success by lord beaverbrook second edition london stanley paul & co essex street, strand, w.c. _first published in november _; _reprinted november _ publishers' note the contents of this volume originally appeared as weekly articles by lord beaverbrook in the _sunday express_. they aroused so much interest, and so many applications were received for copies of the various articles, that it was decided to have them collected and printed in volume form. he who buys _success_, reads and digests its precepts, will find this inspiring volume a sure will-tonic. it will nerve him to be up and doing. it will put such spring and go into him that he will make a determined start on that road which, pursued with perseverance, leads onwards and upwards to the desired goal--success. preface the articles embodied in this small book were written during the pressure of many other affairs and without any idea that they would be published as a consistent whole. it is, therefore, certain that the critic will find in them instances of a repetition of the central idea. this fact is really a proof of a unity of conception which justifies their publication in a collected form. i set out to ask the question, "what is success in the affairs of the world--how is it attained, and how can it be enjoyed?" i have tried with all sincerity to answer the question out of my own experience. in so doing i have strayed down many avenues of inquiry, but all of them lead back to the central conception of success as some kind of temple which satisfies the mind of the ordinary practical man. other fields of mental satisfaction have been left entirely outside as not germane to the inquiry. i address myself to the young men of the new age. those who have youth also possess opportunity. there is in the british empire to-day no bar to success which resolution cannot break. the young clerk has the key of success in his pocket, if he has the courage and the ability to turn the lock which leads to the temple of success. the wide world of business and finance is open to him. any public dinner or meeting contains hundreds of men who can succeed if they will only observe the rules which govern achievement. a career to-day is open to talent, for there is no heredity in finance, commerce, or industry. the succession and death duties are wiping out those reserves by which old-fashioned banks and businesses warded off from themselves for two or three generations the result of hereditary incompetence. ability is bound to be recognised from whatever source it springs. the struggle in finance and commerce is too intense and the battle too world-wide to prevent individual efficiency playing a bigger and a better rôle. if i have given encouragement to a single young man to set his feet on the path which leads upwards to success, and warned him of a few of the perils which will beset him on the road, i shall feel perfectly satisfied that this book has not been written in vain. beaverbrook. contents i. success ii. happiness: three secrets iii. luck iv. moderation v. money vi. education vii. arrogance viii. courage ix. panic x. depression xi. failure xii. consistency xiii. prejudice xiv. calm i success success--that is the royal road we all want to tread, for the echo off its flagstones sounds pleasantly in the mind. it gives to man all that the natural man desires: the opportunity of exercising his activities to the full; the sense of power; the feeling that life is a slave, not a master; the knowledge that some great industry has quickened into life under the impulse of a single brain. to each his own particular branch of this difficult art. the artist knows one joy, the soldier another; what delights the business man leaves the politician cold. but however much each section of society abuses the ambitions or the morals of the other, all worship equally at the same shrine. no man really wants to spend his whole life as a reporter, a clerk, a subaltern, a private member, or a curate. downing street is as attractive as the oak-leaves of the field-marshal; york and canterbury as pleasant as a dominance in lombard street or burlington house. for my own part i speak of the only field of success i know--the world of ordinary affairs. and i start with a contradiction in terms. success is a constitutional temperament bestowed on the recipient by the gods. and yet you may have all the gifts of the fairies and fail utterly. man cannot add an inch to his stature, but by taking thought he can walk erect; all the gifts given at birth can be destroyed by a single curse. like all human affairs, success is partly a matter of predestination and partly of free will. you cannot make the genius, but you can either improve or destroy it, and most men and women possess the assets which can be turned into success. but those who possess the precious gifts will have both to hoard and to expand them. what are the qualities which make for success? they are three: judgment, industry, and health, and perhaps the greatest of these is judgment. these are the three pillars which hold up the fabric of success. but in using the word judgment one has said everything. in the affairs of the world it is the supreme quality. how many men have brilliant schemes and yet are quite unable to execute them, and through their very brilliancy stumble unawares upon ruin? for round judgment there cluster many hundred qualities, like the setting round a jewel: the capacity to read the hearts of men; to draw an inexhaustible fountain of wisdom from every particle of experience in the past, and turn the current of this knowledge into the dynamic action of the future. genius goes to the heart of a matter like an arrow from a bow, but judgment is the quality which learns from the world what the world has to teach and then goes one better. shelley had genius, but he would not have been a success in wall street--though the poet showed a flash of business knowledge in refusing to lend money to byron. in the ultimate resort judgment is the power to assimilate knowledge and to use it. the opinions of men and the movement of markets are all so much material for the perfected instrument of the mind. but judgment may prove a sterile capacity if it is not accompanied by industry. the mill must have grist on which to work, and it is industry which pours in the grain. a great opportunity may be lost and an irretrievable error committed by a brief break in the lucidity of the intellect or in the train of thought. "he who would be cæsar anywhere," says kipling, "must know everything everywhere." nearly everything comes to the man who is always all there. men are not really born either hopelessly idle, or preternaturally industrious. they may move in one direction or the other as will or circumstances dictate, but it is open to any man to work. hogarth's industrious and idle apprentice point a moral, but they do not tell a true tale. the real trouble about industry is to apply it in the right direction--and it is therefore the servant of judgment. the true secret of industry well applied is concentration, and there are many well-known ways of learning that art--the most potent handmaiden of success. industry can be acquired; it should never be squandered. but health is the foundation both of judgment and industry--and therefore of success. and without health everything is difficult. who can exercise a sound judgment if he is feeling irritable in the morning? who can work hard if he is suffering from a perpetual feeling of malaise? the future lies with the people who will take exercise and not too much exercise. athleticism may be hopeless as a career, but as a drug it is invaluable. no ordinary man can hope to succeed who does not work his body in moderation. the danger of the athlete is to believe that in kicking a goal he has won the game of life. his object is no longer to be fit for work, but to be superfit for play. he sees the means and the end through an inverted telescope. the story books always tell us that the rowing blue finishes up as a high court judge. the truth is very different. the career of sport leads only to failure, satiety, or impotence. the hero of the playing fields becomes the dunce of the office. other men go on playing till middle-age robs them of their physical powers. at the end the whole thing is revealed as vanity. play tennis or golf once a day and you may be famous; play it three times a day and you will be in danger of being thought a professional--without the reward. the pursuit of pleasure is equally ephemeral. time and experience rob even amusement of its charm, and the night before is not worth next morning's headache. practical success alone makes early middle-age the most pleasurable period of a man's career. what has been worked for in youth then comes to its fruition. it is true that brains alone are not influence, and that money alone is not influence, but brains and money combined are power. and fame, the other object of ambition, is only another name for either money or power. never was there a moment more favourable for turning talent towards opportunity and opportunity into triumph than great britain now presents to the man or woman whom ambition stirs to make a success of life. the dominions of the british empire abolished long ago the privileges which birth confers. no bar has been set there to prevent poverty rising to the heights of wealth and power, if the man were found equal to the task. the same development has taken place in great britain to-day. men are no longer born into cabinets; the ladder of education is rapidly reaching a perfection which enables a man born in a cottage or a slum attaining the zenith of success and power. there stand the three attributes to be attained--judgment, industry, and health. judgment can be improved, industry can be acquired, health can be attained by those who will take the trouble. these are the three pillars on which we can build the golden pinnacle of success. ii happiness: three secrets near by the temple of success based on the three pillars of health, industry, and judgment, stands another temple. behind the curtains of its doors is concealed the secret of happiness. there are, of course, many forms of that priceless gift. different temperaments will interpret it differently. various experiences will produce variations of the blessing. a man may make a failure in his affairs and yet remain happy. the spiritual and inner life is a thing apart from material success. even a man who, like robert louis stevenson, suffers from chronic ill-health can still be happy. but we must leave out these exceptions and deal with the normal man, who lives by and for his practical work, and who desires and enjoys both success and health. granted that he has these two possessions, must he of necessity be happy? not so. he may have access to the first temple, but the other temple may still be forbidden him. a rampant ambition can be a torture to him. an exaggerated selfishness can make his life miserable, or an uneasy conscience may join with the sins of pride to take their revenge on his mentality. for the man who has attained success and health there are three great rules: "to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly." these are the three pillars of the temple of happiness. justice, which is another word for honesty in practice and in intention, is perhaps the easiest of the virtues for the successful man of affairs to acquire. his experience has schooled him to something more profound than the acceptance of the rather crude dictum that "honesty is the best policy"--which is often interpreted to mean that it is a mistake to go to gaol. but real justice must go far beyond a mere fear of the law, or even a realisation that it does not pay to indulge in sharp practice in business. it must be a mental habit--a fixed intention to be fair in dealing with money or politics, a natural desire to be just and to interpret all bargains and agreements in the spirit as well as in the letter. the idea that nearly all successful men are unscrupulous is very frequently accepted. to the man who knows, the doctrine is simply foolish. success is not the only or the final test of character, but it is the best rough-and-ready reckoner. the contrary view that success probably implies a moral defect springs from judging a man by the opinions of his rivals, enemies, or neighbours. the real judges of a man's character are his colleagues. if they speak well of him, there is nothing much wrong. the failure, on the other hand, can always be sure of being popular with the men who have beaten him. they give him a testimonial instead of a cheque. it would be too curious a speculation to pursue to ask whether justice, like the other virtues, is not a form of self-interest. to answer it in the affirmative would condemn equally the doctrines of the sermon on the mount and the advice to do unto others what they should do unto you. but this is certain. no man can be happy if he suffers from a perpetual doubt of his own justice. the second quality, mercy, has been regarded as something in contrast or conflict with justice. it is not really so. mercy resembles the prerogative of the judge to temper the law to suit individual cases. it must be of a kindred temper with justice, or it would degenerate into mere weakness or folly. a man wants to be certain of his own just inclination before he can dare to handle mercy. but the quality of mercy is, perhaps, not so common in the human heart as to require this caution. it is a quality that has to be acquired. but the man of success and affairs ought to be the last person to complain of the difficulty of acquiring it. he has in his early days felt the whip-hand too often not to sympathise with the feelings of the under-dog. and he always knows that at some time in his career he, too, may need a merciful interpretation of a financial situation. shakespeare may not have had this in his mind when he said that mercy "blesseth him that gives and him that takes"; but he is none the less right. those who exercise mercy lay up a store of it for themselves. shylock had law on his side, but not justice or mercy. one is reminded of his case by the picture of certain jews and gentiles alike as seen playing roulette at monte carlo. their losses, inevitable to any one who plays long enough, seem to sadden them. m. blanc would be doing a real act of mercy if he would exact his toll not in cash, but in flesh. some of the players are of a figure and temperament which would miss the pound of flesh far less than the pound sterling. what, then, in its essence is the quality of mercy? it is something beyond the mere desire not to push an advantage too far. it is a feeling of tenderness springing out of harsh experience, as a flower springs out of a rock. it is an inner sense of gratitude for the scheme of things, finding expression in outward action, and, therefore, assuring its possessor of an abiding happiness. the quality of humility is by far the most difficult to attain. there is something deep down in the nature of a successful man of affairs which seems to conflict with it. his career is born in a sense of struggle and courage and conquest, and the very type of the effort seems to invite in the completed form a temperament of arrogance. i cannot pretend to be humble myself; all i can confess is the knowledge that in so far as i could acquire humility i should be happier. indeed, many instances prove that success and humility are not incompatible. one of the most eminent of our politicians is by nature incurably modest. the difficulty in reconciling the two qualities lies in that "perpetual presence of self to self which, though common enough in men of great ambition and ability, never ceases to be a flaw." but there is certainly one form of humility which all successful men ought to be able to practise. they can avoid a fatal tendency to look down on and despise the younger men who are planting their feet in their own footsteps. the established arrogance which refuses credit or opportunity to rising talent is unpardonable. a man who gives way to what is really simply a form of jealousy cannot hope to be happy, for jealousy is above all others the passion which tears the heart. the great stumbling block which prevents success embracing humility is the difficulty of distinguishing between the humble mind and the cowardly one. when does humility merge into moral cowardice and courage into arrogance? some men in history have had this problem solved for them. stonewall jackson is a type of the man of supreme courage and action and judgment who was yet supremely humble--but he owed his bodily and mental qualities to nature and his humility to the intensity of his presbyterian faith. few men are so fortunately compounded. still, if the moral judgment is worth anything, a man should be able to practise courage without arrogance and to walk humbly without fear. if he can accomplish the feat he will reap no material reward, but an immense harvest of inner well-being. he will have found the blue bird of happiness which escapes so easily from the snare. he will have joined justice to mercy and added humility to courage, and in the light of this self-knowledge he will have attained the zenith of a perpetual satisfaction. iii luck some of the critics do not believe that the pinnacle of success stands only on the three pillars of judgment, industry, and health. they point out that i have omitted one vital factor--luck. so widespread is this belief, largely pagan in its origin, that mere fortune either makes or unmakes men, that it seems worth while to discuss and refute this dangerous delusion. of course, if the doctrine merely means that men are the victims of circumstances and surroundings, it is a truism. it is luckier to be born heir to a peerage and £ , than to be born in whitechapel. past and present chancellors of the exchequer have gone far in removing much of this discrepancy in fortune. again, a disaster which destroys a single individual may alter the whole course of a survivor's career. but the devotees of the goddess of luck do not mean this at all. they hold that some men are born lucky and others unlucky, as though some fortune presided at their birth; and that, irrespective of all merits, success goes to those on whom fortune smiles and defeat to those on whom she frowns. or at least luck is regarded as a kind of attribute of a man like a capacity for arithmetic or games. this view is in essence the belief of the true gambler--not the man who backs his skill at cards, or his knowledge of racing against his rival--but who goes to the tables at monte carlo backing runs of good or ill luck. it has been defined as a belief in the imagined tendencies of chance to produce events continuously favourable or continuously unfavourable. the whole conception is a nightmare of the mind, peculiarly unfavourable to success in business. the laws of games of chance are as inexorable as those of the universe. a skilful player will, in the long run, defeat a less skilful one; the bank at monte carlo will always beat the individual if he stays long enough. i presume that the bank there is managed honestly, although i neither know nor care whether it is. but this at least is certain--the cagnotte gains per cent. on every spin. mathematically, a man is bound to lose the capital he invests in every thirty throws when his luck is neither good nor bad. in the long run his luck will leave him with a balanced book--minus the cagnotte. my advice to any man would be, "never play roulette at all; but if you must play, hold the cagnotte." the press, of course, often publishes stories of great fortunes made at monte carlo. the proprietors there understand publicity. such statements bring them new patrons. it is necessary to dwell on this gambling side of the question, because every man who believes in luck has a touch of the gambler in him, though he may never have played a stake. and from the point of view of real success in affairs the gambler is doomed in advance. it is a frame of mind which a man should discourage severely when he finds it within the citadel of his mind. it is a view which too frequently infects young men with more ambition than industry. the view of fortune as some shining goddess sweeping down from heaven and touching the lucky recipient with her pinions of gold dazzles the mind of youth. men think that with a single stroke they will either be made rich for life or impoverished for ever. the more usual view is less ambitious. it is the complaint that fortune has never looked a man's way. failure due to lack of industry is excused on the ground that the goddess has proved adverse. there is a third form of this mental disease. a young man spoke to me in monte carlo the other day, and said, "i could do anything if only i had the chance, but that chance never comes my way." on that same evening i saw the aspirant throwing away whatever chance he may have had at the tables. a similar type of character is to be found in the young man who consistently refuses good offers or even small chances of work because they are not good enough for him. he expects that luck will suddenly bestow on him a ready-made position or a gorgeous chance suitable to the high opinions he holds of his own capacities. after a time people tire of giving him any openings at all. in wooing the goddess of luck he has neglected the goddess of opportunity. these men in middle age fall into a well-known class. they can be seen haunting the temple, and explaining to their more industrious and successful associates that they would have been lord chancellor if a big brief had ever come their way. they develop that terrible disease known as "the genius of the untried." their case is almost as pitiful or ludicrous as that of the man of very moderate abilities whom drink or some other vice has rendered quite incapable. there will still be found men to whisper to each other as he passes, "ah, if brown didn't drink, he might do anything." far different will be the mental standpoint of the man who really means to succeed. he will banish the idea of luck from his mind. he will accept every opportunity, however small it may appear, which seems to lead to the possibility of greater things. he will not wait on luck to open the portals to fortune. he will seize opportunity by the forelock and develop its chances by his industry. here and there he may go wrong, where judgment or experience is lacking. but out of his very defeats he will learn to do better in the future, and in the maturity of his knowledge he will attain success. at least, he will not be found sitting down and whining that luck alone has been against him. there remains a far more subtle argument in favour of the gambling temperament which believes in luck. it is that certain men possess a kind of sixth sense in the realm of speculative enterprise. these men, it is said, know by inherent instinct, divorced from reasoned knowledge, what enterprise will succeed or fail, or whether the market will rise or fall. they are the children of fortune. the real diagnosis of these cases is a very different one from that put forward by the mystic apostles of the golden luck. eminent men who are closely in touch with the great affairs of politics or business often act on what appears to be a mere instinct of this kind. but, in truth, they have absorbed, through a careful and continuous study of events both in the present and the past, so much knowledge, that their minds reach a conclusion automatically, just as the heart beats without any stimulus from the brain. ask them for the reasons of their decision, and they become inarticulate or unintelligible in their replies. their conscious mind cannot explain the long-hoarded experience of their subconscious self. when they prove right in their forecast, the world exclaims, "what luck!" well, if luck of that kind is long enough continued it will be best ascribed to judgment. the real "lucky" speculator is of a very different character. he makes a brilliant coup or so and then disappears in some overwhelming disaster. he is as quick in losing his fortune as he is in making it. nothing except judgment and industry, backed by health, will ensure real and permanent success. the rest is sheer superstition. two pictures may be put before the believer in luck as an element in success. the one is monte carlo--where the goddess fortune is chiefly worshipped--steeped in almost perpetual sunshine, piled in castellated masses against its hills, gaining the sense of the illimitable from the blue horizon of the mediterranean--a shining land meant for clean exercise and repose. yet there youth is only seen in its depravity, while old age flocks to the central gambling hell to excite or mortify its jaded appetites by playing a game it is bound to lose. here you may see in their decay the people who believe in luck, steeped in an atmosphere of smoke and excitement, while beauty of nature or the pursuits of health call to them in vain. three badly lighted tennis courts compete with thirty splendidly furnished casino rooms. but of means for obtaining the results of exercise without the exertion there is no end. the salle des bains offers to the fat and the jaded the hot bath, the electric massage, and all the mechanical instruments for restoring energy. modern science and art combine to outdo the attractions of the baths of imperial rome. in far different surroundings from these were born the careers of the living captains of modern industry and finance--inchcape, pirrie, cowdray, leverhulme, or mckenna. these men believed in industry, not in fortune, and in judgment rather than in chance. the youth of this generation will do well to be guided by their example, and follow their road to success. not by the worship of the goddess of luck were the great fortunes established or the great reputations made. it is natural and right for youth to hope, but if hope turns to a belief in luck, it becomes a poison to the mind. the youth of england has before it a splendid opportunity, but let it remember always that nothing but work and brains counts, and that a man can even work himself into brains. no goddess will open to any man the portals of the temple of success. young men must advance boldly to the central shrine along the arduous but well-tried avenues of judgment and industry. iv moderation judgment, industry, and health, as the instruments of success, depend largely on a fourth quality, which may be called either restraint or moderation. the successful men of these arduous days are those who control themselves strictly. those who are learned in the past may point out exceptions to this rule. but charles james fox or bolingbroke were only competing with equals in the art of genteel debauchery. their habits were those of their competitors. they were not fighting men who safeguarded their health and kept a cool head in the morning. it is impossible to imagine to-day a leader of the opposition who, after a night of gambling at faro, would go down without a breakfast or a bath to develop an important attack on the government. the days of the brilliant debauchee are over. politicians no longer retire for good at forty to nurse the gout. the antagonists that careless genius would have to meet in the modern world would be of sterner stuff. the modern men of action realise that a sacrifice of health is a sacrifice of years--and that every year is of value. they protect their constitutions as the final bulwark against the assault of the enemy. a man without a digestion is likely to be a man without a heart. political and financial courage spring as much from the nerves or the stomach as from the brain. and without courage no politician or business man is worth anything. moderation is, therefore, the secret of success. and, above all, i would urge on ambitious youth the absolute necessity of moderation in alcohol. i am the last man in the world to be in favour of the regulation of the social habits of the people by law. here every man should be his own controller and law-giver. but this much is certain: no man can achieve success who is not strict with himself in this matter; nor is it a bad thing for an aspiring man of business to be a teetotaller. take the case of the prime minister. no man is more careful of himself. he sips a single glass of burgundy at dinner for the obvious reason that he enjoys it, and not because it might stimulate his activities. he has given up the use of tobacco. bolingbroke as a master of manoeuvres would have had a poor chance against him. for bolingbroke lost his nerve in the final disaster, whereas the prime minister could always be trusted to have all his wits and courage about him. mr. lloyd george is regarded as a man riding the storm of politics with nerves to drive him on. no view could be more untrue. in the very worst days of the war in he could be discovered at the war office taking his ten minutes' nap with his feet up on a chair and discarded newspapers lying like the débris of a battle-field about him. it would be charitable to suppose that he had fallen asleep before he had read his newspapers! he even takes his golf in very moderate doses. we are often told that he needs a prolonged holiday, but somewhere in his youth he finds inexhaustible reserves of power which he conserves into his middle age. in this way he has found the secret of his temporary empire. it is for this reason that the man in command is never too busy to see a caller who has the urgency of vital business at his back. the ex-leader of the conservative party, mr. bonar law, however much he may differ from the premier in many aspects of his temperament, also finds the foundation of his judgment in exercise and caution. as a player of games he is rather poor, but makes up in enthusiasm for tennis what he lacks in skill. his habits are almost ascetic in their rigour. he drinks nothing, and the finest dinner a cook ever conceived would be wasted on him. a single course of the plainest food suffices his appetite, and he grows manifestly uneasy when faced with a long meal. his pipe, his one relaxation, never far absent, seems to draw him with a magic attraction. as it was, his physical resources stood perhaps the greatest strain that has been imposed on any public man in our time. from the moment when he joined the first coalition government in to the day when he laid down office in he was beset by cares and immersed in labours which would have overwhelmed almost any other man. neither this nor succeeding coalition governments were popular with a great section of his conservative followers, and to the task of taking decisions on the war was added the constant and irritating necessity of keeping his own supporters in line with the administration. in he had to take the vital decision which displaced mr. asquith in favour of mr. lloyd george, and during the latter's premiership he had to suffer the strain of constantly accommodating himself, out of a feeling of personal loyalty, to methods which were not congenial to his own nature. in the face of all these stresses he never would take a holiday, and nothing except the rigid moderation of his life enabled him to keep the cool penetration of his judgment intact and his physical vigour going during those six terrible years. the lord chancellor might appear to be an exception to the rule. this is very far from being the case. it is true that his temperament knows no mean either in work or play. one of the most successful speeches he ever delivered in the house of commons was the fruit of a day of violent exercise, followed by a night of preparation, with a wet towel tied round the head. and yet he appeared perfectly fresh; he has the priceless asset of the most marvellous constitution in the british empire. kipling's poem on france suggests an adaptation to describe the lord chancellor: "furious in luxury, merciless in toil, terrible with strength renewed from a tireless soil." no man has spent himself more freely in the hunting-field or works harder to-day at games. yet, with all this tendency to the extreme of work and play, he is a man of iron resolution and determined self-control. although the most formidable enemy of the pussyfooters and the most powerful protector of freedom in the social habits of the people that the cabinet contains, he is, like mr. bonar law, a teetotaler. it is this capacity for governing himself which is pointing upwards to still greater heights of power. mr. mckenna is, perhaps, the most striking instance of what determination can achieve in the way of health and physique. his rowing blue was the simple and direct result of taking pains--in the form of a rowing dummy in which he practised in his own rooms. the achievement was typical of a career which has in its dual success no parallel in modern life. there have been many chancellors of the exchequer and many big men in the city. that a man, after forcing his way to the front in politics, should transfer his activities to the city and become in a short four years its most commanding figure is unheard of. and mr. mckenna had the misfortune to enter public life with the handicap of a stutter. he set himself to cure it by reading burke aloud to his family, and he cured it. he was then told by his political friends that he spoke too quickly to be effective. he cured himself of this defect too, by rehearsing his speeches to a time machine--an ordinary stop-watch, not one of the h.g. wells' variety. indeed, if any man can be said to have "made himself," it is mr. mckenna. he bridges the gulf between politics and the city, and brings one to a final instance of the purely business man. mr. gordon selfridge is an exemplar of the simple life practical in the midst of unbounded success. he goes to his office every morning regularly at nine o'clock. in the midst of opulence he eats a frugal lunch in a room which supplies the one thing of which he is avaricious--big windows and plenty of fresh air. for light and air spell for him, as for the rest of us, health and sound judgment. he possesses, indeed, one terrible and hidden secret--a kind of baron's castle somewhere in the heart of south england, where he may retire beyond the pursuit of king or people, and hurl his defiance from its walls to all the intruders which threaten the balance of the mind. no one has yet discovered this castle, for it exists only on paper. when mr. gordon selfridge requires mental relaxation, he may be found poring over the plans which are to be the basis of this fairy edifice. moat and parapet, tower, dungeon, and drawbridge, are all there, only awaiting the mason of the future to translate them into actuality. but the success of mr. selfridge lies in his frugality, and not in his dreams. one can afford to have a castle in spain when one possesses the money to pay for it. it is the complexity of modern life which enforces moderation. science has created vast populations and huge industries, and also given the means by which single minds can direct them. invention gives these gifts, and compels man to use them. man is as much the slave as the master of the machine, as he turns to the telephone or the telegram. in this fierce turmoil of the modern world he can only keep his judgment intact, his nerves sound, and his mind secure by the process of self-discipline, which may be equally defined as restraint, control, or moderation. this is the price which must be paid for the gifts the gods confer. v money many serious letters and a half-humorous criticism in _punch_ suggest that i am to be regarded as the apostle of a pure materialism. that is not so. i quite recognise the existence of other ambitions in the walks of art, religion, or literature. but at the very outset i confined the scope of my advice to those who wish to triumph in practical affairs. i am talking to the young men who want to succeed in business and to build up a new nation. criticism based on any other conception of my purpose is a spent shaft. money--the word has a magical sound. it conjures up before the vision some kind of enchanted paradise where to wish is to have--aladdin's lamp brought down to earth. yet in reality money carries with it only two qualities of value: the character it creates in the making; the self-expression of the individuality in the use of it, when once it has been made. the art of making money implies all those qualities--resolution, concentration, economy, self-control--which make for success and happiness. the power of using it makes a man who has become the captain of his own soul in the process of its acquirement also the master of the circumstances which surround him. he can shape his immediate world to his own liking. apart from these two faculties, character in acquirement, power in use, money has little value, and is just as likely to be a curse as a blessing. for this reason the money master will care little for leaving vast wealth to his descendants. he knows that they would be better men for going down stripped into the struggle, with no inheritance but that of brains and character. wealth without either the wish, the brains, or the power to use it is too often the medium through which men pamper the flesh with good living, and the mind with inanity, until death, operating through the liver, hurries the fortunate youth into an early grave. the inheritance tax should have no terrors for the millionaire. the value of money is, therefore, first in the striving for it and then in the use of it. the ambition itself is a fine one--but how is it to be achieved? i would lay down certain definite rules for the guidance of the young man who, starting with small things, is determined to go on to great ones:-- . the first key which opens the door of success is the trading instinct, the knowledge and sense of the real value of any article. without it a man need not trouble to enter business at all, but if he possesses it even in a rudimentary form he can cultivate it in the early days when the mind is still plastic, until it develops beyond all recognition. when i was a boy i knew the value in exchange of every marble in my village, and this practice of valuing became a subconscious habit until, so long as i remained in business, i always had an intuitive perception of the real and not the face value of any article. the young man who will walk through life developing the capacity for determining values, and then correcting his judgments by his information, is the man who will succeed in business. . but supposing that a young man has acquired this sense of values, he may yet ruin himself before he comes to the fruition of his talent if he will not practise economy. by economy i mean the economic conduct of his business. examine your profit and loss account before you go out to conquer the financial world, and then go out for conquest--if the account justifies the enterprise. too many men spend their time in laying down "pipe-lines" for future profits which may not arrive or only arrive for some newcomer who has taken over the business. there is nothing like sticking to one line of business until you have mastered it. a man who has learned how to conduct a single industry at a profit has conquered the obstacles which stand in the way of success in the larger world of enterprise. . do not try to cut with too wide a swath. this last rule is the most important of all. many promising young men have fallen into ruin from the neglect of this simple principle. it is so easy for premature ambition to launch men out into daring schemes for which they have neither the resources nor the experience. acquire the knowledge of values, practise economy, and learn to read the minds of men, and your technique will then be perfected and ready for use on wider fields. the instinct for values, the habit of economy, the technique of business, are only three forms of the supreme quality of that judgment which is success. for these reasons it is the first £ , which counts. there is the real struggle, the test of character, and the warranty of success. youth and strength are given us to use in that first struggle, and a man must feel those early deals right down to the pit of his stomach if he is going to be a great man of business. they must shake the very fibre of his being as the conception of a great picture shakes an artist. but the first ten thousand made, he can advance with greater freedom and take affairs in his stride. he will have the confidence of experience, and can paint with a big brush because all the details of affairs are now familiar to his mentality. with this assured technique nothing will check the career. "why," says the innkeeper in an adaptation from bernard shaw's sketch of napoleon in italy, "conquering countries is like folding a tablecloth. once the first fold is made, the rest is easy. conquer one, conquer all." such in effect is the career of the great captains of industry. yet the man who attains, by the practice of these rules, a great fortune, may fail of real achievement and happiness. he may not be able to recognise that the qualities of the aspirant are not exactly the qualities of the man who has arrived. the sense of general responsibility must supersede the spirit of private adventure. the stability of credit becomes the watchword of high finance. thus the great money master will not believe that periods of depression are of necessity ruinous. it is true that no great profits will be made in such years of depression. but the lean years will not last for ever. industry during the period of deflation goes through a process like that of an over-fat man taking a turkish bath. the extravagances are eliminated, new invention and energy spring up to meet the call of necessity, and when the boom years come again it finds industry, like a highly trained athlete, ready to pour out the goods and pay the wages. economic methods are nurtured by depression. but when all has been said and done, the sceptic may still question us. is the capacity to make money something to be desired and striven for, something worth having in the character, some proof of ability in the mind? the answer is "yes." money which is striven for brings with it the real qualities in life. here are the counters which mark character and brains. the money brain is, in the modern world, the supreme brain. why? because that which the greatest number of men strive for will produce the fiercest competition of intellect. politics are for the few; they are a game, a fancy, or an inheritance. leaving out the man of genius who flares out, perhaps, once or twice in a century, the amount of ability which enables a man to cut a very respectable figure in a cabinet is extraordinarily low, compared with that demanded in the world of industry and finance. the politician will never believe this, but it is so. the battles of the market-place are real duels, on which realities of life and death and fortune or poverty and even of fame depend. here men fight with a precipice behind them, not a pension of £ , a year. the young men who go down into that press must win their spurs by no man's favour. but youth can triumph; it has the resolution when the mind is still plastic to gain that judgment which experience gives. my advice to the young men of to-day is simply this: money is nothing but the fruit of resolution and intellect applied to the affairs of the world. to an unshakable resolution fortune will oppose no bar. vi education a great number of letters have reached me from young men who seem to think that the road to success is barred to them owing to defects in their education. to them i would send this message: never believe that success cannot come your way because you have not been educated in the orthodox and regular fashion. the nineteenth century made a god of education, and its eminent men placed learning as the foremost influence in life. i am bold enough to dissent, if by education is meant a course of study imposed from without. indeed, such a course may be a hindrance rather than a help to a man entering on a business career. no young man on the verge of life ought to be in the least discouraged by the fact that he is not stamped with the hall mark of oxford or cambridge. possibly, indeed, he has escaped a grave danger; for if, in the impressionable period of youth, attention is given to one kind of knowledge, it may very likely be withdrawn from another. a life of sheltered study does not allow a boy to learn the hard facts of the world--and business is concerned with reality. the truth is that education is the fruit of temperament, not success the fruit of education. what a man draws into himself by his own natural volition is what counts, because it becomes a living part of himself. i will make one exception in my own case--the shorter catechism, which was acquired by compulsion and yet remains with me. my own education was of a most rudimentary description. it will be difficult for the modern english mind to grasp the parish of newcastle, new brunswick, in the 'eighties--sparse patches of cultivation surrounded by the virgin forest and broken by the rush of an immense river. for half the year the land is in the iron grip of snow and frost, and the miramichi is frozen right down to its estuary--so that "the rain is turned to a white dust, and the sea to a great green stone." it was the seasons which decided my compulsory education. in the winter i attended school because it was warm inside, and in the summer i spent my time in the woods because it was warm outside. perhaps the most remarkable instance of what self-education can do is to be found in the achievements of mr. j.l. garvin. he received no formal education at all in the public school or university sense, and he began to work for his living at an early age. yet, not only is he, perhaps, the most eminent of living journalists, but his knowledge of books is, if not more profound than that of any other man in england, certainly wider in range, for it is not limited to any country or language. by his own unaided efforts he has gained not only knowledge, but style and judgment. to listen to his talk on literature is not merely to yield oneself to the spell of the magician, but to feel that the critic has got his estimate of values right. reading, indeed, is the real source both of education and of style. read what you like, not what somebody else tells you that you ought to like. that reading alone is valuable which becomes part of the reader's own mind and nature, and this can never be the case if the matter is not the result of self-selection, but forced on the student from outside. read anything and read everything--just as a man with a sound digestion and a good appetite eats largely and indifferently of all that is set before him. the process of selection and rejection, or, in other words, of taste, will come best and naturally to any man who has the right kind of brains in his head. some books he will throw away; others he will read over and over again. my education owes much to scott and stevenson, stealthily removed from my father's library and read in the hayloft when i should have been in school. as a partiality for the right kind of literature grows on a man he is unconsciously forming his mind and his taste and his style, and by a natural impulse and no forced growth the whole world of letters is his. there are, of course, in addition, certain special branches of education needing teaching which are of particular value to the business life. foremost among these are mathematics and foreign languages. it is not suggested that a knowledge of the higher mathematics is essential to a successful career; none the less it is true that the type of mind which takes readily to mathematics is the kind which succeeds in the realm of industry and finance. one of the things i regret is that my business career was shaped on a continent which speaks one single language for commercial purposes from the arctic circle to the gulf of mexico. foreign languages are, therefore, a sealed book to me. but if a man can properly appraise the value of something he does not possess, i would place a knowledge of languages high in the list of acquirements making for success. but when all is said and done, the real education is the market-place of the street. there the study of character enables the boy of judgment to develop an unholy proficiency in estimating the value of the currency of the realm. experiences teaches that no man ought to be downcast in setting out on the adventure of life by a lack of formal knowledge. the lord chancellor asked me the other day where i was going to educate one of my sons. when i replied that i had not thought about the matter, and did not care, he was unable to repress his horror. and yet the real reasons for such indifference are deep rooted in my mind. a boy is master, and the only master, of his fortune. if he wants to succeed in literature, he will read the classics until he obtains by what he draws into himself that kind of instinct which enables him to distinguish between good work and bad, just as the expert with his eyes shut knows the difference between a good and a bad cigar. neither may be able to give any reason, for the verdict bases on subconscious knowledge, but each will be right when he says, "here i have written well," or "here i have smoked badly." the message, therefore, is one of encouragement to the young men of england who are determined to succeed in the affairs of the world, and yet have not been through the mill. the public schools turn out a type--the individual turns out himself. in the hour of action it is probable that the individual will defeat the type. nothing is of advantage in style except reading for oneself. nothing is of advantage in the art of learning to know a good cigar but the actual practice of smoking. nothing is of advantage in business except going in young, liking the game, and buying one's experience. in a word, man is the creator and not the sport of his fate. he can triumph over his upbringing and, what is more, over himself. vii arrogance what is arrogance? to begin with, it is the besetting sin of young men who have begun to prosper by their own exertions in the affairs of the world. it is not pride, which is a more or less just estimate of one's own power and responsibilities. it is not vanity or conceit, which consists in pluming oneself exactly on the qualities one does not possess. arrogance is in essence something of far tougher fibre than conceit. it is the sense of ability and power run riot; the feeling that the world is an oyster, and that in opening its rough edges there is no need to care a jot for the interests or susceptibilities of others. a young man who has surmounted his education, gone out into the world on his own account, and made some progress in business, is the ready prey of the bacillus of arrogance. he does not yet know enough of life to realise the price he will have to pay in the future for the brusqueness of his manner or the abruptness of his proceedings. he may even fancy that it is only necessary to be as rude as napoleon to acquire all the gifts of the emperor. this conception is altogether false, though it may be pardoned to youth in the first rush of success. the unfortunate point is that in everyday life the older men will not in practice confer this pardon. they are annoyed by the presumption the newcomer displays, and they visit their wrath on him, not only at the time of the offence, but for years afterwards. at the moment this attitude of criticism and hostility the masters of the field show to the aspirant may not be without its advantages if it teaches him that justice, moderation, and courtesy are qualities which still possess merits even for the rising young man. if so, we may thank heaven even for our enemies. the usual prophecy for curbing arrogant youth on these occasions is the sure prediction that he will come a smash. as a matter of fact, it is extraordinarily rare for a man who has conquered the initial difficulties of success in money-making, if his work is honest, to come to disaster. none the less, if the young man hears these "ancestral voices prophesying war," and shivers a little in his bed at night, he will be none the worse for the cold douche of doubt and enmity. indeed, so long as youth keeps its head it will be the better for the successive hurdles which obstructive age, or even middle-age, puts in its path. a few stumbles will teach it care in approaching the next jump. the only real cure for arrogance is a check--not an absolute failure. for complete disaster is as likely to breed the arrogance of despair as supreme triumph is to breed the arrogance of invincibility. a set-back is the best cure for arrogance. it would be a false assumption to suppose that temporary humiliations or mistakes can rid one definitely and finally of the vice i am describing. arrogance seems too closely knit into the very fibre of early success. the firsthand experience of youth is not sufficient to effect the cure--and it may be that no years and no experience will purge the mind of this natural tendency. when pitt publicly announced at twenty-three that he would never take anything less than cabinet rank he was undoubtedly arrogant. he became premier at twenty-four. but age and experience moderated his supreme haughtiness, leaving at the end a residue of pure self-confidence which enabled him to bear up against blow after blow in the effort to save the state. arrogance, tempered by experience and defeat, may thus produce in the end the most effective type of character. but it seems a pity that youth should suffer so much in the aftermath while it learns the necessary lessons. but will youth listen to the advice of middle-age? for every man youth tramples on in the arrogance of his successful career a hundred enemies will spring up to dog with an implacable dislike the middle of his life. a fault of manner, a deal pressed too hard in equity, the abruptness by which the old gods are tumbled out to make room for the new--all these are treasured up against the successful newcomer. in the very heat of the strife men take no more reckon of these things than of a flesh wound in the middle of a hand-to-hand battle. it is the after recollection on the part of the vanquished that breeds the sullen resentment rankling against the arrogance of the conqueror. years afterwards, when all these things seem to have passed away, and the very recollection of them is dim in the mind of the young man, he will suddenly be struck by an unlooked-for blow dealt from a strange or even a friendly quarter. he will stagger, as though hit from behind with a stone, and exclaim, "why did this man hit me suddenly from the dark?" then searching back in the chamber of his mind he will remember some long past act of arrogance--conceived of at the time merely as an exertion of legitimate power and ability--and he will realise that he is paying in maturity for the indiscretions of his youth. he may be engaged in some scheme for the benefit of a people or a nation in which there is not the faintest trace of self-interest. he may even be anxious to keep the peace with all men in the pursuit of his aim. but he may yet be compelled to look with sorrow on the wreck of his idea and pay the default for the antagonisms of his youth. it is not, perhaps, in the nature of youth to be prudent. the game seems everything; the penalties either nil or remote. but if prudence was ever vital in the early years, it is in the avoidance of those unnecessary enmities which arrogance brings in its train. it might be supposed that middle-age was preaching to youth on a sin it had outlived. that is not the case. unfortunately, arrogance is not confined to any period of life. but in early age it is a tendency at once most easy to forgive and to cure. carried into later years, with no perception of the fault, it becomes incurable. worse than that, it usually turns its possessor into a mixture of bore and fool. wrapped up in the mantle of his own self-esteem, the sufferer fails to catch the drift of sentiment round him, or to put himself in touch with the opinions of others. his chair in any room is soon surrounded by vacant seats or by patient sufferers. the vice has, in fact, turned inwards, and corroded the mentality. far better the enemies and the mistakes of youth than this final assault on the fortress of inner calm and happiness within the mind. the arrogant man can neither be friends with others nor, what is worse still, be friends with himself. the intense concentration on self which the mental habit brings not only disturbs any rational judgment of the values of the outer world, but poisons all sanity, calm, and happiness at the very source of being. it is hard to shed arrogance. it is more difficult to be humble. it is worth while to make the attempt. viii courage courage! it sounds an easy quality to possess, bringing with it the dreams of v.c.s, and bestowing on every man worth the name the power to endure physical danger. but courage in business is a more complex affair. it presupposes a logical dilemma which can only be escaped in the field of practice. the man who has nothing but courage easily lets this quality turn into mere stubbornness, and a crass obstinacy is as much a hindrance to business success as a moral weakness. yet to the man who does not possess moral courage the most brilliant abilities may prove utterly useless. there is the folly of resistance and the folly of complaisance. there is the tendency towards eternal compromise and the desire for futile battle. until the mind of youth has adjusted itself between the two extremes and formed a technique which is not so much independent of either tendency as inclusive of both, youth cannot hope for great success. the evils which pure stubbornness brings in its train are perfectly clear. men cling to a business indefinitely in the fond wish that a loss may yet be turned into a profit. they hope on for a better day which their intelligence tells them will never dawn. for this attitude of mind stupidity is a better word than stubbornness, and a far better word than courage. when reason and judgment bid us give up the immediate battle and start afresh on some new line, it is intellectual cowardice, not moral courage, which bids us persevere. this obstinacy is the reverse of the shield of which courage is the shining emblem--for courage in its very essence can never be divorced from judgment. but it is easy for the character to run to the other extreme. there is a well-known type of jewish business man who never succeeds because he is always too ready to compromise before the goal of a transaction has been attained. to such a mind the certainty of half a loaf is always better than the probability of a whole one. one merely mentions the type to accentuate the paradox. great affairs above all things require for their successful conduct that class of mind which is eminently sensitive to the drift of events, to the characters or changing views of friends and opponents, to a careful avoidance of that rigidity of standpoint which stamps the doctrinaire or the mule. the mind of success must be receptive and plastic. it must know by the receptivity of its capacities whether it is paddling against the tide or with it. but it is perfectly clear that this quality in the man of affairs, which is akin to the artistic temperament, may very easily degenerate into mere pliability. never fight, always negotiate for a remnant of the profits, becomes the rule of life. at each stage in the career the primroses will beckon more attractively towards the bonfire, and the uphill path of contest look more stony and unattractive. in this process the intellect may remain unimpaired, but the moral fibre degenerates. i once had to make a choice of this nature in the days of my youth when i was forming the canada cement company. one of the concerns offered for sale to the combine was valued at far too high a price. in fact, it was obvious that only by selling it at this over-valuation could its debts be paid. the president of this overvalued concern was connected with the most powerful group of financiers that canada has ever seen. their smile would mean fortune to a young man, and their frown ruin to men of lesser position. the loss of including an unproductive concern at an unfair price would have been little to me personally--but it would have saddled the new amalgamated industry and the investors with a liability instead of an asset. it was certainly far easier to be pliable than to be firm. every kind of private pressure was brought to bear on me to accede to the purchase of the property. when this failed, all the immense engines for the formation of public opinion which were at the disposal of the opposing forces were directed against me in the form of vulgar abuse. and that attack was very cleverly directed. it made no mention of my refusal to buy a certain mill for the combine at an excessive cost to the shareholding public. on the contrary, those who had failed to induce me to break faith with the investing public appealed to that public to condemn me for forming a trust. i am prepared now to confess that i was bitterly hurt and injured by the injustice of these attacks. but i regret nothing. why? because these early violent criticisms taught me to treat ferocious onslaughts in later life with complete indifference. a certain kind of purely cynical intelligence would hold that i should have been far wiser to adopt the pliable rôle. but that innate judgment which dwells in the recesses of the mind tells me that my whole capacity for action in affairs would have been destroyed by the moral collapse of yielding to that threat. pliability would have become a habit rather than a matter of judgment and will, for fortitude only comes by practice. every young man who enters business will at some time or another meet a similar crisis which will determine the bias of his career and dictate his habitual technique in negotiation. but he may well exclaim, "how do you help me? you say that courage may be stubbornness and even stupidity--and compromise a mere form of cowardice or weakness. where is the true courage which yet admits of compromise to be found?" it is the old question: how can firmness be combined with adaptability to circumstances? there is no answer except that the two qualities _must_ be made to run concurrently in the mind. one must be responsive to the world, and yet sensible of one's own personality. it is only the special circumstance of a grave crisis which will put a young man to this crucial test of judgment. the case will have to be judged on its merits, and yet the final decision will affect the whole of his career. but one practical piece of advice can be given. never bully, and never talk about the whip-hand--it is a word not used in big business. the view of the intellect often turns towards compromise when the direction of the character is towards battle. such a conflict of tendencies is most likely to lead to the wise result. the fusion of firmness with a careful weighing of the risks will best attain the real decision which is known as courage. the intellectual judgment will be balanced by the moral side. any man who could attain this perfect balance between these two parallel sides of his mind would have attained, at a single stroke, all that is required to make him eminent in any walk of life. one regards perfection, but cannot attain it. none the less, it is out of this struggle to combine a sense of proportion with an innate hardihood that true courage is born; and courage is success. ix panic panic is the fear which makes great masses of men rush into the abyss without due reason. it is, in fact, a mass sentiment with which there is no reasoning. yet at one time or another in his career every man in business will be confronted with a stampede of this character, and if he does not understand how to deal with it, he will be trampled in the mud. the purely stubborn man will be the first to go under. he will say, and may be perfectly right in saying, that there is no real cause for anxiety. he will prepare to run slap through the storm, and refuse to reef a single financial sail. he forgets that the mere existence of panic in the minds of others is in itself as hard a factor in the situation as the real value of the properties on the market which are being stampeded. the atmosphere of the business world is a reality even when the views which produce it are wrong. to face a panic one must first of all realise the intrinsic facts, and then allow for the misreading of others. it is the plastic and ingenious mind which will best grapple with these unusual circumstances. it will invent weapons and expedients with which to face each new phase of the position. "whenever you meet an abnormal situation," said the sage, "deal with it in an abnormal manner." that is sound advice. but a business panic is, after all, a rare phenomenon--something a man need only have to face once in a lifetime. it is the panic in the mind of the individual which is the perpetual danger. how many men are there who let this perpetual fear of financial disaster gnaw at their minds like a rat in the dark? those who only see the mask put on in the daytime would be astonished to know the number of men who lay awake at night quaking with fear at some imagined disaster, the day of which will probably never come. these are the men who cannot keep a good heart--who lack that particular kind of courage which prevents a man becoming the prey of his own nervous imagination. they sell out good business enterprises at an absurdly low price because they have not got the nerve to hold on. those who buy them secure the profits. one may pity the sellers, but cannot blame the buyers. those who have the courage of their judgment are bound to win. these pessimists foresee all the possibilities, and just because they foresee too much, it may be that they will spin out of the disorder of their own minds a real failure which a little calmness and courage would have avoided. the moment a man is infected with this internal panic-fear, he ceases to be able to exercise his judgment. he is convinced, let us say, that the raw material of his industry is running short. he sees himself with contracts on hand which he will not be able to complete. very likely there is not the remotest risk of any such shortage arising, but, in the excess of his anxiety, he buys too heavily, and at too high a price. his actions become impulsive rather than reasoned. it is true that in the perfectly balanced temperament action will follow on judgment so quickly that the two operations cannot be distinguished. such decisions may appear to be precipitate or impulsive, but they are not really so. but the young man who has the disease of fear in his brain cells will act on an impulse which is purely irrational, because it is based on a blind terror and not on a reasoned experience. when a man is in this state of mind, the best thing he can do is to delay his final decisions until he has really thought matters out. if he does this, the actual facts of the case may, on reflection, prove far less serious than the impulsive and diseased mind has supposed. but it must follow that a man who can only trust his judgment to operate after a period of time must be in the second class, compared with the formed judgment which can flash into sane action in a moment. he must always be a day behind the fair--a quality fatal to real success. how can the victim exorcise from his mind this dread of the unknown--this partly conscious and partly subconscious form of fear, "which eats the heart alway"? nothing can throw off the grip which this acute anxiety has fixed on the brain, except a resolute effort of will and intelligence. i, myself, would give one simple recipe for the cure. when you feel inclined to be anxious about the present, think of the worst anxiety you ever had in the past. instead of one grip on the mind, there will be two distinct grips--and the greater grip of the past will overpower the lesser one in the present. "nothing," a man will say, "can be as bad as that crisis of old, and yet i survived it successfully. if i went through that and survived, how far less arduous and dangerous is the situation to-day?" a man can thus reason and will himself into the possession of a stout heart. if a man can still the panic of his own heart, he will need to fear very little all the storms which may rage against him from outside. "it is the nature of tense spirits," says lord rosebery, "to be unduly elated and unduly depressed." a man who can conquer these extremes and turn them into common level of effort is the man who will be master in the sphere of his own soul, and, therefore, capable of controlling the vast currents which flow from outside. he may rise to that height of calmness once exhibited by lord leverhulme, who, when threatened with panic in his business, remarked, "yes, of course, if the skies fall, all the larks will be killed." panic, therefore, whether external or internal, is an experience which tests at once the body, the mind, and the soul. the internal panic is an evil which can only be cured by a resolute application of the will and intellect to the subconscious self. the panic of a world suddenly convulsed in its markets is like a thunderstorm, sweeping from the mountains down the course of a river to where some town looks out on the bay. it comes in a moment from the wild, and passes as swiftly into the sea. it has the evanescence of a dream and yet all the force of reality. it consists of air and rain, and yet the lighter substance, driven with the force of a panic passion, can uproot the solid materials, as the tornado the tall trees and the stone dwellings of humanity, and turn the secular lives of men into desolation and despair. when it has passed, all seems calm, and only the human wreckage remains to show the power of the storm that has swept by. to face these sudden blows which seem to come out of the void, men must have their reserves of character and mentality well in hand. the first reserve is that of intellect. never let mere pride or obstinacy stand in the way of bowing to the storm. firmness of character should on these terrible occasions be turned inside out, and be formed into a plasticity of intellect which finds at once its inspiration and its courage in the adoption of novel expedients. the courage of the heart will let no expedient of the ingenuity be left untried. but both ingenuity and courage will find their real source in a health which has not yet exhausted the resources of the body. firmness which is not obstinacy, health which is not the fad of the valetudinarian, adaptability which is not weakness, enterprise which is not rashness--these are the qualities which will preserve men in those evil days when the "blast of the terrible one is against the wall." x depression depression is not a word which sounds cheerfully in the ears of men of affairs. but the actuality is not as bad as the term. it differs in every respect from panic. it is not a sudden and furious gust breaking on a peaceful situation, irrational both in its onset and in its passing away, but something which can be foreseen, and ought to be foreseen, by any prudent voyager on the waters of business. the wise mariner will furl his sails before the winds blow too strong. nor is depression in itself a disaster. it is merely the wholesome corrective which nature applies to the swollen periods of the world's affairs. as with trade and commerce, so with the individual. the high-spirited man pays for his hours of elation and optimism, when every prospect seems to be open to him and the sunshine of life a thing which will last for ever, by corresponding states of reaction and gloom, when the whole universe seems to be involved in a conspiracy against his welfare. the process is a salutary if not a pleasant one--and has been applied remorsely ever since jeshurun waxed fat and kicked. so it is with the volume of the world's business. however well men may try to balance the trend of affairs so as to produce a normal relation between the output and the needs of humanity, the natural laws do not cease to operate in a rhythmic alternation between the high prices which stimulate production and the glut of goods which overtakes the demand of the market and breaks the price. but this change in the sequence from boom to depression is not an unmixed evil. prosperity spells extravagance in production. while the good times endure, there is no sufficient incentive either to economy or to invention. a concern which is selling goods at a high profit as fast as it can make them will not trouble to manage its affairs on strict economic lines. it is when the pinch begins to be felt that men will investigate with relentless zeal their whole method of production, will welcome every procedure which reduces cost, and seek for every new invention which promises an economy. depression is the purge of business. the lean years abolish the adipose deposit of prosperity. the athlete is once more trained down fine for the battle. men who realise these facts will not, therefore, grumble overmuch at bad times. they will, at least, have had the sense to see that those times were bound to come, and have refused to believe that they had entered into a perpetual paradise of high prices. in this respect free will makes the individual superior to the alternations of the market. he, at least, is not compelled to be always either exalted or depressed. if he cannot be the master of the market, he is, at least, master of his own fate. how, then, should men deal with the alternate cycles of flourishing and declining trade? there is a celebrated dictum, "sell on arising market, buy on a falling one." that man will be safest who will reject this time-worn theory, or will only accept it with profound modifications. the advice i tender on this subject is as applicable to throgmorton street as it is good for mincing lane. the danger of the dictum is that it commits the believer to rowing for ever against the tide. let us take the case of buying on a falling market. that a man should abstain from all buying transactions while the market is falling is an absurd proposition. but it is none the less true in the main that such a course is a mistaken one. the machinery of his industry must, of course, be kept in motion, or it will rust and cease to be able to move in better times. but it is unwise to embark on new enterprises and commitments when commerce, finance, and industry are all stagnant. and very frequently buying on a falling market means just this. it is like sowing in the depths of winter seeds which would mature just as well if they were sown in march. no; it is when the tide has definitely turned that new enterprises should be undertaken. the iron frost is then broken, and the sower may go out to scatter in the spring-time seeds which will bring in their harvest. to buy before the turn is to incur the cost of carrying stocks for many unnecessary months. the converse of the proposition is to sell on a rising market. certainly. sell on a rising market, but do not stop selling because the market ceases to rise. a great part of the art of business is the selling capacity and the organisation of sales, but to carry out a preordained system of selling on an abstract theory is mere folly. to cease selling just because the market is not rising at a given moment, and to wait for a better day--which may not dawn--is to burden a firm unduly with the carrying of stocks and commodities. there is a saying in canada, "go, while the going is good." the phrase--an invitation to sell--finds its origin in the state of the roads. when the winter is making, the roads are hard and smooth for sleighing, and are kept so by the continual fresh falls of snow, and you can speed swiftly over the firm surface. but when the winter is breaking, the falls of snow cease, and the sleigh leaps with a crash and a bump over great gullies, tossing the traveller from side to side and dashing his head against the dashboard. these depressions are called "thank you marms," because that is the ejaculation with which the victim informs his companions that he has recovered his equanimity. the man who will never sell on a falling market is the man who will not face the "thank you marms." he will "go while the going is good," but he will not accept the corollary to the dictum, "but don't stop because going is bad." he has not the nerve to face the bump and come up smiling. don't be afraid to sell on a falling market, or you will be afraid to sell at all until you are forced to sell at far lower prices because of the weight of stocks or commitments which must be liquidated at any cost. it is precisely in time of depression that the men of business ought to press their selling and organise their sales organisation to the utmost limit. if finance, commerce, and industry could only be persuaded to take this course in the slack times, then every action in this direction would cure the evil by lessening the duration of the bad times. not till the surplus stocks have been unloaded will the winter pass and the summer come again in the enterprise of the world. selling is the final cure for depression. xi failure the bitterest thing in life is failure, and the pity is that it is almost always the result of some avoidable error or misconception. with the rare exception of a man who is by nature a criminal or a waster, there need be no such thing as failure. every man has a career before him, or, at worst, every man can find a niche in the social order into which he can fit himself with success. the trouble in so many cases is that it takes time and opportunity for a man to discover in what direction his natural bent lies. he springs from a certain stock or class, and the circumstances which surround him in youth naturally dictate to him the choice of a career. in many cases it will be a method of living to which he is totally unsuited. but once he is embarked on it the clogs are about his feet, and it is hard to break away and begin all over again. and this ill-fitting of men to jobs may not even embrace so wide a divergence as that between one kind of activity and business and another. a young man may be in the right business for him, and yet in the wrong department of it. in any case, the result is the same. the employer votes him no use, or at least just passable, or second rate. much worse, the employee knows himself that he has failed to make good, and that at the best nothing but a career of mediocrity stretches out before him. he admits a failure, and by that very act of admission he has failed. the waters of despair close above his head, and the consequence may be ruin. such mistakes spring from a wrong conception of the nature of the human mind. we are too apt to believe in a kind of abstraction called "general ability," which is expected to exhibit itself under any and every condition. according to this doctrine, if a man is clever at one thing or successful under one set of circumstances, he must be equally clever at everything and equally successful under all conditions. such a view is manifestly untrue. the mind of man is shut off into separate compartments, often capable of acting quite independently of each other. no one would dream of measuring the capacity of the individual for domestic affection by that of his power for oratory, or his spirituality by his business instinct. and what is true of the larger distinctions of the soul is also true of that particular part of the mind which is devoted to practical success. specialised aptitude for one particular branch of activity is the exception rather than the rule. the contrary opinion may, indeed, easily lead to grave error in the judgment of men, and therefore in the management of affairs. there is no art in which either the barrister, the politician, or, for that matter, the journalist excels so much as in the rapid grasp of a logical position, the power of assimilating great masses of material against it or for it, and of putting out the results of this research again in a lucid and convincing form. anyone listening to such an exposition would be tempted to believe that here was a man of such high general ability that he would be perfectly capable of handling in practice, and with superb ability, the affairs he has been explaining. and yet such a judgment would be wrong. the expositor would be a failure as an active agent. it would not be difficult to find the exact converse to the case. the greatest of all the editors of big london newspapers will fail entirely to appreciate a careful and logical statement of a situation when it is subjected to him. but place before him the raw material and the implements of his own profession, and his infallible instinct for news will enable him to produce a newspaper far transcending that which his more logical critic could have achieved. leaving aside a few strange exceptions, a musician is not a soldier, a barrister not a stockbroker, a poet not a man of business, or a politician a great organiser. anyone who had strayed in youth to the wrong profession and failed might yet prove himself an immense success in another, and these broad distinctions at the top ramify downwards until the general truth is equally applicable to all the subdivisions of business and even to all the administrative sections of particular firms. to take a single practical instance, there is the department of salesmanship and the department of finance. salesmanship requires, above all, the spirit of optimism. that same spirit carried into the sphere of finance might ruin a firm. the success in one branch might therefore well be the failure in the other, and vice versa. no young man, therefore, has failed until he has succeeded. if i had to choose one single and celebrated instance of this doctrine i should find it in the career of lord reading, viceroy of india. it may be objected that, as he is of the jewish race and religion, his is not a fair test case by which to try the abilities and aptitudes of the young men of great britain. i do not accept the distinction. the powers and mental aptitudes of the jews are exactly the same as ours, except that they come to full flower earlier. the precocity of this maturity is interpreted as a special genius for affairs--which it is not. lord reading started his career on the stock exchange, where he failed utterly. no doubt experience would have brought him a reasonable measure of success; but it was equally clear that this was not the sphere for his preeminent abilities. he therefore broke boldly away and entered at the bar, where his intellect secured him a reputation and an income, especially in commercial cases, which left his competitors divided between admiration and annoyance. in a single year he made £ , . the peg had found the round hole. his eminence procured him the attorney-generalship. yet with all his ability and his personal popularity he was not a real success in the house of commons. parliamentary warfare was not his aptitude. so he became lord chief justice. his great personal character and reputation gave lord reading in his new position a certain reputation as a great lord chief. from my own limited experience i do not agree. i had to watch closely a certain case he was trying, and i did not think lord reading was a great judge. he failed to carry the jury with him; the final court of appeal ordered a new trial, which resulted in the reversal of the judgment. such a thing might happen to any judge, but a strong one would have put a prompt end to proceedings which were obviously vexatious and entailed great cost by the delay on defendants, who had obviously been dragged improperly into the action. but his real opportunity came with his mission to the united states during the war. no ambassador had ever achieved such popularity and influence or brought back such rich sheaves with him. as a diplomatist, a man of law, and a man of business, he shone supreme. once more, since his days at the commercial bar, he had found the real field for his talents. from the law courts he has journeyed to a position of great responsibility in india. some voices are already acclaiming the success of the new viceroy. it will be wiser to wait until it is clear whether his versatile genius will find successful play in its new environment. but the moral of lord reading's career is plain. do not despair over initial failure. seek a new opening more suited to your talents. fight on in the certain hope that a career waits for every man. xii consistency nothing is so bad as consistency. there exists no more terrible person than the man who remarks: "well, you may say what you like, but at any rate i have been consistent." this argument is generally advanced as the palliation for some notorious failure. and this is natural for the man who is consistent must be out of touch with reality. there is no consistency in the course of events, in history, in the weather, or in the mental attitude of one's fellow-men. the consistent man means that he intends to apply a single foot-rule to all the chances and changes of the universe. this mental standpoint must of necessity be founded on error. to adopt it is to sacrifice judgment, to cast away experience, and to treat knowledge as of no account. the man who prides himself on his consistency means that facts are nothing compared to his superior sense of intellectual virtue. but to attack consistency is quite a different thing from elevating inconsistency to the rank of an ideal. the man who was proud of being inconsistent, not from necessity but from choice, would be as much of a fool as his opposite. life, in a word, can never be lived by a theory. the politicians are the most prominent victims of the doctrine of consistency. they practice an art which, above all others, depends for success on opportunism--on dealing adequately with the chances and changes of circumstances and personalities. and yet the politician more than anyone else has to consider how far he dare do the right thing to-day in view of what he said yesterday. the policy of a great nation is often diverted into wrong channels by the memories of old speeches, and statesmen fear men who mole in hansard. again, i do not recommend inconsistency as a good thing in itself. if a politician believes in some great general economic policy such as free trade or protection, he will only be justified in changing his mind under the irresistible pressure of a change of circumstance. he will be slow, and rightly, to change his standpoint until the evidence carries absolute conviction. in business consistency of mental attitude is a terrible vice, for a simple and obvious reason. by an inevitable process like the swaying of the solstice the business world alternates between periods of boom and periods of depression. the wheel is always revolving, fast or slow, round the full cycle of over-or under-production. it is clear that a policy which is right in one stage of the process must necessarily be wrong in the other. what would happen to a man who said, "i am consistent. i always buy," or to one who replied, "no man can charge me with lack of principle. i invariably sell"? their stories would soon be written in the _gazette_. this is the most obvious instance of the perils of consistency in the world of business. but, quite apart from this, nothing but fluidity of judgment can ever lead the man of affairs to success. i once took the chairmanship of a bank which had passed into a state of torpor threatening final decay. there was not a living fibre in it, and my task was to try to galvanise the corpse. i sought here and there and in every direction for an opening, like a boxer feeling for a weak point in his opponent's guard. my fellow directors, who had served on the board for many years, were shrewd business men, but if the bank had not lost the capacity for either accepting or creating new situations it would not have been in a state of decay. the board met once a week, and the directors gathered together before the meeting at the luncheon-table. "what surprise proposal are you going to spring on us to-day?" they used to ask me. and the mere fact that the proposal was of the nature of a surprise was almost invariably the only criticism against it. i may have been wrong in surprising my colleagues by the various projects that i put forward, but in the propositions themselves i proved right. the criticism was really based on the doctrine of consistency fatal to all business enterprise. suppose an amalgamation was contemplated one day i would be a buyer of another bank, and if by next week this plan had fallen through i would be strongly in favour of selling to a bigger bank. "but you are inconsistent," said my colleagues. my answer is that what the business needed was life and movement at all costs, and that buying or selling, consistency or inconsistency were neither here nor there. the prominent capitalist is often open to this particular charge. on wednesday, says the adversary, he was all for this great scheme; on friday he has forgotten all about it and has another one. this is perfectly true--but then between wednesday and friday the weather has changed completely. is the barometer fickle or inconsistent because it registers an alteration of weather? nevertheless, the men of affairs who follow facts to success rather than consistency to failure must expect to pay the penalty. or at least, if they are to avoid the punishment for being right they must take enormous precautions. the principle penalty is the prompt criticism that although the successful business man plays the game with vigour, nerve, and sinew, yet he plays it according to his own rules. the truth is that there is no other way in which to play the game. fluidity of judgment, adversely described as fickleness and inconsistency, is the essence of success. but the criticism is damaging. there are only two ways of combating it, the wrong one and the right one. the wrong method is that of hypocrisy--claiming a consistency which does not exist. the right one is to cultivate the art of pleasing, so that inconsistency may be forgiven. friends may thus be retained though business policies vary. this is the highest art of financial diplomacy. those who by some misfortune of character or upbringing are incapable of this practice must make up their minds to face the abuse which their successful practice of inconsistency will entail. they will not, if they are wise, cultivate hypocrisy, not because the practice will damage them in the esteem of their colleagues and neighbours, for, on the contrary, it will enhance their repute, but because it will damage their own self-respect. they would know that they were right in following fact and fortune, and yet would be making a public admission that they were wrong. xiii prejudice the most common, and, perhaps, the most serious of vices is prejudice. it is a thing imbibed with one's mother's milk, fortified by all one's youthful surroundings, and only broken through, if at all, by experience of the world and a deliberate mental effort. prejudice is, indeed, a vice in the most serious sense of the term. it is more damaging and corroding in its effects than most of the evil habits which are usually described by that term. it is destructive of judgment and devastating in its effect on the mentality because it is a symptom of a narrowness of outlook on the world. the man who can learn to outlive prejudice has broken through an iron ring which binds the mind. and yet we all come into the world of affairs in early youth with that ring surrounding our temples. we have subconscious prejudices even where we have no conscious ones. family, tradition, early instruction and upbringing fasten on every man preconceptions which are hard to break. i write out of my own experience. i was brought up as the son of a minister of the church of scotland, who left edinburgh university as a young man to take up a ministry in canada. the presbyterian faith was, therefore, the one in which i was brought up in my boyhood, and i still feel in my inner being a prejudice, which i cannot defend in reason, against those doctrines which traverse the westminster confession of faith. however much thought and experience have modified my views on religious questions, my tendency is to become the church of scotland militant if any other denomination challenges its views or organisation. such are the prepossessions which surround youth. they are formidable, whether they take the shape of religion or politics or class--and a fixed form of religious belief is probably the most operative of them all. it is quite possible that but for subconscious training of the mind inbred through the generations neither man nor society would have been able to survive. none the less, now that man has attained the stage of social reason, prejudice is rather a weakness than a strength. the greatest prejudice in social life is that against persons--not against people known to one, for in that case it is dislike or indifference or even hatred, but against some individual not even known by sight. a mentions b to c. "oh!" says c. "i loathe that man." "but have you ever met him?" says a. "no, and i don't want to, but i know quite enough about him." "but what do you know against him?" "well, i know that e told d, who told me, that he was black through and through, and a bad man." a few weeks afterwards c sits next b at dinner; finds him an excellent sort of man to talk to and to do business with, and henceforward goes about chanting his praises. thus is personal prejudice disproved by the actual fact. it is a curious freak of circumstance, not easily accounted for, that men who possess that fascination of personality which makes them firm friends and violent enemies are most liable to be adversely judged out of that lack of knowledge which is called prejudice. there is another form of the error which is found in the business world. men of affairs conceive quite irrational dislikes for certain types of securities or transactions. they are given, perhaps, an excellent offer, out of which they might make a considerable profit. they turn the matter down without further consideration. their ostensible reason is that they are not accustomed to deal in that particular class of security. their real reason for refusing is that they are the victims of their own environment, and that they have not the intellectual courage or force to break away from it even when every argument proves that it would be to their advantage to do so. their intellects have become musclebound by habit or tradition. the fourth and, perhaps, the most violent form of prejudice, outside the sphere of religion, may be found in politics. men embrace certain political conceptions, and, though the whole world breaks into ruins, and is reconstructed around them, nothing will alter their original ideas. the radical says that the tory does not change his spots, and the tory is convinced that a radical is still a direct emanation of the evil one. in the middle of these conflicting antagonisms the real road to national peace, prosperity, and security is missed by those who prefer prejudice to the lessons which reality teaches. the most infamous case of all to the unbending partisan is that of a man who has so far outlived the prejudices of party as to be able to criticise one side without joining another. the advantage of prejudice is the preservation of tradition; its disadvantage is the inability which it brings to an individual or to a nation to adapt life to the change of circumstance. it is, therefore, at once both the vice of youth and of age. youth is prejudiced by upbringing; age is prejudiced because it cannot adapt itself to the circumstances of a changing world. but both youth and age can fight by the power of the human will against the tendencies which steep them in their own prepossessions. youth can say: "i will forget that i was brought up to be a scotsman and a presbyterian, and so prejudiced against all roman catholics or jews; the world is open to me, i will form my own convictions and judge men and religion on their merits." the subconscious self will still operate, but its extravagances will be checked by reason and will. age can say to itself: "it is true that all that has happened in the past is part of my experience, and therefore of me. i have formed certain conclusions from what i have observed, but the data on which i have formed them are constantly changing. the moment that i cease to be able to accept and pass into my own experience new factors which my past would reject as unpleasant or untrue i have become stereotyped in prejudice and the truth of actuality is no longer in me, and when touch with the world is lost the only alternative is retirement or disaster." the more quickly youth breaks away from the prejudices of its surroundings, the more rapid will be its success. the harder that age fights against prepossessions, born of the past, which gather round to obstruct the free operation of its mind, the longer will be the period of a happy, successful, and active life. prejudice is a mixture of pride and egotism, and no prejudiced man, therefore, will be happy. xiv calm the last two essays have dealt with the more depressing sides of practical life--the sudden tempest which sweeps down on the business man, or the long period of depression which is the necessary prelude to the times in which optimism is justified. but it is on the note of optimism, and not of pessimism, that i would conclude, and after the storm comes the calm. what is calm to the man of experience in affairs? it is the end to which turbulent and ambitious youth should devote itself in order that it may attain to happiness in that period of middle-age which still gives to assured success its real flavour. youth is the time of hope; old age is the time for looking back on the pleasures and achievements of the past--when success or failure may seem matters of comparative unimportance. successful middle-age stands between the two. its calm is not the result either of senility or failure. it represents that solid success which enables a man to adventure into fresh spheres without any perturbation. new fields call to him--art, or letters, or public service. success is already his, and it will be his own fault if he does not achieve happiness as well. successful middle-age appears to me to be the ideal of practical men. i have tried to indicate the method by which it can be attained by any young man who is sufficiently resolute in his purpose. finance, commerce, and industry are, under modern conditions, spheres open to the talent of any individual. the lack of education in the formal sense is no bar to advancement. every young man has his chance. but will he practise industry, economy, and moderation, avoid arrogance and panic, and know how to face depression with a stout heart? even if he is a genius, will he know how not to soar with duly restrained wings? the secret of power is the method by which the fire of youth is translated into the knowledge of experience. in these essays i have suggested a short cut to that knowledge. i once had youth, and now i have experience, and i believe that youth can do anything if its desire for success is sufficiently strong to curb all other desires. i also believe that a few words of experience can teach youth how to avoid the pitfalls of finance which wait for the most audacious spirits. i write out of the conviction of my own experience. but, above all, stands the attainment of happiness as the final form of struggle. happiness can only be attained as the result of a prolonged effort. it is the result of material surroundings and yet a state of the inner mind. it is, therefore, in some form or another at once the consequence of achievement and a sense of calm. the flavour is achievement, but the fruit should be the assured sense of happiness. "one or another in money or guns may surpass his brother. but whoever shall know, as the long days go. that to live is happy, has found his heaven." it is in ignoring this doctrine of the poet that so many men go wrong. they practise the doctrines of success: they attain it, and then they lose happiness because they cannot stop. the flower is brilliant, but the fruit has a sour taste. the final crown in the career of success is to know when to retire. "call no man happy," says the ancient sage, "until he is dead," drawing his moral from the cruel death of a great king. i would say, call no man successful until he has left business with enough money to live the kind of life that pleases him. the man who holds on beyond this limit is laying up trouble for himself and disappointment for others. success in the financial world is the prerogative of young men. a man who has not succeeded in the field before middle-age comes upon him, will never succeed in the fundamental sense of the term. an honourable and prosperous career may, indeed, lie before him, but he will never reach the heights. he will just go on from year to year, making rather more or rather less money, by a toil to which only death or old age will put a term. and i have not written this book for the middle-aged, but for the young. to them my advice would be, "succeed young, and retire as young as you can." the fate of the successful who hold on long after they have amassed a great, or at least an adequate, fortune, is written broad across the face of financial history. the young man who has arrived has formed the habit and acquired the technique of business. the habit has become part of his being. how hard it is to give it up! his technique has become almost universally successful. if he has made £ , by it, why not go on and make half a million; if he has made a million, why not go on and make three? all that you have to do, says the subtle tempter, is to reproduce the process of success indefinitely. the riches and the powers of the world are to be had in increasing abundance by the mere exercise of qualities which, though they have been painfully acquired, have now become the very habit of pleasure. how dull life would seem if the process of making money was abandoned; how impossible for a man of ripe experience to fail where the mere stripling had succeeded? the temptation is subtle, but the logic is wrong. success is not a process which can reproduce itself indefinitely in the same field. the dominant mind loses its elasticity: it fails to appreciate real values under changed conditions. victory has become to it not so much a struggle as a habit. then follows the decline. the judgment begins to waver or go astray out of a kind of self-worship, which makes the satisfaction of self, and not the realisation of what is possible, the dominant object in every transaction. there will be plenty of money to back this delusion for a time, and plenty of flatterers and sycophants to play up to and encourage the delusion. the history of napoleon has not been written in vain. here we see a first-class intellect going through this process of mental corruption, which leads from overwhelming success in early youth, to absolute disaster in middle-age. the only hope for the napoleon of finance is to retire before his delusions overtake him. but what is the man who retires early from business to do? some form of activity must fill the void. the answer to the question is to be found in a change of occupation. to some, recreation, and the pursuit of some art or science or study may bring satisfaction, but these will be the exceptions. some kind of public service will beckon to the majority. and it is natural that this should be the case. politics, journalism, the management of commissions or charitable organisations, all require much the same kind of aptitudes and draw on the same kind of experiences which are acquired by the successful man of affairs. the difference is that they are not so arduous, because they are rarely a matter of life and death to any man--and certainly can never be so to a man with an assured income. on the other hand, from the point of view of society, it is a great advantage to a nation that it should have at its disposal the services of men of this kind of capacity and experience. what public life needs above all things is the presence in it of men who have a knowledge of reality. in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the landowning classes supplied this kind of direction to the state as the fruit of their leisure, and, despite some narrowness and selfishness, they undoubtedly did their work well. but they were disappearing as a class before the war, and the war has practically destroyed them. nor are the world-wide industrial, commercial, and economic problems of the twentieth century particularly suitable to their form of intellect. the policy of great britain of to-day ought to be founded on a knowledge both of markets and production. it is here that the retired man of affairs can help. simply to go on making money after all personal need for it has passed is, therefore, a form of selfishness, and, in consequence, will not bring happiness, and in the ultimate calculation that life can hardly be called successful which is not happy. my final message is one of hope to youth. dare all, yet keep a sense of proportion. deny yourself all, and yet do not be a prig. hope all, without arrogance, and you will achieve all without losing the capacity for moderation. then the temple of success will assuredly be open to you, and you will pass from it into the inner shrine of happiness. _printed by hazell, watson & viney, ld., london and aylesbury._ [illustration] certain success _by_ norval a. hawkins _author of "the selling process"_ third edition detroit, michigan contents chapter page to begin with . . . . . . . . . . . . . . how to study. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i. the universal need for sales knowledge. . ii. the man-stuff you have for sale . . . . . iii. skill in selling your best self . . . . . iv. preparing to make your success certain. . v. your prospects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi. gaining your chance . . . . . . . . . . . vii. knowledge of other men. . . . . . . . . . viii. the knock at the door of opportunity and the invitation to come in . . . . . ix. getting yourself wanted . . . . . . . . . x. obstacles in your way . . . . . . . . . . xi. the goal of success . . . . . . . . . . . xii. the celebration stage . . . . . . . . . . _to begin with--_ [sidenote: salesmanship essential to assure success] there are particular characteristics one can have, and particular things one can do, that will make _failure_ in life _certain_. why, then, should not the possession of particular opposite characteristics, and the doing of particular opposite things, result as _certainly_ in _success_, which is the antithesis of failure? that is a logical, common-sense question. the purpose of this book and its companion volume, "the selling process," is to answer it convincingly for you. success _can_ be made certain; not, however, by the mere _possession_ of particular characteristics, nor by just _doing_ particular things. _your_ success in life can be _assured_; but only if you supplement your qualifications and make everything you do most effective _by using continually, whatever your vocation, the art of salesmanship_. * * * * * [sidenote: why are some men failures who deserve to succeed?] life can hold nothing but _failure_ for the ill-natured, unsociable, disgusting tramp who is known to be ignorant, lazy, shiftless, a spendthrift, a liar, and an all-around crook. such a worthless man will make a complete failure of life because he is so _dis_-qualified to succeed. on the other hand certain success ought to be achieved by the good-natured, intelligent, reliable man who continually wins friends; the truthful man who has a fine reputation for thrift, honesty, neatness, and love for his work. he seems entirely worthy of success. yet for reasons that baffle himself and his friends it sometimes happens that such a man is unsuccessful. the defeat in life of one who appears so deserving of victory seems to prove that success cannot be _assured_ by the development of individual characteristics and by doing specific things. but such a wholly negative conclusion would be wrong. when a worthy man fails, he loses out because he lacks an essential _positive_ factor of certain success--the ability to _sell_ his capabilities. _by mastering the selling process this failure can turn himself into a success_. [sidenote: self-advertised disqualifications unrecognized capabilities] we are sure of the failure of the man who is utterly disqualified to succeed; not because he _has_ particular faults, but because they _self-advertise and sell the idea_ of his disqualifications for success. his characteristics and actions make on our minds an impression of his general worthlessness. defects are apt to attract attention, while perfection often passes unnoticed. millions of worthy men, otherwise qualified for success, have failed solely because their merits were not appreciated and rewarded as they would have been if recognized. capabilities, like goods, are _profitless_ until they are _sold_. therefore the man who deserves to win out in life can make his victory _sure_ only by learning and practicing with skill the certain success methods of the master salesman. * * * * * [sidenote: the duty to succeed] down through all the ages has come the _duty_ to succeed. it was enjoined in the parable of the talents. no one has the right to do less than his best. then only can he claim full justification for his existence. the creator accepts no excuses for failure. every personal quality, and every opportunity to succeed that a man has, must be used, to entitle him to the rewards of success. he owes not only to himself and to his fellows, but also to god, the obligation of developing his _utmost capability_. if he does not pay dividends on the divine investment in him, his dereliction is justly punished by failure in life. sometimes he even forfeits the right to live. [sidenote: success cannot be copied] many ambitious people, who recognize their duty to succeed but do not know how to go about it, make a common mistake in thinking. they believe the secret of certain success can be learned from _examples_; that success can be _copied_. so men who have succeeded conspicuously are often asked to state and explain their rules, for the benefit of other men who regard them as oracles. [sidenote: other men's formulas] doubtless you have read much about marshall field, j. pierpont morgan, charles m. schwab, and similar outstanding business men. you have studied their principles of success. you have tried to practice their methods. but somehow the most careful following of their directions has not made you a multi-millionaire, nor can you see riches as a prospect. naturally you are both disappointed and puzzled. perhaps you have tested faithfully for years various formulas of success extracted from the advice of successful men. yet _you_ have failed, or have achieved only partial and unsatisfying success. you have been unable to solve the problem that you once felt so sure could be worked out by the rules you mastered. maybe you have become discouraged and have given up, in disgust, your ambition for achievement. very likely you have said to yourself, "success is so much a matter of luck and circumstances, there's no way to make sure of it. i've done everything that marshall field, j. pierpont morgan, and charles m. schwab have counseled; but i'm still plugging along on an ordinary salary. rules for certain success are bunk. luck has to break right for a man." [sidenote: the element of luck] unquestionably good luck _has_ brought success to some men who would have failed without its aid. it is equally beyond doubt that bad luck has prevented other men from achieving their ambitions. of course _such_ successes and failures do not fall within any rules. they are altogether exceptional, and neither prove nor disprove general principles. eliminating the factor of luck, good or bad, the success of any normal, deserving man _can_ be made certain _to the extent of his individual capacity_. some men have different or bigger capacities than others; hence not all successes will be of the same kind, or alike in extent. but any normal, deserving man can assure himself as great a success as he is fitted to achieve. it is necessary, however, that he do more than _develop his utmost capability_. he must learn to employ skillful salesmanship, in order to _market_ his "goods of sale," or personal qualifications, _most profitably_. [sidenote: sales skill necessary] each of us has to make _his own pattern_ of success. "the individual should develop his individuality," instead of attempting to imitate anybody else. it is even more necessary for him to _use_ most effectively all the natural powers he builds up. a man can assure his success only if he learns how to utilize his personal qualifications _so as to create and control his opportunities_ to succeed. he should be able to _bring himself to good luck_, and not expect anybody or any event to bring good luck to him. one cannot make the most effective use of his capabilities, he cannot create and control his chances to succeed, until he develops skill in salesmanship, which is necessary to market his qualifications profitably. he must practice "selling himself" until the habit of using sales skill in everything he does and says becomes second nature to him. sales skill is the _dynamic_ factor of success. it transforms potential powers into actual accomplishments. it enables the qualified man to turn his individual capabilities to best account. * * * * * [sidenote: opportunity a constant companion] sometimes a man says, as an excuse for his failure, "i never had a chance." the truth is that opportunity is a constant companion to every man. each of us has _within himself_ limitless wealth. all normal people are rich in ability. it is possible for anyone to become more prosperous. _he need only turn his possibilities into realities._ when a man capable of accumulating riches continues poor, he is like the shipwrecked discoverer of a bonanza gold mine on an uncharted island. he cannot exchange his potential wealth for the things he desires; because he is unable to market his raw gold. similarly you who have not yet succeeded are _potentially_ rich. if you possess the generally recognized fundamentals of success; such as characteristic honesty, intelligence, energy, etc., you are not handicapped for want of a market. even though you now may seem to lack some of the essential qualifications, you are capable of succeeding. every necessary characteristic of the successful man is _latent_ in your nature and can be brought out by development. you have not yet done your utmost with the best that is in you. [sidenote: your market not lacking] first you should resolve to make yourself completely _worthy_ to succeed. meanwhile you should be learning how to sell your "goods." on every hand there are markets in which qualities like yours are being sold successfully by other men. undoubtedly there will be a purchaser for the best that is in you when you bring it out; provided you present your "goods of sale" in the most skillful way. all about you are highly prosperous people with no more innate merits than you have. certainly the market for your particular abilities is within reach. golden opportunities of which you have not taken the fullest advantage surround you and touch your daily activities. if you have not grasped your chance, it was because you did not _know how_ to reach out with all your capabilities. in other words, possessing the fundamental qualifications for success, you have stood in the midst of the world's need for such capabilities as yours, _but you have not gone through the selling process_. you have failed thus far to achieve your ambition, simply because _you have been an unsuccessful salesman of yourself_ to the world. perhaps you never have thought of yourself as a salesman. you may not have realized the importance _to you_ of knowing and practicing the principles of skillful selling. only one per cent of the people in the united states _call_ themselves salesmen or saleswomen. yet in order to succeed, each of us must sell his or her particular qualifications. your knowledge and use of the selling process are essential to assure your success in life. * * * * * [sidenote: master salesmen made, not born] the best commercial executives agree that the most effective selling representative of a house is not the "natural born" salesman, but the salesman who is _made_ highly efficient by training. so every big, successful business conducts a course in salesmanship. thorough tests have proved that particular principles and methods of selling are sure to produce the highest average of orders. therefore these principles and methods are followed as _standard practice_ in the sales department. that is, in order to _assure_ the success of an individual salesman, he is required and aided to develop particular qualifications and to do certain things that master executives have learned will get the orders and hold the trade of buyers. the qualified professional salesman is drilled thoroughly in tested principles and methods of selling. he is trained to use this standard sales knowledge skillfully. as a result he works in the field with complete confidence. why should he doubt that he will succeed? he knows his own limitations and capabilities; knows the true worth of his line; knows there is a market in his territory; knows how to sell in the ways that have been proved most effective; and knows that practice of right salesmanship will make him skillful in getting and holding business. verily such "knowledge is power." * * * * * [sidenote: certain success with the selling process] _your_ success in selling _yourself_ can be made as certain as is a successful career to the first-class professional salesman. this book and its companion volume will explain in detail salesmanship ways to develop your best capabilities most effectively. you will be given the principles and methods employed by the expert salesman in marketing any kind of right goods. you will also be shown how to sell yourself by adapting his practices to your "goods of sale." when you comprehend, and employ as second nature, the usages of the finest sales art, your success in life, like that of the master professional salesman, will be _certain_. [sidenote: ideas of goods not the goods themselves are sold] if you have not _called_ yourself a salesman, perhaps you doubt the value to you of skill in selling. all you have to market is the best that is in yourself. your ambition may be to succeed as a doctor, or lawyer, or preacher, or clerk, or mechanic, or farmer, or banker. you do not see how salesmanship could assure _your_ success, however much it might help some one with commercial ambitions. if you think it would not be worth while for you to master the selling process, since you do not expect to engage in the _profession_ of selling, you misconceive the functions and work of the salesman. you have thought he sells "_goods_;" and that as you do not deal in commodities, you would have no practical use for the selling process he employs to assure his success. but even the shoe salesman, or grocery salesman, or real estate salesman, or insurance salesman does not really sell _goods_. he sells _ideas about_ goods. similarly you sell ideas about yourself in order to succeed. [sidenote: when the goods and the ideas are different] a sale is often completed in business without any inspection of the actual "goods" by the purchaser; as when a quantity of standard sheet copper is specified, or when the salesman describes a piece of machinery or shows a picture of it with a catalogue number. the "goods" are to be delivered later. however, the _selling process is finished;_ though only the mind's eye of the buyer has seen what he anticipates getting on his order. the salesman has presented nothing except _certain ideas_ to the mental vision of the prospect. but these ideas have been sold so realistically to the imagination of the purchaser that he gives his order for what he _expects_. suppose the goods delivered later do not correspond with the particular ideas about them that have been sold. for example, the sheet copper furnished is not as specified in the contract, or the machine shipped is not the same as the salesman pictured when he got the order for it. then there has been _no sale_ of the different "goods." the intending purchaser bought _particular ideas_. he will not accept the delivery of _goods unlike the ideas sold_ to him. [sidenote: know your prospect's idea] another illustration. a real estate salesman describes a bungalow to a prospect for a home. he shows plans and specifications, with accurate dimensions; there is no misrepresentation of any detail. the salesman especially emphasizes, what is his own belief, that the bungalow would make a "cozy" home. the prospect decides to buy the property. he says, "if it is as you describe it, i'll take that place." _the sale to his mind has been completed._ all that remains is delivery of a bungalow corresponding to the ideas sold. the delighted salesman escorts the buyer to the "cozy home." but the empty rooms do not confirm the idea emphasized to the prospect. the salesman cannot furnish them convincingly with his imaginative "cozy" word pictures. he has made the mistake of omitting to learn the other man's conception of a cozy home before selling the expectation of coziness. he is shocked when the sale is declared annulled with the prospect's contradiction of his description, "there's nothing cozy about this place." the intending buyer of a home feels there has been a misrepresentation; though the bungalow is exactly like the plans and specifications shown to him. he was sold an idea that "the goods" have not delivered; so he declares the sale off. a sale is a success only when _true ideas_ are sold, and afterward are delivered by _the goods_. [sidenote: selling ideas about yourself] if you "have the goods" and would succeed _certainly_ in your chosen vocation, you must _sell_ to the world or to individual buyers _true ideas_ about your particular qualifications for success--true ideas regarding _your best capabilities_ and the _value_ of your services. your "goods of sale" may be your muscular power; your brain energy; your talents, skill, integrity, and knowledge in this capacity or in that. whatever qualities you possess, it is necessary that some one be sold the idea of their full worth, or you cannot succeed. no matter how valuable your services _might_ be, they have only potential worth until another man, or some business, or the world at large _perceives desirable possibilities in you and buys the expectation that you will "deliver the goods_." probably you have said to yourself, "if i had the chance, i know i could deliver the goods." we will grant that you are able to make delivery. however, _before you will be given a chance_ you must get across to the mind of some prospective buyer of muscular power, or brain energy, or other capabilities such as you could supply, the true idea that _you have_ "the goods" he needs and that your qualifications would be a satisfactory purchase _for him_. in other words, it is necessary that you use _the selling process_ effectively, with thorough scientific knowledge and a high degree of art, _in order to make certain of gaining your opportunity_ for success. you have no doubt that you can succeed if you get the chance. but you have not realized, perhaps, that _you can make yourself the master of your own destiny by first learning and then practicing until it becomes second nature to you the sure, salesmanship way to gain the opportunities you deserve_. after you _comprehend_ the sure process, you can soon develop _skill in actually selling_ to other men true ideas of the best that is in you. [sidenote: the secret of certain success] the secret of _certain success_ in life for you, then, _whatever your vocation or ambition_, lies in knowing how to sell true ideas of your best capability in the right market or field of service. the chapters of the present book, supplemented by the contents of the companion volume, "the selling process," should reveal to you clearly every principal detail of this secret. [sidenote: no % salesmen] before you proceed further with the study of successful salesmanship as analyzed in these pages, avoid a possible misconception of masterly selling. even the most efficient salesman does not get _all_ the orders for which he tries. by his knowledge and skill his average of failures is minimized; therefore everybody recognizes him as a great success. so, however well you comprehend the selling process, and however skillfully you use it in your career, you will not _always_ accomplish the particular purpose to which you apply your salesmanship. but you will markedly lessen the number and importance of your failures to do the things you attempt. you will also increase to an extraordinary degree the quantity, quality, and profitable results of your successful efforts. you will make a grand average so high that you will feel you are a real success. others, too, will so regard you. [sidenote: the master key] therefore, whatever your life ambition, study the selling process until you understand it thoroughly; then perfect your skill by daily practice in selling your ideas, and ideas about yourself, to other people. when you know how to sell true ideas of your best capability in your chosen market or field of service, and have become expert in _applying_ what you have learned, you can use salesmanship continually in your everyday work. you should feel _absolute assurance_ that with its aid you can open the treasure house of your desires. _this universal master key that fits all locks now between you and success can be made by your own hands and head. you have begun to shape it for your future use._ _how to study certain success with the selling process_ [sidenote: suggestion to salesmen] the professional salesman or saleswoman who undertakes the thorough study of both this book and its companion volume, might better read first "the selling process," the chapters of which apply especially to his or her vocation. if you are a "salesman," therefore, begin your study with the introduction to that book. when you have read "the selling process" once, start "certain success" and master it. then re-read the other book in the light of the new ideas that will have been shed upon its contents by the present text. the practical value of "certain success" and "the selling process" to you as a salesman will be multiplied a hundredfold if both are kept handy for _continual reference_. the marginal index should enable you to find quickly any point regarding which you want to refresh your recollection. this set of books was not written to collect dust on a library shelf. no salesman can get the full worth out of the pages unless he _uses_ "certain success" and "the selling process" _as working tools_. [sidenote: if your vocation is not selling] if you are not engaged in selling as a vocation, and have not realized before that you must be a good salesman or saleswoman in order to achieve your life ambition, commence mastering the secret of certain success with the selling process by reading thoroughly the book now in your hands. this preliminary study will increase your ability to read intelligently the more technical contents of "the selling process." do not skip or slight any portion of either book. you cannot afford to miss a single bit of information regarding the sure way to succeed. * * * * * [sidenote: purpose and scope of the two books] this is the first publication of "certain success," but five large editions of "the selling process" were required in and to supply the demand from all over the world. the two books, each complete in itself, now are issued together under the double title, certain success with the selling process; though either "certain success" or "the selling process" may be ordered alone. my chief purpose in preparing this set has been to stimulate each reader's comprehension of the value of skillful salesmanship _to him_. all of us who are ambitious to make the most of the best that is in us need to be first-class salesmen, whether we market "goods" or our personal capabilities. as has been emphasized repeatedly in this preface, _every one who would succeed in life must know how to sell his qualifications to the highest advantage_. poor salesmanship is responsible for most of the failures of people who really _deserve_ to succeed. it is almost surely fatal to ambitious hopes in any trade, profession, or business. certain success with the selling process covers in outline the whole subject of salesmanship. but the scope of this set does not afford room to give here a minutely detailed exposition of the special processes of making sales in particular businesses. i have compiled for you, rather, the _general principles_ of effective selling that may be _universally applied_. "certain success" and "the selling process" are handbooks of fundamental ideas which each reader, by his individual thinking, should amplify and fit to his own work or ambition. * * * * * [sidenote: real study required] the fine art of successful salesmanship cannot be mastered in a few hours of casual reading. you will not be able, immediately after glancing through these books, to unlock every long-desired golden opportunity with absolute assurance. certain success with the selling process must be _studied out_. you should keep them always at hand like your bank books, and draw on the contents for your salesmanship needs from day to day. you will get only a smattering of the secret of certain success if you just skim over the chapters, and skip whatever requires you to think hard in order to comprehend it all. but if you dig into the meaning of each sentence for the full idea, you will enrich yourself with constantly increasing power and skill in selling. _so you will surely become a real success_. * * * * * [sidenote: tested working tools] the principles and methods of successful salesmanship summarized in these companion books, though they will be new to most readers, are not mere personal theories. they all have been demonstrated and tested in actual practice during my twelve years experience as commercial and general sales manager of the ford motor company. under my direction in the course of that period ford sales were multiplied one hundred thirty-two times--from , to , cars a year. the fundamental principles and methods that i have tested and proved to be most successful in selling automobiles and good will should work equally well in any profession, or business, or trade; and for any normal, intelligent man or woman who uses them continually. [sidenote: dollars and cents value] since the first publication of "the selling process" thousands of enthusiastic readers of the book have voluntarily borne witness to its practical, dollars-and-cents value to them in their daily work. preachers, doctors, lawyers, bank officials, clerks, book-keepers, mechanics, laborers; as well as business executives and sales managers and salesmen--men and women in scores of widely different vocations--unite in testifying to their increased earning power and fuller satisfaction in living and working. they credit these results to their study and continued use of "the selling process." the value of that book will be at least doubled by the supplemental reading of "certain success." therefore the two are now published as a set of working tools for any ambitious man or woman who is resolved to _earn_ success. norval a. hawkins majestic building, detroit, michigan. chapter i _the universal need for sales knowledge_ [sidenote: analysis of secret of certain success] the secret of certain success has four principal elements. it comprises: ( ) knowing how to sell ( ) the true idea ( ) of one's best capabilities ( ) in the right market or field of service. _your_ success will be in direct proportion to your thorough knowledge and continual use of _all four parts_ of the whole secret. no matter how great your effort, an entire lack of one or more of these principal elements of certain success will cause partial or utter failure in your life ambition. you will be like a man who tries to open a safe with a four-combination lock, though he knows only two or three of the numbers. no one, however well fitted for success elsewhere, can succeed in the _wrong field_, or in rendering services for which _he_ is not qualified. nor is complete success attainable by a man unless he develops the _best_ that is in him. even if he brings to the right market his utmost ability, he may fail miserably by making a _false impression_ that he is unfitted for the opportunity he wants. or he may be overlooked because he does not make the _true_ impression of his fitness. evidently, in order to gain a _chance_ to succeed, anyone must first _sell_ to the fullest advantage the idea that he is _the_ man for the opportunity already waiting or for the new opening he makes for himself. of course he cannot do this _surely_ unless he _knows how_. therefore sales knowledge is _universally needed_ to complement the three other principal elements of the complete secret of certain success. [sidenote: reasons for failures] when we try to explain the failure of any man who seems worthy to have succeeded, we nearly always say, in substance, one of three things about his case: "he is a square peg in a round hole;" by which we usually mean he is a right man in the wrong place. or, "he is capable of filling a better position;" a more polite way of saying that a man has outgrown his present job but has not developed ability to get a bigger one. oftenest, probably, we declare, "he isn't appreciated." very rarely is a worthy man's failure in life ascribed to the commonest cause--_his personal inefficiency in selling_ to the world comprehension of his especial qualifications for success. [sidenote: what failures realize] if a man is a square peg in a round hole, he should realize that his particular qualities must be fitted into the right field for them before he can succeed. a natural "organizer" cannot achieve his ambitions if he works alone at a routine task. no sensible man would aspire to fill a better position than he holds, unless he had developed a capacity beyond the limitations of his present work. the shipping clerk who craves the higher salary of a correspondent knows he cannot hope for the desired promotion if he has not learned to write good business letters. however deserving of advancement a man may be, he realizes he has but a slim chance to succeed if his worth is unrecognized. so he wants appreciation from his chief. he knows that unless his worth is perceived and truly valued, some one else, who may be less qualified, is apt to be selected for the "manager's" job he desires. such "injustices" have poisoned countless disappointed hopes with bitterest resentment. the deserving man who fails because he is a misfit in his particular position, the worthy man who is limited to a small career because the work he does lacks scope for the use of all his ability; the third good man who has been kept down for the reason that his chief is blind to his qualifications for promotion--all three of these failures understand pretty clearly the reasons for their non-success. [sidenote: when lack of salesmanship causes failure] it is very different in the case of the capable man who fails because he has been _inefficient in selling true impressions_ of his qualifications for success. a private secretary, for illustration, might be thoroughly competent for managerial duties; but by his self-effacement in his present job he might make the false impression that he was wanting in executive capacity. he would be given a chance as manager if he were effective in creating a true impression of his administrative ability. such a capable man, if he has little or no scientific knowledge of the selling _process_ is apt also to lack comprehension of the value _to him_ of knowing _how to sell ideas_. he does not happen to call himself a salesman. therefore he has never studied with personal interest the fine art of selling. he does not realize that _ignorance of salesmanship_, and _consequent non-use of the selling process, almost always are responsible for the merely partial success or the downright failure in life of the man who deserves to win, but who loses out_. [sidenote: who is to blame for failure] one may feel able to "deliver the goods," were he given the chance. he may know where his best capability is greatly needed and would be highly appreciated if recognized. yet the door of opportunity may not open to his deserving hand, however hard he tries to win his way in. his failure seems to him altogether unfair, the rankest injustice from fortune. if a man knows he is completely fitted to fill a higher position, he feels considerable self-confidence when he first applies for it. but his real ability may not be recognized by his chief. the ambitious man may be denied the coveted chance to take the step upward to the bigger opportunities for which he rightly believes himself qualified. if his deserts and his utmost efforts do not win the promotion he desires, he grows discouraged. he loses the taste of zest for his work. his earlier optimism oozes away. after awhile his ambition slumps. then he resigns himself sullenly to the conviction that he is a failure _but is not to blame_. [sidenote: dynamic quality lacking] leaving out of consideration most exceptional, unpreventable bad luck, the worthy man who fails in life _is_ to blame. he is not, as he thinks, a victim of circumstances or ill-fate. his failure is due to his ignorance of the first of the four principal factors of the secret of certain success. _potentially_ qualified to succeed, he does not have the absolutely necessary _dynamic_ element. he lacks an essential characteristic of the self-made successful man, a characteristic which any one of intelligence can learn how to develop--_a high degree of capability in gaining his own opportunities to succeed_. he does not know _how to sell true ideas about himself_; though he may realize the importance of making the best impression possible. so, however, he tries, he cannot get his deserved chances to succeed. he could secure them _easily_ if he comprehended the selling process of the master salesman, and used it with skill. this process of masterly selling is the key to certain success for the fully qualified man in any vocation. [sidenote: making and governing one's own good luck] a capable applicant will invariably be given a chance to succeed, if he takes the best that is in him to a man who has need of such services as he could render, and then _sells the true idea of his ability_. he has mastered _all four principal elements of the complete secret of certain success_. consequently he is able to create and to control his opportunities to succeed. he makes and governs his own good luck. everywhere the most desirable positions in the business world are in need of men who can fill them. only the poorer jobs are crowded. but when opportunity has to seek the man, the _right_ one is often overlooked. the golden chance is gained by another--less qualified and less worthy, perhaps; but _a better salesman of himself_. the fully competent man, however, can _assure_ his success by becoming proficient in selling true ideas of his best capability in the right market or field of service. the master salesman of himself makes his own chances to succeed, and therefore runs no risk of being overlooked by opportunity. [sidenote: success way is charted] master salesmen of ideas about "goods" use _particular selling processes_ to get their ideas across _surely_ to the minds of prospective buyers. the professional salesman, therefore, has plainly charted the way to certain success in any vocation, for the man who has developed the best that is in him. if you are a candidate for a position, do not let a prospective employer _buy_ your services at _his_ valuation, for he is certain to under-estimate you. _sell_ him true ideas of your merits. set a fair price on your _worth_, and _get_ across to his mind the true idea that you would be worth that much _to him_. such skillful salesmanship used by an applicant for a position can be depended on to make the best possible impression of his desirability; just as the practiced art of the professional salesman enables him to present the qualities and values of his goods in the most favorable light. the _masterly selling process_ is not very difficult to learn. proficiency in its use can be gained gradually by any one who practices consciously every day the actual sale of ideas in the artistic way. [sidenote: knowledge of salesmanship develops confidence] as was stated in the introduction to this book, it has been proved conclusively in business that particular principles and methods of selling are certain to produce the highest average of closed orders. in other words, success for the professional salesman is _assured_ if he develops certain qualifications, and if he does certain things; all within the capacity of any normal, intelligent man. scientific sales executives know positively, as the result of comparative tests, that the salesman who develops these personal qualifications, and who does these things, should get his quota of business and hold it. hence, as has been said, specific training is given in the sales schools of the most successful businesses, along the lines of best selling practice. [sidenote: practical principles] when the individual salesman who has been so trained commences work in his territory, he learns in his experiences with buyers that the principles and methods he has been taught are actually _most effective_. assuming that he has developed his _best capabilities_ pretty fully, and that he has become fairly _skillful_ in using what he knows about how to sell his line, he works with continually growing confidence that he will succeed. why should he doubt his complete selling power? he knows there is a _field for his goods_ in this territory. he knows clearly and vividly _what ideas_ he wants to get across to the minds of prospective buyers. he knows--most important of all--_just how_ to make convincing and attractive impressions of the desirability and true value of what he presents for purchase. he comprehends the _most effective ways_ to show prospects both their _need_ for his goods and that he has come, with a real purpose of service, to _satisfy_ that need. you, the non-professional salesman of yourself, will sell _your_ "goods of sale" with similar complete confidence in your power to gain and to control your opportunities for success--if you, too, use the right selling process. this set of books explains and demonstrates in detail the principles and methods of _the successful salesman of ideas_. the introduction and twelve chapters of the present series apply the selling process especially to _the sale of ideas about one's self_, with particular relation to _self-advancement_ in the world. "the selling process," companion book to "certain success," shows the master _professional_ salesman at work, getting orders with _assurance_. [sidenote: hard study necessary] the fact that you have proceeded thus far in reading "certain success" proves you have an earnest purpose to make the most of your present opportunity to learn _how_ to succeed with certainty. we will assume that you have developed your individual ability pretty fully, and that you know where there is a field for such services as you are sure you could render if afforded the chance. surely, then, your ambition in life, whatever it may be, is a sufficient incentive to the most thorough study of the principles and methods of successful salesmanship. do not merely _read_ this set of books. master "certain success" and "the selling process" to make yourself the master of your own destiny. again and again, lest at any time while you study you might fall below % in _absolute assurance_, you will read in these chapters the assertion that your success can be made _certain_. this statement is not an exaggeration. it is necessary that you accept it literally throughout your reading of this set of books. do not take it "with a grain of salt." the taste of the declaration that the selling process makes success sure will become familiar after these many repetitions. realize when you come upon the repeated idea as you proceed with your study that your continued reading should frequently be reenforced by a steadily growing conviction that you _are_ mastering the sure way to succeed. you believe in yourself more than you did when you began to read this book. this increasing faith should develop to complete confidence when you have dug _into_ the text of both "certain success" and "the selling process," and have dug _out_ every idea in the twenty-four chapters. [sidenote: salesmanship not a science but an art] at the outset of your present study comprehend that salesmanship is not a _science_. rather, it is an _art_. like every other art, however, it has a _related_ science. selling is a _process. knowledge about the principles and methods_ that make the process most effective is the related _science_. but such knowledge supplies only the best foundation for building success by the _actual practice_ of most effective salesmanship. the master salesman practices the scientific principles and methods he has learned until the _skillful use_ of his knowledge in every-day selling becomes _second nature_ to him. thus, and thus only, is his _art_ perfected. you will gain _knowledge_ from these books about _how_ to sell with assurance the true idea of your best capabilities--about _how_ to sell any "goods of sale" unfailingly. but you can develop the _skill_ necessary to the _actual achievement_ of certain success only if you _continually use_ what you learn about the selling process. you must perfect your selling _art_ by the intelligent employment of every _word_ and _tone_ and _act_ of your life to attract other men to you, and to impress on them convincingly true ideas of your particular ability. [sidenote: be a salesman every minute] the master professional salesman is "always on the job" with his three means of self-expression, to get across to prospects true ideas of the desirability and value of his goods. he is a salesman _every minute_, and in _everything_ he does or says. you can become as efficient as he, in selling ideas about _your_ "goods of sale," if your proficiency becomes as _easy and natural_ as his. such ease is the _sure_ result of sufficient right practice. you have countless opportunities daily to make use of the selling process. in each expression of yourself--in your every word, tone, and act--you convey _some_ idea of your particular character and ability. you should _know how_ to make _true, attractive_ impressions of your _best_ self; and how to avoid making _untrue_ and _unfavorable_ impressions by what you do and say. then, when you have _learned_ the most effective _way_ to sell ideas about yourself that you want other people to have, it is necessary that you _use_ the selling process consciously all the time until you grow into the habit of using it unconsciously, as your second nature. once you are accustomed to _acting the salesman continually_, it will be no more difficult for _you_ to be "always on the job" selling right ideas of your qualifications for success, than it is for the _professional_ user of the selling process to be a salesman "every minute." [sidenote: your "goods of sale"] as already has been emphasized, "the goods of sale" in your case are your _best_ capabilities. you need first of all to _know_ your true self, before you can sell true ideas about your qualifications for success. your _true_ self is your _best_ self. you are untrue to yourself, you balk your own ambition to succeed, unless you develop to the _utmost of your capacity_ your particular salable qualities. you do not need qualities _you_ now wholly lack. you should not attempt to "salt" the gold mine in yourself with the characteristics of _other_ men who have succeeded by the development and use of capabilities that were natural to _them_, but that would be unnatural to _you_. it is worse than futile--it is foolish for you to imitate anybody else. just be _your_ best self. make the most of what _you_ have that is salable. you require no more to assure your success. [sidenote: selling the truth about your best self] every individual has distinct characteristics, and is capable of doing particular things, of which he may be genuinely proud if he fully develops and uses his personal qualifications. _when all the truth about his best possible self is skillfully made known to others_, chances for success are certain to be opened to the ambitious man. if he lacks the salesmanship key, the doors of opportunity may always remain closed, however well he deserves to be welcomed. _you_ possess "goods of sale" that have real _quality_, that are _durable_, that will render _service_ and afford pleasurable satisfaction to others. _your_ goods can be sold as _surely_ as quality phonographs, durable automobile tires, serviceable clothes, or pleasing books. maybe you can "deliver the goods" with smiles, or hearty tones, or ready acts of kindness. any one can easily be friendly. but have you developed _all your ability_ to smile genuinely? have you cultivated the hearty tone of real kindness so that now it is _unnatural_ for you ever to speak in any other way? do you perform friendly acts of consideration for others on _every_ occasion, as second nature? if your honest answers to such questions must be negative, you are not a good salesman of your best self all the time. [sidenote: your salable qualities] your most salable quality may be dependability, rather than quick thinking. if this is the case, concentrate your salesmanship on making impressions of the true idea of _your reliability_. your greatest success will be achieved in some field of service where dependableness is a primary essential. you may be _naturally unfitted_ to make a star reporter, but _peculiarly qualified_ to develop into the cashier of a bank. should you happen to be unattractive in features, your job is to transform your homeliness into a _likable_ quality--not to try to make yourself appear handsome. if you are wholly inexperienced, that need not be a detriment to your success in the field you want to enter. when you have mastered the selling process, your very greenness can be presented before the mind of a prospective employer as the best of reasons for engaging you. you will be able to make yourself appear desirable because you _are_ green in that field, and therefore have no wrong ideas to "unlearn." [sidenote: know all of yourself] you can greatly improve your chances to get the job for which you are best adapted, if you use the reciprocal selling process employed by the professional salesman when he sells his services to a house. he meets the head of the concern as his man-equal, and does not just offer himself "for hire." such a consciousness of your man-equality when you are face to face with a prospective employer can result only from certain, analytical _knowledge of your best self_, complemented by _knowing how to sell_ the true idea of your particular desirability and worth. very likely you think you are seriously _handicapped_ in many ways. having made no detailed analysis of yourself from a salesman's view-point, you do not appreciate fully the number and the market value of the _advantages_ you might have. probably some of your best, most salable qualities are latent or but partly developed. [sidenote: chart necessary] list _your_ particular "goods of sale." put down on a chart, not only the qualities you have now, but all the additional ones you feel _capable of developing_. then you will realize vividly that you possess many abilities, some undeveloped yet, which are always needed in the world. you know that such qualities _should_ be readily salable, to the mutual benefit of yourself and of buyers. you are learning the selling process in order to make certain that _you can_ sell the best that is in _you_, as other men are selling themselves successfully. complete your chart by listing your various _defects_. then study out ways to use even _your particular faults_ differently than you have been handling them; so that they will help you, instead of being hindrances to your success. think of some people you know, and of how they have turned their physical "liabilities" into "assets" of popularity. the very first sales knowledge you need is of exactly what _you_ have to sell. you cannot see _all_ of yourself, your good and bad points--yourself as you _are_, and as you _might be_--unless you make a detailed chart of your "goods of sale." one of the most important immediate effects of such a self-analysis will be increased self-respect. your handicaps will shrink, and the peculiar advantages you have will grow before your eyes. you should feel new confidence in your own ability. [sidenote: man-equality] with this confidence will come a feeling that you are not the inferior of another man who has achieved a larger measure of success than you have gained. when you start the sale of true ideas of your best self to an employer-buyer of such services as you are capable of rendering, you will have an innate consciousness of your man-equality with him. you should realize that this sale of yourself, like all other true sales, is to be a transaction of reciprocal benefits, and should be conducted on the basis of mutual respect. it is your right to take pains that the prospective buyer of your services shall sell himself to you as the boss you want to work with. expect him to sell himself to you as a desirable employer just as thoroughly and satisfyingly as you intend to sell yourself to him as a worthy applicant for an opportunity in his business. when you have definite, sure knowledge of your capability and service value, you certainly should not be willing to take "any old job." there is no better way to make the impression of _your desirability_ as an employee than to demonstrate that you are _choosing_ your employment intelligently. in explaining your choice, give specific reasons for your selection of this particular opening. show that you comprehend _what is to be done_. give some indication of your ability to do it _efficiently_ and _satisfactorily_. suggest the _worth_ of your services when you shall have proved your fitness. [sidenote: require employer to sell you the job] the ordinary man who applies for a job in the ordinary way is accepted or turned down wholly at the discretion of the employer. if you use the selling process skillfully, you will suggest that _you_ are out of the ordinary class. of course, you should demonstrate in your salesmanship that you are not over-rating your ability. the other man must be made to feel you have sound reasons for your bearing of equality and self-confidence when you seek to make sure that in his business you will have your best chance to succeed. by showing him that you are taking intelligent precautions against making a mistake in your employment, you indicate conclusively that you are not merely a "floater," but that you have a purpose "to stick and make good." in the same measure that you require proof of a desirable personality in an employer, you should make sure that the work is exactly what you expect. see that your prospective "new boss" sells you the job at the same time you are selling him your services. if he perceives in you the one man who best fits his needs, he will put forth every effort to buy your services. every employer will respect the man who states, with salesmanship, a sound reason for selecting and seeking connection with a business house; since such a man gives promise of making the sort of dependable, loyal worker that every business values and appreciates. [sidenote: sell to satisfy real needs] the true salesman sells to satisfy _a real need_ of the buyer. therefore, when you have charted your salable qualities, select the field of service in which such capability as you possess is needed. that, you may be sure, is _your_ right market--the field where you are _certain_ to succeed. enter it, and no other field. apply there for a place of opportunity to serve; with the absolute confidence of a good salesman come to satisfy a want, and conscious of his individual fitness "to deliver the goods." you may not get just what you desire at the first attempt. the best professional salesman often has to make _repeated_ efforts to close orders. but in the end, if you "have the goods," that are needed where you bring them, _and you know how to sell true ideas of your best self_ (as you _will_ know after mastering the selling process) you will be sure of getting sufficient opportunities to succeed. you will be as certain about getting enough chances as the first-class professional salesman is certain of attaining his full quota of business despite some turn-downs. _success is a matter of making a good batting average_. [sidenote: parts of complete process] remember as you read that you are studying _a completed process_. an unfinished sales effort is not _a sale_ at all. you will not be a _certainly successful_ salesman until you perfect your knowledge and skill in _all the steps_ of salesmanship. you can learn only a single part of sales efficiency at a time. the relative significance of each point, its full importance in the entire selling process, will not be comprehended until you have read at least once all there is in this set of books. when you re-study the successive chapters, the details you may at first understand but vaguely in a disconnected way will be clear. you will comprehend them as various elements of salesmanship which must be fitted together to complete the process of selling. thus far in the present chapter we have been considering principally the "goods of sale." we have been looking at our subject from the _material_ aspect. now let us turn our attention to the mental view of sales. [sidenote: mental nature of selling process] in the effective selling process the skilled salesman is able to be the _controlling_ party. _he makes the other man think as he thinks_. as has been stated repeatedly, he sells _ideas_, not goods. so the _real nature_ of any sale is mental, not material. you must "deliver the goods" to the _mind_ of the man to whom you wish to sell your best capabilities. you should use the same process as the professional salesman, who works to control the _thoughts_ of his prospect regarding the line of goods presented. hence when you plan to make sure of getting a desired position, it is necessary that you know _exactly how_ to put true ideas about yourself into the head of the person whom you have chosen as your prospective employer. further, you need to know _precisely what_ psychological effects you can secure with certainty by using skillful salesmanship. [sidenote: three sales mediums] ideas of your best capability may be sold through three mediums--advertising, correspondence, and personal selling. take advantage of all three, wherever and whenever possible, to gain your chance for success. use these mediums with _real salesmanship_. [sidenote: advertising] if you advertise for a position, think out in detail the impression of your true best self that you wish to make on the minds of readers. put _your personality_ into the advertising medium in such carefully selected language as will reach _the needs of particular employers_, and will not appear to be just a broadside of words shot into the air without aim. indicate clearly that _you_ are not seeking "any old job so long as the salary is good." analyze and know _just what_ you suggest about yourself in print. many a successful business man has sold himself through the door of his initial big opportunity by real salesmanship in his advertisement of his capabilities. [sidenote: correspondence] each letter you write should be regarded as "a sales letter." it makes an impression, true or false, of _you_. take the greatest pains to have that impression what you want it to be. never be slovenly or careless in writing to _anyone on any subject_. put genuine salesmanship into all your letters _consciously_; instead of conveying ideas unwittingly, without realizing what the reader is likely to think of you and the things you write. you can scatter impressions of your best self broadcast over the earth by using your ordinary correspondence as a medium of salesmanship. so you can open both nearby and far distant opportunities for the future; even while you still are training yourself to make the most of these chances you hope to gain. good sales letters are so rare that the ability to write them has erroneously been called "a gift." it is not. any one of educated intelligence can write his ideas; _provided he has clear, definite thought-images in his own mind_. but cloudy thinking reflects only a blur on paper. [sidenote: using sales letters] a letter that plainly conveys true ideas is a sales letter; for it gets across to the mind of the recipient a clear, definite mental impression of the writer's real personality and thoughts. in all your correspondence, throughout the period of preparation for your chosen life career, send out true ideas of your best capability. if you do, you doubtless will find the door of your desired opportunity open by the time you are fully prepared to knock. successful business is always ready in advance to welcome "comers;" whenever and wherever they are sighted. therefore project your personality far and wide through your letters. employ the medium of correspondence, with salesmanship knowledge and skill, even when you write the most ordinary messages to your acquaintances or to strangers. that is, _think out certain ways to sell particular ideas about yourself_; then incorporate these bits of salesmanship in your letters. a young man in his senior year at college selected a large corporation as his prospective employer. he did not know any of the executives of the company, but he worked out a plan to get acquainted through letters. he was especially desirous of entering the field of foreign trade, and had made a fairly comprehensive study of the export business. he wrote to the president of the corporation, gave a brief outline of articles and books he had read; then complimented the great company by declaring that he realized the knowledge he had acquired was theoretical and abstract, and that he wished to gain practical, concrete ideas by studying the methods of the corporation. he enclosed with his letter ten cents in postage stamps, and requested that he be sent any forms, instruction sheets, sales bulletins, etc., the president was willing to let him have for study. [sidenote: getting a future chance] his letter was referred to the vice-president in charge of sales, who in turn passed it on to a department manager with instructions to supply the matter requested. in the course of a week the college student received a bulky package. meanwhile a letter had been sent from the department head which stated that the vice-president in charge of sales had referred to him the request for forms, instruction sheets, etc., and that they would be forwarded under separate cover. the student took advantage of the three opportunities opened to conduct correspondence with the executives of the corporation. he first wrote courteous, carefully worded "thank-you" letters to the president, vice-president, and department head. these were all in his own hand, so that his good penmanship might make an individual impression. after these letters were dispatched the student mastered the material that had been sent to him. then he wrote three supplemental letters of appreciation, and made concise comments on some of the methods of the corporation, with comparisons from his previous reading of books and articles on foreign trade. he stated that he intended to make further investigation along these particular lines and that if he learned anything he thought might be interesting to the company he would write what he found out. in the course of a month he sent a letter which detailed his investigations. this he addressed to the department head only. but he also penned brief letters to the president and vice-president, in which he informed them that he had written in detail to the department head. [sidenote: effect of follow-up letters] the correspondence continued throughout the remainder of the student's senior year at college. the letters from the business men soon evidenced more than formal courtesy. they grew personal and indicated real interest. a month before his graduation the student was invited to call at the company's office after commencement. he went, made an excellent impression in interviews with the vice-president in charge of sales and the department head, and though the ink on his sheepskin was not yet dry, he gained his object. he was engaged by the corporation and began training as a prospective representative of the company in foreign territory. thus through the correspondence medium of salesmanship a young man who had no advantage of personal influence or acquaintance secured exactly the chance he wanted. similar opportunities are open to any one. [sidenote: personal selling] _every moment of your life when you are in the presence of other people, you have chances to sell true ideas about the best that is in you._ you will not need to seek such opportunities for personal salesmanship. chances come to you continually to make good impressions on the minds of the men and women you meet from day to day. be a skillful salesman of true ideas about yourself always, even in the most casual relations you have with other people. sell the best possible impressions of yourself to passers-by on the street, to your fellow riders in cars, to clerks and customers of stores you visit, to your home and business associates. put selling skill, as second nature, into each word, tone, and action of your social and business life. realize that in whatever you do or say, consciously or unconsciously, you _are_ selling ideas about your capability or your incapacity. you are making more or less definite impressions--you are affecting your opportunities to succeed, and are forming good or bad habits--all the time. _control the effects of your words, tones, and acts by saying and doing, consciously and intelligently, only what will aid in selling true ideas of your best capabilities._. [sidenote: practical psychology] of course you already know that each word and tone and act of your life makes _some_ impression on the people who hear or see you. but probably you have not realized fully that _particular ways_ of saying and doing things have _distinct and different effects_, each governed by an exact law of psychology. you perhaps do not know now _just what_ impression is made by a certain word, or tone, or act. to be a master salesman of yourself you need to study the science of mind sufficiently to acquire _working knowledge_ of common mental actions and reactions. familiarity with at least the general principles of psychology is of the utmost importance in using the selling process effectively. do not shy from study of the science of mind because it is an "ology" and therefore may seem hard. _you are a psychologist already_. you know that certain things you do and say make agreeable or unfavorable impressions on other people. in a _general_ way you know _why_. it is necessary only that you analyze _specifically_ what you realize now rather indefinitely. if you do not care to study a _book_ on psychology, just use your own mind as your psychological laboratory for continual self-analysis. answer for yourself such questions as, "exactly what effect will this particular word, or tone, or act have--and just why?" you can work out pretty well the _practical knowledge of psychology_ you must have in order to sell ideas about your capabilities most effectively. you simply need to apply _purposeful intelligence_ in everything you do and say; instead of making impressions without comprehending that by each word and tone and act of daily living you are influencing, favorably or adversely, your chances to succeed. [sidenote: three factors of selling process] think of yourself as one of the _three factors_ of the selling process. the _goods of sale_ are your best capabilities, of course. the second factor is the _prospective buyer_, the man who has need of such qualities or services as you could supply. the _agent of sale_, or third factor, is yourself. if you will keep in mind always the conception of yourself as _the uniting link_ between your "goods of sale" and the prospective buyer, you can be a salesman of yourself every minute. at any moment except when you are alone you may encounter and influence a possible buyer of your best capabilities. you are continually within sight and hearing of people whose impressions of you might affect your chances to succeed in life. therefore always be alert to grasp every sales opportunity within your reach. [sidenote: twelve steps] it will be essential, also, that you have knowledge of the successive _steps_ of the selling process, as well as knowledge of your goods of sale and knowledge of practical mind science. otherwise you might omit inadvertently to use some round of the ladder to certain success, and tumble to failure. these steps are so important to understand that the last nine chapters of the companion book are devoted to them exclusively. it will suffice here just to state what they are. . preparation for selling; . prospecting; . the plan of approach; . securing an audience; . sizing up the buyer; . gaining attention; . awakening interest; . the creation of desire; . handling objections; . the process of decision; . obtaining signature or assent; . the get-away that leads to future orders. [sidenote: five degrees of effort] another element of necessary knowledge about the selling process is the classification of sales according to the five degrees of effort required to close them. . a sale completed by response to the mere demand of the buyer. _example_--while a street car strike is on you are driving, an automobile down town. a man in a hurry to catch a train stops you and says, "i'll give you two dollars to take me to the station." you transport him in response to his call for your services. [sidenote: distinguish degrees of effort] . a sale completed by the buyer's acceptance on presentation only. _example_--a man is walking along a country road in the summer time. he sees a sign in the door-yard of a farmhouse; berry pickers wanted. he presents himself as a candidate and the farmer at once engages his services. . a sale completed immediately after a desire of the buyer has been created by a definite, intentional effort of the salesman. _example_--a man out of work wants a job that will employ his physical strength. he encounters three men who are struggling to load a very heavy box onto a truck. he takes off his coat and proves his strength by the ease with which the box is lifted when he helps. he inquires which of the three men is the truck boss; and asks for a job. he is hired because he has made the boss want the aid of his strength in handling heavy loads. . a sale completed only after persuasion of the buyer. _example_--assume that the truck boss in the next preceding illustration refuses at first to hire the applicant who has demonstrated his strength. it is necessary then for the man out of a job to talk his prospective boss into the idea that he needs a fourth man in his gang. . a sale completed only after a decision by the buyer as to the comparative benefits of purchasing or of not buying. _example_--you and another candidate apply for the same position in an office. you appear to be about equal in capability. the employer "weighs you in the balance" against the other applicant. this is a sale requiring the fifth degree of effort. manifestly you will need to use a very high quality of skill to get into the mind of the prospective buyer of services the idea that you are likely to be of more value as an employee than your competitor for the place. then you must skillfully prompt him to accept your application. [sidenote: difficult sales most worth making] when you appreciate exactly how sales differ in the degrees of effort necessary to close them, you will realize the wisdom of preparing to sell your particular qualities and services _with full comprehension of all the difficulties commonly met_ by candidates for desirable positions. countless men have died failures because they used throughout their lives only the first or second degrees of effort. consequently all their attempts to get good jobs were futile. the non-success of millions of other worthy men has been due to their use of no more than the third or fourth degrees of selling effort. [sidenote: sales of the fifth degree of difficulty] sales of the fifth degree of difficulty sometimes demand knowledge and skillful use of the entire selling process. _they are the sales most worth making._ the applicant for a new position or for a promotion is _certain to succeed_ in his purpose if he knows how to complete a sale of the true idea of his best capabilities. in order to do this he must control the _weighing process_ of the buyer; and be skillful in _prompting acceptance_ of his "goods of sale." when you _master_ and reduce to _every-day practice_ the fundamental principles you can learn from this set of books, you will be assured of making a successful average in handling sales of the fifth degree of effort. they are sales of the kind the _professional_ salesman makes with complete confidence every day. _his_ methods, applied to the marketing of _your_ goods of sale, will work such wonders for you that you soon should build up self-confidence equal to the matter-of-fact assurance of the master salesman of clothing, insurance, and other _materials_ of sale. he _knows_ when he begins a season or starts on a trip that he will make a good batting average. [sidenote: desired results in selling] comprehend, further, exactly what _results_ are desired by the skilled salesman whose work is based on scientific principles. the _immediate_ results desired are: first, _confidence_; second, _acceptance_ of the ideas brought by the salesman. one who is unfamiliar with the scientific principles underlying the skillful practice of the right selling process is unlikely to realize that the _first_ sales effort should be concentrated on _winning the prospective buyer's confidence in the salesman and in the goods of sale_. failures in selling are often due to the fault of the salesman who works primarily for but the _second_ of the immediate results to be desired; the acceptance of his proposition--the acceptance of his personal capabilities and services, for instance. he neglects, as a _preliminary_ to securing acceptance, to gain the _confidence_ of the other man. when you undertake to sell your particular good qualities and your services to a prospective employer, do not make the mistake in salesmanship of omitting the process of first winning his _belief_ in you. [sidenote: repeat sales] besides the two _immediate_ results desired by the skillful salesman, there is a _permanent_ result to be worked for--an enduring consequence desired from the present gains made. that permanent result wanted is _the opening of other opportunities for future sales_. _complete success in life_ is not assured when the _original_ sale of one's best capabilities is closed successfully. gaining the _initial_ desired chance does not make it certain that one will succeed in his _entire career_. the first sale is faulty if it does not include a lead to future opportunities "to deliver the goods." the right selling process is continuous. where one sale ends, another should be already started. a great many failures of capable men can be ascribed to short-sighted concentration on immediate chances. _one who would make certain of the success of his whole life must ever look ahead to the next possible opportunity for the sale of the true idea of his best capabilities, meanwhile making the most of his present chance._ [sidenote: service purpose in selling] in order to get the right viewpoint for further study of the selling process, you, _the salesman of yourself_, need to comprehend clearly the fundamental _purpose_ of all true salesmanship. _it should be the service of the buyer in satisfying his real needs._ few salesmen _know_ what sales service _is_, and _how_ it should be rendered. service is the very soul of the certain success selling process. service must be studied _as a purpose_ until the principles underlying the fullest satisfaction of the buyer's real needs are mastered, and all false misconceptions of service are cleared away from the salesman's idea of his obligation to the purchaser of his goods of sale. [sidenote: sales knowledge universally needed] this brief summary of the principal essentials of sales knowledge has been outlined in order to impress on you the practically _universal need for a better understanding of the selling process_. certainly you are convinced now that it will pay _you_ to know how to sell. then let us look next at _yourself_ in a different light--as a subject of study in sales-_man_-ship. chapter ii _the man-stuff you have for sale_ [sidenote: the man sales-man ship] your _knowledge_ of sales principles and methods, and your _skill_ in selling ideas must be combined with right sales-_manhood_ if your _complete_ success in sales-man-ship is to be made certain. particular _man_ qualities are necessary to make you a master _salesman_ in your chosen field. "a good man obtaineth favor." so we will study now the elements of character required for the most effective sales-_man_-ship, and how to develop them. we shall not consider "man" in the abstract, nor exceptional ideals of manhood. our thought of the sales _man_ will be concentrated on qualities _you_ have or can develop, that are necessary to make _you_ most efficient in selling ideas about _yourself_. some radical _changes_ in your present character may be required. but you will need principally to _grow_ in order to attain the full stature of sales manhood that is necessary to gain complete success. if your manliness is dwarfed now, you cannot succeed largely in selling true ideas of your best and biggest capabilities, until you rid yourself of the character faults that are stunting your growth as a sales _man_. [sidenote: the little man out-of-date] realize at the outset that the time has passed forever when the _little_ man, with the narrowly selfish outlook for "number one," might succeed. the demand of the future will be, however, not so much for big men as for big men. the world no longer looks up to kaisers and czars. success has ceased to be merely a towering figure. hereafter the one sure way to succeed will lead through the door of _brotherly understanding of the other fellow_, into the _common heart of mankind_. only sales_man_ship can open that door with certainty. we are entering a new business era, where the old individualistic methods of attaining so-called "success" will be worse than useless. many of them even now are forbidden by law. all the practices of the "profiteer" and his ilk are discountenanced by far-seeing people. men of vision perceive that the size of to-morrow's success will be measured in direct proportion to its quality of _human service_. "service" is the motto of the highest salesmanship. therefore, in shaping your plans to succeed, start with the resolve to make yourself a truly big sales man. do not copy the little, selfish models of yesterday. study the signs of the times. to be out-of-date is equivalent to being a failure. [sidenote: pint and bushel men] you will need to be big in ability, in imagination, in energy, in your ideals--but most of all you must be big in manhood. if you are little and selfish in your life purpose, you cannot be certain of success in selling to a truly big man the idea that you are fully qualified for his service. before making any attempt to sell yourself into a desirable position, take pains to develop as much _man quality_ as characterizes your prospective employer. you cannot comprehend him if you fall short of his standard of manhood. to-day the biggest buyers of brains and brawn recognize their obligations of human brotherhood. if you are little and self-centered, how can you reach into the mind and heart and soul of another man who is genuinely big? how can you impel him to think as you wish? the little man even doubts the existence of big manhood. he cannot comprehend such size. a pint measure, however much it is stretched, is utterly unable to contain a bushel. but the larger measure easily holds either a pint or a bushel. similarly if you are big in _manhood_, you can comprehend alike the little man and the big man. you will be able to deal successfully with both. [sidenote: the clothing of manhood] it is not sufficient, however, that you grow to the full stature of your biggest man possibilities. it is necessary also that you be _clothed in the characteristics of manhood_ in order to be _recognized_ as a man. when you were only an infant, you were safety-pinned into a square of cloth once doubled triangularly. you graduated to rompers at a year and a half or two. then you put on knee-pants, and afterward youth's long trousers. now you wear the clothes of a full-grown man. you would not think of dressing in knickerbockers, or rompers, or--something younger, to present your qualities and services for sale. yet your outer garb is much less important to the success of your salesmanship than is your _clothing of manhood._ [sidenote: what is your man power?] if you hope to assure yourself of man's-size success in life, plan that wherever you are you will make the instant impression that you are "every inch a man," not just an overgrown baby or boy. follow the example of paul, that incomparably great salesman of the new ideas of christianity. he wrote in his powerful first sales letter to the corinthian field, "when i became a man, i put away childish things." _compel respect_ by your sound virility. have a well-founded consciousness that in manhood you are the equal of any other man, and you can make everybody you meet feel you are a man _all through_. what is your size as a sales _man_ now? ask yourself this question, and answer it frankly. in order to make sure of selling yourself into the opportunities you want, you must take your own measure and fit your manhood to the selling process you have begun to learn. beyond a doubt you are now a sales man of _some_ size. you are selling your physical or mental powers, your services of this kind or that, with a degree of efficiency directly proportionate to your man-power. [sidenote: the ¼ m.p. man] if you are only a ¼ m.p. salesman at present, you lack three-fourths of the man capacity needed to handle with certain success all the opportunities of full-size manhood. you were not limited by nature to ¼ m.p. size. you were born with _full man capacity_. you are like a gasoline motor developing but a quarter of the power it was designed to produce--not because of any structural fault in the engine, but simply for the reason that it does not function _now_ as it was intended to operate, and as it can be made to work _in the future_ if it is overhauled and put in perfect condition. the full power capacity originally built _into_ the motor needs to be brought _out_. likewise _your_ man-power plant requires to be made as efficient as possible, in order to assure you of full man-capability for achieving success. maybe your chief fault is poor fuel, and what you most need is good "gas." you have not been filling up your mind with the right ideas. or, perhaps, your piston rings leak; and you lack the high compression of determined persistence. another fault might be in your carburetor--you are not a good "mixer." or your spark of enthusiasm may be weak. it is possible, too, that your fine points are caked over by the carbon of accumulated bad habits. maybe you have a cracked cylinder--your health is partly broken down. the fault is in your timer, perhaps. you are not "on the job" when you should be. [sidenote: your manhood can be re-built] no matter what ails your particular engine, _it can be repaired or rebuilt into a full one-manpower motor of efficiency_. if you limp and pound along with but a quarter of your capability, it is your own fault for not overhauling your power plant. don't continue as a ¼ m.p. man and blame anybody else, or curse your bad luck because you can't make speed and carry the load necessary to succeed. _stop trying to go on crippled or clogged in manhood_. run yourself into the repair shop right away and "get fixed." you can make your manhood over. there is full-man capability in you. you can get it all out and put it to work for your success. you have the ability to re-make your _character_ entirely, without changing _your individual nature_. you must accomplish transformation into _your best self_ before you can make the most of your opportunities to sell your abilities and services. it will not suffice that you just are _willing_, or _desire,_ to become a first-class salesman of your particular "goods of sale." merely acquiring information or _knowledge_ of the selling process is not enough to assure your success in life. even the most skillful _practice_ of all the sales principles and methods you learn will be insufficient to guarantee your success--if you do not develop your full _man capacity_ for sales-man-ship. [sidenote: essentials of the master sales man] the result of the necessary changes and growth in _your_ manhood will be an enlarged conception of _all_ men--your greater capacity to understand and to handle _any one else_ successfully. it is entirely possible for you to develop and cultivate every essential quality of the master sales-_man_, and still to be just _yourself_. [sidenote: good appearance] the high grade professional salesman makes the best _appearance_ of which he is capable. surely you can do that, too. you can train yourself to grace and ease in your bearing. however unsatisfactory your features may be, you certainly are capable of looking pleasant, and therefore of being attractive. it is possible for you to have well-kept hands and hair; to wear suitable, clean clothes; to be neat. [sidenote: physical capacity] first-class salesmanship requires, too, a high degree of _physical capacity_ for the most effective performance of the selling process. you need health, virility, energy, liveliness, and endurance, in order to sell effectively _the idea that you are physically able_ to fill the job you want most. physical incapacity is a handicap in almost any vocation. it can be remedied. it _must_ be remedied as fully as possible in your case. you may not be very robust naturally, _but you can make the most of the constitution you have_, with certain success as the incentive for your fullest possible physical development. few of us are as well as we _might_ be. [sidenote: mental equipment] whatever your physical shortcomings, there can be no doubt that you are capable of developing all the essential _mental_ equipment of the successful salesman. you only need to comprehend a few elemental laws of mind science; and then to _train_ yourself to the utmost of your particular ability--in perceptive power, alertness, accuracy, punctuality, memory, imagination, concentration, adaptability to circumstances, stability, self-control, determination, tact, diplomacy, and good judgment. does this seem like a long list of difficult accomplishments? examine the items, and realize how easy it is to develop these mental qualities of masterly sales_man_ship. perception is simply looking at things with your mind as well as with your eyes. alertness is no more than mental sharp ears. accuracy results from taking pains to be right. punctuality is a habit of mind that anyone can develop. memory is acquired by practice in remembering things. you use _some_ imagination every day--use _all_ your imaginative power. likewise you occasionally concentrate your thoughts. more exercise in concentration will develop this mental characteristic. you adapt yourself to circumstances when necessary, or when you choose. you can train yourself so that you will be prepared to meet anything that may happen. you have a degree of stability of character, otherwise you never would accomplish anything. increase your steadfastness by sticking to more purposes. similarly determination, self-control, tact, diplomacy, and good judgment are merely the natural results of _continual practice_ to develop these mental qualities. [sidenote: emotional qualities] the principal _emotional_ or _heart_ qualities required in masterly selling are ambition, hopefulness, optimism, enthusiasm, cheerfulness, self-confidence, courage, persistence, patience, earnestness, sympathy, frankness, expressiveness, humor, loyalty, and love of others. think of these one by one, and realize how many of them you already possess to a considerable degree. you may not be optimistic; perhaps you lack self-confidence, or maybe you are wanting in courage. but with the possible exception of these three "heart" qualities of the master salesman, you are not deficient now in the emotional essentials of successful salesmanship. you need only a _higher degree_ of each. develop all your capability in the other qualities, and you will find you have become an optimist. your self-confidence, too, will grow as fast as you increase your ability. when you are full of optimism and self-confidence, you will not find it difficult to create courage within yourself. _then you will have the complete emotional equipment of a master salesman._ the exact way to develop courage with certainty is explained in the second chapter of "the selling process," with especial reference to the professional salesman, who _must_ meet his prospects courageously in all circumstances if he would succeed. [sidenote: ethical essentials] nor is it hard for you to qualify yourself _ethically_ for mastery of the selling process. surely your intentions are right. you mean to be honest and truthful. you can be of good moral character. you expect to be reliable. it should be easy for you to love your chosen work. [sidenote: spiritual capacity] there remains, finally, the essential of _spiritual capacity_ for selling. it comprises idealism, vision, faith, desire to serve, ability to understand other men. perhaps you are deficient in some of these spiritual qualities now. but with idealism all about you in the spirit of the world cannot you, too, lift your eyes to higher purposes than the satisfaction of merely selfish desires? are you not able to look broadly, instead of narrowly at life? you know you must have faith--that you cannot make sure of success if you doubt. your mission as a true salesman of yourself should be to serve your prospects by satisfying their real needs for the abilities you have. love of others results from serving them with what you can supply that they lack. in no respect, then, from personal good appearance to spiritual capacity, need you be other than _your best possible self_ to qualify for certain success with the selling process. [sidenote: change and growth necessary] reference has been made repeatedly in these pages to the necessity for _change_ and _growth_ in your man character before you can become a master salesman of your full capability for success. of course you cannot change your _nature_ into a different _nature_; any more than one form of life can be transformed into an entirely distinct form of life. it is impossible to develop a carrot into a calla, or to make a dog of a pig. but the _elements_ of any particular form of life may be altered, most radically. [sidenote: develop use, activity and quality of elements] so you can develop: ( ) the _use_; ( ) the _degree of activity_; ( ) the _quality_, of any element in your present salesman equipment. for example, it is generally recognized that suitable clothes help to create a good impression. therefore you should _use_ to the _highest degree of activity_ and of _quality_ what you know about the effect of dress in helping to create a good impression. but, to particularize, do you (_use_ your knowledge) polish your shoes, even if it is no more than flicking off the dust with your handkerchief, every chance (_highest degree of activity_) you get when they need it? and when you polish your shoes in the morning preparatory to starting your day's work, do you just give them "a lick and a promise," or do you "make 'em shine?" (highest degree of _quality_.) [sidenote: animal training] the "stupid" pig can be taught to do as phenomenal tricks as the "intelligent" dog. it is possible to train a pig so that he will appear to be able to discriminate among colors, to tell time, even to perform simple operations in arithmetic. at the circus or vaudeville we sit in wonder while the "educated" stupid pig, alertly afraid of the trainer's whip, performs stunts of seeming _intelligence_. under the stimulus of fear he acts like a quick-thinking dog. in truth he _has_ been changed by training, from the _pig characteristic_ of utter stupidity to the _dog characteristic_ of rudimentary intelligence. but in _nature and form_ he remains just a pig. if you should see him among other pigs in a pen, you never would mistake the "educated" pig for a fat puppy. in the trained pig the _use_ of his pig mind is developed to an unusual degree of _activity_ and of _quality_ to save himself from punishment and to gain the tidbits that reward his performance of tricks. the purpose of the trainer is accomplished by changing and developing the _mind functioning_ of the pig. no trainer would attempt to change the _nature_ of a pig--to develop a pig into an elephant, a different _creature_. only _characteristics_ can be changed or developed. [sidenote: plant development] luther burbank has accomplished with plants even more extraordinary changes and developments in characteristics than have been achieved by the most expert trainers of animals. he could not make a carrot into a calla; but he did take the dwarf natural calla plant and develop it into a splendid lily that bears flowers measuring a foot across the petal. he also multiplied the characteristic colors of the natural calla and has evolved great blossoms of a score of shades, from pure white to jet black. the noted plant wizard developed, too, the naturally small, hard, dry, sour prune and transformed it into a juicy, sweet fruit that is bigger and more delicious than our common plum. he also succeeded in altering radically an element of the natural walnut, which had a characteristic covering skin of bitter tannin over the meat inside the nut shell. for countless centuries walnut trees had been in the habit of covering the meat of their nuts with this tannin skin. luther burbank trained selected walnut trees to give up this fixed bad habit, and to produce nuts the meats of which were not enveloped in bitter coverings. [sidenote: man making] since expert trainers have been able to accomplish such marvelous changes and developments in the characteristics of lower animals and plants--not changes in the form of life, but alterations so nearly miraculous that they seem almost to be changes in nature--is there the least doubt that you, a _man_, excelling every other animal, and every plant in consciousness and intelligence, are capable of the most radical, elemental changes in your present self? cannot _you_, then, certainly develop and _use_ to a much higher degree of _activity_ and _quality_ the man characteristics you now possess? of course you can! you need but to learn the _science of yourself_--to get full knowledge of what you are and of what you might be--by studying the _big, best qualities in you_. after that you will need _to make the most_ of what you learn about your true self. intensive self-study will reveal to you all the possibilities of your enlarged and bettered personality. when you know you have developed your biggest, best manhood, you certainly will feel increased power to sell your "goods." of all living creatures, man is the most adaptable, is capable of the greatest development, and responsive in the highest degree to desires from within and to influences from outside himself. only a stupidly ignorant man would hold to the belief that the elements of his character cannot be radically changed and developed. at present you may be handicapped with what you have considered "natural disqualifications" for success. then _study_ yourself thoroughly, _one detail at a time_. follow this self-analysis by intelligent practice in the active use of your best qualities, and determine to _change_ your "disqualifications" into _salable characteristics_ that will help you to succeed. [sidenote: no normal man lacks qualifications for success] certainly a slouch can straighten up, wash his dirty hands and face, dress neatly, and suggest proper regard for his appearance. the physical weakling is able to build considerable strength into himself. dullards, unless their brains are stunted, may develop surprising intellectual keenness. careless men can train themselves to painstaking accuracy. individuals who are habitually late may become models of punctuality. the man of flighty thoughts can concentrate. it is possible to control a quick, bad temper. tact, diplomacy, and good judgment can be learned and used efficiently by the countless thousands of people who now are tactless, undiplomatic, and characterized by poor judgment. so it is with the principal emotional, ethical, and spiritual qualities of the master salesman. _you_ have them _all_, elementally. _certainly you can develop any selected element to higher activity and use it_ to help you sell true ideas of your best capabilities. maybe you have fought long and vainly for self-confidence, for courage, for will power. perhaps you have realized for years that you are slow in perception, and have struggled to make yourself take mental snap-shots of details and conditions. you have wished and willed and worked to be agreeable and courteous; yet perhaps you lose friends by your characteristic disagreeableness and lack of courtesy. if, in spite of all you so far have done to improve yourself, you have been unable to get rid of your faults and defects, you are apt to question the statement that you _certainly can_ develop such qualities as you most desire. [sidenote: decision will power hard work insufficient] no doubt you have _decided_, probably you have _willed_, very likely you have made a _persistent struggle_ to change your characteristics. you honestly have tried hard to grow, and to increase your man capacity. consequently your failure may have left you rather hopeless about ever succeeding as you once expected to succeed. perhaps you have given up your case as "too tough a job." we will assume that you are not so young as you wish you were, and that you have committed to memory the fatalistic, hoary lie, "you can't teach an old dog new tricks." but recall the fixed habit of bitterness the walnut had for centuries, the color and size of the natural calla, the sour taste of the little wild prune, which the plant wizard changed most radically without using any "wizardry" at all. he just _applied scientific knowledge_ in his training of walnut trees and callas and prunes and other forms of vegetable life. have you tried his method of development? do you know exactly what he did? if luther burbank had merely _desired_ and _willed_ that the walnut should give up its old bad habit, he never could have accomplished the job of development. he might have _insisted persistently_ for a life-time that the little, sour, dry prune should become more luscious and larger than the plum; but it would have remained the same in size and other characteristics as it always had been, despite his continued determination. desire, will, and persistence were but preliminary steps toward the complete accomplishment of his purpose with the prune. [sidenote: luther burbank's method] burbank worked out in his mind and by actual experiments _distinctive methods_ of development--_development and changes along particular, definite lines._ he selected for the prune he _wanted to produce,_ (an imagined, ideal prune) certain desirable qualities of the plum--the best plum characteristics. he studied _what produced these particular qualities in plums_. then with his exact, scientific knowledge of the _similarity in nature_ of the plum and the prune, and his equally definite knowledge of the _differences in their characteristics_, supplemented by his knowledge of _exactly what produced_ the difference in the two fruits, he started his experiments with natural prune trees. he led specimens through a pre-determined scientific process of training. he succeeded in getting his experimental prune trees to develop discriminatively, almost as if they had the power of choice, _particular plum qualities in preference to others._ but the result was not a transformation of the prune trees into plum trees. the fruit of the tree he evolved was just a _perfected_ prune. he simply developed _all the capability_ the prune had originally to be _like_ a plum in deliciousness. [sidenote: natural growth without struggle] note just here one very important feature of the burbank method of plant development and change. it did not involve any _struggle_ or _hard work_ on the part of his trees. he merely provided _natural_, but scientifically _selected_ conditions and food; knowing that his prunes then would grow naturally in the particular ways he wanted them to develop, and in no other ways at variance with his plan. perhaps the primary fault in your ineffective effort to develop yourself into the man you want to be, is that it has been a _struggle_. _natural_ growth always is _easy_. growth involves a struggle only when one or more of the _means_ of natural growth are lacking. luther burbank wished his prune trees to develop certain selected qualities of the plum. therefore he provided his wild prunes with the same means he had used effectively _with plums_ to increase _their_ lusciousness. he knew these means should have a _similar_ effect on _prunes_. when he had provided the natural means of discriminative development, he left the rest to the _natural growth_ of his prune trees. they began to develop the selected plum qualities _easily_, and generation after generation became more and more like plums. [sidenote: two bases of growth mind and body] now let us consider briefly: first, the _bases_ of natural, easy growth of selected man qualities; second, the _processes_ that take place in the development of desired man qualities, some of which may not have seemed to exist previous to the evolutionary training; third, the training _methods_ that should be employed to make these processes most effective and to produce the particular results wanted and no others. there are _two bases of development in every one_--the inner and the outer man. the _real himself_ is the inner man, which psychologists call the "ego." but there is something else in the make-up of every man, his _body_. each of us recognizes his body--not as _himself_, not as his ego--but as _belonging to_ the real, or inner himself. a man thinks and says, "_my_ body" just as he considers and refers to anything else that is his. the discrimination between the two parts of "_you_" must be understood at the very start of your self-development. all your plans for the growth of the characteristics you need to assure your success should be based on comprehension of your _duality_. the two "you's" in yourself not only are distinctly _different_, but they are also very intimately _related_ in all their functions. neither your "ego" nor your body is independent of the other part of your duality. so, of course, both must co-operate fully in every _process_ of your self-development; and your _training methods_ should be planned for the bettered growth of your inner and outer man _as a team_. [sidenote: team-work processes] you understand now that your growth should be on a dual basis; that you have two different men to develop, not just one; and that they must be handled _discriminatively_, but _together_. next it is necessary that you know in _exactly what ways_ the activities of the mind man, or ego, are related to the activities of his body, or the physical man. otherwise you cannot comprehend the team-work processes by which any desired qualities of manhood can be developed from their rudiments. perhaps the reason you have not yet succeeded fully is that you have been a "one-horse" man and have not trained your dual self to be an effective _mind-and-body_ team pulling together. it takes both mind and body to bring to market successfully all the "best capability" of a man. [sidenote: training methods] evidently, as a pre-requisite to self-development, one should have knowledge of the particular processes that result _surely_ in natural, easy, rapid growth. otherwise he would be more than likely to employ a wrong or only partly right _method of training_. so as a student of yourself you need to start with comprehension of your two _bases_ of development, mind and body. it is necessary next that you acquire scientific knowledge of the distinct but related _processes_ of developing your two selves severally to work together as a team. then you must learn the particular _methods_ of coöperative mental and physical training that are most effective in accomplishing the man growth you desire. [sidenote: neither mind nor body a unit] not only have you two selves, but neither "you" is a _single unit_. your mind, as well as your body, is made up of distinctly different but very intimately related and associated _parts_. your "mind" cannot be developed as a _whole_. its parts must be severally bettered and strengthened in coordination, just as the physical man is developed by training his various muscles. you know you have _distinct sets of muscles_ which all together make up your _composite body_. perhaps, however, you have not realized before that your _mind_ is not a _unit_, but is made up of innumerable distinct "mind centers," each of which functions as independently of the others as your set of eye muscles operates independently of the set of muscles governing the movements of one of your fingers. and possibly you do not know that each _mind_ center has a distinct _brain_ center, which functions for that _particular part alone_ of your whole mind. _each associated mind-and-brain center_ also has direct, distinct nerve connections _with only one set of muscles_. in fact, you are "a many-minded, many-bodied" man--a collection of mental and physical _parts_, a composite man rather than a man unit. these several parts are in large measure practically _independent_ of one another. one set of body parts "belongs to" only its particular associated set of mind parts, or mind center. [sidenote: independent mind and body centers] if you were constituted otherwise, your life would be very precarious; for the injury or destruction of even a minor part of your body would be fatal to the whole unit. as it is, you can lose a finger without affecting your eye-sight in the least. so you might suffer a localized brain injury that would completely paralyze a finger, without impairing your sight at all. either the mind center that governs a finger, or the set of muscles in that finger can be affected without necessarily reacting upon any _other_ mind center or any _other_ set of muscles. [sidenote: interrelation of the ego and physical man] _but if the mind center that governs a certain set of muscles is affected, that set of muscles also is directly affected and at once. likewise if anything happens to a particular set of muscles, the reaction is instantly transmitted to its associated mind center through the "direct wire" nerves and brain center which particularly serve that part of the mind_. great scientists have studied mental and physical phenomena in inter-relation and have learned certain facts. for example, it is known that "the mind" not only affects the general functions of "the body," but also the rate of bodily activity and the chemistry of body tissues. long-continued hard thinking actually does "wear a man out." it consumes blood and brain tissue. it "slows him up." it may impair his digestion and appetite. we all know these things, but the scientists know just _why_ we feel _physically_ tired after using only our _minds_. they have learned also that every activity of the _mind_ has a direct effect on the _brain substance._ that is, each mind operation _through_ the brain _changes_ its physical structure in some degree. mental effort or relaxation increases or decreases the amount of blood in the brain. when you have been using your mind very hard, your head "feels heavy," and it _is_ unusually heavy then on account of the extra amount of blood weight. even the temperature of the brain, particularly of that portion of the brain which is especially functioning at a given moment, is changed with every mental effort. [sidenote: slow muscles slow mind] there is abundant scientific proof that the quality and quantity of muscle, brain, and nerve (_physical_) activity in a particular individual are accompanied by corresponding qualities and quantities of _mental_ activity. that is, when a person's muscle action, nerve response, and brain action are sluggish, his _mind_ also develops a characteristic of slow action. and vice versa. we say of a certain acquaintance that he has an alert mind. but his "ego," or mental self, could not act quickly and alertly if his _brain_, the physical instrument of his _mind_, did not receive and transmit impressions swiftly to his mentality. the _brain_ does not _think_. it is as purely physical as any other part of the body. it just _handles_, or transmits in and out, to and from the _mind_, the various impressions sent _in_ by different sense muscles, and the mental reflexes or impulses sent _out_ by the innumerable mind centers. your mind works _through_ your brain. of course, therefore, the quality and quantity of mental work _you_ are capable of doing are limited by the degree of handling-or-transmitting _efficiency_ characteristic of _your_ particular brain structure. [sidenote: value of practical psychology] any interference with the _brain_ quality or quantity of an individual naturally interferes with his normal _mental_ functioning. if a particular part of a man's brain is injured, the associated mind center is harmed likewise and his mental _quality_ is affected in proportion. should a certain portion of his brain be cut out, the total _quantity_ of his mental powers would be correspondingly reduced. we all know these things about the brain and the mind. but only a few scientists are familiar with many _details_ of the _inter-relation of mind and brain and muscles_, which should be known to all people who want to make the most of themselves. the salesman of himself needs to understand his "goods" thoroughly; so as we study the selling process that completes the secret of certain success, we dig into _practical psychology_ a little way now in order to stimulate in you a desire for further exploration of that gold mine of opportunities. [sidenote: physical manifestations of ideas] the mind depends on the brain, in coordination with the nerves and muscles, to _express_ thoughts. that is how your _inner_ or "ego" sales-man gets his ideas _out_ of your physical salesman, and _shows them_ to the minds of prospective buyers. you can make another person conscious of your thoughts only by some _perceptible physical manifestation_ of the idea you wish to convey to him. evidently, then, in order to succeed in developing your big sales manhood and in making effective impressions of it on others, you must learn both _how to think the ideas of big manhood into your own mind_ most effectively and how to _show them outwardly_ with masterly skill. the first process is man development; the second is sales-_man_-ship, or _manhood self-expression for the purpose of controlling the ideas of other men_. [sidenote: selling a thought] there is but one way to indicate or express what is going on in your mind. your thoughts can be physically shown only by _muscular action_ of some kind. brain and nerve action are hidden, but muscle action can be perceived. if your _muscular action_ expresses exactly the _idea_ you desire and will and use it to manifest, your mind is able to get its _thought_ across to another mind--_to sell_ the idea. conversely, if your muscle action--your outer, perceptible self--expresses something _different_ from your thought intention, your mind has failed to make the true impression of your idea. it may be that an impression directly contradictory to your thought has been made by your muscles working at cross purposes. so the truth in your mind won't get across to the other man's mind--not because your _idea_ was untrue, but because it has not been _physically interpreted_ by your muscles as you _intended_. for example, you might stand so much in awe of a man you greatly admire that you would avoid speaking to him, and in consequence would appear to him indifferent or cold. your physical appearance would belie your intentions. perhaps, if you have failed in life or have only partially succeeded, despite the qualifications you possess for complete success, your _muscles_ may be principally to blame. the parts of your idea-selling equipment that _can be perceived in action_ probably have not "delivered the goods" of sale correctly. [sidenote: how knowledge is accumulated] not only is your mind absolutely dependent on the muscular system of your body for any true _expression_ of the real _you_ inside; it likewise must depend on the activity of your various sets of muscles to get all the _incoming_ sense impressions that make up whatever _knowledge_ you have. have you realized how your present fund of information was accumulated? everything you know came into your conscious mind originally through impressions first made on your various "sense" muscles, and then transmitted by nerve telegraph to directly connected brain centers, which in turn passed on to their associated mind centers these original impressions of new ideas. many repetitions of similar sense impressions were needed to register permanently in your mind your first conceptions of different colors, scents, etc. thus you learned to think. the process was _started_--not by your _mind_--but by your various "sense" muscles. these received from your environment impressions of heat, cold, softness, hardness, etc., and passed them in to associated brain-mind centers, which thus commenced to collect knowledge about the world which you entered with a mind _absolutely empty of_ ideas. if a child might be born with a good brain, but with his general muscular system completely paralyzed, _he could learn nothing at all_ regarding the world. he would have no conscious mind. no sense impression of smell, light, taste, sound, or feeling could be received by the brain of such a child; for no original perceptions of any kind could be taken in. he would be like a complete telegraph system with every branch office closed. no intelligence would be transmitted; since no message could be even filed for sending. because of the paralysis of the sensory muscles, the child's conscious mind would remain blank. [sidenote: each mind-center must be developed specifically] recall now that you have a _multiplex_, not a single brain. that is, your so-called "brain" is made up of innumerable, distinct "brain centers" which function quite independently of one another. no particular unit requires help from any of the others in order to do its especial work with full efficiency. _each center attends only to its specific business in your life_. it rests, or relaxes from activity, when it has nothing to do; or when the particular muscles it governs are not in use. and, of course, when a certain _brain_ center rests or is inactive, its associated _mind_ center also rests or is inactive. as already has been stated, the mind of a man is built up, _through_ the brain instrument, by the _sense impressions_ transmitted to his consciousness. in other words, _all he knows with his mind first came into his mental capacity from outside impressions of things and ideas_. the fewer the impressions that come into the mind through the brain, the less does a man know. and only the impressions that come into a _particular_ mind center develop _that_ center. (for example, the development of keenest eyesight by many _optical_ impressions would not affect at all a man's ability to discriminate among the tones of music, would not give him "a good _ear_.") [sidenote: weak or undeveloped centers] it is evident, therefore, that if a _particular brain center_ temporarily or permanently is deprived of right and sufficient exercise in transmitting sense impressions, _its coordinated mind center_ will be stunted in its growth or starved for lack of mental food. this is why a man is awkward in using his native tongue when he returns to the country of his birth after a long residence among people of a different nation where that language was not spoken. but a little exercise of his brain in transmitting again the sound of his native tongue will quickly stimulate his mind with the renewed supply of this particular mental food to which it formerly was accustomed. in a few weeks he will use the old language naturally; whereas another man, who never had spoken it, would require years to build up such full knowledge from a start of complete ignorance of the language. evidently, too, a _weak_, undeveloped brain center would be incapable of receiving _strong_ mental impulses from its coordinated mind center, and of transmitting them in full strength to the particular muscles governed by that mind center. this is why, if a man's _brain center_ of courage is undeveloped, even the most courageous _thoughts_ will not make his body _act_ bravely. his legs may run away against his will to fight. the physical instrument of his mind (his brain), and also certain associated sets of muscles, must be sufficiently exercised in the _action_ of courage to build up within him the _physical structure_ of fearlessness that will be instantly responsive to a _mental attitude_ of bravery. [sidenote: right exercise for development] if for any reason the brain instrument is weak or undeveloped, it can handle only weakly either in-coming messages to the ego from the senses, or out-going impulses from the mind to the muscles. so, because of this undeveloped brain instrument, the full capability of neither the inner nor the outer man can be built up and put to use. obviously, therefore, if one is ambitious to succeed, he needs to know and to practice the _coordinated mind-brain-muscle exercises_ that will increase the quantity and better the quality of his man capacity. since he is a "many-minded, many-bodied" man, _general_ physical and mental exercise will not develop the _particular_ qualities required to assure his success. each and every mind-brain-muscle set must be built up individually by _specific_ exercises which strengthen _that particular unit_ of the multiplex man. then, of course, all his units should be taught to work _together_ to make his success certain with his all-around capability fully developed and coordinated. [sidenote: the discriminative-restrictive method] luther burbank worked out "discriminative-restrictive" methods of growth that may be applied as successfully to men as to plants. he could not have built up the ability of a prune tree to produce _delicious_ fruit if he had not fed into the tree structure, or instrument of production, a sufficient quantity and high quality of the _particular plant foods of deliciousness_. he restricted his experimental prune trees to the development of specific delicious qualities, by giving them no food except that _discriminatively_ selected for his purpose. that is, he made them develop in one way and in one way only, when he was making a particular test. similarly, as has been stated before, you can develop the specific _man_ qualities you need to succeed. you must _feed_ to a particular mind center, through the related brain center, _selected sense impressions_. these can come only from the coordinated set of _muscles_ governed by that mind-brain center. then you should _exercise_ the specific brain center and set of muscles in the production of mental reflexes, or the mind fruit. acts of courage, for example, are the fruit of brave thoughts. [sidenote: brain development] a particular brain center, of course, will be strengthened both by the _food_ of sense impressions it is given, and by the _exercise_ of handling messages to and from the mind. the brain, or physical instrument of the mind, is like an intermediary or go-between of the ego and the body. it is of the utmost importance that it should do its work efficiently. otherwise the full capability of neither the outer nor the inner man can be utilized. if brown passes something to jones, who passes it along to smith; then smith passes it back to jones to be re-passed to brown--jones, the middle agent of transmission or handling instrument, whom we are comparing to the brain, might be so awkward, slow, and inefficient as a go-between that the possible ability of brown and smith in passing would be nullified or greatly hampered. but if the inefficiency of jones is blamable to his inexperience, it evidently can be changed to efficiency by _sufficient right exercise_ in passing. the more of that sort of work he does, in either direction, the better passer will jones become. his exercise, however, must be _in passing_ things, if _passing_ capability is to be developed. he would not become a better and quicker _passer_ by any amount of exercise in taking things apart, or in inspecting things--wholly dissimilar functions. [sidenote: training in passing] moreover, jones would not become an expert passer of _glassware_ as a result of practice in passing _bricks_, for the two kinds of things are not handled alike. indeed, the man accustomed to passing bricks might be more likely to break glassware than another man who previously had no particular skill in passing anything. the expert brick-passer would be apt to forget sometimes that he was passing glass. his muscles might treat the fragile ware with the rough habit acquired in passing bricks. plainly, discriminative-restrictive methods of training are required to perfect capability in any _particular_ kind of physical passing; however much skill in _general_ passing may have been developed. if jones should become expert in passing pails of liquid, he would nevertheless need to train himself anew in order to pass frozen liquid efficiently in the form of cakes of ice. and, to particularize still more, it would be necessary for him to learn how to pass different liquids. water and thick molasses in pails should not be handled alike. similarly the various brain centers, as passers of different sense impressions and mental reflexes in and out, require, each of them--like jones--the _specific_ exercises that will develop _their several particular_ abilities. the _individual brain unit_ (as of courage, memory, judgment, etc.) is strengthened only by handling the in and out business of _its_ coordinated muscles and mind center. also, while a particular set of muscles and coordinate mind center are strengthening their brain center by the exercise they give _it_, they are both being developed by the same exercise of passing along sense impressions and thoughts to each other through the brain--like smith and brown. [sidenote: the process of growth] returning to the comparison of burbank's methods with man development, we perceive again how the principle of discriminative-selective training is applied to accomplish the growth of certain characteristics needed to assure a man's success. the plant wizard in his initial tests gave to his undeveloped prune trees particular food and conditions and treatment selected for the purpose of imparting specific qualities of deliciousness. a prune _somewhat improved_ in deliciousness was the first result. then from the product of that _improved_ prune he started _another_ cycle of development. he fed the selected food of deliciousness to the improved prune tree, and a fruit _more_ delicious resulted. his work was simply plant breeding by the discriminative-restrictive method. brain breeding is a similar process of _particularized, cumulative_ development. [sidenote: begin with specific training of the outer man] all the foregoing rather complicated explanation of "psychological processes" has seemed necessary to make a clear impression of the _right training methods_ for building within you any quality you need to assure your success. you must begin by training your _outer_ man. you can develop a particular mind-brain center (such as the center of courage) only by the discriminative-restrictive training of those portions of your _body_ which are directly related in activity and responsiveness to that mind-brain unit of the multiplex you. training of _any other_ set of muscles will not develop the particular mind-brain center you want to build up, and would be a wrong procedure. you should _begin_ with specific training of particular sets of _sensory muscles_ because, as we have seen, that is the _natural_ order of the process of growth. it is how you began to learn everything you know. you can increase and improve your present limited, conscious knowledge most effectively by taking into your mind from your _trained_ particular senses _more and better_ impressions than you ever have taken in before. [sidenote: developing persistence] suppose your success has been hindered by your lack of persistence. you need to develop _that quality_ in particular. let us see how the discriminative-restrictive principle should be applied specifically to assure you of building _persistence_ within yourself. first it is necessary that you discriminate between _this one_ quality and _all others_; especially between it and the quality of _determination_. very _different_ training methods are required to develop persistence and determination respectively. when you are just "determined" to do a thing, your jaw muscles, your arm and back muscles, perhaps all your commonly known muscles, will be hardened _as long as you remain determined, but no longer_. they will relax when the occasion for determination has passed. the habit of instantly tensing your muscles temporarily whenever you need to be determined will very greatly strengthen and improve the efficiency of your brain-mind center of _determination._ but that _temporary_ hardening of your muscles will only slightly affect the development in you of _characteristic persistence_. [sidenote: developing determination] hence the training of your muscles for building the habit of determination within you should be concentrated on exercise in _changing swiftly_ from comparative laxity to _muscular tension_. that is, in order to accustom your _mind_ to hardening with _determined thoughts_ whenever determination is needed, you should train your _muscles_ to harden _in coordination_, and thus to support your mental determination by the complementary _physical suggestion_ of the same quality. you do not need to use determination _all the time_; so it will be sufficient if your muscles are taught to be _quickly responsive_ to determination of mind on any occasion. (you know it helps you to carry out a resolution if you stiffen your body at the moment you make up your mind to do a thing, but _continued_ stiffness of the body in determination would be a strain likely to weaken your power of action unless backed by a tremendous, stored-up reserve strength of muscles.) begin your practice for the development of determination, then, by training your muscles to tauten the instant you think determinedly. your brain-mind center of determination will also be strengthened by the exercise that builds up the supporting habit of muscle action in coordination. millions of men have failed in life because their determined thoughts were not reenforced by stiffened backbones. [sidenote: discrimination between determination and persistence] now let us discriminate between muscle training to develop the characteristic of _persistence_ and the training already described for the building of determination. in order to strengthen your persistence, you must transmit through the distinct brain center of persistence to the corresponding mind center, the impression of muscles _permanently developed in firmness_, not just capable of temporary hardening on occasion. the _characteristically persistent_ man has gradually developed his lax-muscled, sagging, baby chin into a jaw that is habitually firm, whether or not he happens to be determined to do anything at a given moment. his muscles do not sag utterly, even when he is asleep. he probably wakes up in the morning with his teeth clenched. so, whenever his coordinated brain-mind center perceives that the quality of persistence is required, and starts to apply it, the _mental impulse_ to persist is backed by a _permanent firm muscle structure_ that can stand up as long as the mind needs the physical support. [sidenote: a slump in determination] in contrast, the man who is only characteristically _determined_, but who lacks _persistence_ in his determination, has developed just the habit of hardening his muscles _for the time_ he is determined on doing a particular thing. that does not exercise his muscles sufficiently to make them firm _all_ the time, whether under tension or not. consequently his determination is likely to slump if his resolution is subjected to a long strain. he does not possess muscular structure sufficiently strong to support persistence in his determination. _habitual lack_ of firmness in the jaw muscles, as you know, results in a sagging chin; which detrimentally affects the brain-mind center of persistence. a man whose jaw habitually hangs loose may be capable of great _determination_ for a while, but he is not _persistent in character_. he might clench his teeth, stiffen his body, and plunge into the surf to rescue a drowning person; but his first resolution to effect the rescue would be weakened by the cold water and by fear. he lacks the quality of the bulldog that will die rather than loose its teeth from another dog's throat. [sidenote: muscles express and impress ideas] the coordinated muscles _express_ the mental attitude, as we have perceived; and equally they _impress_ the mind with _their_ attitude. if you have a sagging chin, you are incapable of the mental bulldog grip of persistence. so _tighten up your jaw muscles, and never let them hang utterly loose_, if you are resolved to develop the characteristic of "stick-to-it-iveness." _begin_ with _muscle_ training, for your muscles must be utilized to start the process of building up your brain-mind center of persistence. [sidenote: developing perception] when you train the particular sense muscles that transmit external _impressions_ to a particular brain-mind unit (the same muscles that reflexively _express_ the ideas of that one part of your multiplex ego) you may be absolutely _sure_ of developing a particular related characteristic. for example, if you want to sharpen your _perceptive_ faculties so that you will see with the _eyes of your mind_ much more than the _ordinary_ man perceives, exercise your _physical_ eyes in taking snap-shots that you can see clearly in detail _with your imagination_ when you look away from an object after a glance at it. try glancing at the furnishings of your room, then shut your eyes and construct a mental picture. when this is definitely clear to you, open your eyes. the reality will be very different from your imagined picture. but _sharpen your perceptive faculties_, develop a "camera eye;" then the reality will be exactly impressed on your mind. witnesses in court often contradict one another, in all honesty, simply because their ability to perceive actualities is not highly developed. in consequence, they get false mental impressions of happenings or things they severally have seen. [sidenote: three processes of mental development] there are but three _processes_ of mental development: the first process comprises _getting information_ from a _sense_ to its associated _brain center_, which then makes the _mind_ center conscious that particular information has been transmitted to it. the second process is _organizing_ the information in the mind center, with relation to _other_ information _previously_ brought to the mind. in the third process the mind center directs its co-related brain center to send out certain _impulses of action_ to the corresponding muscular structure. let us analyze an illustration of these three processes of mental development. suppose first you _hear_ something that concerns a particular prospect for your "goods of sale." second, you comprehend the _significance_ to you of what you have heard. third, your mind directs your muscles to make a particular _use_ of what you have comprehended. the original mental impression has been _fully developed_ because you employed all three processes. if you had not completed the cycle of development, you would have given your mind only partial exercise with what you heard. in order to become a master salesman, you must _take in_ many impressions, perceive their _significance to you_ and how you can make use of them, then _act_ on your comprehension of what you have learned. there are countless failures in the world who might have been successes if they had not stopped their possible mental development at the first or second stages. a man might know an encyclopedia of facts, but be a failure. he might comprehend how to use his knowledge, and still be a failure. _success comes only to the man who acts most effectively on what he knows_. [sidenote: right practice of the three processes] in order to secure quick and effective results, the _practice_ of the three necessary processes of development should be: first, _definitely conscious_. you need to _know just what_ quality you want to develop in yourself. second, _discriminative_. you must learn the _differences_ between what you _want_, and what you _don't want_ to develop in particular. third, _restrictive_. it is necessary that in your training to develop a certain quality, you _concentrate_ your practice on the respects in which this particular quality differs from other qualities. most of us are pretty _definitely conscious_ of what we want. we know just the qualities we would like to have. but very few people employ most effectively the _discriminative-restrictive methods of training_ in their processes of development. [sidenote: importance of differentiation] it is impossible to develop a particular quality fully if you only recognize its _likenesses_ to other qualities. _real mental development is accomplished only as a result of the recognition of differences_. after studying twins for a year, you still might be unable to tell them apart if you were impressed solely with their remarkable similarity to each other. another man, with a mind discriminatively and restrictively trained to recognize differences, would learn in five minutes to distinguish the individualities of the twins. almost phenomenal development can be attained by use of the discriminative-restrictive training method. the minutest distinctions can be perceived if one concentrates his practice for mental growth on the recognition of _differences only_. individuals who have lost one or more senses become extraordinarily adept in detecting contrasts with their other senses. a normal man, possessed of all his senses, is capable of even greater development of his powers of differentiation. you know how remarkably a blind man learns to "see" with his fingers and ears. but need you lose the sense of sight before you can comprehend the lesson of his example to you? you realize that you appear to lack many essential qualities of success. know now that these are all merely _dormant_ in you. they can be awakened and developed to an extraordinary degree if you train yourself consciously in the discriminative-restrictive use of all your sense tools. you would do it if you were blind. it certainly should be much easier to accomplish the desired transformation with your eyes open to aid your other senses. [sidenote: whatever you lack now you can develop] the significance of all this is that you need not be permanently handicapped in your sales-_man_-ship by any present lack of particular qualifications for success. _it makes no difference what you happen to be short of now_. by properly coordinating your brain-mind-muscle sets or centers, and by using all three in the processes of your development, _you can make yourself over almost miraculously_. will power, courage, exact and wise judgment, persistence, patience, rapid thinking, constructive imagination--_any and all qualities you want_ can be developed in you, even though they now seem not to exist. your development is limited only by the practically limitless number of unawakened cells in your brain. most of your potential mind centers are asleep yet. _you can wake up the slumberers with your various sense muscles, and vigorously exercise them into activity for your success_. you have been handicapped because you have been carrying so many "dead-heads" that ought to be working or paying their way. _remember that growth of any brain-mind center can be begun and continued only by the exercise of the coordinated set of sense muscles in transmitting impressions from outside yourself and in expressing your thoughts_. [sidenote: your limitless brain capacity] the number of cells in the human brain has been estimated at from six hundred millions to two billions. the greatest genius who ever lived doubtless had scores of millions of brain cells that remained more or less idle, if not sound asleep, all his life. nature has furnished you with a plentiful surplus of grey matter in your head. do not be afraid that you will exhaust or tire out your brains by your self-development. _put into your work all the brains you can waken with your various senses. and keep the alarm clocks wound up_. william james, the great psychologist, wrote, "compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. our fires are damped; our drafts are checked. we are making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. there are in every one potential forms of activity that actually are shunted from use. part of the imperfect vitality under which we labor can thus be easily explained. one part of our mind dams up--even damns up--the other part." [sidenote: growth can be assured and success made certain] can you become a big sales man? of course! you have all the necessary tools to make yourself over in any way you will--your muscles, nerves, brain, and mind. use them cooperatively, as they were meant to be used, _in their respective sets_--not as if you were a mental-physical unit. _to develop your sales manhood you need only to apply real thinking in the processes of your daily life_. study out the reasons and effects of all your acts and expressions. your experimental psychological laboratory should be yourself, undergoing at your hands the transformation from what you are to what it is possible for you to become. begin making your man-stuff over. each successive step will be easier to take. _your growth, when you employ the right processes and methods, is certain_. therefore your success in making yourself a big sales man can be _assured_. chapter iii _skill in selling your best self_ [sidenote: practice of the art] if you have developed real capability and first-class manhood, you have "the goods" that are always salable. but you realize now that the mere _possession_ of these basic qualifications for success will not insure you against failure in life. you cannot be _certain_ of succeeding unless you _know how to sell_ true ideas of your best self in the right market or field of service, and until you develop _sales skill_ by continual correct practice. we will assume that you have had little or no selling experience. you are conscious that you entirely lack sales art. therefore, though in other ways you feel qualified to succeed in life, you may be dubious about your future. perhaps you realize that _skill in selling_ true ideas of your best capabilities is all you need to make your success certain. but you question, "can i be _sure_ of becoming a skillful salesman of myself?" you have no doubt of your ability to _learn_ the selling process, but very likely you do not believe you ever could _practice_ it with the art of a master salesman. consequently you are not yet convinced of the certainty of your success. [sidenote: success proportionate to sales skill] of course success cannot be absolutely assured in advance unless _every element_ of the secret we have analyzed can be mastered. hence it is necessary that you now be shown _certain ways_ to sell ideas--ways that _cannot fail_, that are adaptable to the sale of _any_ right "goods," and that _you_ surely can master. you need to feel absolutely confident that _if you follow specific principles and use particular methods, you can impress on any other man true ideas of your best capabilities_. when you become skillful in making good impressions, you certainly will be able to sell yourself into such chances to succeed as fit your individual qualifications. _your success with the best that is in you can be made directly proportionate to your skill as a salesman of "your goods_." mastery of the art of selling will enable you to cut down to the minimum the possibilities of failure in whatever you undertake. remember that _success does not demand perfection._ there never was a % salesman. to be a success, you need only _make a good batting average in your opportunities_ to sell. it is not necessary to hit to be a champion batsman in the game of life. ty cobb led his league a dozen years with an average under . . [sidenote: technique and tools] the _foundation_ of sales art is _knowledge of selling technique_. so the first step in the process of developing your skill as a salesman of yourself is the study of the _right tools_ for making impressions of "true ideas of your best capabilities." you must know, also, the scientific rules that govern the _most effective use_ of these right tools. technique, however, is only the _basic element_ of salesmanship. on the foundation of your sales _knowledge_ it is necessary to build sales _skill_ that will completely cover up your technique. your perfected sales art should seem, and really be _second nature_ to you. your salesmanship probably will be crude until you overcome the awkwardness of handling unfamiliar tools, or familiar tools in ways that are new to you. but "practice makes perfect." the use of the right technique in selling true ideas about your best self will soon become natural. [sidenote: making success easy] the _skillful_ sale of ideas is accomplished _without waste of time or energy in the selling process_. the unskillful, would-be salesman not only fritters away his own time and effort, he also wastes the patience and power of the man to whom he wants to sell his "goods." the sales artist, however, gets his ideas into the mind of a prospect _quickly_, with the least possible _wear and tear_ on either party to the sale. no one appreciates a fine salesman so thoroughly as the best buyer. skill in selling true ideas about your particular qualifications will not only _assure_ your success, but will make it _easy_ for you to succeed. [sidenote: docking your sales-man-ship] the skillful salesman is the captain of his own sales-man-ship. but in order to make certain of landing his cargo of right impressions he takes aboard the pilot science to begin with, and then concentrates on four factors of the art of selling ideas: first, _discovering and traversing_ the best channel into the prospect's mind; second, _locating the particular point of interest_ upon which the salesman's cargo can be most effectively unloaded; third, _maneuvering alongside_ this center of the buyer's interest; fourth, _securely tying to_ the interest pier so that the shipload of ideas may be fully discharged. the primary aim of the skillful salesman _when making port_ is to get safely to the right landing place as soon as possible and with the least danger of failure in his _ultimate purpose_ of completing the sale. at this initial stage of the selling process, however, he concentrates his thoughts on the _skillful docking_ of his sales-man-ship. the _nature of the cargo_ a sailor ship captain brings to port has little or nothing to do with the art of reaching and tying up to the pier. similarly, whatever his "goods of sale," the skillful _salesman_ uses the same principles and methods to dock his salesman-shipload of ideas most effectively in the harbor of the prospect's mind. so the _art_ you are studying is _standardized_. when you master it, you can apply it successfully to the sale of your best self or any other "goods of sale." [sidenote: reasoning and argument are wrong] before considering the methods of selling that are most effective, it will be well to get rid of a mistaken idea that is all too common. a great many people regard reasoning power, or the force of pure logic, as an important selling tool. there are so-called salesmen who attempt to "argue" prospects into buying. unthinking sales executives sometimes instruct their representatives to employ certain "selling arguments." but the methods and language of the debater have no place in the repertory of a _truly artistic_ salesman or sales manager. one debater never _convinces_ the other. at best he only can _defeat_ his antagonist. in a skillfully finished sale, however, there should be neither victor nor vanquished. the selling process is not a battle of minds. there is no room in it for any spirit of antagonism on the part of the salesman. so in your self-training to sell true ideas of your best capabilities, do not emphasize especially the value of logic and reasoning. if you use them at all in selling yourself, disguise their character most skillfully. _never suggest that you are debating or arguing your qualifications_ with prospective buyers of your mental or physical capacity for service. you cannot browbeat your way into opportunities to succeed. most employers buy the expected services of men and women in order to satisfy their own _desires_ for particular capabilities. few will buy against their wishes. in order to sell your qualifications with certain success, you first must make the other man genuinely _want_ what you offer. almost always _mind vision_ and _heart hunger_ must be stimulated to produce desire. therefore the most skillful salesman of himself does not use the words, tones, and actions of argument. in preference to cold reason and logic he employs the arts of _mental suggestion_ and _emotional persuasion_. [sidenote: the force of suggestion] suggestion is especially effective in producing desire; because an idea that is merely _suggested_, and not stated, is unlikely to provoke antagonism or resistance. a suggestion is given ready access to the mind of the other man. usually it gets in without his realizing that a _strange_ thought has entered his head from outside. when he becomes conscious of the presence in his mind of an idea that has been only _suggested_ to him, he is apt to treat it _as one of his own family of ideas_ and not as an intruder. naturally he is little inclined to oppose a desire that he thinks is _prompted by his own thoughts_. however, he would be disposed to resist the same wish if he realized it had been _injected_ into his consciousness. all of us know the great force of suggestion; but there are very few people who so use words, tones, and movements as to make the _most_ of their power of _suggesting_ ideas in preference to _stating_ them. probably no tool of salesmanship will be of more help in _assuring_ your success than fully developed ability in suggestion, which is the skillful process of getting your ideas into the minds of others _unawares_. [sidenote: words are doubted] the _words_ we use are intended to convey pretty definite meanings to listeners. if we are entirely honest in our words, we expect whatever we say to be taken at its face value as the truth. yet each of us knows that his own mind seldom accepts without question the statements of other men, however well informed and honest they are reputed to be. you and i mentally reserve the right to believe or to doubt the written or spoken _words_ of someone else; because they always enter our minds _consciously_. we know that the words we hear or read come from _outside ourselves_. the skillful salesman proceeds on the assumption that his words will be stopped at the door of the prospect's mind and examined with more or less suspicion of their sincerity and truth. therefore the selling artist employs words principally for one purpose--to communicate to the other man information about such _facts_ as cannot be introduced to his consciousness otherwise. some facts can be told only in words. but a master of the selling process uses as few words as possible to convey his meaning. he depends on his _suggestive tones_ more than on what he says. he reenforces his speech with accompanying _movements_ and muscular _expressions_, to get into the mind of the other man by _suggestive action_ the true _ideas behind the words_ used. similarly when you bring your full capability to the market of your choice, you should not rely upon a mere _declaration_ of your qualifications; and upon _word_ proof, written or spoken, that you are _the_ man for the job. your words are unlikely to be taken at their face value. any claims you have a right to make will be discounted heavily if you _say_ very much about your own ability. you run the risk of being judged a braggart and egotist when you _talk_ up your good points; though you may be telling no more than the plain truth. [sidenote: tones and acts are believed] however, if your _tones_ of sincerity and self-confidence denote really big manhood; and if your every _act and expression_ indicate to a prospective employer that you are entirely capable of filling the job for which you apply, he probably will consider himself very shrewd in sizing you up. really _you_ have suggested to him every idea he has about you, but he will think _he_ has _found_ in you the very qualifications he desires in an employee. you can do more to sell yourself by the way you walk into a man's office than you could accomplish by bringing him the finest letters of introduction or by "giving him the smoothest line of talk about yourself." he is able to read the principal characteristics of the real you in your poise and movements and in the manner of your speech. _he will believe absolutely any characteristic he himself finds in you_. _what_ you say to him may have little real influence on his judgment of you. but be sure that he will note _how_ you speak; and will make up his mind about you from your tones and actions, rather than from your words. he will think the ideas you suggest to him are _his own original discoveries_. [sidenote: suggestion by tones and acts] evidently, before you attempt to achieve success, it is very important that you study the _art of suggestion_ by tones and actions. when you know the principles, you should practice this art until you make yourself a master of skillful suggestion. you need to know precisely the _effects_ of tone _variations_, the exact _significance_ of the _various_ tones you can use. it is necessary also for you to comprehend not only that "every little movement has a meaning all its own," but _just what that meaning is_. when you are equipped with thorough knowledge of _how_ to suggest particular ideas through tones and motions, you should practice using the principles and methods of suggestive expression you have learned, until it becomes second nature _always to speak and act with selling art_. then you will be a skillful salesman, sure of your power to sell true ideas of your best capability wherever you are. your success will have been made certain through your sales _art_ built on the foundation of your sales _knowledge_ by your fully developed sales _manhood_. [sidenote: discriminative selective method] your increased selling _skill_ will result _naturally_, just as we have seen that you will _grow_ naturally in sales _manhood_, if you employ the discriminative-selective method when training your human nature in the art of suggesting your best self. you need first to recognize the exact _differences_ of significance among the various tones and movements at your command. then your self-training in suggestive expression should be concentrated on the _particular ways_ of speaking and acting that will best demonstrate your qualifications for success. of course it is equally important to _eliminate all tones and movements that might suggest unfavorable ideas_ about you. to make sure of your success, be certain that everything you do and say tells "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" about your capabilities. it is necessary to make sure no word, tone, or movement carries the least suggestion that might possibly leave a false impression of the real you. let us make a brief analysis now of words, tones, and acts--_the three means of suggestive expression which are the natural equipment of every man for conveying his ideas to the minds of others_. you cannot employ the discriminative-restrictive method to develop your selling skill unless you know very definitely just _what_ your different tools of expression are, and the almost infinite variety of _uses_ to which they can be put. [sidenote: four rules about words] for the reasons already explained, words are of much less value than tones and movements in suggesting ideas the other man will admit to his mind unawares. but the sales efficiency of words can be very much increased if they are chosen with intelligent _discrimination_, and if the choice is _restricted_ to words that have four qualifications. first, they should be _common_ words. second, _short_ words are more forceful than long words. third, words of _definite meanings_ are preferable to mere generalizations. fourth, words that make _vivid_ impressions are most effective in suggesting ideas. [sidenote: common words] when you employ words to sell true ideas of your best capability, choose words that everybody understands. do not "air your knowledge" in uncommon language. unless you are seeking a position as a philologist in a college, restrict yourself to every-day common speech when selling your personal qualifications. an important element in the skillful sale of ideas is making them as _easy_ as possible for the other man to comprehend. if you use unfamiliar words, it sometimes will be hard for him to understand what you mean. _the truly artistic salesman avoids introducing any unnecessary element of difficulty into the selling process_. so you should discriminate against all unusual expressions and restrict yourself to the _common_ words that are easy for any man to comprehend. [sidenote: short words] a long word or phrase may convey your idea clearly, but _force_ is lost in the drawn-out process. remember that your _words_ will meet the intuitive resistance of the other man's mind before they are admitted to his full belief. you cannot afford to sacrifice the driving-in power of the _short_ word. therefore, when your opinion is asked, it will be better salesmanship to say, "i think" so and so than "it is my impression--" [sidenote: definite words] the _definite_ word conveys a _particular meaning_ to the mind of the other man, not merely a vague or general idea. never say, when you apply for a position, "i can do anything." that tells the prospective employer simply _nothing_ about your ability. particularize. [sidenote: vivid words] it is of the utmost importance to make _vivid impressions_ with your speech. you should employ words skillfully to produce in the mind of the other man _distinct and lifelike_ mental images. he may not credit the words themselves, taken literally and alone. but he will believe in _the pictures the words paint in his mind_; because he will think he himself is the mental artist. he will not be suspicious of his own work. if you apply for a situation in a bank, and the cashier seeks to learn whether or not you are safely conservative in your views, you can suggest in vivid words that you have the qualification he requires. you will make the desired impression if you say to him, "i always carry an umbrella when it looks like rain." [sidenote: tone meanings] our analysis of the three means of self-expression turns now to _tones_. rightly selected words are tremendously augmented in selling power when they are _rightly spoken_. most men employ but a small part of their complete tonal equipment, and are ignorant of the _full sales value_ of the portion they use. the master salesman, however, practices the gamut of his natural tones, and utilizes each to produce particular effects. thus he supplements his mere statements with _suggestive shades of meaning_. the _way_ he says a thing has more effect than the words themselves. conversely tone _faults_ may have a disastrous effect on one's chances to succeed. for illustration, ideas of mind, of feeling, and of power can be correctly expressed by the discriminative use of particular _pitches_ of tone. but a wrong pitch, though the words employed might be identical, would convey a directly opposite and false impression. [sidenote: mental pitch] suppose you are appealing only to the _mind_ of your prospective employer--as when you quote figures to him--you should restrict your tone temporarily to the mental pitch. you are just conveying facts now. therefore the "matter-of-fact" tone best suits the ideas expressed. since it fits what you are saying, the way you speak impresses the other man with the suggestion that _your tone and words are consistent_. therefore his mind has no inclination to resist the mental pitch on this occasion. he admits your figures to his conscious belief more readily than he would credit them if spoken in an emotive or power tone. such tone pitches would strike him as out of place in a mere statement of fact. [sidenote: tone faults] if your prospective employer asks how old you are, and how many years of experience you have had, and you reply in a tone vibrant with emotion or in a deep tone of sternness, the wrong pitch certainly will make a bad impression on him. by employing an inconsistent pitch when stating facts, you might "queer" your chances for the position you most desire. the tone fault in your salesmanship would lie about your real character. the man addressed would think you were foolish to use such a pitch in merely imparting a bit of _information_ to his mind. he would expect you to employ for _that_ purpose simply a _head_ tone, not a chest tone nor an abdominal tone. the head tone, when used to convey matters of _fact_, aids in convincing the _mind_ of the other man because _it is the pitch that fits bare facts_--the tone of pure mentality. [sidenote: when mental tone should be used] this mental, or head tone, is most effective in gaining _attention_, in conveying _information_, in arousing the _perceptive faculties_ of another mind. _restrict its use to these purposes only._ the mental tone is not pleasing to the ear. it is pitched high. it suggests arguments and disputes. it is the provocative tone of quarrels. so it should be employed most carefully, with every precaution against giving offense by its _insistence_. avoid its use for long at a time. its very monotony is apt to irritate. the high pitch suggests a mental challenge to the mind of the other man, and hence arouses his mental tendency to opposition. the unskillful _over-use_ of head tones may ruin a salesman's best opportunity to gain a coveted object. there are times, however, when it is necessary that you should insist--briefly. if you do so _artistically_, and do not persist in the high, mental, rasping tone; but change to the lower, emotive, chest tone very soon after your insistence on the other man's attention, you will not hurt your chances. it is the _continued_ use of the head tone that is to be avoided. [sidenote: emotive pitch] the _emotive_ (chest or heart) pitch dissipates opposition as naturally as the mind tone provokes a quarrel. even a hot argument can be ended without any lasting ill-feeling if the disputants conclude with hearty expressions of good will for one another. the same words spoken in head tones would increase the antagonism by suggesting sarcasm or insincerity. the resonant chest tone suggests that it comes from the speaker's heart. the _hearer's_ heart makes _his_ mind believe the heart message conveyed by the emotional pitch of the other man's voice. therefore if you want your ideas to penetrate a man's _heart_, don't aim your tone _high_ at his head. _lower_ it to the pitch of true friendliness, of comradeship, of human brotherhood. aim at _his_ breast with _your_ breast tone. do not fawn or plead, however, when selling ideas of yourself. you can persuade best by suggesting that you have brought all your manhood to render the other man a real service. this suggestion will induce a feeling of _respect_ for you, which will certainly be followed by willingness of the prospect to let you show him you are able "to deliver the goods." [sidenote: danger of over-using head tone] some people suggest by the over-use of head tones that they depend altogether on what they _know_ to achieve success. they make the impression that they expect their high degree of _mentality_ to open chances for them to succeed. "they know they know" their business; so when they secure opportunities to demonstrate their capabilities, they emphasize too much what they _know_. they are apt to use the mental tone continually. perhaps the prospective employer needs a man of exactly such knowledge as is possessed by the candidate he is interviewing. but if when presenting his qualifications the applicant rasps the ears of his hearer for a long time with high-pitched head tones, the listener intuitively becomes prejudiced. he is impressed with the suggestion that the speaker is a "know-it-all" fellow. the employer is likely to turn down his application because of the unskilled tone pitch in which it is made. [sidenote: sing-song parrot talk] when a man has talked glibly and fast about superior qualifications he knows he possesses, it dazes him if his exceptional capabilities fail to win him the job for which he is particularly fitted. he cannot comprehend why another applicant who plainly is not so well qualified should be chosen. but his voice has suggested to the employer that everything he said was just "parrot talk." thousands of bright "parrots" remain failures all their lives for no other reason than their utter inability to get inside the _hearts_ of other men. the ordinary canvasser who trudges from house to house with his "sing-song" patter has grown into the bad habit of using head tones almost exclusively. as a natural reflex of the unpleasant impression he makes with his voice, it is a common experience to have a door slammed in his face. [sidenote: getting around mental barrier] the master salesman comprehends that the _mentality_ of a prospect is a barrier to his _emotional_ expression. that is, the mind is an alert sentinel on guard to protect the _heart_ from its own impulses to unthinking action. so the skillful salesman when making his "approach" _goes around_ the mind side of the prospect to the emotional side, where there is no hostile guard. he knows that "the hearts of all men are akin," and that "the hardest heart has soft spots." he realizes it is bad salesmanship to challenge the sentinel mind of the prospect in a mental tone. so the salesman artist makes _his_ tone resonant with chest vibrations that stimulate the direct response of the _other_ man's heart. _he works at first to draw out fellow feeling, not to drive his ideas into the head of the prospect._ [sidenote: talking like a brother] the mere presentation of _thoughts_, or _mental pictures_ of goods, is not enough to induce a prospect to buy. the master salesman comprehends that he has to deal with the _dual personality_ of the individual he plans to sell. therefore from the very beginning of his interview he works to open the mind of the other man by first establishing a unity of human feeling between his own heart and the heart of his prospect. he uses the _emotive_ tone. he "talks like a brother." of course he is careful not to exaggerate this show of fellow feeling. he uses a "hearty" tone without appearing in the least degree hypocritical. when their _hearts_ are in accord, the other man is prepared to agree _mentally_ with the salesman. [sidenote: power pitch] the third pitch of your voice as a salesman is the _power_ tone. it can be used skillfully to suggest that you have the force required to succeed. it is the pitch that comes from deep down and that calls into play the powerful abdominal muscles. it is not necessarily a loud tone, however. often it is low, with a suggestion of immense reserve strength behind it. with the power pitch you can _command_ in a simple request which, spoken in a higher tone, might be refused because it would lack the suggestion of force. in order to succeed, you sometimes must employ power. when a situation requires a demonstration of your strong personality, augment the force of your words and acts by using the tone pitch that suggests the power of the big muscles of your waist. [sidenote: when to use power tone] employ the emotive tone to convey ideas of your truthfulness and honor. show your courtesy and kindness with the heart pitch; use it to manifest your real desire to be of service to your prospect. but suggest your solidity and capacity for good judgment by employing the pitch of power. with its aid you can convince your prospect of the enduring quality of your best characteristics; you can deny disparagement or doubt of your ability; you will be able to brush aside unfounded objections; you can compel respect. [sidenote: tone units] the discriminative use of various _units_ of tone is as helpful in making suggestive impressions as is the employment of character pitches. the one-tone voice does not augment the force of words. "yes" said with but one tonal unit is not nearly so powerful as "y-es" in two tones, the second pitched low. a two-tone "y-es" with the second unit high-pitched suggests the very opposite of plain "yes." it implies "no," or a question instead of an affirmation. sometimes it is advisable to suggest "no" when the word itself if spoken bluntly would give offense. you can convey the idea of skepticism or denial by using two tone units skillfully pitched in saying "y-es." while you ordinarily can double the effectiveness of your tone by using two units, and you may treble the effect if you employ three (as in the exclamation a-ha-a!), if you attempted to use more than three units of tone in any ordinary circumstances you would be likely to appear odd or fantastic, if not foolish. so be careful not to over-do the employment of multiple tone units to stress your meaning. [sidenote: placing tones] there is selling value, too, in the _placing_ of tones in your mouth. a tone placed far forward indicates lack of thought and instability. it is the tone we associate with "lip judgments." on the contrary, hidden thoughts, unwillingness to tell all you know, are suggested by tones placed far back in your mouth. the middle-of-the-mouth tone makes the impression that the voice is properly balanced, and suggests the associated idea of mind balance. avoid the extremes in placing your tones, if you would make certain of the most effective use of your voice in selling ideas. convince and persuade by employing the secure, trustworthy tone of the "happy medium." [sidenote: bad habits] _undoubtedly you have little bad habits that tell lies about you_--habits in the use of words, habits of tone, and especially habits of action. when you fully understand the significance of _what_ you say, and of _how_ you say it, and of the things you _do_--the effects produced on other men--you will _start changing your bad characteristics into good factors_ that will certainly help you to succeed. so study yourself most carefully, in order to learn what your habits are, and their meanings. [sidenote: significance of movements] ordinarily a man is conscious of his words and tones, but he often _does_ things unconsciously. probably you realize only vaguely or not at all just what your various _actions_ suggest to people who observe you. therefore it is of the greatest importance that you study the significance of _discriminated movements, gestures, and facial expressions_ as aids or hindrances to the making of true impressions of your best capabilities. you should _restrict yourself to acts that make the best impressions._ movements, and their results, may be analyzed under three heads: _poise, pose_, and _action_. [sidenote: poise] it is a phenomenon of psychology that the balancing of the body suggests mental balance. conversely, if the body is out of balance, there is the suggestion that the mind is no better poised. that is, if a man cannot keep his balance physically, we have an intuition that he is mentally off his equilibrium. correct poise of course involves correct body support, and suggests a rightly supported mind. _hence you can make the impression, merely by the way you stand and walk, that you are a person of well-poised judgment_. you may hurt your chances very much if it seems necessary for you to prop your body with your legs. the man who stands with his feet wide apart is out of balance, and is easily tipped over. the impression made by the incorrect poise is that such a man must be unable to stand by himself like normal men. the law of the association of ideas then immediately suggests that his thoughts are similarly unable to stand unless propped. incorrect poise of the body has another bad effect in the sale of ideas. it makes the impression of _abnormality_. being unusual, it distracts attention from the salesman and his capabilities, and turns it to his lack of balance. you realize that in order to sell your ideas effectively you need the _concentrated attention_ of your prospect. it will help you to succeed in life if you perfect yourself in the skillful poising of your body and its members so that you will be able to appear perfectly balanced in any normal position. if you teeter from side to side, or rock back and forth on your heels when you are talking to a man whom you want to impress with your stability of character, you will undermine everything you _say_ by what you _do_. of course you should not stand stiffly. your leg posts are designed to serve as a flexible pedestal for your body. your ability to shift your weight from one foot to the other easily without losing your balance suggests associated capability of your mind to keep your judgment in balance. if you have a correctly poised mind, it _can_ balance your body. [sidenote: pose] the _poses_ of your body, too, are suggestive of ideas about your mental make-up. the quiet pose aids in making impressions of the qualities of solidity of purpose, of calmness, of confidence, etc. the active pose is suggestive of enthusiasm, force, hustling, and the like. your pose should be suited to the vocation you have chosen. in a bank, for instance, the quiet pose of assured efficiency perfectly suits the atmosphere of safety and security. in a factory, on the other hand, you are likely to make a better impression with a much more active pose that matches the energy and speed of manufacturing operations. you should not, however, take any pose as a _pretense_. whatever poses you employ to augment the things you say should be used as _means for the better communication of truth, not to falsify_ in any degree. and you will need to be extremely careful lest you over-do a particular pose and suggest affectation. doubtless you have characteristic poses. analyze yourself. _determine what your habits of pose mean to other people_. then make such changes in your characteristic poses as will signify only the best traits you have. [sidenote: action] next we will make a brief study of _actions_ from four viewpoints. first, the _lines_ of action; second, the _directions_ of action; third, the _planes_ of action; fourth, the _tension_ or the _laxity_ of action. [sidenote: lines of action] all movements are in straight, single curved, or multiple curved _lines of action_. each of these classes of movements creates a _particular impression_ when it is perceived--an impression very different from that produced by movements of either of the other classes. it will help you greatly in your ambition to succeed if you understand the _exact significance_ of your every action along the various lines, and if you employ intelligently the right movements to suggest the particular ideas you wish to convey. the straight gesture always indicates an appeal to mentality. use it to aim ideas at the other man's _mind_. the single curve, or wave movement, invariably denotes feeling. employ it to reach into the breast of the other man and influence his _heart_. the gesture of double curves signifies power. it should be employed to _dominate_ both the mind and actions of the prospect--to _make_ him _think_ and _do_ the things you will. [sidenote: directions of actions] the different _directions_ of actions also suggest various ideas. your selling purpose is to get ideas over from your mind to the mind of the other man. it is especially important that the direction of your gestures should conform to your sales intention. every movement you make to aid your purpose should suggest your mental action _toward_ the prospect, or _away from_ yourself. it should signify that you are taking something out of your mind and offering it to his. of course you don't _break into_ his head with your idea and force him to receive it. you just bring it to the front porch of his mind. then, if you have been skillful in your salesmanship, _he_ will open the door of interest after _you_ ring the bell of attention, and will permit your idea to enter his thoughts. but he is unlikely to admit it unless by some indication _from_ you _to_ him he knows what is expected of him. if you gesture toward yourself when expressing your thoughts, you do not suggest to the other man that he take in your ideas. instead you concentrate his attention on your selfishness and your individual opinion. the characteristic gestures of the typical old peddler are displeasing because they are made in the wrong _direction_. he holds his arms close to his body and gesticulates toward himself. he makes the impression that he does not have your interest at heart in the least, but only his own. [sidenote: affirmation and denial] an up-and-down movement suggests something standing. it has the associated significance of vitality or life. conversely, a side-to-side gesture suggests similarity to things lying down, lack of vitality, or the death of ideas. by holding yourself erect you make a very different impression of your energy than would be made were you to lean to one side. you can affirm a statement by an up-and-down movement of your hand or by a nod of your head. you deny suggestively with a horizontal gesture or by shaking your head from side to side. [sidenote: levels of action] the significance of action on different _planes_ or _levels_ is seldom appreciated. the level of eye action is of especial importance in suggesting particular ideas. when you look another person in the eye, you convey to him the idea of direct mental energy. you suggest the straight action of your mind in team-work with his. your eye action on the same level indicates to him that you are thinking on the _practical_ plane. [sidenote: lifting prospect's thoughts] but if your eyes repeatedly focus above the level of the other man's eyes, you make the impression that you are an _idealist_ rather than a practical person. what you say will not seem to him to apply directly to his case. he will not feel the personal, or man-to-man contact of your thoughts. sometimes, however, it is important to lift your eyes when talking to a prospect, in order to suggest that he lift his thoughts from the level of mere selfishness. by your suggestive eye action on the upper plane you may stimulate in him a higher vision of possibilities or an insight into the future, if he seems inclined to take a strictly practical view of his present needs only. when you look below the eye level of the other man, you indicate ( ) modesty, if the movement is directly down; ( ) shame, if the movement is a little to one side and downward; ( ) disgust, if your eyes look far down and far to the side. [sidenote: tensity and laxness] the _tensity_ or _laxness_ of your muscles when you are in the presence of a prospect will suggest to him very diverse ideas. both tensity and laxity of muscles can be used to good effect in selling. your muscles should appear somewhat tense when you are _presenting_ ideas, in order to make the impression that your mind is fully active. conversely, by normal relaxation of your muscles when you are _listening_, you suggest the receptivity of your mind and your entire readiness to take in ideas from outside. when you show your muscles are relaxed, you also indicate that you are perfectly at ease and unafraid of objections or criticism. if you were to sit tense under criticism, you would suggest that you felt the necessity of fighting back. but you disarm disparagement of your capabilities when you appear entirely at ease while you listen. [sidenote: introduction to study of sales art] the brief outline in this chapter of fundamental principles of selling _skill_, and of the methods by which ideas may be conveyed through artistic suggestion, is just an introduction to your study and comprehension of the successive steps of salesmanship practice which are to be analyzed in the remaining chapters of this book. the limitations of our present space have made it impossible to do more than summarize here the chief factors of art in selling ideas. you will need to master the remainder of the book in order to amplify and to apply most effectively in practice the general principles and methods that have been outlined. surely you now are convinced that skill in selling is not a vague mystery, not a natural gift, not something impossible for _you_ to attain. every element of sales art can be analyzed in detail. you are learning _exactly how_ to sell the true ideas of your best capability. practice of what you learn will perfect your salesmanship. [sidenote: success certain] there is absolutely no doubt that you can master the right principles and methods. by continual practice you surely can become skillful in their daily use. when you make yourself adept in the art, you _certainly_ will be able to sell your particular qualifications successfully. chapter iv _preparing to make your success certain_ [sidenote: be ready when your chance comes] thousands of men have failed in life because they were not ready when their best chances for success came. some of these golden opportunities slipped away unrecognized. others, though perceived, could not be grasped. the men to whom they were presented had not prepared to hold and use such chances whenever they might arrive. _if you would make your success a certainty, you must get all ready for it in advance_. then you will not be taken unawares when you find your big chance. if you are thoroughly prepared, you will sight it quickly, realize its full value, and seize it with complete confidence in your ability to make the most of it. before you seek it, be sure of your entire readiness for the opportunity you especially want. you can much better afford to wait a little while for _certain_ success than to rush, unready, into the field of your choice, risking the likelihood of failure that could be guarded against by intelligent preparation to succeed. [sidenote: do not start unprepared] a young man was offered a position of fine opportunity with a great banking house. his ambition was to build his career in that particular organization. but when the duties of the proffered situation were explained to him, he declined to undertake them at once; though he risked the chance that he might not get another such opportunity for employment by the financial institution of his choice. "i am sorry," he said to the cashier, "but i do not know enough about accounting to fill that job now. it will take six months of hard work evenings to train myself to fit your needs. please give me other employment in the bank meanwhile, so i'll be able to study the job at close range while getting ready for it." this was excellent salesmanship. the candidate suggested in his words, tones, and actions that he recognized a real opportunity, that he comprehended all it involved, that he was willing to prepare himself adequately, and that he felt certain of his ability to fill the place after completing the necessary preparation. the bank, however, was in immediate need of his services in the position offered to him. so the cashier, who had been very well impressed by the young man's attitude, told him to take the place, and offered to supply him with an accountant aide for six months. [sidenote: keeping the opportunity open] "i would rather not," the applicant persisted in declining. "i mean to keep on climbing toward the top in this bank, once i get started; and i don't want to begin as a cripple. i couldn't give thorough satisfaction now, even with an assistant on the accounting. it is not good business for me to start by making a poor impression. i'd prefer that you do not think of me as a man for whom excuses need to be made. i wish to commence my work in that job, when i am ready, with your complete confidence that i can handle it--not as a weak sister." he smiled winningly. the failure of so skillful a salesman of ideas was simply _impossible_. there is no getting away from such a high quality of salesmanship. the cashier bought the present and prospective services of the young man who had demonstrated _at the outset_ his comprehension of the _first importance of preparation._ the opportunity was kept open six months for the applicant in training, while he fitted himself for his future job. this successful salesman of true ideas of his best capabilities is now a vice-president of the great financial institution. "but," you say, "suppose the cashier had been unable to wait, would not the young man's over-emphasis of his attitude on preparation have _prevented_ him from succeeding in his ambition?" no! a single turn-down cannot cause the failure of a successful salesman. if that cashier had not appreciated the worth of the candidate, an officer of some other bank certainly would have had a clearer vision of his value. the applicant might have been balked temporarily in his ambition. the best salesman occasionally has to try and try again. but a successful career for that young man was assured in advance. from the very start he was "certain to get there." on the other hand, if he had risked making a disappointing impression in his new job, he might have taken the first step toward failure. suppose he had begun the work for which he was unprepared, and then had made serious mistakes due to his unfitness. his record would have been blemished. his ability might have been questioned. he prevented such possibilities by _making sure his preparation was adequate_ before he accepted his big chance. [sidenote: preparation should be two-fold] your preparation for certain success must be two-fold. you need to prepare yourself in ability first _to perceive_; then _to appreciate the full value_ of what you see. golden opportunities are all about you. if you do not recognize them, or if you perceive but slight value in the signs of rich chances to succeed, you will fail because of your unreadiness. many a farmer in oklahoma cursed his "bad luck" after he sold a farm on which a gusher was later discovered. but the oil had been there all the time. the "luckless" farmer simply did not _perceive_ the indications of wealth under his plodding feet; or, if he saw signs of oil, he did not realize that they _denoted_ the possibility of millions. [sidenote: developing perception] perception can be broadened almost immeasurably. the physical eye, if normal and thoroughly trained, is fitted to be "all seeing." _so can your mind be made capable of widest vision over all the fields of possible opportunity_. some are within your present mental view, others you can see only after going farther or climbing higher in knowledge. the biggest possibilities of success cannot be comprehended in their entirety by narrowed mental sight. the first essential of preparation to succeed is that you _open your eyes fully, and look all around you_ for the opportunities within range of your vision. there are so many _close at hand_ that your search would better begin right where you are. even if eventually you seek far for the best chance to succeed, do so with thorough knowledge of what is near by. before you leave your present environment, have an intelligent conviction that you are capable of a bigger or different success than is to be found within your immediate reach. also see and comprehend the especial _difficulties_ you will find close at hand. it does not always pay to remain in "the old home town." often a young man needs to go to a community of strangers to gain appreciation of his ability. it is likely to be hard for him to win success among people who knew him as a boy and who still regard him as immature. he may find it much easier to succeed in a neighboring town. it is possible to make the greatest success turn aside from beaten paths, leave the accustomed haunts of the successful, and go to a place where no such success ever before has been established. the mayo brothers compelled their success as world renowned surgeons to come to them at the little city of rochester, minnesota. elbert hubbard brought fame to east aurora, new york, by founding there his school of philosophy and the roycrofters. [sidenote: over-specialized preparation] almost as common as the mistake of first looking far afield for success opportunities, is the error of _over-particularizing_ one's original preparation. if you think now that you want to be a lawyer, you should prepare yourself especially by studying law, of course. but you should not exclude preparation for other vocations. judge gary was thoroughly prepared for legal practice. doubtless when he began his studies of law he expected to continue in his chosen profession. but he did not neglect to prepare himself in general business capability. so when his biggest chance came, he was ready to step out of his law practice and into a manufacturing industry. there he fitted himself for the position of chief executive in the immense united states steel corporation. the ability of a _master_ salesman is not limited to getting orders for just one line of goods, or to selling only to certain buyers. he has _all-around_ sales knowledge and skill. though he naturally sells to better advantage in some fields than in others, he can attain a high degree of efficiency in selling anything meritorious, because of his _broad and diversified preparation_. [sidenote: varied and adaptable preparation] your preparation for all the possibilities of success you may be able to reach hereafter should be similarly _varied_ and _adaptable_; though you will be wise to specialize, in addition, by making more detailed preparation for the vocation of your choice. at twenty the average man cannot _know_ for what he is best fitted. he may not be sure even at thirty. the start toward eventual success has often been delayed until middle life. to cite my own case, i prepared myself especially for the career of a certified public accountant, but found my greatest success in the profession of selling. i was able to grasp my biggest opportunity in the sales field because, though i had been devoting my time and energies chiefly to accountancy, i had studied and practiced salesmanship for years in order to market my own services most effectively. _while preparing yourself for success, keep your mental eyes wide open_. perceive any and all chances about you, however much you specialize in your preparation for a selected career. [sidenote: preparation in salesmanship] comprehend that preparation in _salesmanship_ is necessary, whatever vocation you choose. mastery of the selling process is absolutely essential if you would assure your success in _any_ field of ambition. not only must you _perceive_ opportunities to succeed, but you also must know how to _sell yourself into the chances_ you see. no matter how much particularized knowledge you may acquire in preparation for a selected career, your success will not be _assured_ until you are able to sell your capabilities to the best advantage. you can neither perceive all your possible selling opportunities, nor make the most of them when seen, unless you learn the selling process and develop skill in the actual sale of the best that is in you. broad, varied knowledge is required as the foundation for certain success. it cannot be built on a narrow or limited base. evidently, however, exactly the same amount of knowledge possessed by two men would not make them equally successful. as already has been emphasized, success is not assured by the mere possession of knowledge, _but by the effective ways in which elements of knowledge are fitted to opportunities_. [sidenote: abstract and applied knowledge] your abstract knowledge may be valueless. in order to succeed certainly _you must connect the things you have learned with particular people in particular fields of activity_. when you have developed the power of relating your individual ability to every imaginable _use_, your mental eyes will be opened to many opportunities for success that you otherwise might never perceive. such an association of _what you know and can do_ with the various ways your capabilities might be utilized will tremendously augment your self-confidence. when you realize in how many ways it is possible to use your especial talents, you will not be likely to doubt your own _worth_. you will offer your qualifications for sale with complete faith in their value to prospective buyers. [sidenote: insurance against undervaluation] thorough preparation in _comprehension of values_ is the salesman's best protection against a personal inclination, or an outside temptation, to cut prices. if your preparation for your chosen career has been limited to _gaining knowledge_, and you have not studied its true _worth_ to every imaginable prospective buyer, you will be apt often to offer your services for far less than their full value. conversely sometimes you will be likely to think your services are worth more than they really are. you may fail to close sales because your price is too high. a pre-requisite of good salesmanship is the _right_ price. _if your preparation for selling your services has been thorough, you will realize the exact worth of your knowledge and skill_. you will neither suggest inferior value by quoting a cut price on your capabilities, nor demand so much as to indicate the characteristics of displeasing egotism or greed. _if you know what you are truly worth, you will make the right price on your real value._ then your self-confidence in your worth will lend you power to convince the other man that your services would be a good "buy" for him. [sidenote: seeing into opportunities] if you can imagine _all the various uses to which your ability might be put_, you will appreciate the full value of every opportunity you perceive. not only will you see the chances for success that are all about you, but you will _see into_ them. when your mind _catches sight_ of success chances, they will look _familiar_ to you because of their similarity to opportunities you _previously had thought about_ and connected with your own qualifications. if you are prepared to perceive and to appreciate fully each indication of a success opportunity that comes within the range of your mental vision, you will promptly begin working a chance "for all it is worth," as if it were a newly discovered gold mine. [sidenote: service purpose in preparation] possibly what you have read has unduly impressed you with the idea that the salesman's motive in his preparation is selfish. so perhaps it is well to pause here for the reminder that your primary salesmanship purpose should be true _service_. you are preparing yourself thoroughly in knowledge of your full sales value, _as a measure of success insurance and self-protection._ it is not true sales service to give a buyer value greatly in excess of the price quoted. it is right for you to make sure in advance about your full worth. however, the obligation to render service is the principal element of right salesmanship, and should come before the objective of a good price. _prepare then primarily to serve your prospect._ demonstrate your true service purpose, and he will give secondary consideration to the cost of engaging your qualifications for his business. [sidenote: pleasing character] you can serve best if you _please_ in rendering service. therefore prepare your _self_, your _knowledge_, and all your _methods_ so that from the moment you make your first impression on a prospective employer, you will please him. do not prepare for the interview with the purpose of pleasing yourself. what _you_ like may be distasteful to the man you want to impress. since you cannot tell in advance when or where you may encounter a prospective buyer of your services, you will not be safeguarding every possible chance to succeed unless you wear your "company manners" all the time. you always should dress carefully, act with painstaking courtesy, and conduct yourself as if you might meet a rich relation at any moment. you certainly can expect more wealth from "making yourself solid" with opportunity than you ever are likely to be willed by a millionaire uncle. it will pay you much better to please opportunity in general than to ingratiate yourself with any person in particular. [sidenote: please everybody everywhere always] "company manners" that are just "put on" temporarily may be left off on the very occasion when you would want to appear at your best if you only knew that "the golden chance" was to be met. therefore prepare to be _characteristically_ pleasing to _everybody, everywhere, and all the time._ then, no matter where or when or in what guise you come upon opportunity, you will be sure to please with your _genuineness_. innumerable great successes have begun with the making of a pleasing impression on some one whose presence and notice were unknown. you realize that your success is practically impossible if you displease. preparation to please is of first importance in getting ready to succeed. your success in the field of your especial ambition will be assured if you win your first chance there by making an _initial_ pleasing impression and then _keep right on pleasing_. cultivate grace in your movements--for grace is pleasing to everyone. carry your body naturally, especially your head; with such a bearing that total strangers will feel pleasure when they look at you. _be a person who pleases at sight._ it is not difficult. no matter what sort of face you have, if it expresses habitually your pleasure in living, it will look pleasant. a look of pleasure is pleasing to others. you like to see some one else enjoying himself thoroughly. everybody feels the same way. our own faces brighten when we come upon radiant happiness anywhere. [sidenote: details that please] please others with your smile. it should not be just an affected smirk, but a smile of _genuine friendliness for all the world_. please by wearing inconspicuous clothes that are faultless in taste, fit, and cleanliness; and of a quality suited to your vocation. show also that you take good care of what you wear, for that makes a pleasing impression. _you can please in your dress without arraying yourself in expensive clothes._ indeed, an over-dressed man is more displeasing to opportunity than is one poorly dressed. there can be no excuse for foppishness, but a shabby neat appearance may be due to a good reason. please with the suggestion in your manner that you are getting along well. do not pretend false prosperity, of course; but _indicate that you feel successful_. any one finds it unpleasant to be in the company of a failure. _if you would succeed hereafter, avoid making the impression that you have not already succeeded._ "success breeds success." [sidenote: courtesy and politeness] be courteous invariably. learn and observe the rules of politeness. please by acting the gentleman always. practice courtesy and politeness in your own home to perfect yourself in these pleasing characteristics. then you will show them everywhere. remember that the rest of the world is made up of "somebody else's folks." courtesy and politeness are not natural attributes. in order to make yourself a master salesman you need to _develop_ them to an unusually high degree. you may _intend_ to be courteous and polite always, but only the development of the _fixed habit_ will fully support your intention. you cannot be polite, however courteous you mean to be, unless you take pains to prepare yourself with knowledge of the usages of polite people. in order to be polite, it is necessary that you do not only the courteous thing, but the _correct thing_. your courtesy might displease if it were unsuited to the circumstances. it would not be polite, for example, to invite an orthodox jew to dinner and then to serve him with a pork tenderloin. your intention to be a courteous host would not lessen your offense against good manners. your guest would be incensed by your impoliteness, not pleased by your courteous intention. [sidenote: virility pleases] no quality you have is more generally pleasing than virility--_your man stuff_. therefore on all occasions show yourself "every inch a man." moreover, act like a _he_-man. never appear "sissyfied" in even the slightest degree. swing your legs from the hips when you walk; don't mince along. the stride of a he-man is strong and free. if yours lacks the qualities of virility, change your habit of walking. when you make gestures, move your whole arm. a wrist movement suggests effeminacy. it is important, too, that you _train your voice to ring with manliness_. even a squeaky, weak tone can be made to suggest man stuff if the words are spoken crisply, and the sentences are cleanly cut. do things with the _ease_ that indicates a man's strength, not with evident effort. perhaps you have not realized that by cultivating grace in your movements you can make impressions of your man power. _grace means the least possible expenditure of energy in efficient action._ a man can accomplish things with ease and grace that a child or a woman would make hard work of and do awkwardly. [sidenote: pleasing tones] a pleasing tone helps to assure one's success. you may think your voice is a heavy handicap. perhaps it is high pitched and squeaky; or, on the other hand, a "growly" bass suggestive of ill-nature. again it may be faltering or hoarse. such faults are not serious to a master salesman. _if your vocal equipment is physically normal, your voice can be made pleasing._ in order to make your tones agreeable, learn to vibrate them naturally through your _nose_. a mouth tone is displeasing. the so-called "nasal twang" that sounds so unpleasant is a mouth tone _prevented_ from free vibration through the nose. humming, as you know, both _indicates_ pleasure and is a pleasant _sound_. it is produced with the mouth closed, by a vibration of the bone structure of the face and of the nasal cavities. certainly, even if you have a disagreeable voice, you can make your tones _hum_, and thereby render them more pleasing. adenoids that could be removed--even failure to keep the nose clean--may prevent a man from succeeding. _whatever hinders the free vibration of tones makes displeasing impressions of the speaker_. when a man has a bad cold in his head that blocks the nasal passages, his voice rasps the ears of a hearer. [sidenote: avoid giving displeasure] not only please by _doing_ things that give _pleasure_; also _avoid_ doing _displeasing_ things. for example, when you say or suggest anything to another person you want to influence, remember to be a _salesman_ of your ideas. do not make the impression that you are _teaching_. no adult human being really enjoys being _taught_. any grown person likes to be treated as an equal, and to have new thoughts conveyed to him without that suggestion of superior intelligence which is characteristic of many teachers when dealing with pupils. perhaps you have heard burton holmes lecture. his enunciation is a delight in its perfection, but he talks "according to the dictionary" so naturally that his correctness does not sound a bit affected. you feel at home with him. his diction is attractive to you. another speaker practicing the same exactness of pronunciation, but less artistic in selling his ideas with words, might displease you by his scholarly accents. [sidenote: tact] sometimes it is tactful to speak incorrectly, as a courtesy to the other man. if in the course of your interview with a prospective employer he should mispronounce a word, you would be undiplomatic to emphasize the correct pronunciation in speaking that word yourself. it is not dishonest, but truly polite to reply "my ad'dress is"--instead of pronouncing the word correctly. do not suggest by over-emphasis of right speech that you wish to pose as one who is _conscious_ of his superiority, however well you may realize that you are on a higher plane of intellectuality. we all like a genuinely great man who does not hold himself aloof. [sidenote: prepare for all kinds of men] prepare to meet not only strong men, but weak men; cautious men; very proud men; greedy men. be ready for reckless men, humble men, men who live to serve others. be aware in advance of the differences in their _buying motives_. they will not all have the same reasons for giving or for refusing you a chance. _hence be prepared to adapt your salesmanship to the characteristics of the various kinds of men you are likely to meet_. though you never should pander to an unworthy motive, study different types of character and _learn how to fit your ability to the peculiar or distinctive traits of possible buyers_ of such services as you have for sale. perhaps an easy-going employer will appreciate your "pep" as much as would a hustler, but he won't like it if you seem to prod _him_ with your energy. on the other hand, the employer who is a hustler himself might be keenly pleased should you keep him on the jump to stay even with you. [sidenote: success insurance] be thorough in _preparing_ to sell your capabilities; so that your success may be _insured_. you ride on a first-class railroad with confidence, feeling that every precaution for your safety has been taken. you are at ease when you begin your trip; for you know that track, train, and men in charge all are dependable. because of the complete readiness of the railroad for your journey, you count on arriving safely at your destination. you have no fears that you may be wrecked en route. similarly you should make the most thorough preparation before starting out as a salesman of the best that is in you. you have to grade your own roadbed, and must yourself lay the rails over which your ideas in trains of thought will be carried to the minds of other men. you are fireman, engineer, brakeman, and conductor of this twentieth century limited. _your destiny as a salesman of yourself is in the hands of no one else_. before you travel any farther, take all practicable measures to assure your safe arrival, without delay, at the station of success. [sidenote: start confidently] when you are thoroughly prepared to sell true ideas of your best capabilities, you should start with confidence that you will reach the end of the line safely and on time. don't attempt to "get there" before making adequate preparation for success. remember that a railroad does not commence operating through trains until the track is finished. if you are prepared now for the actual start in salesmanship--if you are packed up and ready to leave for your field of opportunity--all aboard! chapter v _your prospects_ [sidenote: meaning of "prospects"] if you were to be asked, "what are your prospects for success?" you probably would answer by stating the things you _expect_ or _hope may happen_. we commonly say that a certain man isn't rich, but he has "prospects;" because he has a wealthy aunt who is very fond of him, or he is employed by a business that is growing fast, or he owns property which seems sure to increase in value, or some other good fortune is likely to befall him. the literal meaning of "prospect" is "looking forward." so most of us have come to think of our prospects as just possible occurrences in the future, to the happening of which we may look ahead with considerable hopefulness. "prospects," in salesmanship has a very different meaning. the master salesman does not regard himself as merely a "prospect_ee_," but as a prospect_or_. he thinks of "prospecting" as the gold miner uses the word to describe his activities when he searches for valuable mineral deposits. "prospects" do not just "happen" in the selling process of achieving success. they do not result from circumstances merely, but _must be accumulated by the activity of the salesman_. [sidenote: making good luck] "your prospects," as the subject of this chapter, does not mean your fondest _hopes_, or confident _expectations_. we are studying the _ways to assure_ your success. if your prospects depended on mere happenings, they would be highly uncertain; because what you hope and expect may occur, may never take place in fact. the master salesman does not depend on such prospects. _he makes his own luck_ to a very large extent by skillful prospecting; as the trained prospector for gold tremendously increases his chances of discovering a rich lode by thoroughly and intelligently investigating a mining region. we are to consider now the prospects you are capable of _controlling_, the opportunities you can bring within reach by your own exploration of possible fields of success. we will study _particular things you can do, and exactly how to do them_, to increase the number and quality of your chances to succeed. a trained prospector for gold has more chances to strike it rich than a greenhorn because he knows the indications of valuable minerals, and is skilled in the use of that knowledge. so your opportunities for success will certainly be increased if you know how to search for, to discern, and to make the right use of your prospects. [sidenote: prospecting not gambling] do not think, because we have compared prospecting in mining and in selling, that the success of the salesman prospector, _your_ success, must be largely a "gamble" anyway, as is the case with the explorer for gold. however experienced and skillful in prospecting the miner may be, he is very uncertain of discovering a bonanza. he cannot be absolutely sure there _is_ gold in the region he explores, in paying quantities and practicable for mining. though he has every reason to feel confident of the richness of a particular field, he may nevertheless be so unfortunate as not to discover the gold lode or profitable placer deposit. he is helpless to control the _existence_ of the indications of success. they are predetermined by nature. by no effort of his own is he able to increase or decrease the fixed quantity and quality of the golden chances about him. he can only increase his _likelihood of discovering_ gold. even the most intelligent, skillful prospecting will not make a miner's success certain. you, the salesman prospector for opportunities to succeed, are not so limited. there are particular things you can do, and particular ways of doing them, that will _assure your finding chances_ to make sales of the best that is in you. if you learn the scientific principles of prospecting for opportunities, if you make yourself highly skillful in looking for and digging into the success chances that surround you always, there will be nothing uncertain about your prospects to succeed. you will know _surely_ that you _have_ prospects, just _what_ and _where_ they are, and their _full worth_ to you. of course, prospecting is only _part_ of the selling process; so your knowledge and skill as a prospector will not suffice to guarantee your _complete_ success. however, at this preliminary stage you can be certain that your search for rich chances to succeed will not be a barren quest. the present chapter will help you to make sure of gaining for yourself such opportunities as lead to complete success in the field of your choice. we will observe and understand how the skillful salesman prospects for the purpose of increasing his sales efficiency. we will study the principles and methods of prospecting he uses successfully; for his practices, applied to your job of selling yourself, will certainly improve your chances to succeed. we will see also how your very best prospects can be _created_ by masterly salesmanship. [sidenote: hard work necessary] at the outset comprehend that no other step in the selling process involves so much _hard work_ as you will need to do in order to find all your possible chances of success and to make the most of them. it is necessary that you look _intelligently_, most _earnestly_, and _constantly_. you must expect to spend a great deal of time and energy in your quest for prospects. so it is essential to your success as a prospector that the investigation of your field of opportunity be carefully _planned_ in order to make the most effective use of the time you spend prospecting. it is vitally important, too, that you develop sufficient physical stamina to do a tremendous amount of hard work. the gold miner has little chance to discover the bonanza he seeks if he searches only a few days or weeks, or if he lacks the strength and endurance required for making a thorough exploration of the mineral region. similarly it may take a master salesman months of unremitting toil to prospect a sale that he then is able to close in an hour or two. [sidenote: the food of salesmanship] _prospecting supplies the food of salesmanship._ the salesman thrives if his prospecting is sufficient and good. he grows thin and weak to the point of failure if it is bad, or inadequate in quantity. every salesman should realize that prospecting furnishes the nourishment for salesmanship, but some so-called salesmen do practically nothing to ensure themselves an abundant food supply. they merely absorb the tips that come their way. like sponges they sop up the limited quantity of selling chances they happen to get. that is not the way to feed one's ambition with opportunities. comprehend that you must _seek actively_ for your best prospects. you should not stop searching until you find what you are looking for. myriads of men have failed because they did not make _an earnest, hard effort to discover chances_ to succeed, or because they _did not persist in the exploration_ of their fields of opportunity. you know that other men no more capable than you are succeeding all about you. certainly, then, _your_ chance _exists_. seek it in your own thoughts and in the circumstances of your every-day living. put a great deal of time and toil into your search. you cannot afford to loaf on this preliminary job. [sidenote: prospect continually act quickly] _every moment you are awake should be used in prospecting_; unless it is required for some other part of the process of assuring your success. there is no keener pleasure than the eager, continual search of a miner for gold and of a master salesman for possible big buyers. it is necessary that you feel their thrilling zest for discovery; that you develop their unflagging energy; that you be fired by their ardor for the quest. in order to be a highly successful prospector you will need especially a quality they have in common--"pep." how eagerly the miner prospector drinks in every bit of news he hears about a new strike! how alertly the master salesman listens to casual gossip that holds a clue which may lead to a sale! but the miner and the salesman prospectors would not benefit in any degree by what they learn through their perception of prospects if they did not then _act_ intelligently upon the clues secured. not only should you keep your eyes and ears open for indications of opportunities to succeed, but you should be ready in advance _to take instant advantage_ of any you may discover. what a fool a miner would be if, after finding rich prospects of gold, he were to lose his chance to someone else because he did not know how to file a mining claim! could there be a greater failure in salesmanship than learning about a big contract to be let, and being unprepared to bid on it? before doing any _outside_ prospecting, be sure you know what you have _in you_. make certain of your ability to take full advantage of your chances to succeed when you come upon them. [sidenote: little doors to big success] prospects that seem at first glance to be hardly worth following may lead to other prospects. merely because your ambitions are _big_, do not neglect a chance to make a _little_ success. investigate completely every minor prospect you find. until you look into it thoroughly, you cannot be sure of all that a clue holds. the indication of an opportunity that seems of slight importance may possibly lead straight to the bonanza lode. an elevator boy in an office building made up his mind to rise permanently in the world; to get out of the vocation in which he was just going up and down all the time without arriving anywhere in particular. he prospected the tenants of the building, learned all he could about them, and determined who were the biggest men. he studied the directory, asked questions, and finally selected the one big business man to whom he was resolved to sell his capabilities. [sidenote: persistent effort after prospecting] this man was known to be unapproachable. so, instead of attempting to interview him, the elevator boy prospected to discover his characteristics. he found out exactly what qualities were most likely to please his intended employer. then he cultivated the tone, manner, and habits of action that he felt certain would impress the difficult prospect most favorably. it took the resolute elevator boy nearly a year of continual, skillful work to make the big business man notice him and distinguish him from the other elevator boys. six months more were required to develop the big man's attention into thorough interest. but at the end of a year and a half of faithful prospecting, the ambitious youth gained his selected, self-created opportunity to succeed. there was no stopping him after he got his start. in less than a decade he had sold his qualifications so successfully to a group of powerful financiers that he, too, had become a multi-millionaire. this illustration of persistent effort to gain a desired chance should help to keep you from becoming discouraged about your prospects for success. bear in mind the old, familiar motto, "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again." stick to your prospecting when you know you are on the right lead. it has been estimated that the busy bee inserts its proboscis into flowers , , times to obtain a single pound of honey. but the bee is the only insect, remember, that _lives on honey_. [sidenote: no poor territory for success] the poor salesman is apt to complain that his territory is poor. _the good salesman makes any territory good._ so in prospecting your field of immediate opportunities, make the best, not the worst, of your present circumstances. the star base-ball player does not refuse to play on the small-town team because it isn't good enough for him. the great ty cobb first made them "sit up and take notice" in a bush league. undoubtedly he felt then that he was fit for better company, but he put in his best licks and played big-city ball on the small-town team. that was excellent prospecting for the chance he wanted with the best clubs. from the very beginning of his career, ty cobb has used masterly salesmanship to get across to the world true ideas of his best capabilities in his chosen field. _to-day there is no poor territory for success._ telegraph and telephone and wireless methods of communication, electric light and power, railroads and inter-urban car service, farm tractors, passenger automobiles, motor trucks, and the airplane have so revolutionized the inter-relations of men that all the former great distances of different locations and view-points have been shortened almost to nothingness. the whole world lives now in a single community of interest. the great war has taught us that each individual is close to everyone else. in your prospecting for success you are not limited by any narrow boundary of opportunities. wherever you are, newspapers and magazines bring to your door chances for big success. if you search for prospects in everything you read you should be able to reach out all over the earth with your capability. an ambitious man i never had heard of before wrote to me at one time from south africa to secure a selected territory for the sale of automobiles in a western city of the united states. from a distance of nearly half the circumference of the earth he got his chance to succeed. [sidenote: the fields of opportunity are broad] a clerk in a los angeles real estate office received a letter from an acquaintance in chicago who had spent his summer vacation in michigan. the chicago man wrote that the farmers of the traverse bay region were made rich by a bumper crop of potatoes just harvested. the californian saw a chance for success in this bit of information. he worked out his idea and talked it over with his employers. he sold them on it. they sent him east loaded with facts about "the glorious west" and brim-full of los angeles peptimism. aided by cold weather in michigan that winter, the western real estate man eventually sold california irrigated ranches to a score of michigan farmers who suddenly had made sufficient money to retire from potato raising, and who were old enough to be strongly attracted by the idea of owning and cultivating land in a more genial climate. thus a sentence in a letter led straight to the success of the clerk who perceived his prospects and knew how to make the most of them. [sidenote: know local conditions] while distances have been bridged by modern swift means of communication and transportation, every locality has opportunities for success that are peculiar to it alone. conversely every locality is handicapped in certain ways. therefore in your prospecting for success _study the conditions in your especial field_. as a salesman of yourself, you should know your "territory," its advantages and disadvantages in particular respects. men are doing business in your town. there is no better way to gain a prospect to succeed with a house in your home community than to demonstrate to the head of the concern that you comprehend just what he is "up against" on the one hand, and on the other what "edge" he has on businesses in the same line located elsewhere. you could make no worse mistake, you could injure your own prospects no more, than by showing ignorance of local conditions, or inappreciation of the circumstances in which your prospect's business is being conducted. [sidenote: turn to account what you learn] not only should you know as many facts as possible regarding opportunities in your chosen field; it is even more important that, by the use of your _imagination_ you relate these facts to _practical ways of turning them to account_ for your benefit. in order to derive the maximum of benefit from your prospecting, you must make the _best use_ of every item of knowledge you gain. sometimes the mere _possession_ of particular knowledge will increase your chances to succeed. but almost invariably you can multiply the value of what you learn if you _prospect in your own mind for ideas_ about putting the facts to the most profitable use. do not forget that the primary object of true salesmanship is service to the other fellow. therefore _prospect your own thoughts with the purpose of making what you know especially valuable to some one else_, your intended employer for instance. in every step of the selling process you should think first of how you can serve your prospect with something that he lacks and needs. [sidenote: prospect needs] surprisingly few young men who go into business prospect their fields of opportunity to learn what is most wanted there. the great majority take up special professions or enter selected industries just because _they_ wish to do chosen things. the master salesman, however, _adapts himself to the circumstances and requirements of his customers_, even at the sacrifice of his personal inclinations. he could not succeed if he sold only what he wanted to sell, or if he confined his salesmanship efforts to a limited number of buyers because he liked them and disliked others. in order to assure your success, _you must learn to like to do what is most needed to be done, and learn to like to serve whoever lacks what you can supply_. therefore prospect your fields of opportunity to learn what capabilities are principally needed. if you would make your success as easy as possible, look about you first to determine the demand for such services as you are able to render. [sidenote: sometimes go the round-about way] perhaps your prospecting will indicate that it is advisable for you to go a round-about way to your goal of ambition; because the direct route is beset with great difficulties. a young doctor wished to specialize in bacteriology. he realized that it would take the savings of a great many years of general medical practice to equip a complete laboratory of his own. accordingly he discontinued the practice of his profession; though he went on with his studies. he engaged in business for five years. thus in a comparatively short time he earned the money he needed to enable him to devote the rest of his life to bacteriological research. [sidenote: racial characteristics] different territories or fields of opportunity have _various characters_, like different people. it is important to study especially the racial types you are likely to encounter. many a man has attained success by accumulating discriminative knowledge regarding the national peculiarities of the latin peoples, slavs, teutons, anglo-saxons, magyars, etc. the italian has strong likes and dislikes in colors and patterns of goods. to be a good salesman in dealing with him, you should know his preferences and prejudices. if you learn what colors and patterns are most favored in the "little italy" of your city, you may be able to employ this bit of knowledge to help you very much in influencing your fellow-residents of italian descent. you are aware of the effect produced on the majority of irishmen by the color green. but take care to learn whether the irishmen whose political help you would like to win are from the south or the north of the emerald isle. they may be orangemen, and you might "queer" your prospects by going among them wearing a green necktie. _learn your facts with discrimination; then use them restrictively in the circumstances where they will be most effective in promoting your success._ [sidenote: temporary conditions] prospect to learn not only permanent conditions in your field of opportunity, but also any _temporary_ conditions that might affect your chances to succeed. mental and emotional "waves" sweep over the country and over local communities at times. billy sunday's revivals in various great cities brought success opportunities to particular businesses, but had injurious effects on others. you should take such factors into account when studying your prospects. the manufacturers of that successful innovation, the "service flag," took advantage of the sudden demand for such an emblem. when war came, they saw into the future and perceived a new lack. but the need for service flags was temporary. before the war ended they were displayed everywhere. to-day none are seen. now there has come into existence the american legion, which seems certain to be a great political and social power in the united states for generations, as was the g.a.r. after the civil war. any man who hopes for political success in the course of the next thirty or forty years must prospect the thoughts and feelings of the veterans of - . [sidenote: analyze individuals] you will have _specific_ as well as general prospects. hence it is essential that you supplement your study of conditions with the _analysis of individuals_. study men with the greatest care, especially the one man or group of men upon whom you want to impress ideas of your capabilities. learn all you can regarding the personal characteristics of the individual to whom you hope to sell your services or "goods." your knowledge of his traits and peculiarities, your familiarity with his life purposes and hobbies, may assure you a chance to succeed with him that otherwise you could not get. a friend of mine is the president of a big ice company, but he is not so much interested in cooling people's food as in warming their hearts with his genuine brotherhood for all men. there isn't much prospect for anybody to sell him "a cold business proposition," even though he is a dealer in ice. [sidenote: hobbies] do not, however, make a "hobby of hobbies." only the _big_ hobbies of your man are worth especial study. never harp on any of his little idiosyncracies. he may be sensitive about being eccentric. it is bad salesmanship to _pretend_ an interest in another person's whims. you cannot use his hobbies to help your prospects _unless you share his feelings_ to a considerable degree. my friend who believes and practices the doctrine that all men are brothers would be sure to detect quickly a false humanitarian bent on a selfish purpose to exploit his hobby. as already has been emphasized, the object of the good salesman when prospecting is to discover the lacks of men who might benefit from the things he has to sell. if you are looking for your prospects with that _service_ purpose, you have taken a long preparatory step in the process of selling your qualifications. find the employer who _needs_ your best ability, and your success will be assured the moment you get into his mind the true idea that you are the man he has been looking for. [sidenote: prospect lacks] undoubtedly you know men to whom success has come because they made other men realize they fitted into particular needs. a young acquaintance of mine foresaw that a manufacturer would want an assistant within a year or two; though the executive himself was unaware that he was developing such a need. my acquaintance got a minor job under him in order to make a good impression in advance. long before the head of the business realized that he was breaking in a confidential assistant, the young man had qualified for the position he had perceived in prospect. your chosen employer may not know of the lack that you have prospected in his business. he may not have the least idea that he wants you. prospecting his needs is part of _your_ job as a salesman of yourself. an expert accountant sold himself into a fine position as the auditor of a great corporation by anticipating that the company would need to have its system of book-keeping revolutionized in order to prepare for the federal income tax. he prospected what was coming to that business; then sold the president comprehension that he lacked an expert accountant he was going to need badly before long. one of my own experiences as an accountant illustrates the value of specific prospecting. when i was studying accountancy, i bought every authoritative publication on the subject. for one set of forty books i had to send to london. each volume related to the peculiar accounts, terms, etc. of one business. there was a book on brewery accounting, another on commission house accounting, and so on through the list of forty businesses. to each volume i afterward owed at least one client. for instance, i got a commission to make a cost survey for a tobacco company, largely because i was able to convince the president that i knew a good deal about the tobacco business. i talked intelligently to him regarding the processes of his industry. [sidenote: reasons behind habits] when you prospect an individual's personal qualities, traits, or hobbies, do not stop after learning the facts. study out the _reasons behind_ habits and opinions. it may help you only a little to know that your intended employer is a republican or a democrat; that he is conservative or radical in his social opinions. but your chances of success in dealing with him will be greatly increased if you know exactly _why_ he belongs to one or the other political party, and the _reason_ he is a "stand-patter" or a "progressive." use knowledge of why's and wherefore's with the skill of a salesman bent on securing an order from a prospective buyer. but be sure you get the _fundamental facts_, for often "appearances are deceiving." [sidenote: your personal responsibility] when you look for prospects in your selected field of service-opportunities recognize your _personal responsibility_ for the successful development of the chances you find. before you begin prospecting, realize that _what you make of your opportunities is solely up to you_. assume all the responsibility for your own success; then you will have no excuse to blame any one else if you fail. should things not go as you wish, say "it's my own fault," and feel that way. _the true salesman never apologizes to himself._ so if you have not found your prospects, or if you have not made the best use of the chances you have discovered, kick at the man who is responsible. don't get sore on the world at large. [sidenote: follow-ups] perhaps what has been said thus far has over-emphasized the process of prospecting for the _first_ chance to succeed. maybe it suggests to you that if one can get an opening, the hardest part of the effort to assure success will have been accomplished. but a successful career in salesmanship is not built on single orders closed. the master salesman keeps on selling the same buyer and develops him into a steady customer. he continues all the while to prospect the needs of that buyer, just as thoroughly as if he were planning his first approach. _your initial success should be completed by after-service._ in order to continue progressing toward your goal, you must "deliver the goods" right along. you cannot keep your success growing unless you prospect unremittingly for more and better opportunities to render service. give satisfaction in larger amount and improved quality from month to month, and year after year. if you would continue to succeed, look ahead always for more prospects and _seek in each of them new chances to broaden your usefulness_. [sidenote: the art of prospecting] if you prospect _skillfully_ (with art), your chances to find what you seek will be remarkably increased. so look for your prospects _cheerily_. be _frank_ and _expressive_ in your quest. show your _sympathetic_ side, and thus appeal to the _kinder_ tendencies of other people. the best way to avoid the world's coldness is by _warming_ everybody you meet with your own cordiality. be _courteous_. especially cultivate the art of talking _with_ people instead of _at_ them. use _tact_ and _judgment_ in dealing with your prospects. thousands of men are shut away from the open minds and hearts of others by doors of concealment and reserve. you need to open such doors. you can do it only by frankness on your own part, which will induce people to feel like telling you their secrets. frank expression of your opinion, provided it has a sound foundation, will often draw out the hidden opinions of others and reveal to you prospects that you might never discover unaided. do not, however, be dogmatic or arbitrary in saying what you think. speak your beliefs casually. then you will not discourage those honest differences of opinion that enlighten one's own ideas. rid your face of sharpness if you would be a good prospector for your best chances to succeed. avoid "the cutting edge" in your voice and manner when you make inquiries about opportunities you seek. you are likely to be most effective in prospecting if you _cultivate an easy attitude of friendliness_. the master salesman does not set his jaw when prospecting. he uses curved, instead of straight line gestures to supplement his words. he suggests a "ball-bearing" disposition, not "corners." [sidenote: sympathetic attitude] be a good mixer when looking for your prospects. learn the art of _companionship_. the first essential is fellow feeling. therefore do not go about with a chip on your shoulder, but with your face a-smile and your palms open to offer and to receive hand-clasps. sympathize with the ambitions of other men, with their hopes and dreams. remember that each part of every work of man, however substantial and enduring it now may be, was once no more than a figment of the imagination of some one's mind. so do not be altogether "practical" when prospecting. it is a mistake to neglect to prospect visions. [sidenote: have a leader] when the master salesman prospects, he uses very effectively a "leader" idea. you know how aggressive stores advertise leaders that draw trade in other things. your prospecting of your various capabilities should enable you to decide which of your qualifications will make the most effective leader in the case of a certain employer. do not expect him to perceive _all_ your merits immediately. concentrate his attention and interest on _one or two elements_ of your fitness to fill his especial needs. prospect to make sure which of your possible leaders would be most likely to influence him in your favor. then _use these selected elements of your character very prominently_ to open the door of your initial chance. countless successes have been founded on well chosen leaders. a little bake shop in chicago competes successfully to-day with a great chain-store company that has an immense establishment directly across the street. the shop sells as its leaders home-made english tarts that no chain-store could supply. these draw buyers for groceries and other goods the chain-store sells much cheaper, but which the purchasers of tarts order with their pastry rather than cross the street and divide their marketing. [sidenote: summary] now let us summarize "your prospects." they are not far away nor far ahead in time. they are in your own hands right now. you _cannot fail_ in life if you recognize and use most effectively all the opportunities available to you at present. you suffer from no lack of chances to succeed. you only need to open your physical eyes and the eyes of your mind to _see_ fine prospects every day. then if you _imaginatively relate your abilities to what you perceive, and plan how you can fit yourself into a chosen place of real service_, you will have begun the selling process successfully. at the outset of your career it is possible for you to reduce difficult obstacles to temporary set-backs that you can get around or overcome. [sidenote: success a matter of fractions] there is only a narrow margin of difference between success and failure. _success is a matter of fractions and decimals, not of big units_. a few thousand american soldiers and marines turned the tide of german victory at chateau thierry. "it is the last straw that breaks the camel's back." if you _begin_ the selling process by the finest prospecting, and _keep on_ with equal effectiveness throughout all the following steps of salesmanship, you will gain so many more chances than you otherwise could get that _your success in the end will be assured_. the master salesman works with _certainty_ that he will secure his quota of orders. he knows in advance that he will succeed; _because he knows sure ways to sell_. good prospecting is just a natural process, intelligently comprehended. it is neither mysterious nor hard. it is one of the preliminary, understandable ways to make success not only _sure_, but _easy_ to attain. chapter vi _gaining your chance_ [sidenote: getting inside the door] we will assume that you have qualified yourself to succeed; that you have developed your best capabilities in knowledge, in manhood, and in sales skill; that you have completed the general preparation necessary to assure your success in marketing your particular qualifications; and that you also have learned how to find and to make the most of your prospects. after these preliminaries you are ready to take the next step in the selling process, and to begin putting your capabilities, and what you have learned from preparation and prospecting, to _specific use in actual selling_. in order to succeed, you must not only be _qualified_ for some _particular_ service work, but you also need _chances to demonstrate_ your capabilities and preparedness for effective service. if you stand all your life in complete readiness for success but outside the door of opportunity, you will be a failure despite your exceptional qualifications and preparations for handling chances to succeed. _it is necessary that you get inside the door._ we will study now the _sure_ ways and means of entrance. [sidenote: the salesman's advantage over the buyer] one great advantage the skillful salesman has over even the best buyer is that he can _plan_ completely _what_ he will do and _how_ he will do it to accomplish his selling purpose. the prospect is unable to anticipate who will call upon him next; so it is impossible for him to avoid being taken _unawares_ by each salesman. he can make only general and hasty preparations at the moment to deal with the particular individual who comes intent on securing his order. the good salesman, however, works out in advance the most effective ways and means to present his proposition. each move in the process of selling his ideas to a prospect is carefully studied and practiced beforehand. the effects of different words and tones and acts are exactly weighed. when the thoroughly prepared salesman calls on a possible buyer, he has in mind a flexible program of procedure with which he is perfectly familiar and which he can adapt skillfully to various conditions that his imagination has enabled him to anticipate. hence the master salesman usually is able to _control the situation_, no matter how shrewd the prospect may be; because the salesman's chance to plan assures him a great advantage over the unprepared or incompletely prepared other party to the sale. [sidenote: dominate the interview with confidence] if you would likewise "dominate" the man to whom you want to sell your capabilities, prepare "plans of approach" to his interest before calling on him; in order to make sure of presenting your qualifications most strongly. he can oppose your salesmanship with but comparatively weak resistance; because _he has had no such opportunity as you to get all ready for this interview_. the skillful salesman is confident that he can control the selling process he begins. when you seek a selected chance for the success you desire, you should feel similar assurance of ability to sell your services. you will possess this feeling if you prepare your "plan of approach" as the master salesman gets ready for his interview with a prospective buyer. [sidenote: the two entrances] you have to make two distinct "entrances" in order to gain your desired chance to succeed. you need to get _yourself_ into the _presence_ of the employer you have selected. then it is essential that you get the _true idea_ of your capabilities and preparedness into his _mind_. your "approach" to his attention and interest, therefore, involves a _double_ process. it is important that you plan intelligently the most skillful ways and means of making the _two_ entrances; through the _physical_ and the _mental_ closed doors that now shut you out from the opportunities you have prospected and desire to gain. no master salesman would call on an important prospect before planning in his own mind how to take the successive steps of the interview expected. nor would a master salesman neglect to think out in advance several specific methods of getting past any physical barriers he might encounter between the outer door of the general office and the inner sanctum of the man he must meet face to face in order to close a sale. [sidenote: ordinary way of getting job] but when the _unskilled_ salesman of his own capabilities seeks a situation, he usually neglects to make careful, detailed plans to reach his prospect in the most effective way. he does not prepare to create the particular impressions that would be most apt to assure him the attention and interest of the employer upon whom he calls. nearly always when a man out of a job answers an advertisement or follows up a clue to a possible opening for his services, he thinks the most important thing is to "get there first." the only advantage he hopes to gain over other applicants is a position at the head of the line. have you ever stopped to analyze the mental attitude of an employer toward the half dozen, dozen, or score of men who answer his advertisement for the services of one man? he thinks, "here are a lot of fellows out of jobs. probably most of them are no good, or they wouldn't be out of jobs. they are competing for this place. each sees there are plenty of others who will be glad to have it. therefore it is likely that i can get a man without paying him much to start with, and he probably won't be very independent for a while after i hire him. i'll take my pick of the lot, and keep the names and addresses of two or three others in case he doesn't make good." [sidenote: shearing the sheep] then the employer calls in the applicants as if they were so many sheep to be sheared by sharp cross-examination. practically every candidate enters the private office with a considerable degree of sheepishness in his feelings, whether he tries to appear at ease or not. the employer first eyes him in keen appraisal. he then proceeds briskly to clip off facts about him. the man sitting behind the desk absolutely dominates the situation. he finishes his questioning, and disposes of the applicant as he pleases. what chance to gain the desired opportunity for service does each candidate have in such an uncontrolled process of getting a job? he has one-sixth, or one-twelfth, or one-twentieth of a chance for success; according to whether there are six or a dozen or a score of applicants. also, practically without exception, men who come seeking a position and find that it has been filled make no further efforts to secure the opportunity for which they have applied; though the successful candidate may not make good and the position may soon be vacant again. your own experience and observation have made familiar to you this common way of looking for jobs. you know that in such cases the employer has all the advantage. certainly the applicants who try to gain a chance to work by this method use no _salesmanship_ at all. [sidenote: the salesman's method] how would a "salesman" candidate for such a situation proceed? first, he would avoid the mistake of presenting himself as _merely one of a crowd_ of competing applicants. he would _make his particular personality stand out_. before calling, he would do some prospecting to discover just what capabilities were needed to fill the position advertised. then he would plan different ways of tackling the prospective employer. when all ready, but not before, he would go to the address. if he should find a crowd there, he would not merge with it. he would avoid stating his business immediately in the outer office, rather than identify himself with the other candidates waiting. he would have a plan to get an interview later, after the dispersal of the crowd. if he should be told then that the position had been filled, he would go right ahead with his selling program regardless of the rebuff. he would proceed to sell the boss the idea that _he_ was an especially well fitted man for the job. he would assume that no one else could give such satisfaction. nevertheless the employer might feel that he had no place open for the latest candidate. in this event the applicant would demonstrate with salesmanship that he was the sort of person it is worth while for any business man to keep track of. such a real "salesman" of his own capabilities, if put off for the time being, would be reasonably sure to get his desired chance the next time that employer might require such services as he could supply. [sidenote: a salesman cost clerk] a young acquaintance of mine wanted to secure a chance in the office of a prominent manufacturing corporation, under a certain executive whom he regarded as the most capable business man in the city. the company had advertised for a minor clerk in the cost department, which was managed by the particular executive. my acquaintance called, and found seven other applicants waiting in the general office. he did not join them, but sent in his card to the busy head of the cost department with the penciled request, "may i see you for twenty seconds in order to make a personal inquiry?" he was promptly admitted to the private office, and then stated his purpose in calling. he was careful to be extremely brief. "my name is james a. ward. i believe, mr. blank, i am the man you want for the clerkship in your cost section. in order to save your time, may i have permission to make some inquiries of the chief clerk in that department, to learn just what qualifications are required and what the work is? then when you talk with me, it will be unnecessary for you to explain details." [sidenote: securing a stand-in] taken unawares, the executive was not prepared to refuse the courteous request. moreover, he was impressed with the distinctive attitude of the young man. he instructed that the candidate be taken to the cost department. there my acquaintance made an excellent impression on the cost accountant and several clerks. thus in advance of any other applicant he secured a "stand-in" with a number of persons who might influence the judgment of their chief in selecting a new man. when he had learned the nature of the work to be done, ward did not make the mistake of thrusting himself again into the sanctum. instead, he wrote a note to the executive on whom he had called first. "dear mr. blank: i know now exactly what the job in the cost department is, and that i can fill it. but i should like to think over the best ways to give you complete satisfaction, before talking with you about it. please telephone to me at main when it will be convenient for you to see me. respectfully, james a. ward." the young man sent his note into the private office and left at once. there now were nine applicants on the anxious seat in the reception room. ward did not wish to be asked to wait his turn. he felt sure the executive would inquire of the costs manager about him, and he got away from the office quickly so that there would be an opportunity for his chosen prospective employer to receive the full effect of the good impression made in the cost department. [sidenote: giving opportunity a chance to catch up] my acquaintance was not at all worried lest some other candidate be chosen in his absence. the measures of salesmanship he had taken made it practically certain that the executive would not employ any one else before talking to him. ward went to his room and waited for the telephone call he was sure would come. while he sat expecting it, he used the time to think out the best ways to approach the big man with whom he wanted to work. the salesman candidate was summoned in about an hour. none of the applicants ahead of him had come prepared with any definite plans. therefore my acquaintance, who knew in advance just what the conditions were and who had decided exactly how he would present his particular capabilities, found it easy to secure the chance he desired. he is earning a salary of four thousand dollars a year now, and is on his way up to a five-or-six-figure job. he will get there, "as sure as shooting." a salesman like that cannot be kept down. [sidenote: turning failure into success] i asked ward one day what he would have done if the telephone call he expected had not come. he replied that he would have gone to see the executive next morning anyhow, and that he had planned carefully how he would approach him. "i'd have sent in a note that i was ready to report some ideas i had worked out regarding his cost-keeping as a result of the thinking i had done since learning his system. he wouldn't have refused to see me, even if he had hired some one else meanwhile. then i'd have told him the very things that got me the job. they would have assured me a chance in his office, whether he had a place for me right then or not," ward asserted positively. "if that plan of mine hadn't succeeded," he amended, "i'd have known he wasn't the kind of man i wanted to work for, after all. but it turned out exactly as i knew it would," my friend ended with a grin. can you imagine a man of such sales ability failing to get a chance almost anywhere? yet ward did only what any one, with a little forethought, might have done in the circumstances. analyze the selling process he used, and you will perceive that there was nothing marvelous about it--it was all perfectly natural. is there any good reason why _you_ cannot employ similar methods to gain the chance you want? [sidenote: service purpose is essence of salesmanship] let us dig into what ward did, and find the "essence" of his salesmanship in the ways and means he employed to assure his two "entrances," to the presence and into the mind of the executive. _he was successful principally because he made the impression that he had come with a purpose of rendering real service to the other man._ his plan of approach assured him the opportunity he wanted because it was designed to serve the head of the department in his need for particular capabilities. _very rarely will any one refuse a needed service._ so, coming with a purpose of service, ward made certain in advance that he would be welcomed to his opportunity. the essence of a successful plan of approach to the mind of any prospect is _a carefully thought-out idea of how to supply him with exactly what he lacks_. just as the service purpose well planned is the key to the door of a man's _mind_; so is it the "open sesame" to his _presence_. plan how to bring to the attention of a prospect your real service motive in coming to him, and how at the same time you can indicate to him your capabilities; then you will be as sure as was my ingenious acquaintance that no office door will long remain closed to you. _you only need to use the processes of the master salesman to gain any chance you want._ you will succeed almost always in your immediate object; and if you are unsuccessful in your first or second sales attempt you will be absolutely certain to get some other good opportunity very soon. [sidenote: make a "vacancy" for yourself] it is not necessary to wait until the employer for whom you have chosen to work advertises a job. you should plan ways and means of gaining an entrance into his business organization, regardless of any "vacancy" he may have in mind. plan exactly how you can serve him. prospect for a need that he may not realize himself. afterward work out a particular method of showing him clearly _what he lacks_, and that _you are the man_ to fill the vacancy you yourself have discovered and revealed to him. an elderly man who was down on his luck and who, on account of his grey hair, had been unable to get various kinds of work he had sought, devised a novel plan of approach that gained him a coveted chance in a big department store. he came to the main office and reached the sales manager without difficulty by appearing to be just a customer of the store. then he whisked from under his coat a pasteboard sign on which he had printed, porter wanted--to keep sidewalk clean. "i'm after that job, sir," he explained his presence. the sales manager waved the old man away. "you're in the wrong place," he said curtly. "employment office is on the top floor." "i made the sign myself," the applicant declared, standing his ground. "the employment manager--you--no one in this store has realized, i think, how filthy your sidewalk is. if you will come down with me and look at it, i'm sure you will want to have it cleaned and will instruct that i be given the chance. it is hurting your sales, as it is now. kept clean, as i would keep it, it would be a fine advertisement of the store's policies, and would help sales." the old man's plan of entrance gained him his initial opportunity. he swept the sidewalk only two weeks. then the sales manager made a place for him behind a counter, where he is serving customers with satisfaction to-day. [sidenote: distinguishing characteristic of masterly salesmanship] you will recall that in a previous chapter the _ability to discriminate_ was stated as the _distinguishing characteristic_ of masterly salesmanship. the ability to perceive differences, and skill in emphasizing them, will _assure_ success in selling either ideas or goods. the discriminative-restrictive study of anything is certain to give one a much clearer and more definite understanding of it than could be secured by a study of its likeness to something else. if, when describing two people, you _compare_ their points of _resemblance_, you do not paint a clear picture of either. but if you _restrict_ your comments to the _differences_ in their features, you will portray a pretty definite mental image of each. [sidenote: "different" ways win] you have been given several examples of ways and means to gain an entrance into the presence and into the mind of an employer. you will note that each applicant _restricted_ his plans of approach to methods that were entirely _different_ from those ordinarily used in getting a job. the purpose of the salesman in every case was to bring out the difference between him and competing candidates for the situation. the selling processes described were successful because _discriminative-restrictive principles of skill were employed to bring to the attention and interest of the prospect the service capabilities of the one applicant, in distinction from all others_. when you plan to gain the chance you most want, you can assure yourself of success if you will work out in your own mind how to do _something effective that is different_ from the methods commonly used in attempts to gain opportunities, and that will impress your _real service purpose_ in applying for your chance. first think out clearly _what the other man needs_. distinguish exactly in your thoughts between what is _lacking_ in his organization, and what he _already has_. then when planning to gain an entrance to the presence and the mind of your prospect, restrict your thoughts to ways and means of indicating and suggesting that _you know precisely what service is wanted_. prepare to show him that you don't have merely a vague, indefinite idea of a job _like_ other jobs. plan to indicate that you are not just about the _same_ as ordinary men who apply for positions. be ready to make the first impression that you are _a particular man with individual ideas and distinctive capability_. if you can prove that, you will be certain to gain your chance through good salesmanship of the true idea of your qualifications. [sidenote: plan approach to fit the particular man] when planning his approach, the master salesman combines his earlier work of preparation and his prospecting. he re-organizes in his mind all the information he previously has gained for his own benefit. now he reviews his knowledge _from the standpoint of the prospect_. he plans to use what he has learned in the ways that seem to him most likely to fit the mentality, impulses, feelings, conditions, and real needs of the man he wants to influence to accept his proposition. having thus planned to _fit his knowledge to an individual prospect_, the skillful salesman arranges constructively in his own mind _particular, definite points of contact_ with the mind of this one other man. he plans restrictively. that is, he works out only the approach ideas that are likely to fit the characteristics of the certain man on whom he intends to call. he also discards ways and means that are not _especially adapted_ to this prospect. [sidenote: different effects on different people] of course the master salesman purposes to make the best possible impression always; but he recognizes that words, tones, and actions which would create a favorable impression on one prospect might make an opposite impression on another. for instance, a jolly manner and expression help in gaining an entrance to the friendly consideration of a good-natured man, but would be likely to affect a cynical dyspeptic disagreeably. the intelligence and skill used by the master professional salesman of goods in planning ways and means to gain his sales chances, can be used in the same way just as effectively by _you_ when planning _your_ approach to the presence and mind of any one related to your opportunities for success. before you apply for the job you want, or before you present your qualifications for promotion or an increased salary, _make in advance a discriminative selection of ideas that will be likely to prove most effective in accomplishing your purpose_ with your employer prospect. then, when you interview him, _restrict_ your presentation of your case to these discriminatively selected strong points of your particular capability. [sidenote: contrast selfish and service purposes] you should suggest contrasts between yourself and ordinary job seekers or employees. when you present your qualifications for a promotion or for a raise, you will be _sure_ of succeeding if you are able to get across to your employer's mind the true idea that your services in the future may be _different and deserving of more reward_ than the services for which you have previously been paid. when an employee asks for more money because other men are being paid higher wages in the same office, or because he has prospects of better pay elsewhere, or even because of increased costs of living, he makes an _unfavorable_ impression on the man from whom he requests a raise. his purpose in presenting his claims is evidently selfish. he appears to be looking out only for number one, and the employer naturally looks out for _his_ number one when responding. by using methods that suggest a wholly selfish purpose, the applicant decreases his chances of gaining what he desires. yet most employees ask for raises in just this way. [sidenote: the quid pro quo] contrast the impression made when an employee approaches the boss with a carefully planned demonstration of his _capability for increased service_, as the basis of a proposal that he be promoted or given a higher salary. he comes into "the old man's" office with an attitude that produces a _favorable_ impression. when he explains exactly what he is doing, or can do if permitted, that is deserving of more reward than he has been receiving, he presents the idea of a "quid pro quo" to his "prospect," just as the salesman of goods presents the idea of _value_ in fair exchange for _price_. if the service now being rendered by the employee, or the new service he wishes permission to render, is really worth more money to the employer, the applicant for a raise is practically certain to get it, provided he has chosen a fair boss. and, of course, a good salesman of himself does not go to work in the first place until he has prospected the squareness and fair-mindedness of the employer. [sidenote: the saleswoman secretary] a young woman was employed in a secretarial capacity shortly before the world war began. in the course of the next two years her salary was voluntarily doubled by her employer. but her necessary expenses increased in proportion; so she was able to save no more money (in purchasing power) than it would have been possible for her to put in the bank if there had been no increase either in her earnings or in the cost of living. that is, if the war had not happened, and she had continued at work for two years without any raise at all, she would have been practically as well off at the end of that time as she actually found herself with her doubled pay. as the months of her employment passed, she had made herself progressively much more valuable to her employer. she was rendering him now a very large amount of high-grade service. but in effect she was being paid no more money than when she was engaged. the young woman knew her employer intended to be fair with her. undoubtedly he felt he had treated her well by voluntarily doubling her salary in two years. if she had gone to him and had asked for more pay in the manner of the ordinary applicant for a raise; if she had stated her request without skillfully showing the difference between actual conditions and his misconception of the facts; she likely would have made an unfavorable impression. but she was a good saleswoman of her ideas. she made a discriminative-restrictive plan of approach to gain her object, and used first-class selling skill to get into her employer's mind a true conception of her worth to him. [sidenote: opening the boss's eyes] she compiled from her budget the exact amount of increased living costs. the comparative figures of two years showed that her necessary expenses were approximately double what they had been before the war. then she used the percentage ratio to demonstrate in neat typewriting that approximately all of her salary increases had gone to some one else, and had not remained in her hands. on another sheet she typed a summary of the most important business responsibilities she carried for her employer at present, but which she had not been qualified nor trusted to bear when she was first engaged. the secretary brought the two exhibits to the desk of the business man, laid them before him with brief explanations of what they represented, and concluded with a simple personal statement which she worded most carefully. [sidenote: the approach that commands respect] "mr. blank, i know you mean to be perfectly square with me. so i want you to realize what has been the actual purchasing power of the salary i have received, and what i have done with it. this percentage slip shows that my additional pay was all used for additional expenses. i have been unable to increase my savings. i really have been paid only for the same kind of services i was able to render when you employed me. now i know how to do all these additional things." she pointed to the list typed on the second sheet of paper. "in effect, i haven't been paid anything for them, you see. i am sure you have not appreciated the difference between the increased service i have rendered, and the buying power of the raises you have meant to give me but which have all gone to some one else. please study these lists. i believe you will feel that i am earning a larger salary and really am worth more to you than two years ago." her "different" approach gained the secretary not only an immediate increase of fifty per cent in her salary; but five hundred dollars back pay that her fair-minded employer was convinced she should have received. such an approach commands the respect of the prospect. it is the approach of an equal, not of an inferior. _so greatly does it reduce the chances of failure that the salesman is practically certain to succeed in his purpose._ [sidenote: initiative is yours] recognize that the _initiative_ in gaining your chance should be in your own hands. do not wait for any opportunity to come to you. "go to it." go prepared to control the situation you have planned to create, but be ready also to meet _unexpected possibilities_. the object of the master salesman in his preparation is not only to make the selling process _easy_, but also to meet any _difficulties_ he can foresee that may arise to block him. he is ready to take full advantage of favorable conditions he has planned to meet, and is equally ready for turn-downs. if you use the discriminative-restrictive method to gain admission to the presence and into the mind of your prospect, it is altogether unlikely that you will be denied the chance you seek. nevertheless _go loaded for refusals_. be ready with the quick come-back to every turn-down you can imagine. a clerk in a real estate office wanted an opportunity to prove that he was capable of selling. times were very hard, and the firm had flatly announced that it would not promote anybody or grant any raises. but this clerk, who had made up his mind to secure a salesman's job, carefully prepared a plan of approach before he went to the president's office. his ostensible purpose was to get a raise; so he had worked out an ingenious reply to every objection he could imagine his employer might make to paying him more money. but he really wanted a different job, not just a larger salary. [sidenote: come-backs to turn downs] he tackled the "old man" at a selected time when he knew the president would not be busy. one after another, in quick succession, he came back at every reason given for turning him down on his application for additional pay. finally the cornered employer stated frankly that the clerk was entitled to a raise, but as frankly said it could not be granted because of general business conditions. the applicant, having gained his immediate object by proving his worth, then switched to the second part of his plan of approach. "i didn't expect more money for my clerical work, but haven't i proved to you by the way i handle turn-downs that i possess the qualifications of a salesman? it would be just as hard for a prospect to say 'no' to me as it has been for you. i don't want a raise. i want a chance at selling real estate. give me a drawing account equal to my present salary, and i'll earn it in commissions. i'm going to make it hard for anybody to get away from me after i tackle him to buy a lot or a house." of course the clerk got his chance. [sidenote: touch tender spots] another important detail of good salesmanship in planning to approach opportunities to succeed, is _touching the tender spots of the subordinates_ in the office of the big man you want to reach. also plan to touch tender spots in _him_. you can do it with a courteous bow, or with the tone of respect. employ the _personal appeal_--that is, make _contact_ between _your personality_ and the personality of the _other party_ you desire to influence. there is no better way than by manifesting your _real friendliness_. one who comes as a friend is able to feel and to appear _at ease_. the bearing of perfect ease makes the excellent impression of _true equality in manhood_, and helps very greatly in gaining for one a chance to succeed. [sidenote: strength and resourcefulness] sometimes self-respect will require you to use very forceful methods to secure the opportunity you desire. a snippy clerk may refuse you admittance to the private office. the big man himself may send out word that he will not receive you, or perhaps he will attempt to dismiss you brusquely after you are granted an audience. so be prepared to manifest your _strength_, as well as your _resourcefulness_, should such _force_ of personality be needed in any imaginable situation. if you have planned exactly how you will show your strength, you will make the impression when you manifest it actually that you are strong in fact, and not just a bluffer. often you can prove your strength by looking another person fearlessly in the eye. [sidenote: four essentials of good approach] it is evident from what has already been outlined that to make a successful approach one needs particular qualifications. there are four essentials: first, _mental alertness in perceiving_; second, _good memory for retaining the impressions received_; third, _constructive imagination_ in planning the approach; fourth, _friendly courage_ in securing an audience and in making the actual approach to the mind of the other man. all your senses must be _wide awake_ if you are to _perceive every point of difference_ that can be used effectively to sell your particular ideas in contrast with ordinary ideas. it is necessary not only that you _see_ distinctions clearly, but that you be able to _remember them instantly_, when you need to use them in selling your ideas. you cannot make any certainly successful plan to deal with a future possible chance unless you _cultivate your power of imagination by working out in advance every conceivable situation that may be anticipated_. and all your other capabilities in gaining your chance will be of no avail if your purpose meets resistance; unless you are equipped beforehand with friendly courage, the _kind of real bravery that is likable_. [sidenote: genius] it is highly important to your success that you be able to make the impression that you are a person of _genius_. genius, analyzed, is no more than the exceptional application of natural ability to doing work. application demands complete attention. attention leads to discrimination. discrimination concentrates, of course, upon the recognition of differences. and differentiation depends principally upon sense training in alertness. unless a sense is very keen, it cannot make distinctions sharply. _so we get back to the primary necessity of developing all your senses and of keeping them wide awake to perceive and act upon chances for success_. [sidenote: memory] your discriminative power of perception will be well-nigh valueless to you, however, if you are unable to recall whenever needed, all the points of difference possible to utilize in your salesmanship. therefore you should _train your memory_. we will not enlarge just now upon this factor of the process of making success certain; because in previous chapters and also in the companion book, "the selling process," the right methods of developing a good memory are indicated. [sidenote: constructive imagination] the value of _constructive imagination_, not only in planning your entrance to the physical presence and into the mind of the prospect, but all through your salesmanship, cannot be over emphasized. if you are to gain your chance with another man, _you must be able to see imaginary future situations, through his eyes_. in advance of your interview it is necessary that you imagine yourself in his place when a caller like yourself is received. some so-called "realists" condemn imagination. they say it is apt to make men visionary and unable to recognize and meet successfully the every-day problems of life. but the _big_ men of finance, industry, and politics have become pre-eminent because of the fertility and productiveness of their imaginations. what the "hard-headed" man condemns is not imagination, but _inability to use it constructively_. he deprecates imagination not carried into _action_. constructive imagination, however, has always been man's greatest aid in making progress. [sidenote: four ways to re-construct ideas] in order to develop your constructive imagination most effectively you must follow certain laws with regard to the re-adjustment of parts, qualities, or attributes of things you know. you can re-construct an idea; ( ) by merely _enlarging_ an old mental image; or ( ) by _diminishing_ the size of the previous image; or ( ) by _separating_ a composite image into its parts; or ( ) by imaging _each part as a whole_. let us illustrate how these laws of constructive imagination might be applied effectively in planning the approach to a prospective employer. [sidenote: using constructive imagination] he perhaps has an idea that the possibilities of the job you want are limited. you should plan to _enlarge_ the picture of your possible service and to show that you could do more things than he is likely to expect of you. so you can _diminish_ his idea of the salary you want, by planning to show him that in proportion to the enlarged service you purpose to render, the pay you ask is not really big. in order to make him appreciate better just what your contemplated job means, you can _separate_ it into the different functions you will perform. the mere fact that the job has a great many parts will be effective in impressing him with the idea that it is worth more pay. then you can take each part or function of your job and show it as a _whole_ opportunity. for instance, if you are a correspondent, you might demonstrate just how letters of different length could be spaced on the stationery to develop a uniformly artistic impression that would help to get more business by mail. all your imaginative powers can be made to work _together_ to accomplish the one certain result you desire. "constructive imagination is always characterized by a definite purpose, which never is lost sight of until the image is complete." [sidenote: friendly courage] thousands of men have failed, after getting right up to the door of opportunity, because they had to turn away in order to screw up their _courage_. no one can hope to succeed if he lacks _the quality of bravery necessary to gain chances_. true bravery is not cockiness or swaggering. it is simply a _kindly self-confidence_ that makes no impression of a threat to others, and gives no suggestion that the man who has it feels there is the slightest reason for being afraid of anybody else. [sidenote: no one to fear] really, if you have planned just how to approach each prospect with a true service purpose, there is no one in the world you need to fear. lack of courage is usually due to lack of preparation for what might be anticipated. sometimes a man is fearful of another because of his own consciousness that he has come to that other man principally for the purpose of _taking something away from him_. this consciousness causes a guilty feeling, which undermines courage. if through imaginative planning you know in advance about what to expect, and if you feel your intentions toward your prospect are absolutely square, you will not be afraid to seek your chance anywhere. your courage will not ooze. [sidenote: "right is might"] true courage is based on a _permanent consciousness of right feeling and thinking, coupled with the sense of power_ that is expressed in the maxim, "right is might." such courage can be developed by the discriminative-restrictive process with absolute certainty, as is explained in the companion book, "the selling process." [sidenote: big mental outlook] our study of plans of approach would be incomplete without emphasizing the prime necessity for a _big mental outlook_. to assure your success in gaining the chances you want it is necessary that you vision imaginary situations of the future and fit into them the facts you know now or may be able to learn. however, you cannot develop maximum skill in gaining your chances if you are unable to learn anything except through personal experience. personal experience is valuable, no doubt. but you must develop the ability to _think out the significance of other men's experiences_, and must be capable of _applying what you learn to your own imaginary use_. the big view-point, the ability to learn from observation as well as from experience, will develop in you broad and varied conceptions of other men. it will make you tolerant of characteristics that differ widely from your own. you will respect the view-point of the other fellow, and will recognize that he may be perfectly fair in his attitude and opinions, however widely he may differ from your ideas. your big mental outlook should make you feel friendly toward him as your prospect, and you can make the approach of _courage that is friendly_. [sidenote: the sentry and the password] perhaps you will meet opposition to your entrance when you come to gain your chance. it is likely that some sentry in the outer office of your prospect, or the sentry of his own mind when you reach his presence, may halt you at the portal of opportunity with the challenge, "who goes there?" your answer should be spoken confidently, "a friend." the test will then be made by the sentry, "advance, friend, and give the countersign." _the secret pass-word to opportunity is, "service."_ prove you know the countersign, speak it with courage, and you will find yourself no longer an object of suspicion, no longer regarded as a possible enemy. _you have nothing to fear if you plan to approach your prospect as a true friend who has come with a carefully thought out, intelligent offer of service that he lacks._ chapter vii _knowledge of other men_ [sidenote: unlocking the other man's heart and mind] we have seen how you can make certain of _gaining_ your introductory chance. now we are to consider the first step in the _most effective use_ of this opportunity to begin building your own success. let us say that you have chosen a particular man as the sort of employer with whom you want to work. your prospecting has convinced you that in his business you have found the right market for your present services and a promising field for the future big success you are ambitious to achieve. therefore you wish to sell him a true idea of your best capabilities. we will assume that you have passed the threshold of his private office, but your object in calling upon him has not yet entered _his thoughts and feelings_. before you state the ideas and service intention you have brought, make certain of the best possible reception from him. you need to take every practicable precaution against being rebuffed. you want to assure yourself of a welcome. having gained this chance to start the sale of your capabilities, it is of vital importance not to take the next step in the selling process _blindly_, lest you stumble. hence you should _size up_ the other man before you announce your purpose in calling. what you may learn from reading his character correctly will help you to gain admittance into his mind for your ideas. it should assure a welcome from his heart for your sincere desire to serve him. [sidenote: skeleton key unavailing] golden opportunities to succeed in a particular business cannot be unlocked with a skeleton key of knowledge about human nature. knowledge of _all_ men supplies merely the shaft and general shape of the key blank, which must then be notched and filed to fit the characteristics of the individual whose mind and heart you wish to open for the admission of your ideas and feelings. unless you can get into that _one_ mind and that _one_ heart with your service purpose, you will be shut out from the opportunity you want. it is important that you know the traits of men in general, of course. such knowledge, however, should be supplemented by a _specific_ and true conception of the particular man through whom you hope to reach your chance to succeed. do not confuse in your present thoughts the process of _prospecting_ the characteristics of a man _before_ meeting him, with the later process of _sizing him up at the time of the interview_. it is highly important to accumulate in advance as much knowledge as possible of your prospect's individual traits. but what you learned about your chosen future employer before you gained the chance to present your ideas to him in his office should be used _merely as a guide_ in sizing him up on the spot. [sidenote: stop, look, listen] take nothing for granted now. through your personal, specific observation either confirm or disprove every item of information that has come to you from other people previous to meeting this man face to face. your informants may or may not have had correct conceptions of his characteristics. it would be unwise, even unsafe, for you to rely implicitly on _their_ judgment of him. you need to _be certain you know him as he really is_; so that you can present your purpose with the confidence a skilled salesman feels when he is sure he understands the principal traits of the prospect he is addressing. in reaching this man you have gained your first chance. you cannot afford to risk losing it by haste. _do not advance farther in the selling process until you have made certain of the ground you are to tread._ it is very bad salesmanship to begin introducing ideas and feelings to a mind and heart that are unknown to you except from hearsay. "but," you say, "i'm not a mind reader. and i can't look into another man's heart." true. yet you should be able to read the _signs_ of his thoughts; which he manifests in his words, tones, and acts. and you need not see into _his_ heart to know what it contains; since fundamentally _all_ men are much alike at heart. just look clearly into your own heart at its best. you will find there the basic emotions and feelings that civilized men have in common everywhere. [sidenote: character analysis by types not reliable] character analysis by "types" is unreliable. i believe as little in phrenology as in palm-reading. i have directed thousands of men in business. personal experience has proved to me that the _permanent_ structure of a particular human body is not an invariably true index to the characteristics of the inner, or ego man who owns that body. he has had no control over the color of his hair or eyes. he cannot reshape the bones of his face, nor alter the bumps on his head. to believe that such permanent structural details of the "natural" _outer_ man determine or denote the peculiar aptitudes of the _inner_ man is to credit the exploded doctrine of fore-ordination. therefore, when you have gained the chance to present your capabilities for sale to a chosen prospect with whom you believe you will have the best opportunities to succeed, and when you are swiftly shaping your presentation plans to fit his personality, don't size up merely the factors of his make-up with which he was born. you will be apt to mistake his true character if you have come to his office with the delusion that the blonde type of man is fundamentally different _in nature_ from the brunette type. get out of your head any misconception that a man is foredoomed to practically certain failure in a particular career because he has a big nose, sloping brow, and receding chin; and that another man with a snub nose, bulging forehead, and protruding jaw is destined almost surely to succeed if he selects a certain vocation. no "mind man" with a normal, healthy body is limited in his possibilities of success by being born with red, or black, or tow hair; or because the bones of his head happen to be shaped in a particular way. the ego is the master, not the slave, of the body. [sidenote: true signs of character] _the true signs of character are to be read only in the words, tones, and movements_ of a man--and in his muscle structure _as he has developed it_ or has left it _undeveloped_. we already have seen in a previous chapter how a mind center and its co-ordinated set of muscles develop each other. so the positive characteristics of the inner man are revealed clearly by the muscle structure built up by his habits of thinking and feeling and action. on the other hand, his deficiency in certain mental and emotional development is indicated negatively by his lack of the muscle structure that naturally would be co-ordinate with such development. the relation of muscular development to mental development, as explained in an earlier chapter, suggests the one _sure_ way to judge a man's habits of thinking. _observe discriminatingly his various muscle structures, and his muscle activities in detail._ the development of certain sets of _muscles_ proves a co-ordinate development of the _mind centers_ most directly connected with these muscle structures. similarly the _mental action_ of a man is indicated by his _physical manifestations_ with his muscles in movements. hence if you learn to read the _mental significance of particular muscle structures and of particular muscle actions_, you will be able to size up both the _habits_ of thought (individual characteristics) of a man, and what he happens to be thinking _at the time_ you come to present your services or ideas for sale. [sidenote: recapitulation] before going on with our study of the subject of this chapter, let us summarize the preceding pages to make sure that we know thoroughly the somewhat difficult but very important ground we have gone over thus far. you chose a certain man as your prospective employer because you believe that if you succeed in associating yourself with him you will have the best opportunities to achieve your ambition. you are now standing in his presence. you need to size up his true character quickly in order that you may be sure of presenting your capabilities in the particular way that is likely to be most effective with him. you wish to impress this one man with right ideas of your qualities and their value. you want him to perceive that he lacks and requires just such services as you purpose to offer for sale. you realize it is unsafe for you to jump at conclusions about his characteristics. you pause briefly to size him up before presenting your proposition, rather than to proceed blindly in ignorance of his habits of thought, and with no clue to what he happens to be thinking at the time you call. you must know all it is possible to find out on the spot regarding him. [sidenote: what has he done with his birthright?] you cannot be certain of his characteristics if you judge him solely by what nature forced on him. but you can be absolutely sure if you size him up by observing _what he has done with his birthright_, and if you are then able to _interpret_ correctly what you _perceive_. your prospect has had nothing to do with the shape and size of his head. his fair or dark complexion is inherited. he is utterly unable to control the color of his hair or eyes. his _muscle structure_, however, is a _development_ that he has accomplished himself. if he has a firm jaw, the jaw _muscles_, not the jaw _bone_, signify the characteristics of a firm mentality. _judge the physical man he has made by his habits of living under the government of his mind._ disregard such physical details of his appearance as he cannot help. the _made_ man is the true image of the ego. it is this _ego_ of your prospective employer you need to know, for your chance to succeed in your purpose with him depends on the _inner_ man you must convince and persuade. therefore restrict your size-up to the discriminative observation of the _muscle signs of his mind habits and mind actions_. [sidenote: recall burbank method] recall now, or re-read the second chapter of this book. there you studied the principles of restrictive-discriminative growth--the burbank method of developing selected qualities of manhood. that chapter related to your cultivation of particular characteristics within _yourself_. the same principles will guide you with equal certainty in acquiring knowledge of _other men_. every _mental_ characteristic of your prospect about which you need to know has _physical indications that can be perceived, and translated into certain knowledge of details of his character_. you have studied the co-relation of _your_ mind and body in mutual development. you may be sure that similar processes of development have produced like effects in the case of the man you have come to see. you know exactly how to grow particular qualities within yourself, by using your muscles to develop corresponding mind centers and vice versa. you can read another man's mind by observing _his_ muscle structure and muscle action, and by then interpreting the mental significance of what you perceive. [sidenote: men are alike at heart, but differ in mind] to repeat and emphasize again what already has been said about knowing the _heart_ of another man--you need but look into your own breast to find there the finest basic characteristics of the human heart in general. as kipling wrote, "the colonel's lady and judy o'grady are sisters under their skins." all men are fundamentally alike at the bottoms of their hearts, however much they may differ in the individual traits they have grafted upon their common root of human nature. so when you are sizing up your prospect, you should comprehend that _the most effective way to get to his heart is through such an appeal as would reach the heart of every man_. know your own heart surely, then, in order to be certain of knowing his. all human hearts respond similarly to manifestations of courage, nobility, love, faith, honor, and the like. we laugh and cry at the same humor and pathos. our _feelings_ are closely akin. we differ from one another only in our _minds_. our individual, acquired habits of thought affect but the _degrees_ of our several heart responses to the gamut of fundamental emotional appeals. [sidenote: exhaustive prolonged analysis unnecessary] knowledge of another man, then, involves first, comprehension that he is _like_ every other man in his _emotions_, and _unlike_ all other men in the way he _thinks_. to a trained observer his habits of thought are clearly indicated by his muscle structure and muscle action. exhaustive prolonged analysis is unnecessary. you can learn to read quickly the mental significance of the comparatively small number of details of muscle structure and action that constitute a fairly complete index to his character. then you will be able to judge with certainty practically all the traits of which you need to be sure in order to make the most effective presentation of your services for sale to this particular man. [sidenote: value of size-up] the value of such a dependable size-up can scarcely be over-estimated. it is not easy to gain the _initial_ chance to present your capabilities to the one man with whom you have chosen to be associated. but it would be tremendously harder to win a _second_ opportunity to sell your services after _failing_ the first time. by sizing him up aright while you are presenting your qualifications for his consideration, you will be able to _avoid making unfavorable impressions_. you can also adapt your salesmanship to _creating the best possible impression_ of your capabilities and their fitness to his *especial needs*. [sidenote: the gruff reception] sometimes a man seeking to gain the big chance that he believes would open the door to success fails to secure his opportunity because he is disconcerted by a gruff reception that he misconstrues as personal to him. he wrongly interprets _natural_ self-defense as a sign of habitual crabbedness. a big man often thinks he is "hunted" by people who want to make him the prey of their own purposes. the employer you have chosen as the means of reaching the goal of your ambition may feel suspicious of your object in approaching him. he is likely to assume an attitude of extreme reserve, or even of icy indifference. possibly his manner will be curt and sharp. size up such a reception as just his way of protecting himself against impositions. his treatment of you is merely a superficial manifestation of the instinct for self-preservation. it indicates nothing more than that he is wary of any one who calls on him with an unknown purpose. his object in being cold or brusque is to get rid of people who might annoy him or waste his time. he would not assume his repelling pose if he knew _you_ had come with a purpose of _true service_, after full preparation of yourself and your selling plans to interest him. though he does not realize it yet, you will neither pester him nor fritter away his precious minutes. [sidenote: melting ice and smoothing roughness] therefore if your size-up convinces you that the cold, brusque manner is only _assumed_, you need not deal with it as if it were _characteristic_. it indicates no more than the habit of wariness. you should proceed confidently with your selling process, undeterred by the bearing of your prospect. do not attempt to mollify his assumed harshness. it will take but a few moments for you to _sell him the idea that you have brought him something he really needs_. when he first glimpses your service purpose, his icy pose will begin to melt and his rough tones will be smoothed. a great public-utility corporation with thousands of branch offices throughout the united states had as its purchasing agent for many years an old gorgon. he was "a holy terror" to new salesmen, but became a staunch customer when once his confidence was deservedly gained. and every employee in the office of this tartar loved him for his true kindness of heart. [sidenote: don't flinch or retreat] you may have occasion to call on such an eccentric big man. if you are rebuffed fiercely, don't let it "get your goat." he can have no possible reason for disliking you personally, especially before he comprehends your purpose in coming to him. so disregard his ferocious pose. though he may treat you as an unwelcome intruder, proceed calmly to the statement of your business. you know that your intention to render him a true service justifies you in taking his time. therefore his assumed fierce manner should be powerless to disconcert you. _do not retreat_ from a chosen prospective employer; _do not even flinch_ from him, however ill-tempered and repellant he may appear. you cannot possibly lose so much by standing your ground as you would forfeit by running away from this chance to demonstrate your salesmanship. countless thousands of men have failed because at the first sign of antagonism they surrendered even more than they might have lost if they had been utterly beaten after the hardest kind of a fight for victory. _they gave up without a struggle, not only all their chances for success, but their self-respect as well._ suppose the man you have selected as your future employer does snap at you viciously when you call on him; his ferocity signifies no more than that you must approach and handle him carefully. your prospecting and your size-up should have convinced you that he is not in fact the crab he tries to appear. real, thorough cranks are so rare they can be considered as non-existent. it is safe to conclude that any man who acts as if he were sore all the way through all the time is just _acting_. ignore the irrascibility of the "everett trues" you meet. _superficial_, _assumed_ indications will not help you to comprehend the _inner_ man you want to influence. _restrict your size-up to the signs of that inner man._ while the old gorgon you face is brow-beating you, he may be planning in the back of his head an act of gentle kindness to some one. if he is _habitually_ kind, there will be physical indications of that characteristic; in his _tones_ and _acts_ if not in his _words_. look for these signs beneath his harsh manner, which is merely a disguise he has put on. "everett true" behaves like a domineering tyrant, but he really is characterized by an acute sensitiveness to what is right and just. [sidenote: judge by unconscious appearance and actions] when sizing up a man, depend principally upon details of his _appearance_ and _actions_. translate whatever you see or hear into definite discriminative judgments regarding him. his muscle structure and movements indicate certain traits. of course you should also observe and size up the significance of the words and tones he uses. but a man employs his speech with the conscious intention of making impressions. therefore it is not safe to rely on a size-up based on what he says. your prospect may be using his words and tones to hide, rather than to reveal, his inner self. however, if you know how to separate and classify _details of muscle structure and action_, you can depend safely on specific conclusions based on these indications. the muscle structure of a man is the result of his habits of living, or of his predominant characteristics. he builds it up unconsciously and is unable to disguise it. it can be interpreted as certain proof that he has particular traits. most of his movements, too, are made without his realizing exactly what they denote of his character and present thoughts. he just "acts natural." therefore if you read indications of the inner man by analytically observing his _physique_ and _actions_, you will gain reliable information about him. he will not know that he is revealing his traits and what he is thinking. [sidenote: your opinions about people] from your earliest childhood to this moment you have been forming first-hand opinions of other people by observing and interpreting their words, tones, and movements. sizing up men is not a new process to you. but in order to be a certainly successful salesman of yourself you should _observe more intelligently and discriminatively_ hereafter. instead of making up your mind about people without knowing just how or why you arrive at your judgments, classify your intuitions scientifically. know the reasons for your opinions. you can be sure about the conclusions you reach as a result of your _specific, exact observation of details_. the study and analysis of words, tones, and acts, coupled with a little painstaking practice, will make you an expert judge of other men. [sidenote: study character unobserved] do not seem to make an effort to observe the person you are sizing up, for that would impress him disagreeably. without indicating that you are watching him, mentally note and interpret his muscle structure, his manner of speaking, his gestures, the rate of his physical activity, the way his actions respond to his ideas, the type and tensity of his movements. _each item you analyze and translate should indicate to you clearly some fact about the inner man._ of course you will not be able to read your prospect thoroughly in the first few moments after you meet him. it is possible to make only a partial size-up then. no one would reveal _all_ his characteristics in such a brief time. _but each indication you perceive and interpret correctly will aid you to attribute to him certain other, related traits._ for instance, if the actions of a man indicate the characteristic of evasion, you may judge safely that he lacks courage, the highest sense of honor, some of the elements of perfect squareness and trustworthiness. if he has a habit of under-estimating or "knocking," and manifests this characteristic in something he says or does, you may feel certain he is not an idealist. he is likely to be pretty "practical" in his views, and cannot be won by appeals to rosy visions. [sidenote: elements of character are consistent] analysis of a man's true character usually shows that its elements are thoroughly consistent. a human being is not a bundle of contradictions, but an aggregation of likenesses. every man differs from every _other_ man; yet, generally speaking, one element of his character is not apt to differ radically from another detail of _himself_. there are exceptions, but in most cases the seeming contradictions in an individual are only apparent opposites. supposed inconsistencies cause surprise because the true fundamental traits of the person observed are not discerned. the _outer_ man often seems to contradict himself. but nearly always the _inner_ man is consistent in his various characteristics. this is the reason why your size-up should be _restricted to discriminative observation of indications of the ego_. [sidenote: application of theory] perhaps you have been thinking, "the _theory_ seems to be all right, but exactly how is it _applied?_" so we shall turn our attention next to specific details of sizing up the characteristics of the inner man. we shall see just how his thoughts and feelings may be discerned at a particular time. we assumed previously that you have called upon the man to whom you want to sell your services. you believe the way to your success lies through association with him. _your faculties of observation should be trained to size up at a glance whatever traits are suggested by his bearing, his clothes, his manner, his actions, his surroundings_. whether he is standing or sitting, it is possible for you to perceive and interpret his pose and poise. you can learn much from his walk if he steps forward to greet you. his handshake may tell volumes about his true character. the different ways that men clasp palms are especially significant of their individual traits. you should have a scientific knowledge of handshakes. [sidenote: traits suggested by nods] should your prospect merely nod on your entrance, note discriminatively the movement he makes. there are many kinds of nods. the quick, sharp tipping of the head indicates unhesitating, clean-cut decisions. such judgments on the spur of the moment are not always right, but they are apt to be pretty conclusive. irregular, jerky nods are signs of irritability, of rash or very impulsive decisions, and often of unreasoning prejudice. the nod made directly forward signifies frankness, dignity, and straight thinking. the tilting of the head a little to one side suggests a habit of indirectness and a tendency to "stall." [sidenote: learn to analyze smiles] how much of a man's character is illumined by his smile! ability to analyze smiles _correctly_ will enable you to size up the dissembled traits of character behind the _false_ smile. such analytical ability will also show you how to turn to your best advantage the smile of _true_ friendliness. it is possible to judge from the physical aspect, from the facial expressions, from the movements, and from the voice of a man whether he is nervous or phlegmatic, active or passive, healthy or lacking in vigor and strength. a skillful size-up will determine that he is either eccentric or well balanced mentally, that he is thrifty or extravagant, that he is disposed to take comprehensive views or is inclined to give undue attention to trifles and details. he will indicate to a keen observer real intellect or mere intelligence. his emotions also may be read. he reveals himself as generous or selfish; as an optimist or as a skeptic. he shows that he is responsive to heart appeals or is hard hearted, moral or immoral, artistic or lacking in appreciation of art, cultured or boorish. [sidenote: discriminative restrictive process] to know the significance of your prospect's different _words, tones, and movements--the only means he has for the expression of his ideas and feelings_, just apply to _his_ case whatever you have learned in studying _yourself_. adapt your previous discriminative knowledge to the prospect you are sizing up. restrict your conclusions about him to the significance of details you observe in his appearance, actions, and speech. after considerable practice in sizing up you will become familiar with the indications of many different traits. _but in most cases it will be sufficient if you can observe swiftly and interpret in a flash only a few of the commonest character signs_. we will touch briefly upon some of these. [sidenote: facial muscles] tense jaw muscles, whether large or small, denote the characteristic of persistence. but loose, flabby cheek muscles do not necessarily prove the habit of over-eating, or of sensuality. they may mean that the man who has them does not habitually allow his feelings to show in his face. when the muscles of facial expression are flabby they prove only that they are slightly used. therefore when you encounter a man with loose cheeks read his characteristics from other muscle-structure signs, and from his actions. do not misjudge the heavy face as a sign of grossness. [sidenote: courage and bluff] if a man holds his head up easily, and moves it in this upright position without stiffness or effort, you may be sure his back neck and shoulder muscles are strongly developed. such strong development suggests that he is courageous, for these muscles are directly co-ordinated with the mind center of bravery. therefore the head and shoulders easily held back and up; not a high chest, signify courage. the bulging chest often indicates no more than pouter-pigeon bluff temporarily put on. [sidenote: indications of intellect and power] a man's high chest, however, is a sign that his predominant characteristics are intellectual; because his chest has been developed by the student's habit of upper-lung breathing. the nerves running from the upper part of the lungs are directly connected with the brain centers of _intellect_. on the contrary the nerves that lead from the lower portions of the lungs center first in the plexus through which are manifested the _vital emotions_ and the emotions of _sex_. hence the man who breathes deeply by habit indicates a great deal of vitality and has marked "he-man" traits. he is not of the intellectual type so markedly as he is a man of _power_. the man who breathes only from the upper part of his lungs is not a man of power, but may have a fine intellect. [sidenote: significance of postures] the postures of the body are significant of characteristics. if your prospect stands with his feet wide apart and his arms folded conspicuously across his high-held chest, he probably has a habit of bluffing. his widely spread feet indicate that he has to prop himself in that physical posture; so it is unnatural to him. similarly he has had to prop himself in his mental posture. _push your ideas hard and he will lose his mental balance;_ just as he would lose his physical balance if you were to jolt him. he is obliged to prop himself. he is bluffing. you can make him quit. the folded arms and expanded chest of the bluffer mean no more than the high-arched back of a cat. stroke "tom" soothingly, and he stops bristling. stroke the human bluffer tactfully with persuasion, and he will not act pugnacious for long. [sidenote: the balanced body] but if, when making a statement, your prospect stands or walks about easily with his feet close together; if he balances his body without difficulty or artificial postures--it is certain that he has a good deal of determination in his make-up. you cannot influence him to change his mind by making emotional appeals to him. in order to secure the favorable decision of such a man, you will need to use the most conclusive, solid evidence of your capabilities. [sidenote: wavering minds] suppose your prospect shifts his feet continually and rather jerkily. while you are talking with him, he frequently changes his weight from one foot to the other. he is suggesting that he has little confidence in his own judgment, that he is not sure of his own thoughts. _take the lead strongly with such a man._ do his thinking for him. it is up to you to bring his vacillating mind to definite conclusions, following your lead. first make it clear to him that your proposal is really to his interest. then proceed with a manner of absolute assurance, as if you did not question his doing what you wish. with your skillful salesmanship you can stop his wavering and induce him to act as you indicate. [sidenote: quick thinkers] the _rate_ of one's _muscular_ activity is directly associated with the rate of one's _mental_ activity. the man who _moves_ slowly by habit is also a plodder in his _thoughts_. on the contrary, quick actions indicate quick thinking; which, however, may be mistaken. only the quick motion that is _under perfect control_ suggests an _unerring_ conclusion reached swiftly. the man who snatches up a pencil with sure fingers, and without fumbling it begins to write at once, demonstrates that he has an electrically fast mind perfectly harnessed to his purpose. when another man reaches swiftly for a pencil but misses his sure grasp at the first attempt; or when the dash of his hand to the paper is followed by a momentary delay for adjustment of the pencil in his fingers or by hesitation before he begins to write, he denotes mere impulsiveness. [sidenote: self-control] sometimes a quick thinker will purposely develop the habit of making very deliberate motions. this trait is the result of his determined repression of a recognized inclination to act on impulse. he has accomplished perfect self-control in order to guard against the danger of making up his mind too quickly on his first thoughts. but his slowed-down movements will be so _precise_ and _certain_ as to indicate his characteristic of self-control and that his mind has moved in advance of his acts. if you have occasion to size up such a man, you should perceive that the movements of his muscles do not correspond with the rate of his mental activity, as a superficial observer might mistakenly conclude. if your prospect sits or stands immobile; or if his actions give no indication of what he is thinking, watch his eyes and his facial muscles of expression. eyes that fairly dart from one object to another, expressions that flash on and off the face; prove swift mental activity, no matter how quietly the body may be held. for instance, a strong, quick thinker may have his muscles under such perfect control that he will pick up a pencil very deliberately because he has trained himself to repress his impulses. but when he has finished using the pencil, he will drop it cleanly and not let it slip slowly from his fingers. his self-training in precaution applies only to what he does _before_ acting on a purpose. the moment he is done writing, he also is done with the pencil. his hand does not linger with it over the paper. unconsciously his characteristic quickness manifests itself in his inclination to get rid at once of the tool he has finished using. [sidenote: tightened thoughts] any indication of _muscular tensity_ suggests a _tightening of the mind_ on thoughts. it is often a sign of mental resistance or of persistency. if, when talking to a man you observe that his muscles seem taut, avoid forcing the idea you want him to accept, for his mind is opposing it strongly just then. perhaps he has a persistent thought of his own, at variance with yours. either give him a chance to express his idea in words, so you can dispose of it, or switch him away from it by changing the trend of the conversation. when you perceive that his muscles are normally relaxed, you may safely return to the postponed point. you will encounter lessened mental resistance. very likely he will then have no impulse to persist in the thought he previously had fixed in his mind. [sidenote: what a man's walk shows] note how your prospect walks forward to meet you, or how he moves about his office. if his stride is long and free and easy, it proves that the back muscles of his thighs are strong. those muscles function in direct co-ordination with the mental action of _willing_. therefore when a man walks easily with a long, free stride he indicates that he has a strong will. he may be sized up confidently as a fighter for his rights, as a man with a great deal of resolution once he makes up his mind. [sidenote: determine mental speed] it is very important when sizing up a man to determine the _degree of his mental speed_. if you have brought your best capabilities for sale to a prospective employer, you need to know whether or not he is getting clearly all the ideas you present. it is necessary for you to make sure on the one hand that you are not presenting ideas too fast for his mind to comprehend each point fully. on the other hand, you wish to avoid harping on details after he understands them. it will aid you very much in your salesmanship if you know _just how quickly_ the mind of your prospect acts. there is no better way to find out than by noting the speed of his _muscle_ response to test ideas. since the rate of _muscle_ activity is directly indicative of the rate of _mental_ activity, you can often learn from observing the _movements_ of your prospect _how quickly his mind takes in_ points you state or suggest. you might test him by asking that he write a name or set down some figures you give him. if without hesitation he reaches for a pencil, you may be sure his mind responds quickly to your ideas. but should there be a moment or two of delay before he picks up the pencil, his _slower physical response_ to your request is to be read as an _indication that his mind does not grasp ideas at once_. [sidenote: keep mental pace] after making your size-up of the degree of his mental speed, you can govern your presentation by what you have learned. if you are dealing with a mind that acts slowly, give your prospect plenty of time to get each idea you want to impress upon him. but proceed briskly from point to point with the man whose mind grasps ideas instantly. you would make a poor impression on him were you to go at a lagging pace. it is not necessary, however, to make special or artificial tests to learn how quickly your ideas are being grasped. observe the facial expressions of your prospect, which will indicate how soon your thought is appreciated after it is presented. should you say something with a touch of humor, the time it takes him to smile or twinkle his eyes will measure the speed of his mind in catching ideas. [sidenote: head and eye movements] the movements of the head and of the eyes, according to which are predominant in the case of an individual, tell much of his character. the villain on the stage habitually looks out of the corners of his eyes. so does the mischievous ingenue. but the hero turns his whole head when he looks about. and the look of innocence in the eyes of the heroine is straightforward; her head is pointed directly in line with her gaze. _apply the principle in your salesmanship._ when you observe a man who turns his head freely and easily for a square look at a person who comes into his presence, size him up as one who is not afraid to face either facts or people. if you note that another prospect glances obliquely at persons or objects, or that he habitually turns his eyes to one side or the other while keeping his head still, judge him to lack the characteristic of frankness. he is likely to be evasive and shifty in his dealings. perhaps the sign you have perceived indicates no more than that your prospect is "stalling." it is evidence, nevertheless, that his mind is not meeting your ideas squarely. you will need to compel his attention to come back to your point, time and again perhaps. [sidenote: strength of mind] the full-arm movement denotes strength, and bigness of conceptions. a mere wrist gesture suggests littleness, flippancy, weak traits. similarly if a man walks from his hips, he suggests the characteristic of strong personal opinion. if he walks principally from the knees, or over-uses his ankles and minces along, he indicates that his mind is not certain and that he holds his opinions weakly. a straight gesture denotes pure _mentality_. a single-curved movement indicates some _emotion_, rather than only a thought. action in a double curve suggests _power_ behind the expression. [sidenote: honor and straightforwardness] a gesture outward from the chest and on the _same level_ denotes the qualities of honor and straightforwardness. if your prospect makes such a motion in response to some idea you present, he is thinking on the same man-level as yourself--he is treating you as his equal. a characteristic movement of the arm _above_ the shoulders signifies vivid imagination, or impracticability. it may be read as an indication of lightness of character or of a tendency to go off on a tangent. conversely, gestures outward from the _lower_ part of the body denote power, or an inclination to depreciate values. [sidenote: selfishness] if a man gestures _toward_ himself, he indicates limited conceptions, or selfishness, with a tendency to materialize everything. movements in any direction _away from_ the trunk of the body and on its level denote assertiveness, sincerity, creative ability, or willingness to cooperate in thought. [sidenote: affirmation and denial] _vertical_ movements suggest the _life_ of ideas, and symbolize _affirmation_. _horizontal_ gestures accompany the _denial_ of ideas and the _death_ of interest. the _diagonal upward_ curve indicates _idealism_. a similar curve _downward_ is a sign that an idea presented to the imagination is _concretely realized_. [sidenote: frankness and dodging] the person who gestures _directly in front_ of himself proves he is _willing to meet you face to face_ regarding the idea presented. but when a man gestures _slightly_ to one side or the other, he is not dodging. his movement denotes only that he is _thinking seriously_. however, if you present ideas to a man who gestures _far_ to the right or left, you may feel certain that he is not giving his thoughts in harmony with yours, but probably is trying to get your ideas out of his mind. [sidenote: study tones] while we have emphasized that "muscular indications" are of principal importance in making a certain size-up, the tones and words of the prospect should not be altogether neglected. often a man will unintentionally reveal in his tones the very things he means his words to conceal. you would not depend on the words of a person if they were contradicted by his acts and tones. mental, emotive, and power characteristics are signified by various tone pitches. _the degree of a man's determination_ and his _persistence in thought_ are denoted by the _number of tone units_ he habitually employs when speaking. the _genuineness_ of a statement is suggested or disproved by the tone _intervals_ in the statement. "yes" spoken in one unit without inflection means unqualified assent. "y-es" in two tones may mean doubtful assent, or false agreement, or even a contradiction. the _middle-of-the-mouth_ tone proves a _well balanced_ mind, in contrast with the _unreliable_ mind that is denoted by the _lip_ tone, and the _secretive_ mind which is suggested by the tone that comes from _far back_ in the mouth. in a five minute conversation an alert observer who has studied a few of the elemental principles of tone analysis can size up a great many of the most pronounced characteristics of a prospect. [sidenote: don't offend by scrutiny] it is better to make no size-up at all than to _strain_ in observing the other man and make him aware of your close scrutiny. such an inartistic size-up impresses a prospect disagreeably. he feels that you are prying into his personal characteristics. therefore _teach yourself to observe without seeming to look closely at the object of your size-up_. learn to observe unobserved; especially to perceive details without looking _sharply_. your eyes and ears can take in specific points about your prospect without making their keen activity apparent. [sidenote: two parts of sizing-up process] when you have learned how to see and hear many details clearly at the same time, _unsuspected by your prospect_, you will be a master of the first essential of skillful character reading. the second necessary element of proficiency in sizing up men is the _relation or association of each detail observed, with the particular characteristic it denotes_. to begin with, _perceive points_ about your prospect. then ask yourself about each, "_what does this mean?_" [sidenote: practice makes perfect] of course you will not become an expert judge of other men at once. but get the habit of seeing and hearing _specific indications of characteristics_ wherever you go. you will soon find that your mind has been opened to new, clear ideas of people. it is possible for anyone to become a mind reader. it is necessary only to _note_ and _think out_ the meaning of character signs and thoughts. trained specific observation will read and interpret these signs. when you become skillful in sizing up other men, this art will help you very much in gaining the best possible receptions everywhere you go. also, if you are able to read your prospect's thoughts and character, you can avoid antagonizing his ideas. [sidenote: remove unnecessary difficulties] gain knowledge of other men in order to make it easy to sell them true ideas of your best capabilities. it is not _hard_ to succeed if you take the _unnecessary_ difficulties out of the process of gaining your chances. chapter viii _the knock at the door of opportunity and the invitation to come in_ [sidenote: selling is not a mechanical process] the process of selling ideas comprises several steps, part or all of which the salesman may need to take in order to close a particular sale successfully. in our study we are considering step after step in regular order, but the actual selling process cannot be reduced to such exactitude and routine. before we begin our analysis of this "presentation" step, it should be clearly understood that success in selling ideas is not achieved by going through a _machine-like_ process. we follow a regular sequence in these chapters, but it is unlikely that you will ever complete a sale of your services by taking the various steps of the selling process in the precise order of our study. [sidenote: be a fully equipped salesman] you may need to use them all in order to succeed in a specific instance. again, without taking many of the steps here analyzed, you might be able to gain the success opportunity you most desire. _the object of this book is to fit you for any and every condition you are likely to meet_ in your efforts to gain opportunities for your ambition. it is improbable that in order to get your desired chance and to make the most of it you will have to _use_ all you learn of the secret of certain success. you cannot afford, however, to run an _avoidable risk_ of being at a loss regarding what to do at any stage of the process of selling to a selected prospect true ideas of your best capability. you need to know the most effective ways to deal with situations that may never happen, but which, on the contrary, _might_ be encountered. you cannot start _confidently_ on your quest for success unless you are _fully_ equipped. [sidenote: reducing the odds against you] if you believed it would be necessary for you to do everything contained in this book in order to gain the opportunities you desire, you likely would feel very skeptical about succeeding. you might think, "a single little slip and i'd lose out. it's a thousand to one against me." the fact is that the odds on the side of failure are very heavy in the case of an _ordinary_ man. if you can _reduce_ them only a little _in your own case_, you will get a start towards success because of the slight lessening of your handicap. [sidenote: value of knowing a single step] i recall a man who mastered but three principles of _prospecting needs_. with this limited knowledge of salesmanship he was able to induce a great financier to open the door of opportunity and take him into a field of rich chances to earn a fortune. another friend of mine got his start solely from knowledge of a manufacturer's principal hobby. what he knew about the "single tax" enabled him to plan a sure approach to the mind of the factory owner. a young lawyer in chicago seized upon a chance for fame and wealth in his first meeting with a poor, seemingly unsuccessful inventor. in each of these instances a single step of the selling process, taken correctly, carried the salesman through the door of opportunity and brought him within reach of the beginnings of success. [sidenote: get ready for imaginable happenings] _you_ may not need to knock at that door, nor wait for an invitation to come in. in _your_ case, perhaps, the door stands open, with a "welcome" mat just outside. yet if you _do need_ to knock with your ideas for admittance to another man's mind, and if it ever becomes _necessary_ for you to win a welcome, this chapter will prove valuable reading. you will be helped to gain your desired chance, and the danger of your failure will be minimized, if you _know how_ to knock and exactly _what to do_ to assure your welcome. even the master salesman can never be absolutely certain of the reception he will have from any prospect. therefore he "goes loaded" for all imaginable contingencies. you, the salesman of yourself, should be likewise prepared with knowledge of how each and every step in the selling process may be taken most effectively. whatever emergency arises, you must be ready to take the fullest advantage of a favorable turn, and equally ready to reduce as much as possible any disadvantage you encounter. [sidenote: knocking and getting in] of course it will avail you nothing if you succeed only in _reaching_ the particular man through whom you have planned to gain success. and after you meet him it will do you no material good to _size him up_ correctly; if you are then unable to hold his _attention_ to your presentation of ideas. your preliminary skillful salesmanship would all be wasted. evidently, in order that you may continue the process of gaining your chance, it is necessary that you should know how to knock on the door of his mind in such an _agreeable but compelling_ way that he will be _forced_ to let his attention come out _pleasantly_ to you and your purpose. hence right knocking at the door of opportunity immediately follows the size-up as an essential part of the process of making success certain. it is necessary next for you to know how to prevent a turn-down on the front porch of your prospect's mind, and how to insure _the admission of your ideas to his thoughts_. you can compel your prospect to open the door of his attention, but in order to get _inside_ his mind and secure his _interest_ in your purpose, you must win his _willing invitation_ for your ideas to enter his thoughts and make themselves at home there. [sidenote: certain success methods] we have seen how you can make certain of gaining your chance to reach the door of opportunity. you can size up surely your prospect's dominant characteristics and what he is thinking. likewise you can guarantee to yourself, first the attention, and second the interest of the man you have come to see. it is necessary only that you use the methods of the master salesman to _compel_ the opening of the door and to _induce_ the extension of welcome to your ideas. [sidenote: our old acquaintance again] here again we meet our old acquaintance, the discriminative-restrictive method. you must _discriminate_ between the process of knocking at the door of opportunity and the process of securing the invitation to come in. then, in _practicing_ these related but different steps of the selling process, it is necessary that when you knock you _restrict_ yourself to the use of the methods that are most effective in gaining _attention_. similarly you should restrict yourself to using the very _different_ methods of securing _interest_, when you work to get an invitation for your ideas to come inside the other man's mind and make themselves at home there. [sidenote: process of compelling attention] psychologists define "attention" as "that act of the mind which holds to a given object perceived by one or more senses, to the _exclusion_ of all other objects that might be perceived at that time by the same or other senses." a knock at a door attracts attention because it temporarily diverts the previous attentiveness of the mind to other things, and concentrates it on a new object of attention. the sense of hearing is _struck_. whether or not the mind is _willing_ to hear, it _cannot help perceiving_ the sudden new sound. its attention is _forced_. the instant the knock is heard, the mind is compelled to drop or suspend what it has been thinking about; though this _exclusive_ new attention to the knock may last but a fraction of a second. our _senses_ function under the control of the sub-conscious mind. it is futile for us to _will_ that we _won't_ hear, or see, or taste, etc. we _have_ to take in sense impressions, whether we want to do so or not. therefore, if you employ restrictively the _sense-hitting_ method, you can force the man upon whom you call to give his _attention_ to you or to the presentation of your ideas. [sidenote: inducing interest] it is necessary to discriminate, however, between the use of the avenues to reach the mind center of _attention_, and the use of very _different_ ways into the mind center of _interest_. if you start wrong, there is very little chance that you will arrive at the right destination. the center of interest is wholly under the control of the _conscious_ mind. your prospect can refuse to be interested, if he chooses, despite your determination to interest him. _his interest must be induced_. any attempt to _compel_ it is apt to have a fatal result. nearly always such an effort to force interest develops antagonism, instead. but there are methods of _inducing_ interest that are just as sure to succeed as are the sense-hitting methods by which attention may be compelled. this _double step_ in the process of selling the true idea of your best capabilities in the right market can be taken with absolute _certainty_ of success if you know and practice the principles in accordance with which the master salesman sells his ideas of goods to prospects. we are to study these principles now, as applied to the sale of your qualifications for success in the field you have selected. [sidenote: exclusive agreeable attention] when you enter the office of your prospect--your chosen future employer, for example--he will be giving his attention to _something_. no one, while he is awake, can be wholly _non_-attentive. your function, at this stage of the selling process, is to compel him to stop paying attention to something or somebody _else_, and to give _you and your ideas_ his exclusive attention. [sidenote: avoid making unfavorable impressions] of course good salesmanship makes it advisable also to avoid creating a _disagreeable_ impression while forcing yourself and your ideas upon the attention of your prospect. the _conscious_ mind governs a man's likes and dislikes. so if you knock compellingly at the door of _that_ mind to gain attention, you may arouse very _unfavorable_ attention. for illustration, a boisterous greeting of your prospect, or a very noisy entrance into his office, would doubtless compel his attention by the direct hammering on his senses. but the attraction of his attention to you would affect the operations of both his conscious and sub-conscious minds, and his conscious mind would be disagreeably impressed. his compelled attention, therefore, might result in your being thrown out. [sidenote: gaining both attention and interest] however, you can knock at the _sense_ doors of the _sub-conscious_ mind with such unobjectionable sense-hitting methods that while agreeable _attention_ will be _compelled_ thereby, you can also be sure that a favorable impression on the conscious mind of the prospect will be _induced_. for illustration, if your prospect is evidently busy at his desk when you are admitted to his office, you might compel his attention by entering very quietly and by standing in silence without interrupting him until he has had an opportunity to finish what he is doing. his sound sense would be struck, paradoxically, by your exceptional quietness. his sense of equilibrium would also be affected by your perfect poise while waiting. your whole attitude would impress him so favorably that his especial interest in you would be induced. his greeting would be pleasant. suppose your prospect looks up from his work when you enter his presence, and you approach close to his desk; if you are immaculate in dress and body, you will appeal agreeably to his olfactory sense. the law of the association of ideas will then begin to work in your favor. your prospect will get subconsciously a conscious impression of your clean character. you might wear a fresh flower in your buttonhole and so strike several of his senses pleasantly. but unless the flower is inconspicuous and in good taste it would make an unfavorable impression. [sidenote: good impressions] let us assume now that when you enter the office of your prospect, he is disgruntled about something. you can take some of the heat out of his ill temper by your appearance of cool self-confidence and good nature. there are many more such _favorable sense impressions_ which you could make by simply standing in manly erectness while waiting to receive the exclusive attention of your prospect. you might employ all the sense-hitting features of bearing and manner referred to above. the effect of the sum of these would be the _forced agreeable attention_ of your prospect. he simply could not help noticing the various items that would strike his different senses; nor could he help being agreeably impressed; though he might not give you any indication of the effect you had compelled. [sidenote: continual attention necessary] it is highly important that you should be able first to _gain_ the favorable attention of your prospect, and second to _hold_ it until his interest is aroused. it may also be necessary for you to _regain_ his attention if it is temporarily lost and diverted to some other object. the master salesman realizes it is essential to have the attention of his prospect _continually centered_ upon the ideas presented, _throughout the selling process_. only a poor salesman of ideas would go right on talking, even though it might be clearly evident that he did not have the exclusive attention of the man addressed. [sidenote: regaining attention] when you proffer your capabilities for purchase by a prospective employer, do not make the mistake of continuing to present your best selling points if you have any doubt that his attention is exclusively yours. _stop your selling process if his attention wanders or is diverted_. use the sense-hitting method to compel it to _come back_ to you and your ideas. if some one should enter his office while you are talking to him, or if his telephone should ring, stop short in your presentation. (your sudden silence, in itself, will be attention compelling.) do not go on with your sales presentation until the interruption is over. then use some sense-hitting method of making sure that his attention is again concentrated on you and your ideas. [sidenote: sense hitting] an acquaintance of mine who had especially fitted himself for business correspondence, typed striking paragraphs taken from form letters he had devised and pasted the slips of paper on stiff filing cards. he carried with him to his interview with the president of a large corporation about thirty-five or forty of these cards. his prospecting had indicated that in the course of the half hour he had planned to take up with a presentation of his capabilities this executive would be interrupted often by telephone calls and the entrance of subordinates. the salesman's size-up also revealed that his prospect's attention was likely to wander to the things on his desk. from time to time when the correspondent was presenting his ideas the president reached out his hand and picked up a paper. evidently he was inclined to give but flighty attention to his caller. [sidenote: striking more than one sense] the salesman, however, had "come loaded" for exactly this situation. he had worked out his selling plan in detail. as he developed idea after idea, he used a device for regaining attention by hitting at the prospect's senses of _sight_ and _hearing_. just as soon as the president's hand wandered to a paper, the salesman ruffled the cards he held, quickly selected one, and clicked it down on the desk top before his prospect. he had to do this perhaps a dozen times before he felt confident he had clinched the interest of the executive. if the salesman had used words merely, what, he said in presenting his ideas to the prospect might have gone in one ear and out the other. but his action of ruffling the cards struck the president's senses of sight and hearing compellingly; as did the clicking of the card on the desk top when it was presented for reading. repeatedly the return of the prospect's wandering attention was forced subconsciously; yet no disagreeable impression was made on his conscious mind. in the course of half an hour the correspondent succeeded in selling his services at a very satisfactory salary. [sidenote: "come loaded"] if you similarly "come loaded" for sense-hitting, you will be able to get your prospect's attention originally, and to regain it whenever it is temporarily lost. in advance of your call on the man to whom you want to sell your services, think out things you can do that will strike one or more of his senses forcibly, without making disagreeable impressions. you can take with you to the interview specimens of your work, or testimonials; and hold them in your hand where they will attract notice. or you might plan to use attention-compelling gestures. [sidenote: tone variations] changes of tone will make the other man "perk up his ears" if his attention wanders; so plan to introduce variety into your manner of speaking. don't just open the spigot of your mind and let your ideas run out in a monotone. variety of voice is pleasing, as well as attention-compelling. i know a salesman who is in the habit of using a spotlessly clean big handkerchief to help him keep the prospect's mind concentrated on the proposition being presented. whenever the other man's attention is diverted, this salesman whisks his handkerchief from his pocket and touches his lips with it. the flash of white hits the sight-sense of the prospect and brings back his wandering attention to the salesman. [sidenote: sense hitting should help the sale] but such devices are superficial. _the best sense-hitting means of compelling attention, directly relates some sense effect to the salesman's purpose._ the correspondent who ruffled his cards and clicked them down on the prospect's desk would not have been so successful if on each card he had not pasted a specimen of his work as an efficient letter writer. if he had brought a pack of blank cards, for example, the repeated use of his device for getting attention might have irritated the other man. to analyze the illustration further; if the correspondent had brought the specimens of his work on letter paper, not pasted on stiff cards, they would have been much less effective. he could not have ruffled them, and would have been unable to make the clicking sound he used to hit the other man's ears. [sidenote: suggesting capability] suppose you apply for a situation as a bookkeeper or an accountant. one of the best sense-hitting devices you could use to compel attention to your ability would be a collection of complicated tabulations in your handwriting, made neatly without a correction or an erasure. such an exhibit of painstaking workmanship, if complemented by a neat, attractive personal appearance, would _force_ the employer to _notice_ you and the proofs of your qualifications. you certainly would make a most favorable impression. your prospect would imagine his books and records as you would keep them. when presenting the evidences of your capability as an accountant, you could suggest other qualities than those mentioned--such as the proper pride of a good workman, serious earnestness, dignity, keen intelligence, etc. such _suggestions made with the aid of sense-hitting devices_ would help you to complete the sale of your services. [sidenote: make your qualities stand out] perhaps you wish particularly to impress your qualities of alertness, energy, love of work, and physical stamina. then sit or stand easily erect when you call on your prospect. if you should slump or loll in your chair, you would suggest that you lacked the very characteristics on which you are depending to get the job. _make your best qualities stand out noticeably_ in your bearing. should you apply for a position of great trust, requiring the exercise of the finest discretion, be sure to look the other man frankly in the face and let him see into your eyes. also modulate your tones to the pitch of discretion and confidence. your manner, your expressions, your voice will all draw attention to your fitness for the chance you want. [sidenote: original methods] such illustrations as have been given above should be understood as merely suggestive of ways to use the sense-hitting method of compelling attention. _do not copy_ the suggestions offered. _think out for your individual use a collection of sense-hitting devices of your own._ then you will be able to select various ways to gain and to re-gain attention when you are in the presence of a prospect. no matter what may be your ability and ambition, _there are features of your character and your service capacity that you can utilize to make direct sense appeals_. find out for yourself what they are, and plan how to use them most effectively. if you cannot gain attention to your qualifications, or if you are unable to recall wandering attention, you may lose the chance you have succeeded in getting. _insure yourself_ against the possibility of such a disaster; so that your previous good salesmanship in securing an interview will not all go for naught. [sidenote: out-of-the-ordinary things] if you do something _out of the ordinary_, the force of your sense-hitting will be much greater than if you employ only common devices for gaining attention. it is better to _do_ something that compels attention to your recommendations than to _say_ "i want to call your attention to these letters." [sidenote: danger of distracting attention] however, there is always the danger that in gaining attention by _unusual_ means you may attract too much attention to the _device_ you use, and so distract notice from the _proposition_ you are presenting for sale. therefore be sure that whatever extraordinary thing you do to compel attention _contributes directly to your main purpose_ and does not lead your prospect off on a _side track_ of thought. a business house once got out an advertising novelty and had samples distributed by the salesmen as gifts to their principal customers. the novelty was an ingenious mechanical device. it attracted so much attention to itself that when a salesman put it on the desk of a prospect before beginning his sales talk, the attention of the other man was drawn from what the salesman was saying and was given to the novelty. the prospect would pick up and examine the advertising device while the salesman was presenting ideas regarding his standard line of goods. as a result, many of the best points of the sales talks were unnoticed. the advertising novelty was a detriment. the sales volume fell off while it was being distributed. the slump was traced directly to the mistake of having the _salesmen_ pass out the attention-compelling device _which was not related to the staples of the house line_. [sidenote: the remedy] the distribution was made by mail thereafter, in advance of the salesman's call. it was effective then as an introduction for the traveler; because by the time he came to see the prospect, the novelty of the advertising device had worn off. it was no longer an attention-distracter. [sidenote: three ways to compel attention] remember that the attention of your prospect is always given to _something_. if another object of attention is more compelling than _your_ means of forcing his notice, your attempt will fail. therefore be sure that your attention-getting device has at least one of three points of superiority. ( ) it can be _stronger_ than the other appeal to the same sense. if your prospect's attention to what you are saying wanders because a phonograph starts to play in the next room, you can recall it to your presentation by slapping your hands together to emphasize a point, or you can change your tone suddenly. his sense of hearing will be struck compellingly by your device. ( ) your appeal for attention can be made to _more_ senses than are being reached by the distraction. the phonograph music hits only the ears of your prospect. besides slapping your hands together or changing your tone, you can supplement such appeals to his tone sense by an appeal to his sense of sight. you can make a gesture, or display a letter for him to read just at that moment. ( ) your appeal can hit the senses of your prospect more _insistently_ than the other. if the phonograph music proves very attractive to him, you will need to _keep hammering_ at him with forceful changes of voice, with gestures, by touching him, or by doing something else to make his attention to the music "let go." [sidenote: summary] to summarize the most effective method of gaining attention--_hit each sense to which you appeal as strongly as you can, without making a disagreeable impression, strike as many senses as possible, and keep on using your sense-hitting device as long as necessary to get or to recover exclusive favorable attention_. many a man has gained success because he first gained attention. he stood out from the crowd, or was able to make his qualities noticeable. when one is fully qualified for success, he may need only to attract attention to his capabilities; then he is likely to be given the chance he wants. [sidenote: "i'm not interested"] often, however, the salesman is discomfited after he gains attention. the prospect halts the selling process by declaring, "i'm not interested." suppose you are able to compel your prospective employer to notice you favorably, but he balks there and shows no inclination to buy your services. he has listened attentively to all you have said. he has concentrated his mind upon you, and has not wandered in thought to other subjects. yet you perceive that he is inclined to put you off or to turn you down. evidently, in order to prevent such a contretemps, you need to resort now to a _different selling step_, which you have not taken previously. it is necessary that you have at your command a way to induce interest. this interest-inducing means must be as _sure_ in its effects as the sense-hitting method of compelling attention. otherwise you could not be certain of success with the selling process. if the effectiveness of every step cannot be assured in advance, you will not rely confidently on salesmanship to achieve your ambition. [sidenote: discriminate between attention and interest] probably you have never worked out in your mind exactly _the reasons why you are interested_ in particular things and in certain people. let us make an analysis. your _attention_ might be attracted so strongly to a vicious criminal that for the time being you could think of no one else. yet his fate might be a matter of such indifference to you that you would have absolutely no _interest_ in the man. but suppose you should see in his face, or in an expression of his eyes, something that haunted your memory appealingly. it would induce you to read the newspaper accounts of his trial. you would feel a little sorry for him, on learning that he had been sentenced to a long term in prison. very likely you would say to yourself, "i suppose he is a mighty tough character, but i believe there is something in him that isn't altogether bad." your intuition would tell you he possessed undefined traits that you like. in _your own liking_ for these characteristics that you vaguely discerned in him when you saw him, _is the key to the interest he induced_. [sidenote: what and whom we like] what do we like? whom do we like? things that are _like_ our own ideas. people who are _like_ the ideas we have about likable people. interest is all a matter of recognizing points of likeness. in order to draw your prospect beyond the attention stage of the selling process, and to induce his interest in your "goods," you must impress on him suggestions of the similarity of your ideas to ideas already in his own mind. _he will like your ideas in proportion to their resemblance to his own way of thinking_ on the same subjects. so you should express yourself as nearly as possible in his terms, and attract his interest by making him feel that your mind and his are much alike. [sidenote: non-interest] one day i was sitting in the private office of a very wealthy philanthropist. a salesman presented a letter of introduction to the millionaire, who in turn introduced me to his caller. the newcomer thereupon proceeded to present most attractively a business proposal. he offered my friend an excellent opportunity to make a good deal of money by joining an underwriting syndicate. the millionaire at once declared he was not interested. "i have all the money i want," he said, and bowed the salesman out. the ideas that had been presented to him were altogether _different_ from his own financial motives. [sidenote: interest] that same afternoon another promoter called upon my friend with a project for investment in a house-building corporation. this second salesman evidently had prospected the philanthropist and had planned just how to interest him. he did not stress the profits to be made from investment in the stock of his corporation, but referred to them in a minor key. he emphasized the need of the city for more homes, and cited instances of distress due to the housing shortage. my friend was thoroughly interested. he took home the salesman's prospectus for further study. since he was a good business man, he satisfied himself that the investment would be profitable. but he subscribed for fifty thousand dollars worth of securities principally because they represented a project _like his own ideas_ of the way money should be put to work for human happiness. [sidenote: know prospect's likes and dislikes] when you call on the man you have selected as your future employer, go equipped with all the prospecting knowledge regarding him that you have been able to get. be sure you know his strongest likes and dislikes. size him up on the spot, for the purpose of supplementing what you have previously learned about him. hit his attention with sense-appeals related to his peculiarities. then, in order to make sure of his interest, present some idea that is of the kind _he_ especially likes. he will open his mind and welcome your idea at once. [sidenote: the man of quick decisions] suppose he has a reputation for brusqueness and quick decisions, and is impatient about any waste of time. you probably would help your cause by looking him straight in the eye and saying bluntly something like this: "i want to work for you because you are my kind of a man. ask me any questions you want, now. you won't have to call me on the carpet for information about my work after you hire me. pay me two hundred dollars a month, and i won't be back in this office to get a raise until you send for me." i know a young man who secured a good job from an "old crab" in just that way, within three minutes after they first met. two men sought the position of office manager of an automobile company. the owners of the business were thorough mechanics who had designed their own car, but who were comparatively unfamiliar with office operations. they were not at home outside their factory. [sidenote: mistake of speaking different language] the first candidate for the vacant position brought the finest recommendations of his qualifications for office management. the other applicant had had much less experience, and was not nearly so well qualified. but the first man was a poor salesman of his capabilities. he failed to recognize, when he explained his ideas to the partners, that he was talking to a pair of mechanics. they did not understand the language he used. his presentation of his qualifications as an office manager would have impressed an employer accustomed to sitting at a desk. but the partners were intuitively prejudiced against the capable candidate who was so very _unlike themselves_ in all respects. [sidenote: speaking the same language] the other applicant was shrewd. he used salesmanship in presenting his lesser qualifications for the position. he talked in terms borrowed from the language of shop practice. he compared the plans he suggested for the office supplies stock room, with the "tool crib" in the factory. he explained his idea of office organization by using as a model a chart of the plant departments. he compared office expenses with factory overhead. the owners of the business understood very little about the subjects he discussed, but he used words and expressions that were familiar to them. so his ideas, as he presented them, impressed the partners as _like their own way of looking at things_. the better salesman, who knew how to interest his prospects, got the five-figure job; though he was a less capable office executive than the disappointed applicant. [sidenote: fitting ideas to prospect's mind] do not try to sell another man particular ideas because _you_ like them. you are not the buyer. sell him ideas that _he_ likes. fit the ideas you bring him to the characteristics of his mind. if you judge him to be a quick thinker, do not hesitate in indecision a moment longer than is necessary for you to make up your mind confidently. on the other hand, should he be a deliberate thinker, be careful not to make an impression that you are rash or impulsive in your decisions. [sidenote: clothes and interest] if he is inclined to be finical about his dress, or over-particular regarding orderliness, he will be interested if your garb is punctiliously correct and if you suggest to him the habits of precision. i read a little while ago the story of a young man who lost the chance to become the confidential assistant of a noted financier. the young man missed his opportunity because he made the mistake of wearing a soft collar when he called for the final interview with the financier. [sidenote: avoid false pretense of interest] _do not, of course, put on false pretenses_, to make your prospect like you and your ideas. remember that you must _live up_ to a first good impression. so appear nothing, say nothing, do nothing that is untrue to your best self. but without any dishonesty you can indicate that your way of thinking has points of similarity to the slant of the other man's mind. if he is a republican, while you are a democrat, and the subject of politics comes up, do not pretend to be an elephant worshiper. admit your party allegiance casually, and remark that you are not hide-bound in your political faith, but open-minded. maybe he will employ you with the hope of converting you to republicanism. [sidenote: few direct opposites] there are few ideas regarding which honest men are diametrically opposed on principle. you can suggest to your prospective employer the idea that you are in accord with his way of thinking; though you may differ widely in many respects. you need not emphasize the _degree_ of your likeness in mind. certainly it would be very poor policy to stress your differences of opinion. [sidenote: like breeds like] _any likeness of your suggestions to the ideas of the other man will impress him agreeably._ he will be pleased to find the points of resemblance, and they will help to gloss over a possible prejudice in his mind against you. the association of your similar ideas on a subject will suggest to him imaginative pictures of your association with him in his business. "like breeds like." he will place you mentally in a situation where the likable qualities he has found in you might be employed to his satisfaction. [sidenote: inside the door] then you will be safely _inside the door_ of his interest. without realizing it, your prospect would like to bring about the condition he has imagined. he is beginning to want you in his employ; though as yet he has no deep-seated desire for your services. objections to you may spring up in his mind, but you certainly have been successful throughout the processes of getting his response to your knock, and of securing for your ideas his invitation to come into his thoughts for a better acquaintance with your purpose. [sidenote: unwelcome guests] after admitting your ideas to his mind, he may wish he had not welcomed them. he may find objectionable things in you or in your proposal. sometimes a man responds to a knock on his door, and becomes sufficiently interested in the caller to invite him to enter the house; but regrets afterward that he extended the welcome. this change of heart and mind is usually due to something done by the visitor after his admittance. however, we are not considering just now any step of the selling process beyond winning a welcome. in later chapters we will study how to make the most effective use of hospitality and the things to avoid that might impress the host as abuses of the privileges of a guest. [sidenote: furniture of the mind] ideas have been called "the furniture of the mind." we have already seen that they are the developments of _repeated sense impressions_. a particular mind center is partly or wholly furnished with ideas in proportion to the man's use of his sense avenues to bring in ideas from outside himself. the doors of the mind swing inward most readily when the new mental furniture brought along a sense avenue matches the ideas already in the mind center. doubtless the young man who lost the interest of a great financier by wearing a soft collar would have been able to hold it if he had dressed according to his prospect's ideas. [sidenote: one likable thing helps] _if there is one thing about you that another man dislikes, it disproportionately tinges his entire attitude of mind toward you. on the other hand, if you have one especially likable feature, it tends to lessen the disagreeable impression of things about you that the other man does not like._ so, when you come to a prospect as a salesman of your best self and have gained his attention, avoid making disagreeable suggestions to his mind, and have at your command a number of sense appeals you are sure he will like. you certainly will secure his interest if you follow this selling process. to win his interest you need not induce your prospect to like you _all through_ or in _every respect_. if he likes but one thing about you at first, he will be interested enough to give you the chance to develop more interest. _the interest that produces the fruit of acceptance is often a growth from only one seed sown by the salesman of ideas_. [sidenote: avoid over-emphasis] at this stage of the selling process it is not wise to plunge ahead fast. do not go to the _extreme_ on any subject that you find is interesting to your prospect. his interest may be mild, and he might be prejudiced if you seem to display excessive concern about something that he considers of minor importance. i recall the experience of a man who was complimented on keeping an appointment to the minute. he _over-emphasized_ the virtue of punctuality and irritated his prospect, who was not always on time himself. the job went to another applicant. [sidenote: moderate attitude] _be moderate_ in your attitude when you work to secure the beginning of interest, lest you raise an obstacle in your path. until you are sure you have won a considerable degree of interest, you cannot lead strongly in any direction without running the risk of losing some of the advantages you have gained. therefore at the interest stage proceed warily. "watch your step." [sidenote: hobbies] be especially careful not to gush over a hobby of your prospect, in which his interest may not be so great as you suppose. _hobbies are dangerous_. don't harp on one. it requires consummate art to show enthusiasm about another man's hobby without arousing his suspicions regarding your sincerity. [sidenote: art of knocking and winning a welcome] throughout the various steps of the selling process, salesmanship is an _art_. the art of knocking at the door of opportunity and of winning the invitation to come in lies in _making favorable out-of-the-ordinary impressions in unusual ways_. the salesman himself, his methods of presenting his services for sale, and his qualifications--all should stand out distinctly, and make impressions of his individuality. he should not seem like a common applicant for a position, but should suggest to the prospective employer that he is a man of uncommon characteristics and especial capability. [sidenote: the process and effects] that is the way to make a good impression. such an impression of an extraordinary personality first affords pleasure, then excites a degree of admiration, and next arouses a certain amount of curiosity that is nearly akin to interest. if you please your prospect in your initial impression on him, he will like you and begin to feel _personal concern_ about your application. [sidenote: analyze, discriminate, restrict] in order to qualify yourself for taking this step of the selling process effectively hereafter, analyze the impressions you make now. discriminatively select the good and bad details. then restrict your future practice in perfecting the art of inducing interest, to the development and use of your pleasing qualities only. [sidenote: the interesting opening] most men begin an interview with a prospective employer indefinitely or in merely general terms. naturally they confront a wall of non-interest. you have come, remember, on a mission of service. please at once by presenting the idea that you know a particular service which is lacking and which you can supply. break the ice of strangeness between you and your prospect by an appeal first to his human side through a smile of _genuine friendliness_ and by looking straight into his eyes so that he can see into your heart. then in a business-like way get right down to business without hesitation. show enthusiasm, which is contagious if not overdone. base your enthusiasm on real optimism. indicate temperamental youthfulness in vigor and courage. say something original--something strong, maybe a little startling; but it must be self-evidently true. by all means avoid anything that suggests parrot talk or indefinite thought. do not expect the other man to listen with interest to a statement proceeding from premise to conclusion. [sidenote: headlines] _use headlines prominently and often_ to summarize the body of your proposal. headlines attract your attention and induce your interest in particular newspaper items. employ headline statements for the same purpose in selling the idea of your capabilities; just as surely you will get attention and interest. a noted sales manager who had been earning a large salary made up his mind that satisfying success for him was to be gained only through a business in which he would be partly an owner instead of just an employee. he called together a group of financiers and introduced his purpose by saying to them, "gentlemen, i have an idea in which i have so much confidence that i will resign my $ , a year job to develop it. i want to explain it to you and to have your co-operation in financing a project i have worked out." his headline statement secured instant interest, of course. _there is something about yourself or your capabilities that you can put into headlines._ in forcible, vivid language you can strike some senses of your prospects. think of headline statements about your services. write them out in advance. you may be certain they will produce the same psychological effect as headlines in the newspapers. [sidenote: sense doors always open] _use the sense avenues_ to introduce agreeable suggestions into your prospect's mind centers of attention and interest. then you will be employing the _unusual_ methods of a master salesman, who devises ways of using every possible sense appeal. _the sense doors are always open. they are held open by the subconscious mind. if you understand your way through them there will be no doubt about the effectiveness of your knock at the door of opportunity, or about getting an invitation for your ideas to enter the mind of the other man._ chapter ix _getting yourself wanted_ [sidenote: show a need for your services] a great many salesmen mistakenly believe that if they can interest a prospect thoroughly in their goods, he is almost sure to buy. when this stage is reached, they think they only need to keep his interest growing to close the sale. if, instead, it drags on interminably, they are utterly at a loss regarding what _more_ they should do to secure the order. do not fall into a similar error when selling true ideas of your best capabilities. not only is it necessary that you induce your prospective employer's _interest_ in your personal qualifications, but you need to make him realize there is a _present lack_ in his business which you can fill to his satisfaction. _you must get yourself wanted._ you might make an excellent first impression on the man you have chosen as your future chief. he might listen attentively to your presentation of ideas, and question you so interestedly that you would expect him to say at any moment, "all right. the job is yours." then, instead of engaging your services, he might remark, "i'll keep your name on file." or he might say, "i know a man who probably could use you. i'll give you a note to him." you would win a cordial farewell handshake from your prospect, but not an acceptance of your proposal to work with him. you would leave without the job. _your failure would be due to your inability to get yourself sufficiently wanted_. [sidenote: see yourself through your prospect's eyes] now imagine yourself in the place of this employer. see your application through his eyes. unless you can look at yourself from the prospect's viewpoint, you may not comprehend your deficiency in salesmanship. the employer upon whom you called said to himself while you were trying to sell your services, "here is a very attractive man. he presents an interesting proposition. but i have no real need for such an employee; therefore it would be poor business for me to engage him, much as i should like to do so. i am sorry that at present i have no place for him in my organization. he's a man i'd like to keep track of, so i'll file his name and address for possible future reference. meanwhile i'll give him a note to my friend smith. i hate to turn him down cold; he's such a fine man." evidently the employer did not feel a _lack_ in his own business. you failed to make him realize any _need_ for your services. [sidenote: proving a need] contrast with this illustration the case of an efficiency engineer who secured his chance to overhaul a factory by demonstrating to a manufacturer that he needed a new order-checking system. the engineer "beat" the old system and brought to the manufacturer's office a lot of goods he had secured that could not be checked. his salesmanship compelled attention, induced thorough interest, and proved there was a hole that should be filled. when the lack was shown convincingly, the manufacturer wanted it satisfied. the sale of the engineer's services was quickly closed. [sidenote: getting yourself wanted is only one step ahead] do not jump to the conclusion that you are sure of the job you desire, just as soon as you get yourself wanted. you are not yet at the end of the selling process. the prospect has only been conducted successfully another step forward toward your goal. _the moment after he realizes the lack in his business, he is apt to question most critically your qualifications for filling it._ [sidenote: analysis naturally follows desire] _as soon as a man begins to feel a real tug of desire for anything, he examines it with new, increased interest to make sure there isn't something the matter with it._ the suit of clothes that only induces his interest in a shop window is passed by after a look. however, if he says to himself, "that's the kind of suit i want," he goes in and examines the workmanship and the cloth, in search of faults. the salesman may need to overcome certain objections of his prospect before the order can be secured. but we have not reached the objections stage of the uncompleted sale. that is the subject of the next chapter. let us retrace our steps to study the essence of the art of getting yourself wanted. [sidenote: two-part process of getting yourself wanted] there are two parts to the process. first, you must show the prospect what he lacks; that in his business there is _an unoccupied opportunity for such services as you believe you are capable of rendering to his benefit and satisfaction_. second, you need to _picture yourself filling the place and giving the service_; to show him imaginatively _your qualifications at work in his business_. [sidenote: sincerity of service purpose] of course it is primarily necessary that you believe in your own capability, and in the value to the other man of the qualities you have brought to him for sale. unless you have this feeling yourself, you will not be likely to draw out his reciprocating desire for your services. you are not dealing now with his mind. _desire proceeds from the heart. it is emotional, not mental_. the least suspicion of your insincerity would check your prospect's feeling that he wants you as an employee. you must feel that you have come with a purpose of genuine service, and you must draw out his similar feeling. [sidenote: desire comes out of the heart] when you knocked at the door of your prospect's mind, and when you sought to induce his welcome for your ideas, your object was to get him to take your thoughts _into_ his head. the line of action is _reversed_ at the desire stage of the selling process. until now _you_ have been the moving party. you have been getting yourself and your ideas into his consciousness. but while attention and interest are _receptive_ processes, the emotion of genuine desire starts with an _outward moving impulse from the prospect_. it isn't enough that he open his heart and let you enter, as he has admitted your ideas to his mind. _if he really wants you, his feeling of desire will come out after you_. [sidenote: service value is appreciated] you have revealed to your prospect a lack in his business, and have pictured yourself filling it to his satisfaction. you have done him a double service. it is human nature to _appreciate_ such a genuine service, and to _want more_ like it. the first service is accepted with appreciation, but when the square man wants more _he makes a move to get it, and expects to pay for it_. as soon as you have shown the lack and your ability to fill it, and have pictured yourself "on the job," it will be natural for your prospect to want you there in fact. the colored porter who washed the windows and scrubbed floors in the general offices of a manufacturing corporation was ambitious to rise in the social scale and to earn a larger salary. one evening he went to the private office of the president, and presented for sale an idea of his capability for a different job. [sidenote: official welcomer wanted] "boss," he began, "you-all ain't got nobody dere to de front doah to make folks feel welcome-like when dey comes in heah. down in virginny my ol' gran-pap useter weah a dress suit ever' day an' jist stan' in de front hall of his ol' massa's house, a-waitin' to bow an' smile to comp'ny whad'd come in. if you'll jist rent me one o' dem dar suits, boss, i could stan' out in the front office an' make folks feel we wuz glad to see 'um, lak' mah gran'pap did. when ennybody comes heah now, dey ain't nobody pays much 'tention to 'um. you'd orter git somebody on dat job, boss; an' i reckon i'm jist 'bout cut out foh it, suh." the colored man compelled attention by presenting himself at the door of the sanctum. he induced interest in his proposal. then, in addition, _he pointed out a lack and that he could fill it_. immediately the president _visioned_ the old darkey as an official welcomer, and _wanted_ him. _he reached right out for the service offered_. the sale was closed at once, and the colored man shone in his new glories within a week. [sidenote: conflict of heart and mind] often a man desires with his heart things that his mind does not approve. therefore when you work to get yourself wanted, _appeal to the heart of your prospect, rather than to his mind_. then if _his_ mind raises objections to his desire for your services, _your_ mind at a later stage of the selling process will overcome or get around his mental opposition. when the time for that step arrives, _his heart_ will already have been won as _your ally_, and will help you dispose of the objections _his mind_ has raised. [sidenote: get yourself liked] as a preliminary to getting yourself wanted, get yourself _liked_. make such an impression, do and say such things, as will draw out of the heart of your prospect _a friendly feeling_ for you. you know of people who have been boosted to notable successes because influential men took personal interest in their advancement. i recall an office boy who was always ready to perform little extra services. he held his employer's overcoat one day, and the boss rather absent-mindedly handed him a tip. the boy shook his head and declined the dime. "i didn't do that for a tip. you always treat me fine, and i just like to show you i appreciate it." the boy's _heart had spoken_, and the employer's _heart responded at once with an especial liking_ for the lad. the seed of personal interest having been planted in the heart of the president, his liking grew. the boy was advanced to better and better positions. he made good on his merits, but he was helped very much because his employer _wanted_ him to succeed. [sidenote: the common heart of man] reference has previously been made to the fundamental likeness of all men at heart and to their differences in mind. send out with your voice an appeal to only the _minds_ of your audience--read a table of statistics, for example--and it will affect all your hearers _differently, depending on the mental characteristics of each individual_. but tell a story of great courage, of self-sacrifice, of love--_the same fundamental effect_ will be produced on all the _hearts_ in the audience; though, of course, the various individuals will respond with _different degrees of emotional intensity_. as has been said before, in order to look into the heart of another man you need but see clearly into your own. there you will find all the emotions of human nature, no matter how you may differ from other men in mentality. hence if you would prompt the heart of another man to want your services, just _do the things he would need to do to win your liking for him_. imagine the cases reversed, and be guided in your selling process by what you see. [sidenote: popular men] to look at this step from another angle--_if you would be likable, you must find other men likable_. if you like people only within a limited range, you will similarly narrow your own likableness. if, however, you genuinely like all men--like them for their faults and frailties as well as for their merits--you will appeal to the intuitive heart of any other man. you will draw out his liking for you because _the magnetic power of your own heart will not be restricted_ to pulling your way the friendly feelings of only a few people. instead, you will be a "popular" man, a man who is _generally_ well liked. you meet certain men whom you like at sight. you desire further acquaintance, or friendship with them. but these men have not prepared themselves to suit _you_ in particular. most _other_ people who meet them have the _same feeling_ toward them that you experience. the men you like at sight, and who make friends wherever they go have developed in themselves _feelings of friendliness for all men_. as like breeds like, liking draws liking. [sidenote: artificial methods never deceive the heart] if you try to develop particular traits, only because you believe they will attract other men to you, you will not make your nature likable. such _artificial methods_ of making yourself attractive _never deceive heart intuitions_. you will not become popular by proceeding _selfishly_. but if you develop within yourself a heartfelt interest in your fellow men, if you are full of genuine desire to serve them with your friendship, _you will attract the liking of nearly all the people you meet_. they will want to know you better and to be your friends. [sidenote: no insulation against human magnetism] there is "no sich critter" as a natural grouch. a man who has that reputation is _repressing his natural emotions_--that is all. he does not express his true feelings. he attempts to deny that he has them. _but they are inside him, and you can pull them toward you_ if you bring your likableness to bear upon his heart. he will feel the tug, and will be drawn to you by your magnetic power. _there is no insulation that can prevent the pull of human magnetism_. so treat the crab with a feeling of real liking for the human nature inside, and don't be discouraged by his shell. be more than ordinarily likable when you have to deal with a surly prospect. exert all the magnetism you have. he will feel drawn to you. you will get yourself wanted. j. pierpont morgan, senior, was noted for being unapproachable. but it is said that he took a great liking to a certain newsboy who never acted afraid of him and who treated him as an ordinary mortal. this gamin always had a cheery word for everybody. that he made no exception in mr. morgan's case won the heart of the austere financier, who helped the boy to get an education and to start in business. [sidenote: do not over-sell likability] the emphasis placed on the importance of likableness as the _principal_ factor in getting yourself wanted may have made you forget the _primary_ necessity of showing your prospect _a real lack in his business, and that you are capable of filling it_. it is possible to attract an employer's liking for you, whether he has a place for you or not. but his liking will do you no good unless you can also make him see he has a need for you. _success is not to be won by getting in where you are not wanted, however likable you may be_. you must sell the idea of your service _value_ as well as the ideas that your services would be _liked_. you _cannot over-develop_ the quality of likableness, but you _can over-sell_ it, to the detriment of your own best interest. [sidenote: a winning personality sometimes fails] one of the most conspicuous failures i know is a man who has "a winning personality." times without number his genuine agreeableness has won him fine chances to succeed, but in the positions he has held he has never studied the needs of his employers for other qualities than likability. consequently he has fallen down on all his big chances. today he is just a popular door man for a big department store. his intelligence and his physical ability are so evident that he is an object of pity and wonder as he smiles and bows to customers of the store. undoubtedly if he had studied the different opportunities he has had, and had fitted himself into all the requirements of a particular situation, his winning personality would have helped him higher and higher toward the mountain peaks of success instead of leaving him on an ant hill. [sidenote: three impressions necessary] of course the mind of your prospective employer acts in co-ordination with his heart when you attract him so much that he really wants the service you proffer. he imagines you rendering that service. he thinks what "might be" if you were associated with his business. he paints mental pictures that please him, and he wishes his vision to come true. but when he begins to imagine you rendering service, the picture of your agreeable personality will not be pleasant to him if he sees that he doesn't really need you. _in order to get yourself wanted it is necessary that you show him the lack, and that you can fill it, and that you would be likable when filling it_. if you make these three impressions on the mind and heart of your prospect, your success in your purpose will be assured. you will not fail to get yourself wanted. [sidenote: desire is turning point of the sale] in salesmanship "desire is the determinant of the sale." by this is meant that _when the salesman sufficiently stimulates a real desire in his prospect, he has climbed the highest grade of difficulty_. if he is skillful, the selling process from then on should be comparatively easy sledding. you realize that if you can get yourself wanted by an employer, the matter of landing a job in his business should not be hard. we therefore are considering now _the turning point in the process of selling the true idea of your best capabilities in the right field_. after you get yourself wanted, the odds are no longer against you, but grow increasingly in your favor. if, having succeeded in getting yourself wanted, you then fail in your ultimate purpose, you should blame no one but yourself. [sidenote: the use of tactful suggestion] a very skillful use of _tact and diplomacy_ is necessary to success in pointing out to a prospect something that he lacks, and your capability for filling that lack. a man is apt to resent your "picking flaws" in his business. he is likely to regard you as an egotist if you _assert_ that he needs you. you will not get yourself wanted if you make the impression that you are a critical fault-finder with "the big-head." rather, you should pattern after the example of the professional salesman of goods. in the processes of persuasion and creating desire he employs the arts of _suggestion in preference to making direct statements_. he is a tactful diplomat. learn from his methods, as explained in "the selling process." you have come to a chosen employer, with a real service purpose; but be careful not to _offend_ in your presentation. do not bring him your idea for improving his business as if it were a great discovery you have made. he won't like it if you open his eyes to his lacks in that fashion. you might better suggest that while you have perceived what he needs, you have no doubt he either has seen it already or would have perceived it if his time and attention had not been engrossed by other things. you will be liked if you so present a picture of the lack and of yourself satisfying it. [sidenote: rubbing the prospect the wrong way] _you are apt to get yourself cordially disliked if you rub your prospect's pride in his business the wrong way_. an accountant sought an opportunity to become the auditor for a manufacturing corporation. he had gained considerable "inside knowledge" of the company's lax business methods. but when talking to the president he exaggerated the relative importance of these defects. in his eagerness to impress the executive with the need for an auditor, he over-drew the danger from leaks in the company's accounting system. the president was exasperated. his pride was stung. what had been said reflected on his capability as an executive. so he turned savagely on the accountant. "if we're so rotten as all that," he snarled, "how could we make money and pay dividends? no doubt you are right in your criticisms of our methods. but if i had a man like you around here, continually finding fault and picking everybody and everything to pieces, the whole business would be demoralized. the ideas you have brought to me are worth a thousand dollars, and i'll give you my check for that, but no crepe hanger can work for me." [sidenote: avoid teaching] when you present your capabilities for sale, don't suggest that you think your prospect's business will go to the "demnition bow-wows" if your services are not engaged. _understate the lack and your fitness to fill it_. you may be sure the employer will appreciate fully the value of the new ideas you bring, and the worth of your services. [sidenote: pope's rule] none of us really like "teachers." nowadays the most successful educational methods follow the rule laid down by alexander pope, "men must be taught as if you taught them not; and things unknown proposed as things forgot." do not suggest that you are a "know it all." much less make the impression that the other man does not know. communicate to him the idea that you believe he has overlooked the lack to which you call his attention. with modest confidence present your capabilities. you need not assert in words that you will fill the bill. your prospect can see that. in everything you suggest and say, show that you genuinely like him and his business. manifest sincere admiration. _make him feel that you have come to his office because you especially want to work there. that will make him want you in his service_. use suggestion to increase his desire for you. [sidenote: reduce resistance by suggestion] _direct_ presentation of ideas indicates an intention to inform, to teach, to direct the mind of the other man. every human individual, whether a child or a centenarian, _re-acts in opposition_ to such an effort at instruction. there is something in all of us alike which makes us wish to think and decide for ourselves. hence the value of the art of suggestion in getting yourself wanted. ideas you _suggest_ enter the mind of the other man so unobtrusively that _he does not realize you originated them_. he has no feeling that you intend to influence his mind. consequently he makes no resistance to the suggested ideas. _it never pays to reason when selling an idea; because reasoning invariably brings out a reaction of opposition_. you will not create a desire for your services by presenting them _logically_, or by making an _argument_ regarding your capabilities. one of the greatest students of the human mind assures us that "most persons never perform an act of pure reasoning; but all their acts are the results of imitation, habit, suggestion, or some related form of thinking." [sidenote: three reasons for using suggestion] suggestion is remarkably effective in persuading and in arousing desire because: first, _every "suggested" idea is accepted as absolutely true unless it is contradicted by other ideas already in the mind of the prospect_. this is because the prospect thinks a _suggested_ idea is his. he adopts it and makes it his own. that is, his mind takes the suggestion and interprets it in terms of his own thoughts. of course he believes what he himself thinks. _say_ to a prospective employer that you would particularly like to work in association with him, and he may believe you are "shooting hot air." he will have no such feeling if you tell him details about his business that have especially interested you. _show_ him that you have been studying and observing his methods. give him to understand that you have also investigated other businesses. thus without _saying_ it, you _suggest_ to his mind that you have come to his office because you really would prefer to be employed there. he will believe the suggested idea; though he might have scoffed at the statement. [sidenote: suggestion avoids contradiction] second, _suggestion is effective in persuasion and in arousing desire because suggested ideas which include no comparisons or criticisms very seldom arouse contradictory attitudes of mind_. the suggested idea enters the mind of the other man quietly, unaccompanied by a blare of the trumpet "i tell you." opposing ideas are not aware of its presence until it has supplanted them. _suggest_ to a chosen employer that he _means_ to be up-to-date, and he agrees. if you _say_ his methods are behind the times, he will be apt to defend them instead of following your lead along the line of suggested improvements. [sidenote: suggested ideas tend to action] third, _every suggested idea of action tends to result in the action itself; whereas a direct attempt to secure action is almost sure to result in opposition_. human nature works that way. your prospect, being unconscious that a particular idea of action is suggested to him, does not have his will stimulated to prevent that action. if you come to your prospective employer and _ask_ for the job you want, he will be on the _defensive_. but if you _suggest_ to him that he wants you--that he lacks and needs such services as you present--_he will be impelled to the affirmative action of offering you the job_. [sidenote: selling henry ford] when i was originally engaged by henry ford, it was in the capacity of a public accountant, for an audit of the business of the ford motor company, and later for the installation of an accounting system that would tell accurately every month "where they were at." back in - the ford motor company was not showing any more profits than many other motor car manufacturers organized on similar lines. after i completed my work as an accountant, mr. ford talked with me about taking a permanent position with the company in the capacity of "commercial manager." that title covered responsibility for the distribution of products, advertising, collections, selection of branch managers and their corps of assistants, operation of branch houses, appointment and direction of agents, employment and control of the entire sales force, etc., etc. the position was much broader than that of sales manager, as it included also the accounting and organizing of nearly every department of the business. for several years prior to that time i had sold my services as a public accountant and organizer to many large concerns throughout the country, including twenty-eight different automobile companies. i believed in my ability, not only to organize a selling and distributing force for successfully marketing a standard product, but also to extend that force over a world field and to control it in all the details of its operations, from opening the mail to the declaration and payment of dividends, more efficiently than the average sales or commercial manager. so i had no hesitancy in undertaking the ford job, which, even at that early date, i visualized as culminating in a big one. when i finally engaged my services with the ford motor company on a permanent basis, the business was represented by only a few hundred scattered, unorganized, uncontrolled, and non-directed dealers. my work during the following twelve years was concentrated on developing and enlarging yearly this small hit-or-miss distributing aggregation into a compact force of thousands of well-trained, highly efficient sales and service representatives of the ford motor company. they were all ford "boosters," and by their loyalty and intensive co-operation they "put across the ford" in the big way that today makes the little car so conspicuous everywhere throughout the world. [sidenote: statement avoided suggestion used] note that while my experience with the ford motor company as a public accountant convinced me that what the business needed then was a commercial manager and sales organizer, and i believed myself fitted for the position, i did not make that statement to mr. ford; because it would have been poor salesmanship. he might have thought me entirely qualified to deal with figures, but not so capable of handling sales agents and dealers. so i never _said_ to him that i was the man he needed. but i _suggested_ it by presenting my ideas of how the job should be done. he accepted my ideas as good, and was influenced by the natural suggestion that resulted from them. he told me that he wanted me to become commercial and sales manager. it was the opportunity for success that i most desired. i got myself _wanted_ without having to overcome any _resistance_ in the mind of the man with whom i had chosen to work. [sidenote: negative suggestions] you recognize how true to human nature are incidents of this sort. you know how powerful is the force of _affirmative_ suggestion. but have you appreciated how surely desire is killed by _negative_ suggestions? if you make _displeasing_ impressions, you will get yourself _not_ wanted. therefore you must _be careful to avoid certain things your prospect would not like, just as you should be careful in doing things that are likable_. [sidenote: speak the prospect's language] if your prospecting and sizing up of an employer indicate that he is very painstaking, suggest to him how particular you have been to prepare yourself in knowledge of his needs. if he is a man who weighs ideas carefully, suggest to him your qualities of judgment and decision. perhaps he is characterized by a marked constructive imagination. suggest that you, too, have imaginative power. bring out conspicuously the particular elements of your qualifications that are most likely to _suggest ideas akin to his own_. speak those phrases of the language of suggestion which he best understands, and that are most likely to impress him with _the idea that you and he think alike_. [sidenote: deceptive suggestions] a caution is necessary here. in any suggestion that you make, _convey neither more nor less than the actual truth_ regarding your capabilities. _avoid any possibility of deception_. i recall the case of a young man who quite won the heart of a dignified bank president whose tastes were very quiet. the young man studiously avoided the slightest appearance of flashiness in his dress and manner. he spoke in modulated tones. his movements were subdued. he had exactly the quiet pose that suited his prospective employer. the banker stressed his appreciation of the characteristics manifested by the applicant, and the young man "overdid it" by suggesting that he was _always_ decorous in his manner. the bank president had occasion to entertain a visiting financier who wanted to go to the ball game. a few seats away the young man whose application was being considered rooted boisterously for the home team, unconscious of the contradiction he presented to the suggestions he had made in the banker's private office. the new impression was made more disagreeable because the boisterous behavior suggested to the banker that the young man had not conveyed a true idea of himself previously. when he came next morning for the answer to his application, he received a cold "no." the young man really was not boisterous except on the rare occasions when he let off steam, as at a ball game. if he had conveyed the _truthful_ impression that he was _nearly always_ quiet, and had taken pains to admit that _occasionally_ he "let loose," but only in proper surroundings, he would not have killed his chances by the negative suggestion of untruthfulness. [sidenote: motive of suggestion] after all it is your _motive_ that determines the right or wrong use of suggestion in getting yourself wanted. if you keep carefully in mind a purpose to _suggest less instead of more than the truth_ about your capabilities, you need not fear that you will offend by over-drawing the picture of your real self. if _your_ motive is wrong, it will lower the quality of _your_ manhood. if you suggest a wrong motive to the _other_ man, the effect is to lower _his_ manhood qualities in considering you. _it is particularly important not to stimulate a motive that may afterward operate to your detriment_. [sidenote: over-suggestion of ability] i know a young man who was so eager to show his willingness to work that he suggested absolute tirelessness. his employer, though he appreciated what this young man did, kept overloading him. finally the employee broke down and made a serious mistake. he was unjustly dismissed from service because _he had encouraged his employer to depend on him altogether too much, and disappointment resulted_. do not pretend a higher degree of ability than you possess. attempt no more than you can do well. you will succeed in getting yourself wanted if you _manifest promise of growth_ in capability. if you are a sapling, do not pose as a full grown tree of knowledge. [sidenote: selling out to competitor] sometimes it happens that a man can present his capabilities for sale and appear especially desirable to another man because he possesses certain knowledge the employer would like to have. maybe you have sought to gain your chance by carrying to a competitor of your former employer the latter's secrets. if you come with the suggestion that you will sell out, you are offering a service that does not command full respect, and you are appealing only to the _lower motives_ of your prospect. you do not thereby get _yourself_ wanted. he wants _what you know_. what you have learned fairly by working for one man, you have a right to sell fairly to another man, of course. but do not suggest that this special knowledge is the _principal element_ of your desirability. suggest, rather, that it is _only incidental to your all-around fitness_ for the job you want. [sidenote: self-respect] use what you know without pandering to the lower motives of your new employer. impel him to like you for what you _are_, and not merely for what you _bring_. open his eyes to your _better_ nature, not to the _worst_ side of you. _he will see in you the better qualities of himself and appreciate them_. have your own motives right; then there will be no danger that you will appeal to the wrong motives of the other man. of course you must have the highest respect for your own motives. this necessitates high character. _you must be honest in the very structure of your being_. you need, too, _absolute faith in yourself and in your proposition_, and faith in the _desirability_ of your service to the other man. finally, you must be _consecrated_ to the motive of rendering him _service_. [sidenote: postpone criticism until desire is stimulated] it is poor salesmanship to let your prospect begin to analyze your faults _until you have made yourself thoroughly pleasing_ to him. before you complete the selling process you should admit your own faults, rather than let him discover them. _but skillfully postpone this step until you get yourself wanted._ then your prospect will be inclined to _co-operate_ in disposing of objections to you; whereas _if criticisms arise too soon in the selling process they may prevent him from liking you thoroughly, and may check your purpose before you get yourself wanted_. [sidenote: right time to "face the music"] a merchant received an application for employment in his private office from a young man who created so pleasing an impression that the employer decided to make him his secretary. he outlined his ideas to the applicant, who entered into them most enthusiastically; thereby increasing the liking of his prospective employer for him. then the young man sat up straight in his chair, looked the merchant squarely in the eye, and said, "no one in this city knows it, but when i was eighteen years old i stole ten dollars and was sentenced to the reform school. that was seven years ago. i never have done anything dishonest since, and i never will again. but you have a right to know my whole record before you employ me in a position of such trust." if the candidate had confessed his blemished record _before_ making himself thoroughly desirable, it is practically certain that he would not have won the place. he got it because _he handled the objection after instead of before creating the desire_ for his services. [sidenote: concentrate on suggesting qualifications] we shall consider in the next chapter how to meet and handle objections, how to deal with your faults. but as we postpone our study of that step in the selling process; so should you postpone consideration of your faults and shortcomings, until you get yourself wanted. do not dodge direct questions, but courteously request that you be permitted to answer them a little later. _at this stage_ of selling the true idea of your best capabilities _concentrate upon the moderate, truthful suggestion of your qualifications_. [sidenote: gaining prospect's confidence] the first result to be desired in selling is the _confidence of the buyer_. use all your manly qualities to win this confidence _deservedly_. then when you honestly admit your faults and shortcomings, you will be aided to win out in the end by the confidence you have already inspired in the other man. very often the applicant for a position fails to get it because he merely presents the _abstract_ idea that his services are for sale. _he does not picture himself in actual service_. the presentation of abstract ideas is an appeal only to the _interest_ or mind side of the other man. the presentation to his imagination must go _beyond_ his interest, if his _heart desire_ for the services is to be secured. therefore it is highly important to your success in getting yourself wanted that you plan how you actually would serve on the job, and when you are talking with your prospective employer, _speak as if you were at work_. [sidenote: picture yourself at work] if you imagine yourself fitted into a particular job, and _show yourself there to the mind's eye_ of your prospect, he will have to go through the mental process of _getting you out_ of the imaginary job. that will be much harder for him than it would have been to _keep you out_ in the first place. if you merely present the services you _could_ render, and don't picture yourself as _actually rendering_ them, you haven't won even the imaginary job. _but if you do paint yourself into a chosen place, and can make your prospect see you in that position, the suggestion will impel him to copy imagination with actuality. he will consider you as if you were on the job._ evidently when you have won this advantage, he will be inclined to want to keep you at work, unless you do something or manifest some quality that makes you undesirable. [sidenote: no doubt about success] _getting yourself wanted is a process that can be brought to a successful conclusion with absolute certainty._ it is not difficult to understand human nature if you are willing to see clearly into yourself. it is only necessary, then, that you subordinate your personality to the personality of the other man. _learn what he wants, and avoid showing him that you want something from him. show him instead that you can supply what he lacks_. complete and round out the process by suggesting the particular qualities in yourself that your prospecting and size-up have indicated to be the qualities _he especially likes_. he will want you then. he can't help it. chapter x _obstacles in your way_ [sidenote: mountain climbing] there is no great mountain in the world that has a natural, smooth road with an easy grade all the way to the top. mountain climbing requires some hard work. it involves getting around, or going over, or removing many obstacles that block the path upward. you will encounter similar difficulties, obstacles, and resistance on your way to success. _if you cannot pass them, your ambition will be defeated._ you will quit the climb, discouraged; or will be driven back, a failure. in order to _assure_ your success you must now ascertain dependable ways to conquer obstacles. this advance knowledge will make them seem less formidable. since you will have definite plans for dealing with the difficulties that may obstruct your path, you will not feel hopelessly blocked when you face them. [sidenote: knowing how] no great mountain has ever been scaled by a novice ignorant of the science, and unskilled in the art of climbing to supreme heights. but an expert mountaineer learns from mastering one peak something about how to climb others. he develops ability to conquer any and all obstacles he may meet. he proves repeatedly that what would be impossible to a novice is a _certainty_ to him. he starts the most difficult ascent with absolute confidence that he will gain the top. [sidenote: obstacles and resistance] _you likewise can feel sure of your ability to reach the highest peaks of success_. in preceding chapters you have been shown how to take advantage of the _easiest_ way up by following the guide marks of salesmanship at every step. now we are to study the obstacles you will encounter, in particular the objections the prospect may raise to frustrate your purpose. at this stage of the selling process you will be like a mountaineer fighting in the alps. it will probably be necessary that you overcome or evade considerable human resistance while you are climbing toward your goal. let us assume that you have already gained a chance to sell your capabilities to the particular man through whom you expect to succeed. he has heeded your knock and welcomed you into his interest. you have made such a presentation of your desirability and service value that he wants you to be associated with him. but now it will be natural for him to begin a critical analysis, seeking whatever faults he can discover or imagine in you or your proposition. _your success or failure in your ultimate purpose is likely to depend on how you handle the criticisms he raises._ therefore it is of vital importance that you learn in advance _sure ways to gain your goal despite normal opposition._ [sidenote: objections are natural] recognize first that it is _natural_ for your prospect to raise objections, whether he is favorably impressed or not. his resistance to your purpose may be only a _precaution_. perhaps it does not indicate _opposition_ at all. he may want you to convince him you are all right; so that he will feel entire confidence in his own judgment when he finally does as you wish. or he may object for no other purpose than to test you thoroughly. if this is the case, his sympathies will all be with you while you are dealing with the obstacles he puts in your way. _evidently objections of this sort should not be handled the same as the objections of opposition._ it is necessary that you distinguish between the two kinds and that _when dealing with each specific objection you determine in your own mind what is its source_. there should be nothing in your method of handling the obstacle that might _antagonize_ your prospect. you should take fullest advantage of his every inclination to _cooperate_ with you in his thoughts and feelings. he may be "pulling for" you strongly when he seems to be "bucking" the hardest. [sidenote: objection is favorable sign] _an objection really is a favorable sign._ if you call upon a prospective employer who, after hearing your presentation, begins to find fault with it and with you, or tries to evade your proposal, you may be sure that you have carried him along a considerable distance toward the accomplishment of your purpose. _he objects or evades because he is on the defensive._ "you have him going." he is wary, and so takes measures for self-protection. _the moment your prospect begins to raise objections in your way, he indicates that he is not entirely comfortable in his own mind about escaping from your salesmanship._ he has felt the tug of desire; but he does not feel sure yet that you deserve his confidence, or else he has a pretty positive idea that in this matter of your possible employment his interests and yours are different. he is looking out for himself. [sidenote: welcome opportunity to strengthen yourself] however, you have come with a _true service_ purpose. you believe he _needs_ you; that you can _satisfy a lack_ in his business. you feel your interests and his are alike, not different. you know that you have no intention "to put anything over on him." you want your prospect to be absolutely satisfied with what you propose. therefore you should welcome every chance to convince his mind and win his confidence. _an objection affords you an opportunity to overcome it, and so both to strengthen your proposition and to weaken his resistance._ [sidenote: don't set up straw men to knock down] _you_ should not, however, bring up objections that the _prospect_ has not raised in his own mind. that would be putting up a straw man and knocking him down, which is profitless and unconvincing. of course you must clear the path when there is no other way to proceed, but do not block it yourself. sometimes it will not be advisable to clear the path. if you can get around a difficulty you see, without attracting your prospect's attention to it, you will be wise to go some indirect way to your goal. suppose, for example, that you know the salary you want is higher than your prospect has been accustomed to pay. it will be good salesmanship for you not to refer to the amount you have in mind, until after you have carried him along with you to consider the profits he will make from engaging your services. since you plan to show him that these profits will pay your salary, you will be wise to avoid the matter of your compensation until you have approached nearer to the successful conclusion of your selling process. [sidenote: avoid troubles by forethought] _almost every difficulty and opposition you are likely to encounter can be anticipated._ don't wait until you come face to face with an obstruction in the way of success. let forethought carry you imaginatively into just such a situation. _think yourself out of a possible difficulty before you actually get into it._ then you can win the respect of your prospect by proving on the spot that you are not a man who can be dodged or blocked, or cornered. _every time you pass an obstacle, you will be a long step nearer to success_ in selling your services. suppose an employer says to you, "you are too young. you have had no experience in this line of work." you cannot _deny_ your youth and you should not _defend_ it as if it were a fault. nor can you claim experience you have not had. but it is unnecessary for you to indicate any feeling that inexperience is a demerit. an ordinary applicant might be discomfited by such resistance to his purpose. if you are a skillful salesman, you will be prepared to deal with this very obstacle and will turn it to good account. you can say at once: [sidenote: value of adaptability] "because i am young, i am adaptable to your methods, instead of being set in ways that might differ from yours. true, i am not experienced. therefore, i haven't any wrong ideas to unlearn. think of me as raw material that won't have to be re-made, and that can be easily shaped as you want to form it. i realize it will take some work on your part, _but the product will be satisfactory to you when it is done_. it seems to me that the only question involved is whether or not i would make it worth your while to do the work on me. the fact that i have come to you of my own choice proves i really want to be employed here. i assure you now that i will make my services worth any pains you take to teach me your methods, and i will be just as eager to remain as i am to start." [sidenote: use objection as a sales help] analyze this method of dealing with any particular obstacle. _plan to get rid of the obstruction completely, leaving the way ahead smoothed._ when the objection of the prospect is so skillfully disposed of, his _desire_ for your services is stimulated. he _wants you more, because he likes you better_ now that you have cleared away the obstacle. thus you have utilized the objection as a _help_ in selling yourself successfully. just so a mountain climber uses the rocks he encounters as holding places to help him climb higher. your prospect may say that he has no need for such services as you offer. he may state reasons why you are not needed in his business. _but if you have prepared yourself thoroughly, each disclaimer of his lack, every suggestion of an objection, will give you an opportunity to prove in some specific way your service value to him._ the president of a manufacturing company had an ironclad rule that all positions in his business were to be filled by promotion. he never hired a new employee except to start at the bottom. a competent young office man applied for a situation. he was turned down flatly. the company's policy was quoted as the reason. he met this obstacle in a new way. [sidenote: making an exception] "one of the principal reasons i came to you, mr. blank, is that i hope to benefit from your rule myself. i want to get into a company where i will know that the way to advancement is sure without going outside for my chance. but by my experience in other employment i have developed certain capabilities that would warrant you in making an exception to your rule, in my case. "you do not audit your own books. yet you have been self-auditing your methods of office operation. another thought i want to suggest. you know that in the royal families of europe the stock runs down because they don't get in fresh blood. i would not advocate a change in your general policy. but you have already made an exception to your rule in having your books checked by a public accountant whom you engage by the year for that purpose. "i propose to bring in the outside viewpoint for the study of your office system, with the expectation of suggesting possible improvements. i want to introduce fresh blood, and yet to become part of your organization family. it is sound business for you to engage me because i am from the outside. you need an auditor of your operations as much as an auditor of your accounts." this view of the matter had never been presented before to the employer. it won him over to the proposal. the new man broke in where every preceding applicant had failed. [sidenote: apparent objections] thus far we have considered _actual_ obstructions, _real_ blocks in the salesman's way. now let us turn our attention briefly to obstacles that are only _apparent_, to resistance that is but a _feint_. your prospect may try to put you off. or perhaps he will attempt to evade uttering a downright refusal, and instead will make some sort of an excuse for not doing what you wish. if you dignify these _artificial_ or merely _apparent_ obstacles by treating them as _real obstructions_, you will hinder your own progress toward success. [sidenote: danger of losing ground gained] you have secured your chance to present your services for purchase. you have made real progress toward the successful accomplishment of your ultimate purpose. _nearly always if you let yourself be put off for any reason, without making a definite advance toward your final goal, you will lose some of the ground already gained._ when your prospect attempts to evade the issue by making an excuse or by postponing further consideration of the subject, _he tacitly admits that your position is strong_. but if you have to start the selling process all over again at another time, if you let him put you off when your position is strong, _you will be weaker when you attempt to resume your sale_. [sidenote: do one of two things] should you be put off, do one of two things. _either disregard the evasion entirely and go straight ahead with your selling process_; or, if you consent to the postponement or evasion, _take advantage of your strategical position of strength to make a definite advance toward the accomplishment of your purpose_. for examples of the two methods let us consider suppositious cases. [sidenote: driving ahead] your prospective employer might say, "i'll think over your application. come in next week and i'll let you know my decision." you can handle this evasion effectively by going directly ahead and proposing, "i am perfectly willing that you should think over my usefulness to you, but during the week you are considering me for future employment, let me actually work on the job. if you decide that you don't want to keep me, tell me so at the end of the week and there will be no charge for my time." _you will be driving straight toward your goal, not even pausing when he attempts to put you off._ [sidenote: strengthening position] this effort at evasion or postponement might be handled in a different way. you could say to the prospective employer, "very well. i will return in a week for your decision. meanwhile i will submit some additional references as to my character and energy. i ask also that you permit me to save a week instead of wasting it. i should like your permission to spend this next week in your office, studying the job. then if you decide to employ me, as i believe you will, i will be already broken in." such a proposal is hard to refuse. while you would consent to the postponement or evasion of decision, _you would be strengthening your own position_. [sidenote: make progress] _in one way or the other you can make progress._ either you can brush the evasion aside and carry your prospect through to the closing stage of the sale of your services, or you can close an intermediate sale on the spot, as in the second illustration. [sidenote: forcing real objection] _do not, therefore, treat evasions and postponements as real obstacles._ even in case you cannot induce your prospect to go ahead with you, or close an intermediate sale, _you can avoid being blocked_ by his attempt to put you off. when he sees that he cannot get rid of you by his subterfuge, he will be forced to make a _real_ objection. he will not give you another weak excuse after you have disposed of his first attempt to evade. when he tries to block you by making a real objection, after the failure of his excuse or postponement, he will fall right into your plan of the sale. _you will be all ready for the objection he states._ you will know exactly how to handle it and turn it to good account so that his opposition will be weakened and you will add to your strength. let us suppose your prospect comes out with the flat statement, after you prevent him from putting you off, "no, i have made up my mind not to add any new employees for the present." he thinks that settles the question. in reality it affords you a sales opening. you retort, "your attitude is perfectly right. you do not want to add to expense. i should feel the same way myself, were i in your position. however, i am not going to be an _expense_. i shall be a _money-maker._ i know you have no objections to increasing your profits." his opposition would have given you your lead. [sidenote: unsound objection] a man applied for a position in a bank. business in general was dull; so the president tried to put him off. the position sought offered any one filling it opportunities to develop increased business for the bank along certain lines. thus the objection of dull times was plainly _unsound_. the applicant felt, however, that it would be a mistake to urge very strongly his ideas about increasing the business. he believed the president would not accept them if fully stated. so the young man met the attempted evasion by drawing the banker on to a step that committed him only to the _beginning_ of the program outlined. "i appreciate that business is not rushing at present," he said. "therefore you will have time to study how i propose to develop some new business. if you were very busy, you would not be able to investigate my plan thoroughly. you may not care to put it into effect just now, but while you have comparative leisure let me give you an illustration of ways in which my idea can be worked out. "it is unnecessary to discuss salary or a definite engagement at present, if you prefer to wait awhile. but with your permission i should like to come in here for a month and demonstrate a few of my ideas in actual practice. at the end of that time i will show you a chart of the results." [sidenote: evasion turned to selling aid] _the evasion was turned into a selling aid_. the banker, naturally desirous of making additional profits, could not very well turn down such a proposal. he would have felt a little ashamed to accept services without paying for them. therefore he gave the applicant a chance and agreed to pay him a moderate salary from the beginning. the new man went to work immediately, and very soon demonstrated such value that his compensation was increased to an entirely satisfactory amount. [sidenote: don't fight back] already in this chapter you have been warned against handling an objection in such a way that the natural antagonism of the man who makes it will be increased by your method of dealing with his opposition. when he resists you, or puts obstructions in your way, you of course must take the measures that are necessary to enable you to proceed with your purpose, notwithstanding the obstacles he raises. _but if he acts antagonistic, be careful not to appear to fight back._ avoid making the impression that you regard him as an _opponent_. your difficulty in closing the sale will be lessened if you keep him from feeling at any time that he needs to adopt measures of _self-protection_ against you. [sidenote: diplomacy and tact] _when your progress is obstructed, it is necessary that you use a very high degree of diplomacy and tact._ this will carry you much farther toward your purpose than any manifestation of naked force. of course you must meet many objections squarely. you will encounter obstructions that cannot be avoided, opposition that will not step aside. there will be occasions when it will be necessary for you to employ force. but you can always conceal "the iron hand in the velvet glove" if you exert your force in _tones_ and with _gestures_ or _movements_, rather than by making _word_ statements. _the art of suggestion can be employed as effectively at the objection stage as at any other step of the selling process._ let us assume that you are a greenhorn. but you believe yourself capable of filling a certain position. you apply for it. your prospective employer questions your capability because you lack experience. he refuses your application, and declares he is unwilling to run the risk of having you make mistakes that might be expensive to him. [sidenote: using suggestion instead of statement] you know that you are very careful, and that you would not take any important action on your own responsibility if you were in doubt whether or not you were right. you feel that his objection is unsound; that he is exaggerating caution. but it would certainly be a mistake for you to say, "nonsense!" that would make him bristle. of course you want to show him that you do not take his objections seriously. you can make the right impression by smiling at his statement. you can reinforce the effect of your smile by making a horizontal gesture with your hand. if you shake your head slightly, force will be added to your denial of incapacity or rashness. it may not be necessary for you to _say_ anything. possibly your suggestion will be stronger if you simply ignore the point he has raised against you. usually, however, in such a case it is best to employ a few quiet words in disposing of the objection; _though chief reliance should be placed on the suggested meaning behind the statement_. [sidenote: your stake in your opportunities] i recall the case of a man who handled an objection of that sort by first smiling while shaking his head and making a gesture of negation, and then said, "i could not lose much for _you_, but if i were reckless or irresponsible i certainly would lose for _myself_ this opportunity that you see i want very much. i have a great deal more at stake than you. you may be sure i shall not risk losing my chance to succeed, by causing you any losses." the tone used was the heart pitch of sincerity, with the final assurance in the deeper tones of power. the tone and the manner of the applicant for the position indicated such strength that the prospect felt the weakness of his objection and did not persist in it. [sidenote: direct and qualified admissions] when you make a _direct admission_ of the point the prospect raises against you, _have a strong answer ready and give it to him at once_. otherwise you will not rid his mind entirely of the objection. in most cases it is preferable to make only an _indirect_ or _qualified_ admission of the point raised. then the objection, not having been strengthened by your full confirmation, can be overcome without the use of much force or power. [sidenote: straight-out agreement with the objection] if your prospective employer says to you, "we are not making any money. i do not intend to put on a new man," diplomacy requires you to admit unequivocally the truth of his assertion that his business is not profitable. he may be exaggerating a temporary condition, but he would take offense if you should question his blunt statement. therefore agree with him, and having prepared the opening with your tact, _introduce to his mind agreeable ideas of satisfying his want for profits_. you might say, "i realize business is poor. that is one of the reasons i come to you just now. if you were making plenty of money, you would not appreciate the value of my ideas for increasing your profits. the results of the work i propose to do might not be sufficiently conspicuous among other large earnings to attract your especial notice. this period of depression gives me the very opportunity i need to prove to you that i would be a money-maker, and not an expense to you. surely you would like to have me demonstrate that. all i ask is a chance to convince you. judge me by the results." analyze this unequivocal admission of the validity of the objection. such cases can often be handled most effectively by granting the point raised, directly and without any reservations, and then answering the objection in such a way that it is completely removed as an obstruction. this is good salesmanship. [sidenote: indirect admission] suppose, however, you feel the objection of poor business is unsound. let us assume that this prospective employer you are interviewing has a dull season every year. therefore the condition of which he complains is simply normal, and his objection is put forward as an excuse for rejecting your application. _in such a case you do not want to make the obstruction more formidable by fully admitting its validity. yet tact forbids you to deny its soundness._ it will be better salesmanship to recognize indirectly the point raised than it would be to give your full agreement with the objection, as in the above example of an unequivocal admission. you might use such an answer as this: [sidenote: "that is true, but"] "i notice, mr. blank, that you are making some extensive repairs on your factory. though this involves additional expense in your dullest season, you are having the work done now because this is your slackest time. true, your profit showing at present will not be so good as it would be if you did not make the repairs. but the earnings of your business will be improved during your busiest season and you will avoid the extra expense of interrupting your production when it is at the maximum. this, of course, is the time to have your repair work done. it would not be good business to put it off. "my proposal that you engage me now is directly along the line of your own policies. what i would do in your office might be called repair work. your dull season is the time to have it done. i can introduce my efficiency ideas now without disorganizing your operations. then, when you are busiest, the new system will be in perfect working order, for your service." [sidenote: adapt solutions to your own problems] when you study illustrations of the application of basic principles, do not give them merely superficial consideration. _examples are of slight value unless they suggest to you how you should use your imagination to make illustrations of your own in actual practice of the principles._ whatever your need for help in selling your services, and whatever difficulties you may have to overcome or get around, you will find in the pages of these books _cues_ to the methods of certain success. evidently, however, the scope of the series of chapters must be somewhat limited. none of the answers to the major problems of salesmanship are omitted from the contents, _but you must apply and fit the given solutions to your individual necessities_. [sidenote: two bases of objections] turn your thought now to the different bases of objections. it is of the utmost importance that you know whether the obstruction is raised by the _mind_ or by the _heart_ of your prospect. _mental_ resistance can be met and overcome by _ideas_, by points introduced by _your_ mind into the _mind_ of the _other_ man. his _heart_ may not be involved. but if there is "feeling" in his opposition, it is necessary that you displace it with a different _feeling_ toward you and your proposal. the heart of your prospect must be turned from antagonism to friendliness, if it is involved in an objection. therefore when a point is made against you, _decide from the evidence whether the obstacle raised has an emotional or a mental basis_. treat it accordingly. use your own _mind_ principally in dealing with the purely _mental_ objection of the prospect. but depend on drawing out _his heart with yours if his emotions are involved_ in his opposition. [sidenote: mental basis] suppose you have a plan about engaging in a certain business. you have worked it out carefully and are confident that it is "a winner." but you need financial backing. so you go to a man who has money, and apply to him for a loan. he listens to your plan. when you finish explaining, he refuses your request. he uses the mental tone of cold business when he states his reason. "you offer me no security. i am not in the habit of lending money without it." his words and manner indicate that he has listened to your plan without the slightest feeling of sympathy for your purpose. his _emotions_ have not been stirred. he is turning you down simply because his _mind_ is opposed to the form of investment you propose for his money. it would be futile for you to make an _emotional_ appeal to this man, in the hope of getting rid of his _mental_ objection. he would be disagreeably impressed were you to attempt to stir his heart. you cannot offer him the security he has in mind, but you need not be balked for that reason. it is possible for you to make an appeal to his mind only, and to suggest to him ideas of security that he has not considered. "mr. j.p. morgan," you might remind him, "when asked the basis upon which he loaned money, replied, 'character, principally.' i offer you the security that mr. morgan considered most important. you know my reputation is good. you perceive that my plan is sound, and that i have thought it out thoroughly. you do not expect me to lose money. i have proposed to protect you as fully as possible by agreeing in advance that i will take no step until after your approval has been given. therefore, in addition to my character, i am offering you the security of your own mature, sound judgment on all operations. [sidenote: a new idea of security] "don't you believe that my squareness, guided by your advice, would secure you? i have applied for a loan of only ten thousand dollars. you will absolutely control the expenditure of the money. you know, therefore, that at the worst i could not have a large loss. i have offered you life insurance to protect you against the possibility of my death within the next five years. it is altogether improbable that i should have a loss of as much as a thousand dollars in the new business. certainly you have sufficient confidence in my ability and integrity to believe that i could and would repay you a thousand dollars with interest before the expiration of five years. i expect, and you expect, that my venture will prove successful. i have planned a sound business enterprise, free from the dangers of speculation. with the cooperation of your judgment, your loan would be a secure investment. i believe you are now convinced of that." [sidenote: reaching heart through mind] notice that the objection is dealt with powerfully; yet there is no appeal that is aimed away from the prospect's _mind_. for this very reason his sympathy with the proposal is likely to be stimulated. _such salesmanship often has the effect of enlisting the heart of the other man after removing the objection of his mind._ [sidenote: objection on emotional basis] let us assume now that the prospect refuses to make the loan to you because he has been imposed upon before by some one he has backed. he may really want to lend you the money, but his heart has been so embittered by his previous experience that he turns a deaf ear to your proposition. his opposition is based chiefly on feeling. his heart, not his mind, is at the bottom of his refusal of your request for a loan. he would not be reached by the appeal that would be effective with the man in the first example. this second prospect should be addressed something like this: "the experiences you have had hurt you, principally because they have made you lose faith in men. this, not the money involved, was your greatest loss. so long as you have only those experiences to think about, you will be unable to get back your former belief in human nature. you would like to recover it. you would be happy to feel that the men who abused your confidence were exceptions, and not the rule. [sidenote: selling a new feeling] "if you will lend me ten thousand dollars, and i make good my promises to you, your new experience with me will go a long way toward restoring your lost faith in men. it is natural that you should feel embittered, but the taste in your mouth is unpleasant. back me up. i will help you get rid of your bitterness, and will replace it with a glow of satisfaction. you cannot doubt that i will make good. you should not let your old prejudice stand in the way of the gratified feeling you will have when i prove to you that all men are not unworthy of trust. after i justify your confidence you will be happier for the rest of your life." in the illustration the objection is dealt with _emotionally; because its basis is feeling_. no _mental_ appeal is made. the salesmanship in this example is the direct converse of that in the previous illustration. [sidenote: the best rule] usually, however, it is best to counteract objections by making appeals to _both the heart and the mind_ of the objector. in most cases it is safe to assume that his mental opposition involves his feelings to some degree, and it rarely happens that an objection is so purely emotional that the mind of the prospect does not take part in it at all. so the rule of masterly salesmanship is to use neither the appeal to mentality nor the appeal to feeling _exclusively_, but rather to _stress one or the other, while using both_. if the objection appears to be based _principally_ on opposition of _mind_, it is more important to reach into the prospect's _mind_ with the answer than it is to draw out his _heart_; and vice versa. [sidenote: emotional and mental tones] if the thought behind the objection arises principally from _feeling_, it will nearly always be expressed in an _emotive tone_. by this pitch of the prospect's voice you can determine whether he is speaking chiefly from his heart or from his mind. conversely, of course, the _mental_ objection will be pitched in the high "head" tone. one of the most difficult features of dealing with opposition from the other man is uncertainty as to _how much he means_ of what he says and does. it would be a mistake to take his resistance too seriously or too lightly. therefore it will aid your salesmanship a great deal if you are able to discriminate between the mental and the emotional tones in which opposition is expressed. you can reply accordingly. [sidenote: the power pitch] it is almost as important that you recognize _the pitch of power_ when it reenforces the words of objection, and that on the other hand you note when the power tone is _lacking_. in the first case you will need to reply with considerable force, whether you appeal to the mind or the heart of the prospect. but when his objection is stated in a powerless tone, even though it may be accompanied by curtness or bluster, you need not waste much force on your answering appeal to his mentality or his emotions. [sidenote: keep ears alert] the mental tone, as we recall from previous study, is pitched higher than either the tone of feeling or the tone of power. the medium, heart tone is vibrant. it rings with sincerity. the power tone is deep, and most sonorous of the three. _keep your ears alert for these indications_ your prospect will give you unconsciously when he opposes your purpose. the discriminative reading of the tones of objections will greatly reduce the danger of "getting your wires crossed" when you reply. [sidenote: suggest strength without antagonism] if you have to deal with opposition expressed in the tone of power or with gestures of force, you will be safe in concluding that considerable _feeling_ is behind the objection. therefore it will be necessary for you to put _both feeling and power_ into your answer. you should be careful, however, when you meet such resistance, not to make the impression that you are engaged in a contest of power with your prospect. _throughout the selling process avoid any suggestion that you are fighting back._ use the tone of force, not to indicate that your strength of purpose is greater than the strength of the resistance, but just to _emphasize the basic soundness_ of your proposition. thus you can suggest that you are sure of your ground, while you do not dispute the force and sincerity of the other man in making his objection. suppose, for example, you apply for a situation in a wealthy firm, and one of the partners turns you down most emphatically by saying that they can't afford to engage any new men at present. you realize the firm may be losing money temporarily, but you believe that your services in the capacity you have outlined will be valuable to the partners. you can come back firmly and not retreat an inch from your position. you need not _antagonize_ by manifesting your determination to have the merits of your proposal given due consideration. you know your prospect feels pretty strongly on the matter of increasing his payroll while business is unprofitable, but you should make him recognize that you believe so thoroughly in your earning capacity that you feel you would justify him in disregarding the temporary depression, while he considers your service worth. [sidenote: units of tone] as we have noted previously, it is important to know, at the time an objection is put in your way, _whether or not it is really meant_. when deciding in your mind on the right answer to this problem, you will be helped very much if you size up not only the tone pitch of the objection, but also the _units_ of tone employed by the prospect in his expression of opposition. if he refuses your application, but uses just _one_ tone, you may be sure his negative is not strong. if you do not strengthen it to stubbornness by antagonizing him, but use tact to get rid of his resistance, you will not find it difficult to melt away the obstruction. however, should the "no" be spoken in two or more tones, with increased stress at the end, your prospect certainly means his rejection to be final. his mind is fully made up for the time being. it would be poor salesmanship to butt your head against his fixed idea, just as it would be foolish to tackle a strong opponent when he stands most formidably braced to resist attack. but the two or three toned negative does not mean that the idea behind it is fixed in the prospect's mind _forever_. any one is prone to change his mind, _unless he is kept so busy supporting a position taken that he has no chance to alter his opinion_. [sidenote: preventing stubborness] therefore leave alone at first the rock you encounter. get behind the boulder by taking a roundabout path. then quietly dig the support from under the negative idea. if you make no fuss while you are undermining the obstacle, it will be likely to topple over and roll from your path without your prospect's noticing that it has disappeared. if his interest is diverted from it, there is no reason why he should turn his mind back to a stubborn insistence on his objection. should he be conscious that the rock of his earlier opposition has rolled away, he will probably think it lost its balance. he will not realize that you subtly undermined it and got rid of it by your skillful salesmanship. a salesman of an encyclopedia met a prospect who refused to give favorable attention to him and his proposition. "no sir-e-e!" declared this objector, shaking his head emphatically. "no more book agents can work me. the last slick one that tried to swindle me is in ja-a-il now, and i put him the-ere!" he gloated in two or three tones. [sidenote: turning back a turn-down] "good for you!" praised the undaunted salesman, who had come prepared for adamantine obstacles in his path. "if more book buyers would see that such rascals get what's coming to them, the rest of us salesmen, who represent square publishers squarely, would not have to prove so often that we are not crooks like some fellows who have happened to precede us in a territory. please tell me the name of the man who swindled you. he might hit my publishers for a job after he gets out of jail, and i want to warn the boss against him. sometimes those slick rascals pull the wool over our eyes, too. we are always on the lookout to avoid getting tangled up with them." the salesman pulled out his note book and pencil. when the name was given, he wrote it down painstakingly. he asked the prospect to spell it for him; so that he would be sure to get it right. then he thanked the man who had said he would have nothing more to do with book agents. having "got around" the objector, the salesman proceeded with his selling talk on the encyclopedia, as if he had not been turned down flatly to begin with. in less than half an hour he had secured the signature of the prospect to a contract for the finest edition. [sidenote: be ready for opposition] if this salesman had not been thoroughly prepared to meet the strongest kind of mental and emotional opposition, he could not have come back so quickly with the appropriate answer that undermined the obstacle. you should be likewise ready for the "tough customers" one hears about. _practice in anticipation various ways of handling every imaginable objection._ then, when you face an actual difficulty, you will either have on the tip of your tongue a solution of the problem, or your forethought will assist you to devise on the spur of the moment the way to work out the right answer. again we observe the importance of full preparation, in assuring successful salesmanship. [sidenote: two essentials of resourcefulness] no quality is more important to the salesman than _resourcefulness_. its first requisite is _knowledge_, particularly advance knowledge of the points that are likely to come up in the course of the selling process. the second is a _mind trained to act quickly and effectively in using_ its knowledge. if you have these two essentials of resourcefulness, no objection will ever catch you napping. it will do you no good to look up the right answer _after you leave the prospect_. nothing can be more exasperatingly worthless than an idea of something you "might have said" but could not think of until _too late_. have all your facts on tap. and be practiced in making use of them in every imaginable way. rare indeed will be cases that you are not prepared to handle successfully. [sidenote: practicing "come-backs"] i know a salesman who trained himself in resourcefulness by typing on about fifty cards all the objections to his goods or proposition that he could imagine. for ten or fifteen minutes every evening he played solitaire with these cards. he would shuffle them, held face down, and then deal off, face up, objection after objection. he never could tell which was coming next. in a few weeks he had trained himself to give an answer instantly to each objection, and to utilize it as a help instead of a hindrance in his selling. thereafter opposition and criticism from prospects had no terrors for this salesman. he was able to get rid of objections so swiftly, surely, and completely that they never had time to grow formidable in the mind of the other man. [sidenote: adaptive originality] only a little less important than resourcefulness in meeting objections, is _adaptive originality in answering them_. the "pat, new" reply is always very effective. but do not unduly stress the value of the factor of _originality_ alone. it must be coupled with _adaptation to the particular viewpoint of the other man_. you must speak his language, if you would be sure of making him understand you perfectly. [sidenote: use prospect's language] for example, suppose you apply to a watch manufacturer for a position in his office. he seems inclined to question your dependability. you will make a hit with him if you quote a detail from one of his own ads and say, "i have a seventeen jewel movement," and then particularize that number of good points about yourself. such a reference preceding a specification of your qualities would be adaptive originality. _it would be an expression exactly fitted to the way this prospect thinks._ so it would be more effective than an ordinary answer to the objection. adaptive originality in disposing of objections is a manifestation of tact and diplomacy--the fine art of letting the other man down with a shock absorber instead of jolting him to your way of thinking. [sidenote: keep train of thought on main track] when your prospect starts objecting, it is up to you to prevent him from wandering far afield. at the objections stage, as at every other step in the selling process, _you should dominate the other man_. tactfully keep him concentrated on the subject and on your application. if he starts to grumble that some man he has engaged previously was "no good," you can smile and reply, "you would not give _me credit_ for _anybody else's_ fine work, and of course you do not _blame me_ for what _that_ fellow did." you know what points are relevant to the subject you have come to discuss, and what are not. _discriminate, and make the prospect follow you._ restrict your treatment of his objections to points, means, and methods that will keep his ideas from switching onto side-tracks of thought. _when he wanders away from the subject, do not ramble with him._ promptly and diplomatically run his mind back on the main line of your purpose. _you are operating a through train to success. you must not be diverted into picking either daisies or thistles by the right of way while your salesmanship engine stands idle._ [sidenote: patience and calmness] tact and diplomacy include the qualities of _patience_ and _calmness_. you cannot deal successfully with opposition if you are impatient or flustered. patience understands the other man and avoids giving him offense; because it comprehends his way of thinking and is considerate of his right to his opinions. _calmness denotes a consciousness of strength. hence it inspires admiration._ keep your patience open-eyed. see ahead. do not chafe restlessly because the present moment is not propitious. a better chance for you is coming. because of your vision have faith in your power to _make_ it come. whatever may happen, be self-possessed when you meet it. you can give no more impressive proof of your bigness. your calmness will win the confidence of the other man. it will help in making the impression of courageous truth. only an honest purpose can meet attack with quiet fearlessness. [sidenote: win admiration by keeping upper hand] _the chief danger to the salesman at the objections stage is that he may lose control of the selling process._ be on your guard to prevent the other man from dominating you by his opposition. you have the advantage at the start. he cannot be so well prepared to make objections as you should be to dispose of them effectively. _keep the upper hand._ if you have not antagonized his feelings, your prospect will admire you when he sees that he cannot dominate you and realizes that you will not let him have his own way. you will build up in him a favorable opinion of your manhood, intelligence, and power. _he cannot help appreciating your art in handling him._ [sidenote: make desire grow] dispose of each objection in such a way that you will get yourself wanted more and more as you remove or get around the obstacles encountered. _the prospect's desire for your services should grow in proportion as you overcome his opposition._ it is possible to use objections, or rather their answers, to strengthen your salesmanship so greatly that it will be easy to gain your object--the job or the promotion you seek. [sidenote: hard climb leads to supreme heights] therefore do not quail from the obstacles you meet. recognize in each an opportunity to succeed in demonstrating your capability; a chance to increase the respect, confidence, and liking of your prospective employer. _remember, if there were no difficult, steep mountains to scale, the supreme heights of success could not be gained._ so, with shining face, climb on and up undaunted! chapter xi _the goal of success_ [sidenote: "nearly succeeded" means "failed"] after an applicant for a position seems to have the coveted opportunity almost in his grasp, he is sometimes unable to _clinch_ the sale of his services. he does not get the job. his failure is none the less _complete_ because he _nearly_ succeeded. _no race was ever won by a man who could not finish._ however successful you may have been in the earlier stages of the selling process, if your services are finally declined by the prospective employer you have interviewed, your sales effort has ended in failure. when one has made a fine presentation of his capability, and therefore feels confident of selling his services, it shocks and disheartens him to have his application rejected. "it takes the starch out of a man." he is apt to feel limp in courage when he turns his back on the lost chance to make good, and faces the necessity of starting the selling process all over again with another prospect. it is harder to lose a race in the shadow of the goal than to be disqualified before the start. the prospect who seems on the point of saying, "yes," but finally shakes his head is the heart-breaker to the salesman. [sidenote: making the touch down] of course, as you have been reminded, even the best salesman cannot get _all_ the orders he tries to secure. _but he seldom fails to "close" a real prospect whom he has conducted successfully through the preliminary steps of a sale._ each advance he makes increases his confidence that he will get the order. the master salesman does not falter and fall down just before the finish. he is at the top of his strength as he nears the goal. all his training and practice have had but one ultimate object--a successfully _completed_ sale. he knows that _nothing else counts_. he does not lose the ball on the one-yard line. he pushes it over for a touchdown. he cannot be held back when he gets that close to the goal posts. you must be like him if you would make the "almost sure" victory a _certainty._ [sidenote: don't fear to take success] perhaps the commonest cause of the failures that occur at the closing stage is the salesman's _fear of bringing the selling process to a head_. he is in doubt whether the prospect will say "yes" or "no." his lack of courageous confidence makes him falter when he should bravely put his fortune to the test of decision. he does not "strike while the iron is hot," but hesitates until the prospect's desire cools. many an applicant for a position has talked an employer into the idea of engaging his services, and then has gone right on talking until he changed the other man's mind. he is the worst of all failures. though he has won the prize, he lets it slip through his fingers because he lacks the nerve to tighten his hold. [sidenote: keep control at the close] doubt and timidity at the closing stage, after the earlier steps have been taken successfully, are paradoxes. surely each _preliminary_ advance the salesman makes should add to his confidence that he can _complete_ the sale. his proved ability to handle objections and to overcome resistance should have developed all the courage he needs to _finish_ the selling process. closing requires less bravery and staunch faith than one must have when making his approach. now he knows his man, and that this prospect's mind and heart can be favorably influenced by salesmanship. is it not a contradiction of good sense to weaken at the finish instead of pressing the advantages already gained and crowning the previous work with ultimate success? yet there are salesmen who seem so afraid of hearing a possible "no" that they dare not prompt an almost certain "yes." when you have presented to your prospective employer a thoroughly good case for yourself, _do not slow down or stop the selling process_. especially avoid letting _him_ take the reins. thus far _you_ have controlled the sale. _keep final developments in your own hands._ go ahead. smile. be and appear entirely at ease. look the other man in the eye. ask him, "when shall i start work?" _suggest_ that you believe he is favorable to your application. _even speak his decision for him_, as though it were a matter-of-course. if the previous trend of the interview justifies you in assuming that he has almost made up his mind to employ you, pronounce his probable thought as if he had announced it as his final conclusion. _he will not be likely to reverse the decision you have spoken for him._ his mental inclination will be to _follow your lead_, and to accept as his own judgment what you have assumed to be settled in his mind. [sidenote: reversing a negative decision] a stubborn merchant made a dozen objections to hiring a new clerk. the young man cleared them all away, one after another, as soon as each was raised. but the employer leaned back obstinately in his chair and declared, "just the same, i don't need any more clerks." this was but a repetition of an objection already disposed of. the applicant concluded, therefore, that he had his man cornered. the salesman smiled broadly at the indication of his success. he stood up and took off his overcoat. "well," he said, "you certainly need one less than you did, now that i'm ready to begin work. i understand why you have been putting me off. you wanted to test my stick-to-it-ive-ness. i'm sure i have convinced you on that point. you needn't worry about my staying on the job. shall i report to the superintendent, or will you start me yourself?" the merchant drew a deep breath; then emptied his lungs with a burst of astonishment mixed with relief. he could not help laughing. "i meant to turn you down, but you say i've made up my mind to hire you. i didn't know it myself, but you're right. i believe you are the sort of clerk i always want." [sidenote: expect the prospect to say "yes"] remember, when you face your prospect at the closing stage, the _motive_ that brought you to him. you came with the intention of rendering him _services from which he will profit_. you want your capability to be a "good buy" for him. your consciousness that your motive is _right_ should give you strengthened _faith_ in yourself and in the successful outcome of your salesmanship. it should fill you with the courage necessary to close the sale. _neither hesitate nor flinch. confidently prompt the decision_ in your favor. believe that you _have_ won and you will not be intimidated by fears of failure. your prospect is unlikely to say "no" _if you really expect to hear "yes."_ even if he speaks the negative, still _believe in your own faith_. i know a man who, a minute after his application was flatly rejected, won the position he wanted. unrebuffed, he came back with, "eventually, why not now?" his evident conviction that he was _needed_ gained the victory when his chance seemed lost. [sidenote: don't be afraid to pop the question] we all laugh at the young swain who courts a girl devotedly for months and uses every art he knows to sell her the idea that he would make her happy as his wife; but who turns pale, then red, and chokes whenever he has a chance to pop the question. often the girl must go half way with prompting. when, thus encouraged, he finally stammers out his appeal for her decision, she accepts him so quickly that he feels foolish. women are reputed to be better "closers" of such sales than men. you smile at the comparison of courting with salesmanship. yet the selling process is as effective in making good impressions of the sort of husband one might be as in impressing an employer with the idea that one's services in business would prove desirable. [sidenote: selling a future husband] the young man bent on marriage needs to prospect for the right girl, to secure an audience, to compel her attention, to regain it when diverted to other admirers, and to develop her curiosity about him into interest. he must size up her likes and dislikes; then adapt his salesmanship to her tastes, tactfully subordinating his own preferences to hers. if she is athletic, he will play tennis or go on tramps with her, however tired he feels after his work. if she is sentimental, he will take her canoeing and read poetry to her, though he may prefer detective yarns. throughout his courtship he will do his utmost to stimulate in her a desire to have him as a life partner. whatever objections she makes to him, he will get rid of or overcome. suppose he has taken all these preliminary selling steps successfully, and at last the time comes for pinning the girl down to a definite answer to the all-important question, is there any likelihood that it will be a refusal? of course not! if his earlier salesmanship has been masterly, the reasons why she will be inclined to accept him in the end are of much greater weight and number than any causes for rejection that she may have thought of previously. [sidenote: never weaken at the finish] he should not fear to close the sale. he has been "going strong" until now; why should he weaken at the finish? the master salesman does not quaver then, or doubt his success. he asks his prospect's decision bravely and with confidence, or he assumes it as a matter of course and kisses the girl. his heart beats faster than usual, but he is not afraid of hearing "no." _you should feel the same way_ after leading your prospective employer successfully through the preliminary stages of the process of selling your services to him. do not falter now. _promptly emphasize the idea that the weight, amount, and quality of your merits are fully worth the compensation previously discussed._ if you are _sure_ of that, if you have valued your services from _his_ standpoint, and not just from _your own_, you will feel no doubts about the acceptance of your application. you will put your prospective employer through the process of decision as courageously and confidently as you first entered his presence. [sidenote: getting the decision pronounced] sometimes a prospect will be convinced, but will not express what is in his thoughts. therefore _it is not enough to bring about a favorable conclusion of mind_. until this has been _pronounced or signified_, it may easily be changed. hence the _effective process of decision includes both the mental action of judgment and its perceptible indication_. often a prospect who is _thinking_ "yes" will not _say_ it until he is prompted by the salesman. [sidenote: a lawyer sums up the case] when a lawyer is trying a case, he endeavors to bring out the evidence in favor of his client and to make the jury see every point clearly. he shows also the fallacies and falsities of opposing testimony. but after all the evidence has been given, the case is not turned over _immediately_ to the jury for decision. if that were done the lawyer would miss his best chance to influence the jurors to make up their minds in his favor. they are not so familiar as he with the facts and their significance. they would be apt to attach more importance to some details of testimony, and less to others, than the circumstances warrant. so, to assist the jurors in arriving at their verdict on the evidence, the lawyer _sums up the case_. he lays before their minds his views, and tries with all his power and art to convince them that his word pictures are true reproductions of the facts in their relation and proportion to all the circumstances surrounding the issue. [sidenote: preponderance of evidence] the _object_ of the lawyer when he addresses the jury is to make the convincing impression that _the testimony in favor of his client far outweighs the evidence on the other side_. he adjures the twelve men before him to "weigh the evidence carefully." he declares the judge will instruct them that in a lawsuit the verdict should be given to the party who has a "preponderance" or greater weight of proof on his side. _at this closing stage of the case the lawyer acts as a weighmaster._ he wants to make the jurors feel that he has handled the scales _fairly_, that he has taken into consideration the evidence _against_ him as well as the facts _in his favor_; and that the preponderance of weight _is as he has shown it_--so that they will accept _his_ view and gave him the verdict. if he feels a sincere conviction that he is right in asking for a decision on his side, he makes his closing address with the ring of confidence. he looks the jurors in the eye and asks for the verdict in his favor as a matter of _right_. he does not beg, but claims what the weight of the evidence _entitles_ him to receive. [sidenote: treat your prospects as jurors] the jury that will decide on your application when you apply for a position will usually consist of but one man, or will be composed of a committee or board of directors. treat him or them _as a jury_. remember that your capabilities and your deficiencies are _on trial_. close your case with the same process the skillful lawyer uses when he sums up the evidence and weighs it before the minds of the jurors. do what he does _as a weighmaster_. avoid making any impression that you are not weighing your _demerits_ fairly, though you _minimize their importance_; also miss no chance to impress the _full weight_ of your _qualifications_. the essence of good salesmanship at this stage of the process is _skillful, but honest weighing_. that means using _both sides_ of the scale, to convince the prospect that _the balance tips in your favor_. he will not believe in the correctness of the "yes" weight unless you show the lesser weight of "no" _in contrast_. then he cannot help _seeing_ which is the heavier. _decision on the respective weights is only a process of perception._ [sidenote: the process of perception] let us suppose the employer has asserted the objections that you are not sufficiently experienced to earn the salary you want, and that you don't know enough yet to fill the job. it would be poor salesmanship to try to convince him that you have had a good deal of experience. if you exaggerate the importance of the things you have learned, he almost surely will judge you to be an unfair weighman of yourself. so you should tacitly admit your inexperience and treat the value of experience lightly by reminding him that his business is unlike any other. then bear down hard on your eagerness to learn his ways and to work for him. thus you can make him perceive the two sides of the scale _as you view them_. [sidenote: tipping the balances your way] it is possible for you so to tip the balances in your favor, though previously the mind's eye of your prospective employer may have been seeing the greater weight on the unfavorable side. _it is legitimate salesmanship to influence the decision of the other man in this way._ your weighing is entirely honest; though you sharply reverse the balances. certainly you have the right to estimate the full worth of your services, to depreciate the significance of points against you, and to picture your desirability to the prospect as you see it, however that view may differ from his previous conception. _if your picture of the respective weights is attractive and convincing, the other man will adopt it as his own and discard his former opinions about you._ not only will he accept the idea of your capabilities that you make him perceive; he also will see that your deficiencies are much less important than he had before considered them. [sidenote: serving hash for dessert] beware of a mistake commonly made by applicants for positions who do not understand the art of successfully closing the sale of one's services. when they try to clinch the final decision, _they just repeat strongly all their best points. they make no mention of their shortcomings._ for dessert, in other words, they serve a hash of the best dishes of previous courses. is it any wonder that such a close takes away any appetite the prospect may have had? what would you think of a lawyer who had closed his case by simply reading to the jury all the testimony that had been given on his side, but who had made no reference to the opposing evidence? if you were a juror, would you vote for a verdict in favor of the side so summed up? of course you would have heard the testimony of both parties to the case, but _you would not feel that the lawyer who ignored the evidence against his client had helped you to arrive at the conclusion that he had the preponderance of proof on his side_. on the contrary, you probably would be inclined to attach to the opposing evidence _greater weight than the facts justified_, and would discount whatever the lawyer claimed for his client. you, yourself, would act as weighmaster; and would give the other party to the suit the benefit of any doubt in your mind as to the contrasting weights of the testimony pro and con. _the lawyer's failure to weigh all the evidence before your eyes would make the impression on you that his view of the case was unfair to his opponent._ if you felt at all doubtful, you would be likely to vote against him in order to make sure that the other side received a square deal. [sidenote: weigh both pros and cons before jury] _the jury that is to decide favorably or unfavorably on your application for a position will feel similarly inclined to reach a negative conclusion if in closing you omit the process of weighing the pros and cons, and emphasize only your strong points._ it is good salesmanship to stress these at the finishing stage, but they should be pictured _in contrast with lighter objections_ to your employment. in order to _convince_ the prospect that the reasons for employing you outweigh the reasons for turning you down, you must show his mind _both sides of the scale_. if you fail to do this, his own imagination will do the weighing and is certain to bear down with prejudice on every point against you. it will also depreciate your view of the points in your favor. the other man will make sure that _he_ is getting a square deal on the weights, since he will believe _you_, too, are looking out only for number one. [sidenote: to make certain do the weighing yourself] the _certain_ way to make your prospect perceive that the reasons for accepting your proposal are of greater weight than any causes for turning down your application is to _do the weighing yourself_. first be sure the heavier weight _is_ on your side. when you fully believe that, use all the arts of salesmanship to _make the other man see the balances as you view them_. then he can come to but one conclusion, that the "preponderance" is on your side. _just as soon as you make the respective weights clear to his perception, he will be convinced._ he cannot deny what his own mind's eye has been made to see. [sidenote: get prospect committed] therefore bringing about a favorable _mental conclusion_ is not at all difficult. the judgment that your services would be desirable is no harder to gain than a decision that the weight of one side of a scale is greater than the other. any one who looks at the balances sees at once which way they tip. the rub is not in getting the decision _made_ but in getting it _pronounced_. the sale is not completed until the prospect has _committed_ himself. [sidenote: now is the acceptance time] he feels that his mental processes are his own secret, which you cannot read; so he will not guard against the conclusion of his _mind_ that you would be a desirable employee. but for some reason he may be unwilling to _express_ his thoughts to you just then, however thoroughly he is convinced. he naturally prefers not to say "yes" at once; so that he may change his mind if he wishes. _you will endanger your chances of success if you let him put off action on his decision._ to-morrow he is likely to see the weights in a different light and to imagine less on your side and more against you. _now_ is the time to close the sale, when he cannot help seeing things _your way_. [sidenote: two stages of closing] you know that sometimes a juror will be convinced in his own mind, yet cannot bring himself actually to vote according to his mental conclusion. perhaps he is a "wobbler" by nature. so a girl may decide in her thoughts that a certain suitor would make a good husband, yet she may hesitate to accept him just because that step is _final_. these illustrations impress the importance of _discriminating between the two stages of closing a sale_. the success of the salesman is made certain only by his knowledge and skillful use, first of the art of _vivid weighing_, and second of the art of _prompting the prospect to action on his perception of the difference in the balances_. at the closing stage we have encountered again our old acquaintance, "the discriminative-restrictive process." [sidenote: closing a procrastinator] a friend of mine who has an advertising agency wanted to secure the business of a prominent manufacturer who was inclined to vacillation. the prospect was always timid about acting and had the reputation of a chronic procrastinator. my friend went ahead with the selling process in ordinary course until he had proved the desirability of his service and had shown that there was no really weighty reason why the contract should not be given to him. he knew he was entitled to the decision then, but he did not wait for the timid man to pronounce it. the advertising agent knew the characteristics of the prospect and had planned just how he would handle the finishing stage of the selling process so as to get the order promptly. [sidenote: the clincher held in reserve] he held in reserve a closing method that a less skillful salesman probably would have used earlier in the sale instead of reserving it especially for the end. as soon as he had completed the weighing process my friend took from his pocket a sheet of copy he had prepared for a first advertisement along the line he had proposed. this had been worked out carefully in advance, just as if the order had already been given for the advertising service. my friend laid the sheet of copy before the prospect, who was taken completely by surprise. "i knew you would want this service as soon as i explained it to you," said the salesman. "therefore i prepared this ad for the first publication under the plan i have submitted, and which i am sure you approve. there is no question that you will get much better results from this copy than you have been receiving from the advertising you are doing now. naturally you want to begin benefiting from my service as soon as possible. i'm all ready to deliver the goods. just pencil your o.k. on the corner of this copy. i'll do the rest." [sidenote: from pencil to pen] with a smile of confidence the salesman held out a soft lead pencil. _the moment the other man involuntarily obeyed the suggestion by accepting the tendered pencil, he was started on the purely muscular process of pronouncing his approval of the proposition likewise tendered for his acceptance._ the informality of the off-hand request that he "pencil his o.k." kept him from being scared off. he did not feel that he had yet committed himself fully. probably, with characteristic timidity, he would have shied from signing a formal contract at that moment. but he hesitated only slightly before he scribbled his initials on the corner of the proposed ad. then he handed the pencil back to the salesman. the advertising agent picked up the approved copy, and at once laid before the prospect a formal contract. simultaneously he tendered his fountain pen. _he had started the advertiser to writing his name, and did not let the process stop._ "now just o.k. this, too," he directed, "and the whole matter will be settled to your complete satisfaction." then, to prevent the procrastinator from backing up, the salesman reached for the telephone on the advertiser's desk. "with your permission, i'll call up the----magazine and reserve choice space for this ad. it won't cost any more and by getting in early we'll make the ad most effective." [sidenote: decide for, then commit the prospect] my friend manifested complete confidence that the sale was _closed_. by continuing the process of affirming the decision, he prevented the prospect from backing up after making his pencilled o.k. being thus committed informally, the usually vacillating advertiser could not well avoid using the pen put into his hand to sign the formal contract laid before him. without speaking to him, the salesman pointed to the dotted line while he called the telephone number he wanted. _the prospect wrote his name before he had time to stop the impulse that the advertising agent had started._ the salesman had both _induced_ the mental _decision_ in his favor, and _impelled_ its _pronouncement_. really he first _made up the prospect's mind for him_, and then _committed him to the decision so made_ without the other man's volition. [sidenote: both processes in right sequence] _only by performing both processes in right sequence at the closing stage can a sale be finished under the control of the salesman._ if the _favorable conclusion_ as to the respective weights of negative and affirmative is not first worked out before the mind's eye of the prospect, anything done to _commit_ him to a decision will likely kill the salesman's chances for success. the prospect whose mind is not yet made up favorably, who does not clearly perceive that the preponderance is on the "yes" side of the scale, will almost surely say "no" if his decision is _prematurely_ impelled. [sidenote: discriminate and restrict] hence it is important that the salesman discriminate between the two closing stages, and that he restrict his selling methods at each stage to the selling processes that are effective then. he must not get "the cart before the horse," as the ignorant or unskillful closer is apt to do. the poor closer does not understand the "discriminative-restrictive" process. he lacks comprehension of the distinction that should be drawn between the methods he _previously_ has used and what is now required to _finish_ the sale. let us be sure we know how to discriminate; so that our work at the closing stage may be restricted to the processes that are required to assure success in taking the particular step necessary. [sidenote: new process necessary to close] throughout the series of selling steps that precede the closing stage, the continuing purpose of the salesman is to make the prospect _see_ the proposal in the true light, as the salesman himself views it. when the selling process draws to a conclusion, the purpose of the salesman changes. now he wants the prospect to _decide_ and then _act upon_ what has been shown to his mind's eye. if the salesman is to control the close, he must do something _new_ to prompt decision and to actuate its pronouncement. the unskillful closer, instead of changing his previous sales tactics, nearly always devotes his final efforts to making the prospect _see more clearly_ the pictures already laid before his mind. he tries to impress the prospect with a _re-hash of perception_, by emphasizing more strongly than before the favorable points brought out clearly at earlier stages. of course it is important that at the close of the sale the prospect have all these points in view, but it is not good salesmanship to emphasize only the appeal to his _perceptive_ faculties. the guest who has had a good dinner does not need to be told just afterward what he has eaten, or reminded of the courses by having them brought in again. [sidenote: logic and reason won't win] as it is a mistake to serve at the close of a sale only a re-hash of favorable points; so is it bad salesmanship to rely on a dessert of "logic and reason" for the finishing touch. _logic and reason provoke antagonism. they are ineffective in bringing about either a favorable conclusion of mind or action on such a decision._ if you have presented your capabilities fully to a prospective employer, do not wind up by marshalling reasons why he should engage you. avoid the use of the "major premise, minor premise, argument, and logical conclusion." _you cannot debate yourself into a job_, for the judge is made antagonistic by your method, which puts him on the defensive. it is human nature to resist a decision that logic tries to force. no man arrives at his conclusions of mind by putting himself through a reasoning process. a normal person does not need to reason about things he knows. _he knows without reasoning._ he attempts to use logic only when he is _uncertain_ what to think. if logic is used by the salesman to convince the other man, it will be ineffective because it is an unnatural means that the prospect almost never employs to convince himself, and of which he is suspicious. [sidenote: why reasoning is futile] a major premise is but an assumption unless it is already known. if it is known, why should it be proved? since the correctness of the conclusion depends entirely upon the validity of the premise, it is evidently absurd to attempt to prove a truth from the basis of an admitted assumption. the reasoning process that starts from a truth already known, and arrives at a truth that must similarly have been known, is utterly useless and a waste of time. hence, _if you use the reasoning process you will either fail to convince your prospect by starting from a premise that he does not know, or you will irritate and unfavorably impress him by seeming to reflect on his intelligence when you prove to him something he already knows_. that is the wrong way to bring your man to a "yes" decision. if the whole process of the sale could be summed up in just one logical statement at closing, it might occasionally be practical for the salesman to apply reasoning with good effect to help him secure the decision. but the four steps, first and second premise, argument, and conclusion, must be applied to every point that is made with reasoning. since the force of the conclusion is largely lost unless the major premise is an absolute truth recognized by everybody, there is danger of confusion, and no possibility of convincing the prospect by such methods. besides, a multitude of reasoning processes would be necessary to cover all the points presented by the salesman and all the objections raised by the prospect. moreover, as we have seen, the whole procedure of "a logical close" falls back upon itself unless everything the salesman hopes to prove was known and admitted to be true before he began to reason it out. [sidenote: favorable decision defined] _favorable decision is the prospect's mental conclusion that it is better to buy than not to buy; better to accept than to refuse._ the process of securing decision is not complex; it is very simple. as has been said, the salesman needs only to weigh before the mind's eye of the prospect the favorable and unfavorable ideas of the proposal. _any weighing of two mental images always results in a judgment as to which is preferable, or that one course of action would be better than the other._ the mind is never so exactly balanced between contrasting ideas that it does not tip at all either way. [sidenote: weighing ideas of a steak] the skill of the salesman weighmaster, used legitimately before the mind's eye of the prospect to tip the scales of decision to the favorable side, is illustrated in the story of a butcher who had been asked by a woman customer to weigh a steak for her. he knew that the weighing process _in her mind_ included more than the balancing of a certain number of pounds and ounces on the scale. against the reasons for her evident inclination to take the selected steak, she would weigh its cost, her personal ideas of its value, and other factors of the high cost of living. [sidenote: skillful close of the sale] the butcher wished to bring her quickly to a favorable decision. he wanted to make up the customer's mind for her in such a conclusive way that she would be prevented from hesitating over the purchase. as a weighman of pounds and ounces he only wanted to show the prospect that he was honest. but in order to tip _the buying scales in her mind_ he put into the balances, on the side opposite the cost of the steak, the heavier weight of buying inducements. first he did the actual weighing of the steak; then he added on the "yes" side of the scales of decision _ideas of the excellence and desirability of the meat_. he followed immediately with a _suggestion of action that would commit the prospect to buying_. "two pounds and five ounces, ma'am! only a dollar and forty-three cents. it's the very choicest part of the loin. you couldn't get a cut any tenderer than that, or with less bone. would you like to have a little extra suet wrapped up with it?" [sidenote: three effects produced] the butcher thus combined in his close _three effects_. he brought about _judgment of the prospect's intellect_, plus _increased desire_ for the goods, plus the _impulse to carry the desire into action_. first, by emphasizing, "two pounds and five ounces!" in a _heavy_ tone, and by depreciating the cost, "only a dollar and forty-three cents," spoken _lightly_, he implied that the _value_ of the steak far outweighed the _price_. thus judgment of the prospect's intellect was effected. second, to stimulate increased desire for the steak, the butcher skillfully put on the favorable side of the scales of decision the weight of _a suggestion of excellence_. he said temptingly, "it's the very choicest part of the loin." at this point he also employed _contrast_, to make the prospect's desire stronger still. "you couldn't get a cut any tenderer than this, or with less bone." third, this skillful salesman prompted _the immediate committal of his customer to a favorable decision_. he impelled her to this affirmative action by suggesting, "would you like to have a little extra suet wrapped up with it?" he put a question that was _easy_ for the prospect to answer with "yes." once she accepted the suet offered free, she tacitly accepted the steak at the price stated. _it is skillful salesmanship to make it easy for the buyer to say "yes" or to imply the favorable decision indirectly_. the butcher might have been answered with "no" if he had asked, "will you take this steak?" but he himself nodded when he made the proposal that he wrap up the extra suet. the woman was thus impelled to nod with him. the sale was closed, artistically, in a few seconds. when you plan how you will close a sale of true ideas of your best capability, _work out in advance a similar weighing process, followed at once by an indirect prompting of acceptance of the decision you suggest_. shape and re-shape your intended "close" in your mind until it includes the three effects the butcher produced. [sidenote: put a "kick" into the close] put a "kick" into your stimulation of desire at the closing stage. _paint the points in your favor brightly and glowingly, though in true colors. conversely paint all objections to your employment unattractively._ suppose you are applying for a secretarial position. it would be good "painting" to close something like this: "i am going to learn to do things _your_ way. you would not want a man in the position who was _experienced_; because he would do things some one else's way, not yours. my inexperience really means i am adaptable to your methods. i'd become exactly the sort of secretary _you_ want. for instance, how do you prefer to have your mail brought to you--just as it is opened, or with previous correspondence and notations attached?" such an alternative question, _answered either way_, leads the prospect through the stage of favorable decision and implies his committal to acceptance of the services offered. it can be followed by the direct proposal, "all, right, i'll bring your mail that way." _such a close is practically sure to succeed_. [sidenote: using the negative positively] a man who was not at all prepossessing applied to me one day for a job. he conducted the sale of himself very skillfully, but i meant to put him off. it was our dull season, and his looks didn't make a hit with me anyway. however, he realized there was a good deal on the negative side of the scale, and he weighed his disqualifications honestly; though he depreciated the importance of his unprepossessing appearance. then, in contrast to the negative side, he showed me very weighty and attractive reasons for employing him. he started by grinning good-humoredly. "i'm not a prize beauty," he remarked. "but the other day i was reading about abraham lincoln, and the book made me feel encouraged about myself. i don't believe i'm any homelier or any more awkward than he was. i don't expect to be a parlor salesman, anyhow, or to rely on my good looks to get orders. i plan to succeed by work. i'm going to be on the job early and late and every minute between. i'll believe in what i'm selling--down to the very bottom of my heart. i'll make anybody see i'm in dead earnest. i look honest, and i am. i'll be square with customers and with you. i guess that out in the field a reputation for always being willing to help, and for telling the truth straight, will count more than anything else. i know i'm inexperienced, but that's a fault i can cure mighty soon." he grinned again. "i'll start right away to get the greenness off, if you'll tell me where to hang up my hat." his good nature warmed me into smiling with him. i could not help feeling inclined to try this man. i decided to give him his chance at once. he started my impulse to accept his services, and i pronounced the decision in his favor that he prompted. of course he made good. that was a foregone conclusion. he had mastered the selling process, and was an especially fine closer. he succeeded in getting more than his quota of orders the first year. selling never seemed to be hard work for him. [sidenote: two ways to prompt pronouncement] the pronouncement of the prospect's decision can be prompted, his favorable action can be brought about, in _two ways_. first, as we have seen, _the salesman can suggest, directly or indirectly, the action he wants the other man to take_. second, _the salesman himself can do something_ that the prospect will be impelled to _imitate_. [sidenote: impelling imitation of action] for example, when you apply for a position, and have completed the process of weighing the points in your favor in contrast with the less weighty reasons for not employing you, lean forward slightly in an attitude of easy expectancy. _the prospect's mind will be inclined to imitate your physical act_. he will lean toward acceptance of your services. your act will tend to bring you together. your magnetism will draw his. or you might extend your hand. he will have an impulse to reach out his in turn. it is natural for a man to take a hand that is courteously offered. the moment after you reach toward the prospect say, "let's shake hands on it." once his fingers start moving toward yours in imitation of your action, it will be easy for him to commit himself. [sidenote: five essentials of good close] now let us review the essentials of good salesmanship in closing, which we have been analyzing. we can summarize under five divisions the entire process of completing a sale most effectively and with the practical assurance of success. first, _the salesman must have definite, certain knowledge that the mind of the prospect has reached the closing stage_; that it is time to _end_ the "testimony" and to _begin_ weighing the evidence. if the salesman has kept control of the selling process throughout all the preceding stages, he will know when the selling point is reached, _for he will be there himself_, with the prospect he has "safely conducted" thus far. second, at this "right time" it is necessary to _change former sales tactics promptly_, and to _start contrasting_ the affirmative and negative ideas that have previously been brought out. third, the salesman should weigh these contrasting ideas so _vividly_ that the mind's eye of the prospect will _see_ the scales and _perceive_ the greater weight on the "yes" side, _as the salesman pictures it_. fourth, it is important that the salesman _color_ the affirmative ideas very _alluringly_, and increase the contrast by painting _unattractively_ everything on the negative side of the scale; so that "no," besides appearing much _lighter_ than "yes," will seem _uninviting_. fifth, the selling process should be brought to a climax by the salesman's _suggestion_ or _imitation_ of some _act_ designed to _commit_ the prospect to _acceptance_ in an _easy_ way. [sidenote: unbalancing the process] nothing so _unbalances_ the process of securing a favorable decision and its pronouncement as any indication of fear, doubt, or hesitancy in the attitude of the salesman. therefore, even though you may be uncertain as to the outcome of your selling efforts, _do not show it_. long before you came to the decision point, you passed the worst dangers on the road to the end of the sale. surely your courage should be _strongest_ at the closing stage. [sidenote: light dissipates fear and doubt] fear usually arises from something _unknown_; it is due only to _darkness_. since you _know_ now just what closing involves, and _light_ has been shed on the problems of getting the prospect's "yes," your fears and doubts should be dissipated. _you should not hesitate to end the sale you have controlled successfully throughout previous stages_. our analysis has revealed that closing is no more difficult than winning attention to your proposition in the first place. as a result, your present attitude toward closing is _positive_. your courage and self-confidence have been built up. you realize just _how_ success in finishing a well-conducted sale can be made practically _sure_. [sidenote: negatives must be avoided] certain _negative_ attitudes at the closing stage should be avoided. especially do not throw into the scales of decision any little pleas for _personal favor_, with the hope that in so doing you will increase the weight on the "yes" side. such tactics almost invariably tend to tip the balance _un_favorably. a plea of this sort is equivalent to an admission that the ideas you have presented _for_ buying do not _themselves_ outweigh the prospect's images _against_ buying. you suggest to him that you are trying to push the balance down on your side by putting your finger on it, by "weighing in your hand," as unfair butchers sometimes do with a chicken they hold on the scales by the legs. [sidenote: "as a personal favor to me"] the prospect will instantly perceive your action. _his mind, acting on the principle of the gyroscope, will resist by greater opposition any push of the personal plea_. if you ask a decision as a personal favor, your prospect will lose confidence in the true weight of the ideas on your side that you have already registered in his mind. you are much more likely to hurt than to help your chances for success by making a personal plea. even if it should prove effective, what you get that way would be alms given to a beggar, and not the earned prize of good salesmanship. _never buy success at the cost of self-respect_. to be a successful _beggar_ is nothing to feel proud of. [sidenote: "treating" at close] do not attempt to "_treat"_ your prospect by flattering him at the closing stage. such "treating" is a tacit admission that your goods of sale, your best qualifications, have not sufficient merit to sell at their intrinsic value. or you practically confess that you are not good enough salesman to win out with just your goods and your ability to sell yourself for what you claim to be worth. _flattery is a call for help_. it is like the bad salesmanship of trying to buy an order with cigars or a dinner. never "treat" at the closing stage, for to do so is to admit _weakness_ when you should be your _strongest_. [sidenote: "no" seldom is final] of course you should not take a first or second "no" as a _final_ answer. even if the prospect indicates that he is inclined to decide against you, _continue confidently to heap images in favor of buying on the "yes" side of the scale until you have used all the honest weight you have to put in the balance_. he will not respect you as a salesman if you quit at his first "no." _it is up to you to tip the scales of decision your way_. remember that you should not bring the other man to the judgment point _until after you have aroused and intensified his desire to a very great degree_. if you have made him want you at all, you will disappoint him if you then fail to put enough weight on the "yes" side of the scale to win his decision to employ you. when you receive a "no," understand it to mean, "no, that is not yet enough ideas for buying your services." keep right on putting weight into the "yes" side of the balance until it tips your way. _do not consider any "no" final until you have run out of both contrasting weight and attractive colors; so that you cannot change the scales_. [sidenote: stick it out here and now] if it is possible for you to "stick," don't be put off when you come to the closing stage. _all the weighing you do at the present time will be valueless lost effort unless you complete the selling process here and now_. when your prospect tries to put you off, he tacitly admits your weights are right. otherwise he would say "no" and be done with you. you really have won his mental decision. a continuance of skillful salesmanship will enable you to get him to act favorably without delay or further evasion. [sidenote: entertainment in court room out of place] some salesmen make the mistake of mixing _entertainment_ with the closing process. earlier in the sale you may be able to secure excellent results by entertaining the prospect with clean jokes and good stories. but the close is the stage at which he arrives at his mental conclusion as to the "preponderance" of the evidence. _jests and light conversation are out of place when the judge is performing his functions in the courtroom of the mind._ an amusing remark or a witty quip at this juncture would suggest that the scales of decision in the salesman's own mind were somewhat unbalanced. your attitude when you are weighing "yes" and "no" before the prospect should be _pleasant_, but _quiet_ and _serious, as is becoming to a convincing weighman_. when you work to secure a favorable decision, you are weighing evidence with the purpose of impelling the prospect to take your judgment or to weigh the evidence just as you do. it is necessary all through the process that he be made to feel you realize you are aiding in the performance of a _judicial_ function. he must have complete confidence in your intention and ability to handle the scales honestly and with serious pains to determine what is the right judgment about your proposition. your levity at the closing stage would lessen the effect of honest, serious, painstaking weighing of the images for buying in contrast with the images against buying. so get the funny stories out of your system before you come to the decision step of the sale, or else keep them bottled up inside you and don't pull the cork until you are safely at the celebration stage. [sidenote: tones and acts when weighing] do not forget when closing to add _force_ to your words by _tones and gestures that emphasize ideas of the contrast in weights_ between the two sides of the scale. by your light tone you can indicate the triviality of objections to your proposition. with the heavier tone of power you can suggest the great weight of the favorable ideas. if you use _broad gestures of your whole hand and full arm_, you can seem to pile a large heap of points on your side of the scale. conversely you can indicate the smallness of objections by moving _your fingers only_, as if you were picking up a tiny object. demolish unfavorable points with a strong gesture of negation, as by sweeping your arm horizontally. give life to the ideas on the favorable side of the scale by accompanying your words with up and down gestures that signify vitality. [sidenote: do not show that closing is hard work] your physical condition or outward appearance will help or harm your chances for success at the closing stage. you should not manifest the least indication that you are under a strain of anxiety as to the outcome, or that you lack the strength to control the completion of the selling process. why should you not have a feeling of ease when you reach the close? _if your bearing suggests your self-confidence, it will give the other man confidence in your capabilities._ when a salesman has to "sweat blood" to finish a sale, he indicates that it is usually mighty hard work for him to get what he wants. this impression suggests to the other man that there must be something wrong with the proposition or it wouldn't take so much effort of the salesman to put it across. _any element of doubt at the final stage will almost surely delay or kill the salesman's chances to close successfully._ [sidenote: make sure of a good batting average] recall once more that the measure of success in selling is not % of closed sales; every possible order secured and none lost. _success is made certain when failures are reduced to the minimum and successes are increased to the maximum of practicability._ there can be no question that if you use the _right processes_ in closing, your chances for success will be so greatly increased that your batting average of actual sales should take you far above the failure line. your career as a salesman involves _continual_ selling. you must make sale after sale. however skillfully you employ the right process at the closing stage, you may not accomplish your purpose the first time you try. _but if you keep on selling your services in the right way, you will be as absolutely certain to succeed as the master salesman of "goods" is sure of closing his quota every year he works._ chapter xii _the celebration stage_ [sidenote: what are you going to do with success?] you know now the _certain_ way to get your chance to succeed in the vocation of your choice. you are convinced that a _good salesman_ can create and control his opportunities in any field, can bring himself to good luck in the right market for his services. you are resolved to master the art of selling, and so to insure your future against any possibility of failure. you feel confident of success; because you are willing to earn it by the diligent study and practice of salesmanship. there is no doubt in your mind that when you become a skillful salesman of your best capabilities, you can get a chance to succeed. _now what are you going to do with success after you gain it?_ suppose you had sold yourself into the very opportunity you want, suppose you had won the coveted job or promotion, _how would you celebrate_? it has been said that a man shows his real self either in the moment of his failure or in the moment of his success. let us assume that you have reached your present objective. you stand at the goal, a winner. does your victory _intoxicate_, or does it _sober_ you with the realization that you have but opened the way to limitless fields of bigger service ahead? has success gone to your _hands_ and made them tingle with eagerness to grasp more chances to succeed, or has it gone to your _head_? [sidenote: the stepping-stone to more sales] _the celebration stage of the selling process should be the first stepping-stone leading to another successful sale._ often it proves to be a stumbling block that marks the beginning of a downfall to failure. rare is the man who is not spoiled a little by achievement. _success is the severest test of salesmanship._ [sidenote: spoiled by success] i recall a chief clerk who worked more than a year for promotion to the position of assistant manager. he earned the better job, and was assigned to the desk toward which he had been looking longingly for sixteen months. then he "celebrated" by starting to take life easy. he developed a manner of superiority. he acted as if the little foothill he had climbed was a big mountain. he sunned himself on the top, basking in complacency because he had risen above his former clerkship. one day he was called into the manager's office. he came out chop-fallen and took his personal belongings from the assistant's desk. another man was promoted to the place he had failed to fill. he went back to his clerk's stool and is roosting there today. [sidenote: egotism's downfall] i know a salesman who closed so many orders the first time he covered his territory that he came back to headquarters with an inflated idea of his importance. he strutted into the president's room and boasted of what he had done. the delighted head of the business gave him a cigar and invited him to tell the story. the salesman betrayed such egotism that his employer was disgusted. the president was plain-spoken. he warned the successful salesman against getting a "swelled head." the egotist felt insulted. he resigned his position, arrogantly declaring that he would not work for a house where results were so little appreciated. he was cocksure of himself. however, when he offered his services to a competing firm, his application was turned down. the rebuff stunned him. he did not realize that his egotism disgusted the second executive as much as the first. the salesman's spirit was broken. he has never since been more than a fair peddler. [sidenote: giant and pigmy successes] think of "successful" men you know. _compare them as they are now with the men they used to be before they succeeded._ as they rose did they loom bigger and bigger in your respect, or grow smaller and smaller in admirable qualities? there are so-called successful men whose characters seem to be dwarfed by the mountain tops they attain. other men grow to be giants and overshadow any eminences they climb. the littleness of the last kaiser and crown prince of germany was only emphasized by their elevation above the common people. on the other hand the bigness of lincoln and roosevelt was so tremendous that their personalities towered above even the highest honor in the world. [sidenote: breaking training] _when football players are fighting_ for the championship of the season, they are governed by rigid rules of living. _they keep themselves fit_ by strict diet, by the avoidance of all dissipations, by hardening exercise, and by recuperative rest. but after the "big game" is won, they break training. they stuff themselves with rich food until their bodies and minds are sluggish. then they celebrate their victory by some sort of jollification that lasts half the night. _the next day a second-rate team could beat the champions._ a man who has kept himself lean, hard-muscled, and healthy all the way to the achievement of his ambition is apt to take on flabby flesh and gout when he succeeds. the celebration of thanksgiving is an ordeal from which one does not recover for weeks. turkey and mince pie immoderately eaten are poisons. our annual feast day is more deadly than the fourth of july. [sidenote: rusting in self-satisfaction] a great many people "break training" mentally as well as physically at the celebration stage. _their minds and muscles turn flabby after they succeed. they are so proud of their accomplishments that they rust in self-satisfaction._ then, usually too late for remedy, they find themselves afflicted by the rheumatic twinges of deep-seated discontent with what they have done. we are all familiar with the tragedies of the farmer who sells his acres and moves into town "so that he can take life easy," and of the business man who retires from his "daily grind" to enjoy the fortune of success. so long as they remained at work they were vigorous in mind and body. but nearly always men who give up their accustomed activities begin to develop mental and physical ailments soon afterward. they age and break down in a few years. _in order to stay well, one must keep going. it is far less wearying to walk than to stand still. normal fatigue of mind and body are not so exhaustive of mental and physical energy as torpid idleness._ [sidenote: advance or you will slip back] probably you do not think of quitting work for a long time. you look at your future retirement as a remote possibility. very likely you feel it is premature to consider "your declining years" now, when you are in the full vigor of ambition. _but if you stop advancing, in order to celebrate your progress thus far, you have quit working your way ahead. if you stay contented with what you have done, even for a little while, you have temporarily retired from the game of success and are in danger of rusting into a partial failure. if you do not continue moving ever upward, you will slip into a decline without realizing that you are going back and down._ [sidenote: the zest for work] the successful salesman thrives on his work, and pines for it when he "lays off." he welcomes the end of his annual vacation with more zest than its beginning. he celebrates each order gained by planning at once how he will get another. he is like alexander, who sighed only when there were no more worlds to conquer. he is as perennially tireless as edison, the wizard who is never weary. _to the true salesman there is no enjoyment equal to selling._ he often declares that he "would rather sell than eat." [sidenote: pattern after master salesmen] you know the importance of being a _good salesman_. you have studied the methods he uses throughout the selling process. now at the celebration stage pattern after the _masters_ of the profession. do not get into the bad habits of the _mediocre fellows who slacken their efforts after each success_, and who need the spur of necessity to make them do their utmost. when a good salesman has booked an order, and has taken pains to make a fine last impression on his customer, he does not go to his hotel and play kelly pool, or otherwise spend the rest of the day just loafing around. only the poor salesman celebrates in such a way; _thereby showing that his successes are so rare he is not used to them_. [sidenote: starting after the next chance] the good salesman looks at his watch the moment he is out of his customer's sight. he makes a swift calculation of the time it will take him to reach and sell the next man on his list. if he has no other prospect nearby, he starts looking for one that minute. his keen eyes catch every name on the business signs he passes. _his imaginative mind is planning how he can use the order he just has closed, to influence some other buyer to make a contract._ if there are no additional customers for his line in the town, he sprints to the station to catch the first train up the road. _he does not waste a minute getting to his next selling opportunity_. [sidenote: pepper and poppies] some pretty good salesmen never win the grand quota prize in a sales contest _because they take so much time out for celebrating the big orders they close_. if they land a fine contract in the morning, they don't try to do much selling that afternoon. the prize-winning salesman, too, is delighted to secure a big order. but he doesn't say to himself, "that will put me 'way ahead on the sales record for today." instead he grins and thinks, "this is _my day_. i'm going to fatten up my batting average while i'm going good." _success is pepper to him, not the poppy drug that slackens energy._ [sidenote: continual accumulation] you have worked hard to get the chance you now have. you have paid for it with your best efforts. _it represents an accumulation of your salesmanship._ the good job or the promotion you have gained is like a savings account. let us compare it with the first hundred dollars a thrifty man puts into the bank for a rainy day. would he celebrate the accumulation of that moderate amount of money, the first evidence of his ability to save, by quitting the practice of spending less than his earnings? would he then say to himself, "i am now successful as a saver"? would he stop putting a few dollars in the bank every saturday, just because he already had a hundred? [sidenote: the building process is gradual] no. he would _continue_ to save until he had enough "units of thrift," enough hundreds of dollars, to take a _longer_ step toward success. he would invest his accumulated savings in a lot, or house. perhaps he would start a business of his own. after his investment he still would continue to save. so he would _build_ his success. _all building is a gradual, continual process_. the bricks are laid _one after another_. it takes many to complete the structure. _likewise a series of minor successes must be built into a major accomplishment._ it does not rise all at once. if you are tempted to pause where you are in order to celebrate, ask yourself, "_is this really the celebration stage_?" probably you will find you have only laid the corner-stone, or made an excavation for the foundation of your success. you would not think of having a housewarming because you had finished the basement walls. nor would you consider it an occasion for especial jollification the day you erected the scantlings around the first floor joists. not until the walls are up and the roof is on, not until the house is plastered and papered and painted, not until it is finished would you think of standing on the sidewalk to look it over pride fully and exult, "i did that. it's a good job." [sidenote: repeated building] but if you complete _one_ house, you will not only feel the satisfaction of accomplishment, you will also want to build _another_ that would be a great improvement on the one just finished. you will be _healthily dissatisfied with what you have already done_. very likely you will sell the first house at a profit, and straightway start to put up a better building on another lot. in time you will sell that, too. you will continue the procedure until you become a master builder of houses, and continually achieve more and more success. we have assumed that you now are successfully in possession of an opportunity. you have sold yourself into the very job you want, or into a better position that you believe will afford you fine chances to advance. _do not slump or relax in salesmanship. do not think back, or spend much time contemplating your present success. look ahead to your next sale_ of true ideas of your best capabilities. _the successful salesman is a quick repeater._ he counts his accomplishments in _totals_, not by units. he has successful "_years_," each made up of about three hundred successful working days. he plans in _campaigns_; so he is not inclined to over-celebrate the winning of a battle. [sidenote: make each goal a new starting point] samuel mcroberts, vice-president of the great national city bank of new york, started working for armour & company at a small salary in the early nineties. he was a young man who was always _healthily ambitious to keep moving ahead_. he "ate up" the minor work assigned to him, and celebrated the completion of each task by asking at once, "what next?" in a few years he had risen by successive promotions to the position of treasurer of armour & company. but that wasn't a _goal_ to mcroberts. it seemed to him only a _good starting point_ to bigger successes in the financial world. he became a director of several banks, an officer in important railroad and other corporations. _he continually enlarged his service value_ until he was called to new york's greatest bank, and took his place among the masters of american finance. he did not loll back in his chair then and start taking it easy. _he packed more and more accomplishments into every day._ when the war began, he went to washington to take executive charge of the job of procuring ordnance for the fighters. he held a post analogous to that of lloyd-george when he was minister of munitions for great britain. mcroberts made good as a brigadier general, and after the war resumed his success in business. whatever he did, wherever he worked, samuel mcroberts _smiled welcomes to more opportunities for service, and reached out his ready hands to grasp them_. [sidenote: celebrate by tackling the job ahead] _that is the way to celebrate--by tackling the job ahead. there is no end to the selling process. one sale should lead directly to another_. the good salesman celebrates only the opportunity to get the next order in prospect. he may chuckle to himself over the sale just closed, but he does his rejoicing on his way to a new selling chance. [sidenote: dynamic confidence static complacency] you haven't "arrived" yet. you are just well started. _keep moving, and you will never "see your finish."_ your successes thus far should have developed a considerable degree of _self-confidence._ be careful not to let that _dynamic_ quality change into the _static_ element of _self-complacency._ never be satisfied with what you have done. _always have the zest of appetite for more to do_. add every day to your success chances. do not lose either your self-respect, or the respect of the men with whom you are associated, by _ceasing to grow. do more than you are paid for, and pretty soon your job will be unable to hold all your earning capacity_. you will be promoted to bigger opportunities. _if you shrink in the place you occupy now, your future chances will shrivel to fit your smaller size_. the way to get a better-paying job, to win a bigger, more profitable field for your salesmanship, is to _crowd your present position with your capabilities_. burst out of your limited territory and spread over more ground. [sidenote: serving friends] render your utmost possible service to other people. celebrate each opportunity to form a friendship. _make some one like you for what you are willing to do for him_. hold your friends, once they are made. as emerson advised, "be concerned for other people and their welfare. put their interests sometimes ahead of your own. you can love your fellow men so much that you will never trample on their rights; and while you yourself keep climbing, raise as many of them as you can along with you. that is the way to make friends." celebrate the good fortune of your business associates, rather than your own. when a big contract is closed by your employer, be as tickled over it as he feels. genuinely rejoice in his success. _have no envy of the man above you, then when you rise to a higher level the men below you will not be likely to feel jealous_. [sidenote: ford and schwab] why has henry ford won so unique a place in the personal regard of the everyday man? ford is one of the richest men in the world; yet he is not hated. what is the reason for his general popularity? he is not an idler. he has celebrated each success by taking on another job. and he always has given a hand-up to the other fellow instead of kicking him down so that he might climb higher because of his failure. he has understood and sympathized with the hopes and viewpoint of people who work. as a result countless men and women, most of whom never have seen him, think of henry ford as their friend. his finest success is not signified by the millions of money he has accumulated, but by the millions of friendships he enjoys. charles m. schwab, too, is popular. he is a man whom people like. because he was so successful in winning friends, rather than for his generally recognized business ability, he was made the head of the government's ship-building program in the war. other men were eager to work with and for charles m. schwab. the co-operation of thousands of friendships, new and old, more than anything else enabled him to succeed in his big, patriotic job. how much more he has to celebrate in his wealth of good will than in his great fortune of dollars! schwab has been called the most successful salesman in the world, which is another way of saying that he has no equal in ability to make other people both trust and like him. [sidenote: the truest wealth] you may never accumulate millions of dollars. _that in itself is not success. many wealthy men are failures in life. but with the aid of masterly salesmanship you can so enrich yourself with friendships and the opportunities they bring that making all the money you want will be merely incidental to your real success_. let every accomplishment be a stimulus to better selling of your service. celebrate successful sales of your ideas by undertaking to sell more true ideas about your best capabilities in a larger field of usefulness. [sidenote: the revolving door] the good salesman goes from opportunity to opportunity through a revolving door. as it closes on one selling chance, it opens on another. he steps directly from a finished sale into the prospect of getting an order elsewhere. so he never stops selling. you have sold yourself some knowledge of salesmanship. do not rest contented with what you have already learned. these chapters should but whet your appetite for more opportunities to master the principles and methods of selling true ideas of your best capabilities. so as you close this book, reach out your hand to open another. you cannot over-study the subject of salesmanship. _never be satisfied with what you know_. continue to search for more golden knowledge, and make it yours by practicing everything you learn. [sidenote: failure impossible to the good salesman] it is impossible to fail in life if you become a master salesman of the best that is in you. you will be sure to succeed. so here is good luck to you! keep on making it for yourself, and you never will run out. certain success will be yours. * * * * * it is you that you offer for sale, with your traits ranged like goods on a shelf, and the first thing to do, without fail, is to make a success of yourself. edgar a. guest. generously made available by the making of america collection of the university of michigan library (http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moagrp/) note: images of the original pages are available through the making of america collection of the university of michigan library. see http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moagrp/ what is free trade? an adaptation of frederick bastiat's "sophismes Économiques" designed for the american reader by emile walter a worker new york: g. p. putnam & son, broadway the new york printing company, , , and centre street, new york contents. chapter i. plenty and scarcity chapter ii. obstacles to wealth and causes of wealth chapter iii. effort--result chapter iv. equalizing of the facilities of production chapter v. our productions are overloaded with internal taxes chapter vi. balance of trade chapter vii. a petition chapter viii. discriminating duties chapter ix. a wonderful discovery chapter x. reciprocity chapter xi. absolute prices chapter xii. does protection raise the rate of wages? chapter xiii. theory and practice chapter xiv. conflict of principles chapter xv. reciprocity again chapter xvi. obstructed rivers plead for the prohibitionists chapter xvii. a negative railroad chapter xviii. there are no absolute principles chapter xix. national independence chapter xx. human labor--national labor chapter xxi. raw material chapter xxii. metaphors chapter xxiii. conclusion introduction. years ago i could not rid my mind of the notion that free trade meant some cunning policy of british statesmen designed to subject the world to british interests. coming across bastiat's inimitable _sophismes economiques_ i learnt to my surprise that there were frenchmen also who advocated free trade, and deplored the mischiefs of the protective policy. this made me examine the subject, and think a good deal upon it; and the result of this thought was the unalterable conviction i now hold--a conviction that harmonizes with every noble belief that our race entertains; with civil and religious freedom for all, regardless of race or color; with the harmony of god's works; with peace and goodwill to all mankind. that conviction is this: that to make taxation the incident of protection to special interests, and those engaged in them, is robbery to the rest of the community, and subversive of national morality and national prosperity. i believe that taxes are necessary for the support of government, i believe they must be raised by levy, i even believe that some customs taxes may be more practicable and economical than some internal taxes; but i am entirely opposed to making anything the object of taxation but the revenue required by government for its economical maintenance. i do not espouse free trade because it is british, as some suppose it to be. independent of other things, that would rather set me against it than otherwise, because generally those things which best fit european society ill befit our society--the structure of each being so different. free trade is no more british than any other kind of freedom: indeed, great britain has only followed quite older examples in adopting it, as for instance the republics of venice and holland, both of which countries owed their extraordinary prosperity to the fact of their having set the example of relaxing certain absurd though time-honored restrictions on commerce. i espouse free trade because it is just, it is unselfish, and it is profitable. for these reasons have i, a worker, deeply interested in the welfare of the fellow-workers who are my countrymen, lent to truth and justice what little aid i could, by adapting bastiat's keen and cogent essay to the wants of readers on this side of the atlantic. emile walter, _the worker_. new york, . what is free trade? chapter i. plenty and scarcity. which is better for man and for society--abundance or scarcity? what! can such a question be asked? has it ever been pretended, is it possible to maintain, that scarcity is better than plenty? yes: not only has it been maintained, but it is still maintained. congress says so; many of the newspapers (now happily diminishing in number) say so; a large portion of the public say so; indeed, the _city theory_ is by far the more popular one of the two. has not congress passed laws which prohibit the importation of foreign productions by the maintenance of excessive duties? does not the _tribune_ maintain that it is advantageous to limit the supply of iron manufactures and cotton fabrics, by restraining any one from bringing them to market, but the manufacturers in new england and pennsylvania? do we not hear it complained every day: our importations are too large; we are buying too much from abroad? is there not an association of ladies, who, though they have not kept their promise, still, promised each other not to wear any clothing which was manufactured in other countries? now tariffs can only raise prices by diminishing the quantity of goods offered for sale. therefore, statesmen, editors, and the public generally, believe that scarcity is better than abundance. but why is this; why should men be so blind as to maintain that scarcity is better than plenty? because they look at _price_, but forget _quantity_. but let us see. a man becomes rich in proportion to the remunerative nature of his labor; that is to say, _in proportion as he sells his produce at a high price_. the price of his produce is high in proportion to its scarcity. it is plain, then, that, so far as regards him at least, scarcity enriches him. applying, in turn, this manner of reasoning to each class of laborers individually, the _scarcity theory_ is deduced from it. to put this theory into practice, and in order to favor each class of labor, an artificial scarcity is produced in every kind of produce by prohibitory tariffs, by restrictive laws, by monopolies, and by other analogous measures. in the same manner it is observed that when an article is abundant, it brings a small price. the gains of the producer are, of course, less. if this is the case with all produce, all producers are then poor. abundance, then, ruins society; and as any strong conviction will always seek to force itself into practice, we see the laws of the country struggling to prevent abundance. now, what is the defect in this argument? something tells us that it must be wrong; but _where_ is it wrong? is it false? no. and yet it is wrong? yes. but how? _it is incomplete._ man produces in order to consume. he is at once producer and consumer. the argument given above, considers him only under the first point of view. let us look at him in the second character, and the conclusion will be different. we may say: the consumer is rich in proportion as he _buys_ at a low price. he buys at a low price in proportion to the abundance of the articles in demand; _abundance_, then, enriches him. this reasoning, extended to all consumers, must lead to the _theory of abundance_. which theory is right? can we hesitate to say? suppose that by following out the _scarcity theory_, suppose that through prohibitions and restrictions we were compelled not only to make our own iron, but to grow our own coffee; in short, to obtain everything with difficulty and great outlay of labor. we then take an account of stock and see what our savings are. afterward, to test the other theory, suppose we remove the duties on iron, the duties on coffee, and the duties on everything else, so that we shall obtain everything with as little difficulty and outlay of labor as possible. if we then take an account of stock, is it not certain that we shall find more iron in the country, more coffee, more everything else? choose then, fellow-countrymen, between scarcity and abundance, between much and little, between protection and free trade. you now know which theory is the right one, for you know the fruits they each bear. but, it will be answered, if we are inundated with foreign goods and produce, our specie, our precious product of california, our dollars, will leave the country. well, what of that? man is not fed with coin. he does not dress in gold, nor warm himself with silver. what does it matter, then, whether there be more or less specie in the country, provided there be more bread in the cupboard, more meat in the larder, more clothes in the wardrobe, and more fuel in the cellar? again, it will be objected, if we accustom ourselves to depend upon england for iron, what shall we do in case of a war with that country? to this i reply, we shall then be compelled to produce iron ourselves. but, again i am told, we will not be prepared; we will have no furnaces in blast, no forges ready. true; neither will there be any time when war shall occur that the country will not be already filled with all the iron we shall want until we can make it here. did the confederates in the late war lack for iron? why, then, shall we manufacture our own staples and bolts because we may some day or other have a quarrel with our ironmonger! to sum up: a radical antagonism exists between the vender and the buyer. the former wishes the article offered to be _scarce_, and the supply to be small, so that the price may be high. the latter wishes it _abundant_ and the supply to be large, so that the price may be low. the laws, which should at least remain neutral, take part for the vender against the buyer; for the producer against the consumer; for high against low prices; for scarcity against abundance; for protection against free trade. they act, if not intentionally, at least logically, upon the principle that _a nation is rich in proportion as it is in want of everything_. chapter ii. obstacles to wealth and causes of wealth. man is naturally in a state of entire destitution. between this state, and the satisfying of his wants, there exist a number of obstacles which it is the object of labor to surmount. i wish to make a journey of some hundred miles. but between the point of my departure and my destination there are interposed mountains, rivers, swamps, forests, robbers; in a word--_obstacles_. to overcome these obstacles it is necessary that i should bestow much labor and great efforts in opposing them; or, what is the same thing, if others do it for me, i must pay them the value of their exertions. it is evident that i would have been better off had these obstacles never existed. remember this. through the journey of life, in the long series of days from the cradle to the tomb, man has many difficulties to oppose him. hunger, thirst, sickness, heat, cold, are so many obstacles scattered along his road. in a state of isolation he would be obliged to combat them all by hunting, fishing, agriculture, spinning, weaving, architecture, etc., and it is very evident that it would be better for him that these difficulties should exist to a less degree, or even not at all. in a state of society he is not obliged personally to struggle with each of these obstacles, but others do it for him; and he, in turn, must remove some one of them for the benefit of his fellow-men. this doing one kind of labor for another, is called the division of labor. considering mankind as a whole, _let us remember once more that it would be better for society that these obstacles should be as weak and as few as possible_. but mark how, in viewing this simple truth from a narrow point of view, we come to believe that obstacles, instead of being a disadvantage, are actually a source of wealth! if we examine closely and in detail the phenomena of society and the private interests of men _as modified by the division of labor_, we perceive, without difficulty, how it has happened that wants have been confounded with riches, and the obstacle with the cause. the separation of occupations, which results from the division of labor, causes each man, instead of struggling against _all_ surrounding obstacles, to combat only _one_; the effort being made not for himself alone, but for the benefit of his fellows, who, in their turn, render a similar service to him. it hence results that this man looks upon the obstacle which he has made it his profession to combat for the benefit of others, as the immediate cause of his riches. the greater, the more serious, the more stringent, may be this obstacle, the more he is remunerated for the conquering of it, by those who are relieved by his labors. a physician, for instance, does not busy himself in baking his bread, or in manufacturing his clothing and his instruments; others do it for him, and he, in return, combats the maladies with which his patients are afflicted. the more dangerous and frequent these maladies are, the more others are willing, the more, even, are they forced, to work in his service. disease, then, which is an obstacle to the happiness of mankind, becomes to him the source of his comforts. the reasoning of all producers is, in what concerns themselves, the same. as the doctor draws his profits from _disease_, so does the ship-owner from the obstacle called _distance_; the agriculturist from that named _hunger_; the cloth manufacturer from _cold_; the schoolmaster lives upon _ignorance_, the jeweler upon _vanity_, the lawyer upon _cupidity and breach of faith_. each profession has then an immediate interest in the continuation, even in the extension, of the particular obstacle to which its attention has been directed. theorists hence go on to found a system upon these individual interests, and say: wants are riches: labor is riches: the obstacle to well-being is well-being: to multiply obstacles is to give food to industry. then comes the statesman; and as the developing and propagating of obstacles is the developing and propagating of riches, what more natural than that he should bend his efforts to that point? he says, for instance: if we prevent a large importation of iron, we create a difficulty in procuring it. this obstacle severely felt, obliges individuals to pay, in order to relieve themselves from it. a certain number of our citizens, giving themselves up to the combating of this obstacle, will thereby make their fortunes. in proportion, too, as the obstacle is great, and the mineral scarce, inaccessible, and of difficult and distant transportation, in the same proportion will be the number of laborers maintained by the various branches of this industry. the same reasoning will lead to the proscription of machinery. here are men who are at a loss how to dispose of their petroleum. this is an obstacle which other men set about removing for them by the manufacture of casks. it is fortunate, say our statesmen, that this obstacle exists, since it occupies a portion of the labor of the nation, and enriches a certain number of our citizens. but here is presented to us an ingenious machine, which cuts down the oak, squares it, makes it into staves, and, gathering these together, forms them into casks. the obstacle is thus diminished, and with it the fortunes of the coopers. we must prevent this. let us proscribe the machine! to sift thoroughly this sophism, it is sufficient to remember that human labor is not an _end_ but a _means_. _labor is never without employment._ if one obstacle is removed, it seizes another, and mankind is delivered from two obstacles by the same effort which was at first necessary for one. if the labor of coopers could become useless, it must take another direction. to maintain that human labor can end by wanting employment, it would be necessary to prove that mankind will cease to encounter obstacles. chapter iii. effort--result. we have seen that between our wants and their gratification many obstacles are interposed. we conquer or weaken these by the employment of our faculties. it may be said, in general terms, that industry is an effort followed by a result. but by what do we measure our well-being? by our riches? by the result of our effort, or by the effort itself? there exists always a proportion between the effort employed and the result obtained. does progress consist in the relative increase of the second or of the first term of this proportion--between effort or result? both propositions have been sustained, and in political economy opinions are divided between them. according to the first system, riches are the result of labor. they increase in the same ratio as _the result does to the effort_. absolute perfection, of which god is the type, consists in the infinite distance between these two terms in this relation, viz., effort none, result infinite. the second system maintains that it is the effort itself which forms the measure of, and constitutes, our riches. progression is the increase of the _proportion of the effect to the result_. its ideal extreme may be represented by the eternal and fruitless efforts of sisyphus.[a] [footnote a: we will therefore beg the reader to allow us in future, for the sake of conciseness, to designate this system under the term of _sisyphism_, from sisyphus, who, in punishment of his crimes, was compelled to roll a stone up hill, which fell to the bottom as fast as he rolled it to the top, so that his labor was interminable as well as fruitless.] the first system tends naturally to the encouragement of everything which diminishes difficulties, and augments production--as powerful machinery, which adds to the strength of man; the exchange of produce, which allows us to profit by the various natural agents distributed in different degrees over the surface of our globe; the intellect which discovers, the experience which proves, and the emulation which excites. the second as logically inclines to everything which can augment the difficulty and diminish the product; as, privileges, monopolies, restrictions, prohibition, suppression of machinery, sterility, &c. it is well to mark here that the universal practice of men is always guided by the principle of the first system. every _workman_, whether agriculturist, manufacturer, merchant, soldier, writer or philosopher, devotes the strength of his intellect to do better, to do more quickly, more economically--in a word, _to do more with less_. the opposite doctrine is in use with theorists, essayists, statesmen, ministers, men whose business is to make experiments upon society. and even of these we may observe, that in what personally concerns themselves, they act, like everybody else, upon the principle of obtaining from their labor the greatest possible quantity of useful results. it may be supposed that i exaggerate, and that there are no true sisyphists. i grant that in practice the principle is not pushed to its extreme consequences. and this must always be the case when one starts upon a wrong principle, because the absurd and injurious results to which it leads, cannot but check it in its progress. for this reason, practical industry never can admit of sisyphism. the error is too quickly followed by its punishment to remain concealed. but in the speculative industry of theorists and statesmen, a false principle may be for a long time followed up, before the complication of its consequences, only half understood, can prove its falsity; and even when all is revealed, the opposite principle is acted upon, self is contradicted, and justification sought, in the incomparably absurd modern axiom, that in political economy there is no principle universally true. let us see, then, if the two opposite principles i have laid down do not predominate, each in its turn; the one in practical industry, the other in industrial legislation. when a man prefers a good plough to a bad one; when he improves the quality of his manures; when, to loosen his soil, he substitutes as much as possible the action of the atmosphere for that of the hoe or the harrow; when he calls to his aid every improvement that science and experience have revealed, he has, and can have, but one object, viz., to _diminish the proportion of the effort to the result_. we have indeed no other means of judging of the success of an agriculturist or of the merits of his system, but by observing how far he has succeeded in lessening the one, while he increases the other; and as all the farmers in the world act upon this principle, we may say that all mankind are seeking, no doubt for their own advantage, to obtain at the lowest price, bread, or whatever other article of produce they may need, always diminishing the effort necessary for obtaining any given quantity thereof. this incontestable tendency of human nature, once proved, would, one might suppose, be sufficient to point out the true principle to the legislator, and to show him how he ought to assist industry (if indeed it is any part of his business to assist it at all), for it would be absurd to say that the laws of men should operate in an inverse ratio from those of providence. yet we have heard members of congress exclaim, "i do not understand this theory of cheapness; i would rather see bread dear, and work more abundant." and consequently these gentlemen vote in favor of legislative measures whose effect is to shackle and impede commerce, precisely because by so doing we are prevented from procuring indirectly, and at low price, what direct production can only furnish more expensively. now it is very evident that the system of mr. so-and-so, the congressman, is directly opposed to that of mr. so-and-so, the agriculturist. were he consistent with himself, he would as legislator vote against all restriction; or else as farmer, he would practise in his fields the same principle which he proclaims in the public councils. we would then see him sowing his grain in his most sterile fields, because he would thus succeed in _laboring much_, to _obtain little_. we would see him forbidding the use of the plough, because he could, by scratching up the soil with his nails, fully gratify his double wish of "_dear bread_ and _abundant labor_." restriction has for its avowed object and acknowledged effect, the augmentation of labor. and again, equally avowed and acknowledged, its object and effect are, the increase of prices--a synonymous term for scarcity of produce. pushed then to its greatest extreme, it is pure sisyphism as we have defined it; _labor infinite; result nothing_. there have been men who accused railways of _injuring shipping_; and it is certainly true that the most perfect means of attaining an object must always limit the use of a less perfect means. but railways can only injure shipping by drawing from it articles of transportation; this they can only do by transporting more cheaply; and they can only transport more cheaply, by _diminishing the proportion of the effort employed to the result obtained_--for it is in this that cheapness consists. when, therefore, these men lament the suppression of labor in attaining a given result, they maintain the doctrine of sisyphism. logically, if they prefer the vessel to the railway, they should also prefer the wagon to the vessel, the pack-saddle to the wagon, and the sack to the pack-saddle: for this is, of all known means of transportation, the one which requires the greatest amount of labor, in proportion to the result obtained. "labor constitutes the riches of the people," say some theorists. this was no elliptical expression, meaning that the "results of labor constitute the riches of the people." no; these theorists intended to say, that it is the _intensity_ of labor which measures riches; and the proof of this is that from step to step, from restriction to restriction, they forced on the united states (and in so doing believed that they were doing well) to give to the procuring of, for instance, a certain quantity of iron, double the necessary labor. in england, iron was then at $ ; in the united states it cost $ . supposing the day's work to be worth $ . , it is evident that the united states could, by barter, procure a ton of iron by eight days' labor taken from the labor of the nation. thanks to the restrictive measures of these gentlemen, sixteen days' work were necessary to procure it, by direct production. here then we have double labor for an identical result; therefore double riches; and riches, measured not by the result, but by the intensity of labor. is not this pure and unadulterated sisyphism? that there may be nothing equivocal, these gentlemen carry their idea still farther, and on the same principle that we have heard them call the intensity of labor _riches_, we will find them calling the abundant results of labor and the plenty of everything proper to the satisfying of our wants, _poverty_. "everywhere," they remark, "machinery has pushed aside manual labor; everywhere production is superabundant; everywhere the equilibrium is destroyed between the power of production and that of consumption." here then we see that, according to these gentlemen, if the united states was in a critical situation it was because her productions were too abundant; there was too much intelligence, too much efficiency in her national labor. we were too well fed, too well clothed, too well supplied with everything; the rapid production was more than sufficient for our wants. it was necessary to put an end to this calamity, and therefore it became needful to force us, by restrictions, to work more in order to produce less. all that we could have further to hope for, would be, that human intellect might sink and become extinct; for, while intellect exists, it cannot but seek continually to increase the _proportion of the end to the means; of the product to the labor_. indeed it is in this continuous effort, and in this alone, that intellect consists. sisyphism has been the doctrine of all those who have been intrusted with the regulation of the industry of our country. it would not be just to reproach them with this; for this principle becomes that of our administration only because it prevails in congress; it prevails in congress only because it is sent there by the voters; and the voters are imbued with it only because public opinion is filled with it to repletion. let me repeat here, that i do not accuse the protectionists in congress of being absolutely and always sisyphists. very certainly they are not such in their personal transactions; very certainly each of them will procure for himself _by barter_, what by _direct production_ would be attainable only at a higher price. but i maintain that they are sisyphists when they prevent the country from acting upon the same principle. chapter iv. equalizing of the facilities of production. the protectionists often use the following argument: "it is our belief that protection should correspond to, should be the representation of, the difference which exists between the price of an article of home production and a similar article of foreign production. a protective duty calculated upon such a basis does nothing more than secure free competition; free competition can only exist where there is an equality in the facilities of production. in a horse-race the load which each horse carries is weighed and all advantages equalized; otherwise there could be no competition. in commerce, if one producer can undersell all others, he ceases to be a competitor and becomes a monopolist. suppress the protection which represents the difference of price according to each, and foreign produce must immediately inundate and obtain the monopoly of our market. every one ought to wish, for his own sake and for that of the community, that the productions of the country should be protected against foreign competition, _whenever the latter may be able to undersell the former_." this argument is constantly recurring in all writings of the protectionist school. it is my intention to make a careful investigation of its merits, and i must begin by soliciting the attention and the patience of the reader. i will first examine into the inequalities which depend upon natural causes, and afterwards into those which are caused by diversity of taxes. here, as elsewhere, we find the theorists who favor protection taking part with the producer. let us consider the case of the unfortunate consumer, who seems to have entirely escaped their attention. they compare the field of protection to the _turf_. but on the turf, the race is at once a _means and an end_. the public has no interest in the struggle, independent of the struggle itself. when your horses are started in the course with the single object of determining which is the best runner, nothing is more natural than that their burdens should be equalized. but if your object were to send an important and critical piece of intelligence, could you without incongruity place obstacles to the speed of that one whose fleetness would secure you the best means of attaining your end? and yet this is your course in relation to industry. you forget the end aimed at, which is the _well-being_ of the community; you set it aside; more, you sacrifice it by a perfect _petitio principii_. but we cannot lead our opponents to look at things from our point of view; let us now take theirs: let us examine the question as producers. i will seek to prove: . that equalizing the facilities of production is to attack the foundations of mutual exchange. . that it is not true that the labor of one country can be crushed by the competition of more favored climates. . that, even were this the case, protective duties cannot equalize the facilities of production. . that freedom of trade equalizes these conditions as much as possible; and . that the countries which are the least favored by nature are those which profit most by mutual exchange. . _equalizing the facilities of production is to attack the foundations of mutual exchange._ the equalizing of the facilities of production, is not only the shackling of certain articles of commerce, but it is the attacking of the system of mutual exchange in its very foundation principle. for this system is based precisely upon the very diversities, or, if the expression be preferred, upon the inequalities of fertility, climate, temperature, capabilities, which the protectionists seek to render null. if new england sends its manufactures to the west, and the west sends corn to new england, it is because these two sections are, from different circumstances, induced to turn their attention to the production of different articles. is there any other rule for international exchanges? again, to bring against such exchanges the very inequalities of condition which excite and explain them, is to attack them in their very cause of being. the protective system, closely followed up, would bring men to live like snails, in a state of complete isolation. in short, there is not one of its sophisms, which, if carried through by vigorous deductions, would not end in destruction and annihilation. . _it is not true that the labor of one country can be crushed by the competition of more favored climates._ the statement is not true that the unequal facility of production, between two similar branches of industry, should necessarily cause the destruction of the one which is the least fortunate. on the turf, if one horse gains the prize, the other loses it; but when two horses work to produce any useful article, each produces in proportion to his strength; and because the stronger is the more useful it does not follow that the weaker is good for nothing. wheat is cultivated in every section of the united states, although there are great differences in the degree of fertility existing among them. if it happens that there be one which does not cultivate it, it is because, even to itself, such cultivation is not useful. analogy will show us, that under the influences of an unshackled trade, notwithstanding similar differences, wheat would be produced in every portion of the world; and if any nation were induced to entirely abandon the cultivation of it, this would only be because it would _be her interest_ to otherwise employ her lands, her capital, and her labor. and why does not the fertility of one department paralyze the agriculture of a neighboring and less favored one? because the phenomena of political economy have a suppleness, an elasticity, and, so to speak, _a self-levelling power_, which seems to escape the attention of the school of protectionists. they accuse us of being theoretic, but it is themselves who are so to a supreme degree, if the being theoretic consists in building up systems upon the experience of a single fact, instead of profiting by the experience of a series of facts. in the above example, it is the difference in the value of lands which compensates for the difference in their fertility. your field produces three times as much as mine. yes. but it has cost you ten times as much, and therefore i can still compete with you: this is the sole mystery. and observe how the advantage on one point leads to disadvantage on the other. precisely because your soil is more fruitful it is more dear. it is not _accidentally_ but _necessarily_ that the equilibrium is established, or at least inclines to establish itself: and can it be denied that perfect freedom in exchanges is of all systems the one which favors this tendency? i have cited an agricultural example; i might as easily have taken one from any trade. there are tailors at barnegat, but that does not prevent tailors from being in new york also, although the latter have to pay a much higher rent, as well as higher price for furniture, workmen, and food. but their customers are sufficiently numerous not only to reëstablish the balance, but also to make it lean on their side. when, therefore, the question is about equalizing the advantages of labor, it would be well to consider whether the natural freedom of exchange is not the best umpire. this self-levelling faculty of political phenomena is so important, and at the same time so well calculated to cause us to admire the providential wisdom which presides over the equalizing government of society, that i must ask permission a little longer to turn to it the attention of the reader. the protectionists say, such a nation has the advantage over us, in being able to procure cheaply, coal, iron, machinery, capital; it is impossible for us to compete with it. we must examine this proposition under other aspects. for the present, i stop at the question, whether, when an advantage and a disadvantage are placed in juxtaposition, they do not bear in themselves, the former a descending, the latter an ascending power, which must end by placing them in a just equilibrium? let us suppose the countries a and b. a has every advantage over b; you thence conclude that labor will be concentrated upon a, while b must be abandoned. a, you say, sells much more than it buys; b buys much more than it sells. i might dispute this, but i will meet you upon your own ground. in the hypothesis, labor being in great demand in a, soon rises in value; while labor, iron, coal, lands, food, capital, all being little sought after in b, soon fall in price. again: a being always selling and b always buying, cash passes from b to a. it is abundant in a, very scarce in b. but where there is abundance of cash, it follows that in all purchases a large proportion of it will be needed. then in a, _real dearness_, which proceeds from a very active demand, is added to _nominal dearness_, the consequence of a superabundance of the precious metals. scarcity of money implies that little is necessary for each purchase. then in b, a _nominal cheapness_ is combined with _real cheapness_. under these circumstances, industry will have the strongest possible motives for deserting a to establish itself in b. now, to return to what would be the true course of things. as the progress of such events is always gradual, industry from its nature being opposed to sudden transits, let us suppose that, without waiting the extreme point, it will have gradually divided itself between a and b, according to the laws of supply and demand; that is to say, according to the laws of justice and usefulness. _i do not advance an empty hypothesis when i say, that were it possible that industry should concentrate itself upon a single point, there must, from its nature, arise spontaneously, and in its midst_, an irresistible power of decentralization. we will quote the words of a manufacturer to the chamber of commerce at manchester (the figures brought into his demonstration being suppressed): "formerly we exported goods; this exportation gave way to that of thread for the manufacture of goods; later, instead of thread, we exported machinery for the making of thread; then capital for the construction of machinery; and lastly, workmen and talent, which are the source of capital. all these elements of labor have, one after the other, transferred themselves to other points, where their profits were increased, and where the means of subsistence being less difficult to obtain, life is maintained at less cost. there are at present to be seen in prussia, austria, saxony, switzerland, and italy, immense manufacturing establishments, founded entirely by english capital, worked by english labor, and directed by english talent." we may here perceive that nature, with more wisdom and foresight than the narrow and rigid system of the protectionists can suppose, does not permit the concentration of labor, and the monopoly of advantages, from which they draw their arguments as from an absolute and irremediable fact. it has, by means as simple as they are infallible, provided for dispersion, diffusion, mutual dependence, and simultaneous progress; all of which, your restrictive laws paralyze as much as is in their power, by their tendency towards the isolation of nations. by this means they render much more decided the differences existing in the conditions of production; they check the self-levelling power of industry, prevent fusion of interests, neutralize the counterpoise, and fence in each nation within its own peculiar advantages and disadvantages. . _even were the labor of one country crushed by the competition of more favored climates (which is denied), protective duties cannot equalize the facilities of production._ to say that by a protective law the conditions of production are equalized, is to disguise an error under false terms. it is not true that an import duty equalizes the conditions of production. these remain after the imposition of the duty just as they were before. the most that law can do is to equalize the _conditions of sale_. if it should be said that i am playing upon words, i retort the accusation upon my adversaries. it is for them to prove that _production_ and _sale_ are synonymous terms, which if they cannot do, i have a right to accuse them, if not of playing upon words, at least of confounding them. let me be permitted to exemplify my idea. suppose that several new york speculators should determine to devote themselves to the production of oranges. they know that the oranges of portugal can be sold in new york at one cent each, whilst on account of the boxes, hot-houses, &c., which are necessary to ward against the severity of our climate, it is impossible to raise them at less than a dollar apiece. they accordingly demand a duty of ninety-nine cents upon portugal oranges. with the help of this duty, say they, the _conditions of production_ will be equalized. congress, yielding as usual to this argument, imposes a duty of ninety-nine cents on each foreign orange. now i say that the _relative conditions of production_ are in no wise changed. the law can take nothing from the heat of the sun in lisbon, nor from the severity of the frosts in new york. oranges continuing to mature themselves _naturally_ on the banks of the tagus, and artificially upon those of the hudson, must continue to require for their production much more labor on the latter than the former. the law can only equalize the _conditions of sale_. it is evident that while the portuguese sell their oranges here at a dollar apiece, the ninety-nine cents which go to pay the tax are taken from the american consumer. now look at the whimsicality of the result. upon each portuguese orange, the country loses nothing; for the ninety-nine cents which the consumer pays to satisfy the impost tax, enter into the treasury. there is improper distribution; but no loss. but upon each american orange consumed, there will be about ninety-nine cents lost; for while the buyer very certainly loses them, the seller just as certainly does not gain them; for, even according to the hypothesis, he will receive only the price of production, i will leave it to the protectionists to draw their conclusion. . _but freedom of trade equalizes these conditions as much as is possible._ i have laid some stress upon this distinction between the conditions of production and those of sale, which perhaps the prohibitionists may consider as paradoxical, because it leads me on to what they will consider as a still stranger paradox. this is: if you really wish to equalize the facilities of production, leave trade free. this may surprise the protectionists; but let me entreat them to listen, if it be only through curiosity, to the end of my argument. it shall not be long. i will now take it up where we left off. if we suppose for the moment, that the common and daily profits of each american amount to one dollar, it will indisputably follow that to produce an orange by _direct_ labor in america, one day's work, or its equivalent, will be requisite; whilst to produce the cost of a portuguese orange, only one-hundredth of this day's labor is required; which means simply this, that the sun does at lisbon what labor does at new york. now is it not evident, that if i can produce an orange, or, what is the same thing, the means of buying it, with one-hundredth of a day's labor, i am placed exactly in the same condition as the portuguese producer himself, excepting the expense of the transportation? it therefore follows that freedom of commerce equalizes the conditions of production direct or indirect, as much as it is possible to equalize them; for it leaves but the one inevitable difference, that of transportation. i will add that free trade equalizes also the facilities for attaining enjoyments, comforts, and general consumption; the last, an object which is, it would seem, quite forgotten, and which is nevertheless all-important; since, in fine, consumption is the main object of all our industrial efforts. thanks to freedom of trade, we would enjoy here the results of the portuguese sun, as well as portugal itself; and the inhabitants of new york would have in their reach, as well as those of london, and with the same facilities, the advantages which nature has in a mineralogical point of view conferred upon cornwall. . _countries least favored by nature (countries not yet cleared of forests, for example) are those which profit most by mutual exchange._ the protectionists may suppose me in a paradoxical humor, for i go further still. i say, and i sincerely believe, that if any two countries are placed in unequal circumstances as to advantages of production, _the one of the two which is the less favored by nature, will gain more by freedom of commerce_. to prove this, i will be obliged to turn somewhat aside from the form of reasoning which belongs to this work. i will do so, however; first, because the question in discussion turns upon this point; and again, because it will give me the opportunity of exhibiting a law of political economy of the highest importance, and which, well understood, seems to me to be destined to lead back to this science all those sects which, in our days, are seeking in the land of chimeras that social harmony which they have been unable to discover in nature. i speak of the law of consumption, which the majority of political economists may well be reproached with having too much neglected. consumption is the _end_, the final cause of all the phenomena of political economy, and, consequently, in it is found their final solution. no effect, whether favorable or unfavorable, can be vested permanently in the producer. his advantages and disadvantages, derived from his relations to nature and to society, both pass gradually from him; and by an almost insensible tendency are absorbed and fused into the community at large--the community considered as consumers. this is an admirable law, alike in its cause and its effects; and he who shall succeed in making it well understood, will have a right to say, "i have not, in my passage through the world, forgotten to pay my tribute to society." every circumstance which favors the work of production is of course hailed with joy by the producer, for its _immediate effect_ is to enable him to render greater services to the community, and to exact from it a greater remuneration. every circumstance which injures production, must equally be the source of uneasiness to him; for its _immediate effect_ is to diminish his services, and consequently his remuneration. this is a fortunate and necessary law of nature. the immediate good or evil of favorable or unfavorable circumstances must fall upon the producer, in order to influence him invisibly to seek the one and to avoid the other. again: when an inventor succeeds in his labor-saving machine, the _immediate_ benefit of this success is received by him. this again is necessary, to determine him to devote his attention to it. it is also just; because it is just that an effort crowned with success should bring its own reward. but these effects, good and bad, although permanent in themselves, are not so as regards the producer. if they had been so, a principle of progressive and consequently infinite inequality would have been introduced among men. this good, and this evil, both therefore pass on, to become absorbed in the general destinies of humanity. how does this come about? i will try to make it understood by some examples. let us go back to the thirteenth century. men who gave themselves up to the business of copying, received for this service _a remuneration regulated by the general rate of the profits_. among them is found one, who seeks and finds the means of rapidly multiplying copies of the same work. he invents printing. the first effect of this is, that the individual is enriched, while many more are impoverished. at the first view, wonderful as the discovery is, one hesitates in deciding whether it is not more injurious than useful. it seems to have introduced into the world, as i said above, an element of infinite inequality. guttenberg makes large profits by this invention, and perfects the invention by the profits, until all other copyists are ruined. as for the public--the consumer--it gains but little, for guttenberg takes care to lower the price of books only just so much as is necessary to undersell all rivals. but the great mind which put harmony into the movements of celestial bodies, could also give it to the internal mechanism of society. we will see the advantages of this invention escaping from the individual, to become for ever the common patrimony of mankind. the process finally becomes known. guttenberg is no longer alone in his art; others imitate him. their profits are at first considerable. they are recompensed for being the first who made the effort to imitate the processes of the newly-invented art. this again was necessary, in order that they might be induced to the effort, and thus forward the great and final result to which we approach. they gain largely; but they gain less than the inventor, for _competition_ has commenced its work. the price of books now continually decreases. the gains of the imitators diminish in proportion as the invention becomes older; and in the same proportion imitation becomes less meritorious. soon the new object of industry attains its normal condition; in other words, the remuneration of printers is no longer an exception to the general rules of remuneration, and, like that of copyists formerly, it is only regulated _by the general rate of profits_. here then the producer, as such, holds only the old position. the discovery, however, has been made; the saving of time, labor, effort, for a fixed result, for a certain number of volumes, is realized. but in what is this manifested? in the cheap price of books. for the good of whom? for the good of the consumer--of society--of humanity. printers, having no longer any peculiar merit, receive no longer a peculiar remuneration. as men--as consumers--they no doubt participate in the advantages which the invention confers upon the community; but that is all. as printers, as producers, they are placed upon the ordinary footing of all other producers. society pays them for their labor, and not for the usefulness of the invention. _that_ has become a gratuitous benefit, a common heritage to mankind. the wisdom and beauty of these laws strike me with admiration and reverence. what has been said of printing, can be extended to every agent for the advancement of labor--from the nail and the mallet, up to the locomotive and the electric telegraph. society enjoys all, by the abundance of its use, its consumption; and it _enjoys all gratuitously_. for as their effect is to diminish prices, it is evident that just so much of the price as is taken off by their intervention, renders the production in so far _gratuitous_. there only remains the actual labor of man to be paid for; and the remainder, which is the result of the invention, is subtracted; at least after the invention has run through the cycle which i have just described as its destined course. i send for a workman; he brings a saw with him; i pay him two dollars for his day's labor, and he saws me twenty-five boards. if the saw had not been invented, he would perhaps not have been able to make one board, and i would none the less have paid him for his day's labor. the _usefulness_, then, of the saw, is for me a gratuitous gift of nature, or rather, is a portion of the inheritance which, _in common_ with my brother men, i have received from the genius of my ancestors. i have two workmen in my field; the one directs the handle of a plough, the other that of a spade. the result of their day's labor is very different, but the price is the same, because the remuneration is proportioned, not to the usefulness of the result, but to the effort, the [time, and] labor given to attain it. i invoke the patience of the reader, and beg him to believe, that i have not lost sight of free trade: i entreat him only to remember the conclusion at which i have arrived: _remuneration is not proportioned to the usefulness of the articles brought by the producer into the market, but to the [time and] labor required for their production._[b] [footnote b: it is true that [time and] labor do not receive a uniform remuneration; because labor is more or less intense, dangerous, skilful, &c., [and time more or less valuable.] competition establishes for each category a price current: and it is of this variable price that i speak.] i have so far taken my examples from human inventions, but will now go on to speak of natural advantages. in every article of production, nature and man must concur. but the portion of nature is always gratuitous. only so much of the usefulness of an article as is the result of human labor becomes the object of mutual exchange, and consequently of remuneration. the remuneration varies much, no doubt, in proportion to the intensity of the labor, of the skill, which it requires, of its being _à-propos_ to the demand of the day, of the need which exists for it, of the momentary absence of competition, &c. but it is not the less true in principle, that the assistance received from natural laws, which belongs to all, counts for nothing in the price. we do not pay for the air we breathe, although so useful to us, that we could not live two minutes without it. we do not pay for it, because nature furnishes it without the intervention of man's labor. but if we wish to separate one of the gases which compose it for instance, to fill a balloon, we must take some [time and] labor; or if another takes it for us, we must give him an equivalent in something which will have cost us the trouble of production. from which we see that the exchange is between efforts, [time and] labor. it is certainly not for hydrogen gas that i pay, for this is everywhere at my disposal, but for the work that it has been necessary to accomplish in order to disengage it; work which i have been spared, and which i must refund. if i am told that there are other things to pay for, as expense, materials, apparatus, i answer, that still in these things it is the work that i pay for. the price of the coal employed is only the representation of the [time and] labor necessary to dig and transport it. we do not pay for the light of the sun, because nature alone gives it to us. but we pay for the light of gas, tallow, oil, wax, because here is labor to be remunerated;--and remark, that it is so entirely [time and] labor and not utility to which remuneration is proportioned, that it may well happen that one of these means of lighting, while it may be much more effective than another, may still cost less. to cause this, it is only necessary that less [time and] human labor should be required to furnish it. when the water-boat comes to supply my ship, were i to pay in proportion to the _absolute utility_ of the water, my whole fortune would not be sufficient. but i pay only for the trouble taken. if more is required, i can get another boat to furnish it, or finally go and get it myself. the water itself is not the subject of the bargain, but the labor required to obtain the water. this point of view is so important, and the consequences that i am going to draw from it so clear, as regards the freedom of international exchanges, that i will still elucidate my idea by a few more examples. the alimentary substance contained in potatoes does not cost us very dear, because a great deal of it is attainable with little work. we pay more for wheat, because, to produce it, nature requires more labor from man. it is evident that if nature did for the latter what she does for the former, their prices would tend to the same level. it is impossible that the producer of wheat should permanently gain more than the producer of potatoes. the law of competition cannot allow it. again, if by a happy miracle the fertility of all arable lands were to be increased, it would not be the agriculturist, but the consumer, who would profit by this phenomenon; for the result of it would be abundance and cheapness. there would be less labor incorporated into an acre of grain, and the agriculturist would be therefore obliged to exchange it for less labor incorporated into some other article. if, on the contrary, the fertility of the soil were suddenly to deteriorate, the share of nature in production would be less, that of labor greater, and the result would be higher prices. i am right then in saying that it is in consumption, in mankind, that at length all political phenomena find their solution. as long as we fail to follow their effects to this point, and look only at _immediate_ effects, which act but upon individual men or classes of men _as producers_, we know nothing more of political economy than the quack does of medicine, when instead of following the effects of a prescription in its action upon the whole system, he satisfies himself with knowing how it affects the palate and the throat. the tropical regions are very favorable to the production of sugar and coffee; that is to say, nature does most of the business and leaves but little for labor to accomplish. but who reaps the advantage of this liberality of nature? not these regions, for they are forced by competition to receive remuneration simply for their labor. it is mankind who is the gainer; for the result of this liberality is _cheapness_, and cheapness belongs to the world. here in the temperate zone, we find coal and iron ore on the surface of the soil; we have but to stoop and take them. at first, i grant, the immediate inhabitants profit by this fortunate circumstance. but soon comes competition, and the price of coal and iron falls, until this gift of nature becomes gratuitous to all, and human labor is only paid according to the general rate of profits. thus, natural advantages, like improvements in the process of production, are, or have, a constant tendency to become, under the law of competition, the common and _gratuitous_ patrimony of consumers, of society, of mankind. countries, therefore, which do not enjoy these advantages, must gain by commerce with those which do; because the exchanges of commerce are between _labor and labor_, subtraction being made of all the natural advantages which are combined with these labors; and it is evidently the most favored countries which can incorporate into a given labor the largest proportion of these _natural advantages_. their produce representing less labor, receives less recompense; in other words, is _cheaper_. if then all the liberality of nature results in cheapness, it is evidently not the producing, but the consuming country, which profits by her benefits. hence we may see the enormous absurdity of the consuming country, which rejects produce precisely because it is cheap. it is as though we should say: "we will have nothing of that which nature gives you. you ask of us an effort equal to two, in order to furnish ourselves with produce only attainable at home by an effort equal to four. you can do it because with you nature does half the work. but we will have nothing to do with it; we will wait till your climate, becoming more inclement, forces you to ask of us a labor equal to four, and then we can treat with you _upon an equal footing_!" a is a favored country; b is maltreated by nature. mutual traffic then is advantageous to both, but principally to b, because the exchange is not between _utility_ and _utility_, but between _value_ and _value_. now a furnishes a greater _utility in a similar value_, because the utility of any article includes at once what nature and what labor have done; whereas the value of it only corresponds to the portion accomplished by labor. b then makes an entirely advantageous bargain; for by simply paying the producer from a for his labor, it receives in return not only the results of that labor, but in addition there is thrown in whatever may have accrued from the superior bounty of nature. we will lay down the general rule. traffic is an exchange of _values_; and as value is reduced by competition to the simple representation of labor, traffic is the exchange of equal labors. whatever nature has done towards the production of the articles exchanged, is given on both sides _gratuitously_; from whence it necessarily follows, that the most advantageous commerce is transacted with those countries which are the least favored by nature. the theory of which i have attempted in this chapter to trace the outlines, deserves a much greater elaboration. but perhaps the attentive reader will have perceived in it the fruitful seed which is destined in its future growth to smother protectionism, at once with the various other isms whose object is to exclude the law of competition from the government of the world. competition, no doubt, considering man as producer, must often interfere with his individual and _immediate_ interests. but if we consider the great object of all labor, the universal good, in a word, consumption, we cannot fail to find that competition is to the moral world what the law of equilibrium is to the material one. it is the foundation of true gratification, of true liberty and equality, of the equality of comforts and condition, so much sought after in our day; and if so many sincere reformers, so many earnest friends to public right, seek to reach their end by _commercial legislation_, it is only because they do not yet understand _commercial freedom_. chapter v. our productions are overloaded with internal taxes-- this is but a new wording of the sophism before noticed. the demand made is, that the foreign article should be taxed, in order to neutralize the effects of the internal tax, which weighs down domestic produce. it is still then but the question of equalizing the facilities of production. we have but to say that the tax is an artificial obstacle, which has exactly the same effect as a natural obstacle, i.e. the increasing of the price. if this increase is so great that there is more loss in producing the article in question at home than in attracting it from foreign parts by the production of an equivalent value of something else--_laissez faire_. individual interest will soon learn to choose the lesser of two evils. i might refer the reader to the preceding demonstration for an answer to this sophism; but it is one which recurs so often, that it deserves a special discussion. i have said more than once, that i am opposing only the theory of the protectionists, with the hope of discovering the source of their errors. were i disposed to enter into controversy with them, i would say: why direct your tariffs principally against england, a country more overloaded with taxes than any in the world? have i not a right to look upon your argument as a mere pretext? but i am not of the number of those who believe that prohibitionists are guided by interest, and not by conviction. the doctrine of protection is too popular not to be sincere. if the majority could believe in freedom, we would be free. without doubt it is individual interest which weighs us down with tariffs; but it acts upon conviction. "the will (said pascal) is one of the principal organs of belief." but belief does not the less exist because it is rooted in the will and in the secret inspirations of egotism. we will return to the sophism drawn from internal taxes. the government may make either a good or a bad use of taxes; it makes a good use of them when it renders to the public services equivalent to the value received from them; it makes a bad use of them when it expends this value, giving nothing in return. to say in the first case that they place the country which pays them in more disadvantageous conditions for production, than the country which is free from them, is a sophism. we pay, it is true, so many millions for the administration of justice, and the maintenance of order, but we have justice and order; we have the security which they give, the time which they save for us; and it is most probable that production is neither more easy nor more active among nations, where (if there be such) each individual takes the administration of justice into his own hands. we pay, i grant, many millions for roads, bridges, ports, steamships; but we have these steamships, these ports, bridges, and roads; and unless we maintain that it is a losing business to establish them, we cannot say that they place us in a position inferior to that of nations who have, it is true, no budget of public works, but who likewise have no public works. and here we see why (even while we accuse taxes of being a cause of industrial inferiority) we direct our tariffs precisely against those nations which are the most taxed. it is because these taxes, well used, far from injuring, have ameliorated the _conditions of production_ to these nations. thus we again arrive at the conclusion that the protectionist sophisms not only wander from, but are the contrary--the very antithesis--of truth. as to unproductive taxes, suppress them if you can; but surely it is a most singular idea to suppose, that their evil effect is to be neutralized by the addition of individual taxes to public taxes. many thanks for the compensation! the state, you say, has taxed us too much; surely this is no reason that we should tax each other! a protective duty is a tax directed against foreign produce, but which returns, let us keep in mind, upon the national consumer. is it not then a singular argument to say to him, "because the taxes are heavy, we will raise prices higher for you; and because the state takes a part of your revenue, we will give another portion of it to benefit a monopoly?" but let us examine more closely this sophism so accredited among our legislators; although, strange to say, it is precisely those who keep up the unproductive taxes (according to our present hypothesis) who attribute to them afterwards our supposed inferiority, and seek to re-establish the equilibrium by further taxes and new clogs. it appears to me to be evident that protection, without any change in its nature and effects, might have taken the form of a direct tax, raised by the state, and distributed as a premium to privileged industry. let us admit that foreign iron could be sold in our market at $ , but not lower; and american iron at not lower than $ . in this hypothesis there are two ways in which the state can secure the national market to the home producer. the first, is to put upon foreign iron a duty of $ . this, it is evident, would exclude it, because it could no longer be sold at less than $ ; $ for the indemnifying price, $ for the tax; and at this price it must be driven from the market by american iron, which we have supposed to cost $ . in this case the buyer, the consumer, will have paid all the expenses of the protection given. the second means would be to lay upon the public an internal revenue tax of $ , and to give it as a premium to the iron manufacturer. the effect would in either case be equally a protective measure. foreign iron would, according to both systems, be alike excluded; for our iron manufacturer could sell at $ , what, with the $ premium, would thus bring him in $ . while the price of sale being $ , foreign iron could not obtain a market at $ . in these two systems the principle is the same; the effect is the same. there is but this single difference; in the first case the expense of protection is paid by a part, in the second by the whole of the community. i frankly confess my preference for the second system, which i regard as more just, more economical, and more legal. more just, because, if society wishes to give bounties to some of its members, the whole community ought to contribute; more economical, because it would banish many difficulties, and save the expenses of collection; more legal, because the public would see clearly into the operation, and know what was required of it. but if the protective system had taken this form, would it not have been laughable enough to hear it said: "we pay heavy taxes for the army, the navy, the judiciary, the public works, the debt, &c. these amount to more than millions. it would therefore be desirable that the state should take another millions to relieve the poor iron manufacturers." this, it must certainly be perceived, by an attentive investigation, is the result of the sophism in question. in vain, gentlemen, are all your efforts; you cannot give money to one without taking it from another. if you are absolutely determined to exhaust the funds of the taxable community, well; but, at least, do not mock them; do not tell them, "we take from you again, in order to compensate you for what we have already taken." it would be a too tedious undertaking to endeavor to point out all the fallacies of this sophism. i will therefore limit myself to the consideration of it in three points. you argue that the united states are overburdened with taxes, and deduce thence the conclusion that it is necessary to protect such and such an article of produce. but protection does not relieve us from the payment of these taxes. if, then, individuals devoting themselves to any one object of industry, should advance this demand: "we, from our participation in the payment of taxes, have our expenses of production increased, and therefore ask for a protective duty which shall raise our price of sale:" what is this but a demand on their part to be allowed to free themselves from the burden of the tax, by laying it on the rest of the community? their object is to balance, by the increased price of their produce, the amount which they pay in taxes. now, as the whole amount of these taxes must enter into the treasury, and the increase of price must be paid by society, it follows that (where this protective duty is imposed) society has to bear, not only the general tax, but also that for the protection of the article in question. but, it is answered, let _everything_ be protected. firstly, this is impossible; and, again, were it possible, how could such a system give relief? _i_ will pay for you, _you_ will pay for me; but not the less still there remains the tax to be paid. thus you are the dupes of an illusion. you determine to raise taxes for the support of an army, a navy, judges, roads, &c. afterwards you seek to disburden from its portion of the tax, first one article of industry, then another, then a third; always adding to the burden of the mass of society. you thus only create interminable complications. if you can prove that the increase of price resulting from protection, falls upon the foreign producer, i grant something specious in your argument. but if it be true that the american people paid the tax before the passing of the protective duty, and afterwards that it has paid not only the tax but the protective duty also, truly i do not perceive wherein it has profited. but i go much further, and maintain that the more oppressive our taxes are, the more anxiously ought we to open our ports and frontiers to foreign nations, less burdened than ourselves. and why? _in order that we may_ share with them, _as much as possible, the burden which we bear._ is it not an incontestable maxim in political economy, that taxes must, in the end, fall upon the consumer? _the greater then our commerce, the greater the portion which will be reimbursed to us, of taxes incorporated in the produce which we will have sold to foreign consumers; whilst we on our part will have made to them only a lesser reimbursement, because (according to our hypothesis) their produce is less taxed than ours._ chapter vi. balance of trade. our adversaries have adopted a system of tactics, which embarrasses us not a little. do we prove our doctrine? they admit the truth of it in the most respectful manner. do we attack their principles? they abandon them with the best possible grace. they only ask that our doctrine, which they acknowledge to be true, should be confined to books; and that their principles, which they allow to be false, should be established in practice. if we will give up to them the regulation of our tariffs, they will leave us triumphant in the domain of literature. it is constantly alleged in opposition to our principles, that they are good only in theory. but, gentlemen, do you believe that merchants' books are good in practice? it does appear to me, if there is anything which can have a practical authority, when the object is to prove profit and loss, that this must be commercial accounts. we cannot suppose that all the merchants of the world, for centuries back, should have so little understood their own affairs, as to have kept their books in such a manner as to represent gains as losses, and losses as gains. truly it would be easier to believe that our legislators are bad political economists. a merchant, one of my friends, having had two business transactions, with very different results, i have been curious to compare on this subject the accounts of the counter with those of the custom-house, interpreted by our legislators. mr. t dispatched from new orleans a vessel freighted for france with cotton valued at $ , . such was the amount entered at the custom-house. the cargo, on its arrival at havre, had paid ten per cent. expenses, and was liable to thirty per cent. duties, which raised its value to $ , . it was sold at twenty per cent. profit on its original value, which equalled $ , , and the price of sale was $ , , which the consignee converted into merchandise, principally parisian goods. these goods, again, had to pay for transportation to the sea-board, insurance, commissions, &c., ten per cent.; so that when the return cargo arrived at new orleans, its value had risen to $ , , and it was thus entered at the custom-house. finally, mr. t realized again on this return cargo twenty per cent. profits, amounting to $ , . the goods thus sold for the sum of $ , . if our legislators require it, i will send them an extract from the books of mr. t. they will there see, _credited_ to the account of _profit and loss_, that is to say, set down as gained, two sums; the one of $ , , the other of $ , , and mr. t feels perfectly certain that, as regards these, there is no mistake in his accounts. now what conclusion do our congressmen draw from the sums entered into the custom-house, in this operation? they thence learn that the united states have exported $ , , and imported $ , ; from whence they conclude "_that she has spent, dissipated, the profits of her previous savings; that she is impoverishing herself and progressing to her ruin; and that she has squandered on a foreign nation_ $ , _of her capital_." some time after this transaction, mr. t dispatched another vessel, again freighted with national produce, to the amount of $ , . but the vessel foundered in leaving the port, and mr. t had only further to inscribe upon his books two little items, thus worded: "_sundries due to x_, $ , , for purchase of divers articles dispatched by vessel n." "_profit and loss due, to sundries_, $ , , _for final and total loss of cargo._" in the meantime the custom-house inscribed $ , upon its list of _exportations_, and as there can of course be nothing to balance this entry on the list of _importations_, it hence follows that our enlightened members of congress must see in this wreck _a clear profit_ to the united states of $ , . we may draw hence yet another conclusion, viz.: that according to the balance of trade theory, the united states has an exceedingly simple manner of constantly doubling her capital. it is only necessary, to accomplish this, that she should, after entering into the custom-house her articles for exportation, cause them to be thrown into the sea. by this course, her exportations can speedily be made to equal her capital; importations will be nothing, and our gain will be, all which the ocean will have swallowed up. you are joking, the protectionists will reply. you know that it is impossible that we should utter such absurdities. nevertheless, i answer, you do utter them, and what is more, you give them life, you exercise them practically upon your fellow-citizens, as much, at least, as is in your power to do. but lest even mr. t's books may not be deemed of sufficient weight to counterbalance the convictions of the horace greeley school of prohibition, i shall proceed to furnish a table exhibiting various classes of commercial transactions, embracing most of the classes usually effected by importing and exporting houses, all of which may result in undoubted profits to the parties engaged in them, and to the country at large, and yet which, as they appear in the annual commerce and navigation reports issued by the government, would be made to prove by mr. greeley that the result has in each case been a loss to the country. the sums are all stated in gold: a, represents one hundred merchants, who shipped to london beef, boots and shoes, butter, cheese, cotton, hams and bacon, flour, indian corn, lard, lumber, machinery, oils, pork, staves, tallow, tobacco and cigars, worth in new york, in the aggregate, ten millions of dollars, gold, but worth in london plus the cost of transportation, &c., eleven millions of dollars, gold, in bond. after being sold in london, the proceeds (eleven millions) were invested in british goods, worth eleven millions in london, but worth twelve millions in bond in new york, and plus the cost of transportation, &c. after having these goods sold in new york, a net profit of two millions was the result of the whole transaction, a profit both to the merchants and the country; yet, according to the commerce and navigation returns, the exports were ten millions, and the imports eleven millions (valued at the foreign place of production as the law directs), showing, according to mr. greeley's solitary point of view, a loss to the country of one million. b, owned a gold mine in nevada, and had no capital with which to develop it. he proceeded to france, sold his mine to c for a million, which he invested in french muslin-de-laines, buttons, and glassware, worth a million in france, but worth $ , , in philadelphia, ex duty and plus transportation, &c. these sold, b netted an undoubted profit of $ , , besides getting rid of his mine; but, according to the commerce and navigation returns, the exports were nothing, and the imports $ , , ; showing, according to mr. greeley's solitary point of view, a loss to the country of $ , , . c, the french owner of the nevada mine, had a million more with which to develop it. hearing that french cloths and gloves had a good sale in boston, he invested his million in these goods, sailed for boston with them, sold them there in bond and plus exportation, for $ , , , which he at once invested in machinery, labor, &c., destined for nevada. so far, c made a profit of $ , , and had $ , , invested in an american gold mine; but, according to the commerce and navigation returns, the exports were nothing, and the imports $ , , ; according to mr. greeley's solitary point of view, a loss to the country of $ , , . d, had a rich uncle in rio janeiro who died and left him a million. d ordered this sum to be invested in hides and shipped to him at boston. these hides were worth a million in rio, but $ , , in natick, ex duty and plus transportation. upon selling them d was clearly worth $ , , ; yet, according to the commerce and navigation reports, as there had been no exports, but simply $ , , of imports, the transaction, from mr. greeley's solitary point of view, seemed a loss to the country of $ , , . e, in , shipped to cuba, wagons, carts, agricultural implements, pianos and billiard-tables, worth $ , , in baltimore, but $ , , in havana, ex duty and plus transportation. these he sold, and invested the proceeds in cigars worth $ , , in havana, but in russia, ex duty and plus transportation, $ , , . disposing of these in turn, and investing the proceeds in russian iron worth $ , , in russia, but $ , , in venezuela, ex duty and plus transportation, he shipped the iron to venezuela, where he realized on it, investing the proceeds this time in south american products worth in spain $ , , . he sold these products in spain, bought olive oil with the proceeds, shipped the same to australia, where it was worth, ex duty and plus charges, $ , , , which sum he realized in gold, which he carried to new york in . on the latter transaction he makes no profit, but barely clears his charges. yet on the whole he has made a net gain of $ , ; but, according to the commerce and navigation reports, the exports have been $ , , and the imports $ , , , showing, from mr. greeley's solitary point of view, a loss to the country of $ , . nay more, for mr. greeley balances his trade accounts each year by itself, and as e's outward shipment was made in and his importation in , the country, according to h.g., lost in , by over importation, $ , , . yet not to be hard on h.g., and to be perfectly honest in our accounts, we will only set down a loss to the country from his point of view of $ , . f, owned the , ton ship great republic, which cost him $ , . finding her too large for profitable employment, and hearing that large vessels were in demand in england as troop transports to the crimea, he sent her out in ballast and sold her in southampton for $ , cash. with this sum he went to geneva, where he invested it in swiss watches worth $ , in geneva, but $ , in new orleans, ex duty and plus transportation. to new orleans he accordingly shipped the watches, and they were sold. by these transactions he not only got rid of his elephant, but both he and the country clearly gained $ , . yet according to mr. greeley's single eye the country suffered to the extent of $ , , for in the exports appeared nothing, but among the imports $ , worth of foreign gewgaws, only fit to keep time with. g, (an actual transaction) shipped by the great eastern on her last voyage from new york, lard and other merchandise, worth in new york $ , , the fact of which, in the hurry of business, he failed to report to the custom house, and it therefore did not appear in the exports. this lard was carried to england, where it found no sale, and was reshipped to new york. g only escaped being charged duty on it when it arrived, by swearing that it had been originally shipped from here in good faith; yet it was entered as an import (free of duty), and showed, according to mr. greeley's one eye, that the country was on the road to ruin $ , worth. h, lived in brownsville, texas, where he had a lot of arms and gunpowder, worth $ , . the mexicans levied a very high import duty on these articles, and they consequently bore a very high price in matamoras, just opposite, being worth in the market of that town no less than $ , . he accordingly conceived the idea of smuggling them into mexican territory, and, with the connivance of the mexican officials, (what rascals these foreign custom-house officials are, to be sure!) actually succeeded in doing so, and thus realized the very handsome profit of $ , in gold. the entire proceeds he invested in mexican indigo and cochineal, worth in mexico $ , , and in boston $ , , in bond, plus charges. of course, no export entry was furnished to the customs collector at brownsville; but mr. greeley fastened his one eye on the indigo and cochineal, when it arrived in boston, and made up his mind that the country had lost $ , . as for h, he has invested $ , in more gunpowder and arms, and starts for brownsville next week, to try his luck again. with the other $ , he has a notion of buying out the new york _tribune_, and setting it right on free trade, and other matters of the sort. i, and his friends owned a fine fleet of merchantmen when the war broke out. the aggregate burden of the vessels was nearly a million of tons, and they were worth $ a ton. when the rebel cruisers commenced their operations, there were no united states cruisers prepared to capture them, because our best vessels were on blockade service. this being the case, insurance on american merchantmen rose very high--so high that i and his friends were reluctantly compelled to sell their vessels in great britain and elsewhere, and convert them into cash. they brought $ , , , and this sum was invested in merchandise, which netted a profit of ten per cent. to i and his friends. they thus gained $ , , by these transactions. the entire proceeds, $ , , , they then lent to the government with which to carry on its war of existence with the southern insurgents. profitable as these transactions clearly were to i and his friends, and to the government, mr. greeley, nevertheless, only sees the import of $ , , worth of foreign extravagances, and consequently wants the tariff on iron increased in order to make water run up hill. j, had $ , , in five-twenty bonds, which cost him $ , , gold. as the market price in new york was only gold, while it was - / in london, he conceived the inhuman idea of selling them in the latter place. the cost of sending them there, including insurance, &c., made them net him but , but at this price he gained a profit of $ , . with his capital now augmented to $ , , he bought rags in italy, which he sold in new york for $ , , , ex duty and plus transportation, a clear profit of $ , from the start. no export appearing in the commerce and navigation returns, and nothing but the rags meeting his unital gaze, mr. greeley at once posted his national ledger with a loss of $ , , , the cost of the rags in italy. k, was, and is still (for these are actual transactions taken from his account books), an exchange broker, doing business in new york. he buys notes on the banks of england, ireland, scotland, france and canada--indeed, foreign banknotes of all kinds--for which he usually pays about ninety per cent, of their face value. by the end of last year he had invested $ , in these notes brought here by travellers. he then inclosed them in letters, and sent them to their proper destinations to be redeemed. redeemed they were in due time, and the proceeds remitted in gold. in this business he earned the neat profit of $ , , and the country was that much richer thereby. but mr. greeley, who only looked at the import of k's gold remittance, declared the country $ , worse off than before, and dares us to "come on" with the figures. l, and some fifty thousand other skedaddlers ran off to canada when the war broke out, for fear they might be drafted. together with the colored folks who fled there, and the many travellers who went there from time to time, they carried with them most of our silver half-dollars, quarters, dimes, half-dimes, and three-cent pieces. these amounted to $ , , , which the skedaddlers, the colored folks, and the travellers, as with returning peace they slowly straggled back into the country, invested in canadian knick-knacks, which they disposed of in the united states. the incoming goods were duly entered at our frontier custom-houses, but the outgoing silver was not. mr. greeley, unaware of this fact, detects an over-importation of $ , , , and is waiting to be elected to congress in order to legislate the matter right. m, (an actual transaction) had $ , , in illinois central railroad bonds, for which he desired to obtain $ , , worth of iron rails to repair the road with. not being able to effect the transaction in the united states, he sent the bonds to germany, where they were sold, and the proceeds invested in english railroad iron, worth $ , , in glasgow, but $ , , in chicago, ex duty, and plus transportation. by this transaction m, besides effecting the desired exchange, netted a profit of $ , . yet, according to the commerce and navigation reports, and mr. greeley's one eye, as there had been no exports and $ , , of imports, the country was a sufferer by the latter sum. n, was a body of incorporators who owned a tract of land lying in the bend of a river. standing in need of water power for manufacturing purposes, they resolved to cut a canal across the bend. as this would essentially benefit the navigation of the river, the state agreed to guaranty their bonds for a loan of money to the extent of $ , , . finding no purchaser for these bonds in the united states, they remitted them to europe, and there sold them at par. with the proceeds they purchased army blankets for the boston market, on which they realized ten per cent. net profit. these sold, the avails were invested in barrows, spades, water-wheels, wages, &c., and in good time the canal was cut and the manufactory set a-going. profitable as this thing was to n, mr. greeley's single-barrelled telescope sees in it only a loss to the country of $ , , . o, represents the illinois central, union pacific, and other western railroads, owning grants of land along their respective roads, to sell which to actual settlers they open agencies in london, havre, antwerp, and other european cities. the emigrants who buy these lands pay for them in europe, and set sail for america with their title-deeds in their pockets, and their axes on their shoulders, ready for a conquest over forest and prairie. the agents of the illinois central railroad (see report of the company), who have sold , , acres, say at an average of ten dollars per acre, invested the proceeds, $ , , , in iron rails for the road, worth that sum in england, but ten per cent. more in illinois, less duty and plus transportation. the road has thus not only netted a profit of $ , , on the transaction, but sold their wild lands to actual settlers, who will soon convert them into productive farms. but mr. greeley, upon seeing an import of $ , , of iron rails, declares the thing must be stopped or the country will perish. p, is sir morton peto and other european capitalists, who, believing that eight per cent., the average rate of interest in the united states, is better than three per cent., the average rate in england, invest $ , , of capital in american enterprises. this capital is sent hither in the form of merchandise, to stock our railroads, farms, factories, etc., and is so much clear benefit to the country; but to mr. greeley's solitary vision it is only a curse. q, and his friends are cozy old-fashioned merchants in boston city, who own one hundred and seventy-nine vessels (see consular reports, ), which trade between foreign ports and away from the united states altogether. these vessels have an aggregate burden of one million tons, are worth forty dollars, gold, per ton, and earn a net profit per annum of ten per cent. on their cost. although in this kind of carrying trade we are wofully behind other nations, yet it yields, in twelve years (the average age of the vessels engaged in it), the neat little profit of $ , , , which is invested by q in tea, coffee, and sugar, and imported into the united states at a net profit of ten per cent. although an unquestionable gain to q and the country at large of $ , , , mr. greeley, with his contracted views, only regards it as a dead loss on the import side of our commerce and navigation returns. r, was a bank which had a defaulting cashier, who ran away in with $ , of its funds. (sch*yl*r carried off a million of new haven railroad bonds). these funds were recovered and converted into gold, which was shipped to the united states. according to mr. greeley, who could find no record of exports to counterbalance it, the same was a dead loss to the country. s, and his friends own , tons of whaling ships (see commerce and navigation reports, ), worth $ per ton, gold, or $ , , . these ships are sent annually to the arctic regions and earn for s and his friends ten per cent., or $ , net profit each year. five years' profits, consisting of whale oil, bone, etc., which, after an active and profitable trade at the sandwich islands, they returned with this year, were valued at $ , , , and were duly entered among the imports, furnishing to mr. greeley an indubitable proof that the country was losing money in this business, and that the attention of congress should at once be directed toward supplying a proper remedy. t, was a south american refugee, who brought with him a million of dollars in gold doubloons. after living here for many years, by which time, through foreign trading, his capital had doubled, he invested the entire avails in united states bonds, as a last and striking evidence of his faith in our institutions, and departed to his native country, there to rest his bones. this man clearly prospered, and so did the country in which he settled, and on whose national faith he lent all his fortune. yet mr. greeley concludes the whole thing to have been a bad job for us, and harps upon another over-importation of $ , , . u, is a gallant yankee sea-captain, who picks up an abandoned vessel at sea laden with a valuable cargo of teas, and bravely tows her into port, receiving $ , of the proceeds of the sale of her cargo as salvage for his skill and intrepidity. from mr. greeley's point of view u is a traitor to his country, and suffering a merited poverty for over-importing. but u drives his carriage about town, and has his own opinion of mr. greeley's views. v, having a debt of $ , due to him by a merchant in alexandria, requests him to invest the same in arabian horses, as fancy stock to improve american breeds. the horses arrive in good order, and on being sold, yield v a net profit of $ , , besides enriching our native breeds of these useful animals. mr. greeley still holds out, and jots the whole transaction down as an additional evidence of national decadence. tabular expose. official returns of these transactions as they would appear per commerce and navigation reports.--sums all stated in gold. --+------------+------------+------------+----------------| |exports. | imports. | net profit |immediate | |value in the| foreign | to the |accretion to the| |united | value. | individual.|country's stock | |states. | | |of productive | | | | |wealth. | --+------------+------------+------------+----------------| a | $ , , | $ , , | $ , , | $ , , | b | | , , | , | , , | c | | , , | , | , , | d | | , , | , , | , , | e | , , | , , | , | , | f | | , | , | , | g | | , | | | h | | , | , | , | i | | , , | , , | , , | j | | , , | , | , , | k | | , | , | , | l | | , , | | , , | m | | , , | , | , , | n | | , , | , | , , | o | | , , | , , | , , | p | | , , | | , , | q | | , , | , , | , , | r | | , | , | , | s | | , , | , , | , , | t | | , , | , , | , , | u | | , | , | , | v | | , | , | , | w | | | | | x | | | | | y | | | | | z | | | | | --+------------+------------+------------+----------------| $ , , |$ , , |$ , , |$ , , | ----------------------------------------------------------- w, x, y, z, represent , , , , other commercial transactions, in all of which the parties to them and the countries in which they live make money, but which, regarded from mr. greeley's solitary point of view, should be stopped at once by appropriate legislation. these various transactions, it will be perceived, have netted to the individuals engaged in them a clear profit of $ , , , while the country has added to its immediate stock of wealth not only this sum, but $ , , over, viz: $ , , ; while, according to the balance of trade chimera, which simply weighs the custom-house reports of the value of the exports with that of the imports (and their values in their respective countries of production, too), this commerce has been a loss to the country of $ , , --$ , , : $ , , . so much for _theory_ when confronted with _practice_. the truth is, that the theory of the balance of trade should be precisely _reversed_. the profits accruing to the nation from any foreign commerce should be calculated by the overplus of the importation above the exportation. this overplus, after the deduction of expenses, is the real gain. here we have the true theory, and it is one which leads directly to freedom in trade. i now, gentlemen, abandon you this theory, as i have done all those of the preceding chapters. do with it as you please, exaggerate it as you will; it has nothing to fear. push it to the furthest extreme; imagine, if it so please you, that foreign nations should inundate us with useful produce of every description, and ask nothing in return; that our importations should be _infinite_, and our exportations _nothing_. imagine all this, and still i defy you to prove that we will be the poorer in consequence. chapter vii. a petition. petition from the manufacturers of candles, wax-lights, lamps, chandeliers, reflectors, snuffers, extinguishers; and from the producers of tallow, oil, resin, petroleum, kerosene, alcohol, and generally of every thing used for lights. "_to the honorable the senators and representatives of the united states in congress assembled._ "gentlemen:--you are in the right way: you reject abstract theories; abundance, cheapness, concerns you little. you are entirely occupied with the interest of the producer, whom you are anxious to free from foreign competition. in a word, you wish to secure the _national market_ to _national labor_. "we come now to offer you an admirable opportunity for the application of your--what shall we say? your theory? no, nothing is more deceiving than theory--your doctrine? your system? your principle? but you do not like doctrines; you hold systems in horror; and, as for principles, you declare that there are no such things in political economy. we will say, then, your practice; your practice without theory, and without principle. "we are subjected to the intolerable competition of a foreign rival, who enjoys, it would seem, such superior facilities for the production of light, that he is enabled to _inundate_ our _national market_ at so exceedingly reduced a price, that, the moment he makes his appearance, he draws off all custom from us; and thus an important branch of american industry, with all its innumerable ramifications, is suddenly reduced to a state of complete stagnation. this rival, who is no other than the sun, carries on so bitter a war against us, that we have every reason to believe that he has been excited to this course by our perfidious cousins, the britishers. (good diplomacy this, for the present time!) in this belief we are confirmed by the fact that in all his transactions with their befogged island, he is much more moderate and careful than with us. "our petition is, that it would please your honorable body to pass a law whereby shall be directed the shutting up of all windows, dormers, sky-lights, shutters, curtains--in a word, all openings, holes, chinks, and fissures through which the light of the sun is used to penetrate into our dwellings, to the prejudice of the profitable manufactures which we flatter ourselves we have been enabled to bestow upon the country; which country cannot, therefore, without ingratitude, leave us now to struggle unprotected through so unequal a contest. "we pray your honorable body not to mistake our petition for a satire, nor to repulse us without at least hearing the reasons which we have to advance in its favor. "and first, if, by shutting out as much as possible all access to natural light, you thus create the necessity for artificial light, is there in the united states an industrial pursuit which will not, through some connection with this important object, be benefited by it? "if more tallow be consumed, there will arise a necessity for an increase of cattle and sheep. thus artificial meadows must be in greater demand; and meat, wool, leather, and above all, manure, this basis of agricultural riches, must become more abundant. "if more oil be consumed, it will effect a great impetus to our petroleum trade. pit-hole, tack, and oil creek stock will go up exceedingly, and an immense revenue will thereby accrue to the numerous possessors of oil lands, who will be able to pay such a large tax that the national debt can be paid off at once. besides that, the patent hermetical barrel trade, and numerous other industries connected with the oil trade, will prosper at an unprecedented rate, to the great benefit and glory of the country. "navigation would equally profit. thousands of vessels would soon be employed in the whale fisheries, and thence would arise a navy capable of sustaining the honor of the united states, and of responding to the patriotic sentiments of the undersigned petitioners, candle-merchants, &c. "but what words can express the magnificence which new york will then exhibit! cast an eye upon the future, and behold the gildings, the bronzes, the magnificent crystal chandeliers, lamps, lusters, and candelabras, which will glitter in the spacious stores, compared to which the splendor of the present day will appear little and insignificant. "there is none, not even the poor manufacturer of resin in the midst of his pine forests, nor the miserable miner in his dark dwelling, but who would enjoy an increase of salary and of comforts. "gentlemen, if you will be pleased to reflect, you cannot fail to be convinced that there is perhaps not one american, from the opulent stockholder of pit-hole, down to the poorest vender of matches, who is not interested in the success of our petition. "we foresee your objections, gentlemen; but there is not one that you can oppose to us which you will not be obliged to gather from the works of the partisans of free trade. we dare challenge you to pronounce one word against our petition, which is not equally opposed to your own practice and the principle which guides your policy. "if you tell us that, though we may gain by this protection, the united states will not gain, because the consumer must pay the price of it, we answer you: "you have no longer any right to cite the interest of the consumer. for whenever this has been found to compete with that of the producer, you have invariably sacrificed the first. you have done this to _encourage labor_, to _increase the demand for labor_. the same reason should now induce you to act in the same manner. "you have yourselves already answered the objection. when you were told: the consumer is interested in the free introduction of iron, coal, corn, wheat, cloths, &c., your answer was: yes, but the producer is interested in their exclusion. thus, also, if the consumer is interested in the admission of light, we, the producers, pray for its interdiction. "you have also said the producer and the consumer are one. if the manufacturer gains by protection, he will cause the agriculturist to gain also; if agriculture prospers, it opens a market for manufactured goods. thus we, if you confer upon us the monopoly of furnishing light during the day, will as a first consequence buy large quantities of tallow, coal, oil, resin, kerosene, wax, alcohol, silver, iron, bronze, crystal, for the supply of our business; and then we and our numerous contractors having become rich, our consumption will be great, and will become a means of contributing to the comfort and competency of the workers in every branch of national labor. "will you say that the light of the sun is a gratuitous gift, and that to repulse gratuitous gifts is to repulse riches under pretence of encouraging the means of obtaining them? "take care--you carry the death-blow to your own policy. remember that hitherto you have always repulsed foreign produce, _because_ it was an approach to a gratuitous gift, and _the more in proportion_ as this approach was more close. you have, in obeying the wishes of other monopolists, acted only from a _half-motive_; to grant our petition there is a much _fuller inducement_. to repulse us, precisely for the reason that our case is a more complete one than any which have preceded it, would be to lay down the following equation: + × + = -; in other words, it would be to accumulate absurdity upon absurdity. "labor and nature concur in different proportions, according to country and climate, in every article of production. the portion of nature is always gratuitous; that of labor alone regulates the price. "if a lisbon orange can be sold at one hundredth the price of a new york one, it is because a natural and gratuitous heat does for the one, what the other only obtains from an artificial and consequently expensive one. "when, therefore, we purchase a portuguese orange, we may say that we obtain it / gratuitously and / by the right of labor; in other words, at a mere song compared to those of new york. "now it is precisely on account of this / _gratuity_ (excuse the phrase) that you argue in favor of exclusion. how, you say, could national labor sustain the competition of foreign labor, when the first has every thing to do, and the last is rid of nearly all the trouble, the sun taking the rest of the business upon himself? if then the / _gratuity_ can determine you to check competition, on what principle can the _entire gratuity_ be alleged as a reason for admitting it? you are no logicians if, refusing the / gratuity as hurtful to human labor, you do not _à fortiori_, and with double zeal, reject the full gratuity. "again, when any article, as coal, iron, cheese, or cloth, comes to us from foreign countries with less labor than if we produced it ourselves, the difference in price is a _gratuitous gift_ conferred upon us; and the gift is more or less considerable, according as the difference is greater or less. it is the quarter, the half, or the three-quarters of the value of the produce, in proportion as the foreign merchant requires the three-quarters, the half, or the quarter of the price. it is as complete as possible when the producer offers, as the sun does with light, the whole, in free gift. the question is, and we put it formally, whether you wish for the united states the benefit of gratuitous consumption, or the supposed advantages of laborious production. choose: but be consistent. and does it not argue the greatest inconsistency to check, as you do, the importation of iron-ware, dry-goods, and other foreign manufactures, merely because, and even in proportion as, their price approaches zero, while at the same time you freely admit, and without limitation, the light of the sun, whose price is during the whole day _at_ zero?" chapter viii. discriminating duties. a poor laborer of ohio had raised, with the greatest possible care and attention, a nursery of vines, from which, after much labor, he at last succeeded in producing a pipe of catawba wine, and forgot, in the joy of his success, that each drop of this precious nectar had cost a drop of sweat to his brow. "i will sell it," said he to his wife, "and with the proceeds i will buy lace, which will serve you to make a present for our daughter." the honest countryman, arriving in the city of cincinnati, there met an englishman and a yankee. the yankee said to him, "give me your wine, and i in exchange will give you fifteen bundles of yankee lace." the englishman said, "give it to me, and i will give you twenty bundles of english lace, for we english can spin cheaper than the yankees." but a custom-house officer standing by, said to the laborer, "my good fellow, make your exchange, if you choose, with brother jonathan, but it is my duty to prevent your doing so with the englishman." "what!" exclaimed the countryman, "you wish me to take fifteen bundles of new england lace, when i can have twenty from manchester!" "certainly," replied the custom-house officer; "do you not see that the united states would be a loser if you were to receive twenty bundles instead of fifteen?" "i can scarcely understand this," said the laborer. "nor can i explain it," said the custom-house officer, "but there is no doubt of the fact; for congressmen, ministers, and editors, all agree that a people is impoverished in proportion as it receives a large compensation for any given quantity of its produce." the countryman was obliged to conclude his bargain with the yankee. his daughter received but three-fourths of her present; and these good folks are still puzzling themselves to discover how it can happen that people are ruined by receiving four instead of three; and why they are richer with three dozen bundles of lace instead of four. chapter ix. a wonderful discovery. at this moment, when all minds are occupied in endeavoring to discover the most economical means of transportation; when, to put these means into practice, we are levelling roads, improving rivers, perfecting steamboats, establishing railroads, and attempting various systems of traction, atmospheric, hydraulic, pneumatic, electric, &c.; at this moment, when, i believe, every one is seeking in sincerity and with ardor the solution of this problem--"_to bring the price of things in their place of consumption, as near as possible to their price in that of production_"--i would believe myself to be acting a culpable part towards my country, towards the age in which i live, and towards myself, if i were longer to keep secret the wonderful discovery which i have just made. i am well aware that the self-illusions of inventors have become proverbial, but i have, nevertheless, the most complete certainty of having discovered an infallible means of bringing produce from all parts of the world into the united states, and reciprocally to transport ours, with a very important reduction of price. infallible! and yet this is but a single one of the advantages of my astonishing invention, which requires neither plans nor devices, neither preparatory studies, nor engineers, nor machinists, nor capital, nor stockholders, nor governmental assistance! there is no danger of shipwrecks, of explosions, of shocks of fire, nor of displacement of rails! it can be put into practice without preparation almost any day we think proper! finally: and this will, no doubt, recommend it to the public, it will not increase the budget one cent; but the contrary. it will not augment the number of office-holders, nor the exigencies of state; but the contrary. it will put in hazard the liberty of no one; but on the contrary, it will secure to each a greater freedom. i have been led to this discovery, not from accident, but from observation, and i will tell you how. i had this question to determine: "why does any article made, for instance, at montreal, bear an increased price on its arrival at new york?" it was immediately evident to me that this was the result of _obstacles_ of various kinds existing between montreal and new york. first, there is _distance_, which cannot be overcome without trouble and loss of time; and either we must submit to these troubles and losses in our own person, or pay another for bearing them for us. then come rivers, hills, accidents, heavy and muddy roads. these are so many _difficulties_ to be overcome; in order to do which, causeways are constructed, bridges built, roads cut and paved, railroads established, &c. but all this is costly, and the article transported must bear its portion of the expense. there are robbers, too, on the roads, sometimes, and this necessitates railway guards, a police force, &c. now, among these _obstacles_, there is one which we ourselves have lately placed, and that at no little expense, between montreal and new york. this consists of men planted along the frontier, armed to the teeth, whose business it is to place _difficulties_ in the way of the transportation of goods from one country to another. these men are called custom-house officers, and their effect is precisely similar to that of rutted and boggy roads. they retard and put obstacles in the way of transportation, thus contributing to the difference which we have remarked between the price of production and that of consumption; to diminish which difference, as much as possible, is the problem which we are seeking to resolve. here, then, we have found its solution. let our tariff be diminished: we will thus have constructed a northern railway which will cost us nothing. nay, more, we will be saved great expenses, and will begin, from the first day, to save capital. really, i cannot but ask myself, in surprise, how our brains could have admitted so whimsical a piece of folly as to induce us to pay many millions to destroy the _natural obstacles_ interposed between the united states and other nations, only at the same time to pay so many millions more in order to replace them by _artificial obstacles_, which have exactly the same effect; so that the obstacle removed and the obstacle created, neutralize each other, things go on as before, and the only result of our trouble is a double expense. an article of canadian production is worth, at montreal, twenty dollars, and, from the expenses of transportation, thirty dollars at new york. a similar article of new york manufacture costs forty dollars. what is our course under these circumstances? first, we impose a duty of at least ten dollars on the canadian article, so as to raise its price to a level with that of the new york one--the government, withal, paying numerous officials to attend to the levying of this duty. the article thus pays ten dollars for transportation, and ten for the tax. this done, we say to ourselves: transportation between montreal and new york is very dear; let us spend two or three millions in railways, and we will reduce it one-half. evidently the result of such a course will be to get the canadian article at new york for thirty-five dollars, viz.: dollars--price at montreal. " duty. " transportation by railway. -- dollars--total, or market price at new york. could we not have attained the same end by lowering the tariff to five dollars? we would then have-- dollars--price at montreal. " duty. " transportation on the common road. -- dollars--total, or market price at new york. and this arrangement would have saved us the $ , , spent upon the railway, besides the expense saved in custom-house surveillance, which would of course diminish in proportion as the temptation to smuggling would become less. but it is answered: the duty is necessary to protect new york industry. so be it; but do not then destroy the effect of it by your railway. for if you persist in your determination to keep the canadian article on a par with the new york one at forty dollars, you must raise the duty to fifteen dollars, in order to have:-- dollars--price at montreal. " protective duty. " transportation by railway. -- dollars--total, at equalized prices. and i now ask, of what benefit, under these circumstances, is the railway? frankly, is it not humiliating to the nineteenth century, that it should be destined to transmit to future ages the example of such puerilities seriously and gravely practised? to be the dupe of another, is bad enough; but to employ all the forms and ceremonies of representation in order to cheat oneself--to doubly cheat oneself, and that too in a mere numerical account--truly this is calculated to lower a little the pride of this _enlightened age_. chapter x. reciprocity. we have just seen that all which renders transportation difficult, acts in the same manner as protection; or, if the expression be preferred, that protection tends towards the same result as all obstacles to transportation. a tariff may be truly spoken of as a swamp, a rut, a steep hill; in a word, an _obstacle_, whose effect is to augment the difference between the price of consumption and that of production. it is equally incontestable that a swamp, a bog, &c., are veritable protective tariffs. there are people (few in number, it is true, but such there are) who begin to understand that obstacles are not the less obstacles because they are artificially created, and that our well-being is more advanced by freedom of trade than by protection; precisely as a canal is more desirable than a sandy, hilly, and difficult road. but they still say, this liberty ought to be reciprocal. if we take off our taxes in favor of canada, while canada does not do the same towards us, it is evident that we are duped. let us, then, make _treaties of commerce_ upon the basis of a just reciprocity; let us yield where we are yielded to; let us make the _sacrifice_ of buying that we may obtain the advantage of selling. persons who reason thus, are (i am sorry to say), whether they know it or not, governed by the protectionist principle. they are only a little more inconsistent than the pure protectionists, as these are more inconsistent than the absolute prohibitionists. i will illustrate this by a fable: there were, it matters not where, two towns, n*w y*rk and m*ntr**l, which, at great expense, had a road built, which connected them with each other. some time after this was done, the inhabitants of n*w y*rk became uneasy, and said: "m*ntr**l is overwhelming us with its productions; this must be attended to." they established, therefore, a corps of _obstructors_, so called, because their business was to place obstacles in the way of the convoys which arrived from m*ntr**l. soon after, m*ntr**l also established a corps of obstructors. after some years, people having become more enlightened, the inhabitants of m*ntr**l began to discover that these reciprocal obstacles might possibly be reciprocal injuries. they sent, therefore, an ambassador to n*w y*rk, who (passing over the official phraseology) spoke much to this effect: "we have built a road, and now we put obstacles in the way of this road. this is absurd. it would have been far better to have left things in their original position, for then we would not have been put to the expense of building our road, and afterwards of creating difficulties. in the name of m*ntr**l i come to propose to you not to renounce at once our system of mutual obstacles, for this would be acting according to a principle, and we despise principles as much as you do; but to somewhat lighten these obstacles, weighing at the same time carefully our respective _sacrifices_." the ambassador having thus spoken, the town of n*w y*rk asked time to reflect; manufacturers, office-seekers, congressmen, and custom-house officers, were consulted; and at last, after some years' deliberation, it was declared that the negotiations were broken off. at this news, the inhabitants of m*ntr**l held a council. an old man (who it has always been supposed had been secretly bribed by n*w y*rk) rose and said: "the obstacles raised by n*w y*rk are injurious to our sales; this is a misfortune. those which we ourselves create, injure our purchases; this is a second misfortune. we have no power over the first, but the second is entirely dependent upon ourselves. let us then at least get rid of one, since we cannot be delivered from both. let us suppress our corps of obstructors, without waiting for n*w y*rk to do the same. some day or other she will learn to better calculate her own interests." a second counsellor, a man of practice and of facts, uncontrolled by principles and wise in ancestral experience, replied: "we must not listen to this dreamer, this theorist, this innovator, this utopian, this political economist, this friend to n*w y*rk. we would be entirely ruined if the embarrassments of the road were not carefully weighed and exactly equalized between n*w y*rk and m*ntr**l. there would be more difficulty in going than in coming; in exportation than in importation. we would be with regard to n*w y*rk, in the inferior condition in which havre, nantes, bordeaux, lisbon, london, hamburg, and new orleans, are, in relation to cities placed higher up the rivers seine, loire, garonne, tagus, thames, elbe, and mississippi; for the difficulties of ascending must always be greater than those of descending rivers." "(a voice exclaims: 'but the cities near the mouths of rivers have always prospered more than those higher up the stream.') "this is not possible." "(the same voice: 'but it is a fact.') "well, they have then prospered _contrary to rule_." such conclusive reasoning staggered the assembly. the orator went on to convince them thoroughly and conclusively by speaking of national independence, national honor, national dignity, national labor, overwhelming importation, tributes, ruinous competition. in short, he succeeded in determining the assembly to continue their system of obstacles, and i can now point out a certain country where you may see road-workers and obstructors working with the best possible understanding, by the decree of the same legislative assembly, paid by the same citizens; the first to improve the road, the last to embarrass it. chapter xi. absolute prices. if we wish to judge between freedom of trade and protection, to calculate the probable effect of any political phenomenon, we should notice how far its influence tends to the production of _abundance_ or _scarcity_, and not simply of _cheapness_ or _dearness_ of price. we must beware of trusting to absolute prices: it would lead to inextricable confusion. mr. protectionist, after having established the fact that protection raises prices, adds: "the augmentation of price increases the expenses of life, and consequently the price of labor, and every one finds in the increase of the price of his produce the same proportion as in the increase of his expenses. thus, if everybody pays as consumer, everybody receives also as producer." it is evident that it would be easy to reverse the argument, and say: if everybody receives as producer, everybody must pay as consumer. now what does this prove? nothing whatever, unless it be that protection _transfers_ riches, uselessly and unjustly. spoliation does the same. again, to prove that the complicated arrangements of this system give even simple compensation, it is necessary to adhere to the "_consequently_" of mr. protectionist, and to convince oneself that the price of labor rises with that of the articles protected. this is a question of fact. for my own part i do not believe in it, because i think that the price of labor, like everything else, is governed by the proportion existing between the supply and the demand. now i can perfectly well understand that _restriction_ will diminish the supply of produce, and consequently raise its price; but i do not as clearly see that it increases the demand for labor, thereby raising the rate of wages. this is the less conceivable to me, because the sum of labor required depends upon the quantity of disposable capital; and protection, while it may change the direction of capital, and transfer it from one business to another, cannot increase it one penny. this question, which is of the highest interest, we will examine elsewhere. i return to the discussion of _absolute prices_, and declare that there is no absurdity which cannot be rendered specious by such reasoning as that which is commonly resorted to by protectionists. imagine an isolated nation possessing a given quantity of cash, and every year wantonly burning the half of its produce; i will undertake to prove by the protective theory that this nation will not be the less rich in consequence of such a procedure. for, the result of the conflagration must be, that everything would double in price. an inventory made before this event, would offer exactly the same nominal value as one made after it. who, then, would be the loser? if john buys his cloth dearer, he also sells his corn at a higher price; and if peter makes a loss on the purchase of his corn, he gains it back by the sale of his cloth. thus "every one finds in the increase of the price of his produce, the same proportion as in the increase of his expenses: and thus if everybody pays as consumer, everybody also receives as producer." all this is nonsense, and not science. the simple truth is, that whether men destroy their corn and cloth by fire, or by use, the effect is the same as regards price, but not as regards riches, for it is precisely in the enjoyment of the use, that riches--in other words, comfort, well-being--exist. restriction may in the same way, while it lessens the abundance of things, raise their prices, so as to leave each individual as rich, _numerically speaking_, as when unembarrassed by it. but because we put down in an inventory three bushels of corn at $ , or four bushels at cents, and sum up the nominal value of each inventory at $ , does it thence follow that they are equally capable of contributing to the necessities of the community? to this truthful and common-sense view of the phenomenon of consumption it will be my continual endeavor to lead the protectionists; for in this is the end of all my efforts, the solution of every problem. i must continually repeat to them that restriction, by impeding commerce, by limiting the division of labor, by forcing it to combat difficulties of situation and temperature, must in its results diminish the quantity produced by any fixed quantum of labor. and what can it benefit us that the smaller quantity produced under the protective system bears the same _nominal value_ as the greater quantity produced under the free trade system? man does not live on _nominal values_, but on real articles of produce; and the more abundant these articles are, no matter what price they may bear, the richer is he. the following passage occurs in the writings of a french protectionist: "if fifteen millions of merchandise sold to foreign nations, be taken from our ordinary produce, calculated at fifty millions, the thirty-five millions of merchandise which remain, not being sufficient for the ordinary demand, will increase in price to the value of fifty millions. the revenue of the country will thus represent fifteen millions more in value.... there will then be an increase of fifteen millions in the riches of the country; precisely the amount of the importation of money." this is droll enough! if a country has made in the course of the year fifty millions of revenue in harvests and merchandise, she need but sell one-quarter to foreign nations, in order to make herself one-quarter richer than before! if then she sold the half, she would increase her riches by one-half; and if the last hair of her wool, the last grain of her wheat, were to be changed for cash, she would thus raise her product to one hundred millions, where before it was but fifty! a singular manner, certainly, of becoming rich. unlimited price produced by unlimited scarcity! to sum up our judgment of the two systems, let us contemplate their different effects when pushed to the most exaggerated extreme. according to the protectionist just quoted, the french would be quite as rich, that is to say, as well provided with everything, if they had but a thousandth part of their annual produce, because this part would then be worth a thousand times its natural value! so much for looking at prices alone. according to us, the french would be infinitely rich if their annual produce were infinitely abundant, and consequently bearing no value at all. chapter xii. does protection raise the rate of wages? when we hear our beardless scribblers, romancers, reformers, our perfumed magazine writers, stuffed with ices and champagne, as they carefully place in their portfolios the sentimental scissorings which fill the current literature of the day, or cause to be decorated with gilded ornaments their tirades against the egotism and the individualism of the age; when we hear them declaiming against social abuses, and groaning over deficient wages and needy families; when we see them raising their eyes to heaven and weeping over the wretchedness of the laboring classes, while they never visit this wretchedness unless it be to draw lucrative sketches of its scenes of misery, we are tempted to say to them: the sight of you is enough to make me sicken of attempting to teach the truth. affectation! affectation! it is the nauseating disease of the day! if a thinking man, a sincere philanthropist, takes into consideration the condition of the working classes and endeavors to lay bare their necessities, scarcely has his work made an impression before it is greedily seized upon by the crowd of reformers, who turn, twist, examine, quote, exaggerate it, until it becomes ridiculous; and then, as sole compensation, you are overwhelmed with such big words as: organization, association; you are flattered and fawned upon until you become ashamed of publicly defending the cause of the working man; for how can it be possible to introduce sensible ideas in the midst of these sickening affectations? but we must put aside this cowardly indifference, which the affectation that provokes it is not enough to justify. working men, your situation is singular! you are robbed, as i will presently prove to you. but no: i retract the word; we must avoid an expression which is violent; perhaps, indeed, incorrect; inasmuch as this spoliation, wrapped in the sophisms which disguise it, is practised, we must believe, without the intention of the spoiler, and with the consent of the spoiled. but it is nevertheless true that you are deprived of the just remuneration of your labor, while no one thinks of causing _justice_ to be rendered to you. if you could be consoled by the noisy appeals of your champions to philanthropy, to powerless charity, to degrading almsgiving, or if the high-sounding words of voice of the people, rights of labor, &c., would relieve you--these indeed you can have in abundance. but _justice_, simple _justice_--this nobody thinks of rendering you. for would it not be _just_ that after a long day's labor, when you have received your wages, you should be permitted to exchange them for the largest possible sum of comforts you can obtain voluntarily from any man upon the face of the earth? i too, perhaps, may some day speak to you of the voice of the people, the rights of labor, &c., and may perhaps be able to show you what you have to expect from the chimeras by which you allow yourselves to be led astray. in the meantime let us examine if _injustice_ is not done to you by the legislative limitation of the number of persons from whom you are allowed to buy those things which you need; as iron, coal, cotton and woollen cloths, &c.; thus artificially fixing (so to express myself) the price which these articles must bear. is it true that protection, which avowedly raises prices, and thus injures you, proportionably raises the rate of wages? on what does the rate of wages depend? one of your own class has energetically said: "when two workmen run after a boss, wages fall; when two bosses run after a workman, wages rise." allow me, in similar laconic phrase, to employ a more scientific, though perhaps a less striking expression: "the rate of wages depends upon the proportion which the supply of labor bears to the demand." on what depends the _demand_ for labor? on the quantity of disposable capital seeking investment. and the law which says, "such or such an article shall be limited to home production and no longer imported from foreign countries," can it in any degree increase this capital? not in the least. this law may withdraw it from one course, and transfer it to another; but cannot increase it one penny. then it cannot increase the demand for labor. while we point with pride to some prosperous manufacture, can we answer, whence comes the capital with which it is founded and maintained? has it fallen from the moon? or rather is it not drawn either from agriculture, or stock-breeding, or commerce? we here see why, since the reign of protective tariffs, if we see more workmen in our mines and our manufacturing towns, we find also fewer vessels in our ports, fewer graziers and fewer laborers in our fields and upon our hill-sides. i could speak at great length upon this subject, but prefer illustrating my thought by an example. a countryman had twenty acres of land, with a capital of $ , . he divided his land into four parts, and adopted for it the following changes of crops: st, maize; d, wheat; d, clover; and th, rye. as he needed for himself and family but a small portion of the grain, meat, and dairy produce of the farm, he sold the surplus and bought iron, coal, cloths, etc. the whole of his capital was yearly distributed in wages and payments of accounts to the workingmen of the neighborhood. this capital was, from his sales, again returned to him, and even increased from year to year. our countryman, being fully convinced that idle capital produces nothing, caused to circulate among the working classes this annual increase, which he devoted to the inclosing and clearing of lands, or to improvements in his farming utensils and his buildings. he deposited some sums in reserve in the hands of a neighboring banker, who on his part did not leave these idle in his strong-box, but lent them to various tradesmen, so that the whole came to be usefully employed in the payment of wages. the countryman died, and his son, become master of the inheritance, said to himself: "it must be confessed that my father has, all his life, allowed himself to be duped. he bought iron, and thus paid _tribute_ to england, while our own land could, by an effort, be made to produce iron as well as england. he bought coal, cloths, and oranges, thus paying _tribute_ to new brunswick, france, and sicily, very unnecessarily; for coal may be found, doeskins may be made, and oranges may be forced to grow, within our own territory. he paid tribute to the foreign miner and the weaver; our own servants could very well mine our iron and get up native doeskins almost as good as the french article. he did all he could to ruin himself, and gave to strangers what ought to have been kept for the benefit of his own household." full of this reasoning, our headstrong fellow determined to change the routine of his crops. he divided his farm into twenty parts. on one he dug for coal; on another he erected a cloth factory; on a third he put a hot-house and cultivated the orange; he devoted the fourth to vines, the fifth to wheat, &c., &c. thus he succeeded in rendering himself _independent_, and furnished all his family supplies from his own farm. he no longer received anything from the general circulation; neither, it is true, did he cast anything into it. was he the richer for this course? no; for his mine did not yield coal as cheaply as he could buy it in the market, nor was the climate favorable to the orange. in short, the family supply of these articles was very inferior to what it had been during the time when the father had obtained them and others by exchange of produce. with regard to the demand for labor, it certainly was no greater than formerly. there were, to be sure, five times as many fields to cultivate, but they were five times smaller. if coal was mined, there was also less wheat; and because there were no more oranges bought, neither was there any more rye sold. besides, the farmer could not spend in wages more than his capital, and his capital, instead of increasing, was now constantly diminishing. a great part of it was necessarily devoted to numerous buildings and utensils, indispensable to a person who determines to undertake everything. in short, the supply of labor continued the same, but the means of paying became less. the result is precisely similar when a nation isolates itself by the prohibitive system. its number of industrial pursuits is certainly multiplied, but their importance is diminished. in proportion to their number, they become less productive, for the same capital and the same skill are obliged to meet a greater number of difficulties. the fixed capital absorbs a greater part of the circulating capital; that is to say, a greater part of the funds destined to the payment of wages. what remains, ramifies itself in vain; the quantity cannot be augmented. it is like the water of a deep pond, which, distributed among a multitude of small reservoirs, appears to be more abundant, because it covers a greater quantity of soil, and presents a larger surface to the sun, while we hardly perceive that, precisely on this account, it absorbs, evaporates, and loses itself the quicker. capital and labor being given, the result is, a sum of production, always the less great in proportion as obstacles are numerous. there can be no doubt that international barriers, by forcing capital and labor to struggle against greater difficulties of soil and climate, must cause the general production to be less, or, in other words, diminish the portion of comforts which would thence result to mankind. if, then, there be a general diminution of comforts, how, working men, can it be possible that _your_ portion should be increased? under such a supposition it would be necessary to believe that the rich, those who made the law, have so arranged matters, that not only they subject themselves to their own proportion of the general diminution, but taking the whole of it upon themselves, that they submit also to a further loss in order to increase your gains. is this credible? is this possible? it is, indeed, a most suspicious act of generosity; and if you act wisely you will reject it. chapter xiii. theory and practice. defenders of free trade, we are accused of being mere theorists, of not giving sufficient weight to the practical. "what a fearful charge against you, free traders," say the protectionists, "is this long succession of distinguished statesmen, this imposing race of writers, who have all held opinions differing from yours!" this we do not deny. we answer, "it is said, in support of established errors, that 'there must be some foundation for ideas so generally adopted by all nations. should not one distrust opinions and arguments which overturn that which, until now, has been held as settled; that which is held as certain by so many persons whose intelligence and motives make them trustworthy?'" we confess this argument should make a profound impression, and ought to throw doubt on the most incontestable points, if we had not seen, one after another, opinions the most false, now generally acknowledged to be such, received and professed by all the world during a long succession of centuries. it is not very long since all nations, from the most rude to the most enlightened, and all men, from the street-porter to the most learned philosopher, believed in the four elements. nobody had thought of contesting this doctrine, which is, however, false; so much so, that at this day any mere naturalist's assistant, who should consider earth, water, and fire, elements, would disgrace himself. on which our opponents make this observation: "if you suppose you have thus answered the very forcible objection you have proposed to yourselves, you deceive yourselves strangely. suppose that men, otherwise intelligent, should be mistaken on any point whatever of natural history for many centuries, that would signify or prove nothing. would water, air, earth, fire, be less useful to man whether they were or were not elements? such errors are of no consequence; they lead to no revolutions, do not unsettle the mind; above all, they injure no interests, so they might, without inconvenience, endure for millions of years. the physical world would progress just as if they did not exist. would it be thus with errors which attack the moral world? can we conceive that a system of government, absolutely false, consequently injurious, could be carried out through many centuries, among many nations, with the general consent of educated men? can we explain how such a system could be reconciled with the ever-increasing prosperity of nations? you acknowledge that the argument you combat ought to make a profound impression. yes, truly, and this impression remains, for you have rather strengthened than destroyed it." or again, they say: "it was only in the middle of the last century, the eighteenth century, in which all subjects, all principles, without exception, were delivered up to public discussion, that these furnishers of speculative ideas which are applied to everything without being applicable to anything--commenced writing on political economy. there existed, however, a system of political economy, not written, but practised by governments. it is said that colbert was its inventor, and it was the rule of all the states of europe. what is more singular, it has remained so till lately, despite anathemas and contempt, and despite the discoveries of the modern school. this system, which our writers have called the _mercantile system_, consists in opposing, by prohibitions and duties, such foreign productions as might ruin our manufacturers by their competition. this system has been pronounced futile, absurd, capable of ruining any country, by economical writers of all schools. it has been banished from all books, reduced to take refuge in the practice of every people; and we do not understand why, in regard to the wealth of nations, governments should not have yielded themselves to wise authors rather than to _the old experience_ of a system. above all, we cannot conceive why, in political economy, the american government should persist in resisting the progress of light, and in preserving, in its practice, those old errors which all our economists of the pen have designated. but we have said too much about this mercantile system, which has in its favor _facts_ alone, though sustained by scarcely a single writer of the day." would not one say, who listened only to this language, that we political economists, in merely claiming for every one _the free disposition of his own property_, had, like the fourierists, conjured up from our brains a new social order, chimerical and strange; a sort of phalanstery, without precedent in the annals of the human race, instead of merely talking plain _meum_ and _tuum_ it seems to us that if there is in all this anything utopian, anything problematical, it is not free trade, but protection; it is not the right to exchange, but tariff after tariff applied to overturning the natural order of commerce. but it is not the point to compare and judge of these two systems by the light of reason; the question for the moment is, to know which of the two is founded upon experience. so, messrs. monopolists, you pretend that the facts are on your side; that we have, on our side, theories only. you even flatter yourselves that this long series of public acts, this old experience of the world, which you invoke, has appeared imposing to us, and that we confess we have not as yet refuted you as fully as we might. but we do not cede to you the domain of facts, for you have on your side only exceptional and contracted facts, while we have universal ones to oppose to them; the free and voluntary acts of all men. what do you say, and what say we? we say: "it is better to buy from others anything which would cost more to make ourselves." and on your part you say: "it is better to make things ourselves, even though it would cost less to purchase them from others." now, gentlemen, laying aside theory, demonstration, argument, everything which appears to afflict you with nausea, which of these assertions has in its favor the sanction of _universal practice_? visit the fields, work-rooms, manufactories, shops; look above, beneath, and around you; investigate what is going on in your own establishment; observe your own conduct at all times, and then say which is the principle that directs these labors, these workmen, these inventors, these merchants; say, too, which is your own individual practice. does the farmer make his clothes? does the tailor raise the wheat which he consumes? does not your housekeeper cease making bread at home so soon as she finds it more economical to buy it from the baker? do you give up the pen for the brush in order to avoid paying tribute to the shoe-black? does not the whole economy of society depend on the separation of occupations, on the division of labor; in one word, on _exchange_? and is exchange anything else than the calculation which leads us to discontinue, as far as we can, direct production, when indirect acquisition spares us time and trouble? you are not, then, men of _practice_, since you cannot show a single man on the surface of the globe who acts in accordance with your principle. "but," you will say, "we have never heard our principle made the rule of individual relations. we comprehend perfectly that this would break the social bond, and force men to live, like snails, each one in his own shell. we limit ourselves to asserting that it governs _in fact_ the relations which are established among the agglomerations of the human family." but still, this assertion is erroneous. the family, the village, the town, the county, the state, are so many agglomerations, which all, without any exception, _practically_ reject your principle, and have never even thought of it. all of them procure, by means of exchange, that which would cost them more to procure by means of production. nations would act in the same natural manner, if you did not prevent it _by force_. it is _we_, then, who are the men of practice and of experience; for, in order to combat the interdict which you have placed exceptionally on certain international exchanges, we appeal to the practice and experience of all individuals, and all agglomerations of individuals whose acts are voluntary, and consequently may be called on for testimony. but you commence by _constraining_, by _preventing_, and then you avail yourself of acts caused by prohibition to exclaim, "see! practice justifies us!" you oppose our _theory_, indeed all _theory_. but when you put a principle in antagonism with ours, do you, by chance, fancy that you have formed no _theory_? no, no; erase that from your plea. you form a theory as well as ourselves; but between yours and ours there is this difference: our theory consists merely in observing universal facts, universal sentiments, universal calculations and proceedings, and further, in classifying them and arranging them, in order to understand them better. it is so little opposed to practice, that it is nothing but _practice explained_. we observe the actions of men moved by the instinct of preservation and of progress; and what they do freely, voluntarily, is precisely what we call _political economy_, or the economy of society. we go on repeating with out cessation: "every man is _practically_ an excellent economist, producing or exchanging, according as it is most advantageous to him to exchange or to produce. each one, through experience, is educated to science; or rather, science is only that same experience scrupulously observed and methodically set forth." as for you, you form a theory, in the unfavorable sense of the word. you imagine, you invent--proceedings which are not sanctioned by the practice of any living man under the vault of heaven--and then you call to your assistance constraint and prohibition. you need, indeed, have recourse to _force_, since, in wishing that men should _produce_ that which it would be more advantageous to them to _buy_, you wish them to renounce an _advantage_; you demand that they should act in accordance with a doctrine which implies contradiction even in its terms. now, this doctrine, which, you argue, would be absurd in individual relations, we defy you to extend, even in speculation, to transactions between families, towns, counties, states. by your own avowal, it is applicable to international relations only. and this is why you are obliged to repeat daily: "principles are not in their nature absolute. that which is _well_ in the individual, the family, the county, the state, is _evil_ in the nation. that which is _good_ in detail--such as, to purchase rather than to produce, when purchase is more advantageous than production--is bad in the mass. the political economy of individuals is not that of nations," and other rubbish, _ejusdem farinæ_. and why all this? look at it closely. it is in order to prove to us that we, consumers, are your property, that we belong to you body and soul, that you have an exclusive right to our stomachs and limbs, and it is for you to nourish us and clothe us at your own price, however great may be your ignorance, your rapacity, or the inferiority of your position. no, you are not men of practice; you are men of abstraction--and of extraction! chapter xiv. conflict of principles. there is one thing which confounds us, and it is this: some sincere publicists, studying social economy from the point of view of producers only, have arrived at this double formula: "governments ought to dispose of the consumers subject to the influence of their laws, in favor of national labor." "they should render distant consumers subject to their laws, in order to dispose of them in favor of national labor." the first of these formulas is termed _protection_; the latter, _expediency_. both rest on the principle called balance of trade; the formula of which is: "a people impoverishes itself when it imports, and enriches itself when it exports." of course, if every foreign purchase is a tribute paid, a loss, it is perfectly evident we must restrain, even prohibit, importations. and if all foreign sales are tribute received, profit, it is quite natural to create channels of outlet, even by force. protective system--colonial system: two aspects of the same theory. to _hinder_ our fellow-citizens purchasing of foreigners, _to force_ foreigners to purchase from our fellow-citizens, are merely two consequences of one identical principle. now, it is impossible not to recognize that according to this doctrine, general utility rests on _monopoly_, or interior spoliation, and on _conquest_, or exterior spoliation. let us enter one of the cabins among the adirondacks. the father of the family has received for his work only a slender salary. the icy northern blast makes his half naked children shiver, the fire is extinguished, and the table bare. there are wool, and wood, and coal, just over the st. lawrence; but these commodities are forbidden to the family of the poor day-laborer, for the other side of the river is no longer the united states. the foreign pine-logs may not gladden the hearth of his cabin; his children may not know the taste of canadian bread, the wool of upper canada will not bring back warmth to their benumbed limbs. general utility wills it so. all very well! but acknowledge that here it contradicts justice. to dispose by legislation of consumers, to limit them to the products of national labor, is to encroach upon their liberty, to forbid them a resource (exchange) in which there is nothing contrary to morality; in one word, it is to do them injustice. "yet this is necessary," it is said, "under the penalty of seeing national labor stopped, under the penalty of striking a fatal blow at public prosperity." the writers of the protectionist school arrive then at this sad conclusion; that there is a radical incompatibility between justice and utility. on the other side, if nations are interested in selling, and not in buying, violent action and reaction are the natural condition of their relations, for each will seek to impose its products on all, and all will do their utmost endeavor to reject the products of each. as a sale, in effect, implies a purchase, and since, according to this doctrine, to sell is to benefit, as to buy is to injure, every international transaction implies the amelioration of one people, and the deterioration of another. but, on one side, men are fatally impelled towards that which profits them: on the contrary, they resist instinctively whatever injures them; whence we must conclude that every people bears within itself a natural force of expansion, and a not less natural power of resistance, which are equally prejudicial to all the others; or, in other terms, that antagonism and war are the natural constitution of human society! so that the theory which we are discussing may be summed up in these two axioms: "utility is incompatible with justice at home," "utility is incompatible with peace abroad." now that which astonishes us, which confounds us, is, that a publicist, a statesman, who has sincerely adhered to an economic doctrine whose principle clashes so violently with other incontestable principles, could enjoy one moment's calm and repose of mind. as for us, it seems to us, that if we had penetrated into science by this entrance, if we did not clearly perceive that liberty, utility, justice, peace, are things not only compatible, but closely allied together, so to say, identical with each other, we would try to forget all we had learned; we would say to ourselves: "how could god will that men shall attain prosperity only through injustice and war? how could he will that they may remove war and injustice only by renouncing their own well-being?" does not the science which has conducted us to the horrible blasphemy which this alternative implies deceive us by false lights; and shall we dare take on ourselves to make it the basis of legislation for a great people? and when a long succession of illustrious philosophers have brought together more comforting results from this same science, to which they have consecrated their whole lives; when they affirm that liberty and utility are reconciled with justice and peace, that all these grand principles follow infinite parallels, without clashing, throughout all eternity; have they not in their favor the presumption which results from all we know of the goodness and the wisdom of god, manifested in the sublime harmony of the material creation? ought we lightly to believe, against such a presumption, and in face of so many imposing authorities, that it has pleased this same god to introduce antagonism and a discord into the laws of the moral world? no, no; before taking it for granted that all social principles clash, shock, and neutralize each other, and are in anarchical, eternal, irremediable, conflict together; before imposing on our fellow citizens the impious system to which such reasoning conducts us, we had better go over the whole chain, and assure ourselves that there is no point on the way where we may have gone astray. and if, after a faithful examination, twenty times recommenced, we should always return to this frightful conclusion, that we must choose between the advantages and the good--we should thrust science away, disheartened; we should shut ourselves up in voluntary ignorance; above all, we should decline all participation in the affairs of our country, leaving to the men of another time the burden and the responsibility of a choice so difficult. chapter xv. reciprocity again. the protectionists ask, "are we sure that the foreigner will purchase as much from us, as he will sell to us? what reason have we to think that the english producer will come to us rather than to any other nation on the globe to look for the productions he may need; and for productions equivalent in value to his own exportations to this country?" we are surprised that men who call themselves peculiarly _practical_, reason independent of all practice. in practice, is there one exchange in a hundred, in a thousand, in ten thousand perhaps, where there is a direct barter of product for product? since there has been money in the world, has any cultivator ever said, "i wish to buy shoes, hats, advice, instruction, from that shoemaker, hatter, lawyer, and professor only, who will purchase from me just wheat enough to make an equivalent value?" and why should nations impose such a restraint upon themselves? how is the matter managed? suppose a nation deprived of exterior relations. a man has produced wheat. he throws it into the widest national circulation he can find for it, and receives in exchange, what? some dollars; that is to say bills, bonds, infinitely divisible, by means of which it becomes lawful for him to withdraw from national circulation, whenever he thinks it advisable, and by just agreement, such articles as he may need or wish. in fine, at the end of the operation he will have withdrawn from the mass the exact equivalent of what he threw into it, and in value his consumption will precisely equal his production. if the foreign exchanges of that nation are free, it is no longer into _national_, but into _general_ circulation that each one throws his products, and from which he draws his returns. he has not to inquire whether what he delivers up for general circulation is purchased by a fellow-countryman or a foreigner; whether the goods he receives came to him from a frenchman or an englishman; whether the objects for which, in accordance with his needs, he, in the end, exchanges his bills, are made on this or that side of the atlantic or the st. lawrence. with each individual there is always an exact balance between what he puts into and what he draws out of the grand common reservoir; and if that is true of each individual, it is true of the nation in the aggregate. the only difference between the two cases is, that in the latter, each one is in a more extended market for both his sales and his purchases, and has consequently more chances of doing well by both. this objection is made: "if every one should agree that they would not withdraw from circulation any of the products of a specified individual, he in turn would sustain the misfortune of being able to draw nothing out. the same of a nation." answer.--if the nation cannot draw out of the mass, it will no longer contribute to it: it will work for itself. it will be compelled to that which you would impose on it in advance: that is to say, isolation. and this will be the ideal of prohibitive government. is it not amusing that you inflict upon it, at once and already, the misfortune of this system, in the fear that it runs the risk of getting there some day without you? chapter xvi. obstructed rivers plead for the prohibitionists. some years ago, when the spanish cortes were discussing a treaty with portugal on improving the course of the river douro, a deputy rose and said, "if the douro is turned into a canal, transportation will be made at a much lower price. portuguese cereals will sell cheaper in castile, and will make a formidable opposition to our _national labor_. i oppose the project unless the ministers engage to raise the tariff in such a way as to restore the equilibrium." the assembly found the argument unanswerable. three months later the same question was submitted to the senate of portugal. a noble hidalgo said: "mr. president, the project is absurd. you post guards, at great expense, on the banks of the douro, in order to prevent the introduction of castilian cereals into portugal, while, at the same time, you would, also, at great expense, facilitate their introduction. this is an inconsistency with which i cannot identify myself. let the douro pass on to our sons as our fathers left it to us." now, when it is proposed to alter and confine the course of the mississippi, we recall the arguments of the iberian orators, and say to ourselves, if the member from st. louis was as good an economist as those of valencia, and the representatives from new orleans as powerful logicians as those of oporto, assuredly the mississippi would be left "to sleep amid its forests dank and lone," for to improve the navigation of the mississippi will favor the introduction of new orleans products to the injury of st. louis, and an inundation of the products of st. louis to the detriment of new orleans. chapter xvii. a negative railroad. we have said that when, unfortunately, we place ourselves at the point of view of the producer's interest, we cannot fail to clash with the general interest, because the producer, as such, demands only _efforts_, _wants_, _and obstacles_. when the atlantic and great western railway is finished, the question will arise, "should connection be broken at pittsburg?" this the pittsburgers will answer affirmatively, for a multitude of reasons, but for this among others; the railroad from new york to st. louis ought to have an interruption at pittsburg, in order that merchandise and travellers compelled to stop in the city may leave in it fees to the hackmen, pedlars, errand-boys, consignees, hotel-keepers, etc. it is clear, that here again the interest of the agent of labor is placed before the interest of the consumer. but if pittsburg ought to profit by the interruption, and if the profit is conformable with public interest, harrisburg, dayton, indianapolis, columbus, much more all the intermediate points, ought to demand stoppages, and that in the general interest, in the widely extended interest of national labor, for the more they are multiplied, the more will consignments, commissions, transportations, be multiplied on all points of the line. with this system we arrive at a railroad of successive stoppages, to a _negative railroad_. whether the protectionists wish it or not, it is not the less certain that the principle of restriction is the same as the principle of gaps, the sacrifice of the consumers to the producer, of the end to the means. chapter xviii. there are no absolute principles. we cannot be too much astonished at the facility with which men resign themselves to be ignorant of what is most important for them to know, and we may feel sure that they have decided to go to sleep in their ignorance when they have brought themselves to proclaim this axiom: there are no absolute principles. enter the halls of congress. the question under discussion is whether the law shall interdict or allow international exchanges. mr. c****** rises and says: "if you tolerate these exchanges, the foreigner will inundate you with his products, the english with cotton and iron goods, the nova-scotian with coal, the spaniard with wool, the italian with silk, the canadian with cattle, the swede with iron, the newfoundlander with salt-fish. industrial pursuits will thus be destroyed." mr. g***** replies: "if you prohibit these exchanges, the varied benefits which nature has lavished on different climates will be, to you, as though they were not. you will not participate in the mechanical skill of the english, nor in the riches of the nova-scotian mines, in the abundance of canadian pasturage, in the cheapness of spanish labor, in the fervor of the italian climate; and you will be obliged to ask through a forced production that which you might by exchange have obtained through a readier production." assuredly, one of the senators deceives himself. but which? it is well worth while to ascertain; for we are not dealing with opinions only. you stand at the entrance of two roads; you must choose; one of them leads necessarily to _misery_. to escape from this embarrassment it is said: there are no absolute principles. this axiom, so much in vogue in our day, not only serves laziness, it is also in accord with ambition. if the theory of prohibition should prevail, or again, if the doctrine of liberty should triumph, a very small amount of law would suffice for our economic code. in the first case it would stand--_all foreign exchange is forbidden_; in the second, _all exchange with abroad is free_, and many great personages would lose their importance. but if exchange has not a nature proper to itself; if it is governed by no natural law; if it is capriciously useful or injurious; if it does not find its spring in the good it accomplishes, its limit when it ceases to do good; if its effects cannot be appreciated by those who execute them; in one word, if there are no absolute principles, we are compelled to measure, weigh, regulate transactions, to equalize the conditions of labor, to look for the level of profits--colossal task, well suited to give great entertainments, and high influence to those who undertake it. here in new york are a million of human beings who would all die within a few days, if the abundant provisioning of nature were not flowing towards this great metropolis. imagination takes fright in the effort to appreciate the immense multiplicity of articles which must cross the bay, the hudson, the harlem, and the east rivers, to-morrow, if the lives of its inhabitants are not to become the prey of famine, riot, and pillage. yet, as we write, all are sleeping; and their quiet slumbers are not disturbed for a moment by the thought of so frightful a perspective. on the other hand, forty-five states and territories have worked to-day, without concert, without mutual understanding, to provision new york. how is it that every day brings in what is needed, neither more nor less, to this gigantic market? what is the intelligent and secret power which presides over the astonishing regularity of movements so complicated--a regularity in which each one has a faith so undoubting, though comfort and life are at stake. this power is an _absolute principle_, the principle of freedom of operation, the principle of free conduct. we have faith in that innate light which providence has placed in the hearts of all men, to which he has confided the preservation and improvement of our race-_interest_ (since we must call it by its name), which is so active, so vigilant, so provident, when its action is free. what would become of you, inhabitants of new york, if a congressional majority should take a fancy to substitute for this power the combinations of their genius, however superior it may be supposed to be; if they imagined they could submit this prodigious mechanism to its supreme direction, unite all its resources in their own hands, and decide when, where, how, and on what conditions everything should be produced, transported, exchanged, and consumed? ah! though there may be much suffering within your bounds, though misery, despair, and perhaps hungry exhaustion may cause more tears to flow than your ardent charity can dry, it is probable, it is certain, we dare to affirm, that the arbitrary intervention of government would multiply these sufferings infinitely, and would extend to you all, those evils which at present are confined to a small portion of your number. we all have faith in this principle where our internal transactions are concerned; why should we not have faith in the same principle applied to our international operations, which are, assuredly, less numerous, less delicate, and less complicated. and if it is not necessary that the mayor and common council of new york should regulate our industries, weigh our change, our profits, and our losses, occupy themselves with the regulation of prices, equalize the conditions of our labor in internal commerce--why is it necessary that the custom-house, proceeding on its fiscal mission, should pretend to exercise protective action upon our exterior commerce? chapter xix. national independence. among the arguments which are considered of weight in favor of the restriction system, we must not forget that drawn from national independence. "what shall we do in case of war," say they, "if we have placed ourselves at the mercy of great britain for iron and coal?" english monopolists did not fail on their side to exclaim, when the corn-laws were repealed, "what will become of great britain in time of war if she depends on the united states for food?" one thing they fail to observe: it is that this sort of dependence, which results from exchange, from commercial operations, is a _reciprocal_ dependence. we cannot depend on the foreigner unless the foreigner depends on us. this is the very essence of _society_. we do not place ourselves in a state of independence by breaking natural relations, but in a state of isolation. remark also: we isolate ourselves in the anticipation of war; but the very act of isolation is the commencement of war. it renders it more easy, less burdensome, therefore less unpopular. let nations become permanent recipient customers each of the other, let the interruption of their relations inflict upon them the double suffering of privation and surfeit, and they will no longer require the powerful navies which ruin them, the great armies which crush them; the peace of the world will no longer be compromised by the caprice of a napoleon or of a bismarck, and war will disappear through lack of aliment, resources, motive, pretext, and popular sympathy. we know well that we shall be reproached (in the cant of the day) for proposing interest, vile and prosaic interest, as a foundation for the fraternity of nations. it would be preferred that it should have its foundation in charity, in love, even in self-renunciation, and that, demolishing the material comfort of man, it should have the merit of a generous sacrifice. when shall we have done with such puerile talk? when shall we banish charlatanry from science? when shall we cease to manifest this disgusting contradiction between our writings and our conduct? we hoot at and spit upon _interest_, that is to say, the useful, the right (for to say that all nations are interested in a thing, is to say that that thing is good in itself), as if interest were not the necessary, eternal, indestructible instrument to which providence has intrusted human perfectibility. would not one suppose us all angels of disinterestedness? and is it supposed that the public does not see with disgust that this affected language blackens precisely those pages for which it is compelled to pay highest? affectation is truly the malady of this age. what! because comfort and peace are correlative things; because it has pleased god to establish this beautiful harmony in the moral world; you are not willing that we should admire and adore his providence, and accept with gratitude laws which make justice the condition of happiness. you wish peace only so far as it is destructive to comfort; and liberty burdens you because it imposes no sacrifices on you. if self-renunciation has so many claims for you, who prevents your carrying it into private life? society will be grateful to you for it, for some one, at least, will receive the benefit of it; but to wish to impose it on humanity as a principle is the height of absurdity, for the abnegation of everything is the sacrifice of everything--it is evil set up in theory. but, thank heaven, men may write and read a great deal of such talk, without causing the world to refrain on that account from rendering obedience to its motive-power, which is, whether they will or no, _interest_. after all, it is singular enough to see sentiments of the most sublime abnegation invoked in favor of plunder itself. just see to what this ostentatious disinterestedness tends. these men, so poetically delicate that they do not wish for peace itself, if it is founded on the base interest of men, put their hands in the pockets of others, and, above all, of the poor; for what section of the tariff protects the poor? well, gentlemen, dispose according to your own judgment of what belongs to yourselves, but allow us also to dispose of the fruit of the sweat of our brows, to avail ourselves of exchange at our own pleasure. talk away about self-renunciation, for that is beautiful; but at the same time practice a little honesty. chapter xx. human labor--national labor. to break machines, to reject foreign merchandise--are two acts proceeding from the same doctrine. we see men who clap their hands when a great invention is made known to the world, who nevertheless adhere to the protective system. such men are highly inconsistent. with what do they upbraid freedom of commerce? with getting foreigners more skilful or better situated than ourselves to produce articles, which, but for them, we should produce ourselves. in one word, they accuse us of damaging national labor. might they not as well reproach machines for accomplishing, by natural agents, work which, without them, we could perform with our own arms, and, in consequence, damaging human labor? the foreign workman who is more favorably situated than the american laborer, is, in respect to the latter, a veritable economic machine, which injures him by competition. in the same manner, a machine which executes a piece of work at a less price than can be done by a certain number of arms, is, relatively to those arms, a true competing foreigner, who paralyzes them by his rivalry. if, then, it is needful to protect national labor against the competition of foreign labor, it is not less so, to protect human labor against the rivalry of mechanical labor. so, he who adheres to the protective policy, if he has but a small amount of logic in his brain, must not stop when he has prohibited foreign products; he must farther proscribe the shuttle and the plough. and that is the reason why we prefer the logic of those men who, declaiming against the invasion of exotic merchandise, have, at least, the courage to declaim as well against the excess of production due to the inventive power of the human mind. hear such a conservative:--"one of the strongest arguments against liberty of commerce, and the too great employment of machines, is, that very many workmen are deprived of work, either by foreign competition, which is destructive to their manufactures, or by machines, which take the place of men in the workshops." this gentleman perfectly sees the analogy, or rather, let us say, the identity, existing between importations and machines; that is the reason he proscribes both: and truly there is some pleasure in having to do with reasonings, which, even in error, pursue an argument to the end. let us look at the difficulty in the way of its soundness. if it be true, _à priori_, that the domain of _invention_ and that of labor cannot be extended, except at the expense of one or the other, it is in the place where there are most machines, lancaster or lowell, for example, that we shall meet with the fewest _workmen_. and if, on the contrary, we prove _a fact_, that mechanical and hand work co-exist in a greater degree among wealthy nations than among savages, we must necessarily conclude that these two powers do not exclude each other. it is not easy to explain how a thinking being can taste repose in presence of this dilemma: either--"the inventions of man do not injure labor, as general facts attest, since there are more of both among the english and americans than among the hottentots and cherokees. in that case i have made a false reckoning, though i know neither where nor when i got astray. i should commit the crime of treason to humanity if i should introduce my error into the legislation of my country." or else--"the discoveries of the mind limit the work of the arms, as some particular facts seem to indicate; for i see daily a machine do the labor of from twenty to a hundred workmen, and thus i am forced to prove a flagrant, eternal, incurable antithesis between the intellectual and physical ability of man; between his progress and his comfort; and i cannot forbear saying that the creator of man ought to have given him either reason or arms, moral force, or brutal force, but that he has played with him in conferring upon him opposing faculties which destroy one another." the difficulty is pressing. do you know how they get rid of it? by this singular apothegm: "in political economy there are no absolute principles." in intelligible and vulgar language, that means: "i do not know where is the true nor the false; i am ignorant of what constitutes general good or evil; i give myself no trouble about it. the only law which i consent to recognize, is the immediate effect of each measure upon my personal comfort." no absolute principles! you might as well say, there are no absolute facts; for principles are only the summing up of well proven facts. machines, importations, have certainly consequences. these consequences are good or bad. on this point there may be difference of opinion. but whichever of these we adopt, we express it in one of these two _principles_: "machines are a benefit," or "machines are an evil." "importations are favorable," or "importations are injurious." but to say "there are no principles," is the lowest degree of abasement to which the human mind can descend; and we confess we blush for our country when we hear so monstrous a heresy uttered in the presence of the american people, with their consent; that is to say, in the presence and with the consent of the greater part of our fellow-citizens, in order to justify congress for imposing laws on us, in perfect ignorance of the reasons for them or against them. but then we shall be told, "destroy _the sophism_; prove that machines do not injure _human labor_, nor importations _national industry_." in an essay of this nature such demonstrations cannot be complete. our aim is more to propose difficulties than to solve them; to excite reflection, than to satisfy it. no conviction of the mind is well acquired, excepting that which it gains by its own labor. we will try, nevertheless, to place it before you. the opponents of importations and machines are mistaken, because they judge by immediate and transitory consequences, instead of looking at general and final ones. the immediate effect of an ingenious machine is to economize, towards a given result, a certain amount of handwork. but its action does not stop there: inasmuch as this result is obtained with less effort, it is given to the public for a lower price; and the amount of the savings thus realized by all the purchasers, enables them to procure other gratifications--that is to say, to encourage handwork in general, equal in amount to that subtracted from the special handwork lately improved upon--so that the level of work has not fallen, though that of gratification has risen. let us make this connection of consequences evident by an example. suppose that in the united states ten millions of hats are sold at five dollars each: this affords to the hatters' trade an income of fifty millions. a machine is invented which allows hats to be afforded at three dollars each. the receipts are reduced to thirty millions, admitting that the consumption does not increase. but, for all that, the other twenty millions are not subtracted from _human labor_. economized by the purchasers of hats, they will serve them in satisfying other needs, and by consequence will, to that amount, remunerate collective industry. with these two dollars saved, john will purchase a pair of shoes, james a book, william a piece of furniture, etc. human labor, in the general, will thus continue to be encouraged to the amount of fifty millions; but this sum, beside giving the same number of hats as before, will add the gratifications obtained by the twenty millions which the machine has spared. these gratifications are the net products which america has gained by the invention. it is a gratuitous gift, a tax, which the genius of man has imposed on nature. we do not deny that, in the course of the change, a certain amount of labor may have been _displaced_; but we cannot agree that it has been destroyed, or even diminished. the same holds true of importations. we will resume the hypothesis. america makes ten millions of hats, of which the price was five dollars each. the foreigner invaded our market in furnishing us with hats at three dollars. we say that national labor will be not at all diminished. for it will have to produce to the amount of thirty millions, in order to pay for ten millions of hats at three dollars. and then there will remain to each purchaser two dollars saved on each hat, or a total of twenty millions, which will compensate for other enjoyments; that is to say, for other work. so the total of labor remains what it was; and the supplementary enjoyments, represented by twenty millions economized on the hats, will form the net profit of the importations, or of free trade. no one need attempt to horrify us by a picture of the sufferings, which, in this hypothesis, will accompany the displacement of labor. for if prohibition had never existed, labor would have classed itself in accordance with the law of exchange, and no displacement would have taken place. if, on the contrary, prohibition has brought in an artificial and unproductive kind of work, it is prohibition, and not free trade, which is responsible for the inevitable displacement, in the transition from wrong to right. unless, indeed, it should be contended that, because an abuse cannot be destroyed without hurting those who profit by it, its existence for a single moment is reason enough why it should endure forever. chapter xxi. raw material. it is said that the most advantageous commerce consists in the exchange of manufactured goods for raw material, because this raw material is a spur to _national labor_. and then the conclusion is drawn, that the best custom-house regulation would be that which should give the utmost possible facility to the entry of _raw material_, and oppose the greatest obstacles to articles which have received their first manipulation by labor. no sophism of political economy is more widely spread than the foregoing. it supports not only the protectionists, but, much more, and above all, the pretended liberalists. this is to be regretted; for the worst which can happen to a good cause is not to be severely attacked, but to be badly defended. commercial freedom will probably have the fate of all freedom; it will not be introduced into our laws until after it has taken possession of our minds. but if it be true that a reform must be generally understood, in order that it may be solidly established, it follows that nothing can retard it so much as that which misleads public opinion; and what is more likely to mislead it than those writings which seem to favor freedom by upholding the doctrines of monopoly? several years ago, three large cities of france--lyons, bordeaux, and havre--were greatly agitated against the restrictive policy. the nation, and indeed all europe, was moved at seeing a banner raised, which they supposed to be that of free trade. alas! it was still the banner of monopoly; of a monopoly a little more niggardly, and a great deal more absurd, than that which they appeared to wish to overturn. owing to the sophism which we are about to unveil, the petitioners merely reproduced the doctrine of _protection to national labor_, adding to it, however, another folly. what is, in effect, the prohibitive system? let us listen to the protectionist: "labor constitutes the wealth of a people, because it alone creates those material things which our necessities demand, and because general comfort depends upon these." this is the principle. "but this abundance must be the product of _national labor_. should it be the product of foreign labor, national labor would stop at once." this is the mistake. (see the close of the last chapter.) "what shall be done, then, in an agricultural and manufacturing country?" this is the question. "restrict its market to the products of its own soil, and its own industry." this is the end proposed. "and for this end, restrain by prohibitive duties the entrance of the products of the industry of other nations." these are the means. let us reconcile with this system that of the petition from bordeaux. it divided merchandise into three classes: "the first includes articles of food, and _raw material free from all human labor. a wise economy would require that this class should not be taxed_." here there is no labor; consequently no protection. "the second is composed of articles which have undergone _some preparation_. this preparation warrants us _in charging it with some tax_." here protection commences, because, according to the petitioners, _national labor_ commences. "the third comprises perfected articles which can in no way serve national labor; we consider these the most taxable." here, labor, and with it protection, reach their maximum. the petitioners assert that foreign labor injures national labor; this is _the error_ of the prohibitive school. they demanded that the french market should be restricted to french _labor_; this is the _end_ of the prohibitive system. they insisted that foreign labor should be subject to restriction and taxation; these are the _means_ of the prohibitive system. what difference, then, is it possible to discover between the petitioners of bordeaux and the advocate of american restriction? one alone: the greater or less extent given to the word _labor_. the protectionist extends it to everything--so he wishes to _protect_ everything. "labor constitutes _all_ the wealth of a people," says he; "to protect national industry, _all_ national industry, manufacturing industry, _all_ manufacturing industry, is the idea which should always be kept before the people." the petitioners saw no labor excepting that of manufacturers; so they would admit that alone to the favors of protection. they said: "raw material is _devoid of all human labor_. for that reason we should not tax it. fabricated articles can no longer occupy national labor. we consider them the most taxable." we are not inquiring whether protection to national labor is reasonable. the protectionist and the bordelais agree upon this point, and we, as has been seen in the preceding chapters, differ from both. the question is to ascertain which of the two--the protectionists or the raw-materialists of bordeaux--give its just acceptation to the word "labor." now, upon this ground, it must be said, the protectionist is, by all odds, right; for observe the dialogue which might take place between them: the protectionist: "you agree that national labor ought to be protected. you agree that no foreign labor can be introduced into our market without destroying therein an equal amount of our national labor. yet you assert that there is a host of merchandise possessed of _value_ (since it sells), which is, however, free from _human labor_. and, among other things, you name wheat, corn, meats, cattle, lard, salt, iron, brass, lead, coal, wool, furs, seeds, etc. if you can prove to me that the value of these things is not due to labor, i will agree that it is useless to protect them. but, again, if i demonstrate to you that there is as much labor in a hundred dollars' worth of wool as in a hundred dollars' worth of cloth, you must acknowledge that protection is as much due to the one as to the other. now, why is this bag of wool worth a hundred dollars? is it not because that sum is the price of production? and is the price of production anything but that which it has been necessary to distribute in wages, salaries, manual labor, interest, to all the workmen and capitalists who have concurred in producing the article?" the raw-materialist: "it is true, that in regard to wool, you may be right. but a bag of wheat, an ingot of iron, a quintal of coal--are they the produce of labor? did not nature create them?" the protectionist: "without doubt nature _creates_ the _elements_ of all things; but it is labor which produces their _value_. i was wrong myself in saying that labor creates material objects, and this faulty phrase has led the way to many other errors. it does not belong to man, either manufacturer or cultivator, to _create_, to make something out of nothing; if, by _production_, we understand _creation_, all our labors will be unproductive; that of merchants more so than any other, except, perhaps, that of law-makers. the farmer has no claim to have _created_ wheat, but he may claim to have created its _value_: he has transformed into wheat substances which in no wise resembled it, by his own labor with that of his ploughmen and reapers. what more does the miller effect who converts it into flour, the baker who turns it into bread? because man must clothe himself in cloth, a host of operations is necessary. before the intervention of any human labor, the true raw materials of this product (cloth) are air, water, gas, light, the chemical substances which must enter into its composition. these are truly the raw materials which are _untouched by human labor_; therefore, they are of no _value_, and i do not think of protecting them. but a first labor converts these substances into hay, straw, etc., a second into wool, a third into thread, a fourth into cloth, a fifth into clothing--who will dare to say that every step in this work is not _labor_, from the first stroke of the plough, which begins, to the last stroke of the needle, which terminates it? and because, in order to secure more celerity and perfection in the accomplishment of a definite work, such as a garment, the labors are divided among several classes of industry, you wish, by an arbitrary distinction, that the order of succession of these labors should be the only reason for their importance; so much so that the first shall not deserve even the name of labor, and that the last work pre-eminently, shall alone be worthy of the favors of protection!" the raw-materialist: "yes, we begin to see that wheat no more than wool is entirely devoid of human labor; but, at least, the agriculturist has not, like the manufacturer, done all by himself and his workmen; nature aids him, and if there is labor, it is not all labor in the wheat." the protectionist: "but all its _value_ is in the labor it has cost. i admit that nature has assisted in the material formation of wheat. i admit even that it may be exclusively her work; but confess that i have controlled it by my labor; and when i sell you some wheat, observe this well: that it is not the work of _nature_ for which i make you pay, but _my own_; and, on your supposition, manufactured articles would be no more the product of labor than agricultural ones. does not the manufacturer, too, rely upon nature to second him? does he not avail himself of the weight of the atmosphere in aid of the steam-engine, as i avail myself of its humidity in aid of the plough? did he create the laws of gravitation, of correlation of forces, of affinities?" the raw-materialist: "come, let the wool go too. but coal is assuredly the work, and the exclusive work, of nature, _unaided by any human labor_." the protectionist: "yes, nature made coal, but _labor_ makes its value. coal had no _value_ during the thousands of years during which it was hidden, unknown, a hundred feet below the soil. it was necessary to look for it there--that is a _labor_: it was necessary to transport it to market; that is another _labor_: and once more, the price which you pay for it in the market is nothing else than the remuneration for these labors of digging and transportation." we see that thus far the protectionist has all the advantage on his side; that the value of raw material, as well as that of manufactured material, represents the expense of production, that is to say, of _labor_; that it is impossible to conceive of a material possessed of value while totally unindebted to human labor; that the distinction which the raw-materialists make is wholly futile, in theory; that, as a basis for an unequal division of _favors_, it would be iniquitous in practice; because the result would be that one-third of the people, engaged in manufactures, would obtain the sweets of monopoly, for the reason that they produced _by labor_, while the other two-thirds, that is to say the agriculturists, would be abandoned to competition, under pretext that they produced without labor. it will be urged that it is of more advantage to a nation to import the materials called raw, whether they are or are not the product of labor, and to export manufactured articles. this is a strongly accredited opinion. "the more abundant raw materials are," said the petition from bordeaux, "the more manufactories are multiplied and extended." it said again, that "raw material opens an unlimited field of labor to the inhabitants of the country from which it is imported." "raw material," said the other petition, that from havre, "being the aliment of labor, must be submitted to a _different system_, and admitted at once at the lowest duty." the same petition would have the protection on manufactured articles reduced, not one after another, but at an undetermined time; not to the lowest duty, but to twenty per cent. "among other articles which necessity requires to be abundant and cheap," said the third petition, that from lyons, "the manufacturers name all raw material." this all rests on an illusion. we have seen that all _value_ represents labor. now, it is true that labor increases ten-fold, sometimes a hundred-fold, the value of a rough product, that is to say, expands ten-fold, a hundred-fold, the products of a nation. thence it is reasoned, "the production of a bale of cotton causes workmen of all classes to earn one hundred dollars only. the conversion of this bale into lace collars raises their profits to ten thousand dollars; and will you dare to say that the nation is not more interested in encouraging labor worth ten thousand than that worth one hundred dollars?" we forget that international exchanges, no more than individual exchanges, work by weight or measure. we do not exchange a bale of cotton for a bale of lace collars, nor a pound of wool in the grease for a pound of wool in cashmere; but a certain value of one of these things _for an equal value_ of the other. now to barter equal value against equal value is to barter equal work against equal work. it is not true, then, that the nation which gives for a hundred dollars cashmere or collars, gains more than the nation which delivers for a hundred dollars wool or cotton. in a country where no law can be adopted, no impost established, without the consent of those whom this law is to govern, the public cannot be robbed without being first deceived. our ignorance is the "raw material" of all extortion which is practised upon us, and we may be sure in advance that every sophism is the forerunner of a spoliation. good public, when you see a sophism, clap your hand on your pocket; for that is certainly the point at which it aims. what was the secret thought which the shipowners of bordeaux and of havre, and the manufacturers of lyons, conceived in this distinction between agricultural products and manufactured articles? "it is principally in this first class (that which comprehends raw material _unmodified by human labor_)," said the raw-materialists of bordeaux, "that the chief aliment of our merchant marine is found. at the outset, a wise economy would require that this class should not be taxed. the second (articles which have received some preparation) may be charged; the third (articles on which no more work has to be done) we consider the most taxable." "consider," said those of havre, "that it is indispensable to reduce all raw materials one after another to the lowest rate, in order that industry may successively bring into operation the naval forces which will furnish to it its first and indispensable means of labor." the manufacturers could not in exchange of politeness be behind the ship-owners; so the petition from lyons demanded the free introduction of raw material, "in order to prove," said they, "that the interests of manufacturing towns are not always opposed to those of maritime ones!" true; but it must be said that both interests were, understood as the petitioners understood them, terribly opposed to the interests of the country, of agriculture, and of consumers. see, then, where you would come out! see the end of these subtle economical distinctions! you would legislate against allowing _perfected_ produce to traverse the ocean, in order that the much more expensive transportation of rough materials, dirty, loaded with waste matter, may offer more employment to our merchant service, and put our naval force into wider operation. this is what these petitioners termed _a wise economy_. why did they not demand that the firs of russia should be brought to them with their branches, bark, and roots; the gold of california in its mineral state, and the hides from buenos ayres still attached to the bones of the tainted skeleton? industry, the navy, labor, have for their end, the general good, the public good. to create a useless industry, in order to favor superfluous transportation; to feed superfluous labor, not for the good of the public, but for the expense of the public--this is to realize a veritable begging the question. work, in itself, is not a desirable thing; its result is; all work without result is a loss. to pay sailors for carrying useless waste matter across the sea is like paying them for skipping stones across the surface of the water. so we arrive at this result: that all economical sophisms, despite their infinite variety, have this in common, that they confound the means with the end, and develop one at the expense of the other. chapter xxii. metaphors. sometimes a sophism dilates itself, and penetrates through the whole extent of a long and heavy theory. more frequently it is compressed, contracted, becomes a principle, and is completely covered by a word. a good man once said: "god protect us from the devil and from metaphors!" in truth, it would be difficult to say which of the two creates the more evil upon our planet. it is the demon, say you; he alone, so long as we live, puts the spirit of spoliation in our hearts. yes; but he does not prevent the repression of abuses by the resistance of those who suffer from them. _sophistry_ paralyzes this resistance. the sword which malice puts in the assailant's hand would be powerless, if sophistry did not break the shield upon the arm of the assailed; and it is with good reason that malebranche has inscribed at the opening of his book, "error is the cause of human misery." see how it comes to pass. ambitious hypocrites will have some sinister purpose; for example, sowing national hatred in the public mind. this fatal germ may develop, lead to general conflagration, arrest civilization, pour out torrents of blood, draw upon the land the most terrible of scourges--_invasion_. in every case of indulgence in such sentiments of hatred they lower us in the opinion of nations, and compel those americans, who have retained some love of justice, to blush for their country. certainly these are great evils; and in order that the public should protect itself from the guidance of those who would lead it into such risks, it is only necessary to give it a clear view of them. how do they succeed in veiling it from them? it is by _metaphor_. they alter, they force, they deprave the meaning of three or four words, and all is done. such a word is _invasion_ itself. an owner of an american furnace says, "preserve us from the _invasion_ of english iron." an english landlord exclaims, "let us repel the _invasion_ of american wheat!" and so they propose to erect barriers between the two nations. barriers constitute isolation, isolation leads to hatred, hatred to war, and war to _invasion_. "suppose it does," say the two sophists; "is it not better to expose ourselves to the chance of an eventual _invasion_, than to accept a certain one?" and the people still believe, and the barriers still remain. yet what analogy is there between an exchange and an _invasion_? what resemblance can possibly be established between a vessel of war, which comes to pour fire, shot, and devastation into our cities, and a merchant ship, which comes to offer to barter with us freely, voluntarily, commodity for commodity? as much may be said of the word _inundation_. this word is generally taken in bad part, because _inundations_ often ravage fields and crops. if, however, they deposit upon the soil a greater value than that which they take from it; as is the case in the inundations of the nile, we might bless and deify them as the egyptians do. well! before declaiming against the inundation of foreign produces, before opposing to them restraining and costly obstacles, let us inquire if they are the inundations which ravage or those which fertilize? what should we think of mehemet ali, if, instead of building, at great expense, dams across the nile for the purpose of extending its field of inundation, he should expend his money in digging for it a deeper bed, so that egypt should not be defiled by this _foreign_ slime, brought down from the mountains of the moon? we exhibit precisely the same amount of reason, when we wish, by the expenditure of millions, to preserve our country--from what? the advantages with which nature has endowed other climates. among the metaphors which conceal an injurious theory, none is more common than that embodied in the words _tribute, tributary_. these words are so much used that they have become synonymous with the words _purchase, purchaser_, and one is used indifferently for the other. yet a _tribute_ or _tax_ differs as much from _purchase_ as a theft from an exchange, and we should like quite as well to hear it said, "dick turpin has broken open my safe, and has _purchased_ out of it a thousand dollars," as we do to have it remarked by our sage representatives, "we have paid to england the _tribute_ for a thousand gross of knives which she has sold to us." for the reason why turpin's act is not a _purchase_ is, that he has not paid into my safe, with my consent, value equivalent to what he has taken from it, and the reason why the payment of five hundred thousand dollars, which we have made to england, is not a _tribute_, is simply because she has not received them gratuitously, but in exchange for the delivery to us of a thousand gross of knives, which we ourselves have judged worth five hundred thousand dollars. but is it necessary to take up seriously such abuses of language? why not, when they are seriously paraded in newspapers and in books? do not imagine that they escape from writers who are ignorant of their language; for one who abstains from them, we could point you to ten who employ them, and they persons of consideration--that is to say, men whose words are laws, and whose most shocking sophisms serve as the basis of administration for the country. a celebrated modern philosopher has added to the categories of aristotle, the sophism which consists in including in one word the begging of the question. he cites several examples. he should have added the word _tributary_ to his vocabulary. in effect the question is, are purchases made abroad useful or injurious? "they are injurious," you say. and why? "because they make us _tributary_ to the foreigner." here is certainly a word which presents as a fact that which is a question. how is this abusive trope introduced into the rhetoric of monopolists? some specie _goes out of a country_ to satisfy the rapacity of a victorious enemy--other specie, also, goes out of a country to settle an account for merchandise. the analogy between the two cases is established, by taking account of the one point in which they resemble one another, and leaving out of view that in which they differ. this circumstance, however,--that is to say, non-reimbursement in the one case, and reimbursement freely agreed upon in the other--establishes such a difference between them, that it is not possible to class them under the same title. to deliver a hundred dollars _by compulsion_ to him who says "stand and deliver," or _voluntarily_ to pay the same sum to him who sells you the object of your wishes--truly, these are things which cannot be made to assimilate. as well might you say, it is a matter of indifference whether you throw bread into the river or eat it, because in either case it is bread _destroyed_. the fault of this reasoning, as in that which the word _tribute_ is made to imply, consists in founding an exact similitude between two cases on their points of resemblance, and omitting those of difference. chapter xxiii. conclusion. all the sophisms we have hitherto combated are connected with one single question: the restrictive system; and, out of pity for the reader, we pass by acquired rights, untimeliness, misuse of the currency, etc., etc. but social economy is not confined to this narrow circle. fourierism, saint-simonism, communism, mysticism, sentimentalism, false philanthropy, affected aspirations to equality and chimerical fraternity, questions relative to luxury, to salaries, to machines, to the pretended tyranny of capital, to distant territorial acquisitions, to outlets, to conquests, to population, to association, to emigration, to imposts, to loans, have encumbered the field of science with a host of parasitical _sophisms_, which demand the hoe and the sickle of the diligent economist. it is not because we do not recognize the fault of this plan, or rather of this absence of plan. to attack, one by one, so many incoherent sophisms which sometimes clash, although more frequently one runs into the other, is to condemn one's self to a disorderly, capricious struggle, and to expose one's self to perpetual repetitions. how much we should prefer to say simply how things are, without occupying ourselves with the thousand aspects in which the ignorant see them! to explain the laws under which societies prosper or decay, is virtually to destroy all sophistry at once. when la place had described all that can, as yet, be known of the movements of the heavenly bodies, he had dispersed, without even naming them, all the astrological dreams of the egyptians, greeks, and hindoos, much more surely than he could have done by directly refuting them through innumerable volumes. truth is one; the book which exposes it is an imposing and durable monument: il brave les tyrans avides, plus hardi que les pyramides et plus durable que l'airain. error is manifold, and of ephemeral duration; the work which combats it does not carry within itself a principle of greatness or of endurance. but if the power, and perhaps the opportunity, have failed us for proceeding in the manner of la place and of say, we cannot refuse to believe that the form which we have adopted has, also, its modest utility. it appears to us especially well suited to the wants of the age, to the hurried moments which it can consecrate to study. a treatise has, doubtless, an incontestable superiority; but upon condition that it be read, meditated upon, searched into. it addresses itself to a select public only. its mission is, at first, to fix, and afterwards to enlarge, the circle of acquired knowledge. the refutation of vulgar prejudices could not carry with it this high bearing. it aspires only to disencumber the route before the march of truth, to prepare the mind, to reform public opinion, to blunt dangerous tools in improper hands. it is in social economy above all, that these hand-to-hand struggles, these constantly recurring combats with popular errors, have a true practical utility. we might arrange the sciences under two classes. the one, strictly, can be known to philosophers only. they are those whose application demands a special occupation. the public profit by their labor, despite their ignorance of them. they do not enjoy the use of a watch the less, because they do not understand mechanics and astronomy. they are not the less carried along by the locomotive and the steamboat through their faith in the engineer and the pilot. we walk according to the laws of equilibrium without being acquainted with them. but there are sciences which exercise upon the public an influence proportionate with the light of the public itself, not from knowledge accumulated in a few exceptional heads, but from that which is diffused through the general understanding. such are morals, hygiene, social economy, and in countries which men belong to themselves, politics. it is of these sciences, above all, that bentham might have said: "that which spreads them is worth more than that which advances them." of what consequence is it that a great man, a god even, should have promulgated moral laws, so long as men, imbued with false notions, take virtues for vices, and vices for virtues? of what value is it that smith, say, and, according to chamans, economists of all schools, have proclaimed the superiority of liberty to restraint in commercial transactions, if those who make the laws and those for whom the laws are made, are convinced to the contrary. these sciences, which are well named social, have this peculiarity: that for the very reason that they are of a general application, no one confesses himself ignorant of them. do we wish to decide a question in chemistry or geometry? no one pretends to have the knowledge instinctively; we are not ashamed to consult draper; we make no difficulty about referring to euclid. but in social science authority is but little recognized. as such a one has to do daily with morals, good or bad, with hygiene, with economy, with politics reasonable or absurd, each one considers himself skilled to comment, discuss, decide, and dogmatize in these matters. are you ill? there is no good nurse who does not tell you, at the first moment, the cause and cure of your malady. "they are humors," affirms she; "you must be purged." but what are humors? and are these humors? she does not trouble herself about that. i involuntarily think of this good nurse when i hear all social evils explained by these common phrases: "it is the superabundance of products, the tyranny of capital, industrial plethora," and other idle stories of which we cannot even say: _verba et voces prætereaque nihil_: for they are also fatal mistakes. from what precedes, two things result-- st. that the social sciences must abound in sophistry much more than the other sciences, because in them each one consults his own judgment or instinct alone. d. that in these sciences sophistry is especially injurious, because it misleads public opinion where opinion is a power--that is, law. two sorts of books, then, are required by these sciences; those which expound them, and those which propagate them; those which show the truth, and those which combat error. it appears to us that the inherent defect in the form of this little essay--_repetition_--is that which constitutes its principal value. in the question we have treated, each sophism has, doubtless, its own set form, and its own range, but all have one common root, which is, "_forgetfulness of the interests of man, insomuch as they forget the interests of consumers_." to show that the thousand roads of error conduct to this generating sophism, is to teach the public to recognize it, to appreciate it--to distrust it under all circumstances. after all, we do not aspire to arouse convictions, but doubts. we have no expectation that in laying down the book, the reader shall exclaim: "_i know_." please heaven he may be induced to say, "_i am ignorant_." "i am ignorant, for i begin to believe there is something delusive in the sweets of scarcity." "i am no longer so much edified by the charms of obstruction." "effort without result no longer seems to me so desirable as result without effort." "it may probably be true that the secret of commerce does not consist, as that of arms does, _in giving and not receiving_, according to the definition which the duellist in the play gives of it." "i consider an article is increased in value by passing through several processes of manufacture; but, in exchange, do two equal values cease to be equal because the one comes from the plough and the other from the power-loom?" "i confess that i begin to think it singular that humanity should be ameliorated by shackles, or enriched by taxes: and, frankly, i should be relieved of a heavy weight, i should experience a pure joy, if i could see demonstrated, which the author assures us of, that there is no incompatibility between comfort and justice, between peace and liberty, between the extension of labor and the progress of intelligence." "so, without feeling satisfied by his arguments, to which i do not know whether to give the name of reasoning or of objections, i will interrogate the masters of the science." let us terminate by a last and important observation this monograph of sophisms. the world does not know, as it ought, the influence which sophistry exerts upon it. if we must say what we think, when the right of the strongest was dethroned, sophistry placed the empire in the right of the most cunning; and it would be difficult to say which of these two tyrants has been the more fatal to humanity. men have an immoderate love for pleasure, influence, position, power--in one word, for wealth. and at the same time men are impelled by a powerful impulse to procure these things at the expense of another. but this other, which is the public, has an inclination not less strong to keep what it has acquired, provided it can and knows how. spoliation, which plays so large a part in the affairs of the world, has, then, two agents only: strength and cunning; and two limits: courage and right. power applied to spoliation forms the groundwork of human savagism. to retrace its history would be to reproduce almost entire the history of all nations--assyrians, babylonians, medes, persians, egyptians, greeks, romans, goths, franks, huns, turks, arabs, moguls, tartars--without counting that of the spaniards in america, the english in india, the french in africa, the russians in asia, etc., etc. but, at least, among civilized nations, the men who produce wealth have become sufficiently numerous and sufficiently strong to defend it. is that to say that they are no longer despoiled? by no means; they are robbed as much as ever, and, what is more, they despoil one another. the agent alone is changed; it is no longer by violence, but by stratagem, that the public wealth is seized upon. in order to rob the public, it must be deceived. to deceive it, is to persuade it that it is robbed for its own advantage; it is to make it accept fictitious services, and often worse, in exchange for its property. hence sophistry, economical sophistry, political sophistry, and financial sophistry--and, since force is held in check, sophistry is not only an evil, it is the parent of other evils. so it becomes necessary to hold it in check, _in its turn_, and for this purpose to render the public more acute than the cunning; just as it has become more peaceful than the strong. [illustration: the author] dollars and sense [revised and enlarged edition] being memoranda made in the school of practical experience herein are golden helps for employer and employee cheer, courage, help for the weak, weary, discouraged ones who live in shadowland cures for worry and fear backbone instead of wishbone and guides and experience which will bring success in business, happiness in your home, respect of your neighbors, love of friends, and altogether many helps which will show you how to make this life well worth the living by col. wm. c. hunter price paper cover, cents a copy cloth bound, cents a copy pro rata for any quantity published by hunter &. company oak park, illinois. u.s.a. each chapter separately copyrighted in copyrighted in book form, revised and enlarged edition, copyright, by wm. c. hunter all rights reserved contents aches and pains advertising advice ambition anger argument associates backbone and wishbone brains, birth, boodle bribes buying catching up cigarets compensation competition credit debt discontent do good double equipment dressing elimination employees enthusiasm expenses financing fixed charges friends frozen dog tales generalists get away good fellowship good for evil gossip groundwork grumbling hard times hard work health home life honesty horse sense hypochondriacs independence initiative kindness lawyers laxity learn to play learn to say no managers memory monthly dividends my symphony never quit work night work obedience optimism our sons patience pay day perspiration politics precedent producers profanity promises pull reading rule of gold salesmen saving selling short letters sizing up things sleep specialists speculation stand when selling stenographers success system the boss the man, not the plan the string thinking vacations vantage ground waiting for success worry dedication the author respectfully dedicates this book to the officers and proprietors to the managers and superintendents to the buyers and sellers to the clerks and office men to the youth seeking promotion to the boy with his first job and to all who wish to get happiness health and dollars. dollars and sense groundwork when you cut a melon, your friends will come with eager mouths and sit under your shade tree and help you eat it. few of these friends would respond to your call for help when you were working in the hot sun raising that melon. many people accept the dividends and benefits of friendship but give you a cold shoulder when called upon for assessments of friendship. the world is full of young men whose objective is snaps. they are looking all the time for what they can get and not what they can give. to forge ahead, you must give value received. you can't draw out all the time. the employe must do what he is paid to do and "then some," for it is this "then some" or plus that gets your salary raised. the employer and employe must realize that each must make profit. it is because there are so many ingrates and so many four flushers that so few succeed. this book will be welcomed by those who are square, ambitious and patient. it is not theory. it is not preaching. these chapters will be old friends to you, and you may read a few minutes or a few hours. you may read and re-read as often as you wish, for you will always find some new truth impressed on you every time you read. keep this book, carry it with you, and you will be benefitted. worry and fear will fade and peace and courage will grow within you the more you study these pages. the writer has "been at it" for years. he has had successes, failures, joys, sorrows, and experienced the passions, the problems, the difficulties you have experienced. since the age of ten years he has been upon his own resources and the years since then have been years of study, working and playing, all blended into a happy life. the jolts, set backs, sorrows, worries, fears and discouragements are the things which made him strong. they were experiences. smooth sailing doesn't bring out the stuff one is made of. it takes shadows to make sunlight appreciated. it takes reverses to make success. it takes hard knocks to polish you. this is a book of experiences, not one of theories. there is no attempt to make this a literary effort. all the writer hopes for or cares to do is to truthfully state facts and experiences in plain language. study the thought rather than the expression. it is sense the writer wants to express rather than nonsense. the writer is happy to say that the previous editions sold rapidly and his friends not only read, but pass the word along. the way to get happiness is to make others happy and the present of one of these books to a friend or employe is a quick way to get happiness. let us go along together and consider some of the problems which we all have to face in our business as well as our social life. a volume could be written on each chapter. but volumes are tiresome and herein you will find net values which are the result of boiling down. so now we have the groundwork of this book. we understand each other. simply take these truths for their evident worth. you won't agree with the writer in all things, of course not. if, however, you get one truth that will help you, then you have been repaid for reading this book and the writer has been repaid for writing it. learn to say no. look over the history of the thousands who have failed in business, and you will find in nearly every instance the failure was due to an inability to say no. people come to us under various guises and ask us to do things which in our better judgment we had rather not do, and too many have not the backbone to say no. we are led to invest in mining stocks and to embark in precarious enterprises because we cannot say no. we endorse notes and go security for our friends, not because we want to but because we cannot say no. there is a class of "good fellows" who are after us to join them in physical pleasures, the foregoing of which would be better for us physically, financially and mentally. too many join them because they cannot say no. it is rarely a man goes off deliberately and gets drunk. the lone drunk is usually the result of sorrow, sudden financial blow or a hard jolt of some sort. the man who gets drunk generally does so because he cannot say no when bibulous friends press him to take a drink. the ability to say no, to refrain from going with the crowd, to decline to go down stream is, more than any other one thing in this life, the mark of a strong character. the one who can say no is going to succeed. temporarily he may feel ashamed; he may find it hard to withstand the jibes and jeers and criticism of his friends for refusing to join them in things he should not do. our old friend--the law of compensation--comes in here, for in proportion as a man has the ability to say no, who has the courage of his convictions, whose duty is to his body and his family before the temptations that surround him, so in proportion as there are few such individuals these individuals stand out as marked successes. the manager of one of the biggest breweries in the united states has not tasted liquor of any kind in the last twenty years. surely this man shows his courage, for his action in face of his occupation is a supreme test of backbone and ability to say no. the embezzler does not start out to do wrong. some friends want to borrow money or someone needs financial aid temporarily, and, either at the request of friends or because the individual has something he wishes to purchase and has not the patience to wait, he borrows from the firm by means of "the ticket in the drawer" plan. he repeats the operation frequently until his conscience is dulled, and he gets the habit. some day he wakes up to find he has several tickets in the drawer, and resorts to extreme measures, trying to beat the races, or to win money by gambling on stocks or grain. one day he finds he is in a dickens of a fix. he sees no way out of it. he takes more money and skips out, only to be caught later on and made to suffer, and all this because he could not say no to temptation. learn to say no. set your jaws firmly and say no. the friends who go back on you and criticize you for saying no to the things that are hurtful to you are unworthy of the name of friends, and you can very well get along without them. friends who ask you to do the things you should not do are the very ones who are of no service to you in time of need. the individual who says no regardless of the flings and taunts that are cast at him is the one who eventually makes a success. character counts above all things in the business world. the banker extends credit on character oftener than we imagine. the banker knows how to say no. a man's credit and character are most important factors in business, and many a man without security has attained magnificent success through untiring energy, ability, character and courage enough to say no. in proportion as you grow strong and unhesitating in saying no, the temptations and opportunities to say yes will lessen in number. exercise your back bone and your jaw bone, so you can say no and stick to it. credit no factor is so necessary in building up business as credit, and no factor is so necessary in building up credit as truth. it is comparatively easy to start credit, but the art is to keep credit. the young business man who says "i want no credit, i buy and sell for cash" makes a mistake. it is all right to pay promptly, but do not establish a spot cash payment basis, for later on, when you ask credit, your creditors will think something is wrong. establish a credit whether you need it or not. it is a good advertisement and a frequent help. be reasonably slow in paying your bills, but positively sure that you do pay them. when you get a sharp or blunt letter asking for a settlement, go to your creditor face to face, set a date when you will make a payment and keep your agreement. don't be specific as to amount unless you are decidedly sure you can do it. be specific as to date, however, and be there or have your check there on the date. suppose a man owes you $ and you ask him for it and he says "here are ten dollars on account, and on next thursday i will make another payment, and as often as i can i will pay something until you are fully paid up." you don't get angry at that man when you see his intentions are good and he is doing his best. so long as your creditor gets something every time he writes it keeps him good natured. it is the man who breaks promises who gets hard usage from the creditors. if you owe more than your present cash balance can liquidate, make a pro rata payment all around among your creditors. write a good square letter saying nothing would please you more than to send a check in full, and that this payment is made as evidence of your willingness and intention to keep good faith. keep in touch personally with your creditors as far as possible. talk to them of your plans and prospects. always tell the truth. have your account as a moral risk rather than as a dun or bradstreet risk. there is sentiment in business. creditors have hearts and they have good impulses. they appreciate friendship and especially gratitude. don't believe a word of that great untruth "there is no sentiment in business." don't get angry when asked for money. admit your slowness and tell your creditor that as an offset for your present slowness you have a good memory and a heart that appreciates, and some day your purchases will be much larger, and those who are your friends now will certainly get the benefit when the time comes that you do not require favors. an honest, frank, heart to heart talk is most valuable. the credit man keeps the truthful man in mind and his account under his protecting wing. the credit man glories with you, and has a distinct interest in your success when it comes. it often happens that the small bank or small manufacturer is the best place for the beginner to go for credit. you can get closer to the small growing creditor than you can to the big fellow who is independent. the big bank is cold blooded. it insists upon security and collateral. your account in a big bank is only an incidental detail, and the cashier is cold and distant and blunt. the small bank, however, gives you more time and attention, is more interested in you and can remember you much better than the big bank. avoid bad associates. you can't play the races and give wine dinners and maintain strong confidence with your creditors. you must be worthy of the confidence reposed in you. it is your duty and part of the contract to be reliable and truthful. every time a creditor gets out of sorts go to him and pay him something, and he will quiet down. be grateful. don't be afraid to express yourself freely and frequently on this point. when you are caught up and financially strong stick to those who stuck by you. remember, credit is based on confidence in the individual rather than in his bank account. don't get into nasty arguments or disputes. give and take. be fair. be square. keep your temper. stoop to conquer. cut out all thoughts of revenge. when a house does not treat you right, curb your temper, and, as soon as you can, get in touch with some other good house. tell the new house frankly why you changed. credit is a subsidy, and it stands the hustling business man in good stead. many men have started in business with a capital only of ability, hard work, honesty and good reputation. the use or abuse of credit determines whether a man will rise or fall. keep your record clean, and if later you get on the shoals your past will stand you in good stead. if you have been given to sharp practice or dishonesty, woe be unto you when you fall. remember these things carefully. keep in personal touch with your creditors, keep your promises, pay on account when you cannot pay in full, hustle, be honest, keep good company, don't gamble, don't be a sport. if you practice these virtues, offers of aid will come to you rather than flee from you. never quit work the average young man makes up his mind that at fifty or sixty years of age he will retire and take things easy for the rest of his days. the average young man makes a great mistake. it is far better to wear out than to rust out. to the young man work is a drudge, a necessity to keep him alive. in middle age work is an accepted thing and we are used to it, and feel rather the better for having occupation. in old age work is a necessity to keep the mind and body young. there is scarcely a more miserable spectacle than the man of fifty or sixty who has retired with ample fortune. he loafs around the house. goes from one club to another. gets lonely. feels blue. he tries to kill time in the day looking forward to the meeting of his cronies in the evening. the cronies are busy in the day time and they have engagements and pleasures in the evening, so that our retired friend seems to be in the way. he finds that the anticipation of retirement was a pleasure, and that the realization is a keen disappointment. "there is nothing," says carnegie, "absolutely nothing in money beyond a competence." when one has enough money to buy things for the home, for his family comfort and enjoyment, when he has sufficient income to take care of himself and his family, surplus dollars do not mean much. the business man should prepare for his future so that if ill health overtakes him he may have the where-with to surround himself with comforts, travel and the best of care. the man who enjoys pleasures of the home and friends, who trains up young blood to take hold of the business, who travels and enjoys himself as he goes along has the right idea. we must learn to enjoy life now instead of waiting for tomorrow, for tomorrow may never come. the man who cashes in, puts his money in bonds and retires from all work goes down hill quickly, and feels he is of no use in the world. the farmer who moves in town to live on his income is a sorry individual unless he has a garden and chickens, or buys and sells farms, or occupies his time with work of some kind. the retired, non-working farmer who has moved to town gets up in the morning, goes to see the train come in, whittles a stick, loafs at the hotel or store, goes to the next train, talks of his rheumatism, goes to bed at eight o'clock, and the next day goes through the same rigmarole. we have all seen these old codgers who have retired. they are not happy because they have quit their life's habit of work, and are rusting out. occupation is the plan of nature to keep man happy, so when you have all the money you need, have some occupation or hobby to occupy your time. the man who retires from any active work is merely counting the days until he dies. when old age comes and your body or brain won't let you do or care for as much as you could in your younger days, then get lighter work or lighter cares. keep busy if it is only raising chickens or gardening, or studying astronomy or botany. keep at it as long as you can. die in the harness instead of fading slowly away. cultivate the reading habit in your younger days that it may be a pleasant occupation when your legs and hands grow feeble with age. when you quit work or occupation of some sort then life has no beauty for you. stand when selling you can make your point clearer, you can talk with more force, you can impress and convince your customer better if you stand while he is seated. have you ever noticed that when you are seated and the other fellow is standing it puts you at a disadvantage? try it some time. have you not noticed that if you are seated and your adversary is standing, when you get enthusiastic and wish to combat his argument, it is impossible for you to get in your best licks while you are seated? you involuntarily rise when you make your strong points and are full of your subject. how far would a life insurance man or an advertising man get if he sat down and leaned back and relaxed while talking to you? you will observe that the good solicitor declines with thanks your proffered chair. he stands up, he knows the value of standing. by the relation between his standing and you sitting it makes him a positive and you a negative force. he forces--you receive. how much would an orator impress his audience if he delivered his lecture in a sitting posture? you cannot combat argument very well if you are sitting, nor can you convince others as well sitting as standing. when you call on a customer carry a busy air with you. stand up. talk straight from the shoulder. make your point and claims clear. place your position or proposition definitely, forcefully and quickly before your customer. make a good get-away when you have accomplished your purpose. if you don't land him the first time, get away anyway. let him see that your time is money, and that you appreciate that his time is money, too. don't visit. gracefully and politely decline the chair that is offered; say that your limit of time and disinclination to trespass require your stay to be brief. stand. keep busy and active. get away quickly, and you will be welcome next time. the short stayer is a welcome guest. he may not land his customers as quickly, but in the end he will land more customers, and hold them closer and retain them longer than the tedious, visiting, social bore who sits and sits and sits. the best vantage ground in closing a contract or settling a dispute it makes considerable difference whether you are in the other fellow's office or in your own. the man in whose office the transaction takes place has the decided advantage. if you have a disputed bill, or if you wish to make a contract for material or merchandise use every effort to get the other man in your office. when you go to another office you are on the aggressive, when another man comes to your office you are on the defensive. it is great diplomacy to get the man you deal with to come to you instead of going to him. in proportion as you are diplomatic you will be able to benefit. if you meet the other man in a club, hotel or a place outside of your office or the other man's office, then the vantage ground is even and neither has the best of it so far as location is concerned. starting from an even vantage ground the advantage shifts greatly one way or the other according to whether you go or the other man comes. railroad officials, bankers and great merchants realize the importance of having the vantage ground in their favor. the merchant, for instance, has private rooms and regular office hours for his buyers, and he lets the manufacturers come to him. stop a moment and look over your own experience, and you will recall numerous instances where it has been to your advantage to close a deal in your own office. there is nothing in what we have written in this series of talks that has less theory in it than this particular chapter. there is no point we have made more surely proven by experience. the army that attacks the enemy in the enemy's country has the odds against it, as all wars have proven. men fight best at home on their own vantage ground. whether you are buying or selling try to close the deal in your own place of business. if you have travelers on the road let it be part of their business and duty to invite and persuade customers to call at your place of business when they are in town. ambition a man without ambition had better content himself with learning a trade. a good mechanic is fairly sure of three dollars a day, and fifty-two weeks' employment in the year. the mechanic does not have many worries. he does not have notes to meet at the bank. he does not have to face the ingratitude of employes and petty jealousies, for he has no employes working for him. he lays down his tools when the bell rings and goes home to his family. his ambition is to have a good place to sleep, plenty to eat, money enough to buy clothing for his family and to send his children to school, and extra spending money enough over his fixed charges to allow him to take his family to the circus when it comes to town. ambition makes men strive to get ahead. ambition cultivates taking chances. nearly every man is a gambler. some of you will be shocked at this statement, yet upon careful analysis nearly every move a successful business man makes is a gamble. he is betting that he will take in more money than he lays out on a new plan. the man with ambition is a gambler. the man who learns a trade and does not strive to increase his earnings is not a gambler. we pride ourselves on our ability to buy cheaply, because the cheaper we can buy the greater our earnings will be and the less our gamble. any man with two hands and ordinary health can earn a livelihood, but the ambitious man wants to make a name for himself and to make a success in business, so he works harder than he would do if his problem were only the obtaining of money enough to buy the things necessary for his existence. the moment a man loses ambition, his progress, so far as business advancement is concerned, ceases. nearly every successful business today is successful because the proprietors, in the infancy of the business, were filled with ambition which made them work hard. we are all familiar with the successful business man who loses his ambition. it is an absolute certainty that as soon as a man loses ambition his business falls off, unless he makes it an object to take care of the ambitious young men in his employ, so that they may keep up the pace of progress he established. lawyers keep in touch with a lawyer, but don't take his advice on business matters. a lawyer should be like a dictionary--a place of reference. lawyers by the very nature of their vocation have much to do with concerns who are in trouble, and with firms who are poorly managed. lawyers know law first and business second; the business man knows business first and law second. the advice of one successful business man is worth the advice of twenty-three lawyers on a matter of business. use the lawyer to keep you out of trouble. let him see your contracts and the papers and agreements pertaining to leases, sales, purchases, royalties, and all documents which may from their nature be brought into court as evidence. these things are the ones on which to take the lawyer's advice. when you are pushed into a corner and must fight, then get the best lawyer, for in a fight in court, like a fight in the prize ring, the best trained and equipped man usually wins. it's more often the best lawyer wins than the best side of the case. legal struggles seldom pay. law suits take up time and money, and the result, even if in your favor, seldom offsets the time, money and worry you have expended. the good lawyer keeps you from fighting. many lawyers, however, are grafters, and they advise fight, for they win whether you do or not. settle disputes even if you are imposed on. there is little satisfaction in getting a judgment for one hundred dollars, when your lawyers fees are fifty dollars and you have expended two hundred dollars' worth of time and worry over the case. ask your lawyer's advice on the legal status of your operations, and not on business propositions. if you are a success in business that is an evidence, generally speaking, that your judgment is good. you can get all the advice you want for nothing. if you state a case and lay out a proposed plan, and then ask your friends' advice on the subject, you can safely count that nine out of ten will say that your proposition is all right as outlined by you. these friends figure that you have given the plan much thought and study, and it is much simpler for them to coincide with your opinion than to take an opposite view. honestly between ourselves we must admit that when we seek advice we generally do it only for the purpose of having our own opinions confirmed, and, if our friends do not agree with us, we say they are prejudiced. lawyers don't see the smooth, systematic, well balanced side of business, and their knowledge is all negative instead of positive on business matters. if you have an important move in mind, map out the plan carefully, lay the plan out in detail, be conservative in your estimate of prospective profits, and always make a liberal allowance for cost over the figures you have prepared, and deduct a liberal percentage from the receipts you anticipate. be very conservative in matters of figures, and then some. the building you propose to put up will cost far more than your architect tells you. you know this in advance, and you make an allowance for extras, but when the bills all come in you will find that in addition to the estimated cost and the extras which you have figured on, there will be something else to pay. the sales of a business you propose to embark in will be less than you or your manager figure they will be. always allow for enthusiasm and imagination in the matter of prospective receipts. when your plans are all in shape show the documents, contracts and agreements to your lawyer, and get his legal, but not his personal, advice. you must be the doctor of your own business. remember, a lawyer knows law, and a business man knows business. be a producer employes are divided into two classes--the kind that makes profits and the kind that is on the expense side of the ledger. the young man who has the foresight and ability to get on the selling side, the side that brings profit to the house, has the decided advantage over the young man who is on the expense side. book-keepers, stock-keepers, clerks and all other expense employes are paid far lower salaries than the salesmen and buyers, those who produce results. in the newspaper business the editor with his college education has practically attained his limit of progress when he is years old. he may get from $ . to $ . or even $ . a week as editor. the young man in the advertising department may get from $ . to $ . a week. he is a producer of tangible results; the editor produces theoretical results. in every business the man who sells things, who brings in the profits, is the man who gets the best pay. the boss will grudgingly give a dollar a week increase to the book-keeper. he only thinks what it would cost him to replace the book-keeper. the producer gets his increases in $ . and $ . a week jumps. the expense employe is in competition with the great army of the unemployed, and there are multitudes who will work for less money than the man who is holding his job on the expense side. the producer, on the other hand, knows how much profit he is bringing into his house, and if those profits are steadily increasing he may be sure his salary will increase proportionately. if it does not he can always get another position by laying the facts and figures before some more enterprising house. the producer is seldom out of a situation. if for any reason he is out of employment temporarily he can go to a good house and work on commission, or get a small drawing account, and at three or six months talk salary on actual showing made. the shrewd business man won't let profits slip away if he can help it, so the real producer sits in a pretty good seat. he has only to show what he can do and he will be paid accordingly. the expense man's only stock in trade is faithfulness, neatness and amount of detail he can handle. he has little lee-way in the matter of salary, for thousands are faithful, thousands are neat and thousands can perform great amounts of detail. the young man just out of school should have for his ideal that he shall be a producer first and a proprietor later on. to this end he should equip himself by spending four or five years acquainting himself thoroughly with all the phases and departments of the business and learning the facts about the manufacture of the goods he expects to sell eventually. all this understanding and preparation will be of great service when he is a salesman, and greater service when he is a proprietor. the writer started wholly dependent upon his own exertions for a livelihood at fourteen years of age. at fifteen he learned shorthand by evening study. at sixteen he attended to the correspondence and mail order department for his employer. at eighteen he was getting $ . a week in cash for his services, and many times that amount in valued experience. "one day he got a blank application for a $ . clerkship in the post office. at that time appointments were made by political pull and not through the civil service. the writer took the blank to a relative, who was the leading politician of the state. he asked for the endorsement of this senator and received this advice: "young man, my signature to this sheet would get you the job, but if you were my son i would not let you take the place. i will give you some advice, which is this--never take a political, railroad or bank job. in all these callings you are in competition with thousands of others. the compensation is small, the chance to better your position is remote, and you are a machine. if you want to make a success of life be a producer, learn to sell things." this advice was acted on, and the writer remembers it as the turning point in his career. it is a sad thing to see the old man working for $ . or $ . a month who in the past drew $ , or $ , a year. such men were expense men and not producers. moves on the checker board of business are made quickly. the man with silver hair may be an accountant or confidential man drawing a good salary. something happens, his firm goes out of business or sells out, and our old friend is left without a position. he has been used to the comforts and associations a good salary allows, and now he finds himself out of a place and faces the necessity of starting over again, and his competitors are young and active men ready for the battle of life. the old man out of a job goes around amongst his friends. the friend can do nothing but gives him a letter of recommendation. he is passed along from one to another until he is foot-sore and heart sick and weary of it all. he winds up as a sleeping car conductor, or gets a position as floor walker or clerk at the inquiry desk. the producer, be he ever so old or ever so often out of a job, can catch on again. he gets his job on results and not sympathy. business men are on the lookout for producers. young man, learn to be a producer. the man--not the plan we are prone to give credit to the plan as being the thing that makes a successful business. it is not the plan, it is the man behind the plan that is responsible for the success. the man who has a well-defined ideal, who hews to the line, who eliminates all deterrent influences, who concentrates his energy on his ideal, who bends his efforts towards the one thing is pretty sure to accomplish his purpose. we often see a man make a marked success in a field that others have considered barren. take a small town, for instance, where there are many retail stores. the people of the town will tell the prospective merchant that the town is already overcrowded with stores, that none of the stores seem to be making more than a bare living, and that it would be impossible for another store to make a success, on account of the already overcrowded conditions, yet the right man comes along and starts a store in that town and makes a marked success. if the plan were the making of success, all an enterprising business man would have to do would be to pick out some plan which was successful and then imitate it. the great ocean of business has many derelicts on it as a result of copying plans. it is a part of the law of compensation that the man who originates a plan and carries it to successful conclusion has a patent on his business. this patent is his individuality and good business equipment. the man who steals his plan physically is unable to steal the mental end. since men have recorded facts in the shape of history, we find that men have made successes of plans and businesses that have been discarded by their predecessors as played-out plans. when a plan is presented to you do not calculate the outcome by the plan, but by the man. two banks may start side by side with exactly the same office furniture and exactly the same business operations. they use the same kind of money; they make loans on lands or on securities. the operations of these two banks may be as closely identical as possible, yet within ten years one bank will have considerable surplus and the other may be out of business. if the plan were the measure of success these two banks should fare equally well, but the fact that they differed so materially is in itself evidence that the success is determined by the individuals and not the plan. the illustration of a bank may be carried into other lines, merchandising, manufacturing or railroading. compensation the law of compensation is--you pay for what you get, or you get what you pay for. this law says if a horse can run fast it can't pull a good load and vice versa. this law says a horse cannot go fast far. it says that for every sorrow there is a joy, for every positive there is a negative. where evil exists there is some good to offset it, says compensation. the law of compensation is the measure optimists use, and in nearly every chapter we have written in this series, compensation will be found as a ground-work. you can't get away from nor violate this rule of compensation. it is not new, it is as old as creation itself. centuries ago it was expressed this way: "whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." too many try to ignore this great rule, they try to get something for nothing. you may eat first and pay afterwards, or you may pay first and eat afterwards. you may play the butterfly; sip life's sweets and sow your wild oats now, but pay day will come and may be you will be unable to pay. you may spend your income now and suffer want later on. you may work hard now and play as you go along. you may have happiness each day you live; you can make life worth living if you work. happiness is compensation for work; no work, no happiness. you may have what you want, but, you must pay for it. millions cost happiness and often cost health too. the dinner is properly balanced when it has sweets as well as substantials. the sensible person finds the dinner is better if the sweets come after the substantials. to violate the law of compensation is to eat the sweets first and then the substantials, and by this law the substantials do not taste good when they are eaten after the sweets. the man who procrastinates is violating the law of compensation. when you see your duty attend to it at once. the boss by the boss we mean the active proprietor, the executive head, the owner of the business. he is sometimes called the "old man." the success of an institution depends largely upon the example set by the boss. if the boss is careless in little things, if he is sharp in his practice, if he does mean acts, he may rely upon it his employes will copy him, and later on, when some blow strikes the business, he will find it has happened through the practices of the employes who got their cues from the boss. kindness wins kindness; love wins love. if the boss is generous and charitable, if he sets a good example, he will have an esprit de corps among his employes that is of incalculable value. there is not one chance in a thousand for the boss to make a success unless he has risen to the position of boss, and climbed and earned his position through steady progress. the boss must know how to do the things he hires others to do. the boss who can show an employe his error in a kindly manner and point out a better method, leaves a good feeling in the heart of that employe. the boss who shows his heart to the employe and is concerned in the things not necessarily business will be repaid a thousand-fold in loyalty and willingness on the part of the employe. employes deeply appreciate consideration, and especially the little kindnesses which are not what might be called business practice. the boss should not be too far aloof; he should be just head and shoulders above those working under him; he should be just far enough above that he stands out as a commander. he should be willing to grant an audience to an employe and should work with him. the boss should say we rather than i. he should talk with the employes and not down to them. he should make each individual under him feel that he is part of the institution and an element in its success. remember this--employes watch the boss and they copy him. where you find hard working employes you will find a hard working boss. the boss cannot run the whole business himself; he is dependent upon willing hands, and, in order to get willing hands, he must have willing hands himself. if the boss is alert and discovers wastes and leaks in his business, the employes will discover them too, and the business will receive double benefit. sizing up things one of the most necessary as well as beneficial practices a man can have is to take fifteen minutes to an hour each day and devote the time to sizing up things, to planning the day's work for the morrow, to threshing the wheat from the chaff, to reviewing the accomplishments of the day. sizing up things can only be well done in solitude. the benefits of sizing up things in solitude are so great it is a wonder more has not been written on the subject. plants grow in darkness, yet the common understanding is they grow in sunshine. the sunshine is absolutely necessary for the growth of the plant, but the real growth is done in the quiet darkness. a man's brain develops in solitude, yet bustle and crowds and business activity are as necessary to the man as sunshine is to the plant. the real brain and moral growth takes place in solitude. here again we must remember the law of compensation, for if a plant had all sunshine and no shadow, and if a man had all hustle and bustle and no solitude, it would be like a machine without a governor; the man and the plant would run so fast something would have to give way. on the other hand compensation says that if a man is too much in solitude, or the plant too much in darkness, they will wither and die. man has always had strong admiration for the strong individual, whether bird, beast, fish, plant or human. there are two kinds of birds, the kind that lives in flocks, like the blackbird and the wild duck, and the kind that lives by itself, like the eagle. amongst birds the eagle is chosen as an emblem for the flag, and never the duck or blackbird. amongst beasts there are two classes, the herd kind like sheep, and the strong individual, like the lion. the lion is the symbol of strength and courage, the sheep the symbol of innocence and simplicity. the lion appears on coat of arms but not the sheep. in the fish family there are two classes, the kind that lives in schools, like the mackerel, and the kind that lives by itself, like the whale. when first the savage drew a rude picture of a fish on his hut it was a whale, and not a mackerel. we do not find the mackerel's picture excepting at the fish dealers and on the menu, and then only because the mackerel is good to eat. among trees the one that attains great proportions and beautiful symmetry is yonder giant oak or elm that grows in the open. it needs room to breathe and grow. it grows better if it is segregated from the crowded forest. the giant tree is not the one that grows in the dense forest. there are two kinds of men, the kind that lives in the herd and the kind that has strong individuality that needs room to grow. the herd man exists in infinitely greater numbers than the individual man. we cannot imagine lincoln, bismarck, webster, clay, edison or burbank living in the herd, or spending their time in the boulevard cafes. the man who lives in a herd, who is ever present where the lights are bright, where gaiety abounds, where excitement reigns, where feasting is present, soon gets himself into the habit of cultivating this excitement. he is never happy when alone. the brain never sleeps and something must occupy it. the herd man fills his brain with frivolous things, he seeks constant excitement. he is like the plant always in the sun, he burns himself out. the great man with the individuality is great because he has always spent plenty of tune by himself, sizing up things in solitude. sizing up things makes the brain grow and makes it stronger. the universities of this country tend in a great measure to produce the herd man. the students dress alike. all have the same mannerisms, all have the same tilt to their hats, and all the same turned up trousers. they feed at certain restaurants and crowd in flocks. very few college men learn the benefits of sizing up things in solitude until in after years. on the other hand the student in the school of practical experience does not copy his fellow students. that is why in this great practical experience school we find lincolns, edisons, jim hills and carnegies. those men have to wrestle with the problems for themselves. they had to size up things in solitude instead of reading the sizing up from text books, as is done in the regular university. every man before retiring at night, or even during the day, should take a few minutes to himself and carefully analyze the doings of the day. he should weigh the positive and negative acts, the good and the bad, the wise and the foolish, the right and the wrong impulses, the gain and loss in achievement. he should strike a balance, and if he sees that the bad, deterrent and backward things in the lead he should resolve to get a move on himself. the man who goes along without this sizing up things in solitude is like the merchant who keeps no record, who pays his bills from the cash drawer and takes what is left for profit. he will still be running a little shop in twenty years, while his competitor who sized things up each day will be in the wholesale business or will have retired with a competency. try this sizing up things for two weeks, and the benefits you will receive will be so manifest it will need no further suggestion to make you keep up the practice. competition the saying is "competition is the life of trade," and this saying is true, or it would not have endured so long. if it were not for competition we should be living in the woods in a state of savagery. ages ago all men and women led the simple life. their chief vocation was idleness. when the weather was hot the man sat in the shade; as the sunshine crept to him he moved into the shade again. in winter he reversed the process. when our savage ancestor felt a pain in his stomach, his simple instinct showed him that if he put things in his mouth and swallowed them the pain in the stomach would leave. this low browed man's whole object in life was to keep from having those hunger pains, and the only energy he expended was in hustling for food and in protecting his food from the other savages. one day a man observed that the beasts lived on each other, so he conceived the idea that it would be good for him to live on other animals. that it would be easier than digging roots and gathering herbs, so this man caught and ate slow-moving animals. he used a club to do the killing. along about here competition began, for another man learned to throw a club and kill his game. then another competitor discovered that a round stone was a more effective weapon than a club. these hairy forbears of ours lived in caves until competition led up to the building of huts. one day a savage discovered that while the skins of animals were hard to eat, they nevertheless made a good body covering. another discovered that if the skins were tied about him it left his arms free to act. this man was the first tailor. he punched holes in the skin and tied the rude garment together with strips of skin. this first tailor was quite an important man among his fellows on account of his great discovery. some of these wild men were fleet of foot and had well developed cunning. they became expert hunters. on the other hand some of the less active, by the law of compensation, became more expert tailors, so trade was formed. the hunter killed enough for himself and the tailor, while the tailor made clothes for both of them. in these days the woodsman lived on animals and the plainsman on vegetables mostly. so the woodsman traded skin clothing with the plainsman for grains and herbs, and this marked the birth of commerce. then dugouts and canoes were built, and thus our ancestors crossed lakes and seas and developed maritime commerce. from away back in those dark ages up to the present time competition has stimulated mankind and spurred him on towards better conditions. the whole human race has benefited by each improvement which competition has brought about. we have in mind a certain mail order house that up to had things its own way. then it sold two to three million dollars worth of merchandise annually. a competitor came into the field, stirred things up, and now the old mail order house is doing eight to ten times as much business per annum as they did before they had the competition. in the matter of competition we must early learn not to worry over competition, but to derive as much good from it as possible. if a competitor does something better than you do, do not kick or protest, but jump into the band wagon and do the thing as well or better than he does it. price cutting is the simplest and most common phase of competition, but a better way to get advantage over your competitor is to improve your business by cutting off wastes and leaks, and reducing fixed and fancy charges so you can give your customers more quality and more quantity for the money. in proportion as you increase the value you give for a dollar, just so you will find it easier to get the dollar. do not regard competition as hurtful to your business, but rather look upon it as a pace-maker for you. if you had ten experts working for you studying how to improve your business you would certainly get benefit from it, but probably not enough benefit to offset the great cost of hiring these ten experts. on the other hand, if you have ten competitors who are sitting up nights studying how to improve their businesses, you can get the benefit of their experience without it costing you anything. the world is big and there is room for all, but old compensation says the prizes are given to the fittest. if you are a laggard, if you are on the defensive instead of on the aggressive, get busy, wake up, do it now. advertising good advertising is good publicity. advertising is the thing that makes your trade increase. everything you do in connection with your business and every act of yours outside of your business is an advertisement. reputation is an advertisement, so is honesty, politeness, correspondence, methods, catalogues, circulars and salesmen. neatness is an advertisement, and so is promptness, thoroughness. and then there is another kind of advertising which is your statement in the newspaper. this is the printed kind of advertising, and this kind of advertising is the most common, in fact, when we suggest that you should advertise, it immediately comes to your mind that advertising is space in the newspaper. keep in mind, however, when we speak of advertising we refer to everything in connection with your business that makes an impression upon the public or the prospective buyer. some of the old timers refrain from printed advertising in newspapers, saying that the best advertisement is merit. merit is a good advertisement, but it is mighty slow in its action. if the inventor of the typewriter planned and built the machine in his barn without letting anyone know about it, if he kept absolutely quiet about his doings, relying on the fact that the typewriter had merit, it would never be known to the public unless he told about it. if the inventor of the typewriter waited for merit alone as the vehicle for acquainting the world with the merits of the typewriter, the world would never know of it, unless, perhaps, a fire inspector or an health officer accidently stumbled across the machine while inspecting the premises. if the inventor waited for intrinsic merit to sell his goods, he would find that months and years would elapse before he could develop his business into profitable proportions. if you have a good thing you must tell about it. telling makes selling. telling is advertising. professional men hold up their hands in horror when you suggest advertising to them. they tell you they don't believe in advertising, that it is not ethical, that it is not dignified. doctors and lawyers are most notable in this respect. one of the first things of their code of ethics is "thou shalt not advertise." they mean paid newspaper advertising. the man who originated this idea evidently did not have the money to pay for any, and it was a case of sour grapes. let us look into this matter of ethics and see whether the doctor and the lawyer really believe what they say about this matter of advertising. it is a rare spectacle to find a lawyer who will not gladly give an interview to a newspaper reporter during some important trial. the doctor gladly avails himself of the opportunity to read a paper before a medical society, and he sees to it that this paper is published in a medical journal later on. professional men belong to clubs, take part in public affairs, speak before people, work on committees, and actively take part in anything that will bring them in the limelight of publicity. they do this advertising themselves, yet they say they do not believe in advertising. uncle sam builds war ships, equips his soldiers splendidly, conducts his business affairs with high grade talent, all this that the united states may be well advertised among our sister nations. advertising is absolutely essential to successful business. not printed advertising alone but all kinds of advertising. the quality, the price, your aggressiveness, everything in your business is an advertisement, either a good advertisement or a bad one. it behooves you to see the advertising you do, whatever kind it may be, is of the good kind. if you expect to remain in business a long time your advertisements must be good. keep in mind that methods are advertisements. one bad move, which is a bad advertisement for you, calls for two or more good moves or good advertisements. have everything, every detail of your business carry a good advertisement, that is, have it help your business. have every employe pulling on the same center tugs and have them all face forward, and your vehicle will move forward. buying the buyer derives much information and much shrewdness by carefully watching the seller's methods. some buyers seem to think that bull-dozing tactics, cute lies and irritable manners make the seller humble, weak-kneed and non-combative. this is a great mistake. the best buyer is first a gentleman. he keeps his word, he is patient and he knows his business thoroughly. the buyer gains much by being open and above board with the seller. let the seller know that your success consists in getting as much value as you can for the money, and that your continuous trade will result only through fair treatment. let the seller understand that the better he treats you in the matter of price and quality the better you will be able to treat your customers, and the longer you will be able to deal with the seller. the moment a buyer shows bull-dozing methods, the seller is antagonized, and his object then is to soak the buyer. the buyer who keeps his temper and goes at the matter philosophically is the one who wins out. the buyer should explain to the seller that the seller can get the best of him once and may be twice, but not more than that. the main thing for the buyer to possess is a most thorough knowledge of the goods he buys. learn who makes the goods and where they are made, and get at the factory cost. then learn whose factories have the best reputation, and whose are the best fitted and established to make the goods you buy. remember you can afford to investigate. when you find a factory over-sold you will find that factory more independent. when you find a factory short of orders you will find them eager for your trade, and the chances are you can do much better with this factory than with the one that is behind on its orders. don't get excited, don't hurry. speak gently. know your ground. cultivate a reputation for fairness rather than smoothness. laxity and indifference in buying means that you are allowing wastes and leaks to creep in your business, and that you are placing a handicap on your traveling salesman, for goods well bought are half sold. expenses if you get confidential with mr. bradstreet or mr. dun so that they will give you access to the inside history of the commercial concerns which have failed in business, you will quickly discover that in the majority of cases the cause of the failure was "too much expense." it has become quite a common saying in speaking of failures that "the expenses ate up the profits." our friends mr. dun and mr. bradstreet tell us that there is about one concern in fifty which succeeds in business. if you will look at the successes you will find out that the proprietors were good buyers as well as good sellers but that the particular point that made them successful was their ability to make careful analysis in the matter of expenses. the business man should have his expenses divided into as many classifications as possible. his payroll should be separated into various departments, office, salesmen, workmen, accounting, and so on; through all the items of expense the division should be made as finely as possible. the proprietor should have a statement each week on his desk showing how every cent was expended. these items should be summarized monthly, and constant reference made to the items of expense in comparison with items of expense for the previous month, as well as items of expense for the same month of the previous year. one of the pit-falls in nearly every business is "general expense" or "sundry expense." this department is a catchall for a lot of items, and it hides a lot of leaks and wastes in business. you can't divide your expense items too minutely. the finer the divisions, the easier you can detect a waste of money. the business man who has a statement of both receipts and expenses is in the position of the first engineer of an ocean steamer; he does not seem to be doing much and does not worry unless something goes wrong, then he shows his training and ability to mend breaks and repair weak places. if the business man analyzes his sources of income into several divisions the same as he does his items of expense, he will find it an easy matter to correct errors that creep in the business. he does not have to worry about those items of expense which show minus, nor about those items of receipts which show plus. with a finely divided sheet of both expenses and receipts you can quickly determine where the profit is coming from and where the leaks appear. if an expense item shows plus, you can run down that item and see reasons for it and endeavor to bring down that expense. if a receipt item shows minus, you can run down that item and endeavor to increase the receipts. the writer has a little printed card on his check book and it reads "drive the axe into expenses." it is a constant reminder to stop the wastes. the only real success that comes to the business man is the profits at the end of the year, that is, the amount of money he makes net. it is easier to increase profits by cutting the expenses in many cases than it is to increase profits by increasing sales. and here let us remark that on this subject, as well as all the other subjects we are writing about in this series of articles, we have in mind the matter of common sense, temperate action. extremes carry things too far. you must not cut the expenses beyond the point where it seriously interferes with the sales. if you are interested in this matter of expense, and you certainly should be, take up your items of expense for last month or last year, go over the cost of help, the cost of raw material and the cost of manufacturing; go over each branch of your expenses, analyze the items carefully, look into every point thoroughly, and we will guarantee that at the end of your analysis you will see where you can save a respectable sum in the operation of your business. in going into this matter of expense, do not take all the items at once, but take each item up separately and go through it thoroughly. do not assume that you are paying too much for everything, but use good sense and good judgment and see that you get your money's worth. take the item of wages. look over the individuals in your employ, and you will see a place, for instance, where two persons can do the work three are now doing. remember, it is generally true that where two persons are engaged in handling a certain department and they are overworked, the tendency is to give them additional help. when this is done you will find thenceforth all three are busy. in other words, each of the two persons who were formerly overworked ease up and do less work the moment the third person is given as assistant. you have noticed that where you put three employes to do the work formerly done by two, it is almost impossible--if you take the employe's word--to get two employes to do the work after three have been doing it. the work should push the employe. the employer should get full capacity of his employes. look over your pay roll and make up your mind that here and there you are going to employes and ask them to help you save money, and at the same time you will let them earn more money for themselves. you will find that this plan works admirably. for instance, if you have three employes getting $ . a week each; go to the two who do the most work and say to them: "if you can do the work of this department with one less employe i will give you each $ . a week more." in this way you will pay two employes $ . a week instead of three employes $ . a week each. this will save you $ . on that particular part of your payroll. if you save proportionately all through your payroll it will make a decided profit in itself. saving can also be made in the payroll by taking one of the heads of the department into your confidence and letting out the work to him by contract, offering to give him one-half, or one-third or one-quarter of the amount he can save in his department. it is surprising to see how different his argument will be when his pocket is affected. for instance, in the past he explained to you that his department is behind in its work because he has not enough help. he has been asking for more help right along, but never asked that some of the help be laid off. if, on the other hand, you say to him you will give him one-third of what he can save in the matter of wages in his department, you will instantly notice that his whole argument and attitude change. he discovers that he has ability to pick out employes who do the most work, and lets out the four-flushers and idlers. remember, that as a rule the best paid employes are the cheapest. you can well afford to pay the heads of your departments more wages if they can save you more money. a manufacturer should divide the number of completed articles done per day or per week by the amount of wages paid, and find out what the wage item is in each department per article. suppose that under your present system it costs you eighty cents in wages per article in department a, sixty cents per article in department b, etc. explain to the foreman of department a that it is now costing you eighty cents per article for wages in his department, and to the foreman of department b that wages are costing you sixty cents per article in his department. tell these employes you will give them one-third or one-half of whatever they can save in their departments. you will find department a will cost you from seventy to seventy-five cents per article thereafter, and department b from fifty to fifty-five cents per article, and in the meantime the foreman of the department is making more money for you, and likewise making more money for himself, than under the old system. this matter of expense is most important, and should have the most serious attention of the proprietor. advice one of the things most frequently asked for and yet one seldom made use of, is advice. ninety-nine times out of a hundred the man who comes to you for advice as a matter of fact really wants to have his own opinion confirmed. do not go around with a pocket full of advice offering it to everyone. if you advise a man to change his habits or manner of life he will resent your proffered aid. the best way to give advice is to take another fellow for example and hit your friend through the illustration of the other fellow. let him discover the point himself rather than let it appear that you are telling him the thing. the matter of advice is a very hard thing to properly understand. you advise another to do a certain thing, forgetting in the meanwhile, that if you were in his position your view-point would be his and not your own. you play your strong qualities against his weak ones. it is easy enough for you to advise a drunkard not to drink, but difficult for you to understand his view point on the subject if you are not a drinking man yourself. giving advice usually comes about because we see a weakness in others. the opposite of this weakness is a feature in our own make-up. the business man who is constantly asking advice is advertising the fact of his uncertainty of his own actions. your great problems must be decided by yourself. the one thing that separates the sheep from the goats, and success from failure, is the ability to analyze, study and weigh problems for yourself, and to make decisions for yourself. the law of compensation comes in here again, for in proportion as you have self-reliance and good judgment your success will be measured. you may rely upon it that if you go about seeking advice, you will get two kinds of advice--first: the advice that concurs with your own preference or decision; and, second, the kind that is in opposition to your views. you accept the first kind because it tickles your vanity, and you throw aside the second, saying the advice is prejudiced. don't ask advice. size up and weigh the problem yourself and use your own best judgment. reading the business man who goes along day by day without taking on any responsibilities or without tackling more difficult problems, finds he does not progress. the man who gets into a rut and reads light, frothy literature all the time--the kind that is pleasing to the imagination, the kind that leaves no permanent impression--does not progress mentally. reading should be like eating, we should have the dessert as well as the substantials. it would be a great mistake to eat dessert alone, and it is certainly a mistake to read light, frothy reading matter alone. one of the prime requisites to a successful career is concentration of thought. few things will dissipate thought as much as over-reading of newspapers. the newspaper starts in with the first page, and by the time you have finished the last column oh the last page you may have read a hundred articles, each one of these articles touching on a different line of thought. the daily newspaper contains climaxes of all kinds. each article is a distinct change of thought. the daily newspaper gives us statistics, sorrow, laughter, crime, passion, death, lies, humor, and so on all through the gamut of the scale of human experience. the man who craves the newspaper soon finds his line of thought frequently interrupted, side-stepped, drawn, cut off and dispersed. abundant evidences are at hand where the book reader acquired the daily newspaper habit and reads the daily to such an extent that it is impossible for him to read books thereafter. he has broken his continuity of thought, and when this happens book reading is impossible. everyone should read two or three or more books at a time. one should be an interesting book, whether history, story or comedy, so long as it is well written and along lines that will hold one's interest. one should read one book after another of this sort as a dessert for his dinner, as it were, but along with it he should eat substantial food in the nature of substantial reading. do not read yourself to sleep at night over a light novel. read your novel for an hour or so; then take up your old philosopher or scientist and read a page, or as much as necessary to find some thought clearly expressed so that it will be burned into your mind. that thought will remain and will be of service to you in years to come. read daily newspapers scantily. read items concerning the business you are engaged in. read the doings of congress and the important events of the day. go over the head-lines, if need be, and eliminate all those shocking stories of crime and sordid influence. do not let yourself get into the habit of reading the details of horrible crimes and bad impulses and criminal acts. skip over all the details of hangings and murders. they are weeds in the mind that choke up the beautiful flowers of thought. remember, everything you read depresses or elevates, and in proportion as you accustom yourself to read substantial matter so in proportion you will progress in this world, and have a flood of thoughts at your command when requirements come upon you calling for clean-cut expressions. you will write better letters, you will converse better, you will enjoy social intercourse better if you read helpful reading matter from books and read newspapers very sparingly. argument not once in a thousand times will one man convince another in an argument, and the benefits you get if you do convince the other fellow will not compensate you for the waste of energy expended on the other nine hundred and ninety-nine times when your efforts failed. you convince a man against his will and he is of the same opinion still. there is a mighty lot of difference between argument and reason. you may accomplish more by dividing your case into one or two good reasons and telling your adversary that you will not argue the case, but you will let him look at these reasons, and when he takes it up logically you will have no fear of his conclusion, for truth must triumph. while argument itself is a footless proposition, it is infinitely more so if your argument is with those of less mental calibre than your own, for by the law of compensation, in proportion as a man is ignorant, he makes up in perversity and lack of analytical ability. do not stoop to contend with those who have no standing, mentally, morally or physically. it is a waste of time. if it is your purpose to change a man's opinion, do not try to do it by argument. study the ground carefully. state your points with preciseness, make careful analysis of every phase of the situation, take up the matter point by point. start with your adversary by getting on ground on which you both will agree. take up the points on which there can be little chance for differences of opinion. you will find the other man will get in the habit of agreeing with your propositions and that his antagonism weakens. state facts that are right and truthful, and are so plain that the truth will be self-evident. after you have made several propositions on which the other man agrees with you wholly, then make a proposition that is ninety per cent. his way and ten per cent. your way. gradually increase that ten per cent. until you swing him around so that he sees the truth. he then imagines that he has made the deduction himself. remember, you can swing the biggest ship around by a steady, slow, gentle pull. on the other hand a sudden strain on the hawser would produce no effect whatever on the ship. the man who wishes to convert another to his way of thinking must be a diplomat if he is successful. do not get excited, keep cool and collected, be sure of your ground, be positive in your assertions, make the whole matter clear, and use good judgment, sound reason and clear logic. speculation you are playing against odds when you speculate. the only man who has a sure thing on the board of trade or stock exchange or the race track is the man with the "wienerwurst" privilege. the successful business man some day wakes up to the fact that his bills are paid, and that he has surplus money. this surplus money should be used for investment purposes and not for speculation. of course, it is hard to draw the line where investment leaves off and speculation begins. when you speculate on margins you are like the fellow holding on a bear's tail as it runs around a tree--if you lose your hold the bear will get you. the man who makes an investment, buying stocks or real estate and paying cash for them does not have to worry about the market. prices may be up or down, but the man who has paid for what he has bought will sleep well. you can't beat the speculation game. the only ones who make a success, and their success is ephemeral, are those who make speculation their whole occupation. the professional speculator is merely a high grade gambler, and he always winds up a loser. go to the stock exchange or the board of trade and you will see at either place a half a dozen old fellows hanging around. they are all men who have seen better days. a little inquiry and diplomacy on your part will bring forth the fact that these men were once prominent figures on 'change. when you have more money than you need in your business buy good farm lands out west, or good timber lands. no man ever bought good farm land or good timber land at the prevailing market price and lost money eventually. of course, at different seasons of the year the price of land may go down a little temporarily, but the moment a good crop comes in, the price goes up again. with good clear farm land you can always go to the nearest bank and borrow from sixty to seventy-five per cent. of its value. real estate is the true basis of wealth, and if you want to play a sure game, buy land that produces things. when you buy vacant property in a large city, it is mere speculation. the land does not bring in any remuneration, and you are simply betting that the prices will increase. every large city has abundant instances of vacant property that is not worth as much now as it was ten or twenty years ago. real estate booms come in cycles. prices go up and men get the fever and buy vacant property. the boom explodes, property goes down and you can't get your money back. the chances are you have bought the property on two or three years' time, and it certainly is paying for a white elephant when you are paying for land that is worth less than what it cost you. you cannot get out, however, because the original payment has already been made, and your only hope is to save something on your investment. notwithstanding the fact that certain business sections and certain residence sections in any city steadily increase in price, yet the average real estate in the city increases by very slow percentage. the same amount of money, put out in mortgages, with the interest added and compounded, will develop wealth greater than the average vacant property investment, for where one lot soars up to a high price there are a hundred that don't increase at all, and the picking out of the lot that is going to increase in value is as hard as picking out the horse that is going to win the race. it is because the vacant city property has only speculative value that the business man should not touch it. buy farm property that you can rent. it will bring you interest on your money right along, and the tendency of farm land is and always has been steadily forward. mr. yerkes, of chicago, was a speculator who made millions in the street-car system. he was thoroughly familiar with hydraulics, and he soaked the stocks as full of water as possible and then unloaded on the investors who speculated in street-car stocks. these speculators are now holding the bag. when mr. yerkes closed out his holdings in chicago he granted an interview, and one truth he uttered in that interview has ever been remembered by the writer. it is so valuable an expression coming from such a successful speculator that we are going to give it to you. it is as follows: "i have never known a business man to successfully speculate in grains or stocks for two years." the business man who is watching the ticker or calling up the stock exchange every day, who takes little flyers, is skating on mighty thin ice. when you buy farms you are exchanging your money for the most certain thing in the world, for the basis of all wealth is land, and money simply represents the things which come out of the land. the things that grow on the land are exchanged for gold, and the gold is exchanged for things that come out of the land. the government exchanges the gold for pieces of paper called money, which in reality means that you can exchange these pieces of paper for gold, and you can exchange the gold for the things that come out of and grow upon the land. the stock broker may not like this chapter because the more speculation the more he benefits. he gets a rake-off every time a man buys and every time a man sells. he plays a sure thing. he is like the man with the wienerwurst privilege. don't speculate. invest. elimination one of the greatest brain savers is elimination. every man should try to operate along lines of the least resistance, eliminate the deterrent influences and all things that fret him. do not look for trouble. do not concern yourself too much over disagreeable things over which you have no control. do not build up an intricate system in your business. have simplicity your ideal. eliminate all useless moves. if you have disturbing influences in your institution, such as an employe who is continually causing friction, eliminate that employe. the man who causes friction is pulling back on the forward impulses of your business, and he is holding back one or more men who are trying to help you forward. get rid of useless things that take your time or cause you worry. remember that as you grow successful people will come to you under various excuses to get your aid financially or morally. they want you to go into new companies. the officers of the club to which you belong will ask you to be a director. you will be invited to dinners, asked to speak, asked to do a thousand and one things, and in proportion as you accede to these demands you will find the demands increasing until finally you have little time to attend to your own affairs or to attend to your family. have as your center idea--elimination. everything that takes your time from your business or your family is an extra tax on your strength. eliminate every habit that holds you back, every practice that unfits you for progress, every person who depresses you, every move that is not necessary, every footless idea that crowds your brain. the specialist when this nation of ours was born nearly every one was a generalist. the merchant sold a general line of merchandise. the doctor was also a farmer and a horse trader. in those days there were very few specialists. as time passed some of the wiser individuals turned specialist and succeeded. the doctor who is a generalist cannot excel in any one branch of medicine, or compete with the specialist who devotes all his time and study and practice towards one point and towards the treatment of a specific ailment. the merchant who sells everything cannot compete with the man who makes it his business to sell one class of goods. this is an age of specialists, and what we considered a specialist twenty-five years ago is only a generalist from the present standpoint. the specialist of twenty-five years ago has been divided again and again. the best doctor today is one who doctors the eye alone, the stomach alone, or the nerves alone. he can do more for you and knows more of your case in five minutes' observation than the generalist would in three months. with the keen competition of these days it is necessary for the individual to be a specialist in business. pleasure and recreation are the only things in which an individual should be a generalist. were it not for specialists we should know little about the sun, little of electricity, little of steam, little of railroads, little of advertising, little of anything else. it is because individuals have made a speciality of one thing, because they have concentrated their energies and their brain power on one thing that the world has progressed. recreation is for relaxation, and the business man should see to it that he gets the full benefit of recreation. if he carries specialism into recreation, recreation is spoiled, for the moment a man is a specialist in recreation he strives to excel, and this striving to excel is hard work, and that is the same thing he is doing in business. the business man who plays billiards and no other game doubtless will play a better game than the generalist who indulges in all sorts of games and recreations, but the man who makes a specialty of billiards finds his powers centered on this game of billiards. he puts his thought on it and wishes to excel, he wishes to make a record, and billiards then become business. this striving to excel in a game brings forth the same gambling instinct manifested in business. it is his "i will." the business man who plays a good game of billiards some day meets his superior, and the superior is the individual who does nothing but play billiards. if a man tries to be a specialist in billiards and a specialist in business, even though both callings commence with "b," he will find that a division of effort is a division of results, and he will not be a success in either business or billiards. in proportion as he excels in billiards he will be lacking in business, and vice versa. we remember the story of a young friend of herbert spencer who joined the great philosopher in a game of billiards. the young man played a most excellent game. when they had finished spencer remarked: "young man, your education has been greatly neglected, you play billiards too well." be a specialist in business and a generalist in pleasure. play billiards, swim, ride, play golf and indulge in all athletic sports and so long as you get uniform pleasure and recreation from these things you are doing right, you are helping your mind and developing your body and letting your brain rest, so that it may be keen and a greater help in your specialty, which is business. the world needs specialists, and it needs specialists in recreation as well as business, but the man who tries to be a specialist in business as well as a specialist in recreation will fail in both, or, at least, his success will be only moderate. it is necessary for life's scheme that we have individuals who have steady incomes so that they do not require to enter the strenuous business life. it is necessary to have such individuals, so that they may devote themselves to being specialists in recreation, otherwise the sports would die out. if you go in for sport do not expect you can compete with anybody who goes in for sport exclusively. you can't win in two callings or occupations. the string there is a string to every proposition, and it behooves you to look out for the string before acceding to the requests that are made of you. when a stranger comes and offers to do things for you, to let you in on the ground floor, or assures you that he is working for your interest, you may be sure there is a string to his proposition, and the string is that, as a matter of fact, it is himself instead of you he is looking out for. don't bite at the chance that is offered you to get something for nothing. the biggest kind of a string is always in such a proposition. remember this, that people are selfish. each man looks out for his own interest, and even if he is protecting your interest, it is because his own interest will be better conserved by looking out for yours. don't decide on important matters too quickly. don't get tied up in big contracts with strangers until you have found every strand of the string. don't be too suspicious but hunt for the string. it pays to be very conservative on all matters in which others are interested. sometimes the string in the proposition is legitimate and the other fellow may be more interested than you are, but it certainly behooves you to see what this string is and to understand exactly where the end of the string is tied. don't draw up in your shell and look upon every man with a proposition as trying to take advantage of you, but put down this as a truth--there is a string to every proposition, and you must find that string before you close the deal. horse sense just how the expression "horse sense" came into use is not known, but the meaning of the combination means good reason, old fashioned logic, simple analysis and actual truth, and the basing of your actions upon simple things rather than complex things. the man who uses horse sense in his transactions gets along further and faster than the man who uses selfishness and smartness. to be possessed of horse sense is a most valuable asset. it is something you can use every day of your life. horse sense is really one of the things that makes up the law of compensation. the law of compensation itself is the quintessence of horse sense. luck is the gambling chance, and horse sense is the investment and security chance. the man with horse sense may not go as far in a day as the man with luck, but he will progress more days and go further eventually than the lucky man. horse sense is one of the most valuable things in the business world, and it is one of the rarest things. it is so valuable because it is so rare. in the business world today the men who are doing great things are the men who have horse sense. we call these men wonderful and look upon their accomplishments as the result of some mysterious, wonder-working power that they possess. wonder workers are only flashes in the pan. do not hire your employes on account of your preference for a certain color hair or certain colored eyes. do not hire your employes on account of their physical appearance, or on account of their ability to dress in the height of fashion. get down to their net worth. find out how much horse sense they have. hire employes, as far as possible, who are blessed with old fashioned horse sense. the manager the good manager is one who commands respect, not through his authority but because those under him appreciate that he has more ability and experience than they have. the selection of a good manager is very important, for the success of one's business depends upon its management. the proprietor cannot do all the things himself, and he must rely upon his lieutenants. give a certain class of work to ten girls. put them in a room by themselves with no one in authority. come back next day and you will find that there is one girl who is laying out the work for the others. there is something in this girl that makes her a natural manager, and there is a certain instinct amongst the rest of the girls that makes them acknowledge this one girl as their superior, and the one to go to for advice. this natural leadership is the quality the manager should possess. above all, the manager, like the boss, must know how to do things he hires others to do, and the things we have said concerning the boss is likewise true of the manager, for the manager is the next step below the boss. the successful boss would not have obtained his present position if he had not been a good manager previously. let the manager read thoroughly our chapter on the boss if he has ambition to be boss some day. the mistake frequently made by the manager is to take credit himself for the work done by those under him, for such a manager may be sure that sooner or later his position in this respect will be found out, and to his surprise he will find that the employe who has been doing the things for which he has taken credit will take the manager's place. employes are quick to detect this spirit in the manager. they see that their own efforts are not known to the boss, and it makes them indifferent, because they see no appreciation for what they are doing. on the other hand, if the manager says a good word to the boss concerning an employe who has shown marked ability, it redounds to the manager's credit that he is liberal enough to give credit where it properly belongs. truth will out as sure as the sun will shine, and the manager cannot conceal his subordinates' abilities and pass them off as his own for any length of time. the good manager will say a kind word to the boss about the employe, if he is the right sort. it makes an employe feel confidence in the manager when he knows that the manager is appreciative and ready to tell his superior of good things in the employe's favor. the manager who is bad tempered, suspicious and tries to take credit that does not belong to him is only holding his position temporarily, and some day he will be let out of the institution for which he is working, and will find himself forced to the extremity of getting a place somewhere else back in the ranks from which he had temporarily risen. selling time was when the best salesman was the one who could tell the biggest lies, drink the most whiskey and show his customers the liveliest time. today the best salesman is distinguished by the following attributes: truth, trustworthiness, together with a fine knowledge of the goods he is selling. the man who sells goods must be prepared to hear from nearly every man that his price is too high. if the buyers would always tell the truth, then the salesman who sold the most goods would simply be the one who actually sold at the lowest price. price does not mean anything. price is high or low only when quality is taken into consideration. the man who sells merchandise, or advertising, for instance, must be thoroughly acquainted himself with the thing he sells. he must be reliable, he must give good measure, he must keep his word. we hear a good deal about the live-wire, rapid-fire salesman, who goes out on his initial trip and comes back with a bagful of orders. it must be remembered that ever and always there is the law of compensation to take into consideration. the salesman who bags a lot of orders on the first trip does not get so many the second time. he has colored his picture too highly on the first trip. he has made too many side promises, too many mis-statements, and the customer finds out he cannot be believed, and this smooth article of a salesman is not as welcome in the buyer's office the second trip. on the other hand and in strict accordance with the law of compensation, the salesman who tells the truth, who moves quickly, who does what he agrees to and knows what he is talking about, who talks convincingly and attends strictly to business will eventually succeed. the great house of marshall field & co. of chicago have operated along the line of fairness, good treatment and willingness to right a wrong and correct a mistake quickly. marshall field had horse sense when he inaugurated his business. wonder workers who start out with a burst of speed and smash records in the matter of selling will still be salesmen at fifty years of age, for you can't go fast far. those wonder workers change frequently. they flit from house to house. they work because they need the money to have a good time with, and as soon as they get the money they proceed to have a good time until their little pile runs out, and then they get another job. business men know this wonder worker well. go into any wholesale house and you will find them. they are living in the past and relating their conquests. they never speak of the present but always of the past. they have done things they can't do again. the good salesman is doing things now better than he has done in the past. the permanently successful salesman does not cut much of a figure in the matter of dress. he is not as handsome as the wonder worker. in fact, he may be physically uncouth, but he has a heart under his rough exterior. the customers he mingles with have confidence in him. they know he will do what he promises, and finally this man is the one who builds up a good trade and at fifty years of age he has a place of his own, sends salesmen on the road, and his house does a good business because his policy permeates the institution, and the customers have confidence in the house because he is at the head of it, and they are familiar with his methods and practice. some buyers seem to think that it is necessary for them to give the impression to the seller that they are buying at lower prices than the seller quotes. the wonder worker tries to make each customer believe that he is buying at the lowest price. the common sense salesman does not resort to such tactics. the average buyer does not concern himself so much about being able to buy cheaper as he does to feel sure that his competitor does not get better treatment than he does. in the matter of selling there is no one thing that ultimately proves so successful as the one price plan. by that we mean the same price to all who purchase the same quantity or the same amount in a given time. the more elastic and variable your prices, the more ingenuity required to keep these cut prices from getting into the hands of your customers. this matter of cutting prices causes no end of worry. in proportion as you indulge in cutting prices, so in proportion you will receive an increased number of cut price offers. let it be known that your prices are subject to reduction at the hands of a smooth buyer, and the news will travel fast. let it be known that you don't cut prices, and that news will gain currency in the trade, and you will not have cut prices offered you. there is something in the matter of selling beyond dollars and cents, and that is dollars and sense. remember this, when you sell goods you are also selling reputation. if your goods are bad your reputation will be bad too. you can't have a good reputation and sell bad goods and make a permanent success. remember, every sale you make is an advertisement. remember, you can take advantage of the buyer once or twice, but if you want to hold his trade you must be fair with him. smooth tactics that bring in present money react and lose trade for you later on. vacations every man owes it to himself and to his family to take a vacation each year. vacate means to get out or away from, and if you take your so called vacation by a trip to another city and spend your time in the whirl of industry, you are not helping yourself, you are not taking a vacation. neither are you resting your mind and body if you go to a swell summer resort where white duck trousers in the day and full dress in the evening is the rule. the real vacation you get is when you take yourself away from the business marts of trade, and go to a place where you can get your feet on good old mother earth. go where fences are unknown, where there are no "keep off the grass" signs, climb the hills, walk through the forests, fill your lungs with good ozone, say to yourself "all these beautiful things are mine." nature has arranged it so that the poorest man in the world can get the most priceless things as easily as the multi-millionaire. the four most precious things in the world are good air, good food, good water and good health. money cannot buy any one of these things. the man with millions cannot get any better air, or more nourishing food, or purer water, or better health than can the poor man. the man who goes to the big woods for his vacation, who lives out of doors, who gets near to nature, is putting by a reserve in his constitution and brain that he will draw upon for the remainder of the year. such vacations will clear the cobwebs from your brain. it will give you ability to do greater things, and make you see the beautiful side of life. a man should not depend wholly on his two or three weeks in the woods, however. he should take a little vacation every day. he should arrange to get some benefit for his brain and body in each twenty-four hours. he should take a few moments each day and devote it to mental and physical relaxation. and, above all, he can get a good vacation every twenty-four hours if he sleeps properly. our good friend grizzly pete, of frozen dog, understands the real vacation when he says. mighty pleasin' sport, you bet, sittin' on a rock; beats a store or office an' workin' by a clock. clears away the cobwebs from your weary brain; gives you inspiration; makes you a man again. there ain't no medicine i know for the appetite like a summer mornin', waitin' fer a bite. lazy summer days are here--ain't you kind o' wishin' that you had your old clothes on, an' was settin here a-fishin'? health there is no misfortune, no real hard luck except sickness and poor health. if you find your health is becoming impaired, change your methods and vocation. change before it is too late. a stitch in time saves nine times nine in matters of health. get plenty of exercise, good air, good water, sleep with your windows open in winter as well as summer, walk over two miles every day. avoid worry. do good deeds. help others. eliminate evil thoughts and deterrent influences. if your health is impaired, forsake dollars if necessary and make health your first concern. dollars are worth having, but sense is infinitely better to be possessed of. if your health will not permit you to get dollars and cents, then make it your object to get health and sense. rockefeller would give his millions if he could have the health of nearly any of the thousand of employes who work for him. a good stomach is rather to be chosen than great riches. patience supposin' fish don't bite at first, what are you goin' to do? throw down your pole, chuck out your bait, an' say your fishin's through? you bet you ain't; you're goin' to fish, an' fish, an' fish, an' wait until you've ketched a basketful or used up all your bait. suppose success don't come at first, what are you goin' to do? throw up the sponge and kick yourself? an' growl, an' fret, an' stew? you bet you ain't; you're goin' to fish, an' bait, an' bait agin, until success will bite your hook, for grit is sure to win. patient effort and hard work each day, properly directed, will surely bring success. failure comes to those who grow weary in the struggle, and to those who overwork themselves and overtax their abilities. such persons hope that by large sacrifices of sleep and happiness, and by extra application and hard work, they will build for themselves fortune, that they may be happy at some future time. they make a great mistake in this respect. divide your energies so that each individual day is successful, no matter how much the success may be. it is the men who are doing little things today who will be picked out to do great things tomorrow. and while you are making a little success each day, be sure that your heart sings while your hands work. men who can do things are discovered. they need not push themselves to the front. good men are scarce, and the great successful business men of today are the ones who know how to do the work that they are hiring employes to do. talent in this direction will surely attract the attention of your superiors. learn to master the details of your business yourself. use conscientious effort and painstaking effort. make a round-up each night of what you have done during the day. see wherein you have been in error and wherein you could have improved the day's work and you will be better fitted for tomorrow's duties. after closing your day's business, devote a part of the evening to your family and friends, and a part of it to some good book. it is not the clock that strikes the loudest that keeps the best time. the expensive chronometer works steadily along doing its work well and faithfully. it does not attract as much attention as the gilt clock with its sweet chimes, but men who know things are aware that the chronometer has the more real merit. have the chronometer for your ideal and not the fancy clock, for true merit will certainly receive due reward. we should all have some ideal which we hope to attain tomorrow, but let us remember that the way to reach the ideal tomorrow is to make today successful. patience is a virtue few of us are possessed of, but the story of every successful business has written on every page of its history patience and perseverance. do not get discouraged if your rate of progress each day is not as much as you hoped for, but, so long as you are going forward and are patient, you may be sure that you are gaining. hard times hard times follow good times with unerring regularity and certainty; this is in perfect accordance with the rule of compensation. in good times we should prepare ourselves and erect strong guards around our business, so that when hard times come we may find ourselves able to go through the troublous times. if prosperity ran on unchecked, the ordinary, well-established business would soon be a thing of the past, for people would speculate instead of work. when the manufacturer has his bills paid and finds a surplus in the bank, that surplus is likely to be turned into speculation. when everyone speculates values rise, and continue to rise until prices reach fictitious altitudes, and then comes about the cashing in. it so happens that the cashing in is a general movement, and when this happens hard times quickly follow. the successful business man should keep his money where it is get-at-able, and when hard times come and the prices go away down to low water mark, then he should buy. later on prosperity will return, as sure as the sun will rise, and the things bought during the hard times will greatly increase in value. hard times and prosperity rotate several times in a man's business career. hard times are necessary to the general scheme, for with continuous prosperity business would increase to such a momentum that there is no telling what the results would be. in times of prosperity you must make preparations for the hard times that are sure to come. if your pumps are greater than your leaks, your craft won't sink when the storm of adversity and hard times breaks across your ship. sleep no one can do his best work if his mind is wool gathering. if an employe is thinking about the races, he is cheating his boss, for he cannot give him his best service. if the employe is in the habit of being up late nights, he cannot concentrate his mind nor bring out the best there is in him. nothing is so good for the hard worker, nothing will stand him in such good stead, as plenty of sleep. go to bed early. get lots of sleep every night and you will be ready and strong for the fray of the morrow. if you get plenty of sleep you are far ahead of your fellow employe who does not get enough sleep. sleep smooths out the wrinkles, builds up a storage battery in you and gives you confidence in yourself. you hold your head higher, your step is more elastic, your eyes are clearer, your mind works better, and your stomach does its full duty if you have taken plenty of time for sleep, for sleep is the plan of nature to restore the mind and the body. lack of sleep means wilful waste of your energies and a dulling of your abilities. business men pay for ability, keenness, alertness and capacity, and in proportion as you limit these qualifications by lack of sleep, so in proportion will your salary be kept down. grumbling grumbling kills friends. the business man who is ever grumbling and growling about things makes a blue atmosphere about him. people somehow or other seem to prefer a rosy atmosphere to a blue. there is no good in grumbling. it gains nothing. grumbling is an evidence that you have not sized things up correctly. that you are laboring under a delusion; that you are looking at the world through blue glasses, that you are not making proper estimates of other people. grumbling is an advertisement to the world that you are not well balanced. grumbling won't help things a bit. the more you indulge in the habit the more firmly it becomes fixed upon you, and later you will find it almost impossible to shake it off. the grumbler grows to be a pessimist; he says disagreeable things; he makes his friends feel ill at ease. the grumbler gradually loses his acquaintances and even his close friends. if you are starting on the grumbling path, pull yourself together and cut the habit quick and short. grumbling and indigestion go hand in hand. if you have indigestion, square yourself against it, make up your mind you will not indulge yourself and vent your ill feelings in grumbling. if you can start out each day with a resolve not to grumble you will find the proposition not difficult. the first two or three hours of the day is the time when your resistance is called into play. there is no better antidote or cure for the poisonous grumbling disposition than the following, which has been for many years a pet sermonette of the writer: be pleasant in the morning until ten o'clock, the rest of the day will take care of itself. associates "birds of a feather flock together." "a man is known by the company he keeps." "like begets like." "we are creatures of environment." all these truthful sayings have been preserved as proverbs simply because they are simon pure truths. the matter of associates is most important for the business man or employe to consider. the young man who spends his time in gambling, drinking or dissipation cannot do his best work. he can no more hide these practices than the clouds can obscure the sun permanently, for evil, as well as truth, is sure to come out. one of the best attributes a man can possess is character. character gives him credit at the bank, it gives him a standing among men. if the employe ever expects to be a boss he must have character, and he must associate with men of ideas who will be helpful to him. a man will never improve his game of billiards if he always associates and plays with an inferior. he may satisfy himself for the time being that he is a big toad in a little puddle, but if he plays with a poorer player than he is he is bound to retrograde. the only way we can advance is to surround ourselves and associate with uplifting influences and healthful individuals. our eyes should be turned forward and not backward. it will make several seconds difference in the speed of a horse whether he is running against a horse he can beat or running against a horse that can beat him. race horse men have reduced this truth to actual practice. they have what is called a pace maker. when they want a horse to trot fast they mount a boy on a running horse just ahead of the trotter. if a man associates with his inferiors, the association will surely keep him from progressing. if you want to make money, if you want to progress in the business world, go where money is being made and mix with people who are making money. no man is naturally bad. no man gives himself over to criminal acts or hurtful habits solely upon his own instincts. these actions and habits come about through associations. go to the criminal court any day and you will see evidences of the man who is pulled down on account of his associates. mix with your superiors in matters of business and morals and you will unconsciously absorb qualities and ideas that will push you to the front. hitch your wagon to a star. aim high. pick out ideals in business, and eliminate from your path all deterrent influences. there is no hold-back like harmful associations. you will be judged by the company you keep. old dog tray was really a good dog, but he suffered because of his propensity to associate with bad dogs. fixed charges fixed charges are sums you have to pay out regularly, week after week, or year after year. when you buy materials and supplies, when you lease property or hire employes, or pay interest on borrowed money all such things are fixed charges, and it calls for the best there is in a man to keep these fixed charges down as low as possible. when you buy a single item, such as a desk or a chair or a waste basket, do not lose a lot of valuable time trying to save too much on those articles. when you go to new york once a year, do not stay at a second class hotel for the several days you are in new york, when by the expenditure of fifty cents a day more you could stop at a good hotel. it is false economy to spend five dollars' worth of time to save fifty cents. when you are buying single articles that are not fixed charges you have a little more leeway in the matter of price than when you are buying things that come under the head of fixed charges. in the matter of fixed charges the penny you save on the unit assumes vast proportions in the many multiples. some men will deny themselves a respectable desk because they can buy a cheaper one for ten dollars less, and this same person will lose a thousand dollars through laxity in buying things that come under the head of fixed charges. if you buy one lead pencil never mind whether the price is five or ten cents, but if you buy great gross lots every few weeks you can afford to be very circumspect and painstaking in the matter of price. if you are buying a shirt, fifty cents one way or the other does not make much difference, but if you are in the furnishing goods business and buying thousands of shirts at a time, twenty-five cents a dozen means quite a lot. the matter of stationery and printing comes under the head of fixed charges. if you are buying letter paper for your personal use and you require but three or four hundred sheets in the course of a year, don't bother very much about the price per quire. the stationery you use in your business, which you buy in large quantities, you should be careful of. plain, respectable, good quality letter paper is the kind used by successful concerns. the fancy-colored, freakish paper is nearly always used by the four-flusher in business. he is trying to put on a good front. he uses hand made paper and hand made envelopes. all the get-rich-quick people use fancy, high-priced stationery. the successful house uses a good quality of linen or bond paper, and a medium grade, regular stock size envelope. envelopes are thrown away; letters are saved. that is why an envelope does not require to be as good quality as the letter. it is the letter and what you put on the letter that cuts the ice. fixed charges usually hide a lot of little leaks. stop them. many little leaks make a big aggregate in the course of a year, and there is no place where these leaks start as easily as in the matter of fixed charges. cigarets we cannot call to mind a single instance where the habitual cigaret smoker got to the top of the ladder and held his position. we see heads of large establishments smoke cigarets, but the habit was acquired after the position was attained. the cigaret smoker suffers from lapses of memory, his nerves are shattered, his judgment is not good, he forgets things and is irritable. he cannot hope to compete with the clear-brained individual who does not smoke cigarets. it is not the cigaret itself that does the harm, it is the smoke inhaled into the delicate lung tissue. this smoke covers the lungs with yellow nicotine, carbon and poisonous gases. some men smoke pipes because they wish to escape the criticism to which the cigaret smoker is subject. the pipe smoker who inhales does himself more injury than the cigaret smoker who inhales, because the pipe smoker takes in more smoke. go to the medical college dissecting room and see the lungs of a man who inhaled smoke, and you will quit the habit if you have been guilty. don't burn your lungs with cigaret smoke, or pipe smoke either. the fight to get to the front is hard enough anyway, and if you want to win, do not poison your blood with tobacco smoke. return good for evil one of the first laws was "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," but as time went on and man developed mentally his animal instincts were subordinated and the law was changed, and the new law was this: "return good for evil." nearly every man who has an injury done him tries to repay the injury. he must either repay it with good or with evil. if he repays it with evil he does not get satisfaction. if he repays it with good he gets happiness. it is certain that payment of evil with good can satisfy a man who is looking for revenge, while it has always been a question whether there is any satisfaction in paying evil with evil. if a man does you a mean turn he is expecting you will repay him in like manner. he guards himself against this. he is ready for your revenge, but if you repay him with good you attack him in a weak spot and make him feel like thirty cents, and this is all the revenge you can ask for. it is all right to get square with a man who does you a wrong, and the best way to get square is by doing him a good turn. you should keep mental ledger accounts with all of your friends and all your enemies. when a person does you an injury, debit him until you have a chance to credit his account with some good turn; when you credit his account be sure you overpay what you are owing him, so you will have a balance coming to your credit. we have been taught to return good for evil, but we have heard the saying so many times that few of us pay any attention to it. it's worth while testing, this rule of returning good for evil. the next time someone harms you, repay him by doing him a kindness, and see if you don't feel happier, and at the same time get all the satisfaction you are looking for. it matters not whether the person to whom you have done a kindness appreciates it; you have been benefited and received happiness by your own act, for virtue is its own reward. the man who returns good for evil, has the satisfaction of the man who has on clean underwear, the world may not know it but he does, and that is all that is necessary. learn to play nature has given us many positives and negatives. it has given us the ability to work hard, and it has given us the ability to play hard. work while you work and play while you play. the man who is successful is the man who works hard during business hours, and then goes home and leaves his office behind him and takes up play. a man should devote a part of each day to recreation, to outdoor exercise, to frivolity and to frollicking with his children at home. if he does not care to play, worry will take the place of play. worry and hard work together will kill a man. work and play will make him live. no two things can occupy the same space at the same time. these brains of ours are always busy, and we should be careful what we give the brain to act upon. if we work hard all day, the tendency is that in the evening the brain revolves the things that have been going through it during the day. a review of these thoughts produces worry, especially if our occupation has been a strenuous one and if things have not been to our liking. when we devote ourselves to play, then worry and brain rack will be absent all the time we are playing. play was made to rest the brain. your sleep will be better if you have indulged in recreation, and your mind will be clearer the next morning. good fellowship call a man a fellow and he will resent it, call him a good fellow and he feels complimented. the good fellow is ever found where pleasures abound. he shines at the dinner. his knowledge of mixed drinks is a revelation. the good fellow spends his time where the glasses clink, where the horses run, and where the revelers congregate. his earnings go for dinners, bottles and shows, and while these occupy his mind he imagines he is having a good time, that his actions evidence "good fellowship." go to the clubs and you will see the "good fellow." he is spoken of by all the other "good fellows" as a "good fellow." and they are all good fellows together. some day the good fellow is taken sick and dies. he has not a cent to his name, and the other good fellows take up a collection to bury him. the only persons at the funeral are the other good fellows, and the only requiem he receives is "well, he was a good fellow." the good fellow at fifty is working for the good business man. the good fellow is like the butterfly, and sips life's pleasures, and shows off his fancy colors, living for today only. the successful man is like the ant, he works and puts something away each day, where he can get at it in the future. when winter comes with its chilling blasts, the butterfly has nothing in reserve and it starves to death, while the ant keeps himself alive on the product of his own labor. some day the good fellow finds himself in need. he goes to other good fellows, but they can't help him because they are in the same boat themselves. then our good fellow grows pessimistic, and finds out too late that it does not pay to be a good fellow. good fellows don't get good jobs very often. when they do get them they don't hold them very long. it is a mighty poor recommendation to be referred to as a good fellow. people seem to think that the words "good fellow" cover a multitude of sins, and when a man has done wrong, or makes a mistake, or uses bad judgment, the other good fellows try to excuse his faults by saying--"well, he is a good fellow, anyhow." the good fellow bursts upon us with his halo about him. as time passes the halo dims and the good fellow peters out. the good fellow who is so popular at the club today is found tomorrow trying to eke out an existence selling books and life insurance to other good fellows. there is nothing in good fellowship that can be negotiated at the bank. the credit man of the wholesale house does not give credit on good fellowship. hard work it is a mistaken idea that hard work kills men. hard work never killed a man. it is the improper care of oneself when he is not working that does the damage. the more a man does with his brain the less his hands will have to do. the better a man's reasoning and common sense are, the more successful he will be. it requires hard work these days to keep up in the race. you cannot make a success unless you work hard. hard work will be much easier if you keep worry out of it. hard work brings success, but to do hard work, the machinery must be in good order. you must keep your constitution up, you must have plenty of sleep and you must learn to eat and breathe properly. no story of success has ever been truly written that did not depict hard work in every line. success comes by inches, not by leaps or bounds. success is the pushing forward each day by hard work. burn the candle at one end only and you replace each day what you have burned, by rest, sleep and recreation. by burning the candle at one end only and replacing it fully each day, your candle will not burn out. kindness "a little word in kindness spoken, a motion or a tear, has often healed the heart that's broken and made a friend sincere." there's nothing in business that pays so well as kindness. a man may spend his money, and in proportion as he spends it he reduces his principal. with kindness the matter is different, for in proportion as you spend kindness your principal increases. lincoln said "you can catch more flies with a drop of honey than with a gallon of vinegar." kindness is beautiful. it brings round you many persons who are ready to say kind words to you. this subtle, potent influence of having lots of friends to help you by their actions and showing their hearts is a great blessing. it is surprising that people know so little of the value of kindness. the word "gentleman" is really a compound word, meaning gentle-man, and these words together in their simplicity are the true definition of the word gentleman. kindness means gentleness. no man is a gentleman who is not kind. people are glad to recognize goodness and kindness in an individual. no one can act the part if he is not sincere. we must cultivate kindness, if there is little of it in our makeup. we must take an inventory of our qualities, and if the weeds of mean impulses are crowding out the delicate flowers of kindness, we should pull out those weeds and give the flowers a chance to grow. lincoln was a kind man, kindness was his chief delight, and his examples of kindness have been of untold benefit to millions of people. you remember he said, "when they lay me away let it be said of me that as i traveled along life's road i have always endeavored to pull up a thistle and plant a rose in its stead." life at best is short, and the only things we really get out of life are happiness, health and love. money cannot buy these things. the trouble with many business men is that they imagine good examples and kindness have no place in business. they think the time to be kind is after they have attained success financially. they think the time to show kindness is outside of business hours. the real way to be happy is to do the thing now, live each day for itself. get kindness in each day. the man who is grave, austere, the man who tries to skin the other fellow, who devotes all his energies to money-making alone, finds as the years go by and he has attained his goal, but that he does not know how to enjoy himself. there are three periods in a man's life--the future, the now and the past. when we attain old age our life is largely made up of reminiscences, or looking back over the past. if our past life has been one of struggle, worry and getting the best of the other fellow, then there is little happiness in looking back over such a life. the true philosopher does the thing now, he lives each day. he puts kindness into his action, and when he grows old, he can look back through a life that was pleasant as he lived it, and pleasanter now in living it over again. one of the greek philosophers expresses the following beautiful thought: "if there is any good deed i can do, or kindness i can show, let me do it now. let me not defer or neglect it, for i shall not pass this way again." the trouble is that some of us keep our kindnesses, or rather the expression of it, until it is too late. we should remember--"do not keep the alabaster box of your love and tenderness sealed up until your friends are dead. fill their lives with sweetness, speak approvingly cheerful words while their ears can hear them; the kind things you mean to say when they are gone say before they go. the flowers you mean to send for their coffins send to brighten and sweeten their homes before they leave them. if my friends have alabaster boxes laid away full of fragrant perfumes of sympathy and affection which they intend to lay over my dead body, i would rather they would bring them out in my weary and troubled hours, and open them, that i may be refreshed and cheered by them while i need them. i would rather have a plain coffin without a flower and a funeral without an eulogy, than a life without the sweetness of love and sympathy. let us learn to anoint our friends beforehand for their burial. post-mortem kindness does not cheer the troubled spirit. flowers on the coffin cast no fragrance backward over life's weary way." the salesman selling goods or soliciting requires careful study. the salesman who makes the greatest success in the long run is the man who has practiced truth and established himself in the confidence of his customers. the whirlwind makes a good showing on the start, but, by the law of compensation, what a man gains in speed he loses in power. some customers are slow to open up and extend their confidence to a salesman. others make up their minds quickly and express their preferences. a great deal of preliminary work can be avoided if the salesman is tactful on the start. first impressions are lasting, and a salesman should study carefully his first appearance. he should be neatly but not flashily dressed. he should be a gentleman above all things. the gentleman dresses so that later we can not accurately describe the clothes he wore. it is the flashily dressed salesman we can describe later on, for his clothes are so out of the ordinary that they are remarkable in this respect. the flashily dressed salesman is remembered by his clothes rather than by his personality. the solicitor should never smoke in the presence of the customer on first acquaintance. the matter of smoking in a customer's presence has prejudiced many a man against a salesman who has this practice. business men have prejudices, and to some smoking is highly obnoxious. under no circumstances smoke in a customer's presence unless the customer is smoking, or until at least you are well acquainted with him, and have received his permission to smoke. times without number the writer has left his half-finished cigar in the hall-way before entering the customer's presence. story telling is like a two-edged sword; sometimes it helps and sometimes it is a distinct disadvantage to tell stories. you must know when to tell stories, and, above all, do not tell stories to your customer that he could not repeat in his home. above all things, the salesman must know his man. if the customer gives evidence that he is fond of a story, then remember a good story and tell it to him. no salesman ever made a distinct hit by telling vulgar stories. while a customer may laugh, he forms an opinion of you that is not complimentary, and, if you are always telling stories that you would not repeat where women were present, the customer forms a very low estimate of your character. the facts are the world is full of good stories, and good stories help your case, while vulgar stories hurt it. drinking is another method used by many salesmen to gain favor with a customer, and what we have said about vulgar stories may be applied to the matter of drinking. years ago it was a general practice to take the customer out and get him half seas over before trying to sell him. the customers who are most susceptible to influence through whiskey are the ones who are most likely later on to cause you trouble, either through failure in business or through their preference for some other individual who can outdo you in the matter of drinking. you must get your customer by the heart and not by the stomach. you must make your customer believe in you. in these days the business man likes to deal with a salesman who is business from the start. he only buys goods because he expects to make money on them, and the sooner the transaction is over, the sooner he can turn his attention to other matters. the best advertising solicitors and best salesmen are those who get business on business grounds and through their knowledge of their business, rather than through their ability to tell stories, order dinners and drink liquor. the good salesman studies the other side of the question. he acquaints himself with the method used by the customer in disposing of his goods. he does not talk his own side of the case all the time. he works with the customer, tries to give him good advice and shows an interest in the customer's business. such a salesman gets close to the customer, and retains his patronage long after the good fellow has passed away. be wise, be patient, and above all things, acquaint yourself thoroughly with the goods you are selling. know more about them than your customer does. live up to your obligations. keep your appointments. study your customers' welfare. help them when opportunity offers. the life insurance solicitor who gets the most turn-downs is the one who writes the most policies, because the fact he gets so many turn-downs is owing to the fact that he has seen so many people. hard work, cheerfulness, honesty, patience, sobriety and knowledge of good goods will make a man a successful salesman. honesty under this caption we are expected to say "honesty is the best policy." this expression is as old as the hills, and if it were not good it would not have obtained so long, for honesty certainly is the best policy. many a man in business practices absolute honesty and integrity, because honesty is the simplest and best method he knows of for doing business. no man can succeed permanently, who is dishonest in his practices. the successful business man is the one who practices honesty in all actions and dealings during his business experience. honesty begets honesty. the man who is honest in his dealings with his fellowman has a subsidy which money cannot buy. he gets honest treatment at the hands of others. the merchant who cuts a bolt of silk in the middle and puts different prices on each piece, may figure he is making money by his action, but retribution is sure to follow. honesty is a slow road to wealth, but, in accordance with the law of compensation, in proportion as the business built up on honesty is slow, so in proportion will it last longer. honesty is the best advertisement a man can have in his business. success if after the employe strikes a balance each day, he finds that he is moving forward, then he is on the road to success. and so it is with the business man, only the proportions are greater. one cent put at four per cent. interest per annum nineteen hundred years ago, with interest added to the principal every twenty-five years, would represent today more money than there is in the world. it would have taken twenty-five years before the original investment of one cent was doubled. if a man had started that plan his grandchildren would have said the scheme was no good because it was too slow. the boy goes to school regularly and shows little advance in his mentality if you measure from day to day, but the boy is gaining every day. he is going ahead slowly but certainly. the gambler and the foolish man like success to come quickly and with great strides. it is because there are many foolish men and gamblers that the get-rich-quick fake thrives. the man who gets rich suddenly usually indulges in such sports as lighting cigars with ten dollar bills, and his wind-up is in the pauper's grave. no man knows the true value of money unless he has worked for it. the man who has earned his dollars through the penny route knows the value of the penny, and he gets mighty good value when he spends a dollar. the man who walks steadily in one direction does not appear to be making much progress. the ship on the ocean seems to be standing still. when night comes the man who has been walking steadily has disappeared, and the ship that seemed to be standing still has vanished beyond the horizon. the law of compensation says, the more haste the less speed, and so in the matter of success, we must not feel discouraged because the speed at which we are traveling forward does not seem noticeable when compared with the rapid pace of some of our friends. be not impatient. learn to wait. be a good stayer. do not let the success of the get-rich-quick creature deter you from your resolve to move forward slowly. you will get there in the long run. and when your hair is silvered and cares rest easily upon your shoulders, the long road you have traveled will be a source of infinite satisfaction to you. your retrospection will be pleasant, and the very things that were hard in your youth, are sources of satisfaction to you in your old age. do not use the yard measure in counting your progress, but use the inch rule that has fine fractions on it. thinking "i did not think" is an excuse offered by many. thinking is the thing in business. the trunk railroad, the trans-atlantic cable, the steam engine, the electric light, the wireless telegraph, the very republic in which we are living, came about through thinking. every man should take from five to fifty minutes each day to divorce his mind from the strenuous activity surrounding him, and devote that time to thought, and good will come out of it. the brain is like a muscle, it must be exercised or it becomes flabby. cultivate concentration of thought; study your sphere of usefulness; cut out the weeds that grow in your brain; get out of the mental rut you are in; stop drifting; keep your brain healthily active. men are paid either for what they think or for what their muscles do. man's muscles have a limit; he can move just so much matter by physical force. but his capacity from a mental standpoint is unlimited. the world offers golden prizes to the man who thinks. therefore we should cultivate our brains and make them expand. the brain is like a plant. if you nourish and cultivate it and care for it, it will grow too. excitement, striving for pleasures, indulging in reading light, frothy literature, excessive daily newspaper reading are all weeds and thought killers. don't act on impulses. the get-rich-quick man or the fake mine promoter says, "buy today, the price goes up tomorrow." these fakirs don't want you to think. thinking is an enemy to their persuasive arguments. if you think, and think rightly, the fakir does not get you. when you get a nasty letter don't answer it right away. think it over. think carefully. if your thoughts of revenge are so strong that you cannot calm yourself down, then write a letter and express yourself in the fullest degree. leave the letter on your desk. do not look at it for three hours. then when you look at it you will instantly determine to tear it up, because in the meantime you have been thinking. thoughts expressed on paper have a different sound than if they are uttered verbally, therefore you should think carefully when you write. cultivate poise, calmness, and practice careful thought before you speak or write. in proportion as you master difficult problems through thought, your brain will be ready for greater conquests. here are some things to think about during these times when business is so good. these prosperous times are dangerous times. in times of prosperity we build up false idols, and raise our hopes and ambitions beyond the safety point. prosperity makes most of us careless. we don't give our business the careful consideration we should. we run to extremes during prosperous times. we should make the most of prosperity while it is here. we should enjoy it to the fullest, but we should remember that for every high tide there is a low ebb. prosperity should enable us to put away a reserve for the hard times. we should be careful that prosperity does not turn our heads or cause us to lose our vigilance. home life after all we say and do, the real pleasure of this world comes from the home. the gilded palaces we see in our travels abroad are beautiful to look upon presently, but later on they serve their purpose to make a contrast with the sweet simplicity of home. when you go home, cut business out, and let play and sociability and love occupy your time. a married man should be in partnership with his wife. the man being fitted with sturdier physique, with strong ability to combat, should take up the heavy burden of business, for those are the things he can do the best. the wife should take up the home part of the duties of the firm, and when evening falls each member of the firm should try to lessen or take away the cares to which the other has been subject during the day. the best place in the world is the home, and in proportion as home life is unsatisfactory or uncongenial, so in proportion are the clubs filled with dissatisfied and unhappy men. if you want to hear pessimistic talks on home life, talk with those derelicts who spend most of their time at the clubs. learn to make much of little things. learn that smiles and good humor in the home bring happiness, and iron out the frowns and check the mean impulses arising within us. be pleasant every morning until ten o'clock, and the rest of the day will take care of itself. start out in the morning right and happiness will be home at night. there is nothing in your old age that will be such a comfort to you as retrospection, or looking back over a long life of happiness in the home. the happy little incidents which today seem trivial will be remembered in the future, and a thousand and one occurrences which are happening in the home are being put away in the store-house of memory, later to be called upon and enjoyed again. in the evening of life when you and your silver-haired partner sit before the fire place, when you have retired from active participation in your respective branches of the business, which is bread winning on the part of the man and bread making on the part of the woman, then you will have a happiness and satisfaction which all the gold in the world could not buy. the pleasures of the old who have had happy homes during their lives are the greatest pleasures in the world. the sunset of your life will not be beautiful unless your home life was pleasant during your day of work. optimism the man who is an optimist may be laboring under a delusion, but certain it is that he is happy while under the delusion. every man should have ideals. he should see the beauty and good in things. he may not accomplish his ideals, but the anticipation and working out of them is a mighty pleasant vocation. the pessimist is always unhappy, and when no definite thing is before him to worry about, the very fact that there is nothing to worry about makes him unhappy. the pessimist says "business is not half as good as it would be if it was twice as good as it is." the optimist says "business is twice as good as it would be if it was only half as good as it is." grizzly pete, of frozen dog, idaho, is an optimist, and webb grubb, of the same town, is a pessimist. a short time ago they had a big rain storm in frozen dog. webb grubb kicked about the rain. grizzly pete, all wreathed in smiles, said "rain is a mighty good thing to lay the dust." a few days later the sun came out oppressively warm. webb grubb kicked about the warm weather. grizzly pete, again all smiles, said "hot weather and sunshine are mighty good things to dry the mud." the pessimist goes about with a dark lantern peering into out-of-the-way places, ever looking for meanness and things to find fault about. the optimist goes about in the bright sunlight looking for the beautiful things, and sees more things by the aid of the great sunshine than the pessimist can find with his little dark lantern. the optimist rises in the morning with gladness in his heart, sunshine in his face and smiles upon his lips. the mere privilege of living and enjoying nature is a priceless satisfaction to him. he gets good out of life every moment he lives. he is a man to be envied, if envy is ever allowable. the pessimist warps his mind and his physique, and his influence on others is decidedly bad. the optimist raises the average of the world by his presence, the pessimist lowers the average. the optimist is in the majority, however, and the world is growing better. learn to see beauty in the small things. study nature. watch the processes of plant life and animal life. surround yourself with helpful influences; books, music, friends. there is no investment a man can make that yields such unbounded returns as optimism. optimism cannot be bought with money. it is as free as the air we breathe. that is why poor people generally are optimists. memory the man whose memory allows him to play four games of chess blindfolded is good for nothing else. book-keepers who can name every folio page and every customer's balance are good for little else. there is nothing in mental gymnastics from the dollar standpoint. the good lawyer or the good business man does not rely on his memory, but rather his ability to find out things and get at results. if you remember only the customers who are slow pay or shaky, it will be a lot easier than to remember the names of all the customers who pay promptly. if your wife wants you to get something down town tomorrow, write her request on a little piece of paper, roll it up in a ball, put it in your pocket with your loose change. forget the incident, let the paper do the memory act. next day when you reach in your pocket for change you will find the little ball with the reminder on it. if there is something you want to attend to at home, drop yourself a postal card. carry a little pad of paper in your pocket. write down the little things you are to do. don't store your mind with these temporary matters. let the tab remember for you. let your mind be like a sieve, and have the meshes coarse enough to keep in the big things and let the little things go through. have your business figures written down, your comparative sales, increases or losses. study the written figures. have system. do things methodically. don't trust to your memory. if the thing you see or hear is worth keeping, write it down on the little tab. the orator who commits his speech to memory is in a sorry plight if he forgets a sentence. if you are to speak at a dinner, lay out your plan, divide your topic into several parts. jot down the catch lines, and just before you speak look over the ticket. charge your brain with the points or ideas and build the words around them. don't remember things with verbatim correctness. remember the skeleton thought, the idea. when you quote a price or figure, jot it down. confirm the verbal statement by a written memorandum. memory is a bad servant sometimes. you remember a thing one way and the other fellow remembers it another way. you are both honest, but one of you is wrong. if you had made a memorandum in duplicate or jotted down the figures, what trouble it would have saved you. where dollars are concerned it is good sense to trust to a written memo., and not to any mental memo. no use to cram your brain with transient things, when lead pencils and paper are so cheap and so easily obtainable. the employe who trusts to his memory hurts the business, and after he quits a lot of misunderstandings will come up. insist on your employes making memorandums of things and prices, for when the employe goes he takes his memory with him. if he has a memorandum you know the facts. worry nothing will prevent effective work like worry. if you are given to introspection and worry, and allow these things to go unchecked, they become habits with you, and while your sleep, in a measure, is an antidote for worry, yet the more worry you have the less soundly you will sleep, and consequently the less effective sleep will be in correcting the injury caused by worry. sunshine and darkness cannot be present at the same time, for in nature one of the first rules we find is that no two objects can occupy the same place at the same time. no matter how much one is given to the worry habit, he experiences reflex moments when he does not worry. some of our pessimistic friends who are given to the worry habit say it is impossible for them not to worry. you are thinking of what you are reading, and if your mind is interested in it you are not worrying while you are reading these articles, and this shows that if you are interested in reading there is little chance for worry to get in; for your mind is occupied. men have tried all sorts of things to escape worry. some of them frequent places where gaiety and mirth abound, so that they are for the time being banishing worry, but in proportion as these things keep one from worrying, the reaction is stronger when it does come, and the individual who tries to escape worry by going the pace and occupying his time with light things, suffers more keenly from worry when it does come. some men turn to drink to kill worry. many a man imagines while he is drunk and his brain is clogged with alcohol that he is the happiest man in the world, and some of them go to the extent of imagining their finances are in a flourishing condition. the alcohol fills the brain with fancy pictures, and for the time being the mind forgets to worry. when the alcohol wears away the brain takes up the worry again in an increased degree. to kill worry by the active process is like trying to cure rheumatism by external application. the only thing you do is to stop the pain temporarily. the best way to cure rheumatism is to go at it through the blood. eradicate the uric acid from the system, and then the rheumatism will disappear. the best way to cure worry is not by local applications, but by getting at the root of things. eliminate as far as possible the things which cause worry. remember that as long as you live there will come things across your path that are not to your liking. you should be philosophical, and make the best of things that are about you. look at the bright side rather than the dark. there are only two things in the world to worry about. first--the things we can control or change; second, the things over which we have no control. now, it is manifestly useless to worry over the first kind; for we can correct the thing and there will be nothing to worry about. it is manifestly useless to worry over the things we cannot control, for, as set down in the second proposition, we cannot change the things. it therefore behooves us to eliminate from our calculations the second kind of worry, for no amount of worry can possibly change that kind. we must therefore confine our attention to the first kind, the kind we can change, and when we have changed the thing there is no cause to worry. nothing helps a man's health so much as contrasts in climate or habits. when the doctor tells you it is necessary to go to california or arizona, or some other distant point, he knows that fifty per cent. of the good you will get by the change is from the water, air, sunshine and surroundings, and the other fifty per cent. of the good you will get is because you have been taken away from the very things that have been causing you worry. if you can't get contrasts by trips to other distant points, you can get the contrasts right where you live. if your mind is occupied in the day with deep thinking and hard business problems, you should occupy your evening with something that will contrast with it. take up some light literature, play with your children, or work at some hobby in which you are interested. the trouble with those who worry most is that they have worked themselves up to such a frenzied state they can't read anything excepting startling newspaper articles and freakish, frothy books. the man with rheumatism cannot cure himself in a day, neither can the man with the worry habit eradicate worry from his make-up in a day or so. the man who worries should make up his mind he is going to read and get interested in the reading. let him set apart ten minutes the first day, and agree that he will devote those ten minutes honestly, intently to the subject before him. the next day he can add a minute or two, and so on until he can read one or two hours at a time. finally, the wrinkles will be ironed out and the horizon will be brightened. as we are, so is the world to us. the most familiar objects change their aspect with every change of the soul. when you worry, everything is distorted, everything appears unnatural, the world looks dark, our friends seem far off. the jokes we hear fall flat. we indulge ourselves in pessimism. when the whole matter is summed up philosophically, there is no bad luck in the world except sickness. all other so-called hard luck is simply temporary. if you lose your money, don't worry about it, make some more. if you lose a friend, don't worry; show him his mistake. if you lose an opportunity, do not worry; be ready for the next one. life is short. the end of life is death. what's the use of worrying. worry is like drink. the more you give it the more it fastens on you. cultivate a cheerful disposition. mix with people who are cheerful. do not allow the garden of your mind to grow up with worry weeds. occupation kills worry. if your mind is filled with uplifting work or brain training it will have little time to worry. promises a business man may be rated as worth a million, but if he breaks his promises regarding payments or fulfillments of contracts, he will find later on those who deal with him will insist upon cash transactions. keeping promises is the basis of credit. let it be said of you that you always keep your promise; that you have never been known to break your word, and you will need little persuasion to get the credit man's o.k. if you purchase for cash right along, some day you can ask for and will receive a small credit, if you promise to make your payments on a certain date. if you keep your promise you can repeat the operation. later on you will be given larger credit, because you have been keeping your promises. you can increase your credit step by step to amazing proportions if your promises are always kept. the business world places much confidence in promises. the note in the bank is a written evidence of the promise. the note says on the face of it "i promise to pay." the government of the united states issues bank notes on the face of which is a promise. when you make promises as regards dates, jot down the promise in your memorandum book. whatever you do, keep that promise. the man who breaks his promise in little things will break them in greater ones. when you make a promise to meet a man it is just the same as promising to pay a man money. in either instance you are in the man's debt, and the obligation is not cancelled until the debt is paid. in other words, until the promise is fulfilled. just so sure as the sun sets, the man who habitually breaks his promises will surely break his business. independence it seems to be the rule rather than the exception that the moment a business man attains success he grows independent. there is no such thing as independence within the full meaning of the word. every creature in the world is dependent more or less. the man who takes delight in his so-called independence and forces it to the front, soon receives knocks. the constant tapping and knocking hurts anyone. boosts beat knocks. the man who has a reputation for being independent never gets boosts. some business men forget the obligations they are under. they forget the help that was extended to them in time gone by. they furnish up a fine mahogany office, with an outer room, and outside of this another room with an information desk. they cultivate coldness and independence. they make it difficult for their friends to see them. they put a lot of red tape around their business, and by these acts they get out of touch with the pulse of the business. they look at things through colored glasses. their judgment gets warped. in proportion as a man cultivates independence and autocratic ideas, just so in proportion is he nearing the brink over which many have fallen to destruction. when an independent man has a fall, his enemies glory and loud are the shouts that arise from them, and if we listen closely we will hear the multitude say: "serves him right." there is nothing like democracy in business. by this it must not be understood that the head of the concern is to see every pedler, or every life insurance agent. but if the business man is accessible, and greets you with a glad hand, and in the pleasant manner turns you over to the proper department head, you go away from the office satisfied, and you give this man a boost instead of a knock. the late p. d. armour was a good example of the point we are making, he did not waste time in social visits during business hours, but anyone who had business with the armour institution could get an interview with mr. armour. it has often been remarked by business men that they would rather have a turn-down from mr. armour than an order from some of the other houses, for mr. armour always made one feel good. no one can be independent. the larger one's business is the more the proprietor is dependent on those around him. it takes many months to build a sky scraper, yet a wrecking company can tear a sky scraper to the ground in a few days, and so it is with a man's reputation. it takes years to get good credit in the commercial world, but if success spoils a man and makes him independent, he has created enemies, and there is no telling where these enemies will get in their work. it is like the worms eating through the bottom of a ship. some day the craft goes down because of the silent attacks made in it, which were not visible from the surface. some day the independent man is surprised to have the bank call him in and insist that he take up his loans. he is astonished; he does not know why this sudden change has happened, but like as not some secret enemy in the bank, or some secret competitor who has a friend in the bank, has gotten in his work, and then this independent man finds out how really dependent he is. the safer a man is from attacks, the safer his business is from the financial standpoint, and the more generous this man should be in his consideration for others. no man can afford to be independent. men who have built up their business slowly are not the ones whose heads are turned and who affect this independent air. the independent man is nearly always the newly rich or the suddenly successful business man, and the moment he sets himself up as independent he is made the target for an army of enemies who are waiting for a chance to injure him. short letters most business men make much ado about nothing in the matter of correspondence. they use a wilderness of words to express themselves. they write at such length that the original meaning runs into so many by-lanes that the meaning is lost. the man who writes long letters usually deals out high sounding phrases and customary paragraphs such as he has picked up through his perusal of others' letters. the average business man seems to glory more in his ability to use euphonious sentences than to talk to the point. letters should be like telegrams, they should be short and to the point, so there will be no misunderstanding on the part of the recipient. there is one business man that we have been in close touch with for over fifteen years. we have heard from him an average of once a week, and in all that time he has never written a letter of over twenty-five lines. our records show there is no customer with whom we had so much business dealings and so little misunderstanding as this one. write short letters. use small words. don't be blunt, but be short. perspiration no matter what one's aspirations may be, success will not come without perspiration. it is well this is so, otherwise success would not be appreciated. that which a man earns by perspiration he appreciates and knows how to enjoy. if success were something that could be drawn by chance, like a prize, success would not be worth anything. the measure of any valuable thing, or condition, or relationship is the amount of work, energy, trouble and sacrifice that has been expended to obtain it. none is to be more pitied than the rich idle-born, who have every comfort around them. they do not know that perspiration must be added to aspiration before they get success. friends how little the average business man understands this word "friends." in everyday conversation we hear one man say to another "mr. blank is a friend of mine." as a matter of fact the word acquaintance could be substituted in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred where the word friend is used. real friends are few and far between. a real friend is never determined until a test has been made, and this test is usually troublous times, adversity or the loss of a loved one. when afflictions come to our families, or reverses come to our business, when the dark clouds hang over us, when stormy seas are about to swamp us, when we need help, then is the time we find who are our true friends. when such calls for friendship arrive it is surprising to see how we have been mistaken in individuals. those upon whom we counted most shrug their shoulders, draw their skirts about them and give us good advice, while those whom we had never counted as friends come to the front and lend helping hands. the word friend has been greatly abused. around places of gaiety, where drinks and good fellowship abound, we frequently hear the word friend, but in the time of trouble those who pose as friends will not help us, and the few who would help us cannot because they have squandered their substance and have not the ability to help us. a friend in need is a friend indeed. there is no relationship more sacred than friendship. friendship carries with it love. the true friend is not one made in a hurry. there is no friend like the old one with whom you went birdnesting in your youth, the friend that has plodded along life's road with you shoulder to shoulder. when you have a friend who has proven himself such, never let up so long as you live in your evidences of gratitude for the kindness he has shown you. repay him with interest for his good offices, and let your actions towards him ever be a source of happiness and pleasure to him. nothing is so much appreciated between friends as gratitude, and nothing will kill friendship like ingratitude. genuine friendship is such a rare jewel that when you have a positive demonstration of it, let it be your great concern that you will do nothing to mar this friendship, for broken friendship is a source of grief to both friends so long as they live. employes the success of any business depends upon the hearty cooperation of the employes. we have often heard that a corporation has no soul. a corporation probably has no soul but most of us forget that the officers of the corporation have souls and hearts, and in proportion as the individual at the head of a corporation or private enterprise treats his employes just so he will be repaid. we are paid back what we pay out. if we are harsh and mean to others, ever suspicious, ever looking for evil motives, those who work for us will be suspicious of us and look for evil motives behind our every act. the employer who shows consideration, cultivates respect and sets a good example will find it pays from a monetary standpoint, as well as in the satisfaction he has in knowing that he is doing the right thing. lincoln said "a house divided against itself must fall." if the employes of an institution spend their time in wrangling and quarreling, it means a divided house, and the house will certainly suffer. set a good example to your employes. take them into your confidence. recognize ability. advance worthy ones, and you will find everyone from the office boy to the officer pulling on the rope in the same direction, and you will get full measure of ability from everyone who works for you. it is impossible to suddenly get a perfect working force. a good organization comes through the process of evolution and elimination. whenever an employe does all he is hired to do and a little more, that employe is in a position to occupy a place of greater responsibility. if an employe is a sluggard or a four-flusher, he may be sure these things will be found out and he cannot hope for advancement. employes should remember that the most successful institution is the one whose managers are developed from the rank and file. the best houses do not hire high class help from other concerns. the most successful men are those who started in at the bottom of the ladder, and by perseverance and pluck and aptitude they climbed the ladder until they reached the top. employes should remember that the most difficult problem the employer has to solve is that of good employes. a small want ad. in the metropolitan daily will bring an army of cheap help. the market is full of cheap help, but good employes that are worth over $ , a year are very scarce. the high priced employes are generally the best money makers of the institution, for they are selling their brains rather than their hands. the hands are limited, the brains are not. employes, there are golden opportunities before you. disregard the clock. bend your energies toward doing your work well. the advancement will be sure to follow. the trouble with many employes is that their minds are filled with outside matters of a frivolous nature. in every large city there are thousands of dude employes, the kind who wear high collars, the kind who spend all their salary for clothes. the dude employe stands in his own light. he wears a higher priced tie than the boss; he is immaculately neat; he looks like a fashion plate, but at the same time his tailor bill is not paid, he is owing money right and left. he spends his evenings in the cafes, and at odd moments during the day he dodges out to look over the racing form and smoke a cigaret. this dude employe sits up late at night. he spends his salary, and more too, in the gay life. he is tired next morning when he comes down. the dude employe who wears a high collar is not the one that knuckles down to hard work. perspiration and high collars do not go well together. the dude employe does not like perspiration, so he sees to it that he does not exert himself enough to perspire. employes should remember that very truthful axiom: "the employe who never does more than he is paid for is never paid for more than he does." the employe should remember that the boss takes large chances in hiring help, for there is not one employe out of ten that is a good investment. the employes should remember that it is necessary for the boss to make a good margin of profit on each employe, else he could not maintain his business. every employe who studies how much he can do is a help to an employer. every employe who sees how little he can do is a hold-back to the institution. employes should remember that prosperity goes in cycles, that it is but three generations from shirt sleeve to shirt sleeve. over ninety per cent. of the bosses today started in and worked their way up from the ground. the young man who inherits a partnership in his father's business really has a handicap on him, and is not as likely to succeed as an employe who starts in at the bottom of the ladder. employes should remember that responsibilities only come to those whose shoulders are broad enough to bear them, and when additional responsibility comes to an employe that employe should look upon the responsibility as a distinct advantage to him, for it gives him an opportunity to show the stuff he is made of. laxity when young men start in business their thoughts are all prospective. they look forward to the time when they will attain success. they work hard. they put enthusiasm and long hours into their business. as years pass they attain success and cash in this world's goods. they buy beautiful homes and surround themselves with luxury. they indulge in high living. they have country places. they take things easy. they sit back in their chairs and imagine their business will go on forever because they are so well established. the hard worker is entitled to slacken up a little as success comes to him, but the moment his energies commence to wane, he should see to it that he gets the right sort of young material in the institution to keep up the enthusiasm and hard work which he himself has had. in the very nature of things it is impossible for a man to keep up his youthful pace in his mature age, for, as we have frequently observed, you can't go fast far. one of the principal elements in marshall field's success was that he got enthusiastic, hard workers around him. the moment he saw signs of laxity in any of these individuals, he let them out and got new material. laxity means loss of power, and with loss of power the machine does not do as good work. laxity in business is a waste. enthusiasm in these days of keen competition and wonderful activity it is necessary for the business man to have enthusiasm. if he lacks in this, his business will be at a stand-still, while his enthusiastic competitor goes forward. enthusiasm should not be carried to an extreme any more than any other good thing should be carried to an extreme, but at that it is better to be over-enthusiastic than not enthusiastic enough. no one can be truly enthusiastic who does not believe in his business. enthusiasm is a form of advertising. it shows the people you deal with that there is something going on and that you believe in your own medicine. catching up nearly every one in this business world seems to be engaged in the occupation of "catching up." nearly everyone is a little behind in the matter of finances. as soon as one gets across the stream and is on dry land and has his bills all paid, then he takes on new responsibilities and goes deeper in debt. it is a very hard game, this catching up. the game of existence is very easy to play when you are caught up. we have tramped through the forests of the great west, and we have invariably found that the pace-makers or leaders are the least tired at night, while the followers or those who are behind trying to catch up, are the ones who are most fatigued. some people are habitually behind "with their hauling," as the missourians say. no matter how their salaries may increase they are proportionately behind with their hauling all the time. when an employe gets $ . a month he is owing $ . , he is working hard at the catching-up game all the time. he figures that if he only got $ . a month, he could apply the $ . extra and could catch up in three months. the theory is all right but the practice is not, for when this individual gets $ . a month, instead of applying that $ . extra to catching up, he finds that he wants better neckties and better underwear, and makes greater expenditures all along the line, so instead of wiping out that $ . debt he had when earning $ . a month, he finds himself $ . in debt on his $ . salary. this catching up has a bad influence. it worries the individual; he does not do his best work. when you have all your bills paid and a surplus of $ in the bank, your head is higher, your chest is broader, your backbone stiffer, and you have a confidence that helps you take on greater responsibilities. to be in debt is to be under obligations to your friends, and it kills off those strong qualities which you naturally possess but which warp when you are catching up. the man who is catching up cringes instead of standing erect, he is suppliant instead of dominant. he is disturbed by little things, and in the meantime the catching up process is tearing down his nervous system. get caught up with your hauling. whatever your income is, save a percentage of it. do not mistake us in thinking that we are preaching the old sermon of the savings bank, which is, save your pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves, for our friend grizzly pete of frozen dog, idaho, says: "save your pennies, the dollars will be blown in by your heirs." no man gets rich through mere saving, but it is the training the man gets in saving the pennies that gives him a good idea of values of things and shows him the importance of having a reserve. if the boss is extravagant in little things, the employe multiplies the extravagance. if you are always catching up while you are an employe you will always be catching up while you are boss. if you are always saving and putting by a reserve while you are an employe, you will be doing the same thing when you are a boss. the principle is the same. it is merely a question of figures. do not take on financial responsibilities until you see your way clear to meet the responsibilities, and in addition to meeting them, see to it that you have made an allowance for good measure. catching up calls for double effort and double work. anger in proportion as a man is wise, he controls his anger. centuries ago the following truth was written: "whom the gods would destroy they first make angry," and in the same era there was also given us another truth: "a soft answer turneth away wrath." a man's judgment gets twisted, his ground becomes insecure and his point of vantage weakens when he becomes angry. the man who keeps calm when the other fellow gets angry has infinitely the best of the matter. let the other fellow fret and stew and get red in the face, but you keep calm and you will win the fight every time. control yourself, change the subject, and absent yourself when anger shows. cultivate poise, refrain from lowering yourself to the methods of the ignorant, which is anger. by keeping your temper when your adversary gets angry you thereby show your superiority, and your adversary instinctively feels you are a bigger man than he is. a cool head is wonderful capital for an employer or an employe. don't mistake coolness and poise for submissiveness and servility. don't let people impose on you and take advantage of your good nature. state your position in cool, well-weighed words, and carry conviction with them by your manner. it takes two to make a quarrel. whenever anger is present, do not be one of the two. precedent precedent has caused many failures. we refuse to make a bold move and inaugurate a new system because we hate to break away from the methods established by successful predecessors. we say "let well enough alone." we forget that times change, and that conditions which made our competitors successful, may not now exist. if you have the precedent habit it is an admission that you have not the brains to originate, and you are trying to take advantage of another's brains. you remember the old fable of the lion and the jackass. the jackass was browsing on thistles in the desert. it took all his time to gather enough of the scanty vegetation to keep him alive. one day the jackass noticed the lion comfortably eating a lamb, whereupon he said "that's the scheme for me. i will do the same trick as mr. lion," and forth-with the jackass found a dead lion and covered himself with the lion's skin, hoping that with the lion's skin he would appear as a lion and thus be able to catch game in large portions, and relieve himself of this slow monotonous, hard work he had been used to. the jackass sallied forth, but he could not catch a lamb. he had copied the lion so far as physical appearances were concerned, but he did not have the brains of the lion, and he failed. there are hundreds of wealthy business concerns today who are slowly dying from dry rot because they have not the nerve to break away from the precedent that built up their businesses. they let sentiment outweigh common sense. they maintain the same old lines and follow the same policy because that policy years before things made them successful. many manufacturers continue to advertise in publications which have long since lost their advertising value. these manufacturers have the habit, and on account of precedent they are afraid to break away. they do not recognize that since they started there are dozens of newer, brighter and better publications than the ones they are using. columbus, marconi, edison, stevenson, newton, fulton, and hundreds of other originators would never have succeeded if they had followed precedent. they required strong courage to break away from accepted methods. each of these men was told in so many words that the thing never had been done, and consequently could not be done. business men who throw aside precedent are more apt to succeed, for by throwing aside precedent they show they have originality instead of the ability to copy. financing a financier and a general are much the same thing. the financier makes the dollars do the work at the best place, and the general does the same thing with his soldiers. the financier with plenty of money in the bank and the general with plenty of soldiers at his command are alike. they give the order and the thing is done, for they have the material to do the thing with. the difference between the good financier and the bad financier is like the difference between the good general and the bad one, the difference being that the good one makes a little go a long way, and gets the best results from the little under his command. the cause of many failures is due to bad financing instead of bad business. the trouble is few business men know exactly "where they are at." a detailed statement should be kept of all obligations. the business man should get along as far as possible without giving notes, and when he does give notes he should see to it that the notes are taken up when due. the business man who overstocks shows he is a bad financier. the man who buys too much on possibilities makes a mistake. as you go along this year you should make statistics of the receipts and expenses by the day, week, month and year. with these figures you can make up a budget of your receipts and expenses for the coming year with reasonable correctness. keep your resources well in hand. buy often rather than buy in large quantities. if you are owing money to the bank, have your plans arranged so that you can realize on your assets quickly. the good general always plans his campaign to be ready for attack that may come through unexpected sources. the good financier is always ready for an attack on his finances. the concerns from whom one buys may be prosperous. the bank with whom one deals may be flourishing, and yet without warning something happens and you are suddenly called upon to liquidate your indebtedness. you should be prepared for this sudden call. financing is an art, and you will never be a good financier unless you have had perplexing problems to solve. in order to solve problems you must have the pro and con, in other words, the details of your receipts and expenses. these figures should be put down plainly, with elaborate detail, if necessary, so you may count on your figures and make your plans accordingly. preparing for emergencies is one of the first things the financier should understand. discontent while in another part of this book we show that ambition is one of the things that makes success, yet it must not be forgotten that discontent is another great factor in bringing about success. when the young man quits school he has life before him and has ambition to succeed. it is not particularly necessary that we find out what his ambition is to start him on the right path. let the young man get started at any thing. if he is ambitious and has ability in him to manage a business he will get there finally. he may get started in the wrong line and this will make him discontented. the discontent will cause him to try another tack, and so long as discontent makes him change he will finally get into the right line by the process of eliminating those callings which make him discontented. time after time we find in reading the stories of successful business men that they have floundered around in the beginning of their career from one business or calling to another. discontented with each of them they changed and changed and changed until they finally struck the thing best suited to them, and all the changes they made in the past were distinctly beneficial because of the experience they obtained. if it were not for discontent many of the leaders in the business world today would still be on the farm or clerking in a country store. keep busy, young man, do the first thing that comes handy. change your job if you are discontented, for no one can do his best work if his heart is not in it. when discontent causes you to change frequently you may be sure that some day you will strike your gait, and then ambition will fire you to stick at it. when you get on the right track and are not discontented you have struck it right. the generalist the chapter on "the specialist" is almost inseparable from this chapter. one is the positive, the other the negative. what we have said about the specialist we could repeat by taking the opposite of the question for the generalist. this one point, however, we wish to make clear, even at the risk of repetition. do not be a generalist in business. if you divide your efforts your results will surely be divided. the business man who goes in many outside ventures will not get along as far in the matter of wealth as the man who does one thing well. we hear about "the jack of all trades," but the aftermath of the jack of all trades is "master of none." only one concern in fifty succeeds in business, therefore it calls for your best efforts if you wish to succeed. it calls for a singleness of purpose. if you make more money than is necessary in your business put out the money in some form of investment that will require little of your attention. buy mortgages or real estate. get stuff that you can put in the green box in the safety deposit vault and not have to worry about. the stockbroker has a lot of unwritten history about the business man who divides his energies between his office and the ticker. the business man who is trying to make more progress than his competitor in business and at the same time trying to beat out the stock market is dividing his energies, and between the two occupations he is likely to fail. be a generalist in pleasure and recreation, but not in business. our aches and pains when we work hard with our body all day our backs ache and our muscles ache. this is all right, for nature has given us sweet refreshing slumber to drive away the aches and pains so that on the morrow we are ready for the fray. in proportion as we have endured these backaches and pains and are patient in our occupation, the aches will lessen until finally we have laid up a store of energy so that the aches will not bother us. the backaches and muscle-aches and headaches we have, when they come from honest work performed for the benefit of those we love, are sweet aches and pains. they represent sacrifice, these aches and pains do, and sacrifice brings happiness. the only way to be truly happy is to do something for somebody, and doing something for somebody is making a sacrifice for somebody. the aches and pains we have endured in performing labor for those we love is the best evidence of genuine sacrifice. we gladly suffer when our efforts are appreciated, and when those for whom we work are grateful, but there is one pain that never lessens, and it is the pain that kills. that pain is a heartache, and the heartache comes from ingratitude. after we have endured backaches and headaches for those we love and find the effort has not been appreciated, then comes the heartache, and that is the ache that kills. whenever anyone does something for you, your first concern should be to show appreciation. gratitude is one of the most priceless gems in nature's collection. there is nothing lower on the face of the earth than an ingrate and a snake's belly. dressing many persons look upon the good dresser, and think that good dressing is an evidence of success. in dressing, as in everything else, the extremes should be avoided. the man who is temperate has the right idea. a man must be temperate in dressing as in all other things. we have all seen the solicitor and the business man who look like a fashion plate or tailor's model. each day he appears with a different suit. he wears the latest ties, the latest shoes, and appears in the height of fashion. this extra dresser is a four-flusher, for he is trying to appear as something that he is not. grizzly pete says "it ain't what's on a man but what's in him that counts." in proportion as a man's character or mental training is lacking, he often tries to make up for it in dress. with some it is a case of ninety per cent. dress and ten per cent. man, and with others ninety per cent. man and ten per cent. dress. in trying to find a word of cheer for the good dresser, the writer vainly endeavored to recall some successful business man who had climbed the ladder step by step through a period of years, during which he was always dressed in the height of fashion. we recall to mind several extreme dressers who are possessed of millions, but these millions were the result of accident or inheritance rather than ability. we cannot remember any instance of a plodder who started in with nothing and made his millions who during the operation dressed in extremes. we have an autographed photograph of marshall field, and we venture to say that there are fifty men in field's store more expensively dressed than marshall field was at the time this picture was taken, shortly before his death. not that marshall field was poorly dressed, but that he was dressed like a gentleman. a gentleman does not wear extreme collars, extreme neckties, extreme coats. marshall field's clothes fitted him well, the goods were of splendid quality, but of modest design. marshall field was ninety per cent. man and ten per cent. dress. when a man recognizes he has not the ability to make a name for himself on account of his brains, he resorts to dress in order to give him distinction. the ability to dress in the extreme of fashion is an advertisement to the world that dress is your specialty, and if you are a specialist in dress you will not be a specialist in business. declare monthly dividends make it a rule to declare dividends every month. we venture to say to the business man that you are meeting all your fixed charges, paying your rent and employes, paying for postage stamps, lights, taxes and all other fixed charges. when the government put a two cent tax on your checks you paid that tax. you certainly can add one more fixed charge to your business, and that fixed charge should be a percentage of your cash receipts. it is usually a difficult thing to draw your profits out of your business in a lump at the end of the year, but if you draw your profits out in monthly installments, you can do so without any burden. the business man should figure what percentage of his cash receipts is profit, and this percentage should be deducted every month, less a little leeway to make the matter easier. make the percentage a fixed charge and put this money away in a special account as a reserve fund if you do not wish to draw the dividends out of your business. if you have this reserve fund drawn out in monthly installments, you are ready for attack if your creditors call on you suddenly. if you have a snug little sum in a separate bank as a reserve sufficient to withstand any attacks on your business, your step will be more elastic, you will have more confidence in yourself, you will have less worry than if you are keeping your nose to the grindstone and have no reserve. there is some amount between a dollar a week and a thousand dollars a week which you can draw out of your business without affecting it. if you make this a fixed charge you will take care of it, and you will arrange your business and your purchases so that this fixed charge will be properly taken care of each month. you will trim your expenses a little closer, and your business will thus benefit by having this fixed charge. nearly every failure is due to sudden calls of creditors or refusal of the bank to extend further credit. this fact shows plainly the necessity of having a reserve fund. take your figures for several years back and find what percentage of the total receipts was profit. if, for instance, your business earned $ , and your total sales were $ , , then % of your receipts represents profits. you can therefore declare a monthly dividend of %, and when christmas comes you will have an extra dividend, being the accumulated % each month you did not draw out in dividends. debt if it were not for debt most banks would go out of business, for banks live because debt is a recognized factor in business. the plan of getting rich through saving is a very difficult and practically impossible road to wealth. the man who is working himself out of debt puts in better effort and longer hours into his business than the man who does not owe a cent. go in debt reasonably and carefully, and you can make money with other people's money. money has a fixed value in itself in the matter of earning capacity. this fixed value is % or % or % as the case may be. one who puts his money in securities gets his money which the cash earns without effort on his part. the hustler, however, can make %, % or % on the money, plus his hard work. therefore there is an opportunity for a hustler to borrow money at % or %, and with that money and his energy earn % or %. the active man can therefore pay % per annum for money, and use that money to discount monthly bills at from % to %. the building and loan association, the installment firms and monthly payment real estate concerns show what people can accomplish who go into debt. thousands of families now live in their own homes because they went into debt. few of these families would have homes if they started in on the saving-the-money-first plan and bought for cash. don't go in too deeply. calculate your earnings in business. allow a wide margin for discount on your figures. hard times and unlocked for reverses come, therefore you should play safe. go into debt on a % or % basis of what you are reasonably sure you can pay. up to forty years of age a man is sowing and tilling, and after forty he reaps. the farmer goes into debt during the spring and summer, and reaps in the fall. very few of our great men had much money before they were forty years old. up to forty is the debt period. up to forty a man pays interest; after forty he collects interest. business calls for the hardest kind of work up to forty or fifty. after that time the man makes up in judgment and experience what he lacks in physical activity. work hard until you are forty. go into debt and make the money you have borrowed earn money. after forty make money by investing your funds in sound securities, so you will run no risk of losing what you have worked so hard for during your younger days. the average banker is over forty. the hustling business man who borrows is usually under forty. nature gives the young man ambition, ability and willingness. nature gives the middle aged man judgment, experience and conservatism. forty years will determine what is in a man. if he has the stuff in him to earn a competence at forty, he has usually acquired the judgment and experience to keep it after he is forty. the man born with a golden spoon never knows what hard work is. he does not go into debt because he has plenty of money for his requirements. at forty he has not the experience of his brother who was born in an environment of hard work and little money. the law of compensation thus bestows a subsidy on the poor boy and a handicap on the rich one to even things up. the poor boy goes into debt and works hard; the rich one lets the money do the work for him. there is no joy or happiness in the possession of things we have not worked for, so while we envy the rich who have never worked we should take satisfaction in the law of compensation which gives us a subsidy in the way of ability to work hard and earn money, so that later on we may enjoy the money better than our rich friend who has never worked for his money. don't go into debt on the wholesale plan, hoping to make a big coup. don't try to be a millionaire. don't set too big a mark. have your ideal advancement, no matter how little that advancement is. if you go forward each week or each year you will find at forty or fifty that your substance piles up much faster than you imagine. from forty to fifty years of age most fortunes are made. from twenty to forty your efforts have been foundation work, and the foundation does not show up much above the ground. from forty to fifty you are building the superstructure, and when you commence building that your progress seems more rapid. healthy indebtedness is a great incentive to hard work and a material benefit in building character and gaming experience that in later years will be of untold value to you. brains--birth--boodle one of the weaknesses of the human race is envy. no one is entirely free from envy, although the true philosopher who has studied himself and has things sized up correctly is nearly free from envy. human kind have three measures for gauging the other fellow. we measure the other fellow either by his knowledge--which is brains, by his pedigree--which is birth, or by the money he has accumulated--which is boodle. these three bs are like three stars in the sky. the first star--brains is usually the dimmest, but it is really the brightest star of all. mankind is prone to look at the brighter stars of birth and boodle. these three stars of brains, birth and boodle, are three aristocracies. the first aristocracy has no less authority than that of the almighty. the aristocracies of birth and boodle are sham counterfeits gotten up by man. they do not mean anything when put into the crucible and tested by fire. the aristocracy of brains differs from the aristocracies of birth and boodle as the sun differs from the jack-o-lantern, or as the music of the soul differs from the bray of the burro, or as a pure woman's love differs from the stolen affections hashed up by the fourth husband. brains like air and water, are not always appreciated until we have analyzed and investigated thoroughly. the foolish man thinks champagne is the finest drink. the wise man knows water is the best drink, even though water costs nothing. the foolish man has for his ideal--money or birth. the wise man takes off his hat to brains. the measure of a man is his brain and not his birth or his boodle. thought, reason and knowledge are possible to the man who has a brain. no man can buy brains, and truly he is an aristocrat of the highest order who is blessed with a good brain. some people whose ancestors came over with the pilgrim fathers have a picture of the mayflower in their homes and they seem to take a great deal of pride in the picture of the mayflower. there seems to be a halo around the mayflower. the descendants of the passengers of that ship look upon the picture of the mayflower as a sort of seal or guarantee of the good qualities of their forefathers, and consequently, being direct descendants they take unto themselves a lot of credit for something in which they had no hand in the making. the mayflower was afterwards used as a slave ship, but our disciples of birth do not want to know about this. some of the passengers in the mayflower performed acts and violated laws and conducted themselves in such a manner that would cause people of these days to be put in jail for the same offenses. some of these good ancestors of the present descendants of birth burned witches at the stake. time wipes out a lot of things, and this is probably as it should be, but certainly it is true that the world is progressing and the good man of today is probably better and broader than some of these glorious ancestors to whom so many take off their hats. some of our forefathers in europe were little less than pirates and buccaneers. their descendants today knowing that they can make great claims with little fear of contradiction, extol the virtue of their forefathers and complacently take on a superior air. they have thought over the matter of birth so much that they really think they are superior beings. grizzly pete of frozen dog, idaho, doesn't take much stock in the aristocracy of birth. he says, "it ain't what's on a man and it ain't what his father was that counts. the only thing to judge a man by is what's in him and what kind of brains he has." one thing about this glorious western country of ours is that a man gets credit for and he is punished by his own individual acts. it doesn't make any difference how far back his pedigree runs, if he doesn't make good himself, people have no use for him. the heritage of birth is mighty thin fabric and mighty weak material for a man to use in making a cloak of exclusiveness to put around him. we anticipate that some of our readers will take exception to our attitude on the matter of birth. we wish to be plainly understood that the matter of good birth and good ancestors is a good thing to have. the writer has a pedigree that would be his passport into the aristocracy of birth if he chose to belong to that lodge. your good ancestors is no handicap. it is a credit to you, but mark this down well: you, yourself, are entitled to no credit for any acts of your ancestors. your measure is and should be taken for what your own net worth is. the aristocracy of boodle is the slimmest aristocracy of all. yet there are more people who try to get into that lodge than any other. the possession of the dollar seems to be the ambition of everyone, and usually the first thing we try to find out about a man is "how much is he worth?" the thinker, however, knows that the possession of money doesn't make a man any better than his neighbor who has no money--their morals and their acts being even. brains. that's the true aristocracy. the professor in college who has spent a lifetime in study and has devoted his talents to uplifting mankind is an aristocrat. he may be getting two or three thousand dollars a year, while his brother with lesser knowledge is getting ten times that much in another vocation. the aristocracy of brains always has been, is now and ever will be the enduring aristocracy. even those who belong to the aristocracies of birth and boodle find they are sham counterfeits and many of them turn to study and to good impulses hoping they may get into the lodge of the aristocracy of brain. in business the aristocracy of birth or the aristocracy of boodle is a decided handicap. they make the individual think he is superior and he is above doing things which seem to him trivial, because he thinks he is a superior being. the man with brains, however, digs as well as climbs. without brains, business would go to the dogs, for if business were conducted by men of birth and boodle without brains, you can easily see that the whole fabric would fall to pieces. backbone and wishbone in proportion as a man's backbone weakens his wishbone seems to develop. the ten dollar a week man spends his time saying: "i wish i had the luck other people have." he says: "i wish i had this place, or i wish i had that job." he is ever wishing. things in our body, whether muscle or bone, develop by usage, and if we use the wishbone all the time it will develop into huge proportions. on the other hand if we develop our backbone and use it frequently, we may not have cause to use the wishbone so much. brace up. stand erect. strengthen your backbone and, with it, your jaw bone. say "i will" instead of "i wish." the world bestows her prizes on men with backbone and the blanks on those who use their wishbone. do good doing good is planting seed, the harvest may not show at present but in the future you are going to reap it. a man is paid back precisely in the same coin he pays out. if he plants weeds or mean impulses the harvest will be weeds and mean impulses. if he plants seed of good deeds he will harvest good deeds. centuries ago it was said "cast your bread upon the waters and it will return to you many-fold." the man who is doing good as he goes along, who is lending help, kindly counsel and encouragement will find the world is a pretty good place to live in after all. as he journeys along through life he will find the good he has done in the past has flourished and returned to him in greatly increased proportions, like the bread cast upon the waters. it is not only the good one actually gets for the good, he has done, but it is the profit that comes in the way of happiness he gets for his actions. the true way to obtain happiness is to do something for somebody. you get back out of the general exchequer of good in the world full payment for the good you have done, plus a profit of happiness which comes from the very doing of good. the get-away after you have driven the nail home make your get-away. many a solicitor has lost his prestige because, after having accomplished his point, he hung on. it is quite an art to know when to make the get-away. study your customer carefully, and when you have made your point clear and your proposition is presented to him in the best possible manner, then get away. the bore is a bore because he does not know how to get away. the solicitor is always welcome if it is known he is not a hanger-on, and that he gets in and gets out quickly. double equipment for the employe there is nothing better to possess than double equipment, by which we mean the ability to do two things well. from the employer's standpoint nothing will stand his business in such good stead as to have his employes doubly equipped. in the printing business, for instance, the old time printer knew how to set type, lock up forms and to run a press. nowadays we seldom find a printer in the broad sense of the word. in the big printing establishment we find the various branches of the printing trade have employes who are specialists at one thing. in the printing trade the craftsman is either a compositor a proof-reader, a make-up man, a pressman or a binder. the employe who can set type and also run a press is a decided advantage to the employer. the writer knows a certain publishing house whose every employe is doubly equipped. the rule of the proprietor is that every job or branch of the business must have more than one person competent to run it, and that every person must know how to do two things. double equipment on the part of the employe gives the employer great resources. when sickness, accident or other causes prevent the employe from filling his accustomed place, then the proprietor can call on others who have the double equipment, to fill in the gap. the employe who is following a particular line in the establishment should acquaint himself with some other branch of the business or some other trade, if he is a craftsman. the employe who is doubly equipped is decidedly at an advantage over the employe who knows but one thing. initiative initiative is simply the willingness and ability on the part of an employe to do things that are not simply routine, to do things he is not told to do, to look for opportunities to help the boss or to improve the business wherever possible. the employe who has no initiative in his make up is going around a circle and when you go around a circle you don't go forward. there is no one thing outside of honesty, ability and hard work that will help the employe to go forward like initiative. in every great business there are many opportunities for the employe to do things he is not told to do and when an employe gets the initiative habit he is not long in attracting the attention of the boss. look over the work you are doing, study the matter carefully, figure out some plan whereby the value of the work you are doing will be increased. find a chance to lessen the expense in your department. put into practice some idea that will increase the receipts. acquaint yourself with the operations of other employes in similar work. wherever you find a plan better than yours, take advantage of it. keep your eyes wide open and you will find many opportunities for doing things you are not told to do. every employe should carry out to the letter the directions given him by the boss and in addition to this he should have initiative, which is doing things the boss did not tell him. it is the plus or initiative in a man's make-up that helps him to the front. night work it is always a question among experienced business men whether night work and sunday work help the game of business. of course there are occasions when a job must be finished or work completed within a specified time and if you are behind with your hauling, it is necessary to turn all your resources into a singleness of purpose to get the thing done. the trouble is, however, that many business men figure on this night work as part of the regular scheme and in this they overdo the matter. the law of compensation says that a man is good for just so much work and if he spreads the work over into longer hours the intrinsic value of each hour is lessened. a man who habitually takes work to his home to finish and counts upon these extra hours, will soon find the value of his work decreases. we should all remember that we should work while we work and play while we play. work hard during your business hours, conserve your energies, but outside of business hours, let play, study and recreation occupy your time. if you go home from business at night and forget the things you have been doing in the day and use your time for the things in life outside of business, the next day, when you go to your office, you can make things fly. it is proverbial that the busy man is the one to go to if you wish things done promptly. those of us who were born and reared in the country know a familiar type that is to be found in every country town. he may be a carpenter or blacksmith, or may run a repair shop of some kind. we find him going to the post office in the middle of the day to get his mail. we frequently find him in the back part of the country store playing checkers. at other times he is watching a horse trade. again he is arguing politics. this man does not get in over four or five hours' simon pure hard work in a day. you take a job to this man and it will drag days and weeks. you become impatient at the delay. you get after the man and his answer is that he has not the time. it is practically a truism that those who offer the excuse that they have not the time are really the ones that have the time. some of our friends treat us shabbily in the matter of correspondence and when you get a letter from one of them, he says: "excuse me for not writing sooner, but i really have been so busy that i have not had the time to write." as a matter of fact it takes five or ten minutes to write a letter and the person who pleads for forgiveness through lack of time has wasted a hundred times the minutes necessary to write a letter. the busy man, accepts his duty as a matter of course, a ranges his correspondence and work in systematic order and goes at the thing, hammer and tongs, and gets the thing done. night work is usually evidence that the man does not do his work properly in the day time and he is like our friend in the country who wastes time in the day and tries to make up for it by night work. the thing to do is to work hard in the day time and rest at night. obedience several years ago, our friend elbert hubbard wrote a little sermonette entitled "carrying the message to garcia." the story was simply this: president mckinley called an orderly and gave him a letter and said: "deliver this letter to general garcia." the employe did not stand around and ask a lot of fool questions about the trains and things. he put on his hat and duster and he delivered the letter to garcia. these facts were stretched out in many words and made a little booklet. that booklet reached the sale of more than a million copies. it seemed to make a hit with business men throughout the country. a certain railroad bought and gave a copy to every employe. business men followed the example. the great sale of the book and the wide-spread interest it created would seem to indicate that carrying the message to garcia was an unusual thing and so remarkable that it attracted attention. as a matter of fact the whole theme of the story was simple obedience. there are thousands of institutions in this country who have employes who will carry the message to garcia. richard harding davis, you remember, was dining with friends in london. the discussion was along the lines of obedience and the like. on a wager he called a messenger boy, gave him a letter addressed to his fiancee in chicago, told the messenger boy to deliver the letter to the lady and bring back an answer. that fifteen year old boy carried the message to garcia, or in other words to mr. davis' sweetheart. the colonel of a regiment has under him about twelve hundred men. directly under him are his majors, and then come the captains, lieutenants, sergeants, corporals and privates. the first rule in the army is obedience of orders without question. if obedience were subject to question on the part of the subordinates, the colonel could win no battles. when your superior gives an order, the thing to do is to carry it out. if the order is wrong you will not be to blame, but your superior will suffer. there are times, of course, when an order is given that is manifestly impracticable and initiative on the part of the employe might save trouble. on the other hand, an executive would be greatly handicapped if his orders were subject to interpretation and analysis by his subordinates. the executive may give an order and in the giving have in his own mind the relation of this order to some other order he has given in an entirely different department and upon the proper execution of all the orders given through the various departments depends the ultimate success of his plan. the thing for the employe to do is to obey orders willingly, quickly and to the letter. the employe is not blamed when he does his duty. it is a source of great satisfaction to the boss to know he has dependable employes and that when he gives an order the thing is done so far as further effort on his part is concerned. pay day we have all tried all sorts of plans regarding pay day, but the plan most satisfactory to all concerned is to pay each tuesday or each monday for the previous week. if the nature of your business is such that monday is an unusually busy day, then tuesday should be your pay day. monday is usually called blue monday, because the employes blot out some of the sunshine on sunday by thinking of the hard week's work ahead of them. much of the blueness is driven away, however, if in looking forward they know that monday or tuesday they will get their pay checks. the old fashioned habit of paying off saturday nights is a bad one, especially if most of the employes are men. many men are weak and it is difficult for them to pass a lot of saloons on saturday night without the money in their pockets burning a hole. the saturday pay day may mean that a percentage of your employes will not show up on monday morning. many men will go on a spree on saturday night on the theory that they can rest up on sunday, who would not think of going on a spree on monday night or tuesday night, for it would interfere with the work next day. the writer does not know of a single concern that has adopted this monday or tuesday pay day plan and practiced it for a reasonable time without finding it works admirably. try it in your business and you will not go back to the saturday pay day. saving we will not indulge in the proverbs handed out by the savings bank in the matter of saving. we are not pessimistic when we say that no man ever became wealthy through the savings bank plan of putting away a certain amount each week. we will say, however, that there is no better training for the employe than this one thing of saving. saving a part of your weekly income and putting it away, if carried on for a number of years becomes a habit and it means that you will keep your expenses within your income. it is the saving habit that makes the benefit, for later on when you are in business the habit stands you in good stead and teaches you the value of having a reserve. by all means, put away a certain amount each week. if it is not a dollar, put away fifty cents. if that is too much, put away half of it, or even ten cents a week. have some amount as a fixed charge in your operations and put this amount in the savings bank. later on your balance will grow and you will have much satisfaction in watching its development to better proportions. habitual saving makes you careful in the things you do. it teaches you the relationship between principal and interest. it shows you that when you buy something useless and pay ten dollars for it that it is costing you interest each year to maintain it. the man who does not save is pretty sure to live beyond his means and some day trouble or affliction will come and he will be out of a job and then he appreciates the difference between the butterfly and the bee. when you haven't anything to fall back upon, the world is a mighty blue place. when you have money in the bank it is a mighty good place to live in. waiting for success it takes a good poker-player to know when to lay down his hand. it's a wise business-man who knows when to quit a forlorn hope. it's all right to build up a business. it is all wrong to play a losing game in business for a succession of years in the hopes of ultimate success. as years go by the business man is establishing matters on a firmer and more solid foundation. sales generally increase; the volume of the business gradually grows greater. this fact is responsible for many business men continuing their business at a loss, lured on by the hope of final success. it's all right to build a reputation and to be patient, but when the odds are against you and by all the changes you make and all the brains and ingenuity you put into your business, you cannot turn it into a profitable basis, then get out of that business and start something new. it's all right to build, provided that as you go along you are making a living profit, but dogged determination to play a losing game year after year is not to a man's credit. every man has some particular channel in which his talents will fit and produce good results. if your business goes along year after year at a loss, it is evident that your talents are not in the right channel. the great thing in business is that it shall respond quickly and show signs of life right away. if it does not, then the business is wrong. the shores of the great ocean of business are strewn with wrecks which have been dashed to pieces on the rocks sailing for that false beacon light, "keep everlastingly at it brings success." this saying is true, providing you are making expenses and some profit as you go along, but to keep everlastingly at it when your business shows a loss means failure. the thing that lures many on is the increased sales. meanwhile, the expenses are increasing proportionately, and if these two lines are always parallel, there is no hope of your making a success. better quit before you get too deep in the hole and have a lot of "dead horses" to pay for. it's all right to have ambition, tenacity and patience in business and to look forward to the far future as crowning success of your efforts, but it's all wrong unless you are paying expenses and making a living while doing these things. our sons the noblest and most important work we have to do is the training and teaching of the coming generation. the successful business man has no more difficult problem to solve than what he will do with his son. it is a fact that the greatest successes in the business world today are those men who had to start in the battle early, and fight their way to the front. the successful business man usually tries to arrange matters so that his son will not require to go through the hard working school of experience he himself attended, and in this the business man rather goes to the other extreme in that he tries to make things easy for his boy. as the twig is bent so the tree is inclined. the young mind is plastic and capable of receiving impressions, and we know that the impressions made in our youth are lasting all our days. the problem in the country is not so difficult, for there are so many things to do about the home that the young country boy usually has plenty of chores and duties to perform. occupation is a decided blessing and a present benefit to a boy. people in the cities have all creature comforts about the homes, transportation facilities are ample, the homes are heated by steam, stores are in abundance, people buy from day to day, and every little convenience is at hand to keep the scheme of living going along smoothly. because the city boy is surrounded with schools and the comforts of home he has much time on his hands. the boy is active, and if his activity is not turned on useful things, it will be turned on useless things. the young boy goes to the grammar school, and the daylight hours, outside of school hours, are devoted to play. this is right and as it should be, but when the boy gets along to twelve or fourteen years of age, the parents should arrange for him some little duties, some regular task to perform. the youngster will get accustomed to this, and it is decidedly beneficial. as the boy enters the high school he finds his hours shorter and his leisure hours longer. the high school period is a most important one in the boy's life, and the father should see to it that the high school boy is occupied for several hours each day, either in his own place of business or in some other establishment. there is no way of teaching a boy the value of money like having him work for money. arrange to pay your boy so much an hour for the duties he performs. have his occupation regular, talk with him about what he has done during the day, be a companion to the boy, and soon you will notice that he evinces interest in the things he is doing, and as time passes, ambition is fired in his breast, and when the time comes for him to enter the threshold of business he has been prepared for the work. it is strange that while we parents realize the importance of education, we pay so little attention to the boy while he is going to school. we should keep in touch with the boy's teachers and with the boy himself, taking an interest in his studies. the business man as a rule drifts apart from his son during his younger years. there is nothing that will help the boy so much as being a companion to him, being interested with him in the things he does, whether work or study. fathers and sons should be comrades. a close companionship between father and son is not only a great satisfaction and source of happiness to each of them, but is decidedly beneficial to both. by all means have some regular occupation for your boy while he is going to school. keep in close touch with him. explain to him the things he does not understand. show him the great possibilities ahead of him if he does right, and the impossibility for him to succeed if he does wrong. pull the young man who is expecting to get a fat job through pull is working on a false basis. the young man whose objective is to get a snap shows he has not ambition, and surely this young man will occupy inferior positions as long as he gets a job through pull. there is a legitimate pull in business, and that is activity and ability. don't look for snaps. snaps are merely traps. men are not paid for snaps, but for snap. the average young man just out of college looks for a job through the pull of his father or some relation, and in this he is making a great error. the best way to get a job is to get it without pull through your own energy and aggressiveness. the best jobs are obtained through push and not pull. the city hall and government buildings all have the word "pull" on the front door, and in direct contrast with this you will notice the front doors of the successful business institutions are marked "push." gossip it is surprising to see the extent to which gossip is carried on among business men. the funny papers always refer to women and the members of the sewing societies as gossips of the first class, but if the gossip going around business circles could be tabulated, we are sure the sewing society would have the joke on us. it is a footless thing to spend valuable time in idle gossip, for the gossip is seldom a successful business man. gossip takes hold of some men to such an extent that most of their waking hours are spent in finding out something to tell to someone else, and thus leaves but little time for business. bribes many business men seem to think that bribes are efficient helps. it is not so. the moment you bribe a person you acknowledge your dishonesty by paying for his dishonesty, and you may be sure that the bribe habit will grow; the demands of the men accepting the bribe will grow to alarming proportions. for every dollar you make by bribing someone, you are losing ten dollars in other ways, especially in your own self respect and satisfaction. the moment you give a bribe you are under obligations, and some day or other the facts will be brought out and you will suffer the consequences of your own weakness. underhand, clandestine information you get is no more than dishonesty on your part. you can get better information and accomplish your purpose more surely by going direct to a competitor, stating your case plainly, and announcing your abhorrence of underhand methods. your competitor will appreciate you more for your fairness, and he will go out of his way to give you information when you have shown you are square. stenographers few young men realize the advantage of learning stenography. we all know the young man who writes shorthand comes in touch with the boss at once, and while acting as amanuensis or secretary is getting a schooling that money could not buy. he is going through and becoming familiar with business as it actually exists. he sees the decisions made by his employer, and he unconsciously absorbs methods which would be almost impossible for him to learn were it not for his proximity to the boss. shorthand is decidedly beneficial, first--because it is a good training for the mind; second--it is a help all through one's life. it enables him to take down memoranda and keep notes of verbal transactions; it enables him to get in the private office, and to be in the middle of the nerve centers of business. some of the greatest men in this country were shorthand writers. the stenographer who is alert soon gets to the center of the business; he soon has responsibilities given him by the boss, and is in direct line for promotion. hypochondriacs here is a type we run across every day in business. we see the apparently well man taking out a pill box or a bottle of medicine as he sits down to lunch. we ask him what is the matter, and he proceeds to tell us about his bodily ills and infirmities. many men seem to take a keen delight in having something the matter with them. they go to a physician, though often the disease is practically mental. you can't get health out of a glass bottle. the man who is taking medicine all the time is going at things wrong end to. if his stomach is out of whack he should change his method of living rather than to try to cure his dyspepsia with stuff that comes in a bottle. the man who needs a tonic before he can eat a lunch had better take plenty of air and exercise than to take poisonous drugs into his system. if you are a smoker and find you have no appetite for lunch, give up cigars in the forenoon, and you will notice an immediate difference when you sit down to the noonday meal. the hypochondriac imagines he has things the matter with him, and he becomes confirmed in his belief, he finds that so long as he lives he has something the matter with him. he no sooner gets cured of one than something else attacks him. there is no medicine like air and exercise and occupation. the man who gives in to trifling ailments is in a sad plight. he is never happy unless he is sick. he is unreasonable, and he is the last one to appreciate what can be done by a man who cures himself through the mental processes. we all know that we can take a perfectly well man and pre-arrange to have a dozen of his friends on a given day greet him with some remark about his ill appearance. that man will be sick before the tenth man accosts him. politics politics is a losing game. every man owes it to himself and to his family and to his country to take an interest in politics to the extent of getting out to the primaries and voting for the right man, and help to get good men in office. but when a man carries politics to extremes or mixes it with his business, his business is sure to suffer. there are two kinds of politics--the honest kind and the grafting kind. the honest politician gets very slight remuneration for the time and energy he spends, and the grafting politician sooner or later winds up in the soup through his dishonest practices. there is no greater danger to business than to have the proprietor spend much of his time in politics. the upright business man will not descend to the things practised by the dishonest politician, and the sharp business man who has no compunctions on this score will make a loss in his business. the law of compensation surely comes in here, for in proportion as a man plays politics his business is bound to suffer. profanity twenty-five years ago profanity was found on every side. today you find it only among laborers. business men won't allow profanity. swearing goes with lying. the truthful man can look you in the eye and chisel out his words and you know he means it. the liar gets angry and swears, and he is a bluff. truth doesn't need curse words to make it stick. some great men swear and many small men swear. usually, however, the truly great man doesn't swear. men who think, men who study and analyze, seldom swear. swear words are usually used as fillers in sentences. some men have limited knowledge of adjectives so they resort to swearing. mark this when you hear a man firing a volley of profanity in rapid succession--you lose respect for that man! profanity is an easier habit to acquire and harder to give up than its distant relative, slang. slang has its value for it has taken place of much profanity. slang and profanity, and logic and thought don't mix well together. the more profanity, the less brains in your make-up. profanity is a hold-back. system system is all right so long as it lessens labor. generally system is complex and increases fixed charges. the system of copying every letter is a waste of time. not once in a thousand cases do you require to refer to a letter. have fixed rules and prices and you won't have to refer to letters. when you do copy a letter copy it on the back of the letter you are answering. use a carbon sheet. have simplicity your rule instead of system. system has tangled many institutions. beware of system that makes more work. don't clutter up your office with a lot of useless data and wagon loads of old letters and records. rule of gold centuries ago confucius was walking through the woods soliloquizing and analyzing and sizing up things in solitude. while thus engaged he was waylaid by two chinese peasants. these men had heard of confucius' philosophy, but they could not make much out of it, for confucius used words beyond their limited understanding. these men, with raised clubs, halted confucius and said to him: "our minds are small. we do not understand the things you say. tell us how to live. make your story short or we will slay you. we can only remember as much as you can tell in a moment. therefore, stand on one foot and tell us quickly what we are to do. we can only remember what you can tell while standing on one foot." confucius stood on one foot and said: "sing, fat, bong, lung, looy," which, being interpreted, means "what you would like others to do to you, do to them." this is the golden rule which has been handed down through centuries. it has been alloyed and simulated. it has been attacked, but, like all pure gold, it has endured forever. there is no line of action we can suggest or anything that will prove more valuable to the young man or old man through life than the golden rule. the golden rule is not theoretical, but a wholly practical help, and so in closing this series of talks with you, the writer feels that the essence of all the logic, good advice and philosophy may be summed up in the following: "do unto others as you would have others do unto you." in saying good-bye we suggest that you particularly remember the key to knowledge, which is o.r.b., and which means observe, reflect and benefit, and the practice of the following: work, horse sense and golden rule. the end my symphony by col. wm. c. hunter i have set my mark at truth, my purpose fixed, i shall not hesitate; ever on and on again i go toward the goal of my ambition; i shall not turn aside or pause. the pleadings of the siren, the wiles of the devil, the threats of mine enemies, shall not make my purpose change. obstacles may block my path and darkness blur my way. but ever firm with right my guide i shall keep pushing on. i may not reach my grand ideal, but be that as it may, the journey to it surely will be a pleasant one; and should i fall upon the way, my face shall be toward the place i started for. truth is right and right is truth, wrong shall surely fail; i shall not be discouraged at clouds or storms. i know the sun doth shine, it beams somewhere tho' i see it not. i fear not but the end of time will show all things that are, are best for the eternal plan. truth endureth and lies shall not obtain for any length of time. in shadow land are upstretched hands and, midst the noise of this great world are feeble cries for help; my ear shall practice to hear such calls, my hands shall train to lift the fallen; noble men and women who are pushed aside need champions for their cause; man, where'er he is or what he be is none the less my brother and needs the strong to cheer him on. what we extend in help and cheer, brings its reward in happiness. it is not for me to say or think look out for myself first; the bird, the beast, the stream that flows, the hills, the fields, the land, the sea, are parts, are things like me, and all belong to one grand plan; the stars, the moon, the sky, and endless space as well, are parts of one machine, that runneth by but one grand power of which i am in truth a part, an atom though i be. all things that are, are best-- this much truth i know, though why things are i can't explain, my vision still is dim. all answers will be given out when time shall be no more, and so i keep a-plodding on, and on and on my way; my face is to the light, my heart doth sing for joy; i strive to do the best i can each day in act and thought and word; i know not just the plan of things that are but back of all is truth, and truth i seek; i shall not know all truth until the great revealing time. col. hunter's symphony is printed on heavy parchment paper. illustrated in colors. size x inches. it is suitable for framing or may be hung on the wall with ribbon. price, postpaid, cents a copy. another colonel hunter book [illustration: front cover of the book "frozen dog tales and other things"] this book is full of pathos and humor. it is all stories and sketches depicting life in the far west. it tells of the doings of grizzly pete, joe kip and other inhabitants of frozen dog, idaho, where colonel hunter has his beautiful ranch. it breathes the spirit of the mountains and the forest. in dollars and sense you have read the business side of colonel's life. in frozen dog tales you get his life as he sees it while close to nature. the book is much larger than dollars and sense. it is bound in fancy cloth covers in colors. it has pages and one or more pictures on every page in colors. if you like dollars and sense, you will love frozen dog tales. it touches your heart strings and the next moment convulses you with laughter. the price of frozen dog tales is $ . per copy, postpaid. address hunter & co., oak park, ill. col. hunter's autographed motto we want every reader of dollars and sense to have one of these brass mottoes. the illustration below shows the size. [illustration: be pleasant every morning until ten o'clock, the rest of the day will take care of itself wm c. hunter] the autographed motto is engraved and enameled. it has a hole in the center to tack it up. the motto can either be worn as a pocket piece, or it may be tacked up on your desk, on your dresser, or on the wall. the plate is two inches in diameter price cts. postpaid address hunter & co., oak park, ill. images generously made available by the internet archive/american libraries.) morals in trade and commerce a lecture by frank b. anderson president of the bank of california national association delivered before the students of the university of california berkeley february th, under the "barbara weinstock" foundation morals in trade and commerce the most beautiful thing about youth is its power and eagerness to make ideals, and he is unfortunate who goes out into the world without some picture of services to be rendered, or of a goal to be attained. there are very few of us who, at some time or another, have not cherished these ideals, perhaps secretly and half ashamed as though to us alone had come an inspiration of a career that should touch the pulses of the world and leave it better than we found it. and in the making of youthful ideals we have changed very little with the passage of the centuries. the character of the ideals has changed with changing needs, but not we ourselves. our young men still see visions; they still fill the future with conflict and with struggle and prospectively live out their lives with the crown of achievement in the distance. it is well that it should be so. the ideals of our youth are the motive-power of our lives, and even those of us who have lived far into the eras of disappointment would not willingly wipe from our memories even the most extravagant day dreams from which we drew energy and hope and fortitude and self-reliance. if ideals have such a power over our lives, if they energize and direct our first entry into the world of affairs--as unquestionably they do--they must be counted among the real forces of the day and as such they are as much a matter for our scrutiny and control as educational development or physical perfection. not, perhaps, in the same way, for our ideals belong to that private domain wherein we rightly resent either dictation or authority from the outside. but we can apply both dictation and authority for ourselves. with a firm determination to be upon the right side of the great issues of the day, to uphold honor and justice in public affairs, to uproot the tares and to sow the wheat in the domain of national business, we can apply our whole mental strength to a proper determination of those issues, to a correct distribution of praise and blame, to a careful adjustment of the means to the end and to a precise appreciation of the facts. we can satisfy ourselves that we have heard both sides and that enthusiasm has not deadened our ears to all appeals but the most noisy. we can see to it that our attitude is the judicial one and that our minds are so fixed upon the truth and upon the whole truth that there is no room for prejudice or for passion. all these things can be reared as a superstructure upon the groundwork of lofty ideals, for just as there can be no progress without ideals so there can come nothing but calamity from ideals that are not guided by reflection and by knowledge. never before has it been so hard to know the facts as it is to-day. if we must give credit to the press for the diffusion of knowledge so also must we recognize its equal power to diffuse prejudice and bias. the newspaper and the magazine of to-day are vast and intricate machines that supply the great majority of us with practically all the data upon which we base our judgments. the public mind and the popular press act and react upon one another, the press setting its sails to catch every wind of public interest and the public upon its part demanding to be supplied with all those departments of news to which at the moment it is specially attracted. commercialism and competition have barred a large part of the press from its rightful office as leader and molder of opinion and have reduced it to the position of a clamorous applicant for public favor. the press, like everything else, is ruled by majorities, and in order to live it must cater to the weaknesses of popular majorities, it must reflect their prejudices, it must sustain their ill-formed judgments, and it must so sift and winnow the news of the day that the whims and the passions of the day shall be sustained. there are some newspapers and magazines that are honorably willing to represent only ripe thought and unbiased judgments, but they are not in the majority. what verdict would the historian of the future pass upon the civilization of to-day if he were restricted to the files of our newspapers for his material. it must be confessed that we of to-day, in the hurry and tension of modern life, are hardly in a better position. whatever we may suppose to be our attitude toward the press, with whatever scorn we may regard its baser features, it has an effect upon our minds far greater than we suppose. it is the steady drip of the water upon the stone that wears it away. it is the steady presentation of one aspect of human life, and that the lowest, that slowly jaundices our view and that produces either a rank pessimism or else an indignation against evil so strong as to efface judgment and to paralyze reason. day after day we see human nature presented in its worst aspects and only in its worst aspects. we see fraud, cupidity, tyranny, and violence paraded before us as being almost the only activities worth reporting. dishonesty is offered to us as the prevailing rule of life, and we are asked to believe that the spirit of commercial oppression has allied itself with the machinery of government for the oppression of a nation. it is a dreary picture, a picture that, if faithfully drawn, would justify almost any remedial measures within human power, a picture that by the skill of its presentation arrests attention and almost compels belief. that we so seldom compare the picture with the original is one of the anomalies of modern life. and yet the original is before us and around us all the time, inviting us to notice that it is only the exceptional that is reproduced with attractive skill and that it is only the abnormal that is emphasized with adroit arrangements of line and color. day after day we read of the sensational divorce cases, but there is not one line of the tens of thousands of happy marriages upon which no cloud of discord ever falls. day after day we read of the scandals of municipal government, but how often do we remember the great army of municipal officials who do their whole duty devotedly, courageously, unselfishly? day after day we hear of corporation tyranny, corporation lawlessness, or corporation greed, but what recognition do we give to corporations that obey the laws, whose operations are above censure and who add immeasurably to the wealth of the country and to the prosperity of every citizen in it? with this constant presentation of depravity, this incessant harping upon the one string of human dishonesty, what wonder that our visions should be distorted or that we should exclude from our horizon almost everything but the sinister features of modern life. what wonder that the young men and women should look at the career before them through an all-pervading fog of suspicion or that the days ahead of them should seem to be filled with the struggle against a universal dishonesty. it is from such illusions as this that we must free our ideals if we would do effective work for the world and for ourselves. there are real enemies enough without erecting imaginary windmills to tilt against. frauds, depravities, tragedies surely await us, now as ever, but we shall be doubly armed against them if we look upon them as the exceptions and not the rule and if we draw strength from the great background of human virtue and honesty. and there is such a background, unchanging, resistant, resolute, even though the limelight of publicity be persistently directed upon the few sinister figures on the front of the stage. we cannot afford to lose our faith in human nature, we cannot afford to shut out the greater and the best part of life or to gaze so persistently upon the abnormal that we can no longer see the normal and the ordinary. let us cultivate our sense of ethical values and of ethical perspective rather than to crouch behind a shrub until it looks like a forest. we are indebted to our commercialized newspapers and magazines for our distorted views of human life and for the cynicism that it is the momentary fashion to affect, but that is always disfiguring to the mind that harbors it. certainly we can get no such views and no such cynicism from our own experience or from personal knowledge of the men and women who surround us. honesty is a more familiar sight than dishonesty. all the common and familiar processes of our daily life are based upon an expectation of honesty, and if you will stop to consider for a moment you will see that those processes could not go on without that expectation. and how seldom is it falsified. sometimes of course there comes the jar of disappointment, but the fact that there is a jar shows that it is the exception and not the rule. however much we may talk of guarantees and safeguards and securities, however much we may talk of a business method or instinct that takes nothing for granted, it remains a self-evident fact that we must take human honesty for granted, that we must assume that the man with whom we do business intends to do it rightly and honorably, that he is actuated by a settled principle of fair conduct that will work automatically, and that without this automatically working standard of behavior all our guarantees and safeguards and securities would really have very little value. it is the universal expectation of fair dealing that makes business possible and, in fact, it is this universal expectation of good behavior that makes its breach sufficiently novel to be reported in the newspapers. if fraud and chicanery and violence were the order of the day, they would have no value as news. after twenty-nine years of dealing with human nature in a business where it is seen at its extremes--at its best and at its worst--i believe that the great majority of men and women in business are honest and i am certain that if this were not so, it would be impossible to carry on business. take the statistics of the credit insurance business, a business that may be said to be based upon an assumption of human honesty; examine the statistics of the losses made in business and you will find that these are but a small fraction of the total amount involved and even this small proportion is chiefly due to errors of judgment or to causes in which dishonesty plays no part. ask any banker how much he relies upon human honesty as an indispensable background to the ordinary precautions and safeguards of his business. ask him what is his attitude toward a client whom he detects in a lie or in sharp practice, and he will tell you that he has no use for such a man. he would rather be without his business and free from all contact with those whose natural and innate sense of honesty is lacking. go wherever you like, and you will find the same expectation, the same assumption of honesty. you will find that no business can be carried on without it. whatever high and honorable ideals you may have formed you need have no apprehension that they will be scorned in the business world or that you will have to put them away to win success. it is in the business world that they will be valued, and even the mental equipment that you are now seeking will be less important to you, a lesser guarantee of success than your sense of honor and truth and probity. when you reach the business world--and many of you perhaps will go into the great corporations that are now ceaselessly paraded before you as wolves and as public enemies--you will find there the same kind of human nature that you find here in college, the same estimation of probity and of fair dealing. if you do mean or underhand things, you will find that they are branded in the same way there as here. you will find that manliness and integrity are the rule and not the exception, and i will venture upon the prediction that when the time comes for you to look back upon your career you will see that there has been a steady improvement all along the line, just as those who are already able to look backward find that there has been an improvement since their own college days. but that will rest with yourselves, for the future is in your own hands. it is for you, gentlemen, to see that moral and ethical progress is unbroken. now let me say a word about the corporations of which we hear so much in the newspapers and magazines and that are so persistently represented as enemies of the community and as vampires that are sucking the life-blood of the nation. i think there may be plenty of room here for clarification of our views, and, indeed, we should all be better for it if we could give more precision to our thinking and free ourselves from the imputations that have been allowed to cluster around certain terms. you may be sure that i am under no inclination to defend criminality or wrong-doing or to deny their existence wherever they are actually to be found. there are criminal corporations just as there are criminal doctors, and lawyers, and clergymen. wherever men are gathered together there you will find a certain number who are disposed to seek their personal advantage in reprehensible ways, but because some doctors and some lawyers and some clergymen are criminals we do not attach an imputation to their respective professions. we are content to say that there are black sheep in every flock and so pass on. but the newspapers and the magazines have seen fit to concentrate their attention upon the criminal or the illegal acts of certain individuals who belong to corporations and to explain those acts in a manner which often leads their readers to assume that the acts are an essential part of corporation business. as a result, the very word "corporation" has taken on a sinister meaning, and we are asked to look upon the corporations very much as the rhine peasants used to look upon the robber barons who were accustomed to swoop down upon them and carry off their flocks. a corporation is absolutely nothing more than a partnership of individuals who prefer to do business under certain regulations imposed by the government. there is no difference between the corporate and the individual ways of doing business except a piece of stamped paper issued by the secretary of state. the corporation is made up of individuals who have just the same ideas of honor as you have yourselves, who have just as much integrity, just as great a love of fair play. a man does not change his nature just because he turns his business into a corporation any more than he changes his nature because he moves from one street to another or from the first floor to the second. a corporation then is a combination of men that has been formed under the sanction of law to carry out certain projects that it would be difficult or even impossible to carry out in any other way. the men forming those corporations are just such men as we meet in daily life, no better and no worse, and therefore with all those normal inclinations toward honesty that we are conscious of possessing ourselves and that we are in the habit of finding in others. the fact that these men have formed themselves into a corporation is no more significant of evil than a combination or a partnership among doctors or laborers. it is a part of the spirit of the age, an age that is called upon to do great things, to develop vast natural resources, to feed and clothe great centers of population, and to undertake a hundred other enterprises too large for the strength of the individual. i should like you to think over the real meaning of this term "corporation" in order that you may understand that it has no sinister significance whatever, that it is nothing more than a partnership that has registered itself under certain legal conditions for purposes that are laudable and honest. if you will do this, you will understand at once how senseless is the outcry against corporations as such and how absurd it is that any stigma of dishonesty should be placed upon a particular form of doing business that is exactly like other forms of doing business, with the addition of a legal registration. as i have already said, there are some corporations that break laws, or rather certain individuals who are parts of corporations and who break laws, just as there is a certain small proportion of law-breakers in every section of every community. but that fact carries with it no reflection upon corporations as such, and when our sensational publications and politicians use the word "corporation" as though it were an alternative term for brigand or pirate they are simply assuming a public ignorance that may exist outside, but that certainly ought not to be found within a university. they are taking advantage of a nearly universal disposition to believe one's self injured and are appealing not only to ignorance, but to a low form of cupidity and of mob greed. they would have no success in their crusade against corporations as such if there were any general understanding of the meaning of terms or if it were generally recognized that there are thousands of corporations in this state, and thousands in every state against whom no whisper of wrong-doing has ever been raised and who are doing a useful work, of which every individual among us is a beneficiary, directly or indirectly. now it is not only in our definitions that we need to be precise and to think clearly. we have already seen the need of a better discrimination between the very few corporations that are accused of breaking the laws and the vastly greater number that we never hear of at all and that do their business as quietly and honestly as the baker or the butcher. if lawbreaking is to be found in the business of some corporations, it is incumbent upon us to determine just in what way the law is being broken, why it is being broken, what sort of law it is that is being broken, and how much moral turpitude or public wrong is involved. all these factors would be determined by a judge upon the bench before passing sentence upon the meanest malefactor, and yet we find that the public is constantly urged by the newspapers to pass sentences of ruin and confiscation upon corporations as a whole, with their tens of thousands of innocent stockholders, without any kind of inquiry and under the influence of uninformed passion. there is no department of ethics more disputed than the meaning of abstract right and wrong, and as i am not talking either on philosophy or ethics i will ask you to accept just such commonsense definitions as can be applied to the business world and that may be usefully employed as a working basis. commercial morality and honesty are determined by each community for itself in the light of its own special needs and point of evolution. to-day we hold many things to be wrong that were done by our forefathers with clear consciences, and on the other hand we now believe that many things are right that were held by our forefathers to be wrong. there was a time when slavery did not offend the most delicate conscience, and if we go still further back, we shall reach a time when theft was almost the only crime recognized and when wholesale murder was a virtue. every age had its own standards, and it would be absurd to argue that an act was wrong if it received the sanction of the whole community. it was the communal conscience that determined all problems of right or wrong, and it is still the communal conscience that gives us our definitions of morality and honesty. here, in my opinion, is where a great part of our trouble arises. the communal conscience has changed, and some things regarded right and proper twenty years ago are frowned upon to-day. but business methods tend to become rigid and inelastic, and a sudden evolution of the public conscience leaves them in the rear. then comes a sudden recognition of the disparity, and laws are passed to prevent the practices that formerly went unchallenged. usually these laws are passed in a hurry and by politicians who have no clear grasp of the problem. as a result the laws are ineffective. that is to say, business, clinging conservatively to its familiar ways, finds a plan to continue those ways in spite of the laws passed to prevent them and then public opinion, finding no relief, is angered,--not at the breaking of a law, but because the law itself was ill-designed and ineffective. in other words, public opinion has failed in its effort to force the individual to set aside his own interests for what public opinion considers to be the interests of the community. public opinion in this country is not a steady and persisting force, as it is in some older communities. it moves spasmodically and after long periods of quiescence and usually under some stress of excitement, which prevents deliberation and therefore effectiveness. law being more unwieldy than conditions, naturally lags behind them, and what we have to recognize is a change in conditions and in laws and not an outbreak of lawlessness. another evil result from the impetuous way in which we make laws is that they are not enforced because they are not in harmony with the views of the community. the statute books of every state are encumbered with laws passed in moments of hysteria and never put into operation, or else allowed to lapse after a few months of confusion. every newspaper in california, for example, breaks the law every day when it prints a news item without appending the name of the writer, and probably we are all of us breaking laws of which we never heard. this sort of thing brings a law into contempt and robs it of the sacredness that should attach to it. the sherman anti-trust law, for example, would bring the whole business of the country to a standstill if it were strictly enforced, and i believe it is not good to bring large and innocent sections of the community within the scope of a criminal law simply for the purpose of reaching a minute proportion whose methods are flagrantly bad. if the sherman anti-trust law were enforced, it would have to be repealed at once, and i think honest traders have a right to complain of a law that makes them technical criminals and is enforced only against notorious wrongdoers. the law should be so framed as to reach only wrongdoers and to leave honest traders outside of even its technical scope. president roosevelt was emphatic in his declaration that he intended to enforce the sherman anti-trust act, and during the four years beginning with his administration was active in that direction. in he stated: "combinations of capital, like combinations of labor, are a necessary element in our present industrial system. it is not possible completely to prevent them; and, if it were possible, such complete prevention would do damage to the body politic. it is unfortunate that our present laws should forbid all combinations, instead of sharply discriminating between those combinations which do good and those combinations which do evil. it is a public evil to have on the statute-books a law incapable of full enforcement, because both judges and juries realize that its full enforcement would destroy the business of the country; for the result is to make decent men violators of the law against their will and to put a premium on the behavior of the willful wrongdoers. such a result, in turn, tends to throw the decent man and willful wrongdoer into close association, and in the end to drag down the former to the latter's level; for the man who becomes a law-breaker in one way unhappily tends to lose all respect for law and to be willing to break it in many ways. the law as construed by the supreme court is such that the business of the country cannot be conducted without breaking it." but let it be admitted that there are cases where abuses exist and where methods of doing business that were harmless enough and even necessary enough a few years ago are now working hardship upon the public as a result of changed conditions. these abuses should be corrected; there is no question about that, and they will be corrected either by violent methods that will leave behind them a heritage of bitter resentments and wrongs or by the way of a real statesmanship that will recognize only facts and that will do justice by methods that are themselves just. for a long time to come it must be the greatest of all problems confronting the statesmanship of our day, a problem that must try our patience and our capacity for self-government. do not imagine that america stands alone on this perilous path of reform. all the countries of civilization stand in the same place. all are confronted with the same conflict between new ideals and old methods, between the spirit of to-day and the mechanism of yesterday. the problems of other countries arise from their own peculiar conditions just as our problems arise from our conditions, but their essence, their purport, is the same. and do not imagine that there is any one solution that can be applied or that there is any virtue in the sovereign cure-alls that are clamorously urged upon us by demagogues and by reformers who are eager to reform everything and everybody but themselves. there is no such panacea. it is to be found neither in municipalization, nor nationalization, nor confiscation, nor any of the nostrums advocated so wearisomely by sensation mongers. there is indeed no hope for us except by laborious study of conditions and by an infinitely cautious advance from point to point, so that there may be no injustice, no concessions to prejudice, no incitements of class feeling, no embittering of relations that should be cordial as between citizens of the same republic, whose differences are infinitely small as compared with the well-being of a great nation. of all the dangers that threaten the path of the reformer that of injustice is the greatest. it is better even that abuses should continue for a time longer than that they should be corrected by injustice and by the infliction of hardships upon those who are wholly innocent. two wrongs can never make a right, and wherever we find a so-called reform that is based upon injustice be assured that we are only substituting one evil for another and that our latter end shall be worse than the first. it would be impossible for one now to indicate the direction in which reforms should lie, and there is of course nothing human to which reform is impossible. but it is perhaps suitable that i should indicate some of the ways that can end in nothing but calamity, however alluringly and speciously they may be advocated. for example, there is neither good sense nor honesty in penalizing a corporation because some of its officials have done wrong. wherever wrong has been done, the guilt is with some individual and not with the corporation as a whole. find out who that individual is and let him answer to the law, but do not visit his misdeeds upon innocent stockholders who have had nothing whatever to do with the offense, who knew nothing of its commission and could have done nothing to prevent it if they had known. remember, that a penalty inflicted upon a corporation is actually inflicted not upon guilty persons but upon innocent investors. let me give an illustration of the so-called "reforms" that are recklessly urged upon us to-day and that are to be found in operation here and there throughout the country. i refer to the matter of street franchises. now it may be true, it probably is true, that in many cases these franchises have become of great value and that they ought not to be granted without adequate return. but would it not be just to remember that when these franchises were originally granted they provided a service that was absolutely essential to the growth of the community and that those who obtained the franchises faced a serious risk to their capital and practically threw in their lot with the prospective welfare of the city? it is hard to realize how serious that risk sometimes was and how problematical were the returns. the shareholders in these street traction corporations are spread over the population and every class of the population is represented in them. they invested their money in good faith at a time when no question had ever been raised as to the propriety of these franchises and at a time when these franchises were considered to be for the public good and indubitably were for the public good. and i will ask you if it is honest to use all the machinery of the government, all the artifices of the politician to depreciate the value of those franchises, to threaten their holders with confiscation, to hamper and harass them by all the ways that are open to a democratically governed people? i say unhesitatingly that it is dishonest to do these things, and i will go so far as to say--believing as i do in the good faith of the great majority--that most of those who noisily advocate such measures would be ashamed to do so if they would but face the facts and understand what it is that they are actually doing and the wrong that they are inflicting upon innocent men and women. if mistakes have been made in granting franchises, then take care to avoid such mistakes in the future, but do not enter into a bargain that seemed advantageous to yourselves and then repudiate it when you find that it is not so advantageous as you thought. there is no way to reconcile such a thing with common honesty, and it is in no way mitigated by the fact that it is done by a community and by means of a vote rather than by an individual and in the ordinary small affairs of life. we all know what we should say of the man who acted in this way toward ourselves personally, but in advocating some of the schemes that are now recommended to us by sensational politicians, newspapers, and magazines we are making ourselves responsible for a dishonesty far greater than the evils that we are trying to remedy. let us by all means reform whatever needs to be reformed, but let us do it with clean hands. now, i think that i have said enough to justify my belief that these great problems of our social life are not of a kind to be settled off-hand by violent or radical legislation. they are not to be settled by any one scheme or by any one plan. the only way to approach them is by careful and conscientious thought, a minute examination of the facts at first hand and a rigid determination to act toward corporations and business interests in general in the same spirit of unswerving honesty that you would wish to display to a comrade or to a friend and that you would wish to be displayed toward yourselves. you will find that honesty is the royal road to success in commercial life, and it is also the royal road to all reform in our communal life. do not go out into the world with any expectation that you will be required to surrender the ideals that you have formed in your youth, or that you will be asked to choose between honor and success. those ideals will be the greatest capital with which you can be endowed. they will attract to you everything that makes life desirable and without them you can have neither self-respect nor the respect of others. and as a last word let me recommend you not to be carried away by those gusts of prejudice and passion that sweep periodically through the community. there is a contagion in these things that it is hard to resist, and so much that to-day passes for thought is not thought at all, but merely the automatic, unreflecting acceptance of wild theories that are enunciated with so much force that they seem to be almost axioms. your study of history will show you that the world has always been subject to these waves of emotion, that are sometimes religious, sometimes political, and seem for the time to carry everything before them. we are passing through such a period now, a period of intense unrest, of revolt against conditions that we ourselves made, against methods that we ourselves created and sanctioned. i advise you to look askance upon every movement that in the language of the day is called popular. do not accept a theory or a doctrine because it is popular, but on the other hand do not reject it for that reason. do not permit yourselves to be carried off your intellectual feet by indignation or by protest. demand of every political theory that it stand and deliver its credentials, and before you allow it to pass into the realm of your adoption, see to it that you understand it in all its bearings and that you have traced its results so far as is possible to your foresight; let the final test be one of human justice and of honesty, and then with courage use your power to aid in the formation of public opinion, remembering that public opinion is after all the great controlling force. transcriber's note. the typographical error "resistent" has been corrected. variations of hyphenation from the original document have been retained. [frontispiece: orison swett marden] pushing to the front by orison swett marden "the world makes way for the determined man." published by the success company's branch offices petersburg, n.y. ---- toledo ---- danville oklahoma city ---- san jose copyright, , by orison swett marden. foreword this revised and greatly enlarged edition of "pushing to the front" is the outgrowth of an almost world-wide demand for an extension of the idea which made the original small volume such an ambition-arousing, energizing, inspiring force. it is doubtful whether any other book, outside of the bible, has been the turning-point in more lives. it has sent thousands of youths, with renewed determination, back to school or college, back to all sorts of vocations which they had abandoned in moments of discouragement. it has kept scores of business men from failure after they had given up all hope. it has helped multitudes of poor boys and girls to pay their way through college who had never thought a liberal education possible. the author has received thousands of letters from people in nearly all parts of the world telling how the book has aroused their ambition, changed their ideals and aims, and has spurred them to the successful undertaking of what they before had thought impossible. the book has been translated into many foreign languages. in japan and several other countries it is used extensively in the public schools. distinguished educators in many parts of the world have recommended its use in schools as a civilization-builder. crowned heads, presidents of republics, distinguished members of the british and other parliaments, members of the united states supreme court, noted authors, scholars, and eminent people in many parts of the world, have eulogized this book and have thanked the author for giving it to the world. this volume is full of the most fascinating romances of achievement under difficulties, of obscure beginnings and triumphant endings, of stirring stories of struggles and triumphs. it gives inspiring stories of men and women who have brought great things to pass. it gives numerous examples of the triumph of mediocrity, showing how those of ordinary ability have succeeded by the use of ordinary means. it shows how invalids and cripples even have triumphed by perseverance and will over seemingly insuperable difficulties. the book tells how men and women have seized common occasions and made them great; it tells of those of average ability who have succeeded by the use of ordinary means, by dint of indomitable will and inflexible purpose. it tells how poverty and hardship have rocked the cradle of the giants of the race. the book points out that most people do not utilize a large part of their effort because their mental attitude does not correspond with their endeavor, so that although working for one thing, they are really expecting something else; and it is what we expect that we tend to get. no man can become prosperous while he really expects or half expects to remain poor, for holding the poverty thought, keeping in touch with poverty-producing conditions, discourages prosperity. before a man can lift himself he must lift his thoughts. when we shall have learned to master our thought habits, to keep our minds open to the great divine inflow of life force, we shall have learned the truths of human endowment, human possibility. the book points out the fact that what is called success may be failure; that when men love money so much that they sacrifice their friendships, their families, their home life, sacrifice position, honor, health, everything for the dollar, their life is a failure, although they may have accumulated money. it shows how men have become rich at the price of their ideals, their character, at the cost of everything noblest, best, and truest in life. it preaches the larger doctrine of equality; the equality of will and purpose which paves a clear path even to the presidential chair for a lincoln or a garfield, for any one who will pay the price of study and struggle. men who feel themselves badly handicapped, crippled by their lack of early education, will find in these pages great encouragement to broaden their horizon, and will get a practical, helpful, sensible education in their odd moments and half-holidays. dr. marden, in "pushing to the front," shows that the average of the leaders are not above the average of ability. they are ordinary people, but of extraordinary persistence and perseverance. it is a storehouse of noble incentive, a treasury of precious sayings. there is inspiration and encouragement and helpfulness on every page. it teaches the doctrine that no limits can be placed on one's career if he has once learned the alphabet and has push; that there are no barriers that can say to aspiring talent, "thus far, and no farther." encouragement is its keynote; it aims to arouse to honorable exertion those who are drifting without aim, to awaken dormant ambitions in those who have grown discouraged in the struggle for success. the publishers. contents chapter i. the man and the opportunity ii. wanted--a man iii. boys with no chance iv. the country boy v. opportunities where you are vi. possibilities in spare moments vii. how poor boys and girls go to college viii. your opportunity confronts you--what will you do with it? ix. round boys in square holes x. what career? xi. choosing a vocation xii. concentrated energy xiii. the triumphs of enthusiasm xiv. "on time," or, the triumph of promptness xv. what a good appearance will do xvi. personality as a success asset xvii. if you can talk well xviii. a fortune in good manners xix. self-consciousness and timidity foes to success xx. tact or common sense xxi. enamored of accuracy xxii. do it to a finish xxiii. the reward of persistence xxiv. nerve--grip, pluck xxv. clear grit xxvi. success under difficulties xxvii. uses of obstacles xxviii. decision xxix. observation as a success factor xxx. self-help xxxi. the self-improvement habit xxxii. raising of values xxxiii. public speaking xxxiv. the triumphs of the common virtues xxxv. getting aroused xxxvi. the man with an idea xxxvii. dare xxxviii. the will and the way xxxix. one unwavering aim xl. work and wait xli. the might of little things xlii. the salary you do not find in your pay envelope xliii. expect great things of yourself xliv. the next time you think you are a failure xlv. stand for something xlvi. nature's little bill xlvii. habit--the servant,--the master xlviii. the cigarette xlix. the power of purity l. the habit of happiness li. put beauty into your life lii. education by absorption liii. the power of suggestion liv. the curse of worry lv. take a pleasant thought to bed with you lvi. the conquest of poverty lvii. a new way of bringing up children lviii. the home as a school of good manners lix. mother lx. why so many married women deteriorate lxi. thrift lxii. a college education at home lxiii. discrimination in reading lxiv. reading a spur to ambition lxv. why some succeed and others fail lxvi. rich without money illustrations orison swett marden . . . . . . . . . . _frontispiece_ house in which abraham lincoln was born ulysses s. grant william ewart gladstone john wanamaker jane addams thomas alva edison henry ward beecher lincoln studying by the firelight marshall field joseph jefferson [transcriber's note: jefferson was a prominent actor during the latter half of the 's.] theodore roosevelt helen keller william mckinley julia ward howe mark twain pushing to the front chapter i the man and the opportunity no man is born into this world whose work is not born with him.--lowell. things don't turn up in this world until somebody turns them up.--garfield. vigilance in watching opportunity; tact and daring in seizing upon opportunity; force and persistence in crowding opportunity to its utmost of possible achievement--these are the martial virtues which must command success.--austin phelps. "i will find a way or make one." there never was a day that did not bring its own opportunity for doing good that never could have been done before, and never can be again.--w. h. burleigh. "are you in earnest? seize this very minute; what you can do, or dream you can, _begin_ it." "if we succeed, what will the world say?" asked captain berry in delight, when nelson had explained his carefully formed plan before the battle of the nile. "there is no if in the case," replied nelson. "that we shall succeed is certain. who may live to tell the tale is a very different question." then, as his captains rose from the council to go to their respective ships, he added: "before this time to-morrow i shall have gained a peerage or westminster abbey." his quick eye and daring spirit saw an opportunity of glorious victory where others saw only probable defeat. "is it possible to cross the path?" asked napoleon of the engineers who had been sent to explore the dreaded pass of st. bernard. "perhaps," was the hesitating reply, "it is within the limits of _possibility_." "forward then," said the little corporal, without heeding their account of apparently insurmountable difficulties. england and austria laughed in scorn at the idea of transporting across the alps, where "no wheel had ever rolled, or by any possibility could roll," an army of sixty thousand men, with ponderous artillery, tons of cannon balls and baggage, and all the bulky munitions of war. but the besieged massena was starving in genoa, and the victorious austrians thundered at the gates of nice, and napoleon was not the man to fail his former comrades in their hour of peril. when this "impossible" deed was accomplished, some saw that it might have been done long before. others excused themselves from encountering such gigantic obstacles by calling them insuperable. many a commander had possessed the necessary supplies, tools, and rugged soldiers, but lacked the grit and resolution of bonaparte, who did not shrink from mere difficulties, however great, but out of his very need made and mastered his opportunity. grant at new orleans had just been seriously injured by a fall from his horse, when he received orders to take command at chattanooga, so sorely beset by the confederates that its surrender seemed only a question of a few days; for the hills around were all aglow by night with the camp-fires of the enemy, and supplies had been cut off. though in great pain, he immediately gave directions for his removal to the new scene of action. on transports up the mississippi, the ohio, and one of its tributaries; on a litter borne by horses for many miles through the wilderness; and into the city at last on the shoulders of four men, he was taken to chattanooga. things assumed a different aspect immediately. _a master_ had arrived who was _equal to the situation_. the army felt the grip of his power. before he could mount his horse he ordered an advance, and although the enemy contested the ground inch by inch, the surrounding hills were soon held by union soldiers. were these things the result of chance, or were they compelled by the indominable determination of the injured general? did things _adjust themselves_ when horatius with two companions held ninety thousand tuscans at bay until the bridge across the tiber had been destroyed?--when leonidas at thermopylae checked the mighty march of xerxes?--when themistocles, off the coast of greece, shattered the persian's armada?--when caesar, finding his army hard pressed, seized spear and buckler, fought while he reorganized his men, and snatched victory from defeat?--when winkelried gathered to his heart a sheaf of austrian spears, thus opening a path through which his comrades pressed to freedom?--when for years napoleon did not lose a single battle in which he was personally engaged?--when wellington fought in many climes without ever being conquered?--when ney, on a hundred fields, changed apparent disaster into brilliant triumph?--when perry left the disabled _lawrence_, rowed to the _niagara_, and silenced the british guns?--when sheridan arrived from winchester just as the union retreat was becoming a rout, and turned the tide by riding along the line?--when sherman, though sorely pressed, signaled his men to hold the fort, and they, knowing that their leader was coming, held it? history furnishes thousands of examples of men who have seized occasions to accomplish results deemed impossible by those less resolute. prompt decision and whole-souled action sweep the world before them. true, there has been but one napoleon; but, on the other hand, the alps that oppose the progress of the average american youth are not as high or dangerous as the summits crossed by the great corsican. don't wait for extraordinary opportunities. _seize common occasions and make them great_. on the morning of september , , a young woman in the longstone lighthouse, between england and scotland, was awakened by shrieks of agony rising above the roar of wind and wave. a storm of unwonted fury was raging, and her parents could not hear the cries; but a telescope showed nine human beings clinging to the windlass of a wrecked vessel whose bow was hanging on the rocks half a mile away. "we can do nothing," said william darling, the light-keeper. "ah, yes, we must go to the rescue," exclaimed his daughter, pleading tearfully with both father and mother, until the former replied: "very well, grace, i will let you persuade me, though it is against my better judgment." like a feather in a whirlwind the little boat was tossed on the tumultuous sea, but, borne on the blast that swept the cruel surge, the shrieks of those shipwrecked sailors seemed to change her weak sinews into cords of steel. strength hitherto unsuspected came from somewhere, and the heroic girl pulled one oar in even time with her father. at length the nine were safely on board. "god bless you; but ye're a bonny english lass," said one poor fellow, as he looked wonderingly upon this marvelous girl, who that day had done a deed which added more to england's glory than the exploits of many of her monarchs. "if you will let me try, i think i can make something that will do," said a boy who had been employed as a scullion at the mansion of signer faliero, as the story is told by george cary eggleston. a large company had been invited to a banquet, and just before the hour the confectioner, who had been making a large ornament for the table, sent word that he had spoiled the piece. "you!" exclaimed the head servant, in astonishment; "and who are you?" "i am antonio canova, the grandson of pisano, the stone-cutter," replied the pale-faced little fellow. "and pray, what can you do?" asked the major-domo. "i can make you something that will do for the middle of the table, if you'll let me try." the servant was at his wits' end, so he told antonio to go ahead and see what he could do. calling for some butter, the scullion quickly molded a large crouching lion, which the admiring major-domo placed upon the table. dinner was announced, and many of the most noted merchants, princes, and noblemen of venice were ushered into the dining-room. among them were skilled critics of art work. when their eyes fell upon the butter lion, they forgot the purpose for which they had come in their wonder at such a work of genius. they looked at the lion long and carefully, and asked signer faliero what great sculptor had been persuaded to waste his skill upon such a temporary material. faliero could not tell; so he asked the head servant, who brought antonio before the company. when the distinguished guests learned that the lion had been made in a short time by a scullion, the dinner was turned into a feast in his honor. the rich host declared that he would pay the boy's expenses under the best masters, and he kept his word. antonio was not spoiled by his good fortune, but remained at heart the same simple, earnest, faithful boy who had tried so hard to become a good stone-cutter in the shop of pisano. some may not have heard how the boy antonio took advantage of this first great opportunity; but all know of canova, one of the greatest sculptors of all time. _weak men wait for opportunities, strong men make them_. "the best men," says e. h. chapin, "are not those who have waited for chances but who have taken them; besieged the chance; conquered the chance; and made chance the servitor." there may not be one chance in a million that you will ever receive unusual aid; but opportunities are often presented which you can improve to good advantage, if you will only _act_. the lack of opportunity is ever the excuse of a weak, vacillating mind. opportunities! every life is full of them. every lesson in school or college is an opportunity. every examination is a chance in life. every patient is an opportunity. every newspaper article is an opportunity. every client is an opportunity. every sermon is an opportunity. every business transaction is an opportunity,--an opportunity to be polite,--an opportunity to be manly,--an opportunity to be honest,--an opportunity to make friends. every proof of confidence in you is a great opportunity. every responsibility thrust upon your strength and your honor is priceless. existence is the privilege of effort, and when that privilege is met like a man, opportunities to succeed along the line of your aptitude will come faster than you can use them. if a slave like fred douglass, who did not even own his body, can elevate himself into an orator, editor, statesman, what ought the poorest white boy to do, who is rich in opportunities compared with douglass? it is the idle man, not the great worker, who is always complaining that he has no time or opportunity. some young men will make more out of the odds and ends of opportunities which many carelessly throw away than other will get out of a whole life-time. like bees, they extract honey from every flower. every person they meet, every circumstance of the day, adds something to their store of useful knowledge or personal power. "there is nobody whom fortune does not visit once in his life," says a cardinal; "but when she finds he is not ready to receive her, she goes in at the door and out at the window." cornelius vanderbilt saw his opportunity in the steamboat, and determined to identify himself with steam navigation. to the surprise of all his friends, he abandoned his prosperous business and took command of one of the first steamboats launched, at a salary of one thousand dollars a year. livingston and fulton had acquired the sole right to navigate new york waters by steam, but vanderbilt thought the law unconstitutional, and defied it until it was repealed. he soon became a steamboat owner. when the government was paying a large subsidy for carrying the european mails, he offered to carry them free and give better service. his offer was accepted, and in this way he soon built up an enormous freight and passenger traffic. foreseeing the great future of railroads in a country like ours, he plunged into railroad enterprises with all his might, laying the foundation for the vast vanderbilt system of to-day. young philip armour joined the long caravan of forty-niners, and crossed the "great american desert" with all his possessions in a prairie schooner drawn by mules. hard work and steady gains carefully saved in the mines enabled him to start, six years later, in the grain and warehouse business in milwaukee. in nine years he made five hundred thousand dollars. but he saw his great opportunity in grant's order, "on to richmond." one morning in he knocked at the door of plankinton, partner in his venture as a pork packer. "i am going to take the next train to new york," said he, "to sell pork 'short.' grant and sherman have the rebellion by the throat, and pork will go down to twelve dollars a barrel." this was his opportunity. he went to new york and offered pork in large quantities at forty dollars per barrel. it was eagerly taken. the shrewd wall street speculators laughed at the young westerner, and told him pork would go to sixty dollars, for the war was not nearly over. mr. armour, however, kept on selling, grant continued to advance. richmond fell, pork fell with it to twelve dollars a barrel, and mr. armour cleared two millions of dollars. john d. rockefeller saw his opportunity in petroleum. he could see a large population in this country with very poor lights. petroleum was plentiful, but the refining process was so crude that the product was inferior, and not wholly safe. here was rockefeller's chance. taking into partnership samuel andrews, the porter in a machine shop where both men had worked, he started a single barrel "still" in , using an improved process discovered by his partner. they made a superior grade of oil and prospered rapidly. they admitted a third partner, mr. flagler, but andrews soon became dissatisfied. "what will you take for your interest?" asked rockefeller. andrews wrote carelessly on a piece of paper, "one million dollars." within twenty-four hours mr. rockefeller handed him the amount, saying, "cheaper at one million than ten." in twenty years the business of the little refinery, scarcely worth one thousand dollars for building and apparatus, had grown into the standard oil trust, capitalized at ninety millions of dollars, with stock quoted at , giving a market value of one hundred and fifty millions. these are illustrations of seizing opportunity for the purpose of making money. but fortunately there is a new generation of electricians, of engineers, of scholars, of artists, of authors, and of poets, who find opportunities, thick as thistles, for doing something _nobler than merely amassing riches_. wealth is not an end to strive for, but an opportunity; not the climax of a man's career, but an incident. mrs. elizabeth fry, a quaker lady, saw her opportunity in the prisons of england. from three hundred to four hundred half-naked women, as late as , would often be huddled in a single ward of newgate, london, awaiting trial. they had neither beds nor bedding, but women, old and young, and little girls, slept in filth and rags on the floor. no one seemed to care for them, and the government merely furnished food to keep them alive. mrs. fry visited newgate, calmed the howling mob, and told them she wished to establish a school for the young women and the girls, and asked them to select a schoolmistress from their own number. they were amazed, but chose a young woman who had been committed for stealing a watch. in three months these "wild beasts," as they were sometimes called, became harmless and kind. the reform spread until the government legalized the system, and good women throughout great britain became interested in the work of educating and clothing these outcasts. fourscore years have passed, and her plan has been adopted throughout the civilized world. a boy in england had been run over by a car, and the bright blood spurted from a severed artery. no one seemed to know what to do until another boy, astley cooper, took his handkerchief and stopped the bleeding by pressure above the wound. the praise which he received for thus saving the boy's life encouraging him to become a surgeon, the foremost of his day. "the time comes to the young surgeon," says arnold, "when, after long waiting, and patient study and experiment, he is suddenly confronted with his first critical operation. the great surgeon is away. time is pressing. life and death hang in the balance. is he equal to the emergency? can he fill the great surgeon's place, and do his work? if he can, he is the one of all others who is wanted. _his opportunity confronts him_. he and it are face to face. shall he confess his ignorance and inability, or step into fame and fortune? it is for him to say." are you prepared for a great opportunity? "hawthorne dined one day with longfellow," said james t. fields, "and brought a friend, with him from salem. after dinner the friend said, 'i have been trying to persuade hawthorne to write a story based upon a legend of acadia, and still current there,--the legend of a girl who, in the dispersion of the acadians, was separated from her lover, and passed her life in waiting and seeking for him, and only found him dying in a hospital when both were old.' longfellow wondered that the legend did not strike the fancy of hawthorne, and he said to him, 'if you have really made up your mind not to use it for a story, will you let me have it for a poem?' to this hawthorne consented, and promised, moreover, not to treat the subject in prose till longfellow had seen what he could do with it in verse. longfellow seized his opportunity and gave to the world 'evangeline, or the exile of the acadians.'" open eyes will discover opportunities everywhere; open ears will never fail to detect the cries of those who are perishing for assistance; open hearts will never want for worthy objects upon which to bestow their gifts; open hands will never lack for noble work to do. everybody had noticed the overflow when a solid is immersed in a vessel filled with water, although no one had made use of his knowledge that the body displaces its exact bulk of liquid; but when archimedes observed the fact, he perceived therein an easy method of finding the cubical contents of objects, however irregular in shape. everybody knew how steadily a suspended weight, when moved, sways back and forth until friction and the resistance of the air bring it to rest, yet no one considered this information of the slightest practical importance; but the boy galileo, as he watched a lamp left swinging by accident in the cathedral at pisa, saw in the regularity of those oscillations the useful principle of the pendulum. even the iron doors of a prison were not enough to shut him out from research. he experimented with the straw of his cell, and learned valuable lessons about the relative strength of tubes and rods of equal diameters. for ages astronomers had been familiar with the rings of saturn, and regarded them merely as curious exceptions to the supposed law of planetary formation; but laplace saw that, instead of being exceptions, they are the sole remaining visible evidences of certain stages in the invariable process of star manufacture, and from their mute testimony he added a valuable chapter to the scientific history of creation. there was not a sailor in europe who had not wondered what might lie beyond the western ocean, but it remained for columbus to steer boldly out into an unknown sea and discover a new world. innumerable apples had fallen from trees, often hitting heedless men on the head as if to set them thinking, but newton was the first to realize that they fall to the earth by the same law which holds the planets in their courses and prevents the momentum of all the atoms in the universe from hurling them wildly back to chaos. lightning had dazzled the eyes, and thunder had jarred the ears of men since the days of adam, in the vain attempt to call their attention to the all-pervading and tremendous energy of electricity; but the discharges of heaven's artillery were seen and heard only by the eye and ear of terror until franklin, by a simple experiment, proved that lightning is but one manifestation of a resistless yet controllable force, abundant as air and water. like many others, these men are considered great, simply because they improved opportunities common to the whole human race. read the story of any successful man and mark its moral, told thousands of years ago by solomon: "seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings." this proverb is well illustrated by the career of the industrious franklin, for he stood before five kings and dined with two. he who improves an opportunity sows a seed which will yield fruit in opportunity for himself and others. every one who has labored honestly in the past has aided to place knowledge and comfort within the reach of a constantly increasing number. avenues greater in number, wider in extent, easier of access than ever before existed, stand open to the sober, frugal, energetic and able mechanic, to the educated youth, to the office boy and to the clerk--avenues through which they can reap greater successes than ever before within the reach of these classes in the history of the world. a little while ago there were only three or four professions--now there are fifty. and of trades, where there was one, there are a hundred now. "what is its name?" asked a visitor in a studio, when shown, among many gods, one whose face was concealed by hair, and which had wings on its feet. "opportunity," replied the sculptor. "why is its face hidden?" "because men seldom know him when he comes to them." "why has he wings on his feet?" "because he is soon gone, and once gone, cannot be overtaken." "opportunity has hair in front," says a latin author; "behind she is bald; if you seize her by the forelock, you may hold her, but, if suffered to escape, not jupiter himself can catch her again." but what is the best opportunity to him who cannot or will not use it? "it was my lot," said a shipmaster, "to fall in with the ill-fated steamer _central america_. the night was closing in, the sea rolling high; but i hailed the crippled steamer and asked if they needed help. 'i am in a sinking condition,' cried captain herndon. 'had you not better send your passengers on board directly?' i asked. 'will you not lay by me until morning?' replied captain herndon. 'i will try,' i answered 'but had you not better send your passengers on board _now_?' 'lay by me till morning,' again shouted captain herndon. "i tried to lay by him, but at night, such was the heavy roll of the sea, i could not keep my position, and i never saw the steamer again. in an hour and a half after he said, 'lay by me till morning,' his vessel, with its living freight, went down. the captain and crew and most of the passengers found a grave in the deep." captain herndon appreciated the value of the opportunity he had neglected when it was beyond his reach, but of what avail was the bitterness of his self-reproach when his last moments came? how many lives were sacrificed to his unintelligent hopefulness and indecision! like him the feeble, the sluggish, and the purposeless too often see no meaning in the happiest occasions, until too late they learn the old lesson that the mill can never grind with the water which has passed. such people are always a little too late or a little too early in everything they attempt. "they have three hands apiece," said john b. gough; "a right hand, a left hand, and a little behindhand." as boys, they were late for school, and unpunctual in their home duties. that is the way the habit is acquired; and now, when responsibility claims them, they think that if they had only gone yesterday they would have obtained the situation, or they can probably get one to-morrow. they remember plenty of chances to make money, or know how to make it some other time than now; they see how to improve themselves or help others in the future, but perceive no opportunity in the present. they cannot _seize their opportunity_. joe stoker, rear brakeman on the ---- accommodation train, was exceedingly popular with all the railroad men. the passengers liked him, too, for he was eager to please and always ready to answer questions. but he did not realize the full responsibility of his position. he "took the world easy," and occasionally tippled; and if any one remonstrated, he would give one of his brightest smiles, and reply, in such a good-natured way that the friend would think he had over-estimated the danger: "thank you. i'm all right. don't you worry." one evening there was a heavy snowstorm, and his train was delayed. joe complained of extra duties because of the storm, and slyly sipped occasional draughts from a flat bottle. soon he became quite jolly; but the conductor and engineer of the train were both vigilant and anxious. between two stations the train came to a quick halt. the engine had blown out its cylinder head, and an express was due in a few minutes upon the same track. the conductor hurried to the rear car, and ordered joe back with a red light. the brakeman laughed and said: "there's no hurry. wait till i get my overcoat." the conductor answered gravely, "don't stop a minute, joe. the express is due." "all right," said joe, smilingly. the conductor then hurried forward to the engine. but the brakeman did not go at once. he stopped to put on his overcoat. then he took another sip from the flat bottle to keep the cold out. then he slowly grasped the lantern and, whistling, moved leisurely down the track. he had not gone ten paces before he heard the puffing of the express. then he ran for the curve, but it was too late. in a horrible minute the engine of the express had telescoped the standing train, and the shrieks of the mangled passengers mingled with the hissing escape of steam. later on, when they asked for joe, he had disappeared; but the next day he was found in a barn, delirious, swinging an empty lantern in front of an imaginary train, and crying, "oh, that i had!" he was taken home, and afterwards to an asylum, and there is no sadder sound in that sad place than the unceasing moan, "oh, that i had! oh, that i had!" of the unfortunate brakeman, whose criminal indulgence brought disaster to many lives. "oh, that i had!" or "oh, that i had not!" is the silent cry of many a man who would give life itself for the opportunity to go back and retrieve some long-past error. "there are moments," says dean alford, "which are worth more than years. we cannot help it. there is no proportion between spaces of time in importance nor in value. a stray, unthought-of five minutes may contain the event of a life. and this all-important moment--who can tell when it will be upon us?" "what we call a turning-point," says arnold, "is simply an occasion which sums up and brings to a result previous training. accidental circumstances are nothing except to men who have been trained to take advantage of them." the trouble with us is that we are ever looking for a princely chance of acquiring riches, or fame, or worth. we are dazzled by what emerson calls the "shallow americanism" of the day. we are expecting mastery without apprenticeship, knowledge without study, and riches by credit. young men and women, why stand ye here all the day idle? was the land all occupied before you were born? has the earth ceased to yield its increase? are the seats all taken? the positions all filled? the chances all gone? are the resources of your country fully developed? are the secrets of nature all mastered? is there no way in which you can utilize these passing moments to improve yourself or benefit others? is the competition of modern existence so fierce that you must be content simply to gain an honest living? have you received the gift of life in this progressive age, wherein all the experience of the past is garnered for your inspiration, merely that you may increase by one the sum total of purely animal existence? born in an age and country in which knowledge and opportunity abound as never before, how can you sit with folded hands, asking god's aid in work for which he has already given you the necessary faculties and strength? even when the chosen people supposed their progress checked by the red sea, and their leader paused for divine help, the lord said, "wherefore criest thou unto me? speak unto the children of israel, _that they go forward_." with the world full of work that needs to be done; with human nature so constituted that often a pleasant word or a trifling assistance may stem the tide of disaster for some fellow man, or clear his path to success; with our own faculties so arranged that in honest, earnest, persistent endeavor we find our highest good; and with countless noble examples to encourage us to dare and to do, each moment brings us to the threshold of some new opportunity. don't _wait_ for your opportunity. _make it_,--make it as the shepherd-boy ferguson made his when he calculated the distances of the stars with a handful of glass beads on a string. make it as george stephenson made his when he mastered the rules of mathematics with a bit of chalk on the grimy sides of the coal wagons in the mines. make it, as napoleon made his in a hundred "impossible" situations. make it, as _all leaders of men_, in war and in peace, have made their chances of success. golden opportunities are nothing to laziness, but industry makes the commonest chances golden. "there is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries; and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures." "'tis never offered twice; seize, then, the hour when fortune smiles, and duty points the way; nor shrink aside to 'scape the specter fear, nor pause, though pleasure beckon from her bower; but bravely bear thee onward to the goal." chapter ii wanted--a man "wanted; men: not systems fit and wise, not faiths with rigid eyes, not wealth in mountain piles, not power with gracious smiles, not even the potent pen; wanted; men." all the world cries, where is the man who will save us? we want a man! don't look so far for this man. you have him at hand. this man,--it is you, it is i, it is each one of us! . . . how to constitute one's self a man? nothing harder, if one knows not how to will it; nothing easier, if one wills it.--alexandre dumas. diogenes sought with a lantern at noontide in ancient athens for a perfectly honest man, and sought in vain. in the market place he once cried aloud, "hear me, o men"; and, when a crowd collected around him, he said scornfully: "i called for men, not pygmies." over the door of every profession, every occupation, every calling, the world has a standing advertisement: "wanted--a man." wanted, a man who will not lose his individuality in a crowd, a man who has the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say "no," though all the world say "yes." wanted, a man who, though he is dominated by a mighty purpose, will not permit one great faculty to dwarf, cripple, warp, or mutilate his manhood; who will not allow the over-development of one faculty to stunt or paralyze his other faculties. wanted, a man who is larger than his calling, who considers it a low estimate of his occupation to value it merely as a means of getting a living. wanted, a man who sees self-development, education and culture, discipline and drill, character and manhood, in his occupation. a thousand pulpits vacant in a single religious denomination, a thousand preachers standing idle in the market place, while a thousand church committees scour the land for men to fill those same vacant pulpits, and scour in vain, is a sufficient indication, in one direction at least, of the largeness of the opportunities of the age, and also of the crying need of good men. wanted, a man of courage who is not a coward in any part of his nature. wanted, a man who is well balanced, who is not cursed with some little defect of weakness which cripples his usefulness and neutralizes his powers. wanted, a man who is symmetrical, and not one-sided in his development, who has not sent all the energies of his being into one narrow specialty and allowed all the other branches of his life to wither and die. wanted, a man who is broad, who does not take half views of things; a man who mixes common sense with his theories, who does not let a college education spoil him for practical, every-day life; a man who prefers substance to show, and one who regards his good name as a priceless treasure. wanted, a man "who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to heed a strong will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself." the world wants a man who is educated all over; whose nerves are brought to their acutest sensibility; whose brain is cultured, keen, incisive, broad; whose hands are deft; whose eyes are alert, sensitive, microscopic; whose heart is tender, magnanimous, true. the whole world is looking for such a man. although there are millions out of employment, yet it is almost impossible to find just the right man in almost any department of life, and yet everywhere we see the advertisement: "wanted--a man." rousseau, in his celebrated essay on education, says; "according to the order of nature, men being equal, their common vocation is the profession of humanity; and whoever is well educated to discharge the duty of a man can not be badly prepared to fill any of those offices that have a relation to him. it matters little to me whether my pupil be designed for the army, the pulpit, or the bar. nature has destined us to the offices of human life antecedent to our destination concerning society. to live is the profession i would teach him. when i have done with him, it is true he will be neither a soldier, a lawyer, nor a divine. _let him first be a man_; fortune may remove him from one rank to another as she pleases, he will be always found in his place." a little, short doctor of divinity in a large baptist convention stood on a step and said he thanked god he was a baptist. the audience could not hear and called "louder." "get up higher," some one said. "i can't," he replied. "to be a baptist is as high as one can get." but there is something higher than being a baptist, and that is being a _man_. as emerson says, talleyrand's question is ever the main one; not, is he rich? is he committed? is he well-meaning? has he this or that faculty? is he of the movement? is he of the establishment? but is he anybody? does he stand for something? he must be good of his kind. that is all that talleyrand, all that the common sense of mankind asks. when garfield as a boy was asked what he meant to be he answered: "first of all, i must make myself a man; if i do not succeed in that, i can succeed in nothing." montaigne says our work is not to train a soul by itself alone, nor a body by itself alone, but to train a man. one great need for the world to-day is for men and women who are good animals. to endure the strain of our concentrated civilization, the coming man and woman must have good bodies and an excess of animal spirits. what more glorious than a magnificent manhood, animated with the bounding spirits of overflowing health? it is a sad sight to see thousands of students graduated every year from our grand institutions whose object is to make stalwart, independent, self-supporting men, turned out into the world saplings instead of stalwart oaks, "memory-glands" instead of brainy men, helpless instead of self-supporting, sickly instead of robust, weak instead of strong, leaning instead of erect. "so many promising youths, and never a finished man!" the character sympathizes with and unconsciously takes on the nature of the body. a peevish, snarling, ailing man can not develop the vigor and strength of character which is possible to a healthy, robust, cheerful man. there is an inherent love in the human mind for _wholeness_, a demand that man shall come up to the highest standard; and there is an inherent protest or contempt for preventable deficiency. nature, too, demands that man be ever at the top of his condition. as we stand upon the seashore while the tide is coming in, one wave reaches up the beach far higher than any previous one, then recedes, and for some time none that follows comes up to its mark, but after a while the whole sea is there and beyond it. so now and then there comes a man head and shoulders above his fellow men, showing that nature has not lost her ideal, and after a while even the average man will overtop the highest wave of manhood yet given to the world. apelles hunted over greece for many years, studying the fairest points of beautiful women, getting here an eye, there a forehead and there a nose, here a grace and there a turn of beauty, for his famous portrait of a perfect woman which enchanted the world. so the coming man will be a composite, many in one. he will absorb into himself not the weakness, not the follies, but the strength and the virtues of other types of men. he will be a man raised to the highest power. he will be a self-centered, equipoised, and ever master of himself. his sensibility will not be deadened or blunted by violation of nature's laws. his whole character will be impressionable, and will respond to the most delicate touches of nature. the first requisite of all education and discipline should be man-timber. tough timber must come from well grown, sturdy trees. such wood can be turned into a mast, can be fashioned into a piano or an exquisite carving. but it must become timber first. time and patience develop the sapling into the tree. so through discipline, education, experience, the sapling child is developed into hardy mental, moral, physical man-timber. if the youth should start out with the fixed determination that every statement he makes shall be the exact truth; that every promise he makes shall be redeemed to the letter; that every appointment shall be kept with the strictest faithfulness and with full regard for other men's time; if he should hold his reputation as a priceless treasure, feel that the eyes of the world are upon him that he must not deviate a hair's breadth from the truth and right; if he should take such a stand at the outset, he would, like george peabody, come to have almost unlimited credit and the confidence of everybody who knows him. what are palaces and equipages; what though a man could cover a continent with his title-deeds, or an ocean with his commerce; compared with conscious rectitude, with a face that never turns pale at the accuser's voice, with a bosom that never throbs with fear of exposure, with a heart that might be turned inside out and disclose no stain of dishonor? to have done no man a wrong; to have put your signature to no paper to which the purest angel in heaven might not have been an attesting witness; to walk and live, unseduced, within arm's length of what is not your own, with nothing between your desire and its gratification but the invisible law of rectitude;--_this is to be a man_. man is the only great thing in the universe. all the ages have been trying to produce a perfect model. only one complete man has yet evolved. the best of us are but prophesies of what is to come. what constitutes a state? not high-raised battlement or labored mound, thick wall or moated gate; not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned; not bays and broad-armed ports, where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride; not starred and spangled courts, where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride. no: men, high-minded men, with powers as far above dull brutes endued in forest, brake, or den, as beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude,-- men who their duties know, but know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain, prevent the long-aimed blow, and crush the tyrant while they rend the chain. william jones. god give us men. a time like this demands strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands: men whom the lust of office does not kill; men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; men who possess opinions and a will; men who have honor--men who will not lie; men who can stand before a demagogue and scorn his treacherous flatteries without winking; tall men sun-crowned, who live above the fog in public duty, and in private thinking. anon. chapter iii boys with no chance in the blackest soils grow the fairest flowers, and the loftiest and strongest trees spring heavenward among the rocks.--j. g. holland. poverty is very terrible, and sometimes kills the very soul within us, but it is the north wind that lashes men into vikings; it is the soft, luscious south wind which lulls them to lotus dreams.--ouida. poverty is the sixth sense.--german proverb. it is not every calamity that is a curse, and early adversity is often a blessing. surmounted difficulties not only teach, but hearten us in our future struggles.--sharpe. there can be no doubt that the captains of industry to-day, using that term in its broadest sense, are men who began life as poor boys.--seth low. 'tis a common proof, that lowliness is young ambition's ladder! shakespeare. "i am a child of the court," said a pretty little girl at a children's party in denmark; "_my_ father is groom of the chambers, which is a very high office. and those whose names end with 'sen,'" she added, "can never be anything at all. we must put our arms akimbo, and make the elbows quite pointed, so as to keep these 'sen' people at a great distance." "but my papa can buy a hundred dollars' worth of bonbons, and give them away to children," angrily exclaimed the daughter of the rich merchant peter_sen_. "can your papa do that?" "yes," chimed in the daughter of an editor, "my papa can put your papa and everybody's papa into the newspaper. all sorts of people are afraid of him, my papa says, for he can do as he likes with the paper." "oh, if i could be one of them!" thought a little boy peeping through the crack of the door, by permission of the cook for whom he had been turning the spit. but no, _his_ parents had not even a penny to spare, and his name ended in "sen." years afterwards when the children of the party had become men and women, some of them went to see a splendid house, filled with all kinds of beautiful and valuable objects. there they met the owner, once the very boy who thought it so great a privilege to peep at them through a crack in the door as they played. he had become the great sculptor thorwald_sen_. this sketch is adapted from a story by a poor danish cobbler's son, another whose name did not keep him from becoming famous,--hans christian ander_sen_. "there is no fear of my starving, father," said the deaf boy, kitto, begging to be taken from the poorhouse and allowed to struggle for an education; "we are in the midst of plenty, and i know how to prevent hunger. the hottentots subsist a long time on nothing but a little gum; they also, when hungry, tie a ligature around their bodies. cannot i do so, too? the hedges furnish blackberries and nuts, and the fields, turnips; a hayrick will make an excellent bed." the poor deaf boy with a drunken father, who was thought capable of nothing better than making shoes as a pauper, became one of the greatest biblical scholars in the world. his first book was written in the workhouse. creon was a greek slave, as a writer tells the story in kate field's "washington," but he was also a slave of the genius of art. beauty was his god, and he worshiped it with rapt adoration. it was after the repulse of the great persian invader, and a law was in force that under penalty of death no one should espouse art except freemen. when the law was enacted he was engaged upon a group for which he hoped some day to receive the commendation of phidias, the greatest sculptor living, and even the praise of pericles. what was to be done? into the marble block before him creon had put his head, his heart, his soul, his life. on his knees, from day to day, he had prayed for fresh inspiration, new skill. he believed, gratefully and proudly, that apollo, answering his prayers, had directed his hand and had breathed into the figures the life that seemed to animate them; but now,--now, all the gods seemed to have deserted him. cleone, his devoted sister, felt the blow as deeply as her brother. "o aphrodite!" she prayed, "immortal aphrodite, high enthroned child of zeus, my queen, my goddess, my patron, at whose shrine i have daily laid my offerings, to be now my friend, the friend of my brother!" then to her brother she said: "o creon, go to the cellar beneath our house. it is dark, but i will furnish light and food. continue your work; the gods will befriend us." to the cellar creon went, and guarded and attended by his sister, day and night, he proceeded with his glorious but dangerous task. about this time all greece was invited to athens to behold an exhibit of works of art. the display took place in the agora. pericles presided. at his side was aspasia. phidias, socrates, sophocles, and other renowned men stood near him. the works of the great masters were there. but one group, far more beautiful than the rest,--a group that apollo himself must have chiseled,--challenged universal attention, exciting at the same time no little envy among rival artists. "who is the sculptor of this group?" none could tell. heralds repeated the question, but there was no answer. "a mystery, then! can it be the work of a slave?" amid great commotion a beautiful maiden with disarranged dress, disheveled hair, a determined expression in her eyes, and with closed lips, was dragged into the agora. "this woman," cried the officers, "this woman knows the sculptor; we are sure of it; but she will not tell his name." cleone was questioned, but was silent. she was informed of the penalty of her conduct, but her lips remained closed. "then," said pericles, "the law is imperative, and i am the minister of the law. take the maid to the dungeon." as he spoke a youth with flowing hair, emaciated, but with black eyes that beamed with the flashing light of genius, rushed forward, and flinging himself before him exclaimed: "o pericles, forgive and save the maid! she is my sister. i am the culprit. the group is the work of my hands, the hands of a slave." the indignant crowd interrupted him and cried, "to the dungeon, to the dungeon with the slave." "as i live, no!" said pericles, rising. "behold that group! apollo decides by it that there is something higher in greece than an unjust law. the highest purpose of law should be the development of the beautiful. if athens lives in the memory and affections of men, it is her devotion to art that will immortalize her. not to the dungeon, but to my side bring the youth." and there, in the presence of the assembled multitude, aspasia placed the crown of olives, which she held in her hands, on the brow of creon; and at the same time, amid universal plaudits, she tenderly kissed creon's affectionate and devoted sister. the athenians erected a statue to aesop, who was born a slave, that men might know that the way to honor is open to all. in greece, wealth and immortality were the sure reward of the man who could distinguish himself in art, literature, or war. no other country ever did so much to encourage and inspire struggling merit. "i was born in poverty," said vice-president henry wilson. "want sat by my cradle. i know what it is to ask a mother for bread when she has none to give. i left my home at ten years of age, and served an apprenticeship of eleven years, receiving a month's schooling each year, and, at the end of eleven years of hard work, a yoke of oxen and six sheep, which brought me eighty-four dollars. i never spent the sum of one dollar for pleasure, counting every penny from the time i was born till i was twenty-one years of age. i know what it is to travel weary miles and ask my fellow men to give me leave to toil. . . . in the first month after i was twenty-one years of age, i went into the woods, drove a team, and cut mill-logs. i rose in the morning before daylight and worked hard till after dark, and received the magnificent sum of six dollars for the month's work! each of these dollars looked as large to me as the moon looks to-night." mr. wilson determined never to lose an opportunity for self-culture or self-advancement. few men knew so well the value of spare moments. _he seized them as though they were gold_ and would not let one pass until he had wrung from it every possibility. he managed to read a thousand good books before he was twenty-one--what a lesson for boys on a farm! when he left the farm he started on foot for natick, mass., over one hundred miles distant, to learn the cobbler's trade. he went through boston that he might see bunker hill monument and other historical landmarks. the whole trip cost him but one dollar and six cents. in a year he was the head of a debating club at natick. before eight years had passed, he made his great speech against slavery, in the massachusetts legislature. twelve years later he stood shoulder to shoulder with the polished sumner in congress. with him, _every occasion was a great occasion_. he ground every circumstance of his life into material for success. "don't go about the town any longer in that outlandish rig. let me give you an order on the store. dress up a little, horace." horace greeley looked down on his clothes as if he had never before noticed how seedy they were, and replied: "you see mr. sterrett, my father is on a new place, and i want to help him all i can." he had spent but six dollars for personal expenses in seven months, and was to receive one hundred and thirty-five from judge j. m. sterret of the erie "gazette" for substitute work. he retained but fifteen dollars and gave the rest to his father, with whom he had moved from vermont to western pennsylvania, and for whom he had camped out many a night to guard the sheep from wolves. he was nearly twenty-one; and, although tall and gawky, with tow-colored hair, a pale face and whining voice, he resolved to seek his fortune in new york city. slinging his bundle of clothes on a stick over his shoulder, he walked sixty miles through the woods to buffalo, rode on a canal boat to albany, descended the hudson in a barge, and reached new york, just as the sun was rising, august , . he found board over a saloon at two dollars and a half a week. his journey of six hundred miles had cost him but five dollars. for days horace wandered up and down the streets, going into scores of buildings and asking if they wanted "a hand"; but "no" was the invariable reply. his quaint appearance led many to think he was an escaped apprentice. one sunday at his boarding-place he heard that printers were wanted at "west's printing-office." he was at the door at five o'clock monday morning, and asked the foreman for a job at seven. the latter had no idea that a country greenhorn could set type for the polyglot testament on which help was needed, but said: "fix up a case for him and we'll see if he _can_ do anything." when the proprietor came in, he objected to the new-comer and told the foreman to let him go when his first day's work was done. that night horace showed a proof of the largest and most correct day's work that had then been done. in ten years he was a partner in a small printing-office. he founded the "new yorker," the best weekly paper in the united states, but it was not profitable. when harrison was nominated for president in , greeley started "the log-cabin," which reached the then fabulous circulation of ninety thousand. but on this paper at a penny per copy he made no money. his next venture was "the new york tribune," price one cent. to start it he borrowed a thousand dollars and printed five thousand copies of the first number. it was difficult to give them all away. he began with six hundred subscribers, and increased the list to eleven thousand in six weeks. the demand for the "tribune" grew faster than new machinery could be obtained to print it. it was a paper whose editor, whatever his mistakes, always tried to be right. james gordon bennett had made a failure of his "new york courier" in , of the "globe" in , and of the "pennsylvanian" a little later, and was only known as a clever writer for the press, who had saved a few hundred dollars by hard labor and strict economy for fourteen years. in he asked horace greeley to join him in starting a new daily paper, the "new york herald." greeley declined, but recommended two young printers, who formed partnership with bennett, and the "herald" was started on may , , with a cash capital to pay expenses for _ten days_. bennet hired a small cellar in wall street, furnished it with a chair and a desk composed of a plank supported by two barrels; and there, doing all the work except the printing, began the work of making a really great daily newspaper, a thing then unknown in america, as all its predecessors were party organs. steadily the young man struggled towards his ideal, giving the news, fresh and crisp, from an ever-widening area, until his paper was famous for giving the current history of the world as fully and quickly as any competitor, and often much more thoroughly and far more promptly. neither labor nor expense was spared in obtaining prompt and reliable information on every topic of general interest. it was an up-hill job, but its completion was finally marked by the opening at the corner of broadway and ann street of the most complete newspaper establishment then known. one of the first things to attract the attention on entering george w. childs' private office in philadelphia was this motto, which was the key-note of the success of a boy who started with "no chance": "nihil sine labore." it was his early ambition to own the "philadelphia ledger" and the great building in which it was published; but how could a poor boy working for $ . a week ever hope to own such a great paper? however, he had great determination and indomitable energy; and as soon as he had saved a few hundred dollars as a clerk in a bookstore, he began business as a publisher. he made "great hits" in some of the works he published, such as "kane's arctic expedition." he had a keen sense of what would please the public, and there seemed no end to his industry. in spite of the fact that the "ledger" was losing money every day, his friends could not dissuade him from buying it, and in the dreams of his boyhood found fulfilment. he doubled the subscription price, lowered the advertising rates, to the astonishment of everybody, and the paper entered upon a career of remarkable prosperity, the profits sometimes amounting to over four hundred thousand dollars a year. he always refused to lower the wages of his employees even when every other establishment in philadelphia was doing so. at a banquet in lyons, nearly a century and a half ago, a discussion arose in regard to the meaning of a painting representing some scene in the mythology or history of greece. seeing that the discussion was growing warm, the host turned to one of the waiters and asked him to explain the picture. greatly to the surprise of the company, the servant gave a clear concise account of the whole subject, so plain and convincing that it at once settled the dispute. "in what school have you studied, monsieur?" asked one of the guests, addressing the waiter with great respect. "i have studied in many schools, monseigneur," replied the young servant: "but the school in which i studied longest and learned most is the school of adversity." well had he profited by poverty's lessons; for, although then but a poor waiter, all europe soon rang with the fame of the writings of the greatest genius of his age and country, jean jacques rousseau. the smooth sand beach of lake erie constituted the foolscap on which, for want of other material, p. r. spencer, a barefoot boy with no chance, perfected the essential principles of the spencerian system of penmanship, the most beautiful exposition of graphic art. for eight years william cobbett had followed the plow, when he ran away to london, copied law papers for eight or nine months, and then enlisted in an infantry regiment. during his first year of soldier life he subscribed to a circulating library at chatham, read every book in it, and began to study. "i learned grammar when i was a private soldier on the pay of sixpence a day. the edge of my berth, or that of the guard-bed, was my seat to study in; my knapsack was my bookcase; a bit of board lying on my lap was my writing-table, and the task did not demand anything like a year of my life. i had no money to purchase candles or oil; in winter it was rarely that i could get any evening light but that of the fire, and only my turn, even, of that. to buy a pen or a sheet of paper i was compelled to forego some portion of my food, though in a state of half starvation. i had no moment of time that i could call my own, and i had to read and write amidst the talking, laughing, singing, whistling, and bawling of at least half a score of the most thoughtless of men, and that, too, in the hours of their freedom from all control. think not lightly of the _farthing_ i had to give, now and then, for pen, ink, or paper. that farthing was, alas! a great sum to me. i was as tall as i am now, and i had great health and great exercise. the whole of the money not expended for us at market was _twopence a week_ for each man. i remember, and well i may! that upon one occasion i had, after all absolutely necessary expenses, made shift to have a half-penny in reserve, which i had destined for the purpose of a red herring in the morning, but so hungry as to be hardly able to endure life, when i pulled off my clothes at night, i found that i had lost my half-penny. i buried my head in the miserable sheet and rug, and cried like a child." but cobbett made even his poverty and hard circumstances serve his all-absorbing passion for knowledge and success. "if i," said he, "under such circumstances could encounter and overcome this task, is there, can there be in the whole world, a youth to find any excuse for its non-performance?" humphrey davy had but a slender chance to acquire great scientific knowledge, yet he had true mettle in him, and he made even old pans, kettles, and bottles contribute to his success, as he experimented and studied in the attic of the apothecary-store where he worked. "many a farmer's son," says thurlow weed, "has found the best opportunities for mental improvement in his intervals of leisure while tending 'sap-bush.' such, at any rate, was my own experience. at night you had only to feed the kettles and keep up the fires, the sap having been gathered and the wood cut before dark. during the day we would always lay in a good stock of 'fat-pine,' by the light of which, blazing bright before the sugar-house, i passed many a delightful night in reading. i remember in this way to have a history of the french revolution, and to have obtained a better and more enduring knowledge of its events and horrors and of the actors in that great national tragedy than i have received from all subsequent reading. i remember, also, how happy i was in being able to borrow the books of a mr. keyes, after a two-mile tramp through the snow, shoeless, my feet swaddled in remnants of rag carpet." "may i have a holiday to-morrow, father?" asked theodore parker one august afternoon. the poor lexington millwright looked in surprise at his youngest son, for it was a busy time, but he saw from the boy's earnest face that he had no ordinary object in view, and granted the request. theodore rose very early the next morning, walked through the dust ten miles to harvard college, and presented himself for a candidate for admission. he had been unable to attend school regularly since he was eight years old, but he had managed to go three months each winter, and had reviewed his lessons again and again as he followed the plow or worked at other tasks. all his odd moments had been hoarded, too, for reading useful books, which he borrowed. one book he could not borrow, but he felt that he must have it; so on summer mornings he rose long before the sun and picked bushel after bushel of berries, which he sent to boston, and so got the money to buy that coveted latin dictionary. "well done, my boy!" said the millwright, when his son came home late at night and told of his successful examination; "but, theodore, i cannot afford to keep you there!" "true, father," said theodore, "i am not going to stay there; i shall study at home, at odd times, and thus prepare myself for a final examination, which will give me a diploma." he did this; and, by teaching school as he grew older, got money to study for two years at harvard, where he was graduated with honor. years after, when, as the trusted friend and adviser of seward, chase, sumner, garrison, horace mann, and wendell phillips, his influence for good was felt in the hearts of all his countrymen, it was a pleasure for him to recall his early struggles and triumphs among the rocks and bushes of lexington. "the proudest moment of my life," said elihu burritt, "was when i had first gained the full meaning of the first fifteen lines of homer's iliad." elihu burritt's father died when he was sixteen, and elihu was apprenticed to a blacksmith in his native village of new britain, conn. he had to work at the forge for ten or twelve hours a day; but while blowing the bellows, he would solve mentally difficult problems in arithmetic. in a diary kept at worcester, whither he went some ten years later to enjoy its library privileges, are such entries as these,--"monday, june , headache, pages cuvier's 'theory of the earth,' pages french, hours' forging. tuesday, june , lines hebrew, danish, lines bohemian, lines polish, names of stars, hours' forging. wednesday, june , lines hebrew, lines syriac, hours' forging." he mastered languages and dialects. he became eminent as the "learned blacksmith," and for his noble work in the service of humanity. edward everett said of the manner in which this boy with no chance acquired great learning: "it is enough to make one who has good opportunities for education hang his head in shame." the barefoot christine nilsson in remote sweden had little chance, but she won the admiration of the world for her wondrous power of song, combined with rare womanly grace. "let me say in regard to your adverse worldly circumstances," says dr. talmage to young men, "that you are on a level now with those who are finally to succeed. mark my words, and think of it thirty years from now. you will find that those who are then the millionaires of this country, who are the orators of the country, who are the poets of the country, who are the strong merchants of the country, who are the great philanthropists of the country,--mightiest in the church and state,--are now on a level with you, not an inch above you, and in straightened circumstances. "no outfit, no capital to start with? young man, go down to the library and get some books, and read of what wonderful mechanism god gave you in your hand, in your foot, in your eye, in your ear, and then ask some doctor to take you into the dissecting-room and illustrate to you what you have read about, and never again commit the blasphemy of saying you have no capital to start with. _equipped_? _why, the poorest young man is equipped as only the god of the whole universe could afford to equip him_." a newsboy is not a very promising candidate for success or honors in any line of life. a young man can't set out in life with much less chance than when he starts his "daily" for a living. yet the man who more than any other is responsible for the industrial regeneration of this continent started in life as a newsboy on the grand trunk railway. thomas alva edison was then about fifteen years of age. he had already begun to dabble in chemistry, and had fitted up a small itinerant laboratory. one day, as he was performing some occult experiment, the train rounded a curve, and the bottle of sulphuric acid broke. there followed a series of unearthly odors and unnatural complications. the conductor, who had suffered long and patiently, promptly ejected the youthful devotee, and in the process of the scientist's expulsion added a resounding box upon the ear. edison passed through one dramatic situation after another--always mastering it--until he attained at an early age the scientific throne of the world. when recently asked the secret of his success, he said he had always been a total abstainer and singularly moderate in everything but work. daniel manning who was president cleveland's first campaign manager and afterwards secretary of the treasury, started out as a newsboy with apparently the world against him. so did thurlow weed; so did david b. hill. new york seems to have been prolific in enterprising newsboys. what nonsense for two uneducated and unknown youths who met in a cheap boarding-house in boston to array themselves against an institution whose roots were embedded in the very constitution of our country, and which was upheld by scholars, statesmen, churches, wealth, and aristocracy, without distinction of creed or politics! what chance had they against the prejudices and sentiment of a nation? but these young men were fired by a lofty purpose, and they were thoroughly in earnest. one of them, benjamin lundy, had already started in ohio a paper called "the genius of universal liberty," and had carried the entire edition home on his back from the printing-office, twenty miles, every month. he had walked four hundred miles on his way to tennessee to increase his subscription list. he was no ordinary young man. with william lloyd garrison, he started to prosecute his work more earnestly in baltimore. the sight of the slave-pens along the principal streets; of vessel-loads of unfortunates torn from home and family and sent to southern ports; the heartrending scenes at the auction blocks, made an impression on garrison never to be forgotten; and the young man whose mother was too poor to send him to school, although she early taught him to hate oppression, resolved to devote his life to secure the freedom of these poor wretches. in the first issue of his paper, garrison urged an immediate emancipation, and called down upon his head the wrath of the entire community. he was arrested and sent to jail. john g. whittier, a noble friend in the north, was so touched at the news that, being too poor to furnish the money himself, he wrote to henry clay, begging him to release garrison by paying the fine. after forty-nine days of imprisonment he was set free. wendell phillips said of him, "he was imprisoned for his opinion when he was twenty-four. he had confronted a nation in the bloom of his youth." in boston, with no money, friends, or influence, in a little upstairs room, garrison started the "liberator." read the declaration of this poor young man with "no chance," in the very first issue: "i will be as harsh as truth, as uncompromising as justice. i am in earnest. i will not equivocate, i will not excuse; i will not retreat a single inch, and i will be heard." what audacity for a young man, with the world against him! hon. robert y. hayne, of south carolina, wrote to otis, mayor of boston, that some one had sent him a copy of the "liberator," and asked him to ascertain the name of the publisher. otis replied that he had found a poor young man printing "this insignificant sheet in an obscure hole, his only auxiliary a negro boy, his supporters a few persons of all colors and little influence." but this poor young man, eating, sleeping, and printing in this "obscure hole," had set the world to thinking, and must be suppressed. the vigilance association of south carolina offered a reward of fifteen hundred dollars for the arrest and prosecution of any one detected circulating the "liberator." the governors of one or two states set a price on the editor's head. the legislature of georgia offered a reward of five thousand dollars for his arrest and conviction. garrison and his coadjutors were denounced everywhere. a clergyman named lovejoy was killed by a mob in illinois for espousing the cause, while defending his printing-press, and in the old "cradle of american liberty" the wealth, power, and culture of massachusetts arrayed itself against the "abolitionists" so outrageously, that a mere spectator, a young lawyer of great promise, asked to be lifted upon the high platform, and replied in such a speech as was never before heard in faneuil hall. "when i heard the gentleman lay down the principles which place the murderers of lovejoy at alton side by side with otis and hancock, with quincy and adams," said wendell phillips, pointing to their portraits on the walls. "i thought those pictured lips would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant american, the slanderer of the dead. for the sentiments that he has uttered, on soil consecrated by the prayers of the puritans and the blood of patriots. the earth should have yawned and swallowed him up." the whole nation was wrought to fever heat. between the northern pioneers and southern chivalry the struggle was long and fierce, even in far california. the drama culminated in the shock of civil war. when the war was ended, and, after thirty-five years of untiring, heroic conflict, garrison was invited as the nation's guest, by president lincoln, to see the stars and stripes unfurled once more above fort sumter, an emancipated slave delivered the address of welcome, and his two daughters, no longer chattels in appreciation presented garrison with a beautiful wreath of flowers. about this time richard cobden, another powerful friend of the oppressed, died in london. his father had died leaving nine children almost penniless. the boy earned his living by watching a neighbor's sheep, but had no chance to attend school until he was ten years old. he was sent to a boarding-school, where he was abused, half starved, and allowed to write home only once in three months. at fifteen he entered his uncle's store in london as a clerk. he learned french by rising early and studying while his companions slept. he was soon sent out in a gig as a commercial traveler. he called upon john bright to enlist his aid in fighting the terrible "corn-laws" which were taking bread from the poor and giving it to the rich. he found mr. bright in great grief, for his wife was lying dead in the house. "there are thousands of homes in england at this moment," said richard cobden, "where wives, mothers, and children are dying of hunger. now, when the first paroxysm of grief is passed, i would advise you to come with me, and we will never rest until the corn-laws are repealed." cobden could no longer see the poor man's bread stopped at the custom-house and taxed for the benefit of the landlord and farmer, and he threw his whole soul into this great reform. "this is not a party question," said he, "for men of all parties are united upon it. it is a pantry question,--a question between the working millions and the aristocracy." they formed the "anti-corn-law league," which, aided by the irish famine,--for it was hunger that at last ate through those stone walls of protection,--secured the repeal of the law in . mr. bright said: "there is not in great britain a poor man's home that has not a bigger, better, and cheaper loaf through richard cobden's labors." john bright himself was the son of a poor working man, and in those days the doors of the higher schools were closed to such as he; but the great quaker heart of this resolute youth was touched with pity for the millions of england's and ireland's poor, starving under the corn-laws. during the frightful famine, which cut off two millions of ireland's population in a year, john bright was more powerful than all the nobility of england. the whole aristocracy trembled before his invincible logic, his mighty eloquence, and his commanding character. except possibly cobden, no other man did so much to give the laborer a shorter day, a cheaper loaf, an added shilling. over a stable in london lived a poor boy named michael faraday, who carried newspapers about the streets to loan to customers for a penny apiece. he was apprenticed for seven years to a bookbinder and bookseller. when binding the encyclopaedia britannica, his eyes caught the article on electricity, and he could not rest until he had read it. he procured a glass vial, an old pan, and a few simple articles, and began to experiment. a customer became interested in the boy, and took him to hear sir humphry davy lecture on chemistry. he summoned courage to write the great scientist and sent the notes he had taken of his lecture. one night, not long after, just as michael was about to retire, sir humphry davy's carriage stopped at his humble lodging, and a servant handed him a written invitation to call upon the great lecturer the next morning. michael could scarcely trust his eyes as he read the note. in the morning he called as requested, and was engaged to clean instruments and take them to and from the lecture-room. he watched eagerly every movement of davy, as with a glass mask over his face, he developed his safety-lamp and experimented with dangerous explosives. michael studied and experimented, too, and it was not long before this poor boy with no chance was invited to lecture before the great philosophical society. he was appointed professor at the royal academy of woolwich, and became the wonder of the age in science. tyndall said of him, "he is the greatest experimental philosopher the world has ever seen." when sir humphry davy was asked what was his greatest discovery, he replied "michael faraday." "what has been done can be done again," said the boy with no chance, disraeli, who become lord beaconsfield, england's great prime minister. "i am not a slave, i am not a captive, and by energy i can overcome greater obstacles." jewish blood flowed in his veins and everything seemed against him, but he remembered the example of joseph, who became prime minister of egypt four thousand years before, and that of daniel, who was prime minister to the greatest despot of the world five centuries before the birth of christ. he pushed his way up through the lower classes, up through the middle classes, up through the upper classes, until he stood a master, self-poised upon the topmost round of political and social power. rebuffed, scorned, ridiculed, hissed down in the house of commons, he simply said, "the time will come when you will hear me." the time did come, and the boy with no chance but a determined will swayed the scepter of england for a quarter of a century. henry clay, the "mill-boy of the slashes," was one of seven children of a widow too poor to send him to any but a common country school, where he was drilled only in the "three r's." but he used every spare moment to study without a teacher, and in after years he was a king among self-made men. the boy who had learned to speak in a barn, with only a cow and a horse for an audience, became one of the greatest of american orators and statesmen. see kepler struggling with poverty and hardship, his books burned in public by order of the state, his library locked up by the jesuits, and himself exiled by public clamor. for seventeen years he works calmly upon the demonstration of the great principles that planets revolve in ellipses, with the sun at one focus; that a line connecting the center of the earth with the center of the sun passes over equal spaces in equal times, and that the squares of the times of revolution of the planets above the sun are proportioned to the cubes by their mean distances from the sun. this boy with no chance became one of the world's greatest astronomers. "when i found that i was black," said alexandre dumas, "i resolved to live as if i were white, and so force men to look below my skin." how slender seemed the chance of james sharples, the celebrated blacksmith artist of england! he was very poor, but he often rose at three o'clock to copy books he could not buy. he would walk eighteen miles to manchester and back after a hard day's work to buy a shilling's worth of artist's materials. he would ask for the heaviest work in the blacksmith shop, because it took a longer time to heat at the forge, and he could thus have many spare minutes to study the precious book, which he propped up against the chimney. he was a great miser of spare moments and used every one as though he might never see another. he devoted his leisure hours for five years to that wonderful production, "the forge," copies of which are to be seen in many a home. what chance had galileo to win renown in physics or astronomy, when his parents compelled him to go to a medical school? yet while venice slept, he stood in the tower of st. mark's cathedral and discovered the satellites of jupiter and the phases of venus, through a telescope made with his own hands. when compelled on bended knee to publicly renounce his heretical doctrine that the earth moves around the sun, all the terrors of the inquisition could not keep this feeble man of threescore years and ten from muttering to himself, "yet it does move." when thrown into prison, so great was his eagerness for scientific research that he proved by a straws in his cell that a hollow tube is relatively much stronger than a solid rod of the same size. even when totally blind, he kept constantly at work. imagine the surprise of the royal society of england when the poor unknown herschel sent in the report of his discovery of the star georgium sidus, its orbit and rate of motion; and of the rings and satellites of saturn. the boy with no chance, who had played the oboe for his meals, had with his own hands made the telescope through which he discovered facts unknown to the best-equipped astronomers of his day. he had ground two hundred specula before he could get one perfect. george stephenson was one of eight children whose parents were so poor that all lived in a single room. george had to watch cows for a neighbor, but he managed to get time to make engines of clay, with hemlock sticks for pipes. at seventeen he had charge of an engine, with his father for fireman. he could neither read nor write, but the engine was his teacher, and he a faithful student. while the other hands were playing games or loafing in liquor shops during the holidays, george was taking his machine to pieces, cleaning it, studying it, and making experiments in engines. when he had become famous as a great inventor of improvements in engines, those who had loafed and played called him lucky. without a charm of face or figure, charlotte cushman resolved to place herself in the front rank as an actress, even in such characters as rosalind and queen katherine. the star actress was unable to perform, and miss cushman, her understudy, took her place. that night she held her audience with such grasp of intellect and iron will that it forgot the absence of mere dimpled feminine grace. although poor, friendless, and unknown before, when the curtain fell upon her first performance at the london theater, her reputation was made. in after years, when physicians told her she had a terrible, incurable disease, she flinched not a particle, but quietly said, "i have learned to live with my trouble." a poor colored woman in a log-cabin in the south had three boys, but could afford only one pair of trousers for the three. she was so anxious to give them an education that she sent them to school by turns. the teacher, a northern girl, noticed that each boy came to school only one day out of three, and that all wore the same pantaloons. the poor mother educated her boys as best she could. one became a professor in a southern college, another a physician, and the third a clergyman. what a lesson for boys who plead "no chance" as an excuse for wasted lives! sam cunard, the whittling scotch lad of glasgow, wrought many odd inventions with brain and jack-knife, but they brought neither honor nor profit until he was consulted by burns & mcivor, who wished to increase their facilities for carrying foreign mails. the model of a steamship which sam whittled out for them was carefully copied for the first vessel of the great cunard line, and became the standard type for all the magnificent ships since constructed by the firm. the new testament and the speller were cornelius vanderbilt's only books at school, but he learned to read, write, and cipher a little. he wished to buy a boat, but had no money. to discourage him from following the sea, his mother told him if he would plow, harrow, and plant with corn, before the twenty-seventh day of the month, ten acres of rough, hard, stony land, the worst on his father's farm, she would lend him the amount he wished. before the appointed time the work was done, and well done. on his seventeenth birthday he bought the boat, but on his way home it struck a sunken wreck and sank just as he reached shallow water. but cornelius vanderbilt was not the boy to give up. he at once began again, and in three years saved three thousand dollars. he often worked all night, and soon had far the largest patronage of any boatman in the harbor. during the war of he was awarded the government contract to carry provisions to the military stations near the metropolis. he fulfilled his contract by night so that he might run his ferry-boat between new york and brooklyn by day. the boy who gave his parents all his day earnings and had half of what he got at night, was worth thirty thousand dollars at thirty-five, and when he died, at an advanced age, he left to his thirteen children one of the largest fortunes in america. lord eldon might well have pleaded "no chance" when a boy, for he was too poor to go to school or even to buy books. but no; he had grit and determination, and was bound to make his way in the world. he rose at four o'clock in the morning and copied law books which he borrowed, the voluminous "coke upon littleton" among others. he was so eager to study that sometimes he would keep it up until his brain refused to work, when he would tie a wet towel about his head to enable him to keep awake and to study. his first year's practice brought him but nine shillings, yet he was bound not to give up. when eldon was leaving the chamber the solicitor tapped him on the shoulder and said, "young man, your bread and butter's cut for life." the boy with "no chance" became lord chancellor of england, and one of the greatest lawyers of his age. stephen girard had "no chance." he left his home in france when ten years old, and came to america as a cabin boy. his great ambition was to get on and succeed at any cost. there was no work, however hard and disagreeable, that he would not undertake. midas like, he turned to gold everything he touched, and became one of the wealthiest merchants of philadelphia. his abnormal love of money cannot be commended, but his thoroughness in all he did, his public spirit at times of national need, and willingness to risk his life to save strangers sick with the deadly yellow fever, are traits of character well worthy of imitation. john wanamaker walked four miles to philadelphia every day, and worked in a bookstore for one dollar and twenty-five cents a week. he next worked in a clothing store at an advance of twenty-five cents a week. from this he went up and up until he became one of the greatest living merchants. he was appointed postmaster-general by president harrison in , and in that capacity showed great executive ability. prejudice against her race and sex did not deter the colored girl, edmonia lewis, from struggling upward to honor and fame as a sculptor. fred douglass started in life with less than nothing, for he did not own his own body, and he was pledged before his birth to pay his master's debts. to reach the starting-point of the poorest white boy, he had to climb as far as the distance which the latter must ascend if he would become president of the united states. he saw his mother but two or three times, and then in the night, when she would walk twelve miles to be with him an hour, returning in time to go into the field at dawn. he had no chance to study, for he had no teacher, and the rules of the plantation forbade slaves to learn to read and write. but somehow, unnoticed by his master, he managed to learn the alphabet from scraps of paper and patent medicine almanacs, and then no limits could be placed to his career. he put to shame thousands of white boys. he fled from slavery at twenty-one, went north, and worked as a stevedore in new york and new bedford. at nantucket he was given an opportunity to speak at an anti-slavery meeting, and made so favorable an impression that he was made agent of the anti-slavery society of massachusetts. while traveling from place to place to lecture, he would study with all his might. he was sent to europe to lecture, and won the friendship of several englishmen, who gave him $ , with which he purchased his freedom. he edited a paper in rochester, n. y., and afterwards conducted the "new era" in washington. for several years he was marshal of the district of columbia. henry e. dixey, the well-known actor, began his career upon the stage in the humble part of the hind legs of a cow. p. t. barnum rode a horse for ten cents a day. it was a boy born in a log-cabin, without schooling, or books, or teacher, or ordinary opportunities, who won the admiration of mankind by his homely practical wisdom while president during our civil war, and who emancipated four million slaves. behold this long, lank, awkward youth, felling trees on the little claim, building his homely log-cabin, without floor or windows, teaching himself arithmetic and grammar in the evening by the light of the fireplace. in his eagerness to know the contents of blackstone's commentaries, he walked forty-four miles to procure the precious volumes, and read one hundred pages while returning. abraham lincoln inherited no opportunities, and acquired nothing by luck. his good fortune consisted simply of untiring perseverance and a right heart. in another log-cabin, in the backwoods of ohio, a poor widow is holding a boy eighteen months old, and wondering if she will be able to keep the wolf from her little ones. the boy grows, and in a few years we find him chopping wood and tilling the little clearing in the forest, to help his mother. every spare hour is spent in studying the books he has borrowed, but cannot buy. at sixteen he gladly accepts a chance to drive mules on a canal towpath. soon he applies for a chance to sweep floors and ring the bell of an academy, to pay his way while studying there. his first term at geauga seminary cost him but seventeen dollars. when he returned the next term he had but a sixpence in his pocket, and this he put into the contribution box at church the next day. he engaged board, washing, fuel, and light of a carpenter at one dollar and six cents a week, with the privilege of working at night and on saturdays all the time he could spare. he had arrived on a saturday and planed fifty-one boards that day, for which he received one dollar and two cents. when the term closed, he had paid all expenses and had three dollars over. the following winter he taught school at twelve dollars a month and "board around." in the spring he had forty-eight dollars, and when he returned to school he boarded himself at an expense of thirty-one cents a week. soon we find him in williams college, where in two years he is graduated with honors. he reaches the state senate at twenty-six and congress at thirty-three. twenty-seven years from the time he applied for a chance to ring the bell at hiram college, james a. garfield became president of the united states. the inspiration of such an example is worth more to the young men of america than all the wealth of the astors, the vanderbilts, and the goulds. among the world's greatest heroes and benefactors are many others whose cradles were rocked by want in lowly cottages, and who buffeted the billows of fate without dependence, save upon the mercy of god and their own energies. "the little gray cabin appears to be the birthplace of all your great men," said an english author who had been looking over a book of biographies of eminent americans. with five chances on each hand and one unwavering aim, no boy, however poor, need despair. there is bread and success for every youth under the american flag who has energy and ability to seize his opportunity. it matters not whether the boy is born in a log-cabin or in a mansion; if he is dominated by a resolute purpose and upholds himself, neither men nor demons can keep him down. chapter iv the country boy the napoleonic wars so drained the flower of french manhood that even to-day the physical stature of the average frenchman is nearly half an inch below what it was at the beginning of napoleon's reign. the country in america to-day is constantly paying a similar tribute to the city in the sacrifice of its best blood, its best brain, the finest physical and mental fiber in the world. this great stream of superb country manhood, which is ever flowing cityward, is rapidly deteriorated by the softening, emasculating influences of the city, until the superior virility, stamina and sturdy qualities entirely disappear in two or three generations of city life. our city civilization is always in a process of decay, and would, in a few generations, become emasculated and effeminate were it not for the pure, crystal stream of country youth flowing steadily into and purifying the muddy, devitalized stream of city life. it would soon become so foul and degenerate as to threaten the physical and moral health of city dwellers. one of our great men says that one of the most unfortunate phases of modern civilization is the drift away from the farm, the drift of country youth to the city which has an indescribable fascination for him. his vivid imagination clothes it with arabian nights possibilities and joys. the country seems tame and commonplace after his first dream of the city. to him it is synonymous with opportunity, with power, with pleasure. he can not rid himself of its fascination until he tastes its emptiness. he can not know the worth of the country and how to appreciate the glory of its disadvantages and opportunities until he has seen the sham and shallowness of the city. one of the greatest boons that can ever come to a human being is to be born on a farm and reared in the country. self-reliance and grit are oftenest country-bred. the country boy is constantly thrown upon his own resources, forced to think for himself, and this calls out his ingenuity and inventiveness. he develops better all-round judgment and a more level head than the city boy. his muscles are harder, his flesh firmer, and his brain-fiber partakes of the same superior quality. the very granite hills, the mountains, the valleys, the brooks, the miracle of the growing crops are every moment registering their mighty potencies in his constitution, putting iron into his blood and stamina into his character, all of which will help to make him a giant when he comes to compete with the city-bred youth. the sturdy, vigorous, hardy qualities, the stamina, the brawn, the grit which characterize men who do great things in this world, are, as a rule, country bred. if power is not absorbed from the soil, it certainly comes from very near it. there seems to be a close connection between robust character and the soil, the hills, mountains and valleys, the pure air and sunshine. there is a very appreciable difference between the physical stamina, the brain vigor, the solidity and the reliability of country-bred men and that of those in the city. the average country-bred youth has a better foundation for success-building, has greater courage, more moral stamina. he has not become weakened and softened by the superficial ornamental, decorative influences of city life. and there is a reason for all this. we are largely copies of our environment. we are under the perpetual influence of the suggestion of our surroundings. the city-bred youth sees and hears almost nothing that is natural, aside from the faces and forms of human beings. nearly everything that confronts him from morning till night is artificial, man-made. he sees hardly anything that god made, that imparts solidity, strength and power, as do the natural objects in the country. how can a man build up a solid, substantial character when his eyes and ears bring him only sights and sounds of artificial things? a vast sea of business blocks, sky-scrapers and asphalt pavements does not generate character-building material. just as sculpture was once carried to such an extreme that pillars and beams were often so weakened by the extravagant carvings as to threaten the safety of the structure, so the timber in country boys and girls, when brought to the city, is often overcarved and adorned at the cost of strength, robustness and vigor. in other words, virility, forcefulness, physical and mental stamina reach their maximum in those who live close to the soil. the moment a man becomes artificial in his living, takes on artificial conditions, he begins to deteriorate, to soften. much of what we call the best society in our cities is often in an advanced process of decay. the muscles may be a little more delicate but they are softer; the skin may be a little fairer, but it is not so healthy; the thought a little more supple, but less vigorous. the whole tendency of life in big cities is toward deterioration. city people rarely live really normal lives. it is not natural for human beings to live far from the soil. it is mother earth and country life that give vitality, stamina, courage and all the qualities which make for manhood and womanhood. what we get from the country is solid, substantial, enduring, reliable. what comes from the artificial conditions of the city is weakening, enervating, softening. the country youth, on the other hand, is in the midst of a perpetual miracle. he can not open his eyes without seeing a more magnificent painting than a raphael or a michael angelo could have created in a lifetime. and this magnificent panorama is changing every instant. there is a miracle going on in every growing blade of grass and flower. is it not wonderful to watch the chemical processes in nature's laboratory, mixing and flinging out to the world the gorgeous colorings and marvelous perfumes of the rose and wild flower! no city youth was ever in such a marvelous kindergarten, where perpetual creation is going on in such a vast multitude of forms. the city youth has too many things to divert his attention. such a multiplicity of objects appeals to him that he is often superficial; he lacks depth; his mind is perpetually drawn away from his subject, and he lacks continuity of thought and application. his reading is comparatively superficial. he glances through many papers; magazines and periodicals and gives no real thought to any. his evenings are much more broken up than those of the country boy, who, having very little diversion after supper, can read continuously for an entire evening on one subject. the country boy does not read as many books as the city boy, but, as a rule, he reads them with much better results. the dearth of great libraries, books and periodicals is one reason why the country boy makes the most of good books and articles, often reading them over and over again, while the city youth, in the midst of newspapers and libraries, sees so many books that in most instances he cares very little for them, and will often read the best literature without absorbing any of it. the fact is that there is such a diversity of attractions and distractions, of temptation and amusement in the city, that unless a youth is made of unusual stuff he will yield to the persuasion of the moment and follow the line of least resistance. it is hard for the city-bred youth to resist the multiplicity of allurements and pleasures that bid for his attention, to deny himself and turn a deaf ear to the appeals of his associates and tie himself down to self-improvement while those around him are having a good time. these exciting, diverting, tempting conditions of city life are not conducive to generating the great master purpose, the one unwavering life aim, which we often see so marked in the young man from the country. nor do city-bred youths store up anything like the reserve power, the cumulative force, the stamina, which are developed in the simple life of the soil. for one thing, the country boy is constantly developing his muscular system. his health is better. he gets more exercise, more time to think and to reflect; hence, he is not so superficial as the city boy. his perceptions are not so quick, he is not so rapid in his movements, his thought action is slower and he does not have as much polish, it is true, but he is better balanced generally. he has been forced to do a great variety of work and this has developed corresponding mental qualities. the drudgery of the farm, the chores which we hated as boys, the rocks which we despised, we have found were the very things which educated us, which developed our power and made us practical. the farm is a great gymnasium, a superb manual training school, nature's kindergarten, constantly calling upon the youth's self-reliance and inventiveness. he must make the implements and toys which he can not afford to buy or procure. he must run, adjust and repair all sorts of machinery and farm utensils. his ingenuity and inventiveness are constantly exercised. if the wagon or plow breaks down it must be repaired on the spot, often without the proper tools. this training develops instinctive courage, strong success qualities, and makes him a resourceful man. is it any wonder that the boy so trained in self-reliance, so superbly equipped with physical and mental stamina, should take such pre-eminence, should be in such demand when he comes to the city? is it any wonder that he is always in evidence in great emergencies and crises? just stand a stamina-filled, self-reliant country boy beside a pale, soft, stamina-less, washed-out city youth. is it any wonder that the country-bred boy is nearly always the leader; that he heads the banks, the great mercantile houses? it is this peculiar, indescribable something; this superior stamina and mental caliber, that makes the stuff that rises to the top in all vocations. there is a peculiar quality of superiority which comes from dealing with _realities_ that we do not find in the superficial city conditions. the life-giving oxygen, breathed in great inspirations through constant muscular effort, develops in the country boy much greater lung power than is developed in the city youth, and his outdoor work tends to build up a robust constitution. plowing, hoeing, mowing, everything he does on the farm gives him vigor and strength. his muscles are harder, his flesh firmer, and his brain-fiber partakes of the same superior quality. he is constantly bottling up forces, storing up energy in his brain and muscles which later may be powerful factors in shaping the nation's destiny or which may furnish backbone to keep the ship of state from floundering on the rocks. this marvelous reserve power which he stores up in the country will come out in the successful banker, statesman, lawyer, merchant, or business man. self-reliance and grit are oftenest country-bred. the country boy is constantly thrown upon his own resources; he is forced to think for himself, and this calls out his ingenuity and makes him self-reliant and strong. it has been found that the use of tools in our manual training schools develops the brain, strengthens the deficient faculties and brings out latent powers. the farm-reared boy is in the best manual training school in the world and is constantly forced to plan things, make things; he is always using tools. this is one of the reasons why he usually develops better all-round judgment and a more level head than the city boy. it is human nature to exaggerate the value of things beyond our reach. people save money for years in order to go to europe to visit the great art centers and see the famous masterpieces, when they have really never seen the marvelous pictures painted by the divine artist and spread in the landscape, in the sunset, in the glory of flowers and plant life, right at their very doors. what a perpetual inspiration, what marvels of beauty, what miracles of coloring are spread everywhere in nature, confronting us on every hand! we see them almost every day of our lives and they become so common that they make no impression upon us. think of the difference between what a ruskin sees in a landscape and the impression conveyed to his brain, and what is seen by the ordinary mind, the ordinary person who has little or no imagination and whose esthetic faculties have scarcely been developed! we are immersed in a wilderness of mysteries and marvelous beauties. miracles innumerable in grass and flower and fruit are performed right before our eyes. how marvelous is nature's growing of fruit, for example! how she packs the concentrated sunshine and delicious juices into the cans that she makes as she goes along, cans exactly the right size, without a particle of waste, leakage or evaporation, with no noise of factories, no hammering of tins! the miracles are wrought in a silent laboratory; not a sound is heard, and yet what marvels of skill, deliciousness and beauty? what interrogation points, what wonderful mysteries, what wit-sharpeners are ever before the farmer boy, whichever way he turns! where does all this tremendous increase of corn, wheat, fruit and vegetables come from? there seems to be no loss to the soil, and yet, what a marvelous growth in everything! life, life, more life on every hand! wherever he goes he treads on chemical forces which produce greater marvels than are described in the arabian nights. the trees, the brooks, the mountains, the hills, the valleys, the sunsets, the growing animals on the farm, are all mysteries that set him thinking and to wondering at the creative processes which are working on every hand. then again, the delicious freedom of it all, as contrasted with the cramped, artificial life in the city! everything in the country tends to set the boy thinking, to call out his dormant powers and develop his latent forces. and what health there is in it all! how hearty and natural he is in comparison with the city boy, who is tempted to turn night into day, to live an artificial, purposeless life. the very temptation in the city to turn night into day is of itself health-undermining, stamina-dissipating and character-weakening. while the city youth is wasting his precious energy capital in late hours, pleasure seeking, and often dissipation, the country youth is storing up power and vitality; he is being recharged with physical force by natural, refreshing sleep, away from the distracting influence and enervating excitement of city life. the country youth does not learn to judge people by the false standards of wealth and social standing. he is not inculcated with snobbish ideas. everything in the great farm kindergarten teaches him sincerity, simplicity and honesty. the time was when the boy who gave no signs of genius or unusual ability was consigned to the farm, and the brilliant boy was sent to college or to the city to make a career for himself. but we are now beginning to see that man has made a botch of farming only because he looked upon it as a sort of humdrum occupation; as a means provided by nature for living-getting for those who were not good for much else. farming was considered by many people as a sort of degrading occupation desirable only for those who lacked the brains and education to go into a profession or some of the more refined callings. but the searchlight of science has revealed in it possibilities hitherto undreamed of. we are commencing to realize that it takes a high order of ability and education to bring out the fullest possibilities of the soil; that it requires fine-grained sympathetic talent. we are now finding that agriculture is as great a science as astronomy, and that ignorant men have been getting an indifferent living from their farms simply because they did not know how to mix brains with the soil. the science of agriculture is fast becoming appreciated and is more and more regarded as a high and noble calling, a dignified profession. think of what it means to go into partnership with the creator in bringing out larger, grander products from the soil; to be able to co-operate with that divine creative force, and even to vary the size, the beauty, the perfume of flowers; to enlarge, modify and change the flavor of fruits and vegetables to our liking! think what it must mean to be a magician in the whole vegetable kingdom, like luther burbank, changing colors, flavors, perfumes, species! almost anything is possible when one knows enough and has heart and sympathy enough to enter into partnership with the great creative force in nature. mr. burbank says that the time will come when man will be able to do almost anything he wishes in the vegetable kingdom; will be able to produce at will any shade or color he wishes, and almost any flavor in any fruit; that the size of all fruits and vegetables and flowers is just a matter of sufficient understanding, and that nature will give us almost anything when we know enough to treat her intelligently, wisely and sympathetically. the history of most great men shows that there is a disadvantage in having too many advantages. who can tell what the consequences would have been had lincoln been born in new york and educated at harvard? if he had been reared in the midst of great libraries, brought up in an atmosphere of books, of only a small fraction of which he could get even a superficial knowledge, would he have had that insatiable hunger which prompted him to walk twenty miles in order to borrow blackstone's "commentaries" and to read one hundred pages on the way home? [illustration: house in which abraham lincoln was born] what was there in that rude frontier forest, where this poor boy scarcely ever saw any one who knew anything of books, to rouse his ambition and to stimulate him to self-education? whence came that yearning to know the history of men and women who had made a nation; to know the history of his country? whence came that passion to devour the dry statutes of indiana, as a young girl would devour a love story? whence came that all-absorbing ambition to be somebody in the world; to serve his country with no selfish ambition? had his father been rich and well-educated instead of a poor man who could neither read nor write and who was generally of a shiftless and roving disposition, there is no likelihood that lincoln would ever have become the powerful man he was. had he not felt that imperious "must" calling him, the prod of necessity spurring him on, whence would have come the motive which led him to struggle for self-development, self-unfoldment? if he had been born and educated in luxury, his character would probably have been soft and flabby in comparison with what it was. where in all the annals of history is there another record of one born of such poor parentage and reared in such a wretched environment, who ever rose to such eminence? imagine a boy of to-day, so hungry for an education that he would walk nine miles a day to attend a rude frontier school in a log cabin! what would the city boys of to-day, who do not want to walk even a few blocks to school, think of a youth who would do what lincoln did to overcome his handicap? chapter v opportunities where you are to each man's life there comes a time supreme; one day, one night, one morning, or one noon, one freighted hour, one moment opportune, one rift through which sublime fulfillments gleam, one space when fate goes tiding with the stream, one once, in balance 'twixt too late, too soon, and ready for the passing instant's boon to tip in favor the uncertain beam. ah, happy he who, knowing how to wait, knows also how to watch and work and stand on life's broad deck alert, and at the prow to seize the passing moment, big with fate, from opportunity's extended hand, when the great clock of destiny strikes now! mary a. townsend. what is opportunity to a man who can't use it? an unfecundated egg, which the waves of time wash away into non-entity.--george eliot. the secret of success in life is for a man _to be ready for his opportunity_ when it comes.--disraeli. "there are no longer any good chances for young men," complained a youthful law student to daniel webster. "there is always room at the top," replied the great statesman and jurist. no chance, no opportunities, in a land where thousands of poor boys become rich men, where newsboys go to congress, and where those born in the lowest stations attain the highest positions? the world is all gates, all opportunities to him who will use them. but, like bunyan's pilgrim in the dungeon of giant despair's castle, who had the key of deliverance all the time with him but had forgotten it, we fail to rely wholly upon the ability to advance all that is good for us which has been given to the weakest as well as the strongest. we depend too much upon outside assistance. "we look too high for things close by." a baltimore lady lost a valuable diamond bracelet at a ball, and supposed that it was stolen from the pocket of her cloak. years afterward she washed the steps of the peabody institute, pondering how to get money to buy food. she cut up an old, worn-out, ragged cloak to make a hood, when lo! in the lining of the cloak she discovered the diamond bracelet. during all her poverty she was worth $ , but did not know it. many of us who think we are poor are rich in opportunities, if we could only see them, in possibilities all about us, in faculties worth more than diamond bracelets. in our large eastern cities it has been found that at least ninety-four out of every hundred found their first fortune at home, or near at hand, and in meeting common every-day wants. it is a sorry day for a young man who can not see any opportunities where he is, but thinks he can do better somewhere else. some brazilian shepherds organized a party to go to california to dig gold, and took along a handful of translucent pebbles to play checkers with on the voyage. after arriving in san francisco, and after they had thrown most of the pebbles away, they discovered that they were diamonds. they hastened back to brazil, only to find that the mines from which the pebbles had been gathered had been taken up by other prospectors and sold to the government. the richest gold and silver mine in nevada was sold by the owner for $ , to get money to pay his passage to other mines, where he thought he could get rich. professor agassiz once told the harvard students of a farmer who owned a farm of hundreds of acres of unprofitable woods and rocks, and concluded to sell out and get into a more profitable business. he decided to go into the coal-oil business; he studied coal measures and coal-oil deposits, and experimented for a long time. he sold his farm for $ , and engaged in his new business two hundred miles away. only a short time after, the man who bought his farm discovered upon it a great flood of coal-oil, which the farmer had previously ignorantly tried to drain off. hundreds of years ago there lived near the shore of the river indus a persian by the name of ali hafed. he lived in a cottage on the river bank, from which he could get a grand view of the beautiful country stretching away to the sea. he had a wife and children; an extensive farm, fields of grain, gardens of flowers, orchards of fruit, and miles of forest. he had plenty of money and everything that heart could wish. he was contented and happy. one evening a priest of buddha visited him, and, sitting before the fire, explained to him how the world was made, and how the first beams of sunlight condensed on the earth's surface into diamonds. the old priest told that a drop of sunlight the size of his thumb was worth more than large mines of copper, silver, or gold; that with one of them he could buy many farms like his; that with a handful he could buy a province, and with a mine of diamonds he could purchase a kingdom. ali hafed listened, and was no longer a rich man. he had been touched with discontent, and with that all wealth vanishes. early the next morning he woke the priest who had been the cause of his unhappiness, and anxiously asked him where he could find a mine of diamonds. "what do you want of diamonds?" asked the astonished priest. "i want to be rich and place my children on thrones." "all you have to do is to go and search until you find them," said the priest. "but where shall i go?" asked the poor farmer. "go anywhere, north, south, east, or west." "how shall i know when i have found the place?" "when you find a river running over white sands between high mountain ranges, in those white sands you will find diamonds," answered the priest. the discontented man sold the farm for what he could get, left his family with a neighbor, took the money he had at interest, and went to search for the coveted treasure. over the mountains of arabia, through palestine and egypt, he wandered for years, but found no diamonds. when his money was all gone and starvation stared him in the face, ashamed of his folly and of his rags, poor ali hafed threw himself into the tide and was drowned. the man who bought his farm was a contented man, who made the most of his surroundings, and did not believe in going away from home to hunt for diamonds or success. while his camel was drinking in the garden one day, he noticed a flash of light from the white sands of the brook. he picked up a pebble, and pleased with its brilliant hues took it into the house, put it on the shelf near the fireplace, and forgot all about it. the old priest of buddha who had filled ali hafed with the fatal discontent called one day upon the new owner of the farm. he had no sooner entered the room than his eye caught that flash of light from the stone. "here's a diamond! here's a diamond!" he shouted in great excitement. "has ali hafed returned?" "no," said the farmer, "nor is that a diamond. that is but a stone." they went into the garden and stirred up the white sand with their fingers, and behold, other diamonds more beautiful than the first gleamed out of it. so the famous diamond beds of golconda were discovered. had ali hafed been content to remain at home, and dug in his own garden, instead of going abroad in search for wealth, he would have been one of the richest men in the world, for the entire farm abounded in the richest of gems. you have your own special place and work. find it, fill it. scarcely a boy or girl will read these lines but has much better opportunity to win success than garfield, wilson, franklin, lincoln, harriet beecher stowe, frances willard, and thousands of others had. but to succeed you must be prepared to seize and improve the opportunity when it comes. remember that four things come not back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity. it is one of the paradoxes of civilization that the more opportunities are utilized, the more new ones are thereby created. new openings are as easy to find as ever to those who do their best; although it is not so easy as formerly to obtain great distinction in the old lines, because the standard has advanced so much, and competition has so greatly increased. "the world is no longer clay," said emerson, "but rather iron in the hands of its workers, and men have got to hammer out a place for themselves by steady and rugged blows." thousands of men have made fortunes out of trifles which others pass by. as the bee gets honey from the same flower from which the spider gets poison, so some men will get a fortune out of the commonest and meanest things, as scraps of leather, cotton waste, slag, iron filings, from which others get only poverty and failure. there is scarcely a thing which contributes to the welfare and comfort of humanity, scarcely an article of household furniture, a kitchen utensil, an article of clothing or of food, that is not capable of an improvement in which there may be a fortune. opportunities? they are all around us. forces of nature plead to be used in the service of man, as lightning for ages tried to attract his attention to the great force of electricity, which would do his drudgery and leave him to develop the god-given powers within him. there is power lying latent everywhere waiting for the observant eye to discover it. first find out what the world needs and then supply the want. an invention to make smoke go the wrong way in a chimney might be a very ingenious thing, but it would be of no use to humanity. the patent office at washington is full of wonderful devices of ingenious mechanism, but not one in hundreds is of use to the inventor or to the world. and yet how many families have been impoverished, and have struggled for years amid want and woe, while the father has been working on useless inventions. a. t. stewart, as a boy, lost eighty-seven cents, when his capital was one dollar and a half, in buying buttons and thread which shoppers did not call for. after that he made it a rule never to buy anything which the public did not want, and so prospered. an observing man, the eyelets of whose shoes pulled out, but who could not afford to get another pair, said to himself, "i will make a metallic lacing hook, which can be riveted into the leather." he was then so poor that he had to borrow a sickle to cut grass in front of his hired tenement. he became a very rich man. an observing barber in newark, n. j., thought he could make an improvement on shears for cutting hair, invented clippers, and became rich. a maine man was called in from the hayfield to wash clothes for his invalid wife. he had never realized what it was to wash before. finding the method slow and laborious, he invented the washing machine, and made a fortune. a man who was suffering terribly with toothache felt sure there must be some way of filling teeth which would prevent their aching and he invented the method of gold filling for teeth. the great things of the world have not been done by men of large means. ericsson began the construction of the screw propellers in a bathroom. the cotton-gin was first manufactured in a log cabin. john harrison, the great inventor of the marine chronometer, began his career in the loft of an old barn. parts of the first steamboat ever run in america were set up in the vestry of a church in philadelphia by fitch. mccormick began to make his famous reaper in a grist-mill. the first model dry-dock was made in an attic. clark, the founder of clark university of worcester, mass., began his great fortune by making toy wagons in a horse shed. farquhar made umbrellas in his sitting-room, with his daughter's help, until he sold enough to hire a loft. edison began his experiments in a baggage car on the grand trunk railroad when a newsboy. michael angelo found a piece of discarded carrara marble among waste rubbish beside a street in florence, which some unskilful workman had cut, hacked, spoiled, and thrown away. no doubt many artists had noticed the fine quality of the marble, and regretted that it should have been spoiled. but michael angelo still saw an angel in the ruin, and with his chisel and mallet he called out from it one of the finest pieces of statuary in italy, the young david. patrick henry was called a lazy boy, a good-for-nothing farmer, and he failed as a merchant. he was always dreaming of some far-off greatness, and never thought he could be a hero among the corn and tobacco and saddlebags of virginia. he studied law for six weeks; when he put out his shingle. people thought he would fail, but in his first case he showed that he had a wonderful power of oratory. it then first dawned upon him that he could be a hero in virginia. from the time the stamp act was passed and henry was elected to the virginia house of burgesses, and he had introduced his famous resolution against the unjust taxation of the american colonies, he rose steadily until he became one of the brilliant orators of america. in one of his first speeches upon this resolution he uttered these words, which were prophetic of his power and courage: "caesar had his brutus, charles the first his cromwell, and george the third--may profit by their example. if this be treason, make the most of it." the great natural philosopher, faraday, who was the son of a blacksmith, wrote, when a young man, to humphry davy, asking for employment at the royal institution. davy consulted a friend on the matter. "here is a letter from a young man named faraday; he has been attending my lectures, and wants me to give him employment at the royal institution--what can i do?" "do? put him to washing bottles; if he is good for anything he will do it directly; if he refuses he is good for nothing." but the boy who could experiment in the attic of an apothecary shop with an old pan and glass vials during every moment he could snatch from his work saw an opportunity in washing bottles, which led to a professorship at the royal academy at woolwich. tyndall said of this boy with no chance, "he is the greatest experimental philosopher the world has ever seen." he became the wonder of his age in science. there is a legend of an artist who long sought for a piece of sandalwood, out of which to carve a madonna. he was about to give up in despair, leaving the vision of his life unrealized, when in a dream he was bidden to carve his madonna from a block of oak wood which was destined for the fire. he obeyed, and produced a masterpiece from a log of common firewood. many of us lose great opportunities in life by waiting to find sandalwood for our carvings, when they really lie hidden in the common logs that we burn. one man goes through life without seeing chances for doing anything great, while another close beside him snatches from the same circumstances and privileges opportunities for achieving grand results. opportunities? they are everywhere. "america is another name for opportunities. our whole history appears like a last effort of divine providence in behalf of the human race." never before were there such grand openings, such chances, such opportunities. especially is this true for girls and young women. a new era is dawning for them. hundreds of occupations and professions, which were closed to them only a few years ago, are now inviting them to enter. we can not all of us perhaps make great discoveries like newton, faraday, edison, and thompson, or paint immortal pictures like an angelo or a raphael. but we can all of us make our lives sublime, by _seizing common occasions and making them great_. what chance had the young girl, grace darling, to distinguish herself, living on those barren lighthouse rocks alone with her aged parents? but while her brothers and sisters, who moved to the cities to win wealth and fame, are not known to the world, she became more famous than a princess. this poor girl did not need to go to london to see the nobility; they came to the lighthouse to see her. right at home she had won fame which the regal heirs might envy, and a name which will never perish from the earth. she did not wander away into dreamy distance for fame and fortune, but did her best where duty had placed her. if you want to get rich, study yourself and your own wants. you will find that millions have the same wants. the safest business is always connected with man's prime necessities. he must have clothing and dwelling; he must eat. he wants comforts, facilities of all kinds for pleasure, education, and culture. any man who can supply a great want of humanity, improve any methods which men use, supply any demand of comfort, or contribute in any way to their well-being, can make a fortune. "the golden opportunity is never offered twice; seize then the hour when fortune smiles and duty points the way." why thus longing, thus forever sighing, for the far-off, unattained and dim, while the beautiful, all around thee lying offers up its low, perpetual hymn? harriet winslow. chapter vi possibilities in spare moments dost thou love life? then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.--franklin. eternity itself cannot restore the loss struck from the minute.--ancient poet. _periunt et imputantur_,--the hours perish and are laid to our charge.--inscription on a dial at oxford. i wasted time, and now doth time waste me.--shakespeare. believe me when i tell you that thrift of time will repay you in after life with a usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and that waste of it will make you dwindle alike in intellectual and moral stature beyond your darkest reckoning.--gladstone. lost! somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. no reward is offered, for they are gone forever.--horace mann. "what is the price of that book?" at length asked a man who had been dawdling for an hour in the front store of benjamin franklin's newspaper establishment. "one dollar," replied the clerk. "one dollar," echoed the lounger; "can't you take less than that?" "one dollar is the price," was the answer. the would-be purchaser looked over the books on sale a while longer, and then inquired: "is mr. franklin in?" "yes," said the clerk, "he is very busy in the press-room." "well, i want to see him," persisted the man. the proprietor was called, and the stranger asked: "what is the lowest, mr. franklin, that you can take for that book?" "one dollar and a quarter," was the prompt rejoinder. "one dollar and a quarter! why, your clerk asked me only a dollar just now." "true," said franklin, "and i could have better afforded to take a dollar than to leave my work." the man seemed surprised; but, wishing to end a parley of his own seeking, he demanded: "well, come now, tell me your lowest price for this book." "one dollar and a half," replied franklin. "a dollar and a half! why, you offered it yourself for a dollar and a quarter." "yes," said franklin coolly, "and i could better have taken that price then than a dollar and a half now." the man silently laid the money on the counter, took his book, and left the store, having received a salutary lesson from a master in the art of transmuting time, at will, into either wealth or wisdom. time-wasters are everywhere. on the floor of the gold-working room, in the united states mint at philadelphia, there is a wooden lattice-work which is taken up when the floor is swept, and the fine particles of gold-dust, thousands of dollars' yearly, are thus saved. so every successful man has a kind of network to catch "the raspings and parings of existence, those leavings of days and wee bits of hours" which most people sweep into the waste of life. he who hoards and turns to account all odd minutes, half hours, unexpected holidays, gaps "between times," and chasms of waiting for unpunctual persons, achieves results which astonish those who have not mastered this most valuable secret. "all that i have accomplished, expect to, or hope to accomplish," said elihu burritt, "has been and will be by that plodding, patient, persevering process of accretion which builds the ant-heap--particle by particle, thought by thought, fact by fact. and if ever i was actuated by ambition, its highest and warmest aspiration reached no further than the hope to set before the young men of my country an example in employing those invaluable fragments of time called moments." "i have been wondering how ned contrived to monopolize all the talents of the family," said a brother, found in a brown study after listening to one of burke's speeches in parliament; "but then i remember; when we were at play, he was always at work." the days come to us like friends in disguise, bringing priceless gifts from an unseen hand; but, if we do not use them, they are borne silently away, never to return. each successive morning new gifts are brought, but if we failed to accept those that were brought yesterday and the day before, we become less and less able to turn them to account, until the ability to appreciate and utilize them is exhausted. wisely was it said that lost wealth may be regained by industry and economy, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance and medicine, but lost time is gone forever. "oh, it's only five minutes or ten minutes till mealtime; there's no time to do anything now," is one of the commonest expressions heard in the family. but what monuments have been built up by poor boys with no chance, out of broken fragments of time which many of us throw away! the very hours you have wasted, if improved, might have insured your success. marion harland has accomplished wonders, and she has been able to do this by economizing the minutes to shape her novels and newspaper articles, when her children were in bed and whenever she could get a spare minute. though she has done so much, yet all her life has been subject to interruptions which would have discouraged most women from attempting anything outside their regular family duties. she has glorified the commonplace as few other women have done. harriet beecher stowe, too, wrote her great masterpiece, "uncle tom's cabin," in the midst of pressing household cares. beecher read froude's "england" a little each day while he had to wait for dinner. longfellow translated the "inferno" by snatches of ten minutes a day, while waiting for his coffee to boil, persisting for years until the work was done. hugh miller, while working hard as a stone-mason, found time to read scientific books, and write the lessons learned from the blocks of stone he handled. madame de genlis, when companion of the future queen of france, composed several of her charming volumes while waiting for the princess to whom she gave her daily lessons. burns wrote many of his most beautiful poems while working on a farm. the author of "paradise lost" was a teacher, secretary of the commonwealth, secretary of the lord protector, and had to write his sublime poetry whenever he could snatch a few minutes from a busy life. john stuart mill did much of his best work as a writer while a clerk in the east india house. galileo was a surgeon, yet to the improvement of his spare moments the world owes some of its greatest discoveries. if a genius like gladstone carried through life a little book in his pocket lest an unexpected spare moment slip from his grasp, what should we of common abilities not resort to, to save the precious moments from oblivion? what a rebuke is such a life to the thousands of young men and women who throw away whole months and even years of that which the "grand old man" hoarded up even to the smallest fragments! many a great man has snatched his reputation from odd bits of time which others, who wonder at their failure to get on, throw away. in dante's time nearly every literary man in italy was a hard-working merchant, physician, statesman, judge, or soldier. while michael faraday was employed binding books, he devoted all his leisure to experiments. at one time he wrote to a friend, "time is all i require. oh, that i could purchase at a cheap rate some of our modern gentlemen's spare hours--nay, days." oh, the power of ceaseless industry to perform miracles! alexander von humboldt's days were so occupied with his business that he had to pursue his scientific labors in the night or early morning, while others were asleep. one hour a day withdrawn from frivolous pursuits and profitably employed would enable any man of ordinary capacity to master a complete science. one hour a day would in ten years make an ignorant man a well-informed man. it would earn enough to pay for two daily and two weekly papers, two leading magazines, and at least a dozen good books. in an hour a day a boy or girl could read twenty pages thoughtfully--over seven thousand pages, or eighteen large volumes in a year. an hour a day might make all the difference between bare existence and useful, happy living. an hour a day might make--nay, has made--an unknown man a famous one, a useless man a benefactor to his race. consider, then, the mighty possibilities of two--four--yes, six hours a day that are, on the average, thrown away by young men and women in the restless desire for fun and diversion! every young man should have a hobby to occupy his leisure hours, something useful to which he can turn with delight. it might be in line with his work or otherwise, only _his heart must be in it_. if one chooses wisely, the study, research, and occupation that a hobby confers will broaden character and transform the home. "he has nothing to prevent him but too much idleness, which, i have observed," says burke, "fills up a man's time much more completely and leaves him less his own master, than any sort of employment whatsoever." some boys will pick up a good education in the odds and ends of time which others carelessly throw away, as one man saves a fortune by small economies which others disdain to practise. what young man is too busy to get an hour a day for self-improvement? charles c. frost, the celebrated shoemaker of vermont, resolved to devote one hour a day to study. he became one of the most noted mathematicians in the united states, and also gained an enviable reputation in other departments of knowledge. john hunter, like napoleon, allowed himself but four hours of sleep. it took professor owen ten years to arrange and classify the specimens in comparative anatomy, over twenty-four thousand in number, which hunter's industry had collected. what a record for a boy who began his studies while working as a carpenter! john q. adams complained bitterly when robbed of his time by those who had no right to it. an italian scholar put over his door the inscription: "whoever tarries here must join in my labors." carlyle, tennyson, browning, and dickens signed a remonstrance against organ-grinders who disturbed their work. many of the greatest men of history earned their fame outside of their regular occupations in odd bits of time which most people squander. spenser made his reputation in his spare time while secretary to the lord deputy of ireland. sir john lubbock's fame rests on his prehistoric studies, prosecuted outside of his busy banking-hours. southey, seldom idle for a minute, wrote a hundred volumes. hawthorne's notebook shows that he never let a chance thought or circumstance escape him. franklin was a tireless worker. he crowded his meals and sleep into as small compass as possible so that he might gain time for study. when a child, he became impatient of his father's long grace at table, and asked him if he could not say grace over a whole cask once for all, and save time. he wrote some of his best productions on shipboard, such as his "improvement of navigation" and "smoky chimneys." what a lesson there is in raphael's brief thirty-seven years to those who plead "no time" as an excuse for wasted lives! great men have ever been misers of moments. cicero said: "what others give to public shows and entertainments, nay, even to mental and bodily rest, i give to the study of philosophy." lord bacon's fame springs from the work of his leisure hours while chancellor of england. during an interview with a great monarch, goethe suddenly excused himself, went into an adjoining room and wrote down a thought for his "faust," lest it should be forgotten. sir humphry davy achieved eminence in spare moments in an attic of an apothecary's shop. pope would often rise in the night to write out thoughts that would not come during the busy day. grote wrote his matchless "history of greece" during the hours of leisure snatched from his duties as a banker. george stephenson seized the moments as though they were gold. he educated himself and did much of his best work during his spare moments. he learned arithmetic during the night shifts when he was an engineer. mozart would not allow a moment to slip by unimproved. he would not stop his work long enough to sleep, and would sometimes write two whole nights and a day without intermission. he wrote his famous "requiem" on his death-bed. caesar said: "under my tent in the fiercest struggle of war i have always found time to think of many other things." he was once shipwrecked, and had to swim ashore; but he carried with him the manuscript of his "commentaries," upon which he was at work when the ship went down. dr. mason good translated "lucretius" while riding to visit his patients in london. dr. darwin composed most of his works by writing his thoughts on scraps of paper wherever he happened to be. watt learned chemistry and mathematics while working at his trade of a mathematical instrument-maker. henry kirke white learned greek while walking to and from the lawyer's office where he was studying. dr. burney learned italian and french on horseback. matthew hale wrote his "contemplations" while traveling on his circuit as judge. the present time is the raw material out of which we make whatever we will. do not brood over the past, or dream of the future, but seize the instant and _get your lesson from the hour_. the man is yet unborn who rightly measures and fully realizes the value of an hour. as fenelon says, god never gives but one moment at a time, and does not give a second until he withdraws the first. lord brougham could not bear to lose a moment, yet he was so systematic that he always seemed to have more leisure than many who did not accomplish a tithe of what he did. he achieved distinction in politics, law, science, and literature. dr. johnson wrote "rasselas" in the evenings of a single week, in order to meet the expenses of his mother's funeral. lincoln studied law during his spare hours while surveying, and learned the common branches unaided while tending store. mrs. somerville learned botany and astronomy and wrote books while her neighbors were gossiping and idling. at eighty she published "molecular and microscopical science." the worst of a lost hour is not so much in the wasted time as in the wasted power. idleness rusts the nerves and makes the muscles creak. work has system, laziness has none. president quincy never went to bed until he had laid his plans for the next day. dalton's industry was the passion of his life. he made and recorded over two hundred thousand meteorological observations. in factories for making cloth a single broken thread ruins a whole web; it is traced back to the girl who made the blunder and the loss is deducted from her wages. but who shall pay for the broken threads in life's great web? we cannot throw back and forth an empty shuttle; threads of some kind follow every movement as we weave the web of our fate. it may be a shoddy thread of wasted hours or lost opportunities that will mar the fabric and mortify the workman forever; or it may be a golden thread which will add to its beauty and luster. we cannot stop the shuttle or pull out the unfortunate thread which stretches across the fabric, a perpetual witness of our folly. no one is anxious about a young man while he is busy in useful work. but where does he eat his lunch at noon? where does he go when he leaves his boarding-house at night? what does he do after supper? where does he spend his sundays and holidays? the way he uses his spare moments reveals his character. the great majority of youths who go to the bad are ruined after supper. most of those who climb upward to honor and fame devote their evenings to study or work or the society of those who can help and improve them. each evening is a crisis in the career of a young man. there is a deep significance in the lines of whittier:-- this day we fashion destiny, our web of fate we spin; this day for all hereafter choose we holiness or sin. time is money. we should not be stingy or mean with it, but we should not throw away an hour any more than we would throw away a dollar-bill. waste of time means waste of energy, waste of vitality, waste of character in dissipation. it means the waste of opportunities which will never come back. beware how you kill time, for all your future lives in it. "and it is left for each," says edward everett, "by the cultivation of every talent, by watching with an eagle's eye for every chance of improvement, by redeeming time, defying temptation, and scorning sensual pleasure, to make himself useful, honored, and happy." chapter vii how poor boys and girls go to college "can i afford to go to college?" asks many an american youth who has hardly a dollar to his name and who knows that a college course means years of sacrifice and struggle. it seems a great hardship, indeed, for a young man with an ambition to do something in the world to be compelled to pay his own way through school and college by hard work. but history shows us that the men who have led in the van of human progress have been, as a rule, self-educated, self-made. the average boy of to-day who wishes to obtain a liberal education has a better chance by a hundredfold than had daniel webster or james a. garfield. there is scarcely one in good health who reads these lines but can be assured that if he will he may. here, as elsewhere, the will can usually make the way, and never before was there so many avenues of resource open to the strong will, the inflexible purpose, as there are to-day--at this hour and this moment. "of the five thousand persons--students,--directly connected with harvard university," writes a graduate, "five hundred are students entirely or almost entirely dependent upon their own resources. they are not a poverty-stricken lot, however, for half of them make an income above the average allowance of boys in smaller colleges. from $ to $ , are by no means exceptional yearly earnings of a student who is capable of doing newspaper work or tutoring,--branches of employment that pay well at harvard. "there are some men that make much more. a classmate of the writer entered college with about twenty-five dollars. as a freshman he had a hard struggle. in his junior year, however, he prospered and in his last ten months of undergraduate work he cleared above his college expenses, which were none too low, upward of $ , . "he made his money by advertising schemes and other publishing ventures. a few months after graduation he married. he is now living comfortably in cambridge." a son of poor parents, living in springfield, new york, worked his way through an academy. this only whetted his appetite for knowledge, and he determined to advance, relying wholly on himself for success. accordingly, he proceeded to schenectady, and arranged with a professor of union college to pay for his tuition by working. he rented a small room, which served for study and home, the expense of his bread-and-milk diet never exceeding fifty cents a week. after graduation, he turned his attention to civil engineering, and, later, to the construction of iron bridges of his own design. he procured many valuable patents, and amassed a fortune. his life was a success, the foundation being self-reliance and integrity. albert j. beveridge, the junior united states senator from indiana, entered college with no other capital than fifty dollars loaned to him by a friend. he served as steward of a college club, and added to his original fund of fifty dollars by taking the freshman essay prize of twenty-five dollars. when summer came, he returned to work in the harvest fields and broke the wheat-cutting records of the county. he carried his books with him morning, noon and night, and studied persistently. when he returned to college he began to be recognized as an exceptional man. he had shaped his course and worked to it. the president of his class at columbia university recently earned the money to pay for his course by selling agricultural implements. one of his classmates, by the savings of two years' work as a farm laborer, and money earned by tutoring, writing, and copying done after study hours, not only paid his way through college, but helped to support his aged parents. he believed that he could afford a college training and he got it. at chicago university many hundreds of plucky young men are working their way. the ways of earning money are various, depending upon the opportunities for work, and the student's ability and adaptability. to be a correspondent of city daily papers is the most coveted occupation, but only a few can obtain such positions. some dozen or more teach night school. several teach in the public schools in the daytime, and do their university work in the afternoons and evenings, so as to take their degrees. scores carry daily papers, by which they earn two and one-half to three and one-half dollars a week; but, as this does not pay expenses, they add other employments. a few find evening work in the city library. some attend to lawns in summer and furnaces in winter; by having several of each to care for, they earn from five to ten dollars a week. many are waiters at clubs and restaurants. some solicit advertisements. the divinity students, after the first year, preach in small towns. several are tutors. two young men made twelve hundred dollars apiece, in this way, in one year. one student is a member of a city orchestra, earning twelve dollars a week. a few serve in the university postoffice, and receive twenty cents an hour. a representative american college president recently said: "i regard it as, on the whole, a distinct advantage that a student should have to pay his own way in part as a condition of obtaining a college education. it gives a reality and vigor to one's work which is less likely to be obtained by those who are carried through college. i do not regard it, however, as desirable that one should have to work his own way entirely, as the tax upon strength and time is likely to be such as to interfere with scholarship and to undermine health." circumstances have rarely favored great men. a lowly beginning is no bar to a great career. the boy who works his way through college may have a hard time of it, but he will learn how to work his way in life, and will often take higher rank in school, and in after life, than his classmate who is the son of a millionaire. it is the son and daughter of the farmer, the mechanic and the operative, the great average class of our country, whose funds are small and opportunities few, that the republic will depend on most for good citizenship and brains in the future. the problem of securing a good education, where means are limited and time short, is of great importance both to the individual and the nation. encouragement and useful hints are offered by the experience of many bright young people who have worked their way to diplomas worthily bestowed. gaius b. frost was graduated at the brattleboro, vt., high school, taught district schools six terms, and entered dartmouth college with just money enough to pay the first necessary expenses. he worked in gardens and as a janitor for some time. during his course he taught six terms as principal of a high school, and one year as assistant superintendent in the essex county truant school, at lawrence, mass., pushed a rolling chair at the columbian exposition, chicago, was porter one season at oak hill house, littleton, n. h., and canvassed for a publishing house one summer in maine. none of his fellow-students did more to secure an education. isaac j. cox of philadelphia worked his way through kimball academy, meriden, n. h., and through dartmouth college, doing many kinds of work. there was no honest work within the limits of his ability that he would not undertake to pay his way. he served summers as waiter in a white mountain hotel, finally becoming head-waiter. like mr. frost, he ranked well in his classes, and is a young man of solid character and distinguished attainments. for four years richard weil was noted as the great prize winner of columbia college, and for "turning his time, attention and energy to any work that would bring remuneration." he would do any honest work that would bring cash,--and every cent of this money as well as every hour not spent in sleep throughout the four years of his college course was devoted to getting his education. all these and many more from the ranks of the bright and well-trained young men who have been graduated from the colleges and universities of the country in recent years believed--sincerely, doggedly believed--that a college training was something that they must have. the question of whether or not they could afford it does not appear to have occasioned much hesitancy on their part. it is evident that they did not for one instant think that they could not afford to go to college. in an investigation conducted to ascertain exact figures and facts which a poor boy must meet in working his way through college, it was found that, in a list of forty-five representative colleges and universities, having a student population of somewhat over forty thousand, the average expense per year is three hundred and four dollars; the average maximum expense, five hundred and twenty-nine dollars. in some of the smaller colleges the minimum expense per year is from seventy-five dollars to one hundred and ten dollars. there are many who get along on an expenditure of from one hundred and fifty dollars to two hundred dollars per year, while the maximum expense rises in but few instances above one thousand dollars. in western and southern colleges the averages are lower. for example, eighteen well-known western colleges and universities have a general average expense of two hundred and forty-two dollars per year, while fourteen as well-known eastern institutions give an average expense of four hundred and forty-four dollars. statistics of expense, and the opportunities for self-help, at some of the best known eastern institutions are full of interest: amherst makes a free gift of the tuition to prospective ministers; has one hundred tuition scholarships for other students of good character, habits, and standing; has some free rooms; makes loans at low rates; students have chances to earn money at tutoring, table-waiting, shorthand, care of buildings, newspaper correspondence, agencies for laundries, sale of books, etc. five hundred dollars a year will defray all necessary expenses. bowdoin has nearly a hundred scholarships, fifty dollars to seventy-five dollars a year: "no limits placed on habits or social privileges of recipients;" students getting employment in the library or laboratories can earn about one-fourth of their expenses; these will be, for the college year, three hundred dollars to four hundred dollars. brown university has over a hundred tuition scholarships and a loan fund; often remits room rent in return for services about the college buildings; requires studiousness and economy in the case of assisted students. many students earn money in various ways. the average yearly expenditure is five hundred dollars. the cost at columbia university averages five hundred and forty-seven dollars, the lowest being three hundred and eighty-seven dollars. a great many students who know how to get on in a great city work their way through columbia. cornell university gives free tuition and free rooms to seniors and juniors of good standing in their studies and of good habits. it has thirty-six two-year scholarships (two hundred dollars), for freshmen, won by success in competitive examination. it has also five hundred and twelve state tuition scholarships. many students support themselves in part by waiting on table, by shorthand, newspaper work, etc. the average yearly expenditure per student is five hundred dollars. dartmouth has some three hundred scholarships; those above fifty dollars conditioned on class rank; some rooms at nominal rent; requirements, economy and total abstinence; work of one sort or another to be had by needy students; a few get through on less than two hundred and fifty dollars a year; the average expenditure is about four hundred dollars. harvard has about two hundred and seventy-five scholarships, sixty dollars to four hundred dollars apiece, large beneficiary and loan funds, distributed or loaned in sums of forty dollars to two hundred and fifty dollars to needy and promising under-graduates; freshmen (usually) barred; a faculty employment committee; some students earning money as stenographers, typewriters, reporters, private tutors, clerks, canvassers, and singers; yearly expenditure (exclusive of clothes, washing, books, and stationery, laboratory charges, membership in societies, subscriptions and service), three hundred and fifty-eight dollars to one thousand and thirty-five dollars. the university of pennsylvania in a recent year gave three hundred and fifteen students forty-three thousand, two hundred and forty-two dollars in free scholarships and fellowships; no requirements except good standing. no money loaned, no free rooms. many students support themselves in part, and a few wholly. the average expenditure per year, exclusive of clothes, railway fares, etc., is four hundred and fifty dollars. wesleyan university remits tuition wholly or in part to two-thirds of its under-graduates. loan funds are available. "beneficiaries must be frugal in habits, total abstainers, and maintain good standing and conduct." many students are self-supporting, thirty-five per cent of the whole undergraduate body earning money. the yearly expenditure is three hundred and twenty-five dollars. yale is pretty well off now for fellowships and prizes; remits all but forty dollars of term bills, in case of worthy students, regular in attendance and studious; many such students earning money for themselves; average yearly expenditure, about six hundred dollars. there is a splendid chance for girls at some of the soundest and best known girls' colleges in the united states. the number of girls in the university of michigan who are paying their own way is large. "most of them," says dr. eliza m. mosher, woman's dean of the college, "have earned the money by teaching. it is not unusual for students to come here for two years and go away for a time, in order to earn money to complete the course. some of our most worthy graduates have done this. some lighten their expenses by waiting on tables in boarding-houses, thus paying for their board. others get room and board in the homes of professors by giving, daily, three hours of service about the house. a few take care of children, two or three hours a day, in the families of the faculty. one young woman, who is especially brave and in good earnest, worked as a chambermaid on a lake steamer last year and hurried away this year to do the same. it is her aim to earn one hundred dollars. with this sum, and a chance to pay for room and board by giving service, she will pay the coming year's expenses. because it is especially difficult to obtain good servants in this inland town, there are a few people who are glad to give the college girls such employment." "it is my opinion," said miss mary e. woolley, president of mount holyoke college, "that, if a girl with average intelligence and energy wishes a college education, she can obtain it. as far as i know, the girls who have earned money to pay their way through college, at least in part, have accomplished it by tutoring, typewriting or stenography. some of them earn pin-money while in college by tutoring, typewriting, sewing, summer work in libraries and offices, and in various little ways such as putting up lunches, taking care of rooms, executing commissions, and newspaper work. there are not many opportunities at mount holyoke to earn large amounts of money, but pin-money may be acquired in many little ways by a girl of ingenuity." the system of compulsory domestic service obtaining now at mount holyoke--whereby, in return for thirty, or at the most, fifty minutes a day of light household labor, every student reduces her college expenses by a hundred dollars or a hundred and fifty,--was formerly in use at wellesley; now, however, it is confined there to a few cottages. it has no foothold at bryn mawr, smith and vassar, or at the affiliated colleges, barnard and radcliffe. at city colleges, like the last two mentioned, board and lodging cost more than in the country; and in general it is more difficult for a girl to pay any large part of her expenses through her own efforts and carry on her college work at the same time. a number of girls in barnard are, however, paying for their clothes, books, car fares, etc., by doing what work they can find. tutoring in barnard is seldom available for the undergraduates, because the lists are always full of experienced teachers, who can be engaged by the hour. typewriting is one of the favorite resources. one student has done particularly well as agent for a firm that makes college caps and gowns. another girl, a russian jewess, from the lower east side, new york, runs a little "sweat shop," where she keeps a number of women busy making women's wrappers and children's dresses. she has paid all the expenses of her education in this way. "do any of your students work their way through?" was asked of a bryn mawr authority. "some,--to a certain extent," was the reply; "but not many. the lowest entire expenses of a year, are between four hundred and five hundred and fifty dollars. this amount includes positively everything. two girls may pay part of their expenses by taking charge of the library, and by selling stationery; another, by distributing the mail, and others by 'tutoring'. those who 'tutor' receive a dollar, a dollar and a half, and sometimes a very good one receives two dollars and a half, a lesson. but to earn all of one's way in a college year, and at the same time to keep up in all the studies, is almost impossible, and is not often done. yet several are able to pay half their way." a similar question put to a vassar student brought the following response: "why, yes, i know a girl who has a sign on the door of her room,--'dresses pressed,'--and she earns a good deal of money, too. of course, there are many wealthy girls here who are always having something like that done, and who are willing to pay well for it. and so this girl makes a large sum of money, evenings and saturdays. "there are other girls who are agents for two of the great manufacturers of chocolate creams. "the girl that plays the piano for the exercises in the gymnasium is paid for that, and some of the girls paint and make fancy articles, which they sell here, or send to the stores in new york, to be sold. some of them write for the newspapers and magazines, too, and still others have pupils in music, etc., in poughkeepsie. yes, there are a great many girls who manage to pay most of their expenses." typewriting, tutoring, assistance rendered in library or laboratory or office, furnish help to many a girl who wishes to help herself, in nearly every college. beside these standard employments, teaching in evening schools occasionally offers a good opportunity for steady eking out of means. in many colleges there is opportunity for a girl with taste and cunning fingers to act as a dressmaker, repairer, and general refurnisher to students with generous allowances. orders for gymnasium suits and swimming suits mean good profits. the reign of the shirt-waist has been a boon to many, for the well-dressed girl was never known to have enough pretty ones, and by a judicious display of attractive samples she is easily tempted to enlarge her supply. then, too, any girl who is at all deft in the art of sewing can make a shirt-waist without a professional knowledge of cutting and fitting. no boy or girl in america to-day who has good health, good morals and good grit need despair of getting a college education unless there are extremely unusual reasons against the undertaking. west of the alleghanies a college education is accessible to all classes. in most of the state universities tuition is free. in kansas, for example, board and a room can be had for twelve dollars a month; the college fees are five dollars a year, while the average expenditure of the students does not exceed two hundred dollars per annum. in ohio, the state university has abolished all tuition fees; and most of the denominational colleges demand fees even lower than were customary in new england half a century ago. partly by reason of the cheapness of a college education in ohio, that state now sends more students to college than all of new england. yet if the total cost is less in the west, on the other hand, the opportunities for self-help are correspondingly more in the east. every young man or woman should weigh the matter well before concluding that a college education is out of the question. former president tucker of dartmouth says: "the student who works his way may do it with ease and profit; or he may be seriously handicapped both by his necessities and the time he is obliged to bestow on outside matters. i have seen the sons of rich men lead in scholarship, and the sons of poor men. poverty under most of the conditions in which we find it in colleges is a spur. dartmouth college, i think, furnishes a good example. the greater part of its patronage is from poor men. without examining the statistics, i should say, from facts that have fallen under my observation, that a larger percentage of dartmouth men have risen to distinction than those of almost any other american college." the opportunities of to-day are tenfold what they were half a century ago. former president schurman of cornell says of his early life: "at the age of thirteen i left home. i hadn't definite plans as to my future. i merely wanted to get into a village, and to earn some money. "my father got me a place in the nearest town,--summerside,--a village of about one thousand inhabitants. for my first year's work i was to receive thirty dollars and my board. think of that, young men of to-day! thirty dollars a year for working from seven in the morning until ten at night! but i was glad to get the place. it was a start in the world, and the little village was like a city to my country eyes. "from the time i began working in the store until to-day, i have always supported myself, and during all the years of my boyhood i never received a penny that i did not earn myself. at the end of my first year, i went to a larger store in the same town, where i was to receive sixty dollars a year and my board. my salary was doubled; i was getting on swimmingly. "i kept this place for two years, and then i gave it up, against the wishes of my employer, because i had made up my mind that i wanted to get a better education. i determined to go to college. "i did not know how i was going to do this, except that it must be by my own efforts. i had saved about eighty dollars from my store-keeping, and that was all the money i had in the world. "when i told my employer of my plan, he tried to dissuade me from it. he pointed out the difficulties in the way of my going to college, and offered to double my pay if i would stay in the store. "that was the turning-point in my life. in one side was the certainty of one hundred and twenty dollars a year, and the prospect of promotion as fast as i deserved it. remember what one hundred and twenty dollars meant on prince edward island, and to me, a poor boy who had never possessed such a sum in his life. on the other side was my hope of obtaining an education. i knew that it involved hard work and self-denial, and there was the possibility of failure in the end. but my mind was made up. i would not turn back. i need not say that i do not regret that early decision, although i think that i should have made a successful storekeeper. "with my capital of eighty dollars, i began to attend the village high school, to get my preparation for college. i had only one year to do it in. my money would not last longer than that. i recited in latin, greek, and algebra, all on the same day, and for the next forty weeks i studied harder than i ever had before or have since. at the end of the year i entered the competitive examination for a scholarship in prince of wales college, at charlottetown, on the island. i had small hope of winning it, my preparation had been so hasty and incomplete. but when the result was announced, i found that i had not only won the scholarship from my county, but stood first of all the competitors on the island. "the scholarship i had won amounted to only sixty dollars a year. it seems little enough, but i can say now, after nearly thirty years, that the winning of it was the greatest success i ever have had. i have had other rewards, which, to most persons, would seem immeasurably greater, but with this difference: that first success was essential; without it i could not have gone on. the others i could have done without, if it had been necessary." for two years young schurman attended prince of wales college. he lived on his scholarship and what he could earn by keeping books for one of the town storekeepers, spending less than one hundred dollars during the entire college year. afterward, he taught a country school for a year, and then went to acadia college in nova scotia to complete his course. one of mr. schurman's fellow-students in acadia says that he was remarkable chiefly for taking every prize to which he was eligible. in his senior year, he learned of a scholarship in the university of london offered for competition by the students of canadian colleges. the scholarship paid five hundred dollars a year for three years. the young student in acadia was ambitious to continue his studies in england, and saw in this offer his opportunity. he tried the examination and won the prize, in competition with the brightest students in the larger canadian colleges. during the three years in the university of london, mr. schurman became deeply interested in the study of philosophy, and decided that he had found in it his life-work. he was eager to go to germany to study under the great leaders of philosophic thought. a way was opened for him, through the offer of the hibbard society, in london, of a traveling fellowship with two thousand dollars a year. the honor men of the great english universities like oxford and cambridge were among the competitors, but the poor country boy from prince edward island was again successful, greatly to the surprise of the others. at the end of his course in germany, mr. schurman, then a doctor of philosophy, returned to acadia college to become a teacher there. soon afterward, he was called to dalhousie university, at halifax, nova scotia. in , when a chair of philosophy was established at cornell, president white, who had once met the brilliant young canadian, called him to that position. two years later, dr. schurman became dean of the sage school of philosophy at cornell; and, in , when the president's chair became vacant, he was placed at the head of the great university. at that time he was only thirty-eight years of age. a well-known graduate of amherst college gives the following figures, which to the boy who earnestly wants to go to college are of the most pertinent interest: "i entered college with $ . in my pocket. during the year i earned $ ; received from the college a scholarship of $ , and an additional gift of $ ; borrowed $ . my current expenses during my freshman year were $ . per week. besides this i spent $ . for books; $ . for clothing; $ . for voluntary subscriptions; $ for railroad fares; $ . for sundries. "during the next summer i earned $ . i waited on table at a $ boarding-house all of my sophomore year, and earned half board, retaining my old room at $ per week. the expenses of the sophomore year were $ . . i earned during the year, including board, $ . ; received a scholarship of $ , and gifts amounting to $ . , and borrowed $ , with all of which i just covered expenses. "in my junior year i engaged a nice furnished room at $ per year, which i agreed to pay for by work about the house. by clerical work, etc., i earned $ ; also earned full board waiting upon table; received $ for a scholarship; $ from gifts; borrowed $ , which squared my accounts for the year, excepting $ due on tuition. the expenses for the year, including, of course, the full value of board, room, and tuition, were $ . . "during the following summer i earned $ . throughout the senior year i retained the same room, under the same conditions as the previous year. i waited on table all the year, and received full board; earned by clerical work, tutoring, etc., $ ; borrowed $ ; secured a scholarship of $ ; took a prize of $ ; received a gift of $ . the expenses of the senior year, $ . were necessarily heavier than these of previous years. but having secured a good position as teacher for the coming year, i was permitted to give my note for the amount i could not raise, and so was enabled to graduate without financial embarrassment. "the total expense for the course was about $ , ; of which (counting scholarships as earnings) i earned $ , ." twenty-five of the young men graduated at yale not long ago paid their way entirely throughout their courses. it seemed as if they left untried no avenue for earning money. tutoring, copying, newspaper work, and positions as clerks were well-occupied fields; and painters, drummers, founders, machinists, bicycle agents, and mail carriers were numbered among the twenty-five. in a certain district in boston there are ten thousand students. many of them come from the country and from factory towns. a large number come from the farms of the west. many of these students are paying for their education by money earned by their own hands. it is said that unearned money does not enrich. the money that a student earns for his own education does enrich his life. it is true gold. every young man or woman should weigh the matter well before concluding that a college education is out of the question. if henry wilson, working early and late on a farm with scarcely any opportunities to go to school, bound out until he was twenty-one for only a yoke of oxen and six sheep, could manage to read a thousand good books before his time had expired; if the slave frederick douglass, on a plantation where it was almost a crime to teach a slave to read, could manage from scraps of paper, posters on barns, and old almanacs, to learn the alphabet and lift himself to eminence; if the poor deaf boy kitto, who made shoes in an alms-house, could become the greatest biblical scholar of his age, where is the boy or girl to-day, under the american flag, who cannot get a fair education and escape the many disadvantages of ignorance? "if a man empties his purse into his head," says franklin, "no man can take it away from him. an investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." chapter viii your opportunity confronts you--what will you do with it? never before was the opportunity of the educated man so great as to-day. never before was there such a demand for the trained man, _the man who can do a thing superbly well_. at the door of every vocation is a sign out, "wanted--a man." no matter how many millions are out of employment, the whole world is hunting for a man who can do things; a trained thinker who can do whatever he undertakes a little better than it has ever before been done. everywhere it is the educated, the trained man, the man whose natural ability has been enlarged, enhanced one hundredfold by superior training, that is wanted. on all sides we see men with small minds, but who are well educated, pushing ahead of those who have greater capabilities, but who are only half educated. a one-talent man, superbly trained, often gets the place when a man with many untrained or half-trained talents loses it. never was ignorance placed at such a disadvantage as to-day. while the opportunities awaiting the educated man, the college graduate, on his entrance into practical life were never before so great and so numerous as to-day, so also the dangers and temptations which beset him were never before so great, so numerous, so insidious. all education which does not elevate, refine, and ennoble its recipient is a curse instead of a blessing. a liberal education only renders a rascal more dishonest, more dangerous. _educated rascality is infinitely more of a menace to society than ignorant rascality_. every year, thousands of young men and young women graduate full of ambition and hope, full of expectancy, go out from the schools, the colleges, and the universities, with their diplomas, to face for the first time the practical world. there is nothing else, perhaps, which the graduate needs to be cautioned against more than the money madness which has seized the american people, for nothing else is more fatal to the development of the higher, finer instincts and nobler desires. wealth with us multiplies a man's power so tremendously that everything gravitates toward it. a man's genius, art, what he stands for, is measured largely by how many dollars it will bring. "how much can i get for my picture?" "how much royalty for my book?" "how much can i get out of my specialty, my profession, my business?" "how can i make the most money?" or "how can i get rich?" is the great interrogation of the century. how will the graduate, the trained young man or woman answer it? the dollar stands out so strongly in all the undertakings of life that the ideal is often lowered or lost, the artistic suffers, the soul's wings are weighted down with gold. the commercial spirit tends to drag everything down to its dead, sordid level. it is the subtle menace which threatens to poison the graduate's ambition. _whichever way you turn, the dollar-mark will swing info your vision_. the money-god, which nearly everybody worships in some form or other, will tempt you on every hand. never before was such pressure brought to bear on the trained youth to sell his brains, to coin his ability into dollars, to prostitute his education, as to-day. the commercial prizes held up to him are so dazzling, so astounding, that it takes a strong, vigorous character to resist their temptation, even when the call in one to do something which bears little relation to money-making speaks very loudly. the song of the money-siren to-day is so persistent, so entrancing, so overwhelming that it often drowns the still small voice which bids one follow the call that runs in his blood, that is indicated in the very structure in his brain. tens of thousands of young people just out of school and college stand tiptoe on the threshold of active life, with high ideals and glorious visions, full of hope and big with promise, but many of them will very quickly catch the money contagion; the fatal germ will spread through their whole natures, inoculating their ambition with its vicious virus, and, after a few years, their fair college vision will fade, their yearnings for something higher will gradually die and be replaced by material, sordid, selfish ideals. the most unfortunate day in a youth's career is that one on which his ideals begin to grow dim and his high standards begin to drop; that day on which is born in him the selfish, money-making germ, which so often warps and wrenches the whole nature out of its legitimate orbit. you will need to be constantly on your guard to resist the attack of this germ. after you graduate and go out into the world, powerful influences will be operative in your life, tending to deteriorate your standards, lower your ideals, and encoarsen you generally. when you plunge into the swim of things, you will be constantly thrown into contact with those of lower ideals, who are actuated only by sordid, selfish aims. then dies the man, the woman in you, unless you are made of superior stuff. what a contrast that high and noble thing which the college diploma stands for presents to that which many owners of the diploma stand for a quarter of a century later! it is often difficult to recognize any relationship between the two. american-indian graduates, who are so transformed by the inspiring, uplifting influences of the schools and colleges which are educating them that they are scarcely recognizable by their own tribes when they return home, very quickly begin to change under the deteriorating influences operating upon them when they leave college. they soon begin to shed their polish, their fine manners, their improved language, and general culture; the indian blanket replaces their modern dress, and they gradually drift back into their former barbarism. they become indians again. the influences that will surround you when you leave college or your special training school will be as potent to drag you down as those that cause the young indian to revert to barbarism. the shock you will receive in dropping from the atmosphere of high ideals and beautiful promise in which you have lived for four years to that of a very practical, cold, sordid materiality will be a severe test to your character, your manhood. but the graduate whose training, whose education counts for anything ought to be able to resist the shock, to withstand all temptations. the educated man ought to be able to do something better, something higher than merely to put money in his purse. money-making can not compare with man-making. there is something infinitely better than to be a millionaire of money, and that is to be a millionaire of brains, of culture, of helpfulness to one's fellows, a millionaire of character--a gentleman. whatever degrees you carry from school or college, whatever distinction you may acquire in your career, no title will ever mean quite so much, will ever be quite so noble, as that of gentleman. "a keen and sure sense of honor," says ex-president eliot, of harvard university, "is the finest result of college life." the graduate who has not acquired this keen and sure sense of honor, this thing that stamps the gentleman, misses the best thing that a college education can impart. your future, fortunate graduate, like a great block of pure white marble, stands untouched before you. you hold the chisel and mallet--your ability, your education--in your hands. there is something in the block for you, and it lives in your ideal. shall it be angel or devil? what are your ideals, as you stand tiptoe on the threshold of active life? will you smite the block and shatter it into an unshapely or hideous piece; or will you call out a statue of usefulness, of grace and beauty, a statue which will tell the unborn generations the story of a noble life? great advantages bring great responsibilities. you can not divorce them. a liberal education greatly increases a man's obligations. there is coupled with it a responsibility which you can not shirk without paying the penalty in a shriveled soul, a stunted mentality, a warped conscience, and a narrow field of usefulness. it is more of a disgrace for a college graduate to grovel, to stoop to mean, low practises, than for a man who has not had a liberal education. the educated man has gotten a glimpse of power, of grander things, and he is expected to look up, not down, to aspire, not to grovel. we cannot help feeling that it is worse for a man to go wrong who has had all the benefits of a liberal education, than it is for one who has not had glimpses of higher things, who has not had similar advantages, because where much is given, much is expected. the world has a right to expect that wherever there is an educated, trained man people should be able to say of him as lincoln said of walt whitman, "there goes a man." the world has a right to expect that the graduate, having once faced the light and felt its power, will not turn his back on it; that he will not disgrace his _alma mater_ which has given him his superior chance in life and opened wide for him the door of opportunity. it has a right to expect that a man who has learned how to use skilfully the tools of life, will be an artist and not an artisan; that he will not stop growing. society has a right to look to the collegian to be a refining, uplifting force in his community, an inspiration to those who have not had his priceless chance; it is justified in expecting that he will raise the standard of intelligence in his community; that he will illustrate in his personality, his finer culture, the possible glory of life. it has a right to expect that he will not be a victim of the narrowing, cramping influence of avarice; that he will not be a slave of the dollar or stoop to a greedy, grasping career: that he will be free from the sordidness which often characterizes the rich ignoramus. if you have the ability and have been given superior opportunities, it simply means that you have a great commission to do something out of the ordinary for your fellows; a special message for humanity. if the torch of learning has been put in your hand, its significance is that you should light up the way for the less fortunate. if you have received a message which carries freedom for people enslaved by ignorance and bigotry, you have no right to suppress it. your education means an increased obligation to live your life up to the level of your gift, your superior opportunity. your duty is to deliver your message to the world with all the manliness, vigor, and force you possess. what shall we think of a man who has been endowed with godlike gifts, who has had the inestimable advantage of a liberal education, who has ability to ameliorate the hard conditions of his fellows, to help to emancipate them from ignorance and drudgery; what shall we think of this man, so divinely endowed, so superbly equipped, who, instead of using his education to lift his fellow men, uses it to demoralize, to drag them down; who employs his talents in the book he writes, in the picture he paints, in his business, whatever it may be, to mislead, to demoralize, to debauch; who uses his light as a decoy to lure his fellows on the rocks and reefs, instead of as a beacon to guide them into port? we imprison the burglar for breaking into our houses and stealing, but what shall we do with the educated rascal who uses his trained mind and all his gifts to ruin the very people who look up to him as a guide? "the greatest thing you can do is to be what you ought to be." a great man has said that no man will be content to live a half life when he has once discovered it is a half life, because the other half, the higher half, will haunt him. your superior training has given you a glimpse of the higher life. never lose sight of your college vision. do not permit yourself to be influenced by the maxims of a low, sordid prudence, which will be dinned into your ears wherever you go. regard the very suggestion that you shall coin your education, your high ideals into dollars; that you lower your standards, prostitute your education by the practise of low-down, sordid methods, as an insult. say to yourself, "_if the highest thing in me will not bring success, surely the lowest, the worst, cannot._" the mission of the trained man is to show the world a higher, finer type of manhood. the world has a right to expect better results from the work of the educated man; something finer, of a higher grade, and better quality, than from the man who lacks early training, the man who has discovered only a small part of himself. "pretty good," "fairly good," applied either to character or to work are bad mottoes for an educated man. you should be able to demonstrate that the man with a diploma has learned to use the tools of life skilfully; has learned how to focus his faculties so that he can bring the whole man to his task, and not a part of himself. low ideals, slipshod work, aimless, systemless, half-hearted endeavors, should have no place in your program. it is a disgrace for a man with a liberal education to botch his work, demoralize his ideals, discredit his teachers, dishonor the institution which has given him his chance to be a superior man. "keep your eye on the model, don't watch your hands," is the injunction of a great master as he walks up and down among his pupils, criticizing their work. the trouble with most of us is that we do not keep our eyes on the model; we lose our earlier vision. a liberal education ought to broaden a man's mind so that he will be able to keep his eye always on the model, the perfect ideal of his work, uninfluenced by the thousand and one petty annoyances, bickerings, misunderstandings, and discords which destroy much of the efficiency of narrower, less cultivated minds. the graduate ought to be able to rise above these things so that he can use all his brain power and energy and fling the weight of his entire being into work that is worth while. after the withdrawal of a play that has been only a short time on the stage, we often read this comment, "an artistic success, but a financial failure." while an education should develop all that is highest and best in a man, it should also make him a practical man, not a financial failure. be sure that you possess your knowledge, that your knowledge does not possess you. the mere possession of a diploma will only hold you up to ridicule, will only make you more conspicuous as a failure, if you cannot bring your education to a focus and utilize it in a practical way. _knowledge is power only when it can be made available, practical_. only what you can use of your education will benefit you or the world. the great question which confronts you in the practical world is "what can you do with what you know?" can you transmute your knowledge into power? your ability to read your latin diploma is not a test of true education; a stuffed memory does not make an educated man. the knowledge that can be utilized, that can be translated into power, constitutes the only education worthy of the name. there are thousands of college-bred men in this country, who are loaded down with knowledge that they have never been able to utilize, to make available for working purposes. there is a great difference between absorbing knowledge, making a sponge of one's brain, and transmuting every bit of knowledge into power, into working capital. as the silkworm transmutes the mulberry leaf into satin, so you should transmute your knowledge into practical wisdom. there is no situation in life in which the beneficent influence of a well-assimilated education will not make itself felt. the college man _ought_ to be a superb figure anywhere. the consciousness of being well educated should put one at ease in any society. the knowledge that one's mentality has been broadened out by college training, that one has discovered his possibilities, not only adds wonderfully to one's happiness, but also increases one's self-confidence immeasurably, and _self-confidence is the lever that moves the world_. on every hand we see men of good ability who feel crippled all their lives and are often mortified, by having to confess, by the poverty of their language, their sordid ideals, their narrow outlook on life, that they are not educated. the superbly trained man can go through the world with his head up and feel conscious that he is not likely to play the ignoramus in any company, or be mortified or pained by ignorance of matters which every well-informed person is supposed to know. this assurance of knowledge multiplies self-confidence and gives infinite satisfaction. in other words, a liberal education makes a man think a little more of himself, feel a little surer of himself, have more faith in himself, because he has discovered himself. there is also great satisfaction in the knowledge that one has not neglected the unfoldment and expansion of his mind, that he has not let the impressionable years of youth go by unimproved. but the best thing you carry from your _alma mater_ is not what you there prized most, not your knowledge of the sciences, languages, literature, art; it is something infinitely more sacred, of greater value than all these, and that is _your aroused ambition, your discovery of yourself, of your powers, of your possibilities; your resolution to be a little more of a man, to play a manly part in life, to do the greatest, grandest thing possible to you_. this will mean infinitely more to you than all you have learned from books or lectures. the most precious thing of all, however, if you have made the most of your chance, is the uplift, encouragement, inspiration, which you have absorbed from your teachers, from your associations; this is the embodiment of the college spirit, the spirit of your _alma mater_; it is that which should make you reach up as well as on, which should make you aspire instead of grovel--look up, instead of down. the graduate should regard his education as a sacred trust. he should look upon it as a power to be used, not alone for his advancement, or for his own selfish ends, but for the betterment of all mankind. as a matter of fact, things are so arranged in this world that no one can use his divine gift for himself alone and get the best out of it. to try to keep it would be as foolish as for the farmer to hoard his seed corn in a bin instead of giving it to the earth, for fear he would never get it back. the man who withholds the giving of himself to the world, does it at his peril, at the cost of mental and moral penury. the way to get the most out of ourselves, or out of life, is not to try to _sell_ ourselves for the highest possible price but to _give_ ourselves, not stingily, meanly, but _royally, magnanimously, to our fellows_. if the rosebud should try to retain all of its sweetness and beauty locked within its petals and refuse to give it out, it would be lost. it is only by flinging them out to the world that their fullest development is possible. the man who tries to keep his education, his superior advantages for himself, who is always looking out for the main chance, only shrivels, and strangles the very faculties he would develop. the trouble with most of us is that, in our efforts to sell ourselves for selfish ends or for the most dollars, we impoverish our own lives, stifle our better natures. the graduate should show the world that he has something in him too sacred to be tampered with, something marked "not for sale," a sacred something that bribery cannot touch, that influence cannot buy. you should so conduct yourself that every one will see that there is something in you that would repel as an insult the very suggestion that you could be bought or bribed, or influenced to stoop to anything low or questionable. the college man who is cursed with commonness, who gropes along in mediocrity, who lives a shiftless, selfish life, and does not lift up his head and show that he has made the most of his great privileges disgraces the institution that gave him his chance. you have not learned the best lesson from your school or college if you have not discovered the secret of making life a glory instead of a sordid grind. when you leave your _alma mater_, my young friend, whatever your vocation, do not allow all that is finest within you, your high ideals and noble purposes to be suffocated, strangled, in the everlasting scramble for the dollar. put beauty into your life, do not let your esthetic faculties, your aspiring instincts, be atrophied in your efforts to make a living. do not, as thousands of graduates do, sacrifice your social instincts, your friendships, your good name, for power or position. whether you make money or lose it, never sell your divine heritage, your good name, for a mess of pottage. whatever you do, be larger than your vocation; never let it be said of you that you succeeded in your vocation, but failed as a man. when william story, the sculptor, was asked to make a speech at the unveiling of his great statue of george peabody, in london, he simply pointed to the statue and said, "_that is my speech._" so conduct yourself that your life shall need no eulogy in words. let it be its own eulogy, let your success tell to the world the story of a noble career. however much money you may accumulate, carry your greatest wealth with you, in _a clean record, an unsullied reputation_. then you will not need houses or lands or stocks or bonds to testify to a rich life. never before did an opportunity to render such great service to mankind confront the educated youth as confronts you to-day. what will you do with it? chapter ix round boys in square holes the high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man, is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment and happiness.--emerson. there is hardly a poet, artist, philosopher, or man of science mentioned in the history of the human intellect, whose genius was not opposed by parents, guardians, or teachers. in these cases nature seems to have triumphed by direct interposition; to have insisted on her darlings having their rights, and encouraged disobedience, secrecy, falsehood, even flight from home and occasional vagabondism, rather than the world should lose what it cost her so much pains to produce.--e. p. whipple. i hear a voice you cannot hear, which says, i must not stay; i see a hand you cannot see, which beckons me away. tickell. "james watt, i never saw such an idle young fellow as you are," said his grandmother; "do take a book and employ yourself usefully. for the last half-hour you have not spoken a single word. do you know what you have been doing all this time? why, you have taken off and replaced, and taken off again, the teapot lid, and you have held alternately in the steam, first a saucer and then a spoon, and you have busied yourself in examining and, collecting together the little drops formed by the condensation of the steam on the surface of the china and the silver. now, are you not ashamed to waste your time in this disgraceful manner?" the world has certainly gained much through the old lady's failure to tell james how he could employ his time to better advantage! "but i'm good for something," pleaded a young man whom a merchant was about to discharge for his bluntness. "you are good for nothing as a salesman," said his employer. "i am sure i can be useful," said the youth. "how? tell me how." "i don't know, sir, i don't know." "nor do i," said the merchant, laughing at the earnestness of his clerk. "only don't put me away, sir, don't put me away. try me at something besides selling. i cannot sell; i know i cannot sell." "i know that, too," said the principal; "that is what is wrong." "but i can make myself useful somehow," persisted the young man; "i know i can." he was placed in the counting-house, where his aptitude for figures soon showed itself, and in a few years he became not only chief cashier in the large store, but an eminent accountant. you cannot look into a cradle and read the secret message traced by a divine hand and wrapped up in that bit of clay, any more than you can see the north star in the magnetic needle. god has loaded the needle of that young life so it will point to the star of its own destiny; and though you may pull it around by artificial advice and unnatural education, and compel it to point to the star which presides over poetry, art, law, medicine, or whatever your own pet calling is until you have wasted years of a precious life, yet, when once free, the needle flies back to its own star. "rue it as he may, repent it as he often does," says robert waters, "the man of genius is drawn by an irresistible impulse to the occupation for which he was created. no matter by what difficulties surrounded, no matter how unpromising the prospect, this occupation is the only one which he will pursue with interest and pleasure. when his efforts fail to procure means of subsistence, and he finds himself poor and neglected, he may, like burns, often look back with a sigh and think how much better off he would be had he pursued some other occupation, but he will stick to his favorite pursuit nevertheless." civilization will mark its highest tide when every man has chosen his proper work. no man can be ideally successful until he has found his place. like a locomotive, he is strong on the track, but weak anywhere else. "like a boat on a river," says emerson, "every boy runs against obstructions on every side but one. on that side all obstruction is taken away, and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea." only a dickens can write the history of "boy slavery," of boys whose aspirations and longings have been silenced forever by ignorant parents; of boys persecuted as lazy, stupid, or fickle, simply because they were out of their places; of square boys forced into round holes, and oppressed because they did not fit; of boys compelled to pore over dry theological books when the voice within continually cried "law," "medicine," "art," "science," or "business"; of boys tortured because they were not enthusiastic in employments which they loathed, and against which every fiber of their being was uttering perpetual protest. it is often a narrow selfishness in a father which leads him to wish his son a reproduction of himself. "you are trying to make that boy another you. one is enough," said emerson. john jacob astor's father wished his son to be his successor as a butcher, but the instinct of commercial enterprise was too strong in the future merchant. nature never duplicates men. she breaks the pattern at every birth. the magic combination is never used but once. frederick the great was terribly abused because he had a passion for art and music and did not care for military drill. his father hated the fine arts and imprisoned him. he even contemplated killing his son, but his own death placed frederick on the throne at the age of twenty-eight. this boy, who, because he loved art and music, was thought good for nothing, made prussia one of the greatest nations of europe. how stupid and clumsy is the blinking eagle at perch, but how keen his glance, how steady and true his curves, when turning his powerful wing against the clear blue sky! ignorant parents compelled the boy arkwright to become a barber's apprentice, but nature had locked up in his brain a cunning device destined to bless humanity and to do the drudgery of millions of england's poor; so he must needs say "hands off" even to his parents, as christ said to his mother, "wist ye not that i must be about my father's business?" galileo was set apart for a physician, but when compelled to study anatomy and physiology, he would hide his euclid and archimedes and stealthily work out the abstruse problems. he was only eighteen when he discovered the principle of the pendulum in a lamp left swinging in the cathedral at pisa. he invented both the microscope and telescope, enlarging knowledge of the vast and minute alike. the parents of michael angelo had declared that no son of theirs should ever follow the discreditable profession of an artist, and even punished him for covering the walls and furniture with sketches; but the fire burning in his breast was kindled by the divine artist, and would not let him rest until he had immortalized himself in the architecture of st. peter's, in the marble of his moses, and on the walls of the sistine chapel. pascal's father determined that his son should teach the dead languages, but the voice of mathematics drowned every other call, haunting the boy until he laid aside his grammar for euclid. the father of joshua reynolds rebuked his son for drawing pictures, and wrote on one: "done by joshua out of pure idleness." yet this "idle boy" became one of the founders of the royal academy. turner was intended for a barber in maiden lane, but became the greatest landscape-painter of modern times. claude lorraine, the painter, was apprenticed to a pastry-cook; molière, the author, to an upholsterer; and guido, the famous painter of aurora, was sent to a music school. schiller was sent to study surgery in the military school at stuttgart, but in secret he produced his first play, "the robbers," the first performance of which he had to witness in disguise. the irksomeness of his prison-like school so galled him, and his longing for authorship so allured him, that he ventured, penniless, into the inhospitable world of letters. a kind lady aided him, and soon he produced the two splendid dramas which made him immortal. the physician handel wished his son to become a lawyer, and so tried to discourage his fondness for music. but the boy got an old spinet and practiced on it secretly in a hayloft. when the doctor visited a brother in the service of the duke of weisenfelds, he took his son with him. the boy wandered unobserved to the organ in a chapel, and soon had a private concert under full blast. the duke happened to hear the performance, and wondered who could possibly combine so much melody with so much evident unfamiliarity with the instrument. the boy was brought before him, and the duke, instead of blaming him for disturbing the organ, praised his performance, and persuaded dr. handel to let his son follow his bent. daniel defoe had been a trader, a soldier, a merchant, a secretary, a factory manager, a commissioner's accountant, an envoy, and an author of several indifferent books, before he wrote his masterpiece, "robinson crusoe." wilson, the ornithologist, failed in five different professions before he found his place. erskine spent four years in the navy, and then, in the hope of more rapid promotion, joined the army. after serving more than two years, he one day, out of curiosity, attended a court, in the town where his regiment was quartered. the presiding judge, an acquaintance, invited erskine to sit near him, and said that the pleaders at the bar were among the most eminent lawyers of great britain. erskine took their measure as they spoke, and believed he could excel them. he at once began the study of law, in which he eventually soon stood alone as the greatest forensic orator of his country. a. t. stewart studied for the ministry, and became a teacher, before he drifted into his proper calling as a merchant, through the accident of having lent money to a friend. the latter, with failure imminent, insisted that his creditor should take the shop as the only means of securing the money. "jonathan," said mr. chase, when his son told of having nearly fitted himself for college, "thou shalt go down to the machine-shop on monday morning." it was many years before jonathan escaped from the shop, to work his way up to the position of a man of great influence as a united states senator from rhode island. it has been well said that if god should commission two angels, one to sweep a street crossing, and the other to rule an empire, they could not be induced to exchange callings. not less true is it that he who feels that god has given him a particular work to do can be happy only when earnestly engaged in its performance. happy the youth who finds the place which his dreams have pictured! if he does not fill that place, he will not fill any to the satisfaction of himself or others. nature never lets a man rest until he has found his place. she haunts him and drives him until all his faculties give their consent and he falls into his proper niche. a parent might just as well decide that the magnetic needle will point to venus or jupiter without trying it, as to decide what profession his son shall adopt. what a ridiculous exhibition a great truck-horse would make on the race-track; yet this is no more incongruous than the popular idea that law, medicine, and theology are the only desirable professions. how ridiculous, too, for fifty-two per cent. of our american college graduates to study law! how many young men become poor clergymen by trying to imitate their fathers who were good ones; of poor doctors and lawyers for the same reason! the country is full of men who are out of place, "disappointed, soured, ruined, out of office, out of money, out of credit, out of courage, out at elbows, out in the cold." the fact is, nearly every college graduate who succeeds in the true sense of the word, prepares himself in school, but makes himself after he is graduated. the best thing his teachers have taught him is _how_ to study. the moment he is beyond the college walls he ceases to use books and helps which do not feed him, and seizes upon those that do. [illustration: ulysses s. grant] we must not jump to the conclusion that because a man has not succeeded in what he has really tried to do with all his might, he cannot succeed at anything. look at a fish floundering on the sand as though he would tear himself to pieces. but look again: a huge wave breaks higher up the beach and covers the unfortunate creature. the moment his fins feel the water, he is himself again, and darts like a flash through the waves. his fins mean something now, while before they beat the air and earth in vain, a hindrance instead of a help. if you fail after doing your level best, examine the work attempted, and see if it really be in the line of your bent or power of achievement. cowper failed as a lawyer. he was so timid that he could not plead a case, but he wrote some of our finest poems. molière found that he was not adapted to the work of a lawyer, but he left a great name in literature. voltaire and petrarch abandoned the law, the former choosing philosophy, the latter, poetry. cromwell was a farmer until forty years old. very few of us, before we reach our teens, show great genius or even remarkable talent for any line of work or study. the great majority of boys and girls, even when given all the latitude and longitude heart could desire, find it very difficult before their fifteenth or even before their twentieth year to decide what to do for a living. each knocks at the portals of the mind, demanding a wonderful aptitude for some definite line of work, but it is not there. that is no reason why the duty at hand should be put off, or why the labor that naturally falls to one's lot should not be done well. samuel smiles was trained to a profession which was not to his taste, yet he practiced it so faithfully that it helped him to authorship, for which he was well fitted. fidelity to the work or everyday duties at hand, and a genuine feeling of responsibility to our parents or employers, ourselves, and our god, will eventually bring most of us into the right niches at the proper time. garfield would not have become president if he had not previously been a zealous teacher, a responsible soldier, a conscientious statesman. neither lincoln nor grant started as a baby with a precocity for the white house, or an irresistible genius for ruling men. so no one should be disappointed because he was not endowed with tremendous gifts in the cradle. his business is to do the best he can wherever his lot may be cast, and advance at every honorable opportunity in the direction towards which the inward monitor points. let duty be the guiding-star, and success will surely be the crown, to the full measure of one's ability and industry. what career? what shall my life's work be? if instinct and heart ask for carpentry, be a carpenter; if for medicine, be a physician. with a firm choice and earnest work, a young man or woman cannot help but succeed. but if there be no instinct, or if it be weak or faint, one should choose cautiously along the line of his best adaptability and opportunity. no one need doubt that the world has use for him. true success lies in acting well your part, and this every one can do. better be a first-rate hod-carrier than a second-rate anything. the world has been very kind to many who were once known as dunces or blockheads, after they have become very successful; but it was very cross to them while they were struggling through discouragement and misinterpretation. give every boy and girl a fair chance and reasonable encouragement, and do not condemn them because of even a large degree of downright stupidity; for many so-called good-for-nothing boys, blockheads, numskulls, dullards, or dunces, were only boys out of their places, round boys forced into square holes. wellington was considered a dunce by his mother. at eton he was called dull, idle, slow, and was about the last boy in school of whom anything was expected. he showed no talent, and had no desire to enter the army. his industry and perseverance were his only redeeming characteristics in the eyes of his parents and teachers. but at forty-six he had defeated the greatest general living, except himself. goldsmith was the laughing-stock of his schoolmasters. he was graduated "wooden spoon," a college name for a dunce. he tried to enter a class in surgery, but was rejected. he was driven to literature. goldsmith found himself totally unfit for the duties of a physician; but who else could have written the "vicar of wakefield" or the "deserted village"? dr. johnson found him very poor and about to be arrested for debt. he made goldsmith give him the manuscript of the "vicar of wakefield," sold it to the publishers, and paid the debt. this manuscript made its author famous. robert clive bore the name of "dunce" and "reprobate" at school, but at thirty-two, with three thousand men, he defeated fifty thousand at plassey and laid the foundation of the british empire in india. sir walter scott was called a blockhead by his teacher. when byron happened to get ahead of his class, the master would say: "now, jordie, let me see how soon you will be at the foot again." young linnaeus was called by his teachers almost a blockhead. not finding him fit for the church, his parents sent him to college to study medicine. but the silent teacher within, greater and wiser than all others, led him to the fields; and neither sickness, misfortune, nor poverty could drive him from the study of botany, the choice of his heart, and he became the greatest botanist of his age. richard b. sheridan's mother tried in vain to teach him the most elementary studies. the mother's death aroused slumbering talents, as has happened in hundreds of cases, and he became one of the most brilliant men of his age. samuel drew was one of the dullest and most listless boys in his neighborhood, yet after an accident by which he nearly lost his life, and after the death of his brother, he became so studious and industrious that he could not bear to lose a moment. he read at every meal, using all the time he could get for self-improvement. he said that paine's "age of reason" made him an author, for it was by his attempt to refute its arguments that he was first known as a strong, vigorous writer. it has been well said that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them. chapter x what career? brutes find out where their talents lie; a bear will not attempt to fly, a foundered horse will oft debate before he tries a five-barred gate. a dog by instinct turns aside who sees the ditch too deep and wide. but man we find the only creature who, led by folly, combats nature; who, when she loudly cries--forbear! with obstinacy fixes there; and where his genius least inclines, absurdly bends his whole designs. swift. the crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.--emerson. whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line of talent. be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing.--sydney smith. "every man has got a fort," said artemus ward. "it's some men's fort to do one thing, and some other men's fort to do another, while there is numeris shiftless critters goin' round loose whose fort is not to do nothin'. "twice i've endevered to do things which they wasn't my fort. the first time was when i undertook to lick a owdashus cuss who cut a hole in my tent and krawld threw. sez i, 'my jentle sir, go out, or i shall fall onto you putty hevy.' sez he, 'wade in, old wax figgers,' whereupon i went for him, but he cawt me powerful on the hed and knockt me threw the tent into a cow pastur. he pursood the attack and flung me into a mud puddle. as i aroze and rung out my drencht garmints, i concluded fitin was n't my fort. "i'le now rize the curtain upon seen nd. it is rarely seldum that i seek consolation in the flowin bole. but in a certain town in injianny in the faul of --, my orgin grinder got sick with the fever and died. i never felt so ashamed in my life, and i thought i'd hist in a few swallers of suthin strengthnin. konsequents was, i histed so much i didn't zackly know whereabouts i was. i turned my livin' wild beasts of pray loose into the streets, and split all my wax-works. "i then bet i cood play hoss. so i hitched myself to a kanawl bote, there bein' two other hosses behind and anuther ahead of me. but the hosses bein' onused to such a arrangemunt, begun to kick and squeal and rair up. konsequents was, i was kicked vilently in the stummuck and back, and presently, i found myself in the kanawl with the other hosses, kikin and yellin like a tribe of cusscaroorus savajis. i was rescood, and as i was bein carried to the tavern on a hemlock bored i sed in a feeble voice, 'boys, playin' hoss isn't my fort.' "_moral: never don't do nothin' which isn't your fort, for ef you do you'll find yourself splashin' round in the kanawl, figuratively speakin._" the following advertisement, which appeared day after day in a western paper, did not bring a single reply:-- "wanted.--situation by a practical printer, who is competent to take charge of any department in a printing and publishing house. would accept a professorship in any of the academies. has no objection to teach ornamental painting and penmanship, geometry, trigonometry, and many other sciences. has had some experience as a lay preacher. would have no objection to form a small class of young ladies and gentlemen to instruct them in the higher branches. to a dentist or chiropodist he would be invaluable; or he would cheerfully accept a position as bass or tenor singer in a choir." at length there appeared this addition to the notice:-- "p. s. will accept an offer to saw and split wood at less than the usual rates." this secured a situation at once, and the advertisement was seen no more. your talent is your _call_. your legitimate destiny speaks in your character. if you have found your place, your occupation has the consent of every faculty of your being. if possible, choose that occupation which focuses the largest amount of your experience and tastes. you will then not only have a congenial vocation, but also will utilize largely your skill and business knowledge, which is your true capital. _follow your bent_. you cannot long fight successfully against your aspirations. parents, friends, or misfortune may stifle and suppress the longings of the heart, by compelling you to perform unwelcome tasks; but, like a volcano, the inner fire will burst the crusts which confine it and will pour forth its pent-up genius in eloquence, in song, in art, or in some favorite industry. beware of "a talent which you cannot hope to practice in perfection." nature hates all botched and half-finished work, and will pronounce her curse upon it. better be the napoleon of bootblacks, or the alexander of chimney-sweeps, let us say with matthew arnold, than a shallow-brained attorney who, like necessity, knows no law. half the world seems to have found uncongenial occupation, as though the human race had been shaken up together and exchanged places in the operation. a servant girl is trying to teach, and a natural teacher is tending store. good farmers are murdering the law, while choates and websters are running down farms, each tortured by the consciousness of unfulfilled destiny. boys are pining in factories who should be wrestling with greek and latin, and hundreds are chafing beneath unnatural loads in college who should be on the farm or before the mast. artists are spreading "daubs" on canvas who should be whitewashing board fences. behind counters stand clerks who hate the yard-stick and neglect their work to dream of other occupations. a good shoemaker writes a few verses for the village paper, his friends call him a poet, and the last, with which he is familiar, is abandoned for the pen, which he uses awkwardly. other shoemakers are cobbling in congress, while statesmen are pounding shoe-lasts. laymen are murdering sermons while beechers and whitefields are failing as merchants, and people are wondering what can be the cause of empty pews. a boy who is always making something with tools is railroaded through the university and started on the road to inferiority in one of the "three honorable professions." real surgeons are handling the meat-saw and cleaver, while butchers are amputating human limbs. how fortunate that-- "there's a divinity that shapes our ends, _rough-hew them how we will._" "he that hath a trade," says franklin, "hath an estate; and he that hath a calling hath a place of profit and honor. a plowman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees." a man's business does more to make him than anything else. it hardens his muscles, strengthens his body, quickens his blood, sharpens his mind, corrects his judgment, wakes up his inventive genius, puts his wits to work, starts him on the race of life, arouses his ambition, makes him feel that he is a man and must fill a man's shoes, do a man's work, bear a man's part in life, and show himself a man in that part. no man feels himself a man who is not doing a man's business. a man without employment is not a man. he does not prove by his works that he is a man. a hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle do not make a man. a good cranium full of brains is not a man. the bone and muscle and brain must know how to do a man's work, think a man's thoughts, mark out a man's path, and bear a man's weight of character and duty before they constitute a man. go-at-it-iveness is the first requisite for success. stick-to-it-iveness is the second. under ordinary circumstances, and with practical common sense to guide him, one who has these requisites will not fail. don't wait for a higher position or a larger salary. enlarge the position you already occupy; put originality of method into it. fill it as it never was filled before. be more prompt, more energetic, more thorough, more polite than your predecessor or fellow workmen. study your business, devise new modes of operation, be able to give your employer points. the art lies not in giving satisfaction merely, not in simply filling your place, but in doing better than was expected, in surprising your employer; and the reward will be a better place and a larger salary. when out of work, take the first respectable job that offers, heeding not the disproportion between your faculties and your task. if you put your manhood into your labor, you will soon be given something better to do. this question of a right aim in life has become exceedingly perplexing in our complicated age. it is not a difficult problem to solve when one is the son of a zulu or the daughter of a bedouin. the condition of the savage hardly admits of but one choice; but as one rises higher in the scale of civilization and creeps nearer to the great centers of activity, the difficulty of a correct decision increases with its importance. in proportion as one is hard pressed in competition is it of the sternest necessity for him to choose the right aim, so as to be able to throw the whole of his energy and enthusiasm into the struggle for success. the dissipation of strength or hope is fatal to prosperity even in the most attractive field. gladstone says there is a limit to the work that can be got out of a human body, or a human brain, and he is a wise man who wastes no energy on pursuits for which he is not fitted. "blessed is he who has found his work," says carlyle. "let him ask no other blessedness. he has a work--a life purpose; he has found it, and will follow it." in choosing an occupation, do not ask yourself how you can make the most money or gain the most notoriety, but choose that work which will call out all your powers and develop your manhood into the greatest strength and symmetry. not money, not notoriety, not fame even, but power is what you want. manhood is greater than wealth, grander than fame. character is greater than any career. each faculty must be educated, and any deficiency in its training will appear in whatever you do. the hand must be educated to be graceful, steady, and strong. the eye must be educated to be alert, discriminating, and microscopic. the heart must be educated to be tender, sympathetic, and true. the memory must be drilled for years in accuracy, retention, and comprehensiveness. the world does not demand that you be a lawyer, minister, doctor, farmer, scientist, or merchant; it does not dictate what you shall do, but it does require that you be a master in whatever you undertake. if you are a master in your line, the world will applaud you and all doors will fly open to you. but it condemns all botches, abortions, and failures. "whoever is well educated to discharge the duty of a man," says rousseau, "cannot be badly prepared to fill any of those offices that have relation to him. it matters little to me whether my pupils be designed for the army, the pulpit, or the bar. nature has destined us to the offices of human life antecedent to our destination concerning society. to live is the profession i would teach him. when i have done with him, it is true he will be neither a soldier, a lawyer, nor a divine. let him first be a man. fortune may remove him from one rank to another as she pleases; he will be always found in his place." in the great race of life common sense has the right of way. wealth, a diploma, a pedigree, talent, genius, without tact and common sense, cut but a small figure. the incapables and the impracticables, though loaded with diplomas and degrees, are left behind. not what do you know, or _who_ are you, but _what_ are you, _what can you do_, is the interrogation of the century. george herbert has well said: "what we are is much more to us than what we do." an aim that carries in it the least element of doubt as to its justice or honor or right should be abandoned at once. the art of dishing up the wrong so as to make it look and taste like the right has never been more extensively cultivated than in our day. it is a curious fact that reason will, on pressure, overcome a man's instinct of right. an eminent scientist has said that a man could soon reason himself out of the instinct of decency if he would only take pains and work hard enough. so when a doubtful but attractive future is placed before one, there is a great temptation to juggle with the wrong until it seems the right. yet any aim that is immoral carries in itself the germ of certain failure, in the real sense of the word--failure that is physical and spiritual. there is no doubt that every person has a special adaptation for his own peculiar part in life. a very few--geniuses, we call them--have this marked in an unusual degree, and very early in life. madame de staël was engrossed in political philosophy at an age when other girls are dressing dolls. mozart, when but four years old, played the clavichord and composed minuets and other pieces still extant. the little chalmers, with solemn air and earnest gestures, would preach often from a stool in the nursery. goethe wrote tragedies at twelve, and grotius published an able philosophical work before he was fifteen. pope "lisped in numbers." chatterton wrote good poems at eleven, and cowley published a volume of poetry in his sixteenth year. thomas lawrence and benjamin west drew likenesses almost as soon as they could walk. liszt played in public at twelve. canova made models in clay while a mere child. bacon exposed the defects of aristotle's philosophy when but sixteen. napoleon was at the head of armies when throwing snowballs at brienne. all these showed their bent while young, and followed it in active life. but precocity is not common, and, except in rare cases, we must discover the bias in our natures, and not wait for the proclivity to make itself manifest. when found, it is worth more to us than a vein of gold. "_i_ do not forbid you to preach," said a bishop to a young clergyman, "but nature does." lowell said: "it is the vain endeavor to make ourselves what we are not that has strewn history with so many broken purposes, and lives left in the rough." you have not found your place until all your faculties are roused, and your whole nature consents and approves of the work you are doing; not until you are so enthusiastic in it that you take it to bed with you. you may be forced to drudge at uncongenial toil for a time, but emancipate yourself as soon as possible. carey, the "consecrated cobbler," before he went as a missionary said: "my business is to preach the gospel. i cobble shoes to pay expenses." if your vocation be only a humble one, elevate it with more manhood than others put into it. put into it brains and heart and energy and economy. broaden it by originality of methods. extend it by enterprise and industry. study it as you would a profession. learn everything that is to be known about it. concentrate your faculties upon it, for the greatest achievements are reserved for the man of single aim, in whom no rival powers divide the empire of the soul. _better adorn your own than seek another's place_. go to the bottom of your business if you would climb to the top. nothing is small which concerns your business. master every detail. this was the secret of a. t. stewart's and of john jacob astor's great success. they knew everything about their business. as love is the only excuse for marriage, and the only thing which will carry one safely through the troubles and vexations of married life, so love for an occupation is the only thing which will carry one safely and surely through the troubles which overwhelm ninety-five out of every one hundred who choose the life of a merchant, and very many in every other career. a famous englishman said to his nephew, "don't choose medicine, for we have never had a murderer in our family, and the chances are that in your ignorance you may kill a patient; as to the law, no prudent man is willing to risk his life or his fortune to a young lawyer, who has not only no experience, but is generally too conceited to know the risks he incurs for his client, who alone is the loser; therefore, as the mistakes of a clergyman in doctrine or advice to his parishioners cannot be clearly determined in this world, i advise you by all means to enter the church." "i felt that i was in the world to do something, and thought i must," said whittier, thus giving the secret of his great power. it is the man who must enter law, literature, medicine, the ministry, or any other of the overstocked professions, who will succeed. his certain call, that is his love for it, and his fidelity to it, are the imperious factors of his career. if a man enters a profession simply because his grandfather made a great name in it, or his mother wants him to, with no love or adaptability for it, it were far better for him to be a motor-man on an electric car at a dollar and seventy-five cents a day. in the humbler work his intelligence may make him a leader; in the other career he might do as much harm as a bowlder rolled from its place upon a railroad track, a menace to the next express. only a few years ago marriage was the only "sphere" open to girls, and the single woman had to face the disapproval of her friends. lessing said: "the woman who thinks is like a man who puts on rouge, ridiculous." not many years have elapsed since the ambitious woman who ventured to study or write would keep a bit of embroidery at hand to throw over her book or manuscript when callers entered. dr. gregory said to his daughters: "if you happen to have any learning, keep it a profound secret from the men, who generally look with a jealous and malignant eye on a woman of great parts and a cultivated understanding." women who wrote books in those days would deny the charge as though a public disgrace. all this has changed, and what a change it is! as frances willard said, the greatest discovery of the century is the discovery of woman. we have emancipated her, and are opening countless opportunities for our girls outside of marriage. formerly only a boy could choose a career; now his sister can do the same. this freedom is one of the greatest glories of the twentieth century. but with freedom comes responsibility, and under these changed conditions every girl should have a definite aim. dr. hall says that the world has urgent need of "girls who are mother's right hand; girls who can cuddle the little ones next best to mamma, and smooth out the tangles in the domestic skein when thing's get twisted; girls whom father takes comfort in for something better than beauty, and the big brothers are proud of for something that outranks the ability to dance or shine in society. next, we want girls of sense,--girls who have a standard of their own, regardless of conventionalities, and are independent enough to live up to it; girls who simply won't wear a trailing dress on the street to gather up microbes and all sorts of defilement; girls who don't wear a high hat to the theater, or lacerate their feet and endanger their health with high heels and corsets; girls who will wear what is pretty and becoming and snap their fingers at the dictates of fashion when fashion is horrid and silly. and we want good girls,--girls who are sweet, right straight out from the heart to the lips; innocent and pure and simple girls, with less knowledge of sin and duplicity and evil-doing at twenty than the pert little schoolgirl of ten has all too often. and we want careful girls and prudent girls, who think enough of the generous father who toils to maintain them in comfort, and of the gentle mother who denies herself much that they may have so many pretty things, to count the cost and draw the line between the essentials and non-essentials; girls who strive to save and not to spend; girls who are unselfish and eager to be a joy and a comfort in the home rather than an expense and a useless burden. we want girls with hearts,--girls who are full of tenderness and sympathy, with tears that flow for other people's ills, and smiles that light outward their own beautiful thoughts. we have lots of clever girls, and brilliant girls, and witty girls. give us a consignment of jolly girls, warm-hearted and impulsive girls; kind and entertaining to their own folks, and with little desire to shine in the garish world. with a few such girls scattered around, life would freshen up for all of us, as the weather does under the spell of summer showers." "they talk about a woman's sphere, as though it had a limit; there's not a place in earth or heaven, there's not a task to mankind given, there's not a blessing or a woe, there's not a whisper, yes or no, there's not a life, or death, or birth, that has a feather's weight of worth, without a woman in it." "do that which is assigned you," says emerson, "and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. there is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of phidias, or trowel of the egyptians, or the pen of moses or dante, but different from all these." "the best way for a young man to begin, who is without friends or influence," said russell sage, "is, first, by getting a position; second, keeping his mouth shut; third, observing; fourth, being faithful; fifth, making his employer think he would be lost in a fog without him; and sixth, being polite." "close application, integrity, attention to details, discreet advertising," are given as the four steps to success by john wanamaker, whose motto is, "do the next thing." whatever you do in life, be greater than your calling. most people look upon an occupation or calling as a mere expedient for earning a living. what a mean, narrow view to take of what was intended for the great school of life, the great man developer, the character-builder; that which should broaden, deepen, heighten, and round out into symmetry, harmony, and beauty all the god-given faculties within us! how we shrink from the task and evade the lessons which were intended for the unfolding of life's great possibilities into usefulness and power, as the sun unfolds into beauty and fragrance the petals of the flower! i am glad to think i am not bound to make the world go round; but only to discover and to do, with cheerful heart, the work that god appoints. jean ingelow. "'what shall i do to be forever known?' thy duty ever! 'this did full many who yet sleep all unknown,'-- oh, never, never! think'st thou, perchance, that they remain unknown whom thou know'st not? by angel trumps in heaven their praise is blown, divine their lot." chapter xi choosing a vocation be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing.--sydney smith. "many a man pays for his success with a slice of his constitution." no man struggles perpetually and victoriously against his own character; and one of the first principles of success in life is so to regulate our career as rather to turn our physical constitution and natural inclinations to good account than to endeavor to counteract the one or oppose the other.--bulwer. he that hath a trade hath an estate.--franklin. nature fits all her children with something to do.--lowell. as occupations and professions have a powerful influence upon the length of human life, the youth should first ascertain whether the vocation he thinks of choosing is a healthy one. statesmen, judges, and clergymen are noted for their longevity. they are not swept into the great business vortex, where the friction and raspings of sharp competition whittle life away at a fearful rate. astronomers, who contemplate vast systems, moving through enormous distances, are exceptionally long lived,--as herschel and humboldt. philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians, as galileo, bacon, newton, euler, dalton, in fact, those who have dwelt upon the exact sciences, seem to have escaped many of the ills from which humanity suffers. great students of natural history have also, as a rule, lived long and happy lives. of fourteen members of a noted historical society in england, who died in , two were over ninety, five over eighty, and two over seventy. the occupation of the mind has a great influence upon the health of the body. there is no employment so dangerous and destructive to life but plenty of human beings can be found to engage in it. of all the instances that can be given of recklessness of life, there is none which exceeds that of the workmen employed in what is called dry-pointing--the grinding of needles and of table forks. the fine steel dust which they breathe brings on a painful disease, of which they are almost sure to die before they are forty. yet not only are men tempted by high wages to engage in this employment, but they resist to the utmost all contrivances devised for diminishing the danger, through fear that such things would cause more workmen to offer themselves and thus lower wages. many physicians have investigated the effects of work in the numerous match factories in france upon the health of the employees, and all agree that rapid destruction of the teeth, decay or necrosis of the jawbone, bronchitis, and other diseases result. we will probably find more old men on farms than elsewhere. there are many reasons why farmers should live longer than persons residing in cities or than those engaged in other occupations. aside from the purer air, the outdoor exercise, both conducive to a good appetite and sound sleep, which comparatively few in cities enjoy, they are free from the friction, harassing cares, anxieties, and the keen competition incident to city life. on the other hand, there are some great drawbacks and some enemies to longevity, even on the farm. man does not live by bread alone. the mind is by far the greatest factor in maintaining the body in a healthy condition. the social life of the city, the great opportunities afforded the mind for feeding upon libraries and lectures, great sermons, and constant association with other minds, the great variety of amusements compensate largely for the loss of many of the advantages of farm life. in spite of the great temperance and immunity from things which corrode, whittle, and rasp away life in the cities, farmers in many places do not live so long as scientists and some other professional men. there is no doubt that aspiration and success tend to prolong life. prosperity tends to longevity, if we do not wear life away or burn it out in the feverish pursuit of wealth. thomas w. higginson made a list of thirty of the most noted preachers of the last century, and found that their average length of life was sixty-nine years. among miners in some sections over six hundred out of a thousand die from consumption. in the prisons of europe, where the fatal effects of bad air and filth are shown, over sixty-one per cent. of the deaths are from tuberculosis. in bavarian monasteries, fifty per cent. of those who enter in good health die of consumption, and in the prussian prisons it is almost the same. the effect of bad air, filth, and bad food is shown by the fact that the death-rate among these classes, between the ages of twenty and forty, is five times that of the general population of the same age. in new york city, over one-fifth of all the deaths of persons over twenty are from this cause. in large cities in europe the percentage is often still greater. of one thousand deaths from all causes, on the average, one hundred and three farmers die of pulmonary tuberculosis, one hundred and eight fishermen, one hundred and twenty-one gardeners, one hundred and twenty-two farm laborers, one hundred and sixty-seven grocers, two hundred and nine tailors, three hundred and one dry-goods dealers, and four hundred and sixty-one compositors,--nearly one-half. according to a long series of investigations by drs. benoysten and lombard into occupations or trades where workers must inhale dust, it appears that mineral dust is the most detrimental to health, animal dust ranking next, and vegetable dust third. in choosing an occupation, cleanliness, pure air, sunlight, and freedom from corroding dust and poisonous gases are of the greatest importance. a man who would sell a year of his life for any amount of money would be considered insane, and yet we deliberately choose occupations and vocations which statistics and physicians tell us will be practically sure to cut off from five to twenty-five, thirty, or even forty years of our lives, and are seemingly perfectly indifferent to our fate. there is danger in a calling which requires great expenditure of vitality at long, irregular intervals. he who is not regularly, or systematically employed incurs perpetual risk. "of the thirty-two all-round athletes in a new york club not long ago," said a physician, "three are dead of consumption, five have to wear trusses, four or five are lop-shouldered, and three have catarrh and partial deafness." dr. patten, chief surgeon at the national soldiers' home at dayton, ohio, says that "of the five thousand soldiers in that institution fully eighty per cent. are suffering from heart disease in one form or another, due to the forced physical exertions of the campaigns." man's faculties and functions are so interrelated that whatever affects one affects all. athletes who over-develop the muscular system do so at the expense of the physical, mental, and moral well-being. it is a law of nature that the overdevelopment of any function or faculty, forcing or straining it, tends not only to ruin it, but also to cause injurious reactions on every other faculty and function. vigorous thought must come from a fresh brain. we cannot expect nerve, snap, robustness and vigor, sprightliness and elasticity, in the speech, in the book, or in the essay, from an exhausted, jaded brain. the brain is one of the last organs of the body to reach maturity (at about the age of twenty-eight), and should never be overworked, especially in youth. the whole future of a man is often ruined by over-straining the brain in school. brain-workers cannot do good, effective work in one line many hours a day. when the brain is weary, when it begins to lose its elasticity and freshness, there will be the same lack of tonicity and strength in the brain product. some men often do a vast amount of literary work in entirely different lines during their spare hours. cessation of brain activity does not necessarily constitute brain rest, as most great thinkers know. the men who accomplish the most brain-work, sooner or later--usually later, unfortunately--learn to give rest to one set of faculties and use another, as interest begins to flag and a sense of weariness comes. in this way they have been enabled to astonish the world by their mental achievements, which is very largely a matter of skill in exercising alternate sets of faculties, allowing rest to some while giving healthy exercise to others. the continual use of one set of faculties by an ambitious worker will soon bring him to grief. no set of brain cells can possibly set free more brain force in the combustion of thought than is stored up in them. the tired brain must have rest, or nervous exhaustion, brain fever, or even softening of the brain is liable to follow. as a rule, physical vigor is the condition of a great career. what would gladstone have accomplished with a weak, puny physique? he addresses an audience at corfu in greek, and another at florence in italian. a little later he converses at ease with bismarck in german, or talks fluent french in paris, or piles up argument on argument in english for hours in parliament. there are families that have "clutched success and kept it through generations from the simple fact of a splendid physical organization handed down from one generation to another." [illustration: william ewart gladstone] all occupations that enervate, paralyze, or destroy body or soul should be avoided. our manufacturing interests too often give little thought to the employed; the article to be made is generally the only object considered. they do not care if a man spends the whole of his life upon the head of a pin, or in making a screw in a watch factory. they take no notice of the occupations that ruin, or the phosphorus, the dust, the arsenic that destroys the health, that shortens the lives of many workers; of the cramped condition of the body which creates deformity. the moment we compel those we employ to do work that demoralizes them or does not tend to elevate or lift them, we are forcing them into service worse than useless. "if we induce painters to work in fading colors, or architects with rotten stone, or contractors to construct buildings with imperfect materials, we are forcing our michael angelos to carve in snow." ruskin says that the tendency of the age is to expend its genius in perishable art, _as if it were a triumph to burn its thoughts away in bonfires_. is the work you compel others to do useful to yourself and to society? if you employ a seamstress to make four or five or six beautiful flounces for your ball dress, flounces which will only clothe yourself, and which you will wear at only one ball, you are employing your money selfishly. do not confuse covetousness with benevolence, nor cheat yourself into thinking that all the finery you can wear is so much put into the hungry mouths of those beneath you. it is what those who stand shivering on the street, forming a line to see you step out of your carriage, know it to be. these fine dresses do not mean that so much has been put into their mouths, but _that so much has been taken out of their mouths_. select a clean, useful, honorable occupation. if there is any doubt on this point, abandon it at once, for _familiarity with a bad business will make it seem good_. choose a business that has expansiveness in it. some kinds of business not even a j. pierpont morgan could make respectable. choose an occupation which will develop you; which will elevate you; which will give you a chance for self-improvement and promotion. you may not make quite so much money, but you will be more of a man, and _manhood is above all riches, overtops all titles_, and _character is greater than any career_. if possible avoid occupations which compel you to work in a cramped position, or where you must work at night and on sundays. don't try to justify yourself on the ground that somebody must do this kind of work. let "somebody," not yourself, take the responsibility. aside from the right and wrong of the thing, it is injurious to the health to work seven days in the week, to work at night when nature intended you to sleep, or to sleep in the daytime when she intended you to work. many a man has dwarfed his manhood, cramped his intellect, crushed his aspiration, blunted his finer sensibilities, in some mean, narrow occupation just because there was money in it. "study yourself," says longfellow, "and most of all, note well wherein kind nature meant you to excel." dr. matthews says that "to no other cause, perhaps, is failure in life so frequently to be traced as to a mistaken calling." we can often find out by hard knocks and repeated failures what we can not do before what we can do. this negative process of eliminating the doubtful chances is often the only way of attaining to the positive conclusion. how many men have been made ridiculous for life by choosing law or medicine or theology, simply because they are "honorable professions"! these men might have been respectable farmers or merchants, but are "nobodies" in such vocations. the very glory of the profession which they thought would make them shining lights simply renders more conspicuous their incapacity. thousands of youths receive an education that fits them for a profession which they have not the means or inclination to follow, and that unfits them for the conditions of life to which they were born. unsuccessful students with a smattering of everything are raised as much above their original condition as if they were successful. a large portion of paris cabmen are unsuccessful students in theology and other professions and also unfrocked priests. they are very bad cabmen. "tompkins forsakes his last and awl for literary squabbles; styles himself poet; but his trade remains the same,--he cobbles." don't choose a profession or occupation because your father, or uncle, or brother is in it. don't choose a business because you inherit it, or because parents or friends want you to follow it. don't choose it because others have made fortunes in it. don't choose it because it is considered the "proper thing" and a "genteel" business. the mania for a "genteel" occupation, for a "soft job" which eliminates drudgery, thorns, hardships, and all disagreeable things, and one which can be learned with very little effort, ruins many a youth. when we try to do that for which we are unfitted we are not working along the line of our strength, but of our weakness; our will power and enthusiasm become demoralized; we do half work, botched work, lose confidence in ourselves, and conclude that we are dunces because we cannot accomplish what others do; the whole tone of life is demoralized and lowered because we are out of place. how it shortens the road to success to make a wise choice of one's occupation early, to be started on the road of a proper career while young, full of hope, while the animal spirits are high, and enthusiasm is vigorous; to feel that every step we take, that every day's work we do, that every blow we strike helps to broaden, deepen, and enrich life! those who fail are, as a rule, those who are out of their places. _a man out of his place is but half a man; his very nature is perverted_. he is working against his nature, rowing against the current. when his strength is exhausted he will float down the stream. a man can not succeed when his whole nature is entering its perpetual protest against his occupation. to succeed, his vocation must have the consent of all his faculties; they must be in harmony with his purpose. has a young man a right to choose an occupation which will only call into play his lower and inferior qualities, as cunning, deceit, letting all his nobler qualities shrivel and die? has he a right to select a vocation that will develop only the beast within him instead of the man? which will call out the bulldog qualities only, the qualities which overreach and grasp, the qualities which get and never give, which develop long-headedness only, while his higher self atrophies? the best way to choose an occupation is to ask yourself the question, "what would my government do with me if it were to consider scientifically my qualifications and adaptations, and place me to the best possible advantage for all the people?" the norwegian precept is a good one: "give thyself wholly to thy fellow-men; they will give thee back soon enough." we can do the most possible for ourselves when we are in a position where we can do the most possible for others. _we are doing the most for ourselves and for others when we are in a position which calls into play in the highest possible way the greatest number of our best faculties; in other words, we are succeeding best for ourselves when we are succeeding best for others_. the time will come when there will be institutions for determining the natural bent of the boy and girl; where men of large experience and close observation will study the natural inclination of the youth, help him to find where his greatest strength lies and how to use it to the best advantage. even if we take for granted what is not true, that every youth will sooner or later discover the line of his greatest strength so that he may get his living by his strong points rather than by his weak ones, the discovery is often made so late in life that great success is practically impossible. such institutions would help boys and girls to start in their proper careers early in life; and _an early choice shortens the way_. can anything be more important to human beings than a start in life in the right direction, where even small effort will count for more in the race than the greatest effort--and a life of drudgery--in the wrong direction? a man is seldom unsuccessful, unhappy, or vicious when he is in his place. after once choosing your occupation, however, never look backward; stick to it with all the tenacity you can muster. let nothing tempt you or swerve you a hair's breadth from your aim, and you will win. do not let the thorns which appear in every vocation, or temporary despondency or disappointment, shake your purpose. you will never succeed while smarting under the drudgery of your occupation, if you are constantly haunted with the idea that you could succeed better in something else. great tenacity of purpose is the only thing that will carry you over the hard places which appear in every career to ultimate triumph. this determination, or fixity of purpose, has a great moral bearing upon our success, for it leads others to feel confidence in us, and this is everything. it gives credit and moral support in a thousand ways. people always believe in a man with a fixed purpose, and will help him twice as quickly as one who is loosely or indifferently attached to his vocation, and liable at any time to make a change, or to fail. everybody knows that determined men are not likely to fail. they carry in their very pluck, grit, and determination the conviction and assurance of success. the world does not dictate _what_ you shall do, but it does demand that you do _something_, and that you shall be a king in your line. there is no grander sight than that of a young man or woman in the right place struggling with might and main to make the most of the stuff at command, determined that not a faculty or power shall run to waste. not money, not position, but power is what we want; and character is greater than any occupation or profession. "do not, i beseech you," said garfield, "be content to enter on any business that does not require and compel constant intellectual growth." choose an occupation that is refining and elevating; an occupation that you will be proud of; an occupation that will give you time for self-culture and self-elevation; an occupation that will enlarge and expand your manhood and make you a better citizen, a better man. power and constant growth toward a higher life are the great end of human existence. your calling should be the great school of life, the great man-developer, character-builder, that which should broaden, deepen, and round out into symmetry, harmony, and beauty, all the god-given faculties within you. but whatever you do be greater than your calling; let your manhood overtop your position, your wealth, your occupation, your title. a man must work hard and study hard to counteract the narrowing, hardening tendency of his occupation. said goldsmith,-- burke, born for the universe, narrowed his mind, and to party gave up what was meant for mankind. "constant engagement in traffic and barter has no elevating influence," says lyndall. "the endeavor to obtain the upper hand of those with whom we have to deal, to make good bargains, the higgling and scheming, and the thousand petty artifices, which in these days of stern competition are unscrupulously resorted to, tend to narrow the sphere and to lessen the strength of the intellect, and, at the same time, the delicacy of the moral sense." choose upward, study the men in the vocation you think of adopting. does it elevate those who follow it? are they broad, liberal, intelligent men? or have they become mere appendages of their profession, living in a rut with no standing in the community, and of no use to it? don't think you will be the great exception, and can enter a questionable vocation without becoming a creature of it. in spite of all your determination and will power to the contrary, your occupation, from the very law of association and habit, will seize you as in a vise, will mold you, shape you, fashion you, and stamp its inevitable impress upon you. how frequently do we see bright, open-hearted, generous young men come out of college with high hopes and lofty aims, enter a doubtful vocation, and in a few years return to college commencement so changed that they are scarcely recognized. the once broad, noble features have become contracted and narrowed. the man has become grasping, avaricious, stingy, mean, hard. is it possible, we ask, that a few years could so change a magnanimous and generous youth? go to the bottom if you would get to the top. be master of your calling in all its details. nothing is small which concerns your business. thousands of men who have been failures in life have done drudgery enough in half a dozen different occupations to have enabled them to reach great success, if their efforts had all been expended in one direction. that mechanic is a failure who starts out to build an engine, but does not _quite_ accomplish it, and shifts into some other occupation where perhaps he will almost succeed, but stops just short of the point of proficiency in his acquisition and so fails again. the world is full of people who are "almost a success." they stop just this side of success. their courage oozes out just before they become expert. how many of us have acquisitions which remain permanently unavailable because not carried quite to the point of skill? how many people "almost know a language or two," which they can neither write nor speak; a science or two whose elements they have not quite acquired; an art or two partially mastered, but which they can not practice with satisfaction or profit! the habit of desultoriness, which has been acquired by allowing yourself to abandon a half-finished work, more than balances any little skill gained in one vocation which might possibly be of use later. beware of that frequently fatal gift, versatility. many a person misses being a great man by splitting into two middling ones. universality is the _ignis fatuus_ which has deluded to ruin many a promising mind. in attempting to gain a knowledge of half a hundred subjects it has mastered none. "the jack-of-all-trades," says one of the foremost manufacturers of this country, "had a chance in my generation. in this he has none." "the measure of a man's learning will be the amount of his voluntary ignorance," said thoreau. if we go into a factory where the mariner's compass is made we can see the needles before they are magnetized, they will point in any direction. but when they have been applied to the magnet and received its peculiar power, from that moment they point to the north, and are true to the pole ever after. so man never points steadily in any direction until he has been polarized by a great master purpose. give your life, your energy, your enthusiasm, all to the highest work of which you are capable. canon farrar said, "there is only one real failure in life possible, and that is, not to be true to the best one knows." "'what must i do to be forever known?' thy duty ever." who does the best his circumstance allows, does well, acts nobly, angels could do no more. young. "whoever can make two ears of corn, two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before," says swift, "would deserve better of mankind and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together." chapter xii concentrated energy this one thing i do.--st. paul. the one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation; and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine. . . . everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and sends us home to add one stroke of faithful work.--emerson. the man who seeks one thing in life, and but one, may hope to achieve it before life be done; but he who seeks all things, wherever he goes, only reaps from the hopes which around him he sows, a harvest of barren regrets. owen meredith. the longer i live, the more deeply am i convinced that that which makes the difference between one man and another--between the weak and powerful, the great and insignificant, is energy--invincible determination--a purpose once formed, and then death or victory.--fowell buxton. "there was not enough room for us all in frankfort," said nathan mayer rothschild, in speaking of himself and his four brothers. "i dealt in english goods. one great trader came there, who had the market to himself: he was quite the great man, and did us a favor if he sold us goods. somehow i offended him, and he refused to show me his patterns. this was on a tuesday. i said to my father, 'i will go to england.' on thursday i started. the nearer i got to england, the cheaper goods were. as soon as i got to manchester, i laid out all my money, things were so cheap, and i made a good profit." "i hope," said a listener, "that your children are not too fond of money and business to the exclusion of more important things. i am sure you would not wish that." "i am sure i would wish that," said rothschild; "i wish them to give mind, and soul, and heart, and body, and everything to business; that is the way to be happy." "stick to one business, young man," he added, addressing a young brewer; "stick to your brewery, and you may be the great brewer of london. but be a brewer, and a banker, and a merchant, and a manufacturer, and you will soon be in the gazette." not many things indifferently, but one thing supremely, is the demand of the hour. he who scatters his efforts in this intense, concentrated age, cannot hope to succeed. "goods removed, messages taken, carpets beaten, and poetry composed on any subject," was the sign of a man in london who was not very successful at any of these lines of work, and reminds one of monsieur kenard, of paris, "a public scribe, who digests accounts, explains the language of flowers, and sells fried potatoes." the great difference between those who succeed and those who fail does not consist in the amount of work done by each, but in the amount of intelligent work. many of those who fail most ignominiously do enough to achieve grand success; but they labor at haphazard, building up with one hand only to tear down with the other. they do not grasp circumstances and change them into opportunities. they have no faculty of turning honest defeats into telling victories. with ability enough, and time in abundance,--the warp and woof of success,--they are forever throwing back and forth an empty shuttle, and the real web of life is never woven. if you ask one of them to state his aim and purpose in life, he will say: "i hardly know yet for what i am best adapted, but i am a thorough believer in genuine hard work, and i am determined to dig early and late all my life, and i know i shall come across something--either gold, silver, or at least iron." i say most emphatically, no. would an intelligent man dig up a whole continent to find its veins of silver and gold? the man who is forever looking about to see what he can find never finds anything. if we look for nothing in particular, we find just that and no more. we find what we seek with all our heart. the bee is not the only insect that visits the flower, but it is the only one that carries honey away. it matters not how rich the materials we have gleaned from the years of our study and toil in youth, if we go out into life with no well-defined idea of our future work, there is no happy conjunction of circumstances that will arrange them into an imposing structure, and give it magnificent proportions. "what a immense power over the life," says elizabeth stuart phelps ward, "is the power of possessing distinct aims. the voice, the dress, the look, the very motions of a person, define and alter when he or she begins to live for a reason. i fancy that i can select, in a crowded street, the busy, blessed women who support themselves. they carry themselves with an air of conscious self-respect and self-content, which a shabby alpaca cannot hide, nor a bonnet of silk enhance, nor even sickness nor exhaustion quite drag out." it is said that the wind never blows fair for that sailor who knows not to what port he is bound. "the weakest living creature," says carlyle, "by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something; whereas the strongest, by dispersing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. the drop, by continually falling, bores its passage through the hardest rock. the hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar and leaves no trace behind." "when i was young i used to think it was thunder that killed men," said a shrewd preacher; "but as i grew older, i found it was lightning. so i resolved to thunder less, and lighten more." the man who knows one thing, and can do it better than anybody else, even if it only be the art of raising turnips, receives the crown he merits. if he raises the best turnips by reason of concentrating all his energy to that end, he is a benefactor to the race, and is recognized as such. if a salamander be cut in two, the front part will run forward and the other backward. such is the progress of him who divides his purpose. success is jealous of scattered energies. no one can pursue a worthy object steadily and persistently with all the powers of his mind, and yet make his life a failure. you can't throw a tallow candle through the side of a tent, but you can shoot it through an oak board. melt a charge of shot into a bullet, and it can be fired through the bodies of four men. focus the rays of the sun in winter, and you can kindle a fire with ease. the giants of the race have been men of concentration, who have struck sledgehammer blows in one place until they have accomplished their purpose. the successful men of to-day are men of one overmastering idea, one unwavering aim, men of single and intense purpose. "scatteration" is the curse of american business life. too many are like douglas jerrold's friend, who could converse in twenty-four languages, but had no ideas to express in any one of them. "the only valuable kind of study," said sydney smith, "is to read so heartily that dinner-time comes two hours before you expected it; to sit with your livy before you and hear the geese cackling that saved the capitol, and to see with your own eyes the carthaginian sutlers gathering up the rings of the roman knights after the battle of cannae, and heaping them into bushels, and to be so intimately present at the actions you are reading of, that when anybody knocks at the door it will take you two or three seconds to determine whether you are in your own study or on the plains of lombardy, looking at hannibal's weather-beaten face and admiring the splendor of his single eye." "the one serviceable, safe, certain, remunerative, attainable quality in every study and pursuit is the quality of attention," said charles dickens. "my own invention, or imagination, such as it is, i can most truthfully assure you, would never have served me as it has, but for the habit of commonplace, humble, patient, daily, toiling, drudging attention." when asked on another occasion the secret of his success, he said: "i never put one hand to anything on which i could throw my whole self." "be a whole man at everything," wrote joseph gurney to his son, "a whole man at study, in work, and in play." _don't dally with your purpose_. "i go at what i am about," said charles kingsley, "as if there was nothing else in the world for the time being. that's the secret of all hard-working men; but most of them can't carry it into their amusements." many a man fails to become a great man by splitting into several small ones, choosing to be a tolerable jack-of-all-trades rather than to be an unrivaled specialist. "many persons seeing me so much engaged in active life," said edward bulwer lytton, "and as much about the world as if i had never been a student, have said to me, 'when do you get time to write all your books? how on earth do you contrive to do so much work?' i shall surprise you by the answer i made. the answer is this--'i contrive to do so much by never doing too much at a time. a man to get through work well must not overwork himself; or, if he do too much to-day, the reaction of fatigue will come, and he will be obliged to do too little to-morrow. now, since i began really and earnestly to study, which was not till i had left college and was actually in the world, i may perhaps say that i have gone through as large a course of general reading as most men of my time. i have traveled much and i have seen much; i have mixed much in politics, and in the various business of life; and in addition to all this, i have published somewhere about sixty volumes, some upon subjects requiring much special research. and what time do you think, as a general rule, i have devoted to study, to reading and writing? not more than three hours a day; and, when parliament is sitting, not always that. but then, during these three hours, i have given my whole attention to what i was about.'" s. t. coleridge possessed marvelous powers of mind, but he had no definite purpose; he lived in an atmosphere of mental dissipation which consumed his energy, exhausted his stamina, and his life was in many respects a miserable failure. he lived in dreams and died in reverie. he was continually forming plans and resolutions, but to the day of his death they remained simply resolutions and plans. he was always just going to do something, but never did it. "coleridge is dead," wrote charles lamb to a friend, "and is said to have left behind him above forty thousand treatises on metaphysics and divinity--not one of them complete!" every great man has become great, every successful man has succeeded, in proportion as he has confined his powers to one particular channel. hogarth would rivet his attention upon a face and study it until it was photographed upon his memory, when he could reproduce it at will. he studied and examined each object as eagerly as though he would never have a chance to see it again, and this habit of close observation enabled him to develop his work with marvelous detail. the very modes of thought of the time in which he lived were reflected from his works. he was not a man of great education or culture, except in his power of observation. with an immense procession passing up broadway, the streets lined with people, and bands playing lustily, horace greeley would sit upon the steps of the astor house, use the top of his hat for a desk, and write an editorial for the "new york tribune" which would be quoted far and wide. offended by a pungent article, a gentleman called at the "tribune" office and inquired for the editor. he was shown into a little seven-by-nine sanctum, where greeley, with his head close down to his paper, sat scribbling away at a two-forty rate. the angry man began by asking if this was mr. greeley. "yes, sir; what do you want?" said the editor quickly, without once looking up from his paper. the irate visitor then began using his tongue, with no regard for the rules of propriety, good breeding, or reason. meantime mr. greeley continued to write. page after page was dashed off in the most impetuous style, with no change of features and without his paying the slightest attention to the visitor. finally, after about twenty minutes of the most impassioned abuse ever poured out in an editor's office, the angry man became disgusted, and abruptly turned to walk out of the room. then, for the first time, mr. greeley quickly looked up, rose from his chair, and slapping the gentleman familiarly on his shoulder, in a pleasant tone of voice said: "don't go, friend; sit down, sit down, and free your mind; it will do you good,--you will feel better for it. besides, it helps me to think what i am to write about. don't go." one unwavering aim has ever characterized successful men. "daniel webster," said sydney smith, "struck me much like a steam-engine in trousers." as adams suggests, lord brougham, like canning, had too many talents; and, though as a lawyer he gained the most splendid prize of his profession, the lord chancellorship of england, and merited the applause of scientific men for his investigations in science, yet his life on the whole was a failure. he was "everything by turns and nothing long." with all his magnificent abilities he left no permanent mark on history or literature, and actually outlived his own fame. miss martineau says, "lord brougham was at his chateau at cannes when the daguerreotype process first came into vogue. an artist undertook to take a view of the chateau with a group of guests on the balcony. his lordship was, asked to keep perfectly still for five seconds, and he promised that he would not stir, but alas,--he moved. the consequence was that there was a blur where lord brougham should have been. "there is something," continued miss martineau, "very typical in this. in the picture of our century, as taken from the life by history, this very man should have been the central figure. but, owing to his want of steadfastness, there will be forever a blur where lord brougham should have been. how many lives are blurs for want of concentration and steadfastness of purpose!" fowell buxton attributed his success to ordinary means and extraordinary application, and being a whole man to one thing at a time. it is ever the unwavering pursuit of a single aim that wins. "_non multa, sed multum_"--not many things, but much, was coke's motto. it is the almost invisible point of a needle, the keen, slender edge of a razor or an ax, that opens the way for the bulk that follows. without point or edge the bulk would be useless. it is the man of one line of work, the sharp-edged man, who cuts his way through obstacles and achieves brilliant success. while we should shun that narrow devotion to one idea which prevents the harmonious development of our powers, we should avoid on the other hand the extreme versatility of one of whom w. m. praed says:-- his talk is like a stream which runs with rapid change from rocks to roses, it slips from politics to puns, it glides from mahomet to moses: beginning with the laws that keep the planets in their radiant courses, and ending with some precept deep for skinning eels or shoeing horses. if you can get a child learning to walk to fix his eyes on any object, he will generally navigate to that point without capsizing, but distract his attention and down he goes. the young man seeking a position to-day is not asked what college he came from or who his ancestors were. "_what can you do?_" is the great question. it is special training that is wanted. most of the men at the head of great firms and great enterprises have been promoted step by step from the bottom. "i know that he can toil terribly," said cecil of walter raleigh, in explanation of the latter's success. as a rule, what the heart longs for the head and the hands may attain. the currents of knowledge, of wealth, of success, are as certain and fixed as the tides of the sea. in all great successes we can trace the power of concentration, riveting every faculty upon one unwavering aim; perseverance in the pursuit of an undertaking in spite of every difficulty; and courage which enables one to bear up under all trials, disappointments, and temptations. chemists tell us that there is power enough in a single acre of grass to drive all the mills and steam-cars in the world, could we but concentrate it upon the piston-rod of a steam-engine. but it is at rest, and so, in the light of science, it is comparatively valueless. dr. mathews says that the man who scatters himself upon many objects soon loses his energy, and with his energy his enthusiasm. "never study on speculation," says waters; "all such study is vain. form a plan; have an object; then work for it, learn all you can about it, and you will be sure to succeed. what i mean by studying on speculation is that aimless learning of things because they may be useful some day; which is like the conduct of the woman who bought at auction a brass door-plate with the name of thompson on it, thinking it might be useful some day!" definiteness of aim is characteristic of all true art. he is not the greatest painter who crowds the greatest number of ideas upon a single canvas, giving all the figures equal prominence. he is the genuine artist who makes the greatest variety express the greatest unity, who develops the leading idea in the central figure, and makes all the subordinate figures, lights, and shades point to that center and find expression there. so in every well-balanced life, no matter how versatile in endowments or how broad in culture, there is one grand central purpose, in which all the subordinate powers of the soul are brought to a focus, and where they will find fit expression. in nature we see no waste of energy, nothing left to chance. since the shuttle of creation shot for the first time through chaos, design has marked the course of every golden thread. every leaf, every flower, every crystal, every atom even, has a purpose stamped upon it which unmistakably points to the crowning summit of all creation--man. young men are often told to aim high, but we must aim at what we would hit. a general purpose is not enough. the arrow shot from the bow does not wander around to see what it can hit on its way, but flies straight to the mark. the magnetic needle does not point to all the lights in the heavens to see which it likes best. they all attract it. the sun dazzles, the meteor beckons, the stars twinkle to it, and try to win its affections; but the needle, true to its instinct, and with a finger that never errs in sunshine or in storm, points steadily to the north star; for, while all the other stars must course with untiring tread around their great centers through all the ages, the north star, alone, distant beyond human comprehension, moves with stately sweep on its circuit of more than , years, for all practical purposes of man stationary, not only for a day, but for a century. so all along the path of life other luminaries will beckon to lead us from our cherished aim--from the course of truth and duty; but let no moons which shine with borrowed light, no meteors which dazzle, but never guide, turn the needle of our purpose from the north star of its hope. chapter xiii the triumphs of enthusiasm. the labor we delight in physics pain.--shakespeare. the only conclusive evidence of a man's sincerity is that he gives himself for a principle. words, money, all things else are comparatively easy to give away; but when a man makes a gift of his daily life and practise, it is plain that the truth, whatever it may be, has taken possession of him.--lowell. let us beware of losing our enthusiasm. let us ever glory in something, and strive to retain our admiration for all that would ennoble, and our interest in all that would enrich and beautify our life.--phillips brooks. in the galérie des beaux arts in paris is a beautiful statue conceived by a sculptor who was so poor that he lived and worked in a small garret. when his clay model was nearly done, a heavy frost fell upon the city. he knew that if the water in the interstices of the clay should freeze, the beautiful lines would be distorted. so he wrapped his bedclothes around the clay image. in the morning he was found dead, but his idea was saved, and other hands gave it enduring form in marble. "i do not know how it is with others when speaking on an important question," said henry clay; "but on such occasions i seem to be unconscious of the external world. wholly engrossed by the subject before me, i lose all sense of personal identity, of time, or of surrounding objects." "a bank never becomes very successful," says a noted financier, "until it gets a president who takes it to bed with him." enthusiasm gives the otherwise dry and uninteresting subject or occupation a new meaning. as the young lover has finer sense and more acute vision and sees in the object of his affections a hundred virtues and charms invisible to all other eyes, so a man permeated with enthusiasm has his power of perception heightened and his vision magnified until he sees beauty and charms others cannot discern which compensate for drudgery, privations, hardships, and even persecution. dickens says he was haunted, possessed, spirit-driven by the plots and characters in his stories which would not let him sleep or rest until he had committed them to paper. on one sketch he shut himself up for a month, and when he came out he looked as haggard as a murderer. his characters haunted him day and night. "herr capellmeister, i should like to compose something; how shall i begin?" asked a youth of twelve who had played with great skill on the piano. "pooh, pooh," replied mozart, "you must wait." "but you began when you were younger than i am," said the boy. "yes, so i did," said the great composer, "but i never asked anything about it. when one has the spirit of a composer, he writes because he can't help it." gladstone said that what is really desired is to light up the spirit that is within a boy. in some sense and in some degree, in some effectual degree, there is in every boy the material of good work in the world; in every boy, not only in those who are brilliant, not only in those who are quick, but in those who are stolid, and even in those who are dull, or who seem to be dull. if they have only the good will, the dulness will day by day clear away and vanish completely under the influence of the good will. gerster, an unknown hungarian, made fame and fortune sure the first night she appeared in opera. her enthusiasm almost hypnotized her auditors. in less than a week she had become popular and independent. her soul was smitten with a passion for growth, and all the powers of heart and mind she possessed were enthusiastically devoted to self-improvement. all great works of art have been produced when the artist was intoxicated with the passion for beauty and form which would not let him rest until his thought was expressed in marble or on canvas. "well, i've worked hard enough for it," said malibran when a critic expressed his admiration of her d in alt, reached by running up three octaves from low d; "i've been chasing it for a month. i pursued it everywhere,--when i was dressing, when i was doing my hair; and at last i found it on the toe of a shoe that i was putting on." "every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world," says emerson, "is the triumph of some enthusiasm. the victories of the arabs after mahomet, who, in a few years, from a small and mean beginning, established a larger empire than that of rome, is an example. they did they knew not what. the naked derar, horsed on an idea, was found an overmatch for a troop of cavalry. the women fought like men and conquered the roman men. they were miserably equipped, miserably fed, but they were temperance troops. there was neither brandy nor flesh needed to feed them. they conquered asia and africa and spain on barley. the caliph omar's walking-stick struck more terror into those who saw it than another man's sword." it was enthusiasm that enabled napoleon to make a campaign in two weeks that would have taken another a year to accomplish. "these frenchmen are not men, they fly," said the austrians in consternation. in fifteen days napoleon, in his first italian campaign, had gained six victories, taken twenty-one standards, fifty-five pieces of cannon, had captured fifteen thousand prisoners, and had conquered piedmont. after this astonishing avalanche a discomfited austrian general said: "this young commander knows nothing whatever about the art of war. he is a perfect ignoramus. there is no doing anything with him." but his soldiers followed their "little corporal" with an enthusiasm which knew no defeat or disaster. "there are important cases," says a. h. k. boyd, "in which the difference between half a heart and a whole heart makes just the difference between signal defeat and a splendid victory." "should i die this minute," said nelson at an important crisis, "want of frigates would be found written on my heart." the simple, innocent maid of orleans with her sacred sword, her consecrated banner, and her belief in her great mission, sent a thrill of enthusiasm through the whole french army such as neither king nor statesmen could produce. her zeal carried everything before it. oh! what a great work each one could perform in this world if he only knew his power! but, like a bitted horse, man does not realize his strength until he has once run away with himself. "underneath is laid the builder of this church and city, christopher wren, who lived more than ninety years, not for himself, but for the public good. reader, if you seek his monument, look around!" turn where you will in london, you find noble monuments of the genius of a man who never received instruction from an architect. he built fifty-five churches in the city and thirty-six halls. "i would give my skin for the architect's design of the louvre," said he, when in paris to get ideas for the restoration of st. paul's cathedral in london. his rare skill is shown in the palaces of hampton court and kensington, in temple bar, drury lane theater, the royal exchange, and the great monument. he changed greenwich palace into a sailor's retreat, and built churches and colleges at oxford. he also planned for the rebuilding of london after the great fire, but those in authority would not adopt his splendid idea. he worked thirty-five years upon his master-piece, st. paul's cathedral. although he lived so long, and was exceedingly healthy in later life, he was so delicate as a child that he was a constant source of anxiety to his parents. his great enthusiasm alone seemed to give strength to his body. indifference never leads armies that conquer, never models statues that live, nor breathes sublime music, nor harnesses the forces of nature, nor rears impressive architecture, nor moves the soul with poetry, nor the world with heroic philanthropies. enthusiasm, as charles bell says of the hand, wrought the statue of memnon and hung the brazen gates of thebes. it fixed the mariner's trembling needle upon its axis, and first heaved the tremendous bar of the printing-press. it opened the tubes for galileo, until world after world swept before his vision, and it reefed the high topsail that rustled over columbus in the morning breezes of the bahamas. it has held the sword with which freedom has fought her battles, and poised the axe of the dauntless woodman as he opened the paths of civilization, and turned the mystic leaves upon which milton and shakespeare inscribed their burning thoughts. horace greeley said that the best product of labor is the high-minded workman with an enthusiasm for his work. "the best method is obtained by earnestness," said salvini. "if you can impress people with the conviction that you feel what you say, they will pardon many shortcomings. and above all, study, study, study! all the genius in the world will not help you along with any art, unless you become a hard student. it has taken me years to master a single part." there is a "go," a zeal, a furore, almost a fanaticism for one's ideals or calling, that is peculiar to our american temperament and life. you do not find this in tropical countries. it did not exist fifty years ago. it could not be found then even on the london exchange. but the influence of the united states and of australia, where, if a person is to succeed, he must be on the jump with all the ardor of his being, has finally extended until what used to be the peculiar strength of a few great minds has now become characteristic of the leading nations. enthusiasm is the being awake; it is the tingling of every fiber of one's being to do the work that one's heart desires. enthusiasm made victor hugo lock up his clothes while writing "notre dame," that he might not leave the work until it was finished. the great actor garrick well illustrated it when asked by an unsuccessful preacher the secret of his power over audiences: "you speak of eternal verities and what you know to be true as if you hardly believed what you were saying yourself, whereas i utter what i know to be unreal and untrue as if i did believe it in my very soul." "when he comes into a room, every man feels as if he had taken a tonic and had a new lease of life," said a man when asked the reason for his selection, after he, with two companions, had written upon a slip of paper the name of the most agreeable companion he had ever met. "he is an eager, vivid fellow, full of joy, bubbling over with spirits. his sympathies are quick as an electric flash." "he throws himself into the occasion, whatever it may be, with his whole heart," said the second, in praise of the man of his choice. "he makes the best of everything," said the third, speaking of his own most cherished acquaintance. the three were traveling correspondents of great english journals, who had visited every quarter of the world and talked with all kinds of men. the papers were examined and all were found to contain the name of a prominent lawyer in melbourne, australia. "if it were not for respect for human opinions," said madame de staël to m. mole, "i would not open my window to see the bay of naples for the first time, while i would go five hundred leagues to talk with a man of genius whom i had not seen." enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius, throwing the reader of a book, or the spectator of a statue, into the very ideal presence whence these works have originated. "one moonlight evening in winter," writes the biographer of beethoven, "we were walking through a narrow street of bonn. 'hush!' exclaimed the great composer, suddenly pausing before a little, mean dwelling, 'what sound is that? it is from my sonata in f. hark! how well it is played!' "in the midst of the finale there was a break, and a sobbing voice cried: 'i cannot play any more. it is so beautiful; it is utterly beyond my power to do it justice. oh, what would i not give to go to the concert at cologne!' 'ah! my sister,' said a second voice; 'why create regrets when there is no remedy? we can scarcely pay our rent.' 'you are right,' said the first speaker, 'and yet i wish for once in my life to hear some really good music. but it is of no use.' "'let us go in,' said beethoven. 'go in!' i remonstrated; 'what should we go in for?' 'i will play to her,' replied my companion in an excited tone; 'here is feeling,--genius,--understanding! i will play to her, and she will understand it. pardon me,' he continued, as he opened the door and saw a young man sitting by a table, mending shoes, and a young girl leaning sorrowfully upon an old-fashioned piano; 'i heard music and was tempted to enter. i am a musician. i--i also overheard something of what you said. you wish to hear--that is, you would like--that is--shall i play for you?' "'thank you,' said the shoemaker, 'but our piano is so wretched, and we have no music.' "'no music!' exclaimed the composer; 'how, then, does the young lady--i--i entreat your pardon,' he added, stammering as he saw that the girl was blind; 'i had not perceived before. then you play by ear? but where do you hear the music, since you frequent no concerts?' "'we lived at bruhl for two years; and, while there, i used to hear a lady practicing near us. during the summer evenings her windows were generally open, and i walked to and fro outside to listen to her.' "beethoven seated himself at the piano. never, during all the years i knew him, did i hear him play better than to that blind girl and her brother. even the old instrument seemed inspired. the young man and woman sat as if entranced by the magical, sweet sounds that flowed out upon the air in rhythmical swell and cadence, until, suddenly, the flame of the single candle wavered, sank, flickered, and went out. the shutters were thrown open, admitting a flood of brilliant moonlight, but the player paused, as if lost in thought. "'wonderful man!' said the shoemaker in a low tone; 'who and what are you?' "'listen!' replied the master, and he played the opening bars of the sonata in f. 'then you are beethoven!' burst from the young people in delighted recognition. 'oh, play to us once more,' they added, as he rose to go,--'only once more!' "'i will improvise a sonata to the moonlight,' said he, gazing thoughtfully upon the liquid stars shining so softly out of the depths of a cloudless winter sky. then he played a sad and infinitely lovely movement, which crept gently over the instrument, like the calm flow of moonlight over the earth. this was followed by a wild, elfin passage in triple time--a sort of grotesque interlude, like the dance of fairies upon the lawn. then came a swift agitated ending--a breathless, hurrying, trembling movement, descriptive of flight, and uncertainty, and vague impulsive terror, which carried us away on its rustling wings, and left us all in emotion and wonder. 'farewell to you,' he said, as he rose and turned toward the door. 'you will come again?' asked the host and hostess in a breath. 'yes, yes,' said beethoven hurriedly, 'i will come again, and give the young lady some lessons. farewell!' then to me he added: 'let us make haste back, that i may write out that sonata while i can yet remember it.' we did return in haste, and not until long past the dawn of day did he rise from his table with the full score of the moonlight sonata in his hand." michael angelo studied anatomy twelve years, nearly ruining his health, but this course determined his style, his practice, and his glory. he drew his figures in skeleton, added muscles, fat, and skin successively, and then draped them. he made every tool he used in sculpture, such as files, chisels, and pincers. in painting he prepared all his own colors, and would not let servants or students even mix them. raphael's enthusiasm inspired every artist in italy, and his modest, charming manners disarmed envy and jealousy. he has been called the only distinguished man who lived and died without an enemy or detractor. again and again poor bunyan might have had his liberty; but not the separation from his poor blind daughter mary, which he said was like pulling the flesh from his bones; not the need of a poor family dependent upon him; not the love of liberty nor the spur of ambition could induce him to forego his plain preaching in public places. he had so forgotten his early education that his wife had to teach him again to read and write. it was the enthusiasm of conviction which enabled this poor, ignorant, despised bedford tinker to write his immortal allegory with such fascination that a whole world has read it. only thoughts that breathe in words that burn can kindle the spark slumbering in the heart of another. rare consecration to a great enterprise is found in the work of the late francis parkman. while a student at harvard he determined to write the history of the french and english in north america. with a steadiness and devotion seldom equaled he gave his life, his fortune, his all to this one great object. although he had, while among the dakota indians, collecting material for his history, ruined his health and could not use his eyes more than five minutes at a time for fifty years, he did not swerve a hair's breadth from the high purpose formed in his youth, until he gave to the world the best history upon this subject ever written. after lincoln had walked six miles to borrow a grammar, he returned home and burned one shaving after another while he studied the precious prize. gilbert becket, an english crusader, was taken prisoner and became a slave in the palace of a saracen prince, where he not only gained the confidence of his master, but also the love of his master's fair daughter. by and by he escaped and returned to england, but the devoted girl determined to follow him. she knew but two words of the english language--_london_ and _gilbert_; but by repeating the first she obtained passage in a vessel to the great metropolis, and then she went from street to street pronouncing the other--"gilbert." at last she came to the street on which gilbert lived in prosperity. the unusual crowd drew the family to the window, when gilbert himself saw and recognized her, and took to his arms and home his far-come princess with her solitary fond word. the most irresistible charm of youth is its bubbling enthusiasm. youth sees no darkness ahead,--no defile that has no outlet,--it forgets that there is such a thing as failure in the world, and believes that mankind has been waiting all these centuries for him to come and be the liberator of truth and energy and beauty. of what use was it to forbid the boy handel to touch a musical instrument, or to forbid him going to school, lest he learn the gamut? he stole midnight interviews with a dumb spinet in a secret attic. the boy bach copied whole books of studies by moonlight, for want of a candle churlishly denied. nor was he disheartened when these copies were taken from him. the painter west began in a garret, and plundered the family cat for bristles to make his brushes. it is the enthusiasm of youth which cuts the gordian knot age cannot untie. "people smile at the enthusiasm of youth," says charles kingsley; "that enthusiasm which they themselves secretly look back to with a sigh, perhaps unconscious that it is partly their own fault that they ever lost it." how much the world owes to the enthusiasm of dante! tennyson wrote his first volume at eighteen, and at nineteen gained a medal at cambridge. "the most beautiful works of all art were done in youth," says ruskin. "almost everything that is great has been done by youth," wrote disraeli. "the world's interests are, under god, in the hands of the young," says dr. trumbull. it was the youth hercules that performed the twelve labors. enthusiastic youth faces the sun, it shadows all behind it. the heart rules youth; the head, manhood. alexander was a mere youth when he rolled back the asiatic hordes that threatened to overwhelm european civilization almost at its birth. napoleon had conquered italy at twenty-five. byron and raphael died at thirty-seven, an age which has been fatal to many a genius, and poe lived but a few months longer. romulus founded rome at twenty. pitt and bolingbroke were ministers almost before they were men. gladstone was in parliament in early manhood. newton made some of his greatest discoveries before he was twenty-five. keats died at twenty-five, shelley at twenty-nine. luther was a triumphant reformer at twenty-five. it is said that no english poet ever equaled chatterton at twenty-one. whitefield and wesley began their great revival as students at oxford, and the former had made his influence felt throughout england before he was twenty-four. victor hugo wrote a tragedy at fifteen, and had taken three prizes at the academy and gained the title of master before he was twenty. many of the world's greatest geniuses never saw forty years. never before has the young man, who is driven by his enthusiasm, had such an opportunity as he has to-day. it is the age of young men and young women. their ardor is their crown, before which the languid and the passive bow. but if enthusiasm is irresistible in youth, how much more so is it when carried into old age! gladstone at eighty had ten times the weight and power that any man of twenty-five would have with the same ideals. the glory of age is only the glory of its enthusiasm, and the respect paid to white hairs is reverence to a heart fervent, in spite of the torpid influence of an enfeebled body. the "odyssey" was the creation of a blind old man, but that old man was homer. the contagious zeal of an old man, peter the hermit, rolled the chivalry of europe upon the ranks of islam. dandolo, the doge of venice, won battles at ninety-four, and refused a crown at ninety-six. wellington planned and superintended fortifications at eighty. bacon and humboldt were enthusiastic students to the last gasp. wise old montaigne was shrewd in his gray-beard wisdom and loving life, even in the midst of his fits of gout and colic. dr. johnson's best work, "the lives of the poets," was written when he was seventy-eight. defoe was fifty-eight when he published "robinson crusoe." newton wrote new briefs to his "principia" at eighty-three. plato died writing, at eighty-one. tom scott began the study of hebrew at eighty-six. galileo was nearly seventy when he wrote on the laws of motion. james watt learned german at eighty-five. mrs. somerville finished her "molecular and microscopic science" at eighty-nine. humboldt completed his "cosmos" at ninety, a month before his death. burke was thirty-five before he obtained a seat in parliament, yet he made the world feel his character. unknown at forty, grant was one of the most famous generals in history at forty-two. eli whitney was twenty-three when he decided to prepare for college, and thirty when he graduated from yale; yet his cotton-gin opened a great industrial future for the southern states. what a power was bismarck at eighty! lord palmerston was an "old boy" to the last. he became prime minister of england the second time at seventy-five, and died prime minister at eighty-one. galileo at seventy-seven, blind and feeble, was working every day, adapting the principle of the pendulum to clocks. george stephenson did not learn to read and write until he had reached manhood. some of longfellow's, whittier's, and tennyson's best work was done after they were seventy. at sixty-three dryden began the translation of the "aeneid." robert hall learned italian when past sixty, that he might read dante in the original. noah webster studied seventeen languages after he was fifty. cicero said well that men are like wine: age sours the bad and improves the good. with enthusiasm we may retain the youth of the spirit until the hair is silvered, even as the gulf stream softens the rigors of northern europe. "how ages thine heart,--towards youth? if not, doubt thy fitness for thy work." chapter xiv. "on time," or the triumph of promptness "on the great clock of time there is but one word--now." note the sublime precision that leads the earth over a circuit of five hundred millions of miles back to the solstice at the appointed moment without the loss of one second,--no, not the millionth part of a second,--for ages and ages of which it traveled that imperiled road.--edward everett. "who cannot but see oftentimes how strange the threads of our destiny run? oft it is only for a moment the favorable instant is presented. we miss it, and months and years are lost." by the street of by and by one arrives at the house of never.--cervantes. "lose this day by loitering--'t will be the same story tomorrow, and the next more dilatory." let's take the instant by the forward top.--shakespeare. "haste, post, haste! haste for thy life!" was frequently written upon messages in the days of henry viii of england, with a picture of a courier swinging from a gibbet. post-offices were unknown, and letters were carried by government messengers subject to hanging if they delayed upon the road. even in the old, slow days of stage-coaches, when it took a month of dangerous traveling to accomplish the distance we can now span in a few hours, unnecessary delay was a crime. one of the greatest gains civilization has made is in measuring and utilizing time. we can do as much in an hour to-day as they could in twenty hours a hundred years ago. "delays have dangerous ends." caesar's delay to read a message cost him his life when he reached the senate house. colonel rahl, the hessian commander at trenton, was playing cards when a messenger brought a letter stating that washington was crossing the delaware. he put the letter in his pocket without reading it until the game was finished, when he rallied his men only to die just before his troops were taken prisoners. only a few minutes' delay, but he lost honor, liberty, life! success is the child of two very plain parents--punctuality and accuracy. there are critical moments in every successful life when if the mind hesitate or a nerve flinch all will be lost. "immediately on receiving your proclamation," wrote governor andrew of massachusetts to president lincoln on may , , "we took up the war, and have carried on our part of it, in the spirit in which we believe the administration and the american people intend to act, namely, as if there were not an inch of red tape in the world." he had received a telegram for troops from washington on monday, april ; at nine o'clock the next sunday he said: "all the regiments demanded from massachusetts are already either in washington, or in fortress monroe, or on their way to the defence of the capitol." "the only question which i can entertain," he said, "is what to do; and when that question is answered, the other is, what next to do." "the whole period of youth," said ruskin, "is one essentially of formation, edification, instruction. there is not an hour of it but is trembling with destinies--not a moment of which, once passed, the appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck on the cold iron." napoleon laid great stress upon that "supreme moment," that "nick of time" which occurs in every battle, to take advantage of which means victory, and to lose in hesitation means disaster. he said that he beat the austrians because they did not know the value of five minutes; and it has been said that among the trifles that conspired to defeat him at waterloo, the loss of a few moments by himself and grouchy on the fatal morning was the most significant. blucher was on time, and grouchy was late. it was enough to send napoleon to st. helena, and to change the destiny of millions. it is a well-known truism that has almost been elevated to the dignity of a maxim, that what may be done at any time will be done at no time. the african association of london wanted to send ledyard, the traveler, to africa, and asked when he would be ready to go. "to-morrow morning," was the reply. john jervis, afterwards earl st. vincent, was asked when he could join his ship, and replied, "directly." colin campbell, appointed commander of the army in india, and asked when he could set out, replied without hesitation, "to-morrow." the energy wasted in postponing until to-morrow a duty of to-day would often do the work. how much harder and more disagreeable, too, it is to do work which has been put off! what would have been done at the time with pleasure or even enthusiasm, after it has been delayed for days and weeks, becomes drudgery. letters can never be answered so easily as when first received. many large firms make it a rule never to allow a letter to lie unanswered overnight. promptness takes the drudgery out of an occupation. putting off usually means leaving off, and going to do becomes going undone. doing a deed is like sowing a seed: if not done at just the right time it will be forever out of season. the summer of eternity will not be long enough to bring to maturity the fruit of a delayed action. if a star or planet were delayed one second, it might throw the whole universe out of harmony. "there is no moment like the present," said maria edgeworth; "not only so, there is no moment at all, no instant force and energy, but in the present. the man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hopes from them afterward. they will be dissipated, lost in the hurry and scurry of the world, or sunk in the slough of indolence." cobbett said he owed his success to being "always ready" more than to all his natural abilities combined. "to this quality i owed my extraordinary promotion in the army," said he. "if i had to mount guard at ten, i was ready at nine; never did any man or anything wait one minute for me." "how," asked a man of sir walter raleigh, "do you accomplish so much, and in so short a time?" "when i have anything to do, i go and do it," was the reply. the man who always acts promptly, even if he makes occasional mistakes, will succeed when a procrastinator, even if he have the better judgment, will fail. when asked how he managed to accomplish so much work, and at the same time attend to his social duties, a french statesman replied, "i do it simply by never postponing till to-morrow what should be done to-day." it was said of an unsuccessful public man that he used to reverse this process, his favorite maxim being "never to do to-day what might be postponed till to-morrow." how many men have dawdled away their success and allowed companions and relatives to steal it away five minutes at a time! "to-morrow, didst thou say?" asked cotton. "go to--i will not hear of it. to-morrow! 'tis a sharper who stakes his penury against thy plenty--who takes thy ready cash and pays thee naught but wishes, hopes, and promises, the currency of idiots. _to-morrow_! it is a period nowhere to be found in all the hoary registers of time, unless perchance in the fool's calendar. wisdom disclaims the word, nor holds society with those that own it. 'tis fancy's child, and folly is its father; wrought of such stuffs as dreams are; and baseless as the fantastic visions of the evening." oh, how many a wreck on the road to success could say: "i have spent all my life in pursuit of to-morrow, being assured that to-morrow has some vast benefit or other in store for me." "but his resolutions remained unshaken," charles reade continues in his story of noah skinner, the defaulting clerk, who had been overcome by a sleepy languor after deciding to make restitution; "by and by, waking up from a sort of heavy doze, he took, as it were, a last look at the receipts, and murmured, 'my head, how heavy it feels!' but presently he roused himself, full of his penitent resolutions, and murmured again, brokenly, 'i'll take it to--pembroke--street to--morrow; to--morrow.' the morrow found him, and so did the detectives, dead." "to-morrow." it is the devil's motto. all history is strewn with its brilliant victims, the wrecks of half-finished plans and unexecuted resolutions. it is the favorite refuge of sloth and incompetency. "strike while the iron is hot," and "make hay while the sun shines," are golden maxims. very few people recognize the hour when laziness begins to set in. some people it attacks after dinner; some after lunch; and some after seven o'clock in the evening. there is in every person's life a crucial hour in the day, which must be employed instead of wasted if the day is to be saved. with most people the early morning hour becomes the test of the day's success. a person was once extolling the skill and courage of mayenne in henry's presence. "you are right," said henry, "he is a great captain, but i have always five hours' start of him." henry rose at four in the morning, and mayenne at about ten. this made all the difference between them. indecision becomes a disease and procrastination is its forerunner. there is only one known remedy for the victims of indecision, and that is prompt decision. otherwise the disease is fatal to all success or achievement. he who hesitates is lost. a noted writer says that a bed is a bundle of paradoxes. we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret. we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late. yet most of those who have become eminent have been early risers. peter the great always rose before daylight. "i am," said he, "for making my life as long as possible, and therefore sleep as little as possible." alfred the great rose before daylight. in the hours of early morning columbus planned his voyage to america, and napoleon his greatest campaigns. copernicus was an early riser, as were most of the famous astronomers of ancient and modern times. bryant rose at five, bancroft at dawn, and nearly all our leading authors in the early morning. washington, jefferson, webster, clay, and calhoun were all early risers. daniel webster used often to answer twenty to thirty letters before breakfast. walter scott was a very punctual man. this was the secret of his enormous achievements. he rose at five. by breakfast-time he had, as he used to say, broken the neck of the day's work. writing to a youth who had obtained a situation and asked him for advice, he gave this counsel: "beware of stumbling over a propensity which easily besets you from not having your time fully employed--i mean what the women call dawdling. do instantly whatever is to be done, and take the hours of recreation after business, never before it." not too much can be said about the value of the habit of rising early. eight hours is enough sleep for any man. very frequently seven hours is plenty. after the eighth hour in bed, if a man is able, it is his business to get up, dress quickly, and go to work. "a singular mischance has happened to some of our friends," said hamilton. "at the instant when he ushered them into existence, god gave them a work to do, and he also gave them a competence of time; so much that if they began at the right moment, and wrought with sufficient vigor, their time and their work would end together. but a good many years ago a strange misfortune befell them. a fragment of their allotted time was lost. they cannot tell what became of it, but sure enough, it has dropped out of existence; for just like two measuring-lines laid alongside, the one an inch shorter than the other, their work and their time run parallel, but the work is always ten minutes in advance of the time. they are not irregular. they are never too soon. their letters are posted the very minute after the mail is closed. they arrive at the wharf just in time to see the steamboat off, they come in sight of the terminus precisely as the station gates are closing. they do not break any engagement or neglect any duty; but they systematically go about it too late, and usually too late by about the same fatal interval." some one has said that "promptness is a contagious inspiration." whether it be an inspiration, or an acquirement, it is one of the practical virtues of civilization. there is one thing that is almost as sacred as the marriage relation,--that is, an appointment. a man who fails to meet his appointment, unless he has a good reason, is practically a liar, and the world treats him as such. "if a man has no regard for the time of other men," said horace greeley, "why should he have for their money? what is the difference between taking a man's hour and taking his five dollars? there are many men to whom each hour of the business day is worth more than five dollars." when president washington dined at four, new members of congress invited to dine at the white house would sometimes arrive late, and be mortified to find the president eating. "my cook," washington would say, "never asks if the visitors have arrived, but if the hour has arrived." when his secretary excused the lateness of his attendance by saying that his watch was too slow, washington replied, "then you must get a new watch, or i another secretary." franklin said to a servant who was always late, but always ready with an excuse, "i have generally found that the man who is good at an excuse is good for nothing else." napoleon once invited his marshals to dine with him, but, as they did not arrive at the moment appointed, he began to eat without them. they came in just as he was rising from the table. "gentlemen," said he, "it is now past dinner, and we will immediately proceed to business." blücher was one of the promptest men that ever lived. he was called "marshal forward." john quincy adams was never known to be behind time. the speaker of the house of representatives knew when to call the house to order by seeing mr. adams coming to his seat. once a member said that it was time to begin. "no," said another, "mr. adams is not in his seat." it was found that the clock was three minutes fast, and prompt to the minute, mr. adams arrived. webster was never late at a recitation in school or college. in court, in congress, in society, he was equally punctual. amid the cares and distractions of a singularly busy life, horace greeley managed to be on time for every appointment. many a trenchant paragraph for the "tribune" was written while the editor was waiting for men of leisure, tardy at some meeting. punctuality is the soul of business, as brevity is of wit. during the first seven years of his mercantile career, amos lawrence did not permit a bill to remain unsettled over sunday. punctuality is said to be the politeness of princes. some men are always running to catch up with their business: they are always in a hurry, and give you the impression that they are late for a train. they lack method, and seldom accomplish much. every business man knows that there are moments on which hang the destiny of years. if you arrive a few moments late at the bank, your paper may be protested and your credit ruined. one of the best things about school and college life is that the bell which strikes the hour for rising, for recitations, or for lectures, teaches habits of promptness. every young man should have a watch which is a good timekeeper; one that is _nearly_ right encourages bad habits, and is an expensive investment at any price. "oh, how i do appreciate a boy who is always on time!" says h. c. brown. "how quickly you learn to depend on him, and how soon you find yourself intrusting him with weightier matters! the boy who has acquired a reputation for punctuality has made the first contribution to the capital that in after years makes his success a certainty." promptness is the mother of confidence and gives credit. it is the best possible proof that our own affairs are well ordered and well conducted, and gives others confidence in our ability. the man who is punctual, as a rule, will keep his word, and may be depended upon. a conductor's watch is behind time, and a terrible railway collision occurs. a leading firm with enormous assets becomes bankrupt, simply because an agent is tardy in transmitting available funds, as ordered. an innocent man is hanged because the messenger bearing a reprieve should have arrived five minutes earlier. a man is stopped five minutes to hear a trivial story and misses a train or steamer by one minute. grant decided to enlist the moment that he learned of the fall of sumter. when buckner sent him a flag of truce at fort donelson, asking for the appointment of commissioners to consider terms of capitulation, he promptly replied: "no terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. i propose to move immediately upon your works." buckner replied that circumstances compelled him "to accept the ungenerous and unchivalrous terms which you propose." the man who, like napoleon, can on the instant seize the most important thing and sacrifice the others, is sure to win. many a wasted life dates its ruin from a lost five minutes. "too late" can be read between the lines on the tombstone of many a man who has failed. a few minutes often makes all the difference between victory and defeat, success and failure. chapter xv what a good appearance will do let thy attire be comely but not costly.--livy. costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, but not expressed in fancy; rich not gaudy; for the apparel oft proclaims the man. shakespeare. i hold that gentleman to be the best dressed whose dress no one observes.--anthony trollope. as a general thing an individual who is neat in his person is neat in his morals.--h. w. shaw. there are two chief factors in good appearance; cleanliness of body and comeliness of attire. usually these go together, neatness of attire indicating a sanitary care of the person, while outward slovenliness suggests a carelessness for appearance that probably goes deeper than the clothes covering the body. we express ourselves first of all in our bodies. the outer condition of the body is accepted as the symbol of the inner. if it is unlovely, or repulsive, through sheer neglect or indifference, we conclude that the mind corresponds with it. as a rule, the conclusion is a just one. high ideals and strong, clean, wholesome lives and work are incompatible with low standards of personal cleanliness. a young man who neglects his bath will neglect his mind; he will quickly deteriorate in every way. a young woman who ceases to care for her appearance in minutest detail will soon cease to please. she will fall little by little until she degenerates into an ambitionless slattern. it is not to be wondered at that the talmud places cleanliness next to godliness. i should place it nearer still, for i believe that absolute cleanliness _is_ godliness. cleanliness or purity of soul and body raises man to the highest estate. without this he is nothing but a brute. there is a very close connection between a fine, strong, clean physique and a fine, strong, clean character. a man who allows himself to become careless in regard to the one will, in spite of himself, fall away in the other. but self-interest clamors as loudly as esthetic or moral considerations for the fulfilment of the laws of cleanliness. every day we see people receiving "demerits" for failure to live up to them. i can recall instances of capable stenographers who forfeited their positions because they did not keep their finger nails clean. an honest, intelligent man whom i know lost his place in a large publishing firm because he was careless about shaving and brushing his teeth. the other day a lady remarked that she went into a store to buy some ribbons, but when she saw the salesgirl's hands she changed her mind and made her purchase elsewhere. "dainty ribbons," she said, "could not be handled by such soiled fingers without losing some of their freshness." of course, it will not be long until that girl's employer will discover that she is not advancing his business, and then,--well, the law will work inexorably. the first point to be emphasized in the making of a good appearance is the necessity of frequent bathing. a daily bath insures a clean, wholesome condition of the skin, without which health is impossible. next in importance to the bath is the proper care of the hair, the hands, and the teeth. this requires little more than a small amount of time and the use of soap and water. the hair, of course, should be combed and brushed regularly every day. if it is naturally oily, it should be washed thoroughly every two weeks with a good reliable scalp soap and warm water, to which a very little ammonia may be added. if the hair is dry or lacking in oily matter, it should not be washed oftener than once a month and the ammonia may be omitted. manicure sets are so cheap that they are within the reach of almost everyone. if you can not afford to buy a whole set, you can buy a file (you can get one as low as ten cents), and keep your nails smooth and clean. keeping the teeth in good condition is a very simple matter, yet perhaps more people sin in this particular point of cleanliness than in any other. i know young men, and young women, too, who dress very well and seem to take considerable pride in their personal appearance, yet neglect their teeth. they do not realize that there could hardly be a worse blot on one's appearance than dirty or decaying teeth, or the absence of one or two in front. nothing can be more offensive in man or woman than a foul breath, and no one can have neglected teeth without reaping this consequence. we all know how disagreeable it is to be anywhere near a person whose breath is bad. it is positively disgusting. no employer wants a clerk, or stenographer, or other employee about him who contaminates the atmosphere. nor does he, if he is at all particular, want one whose appearance is marred by a lack of one or two front teeth. many an applicant has been denied the position he sought because of bad teeth. for those who have to make their way in the world, the best counsel on the subject of clothes may be summed up in this short sentence, "let thy attire be comely, but not costly." simplicity in dress is its greatest charm, and in these days, when there is such an infinite variety of tasteful but inexpensive fabrics to choose from, the majority can afford to be well dressed. but no one need blush for a shabby suit, if circumstances prevent his having a better one. you will be more respected by yourself and every one else with an old coat on your back that has been paid for than a new one that has not. it is not the shabbiness that is unavoidable, but the slovenliness that is avoidable, that the world frowns upon. no one, no matter how poor he may be, will be excused for wearing a dirty coat, a crumpled collar, or muddy shoes. if you are dressed according to your means, no matter how poorly, you are appropriately dressed. the consciousness of making the best appearance you possibly can, of always being scrupulously neat and clean, and of maintaining your self-respect and integrity at all costs, will sustain you under the most adverse circumstances, and give you a dignity, strength, and magnetic forcefulness that will command the respect and admiration of others. herbert h. vreeland, who rose in a short time from a section hand on the long island railroad to the presidency of all the surface railways in new york city, should be a practical authority on this subject. in the course of an address on how to attain success, he said:-- "clothes don't make the man, but good clothes have got many a man a good job. if you have twenty-five dollars, and want a job, it is better to spend twenty dollars for a suit of clothes, four dollars for shoes, and the rest for a shave, a hair-cut, and a clean collar, and walk to the place, than go with the money in the pockets of a dingy suit." [illustration: john wanamaker] most large business houses make it a rule not to employ anyone who looks seedy, or slovenly, or who does not make a good appearance when he applies for a position. the man who hires all the salespeople for one of the largest retail stores in chicago says: "while the routine of application is in every case strictly adhered to, the fact remains that the most important element in an applicant's chance for a trial is his personality." it does not matter how much merit or ability an applicant for a position may possess, he can not afford to be careless of his personal appearance. diamonds in the rough of infinitely greater value than the polished glass of some of those who get positions may, occasionally, be rejected. applicants whose good appearance helped them to secure a place may often be very superficial in comparison with some who were rejected in their favor and may not have half their merit; but having secured it, they may keep it, though not possessing half the ability of the boy or girl who was turned away. that the same rule that governs employers in america holds in england, is evidenced by the "london draper's record." it says:-- "wherever a marked personal care is exhibited for the cleanliness of the person and for neatness in dress, there is also almost always found extra carefulness as regards the finish of work done. work people whose personal habits are slovenly produce slovenly work; those who are careful of their own appearance are equally careful of the looks of the work they turn out. and probably what is true of the workroom is equally true of the region behind the counter. is it not a fact that the smart saleswoman is usually rather particular about her dress, is averse to wearing dingy collars, frayed cuffs; and faded ties? the truth of the matter seems to be that extra care as regards personal habits and general appearance is, as a rule, indicative of a certain alertness of mind, which shows itself antagonistic to slovenliness of all kinds." no young man or woman who wishes to retain that most potent factor of the successful life, self-respect, can afford to be negligent in the matter of dress, for "the character is subdued to what it is clothed in." as the consciousness of being well dressed tends to grace and ease of manner, so shabby, ill-fitting, or soiled attire makes one feel awkward and constrained, lacking in dignity and importance. our clothes unmistakably affect our feelings, and self respect, as anyone knows who has experienced the sensation--and who has not?--that comes from being attired in new and becoming raiment. poor, ill-fitting, or soiled garments are detrimental to morals and manners. "the consciousness of clean linen," says elizabeth stuart phelps, "is in and of itself a source of moral strength, second only to that of a clean conscience. a well-ironed collar or a fresh glove has carried many a man through an emergency in which a wrinkle or a rip would have defeated him." the importance of attending to little details--the perfection of which really constitutes the well-dressed man or woman--is well illustrated by this story of a young woman's failure to secure a desirable position. one of those large-souled women of wealth, in which our generation is rich, had established an industrial school for girls in which they received a good english education and were trained to be self-supporting. she needed the services of a superintendent and teacher, and considered herself fortunate when the trustees of the institution recommended to her a young woman whose tact, knowledge, perfect manners, and general fitness for the position they extolled in the highest terms. the young woman was invited by the founder of the school to call on her at once. apparently she possessed all the required qualifications; and yet, without assigning any reason, mrs. v. absolutely refused to give her a trial. long afterward, when questioned by a friend as to the cause of her seemingly inexplicable conduct in refusing to engage so competent a teacher, she replied: "it was a trifle, but a trifle in which, as in an egyptian hieroglyphic, lay a volume of meaning. the young woman came to me fashionably and expensively dressed, but with torn and soiled gloves, and half of the buttons off her shoes. a slovenly woman is not a fit guide for any young girl." probably the applicant never knew why she did not obtain the position, for she was undoubtedly well qualified to fill it in every respect, except in this seemingly unimportant matter of attention to the little details of dress. from every point of view it pays well to dress well. the knowledge that we are becomingly clothed acts like a mental tonic. very few men or women are so strong and so perfectly poised as to be unaffected by their surroundings. if you lie around half-dressed, without making your toilet, and with your room all in disorder, taking it easy because you do not expect or wish to see anybody, you will find yourself very quickly taking on the mood of your attire and environment. your mind will slip down; it will refuse to exert itself; it will become as slovenly, slipshod, and inactive as your body. on the other hand, if, when you have an attack of the "blues," when you feel half sick and not able to work, instead of lying around the house in your old wrapper or dressing gown, you take a good bath,--a turkish bath, if you can afford it,--put on your best clothes, and make your toilet as carefully as if you were going to a fashionable reception, you will feel like a new person. nine times out of ten, before you have finished dressing your "blues" and your half-sick feeling will have vanished like a bad dream, and your whole outlook on life will have changed. by emphasizing the importance of dress i do not mean that you should be like beau brummel, the english fop, who spent four thousand dollars a year at his tailor's alone, and who used to take hours to tie his cravat. an undue love of dress is worse than a total disregard of it, and they love dress too much who "go in debt" for it, who make it their chief object in life, to the neglect of their most sacred duty to themselves and others, or who, like beau brummel, devote most of their waking hours to its study. but i do claim, in view of its effect on ourselves and on those with whom we come in contact, that it is a duty, as well as the truest economy, to dress as well and becomingly as our position requires and our means will allow. many young men and women make the mistake of thinking that "well dressed" necessarily means being expensively dressed, and, with this erroneous idea in mind, they fall into as great a pitfall as those who think clothes are of no importance. they devote the time that should be given to the culture of head and heart to studying their toilets, and planning how they can buy, out of their limited salaries, this or that expensive hat, or tie or coat, which they see exhibited in some fashionable store. if they can not by any possibility afford the coveted article, they buy some cheap, tawdry imitation, the effect of which is only to make them look ridiculous. young men of this stamp wear cheap rings, vermilion-tinted ties, and broad checks, and almost invariably they occupy cheap positions. like the dandy, whom carlyle describes as "a clothes-wearing man,--a man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing of clothes,--every faculty of whose soul, spirit, person and purse is heroically consecrated to this one object," they live to dress, and have no time to devote to self-culture or to fitting themselves for higher positions. the overdressed young woman is merely the feminine of the overdressed young man. the manners of both seem to have a subtle connection with their clothes. they are loud, flashy, vulgar. their style of dress bespeaks a type of character even more objectionable than that of the slovenly, untidily dressed person. the world accepts the truth announced by shakespeare that "the apparel oft proclaims the man"; and the man and the woman, too, are frequently condemned by the very garb which they think makes them so irresistible. at first sight, it may seem hasty or superficial to judge men or women by their clothes, but experience has proved, again and again, that they do, as a rule, measure the sense and self-respect of the wearer; and aspirants to success should be as careful in choosing their dress as their companions, for the old adage: "tell me thy company and i will tell thee what thou art," is offset by this wise saying of some philosopher of the commonplace: "show me all the dresses a woman has worn in the course of her life, and i will write you her biography." "how exquisitely absurd it is," says sydney smith, "to teach a girl that beauty is of no value, dress of no use. beauty is of value. her whole prospect and happiness in life may often depend upon a new gown or a becoming bonnet. if she has five grains of common sense, she will find this out. the great thing is to teach her their proper value." it is true that clothes do not make the man, but they have a much larger influence on man's life than we are wont to attribute to them. prentice mulford declares dress to be one of the avenues for the spiritualization of the race. this is not an extravagant statement, when we remember what an effect clothes have in inciting to personal cleanliness. let a woman, for instance, don an old soiled or worn wrapper, and it will have the effect of making her indifferent as to whether her hair is frowsy or in curl papers. it does not matter whether her face or hands are clean or not, or what sort of slipshod shoes she wears, for "anything," she argues, "is good enough to go with this old wrapper." her walk, her manner, the general trend of her feelings, will in some subtle way be dominated by the old wrapper. suppose she changes,--puts on a dainty muslin garment instead; how different her looks and acts! her hair must be becomingly arranged, so as not to be at odds with her dress. her face and hands and finger nails must be spotless as the muslin which surrounds them. the down-at-heel old shoes are exchanged for suitable slippers. her mind runs along new channels. she has much more respect for the wearer of the new, clean wrapper than for the wearer of the old, soiled one. "would you change the current of your thoughts? change your raiment, and you will at once feel the effect." even so great an authority as buffon, the naturalist and philosopher, testifies to the influence of dress on thought. he declared himself utterly incapable of thinking to good purpose except in full court dress. this he always put on before entering his study, not even omitting his sword. there is something about ill-fitting, unbecoming, or shabby apparel which not only robs one of self-respect, but also of comfort and power. good clothes give ease of manner, and make one talk well. the consciousness of being well dressed gives a grace and ease of manner that even religion will not bestow, while inferiority of garb often induces restraint. one can not but feel that god is a lover of appropriate dress. he has put robes of beauty and glory upon all his works. every flower is dressed in richness; every field blushes beneath a mantle of beauty; every star is veiled in brightness; every bird is clothed in the habiliments of the most exquisite taste. and surely he is pleased when we provide a beautiful setting for the greatest of his handiworks. chapter xvi personality as a success asset there is something about one's personality which eludes the photographer, which the painter can not reproduce, which the sculptor can not chisel. this subtle something which every one feels, but which no one can describe, which no biographer ever put down in a book, has a great deal to do with one's success in life. it is this indescribable quality, which some persons have in a remarkable degree, which sets an audience wild at the mention of the name of a blaine or a lincoln,--which makes people applaud beyond the bounds of enthusiasm. it was this peculiar atmosphere which made clay the idol of his constituents. although, perhaps, calhoun was a greater man, he never aroused any such enthusiasm as "the mill-boy of the slashes." webster and sumner were great men, but they did not arouse a tithe of the spontaneous enthusiasm evoked by men like blaine and clay. a historian says that, in measuring kossuth's influence over the masses, "we must first reckon with the orator's physical bulk, and then carry the measuring line above his atmosphere." if we had discernment fine enough and tests delicate enough, we could not only measure the personal atmosphere of individuals, but could also make more accurate estimates concerning the future possibilities of schoolmates and young friends. we are often misled as to the position they are going to occupy from the fact that we are apt to take account merely of their ability, and do not reckon this personal atmosphere or magnetic power as a part of their success-capital. yet this individual atmosphere has quite as much to do with one's advancement as brain-power or education. indeed, we constantly see men of mediocre ability but with fine personal presence, superb manner, and magnetic qualities, being rapidly advanced over the heads of those who are infinitely their superiors in mental endowments. a good illustration of the influence of personal atmosphere is found in the orator who carries his audience with him like a whirlwind, while he is delivering his speech, and yet so little of this personal element adheres to his cold words in print that those who read them are scarcely moved at all. the influence of such speakers depends almost wholly upon their presence,--the atmosphere that emanates from them. they are much larger than anything they say or do. certain personalities are greater than mere physical beauty and more powerful than learning. charm of personality is a divine gift that sways the strongest characters, and sometimes even controls the destinies of nations. we are unconsciously influenced by people who possess this magnetic power. the moment we come into their presence we have a sense of enlargement. they unlock within us possibilities of which we previously had no conception. our horizon broadens; we feel a new power stirring through all our being; we experience a sense of relief, as if a great weight which long had pressed upon us had been removed. we can converse with such people in a way that astonishes us, although meeting them, perhaps, for the first time. we express ourselves more clearly and eloquently than we believed we could. they draw out the best that is in us; they introduce us, as it were, to our larger, better selves. with their presence, impulses and longings come thronging to our minds which never stirred us before. all at once life takes on a higher and nobler meaning, and we are fired with a desire to do more than we have ever before done, and to be more than we have been in the past. a few minutes before, perhaps, we were sad and discouraged, when, suddenly, the flashlight of a potent personality of this kind has opened a rift in our lives and revealed to us hidden capabilities. sadness gives place to joy, despair to hope, and disheartenment to encouragement. we have been touched to finer issues; we have caught a glimpse of higher ideals; and, for the moment, at least, have been transformed. the old commonplace life, with its absence of purpose and endeavor, has dropped out of sight, and we resolve, with better heart and newer hope, to struggle to make permanently ours the forces and potentialities that have been revealed to us. even a momentary contact with a character of this kind seems to double our mental and soul powers, as two great dynamos double the current which passes over the wire, and we are loath to leave the magical presence lest we lose our new-born power. on the other hand, we frequently meet people who make us shrivel and shrink into ourselves. the moment they come near us we experience a cold chill, as if a blast of winter had struck us in midsummer. a blighting, narrowing sensation, which seems to make us suddenly smaller, passes over us. we feel a decided loss of power, of possibility. we could no more smile in their presence than we could laugh while at a funeral. their gloomy miasmatic atmosphere chills all our natural impulses. in their presence there is no possibility of expansion for us. as a dark cloud suddenly obscures the brightness of a smiling summer sky, their shadows are cast upon us and fill us with vague, undefinable uneasiness. we instinctively feel that such people have no sympathy with our aspirations, and our natural prompting is to guard closely any expression of our hopes and ambitions. when they are near us our laudable purposes and desires shrink into insignificance and mere foolishness; the charm of sentiment vanishes and life seems to lose color and zest. the effect of their presence is paralyzing, and we hasten from it as soon as possible. if we study these two types of personality, we shall find that the chief difference between them is that the first loves his kind, and the latter does not. of course, that rare charm of manner which captivates all those who come within the sphere of its influence, and that strong personal magnetism which inclines all hearts toward its fortunate possessor, are largely natural gifts. but we shall find that the man who practises unselfishness, who is genuinely interested in the welfare of others, who feels it a privilege to have the power to do a fellow-creature a kindness,--even though polished manners and a gracious presence may be conspicuous by their absence,--will be an elevating influence wherever he goes. he will bring encouragement to and uplift every life that touches his. he will be trusted and loved by all who come in contact with him. this type of personality we may all cultivate if we will. magnetic personality is intangible. this mysterious something, which we sometimes call individuality, is often more powerful than the ability which can be measured, or the qualities that can be rated. many women are endowed with this magnetic quality, which is entirely independent of personal beauty. it is often possessed in a high degree by very plain women. this was notably the case with some of the women who ruled in the french _salons_ more absolutely than the king on his throne. at a social gathering, when conversation drags, and interest is at a low ebb, the entrance of some bright woman with a magnetic personality instantly changes the whole situation. she may not be handsome, but everybody is attracted; it is a privilege to speak to her. people who possess this rare quality are frequently ignorant of the source of their power. they simply know they have it, but can not locate or describe it. while it is, like poetry, music, or art, a gift of nature, born in one, it can be cultivated to a certain extent. much of the charm of a magnetic personality comes from a fine, cultivated manner. tact, also, is a very important element,--next to a fine manner, perhaps the most important. one must know exactly what to do, and be able to do just the right thing at the proper time. good judgment and common sense are indispensable to those who are trying to acquire this magic power. good taste is also one of the elements of personal charm. you can not offend the tastes of others without hurting their sensibilities. one of the greatest investments one can make is that of attaining a gracious manner, cordiality of bearing, generosity of feeling,--the delightful art of pleasing. it is infinitely better than money capital, for all doors fly open to sunny, pleasing personalities. they are more than welcome; they are sought for everywhere. many a youth owes his promotion or his first start in life to the disposition to be accommodating, to help along wherever he could. this was one of lincoln's chief characteristics; he had a passion for helping people, for making himself agreeable under all circumstances. mr. herndon, his law partner, says: "when the rutledge tavern, where lincoln boarded, was crowded, he would often give up his bed, and sleep on the counter in his store with a roll of calico for his pillow. somehow everybody in trouble turned to him for help." this generous desire to assist others and to return kindnesses especially endeared lincoln to the people. the power to please is a tremendous asset. what can be more valuable than a personality which always attracts, never repels? it is not only valuable in business, but also in every field of life. it makes statesmen and politicians, it brings clients to the lawyer, and patients to the physician. it is worth everything to the clergyman. no matter what career you enter, you can not overestimate the importance of cultivating that charm of manner, those personal qualities, which attract people to you. they will take the place of capital, or influence. they are often a substitute for a large amount of hard work. some men attract business, customers, clients, patients, as naturally as magnets attract particles of steel. everything seems to point their way, for the same reason that the steel particles point toward the magnet,--because they are attracted. such men are business magnets. business moves toward them, even when they do not apparently make half so much effort to get it as the less successful. their friends call them "lucky dogs." but if we analyze these men closely, we find that they have attractive qualities. there is usually some charm of personality about them that wins all hearts. many successful business and professional men would be surprised, if they should analyze their success, to find what a large percentage of it is due to their habitual courtesy and other popular qualities. had it not been for these, their sagacity, long-headedness, and business training would not, perhaps, have amounted to half so much; for, no matter how able a man may be, if his coarse, rude manners drive away clients, patients, or customers, if his personality repels, he will always be placed at a disadvantage. it pays to cultivate popularity. it doubles success possibilities, develops manhood, and builds up character. to be popular, one must strangle selfishness, he must keep back his bad tendencies, he must be polite, gentlemanly, agreeable, and companionable. in trying to be popular, he is on the road to success and happiness as well. the ability to cultivate friends is a powerful aid to success. it is capital which will stand by one when panics come, when banks fail, when business concerns go to the wall. how many men have been able to start again after having everything swept away by fire or flood, or some other disaster, just because they had cultivated popular qualities, because they had learned the art of being agreeable, of making friends and holding them with hooks of steel! people are influenced powerfully by their friendships, by their likes and dislikes, and a popular business or professional man has every advantage in the world over a cold, indifferent man, for customers, clients, or patients will flock to him. cultivate the art of being agreeable. it will help you to self-expression as nothing else will; it will call out your success qualities; it will broaden your sympathies. it is difficult to conceive of any more delightful birthright than to be born with this personal charm, and yet it is comparatively easy to cultivate, because it is made up of so many other qualities, all of which are cultivatable. i never knew a thoroughly unselfish person who was not an attractive person. no person who is always thinking of himself and trying to figure out how he can get some advantage from everybody else will ever be attractive. we are naturally disgusted with people who are trying to get everything for themselves and never think of anybody else. the secret of pleasing is in being pleasant yourself, in being interesting. if you would be agreeable, you must be magnanimous. the narrow, stingy soul is not lovable. people shrink from such a character. there must be heartiness in the expression, in the smile, in the hand-shake, in the cordiality, which is unmistakable. the hardest natures can not resist these qualities any more than the eyes can resist the sun. if you radiate sweetness and light, people will love to get near you, for we are all looking for the sunlight, trying to get away from the shadows. it is unfortunate that these things are not taught more in the home and in the school; for our success and happiness depend largely upon them. many of us are no better than uneducated heathens. we may know enough, but we give ourselves out stingily and we live narrow and reserved lives, when we should be broad, generous, sympathetic, and magnanimous. popular people, those with great personal charm, take infinite pains to cultivate all the little graces and qualities which go to make up popularity. if people who are naturally unsocial would only spend as much time and take as much pains as people who are social favorites in making themselves popular, they would accomplish wonders. everybody is attracted by lovable qualities and is repelled by the unlovely wherever found. the whole principle of an attractive personality lives in this sentence. a fine manner pleases; a coarse, brutal manner repels. we cannot help being attracted to one who is always trying to help us,--who gives us his sympathy, who is always trying to make us comfortable and to give us every advantage he can. on the other hand, we are repelled by people who are always trying to get something out of us, who elbow their way in front of us, to get the best seat in a car or a hall, who are always looking for the easiest chair, or for the choicest bits at the table, who are always wanting to be waited on first at the restaurant or hotel, regardless of others. the ability to bring the best that is in you to the man you are trying to reach, to make a good impression at the very first meeting, to approach a prospective customer as though you had known him for years without offending his taste, without raising the least prejudice, but getting his sympathy and good will, is a great accomplishment, and this is what commands a great salary. there is a charm in a gracious personality from which it is very hard to get away. it is difficult to snub the man who possesses it. there is something about him which arrests your prejudice, and no matter how busy or how worried you may be, or how much you may dislike to be interrupted, somehow you haven't the heart to turn away the man with a pleasing personality. who has not felt his power multiplied many times, his intellect sharpened, and a keener edge put on all of his faculties, when coming into contact with a strong personality which has called forth hidden powers which he never before dreamed he possessed, so that he could say things and do things impossible to him when alone? the power of the orator, which he flings back to his listeners, he first draws from his audience, but he could never get it from the separate individuals any more than the chemist could get the full power from chemicals standing in separate bottles in his laboratory. it is in contact and combination only that new creations, new forces, are developed. we little realize what a large part of our achievement is due to others working through us, to their sharpening our faculties, radiating hope, encouragement, and helpfulness into our lives, and sustaining and inspiring us mentally. we are apt to overestimate the value of an education from books alone. a large part of the value of a college education comes from the social intercourse of the students, the reenforcement, the buttressing of character by association. their faculties are sharpened and polished by the attrition of mind with mind, and the pitting of brain against brain, which stimulate ambition, brighten the ideals, and open up new hopes and possibilities. book knowledge is valuable, but the knowledge which comes from mind intercourse is invaluable. two substances totally unlike, but having a chemical affinity for each other, may produce a third infinitely stronger than either, or even both of those which unite. two people with a strong affinity often call into activity in each other a power which neither dreamed he possessed before. many an author owes his greatest book, his cleverest saying to a friend who has aroused in him latent powers which otherwise might have remained dormant. artists have been touched by the power of inspiration through a masterpiece, or by some one they happened to meet who saw in them what no one else had ever seen,--the power to do an immortal thing. the man who mixes with his fellows is ever on a voyage of discovery, finding new islands of power in himself which would have remained forever hidden but for association with others. everybody he meets has some secret for him, if he can only extract it, something which he never knew before, something which will help him on his way, something which will enrich his life. no man finds himself alone. others are his discoverers. it is astonishing how much you can learn from people in social intercourse when you know how to look at them rightly. but it is a fact that you can only get a great deal out of them by giving them a great deal of yourself. the more you radiate yourself, the more magnanimous you are, the more generous of yourself, the more you fling yourself out to them without reserve, the more you will get back. you must give much in order to get much. the current will not set toward you until it goes out from you. about all you get from others is a reflex of the currents from yourself. the more generously you give, the more you get in return. you will not receive if you give out stingily, narrowly, meanly. you must give of yourself in a whole-hearted, generous way, or you will receive only stingy rivulets, when you might have had great rivers and torrents of blessings. a man who might have been symmetrical, well-rounded, had he availed himself of every opportunity of touching life along all sides, remains a pygmy in everything except his own little specialty, because he did not cultivate his social side. it is always a mistake to miss an opportunity of meeting with our kind, and especially of mixing with those above us, because we can always carry away something of value. it is through social intercourse that our rough corners are rubbed off, that we become polished and attractive. if you go into social life with a determination to give it something, to make it a school for self-improvement, for calling out your best social qualities, for developing the latent brain cells, which have remained dormant for the lack of exercise, you will not find society either a bore or unprofitable. but you must give it something, or you will not get anything. when you learn to look upon every one you meet as holding a treasure, something which will enrich your life, which will enlarge and broaden your experience, and make you more of a man, you will not think the time in the drawing-room wasted. the man who is determined to get on will look upon every experience as an educator, as a culture chisel, which will make his life a little more shapely and attractive. frankness of manner is one of the most delightful of traits in young or old. everybody admires the open-hearted, the people who have nothing to conceal, and who do not try to cover up their faults and weaknesses. they are, as a rule, large-hearted and magnanimous. they inspire love and confidence, and, by their very frankness and simplicity, invite the same qualities in others. secretiveness repels as much as frankness attracts. there is something about the very inclination to conceal or cover up which arouses suspicion and distrust. we cannot have the same confidence in people who possess this trait, no matter how good they may seem to be, as in frank, sunny natures. dealing with these secretive people is like traveling on a stage coach on a dark night. there is always a feeling of uncertainty. we may come out all right, but there is a lurking fear of some pitfall or unknown danger ahead of us. we are uncomfortable because of the uncertainties. they may be all right, and may deal squarely with us, but we are not sure and can not trust them. no matter how polite or gracious a secretive person may be, we can never rid ourselves of the feeling that there is a motive behind his graciousness, and that he has an ulterior purpose in view. he is always more or less of an enigma, because he goes through life wearing a mask. he endeavors to hide every trait that is not favorable to himself. never, if he can help it, do we get a glimpse of the real man. how different the man who comes out in the open, who has no secrets, who reveals his heart to us, and who is frank, broad and liberal! how quickly he wins our confidence! how we all like and trust him! we forgive him for many a slip or weakness, because he is always ready to confess his faults, and to make amends for them. it he has bad qualities, they are always in sight, and we are ready to make allowances for them. his heart is sound and true, his sympathies are broad and active. the very qualities he possesses--frankness and simplicity,--are conducive to the growth of the highest manhood and womanhood. in the black hills of south dakota there lived a humble, ignorant miner, who won the love and good will of everyone. "you can't 'elp likin' 'im," said an english miner, and when asked why the miners and the people in the town couldn't help liking him, he answered. "because he has a 'eart in 'im; he's a man. he always 'elps the boys when in trouble. you never go to 'im for nothin'." bright, handsome young men, graduates of eastern colleges, were there seeking their fortune; a great many able, strong men drawn there from different parts of the country by the gold fever; but none of them held the public confidence like this poor man. he could scarcely write his name, and knew nothing of the usages of polite society, yet he so intrenched himself in the hearts in his community that no other man, however educated or cultured, had the slightest chance of being elected to any office of prominence while "ike" was around. he was elected mayor of his town, and sent to the legislature, although he could not speak a grammatical sentence. it was all because he had a heart in him; he was a man. chapter xvii if you can talk well when charles w. eliot was president of harvard, he said, "i recognize but one mental acquisition as an essential part of the education of a lady or gentleman, namely, an accurate and refined use of the mother-tongue." sir walter scott defined "a good conversationalist" as "one who has ideas, who reads, thinks, listens, and who has therefore something to say." there is no other one thing which enables us to make so good an impression, especially upon those who do not know us thoroughly, as the ability to converse well. to be a good conversationalist, able to interest people, to rivet their attention, to draw them to you naturally, by the very superiority of your conversational ability, is to be the possessor of a very great accomplishment, one which is superior to all others. it not only helps you to make a good impression upon strangers, it also helps you to make and keep friends. it opens doors and softens hearts. it makes you interesting in all sorts of company. it helps you to get on in the world. it sends you clients, patients, customers. it helps you into the best society, even though you are poor. a man who can talk well, who has the art of putting things in an attractive way, who can interest others immediately by his power of speech, has a very great advantage over one who may know more than he, but who cannot express himself with ease or eloquence. no matter how expert you may be in any other art or accomplishment, you cannot use your expertness always and everywhere as you can the power to converse well. if you are a musician, no matter how talented you may be, or how many years you may have spent in perfecting yourself in your specialty, or how much it may have cost you, only comparatively few people can ever hear or appreciate your music. you may be a fine singer, and yet travel around the world without having an opportunity of showing your accomplishment, or without anyone guessing your specialty. but wherever you go and in whatever society you are, no matter what your station in life may be, you talk. you may be a painter, you may have spent years with great masters, and yet, unless you have very marked ability so that your pictures are hung in the salons or in the great art galleries, comparatively few people will ever see them. but if you are an artist in conversation, everyone who comes in contact with you will see your life-picture, which you have been painting ever since you began to talk. everyone knows whether you are an artist or a bungler. in fact, you may have a great many accomplishments which people occasionally see or enjoy, and you may have a very beautiful home and a lot of property which comparatively few people ever know about; but if you are a good converser, everyone with whom you talk will feel the influence of your skill and charm. a noted society leader, who has been very successful in the launching of _débutantes_ in society, always gives this advice to her _protégés_, "talk, talk. it does not matter much what you say, but chatter away lightly and gayly. nothing embarrasses and bores the average man so much as a girl who has to be entertained." there is a helpful suggestion in this advice. the way to learn to talk is to talk. the temptation for people who are unaccustomed to society, and who feel diffident, is to say nothing themselves and listen to what others say. good talkers are always sought after in society. everybody wants to invite mrs. so-and-so to dinners or receptions because she is such a good talker. she entertains. she may have many defects, but people enjoy her society because she can talk well. conversation, if used as an educator, is a tremendous power developer; but talking without thinking, without an effort to express oneself with clearness, conciseness, or efficiency, mere chattering, or gossiping, the average society small talk, will never get hold of the best thing in a man. it lies too deep for such superficial effort. thousands of young people who envy such of their mates as are getting on faster than they are keep on wasting their precious evenings and their half-holidays, saying nothing but the most frivolous, frothy, senseless things--things which do not rise to the level of humor, but the foolish, silly talk which demoralizes one's ambition, lowers one's ideals and all the standards of life, because it begets habits of superficial and senseless thinking. on the streets, on the cars, and in public places, loud, coarse voices are heard in light, flippant, slipshod speech, in coarse slang expressions. "you're talking through your hat"; "search me"; "you just bet"; "well, that's the limit"; "i hate that man; he gets on my nerves," and a score of other such vulgarities we often hear. nothing else will indicate your fineness or coarseness of culture, your breeding or lack of it, so quickly as your conversation. it will tell your whole life's story. what you say, and how you say it, will betray all your secrets, will give the world your true measure. there is no accomplishment, no attainment which you can use so constantly and effectively, which will give so much pleasure to your friends, as fine conversation. there is no doubt that the gift of language was intended to be a much greater accomplishment than the majority of us have ever made of it. most of us are bunglers in our conversation, because we do not make an art of it; we do not take the trouble or pains to learn to talk well. we do not read enough or think enough. most of us express ourselves in sloppy, slipshod english, because it is so much easier to do so than it is to think before we speak, to make an effort to express ourselves with elegance, ease, and power. poor conversers excuse themselves for not trying to improve by saying that "good talkers are born, not made." we might as well say that good lawyers, good physicians, or good merchants are born, not made. none of them would ever get very far without hard work. this is the price of all achievement that is of value. many a man owes his advancement very largely to his ability to converse well. the ability to interest people in your conversation, to hold them, is a great power. the man who has a bungling expression, who knows a thing, but never can put it in logical, interesting, or commanding language, is always placed at a great disadvantage. i know a business man who has cultivated the art of conversation to such an extent that it is a great treat to listen to him. his language flows with such liquid, limpid beauty, his words are chosen with such exquisite delicacy, taste, and accuracy, there is such a refinement in his diction that he charms everyone who hears him speak. all his life he has been a reader of the finest prose and poetry, and has cultivated conversation as a fine art. you may think you are poor and have no chance in life. you may be situated so that others are dependent upon you, and you may not be able to go to school or college, or to study music or art, as you long to; you may be tied down to an iron environment; you may be tortured with an unsatisfied, disappointed ambition; and yet you can become an interesting talker, because in every sentence you utter you can practise the best form of expression. every book you read, every person with whom you converse, who uses good english, can help you. few people think very much about how they are going to express themselves. they use the first words that come to them. they do not think of forming a sentence so that it will have beauty, brevity, transparency, power. the words flow from their lips helter-skelter, with little thought of arrangement or order. now and then we meet a real artist in conversation, and it is such a treat and delight that we wonder why the most of us should be such bunglers in our conversation, that we should make such a botch of the medium of communication between human beings, when it is capable of being made the art of arts. i have met a dozen persons in my lifetime who have given me such a glimpse of its superb possibilities that it has made all other arts seem comparatively unimportant to me. i was once a visitor at wendell phillips's home in boston, and the music of his voice, the liquid charm of his words, the purity, the transparency of his diction, the profundity of his knowledge, the fascination of his personality, and his marvelous art of putting things, i shall never forget. he sat down on the sofa beside me and talked as he would to an old schoolmate, and it seemed to me that i had never heard such exquisite and polished english. i have met several english people who possessed that marvelous power of "soul in conversation which charms all who come under its spell." mrs. mary a. livermore, julia ward howe, and elizabeth s. p. ward, had this wonderful conversational charm, as has ex-president eliot of harvard. the quality of the conversation is everything. we all know people who use the choicest language and express their thoughts in fluent, liquid diction, who impress us by the wonderful flow of their conversation; but that is all there is to it. they do not impress us with their thoughts; they do not stimulate us to action. we do not feel any more determined to do something in the world, to be somebody, after we have heard them talk than we felt before. we know other people who talk very little, but whose words are so full of meat and stimulating brain force that we feel ourselves multiplied many times by the power they have injected into us. in olden times the art of conversation reached a much higher standard than that of to-day. the deterioration is due to the complete revolution in the conditions of modern civilization. formerly people had almost no other way of communicating their thoughts than by speech. knowledge of all kinds was disseminated almost wholly through the spoken word. there were no great daily newspapers, no magazines or periodicals of any kind. the great discoveries of vast wealth in the precious minerals, the new world opened up by inventions and discoveries, and the great impetus to ambition have changed all this. in this lightning-express age, in these strenuous times, when everybody has the mania to attain wealth and position, we no longer have time to reflect with deliberation, and to develop our powers of conversation. in these great newspaper and periodical days, when everybody can get for one or a few cents the news and information which it has cost thousands of dollars to collect, everybody sits behind the morning sheet or is buried in a book or magazine. there is no longer the same need of communicating thought by the spoken word. oratory is becoming a lost art for the same reason. printing has become so cheap that even the poorest homes can get more reading for a few dollars than kings and noblemen could afford in the middle ages. it is a rare thing to find a polished conversationalist to-day. so rare is it to hear one speaking exquisite english, and using a superb diction, that it is indeed a luxury. good reading, however, will not only broaden the mind and give new ideas, but it will also increase one's vocabulary, and that is a great aid to conversation. many people have good thoughts and ideas, but they cannot express them because of the poverty of their vocabulary. they have not words enough to clothe their ideas and make them attractive. they talk around in a circle, repeat and repeat, because, when they want a particular word to convey their exact meaning, they cannot find it. if you are ambitious to talk well, you must be as much as possible in the society of well-bred, cultured people. if you seclude yourself, though you are a college graduate, you will be a poor converser. we all sympathize with people, especially the timid and shy, who have that awful feeling of repression and stifling of thought, when they make an effort to say something and cannot. timid young people often suffer keenly in this way in attempting to declaim at school or college. but many a great orator went through the same sort of experience, when he first attempted to speak in public and was often deeply humiliated by his blunders and failures. there is no other way, however, to become an orator or a good conversationalist than by constantly trying to express oneself efficiently and elegantly. if you find that your ideas fly from you when you attempt to express them, that you stammer and flounder about for words which you are unable to find, you may be sure that every honest effort you make, even if you fail in your attempt, will make it all the easier for you to speak well the next time. it is remarkable, if one keeps on trying, how quickly he will conquer his awkwardness and self-consciousness, and will gain ease of manner and facility of expression. everywhere we see people placed at a tremendous disadvantage because they have never learned the art of putting their ideas into interesting, telling language. we see brainy men at public gatherings, when momentous questions are being discussed, sit silent, unable to tell what they know, when they are infinitely better informed than those who are making a great deal of display of oratory or smooth talk. people with a lot of ability, who know a great deal, often appear like a set of dummies in company, while some superficial, shallow-brained person holds the attention of those present simply because he can tell what he knows in an interesting way. they are constantly humiliated and embarrassed when away from those who happen to know their real worth, because they can not carry on an intelligent conversation upon any topic. there are hundreds of these silent people at our national capital--many of them wives of husbands who have suddenly and unexpectedly come into political prominence. many people--and this is especially true of scholars--seem to think that the great _desideratum_ in life is to get as much valuable information into the head as possible. but it is just as important to know how to give out knowledge in a palatable manner as to acquire it. you may be a profound scholar, you may be well read in history and in politics, you may be wonderfully well-posted in science, literature, and art, and yet, if your knowledge is locked up within you, you will always be placed at a great disadvantage. locked-up ability may give the individual some satisfaction, but it must be exhibited, expressed in some attractive way, before the world will appreciate it or give credit for it. it does not matter how valuable the rough diamond may be, no explaining, no describing its marvels of beauty within, and its great value, would avail; nobody would appreciate it until it was ground and polished and the light let into its depths to reveal its hidden brilliancy. conversation is to the man what the cutting of the diamond is to the stone. the grinding does not add anything to the diamond. it merely reveals its wealth. how little parents realize the harm they are doing their children by allowing them to grow up ignorant of or indifferent to the marvelous possibilities in the art of conversation! in the majority of homes, children are allowed to mangle the english language in a most painful way. nothing else will develop the brain and character more than the constant effort to talk well, intelligently, interestingly, upon all sorts of topics. there is a splendid discipline in the constant effort to express one's thoughts in clear language and in an interesting manner. we know people who are such superb conversers that no one would ever dream that they have not had the advantages of the higher schools. many a college graduate has been silenced and put to shame by people who have never even been to a high school, but who have cultivated the art of self-expression. the school and the college employ the student comparatively a few hours a day for a few years; conversation is a training in a perpetual school. many get the best part of their education in this school. conversation is a great ability discoverer, a great revealer of possibilities and resources. it stimulates thought wonderfully. we think more of ourselves if we can talk well, if we can interest and hold others. the power to do so increases our self-respect, our self-confidence. no man knows what he really possesses until he makes his best effort to express to others what is in him. then the avenues of the mind fly open, the faculties are on the alert. every good converser has felt a power come to him from the listener which he never felt before, and which often stimulates and inspires to fresh endeavor. the mingling of thought with thought, the contact of mind with mind, develops new powers, as the mixing of two chemicals often produces a new third substance. to converse well one must listen well also--hold oneself in a receptive attitude. we are not only poor conversationalists, but we are poor listeners as well. we are too impatient to listen. instead of being attentive and eager to drink in the story or the information, we have not enough respect for the talker to keep quiet. we look about impatiently, perhaps snap our watch, play a tattoo with our fingers on a chair or a table, hitch about as if we were bored and were anxious to get away, and interrupt the speaker before he reaches his conclusion. in fact, we are such an impatient people that we have no time for anything excepting to push ahead, to elbow our way through the crowd to get the position or the money we desire. our life is feverish and unnatural. we have no time to develop charm of manner, or elegance of diction. "we are too intense for epigram or repartee. we lack time." nervous impatience is a conspicuous characteristic of the american people. everything bores us which does not bring us more business, or more money, or which does not help us to attain the position for which we are striving. instead of enjoying our friends, we are inclined to look upon them as so many rungs in a ladder, and to value them in proportion as they furnish readers for our books, send us patients, clients, customers or show their ability to give us a boost for political position. before these days of hurry and drive, before this age of excitement, it was considered one of the greatest luxuries possible to be a listener in a group surrounding an intelligent talker. it was better than most modern lectures, than anything one could find in a book; for there was a touch of personality, a charm of style, a magnetism which held, a superb personality which fascinated. for the hungry soul, yearning for an education, to drink in knowledge from those wise lips was to be fed with a royal feast indeed. but to-day everything is "touch and go." we have no time to stop on the street and give a decent salutation. it is: "how do?" or "morning," accompanied by a sharp nod of the head, instead of by a graceful bow. we have no time for the graces and the charms. everything must give way to the material. we have no time for the development of a fine manner; the charm of the days of chivalry and leisure has almost vanished from our civilization. a new type of individual has sprung up. we work like trojans during the day, and then rush to a theater or other place of amusement in the evening. we have no time to make our own amusement or to develop the faculty of humor and fun-making as people used to do. we pay people for doing that while we sit and laugh. we are like some college boys, who depend upon tutors to carry them through their examinations--they expect to buy their education ready-made. life is becoming so artificial, so forced, so diverse from naturalness, we drive our human engines at such a fearful speed, that our finer life is crushed out. spontaneity and humor, and the possibility of a fine culture and a superb charm of personality in us are almost impossible and extremely rare. one cause for our conversational decline is a lack of sympathy. we are too selfish, too busily engaged in our own welfare, and wrapped up in our own little world, too intent upon our own self-promotion to be interested in others. no one can make a good conversationalist who is not sympathetic. you must be able to enter into another's life, to live it with the other person, to be a good listener or a good talker. walter besant used to tell of a clever woman who had a great reputation as a conversationalist, though she talked very little. she had such a cordial, sympathetic manner that she helped the timid and the shy to say their best things, and made them feel at home. she dissipated their fears, and they could say things to her which they could not say to anyone else. people thought her an interesting conversationalist because she had this ability to call out the best in others. if you would make yourself agreeable you must be able to enter into the life of the people you are conversing with, and you must touch them along the lines of their interest. no matter how much you may know about a subject, if it does not happen to interest those to whom you are talking your efforts will be largely lost. it is pitiable, sometimes, to see men standing around at the average reception or club gathering, dumb, almost helpless, and powerless to enter heartily into the conversation because they are in a subjective mood. they are thinking, thinking, thinking business, business, business; thinking how they can get on a little faster--get more business, more clients, more patients, or more readers for their books--or a better house to live in; how they can make more show. they do not enter heartily into the lives of others, or abandon themselves to the occasion enough to make good talkers. they are cold and reserved, distant, because their minds are somewhere else, their affections on themselves and their own affairs. there are only two things that interest them; business and their own little world. if you talk about these things, they are interested at once; but they do not care a snap about your affairs, how you get on, or what your ambition is, or how they can help you. our conversation will never reach a high standard while we live in such a feverish, selfish, and unsympathetic state. great conversationalists have always been very tactful--interesting without offending. it does not do to stab people if you would interest them, nor to drag out their family skeletons. some people have the peculiar quality of touching the best that is in us; others stir up the bad. every time they come into our presence they irritate us. others allay all that is disagreeable. they never touch our sensitive spots, and they call out all that is spontaneous and sweet and beautiful. lincoln was master of the art of making himself interesting to everybody he met. he put people at ease with his stories and jokes, and made them feel so completely at home in his presence that they opened up their mental treasures to him without reserve. strangers were always glad to talk with him because he was so cordial and quaint, and always gave more than he got. a sense of humor such as lincoln had is, of course, a great addition to one's conversational power. but not everyone can be funny; and, if you lack the sense of humor, you will make yourself ludicrous by attempting to be funny. a good conversationalist, however, is not too serious. he does not deal too much with facts, no matter how important. facts, statistics, weary. vivacity is absolutely necessary. heavy conversation bores; too light, disgusts. therefore, to be a good conversationalist you must be spontaneous, buoyant, natural, sympathetic, and must show a spirit of good will. you must feel a spirit of helpfulness, and must enter heart and soul into things which interest others. you must get the attention of people and hold it by interesting them, and you can only interest them by a warm sympathy--a real friendly sympathy. if you are cold, distant, and unsympathetic you can not hold their attention. you must be broad, tolerant. a narrow stingy soul never talks well. a man who is always violating your sense of taste, of justice, and of fairness, never interests you. you lock tight all the approaches to your inner self, every avenue is closed to him. your magnetism and your helpfulness are thus cut off, and the conversation is perfunctory, mechanical, and without life or feeling. you must bring your listener close to you, must open your heart wide, and exhibit a broad free nature, and an open mind. you must be responsive, so that he will throw wide open every avenue of his nature and give you free access to his heart of hearts. if a man is a success anywhere, it ought to be in his personality, in his power to express himself in strong, effective, interesting language. he should not be obliged to give a stranger an inventory of his possessions in order to show that he has achieved something. a greater wealth should flow from his lips, and express itself in his manner. no amount of natural ability or education or good clothes, no amount of money, will make you appear well if you use poor english. chapter xviii a fortune in good manners give a boy address and accomplishments, and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes wherever he goes; he has not the trouble of earning or owning them; they solicit him to enter and possess.--emerson. with hat in hand, one gets on in the world.--german proverb. what thou wilt, thou must rather enforce it with thy smile, than hew to it with thy sword. shakespeare. politeness has been compared to an air cushion, which, although there is apparently nothing in it, eases our jolts wonderfully.--george l. carey. birth's gude, but breedin's better.--scotch proverb. conduct is three fourths of life.--matthew arnold. "why the doose de 'e 'old 'is 'ead down like that?" asked a cockney sergeant-major angrily, when a worthy fellow soldier wished to be reinstated in a position from which he had been dismissed. "has 'e 's been han hofficer 'e bought to know 'ow to be'ave 'isself better. what use 'ud 'e be has a non-commissioned hofficer hif 'e didn't dare look 'is men in the face? hif a man wants to be a soldier, hi say, let 'im cock 'is chin hup, switch 'is stick abart a bit, an give a crack hover the 'ead to hanybody who comes foolin' round 'im, helse 'e might just has well be a methodist parson." the english is somewhat rude, but it expresses pretty forcibly the fact that a good bearing is indispensable to success as a soldier. mien and manner have much to do with our influence and reputation in any walk of life. "don't you wish you had my power?" asked the east wind of the zephyr. "why, when i start they hail me by storm signals all along the coast. i can twist off a ship's mast as easily as you can waft thistledown. with one sweep of my wing i strew the coast from labrador to cape horn with shattered ship timber. i can lift and have often lifted the atlantic. i am the terror of all invalids, and to keep me from piercing to the very marrow of their bones, men cut down forests for their fires and explore the mines of continents for coal to feed their furnaces. under my breath the nations crouch in sepulchers. don't you wish you had my power?" zephyr made no reply, but floated from out the bowers of the sky, and all the rivers and lakes and seas, all the forests and fields, all the beasts and birds and men smiled at its coming. gardens bloomed, orchards ripened, silver wheat-fields turned to gold, fleecy clouds went sailing in the lofty heaven, the pinions of birds and the sails of vessels were gently wafted onward, and health and happiness were everywhere. the foliage and flowers and fruits and harvests, the warmth and sparkle and gladness and beauty and life were the only answer zephyr gave to the insolent question of the proud but pitiless east wind. the story goes that queen victoria once expressed herself to her husband in rather a despotic tone, and prince albert, whose manly self-respect was smarting at her words, sought the seclusion of his own apartment, closing and locking the door. in about five minutes some one knocked. "who is it?" inquired the prince. "it is i. open to the queen of england!" haughtily responded her majesty. there was no reply. after a long interval there came a gentle tapping and the low spoken words: "it is i, victoria, your wife." is it necessary to add that the door was opened, or that the disagreement was at an end? it is said that civility is to a man what beauty is to a woman: it creates an instantaneous impression in his behalf. the monk basle, according to a quaint old legend, died while under the ban of excommunication by the pope, and was sent in charge of an angel to find his proper place in the nether world. but his genial disposition and great conversational powers won friends wherever he went. the fallen angels adopted his manner, and even the good angels went a long way to see him and live with him. he was removed to the lowest depths of hades, but with the same result. his inborn politeness and kindness of heart were irresistible, and he seemed to change the hell into a heaven. at length the angel returned with the monk, saying that no place could be found in which to punish him. he still remained the same basle. so his sentence was revoked, and he was sent to heaven and canonized as a saint. the duke of marlborough "wrote english badly and spelled it worse," yet he swayed the destinies of empires. the charm of his manner was irresistible and influenced all europe. his fascinating smile and winning speech disarmed the fiercest hatred and made friends of the bitterest enemies. a gentleman took his daughter of sixteen to richmond to witness the trial of his bitter personal enemy, aaron burr, whom he regarded as an arch-traitor. but she was so fascinated by burr's charming manner that she sat with his friends. her father took her from the courtroom, and locked her up, but she was so overcome by the fine manner of the accused that she believed in his innocence and prayed for his acquittal. "to this day," said she fifty years afterwards, "i feel the magic of his wonderful deportment." madame récamier was so charming that when she passed around the box at the church st. roche in paris, twenty thousand francs were put into it. at the great reception to napoleon on his return from italy, the crowd caught sight of this fascinating woman and almost forgot to look at the great hero. "please, madame," whispered a servant to madame de maintenon at dinner, "one anecdote more, for there is no roast to-day." she was so fascinating in manner and speech that her guests appeared to overlook all the little discomforts of life. according to st. beuve, the privileged circle at coppet after making an excursion returned from chambéry in two coaches. those arriving in the first coach had a rueful experience to relate--a terrific thunder-storm, shocking roads, and danger and gloom to the whole company. the party in the second coach heard their story with surprise; of thunder-storm, of steeps, of mud, of danger, they knew nothing; no, they had forgotten earth, and breathed a purer air; such a conversation between madame de staël and madame récamier and benjamin constant and schlegel! they were all in a state of delight. the intoxication of the conversation had made them insensible to all notice of weather or rough roads. "if i were queen," said madame tesse, "i should command madame de staël to talk to me every day." "when she had passed," as longfellow wrote of evangeline, "it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music." madame de staël was anything but beautiful, but she possessed that indefinable something before which mere conventional beauty cowers, commonplace and ashamed. her hold upon the minds of men was wonderful. they were the creatures of her will, and she shaped careers as if she were omnipotent. even the emperor napoleon feared her influence over his people so much that he destroyed her writings and banished her from france. in the words of whittier it could be said of her as might be said of any woman:-- our homes are cheerier for her sake, our door-yards brighter blooming, and all about the social air is sweeter for her coming. a guest for two weeks at the house of arthur m. cavanaugh, m. p., who was without arms or legs, was very desirous of knowing how he fed himself; but the conversation and manner of the host were so charming that the visitor was scarcely conscious of his deformity. "when dickens entered a room," said one who knew him well, "it was like the sudden kindling of a big fire, by which every one was warmed." it is said that when goethe entered a restaurant people would lay down their knives and forks to admire him. philip of macedon, after hearing the report of demosthenes' famous oration, said: "had i been there he would have persuaded me to take up arms against myself." henry clay was so graceful and impressive in his manner that a pennsylvania tavern-keeper tried to induce him to get out of the stage-coach in which they were riding, and make a speech to himself and his wife. "i don't think much of choate's spread-eagle talk," said a simple-minded member of a jury that had given five successive verdicts to the great advocate; "but i call him a very lucky lawyer, for there was not one of those five cases that came before us where he wasn't on the right side." his manner as well as his logic was irresistible. when edward everett took a professor's chair at harvard after five years of study in europe, he was almost worshiped by the students. his manner seemed touched by that exquisite grace seldom found except in women of rare culture. his great popularity lay in a magical atmosphere which every one felt, but no one could describe, and which never left him. a new york lady had just taken her seat in a car on a train bound for philadelphia, when a somewhat stout man sitting just ahead of her lighted a cigar. she coughed and moved uneasily; but the hints had no effect, so she said tartly: "you probably are a foreigner, and do not know that there is a smoking-car attached to the train. smoking is not permitted here." the man made no reply, but threw his cigar from the window. what has her astonishment when the conductor told her, a moment later, that she had entered the private car of general grant. she withdrew in confusion, but the same fine courtesy which led him to give up his cigar was shown again as he spared her the mortification of even a questioning glance, still less of a look of amusement, although she watched his dumb, immovable figure with apprehension until she reached the door. julian ralph, after telegraphing an account of president arthur's fishing-trip to the thousand islands, returned to his hotel at two o'clock in the morning, to find all the doors locked. with two friends who had accompanied him, he battered at a side door to wake the servants, but what was his chagrin when the door was opened by the president of the united states! "why, that's all right," said mr. arthur when mr. ralph asked his pardon. "you wouldn't have got in till morning if i had not come. no one is up in the house but me. i could have sent my colored boy, but he had fallen asleep and i hated to wake him." the late king edward, when prince of wales, the first gentleman in europe, invited an eminent man to dine with him. when coffee was served, the guest, to the consternation of the others, drank from his saucer. an open titter of amusement went round the table. the prince, quickly noting the cause of the untimely amusement, gravely emptied his cup into his saucer and drank after the manner of his guest. silent and abashed, the other members of the princely household took the rebuke and did the same. queen victoria sent for carlyle, who was a scotch peasant, offering him the title of nobleman, which he declined, feeling that he had always been a nobleman in his own right. he understood so little of the manners at court that, when presented to the queen, after speaking to her a few minutes, being tired, he said, "let us sit down, madam;" whereat the courtiers were ready to faint. but she was great enough, and gave a gesture that seated all her puppets in a moment. the queen's courteous suspension of the rules of etiquette, and what it may have cost her, can be better understood from what an acquaintance of carlyle said of him when he saw him for the first time. "his presence, in some unaccountable manner, rasped the nerves. i expected to meet a rare being, and i left him feeling as if i had drunk sour wine, or had had an attack of seasickness." some persons wield a scepter before which others seem to bow in glad obedience. but whence do they obtain such magic power? what is the secret of that almost hypnotic influence over people which we would give anything to possess? courtesy is not always found in high places. even royal courts furnish many examples of bad manners. at an entertainment given years ago by prince edward and the princess of wales, to which only the very cream of the cream of society was admitted, there was such pushing and struggling to see the princess, who was then but lately married, that, as she passed through the reception rooms, a bust of the princess royal was thrown from its pedestal and damaged, and the pedestal upset; and the ladies, in their eagerness to see the princess, actually stood upon it. when catherine of russia gave receptions to her nobles, she published the following rules of etiquette upon cards: "gentlemen will not get drunk before the feast is ended. noblemen are forbidden to strike their wives in company. ladies of the court must not wash out their mouths in the drinking-glasses, or wipe their faces on the damask, or pick their teeth with forks." but to-day the nobles of russia have no superiors in manners. etiquette originally meant the ticket or tag tied to a bag to indicate its contents. if a bag had this ticket it was not examined. from this the word passed to cards upon which were printed certain rules to be observed by guests. these rules were "the ticket" or the etiquette. to be "the ticket," or, as it was sometimes expressed, to act or talk by the card, became the thing with the better classes. it was fortunate for napoleon that he married josephine before he was made commander-in-chief of the armies of italy. her fascinating manners and her wonderful powers of persuasion were more influential than the loyalty of any dozen men in france in attaching to him the adherents who would promote his interests. josephine was to the drawing-room and the salon what napoleon was to the field--a preeminent leader. the secret of her personality that made her the empress not only of the hearts of the frenchmen, but also of the nations her husband conquered, has been beautifully told by herself. "there is only one occasion," she said to a friend, "in which i would voluntarily use the words, 'i _will_!'--namely, when i would say, 'i will that all around me be happy.'" "it was only a glad 'good-morning,' as she passed along the way, but it spread the morning's glory over the livelong day." a fine manner more than compensates for all the defects of nature. the most fascinating person is always the one of most winning manners, not the one of greatest physical beauty. the greeks thought beauty was a proof of the peculiar favor of the gods, and considered that beauty only worth adorning and transmitting which was unmarred by outward manifestations of hard and haughty feeling. according to their ideal, beauty must be the expression of attractive qualities within--such as cheerfulness, benignity, contentment, charity, and love. mirabeau was one of the ugliest men in france. it was said he had "the face of a tiger pitted by smallpox," but the charm of his manner was almost irresistible. beauty of life and character, as in art, has no sharp angles. its lines seem continuous, so gently does curve melt into curve. it is sharp angles that keep many souls from being beautiful that are almost so. our good is less good when it is abrupt, rude, ill timed, or ill placed. many a man and woman might double their influence and success by a kindly courtesy and a fine manner. tradition tells us that before apelles painted his wonderful goddess of beauty which enchanted all greece, he traveled for years observing fair women, that he might embody in his matchless venus a combination of the loveliest found in all. so the good-mannered study, observe, and adopt all that is finest and most worthy of imitation in every cultured person they meet. throw a bone to a dog, said a shrewd observer, and he will run off with it in his mouth, but with no vibration in his tail. call the dog to you, pat him on the head, let him take the bone from your hand, and his tail will wag with gratitude. the dog recognizes the good deed and the gracious manner of doing it. those who throw their good deeds should not expect them to be caught with a thankful smile. "ask a person at rome to show you the road," said dr. guthrie of edinburgh, "and he will always give you a civil and polite answer; but ask any person a question for that purpose in this country (scotland), and he will say, 'follow your nose and you will find it.' but the blame is with the upper classes; and the reason why, in this country, the lower classes are not polite is because the upper classes are not polite. i remember how astonished i was the first time i was in paris. i spent the first night with a banker, who took me to a pension, or, as we call it, a boarding-house. when we got there, a servant girl came to the door, and the banker took off his hat, and bowed to the servant girl, and called her mademoiselle, as though she were a lady. now, the reason why the lower classes there are so polite is because the upper classes are polite and civil to them." a fine courtesy is a fortune in itself. the good-mannered can do without riches, for they have passports everywhere. all doors fly open to them, and they enter without money and without price. they can enjoy nearly everything without the trouble of buying or owning. they are as welcome in every household as the sunshine; and why not? for they carry light, sunshine, and joy everywhere. they disarm jealousy and envy, for they bear good will to everybody. bees will not sting a man smeared with honey. "a man's own good breeding," says chesterfield, "is the best security against other people's ill manners. it carries along with it a dignity that is respected by the most petulant. ill breeding invites and authorizes the familiarity of the most timid. no man ever said a pert thing to the duke of marlborough, or a civil one to sir robert walpole." the true gentleman cannot harbor those qualities which excite the antagonism of others, as revenge, hatred, malice, envy, or jealousy, for these poison the sources of spiritual life and shrivel the soul. generosity of heart and a genial good will towards all are absolutely essential to him who would possess fine manners. here is a man who is cross, crabbed, moody, sullen, silent, sulky, stingy, and mean with his family and servants. he refuses his wife a little money to buy a needed dress, and accuses her of extravagance that would ruin a millionaire. suddenly the bell rings. some neighbors call: what a change! the bear of a moment ago is as docile as a lamb. as by magic he becomes talkative, polite, generous. after the callers have gone, his little girl begs her father to keep on his "company manners" for a little while, but the sullen mood returns and his courtesy vanishes as quickly as it came. he is the same disagreeable, contemptible, crabbed bear as before the arrival of his guests. what friend of the great dr. johnson did not feel mortified and pained to see him eat like an esquimau, and to hear him call men "liars" because they did not agree with him? he was called the "ursa major," or great bear. benjamin rush said that when goldsmith at a banquet in london asked a question about "the american indians," dr. johnson exclaimed: "there is not an indian in north america foolish enough to ask such a question." "sir," replied goldsmith, "there is not a savage in america rude enough to make such a speech to a gentleman." after stephen a. douglas had been abused in the senate he rose and said: "what no gentleman should say no gentleman need answer." aristotle thus described a real gentleman more than two thousand years ago: "the magnanimous man will behave with moderation under both good fortune and bad. he will not allow himself to be exalted; he will not allow himself to be abased. he will neither be delighted with success, nor grieved with failure. he will never choose danger, nor seek it. he is not given to talk about himself or others. he does not care that he himself should be praised, nor that other people should be blamed." a gentleman is just a gentle man: no more, no less; a diamond polished that was first a diamond in the rough. a gentleman is gentle, modest, courteous, slow to take offense, and never giving it. he is slow to surmise evil, as he never thinks it. he subjects his appetites, refines his tastes, subdues his feelings, controls his speech, and deems every other person as good as himself. a gentleman, like porcelain-ware, must be painted before he is glazed. there can be no change after it is burned in, and all that is put on afterwards will wash off. he who has lost all but retains his courage, cheerfulness, hope, virtue, and self-respect, is a true gentleman, and is rich still. "you replace dr. franklin, i hear," said the french minister, count de vergennes, to mr. jefferson, who had been sent to paris to relieve our most popular representative. "i succeed him; no man can replace him," was the felicitous reply of the man who became highly esteemed by the most polite court in europe. "you should not have returned their salute," said the master of ceremonies, when clement xiv bowed to the ambassadors who had bowed in congratulating him upon his election. "oh, i beg your pardon," replied clement. "i have not been pope long enough to forget good manners." cowper says:-- a modest, sensible, and well-bred man would not insult me, and no other can. "i never listen to calumnies," said montesquieu, "because if they are untrue i run the risk of being deceived, and if they are true, of hating people not worth thinking about." "i think," says emerson, "hans andersen's story of the cobweb cloth woven so fine that it was invisible--woven for the king's garment--must mean manners, which do really clothe a princely nature." no one can fully estimate how great a factor in life is the possession of good manners, or timely thoughtfulness with human sympathy behind it. they are the kindly fruit of a refined nature, and are the open sesame to the best of society. manners are what vex or soothe, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us by a constant, steady, uniform, invincible operation like that of the air we breathe. even power itself has not half the might of gentleness, that subtle oil which lubricates our relations with each other, and enables the machinery of society to perform its functions without friction. "have you not seen in the woods, in a late autumn morning," asks emerson, "a poor fungus, or mushroom,--a plant without any solidity, nay, that seemed nothing but a soft mush or jelly,--by its constant, total, and inconceivably gentle pushing, manage to break its way up through the frosty ground, and actually to lift a hard crust on its head? it is the symbol of the power of kindness." "there is no policy like politeness," says magoon; "since _a good manner often succeeds where the best tongue has failed_." the art of pleasing is the art of rising in the world. the politest people in the world, it is said, are the jews. in all ages they have been maltreated and reviled, and despoiled of their civil privileges and their social rights; yet are they everywhere polite and affable. they indulge in few or no recriminations; are faithful to old associations; more considerate of the prejudices of others than others are of theirs; not more worldly-minded and money-loving than people generally are; and, everything considered, they surpass all nations in courtesy, affability, and forbearance. "men, like bullets," says richter, "go farthest when they are smoothest." napoleon was much displeased on hearing that josephine had permitted general lorges, a young and handsome man, to sit beside her on the sofa. josephine explained that, instead of its being general lorges, it was one of the aged generals of his army, entirely unused to the customs of courts. she was unwilling to wound the feelings of the honest old soldier, and so allowed him to retain his seat. napoleon commended her highly for her courtesy. president jefferson was one day riding with his grandson, when they met a slave, who took off his hat and bowed. the president returned the salutation by raising his hat, but the grandson ignored the civility of the negro. "thomas," said the grandfather, "do you permit a slave to be more of a gentleman than yourself?" "lincoln was the first great man i talked with freely in the united states," said fred douglass, "who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and me, of the difference in color." "eat at your own table," says confucius, "as you would eat at the table of the king." if parents were not careless about the manners of their children at home, they would seldom be shocked or embarrassed at their behavior abroad. james russell lowell was as courteous to a beggar as to a lord, and was once observed holding a long conversation in italian with an organ-grinder whom he was questioning about scenes in italy with which they were each familiar. in hastily turning the corner of a crooked street in london, a young lady ran with great force against a ragged beggar-boy and almost knocked him down. stopping as soon as she could, she turned around and said very kindly: "i beg your pardon, my little fellow; i am very sorry that i ran against you." the astonished boy looked at her a moment, and then, taking off about three quarters of a cap, made a low bow and said, while a broad, pleasant smile overspread his face: "you have my parding, miss, and welcome,--and welcome; and the next time you run ag'in' me, you can knock me clean down and i won't say a word." after the lady had passed on, he said to a companion: "i say, jim, it's the first time i ever had anybody ask my parding, and it kind o' took me off my feet." "respect the burden, madame, respect the burden," said napoleon, as he courteously stepped aside at st. helena to make way for a laborer bending under a heavy load, while his companion seemed inclined to keep the narrow path. a washington politician went to visit daniel webster at marshfield, mass., and, in taking a short cut to the house, came to a stream which he could not cross. calling to a rough-looking farmer near by, he offered a quarter to be carried to the other side. the farmer took the politician on his broad shoulders and landed him safely, but would not take the quarter. the old rustic presented himself at the house a few minutes later, and to the great surprise and chagrin of the visitor was introduced as mr. webster. garrison was as polite to the furious mob that tore his clothes from his back and dragged him through the streets as he could have been to a king. he was one of the serenest souls that ever lived. christ was courteous, even to his persecutors, and in terrible agony on the cross, he cried: "father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." st. paul's speech before agrippa is a model of dignified courtesy, as well as of persuasive eloquence. good manners often prove a fortune to a young man. mr. butler, a merchant in providence, r. i., had once closed his store and was on his way home when he met a little girl who wanted a spool of thread. he went back, opened the store, and got the thread. this little incident was talked of all about the city and brought him hundreds of customers. he became very wealthy, largely because of his courtesy. ross winans of baltimore owed his great success and fortune largely to his courtesy to two foreign strangers. although his was but a fourth-rate factory, his great politeness in explaining the minutest details to his visitors was in such marked contrast with the limited attention they had received in large establishments that it won their esteem. the strangers were russians sent by their czar, who later invited mr. winans to establish locomotive works in russia. he did so, and soon his profits resulting from his politeness were more than $ , a year. a poor curate saw a crowd of rough boys and men laughing and making fun of two aged spinsters dressed in antiquated costume. the ladies were embarrassed and did not dare enter the church. the curate pushed through the crowd, conducted them up the central aisle, and amid the titter of the congregation, gave them choice seats. these old ladies although strangers to him, at their death left the gentle curate a large fortune. courtesy pays. not long ago a lady met the late president humphrey of amherst college, and she was so much pleased with his great politeness that she gave a generous donation to the college. "why did our friend never succeed in business?" asked a man returning to new york after years of absence; "he had sufficient capital, a thorough knowledge of his business, and exceptional shrewdness and sagacity." "he was sour and morose," was the reply; "he always suspected his employees of cheating him, and was discourteous to his customers. hence, no man ever put good will or energy into work done for him, and his patrons went to shops where they were sure of civility." some men almost work their hands off and deny themselves many of the common comforts of life in their earnest efforts to succeed, and yet render success impossible by their cross-grained ungentlemanliness. they repel patronage, and, naturally, business which might easily be theirs goes to others who are really less deserving but more companionable. bad manners often neutralize even honesty, industry, and the greatest energy; while agreeable manners win in spite of other defects. take two men possessing equal advantages in every other respect; if one be gentlemanly, kind, obliging, and conciliating, and the other disobliging, rude, harsh, and insolent, the former will become rich while the boorish one will starve. [illustration: jane addams] a fine illustration of the business value of good manners is found in the bon marché, an enormous establishment in paris where thousands of clerks are employed, and where almost everything is kept for sale. the two distinguishing characteristics of the house are one low price to all, and extreme courtesy. mere politeness is not enough; the employees must try in every possible way to please and to make customers feel at home. something more must be done than is done in other stores, so that every visitor will remember the bon marché with pleasure. by this course the business has been developed until it is said to be the largest of the kind in the world. "thank you, my dear; please call again," spoken to a little beggar-girl who bought a pennyworth of snuff proved a profitable advertisement and made lundy foote a millionaire. many persons of real refinement are thought to be stiff, proud, reserved, and haughty who are not, but are merely diffident and shy. it is a curious fact that diffidence often betrays us into discourtesies which our hearts abhor, and which cause us intense mortification and embarrassment. excessive shyness must be overcome as an obstacle to perfect manners. it is peculiar to the anglo-saxon and the teutonic races, and has frequently been a barrier to the highest culture. it is a disease of the finest organizations and the highest types of humanity. it never attacks the coarse and vulgar. sir isaac newton was the shyest man of his age. he did not acknowledge his great discovery for years just for fear of attracting attention to himself. he would not allow his name to be used in connection with his theory of the moon's motion, for fear it would increase the acquaintances he would have to meet. george washington was awkward and shy and had the air of a countryman. archbishop whately was so shy that he would escape notice whenever it was possible. at last he determined to give up trying to cure his shyness; "for why," he asked, "should i endure this torture all my life?" when, to his surprise, it almost entirely disappeared. elihu burritt was so shy that he would hide in the cellar when his parents had company. practice on the stage or lecture platform does not always eradicate shyness. david garrick, the great actor, was once summoned to testify in court; and, though he had acted for thirty years with marked self-possession, he was so confused and embarrassed that the judge dismissed him. john b. gough said that he could not rid himself of his early diffidence and shrinking from public notice. he said that he never went on the platform without fear and trembling, and would often be covered with cold perspiration. there are many worthy people who are brave on the street, who would walk up to a cannon's mouth in battle, but who are cowards in the drawing-room, and dare not express an opinion in the social circle. they feel conscious of a subtle tyranny in society's code, which locks their lips and ties their tongues. addison was one of the purest writers of english and a perfect master of the pen, but he could scarcely utter a dozen words in conversation without being embarrassed. shakespeare was very shy. he retired from london at forty, and did not try to publish or preserve one of his plays. he took second or third-rate parts on account of his diffidence. generally shyness comes from a person thinking too much about himself--which in itself is a breach of good breeding--and wondering what other people think about him. "i was once very shy," said sydney smith, "but it was not long before i made two very useful discoveries; first, that all mankind were not solely employed in observing me; and next, that shamming was of no use; that the world was very clear-sighted, and soon estimated a man at his true value. this cured me." what a misfortune it is to go through life apparently encased in ice, yet all the while full of kindly, cordial feeling for one's fellow men! shy people are always distrustful of their powers and look upon their lack of confidence as a weakness or lack of ability, when it may indicate quite the reverse. by teaching children early the arts of social life, such as boxing, horseback riding, dancing, elocution, and similar accomplishments, we may do much to overcome the sense of shyness. shy people should dress well. good clothes give ease of manner, and unlock the tongue. the consciousness of being well dressed gives a grace and ease of manner that even religion will not bestow, while inferiority of garb often induces restraint. as peculiarities in apparel are sure to attract attention, it is well to avoid bright colors and fashionable extremes, and wear plain, well-fitting garments of as good material as the purse will afford. beauty in dress is a good thing, rail at it who may. but it is a lower beauty, for which a higher beauty should not be sacrificed. they love dress too much who give it their first thought, their best time, or all their money; who for it neglect the culture of the mind or heart, or the claims of others on their service; who care more for dress than for their character; who are troubled more by an unfashionable garment than by a neglected duty. when ezekiel whitman, a prominent lawyer and graduate of harvard, was elected to the massachusetts legislature, he came to boston from his farm in countryman's dress, and went to a hotel in boston. he entered the parlor and sat down, when he overheard the remark between some ladies and gentlemen: "ah, here comes a real homespun countryman. here's fun." they asked him all sorts of queer questions, tending to throw ridicule upon him, when he arose and said, "ladies and gentlemen, permit me to wish you health and happiness, and may you grow better and wiser in advancing years, bearing in mind that outward appearances are deceitful. you mistook me, from my dress, for a country booby; while i, from the same superficial cause, thought you were ladies and gentlemen. the mistake has been mutual." just then governor caleb strong entered and called to mr. whitman, who, turning to the dumfounded company, said: "i wish you a very good evening." "in civilized society," says johnson, "external advantages make us more respected. a man with a good coat upon his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one." one cannot but feel that god is a lover of the beautiful. he has put robes of beauty and glory upon all his works. every flower is dressed in richness; every field blushes beneath a mantle of beauty; every star is veiled in brightness; every bird is clothed in the habiliments of the most exquisite taste. some people look upon polished manners as a kind of affectation. they claim admiration for plain, solid, square, rugged characters. they might as well say that they prefer square, plain, unornamented houses made from square blocks of stone. st. peter's is none the less strong and solid because of its elegant columns and the magnificent sweep of its arches, its carved and fretted marbles of matchless hues. our manners, like our characters, are always under inspection. every time we go into society we must step on the scales of each person's opinion, and the loss or gain from our last weight is carefully noted. each mentally asks, "is this person going up or down? through how many grades has he passed?" for example, young brown enters a drawing-room. all present weigh him in their judgment and silently say, "this young man is gaining; he is more careful, thoughtful, polite, considerate, straightforward, industrious." besides him stands young jones. it is evident that he is losing ground rapidly. he is careless, indifferent, rough, does not look you in the eye, is mean, stingy, snaps at the servants, yet is over-polite to strangers. and so we go through life, tagged with these invisible labels by all who know us. i sometimes think it would be a great advantage if one could read these ratings of his associates. we cannot long deceive the world, for that other self, who ever stands in the shadow of ourselves holding the scales of justice, that telltale in the soul, rushes to the eye or into the manner and betrays us. but manners, while they are the garb of the gentleman, do not constitute or finally determine his character. mere politeness can never be a substitute for moral excellence, any more than the bark can take the place of the heart of the oak. it may well indicate the kind of wood below, but not always whether it be sound or decayed. etiquette is but a substitute for good manners and is often but their mere counterfeit. sincerity is the highest quality of good manners. the following recipe is recommended to those who wish to acquire genuine good manners:-- of unselfishness, three drachms; of the tincture of good cheer, one ounce; of essence of heart's-ease, three drachms; of the extract of the rose of sharon, four ounces; of the oil of charity, three drachms, and no scruples; of the infusion of common sense and tact, one ounce; of the spirit of love, two ounces. the mixture to be taken whenever there is the slightest symptom of selfishness, exclusiveness, meanness, or i-am-better-than-you-ness. pattern after him who gave the golden rule, and who was the first true gentleman that ever breathed. chapter xix self-consciousness and timidity foes to success timid, shy people are morbidly self-conscious; they think too much about themselves. their thoughts are always turned inward; they are always analyzing, dissecting themselves, wondering how they appear and what people think of them. if these people could only forget themselves and think of others, they would be surprised to see what freedom, ease, and grace they would gain; what success in life they would achieve. timidity, shyness, and self-consciousness belong to the same family. we usually find all where we find any one of these qualities, and they are all enemies of peace of mind, happiness, and achievement. no one has ever done a great thing while his mind was centered upon himself. we must lose ourselves before we can find ourselves. self analysis is valuable only to learn our strength; fatal, if we dwell upon our weaknesses. thousands of young people are held back from undertaking what they long to do, and are kept from trying to make real their great life-dreams, because they are afraid to jostle with the world. they shrink from exposing their sore spots and sensitive points, which smart from the lightest touch. their super-sensitiveness makes cowards of them. over-sensitiveness, whether in man or woman, is really an exaggerated form of self-consciousness. it is far removed from conceit or self-esteem, yet it causes one's personality to overshadow everything else. a sensitive person feels that, whatever he does, wherever he goes, or whatever he says, he is the center of observation. he imagines that people are criticizing his movements, making fun at his expense, or analyzing his character, when they are probably not thinking of him at all. he does not realize that other people are too busy and too much interested in themselves and other things to devote to him any of their time beyond what is absolutely necessary. when he thinks they are aiming remarks at him, putting slights upon him, or trying to hold him up to the ridicule of others, they may not be even conscious of his presence. morbid sensitiveness requires heroic treatment. a sufferer who wishes to overcome it must take himself in hand as determinedly as he would if he wished to get control of a quick temper, or to rid himself of a habit of lying, or stealing, or drinking, or any other defect which prevented his being a whole man. "what shall i do to get rid of it?" asks a victim. think less of yourself and more of others. mingle freely with people. become interested in things outside of yourself. do not brood over what is said to you, or analyze every simple remark until you magnify it into something of the greatest importance. do not have such a low and unjust estimate of people as to think they are bent on nothing but hurting the feelings of others, and depreciating and making light of them on every possible occasion. a man who appreciates himself at his true value, and who gives his neighbors credit for being at least as good as he is, cannot be a victim of over-sensitiveness. one of the best schools for a sensitive boy is a large business house in which he will be thrown among strangers who will not handle him with gloves. in such an environment he will soon learn that everyone has all he can do to attend to his own business. he will realize that he must be a man and give and take with the others, or get out. he will be ashamed to play "cry baby" every time he feels hurt, but will make up his mind to grin and bear it. working in competition with other people, and seeing that exactly the same treatment is given to those above him as to himself, takes the nonsense out of him. he begins to see that the world is too busy to bother itself especially about him, and that, even when people look at him, they are not usually thinking of him. a college course is of inestimable value to a boy or girl of over-refined sensibilities. oftentimes, when boys enter college as freshmen, they are so touchy that their sense of honor is constantly being hurt and their pride stung by the unconscious thrusts of classmates and companions. but after they have been in college a term, and have been knocked about and handled in a rough but good-humored manner by youths of their own age, they realize that it would be the most foolish thing in the world to betray resentment. if one shows that he is hurt, he knows that he will be called the class booby, and teased unmercifully, so he is simply forced to drop his foolish sensitiveness. thousands of people are out of positions, and cannot keep places when they get them, because of this weakness. many a good business man has been kept back, or even ruined, by his quickness to take offense, or to resent a fancied slight. there is many a clergyman, well educated and able, who is so sensitive that he can not keep a pastorate long. from his distorted viewpoint some brother or sister in the church is always hurting him, saying and thinking unkind things, or throwing out hints and suggestions calculated to injure him in the eyes of the congregation. many schoolteachers are great sufferers from over-sensitiveness. remarks of parents, or school committees, or little bits of gossip which are reported to them make them feel as if people were sticking pins in them, metaphorically speaking, all the time. writers, authors, and other people with artistic temperaments, are usually very sensitive. i have in mind a very strong, vigorous editorial writer who is so prone to take offense that he can not hold a position either on a magazine or a daily paper. he is cut to the very quick by the slightest criticism, and regards every suggestion for the improvement of his work as a personal affront. he always carries about an injured air, a feeling that he has been imposed upon, which greatly detracts from an otherwise agreeable personality. the great majority of people, no matter how rough in manner or bearing, are kind-hearted, and would much rather help than hinder a fellowbeing, but they have all they can do to attend to their own affairs, and have no time to spend in minutely analyzing the nature and feeling of those whom they meet in the course of their daily business. in the busy world of affairs, it is give and take, touch and go, and those who expect to get on must rid themselves of all morbid sensitiveness. if they do not, they doom themselves to unhappiness and failure. self-consciousness is a foe to greatness in every line of endeavor. no one ever does a really great thing until he feels that he is a part of something greater than himself, until he surrenders to that greater principle. some of our best writers never found themselves, never touched their power, until they forgot their rules for construction, their grammar, their rhetorical arrangement, by losing themselves in their subject. then they found their style. it is when a writer is so completely carried away with his subject that he cannot help writing, that he writes naturally. he shows what his real style is. no orator has ever electrified an audience while he was thinking of his style or was conscious of his rhetoric, or trying to apply the conventional rules of oratory. it is when the orator's soul is on fire with his theme, and he forgets his audience, forgets everything but his subject, that he really does a great thing. no painter ever did a great masterpiece when trying to keep all the rules of his profession, the laws of drawing, of perspective, the science of color, in his mind. everything must be swallowed up in his zeal, fused in the fire of his genius,--then, and then only, can he really create. no singer ever captivated her audience until she forgot herself, until she was lost in her song. could anything be more foolish and short-sighted than to allow a morbid sensitiveness to interfere with one's advancement in life? i know a young lady with a superb mind and a fine personality, capable of filling a superior position, who has been kept in a very ordinary situation for years simply because of her morbid sensitiveness. she takes it for granted that if any criticism is made in the department where she works, it is intended for her, and she "flies off the handle" over every little remark that she can possibly twist into a reflection upon herself. the result is that she makes it so unpleasant for her employers that they do not promote her. and she can not understand why she does not get on faster. no one wishes to employ anyone who is so sensitive that he is obliged to be on his guard every moment lest he wound him or touch a sore spot. it makes an employer very uncomfortable to feel that those about him are carrying around an injured air a large part of the time, so that he never quite knows whether they are in sympathy with him or not. if anything has gone wrong in his business and he feels vexed, he knows that he is liable to give offense to these people without ever intending it. a man wants to feel that his employees understand him, and that they take into consideration the thousand and one little vexations and happenings which are extremely trying, and that if he does not happen to approach them with a smiling face, with consideration and friendliness in his words or commands, they will not take offense. they will think of his troubles, not their own, if they are wise: they will forget self, and contribute their zeal to the greater good. chapter xx tact or common sense "who is stronger than thou?" asked braham; and force replied "address."--victor hugo. address makes opportunities; the want of it gives them.--bovee. he'll suit his bearing to the hour, laugh, listen, learn, or teach. eliza cook. a man who knows the world will not only make the most of everything he does know, but of many things he does not know; and will gain more credit by his adroit mode of hiding his ignorance, than the pedant by his awkward attempt to exhibit his erudition.--colton. the art of using moderate abilities to advantage wins praise, and often acquires more reputation than actual brilliancy.--rochefoucauld. "tact clinches the bargain, sails out of the bay, gets the vote in the senate, spite of webster or clay." "i never will surrender to a nigger," said a confederate officer, when a colored soldier chased and caught him. "berry sorry, massa," said the negro, leveling his rifle; "must kill you den; hain't time to go back and git a white man." the officer surrendered. "when god endowed human beings with brains," says montesquieu, "he did not intend to guarantee them." when abraham lincoln was running for the legislature the first time, on the platform of the improvement of the sangamon river, he went to secure the votes of thirty men who were cradling a wheatfield. they asked no questions about internal improvements, but only seemed curious to know whether he had muscle enough to represent them in the legislature. lincoln took up a cradle and led the gang around the field. the whole thirty voted for him. "i do not know how it is," said napoleon in surprise to his cook, "but at whatever hour i call for my breakfast my chicken is always ready and always in good condition." this seemed to him the more strange because sometimes he would breakfast at eight and at other times as late as eleven. "sire," said the cook, "the reason is, that every quarter of an hour i put a fresh chicken down to roast, so that your majesty is sure always to have it at perfection." talent in this age is no match for tact. we see its failure everywhere. tact will manipulate one talent so as to get more out of it in a lifetime than ten talents will accomplish without it. "talent lies abed till noon; tact is up at six." talent is power, tact is skill. talent knows what to do, tact knows how to do it. "talent is something, but tact is everything. it is not a sixth sense, but it is like the life of all the five. it is the open eye, the quick ear, the judging taste, the keen smell, and lively touch; it is the interpreter of all riddles, the surmounter of all difficulties, the remover of all obstacles." the world is full of theoretical, one-sided, impractical men, who have turned all the energies of their lives into one faculty until they have developed, not a full-orbed, symmetrical man, but a monstrosity, while all their other faculties have atrophied and died. we often call these one-sided men geniuses, and the world excuses their impractical and almost idiotic conduct in most matters, because they can perform one kind of work that no one else can do as well. a merchant is excused if he is a giant in merchandise, though he may be an imbecile in the drawing-room. adam smith could teach the world economy in his "wealth of nations," but he could not manage the finances of his own household. many great men are very impractical even in the ordinary affairs of life. isaac newton could read the secret of creation; but, tired of rising from his chair to open the door for a cat and her kitten, he had two holes cut through the panels for them to pass at will, a large hole for the cat, and a small one for the kitten. beethoven was a great musician, but he sent three hundred florins to pay for six shirts and half a dozen handkerchiefs. he paid his tailor as large a sum in advance, and yet he was so poor at times that he had only a biscuit and a glass of water for dinner. he did not know enough of business to cut the coupon from a bond when he wanted money, but sold the whole instrument. dean swift nearly starved in a country parish where his more practical classmate stafford became rich. one of napoleon's marshals understood military tactics as well as his chief, but he did not know men so well, and lacked the other's skill and tact. napoleon might fall; but, like a cat, he would fall upon his feet. for his argument in the florida case, a fee of one thousand dollars in crisp new bills of large denomination was handed to daniel webster as he sat reading in his library. the next day he wished to use some of the money, but could not find any of the bills. years afterward, as he turned the page of a book, he found a bank-bill without a crease in it. on turning the next leaf he found another, and so on until he took the whole amount lost from the places where he had deposited them thoughtlessly, as he read. learning of a new issue of gold pieces at the treasury, he directed his secretary, charles lanman, to obtain several hundred dollars' worth. a day or two after he put his hand in his pocket for one, but they were all gone. webster was at first puzzled, but on reflection remembered that he had given them away, one by one, to friends who seemed to appreciate their beauty. a professor in mathematics in a new england college, a "book-worm," was asked by his wife to bring home some coffee. "how much will you have?" asked the merchant. "well, i declare, my wife did not say, but i guess a bushel will do." many a great man has been so absent-minded at times as to seem devoid of common-sense. "the professor is not at home," said his servant who looked out of a window in the dark and failed to recognize lessing when the latter knocked at his own door in a fit of absent-mindedness. "oh, very well," replied lessing. "no matter, i'll call at another time." louis philippe said he was the only sovereign in europe fit to govern, for he could black his own boots. the world is full of men and women apparently splendidly endowed and highly educated, yet who can scarcely get a living. not long ago three college graduates were found working on a sheep farm in australia, one from oxford, one from cambridge, and the other from a german university,--college men tending brutes! trained to lead men, they drove sheep. the owner of the farm was an ignorant, coarse sheep-raiser. he knew nothing of books or theories, but he knew sheep. his three hired graduates could speak foreign languages and discuss theories of political economy and philosophy, but he could make money. he could talk about nothing but sheep and farm; but he had made a fortune, while the college men could scarcely get a living. even the university could not supply common sense. it was "culture against ignorance; the college against the ranch; and the ranch beat every time." do not expect too much from books. bacon said that studies "teach not their own use, but that there is a practical wisdom without them, won by observation." the use of books must be found outside their own lids. it was said of a great french scholar: "he was drowned in his talents." over-culture, without practical experience, weakens a man, and unfits him for real life. book education alone tends to make a man too critical, too self-conscious, timid, distrustful of his abilities, too fine for the mechanical drudgery of practical life, too highly polished, and too finely cultured for every day use. the culture of books and colleges refines, yet it is often but an ethical culture, and is gained at the cost of vigor and rugged strength. book culture alone tends to paralyze the practical faculties. the bookworm loses his individuality; his head is filled with theories and saturated with other men's thoughts. the stamina of the vigorous mind he brought from the farm has evaporated in college; and when he graduates, he is astonished to find that he has lost the power to grapple with men and things, and is therefore out-stripped in the race of life by the boy who has had no chance, but who, in the fierce struggle for existence, has developed hard common sense and practical wisdom. the college graduate often mistakes his crutches for strength. he inhabits an ideal realm where common sense rarely dwells. the world cares little for his theories or his encyclopaedic knowledge. the cry of the age is for practical men. "we have been among you several weeks," said columbus to the indian chiefs; "and, although at first you treated us like friends, you are now jealous of us and are trying to drive us away. you brought us food in plenty every morning, but now you bring very little and the amount is less with each succeeding day. the great spirit is angry with you for not doing as you agreed in bringing us provisions. to show his anger he will cause the sun to be in darkness." he knew that there was to be an eclipse of the sun, and told the day and hour it would occur, but the indians did not believe him, and continued to reduce the supply of food. on the appointed day the sun rose without a cloud, and the indians shook their heads, beginning to show signs of open hostility as the hours passed without a shadow on the face of the sun. but at length a dark spot was seen on one margin; and, as it became larger, the natives grew frantic and fell prostrate before columbus to entreat for help. he retired to his tent, promising to save them, if possible. about the time for the eclipse to pass away, he came out and said that the great spirit had pardoned them, and would soon drive away the monster from the sun if they would never offend him again. they readily promised, and when the sun had passed out of the shadow they leaped and danced and sang for joy. thereafter the spaniards had all the provisions they needed. "common sense," said wendell phillips, "bows to the inevitable and makes use of it." when caesar stumbled in landing on the beach of britain, he instantly grasped a handful of sand and held it aloft as a signal of triumph, hiding forever from his followers the ill omen of his threatened fall. goethe, speaking of some comparisons that had been instituted between himself and shakespeare, said: "shakespeare always hits the right nail on the head at once; but i have to stop and think which is the right nail, before i hit." it has been said that a few pebbles from a brook in the sling of a david who knows how to send them to the mark are more effective than a goliath's spear and a goliath's strength with a goliath's clumsiness. "get ready for the redskins!" shouted an excited man as he galloped up to the log-cabin of the moore family in ohio many years ago; "and give me a fresh horse as soon as you can. they killed a family down the river last night, and nobody knows where they'll turn up next!" "what shall we do?" asked mrs. moore, with a pale face. "my husband went away yesterday to buy our winter supplies, and will not be back until morning." "husband away? whew! that's bad! well, shut up as tight as you can. cover up your fire, and don't strike a light to-night." then springing upon the horse the boys had brought, he galloped away to warn other settlers. mrs. moore carried the younger children to the loft of the cabin, and left obed and joe to watch, reluctantly yielding the post of danger to them at their urgent request. "they're coming, joe!" whispered obed early in the evening, as he saw several shadows moving across the fields. "stand by that window with the axe, while i get the rifle pointed at this one." opening the bullet-pouch, he took out a ball, but nearly fainted as he found it was too large for the rifle. his father had taken the wrong pouch. obed felt around to see if there were any smaller balls in the cupboard, and almost stumbled over a very large pumpkin, one of the two which he and joe had been using to make jack-o'-lanterns when the messenger alarmed them. pulling off his coat, he flung it over the vegetable lantern, made to imitate a gigantic grinning face, with open eyes, nose, and mouth, and with a live coal from the ashes he lighted the candle inside. "they'll sound the war-whoop in a minute, if i give them time," he whispered, as he raised the covered lantern to the window. "now for it!" he added, pulling the coat away. an unearthly yell greeted the appearance of the grinning monster, and the indians fled wildly to the woods. "quick, joe! light up the other one! don't you see that's what scar't 'em so?" demanded obed; and at the appearance of the second fiery face the savages gave a final yell and vanished in the forest. mr. moore and daylight came together, but the indians did not return. thurlow weed earned his first quarter by carrying a trunk on his back from a sloop in new york harbor to a broad street hotel. he had very few chances such as are now open to the humblest boy, but he had tact and intuition. he could read men as an open book, and mold them to his will. he was unselfish. by three presidents whom his tact and shrewdness had helped to elect he was offered the english mission and scores of other important positions, but he invariably declined. lincoln selected weed to attempt the reconciliation of the "new york herald," which had a large circulation in europe, and was creating a dangerous public sentiment abroad and at home by its articles in sympathy with the confederacy. though weed and bennett had not spoken to each other before for thirty years, the very next day after their interview the "herald" became a strong union paper. weed was then sent to europe to counteract the pernicious influence of secession agents. the emperor of france favored the south. he was very indignant because charleston harbor had been blockaded, thus shutting off french manufacturers from large supplies of cotton. but weed's rare tact modified his views, and induced him to change to friendliness the tone of a hostile speech prepared for delivery to the national assembly. england was working night and day preparing for war when weed arrived upon the scene, and soon changed largely the current of public sentiment. on his return to america the city of new york extended public thanks to him for his inestimable services. he was equally successful in business, and acquired a fortune of a million dollars. "tell me the breadth of this stream," said napoleon to his chief engineer, as they came to a bridgeless river which the army had to cross. "sire, i cannot. my scientific instruments are with the army, and we are ten miles ahead of it." "measure the width of this stream instantly."--"sire, be reasonable!"--"ascertain at once the width of this river, or you shall be deposed." the engineer drew the cap-piece of his helmet down until the edge seemed just in line between his eye and the opposite bank; then, holding himself carefully erect, he turned on his heel and noticed where the edge seemed to touch the bank on which he stood, which was on the same level as the other. he paced the distance to the point last noted, and said: "this is the approximate width of the stream." he was promoted. "mr. webster," said the mayor of a western city, when it was learned that the great statesman, although weary with travel, would be delayed for an hour by a failure to make close connections, "allow me to introduce you to mr. james, one of our most distinguished citizens." "how do you do, mr. james?" asked webster mechanically, as he glanced at a thousand people waiting to take his hand. "the truth is, mr. webster," replied mr. james in a most lugubrious tone, "i am not very well." "i hope nothing serious is the matter," thundered the godlike daniel, in a tone of anxious concern. "well, i don't know that, mr. webster. i think it's rheumatiz, but my wife----" "mr. webster, this is mr. smith," broke in the mayor, leaving poor mr. james to enjoy his bad health in the pitiless solitude of a crowd. his total want of tact had made him ridiculous. "address yourself to the jury, sir," said a judge to a witness who insisted upon imparting his testimony in a confidential tone to the court direct. the man did not understand and continued as before. "speak to the jury, sir, the men sitting behind you on the raised benches." turning, the witness bowed low in awkward suavity, and said, "good-morning, gentlemen." "what are these?" asked napoleon, pointing to twelve silver statues in a cathedral. "the twelve apostles," was the reply. "take them down," said napoleon, "melt them, coin them into money, and let them go about doing good, as their master did." "i don't think the proverbs of solomon show very great wisdom," said a student at brown university; "i could make as good ones myself." "very well," replied president wayland, "bring in two to-morrow morning." he did not bring them. "will you lecture for us for fame?" was the telegram young henry ward beecher received from a young men's christian association in the west. "yes, f. a. m. e. fifty and my expenses," was the answer the shrewd young preacher sent back. montaigne tells of a monarch who, on the sudden death of an only child, showed his resentment against providence by abolishing the christian religion throughout his dominions for a fortnight. the triumphs of tact, or common sense, over talent and genius, are seen everywhere. walpole was an ignorant man, and charlemagne could hardly write his name so that it could be deciphered; but these giants knew men and things, and possessed that practical wisdom and tact which have ever moved the world. tact, like alexander, cuts the knots it cannot untie, and leads its forces to glorious victory. a practical man not only sees, but seizes the opportunity. there is a certain getting-on quality difficult to describe, but which is the great winner of the prizes of life. napoleon could do anything in the art of war with his own hands, even to the making of gunpowder. paul was all things to all men, that he might save some. the palm is among the hardest and least yielding of all woods, yet rather than be deprived of the rays of the life-giving sun in the dense forests of south america, it is said to turn into a creeper, and climb the nearest trunk to the light. a farmer who could not get a living sold one half of his farm to a young man who made enough money on the half to pay for it and buy the rest. "you have not tact," was his reply, when the old man asked how one could succeed so well where the other had failed. according to an old custom a cape cod minister was called upon in april to make a prayer over a piece of land. "no," said he, when shown the land, "this does not need a prayer; it needs manure." to see a man as he is you must turn him round and round until you get him at the right angle. place him in a good light, as you would a picture. the excellences and defects will appear if you get the right angle. how our old schoolmates have changed places in the ranking of actual life! the boy who led his class and was the envy of all has been distanced by the poor dunce who was called slow and stupid, but who had a sort of dull energy in him which enabled him to get on in the world. the class leader had only a theoretical knowledge, and could not cope with the stern realities of the age. even genius, however rapid its flight, must not omit a single essential detail, and must be willing to work like a horse. shakespeare had marvelous tact; he worked everything into his plays. he ground up the king and his vassal, the fool and the fop, the prince and the peasant, the black and the white, the pure and the impure, the simple and the profound, passions and characters, honor and dishonor,--everything within the sweep of his vision he ground up into paint and spread it upon his mighty canvas. some people show want of tact in resenting every slight or petty insult, however unworthy their notice. others make don quixote's mistake of fighting a windmill by engaging in controversies with public speakers and editors, who are sure to have the advantage of the final word. one of the greatest elements of strength in the character of washington was found in his forbearance when unjustly attacked or ridiculed. artemus ward touches this bubble with a pretty sharp-pointed pen. "it was in a surtin town in virginny, the muther of presidents and things, that i was shaimfully aboozed by a editer in human form. he set my show up steep, and kalled me the urbane and gentlemunly manager, but when i, fur the purpuss of showin' fair play all round, went to anuther offiss to get my handbills printed, what duz this pussillanermus editer do but change his toon and abooze me like a injun. he sed my wax-wurks was a humbug, and called me a horey-heded itinerent vagabone. i thort at fust ide pollish him orf ar-lar beneki boy, but on reflectin' that he cood pollish me much wuss in his paper, i giv it up; and i wood here take occashun to advise people when they run agin, as they sumtimes will, these miserable papers, to not pay no attenshun to um. abuv all, don't assault a editer of this kind. it only gives him a notorosity, which is jist what he wants, and don't do you no more good than it would to jump into enny other mudpuddle. editors are generally fine men, but there must be black sheep in every flock." john jacob astor had practical talent in a remarkable degree. during a storm at sea, on his voyage to america, the other passengers ran about the deck in despair, expecting every minute to go down; but young astor went below and coolly put on his best suit of clothes, saying that if the ship should founder and he should happen to be rescued, he would at least save his best suit of clothes. "their trading talent is bringing the jews to the front in america as well as in europe," said a traveler to one of that race; "and it has gained for them an ascendency, at least in certain branches of trade, from which nothing will ever displace them." "dey are coming to de vront, most zairtainly," replied his companion; "but vy do you shpeak of deir drading dalent all de time?" "but don't you regard it as a talent?" "a dalent? no! it is chenius. i vill dell you what is de difference, in drade, between dalent and chenius. ven one goes into a man's shtore and manaches to seel him vat he vonts, dat is dalent; but ven annoder man goes into dat man's shtore and sells him vot he don't vont, dat is chenius; and dat is de chenius vot my race has got." chapter xxi enamored of accuracy "antonio stradivari has an eye that winces at false work and loves the true." accuracy is the twin brother of honesty.--c. simmons. genius is the infinite art of taking pains.--carlyle. i hate a thing done by halves. if it be right, do it boldly; if it be wrong, leave it undone.--gilpin. if i were a cobbler, it would be my pride the best of all cobblers to be; if i were a tinker, no tinker beside should mend an old kettle like me. old song. if a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.--emerson. "sir, it is a watch which i have made and regulated myself," said george graham of london to a customer who asked how far he could depend upon its keeping correct time; "take it with you wherever you please. if after seven years you come back to see me, and can tell me there has been a difference of five minutes, i will return you your money." seven years later the gentleman returned from india. "sir," said he, "i bring you back your watch." "i remember our conditions," said graham. "let me see the watch. well, what do you complain of?" "why," said the man, "i have had it seven years, and there is a difference of more than five minutes." "indeed! in that case i return you your money." "i would not part with my watch," said the man, "for ten times the sum i paid for it." "and i would not break my word for any consideration," replied graham; so he paid the money and took the watch, which he used as a regulator. he learned his trade of tampion, the most exquisite mechanic in london, if not in the world, whose name on a timepiece was considered proof positive of its excellence. when a person once asked him to repair a watch upon which his name was fraudulently engraved, tampion smashed it with a hammer, and handed the astonished customer one of his own master-pieces, saying, "sir, here is a watch of my making." graham invented the "compensating mercury pendulum," the "dead escapement," and the "orrery," none of which have been much improved since. the clock which he made for greenwich observatory has been running one hundred and fifty years, yet it needs regulating but once in fifteen months. tampion and graham lie in westminster abbey, because of the accuracy of their work. to insure safety, a navigator must know how far he is from the equator, north or south, and how far east or west of some known point, as greenwich, paris, or washington. he could be sure of this knowledge when the sun is shining, if he could have an absolutely accurate timekeeper; but such a thing has not yet been made. in the sixteenth century spain offered a prize of a thousand crowns for the discovery of an approximately correct method of determining longitude. about two hundred years later the english government offered , pounds for a chronometer by which a ship six months from home could get her longitude within sixty miles; , pounds if within forty miles; , pounds if within thirty miles; and in another clause , pounds for correctness within thirty miles, a careless repetition. the watchmakers of the world contested for the prizes, but came, and they had not been awarded. in that year john harrison asked for a test of his chronometer. in a trip of one hundred and forty-seven days from portsmouth to jamaica and back, it varied less than two minutes, and only four seconds on the outward voyage. in a round trip of one hundred and fifty-six days to barbadoes, the variation was only fifteen seconds. the , pounds was paid to the man who had worked and experimented for forty years, and whose hand was as exquisitely delicate in its movement as the mechanism of his chronometer. "make me as good a hammer as you know how," said a carpenter to the blacksmith in a new york village before the first railroad was built; "six of us have come to work on the new church, and i've left mine at home." "as good a one as i know how?" asked david maydole, doubtfully, "but perhaps you don't want to pay for as good a one as i know how to make." "yes, i do," said the carpenter, "i want a good hammer." it was indeed a good hammer that he received, the best, probably, that had ever been made. by means of a longer hole than usual, david had wedged the handle in its place so that the head could not fly off, a wonderful improvement in the eyes of the carpenter, who boasted of his prize to his companions. they all came to the shop next day, and each ordered just such a hammer. when the contractor saw the tools, he ordered two for himself, asking that they be made a little better than those of his men. "i can't make any better ones," said maydole; "when i make a thing, i make it as well as i can, no matter whom it is for." the storekeeper soon ordered two dozen, a supply unheard of in his previous business career. a new york dealer in tools came to the village to sell his wares, and bought all the storekeeper had, and left a standing order for all the blacksmith could make. david might have grown very wealthy by making goods of the standard already attained; but throughout his long and successful life he never ceased to study still further to perfect his hammers in the minutest detail. they were usually sold without any warrant of excellence, the word "maydole" stamped on the head being universally considered a guaranty of the best article the world could produce. character is power, and is the best advertisement in the world. "we have no secret," said the manager of an iron works employing thousands of men. "we always try to beat our last batch of rails. that is all the secret we've got, and we don't care who knows it." "i don't try to see how cheap a machine i can produce, but how good a machine," said the late john c. whitin, of northbridge, mass., to a customer who complained of the high price of some cotton machinery. business men soon learned what this meant; and when there was occasion to advertise any machinery for sale, new england cotton manufacturers were accustomed to state the number of years it had been in use and add, as an all-sufficient guaranty of northbridge products, "whitin make." "madam," said the sculptor h. k. brown, as he admired a statue in alabaster made by a youth in his teens, "this boy has something in him." it was the figure of an irishman who worked for the ward family in brooklyn years ago, and gave with minutest fidelity not merely the man's features and expression, but even the patches in his trousers, the rent in his coat, and the creases in his narrow-brimmed stove-pipe hat. mr. brown saw the statue at the house of a lady living at newburgh-on-the-hudson. six years later he invited her brother, j. q. a. ward, to become a pupil in his studio. to-day the name of ward is that of the most prosperous of all americans sculptors. "paint me just as i am, warts and all," said oliver cromwell to the artist who, thinking to please the great man, had omitted a mole. "i can remember when you blacked my father's shoes," said one member of the house of commons to another in the heat of debate. "true enough," was the prompt reply, "but did i not black them well?" "it is easy to tell good indigo," said an old lady. "just take a lump and put it into water, and if it is good, it will either sink or swim, i am not sure which; but never mind, you can try it for yourself." john b. gough told of a colored preacher who, wishing his congregation to fresco the recess back of the pulpit, suddenly closed his bible and said, "there, my bredren, de gospel will not be dispensed with any more from dis pulpit till de collection am sufficient to fricassee dis abscess." when troubled with deafness, wellington consulted a celebrated physician, who put strong caustic into his ear, causing an inflammation which threatened his life. the doctor apologized, expressed great regrets, and said that the blunder would ruin him. "no," said wellington, "i will never mention it." "but you will allow me to attend you, so that people will not withdraw their confidence?" "no," said the iron duke, "that would be lying." "father," said a boy, "i saw an immense number of dogs--five hundred, i am sure--in our street, last night." "surely not so many," said the father. "well, there were one hundred, i'm quite sure." "it could not be," said the father; "i don't think there are a hundred dogs in our village." "well, sir, it could not be less than ten: this i am quite certain of." "i will not believe you saw ten even," said the father; "for you spoke as confidently of seeing five hundred as of seeing this smaller number. you have contradicted yourself twice already, and now i cannot believe you." "well, sir," said the disconcerted boy, "i saw at least our dash and another one." we condemn the boy for exaggerating in order to tell a wonderful story; but how much more truthful are they who "never saw it rain so before," or who call day after day the hottest of the summer or the coldest of the winter? there is nothing which all mankind venerate and admire so much as simple truth, exempt from artifice, duplicity, and design. it exhibits at once a strength of character and integrity of purpose in which all are willing to confide. to say nice things merely to avoid giving offense; to keep silent rather than speak the truth; to equivocate, to evade, to dodge, to say what is expedient rather than what is truthful; to shirk the truth; to face both ways; to exaggerate; to seem to concur with another's opinions when you do not; to deceive by a glance of the eye, a nod of the head, a smile, a gesture; to lack sincerity; to assume to know or think or feel what you do not--all these are but various manifestations of hollowness and falsehood resulting from want of accuracy. we find no lying, no inaccuracy, no slipshod business in nature. roses blossom and crystals form with the same precision of tint and angle to-day as in eden on the morning of creation. the rose in the queen's garden is not more beautiful, more fragrant, more exquisitely perfect, than that which blooms and blushes unheeded amid the fern-decked brush by the roadside, or in some far-off glen where no human eye ever sees it. the crystal found deep in the earth is constructed with the same fidelity as that formed above ground. even the tiny snowflake whose destiny is to become an apparently insignificant and a wholly unnoticed part of an enormous bank, assumes its shape of ethereal beauty as faithfully as though preparing for some grand exhibition. planets rush with dizzy sweep through almost limitless courses, yet return to equinox or solstice at the appointed second, their very movement being "the uniform manifestation of the will of god." the marvelous resources and growth of america have developed an unfortunate tendency to overstate, overdraw, and exaggerate. it seems strange that there should be so strong a temptation to exaggerate in a country where the truth is more wonderful than fiction. the positive is stronger than the superlative, but we ignore this fact in our speech. indeed, it is really difficult to ascertain the exact truth in america. how many american fortunes are built on misrepresentation that is needless, for nothing else is half so strong as truth. "does the devil lie?" was asked of sir thomas browne. "no, for then even he could not exist." truth is necessary to permanency. in siberia a traveler found men who could see the satellites of jupiter with the naked eye. these men have made little advance in civilization, yet they are far superior to us in their accuracy of vision. it is a curious fact that not a single astronomical discovery of importance has been made through a large telescope, the men who have advanced our knowledge of that science the most working with ordinary instruments backed by most accurately trained minds and eyes. a double convex lens three feet in diameter is worth $ , . its adjustment is so delicate that the human hand is the only instrument thus far known suitable for giving the final polish, and one sweep of the hand more than is needed, alvan clark says, would impair the correctness of the glass. during the test of the great glass which he made for russia, the workmen turned it a little with their hands. "wait, boys, let it cool before making another trial," said clark; "the poise is so delicate that the heat from your hands affects it." mr. clark's love of accuracy has made his name a synonym of exactness the world over. "no, i can't do it, it is impossible," said webster, when urged to speak on a question soon to come up, toward the close of a congressional session. "i am so pressed with other duties that i haven't time to prepare myself to speak upon that theme." "ah, but, mr. webster, you always speak well upon any subject. you never fail." "but that's the very reason," said the orator, "because i never allow myself to speak upon any subject without first making that subject thoroughly my own. i haven't time to do that in this instance. hence i must refuse." rufus choate would plead before a shoemaker justice of the peace in a petty case with all the fervor and careful attention to detail with which he addressed the united states supreme court. "whatever is right to do," said an eminent writer, "should be done with our best care, strength, and faithfulness of purpose; we have no scales by which we can weigh our faithfulness to duties, or determine their relative importance in god's eyes. that which seems a trifle to us may be the secret spring which shall move the issues of life and death." "there goes a man that has been in hell," the florentines would say when dante passed, so realistic seemed to them his description of the nether world. "there is only one real failure in life possible," said canon farrar; "and that is, not to be true to the best one knows." "it is quite astonishing," grove said of beethoven, "to find the length of time during which some of the best known instrumental melodies remained in his thoughts till they were finally used, or the crude, vague, commonplace shape in which they were first written down. the more they are elaborated, the more fresh and spontaneous they become." leonardo da vinci would walk across milan to change a single tint or the slightest detail in his famous picture of the last supper. "every line was then written twice over by pope," said his publisher dodsley, of manuscript brought to be copied. gibbon wrote his memoir nine times, and the first chapters of his history eighteen times. of one of his works montesquieu said to a friend: "you will read it in a few hours, but i assure you it has cost me so much labor that it has whitened my hair." he had made it his study by day and his dream by night, the alpha and omega of his aims and objects. "he who does not write as well as he can on every occasion," said george ripley, "will soon form the habit of not writing well on any occasion." an accomplished entomologist thought he would perfect his knowledge by a few lessons under professor agassiz. the latter handed him a dead fish and told him to use his eyes. two hours later he examined his new pupil, but soon remarked, "you haven't really looked at the fish yet. you'll have to try again." after a second examination he shook his head, saying, "you do not show that you can use your eyes." this roused the pupil to earnest effort, and he became so interested in things he had never noticed before that he did not see agassiz when he came for the third examination. "that will do," said the great scientist. "i now see that you can use your eyes." reynolds said he could go on retouching a picture forever. the captain of a nantucket whaler told the man at the wheel to steer by the north star, but was awakened towards morning by a request for another star to steer by, as they had "sailed by the other." stephen girard was precision itself. he did not allow those in his employ to deviate in the slightest degree from his iron-clad orders. he believed that no great success is possible without the most rigid accuracy in everything. he did not vary from a promise in the slightest degree. people knew that his word was not "pretty good," but _absolutely_ good. he left nothing to chance. every detail of business was calculated and planned to a nicety. he was as exact and precise even in the smallest trifles as napoleon; yet his brother merchants attributed his superior success to good luck. in napoleon broke up the great camp he had formed on the shores of the english channel, and gave orders for his mighty host to defile toward the danube. vast and various as were the projects fermenting in his brain, however, he did not content himself with giving the order, and leaving the elaboration of its details to his lieutenants. to details and minutiae which inferior captains would have deemed too microscopic for their notice, he gave such exhaustive attention that before the bugle had sounded for the march he had planned the exact route which every regiment was to follow, the exact day and hour it was to leave that station, and the precise moment when it was to reach its destination. these details, so thoroughly premeditated, were carried out to the letter, and the result of that memorable march was the victory of austerlitz, which sealed the fate of europe for ten years. when a noted french preacher speaks in notre dame, the scholars of paris throng the cathedral to hear his fascinating, eloquent, polished discourses. this brilliant finish is the result of most patient work, as he delivers but five or six sermons a year. when sir walter scott visited a ruined castle about which he wished to write, he wrote in a notebook the separate names of grasses and wild flowers growing near, saying that only by such means can a writer be natural. the historian, macaulay, never allowed a sentence to stand until it was as good as he could make it. besides his scrapbooks, garfield had a large case of some fifty pigeonholes, labeled "anecdotes," "electoral laws and commissions," "french spoliation," "general politics," "geneva award," "parliamentary decisions," "public men," "state politics," "tariff," "the press," "united states history," etc.; every valuable hint he could get being preserved in the cold exactness of black and white. when he chose to make careful preparation on a subject, no other speaker could command so great an array of facts. accurate people are methodical people, and method means character. "am offered , bushels wheat on your account at $ . . shall i buy, or is it too high?" telegraphed a san francisco merchant to one in sacramento. "no price too high," came back over the wire instead of "no. price too high," as was intended. the omission of a period cost the sacramento dealer $ , . how many thousands have lost their wealth or lives, and how many frightful accidents have occurred through carelessness in sending messages! "the accurate boy is always the favored one," said president tuttle. "those who employ men do not wish to be on the constant lookout, as though they were rogues or fools. if a carpenter must stand at his journeyman's elbow to be sure his work is right, or if a cashier must run over his bookkeeper's columns, he might as well do the work himself as employ another to do it in that way; and it is very certain that the employer will get rid of such a blunderer as soon as he can." "if you make a good pin," said a successful manufacturer, "you will earn more than if you make a bad steam-engine." "there are women," said fields, "whose stitches always come out, and the buttons they sew on fly off on the mildest provocation; there are other women who use the same needle and thread, and you may tug away at their work on your coat, or waistcoat, and you can't start a button in a generation." "carelessness," "indifference," "slouchiness," "slipshod financiering," could truthfully be written over the graves of thousands who have failed in life. how many clerks, cashiers, clergymen, editors, and professors in colleges have lost position and prestige by carelessness and inaccuracy! "you would be the greatest man of your age, grattan," said curran, "if you would buy a few yards of red tape and tie up your bills and papers." curran realized that methodical people are accurate, and, as a rule, successful. bergh tells of a man beginning business who opened and shut his shop regularly at the same hour every day for weeks, without selling two cents' worth, yet whose application attracted attention and paved the way to fortune. a. t. stewart was extremely systematic and precise in all his transactions. method ruled in every department of his store, and for every delinquency a penalty was rigidly enforced. his eye was upon his business in all its ramifications; he mastered every detail and worked hard. from the time jonas chickering began to work for a piano-maker, he was noted for the pains and care with which he did everything. to him there were no trifles in the manufacturing of pianos. neither time nor labor was of any account to him, compared with accuracy and knowledge. he soon made pianos in a factory of his own. he determined to make an instrument yielding the fullest and richest volume of melody with the least exertion to the player, withstanding atmospheric changes, and preserving its purity and truthfulness of tone. he resolved that each piano should be an improvement upon the one which preceded it; perfection was his aim. to the end of his life he gave the finishing touch to each of his instruments, and would trust it to no one else. he permitted no irregularity in workmanship or sales, and was characterized by simplicity, transparency, and straightforwardness. he distanced all competitors. chickering's name was such a power that one piano-maker had his name changed to chickering by the massachusetts legislature, and put it on his pianos; but jonas chickering sent a petition to the legislature, and the name was changed back. character has a commercial as well as an ethical value. joseph m. w. turner was intended by his father for a barber, but he showed such a taste for drawing that a reluctant permission was given for him to follow art as a profession. he soon became skilful, but as he lacked means he took anything to do that came in his way, frequently illustrating guide-books and almanacs. but although the pay was very small the work was never careless. his labor was worth several times what he received for it, but the price was increased and work of higher grade given him simply because men seek the services of those who are known to be faithful, and employ them in as lofty work as they seem able to do. and so he toiled upward until he began to employ himself, his work sure of a market at some price, and the price increasing as other men began to get glimpses of the transcendent art revealed in his paintings, an art not fully comprehended even in our day. he surpassed the acknowledged masters in various fields of landscape work, and left matchless studies of natural scenery in lines never before attempted. what shakespeare is in literature, turner is in his special field, the greatest name on record. the demand for perfection in the nature of wendell phillips was wonderful. every word must exactly express the shade of his thought; every phrase must be of due length and cadence; every sentence must be perfectly balanced before it left his lips. exact precision characterized his style. he was easily the first forensic orator america has produced. the rhythmical fulness and poise of his periods are remarkable. alexandre dumas prepared his manuscript with the greatest care. when consulted by a friend whose article had been rejected by several publishers, he advised him to have it handsomely copied by a professional penman, and then change the title. the advice was taken, and the article eagerly accepted by one of the very publishers who had refused it before. many able essays have been rejected because of poor penmanship. we must strive after accuracy as we would after wisdom, or hidden treasure or anything we would attain. determine to form exact business habits. avoid slipshod financiering as you would the plague. careless and indifferent habits would soon ruin a millionaire. nearly every very successful man is accurate and painstaking. accuracy means character, and character is power. chapter xxii do it to a finish years ago a relief lifeboat at new london sprung a leak, and while being repaired a hammer was found in the bottom that had been left there by the builders thirteen years before. from the constant motion of the boat the hammer had worn through the planking, clear down to the plating. not long since, it was discovered that a girl had served twenty years for a twenty months' sentence, in a southern prison, because of the mistake of a court clerk who wrote "years" instead of "months" in the record of the prisoner's sentence. the history of the human race is full of the most horrible tragedies caused by carelessness and the inexcusable blunders of those who never formed the habit of accuracy, of thoroughness, of doing things to a finish. multitudes of people have lost an eye, a leg, or an arm, or are otherwise maimed, because dishonest workmen wrought deception into the articles they manufactured, slighted their work, covered up defects and weak places with paint and varnish. how many have lost their lives because of dishonest work, carelessness, criminal blundering in railroad construction? think of the tragedies caused by lies packed in car-wheels, locomotives, steamboat boilers, and engines; lies in defective rails, ties, or switches; lies in dishonest labor put into manufactured material by workmen who said it was good enough for the meager wages they got! because people were not conscientious in their work there were flaws in the steel, which caused the rail or pillar to snap, the locomotive or other machinery to break. the steel shaft broke in mid-ocean, and the lives of a thousand passengers were jeopardized because of somebody's carelessness. even before they are completed, buildings often fall and bury the workmen under their ruins, because somebody was careless, dishonest--either employer or employee--and worked lies, deceptions, into the building. the majority of railroad wrecks, of disasters on land and sea, which cause so much misery and cost so many lives, are the result of carelessness, thoughtlessness, or half-done, botched, blundering work. they are the evil fruit of the low ideals of slovenly, careless, indifferent workers. everywhere over this broad earth we see the tragic results of botched work. wooden legs, armless sleeves, numberless graves, fatherless and motherless homes everywhere speak of somebody's carelessness, somebody's blunders, somebody's habit of inaccuracy. the worst crimes are not punishable by law. carelessness, slipshodness, lack of thoroughness, are crimes against self, against humanity, that often do more harm than the crimes that make the perpetrator an outcast from society. where a tiny flaw or the slightest defect may cost a precious life, carelessness is as much a crime as deliberate criminality. if everybody put his conscience into his work, did it to a complete finish, it would not only reduce the loss of human life, the mangling and maiming of men and women, to a fraction of what it is at present, but it would also give us a higher quality of manhood and womanhood. most young people think too much of quantity, and too little of quality in their work. they try to do too much, and do not do it well. they do not realize that the education, the comfort, the satisfaction, the general improvement, and bracing up of the whole man that comes from doing one thing absolutely right, from putting the trade-mark of one's character on it, far outweighs the value that attaches to the doing of a thousand botched or slipshod jobs. we are so constituted that the quality which we put into our life-work affects everything else in our lives, and tends to bring our whole conduct to the same level. the entire person takes on the characteristics of one's usual way of doing things. the habit of precision and accuracy strengthens the mentality, improves the whole character. on the contrary, doing things in a loose-jointed, slipshod, careless manner deteriorates the whole mentality, demoralizes the mental processes, and pulls down the whole life. every half-done or slovenly job that goes out of your hands leaves its trace of demoralization behind. after slighting your work, after doing a poor job, you are not quite the same man you were before. you are not so likely to try to keep up the standard of your work, not so likely to regard your word as sacred as before. the mental and moral effect of half doing, or carelessly doing things; its power to drag down, to demoralize, can hardly be estimated because the processes are so gradual, so subtle. no one can respect himself who habitually botches his work, and when self-respect drops, confidence goes with it; and when confidence and self-respect have gone, excellence is impossible. it is astonishing how completely a slovenly habit will gradually, insidiously fasten itself upon the individual and so change his whole mental attitude as to thwart absolutely his life-purpose, even when he may think he is doing his best to carry it out. i know a man who was extremely ambitious to do something very distinctive and who had the ability to do it. when he started on his career he was very exact and painstaking. he demanded the best of himself--would not accept his second-best in anything. the thought of slighting his work was painful to him, but his mental processes have so deteriorated, and he has become so demoralized by the habit which, after a while, grew upon him, of accepting his second-best, that he now slights his work without a protest, seemingly without being conscious of it. he is to-day doing quite ordinary things, without apparent mortification or sense of humiliation, and the tragedy of it all is, _he does not know why he has failed_! one's ambition and ideals need constant watching and cultivation in order to keep up to the standards. many people are so constituted that their ambition wanes and their ideals drop when they are alone, or with careless, indifferent people. they require the constant assistance, suggestion, prodding, or example of others to keep them up to standard. how quickly a youth of high ideals, who has been well trained in thoroughness, often deteriorates when he leaves home and goes to work for an employer with inferior ideals and slipshod methods! the introduction of inferiority into our work is like introducing subtle poison into the system. it paralyzes the normal functions. inferiority is an infection which, like leaven, affects the entire system. it dulls ideals, palsies the aspiring faculty, stupefies the ambition, and causes deterioration all along the line. the human mechanism is so constituted that whatever goes wrong in one part affects the whole structure. there is a very intimate relation between the quality of the work and the quality of the character. did you ever notice the rapid decline in a young man's character when he began to slight his work, to shirk, to slip in rotten hours, rotten service? if you should ask the inmates of our penitentiaries what had caused their ruin, many of them could trace the first signs of deterioration to shirking, clipping their hours, deceiving their employers--to indifferent, dishonest work. we were made to be honest. honesty is our normal expression, and any departure from it demoralizes and taints the whole character. honesty means integrity in everything. it not only means reliability in your word, but also carefulness, accuracy, honesty in your work. it does not mean that if only you will not lie with your lips you may lie and defraud in the quality of your work. honesty means wholeness, completeness; it means truth in everything--in deed and in word. merely not to steal another's money or goods is not all there is to honesty. you must not steal another's time, you must not steal his goods or ruin his property by half finishing or botching your work, by blundering through carelessness or indifference. your contract with your employer means that you will give him your best, and not your second-best. "what a fool you are," said one workman to another, "to take so much pains with that job, when you don't get much pay for it. 'get the most money for the least work,' is my rule, and i get twice as much money as you do." "that may be," replied the other, "but i shall like myself better, i shall think more of myself, and that is more important to me than money." you will like yourself better when you have the approval of your conscience. that will be worth more to you than any amount of money you can pocket through fraudulent, skimped, or botched work. nothing else can give you the glow of satisfaction, the electric thrill and uplift which come from a superbly-done job. perfect work harmonizes with the very principles of our being, because we were made for perfection. it fits our very natures. some one has said: "it is a race between negligence and ignorance as to which can make the more trouble." many a young man is being kept down by what probably seems a small thing to him--negligence, lack of accuracy. he never quite finishes anything he undertakes; he can not be depended upon to do anything quite right; his work always needs looking over by some one else. hundreds of clerks and book-keepers are getting small salaries in poor positions today because they have never learned to do things absolutely right. a prominent business man says that the carelessness, inaccuracy, and blundering of employees cost chicago one million dollars a day. the manager of a large house in that city, says that he has to station pickets here and there throughout the establishment in order to neutralize the evils of inaccuracy and the blundering habit. one of john wanamaker's partners says that unnecessary blunders and mistakes cost that firm twenty-five thousand dollars a year. the dead letter department of the post office in washington received in one year seven million pieces of undelivered mail. of these more than eighty thousand bore no address whatever. a great many of them were from business houses. are the clerks who are responsible for this carelessness likely to win promotion? many an employee who would be shocked at the thought of telling his employer a lie with his lips is lying every day in the quality of his work, in his dishonest service, in the rotten hours he is slipping into it, in shirking, in his indifference to his employer's interests. it is just as dishonest to express deception in poor work, in shirking, as to express it with the lips, yet i have known office-boys, who could not be induced to tell their employer a direct lie, to steal his time when on an errand, to hide away during working hours to smoke a cigarette or take a nap, not realizing, perhaps, that lies can be acted as well as told and that acting a lie may be even worse than telling one. the man who botches his work, who lies or cheats in the goods he sells or manufactures, is dishonest with himself as well as with his fellow men, and must pay the price in loss of self-respect, loss of character, of standing in his community. yet on every side we see all sorts of things selling for a song because the maker put no character, no thought into them. articles of clothing that look stylish and attractive when first worn, very quickly get out of shape, and hang and look like old, much-worn garments. buttons fly off, seams give way at the slightest strain, dropped stitches are everywhere in evidence, and often the entire article goes to pieces before it is worn half a dozen times. everywhere we see furniture which looks all right, but which in reality is full of blemishes and weaknesses, covered up with paint and varnish. glue starts at joints, chairs and bedsteads break down at the slightest provocation, castors come off, handles pull out, many things "go to pieces" altogether, even while practically new. "made to sell, not for service," would be a good label for the great mass of manufactured articles in our markets to-day. it is difficult to find anything that is well and honestly made, that has character, individuality and thoroughness wrought into it. most things are just thrown together. this slipshod, dishonest manufacturing is so general that concerns which turn out products based upon honesty and truth often win for themselves a world-wide reputation and command the highest prices. there is no other advertisement like a good reputation. some of the world's greatest manufacturers have regarded their reputation as their most precious possession, and under no circumstances would they allow their names to be put on an imperfect article. vast sums of money are often paid for the use of a name, because of its great reputation for integrity and square dealing. there was a time when the names of graham and tampion on timepieces were guarantees of the most exquisite workmanship and of unquestioned integrity. strangers from any part of the world could send their purchase money and order goods from those manufacturers without a doubt that they would be squarely dealt with. tampion and graham lie in westminster abbey because of the accuracy of their work--because they refused to manufacture and sell lies. when you finish a thing you ought to be able to say to yourself: "there, i am willing to stand for that piece of work. it is not pretty well done; it is done as well as i can do it; done to a complete finish. i will stand for that. i am willing to be judged by it." never be satisfied with "fairly good," "pretty good," "good enough." accept nothing short of your best. put such a quality into your work that anyone who comes across anything you have ever done will see character in it, individuality in it, your trade-mark of superiority upon it. your reputation is at stake in everything you do, and your reputation is your capital. you cannot afford to do a poor job, to let botched work or anything that is inferior go out of your hands. every bit of your work, no matter how unimportant or trivial it may seem, should bear your trade-mark of excellence; you should regard every task that goes through your hands, every piece of work you touch, as tampion regarded every watch that went out of his shop. it must be the very best you can do, the best that human skill can produce. it is just the little difference between the good and the best that makes the difference between the artist and the artisan. it is just the little touches after the average man would quit that make the master's fame. regard your work as stradivarius regarded his violins, which he "made for eternity," and not one of which was ever known to come to pieces or break. stradivarius did not need any patent on his violins, for no other violin maker would pay such a price for excellence as he paid; would take such pains to put his stamp of superiority upon his instrument. every "stradivarius" now in existence is worth from three to ten thousand dollars, or several times its weight in gold. think of the value such a reputation for thoroughness as that of stradivarius or tampion, such a passion to give quality to your work, would give you! there is nothing like being enamored of accuracy, being grounded in thoroughness as a life-principle, of always striving for excellence. no other characteristic makes such a strong impression upon an employer as the habit of painstaking, carefulness, accuracy. he knows that if a youth puts his conscience into his work from principle, not from the standpoint of salary or what he can get for it, but because there is something in him which refuses to accept anything from himself but the best, that he is honest and made of good material. i have known many instances where advancement hinged upon the little overplus of interest, of painstaking an employee put into his work, on his doing a little better than was expected of him. employers do not say all they think, but they detect very quickly the earmarks of superiority. they keep their eye on the employee who has the stamp of excellence upon him, who takes pains with his work, who does it to a finish. they know he has a future. john d. rockefeller, jr., says that the "secret of success is to do the common duty uncommonly well." the majority of young people do not see that the steps which lead to the position above them are constructed, little by little, by the faithful performance of the common, humble, every-day duties of the position they are now filling. the thing which you are now doing will unlock or bar the door to promotion. many employees are looking for some great thing to happen that will give them an opportunity to show their mettle. "what can there be," they say to themselves, "in this dry routine, in doing these common, ordinary things, to help me along?" but it is the youth who sees a great opportunity hidden in just these simple services, who sees a very uncommon chance in a common situation, a humble position, who gets on in the world. it is doing things a little better than those about you do them; being a little neater, a little quicker, a little more accurate, a little more observant; it is ingenuity in finding new and more progressive ways of doing old things; it is being a little more polite, a little more obliging, a little more tactful, a little more cheerful, optimistic, a little more energetic, helpful, than those about you that attracts the attention of your employer and other employers also. many a boy is marked for a higher position by his employer long before he is aware of it himself. it may be months, or it may be a year before the opening comes, but when it does come the one who has appreciated the infinite difference between "good" and "better," between "fairly good" and "excellent," between what others call "good" and the best that can be done, will be likely to get the place. if there is that in your nature which demands the best and will take nothing less; if you insist on keeping up your standards in everything you do, you will achieve distinction in some line provided you have the persistence and determination to follow your ideal. but if you are satisfied with the cheap and shoddy, the botched and slovenly, if you are not particular about quality in your work, or in your environment, or in your personal habits, then you must expect to take second place, to fall back to the rear of the procession. people who have accomplished work worth while have had a very high sense of the way to do things. they have not been content with mediocrity. they have not confined themselves to the beaten tracks; they have never been satisfied to do things just as others do them, but always a little better. they always pushed things that came to their hands a little higher up, a little farther on. it is this little higher up, this little farther on, that counts in the quality of life's work. it is the constant effort to be first-class in everything one attempts that conquers the heights of excellence. it is said that daniel webster made the best chowder in his state on the principle that he would not be second-class in anything. this is a good resolution with which to start out in your career; never to be second-class in anything. no matter what you do, try to do it as well as it can be done. have nothing to do with the inferior. do your best in everything; deal with the best; choose the best; live up to your best. everywhere we see mediocre or second-class men--perpetual clerks who will never get away from the yardstick; mechanics who will never be anything but bunglers, all sorts of people who will never rise above mediocrity, who will always fill very ordinary positions because they do not take pains, do not put conscience into their work, do not try to be first-class. aside from the lack of desire or effort to be first-class, there are other things that help to make second-class men. dissipation, bad habits, neglect of health, failure to get an education, all make second-class men. a man weakened by dissipation, whose understanding has been dulled, whose growth has been stunted by self-indulgences, is a second-class man, if, indeed, he is not third-class. a man who, through his amusements in his hours of leisure, exhausts his strength and vitality, vitiates his blood, wears his nerves till his limbs tremble like leaves in the wind, is only half a man, and could in no sense be called first-class. everybody knows the things that make for second-class characteristics. boys imitate older boys and smoke cigarettes in order to be "smart." then they keep on smoking because they have created an appetite as unnatural as it is harmful. men get drunk for all sorts of reasons; but, whatever the reason, they cannot remain first-class men and drink. dissipation in other forms is pursued because of pleasure to be derived, but the surest consequence is that of becoming second-class, below the standard of the best men for any purpose. every fault you allow to become a habit, to get control over you, helps to make you second-class, and puts you at a disadvantage in the race for honor, position, wealth, and happiness. carelessness as to health fills the ranks of the inferior. the submerged classes that the economists talk about are those that are below the high-water mark of the best manhood and womanhood. sometimes they are second-rate or third-rate people because those who are responsible for their being and their care during their minor years were so before them, but more and more is it becoming one's own fault if, all through life, he remains second-class. education of some sort, and even a pretty good sort, is possible to practically everyone in our land. failure to get the best education available, whether it be in books or in business training, is sure to relegate one to the ranks of the second-class. there is no excuse for incompetence in this age of opportunity; no excuse for being second-class when it is possible to be first-class, and when first-class is in demand everywhere. second-class things are wanted only when first-class can't be had. you wear first-class clothes if you can pay for them, eat first-class butter, first-class meat, and first-class bread, or, if you don't, you wish you could. second-class men are no more wanted than any other second-class commodity. they are taken and used when the better article is scarce or is too high-priced for the occasion. for work that really amounts to anything, first-class men are wanted. if you make yourself first-class in anything, no matter what your condition or circumstances, no matter what your race or color, you will be in demand. if you are a king in your calling, no matter how humble it may be, nothing can keep you from success. the world does not demand that you be a physician, a lawyer, a farmer, or a merchant; but it does demand that whatever you do undertake, you will do it right, will do it with all your might and with all the ability you possess. it demands that you be a master in your line. when daniel webster, who had the best brain of his time, was asked to make a speech on some question at the close of a congressional session, he replied: "i never allow myself to speak on any subject until i have made it my own. i haven't time to do that in this case, hence, i must refuse to speak on the subject." dickens would never consent to read before an audience until he had thoroughly prepared his selection. balzac, the great french novelist, sometimes worked a week on a single page. macready, when playing before scant audiences in country theaters in england, ireland, and scotland, always played as if he were before the most brilliant audiences in the great metropolises of the world. thoroughness characterizes all successful men. genius is the art of taking infinite pains. the trouble with many americans is that they seem to think they can put any sort of poor, slipshod, half-done work into their careers and get first-class products. they do not realize that all great achievement has been characterized by extreme care, infinite painstaking, even to the minutest detail. no youth can ever hope to accomplish much who does not have thoroughness and accuracy indelibly fixed in his life-habit. slipshodness, inaccuracy, the habit of half doing things, would ruin the career of a youth with a napoleon's mind. if we were to examine a list of the men who have left their mark on the world, we should find that, as a rule, it is not composed of those who were brilliant in youth, or who gave great promise at the outset of their careers, but rather of the plodding young men who, if they have not dazzled by their brilliancy, have had the power of a day's work in them, who could stay by a task until it was done, and well done; who have had grit, persistence, common sense, and honesty. the thorough boys are the boys that are heard from, and usually from posts far higher up than those filled by the boys who were too "smart" to be thorough. one such boy is elihu root, now united states senator. when he was a boy in the grammar school at clinton, new york, he made up his mind that anything he had to study he would keep at until he mastered it. although not considered one of the "bright" boys of the school, his teacher soon found that when elihu professed to know anything he knew it through and through. he was fond of hard problems requiring application and patience. sometimes the other boys called him a plodder, but elihu would only smile pleasantly, for he knew what he was about. on winter evenings, while the other boys were out skating, elihu frequently remained in his room with his arithmetic or algebra. mr. root recently said that if his close application to problems in his boyhood did nothing else for him, it made him careful about jumping at conclusions. to every problem there was only one answer, and patience was the price to be paid for it. carrying the principle of "doing everything to a finish" into the law, he became one of the most noted members of the new york bar, intrusted with vast interests, and then a member of the president's cabinet. william ellery channing, the great new england divine, who in his youth was hardly able to buy the clothes he needed, had a passion for self-improvement. "i wanted to make the most of myself," he says; "i was not satisfied with knowing things superficially and by halves, but tried to get comprehensive views of what i studied." the quality which, more than any other, has helped to raise the german people to their present commanding position in the world, is their thoroughness. it is giving young germans a great advantage over both english and american youths. every employer is looking for thoroughness, and german employees, owing to their preeminence in this respect, the superiority of their training, and the completeness of their preparation for business, are in great demand to-day in england, especially in banks and large mercantile houses. as a rule, a german who expects to engage in business takes a four years' course in some commercial school, and after graduation serves three years' apprenticeship without pay, to his chosen business. thoroughness and reliability, the german's characteristics, are increasing the power of germany throughout the civilized world. our great lack is want of thoroughness. how seldom you find a young man or woman who is willing to prepare for his life-work! a little education is all they want, a little smattering of books, and then they are ready for business. "can't wait," "haven't time to be thorough," is characteristic of our country, and is written on everything--on commerce, on schools, on society, on churches. we can't wait for a high-school, seminary, or college education. the boy can't wait to become a youth, nor the youth to become a man. young men rush into business with no great reserve of education or drill; of course, they do poor, feverish work, and break down in middle life, while many die of old age in the forties. perhaps there is no other country in the world where so much poor work is done as in america. half-trained medical students perform bungling operations, and butcher their patients, because they are not willing to take time for thorough preparation. half-trained lawyers stumble through their cases, and make their clients pay for experience which the law school should have given. half-trained clergymen bungle away in the pulpit, and disgust their intelligent and cultured parishioners. many an american youth is willing to stumble through life half prepared for his work, and then blame society because he is a failure. a young man, armed with letters of introduction from prominent men, one day presented himself before chief engineer parsons, of the rapid transit commission of new york as a candidate for a position. "what can you do? have you any specialty?" asked mr. parsons. "i can do almost anything," answered the young man. "well," remarked the chief engineer, rising to end the interview, "i have no use for anyone who can 'almost' do anything. i prefer someone who can actually do one thing thoroughly." there is a great crowd of human beings just outside the door of proficiency. they can half do a great many things, but can't do any one thing well, to a finish. they have acquisitions which remain permanently unavailable because they were not carried quite to the point of skill; they stopped just short of efficiency. how many people almost know a language or two, which they can neither write nor speak; a science or two, whose elements they have not fully mastered; an art or two, which they can not practise with satisfaction or profit! the patent office at washington contains hundreds,--yes, thousands,--of inventions which are useless simply because they are not quite practical, because the men who started them lacked the staying quality, the education, or the ability necessary to carry them to the point of practicability. the world is full of half-finished work,--failures which require only a little more persistence, a little finer mechanical training, a little better education, to make them useful to civilization. think what a loss it would be if such men as edison and bell had not come to the front and carried to a successful termination the half-finished work of others! make it a life-rule to give your best to whatever passes through your hands. stamp it with your manhood. let superiority be your trade-mark, let it characterize everything you touch. this is what every employer is looking for. it indicates the best kind of brain; it is the best substitute for genius; it is better capital than cash; it is a better promoter than friends, or "pulls" with the influential. a successful manufacturer says: "if you make a good pin, you will earn more money than if you make a bad steam engine." "if a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor," says emerson, "though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a path to his door." never allow yourself to dwell too much upon what you are getting for your work. you have something of infinitely greater importance, greater value, at stake. your honor, your whole career, your future success, will be affected by the way you do your work, by the conscience or lack of it which you put into your job. character, manhood and womanhood are at stake, compared with which salary is nothing. everything you do is a part of your career. if any work that goes out of your hands is skimped, shirked, bungled, or botched, your character will suffer. if your work is badly done; if it goes to pieces; if there is shoddy or sham in it; if there is dishonesty in it, there is shoddy, sham, dishonesty in your character. we are all of a piece. we cannot have an honest character, a complete, untarnished career, when we are constantly slipping rotten hours, defective material and slipshod service into our work. the man who has dealt in shams and inferiority, who has botched his work all his life, must be conscious that he has not been a real man; he can not help feeling that his career has been a botched one. to spend a life buying and selling lies, dealing in cheap, shoddy shams, or botching one's work, is demoralizing to every element of nobility. beecher said he was never again quite the same man after reading ruskin. you are never again quite the same man after doing a poor job, after botching your work. you cannot be just to yourself and unjust to the man you are working for in the quality of your work, for, if you slight your work, you not only strike a fatal blow at your efficiency, but also smirch your character. if you would be a full man, a complete man, a just man, you must be honest to the core in the quality of your work. no one can be really happy who does not believe in his own honesty. we are so constituted that every departure from the right, from principle, causes loss of self-respect, and makes us unhappy. every time we obey the inward law of doing right we hear an inward approval, the amen of the soul, and every time we disobey it, a protest or condemnation. there is everything in holding a high ideal of your work, for whatever model the mind holds, the life copies. whatever your vocation, let quality be your life-slogan. a famous artist said he would never allow himself to look at an inferior drawing or painting, to do anything that was low or demoralizing, lest familiarity with it should taint his own ideal and thus be communicated to his brush. many excuse poor, slipshod work on the plea of lack of time. but in the ordinary situations of life there is plenty of time to do everything as it ought to be done. there is an indescribable superiority added to the character and fiber of the man who always and everywhere puts quality into his work. there is a sense of wholeness, of satisfaction, of happiness, in his life which is never felt by the man who does not do his level best every time. he is not haunted by the ghosts or tail ends of half-finished tasks, of skipped problems; is not kept awake by a troubled conscience. when we are trying with all our might to do our level best, our whole nature improves. everything looks down when we are going down hill. aspiration lifts the life; groveling lowers it. don't think you will never hear from a half-finished job, a neglected or botched piece of work. it will never die. it will bob up farther along in your career at the most unexpected moments, in the most embarrassing situations. it will be sure to mortify you when you least expect it. like banquo's ghost, it will arise at the most unexpected moments to mar your happiness. a single broken thread in a web of cloth is traced back to the girl who neglected her work in the factory, and the amount of damage is deducted from her wages. thousands of people are held back all their lives and obliged to accept inferior positions because they cannot entirely overcome the handicap of slipshod habits formed early in life, habits of inaccuracy, of slovenliness, of skipping difficult problems in school, of slurring their work, shirking, or half doing it. "oh, that's good enough, what's the use of being so awfully particular?" has been the beginning of a life-long handicap in many a career. i was much impressed by this motto, which i saw recently in a great establishment, "where only the best is good enough." what a life-motto this would be! how it would revolutionize civilization if everyone were to adopt it and use it; to resolve that, whatever they did only the best they could do would be good enough, would satisfy them! adopt this motto as yours. hang it up in your bedroom, in your office or place of business, put it into your pocket-book, weave it into the texture of everything you do, and your life-work will be what every one's should be--a masterpiece. chapter xxiii the reward of persistence every noble work is at first impossible.--carlyle. victory belongs to the most persevering.--napoleon. success in most things depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.--montesquieu. perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of countenance, and make a seeming impossibility give way.--jeremy collier. "unstable as water, thou shalt not excel." the nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blanches, the thought that never wanders,--these are the masters of victory.--burke. "the pit rose at me!" exclaimed edmund kean in a wild tumult of emotion, as he rushed home to his trembling wife. "mary, you shall ride in your carriage yet, and charles shall go to eton!" he had been so terribly in earnest with the study of his profession that he had at length made a mark on his generation. he was a little dark man with a voice naturally harsh, but he determined, when young, to play the character of sir giles overreach, in massinger's drama, as no other man had ever played it. by a persistency that nothing seemed able to daunt, he so trained himself to play the character that his success, when it did come, was overwhelming, and all london was at his feet. "i am sorry to say that i don't think this is in your line," said woodfall the reporter, after sheridan had made his first speech in parliament. "you would better have stuck to your former pursuits." with head on his hand sheridan mused for a time, then looked up and said, "it is in me, and it shall come out of me." from the same man came that harangue against warren hastings which the orator fox called the best speech ever made in the house of commons. "i had no other books than heaven and earth, which are open to all," said bernard palissy, who left his home in the south of france in , at the age of eighteen. though only a glass-painter, he had the soul of an artist. the sight of an elegant italian cup disturbed his whole existence and from that moment the determination to discover the enamel with which it was glazed possessed him like a passion. for months and years he tried all kinds of experiments to learn the materials of which the enamel was compounded. he built a furnace, which was a failure, and then a second, burning so much wood, spoiling so many drugs and pots of common earthenware, and losing so much time, that poverty stared him in the face, and he was forced, from lack of ability to buy fuel, to try his experiments in a common furnace. flat failure was the result, but he decided on the spot to begin all over again, and soon had three hundred pieces baking, one of which came out covered with beautiful enamel. to perfect his invention he next built a glass-furnace, carrying the bricks on his back. at length the time came for a trial; but, though he kept the heat up six days, his enamel would not melt. his money was all gone, but he borrowed some, and bought more pots and wood, and tried to get a better flux. when next he lighted his fire, he attained no result until his fuel was gone. tearing off the palings of his garden fence, he fed them to the flames, but in vain. his furniture followed to no purpose. the shelves of his pantry were then broken up and thrown into the furnace; and the great burst of heat melted the enamel. the grand secret was learned. persistence had triumphed again. "if you work hard two weeks without selling a book," wrote a publisher to an agent, "you will make a success of it." "know thy work and do it," said carlyle; "and work at it like a hercules." "whoever is resolved to excel in painting, or, indeed, in any other art," said reynolds, "must bring all his mind to bear upon that one object from the moment that he rises till he goes to bed." "i have no secret but hard work," said turner, the painter. "the man who is perpetually hesitating which of two things he will do first," said william wirt, "will do neither. the man who resolves, but suffers his resolution to be changed by the first counter-suggestion of a friend--who fluctuates from opinion to opinion, from plan to plan, and veers like a weather-cock to every point of the compass, with every breath of caprice that blows,--can never accomplish anything great or useful. instead of being progressive in anything, he will be at best stationary, and, more probably, retrograde in all." perseverance built the pyramids on egypt's plains, erected the gorgeous temple at jerusalem, inclosed in adamant the chinese empire, scaled the stormy, cloud-capped alps, opened a highway through the watery wilderness of the atlantic, leveled the forests of the new world, and reared in its stead a community of states and nations. perseverance has wrought from the marble block the exquisite creations of genius, painted on canvas the gorgeous mimicry of nature, and engraved on a metallic surface the viewless substance of the shadow. perseverance has put in motion millions of spindles, winged as many flying shuttles, harnessed thousands of iron steeds to as many freighted cars, and set them flying from town to town and nation to nation, tunneled mountains of granite, and annihilated space with the lightning's speed. it has whitened the waters of the world with the sails of a hundred nations, navigated every sea and explored every land. it has reduced nature in her thousand forms to as many sciences, taught her laws, prophesied her future movements, measured her untrodden spaces, counted her myriad hosts of worlds, and computed their distances, dimensions, and velocities. the slow penny is surer than the quick dollar. the slow trotter will out-travel the fleet racer. genius darts, flutters, and tires; but perseverance wears and wins. the all-day horse wins the race. the afternoon-man wears off the laurels. the last blow drives home the nail. "are your discoveries often brilliant intuitions?" asked a reporter of thomas a. edison. "do they come to you while you are lying awake nights?" "i never did anything worth doing by accident," was the reply, "nor did any of my inventions come indirectly through accident, except the phonograph. no, when i have fully decided that a result is worth getting i go ahead on it and make trial after trial until it comes. i have always kept strictly within the lines of commercially useful inventions. i have never had any time to put on electrical wonders, valuable simply as novelties to catch the popular fancy. _i like it_," continued the great inventor. "i don't know any other reason. anything i have begun is always on my mind, and i am not easy while away from it until it is finished." [illustration: thomas alva edison] a man who thus gives himself wholly to his work is certain to accomplish something; and if he have ability and common sense, his success will be great. how bulwer wrestled with the fates to change his apparent destiny! his first novel was a failure; his early poems were failures; and his youthful speeches provoked the ridicule of his opponents. but he fought his way to eminence through ridicule and defeat. gibbon worked twenty years on his "decline and fall of the roman empire." noah webster spent thirty-six years on his dictionary. what a sublime patience he showed in devoting a life to the collection and definition of words! george bancroft spent twenty-six years on his "history of the united states." newton rewrote his "chronology of ancient nations" fifteen times. titian wrote to charles v.: "i send your majesty the last supper, after working on it almost daily for seven years." he worked on his pietro martyn eight years. george stephenson was fifteen years perfecting his locomotive; watt, twenty years on his condensing engine. harvey labored eight long years before he published his discovery of the circulation of the blood. he was then called a crack-brained impostor by his fellow physicians. amid abuse and ridicule he waited twenty-five years before his great discovery was recognized by the profession. newton discovered the law of gravitation before he was twenty-one, but one slight error in a measurement of the earth's circumference interfered with a demonstration of the correctness of his theory. twenty years later he corrected the error, and showed that the planets roll in their orbits as a result of the same law which brings an apple to the ground. sothern, the great actor, said that the early part of his theatrical career was spent in getting dismissed for incompetency. "never depend upon your genius," said john ruskin, in the words of joshua reynolds; "if you have talent, industry will improve it; if you have none, industry will supply the deficiency." savages believe that when they conquer an enemy, his spirit enters into them, and fights for them ever afterwards. so the spirit of our conquests enters us, and helps us to win the next victory. blücher may have been routed at ligny yesterday, but to-day you hear the thunder of his guns at waterloo hurling dismay and death among his former conquerors. opposing circumstances create strength. opposition gives us greater power of resistance. to overcome one barrier gives us greater ability to overcome the next. in february, , a poor gray-haired man, his head bowed with discouragement almost to the back of his mule, rode slowly out through the beautiful gateway of the alhambra. from boyhood he had been haunted with the idea that the earth is round. he believed that the piece of carved wood picked up four hundred miles at sea and the bodies of two men unlike any other human beings known, found on the shores of portugal, had drifted from unknown lands in the west. but his last hope of obtaining aid for a voyage of discovery had failed. king john of portugal, while pretending to think of helping him, had sent out secretly an expedition of his own. he had begged bread, drawn maps and charts to keep from starving; he had lost his wife; his friends had called him crazy, and forsaken him. the council of wise men called by ferdinand and isabella ridiculed his theory of reaching the east by sailing west. "but the sun and moon are round," said columbus, "why not the earth?" "if the earth is a ball, what holds it up?" asked the wise men. "what holds the sun and moon up?" inquired columbus. "but how can men walk with their heads hanging down, and their feet up, like flies on a ceiling?" asked a learned doctor; "how can trees grow with their roots in the air?" "the water would run out of the ponds and we should fall off," said another philosopher. "this doctrine is contrary to the bible, which says, 'the heavens are stretched out like a tent:'--of course it is flat; it is rank heresy to say it is round," said a priest. columbus left the alhambra in despair, intending to offer his services to charles vii., but he heard a voice calling his name. an old friend had told isabella that it would add great renown to her reign at a trifling expense if what the sailor believed should prove true. "it shall be done," said isabella, "i will pledge my jewels to raise the money. call him back." columbus turned and with him turned the world. not a sailor would go voluntarily; so the king and queen compelled them. three days out, in his vessels scarcely larger than fishing-schooners, the _pinta_ floated a signal of distress for a broken rudder. terror seized the sailors, but columbus calmed their fears with pictures of gold and precious stones from india. two hundred miles west of the canaries, the compass ceased to point to the north star. the sailors are ready to mutiny, but he tells them the north star is not exactly north. twenty-three hundred miles from home, though he tells them it is but seventeen hundred, a bush with berries floats by, land birds fly near, and they pick up a piece of wood curiously carved. on october , columbus raised the banner of castile over the western world. "how hard i worked at that tremendous shorthand, and all improvement appertaining to it," said dickens. "i will only add to what i have already written of my perseverance at this time of my life, and of a patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured." cyrus w. field had retired from business with a large fortune when he became possessed with the idea that by means of a cable laid upon the bottom of the atlantic ocean, telegraphic communication could be established between europe and america. he plunged into the undertaking with all the force of his being. the preliminary work included the construction of a telegraph line one thousand miles long, from new york to st. john's, newfoundland. through four hundred miles of almost unbroken forest they had to build a road as well as a telegraph line across newfoundland. another stretch of one hundred and forty miles across the island of cape breton involved a great deal of labor, as did the laying of a cable across the st. lawrence. by hard work he secured aid for his company from the british government, but in congress he encountered such bitter opposition from a powerful lobby that his measure only had a majority of one in the senate. the cable was loaded upon the _agamemnon_, the flag ship of the british fleet at sebastopol, and upon the _niagara_, a magnificent new frigate of the united states navy; but, when five miles of cable had been paid out, it caught in the machinery and parted. on the second trial, when two hundred miles at sea, the electric current was suddenly lost, and men paced the decks nervously and sadly, as if in the presence of death. just as mr. field was about to give the order to cut the cable, the current returned as quickly and mysteriously as it had disappeared. the following night, when the ship was moving but four miles an hour and the cable running out at the rate of six miles, the brakes were applied too suddenly just as the steamer gave a heavy lurch, breaking the cable. field was not the man to give up. seven hundred miles more of cable were ordered, and a man of great skill was set to work to devise a better machine for paying out the long line. american and british inventors united in making a machine. at length in mid-ocean the two halves of the cable were spliced and the steamers began to separate, the one headed for ireland, the other for newfoundland, each running out the precious thread, which, it was hoped, would bind two continents together. before the vessels were three miles apart, the cable parted. again it was spliced, but when the ships were eighty miles apart, the current was lost. a third time the cable was spliced and about two hundred miles paid out, when it parted some twenty feet from the _agamemnon_, and the vessels returned to the coast of ireland. directors were disheartened, the public skeptical, capitalists were shy, and but for the indomitable energy and persuasiveness of mr. field, who worked day and night almost without food or sleep, the whole project would have been abandoned. finally a third attempt was made, with such success that the whole cable was laid without a break, and several messages were flashed through nearly seven hundred leagues of ocean, when suddenly the current ceased. faith now seemed dead except in the breast of cyrus w. field, and one or two friends, yet with such persistence did they work that they persuaded men to furnish capital for yet another trial even against what seemed their better judgment. a new and superior cable was loaded upon the _great eastern_, which steamed slowly out to sea, paying out as she advanced. everything worked to a charm until within six hundred miles of newfoundland, when the cable snapped and sank. after several attempts to raise it, the enterprise was abandoned for a year. not discouraged by all these difficulties, mr. field went to work with a will, organized a new company, and made a new cable far superior to anything before used, and on july , , was begun the trial which ended with the following message sent to new york:-- "heart's content, july . "we arrived here at nine o'clock this morning. all well. thank god! the cable is laid and is in perfect working order. "cyrus w. field." the old cable was picked up, spliced, and continued to newfoundland, and the two are still working, with good prospects for usefulness for many years. in revelation we read: "he that overcometh, i will give him to sit down with me on my throne." successful men, it is said, owe more to their perseverance than to their natural powers, their friends, or the favorable circumstances around them. genius will falter by the side of labor, great powers will yield to great industry. talent is desirable, but perseverance is more so. "how long did it take you to learn to play?" asked a young man of geradini. "twelve hours a day for twenty years," replied the great violinist. lyman beecher when asked how long it took him to write his celebrated sermon on the "government of god," replied, "about forty years." a chinese student, discouraged by repeated failures, had thrown away his book in despair, when he saw a poor woman rubbing an iron bar on a stone to make a needle. this example of patience sent him back to his studies with a new determination, and he became one of the three greatest scholars of china. malibran said: "if i neglect my practice a day, i see the difference in my execution; if for two days, my friends see it; and if for a week, all the world knows my failure." constant, persistent struggle she found to be the price of her marvelous power. when an east india boy is learning archery, he is compelled to practise three months drawing the string to his ear before he is allowed to touch an arrow. benjamin franklin had this tenacity of purpose in a wonderful degree. when he started in the printing business in philadelphia, he carried his material through the streets on a wheelbarrow. he hired one room for his office, work-room, and sleeping-room. he found a formidable rival in the city and invited him to his room. pointing to a piece of bread from which he had just eaten his dinner, he said: "unless you can live cheaper than i can you can not starve me out." all are familiar with the misfortune of carlyle while writing his "history of the french revolution." after the first volume was ready for the press, he loaned the manuscript to a neighbor who left it lying on the floor, and the servant girl took it to kindle the fire. it was a bitter disappointment, but carlyle was not the man to give up. after many months of poring over hundreds of volumes of authorities and scores of manuscripts, he reproduced that which had burned in a few minutes. audubon, the naturalist, had spent two years with his gun and note-book in the forests of america, making drawings of birds. he nailed them all up securely in a box and went off on a vacation. when he returned he opened the box only to find a nest of norwegian rats in his beautiful drawings. every one was ruined. it was a terrible disappointment, but audubon took his gun and note-book and started for the forest. he reproduced his drawings, and they were even better than the first. when dickens was asked to read one of his selections in public he replied that he had not time, for he was in the habit of reading the same piece every day for six months before reading it in public. "my own invention," he says, "such as it is, i assure you, would never have served me as it has but for the habit of commonplace, humble, patient, toiling attention." addison amassed three volumes of manuscript before he began the "spectator." everyone admires a determined, persistent man. marcus morton ran sixteen times for governor of massachusetts. at last his opponents voted for him from admiration of his pluck, and he was elected by a majority of one! such persistence always triumphs. webster declared that when a pupil at phillips exeter academy he never could declaim before the school. he said he committed piece after piece and rehearsed them in his room, but when he heard his name called in the academy and all eyes turned towards him the room became dark and everything he ever knew fled from his brain; but he became the great orator of america. indeed, it is doubtful whether demosthenes himself surpassed his great reply to hayne in the united states senate. webster's tenacity was illustrated by a circumstance which occurred in the academy. the principal punished him for shooting pigeons by compelling him to commit one hundred lines of vergil. he knew the principal was to take a certain train that afternoon, so he went to his room and learned seven hundred lines. he went to recite them to the principal just before train time. after repeating the hundred lines he continued until he had recited two hundred. the principal anxiously looked at his watch and grew nervous, but webster kept right on. the principal finally stopped him and asked him how many more he had learned. "about five hundred more," said webster, continuing to recite. "you can have the rest of the day for pigeon-shooting," said the principal. great writers have ever been noted for their tenacity of purpose. their works have not been flung off from minds aglow with genius, but have been elaborated and elaborated into grace and beauty, until every trace of their efforts has been obliterated. bishop butler worked twenty years incessantly on his "analogy," and even then was so dissatisfied that he wanted to burn it. rousseau says he obtained the ease and grace of his style only by ceaseless inquietude, by endless blotches and erasures. vergil worked eleven years on the aeneid. the note-books of great men like hawthorne and emerson are tell-tales of the enormous drudgery, of the years put into a book which may be read in an hour. montesquieu was twenty-five years writing his "esprit des lois," yet you can read it in sixty minutes. adam smith spent ten years on his "wealth of nations." a rival playwright once laughed at euripides for spending three days on three lines, when he had written five hundred lines. "but your five hundred lines in three days will be dead and forgotten, while my three lines will live forever," he replied. ariosto wrote his "description of a tempest" in sixteen different ways. he spent ten years on his "orlando furioso," and only sold one hundred copies at fifteen pence each. the proof of burke's "letters to a noble lord" (one of the sublimest things in all literature) went back to the publisher so changed and blotted with corrections that the printer absolutely refused to correct it, and it was entirely reset. adam tucker spent eighteen years on the "light of nature." thoreau's new england pastoral, "a week on the concord and merrimac rivers," was an entire failure. seven hundred of the one thousand copies printed were returned from the publishers. thoreau wrote in his diary: "i have some nine hundred volumes in my library, seven hundred of which i wrote myself." yet he took up his pen with as much determination as ever. the rolling stone gathers no moss. the persistent tortoise outruns the swift but fickle hare. an hour a day for twelve years more than equals the time given to study in a four years' course at a high school. the reading and re-reading of a single volume has been the making of many a man. "patience," says bulwer "is the courage of the conqueror; it is the virtue _par excellence_, of man against destiny--of the one against the world, and of the soul against matter. therefore, this is the courage of the gospel; and its importance in a social view--its importance to races and institutions--cannot be too earnestly inculcated." want of constancy is the cause of many a failure, making the millionaire of to-day a beggar to-morrow. show me a really great triumph that is not the reward of persistence. one of the paintings which made titian famous was on his easel eight years; another, seven. how came popular writers famous? by writing for years without any pay at all; by writing hundreds of pages as mere practise-work; by working like galley-slaves at literature for half a lifetime with no other compensation than--fame. "never despair," says burke; "but if you do, work on in despair." the head of the god hercules is represented as covered with a lion's skin with claws joined under the chin, to show that when we have conquered our misfortunes, they become our helpers. oh, the glory of an unconquerable will! chapter xxiv nerve--grip, pluck "never give up; for the wisest is boldest, knowing that providence mingles the cup; and of all maxims, the best, as the oldest, is the stern watchword of 'never give up!'" be firm; one constant element of luck is genuine, solid, old teutonic pluck. stick to your aim; the mongrel's hold will slip, but only crowbars loose the bulldog's grip; small though he looks, the jaw that never yields drags down the bellowing monarch of the fields! holmes. "soldiers, you are frenchmen," said napoleon, coolly walking among his disaffected generals when they threatened his life in the egyptian campaign; "you are too many to assassinate, and too few to intimidate me." "how brave he is!" exclaimed the ringleader, as he withdrew, completely cowed. "general taylor never surrenders," said old "rough and ready" at buena vista, when santa anna with , men offered him a chance to save his , soldiers by capitulation. the battle was long and desperate, but at length the mexicans were glad to avoid further defeat by flight. when lincoln was asked how grant impressed him as a general, he replied, "the greatest thing about him is cool persistency of purpose. he has the grip of a bulldog; when he once gets his teeth in, nothing can shake him off." it was "on to richmond," and "i propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," that settled the fate of the rebellion. "my sword is too short," said a spartan youth to his father. "add a step to it, then," was the only reply. it is said that the snapping-turtle will not release his grip, even after his head is cut off. he is resolved, if he dies, to die hard. it is just such grit that enables men to succeed, for what is called luck is generally the prerogative of valiant souls. it is the final effort that brings victory. it is the last pull of the oar, with clenched teeth and knit muscles, that shows what oxford boatmen call "the beefiness of the fellow." after grant's defeat at the first battle of shiloh, nearly every newspaper of both parties in the north, almost every member of congress, and public sentiment everywhere demanded his removal. friends of the president pleaded with him to give the command to some one else, for his own sake as well as for the good of the country. lincoln listened for hours one night, speaking only at rare intervals to tell a pithy story, until the clock struck one. then, after a long silence, he said: "i can't spare this man. he fights." it was lincoln's marvelous insight and sagacity that saved grant from the storm of popular passion, and gave us the greatest hero of the civil war. it is this keeping right on that wins in the battle of life. grant never looked backward. once, after several days of hard fighting without definite result, he called a council of war. one general described the route by which he would retreat, another thought it better to retire by a different road, and general after general told how he would withdraw, or fall back, or seek a more favorable position in the rear. at length all eyes were turned upon grant, who had been a silent listener for hours. he rose, took a bundle of papers from an inside pocket, handed one to each general, and said: "gentlemen, at dawn you will execute those orders." every paper gave definite directions for an advance, and with the morning sun the army moved forward to victory. massena's army of , men in genoa had been reduced by fighting and famine to , . they had killed and captured more than , austrians, but their provisions were completely exhausted; starvation stared them in the face; the enemy outnumbered them four to one, and they seemed at the mercy of their opponents. general ott demanded a discretionary surrender, but massena replied: "my soldiers must be allowed to march out with colors flying, and arms and baggage; not as prisoners of war, but free to fight when and where we please. if you do not grant this, i will sally forth from genoa sword in hand. with eight thousand famished men i will attack your camp, and i will fight till i cut my way through it." ott knew the temper of the great soldier, and agreed to accept the terms if he would surrender himself, or if he would depart by sea so as not to be quickly joined by reinforcements. massena's only reply was: "take my terms, or i will cut my way through your army." ott at last agreed, when massena said: "i give you notice that ere fifteen days are passed i shall be once more in genoa," and he kept his word. napoleon said of this man, who was orphaned in infancy and cast upon the world to make his own way in life: "when defeated, massena was always ready to fight a battle over again, as though he had been the conqueror." "the battle is completely lost," said desaix, looking at his watch, when consulted by napoleon at marengo; "but it is only two o'clock, and we shall have time to gain another." he then made his famous cavalry charge, and won the field, although a few minutes before the french soldiers all along the line were momentarily expecting an order to retreat. "well," said barnum to a friend in , "i am going to buy the american museum." "buy it!" exclaimed the astonished friend, who knew that the showman had not a dollar; "what do you intend buying it with?" "brass," was the prompt reply, "for silver and gold have i none." everyone interested in public entertainments in new york knew barnum, and knew the condition of his pocket; but francis olmstead, who owned the museum building, consulted numerous references all telling of "a good showman, who would do as he agreed," and accepted a proposition to give security for the purchaser. mr. olmstead was to appoint a money-taker at the door, and credit barnum towards the purchase with all above expenses and an allowance of fifty dollars per month to support his wife and three children. mrs. barnum assented to the arrangement, and offered to cut down the household expenses to a little more than a dollar a day. six months later mr. olmstead entered the ticket-office at noon, and found barnum eating for dinner a few slices of bread and some corned beef. "is this the way you eat your dinner?" he asked. "i have not eaten a warm dinner since i bought the museum, except on the sabbath; and i intend never to eat another until i get out of debt." "ah! you are safe, and will pay for the museum before the year is out," said mr. olmstead, slapping the young man approvingly on the shoulder. he was right, for in less than a year barnum had paid every cent out of the profits of the establishment. "hard pounding, gentlemen," said wellington at waterloo to his officers, "but we will see who can pound the longest." "it is very kind of them to 'sand' our letters for us," said young junot coolly, as an austrian shell scattered earth over the dispatch he was writing at the dictation of his commander-in-chief. the remark attracted napoleon's attention and led to the promotion of the scrivener. "there is room enough up higher," said webster to a young man hesitating to study law because the profession was so crowded. this is true in every department of activity. the young man who succeeds must hold his ground and push hard. whoever attempts to pass through the door to success will find it labeled, "push." there is another big word in the english language: the perfection of grit is the power of saying "no," with emphasis that can not be mistaken. learn to meet hard times with a harder will, and more determined pluck. the nature which is all pine and straw is of no use in times of trial, we must have some oak and iron in us. the goddess of fame or of fortune has been won by many a poor boy who had no friends, no backing, or anything but pure grit and invincible purpose. a good character, good habits, and _iron industry_ are impregnable to the assaults of the ill luck that fools are dreaming of. there is no luck, for all practical purposes, to him who is not striving, and whose senses are not all eagerly attent. what are called accidental discoveries are almost invariably made by those who are looking for something. a man incurs about as much risk of being struck by lightning as by accidental luck. there is, perhaps, an element of luck in the amount of success which crowns the efforts of different men; but even here it will usually be found that the sagacity with which the efforts are directed and the energy with which they are prosecuted measure pretty accurately the luck contained in the results achieved. apparent exceptions will be found to relate almost wholly to single undertakings, while in the long run the rule will hold good. two pearl-divers, equally expert, dive together and work with equal energy. one brings up a pearl, while the other returns empty-handed. but let both persevere and at the end of five, ten, or twenty years it will be found that they succeeded almost in exact proportion to their skill and industry. "varied experience of men has led me, the longer i live," says huxley, "to set less value on mere cleverness; to attach more and more importance to industry and physical endurance. indeed, i am much disposed to think that endurance is the most valuable quality of all; for industry, as the desire to work hard, does not come to much if a feeble frame is unable to respond to the desire. no life is wasted unless it ends in sloth, dishonesty, or cowardice. no success is worthy of the name unless it is won by honest industry and brave breasting of the waves of fortune." has luck ever made a fool speak words of wisdom; an ignoramus utter lectures on science; a dolt write an odyssey, an aeneid, a paradise lost, or a hamlet; a loafer become a girard or astor, a rothschild, stewart, vanderbilt, field, gould, or rockefeller; a coward win at yorktown, wagram, waterloo, or richmond; a careless stonecutter carve an apollo, a minerva, a venus de medici, or a greek slave? does luck raise rich crops on the land of the sluggard, weeds and brambles on that of the industrious farmer? does luck make the drunkard sleek and attractive, and his home cheerful, while the temperate man looks haggard and suffers want and misery? does luck starve honest labor, and pamper idleness? does luck put common sense at a discount, folly at a premium? does it cast intelligence into the gutter, and raise ignorance to the skies? does it imprison virtue, and laud vice? did luck give watt his engine, franklin his captive lightning, whitney his cotton-gin, fulton his steamboat, morse his telegraph, blanchard his lathe, howe his sewing-machine, goodyear his rubber, bell his telephone, edison his phonograph? if you are told of the man who, worn out by a painful disorder, tried to commit suicide, but only opened an internal tumor, effecting a cure; of the persian condemned to lose his tongue, on whom a bungling operation merely removed an impediment of speech; of a painter who produced an effect long desired by throwing his brush at a picture in rage and despair; of a musician who, after repeated failures in trying to imitate a storm at sea, obtained the result desired by angrily running his hands together from the extremities of the keyboard,--bear in mind that even this "luck" came to men as the result of action, not inaction. "luck is ever waiting for something to turn up," says cobden; "labor, with keen eyes and strong will, will turn up something. luck lies in bed, and wishes the postman would bring him the news of a legacy; labor turns out at six o'clock, and with busy pen or ringing hammer lays the foundation of a competence. luck whines; labor whistles. luck relies on chance; labor, on character." stick to the thing and carry it through. _believe you were made for the place you fill_, and that no one else can fill it as well. put forth your whole energies. be awake, electrify yourself; go forth to the task. only once learn to carry a thing through in all its completeness and proportion, and you will become a hero. you will think better of yourself; others will think better of you. the world in its very heart admires the stern, determined doer. "i like the man who faces what he must with step triumphant and a heart of cheer; who fights the daily battle without fear; sees his hopes fail, yet keeps unfaltering trust that god is god; that somehow, true and just, his plans work out for mortals; not a tear is shed when fortune, which the world holds dear, falls from his grasp; better, with love, a crust than living in dishonor; envies not, nor loses faith in man; but does his best, nor even murmurs at his humbler lot; but with a smile and words of hope, gives zest to every toiler; he alone is great, who by a life heroic conquers fate." chapter xxv clear grit let fortune empty her whole quiver on me, i have a soul that, like an ample shield, can take in all, and verge enough for more. dryden. there's a brave fellow! there's a man of pluck! a man who's not afraid to say his say, though a whole town's against him. longfellow. our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.--goldsmith. the barriers are not yet erected which shall say to aspiring talent, "thus far and no farther."--beethoven. "friends and comrades," said pizarro, as he turned toward the south, after tracing with his sword upon the sand a line from east to west, "on that side are toil, hunger, nakedness, the drenching storm, desertion, and death; on this side, ease and pleasure. there lies peru with its riches: here, panama and its poverty. choose, each man, what best becomes a brave castilian. for my part, i go to the south." so saying, he crossed the line and was followed by thirteen spaniards in armor. thus, on the little island of gallo in the pacific, when his men were clamoring to return to panama, did pizarro and his few volunteers resolve to stake their lives upon the success of a desperate crusade against the powerful empire of the incas. at the time they had not even a vessel to transport them to the country they wished to conquer. is it necessary to add that all difficulties yielded at last to such resolute determination? "perseverance is a roman virtue, that wins each godlike act, and plucks success e'en from the spear-proof crest of rugged danger." "when you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as if you could not hold on a minute longer," said harriet beecher stowe, "never give up then, for that's just the place and time that the tide'll turn." charles sumner said "three things are necessary to a strong character: first, backbone; second, backbone; third, backbone." while digging among the ruins of pompeii, which was buried by the dust and ashes from an eruption of vesuvius a. d. , the workmen found the skeleton of a roman soldier in the sentry-box at one of the city's gates. he might have found safety under sheltering rocks close by; but, in the face of certain death, he had remained at his post, a mute witness to the thorough discipline, the ceaseless vigilance and fidelity which made the roman legionaries masters of the known world. the world admires the man who never flinches from unexpected difficulties, who calmly, patiently, and courageously grapples with his fate; who dies, if need be, at his post. "clear grit" always commands respect. it is that quality which achieves, and everybody admires achievement. in the strife of parties and principles, backbone without brains will carry against brains without backbone. you can not, by tying an opinion to a man's tongue, make him the representative of that opinion; at the close of any battle for principles, his name will be found neither among the dead nor among the wounded, but among the missing. the "london times" was an insignificant sheet published by mr. walter and was steadily losing money. john walter, jr., then only twenty-seven years old, begged his father to give him full control of the paper. after many misgivings, the father finally consented. the young journalist began to remodel the establishment and to introduce new ideas everywhere. the paper had not attempted to mold public opinion, and had had no individuality or character of its own. the audacious young editor boldly attacked every wrong, even the government, whenever he thought it corrupt. thereupon the public customs, printing, and the government advertisements were withdrawn. the father was in utter dismay. his son, he was sure, would ruin the paper and himself. but no remonstrance could swerve the son from his purpose to give the world a great journal which should have weight, character, individuality, and independence. the public soon saw that a new power stood behind the "times"; that its articles meant business; that new life and new blood and new ideas had been infused into the insignificant sheet; that a man with brains and push and tenacity of purpose stood at the helm,--a man who could make a way when he could not find one. among other new features foreign dispatches were introduced, and they appeared in the "times" several days before their appearance in the government organs. the "leading article" also was introduced to stay. the aggressive editor antagonized the government, and his foreign dispatches were all stopped at the outposts, while the ministerial journalists were allowed to proceed. but nothing could daunt this resolute young spirit. at enormous expense he employed special couriers. every obstacle put in his way, and all opposition from the government, only added to his determination to succeed. enterprise, push, grit were behind the "times," and nothing could stay its progress. young walter was the soul of the paper, and his personality pervaded every detail. in those days only three hundred copies of the paper could be struck off in an hour by the best presses, and walter had duplicate and even triplicate types set. then he set his brain to work, and finally the walter press, throwing off , copies per hour, both sides printed, was the result. it was the th of november, , that the first steam printed paper was given to the world. "mean natures always feel a sort of terror before great natures, and many a base thought has been unuttered, many a sneaking vote withheld, through the fear inspired by the rebuking presence of one noble man." as a rule, pure grit, character, has the right of way. in the presence of men permeated with grit and sound in character, meanness and baseness slink out of sight. mean men are uncomfortable, dishonesty trembles, hypocrisy is uncertain. lincoln, being asked by an anxious visitor what he would do after three or four years if the rebellion were not subdued, replied: "oh, there is no alternative but to keep pegging away." "it is in me and it shall come out," said sheridan, when told that he would never make an orator as he had failed in his first speech in parliament. he became known as one of the foremost orators of his day. when a boy henry clay was very bashful and diffident, and scarcely dared recite before his class at school, but he determined to become an orator. so he committed speeches and recited them in the cornfields, or in the barn with the horse and cows for an audience. if impossibilities ever exist, popularly speaking, they ought to have been found somewhere between the birth and death of kitto, that deaf pauper and master of oriental learning. but kitto did not find them there. in the presence of his decision and imperial energy they melted away. he begged his father to take him out of the poorhouse, even if he had to subsist like the hottentots. he told him that he would sell his books and pawn his handkerchief, by which he thought he could raise about twelve shillings. he said he could live upon blackberries, nuts, and field turnips, and was willing to sleep on a hayrick. here was real grit. what were impossibilities to such a resolute, indomitable will? grit is a permanent, solid quality, which enters into the very structure, the very tissues of the constitution. many of our generals in the civil war exhibited heroism; they were "plucky," and often displayed great determination, but grant had pure "grit" in the most concentrated form. he could not be moved from his base; he was self-centered, immovable. "if you try to wheedle out of him his plans for a campaign, he stolidly smokes; if you call him an imbecile and a blunderer, he blandly lights another cigar; if you praise him as the greatest general living, he placidly returns the puff from his regalia; and if you tell him he should run for the presidency, it does not disturb the equanimity with which he inhales and exhales the unsubstantial vapor which typifies the politician's promises. while you are wondering what kind of creature this man without a tongue is, you are suddenly electrified with the news of some splendid victory; proving that behind the cigar, and behind the face discharged of all telltale expression, is the best brain to plan and the strongest heart to dare among the generals of the republic." lincoln had pure "grit." when the illustrated papers everywhere were caricaturing him, when no epithet seemed too harsh to heap upon him, when his methods were criticized by his own party, and the generals in the war were denouncing his "foolish" confidence in grant, and delegations were waiting upon him to ask for that general's removal, the great president sat with crossed legs, and was reminded of a story. lincoln and grant both had that rare nerve which cares not for ridicule, is not swerved by public clamor, can bear abuse and hatred. there is a mighty force in truth, and in the sublime conviction and supreme self-confidence behind it; in the knowledge that truth is mighty, and the conviction and confidence that it will prevail. pure grit is that element of character which enables a man to clutch his aim with an iron grip, and keep the needle of his purpose pointing to the star of his hope. through sunshine and storm, through hurricane and tempest, through sleet and rain, with a leaky ship, with a crew in mutiny, it perseveres; in fact, nothing but death can subdue it, and it dies still struggling. the man of grit carries in his very presence a power which controls and commands. he is spared the necessity of declaring himself, for his grit speaks in his every act. it does not come by fits and starts, it is a part of his life. it inspires a sublime audacity and a heroic courage. many of the failures of life are due to the want of grit or business nerve. it is unfortunate for a young man to start out in business life with a weak, yielding disposition, with no resolution or backbone to mark his own course and stick to it; with no ability to say "no" with an emphasis, obliging this man by investing in hopeless speculation, and, rather than offend a friend, indorsing a questionable note. a little boy was asked how he learned to skate. "oh, by getting up every time i fell down," he replied. whipple tells a story of masséna which illustrates the masterful purpose that plucks victory out of the jaws of defeat. "after the defeat at essling, the success of napoleon's attempt to withdraw his beaten army depended on the character of masséna, to whom the emperor dispatched a messenger, telling him to keep his position for two hours longer at aspern. this order, couched in the form of a request, required almost an impossibility; but napoleon knew the indomitable tenacity of the man to whom he gave it. the messenger found masséna seated on a heap of rubbish, his eyes bloodshot, his frame weakened by his unparalleled exertions during a contest of forty hours, and his whole appearance indicating a physical state better befitting the hospital than the field. but that steadfast soul seemed altogether unaffected by bodily prostration. half dead as he was with fatigue, he rose painfully and said courageously, 'tell the emperor that i will hold out for two hours.' and he kept his word." "often defeated in battle," said macaulay of alexander the great, "he was always successful in war." in the battle of marengo, the austrians considered the day won. the french army was inferior in numbers, and had given way. the austrian army extended its wings on the right and on the left, to follow up the french. then, though the french themselves thought that the battle was lost, and the austrians were confident it was won, napoleon gave the command to charge; and, the trumpet's blast being given, the old guard charged down into the weakened center of the enemy, cut it in two, rolled the two wings up on either side, and the battle was won for france. once when marshal ney was going into battle, looking down at his knees which were smiting together, he said, "you may well shake; you would shake worse yet if you knew where i am going to take you." it is victory after victory with the soldier, lesson after lesson with the scholar, blow after blow with the laborer, crop after crop with the farmer, picture after picture with the painter, and mile after mile with the traveler, that secures what all so much desire--success. a promising harvard student was stricken with paralysis of both legs. physicians said there was no hope for him. the lad determined to continue his college studies. the examiners heard him at his bedside, and in four years he took his degree. he resolved to make a critical study of dante, to do which he had to learn italian and german. he persevered in spite of repeated attacks of illness and partial loss of sight. he was competing for the university prize. think of the paralytic lad, helpless in bed, competing for a prize, fighting death inch by inch! what a lesson! before his manuscript was published or the prize awarded, the brave student died, but his work was successful. congressman william w. crapo, while working his way through college, being too poor to buy a dictionary, actually copied one, walking from his home in the village of dartmouth, mass., to new bedford to replenish his store of words and definitions from the town library. oh, the triumphs of this indomitable spirit of the conqueror! this it was that enabled franklin to dine on a small loaf in the printing-office with a book in his hand. it helped locke to live on bread and water in a dutch garret. it enabled gideon lee to go barefoot in the snow, half starved and thinly clad. it sustained lincoln and garfield on their hard journeys from the log cabin to the white house. president chadbourne put grit in place of his lost lung, and worked thirty-five years after his funeral had been planned. henry fawcett put grit in place of eyesight, and became the greatest postmaster-general england ever had. prescott also put grit in place of eyesight, and became one of america's greatest historians. francis parkman put grit in place of health and eyesight, and became the greatest historian of america in his line. thousands of men have put grit in place of health, eyes, ears, hands, legs and yet have achieved marvelous success. indeed, most of the great things of the world have been accomplished by grit and pluck. you can not keep a man down who has these qualities. he will make stepping-stones out of his stumbling-blocks, and lift himself to success. at fifty, barnum was a ruined man, owing thousands more than he possessed, yet he resolutely resumed business once more, fairly wringing success from adverse fortune, and paying his notes at the same time. again and again he was ruined; but phoenix-like, he rose repeatedly from the ashes of his misfortune each time more determined than before. "it is all very well," said charles j. fox, "to tell me that a young man has distinguished himself by a brilliant first speech. he may go on, or he may be satisfied with his first triumph; but show me a young man who has not succeeded at first, and nevertheless has gone on, and i will back that young man to do better than most of those who have succeeded at the first trial." cobden broke down completely the first time he appeared on a platform in manchester, and the chairman apologized for him. but he did not give up speaking till every poor man in england had a larger, better, and cheaper loaf. see young disraeli, sprung from a hated and persecuted race; without opportunity, pushing his way up through the middle classes, up through the upper classes, until he stands self-poised upon the topmost round of political and social power. scoffed, ridiculed, rebuffed, hissed from the house of commons, he simply says, "the time will come when you will hear me." the time did come, and the boy with no chance swayed the scepter of england for a quarter of a century. one of the most remarkable examples in history is disraeli, forcing his leadership upon that very party whose prejudices were deepest against his race, and which had an utter contempt for self-made men and interlopers. imagine england's surprise when she awoke to find this insignificant hebrew actually chancellor of the exchequer! he was easily master of all the tortures supplied by the armory of rhetoric; he could exhaust the resources of the bitterest invective; he could sting gladstone out of his self-control; he was absolute master of himself and his situation. you could see that this young man intended to make his way in the world. determined audacity was in his very face. handsome, with the hated hebrew blood in his veins, after three defeats in parliamentary elections he was not the least daunted, for he knew his day would come. lord melbourne, the great prime minister, when this gay young fop was introduced to him, asked him what he wished to be. "prime minister of england," was his audacious reply. william h. seward was given a thousand dollars by his father with which to go to college; this was all he was to have. the son returned at the end of the freshman year with extravagant habits and no money. his father refused to give him more, and told him he could not stay at home. when the youth found the props all taken out from under him, and that he must now sink or swim, he left home moneyless, returned to college, graduated at the head of his class, studied law, was elected governor of new york, and became lincoln's great secretary of state during the civil war. garfield said, "if the power to do hard work is not talent, it is the best possible substitute for it." the triumph of industry and grit over low birth and iron fortune in america, the land of opportunity, ought to be sufficient to put to shame all grumblers over their hard fortune and those who attempt to excuse aimless, shiftless, successless men because they have no chance. during a winter in the war of , general jackson's troops, unprovided for and starving, became mutinous and were going home. but the general set the example of living on acorns; and then he rode before the rebellious line and threatened with instant death the first mutineer that should try to leave. the race is not always to the swift, the battle is not always to the strong. horses are sometimes weighted or hampered in the race, and this is taken into account in the result. so in the race of life the distance alone does not determine the prize. we must take into consideration the hindrances, the weights we have carried, the disadvantages of education, of breeding, of training, of surroundings, of circumstances. how many young men are weighted down with debt, with poverty, with the support of invalid parents or brothers and sisters, or friends? how many are fettered with ignorance, hampered by inhospitable surroundings, with the opposition of parents who do not understand them? how many a round boy is hindered in the race by being forced into a square hole? how many youths are delayed in their course because nobody believes in them, because nobody encourages them, because they get no sympathy and are forever tortured for not doing that against which every fiber of their being protests, and every drop of their blood rebels? how many men have to feel their way to the goal through the blindness of ignorance and lack of experience? how many go bungling along from the lack of early discipline and drill in the vocation they have chosen? how many have to hobble along on crutches because they were never taught to help themselves, but have been accustomed to lean upon a father's wealth or a mother's indulgence? how many are weakened for the journey of life by self-indulgence, by dissipation, by "life-sappers"; how many are crippled by disease, by a weak constitution, by impaired eyesight or hearing? when the prizes of life shall be finally awarded, the distance we have run, the weights we have carried, the handicaps, will all be taken into account. not the distance we have run, but the obstacles we have overcome, the disadvantages under which we have made the race, will decide the prizes. the poor wretch who has plodded along against unknown temptations, the poor woman who has buried her sorrows in her silent heart and sewed her weary way through life, those who have suffered abuse in silence, and who have been unrecognized or despised by their fellow-runners, will often receive the greater prize. "the wise and active conquer difficulties, by daring to attempt them; sloth and folly shiver and sink at sight of toil and hazard, and make the impossibility they fear." "i can't, it is impossible," said a foiled lieutenant, to alexander. "begone," shouted the conquering macedonian, "there is nothing impossible to him who will try." were i called upon to express in a word the secret of so many failures among those who started out in life with high hopes, i should say unhesitatingly, they lacked will-power. they could not half will. what is a man without a will? he is like an engine without steam, a mere sport of chance, to be tossed about hither and thither, always at the mercy of those who have wills. i should call the strength of will the test of a young man's possibilities. can he will strong enough, and hold whatever he undertakes with an iron grip? it is the iron grip that takes the strong hold on life. what chance is there in this crowding, pushing, selfish, greedy world, where everything is pusher or pushed, for a young man with no will, no grip on life? "the truest wisdom," said napoleon, "is a resolute determination." an iron will without principle might produce a napoleon; but with character it would make a wellington or a grant, untarnished by ambition or avarice. "the undivided will 't is that compels the elements and wrings a human music from the indifferent air." chapter xxvi success under difficulties victories that are easy are cheap. those only are worth having which come as the result of hard fighting.--beecher. little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them.--washington irving. "i have here three teams that i want to get over to staten island," said a boy of twelve one day in to the innkeeper at south amboy, n. j. "if you will put us across, i'll leave with you one of my horses in pawn, and if i don't send you back six dollars within forty-eight hours you may keep the horse." the innkeeper asked the reason for this novel proposition, and learned that the lad's father had contracted to get the cargo of a vessel stranded near sandy hook, and take it to new york in lighters. the boy had been sent with three wagons, six horses, and three men, to carry the cargo across a sand-spit to the lighters. the work accomplished, he had started with only six dollars to travel a long distance home over the jersey sands, and reached south amboy penniless. "i'll do it," said the innkeeper, as he looked into the bright honest eyes of the boy. the horse was soon redeemed. "my son," said this same boy's mother, on the first of may, , when he asked her to lend him one hundred dollars to buy a boat, having imbibed a strong liking for the sea; "on the twenty-seventh of this month you will be sixteen years old. if, by that time, you will plow, harrow, and plant with corn the eight-acre lot, i will advance you the money." the field was rough and stony, but the work was done in time, and well done. from this small beginning cornelius vanderbilt laid the foundation of a colossal fortune. in vanderbilt owned two or three of the finest coasting schooners in new york harbor, and had a capital of nine thousand dollars. seeing that steam-vessels would soon win supremacy over those carrying sails only, he gave up his fine business to become the captain of a steamboat at one thousand dollars a year. for twelve years he ran between new york city and new brunswick, n. j. in he began business as a steamboat owner, in the face of opposition so bitter that he lost his last dollar. but the tide turned, and he prospered so rapidly that he at length owned over a hundred steamboats. he early identified himself with the growing railroad interests of the country, and became the richest man of his day in america. barnum began the race of business life barefoot, for at the age of fifteen he was obliged to buy on credit the shoes he wore at his father's funeral. he was a remarkable example of success under difficulties. there was no keeping him down; no opposition daunted him. "eloquence must have been born with you," said a friend to j. p. curran. "indeed, my dear sir, it was not," replied the orator; "it was born some three and twenty years and some months after me." speaking of his first attempt at a debating club, he said: "i stood up, trembling through every fiber; but remembering that in this i was but imitating tully, i took courage and had actually proceeded almost as far as 'mr. chairman,' when, to my astonishment and terror, i perceived that every eye was turned on me. there were only six or seven present, and the room could not have contained as many more; yet was it, to my panic-stricken imagination, as if i were the central object in nature, and assembled millions were gazing upon me in breathless expectation. i became dismayed and dumb. my friends cried, 'hear him!' but there was nothing to hear." he was nicknamed "orator mum," and well did he deserve the title until he ventured to stare in astonishment at a speaker who was "culminating chronology by the most preposterous anachronisms." "i doubt not," said the annoyed speaker, "that 'orator mum' possesses wonderful talents for eloquence, but i would recommend him to show it in future by some more popular method than his silence." stung by the taunt, curran rose and gave the man a "piece of his mind," speaking fluently in his anger. encouraged by this success, he took great pains to become a good speaker. he corrected his habit of stuttering by reading favorite passages aloud every day slowly and distinctly, and spoke at every opportunity. bunyan wrote his "pilgrim's progress" on the untwisted papers which were used to cork the bottles of milk brought for his meals. gifford wrote his first copy of a mathematical work, when a cobbler's apprentice, on small scraps of leather; and rittenhouse, the astronomer, first calculated eclipses on his plow handle. david livingstone at ten years of age was put into a cotton factory near glasgow. out of his first week's wages he bought a latin grammar, and studied in the night schools for years. he would sit up and study till midnight unless his mother drove him to bed, notwithstanding he had to be at the factory at six in the morning. he mastered vergil and horace in this way, and read extensively, besides studying botany. so eager for knowledge was he, that he would place his book before him on the spinning-jenny, and amid the deafening roar of machinery would pore over its pages. "all the performances of human art, at which we look with praise and wonder," says johnson, "are instances of the resistless force of perseverance: it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united with canals. if a man was to compare the effect of a single stroke of the pickax, or of one impression of the spade, with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are leveled, and oceans bounded, by the slender force of human beings." great men never wait for opportunities; they make them. nor do they wait for facilities or favoring circumstances; they seize upon whatever is at hand, work out their problem, and master the situation. a young man determined and willing will find a way or make one. a franklin does not require elaborate apparatus; he can bring electricity from the clouds with a common kite. great men have found no royal road to their triumph. it is always the old route, by way of industry and perseverance. the farmer boy, elihu b. washburn, taught school at ten dollars per month, and early learned the lesson that it takes one hundred cents to make a dollar. in after years he fought "steals" in congress, until he was called the "watchdog of the treasury." when elias howe, harassed by want and woe, was in london completing his first sewing-machine, he had frequently to borrow money to live on. he bought beans and cooked them himself. he also borrowed money to send his wife back to america. he sold his first machine for five pounds, although it was worth fifty, and then he pawned his letters patent to pay his expenses home. the boy arkwright begins barbering in a cellar, but dies worth a million and a half. the world treated his novelties just as it treats everybody's novelties--made infinite objection, mustered all the impediments, but he snapped his fingers at their objections, and lived to become honored and wealthy. there is scarcely a great truth or doctrine but has had to fight its way to public recognition in the face of detraction, calumny, and persecution. nearly every great discovery or invention that has blessed mankind has had to fight its way to recognition, even against the opposition of the most progressive men. william h. prescott was a remarkable example of what a boy with "no chance" can do. while at college, he lost one eye by a hard piece of bread thrown during a "biscuit battle," and the other eye became almost useless. but the boy would not lead a useless life. he set his heart upon being a historian, and turned all his energies in that direction. by the aid of others' eyes, he spent ten years studying before he even decided upon a particular theme for his first book. then he spent ten years more, poring over old archives and manuscripts, before he published his "ferdinand and isabella." what a lesson in his life for young men! what a rebuke to those who have thrown away their opportunities and wasted their lives! "galileo with an opera-glass," said emerson, "discovered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena than any one since with the great telescopes. columbus found the new world in an undecked boat." surroundings which men call unfavorable can not prevent the unfolding of your powers. from among the rock-ribbed hills of new hampshire sprang the greatest of american orators and statesmen, daniel webster. from the crowded ranks of toil, and homes to which luxury is a stranger, have often come the leaders and benefactors of our race. where shall we find an illustration more impressive than in abraham lincoln, whose life, career, and death might be chanted by a greek chorus as at once the prelude and the epilogue of the most imperial theme of modern times? born as lowly as the son of god, in a hovel; of what real parentage we know not; reared in penury, squalor, with no gleam of light, nor fair surrounding; a young manhood vexed by weird dreams and visions; with scarcely a natural grace; singularly awkward, ungainly even among the uncouth about him: it was reserved for this remarkable character, late in life, to be snatched from obscurity, raised to supreme command at a supreme moment, and intrusted with the destiny of a nation. the great leaders of his party were made to stand aside; the most experienced and accomplished men of the day, men like seward, and chase, and sumner, statesmen famous and trained, were sent to the rear, while this strange figure was brought by unseen hands to the front, and given the reins of power. _there is no open door to the temple of success_. everyone who enters makes his own door, which closes behind him to all others, not even permitting his own children to pass. not in the brilliant salon, not in the tapestried library, not in ease and competence, is genius born and nurtured; but often in adversity and destitution, amidst the harassing cares of a straitened household, in bare and fireless garrets. amid scenes unpropitious, repulsive, wretched, have men labored, studied, and trained themselves, until they have at last emanated from the gloom of that obscurity the shining lights of their times; have become the companions of kings, the guides and teachers of their kind, and exercised an influence upon the thought of the world amounting to a species of intellectual legislation. "what does he know," said a sage, "who has not suffered?" schiller produced his greatest tragedies in the midst of physical suffering almost amounting to torture. handel was never greater than when, warned by palsy of the approach of death, and struggling with distress and suffering, he sat down to compose the great works which have made his name immortal in music. mozart composed his great operas, and last of all his "requiem," when oppressed by debt and struggling with a fatal disease. beethoven produced his greatest works amidst gloomy sorrow, when oppressed by almost total deafness. perhaps no one ever battled harder to overcome obstacles which would have disheartened most men than demosthenes. he had such a weak voice, and such an impediment in his speech, and was so short of breath, that he could scarcely get through a single sentence without stopping to rest. all his first attempts were nearly drowned by the hisses, jeers, and scoffs of his audiences. his first effort that met with success was against his guardian, who had defrauded him, and whom he compelled to refund a part of his fortune. he was so discouraged by his defeats that he determined to give up forever all attempts at oratory. one of his auditors, however, believed the young man had something in him, and encouraged him to persevere. he accordingly appeared again in public, but was hissed down as before. as he withdrew, hanging his head in great confusion, a noted actor, satyrus, encouraged him still further to try to overcome his impediment. he stammered so much that he could not pronounce some of the letters at all, and his breath would give out before he could get through a sentence. finally, he determined to be an orator at any cost. he went to the seashore and practised amid the roar of the breakers with small pebbles in his mouth, in order to overcome his stammering, and at the same time accustom himself to the hisses and tumults of his audience. he overcame his short breath by practising while running up steep and difficult places on the shore. his awkward gestures were also corrected by long and determined drill before a mirror. columbus was dismissed as a fool from court after court, but he pushed his suit against an incredulous and ridiculing world. rebuffed by kings, scorned by queens, he did not swerve a hair's breadth from the overmastering purpose which dominated his soul. the words "new world" were graven upon his heart; and reputation, ease, pleasure, position, life itself if need be, must be sacrificed. threats, ridicule, ostracism, storms, leaky vessels, mutiny of sailors, could not shake his mighty purpose. you can not keep a determined man from success. place stumbling-blocks in his way and he takes them for stepping-stones, and on them will climb to greatness. take away his money, and he makes spurs of his poverty to urge him on. cripple him, and he writes the waverley novels. all that is great and noble and true in the history of the world is the result of infinite painstaking, perpetual plodding, of common every-day industry. roger bacon, one of the profoundest thinkers the world has produced, was terribly persecuted for his studies in natural philosophy, yet he persevered and won success. he was accused of dealing in magic, his books were burned in public, and he was kept in prison for ten years. even our own revered washington was mobbed in the streets because he would not pander to the clamor of the people and reject the treaty which mr. jay had arranged with great britain. but he remained firm, and the people adopted his opinion. the duke of wellington was mobbed in the streets of london and his windows were broken while his wife lay dead in the house; but the "iron duke" never faltered in his course, or swerved a hair's breadth from his purpose. william phipps, when a young man, heard some sailors on the street, in boston, talking about a spanish ship wrecked off the bahama islands, which was supposed to have money on board. young phipps determined to find it. he set out at once, and, after many hardships, discovered the lost treasure. he then heard of another ship, which had been wrecked off port de la plata many years before. he set sail for england and importuned charles ii for aid. to his delight the king fitted up the ship _rose algier_ for him. he searched and searched for a long time in vain, and at length had to return to england to repair his vessel. james ii was then on the throne, and phipps had to wait for four years before he could raise money to return. his crew mutinied and threatened to throw him overboard, but he turned the ship's guns on them. one day an indian diver went down for a curious sea plant and saw several cannon lying on the bottom. they proved to belong to the wreck. he had nothing but dim traditions to guide him, but he returned to england with $ , , . a constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to win success in spite of every barrier, is the price of all great achievements. the man who has not fought his way up to his own loaf, and does not bear the scar of desperate conflict, does not know the highest meaning of success. the money acquired by those who have thus struggled upward to success is not their only, or indeed their chief reward. when, after years of toil, of opposition, of ridicule, of repeated failure, cyrus w. field placed his hand upon the telegraph instrument ticking a message under the sea, think you that the electric thrill passed no further than the tips of his fingers? when thomas a. edison demonstrated that the electric light had at last been developed into a commercial success, do you suppose those bright rays failed to illuminate the inmost recesses of his soul? chapter xxvii uses of obstacles nature, when she adds difficulties, adds brains.--emerson. many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties.--spurgeon. the good are better made by ill, as odors crushed are sweeter still. rogers. though losses and crosses be lessons right severe, there's wit there ye'll get there, ye'll find no other where. burns. "adversity is the prosperity of the great." "kites rise against, not with, the wind." "many and many a time since," said harriet martineau, referring to her father's failure in business, "have we said that, but for that loss of money, we might have lived on in the ordinary provincial method of ladies with small means, sewing and economizing and growing narrower every year; whereas, by being thrown, while it was yet time, on our own resources, we have worked hard and usefully, won friends, reputation, and independence, seen the world abundantly, abroad and at home; in short, have truly lived instead of vegetating." two of the three greatest epic poets of the world were blind,--homer and milton; while the third, dante, was in his later years nearly, if not altogether, blind. it almost seems as though some great characters had been physically crippled in certain respects so that they would not dissipate their energy, but concentrate it all in one direction. a distinguished investigator in science said that when he encountered an apparently insuperable obstacle, he usually found himself upon the brink of some discovery. "returned with thanks" has made many an author. failure often leads a man to success by arousing his latent energy, by firing a dormant purpose, by awakening powers which were sleeping. men of mettle turn disappointments into helps as the oyster turns into pearl the sand which annoys it. "let the adverse breath of criticism be to you only what the blast of the storm wind is to the eagle,--a force against him that lifts him higher." a kite would not fly unless it had a string tying it down. it is just so in life. the man who is tied down by half a dozen blooming responsibilities and their mother will make a higher and stronger flight than the bachelor who, having nothing to keep him steady, is always floundering in the mud. when napoleon's school companions made sport of him on account of his humble origin and poverty he devoted himself entirely to books, and, quickly rising above them in scholarship, commanded their respect. soon he was regarded as the brightest ornament of the class. "to make his way at the bar," said an eminent jurist, "a young man must live like a hermit and work like a horse. there is nothing that does a young lawyer so much good as to be half starved." thousands of men of great native ability have been lost to the world because they have not had to wrestle with obstacles, and to struggle under difficulties sufficient to stimulate into activity their dormant powers. no effort is too dear which helps us along the line of our proper career. poverty and obscurity of origin may impede our progress, but it is only like the obstruction of ice or débris in the river temporarily forcing the water into eddies, where it accumulates strength and a mighty reserve which ultimately sweeps the obstruction impetuously to the sea. poverty and obscurity are not insurmountable obstacles, but they often act as a stimulus to the naturally indolent, and develop a firmer fiber of mind, a stronger muscle and stamina of body. if the germ of the seed has to struggle to push its way up through the stones and hard sod, to fight its way up to sunlight and air, and then to wrestle with storm and tempest, with snow and frost, the fiber of its timber will be all the tougher and stronger. there is good philosophy in the injunction to love our enemies, for they are often our best friends in disguise. they tell us the truth when friends flatter. their biting sarcasm and scathing rebuke are mirrors which reveal us to ourselves. these unkind stings and thrusts are often spurs which urge us on to grander success and nobler endeavor. friends cover our faults and rarely rebuke; enemies drag out to the light all our weaknesses without mercy. we dread these thrusts and exposures as we do the surgeon's knife, but are the better for them. they reach depths before untouched, and we are led to resolve to redeem ourselves from scorn and inferiority. we are the victors of our opponents. they have developed in us the very power by which we overcome them. without their opposition we could never have braced and anchored and fortified ourselves, as the oak is braced and anchored for its thousand battles with the tempests. our trials, our sorrows, and our griefs develop us in a similar way. the man who has triumphed over difficulties bears the signs of victory in his face. an air of triumph is seen in every movement. john calvin, who made a theology for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was tortured with disease for many years, and so was robert hall. the great men who have lifted the world to a higher level were not developed in easy circumstances, but were rocked in the cradle of difficulties and pillowed on hardships. "the gods look on no grander sight than an honest man struggling with adversity." "then i must learn to sing better," said anaximander, when told that the very boys laughed at his singing. strong characters, like the palm-tree, seem to thrive best when most abused. men who have stood up bravely under great misfortune for years are often unable to bear prosperity. their good fortune takes the spring out of their energy, as the torrid zone enervates races accustomed to a vigorous climate. some people never come to themselves until baffled, rebuffed, thwarted, defeated, crushed, in the opinion of those around them. trials unlock their virtues; defeat is the threshold of their victory. it is defeat that turns bone to flint; it is defeat that turns gristle to muscle; it is defeat that makes men invincible; it is defeat that has made those heroic natures that are now in the ascendency, and that has given the sweet law of liberty instead of the bitter law of oppression. difficulties call out great qualities, and make greatness possible. how many centuries of peace would have developed a grant? few knew lincoln until the great weight of the war showed his character. a century of peace would never have produced a bismarck. perhaps phillips and garrison would never have been known to history had it not been for slavery. "will he not make a great painter?" was asked in regard to an artist fresh from his italian tour. "no, never," replied northcote. "why not?" "because he has an income of six thousand pounds a year." in the sunshine of wealth a man is, as a rule, warped too much to become an artist of high merit. he should have some great thwarting difficulty to struggle against. a drenching shower of adversity would straighten his fibers out again. the best tools receive their temper from fire, their edge from grinding; the noblest characters are developed in a similar way. the harder the diamond, the more brilliant the luster, and the greater the friction necessary to bring it out. only its own dust is hard enough to make this most precious stone reveal its full beauty. the spark in the flint would sleep forever but for friction; the fire in man would never blaze but for antagonism. suddenly, with much jarring and jolting, an electric car came to a standstill just in front of a heavy truck that was headed in an opposite direction. the huge truck wheels were sliding uselessly round on the car tracks that were wet and slippery from rain. all the urging of the teamster and the straining of the horses were in vain,--until the motorman quietly tossed a shovelful of sand on the track under the heavy wheels, and then the truck lumbered on its way. "friction is a very good thing," remarked a passenger. the philosopher kant observed that a dove, inasmuch as the only obstacle it has to overcome is the resistance of the air, might suppose that if only the air were out of the way it could fly with greater rapidity and ease. yet if the air were withdrawn, and the bird should try to fly in a vacuum, it would fall instantly to the ground, unable to fly at all. the very element that offers the opposition to flying is at the same time the condition of any flight whatever. emergencies make giant men. but for our civil war the names of its grand heroes would not be written among the greatest of our time. the effort or struggle to climb to a higher place in life has strength and dignity in it, and cannot fail to leave us stronger, even though we may never reach the position we desire, or secure the prize we seek. from an aimless, idle, and useless brain, emergencies often call out powers and virtues before unknown and unsuspected. how often we see a young man develop astounding ability and energy after the death of a parent, or the loss of a fortune, or after some other calamity has knocked the props and crutches from under him. the prison has roused the slumbering fire in many a noble mind. "robinson crusoe" was written in prison. the "pilgrim's progress" appeared in bedford jail, sir walter raleigh wrote "the history of the world" during his imprisonment of thirteen years. luther translated the bible while confined in the castle of wartburg. for twenty years dante worked in exile, and even under sentence of death. take two acorns from the same tree, as nearly alike as possible; plant one on a hill by itself, and the other in the dense forest, and watch them grow. the oak standing alone is exposed to every storm. its roots reach out in every direction, clutching the rocks and piercing deep into the earth. every rootlet lends itself to steady the growing giant, as if in anticipation of fierce conflict with the elements. sometimes its upward growth seems checked for years, but all the while it has been expending its energy in pushing a root across a large rock to gain a firmer anchorage. then it shoots proudly aloft again, prepared to defy the hurricane. the gales which sport so rudely with its wide branches find more than their match, and only serve still further to toughen every minutest fiber from pith to bark. the acorn planted in the deep forest, on the other hand, shoots up a weak, slender sapling. shielded by its neighbors, it feels no need of spreading its roots far and wide for support. take two boys, as nearly alike as possible. place one in the country away from the hothouse culture and refinements of the city, with only the district school, the sunday-school, and a few books. remove wealth and props of every kind; and, if he has the right sort of material in him, he will thrive. every obstacle overcome lends him strength for the next conflict. if he falls, he rises with more determination than before. like a rubber ball, the harder the obstacle he meets the higher he rebounds. obstacles and opposition are but apparatus of the gymnasium in which the fibers of his manhood are developed. he compels respect and recognition from those who have ridiculed his poverty. put the other boy in a vanderbilt family. give him french and german nurses; gratify his every wish. place him under the tutelage of great masters and send him to harvard. give him thousands a year for spending money, and let him travel extensively. the two meet. the city lad is ashamed of his country brother. the plain, threadbare clothes, hard hands, tawny face, and awkward manner of the country boy make sorry contrast with the genteel appearance of the other. the poor boy bemoans his hard lot, regrets that he has "no chance in life," and envies the city youth. he thinks that it is a cruel providence that places such a wide gulf between them. they meet again as men, but how changed! it is as easy to distinguished the sturdy, self-made man from the one who has been propped up all his life by wealth, position, and family influence, as it is for the shipbuilder to tell the difference between the plank from the rugged mountain oak and one from the sapling of the forest. when god wants to educate a man, he does not send him to school to the graces, but to the necessities. through the pit and the dungeon joseph came to a throne. we are not conscious of the mighty cravings of our half divine humanity; we are not aware of the god within us until some chasm yawns which must be filled, or till the rending asunder of our affections forces us to become conscious of a need. st. paul in his roman cell; john huss led to the stake at constance; tyndale dying in his prison at amsterdam; milton, amid the incipient earthquake throes of revolution, teaching two little boys in aldgate street; david livingstone, worn to a shadow, dying in a negro hut in central africa, alone--what failures they might all have seemed to themselves to be, yet what mighty purposes was god working out by their apparent humiliations! two highwaymen chancing once to pass a gibbet, one of them exclaimed: "what a fine profession ours would be if there were no gibbets!" "tut, you blockhead," replied the other, "gibbets are the making of us; for, if there were no gibbets, every one would be a highwayman." just so with every art, trade, or pursuit; it is the difficulties that scare and keep out unworthy competitors. "success grows out of struggles to overcome difficulties," says smiles. "if there were no difficulties there would be no success. in this necessity for exertion we find the chief source of human advancement,--the advancement of individuals as of nations. it has led to most of the mechanical inventions and improvements of the age." "stick your claws into me," said mendelssohn to his critics when entering the birmingham orchestra. "don't tell me what you like, but what you don't like." john hunter said that the art of surgery would never advance until professional men had the courage to publish their failures as well as their successes. "young men need to be taught not to expect a perfectly smooth and easy way to the objects of their endeavor or ambition," says dr. peabody. "seldom does one reach a position with which he has reason to be satisfied without encountering difficulties and what might seem discouragements. but if they are properly met, they are not what they seem, and may prove to be helps, not hindrances. there is no more helpful and profiting exercise than surmounting obstacles." it was in the madrid jail that cervantes wrote "don quixote." he was so poor that he could not even get paper during the last of his writing, and had to write on scraps of leather. a rich spaniard was asked to help him, but replied: "heaven forbid that his necessities should be relieved; it is his poverty that makes the world rich." "he has the stuff in him to make a good musician," said beethoven of rossini, "if he had only been well flogged when a boy; but he is spoiled by the ease with which he composes." we do our best while fighting desperately to attain what the heart covets. waters says that the struggle to obtain knowledge and to advance one's self in the world strengthens the mind, disciplines the faculties, matures the judgment, promotes self-reliance, and gives one independence of thought and force of character. kossuth called himself "a tempest-tossed soul, whose eyes have been sharpened by affliction." as soon as young eagles can fly the old birds tumble them out and tear the down and feathers from their nest. the rude and rough experience of the eaglet fits him to become the bold king of birds, fierce and expert in pursuing his prey. boys who are bound out, crowded out, kicked out, usually "turn out," while those who do not have these disadvantages frequently fail to "come out." "it was not the victories but the defeats of my life which have strengthened me," said the aged sidenham poyntz. almost from the dawn of history, oppression has been the lot of the hebrews, yet they have given the world its noblest songs, its wisest proverbs, its sweetest music. with them persecution seems to bring prosperity. they thrive where others would starve. they hold the purse-strings of many nations. to them hardship has been "like spring mornings, frosty but kindly, the cold of which will kill the vermin, but will let the plant live." in one of the battles of the crimea a cannon-ball struck inside the fort, crashing through a beautiful garden. but from the ugly chasm there burst forth a spring of water which ever afterward flowed a living fountain. from the ugly gashes which misfortunes and sorrows make in our hearts, perennial fountains of rich experience and new joys often spring. don't lament and grieve over lost wealth. the creator may see something grand and mighty which even he can not bring out as long as your wealth stands in the way. you must throw away the crutches of riches and stand upon your own feet, and develop the long unused muscles of manhood. god may see a rough diamond in you which only the hard hits of poverty can polish. god knows where the richest melodies of our lives are, and what drill and what discipline are necessary to bring them out. the frost, the snows, the tempests, the lightnings are the rough teachers that bring the tiny acorn to the sturdy oak. fierce winters are as necessary to it as long summers. it is its half-century's struggle with the elements for existence, wrestling with the storm, fighting for its life from the moment that it leaves the acorn until it goes into the ship, that gives it value. without this struggle it would have been characterless, staminaless, nerveless, and its grain would have never been susceptible of high polish. the most beautiful as well as the strongest woods are found not in tropical climates, but in severe climates, where they have to fight the frosts and the winter's cold. many a man has never found himself until he has lost his all. adversity stripped him only to discover him. obstacles, hardships, are the chisel and mallet which shape the strong life into beauty. the rough ledge on the hillside complains of the drill, of the blasting which disturbs its peace of centuries: it is not pleasant to be rent with powder, to be hammered and squared by the quarryman. but look again: behold the magnificent statue, the monument, chiseled into grace and beauty, telling its grand story of valor in the public square for centuries. the statue would have slept in the marble forever but for the blasting, the chiseling, and the polishing. the angel of our higher and nobler selves would remain forever unknown in the rough quarries of our lives but for the blastings of affliction, the chiseling of obstacles, and the sand-papering of a thousand annoyances. who has not observed the patience, the calm endurance, the sweet loveliness chiseled out of some rough life by the reversal of fortune or by some terrible affliction? how many business men have made their greatest strides toward manhood, and developed their greatest virtues when reverses of fortune have swept away everything they had in the world; when disease had robbed them of all they held dear in life! often we can not see the angel in the quarry of our lives, the statue of manhood, until the blasts of misfortune have rent the ledge, and difficulties and obstacles have squared and chiseled the granite blocks into grace and beauty. many a man has been ruined into salvation. the lightning which smote his dearest hopes opened up a new rift in his dark life, and gave him glimpses of himself which, until then, he had never seen. the grave buried his dearest hopes, but uncovered in his nature possibilities of patience, endurance, and hope which he never before dreamed he possessed. "adversity is a severe instructor," says edmund burke, "set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves, as he loves us better too. he that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. our antagonist is our helper. this conflict with difficulty makes us acquainted with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. it will not suffer us to be superficial." men who have the right kind of material in them will assert their personality and rise in spite of a thousand adverse circumstances. you can not keep them down. every obstacle seems only to add to their ability to get on. the greatest men will ever be those who have risen from the ranks. it is said that there are ten thousand chances to one that genius, talent, and virtue shall issue from a farmhouse rather than from a palace. adversity exasperates fools, dejects cowards, but draws out the faculties of the wise and industrious, puts the modest to the necessity of trying their skill, awes the opulent, and makes the idle industrious. the storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill, and fortitude of the voyager. a man upon whom continuous sunshine falls is like the earth in august: he becomes parched and dry and hard and close-grained. men have drawn from adversity the elements of greatness. beethoven was almost totally deaf and burdened with sorrow when he produced his greatest works. schiller wrote his best books in great bodily suffering. he was not free from pain for fifteen years. milton wrote his leading productions when blind, poor, and sick. "who best can suffer," said he, "best can do." bunyan said that, if it were lawful, he could even pray for greater trouble, for the greater comfort's sake. not until the breath of the plague had blasted a hundred thousand lives, and the great fire had licked up cheap, shabby, wicked london, did she arise, phoenix-like, from her ashes and ruin, a grand and mighty city. true salamanders live best in the furnace of persecution. many of our best poets "are cradled into poetry by wrong, and learn in suffering what they teach in song." byron was stung into a determination to go to the top by a scathing criticism of his first book, "hours of idleness," published when he was but nineteen years of age. macaulay said, "there is scarce an instance in history of so sudden a rise to so dizzy an eminence as byron reached." in a few years he stood by the side of such men as scott, southey, and campbell, and died at thirty-seven, that age so fatal to genius. many an orator like "stuttering jack curran," or "orator mum," as he was once called, has been spurred into eloquence by ridicule and abuse. this is the crutch age. "helps" and "aids" are advertised everywhere. we have institutes, colleges, universities, teachers, books, libraries, newspapers, magazines. our thinking is done for us. our problems are all worked out in "explanations" and "keys." our boys are too often tutored through college with very little study. "short roads" and "abridged methods" are characteristic of the century. ingenious methods are used everywhere to get the drudgery out of the college course. newspapers give us our politics, and preachers our religion. self-help and self-reliance are getting old-fashioned. nature, as if conscious of delayed blessings, has rushed to man's relief with her wondrous forces, and undertakes to do the world's drudgery and emancipate him from eden's curse. but do not misinterpret her edict. she emancipates from the lower only to call to the higher. she does not bid the world go and play while she does the work. she emancipates the muscles only to employ the brain and heart. the most beautiful as well as the strongest characters are not developed in warm climates, where man finds his bread ready made on trees, and where exertion is a great effort, but rather in a trying climate and on a stubborn soil. it is not chance that returns to the hindoo ryot a penny and to the american laborer a dollar for his daily toil; that makes mexico with its mineral wealth poor, and new england with its granite and ice rich. it is rugged necessity, it is the struggle to obtain; it is poverty, the priceless spur, that develops the stamina of manhood, and calls the race out of barbarism. intelligent labor found the world a wilderness and has made it a garden. as the sculptor thinks only of the angel imprisoned in the marble block, so nature cares only for the man or woman shut up in the human being. the sculptor cares nothing for the block as such; nature has little regard for the mere lump of breathing clay. the sculptor will chip off all unnecessary material to set free the angel. nature will chip and pound us remorselessly to bring out our possibilities. she will strip us of wealth, humble our pride, humiliate our ambition, let us down from the ladder of fame, will discipline us in a thousand ways, if she can develop a little character. everything must give way to that. "the hero is not fed on sweets, daily his own heart he eats; chambers of the great are jails, and head-winds right for royal sails." then welcome each rebuff, that turns earth's smoothness rough, each sting, that bids not sit nor stand but go. browning. chapter xxviii decision resolve, and thou art free.--longfellow. the heaviest charged words in our language are those briefest ones, "yes" and "no." one stands for the surrender of the will, the other for denial; one stands for gratification, the other for character. a stout "no" means a stout character, the ready "yes" a weak one, gild it as we may.--t. t. munger. the world is a market where everything is marked at a set price, and whatever we buy with our time, labor, or ingenuity, whether riches, ease, fame, integrity, or knowledge, we must stand by our decision, and not like children, when we have purchased one thing, repine that we do not possess another we did not buy.--mathews. a man must master his undertaking and not let it master him. he must have the power to decide instantly on which side he is going to make his mistakes.--p. d. armour. when rome was besieged by the gauls in the time of the republic, the romans were so hard pressed that they consented to purchase immunity with gold. they were in the act of weighing it, a legend tells us, when camillus appeared on the scene, threw his sword into the scales in place of the ransom, and declared that the romans should not purchase peace, but would win it with the sword. this act of daring and prompt decision so roused the romans that they triumphantly swept from the sacred soil the enemy of their peace. in an emergency, the arrival of a prompt, decided, positive man, who will do something, although it may be wrong, changes the face of everything. such a man comes upon the scene like a refreshing breeze blown down from the mountain top. he is a tonic to the hesitating, bewildered crowd. when antiochus epiphanes invaded egypt, which was then under the protection of rome, the romans sent an ambassador who met antiochus near alexandria and commanded him to withdraw. the invader gave an evasive reply. the brave roman swept a circle around the king with his sword, and forbade his crossing the line until he had given his answer. by the prompt decision of the intrepid ambassador the invader was led to withdraw, and war was prevented. the prompt decision of the romans won them many a battle, and made them masters of the world. all the great achievements in the history of the world are the results of quick and steadfast decision. men who have left their mark upon their century have been men of great and prompt decision. an undecided man, a man who is ever balancing between two opinions, forever debating which of two courses he will pursue, proclaims by his indecision that he can not control himself, that he was meant to be possessed by others; he is not a man, only a satellite. the decided man, the prompt man, does not wait for favorable circumstances; he does not submit to events; events must submit to him. the vacillating man is ever at the mercy of the opinion of the man who talked with him last. he may see the right, but he drifts toward the wrong. if he decides upon a course he only follows it until somebody opposes it. when julius caesar came to the rubicon, which formed the boundary of italia,--"the sacred and inviolable,"--even his great decision wavered at the thought of invading a territory which no general was allowed to enter without the permission of the senate. but his alternative was "destroy myself, or destroy my country," and his intrepid mind did not waver long. "the die is cast," he said, as he dashed into the stream at the head of his legions. the whole history of the world was changed by that moment's decision. the man who said, "i came, i saw, i conquered," could not hesitate long. he, like napoleon, had the power to choose one course, and sacrifice every conflicting plan on the instant. when he landed with his troops in britain, the inhabitants resolved never to surrender. caesar's quick mind saw that he must commit his soldiers to victory or death. in order to cut off all hope of retreat, he burned all the ships which had borne them to the shores of britain. there was no hope of return, it was victory or death. this action was the key to the character and triumphs of this great warrior. satan's sublime decision in "paradise lost," after his hopeless banishment from heaven, excites a feeling akin to admiration. after a few moments of terrible suspense he resumes his invincible spirit and expresses that sublime line: "what matter where, if i be still the same?" that power to decide instantly the best course to pursue, and to sacrifice every opposing motive; and, when once sacrificed, to silence them forever and not allow them continually to plead their claims and distract us from our single decided course, is one of the most potent forces in winning success. to hesitate is sometimes to be lost. in fact, the man who is forever twisting and turning, backing and filling, hesitating and dawdling, shuffling and parleying, weighing and balancing, splitting hairs over non-essentials, listening to every new motive which presents itself, will never accomplish anything. there is not positiveness enough in him; negativeness never accomplishes anything. the negative man creates no confidence, he only invites distrust. but the positive man, the decided man, is a power in the world, and stands for something. you can measure him, gauge him. you can estimate the work that his energy will accomplish. it is related of alexander the great that, when asked how it was that he had conquered the world, he replied, "by not wavering." when the packet ship _stephen whitney_ struck, at midnight, on an irish cliff, and clung for a few moments to the cliff, all the passengers who leaped instantly upon the rock were saved. the positive step landed them in safety. those who lingered were swept off by the returning wave, and engulfed forever. the vacillating man is never a prompt man, and without promptness no success is possible. great opportunities not only come seldom into the most fortunate life, but also are often quickly gone. "a man without decision," says john foster, "can never be said to belong to himself; since if he dared to assert that he did, the puny force of some cause, about as powerful as a spider, may make a seizure of the unhappy boaster the very next minute, and contemptuously exhibit the futility of the determination by which he was to have proved the independence of his understanding and will. he belongs to whatever can make capture of him; and one thing after another vindicates its right to him by arresting him while he is trying to go on; as twigs and chips floating near the edge of a river are intercepted by every weed and whirled into every little eddy." the decided man not only has the advantage of the time saved from dillydallying and procrastination, but he also saves the energy and vital force which is wasted by the perplexed man who takes up every argument on one side and then on the other, and weighs them until the two sides hang in equipoise, with no prepondering motive to enable him to decide. he is in stable equilibrium, and so does not move at all of his own volition, but moves very easily at the slightest volition of another. yet there is not a man living who might not be a prompt and decided man if he would only learn always to act quickly. the punctual man, the decided man, can do twice as much as the undecided and dawdling man who never quite knows what he wants. prompt decision saved napoleon and grant and their armies many a time when delay would have been fatal. napoleon used to say that although a battle might last an entire day, yet it generally turned upon a few critical minutes, in which the fate of the engagement was decided. his will, which subdued nearly the whole of europe, was as prompt and decisive in the minutest detail of command as in the greatest battle. decision of purpose and promptness of action enabled him to astonish the world with his marvelous successes. he seemed to be everywhere at once. what he could accomplish in a day surprised all who knew him. he seemed to electrify everybody about him. his invincible energy thrilled the whole army. he could rouse to immediate and enthusiastic action the dullest troops, and inspire with courage the most stupid men. the "ifs and buts," he said, "are at present out of season; and above all it must be done with speed." he would sit up all night if necessary, after riding thirty or forty leagues, to attend to correspondence, dispatches and, details. what a lesson to dawdling, shiftless, half-hearted men! "the doubt of charles v.," says motley, "changed the destinies of the civilized world." so powerful were president washington's views in determining the actions of the people, that when congress adjourned, jefferson wrote to monroe at paris: "you will see by their proceedings the truth of what i always told you,--namely, that one man outweighs them all in influence, who supports his judgment against their own and that of their representatives. republicanism resigns the vessel to the pilot." there is no vocation or occupation which does not present many difficulties, at times almost overwhelming, and the young man who allows himself to waver every time he comes to a hard place in life will not succeed. without decision there can be no concentration; and, to succeed, a man must concentrate. the undecided man can not bring himself to a focus. he dissipates his energy, scatters his forces, and executes nothing. he can not hold to one thing long enough to bring success out of it. one vocation or occupation presents its rosy side to him, he feels sure it is the thing he wants to do, and, full of enthusiasm, adopts it as his life's work. but in a few days the thorns begin to appear, his enthusiasm evaporates, and he wonders why he is so foolish as to think himself fitted for that vocation. the one which his friend adopted is much better suited to him; he drops his own and adopts the other. so he vacillates through life, captured by any new occupation which happens to appeal to him as the most desirable at the time, never using his judgment or common sense, but governed by his impressions and his feelings at the moment. such people are never led by principle. you never know where to find them; they are here to-day and there to-morrow, doing this thing and that thing, throwing away all the skill they had acquired in mastering the drudgery of the last occupation. in fact, they never go far enough in anything to get beyond the drudgery stage to the remunerative and agreeable stage, the skilful stage. they spend their lives at the beginning of occupations, which are always most agreeable. these people rarely reach the stage of competency, comfort, and contentment. there is a legend of a powerful genius who promised a lovely maiden a gift of rare value if she would go through a field of corn, and, without pausing, going backward, or wandering hither and thither, select the largest and ripest ear. the value of the gift was to be in proportion to the size and perfection of the ear. she passed by many magnificent ones, but was so eager to get the largest and most perfect that she kept on without plucking any until the ears she passed were successively smaller and smaller and more stunted. finally they became so small that she was ashamed to select one of them; and, not being allowed to go backward, she came out on the other side without any. alexander, his heart throbbing with a great purpose, conquers the world; hannibal, impelled by his hatred to the romans, even crosses the alps to compass his design. while other men are bemoaning difficulties and shrinking from dangers and obstacles, and preparing expedients, the great soul, without fuss or noise, takes the step, and lo, the mountain has been leveled and the way lies open. learn, then, to will strongly and decisively; thus fix your floating life and leave it no longer to be carried hither and thither, like a withered leaf, by every wind that blows. an undecided man is like the turnstile at a fair, which is in everybody's way but stops no one. "the secret of the whole matter was," replied amos lawrence, "we had formed the habit of prompt acting, thus taking the top of the tide; while the habit of some others was to delay till about half tide, thus getting on the flats." most of the young men and women who are lost in our cities are ruined because of their inability to say "no" to the thousand allurements and temptations which appeal to their weak passions. if they would only show a little decision at first, one emphatic "no" might silence their solicitors forever. but they are weak, they are afraid of offending, they don't like to say "no," and thus they throw down the gauntlet and are soon on the broad road to ruin. a little resolution early in life will soon conquer the right to mind one's own business. an old legend says that a fool and a wise man were journeying together, and came to a point where two ways opened before them,--one broad and beautiful, the other narrow and rough. the fool desired to take the pleasant way; the wise man knew that the difficult one was the shortest and safest, and so declared. but at last the urgency of the fool prevailed; they took the more inviting path, and were soon met by robbers, who seized their goods and made them captives. a little later both they and their captors were arrested by officers of the law and taken before the judge. then the wise man pleaded that the fool was to blame because he desired to take the wrong way. the fool pleaded that he was only a fool, and no sensible man should have heeded his counsel. the judge punished them both equally. "if sinners entice thee, consent thou not." there is no habit that so grows on the soul as irresolution. before a man knows what he has done, he has gambled his life away, and all because he has never made up his mind what he would do with it. on many of the tombstones of those who have failed in life could be read between the lines: "he dawdled," "behind time," "procrastination," "listlessness," "shiftlessness," "nervelessness," "always behind." oh, the wrecks strewn along the shores of life "just behind success," "just this side of happiness," above which the words of warning are flying! webster said of such an undecided man that "he is like the irresolution of the sea at the turn of tide. this man neither advances nor recedes; he simply hovers." such a man is at the mercy of any chance occurrence that may overtake him. his "days are lost lamenting o'er lost days." he has no power to seize the facts which confront him and compel them to serve him. to indolent, shiftless, listless people life becomes a mere shuffle of expedients. they do not realize that the habit of putting everything off puts off their manhood, their capacity, their success; their contagion infects their whole neighborhood. scott used to caution youth against the habit of dawdling, which creeps in at every crevice of unoccupied time and often ruins a bright life. "your motto must be," he said, "_hoc age_,"--do instantly. this is the only way to check the propensity to dawdling. how many hours have been wasted dawdling in bed, turning over and dreading to get up! many a career has been crippled by it. burton could not overcome this habit, and, convinced that it would ruin his success, made his servant promise before he went to bed to get him up at just such a time; the servant called, and called, and coaxed; but burton would beg him to be left a little longer. the servant, knowing that he would lose his shilling if he did not get him up, then dashed cold water into the bed between the sheets, and burton came out with a bound. when one asked a lazy young fellow what made him lie in bed so long, "i am employed," said he, "in hearing counsel every morning. _industry_ advises me to get up; _sloth_ to lie still; and they give me twenty reasons for and against. it is my part, as an impartial judge, to hear all that can be said on both sides, and by the time the cause is over dinner is ready." there is no doubt that, as a rule, great decision of character is usually accompanied by great constitutional firmness. men who have been noted for great firmness of character have usually been strong and robust. there is no quality of the mind which does not sympathize with bodily weakness, and especially is this true with the power of decision, which is usually impaired or weakened from physical suffering or any great physical debility. as a rule, it is the strong physical man who carries weight and conviction. any bodily weakness, or lassitude, or lack of tone and vigor, is, perhaps, first felt in the weakened or debilitated power of decisions. nothing will give greater confidence, and bring assistance more quickly from the bank or from a friend, than the reputation of promptness. the world knows that the prompt man's bills and notes will be paid on the day, and will trust him. "let it be your first study to teach the world that you are not wood and straw; that there is some iron in you." "let men know that what you say you will do; that your decision, once made, is final,--no wavering; that, once resolved, you are not to be allured or intimidated." some minds are so constructed that they are bewildered and dazed whenever a responsibility is thrust upon them; they have a mortal dread of deciding anything. the very effort to come to immediate and unflinching decision starts up all sorts of doubts, difficulties, and fears, and they can not seem to get light enough to decide nor courage enough to attempt to remove the obstacle. they know that hesitation is fatal to enterprise, fatal to progress, fatal to success. yet somehow they seem fated with a morbid introspection which ever holds them in suspense. they have just energy enough to weigh motives, but nothing left for the momentum of action. they analyze and analyze, deliberate, weigh, consider, ponder, but never act. how many a man can trace his downfall in life to the failure to seize his opportunity at the favorable moment, when it was within easy grasp, the nick of time, which often does not present itself but once! it was said that napoleon had an officer under him who understood the tactics of war better than his commander, but he lacked that power of rapid decision and powerful concentration which characterized the greatest military leaders perhaps of the world. there were several generals under grant who were as well skilled in war tactics, knew the country as well, were better educated, but they lacked that power of decision which made unconditional surrender absolutely imperative wherever he met the foe. grant's decision was like inexorable fate. there was no going behind it, no opening it up for reconsideration. it was his decision which voiced itself in those memorable words in the wilderness, "i propose to fight it out on these lines if it takes all summer," and which sent back the words "unconditional surrender" to general buckner, who asked him for conditions of capitulation, that gave the first confidence to the north that the rebellion was doomed. at last lincoln had a general who had the power of decision, and the north breathed easy for the first time. the man who would forge to the front in this competitive age must be a man of prompt and determined decision; like caesar, he must burn his ships behind him, and make retreat forever impossible. when he draws his sword he must throw the scabbard away, lest in a moment of discouragement and irresolution he be tempted to sheathe it. he must nail his colors to the mast as nelson did in battle, determined to sink with his ship if he can not conquer. prompt decision and sublime audacity have carried many a successful man over perilous crises where deliberation would have been ruin. "_hoc age_." chapter xxix observation as a success factor henry ward beecher was not so foolish as to think that he could get on without systematic study, and a thorough-going knowledge of the world of books. "when i first went to brooklyn," he said, "men doubted whether i could sustain myself. i replied, 'give me uninterrupted time till nine o'clock every morning, and i do not care what comes after.'" he was a hard student during four hours every morning; those who saw him after that imagined that he picked up the material for his sermons on the street. yet having said so much, it is true that much that was most vital in his preaching he did pick up on the street. "where does mr. beecher get his sermons?" every ambitious young clergyman in the country was asking, and upon one occasion he answered: "i keep my eyes open and ask questions." this is the secret of many a man's success,--keeping his eyes open and asking questions. although beecher was an omnivorous reader he did not care much for the writings of the theologians; the christ was his great model, and he knew that he did not search the writings of the sanhedrin for his sermons, but picked them up as he walked along the banks of the jordan and over the hills and through the meadows and villages of galilee. he saw that the strength of this great master's sermons was in their utter simplicity, their naturalness. beecher's sermons were very simple, healthy, and strong. they pulsated with life; they had the vigor of bright red blood in them, because, like christ's, they grew out of doors. he got them everywhere from life and nature. he picked them up in the marketplace, on wall street, in the stores. he got them from the brakeman, the mechanic, the blacksmith, the day laborer, the newsboy, the train conductor, the clerk, the lawyer, the physician, and the business man. he did not watch the progress of the great human battle from his study, as many did. he went into the thick of the fight himself. he was in the smoke and din. where the battle of life raged fiercest, there he was studying its great problems. now it was the problem of slavery; again the problem of government, or commerce, or education,--whatever touched the lives of men. he kept his hand upon the pulse of events. he was in the swim of things. the great, busy, ambitious world was everywhere throbbing for him. [illustration: henry ward beecher] when he once got a taste of the power and helpfulness which comes from the study of real life, when he saw how much more forceful and interesting actual life stories were as they were being lived than anything he could get out of any book except the bible, he was never again satisfied without illustrations fresh from the lives of the people he met every day. beecher believed a sermon a failure when it does not make a great mass of hearers go away with a new determination to make a little more of themselves, to do their work a little better, to be a little more conscientious, a little more helpful, a little more determined to do their share in the world. this great observer was not only a student of human nature, but of all nature as well. i watched him, many a time, completely absorbed in drinking in the beauties of the marvelous landscape, gathering grandeur and sublimity from the great white mountains, which he loved so well, and where he spent many summers. he always preached on sunday at the hotel where he stayed, and great crowds came from every direction to hear him. there was something in his sermons that appealed to the best in everyone who heard him. they were full of pictures of beautiful landscapes, seascapes, and entrancing sunsets. the clouds, the rain, the sunshine, and the storm were reflected in them. the flowers, the fields, the brooks, the record of creation imprinted in the rocks and the mountains were intermingled with the ferryboats, the steam-cars, orphans, calamities, accidents, all sorts of experiences and bits of life. happiness and sunshine, birds and trees alternated with the direst poverty in the slums, people on sick beds and death beds, in hospitals and in funeral processions; life pictures of successes and failures, of the discouraged, the despondent, the cheerful, the optimist and the pessimist, passed in quick succession and stamped themselves on the brains of his eager hearers. wherever he went, beecher continued his study of life through observation. nothing else was half so interesting. to him man was the greatest study in the world. to place the right values upon men, to emphasize the right thing in them, to be able to discriminate between the genuine and the false, to be able to pierce their masks and read the real man or woman behind them, he regarded as one of a clergyman's greatest accomplishments. like professor agassiz, who could see wonders in the scale of a fish or a grain of sand, beecher had an eye like the glass of a microscope, which reveals marvels of beauty in common things. he could see beauty and harmony where others saw only ugliness and discord, because he read the hidden meaning in things. like ruskin, he could see the marvelous philosophy, the divine plan, in the lowliest object. he could feel the divine presence in all created things. "an exhaustive observation," says herbert spencer, "is an element of all great success." there is no position in life where a trained eye can not be made a great success asset. "let's leave it to osler," said the physicians at a consultation where a precious life hung by a thread. then the great johns hopkins professor examined the patient. he did not ask questions. his experienced eye drew a conclusion from the slightest evidence. he watched the patient closely; his manner of breathing, the appearance of the eye,--everything was a telltale of the patient's condition, which he read as an open book. he saw symptoms which others could not see. he recommended a certain operation, which was performed, and the patient recovered. the majority of those present disagreed with him, but such was their confidence in his power to diagnose a case through symptoms and indications which escape most physicians, that they were willing to leave the whole decision to him. professor osler was called a living x-ray machine, with additional eyes in finger tips so familiar with the anatomy that they could detect a growth or displacement so small that it would escape ordinary notice. the power which inheres in a trained faculty of observation is priceless. the education which beecher got through observation, by keeping his eyes, his ears, and his mind open, meant a great deal more to him and to the world than his college education. he was not a great scholar; he did not stand nearly as high in college as some of his classmates whom he far outstripped in life, but his mind penetrated to the heart of things. lincoln was another remarkable example of the possibilities of an education through reflection upon what he observed. his mind stopped and questioned, and extracted the meaning of everything that came within its range. wherever he went, there was a great interrogation point before him. everything he saw must give up its secret before he would let it go. he had a passion for knowledge; he yearned to know the meaning of things, the philosophy underlying the common, everyday occurrences. ruskin says: "hundreds of people can talk for one who can think; but thousands can think for one who can see." i once traveled abroad with two young men, one of whom was all eyes,--nothing seemed to escape him,--and the other never saw anything. the day after leaving a city, the latter could scarcely recall anything of interest, while the former had a genius for absorbing knowledge of every kind through the eye. things so trivial that his companion did not notice them at all, meant a great deal to him. he was a poor student, but he brought home rich treasures from over the sea. the other young man was comparatively rich, and brought home almost nothing of value. while visiting luther burbank, the wizard horticulturist, in his famous garden, recently, i was much impressed by his marvelous power of seeing things. he has observed the habits of fruits and flowers to such purpose that he has performed miracles in the fields of floriculture and horticulture. stunted and ugly flowers and fruits, under the eye of this miracle worker, become marvels of beauty. george w. cortelyou was a stenographer not long ago. many people thought he would remain a stenographer, but he always kept his eyes open. he was after an opportunity. promotion was always staring him in the face. he was always looking for the next step above him. he was a shrewd observer. but for this power of seeing things quickly, of absorbing knowledge, he would never have advanced. the youth who would get on must keep his eyes open, his ears open, his mind open. he must be quick, alert, ready. i know a young turk, who has been in this country only a year, yet he speaks our language fluently. he has studied the map of our country. he knows its geography, and a great deal of our history, and much about our resources and opportunities. he said that when he landed in new york it seemed to him that he saw more opportunities in walking every block of our streets than he had ever seen in the whole of turkey. and he could not understand the lethargy, the lack of ambition, the indifference of our young men to our marvelous possibilities. the efficient man is always growing. he is always accumulating knowledge of every kind. he does not merely look with his eyes. he sees with them. he keeps his ears open. he keeps his mind open to all that is new and fresh and helpful. the majority of people do not _see_ things; they just _look_ at them. the power of keen observation is indicative of a superior mentality; for it is the mind, not the optic nerve, that really sees. most people are too lazy, mentally, to see things carefully. close observation is a powerful mental process. the mind is all the time working over the material which the eye brings it, considering, forming opinions, estimating, weighing, balancing, calculating. careless, indifferent observation does not go back of the eye. if the mind is not focused, the image is not clean-cut, and is not carried with force and distinctness enough to the brain to enable it to get at the truth and draw accurate conclusions. the observing faculty is particularly susceptible to culture, and is capable of becoming a mighty power. few people realize what a tremendous success and happiness is possible through the medium of the eye. the telegraph, the sewing machine, the telephone, the telescope, the miracles of electricity, in fact, every great invention of the past or present, every triumph of modern labor-saving machinery, every discovery in science and art, is due to the trained power of seeing things. the whole secret of a richly stored mind is alertness, sharp, keen attention, and thoughtfulness. indifference, apathy, mental lassitude and laziness are fatal to all effective observation. it does not take long to develop a habit of attention that seizes the salient points of things. it is a splendid drill for children to send them out on the street, or out of doors anywhere, just for the purpose of finding out how many things they can see in a certain given time, and how closely they can observe them. just the effort to try to see how much they can remember and bring back is a splendid drill. children often become passionately fond of this exercise, and it becomes of inestimable value in their lives. other things equal, it is the keen observer who gets ahead. go into a place of business with the eye of an eagle. let nothing escape you. ask yourself why it is that the proprietor at fifty or sixty years of age is conducting a business which a boy of eighteen or twenty ought to be able to handle better. study his employees; analyze the situation. you will find perhaps that he never knew the value of good manners in clerks. he thought a boy, if honest, would make a good salesman; but, perhaps, by gruff, uncouth manners, he is driving out of the door customers the proprietor is trying to bring in by advertisements. you will see by his show windows, perhaps, before you go into his store, that there is no business insight, no detection of the wants of possible buyers. if you keep your eyes open, you can, in a little while, find out why this man is not a greater success. you can see that a little more knowledge of human nature would have revolutionized his whole business, multiplied the receipts tenfold in a few years. you will see that this man has not studied men. he does not know them. no matter where you go, study the situation. think why the man does not do better if he is not doing well, why he remains in mediocrity all his life. if he is making a remarkable success, try to find out why. keep your eyes open, your ears open. make deductions from what you see and hear. trace difficulties; look up evidences of success or failure everywhere. it will be one of the greatest factors in your own success. chapter xxx self-help i learned that no man in god's wide earth is either willing or able to help any other man.--pestalozzi. what i am i have made myself.--humphry davy. be sure, my son, and remember that the best men always make themselves.--patrick henry. hereditary bondsmen, know ye not who would be free themselves must strike the blow? byron. who waits to have his task marked out, shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled. lowell. "colonel crockett makes room for himself!" exclaimed a backwoods congressman in answer to the exclamation of the white house usher to "make room for colonel crockett!" this remarkable man was not afraid to oppose the head of a great nation. he preferred being right to being president. though rough, uncultured, and uncouth, crockett was a man of great courage and determination. "poverty is uncomfortable, as i can testify," said james a. garfield; "but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself. in all my acquaintance i have never known a man to be drowned who was worth the saving." garfield was the youngest member of the house of representatives when he entered, but he had not been in his seat sixty days before his ability was recognized and his place conceded. he stepped to the front with the confidence of one who belonged there. he succeeded because all the world in concert could not have kept him in the background, and because when once in the front he played his part with an intrepidity and a commanding ease that were but the outward evidences of the immense reserves of energy on which it was in his power to draw. "take the place and attitude which belong to you," says emerson, "and all men acquiesce. the world must be just. it leaves every man with profound unconcern to set his own rate." "a person under the firm persuasion that he can command resources virtually has them," says livy. richard arkwright, the thirteenth child, in a hovel, with no education, no chance, gave his spinning model to the world, and put a scepter in england's right hand such as the queen never wielded. solario, a wandering gypsy tinker, fell deeply in love with the daughter of the painter coll' antonio del fiore, but was told that no one but a painter as good as the father should wed the maiden. "will you give me ten years to learn to paint, and so entitle myself to the hand of your daughter?" consent was given, coll' antonio thinking that he would never be troubled further by the gypsy. about the time that the ten years were to end the king's sister showed coll' antonio a madonna and child, which the painter extolled in terms of the highest praise. judge of his surprise on learning that solario was the artist. his great determination gained him his bride. louis philippe said he was the only sovereign in europe fit to govern, for he could black his own boots. when asked to name his family coat-of-arms, a self-made president of the united states replied, "a pair of shirtsleeves." it is not the men who have inherited most, except it be in nobility of soul and purpose, who have risen highest; but rather the men with no "start" who have won fortunes, and have made adverse circumstances a spur to goad them up the steep mount, where "fame's proud temple shines afar." to such men, every possible goal is accessible, and honest ambition has no height that genius or talent may tread, which has not felt the impress of their feet. you may leave your millions to your son, but have you really given him anything? you can not transfer the discipline, the experience, the power, which the acquisition has given you; you can not transfer the delight of achieving, the joy felt only in growth, the pride of acquisition, the character which trained habits of accuracy, method, promptness, patience, dispatch, honesty of dealing, politeness of manner have developed. you cannot transfer the skill, sagacity, prudence, foresight, which lie concealed in your wealth. it meant a great deal for you, but means nothing to your heir. in climbing to your fortune, you developed the muscle, stamina, and strength which enabled you to maintain your lofty position, to keep your millions intact. you had the power which comes only from experience, and which alone enables you to stand firm on your dizzy height. your fortune was experience to you, joy, growth, discipline, and character; to him it will be a temptation, an anxiety, which will probably dwarf him. it was wings to you, it will be a dead weight to him; to you it was education and expansion of your highest powers; to him it may mean inaction, lethargy, indolence, weakness, ignorance. you have taken the priceless spur--necessity--away from him, the spur which has goaded man to nearly all the great achievements in the history of the world. you thought it a kindness to deprive yourself in order that your son might begin where you left off. you thought to spare him the drudgery, the hardships, the deprivations, the lack of opportunities, the meager education, which you had on the old farm. but you have put a crutch into his hand instead of a staff; you have taken away from him the incentive to self-development, to self-elevation, to self-discipline and self-help, without which no real success, no real happiness, no great character is ever possible. his enthusiasm will evaporate, his energy will be dissipated, his ambition, not being stimulated by the struggle for self-elevation, will gradually die away. if you do everything for your son and fight his battles for him, you will have a weakling on your hands at twenty-one. "my life is a wreck," said the dying cyrus w. field, "my fortune gone, my home dishonored. oh, i was so unkind to edward when i thought i was being kind. if i had only had firmness enough to compel my boys to earn their living, then they would have known the meaning of money." his table was covered with medals and certificates of honor from many nations, in recognition of his great work for civilization in mooring two continents side by side in thought, of the fame he had won and could never lose. but grief shook the sands of life as he thought only of the son who had brought disgrace upon a name before unsullied; the wounds were sharper than those of a serpent's tooth. during the great financial crisis of maria mitchell, who was visiting england, asked an english lady what became of daughters when no property was left them. "they live on their brothers," was the reply. "but what becomes of the american daughters," asked the english lady, "when there is no money left?" "they earn it," was miss mitchell's reply. men who have been bolstered up all their lives are seldom good for anything in a crisis. when misfortune comes, they look around for somebody to lean upon. it the prop is not there, down they go. once down, they are as helpless as capsized turtles, or unhorsed men in armor. many a frontier boy has succeeded beyond all his expectations simply because all props were early knocked out from under him and he was obliged to stand upon his own feet. "a man's best friends are his ten fingers," said robert collyer, who brought his wife to america in the steerage. there is no manhood mill which takes in boys and turns out men. what you call "no chance" may be your only chance. don't wait for your place to be made for you; make it yourself. don't wait for somebody to give you a lift; lift yourself. henry ward beecher did not wait for a call to a big church with a large salary. he accepted the first pastorate offered him, in a little town near cincinnati. he became literally the light of the church, for he trimmed the lamps, kindled the fires, swept the rooms, and rang the bell. his salary was only about $ a year,--but he knew that a fine church and great salary can not make a great man. it was work and opportunity that he wanted. he felt that if there were anything in him work would bring it out. when beethoven was examining the work of moscheles, he found written at the end, "finis, with god's help." he wrote under it, "man, help yourself." a young man stood listlessly watching some anglers on a bridge. he was poor and dejected. at length, approaching a basket filled with fish, he sighed, "if now i had these i would be happy. i could sell them and buy food and lodgings." "i will give you just as many and just as good," said the owner, who chanced to overhear his words, "if you will do me a trifling favor." "and what is that?" asked the other. "only to tend this line till i come back; i wish to go on a short errand." the proposal was gladly accepted. the old man was gone so long that the young man began to get impatient. meanwhile the fish snapped greedily at the hook, and he lost all his depression in the excitement of pulling them in. when the owner returned he had caught a large number. counting out from them as many as were in the basket, and presenting them to the youth, the old fisherman said, "i fulfil my promise from the fish you have caught, to teach you whenever you see others earning what you need to waste no time in foolish wishing, but cast a line for yourself." a white squall caught a party of tourists on a lake in scotland, and threatened to capsize the boat. when it seemed that the crisis had really come, the largest and strongest man in the party, in a state of intense fear, said, "let us pray." "no, no, my man," shouted the bluff old boatman; "_let the little man pray. you take an oar._" the grandest fortunes ever accumulated or possessed on earth were and are the fruit of endeavor that had no capital to begin with save energy, intellect, and the will. from croesus down to rockefeller the story is the same, not only in the getting of wealth, but also in the acquirement of eminence; those men have won most who relied most upon themselves. "the male inhabitants in the township of loaferdom, in the county of hatework," says a printer's squib, "found themselves laboring under great inconvenience for want of an easily traveled road between poverty and independence. they therefore petitioned the powers that be to levy a tax upon the property of the entire county for the purpose of laying out a macadamized highway, broad and smooth, and all the way down hill to the latter place." "every one is the artificer of his own fortune," says sallust. man is not merely the architect of his own fate, but he must lay the bricks himself. bayard taylor, at twenty-three, wrote: "i will become the sculptor of my own mind's statue." his biography shows how often the chisel and hammer were in his hands to shape himself into his ideal. labor is the only legal tender in the world to true success. the gods sell everything for that, nothing without it. you will never find success "marked down." the door to the temple of success is never left open. every one who enters makes his own door, which closes behind him to all others. circumstances have rarely favored great men. they have fought their way to triumph over the road of difficulty and through all sorts of opposition. a lowly beginning and a humble origin are no bar to a great career. the farmer's boys fill many of the greatest places in legislatures, in business, at the bar, in pulpits, in congress, to-day. boys of lowly origin have made many of the greatest discoveries, are presidents of our banks, of our colleges, of our universities. our poor boys and girls have written many of our greatest books, and have filled the highest places as teachers and journalists. ask almost any great man in our large cities where he was born, and he will tell you it was on a farm or in a small country village. nearly all of the great capitalists of the city came from the country. isaac rich, the founder of boston university, left cape cod for boston to make his way with a capital of only four dollars. like horace greeley, he could find no opening for a boy; but what of that? he made an opening. he found a board, and made it into an oyster stand on the street corner. he borrowed a wheelbarrow, and went three miles to an oyster smack, bought three bushels of oysters, and wheeled them to his stand. soon his little savings amounted to $ , and then he bought a horse and cart. self-help has accomplished about all the great things of the world. how many young men falter, faint, and dally with their purpose because they have no capital to start with, and wait and wait for some good luck to give them a lift! but success is the child of drudgery and perseverance. it cannot be coaxed or bribed; pay the price and it is yours. where is the boy to-day who has less chance to rise in the world than elihu burritt, apprenticed to a blacksmith, in whose shop he had to work at the forge all the daylight, and often by candle-light? yet, he managed, by studying with a book before him at his meals, carrying it in his pocket that he might utilize every spare moment, and studying at night and holidays, to pick up an excellent education in the odds and ends of time which most boys throw away. while the rich boy and the idler were yawning and stretching and getting their eyes open, young burritt had seized the opportunity and improved it. at thirty years of age he was master of every important language in europe and was studying those of asia. what chance had such a boy for distinction? probably not a single youth will read this book who has not a better opportunity for success. yet he had a thirst for knowledge and a desire for self-improvement, which overcame every obstacle in his pathway. if the youth of america who are struggling against cruel circumstances to do something and be somebody in the world could only understand that ninety per cent. of what is called genius is merely the result of persistent, determined industry, in most cases of down-right hard work, that it is the slavery to a single idea which has given to many a mediocre talent the reputation of being a genius, they would be inspired with new hope. it is interesting to note that the men who talk most about genius are the men who like to work the least. the lazier the man, the more he will have to say about great things being done by genius. the greatest geniuses have been the greatest workers. sheridan was considered a genius, but it was found that the "brilliants" and "off-hand sayings" with which he used to dazzle the house of commons were elaborated, polished and repolished, and put down in his memorandum book ready for any emergency. genius has been well defined as the infinite capacity for taking pains. if men who have done great things could only reveal to the struggling youth of to-day how much of their reputations was due to downright hard digging and plodding, what an uplift of inspiration and encouragement they would give! how often i have wished that the discouraged, struggling youth could know of the heartaches, the headaches, the nerve-aches, the disheartening trials, the discouraged hours, the fears and despair involved in works which have gained the admiration of the world, but which have taxed the utmost powers of their authors. you can read in a few minutes or a few hours a poem or a book with only pleasure and delight, but the days and months of weary plodding over details and dreary drudgery often required to produce it would stagger belief. the greatest works in literature have been elaborated and elaborated, line by line, paragraph by paragraph, often rewritten a dozen times. the drudgery which literary men have put into the productions which have stood the test of time is almost incredible. lucretius worked nearly a lifetime on one poem. it completely absorbed his life. it is said that bryant rewrote "thanatopsis" a hundred times, and even then was not satisfied with it. john foster would sometimes linger a week over a single sentence. he would hack, split, prune, pull up by the roots, or practise any other severity on whatever he wrote, till it gained his consent to exist. chalmers was once asked what foster was about in london. "hard at it," he replied, "at the rate of a line a week." even lord bacon, one of the greatest geniuses that ever lived, at his death left large numbers of manuscripts filled with "sudden thoughts set down for use." hume toiled thirteen hours a day on his "history of england." lord eldon astonished the world with his great legal learning, but when he was a student too poor to buy books, he had actually borrowed and copied many hundreds of pages of large law books. matthew hale for years studied law sixteen hours a day. speaking of fox, some one declared that he wrote "drop by drop." rousseau says of the labor involved in his smooth and lively style: "my manuscripts, blotted, scratched, interlined, and scarcely legible, attest the trouble they cost me. there is not one of them which i have not been obliged to transcribe four or five times before it went to press. . . . some of my periods i have turned or returned in my head for five or six nights before they were fit to be put to paper." beethoven probably surpassed all other musicians in his painstaking fidelity and persistent application. there is scarcely a bar in his music that was not written and rewritten at least a dozen times. his favorite maxim was, "the barriers are not yet erected which can say to aspiring talent and industry 'thus far and no further.'" gibbon wrote his autobiography nine times, and was in his study every morning, summer and winter, at six o'clock; and yet youth who waste their evenings wonder at the genius which can produce "the decline and fall of the roman empire," upon which gibbon worked twenty years. even plato, one of the greatest writers that ever lived, wrote the first sentence in his "republic" nine different ways before he was satisfied with it. burke wrote the conclusion of his speech at the trial of hastings sixteen times, and butler his famous "analogy" twenty times. it took vergil seven years to write his georgics, and twelve years to write the aeneid. he was so displeased with the latter that he attempted to rise from his deathbed to commit it to the flames. haydn was very poor; his father was a coachman and he, friendless and lonely, married a servant girl. he was sent away from home to act as errand boy for a music teacher. he absorbed a great deal of information, but he had a hard life of persecution until he became a barber in vienna. here he blacked boots for an influential man, who became a friend to him. in this poor boy's oratorio, "the creation," came upon the musical world like the rising of a new sun which never set. he was courted by princes and dined with kings and queens; his reputation was made; there was no more barbering, no more poverty. but of his eight hundred compositions, "the creation" eclipsed them all. he died while napoleon's guns were bombarding vienna, some of the shot falling in his garden. when a man like lord cavanagh, without arms or legs, manages to put himself into parliament, when a man like francis joseph campbell, a blind man, becomes a distinguished mathematician, a musician, and a great philanthropist, we get a hint as to what it means to make the most possible out of ourselves and our opportunities. perhaps ninety-nine of a hundred under such unfortunate circumstances would be content to remain helpless objects of charity for life. if it is your call to acquire money power instead of brain power, to acquire business power instead of professional power, double your talent just the same, no matter what it may be. a glover's apprentice of glasgow, scotland, who was too poor to afford even a candle or a fire, and who studied by the light of the shop windows in the streets, and when the shops were closed climbed the lamp-post, holding his book in one hand, and clinging to the lamp-post with the other,--this poor boy, with less chance than almost any boy in america, became the most eminent scholar of scotland. francis parkman, half blind, became one of america's greatest historians in spite of everything, because he made himself such. personal value is a coin of one's own minting; one is taken at the worth he has put into himself. franklin was but a poor printer's boy, whose highest luxury at one time was only a penny roll, eaten in the streets of philadelphia. michael faraday was a poor boy, son of a blacksmith, who apprenticed him at the age of thirteen to a bookbinder in london. michael laid the foundations of his future greatness by making himself familiar with the contents of the books he bound. he remained at night, after others had gone, to read and study the precious volumes. lord tenterden was proud to point out to his son the shop where he had shaved for a penny. a french doctor once taunted fléchier, bishop of nismes, who had been a tallow-chandler in his youth, with the meanness of his origin, to which he replied, "if you had been born in the same condition that i was, you would still have been but a maker of candles." edwin chadwick, in his report to the british parliament, stated that children, working on half time (that is, studying three hours a day and working the rest of their time out of doors), really made the greatest intellectual progress during the year. business men have often accomplished wonders during the busiest lives by simply devoting one, two, three, or four hours daily to study or other literary work. james watt received only the rudiments of an education at school, for his attendance was irregular on account of delicate health. he more than made up for all deficiencies, however, by the diligence with which he pursued his studies at home. alexander v was a beggar; he was "born mud, and died marble." william herschel, placed at the age of fourteen as a musician in the band of the hanoverian guards, devoted all his leisure to philosophical studies. he acquired a large fund of general knowledge, and in astronomy, a science in which he was wholly self-instructed, his discoveries entitle him to rank with the greatest astronomers of all time. george washington was the son of a widow, born under the roof of a westmoreland farmer; almost from infancy his lot had been that of an orphan. no academy had welcomed him to its shade, no college crowned him with its honors; to read, to write, to cipher--these had been his degrees in knowledge. shakespeare learned little more than reading and writing at school, but by self-culture he made himself the great master among literary men. burns, too, enjoyed few advantages of education, and his youth was passed in almost abject poverty. james ferguson, the son of a half-starved peasant, learned to read by listening to the recitations of one of his elder brothers. while a mere boy he discovered several mechanical principles, made models of mills and spinning-wheels, and by means of beads on strings worked out an excellent map of the heavens. ferguson made remarkable things with a common penknife. how many great men have mounted the hill of knowledge by out-of-the-way paths! gifford worked his intricate problems with a shoemaker's awl on a bit of leather. rittenhouse first calculated eclipses on his plow-handle. columbus, while leading the life of a sailor, managed to become the most accomplished geographer and astronomer of his time. when peter the great, a boy of seventeen, became the absolute ruler of russia his subjects were little better than savages, and in himself even the passions and propensities of barbarism were so strong that they were frequently exhibited during his whole career. but he determined to transform himself and the russians into civilized people. he instituted reforms with great energy, and at the age of twenty-six started on a visit to the other countries of europe for the purpose of learning about their arts and institutions. at saardam, holland, he was so impressed with the sights of the great east india dockyard that he apprenticed himself to a shipbuilder, and helped to build the _st. peter_, which he promptly purchased. continuing his travels, after he had learned his trade, he worked in england in paper-mills, saw-mills, rope-yards, watchmakers' shops, and other manufactories, doing the work and receiving the treatment of a common laborer. while traveling, his constant habit was to obtain as much information as he could beforehand with regard to every place he was to visit, and he would demand, "let me see all." when setting out on his investigations, on such occasions, he carried his tablets in his hand and whatever he deemed worthy of remembrance was carefully noted down. he would often leave his carriage if he saw the country people at work by the wayside as he passed along, and not only enter into conversation with them on agricultural affairs, but also accompany them to their homes, examine their furniture, and take drawings of their implements of husbandry. thus he obtained much minute and correct knowledge, which he would scarcely have acquired by other means, and which he afterward turned to admirable account in the improvement of his own country. the ancients said, "know thyself"; the twentieth century says, "help thyself." self-culture gives a second birth to the soul. a liberal education is a true regeneration. when a man is once liberally educated, he will generally remain a man, not shrink to a manikin, nor dwindle to a brute. but if he is not properly educated, if he has merely been crammed and stuffed through college, if he has merely a broken-down memory from trying to hold crammed facts enough to pass the examination, he will continue to shrink, shrivel, and dwindle, often below his original proportions, for he will lose both his confidence and self-respect, as his crammed facts, which never became a part of himself, evaporate from his distended memory. every bit of education or culture is of great advantage in the struggle for existence. the microscope does not create anything new, but it reveals marvels. to educate the eye adds to its magnifying power until it sees beauty where before it saw only ugliness. it reveals a world we never suspected, and finds the greatest beauty even in the commonest things. the eye of an agassiz could see worlds of which the uneducated eye never dreamed. the cultured hand can do a thousand things the uneducated hand can not do. it becomes graceful, steady of nerve, strong, skilful, indeed it almost seems to think, so animated is it with intelligence. the cultured will can seize, grasp, and hold the possessor, with irresistible power and nerve, to almost superhuman effort. the educated touch can almost perform miracles. the educated taste can achieve wonders almost past belief. what a contrast between the cultured, logical, profound, masterly reason of a gladstone and that of the hod-carrier who has never developed or educated his reason beyond what is necessary to enable him to mix mortar and carry brick! be careful to avoid that over-intellectual culture which is purchased at the expense of moral vigor. an observant professor of one of our colleges has remarked that "the mind may be so rounded and polished by education, and so well balanced, as not to be energetic in any one faculty. in other men not thus trained, the sense of deficiency and of the sharp, jagged corners of their knowledge leads to efforts to fill up the chasms, rendering them at last far better educated men than the polished, easy-going graduate who has just knowledge enough to prevent consciousness of his ignorance. while all the faculties of the mind should be cultivated, it is yet desirable that it should have two or three rough-hewn features of massive strength. young men are too apt to forget the great end of life, which is to be and do, not to read and brood over what other men have been and done." "i repeat that my object is not to give him knowledge, but to teach him how to acquire it at need," said rousseau. all learning is self-teaching. it is upon the working of the pupil's own mind that his progress in knowledge depends. the great business of the master is to teach the pupil to teach himself. "thinking, not growth, makes manhood," says isaac taylor. "accustom yourself, therefore, to thinking. set yourself to understand whatever you see or read. to join thinking with reading is one of the first maxims, and one of the easiest operations." "how few think justly of the thinking few: how many never think who think they do." chapter xxxi the self-improvement habit if you want knowledge you must toil for it.--ruskin. we excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.--quintillian. what sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul.--addison. a boy is better unborn than untaught.--gascoigne. it is ignorance that wastes; it is knowledge that saves, an untaught faculty is at once quiescent and dead.--n. d. hillis. the plea that this or that man has no time for culture will vanish as soon as we desire culture so much that we begin to examine seriously into our present use of time.--matthew arnold. education, as commonly understood, is the process of developing the mind by means of books and teachers. when education has been neglected, either by reason of lack of opportunity, or because advantage was not taken of the opportunities afforded, the one remaining hope is self-improvement. opportunities for self-improvement surround us, the helps to self-improvement are abundant, and in this day of cheap books and free libraries, there can be no good excuse for neglect to use the faculties for mental growth and development which are so abundantly supplied. when we look at the difficulties which hindered the acquisition of knowledge fifty years to a century ago; the scarcity and the costliness of books, the value of the dimmest candle-light, the unremitting toil which left so little time for study, the physical weariness which had to be overcome to enable mental exertion in study, we may well marvel at the giants of scholarship those days of hardship produced. and when we add to educational limitations, physical disabilities, blindness, deformity, ill-health, hunger and cold, we may feel shame as we contemplate the fulness of modern opportunity and the helps and incentives to study and self-development which are so lavishly provided for our use and inspiration, and of which we make so little use. self-improvement implies one essential feeling: the desire for improvement. if the desire exists, then improvement is usually accomplished only by the conquest of self--the material self, which seeks pleasure and amusement. the novel, the game of cards, the billiard cue, idle whittling and story-telling will have to be eschewed, and every available moment of leisure turned to account. for all who seek self-improvement "there is a lion in the way," the lion of self-indulgence, and it is only by the conquest of this enemy that progress is assured. show me how a youth spends his evenings, his odd bits of time, and i will forecast his future. does he look upon this leisure as precious, rich in possibilities, as containing golden material for his future life structure? or does he look upon it as an opportunity for self-indulgence, for a light, flippant good time? the way he spends his leisure will give the keynote of his life, will tell whether he is dead in earnest, or whether he looks upon it as a huge joke. he may not be conscious of the terrible effects, the gradual deterioration of character which comes from a frivolous wasting of his evenings and half-holidays, but the character is being undermined just the same. young men are often surprised to find themselves dropping behind their competitors, but if they will examine themselves, they will find that they have stopped growing, because they have ceased their effort to keep abreast of the times, to be widely read, to enrich life with self-culture. it is the right use of spare moments in reading and study which qualify men for leadership. and in many historic cases the "spare" moments utilized for study were not spare in the sense of being the spare time of leisure. they were rather _spared_ moments, moments spared from sleep, from meal times, from recreation. where is the boy to-day who has less chance to rise in the world than elihu burritt, apprenticed at sixteen to a blacksmith, in whose shop he had to work at the forge all the daylight, and often by candle-light? yet he managed, by studying with a book before him at his meals, carrying it in his pocket that he might utilize every spare moment, and studying nights and holidays, to pick up an excellent education in the odds and ends of time which most boys throw away. while the rich boy and the idler were yawning and stretching and getting their eyes open, young burritt had seized the opportunity and improved it. he had a thirst for knowledge and a desire for self-improvement, which overcame every obstacle in his pathway. a wealthy gentleman offered to pay his expenses at harvard. but no, elihu said he could get his education himself, even though he had to work twelve or fourteen hours a day at the forge. here was a determined boy. he snatched every spare moment at the anvil and forge as if it were gold. he believed, with gladstone, that thrift of time would repay him in after years with usury, and that waste of it would make him dwindle. think of a boy working nearly all the daylight in a blacksmith shop, and yet finding time to study seven languages in a single year. it is not lack of ability that holds men down but lack of industry. in many cases the employee has a better brain, a better mental capacity than his employer. but he does not improve his faculties. he dulls his mind by cigarette smoking. he spends his money at the pool table, theater, or dance, and as he grows old, and the harness of perpetual service galls him, he grumbles at his lack of luck, his limited opportunity. the number of perpetual clerks is constantly being recruited by those who did not think it worth while as boys to learn to write a good hand or to master the fundamental branches of knowledge requisite in a business career. the ignorance common among young men and young women, in factories, stores, and offices, everywhere, in fact, in this land of opportunity, where youth should be well educated, is a pitiable thing in american life. on every hand we see men and women of ability occupying inferior positions because they did not think it worth while in youth to develop their powers and to concentrate their attention on the acquisition of sufficient knowledge. thousands of men and women find themselves held back, handicapped for life because of the seeming trifles which they did not think it worth while to pay attention to in their early days. many a girl of good natural ability spends her most productive years as a cheap clerk, or in a mediocre position because she never thought it worth while to develop her mental faculties or to take advantage of opportunities within reach to fit herself for a superior position. thousands of girls unexpectedly thrown on their own resources have been held down all their lives because of neglected tasks in youth, which at the time were dismissed with a careless "i don't think it worth while." they did not think it would pay to go to the bottom of any study at school, to learn to keep accounts accurately, or fit themselves to do anything in such a way as to be able to make a living by it. they expected to marry, and never prepared for being dependent on themselves,--a contingency against which marriage, in many instances, is no safeguard. the trouble with most youths is that they are not willing to fling the whole weight of their being into their location. they want short hours, little work and a lot of play. they think more of leisure and pleasure than of discipline and training in their great life specialty. many a clerk envies his employer and wishes that he could go into business for himself, be an employer too but it is too much work to make the effort to rise above a clerkship. he likes to take life easy; and he wonders idly whether, after all, it is worth while to strain and strive and struggle and study to prepare oneself for the sake of getting up a little higher and making a little more money. the trouble with a great many people is that they are not willing to make present sacrifices for future gain. they prefer to have a good time as they go along, rather than spend time in self-improvement. they have a sort of vague wish to do something great, but few have that intensity of longing which impels them to make the sacrifice of the present for the future. few are willing to work underground for years laying a foundation for the life monument. they yearn for greatness, but their yearning is not the kind which is willing to pay any price in endeavor or make any sacrifice for its object. so the majority slide along in mediocrity all their lives. they have ability for something higher up, but they have not the energy and determination to prepare for it. they do not care to make necessary effort. they prefer to take life easier and lower down rather than to struggle for something higher. they do not play the game for all they are worth. if a man or woman has but the disposition for self-improvement and advancement he will find opportunity to rise or "what he can not find create." here is an example from the everyday life going on around us and in which we are all taking part. a young irishman who had reached the age of nineteen or twenty without learning to read or write, and who left home because of the intemperance that prevailed there, learned to read a little by studying billboards, and eventually got a position as steward aboard a man-of-war. he chose that occupation and got leave to serve at the captain's table because of a great desire to learn. he kept a little tablet in his coat-pocket, and whenever he heard a new word wrote it down. one day an officer saw him writing and immediately suspected him of being a spy. when he and the other officers learned what the tablet was used for, the young man was given more opportunities to learn, and these led in time to promotion, until, finally, the sometime steward won a prominent position in the navy. success as a naval officer prepared the way for success in other fields. self-help has accomplished about all the great things of the world. how many young men falter, faint, and dally with their purpose, because they have no capital to start with, and wait and wait for some good luck to give them a lift! but success is the child of drudgery and perseverance. it can not be coaxed or bribed; pay the price and it is yours. one of the sad things about the neglected opportunities for self-improvement is that it puts people of great natural ability at a disadvantage among those who are their mental inferiors. i know a member of one of our city legislatures, a splendid fellow, immensely popular, who has a great, generous heart and broad sympathies, but who can not open his mouth without so murdering the english language that it is really painful to listen to him. there are a great many similar examples in washington of men who have been elected to important positions because of their great natural ability and fine characters, but who are constantly mortified and embarrassed by their ignorance and lack of early training. one of the most humiliating experiences that can ever come to a human being is to be conscious of possessing more than ordinary ability, and yet be tied to an inferior position because of lack of early and intelligent training commensurate with his ability. to be conscious that one has ability to realize eighty or ninety per cent of his possibilities, if he had only had the proper education and training, but because of this lack to be unable to bring out more than twenty-five per cent of it on account of ignorance, is humiliating and embarrassing. in other words, to go through life conscious that you are making a botch of your capabilities just because of lack of training, is a most depressing thing. nothing else outside of sin causes more sorrow than that which comes from not having prepared for the highest career possible to one. there are no bitterer regrets than those which come from being obliged to let opportunities pass by for which one never prepared himself. i know a pitiable case of a born naturalist whose ambition was so suppressed, and whose education so neglected in youth, that later when he came to know more about natural history than almost any man of his day, he could not write a grammatical sentence, and could never make his ideas live in words, perpetuate them in books, because of his ignorance of even the rudiments of an education. his early vocabulary was so narrow and pinched, and his knowledge of his language so limited that he always seemed to be painfully struggling for words to express his thought. think of the suffering of this splendid man, who was conscious of possessing colossal scientific knowledge, and yet was absolutely unable to express himself grammatically! how often stenographers are mortified by the use of some unfamiliar word or term, or quotation, because of the shallowness of their preparation! it is not enough to be able to take dictation when ordinary letters are given, not enough to do the ordinary routine of office work. the ambitious stenographer must be prepared for the unusual demand, must have good reserves of knowledge to draw from in case of emergency. but, if she is constantly slipping up upon her grammar, or is all at sea the moment she steps out of her ordinary routine, her employer knows that her preparation is shallow, that her education is very limited, and her prospects will be limited also. a young lady writes me that she is so handicapped by the lack of an early education that she fairly dreads to write a letter to anyone of education or culture for fear of making ignorant mistakes in grammar and spelling. her letter indicates that she has a great deal of natural ability. yet she is much limited and always placed at a disadvantage because of this lack of an early education. it is difficult to conceive of a greater misfortune than always to be embarrassed and handicapped just because of the neglect of those early years. i am often pained by letters from people, especially young people, which indicate that the writers have a great deal of natural ability, that they have splendid minds, but a large part of their ability is covered up, rendered ineffectual by their ignorance. many of these letters show that the writers are like diamonds in the rough, with only here and there a little facet ground off, just enough to let in the light and reveal the great hidden wealth within. i always feel sorry for these people who have passed the school age and who will probably go through life with splendid minds handicapped by their ignorance which, even late in life, they might largely or entirely overcome. it is such a pity that, a young man, for instance, who has the natural ability which would make him a leader among men, must, for the lack of a little training, a little preparation, work for somebody else, perhaps with but half of his ability but with a better preparation, more education. everywhere we see clerks, mechanics, employees in all walks of life, who cannot rise to anything like positions which correspond with their natural ability, because they have not had the education. they are ignorant. they can not write a decent letter. they murder the english language, and hence their superb ability cannot be demonstrated, and remains in mediocrity. the parable of the talents illustrates and enforces one of nature's sternest laws: "to him that hath shall be given; from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." scientists call this law the survival of the fittest. the fittest are those who use what they have, who gain strength by struggle, and who survive by self-development by control of their hostile or helpful environment. the soil, the sunshine, the atmosphere are very liberal with the material for the growth of the plant or the tree, but the plant must use all it gets, it must work it up into flowers, into fruit, into leaf or fiber or something or the supply will cease. in other words, the soil will not send any more building material up the sap than is used for growth, and the faster this material is used the more rapid the growth, the more abundantly the material will come. the same law holds good everywhere. nature is liberal with us if we utilize what she gives us, but if we stop using it, if we do not transform what she gives us into power, if we do not do some building somewhere, if we do not transform the material which she gives us into force and utilize that force, we not only find the supply cut off, but we find that we are growing weaker, less efficient. everything in nature is on the move, either one way or the other. it is either going up or down. it is either advancing or retrograding; we cannot hold without using. nature withdraws muscle or brain if we do not use them. she withdraws skill the moment we stop drilling efficiently, the moment we stop using our power. the force is withdrawn when we cease exercising it. a college graduate is often surprised years after he leaves the college to find that about all he has to show for his education is his diploma. the power, the efficiency which he gained there has been lost because he has not been using them. he thought at the time that everything was still fresh in his mind after his examination that this knowledge would remain with him, but it has been slipping away from him every minute since he stopped using it, and only that has remained and increased which he has used; the rest has evaporated. a great many college graduates ten years afterwards find that they have but very little left to show for their four years' course, because they have not utilized their knowledge. they have become weaklings without knowing it. they constantly say to themselves, "i have a college education, i must have some ability, i must amount to something in the world." but the college diploma has no more power to hold the knowledge you have gained in college than a piece of tissue paper over a gas jet can hold the gas in the pipe. everything which you do not use is constantly slipping away from you. use it or lose it. the secret of power is use. ability will not remain with us, force will evaporate the moment we cease to do something with it. the tools for self-improvement are at your hand, use them. if the ax is dull the more strength must be put forth. if your opportunities are limited you must use more energy, put forth more effort. progress may seem slow at first, but perseverance assures success. "line upon line, and precept upon precept" is the rule of mental upbuilding and "in due time ye shall reap if ye faint not." chapter xxxii raising of values "destiny is not about thee, but within,-- thyself must make thyself." "the world is no longer clay, but rather iron in the hands of its workers," says emerson, "and men have got to hammer out a place for themselves by steady and rugged blows." to make the most of your "stuff," be it cloth, iron, or character,--this is success. raising common "stuff" to priceless value is great success. the man who first takes the rough bar of wrought iron may be a blacksmith, who has only partly learned his trade, and has no ambition to rise above his anvil. he thinks that the best possible thing he can do with his bar is to make it into horseshoes, and congratulates himself upon his success. he reasons that the rough lump of iron is worth only two or three cents a pound, and that it is not worth while to spend much time or labor on it. his enormous muscles and small skill have raised the value of the iron from one dollar, perhaps, to ten dollars. along comes a cutler, with a little better education, a little more ambition, a little finer perception, and says to the blacksmith: "is this all you can see in that iron? give me a bar, and i will show you what brains and skill and hard work can make of it." he sees a little further into the rough bar. he has studied many processes of hardening and tempering; he has tools, grinding and polishing wheels, and annealing furnaces. the iron is fused, carbonized into steel, drawn out, forged, tempered, heated white-hot, plunged into cold water or oil to improve its temper, and ground and polished with great care and patience. when this work is done, he shows the astonished blacksmith two thousand dollars' worth of knife-blades where the latter only saw ten dollars' worth of crude horseshoes. the value has been greatly raised by the refining process. "knife-blades are all very well, if you can make nothing better," says another artisan, to whom the cutler has shown the triumph of his art, "but you haven't half brought out what is in that bar of iron. i see a higher and better use; i have made a study of iron, and know what there is in it and what can be made of it." this artisan has a more delicate touch, a finer perception, a better training, a higher ideal, and superior determination, which enable him to look still further into the molecules of the rough bar,--past the horse-shoes, past the knife-blades,--and he turns the crude iron into the finest cambric needles, with eyes cut with microscopic exactness. the production of the invisible points requires a more delicate process, a finer grade of skill than the cutler possesses. this feat the last workman considers marvelous, and he thinks he has exhausted the possibilities of the iron. he has multiplied many times the value of the cutler's product. but, behold! another very skilful mechanic, with a more finely organized mind, a more delicate touch, more patience, more industry, a higher order of skill, and a better training, passes with ease by the horse-shoes, the knife-blades, and the needles, and returns the product of his bar in fine mainsprings for watches. where the others saw horseshoes, knife-blades, or needles, worth only a few thousand dollars, his penetrating eye saw a product worth one hundred thousand dollars. a higher artist-artisan appears, who tells us that the rough bar has not even yet found its highest expression; that he possesses the magic that can perform a still greater miracle in iron. to him, even main-springs seem coarse and clumsy. he knows that the crude iron can be manipulated and coaxed into an elasticity that can not even be imagined by one less trained in metallurgy. he knows that, if care enough be used in tempering the steel, it will not be stiff, trenchant, and merely a passive metal, but so full of its new qualities that it almost seems instinct with life. with penetrating, almost clairvoyant vision, this artist-artisan sees how every process of mainspring making can be carried further; and how, at every stage of manufacture, more perfection can be reached; how the texture of the metal can be so much refined that even a fiber, a slender thread of it, can do marvelous work. he puts his bar through many processes of refinement and fine tempering, and, in triumph, turns his product into almost invisible coils of delicate hair-springs. after infinite toil and pain, he has made his dream true; he has raised the few dollars' worth of iron to a value of one million dollars, perhaps forty times the value of the same weight of gold. still another workman, whose processes are so almost infinitely delicate, whose product is so little known, by even the average educated man, that his trade is unmentioned by the makers of dictionaries and encylopedias, takes but a fragment of one of the bars of steel, and develops its higher possibilities with such marvelous accuracy, such ethereal fineness of touch, that even mainsprings and hairsprings are looked back upon as coarse, crude, and cheap. when his work is done, he shows you a few of the minutely barbed instruments used by dentists to draw out the finest branches of the dental nerves. while a pound of gold, roughly speaking, is worth about two hundred and fifty dollars, a pound of these slender, barbed filaments of steel, if a pound could be collected, might be worth hundreds of times as much. other experts may still further refine the product, but it will be many a day before the best will exhaust the possibilities of a metal that can be subdivided until its particles will float in the air. it sounds magical, but the magic is only that wrought by the application of the homeliest virtues; by the training of the eye, the hand, the perception; by painstaking care, by hard work, and by determination and grit. if a metal possessing only a few coarse material qualities is capable of such marvelous increase in value, by mixing brains with its molecules, who shall set bounds to the possibilities of the development of a human being, that wonderful compound of physical, mental, moral, and spiritual forces? whereas, in the development of iron, a dozen processes are possible, a thousand influences may be brought to bear upon mind and character. while the iron is an inert mass acted upon by external influences only, the human being is a bundle of forces, acting and counteracting, yet all capable of control and direction by the higher self, the real, dominating personality. the difference in human attainment is due only slightly to the original material. it is the ideal followed and unfolded, the effort made, the processes of education and experience undergone that fuse, hammer, and mold our life-bar into its ultimate development. life, everyday life, has counterparts of all the tortures the iron undergoes, and through them it comes to its highest expression. the blows of opposition, the struggles amid want and woe, the fiery trials of disaster and bereavement, the crushings of iron circumstances, the raspings of care and anxiety, the grinding of constant difficulties, the rebuffs that chill enthusiasm, the weariness of years of dry, dreary drudgery in education and discipline,--all these are necessary to the man who would reach the highest success. the iron, by this manipulation, is strengthened, refined, made more elastic or more resistant, and adapted to the use each artisan dreams of. if every blow should fracture it, if every furnace should burn the life out of it, if every roller should pulverize it, of what use would it be? it has that virtue, those qualities that withstand all; that draw profit from every test, and come out triumphant in the end. in the iron the qualities are, in the main, inherent; but in ourselves they are largely matters of growth, culture, and development, and all are subject to the dominating will. just as each artisan sees in the crude iron some finished, refined product, so must we see in our lives glorious possibilities, if we would but realize them. if we see only horseshoes or knife-blades, all our efforts and struggles will never produce hairsprings. we must realize our own adaptability to great ends; we must resolve to struggle, to endure trials and tests, to pay the necessary price, confident that the result will pay us for our suffering, our trials, and our efforts. those who shrink from the forging, the rolling, and the drawing out, are the ones who fail, the "nobodies," the faulty characters, the criminals. just as a bar of iron, if exposed to the elements, will oxidize, and become worthless, so will character deteriorate if there is no constant effort to improve its form, to increase its ductility, to temper it, or to better it in some way. it is easy to remain a common bar of iron, or comparatively so, by becoming merely a horseshoe; but it is hard to raise your life-product to higher values. many of us consider our natural gift-bars poor, mean, and inadequate, compared with those of others; but, if we are willing, by patience, toil, study, and struggle, to hammer, draw out, and refine, to work on and up from clumsy horseshoes to delicate hairsprings, we can, by infinite patience and persistence, raise the value of the raw material to almost fabulous heights. it was thus that columbus, the weaver, franklin, the journeyman printer, aesop, the slave, homer, the beggar, demosthenes, the cutler's son, ben jonson, the bricklayer, cervantes, the common soldier, and haydn, the poor wheelwright's son, developed their powers, until they towered head and shoulders above other men. there is very little difference between the material given to a hundred average boys and girls at birth, yet one with no better means of improvement than the others, perhaps with infinitely poorer means, will raise his material in value a hundredfold, five-hundredfold, aye, a thousandfold, while the ninety-nine will wonder why their material remains so coarse and crude, and will attribute their failure to hard luck. while one boy is regretting his want of opportunities, his lack of means to get a college education, and remains in ignorance, another with half his chances picks up a good education in the odds and ends of time which other boys throw away. from the same material, one man builds a palace and another a hovel. from the same rough piece of marble, one man calls out an angel of beauty which delights every beholder, another a hideous monster which demoralizes every one who sees it. the extent to which you can raise the value of your life-bar depends very largely upon yourself. whether you go upward to the mainspring or hairspring stage, depends very largely upon your ideal, your determination to be the higher thing, upon your having the grit to be hammered, to be drawn out, to be thrust from the fire into cold water or oil in order to get the proper temper. of course, it is hard and painful, and it takes lots of stamina to undergo the processes that produce the finest product, but would you prefer to remain a rough bar of iron or a horseshoe all your life? [illustration: lincoln studying by the firelight] chapter xxxiii self-improvement through public speaking it does not matter whether you want to be a public speaker or not, everybody should have such complete control of himself, should be so self-centered and self-posed that he can get up in any audience, no matter how large or formidable, and express his thoughts clearly and distinctly. self-expression in some manner is the only means of developing mental power. it may be in music; it may be on canvas: it may be through oratory; it may come through selling goods or writing a book; but it must come through self-expression. self-expression in any legitimate form tends to call out what is in a man, his resourcefulness, inventiveness; but no other form of self-expression develops a man so thoroughly and so effectively, and so quickly unfolds all of his powers, as expression before an audience. it is doubtful whether anyone can reach the highest standard of culture without studying the art of expression, especially public vocal expression. in all ages oratory has been regarded as the highest expression of human achievement. young people, no matter what they intend to be, whether blacksmith or farmer, merchant or physician, should make it a study. nothing else will call out what is in a man so quickly and so effectively as the constant effort to do his best in speaking before an audience. when one undertakes to think on his feet and speak extemporaneously before the public, the power and the skill of the entire man are put to a severe test. the writer has the advantage of being able to wait for his moods. he can write when he feels like it; and he knows that he can burn his manuscript again and again if it does not suit him. there are not a thousand eyes upon him. he does not have a great audience criticizing every sentence, weighing every thought. he does not have to step upon the scales of every listener's judgment to be weighed, as does the orator. a man may write as listlessly as he pleases, use much or little of his brain or energy, just as he chooses or feels like doing. no one is watching him. his pride and vanity are not touched, and what he writes may never be seen by anyone. then, there is always a chance for revision. in conversation, we do not feel that so much depends upon our words; only a few persons hear them, and perhaps no one will ever think of them again. in music, whether vocal or instrumental, what one gives out is only partially one's own; the rest is the composer's. yet anyone who lays any claim to culture, should train himself to think on his feet, so that he can at a moment's notice rise and express himself intelligently. the occasions for little speaking are increasing enormously. a great many questions which used to be settled in the office are now discussed and settled at dinners. all sorts of business deals are now carried through at dinners. there was never before any such demand for dinner oratory as to-day. we know men who have, by the dint of hard work and persistent grit, lifted themselves into positions of prominence, and yet they are not able to stand on their feet in public, even to make a few remarks, or scarcely to put a motion without trembling like an aspen leaf. they had plenty of opportunities when they were young, at school, in debating clubs to get rid of their self-consciousness and to acquire ease and facility in public speaking, but they always shrank from every opportunity, because they were timid, or felt that somebody else could handle the debate or questions better. there are plenty of business men to-day who would give a great deal of money if they could only go back and improve the early opportunities for learning to think and speak on their feet which they threw away. now they have money, they have position, but they are nobodies when called upon to speak in public. all they can do is to look foolish, blush, stammer out an apology and sit down. some time ago i was at a public meeting when a man who stands very high in the community, who is king in his specialty, was called upon to give his opinion upon the matter under consideration, and he got up and trembled and stammered and could scarcely say his soul was his own. he could not even make a decent appearance. he had power and a great deal of experience, but there he stood, as helpless as a child, and he felt cheap, mortified, embarrassed, and probably would have given anything if he had early in life trained himself to get himself in hand so that he could think on his feet and say with power and effectiveness that which he knew. at the very meeting where this strong man who had the respect and confidence of everybody who knew him, and who made such a miserable failure of his attempt to give his opinion upon an important public matter on which he was well posted, being so confused and self-conscious and "stage struck" that he could say scarcely anything, a shallow-brained business man, in the same city, who hadn't a hundredth part of the other man's practical power in affairs, got up and made a brilliant speech, and strangers no doubt thought that he was much the stronger man. he had simply cultivated the ability to say his best thing on his feet, and the other man had not, and was placed at a tremendous disadvantage. a very brilliant young man in new york who has climbed to a responsible position in a very short time, tells me that he has been surprised on several occasions when he has been called upon to speak at banquets, or on other public occasions, at the new discoveries he has made of himself of power which he never before dreamed he possessed, and he now regrets more than anything else that he has allowed so many opportunities for calling himself out to go by in the past. the effort to express one's ideas in lucid, clean-cut, concise, telling english tends to make one's everyday language choicer and more direct, and improves one's diction generally. in this and other ways speech-making develops mental power and character. this explains the rapidity with which a young man develops in school or college when he begins to take part in public debates or in debating societies. every man, says lord chesterfield, may choose good words instead of bad ones and speak properly instead of improperly; he may have grace in his motions and gestures, and may be a very agreeable instead of disagreeable speaker if he will take care and pains. it is a matter of painstaking and preparation. there is everything in learning what you wish to know. your vocal culture, manner, and mental furnishing, are to be made a matter for thought and careful training. nothing will tire an audience more quickly than monotony, everything expressed on the same dead level. there must be variety; the human mind tires very quickly without it. this is especially true of a monotonous tone. it is a great art to be able to raise and lower the voice with sweet flowing cadences which please the ear. gladstone said, "ninety-nine men in every hundred never rise above mediocrity because the training of the voice is entirely neglected and considered of no importance." it was indeed said of a certain duke of devonshire that he was the only english statesman who ever took a nap during the progress of his own speech. he was a perfect genius for dry uninteresting oratory, moving forward with a monotonous droning, and pausing now and then as if refreshing himself by slumber. in thinking on one's feet before an audience, one must think quickly, vigorously, effectively. at the same time he must speak effectively through a properly modulated voice, with proper facial and bodily expression and gesture. this requires practise in early life. in youth the would-be orator must cultivate robust health, since force, enthusiasm, conviction, will-power are greatly affected by physical condition. one, too, must cultivate bodily posture, and have good habits at easy command. what would have been the result of webster's reply to hayne, the greatest oratorical effort ever made on this continent, if he had sat down in the senate and put his feet on his desk? think of a great singer like nordica attempting to electrify an audience while lounging on a sofa or sitting in a slouchy position. an early training for effective speaking will make one careful to secure a good vocabulary by good reading and a dictionary. one must know words. there is no class of people put to such a severe test of showing what is in them as public speakers; no other men who run such a risk of exposing their weak spots, or making fools of themselves in the estimation of others, as do orators. public speaking--thinking on one's feet--is a powerful educator except to the thick-skinned man, the man who has no sensitiveness, or who does not care for what others think of him. nothing else so thoroughly discloses a man's weaknesses or shows up his limitations of thought, his poverty of speech, his narrow vocabulary. nothing else is such a touchstone of the character and the extent of one's reading, the carefulness or carelessness of his observation. close, compact statement must be had. learn to stop when you get through. do not keep stringing out conversation or argument after you have made your point. you only weaken your case and prejudice people against you for your lack of tact, good judgment, or sense of proportion. do not neutralize all the good impression you have made by talking on and on long after you have made your point. the attempt to become a good public speaker is a great awakener of all the mental faculties. the sense of power that comes from holding attention, stirring the emotions or convincing the reason of an audience, gives self-confidence, assurance, self-reliance, arouses ambition, and tends to make one more effective in every particular. one's manhood, character, learning, judgment of his opinions--all things that go to make him what he is--are being unrolled like a panorama. every mental faculty is quickened, every power of thought and expression spurred. thoughts rush for utterance, words press for choice. the speaker summons all his reserves of education, of experience, of natural or acquired ability, and masses all his forces in the endeavor to capture the approval and applause of the audience. such an effort takes hold of the entire nature, beads the brow, fires the eye, flushes the cheek, and sends the blood surging through the veins. dormant impulses are stirred, half-forgotten memories revived, the imagination quickened to see figures and similes that would never come to calm thought. this forced awakening of the whole personality has effects reaching much further than the oratorical occasion. the effort to marshal all one's reserves in a logical and orderly manner, to bring to the front all the power one possesses, leaves these reserves permanently better in hand, more readily in reach. the debating club is the nursery of orators. no matter how far you have to go to attend it, or how much trouble it is, or how difficult it is to get the time, the drill you will get by it is the turning point. lincoln, wilson, webster, choate, clay, and patrick henry got their training in the old-fashioned debating society. do not think that because you do not know anything about parliamentary law that you should not accept the presidency of your club or debating society. this is just the place to learn, and when you have accepted the position you can post yourself on the rules, and the chances are that you will never know the rules until you are thrust into the chair where you will be obliged to give rulings. join just as many young people's organizations--especially self-improvement organizations--as you can, and force yourself to speak every time you get a chance. if the chance does not come to you, make it. jump to your feet and say something upon every question that is up for discussion. do not be afraid to rise to put a motion or to second it or give your opinion upon it. do not wait until you are better prepared. you never will be. every time you rise to your feet will increase your confidence, and after awhile you will form the habit of speaking until it will be as easy as anything else, and there is no one thing which will develop young people so rapidly and effectively as the debating clubs and discussions of all sorts. a vast number of our public men have owed their advance more to the old-fashioned debating societies than anything else. here they learned confidence, self-reliance; they discovered themselves. it was here they learned not to be afraid of themselves, to express their opinions with force and independence. nothing will call a young man out more than the struggle in a debate to hold his own. it is strong, vigorous exercise for the mind as wrestling is for the body. do not remain way back on the back seat. go up front. do not be afraid to show yourself. this shrinking into a corner and getting out of sight and avoiding publicity is fatal to self-confidence. it is so easy and seductive, especially for boys and girls in school or college, to shrink from the public debates or speaking, on the ground that they are not quite well enough educated at present. they want to wait until they can use a little better grammar, until they have read more history and more literature, until they have gained a little more culture and ease of manner. the way to acquire grace, ease, facility, the way to get poise and balance so that you will not feel disturbed in public gatherings, is to get the experience. do the thing so many times that it will become second nature to you. if you have an invitation to speak, no matter how much you may shrink from it, or how timid or shy you may be, resolve that you will not let this opportunity for self-enlargement slip by you. we know of a young man who has a great deal of natural ability for public speaking, and yet he is so timid that he always shrinks from accepting invitations to speak at banquets or in public because he is so afraid that he has not had experience enough. he lacks confidence in himself. he is so proud, and so afraid that he will make some slip which will mortify him, that he has waited and waited and waited until now he is discouraged and thinks that he will never be able to do anything in public speaking at all. he would give anything in the world if he had only accepted all of the invitations he has had, because then he would have profited by experience. it would have been a thousand times better for him to have made a mistake, or even to have broken down entirely a few times, than to have missed the scores of opportunities which would undoubtedly have made a strong public speaker of him. what is technically called "stage fright" is very common. a college boy recited an address "to the conscript fathers." his professor asked,--"is that the way caesar would have spoken it?" "yes," he replied, "if caesar had been scared half to death, and as nervous as a cat." an almost fatal timidity seizes on an inexperienced person, when he knows that all eyes are watching him, that everybody in his audience is trying to measure and weigh him, studying him, scrutinizing him to see how much there is in him; what he stands for, and making up their minds whether he measures more or less than they expected. some are constitutionally sensitive, and so afraid of being gazed at that they don't dare to open their mouths, even when a question in which they are deeply interested and on which they have strong views is being discussed. at debating clubs, meetings of literary societies, or gatherings of any kind, they sit dumb, longing, yet fearing to speak. the sound of their own voices, if they should get on their feet to make a motion or to speak in a public gathering, would paralyze them. the mere thought of asserting themselves, of putting forward their views or opinions on any subject as being worthy of attention, or as valuable as those of their companions, makes them blush and shrink more into themselves. this timidity is often, however, not so much the fear of one's audience, as the fear lest one can make no suitable expression of his thought. the hardest thing for the public speaker to overcome is self-consciousness. those terrible eyes which pierce him through and through, which are measuring him, criticizing him, are very difficult to get out of one's consciousness. but no orator can make a great impression until he gets rid of himself, until he can absolutely annihilate his self-consciousness, forget himself in his speech. while he is wondering what kind of an impression he is making, what people think of him, his power is crippled, and his speech to that extent will be mechanical, wooden. even a partial failure on the platform has good results, for it often arouses a determination to conquer the next time, which never leaves one. demosthenes' heroic efforts, and disraeli's "the time will come when you will hear me," are historic examples. it is not the speech, but the man behind the speech, that wins a way to the front. one man carries weight because he is himself the embodiment of power, he is himself convinced of what he says. there is nothing of the negative, the doubtful, the uncertain in his nature. he not only knows a thing, but he knows that he knows it. his opinion carries with it the entire weight of his being. the whole man gives consent to his judgment. he himself is in his conviction, in his act. one of the most entrancing speakers i have ever listened to--a man to hear whom people would go long distances and stand for hours to get admission to the hall where he spoke--never was able to get the confidence of his audience because he lacked character. people liked to be swayed by his eloquence. there was a great charm in the cadences of his perfect sentences. but somehow they could not believe what he said. the orator must be sincere. the public is very quick to see through shams. if the audience sees mud at the bottom of your eye, that you are not honest yourself, that you are acting, they will not take any stock in you. it is not enough to say a pleasing thing, an interesting thing, the orator must be able to convince; and to convince others he must have strong convictions. great speeches have become the beacon lights of history. those who are prepared acquire a world-wide influence when the fit occasion comes. very few people ever rise to their greatest possibilities or ever know their entire power unless confronted by some great occasion. we are as much amazed as others are when, in some great emergency, we out-do ourselves. somehow the power that stands behind us in the silence, in the depths of our natures, comes to our relief, intensifies our faculties a thousandfold and enables us to do things which before we thought impossible. it would be difficult to estimate the great part which practical drill in oratory may play in one's life. great occasions, when nations have been in peril, have developed and brought out some of the greatest orators of the world. cicero, mirabeau, patrick henry, webster, and john bright might all be called to witness to this fact. the occasion had much to do with the greatest speech delivered in the united states senate--webster's reply to hayne. webster had no time for immediate preparation, but the occasion brought all the reserves in this giant, and he towered so far above his opponent that hayne looked like a pygmy in comparison. the pen has discovered many a genius, but the process is slower and less effective than the great occasion that discovers the orator. every crisis calls out ability, previously undeveloped, and perhaps unexpected. no orator living was ever great enough to give out the same power and force and magnetism to an empty hall, to empty seats, that he could give to an audience capable of being fired by his theme. in the presence of the audience lies a fascination, an indefinable magnetism that stimulates all the mental faculties, and acts as a tonic and vitalizer. an orator can say before an audience what he could not possibly say before he went on the platform, just as we can often say to a friend in animated conversation things which we could not possibly say when alone. as when two chemicals are united, a new substance is formed from the combination, which did not exist in either alone, he feels surging through his brain the combined force of his audience, which he calls inspiration, a mighty power which did not exist in his own personality. actors tell us that there is an indescribable inspiration which comes from the orchestra, the footlights, the audience, which it is impossible to feel at a cold mechanical rehearsal. there is something in a great sea of expectant faces which awakens the ambition and arouses the reserve of power which can never be felt except before an audience. the power was there just the same before, but it was not aroused. in the presence of the orator, the audience is absolutely in his power to do as he will. they laugh or cry as he pleases, or rise and fall at his bidding, until he releases them from the magic spell. what is oratory but to stir the blood of all hearers, to so arouse their emotions that they can not control themselves a moment longer without taking the action to which they are impelled? "his words are laws" may be well said of the statesmen whose orations sway the world. what art is greater than that of changing the minds of men? wendell phillips so played upon the emotions, so changed the convictions of southerners who hated him, but who were curious to listen to his oratory, that, for the time being he almost persuaded them that they were in the wrong. i have seen him when it seemed to me that he was almost godlike in his power. with the ease of a master he swayed his audience. some who hated him in the slavery days were there, and they could not resist cheering him. he warped their own judgment and for the time took away their prejudice. when james russell lowell was a student, said wetmore story, he and story went to faneuil hall to hear webster. they meant to hoot him for his remaining in tyler's cabinet. it would be easy, they reasoned, to get the three thousand people to join them. when he begun, lowell turned pale, and story livid. his great eyes, they thought, were fixed on them. his opening words changed their scorn to admiration, and their contempt to approbation. "he gave us a glimpse into the holy of holies," said another student, in relating his experience in listening to a great preacher. is not oratory a fine art? the well-spring of eloquence, when up-gushing as the very water of life, quenches the thirst of myriads of men, like the smitten rock of the wilderness reviving the life of desert wanderers. chapter xxxiv the triumphs of the common virtues the talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, and doing well whatever you do, without a thought of fame.--longfellow. it is not a question of what a man knows but what use he can make of what he knows.--j. g. holland. seest thou a man diligent in business? he shall stand before kings.--solomon. the most encouraging truth that can be impressed upon the mind of youth is this: "what man has done man may do." men of great achievements are not to be set on pedestals and reverenced as exceptions to the average of humanity. instead, these great men are to be considered as setting a standard of success for the emulation of every aspiring youth. their example shows what can be accomplished by the practise of the common virtues,--diligence, patience, thrift, self-denial, determination, industry, and persistence. we can best appreciate the uplifting power of these simple virtues which all may cultivate and exercise, by taking some concrete example of great success which has been achieved by patient plodding toward a definite goal. no more illustrious example of success won by the exercise of common virtues can be offered than abraham lincoln, rail-splitter and president. probably lincoln has been the hero of more american boys during the last two generations than any other american character. young people look upon him as a marvelous being, raised up for a divine purpose; and yet, if we analyze his character, we find it made up of the humblest virtues, the commonest qualities; the poorest boys and girls, who look upon him as a demigod, possess these qualities. the strong thing about lincoln was his manliness, his straightforward, downright honesty. you could depend upon him. he was ambitious to make the most of himself. he wanted to know something, to be somebody, to lift his head up from his humble environment and be of some account in the world. he simply wanted to better his condition. it is true that he had a divine hunger for growth, a passion for a larger and completer life than that of those about him; but there is no evidence of any great genius, any marvelous powers. he was a simple man, never straining after effect. his simplicity was his chief charm. everybody who knew him felt that he was a man, a large-hearted, generous friend, always ready to help everybody and everything out of their troubles, whether it was a pig stuck in the mire, a poor widow in trouble, or a farmer who needed advice. he had a helpful mind, open, frank, transparent. he never covered up anything, never had secrets. the door of his heart was always open so that anyone could read his inmost thoughts. the ability to do hard work, and to stick to it, is the right hand of genius and the best substitute for it,--in fact, that is genius. if young people were to represent lincoln's total success by one hundred, they would probably expect to find some brilliant faculty which would rank at least fifty per cent of the total. but i think that the verdict of history has given his honesty of purpose, his purity and unselfishness of motive as his highest attributes, and certainly these qualities are within the reach of the poorest boy and the humblest girl in america. suppose we rank his honesty, his integrity twenty per cent of the total, his dogged persistence, his ability for hard work ten per cent, his passion for wholeness, for completeness, for doing everything to a finish ten more, his aspiration, his longing for growth, his yearning for fulness of life ten more. the reader can see that it would be easy to make up the hundred per cent, without finding any one quality which could be called genius; that the total of his character would be made up of the sum of the commonest qualities, the most ordinary virtues within the reach of the poorest youth in the land. there is no one quality in his entire make-up so overpowering, so commanding that it could be ranked as genius. what an inestimable blessing to the world, what an encouragement, an inspiration to poor boys and poor girls that his great achievement can be accounted for by the triumph in his character of those qualities which are beyond the reach of money, of family, of influence, but that are within the reach of the poorest and the humblest. in a speech to the people in colorado mountains, roosevelt said: "you think that my success is quite foreign to anything you can achieve. let me assure you that the big prizes i have won are largely accidental. if i have succeeded, it is only as anyone of you can succeed, merely because i have tried to do my duty as i saw it in my home and in my business, and as a citizen. "if when i die the ones who know me best believe that i was a thoughtful, helpful husband, a loving, wise and painstaking father, a generous, kindly neighbor and an honest citizen, that will be a far more real honor, and will prove my life to have been more successful than the fact that i have ever been president of the united states. had a few events over which no one had control been other than they were it is quite possible i might never have held the high office i now occupy, but no train of events could accidentally make me a noble character or a faithful member of my home and community. therefore each of you has the same chance to succeed in true success as i have had, and if my success in the end proves to have been as great as that achieved by many of the humblest of you i shall be fortunate." mckinley did not start with great mental ability. there was nothing very surprising or startling in his career. he was not a great genius, not notable as a scholar. he did not stand very high in school; he was not a great lawyer; he did not make a great record in congress; but he had a good, level head. he had _the best substitute for genius--the ability for hard work and persistence_. he knew how to keep plodding, how to hang on, and he knew that the only way to show what he was made of in congress was to stick to one thing, and he made a specialty of the tariff, following the advice of a statesman friend. the biographies of the giants of the race are often discouraging to the average poor boy, because the moment he gets the impression that the character he is reading about was a genius, the effect is largely lost upon himself, because he knows that he is not a genius, and he says to himself, "this is very interesting reading, but i can never do those things." but when he reads the life of mckinley he does not see any reason why he could not do the same things himself, because there were no great jumps, no great leaps and bounds in his life from particular ability or special opportunity. he had no very brilliant talents, but he averaged well. he had good common sense and was a hard worker. he had tact and diplomacy and made the most of every opportunity. nothing can keep from success the man who has iron in his blood and is determined that he will succeed. when he is confronted by barriers he leaps over them, tunnels through them, or makes a way around them. obstacles only serve to stiffen his backbone, increase his determination, sharpen his wits and develop his innate resources. the record of human achievement is full of the truth. "there is no difficulty to him who wills." "all the performances of human art, at which we look with praise and wonder," says johnson, "are instances of the resistless force of perseverance." it has been well said that from the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels; one warehouses, another villas. bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks until the architect makes them something else. the boulder which was an obstacle in the path of the weak becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the resolute. the difficulties which dishearten one man only stiffen the sinews of another, who looks on them as a sort of mental spring-board by which to vault across the gulf of failure to the sure, solid ground of full success. one of the greatest generals on the confederate side in the civil war, "stonewall" jackson, was noted for his slowness. with this he possessed great application and dogged determination. if he undertook a task, he never let go till he had it done. so, when he went to west point, his habitual class response was that he was too busy getting the lesson of a few days back to look at the one of the day. he kept up this steady gait, and, from the least promising "plebe," came out seventeenth in a class of seventy, distancing fifty-three who started with better attainments and better minds. his classmates used to say that, if the course was ten years instead of four, he would come out first. the world always stands aside for the determined man. you will find no royal road to your triumph. there is no open door to the temple of success. one of the commonest of common virtues is perseverance, yet it has been the open sesame of more fast locked doors of opportunity than have brilliant tributes. every man and woman can exercise this virtue of perseverance, can refuse to stop short of the goal of ambition, can decline to turn aside in search of pleasures that do but hinder progress. the romance of perseverance under especial difficulty is one of the most fascinating subjects in history. tenacity of purpose has been characteristic of all characters who have left their mark on the world. perseverance, it has been said, is the statesman's brain, the warrior's sword, the inventor's secret, the scholar's "open sesame." persistency is to talent what steam is to the engine. it is the driving force by which the machine accomplishes the work for which it was intended. a great deal of persistency, with a very little talent, can be counted on to go farther than a great deal of talent without persistency. you cannot keep a determined man from success. take away his money, and he makes spurs of his poverty to urge him on. lock him up in a dungeon, and he writes the immortal "pilgrim's progress." stick to a thing and carry it through in all its completeness and proportion, and you will become a hero. you will think better of yourself; others will exalt you. thoroughness is another of the common virtues which all may cultivate. the man who puts his best into every task will leave far behind the man who lets a job go with the comment "that's good enough." nothing is good enough unless it reflects our best. daniel webster had no remarkable traits of character in his boyhood. he was sent to phillips exeter academy in new hampshire, and stayed there only a short time when a neighbor found him crying on his way home, and asked the reason. daniel said he despaired of ever making a scholar. he said the boys made fun of him, for always being at the foot of the class, and that he had decided to give up and go home. the friend said he ought to go back, and see what hard study would do. he went back, applied himself to his studies with determination to win, and it was not long before he silenced those who had ridiculed him, by reaching the head of the class, and remaining there. fidelity to duty has been a distinguishing virtue in men who have risen to positions of authority and command. it has been observed that the dispatches of napoleon rang with the word glory. wellington's dispatches centered around the common word duty. nowadays people seem unwilling to tread the rough path of duty and by patience and steadfast perseverance step into the ranks of those the country delights to honor. every little while i get letters from young men who say, if they were positively sure that they could be a webster in law, they would devote all their energies to study, fling their whole lives into their work; or if they could be an edison in invention, or a great leader in medicine, or a merchant prince like wanamaker or marshall field, they could work with enthusiasm and zeal and power and concentration. they would be willing to make any sacrifice, to undergo any hardship in order to achieve what these men have achieved. but many of them say they do not feel that they have the marvelous ability, the great genius, the tremendous talent exhibited by those leaders, and so they are not willing to make the great exertion. they do not realize that success is not necessarily doing some great thing, that it is not making a tremendous strain to do something great; but that it is just honestly, earnestly living the everyday simple life. it is by the exercise of the common everyday virtues; it is by trying to do everything one does to a complete finish; it is by trying to be scrupulously honest in every transaction; it is by always ringing true in our friendships, by holding a helpful, accommodating attitude toward those about us; by trying to be the best possible citizen, a good, accommodating, helpful neighbor, a kind, encouraging father; it is by all these simple things that we attain success. there is no great secret about success. it is just a natural persistent exercise of the commonest every-day qualities. we have seen people in the country in the summer time trampling down the daisies and the beautiful violets, the lovely wild flowers in their efforts to get a branch of showy flowers off a large tree, which, perhaps, would not compare in beauty and delicacy and loveliness to the things they trampled under their feet in trying to procure it. oh, how many exquisite experiences, delightful possible joys we trample under our feet in straining after something great, in trying to do some marvelous thing that will attract attention and get our names in the papers! we trample down the finer emotions, we spoil many of the most delicious things in life in our scrambling and greed to grasp something which is unusual, something showy that we can wave before the world in order to get its applause. in straining for effect, in the struggle to do something great and wonderful, we miss the little successes, the sum of which would make our lives sublime; and often, after all this straining and struggling for the larger, for the grander things, we miss them, and then we discover to our horror what we have missed on the way up--what sweetness, what beauty, what loveliness, what a lot of common, homely, cheering things we have lost in the useless struggle. great scientists tell us that the reason why the secrets of nature have been hidden from the world so long is because we are not simple enough in our methods of reasoning; that investigators are always looking for unusual phenomena, for something complicated; that the principles of nature's secrets are so extremely simple that men overlook them in their efforts to see and solve the more intricate problems. it is most unfortunate that so many young people get the impression that success consists in doing some marvelous thing, that there must be some genius born in the man who achieves it, else he could not do such remarkable things. chapter xxxv getting aroused "how's the boy gittin' on, davis?" asked farmer john field, as he watched his son, marshall, waiting upon a customer. "well, john, you and i are old friends," replied deacon davis, as he took an apple from a barrel and handed it to marshall's father as a peace offering; "we are old friends, and i don't want to hurt your feelin's; but i'm a blunt man, and air goin' to tell you the truth. marshall is a good, steady boy, all right, but he wouldn't make a merchant if he stayed in my store a thousand years. he weren't cut out for a merchant. take him back to the farm, john, and teach him how to milk cows!" if marshall field had remained as clerk in deacon davis's store in pittsfield, massachusetts, where he got his first position, he could never have become one of the world's merchant princes. but when he went to chicago and saw the marvelous examples around him of poor boys who had won success, it aroused his ambition and fired him with the determination to be a great merchant himself. "if others can do such wonderful things," he asked himself, "why cannot i?" of course, there was the making of a great merchant in mr. field from the start; but circumstances, an ambition-arousing environment, had a great deal to do with stimulating his latent energy and bringing out his reserve force. it is doubtful if he would have climbed so rapidly in any other place than chicago. in , when young field went there, this marvelous city was just starting on its unparalleled career. it had then only about eighty-five thousand inhabitants. a few years before it had been a mere indian trading village. but the city grew by leaps and bounds, and always beat the predictions of its most sanguine inhabitants. success was in the air. everybody felt that there were great possibilities there. [illustration: marshall field] many people seem to think that ambition is a quality born within us; that it is not susceptible to improvement; that it is something thrust upon us which will take care of itself. but it is a passion that responds very quickly to cultivation, and it requires constant care and education, just as the faculty for music or art does, or it will atrophy. if we do not try to realize our ambition, it will not keep sharp and defined. our faculties become dull and soon lose their power if they are not exercised. how can we expect our ambition to remain fresh and vigorous through years of inactivity, indolence, or indifference? if we constantly allow opportunities to slip by us without making any attempt to grasp them, our inclination will grow duller and weaker. "what i most need," as emerson says, "is somebody to make me do what i can." to do what i can, that is my problem; not what a napoleon or a lincoln could do, but what _i_ can do. it makes all the difference in the world to me whether i bring out the best thing in me or the worst,--whether i utilize ten, fifteen, twenty-five, or ninety per cent of my ability. everywhere we see people who have reached middle life or later without being aroused. they have developed only a small percentage of their success possibilities. they are still in a dormant state. the best thing in them lies so deep that it has never been awakened. when we meet these people we feel conscious that they have a great deal of latent power that has never been exercised. great possibilities of usefulness and of achievement are, all unconsciously, going to waste within them. some time ago there appeared in the newspapers an account of a girl who had reached the age of fifteen years, and yet had only attained the mental development of a small child. only a few things interested her. she was dreamy, inactive, and indifferent to everything around her most of the time until, one day, while listening to a hand organ on the street, she suddenly awakened to full consciousness. she came to herself; her faculties were aroused, and in a few days she leaped forward years in her development. almost in a day she passed from childhood to budding womanhood. most of us have an enormous amount of power, of latent force, slumbering within us, as it slumbered in this girl, which could do marvels if we would only awaken it. the judge of the municipal court in a flourishing western city, one of the most highly esteemed jurists in his state, was in middle life, before his latent power was aroused, an illiterate blacksmith. he is now sixty, the owner of the finest library in his city, with the reputation of being its best-read man, and one whose highest endeavor is to help his fellow man. what caused the revolution in his life? the hearing of a single lecture on the value of education. this was what stirred the slumbering power within him, awakened his ambition, and set his feet in the path of self-development. i have known several men who never realized their possibilities until they reached middle life. then they were suddenly aroused, as if from a long sleep, by reading some inspiring, stimulating book, by listening to a sermon or a lecture, or by meeting some friend,--someone with high ideals,--who understood, believed in, and encouraged them. it will make all the difference in the world to you whether you are with people who are watching for ability in you, people who believe in, encourage, and praise you, or whether you are with those who are forever breaking your idols, blasting your hopes, and throwing cold water on your aspirations. the chief probation officer of the children's court in new york, in his report for , says: "removing a boy or girl from improper environment is the first step in his or her reclamation." the new york society for the prevention of cruelty to children, after thirty years of investigation of cases involving the social and moral welfare of over half a million of children, has also come to the conclusion that environment is stronger than heredity. even the strongest of us are not beyond the reach of our environment. no matter how independent, strong-willed, and determined our nature, we are constantly being modified by our surroundings. take the best-born child, with the greatest inherited advantages, and let it be reared by savages, and how many of its inherited tendencies will remain? if brought up from infancy in a barbarous, brutal atmosphere, it will, of course, become brutal. the story is told of a well-born child who, being lost or abandoned as an infant, was suckled by a wolf with her own young ones, and who actually took on all the characteristics of the wolf,--walked on all fours, howled like a wolf, and ate like one. it does not take much to determine the lives of most of us. we naturally follow the examples about us, and, as a rule, we rise or fall according to the strongest current in which we live. the poet's "i am a part of all that i have met" is not a mere poetic flight of fancy; it is an absolute truth. everything--every sermon or lecture or conversation you have heard, every person who has touched your life--has left an impress upon your character, and you are never quite the same person after the association or experience. you are a little different,--modified somewhat from what you were before,--just as beecher was never the same man after reading ruskin. some years ago a party of russian workmen were sent to this country by a russian firm of shipbuilders, in order that they might acquire american methods and catch the american spirit. within six months the russians had become almost the equals of the american artisans among whom they worked. they had developed ambition, individuality, personal initiative, and a marked degree of excellence in their work. a year after their return to their own country, the deadening, non-progressive atmosphere about them had done its work. the men had lost the desire to improve; they were again plodders, with no goal beyond the day's work. the ambition aroused by stimulating environment had sunk to sleep again. our indian schools sometimes publish, side by side, photographs of the indian youths as they come from the reservation and as they look when they are graduated,--well dressed, intelligent, with the fire of ambition in their eyes. we predict great things for them; but the majority of those who go back to their tribes, after struggling awhile to keep up their new standards, gradually drop back to their old manner of living. there are, of course, many notable exceptions, but these are strong characters, able to resist the downward-dragging tendencies about them. if you interview the great army of failures, you will find that multitudes have failed because they never got into a stimulating, encouraging environment, because their ambition was never aroused, or because they were not strong enough to rally under depressing, discouraging, or vicious surroundings. most of the people we find in prisons and poor-houses are pitiable examples of the influence of an environment which appealed to the worst instead of to the best in them. whatever you do in life, make any sacrifice necessary to keep in an ambition-arousing atmosphere, an environment that will stimulate you to self-development. keep close to people who understand you, who believe in you, who will help you to discover yourself and encourage you to make the most of yourself. this may make all the difference to you between a grand success and a mediocre existence. stick to those who are trying to do something and to be somebody in the world,--people of high aims, lofty ambition. keep close to those who are dead-in-earnest. ambition is contagious. you will catch the spirit that dominates in your environment. the success of those about you who are trying to climb upward will encourage and stimulate you to struggle harder if you have not done quite so well yourself. there is a great power in a battery of individuals who are struggling for the achievement of high aims, a great magnetic force which will help you to attract the object of your ambition. it is very stimulating to be with people whose aspirations run parallel with your own. if you lack energy, if you are naturally lazy, indolent, or inclined to take it easy, you will be urged forward by the constant prodding of the more ambitious. chapter xxxvi the man with an idea he who wishes to fulfil his mission must be a man of one idea, that is, of one great overmastering purpose, over shadowing all his aims, and guiding and controlling his entire life.--bate. a healthful hunger for a great idea is the beauty and blessedness of life.--jean ingelow. a profound conviction raises a man above the feeling of ridicule.--j. stuart mill. ideas go booming through the world louder than cannon. thoughts are mightier than armies. principles have achieved more victories than horsemen or chariots.--w. m. paxton. "what are you bothering yourselves with a knitting machine for?" asked ari davis, of boston, a manufacturer of instruments; "why don't you make a sewing-machine?" his advice had been sought by a rich man and an inventor who had reached their wits' ends in the vain attempt to produce a device for knitting woolen goods. "i wish i could, but it can't be done." "oh, yes it can," said davis; "i can make one myself." "well," the capitalist replied, "you do it, and i'll insure you an independent fortune." the words of davis were uttered in a spirit of jest, but the novel idea found lodgment in the mind of one of the workmen who stood by, a mere youth of twenty, who was thought not capable of a serious idea. but elias howe was not so rattle-headed as he seemed, and the more he reflected, the more desirable such a machine appeared to him. four years passed, and with a wife and three children to support in a great city on a salary of nine dollars a week, the light-hearted boy had become a thoughtful, plodding man. the thought of the sewing-machine haunted him night and day, and he finally resolved to produce one. after months wasted in the effort to work a needle pointed at both ends, with the eye in the middle, that should pass up and down through the cloth, suddenly the thought flashed through his mind that another stitch must be possible, and with almost insane devotion he worked night and day, until he had made a rough model of wood and wire that convinced him of ultimate success. in his mind's eye he saw his idea, but his own funds and those of his father, who had aided him more or less, were insufficient to embody it in a working machine. but help came from an old schoolmate, george fisher, a coal and wood merchant of cambridge. he agreed to board elias and his family and furnish five hundred dollars, for which he was to have one-half of the patent, if the machine proved to be worth patenting. in may, , the machine was completed, and in july elias howe sewed all the seams of two suits of woolen clothes, one for mr. fisher and the other for himself. the sewing outlasted the cloth. this machine, which is still preserved, will sew three hundred stitches a minute, and is considered more nearly perfect than any other prominent invention at its first trial. there is not one of the millions of sewing-machines now in use that does not contain some of the essential principles of this first attempt. when it was decided to try and elevate chicago out of the mud by raising its immense blocks up to grade, the young son of a poor mechanic, named george m. pullman, appeared on the scene, and put in a bid for the great undertaking, and the contract was awarded to him. he not only raised the blocks, but did it in such a way that business within them was scarcely interrupted. all this time he was revolving in his mind his pet project of building a "sleeping car" which would be adopted on all railroads. he fitted up two old cars on the chicago and alton road with berths, and soon found they would be in demand. he then went to work on the principle that the more luxurious his cars were, the greater would be the demand for them. after spending three years in colorado gold mines, he returned and built two cars which cost $ , each. everybody laughed at "pullman's folly." but pullman believed that whatever relieved the tediousness of long trips would meet with speedy approval, and he had faith enough in his idea to risk his all in it. pullman was a great believer in the commercial value of beauty. the wonderful town which he built and which bears his name, as well as his magnificent cars, is an example of his belief in this principle. he counts it a good investment to surround his employees with comforts and beauty and good sanitary conditions, and so the town of pullman is a model of cleanliness, order, and comfort. it has ever been the man with an idea, which he puts into practical effect, who has changed the face of christendom. the germ idea of the steam engine can be seen in the writings of the greek philosophers, but it was not developed until more than two thousand years later. it was an english blacksmith, newcomen, with no opportunities, who in the seventeenth century conceived the idea of moving a piston by the elastic force of steam; but his engine consumed thirty pounds of coal in producing one horse power. the perfection of the modern engine is largely due to james watt, a poor, uneducated scotch boy, who at fifteen walked the streets of london in a vain search for work. a professor in the glasgow university gave him the use of a room to work in, and while waiting for jobs he experimented with old vials for steam reservoirs and hollow canes for pipes, for he could not bear to waste a moment. he improved newcomen's engine by cutting off the steam after the piston had completed a quarter or a third of its stroke, and letting the steam already in the chamber expand and drive the piston the remaining distance. this saved nearly three-fourths of the steam. watt suffered from pinching poverty and hardships which would have disheartened ordinary men; but he was terribly in earnest, and his brave wife margaret begged him not to mind her inconvenience, nor be discouraged. "if the engine will not work," she wrote him while struggling in london, "something else will. never despair." "i had gone to take a walk," said watt, "on a fine sabbath afternoon, and had passed the old washing-house, thinking upon the engine at the time, when the idea came into my head that, as steam is an elastic body, it would rush into a vacuum, and if a communication were made between the cylinder and an exhausted vessel, it would rush into it, and might be there condensed without cooling the cylinder." the idea was simple, but in it lay the germ of the first steam engine of much practical value. sir james mackintosh places this poor scotch boy who began with only an idea "at the head of all inventors in all ages and all nations." see george stephenson, working in the coal pits for sixpence a day, patching the clothes and mending the boots of his fellow-workmen at night, to earn a little money to attend a night school, giving the first money he ever earned, $ , to his blind father to pay his debts. people say he is crazy; his "roaring steam engine will set the house on fire with its sparks"; "smoke will pollute the air"; "carriage makers and coachmen will starve for want of work." for three days the committee of the house of commons plies questions to him. this was one of them: "if a cow get on the track of the engine traveling ten miles an hour, will it not be an awkward situation?" "yes, very awkward, indeed, for the coo," replied stephenson. a government inspector said that if a locomotive ever went ten miles an hour, he would undertake to eat a stewed engine for breakfast. "what can be more palpably absurd and ridiculous than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as horses?" asked a writer in the english "quarterly review" for march, . "we should as soon expect the people of woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of congreve's rockets as to trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine, going at such a rate. we trust that parliament will, in all the railways it may grant, _limit the speed to eight or nine miles an hour_, which we entirely agree with mr. sylvester is as great as can be ventured upon." this article referred to stephenson's proposition to use his newly invented locomotive instead of horses on the liverpool and manchester railroad, then in process of construction. the company decided to lay the matter before two leading english engineers, who reported that steam would be desirable only when used in stationary engines one and a half miles apart, drawing the cars by means of ropes and pulleys. but stephenson persuaded them to test his idea by offering a prize of about twenty-five hundred dollars for the best locomotive produced at a trial to take place october , . on the eventful day, thousands of spectators assembled to watch the competition of four engines, the "novelty," the "rocket," the "perseverance," and the "sanspareil." the "perseverance" could make but six miles an hour, and so was ruled out, as the conditions called for at least ten. the "sanspareil" made an average of fourteen miles an hour, but as it burst a water-pipe it lost its chance. the "novelty" did splendidly, but also burst a pipe, and was crowded out, leaving the "rocket" to carry off the honors with an average speed of fifteen miles an hour, the highest rate attained being twenty-nine. this was stephenson's locomotive, and so fully vindicated his theory that the idea of stationary engines on a railroad was completely exploded. he had picked up the fixed engines which the genius of watt had devised, and set them on wheels to draw men and merchandise, against the most direful predictions of the foremost engineers of his day. in all the records of invention there is no more sad or affecting story than that of john fitch. poor he was in many senses, poor in appearance, poor in spirit. he was born poor, lived poor, and died poor. if there ever was a true inventor, this man was one. he was one of those eager souls that would coin their own flesh to carry their point. he only uttered the obvious truth when he said one day, in a crisis of his invention, that if he could get one hundred pounds by cutting off one of his legs he would gladly give it to the knife. he tried in vain both in this country and in france to get money to build his steamboat. he would say: "you and i will not live to see the day, but the time will come when the steamboat will be preferred to all other modes of conveyance, when steamboats will ascend the western rivers from new orleans to wheeling, and when steamboats will cross the ocean. johnny fitch will be forgotten, but other men will carry out his ideas and grow rich and great upon them." poor, ragged, forlorn, jeered at, pitied as a madman, discouraged by the great, refused by the rich, he kept on till, in , he had the first vessel on the delaware that ever answered the purpose of a steamboat. it ran six miles an hour against the tide, and eight miles with it. at noon, on friday, august , , a crowd of curious people might have been seen along the wharves of the hudson river. they had gathered to witness what they considered a ridiculous failure of a "crank" who proposed to take a party of people up the hudson river to albany in what he called a steam vessel named the _clermont_. did anybody ever hear of such a ridiculous idea as navigating against the current up the hudson in a vessel without sails? "the thing will 'bust,'" says one; "it will burn up," says another, and "they will all be drowned," exclaims a third, as he sees vast columns of black smoke shoot up with showers of brilliant sparks. nobody present, in all probability, ever heard of a boat going by steam. it was the opinion of everybody that the man who had tooled away his money and his time on the _clermont_ was little better than an idiot, and ought to be in an insane asylum. but the passengers go on board, the plank is pulled in, and the steam is turned on. the walking beam moves slowly up and down, and the _clermont_ floats out into the river. "it can never go up stream," the spectators persist. but it did go up stream, and the boy, who in his youth said there is nothing impossible, had scored a great triumph, and had given to the world the first steamboat that had any practical value. notwithstanding that fulton had rendered such great service to humanity, a service which has revolutionized the commerce of the world, he was looked upon by many as a public enemy. critics and cynics turned up their noses when fulton was mentioned. the severity of the world's censure, ridicule, and detraction has usually been in proportion to the benefit the victim has conferred upon mankind. as the _clermont_ burned pine wood, dense columns of fire and smoke belched forth from her smoke-stack while she glided triumphantly up the river, and the inhabitants along the banks were utterly unable to account for the spectacle. they rushed to the shore amazed to see a boat "on fire" go against the stream so rapidly with neither oars nor sails. the noise of her great paddle-wheels increased the wonder. sailors forsook their vessels, and fishermen rowed home as fast as possible to get out of the way of the fire monster. the indians were as much frightened as their predecessors were when the first ship approached their hunting-ground on manhattan island. the owners of sailing vessels were jealous of the _clermont_, and tried to run her down. others whose interests were affected denied fulton's claim to the invention and brought suits against him. but the success of the _clermont_ soon led to the construction of other steamships all over the country. the government employed fulton to aid in building a powerful steam frigate, which was called _fulton the first_. he also built a diving boat for the government for the discharge of torpedoes. by this time his fame had spread all over the civilized world, and when he died, in , newspapers were marked with black lines; the legislature of new york wore badges of mourning; and minute guns were fired as the long funeral procession passed to old trinity churchyard. very few private persons were ever honored with such a burial. true, dr. lardner had "proved" to scientific men that a steamship could not cross the atlantic, but in the _savannah_ from new york appeared off the coast of ireland under sail and steam, having made this "impossible" passage. those on shore thought that a fire had broken out below the decks, and a king's cutter was sent to her relief. although the voyage was made without accident, it was nearly twenty years before it was admitted that steam navigation could be made a commercial success in ocean traffic. as junius smith impatiently paced the deck of a vessel sailing from an english port to new york, on a rough and tedious voyage in , he said to himself, "why not cross the ocean regularly in steamships?" in new york and in london a deaf ear was turned to any such nonsense. smith's first encouragement came from george grote, the historian and banker, who said the idea was practicable; but it was the same old story,--he would risk no money in it. at length isaac selby, a prominent business man of london, agreed to build a steamship of two thousand tons, the _british queen_. an unexpected delay in fitting the engines led the projectors to charter the _sirius_, a river steamer of seven hundred tons, and send her to new york. learning of this, other parties started from bristol four days later in the _great western_, and both vessels arrived at new york the same day. soon after smith made the round trip between london and new york in thirty-two days. what a sublime picture of determination and patience was that of charles goodyear, of new haven, buried in poverty and struggling with hardships for eleven long years, to make india rubber of practical use! see him in prison for debt; pawning his clothes and his wife's jewelry to get a little money to keep his children (who were obliged to gather sticks in the field for fire) from starving. watch his sublime courage and devotion to his idea, when he had no money to bury a dead child and when his other five were near starvation; when his neighbors were harshly criticizing him for his neglect of his family and calling him insane. but, behold his vulcanized rubber; the result of that heroic struggle, applied to over five hundred uses by , employees. what a pathetic picture was that of palissy, plodding on through want and woe to rediscover the lost art of enameling pottery; building his furnaces with bricks carried on his back, seeing his six children die of neglect, probably of starvation, his wife in rags and despair over her husband's "folly"; despised by his neighbors for neglecting his family, worn to a skeleton himself, giving his clothes to his hired man because he could not pay him in money, hoping always, failing steadily, until at last his great work was accomplished, and he reaped his reward. german unity was the idea engraven upon bismarck's heart. what cared this herculean despot for the diet chosen year after year simply to vote down every measure he proposed? he was indifferent to all opposition. he simply defied and sent home every diet which opposed him. he could play the game alone. to make germany the greatest power in europe, to make william of prussia a greater potentate than napoleon or alexander, was his all-absorbing purpose. it mattered not what stood in his way, whether people, diet, or nation; all must bend to his mighty will. germany must hold the deciding voice in the areopagus of the world. he rode roughshod over everybody and everything that stood in his way, defiant of opposition, imperious, irrepressible! see the great dante in exile, condemned to be burnt alive on false charges of embezzlement. look at his starved features, gaunt form, melancholy, a poor wanderer; but he never gave up his idea; he poured out his very soul into his immortal poem, ever believing that right would at last triumph. columbus was exposed to continual scoffs and indignities, being ridiculed as a mere dreamer and stigmatized as an adventurer. the very children, it is said, pointed to their foreheads as he passed, being taught to regard him as a kind of madman. an american was once invited to dine with oken, the famous german naturalist. to his surprise, they had neither meats nor dessert, but only baked potatoes. oken was too great a man to apologize for their simple fare. his wife explained, however, that her husband's income was very small, and that they preferred to live simply in order that he might obtain books and instruments for his scientific researches. before the discovery of ether it often took a week, in some cases a month, to recover from the enormous dose, sometimes five hundred drops of laudanum, given to a patient to deaden the pain during a surgical operation. young dr. morton believed that there must be some means provided by nature to relieve human suffering during these terrible operations; but what could he do? he was not a chemist; he did not know the properties of chemical substances; he was not liberally educated. dr. morton did not resort to books, however, nor did he go to scientific men for advice, but immediately began to experiment with well-known substances. he tried intoxicants even to the point of intoxication, but as soon as the instruments were applied the patient would revive. he kept on experimenting with narcotics in this manner until at last he found what he sought in ether. what a grand idea bishop vincent worked out for the young world in the chautauqua circle, dr. clark in his world-wide christian endeavor movement, the methodist church in the epworth league, edward everett hale in his little bands of king's daughters and ten times one is ten! here is clara barton who has created the red cross society, which is loved by all nations. she noticed in our civil war that the confederates were shelling the hospital. she thought it the last touch of cruelty to fight what couldn't fight back, and she determined to have the barbarous custom stopped. of course the world laughed at this poor unaided woman. but her idea has been adopted by all nations; and the enemy that aims a shot at the tent or building over which flies the white flag with the red cross has lost his last claim to human consideration. in all ages those who have advanced the cause of humanity have been men and women "possessed," in the opinion of their neighbors. noah in building the ark, moses in espousing the cause of the israelites, or christ in living and dying to save a fallen race, incurred the pity and scorn of the rich and highly educated, in common with all great benefactors. yet in every age and in every clime men and women have been willing to incur poverty, hardship, toil, ridicule, persecution, or even death, if thereby they might shed light or comfort upon the path which all must walk from the cradle to the grave. in fact it is doubtful whether a man can perform very great service to mankind who is not permeated with a great purpose--with an overmastering idea. beecher had to fight every step of the way to his triumph through obstacles which would have appalled all but the greatest characters. oftentimes in these great battles for principle and struggles for truth, he stood almost alone fighting popular prejudice, narrowness, and bigotry, uncharitableness and envy even in his own church. but he never hesitated nor wavered when he once saw his duty. there was no shilly-shallying, no hunting for a middle ground between right and wrong, no compromise on principles. he hewed close to the chalk line and held his line plumb to truth. he never pandered for public favor nor sought applause. duty and truth were his goal, and he went straight to his mark. other churches did not agree with him nor his, but he was too broad for hatred, too charitable for revenge, and too magnanimous for envy. what tale of the "arabian nights" equals in fascination the story of such lives as those of franklin, of morse, goodyear, howe, edison, bell, beecher, gough, mrs. harriet beecher stowe, amos lawrence, george peabody, mccormick, hoe, and scores of others, each representing some great idea embodied in earnest action, and resulting in an improvement of the physical, mental, and moral condition of those around them? there are plenty of ideas left in the world yet. everything has not been invented. all good things have not been done. there are thousands of abuses to rectify, and each one challenges the independent soul, armed with a new idea. "but how shall i get ideas?" keep your wits open! observe! study! but above all, think! and when a noble image is indelibly impressed upon the mind--_act_! chapter xxxvii dare the spartans did not inquire how many the enemy are, but where they are.--agis ii. what's brave, what's noble, let's do it after the high roman fashion, and make death proud to take us.--shakespeare. let me die facing the enemy.--bayard. who conquers me, shall find a stubborn foe.--byron. no great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty. george eliot. fortune befriends the bold.--dryden. to stand with a smile upon your face against a stake from which you cannot get away--that, no doubt, is heroic. but the true glory is resignation to the inevitable. to stand unchained, with perfect liberty to go away, held only by the higher claims of duty, and let the fire creep up to the heart,--this is heroism.--f. w. robertson. "steady, men! every man must die where he stands!" said colin campbell to the ninety-third highlanders at balaklava, as an overwhelming force of russian cavalry came sweeping down. "ay, ay, sir colin! we'll do that!" was the response from men, many of whom had to keep their word by thus obeying. "bring back the colors," shouted a captain at the battle of the alma, when an ensign maintained his ground in front, although the men were retreating. "no," cried the ensign, "bring up the men to the colors." "to dare, and again to dare, and without end to dare," was danton's noble defiance to the enemies of france. "the commons of france have resolved to deliberate," said mirabeau to de breze, who brought an order from the king for them to disperse, june , . "we have heard the intentions that have been attributed to the king; and you, sir, who cannot be recognized as his organ in the national assembly,--you, who have neither place, voice, nor right to speak,--you are not the person to bring to us a message of his. go, say to those who sent you that we are here by the power of the people, and that we will not be driven hence, save by the power of the bayonet." when the assembled senate of rome begged regulus not to return to carthage to fulfil an illegal promise, he calmly replied: "have you resolved to dishonor me? torture and death are awaiting me, but what are these to the shame of an infamous act, or the wounds of a guilty mind? slave as i am to carthage, i still have the spirit of a roman. i have sworn to return. it is my duty. let the gods take care of the rest." the courage which cranmer had shown since the accession of mary gave way the moment his final doom was announced. the moral cowardice which had displayed itself in his miserable compliance with the lust and despotism of henry viii displayed itself again in six successive recantations by which he hoped to purchase pardon. but pardon was impossible; and cranmer's strangely mingled nature found a power in its very weakness when he was brought into the church of st. mary at oxford on the st of march, to repeat his recantation on the way to the stake. "now," ended his address to the hushed congregation before him,--"now i come to the great thing that troubleth my conscience more than any other thing that ever i said or did in my life, and that is the setting abroad of writings contrary to the truth; which here i now renounce and refuse as things written by a hand contrary to the truth which i thought in my heart, and written for fear of death, to save my life, if it might be. and, forasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, my hand therefore shall be the first punished; for if i come to the fire it shall be the first burned." "this was the hand that wrote it," he again exclaimed at the stake, "therefore it shall suffer first punishment"; and holding it steadily in the flame, "he never stirred nor cried till life was gone." a woman's piercing shriek suddenly startled a party of surveyors at dinner in a forest of northern virginia on a calm, sunny day in . the cries were repeated in quick succession, and the men sprang through the undergrowth to learn their cause. "oh, sir," exclaimed the woman as she caught sight of a youth of eighteen, but a man in stature and bearing; "you will surely do something for me! make these friends release me. my boy,--my poor boy is drowning, and they will not let me go!" "it would be madness; she will jump into the river," said one of the men who was holding her; "and the rapids would dash her to pieces in a moment!" throwing off his coat, the youth sprang to the edge of the bank, scanned for a moment the rocks and whirling currents, and then, at sight of part of the boy's dress, plunged into the roaring rapids. "thank god, he will save my child!" cried the mother, and all rushed to the brink of the precipice; "there he is! oh, my boy, my darling boy! how could i leave you?" but all eyes were bent upon the youth struggling with strong heart and hope amid the dizzy sweep of the whirling currents far below. now it seemed as if he would be dashed against a projecting rock, over which the water flew in foam, and anon a whirlpool would drag him in, from whose grasp escape would seem impossible. twice the boy went out of sight, but he had reappeared the second time, although terribly near the most dangerous part of the river. the rush of waters here was tremendous, and no one had ever dared to approach it, even in a canoe, lest he should be dashed to pieces. the youth redoubled his exertions. three times he was about to grasp the child, when some stronger eddy would toss it from him. one final effort he makes; the child is held aloft by his strong right arm; but a cry of horror bursts from the lips of every spectator as boy and man shoot over the falls and vanish in the seething waters below. "there they are!" shouted the mother a moment later, in a delirium of joy. "see! they are safe! great god, i thank thee!" and sure enough, they emerged unharmed from the boiling vortex, and in a few minutes reached a low place in the bank and were drawn up by their friends, the boy senseless, but still alive, and the youth almost exhausted. "god will give you a reward," solemnly spoke the grateful woman. "he will do great things for you in return for this day's work, and the blessings of thousands besides mine will attend you." the youth was george washington. "your grace has not the organ of animal courage largely developed," said a phrenologist, who was examining wellington's head. "you are right," replied the iron duke, "and but for my sense of duty i should have retreated in my first fight." that first fight, on an indian field, was one of the most terrible on record. when general jackson was a judge and was holding court in a small settlement, a border ruffian, a murderer and desperado, came into the court-room with brutal violence and interrupted the court. the judge ordered him to be arrested. the officer did not dare to approach him. "call a posse," said the judge, "and arrest him." but they also shrank in fear from the ruffian. "call me, then," said jackson; "this court is adjourned for five minutes." he left the bench, walked straight up to the man, and with his eagle eye actually cowed the ruffian, who dropped his weapons, afterwards saying, "there was something in his eye i could not resist." one of the last official acts of president carnot, of france, was the sending of a medal of the french legion of honor to a little american girl who lives in indiana. while a train on the pan handle railroad, having on board several distinguished frenchmen, was bound to chicago and the world's fair, jennie carey, who was then ten years old, discovered that a trestle was on fire, and that if the train, which was nearly due, entered it a dreadful wreck would take place. thereupon she ran out upon the track to a place where she could be seen from some little distance. then she took off her red flannel skirt and, when the train came in view, waved it back and forth across the track. it was seen, and the train stopped. on board of it were seven hundred people, many of whom must have suffered death but for jennie's courage and presence of mind. when they returned to france, the frenchmen brought the occurrence to the notice of president carnot, and the result was the sending of the medal of this famous french society, the purpose of which is the honoring of bravery and merit, wherever they may be found. it was the heroic devotion of an indian girl that saved the life of captain john smith, when the powerful king powhatan had decreed his death. ill could the struggling colony spare him at that time. on may , , napoleon carried the bridge at lodi, in the face of the austrian batteries. fourteen cannon--some accounts say thirty--were trained upon the french end of the structure. behind them were six thousand troops. napoleon massed four thousand grenadiers at the head of the bridge, with a battalion of three hundred carbineers in front. at the tap of the drum the foremost assailants wheeled from the cover of the street wall under a terrible hail of grape and canister, and attempted to pass the gateway to the bridge. the front ranks went down like stalks of grain before a reaper; the column staggered and reeled backward, and the valiant grenadiers were appalled by the task before them. without a word or a look of reproach, napoleon placed himself at their head, and his aides and generals rushed to his side. forward again, this time over heaps of dead that choked the passage, and a quick run, counted by seconds only, carried the column across two hundred yards of clear space, scarcely a shot from the austrians taking effect beyond the point where the platoons wheeled for the first leap. so sudden and so miraculous was it all that the austrian artillerists abandoned their guns instantly, and instead of rushing to the front and meeting the french onslaught, their supports fled in a panic. this napoleon had counted on in making the bold attack. the contrast between napoleon's slight figure and the massive grenadiers suggested the nickname "little corporal." when stephen of colonna fell into the hands of base assailants, they asked him in derision, "where is now your fortress?" "here," was his bold reply, placing his hand upon his heart. after the mexican war general mcclellan was employed as a topographical engineer in surveying the pacific coast. from his headquarters at vancouver he had gone on an exploring expedition with two companions, a soldier and a servant, when one evening he received word that the chiefs of the columbia river tribes desired to confer with him. from the messenger's manner he suspected that the indians meant mischief, and so he warned his companions that they must be ready to leave camp at a moment's notice. mounting his horse, he rode boldly into the indian village. about thirty chiefs were holding council. mcclellan was led into the circle, and placed at the right hand of saltese. he was familiar with the chinook jargon, and could understand every word spoken in the council. saltese made known the grievance of the tribes. two indians had been captured by a party of white pioneers and hanged for theft. retaliation for this outrage seemed imperative. the chiefs pondered long, but had little to say. mcclellan had been on friendly terms with them, and was not responsible for the forest executions, but still, he was a white man, and the chiefs had vowed vengeance against the race. the council was prolonged for hours before sentence was passed, and then saltese, in the name of the head men of the tribes, decreed that mcclellan should immediately be put to death. mcclellan said nothing. he had known that argument and pleas for justice or mercy would be of no avail. he sat motionless, apparently indifferent to his fate. by his listlessness he had thrown his captors off their guard. when the sentence was passed he acted like a flash. flinging his left arm around the neck of saltese, he whipped out his revolver and held it close to the chief's temple. "revoke that sentence, or i shall kill you this instant!" he cried, with his fingers clicking the trigger. "i revoke it!" exclaimed saltese, fairly livid from fear. "i must have your word that i can leave this council in safety." "you have the word of saltese," was the quick response. mcclellan knew how sacred was the pledge which he had received. the revolver was lowered. saltese was released from the embrace of the strong arm. mcclellan strode out of the tent with his revolver in his hand. not a hand was raised against him. he mounted his horse and rode to his camp, where his two followers were ready to spring into the saddle and to escape from the villages. he owed his life to his quickness of perception, his courage, and to his accurate knowledge of indian character. in , rufus choate spoke to an audience of nearly five thousand in lowell, mass., in favor of the candidacy of james buchanan for the presidency. the floor of the great hall began to sink, settling more and more as he proceeded with his address, until a sound of cracking timber below would have precipitated a stampede with fatal results but for the coolness of b. f. butler, who presided. telling the people to remain quiet, he said that he would see if there were any cause for alarm. he found the supports of the floor in so bad a condition that the slightest applause would be likely to bury the audience in the ruins of the building. returning rather leisurely to the platform, he whispered to choate as he passed, "we shall all be in ---- in five minutes"; then he told the crowd that there was no immediate danger if they would slowly disperse. the post of danger, he added, was on the platform, which was most weakly supported, therefore he and those with him would be the last to leave. no doubt many lives were saved by his coolness. many distinguished foreign and american statesmen were present at a fashionable dinner party where wine was freely poured, but schuyler colfax, then vice-president of the united states, declined to drink from a proffered cup. "colfax dares not drink," sneered a senator who had already taken too much. "you are right," said the vice-president, "i dare not." when grant was in houston many years ago, he was given a rousing reception. naturally hospitable, and naturally inclined to like a man of grant's make-up, the houstonites determined to go beyond any other southern city in the way of a banquet and other manifestations of their good-will and hospitality. they made lavish preparations for the dinner, the committee taking great pains to have the finest wines that could be procured for the table that night. when the time came to serve the wine, the headwaiter went first to grant. without a word the general quietly turned down all the glasses at his plate. this movement was a great surprise to the texans, but they were equal to the occasion. without a single word being spoken, every man along the line of the long tables turned his glasses down, and there was not a drop of wine taken that night. two french officers at waterloo were advancing to charge a greatly superior force. one, observing that the other showed signs of fear, said, "sir, i believe you are frightened." "yes, i am," was the reply, "and if you were half as much frightened, you would run away." "that's a brave man," said wellington, when he saw a soldier turn pale as he marched against a battery; "he knows his danger, and faces it." "there are many cardinals and bishops at worms," said a friend to luther, "and they will burn your body to ashes as they did that of john huss." luther replied: "although they should make a fire that should reach from worms to wittenberg, and that should flame up to heaven, in the lord's name i would pass through it and appear before them." he said to another: "i would enter worms though there were as many devils there as there are tiles upon the roofs of the houses." another man said to him: "duke george will surely arrest you." he replied: "it is my duty to go, and i will go, though it rain duke georges for nine days together." a western paper recently invited the surviving union and confederate officers to give an account of the bravest act observed by each during the civil war. colonel thomas wentworth higginson said that at a dinner at beaufort, s. c., where wine flowed freely and ribald jests were bandied, dr. miner, a slight, boyish fellow who did not drink, was told that he could not go until he had drunk a toast, told a story, or sung a song. he replied: "i cannot sing, but i will give a toast, although i must drink it in water. it is 'our mothers.'" the men were so affected and ashamed that they took him by the hand and thanked him for displaying such admirable moral courage. it takes courage for a young man to stand firmly erect while others are bowing and fawning for praise and power. it takes courage to wear threadbare clothes while your comrades dress in broadcloth. it takes courage to remain in honest poverty when others grow rich by fraud. it takes courage to say "no" squarely when those around you say "yes." it takes courage to do your duty in silence and obscurity while others prosper and grow famous although neglecting sacred obligations. it takes courage to unmask your true self, to show your blemishes to a condemning world, and to pass for what you really are. it takes courage and pluck to be outvoted, beaten, laughed at, scoffed, ridiculed, derided, misunderstood, misjudged, to stand alone with all the world against you, but "they are slaves who dare not be in the right with two or three." "an honest man is not the worse because a dog barks at him." we live ridiculously for fear of being thought ridiculous. "tis he is the coward who proves false to his vows, to his manhood, his honor, for a laugh or a sneer." the youth who starts out by being afraid to speak what he thinks will usually end by being afraid to think what he wishes. how we shrink from an act of our own! we live as others live. custom or fashion, or your doctor or minister, dictates, and they in turn dare not depart from their schools. dress, living, servants, carriages, everything must conform, or we are ostracized. who dares conduct his household or business affairs in his own way, and snap his fingers at dame grundy? it takes courage for a public man not to bend the knee to popular prejudice. it takes courage to refuse to follow custom when it is injurious to his health and morals. how much easier for a politician to prevaricate and dodge an issue than to stand squarely on his feet like a man! as the strongest man has a weakness somewhere, so the greatest hero is a coward somewhere. peter was courageous enough to draw his sword to defend his master, but he could not stand the ridicule and the finger of scorn of the maidens in the high priest's hall, and he actually denied even the acquaintance of the master he had declared he would die for. don't be like uriah heep, begging everybody's pardon for taking the liberty of being in the world. there is nothing attractive in timidity, nothing lovable in fear. both are deformities and are repulsive. manly courage is always dignified and graceful. bruno, condemned to be burned alive in rome, said to his judge: "you are more afraid to pronounce my sentence than i am to receive it." anne askew, racked until her bones were dislocated, never flinched, but looked her tormentor calmly in the face and refused to adjure her faith. "i should have thought fear would have kept you from going so far," said a relative who found the little boy nelson wandering a long distance from home. "fear?" said the future admiral, "i don't know him." "to think a thing is impossible is to make it so." _courage is victory, timidity's defeat_. that simple shepherd-lad, david, fresh from his flocks, marching unattended and unarmed, save with his shepherd's staff and sling, to confront the colossal goliath with his massive armor, is the sublimest audacity the world has ever seen. "dent, i wish you would get down and see what is the matter with that leg there," said grant, when he and colonel dent were riding through the thickest of a fire that had become so concentrated and murderous that his troops had all been driven back. "i guess looking after your horse's legs can wait," said dent; "it is simply murder for us to sit here." "all right," said grant; "if you don't want to see to it, i will." he dismounted, untwisted a piece of telegraph wire which had begun to cut the horse's leg, examined it deliberately, and climbed into his saddle. "dent," said he, "when you've got a horse that you think a great deal of, you should never take any chances with him. if that wire had been left there for a little time longer he would have gone dead lame, and would perhaps have been ruined for life." wellington said that at waterloo the hottest of the battle raged round a farmhouse, with an orchard surrounded by a thick hedge, which was so important a point in the british position that orders were given to hold it at any hazard or sacrifice. at last the powder and ball ran short and the hedges took fire, surrounding the orchard with a wall of flame. a messenger had been sent for ammunition, and soon two loaded wagons came galloping toward the farmhouse. "the driver of the first wagon, with the reckless daring of an english boy, spurred his struggling and terrified horses through the burning heap; but the flames rose fiercely round, and caught the powder, which exploded in an instant, sending wagon, horses, and rider in fragments into the air. for a instant the driver of the second wagon paused, appalled by his comrade's fate; the next, observing that the flames, beaten back for the moment by the explosion, afforded him one desperate chance, sent his horses at the smoldering breach and, amid the deafening cheers of the garrison, landed his terrible cargo safely within. behind him the flames closed up, and raged more fiercely than ever." at the battle of friedland a cannon-ball came over the heads of the french soldiers, and a young soldier instinctively dodged. napoleon looked at him and smilingly said: "my friend, if that ball were destined for you, though you were to burrow a hundred feet under ground it would be sure to find you there." when the mine in front of petersburg was finished the fuse was lighted and the union troops were drawn up ready to charge the enemy's works as soon as the explosion should make a breach. but seconds, minutes, and tens of minutes passed, without a sound from the mine, and the suspense became painful. lieutenant doughty and sergeant rees volunteered to examine the fuse. through the long subterranean galleries they hurried in silence, not knowing but that they were advancing to a horrible death. they found the defect, fired the train anew, and soon a terrible upheaval of earth gave the signal to march to victory. at the battle of copenhagen, as nelson walked the deck slippery with blood and covered with the dead, he said: "this is warm work, and this day may be the last to any of us in a moment. but, mark me, i would not be elsewhere for thousands." at the battle of trafalgar, when he was shot and was being carried below, he covered his face, that those fighting might not know their chief had fallen. in a skirmish at salamanca, while the enemy's guns were pouring shot into his regiment, sir william napier's men became disobedient. he at once ordered a halt, and flogged four of the ringleaders under fire. the men yielded at once, and then marched three miles under a heavy cannonade as coolly as if it were a review. execute your resolutions immediately. thoughts are but dreams until their effects be tried. does competition trouble you? work away; what is your competitor but a man? _conquer your place in the world_, for all things serve a brave soul. combat difficulty manfully; sustain misfortune bravely; endure poverty nobly; encounter disappointment courageously. the influence of the brave man is contagious and creates an epidemic of noble zeal in all about him. every day sends to the grave obscure men who have only remained in obscurity because their timidity has prevented them from making a first effort; and who, if they could have been induced to begin, would in all probability have gone great lengths in the career of usefulness and fame. "no great deed is done," says george eliot, "by falterers who ask for certainty." after the great inward struggle was over, and he had determined to remain loyal to his principles, thomas more walked cheerfully to the block. his wife called him a fool for staying in a dark, damp, filthy prison when he might have his liberty by merely renouncing his doctrines, as some of the bishops had done. but thomas more preferred death to dishonor. his daughter showed the power of love to drive away fear. she remained true to her father when all others, even her mother, had forsaken him. after his head had been cut off and exhibited on a pole on london bridge, the poor girl begged it of the authorities, and requested that it be buried in the coffin with her. her request was granted, for her death soon occurred. when sir walter raleigh came to the scaffold he was very faint, and began his speech to the crowd by saying that during the last two days he had been visited by two ague fits. "if, therefore, you perceive any weakness in me, i beseech you ascribe it to my sickness rather than to myself." he took the ax and kissed the blade, and said to the sheriff: "'t is a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases." don't waste time dreaming of obstacles you may never encounter, or in crossing bridges you have not reached. to half will and to hang forever in the balance is to lose your grip on life. abraham lincoln's boyhood was one long struggle with poverty, with little education, and no influential friends. when at last he had begun the practice of law, it required no little courage to cast his fortune with the weaker side in politics, and thus imperil what small reputation he had gained. only the most sublime moral courage could have sustained him as president to hold his ground against hostile criticism and a long train of disaster; to issue the emancipation proclamation, to support grant and stanton against the clamor of the politicians and the press. lincoln never shrank from espousing an unpopular cause when he believed it to be right. at the time when it almost cost a young lawyer his bread and butter to defend the fugitive slave, and when other lawyers had refused, lincoln would always plead the cause of the unfortunate whenever an opportunity presented. "go to lincoln," people would say, when these hounded fugitives were seeking protection; "he's not afraid of any cause, if it's right." then to side with truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just: then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, doubting in his abject spirit, till his lord is crucified. lowell. as salmon p. chase left the court room after an impassioned plea for the runaway slave girl matilda, a man looked at him in surprise and said: "there goes a fine young fellow who has just ruined himself." but in thus ruining himself chase had taken the first important step in a career in which he became governor of ohio, united states senator from ohio, secretary of the united states treasury, and chief justice of the united states supreme court. at the trial of william penn for having spoken at a quaker meeting, the recorder, not satisfied with the first verdict, said to the jury: "we will have a verdict by the help of god, or you shall starve for it." "you are englishmen," said penn; "mind your privileges, give not away your right." at last the jury, after two days and two nights without food, returned a verdict of "not guilty." the recorder fined them forty marks apiece for their independence. what cared christ for the jeers of the crowd? the palsied hand moved, the blind saw, the leper was made whole, the dead spake, despite the ridicule and scoffs of the spectators. what cared wendell phillips for rotten eggs, derisive scorn, and hisses? in him "at last the scornful world had met its match." were beecher and gough to be silenced by the rude english mobs that came to extinguish them? no! they held their ground and compelled unwilling thousands to hear and to heed. did anna dickinson leave the platform when the pistol bullets of the molly maguires flew about her head? she silenced those pistols by her courage and her arguments. what the world wants is a knox, who dares to preach on with a musket leveled at his head; a garrison, who is not afraid of a jail, or a mob, or a scaffold erected in front of his door. when general butler was sent with nine thousand men to quell the new york riots, he arrived in advance of his troops, and found the streets thronged with an angry mob, which had already hanged several men to lamp-posts. without waiting for his men, butler went to the place where the crowd was most dense, overturned an ash barrel, stood upon it, and began: "delegates from five points, fiends from hell, you have murdered your superiors," and the bloodstained crowd quailed before the courageous words of a single man in a city which mayor fernando wood could not restrain with the aid of police and militia. "our enemies are before us," exclaimed the spartans at thermopylae. "and we are before them." was the cool reply of leonidas. "deliver your arms," came the message from xerxes. "come and take them," was the answer leonidas sent back. a persian soldier said: "you will not be able to see the sun for flying javelins and arrows." "then we will fight in the shade," replied a lacedemonian. what wonder that a handful of such men checked the march of the greatest host that ever trod the earth! "it is impossible," said a staff officer, when napoleon gave directions for a daring plan. "impossible!" thundered the great commander, "_impossible_ is the adjective of fools!" the courageous man is an example to the intrepid. his influence is magnetic. men follow him, even to the death. men who have dared have moved the world, often before reaching the prime of life. it is astonishing what daring to begin and perseverance have enabled even youths to achieve. alexander, who ascended the throne at twenty, had conquered the known world before dying at thirty-three. julius caesar captured eight hundred cities, conquered three hundred nations, defeated three million men, became a great orator and one of the greatest statesmen known, and still was a young man. washington was appointed adjutant-general at nineteen, was sent at twenty-one as an ambassador to treat with the french, and won his first battle as a colonel at twenty-two. lafayette was made general of the whole french army at twenty. charlemagne was master of france and germany at thirty. galileo was but eighteen when he saw the principle of the pendulum in the swing lamp in the cathedral at pisa. peel was in parliament at twenty-one. gladstone was in parliament before he was twenty-two, and at twenty-four he was lord of the treasury. elizabeth barrett browning was proficient in greek and latin at twelve; de quincey at eleven. robert browning wrote at eleven poetry of no mean order. cowley, who sleeps in westminster abbey, published a volume of poems at fifteen. luther was but twenty-nine when he nailed his famous thesis to the door of the bishop and defied the pope. nelson was a lieutenant in the british navy before he was twenty. he was but forty-seven when he received his death wound at trafalgar. at thirty-six, cortez was the conqueror of mexico; at thirty-two, clive had established the british power in india. hannibal, the greatest of military commanders, was only thirty when, at cannae, he dealt an almost annihilating blow at the republic of rome, and napoleon was only twenty-seven when, on the plains of italy, he outgeneraled and defeated, one after another, the veteran marshals of austria. equal courage and resolution are often shown by men who have passed the allotted limit of life. victor hugo and wellington were both in their prime after they had reached the age of threescore years and ten. gladstone ruled england with a strong hand at eighty-four, and was a marvel of literary and scholarly ability. shakespeare says: "he is not worthy of the honeycomb that shuns the hive because the bees have stings." "the brave man is not he who feels no fear, for that were stupid and irrational; but he whose noble soul its fear subdues and bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from." many a bright youth has accomplished nothing of worth to himself or the world simply because he did not dare to commence things. begin! begin! begin!!! whatever people may think of you, do that which you believe to be right. be alike indifferent to censure or praise.--pythagoras. i dare to do all that may become a man: who dares do more is none. shakespeare. for man's great actions are performed in minor struggles. there are obstinate and unknown braves who defend themselves inch by inch in the shadows against the fatal invasion of want and turpitude. there are noble and mysterious triumphs which no eye sees, no renown rewards, and no flourish of trumpets salutes. life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment, and poverty are battlefields which have their heroes.--victor hugo. quit yourselves like men.-- samuel iv. . chapter xxxviii the will and the way "i will find a way or make one." nothing is impossible to the man who can will.--mirabeau. the iron will of one stout heart shall make a thousand quail: a feeble dwarf, dauntlessly resolved, will turn the tide of battle, and rally to a nobler strife the giants that had fled.--tupper. in the lexicon of youth which fate reserves for a bright manhood there is no such word as fail.--bulwer. when a firm and decisive spirit is recognized, it is curious to see how the space clears around a man and leaves him room and freedom.--john foster. "as well can the prince of orange pluck the stars from the sky, as bring the ocean to the wall of leyden for your relief," was the derisive shout of the spanish soldiers when told that the dutch fleet would raise that terrible four months' siege of . but from the parched lips of william, tossing on his bed of fever at rotterdam, had issued the command: "_break down the dikes: give holland back to ocean!_" and the people had replied: "better a drowned land than a lost land." they began to demolish dike after dike of the strong lines, ranged one within another for fifteen miles to their city of the interior. it was an enormous task; the garrison was starving; and the besiegers laughed in scorn at the slow progress of the puny insects who sought to rule the waves of the sea. but ever, as of old, heaven aids those who help themselves. on the first and second of october a violent equinoctial gale rolled the ocean inland, and swept the fleet on the rising waters almost to the camp of the spaniards. the next morning the garrison sallied out to attack their enemies, but the besiegers had fled in terror under cover of the darkness. the next day the wind changed, and a counter tempest brushed the water, with the fleet upon it, from the surface of holland. the outer dikes were replaced at once, leaving the north sea within its old bounds. when the flowers bloomed the following spring, a joyous procession marched through the streets to found the university of leyden, in commemoration of the wonderful deliverance of the city. at a dinner party given in , at the residence of chancellor kent, in new york city, some of the most distinguished men in the country were invited, and among them was a young and rather melancholy and reticent frenchman. professor morse was also one of the guests, and during the evening he drew the attention of mr. gallatin, then a prominent statesman, to the stranger, observing that his forehead indicated a great intellect. "yes," replied mr. gallatin, touching his own forehead with his finger, "there is a great deal in that head of his: but he has a strange fancy. can you believe it? he has the idea that he will one day be the emperor of france. can you conceive anything more absurd than that?" it did seem absurd, for this reserved frenchman was then a poor adventurer, an exile from his country, without fortune or powerful connections, and yet, fourteen years later, his idea became a fact,--his dream of becoming napoleon iii. was realized. true, before he accomplished his purpose there were long, dreary years of imprisonment, exile, disaster, and patient labor and hope, but he gained his ambition at last. he was not scrupulous as to the means employed to accomplish his ends, yet he is a remarkable example of what pluck and energy can do. when mr. ingram, publisher of the "illustrated london news," began life as a newsdealer at nottingham, england, he walked ten miles to deliver a single paper rather than disappoint a customer. does any one wonder that such a youth succeeded? once he rose at two o'clock in the morning and walked to london to get some papers because there was no post to bring them. he determined that his customers should not be disappointed. this is the kind of will that finds a way. there is scarcely anything in all biography grander than the saying of young henry fawcett, gladstone's last postmaster-general, to his grief-stricken father, who had put out both his eyes by birdshot during a game hunt: "never mind, father, blindness shall not interfere with my success in life." one of the most pathetic sights in london streets, long afterward, was henry fawcett, m. p., led everywhere by a faithful daughter, who acted as amanuensis as well as guide to her plucky father. think of a young man, scarcely on the threshold of active life, suddenly losing the sight of both eyes and yet by mere pluck and almost incomprehensible tenacity of purpose, lifting himself into eminence in any direction, to say nothing of becoming one of the foremost men in a country noted for its great men! the courageous daughter who was eyes to her father was herself a marvelous example of pluck and determination. for the first time in the history of oxford college, which reaches back centuries, she succeeded in winning the post which had only been gained before by great men, such as gladstone,--the post of senior wrangler. this achievement had had no parallel in history up to that date, and attracted the attention of the whole civilized world. not only had no woman ever held this position before, but with few exceptions it had only been held by men who in after life became highly distinguished. "circumstances," says milton, "have rarely favored famous men. they have fought their way to triumph through all sorts of opposing obstacles." the true way to conquer circumstances is to be a greater circumstance yourself. yet, while desiring to impress in the most forcible manner possible the fact that will-power is necessary to success, and that, other things being equal, the greater the will-power, the grander and more complete the success, we can not indorse the theory that there is nothing in circumstances or environments, or that any man, simply because he has an indomitable will, may become a bonaparte, a pitt, a webster, a beecher, a lincoln. we must temper determination with discretion, and support it with knowledge and common sense, or it will only lead us to run our heads against posts. we must not expect to overcome a stubborn fact merely by a stubborn will. we only have the right to assume that we can do anything within the limit of our utmost faculty, strength, and endurance. obstacles permanently insurmountable bar our progress in some directions, but in any direction we may reasonably hope and attempt to go we shall find that, as a rule, they are either not insurmountable or else not permanent. the strong-willed, intelligent, persistent man will find or make a way where, in the nature of things, a way can be found or made. every schoolboy knows that circumstances do give clients to lawyers and patients to physicians; place ordinary clergymen in extraordinary pulpits; place sons of the rich at the head of immense corporations and large houses, when they have very ordinary ability and scarcely any experience, while poor young men with unusual ability, good education, good character, and large experience, often have to fight their way for years to obtain even very mediocre situations; that there are thousands of young men of superior ability, both in the city and in the country, who seem to be compelled by circumstances to remain in very ordinary positions for small pay, when others about them are raised by money or family influence into desirable places. in other words, we all know that the best men do not always get the best places; circumstances do have a great deal to do with our position, our salaries, our station in life. every one knows that there is not always a way where there is a will; that labor does not always conquer all things; that there are things impossible even to him that wills, however strongly; that one can not always make anything of himself he chooses; that there are limitations in our very natures which no amount of will-power or industry can overcome. but while it is true that the will-power can not perform miracles, yet that it is almost omnipotent, and can perform wonders, all history goes to prove. as shakespeare says:-- men at some time are masters of their fates; the fault, dear brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings. show me a man who according to popular prejudice is a victim of bad luck, and i will show you one who has some unfortunate crooked twist of temperament that invites disaster. he is ill-tempered, conceited, or trifling; lacks character, enthusiasm, or some other requisite for success. disraeli said that man is not the creature of circumstances, but that circumstances are the creatures of men. believe in the power of will, which annihilates the sickly, sentimental doctrine of fatalism,--you must, but can't, you ought, but it is impossible. give me the man who faces what he must, "who breaks his birth's invidious bar, and grasps the skirts of happy chance, and breasts the blows of circumstance, and grapples with his evil star." the indomitable will, the inflexible purpose, will find a way or make one. there is always room for a man of force. "he who has a firm will," says goethe, "molds the world to himself." "people do not lack strength," says victor hugo, "they lack will." "he who resolves upon any great end, by that very resolution has scaled the great barriers to it, and he who seizes the grand idea of self-cultivation, and solemnly resolves upon it, will find that idea, that resolution, burning like fire within him, and ever putting him upon his own improvement. he will find it removing difficulties, searching out, or making means; giving courage for despondency, and strength for weakness." nearly all great men, those who have towered high above their fellows, have been remarkable above all things else for their energy of will. of julius caesar it was said by a contemporary that it was his activity and giant determination, rather than his military skill, that won his victories. the youth who starts out in life determined to make the most of his eyes and let nothing escape him which he can possibly use for his own advancement; who keeps his ears open for every sound that can help him on his way, who keeps his hands open that he may clutch every opportunity, who is ever on the alert for everything which can help him to get on in the world, who seizes every experience in life and grinds it up into paint for his great life's picture, who keeps his heart open that he may catch every noble impulse, and everything which may inspire him,--that youth will be sure to make his life successful; there are no "ifs" or "ands" about it. if he has his health, nothing can keep him from final success. no tyranny of circumstances can permanently imprison a determined will. the world always stands aside for the determined man. "the general of a large army may be defeated," said confucius, "but you can not defeat the determined mind of a peasant." the poor, deaf pauper, kitto, who made shoes in the almshouse, and who became the greatest of biblical scholars, wrote in his journal, on the threshold of manhood: "i am not myself a believer in impossibilities: i think that all the fine stories about natural ability, etc., are mere rigmarole, and that every man may, according to his opportunities and industry, render himself almost anything he wishes to become." lincoln is probably the most remarkable example on the pages of history, showing the possibilities of our country. from the poverty in which he was born, through the rowdyism of a frontier town, the discouragement of early bankruptcy, and the fluctuations of popular politics, he rose to the championship of union and freedom. lincoln's will made his way. when his friends nominated him as a candidate for the legislature, his enemies made fun of him. when making his campaign speeches he wore a mixed jean coat so short that he could not sit down on it, flax and tow-linen trousers, straw hat, and pot-metal boots. he had nothing in the world but character and friends. when his friends suggested law to him, he laughed at the idea of his being a lawyer. he said he had not brains enough. he read law barefoot under the trees, his neighbors said, and he sometimes slept on the counter in the store where he worked. he had to borrow money to buy a suit of clothes to make a respectable appearance in the legislature, and walked to take his seat at vandalia,--one hundred miles. see thurlow weed, defying poverty and wading through the snow two miles, with rags for shoes, to borrow a book to read before the sap-bush fire. see locke, living on bread and water in a dutch garret. see heyne, sleeping many a night on a barn floor with only a book for his pillow. see samuel drew, tightening his apron string "in lieu of a dinner." history is full of such examples. he who will pay the price for victory need never fear final defeat. paris was in the hands of a mob, the authorities were panic-stricken, for they did not dare to trust their underlings. in came a man who said, "i know a young officer who has the courage and ability to quell this mob." "send for him; send for him; send for him," said they. napoleon was sent for, came, subjugated the mob, subjugated the authorities, ruled france and then conquered europe. success in life is dependent largely upon the will-power, and whatever weakens or impairs it diminishes success. the will can be educated. that which most easily becomes a habit in us is the will. learn, then, to will decisively and strongly; thus fix your floating life, and leave it no longer to be carried hither and thither, like a withered leaf, by every wind that blows. "it is not talent that men lack, it is the will to labor; it is the purpose." it was the insatiable thirst for knowledge which held to his task, through poverty and discouragement, john leyden, a scotch shepherd's son. barefoot and alone, he walked six or eight miles daily to learn to read, which was all the schooling he had. his desire for an education defied the extremest poverty, and no obstacle could turn him from his purpose. he was rich when he discovered a little bookstore, and his thirsty soul would drink in the precious treasures from its priceless volumes for hours, perfectly oblivious of the scanty meal of bread and water which awaited him at his lowly lodging. nothing could discourage him from trying to improve himself by study. it seemed to him that an opportunity to get at books and lectures was all that any man could need. before he was nineteen, this poor shepherd boy with no chance had astonished the professors of edinburgh by his knowledge of greek and latin. hearing that a surgeon's assistant in the civil service was wanted, although he knew nothing whatever of medicine, he determined to apply for it. there were only six months before the place was to be filled, but nothing would daunt him, and he took his degree with honor. walter scott, who thought this one of the most remarkable illustrations of perseverance, helped to fit him out, and he sailed for india. webster was very poor even after he entered dartmouth college. a friend sent him a recipe for greasing his boots. webster wrote and thanked him, and added: "but my boots needs other doctoring, for they not only admit water, but even peas and gravel-stones." yet he became one of the greatest men in the world. sydney smith said: "webster was a living lie, because no man on earth could be as great as he looked." carlyle said of him: "one would incline at sight to back him against the world." what seemed to be luck followed stephen girard all his life. no matter what he did, it always seemed to others to turn to his account. being a foreigner, unable to speak english, short, stout, and with a repulsive face, blind in one eye, it was hard for him to get a start. but he was not the man to give up. he had begun as a cabin boy at thirteen, and for nine years sailed between bordeaux and the french west indies. he improved every leisure minute at sea, mastering the art of navigation. at the age of eight he had first discovered that he was blind in one eye. his father, evidently thinking that he would never amount to anything, would not help him to an education beyond that of mere reading and writing, but sent his younger brothers to college. the discovery of his blindness, the neglect of his father, and the chagrin of his brothers' advancement soured his whole life. when he began business for himself in philadelphia, there seemed to be nothing he would not do for money. he bought and sold anything, from groceries to old junk; he bottled wine and cider, from which he made a good profit. everything he touched prospered. he left nothing to chance. his plans and schemes were worked out with mathematical care. his letters written to his captains in foreign ports, laying out their routes and giving detailed instructions, are models of foresight and systematic planning. he never left anything of importance to others. he was rigidly accurate in his instructions, and would not allow the slightest departure from them. he used to say that while his captains might save him money by deviating from instructions once, yet they would cause loss in ninety-nine other cases. he never lost a ship, and many times that which brought financial ruin to many others, as the war of , only increased his wealth. everybody, especially his jealous brother merchants, attributed his great success to his luck. while undoubtedly he was fortunate in happening to be at the right place at the right time, yet he was precision, method, accuracy, energy itself. what seemed luck with him was only good judgment and promptness in seizing opportunities, and the greatest care and zeal in improving them to their utmost possibilities. the mathematician tells you that if you throw the dice, there are thirty chances to one against your turning up a particular number, and a hundred to one against your repeating the same throw three times in succession: and so on in an augmenting ratio. many a young man who has read the story of john wanamaker's romantic career has gained very little inspiration or help from it toward his own elevation and advancement, for he looks upon it as the result of good luck, chance, or fate. "what a lucky fellow," he says to himself as he reads; "what a bonanza he fell into!" but a careful analysis of wanamaker's life only enforces the same lesson taught by the analysis of most great lives, namely, that a good mother, a good constitution, the habit of hard work, indomitable energy, determination which knows no defeat, decision which never wavers, a concentration which never scatters its forces, courage which never falters, self-mastery which can say no, and stick to it, strict integrity and downright honesty, a cheerful disposition, unbounded enthusiasm in one's calling, and a high aim and noble purpose insure a very large measure of success. youth should be taught that there is something in circumstances; that there is such a thing as a poor pedestrian happening to find no obstruction in his way, and reaching the goal when a better walker finds the drawbridge up, the street blockaded, and so fails to win the race; that wealth often does place unworthy sons in high positions; that family influence does gain a lawyer clients, a physician patients, an ordinary scholar a good professorship; but that, on the other hand, position, clients, patients, professorships, managers' and superintendents' positions do not necessarily constitute success. he should be taught that in the long run, as a rule, _the best man does win the best place_, and that persistent merit does succeed. there is about as much chance of idleness and incapacity winning real success or a high position in life, as there would be in producing a "paradise lost" by shaking up promiscuously the separate words of webster's dictionary, and letting them fall at random on the floor. fortune smiles upon those who roll up their sleeves and put their shoulders to the wheel; upon men who are not afraid of dreary, dry, irksome drudgery, men of nerve and grit who do not turn aside for dirt and detail. the youth should be taught that "he alone is great, who, by a life heroic, conquers fate"; that "diligence is the mother of good luck"; that nine times out of ten what we call luck or fate is but a mere bugbear of the indolent, the languid, the purposeless, the careless, the indifferent; that, as a rule, the man who fails does not see or seize his opportunity. opportunity is coy, is swift, is gone, before the slow, the unobservant, the indolent, or the careless can seize her:-- "in idle wishes fools supinely stay: be there a will and wisdom finds a way." it has been well said that the very reputation of being strong-willed, plucky, and indefatigable is of priceless value. it often cows enemies and dispels at the start opposition to one's undertakings which would otherwise be formidable. it is astonishing what men who have come to their senses late in life have accomplished by a sudden resolution. arkwright was fifty years of age when he began to learn english grammar and improve his writing and spelling. benjamin franklin was past fifty before he began the study of science and philosophy. milton, in his blindness, was past the age of fifty when he sat down to complete his world-known epic, and scott at fifty-five took up his pen to redeem a liability of $ , . "yet i am learning," said michael angelo, when threescore years and ten were past, and he had long attained the highest triumphs of his art. even brains are second in importance to will. the vacillating man is always pushed aside in the race of life. it is only the weak and vacillating who halt before adverse circumstances and obstacles. a man with an iron will, with a determination that nothing shall check his career, is sure, if he has perseverance and grit, to succeed. we may not find time for what we would like, but what we long for and strive for with all our strength, we usually approximate, if we do not fully reach. i wish it were possible to show the youth of america the great part that the will might play in their success in life and in their happiness as well. the achievements of will-power are simply beyond computation. scarcely anything in reason seems impossible to the man who can will strong enough and long enough. how often we see this illustrated in the case of a young woman who suddenly becomes conscious that she is plain and unattractive; who, by prodigious exercise of her will and untiring industry, resolves to redeem herself from obscurity and commonness; and who not only makes up for her deficiencies, but elevates herself into a prominence and importance which mere personal attractions could never have given her! charlotte cushman, without a charm of form or face, climbed to the very top of her profession. how many young men, stung by consciousness of physical deformity or mental deficiencies, have, by a strong, persistent exercise of will-power, raised themselves from mediocrity and placed themselves high above those who scorned them! history is full of examples of men and women who have redeemed themselves from disgrace, poverty, and misfortune by the firm resolution of an iron will. the consciousness of being looked upon as inferior, as incapable of accomplishing what others accomplish; the sensitiveness at being considered a dunce in school, has stung many a youth into a determination which has elevated him far above those who laughed at him, as in the case of newton, of adam clark, of sheridan, wellington, goldsmith, dr. chalmers, curran, disraeli and hundreds of others. it is men like mirabeau, who "trample upon impossibilities"; like napoleon, who do not wait for opportunities, but make them; like grant, who has only "unconditional surrender" for the enemy, who change the very front of the world. "i can't, it is impossible," said a foiled lieutenant to alexander. "be gone," shouted the conquering macedonian, "there is nothing impossible to him who will try." were i called upon to express in a word the secret of so many failures among those who started out in life with high hopes, i should say unhesitatingly, they lacked will-power. they could not half will. what is a man without a will? he is like an engine without steam, a mere sport of chance, to be tossed about hither and thither, always at the mercy of those who have wills. i should call the strength of will the test of a young man's possibilities. can he will strong enough, and hold whatever he undertakes with an iron grip? it is the iron grip that takes the strong hold on life. "the truest wisdom," said napoleon, "is a resolute determination." an iron will without principle might produce a napoleon; but with character it would make a wellington or a grant, untarnished by ambition or avarice. "the undivided will 'tis that compels the elements and wrings a human music from the indifferent air." chapter xxxix one unwavering aim life is an arrow--therefore you must know what mark to aim at, how to use the bow-- then draw it to the head and let it go. henry van dyke. the important thing in life is to have a great aim, and to possess the aptitude and perseverance to attain it.--goethe. "a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." let every one ascertain his special business and calling, and then stick to it if he would be successful.--franklin. "why do you lead such a solitary life?" asked a friend of michael angelo. "art is a jealous mistress," replied the artist; "she requires the whole man." during his labors at the sistine chapel, according to disraeli, he refused to meet any one, even at his own house. "this day we sailed westward, which was our course," were the simple but grand words which columbus wrote in his journal day after day. hope might rise and fall, terror and dismay might seize upon the crew at the mysterious variations of the compass, but columbus, unappalled, pushed due west and nightly added to his record the above words. "cut an inch deeper," said a member of the old guard to the surgeon probing his wound, "and you will find the emperor,"--meaning his heart. by the marvelous power of concentrated purpose napoleon had left his name on the very stones of the capital, had burned it indelibly into the heart of every frenchman, and had left it written in living letters all over europe. france to-day has not shaken off the spell of that name. in the fair city on the seine the mystic "n" confronts you everywhere. oh, the power of a great purpose to work miracles! it has changed the face of the world. napoleon knew that there were plenty of great men in france, but they did not know the might of the unwavering aim by which he was changing the destinies of europe. he saw that what was called the "balance of power" was only an idle dream; that, unless some master-mind could be found which was a match for events, the millions would rule in anarchy. his iron will grasped the situation; and like william pitt, he did not loiter around balancing the probabilities of failure or success, or dally with his purpose. there was no turning to the right nor to the left; no dreaming away time, nor building air-castles; but one look and purpose, forward, upward and onward, straight to his goal. his great success in war was due largely to his definiteness of aim. he always hit the bull's-eye. he was like a great burning-glass, concentrating the rays of the sun upon a single spot; he burned a hole wherever he went. after finding the weak place in the enemy's ranks, he would mass his men and hurl them like an avalanche upon the critical point, crowding volley upon volley, charge upon charge, till he made a breach. what a lesson of the power concentration there is in this man's life! to succeed to-day a man must concentrate all the faculties of his mind upon one unwavering aim, and have a tenacity of purpose which means death or victory. every other inclination which tempts him from his aim must be suppressed. a man may starve on a dozen half-learned trades or occupations; he may grow rich and famous upon one trade thoroughly mastered, even though it be the humblest. even gladstone, with his ponderous yet active brain, said he could not do two things at once; he threw his entire strength upon whatever he did. the intensest energy characterized everything he undertook, even his recreation. if such concentration of energy is necessary for the success of a gladstone, what can we common mortals hope to accomplish by "scatteration"? all great men have been noted for their power of concentration which makes them oblivious of everything outside their aim. victor hugo wrote his "notre dame" during the revolution of , while the bullets were whistling across his garden. he shut himself up in one room, locking his clothes up in another, lest they should tempt him to go out into the street, and spent most of that winter wrapped in a big gray comforter, pouring his very life into his work. abraham lincoln possessed such power of concentration that he could repeat quite correctly a sermon to which he had listened in his boyhood. a new york sportsman, in answer to an advertisement, sent twenty-five cents for a sure receipt to prevent a shotgun from scattering, and received the following: "dear sir: to keep a gun from scattering put in but a single shot." it is the men who do one thing in this world who come to the front. who is the favorite actor? it is a jefferson, who devotes a lifetime to a "rip van winkle," a booth, an irving, a kean, who plays one character until he can play it better than any other man living, and not the shallow players who impersonate all parts. the great man is the one who never steps outside of his specialty or dissipates his individuality. it is an edison, a morse, a bell, a howe, a stephenson, a watt. it is an adam smith, spending ten years on the "wealth of nations." it is a gibbon, giving twenty years to his "decline and fall of the roman empire." it is a hume, writing thirteen hours a day on his "history of england." it is a webster, spending thirty-six years on his dictionary. it is a bancroft, working twenty-six years on his "history of the united states." it is a field, crossing the ocean fifty times to lay a cable, while the world ridicules. it is a newton, writing his "chronology of ancient nations" sixteen times. a one-talent man who decides upon a definite object accomplishes more than a ten-talent man who scatters his energies and never knows exactly what he will do. the weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers upon one thing, can accomplish something; the strongest, by dispersing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. a great purpose is cumulative; and, like a great magnet, it attracts all that is kindred along the stream of life. [illustration: joseph jefferson] a yankee can splice a rope in many different ways; an english sailor only knows one way, but that is the best one. it is the one-sided man, the sharp-eyed man, the man of single and intense purpose, the man of one idea, who cuts his way through obstacles and forges to the front. the time has gone forever when a bacon can span universal knowledge; or when, absorbing all the knowledge of the times, a dante can sustain arguments against fourteen disputants in the university of paris, and conquer in them all. the day when a man can successfully drive a dozen callings abreast is a thing of the past. concentration is the keynote of the century. scientists estimate that there is energy enough in less than fifty acres of sunshine to run all the machinery in the world, if it could be concentrated. but the sun might blaze out upon the earth forever without setting anything on fire; although these rays focused by a burning-glass would melt solid granite, or even change a diamond into vapor. there are plenty of men who have ability enough; the rays of their faculties, taken separately, are all right, but they are powerless to collect them, to bring them all to bear upon a single spot. versatile men, universal geniuses, are usually weak, because they have no power to concentrate their talents upon one point, and this makes all the difference between success and failure. chiseled upon the tomb of a disappointed, heart-broken king, joseph ii. of austria, in the royal cemetery at vienna, a traveler tells us, is this epitaph: "here lies a monarch who, with the best of intentions, never carried out a single plan." sir james mackintosh was a man of remarkable ability. he excited in every one who knew him the greatest expectations. many watched his career with much interest, expecting that he would dazzle the world; but there was no purpose in his life. he had intermittent attacks of enthusiasm for doing great things, but his zeal all evaporated before he could decide what to do. this fatal defect in his character kept him balancing between conflicting motives; and his whole life was almost thrown away. he lacked power to choose one object and persevere with a single aim, sacrificing every interfering inclination. he, for instance, vacillated for weeks trying to determine whether to use "usefulness" or "utility" in a composition. one talent utilized in a single direction will do infinitely more than ten talents scattered. a thimbleful of powder behind a ball in a rifle will do more execution than a carload of powder unconfined. the rifle-barrel is the purpose that gives direct aim to the powder, which otherwise, no matter how good it might be, would be powerless. the poorest scholar in school or college often, in practical life, far outstrips the class leader or senior wrangler, simply because what little ability he has he employs for a definite object, while the other, depending upon his general ability and brilliant prospects, never concentrates his powers. it is fashionable to ridicule the man of one idea, but the men who have changed the front of the world have been men of a single aim. no man can make his mark on this age of specialties who is not a man of one idea, one supreme air, one master passion. the man who would make himself felt on this bustling planet, who would make a breach in the compact conservatism of our civilization, must play all his guns on one point. a wavering aim, a faltering purpose, has no place in the twentieth century. "mental shiftlessness" is the cause of many a failure. the world is full of unsuccessful men who spend their lives letting empty buckets down into empty wells. "mr. a. often laughs at me," said a young american chemist, "because i have but one idea. he talks about everything, aims to excel in many things; but i have learned that, if i ever wish to make a breach, i must play my guns continually upon one point." this great chemist, when an obscure schoolmaster, used to study by the light of a pine knot in a log cabin. not many years later he was performing experiments in electro-magnetism before english earls, and subsequently he was at the head of one of the largest scientific institutes of this country. he was the late professor henry, of the smithsonian institution, washington. we should guard against a talent which we can not hope to practise in perfection, says goethe. improve it as we may, we shall always, in the end, when the merit of the matter has become apparent to us, painfully lament the loss of time and strength devoted to such botching. an old proverb says: "the master of one trade will support a wife and seven children, and the master of seven will not support himself." _it is the single aim that wins_. men with monopolizing ambitions rarely live in history. they do not focus their powers long enough to burn their names indelibly into the roll of honor. edward everett, even with his magnificent powers, disappointed the expectations of his friends. he spread himself over the whole field of knowledge and elegant culture; but the mention of the name of everett does not call up any one great achievement as does that of names like garrison and phillips. voltaire called the frenchman la harpe an oven which was always heating, but which never cooked anything. hartley coleridge was splendidly endowed with talent, but there was one fatal lack in his character--he had no definite purpose, and his life was a failure. unstable as water, he could not excel. southey, the uncle of coleridge, says of him: "coleridge has two left hands." he was so morbidly shy from living alone in his dreamland that he could not open a letter without trembling. he would often rally from his purposeless life, and resolve to redeem himself from the oblivion he saw staring him in the face; but, like sir james mackintosh, he remained a man of promise merely to the end of his life. the man who succeeds has a program. he fires his course and adheres to it. he lays his plans and executes them. he goes straight to his goal. he is not pushed this way and that every time a difficulty is thrown in his path; if he can not get over it he goes through it. constant and steady use of the faculties under a central purpose gives strength and power, while the use of faculties without an aim or end only weakens them. the mind must be focused on a definite end, or, like machinery without a balance-wheel, it will rack itself to pieces. this age of concentration calls, not for educated men merely, not for talented men, not for geniuses, not for jacks-of-all-trades, but for men who are trained to do one thing as well as it can be done. napoleon could go through the drill of his soldiers better than any one of his men. _stick to your aim_. the constant changing of one's occupation is fatal to all success. after a young man has spent five or six years in a dry goods store, he concludes that he would rather sell groceries, thereby throwing away five years of valuable experience which will be of very little use to him in the grocery business; and so he spends a large part of his life drifting around from one kind of employment to another, learning part of each but all of none, forgetting that experience is worth more to him than money and that the years devoted to learning his trade or occupation are the most valuable. half-learned trades, no matter if a man has twenty, will never give him a good living, much less a competency, while wealth is absolutely out of the question. how many young men fail to reach the point of efficiency in one line of work before they get discouraged and venture into something else! how easy to see the thorns in one's own profession or vocation, and only the roses in that of another! a young man in business, for instance, seeing a physician riding about town in his carriage, visiting his patients, imagines that a doctor must have an easy, ideal life, and wonders that he himself should have embarked in an occupation so full of disagreeable drudgery and hardships. he does not know of the years of dry, tedious study which the physician has consumed, the months and perhaps years of waiting for patients, the dry detail of anatomy, the endless names of drugs and technical terms. there is a sense of great power in a vocation after a man has reached the point of efficiency in it, the point of productiveness, the point where his skill begins to tell and brings in returns. up to this point of efficiency, while he is learning his trade, the time seems to have been almost thrown away. but he has been storing up a vast reserve of knowledge of detail, laying foundations, forming his acquaintances, gaining his reputation for truthfulness, trustworthiness, and integrity, and in establishing his credit. when he reaches this point of efficiency, all the knowledge and skill, character, influence, and credit thus gained come to his aid, and he soon finds that in what seemed almost thrown away lies the secret of his prosperity. the credit he established as a clerk, the confidence, the integrity, the friendships formed, he finds equal to a large capital when he starts out for himself and takes the highway to fortune; while the young man who half learned several trades, got discouraged and stopped just short of the point of efficiency, just this side of success, is a failure because he didn't go far enough; he did not press on to the point at which his acquisition would have been profitable. in spite of the fact that nearly all very successful men have made a life-work of one thing, we see on every hand hundreds of young men and women flitting about from occupation to occupation, trade to trade, in one thing to-day and another to-morrow,--just as though they could go from one thing to another by turning a switch, as though they could run as well on another track as on the one they have left, regardless of the fact that no two careers have the same gage, that every man builds his own road upon which another man's engine can not run either with speed or safety. this fickleness, this disposition to shift about from one occupation to another, seems to be peculiar to american life, so much so that, when a young man meets a friend whom he has not seen for some time, the commonest question to ask is, "what are you doing now?" showing the improbability or uncertainty that he is doing to-day what he was doing when they last met. some people think that if they "keep everlastingly at it" they will succeed, but this is not always so. working without a plan is as foolish as going to sea without a compass. a ship which has broken its rudder in mid-ocean may "keep everlastingly at it," may keep on a full head of steam, driving about all the time, but it never arrives anywhere, it never reaches any port unless by accident; and if it does find a haven, its cargo may not be suited to the people, the climate, or conditions. the ship must be directed to a definite port, for which its cargo is adapted, and where there is a demand for it, and it must aim steadily for that port through sunshine and storm, through tempest and fog. so a man who would succeed must not drift about rudderless on the ocean of life. he must not only steer straight toward his destined port when the ocean is smooth, when the currents and winds serve, but he must keep his course in the very teeth of the wind and the tempest, and even when enveloped in the fogs of disappointment and mists of opposition. atlantic liners do not stop for fogs or storms; they plow straight through the rough seas with only one thing in view, their destined port, and no matter what the weather is, no matter what obstacles they encounter, their arrival in port can be predicted to within a few hours. on the prairies of south america there grows a flower that always inclines in the same direction. if a traveler loses his way and has neither compass nor chart, by turning to this flower he will find a guide on which he can implicitly rely; for no matter how the rains descend or the winds blow, its leaves point to the north. so there are many men whose purposes are so well known, whose aims are so constant, that no matter what difficulties they may encounter, or what opposition they may meet, you can tell almost to a certainty where they will come out. they may be delayed by head winds and counter currents, but they will _always head for the port_ and will steer straight towards the harbor. you know to a certainty that whatever else they may lose, they will not lose their compass or rudder. whatever may happen to a man of this stamp, even though his sails may be swept away and his mast stripped to the deck, though he may be wrecked by the storms of life, the needle of his compass will still point to the north star of his hope. whatever comes, his life will not be purposeless. even a wreck that makes its port is a greater success than a full-rigged ship with all its sails flying, with every mast and every rope intact, which merely drifts along into an accidental harbor. to fix a wandering life and give it direction is not an easy task, but a life which has no definite aim is sure to be frittered away in empty and purposeless dreams. "listless triflers," "busy idlers," "purposeless busy-bodies," are seen everywhere. a healthy, definite purpose is a remedy for a thousand ills which attend aimless lives. discontent and dissatisfaction flee before a definite purpose. what we do begrudgingly without a purpose becomes a delight with one, and no work is well done nor healthily done which is not enthusiastically done. mere energy is not enough; it must be concentrated on some steady, unwavering aim. what is more common than "unsuccessful geniuses," or failures with "commanding talents"? indeed, the term "unrewarded genius" has become a proverb. every town has unsuccessful educated and talented men. but education is of no value, talent is worthless, unless it can do something, achieve something. men who can do something at everything and a very little at anything are not wanted in this age. what this age wants is young men and women who can do one thing without losing their identity or individuality, or becoming narrow, cramped, or dwarfed. nothing can take the place of an all-absorbing purpose; education can not, genius can not, talent can not, industry can not, will-power can not. the purposeless life must ever be a failure. what good are powers, faculties, unless we can use them for a purpose? what good would a chest of tools do a carpenter unless he could use them? a college education, a head full of knowledge, are worth little to the men who cannot use them to some definite end. the man without a purpose never leaves his mark upon the world. he has no individuality; he is absorbed in the mass, lost in the crowd, weak, wavering, and incompetent. "consider, my lord," said rowland hill to the prime minister of england, "that a letter to ireland and the answer back would cost thousands upon thousands of my affectionate countrymen more than a fifth of their week's wages. if you shut the post-office to them, which you do now, you shut out warm hearts and generous affections from home, kindred, and friends." the lad learned that it cost to carry a letter from london to edinburgh, four hundred and four miles, one eighteenth of a cent, while the government charged for a simple folded sheet of paper twenty-eight cents, and twice as much if there was the smallest inclosure. against the opposition and contempt of the post-office department he at length carried his point, and on january , , penny postage was established throughout great britain. mr. hill was chosen to introduce the system, at a salary of fifteen hundred pounds a year. his success was most encouraging, but at the end of two years a tory minister dismissed him without paying for his services, as agreed. the public was indignant, and at once contributed sixty-five thousand dollars; and, at the request of queen victoria, parliament voted him one hundred thousand dollars cash, together with ten thousand dollars a year for life. it is a great purpose which gives meaning to life; it unifies all our powers, binds them together in one cable and makes strong and united what was weak, separated, scattered. "smatterers" are weak and superficial. of what use is a man who knows a little of everything and not much of anything? it is the momentum of constantly repeated acts that tells the story. "let thine eyes look straight before thee. ponder the path of thy feet and let all thy ways be established. turn not to the right hand nor to the left." one great secret of st. paul's power lay in his strong purpose. nothing could daunt, nothing intimidate him. the roman emperor could not muzzle him, the dungeon could not appall him, no prison suppress him, obstacles could not discourage him. "this one thing i do" was written all over his work. the quenchless zeal of his mighty purpose burned its way down through the centuries, and its contagion will never cease to fire the hearts of men. "try and come home somebody," said his mother to gambetta as she sent him off to paris to school. poverty pinched this lad hard in his little garret study and his clothes were shabby, but what of that? he had made up his mind to get on in the world. for years he was chained to his desk and worked like a hero. at last his opportunity came. jules favre was to plead a great cause on a certain day; but, being ill, he chose this young man, absolutely unknown, rough and uncouth, to take his place. for many years gambetta had been preparing for such an opportunity, and he was equal to it. he made one of the greatest speeches that up to that time had ever been made in france. that night all the papers in paris were sounding the praises of this ragged, uncouth bohemian, and soon all france recognized him as the republican leader. this sudden rise was not due to luck or accident. he had been steadfastly working and fighting his way up against oppositions and poverty for just such an occasion. had he not been equal to it, it would only have made him ridiculous. what a stride; yesterday, poor and unknown, living in a garret; today, deputy-elect, in the city of marseilles, and the great republican leader! when louis napoleon had been defeated at sedan and had delivered his sword to william of prussia, and when the prussian army was marching on paris, the brave gambetta went out of the besieged city in a balloon barely grazed by the prussian guns, landed in amiens, and by almost superhuman skill raised three armies of , men, provided for their maintenance, and directed their military operations. a german officer said: "this colossal energy is the most remarkable event of modern history, and will carry down gambetta's name to remote posterity." this youth who was poring over his books in an attic while other youths were promenading the champs elysées, although but thirty-two years old, was now virtually dictator of france, and the greatest orator in the republic. what a striking example of the great reserve of personal power, which, even in dissolute lives, is sometimes called out by a great emergency or sudden sorrow, and ever after leads the life to victory! when gambetta found that his first speech had electrified all france, his great reserve rushed to the front; he was suddenly weaned from dissipation, and resolved to make his mark in the world. nor did he lose his head in his quick leap into fame. he still lived in the upper room in the musty latin quarter, and remained a poor man, without stain of dishonor, though he might easily have made himself a millionaire. when he died the "figaro" said, "the republic has lost its greatest man." american boys should study this great man, for he loved our country, and took our republic as the pattern for france. there is no grander sight in the world than that of a young man fired with a great purpose, dominated by one unwavering aim. he is bound to win; the world stands to one side and lets him pass; it always makes way for the man with a will in him. he does not have one-half the opposition to overcome that the undecided, purposeless man has who, like driftwood, runs against all sorts of snags to which he must yield simply because he has no momentum to force them out of his way. what a sublime spectacle it is to see a youth going straight to his goal, cutting his way through difficulties, and surmounting obstacles which dishearten others, as though they were but stepping-stones! defeat, like a gymnasium, only gives him new power; opposition only doubles his exertions; dangers only increase his courage. no matter what comes to him, sickness, poverty, disaster, he never turns his eye from his goal. "_duos qui sequitur lepores, neutrum capit._" chapter xl work and wait what we do upon some great occasion will probably depend on what we already are; and what we are will be the result of previous years of self-discipline.--h. p. liddon. i consider a human soul without education like marble in a quarry, which shows none of its inherent beauties until the skill of the polisher sketches out the colors, makes the surface shine, and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot, and vein that runs throughout the body of it.--addison. use your gifts faithfully, and they shall be enlarged; practise what you know, and you shall attain to higher knowledge.--arnold. haste trips up its own heels, fetters and stops itself.--seneca. the more you know, the more you can save yourself and that which belongs to you, and do more work with less effort.--charles kingsley. "i was a mere cipher in that vast sea of human enterprise," said henry bessemer, speaking of his arrival in london in . although but eighteen years old, and without an acquaintance in the city, he soon made work for himself by inventing a process of copying bas-reliefs on cardboard. his method was so simple that one could learn in ten minutes how to make a die from an embossed stamp for a penny. having ascertained later that in this way the raised stamps on all official papers in england could easily be forged, he set to work and invented a perforated stamp which could not be forged nor removed from a document. at the public stamp office he was told by the chief that the government was losing , pounds a year through the custom of removing stamps from old parchments and using them again. the chief also fully appreciated the new danger of easy counterfeiting. so he offered bessemer a definite sum for his process of perforation, or an office for life at eight hundred pounds a year. bessemer chose the office, and hastened to tell the good news to a young woman with whom he had agreed to share his fortune. in explaining his invention, he told how it would prevent any one from taking a valuable stamp from a document a hundred years old and using it a second time. "yes," said his betrothed, "i understand that; but, surely, if all stamps had a date put upon them they could not at a future time be used without detection." this was a very short speech, and of no special importance if we omit a single word of four letters; but, like the schoolboy's pins which saved the lives of thousands of people annually by not getting swallowed, that little word, by keeping out of the ponderous minds of the british revenue officers, had for a long period saved the government the burden of caring for an additional income of , pounds a year. and the same little word, if published in its connection, would render bessemer's perforation device of far less value than a last year's bird's nest. he felt proud of the young woman's ingenuity, and promptly suggested the improvement at the stamp office. as a result his system of perforation was abandoned and he was deprived of his promised office, the government coolly making use from that day to this, without compensation, of the idea conveyed by that little insignificant word. so bessemer's financial prospects were not very encouraging; but, realizing that the best capital a young man can have is a capital wife, he at once entered into a partnership which placed at his command the combined ideas of two very level heads. the result, after years of thought and experiment, was the bessemer process of making steel cheaply, which has revolutionized the iron industry throughout the world. his method consists simply in forcing hot air from below into several tons of melted pig-iron, so as to produce intense combustion; and then adding enough spiegel-eisen (looking-glass iron), an ore rich in carbon, to change the whole mass to steel. he discovered this simple process only after trying in vain much more difficult and expensive methods. "all things come round to him who will but wait." the great lack of the age is want of thoroughness. how seldom you find a young man or woman who is willing to take time to prepare for his life work! a little education is all they want, a little smattering of books, and then they are ready for business. "can't wait" is characteristic of the century, and is written on everything; on commerce, on schools, on society, on churches. can't wait for a high school, seminary, or college. the boy can't wait to become a youth, nor the youth a man. youth rush into business with no great reserve of education or drill; of course they do poor, feverish work, and break down in middle life, and many die of old age in the forties. everybody is in a hurry. buildings are rushed up so quickly that they will not stand, and everything is made "to sell." not long ago a professor in one of our universities had a letter from a young woman in the west, asking him if he did not think she could teach elocution if she could come to the university and take twelve lessons. our young people of to-day are not willing to lay broad, deep foundations. the weary years in preparatory school and college dishearten them. they only want a "smattering" of an education. but as pope says,-- a little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again. the shifts to cover up ignorance, and "the constant trembling lest some blunder should expose one's emptiness," are pitiable. short cuts and abridged methods are the demand of the hour. but the way to shorten the road to success is to take plenty of time to lay in your reserve power. hard work, a definite aim, and faithfulness will shorten the way. don't risk a life's superstructure upon a day's foundation. patience is nature's motto. she works ages to bring a flower to perfection. what will she not do for the greatest of her creation? ages and aeons are nothing to her; out of them she has been carving her great statue, a perfect man. johnson said a man must turn over half a library to write one book. when an authoress told wordsworth she had spent six hours on a poem, he replied that he would have spent six weeks. think of bishop hall spending thirty years on one of his works! owens was working on the "commentary to the epistle to the hebrews" for twenty years. moore spent several weeks on one of his musical stanzas which reads as if it were a dash of genius. carlyle wrote with the utmost difficulty and never executed a page of his great histories till he had consulted every known authority, so that every sentence is the quintessence of many books, the product of many hours of drudging research in the great libraries. today, "sartor resartus" is everywhere. you can get it for a mere trifle at almost any bookseller's, and hundreds of thousands of copies are scattered over the world. but when carlyle brought it to london in , it was refused almost contemptuously by three prominent publishers. at length he managed to get it into "fraser's magazine," the editor of which conveyed to the author the pleasing information that his work had been received with "unqualified disapprobation." henry ward beecher sent half a dozen articles to the publisher of a religious paper to pay for his subscription, but they were respectfully declined. the publishers of the "atlantic monthly" returned miss alcott's manuscript, suggesting that she had better stick to teaching. one of the leading magazines ridiculed tennyson's first poems, and consigned the young poet to temporary oblivion. only one of ralph waldo emerson's books had a remunerative sale. washington irving was nearly seventy years old before the income from his books paid the expenses of his household. in some respects it is very unfortunate that the old system of binding boys out to a trade has been abandoned. to-day very few boys learn any trade. they pick up what they know, as they go along, just as a student crams for a particular examination, just to "get through," without any effort to see how much he may learn on any subject. think of an american youth spending ten years with da vinci on the model of an equestrian statue that he might master the anatomy of the horse! most young american artists would expect, in a quarter of that time, to sculpture an apollo belvidere. a rich man asked howard burnett to do a little something for his album. burnett complied and charged a thousand francs. "but it took you only five minutes," objected the rich man. "yes, but it took me thirty years to learn how to do it in five minutes." what the age wants is men who have the nerve and the grit to work and wait, whether the world applaud or hiss; a mirabeau, who can struggle on for forty years before he has a chance to show the world his vast reserve, destined to shake an empire; a farragut, a von moltke, who have the persistence to work and wait for half a century for their first great opportunities; a grant, fighting on in heroic silence, when denounced by his brother generals and politicians everywhere; a michael angelo, working seven long years decorating the sistine chapel with his matchless "creation" and the "last judgment," refusing all remuneration therefor, lest his pencil might catch the taint of avarice; a thurlow weed, walking two miles through the snow with rags tied around his feet for shoes, to borrow the history of the french revolution, and eagerly devouring it before the sap-bush fire; a milton, elaborating "paradise lost" in a world he could not see; a thackeray, struggling on cheerfully after his "vanity fair" was refused by a dozen publishers; a balzac, toiling and waiting in a lonely garret; men whom neither poverty, debt, nor hunger could discourage or intimidate; not daunted by privations, not hindered by discouragements. it wants men who can work and wait. when a young lawyer daniel webster once looked in vain through all the law libraries near him, and then ordered at an expense of fifty dollars the necessary books, to obtain authorities and precedents in a case in which his client was a poor blacksmith. he won his case, but, on account of the poverty of his client, only charged fifteen dollars, thus losing heavily on the books bought, to say nothing of his time. years after, as he was passing through new york city, he was consulted by aaron burr on an important but puzzling case then pending before the supreme court. he saw in a moment that it was just like the blacksmith's case, an intricate question of title, which he had solved so thoroughly that it was to him now as simple as the multiplication table. going back to the time of charles ii he gave the law and precedents involved with such readiness and accuracy of sequence that burr asked in great surprise if he had been consulted before in the case. "most certainly not," he replied, "i never heard of your case till this evening." "very well," said burr, "proceed"; and, when he had finished, webster received a fee that paid him liberally for all the time and trouble he had spent for his early client. albert bierstadt first crossed the rocky mountains with a band of pioneers in , making sketches for the paintings of western scenes for which he had become famous. as he followed the trail to pike's peak, he gazed in wonder upon the enormous herds of buffaloes which dotted the plains as far as the eye could reach, and thought of the time when they would have disappeared before the march of civilization. the thought haunted him and found its final embodiment in "the last of the buffaloes" in . to perfect this great work he had spent twenty years. everything which endures, which will stand the test of time, must have a deep, solid foundation. in rome the foundation is often the most expensive part of an edifice, so deep must they dig to build on the living rock. fifty feet of bunker hill monument is under ground; unseen and unappreciated by those who tread about that historic shaft, but it is this foundation, apparently thrown away, which enables it to stand upright, true to the plumb-line through all the tempests that lash its granite sides. a large part of every successful life must be spent in laying foundation stones underground. success is the child of drudgery and perseverance and depends upon "knowing how long it takes to succeed." endurance is a much better test of character than any one act of heroism, however noble. the pianist thalberg said he never ventured to perform one of his celebrated pieces in public until he had played it at least fifteen hundred times. he laid no claim whatever to genius; he said it was all a question of hard work. the accomplishments of such industry, such perseverance, would put to shame many a man who claims genius. before edmund kean would consent to appear in that character which he acted with such consummate skill, the gentleman villain, he practised constantly before a glass, studying expression for a year and a half. when he appeared upon the stage, byron, who went with moore to see him, said he never looked upon so fearful and wicked a face. as the great actor went on to delineate the terrible consequences of sin, byron fainted. "for years i was in my place of business by sunrise," said a wealthy banker who had begun without a dollar; "and often i did not leave it for fifteen or eighteen hours." patience, it is said, changes the mulberry leaf to satin. the giant oak on the hillside was detained months or years in its upward growth while its root took a great turn around some rock, in order to gain a hold by which the tree was anchored to withstand the storms of centuries. da vinci spent four years on the head of mona lisa, perhaps the most beautiful ever painted, but he left therein an artistic thought for all time. said captain bingham: "you can have no idea of the wonderful machine that the german army is and how well it is prepared for war. a chart is made out which shows just what must be done in the case of wars with the different nations, and every officer's place in the scheme is laid out beforehand. there is a schedule of trains which will supersede all other schedules the moment war is declared, and this is so arranged that the commander of the army here could telegraph to any officer to take such a train and go to such a place at a moment's notice." a learned clergyman was thus accosted by an illiterate preacher who despised education: "sir, you have been to college, i presume?" "yes, sir," was the reply. "i am thankful," said the former, "that the lord opened my mouth without any learning." "a similar event," retorted the clergyman, "happened in balaam's time." a young man just graduated told the president of trinity college that he had completed his education, and had come to say good-by. "indeed," said the president, "i have just begun my education." many an extraordinary man has been made out of a very ordinary boy: but in order to accomplish this we must begin with him while he is young. it is simply astonishing what training will do for a rough, uncouth, and even dull lad, if he has good material in him, and comes under the tutelage of a skilled educator before his habits become fixed or confirmed. even a few weeks' or months' drill of the rawest and roughest recruits in the late civil war so straightened and dignified stooping and uncouth soldiers, and made them manly, erect, and courteous in their bearing, that their own friends scarcely knew them. if this change is so marked in the youth who has grown to maturity, what a miracle is possible in the lad who is taken early and put under a course of drill and systematic training, both physical, mental, and moral! how often a man who is in the penitentiary, in the poorhouse, or among the tramps, or living out a miserable existence in the slums of our cities, rough, slovenly, has slumbering within the rags possibilities which would have developed him into a magnificent man, an ornament to the human race instead of a foul blot and ugly scar, had he only been fortunate enough early in life to have enjoyed the benefits of efficient and systematic training! laziness begins in cobwebs and ends in iron chains. edison described his repeated efforts to make the phonograph reproduce an aspirated sound, and added: "from eighteen to twenty hours a day for the last seven months i have worked on this single word 'specia.' i said into the phonograph 'specia, specia, specia,' but the instrument responded 'pecia, pecia, pecia.' it was enough to drive one mad. but i held firm, and i have succeeded." the road to distinction must be paved with years of self-denial and hard work. horace mann, the great author of the common school system of massachusetts, was a remarkable example of that pluck and patience which can work and wait. his only inheritance was poverty and hard work. but he had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and a determination to get on in the world. he braided straw to earn money to buy books for which his soul thirsted. gladstone was bound to win. although he had spent many years of preparation for his life work, in spite of the consciousness of marvelous natural endowments which would have been deemed sufficient by many young men, and notwithstanding he had gained the coveted prize of a seat in parliament, yet he decided to make himself master of the situation; and amid all his public and private duties, he not only spent eleven terms more in the study of the law, but also studied greek constantly and read every well-written book or paper he could obtain, so determined was he that his life should be rounded out to its fullest measure, and that his mind should have broad and liberal culture. ole bull said: "if i practise one day, i can see the result; if i practise two days, my friends can see it; if i practise three days, the great public can see it." the habit of seizing every bit of knowledge, no matter how insignificant it may seem at the time, every opportunity, every occasion, and grinding them all up into experience, can not be overestimated. you will find use for all of it. webster once repeated with effect an anecdote which he had heard fourteen years before, and which he had not thought of in the meantime. it exactly fitted the occasion. "it is an ill mason that rejects any stone." webster was once urged to speak on a subject of great importance, but refused, saying he was very busy and had no time to master the subject. "but," replied his friend, "a very few words from you would do much to awaken public attention to it." webster replied, "if there be so much weight in my words, it is because i do not allow myself to speak on any subject until my mind is imbued with it." on one occasion webster made a remarkable speech before the phi beta kappa society at harvard, when a book was presented to him; but after he had gone, his "impromptu" speech, carefully written out, was found in the book which he had forgotten to take away. demosthenes was once asked to speak on a great and sudden emergency, but replied, "i am not prepared." in fact, it was thought by many that demosthenes did not possess any genius whatever, because he never allowed himself to speak on any subject without thorough preparation. in any meeting or assembly, when called upon, he would never rise, even to make remarks, it was said, without previously preparing himself. alexander hamilton said, "men give me credit for genius. all the genius i have lies just in this: when i have a subject in hand i study it profoundly. day and night it is before me. i explore it in all its bearings. my mind becomes pervaded with it. then the effort which i make the people are pleased to call the fruit of genius; it is the fruit of labor and thought." the law of labor is equally binding on genius and mediocrity. nelaton, the great surgeon, said that if he had four minutes in which to perform an operation on which a life depended, he would take one minute to consider how best to do it. "many men," says longfellow, "do not allow their principles to take root, but pull them up every now and then, as children do flowers they have planted, to see if they are growing." we must not only work, but also wait. "the spruce young spark," says sizer, "who thinks chiefly of his mustache and boots and shiny hat, of getting along nicely and easily during the day, and talking about the theater, the opera, or a fast horse, ridiculing the faithful young fellow who came to learn the business and make a man of himself because he will not join in wasting his time in dissipation, will see the day, if his useless life is not earlier blasted by vicious indulgences, when he will be glad to accept a situation from the fellow-clerk whom he now ridicules and affects to despise, when the latter shall stand in the firm, dispensing benefits and acquiring fortune." "i have been watching the careers of young men by the thousand in this busy city of new york for over thirty years," said dr. cuyler, "and i find that the chief difference between the successful and the failures lies in the single element of staying power. permanent success is oftener won by holding on than by sudden dash, however brilliant. the easily discouraged, who are pushed back by a straw, are all the time dropping to the rear--to perish or to be carried along on the stretcher of charity. they who understand and practise abraham lincoln's homely maxim of 'pegging away' have achieved the solidest success." the duke of wellington became so discouraged because he did not advance in the army that he applied for a much inferior position in the customs department, but was refused. napoleon had applied for every vacant position for seven years before he was recognized, but meanwhile he studied with all his might, supplementing what was considered a thorough military education by researches and reflections which in later years enabled him easily to teach the art of war to veterans who had never dreamed of his novel combinations. reserves which carry us through great emergencies are the result of long working and long waiting. dr. collyer declares that reserves mean to a man also achievement,--"the power to do the grandest thing possible to your nature when you feel you must, or some precious thing will be lost,--to do well always, but best in the crisis on which all things turn; to stand the strain of a long fight, and still find you have something left, and so to never know you are beaten, because you never are beaten." he only is independent in action who has been earnest and thorough in preparation and self-culture. "not for school, but for life, we learn"; and our habits--of promptness, earnestness, and thoroughness, or of tardiness, fickleness, and superficiality--are the things acquired most readily and longest retained. to vary the language of another, the three great essentials to success in mental and physical labor are practice, patience, and perseverance, but the greatest of these is perseverance. "let us, then, be up and doing, with a heart for any fate; still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labor and to wait." chapter xli the might of little things think naught a trifle, though it small appear; small sands the mountain, moments make the year, and trifles, life. young. it is but the littleness of man that sees no greatness in trifles.--wendell phillips. he that despiseth small things shall fall by little and little.--ecclesiasticus. the creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.--emerson. men are led by trifles.--napoleon. "a pebble on the streamlet scant has turned the course of many a river." "the bad thing about a little sin is that it won't stay little." "arletta's pretty feet, glistening in the brook, made her the mother of william the conqueror," says palgrave's "history of normandy and england." "had she not thus fascinated duke robert the liberal, of normandy, harold would not have fallen at hastings, no anglo-norman dynasty could have arisen, no british empire." we may tell which way the wind blew before the deluge by marking the ripple and cupping of the rain in the petrified sand now preserved forever. we tell the very path by which gigantic creatures, whom man never saw, walked to the river's edge to find their food. it was little greece that rolled back the overflowing tide of asiatic luxury and despotism, giving instead to europe and america models of the highest political freedom yet attained, and germs of limitless mental growth. a different result at plataea would have delayed the progress of the human race more than ten centuries. among the lofty alps, it is said, the guides sometimes demand absolute silence, lest the vibration of the voice bring down an avalanche. the power of observation in the american indian would put many an educated man to shame. returning home, an indian discovered that his venison, which had been hanging up to dry, had been stolen. after careful observation he started to track the thief through the woods. meeting a man on the route, he asked him if he had seen a little, old, white man, with a short gun, and with a small bobtailed dog. the man told him he had met such a man, but was surprised to find that the indian had not even seen the one he described, and asked him how he could give such a minute description of the man he had never seen. "i knew the thief was a little man," said the indian, "because he rolled up a stone to stand on in order to reach the venison; i knew he was an old man by his short steps; i knew he was a white man by his turning out his toes in walking, which an indian never does; i knew he had a short gun by the mark it left on the tree where he had stood it up; i knew the dog was small by his tracks and short steps, and that he had a bob-tail by the mark it left in the dust where he sat." two drops of rain, falling side by side, were separated a few inches by a gentle breeze. striking on opposite sides of the roof of a court-house in wisconsin, one rolled southward through the rock river and the mississippi to the gulf of mexico; while the other entered successively the fox river, green bay, lake michigan, the straits of mackinaw, lake huron, st. clair river, lake st. clair, detroit river, lake erie, niagara river, lake ontario, the st. lawrence river, and finally reached the gulf of st. lawrence. how slight the influence of the breeze, yet such was the formation of the continent that a trifling cause was multiplied almost beyond the power of figures to express its momentous effect upon the destinies of these companion raindrops. who can calculate the future of the smallest trifle when a mud crack swells to an amazon and the stealing of a penny may end on the scaffold? the act of a moment may cause a life's regret. a trigger may be pulled in an instant, but the soul returns never. a spark falling upon some combustibles led to the invention of gunpowder. a few bits of seaweed and driftwood, floating on the waves, enabled columbus to stay a mutiny of his sailors which threatened to prevent the discovery of a new world. there are moments in history which balance years of ordinary life. dana could interest a class for hours on a grain of sand; and from a single bone, such as no one had ever seen before, agassiz could deduce the entire structure and habits of an animal which no man had ever seen so accurately that subsequent discoveries of complete skeletons have not changed one of his conclusions. a cricket once saved a military expedition from destruction. the commanding officer and hundreds of his men were going to south america on a great ship, and, through the carelessness of the watch, they would have been dashed upon a ledge of rock had it not been for a cricket which a soldier had brought on board. when the little insect scented the land, it broke its long silence by a shrill note, and thus warned them of their danger. by gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation. a little boy in holland saw water trickling from a small hole near the bottom of a dike. he realized that the leak would rapidly become larger if the water were not checked, so he held his hand over the hole for hours on a dark and dismal night until he could attract the attention of passers-by. his name is still held in grateful remembrance in holland. the beetling chalk cliffs of england were built by rhizopods, too small to be clearly seen without the aid of a magnifying-glass. what was so unlikely as that throwing an empty wine-flask in the fire should furnish the first notion of a locomotive, or that the sickness of an italian chemist's wife and her absurd craving for reptiles for food should begin the electric telegraph. madame galvani noticed the contraction of the muscles of a skinned frog which was accidentally touched at the moment her husband took a spark from an electrical machine. she gave the hint which led to the discovery of galvanic electricity, now so useful in the arts and in transmitting vocal or written language. "the fate of a nation," says gladstone, "has often depended upon the good or bad digestion of a fine dinner." a stamp act to raise , pounds produced the american revolution, a war that cost england , , pounds. a war between france and england, costing more than a hundred thousand lives, grew out of a quarrel as to which of two vessels should first be served with water. the quarrel of two indian boys over a grasshopper led to the "grasshopper war." what mighty contests rise from trivial things! a young man once went to india to seek his fortune, but, finding no opening, he went to his room, loaded his pistol, put the muzzle to his head, and pulled the trigger. but it did not go off. he went to the window to point it in another direction and try it again, resolved that if the weapon went off he would regard it as a providence that he was spared. he pulled the trigger and it went off the first time. trembling with excitement he resolved to hold his life sacred, to make the most of it, and never again to cheapen it. this young man became general robert clive, who, with but a handful of european soldiers, secured to the east india company and afterwards to great britain a great and rich country with two hundred millions of people. the cackling of a goose aroused the sentinels and saved rome from the gauls, and the pain from a thistle warned a scottish army of the approach of the danes. henry ward beecher came within one vote of being elected superintendent of a railway. if he had had that vote america would probably have lost its greatest preacher. what a little thing fixes destiny! trifles light as air often suggest to the thinking mind ideas which have revolutionized the world. a famous ruby was offered to the english government. the report of the crown jeweler was that it was the finest he had ever seen or heard of, but that one of the "facets" was slightly fractured. that invisible fracture reduced the value of the ruby thousands of dollars, and it was rejected from the regalia of england. it was a little thing for the janitor to leave a lamp swinging in the cathedral at pisa, but in that steady swaying motion the boy galileo saw the pendulum, and conceived the idea of thus measuring time. "i was singing to the mouthpiece of a telephone," said edison, "when the vibrations of my voice caused a fine steel point to pierce one of my fingers held just behind it. that set me to thinking. if i could record the motions of the point and send it over the same surface afterward, i saw no reason why the thing would not talk. i determined to make a machine that would work accurately, and gave my assistants the necessary instructions, telling them what i had discovered. that's the whole story. the phonograph is the result of the pricking of a finger." it was a little thing for a cow to kick over a lantern left in a shanty, but it laid chicago in ashes, and rendered homeless a hundred thousand people. some little weakness, some self-indulgence, a quick temper, want of decision, are little things, you say, when placed beside great abilities, but they have wrecked many a career. the parliament of great britain, the congress of the united states, and representative governments all over the world have come from king john signing the magna charta. bentham says, "the turn of a sentence has decided many a friendship, and, for aught we know, the fate of many a kingdom." perhaps you turned a cold shoulder but once, and made but one stinging remark, yet it may have cost you a friend forever. the sight of a stranded cuttlefish led cuvier to an investigation which made him one of the greatest natural historians in the world. the web of a spider suggested to captain brown the idea of a suspension bridge. a missing marriage certificate kept the hod-carrier of hugh miller from establishing his claim to the earldom of crawford. the masons would call out, "john, yearl of crawford, bring us anither hod o' lime." the absence of a comma in a bill which passed through congress years ago cost our government a million dollars. a single misspelled word prevented a deserving young man from obtaining a situation as instructor in a new england college. "i cannot see that you have made any progress since my last visit," said a gentleman to michael angelo. "but," said the sculptor, "i have retouched this part, polished that, softened that feature, brought out that muscle, given some expression to this lip, more energy to that limb, etc." "but they are trifles!" exclaimed the visitor. "it may be so," replied the great artist, "but trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle." that infinite patience which made michael angelo spend a week in bringing out a muscle in a statue, with more vital fidelity to truth, or gerhard dow a day in giving the right effect to a dewdrop on a cabbage leaf, makes all the difference between success and failure. the cry of the infant moses attracted the attention of pharoah's daughter, and gave the jews a lawgiver. a bird alighting on the bough of a tree at the mouth of the cave where mahomet lay hid turned aside his pursuers, and gave a prophet to many nations. a flight of birds probably prevented columbus from discovering this continent. when he was growing anxious, martin alonzo pinzon persuaded him to follow a flight of parrots toward the southwest; for to the spanish seamen of that day it was good luck to follow in the wake of a flock of birds when on a voyage of discovery. but for his change of course columbus would have reached the coast of florida. "never," wrote humboldt, "had the flight of birds more important consequences." the children of a spectacle-maker placed two or more pairs of the spectacles before each other in play, and told their father that distant objects looked larger. from this hint came the telescope. every day is a little life; and our whole life but a day repeated. those that dare lose a day are dangerously prodigal; those that dare misspend it, desperate. what is the happiness of your life made up of? little courtesies, little kindnesses, pleasant words, genial smiles, a friendly letter, good wishes, and good deeds. one in a million--once in a lifetime--may do a heroic action. napoleon was a master of trifles. to details which his inferior officers thought too microscopic for their notice he gave the most exhaustive consideration. nothing was too small for his attention. he must know all about the provisions, the horse fodder, the biscuits, the camp kettles, the shoes. when the bugle sounded for the march to battle, every officer had his orders as to the exact route which he should follow, the exact day he was to arrive at a certain station, and the exact hour he was to leave, and they were all to reach the point of destination at a precise moment. it is said that nothing could be more perfectly planned than his memorable march which led to the victory of austerlitz, and which sealed the fate of europe for many years. he would often charge his absent officers to send him perfectly accurate returns, even to the smallest detail. "when they are sent to me, i give up every occupation in order to read them in detail, and to observe the difference between one monthly return and another. no young girl enjoys her novel as much as i do these returns." napoleon left nothing to chance, nothing to contingency, so far as he could possibly avoid it. everything was planned to a nicety before he attempted to execute it. wellington, too, was "great in little things." he knew no such things as trifles. while other generals trusted to subordinates, he gave his personal attention to the minutest detail. the history of many a failure could be written in three words, "lack of detail." how many a lawyer has failed from the lack of details in deeds and important papers, the lack of little words which seemed like surplusage, and which involved his clients in litigation, and often great losses! how many wills are contested from the carelessness of lawyers in the omission or shading of words, or ambiguous use of language! not even helen of troy, it is said, was beautiful enough to spare the tip of her nose; and if cleopatra's had been an inch shorter mark antony might never have become infatuated with her wonderful charms, and the blemish would have changed the history of the world. anne boleyn's fascinating smile split the great church of rome in twain, and gave a nation an altered destiny. napoleon, who feared not to attack the proudest monarchs in their capitols, shrank from the political influence of one independent woman in private life, madame de staël. cromwell was about to sail for america when a law was passed prohibiting emigration. at that time he was a profligate, having squandered all his property. but when he found that he could not leave england he reformed his life. had he not been detained, who can tell what the history of great britain would have been? from the careful and persistent accumulation of innumerable facts, each trivial in itself, but in the aggregate forming a mass of evidence, a darwin extracts his law of evolution, and a linnaeus constructs the science of botany. a pan of water and two thermometers were the tools by which dr. black discovered latent heat; and a prism, a lens, and a sheet of pasteboard enabled newton to unfold the composition of light and the origin of colors. an eminent foreign savant called on dr. wollaston, and asked to be shown over those laboratories of his in which science had been enriched by so many great discoveries, when the doctor took him into a little study, and, pointing to an old tea tray on the table, on which stood a few watch glasses, test papers, a small balance, and a blow-pipe, said, "there is my laboratory." a burnt stick and a barn door served wilkie in lieu of pencil and paper. a single potato, carried to england by sir walter raleigh in the sixteenth century, has multiplied into food for millions, driving famine from ireland again and again. it seemed a small thing to drive william brewster, john robinson, and the poor people of austerfield and scrooby into perpetual exile, but as pilgrims they became the founders of a mighty people. a few immortal sentences from garrison and phillips, a few poems from lowell and whittier, and the leaven is at work which will not cease its action until the whipping-post and bodily servitude are abolished forever. "for want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was lost, and all," says poor richard, "for want of a horseshoe nail." a single remark dropped by an unknown person in the street led to the successful story of "the bread-winners." a hymn chanted by the barefooted friars in the temple of jupiter at rome led to the famous "decline and fall of the roman empire." "words are things" says byron, "and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think." "i give these books for the founding of a college in this colony"; such were the words of ten ministers who in the year assembled at the village of branford, a few miles east of new haven. each of the worthy fathers deposited a few books upon the table around which they were sitting; such was the founding of yale college. great men are noted for their attention to trifles. goethe once asked a monarch to excuse him, during an interview, while he went to an adjoining room to jot down a stray thought. hogarth would make sketches of rare faces and characteristics upon his finger-nails upon the streets. indeed, to a truly great mind there are no little things. trifles light as air suggest to the keen observer the solution of mighty problems. bits of glass arranged to amuse children led to the discovery of the kaleidoscope. goodyear discovered how to vulcanize rubber by forgetting, until it became red hot, a skillet containing a compound which he had before considered worthless. a ship-worm boring a piece of wood suggested to sir isambard brunel the idea of a tunnel under the thames at london. tracks of extinct animals in the old red sandstone led hugh miller on and on until he became the greatest geologist of his time. sir walter scott once saw a shepherd boy plodding sturdily along, and asked him to ride. this boy was george kemp, who became so enthusiastic in his study of sculpture that he walked fifty miles and back to see a beautiful statue. he did not forget the kindness of sir walter, and, when the latter died, threw his soul into the design of the magnificent monument erected in edinburgh to the memory of the author of "waverley." a poor boy applied for a situation at a bank in paris, but was refused. as he left the door, he picked up a pin. the bank president saw this, called the boy back, and gave him a situation from which he rose until he became the greatest banker of paris,--laffitte. a massachusetts soldier in the civil war observed a bird hulling rice, and shot it; taking its bill for a model, he invented a hulling machine which has revolutionized the rice business. the eye is a perpetual camera imprinting upon the sensitive mental plates and packing away in the brain for future use every face, every tree, every plant, flower, hill, stream, mountain, every scene upon the street, in fact, everything which comes within its range. there is a phonograph in our natures which catches, however thoughtless and transient, every syllable we utter, and registers forever the slightest enunciation, and renders it immortal. these notes may appear a thousand years hence, reproduced in our descendants, in all their beautiful or terrible detail. "least of all seeds, greatest of all harvests," seems to be one of the great laws of nature. all life comes from microscopic beginnings. in nature there is nothing small. the microscope reveals as great a world below as the telescope above. all of nature's laws govern the smallest atoms, and a single drop of water is a miniature ocean. the strength of a chain lies in its weakest link, however large and strong all the others may be. we are all inclined to be proud of our strong points, while we are sensitive and neglectful of our weaknesses. yet it is our greatest weakness which measures our real strength. a soldier who escapes the bullets of a thousand battles may die from the scratch of a pin, and many a ship has survived the shocks of icebergs and the storms of ocean only to founder in a smooth sea from holes made by tiny insects. _small things become great when a great soul sees them_. a single noble or heroic act of one man has sometimes elevated a nation. many an honorable career has resulted from a kind word spoken in season or the warm grasp of a friendly hand. it is the little rift within the lute that by and by will make the music mute, and, ever widening, slowly silence all. tennyson. "it was only a glad 'good-morning,' as she passed along the way, but it spread the morning's glory over the livelong day." "only a thought in passing--a smile, or encouraging word, has lifted many a burden no other gift could have stirred." chapter xlii the salary you do not find in your pay envelope the quality which you put into your work will determine the quality of your life. the habit of insisting upon the best of which you are capable, of always demanding of yourself the highest, never accepting the lowest or second best, no matter how small your remuneration, will make all the difference to you between failure and success. "if the laborer gets no more than the wages his employer offers him, he is cheated; he cheats himself." a boy or a man who works simply for his salary, and is actuated by no higher motive, is dishonest, and the one whom he most defrauds is himself. he is cheating himself, in the quality of his daily work, of that which all the after years, try as he may, can never give him back. if i were allowed but one utterance on this subject, so vital to every young man starting on the journey of life, i would say: "don't think too much of the amount of salary your employer gives you at the start. think, rather, of the possible salary you can give yourself, in increasing your skill, in expanding your experience, in enlarging and ennobling yourself." a man's or a boy's work is material with which to build character and manhood. it is life's school for practical training of the faculties, stretching the mind, and strengthening and developing the intellect, not a mere mill for grinding out a salary of dollars and cents. bismarck was said to have really founded the german empire when working for a small salary as secretary to the german legation in russia; for in that position he absorbed the secrets of strategy and diplomacy which later were used so effectively for his country. he worked so assiduously, so efficiently, that germany prized his services more than those of the ambassador himself. if bismarck had earned only his salary, he might have remained a perpetual clerk, and germany a tangle of petty states. i have never known an employee to rise rapidly, or even to get beyond mediocrity, whose pay envelope was his goal, who could not see infinitely more in his work than what he found in the envelope on saturday night. that is necessity; but the larger part of the real pay of a real man's work is outside of the pay envelope. one part of this outside salary is the opportunity of the employee to absorb the secrets of his employer's success, and to learn from his mistakes, while he is being paid for learning his trade or profession. the other part, and the best of all, is the opportunity for growth, for development, for mental expansion; the opportunity to become a larger, broader, more efficient man. the opportunity for growth in a disciplinary institution, where the practical faculties, the executive faculties, are brought into systematic, vigorous exercise at a definite time and for a definite number of hours, is an advantage beyond computation. there is no estimating the value of such training. it is the opportunity, my employee friend, that will help you to make a large man of yourself, which, perhaps, you could not possibly do without being employed in some kind of an institution which has the motive, the machinery, the patronage to give you the disciplining and training you need to bring out your strongest qualities. and instead of paying for the opportunity of unfolding and developing from a green, ignorant boy into a strong, level-headed, efficient man, you are paid! the youth who is always haggling over the question of how many dollars and cents he will sell his services for, little realizes how he is cheating himself by not looking at the larger salary he can pay himself in increasing his skill, in expanding his experience, and in making himself a better, stronger, more useful man. the few dollars he finds in his pay envelope are to this larger salary as the chips which fly from the sculptor's chisel are to the angel which he is trying to call out of the marble. you can draw from the faithfulness of your work, from the grand spirit which you bring to it, the high purpose which emanates from you in its performance, a recompense so munificent that what your employer pays you will seem insignificant beside it. he pays you in dollars; you pay yourself in valuable experience, in fine training, in increased efficiency, in splendid discipline, in self-expression, in character building. then, too, the ideal employer gives those who work for him a great deal that is not found in the pay envelope. he gives them encouragement, sympathy. he inspires them with the possibility of doing something higher, better. how small and narrow and really blind to his own interests must be the youth who can weigh a question of salary against all those privileges he receives in exchange for the meager services he is able to render his employer. do not fear that your employer will not recognize your merit and advance you as rapidly as you deserve. it he is looking for efficient employees,--and what employer is not?--it will be to his own interest to do so,--just as soon as it is profitable. w. bourke cockran, himself a remarkable example of success, says: "the man who brings to his occupation a loyal desire to do his best is certain to succeed. by doing the thing at hand surpassingly well, he shows that it would be profitable to employ him in some higher form of occupation, and, when there is profit in his promotion, he is pretty sure to secure it." do you think that kings of business like andrew carnegie, john wanamaker, robert c. ogden, and other lesser powers in the commercial world would have attained their present commanding success had they hesitated and haggled about a dollar or two of salary when they began their life-work? if they had, they would now probably be working on comparatively small salaries for other people. it was not salary, but opportunity, that each wanted,--a chance to show what was in him, to absorb the secrets of the business. they were satisfied with a dollar or two apiece a week, hardly enough to live on, while they were learning the lessons that made them what they are to-day. no, the boys who rise in the world are not those who, at the start, split hairs about salaries. often we see bright boys who have worked, perhaps for years, on small salaries, suddenly jumping, as if by magic, into high and responsible positions. why? simply because, while their employers were paying them but a few dollars a week, they were paying themselves vastly more in the fine quality of their work, in the enthusiasm, determination, and high purpose they brought to their tasks, and in increased insight into business methods. colonel robert c. clowry, president of the western union telegraph company, worked without pay as a messenger boy for months for experience, which he regarded as worth infinitely more than salary--and scores of our most successful men have cheerfully done the same thing. a millionaire merchant of new york told me the story of his rise. "i walked from my home in new england to new york," he said, "where i secured a place to sweep out a store for three dollars and a half a week. at the end of a year, i accepted an offer from the firm to remain for five years at a salary of seven dollars and a half a week. long before this time had expired, however, i had a proposition from another large concern in new york to act as its foreign representative at a salary of three thousand dollars a year. i told the manager that i was then under contract, but that, when my time should be completed, i should be glad to talk with him in regard to his proposition." when his contract was nearly up, he was called into the office of the head of the house, and a new contract with him for a term of years at three thousand dollars a year was proposed. the young man told his employers that the manager of another house had offered him that amount a year or more before, but that he did not accept it because he wouldn't break his contract. they told him they would think the matter over and see what they could do for him. incredible as it may seem, they notified him, a little later, that they were prepared to enter into a ten-year contract with him at ten thousand dollars a year, and the contract was closed. he told me that he and his wife lived on eight dollars a week in new york, during a large part of this time, and that, by saving and investments, they laid up $ , . at the end of his contract, he was taken into the firm as a partner, and became a millionaire. suppose that this boy had listened to his associates, who probably said to him, many times: "what a fool you are, george, to work here overtime to do the things which others neglect! why should you stay here nights and help pack goods, and all that sort of thing, when it is not expected of you?" would he then have risen above them, leaving them in the ranks of perpetual employees? no, but the boy who walked one hundred miles to new york to get a job saw in every opportunity a great occasion, for he could not tell when fate might be taking his measure for a larger place. the very first time he swept out the store, he felt within him the ability to become a great merchant, and he determined that he would be. he felt that the opportunity was the salary. the chance actually to do with his own hands the thing which he wanted to learn; to see the way in which princely merchants do business; to watch their methods; to absorb their processes; to make their secrets his own,--this was his salary, compared with which the three dollars and fifty cents looked contemptible. he put himself into training, always looking out for the main chance. he never allowed anything of importance to escape his attention. when he was not working, he was watching others, studying methods, and asking questions of everybody he came in contact with in the store, so eager was he to learn how everything was done. he told me that he did not go out of new york city for twelve years; that he preferred to study the store, and to absorb every bit of knowledge that he could, for he was bound some day to be a partner or to have a store of his own. it is not difficult to see a proprietor in the boy who sweeps the store or waits on customers--if the qualities that make a proprietor are in him--by watching him work for a single day. you can tell by the spirit which he brings to his task whether there is in him the capacity for growth, expansion, enlargement; an ambition to rise, to be somebody, or an inclination to shirk, to do as little as possible for the largest amount of salary. when you get a job, just think of yourself as actually starting out in business for yourself, as really working for yourself. get as much salary as you can, but remember that that is a very small part of the consideration. you have actually gotten an opportunity to get right into the very heart of the great activities of a large concern, to get close to men who do things; an opportunity to absorb knowledge and valuable secrets on every hand; an opportunity to drink in, through your eyes and your ears, knowledge wherever you go in the establishment, knowledge that will be invaluable to you in the future. every hint and every suggestion which you can pick up, every bit of knowledge you can absorb, you should regard as a part of your future capital which will be worth more than money capital when you start out for yourself. just make up your mind that you are going to be a sponge in that institution and absorb every particle of information and knowledge possible. resolve that you will call upon all of your resourcefulness, your inventiveness, your ingenuity, to devise new and better ways of doing things; that you will be progressive, up-to-date; that you will enter into your work with a spirit of enthusiasm and a zest which know no bounds, and you will be surprised to see how quickly you will attract the attention of those above you. this striving for excellence will make you grow. it will call out your resources, call out the best thing in you. the constant stretching of the mind over problems which interest you, which are to mean everything to you in the future, will help you expand into a broader, larger, more effective man. if you work with this spirit, you will form a like habit of accuracy, of close observation; a habit of reading human nature; a habit of adjusting means to ends; a habit of thoroughness, of system; _a habit of putting your best into everything you do_, which means the ultimate attainment of your maximum efficiency. in other words, if you give your best to your employer, the best possible comes back to you in skill, training, shrewdness, acumen, and power. your employer may pinch you on salary, but he can not close your eyes and ears; he can not shut off your perceptive faculties; he can not keep you from absorbing the secrets of his business which may have been purchased by him at an enormous cost of toil and sacrifice and even of several failures. on the other hand, it is impossible for you to rob your employer by clipping your hours, shirking your work, by carelessness or indifference, without robbing yourself of infinitely more, of capital which is worth vastly more than money capital--the chance to make a man of yourself, the chance to have a clean record behind you instead of a smirched one. if you think you are being kept back, if you are working for too small a salary, if favoritism puts some one into a position above you which you have justly earned, never mind, no one can rob you of your greatest reward, the skill, the efficiency, the power you have gained, the consciousness of doing your level best, of giving the best thing in you to your employer, all of which advantages you will carry with you to your next position, whatever it may be. don't say to yourself, "i am not paid for doing this extra work; i do not get enough salary, anyway, and it is perfectly right for me to shirk when my employer is not in sight or to clip my hours when i can," for this means a loss of self-respect. you will never again have the same confidence in your ability to succeed; you will always be conscious that you have done a little, mean thing, and no amount of juggling with yourself can induce that inward monitor which says "right" to the well-done thing and "wrong" to the botched work, to alter its verdict in your favor. there is something within you that you cannot bribe; a divine sense of justice and right that can not be blindfolded. nothing will ever compensate you for the loss of faith in yourself. you may still succeed when others have lost confidence in you, but never when you have lost confidence in yourself. if you do not respect yourself; if you do not believe in yourself, your career is at an end so far as its upward tendency is concerned. then again, an employee's reputation is his capital. in the absence of money capital, his reputation means everything. it not only follows him around from one employer to another, but it also follows him when he goes into business for himself, and is always either helping or hindering him, according to its nature. contrast the condition of a young man starting out for himself who has looked upon his position as a sacred trust, a great opportunity, backed, buttressed, and supported by a splendid past, an untarnished reputation--a reputation for being a dead-in-earnest hard worker, square, loyal, and true to his employer's interests--with that of another young man of equal ability starting out for himself, who has done just as little work for his salary as possible, and who has gone on the principle that the more he could get out of an employer--the more salary he could get with less effort--the shrewder, smarter man he was. the very reputation of the first young man is splendid credit. he is backed up by the good opinion of everybody that knows him. people are afraid of the other: they can not trust him. he beat his employer, why should not he beat others? everybody knows that he has not been honest at heart with his employer, not loyal or true. he must work all the harder to overcome the handicap of a bad reputation, a smirched record. in other words, he is starting out in life with a heavy handicap, which, if it does not drag him down to failure, will make his burden infinitely greater, and success, even a purely commercial success, so much the harder to attain. there is nothing like a good, solid, substantial reputation, a clean record, an untarnished past. it sticks to us through life, and is always helping us. we find it waiting at the bank when we try to borrow money, or at the jobber's when we ask for credit. it is always backing us up and helping us in all sorts of ways. young men are sometimes surprised at their rapid advancement. they can not understand it, because they do not realize the tremendous power of a clean name, of a good reputation which is backing them. i know a young man who came to new york, got a position in a publishing house at fifteen dollars a week, and worked five years before he received thirty-five dollars a week. the other employees and his friends called him a fool for staying at the office after hours and taking work home nights and holidays, for such a small salary; but he told them that the opportunity was what he was after, not the salary. his work attracted the attention of a publisher who offered him sixty dollars a week, and very soon advanced him to seventy-five; but he carried with him to the new position the same habits of painstaking, hard work, never thinking of the salary, but _regarding the opportunity as everything_. employees sometimes think that they get no credit for trying to do more than they are paid for; but here is an instance of a young man who attracted the attention of others even outside of the firm he worked for, just because he was trying to earn a great deal more than he was paid for doing. the result was, that in less than two years from the time he was receiving sixty dollars a week, he went to a third large publishing house at ten thousand dollars a year, and also with an interest in the business. the salary is of very little importance to you in comparison with the reputation for integrity and efficiency you have left behind you and the experience you have gained while earning the salary. these are the great things. in olden times boys had to give years of their time in order to learn a trade, and often would pay their employer for the opportunity. english boys used to think it was a great opportunity to be able to get into a good concern, with a chance to work without salary for years in order to learn their business or trade. now the boy is paid for learning his trade. many employees may not think it is so very bad to clip their hours, to shirk at every opportunity, to sneak away and hide during business hours, to loiter when out on business for their employer, to go to their work in the morning all used up from dissipation; but often when they try to get another place their reputation has gone before them, and they are not wanted. others excuse themselves for poor work on the ground that their employer does not appreciate their services and is mean to them. a youth might just as well excuse himself for his boorish manners and ungentlemanly conduct on the ground that other people were mean and ungentlemanly to him. my young friends, you have nothing to do with your employer's character or his method of doing things. you may not be able to make him do what is right, but you can do right yourself. you may not be able to make him a gentleman, but you can be one yourself; and you can not afford to ruin yourself and your whole future just because your employer is not what he ought to be. no matter how mean and stingy he may be, your opportunity for the time is with him, and it rests with you whether you will use it or abuse it, whether you will make of it a stepping-stone or a stumbling-block. the fact is that your present position, your way of doing your work, is the key that will unlock the door above you. slighted work, botched work, will never make a key to unlock the door to anything but failure and disgrace. there is nothing else so valuable to you as an opportunity to build a name for yourself. your reputation is the foundation for your future success, and if you slip rotten hours, and slighted, botched work into the foundation, your superstructure will topple. the foundation must be clean, solid, and firm. the quality which you put into your work will determine the quality of your life. the habit of insisting upon the best of which you are capable, of always demanding of yourself the highest, never accepting the lowest or second best, no matter how small your remuneration, will make all the difference to you between mediocrity or failure, and success. if you bring to your work the spirit of an artist instead of an artisan, a burning zeal, an absorbing enthusiasm, these will take the drudgery out of it and make it a delight. take no chances of marring your reputation by the picayune and unworthy endeavor "to get square" with a stingy or mean employer. never mind what kind of a man he is, resolve that you will approach your task in the spirit of a master, that whether he is a man of high ideals or not, you will be one. remember that you are a sculptor and that every act is a chisel blow upon life's marble block. you can not afford to strike false blows which may mar the angel that sleeps in the stone. whether it is beautiful or hideous, divine or brutal, the image you evolve from the block must stand as an expression of yourself, of your ideals. those who do not care how they do their work, if they can only get through with it and get their salary for it, pay very dearly for their trifling; they cut very sorry figures in life. regard your work as a great life school for the broadening, deepening, rounding into symmetry, harmony, beauty, of your god-given faculties, which are uncut diamonds sacredly intrusted to you for the polishing and bringing out of their hidden wealth and beauty. look upon it as a man-builder, a character-builder, and not as a mere living-getter. regard the living-getting, money-making part of your career as a mere incidental as compared with the man-making part of it. the smallest people in the world are those who work for salary alone. the little money you get in your pay envelope is a pretty small, low motive for which to work. it may be necessary to secure your bread and butter, but you have something infinitely higher to satisfy than that; that is, your sense of the right; the demand in you to do your level best, to be a man, to do the square thing, the fair thing. these should speak so loud in you that the mere bread-and-butter question will be insignificant in comparison. many young employees, just because they do not get quite as much salary as they think they should, deliberately throw away all of the other, larger, grander remuneration possible for them outside of their pay envelope, for the sake of "getting square" with their employer. they deliberately adopt a shirking, do-as-little-as-possible policy, and instead of getting this larger, more important salary, which they can pay themselves, they prefer the consequent arrested development, and become small, narrow, inefficient, rutty men and women, with nothing large or magnanimous, nothing broad, noble, progressive in their nature. their leadership faculties, their initiative, their planning ability, their ingenuity and resourcefulness, inventiveness, and all the qualities which make the leader, the large, full, complete man, remain undeveloped. while trying to "get square" with their employer, by giving him pinched service, they blight their own growth, strangle their own prospects, and go through life half men instead of full men--small, narrow, weak men, instead of the strong, grand, complete men they might be. i have known employees actually to work harder in scheming, shirking, trying to keep from working hard in the performance of their duties, than they would have worked if they had tried to do their best, and had given the largest, the most liberal service possible to their employers. the hardest work in the world is that which is grudgingly done. start out with a tacit understanding with yourself that you will be a man, that you will express in your work the highest thing in you, the best thing in you. you can not afford to debase or demoralize yourself by bringing out your mean side, the lowest and most despicable thing in you. never mind whether your employer appreciates the high quality of your work or not, or thinks more of you for your conscientiousness, you will certainly think more of yourself after getting the approval of that still small voice within you which says "right" to the noble act. the effort always to do your best will enlarge your capacity for doing things, and will encourage you to push ahead toward larger triumphs. everywhere we see people who are haunted by the ghosts of half-finished jobs, the dishonest work done away back in their youth. these covered-up defects are always coming back to humiliate them later, to trip them up, and to bar their progress. the great failure army is full of people who have tried to get square with their employers for the small salary and lack of appreciation. no one can respect himself or have that sublime faith in himself which makes for high achievement while he puts half-hearted, mean service into his work. the man who has not learned to fling his whole soul into his task, who has not learned the secret of taking the drudgery out of his work by putting the best of himself into it, has not learned the first principles of success or happiness. let other people do the poor jobs, the botched work, if they will. keep your standard up. it is a lofty ideal that redeems the life from the curse of commonness and imparts a touch of nobility to the personality. no matter how small your salary, or how unappreciative your employer, bring the entire man to your task; be all there; fling your life into it with all the energy and enthusiasm you can muster. _poor work injures your employer a little, but it may ruin you_. be proud of your work and go to it every morning superbly equipped; go to it in the spirit of a master, of a conqueror. determine to do your level best and never to demoralize yourself by doing your second best. conduct yourself in such a way that you can always look yourself in the face without wincing; then you will have a courage born of conviction, of personal nobility and integrity which have never been tarnished. what your employer thinks of you, what the world thinks of you, is not half as important as what you think of yourself. others are with you comparatively little through life. _you have to live with yourself day and night through your whole existence, and you can not afford to tie that divine thing in you to a scoundrel_. chapter xliii expect great things of yourself "why," asked mirabeau, "should we call ourselves men, unless it be to succeed in everything everywhere?" nothing else will so nerve you to accomplish great things as to believe in your own greatness, in your own marvelous possibilities. count that man an enemy who shakes your faith in yourself, in your ability to do the thing you have set your heart upon doing, for when your confidence is gone, your power is gone. your achievement will never rise higher than your self-faith. it would be as reasonable for napoleon to have expected to get his army over the alps by sitting down and declaring that the undertaking was too great for him, as for you to hope to achieve anything significant in life while harboring grave doubts and fears as to your ability. the miracles of civilization have been performed by men and women of great self-confidence, who had unwavering faith in their power to accomplish the tasks they undertook. the race would have been centuries behind what it is to-day had it not been for their grit, their determination, their persistence in finding and making real the thing they believed in and which the world often denounced as chimerical or impossible. there is no law by which you can achieve success in anything without expecting it, demanding it, assuming it. there must be a strong, firm self-faith first, or the thing will never come. there is no room for chance in god's world of system and supreme order. everything must have not only a cause, but a sufficient cause--a cause as large as the result. a stream can not rise higher than its source. a great success must have a great source in expectation, in self-confidence, and in persistent endeavor to attain it. no matter how great the ability, how large the genius, or how splendid the education, the achievement will never rise higher than the confidence. he can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. this is an inexorable, indisputable law. it does not matter what other people think of you, of your plans, or of your aims. no matter if they call you a visionary, a crank, or a dreamer; you must believe in yourself. you forsake yourself when you lose your confidence. never allow anybody or any misfortune to shake your belief in yourself. you may lose your property, your health, your reputation, other people's confidence, even; but there is always hope for you so long as you keep a firm faith in yourself. if you never lose that, but keep pushing on, the world will, sooner or later, make way for you. a soldier once took a message to napoleon in such great haste that the horse he rode dropped dead before he delivered the paper. napoleon dictated his answer and, handing it to the messenger, ordered him to mount his own horse and deliver it with all possible speed. the messenger looked at the magnificent animal, with its superb trappings, and said, "nay, general, but this is too gorgeous, too magnificent for a common soldier." napoleon said, "nothing is too good or too magnificent for a french soldier." the world is full of people like this poor french soldier, who think that what others have is too good for them; that it does not fit their humble condition; that they are not expected to have as good things as those who are "more favored." they do not realize how they weaken themselves by this mental attitude of self-depreciation or self-effacement. they do not claim enough, expect enough, or demand enough of or for themselves. you will never become a giant if you only make a pygmy's claim for yourself; if you only expect small things of yourself. there is no law which can cause a pygmy's thinking to produce a giant. the statue follows the model. the model is the inward vision. most people have been educated to think that it was not intended they should have the best there is in the world; that the good and the beautiful things of life were not designed for them, but were reserved for those especially favored by fortune. they have grown up under this conviction of their inferiority, and of course they will be inferior until they claim superiority as their birthright. a vast number of men and women who are really capable of doing great things, do small things, live mediocre lives, because they do not expect or demand enough of themselves. they do not know how to call out their best. one reason why the human race as a whole has not measured up to its possibilities, to its promise; one reason why we see everywhere splendid ability doing the work of mediocrity; is because people do not think half enough of themselves. _we do not realize our divinity; that we are a part of the great causation principle of the universe_. we do not think highly enough of our superb birthright, nor comprehend to what heights of sublimity we were intended and expected to rise, nor to what extent we can really be masters of ourselves. we fail to see that we can control our own destiny: make ourselves do whatever is possible; make ourselves become whatever we long to be. "if we choose to be no more than clods of clay," says marie corelli, "then we shall be used as clods of clay for braver feet to tread on." the persistent thought that you are not as good as others, that you are a weak, ineffective being, will lower your whole standard of life and paralyze your ability. a man who is self-reliant, positive, optimistic, and undertakes his work with the assurance of success, magnetizes conditions. he draws to himself the literal fulfilment of the promise, "for unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance." there is everything in assuming the part we wish to play, and playing it royally. if you are ambitious to do big things, you must make a large program for yourself, and assume the part it demands. there is something in the atmosphere of the man who has a large and true estimate of himself, who believes that he is going to win out; something in his very appearance that wins half the battle before a blow is struck. things get out of the way of the vigorous, affirmative man, which are always tripping the self-depreciating, negative man. we often hear it said of a man, "everything he undertakes succeeds," or "everything he touches turns to gold." by the force of his character and the creative power of his thought, such a man wrings success from the most adverse circumstances. confidence begets confidence. a man who carries in his very presence an air of victory, radiates assurance, and imparts to others confidence that he can do the thing he attempts. as time goes on, he is reenforced not only by the power of his own thought, but also by that of all who know him. his friends and acquaintances affirm and reaffirm his ability to succeed, and make each successive triumph easier of achievement than its predecessor. his self-poise, assurance, confidence, and ability increase in a direct ratio to the number of his achievements. as the savage indian thought that the power of every enemy he conquered entered into himself, so in reality does every conquest in war, in peaceful industry, in commerce, in invention, in science, or in art add to the conqueror's power to do the next thing. set the mind toward the thing you would accomplish so resolutely, so definitely, and with such vigorous determination, and put so much grit into your resolution, that nothing on earth can turn you from your purpose until you attain it. this very assertion of superiority, the assumption of power, the affirmation of belief in yourself, the mental attitude that claims success as an inalienable birthright, will strengthen the whole man and give power to a combination of faculties which doubt, fear, and a lack of confidence undermine. confidence is the napoleon of the mental army. it doubles and trebles the power of all the other faculties. the whole mental army waits until confidence leads the way. even a race-horse can not win the prize after it has once lost confidence in itself. courage, born of self-confidence, is the prod which brings out the last ounce of reserve force. the reason why so many men fail is because they do not commit themselves with a determination to win at any cost. they do not have that superb confidence in themselves which never looks back; which burns all bridges behind it. there is just uncertainty enough as to whether they will succeed to take the edge off their effort, and it is just this little difference between doing pretty well and flinging all oneself, all his power, into his career, that makes the difference between mediocrity and a grand achievement. if you doubt your ability to do what you set out to do; if you think that others are better fitted to do it than you; if you fear to let yourself out and take chances; if you lack boldness; if you have a timid, shrinking nature; if the negatives preponderate in your vocabulary; if you think that you lack positiveness, initiative, aggressiveness, ability; you can never win anything very great until you change your whole mental attitude and learn to have great faith in yourself. fear, doubt, and timidity must be turned out of your mind. your own mental picture of yourself is a good measure of yourself and your possibilities. if there is no out-reach to your mind, no spirit of daring, no firm self-faith, you will never accomplish much. a man's confidence measures the height of his possibilities. a stream can not rise higher than its fountain-head. _power is largely a question of strong, vigorous, perpetual thinking along the line of the ambition, parallel with the aim--the great life purpose. here is where power originates._ the deed must first live in the thought or it will never be a reality; and a strong, vigorous concept of the thing we want to do is a tremendous initial step. a thought that is timidly born will be timidly executed. there must be vigor of conception or an indifferent execution. all the greatest achievements in the world began in longing--in dreamings and hopings which for a time were nursed in despair, with no light in sight. this longing kept the courage up and made self-sacrifice easier until the thing dreamed of--the mental vision--was realized. "according to your faith be it unto you." our faith is a very good measure of what we get out of life. the man of weak faith gets little; the man of mighty faith gets much. the very intensity of your confidence in your ability to do the thing you attempt is definitely related to the degree of your achievement. if we were to analyze the marvelous successes of many of our self-made men, we should find that when they first started out in active life they held the confident, vigorous, persistent thought of and belief in their ability to accomplish what they had undertaken. their mental attitude was set so stubbornly toward their goal that the doubts and fears which dog and hinder and frighten the man who holds a low estimate of himself, who asks, demands, and expects but little, of or for himself, got out of their path, and the world made way for them. we are very apt to think of men who have been unusually successful in any line as greatly favored by fortune; and we try to account for it in all sorts of ways but the right one. the fact is that their success represents their expectations of themselves--the sum of their creative, positive, habitual thinking. it is their mental attitude outpictured and made tangible in their environment. they have wrought--created--what they have and what they are out of their constructive thought and their unquenchable faith in themselves. we must not only believe we can succeed, but _we must believe it with all our hearts_. we must have a positive conviction that we can attain success. no lukewarm energy or indifferent ambition ever accomplished anything. _there must be vigor in our expectation, in our faith_, in our determination, in our endeavor. _we must resolve with the energy that does things_. not only must the desire for the thing we long for be kept uppermost, but there must be strongly concentrated intensity of effort to attain our object. as it is the fierceness of the heat that melts the iron ore and makes it possible to weld it or mold it into shape; as it is the intensity of the electrical force that dissolves the diamond--the hardest known substance; so _it is the concentrated aim, the invincible purpose_, that wins success. nothing was ever accomplished by a half-hearted desire. many people make a very poor showing in life, because there is no vim, no vigor in their efforts. their resolutions are spineless; there is no backbone in their endeavor--no grit in their ambition. one must have that determination which never looks back and which knows no defeat; that resolution which burns all bridges behind it and is willing to risk everything upon the effort. when a man ceases to believe in himself--gives up the fight--you can not do much for him except to try to restore what he has lost--his self-faith--and to get out of his head the idea that there is a fate which tosses him hither and thither, a mysterious destiny which decides things whether he will or not. you can not do much with him until he comprehends that _he is bigger than any fate_; that he has within himself a power mightier than any force outside of him. one reason why the careers of most of us are so pinched and narrow, is because we do not have a large faith in ourselves and in our power to accomplish. we are held back by too much caution. we are timid about venturing. we are not bold enough. whatever we long for, yearn for, struggle for, and hold persistently in the mind, we tend to become just in exact proportion to the intensity and persistence of the thought. _we think ourselves into smallness, into inferiority by thinking downward_. we ought to think upward, then we would reach the heights where superiority dwells. the man whose mind is set firmly toward achievement does not appropriate success, _he is success_. self-confidence is not egotism. it is knowledge, and it comes from the consciousness of possessing the ability requisite for what one undertakes. civilization to-day rests upon self-confidence. a firm self-faith helps a man to project himself with a force that is almost irresistible. a balancer, a doubter, has no projectile power. if he starts at all, he moves with uncertainty. there is no vigor in his initiative, no positiveness in his energy. there is a great difference between a man who thinks that "perhaps" he can do, or who "will try" to do a thing, and a man who "knows" he can do it, who is "bound" to do it; who feels within himself a pulsating power, an irresistible force, equal to any emergency. this difference between uncertainty and certainty, between vacillation and decision, between the man who wavers and the man who decides things, between "i hope to" and "i can," between "i'll try" and "i will"--this little difference measures the distance between weakness and power, between mediocrity and excellence, between commonness and superiority. the man who does things must be able to project himself with a mighty force, to fling the whole weight of his being into his work, ever gathering momentum against the obstacles which confront him; every issue must be met wholly, unhesitatingly. he can not do this with a wavering, doubting, unstable mind. the fact that a man believes implicitly that he can do what may seem impossible or very difficult to others, shows that there is something within him that makes him equal to the work he has undertaken. faith unites man with the infinite, and no one can accomplish great things in life unless he works in oneness with the infinite. when a man lives so near to the supreme that the divine presence is felt all the time, then he is in a position to express power. there is nothing which will multiply one's ability like self-faith. it can make a one-talent man a success, while a ten-talent man without it would fail. faith walks on the mountain tops, hence its superior vision. it sees what is invisible to those who follow in the valleys. it was the sustaining power of a mighty self-faith that enabled columbus to bear the jeers and imputations of the spanish cabinet; that sustained him when his sailors were in mutiny and he was at their mercy in a little vessel on an unknown sea; that enabled him to hold steadily to his purpose, entering in his diary day after day--"this day we sailed west, which was our course." it was this self-faith which gave courage and determination to fulton to attempt his first trip up the hudson in the _clermont_, before thousands of his fellow citizens, who had gathered to howl and jeer at his expected failure. he believed he could do the thing he attempted though the whole world was against him. what miracles self-confidence has wrought! what impossible deeds it has helped to perform! it took dewey past cannons, torpedoes, and mines to victory at manila bay; it carried farragut, lashed to the rigging, past the defenses of the enemy in mobile bay; it led nelson and grant to victory; it has been the great tonic in the world of invention, discovery, and art; it has won a thousand triumphs in war and science which were deemed impossible by doubters and the faint-hearted. self-faith has been the miracle-worker of the ages. it has enabled the inventor and the discoverer to go on and on amidst troubles and trials which otherwise would have utterly disheartened them. it has held innumerable heroes to their tasks until the glorious deeds were accomplished. the only inferiority in us is what we put into ourselves. if only we better understood our divinity we should all have this larger faith which is the distinction of the brave soul. we think ourselves into smallness. were we to think upward we should reach the heights where superiority dwells. perhaps there is no other one thing which keeps so many people back as their low estimate of themselves. they are more handicapped by their limiting thought, by their foolish convictions of inefficiency, than by almost anything else, for _there is no power in the universe that can help a man do a thing when he thinks he can not do it_. self-faith must lead the way. you can not go beyond the limits you set for yourself. _it is one of the most difficult things to a mortal to really believe in his own bigness_, in his own grandeur; to believe that his yearnings and hungerings and aspirations for higher, nobler things have any basis in reality or any real, ultimate end. but they are, in fact, the signs of ability to match them, of power to make them real. they are the stirrings of the divinity within us; the call to something better, to go higher. no man gets very far in the world or expresses great power until self-faith is born in him; until he catches a glimpse of his higher, nobler self; until he realizes that his ambition, his aspiration, are proofs of his ability to reach the ideal which haunts him. the creator would not have mocked us with the yearning for infinite achievement without giving us the ability and the opportunity for realizing it, any more than he would have mocked the wild birds with an instinct to fly south in the winter without giving them a sunny south to match the instinct. _the cause of whatever comes to you in life is within you_. there is where it is created. the thing you long for and work for comes to you because your thought has created it; because there is something inside you that attracts it. it comes because there is an affinity within you for it. _your own comes to you; is always seeking you_. whenever you see a person who has been unusually successful in any field, remember that he has usually thought himself into his position; his mental attitude and energy have created it; what he stands for in his community has come from his attitude toward life, toward his fellow men, toward his vocation, toward himself. above all else, it is the outcome of his self-faith, of his inward vision of himself; the result of his estimate of his powers and possibilities. the men who have done the great things in the world have been profound believers in themselves. if i could give the young people of america but one word of advice, it would be this--"_believe in yourself with all your might._" that is, believe that your destiny is inside of you, that there is a power within you which, if awakened, aroused, developed, and matched with honest effort, will not only make a noble man or woman of you, but will also make you successful and happy. all through the bible we find emphasized the miracle-working power of faith. faith in himself indicates that a man has a glimpse of forces within him which either annihilate the obstacles in the way, or make them seem insignificant in comparison with his ability to overcome them. faith opens the door that enables us to look into the soul's limitless possibilities and reveals such powers there, such unconquerable forces, that we are not only encouraged to go on, but feel a great consciousness of added power because we have touched omnipotence, and gotten a glimpse of the great source of things. faith is that something within us which does not guess, but knows. it knows because it sees what our coarser selves, our animal natures can not see. it is the prophet within us, the divine messenger appointed to accompany man through life to guide and direct and encourage him. it gives him a glimpse of his possibilities to keep him from losing heart, from quitting his upward life struggle. our faith knows because it sees what we can not see. it sees resources, powers, potencies which our doubts and fears veil from us. faith is assured, is never afraid, because it sees the way out; sees the solution of its problem. it has dipped in the realms of our finer life our higher and diviner kingdom. all things are possible to him who has faith, because faith sees, recognizes the power that means accomplishment. if we had faith in god and in ourselves we could remove all mountains of difficulty, and our lives would be one triumphal march to the goal of our ambition. if we had faith enough we could cure all our ills and accomplish the maximum of our possibilities. faith never fails; it is a miracle worker. it looks beyond all boundaries, transcends all limitations, penetrates all obstacles and sees the goal. it is doubt and fear, timidity and cowardice, that hold us down and keep us in mediocrity--doing petty things when we are capable of sublime deeds. if we had faith enough we should travel godward infinitely faster than we do. the time will come when every human being will have unbounded faith and will live the life triumphant. then there will be no poverty in the world, no failures, and the discords of life will all vanish. chapter xliv the next time you think you are a failure if you made a botch of last year, if you feel that it was a failure, that you floundered and blundered and did a lot of foolish things; if you were gullible, made imprudent investments, wasted your time and money, don't drag these ghosts along with you to handicap you and destroy your happiness all through the future. haven't you wasted enough energy worrying over what can not be helped? don't let these things sap any more of your vitality, waste any more of your time or destroy any more of your happiness. there is only one thing to do with bitter experiences, blunders and unfortunate mistakes, or with memories that worry us and which kill our efficiency, and that is to _forget them, bury them_! to-day is a good time to "leave the low-vaulted past," to drop the yesterdays, to forget bitter memories. resolve that you will close the door on everything in the past that pains and can not help you. free yourself from everything which handicaps you, keeps you back and makes you unhappy. throw away all useless baggage, drop everything that is a drag, that hinders your progress. enter upon to-morrow with a clean slate and a free mind. don't be mortgaged to the past, and never look back. there is no use in castigating yourself for not having done better. form a habit of expelling from your mind thoughts or suggestions which call up unpleasant subjects or bitter memories, and which have a bad influence upon you. every one ought to make it a life-rule to wipe out from his memory everything that has been unpleasant, unfortunate. we ought to forget everything that has kept us back, has made us suffer, has been disagreeable, and never allow the hideous pictures of distressing conditions to enter our minds again. there is only one thing to do with a disagreeable, harmful experience, and that is--_forget it_! there are many times in the life of a person who does things that are worth while when he gets terribly discouraged and thinks it easier to go back than to push on. but _there is no victory in retreating_. we should never leave any bridges unburned behind us, any way open for retreat to tempt our weakness, indecision or discouragement. if there is anything we ever feel grateful for, it is that we have had courage and pluck enough to push on, to keep going when things looked dark and when seemingly insurmountable obstacles confronted us. most people are their own worst enemies. we are all the time "queering" our life game by our vicious, tearing-down thoughts and unfortunate moods. everything depends upon our courage, our faith in ourselves, in our holding a hopeful, optimistic outlook; and yet, whenever things go wrong with us, whenever we have a discouraging day or an unfortunate experience, a loss or any misfortune, we let the tearing-down thought, doubt, fear, despondency, like a bull in a china shop, tear through our mentalities, perhaps breaking up and destroying the work of years of building up, and we have to start all over again. we work and live like the frog in the well; we climb up only to fall back, and often lose all we gain. one of the worst things that can ever happen to a person is to get it into his head that he was born unlucky and that the fates are against him. there are no fates, outside of our own mentality. we are our own fates. we control our own destiny. there is no fate or destiny which puts one man down and another up. "it is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings." he only is beaten who admits it. the man is inferior who admits that he is inferior, who voluntarily takes an inferior position because he thinks the best things were intended for somebody else. you will find that just in proportion as you increase your confidence in yourself by the affirmation of what you wish to be and to do, your ability will increase. no matter what other people may think about your ability, never allow yourself to doubt that you can do or become what you long to. increase your self-confidence in every possible way, and you can do this to a remarkable degree by the power of self-suggestion. this form of suggestion--talking to oneself vigorously, earnestly--seems to arouse the sleeping forces in the subconscious self more effectually than thinking the same thing. there is a force in words spoken aloud which is not stirred by going over the same words mentally. they sometimes arouse slumbering energies within us which thinking does not stir up--especially if we have not been trained to think deeply, to focus the mind closely. they make a more lasting impression upon the mind, just as words which pass through the eye from the printed page make a greater impression on the brain than we get by thinking the same words; as seeing objects of nature makes a more lasting impression upon the mind than thinking about them. a vividness, a certain force, accompanies the spoken word--especially if earnestly, vehemently uttered--which is not apparent to many in merely thinking about what the words express. if you repeat a firm resolve to yourself aloud, vigorously, even vehemently, you are more likely to carry it to reality than if you merely resolve in silence. we become so accustomed to our silent thoughts that the voicing of them, the giving audible expression to our yearnings, makes a much deeper impression upon us. the audible self-encouragement treatment may be used with marvelous results in correcting our weaknesses; overcoming our deficiencies. never allow yourself to think meanly, narrowly, poorly of yourself. never regard yourself as weak, inefficient, diseased, but as perfect, complete, capable. never even think of the possibility of going through life a failure or a partial failure. failure and misery are not for the man who has seen the god-side of himself, who has been in touch with divinity. they are for those who have never discovered themselves and their god-like qualities. stoutly assert that there is a place for you in the world, and that you are going to fill it like a man. train yourself to expect great things of yourself. never admit, even by your manner, that you think you are destined to do little things all your life. it is marvelous what mental strength can be developed by the perpetual affirmation of vigorous fitness, strength, power, efficiency; these are thoughts and ideals that make a strong man. the way to get the best out of yourself is to put things right up to yourself, handle yourself without gloves, and talk to yourself as you would to a son of yours who has great ability but who is not using half of it. when you go into an undertaking just say to yourself, "now, this thing is right up to me. i've got to make good, to show the man in me or the coward. there is no backing out." you will be surprised to see how quickly this sort of self-suggestion will brace you up and put new spirit in you. i have a friend who has helped himself wonderfully by talking to himself about his conduct. when he feels that he is not doing all that he ought to, that he has made some foolish mistake or has failed to use good sense and good judgment in any transaction, when he feels that his stamina and ambition are deteriorating, he goes off alone to the country, to the woods if possible, and has a good heart-to-heart talk with himself something after this fashion: "now young man, you need a good talking-to, a bracing-up all along the line. you are going stale, your standards are dropping, your ideals are getting dull, and the worst of it all is that when you do a poor job, or are careless about your dress and indifferent in your manner, you do not feel as troubled as you used to. you are not making good. this lethargy, this inertia, this indifference will seriously cripple your career if you're not very careful. you are letting a lot of good chances slip by you, because you are not as progressive and up-to-date as you ought to be. "in short, you are becoming lazy. you like to take things easy. nobody ever amounts to much who lets his energies flag, his standards droop and his ambition ooze out. now, i am going to keep right after you, young man, until you are doing yourself justice. this take-it-easy sort of policy will never land you at the goal you started for. you will have to watch yourself very closely or you will be left behind. "you are capable of something much better than what you are doing. you must start out to-day with a firm resolution to make the returns from your work greater to-night than ever before. you must make this a red-letter day. bestir yourself; get the cobwebs out of your head; brush off the brain ash. think, think, think to some purpose! do not mull and mope like this. you are only half-alive, man; get a move on you!" this young man says that every morning when he finds his standards are down and he feels lazy and indifferent he "hauls himself over the coals," as he calls it, in order to force himself up to a higher standard and put himself in tune for the day. it is the very first thing he attends to. he forces himself to do the most disagreeable tasks first, and does not allow himself to skip hard problems. "now, don't be a coward," he says to himself. "if others have done this, you can do it." by years of stern discipline of this kind he has done wonders with himself. he began as a poor boy living in the slums of new york with no one to take an interest in him, encourage or push him. though he had little opportunity for schooling when he was a small boy, he has given himself a splendid education, mainly since he was twenty-one. i have never known any one else who carried on such a vigorous campaign in self-victory, self-development, self-training, self-culture as this young man has. at first it may seem silly to you to be talking to yourself, but you will derive so much benefit from it that you will have recourse to it in remedying all your defects. there is no fault, however great or small, which will not succumb to persistent audible suggestion. for example, you may be naturally timid and shrink from meeting people; and you may distrust your own ability. if so, you will be greatly helped by assuring yourself in your daily self-talks that you are not timid; that, on the contrary, you are the embodiment of courage and bravery. assure yourself that there is no reason why you should be timid, because there is nothing inferior or peculiar about you; that you are attractive and that you know how to act in the presence of others. say to yourself that you are never again going to allow yourself to harbor any thoughts of self-depreciation or timidity or inferiority; that you are going to hold your head up and go about as though you were a king, a conqueror, instead of crawling about like a whipped cur; you are going to assert your manhood, your individuality. if you lack initiative, stoutly affirm your ability to begin things, and to push them to a finish. and always put your resolve into action at the first opportunity. you will be surprised to see how you can increase your courage, your confidence, and your ability, if you will be sincere with yourself and strong and persistent in your affirmations. i know of nothing so helpful for the timid, those who lack faith in themselves, as the habit of constantly affirming their own importance, their own power, their own divinity. the trouble is that we do not think half enough of ourselves; do not accurately measure our ability; do not put the right estimate upon our possibilities. we berate ourselves, belittle, efface ourselves, because we do not see the larger, diviner man in us. try this experiment the very next time you get discouraged or think that you are a failure, that your work does not amount to much--turn about face. resolve that you will go no further in that direction. stop and face the other way, and _go_ the other way. every time you think you are a failure, it helps you to become one, for your thought is your life pattern and you can not get away from it. you can not get away from your ideals, the standard which you hold for yourself, and if you acknowledge in your thought that you are a failure, that you can't do anything worth while, that luck is against you, that you don't have the same opportunity that other people have---your convictions will control the result. there are thousands of people who have lost everything they valued in the world, all the material results of their lives' endeavor, and yet, because they possess stout hearts, unconquerable spirits, a determination to push ahead which knows no retreat, they are just as far from real failure as before their loss; and with such wealth they can never be poor. a great many people fail to reach a success which matches their ability because they are victims of their moods, which repel people and repel business. we avoid morose, gloomy people just as we avoid a picture which makes a disagreeable impression upon us. everywhere we see people with great ambitions doing very ordinary things, simply because there are so many days when they do not "feel like it" or when they are discouraged or "blue." a man who is at the mercy of a capricious disposition can never be a leader, a power among men. it is perfectly possible for a well-trained mind to completely rout the worst case of the "blues" in a few minutes; but the trouble with most of us is that instead of flinging open the mental blinds and letting in the sun of cheerfulness, hope, and optimism, we keep them closed and try to eject the darkness by main force. the art of arts is learning how to clear the mind of its enemies--enemies of our comfort, happiness, and success. it is a great thing to learn to focus the mind upon the beautiful instead of the ugly, the true instead of the false, upon harmony instead of discord, life instead of death, health instead of disease. this is not always easy, but it is possible to everybody. it requires only skilful thinking, the forming of the right thought habits. the best way to keep out darkness is to keep the life filled with light; to keep out discord, keep it filled with harmony; to shut out error, keep the mind filled with truth; to shut out ugliness, contemplate beauty and loveliness; to get rid of all that is sour and unwholesome, contemplate all that is sweet and wholesome. opposite thoughts can not occupy the mind at the same time. no matter whether you feel like it or not, just affirm that you _must_ feel like it, that you _will_ feel like it, that you _do_ feel like it, that you are normal and that you are in a position to do your best. say it deliberately, affirm it vigorously and it will come true. the next time you get into trouble, or are discouraged and think you are a failure, just try the experiment of affirming vigorously, persistently, that all that is real _must_ be good, for god made all that is, and whatever doesn't seem to be good is not like its creator and therefore can not be real. persist in this affirmation. you will be surprised to see how unfortunate suggestions and adverse conditions will melt away before it. the next time you feel the "blues" or a fit of depression coming on, just get by yourself--if possible after taking a good bath and dressing yourself becomingly--and give yourself a good talking-to. talk to yourself in the same dead-in-earnest way that you would talk to your own child or a dear friend who was deep in the mire of despondency, suffering tortures from melancholy. drive out the black, hideous pictures which haunt your mind. sweep away all depressing thoughts, suggestions, all the rubbish that is troubling you. let go of everything that is unpleasant; all the mistakes, all the disagreeable past; just rise up in arms against the enemies of your peace and happiness; summon all the force you can muster and drive them out. resolve that no matter what happens you are going to be happy; that you are going to enjoy yourself. when you look at it squarely, it is very foolish--almost criminal--to go about this beautiful world, crowded with splendid opportunities, and things to delight and cheer us, with a sad, dejected face, as though life had been a disappointment instead of a priceless boon. just say to yourself, "i am a man and i am going to do the work of a man. it's right up to me and i am going to face the situation." do not let anybody or anything shake your faith that you can conquer all the enemies of your peace and happiness, and that you inherit an abundance of all that is good. we should early form the habit of erasing from the mind all disagreeable, unhealthy, death-dealing thoughts. we should start out every morning with a clean slate. we should blot out from our mental gallery all discordant pictures and replace them with the harmonious, uplifting, life-giving ones. the next time you feel jaded, discouraged, completely played out and "blue," you will probably find, if you look for the reason, that your condition is largely due to exhausted vitality, either from overwork, overeating, or violating in some way the laws of digestion, or from vicious habits of some kind. the "blues" are often caused by exhausted nerve cells, due to overstraining work, long-continued excitement, or over-stimulated nerves from dissipation. this condition is caused by the clamoring of exhausted nerve cells for nourishment, rest, or recreation. multitudes of people suffer from despondency and melancholy, as a result of a run-down condition physically, due to their irregular, vicious habits and a lack of refreshing sleep. when you are feeling "blue" or discouraged, get as complete a change of environment as possible. whatever you do, do not brood over your troubles or dwell upon the things which happen to annoy you at the time. think the pleasantest, happiest things possible. hold the most charitable, loving thoughts toward others. make a strenuous effort to radiate joy and gladness to everybody about you. say the kindest, pleasantest things. you will soon begin to feel a wonderful uplift; the shadows which darkened your mind will flee away, and the sun of joy will light up your whole being. stoutly, constantly, everlastingly affirm that you will become what your ambitions indicate as fitting and possible. do not say, "i shall be a success sometime"; say, "i am a success. success is my birthright." do not say that you are going to be happy in the future. say to yourself, "i was intended for happiness, made for it, and i am happy now." if, however, you affirm, "i am health; i am prosperity; i am this or that," but do not believe it, you will not be helped by affirmation. _you must believe what you affirm and try to realise it_. assert your actual possession of the things you need; of the qualities you long to have. force your mind toward your goal; hold it there steadily, persistently, for this is the mental state that creates. the negative mind, which doubts and wavers, creates nothing. "i, myself, am good fortune," says walt whitman. if we could only realize that the very attitude of assuming that we are the real embodiment of the thing we long to be or to attain, that we possess the good things we long for, not that we possess all the qualities of good, but that we are these qualities--with the constant affirming, "i myself am good luck, good fortune; i am myself a part of the great creative, sustaining principle of the universe, because my real, divine self and my father are one"--what a revolution would come to earth's toilers! chapter xlv stand for something the greatest thing that can be said of a man, no matter how much he has achieved, is that _he has kept his record clean_. why is it that, in spite of the ravages of time, the reputation of lincoln grows larger and his character means more to the world every year? it is because he kept his record clean, and never prostituted his ability nor gambled with his reputation. where, in all history, is there an example of a man who was merely rich, no matter how great his wealth, who exerted such a power for good, who was such a living force in civilization, as was this poor backwoods boy? what a powerful illustration of the fact that _character_ is the greatest force in the world! a man assumes importance and becomes a power in the world just as soon as it is found that he stands for something; that he is not for sale; that he will not lease his manhood for salary, for any amount of money or for any influence or position; that he will not lend his name to anything which he can not indorse. the trouble with so many men to-day is that they do not stand for anything outside their vocation. they may be well educated, well up in their specialties, may have a lot of expert knowledge, but they can not be depended upon. there is some flaw in them which takes the edge off their virtue. they may be fairly honest, but you cannot bank on them. it is not difficult to find a lawyer or a physician who knows a good deal, who is eminent in his profession; but it is not so easy to find one who is a man before he is a lawyer or a physician; whose name is a synonym for all that is clean, reliable, solid, substantial. it is not difficult to find a good preacher; but it is not so easy to find a real man, sterling manhood, back of the sermon. it is easy to find successful merchants, but not so easy to find men who put character above merchandise. what the world wants is men who have principle underlying their expertness--principle under their law, their medicine, their business; men who stand for something outside of their offices and stores; who stand for something in their community; whose very presence carries weight. everywhere we see smart, clever, longheaded, shrewd men, but how comparatively rare it is to find one whose record is as clean as a hound's tooth; who will not swerve from the right; who would rather fail than be a party to a questionable transaction! everywhere we see business men putting the stumbling-blocks of deception and dishonest methods right across their own pathway, tripping themselves up while trying to deceive others. we see men worth millions of dollars filled with terror; trembling lest investigations may uncover things which will damn them in the public estimation! we see them cowed before the law like whipped spaniels; catching at any straw that will save them from public disgrace! what a terrible thing to live in the limelight of popular favor, to be envied as rich and powerful, to be esteemed as honorable and straightforward, and yet to be conscious all the time of not being what the world thinks we are; to live in constant terror of discovery, in fear that something may happen to unmask us and show us up in our true light! but nothing can happen to injure seriously the man who lives four-square to the world; who has nothing to cover up, nothing to hide from his fellows; who lives a transparent, clean life, with never a fear of disclosures. if all of his material possessions are swept away from him, he knows that he has a monument in the hearts of his countrymen, in the affection and admiration of the people, and that nothing can happen to harm his real self because he has kept his record clean. mr. roosevelt early resolved that, let what would come, whether he succeeded in what he undertook or failed, whether he made friends or enemies, he would not take chances with his good name--he would part with everything else first; that he would never gamble with his reputation; that he would keep his record clean. his first ambition was to stand for something, to be a man. before he was a politician or anything else the man must come first. [illustration: theodore roosevelt] in his early career he had many opportunities to make a great deal of money by allying himself with crooked, sneaking, unscrupulous politicians. he had all sorts of opportunities for political graft. but crookedness never had any attraction for him. he refused to be a party to any political jobbery, any underhand business. he preferred to lose any position he was seeking, to let somebody else have it, if he must get smirched in the getting it. he would not touch a dollar, place, or preferment unless it came to him clean, with no trace of jobbery on it. politicians who had an "ax to grind" knew it was no use to try to bribe him, or to influence him with promises of patronage, money, position, or power. mr. roosevelt knew perfectly well that he would make many mistakes and many enemies, but he resolved to carry himself in such a way that even his enemies should at least respect him for his honesty of purpose, and for his straightforward, "square-deal" methods. he resolved to keep his record clean, his name white, at all hazards. everything else seemed unimportant in comparison. in times like these the world especially needs such men as mr. roosevelt--men who hew close to the chalk-line of right and hold the line plumb to truth; men who do not pander to public favor; men who make duty and truth their goal and go straight to their mark, turning neither to the right nor to the left, though a paradise tempt them. who can ever estimate how much his influence has done toward purging politics and elevating the american ideal. he has changed the view-point of many statesmen and politicians. he has shown them a new and a better way. he has made many of them ashamed of the old methods of grafting and selfish greed. he has held up a new ideal, shown them that unselfish service to their country is infinitely nobler than an ambition for self-aggrandizement. american patriotism has a higher meaning to-day, because of the example of this great american. many young politicians and statesmen have adopted cleaner methods and higher aims because of his influence. there is no doubt that tens of thousands of young men in this country are cleaner in their lives, and more honest and ambitious to be good citizens, because here is a man who always stands for the "square deal," for civic righteousness, for american manhood. every man ought to feel that there is something in him that bribery can not touch, that influence can not buy; something that is not for sale; something he would not sacrifice or tamper with for any price; something he would give his life for if necessary. if a man stands for something worth while, compels recognition for himself alone, on account of his real worth, he is not dependent upon recommendations; upon fine clothes, a fine house, or a pull. he is his own best recommendation. the young man who starts out with the resolution to make his character his capital, and to pledge his whole manhood for every obligation he enters into, will not be a failure, though he wins neither fame nor fortune. no man ever really does a great thing who loses his character in the process. no substitute has ever yet been discovered for honesty. multitudes of people have gone to the wall trying to find one. our prisons are full of people who have attempted to substitute something else for it. no man can really believe in himself when he is occupying a false position and wearing a mask; when the little monitor within him is constantly saying, "you know you are a fraud; you are not the man you pretend to be." the consciousness of not being genuine, not being what others think him to be, robs a man of power, honeycombs the character, and destroys self-respect and self-confidence. when lincoln was asked to take the wrong side of a case he said, "i could not do it. all the time while talking to that jury i should be thinking, 'lincoln, you're a liar, you're a liar,' and i believe i should forget myself and say it out loud." character as capital is very much underestimated by a great number of young men. they seem to put more emphasis upon smartness, shrewdness, long-headedness, cunning, influence, a pull, than upon downright honesty and integrity of character. yet why do scores of concerns pay enormous sums for the use of the name of a man who, perhaps, has been dead for half a century or more? it is because there is power in that name; because there is character in it; because it stands for something; because it represents reliability and square dealing. think of what the name of tiffany, of park and tilford, or any of the great names which stand in the commercial world as solid and immovable as the rock of gibraltar, are worth! does it not seem strange that young men who know these facts should try to build up a business on a foundation of cunning, scheming, and trickery, instead of building on the solid rock of character, reliability, and manhood? is it not remarkable that so many men should work so hard to establish a business on an unreliable, flimsy foundation, instead of building upon the solid masonry of honest goods, square dealing, reliability? a name is worth everything until it is questioned; but when suspicion clings to it, it is worth nothing. there is nothing in this world that will take the place of character. there is no policy in the world, to say nothing of the right or wrong of it, that compares with honesty and square dealing. in spite of, or because of, all the crookedness and dishonesty that is being uncovered, of all the scoundrels that are being unmasked, integrity is the biggest word in the business world to-day. there never was a time in all history when it was so big, and it is growing bigger. there never was a time when character meant so much in business; when it stood for so much everywhere as it does to-day. there was a time when the man who was the shrewdest and sharpest and cunningest in taking advantage of others got the biggest salary; but to-day the man at the other end of the bargain is looming up as never before. nathan straus, when asked the secret of the great success of his firm, said it was their treatment of the man at the other end of the bargain. he said they could not afford to make enemies; they could not afford to displease or to take advantage of customers, or to give them reason to think that they had been unfairly dealt with,--that, in the long run, the man who gave the squarest deal to the man at the other end of the bargain would get ahead fastest. there are merchants who have made great fortunes, but who do not carry weight among their fellow men because they have dealt all their lives with inferiority. they have lived with shoddy and shams so long that the suggestion has been held in their minds until their whole standards of life have been lowered; their ideals have shrunken; their characters have partaken of the quality of their business. contrast these men with the men who stood for half a century or more at the head of solid houses, substantial institutions; men who have always stood for quality in everything; who have surrounded themselves not only with ability but with men and women of character. we instinctively believe in character. we admire people who stand for something; who are centered in truth and honesty. it is not necessary that they agree with us. we admire them for their strength, the honesty of their opinions, the inflexibility of their principles. the late carl schurz was a strong man and antagonized many people. he changed his political views very often; but even his worst enemies knew there was one thing he would never go back on, friends or no friends, party or no party--and that was his devotion to principle as he saw it. there was no parleying with his convictions. he could stand alone, if necessary, with all the world against him. his inconsistencies, his many changes in parties and politics, could not destroy the universal admiration for the man who stood for his convictions. although he escaped from a german prison and fled his country, where he had been arrested on account of his revolutionary principles when but a mere youth, emperor william the first had such a profound respect for his honesty of purpose and his strength of character that he invited him to return to germany and visit him, gave him a public dinner, and paid him great tribute. who can estimate the influence of president eliot in enriching and uplifting our national ideas and standards through the thousands of students who go out from harvard university? the tremendous force and nobility of character of phillips brooks raised everyone who came within his influence to higher levels. his great earnestness in trying to lead people up to his lofty ideals swept everything before it. one could not help feeling while listening to him and watching him that _there_ was a mighty triumph of character, a grand expression of superb manhood. such men as these increase our faith in the race; in the possibilities of the grandeur of the coming man. we are prouder of our country because of such standards. it is the ideal that determines the direction of the life. and what a grand sight, what an inspiration, are those men who sacrifice the dollar to the ideal! the principles by which the problem of success is solved are right and justice, honesty and integrity; and just in proportion as a man deviates from these principles he falls short of solving his problem. it is true that he may reach _something_. he may get money, but is that success? the thief gets money, but does he succeed? is it any honester to steal by means of a long head than by means of a long arm? it is very much more dishonest, because the victim is deceived and then robbed--a double crime. we often receive letters which read like this: "i am getting a good salary; but i do not feel right about it, somehow. i can not still the voice within me that says, 'wrong, wrong,' to what i am doing." "leave it, leave it," we always say to the writers of these letters. "do not stay in a questionable occupation, no matter what inducement it offers. its false light will land you on the rocks if you follow it. it is demoralizing to the mental faculties, paralyzing to the character, to do a thing which one's conscience forbids." tell the employer who expects you to do questionable things that you can not work for him unless you can put the trade-mark of your manhood, the stamp of your integrity, upon everything you do. tell him that if the highest thing in you can not bring success, surely the lowest can not. you can not afford to sell the best thing in you, your honor, your manhood, to a dishonest man or a lying institution. you should regard even the suggestion that you might sell out for a consideration as an insult. resolve that you will not be paid for being something less than a man; that you will not lease your ability, your education, your inventiveness, your self-respect, for salary, to do a man's lying for him; either in writing advertisements, selling goods, or in any other capacity. resolve that, whatever your vocation, you are going to stand for something; that you are not going to be _merely_ a lawyer, a physician, a merchant, a clerk, a farmer, a congressman, or a man who carries a big money-bag; but that you are going to be a _man_ first, last, and all the time. chapter xlvi nature's little bill though the mills of god grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all. frederick von logau. because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.--ecclesiastes. man is a watch, wound up at first but never wound up again: once down he's down forever. herrick. old age seizes upon an ill-spent youth like fire upon a rotten house.--south. last sunday a young man died here of extreme old age at twenty-five.--john newton. if you will not hear reason, she'll surely rap your knuckles.--poor richard's sayings. "oh! oh! ah!" exclaimed franklin; "what have i done to merit these cruel sufferings?" "many things," replied the gout; "you have eaten and drunk too freely, and too much indulged those legs of yours in your indolence." nature seldom presents her bill on the day you violate her laws. but if you overdraw your account at her bank, and give her a mortgage on your body, be sure she will foreclose. she may loan you all you want; but, like shylock, she will demand the last ounce of flesh. she rarely brings in her cancer bill before the victim is forty years old. she does not often annoy a man with her drink bill until he is past his prime, and then presents it in the form of bright's disease, fatty degeneration of the heart, drunkard's liver, or some similar disease. what you pay the saloon keeper is but a small part of your score. we often hear it said that the age of miracles is past. we marvel that a thief dying on the cross should appear that very day in paradise; but behold how that bit of meat or vegetable on a hawarden breakfast table is snatched from death, transformed into thought, and on the following night shakes parliament in the magnetism and oratory of a gladstone. the age of miracles past, when three times a day right before our eyes nature performs miracles greater even than raising the dead? watch that crust of bread thrown into a cell in bedford jail and devoured by a poor, hungry tinker; cut, crushed, ground, driven by muscles, dissolved by acids and alkalies; absorbed and hurled into the mysterious red river of life. scores of little factories along this strange stream, waiting for this crust, transmute it as it passes, as if by magic, here into a bone cell, there into gastric juice, here into bile, there into a nerve cell, yonder into a brain cell. we can not trace the processes by which this crust arrives at the muscle and acts, arrives at the brain and thinks. we can not see the manipulating hand which throws back and forth the shuttle which weaves bunyan's destinies, nor can we trace the subtle alchemy which transforms this prison crust into the finest allegory in the world, the pilgrim's progress. but we do know that, unless we supply food when the stomach begs and clamors, brain and muscle can not continue to act; and we also know that unless the food is properly chosen, unless we eat it properly, unless we maintain good digestion by exercise of mind and body, it will not produce the speeches of a gladstone or the allegories of a bunyan. truly we are fearfully and wonderfully made. imagine a cistern which would transform the foul sewage of a city into pure drinking water in a second's time, as the black venous blood, foul with the ashes of burned-up brain cells and débris of worn-out tissues, is transformed in the lungs, at every breath, into pure, bright, red blood. each drop of blood from that magic stream of liquid life was compounded by a divine chemist. in it float all our success and destiny. in it are the extensions and limits of our possibilities. in it are health and long life, or disease and premature death. in it are our hopes and our fears, our courage, our cowardice, our energy or lassitude, our strength or weakness, our success or failure. in it are susceptibilities of high or broad culture, or pinched or narrow faculties handed down from an uncultured ancestry. from it our bones and nerves, our muscles and brain, our comeliness or ugliness, all come. in it are locked up the elements of a vicious or a gentle life, the tendencies of a criminal or a saint. how important is it, then, that we should obey the laws of health, and thus maintain the purity and power of this our earthly river of life! "we hear a great deal about the 'vile body,'" said spencer, "and many are encouraged by the phrase to transgress the laws of health. but nature quietly suppresses those who treat thus disrespectfully one of her highest products, and leaves the world to be peopled by the descendants of those who are not so foolish." nature gives to him that hath. she shows him the contents of her vast storehouse, and bids him take all he wants and be welcome. but she will not let him keep for years what he does not use. use or lose is her motto. every atom we do not utilize this great economist snatches from us. if you put your arm in a sling and do not use it, nature will remove the muscle almost to the bone, and the arm will become useless, but in exact proportion to your efforts to use it again she will gradually restore what she took away. put your mind in the sling of idleness, or inactivity, and in like manner she will remove your brain, even to imbecility. the blacksmith wants one powerful arm, and she gives it to him, but reduces the other. you can, if you will, send all the energy of your life into some one faculty, but all your other faculties will starve. a young lady may wear tight corsets if she chooses, but nature will remove the rose from her cheek and put pallor there. she will replace a clear complexion with muddy hues and sallow spots. she will take away the elastic step, the luster from the eye. don't expect to have health for nothing. nothing in this world worth anything can be had for nothing. health is the prize of a constant struggle. nature passes no act without affixing a penalty for its violation. whenever she is outraged she will have her penalty, although it take a life. a great surgeon stood before his class to perform a certain operation which the elaborate mechanism and minute knowledge of modern science had only recently made possible. with strong and gentle hand he did his work successfully so far as his part of the terrible business went; and then he turned to his pupils and said, "two years ago a safe and simple operation might have cured this disease. six years ago a wise way of life might have prevented it. we have done our best as the case now stands, but nature will have her word to say. she does not always consent to the repeal of her capital sentences." next day the patient died. apart from accidents, we hold our life largely at will. what business have seventy-five thousand physicians in the united states? it is our own fault that even one-tenth of them get a respectable living. what a commentary upon our modern american civilization that three hundred and fifty thousand people in this country die annually from absolutely preventable diseases! seneca said, "the gods have given us a long life, but we have made it short." few people know enough to become old. it is a rare thing for a person to die of old age. only three or four out of a hundred die of anything like old age. but nature evidently intended, by the wonderful mechanism of the human body, that we should live well up to a century. thomas parr, of england, lived to the age of one hundred and fifty-two years. he was married when he was a hundred and twenty, and did not leave off work until he was a hundred and thirty. the great dr. harvey examined parr's body, but found no cause of death except a change of living. henry jenkins, of yorkshire, england, lived to be a hundred and sixty-nine, and would probably have lived longer had not the king brought him to london, where luxuries hastened his death. the court records of england show that he was a witness in a trial a hundred and forty years before his death. he swam across a rapid river when he was a hundred. there is nothing we are more ignorant of than the physiology and chemistry of the human body. not one person in a thousand can correctly locate important internal organs or describe their use in the animal economy. what an insult to the creator who fashioned them so wonderfully and fearfully in his own image, that the graduates from our high schools and even universities, and young women who "finish their education," become proficient in the languages, in music, in art, and have the culture of travel, but can not describe or locate the various organs or functions upon which their lives depend! "the time will come," says frances willard, "when it will be told as a relic of our primitive barbarism that children were taught the list of prepositions and the names of the rivers of thibet, but were not taught the wonderful laws on which their own bodily happiness is based, and the humanities by which they could live in peace and goodwill with those about them." nothing else is so important to man as the study and knowledge of himself, and yet he knows less of himself than he does of the beasts about him. the human body is the great poem of the great author. not to learn how to read it, to spell out its meaning, to appreciate its beauties, or to attempt to fathom its mysteries, is a disgrace to our civilization. what a price mortals pay for their ignorance, let a dwarfed, half-developed, one-sided, short-lived nation answer. "a brilliant intellect in a sickly body is like gold in a spent swimmer's pocket." often, from lack of exercise, one side of the brain gradually becomes paralyzed and deteriorates into imbecility. how intimately the functions of the nervous organs are united! the whole man mourns for a felon. the least swelling presses a nerve against a bone and causes one intense agony, and even a napoleon becomes a child. a corn on the toe, an affection of the kidneys or of the liver, a boil anywhere on the body, or a carbuncle, may seriously affect the eyes and even the brain. the whole system is a network of nerves, of organs, of functions, which are so intimately joined, and related in such close sympathy, that an injury to one part is immediately felt in every other. nature takes note of all our transactions, physical, mental, or moral, and places every item promptly to our debit or credit. let us take a look at a page in nature's ledger:-- to damage to the heart in the "irritable heart," the youth by immoderate athletics, "tobacco heart," a life of tobacco chewing, cigarette promise impaired or blighted. smoking, drinking strong tea or coffee, rowing, running to trains, overstudy, excitement, etc. * * * * * * * * to one digestive apparatus dyspepsia, melancholia, years ruined, by eating hurriedly, by of misery to self, anxiety to eating unsuitable or poorly one's family, pity and disgust cooked food, by drinking ice of friends. water when one is heated, by swallowing scalding drinks, especially tea, which forms tannic acid on the delicate lining of the stomach; or by eating when tired or worried, or after receiving bad news, when the gastric juice can not be secreted, etc. * * * * * * * * to one nervous system years of weakness, disappointed shattered by dissipation, abuses, ambition, hopeless inefficiency, over-excitement, a fast life, _a burnt-out life_. feverish haste to get riches or fame, hastening puberty by stimulating food, exciting life, etc. * * * * * * * * to damage by undue mental impaired powers of mind, exertion by burning the softening of the brain, "midnight oil," exhausting the blighted hopes. brain cells faster than they can be renewed. * * * * * * * * to overstraining the brain a disappointed ambition, a trying to lead his class in life of invalidism. college, trying to take a prize, or to get ahead of somebody else. * * * * * * * * to hardening the delicate a hardened brain, a hardened and sensitive gray matter of conscience, a ruined the brain and nerves, and home, bright's disease, fatty ruining the lining membranes of degeneration, nervous the stomach and nervous degeneration, a short, system by alcohol, opium, etc. useless, wasted life. * * * * * * * * by forced balances, here and accounts closed. physiological there. and moral bankruptcy. sometimes two or three such items are charged to a single account. to offset them, there is placed on the credit side a little feverish excitement, too fleeting for calm enjoyment, followed by regret, remorse, and shame. be sure your sins will find you out. they are all recorded. "the gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make instruments to scourge us." it is a wonder that we live at all. we violate every law of our being, yet we expect to live to a ripe old age. what would you think of a man who, having an elegant watch delicately adjusted to heat and cold, should leave it on the sidewalk with cases open on a dusty or a rainy day, and yet expect it to keep good time? what would you think of a householder who should leave the doors and windows of his mansion open to thieves and tramps, to winds and dust and rain? what are our bodies but timepieces made by an infinite hand, wound up to run a century, and so delicately adjusted to heat and cold that the temperature will not vary half a degree between the heat of summer and the cold of winter whether we live in the regions of eternal frost or under the burning sun of the tropics? a particle of dust or the slightest friction will throw this wonderful timepiece out of order, yet we often leave it exposed to all the corroding elements. we do not always keep open the twenty-five miles of ventilating pores in the skin by frequent bathing. we seldom lubricate the delicate wheels of the body with the oil of gladness. we expose it to dust and cinders, cold and draughts, and poisonous gases. how careful we are to filter our water, air our beds, ventilate our sleeping-rooms, and analyze our milk! we shrink from contact with filth and disease. but we put paper colored with arsenic on our walls, and daily breathe its poisonous exhalations. we frequent theaters crowded with human beings, many of whom are uncleanly and diseased. we sit for hours and breathe in upon fourteen hundred square feet of lung tissue the heated, foul, and heavy air; carbonic acid gas from hundreds of gas burners, each consuming as much oxygen as six people; air filled with shreds of tissue expelled from diseased lungs; poisonous effluvia exhaled from the bodies of people who rarely bathe, from clothing seldom washed, fetid breaths, and skin disease in different stages of development. for hours we sit in this bath of poison, and wonder at our headache and lassitude next morning. we pour a glass of ice water into a stomach busy in the delicate operation of digestion, ignorant or careless of the fact that it takes half an hour to recover from the shock and get the temperature back to ninety-eight degrees, so that the stomach can go on secreting gastric juice. then down goes another glass of water with similar results. we pour down alcohol which thickens the velvety lining of the stomach, and hardens the soft tissues, the thin sheaths of nerves, and the gray matter of the brain. we crowd meats, vegetables, pastry, confectionery, nuts, raisins, wines, fruits, etc., into one of the most delicately constructed organs of the body, and expect it to take care of its miscellaneous and incongruous load without a murmur. after all these abuses we do not give the blood a chance to go to the stomach and help it out of its misery, but summon it to the brain and muscles, notwithstanding the fact that it is so important to have an extra supply to aid digestion that nature has made the blood vessels of the alimentary canal large enough to contain several times the amount in the entire body. who ever saw a horse leave his oats and hay, when hungry, to wash them down with water? the dumb beasts can teach us some valuable lessons in eating and drinking. nature mixes our gastric juice or pepsin and acids in just the right proportion to digest our food, and keep it at _exactly_ the right temperature. if we dilute it, or lower its temperature by ice water, we diminish its solvent or digestive power, and dyspepsia is the natural result. english factory children have received the commiseration of the world because they were scourged to work fourteen hours out of the twenty-four. but there is many a theoretical republican who is a harsher taskmaster to his stomach than this; who allows it no more resting time than he does his watch; who gives it no sunday, no holiday, no vacation in any sense, and who seeks to make his heart beat faster for the sake of the exhilaration he can thus produce. although the heart weighs a little over half a pound, yet it pumps eighteen pounds of blood from itself, forcing it into every nook and corner of the entire body, back to itself in less than two minutes. this little organ, the most perfect engine in the world, does a daily work equal to lifting one hundred and twenty-four tons one foot high, and exerts one-third as much muscle power as does a stout man at hard labor. if the heart should expend its entire force lifting its own weight, it would raise itself nearly twenty thousand feet an hour, ten times as high as a pedestrian can lift himself in ascending a mountain. what folly, then, to goad this willing, hard-working slave to greater exertions by stimulants! we must pay the penalty of our vocations. beware of work that kills the workman. those who prize long life should avoid all occupations which compel them to breathe impure air or deleterious gases, and especially those in which they are obliged to inhale dust and filings from steel and brass and iron, the dust in coal mines, and dust from threshing machines. stone-cutters, miners, and steel grinders are short lived, the sharp particles of dust irritating and inflaming the tender lining of the lung cells. the knife and fork grinders in manchester, england, rarely live beyond thirty-two years. those who work in grain elevators and those who are compelled to breathe chemical poisons are short lived. deep breathing in dusty places sends the particles of dust into the upper and less used lobes of the lungs, and these become a constant irritant, until they finally excite an inflammation, which may end in consumption. all occupations in which arsenic is used shorten life. dr. william ogle, who is authority upon this subject, says, "of all the various influences that tend to produce differences of mortality in any community, none is more potent than the character of the prevailing occupations." finding that clergymen and priests have the lowest death-rate, he represented it as one hundred, and by comparison found that the rate for inn and hotel servants was three hundred and ninety-seven; miners, three hundred and thirty-one; earthenware makers, three hundred and seventeen; file makers, three hundred; innkeepers, two hundred and seventy-four; gardeners, farmers, and agricultural laborers closely approximating the clerical standard. he gave as the causes of high mortality, first, working in a cramped or constrained attitude; second, exposure to the action of poisonous or irritating substances; third, excessive work, mental or physical; fourth, working in confined or foul air; fifth, the use of strong drink; sixth, differences in liability to fatal accidents; seventh, exposure to the inhalation of dust. the deaths of those engaged in alcoholic industries were as one thousand five hundred and twenty-one to one thousand of the average of all trades. it is very important that occupations should be congenial. whenever our work galls us, whenever we feel it to be a drudgery and uncongenial, the friction grinds life away at a terrible rate. health can be accumulated, invested, and made to yield its compound interest, and thus be doubled and redoubled. the capital of health may, indeed, be forfeited by one misdemeanor, as a rich man may sink all his property in one bad speculation; but it is as capable of being increased as any other kind of capital. one is inclined to think with a recent writer that it looks as if the rich men kept out of the kingdom of heaven were also excluded from the kingdom of brains. in new york, boston, philadelphia, and chicago are thousands of millionaires, some of them running through three or four generations of fortune; and yet, in all their ranks, there is seldom a man possessed of the higher intellectual qualities that flower in literature, eloquence, or statesmanship. scarcely one of them has produced a book worth printing, a poem worth reading, or a speech worth listening to. they are struck with intellectual sterility. they go to college; they travel abroad; they hire the dearest masters; they keep libraries among their furniture; and some of them buy works of art. but, for all that, their brains wither under luxury, often by their own vices or tomfooleries, and mental barrenness is the result. he who violates nature's law must suffer the penalty, though he have millions. the fruits of intellect do not grow among the indolent rich. they are usually out of the republic of brains. work or starve is nature's motto; starve mentally, starve morally, even if you are rich enough to prevent physical starvation. how heavy a bill nature collects of him in whom the sexual instinct has been permitted to taint the whole life with illicit thoughts and deeds, stultifying the intellect, deadening the sensibilities, dwarfing the soul! "i waive the quantum of the sin, the hazard of concealing; but och, it hardens all within, and petrifies the feeling." the sense of fatigue is one of nature's many signals of danger. all we accomplish by stimulating or crowding the body or mind when tired is worse than lost. insomnia, and sometimes even insanity, is nature's penalty for prolonged loss of sleep. one of the worst tortures of the inquisition was that of keeping victims from sleeping, often driving them to insanity or death. melancholy follows insomnia; insanity, both. to keep us in a healthy condition, nature takes us back to herself, puts us under the ether of sleep, and keeps us there nearly one-third of our lives, while she overhauls and repairs in secret our wonderful mechanism. she takes us back each night wasted and dusty from the day's work, broken, scarred, and injured in the great struggle of life. each cell of the brain is reburnished and refreshened; all the ashes or waste from the combustion of the tissues is washed out into the blood stream, pumped to the lungs, and thrown out in the breath; and the body is returned in the morning as fresh and good as new. the american honey does not always pay for the sting. labor is the eternal condition on which the rich man gains an appetite for his dinner, and the poor man a dinner for his appetite; but the habit of constant, perpetual industry often becomes a disease. in the norse legend, allfader was not allowed to drink from mirmir's spring, the fount of wisdom, until he had left his eye as a pledge. scholars often leave their health, their happiness, their usefulness behind, in their great eagerness to drink deep draughts at wisdom's fountain. professional men often sacrifice everything that is valuable in life for the sake of reputation, influence, and money. business men sacrifice home, family, health, happiness, in the great struggle for money and power. the american prize, like the pearl in the oyster, is very attractive, but is too often the result of disease. charles linnaeus, the great naturalist, so exhausted his brain by over-exertion that he could not recognize his own work, and even forgot his own name. kirk white won the prize at cambridge, but it cost him his life. he studied at night and forced his brain by stimulants and narcotics in his endeavor to pull through, but he died at twenty-four. paley died at sixty-two of overwork. he was called "one of the sublimest spirits in the world." president timothy dwight of yale college nearly killed himself by overwork when a young man. when at yale he studied nine hours, taught six hours a day, and took no exercise whatever. he could not be induced to stop until he became so nervous and irritable that he was unable to look at a book ten minutes a day. his mind gave way, and it was a long time before he fully recovered. imagine the surprise of the angels at the death of men and women in the early prime and vigor of life. could we but read the notes of their autopsies we might say less of mysterious providence at funerals. they would run somewhat as follows:-- notes from the angels' autopsies. what, is it returned so soon?--a body framed for a century's use returned at thirty?--a temple which was twenty-eight years in building destroyed almost before it was completed? what have gray hairs, wrinkles, a bent form, and death to do with youth? has all this beauty perished like a bud just bursting into bloom, plucked by the grim destroyer? has she fallen a victim to tight-lacing, over-excitement, and the gaiety and frivolity of fashionable life? here is an educated, refined woman who died of lung starvation. what a tax human beings pay for breathing impure air! nature provides them with a tonic atmosphere, compounded by the divine chemist, but they refuse to breathe it in its purity, and so must pay the penalty in shortened lives. they can live a long time without water, a longer time without food, clothing, or the so-called comforts of life; they can live without education or culture, but their lungs must have good, healthful air-food twenty-four thousand times a day if they would maintain health. oh, that they would see, as we do, the intimate connection between bad air, bad morals, and a tendency to crime! here are the ruins of an idolized son and loving husband. educated and refined, what infinite possibilities beckoned him onward at the beginning of his career! but the devil's agent offered him imagination, sprightliness, wit, eloquence, bodily strength, and happiness in _eau de vie_, or "water of life," as he called it, at only fifteen cents a glass. the best of our company tried to dissuade him, but to no avail. the poor mortal closed his "bargain" with the dramseller, and what did he get? a hardened conscience, a ruined home, a diseased body, a muddled brain, a heartbroken wife, wretched children, disappointed friends, triumphant enemies, days of remorse, nights of anguish, an unwept deathbed, an unhonored grave. and only to think that he is only one of many thousands! "what fools these mortals be!" did he not see the destruction toward which he was rushing with all the feverish haste of slavish appetite? ah, yes, but only when it was too late. in his clenched hand, as he lay dead, was found a crumpled paper containing the following, in lines barely legible so tremulous were the nerves of the writer: "wife, children, and over forty thousand dollars all gone! i alone am responsible. all has gone down my throat. when i was twenty-one i had a fortune. i am not yet thirty-five years old. i have killed my beautiful wife, who died of a broken heart; have murdered our children with neglect. when this coin is gone i do not know how i can get my next meal. i shall die a drunken pauper. this is my last money, and my history. if this bill comes into the hands of any man who drinks, let him take warning from my life's ruin." what a magnificent specimen of manhood this would have been if his life had been under the rule of reason, not passion! he dies of old age at forty, his hair is gray, his eyes are sunken, his complexion sodden, his body marked with the labels of his disease. a physique fit for a god, fashioned in the creator's image, with infinite possibilities, a physiological hulk wrecked on passion's seas, and fit only for a danger signal to warn the race. what would parents think of a captain who would leave his son in charge of a ship without giving him any instructions or chart showing the rocks, reefs, and shoals? do they not know that those who sleep in the ocean are but a handful compared with those who have foundered on passion's seas? oh, the sins of silence which parents commit against those dearer to them than life itself! youth can not understand the great solicitude of parents regarding their education, their associations, their welfare generally, and the mysterious silence in regard to their physical natures. an intelligent explanation, by all mothers to the daughters and by all fathers to the sons, of the mysteries of their physical lives, when at the right age, would revolutionize civilization. this young clergyman killed himself trying to be popular. this student committed suicide by exhausting his brain in trying to lead his class. this young lawyer overdrew his account at nature's bank, and she foreclosed by a stroke of paralysis. this merchant died at thirty-five by his own hand. his life was slipping away without enjoyment. he had murdered his capacity for happiness, and dug his own spiritual grave while making preparations for enjoying life. this young society man died of nothing to do and dissipation, at thirty. what a miserable farce the life of men and women seems to us! time, which is so precious that even the creator will not give a second moment until the first is gone, they throw away as though it were water. opportunities which angels covet they fling away as of no consequence, and die failures, because they have "no chance in life." life, which seems so precious to us, they spurn as if but a bauble. scarcely a mortal returns to us who has not robbed himself of years of precious life. scarcely a man returns to us dropping off in genuine old age, as autumn leaves drop in the forest. has life become so cheap that mortals thus throw it away? chapter xlvii habit--the servant,--the master habit, if wisely and skilfully formed, becomes truly a second nature.--bacon. habit, with its iron sinews, clasps and leads us day by day. lamartine. the chain of habit coils itself around the heart like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it.--hazlitt. you can not, in any given case, by any sudden and single effort, will to be true, if the habit of your life has been insincerity.--f. w. robertson. it is a beautiful provision in the mental and moral arrangement of our nature, that that which is performed as a duty may by frequent repetition, become a habit; and the habit of stern virtue, so repulsive to others, may hang around our neck like a wreath of flowers.--paxton hood. "when shall i begin to train my child?" asked a young mother of a learned physician. "how old is the child?" inquired the doctor. "two years, sir." "then you have lost just two years," replied he, gravely. "you must begin with his grandmother," said oliver wendell holmes, when asked a similar question. "at the mouth of the mississippi," says beecher, "how impossible would it be to stay its waters, and to separate from each other the drops from the various streams that have poured in on either side,--of the red river, the arkansas, the ohio, and the missouri,--or to sift, grain by grain the particles of sand that have been washed from the alleghany, or the rocky mountains; yet how much more impossible would it be when character is the river, and habits are the side-streams!" "we sow an act, we reap a habit; we sow a habit, we reap a character." while correct habits depend largely on self-discipline, and often on self-denial, bad habits, like weeds, spring up, unaided and untrained, to choke the plants of virtue and as with canada thistles, allowed to go to seed in a fair meadow, we may have "one day's seeding, ten years' weeding." we seldom see much change in people after they get to be twenty-five or thirty years of age, except in going further in the way they have started; but it is a great comfort to think that, when one is young, it is almost as easy to acquire a good habit as a bad one, and that it is possible to be hardened in goodness as well as in evil. take good care of the first twenty years of your life, and you may hope that the last twenty will take good care of you. a writer on the history of staffordshire tells of an idiot who, living near a town clock, and always amusing himself by counting the hour of the day whenever the clock struck, continued to strike and count the hour correctly without its aid, when at one time it happened to be injured by an accident. dr. johnson had acquired the habit of touching every post he passed in the street; and, if he missed one, he was uneasy, irritable, and nervous till he went back and touched the neglected post. "even thought is but a habit." heredity is a man's habit transmitted to his offspring. a special study of hereditary drunkenness has been made by professor pellman of bonn university, germany. he thus traced the careers of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren in all parts of the present german empire, until he was able to present tabulated biographies of the hundreds descended from some original drunkard. notable among the persons described by professor pellman is frau ada jurke, who was born in , and was a drunkard, a thief, and a tramp for the last forty years of her life, which ended in . her descendants numbered , of whom were traced in local records from youth to death. one hundred and six of the were born out of wedlock. there were beggars, and more who lived from charity. of the women, led disreputable lives. there were in the family convicts, of whom were sentenced for murder. in a period of some seventy-five years, this one family rolled up a bill of costs in almshouses, prisons, and correctional institutions amounting to at least , , marks, or about $ , , . isaac watts had a habit of rhyming. his father grew weary of it, and set out to punish him, which made the boy cry out:-- "pray, father, on me mercy take, and i will no more verses make." a minister had a bad habit of exaggeration, which seriously impaired his usefulness. his brethren came to expostulate. with extreme humiliation over this fault as they set it forth, he said, "brethren, i have long mourned over this fault, and i have shed _barrels of tears_ because of it." they gave him up as incorrigible. men carelessly or playfully get into habits of speech or act which become so natural that they speak or act as they do not intend, to their discomfiture. professor phelps told of some andover students, who, for sport, interchanged the initial consonants of adjacent words. "but," said he, "retribution overtook them. on a certain morning, when one of them was leading the devotions, he prayed the lord to 'have mercy on us, feak and weeble sinners.'" the habit had come to possess him. many speakers have undesirable habits of utterance or gesture. some are continually applying the hand to some part of the face, the chin, the whiskers; some give the nose a peck with thumb and forefinger; others have the habit characterized as,-- "washing the hands with invisible soap in a bowl of invisible water." "we are continually denying that we have habits which we have been practising all our lives," says beecher. "here is a man who has lived forty or fifty years; and a chance shot sentence or word lances him, and reveals to him a trait which he has always possessed, but which, until now, he had not the remotest idea that he possessed. for forty or fifty years he has been fooling himself about a matter as plain as the nose on his face." had the angels been consulted, whether to create man, with this principle introduced, that, _if a man did a thing once, if would be easier the second time, and at length would be done without effort_, they would have said, "create!" remember that habit is an arrangement, a principle of human nature, which we must use to increase the efficiency and ease of our work in life. "make sobriety a habit, and intemperance will be hateful; make prudence a habit, and reckless profligacy will be as contrary to the course of nature in the child, or in the adult, as the most atrocious crimes are to any of us." out of hundreds of replies from successful men as to the probable cause of failure, "bad habits" was in almost every one. how easy it is to be nobody; it is the simplest thing in the world to drift down the stream, into bad company, into the saloon; just a little beer, just a little gambling, just a little bad company, just a little killing of time, and the work is done. new orleans is from five to fifteen feet below high water in the mississippi river. the only protection to the city from the river is the levee. in may, , a small break was observed in the levee, and the water was running through. a few bags of sand or loads of dirt would have stopped the water at first; but it was neglected for a few hours, and the current became so strong that all efforts to stop it were fruitless. a reward of five hundred thousand dollars was offered to any man who would stop it; but it was too late--it could not be done. beware of "small sins" and "white lies." a man of experience says: "there are four good habits,--punctuality, accuracy, steadiness, and dispatch. without the first, time is wasted; without the second, mistakes the most hurtful to our own credit and interest, and those of others, may be committed; without the third, nothing can be well done; and without the fourth, opportunities of great advantage are lost, which it is impossible to recall." abraham lincoln gained his clear precision of statement of propositions by practise, and wendell phillips his wonderful english diction by always thinking and conversing in excellent style. "family customs exercise a vast influence over the world. children go forth from the parent-nest, spreading the habits they have imbibed over every phase of society. these can easily be traced to their sources." "to be sure, this is only a trifle in itself; but, then, the manner in which i do every trifling thing is of very great consequence, because it is just in these little things that i am forming my business habits. i must see to it that i do not fail here, even if this is only a small task." "a physical habit is like a tree grown crooked. you can not go to the orchard, and take hold of a tree grown thus, and straighten it, and say, 'now keep straight!' and have it obey you. what can you do? you can drive down a stake, and bind the tree to it, bending it back a little, and scarifying the bark on one side. and if, after that, you bend it back a little more every month, keeping it taut through the season, and from season to season, at length you will succeed in making it permanently straight. you can straighten it, but you can not do it immediately; you must take one or two years for it." sir george staunton visited a man in india who had committed murder; and in order not only to save his life, but what was of much greater consequence to him, his caste, he had submitted to a terrible penalty,--to sleep for seven years on a bed, the entire top of which was studded with iron points, as sharp as they could be without penetrating the flesh. sir george saw him during the fifth year of his sentence. his skin then was like the hide of a rhinoceros; and he could sleep comfortably on his bed of thorns, and he said that at the end of the seven years he thought he should use the same bed from choice. what a vivid parable of a sinful life! sin, at first a bed of thorns, after a time becomes comfortable through the deadening of moral sensibility. when the suspension bridge over niagara river was to be erected, the question was, how to get the cable over. with a favoring wind a kite was elevated, which alighted on the opposite shores. to its insignificant string a cord was attached, which was drawn over, then a rope, then a larger one, then a cable; finally the great bridge was completed, connecting the united states with canada. first across the gulf we cast kite-borne threads till lines are passed, and habit builds the bridge at last. "launch your bark on the niagara river," said john b. gough; "it is bright, smooth, and beautiful, down the stream you glide on your pleasure excursion. suddenly some one cries out from the bank, 'young men, ahoy!' 'what is it?' "'the rapids are below you.' 'ha! ha! we have heard of the rapids, but we are not such fools as to get there. if we go too fast, then we shall up with the helm, and steer to the shore. then on, boys, don't be alarmed--there is no danger.' "'young men, ahoy there!' 'what is it?' 'the rapids are below you!' 'ha! ha! we will laugh and quaff. what care we for the future? no man ever saw it. sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. we will enjoy life while we may, will catch pleasure as it flies. there's time enough to steer out of danger.' "'young men, ahoy!' 'what is it?' 'beware! beware! the rapids are below you!' "now you see the water foaming all around. see how fast you pass that point! up with the helm! now turn! pull hard! quick, quick! pull for your lives! pull till the blood starts from the nostrils, and the veins stand like whip-cords upon the brow! set the mast in the socket! hoist the sail--ah! ah! it is too late! shrieking, cursing, howling, blaspheming, over you go. "thousands go over the rapids every year, through the power of habit, crying all the while, 'when i find out that it is injuring me, i will give it up!'" a community is often surprised and shocked at some crime. the man was seen on the street yesterday, or in his store, but he showed no indication that he would commit such crime to-day. yet the crime committed to-day is but a regular and natural sequence of what the man did yesterday and the day before. it was but a result of the fearful momentum of all his past habits. a painter once wanted a picture of innocence, and drew from life the likeness of a child at prayer. the little suppliant was kneeling by his mother. the palms of his hands were reverently pressed together, and his mild blue eyes were upturned with the expression of devotion and peace. the portrait was much prized by the painter, who hung it up on his wall, and called it "innocence." years passed away, and the artist became an old man. still the picture hung there. he had often thought of painting a counterpart,--the picture of guilt,--but had not found the opportunity. at last he effected his purpose by paying a visit to a neighboring jail. on the damp floor of his cell lay a wretched culprit heavily ironed. wasted was his body, and hollow his eyes; vice was visible in his face. the painter succeeded admirably; and the portraits were hung side by side for "innocence" and "guilt." the two originals of the pictures were discovered to be one and the same person,--first, in the innocence of childhood! second, in the degradation of guilt and sin and evil habits. will-power can be so educated that it will focus the thought upon the bright side of things, upon objects which lift and elevate. habits of contentment and goodness may be formed the same as any others. walking upon the quarter-deck of a vessel, though at first intolerably confining, becomes by custom so agreeable to a sailor that on shore he often hems himself within the same bounds. lord kames tells of a man who, having relinquished the sea for a country life, reared an artificial mount, with a level summit, resembling a quarter-deck not only in shape, but in size, where he generally walked. when franklin was superintending the erection of some forts on the frontier, as a defense against the indians, he slept at night in a blanket on a hard floor; and, on his first return to civilized life, he could hardly sleep in a bed. captain ross and his crew, having been accustomed, during their polar wanderings, to lie on the frozen snow or a bare rock, afterwards found the accommodations of a whaler too luxurious for them, and the captain exchanged his hammock for a chair. two sailors, who had been drinking, took a boat off to their ship. they rowed but made no progress; and presently each began to accuse the other of not working hard enough. lustily they plied the oars, but after another hour's work still found themselves no farther advanced. by this time they had become tolerably sober; and one of them, looking over the side, said to the other, "why, tom, we haven't pulled the anchor up yet." and thus it is with those who are anchored to something of which they are not conscious, perhaps, but which impedes their efforts, even though they do their very best. "a youth thoughtless, when all the happiness of his home forever depends on the chances or the passions of an hour!" exclaims ruskin. "a youth thoughtless, when his every act is a foundation-stone of future conduct, and every imagination a fountain of life or death! be thoughtless in any after years, rather than now,--though, indeed, there is only one place where a man may be nobly thoughtless,--his deathbed. no thinking should ever be left to be done there." sir james paget tells us that a practised musician can play on the piano at the rate of twenty-four notes a second. for each note a nerve current must be transmitted from the brain to the fingers, and from the fingers to the brain. each note requires three movements of a finger, the bending down and raising up, and at least one lateral, making no less than seventy-two motions in a second, each requiring a distinct effort of the will, and directed unerringly with a certain speed, and a certain force, to a certain place. some can do this easily, and be at the same time busily employed in intelligent conversation. thus, by obeying the law of habit until repetition has formed a second nature, we are able to pass the technique of life almost wholly over to the nerve centers, leaving our minds free to act or enjoy. all through our lives the brain is constantly educating different parts of the body to form habits which will work automatically from reflex action, and thus is delegated to the nervous system a large part of life's duties. this is nature's wonderful economy to release the brain from the drudgery of individual acts, and leave it free to command all its forces for higher service. man's life-work is a masterpiece or a botch, according as each little habit has been perfectly or carelessly formed. it is said that if you invite one of the devil's children to your home the whole family will follow. so one bad habit seems to have a relationship with all the others. for instance, the one habit of negligence, slovenliness, makes it easier to form others equally bad, until the entire character is honeycombed by the invasion of a family of bad habits. a man is often shocked when he suddenly discovers that he is considered a liar. he never dreamed of forming such a habit; but the little misrepresentations to gain some temporary end, had, before he was aware of it, made a beaten track in the nerve and brain tissue, until lying has become almost a physical necessity. he thinks he can easily overcome this habit, but he will not. he is bound to it with cords of steel; and only by painful, watchful, and careful repetition of the exact truth, with a special effort of the will-power at each act, can he form a counter trunk-line in the nerve and brain tissue. society is often shocked by the criminal act of a man who has always been considered upright and true. but, if they could examine the habit-map in his nervous mechanism and brain, they would find the beginnings of a path leading directly to his deed, in the tiny repetitions of what he regarded as trivial acts. all expert and technical education is built upon the theory that these trunk-lines of habit become more and more sensitive to their accustomed stimuli, and respond more and more readily. we are apt to overlook the physical basis of habit. every repetition of an act makes us more likely to perform that act, and discovers in our wonderful mechanism a tendency to perpetual repetition, whose facility increases in exact proportion to the repetition. finally the original act becomes voluntary from a natural reaction. it is cruel to teach the vicious that they can, by mere force of will-power, turn "about face," and go in the other direction, without explaining to them the scientific process of character-building, through habit-formation. what we do to-day is practically what we did yesterday; and, in spite of resolutions, unless carried out in this scientific way, we shall repeat to-morrow what we have done to-day. how unfortunate that the science of habit-forming is not known by mothers, and taught in our schools, colleges, and universities! it is a science compared with which other departments of education sink into insignificance. the converted man is not always told that the great battle is yet before him; that he must persistently, painfully, prayerfully, and with all the will-power he possesses, break up the old habits, and lay counter lines which will lead to the temple of virtue. he is not told that, in spite of all his efforts, in some unguarded moment, some old switch may be left open, some old desire may flash along the line, and that, possibly before he is aware of it, he may find himself yielding to the old temptation which he had supposed to be conquered forever. an old soldier was walking home with a beefsteak in one hand and a basket of eggs in the other, when some one yelled, "halt! attention!" instantly the veteran came to a stand; and, as his arms took the position of "attention," eggs and meat went tumbling into the street, the accustomed nerves responding involuntarily to the old stimulus. paul evidently understood the force of habit. "i find, then," he declares, "the law, that to me who would do good, evil is present. for i delight in the law of god after the inward man; but i see a different law in my members, warring against the law in my mind, and bringing me into captivity, under the law of sin, which is in my members. o wretched man that i am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death!" he referred to the ancient custom of binding a murderer face to face with the dead body of his victim, until suffocated by its stench and dissolution. "i would give a world, if i had it," said an unfortunate wretch, "to be a true man; yet in twenty-four hours i may be overcome and disgraced with a shilling's worth of sin." "how shall i a habit break?" as you did that habit make. as you gathered, you must lose; as you yielded, now refuse. thread by thread the strands we twist, till they bind us, neck and wrist; thread by thread the patient hand must untwine, ere free we stand; as we builded, stone by stone, we must toil unhelped, alone, till the wall is overthrown. chapter xlviii the cigarette we are so accustomed to the sight and smell of tobacco that we entirely overlook the fact that the tobacco of commerce in all its forms is the product of a poisonous weed. it is first a narcotic and then an irritant poison. it has its place in all toxicological classifications together with its proper antidotes. tobacco has not achieved its almost universal popularity without strong opposition. in england king james launched his famous "counterblaste" against its use. in turkey, where men and women are alike slaves to its fascination, tobacco was originally forbidden under severe penalties; the loss of the ears, the slitting of the nostrils and even death itself being penalties imposed for the infraction of the law forbidding the use of tobacco in any form. since then pipes, cigars, snuff and chewing tobacco have become popularized and tobacco in some form or another is used by almost every nation. the last development in the form of tobacco using was the cigarette rolled between the fingers, and the worst form of the cigarette is the manufactured article sold in cheap packages and freely used by boys who in many cases have not reached their teens. the manufactured american cigarette seems to be especially deadly in its effect. it is said to contain five and one-half per cent. of nicotine, or more than twice as much as the cuban-made cigarette contains, and more than six times as much as is contained in the turkish cigarette. i am not going to quarrel with the use of tobacco in general by mature men. he who has come to man's estate is free to decide for himself whether he shall force a poison on his revolting stomach; for the nausea that follows the first use of tobacco is the stomach's attempt to eject the poison which has been absorbed from pipe, cigar, or cigarette. the grown man, too, is able to determine whether he wants to pay the tax which the use of tobacco levies upon his time, his health, his income and his prosperity. the most that can be said of the use of tobacco is that if habitual users of the narcotic weed are successful in life they must be successful in spite of the use of tobacco and not because of it; for it is opposed to both reason and common sense that the habitual use of a poison in any form should promote the development and exercise of the faculties whose energetic use is essential to success. what i desire to do is to warn the boy, the growing youth, of the baneful influence of the cigarette on minds yet unformed, on bodies yet in process of development. the danger of the cigarette to the growing boy lies first in the fact that it poisons the body. that it does not kill at the outset is due to the fact that the dose is small and so slowly increased that the body gradually accommodates itself to this poison as it does to strychnine, arsenic, opium, and other poisons. but all the time there is a slow but steady process of physical degeneration. the digestion is affected, the heart is overtaxed, liver and bowels are deranged in their functions, and as the poison spreads throughout the system there is a gradual physical deterioration which is marked alike in the countenance and in the carriage of the body. any person who cares to do so may prove for himself the poisonous nature of nicotine which is derived from tobacco and taken into the system by those who chew or smoke. dr. j. j. kellogg says: "a few months ago i had all the nicotine removed from a cigarette, making a solution of it. i injected half the quantity into a frog, with the effect that the frog died almost instantly. the rest was administered to another frog with like effect. both frogs were full grown, and of average size. the conclusion is evident that a single cigarette contains poison enough to kill two frogs. a boy who smokes twenty cigarettes a day has inhaled enough poison to kill forty frogs. why does the poison not kill the boy? it does tend to kill him. if not immediately, he is likely to die sooner or later of weak heart, bright's disease, or some other malady which scientific physicians everywhere now recognize as a natural result of chronic nicotine poisoning." a chemist, not long since, took the tobacco used in an average cigarette and soaked it in several teaspoonfuls of water and then injected a portion of it under the skin of a cat. the cat almost immediately went into convulsions, and died in fifteen minutes. dogs have been killed with a single drop of nicotine. a single drop of nicotine taken from a seasoned pipe, and applied to the tongue of a venomous snake has caused almost instant death. a western farmer tried to rear a brood of motherless chickens in his greenhouse. but the chickens did not thrive. they refused to eat; their skins became dry and harsh; their feathers were ruffled; they were feverish and drank constantly. soon they began to die. as the temperature and general condition of the greenhouse seemed to be especially favorable to the rearing of chickens, the florist was puzzled to determine the cause of their sickness and death. after a careful study of the symptoms he found that the source of the trouble arose from the fumes of the tobacco stems burned in the greenhouse to destroy green flies and destructive plant parasites. though the chickens had always been removed from the greenhouse during the tobacco fumigation and were not returned while any trace of smoke was apparent to the human senses, it was evident that the soil, air, and leaves of the plants retained enough of the poison to keep the chickens in a condition of semi-intoxication. the conditions were promptly changed, and the chickens removed to other quarters recovered rapidly and in a short time were healthy and lively though they were stunted in growth because of this temporary exposure to the effects of nicotine. the symptoms in the chickens were almost identical with the symptoms of nicotine poisoning in young boys, and the effects were relatively the same. the most moderate use of the cigarette is injurious to the body and mind of the youth; excessive indulgence leads inevitably to insanity and death. a young man died in a minnesota state institution not long ago, who, five years before, had been one of the most promising young physicians of the west. "still under thirty years at the time of his commitment to the institution," says the newspaper account of his story, "he had already made three discoveries in nervous diseases that had made him looked up to in his profession. but he smoked cigarettes,--smoked incessantly. for a long time the effects of the habit were not apparent on him. in fact, it was not until a patient died on the operating table under his hands, and the young doctor went to pieces, that it became known that he was a victim of the paper pipes. but then he had gone too far. he was a wreck in mind as well as in body, and he ended his days in a maniac's cell." another unfortunate victim of the cigarette was, not long ago, taken to the brooklyn hospital. he was a fireman on the railroad and was only twenty-one years old. he said he began smoking cigarettes when a mere boy. before being taken to the hospital he smoked all night for weeks without sleep. when in the hospital he recognized none, but called loudly to everyone he saw to kill him. he would batter his head against the wall in the attempt to commit suicide. at length he was taken to the king's county hospital in a strait jacket, where death soon relieved him of his sufferings. similar results are following the excessive use of cigarettes, every day and in all sections of the country. "died of heart failure" is the daily verdict on scores of those who drop down at the desk or in the street. can not this sudden taking off, of apparently hale and sturdy men be related, oftentimes to the heart weakness caused by the excessive use of tobacco and particularly of cigarettes? excessive cigarette smoking increases the heart's action very materially, in some instances twenty-five or thirty beats a minute. think of the enormous amount of extra work forced upon this delicate organ every twenty-four hours! the pulsations are not only greatly increased but also very materially weakened, so that the blood is not forced to every part of the system, and hence the tissues are not nourished as they would be by means of fewer but stronger, more vigorous pulsations. the indulgence in cigarettes stunts the growth and retards physical development. an investigation of all the students who entered yale university during nine years shows that the cigarette smokers were the inferiors, both in weight and lung capacity, of the non-smokers, although they averaged fifteen months older. it has been said that the universal habit of smoking has made germany "a spectacled nation." tobacco greatly irritates the eyes, and injuriously affects the optic nerves. the eyes of boys who use cigarettes to excess grow dull and weak, and every feature shows the mark of the insidious poison. the face is pallid and haggard, the cheeks hollow, the skin drawn, there is a loss of frankness of expression, the eyes are shifty, the movements nervous and uncertain, and all this is but preliminary to the ultimate degradation and loss of self-respect which follow the victim of the cigarette habit, through years of misery and failure. side by side with physical deterioration there goes on a process of moral degeneration which robs the cigarette smoking boy of refinement, of manners. the moral depravity which follows cigarette habit is appalling. lying, cheating, swearing, impurity, loss of courage and manhood, a complete dropping of life's standards, result from such indulgence. magistrate crane, of new york city, says: "ninety-nine out of a hundred boys between the ages of ten and seventeen years who come before me charged with crime have their fingers disfigured by yellow cigarette stains--i am not a crank on this subject, i do not care to pose as a reformer, but it is my opinion that cigarettes will do more than liquor to ruin boys. when you have arraigned before you boys hopelessly deaf through the excessive use of cigarettes, boys who have stolen their sisters' earnings, boys who absolutely refuse to work, who do nothing but gamble and steal, you can not help seeing that there is some direct cause, and a great deal of this boyhood crime, is, in my mind, easy to trace to the deadly cigarette. there is something in the poison of the cigarette that seems to get into the system of the boy and to destroy all moral fiber." he gives the following probable course of a boy who begins to smoke cigarettes: "first, cigarettes. second, beer and liquors. third, craps--petty gambling. fourth, horse-racing--gambling on a bigger scale. fifth, larceny. sixth, state prison." another new york city magistrate says: "yesterday i had before me thirty-five boy prisoners. thirty-three of them were confirmed cigarette smokers. to-day, from a reliable source, i have made the grewsome discovery that two of the largest cigarette manufacturers soak their product in a weak solution of opium. the fact that out of thirty-five prisoners thirty-three smoked cigarettes might seem to indicate some direct connection between cigarettes and crime. and when it is announced on authority that most cigarettes are doped with opium, this connection is not hard to understand. opium is like whisky,--it creates an increasing appetite that grows with what it feeds upon. a growing boy who lets tobacco and opium get a hold upon his senses is never long in coming under the domination of whisky, too. tobacco is the boy's easiest and most direct road to whisky. when opium is added, the young man's chance of resisting the combined forces and escaping physical, mental, and moral harm is slim, indeed." i think the above statement regarding the use of opium by manufacturers is exaggerated. yet we know that young men of great natural ability, everywhere, some of them in high positions, are constantly losing their grip, deteriorating, dropping back, losing their ambition, their push, their stamina, and their energy, because of the cigarette's deadly hold upon them. did you ever watch the gradual deterioration of the cigarette smoker, the gradual withdrawal of manliness and character, the fading out of purpose, the decline of ambition; the substitution of the beastly for the manly, the decline of the divine and the ascendency of the brute? a very interesting study this, to watch the gradual withdrawal from the face of all that was manly and clean, and all that makes for success. we can see where purity left him and was gradually replaced by vulgarity, and where he began to be cursed by commonness. we can see the point at which he could begin to do a bad job or a poor day's work without feeling troubled about it. we can tell when he began to lose his great pride in his personal appearance, when he began to leave his room in the morning and to go to his work without being perfectly groomed. only a little while before he would have been greatly mortified to have been seen by his employers and associates with slovenly dress; but now baggy trousers, unblackened shoes, soiled linen, frayed neck-tie do not trouble him. he is not quite as conscientious about his work as he used to be. he can leave a half-finished job, and cut his hours and rob his employer a little here and there without being troubled seriously. he can write a slipshod letter. he isn't particular about his spelling, punctuation, or handwriting, as formerly. he doesn't mind a little deceit. vulgarity no longer shocks him. he does not blush at the unclean test. womanhood is not as sacred to him as in his innocent days. he does not reverence women as formerly; and he finds himself laughing at the coarse jest and the common remarks about them among his associates, when once he would have resented and turned away in disgust. dr. lewis bremer, late physician at st. vincent's institute for the insane says, "basing my opinion upon my experience gained in private sanitariums and hospitals, i will broadly state that the boy who smokes cigarettes at seven will drink whisky at fourteen, take morphine at twenty-five, and wind up at thirty with cocaine and the rest of the narcotics." the saddest effects of cigarette smoking are mental. the physical signs of deterioration have their mental correspondencies. sir william hamilton said: "there is nothing great in matter but man; there is nothing great in man but mind." the cigarette smoker takes man's distinguishing faculty and uncrowns it. he "puts an enemy in his mouth to steal away his brains." anything which impairs one's success capital, which cuts down his achievement and makes him a possible failure when he might have been a grand success, is a crime against him. anything which benumbs the senses, deadens the sensibilities, dulls the mental faculties, and takes the edge off one's ability, is a deadly enemy, and there is nothing else which effects all this so quickly as the cigarette. it is said that within the past fifty years not a student at harvard university who used tobacco has been graduated at the head of his class, although, on the average, five out of six use tobacco. the symptoms of a cigarette victim resembles those of an opium eater. a gradual deadening, benumbing influence creeps all through the mental and moral faculties; the standards all drop to a lower level; the whole average of life is cut down, the victim loses that power of mental grasp, the grip of mind which he once had. in place of his former energy and vim and push, he is more and more inclined to take things easy and to slide along the line of the least resistance. he becomes less and less progressive. he dreams more and acts less. hard work becomes more and more irksome and repulsive, until work seems drudgery to him. professor william mckeever, of the kansas agricultural college, in the course of his findings after an exhaustive study of "the cigarette smoking boy" presents facts which are as appalling as they are undeniable: "for the past eight years i have been tracing out the cigarette boy's biography and i have found that in practically all cases the lad began his smoking habit clandestinely and with little thought of its seriousness while the fond parents perhaps believed that their boy was too good to engage in such practise. "i have tabulated reports of the condition of nearly , cigarette-smoking schoolboys, and in describing them physically my informants have repeatedly resorted to the use of such epithets as 'sallow,' 'sore-eyed,' 'puny,' 'squeaky-voiced,' 'sickly,' 'short-winded,' and 'extremely nervous.' in my tabulated reports it is shown that, out of a group of twenty-five cases of young college students, smokers, whose average age of beginning was , according to their own admissions they had suffered as follows: sore throat, four; weak eyes, ten; pain in chest, eight; 'short wind,' twenty-one; stomach trouble, ten; pain in heart, nine. ten of them appeared to be very sickly. the younger the boy, the worse the smoking hurts him in every way, for these lads almost invariably inhale the fumes; and that is the most injurious part of the practise." professor mckeever made hundreds of sphygmograph records of boys addicted to the smoking habit. discussing what the records showed, he says: "the injurious effects of smoking upon the boy's mental activities are very marked. of the many hundreds of tabulated cases in my possession, several of the very youthful ones have been reduced almost to the condition of imbeciles. out of , who were attending public school, only six were reported 'bright students.' a very few, perhaps ten, were 'average,' and all the remainder were 'poor' or 'worthless' as students. the average grades of fifty smokers and fifty non-smokers were computed from the records of one term's work done in the kansas agricultural college and the results favored the latter group with a difference of . per cent. the two groups represented the same class rank; that is, the same number of seniors, juniors, sophomores, and freshmen." a thorough investigation of the effects of cigarette smoking on boys has been carried on in one of the san francisco schools for many months. this investigation was ordered because a great many of the boys were inferior to the girls, both mentally and morally. it was found that nearly three-fourths of the boys who smoked cigarettes had nervous disorders, while only one of those who did not smoke had any nervous symptoms. a great many of the cigarette smokers had defective hearing, while only one of those who did not smoke was so afflicted. a large percentage of the boys who smoked were defective in memory, while only one boy who did not smoke was so affected. a large portion of the boys who smoked were reported as low in deportment and morals, while only a very small percentage of those who did not smoke were similarly affected. it was found that the minds of many of the cigarette smokers could not comprehend or grasp ideas as quickly or firmly as those who did not smoke. nearly all of the cigarette smokers were found to be untidy and unclean in their personal appearance, and a great many of them were truants; but among those who did not smoke not a single boy had been corrected for truancy. most of the smokers ranked very low in their studies as compared with those who did not smoke. seventy-nine per cent. of them failed of promotion, while the percentage of failure among those who did not smoke was exceedingly small. of twenty boy smokers who were under careful observation for several months, nineteen stood below the average of the class, while only two of those who did not smoke stood below. seventeen out of the twenty were very poor workers and seemed absolutely incapable of close or continuous application to any of their studies. professor wilkinson, principal of a leading high school, says, "i will not try to educate a boy with the cigarette habit. it is wasted time. the mental faculties of the boy who smokes cigarettes are blunted." another high school principal says, "boys who smoke cigarettes are always backward in their studies; they are filthy in their personal habits, and coarse in their manners, they are hard to manage and dull in appearance." it is apparent therefore that the cigarette habit disqualifies the student mentally, that it retards him in his studies, dwarfs his intellect, and leaves him far behind those of inferior mental equipment who do not indulge in the injurious use of tobacco in any form. the mental, moral, and physical deterioration from the use of cigarettes, has been noted by corporations and employers of labor generally, until to-day the cigarette devotee finds himself barred from many positions that are open to those of inferior capabilities, who are not enslaved by the deadly habit. cigarette smoking is no longer simply a moral question. the great business world has taken it up as a deadly enemy of advancement, of achievement. leading business firms all over the country have put the cigarette on the prohibited list. in detroit alone, sixty-nine merchants have agreed not to employ the cigarette user. in chicago, montgomery ward and company, hibbard, spencer and bartlett, and some of the other large concerns have prohibited cigarette smoking among all employees under eighteen years of age. marshall field and company, and the morgan and wright tire company have this rule: "no cigarettes can be smoked by our employees." one of the questions on the application blanks at wanamaker's reads: "do you use tobacco or cigarettes?" the superintendent of the linden street railway, of st. louis, says: "under no circumstances will i hire a man who smokes cigarettes. he is as dangerous on the front of a motor as a man who drinks. in fact, he is more dangerous; his nerves are apt to give way at any moment. if i find a car running badly, i immediately begin to investigate to find if the man smokes cigarettes. nine times out of ten he does, and then he goes, for good." the late e. h. harriman, head of the union pacific railroad system, used to say that they "might as well go to a lunatic asylum for their employees as to hire cigarette smokers." the union pacific railroad prohibits cigarette smoking among its employees. the new york, new haven, and hartford, the chicago, rock island, and pacific, the lehigh valley, the burlington, and many others of the leading railroad companies of this country have issued orders positively forbidding the use of cigarettes by employees while on duty. some time ago, twenty-five laborers working on a bridge were discharged by the roadmasters of the west superior, wisconsin railroad because of cigarette smoking. the pittsburg and western railroad which is part of the baltimore and ohio system, gave orders forbidding the use of cigarettes by its employees on passenger trains and also notified passengers that they must not smoke cigarettes in their coaches. in the call issued for the competitive examination for messenger service in the chicago post-office, sometime since, seven hundred applicants were informed that only the best equipped boys were wanted for this service, and that under no circumstances would boys who smoked cigarettes be employed. other post-offices have taken a similar stand. if some one should present you with a most delicately adjusted chronometer,--one which would not vary a second in a year--do you think it would pay you to trifle with it, to open the case in the dust, to leave it out in the rain overnight, or to put in a drop of glue or a chemical which would ruin the delicacy of its adjustment so that it would no longer keep good time? would you think it wise to take such chances? but the creator has given you a matchless machine, so delicately and wondrously made that it takes a quarter of a century to bring it to perfection, to complete growth, and yet you presume to trifle with it, to do all sorts of things which are infinitely worse than leaving your watch open out of doors overnight, or even in water. the great object of the watch is to keep time. the supreme purpose of this marvelous piece of human machinery is power. the watch means nothing except time. if the human machinery does not produce power, it is of no use. the merest trifle will prevent the watch from keeping time; but you think that you can put anything into your human machinery, that you can do all sorts of irrational things with it, and yet you expect it to produce power--to keep perfect time. it is important that the human machine shall be kept as responsive to the slightest impression or influence as possible, and the brain should be kept clear so that the thought may be sharp, biting, gripping, so that the whole mentality will act with efficiency. and yet you do not hesitate to saturate the delicate brain-cells with vile drinks, to poison them with nicotine, to harden them with smoke from the vilest of weeds. you expect the man to turn out as exquisite work, to do the most delicate things to retain his exquisite sense of ability notwithstanding the hardening, the benumbing influence of cigarette poisoning. let the boy or youth who is tempted to indulge in the first cigarette ask himself--can i afford to take this enormous risk? can i jeopardize my health, my strength, my future, my all, by indulging in a practise which has ruined tens of thousands of promising lives? let the youth who is tempted say, "no! i will wait until mind and body are developed, until i have reached man's estate before i will begin to use tobacco." experience proves that those who reach a robust manhood are rarely willing to sacrifice health and happiness to the cigarette habit. many years ago an eminent physician and specialist in nervous diseases put himself on record as holding the firm belief that the evil effects of the use of tobacco were more lasting and far reaching than the injurious consequences that follow the excessive use of alcohol. apart from affections of the throat and cancerous diseases of lips and tongue which frequently affect smokers there is a physical taint which is transmitted to offspring which handicaps the unfortunate infant "from its earliest breath." the only salvation of the race, said this physician, lay in the fact that women did not smoke. if they too acquired the tobacco habit future generations would be stamped by the degeneracy and depravity which follow the use of tobacco as surely as they follow the use of alcohol. in view of these facts the increase of cigarette smoking among women may well alarm those who have at heart the wellbeing of the rising generation. so rapidly has this habit spread that fashionable hotels and cafes are providing rooms for the especial use of those women who like to indulge in an after-dinner cigarette. a noted restaurant in new york recently added an annex to which ladies with their escorts might retire and smoke. we often see women smoking in new york hotels and restaurants. not long ago the writer was a guest at a dinner and to his surprise several ladies at the table lighted their cigarettes with as much composure as if it were the most natural thing in the world. at a reception recently, i saw the granddaughter of one of america's greatest authors smoking cigarettes. what a spectacle, to see a descendant so nearly removed from one of nature's grandest noblemen, a princely gentleman, smoking! and i said to myself, "what would her grandfather think if he could see this?" on a train running between london and liverpool, a compartment especially reserved for women smokers has been provided. it is said that three american women were the cause of this innovation. the superintendent of one of our largest american railways says that he would not be surprised if the american roads were compelled to follow the lead of their english brethren. it is not unreasonable to suppose that this addiction to the use of tobacco is in many cases inherited. a friend told me of a very charming young woman who was passionately devoted to tobacco. at a time when it was not usual for women to smoke in public her craving for a cigarette was so strong that she could not deny herself the indulgence. she said her father, a deacon in the church, had been an inveterate smoker, and her love of tobacco dated back to her earliest remembrance. every woman should use the uttermost of her influence to discourage the use of the cigarette and enlist the girls as well as boys in her fight against the evil and injurious practise of cigarette smoking. chapter xlix the power of purity blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see god.--sermon on the mount. my strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure. tennyson. virtue alone raises us above hopes, fears, and chances.--seneca. even from the body's purity the mind receives a secret sympathetic aid. thomson. purity is a broad word with a deep meaning. it denotes far more than superficial cleanness. it goes below the surface of guarded speech and polite manners to the very heart of being. "out of the heart are the issues of life." make the fountain clean and the waters that flow from it will be pure and limpid. make the heart clean and the life will be clean. purity is defined as "free from contact with that which weakens, impairs or pollutes." how forceful then is the converse of the definition: impurity weakens, impairs, and pollutes. it weakens both mind and body. it impairs the health. it pollutes not only the thoughts but the conduct which inevitably has its beginning and its end in thought. innocence is the state of natural purity. it was the state of adam and eve in the garden of eden. when they sinned "they knew that they were naked." they lost innocence never to regain it. but purity may be attained. as an unclean garment may be washed, so the heart may be purified and made clean. ghosts of past impurities still may dog us, but they are ghosts that may be laid with an imperative "get thee behind me, satan." they are like the lions that affrighted bunyan's pilgrim--chained securely. they may roar and threaten, but they are powerless if we deny their power. the man who is striving for purity whole-heartedly is like one who sits safely in a guarded house. old memories of evil things like specters may peer in at the windows and mow and gibber at him, but they can not touch him unless he gives them power, unless he unlocks the door of his heart and bids them enter. as the lotus flower grows out of the mud, so may purity and beauty spring up from even the vilest past if we but will it so. as purity is power so impurity is impotence, weakness, degeneracy. many a man goes on in an impure career thinking himself secure, thinking his secret hidden. but impurity, like murder, will out. there was a noted pugilist who was unexpectedly defeated in a great ring battle. people said the fight was a "fake," that it was a "put up job." but those who knew said "impurity." he had lived an evil, debauched life for several years, and he went into the ring impaired in strength, weakened by his transgressions of the law of pure living. purity is power; impurity is weakness. there is a saying of scripture which is absolutely scientific: "be sure your sin will find you out." note this; it is not that your sin will be found out, but _your_ sin will find _you_ out. sin recoils on the sinner, and of all sins that surely find us out, the sins against purity are the most certain to bring retribution. young men do not think that listening to an off-color story, or anything that is vulgar, can injure them much, and, for fear of ridicule, they laugh when they hear anything of the kind, even when it is repulsive to them, and when they loathe it. it is a rare thing for a young man to express with emphasis his disapproval. to know life properly is to know the best in it, not the worst. no one ever yet was made stronger by his knowledge of impurity or experience in sin. _it is said that the mind's phonograph will faithfully reproduce a bad story even up to the point of death_. do not listen once. you can never get the stain entirely out of your life. your character will absorb the poison. impurity is especially fatal in its grip upon the young, because of the vividness of the youthful imagination and the facility with which insinuating suggestions enter the youthful thought. our court records show that a very large percentage of criminals began their downfall through the fatal contagion of impurity communicated from various associations. remember that you can not tell what may come to you in the future, what honor or promotion; and you can not afford to take chances upon having anything in your history which can come up to embarrass you or to keep you back. a thing which you now look upon as a bit of pleasure may come up in the future to hamper your progress. the thing you do to-day while trying to have a good time may come up to block your progress years afterwards. i know men who have been thrust into positions of honor and public trust who would give anything in the world if they could blot out some of the unclean experiences of their youth. things in their early history, which they had forgotten all about and which they never expected to hear from again, are raked up when they become candidates for office or positions of trust. these forgotten bits of so-called pleasure loom up in after-life as insurmountable bars across their pathway. i know a very rich young man who thought he was just having a good time in his youth--sowing his wild oats--who would give a large part of his vast wealth to-day if he could blot out a few years of his folly. it seems strange that men will work hard to build a reputation, and then throw it all away by some weakness in their character. how many men there are in this country with great brain power, men who are kings in their specialties, men who have worked like slaves to achieve their aims, whose reputations have been practically ruined by the flaw of impurity! character is a record of our thoughts and acts. that which we think about most, the ideals and motives uppermost in our mind, are constantly solidifying into character. what we are constantly thinking about, and aiming toward and trying to obtain becomes a permanent part of the life. the man whose thoughts are low and impure, very quickly gives this bent and tendency to his character. the character levels itself with the thought, whether high or low. no man can have a pure, clean character who does not habitually have pure, clean thoughts. the immoral man is invariably an impure thinker--whatever we harbor in the mind out-pictures itself in the body. in eastern countries the leper is compelled to cry, "unclean, unclean," upon the approach of any one not so cursed. what a blessing to humanity if our modern moral lepers were compelled to cry, "unclean, unclean," before they approach innocent victims with their deadly contagion! about the vilest thing on earth is a human being whose character is so tainted with impurity that he leaves the slimy trail of the serpent wherever he goes. there never was a more beautiful and pathetic prayer than that of the poor soiled, broken-hearted psalmist in his hour of shame, "create in me a clean heart." "who shall ascend into the hill of the lord, who shall stand in his holy place? he that hath clean hands and a pure heart." there are thousands of men who would cut off their right hands to-day to be free from the stain, the poison, of impurity. there can be no lasting greatness without purity. vice honeycombs the physical strength as well as destroys the moral fiber. now and again some man of note topples with a crash to sudden ruin. yet the cause of the moral collapse is not sudden. there has been a slow undermining of virtue going on probably for years; then, in an hour when honor, truth, or honesty is brought to a crucial test, the weakened character gives way and there is an appalling commercial or social crash which often finds an echo in the revolver shot of the suicide. tennyson shows the effect of launcelot's guilty love for guinevere, in the great knight's conscious loss of power. his wrongful passion indirectly brought about the death of fair elaine. he himself at times shrank from puny men wont to go down before the shadow of his spear. like a scarlet blot his sin stains all his greatness, and he muses on it remorsefully: "for what am i? what profits me my name of greatest knight? i fought for it and have it. pleasure to have it, none; to lose it pain; now grown a part of me: but what use in it? to make men worse by making my sin known? or sin seem less, the sinner seeming great?" later when the knights of the round table joined in the search for the holy grail, that lost sacred vessel, "the cup, the cup itself from which our lord drank at the last sad supper with his own," launcelot was overtaken by his sin and failed ignominiously. only galahad the pure was permitted to see the cup unsurrounded by a blinding glory, a fearful splendor of watching eyes and guarding shapes. no one is quite the same in his own estimation when he has been once guilty of contact with impurity. his self-respect has suffered a loss. something has gone out of his life. his own good opinion of himself has suffered deterioration, and he can never face his life-task with quite the same confidence again. somehow he feels that the world will know of his soul's debauch and judge him accordingly. there is nothing which will mar a life more quickly than the consciousness of a soul-stain. the loss of self-respect, the loss of character, is irreparable. we are beginning to find that there is an intimate connection between absolute purity _of one's thought and life and his good health, good thinking, and good work_, a very close connection between the moral faculties and the physical health; that nothing so exhausts vitality and vitiates the quality of work and ideals, so takes the edge off of one's ambition, dulls the brain and aspiration, as impurity of thought and life. it seems to blight all the faculties and to demoralize the whole man, so that his efficiency is very much lessened. he does not speak with the same authority. the air of the conqueror disappears from his manner. he does not think so clearly; he does not act with so great certainty, and his self-faith is lost, because confidence is based upon self-respect, and he can no longer respect himself when he does things which he would not respect in another. the fact that his impure acts are done secretly makes no difference. no one can thoroughly respect himself when he does that which demoralizes him, which is unbecoming a gentleman, no matter whether other people know it or not. impurity blights everything it touches. it is not enough to be thought pure and clean and sound. one must actually _be_ pure and clean and sound morally, or his self-respect is undermined. _purity is power because it means integrity of thought, integrity of conduct_. _it means wholeness_. the impure man can not be a great power, because he can not thoroughly believe in himself when conscious that he is rotten in any part of his nature. impurity works like leaven, which affects everything in a man. the very consciousness that the impurity is working within him robs him of power. apart from the moral side of this question, let us show how these things affect one's success in life by sapping the energies, weakening the nature, lowering one's standards, blurring one's ideals, discouraging one's ambition, and lessening one's vitality and power. in the last analysis of success, the mainspring of achievement must rest in the strength of one's vitality, for, without a stock of health equal to great emergencies and persistent longevity, even the greatest ambition is comparatively powerless. and there is nothing that will sap the life-forces so quickly as dissipation and impure living. is there anything truer than that "to be carnally minded is death?" if the thought is carnal, the body must correspond, must express it in some physical discord. nothing else will destroy the very foundations of vitality quicker than impurity of thought and animal self-indulgence. the ideals must be kept bright and the ambition clean-cut. purity of thought means that the mental processes are not clouded, muddy, or clogged by brain ash from a dissipated life, from violation of the laws of health. pure thought comes from pure blood, and pure blood from a clean, sane life. purity signifies a great deal besides freedom from sensual taint. it means saneness, purity, and quality. it has been characteristic of great leaders, men whose greatness has stood the acid test of time, that they have been virtuous in conduct, pure in thought. "i have such a rich story that i want to tell you," said an officer, who one evening came into the union camp in a rollicking mood. "there are no ladies present, are there?" general grant, lifting his eyes from the paper which he was reading, and looking the officer squarely in the eye, said slowly and deliberately: "no, but there are gentlemen present." "a great trait of grant's character," said george w. childs, "was his purity. i never heard him express an impure thought, or make an indelicate allusion in any way or shape. there is nothing i ever heard him say that could not be repeated in the presence of women. if a man was brought up for an appointment, and it was shown that he was an immoral man, grant would not appoint him, no matter how great the pressure brought to bear." on one occasion, when grant formed one of a dinner-party of americans in a foreign city, conversation drifted into references to questionable affairs, when he suddenly rose and said, "gentlemen, please excuse me, i will retire." it is the glory of a man to have clean lips and a clean mind. it is the glory of a woman not to know evil, even in her thoughts. isaac newton's most intimate friend in young manhood was a noted foreign chemist. they were constant associates until one day the italian told an impure story, after which newton never would associate with him. "my extreme youth, when i took command of the army of italy," said napoleon, "rendered it necessary that i should evince great reserve of manners and the utmost severity of morals. this was indispensable to enable me to sustain authority over men so greatly my superiors in age and experience. i pursued a line of conduct in the highest degree irreproachable and exemplary. in spotless morality i was a cato, and must have appeared such to all. i was a philosopher and a sage. my supremacy could be retained only by proving myself a better man than any other man in the army. had i yielded to human weakness, i should have lost my power." the military antagonist and conqueror of napoleon, the duke of wellington, was a man of simple life and austere virtue. when he was laid to rest in the crypt of st. paul's cathedral, "in streaming london's central roar," the poet who wrote his funeral ode was able to say of him: "whatever record leap to light he never shall be shamed." the peril of impurity lies in the insidiousness of the poison. just one taint of impurity, one glance at a lewd picture, one hearing of an unclean story may begin the fatal corruption of mind and heart. "it is the little rift within the lute that by and by will make the music mute, the little rift within the lover's lute or little pitted speck in garnered fruit that rotting inward slowly molders all." when bunyan's pilgrim was assailed by temptation he stopped his ears with his fingers and fled for his life. let the young man who values himself, who sets store upon health and has ambition to succeed in his chosen career, be deaf to unclean speech and flee the companionship of those who think and speak uncleanness. it is the experience of every man who has forsaken vice and turned his feet into the paths of virtue that evil memories will, in his holiest hours, leap upon him like a lion from ambush. into the harmony of the hymn he sings memory will interpolate unbidden, the words of some sensual song. pictures of his debauches, his past licentiousness, will fill his vision, and the unhappy victim can only beat upon his breast and cry, "me miserable! whither shall i flee?" this has been, through all time, the experience of the men that have sought sanctity in seclusion. the saints, the hermits in their caves, the monks in their cells, could never escape the obsessions of memory which with horrible realism and scorching vividness revived past scenes of sin. a boy once showed to another a book of impure words and pictures. he to whom the book was shown had it in his hands only a few minutes. in after-life he held high office in the church, and years and years afterwards told a friend that he would give half he possessed had he never seen it, because its impure images, at the most holy times, would arise unbidden to his mind. physicians tell us that every particle of the body changes in a very few years; but no chemistry, human or divine, can entirely expunge from the mind a bad picture. like the paintings buried for centuries in pompeii, without the loss of tint or shade, these pictures are as brilliant in age as in youth. association begets assimilation. we can not mix with evil associations without being contaminated; can not touch pitch without being defiled. impurity is especially fatal in its grip upon the young, because of the vividness of the youthful imagination and the facility with which insinuating suggestions enter the youthful thought. indelible and satanic is the taint of the evil suggestive power which a lewd, questionable picture or story leaves upon the mind. nothing else more fatally mars the ideals of life and lowers the standard of manhood and womanhood. to read writers whose lines express the utmost possible impurity so dexterously and cunningly that not a vulgar word is used, but rosy, glowing, suggestive language--authors who soften evil and show deformity with the tints of beauty--what is this but to take the feet out of the straight road into the guiltiest path of seduction? very few realize the power of a diseased imagination to ruin a precious life. perhaps the defect began in a little speck of taint. no other faculty has such power to curse or bless mankind, to build up or tear down, to ennoble or debauch, to make happy or miserable, or has such power upon our destiny, as the imagination. many a ruined life began its downfall in the dry rot of a perverted imagination. how little we realize that by subtle, moral manufacture, repeated acts of the imagination weave themselves into a mighty tapestry, every figure and fancy of which will stand out in living colors in the character-web of our lives, to approve or condemn us. in many cases where, for no apparent reason, one is making failure after failure, never reaching, even approximately, the position which was anticipated for him, if he would look frankly into his own heart, and searchingly at his own secret habits, he would find that which, hidden, like the worm at the heart of the rose, is destroying and making impossible all that ennobles, beautifies, and enriches life. "i solemnly warn you," says beecher, "against indulging a morbid imagination. in that busy and mischievous faculty begins the evil. were it not for his airy imagination, man might stand his own master,--not overmatched by the worst part of himself. but ah! these summer reveries, these venturesome dreams, these fairy castles, builded for no good purposes,--they are haunted by impure spirits, who will fascinate, bewitch, and corrupt you. blessed are the pure in heart. blessed art thou, most favored of god, whose thoughts are chastened; whose imagination will not breathe or fly in tainted air, and whose path hath been measured by the golden reed of purity." to be pure in heart is the youth's first great commandment. do not listen to men who tell you that "vice is a necessity." nothing is a necessity that is wrong,--that debauches self-respect. "all wickedness is weakness." vice and vigor have nothing in common. purity is strength, health, power. do not imagine that impurity can be hidden! one may as well expect to have consumption or any other deadly disease, and to look and appear healthy, as to be impure in thought and mind, and to look and appear manly and noble souled. character writes its record in the flesh. "no, no, these are not trifles," said george whitefield, when a friend asked why he was so particular to bathe frequently, and always have his linen scrupulously clean; "a minister must be without spot, even in his garments." purity in a good man can not be carried too far. there is a permanency in the stamp left by the sins resulting from impure thought that follows even to the grave. diseases unnameable, the consequences of the scarlet sin, the following after the "strange woman," write their record in the very bones, literally fulfilling the scripture statement--"their sins shall lie down with their bones in the dust." we often detect in the eye and in the manner the black leper spots of impurity long before the youth suspects they have ever been noticed. when there is a scar or a stain upon one's self-respect it is bound to appear on the surface sooner or later. what fearful blots and stains are left on the characters of those who have to fight for a lifetime to rid themselves of a blighting and contaminating influence, moral or physical! chemists tell us that scarlet is the only color which can not be bleached. there is no known chemical which can remove it. so, formerly, scarlet rags were made into blotting paper. when the sacred writer wished to emphasize the power of divine forgiveness, of divine love, he said: "even though thy sins be as scarlet, they shall be made white as wool!" it certainly takes omnipotent power to expunge impurity from the mind. there is certainly one sin which only divine power can bleach out of the character--the sin of impurity. no man can think much of himself when he is conscious of impurity anywhere in his life. and the very knowledge that one is absolutely pure in his thought and clean in his life increases his self-respect and his self-faith wonderfully. it is a terrible handicap to be conscious that, however much others may think of us, we are foul inside, that our thoughts are vile. it does not matter that our vicious acts are secret, we can not cover them. whatever we have thought or done will outpicture itself in the expression, in the bearing. it will be hung out upon the bulletin board of the face and manner for the world to read. we instinctively feel a person's reality; not what he pretends, but what he is, for we radiate our reality, which often contradicts our words. there is only one panacea for impurity. constant occupation and pure, high thinking are absolutely necessary to a clean life. "i should be a poor counselor of young men," wrote a true friend of youth, "if i taught you that purity is possible only by isolation from the world. we do not want that sort of holiness which can thrive only in seclusion; we want that virile, manly purity which keeps itself unspotted from the world, even amid its worst debasements, just as the lily lifts its slender chalice of white and gold to heaven, untainted by the soil in which it grows, though that soil be the reservoir of death and putrefaction." impurity is the forfeiture of manliness. the true man must be untarnished. james went so far as to declare that this is just what religion is. "pure religion and undefiled before god and the father is this * * to keep himself unspotted from the world." every true man shrinks from uncleanness. he knows what it means. impurity makes lofty friendships impossible. it robs all of life's intercourse of its freshness and its joyous innocence. it sullies all beauty. it does these things chiefly because it separates men from god and his vision. the best and holiest is barred to the stained man. impurity makes it impossible for him to appreciate what is pure and fine, dulls his finer perceptions, and he is not given the place where only pure and fine things are. [illustration: helen keller] there can be no such thing as an impure gentleman. the two words contradict each other. a gentleman must be pure. he need not have fine clothes. he may have had few advantages. but he must be pure and clean. and, if he have all outward grace and gift and be inwardly unclean, though he may call himself a gentleman, he is a liar and a lie. o, young man, guard your heart-purity! keep innocency! never lose it; if it be gone, you have lost from the casket the most precious gift of god. the first purity of imagination, of thought, and of feeling, if soiled, can be cleansed by no fuller's soap. if a harp be broken, art may repair it; if a light be quenched, the flame may kindle it; but if a flower be crushed, what art can repair it? if an odor be wafted away, who can collect or bring it back? parents are, in many cases, responsible for the impurity of their children. through a mistaken sense of delicacy, they allow the awakened, searching mind of the child to get information concerning its physical nature from the mind of some boy or girl no better taught than itself, and so conceive wholly wrong and harmful ideas concerning things of which it is vitally important that every human being should at the outset of life have clear and adequate ideas. such silence, many times, is fatal, and always foolish, if not criminal. "i have noticed," says william acton, "that all patients who have confessed to me that they have practised vice, lamented that they were not, when children, made aware of its consequences; and i have been pressed over and over again to urge on parents, guardians, schoolmasters, and others interested in the education of youth, the necessity of giving to their charges some warning, some intimation, of their danger. to parents and guardians i offer my earnest advice that they should, by hearty sympathy and frank explanation, aid their charges in maintaining pure lives." what stronger breastplate than a heart untainted? a prominent writer says: "if young persons poison their bodies and corrupt their minds with vicious courses, no lapse of time, after a reform, is likely to restore them to physical soundness and the soul purity of their earlier days." there is one idea concerning purity which should never have been conceived, and, having been conceived, should be, once and forever, eternally exploded. it is that purity is different in the different sexes. it would be loosening the foundations of virtue to countenance the notion that, because of a difference in sex, men are at liberty to set morality at defiance, and to do with impunity that which, if done by a woman, would stain her character for life. to maintain a pure and virtuous condition of society, therefore, man as well as woman must be virtuous and pure, both alike shunning all acts infringing on the heart, character, and conscience,--shunning them as poison, which, once imbibed, can never be entirely thrown out again. is there any reason why a man should have any license to drag his thoughts through the mud and filth any more than a woman? is there any sex in principle? isn't a stain a blot upon a boy's character just as bad as upon a girl's? if purity is so refining and elevating for one sex, why should it not be for the other? it is incredible that a man should be socially ostracized for comparatively minor offenses, yet be rotten with immorality and be received into the best homes. but, if a woman makes the least false step in this direction, she is not only ostracized but treated with the utmost contempt, while the man who was the chief sinner in causing a woman's downfall, society will pardon. to put it on the very lowest ground, i am certain that if young men knew and realized the fearful risks to health that they take by indulging in gross impurities they would put them by with a shudder of disgust and aversion. it may very easily happen--it very often actually does happen--that one single step from the path of purity clouds a man's whole life with misery and unspeakable suffering; and not only that, but even entails lifelong disease on children yet unborn. to return to its maker at the close of life the marvelous body which he gave us, scarred by a heedless life, with the heart rotten with impurity, the imagination filled with vicious images, the character honeycombed with vice, is a most ungrateful return for the priceless life of opportunity. a mind retaining all the dew and freshness of innocence shrinks from the very idea of impurity, the very suggestion of it, as if it were sin to have even thought or heard of it, as if even the shadow of the evil would leave some soil on the unsullied whiteness of the virgin mind. "when modesty is once extinguished, it knows not a return." chapter l the habit of happiness the highest happiness must always come from the exercise of the best thing in us. when you find happiness in anything but useful work, you will be the first man or woman to make the discovery. if you take an inventory of yourself at the very outset of your career you will find that you think you are going to find happiness in things or in conditions. most people think they are going to find the largest part of their happiness in money, what money will buy or what it will give them in the way of power, influence, comforts, luxuries. they think they are going to find a great deal of their happiness in marriage. how quickly they find that the best happiness they will ever know is that which must be limited to their own capacity for enjoyment, that their happiness can not come from anything outside of them but must be developed from within. many people believe they are going to find much of their happiness in books, in travel, in leisure, in freedom from the thousand and one anxieties and cares and worries of business; but the moment they get in the position where they thought they would have freedom many other things come up in their minds and cut off much of the expected joy. when they get money and leisure they often find that they are growing selfish, which cuts off a lot of their happiness. no man able to work can be idle without feeling a sense of guilt at not doing his part in the world, for every time he sees the poor laboring people who are working for him, who are working everywhere, he is constantly reminded of his meanness in shifting upon others what he is able to do and ought to do himself. idleness is the last place to look for happiness. idleness is like a stagnant pool. the moment the water ceases to flow, to work, to do something, all sorts of vermin and hideous creatures develop in it. it becomes torpid and unhealthy giving out miasma and repulsive odors. in the same way work is the only thing that will keep the individual healthy and wholesome and clean. an idle brain very quickly breeds impurities. the married man quickly learns that his domestic happiness depends upon what he himself contributes to the partnership, that he can not take out a great deal without putting a great deal in, for selfishness always reaps a mean, despicable harvest. it is only the generous giver who gets much. there is nothing which will so shrivel up a man; and contract his capacity for happiness as selfishness. it is always a fatal blighter, blaster, disappointer. we must give to get, we must be great before we can get great enjoyment; great in our motive, grand in our endeavor, sublime in our ideas. it is impossible, absolutely unscientific, for a bad person to be truly happy; just as impossible as it would be for one to be comfortable while lying on a bed of nettles which are constantly pricking him. there is no way under heaven by which a person can be really happy without being good, clean, square, and true. this does not mean that a person is happy because he does not use tobacco, drink, gamble, use profane language or does not do other vicious things. some of the meanest, narrowest, most contemptible people in the world do none of these things but they are uncharitable, jealous, envious, revengeful. they stab you in the back, slander you, cheat you. they may be cunning, underhanded, and yet have a fairly good standing in the church. no person can be really happy who has a small, narrow, bigoted, uncharitable mind or disposition. generosity, charity, kindness are absolutely essential to real happiness. deceitful people can not be happy; they can not respect themselves because they inwardly despise themselves for deceiving you. a person must be open minded, transparent, simple, in order to be really happy. a person who is always covering up something, trying to keep things from you, misleading you, deceiving you, can not get away from self-reproach, and hence can not be really happy. selfishness is a fatal enemy of happiness because no one ever does a really selfish thing without feeling really mean, without despising himself for it. i have never seen a strong young man sneak into a vacant seat in a car and allow an old man or woman with a package or a baby in her arms to stand, without looking as though he knew he had done a mean, selfish thing. there is a look of humiliation in his face. we are so constituted that we can not help condemning ourselves for our mean or selfish acts. the liar is never really happy. he is always on nettles lest his deceit betray him. he never feels safe. dishonesty in all its phases is fatal to happiness, for no dishonest person can get his self-approval. without this no happiness is possible. before you can be really happy, my friend, you must be able to look back upon a well-spent past, a conscientious, unselfish past. if not, you will be haunted by demons which will destroy your happiness. if you have been mean and selfish, greedy and dishonest with your fellowmen, all sorts of horrible things will rise out of your money pile to terrify and to make your happiness impossible. in other words, happiness is merely a result of the life work. it will partake of the exact quality of the motive which you have put into your life work. if these motives have been selfish, greedy, grasping, if cunning and dishonesty have dominated in your career, your happiness will be marred accordingly. you can not complain of your happiness, because it is your own child, the product of your own brain, your own effort. it has been made up of your motives, colored by your life aim. it exactly corresponds to the cause which produced it. there is the greatest difference in the world between the happiness which comes from a sweet, beautiful, unselfish, helpful, sympathetic, industrious, honorable career, and the mean satisfaction which may grow to be a part of your marked self if you have lived a selfish, grasping life. what we call happiness is the harvest from our life sowing, our habitual thought-sowing, deed-doing. if we have sown selfish, envious, jealous, revengeful, hateful seeds, greedy, grasping seeds, we can not expect a golden happiness harvest like that which comes from a clean and unselfish, helpful sowing. if our harvest is full of the rank, poisonous weeds of jealousy, envy, dishonesty, cunning, and cruelty, we have no one to blame but ourselves, for we sowed the seed which produced that sort of a harvest. somehow some people have an entirely wrong idea of what real happiness is. they seem to think it can be bought, can be had by influence, that it can be purchased by money; that if they have money they can get that wonderful, mysterious thing which they call happiness. but happiness is a natural, faithful harvest from our sowing. it would be as impossible for selfish seed, greed seed to produce a harvest of contentment, of genuine satisfaction, of real joy, as for thistle seeds to produce a harvest of wheat or corn. whatever the quality of your enjoyment or happiness may be, you have patterned it by your life motive by the spirit in which you have worked, by the principles which have actuated you. a pretty different harvest, i grant, many of us must face, marred with all sorts of hideous, poisonous weeds, but they are all the legitimate product of our sowing. no one can rob us of our harvest or change it very much. every thought, every act, every motive, whether secret or public, is a seed which no power on earth can prevent going to its harvest of beauty or ugliness, honor or shame. most people have an idea that happiness is something that can be manufactured. they do not realize that it can no more be manufactured than wheat or corn can be manufactured. it must be grown, and the harvest will be like the seed. you, young man, make up your mind at the very outset of your career that whatever comes to you in life, that whether you succeed or fail, whether you have this or that, there is one thing you will have, and that is a happy, contented mind, that you will extract your happiness as you go along. you will not take the chances of picking up or developing the happy habit after you get rich, for then you may be too old. most people postpone their enjoyment until they are disappointed to find the power of enjoyment has largely gone by and that even if they had the means they could not get anything like as much real happiness out of it as they could have gotten as they went along when they were younger. take no chances with your happiness, or the sort of a life that can produce it; whatever else you risk, do not risk this. early form the happy habit, the habit of enjoyment every day, no matter what comes or does not come to you during the day. pick crumbs of comfort out of your situation, no matter how unpleasant or disagreeable. i know a man who, although poor, can manage to get more comfort out of a real tough, discouraging situation than any one else i have ever seen. i have often seen him when he did not have a dollar to his name, with a wife to support; yet he was always buoyant, happy, cheerful, consented. he would even make fun out of an embarrassing situation, see something ludicrous in his extreme poverty. there have never been such conflicting estimates, such varying ideas, regarding any state of human condition as to what constitutes happiness. many people think that it is purchasable with money, but many of the most restless, discontented, unhappy people in the world are rich. they have the means of purchasing what they _thought_ would produce happiness, but the real thing eludes them. on the other hand, some of the poorest people in the world are happy. the fact is that there is no possible way of cornering or purchasing happiness for it is absolutely beyond the reach of money. it is true, we can purchase a few comforts and immunities from some annoyances and worries with money which we can not get without it. on the other hand, the great majority of people who have inherited money are positively injured by it, because it often stops their own development by taking away the motive for self-effort and self-reliance. when people get money they often stop growing because they depend upon the money instead of relying upon their own inherent resources. rich people suffer from their indulgences more than poor ones suffer from their hardships. a great many rich people die with liver and kidney troubles which are effected both by eating and drinking. the kidneys are very susceptible to the presence of alcohol. if rich people try to get greater enjoyment out of life than poor people by eating and drinking, they are likely very quickly to come to grief. if they try to seek it through the avenue of leisure they soon find that an idle brain is one of the most dangerous things in the world--nothing deteriorates faster. the mind was made for continual strong action, systematic, vigorous exercise, and this is possible only when some dominating aim and a great life purpose leads the way. no person can be really healthful whose mind is not usefully and continually employed. so there is no possibility of finding real happiness in idleness if we are able to work. nature brings a wonderful compensatory power to those who are crippled or sick or otherwise disabled from working, but there is no compensation for idleness in those who are able to work. nature only gives us the use of faculties we employ. "use or lose" is her motto, and when we cease to use a faculty or function it is gradually taken away from us, gradually shrivels and atrophies. there is no satisfaction like that which comes from the steady, persistent, honest, conscientious pursuit of a noble aim. there are a multitude of evidences in man's very structure that his marvelous mechanism was intended for action, for constant exercise, and that idleness and stagnation always mean deterioration and death of power. no man can remain idle without shrinking, shrivelling, constantly becoming a less efficient man; for he can keep up only those faculties and powers which he constantly employs, and there is no other possible way. nature puts her ban of deterioration and loss of power upon idleness. we see these victims everywhere shorn of power--weak, nerveless, backboneless, staminaless, gritless people, without forcefulness, mere nonentities because they have ceased working. without work mental health is impossible and without health the fullest happiness is impossible. it has been said that happiness is the most delusive thing that man pursues. yet why need it be a blind search? if we were to stop the first hundred people we meet on the street and ask them what in their experience has given them the most happiness, probably the answer of no two would be alike. how interesting and instructive it would be to give a thousand dollars to each of these hundred people, and without their knowing it, follow them and see what they would do with the money,--what it would mean to them. to some poor youth hungry for an education, with no opportunity to gain it, this money would mean a college education. another would see in his money a more comfortable home for his aged parents. to another this money would suggest all sorts of dissipation. some would see books and leisure for self-improvement, a trip abroad. we all wear different colored glasses and no two see life with the same tint. some find their present happiness in coarse dissipation; others in a quiet nook with a book. some find their greatest happiness in friends, in social intercourse; others seek happiness in roving over the earth, always thinking that the greatest enjoyment is in another day, in another place, a little further on, in the next room, or to-morrow, or in another country. _to many people, happiness is never where they are, but almost anywhere else_. most people lose sight of the simplicity of happiness. they look for it in big, complicated things. real happiness is perfectly simple. in fact, it is incompatible with complexity. simplicity is its very essence. i was dining recently with a particularly successful young man who is trying very hard to be happy, but he takes such a complicated, strenuous view of everything that his happiness is always flying from him. he drives everything so fiercely, his life is so vigorous, so complicated, that happiness can not find a home with him very long. nor does he understand why. he has money, health; but he always has that restless far-away, absent-minded gaze into something beyond, and i do not think he is ever really very happy. his whole manner of living is extremely complex. he does not seem to know where to find happiness. he has evidently mistaken the very nature of happiness. he thinks it consists in making a great show, in having great possessions, in doing things which attract a great deal of attention; but _happiness would be strangled, suffocated in such an environment_. the essentials of real happiness are few, simple, and close at hand. happiness is made up of very simple ingredients. it flees from the complex life. it evades pomp and show. the heart would starve amid the greatest luxuries. simple joys and the treasures of the heart and mind make happiness. happiness has very little to do with material things. it is a mental state of mind. real permanent happiness can not be found in mere temporary things, because its roots reach away down into eternal principles. one of the most pathetic pictures in civilization is the great army of men and women searching the world over for happiness, as though it existed in things rather than in a state of mind. the people who have spent years and a fortune trying to find it look as hungry and as lean of contentment and all that makes life desirable as when they started out. chasing happiness all over the world is about as silly a business as any human being ever engaged in, for it was never yet found by any pursuer. yet happiness is the simplest thing in the world. it is found in many a home with carpetless floors and pictureless walls. it knows neither rank, station, nor color, nor does it recognize wealth. it only demands that it live with a contented mind and pure heart. it will not live with ostentation; it flees from pretense; it loves the simple life; it insists upon a sweet, healthful, natural environment. it hates the forced and complicated and formal. real happiness flees from the things that pass away; it abides only in principle, permanency. i have never seen a person who has lived a grasping, greedy, money-chasing life, who was not disappointed at what money has given him for his trouble. it is only in giving, in helping, that we find our quest. everywhere we go we see people who are disappointed, chagrined, shocked, to find that what they thought would be the angel of happiness turned out to be only a ghost. all the misery and the crime of the world rest upon the failure of human beings to understand the principle that _no man can really be happy until he harmonizes with the best thing in him, with the divine, and not with the brute_. no one can be happy who tries to harmonize his life with his animal instincts. _the god (the good) in him is the only possible thing that can make him happy_. real happiness can not be bribed by anything sordid or low. nothing mean or unworthy appeals to it. there is no affinity between them. founded upon principle, it is as scientific as the laws of mathematics, and he who works his problem correctly will get the happiness answer. there is only one way to secure the correct answer to a mathematical problem; and that is to work in harmony with mathematical laws. it would not matter if half the world believed there was some other way to get the answer, it would never come until the law was followed with the utmost exactitude. it does not matter that the great majority of the human race believe there is some other way of reaching the happiness goal. the fact that they are discontented, restless, and unhappy shows that they are not working their problem scientifically. we are all conscious that there is another man inside of us, that there accompanies us through life a divine, silent messenger, that other, higher, better self, which speaks from the depths of our nature and which gives its consent, its "amen" to every right action, and condemns every wrong one. man is built upon the plan of honesty, of rectitude--the divine plan. when he perverts his nature by trying to express dishonesty, chicanery, and cunning, of course he can not be happy. the very essence of happiness is honesty, sincerity, truthfulness. he who would have real happiness for his companion must be clean, straightforward, and sincere. the moment he departs from the right she will take wings and fly away. it is just as impossible for a person to reach the normal state of harmony while he is practising selfish, grasping methods, as it is to produce harmony in an orchestra with instruments that are all jangled and out of tune. to be happy, we must be in tune with the infinite within us, in harmony with our better selves. there is no way to get around it. there is no tonic like that which comes from doing things worth while. there is no happiness like that which comes from doing our level best every day, everywhere; no satisfaction like that which comes from stamping superiority, putting our royal trade-mark upon everything which goes through our hands. recently a rich young man was asked why he did not work. "i do not have to," he said. "do not have to" has ruined more young men than almost anything else. the fact is, nature never made any provision for the idle man. vigorous activity is the law of life; it is the saving grace, the only thing that can keep a human being from retrograding. activity along the line of one's highest ambition is the normal state of man, and he who tries to evade it pays the penalty in deterioration of faculty, in paralysis of efficiency. do not flatter yourself that you can be really happy unless you are useful. happiness and usefulness were born twins. to separate them is fatal. it is as impossible for a human being to be happy who is habitually idle as it is for a fine chronometer to be normal when not running. the highest happiness is the feeling of wellbeing which comes to one who is actively employed doing what he was made to do, carrying out the great life-purpose patterned in his individual bent. the practical fulfilling of the life-purpose is to man what the actual running and keeping time are to the watch. without action both are meaningless. man was made to do things. nothing else can take the place of achievement in his life. real happiness without achievement of some worthy aim is unthinkable. one of the greatest satisfactions in this world is the feeling of enlargement, of growth, of stretching upward and onward. no pleasure can surpass that which comes from the consciousness of feeling one's horizon of ignorance being pushed farther and farther away--of making headway in the world--of not only getting on, but also of getting up. happiness is incompatible with stagnation. a man must feel his expanding power lifting, tugging away at a lofty purpose, or he will miss the joy of living. the discords, the bickerings, the divorces, the breaking up of rich homes, and the resorting to all sorts of silly devices by many rich people in their pursuit of happiness, prove that it does not dwell with them, that happiness does not abide with low ideals, with selfishness, idleness, and discord. it is a friend of harmony, of truth, of beauty, of affection, of simplicity. multitudes of men have made fortunes, but have murdered their capacity for enjoyment in the process. how often we hear the remark, "he has the money, but can not enjoy it." a man can have no greater delusion than that he can spend the best years of his life coining all of his energies into dollars, neglecting his home, sacrificing friendships, self-improvement, and everything else that is really worth while, for money, and yet find happiness at the end! the happiness habit is just as necessary to our best welfare as the work habit, or the honesty or square-dealing habit. no one can do his best, his highest thing, who is not perfectly normal, and happiness is a fundamental necessity of our being. it is an indication of health, of sanity, of harmony. the opposite is a symptom of disease, of abnormality. there are plenty of evidences in the human economy that we were intended for happiness, that it is our normal condition; that suffering, unhappiness, discontent, are absolutely foreign and abnormal to our natures. there is no doubt that our life was intended to be one grand, sweet song. we are built upon the plan of harmony, and every form of discord is abnormal. there is something wrong when any human being in this world, tuned to infinite harmonies and beauties that are unspeakable, is unhappy and discontented. chapter li put beauty into your life when the barbarians overran greece, desecrated her temples, and destroyed her beautiful works of art, even their savageness was somewhat tamed by the sense of beauty which prevailed everywhere. they broke her beautiful statues, it is true; but the spirit of beauty refused to die, and it transformed the savage heart and awakened even in the barbarian a new power. from the apparent death of grecian art roman art was born. "cyclops forging iron for vulcan could not stand against pericles forging thought for greece." the barbarian's club which destroyed the grecian statues was no match for the chisel of phidias and praxiteles. "what is the best education?" some one asked plato many centuries ago. "it is," he replied, "that which gives to the body and to the soul all the beauty and all the perfection of which they are capable." the life that would be complete; that would be sweet and sane, as well as strong, must be ornamented, softened, and enriched by a love of the beautiful. there is a lack in the make-up of a person who has no appreciation of beauty, who does not thrill before a great picture or an entrancing sunset, or a glimpse of beauty in nature. savages have no appreciation of beauty. they have a passion for adornment, but there is nothing to show that their esthetic faculties are developed. they merely obey their animal instincts and passions. but as civilization advances ambition grows, wants multiply, and higher and higher faculties show themselves, until in the highest expression of civilization, we find aspiration and love of the beautiful most highly developed. we find it manifested on the person, in the home, in the environment. the late professor charles eliot norton of harvard university, one of the finest thinkers of his day, said that beauty has played an immense part in the development of the highest qualities in human beings; and that civilization could be measured by its architecture, sculpture, and painting. what an infinite satisfaction comes from beginning early in life to cultivate our finer qualities, to develop finer sentiments, purer tastes, more delicate feelings, the love of the beautiful in all its varied forms of expression! one can make no better investment than the cultivation of a taste for the beautiful, for it will bring rainbow hues and enduring joys to the whole life. it will not only greatly increase one's capacity for happiness, but also one's efficiency. a remarkable instance of the elevating, refining influence of beauty has been demonstrated by a chicago school-teacher, who fitted up in her school a "beauty corner" for her pupils. it was furnished with a stained glass window, a divan covered with an oriental rug, and a few fine photographs and paintings, among which was a picture of the sistine madonna. several other esthetic trifles, artistically arranged, completed the furnishings of the "beauty corner." the children took great delight in their little retreat, especially in the exquisite coloring of the stained glass window. insensibly their conduct and demeanor were affected by the beautiful objects with which they daily associated. they became more gentle, more refined, more thoughtful and considerate. a young italian boy, in particular, who had been incorrigible before the establishment of the "beauty corner," became, in a short time, so changed and softened that the teacher was astonished. one day she asked him what it was that made him so good lately. pointing to the picture of the sistine madonna the boy said, "how can a feller do bad things when she's looking at him?" character is fed largely through the eye and ear. the thousand voices in nature of bird and insect and brook, the soughing of the wind through the trees, the scent of flower and meadow, the myriad tints in earth and sky, in ocean and forest, mountain and hill, are just as important for the development of a real man as the education he receives in the schools. if you take no beauty into your life through the eye or the ear to stimulate and develop your esthetic faculties, your nature will be hard, juiceless, and unattractive. beauty is a quality of divinity, and to live much with the beautiful is to live close to the divine. "the more we see of beauty everywhere; in nature, in life, in man and child, in work and rest, in the outward and the inward world, the more we see of god (good)." there are many evidences in the new testament that christ was a great lover of the beautiful especially in nature. was it not he who said: "consider the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin; yet solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these"? back of the lily and the rose, back of the landscape, back of all beautiful things that enchant us, there must be a great lover of the beautiful and a great beauty-principle. every star that twinkles in the sky, every flower, bids us look behind it for its source, points us to the great author of the beautiful. the love of beauty plays a very important part in the poised, symmetrical life. we little realize how much we are influenced by beautiful people and things. we may see them so often that they become common in our experience and fail to attract much of our conscious attention, but every beautiful picture, every sunset and bit of landscape, every beautiful face and form and flower, beauty in any form, wherever we encounter it, ennobles, refines and elevates character. there is everything in keeping the soul and mind responsive to beauty. it is a great refreshener, recuperator, life-giver, health promoter. our american life tends to kill the finer sentiments; to discourage the development of charm and grace as well as beauty; it over-emphasizes the value of material things and under-estimates that of esthetic things, which are far more developed in countries where the dollar is not the god. as long as we persist in sending all the sap and energy of our being into the money-making gland or faculty and letting the social faculty, the esthetic faculty, and all the finer, nobler faculties lie dormant, and even die, we certainly can not expect a well-rounded and symmetrical life, for only faculties that are used, brain cells that are exercised, grow; all others atrophy. if the finer instincts in man and the nobler qualities that live in the higher brain are under-developed, and the coarser instincts which dwell in the lower brain close to the brute faculties are over-developed, man must pay the penalty of animality and will lack appreciation of all that is finest and most beautiful in life. "the vision that you hold in your mind, the ideal that is enthroned in your heart--this you will build your life by, this you will become." it is the quality of mind, of ideals, and not mere things, that make a man. it is as essential to cultivate the esthetic faculties and the heart qualities as to cultivate what we call the intellect. the time will come when our children will be taught, both at home and in school, to consider beauty as a most precious gift, which must be preserved in purity, sweetness, and cleanliness, and regarded as a divine instrument of education. there is no investment which will give such returns as the culture of the finer self, the development of the sense of the beautiful, the sublime, and the true; the development of qualities that are crushed out or strangled in the mere dollar-chaser. there are a thousand evidences in us that we were intended for temples of beauty, of sweetness, of loveliness, of beautiful ideas, and not mere storehouses for vulgar things. there is nothing which will pay so well as to train the finest and truest, the most beautiful qualities in us in order that we may see beauty everywhere and be able to extract sweetness from everything. everywhere we go there are a thousand things to educate the best there is in us. every sunset, landscape, mountain, hill, and tree has secrets of charm and beauty waiting for us. in every patch of meadow or wheat, in every leaf and flower, the trained eye will see beauty which would ravish an angel. the cultured ear will find harmony in forest and field, melody in the babbling brook, and untold pleasure in all nature's songs. whatever our vocation, we should resolve that we will not strangle all that is finest and noblest in us for the sake of the dollar, but that we will _put beauty into our life at every opportunity_. just in proportion to your love for the beautiful will you acquire its charms and develop its graces. the beauty thought, the beauty ideal, will outpicture themselves in the face and manner. if you are in love with beauty you will be an artist of some kind. your profession may be to make the home beautiful and sweet, or you may work at a trade; but whatever your vocation, if you are in love with the beautiful, it will purify your taste, elevate and enrich your life, and make you an artist instead of a mere artisan. there is no doubt that in the future beauty will play an infinitely greater part in civilized life than it has thus far. it is becoming commercialized everywhere. the trouble with us is that the tremendous material-prizes in this land of opportunity are so tempting that we have lost sight of the higher man. we have developed ourselves along the animal side of our nature; the greedy, grasping side. the great majority of us are still living in the basement of our beings. now and then one rises to the drawing-room. now and then one ascends to the upper stories and gets a glimpse of the life beautiful, the life worth while. there is nothing on earth that will so slake the thirst of the soul as the beauty which expresses itself in sweetness and light. an old traveling man relates that once when on a trip to the west he sat next to an elderly lady who every now and then would lean out of the open window and pour some thick salt--it seemed to him--from a bottle. when she had emptied the bottle she would refill it from a hand-bag. a friend to whom this man related the incident told him he was acquainted with the lady, who was a great lover of flowers and an earnest follower of the precept: "scatter your flowers as you go, for you may never travel the same road again." he said she added greatly to the beauty of the landscape along the railroads on which she traveled, by her custom of scattering flower seeds along the track as she rode. many roads have thus been beautified and refreshed by this old lady's love of the beautiful and her effort to scatter beauty wherever she went. if we would all cultivate a love of the beautiful and scatter beauty seeds as we go through life, what a paradise this earth would become! what a splendid opportunity a vacation in the country offers to put beauty into the life; to cultivate the esthetic faculties, which in most people are wholly undeveloped and inactive! to some it is like going into god's great gallery of charm and beauty. they find in the landscape, the valley, the mountains, the fields, the meadows, the flowers, the streams, the brooks and the rivers, riches that no money can buy; beauties that would enchant the angels. but this beauty and glory can not be bought; they are only for those who can see them, appreciate them--who can read their message and respond to their affinity. have you never felt the marvelous power of beauty in nature? if not, you have missed one of the most exquisite joys in life. i was once going through the yosemite valley, and after riding one hundred miles in a stage-coach over rough mountain roads, i was so completely exhausted that it did not seem as though i could keep my seat until we traveled over the ten more miles which would bring us to our destination. but on looking down from the top of the mountain i caught a glimpse of the celebrated yosemite falls and the surrounding scenery, just as the sun broke through the clouds; and there was revealed a picture of such rare beauty and marvelous picturesqueness that every particle of fatigue, brain-fag, and muscle weariness departed in an instant. my whole soul thrilled with a winged sense of sublimity, grandeur, and beauty, which i had never experienced before, and which i never can forget. i felt a spiritual uplift which brought tears of joy to my eyes. no one can contemplate the wonderful beauties of nature and doubt that the creator must have intended that man, made in his own image and likeness, should be equally beautiful. beauty of character, charm of manner, attractiveness and graciousness of expression, a godlike bearing, are our birthrights. yet how ugly, stiff, coarse, and harsh in appearance and bearing many of us are! no one can afford to disregard his good looks or personal appearance. but if we wish to beautify the outer, we must first beautify the inner, for every thought and every motion shapes the delicate tracings of our face for ugliness or beauty. inharmonious and destructive attitudes of mind will warp and mar the most beautiful features. shakespeare says: "god has given you one face and you make yourselves another." the mind can make beauty or ugliness at will. a sweet, noble disposition is absolutely essential to the highest form of beauty. it has transformed many a plain face. a bad temper, ill nature, jealousy, will ruin the most beautiful face ever created. after all, there is no beauty like that produced by a lovely character. neither cosmetics, massage, nor drugs can remove the lines of prejudice, selfishness, envy, anxiety, mental vacillation that are the results of wrong thought habits. beauty is from within. if every human being would cultivate a gracious mentality, not only would what he expressed be artistically beautiful, but also his body. there would indeed be grace and charm, a superiority about him, which would be even greater than mere physical beauty. we have all seen even very plain women who, because of the charm of their personality, impressed us as transcendently beautiful. the exquisite soul qualities expressed through the body transformed it into their likeness. a fine spirit speaking through the plainest body will make it beautiful. some one, speaking of fanny kemble, said: "although she was very stout and short, and had a very red face, yet she impressed me as the supreme embodiment of majestic attributes. i never saw so commanding a personality in feminine form. any type of mere physical beauty would have paled to insignificance by her side." antoine berryer says truly: "there are no ugly women. there are only women who do not know how to look pretty." the highest beauty--beauty that is far superior to mere regularity of feature or form--is within reach of everybody. it is perfectly possible for one, even with the homeliest face, to make herself beautiful by the habit of perpetually holding in mind the beauty thought, not the thought of mere superficial beauty, but that of heart beauty, soul beauty, and by the cultivation of a spirit of kindness, hopefulness, and unselfishness. the basis of all real personal beauty is a kindly, helpful bearing and a desire to scatter sunshine and good cheer everywhere, and this, shining through the face, makes it beautiful. the longing and the effort to be beautiful in character can not fail to make the life beautiful, and since the outward is but an expression of the inward, a mere outpicturing on the body of the habitual thought and dominating motives, the face, the manners, and the bearing must follow the thought and become sweet and attractive. if you hold the beauty thought, the love thought, persistently in the mind, you will make such an impression of harmony and sweetness wherever you go that no one will notice any plainness or deformity of person. there are girls who have dwelt upon what they consider their unfortunate plainness so long that they have seriously exaggerated it. they are not half so plain as they think they are; and, were it not for the fact that they have made themselves very sensitive and self-conscious on the subject, others would not notice it at all. in fact, if they could get rid of their sensitiveness and be natural, they could, with persistent effort, make up in sprightliness of thought, in cheerfulness of manner, in intelligence, and in cheery helpfulness, what they lack in grace and beauty of face. we admire the beautiful face, the beautiful form, but we love the face illumined by a beautiful soul. we love it because it suggests the ideal of the possible perfect man or woman, the ideal which was the creator's model. it is not the outward form of our dearest friend, but our ideal of friendship which he arouses or suggests in us that stirs up and brings into exercise our love and admiration. the highest beauty does not exist in the actual. it is the ideal, possible beauty, which the person or object symbolizes or suggests, that gives us delight. everyone should endeavor to be beautiful and attractive; to be as complete a human being as possible. there is not a taint of vanity in the desire for the highest beauty. the love of beauty that confines itself to mere external form, however, misses its deepest significance. beauty of form, of coloring, of light and shade, of sound, make our world beautiful; yet the mind that is warped and twisted can not see all this infinite beauty. it is the indwelling spirit, the ideal in the soul, that makes all things beautiful; that inspires and lifts us above ourselves. we love the outwardly beautiful, because we crave perfection, and we can not help admiring those persons and things that most nearly embody or measure up to our human ideal. but a beautiful character will make beauty and poetry out of the prosiest environment, bring sunshine into the darkest home, and develop beauty and grace amid the ugliest surroundings. what would become of us if it were not for the great souls who realize the divinity of life, who insist upon bringing out and emphasizing its poetry, its music, its harmony and beauty? how sordid and common our lives would become but for these beauty-makers, these inspirers, these people who bring out all that is best and most attractive in every place, every situation and condition! there is no accomplishment, no trait of character, no quality of mind, which will give greater satisfaction and pleasure or contribute more to one's welfare than an appreciation of the beautiful. how many people might be saved from wrong-doing, even from lives of crime, by the cultivation of the esthetic faculties in their childhood! a love of the truly beautiful would save children from things which encoarsen and brutalize their natures. it would shield them from a multitude of temptations. parents do not take sufficient pains to develop the love and appreciation of beauty in their children. they do not realize that in impressionable youth, everything about the home, even the pictures, the paper on the wall, affect the growing character. they should never lose an opportunity of letting their boys and girls see beautiful works of art, hear beautiful music; they should make a practise of reading to them or having them read very often some lofty poem, or inspirational passages from some great writer, that will fill their minds with thoughts of beauty, open their souls to the inflow of the divine mind, the divine love which encompasses us round about. the influences that moved our youth determine the character, the success and happiness of our whole lives. every soul is born responsive to the beautiful, but this instinctive love of beauty must be fostered through the eye and the mind must be cultivated, or it will die. the craving for beauty is as strong in a child of the slums as in a favorite of fortune. "the physical hunger of the poor, the yearning of their stomachs," says jacob a. riis, "is not half so bitter, or so little likely to be satisfied as their esthetic hunger, their starving for the beautiful." mr. riis has often tried to take flowers from his long island home to the "poors" in mulberry street, new york. "but they never got there," he says. "before i had gone half a block from the ferry i was held up by a shrieky mob of children who cried for the posies and would not let me go another step till i had given them one. and when they got it they ran, shielding the flower with the most jealous care, to some place where they could hide and gloat over their treasure. they came dragging big, fat babies and little weazened ones that they might get a share, and the babies' eyes grew round and big at the sight of the golden glory from the fields, the like of which had never come their way. the smaller the baby, and the poorer, the more wistful its look, and so my flowers went. who could have said them no? "i learned then what i had but vaguely understood before, that there is a hunger that is worse than that which starves the body and gets into the newspapers. all children love beauty and beautiful things. it is the spark of the divine nature that is in them and justifies itself! to that ideal their souls grow. when they cry out for it they are trying to tell us in the only way they can that if we let the slum starve the ideal, with its dirt and its ugliness and its hard-trodden mud where flowers were meant to grow, we are starving that which we little know. a man, a human, may grow a big body without a soul; but as a citizen, as a mother, he or she is worth nothing to the commonwealth. the mark they are going to leave upon it is the black smudge of the slum. "so when in these latter days we invade that slum to make homes there and teach the mothers to make them beautiful; when we gather the children into kindergartens, hang pictures in the schools; when we build beautiful new schools and public buildings and let in the light, with grass and flower and bird, where darkness and foulness were before; when we teach the children to dance and play and enjoy themselves--alas! that it should ever be needed--we are trying to wipe off the smudge, and to lift the heavy mortgage which it put on the morrow, a much heavier one in the loss of citizenship than any community, even the republic, can long endure. we are paying arrears of debt which we incurred by our sad neglect, and we could be about no better business." there are many poor children in the slums of new york, mr. millionaire, who could go into your drawing-room and carry away from its rich canvases, its costly furnishings, a vision of beauty which you never perceived in them because your esthetic faculties, your finer sensibilities, were early stifled by your selfish pursuit of the dollar. the world is full of beautiful things, but the majority have not been trained to discern them. we can not see all the beauty that lies around us, because our eyes have not been trained to see it; our esthetic faculties have not been developed. we are like the lady who, standing with the great artist, turner, before one of his wonderful landscapes, cried out in amazement: "why, mr. turner, i can not see those things in nature that you have put in your picture." "don't you wish you could, madam?" he replied. just think what rare treats we shut out of our lives in our mad, selfish, insane pursuit of the dollar! do you not wish that you could see the marvels that turner saw in a landscape, that ruskin saw in a sunset? do you not wish that you had put a little more beauty into your life instead of allowing your nature to become encoarsened, your esthetic faculties blinded and your finer instincts blighted by the pursuit of the coarser things of life, instead of developing your brute instincts of pushing, elbowing your way through the world for a few more dollars, in your effort to get something away from somebody else? fortunate is the person who has been educated to the perception of beauty; he possesses a heritage of which no reverses can rob him. yet it is a heritage possible to all who will take the trouble to begin early in life to cultivate the finer qualities of the soul, the eye, and the heart. "i am a lover of untainted and immortal beauty," exclaims emerson. "oh, world, what pictures and what harmony are thine!" a great scientist tells us that there is no natural object in the universe which, if seen as the master sees it, coupled with all its infinite meaning, its utility and purpose, is not beautiful. beauty is god's handwriting. just as the most disgusting object, if put under a magnifying glass of sufficient power, would reveal beauties undreamed of, so even the most unlovely environment, the most cruel conditions, will, when viewed through the glass of a trained and disciplined mind, show something of the beautiful and the hopeful. a life that has been rightly trained will extract sweetness from everything; it will see beauty everywhere. situated as we are in a world of beauty and sublimity, we have no right to devote practically all of our energies and to sap all our life forces in the pursuit of selfish aims, in accumulating material wealth, in piling up dollars. it is our duty to treat life as a glory, not as a grind or a purely business transaction, dealing wholly with money and bread-and-butter questions. wherever you are, put beauty into your life. chapter lii education by absorption john wanamaker was once asked to invest in an expedition to recover from the spanish main doubloons which for half a century had lain at the bottom of the sea in sunken frigates. "young men," he replied, "i know of a better expedition than this, right here. near your own feet lie treasures untold; you can have them all by faithful study. "let us not be content to mine the most coal, to make the largest locomotives, to weave the largest quantities of carpets; but, amid the sounds of the pick, the blows of the hammer, the rattle of the looms, and the roar of the machinery, take care that the immortal mechanism of god's own hand--the mind--is still full-trained for the highest and noblest service." the uneducated man is always placed at a great disadvantage. no matter how much natural ability one may have, if he is ignorant, he is discounted. it is not enough to possess ability, it must be made available by mental discipline. we ought to be ashamed to remain in ignorance in a land where the blind, the deaf and dumb, and even cripples and invalids, manage to obtain a good education. many youths throw away little opportunities for self-culture because they cannot see great ones. they let the years slip by without any special effort at self-improvement, until they are shocked in middle life, or later, by waking up to the fact that they are still ignorant of what they ought to know. everywhere we go we see men and women, especially from twenty-five to forty years of age, who are cramped and seriously handicapped by the lack of early training. i often get letters from such people, asking if it is possible for them to educate themselves so late in life. of course it is. there are so many good correspondence schools to-day, and institutions like chautauqua, so many evening schools, lectures, books, libraries, and periodicals, that men and women who are determined to improve themselves have abundant opportunities to do so. while you lament the lack of an early education and think it too late to begin, you may be sure that there are other young men and young women not very far from you who are making great strides in self-improvement, though they may not have half as good an opportunity for it as you have. the first thing to do is to make a resolution, strong, vigorous, and determined, that you are going to be an educated man or woman; that you are not going to go through life humiliated by ignorance; that, if you have been deprived of early advantages, you are going to make up for their loss. resolve that you will no longer be handicapped and placed at a disadvantage for that which you can remedy. you will find the whole world will change to you when you change your attitude toward it. you will be surprised to see how quickly you can very materially improve your mind after you have made a vigorous resolve to do so. go about it with the same determination that you would to make money or to learn a trade. there is a divine hunger in every normal being for self-expansion, a yearning for growth or enlargement. beware of stifling this craving of nature for self-unfoldment. man was made for growth. it is the object, the explanation, of his being. to have an ambition to grow larger and broader every day, to push the horizon of ignorance a little further away, to become a little richer in knowledge, a little wiser, and more of a man--that is an ambition worth while. it is not absolutely necessary that an education should be crowded into a few years of school life. the best-educated people are those who are always learning, always absorbing knowledge from every possible source and at every opportunity. i know young people who have acquired a better education, a finer culture, through a habit of observation, or of carrying a book in the pocket to read at odd moments, or by taking courses in correspondence schools, than many who have gone through college. youths who are quick to catch at new ideas, and who are in frequent contact with superior minds, not only often acquire a personal charm, but even, to a remarkable degree, develop mental power. the world is a great university. from the cradle to the grave we are always in god's great kindergarten, where everything is trying to teach us its lesson; to give us its great secret. some people are always at school, always storing up precious bits of knowledge. everything has a lesson for them. it all depends upon the eye that can see, the mind that can appropriate. very few people ever learn how to use their eyes. they go through the world with a superficial glance at things; their eye pictures are so faint and so dim that details are lost and no strong impression is made on the mind. yet the eye was intended for a great educator. the brain is a prisoner, never getting out to the outside world. it depends upon its five or six servants, the senses, to bring it material, and the larger part of it comes through the eye. the man who has learned the art of seeing things looks with his brain. i know a father who is training his boy to develop his powers of observation. he will send him out upon a street with which he is not familiar for a certain length of time, and then question him on his return to see how many things he has observed. he sends him to the show windows of great stores, to museums and other public places to see how many of the objects he has seen the boy can recall and describe when he gets home. the father says that this practise develops in the boy a habit of _seeing_ things, instead of merely _looking_ at them. when a new student went to the great naturalist, professor agassiz of harvard, he would give him a fish and tell him to look it over for half an hour or an hour, and then describe to him what he saw. after the student thought he had told everything about the fish, the professor would say, "you have not really seen the fish yet. look at it a while longer, and then tell me what you see." he would repeat this several times, until the student developed a capacity for observation. if we go through life like an interrogation point, holding an alert, inquiring mind toward everything, we can acquire great mental wealth, wisdom which is beyond all material riches. ruskin's mind was enriched by the observation of birds, insects, beasts, trees, rivers, mountains, pictures of sunset and landscape, and by memories of the song of the lark and of the brook. his brain held thousands of pictures--of paintings, of architecture, of sculpture, a wealth of material which he reproduced as a joy for all time. everything gave up its lesson, its secret, to his inquiring mind. the habit of absorbing information of all kinds from others is of untold value. a man is weak and ineffective in proportion as he secludes himself from his kind. there is a constant stream of power, a current of forces running to and fro between individuals who come in contact with one another, if they have inquiring minds. we are all giving and taking perpetually when we associate together. the achiever to-day must keep in touch with the society around him; he must put his finger on the pulse of the great busy world and feel its throbbing life. he must be a part of it, or there will be some lack in his life. a single talent which one can use effectively is worth more than ten talents imprisoned by ignorance. education means that knowledge has been assimilated and become a part of the person. it is the ability to express the power within one, to give out what one knows, that measures efficiency and achievement. pent-up knowledge is useless. people who feel their lack of education, and who can afford the outlay, can make wonderful strides in a year by putting themselves under good tutors, who will direct their reading and study along different lines. the danger of trying to educate oneself lies in desultory, disconnected, aimless studying which does not give anything like the benefit to be derived from the pursuit of a definite program for self-improvement. a person who wishes to educate himself at home should get some competent, well-trained person to lay out a plan for him, which can only be effectively done when the adviser knows the vocation, the tastes, and the needs of the would-be student. anyone who aspires to an education, whether in country or city, can find someone to at least guide his studies; some teacher, clergyman, lawyer, or other educated person in the community to help him. there is one special advantage in self-education,--you can adapt your studies to your own particular needs better than you could in school or college. everyone who reaches middle life without an education should first read and study along the line of his own vocation, and then broaden himself as much as possible by reading on other lines. one can take up, alone, many studies, such as history, english literature, rhetoric, drawing, mathematics, and can also acquire by oneself, almost as effectively as with a teacher, a reading knowledge of foreign languages. the daily storing up of valuable information for use later in life, the reading of books that will inspire and stimulate to greater endeavor, the constant effort to try to improve oneself and one's condition in the world, are worth far more than a bank account to a youth. how many girls there are in this country who feel crippled by the fact that they have not been able to go to college. and yet they have the time and the material close at hand for obtaining a splendid education, but they waste their talents and opportunities in frivolous amusements and things which do not count in forceful character-building. it is not such a very great undertaking to get all the essentials of a college course at home, or at least a fair substitute for it. every hour in which one focuses his mind vigorously upon his studies at home may be as beneficial as the same time spent in college. every well-ordered household ought to protect the time of those who desire to study at home. at a fixed hour every evening during the long winter there should be by common consent a quiet period for mental concentration, for what is worth while in mental discipline, a quiet hour uninterrupted by time-thief callers. in thousands of homes where the members are devoted to each other, and should encourage and help each other along, it is made almost impossible for anyone to take up reading, studying, or any exercise for self-improvement. perhaps someone is thoughtless and keeps interrupting the others so that they can not concentrate their minds; or those who have nothing in common with your aims or your earnest life drop in to spend an evening in idle chatter. they have no ideals outside of the bread-and-butter and amusement questions, and do not realize how they are hindering you. there is constant temptation to waste one's evenings and it takes a stout ambition and a firm resolution to separate oneself from a jolly, fun-loving, and congenial family circle, or happy-hearted youthful callers, in order to try to rise above the common herd of unambitious persons who are content to slide along, totally ignorant of everything but the requirements of their particular vocations. a habit of forcing yourself to fix your mind steadfastly and systematically upon certain studies, even if only for periods of a few minutes at a time, is, of itself, of the greatest value. this habit helps one to utilize the odds and ends of time which are unavailable to most people because they have never been trained to concentrate the mind at regular intervals. a good understanding of the possibilities that live in spare moments is a great success asset. the very reputation of always trying to improve yourself, of seizing every opportunity to fit yourself for something better, the reputation of being dead-in-earnest, determined to be somebody and to do something in the world, would be of untold assistance to you. people like to help those who are trying to help themselves. they will throw opportunities in their way. such a reputation is the best kind of capital to start with. one trouble with people who are smarting under the consciousness of deficient education is that they do not realize the immense value of utilizing spare minutes. like many boys who will not save their pennies and small change because they can not see how a fortune could ever grow by the saving, they can not see how a little studying here and there each day will ever amount to a good substitute for a college education. i know a young man who never even attended a high school, and yet educated himself so superbly that he has been offered a professorship in a college. most of his knowledge was gained during his odds and ends of time, while working hard at his vocation. spare time meant something to him. the correspondence schools deserve very great credit for inducing hundreds of thousands of people, including clerks, mill operatives, and employees of all kinds, to take their courses, and thus save for study the odds and ends of time which otherwise would probably be thrown away. we have heard of some most remarkable instances of rapid advancement which these correspondence school students have made by reason of the improvement in their education. many students have reaped a thousand per cent on their educational investment. it has saved them years of drudgery and has shortened wonderfully the road to their goal. wisdom will not open her doors to those who are not willing to pay the price in self-sacrifice, in hard work. her jewels are too precious to scatter before the idle, the ambitionless. the very resolution to redeem yourself from ignorance at any cost is the first great step toward gaining an education. charles wagner once wrote to an american regarding his little boy, "may he know the price of the hours. god bless the rising boy who will do his best, for never losing a bit of the precious and god-given time." there is untold wealth locked up in the long winter evenings and odd moments ahead of you. a great opportunity confronts you. what will you do with it? chapter liii the power of suggestion when plate-glass windows first came into use, rogers, the poet, took a severe cold by sitting with his back to what he supposed was an open window in a dining-room but which was really plate-glass. all the time he was eating he imagined he was taking cold, but he did not dare ask to have the window closed. we little realize how much suggestion has to do with health. in innumerable instances people have been made seriously ill, sometimes fatally so, by others telling them how badly they looked, or suggesting that they had inherited some fatal disease. a prominent new york business man recently told me of an experiment which the friends of a robust young man made upon him. it was arranged that, beginning in the morning, each one should tell him, when he came to work, that he was not looking well, and ask him what the trouble was. they were to say it in a way that would not arouse his suspicions, and note the result. at one o'clock this vigorous young man had been so influenced by the suggestion that he quit work and went home, saying that he was sick. there have been many interesting experiments in the paris hospitals upon patients in a hypnotic trance, wounds being inflicted by mental suggestion. while a cold poker was laid across their limbs, for example, the subjects were told that they were being seared with a red-hot iron, and immediately the flesh would have the appearance of being severely burned. i have known patients to collapse completely at the sight of surgical instruments in the operating room. i have heard them say that they could actually feel the cutting of the knife long before they took the anesthetic. patients are often put to sleep by the injection into their arms of a weak solution of salt and water, which they are led to think is morphia. every physician of large experience knows that he can relieve or produce pain simply by suggestion. many a physician sends patients to some famous resort not so much for the waters or the air as for the miracle which the complete change of thought effects. even quacks and charlatans are able, by stimulating the hope of those who are sick, to produce marvelous cures. the mental attitude of the nurse has much to do with the recovery of a sick person. if she holds the constant suggestion that the patient will recover; if she stoutly affirms it, it will be a wonderful rallying help to the forces which make for life. if, on the other hand, she holds the conviction that he is going to die, she will communicate her belief, and this will consequently depress the patient. we are under the influence of suggestion every moment of our waking lives. everything we see, hear, feel, is a suggestion which produces a result corresponding to its own nature. its subtle power seems to reach and affect the very springs of life. the power of suggestion on expectant minds is often little less than miraculous. an invalid with a disappointed ambition, who thinks he has been robbed of his chances in life and who has suffered for years, becomes all wrought up over some new remedy which is advertised to do marvels. he is in such an expectant state of mind that he is willing to make almost any sacrifice to obtain the wonderful remedy; and when he receives it, he is in such a receptive mood that he responds quickly, and thinks it is the medicine which has worked the magic. faith in one's physician is a powerful curative suggestion. many patients, especially those who are ignorant, believe that the physician holds the keys of life and death. they have such implicit confidence in him that what he tells them has powerful influence upon them for good or ill. the possibilities of healing power in the affirmative suggestion that the patient is going to get well are tremendous. the coming physician will constantly reassure his patient verbally, often vehemently, that he is absolutely bound to recover; he will tell him that there is an omnipotent healing power within him, and that he gets a hint of this in the power which heals a wound, and which refreshes, renews, and recreates him during sleep. it is almost impossible for a patient to get well while people are constantly reminding him how ill he looks. his will-power together with all his physical recuperative forces could not counteract the effect of the reiteration of the sick suggestion. many a sick-room is made a chamber of horrors because of the depressing suggestion which pervades it. instead of being filled with sunshine, good cheer, and encouragement, it is often darkened, god's beautiful sunshine shut out; ventilation is poor; everybody has a sad, anxious face; medicine bottles and surgical apparatus are spread about; everything is calculated to engender disease rather than to encourage health and inspire hope. why, there is enough depressing suggestion in such a place to make a perfectly well person ill! what people need is encouragement, uplift, hope. their natural resisting powers should be strengthened and developed. instead of telling a friend in trouble, despair, or suffering that you feel very sorry for him, try to pull him out of his slough of despond, to arouse the latent recuperative, restorative energies within him. picture to him his god image, his better self, which, because it is a part of the great immortal principle, is never sick and never out of harmony, can never be discordant or suffer. right suggestion would prevent a great majority of our divorces. great infatuation for another has been overcome by suggestion in numerous instances. many women have been thus cured of a foolish love for impossible men, as in the case of girls who have become completely infatuated with the husband of a friend. fallen women have been entirely reclaimed, have been brought to see their better, finer, diviner selves through the power of suggestion. the suggestion which comes from a sweet, beautiful, charming character is contagious and sometimes revolutionizes a whole neighborhood. we all know how the suggestion of heroic deeds, great records, has aroused the ambitions and stirred the energies of others to do likewise. many a life has turned upon a few moments' conversation, upon a little encouragement, upon the suggestion of an inspiring book. many men who have made their impress upon history, who have left civilization a little higher, accomplished what they did largely because their ambition was aroused by suggestion; some book or some individual gave them the first glimpse of their possibility and enabled them to feel for the first time a thrill of the power within them. the suggestion of inferiority is one of the most difficult to overcome. who can ever estimate the damage to humanity and the lives wrecked through it! i know men whose whole careers have been practically ruined through the constant suggestion, while they were children, that they would never amount to anything. this suggestion of inferiority has made them so timid and shy and so uncertain of themselves that they have never been able to assert their individuality. i knew a college student whose rank in his class entitled him to the highest recognition, whose life was nearly ruined by suggestion; he overheard some of his classmates say that he had no more dignity than a goose, and always made a very poor appearance; that under no circumstances would they think of electing him as class orator, because he would make such an unfortunate impression upon an audience. he had unusual ability, but his extreme diffidence, timidity, shyness, made him appear awkward and sometimes almost foolish,--all of which he would undoubtedly have overgrown, had he not overheard the criticism of his classmates. he thought it meant that he was mentally inferior, and this belief kept him back ever after. what a subtle power there is in the suggestion of the human voice! what emotions are aroused in us by its different modulations! how we laugh and cry, become indignant, revengeful, our feelings leaping from one extreme to the other, according to the passion-freighted or love-freighted words which reach our ear; how we sit spell-bound, with bated breath, before the great orator who is playing upon the emotions of his audience, as a musician plays upon the strings of his harp, now bringing out tears, now smiles, now pathos, now indignation! the power of his word-painting makes a wonderful impression. a thousand listeners respond to whatever he suggests. the voice is a great betrayer of our feelings and emotions. it is tender when conveying love to our friends; cold, selfish, and without a particle of sympathy during business transactions when we are trying to get the best of a bargain. how we are attracted by a gentle voice, and repulsed by one that is harsh! we all know how susceptible even dogs and horses are to the different modulations of the human voice. they know the tone of affection; they are reassured and respond to it. but they are stricken with fear and trembling at the profanity of the master's rage. some natures are powerfully affected by certain musical strains; they are immediately lifted out of the deepest depression and despondency into ecstasy. nothing has touched them; they have just merely felt a sensation through the auditory nerve which aroused and awakened into activity certain brain cells and changed their whole mental attitude. music has a decided influence upon the blood pressure in the arteries, and upon the respiration. we all know how it soothes, refreshes, and rests us when jaded and worried. when its sweet harmonies fill the soul, all cares, worries, and anxieties fly away. george eliot, in "the mill on the floss," gives voice to what some of us have often, doubtless, felt, when under its magic spell. "certain strains of music," she says, "affect me so strangely that i can never hear them without changing my whole attitude of mind for a time, and if the effect would last, i might be capable of heroism." latimer, ridley, and hundreds of others went to the stake actually rejoicing, the spectators wondering at the smile of ineffable peace which illumined their faces above the fierce glare of the flames, at the hymns of praise and thanksgiving heard amid the roar of crackling fagots. "no, we don't get sick," said an actor, "because we can't get sick. patti and a few other stars could afford that luxury, but to the majority of us it is denied. it is a case of 'must' with us; and although there have been times when, had i been at home, or a private man, i could have taken to my bed with as good a right to be sick as any one ever had, i have not done so, and have worn off the attack through sheer necessity. it's no fiction that will power is the best of tonics, and theatrical people understand that they must keep a good stock of it always on hand." a tight-rope walker was so ill with lumbago that he could scarcely move. but when he was advertised to appear, he summoned all his will power, and traversed the rope several times with a wheelbarrow, according to the program. when through he doubled up and had to be carried to his bed, "as stiff as a frozen frog." somewhere i have read a story of a poor fellow who went to hang himself, but finding by chance a pot of money, he flung away the rope and went hurriedly home. he who hid the gold, when he missed it, hanged himself with the rope which the other man had left. success is a great tonic, and failure a great depressant. the successful attainment of what the heart longs for, as a rule, improves health and happiness. generally we not only find our treasure where our heart is, but our health also. who has not noticed men of indifferent health, perhaps even invalids, and men who lacked energy and determination, suddenly become roused to a realization of unthought-of powers and unexpected health upon attaining some signal success? the same is sometimes true of persons in poor health who have suddenly been thrown into responsible positions by death of parents or relatives, or who, upon sudden loss of property, have been forced to do what they had thought impossible before. an education is a health tonic. delicate boys and girls, whom parents and friends thought entirely too slender to bear the strain, often improve in health in school and college. other things equal, intelligent, cultured, educated people enjoy the best health. there is for the same reason a very intimate relation between health and morals. a house divided against itself can not stand. intemperance, violation of chastity, and vice of all kinds are discordant notes in the human economy which tend to destroy the great harmony of life. the body is but a servant of the mind. a well-balanced, cultured, and well-disciplined intellect reacts very powerfully upon the physique, and tends to bring it into harmony with itself. on the other hand, a weak, vacillating, one-sided, unsteady, and ignorant mind will ultimately bring the body into sympathy with it. every pure and uplifting thought, every noble aspiration for the good and the true, every longing of the heart for a higher and better life, every lofty purpose and unselfish endeavor, reacts upon the body, makes it stronger, more harmonious, and more beautiful. "as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." the body is molded and fashioned by the thought. if a young woman were to try to make herself beautiful, she would not begin by contemplating ugliness, or dwelling upon the monstrosities of vice, for their hideous images would be reproduced in her own face and manners. nor would she try to make herself graceful by practising awkwardness. we can never gain health by contemplating disease any more than we can reach perfection by dwelling upon imperfection, or harmony through discord. we should _keep a high ideal of health and harmony constantly before the mind_; and we should fight every discordant thought and every enemy of harmony as we would fight a temptation to crime. _never affirm or repeat about your health what you do not wish to be true_. do not dwell upon your ailments nor study your symptoms. never allow yourself to think that you are not complete master of yourself. stoutly affirm your own superiority over bodily ills, and do not acknowledge yourself the slave of an inferior power. the mind has undoubted power to preserve and sustain physical youth and beauty, to keep the body strong and healthy, to renew life, and to preserve it from decay, many years longer than it does now. the longest lived men and women have, as a rule, been those who have attained great mental and moral development. they have lived in the upper region of a higher life, beyond the reach of much of the jar, the friction, and the discords which weaken and shatter most lives. many nervous diseases have been cured by music, while others have been greatly retarded in their development by it. anything which keeps the mind off our troubles tends to restore harmony throughout the body. it is a great thing to form a habit, acquire a reputation, of always talking up and never down, of seeing good things and never bad, of encouraging and never discouraging, and of always being optimistic about everything. "send forth loving, stainless, and happy thoughts, and blessings will flow into your hands; send forth hateful, impure, and unhappy thoughts, and curses will rain down upon you and fear and unrest will wait upon your pillow." there is no one principle that is abused to-day in the business world more than the law of suggestion. everywhere in this country we see the pathetic victims of those who make a business of overpowering and controlling weaker minds. thus is suggestion carried even to the point of hypnotism as is illustrated by unscrupulous salesmen and promoters. if a person steals the property of another he is imprisoned, but if he hypnotizes his victim by projecting his own strong trained thought into the innocent, untrained, unsuspecting victim's mind, overcomes his objections, and induces him voluntarily to buy the thing he does not want and can not afford to buy, perhaps impoverishing himself for years so that he and his family suffer for the necessities of life, no law can stop him. it would be better and should be considered less criminal for a man to go into a home and steal articles of value than to overpower the minds of the heads of poor families and hypnotize them into signing contracts for what they have really no right and are not able to buy. solicitors often command big salaries because of their wonderful personal magnetism and great powers of persuasion. the time will come when many of these "marvelous persuaders," with long heads cunningly trained, traveling about the country, hypnotizing their subjects and robbing them of their hard-earned money, will be regarded as criminals. on the other hand, suggestion is used for practical good in business life. it is now a common practise in many concerns to put in the hands of their employees inspiring books and to republish in pamphlet form special articles from magazines and periodicals which are calculated to stir the employees to new endeavor, to arouse them to greater action and make them more ambitious to do bigger things. schools of salesmanship are using very extensively the psychology of business and are giving all sorts of illustrations which will spur men to greater efficiency. the up-to-date merchant shows his knowledge of the power of suggestion for customers by his fascinating show-windows and display of merchandise. the restaurant keeper knows the power of suggestion of delicious viands upon the appetite, and we often see tempting dishes and articles of food displayed in the window or in the restaurant where the eye will carry the magic suggestion to the brain. a person who has been reared in luxury and refinement would be so affected by the suggestion of uncleanliness and disorderliness in a cheap bowery eating-place that he would lose the keenest appetite. if, however, the same food, cooked in the same way, could be transferred to one of the luxurious broadway restaurants and served upon delicate china and spotless linen with entrancing music, the entire condition would be reversed. the new suggestion would completely reverse the mental and physical conditions. the suggestion of the ugly suspicions of a whole nation so overpowered dreyfus during his trial that it completely neutralized his individuality, overbalanced his consciousness of innocence. his whole manner was that of a guilty person, so that many of his friends actually believed him guilty. after the verdict, in the presence of a vast throng which had gathered to see him publicly disgraced, when his buttons and other insignia of office were torn from his uniform, his sword taken from him and broken, and the people were hissing, jeering, and hurling all sorts of anathemas at him, no criminal could have exhibited more evidence of guilt. the radiations of the guilty suggestion from millions of people completely over-powered his own mentality, his individuality, and, although he was absolutely innocent, his appearance and manner gave every evidence of the treason he was accused of. there is no suggestion so fatal, so insinuating, as that of impurity. vast multitudes of people have fallen victims to this vicious, subtle, fatal poison. who can depict the tragedies which have been caused by immoral, impure suggestion conveyed to minds which were absolutely pure, which have never before felt the taint of contamination? the subtle poisoning infused through the system makes the entrance of the succeeding vicious suggestions easier and easier, until finally the whole moral system becomes saturated with the poison. there is a wonderful illustration of the power of suggestion in the experience of what are called the stigmatists. these nuns who for years concentrated all of their efforts in trying to live the life that christ did, to enter into all of his sufferings, so completely concentrated all of their energies upon the christ suffering, and so vividly pictured the wounds in their imaginations, that their thought really changed the chemical and physical structure of the tissues and they actually reproduced the nail marks in the hands and feet and the spear wound as in the side of the crucified christ. these nuns devoted their lives to this reproduction of the physical evidences of the crucifixion. the fixing of the mind for a long period of time upon the wounds of the hands, feet, and the side, were so vivid, so concentrated, that the picture was made real in their own flesh. in addition to the mental picturing, they kept constantly before them the physical picture of the crucified christ, which made their mental picture all the more vivid and concentrated. the religious ecstasy was so intense that they could actually see christ being crucified, and this mental attitude was outpictured in the flesh. chapter liv the curse of worry this monster dogs us from the cradle to the grave. there is no occasion so sacred but it is there. unbidden it comes to the wedding and the funeral alike. it is at every reception, every banquet; it occupies a seat at every table. no human intellect can estimate the unutterable havoc and ruin wrought by worry. it has ever forced genius to do the work of mediocrity; it has caused more failures, more broken hearts, more blasted hopes, than any other one cause since the dawn of the world. _did you ever hear of any good coming to any human being from worry_? did it ever help anybody to better his condition? does it not always--everywhere--do just the opposite by impairing the health, exhausting the vitality, lessening efficiency? what have not men done under the pressure of worry! they have plunged into all sorts of vice; have become drunkards, drug fiends; have sold their very souls in their efforts to escape this monster. think of the homes which it has broken up; the ambitions it has ruined; the hopes and prospects it has blighted! think of the suicide victims of this demon! if there is any devil in existence, is it not worry, with all its attendant progeny of evils? yet, in spite of all the tragic evils that follow in its wake, a visitor from another world would get the impression that worry is one of our dearest, most helpful friends, so closely do we hug it to ourselves and so loath are we to part from it. is it not unaccountable that people who know perfectly well that success and happiness both depend on keeping themselves in condition to get the most possible out of their energies should harbor in their minds the enemy of this very success and happiness? is it not strange that they should form this habit of anticipating evils that will probably never come, when they know that anxiety and fretting will not only rob them of peace of mind and strength and ability to do their work, but also of precious years of life? no man can utilize his normal power who dissipates his nervous energy in useless anxiety. nothing will sap one's vitality and blight one's ambition or detract from one's real power in the world more than the worrying habit. work kills no one, but worry has killed vast multitudes. it is not the doing things which injures us so much as the dreading to do them--not only performing them mentally over and over again, but anticipating something disagreeable in their performance. many of us approach an unpleasant task in much the same condition as a runner who begins his start such a long distance away that by the time he reaches his objective point--the ditch or the stream which is to test his agility--he is too exhausted to jump across. worry not only saps vitality and wastes energy, but it also seriously affects the quality of one's work. it cuts down ability. a man can not get the highest quality of efficiency into his work when his mind is troubled. the mental faculties must have perfect freedom before they will give out their best. a troubled brain can not think clearly, vigorously, and logically. the attention can not be concentrated with anything like the same force when the brain cells are poisoned with anxiety as when they are fed by pure blood and are clean and unclouded. the blood of chronic worriers is vitiated with poisonous chemical substances and broken-down tissues, according to professor elmer gates and other noted scientists, who have shown that the passions and the harmful emotions cause actual chemical changes in the secretions and generate poisonous substances in the body which are fatal to healthy growth and action. one of the worst forms of worry is the brooding over failure. it blights the ambition, deadens the purpose and defeats the very object the worrier has in view. some people have the unfortunate habit of brooding over their past lives, castigating themselves for their shortcomings and mistakes, until their whole vision is turned backward instead of forward, and they see everything in a distorted light, because they are looking only on the shadow side. the longer the unfortunate picture which has caused trouble remains in the mind, the more thoroughly it becomes imbedded there, and the more difficult it is to remove it. are we not convinced that a power beyond our control runs the universe, that every moment of worry detracts from our success capital and makes our failure more probable; that every bit of anxiety and fretfulness leaves its mark on the body, interrupts the harmony of our physical and mental well-being, and cripples efficiency, and that this condition is at war with our highest endeavor? is it not strange that people will persist in allowing little worries, petty vexations, and unnecessary frictions to grind life away at such a fearful rate that old age stares them in the face in middle life? look at the women who are shriveled and shrunken and aged at thirty, not because of the hard work they have done, or the real troubles they have had, but because of habitual fretting, which has helped nobody, but has brought discord and unhappiness to their homes. somewhere i read of a worrying woman who made a list of possible unfortunate events and happenings which she felt sure would come to pass and be disastrous to her happiness and welfare. the list was lost, and to her amazement, when she recovered it, a long time afterwards, she found that not a single unfortunate prediction in the whole catalogue of disasters had been realized. is not this a good suggestion for worriers? write down everything which you think is going to turn out badly, and then put the list aside. you will be surprised to see what a small percentage of the doleful things ever come to pass. it is a pitiable thing to see vigorous men and women, who have inherited godlike qualities and who bear the impress of divinity, wearing anxious faces and filled with all sorts of fear and uncertainty, worrying about yesterday, to-day, to-morrow--everything imaginable. "fear runs like a baleful thread through the whole web of life from beginning to end," says dr. holcomb. "we are born into the atmosphere of fear and dread, and the mother who bore us had lived in the same atmosphere for weeks and months before we were born. we are afraid of our parents, afraid of our teachers, afraid of our playmates, afraid of ghosts, afraid of rules and regulations and punishments, afraid of the doctor, the dentist, the surgeon. our adult life is a state of chronic anxiety, which is fear in a milder form. we are afraid of failure in business, afraid of disappointments and mistakes, afraid of enemies, open or concealed; afraid of poverty, afraid of public opinion, afraid of accidents, of sickness, of death, and unhappiness after death. man is like a haunted animal from the cradle to the grave, the victim of real or imaginary fears, not only his own, but those reflected upon him from the superstitions, self-deceptions, sensory illusions, false beliefs, and concrete errors of the whole human race, past and present." most of us are foolish children, afraid of our shadows, so handicapped in a thousand ways that we can not get efficiency into our life work. a man who is filled with fear is not a real man. he is a puppet, a mannikin, an apology of a man. quit fearing things that may never happen, just as you would quit any bad practise which has caused you suffering. fill your mind with courage, hope, and confidence. do not wait until fear thoughts become intrenched in your mind and your imagination. do not dwell upon them. apply the antidote instantly, and the enemies will flee. there is no fear so great or intrenched so deeply in the mind that it can not be neutralized or entirely eradicated by its opposite. the opposite suggestion will kill it. once dr. chalmers was riding on a stage-coach beside the driver, and he noticed that john kept hitting the off leader a severe crack with his whip. when he asked him why he did this, john answered: "away yonder there is a white stone; that off leader is afraid of that stone; so by the crack of my whip and the pain in his legs i want to get his mind off from it." dr. chalmers went home, elaborated the idea, and wrote "the expulsive power of a new affection." you must drive out fear by putting a new idea into the mind. fear, in any of its expressions, like worry or anxiety, can not live an instant in your mind in the presence of the opposite thought, the image of courage, fearlessness, confidence, hope, self-assurance, self-reliance. fear is a consciousness of weakness. it is only when you doubt your ability to cope with the thing you dread that fear is possible. fear of disease, even, comes from a consciousness that you will not be able to successfully combat it. during an epidemic of a dreaded contagious disease, people who are especially susceptible and full of fear become panic-stricken through the cumulative effect of hearing the subject talked about and discussed on every hand and the vivid pictures which come from reading the newspapers. their minds (as in the case of yellow fever) become full of images of the disease, of its symptoms--black vomit, delirium,--and of death, mourning, and funerals. if you never accomplish anything else in life, get rid of worry. there are no greater enemies of harmony than little anxieties and petty cares. do not flies aggravate a nervous horse more than his work? do not little naggings, constantly touching him with the whip, or jerking at the reins, fret and worry him much more than the labor of drawing the carriage? it is the little pin-pricks, the petty annoyances of our everyday life, that mar our comfort and happiness and rob us of more strength than the great troubles which we nerve ourselves to meet. it is the perpetual scolding and fault-finding of an irritable man or woman which ruins the entire peace and happiness of many a home. the most deplorable waste of energy in human life is caused by the fatal habit of anticipating evil, of fearing what the future has in store for us, and under no circumstances can the fear or worry be justified by the situation, for it is always an imaginary one, utterly groundless and without foundation. what we fear is invariably something that has not yet happened. it does not exist; hence is not a reality. if you are actually suffering from a disease you have feared, then fear only aggravates every painful feature of your illness and makes its fatal issue more probable. the fear habit shortens life, for it impairs all the physiological processes. its power is shown by the fact that it actually changes the chemical composition of the secretions of the body. fear victims not only age prematurely but they also die prematurely. all work done when one is suffering from a sense of fear or foreboding has little efficiency. fear strangles originality, daring, boldness; it kills individuality, and weakens all the mental processes. great things are never done under a sense of fear of some impending danger. fear always indicates weakness, the presence of cowardice. what a slaughterer of years, what a sacrificer of happiness and ambitions, what a miner of careers this monster has been! the bible says, "a broken spirit drieth the bones." it is well known that mental depression--melancholy--will check very materially the glandular secretions of the body and literally dry up the tissues. fear depresses normal mental action, and renders one incapable of acting wisely in an emergency, for no one can think clearly and act wisely when paralyzed by fear. when a man becomes melancholy and discouraged about his affairs, when he is filled with fear that he is going to fail, and is haunted by the specter of poverty and a suffering family, before he realizes it, he attracts the very thing he dreads, and the prosperity is crushed out of his business. but he is a _mental_ failure first. if, instead of giving up to his fear, a man would _persist in keeping prosperity in his mind_, assume a hopeful, optimistic attitude, and would conduct his business in a systematic, economical, far-sighted manner, actual failure would be comparatively rare. but when a man becomes discouraged, when he loses heart and grip, and becomes panic-stricken and a victim of worry, he is not in a position to make the effort which is absolutely necessary to bring victory, and there is a shrinkage all along the line. there is not a single redeeming feature about worry or any of its numerous progeny. it is always, everywhere, an unmitigated curse. although there is no reality in fear, no truth behind it, yet everywhere we see people who are slaves to this monster of the imagination. chapter lv take a pleasant thought to bed with you shut off your mental steam when you quit work. lock up your business when you lock up your office or factory at night. don't drag it into your home to mar your evening or to distress your sleep. you can not afford to allow the enemies of your peace and happiness to etch their black pictures deeper and deeper into your consciousness. many people lie down to sleep as the camels lie down in the desert, with their packs still on their backs. they do not seem to know how to lay down their burdens, and their minds go on working a large part of the night. if you are inclined to worry during the night, to keep your mental faculties on the strain, taut, it will be a good plan for you to have a bow in your bedroom and unstring it every night as a reminder that you should also unstring your mind so that it will not lose its springing power. the indian knows enough to unstring his bow just as soon as he uses it so that it will not lose its resilience. if a man who works hard all day uses his brain a large part of the night, doing his work over and over again, he gets up in the morning weary, jaded. instead of having a clear, vigorous brain capable of powerfully focusing his mind, he approaches his work with all his standards down, and with about as much chance of winning as a race horse who has been driven all night before a contest would have. not even a man with the will of a napoleon could win out under such conditions. it is of the utmost importance to stop the grinding, rasping process in the brain at night and to keep from wearing life away and wasting one's precious vitality. many people become slaves to night worry. they get into a chronic habit of thinking after they retire--especially of contemplating their troubles and trials,--and it is a very difficult habit to break. it is fundamental to sound health to make it a rule never to discuss business troubles and things that vex and irritate one at night, especially just before retiring, for whatever is dominant in the mind when one falls asleep continues its influence on the nervous structure long into the night. some people age more at night than during the daytime, when, it would appear, if they must worry at all, the reverse ought to be true. when hard at work during the day they do not have much time to think of their ailments, their business troubles, their misfortunes. but when they retire, the whole brood of troubling thoughts and worry ghosts fill the mind with horrors. they grow older instead of younger, as they would under the influence of sound, refreshing sleep. mental discord saps vitality, lessens courage, shortens life. it does not pay to indulge in violent temper, corroding thoughts, mental discord in any form. life is too short, too precious, to spend any part of it in such unprofitable, soul-racking, health-destroying business. the imagination is particularly active at night, and all unpleasant, disagreeable things seem a great deal worse then than in the day, because in the silence and darkness imagination magnifies everything. we have all dreamed of the evening's experience, after we went to sleep: perhaps it is the refrain of a song or the intense situation in a play which we live over again. this shows how powerful impressions are; how important it is never to retire to rest in a fit of temper, or in an ugly, unpleasant mood. we should get ourselves into mental harmony, should become serene and quiet before retiring, and, if possible, lie down smiling, no matter how long it may take to secure this condition. never retire with a frown on your brow; with a perplexed, troubled, vexed expression. smooth out the wrinkles; drive away all the enemies of your peace of mind, and never allow yourself to go to sleep with critical, cruel, jealous thoughts toward any one. it is bad enough to feel inimical toward others when under severe provocation or in a hot temper, but you certainly can not afford deliberately to continue this state of mind after the provocation has ceased. the wear and tear upon your nervous system and your health takes too much out of you. be at peace with all the world at least once every twenty-four hours. you can not afford to allow the enemies of your happiness and your manhood or womanhood to etch their miserable images deeper and deeper into your life and character as you sleep. many of us with crotchety, sour dispositions and quick tempers sometimes have very hard work to be decent in our treatment of others. but we can, at least when we are alone, and away from the people who nettle and antagonize us, forget injuries, quit harboring unpleasant thoughts and hard feelings toward others. it is a great thing to form a habit of forgetting and forgiving before going to sleep, of clearing the mind of all happiness and success enemies. if we have been impulsive, foolish, or wicked during the day in our treatment of others; if we have been holding a vicious, ugly, revengeful, jealous attitude toward others, it is a good time to wipe off the slate and start anew. it is a blessed thing to put into practise st. paul's exhortation to the ephesians: "let not the sun go down upon your wrath." if you wish to wake up feeling refreshed and renewed, you simply must retire in a happy, forgiving, cheerful mood. if you go to sleep in an ugly mood or while worrying or depressed, you will wake up tired, exhausted and with no elasticity or spring in your brain or buoyancy in your spirits, for the blood poisoned by worry, by discordant mood, is incapable of refreshing the brain. if you have a grudge against another, forget it, wipe it out, erase it completely, and substitute a charitable love thought, a kindly, generous thought, before you fall asleep. if you make a habit of clearing the mind every night of its enemies, of driving them all out before you go to sleep, your slumber will be undisturbed by hideous dreams and you will rise refreshed, renewed. clean your mental house before retiring. throw out everything that causes you pain, everything that is disagreeable, undesirable; all unkind thoughts of anger, hatred, jealousy, all selfish, uncharitable thoughts. do not allow them to print their black hideous pictures upon your mind. and when you have let go of all the rubbish and have swept and dusted and garnished your mind, fill it full of the pleasantest, sweetest, happiest, most helpful, encouraging, uplifting thought-pictures possible. an evening-happiness bath ought to be the custom in every home. a bath of love and good-will toward every living creature is more important than a water bath. we should fall asleep in the most cheerful, the happiest possible frame of mind. our minds should be filled with lofty thoughts--with thoughts of love and of helpfulness--thoughts which will continue to create that which is helpful and uplifting, which will renew the soul and help us to awake in the morning refreshed and in superb condition for the day's work. if you have any difficulty in banishing unpleasant or torturing thoughts, force yourself to read some good, inspiring book--something that will smooth out your wrinkles and put you in a happy mood; something that will make you see the real grandeur and beauty of life; something that will make you feel ashamed of petty meannesses and narrow, uncharitable thoughts. after a little practise, you will be surprised to see how quickly and completely you can change your whole mental attitude so that you will face life the right way before you fall asleep. you will be surprised also to find how wonderfully serene, calm, refreshed, and rejuvenated you will be when you wake in the morning, and how much easier it will be to start right, and wear a smile that won't come off during the day, than it was when you went to bed in an ill-humored, worrying or ugly mood, or full of ungenerous, uncharitable thoughts. unless you tune your mind to harmony for sleep, there will be a constant strain upon the nervous system. even if you do manage to go to sleep with a troubled mind, the brain keeps on working and you will wake up exhausted. we should take special pains to erase the memory of all unfortunate experiences of the day, all domestic business or professional troubles and anxieties, in order to retire in a placid, peaceful, harmonious state of mind; not only because of the necessity of rising refreshed and invigorated in the morning, but because the character and the disposition are affected by the condition of the mind upon falling asleep. mental discords not only prevent sound sleep but also leave in the blood poisonous waste from the chemical changes which in turn dulls and impairs the brain action. many business men suffer so much torture at night that some of them actually dread to retire because of the long, tedious, wakeful hours. financial troubles are particularly exaggerated at night; and even many optimists suffer more or less from pessimism then. business men ought to know how to turn off brain power when they are not using it. they would not think of leaving or closing their factories at night without turning off the machinery power. why should they then attempt to go to sleep without turning off their mental power? it is infinitely important to one's health to turn off mental power when not actually using it to produce something. when you get through your regular day's work, why allow your precious energy to dribble away in little worries? why carry your business home, take it to bed with you, and waste your life forces in ineffective thinking? why permit a great leakage of mental energy and a waste of life-force? you must learn to shut off mental steam when you quit work. many men use up almost as much mental energy in the evening and in a restless night as during their actual work in the day. refresh, renew, rejuvenate yourself by play and pleasant recreation. play as hard as you work; have a jolly good time, and then you will get that refreshing, invigorating sleep which gives an overplus of energy, a buoyancy of spirit which will make you eager to plunge into the next day's work. no matter how tired or busy you are, or how late you retire, make it a rule never to go to sleep without erasing every unfortunate impression, every disagreeable experience, every unkind thought, every particle of envy, jealousy, and selfishness, from the mind. _just imagine that the words "harmony," "good cheer," and "good will to every living creature" are written all over your sleeping room in letters of light_. people who have learned the art of putting themselves into harmony with all the world before they retire, of never harboring a thought of jealousy, hatred, envy, revenge, or ill-will of any kind against any human being, get a great deal more out of sleep and retain their youth much longer and are much more efficient than those who have the habit of reviewing their disagreeable experiences and thinking about all their troubles and trials in the night. make it a rule to put the mind into harmony and a good-will attitude when retiring, and you will be surprised to see how much fresher, younger, stronger and more normal you will become. i know people whose lives have been completely revolutionized by this experiment of putting themselves in tune before going to sleep. formerly they were in the habit of retiring in a bad mood; tired, discouraged over anticipated evils and all sorts of worries and anxieties. they would worry over the bad things in their business, the unfortunate conditions in their affairs, and their mistakes, and would discuss their misfortunes at night with their wives. the result was that their minds were in an upset condition when they fell asleep, and these melancholy, black, ugly pictures, so exaggerated in awful vividness in the stillness, became etched deeper and deeper into their minds, and they awoke in the morning weary and exhausted, instead of feeling, as every one should, like a newly-made creature with fresh ambition and invigorated determination. form the habit of making a call upon the great within of you before retiring. leave the message of up-lift, of self-betterment, self-enlargement, which you yearn for and long to realize but do not know how to bring about. registering this call, this demand for something higher and nobler, in your subconsciousness, _putting it right up to yourself_, will work like a leaven during the night; and after a while all the building forces within you will help to unite in furthering your aim; in helping you to realize your vision. there are marvelous possibilities for health building, success building, happiness building, in the preparation of the mind before going to sleep by impressing, declaring, picturing as vividly as possible our ideals of ourselves, what we would like to become and what we long to accomplish. you will be surprised to see how quickly that wonderful force in your subjective self will begin to shape the pattern, to copy the model which you thus give it. in these great interior creative, restorative forces lies the great secret of life. blessed is he who findeth it. chapter lvi the conquest of poverty no one can become prosperous while he really expects or half expects to remain poor. we tend to get what we expect, and to expect nothing is to get nothing. when every step you take is on the road to failure, how can you hope to arrive at the success goal? prosperity begins in the mind and is impossible while the mental attitude is hostile to it. it is fatal to work for one thing and to expect something else, because everything must be created mentally first and is bound to follow its mental pattern. most people do not face life in the right way. they neutralize a large part of their effort because their mental attitude does not correspond with their endeavor, so that while working for one thing they are really expecting something else. they discourage, drive away, the very thing they are pursuing by holding the wrong mental attitude towards it. they do not approach their work with that assurance of victory which attracts, which forces results, that determination and confidence which knows no defeat. to be ambitious for wealth and yet always expecting to be poor, to be always doubting your ability to get what you long for, is like trying to reach east by traveling west. there is no philosophy which will help a man to succeed when he is always doubting his ability to do so, and thus attracting failure. the man who would succeed must think success, must think upward. he must think progressively, creatively, constructively, inventively, and, above all, optimistically. you will go in the direction in which you face. if you look towards poverty, towards lack, you will go that way. if, on the other hand, you turn squarely around and refuse to have anything to do with poverty,--to think it,--live it, or recognize it--you will then begin to make progress towards the goal of plenty. as long as you radiate doubt and discouragement, you will be a failure. if you want to get away from poverty, you must keep your mind in a productive, creative condition. in order to do this you must think confident, cheerful, creative thoughts. the model must precede the statue. _you must see a new world before you can live in it_. if the people who are down in the world, who are side-tracked, who believe that their opportunity has gone forever, that they can never get on their feet again, only knew the power of reversal of their thought, they could easily get a new start. if you would attract good fortune you must get rid of doubt. as long as that stands between you and your ambition, it will be a bar that will cut you off. you must have faith. no man can make a fortune while he is convinced that he can't. the "i can't" philosophy has wrecked more careers than almost anything else. confidence is the magic key that unlocks the door of supply. i never knew a man to be successful who was always talking about business being bad. the habit of looking down, talking down, is fatal to advancement. the creator has bidden every man to look up, not down. he made him to climb, not to grovel. _there is no providence which keeps a man in poverty, or in painful or distressing circumstances_. the creator never put vast multitudes of people on this earth to scramble for a limited supply, as though he were not able to furnish enough for all. there is nothing in this world which men desire and struggle for, and that is good for them, of which there is not enough for everybody. take the thing we need most--food. we have not begun to scratch the possibilities of the food supply in america. the state of texas could supply food, home, and luxuries to every man, woman, and child on this continent. as for clothing, there is material enough in the country to clothe all its inhabitants in purple and fine linen. we have not begun yet to touch the possibilities of our clothing and dress supply. the same is true of all of the other necessities and luxuries. we are still on the outer surface of abundance, a surface covering kingly supplies for every individual on the globe. [illustration: william mckinley] when the whale ships in new bedford harbor and other ports were rotting in idleness, because the whale was becoming extinct, americans became alarmed lest we should dwell in darkness; but the oil wells came to our rescue with abundant supply. and then, when we began to doubt that this source would last, science gave us the electric light. there is building material enough to give every person on the globe a mansion finer than any that a vanderbilt or rothschild possesses. it was intended that we should all be rich and happy; that we should have an abundance of all the good things the heart can crave. we should live in the realization that there is an abundance of power where our present power comes from, and that we can draw upon this great source for as much as we can use. there is something wrong when the children of the king of kings go about like sheep hounded by a pack of wolves. there is something wrong when those who have inherited infinite supply are worrying about their daily bread; are dogged by fear and anxiety so that they can not take any peace; that their lives are one battle with want; that they are always under the harrow of worry, always anxious. there is something wrong when people are so worried and absorbed in making a living that they can not make a life. we were made for happiness, to express joy and gladness, to be prosperous. the trouble with us is that we do not trust the law of infinite supply, but close our natures so that abundance cannot flow to us. in other words, we do not obey the law of attraction. we keep our minds so pinched and our faith in ourselves so small, so narrow, that we strangle the inflow of supply. abundance follows a law as strict as that of mathematics. if we obey it, we get the flow; if we strangle it, we cut it off. the trouble is not in the supply; there is abundance awaiting everyone on the globe. prosperity begins in the mind, and is impossible with a mental attitude which is hostile to it. we can not attract opulence mentally by a poverty-stricken attitude which is driving away what we long for. it is fatal to work for one thing and to expect something else. no matter how much one may long for prosperity, a miserable, poverty-stricken, mental attitude will close all the avenues to it. the weaving of the web is bound to follow the pattern. opulence and prosperity can not come in through poverty-thought and failure-thought channels. they must be created mentally first. we must think prosperity before we can come to it. how many take it for granted that there are plenty of good things in this world for others, comforts, luxuries, fine houses, good clothes, opportunity for travel, leisure, but not for them! they settle down into the conviction that these things do not belong to them, but are for those in a very different class. but why are you in a different class? simply because you think yourself into another class; think yourself into inferiority; because you place limits for yourself. you put up bars between yourself and plenty. you cut off abundance, make the law of supply inoperative for you, by shutting your mind to it. _and by what law can you expect to get what you believe you can not get_? _by what philosophy can you obtain the good things of the world when you are thoroughly convinced that they are not for you_? _one of the greatest curses of the world is the belief in the necessity of poverty_. most people have a strong conviction that some must necessarily be poor; that they were made to be poor. but there was no poverty, no want, no lack, in the creator's plan for man. there need not be a poor person on the planet. the earth is full of resources which we have scarcely yet touched. we have been poor in the very midst of abundance, simply because of our own blighting limiting thought. we are discovering that thoughts are things, that they are incorporated into the life and form part of the character, and if we harbor the fear thought, the lack thought, if we are afraid of poverty, of coming to want, this poverty thought, fear thought incorporates itself in the very life texture and makes us the magnet to attract more poverty like itself. it was not intended that we should have such a hard time getting a living, that we should just manage to squeeze along, to get together a few comforts, to spend about all of our time making a living instead of making a life. the life abundant, full, free, beautiful, was intended for us. let us put up a new image, a new ideal of plenty, of abundance. have we not worshiped the god of poverty, of lack, of want, about long enough? let us hold the thought that god is our great supply, that if we can keep in tune, in close touch with him, so that we can feel our at-one-ness with him, the great source of all supply, abundance will flow to us and we shall never again know want. there is nothing which the human race lacks so much as unquestioned, implicit confidence in the divine source of all supply. we ought to stand in the same relation to the infinite source as the child does to its parents. the child does not say, "i do not dare eat this food for fear that i may not get any more." it takes everything with absolute confidence and assurance that all its needs will be supplied, that there is plenty more where these things came from. we do not have half good enough opinions of our possibilities; do not expect half enough of ourselves; we do not demand half enough, hence the meagerness, the stinginess of what we actually get. we do not demand the abundance which belongs to us, hence the leanness, the lack of fulness, the incompleteness of our lives. we do not demand royally enough. we are content with too little of the things worth while. _it was intended that we should live the abundant life_, that we should have plenty of everything that is good for us. no one was meant to live in poverty and wretchedness. _the lack of anything that is desirable is not natural to the constitution of any human being_. erase all the shadows, all the doubts and fears, and the suggestions of poverty and failure from your mind. when you have become master of your thought, when you have once learned to dominate your mind, you will find that things will begin to come your way. discouragement, fear, doubt, lack of self-confidence, are the germs which have killed the prosperity and happiness of tens of thousands of people. every man must play the part of his ambition. if you are trying to be a successful man you must play the part. if you are trying to demonstrate opulence, you must play it, not weakly, but vigorously, grandly. you must feel opulent, you must think opulence, you must appear opulent. your bearing must be filled with confidence. you must give the impression of your own assurance, that you are large enough to play your part and to play it superbly. suppose the greatest actor living were to have a play written for him in which the leading part was to represent a man in the process of making a fortune--a great, vigorous, progressive character, who conquered by his very presence. suppose this actor, in playing the part, were to dress like an unprosperous man, walk on the stage in a stooping, slouchy, slipshod manner, as though he had no ambition, no energy or life, as though he had no real faith that he could ever make money or be a success in business; suppose he went around the stage with an apologetic, shrinking, skulking manner, as much as to say, "now, i do not believe that i can ever do this thing that i have attempted; it is too big for me. other people have done it, but i never thought that i should ever be rich or prosperous. somehow good things do not seem to be meant for me. i am just an ordinary man, i haven't had much experience and i haven't much confidence in myself, and it seems presumptuous for me to think i am ever going to be rich or have much influence in the world." what kind of an impression would he make upon the audience? would he give confidence, would he radiate power or forcefulness, would he make people think that that kind of a weakling could create a fortune, could manipulate conditions which would produce money? would not everybody say that the man was a failure? would they not laugh at the idea of his conquering anything? _poverty itself is not so bad as the poverty thought_. _it is the conviction that we are poor and must remain so that is fatal_. it is the attitude of mind that is destructive, the facing toward poverty, and feeling so reconciled to it that one does not turn about face and struggle to get away from it with a determination which knows no retreat. if we can conquer _inward poverty_, we can soon conquer poverty of outward things, for, when we change the mental attitude, the physical changes to correspond. holding the poverty thought, keeps us in touch with poverty-stricken, poverty-producing conditions; and the constant thinking of poverty, talking poverty, living poverty, makes us mentally poor. this is the worst kind of poverty. we can not travel toward prosperity until the mental attitude faces prosperity. as long as we look toward despair, we shall never arrive at the harbor of delight. the man who persists in holding his mental attitude toward poverty, or who is always thinking of his hard luck and failure to get on, can by no possibility go in the opposite direction, where the goal of prosperity lies. there are multitudes of poor people in this country who are _half satisfied to remain in poverty_, and who have ceased to make a desperate struggle to rise out of it. they may work hard, but they have lost the hope, the expectation of getting an independence. many people keep themselves poor by fear of poverty, allowing themselves to dwell upon the possibility of coming to want, of not having enough to live upon, by allowing themselves to dwell upon conditions of poverty. when you make up your mind that you are done with poverty forever; that you will have nothing more to do with it; that you are going to erase every trace of it from your dress, your personal appearance, your manner, your talk, your actions, your home; that you are going to show the world your real mettle; that you are no longer going to pass for a failure; that you have set your face persistently toward better things--a competence, an independence--and that nothing on earth can turn you from your resolution, you will be amazed to find what a reenforcing power will come to you, what an increase of confidence, reassurance, and self-respect. resolve with all the vigor you can muster that, since there are plenty of good things in the world for everybody, you are going to have your share, without injuring anybody else or keeping others back. it was intended that you should have a competence, an abundance. it is your birthright. you are success organized, and constructed for happiness, and you should resolve to reach your divine destiny. chapter lvii a new way of bringing up children "only a thought, but the work it wrought could never by tongue or pen be taught, but it ran through a life like a thread of gold, and the life bore fruit a hundredfold." not long ago there was on exhibition in new york a young horse which can do most marvelous things; and yet his trainer says that only five years ago he had a very bad disposition. he was fractious, and would kick and bite, but now instead of displaying his former viciousness, he is obedient, tractable, and affectionate. he can readily count and reckon up figures, can spell many words, and knows what they mean. in fact this horse seems to be capable of learning almost anything. five years of kindness have completely transformed the vicious yearling colt. he is very responsive to kindness, but one can do nothing with him by whipping or scolding him. his trainer says that in all the five years he has never touched him with a whip but once. i know a mother of a large family of children who has never whipped but one of them, and that one only once. when her first child was born people said she was too good-natured to bring up children, that she would spoil them, as she would not correct or discipline them, and would do nothing but love them. but this love has proved the great magnet which has held the family together in a marvelous way. not one of those children has gone astray. they have all grown up manly and womanly, and love has been wonderfully developed in their natures. their own affection responded to the mother's love and has become their strongest motive. to-day all her children look upon "mother" as the grandest figure in the world. she has brought out the best in them because she saw the best in them. the worst did not need correcting or repressing, because the expulsive power of a stronger affection drove out of the nature or discouraged the development of vicious tendencies which, in the absence of a great love, might have become dominant and ruined the life. love is a healer, a life-giver, a balm for our hurts. all through the bible are passages which show the power of love as a healer and life-lengthener. "with long life will i satisfy him," said the psalmist, "because he hath set his love upon me." when shall we learn that the great curative principle is love, that love heals because it is harmony? there can be no discord where it reigns. love is serenity, is peace and happiness. love is the great disciplinarian, the supreme harmonizer, the true peacemaker. it is the great balm for all that blights happiness or breeds discontent, a sovereign panacea for malice, revenge, and all the brutal propensities. as cruelty melts before kindness, so the evil passions and their antidote in sweet charity and loving sympathy. the mother is the supreme shaper of life and destiny. many a mother's love for her children has undoubtedly stayed the ravages of some fatal disease. her conviction that she was necessary to them and her great love for them have braced her, and have enabled her to successfully cope with the enemies of her life for a long time. one mother i know seems to have the magical art of curing nearly all the ills of her children by love. if any member of the family has any disagreeable experience, is injured or pained, hurt or unhappy, he immediately goes to the mother for the universal balm, which heals all troubles. this mother has a way of drawing the troubled child out of discord into the zone of perpetual harmony. if he is swayed by jealousy, hatred, or anger, she applies the love solvent, the natural antidote for these passion poisons. she knows that scolding a child when he is already suffering more than he can bear is like trying to put out a fire with kerosene. our orphan asylums give pathetic illustration of how quickly the child mind matures and ages prematurely without the uplift and enrichment of the mother love, the mother sympathy,--parental protection and home influence. it is well known that children who lose their parents and are adopted by their grandparents and live in the country, where they do not have an opportunity to mingle much with other children, adopt the manners and mature vocabulary of their elders, for they are very imitative, and become little men and women before they are out of their youth. think of a child reared in the contaminating atmosphere of the slums, where everything is dripping with suggestions of vulgarity and wickedness of every description! think of his little mind being filled with profanity, obscenity, and filth of all kinds! is it any wonder that he becomes so filled with vicious, criminal suggestions that he tends to become like his environment? contrast such a child with one that is brought up in an atmosphere of purity, refinement, and culture, and whose mind is always filled with noble, uplifting suggestions of the true, the beautiful, and the lovely. what a difference in the chances of these two children, and without any special effort or choice of their own! one mind is trained upward, towards the light, the other downward, towards darkness. what chance has a child to lead a noble life when all his first impressionable years are saturated with the suggestion of evil, when jealousy and hatred, revenge, quarreling and bickering, all that is low and degrading, fill his ears and eyes? how important it is that the child should only hear and see and be taught that which will make for beauty and for truth, for loveliness and grandeur of character! we ought to have a great deal of charity for those whose early lives have been soaked in evil, criminal, impurity thoughts. the minds of children are like the sensitive plates of a photographer, recording every thought or suggestion to which they are exposed. these early impressions make up the character and determine the future possibility. if you would encourage your child and help him to make the most of himself, inject bright, hopeful, optimistic, unselfish pictures into his atmosphere. to stimulate and inspire his confidence and unselfishness means growth, success, and happiness for him in his future years, while the opposite practice may mean failure and misery. it is of infinitely more importance to hold the right thought towards a child, the confident, successful, happy, optimistic thought, than to leave him a fortune without this. with his mind properly trained he could not fail, could not be unhappy, without reversing the whole formative process of his early life. keep the child's mind full of harmony, of truth, and there will be no room for discord, for error. it is cruel constantly to remind children of their deficiencies or peculiarities. sensitive children are often seriously injured by the suggestion of inferiority and the exaggeration of defects which might have been entirely overcome. this everlasting harping against the bad does not help the child half as much as keeping his little mind full of the good, the beautiful, and the true. the constant love suggestion, purity suggestion, nobility suggestion will so permeate the life after a while that there will be nothing to attract the opposite. it will be so full of sunshine, so full of beauty and love, that there will be little or no place for their opposites. the child's self-confidence should be buttressed, braced, and encouraged in every possible way; not that he should be taught to overestimate his ability and his possibilities, but the idea that he is god's child, that he is heir to an infinite inheritance, magnificent possibilities, should be instilled into the very marrow of his being. a great many boys, especially those who are naturally sensitive, shy, and timid, are apt to suspect that they lack the ability which others have. it is characteristic of such youths that they distrust their own ability and are very easily discouraged or encouraged. it is a sin to shake or destroy a child's self-confidence, to reflect upon his ability or to suggest that he will never amount to much. these discouraging words, like initials cut in the sapling, grow wider and wider with the years, until they become great ugly scars in the man. most parents do not half realize how impressionable children are, and how easily they may be injured or ruined by discouragement or ridicule. children require a great deal of appreciation, praise, and encouragement. they live upon it. it is a great tonic to them. on the other hand, they wither very quickly under criticism, blame, or depreciation. their sensitive natures can not stand it. it is the worst kind of policy to be constantly blaming, chiding them, and positively cruel, bordering on criminality even, to suggest to them that they are mentally deficient or peculiar, that they are stupid and dull, and that they will probably never amount to anything in the world. how easy it is for a parent or teacher to ruin a child's constructive ability, to change a naturally, positive creative mind to a negative, non-producing one, by chilling the child's enthusiasm, by projecting into his plastic mind the idea that he is stupid, dull, lazy, a "blockhead" and good-for-nothing; that he will never amount to anything; that it is foolish for him to try to be much, because he has not the ability or physical stamina to enable him to accomplish what many others do. such teaching would undermine the brightest intellect. i have known of an extremely sensitive, timid boy who had a great deal of natural ability, but who developed very slowly, whose whole future was nearly ruined by his teacher and parents constantly telling him that he was stupid and dull, and that he probably never would amount to anything. a little praise, a little encouragement, would have made a superb man of this youth, because he had the material for the making of one. but he actually believed that he was not up to the ordinary mental standard; he was thoroughly convinced that he was mentally deficient, and this conviction never entirely left him. we are beginning to discover that it is much easier to attract than to coerce. praise and encouragement will do infinitely more for children than threats and punishment. the warm sunshine is more than a match for the cold, has infinitely more influence in developing the bud, the blossom, and the fruit than the wind and the tempest, which suppress what responds voluntarily to the genial influence of the sun's rays. we all know how boys will work like troopers under the stimulus of encouragement and praise. many parents and teachers know this, and how fatal the opposite policy is. but unfortunately a great majority do not appreciate the magic of praise and appreciation. pupils will do anything for a teacher who is always kind, considerate, and interested in them; but a cross, fractious, nagging one so arouses their antagonism that it often proves a fatal bar to their progress. there must be no obstruction, no ill-feeling between the teacher and the pupil, if the best results are to be obtained. many parents are very much distressed by the waywardness of their children; but this waywardness is often more imaginary than real. a large part of children's pranks and mischief is merely the outcome of exuberant youthful spirits, which must have an outlet, and if they are suppressed, their growth is fatally stunted. they are so full of life, energy, and so buoyant that they can not keep still. they _must_ do _something_. give them an outlet for their animal spirits. love is the only power that can regulate and control them. do not try to make men of your boys or women of your girls. it is not natural. love them. make home just as happy a place as possible, and give them rein, freedom. encourage them in their play, for they are now in their fun age. many parents ruin the larger, completer, fuller development of their children by repressing them, destroying their childhood, their play days, by trying to make them adults. there is nothing sadder in american life than the child who has been robbed of its childhood. children are little animals, sometimes selfish, often cruel, due to the fact that some parts of their brain develop faster than others, so that their minds are temporarily thrown out of balance, sometimes even to cruel or criminal tendencies, but later the mind becomes more symmetrical and the vicious tendencies usually disappear. their moral faculties and sense of responsibility unfold more slowly than other traits, and of course, they will do mischievous things; but it is a fatal mistake to be always suppressing them. they must give out their surplus energy in some way. encourage them to romp. play with them. it will keep you young, and will link them to you with hooks of steel. do not be afraid of losing your dignity. if you make home the happiest, most cheerful place on earth for your children, if you love them enough, there is little danger of their becoming bad. thousands of parents by being so severe with their children, scolding and criticizing them and crushing their childhood, make them secretive and deceitful instead of open and transparent, and estrange them and drive them away from home. a man ought to look back upon the home of his childhood as the eden of his life, where love reigned, instead of as a place where a long-faced severity and harshness ruled, where he was suppressed and his fun-loving spirits snuffed out. every mother, whether she realizes it or not, is constantly using the power of suggestion in rearing her children, healing all their little hurts. she kisses the bumps and bruises and tells the child all is well again, and he is not only comforted, but really believes that the kiss and caress have magic to cure the injury. the mother is constantly antidoting and neutralizing the child's little troubles and discords by giving the opposite thought and applying the love-elixir. it is possible, through the power of suggestion, to develop in children faculties upon which health, success, and happiness depend. most of us know how dependent our efficiency is upon our moods, our courage, hope. if the cheerful, optimistic faculties were brought out and largely developed in childhood, it would change our whole outlook upon life, and we would not drag through years of half-heartedness, discouragement, and mental anguish, our steps dogged by fear, apprehension, anxiety, and disappointment. one reason why we have such poor health is because we have been steeped in poor-health thought from infancy. we have been saturated with the idea that pain, physical suffering, and disease, are a part of life; necessary evils which can not be avoided. we have had it so instilled into us that robust health is the exception and could not be expected to be the rule that we have come to accept this unfortunate condition of things as a sort of fate from which we can not hope to get away. the child hears so much sick talk, is cautioned so much about the dangers of catching all sorts of diseases, that he grows up with the conviction that physical discords, aches, pains, all discomfort and suffering, are a necessary part of his existence, that at any time disease is liable to overtake him and ruin his happiness and thwart his career. think of what the opposite training would do for the child; if he were taught that health is the ever-lasting fact and that disease is but the manifestation of the absence of harmony! think what it would mean to him if he were trained to believe that abounding health, rich, full, complete, instead of sickness, that certainty instead of uncertainty were his birthright! think what it would mean for him to _expect_ this during all his growing years, instead of building into his consciousness the opposite, instead of being saturated with the sick thought and constantly being cautioned against disease and the danger of contracting it! the child should be taught that god never created disease, and never intended that we should suffer; that we were made for abounding health and happiness, made for enjoyment not for pain--made to be happy, not miserable, to express harmony, not discord. children are extremely credulous. they are inclined to believe everything that an adult tells them, especially the nurse, the father and mother, and their older brothers and sisters. even the things that are told them in jest they take very seriously; and their imaginations are so vivid and their little minds so impressionable that they magnify everything. they are often punished for telling falsehoods, when the fault is really due to their excessively active imagination. many ignorant or thoughtless parents and nurses constantly use fear as a means of governing children. they fill their little minds full of all sorts of fear stories and terror pictures which may mar their whole lives. they often buy soothing syrups and all sorts of sleeping potions to prevent the little ones from disturbing their rest at night, or to keep them quiet and from annoying them in the day time, and thus are liable to stunt their brain development. even if children were not seriously injured by fear, it would be wicked to frighten them, for it is wrong to deceive them. if there is anything in the world that is sacred to the parent or teacher, it is the unquestioned confidence of children. i believe that the beginnings of deterioration in a great many people who go wrong could be traced to the forfeiting of the children's respect and confidence by the parents and teachers. we all know from experience that confidence once shaken is almost never entirely restored. even when we forgive, we seldom forget; the suspicion often remains. there should never be any shadows between the child and his parents and teachers. he should always be treated with the utmost frankness, transparency, sincerity. the child's respect is worth everything to his parents. nothing should induce them to violate it or to shake it. it should be regarded as a very sacred thing, a most precious possession. think of the shock which must come to a child when he grows up and discovers that those he has trusted implicitly and who seemed almost like gods to him have been deceiving him for years in all sorts of ways! i have heard mothers say that they dreaded to have their children grow up and discover how they had deceived them all through their childhood; to have them discover that they had resorted to fear, superstition, and all sorts of deceits in order to govern or influence them. whenever you are tempted to deceive a child again, remember that the time will come when _he will understand_, and that he will receive a terrible shock when he discovers that you, up to whom he has looked with such implicit trust, such simple confidence, have deceived him. parents should remember that every distressing, blood-curdling story told to a child, every superstitious fear instilled into his young life, the mental attitude they bear towards him, the whole treatment they accord him, are making phonographic records in his nature which will be reproduced with scientific exactness in his future life. whatever you do, never punish a child when he is suffering with fear. it is a cruel thing to punish children the way most mothers and teachers do, anyway; but to punish a child when he is already quivering with terror is extremely distressing, and to whip a child when you are angry is brutal. many children never quite forget or forgive a parent or teacher for this cruelty. parents, teachers, friends often put a serious stumbling-block in the way of a youth by suggesting that he ought to study for the ministry, or the law; to be a physician, an engineer, or enter some other profession or business for which he may be totally unfitted. i know a man whose career was nearly ruined by the suggestion of his grandmother when he was a child that she would educate him for the church, and that it was her wish for him to become a clergyman. it was not that she saw in the little child any fitness for this holy office, but because _she wanted a clergyman in the family_, and she often reminded him that he must not disappoint her. the boy, who idolized his grandmother, pondered this thought until he became a young man. the idea possessed him so strongly that every time he tried to make a choice of a career the picture of a clergyman rushed first to his mind, and, although he could see no real reason why he should become a clergyman, the suggestion that he ought to worked like leaven in his nature and kept him from making any other choice until too late to enable him to succeed to any great extent. i know a most brilliant and marvelously fascinating woman who is extremely ambitious to make a name for herself, but she is almost totally lacking in her ability to apply herself, even in the line where her talent is greatly marked. she seems to be abundantly endowed in every faculty and quality except this. now, if her parents had known the secret of correcting mental deficiencies, building up weak faculties, this girl could have been so trained that she would probably have had a great career and made a world-wide name for herself. i have in mind another woman, a most brilliant linguist, who speaks fluently seven languages. she is a most fascinating conversationalist and impresses one as having read everything, but, although in good health, she is an object of charity to-day, simply because she has never developed her practical faculties at all, and this because she was never trained to work, to depend upon herself even in little things when she was a child. she was fond of her books, was a most brilliant scholar, but never learned to be practical or to do anything herself. her self-reliance and independence were never developed. all of her early friends predicted a brilliant future for her, but because of the very consciousness of possessing so many brilliant qualities and of the fact that she was flattered during all her student life and not obliged to depend upon herself for anything, she continued to exercise her strong scholarship faculties only, little dreaming that the neglect to develop her weaker ones would wreck her usefulness and her happiness. it is not enough to possess ability. we must be able to use it effectively, and whatever interferes with its activity to that extent kills efficiency. there are many people who are very able in most qualities and yet their real work is seriously injured and often practically ruined, or they are thrown into the mediocre class, owing to some weakness or deficiency which might have been entirely remedied by cultivation and proper training in earlier life. i know a man of superb ability in nearly every respect who is so timid and shy that he does not dare push himself forward or put himself in the position of greatest advantage, does not dare _begin_ things. consequently his whole life has been seriously handicapped. if children could only be taught to develop a positive, creative mind, it would be of infinitely more value and importance to them than inheriting a fortune with a non-productive one. youths should be taught that the most valuable thing to learn in life next to integrity is how to build their minds up to the highest possible producing point, the highest possible state of _creative efficiency_. the most important part of the education of the future will be to increase the chances of success in life and lessen the danger of failure and the wrecking of one's career by building up weak and deficient faculties, correcting one-sided tendencies, so that the individual will become more level-headed, better balanced, and have a more symmetrical mind. many students leave school and college knowing a great deal, but without a bit of improvement in their self-confidence, their initiative ability. they are just as timid, shy, and self-depreciatory as before entering. now, what advantage is it to send a youth out into the world with a head full of knowledge but without the confidence or assurance to use it effectively, or the ability to grapple with life's problems with that vigor and efficiency which alone can bring success? it is an unpardonable reflection upon a college which turns out youths who dare not say their souls are their own, who have not developed a vigorous self-confidence, assurance, and initiative. hundreds of students are turned out of our colleges every year who would almost faint away if they were suddenly called upon to speak in public, to read a resolution, or even to put a motion. the time will come when an education will enable a youth while upon his feet in public to express himself forcefully, to use the ability he has and summon his knowledge quickly. he will be so trained in self-control, in self-confidence, in level-headedness, that he will not be thrown off his guard in an emergency. the future education will mean that what the student knows will be _available_, that he can utilize it at will, that he will be trained to use it _efficiently_. many of our graduates leave college every year as weak and inefficient in many respects as when they began their education. what is education for if it is not to train the youth to be the master of his faculties, master of every situation, able to summon all of his reserves of knowledge and power at will? a college graduate, timid, stammering, blushing, and confused, when suddenly called upon to use his knowledge whether in public or elsewhere, ought to be an unknown thing. of what use is education which can not be summoned at will? of what good are the reserves of learning which can not be marshaled quickly when we need them, which do not help one to be master of himself and the situation, whatever it may be? the time will come when no child will be allowed to grow up without being taught to believe in himself, to have great confidence in his ability. this will be a most important part of his education, for if he believes in himself _enough_, he will not be likely to allow a single deficient faculty or weakness to wreck his career. he should be reared in the conviction that he was sent into this world with a mission and that he is going to deliver it. every youth should be taught that it was intended he should fill a place in the world which no one else can fill; that he should expect to fill it, and train himself for it; taught that he was made in the creator's image, that in the truth of his being he is divine, perfect, immortal, and that the image of god can not fail. he should be taught to think grandly of himself, to form a sublime estimate of his possibilities and of his future. this will increase his self-respect and self-development in well-proportioned living. chapter lviii the home as a school of good manners not long ago i visited a home where such exceptionally good breeding prevailed and such fine manners were practised by all the members of the family, that it made a great impression upon me. this home is the most remarkable school of good manners, refinement, and culture generally, i have ever been in. the parents are bringing up their children to practise their best manners on all occasions. they do not know what company manners mean. the boys have been taught to treat their sisters with as much deference as though they were stranger guests. the politeness, courtesy, and consideration which the members of this family show toward one another are most refreshing and beautiful. coarseness, gruffness, lack of delicacy find no place there. both boys and girls have been trained from infancy to make themselves interesting, and to entertain and try to make others happy. the entire family make it a rule to dress before dinner in the evening, just as they would if special company were expected. their table manners are specially marked. at table every one is supposed to be at his best, not to bring any grouch, or a long or sad face to it, but to contribute his best thought, his wittiest sayings, to the conversation. every member of the family is expected to do his best to make the meal a really happy occasion. there is a sort of rivalry to see who can be the most entertaining, or contribute the spiciest bits of conversation. there is no indication of dyspepsia in this family, because every one is trained to laugh and be happy generally, and laughter is a fatal enemy of indigestion. the etiquette of the table is also strictly observed. every member of the family tries to do just the proper thing and always to be mindful of others' rights. kindness seems to be practised for the joy of it, not for the sake of creating a good impression on friends or acquaintances. there is in this home an air of peculiar refinement which is very charming. the children are early taught to greet callers and guests cordially, heartily, in real southern, hospitable fashion, and to make them feel that they are very welcome. they are taught to make every one feel comfortable and at home, so that there will be no sense of restraint. as a result of this training the children have formed a habit of good behavior and are considered an acquisition to any gathering. they are not embarrassed by the awkward slips and breaks which are so mortifying to those who only wear their company manners on special occasions. a stranger would almost think this home was a school of good breeding, and it is a real treat to visit these people. it is true the parents in this family have the advantage of generations of fine breeding and southern hospitality back of them, which gives the children a great natural advantage. there is an atmosphere of chivalry and cordiality in this household which is really refreshing. many parents seem to expect that their children will pick up their good manners outside of the home, in school, or while visiting. this is a fatal mistake. every home should be a school of good manners and good breeding. the children should be taught that there is nothing more important than the development of an interesting personality, an attractive presence, and an ability to entertain with grace and ease. they should be taught that the great object of life is to develop a superb personality, a noble manhood and womanhood. there is no art like that of a beautiful behavior, a fine manner, no wealth greater than that of a pleasing personality. chapter lix mother "all that i am or hope to be," said lincoln, after he had become president, "i owe to my angel mother." "my mother was the making of me," said thomas edison, recently. "she was so true, so sure of me; and i felt that i had some one to live for; some one i must not disappoint." "all that i have ever accomplished in life," declared dwight l. moody, the great evangelist, "i owe to my mother." "to the man who has had a good mother, all women are sacred for her sake," said jean paul richter. the testimony of great men in acknowledgment of the boundless debt they owe to their mothers would make a record stretching from the dawn of history to to-day. few men, indeed, become great who do not owe their greatness to a mother's love and inspiration. how often we hear people in every walk of life say, "i never could have done this thing but for my mother. she believed in me, encouraged me when others saw nothing in me." "a kiss from my mother made me a painter," said benjamin west. a distinguished man of to-day says: "i never could have reached my present position had i not known that my mother expected me to reach it. from a child she made me feel that this was the position she expected me to fill; and her faith spurred me on and gave me the power to attain it." everything that a man has and is he owes to his mother. from her he gets health, brain, encouragement, moral character, and all his chances of success. "in the shadow of every great man's fame walks his mother," says dorothy dix. "she has paid the price of his success. she went down into the valley of the shadow to give him life, and every day for years and years thereafter she toiled incessantly to push him on toward his goal. "she gave the labor of her hands for his support; she poured into him ambition when he grew discouraged; she supplemented his weakness with her strength; she filled him with her hope and faith when his own failed. "at last he did the big thing, and people praised him, and acclaimed him, and nobody thought of the quiet, insignificant little woman in the background, who had been the real power behind the throne. sometimes even the king himself forgets who was the kingmaker." many a man is enjoying a fame which is really due to a self-effacing, sacrificing mother. people hurrah for the governor, or mayor, or congressman, but the real secret of his success is often tucked away in that little unknown, unappreciated, unheralded mother. his education and his chance to rise may have been due to her sacrifices. it is a strange fact that our mothers, the molders of the world, should get so little credit and should be so seldom mentioned among the world's achievers. the world sees only the successful son; the mother is but a round in the ladder upon which he has climbed. her name or face is seldom seen in the papers; only her son is lauded and held up to our admiration. yet it was that sweet, pathetic figure in the background that made his success possible. the woman who merits the greatest fame is the woman who gives a brilliant mind to the world. the mothers of great men and women deserve just as much honor as the great men and women themselves, and they will receive it from the better understanding of the coming days. "a wife may do much toward polishing up a man and boosting him up the ladder, but unless his mother first gave him the intellect to scintillate and the muscles to climb with, the wife labors in vain," continues dorothy dix, in the _evening journal_. "you can not make a clod shine. you can not make a mollusk aspire. you must have the material to work with, to produce results. "by the time a man is married his character is formed, and he changes very little. his mother has made him; and no matter how hard she tries, there is very little that his wife can do toward altering him. "it is not the philosophies, the theories, the code of ethics that a man acquires in his older years that really influence him. it is the things that he learned at his mother's knee, the principles that she instilled in him in his very cradle, the taste and habits that she formed, the strength and courage that she breathed into him. "it is the childish impressions that count. it is the memory of whispered prayers, of bedtime stories, of old ideals held unfalteringly before a boy's gaze; it is half-forgotten songs, and dim visions of heroes that a mother taught her child to worship, that make the very warp and woof of the soul. "it is the pennies, that a mother teaches a boy to save and the self-denial that she inculcates in doing it, that form the real foundation of the fortune of the millionaire. "it is the mother that loves books, and who gives her sons her love of learning, who bestows the great scholars, the writers, and orators, on the world. "it is the mother that worships science, who turns the eyes of the child upon her breast up to the wonder of the stars, and who teaches the little toddler at her side to observe the marvel of beast, and bird, and flower, and all created things, whose sons become the great astronomers and naturalists, and biologists." the very atmosphere that radiates from and surrounds the mother is the inspiration and constitutes the holy of holies of family life. "in my mother's presence," said a prominent man, "i become for the time transformed into another person." how many of us have felt the truth of this statement! how ashamed we feel when we meet her eyes, that we have ever harbored an unholy thought, or dishonorable suggestion! it seems impossible to do wrong while under that magic influence. what revengeful plans, what thoughts of hatred and jealousy, have been scattered to the four winds while in the mother's presence! her children go out from communion with her resolved to be better men, nobler women, truer citizens. "how many of us have stood and watched with admiration the returning victor of some petty battle, cheering until we were hoarse, exhausting ourselves with the vehemence of our enthusiasm," says a writer, "when right beside us, possibly touching our hand, was one greater than he? one whose battle has not been petty--whose conflict has not been of short duration, but has for us fought many a severe fight. "when we had the scarlet fever or diphtheria and not one would come near us, who held the cup of cold water to our fever-parched lips? who bent over us day and night and fought away with almost supernatural strength the greatest of all enemies--death? the world's greatest heroine--mother! who is it that each sunday dinner-time chose the neck of the chicken that we might have the juicy wing or breast or leg? who is it stays home from the concert, the social, the play, that we may go with the others and not be stinted for small change? who is it crucifies her love of pretty clothes, her desire for good things, her longing for pleasure that we may have all these? who is it? mother!" the greatest heroine in the world is the mother. no one else makes such sacrifices, or endures anything like the suffering that she uncomplainingly endures for her children. what is the giving of one's life in battle or in a wreck at sea to save another, in comparison with the perpetual sacrifice of many mothers of a living death lasting for half a century or more? how the world's heroes dwindle in comparison with the mother heroine! there is no one in the average family, the value of whose services begins to compare with those of the mother, and yet there is no one who is more generally neglected or taken advantage of. she must remain at home evenings, and look after the children, when the others are out having a good time. her cares never cease. she is responsible for the housework, for the preparation of meals; she has the children's clothes to make or mend, there is company to be entertained, darning to be done, and a score of little duties which must often be attended to at odd moments, snatched from her busy days, and she is often up working at night, long after every one else in the house is asleep. no matter how loving or thoughtful the father may be, the heavier burdens, the greater anxieties, the weightier responsibilities of the home, of the children, usually fall on the mother. indeed, the very virtues of the good mother are a constant temptation to the other members of the family, especially the selfish ones, to take advantage of her. they seem to take it for granted that they can put all their burdens on the patient, uncomplaining mother; that she will always do anything to help out, and to enable the children to have a good time; and in many homes, sad to say, the mother, just because of her goodness, is shamefully imposed upon and neglected. "oh, mother won't mind, mother will stay at home." how often we hear remarks like this from thoughtless children! it is always the poor mother on whom the burden falls; and the pathetic thing is that she rarely gets much credit or praise. many mothers in the poor and working classes practically sacrifice all that most people hold dearest in life for their children. they deliberately impair their health, wear themselves out, make all sorts of sacrifices, to send a worthless boy to college. they take in washing, go out house-cleaning, do the hardest and most menial work, in order to give their boys and girls an education and the benefit of priceless opportunities that they never had; yet, how often, they are rewarded only with total indifference and neglect! some time ago i heard of a young girl, beautiful, gay, full of spirit and vigor, who married and had four children. her husband died penniless, and the mother made the most heroic efforts to educate the children. by dint of unremitting toil and unheard of sacrifices and privations she succeeded in sending the boys to college and the girls to a boarding-school. when they came home, pretty, refined girls and strong young men, abreast with all the new ideas and tastes of their times, she was a worn-out, commonplace old woman. they had their own pursuits and companions. she lingered unappreciated among them for two or three years, and then died, of some sudden failure of the brain. the shock of her fatal illness woke them to consciousness of the truth. they hung over her, as she lay prostrate, in an agony of grief. the oldest son, as he held her in his arms, cried: "you have been a good mother to us!" her face brightened, her eyes kindled into a smile, and she whispered: "you never said so before, john." then the light died out, and she was gone. many men spend more money on expensive caskets, flowers, and emblems of mourning than they ever spent on their poor, loving, self-sacrificing mothers for many years while alive. men who, perhaps, never thought of carrying flowers to their mothers in life, pile them high on their coffins. who can ever depict the tragedies that have been enacted in the hearts of american mothers, who have suffered untold tortures from neglect, indifference, and lack of appreciation? what a pathetic story of neglect many a mother's letters from her grown-up children could tell! a few scraggy lines, a few sentences now and then, hurriedly written and mailed--often to ease a troubled conscience--mere apologies for letters, which chill the mother heart. i know men who owe their success in life to their mother; who have become prosperous and influential, because of the splendid training of the self-sacrificing mother, and whose education was secured at an inestimable cost to her, and yet they seldom think of carrying to her flowers, confectionery, or little delicacies, or of taking her to a place of amusement, or of giving her a vacation or bestowing upon her any of the little attentions and favors so dear to a woman's heart. they seem to think she is past the age for these things, that she no longer cares for them, that about all she expects is enough to eat and drink, and the simplest kind of raiment. these men do not know the feminine heart which never changes in these respects, except to grow more appreciative of the little attentions, the little considerations, and thoughtful acts which meant so much to them in their younger days. not long ago i heard a mother, whose sufferings and sacrifices for her children during a long and trying struggle with poverty should have given her a monument, say, that she guessed she'd better go to an old ladies' home and end her days there. what a picture that was! an aged woman with white hair and a sweet, beautiful face; with a wonderful light in her eye; calm, serene, and patient, yet dignified, whose children, all of whom are married and successful, made her feel as if she were a burden! they live in luxurious homes, but have never offered to provide a home for the poor, old rheumatic mother, who for so many years slaved for them. they put their own homes, stocks, and other property in their wives' names, and while they pay the rent of their mother's meagerly furnished rooms and provide for her actual needs, they apparently never think what joy it would give her to own her own home, and to possess some pretty furnishings, and a few pictures. in many cases men through thoughtlessness do not provide generously for their mothers even when well able to. they seem to think that a mother can live most anywhere, and most anyway; that if she has enough to supply her necessities she is satisfied. just think, you prosperous business men, how you would feel if the conditions were reversed, if you were obliged to take the dependent, humiliating position of your mother! whatever else you are obliged to neglect, take no chances of giving your mother pain by neglecting her, and of thus making yourself miserable in the future. the time may come when you will stand by her bedside, in her last sickness, or by her coffin, and wish that you had exchanged a little of your money for more visits and more attentions and more little presents to your mother; when you will wish that you had cultivated her more, even at the cost of making a little less money. there is no one else in this world who can take your mother's place in your life. and there is no remorse like that which comes from the remembrance of ill-treating, abusing, or being unkind to one's mother. these things stand out with awful vividness and terrible clearness when the mother is gone forever from sight, and you have time to contrast your treatment with her long suffering, tenderness, and love, and her years of sacrifice for you. one of the most painful things i have ever witnessed was the anguish of a son who had become wealthy and in his prosperity neglected the mother, whose sacrifices alone had made his success possible. he did not take the time to write to her more than twice a year, and then only brief letters. he was too busy to send a good long letter to the poor old lonely mother back in the country, who had risked her life and toiled and sacrificed for years for him! finally, when he was summoned to her bedside in the country, in her last sickness, and realized that his mother had been for years without the ordinary comforts of life, while he had been living in luxury, he broke down completely. and while he did everything possible to alleviate her suffering, in the few last days that remained to her on earth, and gave her an imposing burial, what torture he must have suffered, at this pitiful picture of his mother who had sacrificed everything for him! "the regrets for thoughtless acts and indifference to admonitions now felt and expressed by many living sons of dead mothers will, in time, be felt and expressed by the living sons of living mothers," says richard l. metcalfe, in the "commoner." "the boys of to-day who do not understand the value of the mother's companionship will yet sing--with those who already know--this song of tribute and regret: "'the hours i spent with thee, dear heart, are as a string of pearls to me; i count them over, every one apart, my rosary. "'each hour a pearl, each pearl a prayer, to still a heart in absence wrung; i tell each bead unto the end, and there a cross is hung. "'o memories that bless--and burn! oh mighty gain and bitter loss! i kiss each bead and strive at last to learn to kiss the cross, sweet heart, to kiss the cross.'" no man worthy of the name ever neglects or forgets his mother. i have an acquaintance, of very poor parentage, who had a hard struggle to get a start in the world; but when he became prosperous and built his beautiful home, he finished a suite of rooms in it especially for his mother, furnished them with all conveniences and comforts possible, and insisted upon keeping a maid specially for her. although she lives with her son's family, she is made to feel that this part of the great home is her own, and that she is as independent as though she lived in her own house. every son should be ambitious to see his mother as well provided for as his wife. really great men have always reverenced and cared tenderly for their mothers. president mckinley provided in his will that, first of all, his mother should be made comfortable for life. the first act of garfield, after he was inaugurated president, was to kiss his aged mother, who sat near him, and who said this was the proudest and happiest moment of her life. ex-president loubet of france, even after his elevation to the presidency, took great pride in visiting his mother, who was a humble market gardener in a little french village. a writer on one occasion, describing a meeting between this mother and her son, says: "her noted son awaited her in the market-place, as she drove up in her little cart loaded with vegetables. assisting his mother to alight, the french president gave her his arm and escorted her to her accustomed seat. then holding over her a large umbrella, to shield her from the threatening weather, he seated himself at her side, and mother and son enjoyed a long talk together." i once saw a splendid young college graduate introduce his poor, plainly dressed old mother to his classmates with as much pride and dignity as though she was a queen. her form was bent, her hands were calloused, she was prematurely old, and much of this deterioration was caused by all sorts of drudgery to help her boy to pay his college expenses. i have seen other college men whose mothers had made similar sacrifices, and who were ashamed to have them attend their graduating exercises, ashamed to introduce them to their classmates. think of the humiliation and suffering of the slave mother, who has given all the best of her life to a large family, battling with poverty in her efforts to dignify her little home, and to give her children an education, when she realizes that she is losing ground intellectually, yet has no time or strength for reading, or self-culture, no opportunity for broadening her mental outlook by traveling or mingling with the world! but this is nothing compared to the anguish she endures, when, after the flower of her youth is gone and there is nothing left of her but the ashes of a burned-out existence, the shreds of a former superb womanhood, she awakes to the consciousness that her children are ashamed of her ignorance and desire to keep her in the background. from babyhood children should be taught to look up to, not down on their mother. for that reason she should never appear before them in slovenly raiment, nor conduct herself in any way that would lessen their respect. she should keep up her intellectual culture that they may not advance beyond her understanding and sympathies. no matter how callous or ungrateful a son may be, no matter how low he may sink in vice or crime, he is always sure of his mother's love, always sure of one who will follow him even to his grave, if she is alive and can get there; of one who will cling to him when all others have fled. it is forever true, as kipling poignantly expresses it in his beautiful verses on "mother love": "'if i were hanged on highest hill, mother o' mine, o mother o' mine! i know whose love would follow still, mother o' mine, o mother o' mine! "'if i were drowned in the deepest sea, mother o' mine, o mother o' mine! i know whose tears would come down to me, mother o' mine, o mother o' mine! "'if i were cursed of body and soul, mother o' mine, o mother o' mine! i know whose prayer's would make me whole! mother o' mine, o mother o' mine!'" one of the saddest sights i have ever seen was that of a poor, old, broken-down mother, whose life had been poured into her children, making a long journey to the penitentiary to visit her boy, who had been abandoned by everybody but herself. poor old mother! it did not matter that he was a criminal, that he had disgraced his family, that everybody else had forsaken him, that he had been unkind to her--the mother's heart went out to him just the same. she did not see the hideous human wreck that crime had made. she saw only her darling boy, the child that god had given her, pure and innocent as in his childhood. oh, there is no other human love like this, which follows the child from the cradle to the grave, never once abandons, never once forsakes him, no matter how unfortunate or degenerate he may become. "so your best girl is dead," sneeringly said a new york magistrate to a young man who was arrested for attempting suicide. "who was she?" without raising his eyes, the unfortunate victim burst into tears and replied, "she was my mother!" the smile vanished from the magistrate's face and, with tears in his eyes, he said, "young man, go and try to be a good man, for your mother's sake." how little we realize what tragedy may be going on in the hearts of those whom we sneeringly condemn! what movement set on foot in recent years, deserves heartier support than that for the establishment of a national mothers' day? the day set apart as mothers' day by those who have inaugurated this movement is _the second sunday in may_. let us unite in doing all we can to make it a real mothers' day, by especially honoring our mothers; in the flesh, those of us who are so fortunate as to have our mothers with us; in the spirit, those who are not so fortunate. if away from her, write a good, loving letter, or telephone or telegraph to the best mother who ever lived--your mother. send her some flowers, an appropriate present; go and spend the day with her, or in some other way make her heart glad. show her that you appreciate her, and that you give her credit for a large part of your success. let us do all we can to make up for past neglect of the little-known, half-appreciated, unheralded mothers who have had so little credit in the past, and are so seldom mentioned among the world's achievers, by openly, and especially in our hearts, paying our own mothers every tribute of honor, respect, devotion, and gratitude that love and a sense of duty can suggest. let us acknowledge to the world the great debt we owe them by wearing, every one of us, boy and girl, man and woman, on mothers' day, a white carnation--the flower chosen as the symbol and emblem of motherhood. happily chosen emblem! what could more fittingly represent motherhood with its whiteness symbolizing purity; its lasting qualities, faithfulness; its fragrance, love; its wide field of growth, charity; its form, beauty! what an impressive and beautiful tribute to motherhood it would be for a whole nation to unite one day in wearing its chosen emblem, and in song and speech, and other appropriate exercises, to honor its mothers! chapter lx why so many married women deteriorate a woman writes me: "you would laugh if you knew the time i have had in getting the dollar which i enclose for your inspiring magazine. i would get a pound less of butter, a bar less of soap. i never have a cent of my own. do you think it wrong of me to deceive my husband in this way? i either have to do this or give up trying at all." there are thousands of women who work harder than their husbands and really have more right to the money, who are obliged to practise all sorts of deceit in order to get enough to buy clothing and other things essential to decent living. the difficulty of extracting money from an unwilling husband has been the beginning of thousands of tragedies. the majority of husbands are inclined to exert a censorship over their wives' expenditures. i have heard women say that they would go without necessary articles of clothing and other requirements just as long as possible and worry for days and weeks before they could summon courage to ask for money, because they dreaded a scene and the consequent discord in the home. many women make it a rule never to ask for money, except when the husband is leaving the house and in a hurry to get away. the disagreeable scene is thus cut as short as possible, as he has not time then to go into all the details of his wife's alleged extravagances and find out what has become of every cent of the money given her on some similar previous occasion. the average man does not begin to realize how it humiliates his wife to feel that she must ask him for fifty cents, a dollar, or five dollars every time she needs it, and to tell him just exactly what she is going to do with it, and then perhaps be met with a sharp reproof for her extravagance of foolish expenditures. men who are extremely kind and considerate with their wives in most things are often contemptibly mean regarding money matters. many a man who is generous with his tips and buys expensive cigars and orders costly lunches for himself and friends at the club because he wants to be considered a "good fellow," will go home at night and bicker with his wife over the smallest expenditure, destroying the whole peace of the household, when perhaps she does not spend as much upon herself as he does for cigars and drink. why is it that men are so afraid to trust their wives with money when they trust them implicitly with everything else, especially as women are usually much more economical than men would be in managing the home and providing for the children? a large part of the friction in the average home centers around money matters and could be avoided by a simple, definite understanding between husband and wife, and a business arrangement of household finances. a regular advance to the wife for the household and a certain sum for personal use which she need not account for, would do more to bring about peace and harmony in the majority of homes than almost anything else. to be a slave to the home, as many women are, and then to be obliged to assume the attitude of a beggar for every little bit of money she needs for herself, or to have to give an accounting for every cent she spends and tell her lord and master what she did with her last money before she can get any more, is positively degrading. when the husband gets ready to regard his wife as an equal partner in the marriage firm instead of as an employee with one share in a million-dollar company, or as merely a housekeeper; when he is willing to regard his income as much his wife's as his own and not put her in the position of a beggar for every penny she gets; when he will grant her the same privileges he demands for himself; when he is willing to allow his wife to live her own life in her own way without trying to "boss" her, we shall have more true marriages, happier homes, a higher civilization. some one says that a man is never so happy as when he has a few dollars his wife knows nothing about. and there is a great deal of truth in it. men who are perfectly honest with their wives about most things are often secretive about money matters. they hoodwink them regarding their incomes and especially about any ready cash they have on hand. no matter how much the average man may think of his wife, or how considerate he may be in other matters, he rarely considers that she has the same right to his cash that he has, although he may be boasting to outsiders of her superior management in matters of economy. he feels that he is the natural guardian of the money, as he makes it; that he has a little more right to it than has his wife, and that he must protect it and dole it out to her. what disagreeable experiences, unfortunate bickerings, misunderstandings and family prejudice could be avoided if newly-married women would insist upon having a certain proportion of the income set aside for the maintenance of the home and for their own personal needs, without the censorship of their husbands and without being obliged to give an itemized account of their expenditures! it is a rare thing to find a man who does not waste ten times as much money on foolish things as does his wife, and yet he would make ten times the talk about his wife's one-tenth foolishness as his own ten-tenths. on the other hand, thousands of women, starving for affection, protest against their husband's efforts to substitute money for it--to satisfy their cravings, their heart-hunger, with the things that money can buy. it is an insult to womanhood to try to satisfy her nature with material things, while the affections are famishing for genuine sympathy and love, for social life, for contact with the great, throbbing world outside. women do admire beautiful things; but there is something they admire infinitely more. luxuries do not come first in any real woman's desires. she prefers poverty with love to luxury with an indifferent or loveless husband. how gladly would these women whose affections are blighted by cold indifference or the unfaithfulness of their husbands, exchange their liberal allowance, their luxuries, for genuine sympathy and affection! one of the most pathetic spectacles in american life is that of the faded, outgrown wife, standing helpless in the shadow of her husband's prosperity and power, having sacrificed her youth, beauty, and ambition--nearly everything that the feminine mind holds dear--to enable an indifferent, selfish, brutish husband to get a start in the world. it does not matter that in her unselfish effort to help him she burned up much of her attractiveness over the cooking stove; that she lost more of it at the washtub, in scrubbing and cleaning, and rearing and caring for their children during the slavery of her early married life; it does not matter how much she suffered during those terrible years of poverty and privation. just as soon as the selfish husband begins to get prosperous, finds that he is succeeding, feels his power, he often begins to be ashamed of the woman who has given up everything to make his success possible. it is a sad thing to see any human being whose life is blighted by the lack of love; but it is doubly pathetic to see a woman who has given everything to the man she loved and who gets in return only her board and clothes and an allowance, great or small. some men seem to think that the precept, "man does not live by bread alone," was not meant to include woman. they can not understand why she should not be happy and contented if she has a comfortable home and plenty to eat and wear. they would be surprised to learn that many a wife would gladly give up luxuries and live on bread and water, if she could only have her husband's sympathy in her aspirations, his help and encouragement in the unfolding of her stifled talents. i know a very able, promising young man who says that if he had had a rich father he never would have developed his creative power; that his ambition would have been strangled; that it was the desperate struggle to make a place for himself in the world that developed the real man in him. this young man married a poor girl who had managed by the hardest kind of work and sacrifice to pay her way through college. she had just begun to develop her power, to feel her wings, when her husband caged her in his home, took away her highest incentive for self-development. he said that a man who could not support a wife without her working had no business to marry. he dressed his wife like a queen; gave her horses and carriages and servants. but all the time he was discouraging her from developing her self-reliance, taking away all motives for cultivating her resourcefulness and originality. at first the wife was very eager to work. her ambition rebelled against the gilded chains by which she was bound. she was restless, nervous, and longed to use her powers to do something for herself and the world. but her husband did not believe in a woman doing the things she wished to do. he wanted his wife to look pretty and fresh when he returned from his business at night; to keep young and to shine in society. he was proud of her beauty and vivacity. he thought he loved her, but it was a selfish love, for real love has a tender regard for a person's highest good, for that person's sake. gradually the glamour of society, the lethe of a luxurious life, paralyzed her ambition, which clamored less and less peremptorily for recognition, until at length she subsided into a life of almost total inaction. multitudes of women in this country to-day are vegetating in luxurious homes, listless, ambitionless, living narrow, superficial, rutty lives, because the spur of necessity has been taken away from them; because their husbands, who do not want them to work, have taken them out of an ambition-arousing environment. but a life of leisure is not the only way of paralyzing the development of a wife's individuality. it can be done just as effectively by her becoming a slave of her family. i believe that the average wife is confined to her home a great deal too much. many women do not seem to have any existence outside of the little home orbit; do not have any special interests or pleasures to speak of apart from their husbands. they have been brought up to think that wives have very little purpose in life other than to be the slaves and playthings of their lords and masters, to bear and bring up children, and to keep meekly in the background. the wife who wishes to hold her husband's affection, if he is ambitious, must continue to grow, must keep pace with him mentally. she must make a continual investment in self-improvement and in intellectual charm so that her mental growth will compensate for the gradual loss of physical charm. she must keep her husband's admiration, and if he is a progressive man he is not likely to admire a wife who stands still mentally. admiration is a very important part of love. you may be very sure that if you have an ambitious husband you must do something to keep up with him besides lounging, idling about the home, reading silly novels, dressing stylishly and waiting for him to return at night. if he sees that your sun rises and sets in him, that you have little interest outside, that you are not broadening and deepening your life in other ways by extending your interests, reaching out for self-enlargement, self-improvement, he will be disappointed in you, and this will be a great strain upon his love. it is impossible for a girl who has had only a little schooling to appreciate the transforming power that comes from liberal education and broad culture. for the sake of her husband and children and her own peace of mind and satisfaction, she should try to improve herself in every possible way. think of what it means to be able to surround one's home with an atmosphere of refinement, culture and superior intelligence! the quality of one's own ideals has a great deal to do with the quality of the ideals of one's family. even considered alone from the standpoint of self-protection, as a safeguard, a woman ought to get a liberal education; a college education, if possible. the conditions of home life in this country are such that it is very difficult for the wife to keep up with her husband's growth, to keep pace with him, because he is constantly in an ambition-arousing, stimulating environment. unless she is unusually ambitious and has great power of application and concentration and plenty of leisure, she is likely to drop behind her husband. as a rule, the husband has infinitely more to encourage and stimulate him than has the wife. success itself is a tremendous tonic. the consciousness of perpetual triumph, of conquering things, is a great stimulus. it is true that women have developed more admirable and loving qualities in their home life than have men; but during all these centuries, while women have been shut up in the home, men have been touching hands with the great, busy world, absorbing knowledge of human nature and broadening their minds by coming into contact with men and things. they have developed independence, stamina, strength, by being compelled to solve the larger, more practical problems of life. the business man and the professional man are really in a perpetual school, a great practical university. the strenuous life, however dangerous, is essentially educative. the man has the incalculable advantage of a great variety of experiences and of freshness of view. he is continually coming in contact with new people, new things, being molded by a vast number of forces in the busy world which never touch the wife. if women, equally with men, do not continue to grow and expand after marriage, how can we expect race improvement? woman must ascend to higher, wider planes, or both man and woman must descend. "male and female created he them." there is no separating them; they must rise or fall together. "the woman's cause is man's; they rise or sink together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free." many a man has tired of his wife because she has not kept pace with him; because, instead of growing broader and keener as the years pass, she has become narrow. it never occurs to him that the fault may be wholly his own. in the early years of their married life he perhaps laughed at her "dreams," as he called her longings for self-improvement. he discouraged, if he did not actually oppose, every effort she made to grow to the full stature of her womanhood. his indifference or hostility quenched the hopes she had indulged before marriage. the bitterness of her disappointment crushed her spirit. she lost her buoyancy and enthusiasm and gradually sank to the level of a household drudge. and the husband wonders what has changed the joyous, high-spirited girl he married into the dull, apathetic woman who now performs her duties like an automaton. there are to-day thousands of wives doing the work of ordinary housemaids, who, putting it on a low standard, are smothering ability to earn perhaps more money than the men who enslave them, if they only had an opportunity to unfold the powers which god has given them; but they have been brought up from infancy to believe that marriage is the only real career for a woman, that these longings and hungerings for self-expression are to be smothered, covered up by the larger duties of a wife and mother. if the husbands could change places with their wives for a year, they would feel the contracting, narrowing influence in which the average wife lives. their minds would soon cease to reach out, they would quickly feel the pinching, paralyzing effect of the monotonous existence, of doing the same things every day, year in and year out. the wives, on the other hand, would soon begin to broaden out. their lives would become richer, fuller, more complete, from contact with the world, from the constant stretching of their minds over large problems. i have heard men say that remaining in the home on sundays or holidays just about uses them up; that it is infinitely harder and more trying than the same time spent in their occupations, and that while they love their children their incessant demands, the noise and confusion would drive them to drink if they had to bear it all the time. strong men admit that they can not stand these little nerve-racking vexations of the home. yet they wonder why the wife and mother is nervous, and seem to think that she can bear this sort of thing three hundred and sixty-five days in the year without going away and getting relief for a half-dozen days during the whole time. few men would exchange places with their wives. their hours are shorter, and when their day's work is done, it is done, while a wife and mother not only works all day, but is also likely to be called during the night. if any one is disturbed in the night by the children, it is the mother; rarely the father. how long would men continue to conduct their business offices or factories with the primitive, senseless methods in vogue in the average kitchen to-day? man puts all his inventiveness, his ingenuity, in improving methods, in facilitating his business and getting the drudgery out of his work in his office and factory, but the wife and mother still plods along in an ill-fitted kitchen and laundry. and yet our greatest modern inventor has said that the cares of the home could be reduced to a minimum and the servant problem solved if the perfectly practicable devices, for lightening household labor were adopted in the home! "but," many of our men readers will say, "is there any profession in the world grander than that of home making? can anything be more stimulating, more elevating, than home making and the rearing of children? how can such a vocation be narrowing or monotonous?" of course it is grand. there is nothing grander in the universe than the work of a true wife, a noble mother. but it would require the constitution of a hercules, an infinitely greater patience than that of a job, to endure such work with almost no change or outside variety, year in and year out, as many wives and mothers do, without breaking down. the average man does not appreciate how almost devoid of incentives to broadmindedness, to many-sidedness, to liberal growth, the home life of many women is. there is a disease called arrested development, in which the stature of the adult remains that of a child, all physical growth and expansion having stopped. one of the most pitiable phases of american life and one of the most discouraging elements in our civilization is the suppressed wife who is struggling with arrested development after marriage. i have known of beautiful young wives who went to their husbands with the same assurance of confidence and trust as to their hopes and ambitions with which a child would approach its mother, only to meet with a brutal rebuff for even venturing to have an ambition which did not directly enhance the husband's comfort or convenience in his home. it is a strange fact that most men think that when a woman marries she goes to her new home with as rigid vows as the monks take on entering the monastery, or the nuns the convent, and they regard the suggestion of a career for her, which does not directly bear upon the home, as domestic treason. there are some women, especially sensitive ones, who would never again tell their husbands of their hopes and aspirations after they had been laughed at and ridiculed a few times, but would be forever silent, even when the canker of bitter disappointment was consuming them. suppose a girl has the brains and the ability of a george eliot and she marries a young business man who thinks that writing articles or books or devoting a large part of her time to music is all nonsense; that her place is at home, taking care of it and bringing up her children, and denies her the right to exercise her talent. how would he like to have the conditions reversed? it is true that woman is peculiarly fitted for the home, and every normal woman should have a home of her own, but her career should not be confined or limited to it any more than a man's. i do not see why she should not be allowed to live the life normal to her; why she should be denied the right of self-expression, any more than the man. and i regard that man as a tyrant who tries to cramp her in the natural expression of her ambition or sneers at, nags, and criticizes her for seeking to bring out, to unfold, the sacred thing which the creator has given her. this is one of her inalienable rights which no man should dare interfere with. if he does, he deserves the unhappiness which is likely to come to his home. a wife should neither be a drudge nor a dressed-up doll; she should develop herself by self-effort, just as her husband develops himself. she should not put herself in a position where her inventiveness, resourcefulness, and individuality will be paralyzed by lack of motive. we hear a great deal about the disinclination of college girls to marry. if this is a fact, it is largely due to the unfairness of men. the more education girls get, the more they will hesitate to enter a condition of slavery, even under the beautiful guise of home. is it any wonder that so many girls refuse to marry, refuse to take chances of suppressing the best thing in them? is it any wonder that they protest against putting themselves in a position where they will not be able to deliver to the world the sacred message which the creator has given them? i believe in marriage, but i do not believe in that marriage which paralyzes self-development, strangles ambition, discourages evolution and self-growth, and which takes away the life purpose. to be continually haunted by the ghosts of strangled talents and smothered faculties prevents real contentment and happiness. many a home has been made miserable, not because the husband was not kind and affectionate, not because there was not enough to eat and to wear, but because the wife was haunted with unrealized hopes and disappointed ambitions and expectations. is there anything more pitiful than such a stifled life with its crushed hopes? is there anything sadder than to go through life conscious of talents and powers which we can not possibly develop; to feel that the best thing in us must be strangled for the want of opportunity, for the lack of appreciation even by those who love us best; to know that we can never by any possibility reach our highest expression, but must live a sordid life when under different conditions a higher would be possible? a large part of the marital infelicity about which we hear so much comes from the husband's attempt to cramp his wife's ambition and to suppress her normal expression. a perversion of native instinct, a constant stifling of ambition, and the longing to express oneself naturally, gradually undermine the character and lead to discontentment and unhappiness. a mother who is cramped and repressed transmits the seeds of discontent and one-sided tendencies to her children. the happiest marriages are those in which the right of husband and wife to develop broadly and naturally along individual lines has been recognized by each. the noblest and most helpful wives and mothers are those who develop their powers to their fullest capacity. woman is made to admire power, and she likes to put herself under the domination of a masterful man and rest in his protection. but it must be a _voluntary_ obedience which comes from admiration of original force, of sturdy, rugged, masculine qualities. the average man can not get away from the idea of his wife's service to him personally; that she is a sort of running mate, not supposed to win the race, but to help to pull him along so that _he_ will win it. he can not understand why she should have an ambition which bears no direct relation to his comfort, his well-being, his getting on in the world. the very suggestion of woman's inferiority, that she must stand in the man's shadow and not get ahead of him, that she does not have quite the same rights in anything that he has, the same property rights, the same suffrage rights; in other words, the whole suggestion of woman's inferiority, has been a criminal wrong to her. many women who are advocating woman's suffrage perhaps would not use the ballot if they had it. their fight is one for freedom to do as they please, to live their own lives in their own way. the greatest argument in the woman's suffrage movement is woman's protest against unfair, unjust treatment by men. man's opposition to woman suffrage is merely a relic of the old-time domestic barbarism. it is but another expression of his determination to "boss" everybody and everything about him. the time will come when men will be ashamed that they ever opposed woman's suffrage. think of a man considering it right and just for his most ignorant workman to have an equal vote with himself on public matters and yet denying the right to his educated wife and daughters! chapter lxi thrift "mony a mickle makes a muckle."--scotch proverb. "a penny saved is a penny earned."--english saying. "beware of little extravagances; a small leak will sink a big ship."--franklin. "no gain is more certain than that which proceeds from the economical use of what we have."--latin proverb. "make all you can, save all you can, give all you can."--john wesley. "all fortunes have their foundation laid in economy."--j. g. holland. in the philosophy of thrift, the unit measure of prosperity is always the smallest of coins current. thrift is measured not by the pound but by the penny, not by the dollar but by the cent. thus any person in receipt of an income or salary however small finds it in his power to practise thrift and to lay the foundation of prosperity. the word thrift in its origin means the grasping or holding fast the things that we have. it implies economy, carefulness, as opposed to waste and extravagance. it involves self-denial and frugal living for the time being, until the prosperity which grows out of thrift permits the more liberal indulgence of natural desires. one of the primary elements of thrift is to spend less than you earn, to save something however small from the salary received, to lay aside at regular intervals when possible some part of the money earned or made, in provision for the future. "every boy should realize, in starting out, that he can never accumulate money unless he acquires the habit of saving," said russell sage. "even if he can save only a few cents at the beginning, it is better than saving nothing at all; and he will find, as the months go on, that it becomes easier for him to lay by a part of his earnings. it is surprising how fast an account in a savings bank can be made to grow, and the boy who starts one and keeps it up stands a good chance of enjoying a prosperous old age. some people who spend every cent of their income on their living expenses are always bewailing the fact that they have never become rich. they pick out some man who is known to have made a fortune and speak of him as being 'lucky.' there is practically no such thing as luck in business, and the boy who depends upon it to carry him through is very likely not to get through at all. the men who have made a success of their lives are men who started out right when they were boys. they studied while at school, and when they went to work, they didn't expect to be paid wages for loafing half the time. they weren't always on the lookout for an 'easy snap' and they forged ahead, not waiting always for the opportunities that never came, and bewailing the supposed fact that times are no longer what they used to be." "a young man may have many friends," says sir thomas lipton, "but he will find none so steadfast, so constant, so ready to respond to his wants, so capable of pushing him ahead, as a little leather-covered book, with the name of a bank on the cover. saving is the first great principle of success. it creates independence, it gives a young man standing, it fills him with vigor, it stimulates him with proper energy; in fact, it brings to him the best part of any success,--happiness and contentment." it is estimated that if a man will begin at twenty years of age to lay by twenty-six cents every working day, investing at seven per cent. compound interest, he will at seventy years of age have amassed thirty-two thousand dollars. "economy is wealth." this proverb has been repeated to most of us until we are either tired of it or careless of it, but it is well to remember that a saying becomes a proverb because of its truth and significance. many a man has proved that if economy is not actual wealth, it is, in many cases, potentially so. professor marshall, the noted english economist, estimates that $ , , is spent annually by the british working classes for things that do nothing to make their lives nobler or happier. at a meeting of the british association, the president, in an address to the economic section, expressed his belief that the simple item of food-waste alone would justify the above-mentioned estimate. one potent cause of waste to-day is that very many of the women do not know how to buy economically, and are neither passable cooks nor good housekeepers. edward atkinson estimated that in the united states the waste from bad cooking alone is over a hundred million dollars a year! "provided he has some ability and good sense to start with, is thrifty, honest, and economical," said philip d. armour, "there is no reason why any young man should not accumulate money and attain so-called success in life." when asked to what qualities he attributed his own success, mr. armour said: "i think that thrift and economy had much to do with it. i owe much to my mother's training and to a good line of scotch ancestors, who have always been thrifty and economical." "a young man should cultivate the habit of always saving something," said the late marshall field, "however small his income." it was by living up to this principle that mr. field became the richest and most successful merchant in the world. when asked by an interviewer, whom i sent to him on one occasion, what he considered the turning point in his career, he answered, "saving the first five thousand dollars i ever had, when i might just as well have spent the modest salary i made. possession of that sum, once i had it, gave me the ability to meet opportunities. that i consider the turning point." the first savings prove the turning point in many a young man's career. but it is true that the lack of thrift is one of the greatest curses of modern civilization. extravagance, ostentatious display, a desire to outshine others, is a vice of our age, and especially of our country. some one has said that "investigation would place at the head of the list of the cause of poverty, wastefulness inherited from wasteful parents." "if you know how to spend less than you get," said franklin, "you have the philosopher's stone." the great trouble with many young people is that they do not acquire the saving habit at the start, and never find the "philosopher's stone." they don't learn to spend less than they get. if they learned that lesson in time, they would have little difficulty in making themselves independent. it is this first saving that counts. john jacob astor said it cost him more to get the first thousand dollars than it did afterwards to get a hundred thousand; but if he had not saved the first thousand, he would have died poor. "the first thing that a man should learn to do," says andrew carnegie, "is to save his money. by saving his money he promotes thrift,--the most valued of all habits. thrift is the great fortune-maker. it draws the line between the savage and the civilized man. thrift not only develops the fortune, but it develops, also, the man's character." the savings bank is one of the greatest encouragements to thrift, because it pays a premium on deposits in the form of interest on savings. one of the greatest benefits ever extended by this government to its citizens is the opening of postal savings banks where money can be deposited with absolute security against loss, because the federal government would have to fail before the bank could fail. the economies which enable a man to start a savings account are not usually pinching economies, not the stinting of the necessaries of life, but merely the foregoing of selfish pleasures and indulgences which not only drain the purse but sap the physical strength and undermine the health of brain and body. the majority of people do not even try to practise self-control; are not willing to sacrifice present enjoyment, ease, for larger future good. they spend their money at the time for transient gratification, for the pleasure of the moment, with little thought for to-morrow, and then they envy others who are more successful, and wonder why they do not get on better themselves. they store up neither money nor knowledge for the future. the squirrels know that it will not always be summer. they store food for the winter, which their instinct tells them is coming; but multitudes of human beings store nothing, consume everything as they go along, so that when sickness or old age come, there is no reserve, nothing to fall back upon. they have sacrificed their future for the present. the facility with which loose change slips away from these people is most insidious and unaccountable. i know young men who spend more for unnecessary things, what they call "incidentals"--cigars, drinks, all sorts of sweets, soda-water and nick-nacks of various kinds--than for their essentials, board, clothes, rooms. then they wonder where all their money goes to, as they never keep any account of it, and rarely restrain a desire. they do not realize it when they fling out a nickel here and a dime there, pay a quarter for this and a quarter for that; but in a week it counts up, and in a year it amounts to a large sum. "he never lays up a cent" is an expression which we hear every day regarding those who earn enough to enable them to save a competence. a short time ago, a young man in new york complained to a friend of poverty and his inability to save money. "how much do you spend for luxuries?" asked the friend. "luxuries!" answered the young man, "if by luxuries you mean cigars and a few drinks, i don't average,--including an occasional cigar or a glass of light wine for a friend,--over six dollars a week. most of the boys spend more, but i make it a rule to be moderate in my expenditures." "ten years ago," declared the friend, "i was spending about the same every week for the same things, and paying thirty dollars a month for five inconvenient rooms up four flights of stairs. i had just married then, and one day i told my wife that i longed to have her in a place befitting her needs and refinement. 'john,' was her reply, 'if you love me well enough to give up two things which are not only useless, but extremely harmful to you, we can, for what those things alone cost, own a pretty home in ten years.' "she sat down by me with a pencil and paper, and in less than five minutes had demonstrated that she was right. you dined with me in the suburbs the other day, and spoke of the beauty and convenience of our cottage. that cottage cost three thousand dollars, and every dollar of it was my former cigar and drink money. but i gained more than a happy wife and pretty home by saving; i gained self-control, better health, self-respect, a truer manhood, a more permanent happiness. i desire every young man who is trying to secure pleasure through smoking and drinking, whether moderately or immoderately, to make use of his judgment, and pencil and paper, and see if he is not forfeiting in a number of directions far more than he is gaining." there is an impressive fact in the gospel story of the prodigal son. the statement "he wasted his substance in riotous living" means more than that he wasted his funds. it implies that he wasted _himself_. and the most serious phase of all waste is not the waste of substance but the waste of self, of one's energy, capital, the lowering of morals, the undermining of character, the loss of self-respect which thrift encourages and promotes. thrift is not only one of the foundation-stones of a fortune, but also one of character. the habit of thrift improves the quality of the character. the saving of money usually means the saving of a man. it means cutting off indulgences or avoiding vicious habits which are ruinous. it often means health in the place of dissipation. it often means a clear instead of a cloudy and muddled brain. furthermore, the saving habit indicates an ambition to get on and up in the world. it develops a spirit of independence, of self-reliance. a little bank account or an insurance policy indicates a desire to improve one's condition, to look up in life. it means hope, it means ambition, a determination to "make good." people believe in the young man, who, without being mean or penurious, saves a part of his income. it is an indication of many sterling qualities. business men naturally reason that if a young man is saving his money, he is also saving his energy, his vitality, from being wasted, that he is looking up in the world, and not down; that he is longheaded, wise; that he is determined not to sacrifice the larger gain of the future for the gratification of the hour. a snug little bank account will add to your self-respect and self-confidence, because it shows that you have practicability, a little more independence. you can look the world in the face with a little more assurance, you can stand a little more erect and face the future with more confidence, if you know that there stands between yourself and want a little ready money or a safe investment of some kind. the very consciousness that there is something back of you that will prove a barrier to the wolf which haunts so many human beings, and which is a terror and an efficiency destroyer to so many, will strengthen and buttress you at every point. it will relieve you from worry and anxiety about the future; it will unlock your faculties, release them from the restraint and suppression which uncertainty, fear, and doubt impose, and leave you free to do your best work. another great aid and incentive to thrift is the life insurance policy. "primarily devised for the support of widows and orphans, life insurance practise has been developed so as to include the secure investment of surplus earnings in conjunction with the insurance of a sum payable at death." i am a great believer in the efficiency of savings-banks as character builders; but life insurance has some greater advantages, especially in furnishing that imperious "must," that spur of necessity so important as a motive to most people. people can put money into savings-banks when they get it, provided some stronger desire does not overcome the inclination; but they feel that they _must_ pay their insurance premium. then again, money obtainable just by signing the name is so easily withdrawn for spending in all sorts of ways. this is one reason why i often recommend life insurance to young people as a means of saving. it has been of untold value as an object-lesson of the tremendous possibilities in acquiring the saving habit. i believe that life insurance is doing a great deal to induce the habit of saving. when a young man on a salary or a definite income takes out an insurance policy he has a definite aim. he has made up his mind positively to save so much money every year from his income to pay his premium. then it is easier for him to say "no," to the hundred-and-one alluring temptations to spend his money for this and that. he can say "no," then with emphasis, because he knows he must keep up his insurance. an insurance policy has often changed the habits of an entire family from thriftlessness and spendthrift tendencies to thrift and order. the very fact that a certain amount must be saved from the income every week, or every month, or every year, has often developed the faculty of prudence and economy of the entire household. everybody is cautioned to be careful because the premium must be paid. and oftentimes it is the first sign of a program or order,--system in the home. the consciousness of a sacred obligation to make payments on that which means protection for those dear to you often shuts out a great deal of foolishness, and cuts out a lot of temptation to spend money for self-gratification and to cater to one's weak tendencies. the life insurance policy has thus proved to be a character insurance as well, an insurance against silly expenditures, an insurance against one's own weak will power, or vicious, weak tendencies; a real protection against one's self, one's real enemy. among the sworn enemies of thrift may be named going into debt, borrowing money, keeping no itemized account of daily expenditures, and buying on the instalment plan. that great english preacher spurgeon said that debt, dirt, and the devil made up the trinity of evil. and debt can discount the devil at any time for possibilities of present personal torment. the temptations to go into debt are increasing rapidly. on every hand in the cities one may read such advertisements as "we trust you," "your credit is good with us," and with these statements come offers of clothing, furniture, and what not "on easy payments." but as the irishman remarked after an experience with the instalment purchase of furniture: "onaisy payments they sure are." as a matter of fact, the easy payments take all the ease and comfort out of life--they are easy only for the man who receives them. beware of the delusions of buying on the instalment plan. there are thousands of poor families in this country who buy organs and sets of books and encyclopedias, lightning rods, farming implements, and all sorts of things which they might get along without, because they can pay for them a little at a time. in this way, they keep themselves poor. they are always pinching, sacrificing, to save up for the agent when he comes around to collect. all through the south there are poor homes of both colored and white families, where there are not sufficient cooking utensils and knives, forks, and spoons to enable the members to eat with comfort, and yet you will find expensive things in their homes which they have bought on the instalment plan, and which keep them poor for years trying to pay for them. as far as borrowing money is concerned the bitter experience of countless men and women is crystallized in that old saying: "he that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing." there is a world of safety for the man who follows shakespeare's advice: "neither a borrower nor a lender be." it is sometimes said flippantly that "poverty is no disgrace but it's mighty uncomfortable." and yet poverty is often a real disgrace. people born to poverty may rise above it. people who have poverty thrust upon them may overcome it. in this great land of abundance and opportunity poverty is in most cases a disgrace and a reproach. dr. johnson said to boswell, "i admonish you avoid poverty, the temptation and worry it breeds." there is something humiliating in being poor. the very consciousness that we have _nothing to show for our endeavor_ besides a little character and the little we have done, is anything but encouraging. somehow, we feel that we have not amounted to much, and we know the world looks upon us in the same way if we have not managed to accumulate something. it is a reflection upon our business ability, upon our judgment, upon our industry. it is not so much for the money, as for what it means to have earned and saved money; it is the idea of thrift. if we have not been thrifty, if we have not saved anything, the world will look upon us as good for nothing, as partial failures, as either lazy, slipshod, or extravagant. they regard us as either not having been able to make money, or if we have, not being able to save it. but let it be remembered that thrift is not parsimony not miserliness. it often means very liberal spending. it is a perpetual protest against putting the emphasis on the wrong thing. no one should make the mistake of economizing to the extent of planting seeds, and then denying liberal nourishment to the plants that grow from them; of conducting business without advertising; or of saving a little extra expense by pinching on one's table or dress. "a dollar saved is a dollar earned," but a dollar spent well and liberally is often several dollars earned. a dollar saved is often very many dollars lost. the progressive, generous spirit, nowadays, will leave far behind the plodder that devotes time to adding pennies that could be given to making dollars. the only value a dollar has is its buying power. "no matter how many times it has been spent, it is still good." hoarded money is of no more use than gold so inaccessible in old mother earth that it will never feel the miner's pick. there is plenty in this world, if we keep it moving and keep moving after it. imagine everybody in the world stingy, living on the principle of "we can do without that," or "our grandfathers got along without such things, and i guess i can." what would become of our parks, grand buildings, electrical improvements; of music and art? what would become of labor that nurses a tree from a forest to a piano or a palace car? what would become of those dependent upon the finished work? what would happen, what panic would follow, if everybody turned stingy, is indefinable. "so apportion your wants that your means may exceed them," says bulwer. "with one hundred pounds a year i may need no man's help; i may at least have 'my crust of bread and liberty.' but with five thousand pounds a year, i may dread a ring at my bell; i may have my tyrannical master in servants whose wages i can not pay; my exile may be at the fiat of the first long-suffering man who enters judgement against me; for the flesh that lies nearest my heart, some shylock may be dusting his scales and whetting his knife. every man is needy who spends more than he has; no man is needy who spends less. i may so ill manage that, with five thousand a year, i purchase the worst evils of poverty,--terror and shame; i may so well manage my money that, with one hundred pounds a year, i purchase the best blessings of wealth,--safety and respect." chapter lxii a college education at home "tumbling around in a library" was the phrase oliver wendell holmes used in describing in part his felicities in boyhood. one of the most important things that wise students get out of their schooldays is a familiarity with books in various departments of learning. the ability to pick out from a library what is needed in life is of the greatest practical value. it is like a man selecting his tools for intellectual expansion and social service. "men in every department of practical life," says president hadley of yale, "men in commerce, in transportation, or in manufactures--have told me that what they really wanted from our colleges was men who have this selective power of using books efficiently. the beginnings of this kind of knowledge are best learned in any home fairly well furnished with books." libraries are no longer a luxury, but a necessity. a home without books and periodicals and newspapers is like a house without windows. children learn to read by being in the midst of books; they unconsciously absorb knowledge by handling them. no family can now afford to be without good reading. children who are well supplied with dictionaries, encyclopedias, histories, works of reference, and other useful books, will educate themselves unconsciously, and almost without expense, and will learn many things of their own accord in moments which would otherwise be wasted; and which, if learned in schools, academies, or colleges, would cost ten times as much as the expense of the books would be. besides, homes are brightened and made attractive by good books, and children stay in such pleasant homes; while those whose education has been neglected are anxious to get away from home, and drift off and fall into all manner of snares and dangers. it is astonishing how much a bright child will absorb from being brought up in the atmosphere of good books, being allowed to constantly use them, to handle them, to be familiar with their bindings and titles. it is a great thing for children to be brought up in the atmosphere of books. many people never make a mark on a book, never bend down a leaf, or underscore a choice passage. their libraries are just as clean as the day they bought them, and, often, their minds are just about as clean of information. don't be afraid to mark your books. make notes in them. they will be all the more valuable. one who learns to use his books in early life, grows up with an increasing power for effective usefulness. it is related that henry clay's mother furnished him with books by her own earnings at the washtub. wear threadbare clothes and patched shoes if necessary, but do not pinch or economize on books. if you can not give your children an academic education you can place within their reach a few good books which will lift them above their surroundings, into respectability and honor. is not one's early home the place where he should get his principal training for life? it is here we form habits which shape our careers, and which cling to us as long as we live. it is here that regular, persistent mental training should fix the life ever after. i know of pitiable cases where ambitious boys and girls have longed to improve themselves, and yet were prevented from doing so by the pernicious habits prevailing in the home, where everybody else spent the evenings talking and joking, with no effort at self-improvement, no thought of higher ideals, no impulse to read anything better than a cheap, exciting story. the aspiring members of the family were teased and laughed at until they got discouraged and gave up the struggle. if the younger ones do not want to read or study themselves, they will not let anybody else so inclined do so. children are naturally mischievous, and like to tease. they are selfish, too, and can not understand why anyone else should want to go off by himself to read or study when they want him to play. were the self-improvement habit once well established in a home, it would become a delight. the young people would look forward to the study hour with as much anticipation as to playing. were it possible for every family that squanders precious time, to spend an evening in such a home, it would be an inspiration. a bright, alert, intelligent, harmonious atmosphere so pervades a self-improving home that one feels insensibly uplifted and stimulated to better things. i know a new england family in which all the children and the father and mother, by mutual consent, set aside a portion of each evening for study or some form of self-culture. after dinner, they give themselves completely to recreation. they have a regular romp and play, and all the fun possible for an hour. then when the time comes for study, the entire house becomes so still that you could hear a pin drop. everyone is in his place reading, writing, studying, or engaged in some form of mental work. no one is allowed to speak or disturb anyone else. if any member of the family is indisposed, or for any reason does not feel like working, he must at least keep quiet and not disturb the others. there is perfect harmony and unity of purpose, an ideal condition for study. everything that would scatter the efforts or cause the mind to wander, all interruptions that would break the continuity of thought, is carefully guarded against. more is gained in one hour of close, uninterrupted study, than in two or three broken by many interruptions, or weakened by mind wandering. sometimes the habits of a home are revolutionized by the influence of one resolute youth who declares himself, taking a stand and announcing that, as for himself, he does not propose to be a failure, that he is going to take no chances as to his future. the moment he does this, he stands out in strong contrast with the great mass of young people who are throwing away their opportunities and have not grit and stamina enough to do anything worth while. the very reputation of always trying to improve yourself in every possible way, of being dead in earnest, will attract the attention of everybody who knows you, and you will get many a recommendation for promotion which never comes to those who make no special effort to climb upward. there is a great deal of time wasted even in the busiest lives, which, if properly organized, might be used to advantage. many housewives who are so busy from morning to night that they really believe they have no time for reading books, magazines, or newspapers would be amazed to find how much they would have if they would more thoroughly systematize their work. order is a great time saver, and we certainly ought to be able to so adjust our living plan that we can have a fair amount of time for self-improvement, for enlarging life. yet many people think that their only opportunity for self-improvement depends upon the time left after everything else has been attended to. what would a business man accomplish if he did not attend to important matters until he had time that was not needed for anything else? the good business man goes to his office in the morning and plunges right into the important work of the day. he knows perfectly well that if he attends to all the outside matters, all the details and little things that come up, sees everybody that wants to see him, and answers all the questions people want to ask, that it will be time to close his office before he gets to his main business. most of us manage somehow to find time for the things we love. if one is hungry for knowledge, if one yearns for self-improvement, if one has a taste for reading, he will make the opportunity. where the heart is, there is the treasure. where the ambition is, there is time. it takes not only resolution but also determination to set aside unessentials for essentials, things pleasant and agreeable to-day for the things that will prove best for us in the end. there is always temptation to sacrifice future good for present pleasure; to put off reading to a more convenient season, while we enjoy idle amusements or waste the time in gossip or frivolous conversation. the greatest things of the world have been done by those who systematized their work, organized their time. men who have left their mark on the world have appreciated the preciousness of time, regarding it as the great quarry. if you want to develop a delightful form of enjoyment, to cultivate a new pleasure, a new sensation which you have never before experienced, begin to read good books, good periodicals, regularly every day. do not tire yourself by trying to read a great deal at first. read a little at a time, but read some every day, no matter how little. if you are faithful you will soon acquire a taste for reading--the reading habit; and it will, in time, give you infinite satisfaction, unalloyed pleasure. in a gymnasium, one often sees lax, listless people, who, instead of pursuing a systematic course of training to develop all the muscles of the body, flit aimlessly from one thing to another, exercising with pulley-weights for a minute or two, taking up dumb-bells and throwing them down, swinging once or twice on parallel bars, and so frittering away time and strength. far better it would be for such people to stay away from a gymnasium altogether, for their lack of purpose and continuity makes them lose rather than gain muscular energy. a man or woman who would gather strength from gymnastic exercise must set about it systematically and with a will. he must put mind and energy into the work, or else continue to have flabby muscles and an undeveloped body. [illustration: julia ward howe] the physical gymnasium differs only in kind from the mental one. thoroughness and system are as necessary in one as in the other. it is not the tasters of books--not those who sip here and there, who take up one book after another, turn the leaves listlessly and hurry to the end,--who strengthen and develop the mind by reading. to get the most from your reading you must read with a purpose. to sit down and pick up a book listlessly, with no aim except to pass away time, is demoralizing. it is much as if an employer were to hire a boy, and tell him he could start when he pleased in the morning, work when he felt like it, rest when he wanted to, and quit when he got tired! never go to a book you wish to read for a purpose, if you can possibly avoid it, with a tired, jaded mentality. if you do, you will get the same in kind from it. go to it fresh, vigorous, and with active, never passive, faculties. this practise is a splendid and effective cure for mind-wandering, which afflicts so many people, and which is encouraged by the multiplicity of and facility of obtaining reading matter at the present day. what can give greater satisfaction than reading with a purpose, and that consciousness of a broadening mind that follows it, and growth, of expansion, of enriching the life, the consciousness that we are pushing ignorance, bigotry, and whatever clouds the mind and hampers progress a little further away from us? the kind of reading that counts, that makes mental fiber and stamina is that upon which the mind is concentrated; approaching a book with all one's soul intent upon its contents. how few people ever learn to concentrate their attention. most of us waste a vast amount of precious time dawdling and idling. we sit or stand over our work without thinking. our minds are blank much of the time. passive reading is even more harmful in its effects than desultory reading. it no more strengthens the brain than sitting down in a gymnasium develops the body. the mind remains inactive, in a sort of indolent revery, wandering here and there, without focusing anywhere. such reading takes the spring and snap out of the mental faculties, weakens the intellect, and makes the brain torpid and incapable of grappling with great principles and difficult problems. what you get out of a book is not necessarily what the author puts into it, but what you bring to it. if the heart does not lead the head; if the thirst for knowledge, the hunger for a broader and deeper culture, are not the motives for reading, you will not get the most out of a book. but, if your thirsty soul drinks in the writer's thought as the parched soil absorbs rain, then your latent possibilities and the potency of your being, like delayed germs and seeds in the soil, will spring forth into new life. when you read, read as macaulay did, as carlyle did, as lincoln did--as did every great man who has profited by his reading--with your whole soul absorbed in what you read, with such intense concentration that you will be oblivious of everything else outside of your book. "reading furnishes us only with the materials of knowledge," said john locke; "it is thinking that makes what we read ours." in order to get the most out of books, the reader must be a thinker. the mere acquisition of facts is not the acquisition of power. to fill the mind with knowledge that can not be made available is like filling our houses with furniture and bric-à-brac until we have no room to move about. food does not become physical force, brain, or muscle until it has been thoroughly digested and assimilated, and has become an integral part of the blood, brain, and other tissues. knowledge does not become power until digested and assimilated by the brain, until it has become a part of the mind itself. if you wish to become intellectually strong, after reading with the closest attention, form this habit: frequently close your book and sit and think, or stand and walk and think--but think, contemplate, reflect. turn what you have read over and over in your mind. it is not yours until you have assimilated it by your thought. when you first read it, it belongs to the author. it is yours only when it becomes an integral part of you. many people have an idea that if they keep reading everlastingly, if they always have a book in their hands at every leisure moment, they will, of necessity, become full-rounded and well-educated. but they might just as well expect to become athletes by eating at every opportunity. it is even more necessary to think than to read. thinking, contemplating what we have read, is what digestion and assimilation are to the food. some of the biggest fools i know are always cramming themselves with knowledge. but they never think. when they get a few minutes' leisure they grab a book and go to reading. in other words, they are always eating intellectually, but never digesting their knowledge or assimilating it. i know a young man who has formed such a habit of reading that he is almost never without a book, a magazine, or a paper. he is always reading at home, on the cars, at the railway stations, and he has acquired a vast amount of knowledge. he has a perfect passion for knowledge, and yet his mind seems to have been weakened by this perpetual brain stuffing. by every reader let milton's words be borne in mind: "who reads incessantly, and to his reading brings not a spirit and judgment equal or superior, . . . uncertain and unsettled still remains, deep versed in books and shallow in himself, crude or intoxicate, collecting toys and trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge, as children gathering pebbles on the shore." when webster was a boy, books were scarce, and so precious that he never dreamed that they were to be read only once, but thought they ought to be committed to memory, or read and re-read until they became a part of his very life. elizabeth barrett browning says, "we err by reading too much, and out of proportion to what we think. i should be wiser, i am persuaded, if i had not read half as much; should have had stronger and better exercised faculties, and should stand higher in my own appreciation." those who live more quietly do not have so many distracting influences, and consequently think more deeply and reflect more than others. they do not read so much but they are better readers. you should bring your mind to the reading of a book, or to the study of any subject, as you take an ax to the grindstone; not for what you get from the stone, but for the sharpening of the ax. the greatest advantage of books does not always come from what we remember of them, but from their suggestiveness, their character-building power. "it is not in the library, but in yourself," says fr. gregory, "in your self-respect and your consciousness of duty nobly done--that you are to find the 'fountain of youth,' the 'elixir of life,' and all the other things that tend to preserve life's freshness and bloom. "it is a grand thing to read a good book--it is a grander thing to live a good life--and in the living of such life is generated the power that defies age and its decadence." it is not the ability, the education, the knowledge that one has that makes the difference between men. the mere possession of knowledge is not always the possession of power; knowledge which has not become a part of yourself, knowledge which can not swing into line in an emergency is of little use, and will not save you at the critical moment. to be effective, a man's education must become a part of himself as he goes along. all of it must be worked up into power. a little practical education that has become a part of one's being and is always available, will accomplish more in the world than knowledge far more extensive that can not be utilized. no one better illustrates what books will do for a man, and what a thinker will do with his books, than gladstone, who was always far greater than his career. he rose above parliament, reached out beyond politics, and was always growing. he had a passion for intellectual expansion. his peculiar gifts undoubtedly fitted him for the church, or he would have made a good professor at oxford or cambridge. but, circumstances led him into the political arena, and he adapted himself readily to his environment. he was an all round well read man, who thought his way through libraries and through life. one great benefit of a taste for reading, and access to the book world, is the service it renders as a diversion and a solace. what a great thing to be able to get away from ourselves, to fly away from the harassing, humiliating, discouraging, depressing things about us, to go at will to a world of beauty, joy, and gladness! if a person is discouraged or depressed by any great bereavement or suffering, the quickest and the most effective way of restoring the mind to its perfect balance, to its normal condition, is to immerse it in a sane atmosphere, an uplifting, encouraging, inspiring atmosphere, and the most good in the world is found in the best books. i have known people who were suffering under the most painful mental anguish, from losses and shocks which almost unbalanced their minds, to be completely revolutionized in their mental state by the suggestive power which came from becoming absorbed in a great book. everywhere we see rich old men sitting around the clubs, smoking, looking out of the windows, lounging around hotels, traveling about, uneasy, dissatisfied, not knowing what to do with themselves, because they had never prepared for this part of their lives. they put all their energy, ambition, everything into their vocation. i know an old gentleman who has been an exceedingly active business man. he has kept his finger upon the pulse of events. he has known what has been going on in the world during his whole active career. and he is now as happy and as contented as a child in his retirement, because he has always been a great reader, a great lover of his kind. people who keep their minds bent in one direction too long at a time soon lose their elasticity, their mental vigor, freshness, spontaneity. if i were to quote mr. dooley, it would be:--"reading is not thinking; reading is the next thing this side of going to bed for resting the mind." to my own mind, however, i would rather cite that versatile englishman, lord rosebery. in a speech at the opening of a carnegie library at west calder, midlothian, he made a characteristic utterance upon the value of books, saying in substance: "there is, however, one case in which books are certainly an end in themselves, and that is to refresh and to recruit after fatigue. when the object is to refresh and to exalt, to lose the cares of this world in the world of imagination, then the book is more than a means. it is an end in itself. it refreshes, exalts, and inspires the man. from any work, manual or intellectual, the man with a happy taste for books comes in tired and soured and falls into the arms of some great author, who raises him from the ground and takes him into a new heaven and a new earth, where he forgets his bruises and rests his limbs, and he returns to the world a fresh and happy man." "who," asks professor atkinson, "can overestimate the value of good books, those strips of thought, as bacon so finely calls them, voyaging through seas of time, and carrying their precious freight so safely from generation to generation? here are finest minds giving us the best wisdom of present and past ages; here are the intellects gifted far beyond ours, ready to give us the results of lifetimes of patient thought, imaginations open to the beauty of the universe." the lover of good books can never be very lonely; and, no matter where he is, he can always find pleasant and profitable occupation and the best of society when he quits work. who can ever be grateful enough for the art of printing; grateful enough to the famous authors who have put their best thoughts where we can enjoy them at will? there are some advantages of intercourse with great minds through their books over meeting them in person. the best of them live in their books, while their disagreeable peculiarities, their idiosyncrasies, their objectionable traits are eliminated. in their books we find the authors at their best. their thoughts are selected, winnowed in their books. book friends are always at our service, never annoy us, rasp or nettle us. no matter how nervous, tired, or discouraged one may be, they are always soothing, stimulating, uplifting. we may call up the greatest writer in the middle of the night when we can not sleep, and he is just as glad to see us as at any other time. we are not excluded from any nook or corner in the great literary world; we can visit the most celebrated people that ever lived without an appointment, without influence, without the necessity of dressing or of observing any rules of etiquette. we can drop in upon a milton, a shakespeare, an emerson, a longfellow, a whittier without a moment's notice and receive the warmest welcome. "you get into society, in the widest sense," says geikie, "in a great library, with the huge advantage of needing no introductions, and not dreading repulses. from that great crowd you can choose what companions you please, for in the silent levees of the immortals there is no pride, but the highest is at the service of the lowest, with a grand humility. you may speak freely with any, without a thought of your inferiority; for books are perfectly well bred, and hurt no one's feelings by any discriminations." "it is not the number of books," says professor william mathews, "which a young man reads that makes him intelligent and well informed, but the number of well-chosen ones that he has mastered, so that every valuable thought in them is a familiar friend." it is only when books have been read and reread with ever deepening delight, that they are clasped to the heart, and become what macaulay found them to be, the old friends who are never found with new faces, who are the same to us in our wealth and in our poverty, in our glory and in our obscurity. no one gets into the inmost heart of a beautiful poem, a great history, a book of delicate humor, or a volume of exquisite essays, by reading it once or twice. he must have its precious thoughts and illustrations stored in the treasure-house of memory, and brood over them in the hours of leisure. "a book may be a perpetual companion. friends come and go, but the book may beguile all experiences and enchant all hours." "the first time," says goldsmith, "that i read an excellent book, it is to me just as if i had gained a new friend; when i read over a book i have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one." "no matter how poor i am," says william ellery channing, "no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling; if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof--if milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of paradise; and shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart,--i shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where i live." "books," says milton, "do preserve as in a violl, the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. a good booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm'd and treasur'd up on purpose to a life beyond life." "a book is good company," said henry ward beecher. "it comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never. it is not offended at your absent-mindedness, nor jealous if you turn to other pleasures, of leaf, or dress, or mineral, or even of books. it silently serves the soul without recompense, not even for the hire of love. and yet more noble, it seems to pass from itself, and to enter the memory, and to hover in a silvery transformation there, until the outward book is but a body and its soul and spirit are flown to you, and possess your memory like a spirit." chapter lxiii discrimination in reading a few books well read, and an intelligent choice of those few,--these are the fundamentals for self-education by reading. if only a few well chosen, it is better to avail yourself of choices others have already made--old books, the standard works tested by many generations of readers. if only a few, let them be books of highest character and established fame. such books are easily found even in small public libraries. for the purpose of this chapter, which is to aid in forming a taste for reading, there should be no confusion of choice by naming too many books of one author. if you read one and like it, you can easily find another. it is a cardinal rule that if you do not like a book, do not read it. what another likes, you may not. any book list is suggestive; it can be binding only on those who prize it. like attracts like. did you ever think that the thing you are looking for is looking for you; that it is the very law of affinities to get together? if you are coarse in your tastes, vicious in your tendencies, you do not have to work very hard to find coarse vicious books; they are seeking you by the very law of attraction. one's taste for reading is much like his taste for food. dull books are to be avoided, as one refuses food disagreeable to him; to someone else the book may not be dull, nor the food disagreeable. whole nations may eat cabbage, or stale fish, while i like neither. ultimately, therefore, every reader must make his own selection, and find the book that finds him. any one not a random reader will soon select a short shelf of books that he may like better than a longer shelf that exactly suits some one else. either will be a shelf of good books, neither a shelf of the best books, since if best for you or me, they may not be best for everybody. a most learned man in india, in turning the leaves of a book, as he read, felt a little prick in his finger; a tiny snake dropped out and wriggled out of sight. the pundit's finger began to swell, then his arm; and in an hour, he was dead. who has not noticed in the home a snake in a book that has changed the character of a boy through its moral poison so that he was never quite the same again? how well did carlyle divide books into sheep and goats. it is probable that the careers of the majority of criminals in our prisons to-day might have been vastly different if the character of their reading when young had been different; had it been up-lifting, wholesome, instead of degrading. "christian endeavor" clark read a notice conspicuously posted in a large city:--"all boys should read the wonderful story of the desperado brothers of the western plains, whose strange and thrilling adventures of successful robbery and murder have never before been equaled. price five cents." the next morning, dr. clark read in a newspaper of that city that seven boys had been arrested for burglary, and four stores broken into by the "gang." one of the ringleaders was only ten years old. at their trial, it appeared that each had invested five cents in the story of border crime. "red-eyed dick, the terror of the rockies," or some such story has poisoned many a lad's life. a seductive, demoralizing book destroys the ambition unless for vicious living. all that was sweet, beautiful, and wholesome in the character before seems to vanish, and everything changes after the reading of a single bad book. it has aroused the appetite for more forbidden pleasures, until it crowds out the desire for everything better, purer, healthier. mental dissipation from this exciting literature, often dripping with suggestiveness of impurity, giving a passport to the prohibited; this is fatal to all soundness of mind. a lad once showed to another a book full of words and pictures of impurity. he only had it in his hands a few moments. later in life he held high office in the church, and years afterward told a friend that he would have given half he possessed had he never seen it. light, flashy stories, with no intention in them, seriously injured the mind of a brilliant young lady, i once knew. like the drug fiend whose brain has been stupefied, her brain became completely demoralized by constant mental dissipation. familiarity with the bad, ruins the taste for the good. her ambition and ideas of life became completely changed. her only enjoyment was the excitement of her imagination through vicious books. nothing else will more quickly injure a good mind than familiarity with the frivolous, the superficial. even though they may not be actually vicious, the reading of books which are not true to life, which carry home no great lesson, teach no sane or healthful philosophy, but are merely written to excite the passions, to stimulate a morbid curiosity, will ruin the best of minds in a very short time. it tends to destroy the ideals and to ruin the taste for all good reading. read, read, read all you can. but never read a bad book or a poor book. life is too short, time too precious, to spend it in reading anything but the best. any book is bad for you, the reading of which takes away your desire for a better one. many people still hold that it is a bad thing for the young to read works of fiction. they believe that young minds get a moral twist from reading that which they know is not true, the descriptions of mere imaginary heroes and heroines, and of things which never happened. now, this is a very narrow, limited view of a big question. these people do not understand the office of the imagination; they do not realize that many of the fictitious heroes and heroines that live in our minds, even from childhood's days, are much more real in their influence on our lives than some of those that exist in flesh and blood. dickens' marvelous characters seem more real to us than any we have ever met. they have followed millions of people from childhood to old age, and influenced their whole lives for good. many of us would look upon it as a great calamity to have these characters of fiction blotted out of our memory and their influence taken out of our lives. readers are sometimes so wrought up by a good work of fiction, their minds are raised to such a pitch of courage and daring, all their faculties so sharpened and braced, their whole nature so stimulated, that they can for the time being attempt and accomplish things which were impossible to them without the stimulus. this, it seems to me, is one of the great values of fiction. if it is good and elevating, it is a splendid exercise of all the mental and moral faculties; it increases courage; it rouses enthusiasm; it sweeps the brain-ash off the mind, and actually strengthens its ability to grasp new principles and to grapple with the difficulties of life. many a discouraged soul has been refreshened, re-invigorated, has taken on new life by the reading of a good romance. i recall a bit of fiction, called "the magic story," which has helped thousands of discouraged souls, given them new hope, new life, when they were ready to give up the struggle. the reading of good fiction is a splendid imagination exerciser and builder. it stimulates it by suggestions, powerfully increases its picturing capacity, and keeps it fresh and vigorous and wholesome, and a wholesome imagination plays a very great part in every sane and worthy life. it makes it possible for us to shut out the most disagreeable past, to shut out at will all hideous memories of our mistakes, failures, and misfortunes; it helps us to forget our trouble and sorrows, and to slip at will into a new, fresh world of our own making, a world which we can make as beautiful, as sublime, as we wish. the imagination is a wonderful substitute for wealth, luxuries, and for material things. no matter how poor we may be, or how unfortunate, we may be bedridden even, we can by its aid travel round the world, visit its greatest cities, and create the most beautiful things for ourselves. sir john herschel tells an amusing anecdote illustrating the pleasure derived from a book, not assuredly of the first order. in a certain village the blacksmith had got hold of richardson's novel "pamela, or virtue rewarded," and used to sit on his anvil in the long summer evenings and read it aloud to a large and attentive audience. it is by no means a short book, but they fairly listened to it all. "at length, when the happy turn of fortune arrived, which brings the hero and heroine together, and sets them living long and happily according to the most approved rules, the congregation were so delighted as to raise a great shout, and, procuring the church keys, actually set the parish bells ringing." "it all comes back to us now," said the brilliant editor of the "interior" not long ago, "that winter evening in the old home. the curtains are down, the fire is sending out a cheerful warmth and the shaded lamps diffusing a well-tempered radiance. the lad of fifteen is bent over a borrowed volume of sea tales. for hours he reads on, oblivious of all surroundings, until parental attention is drawn toward him by the unusual silence. the boy is seen to be trembling from head to foot with suppressed excitement. a fatherly hand is laid upon the volume, closing it firmly, and the edict is spoken, 'no more novels for five years.' and the lad goes off to bed, half glad, half grieved, wondering whether he has found fetters or achieved freedom. "in truth he had received both; for that indiscriminating command forbade to him during a formative period of his life works which would have kindled his imagination, enriched his fancy, and heightened his power of expression; but if it closed to him the garden of hesperides, it also saved him from a possible descent to the inferno; it made heroes of history, not demigods of mythology, his companions, and reserved to maturer years those excursions in the literature of the imagination which may lead a young man up to heaven or as easily drag him down to hell. "the boy who is permitted to saturate his mind with stories of 'battle, murder, and sudden death,' is fitting himself, as the records of our juvenile courts show, for the penitentiary or perhaps the gallows. no man can handle pitch without defilement. we may choose our books, but we can not choose their effects. we may plant the vine or sow the thistle, but we can not command what fruit each shall bear. we may loosely select our library, but by and by it will fit us close as a glove. "there was never such a demand for fiction as now, and never larger opportunities for its usefulness. nothing has such an attraction for life as life. but what the heart craves is not 'life as it is.' it is life as it ought to be. we want not the feeble but the forceful; not the commonplace but the transcendent. nobody objects to the 'purpose novel' except those who object to the purpose. dealing as it does in the hands of a great master, with the grandest passions, the most tender emotions, the divinest hopes, it can portray all these spiritual forces in their majestic sweep and uplift. and as a matter of history, we have seen the novel achieve in a single generation the task at which the homily had labored ineffectively for a hundred years. realizing this, it is safe to say that there is not a theory of the philosopher, a hope of the reformer, or a prayer of the saint which does not eventually take form in a story. the novel has wings, while logic plods with a staff. in the hour it takes the metaphysician to define his premises, the story-teller has reached the goal--and after him tumbles the crowd tumultuous." with the assistance of rev. dr. e. p. tenney, i venture upon the following lists of books in various lines of reading: _fiction_ "the arabian nights entertainment." "stories from the arabian nights" (riverside school library), contains many of the more famous stories. c. irving bachelder's [transcriber's note: "bacheller"?] "eben holden," is a good book. , copies were sold. j. m. barrie's "little minister," a story of scottish life, is very bright reading. bunyan's "pilgrim's progress," is one of the most famous of allegories. cervantes' "don quixote" is so widely known that any well-read man should know it. its humor never grows old. ralph connor's three books,--"the man from glengarry," "black rock," and "the sky pilot,"--have sold , copies. of george w. cable's books, "the cavalier," and "old creole days" are among the best. dinah mulock craik's "john halifax, gentleman," is of rare merit. c. e. craddock's (pseudonym), "in the tennessee mountains" is entertaining. a powerful story of mountain-life. of f. marion crawford's stories, among the best are "mr. isaacs" and "a roman singer." alexander dumas' "count of monte christo" [transcriber's note: "cristo"?] is a world-famous romance. of george eliot, "silas marner" is the best of the short stories, and "romola" the best of the long. "adam bede" ranks barely second to "silas marner." charlotte bronte's "jane eyre" remains a classic among earlier english novels. edward everett hale's "man without a country" will be read as long as the american flag flies. hawthorne's "mosses from an old manse" are stories of unique interest, and "the scarlet letter" is known to all well-read people. of rudyard kipling, read "kim," and "the man who would be king." pierre loti's "iceland fisherman" is translated by a. f. de koven. mcclurg, $ . . s. weir mitchell's "hugh wynne" sold , copies. thomas nelson page's "gordon keith" sold , copies. if you read only one of walter scott's novels, take "ivanhoe," or "the talisman." five more of those most read are likely to follow. henryk sienkiewicz's "quo vadis" is most notable. robert l. stevenson's "treasure island," and "doctor jekyll and mr. hyde," and "the merry men and other tales," are fair examples of the charm and insight of this author. he who reads frank stockton's "rudder grange" is likely to read more of this author's books. mrs. h. b. stowe's "uncle tom's cabin" is still one of the great stories of the world. of mark twain, "huckleberry finn," "the innocents abroad," and the "story of joan of arc" are representative volumes. miss warner's "wide, wide world" is unique in american fiction. john watson's "beside the bonnie briar bush," sold , copies in america. lew wallace's "ben hur" is the greatest of scriptural romances. thirty-eight books by twenty-eight authors. it would have been easier to name a hundred authors and two hundred books. i will add from "the critic" a list whose sales have reached six figures:-- _books of every-day life_ "david harum," by westcott . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , "mrs. wiggs of the cabbage patch," by alice hegan rice , "the virginian," by owen wister . . . . . . . . . . . , "lovey mary," by alice hegan rice . . . . . . . . . . , "the birds' christmas carol," by mrs. wiggin . . . . . , "the story of patsy," by mrs. wiggin . . . . . . . . . , "the leopard's spots," by thomas g. dixon, jr. . . . , _romantic_ "richard carvel," by winston churchill . . . . . . . . , "the crisis," by winston churchill . . . . . . . . . . , "graustark," by g. b. mccutcheon . . . . . . . . . . . , "the eternal city," by hall caine . . . . . . . . . . , "dorothy vernon," by charles major . . . . . . . . . . , "the manxman," by hall caine . . . . . . . . . . . . . , "when knighthood was in flower," by charles major . . , "to have and to hold," by miss johnston . . . . . . . , "audrey," by miss johnston . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , "the helmet of navarre," by bertha runkle . . . . . . , chapter lxiv reading a spur to ambition the great use in reading is for self-discovery. inspirational, character-making, life-shaping books are the main thing. cotton mather's "essay to do good" influenced the whole career of benjamin franklin. there are books that have raised the ideals and materially influenced entire nations. who can estimate the value of books that spur ambition, that awaken slumbering possibilities? are we ambitious to associate with people who inspire us to nobler deeds? let us then read uplifting books, which stir us to make the most of ourselves. we all know how completely changed we sometimes are after reading a book which has taken a strong, vigorous hold upon us. thousands of people have found themselves through the reading of some book, which has opened the door within them and given them the first glimpse of their possibilities. i know men and women whose whole lives have been molded, the entire trend of their careers completely changed, uplifted beyond their dreams by the books they have read. when senator petters of alabama went to california on horseback in , he took with him a bible, shakespeare, and burns's poems. he said that those books read and thought about, on the great plains, forever after spoiled him for reading poorer books. "the silence, the solitude," he said, "and the strange flickering light of the camp fire, seemed to bring out the tremendous significance of those great books; and i treasure them to-day as my choicest possessions." marshall field and other proprietors of the great business houses of chicago petitioned the school authorities for improved instruction along moral lines, affirming that the boys needed religious ideas to make them more reliable in business affairs. it has been said by president white of cornell that,--"the great thing needed to be taught in this country is _truth, simple ethics, the distinction between right and wrong_. stress should be laid upon _what is best in biography_, upon _noble deeds and sacrifices_, especially those which show that the greatest man is not the greatest orator, or the tricky politician. they are a curse; what we need is _noble men_. national loss comes as the penalty for frivolous boyhood and girlhood, that gains no moral stamina from wholesome books." if youths learn to feed on the thoughts of the great men and women of all times, they will never again be satisfied with the common or low; they will never again be satisfied with mediocrity; they will aspire to something higher and nobler. a day which is passed without treasuring up some good thought is not well spent. every day is a leaf in the book of life. do not waste a day any more than you would tear out leaves from the book of life. the bible, such manuals as "daily strength for daily needs," such books as professor c. c. everett's "ethics for young people"; lucy elliott keeler's "if i were a girl again"; "beauty through hygiene," by dr. emma f. walker, such essays as robert l. stevenson's "gentlemen" (in his "familiar studies of men and books") munger's "on the threshold"; john ruskin's "sesame and lilies"--these are the books that make young men and maidens so trustworthy that the marshall fields and john wanamakers want their aid in the conduct of great business concerns. blessed are they who go much farther in later years, and who become familiar with those "olympian bards who sang divine ideas below, which always find us young and always keep us so." the readers who do not know the concord philosopher emerson, and the great names of antiquity, marcus aurelius, epictetus and plato, have yet great pleasures to come. aside from reading fiction, books of travel are of the best for mental diversion; then there are nature studies, and science and poetry,--all affording wholesome recreation, all of an uplifting character, and some of them opening up study specialties of the highest order, as in the great range of books classified as natural science. the reading and study of poetry is much like the interest one takes in the beauties of natural scenery. much of the best poetry is indeed a poetic interpretation of nature. whittier and longfellow and bryant lead their readers to look on nature with new eyes, as ruskin opened the eyes of henry ward beecher. a great deal of the best prose is in style and sentiment of a true poetic character, lacking only the metrical form. to become familiar with tennyson and shakespeare, and the brilliant catalogue of british poets is in itself a liberal education. rolfe's shakespeare is in handy volumes, and so edited as to be of most service. palgrave's "golden treasury" of the best songs and lyrical poems in the english language was edited with the advice and collaboration of tennyson. his "children's treasury" of lyrical poetry is most attractive. emerson's parnassus, and whittier's "three centuries of song" are excellent collections of the most famous poems of the ages. of books of travel, here are a dozen titles, where one might easily name twelve hundred:-- edmondo de amicis,--"holland and its people," and his "constantinople." frank t. bullen's "cruise of the cachelot round the world after sperm wales." j. m. hoppin's "old england." clifton johnson, "among english hedgerows." w. d. howell's "venetian life"; "italian journeys." irving's "sketch book," and the "alhambra." henry james, "portraits of places." arthur smith's "chinese characteristics," and especially his "village life in china." it would be impossible to list books more interesting and more useful than most fiction, which may be called nature studies. i will name a few books that will certainly incite the reader to search for more:-- ernest ingersoll's "book of the ocean." professor e. s. holder's "the sciences," a reading book for children. jean mace's "history of a mouthful of bread." e. a. martin's "story of a piece of coal." professor charles a. young's "the sun," revised edition . serviss' "astronomy with an opera-glass," "pleasures of the telescope," "the skies and the earth." thoreau's "walden; or life in the woods." mrs. f. t. parsons' (smith) dana. "according to seasons"; talks about the flowers in the order of their appearance in the woods and fields. describes wild flowers in order of blooming, with information about their haunts and habits. also, by the same author, "how to know the wild flowers". describes briefly more than varieties common east of chicago, grouping them by color. seton-thompson's "wild animals i have known"; of which , copies have been sold. f. a. lucas' "animals of the past" bradford towey's "birds in the bush," and "everyday birds." president d. s. jordan's "true tales of birds and beasts." d. l. sharp's "a watcher in the woods." w. h. gibson's "sharp eyes." m. w. morley's "the bee-people." never before was a practical substitute for a college education at home made so cheap, so easy, and so attractive. knowledge of all kinds is placed before us in a most attractive and interesting manner. the best of the literature of the world is found to-day in thousands of american homes where fifty years ago it could only have been obtained by the rich. what a shame it is that under such conditions as these an american should grow up ignorant, should be uneducated in the midst of such marvelous opportunities for self-improvement! indeed, most of the best literature in every line to-day appears in the current periodicals, in the form of short articles. many of our greatest writers spend a vast amount of time in the drudgery of travel and investigation in gathering material for these articles, and the magazine publishers pay thousands of dollars for what a reader can get for ten or fifteen cents. thus the reader secures for a trifle in periodicals or books the results of months and often years of hard work and investigation of our greatest writers. a new york millionaire,--a prince among merchants,--took me over his palatial residence on fifth avenue, every room of which was a triumph of the architect's, of the decorator's, and of the upholsterer's art. i was told that the decorations of a single sleeping-room had cost ten thousand dollars. on the walls were paintings secured at fabulous prices, and about the rooms were pieces of massive and costly furniture, and draperies representing a small fortune, and carpets on which it seemed almost sacrilege to tread covered the floors. but there was scarcely a book in the house. he had expended a fortune for physical pleasures, comforts, luxury, and display. it was pitiful to think of the physical surfeit and mental starvation of the children of such a home as that. when i went out, he told me that he came to the city a poor boy, with all his worldly possessions done up in a little red bandana. "i am a millionaire," he said, "but i want to tell you that i would give half i have to-day for a decent education." many a rich man has confessed to confidential friends and his own heart that he would give much of his wealth,--all, if necessary,--to see his son a manly man, free from the habits which abundance has formed and fostered till they have culminated in sin and degradation and perhaps crime; and has realized that, in all his ample provision, he has failed to provide that which might have saved his son and himself from loss and torture,--good books. there is a wealth within the reach of the poorest mechanic and day-laborer in this country that kings in olden times could not possess, and that is the wealth of a well-read, cultured mind. in this newspaper age, this age of cheap books and periodicals, there is no excuse for ignorance, for a coarse, untrained mind. to-day no one is so handicapped, if he have health and the use of his faculties, that he can not possess himself of wealth that will enrich his whole life, and enable him to converse and mingle with the most cultured people. no one is so poor but that it is possible for him to lay hold of that which will broaden his mind, which will inform and improve him, and lift him out of the brute stage of existence into their god-like realm of knowledge. "no entertainment is so cheap as reading," says mary wortley montague; "nor any pleasure so lasting." good books elevate the character, purify the taste, _take the attractiveness out of low pleasures_, and lift us upon a higher plane of thinking and living. "a great part of what the british spend on books," says sir john lubbock, "they save in prisons and police." it seems like a miracle that the poorest boy can converse freely with the greatest philosophers and scientists, statesmen, warriors, authors of all time with little expense, that the inmates of the humblest cabin may follow the stories of the nations, the epochs of history, the story of liberty, the romance of the world, and the course of human progress. have you just been to a well educated sharp-sighted employer to find work? you did not need to be at any trouble to tell him the names of the books you have read, because they have left their indelible mark upon your face and your speech. your pinched, starved vocabulary, your lack of polish, your slang expressions, tell him of the trash you have given your precious time to. he knows that you have not rightly systemized your hours. he knows that thousands of young men and women whose lives are crowded to overflowing with routine work and duties, manage to find time to keep posted on what is going on in the world, and for systematic, useful reading. carlyle said that a collection of books is a university. what a pity that the thousands of ambitious, energetic men and women who missed their opportunities for an education at the school age, and feel crippled by their loss, fail to catch the significance of this, fail to realize the tremendous cumulative possibilities of that great life-improver that admirable substitute for a college or university education--reading. "of the things which man can do or make here below," it was said by the sage of chelsea, "by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy, are the things we call books! those poor bits of rag-paper with black ink on them; from the daily newspaper to the sacred hebrew book, what have they not done, what are they not doing?" president schurmann of cornell, points with pride to a few books in his library which he says he bought when a poor boy by going many a day without his dinner. the great german professor oken was not ashamed to ask professor agassiz to dine with him on potatoes and salt, that he might save money for books. king george iii, used to say that lawyers do not know so much more law than other people; but they know better where to find it. a practical working knowledge of how to find what is in the book world, relating to any given point, is worth a vast deal from a financial point of view. and by such knowledge, one forms first an acquaintance with books, then friendship. "when i consider," says james freeman clarke, "what some books have done for the world, and what they are doing, how they keep up our hope, awaken new courage and faith, soothe pain, give an ideal of life to those whose homes are hard and cold, bind together distant ages and foreign lands, create new worlds of beauty, bring down truths from heaven,--i give eternal blessings for this gift." for the benefit of the younger readers we give below a list of forty juveniles. aesop's "fables." louise m. alcott's "little women," "little men," which stood at the top of a list of books chosen in eleven thousand elementary class-rooms in new york. t. b. aldrich's "story of a bad boy." anderson's "fairy tales." amelia e. barr's "the bow of orange ribbon," a book for girls. "black beauty." e. s. brooks, "true story of general grant." bulfinch's "children's lives of great men," "age of chivalry," and "age of fable." bullen's "log of a sea waif." burnett's "little lord fauntleroy," and "sara crewe," the latter a book for girls. butterworth's "zig-zag journeys." carleton coffin's, "boys' of ' ." eva lovett carson's "the making of a girl." ralph connor's "gwen," a book for girls. louis carroll's "alice in wonderland," and "through the looking glass." dana's "two years before the mast." "de amicin's cuore," which has sold , in italy. defoe's "robinson crusoe." mary mapes dodge, "hans brinker," or "the silver skates," "life in holland." eugene field's "a little book of profitable tales." it has sold , copies. grimm's "fairy tales." habberton's "helen's babies." e. e. hale's "boy heroes." chandler harris' "little mr. thimblefinger and his queer country; what the children saw and heard there." fantastic tale interweaving negro animal stories and other georgia folklore with modern inventions. "mr. rabbit at home"; sequel to "little mr. thimblefinger and his queer country." animal stories told to children. charles kingsley's "water babies." kipling's "jungle books," which have sold , copies. knox's "boy travelers." lanier's "boy froissart," and "boy's king arthur." edward lear's "nonsense books." mabie's "norse stories." samuel's "from the forecastle to the cabin." the experiences of the author who ran away from home and shipped as cabin boy; points out dangers that beset a seafaring life. mrs. a. d. t. whitney's "faith gartney's girlhood." kate douglas wiggin's "rebecca of sunnybrook farm." not long ago president eliot of harvard college aroused widespread controversy over his selection of a library of books, which might be contained on a five-foot shelf. we append his selections as indicative of the choice of a great scholar and educator. the following sixteen titles may be had in everyman's library, cloth . net per volume; leather c. net per volume: _president eliot's five-foot shelf_ benjamin franklin's autobiography. sir thomas browne's "religio medici." "confessions of st. augustine." shelley's "the cenci" (contained in volume two of the complete works). emerson's "english traits," and "representative men." emerson's essays. chaucer's "canterbury tales." bacon's essays. walton's "complete angler." milton's poems. goethe's "faust." marlowe's "dr. faustus." marcus aurelius' "meditations." browning's "blot on the scutcheon" (contained in volume one of the poems). dante's "divine comedy." bunyan's "pilgrim's progress." thomas Ã�. kempis' "imitation of christ." burns's "tam o'shanter." dryden's "translation of the aeneid." walton's lives of donne, and herbert. ben johnson's "volpone." smith's "wealth of nations." plutarch's "lives." letters of pliny. cicero's select letters. plato's "phaedrus." epictetus' discourses. socrates' "apology and crito." beaumont and fletcher's "maid's tragedy." milton's tractate on education. bacon's "new atlantis." darwin's "origin of species." webster's "duchess of malfi." dryden's "all for love." thomas middleton's "the changeling." john woolman's journal. "arabian nights." tennyson's "becket." penn's "fruits of solitude." milton's "areopagitica." the following list of books is offered as suggestive of profitable lines of reading for all classes and tastes: _books on nature_ thoreau's, "cape cod," "maine woods," "excursions." burroughs' "ways of nature," "wake robin," "signs and seasons," "pepacton." jefferies' "life of the fields," "wild life in a southern country," and "idylls of field and hedgerow." lubbock's "beauties of nature." maeterlinck's "life of the bee." thompson's "my winter garden." warner's "my summer in a garden." van dyke's "little rivers," "fisherman's luck." white's "the forest." mrs. wright's "garden of a commuter's wife." wordsworth's and bryant's poems. _novels descriptive of american life_ simms' "the partisan." cooper's "the spy." hawthorne's "the house of the seven gables." cable's "old creole days," "the grandissimes." howells' "the rise of silas lapham." howells' "a hazard of new fortunes." eggleston's "a hoosier schoolmaster." bret harte's "luck of roaring camp and other stories." mary hallock foote's "the led-horse claim." octave thanet's "heart of toil," "stories of a western town." wister's "the virginian," "lady baltimore." e. hopkinson smith's "the fortune of oliver horn." thomas nelson page's "short stories," and "red rock." mrs. delands' "old chester tales." j. l. allen's "flute and violin," "the choir invisible." frank norris' "the octopus," "the pit" garland's "main traveled roads." miss jewett's "country of the pointed firs," "the tory lover." miss wilkins' "new england nun," "pembroke." churchill's "the crisis," "coniston," "mr. crewe's career." brander matthews' "his father's son." s. weir mitchell's "hugh wynne." fox's "the little shepherd of kingdom come." mrs. wharton's "the house of mirth." robert grant's "unleavened bread." robert herrick's "the common lot," "the memoirs of an american citizen." grace e. king's "balcony stories." _books which interpret american ideals_ emerson's addresses and essays. lowell's essay on democracy. lincoln's inaugural addresses. booker t. washington's "up from slavery." jacob riis' "the making of an american." higginson's "the new world and the new book." brander matthews' "introduction to american literature." whittier's "snow-bound." louise manley's "southern literature." thomas nelson page's "the old south." e. j. turner's "the rise of the new west" churchill's "the crossing." james bryce's "american commonwealth." _some of the best biographies_ "life of sir walter scott," lockhart. "life of frederick the great," carlyle. "alfred lord tennyson," by his son. "life and letters of thomas henry huxley," by his son. plutarch's "lives." "lives of seventy of the most eminent painters, sculptors and architects," vasari. "cicero and his friends," boissier. "life of samuel johnson," boswell. autobiography of leigh hunt. "memoirs of my life and writings," gibbon. autobiography of martineau. "life of john sterling," carlyle. "life and times of goethe," grimm. "life and letters of macaulay," trevelyan. "life of charles james fox," trevelyan. "life of carlyle," froude. benvenuto cellini's autobiography. boswell's "johnson." trevelyan's "life of macaulay." carlyle's, "frederick the great." stanley's, "thomas arnold." hughes', "alfred the great." mrs. kingsley's, "charles kingsley." lounsbury's, "cooper." greenslet's, "lowell," and "aldrich." mims', "sidney lanier." wister's, "seven ages of washington." grant's autobiography. morley's, "chatham." harrison's, "cromwell." w. clark russell's, "nelson." morse's, "benjamin franklin." _twenty-four american biographies_ "abraham lincoln," schurz. "life of george washington," irving. "charles eliot, landscape architect," eliot. "nathaniel hawthorne and his wife," hawthorne. "henry wadsworth longfellow," higginson. "james russell lowell," greenslet. "life of francis parkman," farnham. "edgar alien poe," woodberry. autobiography of joseph jefferson. "walt whitman," perry. "life and letters of whittier," pickard. "james russell lowell and his friends," hale. "george washington," wilson. autobiography of benjamin franklin. "story of my life," helen keller. "autobiography of a journalist," stillman. "autobiography of seventy years," hoar. "life of thomas bailey aldrich," greenslet. "life of alice freeman palmer," palmer. "personal memoirs," grant. "memoirs," sherman. "memoirs of ralph waldo emerson," cabot. "sidney lanier," mims. "life of j. fenimore cooper," lounsbury. the books enumerated have been selected as examples of the best in their respective classes. even those books of fiction chosen, primarily, for entertainment, are instructive and educational. whether the reader's taste runs to history, biography, travel, nature study, or fiction, he may select any one of the books named in these respective classifications and be assured of possessing a volume worthy of reading and ownership. it is the author's hope and desire that the list of books he has given, limited as it is, may prove of value to those seeking self-education, and that the books may encourage the disheartened, stimulate ambition, and serve as stepping stones to higher ideals and nobler purposes in life. chapter lxv why some succeed and others fail life's highway is strewn with failures, just as the sea bed is strewn with wrecks. a large percentage of those who embark in commercial undertakings fail, according to the records of commercial agencies. why do men fail? why do adventures into business, happily launched, terminate in disastrous wreck? why do the few succeed and the many fail? some failures are relative and not absolute; a partial success is achieved; a success that goes limping along through life; but the goal of ambition is unreached, the heart's desire unattained. there are so many elements that enter into business that it is impossible to more than indicate them. health, natural aptitude, temperament, disposition, a right start and in the right place, hereditary traits, good judgment, common sense, level-headedness, etc., are all factors which enter into one's chance of success in life. the best we can do in one chapter is to hang out the red flag over the dangerous places; to chart the rocks and shoals, whereon multitudes of vessels, which left the port of youth with flying colors, favoring breezes and every promise of a successful voyage, have been wrecked and lost. the lack of self-confidence and lack of faith in one's ideas in one's mission in life have caused innumerable failures. people who don't get on and who don't know why, do not realize the power of trifles to mar a career, what little things are killing their business or injuring their profession; do not realize how little things injure their credit; such as the lack of promptness in paying bills, or meeting a note at the bank. many men fail because they thought they had the field and were in no danger from competition, so that the heads of the firm took it easy, or because some enterprising up-to-date, progressive young man came to town, and, before they realized it, took their trade away from them, because they got into a rut, and didn't keep up-to-date stock and an attractive store. they don't realize what splendid salesmen, an attractive place of business, up-to-date methods, and courteous treatment of customers mean. men often fail because they do not realize that creeping paralysis, caused by dry rot, is gradually strangling their business. many business men fail because they dare not look their business conditions in the face when things go wrong, and do not adopt heroic methods, but continue to use palliatives, until the conditions are beyond cure, even with a surgeon's knife. lots of men fail because they don't know how to get rid of deadwood in their establishment, or retain non-productive employees, who with slip-shod methods, and indifference drive away more business than the proprietors can bring in by advertising. many other men fail because they tried bluff in place of capital, and proper training, or because they didn't keep up with the times. lots of young people fail to get ahead and plod along in mediocrity because they never found their place. they are round pegs in square holes. others are not capable of coping with antagonism. favoritism of proprietors and managers has killed many a business. a multitude of men fail to get on because they take themselves too seriously. they deliver their goods in a hearse, employ surly, unaccommodating clerks. bad business manners have killed many a business. slave-driving methods, inability to get along with others, lack of system, defective organizing ability, have cut short many a career. a great many men are ruined by "side-lines" things outside their regular vocation. success depends upon efficiency, and efficiency is impossible without intense, persistent concentration. many traveling men think that they can pick up a little extra money and increase their income by taking up some "side-line." but it is always the small man, never the big one, who has a "side-line." many of these men remain small, and are never able to rise to a big salaried position because they split up their endeavor, dissipate their energy. "side-lines" are dangerous because they divert the mind, scatter effort, and nothing great can be accomplished without _intense concentration_. many people are always driving success away from them by their antagonistic manner, and their pessimistic thought. _they work for one thing, but expect something else_. they don't realize that their mental attitude must correspond with their ambition; that if they are working hard to get on, they must expect prosperity, and not kill their prospects by their adverse mental attitude--their doubts and fears. lots of men are ruined by "a sure thing," an inside tip, buying stocks on other people's judgment. many people fail because they lose their grit after they fail, or when they get down, they don't know how to get up. many are victims of their moods, slaves of despondency. courage and an optimistic outlook upon life are imperative to the winner. fear is fatal to success. many a young man fails because he can not multiply himself in others, can not delegate his work, is lost in detail. other men fail in an attempt to build up a big business; their minds are not trained to grasp large subjects, to generalize, to make combinations; they are not self-reliant, depending upon other people's judgment and advice. many a man who works hard himself, does not know how to handle men, and does not know how to use other people's brains. thousands of youths fail to get on because they never fall in love with their work. work that is drudgery never succeeds. fifty years ago, a stable-boy cleaned the horses of a prosperous hotel proprietor, who drove into denver for supplies. that boy became governor of colorado, and later the hotel-keeper, with shattered fortunes, was glad to accept a place as watchman at the hand of the former stable-boy. life is made up of such contrasts. every successful man, in whatever degree and in whatever line, has, at every step of his life, been on seemingly equal terms with hundreds of his fellows who, later, reached no such measure of success as he. every miserable failure has had at some time as many chances, and at least as much possibility of cultivating the same qualities, as the successful people have had at some time in their lives. since humble birth and handicaps of every sort and degree have not prevented success in the determined man; since want has often spurred to needed action and obstacles but train to higher leaping, why should men fail? what causes the failures and half-successes that make up the generality of mankind? the answer is manifold, but its lesson is plain. as one writer has expressed it, "_every mainspring of success is a mainspring of failure, when wound around the wrong way._" every opportunity for advancement, for climbing for success, is just as much an opportunity for failure. every success quality can be turned to one's disadvantage through excessive development or wrong use. no matter how broad and strong the dike may be, if a little hole lets the water through, ruin and disaster are sure. possession of almost all the success-qualities may be absolutely nullified by one or two faults or vices. sometimes one or two masterful traits of character will carry a person to success, in spite of defects that are a serious clog. the numerous failures who wish always to blame their misfortunes upon others, or upon external circumstances, find small comfort in statistics compiled by those who have investigated the subject. in analyzing the causes of business failure in a recent year _bradstreet's_ found that seven-tenths were due to faults of those failing, and only three-tenths to causes entirely beyond their control. faults causing failure, with per cent. of failures caused by each, are given as follows: incompetence, per cent.; inexperience, . per cent.; lack of capital, . per cent.; unwise granting of credit, . per cent.; speculation, . per cent. it may be explained that "lack of capital" really means attempting to do too much with inadequate capital. this is a purely commercial analysis of purely commercial success. character delinquencies must be read between the lines. forty successful men were induced, not long ago, to answer in detail the question, "what, in your observation, are the chief causes of the failure in life of business or professional men?" the causes attributed by these representative men were as follows: bad habits; bad judgment; bad luck; bad associates; carelessness of details; constant assuming of unjustifiable risks; desire to become rich too fast; drinking; dishonest dealings; desire of retrenchment; dislike to say no at the proper time; disregard of the golden rule; drifting with the tide; expensive habits of life; extravagance: envy; failure to appreciate one's surroundings; failure to grasp one's opportunities; frequent changes from one business to another; fooling away of time in pursuit of a so-called good time, gambling; inattention; incompetent assistants; incompetency; indolence; jealousy. lack of attention to business; of application; of adaptation; of ambition; of business methods; of capital; of conservatism; of close attention to business; of confidence in self; of careful accounting; of careful observation; of definite purpose; of discipline in early life; of discernment of character; of enterprise; of energy; of economy; of faithfulness; of faith in one's calling; of industry; of integrity; of judgment; of knowledge of business requirements; of manly character; of natural ability; of perseverance; of pure principles; of proper courtesy toward people; of purpose; of pluck; of promptness in meeting business engagements; of system. late hours; living beyond one's income; leaving too much to one's employees; neglect of details; no inborn love for one's calling; over-confidence in the stability of existing conditions; procrastination; speculative mania; selfishness; self-indulgence in small vices; studying ease rather than vigilance; social demoralization; thoughtless marriages; trusting one's work to others; undesirable location; unwillingness to pay the price of success; unwillingness to bear early privations; waste; yielding too easily to discouragement. surely, here is material enough for a hundred sermons if one cared to preach them. without attempting to discuss all these causes of failure, some few may be profitably examined. no youth can hope to succeed who is timid, who lacks faith in himself, who has not the courage of his convictions, and who always seeks for certainty before he ventures. "self-distrust is the cause of most of our failures," said one. "in the assurance of strength there is strength, and they are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their powers." "the ruin which overtakes so many merchants," said another, "is due, not so much to their lack of business talent, as to their lack of business nerve. how many lovable persons we see in trade, endowed with brilliant capacities, but cursed with yielding dispositions--who are resolute in no business habits and fixed in no business principles--who are prone to follow the instincts of a weak good nature, against the ominous hints of a clear intelligence; now obliging this friend by indorsing an unsafe note, and then pleasing that neighbor by sharing his risk in a hopeless speculation, and who, after all the capital they have earned by their industry and sagacity has been sunk in benevolent attempts to assist blundering or plundering incapacity, are doomed, in their bankruptcy, to be the mark of bitter taunts from growling creditors and insolent pity from a gossiping public." scattering one's forces has killed many a man's success. withdrawal of the best of yourself from the work to be done is sure to bring final disaster. every particle of a man's energy, intellect, courage, and enthusiasm is needed to win success in one line. draw off part of the supply of any one or all of these, and there is danger that what is left will not suffice. a little inattention to one's business at a critical point is quite sufficient to cause shipwreck. the pilot who pays attention to a pretty passenger is not likely to bring his ship to port. attractive side issues, great schemes, and flattering promises of large rewards, too often lure the business or professional man from the safe path in which he may plod on to sure success. many a man fails to become a great man, by splitting into several small ones, choosing to be a tolerable jack-at-all-trades, rather than to be an unrivalled specialist. lack of thoroughness is another great cause of failure. the world is overcrowded with men, young and old, who remain stationary, filling minor positions, and drawing meager salaries, simply because they have never thought it worth while to achieve mastery in the pursuits they have chosen to follow. lack of education has caused many failures; if a man has success qualities in him, he will not long lack such education as is absolutely necessary to his success. he will walk fifty miles if necessary to borrow a book, like lincoln. he will hang by one arm to a street lamp, and hold his book with the other, like a certain glasgow boy. he will study between anvil blows, like elihu burritt; he will do some of the thousand things that other noble strugglers have done to fight against circumstances that would deprive them of what they hunger for. "the five conditions of failure," said h. h. vreeland, president of the metropolitan street railway company of new york, "may be roughly classified thus: first, laziness, and particularly mental laziness; second, lack of faith in the efficiency of work; third, reliance on the saving grace of luck; fourth, lack of courage, initiative and persistence: fifth, the belief that the young man's job affects his standing, instead of the young man's affecting the standing of his job." look where you will, ask of whom you will, and you will find that not circumstances, but personal qualities, defects and deficiencies, cause failures. this is strongly expressed by a wealthy manufacturer who said: "nothing else influences a man's career in life so much as his disposition. he may have capacity, knowledge, social position, or money to back him at the start; but it is his disposition that will decide his place in the world at the end. show me a man who is, according to popular prejudice, a victim of bad luck, and i will show you one who has some unfortunate, crooked twist of temperament that invites disaster, he is ill-tempered, or conceited, or trifling, or lacks enthusiasm." there are some men whose failure to succeed in life is a problem to others, as well as to themselves. they are industrious, prudent, and economical; yet after a long life of striving, old age finds them still poor. they complain of ill luck, they say fate is against them. but the real truth is that their projects miscarry, because they mistake mere activity for energy. confounding two things essentially different, they suppose that if they are always busy, they must of necessity be advancing their fortunes; forgetting that labor misdirected is but a waste of activity. the worst of all foes to success is sheer, downright laziness. there is no polite synonym for laziness. too many young men are afraid to work. they are lazy. they aim to find genteel occupations, so that they can dress well, and not soil their clothes, and handle things with the tips of their fingers. they do not like to get their shoulders under the wheel, and they prefer to give orders to others, or figure as masters, and let some one else do the drudgery. there is no place in this century for the lazy man. he will be pushed to the wall. labor ever will be the inevitable price for everything that is valuable. a metropolitan daily newspaper not long ago invited confessions by letter from those who felt that their lives had been failures. the newspaper agreed not to disclose the name or identity of any person making such a confession, and requested frank statements. two questions were asked: "has your life been a failure? has your business been a failure?" some of the replies were pitiable in the extreme. some attributed their failures to a cruel fate which seemed to pursue them and thwart all their efforts, some to hereditary weaknesses, deformities, and taints, some to a husband or a wife, others to "inhospitable surroundings," and "cruel circumstances." it is worthy of note that not one of these failures mentioned laziness as a cause. here are some of the reasons they did give: "j. p. t." considered that his life was a failure from too much genius. he said he thought he could do anything, and therefore he couldn't wait to graduate from college, but left and began the practise of law, was principal of an academy, overworked himself, and had too many irons in the fire. he failed, he said, from dissipating his energies, and having too much confidence in men. "rutherford," said he had four chances to succeed in life, but lost them all. the first cause of his failure was lack of perseverance. he tired of the sameness and routine of his occupation. his second shortcoming was too great liberality, too much confidence in others. third, economy was not in his dictionary. fourth, "i had too much hope, even in the greatest extremities." fifth, "i believed too much in friends and friendships. i couldn't read human nature, and did not make allowance enough for mistakes." sixth, "i never struck my vocation." seventh, "i had no one to care for, to spur me on to do something in the world. i am seventy years old, never drank, never had bad habits, always attended church. but i am as poor as when i started for myself." "g. c. s." failed dismally. "my weakness was building air-castles. i had a burning desire to make a name in the world, and came to new york from the country. rebuffed, discouraged, i drifted. i had no heart for work. i lacked ability and push, without which no life can be a success." "lacked ability and push."--push _is_ ability. laziness is lack of push. nothing can take the place of push. push means industry and endurance and everlasting stick-to-it-ive-ness. "a somewhat varied experience of men has led me, the longer i live," said a great man, "to set less value on mere cleverness; to attach more and more importance to industry and physical endurance." goethe said that industry is nine-tenths of genius, and franklin that diligence is the mother of good luck. a thousand other tongues and pens have lauded work. idleness and shiftlessness may be set down as causing a large part of the failures of the world. on every side we see persons who started out with good educations and great promise, but who have gradually "gone to seed." their early ambition oozed out, their early ideals gradually dropped to lower standards. ambition is a spring that sets the apparatus going. all the parts may be perfect, but the lack of a spring is a fatal defect. without wish to rise, desire to accomplish and to attain, no life will succeed largely. "chief among the causes which bring positive failure or a disappointing portion of half success to thousands of honest strugglers is vacillation," said thomas b. bryan. many a business man has made his fortune by promptly deciding at some nice juncture to expose himself to a considerable risk. yet many failures are caused by ill-advised changes and causeless vacillation of purpose. the vacillating man, however strong in other respects, is always pushed aside in the race of life by the determined man, the decisive man, who knows what he wants to do and does it; even brains must give way to decision. one could almost say that no life ever failed that was steadfastly devoted to one aim, if that aim were not in itself unworthy. i am a great believer in a college education, but a great many college graduates have made failures of their lives who might have succeeded had they not gone to college, because they depended upon theoretical, impractical knowledge to help them on, and were not willing to begin at the bottom after graduation. on every hand we see men who did well in college, but who do very poorly in life. they stood high in their classes, were conscientious, hard workers, but somehow when they get out into life, they do not seem able to catch on. they are not practical. it would be hard to tell why they never get ahead, but there seems to be something lacking in their make-up, some screw loose somewhere. these brilliant graduates, but indifferently successful men, are often enigmas to themselves. they don't understand why they don't get on. there is no doubt that ill-health is often the cause of failure, but this is often due to a wrong mental attitude, wrong thinking. the pessimistic, discouraged mental attitude is very injurious to good health. worry, fear, anxiety, jealousy, extreme selfishness, poison the system, so that it does not perform its functions perfectly, and will cause much ill-health. a complete reversal of the mental attitude would bring robust health to multitudes of those who suffer from "poor health." if people would only think right, and live right, ill-health would be very rare. a wrong mental attitude is the cause of a large part of physical weakness, disease, and suffering. it has been said that the two chief factors of success are industry and health. but the history of human triumphs over difficulties shows that the sick, the crippled, the deformed, have often outrun the strong and hale to the goal of success, in spite of tremendous physical handicaps. many such instances are cited in other chapters of this volume. where men have built an abiding success, industry and perseverance have proven the foundation stone? of their great achievements. every man may lay this foundation and build on it for himself. whatever a man's natural advantages may be, great or small, industry and perseverance are his, if he chooses. by the exercise of these qualities he may rise, as others have done, to success, if like palissy he "labors and endures and waits and what he can not find creates." when is success a failure? when you are doing the lower while the higher is possible. when you are not a cleaner, finer, larger man on account of your life-work. when you live only to eat, drink, have a good time, and accumulate money. when you do not carry a higher wealth in your character than in your pocketbook. when your highest brain cells have been crowded out of business by greed. when it has made conscience an accuser, and shut the sunlight out of your life. when all sympathy has been crushed out by selfish devotion to your vocation. when the attainment of your ambition has blighted the aspirations and crushed the hopes of others. when you plead that you never had time to cultivate your friendships, politeness, or good manners. when you have lost on your way your self-respect, your courage, your self-control, or any other quality of manhood. when you do not overtop your vocation; when you are not greater as a man than as a lawyer, a merchant, a physician, or a scientist. when you have lived a double life and practised double-dealing. when it has made you a physical wreck--a victim of "nerves" and moods. when the hunger for more money, more land, more houses and bonds has grown to be your dominant passion. when it has dwarfed you mentally and morally, and robbed you of the spontaneity and enthusiasm of youth. when it has hardened you to the needs and sufferings of others, and made you a scorner of the poor and unfortunate. when there is a dishonest or a deceitful dollar in your possession; when your fortune spells the ruin of widows and orphans, or the crushing of the opportunities of others. when your absorption in your work has made you practically a stranger to your family. when you go on the principle of getting all you can and giving as little as possible in return. when your greed for money has darkened and cramped your wife's life, and deprived her of self-expression, of needed rest and recreation, or amusement of any kind. when the nervous irritability engendered by constant work, without relaxation, has made you a brute in your home and a nuisance to those who work for you. when you rob those who work for you of what is justly their due, and then pose as a philanthropist by contributing a small fraction of your unjust gains to some charity or to the endowment of some public institution. chapter lxvi rich without money let others plead for pensions; i can be rich without money, by endeavoring to be superior to everything poor. i would have my services to my country unstained by any interested motive.--lord collingwood. i ought not to allow any man, because he has broad lands, to feel that he is rich in my presence. i ought to make him feel that i can do without his riches, that i can not be bought,--neither by comfort, neither by pride,--and although i be utterly penniless, and receiving bread from him, that he is the poor man beside me.--emerson. he is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.--socrates. my crown is in my heart, not on my head, nor decked with diamonds and indian stones, nor to be seen: my crown is called content; a crown it is, that seldom kings enjoy. shakespeare. many a man is rich without money. thousands of men with nothing in their pockets are rich. a man born with a good, sound constitution, a good stomach, a good heart and good limbs, and a pretty good head-piece is rich. good bones are better than gold, tough muscles than silver, and nerves that carry energy to every function are better than houses and land. "heart-life, soul-life, hope, joy, and love, are true riches," said beecher. why should i scramble and struggle to get possession of a little portion of this earth? this is my world now; why should i envy others its mere legal possession? it belongs to him who can see it, enjoy it. i need not envy the so-called owners of estates in boston or new york. they are merely taking care of my property and keeping it in excellent condition for me. for a few pennies for railroad fare whenever i wish i can see and possess the best of it all. it has cost me no effort, it gives me no care; yet the green grass, the shrubbery, and the statues on the lawns, the finer sculptures and the paintings within, are always ready for me whenever i feel a desire to look upon them. i do not wish to carry them home with me, for i could not give them half the care they now receive; besides, it would take too much of my valuable time, and i should be worrying continually lest they be spoiled or stolen. i have much of the wealth of the world now. it is all prepared for me without any pains on my part. all around me are working hard to get things that will please me, and competing to see who can give them the cheapest. the little that i pay for the use of libraries, railroads, galleries, parks, is less than it would cost to care for the least of all i use. life and landscape are mine, the stars and flowers, the sea and air, the birds and trees. what more do i want? all the ages have been working for me; all mankind are my servants. i am only required to feed and clothe myself, an easy task in this land of opportunity. a millionaire pays a big fortune for a gallery of paintings, and some poor boy or girl comes in, with open mind and poetic fancy, and carries away a treasure of beauty which the owner never saw. a collector bought at public auction in london, for one hundred and fifty-seven guineas, an autograph of shakespeare; but for nothing a schoolboy can read and absorb the riches of "hamlet." "want is a growing giant whom the coat of have was never large enough to cover." "a man may as soon fill a chest with grace, or a vessel with virtue," says phillips brooks, "as a heart with wealth." shall we seek happiness through the sense of taste or of touch? shall we idolize our stomachs and our backs? have we no higher missions, no nobler destinies? shall we "disgrace the fair day by a pusillanimous preference of our bread to our freedom"? what does your money say to you: what message does it bring to you? does it say to you, "eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die"? does it bring a message of comfort, of education, of culture, of travel, of books, of an opportunity to help your fellow-men or is the message "more land, more thousands and millions"? what message does it bring you? clothes for the naked, bread for the starving, schools for the ignorant, hospitals for the sick, asylums for the orphans, or of more for yourself and none for others? is it a message of generosity or of meanness, breadth or narrowness? does it speak to you of character? does it mean a broader manhood, a larger aim, a nobler ambition, or does it cry, "more, more, more"? are you an animal loaded with ingots, or a man filled with a purpose? he is rich whose mind is rich, whose thought enriches the intellect of the world. a sailor on a sinking vessel in the caribbean sea eagerly filled his pockets with spanish dollars from a barrel on board while his companions, about to leave in the only boat, begged him to seek safety with them. but he could not leave the bright metal which he had so longed for and idolized, and when the vessel went down he was prevented by his very riches from reaching shore. "who is the richest of men?" asked socrates. "he who is content with the least, for contentment is nature's riches." in more's "utopia" gold was despised. criminals were forced to wear heavy chains of it, and to have rings of it in their ears; it was put to the vilest uses to keep up the scorn of it. bad characters were compelled to wear gold head-bands. diamonds and pearls were used to decorate infants, so that the youth would discard and despise them. "ah, if the rich were as rich as the poor fancy riches!" exclaims emerson. in excavating pompeii a skeleton was found with the fingers clenched round a quantity of gold. a man of business in the town of hull, england, when dying, pulled a bag of money from under his pillow, which he held between his clenched fingers with a grasp so firm as scarcely to relax under the agonies of death. "oh! blind and wanting wit to choose, who house the chaff and burn the grain; who hug the wealth ye cannot use, and lack the riches all may gain." poverty is the want of much, avarice the want of everything. a poor man while scoffing at the wealthy for not enjoying themselves was met by a stranger who gave him a purse, in which he was always to find a ducat. as fast as he took one out another was to drop in, but he was not to begin to spend his fortune until he had thrown away the purse. he took ducat after ducat out, but continually procrastinated and put off the hour of enjoyment until he had got "a little more," and died at last counting his millions. a beggar was once met by fortune, who promised to fill his wallet with gold, as much as he might desire, on condition that whatever touched the ground should turn at once to dust. the beggar opened his wallet, asked for more and yet more, until the bag burst. the gold fell to the ground, and all was lost. when the steamer _central america_ was about to sink, the stewardess, having collected all the gold she could from the staterooms, and tied it in her apron, jumped for the last boat leaving the steamer. she missed her aim, fell into the water and the gold carried her down head first. franklin said money never made a man happy yet; there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. the more a man has, the more he wants. instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one. a great bank account can never make a man rich. it is the mind that makes the body rich. no man is rich, however much money or land he may possess, who has a poor heart. if that is poor, he is poor indeed, though he own and rule kingdoms. he is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has. some men are rich in health, in constant cheerfulness, in a mercurial temperament which floats them over troubles and trials enough to sink a shipload of ordinary men. others are rich in disposition, family, and friends. there are some men so amiable that everybody loves them; so cheerful that they carry an atmosphere of jollity about them. the human body is packed full of marvelous devices, of wonderful contrivances, of infinite possibilities for the happiness and enrichment of the individual. no physiologist, inventor, nor scientist has ever been able to point out a single improvement, even in the minutest detail, in the mechanism of the human body. no chemist has ever been able to suggest a superior combination in any one of the elements which make up the human structure. [illustration: mark twain] one of the first great lessons of life is to learn the true estimate of values. as the youth starts out in his career all sorts of wares will be imposed upon him and all kinds of temptations will be used to induce him to buy. his success will depend very largely upon his ability to estimate properly, not the apparent but the real value of everything presented to him. vulgar wealth will flaunt her banner before his eyes, and claim supremacy over everything else. a thousand different schemes will be thrust into his face with their claims for superiority. every occupation and vocation will present its charms and offer its inducements in turn. the youth who would succeed must not allow himself to be deceived by appearance, but must place the emphasis of life upon the right thing. raphael was rich without money. all doors opened to him, and he was more than welcome everywhere. his sweet spirit radiated sunshine wherever he went. henry wilson, the sworn friend of the oppressed, whose one question, as to measures or acts, was ever "is it right; will it do good?" was rich without money. so scrupulous had this natick cobbler been not to make his exalted position a means of worldly gain, that when he came to be inaugurated as vice-president of the country, he was obliged to borrow of his fellow-senator, charles sumner, one hundred dollars to meet the necessary expenses of the occasion. mozart, the great composer of the "requiem," left barely enough money to bury him, but he has made the world richer. a rich mind and noble spirit will cast over the humblest home a radiance of beauty which the upholsterer and decorator can never approach. who would not prefer to be a millionaire of character, of contentment, rather than possess nothing but the vulgar coins of a croesus? whoever uplifts civilization, though he die penniless, is rich, and future generations will erect his monument. an asiatic traveler tells us that one day he found the bodies of two men laid upon the desert sand beside the carcass of a camel. they had evidently died from thirst, and yet around the waist of each was a large store of jewels of different kinds, which they had doubtless been crossing the desert to sell in the markets of persia. the man who has no money is poor, but one who has nothing but money is poorer. he only is rich who can enjoy without owning; he is poor who though he have millions is covetous. there are riches of intellect, and no man with an intellectual taste can be called poor. he is rich as well as brave who can face compulsory poverty and misfortune with cheerfulness and courage. we can so educate the will power that it will focus the thoughts upon the bright side of things, and upon objects which elevate the soul, thus forming a habit of happiness and goodness which will make us rich. the habit of making the best of everything and of always looking on the bright side is a fortune in itself. he is rich who values a good name above gold. among the ancient greeks and romans honor was more sought after than wealth. rome was imperial rome no more when the imperial purple became an article of traffic. diogenes was captured by pirates and sold as a slave. his purchaser released him, giving him charge of his household and of the education of his children. diogenes despised wealth and affectation, and lived in a tub. "do you want anything?" asked alexander the great, greatly impressed by the abounding cheerfulness of the philosopher under such circumstances. "yes," replied diogenes, "i want you to stand out of my sunshine and not take from me what you can not give me." "were i not alexander," exclaimed the great conqueror, "i would be diogenes." "do you know, sir," said a devotee of mammon to john bright, "that i am worth a million sterling?" "yes," said the irritated but calm-spirited respondent, "i do; and i know that it is all you are worth." what power can poverty have over a home where loving hearts are beating with a consciousness of untold riches of the head and heart? st. paul was never so great as when he occupied a prison cell under the streets of rome; and jesus christ reached the height of his success when, smitten, spat upon, tormented, and crucified, he cried in agony, and yet with triumphant satisfaction, "it is finished." don't start out in life with a false standard; a truly great man makes official position and money and houses and estates look so tawdry, so mean and poor, that we feel like sinking out of sight with our cheap laurels and our gold. one of the great lessons to teach in this century of sharp competition and the survival of the fittest is how to be rich without money and to learn how to live without success according to the popular standard. in the poem, "the changed cross," a weary woman is represented as dreaming that she was led to a place where many crosses lay, crosses of divers shapes and sizes. the most beautiful one was set in jewels of gold. it was so tiny and exquisite that she changed her own plain cross for it, thinking she was fortunate in finding one so much lighter and lovelier. but soon her back began to ache under the glittering burden, and she changed it for another, very beautiful and entwined with flowers. but she soon found that underneath the flowers were piercing thorns which tore her flesh. at last she came to a very plain cross without jewels, without carving, and with only the word, "love," inscribed upon it. she took this one up and it proved the easiest and best of all. she was amazed, however, to find that it was her old cross which she had discarded. it is easy to see the jewels and the flowers in other people's crosses, but the thorns and heavy weight are known only to the bearers. how easy other people's burdens seem to us compared with our own! we do not realize the secret burdens which almost crush the heart, nor the years of weary waiting for delayed success--the aching hearts longing for sympathy, the hidden poverty, the suppressed emotion in other lives. william pitt, the great commoner, considered money as dirt beneath his feet compared with the public interest and public esteem. his hands were clean. the object for which we strive tells the story of our lives. men and women should be judged by the happiness they create in those around them. noble deeds always enrich, but millions of mere dollars may impoverish. _character is perpetual wealth_, and by the side of him who possesses it the millionaire who has it not seems a pauper. invest in yourself, and you will never be poor. floods can not carry your wealth away, fire can not burn it, rust can not consume it. "if a man empties his purse into his head," says franklin, "no man can take it from him. an investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." howe'er it be, it seems to me, 'tis only noble to be good. kind hearts are more than coronets, and simple faith than norman blood. tennyson. sophisms of the protectionists. by the late m. frederic bastiat, _member of the institute of france_. * * * * * part i. sophisms of protection--first series. part ii. sophisms of protection--second series. part iii. spoliation and law. part iv. capital and interest. translated from the paris edition of . new-york: american free trade league. . entered according to act of congress in the year , by the western news company, in the clerk's office of the district court of the united states, for the northern district of illinois. preface. a previous edition of this work has been published under the title of "essays on political economy, by the late m. frederic bastiat." when it became necessary to issue a second edition, the free-trade league offered to buy the stereotype plates and the copyright, with a view to the publication of the book on a large scale and at a very low price. the primary object of the league is to educate public opinion; to convince the people of the united states of the folly and wrongfulness of the protective system. the methods adopted by the league for the purpose have been the holding of public meetings and the publication of books, pamphlets, and tracts, some of which are for sale at the cost of publication, and others given away gratuitously. in publishing this book the league feels that it is offering the most effective and most popular work on political economy that has as yet been written. m. bastiat not only enlivens a dull subject with his wit, but also reduces the propositions of the protectionists to absurdities. free-traders can do no better service in the cause of truth, justice, and humanity, than by circulating this little book among their friends. it is offered you at what it costs to print it. will not every free-trader put a copy of the book into the hands of his protectionist friends? it would not be proper to close this short preface without an expression on the part of the league of its obligation to the able translator of the work from the french, mr. horace white, of chicago. office of the american free-trade league, nassau street, new-york, june, . preface to first edition. this compilation, from the works of the late m. bastiat, is given to the public in the belief that the time has now come when the people, relieved from the absorbing anxieties of the war, and the subsequent strife on reconstruction, are prepared to give a more earnest and thoughtful attention to economical questions than was possible during the previous ten years. that we have retrograded in economical science during this period, while making great strides in moral and political advancement by the abolition of slavery and the enfranchisement of the freedmen, seems to me incontestable. professor perry has described very concisely the steps taken by the manufacturers in , after the southern members had left their seats in congress, to reverse the policy of the government in reference to foreign trade.[ ] he has noticed but has not laid so much stress as he might on the fact that while there was no considerable public opinion to favor them, there was none at all to oppose them. not only was the attention of the people diverted from the tariff by the dangers then impending, but the republican party, which then came into power, had, in its national convention, offered a bribe to the state of pennsylvania for its vote in the presidential election, which bribe was set forth in the following words: "_resolved_, that while providing revenue for the support of the general government by duties upon imports, sound policy requires such an adjustment of these imposts as to encourage the development of the industrial interests of the whole country; and we commend that policy of national exchanges which secures to the workingmen liberal wages, to agriculture remunerative prices, to mechanics and manufacturers an adequate reward for their skill, labor and enterprise, and to the nation commercial prosperity and independence."--_chicago convention platform_, . [footnote : elements of political economy, p. ] it is true that this resolution did not commit anybody to the doctrine that the industrial interests of the whole country are promoted by taxes levied upon imported property, however "adjusted," but it was understood, by the pennsylvanians at least, to be a promise that if the republican party were successful in the coming election, the doctrine of protection, which had been overthrown in , and had been in an extremely languishing state ever since, should be put upon its legs again. i am far from asserting that this overture was needed to secure the vote of pennsylvania for mr. lincoln in , or that that state was governed by less worthy motives in her political action than other states. i only remark that her delegates in the convention thought such a resolution would be extremely useful, and such was the anxiety to secure her vote in the election that a much stronger resolution might have been conceded if it had been required. i affirm, however, that there was no agitation on the tariff question in any other quarter. new england had united in passing the tariff of , which lowered the duties imposed by the act of about fifty per cent., i.e., one-half of the previously existing scale. the western states had not petitioned congress or the convention to disturb the tariff; nor had new york done so, although mr. greeley, then as now, was invoking, more or less frequently, the shade of henry clay to help re-establish what is deftly styled the "american system." the protective policy was restored, after its fifteen years' sleep, under the auspices of mr. morrill, a representative (now a senator) from vermont. latterly i have noticed in the speeches and votes of this gentleman (who is, i think, one of the most conscientious, as he is one of the most amiable, men in public life), a reluctance to follow to their logical conclusion the principles embodied in the "morrill tariff" of . his remarks upon the copper bill, during the recent session of congress, indicate that, in his opinion, those branches of american industry which are engaged in producing articles sent abroad in exchange for the products of foreign nations, are entitled to some consideration. this is an important admission, but not so important as another, which he made in his speech on the national finances, january , , in which, referring to the bank note circulation existing in the year , he said: "_and that was a year of as large production and as much general prosperity as any, perhaps, in our history_."[ ] if the year immediately preceding the enactment of the morrill tariff was a year of as large production and as much general prosperity as any in our history, of what use has the morrill tariff been? we have seen that it was not demanded by any public agitation. we now see that it has been of no public utility. [footnote : congressional globe, second session thirty-ninth congress, p. .] in combating, by arguments and illustrations adapted to the comprehension of the mass of mankind, the errors and sophisms with which protectionists deceive themselves and others, m. bastiat is the most lucid and pointed of all writers on economical science with whose works i have any acquaintance. it is not necessary to accord to him a place among the architects of the science of political economy, although some of his admirers rank him among the highest.[ ] it is enough to count him among the greatest of its expounders and demonstrators. his death, which occurred at pisa, italy, on the th december, , at the age of , was a serious loss to france and to the world. his works, though for the most part fragmentary, and given to the public from time to time through the columns of the _journal des economistes_, the _journal des debats_, and the _libre echange_, remain a monument of a noble intellect guided by a noble soul. they have been collected and published (including the _harmonies economiques_, which the author left in manuscript) by guillaumin & co., the proprietors of the _journal des economistes_, in two editions of six volumes each, vo. and mo. when we reflect that these six volumes were produced between april, , and december, , by a young man of feeble constitution, who commenced life as a clerk in a mercantile establishment, and who spent much of his time during these six years in delivering public lectures, and laboring in the national assembly, to which he was chosen in , our admiration for such industry is only modified by the thought that if he had been more saving of his strength, he might have rendered even greater services to his country and to mankind. [footnote : mr. macleod (_dictionary of political economy_, vol. i, p. ) speaks of bastiat's definition of value as "the greatest revolution that has been effected in any science since the days of galileo." see also professor perry's pamphlet, _recent phases of thought in political economy_, read before the american social science association, october, , in which, it appears to me, that bastiat's theory of rent, in announcing which he was anticipated by mr. carey, is too highly praised.] the _sophismes economiques_, which fill the larger portion of this volume, were not expected by their author to outlast the fallacies which they sought to overthrow. but these fallacies have lived longer and have spread over more of the earth's surface than any one _a priori_ could have believed possible. it is sometimes useful, in opposing doctrines which people have been taught to believe are peculiar to their own country and time, to show that the same doctrines have been maintained in other countries and times, and have been exploded in other languages. by what misuse of words the doctrine of protection came to be denominated the "american system," i could never understand. it prevailed in england nearly two hundred years before our separation from the mother country. adam smith directed the first formidable attack against it in the very year that our independence was declared. it held its ground in england until it had starved and ruined almost every branch of industry--agriculture, manufactures, and commerce alike.[ ] it was not wholly overthrown until , the same year that witnessed its discomfiture in the united states, as already shown. it still exists in a subdued and declining way in france, despite the powerful and brilliant attacks of say, bastiat, and chevalier, but its end cannot be far distant in that country. the cobden-chevalier treaty with england has been attended by consequences so totally at variance with the theories and prophecies of the protectionists that it must soon succumb. [footnote : it is so often affirmed by protectionists that the superiority of great britain in manufactures was attained by means of protection, that it is worth while to dispel that illusion. the facts are precisely the reverse. protection had brought great britain in the year to the last stages of penury and decay, and it wanted but a year or two more of the same regimen to have precipitated the country into a bloody revolution. i quote a paragraph from miss martineau's "history of england from to ," book vi, chapter : "serious as was the task of the minister (sir r. peel) in every view, the most immediate sympathy was felt for him on account of the fearful state of the people. the distress had now so deepened in the manufacturing districts as to render it clearly inevitable that many must die, and a multitude be lowered to a state of sickness and irritability from want of food; while there seemed no chance of any member of the manufacturing classes coming out of the struggle at last with a vestige of property wherewith to begin the world again. the pressure had long extended beyond the interests first affected, and when the new ministry came into power, there seemed to be no class that was not threatened with ruin. in carlisle, the committee of inquiry reported that a fourth of the population was in a state bordering on starvation--actually certain to die of famine, unless relieved by extraordinary exertions. in the woollen districts of wiltshire, the allowance to the independent laborer was not two-thirds of the minimum in the workhouse, and the large existing population consumed only a fourth of the bread and meat required by the much smaller population of . in stockport, more than half the master spinners had failed before the close of ; dwelling houses to the number of , , were shut up; and the occupiers of many hundreds more were unable to pay rates at all. five thousand persons were walking the streets in compulsory idleness, and the burnley guardians wrote to the secretary of state that the distress was far beyond their management; so that a government commissioner and government funds were sent down without delay. at a meeting in manchester, where humble shopkeepers were the speakers, anecdotes were related which told more than declamation. rent collectors were afraid to meet their principals, as no money could be collected. provision dealers were subject to incursions from a wolfish man prowling for food for his children, or from a half frantic woman, with her dying baby at her breast; or from parties of ten or a dozen desperate wretches who were levying contributions along the street. the linen draper told how new clothes had become out of the question with his customers, and they bought only remnants and patches, to mend the old ones. the baker was more and more surprised at the number of people who bought half-pennyworths of bread. a provision dealer used to throw away outside scraps; but now respectable customers of twenty years' standing bought them in pennyworths to moisten their potatoes. these shopkeepers contemplated nothing but ruin from the impoverished condition of their customers. while poor-rates were increasing beyond all precedent, their trade was only one-half, or one-third, or even one-tenth what it had been three years before. in that neighborhood, a gentleman, who had retired from business in , leaving a property worth £ , to his sons, and who had, early in the distress, become security for them, was showing the works for the benefit of the creditors, at a salary of £ a week. in families where the father had hitherto earned £ per week, and laid by a portion weekly, and where all was now gone but the sacks of shavings they slept on, exertions were made to get 'blue milk' for children to moisten their oatmeal with; but soon they could have it only on alternate days; and soon water must do. at leeds the pauper stone-heap amounted to , tons; and the guardians offered the paupers s. per week for doing nothing, rather than s. d. per week for stone-breaking. the millwrights and other trades were offering a premium on emigration, to induce their hands to go away. at hinckley, one-third of the inhabitants were paupers; more than a fifth of the houses stood empty; and there was not work enough in the place to employ properly one-third of the weavers. in dorsetshire a man and his wife had for wages s. d. per week, and three loaves; and the ablest laborer had s. or s. in wiltshire, the poor peasants held open-air meetings after work--which was necessarily after dark. there, by the light of one or two flaring tallow candles, the man or the woman who had a story to tell stood on a chair, and related how their children were fed and clothed in old times--poorly enough, but so as to keep body and soul together; and now, how they could nohow manage to do it. the bare details of the ages of their children, and what the little things could do, and the prices of bacon and bread, and calico and coals, had more pathos in them than any oratory heard elsewhere." "but all this came from the corn laws," is the ready reply of the american protectionist. the corn laws were the doctrine of protection applied to breadstuffs, farm products, "raw materials." but it was not only protection for corn that vexed england in , but protection for every thing and every body, from the landlord and the mill-owner to the kelp gatherer. every species of manufacturing industry had asked and obtained protection. the nation had put in force, logically and thoroughly, the principle of denying themselves any share in the advantages which nature or art had conferred upon other climates and peoples, (which is the principle of protection), and with the results so pathetically described by miss martineau. the prosperity of british manufactures dates from the year . that they maintained any kind of existence prior to that time is a most striking proof of the vitality of human industry under the persecution of bad laws.] as these pages are going through the press, a telegram announces that the french government has abolished the discriminating duties levied upon goods imported in foreign bottoms, and has asked our government to abolish the like discrimination which our laws have created. commercial freedom is making rapid progress in prussia, austria, italy, and even in spain. the united states alone, among civilized nations, hold to the opposite principle. our anomalous position in this respect is due, as i think, to our anomalous condition during the past eight or nine years, already adverted to--a condition in which the protected classes have been restrained by no public opinion--public opinion being too intensely preoccupied with the means of preserving the national existence to notice what was doing with the tariff. but evidences of a reawakening are not wanting. there is scarcely an argument current among the protectionists of the united states that was not current in france at the time bastiat wrote the _sophismes economiques_. nor was there one current in his time that is not performing its bad office among us. hence his demonstrations of their absurdity and falsity are equally applicable to our time and country as to his. they may have even greater force among us if they thoroughly dispel the notion that protection is an "american system." surely they cannot do less than this. there are one or two arguments current among the protectionists of the united states that were not rife in france when bastiat wrote his _sophismes_. it is said, for instance, that protection has failed to achieve all the good results expected from it, because the policy of the government has been variable. if we could have a steady course of protection for a sufficient period of time (nobody being bold enough to say what time would be sufficient), and could be _assured_ of having it, we should see wonderful progress. but, inasmuch as the policy of the government is uncertain, protection has never yet had a fair trial. this is like saying, "if the stone which i threw in the air had staid there, my head would not have been broken by its fall." it would not stay there. the law of gravitation is committed against its staying there. its only resting-place is on the earth. they begin by violating natural laws and natural rights--the right to exchange services for services--and then complain because these natural laws war against them and finally overcome them. but it is not true that protection has not had a fair trial in the united states. the protection has been greater at some times than at others, that is all. prior to the late war, all our revenue was raised from customs; and while the tariffs of and were designated "free trade tariffs," to distinguish them from those existing before and since, they were necessarily protective to a certain extent. again, it is said that there is need of diversifying our industry--- as though industry would not diversify itself sufficiently through the diverse tastes and predilections of individuals--as though it were necessary to supplement the work of the creator in this behalf, by human enactments founded upon reciprocal rapine. the only rational object of diversifying industry is to make people better and happier. do men and women become better and happier by being huddled together in mills and factories, in a stifling atmosphere, on scanty wages, ten hours each day and days each year, than when cultivating our free and fertile lands? do they have equal opportunities for mental and moral improvement? the trades-unions tell us, no. whatever may be the experience of other countries where the land is either owned by absentee lords, who take all the product except what is necessary to give the tenant a bare subsistence, or where it is cut up in parcels not larger than an american garden patch, it is an undeniable fact that no other class of american workingmen are so independent, so intelligent, so well provided with comforts and leisure, or so rapidly advancing in prosperity, as our agriculturists; and this notwithstanding they are enormously overtaxed to maintain other branches of industry, which, according to the protective theory, cannot support themselves. the natural tendency of our people to flock to the cities, where their eyes and ears are gratified at the expense of their other senses, physical and moral, is sufficiently marked not to need the influence of legislation to stimulate it. it is not the purpose of this preface to anticipate the admirable arguments of m. bastiat; but there is another theory in vogue which deserves a moment's consideration. mr. h.c. carey tells us, that a country which exports its food, in reality exports its soil, the foreign consumers not giving back to the land the fertilizing elements abstracted from it. mr. mill has answered this argument, upon philosophical principles, at some length, showing that whenever it ceases to be advantageous to america to export breadstuffs, she will cease to do so; also, that when it becomes necessary to manure her lands, she will either import manure or make it at home.[ ] a shorter answer is, that the lands are no better manured by having the bread consumed in lowell, or pittsburgh, or even in chicago, than in birmingham or lyons. but it seems to me that mr. carey does not take into account the fact that the total amount of breadstuffs exported from any country must be an exceedingly small fraction of the whole amount taken from the soil, and scarcely appreciable as a source of manure, even if it were practically utilized in that way. thus, our exportation of flour and meal, wheat and indian corn, for the year , as compared with the total crop produced, was as follows: total crop.[ ] flour and meal, bbls. wheat, bu. corn, bu. , , , , , , _exportation._ flour and meal, bbls. wheat, bu. corn, bu. , , , , , , _percentage of exportation to total crop._ . . . this was the result for the year preceding the enactment of the morrill tariff. it is true that our exports of wheat and indian corn rose in the three years following the enactment of the morrill tariff, from an average of eight million bushels to an average of forty-six million bushels, but this is contrary to the theory that high tariffs tend to keep breadstuffs at home, and low ones to send them abroad. there is need of great caution in making generalizations as to the influence of tariffs on the movement of breadstuffs. good or bad harvests in various countries exercise an uncontrollable influence upon their movement, far beyond the reach of any legislation short of prohibition. the market for breadstuffs in the world is as the number of consumers; that is, of population. it is sometimes said in the way of reproach, (and it is a curious travesty of mr. carey's manure argument,) that foreign nations _will not_ take our breadstuffs. it is not true; but if it were, that would not be a good reason for our passing laws to prevent them from doing so; that is, to deprive them of the means to pay for them. every country must pay for its imports with its exports. it must pay for the services which it receives with the services which it renders. if foreign nations are not allowed to render services to us, how shall we render them the service of bread? [footnote : principles of political economy (people's ed.), london, , page .] [footnote : these figures are taken from the census report for the year . in this report the total production of flour and meal is given, not in barrels, but in value. the quantity is ascertained by dividing the total value by the average price per barrel in new york during the year, the fluctuations then being very slight. flour being a manufactured article, is it not a little curious that we exported under the "free trade tariff" twice as large a percentage of breadstuffs in that form as we did of the "raw material," wheat?] the first series of bastiat's _sophismes_ were published in , and the second series in . the first series were translated in , by mrs. d.j. mccord, and published the same year by g.p. putnam, new york. mrs. mccord's excellent translation has been followed (by permission of her publisher, who holds the copyright,) in this volume, having been first compared with the original, in the paris edition of . a very few verbal alterations have been made, which, however, have no bearing on the accuracy and faithfulness of her work. the translation of the essay on "capital and interest" is from a duodecimo volume published in london a year or two ago, the name of the translator being unknown to me. the second series of the _sophismes_, and the essay entitled "spoliation and law," are, i believe, presented in english for the first time in these pages. h.w. chicago, august , . part i. sophisms of protection. first series. introduction. my object in this little volume has been to refute some of the arguments usually advanced against free trade. i am not seeking a combat with the protectionists. i merely advance a principle which i am anxious to present clearly to the minds of sincere men, who hesitate because they doubt. i am not of the number of those who maintain that protection is supported by interests. i believe that it is founded upon errors, or, if you will, upon _incomplete truths_. too many fear free trade, for this apprehension to be other than sincere. my aspirations are perhaps high; but i confess that it would give me pleasure to hope that this little work might become, as it were, a _manual_ for such men as may be called upon to decide between the two principles. when one has not made oneself perfectly familiar with the doctrines of free trade, the sophisms of protection perpetually return to the mind under one form or another; and, on each occasion, in order to counteract their effect, it is necessary to enter into a long and laborious analysis. few, and least of all legislators, have leisure for this labor, which i would, on this account, wish to present clearly drawn up to their hand. but it may be said, are then the benefits of free trade so hidden as to be perceptible only to economists by profession? yes; we confess it; our adversaries in the discussion have a signal advantage over us. they can, in a few words, present an incomplete truth; which, for us to show that it is incomplete, renders necessary long and uninteresting dissertations. this results from the fact that protection accumulates upon a single point the good which it effects, while the evil inflicted is infused throughout the mass. the one strikes the eye at a first glance, while the other becomes perceptible only to close investigation. with regard to free trade, precisely the reverse is the case. it is thus with almost all questions of political economy. if you say, for instance: there is a machine which has turned out of employment thirty workmen; or again: there is a spendthrift who encourages every kind of industry; or: the conquest of algiers has doubled the commerce of marseilles; or, once more: the public taxes support one hundred thousand families; you are understood at once; your propositions are clear, simple, and true in themselves. if you deduce from them the principle that machines are an evil; that sumptuous extravagance, conquest, and heavy imposts are blessings; your theory will have the more success, because you will be able to base it upon indisputable facts. but we, for our part, cannot stop at a cause and its immediate effect; for we know that this effect may in its turn become itself a cause. to judge of a measure, it is necessary that we should follow it from step to step, from result to result, until through the successive links of the chain of events we arrive at the final effect. we must, in short, _reason_. but here we are assailed by clamorous exclamations: you are theorists, metaphysicians, ideologists, utopians, men of maxims! and immediately all the prejudices of the public are against us. what then shall we do? we must invoke the patience and candor of the reader, giving to our deductions, if we are capable of it, sufficient clearness to throw forward at once, without disguise or palliation, the true and the false, in order, once for all, to determine whether the victory should be for restriction or free trade. i wish here to make a remark of some importance. some extracts from this volume have appeared in the "_journal des economistes_." in an article otherwise quite complimentary published by the viscount de romanet (see _moniteur industriel_ of the th and th of may, ), he intimates that i ask for the _suppression of custom houses_. mr. de romanet is mistaken. i ask for the suppression of the _protective policy_. we do not dispute the right of _government_ to impose taxes, but would, if possible, dissuade _producers_ from taxing one another. it was said by napoleon that duties should never be a fiscal instrument, but a means of protecting industry. we plead the contrary, and say, that duties should never be made an instrument of reciprocal rapine; but that they may be employed as a useful fiscal machine. i am so far from asking for the suppression of duties, that i look upon them as the anchor on which the future salvation of our finances will depend. i believe that they may bring immense receipts into the treasury, and, to give my entire and undisguised opinion, i am inclined, from the slow progress of healthy, economical doctrines, and from the magnitude of our budget, to hope more for the cause of commercial reform from the necessities of the treasury than from the force of an enlightened public opinion. i. abundance--scarcity. which is the best for man or for society, abundance or scarcity? how, it may be exclaimed, can such a question be asked? has it ever been pretended, is it possible to maintain, that scarcity can be the basis of a man's happiness? yes; this has been maintained, this is daily maintained; and i do not hesitate to say that the _scarcity theory_ is by far the most popular of the day. it furnishes the subject of discussions, in conversations, journals, books, courts of justice; and extraordinary as it may appear, it is certain that political economy will have fulfilled its task and its practical mission, when it shall have rendered common and irrefutable the simple proposition that "in abundance consist man's riches." do we not hear it said every day, "foreign nations are inundating us with their productions"? then we fear abundance. has not mr. de saint cricq said, "production is superabundant"? then he fears abundance. do we not see workmen destroying and breaking machinery? they are frightened by the excess of production; in other words, they fear abundance. has not mr. bugeaud said, "let bread be dear and the agriculturist will be rich"? now bread can only be dear because it is scarce. then mr. bugeaud lauded scarcity. has not mr. d'argout produced the fruitfulness of the sugar culture as an argument against it? has he not said, "the beet cannot have a permanent and extended cultivation, because a few acres given up to it in each department, would furnish sufficient for the consumption of all france"? then, in his opinion, good consists in sterility and scarcity, evil in fertility and abundance. "_la presse_," "_le commerce_," and the majority of our journals, are, every day, publishing articles whose aim is to prove to the chambers and to government that a wise policy should seek to raise prices by tariffs; and do we not daily see these powers obeying these injunctions of the press? now, tariffs can only raise prices by diminishing the quantity of goods offered for sale. then, here we see newspapers, the legislature, the ministry, all guided by the scarcity theory, and i was correct in my statement that this theory is by far the most popular. how then has it happened, that in the eyes at once of laborers, editors and statesmen, abundance should appear alarming, and scarcity advantageous? it is my intention to endeavor to show the origin of this delusion. a man becomes rich, in proportion to the profitableness of his labor; that is to say, _in proportion as he sells his productions at a high price_. the price of his productions is high in proportion to their scarcity. it is plain then, that, as far as regards him at least, scarcity enriches him. applying successively this mode of reasoning to each class of laborers individually, the _scarcity theory_ is deduced from it. to put this theory into practice, and in order to favor each class of labor, an artificial scarcity is forced in every kind of production, by prohibition, restriction, suppression of machinery, and other analogous measures. in the same manner it is observed that when an article is abundant it brings a small price. the gains of the producer are, of course, less. if this is the case with all produce, all producers are then poor. abundance then ruins society. and as any strong conviction will always seek to force itself into practice, we see, in many countries, the laws aiming to prevent abundance. this sophism, stated in a general form, would produce but a slight impression. but when applied to any particular order of facts, to any particular article of industry, to any one class of labor, it is extremely specious, because it is a syllogism which is not _false_, but _incomplete_. and what is true in a syllogism always necessarily presents itself to the mind, while the _incomplete_, which is a negative quality, an unknown value, is easily forgotten in the calculation. man produces in order to consume. he is at once producer and consumer. the argument given above, considers him only under the first point of view. let us look at him in the second character and the conclusion will be different. we may say, the consumer is rich in proportion as he _buys_ at a low price. he buys at a low price in proportion to the abundance of the article in demand; abundance then enriches him. this reasoning extended to all consumers must lead to the _theory of abundance_! it is the imperfectly understood notion of exchange of produce which leads to these fallacies. if we consult our individual interest, we perceive immediately that it is double. as _sellers_ we are interested in high prices, consequently in scarcity. as _buyers_ our advantage is in cheapness, or what is the same thing, abundance. it is impossible then to found a proper system of reasoning upon either the one or the other of these separate interests before determining which of the two coincides and identifies itself with the general and permanent interests of mankind. if man were a solitary animal, working exclusively for himself, consuming the fruit of his own personal labor; if, in a word, he did not exchange his produce, the theory of scarcity could never have introduced itself into the world. it would be too strikingly evident, that abundance, whencesoever derived, is advantageous to him, whether this abundance might be the result of his own labor, of ingenious tools, or of powerful machinery; whether due to the fertility of the soil, to the liberality of nature, or to an _inundation_ of foreign goods, such as the sea bringing from distant regions might cast upon his shores. never would the solitary man have dreamed, in order to encourage his own labor, of destroying his instruments for facilitating his work, of neutralizing the fertility of the soil, or of casting back into the sea the produce of its bounty. he would understand that his labor was a _means_ not an _end_, and that it would be absurd to reject the object, in order to encourage the means. he would understand that if he has required two hours per day to supply his necessities, any thing which spares him an hour of this labor, leaving the result the same, gives him this hour to dispose of as he pleases in adding to his comforts. in a word, he would understand that every step in the _saving of labor_, is a step in the improvement of his condition. but traffic clouds our vision in the contemplation of this simple truth. in a state of society with the division of labor to which it leads, the production and consumption of an article no longer belong to the same individual. each now looks upon his labor not as a means, but as an end. the exchange of produce creates with regard to each object two separate interests, that of the producer and that of the consumer; and these two interests are always directly opposed to each other. it is essential to analyze and study the nature of each. let us then suppose a producer of whatever kind; what is his immediate interest? it consists in two things: st, that the smallest possible number of individuals should devote themselves to the business which he follows; and dly, that the greatest possible number should seek the articles of his produce. in the more succinct terms of political economy, the supply should be small, the demand large; or yet in other words: limited competition, unlimited consumption. what on the other side is the immediate interest of the consumer? that the supply should be large, the demand small. as these two interests are immediately opposed to each other, it follows that if one coincides with the general interest of society the other must be adverse to it. which then, if either, should legislation favor as contributing most to the good of the community? to determine this question, it suffices to inquire in which the secret desires of the majority of men would be accomplished. inasmuch as we are producers, it must be confessed that we have each of us anti-social desires. are we vine-growers? it would not distress _us_ were the frost to nip all the vines in the world except our own: _this is the scarcity theory_. are we iron-workers? we would desire (whatever might be the public need) that the market should offer no iron but our own; and precisely for the reason that this need, painfully felt and imperfectly supplied, causes us to receive a high price for _our_ iron: _again here is the theory of scarcity_. are we agriculturists? we say with mr. bugeaud, let bread be dear, that is to say scarce, and our business goes well: _again the theory of scarcity_. are we physicians? we cannot but see that certain physical ameliorations, such as the improved climate of the country, the development of certain moral virtues, the progress of knowledge pushed to the extent of enabling each individual to take care of his own health, the discovery of certain simple remedies easily applied, would be so many fatal blows to our profession. as physicians, then, our secret desires are anti-social. i must not be understood to imply that physicians allow themselves to form such desires. i am happy to believe that they would hail with joy a universal panacea. but in such a sentiment it is the man, the christian, who manifests himself, and who by a praiseworthy abnegation of self, takes that point of view of the question, which belongs to the consumer. as a physician exercising his profession, and gaining from this profession his standing in society, his comforts, even the means of existence of his family, it is impossible but that his desires, or if you please so to word it, his interests, should be anti-social. are we manufacturers of cotton goods? we desire to sell them at the price most advantageous to _ourselves_. we would willingly consent to the suppression of all rival manufactories. and if we dare not publicly express this desire, or pursue the complete realization of it with some success, we do so, at least to a certain extent, by indirect means; as for example, the exclusion of foreign goods, in order to diminish the _quantity offered_, and to produce thus by forcible means, and for our own profits, a _scarcity_ of clothing. we might thus pass in review every business and every profession, and should always find that the producers, _in their character of producers_, have invariably anti-social interests. "the shop-keeper (says montaigne) succeeds in his business through the extravagance of youth; the laborer by the high price of grain; the architect by the decay of houses; officers of justice by lawsuits and quarrels. the standing and occupation even of ministers of religion are drawn from our death and our vices. no physician takes pleasure in the health even of his friends; no soldier in the peace of his country; and so on with all." if then the secret desires of each producer were realized, the world would rapidly retrograde towards barbarism. the sail would proscribe steam; the oar would proscribe the sail, only in its turn to give way to wagons, the wagon to the mule, and the mule to the foot-peddler. wool would exclude cotton; cotton would exclude wool; and thus on, until the scarcity and want of every thing would cause man himself to disappear from the face of the globe. if we now go on to consider the immediate interest of the _consumer_, we shall find it in perfect harmony with the public interest, and with the well-being of humanity. when the buyer presents himself in the market, he desires to find it abundantly furnished. he sees with pleasure propitious seasons for harvesting; wonderful inventions putting within his reach the largest possible quantity of produce; time and labor saved; distances effaced; the spirit of peace and justice diminishing the weight of taxes; every barrier to improvement cast down; and in all this his interest runs parallel with an enlightened public interest. he may push his secret desires to an absurd and chimerical height, but never can they cease to be humanizing in their tendency. he may desire that food and clothing, house and hearth, instruction and morality, security and peace, strength and health, should come to us without limit and without labor or effort on our part, as the water of the stream, the air which we breathe, and the sunbeams in which we bask, but never could the realization of his most extravagant wishes run counter to the good of society. it may be said, perhaps, that were these desires granted, the labor of the producer constantly checked would end by being entirely arrested for want of support. but why? because in this extreme supposition every imaginable need and desire would be completely satisfied. man, like the all-powerful, would create by the single act of his will. how in such an hypothesis could laborious production be regretted? imagine a legislative assembly composed of producers, of whom each member should cause to pass into a law his secret desire as a _producer_; the code which would emanate from such an assembly could be nothing but systematized monopoly; the scarcity theory put into practice. in the same manner, an assembly in which each member should consult only his immediate interest of _consumer_ would aim at the systematizing of free trade; the suppression of every restrictive measure; the destruction of artificial barriers; in a word, would realize the theory of abundance. it follows then, that to consult exclusively the immediate interest of the producer, is to consult an anti-social interest. to take exclusively for basis the interest of the consumer, is to take for basis the general interest. * * * * * let me be permitted to insist once more upon this point of view, though at the risk of repetition. a radical antagonism exists between the seller and the buyer. the former wishes the article offered to be _scarce_, supply small, and at a high price. the latter wishes it _abundant_, supply large, and at a low price. the laws, which should at least remain neutral, take part for the seller against the buyer; for the producer against the consumer; for high against low prices; for scarcity against abundance. they act, if not intentionally at least logically, upon the principle that _a nation is rich in proportion as it is in want of every thing_. for, say they, it is necessary to favor the producer by securing him a profitable disposal of his goods. to effect this, their price must be raised; to raise the price the supply must be diminished; and to diminish the supply is to create scarcity. let us suppose that at this moment, with these laws in full action, a complete inventory should be made, not by value, but by weight, measure and quantity, of all articles now in france calculated to supply the necessities and pleasures of its inhabitants; as grain, meat, woollen and cotton goods, fuel, etc. let us suppose again that to-morrow every barrier to the introduction of foreign goods should be removed. then, to judge of the effect of such a reform, let a new inventory be made three months hence. is it not certain that at the time of the second inventory, the quantity of grain, cattle, goods, iron, coal, sugar, etc., will be greater than at the first? so true is this, that the sole object of our protective tariffs is to prevent such articles from reaching us, to diminish the supply, to prevent low prices, or which is the same thing, the abundance of goods. now i ask, are the people under the action of these laws better fed because there is _less_ bread, _less_ meat, and _less_ sugar in the country? are they better dressed because there are _fewer_ goods? better warmed because there is _less_ coal? or do they prosper better in their labor because iron, copper, tools and machinery are scarce? but, it is answered, if we are inundated with foreign goods and produce, our coin will leave the country. well, and what matters that? man is not fed with coin. he does not dress in gold, nor warm himself with silver. what difference does it make whether there be more or less coin in the country, provided there be more bread in the cupboard, more meat in the larder, more clothing in the press, and more wood in the cellar? * * * * * to restrictive laws, i offer this dilemma: either you allow that you produce scarcity, or you do not allow it. if you allow it, you confess at once that your end is to injure the people as much as possible. if you do not allow it, then you deny your power to diminish the supply, to raise the price, and consequently you deny having favored the producer. you are either injurious or inefficient. you can never be useful. ii. obstacle--cause. the obstacle mistaken for the cause--scarcity mistaken for abundance. the sophism is the same. it is well to study it under every aspect. man naturally is in a state of entire destitution. between this state and the satisfying of his wants, there exists a multitude of _obstacles_ which it is the object of labor to surmount. it is interesting to seek how and why he could have been led to look even upon these obstacles to his happiness as the cause of it. i wish to take a journey of some hundred miles. but, between the point of my departure and my destination, there are interposed, mountains, rivers, swamps, forests, robbers--in a word, _obstacles_; and to conquer these obstacles, it is necessary that i should bestow much labor and great efforts in opposing them;--or, what is the same thing, if others do it for me, i must pay them the value of their exertions. it is evident that i should have been better off had these obstacles never existed. through the journey of life, in the long series of days from the cradle to the tomb, man has many difficulties to oppose him in his progress. hunger, thirst, sickness, heat, cold, are so many obstacles scattered along his road. in a state of isolation, he would be obliged to combat them all by hunting, fishing, agriculture, spinning, weaving, architecture, etc., and it is very evident that it would be better for him that these difficulties should exist to a less degree, or even not at all. in a state of society he is not obliged, personally, to struggle with each of these obstacles, but others do it for him; and he, in return, must remove some one of them for the benefit of his fellow-men. again it is evident, that, considering mankind as a whole, it would be better for society that these obstacles should be as weak and as few as possible. but if we examine closely and in detail the phenomena of society, and the private interests of men as modified by exchange of produce, we perceive, without difficulty, how it has happened that wants have been confounded with riches, and the obstacle with the cause. the separation of occupations, which results from the habits of exchange, causes each man, instead of struggling against all surrounding obstacles to combat only _one_; the effort being made not for himself alone, but for the benefit of his fellows, who, in their turn, render a similar service to him. now, it hence results, that this man looks upon the obstacle which he has made it his profession to combat for the benefit of others, as the immediate cause of his riches. the greater, the more serious, the more stringent may be this obstacle, the more he is remunerated for the conquering of it, by those who are relieved by his labors. a physician, for instance, does not busy himself in baking his bread, or in manufacturing his clothing and his instruments; others do it for him, and he, in return, combats the maladies with which his patients are afflicted. the more dangerous and frequent these maladies are, the more others are willing, the more, even, are they forced, to work in his service. disease, then, which is an obstacle to the happiness of mankind, becomes to him the source of his comforts. the reasoning of all producers is, in what concerns themselves, the same. as the doctor draws his profits from disease, so does the ship owner from the obstacle called _distance_; the agriculturist from that named _hunger_; the cloth manufacturer from _cold_; the schoolmaster lives upon _ignorance_, the jeweler upon _vanity_, the lawyer upon _quarrels_, the notary upon _breach of faith_. each profession has then an immediate interest in the continuation, even in the extension, of the particular obstacle to which its attention has been directed. theorists hence go on to found a system upon these individual interests, and say: wants are riches: labor is riches: the obstacle to well-being is well-being: to multiply obstacles is to give food to industry. then comes the statesman;--and as the developing and propagating of obstacles is the developing and propagating of riches, what more natural than that he should bend his efforts to that point? he says, for instance: if we prevent a large importation of iron, we create a difficulty in procuring it. this obstacle severely felt, obliges individuals to pay, in order to relieve themselves from it. a certain number of our citizens, giving themselves up to the combating of this obstacle, will thereby make their fortunes. in proportion, too, as the obstacle is great, and the mineral scarce, inaccessible, and of difficult and distant transportation, in the same proportion will be the number of laborers maintained by the various branches of this industry. the same reasoning will lead to the suppression of machinery. here are men who are at a loss how to dispose of their wine-harvest. this is an obstacle which other men set about removing for them by the manufacture of casks. it is fortunate, say our statesmen, that this obstacle exists, since it occupies a portion of the labor of the nation, and enriches a certain number of our citizens. but here is presented to us an ingenious machine, which cuts down the oak, squares it, makes it into staves, and, gathering these together, forms them into casks. the obstacle is thus diminished, and with it the profits of the coopers. we must prevent this. let us proscribe the machine! to sift thoroughly this sophism, it is sufficient to remember that human labor is not an _end_, but a _means_. _it is never without employment._ if one obstacle is removed, it seizes another, and mankind is delivered from two obstacles by the same effort which was at first necessary for one. if the labor of coopers becomes useless, it must take another direction. but with what, it may be asked, will they be remunerated? precisely with what they are at present remunerated. for if a certain quantity of labor becomes free from its original occupation, to be otherwise disposed of, a corresponding quantity of wages must thus also become free. to maintain that human labor can end by wanting employment, it would be necessary to prove that mankind will cease to encounter obstacles. in such a case, labor would be not only impossible, it would be superfluous. we should have nothing to do, because we should be all-powerful, and our _fiat_ alone would satisfy at once our wants and our desires. iii. effort--result. we have seen that between our wants and their gratification many obstacles are interposed. we conquer or weaken these by the employment of our faculties. it may be said, in general terms, that industry is an effort followed by a result. but by what do we measure our well-being? by the _result_ of our effort, or by the _effort itself_? there exists always a proportion between the effort employed and the result obtained. does progress consist in the relative increase of the second or of the first term of this proportion? both propositions have been sustained, and in political economy opinions are divided between them. according to the first system, riches are the result of labor. they increase in the same ratio as _the result does to the effort_. absolute perfection, of which _god_ is the type, consists in the infinite distance between these two terms in this relation, viz., effort none, result infinite. the second system maintains that it is the effort itself which forms the measure of, and constitutes, our riches. progression is the increase of the _proportion of the effort to the result_. its ideal extreme may be represented by the eternal and fruitless efforts of sisyphus.[ ] [footnote : we will therefore beg the reader to allow us in future, for the sake of conciseness, to designate this system under the term of _sisyphism_.] the first system tends naturally to the encouragement of every thing which diminishes difficulties, and augments production,--as powerful machinery, which adds to the strength of man; the exchange of produce, which allows us to profit by the various natural agents distributed in different degrees over the surface of our globe; the intellect which discovers, experience which proves, and emulation which excites. the second as logically inclines to every thing which can augment the difficulty and diminish the product; as privileges, monopolies, restrictions, prohibitions, suppression of machinery, sterility, etc. it is well to remark here that the universal practice of men is always guided by the principle of the first system. every _workman_, whether agriculturist, manufacturer, merchant, soldier, writer or philosopher, devotes the strength of his intellect to do better, to do more quickly, more economically,--in a word, _to do more with less_. the opposite doctrine is in use with legislators, editors, statesmen, men whose business is to make experiments upon society. and even of these we may observe, that in what personally concerns _themselves_, they act, like every body else, upon the principle of obtaining from their labor the greatest possible quantity of useful results. it may be supposed that i exaggerate, and that there are no true _sisyphists_. i grant that in practice the principle is not pushed to its extremest consequences. and this must always be the case when one starts upon a wrong principle, because the absurd and injurious results to which it leads, cannot but check it in its progress. for this reason, practical industry never can admit of _sisyphism_. the error is too quickly followed by its punishment to remain concealed. but in the speculative industry of theorists and statesmen, a false principle may be for a long time followed up, before the complication of its consequences, only half understood, can prove its falsity; and even when all is revealed, the opposite principle is acted upon, self is contradicted, and justification sought, in the incomparably absurd modern axiom, that in political economy there is no principle universally true. let us see then, if the two opposite principles i have laid down do not predominate, each in its turn;--the one in practical industry, the other in industrial legislation. i have already quoted some words of mr. bugeaud; but we must look on mr. bugeaud in two separate characters, the agriculturist and the legislator. as agriculturist, mr. bugeaud makes every effort to attain the double object of sparing labor, and obtaining bread cheap. when he prefers a good plough to a bad one, when he improves the quality of his manures; when, to loosen his soil, he substitutes as much as possible the action of the atmosphere for that of the hoe or the harrow; when he calls to his aid every improvement that science and experience have revealed, he has, and can have, but one object, viz., _to diminish the proportion of the effort to the result_. we have indeed no other means of judging of the success of an agriculturist, or of the merits of his system, but by observing how far he has succeeded in lessening the one, while he increases the other; and as all the farmers in the world act upon this principle, we may say that all mankind are seeking, no doubt for their own advantage, to obtain at the lowest price, bread, or whatever other article of produce they may need, always diminishing the effort necessary for obtaining any given quantity thereof. this incontestable tendency of human nature, once proved, would, one might suppose, be sufficient to point out the true principle to the legislator, and to show him how he ought to assist industry (if indeed it is any part of his business to assist it at all), for it would be absurd to say that the laws of men should operate in an inverse ratio from those of providence. yet we have heard mr. bugeaud in his character of legislator, exclaim, "i do not understand this theory of cheapness; i would rather see bread dear, and work more abundant." and consequently the deputy from dordogne votes in favor of legislative measures whose effect is to shackle and impede commerce, precisely because by so doing we are prevented from procuring by exchange, and at low price, what direct production can only furnish more expensively. now it is very evident that the system of mr. bugeaud the deputy, is directly opposed to that of mr. bugeaud the agriculturist. were he consistent with himself, he would as legislator vote against all restriction; or else as farmer, he would practice in his fields the same principle which he proclaims in the public councils. we should then see him sowing his grain in his most sterile fields, because he would thus succeed in _laboring much_, to _obtain little_. we should see him forbidding the use of the plough, because he could, by scratching up the soil with his nails, fully gratify his double wish of "_dear bread_ and _abundant labor_." restriction has for its avowed object, and acknowledged effect, the augmentation of labor. and again, equally avowed and acknowledged, its object and effect are, the increase of prices;--a synonymous term for scarcity of produce. pushed then to its greatest extreme, it is pure _sisyphism_ as we have defined it: _labor infinite; result nothing_. baron charles dupin, who is looked upon as the oracle of the peerage in the science of political economy, accuses railroads of _injuring shipping_, and it is certainly true that the most perfect means of attaining an object must always limit the use of a less perfect means. but railways can only injure shipping by drawing from it articles of transportation; this they can only do by transporting more cheaply; and they can only transport more cheaply, by _diminishing the proportion of the effort employed to the result obtained_; for it is in this that cheapness consists. when, therefore, baron dupin laments the suppression of labor in attaining a given result, he maintains the doctrine of _sisyphism_. logically, if he prefers the vessel to the railway, he should also prefer the wagon to the vessel, the pack-saddle to the wagon, and the wallet to the pack-saddle; for this is, of all known means of transportation, the one which requires the greatest amount of labor, in proportion to the result obtained. "labor constitutes the riches of the people," said mr. de saint cricq, a minister who has laid not a few shackles upon our commerce. this was no elliptical expression, meaning that the "results of labor constitute the riches of the people." no,--this statesman intended to say, that it is the _intensity_ of labor, which measures riches; and the proof of this is, that from step to step, from restriction to restriction, he forced on france (and in so doing believed that he was doing well) to give to the procuring, of, for instance, a certain quantity of iron, double the necessary labor. in england, iron was then at eight francs; in france it cost sixteen. supposing the day's work to be worth one franc, it is evident that france could, by barter, procure a quintal of iron by eight days' labor taken from the labor of the nation. thanks to the restrictive measures of mr. de saint cricq, sixteen days' work were necessary to procure it, by direct production. here then we have double labor for an identical result; therefore double riches; and riches, measured not by the result, but by the intensity of labor. is not this pure and unadulterated _sisyphism_? that there may be nothing equivocal, the minister carries his idea still farther, and on the same principle that we have heard him call the intensity of labor _riches_, we will find him calling the abundant results of labor, and the plenty of every thing proper to the satisfying of our wants, _poverty_. "every where," he remarks, "machinery has pushed aside manual labor; every where production is superabundant; every where the equilibrium is destroyed between the power of production and that of consumption." here then we see that, according to mr. de saint cricq, if france was in a critical situation, it was because her productions were too abundant; there was too much intelligence, too much efficiency in her national labor. we were too well fed, too well clothed, too well supplied with every thing; the rapid production was more than sufficient for our wants. it was necessary to put an end to this calamity, and therefore it became needful to force us, by restrictions, to work more, in order to produce less. i also touched upon an opinion expressed by another minister of commerce, mr. d'argout, which is worthy of being a little more closely looked into. wishing to give a death blow to the beet, he said: "the culture of the beet is undoubtedly useful, _but this usefulness is limited_. it is not capable of the prodigious developments which have been predicted of it. to be convinced of this it is enough to remark that the cultivation of it must necessarily be confined within the limits of consumption. double, treble if you will, the present consumption of france, and _you will still find that a very small portion of her soil will suffice for this consumption_. (truly a most singular cause of complaint!) do you wish the proof of this? how many hectares were planted in beets in the year ? , , which is - th of our cultivable soil. how many are there at this time, when our domestic sugar supplies one-third of the consumption of the country? , hectares, or - th of the cultivable soil, or centiares for each commune. suppose that our domestic sugar should monopolize the supply of the whole consumption, we still would have but , hectares or - th of our cultivable soil in beets."[ ] [footnote : in justice to mr. d'argout we should say that this singular language is given by him as the argument of the enemies of the beet. but he made it his own, and sanctioned it by the law in justification of which he adduced it.] there are two things to consider in this quotation. the facts and the doctrine. the facts go to prove that very little soil, capital, and labor would be necessary for the production of a large quantity of sugar; and that each commune of france would be abundantly provided with it by giving up one hectare to its cultivation. the peculiarity of the doctrine consists in the looking upon this facility of production as an unfortunate circumstance, and the regarding the very fruitfulness of this new branch of industry as a _limitation to its usefulness_. it is not my purpose here to constitute myself the defender of the beet, or the judge of the singular facts stated by mr. d'argout, but it is worth the trouble of examining into the doctrines of a statesman, to whose judgment france, for a long time, confided the fate of her agriculture and her commerce. i began by saying that a variable proportion exists in all industrial pursuits, between the effort and the result. absolute imperfection consists in an infinite effort, without any result; absolute perfection in an unlimited result, without any effort; and perfectibility, in the progressive diminution of the effort, compared with the result. but mr. d'argout tells us, that where we looked for life, we shall find only death. the importance of any object of industry is, according to him, in direct proportion to its feebleness. what, for instance, can we expect from the beet? do you not see that , hectares of land, with capital and labor in proportion, will suffice to furnish sugar to all france? it is then an object of _limited usefulness_; limited, be it understood, in the _work_ which it calls for; and this is the sole measure, according to our minister, of the usefulness of any pursuit. this usefulness would be much more limited still, if, thanks to the fertility of the soil, or the richness of the beet, , hectares would serve instead of , . if there were only needed twenty times, a hundred times more soil, more capital, more labor, to _attain the same result_--oh! then some hopes might be founded upon this article of industry; it would be worthy of the protection of the state, for it would open a vast field to national labor. but to produce much with little is a bad example, and the laws ought to set things to rights. what is true with regard to sugar, cannot be false with regard to bread. if therefore the usefulness of an object of industry is to be calculated, not by the comforts which it can furnish with a certain quantum of labor, but, on the contrary, by the increase of labor which it requires in order to furnish a certain quantity of comforts, it is evident that we ought to desire, that each acre of land should produce little corn, and that each grain of corn should furnish little nutriment; in other words, that our territory should be sterile enough to require a considerably larger proportion of soil, capital, and labor to nourish its population. the demand for human labor could not fail to be in direct proportion to this sterility, and then truly would the wishes of messrs. bugeaud, saint cricq, dupin, and d'argout be satisfied; bread would be dear, work abundant, and france would be rich--rich according to the understanding of these gentlemen. all that we could have further to hope for, would be, that human intellect might sink and become extinct; for, while intellect exists, it can but seek continually to increase the _proportion of the end to the means; of the product to the labor_. indeed it is in this continuous effort, and in this alone, that intellect consists. _sisyphism_ has then been the doctrine of all those who have been intrusted with the regulation of the industry of our country. it would not be just to reproach them with this; for this principle becomes that of our ministry, only because it prevails in the chambers; it prevails in the chambers, only because it is sent there by the electoral body; and the electoral body is imbued with it, only because public opinion is filled with it to repletion. let me repeat here, that i do not accuse such men as messrs. bugeaud, dupin, saint cricq, and d'argout, of being absolutely and always _sisyphists_. very certainly they are not such in their personal transactions; very certainly each one of them will procure for himself _by barter_, what by _direct production_ would be attainable only at a higher price. but i maintain that they are _sisyphists_ when they prevent the country from acting upon the same principle. iv. equalizing of the facilities of production. it is said ... but, for fear of being accused of manufacturing sophisms for the mouths of the protectionists, i will allow one of their most able reasoners to speak for himself. "it is our belief that protection should correspond to, should be the representation of, the difference which exists between the price of an article of home production and a similar article of foreign production.... a protecting duty calculated upon such a basis does nothing more than secure free competition; ... free competition can only exist where there is an equality in the facilities of production. in a horse-race the load which each horse carries is weighed and all advantages equalized; otherwise there could be no competition. in commerce, if one producer can undersell all others, he ceases to be a competitor and becomes a monopolist.... suppress the protection which represents the difference of price according to each, and foreign productions must immediately inundate and obtain the monopoly of our market."[ ] [footnote : m. le vicomte de romanet.] "every one ought to wish, for his own sake and for that of the community, that the productions of the country should be protected against foreign competition, _whenever the latter may be able to undersell the former_."[ ] [footnote : mathieu de dombasle.] this argument is constantly recurring in all writings of the protectionist school. it is my intention to make a careful investigation of its merits, and i must begin by soliciting the attention and the patience of the reader. i will first examine into the inequalities which depend upon natural causes, and afterwards into those which are caused by diversity of taxes. here, as elsewhere, we find the theorists who favor protection, taking part with the producer. let us consider the case of the unfortunate consumer, who seems to have entirely escaped their attention. they compare the field of production to the _turf_. but on the turf, the race is at once a _means and an end_. the public has no interest in the struggle, independent of the struggle itself. when your horses are started in the course with the single object of determining which is the best runner, nothing is more natural than that their burdens should be equalized. but if your object were to send an important and critical piece of intelligence, could you without incongruity place obstacles to the speed of that one whose fleetness would secure the best means of attaining your end? and yet this is your course in relation to industry. you forget the end aimed at, which is the _well-being_ of the community. but we cannot lead our opponents to look at things from our point of view, let us now take theirs; let us examine the question as producers. i will seek to prove . that equalizing the facilities of production is to attack the foundations of all trade. . that it is not true that the labor of one country can be crushed by the competition of more favored climates. . that, even were this the case, protective duties cannot equalize the facilities of production. . that freedom of trade equalizes these conditions as much as possible; and . that the countries which are the least favored by nature are those which profit most by freedom of trade. i. the equalizing of the facilities of production, is not only the shackling of certain articles of commerce, but it is the attacking of the system of mutual exchange in its very foundation principle. for this system is based precisely upon the very diversities, or, if the expression be preferred, upon the inequalities of fertility, climate, temperature, capabilities, which the protectionists seek to render null. if guyenne sends its wines to brittany, and brittany sends corn to guyenne, it is because these two provinces are, from different circumstances, induced to turn their attention to the production of different articles. is there any other rule for international exchanges? again, to bring against such exchanges the very inequalities of condition which excite and explain them, is to attack them in their very cause of being. the protective system, closely followed up, would bring men to live like snails, in a state of complete isolation. in short, there is not one of its sophisms, which if carried through by vigorous deductions, would not end in destruction and annihilation. ii. it is not true that the unequal facility of production, in two similar branches of industry, should necessarily cause the destruction of the one which is the least fortunate. on the turf, if one horse gains the prize, the other loses it; but when two horses work to produce any useful article, each produces in proportion to his strength; and because the stronger is the more useful, it does not follow that the weaker is good for nothing. wheat is cultivated in every department of france, although there are great differences in the degree of fertility existing among them. if it happens that there be one which does not cultivate it, it is because, even to itself, such cultivation is not useful. analogy will show us, that under the influence of an unshackled trade, notwithstanding similar differences, wheat would be produced in every kingdom of europe; and if any one were induced to abandon entirely the cultivation of it, this would only be, because it would _be her interest_ to employ otherwise her lands, her capital, and her labor. and why does not the fertility of one department paralyze the agriculture of a neighboring and less favored one? because the phenomena of political economy have a suppleness, an elasticity, and, so to speak, _a self-leveling power_, which seems to escape the attention of the school of protectionists. they accuse us of being theorists, but it is themselves who are theorists to a supreme degree, if being theoretic consists in building up systems upon the experience of a single fact, instead of profiting by the experience of a series of facts. in the above example, it is the difference in the value of lands, which compensates for the difference in their fertility. your field produces three times as much as mine. yes. but it has cost you three times as much, and therefore i can still compete with you: this is the sole mystery. and observe how the advantage on one point leads to disadvantage on the other. precisely because your soil is more fruitful, it is more dear. it is not _accidentally_ but _necessarily_ that the equilibrium is established, or at least inclines to establish itself; and can it be denied that perfect freedom in exchanges is, of all the systems, the one which favors this tendency? i have cited an agricultural example; i might as easily have taken one from any trade. there are tailors at quimper, but that does not prevent tailors from being in paris also, although the latter have to pay a much higher rent, as well as higher price for furniture, workmen, and food. but their customers are sufficiently numerous not only to re-establish the balance, but also to make it lean on their side. when therefore the question is about equalizing the advantages of labor, it would be well to consider whether the natural freedom of exchange is not the best umpire. this self-leveling faculty of political phenomena is so important, and at the same time so well calculated to cause us to admire the providential wisdom which presides over the equalizing government of society, that i must ask permission a little longer, to turn to it the attention of the reader. the protectionists say, such a nation has the advantage over us, in being able to procure cheaply, coal, iron, machinery, capital; it is impossible for us to compete with it. we must examine the proposition under other aspects. for the present, i stop at the question, whether, when an advantage and a disadvantage are placed in juxtaposition, they do not bear in themselves, the former a descending, the latter an ascending power, which must end by placing them in a just equilibrium. let us suppose the countries a and b. a has every advantage over b; you thence conclude that labor will be concentrated upon a, while b must be abandoned. a, you say, sells much more than it buys; b buys more than it sells. i might dispute this, but i will meet you upon your own ground. in the hypothesis, labor, being in great demand in a, soon rises in value; while labor, iron, coal, lands, food, capital, all being little sought after in b, soon fall in price. again: a being always selling and b always buying, cash passes from b to a. it is abundant in a--very scarce in b. but where there is abundance of cash, it follows that in all purchases a large proportion of it will be needed. then in a, _real dearness_, which proceeds from a very active demand, is added to _nominal dearness_, the consequence of a superabundance of the precious metals. scarcity of money implies that little is necessary for each purchase. then in b, a _nominal cheapness_ is combined with _real cheapness_. under these circumstances, industry will have the strongest possible motives for deserting a, to establish itself in b. now, to return to what would be the true course of things. as the progress of such events is always gradual, industry from its nature being opposed to sudden transits, let us suppose that, without waiting the extreme point, it will have gradually divided itself between a and b, according to the laws of supply and demand; that is to say, according to the laws of justice and usefulness. i do not advance an empty hypothesis when i say, that were it possible that industry should concentrate itself upon a single point, there must, from its nature, arise spontaneously, and in its midst, an irresistible power of decentralization. we will quote the words of a manufacturer to the chamber of commerce at manchester (the figures brought into his demonstration are suppressed): "formerly we exported goods; this exportation gave way to that of thread for the manufacture of goods; later, instead of thread, we exported machinery for the making of thread; then capital for the construction of machinery; and lastly, workmen and talent, which are the source of capital. all these elements of labor have, one after the other, transferred themselves to other points, where their profits were increased, and where the means of subsistence being less difficult to obtain, life is maintained at a less cost. there are at present to be seen in prussia, austria, saxony, switzerland, and italy, immense manufacturing establishments, founded entirely by english capital, worked by english labor, and directed by english talent." we may here perceive, that nature, or rather providence, with more wisdom and foresight than the narrow rigid system of the protectionists can suppose, does not permit the concentration of labor, the monopoly of advantages, from which they draw their arguments as from an absolute and irremediable fact. it has, by means as simple as they are infallible, provided for dispersion, diffusion, mutual dependence, and simultaneous progress; all of which, your restrictive laws paralyze as much as is in their power, by their tendency towards the isolation of nations. by this means they render much more decided the differences existing in the conditions of production; they check the self-leveling power of industry, prevent fusion of interests, and fence in each nation within its own peculiar advantages and disadvantages. iii. to say that by a protective law the conditions of production are equalized, is to disguise an error under false terms. it is not true that an import duty equalizes the conditions of production. these remain after the imposition of the duty just as they were before. the most that the law can do is to equalize the _conditions of sale_. if it should be said that i am playing upon words, i retort the accusation upon my adversaries. it is for them to prove that _production_ and _sale_ are synonymous terms, which if they cannot do, i have a right to accuse them, if not of playing upon words, at least of confounding them. let me be permitted to exemplify my idea. suppose that several parisian speculators should determine to devote themselves to the production of oranges. they know that the oranges of portugal can be sold in paris at ten centimes, whilst on account of the boxes, hot-houses, etc., which are necessary to ward against the severity of our climate, it is impossible to raise them at less than a franc apiece. they accordingly demand a duty of ninety centimes upon portugal oranges. with the help of this duty, say they, the _conditions of production_ will be equalized. the legislative body, yielding as usual to this argument, imposes a duty of ninety centimes on each foreign orange. now i say that the _relative conditions of production_ are in no wise changed. the law can take nothing from the heat of the sun in lisbon, nor from the severity of the frosts in paris. oranges continuing to mature themselves _naturally_ on the banks of the tagus, and artificially upon those of the seine, must continue to require for their production much more labor on the latter than the former. the law can only equalize the _conditions of sale_. it is evident that while the portuguese sell their oranges at a franc apiece, the ninety centimes which go to pay the tax are taken from the french consumer. now look at the whimsicality of the result. upon each portuguese orange, the country loses nothing; for the ninety centimes which the consumer pays to satisfy the tax, enter into the treasury. there is improper distribution, but no loss. upon each french orange consumed, there will be about ninety centimes lost; for while the buyer very certainly loses them, the seller just as certainly does not gain them, for even according to the hypothesis, he will receive only the price of production. i will leave it to the protectionists to draw their conclusion. iv. i have laid some stress upon this distinction between the conditions of production and those of sale, which perhaps the prohibitionists may consider as paradoxical, because it leads me on to what they will consider as a still stranger paradox. this is: if you really wish to equalize the facilities of production, leave trade free. this may surprise the protectionists; but let me entreat them to listen, if it be only through curiosity, to the end of my argument. it shall not be long. i will now take it up where we left off. if we suppose for the moment, that the common and daily profits of each frenchman amount to one franc, it will indisputably follow that to produce an orange by _direct_ labor in france, one day's work, or its equivalent, will be requisite; whilst to produce the cost of a portuguese orange, only one-tenth of this day's labor is required; which means simply this, that the sun does at lisbon what labor does at paris. now is it not evident, that if i can produce an orange, or, what is the same thing, the means of buying it, with one-tenth of a day's labor, i am placed exactly in the same condition as the portuguese producer himself, excepting the expense of the transportation? it is then certain that freedom of commerce equalizes the conditions of production direct or indirect, as much as it is possible to equalize them; for it leaves but the one inevitable difference, that of transportation. i will add that free trade equalizes also the facilities for attaining enjoyments, comforts, and general consumption; the last an object which is, it would seem, quite forgotten, and which is nevertheless all important; since consumption is the main object of all our industrial efforts. thanks to freedom of trade, we would enjoy here the results of the portuguese sun, as well as portugal itself; and the inhabitants of havre, would have in their reach, as well as those of london, and with the same facilities, the advantages which nature has in a mineralogical point of view conferred upon newcastle. the protectionists may suppose me in a paradoxical humor, for i go farther still. i say, and i sincerely believe, that if any two countries are placed in unequal circumstances as to advantages of production, _that one of the two which is the least favored by nature, will gain most by freedom of commerce_. to prove this, i shall be obliged to turn somewhat aside from the form of reasoning which belongs to this work. i will do so, however; first, because the question in discussion turns upon this point; and again, because it will give me the opportunity of exhibiting a law of political economy of the highest importance, and which, well understood, seems to me to be destined to lead back to this science all those sects which, in our days, are seeking in the land of chimeras that social harmony which they have been unable to discover in nature. i speak of the law of consumption, which the majority of political economists may well be reproached with having too much neglected. consumption is the _end_, the final cause, of all the phenomena of political economy, and, consequently, in it is found their final solution. no effect, whether favorable or unfavorable, can be arrested permanently upon the producer. the advantages and the disadvantages, which, from his relations to nature and to society, are his, both equally pass gradually from him, with an almost insensible tendency to be absorbed and fused into the community at large; the community considered as consumers. this is an admirable law, alike in its cause and its effects, and he who shall succeed in making it well understood, will have a right to say, "i have not, in my passage through the world, forgotten to pay my tribute to society." every circumstance which favors the work of production is of course hailed with joy by the producer, for its _immediate effect_ is to enable him to render greater services to the community, and to exact from it a greater remuneration. every circumstance which injures production, must equally be the source of uneasiness to him; for its _immediate effect_ is to diminish his services, and consequently his remuneration. this is a fortunate and necessary law of nature. the immediate good or evil of favorable or unfavorable circumstances must fall upon the producer, in order to influence him invincibly to seek the one and to avoid the other. again, when a workman succeeds in his labor, the _immediate_ benefit of this success is received by him. this again is necessary, to determine him to devote his attention to it. it is also just; because it is just that an effort crowned with success should bring its own reward. but these effects, good and bad, although permanent in themselves, are not so as regards the producer. if they had been so, a principle of progressive and consequently infinite _inequality_ would have been introduced among men. this good, and this evil, both therefore pass on, to become absorbed in the general destinies of humanity. how does this come about? i will try to make it understood by some examples. let us go back to the thirteenth century. men who gave themselves up to the business of copying, received for this service _a remuneration regulated by the general rate of profits_. among them is found one, who seeks and finds the means of multiplying rapidly copies of the same work. he invents printing. the first effect of this is, that the individual is enriched, while many more are impoverished. at the first view, wonderful as the discovery is, one hesitates in deciding whether it is not more injurious than useful. it seems to have introduced into the world, as i said above, an element of infinite inequality. guttenberg makes large profits by this invention, and perfects the invention by the profits, until all other copyists are ruined. as for the public,--the consumer,--it gains but little, for guttenberg takes care to lower the price of books only just so much as is necessary to undersell all rivals. but the great mind which put harmony into the movements of celestial bodies, could also give it to the internal mechanism of society. we will see the advantages of this invention escaping from the individual, to become forever the common patrimony of mankind. the process finally becomes known. guttenberg is no longer alone in his art; others imitate him. their profits are at first considerable. they are recompensed for being the first who make the effort to imitate the processes of the newly invented art. this again was necessary, in order that they might be induced to the effort, and thus forward the great and final result to which we approach. they gain much; but they gain less than the inventor, for _competition_ has commenced its work. the price of books now continually decreases. the gains of the imitators diminish in proportion as the invention becomes older; and in the same proportion imitation becomes less meritorious. soon the new object of industry attains its normal condition; in other words, the remuneration of printers is no longer an exception to the general rules of remuneration, and, like that of copyists formerly, it is only regulated _by the general rate of profits_. here then the producer, as such, holds only the old position. the discovery, however, has been made; the saving of time, labor, effort, for a fixed result, for a certain number of volumes, is realized. but in what is this manifested? in the cheap price of books. for the good of whom? for the good of the consumer,--of society,--of humanity. printers, having no longer any peculiar merit, receive no longer a peculiar remuneration. as men,--as consumers,--they no doubt participate in the advantages which the invention confers upon the community; but that is all. as printers, as producers, they are placed upon the ordinary footing of all other producers. society pays them for their labor, and not for the usefulness of the invention. _that_ has become a gratuitous benefit, a common heritage to mankind. what has been said of printing can be extended to every agent for the advancement of labor; from the nail and the mallet, up to the locomotive and the electric telegraph. society enjoys all, by the abundance of its use, its consumption; and it _enjoys all gratuitously_. for as their effect is to diminish prices, it is evident that just so much of the price as is taken off by their intervention, renders the production in so far _gratuitous_. there only remains the actual labor of man to be paid for; and the remainder, which is the result of the invention, is subtracted; at least after the invention has run through the cycle which i have just described as its destined course. i send for a workman; he brings a saw with him; i pay him two francs for his day's labor, and he saws me twenty-five boards. if the saw had not been invented, he would perhaps not have been able to make one board, and i would have paid him the same for his day's labor. the _usefulness_ then of the saw, is for me a gratuitous gift of nature, or rather it is a portion of the inheritance which, _in common_ with my brother men, i have received from the genius of my ancestors. i have two workmen in my field; the one directs the handle of a plough, the other that of a spade. the result of their day's labor is very different, but the price is the same, because the remuneration is proportioned, not to the usefulness of the result, but to the effort, the labor given to attain it. i invoke the patience of the reader, and beg him to believe, that i have not lost sight of free trade: i entreat him only to remember the conclusion at which i have arrived: _remuneration is not proportioned to the usefulness of the articles brought by the producer into the market, but to the labor_.[ ] [footnote : it is true that labor does not receive a uniform remuneration; because labor is more or less intense, dangerous, skillful, etc. competition establishes for each category a price current; and it is of this variable price that i speak.] i have so far taken my examples from human inventions, but will now go on to speak of natural advantages. in every article of production, nature and man must concur. but the portion of nature is always gratuitous. only so much of the usefulness of an article as is the result of human labor becomes the object of mutual exchange, and consequently of remuneration. the remuneration varies much, no doubt, in proportion to the intensity of the labor, of the skill which it requires, of its being _à propos_ to the demand of the day, of the need which exists for it, of the momentary absence of competition, etc. but it is not the less true in principle, that the assistance received from natural laws, which belongs to all, counts for nothing in the price. we do not pay for the air we breathe, although so useful to us, that we could not live two minutes without it. we do not pay for it, because nature furnishes it without the intervention of man's labor. but if we wish to separate one of the gases which compose it, for instance, to fill a balloon, we must take some trouble and labor; or if another takes it for us, we must give him an equivalent in something which will have cost us the trouble of production. from which we see that the exchange is between troubles, efforts, labors. it is certainly not for hydrogen gas that i pay, for this is every where at my disposal, but for the work that it has been necessary to accomplish in order to disengage it; work which i have been spared, and which i must refund. if i am told that there are other things to pay for; as expense, materials, apparatus; i answer, that still in these things it is the work that i pay for. the price of the coal employed is only the representation of the labor necessary to dig and transport it. we do not pay for the light of the sun, because nature alone gives it to us. but we pay for the light of gas, tallow, oil, wax, because here is labor to be remunerated;--and remark, that it is so entirely labor and not utility to which remuneration is proportioned, that it may well happen that one of these means of lighting, while it may be much more effective than another, may still cost less. to cause this, it is only necessary that less human labor should be required to furnish it. when the water-carrier comes to supply my house, were i to pay him in proportion to the _absolute utility_ of the water, my whole fortune would not be sufficient. but i pay him only for the trouble he has taken. if he requires more, i can get others to furnish it, or finally go and get it myself. the water itself is not the subject of our bargain; but the labor taken to get the water. this point of view is so important, and the consequences that i am going to draw from it so clear, as regards the freedom of international exchanges, that i will still elucidate my idea by a few more examples. the alimentary substance contained in potatoes does not cost us very dear, because a great deal of it is attainable with little work. we pay more for wheat, because, to produce it nature requires more labor from man. it is evident that if nature did for the latter what she does for the former, their prices would tend to the same level. it is impossible that the producer of wheat should permanently gain more than the producer of potatoes. the law of competition cannot allow it. if by a happy miracle the fertility of all arable lands were to be increased, it would not be the agriculturist, but the consumer, who would profit by this phenomenon; for the result of it would be, abundance and cheapness. there would be less labor incorporated into an acre of grain, and the agriculturist would be therefore obliged to exchange it for a less labor incorporated into some other article. if, on the contrary, the fertility of the soil were suddenly to deteriorate, the share of nature in production would be less, that of labor greater, and the result would be higher prices. i am right then in saying that it is in consumption, in mankind, that at length all political phenomena find their solution. as long as we fail to follow their effects to this point, and look only at _immediate_ effects, which act but upon individual men or classes of men _as producers_, we know nothing more of political economy than the quack does of medicine, when, instead of following the effects of a prescription in its action upon the whole system, he satisfies himself with knowing how it affects the palate and the throat. the tropical regions are very favorable to the production of sugar and coffee; that is to say, nature does most of the business and leaves but little for labor to accomplish. but who reaps the advantage of this liberality of nature? not these regions, for they are forced by competition to receive simply remuneration for their labor. it is mankind who is the gainer; for the result of this liberality is _cheapness_, and cheapness belongs to the world. here in the temperate zone, we find coal and iron ore, on the surface of the soil; we have but to stoop and take them. at first, i grant, the immediate inhabitants profit by this fortunate circumstance. but soon comes competition, and the price of coal and iron falls, until this gift of nature becomes gratuitous to all, and human labor is only paid according to the general rate of profits. thus natural advantages, like improvements in the process of production, are, or have a constant tendency to become, under the law of competition, the common and _gratuitous_ patrimony of consumers, of society, of mankind. countries therefore which do not enjoy these advantages, must gain by commerce with those which do; because the exchanges of commerce are between _labor and labor_; subtraction being made of all the natural advantages which are combined with these labors; and it is evidently the most favored countries which can incorporate into a given labor the largest proportion of these _natural advantages_. their produce representing less labor, receives less recompense; in other words, is _cheaper_. if then all the liberality of nature results in cheapness, it is evidently not the producing, but the consuming country, which profits by her benefits. hence we may see the enormous absurdity of the consuming country, which rejects produce precisely because it is cheap. it is as though we should say: "we will have nothing of that which nature gives you. you ask of us an effort equal to two, in order to furnish ourselves with articles only attainable at home by an effort equal to four. you can do it because with you nature does half the work. but we will have nothing to do with it; we will wait till your climate, becoming more inclement, forces you to ask of us a labor equal to four, and then we can treat with you _upon an equal footing_." a is a favored country; b is maltreated by nature. mutual traffic then is advantageous to both, but principally to b, because the exchange is not between _utility_ and _utility_, but between _value_ and _value_. now a furnishes a greater _utility in a similar value_, because the _utility_ of any article includes at once what nature and what labor have done; whereas the _value_ of it only corresponds to the portion accomplished by labor. b then makes an entirely advantageous bargain; for by simply paying the producer from a for his labor, it receives in return not only the results of that labor, but in addition there is thrown in whatever may have accrued from the superior bounty of nature. we will lay down the general rule. traffic is an exchange of _values_; and as value is reduced by competition to the simple representation of labor, traffic is the exchange of equal labors. whatever nature has done towards the production of the articles exchanged, is given on both sides _gratuitously_; from whence it necessarily follows, that the most advantageous commerce is transacted with those countries which are the most favored by nature. * * * * * the theory of which i have attempted, in this chapter, to trace the outlines, would require great developments. but perhaps the attentive reader will have perceived in it the fruitful seed which is destined in its future growth to smother protection, at once with fourierism, saint simonism, commonism, and the various other schools whose object is to exclude the law of competition from the government of the world. competition, no doubt, considering man as producer, must often interfere with his individual and _immediate_ interests. but if we consider the great object of all labor, the universal good, in a word, _consumption_, we cannot fail to find that competition is to the moral world what the law of equilibrium is to the material one. it is the foundation of true commonism, of true socialism, of the equality of comforts and condition, so much sought after in our day; and if so many sincere reformers, so many earnest friends to the public rights, seek to reach their end by commercial _legislation_, it is only because they do not yet understand _commercial freedom_. v. our productions are overloaded with taxes. this is but a new wording of the last sophism. the demand made is, that the foreign article should be taxed, in order to neutralize the effects of the tax, which weighs down national produce. it is still then but the question of equalizing the facilities of production. we have but to say that the tax is an artificial obstacle, which has exactly the same effect as a natural obstacle, i.e. the increasing of the price. if this increase is so great that there is more loss in producing the article in question than in attracting it from foreign parts by the production of an equivalent value, let it alone. individual interest will soon learn to choose the lesser of two evils. i might refer the reader to the preceding demonstration for an answer to this sophism; but it is one which recurs so often in the complaints and the petitions, i had almost said the demands, of the protectionist school, that it deserves a special discussion. if the tax in question should be one of a special kind, directed against fixed articles of production, i agree that it is perfectly reasonable that foreign produce should be subjected to it. for instance, it would be absurd to free foreign salt from impost duty; not that in an economical point of view france would lose any thing by it; on the contrary, whatever may be said, principles are invariable, and france would gain by it, as she must always gain by avoiding an obstacle whether natural or artificial. but here the obstacle has been raised with a fiscal object. it is necessary that this end should be attained; and if foreign salt were to be sold in our market free from duty, the treasury would not receive its revenue, and would be obliged to seek it from some thing else. there would be evident inconsistency in creating an obstacle with a given object, and then avoiding the attainment of that object. it would have been better at once to seek what was needed in the other impost without taxing french salt. such are the circumstances under which i would allow upon any foreign article a duty, _not protecting_ but fiscal. but the supposition that a nation, because it is subjected to heavier imposts than those of another neighboring nation, should protect itself by tariffs against the competition of its rival, is a sophism, which it is now my purpose to attack. i have said more than once, that i am opposing only the theory of the protectionists, with the hope of discovering the source of their errors. were i disposed to enter into controversy with them, i would say: why direct your tariffs principally against england and belgium, both countries more overloaded with taxes than any in the world? have i not a right to look upon your argument as a mere pretext? but i am not of the number of those who believe that prohibitionists are guided by interest, and not by conviction. the doctrine of protection is too popular not to be sincere. if the majority could believe in freedom, we would be free. without doubt it is individual interest which weighs us down with tariffs; but it acts upon conviction. the state may make either a good or a bad use of taxes; it makes a good use of them when it renders to the public services equivalent to the value received from them; it makes a bad use of them when it expends this value, giving nothing in return. to say in the first case that they place the country which pays them in more disadvantageous conditions for production, than the country which is free from them, is a sophism. we pay, it is true, twenty millions for the administration of justice, and the maintenance of the police, but we have justice and the police; we have the security which they give, the time which they save for us; and it is most probable that production is neither more easy nor more active among nations, where (if there be such) each individual takes the administration of justice into his own hands. we pay, i grant, many hundred millions for roads, bridges, ports, railways; but we have these railways, these ports, bridges and roads, and unless we maintain that it is a losing business to establish them, we cannot say that they place us in a position inferior to that of nations who have, it is true, no taxes for public works, but who likewise have no public works. and here we see why (even while we accuse internal taxes of being a cause of industrial inferiority) we direct our tariffs precisely against those nations which are the most taxed. it is because these taxes, well used, far from injuring, have ameliorated the _conditions of production_ to these nations. thus we again arrive at the conclusion that the protectionist sophisms not only wander from, but are the contrary--the very antithesis of truth. as to unproductive imposts, suppress them if you can; but surely it is a most singular idea to suppose, that their evil effect is to be neutralized by the addition of individual taxes to public taxes. many thanks for the compensation! the state, you say, has taxed us too much; surely this is no reason why we should tax each other! a protective duty is a tax directed against foreign produce, but which returns, let us keep in mind, upon the national consumer. is it not then a singular argument to say to him, "because the taxes are heavy, we will raise prices higher for you; and because the state takes a part of your revenue, we will give another portion of it to benefit a monopoly?" but let us examine more closely this sophism so accredited among our legislators; although, strange to say, it is precisely those who keep up the unproductive imposts (according to our present hypothesis) who attribute to them afterwards our supposed inferiority, and seek to re-establish the equilibrium by further imposts and new clogs. it appears to me to be evident that protection, without any change in its nature and effects, might have taken the form of a direct tax, raised by the state, and distributed as a premium to privileged industry. let us admit that foreign iron could be sold in our market at eight francs, but not lower; and french iron at not lower than twelve francs. in this hypothesis there are two ways in which the state can secure the national market to the home producer. the first, is to put upon foreign iron a duty of five francs. this, it is evident, would exclude it, because it could no longer be sold at less than thirteen francs; eight francs for the cost price, five for the tax; and at this price it must be driven from the market by french iron, which we have supposed to cost twelve francs. in this case the buyer, the consumer, will have paid all the expenses of the protection given. the second means would be to lay upon the public a tax of five francs, and to give it as a premium to the iron manufacturer. the effect would in either case be equally a protective measure. foreign iron would, according to both systems, be alike excluded; for our iron manufacturer could sell at seven francs, what, with the five francs premium, would thus bring him in twelve. while the price of sale being seven francs, foreign iron could not obtain a market at eight. in these two systems the principle is the same; the effect is the same. there is but this single difference; in the first case the expense of protection is paid by a part, in the second by the whole of the community. i frankly confess my preference for the second system, which i regard as more just, more economical and more legal. more just, because, if society wishes to give bounties to some of its members, the whole community ought to contribute; more economical, because it would banish many difficulties, and save the expenses of collection; more legal, lastly, because the public would see clearly into the operation, and know what was required of it. but if the protective system had taken this form, would it not have been laughable enough to hear it said, "we pay heavy taxes for the army, the navy, the judiciary, the public works, the schools, the public debt, etc. these amount to more than a thousand million. it would therefore be desirable that the state should take another thousand million, to relieve the poor iron manufacturers; or the suffering stockholders of coal mines; or those unfortunate lumber dealers, or the useful codfishery." this, it must be perceived, by an attentive investigation, is the result of the sophism in question. in vain, gentlemen, are all your efforts; you cannot _give money_ to one without taking it from another. if you are absolutely determined to exhaust the funds of the taxable community, well; but, at least, do not mock them; do not tell them, "we take from you again, in order to compensate you for what we have already taken." it would be a too tedious undertaking to endeavor to point out all the fallacies of this sophism. i will therefore limit myself to the consideration of it in three points. you argue that france is overburthened with taxes, and deduce thence the conclusion that it is necessary to protect such and such an article of produce. but protection does not relieve us from the payment of these taxes. if, then, individuals devoting themselves to any one object of industry, should advance this demand: "we, from our participation in the payment of taxes, have our expenses of production increased, and therefore ask for a protective duty which shall raise our price of sale;" what is this but a demand on their part to be allowed to free themselves from the burthen of the tax, by laying it on the rest of the community? their object is to balance, by the increased price of their produce, the amount which _they_ pay in taxes. now, as the whole amount of these taxes must enter into the treasury, and the increase of price must be paid by society, it follows that (where this protective duty is imposed) society has to bear, not only the general tax, but also that for the protection of the article in question. but it is answered, let _every thing_ be protected. firstly, this is impossible; and, again, were it possible, how could such a system give relief? _i_ will pay for you, _you_ will pay for me; but not the less, still there remains the tax to be paid. thus you are the dupes of an illusion. you determine to raise taxes for the support of an army, a navy, the church, university, judges, roads, etc. afterwards you seek to disburthen from its portion of the tax, first one article of industry, then another, then a third; always adding to the burthen of the mass of society. you thus only create interminable complications. if you can prove that the increase of price resulting from protection, falls upon the foreign producer, i grant something specious in your argument. but if it be true that the french people paid the tax before the passing of the protective duty, and afterwards that it has paid not only the tax, but the protective duty also, truly i do not perceive wherein it has profited. but i go much further, and maintain that the more oppressive our taxes are, the more anxiously ought we to open our ports and frontiers to foreign nations, less burthened than ourselves. and why? in order that we may share with them, as much as possible, the burthen which we bear. is it not an incontestable maxim in political economy, that taxes must, in the end, fall upon the consumer? the greater then our commerce, the greater the portion which will be reimbursed to us, of taxes incorporated in the produce, which we will have sold to foreign consumers; whilst we, on our part, will have made to them only a lesser reimbursement, because (according to our hypothesis) their produce is less taxed than ours. again, finally, has it ever occurred to you to ask yourself, whether these heavy taxes which you adduce as a reason for keeping up the prohibitive system, may not be the result of this very system itself? to what purpose would be our great standing armies, and our powerful navies, if commerce were free? vi. balance of trade. our adversaries have adopted a system of tactics, which embarrasses us not a little. do we prove our doctrine? they admit the truth of it in the most respectful manner. do we attack their principles? they abandon them with the best possible grace. they only ask that our doctrine, which they acknowledge to be true, should be confined to books; and that their principles, which they allow to be false, should be established in practice. if we will give up to them the regulation of our tariffs, they will leave us triumphant in the domain of theory. "assuredly," said mr. gauthier de roumilly, lately, "assuredly no one wishes to call up from their graves the defunct theories of the balance of trade." and yet mr. gauthier, after giving this passing blow to error, goes on immediately afterwards, and for two hours consecutively, to reason as though this error were a truth. give me mr. lestiboudois. here we have a consistent reasoner! a logical arguer! there is nothing in his conclusions which cannot be found in his premises. he asks nothing in practice which he does not justify in theory. his principles may perchance be false, and this is the point in question. but he has a principle. he believes, he proclaims aloud, that if france gives ten to receive fifteen, she loses five; and surely, with such a belief, nothing is more natural than that he should make laws consistent with it. he says: "what it is important to remark, is, that constantly the amount of importation is augmenting, and surpassing that of exportation. every year france buys more foreign produce, and sells less of its own produce. this can be proved by figures. in , we see the importation exceed the exportation by two hundred millions. this appears to me to prove, in the clearest manner, that national labor _is not sufficiently protected_, that we are provided by foreign labor, and that the competition of our rivals _oppresses_ our industry. the law in question, appears to me to be a consecration of the fact, that our political economists have assumed a false position in declaring, that in proportion to produce bought, there is always a corresponding quantity sold. it is evident that purchases may be made, not with the habitual productions of a country, not with its revenue, not with the results of actual labor, but with its capital, with the accumulated savings which should serve for reproduction. a country may spend, dissipate its profits and savings, may impoverish itself, and by the consumption of its national capital, progress gradually to its ruin. _this is precisely what we are doing. we give, every year, two hundred millions to foreign nations_." well! here, at least, is a man whom we can understand. there is no hypocrisy in this language. the balance of trade is here clearly maintained and defended. france imports two hundred millions more than she exports. then france loses two hundred millions yearly. and the remedy? it is to check importation. the conclusion is perfectly consistent. it is, then, with mr. lestiboudois that we will argue, for how is it possible to do so with mr. gauthier? if you say to the latter, the balance of trade is a mistake, he will answer, so i have declared it in my exordium. if you exclaim, but it is a truth, he will say, thus i have classed it in my conclusions. political economists may blame me for arguing with mr. lestiboudois. to combat the balance of trade, is, they say, neither more nor less than to fight against a windmill. but let us be on our guard. the balance of trade is neither so old, nor so sick, nor so dead, as mr. gauthier is pleased to imagine; for all the legislature, mr. gauthier himself included, are associated by their votes with the theory of mr. lestiboudois. however, not to fatigue the reader, i will not seek to investigate too closely this theory, but will content myself with subjecting it to the experience of facts. it is constantly alleged in opposition to our principles, that they are good only in theory. but, gentlemen, do you believe that merchants' books are good in practice? it does appear to me that if there is any thing which can have a practical authority, when the object is to prove profit and loss, that this must be commercial accounts. we cannot suppose that all the merchants of the world, for centuries back, should have so little understood their own affairs, as to have kept their books in such a manner as to represent gains as losses, and losses as gains. truly it would be easier to believe that mr. lestiboudois is a bad political economist. a merchant, one of my friends, having had two business transactions, with very different results, i have been curious to compare on this subject the accounts of the counter with those of the custom-house, interpreted by mr. lestiboudois with the sanction of our six hundred legislators. mr. t... despatched from havre a vessel, freighted, for the united states, with french merchandise, principally parisian articles, valued at , francs. such was the amount entered at the custom-house. the cargo, on its arrival at new orleans, had paid ten per cent. expenses, and was liable to thirty per cent. duties; which raised its value to , francs. it was sold at twenty per cent. profit on its original value, which being , francs, the price of sale was , francs, which the assignee converted into cotton. this cotton, again, had to pay for expenses of transportation, insurance, commissions, etc., ten per cent.: so that when the return cargo arrived at havre, its value had risen to , francs, and it was thus entered at the custom-house. finally, mr. t... realized again on this return cargo twenty per cent. profits; amounting to , francs. the cotton thus sold for the sum of , francs. if mr. lestiboudois requires it, i will send him an extract from the books of mr. t... he will there see, _credited_ to the account of _profit and loss_, that is to say, set down as gained, two sums; the one of , , the other of , francs, and mr. t ... feels perfectly certain that as regards these, there is no mistake in his accounts. now what conclusion does mr. lestiboudois draw from the sums entered into the custom-house, in this operation? he thence learns that france has exported , francs, and imported , ; from whence the honorable deputy concludes "_that she has spent, dissipated the profits of her previous savings; that she is impoverishing herself and progressing to her ruin; and that she has squandered on a foreign nation_ , _francs of her capital_." some time after this transaction, mr. t... despatched another vessel, again freighted with domestic produce, to the amount of , francs. but the vessel foundered after leaving the port, and mr. t ... had only farther to inscribe on his books two little items, thus worded: "_sundries due to x_, , francs, for purchase of divers articles despatched by vessel n. "_profit and loss due to sundries, , francs, for final and total loss of cargo._" in the meantime the custom-house inscribed , francs upon its list of _exportations_, and as there can of course be nothing to balance this entry on the list of _importations_, it hence follows that mr. lestiboudois and the chamber must see in this wreck _a clear profit_ to france of , francs. we may draw hence yet another conclusion, viz.: that according to the balance of trade theory, france has an exceedingly simple manner of constantly doubling her capital. it is only necessary, to accomplish this, that she should, after entering into the custom-house her articles for exportation, cause them to be thrown into the sea. by this course, her exportations can speedily be made to equal her capital; importations will be nothing, and our gain will be, all which the ocean will have swallowed up. you are joking, the protectionists will reply. you know that it is impossible that we should utter such absurdities. nevertheless, i answer, you do utter them, and what is more, you give them life, you exercise them practically upon your fellow citizens, as much, at least, as is in your power to do. the truth is, that the theory of the balance of trade should be precisely _reversed_. the profits accruing to the nation from any foreign commerce should be calculated by the overplus of the importation above the exportation. this overplus, after the deduction of expenses, is the real gain. here we have the true theory, and it is one which leads directly to freedom in trade. i now, gentlemen, abandon you this theory, as i have done all those of the preceding chapters. do with it as you please, exaggerate it as you will; it has nothing to fear. push it to the farthest extreme; imagine, if it so please you, that foreign nations should inundate us with useful produce of every description, and ask nothing in return; that our importations should be _infinite_, and our exportations _nothing_. imagine all this, and still i defy you to prove that we will be the poorer in consequence. vii. petition from the manufacturers of candles, wax-lights, lamps, chandeliers, reflectors, snuffers, extinguishers; and from the producers of tallow, oil, resin, alcohol, and generally of every thing used for lights. _to the honorable the members of the chamber of deputies:_ "gentlemen,--you are in the right way: you reject abstract theories; abundance, cheapness, concerns you little. you are entirely occupied with the interest of the producer, whom you are anxious to free from foreign competition. in a word, you wish to secure the _national market_ to _national labor_. "we come now to offer you an admirable opportunity for the application of your----what shall we say? your theory? no, nothing is more deceiving than theory;--your doctrine? your system? your principle? but you do not like doctrines; you hold systems in horror; and, as for principles, you declare that there are no such things in political economy. we will say then, your practice; your practice without theory, and without principle. "we are subjected to the intolerable competition of a foreign rival, who enjoys, it would seem, such superior facilities for the production of light, that he is enabled to _inundate_ our _national market_ at so exceedingly reduced a price, that, the moment he makes his appearance, he draws off all custom from us; and thus an important branch of french industry, with all its innumerable ramifications, is suddenly reduced to a state of complete stagnation. this rival, who is no other than the sun, carries on so bitter a war against us, that we have every reason to believe that he has been excited to this course by our perfidious neighbor england. (good diplomacy this, for the present time!) in this belief we are confirmed by the fact that in all his transactions with this proud island, he is much more moderate and careful than with us. "our petition is, that it would please your honorable body to pass a law whereby shall be directed the shutting up of all windows, dormers, sky-lights, shutters, curtains, vasistas, oeil-de-boeufs, in a word, all openings, holes, chinks and fissures through which the light of the sun is used to penetrate into our dwellings, to the prejudice of the profitable manufactures which we flatter ourselves we have been enabled to bestow upon the country; which country cannot, therefore, without ingratitude, leave us now to struggle unprotected through so unequal a contest. "we pray your honorable body not to mistake our petition for a satire, nor to repulse us without at least hearing the reasons which we have to advance in its favor. "and first, if, by shutting out as much as possible all access to natural light, you thus create the necessity for artificial light, is there in france an industrial pursuit which will not, through some connection with this important object, be benefited by it? "if more tallow be consumed, there will arise a necessity for an increase of cattle and sheep. thus artificial meadows must be in greater demand; and meat, wool, leather, and above all, manure, this basis of agricultural riches, must become more abundant. "if more oil be consumed, it will cause an increase in the cultivation of the olive-tree. this plant, luxuriant and exhausting to the soil, will come in good time to profit by the increased fertility which the raising of cattle will have communicated to our fields. "our heaths will become covered with resinous trees. numerous swarms of bees will gather upon our mountains the perfumed treasures, which are now cast upon the winds, useless as the blossoms from which they emanate. there is, in short, no branch of agriculture which would not be greatly developed by the granting of our petition. "navigation would equally profit. thousands of vessels would soon be employed in the whale fisheries, and thence would arise a navy capable of sustaining the honor of france, and of responding to the patriotic sentiments of the undersigned petitioners, candle merchants, etc. "but what words can express the magnificence which _paris_ will then exhibit! cast an eye upon the future and behold the gildings, the bronzes, the magnificent crystal chandeliers, lamps, reflectors and candelabras, which will glitter in the spacious stores, compared with which the splendor of the present day will appear trifling and insignificant. "there is none, not even the poor manufacturer of resin in the midst of his pine forests, nor the miserable miner in his dark dwelling, but who would enjoy an increase of salary and of comforts. "gentlemen, if you will be pleased to reflect, you cannot fail to be convinced that there is perhaps not one frenchman, from the opulent stockholder of anzin down to the poorest vendor of matches, who is not interested in the success of our petition. "we foresee your objections, gentlemen; but there is not one that you can oppose to us which you will not be obliged to gather from the works of the partisans of free trade. we dare challenge you to pronounce one word against our petition, which is not equally opposed to your own practice and the principle which guides your policy. "do you tell us, that if we gain by this protection, france will not gain, because the consumer must pay the price of it? "we answer you: "you have no longer any right to cite the interest of the consumer. for whenever this has been found to compete with that of the producer, you have invariably sacrificed the first. you have done this to _encourage labor_, to _increase the demand for labor_. the same reason should now induce you to act in the same manner. "you have yourselves already answered the objection. when you were told: the consumer is interested in the free introduction of iron, coal, corn, wheat, cloths, etc., your answer was: yes, but the producer is interested in their exclusion. thus, also, if the consumer is interested in the admission of light, we, the producers, pray for its interdiction. "you have also said, the producer and the consumer are one. if the manufacturer gains by protection, he will cause the agriculturist to gain also; if agriculture prospers, it opens a market for manufactured goods. thus we, if you confer upon us the monopoly of furnishing light during the day, will as a first consequence buy large quantities of tallow, coals, oil, resin, wax, alcohol, silver, iron, bronze, crystal, for the supply of our business; and then we and our numerous contractors having become rich, our consumption will be great, and will become a means of contributing to the comfort and competency of the workers in every branch of national labor. "will you say that the light of the sun is a gratuitous gift, and that to repulse gratuitous gifts, is to repulse riches under pretence of encouraging the means of obtaining them? "take care,--you carry the death-blow to your own policy. remember that hitherto you have always repulsed foreign produce, _because_ it was an approach to a gratuitous gift, and _the more in proportion_ as this approach was more close. you have, in obeying the wishes of other monopolists, acted only from a _half-motive_; to grant our petition there is a much _fuller inducement_. to repulse us, precisely for the reason that our case is a more complete one than any which have preceded it, would be to lay down the following equation: + × + =-; in other words, it would be to accumulate absurdity upon absurdity. "labor and nature concur in different proportions, according to country and climate, in every article of production. the portion of nature is always gratuitous; that of labor alone regulates the price. "if a lisbon orange can be sold at half the price of a parisian one, it is because a natural and gratuitous heat does for the one, what the other only obtains from an artificial and consequently expensive one. "when, therefore, we purchase a portuguese orange, we may say that we obtain it half gratuitously and half by the right of labor; in other words, at _half price_ compared to those of paris. "now it is precisely on account of this _demi-gratuity_ (excuse the word) that you argue in favor of exclusion. how, you say, could national labor sustain the competition of foreign labor, when the first has every thing to do, and the last is rid of half the trouble, the sun taking the rest of the business upon himself? if then the _demi-gratuity_ can determine you to check competition, on what principle can the _entire gratuity_ be alleged as a reason for admitting it? you are no logicians if, refusing the demi-gratuity as hurtful to human labor, you do not _à fortiori_, and with double zeal, reject the full gratuity. "again, when any article, as coal, iron, cheese, or cloth, comes to us from foreign countries with less labor than if we produced it ourselves, the difference in price is a _gratuitous gift_ conferred upon us; and the gift is more or less considerable, according as the difference is greater or less. it is the quarter, the half, or the three-quarters of the value of the produce, in proportion as the foreign merchant requires the three-quarters, the half, or the quarter of the price. it is as complete as possible when the producer offers, as the sun does with light, the whole in free gift. the question is, and we put it formally, whether you wish for france the benefit of gratuitous consumption, or the supposed advantages of laborious production. choose, but be consistent. and does it not argue the greatest inconsistency to check as you do the importation of coal, iron, cheese, and goods of foreign manufacture, merely because and even in proportion as their price approaches _zero_, while at the same time you freely admit, and without limitation, the light of the sun, whose price is during the whole day at _zero_?" viii. discriminating duties. a poor laborer of gironde had raised, with the greatest possible care and attention, a nursery of vines, from which, after much labor, he at last succeeded in producing a pipe of wine, and forgot, in the joy of his success, that each drop of this precious nectar had cost a drop of sweat to his brow. i will sell it, said he to his wife, and with the proceeds i will buy thread, which will serve you to make a _trousseau_ for our daughter. the honest countryman, arriving in the city, there met an englishman and a belgian. the belgian said to him, give me your wine, and i in exchange, will give you fifteen bundles of thread. the englishman said, give it to me, and i will give you twenty bundles, for we english can spin cheaper than the belgians. but a custom-house officer standing by, said to the laborer, my good fellow, make your exchange, if you choose, with the belgian, but it is my duty to prevent your doing so with the englishman. what! exclaimed the countryman, you wish me to take fifteen bundles of brussels thread, when i can have twenty from manchester? certainly; do you not see that france would be a loser, if you were to receive twenty bundles instead of fifteen? i can scarcely understand this, said the laborer. nor can i explain it, said the custom-house officer, but there is no doubt of the fact; for deputies, ministers, and editors, all agree that a people is impoverished in proportion as it receives a large compensation for any given quantity of its produce. the countryman was obliged to conclude his bargain with the belgian. his daughter received but three-fourths of her _trousseau_; and these good folks are still puzzling themselves to discover how it can happen that people are ruined by receiving four instead of three; and why they are richer with three dozen towels instead of four. ix. wonderful discovery! at this moment, when all minds are occupied in endeavoring to discover the most economical means of transportation; when, to put these means into practice, we are leveling roads, improving rivers, perfecting steamboats, establishing railroads, and attempting various systems of traction, atmospheric, hydraulic, pneumatic, electric, etc.,--at this moment when, i believe, every one is seeking in sincerity and with ardor the solution of this problem-- "_to bring the price of things in their place of consumption, as near as possible to their price in that of production_"-- i would believe myself acting a culpable part towards my country, towards the age in which i live, and towards myself, if i were longer to keep secret the wonderful discovery which i have just made. i am well aware that the self-illusions of inventors have become proverbial, but i have, nevertheless, the most complete certainty of having discovered an infallible means of bringing the produce of the entire world into france, and reciprocally to transport ours, with a very important reduction of price. infallible! and yet this is but a single one of the advantages of my astonishing invention, which requires neither plans nor devices, neither preparatory studies, nor engineers, nor machinists, nor capital, nor stockholders, nor governmental assistance! there is no danger of shipwrecks, of explosions, of shocks, of fire, nor of displacement of rails! it can be put into practice without preparation from one day to another! finally, and this will, no doubt, recommend it to the public, it will not increase taxes one cent; but the contrary. it will not augment the number of government functionaries, nor the exigencies of government officers; but the contrary. it will put in hazard the liberty of no one; but the contrary. i have been led to this discovery not from accident, but observation, and i will tell you how. i had this question to determine: "why does any article made, for instance, at brussels, bear an increased price on its arrival at paris?" it was immediately evident to me that this was the result of _obstacles_ of various kinds existing between brussels and paris. first, there is _distance_, which cannot be overcome without trouble and loss of time; and either we must submit to these in our own person, or pay another for bearing them for us. then come rivers, swamps, accidents, heavy and muddy roads; these are so many _difficulties_ to be overcome; in order to do which, causeways are constructed, bridges built, roads cut and paved, railroads established, etc. but all this is costly, and the article transported must bear its portion of the expense. there are robbers, too, on the roads, and this necessitates guards, a police, etc. now, among these _obstacles_, there is one which we ourselves have placed, and that at no little expense, between brussels and paris. this consists of men planted along the frontier, armed to the teeth, whose business it is to place _difficulties_ in the way of the transportation of goods from one country to another. these men are called custom-house officers, and their effect is precisely similar to that of steep and boggy roads. they retard and put obstacles in the way of transportation, thus contributing to the difference which we have remarked between the price of production and that of consumption; to diminish which difference as much as possible, is the problem which we are seeking to resolve. here, then, we have found its solution. _let our tariff be diminished._ we will thus have constructed a northern railroad which will cost us nothing. nay, more, we will be saved great expenses, and will begin from the first day to save capital. really, i cannot but ask myself, in surprise, how our brains could have admitted so whimsical a piece of folly, as to induce us to pay many millions to destroy the _natural obstacles_ interposed between france and other nations, only at the same time to pay so many millions more in order to replace them by _artificial obstacles_, which have exactly the same effect; so that the obstacle removed, and the obstacle created, neutralize each other; things go on as before, and the only result of our trouble, is, a double expense. an article of belgian production is worth at brussels twenty francs, and, from the expenses of transportation, thirty francs at paris. a similar article of parisian manufacture costs forty francs. what is our course under these circumstances? first, we impose a duty of at least ten francs on the belgian article, so as to raise its price to a level with that of the parisian; the government withal, paying numerous officials to attend to the levying of this duty. the article thus pays ten francs for transportation, ten for the tax. this done, we say to ourselves: transportation between brussels and paris is very dear; let us spend two or three millions in railways, and we will reduce it one-half. evidently the result of such a course will be to get the belgian article at paris for thirty-five francs, viz: francs--price at brussels. " duty. " transportation by railroad. -- francs--total, or market price at paris. could we not have attained the same end by lowering the tariff to five francs? we would then have-- francs--price at brussels. " duty. " transportation on the common road. -- francs--total, or market price at paris. and this arrangement would have saved us the , , spent upon the railroad, besides the expense saved in custom-house surveillance, which would of course diminish in proportion as the temptation to smuggling would become less. but it is answered, the duty is necessary to protect parisian industry. so be it; but do not then destroy the effect of it by your railroad. for if you persist in your determination to keep the belgian article on a par with the parisian at forty francs, you must raise the duty to fifteen francs, in order to have:-- francs--price at brussels. " protective duty. " transportation by railroad. -- francs--total, at equalized prices. and i now ask, of what benefit, under these circumstances, is the railroad? frankly, is it not humiliating to the nineteenth century, that it should be destined to transmit to future ages the example of such puerilities seriously and gravely practiced? to be the dupe of another, is bad enough; but to employ all the forms and ceremonies of legislation in order to cheat one's self,--to doubly cheat one's self, and that too in a mere mathematical account,--truly this is calculated to lower a little the pride of this _enlightened age_. x. reciprocity. we have just seen that all which renders transportation difficult, acts in the same manner as protection; or, if the expression be preferred, that protection tends towards the same result as obstacles to transportation. a tariff may then be truly spoken of, as a swamp, a rut, a steep hill; in a word, an _obstacle_, whose effect is to augment the difference between the price of consumption and that of production. it is equally incontestable that a swamp, a bog, etc., are veritable protective tariffs. there are people (few in number, it is true, but such there are) who begin to understand that obstacles are not the less obstacles, because they are artificially created, and that our well-being is more advanced by freedom of trade than by protection; precisely as a canal is more desirable than a sandy, hilly, and difficult road. but they still say, this liberty ought to be reciprocal. if we take off our taxes in favor of spain, while spain does not do the same towards us, it is evident that we are duped. let us then make _treaties of commerce_ upon the basis of a just reciprocity; let us yield where we are yielded to; let us make the _sacrifice_ of buying that we may obtain the advantage of selling. persons who reason thus, are (i am sorry to say), whether they know it or not, governed by the protectionist principle. they are only a little more inconsistent than the pure protectionists, as these are more inconsistent than the absolute prohibitionists. i will illustrate this by a fable. stulta and puera (fool-town and boy-town). there were, it matters not where, two towns, _stulta_ and _puera_, which at great expense had a road built which connected them with each other. some time after this was done, the inhabitants of _stulta_ became uneasy, and said: _puera_ is overwhelming us with its productions; this must be attended to. they established therefore a corps of _obstructors_, so called because their business was to place obstacles in the way of the wagon trains which arrived from _puera_. soon after, _puera_ also established a corps of obstructors. after some centuries, people having become more enlightened, the inhabitants of _puera_ began to discover that these reciprocal obstacles might possibly be reciprocal injuries. they sent therefore an ambassador to _stulta_, who (passing over the official phraseology) spoke much to this effect: "we have built a road, and now we put obstacles in the way of this road. this is absurd. it would have been far better to have left things in their original position, for then we would not have been put to the expense of building our road, and afterwards of creating difficulties. in the name of _puera_, i come to propose to you, not to renounce at once our system of mutual obstacles, for this would be acting according to a theory, and we despise theories as much as you do; but to lighten somewhat these obstacles, weighing at the same time carefully our respective _sacrifices_." the ambassador having thus spoken, the town of _stulta_ asked time to reflect; manufacturers, agriculturists were consulted; and at last, after some years' deliberation, it was declared that the negotiations were broken off. at this news, the inhabitants of _puera_ held a council. an old man (who it has always been supposed had been secretly bribed by _stulta_) rose and said: "the obstacles raised by _stulta_ are injurious to our sales; this is a misfortune. those which we ourselves create, injure our purchases; this is a second misfortune. we have no power over the first, but the second is entirely dependent upon ourselves. let us then at least get rid of one, since we cannot be delivered from both. let us suppress our corps of _obstructors_, without waiting for _stulta_ to do the same. some day or other she will learn to understand better her own interests." a second counselor, a man of practice and of facts, uncontrolled by theories and wise in ancestral experience, replied: "we must not listen to this dreamer, this theorist, this innovator, this utopian, this political economist, this friend to _stulta_. we would be entirely ruined if the embarrassments of the road were not carefully weighed and exactly equalized, between _stulta_ and _peura_. there would be more difficulty in going than in coming; in exportation than in importation. we would be, with regard to _stulta_, in the inferior condition in which havre, nantes, bordeaux, lisbon, london, hamburg, and new orleans, are, in relation to cities placed higher up the rivers seine, loire, garonne, tagus, thames, the elbe, and the mississippi; for the difficulties of ascending must always be greater than those of descending rivers. (a voice exclaims: 'but the cities near the mouths of rivers have always prospered more than those higher up the stream.') this is not possible. (the same voice: 'but it is a fact.') well, they have then prospered _contrary to rule_." such conclusive reasoning staggered the assembly. the orator went on to convince them thoroughly and conclusively by speaking of national independence, national honor, national dignity, national labor, overwhelming importation, tributes, ruinous competition. in short, he succeeded in determining the assembly to continue their system of obstacles, and i can now point out a certain country where you may see road-builders and _obstructors_ working with the best possible understanding, by the decree of the same legislative assembly, paid by the same citizens; the first to improve the road, the last to embarrass it. xi. absolute prices. if we wish to judge between freedom of trade and protection, to calculate the probable effect of any political phenomenon, we should notice how far its influence tends to the production of _abundance or scarcity_, and not simply of _cheapness or dearness_ of price. we must beware of trusting to _absolute prices_, it would lead to inextricable confusion. mr. mathieu de dombasle, after having established the fact that protection raises prices, adds: "the augmentation of price increases the expenses of life, and consequently the price of labor, and every one finds in the increase of the price of his produce the same proportion as in the increase of his expenses. thus, if every body pays as consumer, every body receives also as producer." it is evident that it would be easy to reverse the argument and say: if every body receives as producer, every body must pay as consumer. now, what does this prove? nothing whatever, unless it be that protection _transfers_ riches, uselessly and unjustly. robbery does the same. again, to prove that the complicated arrangements of this system give even simple compensation, it is necessary to adhere to the "_consequently_" of mr. de dombasle, and to convince one's self that the price of labor rises with that of the articles protected. this is a question of fact, which i refer to mr. moreau de jonnès, begging him to examine whether the rate of wages was found to increase with the stock of the mines of anzin. for my own part i do not believe in it, because i think that the price of labor, like every thing else, is governed by the proportion existing between the supply and the demand. now i can perfectly well understand that _restriction_ will diminish the supply of coal, and consequently raise its price; but i do not as clearly see that it increases the demand for labor, thereby raising the rate of wages. this is the less conceivable to me, because the sum of labor required depends upon the quantity of disposable capital; and protection, while it may change the direction of capital, and transfer it from one business to another, cannot increase it one penny. this question, which is of the highest interest, we will examine elsewhere. i return to the discussion of _absolute prices_, and declare that there is no absurdity which cannot be rendered specious by such reasoning as that of mr. de dombasle. imagine an isolated nation possessing a given quantity of cash, and every year wantonly burning the half of its produce. i will undertake to prove by the theory of mr. de dombasle that this nation will not be the less rich in consequence of such a procedure. for, the result of the conflagration must be, that every thing would double in price. an inventory made before this event would offer exactly the same nominal value, as one made after it. who then would be the loser? if john buys his cloth dearer, he also sells his corn at a higher price; and if peter makes a loss on the purchase of his corn, he gains it back by the sale of his cloth. thus "every one finds in the increase of the price of his produce, the same proportion as in the increase of his expenses; and thus if every body pays as consumer, every body also receives as producer." all this is nonsense. the simple truth is: that whether men destroy their corn and cloth by fire or by use, the effect is the same _as regards price_, but not _as regards riches_, for it is precisely in the enjoyment of the use, that riches--in other words, comfort, well-being--exist. protection may, in the same way, while it lessens the abundance of things, raise their prices, so as to leave each individual as rich, _numerically speaking_, as when unembarrassed by it. but because we put down in an inventory three hectolitres of corn at francs, or four hectolitres at francs, and sum up the nominal value of each at francs, does it thence follow that they are equally capable of contributing to the necessities of the community? to this view of consumption, it will be my continual endeavor to lead the protectionists; for in this is the end of all my efforts, the solution of every problem. i must continually repeat to them that restriction, by impeding commerce, by limiting the division of labor, by forcing it to combat difficulties of situation and temperature, must in its results diminish the quantity produced by any fixed quantum of labor. and what can it benefit us that the smaller quantity produced under the protective system bears the same _nominal value_ as the greater quantity produced under the free trade system? man does not live on _nominal values_, but on real articles of produce; and the more abundant these articles are, no matter what price they may bear, the richer is he. xii. does protection raise the rate of wages? workmen, your situation is singular! you are robbed, as i will presently prove to you.... but no; i retract the word; we must avoid an expression which is violent; perhaps indeed incorrect; inasmuch as this spoliation, wrapped in the sophisms which disguise it, is practiced, we must believe, without the intention of the spoiler, and with the consent of the spoiled. but it is nevertheless true that you are deprived of the just compensation of your labor, while no one thinks of causing _justice_ to be rendered to you. if you could be consoled by noisy appeals to philanthropy, to powerless charity, to degrading alms-giving, or if high-sounding words would relieve you, these indeed you can have in abundance. but _justice_, simple _justice_--nobody thinks of rendering you this. for would it not be _just_ that after a long day's labor, when you have received your little wages, you should be permitted to exchange them for the largest possible sum of comforts that you can obtain voluntarily from any man whatsoever upon the face of the earth? let us examine if _injustice_ is not done to you, by the legislative limitation of the persons from whom you are allowed to buy those things which you need; as bread, meat, cotton and woolen cloths, etc.; thus fixing (so to express myself) the artificial price which these articles must bear. is it true that protection, which avowedly raises prices, and thus injures you, raises proportionably the rate of wages? on what does the rate of wages depend? one of your own class has energetically said: "when two workmen run after a master, wages fall; when two masters run after a workman, wages rise." allow me, in more laconic phrase, to employ a more scientific, though perhaps a less striking expression: "the rate of wages depends upon the proportion which the supply of labor bears to the demand." on what depends the _demand_ for labor? on the quantity of disposable national capital. and the law which says, "such or such an article shall be limited to home production and no longer imported from foreign countries," can it in any degree increase this capital? not in the least. this law may withdraw it from one course, and transfer it to another; but cannot increase it one penny. then it cannot increase the demand for labor. while we point with pride to some prosperous manufacture, can we answer, from whence comes the capital with which it is founded and maintained? has it fallen from the moon? or rather is it not drawn either from agriculture, or navigation, or other industry? we here see why, since the reign of protective tariffs, if we see more workmen in our mines and our manufacturing towns, we find also fewer sailors in our ports, and fewer laborers and vine-growers in our fields and upon our hillsides. i could speak at great length upon this subject, but prefer illustrating my thought by an example. a countryman had twenty acres of land, with a capital of , francs. he divided his land into four parts, and adopted for it the following changes of crops: st, maize; d, wheat; d, clover; and th, rye. as he needed for himself and family but a small portion of the grain, meat, and dairy-produce of the farm, he sold the surplus and bought oil, flax, wine, etc. the whole of his capital was yearly distributed in wages and payments of accounts to the workmen of the neighborhood. this capital was, from his sales, again returned to him, and even increased from year to year. our countryman, being fully convinced that idle capital produces nothing, caused to circulate among the working classes this annual increase, which he devoted to the inclosing and clearing of lands, or to improvements in his farming utensils and his buildings. he deposited some sums in reserve in the hands of a neighboring banker, who on his part did not leave these idle in his strong box, but lent them to various tradesmen, so that the whole came to be usefully employed in the payment of wages. the countryman died, and his son, become master of the inheritance, said to himself: "it must be confessed that my father has, all his life, allowed himself to be duped. he bought oil, and thus paid _tribute_ to province, while our own land could, by an effort, be made to produce olives. he bought wine, flax, and oranges, thus paying _tribute_ to brittany, medoc, and the hiera islands very unnecessarily, for wine, flax and oranges may be forced to grow upon our own lands. he paid tribute to the miller and the weaver; our own servants could very well weave our linen, and crush our wheat between two stones. he did all he could to ruin himself, and gave to strangers what ought to have been kept for the benefit of his own household." full of this reasoning, our headstrong fellow determined to change the routine of his crops. he divided his farm into twenty parts. on one he cultivated the olive; on another the mulberry; on a third flax; he devoted the fourth to vines, the fifth to wheat, etc., etc. thus he succeeded in rendering himself _independent_, and furnished all his family supplies from his own farm. he no longer received any thing from the general circulation; neither, it is true, did he cast any thing into it. was he the richer for this course? no, for his land did not suit the cultivation of the vine; nor was the climate favorable to the olive. in short, the family supply of all these articles was very inferior to what it had been during the time when the father had obtained them all by exchange of produce. with regard to the demand for labor, it certainly was no greater than formerly. there were, to be sure, five times as many fields to cultivate, but they were five times smaller. if oil was raised, there was less wheat; and because there was no more flax bought, neither was there any more rye sold. besides, the farmer could not spend in wages more than his capital, and his capital, instead of increasing, was now constantly diminishing. a great part of it was necessarily devoted to numerous buildings and utensils, indispensable to a person who determines to undertake every thing. in short, the supply of labor continued the same, but the means of paying becoming less, there was, necessarily, a reduction of wages. the result is precisely similar, when a nation isolates itself by the prohibitive system. its number of industrial pursuits is certainly multiplied, but their importance is diminished. in proportion to their number, they become less productive, for the same capital and the same skill are obliged to meet a greater number of difficulties. the fixed capital absorbs a greater part of the circulating capital; that is to say, a greater part of the funds destined to the payment of wages. what remains, ramifies itself in vain, the quantity cannot be augmented. it is like the water of a pond, which, distributed in a multitude of reservoirs, appears to be more abundant, because it covers a greater quantity of soil, and presents a larger surface to the sun, while we hardly perceive that, precisely on this account, it absorbs, evaporates, and loses itself the quicker. capital and labor being given, the result is, a sum of production, always the less great, in proportion as obstacles are numerous. there can be no doubt that protective tariffs, by forcing capital and labor to struggle against greater difficulties of soil and climate, must cause the general production to be less, or, in other words, diminish the portion of comforts which would thence result to mankind. if, then, there be a general diminution of comforts, how, workmen, can it be possible that _your_ portion should be increased? under such a supposition, it would be necessary to believe that the rich, those who made the law, have so arranged matters, that not only they subject themselves to their own proportion of the general loss, but taking the whole of it upon themselves, that they submit also to a further loss, in order to increase your gains. is this credible? is this possible? it is, indeed, a most suspicious act of generosity, and if you act wisely, you will reject it. xiii. theory--practice. partisans of free trade, we are accused of being theorists, and not relying sufficiently upon practice. what a powerful argument against mr. say (says mr. ferrier,) is the long succession of distinguished ministers, the imposing league of writers who have all differed from him; and mr. say is himself conscious of this, for he says: "it has been said, in support of old errors, that there must necessarily be some foundation for ideas so generally adopted by all nations. ought we not, it is asked, to distrust observations and reasoning which run counter to every thing which has been looked upon as certain up to this day, and which has been regarded as undoubted by so many who were to be confided in, alike on account of their learning and of their philanthropic intentions? this argument is, i confess, calculated to make a profound impression, and might cast a doubt upon the most incontestable facts, if the world had not seen so many opinions, now universally recognized as false, as universally maintain, during a long series of ages, their dominion over the human mind. the day is not long passed since all nations, from the most ignorant to the most enlightened, and all men, the wisest as well as the most uninformed, admitted only four elements. nobody dreamed of disputing this doctrine, which is, nevertheless, false, and to-day universally decried." upon this passage mr. ferrier makes the following remarks: "mr. say is strangely mistaken, if he believes that he has thus answered the very strong objections which he has himself advanced. it is natural enough that, for ages, men otherwise well informed, might mistake upon a question of natural history; this proves nothing. water, air, earth, and fire, elements or not, were not the less useful to man.... such errors as this are of no importance. they do not lead to revolutions, nor do they cause mental uneasiness; above all, they clash with no interests, and might, therefore, without inconvenience, last for millions of years. the physical world progresses as though they did not exist. but can it be thus with errors which affect the moral world? can it be conceived that a system of government absolutely false, consequently injurious, could be followed for many centuries, and among many nations, with the general consent of well-informed men? can it be explained how such a system could be connected with the constantly increasing prosperity of these nations? mr. say confesses that the argument which he combats is calculated to make a profound impression. most certainly it is; and this impression remains; for mr. say has rather increased than diminished it." let us hear mr. de saint chamans. "it has been only towards the middle of the last, the eighteenth century, when every subject and every principle have without exception been given up to the discussion of book-makers, that these furnishers of _speculative_ ideas, applied to every thing and applicable to nothing, have begun to write upon the subject of political economy. there existed previously a system of political economy, not written, but _practiced_ by governments. colbert was, it is said, the inventor of it; and colbert gave the law to every state of europe. strange to say, he does so still, in spite of contempt and anathemas, in spite too of the discoveries of the modern school. this system, which has been called by our writers the _mercantile system_, consisted in ... checking by prohibition or import duties such foreign productions as were calculated to ruin our manufactures by competition.... this system has been declared, by all writers on political economy, of every school,[ ] to be weak, absurd, and calculated to impoverish the countries where it prevails. banished from books, it has taken refuge in _the practice_ of all nations, greatly to the surprise of those who cannot conceive that in what concerns the wealth of nations, governments should, rather than be guided by the wisdom of authors, prefer the _long experience_ of a system, etc.... it is above all inconceivable to them that the french government ... should obstinately resist the new lights of political economy, and maintain in its _practice_ the old errors, pointed out by all our writers.... but i am devoting too much time to this mercantile system, which, unsustained by writers, _has only facts_ in its favor!" [footnote : might we not say: it is a powerful argument against messrs. ferrier and de saint chamans, that all writers on political economy, of _every school_, that is to say, all men who have studied the question, come to this conclusion: after all, freedom is better than restriction, and the laws of god wiser than those of mr. colbert.] would it not be supposed from this language that political economists, in claiming for each individual the _free disposition of his own property_, have, like the fourierists, stumbled upon some new, strange, and chimerical system of social government, some wild theory, without precedent in the annals of human nature? it does appear to me, that, if in all this there is any thing doubtful, and of fanciful or theoretic origin, it is not free trade, but protection; not the operating of exchanges, but the custom-house, the duties, imposed to overturn artificially the natural order of things. the question, however, is not here to compare and judge of the merits of the two systems, but simply to know which of the two is sanctioned by experience. you, messrs. monopolists, maintain that _facts_ are for you, and that we on our side have only _theory_. you even flatter yourselves that this long series of public acts, this old experience of europe which you invoke, appeared imposing to mr. say; and i confess that he has not refuted you, with his habitual sagacity. i, for my part, cannot consent to give up to you the domain of _facts_; for while on your side you can advance only limited and special facts, _we_ can oppose to them universal facts, the free and voluntary acts of all men. what do _we_ maintain? and what do _you_ maintain? we maintain that "it is best to buy from others what we ourselves can produce only at a higher price." you maintain that "it is best to make for ourselves, even though it should cost us more than to buy from others." now gentlemen, putting aside theory, demonstration, reasoning, (things which seem to nauseate you,) which of these assertions is sanctioned by _universal practice_? visit our fields, workshops, forges, stores; look above, below, and around you; examine what is passing in your own household; observe your own actions at every moment, and say which principle it is, that directs these laborers, workmen, contractors, and merchants; say what is your own personal _practice_. does the agriculturist make his own clothes? does the tailor produce the grain which he consumes? does not your housekeeper cease to make her bread at home, as soon as she finds it more economical to buy it from the baker? do you lay down your pen to take up the blacking-brush in order to avoid paying tribute to the shoe-black? does not the whole economy of society depend upon a separation of occupations, a division of labor, in a word, upon mutual exchange of production, by which we, one and all, make a calculation which causes us to discontinue direct production, when indirect acquisition offers us a saving of time and labor. you are not then sustained by _practice_, since it would be impossible, were you to search the world, to show us a single man who acts according to your principle. you may answer that you never intended to make your principle the rule of individual relations. you confess that it would thus destroy all social ties, and force men to the isolated life of snails. you only contend that it governs _in fact_, the relations which are established between the agglomerations of the human family. we say that this assertion too is erroneous. a family, a town, county, department, province, all are so many agglomerations, which, without any exception, all _practically_ reject your principle; never, indeed, even think of it. each of these procures by barter, what would be more expensively procured by production. nations would do the same, did you not _by force_ prevent them. we, then, are the men who are guided by practice and experience. for to combat the interdict which you have specially put upon some international exchanges, we bring forward the practice and experience of all individuals, and of all agglomerations of individuals, whose acts being voluntary, render them proper to be given as proof in the question. but you, on your part, begin by _forcing_, by _hindering_, and then, adducing forced or forbidden acts, you exclaim: "look; we can prove ourselves justified by example!" you exclaim against our _theory_, and even against _all theory_. but are you certain, in laying down your principles, so antagonistic to ours, that you too are not building up theories? truly, you too have your theory; but between yours and ours there is this difference: our theory is formed upon the observation of universal _facts_, universal sentiments, universal calculations and acts. we do nothing more than classify and arrange these, in order to better understand them. it is so little opposed to practice, that it is in fact only _practice explained_. we look upon the actions of men as prompted by the instinct of self-preservation and of progress. what they do freely, willingly,--this is what we call _political economy_, or economy of society. we must repeat constantly that each man is _practically_ an excellent political economist, producing or exchanging, as his advantage dictates. each by experience raises himself to the science; or rather the science is nothing more than experience, scrupulously observed and methodically expounded. but _your_ theory is _theory_ in the worst sense of the word. you imagine procedures which are sanctioned by the experience of no living man, and then call to your aid constraint and prohibition. you cannot avoid having recourse to force; because, wishing to make men produce what they can _more advantageously_ buy, you require them to give up an advantage, and to be led by a doctrine which implies contradiction even in its terms. i defy you too, to take this doctrine, which by your own avowal would be absurd in individual relations, and apply it, even in speculation, to transactions between families, towns, departments, or provinces. you yourselves confess that it is only applicable to internal relations. thus it is that you are daily forced to repeat: "principles can never be universal. what is _well_ in an individual, a family, commune, or province, is _ill_ in a nation. what is good in detail--for instance: purchase rather than production, where purchase is more advantageous--is _bad_ in a society. the political economy of individuals is not that of nations;" and other such stuff, _ejusdem farinæ_. and all this for what? to prove to us, that we consumers, we are your property! that we belong to you, soul and body! that you have an exclusive right on our stomachs and our limbs! that it is your right to feed and dress us at your own price, however great your ignorance, your rapacity, or the inferiority of your work. truly, then, your system is one not founded upon practice; it is one of abstraction--of extortion. xiv. conflicting principles. there is one thing which embarrasses me not a little; and it is this: sincere men, taking upon the subject of political economy the point of view of producers, have arrived at this double formula: "a government should dispose of consumers subject to its laws in favor of home industry." "it should subject to its laws foreign consumers, in order to dispose of them in favor of home industry." the first of the formulas is that of _protection_; the second that of _outlets_. both rest upon this proposition, called the _balance of trade_, that "a people is impoverished by importations and enriched by exportations." for if every foreign purchase is a _tribute paid_, a loss, nothing can be more natural than to restrain, even to prohibit importations. and if every foreign sale is a _tribute received_, a gain, nothing more natural than to create _outlets_, even by force. _protective system; colonial system._--these are only two aspects of the same theory. to _prevent_ our citizens from buying from foreigners, and to _force_ foreigners to buy from our citizens. two consequences of one identical principle. it is impossible not to perceive that according to this doctrine, if it be true, the welfare of a country depends upon _monopoly_ or domestic spoliation, and upon _conquest_ or foreign spoliation. let us take a glance into one of these huts, perched upon the side of our pyrenean range. the father of a family has received the little wages of his labor; but his half-naked children are shivering before a biting northern blast, beside a fireless hearth, and an empty table. there is wool, and wood, and corn, on the other side of the mountain, but these are forbidden to them; for the other side of the mountain is not france. foreign wood must not warm the hearth of the poor shepherd; his children must not taste the bread of biscay, nor cover their numbed limbs with the wool of navarre. it is thus that the general good requires! the disposing by law of consumers, forcing them to the support of home industry, is an encroachment upon their liberty, the forbidding of an action (mutual exchange) which is in no way opposed to morality! in a word, it is an act of _injustice_. but this, it is said, is necessary, or else home labor will be arrested, and a severe blow will be given to public prosperity. thus then we must come to the melancholy conclusion, that there is a radical incompatibility between the just and the useful. again, if each people is interested in _selling_, and not in _buying_, a violent action and reaction must form the natural state of their mutual relations; for each will seek to force its productions upon all, and all will seek to repulse the productions of each. a sale in fact implies a purchase, and since, according to this doctrine, to sell is beneficial, and to buy injurious, every international transaction must imply the benefiting of one people by the injuring of another. but men are invincibly inclined to what they feel to be advantageous to themselves, while they also, instinctively resist that which is injurious. from hence then we must infer that each nation bears within itself a natural force of expansion, and a not less natural force of resistance, which are equally injurious to all others. in other words, antagonism and war are the _natural_ state of human society. thus then the theory in discussion resolves itself into the two following axioms. in the affairs of a nation, utility is incompatible with the internal administration of justice. utility is incompatible with the maintenance of external peace. well, what embarrasses and confounds me is, to explain how any writer upon public rights, any statesman who has sincerely adopted a doctrine of which the leading principle is so antagonistic to other incontestable principles, can enjoy one moment's repose or peace of mind. for myself, if such were my entrance upon the threshold of science, if i did not clearly perceive that liberty, utility, justice, and peace, are not only compatible, but closely connected, even identical, i would endeavor to forget all i have learned; i would say: "can it be possible that god can allow men to attain prosperity only through injustice and war? can he so direct the affairs of mortals, that they can only renounce war and injustice by, at the same time, renouncing their own welfare? "am i not deceived by the false lights of a science which can lead me to the horrible blasphemy implied in this alternative, and shall i dare to take it upon myself to propose this as a basis for the legislation of a great people? when i find a long succession of illustrious and learned men, whose researches in the same science have led to more consoling results; who, after having devoted their lives to its study, affirm that through it they see liberty and utility indissolubly linked with justice and peace, and find these great principles destined to continue on through eternity in infinite parallels, have they not in their favor the presumption which results from all that we know of the goodness and wisdom of god as manifested in the sublime harmony of material creation? can i lightly believe, in opposition to such a presumption and such imposing authorities, that this same god has been pleased to put disagreement and antagonism in the laws of the moral world? no; before i can believe that all social principles oppose, shock and neutralize each other; before i can think them in constant, anarchical and eternal conflict; above all, before i can seek to impose upon my fellow-citizens the impious system to which my reasonings have led me, i must retrace my steps, hoping, perchance, to find some point where i have wandered from my road." and if, after a sincere investigation twenty times repeated, i should still arrive at the frightful conclusion that i am driven to choose between the desirable and the good, i would reject the science, plunge into a voluntary ignorance, above all, avoid participation in the affairs of my country, and leave to others the weight and responsibility of so fearful a choice. xv. reciprocity again. mr. de saint cricq has asked: "are we sure that our foreign customers will buy from us as much as they sell us?" mr. de dombasle says: "what reason have we for believing that english producers will come to seek their supplies from us, rather than from any other nation, or that they will take from us a value equivalent to their exportations into france?" i cannot but wonder to see men who boast, above all things, of being _practical_, thus reasoning wide of all practice! in practice, there is perhaps no traffic which is a direct exchange of produce for produce. since the use of money, no man says, i will seek shoes, hats, advice, lessons, only from the shoemaker, the hatter, the lawyer, or teacher, who will buy from me the exact equivalent of these in corn. why should nations impose upon themselves so troublesome a restraint? suppose a nation without any exterior relations. one of its citizens makes a crop of corn. he casts it into the _national_ circulation, and receives in exchange--what? money, bank bills, securities, divisible to any extent, by means of which it will be lawful for him to withdraw when he pleases, and, unless prevented by just competition from the national circulation, such articles as he may wish. at the end of the operation, he will have withdrawn from the mass the exact equivalent of what he first cast into it, and in value, _his consumption will exactly equal his production_. if the exchanges of this nation with foreign nations are free, it is no longer into the _national_ circulation but into the _general_ circulation that each individual casts his produce, and from thence his consumption is drawn. he is not obliged to calculate whether what he casts into this general circulation is purchased by a countryman or by a foreigner; whether the notes he receives are given to him by a frenchman or an englishman, or whether the articles which he procures through means of this money are manufactured on this or the other side of the rhine or the pyrenees. one thing is certain; that each individual finds an exact balance between what he casts in and what he withdraws from the great common reservoir; and if this be true of each individual, it is not less true of the entire nation. the only difference between these two cases is, that in the last, each individual has open to him a larger market both for his sales and his purchases, and has, consequently, a more favorable opportunity of making both to advantage. the objection advanced against us here, is, that if all were to combine in not withdrawing from circulation the produce from any one individual, he, in his turn, could withdraw nothing from the mass. the same, too, would be the case with regard to a nation. our answer is: if a nation can no longer withdraw any thing from the mass of circulation, neither will it any longer cast any thing into it. it will work for itself. it will be obliged to submit to what, in advance, you wish to force upon it, viz., _isolation_. and here you have the ideal of the prohibitive system. truly, then, is it not ridiculous enough that you should inflict upon it now, and unnecessarily, this system, merely through fear that some day or other it might chance to be subjected to it without your assistance? xvi. obstructed rivers pleading for the prohibitionists. some years since, being at madrid, i went to the meeting of the cortes. the subject in discussion was a proposed treaty with portugal, for improving the channel of the douro. a member rose and said: if the douro is made navigable, transportation must become cheaper, and portuguese grain will come into formidable competition with our _national labor_. i vote against the project, unless ministers will agree to increase our tariff so as to re-establish the equilibrium. three months after, i was in lisbon, and the same question came before the senate. a noble hidalgo said: mr. president, the project is absurd. you guard at great expense the banks of the douro, to prevent the influx into portugal of spanish grain, and at the same time you now propose, at great expense, _to facilitate such an event_. there is in this a want of consistency in which i can have no part. let the douro descend to our sons as we have received it from our fathers. xvii. a negative railroad. i have already remarked that when the observer has unfortunately taken his point of view from the position of producer, he cannot fail in his conclusions to clash with the general interest, because the producer, as such, must desire the existence of efforts, wants, and obstacles. i find a singular exemplification of this remark in a journal of bordeaux. mr. simiot puts this question: ought the railroad from paris into spain to present a break or terminus at bordeaux? this question he answers affirmatively. i will only consider one among the numerous reasons which he adduces in support of his opinion. the railroad from paris to bayonne ought (he says) to present a break or terminus at bordeaux, in order that goods and travelers stopping in this city should thus be forced to contribute to the profits of the boatmen, porters, commission merchants, hotel-keepers, etc. it is very evident that we have here again the interest of the agents of labor put before that of the consumer. but if bordeaux would profit by a break in the road, and if such profit be conformable to the public interest, then angoulème, poictiers, tours, orleans, and still more all the intermediate points, as ruffec, châtellerault, etc., etc., would also petition for breaks; and this too would be for the general good and for the interest of national labor. for it is certain, that in proportion to the number of these breaks or termini, will be the increase in consignments, commissions, lading, unlading, etc. this system furnishes us the idea of a railroad made up of successive breaks; _a negative railroad_. whether or not the protectionists will allow it, most certain it is, that the _restrictive principle_ is identical with that which would maintain _this system of breaks_: it is the sacrifice of the consumer to the producer, of the end to the means. xviii. "there are no absolute principles." the facility with which men resign themselves to ignorance in cases where knowledge is all-important to them, is often astonishing; and we may be sure that a man has determined to rest in his ignorance, when he once brings himself to proclaim as a maxim that there are no absolute principles. we enter into the legislative halls, and find that the question is, to determine whether the law will or will not allow of international exchanges. a deputy rises and says, if we tolerate these exchanges, foreign nations will overwhelm us with their produce. we will have cotton goods from england, coal from belgium, woolens from spain, silks from italy, cattle from switzerland, iron from sweden, corn from prussia, so that no industrial pursuit will any longer be possible to us. another answers: prohibit these exchanges, and the divers advantages with which nature has endowed these different countries, will be for us as though they did not exist. we will have no share in the benefits resulting from english skill, or belgian mines, from the fertility of the polish soil, or the swiss pastures; neither will we profit by the cheapness of spanish labor, or the heat of the italian climate. we will be obliged to seek by a forced and laborious production, what, by means of exchanges, would be much more easily obtained. assuredly one or other of these deputies is mistaken. but which? it is worth the trouble of examining. there lie before us two roads, one of which leads inevitably to _wretchedness_. we must choose. to throw off the feeling of responsibility, the answer is easy: there are no absolute principles. this maxim, at present so fashionable, not only pleases idleness, but also suits ambition. if either the theory of prohibition, or that of free trade, should finally triumph, one little law would form our whole economical code. in the first case this would be: _foreign trade is forbidden_; in the second: _foreign trade is free_; and thus, many great personages would lose their importance. but if trade has no distinctive character, if it is capriciously useful or injurious, and is governed by no natural law, if it finds no spur in its usefulness, no check in its inutility, if its effects cannot be appreciated by those who exercise it; in a word, if it has no absolute principles,--oh! then it is necessary to deliberate, weigh, and regulate transactions, the conditions of labor must be equalized, the level of profits sought. this is an important charge, well calculated to give to those who execute it, large salaries, and extensive influence. contemplating this great city of paris, i have thought to myself: here are a million of human beings who would die in a few days, if provisions of every kind did not flow in towards this vast metropolis. the imagination is unable to calculate the multiplicity of objects which to-morrow must enter its gates, to prevent the life of its inhabitants from terminating in famine, riot, or pillage. and yet at this moment all are asleep, without feeling one moment's uneasiness, from the contemplation of this frightful possibility. on the other side, we see eighty departments who have this day labored, without concert, without mutual understanding, for the victualing of paris. how can each day bring just what is necessary, nothing less, nothing more, to this gigantic market? what is the ingenious and secret power which presides over the astonishing regularity of such complicated movements, a regularity in which we all have so implicit, though thoughtless, a faith; on which our comfort, our very existence depends? this power is an _absolute principle_, the principle of freedom in exchanges. we have faith in that inner light which providence has placed in the heart of all men; confiding to it the preservation and amelioration of our species; _interest_, since we must give its name, so vigilant, so active, having so much forecast when allowed its free action. what would be your condition, inhabitants of paris, if a minister, however superior his abilities, should undertake to substitute, in the place of this power, the combinations of his own genius? if he should think of subjecting to his own supreme direction this prodigious mechanism, taking all its springs into his own hand, and deciding by whom, how, and on what conditions each article should be produced, transported, exchanged and consumed? ah! although there is much suffering within your walls; although misery, despair, and perhaps starvation, may call forth more tears than your warmest charity can wipe away, it is probable, it is certain, that the arbitrary intervention of government would infinitely multiply these sufferings, and would extend among you the evils which now reach but a small number of your citizens. if then we have such faith in this principle as applied to our private concerns, why should we not extend it to international transactions, which are assuredly less numerous, less delicate, and less complicated? and if it be not necessary for the prefect of paris to regulate our industrial pursuits, to weigh our profits and our losses, to occupy himself with the quantity of our cash, and to equalize the conditions of our labor in internal commerce, on what principle can it be necessary that the custom-house, going beyond its fiscal mission, should pretend to exercise a protective power over our external commerce? xix. national independence. among the arguments advanced in favor of a restrictive system, we must not forget that which is drawn from the plea of _national independence_. "what will we do," it is asked, "in case of war, if we are at the mercy of england for our iron and coal?" the english monopolists, on their side, do not fail to exclaim: "what will become of great britain in case of war if she depends upon france for provisions?" one thing appears to be quite lost sight of, and this is, that the dependence which results from commercial transactions, is a _reciprocal_ dependence. we can only be dependent upon foreign supplies, in so far as foreign nations are dependent upon us. this is the essence of _society_. the breaking off of natural relations places a nation, not in an independent position, but in a state of isolation. and remark that the reason given for this isolation, is that it is a necessary provision for war, while the act is itself a commencement of war. it renders war easier, less burdensome, and consequently less unpopular. if nations were to one another permanent outlets for mutual produce; if their respective relations were such that they could not be broken without inflicting the double suffering of privation and of over-supply, there could then no longer be any need of these powerful fleets which ruin, and these great armies which crush them; the peace of the world could no more be compromised by the whim of a thiers or a palmerston, and wars would cease, from want of resources, motives, pretexts, and popular sympathy. i know that i shall be reproached (for it is the fashion of the day) for placing interest, vile and prosaic interest, at the foundation of the fraternity of nations. it would be preferred that this should be based upon charity, upon love; that there should be in it some self-denial, and that clashing a little with the material welfare of men, it should bear the merit of a generous sacrifice. when will we have done with such puerile declamations? we contemn, we revile _interest_, that is to say, the good and the useful, (for if all men are interested in an object, how can this object be other than good in itself?) as though this interest were not the necessary, eternal, and indestructible mover, to the guidance of which providence has confided human perfectibility! one would suppose that the utterers of such sentiments must be models of disinterestedness; but does the public not begin to perceive with disgust, that this affected language is the stain of those pages for which it oftenest pays the highest price? what! because comfort and peace are correlative, because it has pleased god to establish so beautiful a harmony in the moral world, you would blame me when i admire and adore his decrees, and for accepting with gratitude his laws, which make justice a requisite for happiness! you will consent to have peace only when it clashes with your welfare, and liberty is irksome if it imposes no sacrifices! what then prevents you, if self-denial has so many charms, from exercising it as much as you desire in your private actions? society will be benefited by your so doing, for some one must profit by your sacrifices. but it is the height of absurdity to wish to impose such a principle upon mankind generally; for the self-denial of all, is the sacrifice of all. this is evil systematized into theory. but, thanks be to heaven! these declamations may be written and read, and the world continues nevertheless to obey its great mover, its great cause of action, which, spite of all denials, is _interest_. it is singular enough, too, to hear sentiments of such sublime self-abnegation quoted in support even of spoliation; and yet to this tends all this pompous show of disinterestedness! these men so sensitively delicate, that they are determined not to enjoy even peace, if it must be propped by the vile _interest_ of men, do not hesitate to pick the pockets of other men, and above all of poor men. for what tariff protects the poor? gentlemen, we pray you, dispose as you please of what belongs to yourselves, but let us entreat you to allow us to use, or to exchange, according to our own fancy, the fruit of our own labor, the sweat of our own brows. declaim as you will about self-sacrifice; that is all pretty enough; but we beg of you, do not at the same time forget to be honest. xx. human labor--national labor. destruction of machinery--prohibition of foreign goods. these are two acts proceeding from the same doctrine. we do meet with men who, while they rejoice over the revelation of any great invention, favor nevertheless the protective policy; but such men are very inconsistent. what is the objection they adduce against free trade? that it causes us to seek from foreign and more easy production, what would otherwise be the result of home production. in a word, that it injures domestic industry. on the same principle, can it not be objected to machinery, that it accomplishes through natural agents what would otherwise be the result of manual labor, and that it is thus injurious to human labor? the foreign laborer, enjoying greater facilities of production than the french laborer, is, with regard to the latter, a veritable _economical machine_, which crushes him by competition. thus, a piece of machinery capable of executing any work at a less price than could be done by any given number of hands, is, as regards these hands, in the position of a _foreign competitor_, who paralyzes them by his rivalry. if then it be judicious to protect _home labor_ against the competition of _foreign labor_, it cannot be less so to protect _human labor_ against _mechanical labor_. whoever adheres to the protective system, ought not, if his brain be possessed of any logical powers, to stop at the prohibition of foreign produce, but should extend this prohibition to the produce of the loom and of the plough. i approve therefore of the logic of those who, whilst they cry out against the _inundation_ of foreign merchandise, have the courage to declaim equally against the _excessive production_ resulting from the inventive power of mind. of this number is mr. de saint chamans. "one of the strongest arguments, (says he) which can be adduced against free trade, and the too extensive employment of machines, is, that many workmen are deprived of work, either by foreign competition, which depresses manufactures, or by machinery, which takes the place of men in workshops." mr. de st. chamans saw clearly the analogy, or rather the identity which exists between _importation_ and _machinery_, and was, therefore, in favor of proscribing both. there is some pleasure in having to do with intrepid arguers, who, even in error, thus carry through a chain of reasoning. but let us look at the difficulty into which they are here led. if it be true, _à priori_, that the domain of _invention_, and that of _labor_, can be extended only to the injury of one another, it would follow that the fewest _workmen_ would be employed in countries (lancashire, for instance) where there is the most _machinery_. and if it be, on the contrary, proved, that machinery and manual labor coexist to a greater extent among rich nations than among savages, it must necessarily follow, that these two powers do not interfere with one another. i cannot understand how a thinking being can rest satisfied with the following dilemma: either the inventions of man do not injure labor; and this, from general facts, would appear to be the case, for there exists more of both among the english and the french, than among the sioux and the cherokees. if such be the fact, i have gone upon a wrong track, although unconscious at what point. i have wandered from my road, and i would commit high treason against humanity, were i to introduce such an error into the legislation of my country. or else the results of the inventions of mind limit manual labor, as would appear to be proved from limited facts; for every day we see some machine rendering unnecessary the labor of twenty, or perhaps a hundred workmen. if this be the case, i am forced to acknowledge, as a fact, the existence of a flagrant, eternal, and incurable antagonism between the intellectual and the physical power of man; between his improvement and his welfare. i cannot avoid feeling that the creator should have bestowed upon man either reason or bodily strength; moral force, or brutal force; and that it has been a bitter mockery to confer upon him faculties which must inevitably counteract and destroy one another. this is an important difficulty, and how is it put aside? by this singular apothegm: "_in political economy there are no absolute principles._" there are no principles! why, what does this mean, but that there are no facts? principles are only formulas, which recapitulate a whole class of well-proved facts. machinery and importation must certainly have effects. these effects must be either good or bad. here there may be a difference of opinion as to which is the correct conclusion, but whichever is adopted, it must be capable of being submitted to the formula of one or other of these principles, viz.: machinery is a good, or, machinery is an evil. importations are beneficial, or, importations are injurious. bat to say _there are no principles_, is certainly the last degree of debasement to which the human mind can lower itself, and i confess that i blush for my country, when i hear so monstrous an absurdity uttered before, and approved by, the french chambers, the _élite_ of the nation, who thus justify themselves for imposing upon the country laws, of the merits or demerits of which they are perfectly ignorant. but, it may be said to me, finish, then, by destroying the _sophism_. prove to us that machines are not injurious to _human labor_, nor importations to _national labor_. in a work of this nature, such demonstrations cannot be very complete. my aim is rather to point out than to explain difficulties, and to excite reflection rather than to satisfy it. the mind never attains to a firm conviction which is not wrought out by its own labor. i will, however, make an effort to put it upon the right track. the adversaries of importations and of machinery are misled by allowing themselves to form too hasty a judgment from immediate and transitory effects, instead of following these up to their general and final consequences. the immediate effect of an ingenious piece of machinery, is, that it renders superfluous, in the production of any given result, a certain quantity of manual labor. but its action does not stop here. this result being obtained at less labor, is given to the public at a less price. the amount thus saved to the buyers, enables them to procure other comforts, and thus to encourage general labor, precisely in proportion to the saving they have made upon the one article which the machine has given to them at an easier price. thus the standard of labor is not lowered, though that of comfort is raised. let me endeavor to render this double fact more striking by an example. i suppose that ten million of hats, at fifteen francs each, are yearly consumed in france. this would give to those employed in this manufacture one hundred and fifty millions. a machine is invented which enables the manufacturer to furnish hats at ten francs. the sum given to the maintenance of this branch of industry, is thus reduced (if we suppose the consumption not to be increased) to one hundred millions. but the other fifty millions are not, therefore, withdrawn from the maintenance of _human labor_. the buyers of hats are, from the surplus saved upon the price of that article, enabled to satisfy other wants, and thus, in the same proportion, to encourage general industry. john buys a pair of shoes; james, a book; jerome, an article of furniture, etc. human labor, as a whole, still receives the encouragement of the whole one hundred and fifty millions, while the consumers, with the same supply of hats as before, receive also the increased number of comforts accruing from the fifty millions, which the use of the machine has been the means of saving to them. these comforts are the net gain which france has received from the invention. it is a gratuitous gift; a tribute exacted from nature by the genius of man. we grant that, during this process, a certain sum of labor will have been _displaced_, forced to change its direction; but we cannot allow that it has been destroyed or even diminished. the case is the same with regard to importations. i will resume my hypothesis. france, according to our supposition, manufactured ten millions of hats at fifteen francs each. let us now suppose that a foreign producer brings them into our market at ten francs. i maintain that _national labor_ is thus in no wise diminished. it will be obliged to produce the equivalent of the hundred millions which go to pay for the ten millions of hats at ten francs, and then there remains to each buyer five francs, saved on the purchase of his hat, or, in total, fifty millions, which serve for the acquisition of other comforts, and the encouragement of other labor. the mass of labor remains, then, what it was, and the additional comforts accruing from the fifty millions saved in the purchase of hats, are the net profit of importation or free trade. it is no argument to try and alarm us by a picture of the sufferings which, in this hypothesis, would result from the displacement or change of labor. for, if prohibition had never existed, labor would have classed itself in accordance with the laws of trade, and no displacement would have taken place. if prohibition has led to an artificial and unproductive classification of labor, then it is prohibition, and not free trade, which is responsible for the inevitable displacement which must result in the transition from evil to good. it is a rather singular argument to maintain that, because an abuse which has been permitted a temporary existence, cannot be corrected without wounding the interests of those who have profited by it, it ought, therefore, to claim perpetual duration. xxi. raw material. it is said that no commerce is so advantageous as that in which manufactured articles are exchanged for raw material; because the latter furnishes aliment for _national labor_. and it is hence concluded: that the best regulation of duties, would be to give the greatest possible facilities to the importation of raw material, and at the same time to check that of the finished article. there is, in political economy, no more generally accredited sophism than this. it serves for argument not only to the protectionists, but also to the pretended free trade school; and it is in the latter capacity that its most mischievous tendencies are called into action. for a good cause suffers much less in being attacked, than in being badly defended. commercial liberty must probably pass through the same ordeal as liberty in every other form. it can only dictate laws, after having first taken thorough possession of men's minds. if, then, it be true that a reform, to be firmly established, must be generally understood, it follows that nothing can so much retard it, as the misleading of public opinion. and what more calculated to mislead opinion than writings, which, while they proclaim free trade, support the doctrines of monopoly? it is some years since three great cities of france, viz., lyons, bordeaux, and havre, combined in opposition to the restrictive system. france, all europe, looked anxiously and suspiciously at this apparent declaration in favor of free trade. alas! it was still the banner of monopoly which they followed! a monopoly, only a little more sordid, a little more absurd than that of which they seemed to desire the destruction! thanks to the sophism which i would now endeavor to deprive of its disguise, the petitioners only reproduced, with an additional incongruity, the old doctrine of _protection to national labor_. what is, in fact, the prohibitive system? we will let mr. de saint cricq answer for us. "labor constitutes the riches of a nation, because it creates supplies for the gratification of our necessities; and universal comfort consists in the abundance of these supplies." here we have the principle. "but this abundance ought to be the result of _national labor_. if it were the result of foreign labor, national labor must receive an inevitable check." here lies the error. (see the preceding sophism). "what, then, ought to be the course of an agricultural and manufacturing country? it ought to reserve its market for the produce of its own soil and its own industry." here is the object. "in order to effect this, it ought, by restrictive, and, if necessary, by prohibitive duties, to prevent the influx of produce from foreign soils and foreign industry." here is the means. let us now compare this system with that of the petition from bordeaux. this divided articles of merchandise into three classes. "the first class includes articles of food and _raw material untouched by human labor_. _a judicious system of political economy would require that this class should be exempt from taxation._" here we have the principle of no labor, no protection. "the second class is composed of articles which have received _some preparation_ for manufacture. this preparation would render reasonable the imposition of _some duties_." here we find the commencement of protection, because, at the same time, likewise commences the demand for _national labor_. "the third class comprehends finished articles, which can, under no circumstances, furnish material for national labor. we consider this as the most fit for taxation." here we have at once the maximum of labor, and, consequently, of production. the petitioners then, as we here see, proclaimed foreign labor as injurious to national labor. this is the _error_ of the prohibitive system. they desired the french market to be reserved for _french labor_. this is the _object_ of the prohibitive system. they demanded that foreign labor should be subjected to restrictions and taxes. these are the _means_ of the prohibitive system. what difference, then, can we possibly discover to exist between the bordalese petitioners and the corypheus of restriction? one, alone; and that is simply the greater or less extension which is given to the signification of the word _labor_. mr. de saint cricq, taking it in its widest sense, is, therefore, in favor of _protecting_ every thing. "labor," he says, "constitutes _the whole_ wealth of a nation. protection should be for the agricultural interest, and _the whole_ agricultural interest; for the manufacturing interest, and _the whole_ manufacturing interest; and this principle i will continually endeavor to impress upon this chamber." the petitioners consider no labor but that of the manufacturers, and accordingly, it is that, and that alone, which they would wish to admit to the favors of protection. "raw material being entirely _untouched by human labor_, our system should exempt it from taxes. manufactured articles furnishing no material for national labor, we consider as the most fit for taxation." there is no question here as to the propriety of protecting national labor. mr. de saint cricq and the bordalese agree entirely upon this point. we have, in our preceding chapters, already shown how entirely we differ from both of them. the question to be determined, is, whether it is mr. de saint cricq, or the bordalese, who give to the word _labor_ its proper acceptation. and we must confess that mr. de saint cricq is here decidedly in the right. the following dialogue might be supposed between them: _mr. de saint cricq._--you agree that national labor ought to be protected. you agree that no foreign labor can be introduced into our market, without destroying an equal quantity of our national labor. but you contend that there are numerous articles of merchandise possessing _value_, for they are sold, and which are nevertheless _untouched by human labor_. among these you name corn, flour, meat, cattle, bacon, salt, iron, copper, lead, coal, wool, skins, seeds, etc. if you can prove to me, that the _value_ of these things is not dependent upon labor, i will agree that it is useless to protect them. but if i can prove to you that there is as much labor put upon a hundred francs worth of wool, as upon a hundred francs worth of cloth, you ought to acknowledge that protection is the right as much of the one, as of the other. i ask you then why this bag of wool is worth a hundred francs? is it not because this is its price of production? and what is the price of production, but the sum which has been distributed in wages for labor, payment of skill, and interest on money, among the various laborers and capitalists, who have assisted in the production of the article? _the petitioners._--it is true that with regard to wool you may be right; but a bag of corn, a bar of iron, a hundred weight of coal, are these the produce of labor? is it not nature which _creates_ them? _mr. de st. cricq._--without doubt, nature _creates_ these substances, but it is labor which gives them their _value_. i have myself, in saying that labor _creates_ material objects, used a false expression, which has led me into many farther errors. no man can _create_. no man can bring any thing from nothing; and if _production_ is used as a synonym for _creation_, then indeed our labor must all be useless. the agriculturist does not pretend that he has _created_ the corn; but he has given it its _value_. he has by his own labor, and by that of his servants, his laborers, and his reapers, transformed into corn substances which were entirely dissimilar from it. what more is effected by the miller who converts it into flour, or by the baker who makes it into bread? in order that a man may be dressed in cloth, numerous operations are first necessary. before the intervention of any human labor, the real _primary materials_ of this article are air, water, heat, gas, light, and the various salts which enter into its composition. these are indeed _untouched by human labor_, for they have no _value_, and i have never dreamed of their needing protection. but a first _labor_ converts these substances into forage; a second into wool; a third into thread; a fourth into cloth; and a fifth into garments. who can pretend to say, that all these contributions to the work, from the first furrow of the plough, to the last stitch of the needle, are not _labor_? and because, for the sake of speed and greater perfection in the accomplishment of the final object, these various branches of labor are divided among as many classes of workmen, you, by an arbitrary distinction, determine that the order in which the various branches of labor follow each other shall regulate their importance, so that while the first is not allowed to merit the name of labor, the last shall receive all the favors of protection. _the petitioners._--yes, we begin to understand that neither wool nor corn are entirely _independent of human labor_; but certainly the agriculturist has not, like the manufacturer, had every thing to do by his own labor, and that of his workmen; nature has assisted him; and if there is some labor, at least all is not labor, in the production of corn. _mr. de st. cricq._--but it is the labor alone which gives it _value_. i grant that nature has assisted in the production of grain. i will even grant that it is exclusively her work; but i must confess at least that i have constrained her to it by my labor. and remark, moreover, that when i sell my corn, it is not the _work of nature_ which i make you pay for, but _my own_. you will perceive, also, by following up your manner of arguing, that neither will manufactured articles be the production of labor. does not the manufacturer also call upon nature to assist him? does he not by the assistance of steam-machinery force into his service the weight of the atmosphere, as i, by the use of the plough, take advantage of its humidity? is it the cloth-manufacturer who has created the laws of gravitation, transmission of forces and of affinities? _the petitioners._--well, well, we will give up wool, but assuredly coal is the work, the exclusive work, of nature. this, at least, is _independent of all human labor_. _mr. de st. cricq._--yes, nature certainly has made coal; but _labor has made its value_. where was the _value_ of coal during the millions of years when it lay unknown and buried a hundred feet below the surface of the earth? it was necessary to seek it. here was labor. it was necessary to transport it to a market. again this was labor. the price which you pay for coal in the market is the remuneration given to these labors of digging and transportation.[ ] [footnote : i do not, for many reasons, make explicit mention of such portion of the remuneration as belongs to the contractor, capitalist, etc. firstly: because, if the subject be closely looked into, it will be seen that it is always either the reimbursing in advance, or the payment of anterior _labor_. secondly: because, under the general labor, i include not only the salary of the workmen, but the legitimate payment of all co-operation in the work of production. thirdly: finally, and above all, because the production of the manufactured articles is, like that of the raw material, burdened with interests and remunerations, entirely independent of _manual labor_; and that the objection, in itself, might be equally applied to the finest manufacture and to the roughest agricultural process.] we see that, so far, all the advantage is on the side of mr. de st. cricq, and that the _value_ of unmanufactured as of manufactured articles, represents always the expense, or what is the same thing, the _labor_ of production; that it is impossible to conceive of an article bearing a _value, independent of human labor_; that the distinction made by the petitioners is futile in theory, and, as the basis of an unequal division of favors, would be iniquitous in practice; for it would thence result that the one-third of the french occupied in manufactures, would receive all the benefits of monopoly, because they produce _by labor_; while the two other thirds, formed by the agricultural population, would be left to struggle against competition, under pretense that they produce _without labor_. it will, i know, be insisted that it is advantageous to a nation to import the raw material, whether or not it be the result of labor; and to export manufactured articles. this is a very generally received opinion. "in proportion," says the petition of bordeaux, "as raw material is abundant, manufactures will increase and flourish." "the abundance of raw material," it elsewhere says, "gives an unlimited scope to labor in those countries where it prevails." "raw material," says the petition from havre, "being the element of labor, should be _regulated on a different system_, and ought to be admitted _immediately_ and at the _lowest rate_." the same petition asks, that the protection of manufactured articles should be reduced, not _immediately_, but at some indeterminate time, not to the _lowest rate_ of entrance, but to twenty per cent. "among other articles," says the petition of lyons, "of which the low price and the abundance are necessary, the manufacturers name all _raw material_." all this is based upon error. all _value_ is, we have seen, the representative of labor. now it is undoubtedly true that manufacturing labor increases ten-fold, a hundred-fold, the value of raw material, thus dispensing ten, a hundred-fold increased profits throughout the nation; and from this fact is deduced the following argument: the production of a hundred weight of iron, is the gain of only fifteen francs to the various workers therein engaged. this hundred weight of iron, converted into watch-springs, is increased in value by this process, ten thousand francs. who can pretend that the nation is not more interested in securing the ten thousand francs, than the fifteen francs worth of labor? in this reasoning it is forgotten, that international exchanges are, no more than individual exchanges, effected through weight and measure. the exchange is not between a hundred weight of unmanufactured iron, and a hundred weight of watch-springs, nor between a pound of wool just shorn, and a pound of wool just manufactured into cashmere, but between a fixed value in one of these articles, and a fixed equal value in another. to exchange equal value with equal value, is to exchange equal labor with equal labor, and it is therefore not true that the nation which sells its hundred francs worth of cloth or of watch-springs, gains more than the one which furnishes its hundred francs worth of wool or of iron. in a country where no law can be passed, no contribution imposed without the consent of the governed, the public can be robbed, only after it has first been cheated. our own ignorance is the primary, the _raw material_ of every act of extortion to which we are subjected, and it may safely be predicted of every _sophism_, that it is the forerunner of an act of spoliation. good public, whenever therefore you detect a sophism in a petition, let me advise you, put your hand upon your pocket, for be assured, it is that which is particularly the point of attack. let us then examine what is the secret design which the ship-owners of bordeaux and havre, and the manufacturers of lyons, would smuggle in upon us by this distinction between agricultural produce and manufactured produce. "it is," say the petitioners of bordeaux, "principally in this first class (that which comprehends raw material, _untouched by human labor_) that we find _the principal encouragement of our merchant vessels_.... a wise system of political economy would require that this class should not be taxed.... the second class (articles which have received some preparation) may be considered as taxable. the third (articles which have received from labor all the finish of which they are capable) we regard as _most proper for taxation_." "considering," say the petitioners of havre, "that it is indispensable to reduce _immediately_ and to the _lowest rate_, the raw material, in order that manufacturing industry may give employment to our merchant vessels, which furnish its first and indispensable means of labor." the manufacturers could not allow themselves to be behindhand in civilities towards the ship-owners, and accordingly the petition of lyons demands the free introduction of raw material, "in order to prove," it remarks, "that the interests of manufacturing towns are not opposed to those of maritime cities." this may be true enough; but it must be confessed that both, taken in the sense of the petitioners, are terribly adverse to the interest of agriculture and of consumers. this, then, gentlemen, is the aim of all your subtle distinctions! you wish the law to oppose the maritime transportation of _manufactured_ articles, in order that the much more expensive transportation of the raw material should, by its larger bulk, in its rough, dirty and unimproved condition, furnish a more extensive business to your _merchant vessels_. and this is what you call a _wise system of political economy_! why not also petition for a law requiring that fir-trees, imported from russia, should not be admitted without their branches, bark, and roots; that mexican gold should be imported in the state of ore, and buenos ayres leathers only allowed an entrance into our ports, while still hanging to the dead bones and putrefying bodies to which they belong? the stockholders of railroads, if they can obtain a majority in the chambers, will no doubt soon favor us with a law forbidding the manufacture, at cognac, of the brandy used in paris. for, surely, they would consider it a wise law, which would, by forcing the transportation of ten casks of wine instead of one of brandy, thus furnish to parisian industry an _indispensable encouragement to its labor_, and, at the same time, give employment to railroad locomotives! until when will we persist in shutting our eyes upon the following simple truth? labor and industry, in their general object, have but one legitimate aim, and this is the public good. to create useless industrial pursuits, to favor superfluous transportation, to maintain a superfluous labor, not for the good of the public, but at the expense of the public, is to act upon a _petitio principii_. for it is the result of labor, and not labor itself, which is a desirable object. all labor, without a result, is clear loss. to pay sailors for transporting rough dirt and filthy refuse across the ocean, is about as reasonable as it would be to engage their services, and pay them for pelting the water with pebbles. thus we arrive at the conclusion that _political sophisms_, notwithstanding their infinite variety, have one point in common, which is the constant confounding of the _means_ with the _end_, and the development of the former at the expense of the latter. xxii. metaphors. a sophism will sometimes expand and extend itself through the whole tissue of a long and tedious theory. oftener it contracts into a principle, and hides itself in one word. "heaven preserve us," said paul louis, "from the devil and from the spirit of metaphor!" and, truly, it might be difficult to determine which of the two sheds the most noxious influence over our planet. the devil, you will say, because it is he who implants in our hearts the spirit of spoliation. aye; but he leaves the capacity for checking abuses, by the resistance of those who suffer. it is the genius of sophism which paralyzes this resistance. the sword which the spirit of evil places in the hands of the aggressor, would fall powerless, if the shield of him who is attacked were not shattered in his grasp by the spirit of sophism. malbranche has, with great truth, inscribed upon the frontispiece of his book this sentence: _error is the cause of human misery_. let us notice what passes in the world. ambitious hypocrites may take a sinister interest in spreading, for instance, the germ of national enmities. the noxious seed may, in its developments, lead to a general conflagration, check civilization, spill torrents of blood, and draw upon the country that most terrible of scourges, _invasion_. such hateful sentiments cannot fail to degrade, in the opinion of other nations, the people among whom they prevail, and force those who retain some love of justice to blush for their country. these are fearful evils, and it would be enough that the public should have a clear view of them, to induce them to secure themselves against the plotting of those who would expose them to such heavy chances. how, then, are they kept in darkness? how, but by metaphors? the meaning of three or four words is forced, changed, and depraved--and all is said. such is the use made, for instance, of the word _invasion_. a master of french iron-works, exclaims: save us from the _invasion_ of english iron. an english landholder cries; let us oppose the _invasion_ of french corn. and forthwith all their efforts are bent upon raising barriers between these two nations. thence follows isolation; isolation leads to hatred; hatred to war; and war to _invasion_. what matters it? say the two _sophists_; is it not better to expose ourselves to a possible _invasion_, than to meet a certain one? and the people believe; and the barriers are kept up. and yet what analogy can exist between an exchange and an invasion? what resemblance can possibly be discovered between a man-of-war, vomiting fire, death, and desolation over our cities--and a merchant vessel, which comes to offer in free and peaceable exchange, produce for produce? much in the same way has the word _inundation_ been abused. this word is generally taken in a bad sense; and it is certainly of frequent occurrence for inundations to ruin fields and sweep away harvests. but if, as is the case in the inundations of the nile, they were to leave upon the soil a superior value to that which they carried away, we ought, like the egyptians, to bless and deify them. would it not be well, before declaiming against the _inundations_ of foreign produce, and checking them with expensive and embarrassing obstacles, to certify ourselves whether these inundations are of the number which desolate, or of those which fertilize a country? what would we think of mehemet ali, if, instead of constructing, at great expense, dams across the nile to increase the extent of its inundations, he were to scatter his piasters in attempts to deepen its bed, that he might rescue egypt from the defilement of the _foreign_ mud which is swept down upon it from the mountains of the moon? exactly such a degree of wisdom do we exhibit, when at the expense of millions, we strive to preserve our country.... from what? from the blessings with which nature has gifted other climates. among the _metaphors_ which sometimes conceal, each in itself, a whole theory of evil, there is none more common than that which is presented under the words _tribute_ and _tributary_. these words are so frequently employed as synonyms of _purchase_ and _purchaser_, that the terms are now used almost indifferently. and yet there is as distinct a difference between a _tribute_, and a _purchase_, as between a _robbery_ and an _exchange_. it appears to me that it would be quite as correct to say, cartouche has broken open my strong-box, and, has _bought_ a thousand crowns from me, as to state, as i have heard done to our honorable deputies, we have paid in _tribute_ to germany the value of a thousand horses which she has sold us. the action of cartouche was not a _purchase_, because he did not put, and with my consent, into my strong box an equivalent value to that which he took out. neither could the purchase-money paid to germany be _tribute_, because it was not on our part a forced payment, gratuitously received on hers, but a willing compensation from us for a thousand horses, which we ourselves judged to be worth , francs. is it necessary then seriously to criticise such abuses of language? yes, for very seriously are they put forth in our books and journals. nor can we flatter ourselves that they are the careless expressions of uneducated writers, ignorant even of the terms of their own language. they are current with a vast majority, and among the most distinguished of our writers. we find them in the mouths of our d'argouts, dupins, villèles; of peers, deputies and ministers; men whose words become laws, and whose influence might establish the most revolting sophisms, as the basis of the administration of their country. a celebrated modern philosopher has added to the categories of aristotle the sophism which consists in expressing in one word a _petitio principii_. he cites several examples, and might have added the word _tributary_ to his nomenclature. for instance, the question is to determine whether foreign purchases are useful or hurtful. you answer, hurtful. and why? because they render us _tributary_ to foreigners. truly here is a word, which begs the question at once. how has this delusive figure of speech introduced itself into the rhetoric of monopolists? money is _withdrawn from the country_ to satisfy the rapacity of a victorious enemy: money is also _withdrawn from the country_ to pay for merchandise. the analogy is established between the two cases, calculating only the point of resemblance and abstracting that by which they differ. and yet it is certainly true, that the non-reimbursement in the first case, and the reimbursement freely agreed upon in the second, establishes between them so decided a difference, as to render it impossible to class them under the same category. to be obliged, with a dagger at your throat, to give a hundred francs, or to give them willingly in order to obtain a desired object,--truly these are cases in which we can perceive little similarity. it might just as correctly be said, that it is a matter of indifference whether we eat our bread, or have it thrown into the water, because in both cases it is destroyed. we here draw a false conclusion, as in the case of the word _tribute_, by a vicious manner of reasoning, which supposes an entire similitude between two cases, their resemblance only being noticed and their difference suppressed. conclusion. all the sophisms which i have so far combated, relate to the restrictive policy; and some even on this subject, and those of the most remarkable, i have, in pity to the reader, passed over: _acquired rights_; _unsuitableness_; _exhaustion of money_, _etc._, _etc._ but social economy is not confined within this narrow circle. fourierism, saint simonism, commonism, agrarianism, anti-rentism, mysticism, sentimentalism, false philanthropy, affected aspirations for a chimerical equality and fraternity; questions relative to luxury, wages, machinery; to the pretended tyranny of capital; to colonies, outlets, population; to emigration, association, imposts, and loans, have encumbered the field of science with a crowd of parasitical arguments,--_sophisms_, whose rank growth calls for the spade and the weeding-hoe. i am perfectly sensible of the defect of my plan, or rather absence of plan. by attacking as i do, one by one, so many incoherent sophisms, which clash, and then again often mingle with each other, i am conscious that i condemn myself to a disorderly and capricious struggle, and am exposed to perpetual repetitions. i should certainly much prefer to state simply how things _are_, without troubling myself to contemplate the thousand aspects under which ignorance _supposes_ them to be.... to lay down at once the laws under which society prospers or perishes, would be _virtually_ to destroy at once all sophisms. when laplace described what, up to his time, was known of the movements of celestial bodies, he dissipated, without even naming them, all the astrological reveries of the egyptians, greeks, and hindoos, much more certainly than he could have done by attempting to refute them directly, through innumerable volumes. truth is one, and the work which expounds it is an imposing and durable edifice. error is multiple, and of ephemereal nature. the work which combats it, cannot bear in itself a principle of greatness or of durability. but if power, and perhaps opportunity, have been wanting to me, to enable me to proceed in the manner of laplace and of say, i still cannot but believe that the mode adopted by me has also its modest usefulness. it appears to me likewise to be well suited to the wants of the age, and to the broken moments which it is now the habit to snatch for study. a treatise has without doubt an incontestable superiority. but it requires to be read, meditated, and understood. it addresses itself to the select few. its mission is first to fix attention, and then to enlarge the circle of acquired knowledge. a work which undertakes the refutation of vulgar prejudices, cannot have so high an aim. it aspires only to clear the way for the steps of truth; to prepare the minds of men to receive her; to rectify public opinion, and to snatch from unworthy hands dangerous weapons which they misuse. it is above all, in social economy, that this hand-to-hand struggle, this ever-reviving combat with popular errors, has a true practical utility. sciences might be arranged in two categories. those of the first class whose application belongs only to particular professions, can be understood only by the learned; but the most ignorant may profit by their fruits. we may enjoy the comforts of a watch; we may be transported by locomotives or steamboats, although knowing nothing of mechanism and astronomy. we walk according to the laws of equilibrium, while entirely ignorant of them. but there are sciences whose influence upon the public is proportioned only to the information of that public itself, and whose efficacy consists not in the accumulated knowledge of some few learned heads, but in that which has diffused itself into the reason of man in the aggregate. such are morals, hygiene, social economy, and (in countries where men belong to themselves) political economy. of these sciences bentham might above all have said: "it is better to circulate, than to advance them." what does it profit us that a great man, even a god, should promulgate moral laws, if the minds of men, steeped in error, will constantly mistake vice for virtue, and virtue for vice? what does it benefit us that smith, say, and, according to mr. de st. chamans, political economists of _every school_, should have proclaimed the superiority in all commercial transactions, of _liberty_ above _restraint_, if those who make laws, and for whom laws are made, are convinced of the contrary? these sciences, which have very properly been named _social_, are again peculiar in this, that they, being of common application, no one will confess himself ignorant of them. if the object be to determine a question in chemistry or geometry, nobody pretends to have an innate knowledge of the science, or is ashamed to consult mr. thénard, or to seek information from the pages of legendre or bezout. but in the social sciences authorities are rarely acknowledged. as each individual daily acts upon his own notions whether right or wrong, of morals, hygiene, and economy; of politics, whether reasonable or absurd, each one thinks he has a right to prose, comment, decide, and dictate in these matters. are you sick? there is not a good old woman in the country who is not ready to tell you the cause and the remedy of your sufferings. "it is from humors in the blood," says she, "you must be purged." but what are these humors, or are there any humors at all? on this subject she troubles herself but little. this good old woman comes into my mind, whenever i hear an attempt made to account for all the maladies of the social body, by some trivial form of words. it is superabundance of produce, tyranny of capital, industrial plethora, or other such nonsense, of which, it would be fortunate if we could say: _verba et voces prætereaque nihil_, for these are errors from which fatal consequences follow. from what precedes, the two following results may be deduced: st. that the social sciences, more than others, necessarily abound in _sophisms_, because in their application, each individual consults only his own judgment and his own instincts. d. that in these sciences _sophisms_ are especially injurious, because they mislead opinion on a subject in which opinion is power--is law. two kinds of books then are necessary in these sciences, those which teach, and those which circulate; those which expound the truth, and those which combat error. i believe that the inherent defect of this little work, _repetition_, is what is likely to be the cause of its principal utility. among the sophisms which it has discussed, each has undoubtedly its own formula and tendency, but all have a common root; and this is, the _forgetfulness of the interests of men, considered as consumers_. by showing that a thousand mistaken roads all lead to this great _generative_ sophism, i may perhaps teach the public to recognize, to know, and to mistrust it, under all circumstances. after all, i am less at forcing convictions, than at waking doubts. i have no hope that the reader as he lays down my book will exclaim, _i know_. my aspirations will be fully satisfied, if he can but sincerely say, _i doubt_. "i doubt, for i begin to fear that there may be something illusory in the supposed blessings of scarcity." (sophism i.) "i am not so certain of the beneficial effect of obstacles." (sophism ii.) "_effort without result_, no longer appears to me so desirable as _result without effort_." (sophism iii.) "i understand that the more an article has been labored upon, the more is its _value_. but in trade, do two _equal_ values cease to be equal, because one comes from the plough, and the other from the workshop?" (sophism xxi.) "i confess that i begin to think it singular that mankind should be the better of hindrances and obstacles, or should grow rich upon taxes; and truly i would be relieved from some anxiety, would be really happy to see the proof of the fact, as stated by the author of "the sophisms," that there is no incompatibility between prosperity and justice, between peace and liberty, between the extension of labor and the advance of intelligence." (sophisms xiv and xx.) "without, then, giving up entirely to arguments, which i am yet in doubt whether to look upon as fairly reasoned, or as paradoxical, i will at least seek enlightenment from the masters of the science." * * * * * i will now terminate this sketch by a last and important recapitulation. the world is not sufficiently conscious of the influence exercised over it by _sophistry_. when _might ceases to be right_, and the government of mere _strength_ is dethroned, _sophistry_ transfers the empire to _cunning and subtilty_. it would be difficult to determine which of the two tyrannies is most injurious to mankind. men have an immoderate love for pleasure, influence, consideration, power--in a word, for riches; and they are, by an almost unconquerable inclination, pushed to procure these, at the expense of others. but these _others_, who form the public, have a no less strong inclination to keep what they have acquired; and this they will do, if they have the _strength_ and the _knowledge_ to effect it. spoliation, which plays so important a part in the affairs of this world, has then two agents; _force_ and _cunning_. she has also two checks; _courage_ and _knowledge_. force applied to spoliation, furnishes the great material for the annals of men. to retrace its history would be to present almost the entire history of every nation: assyrians, babylonians, medes, persians, greeks, romans, goths, franks, huns, turks, arabs, tartars, without counting the more recent expeditions of the english in india, the french in africa, the russians in asia, etc., etc. but among civilized nations surely the producers of riches are now become sufficiently numerous and strong to defend themselves. does this mean that they are no longer robbed? they are as much so as ever, and moreover they rob one another. the only difference is that spoliation has changed her agent. she acts no longer by _force_, but by _cunning_. to rob the public, it is necessary to deceive them. to deceive them, it is necessary to persuade them that they are robbed for their own advantage, and to induce them to accept in exchange for their property, imaginary services, and often worse. hence spring _sophisms_ in all their varieties. then, since force is held in check, _sophistry_ is no longer only an evil; it is the genius of evil, and requires a check in its turn. this check must be the enlightenment of the public, which must be rendered more _subtle_ than the subtle, as it is already _stronger_ than the strong. * * * * * good public! i now dedicate to you this first essay; though it must be confessed that the preface is strangely transposed, and the dedication a little tardy. part ii. sophisms of protection. second series. "the request of industry to the government is as modest as that of diogenes to alexander: 'stand out of my sunshine.'"--bentham. i. natural history of spoliation. why do i give myself up to that dry science, political economy? the question is a proper one. all labor is so repugnant in its nature that one has the right to ask of what use it is. let us examine and see. i do not address myself to those philosophers who, if not in their own names, at least in the name of humanity, profess to adore poverty. i speak to those who hold wealth in esteem--and understand by this word, not the opulence of the few, but the comfort, the well-being, the security, the independence, the instruction, the dignity of all. there are only two ways by which the means essential to the preservation, the adornment and the perfection of life may be obtained--production and spoliation. some persons may say: "spoliation is an accident, a local and transient abuse, denounced by morality, punished by the law, and unworthy the attention of political economy." still, however benevolent or optimistic one may be, he is compelled to admit that spoliation is practiced on so vast a scale in this world, and is so generally connected with all great human events, that no social science, and, least of all, political economy, can refuse to consider it. i go farther. that which prevents the perfection of the social system (at least in so far as it is capable of perfection) is the constant effort of its members to live and prosper at the expense of each other. so that, if spoliation did not exist, society being perfect, the social sciences would be without an object. i go still farther. when spoliation becomes a means of subsistence for a body of men united by social ties, in course of time they make a law which sanctions it, a morality which glorifies it. it is enough to name some of the best defined forms of spoliation to indicate the position it occupies in human affairs. first comes war. among savages the conqueror kills the conquered, to obtain an uncontested, if not incontestable, right to game. next slavery. when man learns that he can make the earth fruitful by labor, he makes this division with his brother: "you work and i eat." then comes superstition. "according as you give or refuse me that which is yours, i will open to you the gates of heaven or of hell." finally, monopoly appears. its distinguishing characteristic is to allow the existence of the grand social law--_service for service_--while it brings the element of force into the discussion, and thus alters the just proportion between _service received_ and _service rendered_. spoliation always bears within itself the germ of its own destruction. very rarely the many despoil the few. in such a case the latter soon become so reduced that they can no longer satisfy the cupidity of the former, and spoliation ceases for want of sustenance. almost always the few oppress the many, and in that case spoliation is none the less undermined, for, if it has force as an agent, as in war and slavery, it is natural that force in the end should be on the side of the greater number. and if deception is the agent, as with superstition and monopoly, it is natural that the many should ultimately become enlightened. another law of providence wars against spoliation. it is this: spoliation not only displaces wealth, but always destroys a portion. war annihilates values. slavery paralyzes the faculties. monopoly transfers wealth from one pocket to another, but it always occasions the loss of a portion in the transfer. this is an admirable law. without it, provided the strength of oppressors and oppressed were equal, spoliation would have no end. a moment comes when the destruction of wealth is such that the despoiler is poorer than he would have been if he had remained honest. so it is with a people when a war costs more than the booty is worth; with a master who pays more for slave labor than for free labor; with a priesthood which has so stupefied the people and destroyed its energy that nothing more can be gotten out of it; with a monopoly which increases its attempts at absorption as there is less to absorb, just as the difficulty of milking increases with the emptiness of the udder. monopoly is a species of the genus spoliation. it has many varieties, among them sinecure, privilege, and restriction upon trade. some of the forms it assumes are simple and _naive_, like feudal rights. under this _regime_ the masses are despoiled, and know it. other forms are more complicated. often the masses are plundered, and do not know it. it may even happen that they believe that they owe every thing to spoliation, not only what is left them but what is taken from them, and what is lost in the operation. i also assert that, in the course of time, thanks to the ingenious machinery of habit, many people become spoilers without knowing it or wishing it. monopolies of this kind are begotten by fraud and nurtured by error. they vanish only before the light. i have said enough to indicate that political economy has a manifest practical use. it is the torch which, unveiling deceit and dissipating error, destroys that social disorder called spoliation. some one, a woman i believe, has correctly defined it as "the safety-lock upon the property of the people." commentary. if this little book were destined to live three or four thousand years, to be read and re-read, pondered and studied, phrase by phrase, word by word, and letter by letter, from generation to generation, like a new koran; if it were to fill the libraries of the world with avalanches of annotations, explanations and paraphrases, i might leave to their fate, in their rather obscure conciseness, the thoughts which precede. but since they need a commentary, it seems wise to me to furnish it myself. the true and equitable law of humanity is the _free exchange of service for service_. spoliation consists in destroying by force or by trickery the freedom of exchange, in order to receive a service without rendering one. forcible spoliation is exercised thus: wait till a man has produced something; then take it from him by violence. it is solemnly condemned by the decalogue: _thou shalt not steal._ when practiced by one individual on another, it is called robbery, and leads to the prison; when practiced among nations, it takes the name of conquest, and leads to glory. why this difference? it is worth while to search for the cause. it will reveal to us an irresistible power, public opinion, which, like the atmosphere, envelopes us so completely that we do not notice it. rousseau never said a truer thing than this: "a great deal of philosophy is needed to understand the facts which are very near to us." the robber, for the reason that he acts alone, has public opinion against him. he terrifies all who are about him. yet, if he has companions, he plumes himself before them on his exploits, and here we may begin to notice the power of public opinion, for the approbation of his band serves to obliterate all consciousness of his turpitude, and even to make him proud of it. the warrior lives in a different atmosphere. the public opinion which would rebuke him is among the vanquished. he does not feel its influence. but the opinion of those by whom he is surrounded approves his acts and sustains him. he and his comrades are vividly conscious of the common interest which unites them. the country which has created enemies and dangers, needs to stimulate the courage of its children. to the most daring, to those who have enlarged the frontiers, and gathered the spoils of war, are given honors, reputation, glory. poets sing their exploits. fair women weave garlands for them. and such is the power of public opinion that it separates the idea of injustice from spoliation, and even rids the despoiler of the consciousness of his wrong-doing. the public opinion which reacts against military spoliation, (as it exists among the conquered and not among the conquering people), has very little influence. but it is not entirely powerless. it gains in strength as nations come together and understand one another better. thus, it can be seen that the study of languages and the free communication of peoples tend to bring about the supremacy of an opinion opposed to this sort of spoliation. unfortunately, it often happens that the nations adjacent to a plundering people are themselves spoilers when opportunity offers, and hence are imbued with the same prejudices. then there is only one remedy--time. it is necessary that nations learn by harsh experience the enormous disadvantage of despoiling each other. you say there is another restraint--moral influences. but moral influences have for their object the increase of virtuous actions. how can they restrain these acts of spoliation when these very acts are raised by public opinion to the level of the highest virtues? is there a more potent moral influence than religion? has there ever been a religion more favorable to peace or more universally received than christianity? and yet what has been witnessed during eighteen centuries? men have gone out to battle, not merely in spite of religion, but in the very name of religion. a conquering nation does not always wage offensive war. its soldiers are obliged to protect the hearthstones, the property, the families, the independence and liberty of their native land. at such a time war assumes a character of sanctity and grandeur. the flag, blessed by the ministers of the god of peace, represents all that is sacred on earth; the people rally to it as the living image of their country and their honor; the warlike virtues are exalted above all others. when the danger is over, the opinion remains, and by a natural reaction of that spirit of vengeance which confounds itself with patriotism, they love to bear the cherished flag from capital to capital. it seems that nature has thus prepared the punishment of the aggressor. it is the fear of this punishment, and not the progress of philosophy, which keeps arms in the arsenals, for it cannot be denied that those people who are most advanced in civilization make war, and bother themselves very little with justice when they have no reprisals to fear. witness the himalayas, the atlas, and the caucasus. if religion has been impotent, if philosophy is powerless, how is war to cease? political economy demonstrates that even if the victors alone are considered, war is always begun in the interest of the few, and at the expense of the many. all that is needed, then, is that the masses should clearly perceive this truth. the weight of public opinion, which is yet divided, would then be cast entirely on the side of peace. forcible spoliation also takes another form. without waiting for a man to produce something in order to rob him, they take possession of the man himself, deprive him of his freedom, and force him to work. they do not say to him, "if you will do this for me, i will do that for you," but they say to him, "you take all the troubles; we all the enjoyments." this is slavery. now it is important to inquire whether it is not in the nature of uncontrolled power always to abuse itself. for my part i have no doubt of it, and should as soon expect to see the power that could arrest a stone in falling proceed from the stone itself, as to trust force within any defined limits. i should like to be shown a country where slavery has been abolished by the voluntary action of the masters. slavery furnishes a second striking example of the impotence of philosophical and religious sentiments in a conflict with the energetic activity of self-interest. this may seem sad to some modern schools which seek the reformation of society in self-denial. let them begin by reforming the nature of man. in the antilles the masters, from father to son, have, since slavery was established, professed the christian religion. many times a day they repeat these words: "all men are brothers. love thy neighbor as thyself; in this are the law and the prophets fulfilled." yet they hold slaves, and nothing seems to them more legitimate or natural. do modern reformers hope that their moral creed will ever be as universally accepted, as popular, as authoritative, or as often on all lips as the gospel? if _that_ has not passed from the lips to the heart, over or through the great barrier of self-interest, how can they hope that their system will work this miracle? well, then, is slavery invulnerable? no; self-interest, which founded it, will one day destroy it, provided the special interests which have created it do not stifle those general interests which tend to overthrow it. another truth demonstrated by political economy is, that free labor is progressive, and slave labor stationary. hence the triumph of the first over the second is inevitable. what has become of the cultivation of indigo by the blacks? free labor, applied to the production of sugar, is constantly causing a reduction in the price. slave property is becoming proportionately less valuable to the master. slavery will soon die out in america unless the price of sugar is artificially raised by legislation. accordingly we see to-day the masters, their creditors and representatives, making vigorous efforts to maintain these laws, which are the pillars of the edifice. unfortunately they still have the sympathy of people among whom slavery has disappeared, from which circumstance the sovereignty of public opinion may again be observed. if public opinion is sovereign in the domain of force, it is much more so in the domain of fraud. fraud is its proper sphere. stratagem is the abuse of intelligence. imposture on the part of the despoiler implies credulity on the part of the despoiled, and the natural antidote of credulity is truth. it follows that to enlighten the mind is to deprive this species of spoliation of its support. i will briefly pass in review a few of the different kinds of spoliation which are practiced on an exceedingly large scale. the first which presents itself is spoliation through the avenue of superstition. in what does it consist? in the exchange of food, clothing, luxury, distinction, influence, power--substantial services for fictitious services. if i tell a man: "i will render you an immediate service," i am obliged to keep my word, or he would soon know what to depend upon, and my trickery would be unmasked. but if i should tell him, "in exchange for your services i will do you immense service, not in this world but in another; after this life you may be eternally happy or miserable, and that happiness or misery depends upon me; i am a vicar between god and man, and can open to you the gates of heaven or of hell;" if that man believes me he is at my mercy. this method of imposture has been very extensively practiced since the beginning of the world, and it is well known to what omnipotence the egyptian priests attained by such means. it is easy to see how impostors proceed. it is enough to ask one's self what he would do in their place. if i, entertaining views of this kind, had arrived in the midst of an ignorant population, and were to succeed by some extraordinary act or marvelous appearance in passing myself off as a supernatural being, i would claim to be a messenger from god, having an absolute control over the future destinies of men. then i would forbid all examination of my claims. i would go still further, and, as reason would be my most dangerous enemy, i would interdict the use of reason--at least as applied to this dangerous subject. i would _taboo_, as the savages say, this question, and all those connected with it. to agitate them, discuss them, or even think of them, should be an unpardonable crime. certainly it would be the acme of art thus to put the barrier of the _taboo_ upon all intellectual avenues which might lead to the discovery of my imposture. what better guarantee of its perpetuity than to make even doubt sacrilege? however, i would add accessory guarantees to this fundamental one. for instance, in order that knowledge might never be disseminated among the masses, i would appropriate to myself and my accomplices the monopoly of the sciences. i would hide them under the veil of a dead language and hieroglyphic writing; and, in order that no danger might take me unawares, i would be careful to invent some ceremony which day by day would give me access to the privacy of all consciences. it would not be amiss for me to supply some of the real wants of my people, especially if by doing so i could add to my influence and authority. for instance, men need education and moral teaching, and i would be the source of both. thus i would guide as i pleased the minds and hearts of my people. i would join morality to my authority by an indissoluble chain, and i would proclaim that one could not exist without the other, so that if any audacious individual attempted to meddle with a _tabooed_ question, society, which cannot exist without morality, would feel the very earth tremble under its feet, and would turn its wrath upon the rash innovator. when things have come to this pass, it is plain that these people are more mine than if they were my slaves. the slave curses his chain, but my people will bless theirs, and i shall succeed in stamping, not on their foreheads, but in the very centre of their consciences, the seal of slavery. public opinion alone can overturn such a structure of iniquity; but where can it begin, if each stone is _tabooed_? it is the work of time and the printing press. god forbid that i should seek to disturb those consoling beliefs which link this life of sorrows to a life of felicity. but, that the irresistible longing which attracts us toward religion has been abused, no one, not even the head of christianity, can deny. there is, it seems to me, one sign by which you can know whether the people are or are not dupes. examine religion and the priest, and see whether the priest is the instrument of religion, or religion the instrument of the priest. if the priest is the instrument of religion, if his only thought is to disseminate its morality and its benefits on the earth, he will be gentle, tolerant, humble, charitable, and full of zeal; his life will reflect that of his divine model; he will preach liberty and equality among men, and peace and fraternity among nations; he will repel the allurements of temporal power, and will not ally himself with that which, of all things in this world, has the most need of restraint; he will be the man of the people, the man of good advice and tender consolations, the man of public opinion, the man of the evangelist. if, on the contrary, religion is the instrument of the priest, he will treat it as one does an instrument which is changed, bent and twisted in all ways so as to get out of it the greatest possible advantage for one's self. he will multiply _tabooed_ questions; his morality will be as flexible as seasons, men, and circumstances. he will seek to impose on humanity by gesticulations and studied attitudes; an hundred times a day he will mumble over words whose sense has evaporated and which have become empty conventionalities. he will traffic in holy things, but just enough not to shake faith in their sanctity, and he will take care that the more intelligent the people are, the less open shall the traffic be. he will take part in the intrigues of the world, and he will always side with the powerful, on the simple condition that they side with him. in a word, it will be easy to see in all his actions that he does not desire to advance religion by the clergy, but the clergy by religion, and as so many efforts indicate an object, and as this object, according to the hypothesis, can be only power and wealth, the decisive proof that the people are dupes is when the priest is rich and powerful. it is very plain that a true religion can be abused as well as a false one. the higher its authority the greater the fear that it may be severely tested. but there is much difference in the results. abuse always stirs up to revolt the sound, enlightened, intelligent portion of a people. this inevitably weakens faith, and the weakening of a true religion is far more lamentable than of a false one. this kind of spoliation, and popular enlightenment, are always in an inverse ratio to one another, for it is in the nature of abuses to go as far as possible. not that pure and devoted priests cannot be found in the midst of the most ignorant population, but how can the knave be prevented from donning the cassock and nursing the ambitious hope of wearing the mitre? despoilers obey the malthusian law; they multiply with the means of existence, and the means of existence of knaves is the credulity of their dupes. turn whichever way you please, you always find the need of an enlightened public opinion. there is no other cure-all. another species of spoliation is _commercial fraud_, a term which seems to me too limited because the tradesman who changes his weights and measures is not alone culpable, but also the physician who receives a fee for evil counsel, the lawyer who provokes litigation, etc. in the exchange of two services one may be of less value than the other, but when the service received is that which has been agreed upon, it is evident that spoliation of that nature will diminish with the increase of public intelligence. the next in order is the abuse in the _public service_--an immense field of spoliation, so immense that we can give it but partial consideration. if god had made man a solitary animal, every one would labor for himself. individual wealth would be in proportion to the services each one rendered to himself. but since _man is a social animal, one service is exchanged for another_. a proposition which you can transpose if it suits you. in society there are certain requirements so general, so universal in their nature, that provision has been made for them in the organizing of the public service. among these is the necessity of security. society agrees to compensate in services of a different nature those who render it the service of guarding the public safety. in this there is nothing contrary to the principles of political economy. _do this for me, i will do that for you._ the principle of the transaction is the same, although the process is different, but the circumstance has great significance. in private transactions each individual remains the judge both of the service which he renders and of that which he receives. he can always decline an exchange, or negotiate elsewhere. there is no necessity of an interchange of services, except by previous voluntary agreement. such is not the case with the state, especially before the establishment of representative government. whether or not we require its services, whether they are good or bad, we are obliged to accept such as are offered and to pay the price. it is the tendency of all men to magnify their own services and to disparage services rendered them, and private matters would be poorly regulated if there was not some standard of value. this guarantee we have not, (or we hardly have it,) in public affairs. but still society, composed of men, however strongly the contrary may be insinuated, obeys the universal tendency. the government wishes to serve us a great deal, much more than we desire, and forces us to acknowledge as a real service that which sometimes is widely different, and this is done for the purpose of demanding contributions from us in return. the state is also subject to the law of malthus. it is continually living beyond its means, it increases in proportion to its means, and draws its support solely, from the substance of the people. woe to the people who are incapable of limiting the sphere of action of the state. liberty, private activity, riches, well-being, independence, dignity, depend upon this. there is one circumstance which must be noticed: chief among the services which we ask of the state is _security_. that it may guarantee this to us it must control a force capable of overcoming all individual or collective domestic or foreign forces which might endanger it. combined with that fatal disposition among men to live at the expense of each other, which we have before noticed, this fact suggests a danger patent to all. you will accordingly observe on what an immense scale spoliation, by the abuses and excesses of the government, has been practiced. if one should ask what service has been rendered the public, and what return has been made therefor, by such governments as assyria, babylon, egypt, rome, persia, turkey, china, russia, england, spain and france, he would be astonished at the enormous disparity. at last representative government was invented, and, _a priori_, one might have believed that the disorder would have ceased as if by enchantment. the principle of these governments is this: "the people themselves, by their representatives, shall decide as to the nature and extent of the public service and the remuneration for those services." the tendency to appropriate the property of another, and the desire to defend one's own, are thus brought in contact. one might suppose that the latter would overcome the former. assuredly i am convinced that the latter will finally prevail, but we must concede that thus far it has not. why? for a very simple reason. governments have had too much sagacity; people too little. governments are skillful. they act methodically, consecutively, on a well concerted plan, which is constantly improved by tradition and experience. they study men and their passions. if they perceive, for instance, that they have warlike instincts, they incite and inflame this fatal propensity. they surround the nation with dangers through the conduct of diplomats, and then naturally ask for soldiers, sailors, arsenals and fortifications. often they have but the trouble of accepting them. then they have pensions, places, and promotions to offer. all this calls for money. hence loans and taxes. if the nation is generous, the government proposes to cure all the ills of humanity. it promises to increase commerce, to make agriculture prosperous, to develop manufactures, to encourage letters and arts, to banish misery, etc. all that is necessary is to create offices and to pay public functionaries. in other words, their tactics consist in presenting as actual services things which are but hindrances; then the nation pays, not for being served, but for being subservient. governments assuming gigantic proportions end by absorbing half of all the revenues. the people are astonished that while marvelous labor-saving inventions, destined to infinitely multiply productions, are ever increasing in number, they are obliged to toil on as painfully as ever, and remain as poor as before. this happens because, while the government manifests so much ability, the people show so little. thus, when they are called upon to choose their agents, those who are to determine the sphere of, and compensation for, governmental action, whom do they choose? the agents of the government. they entrust the executive power with the determination of the limit of its activity and its requirements. they are like the _bourgeois gentilhomme_, who referred the selection and number of his suits of clothes to his tailor. however, things go from bad to worse, and at last the people open their eyes, not to the remedy, for there is none as yet, but to the evil. governing is so pleasant a trade that everybody desires to engage in it. thus the advisers of the people do not cease to say: "we see your sufferings, and we weep over them. it would be otherwise if _we_ governed you." this period, which usually lasts for some time, is one of rebellions and insurrections. when the people are conquered, the expenses of the war are added to their burdens. when they conquer, there is a change of those who govern, and the abuses remain. this lasts until the people learn to know and defend their true interests. thus we always come back to this: there is no remedy but in the progress of public intelligence. certain nations seem remarkably inclined to become the prey of governmental spoliation. they are those where men, not considering their own dignity and energy, would believe themselves lost, if they were not governed and administered upon in all things. without having traveled much, i have seen countries where they think agriculture can make no progress unless the state keeps up experimental farms; that there will presently be no horses if the state has no stables; and that fathers will not have their children educated, or will teach them only immoralities, if the state does not decide what it is proper to learn. in such a country revolutions may rapidly succeed one another, and one set of rulers after another be overturned. but the governed are none the less governed at the caprice and mercy of their rulers, until the people see that it is better to leave the greatest possible number of services in the category of those which the parties interested exchange after a fair discussion of the price. we have seen that society is an exchange of services, and should be but an exchange of good and honest ones. but we have also proven that men have a great interest in exaggerating the relative value of the services they render one another. i cannot, indeed, see any other limit to these claims than the free acceptance or free refusal of those to whom these services are offered. hence it comes that certain men resort to the law to curtail the natural prerogatives of this liberty. this kind of spoliation is called privilege or monopoly. we will carefully indicate its origin and character. every one knows that the services which he offers in the general market are the more valued and better paid for, the scarcer they are. each one, then, will ask for the enactment of a law to keep out of the market all who offer services similar to his. this variety of spoliation being the chief subject of this volume, i will say little of it here, and will restrict myself to one remark: when the monopoly is an isolated fact, it never fails to enrich the person to whom the law has granted it. it may then happen that each class of workmen, instead of seeking the overthrow of this monopoly, claim a similar one for themselves. this kind of spoliation, thus reduced to a system, becomes then the most ridiculous of mystifications for every one, and the definite result is that each one believes that he gains more from a general market impoverished by all. it is not necessary to add that this singular _regime_ also brings about an universal antagonism between all classes, all professions, and all peoples; that it requires the constant but always uncertain interference of government; that it swarms with the abuses which have been the subject of the preceding paragraph; that it places all industrial pursuits in hopeless insecurity; and that it accustoms men to place upon the law, and not upon themselves, the responsibility for their very existence. it would be difficult to imagine a more active cause of social disturbance. justification. it may be asked, "why this ugly word--spoliation? it is not only coarse, but it wounds and irritates; it turns calm and moderate men against you, and embitters the controversy." i earnestly declare that i respect individuals; i believe in the sincerity of almost all the friends of protection, and i do not claim that i have any right to suspect the personal honesty, delicacy of feeling, or philanthropy of any one. i also repeat that protection is the work, the fatal work, of a common error, of which all, or nearly all, are at once victims and accomplices. but i cannot prevent things being what they are. just imagine some diogenes putting his head out of his tub and saying, "athenians, you are served by slaves. have you never thought that you practice on your brothers the most iniquitous spoliation?" or a tribune speaking in the forum, "romans! you have laid the foundation of all your greatness on the pillage of other nations." they would state only undeniable truths. but must we conclude from this that athens and rome were inhabited only by dishonest persons? that socrates and plato, cato and cincinnatus were despicable characters? who could harbor such a thought? but these great men lived amidst surroundings that relieved their consciences of the sense of this injustice. even aristotle could not conceive the idea of a society existing without slavery. in modern times slavery has continued to our own day without causing many scruples among the planters. armies have served as the instruments of grand conquests--that is to say, of grand spoliations. is this saying that they are not composed of officers and men as sensitive of their honor, even more so, perhaps, than men in ordinary industrial pursuits--men who would blush at the very thought of theft, and who would face a thousand deaths rather than stoop to a base action? it is not individuals who are to blame, but the general movement of opinion which deludes and deceives them--a movement for which society in general is culpable. thus is it with monopoly. i accuse the system, and not individuals; society as a mass, and not this or that one of its members. if the greatest philosophers have been able to deceive themselves as to the iniquity of slavery, how much easier is it for farmers and manufacturers to deceive themselves as to the nature and effects of the protective system. ii. two systems of morals. arrived at the end of the preceding chapter, if he gets so far, i imagine i hear the reader say: "well, now, was i wrong in accusing political economists of being dry and cold? what a picture of humanity! spoliation is a fatal power, almost normal, assuming every form, practiced under every pretext, against law and according to law, abusing the most sacred things, alternately playing upon the feebleness and the credulity of the masses, and ever growing by what it feeds on. could a more mournful picture of the world be imagined than this?" the problem is, not to find whether the picture is mournful, but whether it is true. and for that we have the testimony of history. it is singular that those who decry political economy, because it investigates men and the world as it finds them, are more gloomy than political economy itself, at least as regards the past and the present. look into their books and their journals. what do you find? bitterness and hatred of society. the very word _civilization_ is for them a synonym for injustice, disorder and anarchy. they have even come to curse _liberty_, so little confidence have they in the development of the human race, the result of its natural organization. liberty, according to them, is something which will bring humanity nearer and nearer to destruction. it is true that they are optimists as regards the future. for, although humanity, in itself incapable, for six thousand years has gone astray, a revelation has come, which has pointed out to men the way of safety, and, if the flock are docile and obedient to the shepherd's call, will lead them to the promised land, where well-being may be attained without effort, where order, security and prosperity are the easy reward of improvidence. to this end humanity, as rousseau said, has only to allow these reformers to change the physical and moral constitution of man. political economy has not taken upon itself the mission of finding out the probable condition of society had it pleased god to make men different from what they are. it may be unfortunate that providence, at the beginning, neglected to call to his counsels a few of our modern reformers. and, as the celestial mechanism would have been entirely different had the creator consulted _alphonso the wise_, society, also, had he not neglected the advice of fourier, would have been very different from that in which we are compelled to live, and move, and breathe. but, since we are here, our duty is to study and to understand his laws, especially if the amelioration of our condition essentially depends upon such knowledge. we cannot prevent the existence of unsatisfied desires in the hearts of men. we cannot satisfy these desires except by labor. we cannot deny the fact that man has as much repugnance for labor as he has satisfaction with its results. since man has such characteristics, we cannot prevent the existence of a constant tendency among men to obtain their part of the enjoyments of life while throwing upon others, by force or by trickery, the burdens of labor. it is not for us to belie universal history, to silence the voice of the past, which attests that this has been the condition of things since the beginning of the world. we cannot deny that war, slavery, superstition, the abuses of government, privileges, frauds of every nature, and monopolies, have been the incontestable and terrible manifestations of these two sentiments united in the heart of man: _desire for enjoyment; repugnance to labor_. "in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread!" but every one wants as much bread and as little sweat as possible. this is the conclusion of history. thank heaven, history also teaches that the division of blessings and burdens tends to a more exact equality among men. unless one is prepared to deny the light of the sun, it must be admitted that, in this respect at least, society has made some progress. if this be true, there exists in society a natural and providential force, a law which causes iniquity gradually to cease, and makes justice more and more a reality. we say that this force exists in society, and that god has placed it there. if it did not exist we should be compelled, with the socialists, to search for it in those artificial means, in those arrangements which require a fundamental change in the physical and moral constitution of man, or rather we should consider that search idle and vain, for the reason that we could not comprehend the action of a lever without a place of support. let us, then, endeavor to indicate that beneficent force which tends progressively to overcome the maleficent force to which we have given the name spoliation, and the existence of which is only too well explained by reason and proved by experience. every maleficent act necessarily has two terms--the point of beginning and the point of ending; the man who performs the act and the man upon whom it is performed; or, in the language of the schools, the active and the passive agent. there are, then, two means by which the maleficent act can be prevented: by the voluntary absence of the active, or by the resistance of the passive agent. whence two systems of morals arise, not antagonistic but concurrent; religious or philosophical morality, and the morality to which i permit myself to apply the name economical (utilitarian). religious morality, to abolish and extirpate the maleficent act, appeals to its author, to man in his capacity of active agent. it says to him: "reform yourself; purify yourself; cease to do evil; learn to do well; conquer your passions; sacrifice your interests; do not oppress your neighbor, to succor and relieve whom is your duty; be first just, then generous." this morality will always be the most beautiful, the most touching, that which will exhibit the human race in all its majesty; which will the best lend itself to the offices of eloquence, and will most excite the sympathy and admiration of mankind. utilitarian morality works to the same end, but especially addresses itself to man in his capacity of passive agent. it points out to him the consequences of human actions, and, by this simple exhibition, stimulates him to struggle against those which injure, and to honor those which are useful to him. it aims to extend among the oppressed masses enough good sense, enlightenment and just defiance, to render oppression both difficult and dangerous. it may also be remarked that utilitarian morality is not without its influence upon the oppressor. an act of spoliation causes good and evil--evil for him who suffers it, good for him in whose favor it is exercised--else the act would not have been performed. but the good by no means compensates the evil. the evil always, and necessarily, predominates over the good, because the very fact of oppression occasions a loss of force, creates dangers, provokes reprisals, and requires costly precautions. the simple exhibition of these effects is not then limited to retaliation of the oppressed; it places all, whose hearts are not perverted, on the side of justice, and alarms the security of the oppressors themselves. but it is easy to understand that this morality which is simply a scientific demonstration, and would even lose its efficiency if it changed its character; which addresses itself not to the heart but to the intelligence; which seeks not to persuade but to convince; which gives proofs not counsels; whose mission is not to move but to enlighten, and which obtains over vice no other victory than to deprive it of its booty--it is easy to understand, i say, how this morality has been accused of being dry and prosaic. the reproach is true without being just. it is equivalent to saying that political economy is not everything, does not comprehend everything, is not the universal solvent. but who has ever made such an exorbitant pretension in its name? the accusation would not be well founded unless political economy presented its processes as final, and denied to philosophy and religion the use of their direct and proper means of elevating humanity. look at the concurrent action of morality, properly so called, and of political economy--the one inveighing against spoliation by an exposure of its moral ugliness, the other bringing it into discredit in our judgment, by showing its evil consequences. concede that the triumph of the religious moralist, when realized, is more beautiful, more consoling and more radical; at the same time it is not easy to deny that the triumph of economical science is more facile and more certain. in a few lines, more valuable than many volumes, j.b. say has already remarked that there are two ways of removing the disorder introduced by hypocrisy into an honorable family; to reform tartuffe, or sharpen the wits of orgon. moliere, that great painter of human life, seems constantly to have had in view the second process as the more efficient. such is the case on the world's stage. tell me what cæsar did, and i will tell you what were the romans of his day. tell me what modern diplomacy has accomplished, and i will describe the moral condition of the nations. we should not pay two milliards of taxes if we did not appoint those who consume them to vote them. we should not have so much trouble, difficulty and expense with the african question if we were as well convinced that two and two make four in political economy as in arithmetic. m. guizot would never have had occasion to say: "france is rich enough to pay for her glory," if france had never conceived a false idea of glory. the same statesman never would have said: "_liberty is too precious for france to traffic in it_," if france had well understood that _liberty_ and a _large budget_ are incompatible. let religious morality then, if it can, touch the heart of the tartuffes, the cæsars, the conquerors of algeria, the sinecurists, the monopolists, etc. the mission of political economy is to enlighten their dupes. of these two processes, which is the more efficient aid to social progress? i believe it is the second. i believe that humanity cannot escape the necessity of first learning a _defensive morality_. i have read, observed, and made diligent inquiry, and have been unable to find any abuse, practiced to any considerable extent, that has perished by voluntary renunciation on the part of those who profited by it. on the contrary, i have seen many that have yielded to the manly resistance of those who suffered by them. to describe the consequences of abuses, is the most efficient way of destroying the abuses themselves. and this is true particularly in regard to abuses which, like the protective system, while inflicting real evil upon the masses, are to those who seem to profit by them only an illusion and a deception. well, then, does this species of morality realize all the social perfection which the sympathetic nature of the human heart and its noblest faculties cause us to hope for? this i by no means pretend. admit the general diffusion of this defensive morality--which, after all, is only a knowledge that the best understood interests are in accord with general utility and justice. a society, although very well regulated, might not be very attractive, where there were no knaves, only because there were no fools; where vice, always latent, and, so to speak, overcome by famine, would only stand in need of available plunder in order to be restored to vigor; where the prudence of the individual would be guarded by the vigilance of the mass, and, finally, where reforms, regulating external acts, would not have penetrated to the consciences of men. such a state of society we sometimes see typified in one of those exact, rigorous and just men who is ever ready to resent the slightest infringement of his rights, and shrewd in avoiding impositions. you esteem him--possibly you admire him. you may make him your deputy, but you would not necessarily choose him for a friend. let, then, the two moral systems, instead of criminating each other, act in concert, and attack vice at its opposite poles. while the economists perform their task in uprooting prejudice, stimulating just and necessary opposition, studying and exposing the real nature of actions and things, let the religious moralist, on his part, perform his more attractive, but more difficult, labor; let him attack the very body of iniquity, follow it to its most vital parts, paint the charms of beneficence, self-denial and devotion, open the fountains of virtue where we can only choke the sources of vice--this is his duty. it is noble and beautiful. but why does he dispute the utility of that which belongs to us? in a society which, though not superlatively virtuous, should nevertheless be regulated by the influences of _economical morality_ (which is the knowledge of the economy of society), would there not be a field for the progress of religious morality? habit, it has been said, is a second nature. a country where the individual had become unaccustomed to injustice, simply by the force of an enlightened public opinion, might, indeed, be pitiable; but it seems to me it would be well prepared to receive an education more elevated and more pure. to be disaccustomed to evil is a great step towards becoming good. men cannot remain stationary. turned aside from the paths of vice which would lead only to infamy, they appreciate better the attractions of virtue. possibly it may be necessary for society to pass through this prosaic state, where men practice virtue by calculation, to be thence elevated to that more poetic region where they will no longer have need of such an exercise. iii. the two hatchets. _petition of jacques bonhomme, carpenter, to m. cunin-gridaine, minister of commerce._ mr. manufacturer-minister: i am a carpenter, as was jesus; i handle the hatchet and the plane to serve you. in chopping and splitting from morning until night in the domain of my lord, the king, the idea has occurred to me that my labor was as much _national_ as yours. and accordingly i don't understand why protection should not visit my shop as well as your manufactory. for indeed, if you make cloths, i make roofs. both by different means protect our patrons from cold and rain. but i have to run after customers while business seeks you. you know how to manage this by obtaining a monopoly, while my business is open to any one who chooses to engage in it. what is there astonishing in this? mr. cunin, the cabinet minister, has not forgotten mr. cunin, the manufacturer, as was very natural. but unfortunately, my humble occupation has not given a minister to france, although it has given a saviour to the world. and this saviour, in the immortal code which he bequeathed to men, did not utter the smallest word by virtue of which carpenters might feel authorized to enrich themselves as you do at the expense of others. look, then, at my position. i earn thirty cents every day, excepts sundays and holidays. if i apply to you for work at the same time with a flemish workman, you give him the preference. but i need clothing. if a belgian weaver puts his cloth beside yours, you drive both him and his cloth out of the country. consequently, forced to buy at your shop, where it is dearest, my poor thirty cents are really worth only twenty-eight. what did i say? they are worth only twenty-six. for, instead of driving the belgian weaver away at _your own expense_ (which would be the least you could do) you compel me to pay those who, in your interest, force him out of the market. and since a large number of your fellow-legislators, with whom you seem to have an excellent understanding, take away from me a cent or two each, under pretext of protecting somebody's coal, or oil, or wheat, when the balance is struck, i find that of my thirty cents i have only fifteen left from the pillage. possibly, you may answer that those few pennies which pass thus, without compensation, from my pocket to yours, support a number of people about your _chateau_, and at the same time assist you in keeping up your establishment. to which, if you would permit me, i would reply, they would likewise support a number of persons in my cottage. however this may be, hon. minister-manufacturer, knowing that i should meet with a cold reception were i to ask you to renounce the restriction imposed upon your customers, as i have a right to, i prefer to follow the fashion, and to demand for myself, also, a little morsel of _protection_. to this, doubtless you will interpose some objections. "friend," you will say, "i would be glad to protect you and your colleagues; but how can i confer such favors upon the labor of carpenters? shall i prohibit the importation of houses by land and by sea?" this would seem sufficiently ridiculous, but by giving much thought to the subject, i have discovered a way to protect the children of st. joseph, and you will, i trust, the more readily grant it since it differs in no respect from the privilege which you vote for yourself every year. this wonderful way is to prohibit the use of sharp hatchets in france. i say that this restriction would be neither more illogical nor arbitrary than that which you subject us to in regard to your cloth. why do you drive away the belgians? because they sell cheaper than you do. and why do they sell cheaper than you do? because they are in some way or another your superiors as manufacturers. between you and the belgians, then, there is exactly the same difference that there is between a dull hatchet and a sharp one. and you compel me, a carpenter, to buy the workmanship of your dull hatchet! consider france a laborer, obliged to live by his daily toil, and desiring, among other things, to purchase cloth. there are two means of doing this. the first is to card the wool and weave the cloth himself; the second is to manufacture clocks, or wines, or wall-paper, or something of the sort, and exchange them in belgium for cloth. the process which gives the larger result may be represented by the sharp hatchet; the other process by the dull one. you will not deny that at the present day in france it is more difficult to manufacture cloth than to cultivate the vine--the former is the dull hatchet, the latter the sharp one--on the contrary, you make this greater difficulty the very reason why you recommend to us the worst of the two hatchets. now, then, be consistent, if you will not be just, and treat the poor carpenters as well as you treat yourself. make a law which shall read: "it is forbidden to use beams or shingles which have not been fashioned by dull hatchets." and you will immediately perceive the result. where we now strike an hundred blows with the ax, we shall be obliged to give three hundred. what a powerful encouragement to industry! apprentices, journeymen and masters, we should suffer no more. we should be greatly sought after, and go away well paid. whoever wishes to enjoy a roof must leave us to make his tariff, just as buyers of cloth are now obliged to submit to you. as for those free trade theorists, should they ever venture to call the utility of this system in question we should know where to go for an unanswerable argument. your investigation of is at our service. we should fight them with that, for there you have admirably pleaded the cause of prohibition, and of dull hatchets, which are both the same. iv. inferior council of labor. "what! you have the assurance to demand for every citizen the right to buy, sell, trade, exchange, and to render service for service according to his own discretion, on the sole condition that he will conduct himself honestly, and not defraud the revenue? would you rob the workingman of his labor, his wages and his bread?" this is what is said to us. i know what the general opinion is; but i have desired to know what the laborers themselves think. i have had an excellent opportunity of finding out. it was not one of those _superior councils of industry_ (committee on the revision of the tariff), where large manufacturers, who style themselves laborers, influential ship-builders who imagine themselves seamen, and wealthy bondholders who think themselves workmen, meet and legislate in behalf of that philanthropy with whose nature we are so well acquainted. no, they were workmen "to the manor born," real, practical laborers, such as joiners, carpenters, masons, tailors, shoemakers, blacksmiths, grocers, etc., etc., who had established in my village a _mutual aid society_. upon my own private authority i transformed it into an _inferior council of labor_ (people's committee for revising the tariff), and i obtained a report which is as good as any other, although unencumbered by figures, and not distended to the proportions of a quarto volume and printed at the expense of the state. the subject of my inquiry was the real or supposed influence of the protective system upon these poor people. the president, indeed, informed me that the institution of such an inquiry was somewhat in contravention of the principles of the society. for, in france, the land of liberty, those who desire to form associations must renounce political discussions--that is to say, the discussion of their common interests. however, after much hesitation, he made the question the order of the day. the assembly was divided into as many sub-committees as there were different trades represented. a blank was handed to each sub-committee, which, after fifteen days' discussion, was to be filled and returned. on the appointed day the venerable president took the chair (official style, for it was only a stool) and found upon the table (official style, again, for it was a deal plank across a barrel) a dozen reports, which he read in succession. the first presented was that of the tailors. here it is, as accurately as if it had been photographed: results of protection--report of the tailors. _disadvantages._ |_advantages._ | . on account of the protective tariff, we pay | none. more for our own bread, meat, sugar, thread, | etc., which is equivalent to a considerable | . we have examined diminution of our wages. | the question in | every light, and . on account of the protective tariff, our patrons | have been unable to are also obliged to pay more for everything, and | perceive a single have less to spend for clothes, consequently we | point in regard to have less work and smaller profits. | which the protective | system is . on account of the protective tariff, clothes | advantageous to are expensive, and people make them wear longer, | our trade. which results in a loss of work, and compels us to | offer our services at greatly reduced rates. | here is another report: effects of protection--report of the blacksmiths. _disadvantages._ | _advantages._ | . the protective system imposes a tax (which does | not get into the treasury) every time we eat, drink, | warm, or clothe ourselves. | | . it imposes a similar tax upon our neighbors, and | hence, having less money, most of them use wooden | pegs, instead of buying nails, which deprives us of | labor. | | . it keeps the price of iron so high that it can | none. no longer be used in the country for plows, or gates,| or house fixtures, and our trade, which might give | work to so many who have none, does not even give | ourselves enough to do. | | . the deficit occasioned in the treasury by those | goods _which do not enter_ is made up by taxes | on our salt. | the other reports, with which i will not trouble the reader, told the same story. gardeners, carpenters, shoemakers, boatmen, all complained of the same grievances. i am sorry there were no day laborers in our association. their report would certainly have been exceedingly instructive. but, unfortunately, the poor laborers of our province, all _protected_ as they are, have not a cent, and, after having taken care of their cattle, cannot go themselves to the _mutual aid society_. the pretended favors of protection do not prevent them from being the pariahs of modern society. what i would especially remark is the good sense with which our villagers have perceived not only the direct evil results of protection, but also the indirect evil which, affecting their patrons, reacts upon themselves. this is a fact, it seems to me, which the economists of the school of the _moniteur industriel_ do not understand. and possibly some men, who are fascinated by a very little protection, the agriculturists, for instance, would voluntarily renounce it if they noticed this side of the question. possibly, they might say to themselves: "it is better to support one's self surrounded by well-to-do neighbors, than to be protected in the midst of poverty." for to seek to encourage every branch of industry by successively creating a void around them, is as vain as to attempt to jump away from one's shadow. v. dearness--cheapness. i consider it my duty to say a few words in regard to the delusion caused by the words _dear_ and _cheap_. at the first glance, i am aware, you may be disposed to find these remarks somewhat subtile, but whether subtile or not, the question is whether they are true. for my part i consider them perfectly true, and particularly well adapted to cause reflection among a large number of those who cherish a sincere faith in the efficacy of protection. whether advocates of free trade or defenders of protection, we are all obliged to make use of the expression _dearness_ and _cheapness_. the former take sides in behalf of _cheapness_, having in view the interests of consumers. the latter pronounce themselves in favor of _dearness_, preoccupying themselves solely with the interests of the producer. others intervene, saying, _producer and consumer are one and the same_, which leaves wholly undecided the question whether cheapness or dearness ought to be the object of legislation. in this conflict of opinion it seems to me that there is only one position for the law to take--to allow prices to regulate themselves naturally. but the principle of "let alone" has obstinate enemies. they insist upon legislation without even knowing the desired objects of legislation. it would seem, however, to be the duty of those who wish to create high or low prices artificially, to state, and to substantiate, the reasons of their preference. the burden of proof is upon them. liberty is always considered beneficial until the contrary is proved, and to allow prices naturally to regulate themselves is liberty. but the _roles_ have been changed. the partisans of high prices have obtained a triumph for their system, and it has fallen to defenders of natural prices to prove the advantages of their system. the argument on both sides is conducted with two words. it is very essential, then, to understand their meaning. it must be granted at the outset that a series of events have happened well calculated to disconcert both sides. in order to produce _high prices_ the protectionists have obtained high tariffs, and still low prices have come to disappoint their expectations. in order to produce _low prices_, free traders have sometimes carried their point, and, to their great astonishment, the result in some instances has been an increase instead of a reduction in prices. for instance, in france, to protect farmers, a law was passed imposing a duty of twenty-two per cent. upon imported wools, and the result has been that native wools have been sold for much lower prices than before the passage of the law. in england a law in behalf of the consumers was passed, exempting foreign wools from duty, and the consequence has been that native wools have sold higher than ever before. and this is not an isolated fact, for the price of wool has no special or peculiar nature which takes it out of the general law governing prices. the same fact has been reproduced under analogous circumstances. contrary to all expectation, protection has frequently resulted in low prices, and free trade in high prices. hence there has been a deal of perplexity in the discussion, the protectionists saying to their adversaries: "these low prices that you talk about so much are the result of our system;" and the free traders replying: "those high prices which you find so profitable are the consequence of free trade." there evidently is a misunderstanding, an illusion, which must be dispelled. this i will endeavor to do. suppose two isolated nations, each composed of a million inhabitants; admit that, other things being equal, one nation had exactly twice as much of everything as the other--twice as much wheat, wine, iron, fuel, books, clothing, furniture, etc. it will be conceded that one will have twice as much wealth as the other. there is, however, no reason for the statement that the _absolute prices_ are different in the two nations. they possibly may be higher in the wealthiest nation. it may happen that in the united states everything is nominally dearer than in poland, and that, nevertheless, the people there are less generally supplied with everything; by which it may be seen that the abundance of products, and not the absolute price, constitutes wealth. in order, then, accurately to compare free trade and protection the inquiry should not be which of the two causes high prices or low prices, but which of the two produces abundance or scarcity. for observe this: products are exchanged, the one for the other, and a relative scarcity and a relative abundance leave the absolute price exactly at the same point, but not so the condition of men. let us look into the subject a little further. since the increase and the reduction of duties have been accompanied by results so different from what had been expected, a fall of prices frequently succeeding the increase of the tariff, and a rise sometimes following a reduction of duties, it has become necessary for political economy to attempt the explanation of a phenomenon which so overthrows received ideas; for, whatever may be said, science is simply a faithful exposition and a true explanation of facts. this phenomenon may be easily explained by one circumstance which should never be lost sight of. it is that there are _two causes_ for high prices, and not one merely. the same is true of low prices. one of the best established principles of political economy is that price is determined by the law of supply and demand. the price is then affected by two conditions--the demand and the supply. these conditions are necessarily subject to variation. the relations of demand to supply may be exactly counterbalanced, or may be greatly disproportionate, and the variations of price are almost interminable. prices rise either on account of augmented demand or diminished supply. they fall by reason of an augmentation of the supply or a diminution of the demand. consequently there are two kinds of _dearness_ and two kinds of _cheapness_. there is a bad dearness, which results from a diminution of the supply; for this implies scarcity and privation. there is a good dearness--that which results from an increase of demand; for this indicates the augmentation of the general wealth. there is also a good cheapness, resulting from abundance. and there is a baneful cheapness--such as results from the cessation of demand, the inability of consumers to purchase. and observe this: prohibition causes at the same time both the dearness and the cheapness which are of a bad nature; a bad dearness, resulting from a diminution of the supply (this indeed is its avowed object), and a bad cheapness, resulting from a diminution of the demand, because it gives a false direction to capital and labor, and overwhelms consumers with taxes and restrictions. so that, _as regards the price_, these two tendencies neutralize each other; and for this reason, the protective system, restricting the supply and the demand at the same time, does not realize the high prices which are its object. but with respect to the condition of the people, these two tendencies do not neutralize each other; on the contrary, they unite in impoverishing them. the effect of free trade is exactly the opposite. possibly it does not cause the cheapness which it promises; for it also has two tendencies, the one towards that desirable form of cheapness resulting from the increase of supply, or from abundance; the other towards that dearness consequent upon the increased demand and the development of the general wealth. these two tendencies neutralize themselves as regards the _mere price_; but they concur in their tendency to ameliorate the condition of mankind. in a word, under the protective system men recede towards a condition of feebleness as regards both supply and demand; under the free trade system, they advance towards a condition where development is gradual without any necessary increase in the absolute prices of things. price is not a good criterion of wealth. it might continue the same when society had relapsed into the most abject misery, or had advanced to a high state of prosperity. let me make application of this doctrine in a few words: a farmer in the south of france supposes himself as rich as croesus, because he is protected by law from foreign competition. he is as poor as job--no matter, he will none the less suppose that this protection will sooner or later make him rich. under these circumstances, if the question was propounded to him, as it was by the committee of the legislature, in these terms: "do you want to be subject to foreign competition? yes or no," his first answer would be "no," and the committee would record his reply with great enthusiasm. we should go, however, to the bottom of things. doubtless foreign competition, and competition of any kind, is always inopportune; and, if any trade could be permanently rid of it, business, for a time, would be prosperous. but protection is not an isolated favor. it is a system. if, in order to protect the farmer, it occasions a scarcity of wheat and of beef, in behalf of other industries it produces a scarcity of iron, cloth, fuel, tools, etc.--in short, a scarcity of everything. if, then, the scarcity of wheat has a tendency to increase the price by reason of the diminution of the supply, the scarcity of all other products for which wheat is exchanged has likewise a tendency to depreciate the value of wheat on account of a falling off of the demand; so that it is by no means certain that wheat will be a mill dearer under a protective tariff than under a system of free trade. this alone is certain, that inasmuch as there is a smaller amount of everything in the country, each individual will be more poorly provided with everything. the farmer would do well to consider whether it would not be more desirable for him to allow the importation of wheat and beef, and, as a consequence, to be surrounded by a well-to-do community, able to consume and to pay for every agricultural product. there is a certain province where the men are covered with rags, dwell in hovels, and subsist on chestnuts. how can agriculture flourish there? what can they make the earth produce, with the expectation of profit? meat? they eat none. milk? they drink only the water of springs. butter? it is an article of luxury far beyond them. wool? they get along without it as much as possible. can any one imagine that all these objects of consumption can be thus left untouched by the masses, without lowering prices? that which we say of a farmer, we can say of a manufacturer. cloth-makers assert that foreign competition will lower prices owing to the increased quantity offered. very well, but are not these prices raised by the increase of the demand? is the consumption of cloth a fixed and invariable quantity? is each one as well provided with it as he might and should be? and if the general wealth were developed by the abolition of all these taxes and hindrances, would not the first use made of it by the population be to clothe themselves better? therefore the question, the eternal question, is not whether protection favors this or that special branch of industry, but whether, all things considered, restriction is, in its nature, more profitable than freedom? now, no person can maintain that proposition. and just this explains the admission which our opponents continually make to us: "you are right on principle." if that is true, if restriction aids each special industry only through a greater injury to the general prosperity, let us understand, then, that the price itself, considering that alone, expresses a relation between each special industry and the general industry, between the supply and the demand, and that, reasoning from these premises, this _remunerative price_ (the object of protection) is more hindered than favored by it. appendix. we published an article entitled _dearness-cheapness_, which gained for us the two following letters. we publish them, with the answers: "dear mr. editor:--you upset all my ideas. i preached in favor of free trade, and found it very convenient to put prominently forward the idea of _cheapness_. i went everywhere, saying, "with free trade, bread, meat, woolens, linen, iron and coal will fall in price." this displeased those who sold, but delighted those who bought. now, you raise a doubt as to whether _cheapness_ is the result of free trade. but if not, of what use is it? what will the people gain, if foreign competition, which may interfere with them in their sales, does not favor them in their purchases?" my dear free trader:--allow us to say that you have but half read the article which provoked your letter. we said that free trade acted precisely like roads, canals and railways, like everything which facilitates communications, and like everything which destroys obstacles. its first tendency is to increase the quantity of the article which is relieved from duties, and consequently to lower its price. but by increasing, at the same time, the quantity of all the things for which this article is exchanged, it increases the _demand_, and consequently the price rises. you ask us what the people will gain. suppose they have a balance with certain scales, in each one of which they have for their use a certain quantity of the articles which you have enumerated. if a little grain is put in one scale it will gradually sink, but if an equal quantity of cloth, iron and coal is added in the others, the equilibrium will be maintained. looking at the beam above, there will be no change. looking at the people, we shall see them better fed, clothed and warmed. "dear mr. editor:--i am a cloth manufacturer, and a protectionist. i confess that your article on _dearness_ and _cheapness_ has led me to reflect. it has something specious about it, and if well proven, would work my conversion." my dear protectionist:--we say that the end and aim of your restrictive measures is a wrongful one--_artificial dearness_. but we do not say that they always realize the hopes of those who initiate them. it is certain that they inflict on the consumer all the evils of dearness. it is not certain that the producer gets the profit. why? because if they diminish the supply they also diminish the _demand_. this proves that in the economical arrangement of this world there is a moral force, a _vis medicatrix_, which in the long run causes inordinate ambition to become the prey of a delusion. pray, notice, sir, that one of the elements of the prosperity of each special branch of industry is the general prosperity. the rent of a house is not merely in proportion to what it has cost, but also to the number and means of the tenants. do two houses which are precisely alike necessarily rent for the same sum? certainly not, if one is in paris and the other in lower brittany. let us never speak of a price without regarding the _conditions_, and let us understand that there is nothing more futile than to try to build the prosperity of the parts on the ruin of the whole. this is the attempt of the restrictive system. competition always has been, and always will be, disagreeable to those who are affected by it. thus we see that in all times and in all places men try to get rid of it. we know, and you too, perhaps, a municipal council where the resident merchants make a furious war on the foreign ones. their projectiles are import duties, fines, etc., etc. now, just think what would have become of paris, for instance, if this war had been carried on there with success. suppose that the first shoemaker who settled there had succeeded in keeping out all others, and that the first tailor, the first mason, the first printer, the first watchmaker, the first hair-dresser, the first physician, the first baker, had been equally fortunate. paris would still be a village, with twelve or fifteen hundred inhabitants. but it was not thus. each one, except those whom you still keep away, came to make money in this market, and that is precisely what has built it up. it has been a long series of collisions for the enemies of competition, and from one collision after another, paris has become a city of a million inhabitants. the general prosperity has gained by this, doubtless, but have the shoemakers and tailors, individually, lost anything by it? for you, this is the question. as competitors came, you said: the price of boots will fail. has it been so? no, for if the _supply_ has increased, the _demand_ has increased also. thus will it be with cloth; therefore let it come in. it is true that you will have more competitors, but you will also have more customers, and richer ones. did you never think of this when seeing nine-tenths of your countrymen deprived during the winter of that superior cloth that you make? this is not a very long lesson to learn. if you wish to prosper, let your customers do the same. when this is once known, each one will seek his welfare in the general welfare. then, jealousies between individuals, cities, provinces and nations, will no longer vex the world. vi. to artisans and laborers. many papers have attacked me before you. will you not read my defense? i am not mistrustful. when a man writes or speaks, i believe that he thinks what he says. what is the question? to ascertain which is the more advantageous for you, restriction or liberty. i believe that it is liberty; they believe it is restriction; it is for each one to prove his case. was it necessary to insinuate that we are the agents of england? you will see how easy recrimination would be on this ground. we are, they say, agents of the english, because some of us have used the english words _meeting_, _free trader_! and do not they use the english words _drawback_ and _budget_? we imitate cobden and the english democracy! do not they parody bentinck and the british aristocracy? we borrow from perfidious albion the doctrine of liberty. do not they borrow from her the sophisms of protection? we follow the commercial impulse of bordeaux and the south. do not they serve the greed of lille, and the manufacturing north? we favor the secret designs of the ministry, which desires to turn public attention away from the protective policy. do not they favor the views of the custom house officers, who gain more than anybody else by this protective _regime_? so you see that if we did not ignore this war of epithets, we should not be without weapons. but that is not the point in issue. the question which i shall not lose sight of is this: _which is better for the working-classes, to be free or not to be free to purchase from abroad?_ workmen, they say to you, "if you are free to buy from abroad these things which you now make yourselves, you will no longer make them. you will be without work, without wages, and without bread. it is then for your own good that your liberty be restricted." this objection recurs in all forms. they say, for instance, "if we clothe ourselves with english cloth, if we make our plowshares with english iron, if we cut our bread with english knives, if we wipe our hands with english napkins, what will become of the french workmen--what will become of the _national labor_?" tell me, workmen, if a man stood on the pier at boulogne, and said to every englishman who landed: if you will give me those english boots, i will give you this french hat; or, if you will let me have this english horse, i will let you have this french carriage; or, are you willing to exchange this birmingham machine for this paris clock? or, again, does it suit you to barter your newcastle coal for this champagne wine? i ask you whether, supposing this man makes his proposals with average judgment, it can be said that our _national labor_, taken as a whole, would be harmed by it? would it be more so if there were twenty of these people offering to exchange services at boulogne instead of one; if a million barters were made instead of four; and if the intervention of merchants and money was called on to facilitate them and multiply them indefinitely? now, let one country buy of another at wholesale to sell again at retail, or at retail to sell again at wholesale, it will always be found, if the matter is followed out to the end, that _commerce consists of mutual barter of products for products, of services for services_. if, then, _one barter_ does not injure the _national labor_, since it implies as much _national labor given_ as _foreign labor received_, a hundred million of them cannot hurt the country. but, you will say, where is the advantage? the advantage consists in making a better use of the resources of each country, so that the same amount of labor gives more satisfaction and well-being everywhere. there are some who employ singular tactics against you. they begin by admitting the superiority of freedom over the prohibitive system, doubtless in order that they may not have to defend themselves on that ground. next they remark that in going from one system to another there will be some _displacement_ of labor. then they dilate upon the sufferings which, according to themselves, this _displacement_ must cause. they exaggerate and amplify them; they make of them the principal subject of discussion; they present them as the exclusive and definite result of reform, and thus try to enlist you under the standard of monopoly. these tactics have been employed in the service of all abuses, and i must frankly admit one thing, that it always embarrasses even the friends of those reforms which are most useful to the people. you will understand why. when an abuse exists, everything arranges itself upon it. human existences connect themselves with it, others with these, then still others, and this forms a great edifice. do you raise your hand against it? each one protests; and notice this particularly, those persons who protest always seem at the first glance to be right, because it is easier to show the disorder which must accompany the reform than the order which will follow it. the friends of the abuse cite particular instances; they name the persons and their workmen who will be disturbed, while the poor devil of a reformer can only refer to the _general good_, which must insensibly diffuse itself among the masses. this does not have the effect which the other has. thus, supposing it is a question of abolishing slavery. "unhappy people," they say to the colored men, "who will feed you? the master distributes floggings, but he also distributes rations." it is not seen that it is not the master who feeds the slave, but his own labor which feeds both himself and master. when the convents of spain were reformed, they said to the beggars, "where will you find broth and clothing? the abbot is your providence. is it not very convenient to apply to him?" and the beggars said: "that is true. if the abbot goes, we see what we lose, but we do not see what will come in its place." they do not notice that if the convents gave alms they lived on alms, so that the people had to give them more than they could receive back. thus, workmen, a monopoly imperceptibly puts taxes on your shoulders, and then furnishes you work with the proceeds. your false friends say to you: if there was no monopoly, who would furnish you work? you answer: this is true, this is true. the labor which the monopolists procure us is certain. the promises of liberty are uncertain. for you do not see that they first take money from you, and then give you back a _part_ of it for your labor. do you ask who will furnish you work? why, you will give each other work. with the money which will no longer be taken from you, the shoemaker will dress better, and will make work for the tailor. the tailor will have new shoes oftener, and keep the shoemaker employed. so it will be with all occupations. they say that with freedom there will be fewer workmen in the mines and the mills. i do not believe it. but if this does happen, it is _necessarily_ because there will be more labor freely in the open air. for if, as they say, these mines and spinning mills can be sustained only by the aid of taxes imposed on _everybody_ for their benefit, these taxes once abolished, _everybody_ will be more comfortably off, and it is the comfort of all which feeds the labor of each one. excuse me if i linger at this demonstration. i have so great a desire to see you on the side of liberty. in france, capital invested in manufactures yields, i suppose, five per cent. profit. but here is mondor, who has one hundred thousand francs invested in a manufactory, on which he loses five per cent. the difference between the loss and gain is ten thousand francs. what do they do? they assess upon you a little tax of ten thousand francs, which is given to mondor, and you do not notice it, for it is very skillfully disguised. it is not the tax gatherer who comes to ask you your part of the tax, but you pay it to mondor, the manufacturer, every time you buy your hatchets, your trowels, and your planes. then they say to you: if you do not pay this tax, mondor can work no longer, and his employes, john and james, will be without labor. if this tax was remitted, would you not get work yourselves, and on your own account too? and, then, be easy, when mondor has no longer this soft method of obtaining his profit by a tax, he will use his wits to turn his loss into a gain, and john and james will not be dismissed. then all will be profit _for all_. you will persist, perhaps, saying: "we understand that after the reform there will be in general more work than before, but in the meanwhile john and james will be on the street." to which i answer: first. when employment changes its place only to increase, the man who has two arms and a heart is not long on the street. second. there is nothing to hinder the state from reserving some of its funds to avoid stoppages of labor in the transition, which i do not myself believe will occur. third. finally, if to get out of a rut and get into a condition which is better for all, and which is certainly more just, it is absolutely necessary to brave a few painful moments, the workmen are ready, or i know them ill. god grant that it may be the same with employers. well, because you are workmen, are you not intelligent and moral? it seems that your pretended friends forget it. it is surprising that they discuss such a subject before you, speaking of wages and interests, without once pronouncing the word _justice_. they know, however, full well that the situation is _unjust_. why, then, have they not the courage to tell you so, and say, "workmen, an iniquity prevails in the country, but it is of advantage to you and it must be sustained." why? because they know that you would answer, no. but it is not true that this iniquity is profitable to you. give me your attention for a few moments and judge for yourselves. what do they protect in france? articles made by great manufacturers in great establishments, iron, cloth and silks, and they tell you that this is done not in the interest of the employer, but in your interest, in order to insure you wages. but every time that foreign labor presents itself in the market in such a form that it may hurt _you_, but not the great manufacturers, do they not allow it to come in? are there not in paris thirty thousand germans who make clothes and shoes? why are they allowed to establish themselves at your side when cloth is driven away? because the cloth is made in great mills owned by manufacturing legislators. but clothes are made by workmen in their rooms. these gentlemen want no competition in the turning of wool into cloth, because that is _their_ business; but when it comes to converting cloth into clothes, they admit competition, because that is _your_ trade. when they made railroads they excluded english rails, but they imported english workmen to make them. why? it is very simple; because english rails compete with the great rolling mills, and english muscles compete only with yours. we do not ask them to keep out german tailors and english laborers. we ask that cloth and rails may be allowed to come in. we ask justice for all, equality before the law for all. it is a mockery to tell us that these custom house restrictions have _your_ advantage in view. tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, millers, masons, blacksmiths, merchants, grocers, jewelers, butchers, bakers and dressmakers, i challenge you to show me a single instance in which restriction profits you, and if you wish, i will point out four where it hurts you. and after all, just see how much of the appearance of truth this self-denial, which your journals attribute to the monopolists, has. i believe that we can call that the _natural rate of wages_ which would establish itself _naturally_ if there were freedom of trade. then, when they tell you that restriction is for your benefit, it is as if they told you that it added a _surplus_ to your _natural_ wages. now, an _extra natural_ surplus of wages must be taken from somewhere; it does not fall from the moon; it must be taken from those who pay it. you are then brought to this conclusion, that, according to your pretended friends, the protective system has been created and brought into the world in order that capitalists might be sacrificed to laborers! tell me, is that probable? where is your place in the chamber of peers? when did you sit at the palais bourbon? who has consulted you? whence came this idea of establishing the protective system? i hear your answer: _we_ did not establish it. we are neither peers nor deputies, nor counselors of state. the capitalists have done it. by heavens, they were in a delectable mood that day. what! the capitalists made this law; _they_ established the prohibitive system, so that you laborers should make profits at their expense! but here is something stranger still. how is it that your pretended friends who speak to you now of the goodness, generosity and self-denial of capitalists, constantly express regret that you do not enjoy your political rights? from their point of view, what could you do with them? the capitalists have the monopoly of legislation, it is true. thanks to this monopoly, they have granted themselves the monopoly of iron, cloth, coal, wood and meat, which is also true. but now your pretended friends say that the capitalists, in acting thus, have stripped themselves, without being obliged to do it, to enrich you without your being entitled to it. surely, if you were electors and deputies, you could not manage your affairs better; you would not even manage them as well. if the industrial organization which rules us is made in your interest, it is a perfidy to demand political rights for you; for these democrats of a new species can never get out of this dilemma; the law, made by the present law-makers, gives you _more_, or gives you _less_, than your natural wages. if it gives you _less_, they deceive you in inviting you to support it. if it gives you _more_, they deceive you again by calling on you to claim political rights, when those who now exercise them, make sacrifices for you which you, in your honesty, could not yourselves vote. workingmen, god forbid that the effect of this article should be to cast in your hearts the germs of irritation against the rich. if mistaken _interests_ still support monopoly, let us not forget that it has its root in _errors_, which are common to capitalists and workmen. then, far from laboring to excite them against one another, let us strive to bring them together. what must be done to accomplish this? if it is true that the natural social tendencies aid in effacing inequality among men, all we have to do to let those tendencies act is to remove the artificial obstructions which interfere with their operation, and allow the relations of different classes to establish themselves on the principle of _justice_, which, to my mind, is the principle of freedom. vii. a chinese story. they exclaim against the greed and the selfishness of the age! open the thousand books, the thousand papers, the thousand pamphlets, which the parisian presses throw out every day on the country; is not all this the work of little saints? what spirit in the painting of the vices of the time! what touching tenderness for the masses! with what liberality they invite the rich to divide with the poor, or the poor to divide with the rich! how many plans of social reform, social improvement, and social organization! does not even the weakest writer devote himself to the well-being of the laboring classes? all that is required is to advance them a little money to give them time to attend to their humanitarian pursuits. there is nothing which does not assume to aid in the well-being and moral advancement of the people--nothing, not even the custom house. you believe that it is a tax machine, like a duty or a toll at the end of a bridge? not at all. it is an essentially civilizing, fraternizing and equalizing institution. what would you have? it is the fashion. it is necessary to put or affect to put feeling or sentimentality everywhere, even in the cure of all troubles. but it must be admitted that the custom house organization has a singular way of going to work to realize these philanthropic aspirations. it puts on foot an army of collectors, assistant collectors, inspectors, assistant inspectors, cashiers, accountants, receivers, clerks, supernumeraries, tide-waiters, and all this in order to exercise on the industry of the people that negative action which is summed up in the word _to prevent_. observe that i do not say _to tax_, but really _to prevent_. and _to prevent_, not acts reproved by morality, or opposed to public order, but transactions which are innocent, and which they have even admitted are favorable to the peace and harmony of nations. however, humanity is so flexible and supple that, in one way or another, it always overcomes these attempts at prevention. it is for the purpose of increasing labor. if people are kept from getting their food from abroad they produce it at home. it is more laborious, but they must live. if they are kept from passing along the valley, they must climb the mountains. it is longer, but the point of destination must be reached. this is sad, but amusing. when the law has thus created a certain amount of obstacles, and when, to overcome them, humanity has diverted a corresponding amount of labor, you are no longer allowed to call for the reform of the law; for, if you point out the _obstacle_, they show you the labor which it brings into play; and if you say this is not labor created but _diverted_, they answer you as does the _esprit public_--"the impoverishing only is certain and immediate; as for the enriching, it is more than problematical." this recalls to me a chinese story, which i will tell you. there were in china two great cities, tchin and tchan. a magnificent canal connected them. the emperor thought fit to have immense masses of rock thrown into it, to make it useless. seeing this, kouang, his first mandarin, said to him: "son of heaven, you make a mistake." to which the emperor replied: "kouang, you are foolish." you understand, of course, that i give but the substance of the dialogue. at the end of three moons the celestial emperor had the mandarin brought, and said to him: "kouang, look." and kouang, opening his eyes, looked. he saw at a certain distance from the canal a multitude of men _laboring_. some excavated, some filled up, some leveled, and some laid pavement, and the mandarin, who was very learned, thought to himself: they are making a road. at the end of three more moons, the emperor, having called kouang, said to him: "look." and kouang looked. and he saw that the road was made; and he noticed that at various points, inns were building. a medley of foot passengers, carriages and palanquins went and came, and innumerable chinese, oppressed by fatigue, carried back and forth heavy burdens from tchin to tchan, and from tchan to tchin, and kouang said: it is the destruction of the canal which has given labor to these poor people. but it did not occur to him that this labor was _diverted_ from other employments. then more moons passed, and the emperor said to kouang: "look." and kouang looked. he saw that the inns were always full of travelers, and that they being hungry, there had sprung up, near by, the shops of butchers, bakers, charcoal dealers, and bird's nest sellers. since these worthy men could not go naked, tailors, shoemakers and umbrella and fan dealers had settled there, and as they do not sleep in the open air, even in the celestial empire, carpenters, masons and thatchers congregated there. then came police officers, judges and fakirs; in a word, around each stopping place there grew up a city with its suburbs. said the emperor to kouang: "what do you think of this?" and kouang replied: "i could never have believed that the destruction of a canal could create so much labor for the people." for he did not think that it was not labor created, but _diverted_; that travelers ate when they went by the canal just as much as they did when they were forced to go by the road. however, to the great astonishment of the chinese, the emperor died, and this son of heaven was committed to earth. his successor sent for kouang, and said to him: "clean out the canal." and kouang said to the new emperor: "son of heaven, you are doing wrong." and the emperor replied: "kouang, you are foolish." but kouang persisted and said: "my lord, what is your object?" "my object," said the emperor, "is to facilitate the movement of men and things between tchin and tchan; to make transportation less expensive, so that the people may have tea and clothes more cheaply." but kouang was in readiness. he had received, the evening before, some numbers of the _moniteur industriel_, a chinese paper. knowing his lesson by heart, he asked permission to answer, and, having obtained it, after striking his forehead nine times against the floor, he said: "my lord, you try, by facilitating transportation, to reduce the price of articles of consumption, in order to bring them within the reach of the people; and to do this you begin by making them lose all the labor which was created by the destruction of the canal. sire, in political economy, absolute cheapness"-- the emperor. "i believe that you are reciting something." kouang. "that is true, and it would be more convenient for me to read." having unfolded the _esprit public_, he read: "in political economy the absolute cheapness of articles of consumption is but a secondary question. the problem lies in the equilibrium of the price of labor and that of the articles necessary to existence. the abundance of labor is the wealth of nations, and the best economic system is that which furnishes them the greatest possible amount of labor. do not ask whether it is better to pay four or eight cents cash for a cup of tea, or five or ten shillings for a shirt. these are puerilities unworthy of a serious mind. no one denies your proposition. the question is, whether it is better to pay more for an article, and to have, through the abundance and price of labor, more means of acquiring it, or whether it is better to impoverish the sources of labor, to diminish the mass of national production, and to transport articles of consumption by canals, more cheaply it is true, but, at the same time, to deprive a portion of our laborers of the power to buy them, even at these reduced prices." the emperor not being altogether convinced, kouang said to him: "my lord, be pleased to wait. i have the _moniteur industriel_ to quote from." but the emperor said: "i do not need your chinese newspapers to tell me that to create _obstacles_ is to turn labor in that direction. yet that is not my mission. come, let us clear out the canal, and then we will reform the tariff." kouang went away plucking out his beard, and crying: oh, fo! oh, pe! oh, le! and all the monosyllabic and circumflex gods of cathay, take pity on your people; for, there has come to us an emperor of the _english school_, and i see very plainly that, in a little while, we shall be in want of everything, since it will not be necessary for us to do anything! viii. post hoc, ergo propter hoc. "after this, therefore on account of this." the most common and the most false of arguments. real suffering exists in england. this occurrence follows two others: first. the reduction of the tariff. second. the loss of two consecutive harvests. to which of these last two circumstances is the first to be attributed? the protectionists do not fail to exclaim: "it is this cursed freedom which does all the mischief. it promised us wonders and marvels; we welcomed it, and now the manufactories stop and the people suffer." commercial freedom distributes, in the most uniform and equitable manner, the fruits which providence grants to the labor of man. if these fruits are partially destroyed by any misfortune, it none the less looks after the fair distribution of what remains. men are not as well provided for, of course, but shall we blame freedom or the bad harvest? freedom rests on the same principle as insurance. when a loss happens, it divides, among a great many people, and a great number of years, evils which without it would accumulate on one nation and one season. but have they ever thought of saying that fire was no longer a scourge, since there were insurance companies? in , ' and ' , the reduction of taxes began in england. at the same time the harvests were very abundant, and we can justly believe that these two circumstances had much to do with the wonderful prosperity shown by that country during that period. in the harvest was bad, and in it was still worse. breadstuffs grew dear, the people spent their money for food, and used less of other articles. there was a diminished demand for clothing; the manufactories were not so busy, and wages showed a declining tendency. happily, in the same year, the restrictive barriers were again lowered, and an enormous quantity of food was enabled to reach the english market. if it had not been for this, it is almost certain that a terrible revolution would now fill great britain with blood. yet they make freedom chargeable with disasters, which it prevents and remedies, at least in part. a poor leper lived in solitude. no one would touch what he had contaminated. compelled to do everything for himself, he dragged out a miserable existence. a great physician cured him. here was our hermit in full possession of the _freedom of exchange_. what a beautiful prospect opened before him! he took pleasure in calculating the advantages, which, thanks to his connection with other men, he could draw from his vigorous arms. unluckily, he broke both of them. alas! his fate was most miserable. the journalists of that country, witnessing his misfortune, said: "see to what misery this ability to exchange has reduced him! really, he was less to be pitied when he lived alone." "what!" said the physician; "do not you consider his two broken arms? do not they form a part of his sad destiny? his misfortune is to have lost his arms, and not to have been cured of leprosy. he would be much more to be pitied if he was both maimed and a leper." _post hoc, ergo propter hoc_; do not trust this sophism. ix. robbery by bounties. they find my little book of _sophisms_ too theoretical, scientific, and metaphysical. very well. let us try a trivial, commonplace, and, if necessary, coarse style. convinced that the public is _duped_ in the matter of protection, i have desired to prove it. but the public wishes to be shouted at. then let us cry out: "midas, king midas, has asses' ears!" an outburst of frankness often accomplishes more than the politest circumlocution. to tell the truth, my good people, _they are robbing you_. it is harsh, but it is true. the words _robbery_, _to rob_, _robber_, will seem in very bad taste to many people. i say to them as harpagon did to elise, is it the _word_ or the _thing_ that alarms you? whoever has fraudulently taken that which does not belong to him, is guilty of robbery. (_penal code, art. ._) _to rob_: to take furtively, or by force. (_dictionary of the academy._) _robber_: he who takes more than his due. (_the same._) now, does not the monopolist, who, by a law of his own making, obliges me to pay him twenty francs for an article which i can get elsewhere for fifteen, take from me fraudulently five francs, which belong to me? does he not take it furtively, or by force? does he not require of me more than his due? he carries off, he takes, he demands, they will say, but not _furtively_ or _by force_, which are the characteristics of robbery. when our tax levy is burdened with five francs for the bounty which this monopolist carries off, takes, or demands, what can be more _furtive_, since so few of us suspect it? and for those who are not deceived, what can be more _forced_, since, at the first refusal to pay, the officer is at our doors? still, let the monopolists reassure themselves. these robberies, by means of bounties or tariffs, even if they do violate equity as much as robbery, do not break the law; on the contrary, they are perpetrated through the law. they are all the worse for this, but they have nothing to do with _criminal justice_. besides, willy-nilly, we are all _robbers_ and _robbed_ in the business. though the author of this book cries _stop thief_, when he buys, others can cry the same after him, when he sells. if he differs from many of his countrymen, it is only in this: he knows that he loses by this game more than he gains, and they do not; if they did know it, the game would soon cease. nor do i boast of having first given this thing its true name. more than sixty years ago, adam smith said: "when manufacturers meet it may be expected that a conspiracy will be planned against the pockets of the public." can we be astonished at this when the public pay no attention to it? an assembly of manufacturers deliberate officially under the name of _industrial league_. what goes on there, and what is decided upon? i give a very brief summary of the proceedings of one meeting: "a ship-builder. our mercantile marine is at the last gasp (warlike digression). it is not surprising. i cannot build without iron. i can get it at ten francs _in the world's market_; but, through the law, the managers of the french forges compel me to pay them fifteen francs. thus they take five francs from me. i ask freedom to buy where i please. "an iron manufacturer. _in the world's market_ i can obtain transportation for twenty francs. the ship-builder, through the law, requires thirty. thus he _takes_ ten francs from me. he plunders me; i plunder him. it is all for the best. "a public official. the conclusion of the ship-builder's argument is highly imprudent. oh, let us cultivate the touching union which makes our strength; if we relax an iota from the theory of protection, good-bye to the whole of it. "the ship-builder. but, for us, protection is a failure. i repeat that the shipping is nearly gone. "a sailor. very well, let us raise the discriminating duties against goods imported in foreign bottoms, and let the ship-builder, who now takes thirty francs from the public, hereafter take forty. "a minister. the government will push to its extreme limits the admirable mechanism of these discriminating duties, but i fear that it will not answer the purpose. "a government employe. you seem to be bothered about a very little matter. is there any safety but in the bounty? if the consumer is willing, the tax-payer is no less so. let us pile on the taxes, and let the ship-builder be satisfied. i propose a bounty of five francs, to be taken from the public revenues, to be paid to the ship-builder for each quintal of iron that he uses. "several voices. seconded, seconded. "a farmer. i want a bounty of three francs for each bushel of wheat. "a weaver. and i two francs for each yard of cloth. "the presiding officer. that is understood. our meeting will have originated the system of _drawbacks_, and it will be its eternal glory. what branch of manufacturing can lose hereafter, when we have two so simple means of turning losses into gains--the _tariff_ and _drawbacks_. the meeting is adjourned." some supernatural vision must have shown me in a dream the coming appearance of the _bounty_ (who knows if i did not suggest the thought to m. dupin?), when some months ago i wrote the following words: "it seems evident to me that protection, without changing its nature or effects, might take the form of a direct tax levied by the state, and distributed in indemnifying bounties to privileged manufacturers." and after having compared protective duties with the bounty: "i frankly avow my preference for the latter system; it seems to me more just, more economical, and more truthful. more just, because if society wishes to give gratuities to some of its members, all should contribute; more economical, because it would save much of the expense of collection, and do away with many obstacles; and, finally, more truthful, because the public could see the operation plainly, and would know what was done." since the opportunity is so kindly offered us, let us study this _robbery by bounties_. what is said of it will also apply to _robbery by tariff_, and as it is a little better disguised, the direct will enable us to understand the indirect, cheating. thus the mind proceeds from the simple to the complex. but is there no simpler variety of robbery? certainly, there is _highway robbery_, and all it needs is to be legalized, or, as they say now-a-days, _organized_. i once read the following in somebody's travels: "when we reached the kingdom of a---- we found all industrial pursuits suffering. agriculture groaned, manufactures complained, commerce murmured, the navy growled, and the government did not know whom to listen to. at first it thought of taxing all the discontented, and of dividing among them the proceeds of these taxes after having taken its share; which would have been like the method of managing lotteries in our dear spain. there are a thousand of you; the state takes a dollar from each one, cunningly steals two hundred and fifty, and then divides up seven hundred and fifty, in greater or smaller sums, among the players. the worthy hidalgo, who has received three-quarters of a dollar, forgetting that he has spent a whole one, is wild with joy, and runs to spend his shillings at the tavern. something like this once happened in france. barbarous as the country of a---- was, however, the government did not trust the stupidity of the inhabitants enough to make them accept such singular protection, and hence this was what it devised: "the country was intersected with roads. the government had them measured, exactly, and then said to the farmers, 'all that you can steal from travelers between these boundaries is yours; let it serve you as a _bounty_, a protection, and an encouragement.' it afterwards assigned to each manufacturer and each ship-builder, a bit of road to work up, according to this formula: dono tibi et concedo, virtutem et puissantiam, robbandi, pillageandi, stealandi, cheatandi, et swindlandi, impune per totam istam, viam. "now it has come to pass that the natives of the kingdom of a---- are so familiarized with this regime, and so accustomed to think only of what they steal, and not of what is stolen from them, so habituated to look at pillage but from the pillager's point of view, that they consider the sum of all these private robberies as _national profit_, and refuse to give up a system of protection without which, they say, no branch of industry can live." do you say, it is not possible that an entire nation could see an _increase of riches_ where the inhabitants plundered one another? why not? we have this belief in france, and every day we organize and practice _reciprocal robbery_ under the name of bounties and protective tariffs. let us exaggerate nothing, however; let us concede that as far as the _mode of collection_, and the collateral circumstances, are concerned, the system in the kingdom of a---- may be worse than ours; but let us say, also, that as far as principles and necessary results are concerned, there is not an atom of difference between these two kinds of robbery legally organized to eke out the profits of industry. observe, that if _highway robbery_ presents some difficulties of execution, it has also certain advantages which are not found in the _tariff robbery_. for instance: an equitable division can be made between all the plunderers. it is not thus with tariffs. they are by nature impotent to protect certain classes of society, such as artizans, merchants, literary men, lawyers, soldiers, etc., etc. it is true that _bounty robbery_ allows of infinite subdivisions, and in this respect does not yield in perfection to _highway robbery_, but on the other hand it often leads to results which are so odd and foolish, that the natives of the kingdom of a---- may laugh at it with great reason. that which the plundered party loses in highway robbery is gained by the robber. the article stolen remains, at least, in the country. but under the dominion of _bounty robbery_, that which the duty takes from the french is often given to the chinese, the hottentots, caffirs, and algonquins, as follows: a piece of cloth is worth a _hundred francs_ at bordeaux. it is impossible to sell it below that without loss. it is impossible to sell it for more than that, for the _competition_ between merchants forbids. under these circumstances, if a frenchman desires to buy the cloth, he must pay a _hundred francs_, or do without it. but if an englishman comes, the government interferes, and says to the merchant: "sell your cloth, and i will make the tax-payers give you _twenty francs_ (through the operation of the _drawback_)." the merchant, who wants, and can get, but one hundred francs for his cloth, delivers it to the englishman for eighty francs. this sum added to the twenty francs, the product of the _bounty robbery_, makes up his price. it is then precisely as if the tax-payers had given twenty francs to the englishman, on condition that he would buy french cloth at twenty francs below the cost of manufacture,--at twenty francs below what it costs us. then bounty robbery has this peculiarity, that the _robbed_ are inhabitants of the country which allows it, and the _robbers_ are spread over the face of the globe. it is truly wonderful that they should persist in holding this proposition to have been demonstrated: _all that the individual robs from the mass is a general gain._ perpetual motion, the philosopher's stone, and the squaring of the circle, are sunk in oblivion; but the theory of _progress by robbery_ is still held in honor. _a priori_, however, one might have supposed that it would be the shortest lived of all these follies. some say to us: you are, then, partisans of the _let alone_ policy? economists of the superannuated school of the smiths and the says? you do not desire the _organization of labor_? why, gentlemen, organize labor as much as you please, but we will watch to see that you do not organize _robbery_. others say, _bounties_, _tariffs_, all these things may have been overdone. we must use, without abusing them. a wise liberty, combined with moderate protection, is what _serious_ and practical men claim. let us beware of _absolute principles_. this is exactly what they said in the kingdom of a----, according to the spanish traveler. "highway robbery," said the wise men, "is neither good nor bad in itself; it depends on circumstances. perhaps too much freedom of pillage has been given; perhaps not enough. let us see; let us examine; let us balance the accounts of each robber. to those who do not make enough, we will give a little more road to work up. as for those who make too much, we will reduce their share." those who spoke thus acquired great fame for moderation, prudence, and wisdom. they never failed to attain the highest offices of the state. as for those who said, "let us repress injustice altogether; let us allow neither _robbery_, nor _half robbery_, nor _quarter robbery_," they passed for theorists, dreamers, bores--always parroting the same thing. the people also found their reasoning too easy to understand. how can that be true which is so very simple? x. the tax collector. jacques bonhomme, vine-grower. m. lasouche, tax collector. l. you have secured twenty hogsheads of wine? j. yes, with much care and sweat. --be so kind as to give me six of the best. --six hogsheads out of twenty! good heavens! you want to ruin me. if you please, what do you propose to do with them? --the first will be given to the creditors of the state. when one has debts, the least one can do is to pay the interest. --where did the principal go? --it would take too long to tell. a part of it was once upon a time put in cartridges, which made the finest smoke in the world; with another part men were hired who were maimed on foreign ground, after having ravaged it. then, when these expenses brought the enemy upon us, he would not leave without taking money with him, which we had to borrow. --what good do i get from it now? --the satisfaction of saying: how proud am i of being a frenchman when i behold the triumphal column, and the humiliation of leaving to my heirs an estate burdened with a perpetual rent. still one must pay what he owes, no matter how foolish a use may have been made of the money. that accounts for one hogshead, but the five others? --one is required to pay for public services, the civil list, the judges who decree the restitution of the bit of land your neighbor wants to appropriate, the policemen who drive away robbers while you sleep, the men who repair the road leading to the city, the priest who baptizes your children, the teacher who educates them, and myself, your servant, who does not work for nothing. --certainly, service for service. there is nothing to say against that. i had rather make a bargain directly with my priest, but i do not insist on this. so much for the second hogshead. this leaves four, however. --do you believe that two would be too much for your share of the army and navy expenses? --alas, it is little compared with what they have cost me already. they have taken from me two sons whom i tenderly loved. --the balance of power in europe must be maintained. --well, my god! the balance of power would be the same if these forces were every where reduced a half or three-quarters. we should save our children and our money. all that is needed is to understand it. --yes, but they do not understand it. --that is what amazes me. for every one suffers from it. --you wished it so, jacques bonhomme. --you are jesting, my dear mr. collector; have i a vote in the legislative halls? --whom did you support for deputy? --an excellent general, who will be a marshal presently, if god spares his life. --on what does this excellent general live? --my hogsheads, i presume. --and what would happen were he to vote for a reduction of the army and your military establishment? --instead of being made a marshal, he would be retired. --do you now understand that yourself? --let us pass to the fifth hogshead, i beg of you. --that goes to algeria. --to algeria! and they tell me that all mussulmans are temperance people, the barbarians! what services will they give me in exchange for this ambrosia, which has cost me so much labor? --none at all; it is not intended for mussulmans, but for good christians who spend their days in barbary. --what can they do there which will be of service to me? --undertake and undergo raids; kill and be killed; get dysenteries and come home to be doctored; dig harbors, make roads, build villages and people them with maltese, italians, spaniards and swiss, who live on your hogshead, and many others which i shall come in the future to ask of you. --mercy! this is too much, and i flatly refuse you my hogshead. they would send a wine-grower who did such foolish acts to the mad-house. make roads in the atlas mountains, when i cannot get out of my own house! dig ports in barbary when the garonne fills up with sand every day! take from me my children whom i love, in order to torment arabs! make me pay for the houses, grain and horses, given to the greeks and maltese, when there are so many poor around us! --the poor! exactly; they free the country of this _superfluity_. --oh, yes, by sending after them to algeria the money which would enable them to live here. --but then you lay the basis of a _great empire_, you carry _civilization_ into africa, and you crown your country with immortal glory. --you are a poet, my dear collector; but i am a vine-grower, and i refuse. --think that in a few thousand years you will get back your advances a hundred-fold. all those who have charge of the enterprise say so. --at first they asked me for one barrel of wine to meet expenses, then two, then three, and now i am taxed a hogshead. i persist in my refusal. --it is too late. your _representative_ has agreed that you shall give a hogshead. --that is but too true. cursed weakness! it seems to me that i was unwise in making him my agent; for what is there in common between the general of an army and the poor owner of a vineyard? --you see well that there is something in common between you, were it only the wine you make, and which, in your name, he votes to himself. --laugh at me; i deserve it, my dear collector. but be reasonable, and leave me the sixth hogshead at least. the interest of the debt is paid, the civil list provided for, the public service assured, and the war in africa perpetuated. what more do you want? --the bargain is not made with me. you must tell your desires to the general. _he_ has disposed of your vintage. --but what do you propose to do with this poor hogshead, the flower of my flock? come, taste this wine. how mellow, delicate, velvety it is! --excellent, delicious! it will suit d----, the cloth manufacturer, admirably. --d----, the manufacturer! what do you mean? --that he will make a good bargain out of it. --how? what is that? i do not understand you. --do you not know that d---- has started a magnificent establishment very useful to the country, but which loses much money every year? --i am very sorry. but what can i do to help him? --the legislature saw that if things went on thus, d---- would either have to do a better business or close his manufactory. --but what connection is there between d----'s bad speculations and my hogshead? --the chamber thought that if it gave d---- a little wine from your cellar, a few bushels of grain taken from your neighbors, and a few pennies cut from the wages of the workingmen, his losses would change into profits. --this recipe is as infallible as it is ingenious. but it is shockingly unjust. what! is d---- to cover his losses by taking my wine? --not exactly the wine, but the proceeds of it; that is what we call a _bounty for encouragement_. but you look amazed! do not you see what a great service you render to the country? --you mean to say to d----? --to the country. d---- asserts that, thanks to this arrangement, his business prospers, and thus it is, says he, that the country grows rich. that is what he recently said in the chamber of which he is a member. --it is a damnable fraud! what! a fool goes into a silly enterprise, he spends his money, and if he extorts from me wine or grain enough to make good his losses, and even to make him a profit, he calls it a general gain! --your _representative_ having come to that conclusion, all you have to do is to give me the six hogsheads of wine, and sell the fourteen that i leave you for as much as possible. --that is my business. --for, you see, it would be very annoying if you did not get a good price for them. --i will think of it. --for there are many things which the money you receive must procure. --i know it, sir. i know it. --in the first place, if you buy iron to renew your spades and plowshares, a law declares that you must pay the iron-master twice what it was worth. --ah, yes; does not the same thing happen in the black forest? --then, if you need oil, meat, cloth, coal, wool and sugar, each one by the law will cost you twice what it is worth. --but this is horrible, frightful, abominable. --what is the use of these hard words? you yourself, through your _authorized_ agent---- --leave me alone with my authorized agent. i made a very strange disposition of my vote, it is true. but they shall deceive me no more, and i will be represented by some good and honest countryman. --bah, you will re-elect the worthy general. --i? i re-elect the general to give away my wine to africans and manufacturers? --you will re-elect him, i say. --that is a little _too much_. i will not re-elect him, if i do not want to. --but you will want to, and you will re-elect him. --let him come here and try. he will see who he will have to settle with. --we shall see. good bye. i take away your six hogsheads, and will proceed to divide them as the general has directed. xi. utopian ideas. if i were his majesty's minister! --well, what would you do? --i should begin by--by--upon my word, by being very much embarrassed. for i should be minister only because i had the majority, and i should have that only because i had made it, and i could only have made it, honestly at least, by governing according to its ideas. so if i undertake to carry out my ideas and to run counter to its ideas, i shall not have the majority, and if i do not, i cannot be his majesty's minister. --just imagine that you are so, and that consequently the majority is not opposed to you, what would you do? --i would look to see on which side _justice_ is. --and then? --i would seek to find where _utility_ was. --what next? --i would see whether they agreed, or were in conflict with one another. --and if you found they did not agree? --i would say to the king, take back your portfolio. --but suppose you see that _justice_ and _utility_ are one? --then i will go straight ahead. --very well, but to realize utility by justice, a third thing is necessary. --what is that? --possibility. --you conceded that. --when? --just now. --how? --by giving me the majority. --it seems to me that the concession was rather hazardous, for it implies that the majority clearly sees what is just, clearly sees what is useful, and clearly sees that these things are in perfect accord. --and if it sees this clearly, the good will, so to speak, do itself. --this is the point to which you are constantly bringing me--to see a possibility of reform only in the progress of the general intelligence. --by this progress all reform is infallible. --certainly. but this preliminary progress takes time. let us suppose it accomplished. what will you do? for i am eager to see you at work, doing, practicing. --i should begin by reducing letter postage to ten centimes. --i heard you speak of five, once. --yes; but as i have other reforms in view, i must move with prudence, to avoid a deficit in the revenues. --prudence? this leaves you with a deficit of thirty millions. --then i will reduce the salt tax to ten francs. --good! here is another deficit of thirty millions. doubtless you have invented some new tax. --heaven forbid! besides, i do not flatter myself that i have an inventive mind. --it is necessary, however. oh, i have it. what was i thinking of? you are simply going to diminish the expense. i did not think of that. --you are not the only one. i shall come to that; but i do not count on it at present. --what! you diminish the receipts, without lessening expenses, and you avoid a deficit? --yes, by diminishing other taxes at the same time. (here the interlocutor, putting the index finger of his right hand on his forehead, shook his head, which may be translated thus: he is rambling terribly.) --well, upon my word, this is ingenious. i pay the treasury a hundred francs; you relieve me of five francs on salt, five on postage; and in order that the treasury may nevertheless receive one hundred francs, you relieve me of ten on some other tax? --precisely; you understand me. --how can it be true? i am not even sure that i have heard you. --i repeat that i balance one remission of taxes by another. --i have a little time to give, and i should like to hear you expound this paradox. --here is the whole mystery: i know a tax which costs you twenty francs, not a sou of which gets to the treasury. i relieve you of half of it, and make the other half take its proper destination. --you are an unequaled financier. there is but one difficulty. what tax, if you please, do i pay, which does not go to the treasury? --how much does this suit of clothes cost you? --a hundred francs. --how much would it have cost you if you had gotten the cloth from belgium? --eighty francs. --then why did you not get it there? --because it is prohibited. --why? --so that the suit may cost me one hundred francs instead of eighty. --this denial, then, costs you twenty francs? --undoubtedly. --and where do these twenty francs go? --where do they go? to the manufacturer of the cloth. --well, give me ten francs for the treasury, and i will remove the restriction, and you will gain ten francs. --oh, i begin to see. the treasury account shows that it loses five francs on postage and five on salt, and gains ten on cloth. that is even. --your account is--you gain five francs on salt, five on postage, and ten on cloth. --total, twenty francs. this is satisfactory enough. but what becomes of the poor cloth manufacturer? --oh, i have thought of him. i have secured compensation for him by means of the tax reductions which are so profitable to the treasury. what i have done for you as regards cloth, i do for him in regard to wool, coal, machinery, etc., so that he can lower his price without loss. --but are you sure that will be an equivalent? --the balance will be in his favor. the twenty francs that you gain on the cloth will be multiplied by those which i will save for you on grain, meat, fuel, etc. this will amount to a large sum, and each one of your , , fellow-citizens will save the same way. there will be enough to consume the cloths of both belgium and france. the nation will be better clothed; that is all. --i will think on this, for it is somewhat confused in my head. --after all, as far as clothes go, the main thing is to be clothed. your limbs are your own, and not the manufacturer's. to shield them from cold is your business and not his. if the law takes sides for him against you, the law is unjust, and you allowed me to reason on the hypothesis that what is unjust is hurtful. --perhaps i admitted too much; but go on and explain your financial plan. --then i will make a tariff. --in two folio volumes? --no, in two sections. --then they will no longer say that this famous axiom "no one is supposed to be ignorant of the law" is a fiction. let us see your tariff. --here it is: section first. all imports shall pay an _ad valorem_ tax of five per cent. --even _raw materials_? --unless they are _worthless_. --but they all have value, much or little. --then they will pay much or little. --how can our manufactories compete with foreign ones which have these _raw materials_ free? --the expenses of the state being certain, if we close this source of revenue, we must open another; this will not diminish the relative inferiority of our manufactories, and there will be one bureau more to organize and pay. --that is true; i reasoned as if the tax was to be annulled, not changed. i will reflect on this. what is your second section? --section second. all exports shall pay an _ad valorem_ tax of five per cent. --merciful heavens, mr. utopist! you will certainly be stoned, and, if it comes to that, i will throw the first one. --we agreed that the majority were enlightened. --enlightened! can you claim that an export duty is not onerous? --all taxes are onerous, but this is less so than others. --the carnival justifies many eccentricities. be so kind as to make this new paradox appear specious, if you can. --how much did you pay for this wine? --a franc per quart. --how much would you have paid outside the city gates? --fifty centimes. --why this difference? --ask the _octroi_[ ] which added ten sous to it. --who established the _octroi_? --the municipality of paris, in order to pave and light the streets. --this is, then, an import duty. but if the neighboring country districts had established this _octroi_ for their profit, what would happen? --i should none the less pay a franc for wine worth only fifty centimes, and the other fifty centimes would pave and light montmartre and the batignolles. --so that really it is the consumer who pays the tax? --there is no doubt of that. --then by taxing exports you make foreigners help pay your expenses.[ ] --i find you at fault, this is not _justice_. --why not? in order to secure the production of any one thing, there must be instruction, security, roads, and other costly things in the country. why shall not the foreigner who is to consume this product, bear the charges its production necessitates? --this is contrary to received ideas. --not the least in the world. the last purchaser must repay all the direct and indirect expenses of production. --no matter what you say, it is plain that such a measure would paralyze commerce; and cut off all exports. --that is an illusion. if you were to pay this tax besides all the others, you would be right. but, if the hundred millions raised in this way, relieve you of other taxes to the same amount, you go into foreign markets with all your advantages, and even with more, if this duty has occasioned less embarrassment and expense. --i will reflect on this. so now the salt, postage and customs are regulated. is all ended there? --i am just beginning. --pray, initiate me in your utopian ideas. --i have lost sixty millions on salt and postage. i shall regain them through the customs; which also gives me something more precious. --what, pray? --international relations founded on justice, and a probability of peace which is equivalent to a certainty. i will disband the army. --the whole army? --except special branches, which will be voluntarily recruited, like all other professions. you see, conscription is abolished. --sir, you should say recruiting. --ah, i forgot, i cannot help admiring the ease with which, in certain countries, the most unpopular things are perpetuated by giving them other names. --like _consolidated duties_, which have become _indirect contributions_. --and the _gendarmes_, who have taken the name of _municipal guards_. --in short, trusting to utopia, you disarm the country. --i said that i would muster out the army, not that i would disarm the country. i intend, on the contrary, to give it invincible power. --how do you harmonize this mass of contradictions? --i call all the citizens to service. --is it worth while to relieve a portion from service in order to call out everybody? --you did not make me minister in order that i should leave things as they are. thus, on my advent to power, i shall say with richelieu, "the state maxims are changed." my first maxim, the one which will serve as a basis for my administration, is this: every citizen must know two things--how to earn his own living, and defend his country. --it seems to me, at the first glance, that there is a spark of good sense in this. --consequently, i base the national defense on a law consisting of two sections. section first. every able-bodied citizen, without exception, shall be under arms for four years, from his twenty-first to his twenty-fifth year, in order to receive military instruction.-- --this is pretty economy! you send home four hundred thousand soldiers and call out ten millions. --listen to my second section: sec. . _unless_ he proves, at the age of twenty-one, that he knows the school of the soldier perfectly. --i did not expect this turn. it is certain that to avoid four years' service, there will be a great emulation among our youth, to learn _by the right flank_ and _double quick, march_. the idea is odd. --it is better than that. for without grieving families and offending equality, does it not assure the country, in a simple and inexpensive manner, of ten million defenders, capable of defying a coalition of all the standing armies of the globe? --truly, if i were not on my guard, i should end in getting interested in your fancies. _the utopist, getting excited:_ thank heaven, my estimates are relieved of a hundred millions! i suppress the _octroi_. i refund indirect contributions. i-- _getting more and more excited:_ i will proclaim religious freedom and free instruction. there shall be new resources. i will buy the railroads, pay off the public debt, and starve out the stock gamblers. --my dear utopist! --freed from too numerous cares, i will concentrate all the resources of the government on the repression of fraud, the administration of prompt and even-handed justice. i-- --my dear utopist, you attempt too much. the nation will not follow you. --you gave me the majority. --i take it back. --very well; then i am no longer minister; but my plans remain what they are--utopian ideas. [footnote : the entrance duty levied at the gates of french towns.] [footnote : i understand m. bastiat to mean merely that export duties are not necessarily more onerous than import duties. the statement that all taxes are paid by the consumer, is liable to important modifications. an export duty may be laid in such way, and on such articles, that it will be paid wholly by the foreign consumer, without loss to the producing country, but it is only when the additional cost does not lessen the demand, or induce the foreigner to produce the same article. _translator._] xii. salt, postage, and customs. [this chapter is an amusing dialogue relating principally to english postal reform. being inapplicable to any condition of things existing in the united states, it is omitted.--_translator._] xiii. the three aldermen. a demonstration in four tableaux. _first tableau._ [the scene is in the hotel of alderman pierre. the window looks out on a fine park; three persons are seated near a good fire.] _pierre._ upon my word, a fire is very comfortable when the stomach is satisfied. it must be agreed that it is a pleasant thing. but, alas! how many worthy people like the king of yvetot, "blow on their fingers for want of wood." unhappy creatures, heaven inspires me with a charitable thought. you see these fine trees. i will cut them down and distribute the wood among the poor. _paul and jean._ what! gratis? _pierre._ not exactly. there would soon be an end of my good works if i scattered my property thus. i think that my park is worth twenty thousand livres; by cutting it down i shall get much more for it. _paul._ a mistake. your wood as it stands is worth more than that in the neighboring forests, for it renders services which that cannot give. when cut down it will, like that, be good for burning only, and will not be worth a sou more per cord. _pierre._ oh! mr. theorist, you forget that i am a practical man. i supposed that my reputation as a speculator was well enough established to put me above any charge of stupidity. do you think that i shall amuse myself by selling my wood at the price of other wood? _paul._ you must. _pierre._ simpleton!--suppose i prevent the bringing of any wood to paris? _paul._ that will alter the case. but how will you manage it? _pierre._ this is the whole secret. you know that wood pays an entrance duty of ten sous per cord. to-morrow i will induce the aldermen to raise this duty to one hundred, two hundred, or three hundred livres, so high as to keep out every fagot. well, do you see? if the good people do not want to die of cold, they must come to my wood-yard. they will fight for my wood; i shall sell it for its weight in gold, and this well-regulated deed of charity will enable me to do others of the same sort. _paul._ this is a fine idea, and it suggests an equally good one to me. _jean._ well, what is it? _paul._ how do you find this normandy butter? _jean._ excellent. _paul_. well, it seemed passable a moment ago. but do you not think it is a little strong? i want to make a better article at paris. i will have four or five hundred cows, and i will distribute milk, butter and cheese to the poor people. _pierre and jean._ what! as a charity? _paul._ bah, let us always put charity in the foreground. it is such a fine thing that its counterfeit even is an excellent card. i will give my butter to the people and they will give me their money. is that called selling? _jean._ no, according to the _bourgeois gentilhomme_; but call it what you please, you ruin yourself. can paris compete with normandy in raising cows? _paul._ i shall save the cost of transportation. _jean._ very well; but the normans are able to _beat_ the parisians, even if they do have to pay for transportation. _paul._ do you call it _beating_ any one to furnish him things at a low price? _jean._ it is the time-honored word. you will always be beaten. _paul._ yes; like don quixote. the blows will fall on sancho. jean, my friend, you forgot the _octroi_. _jean._ the _octroi_! what has that to do with your butter? _paul._ to-morrow i will demand _protection_, and i will induce the council to prohibit the butter of normandy and brittany. the people must do without butter, or buy mine, and that at my price, too. _jean._ gentlemen, your philanthropy carries me along with it. "in time one learns to howl with the wolves." it shall not be said that i am an unworthy alderman. pierre, this sparkling fire has illumined your soul; paul, this butter has given an impulse to your understanding, and i perceive that this piece of salt pork stimulates my intelligence. to-morrow i will vote myself, and make others vote, for the exclusion of hogs, dead or alive; this done, i will build superb stock-yards in the middle of paris "for the unclean animal forbidden to the hebrews." i will become swineherd and pork-seller, and we shall see how the good people of lutetia can help getting their food at my shop. _pierre._ gently, my friends; if you thus run up the price of butter and salt meat, you diminish the profit which i expected from my wood. _paul._ nor is my speculation so wonderful, if you ruin me with your fuel and your hams. _jean._ what shall i gain by making you pay an extra price for my sausages, if you overcharge me for pastry and fagots? _pierre._ do you not see that we are getting into a quarrel? let us rather unite. let us make _reciprocal concessions_. besides, it is not well to listen only to miserable self-interest. _humanity_ is concerned, and must not the warming of the people be secured? _paul._ that it is true, and people must have butter to spread on their bread. _jean._ certainly. and they must have a bit of pork for their soup. _all together._ forward, charity! long live philanthropy! to-morrow, to-morrow, we will take the octroi by assault. _pierre._ ah, i forgot. one word more which is important. my friends, in this selfish age people are suspicious, and the purest intentions are often misconstrued. paul, you plead for _wood_; jean, defend _butter_; and i will devote myself to domestic _swine_. it is best to head off invidious suspicions. _paul and jean_ (leaving). upon my word, what a clever fellow! second tableau. _the common council._ _paul._ my dear colleagues, every day great quantities of wood come into paris, and draw out of it large sums of money. if this goes on, we shall all be ruined in three years, and what will become of the poor people? [bravo.] let us prohibit foreign wood. i am not speaking for myself, for you could not make a tooth-pick out of all the wood i own. i am, therefore, perfectly disinterested. [good, good.] but here is pierre, who has a park, and he will keep our fellow-citizens from freezing. they will no longer be in a state of _dependence_ on the charcoal dealers of the yonne. have you ever thought of the risk we run of dying of cold, if the proprietors of these foreign forests should take it into their heads not to bring any more wood to paris? let us, therefore, prohibit wood. by this means we shall stop the drain of specie, we shall start the wood-chopping business, and open to our workmen a new source of labor and wages. [applause.] _jean._ i second the motion of the honorable member--a proposition so philanthropic and so disinterested, as he remarked. it is time that we should stop this intolerable _freedom of entry_, which has brought a ruinous competition upon our market, so that there is not a province tolerably well situated for producing some one article which does not inundate us with it, sell it to us at a low price, and depress parisian labor. it is the business of the state to _equalize the conditions of production_ by wisely graduated duties; to allow the entrance from without of whatever is dearer there than at paris, and thus relieve us from an unequal _contest_. how, for instance, can they expect us to make milk and butter in paris as against brittany and normandy? think, gentlemen; the bretons have land cheaper, feed more convenient, and labor more abundant. does not common sense say that the conditions must be equalized by a protecting duty? i ask that the duty on milk and butter be raised to a thousand per cent., and more, if necessary. the breakfasts of the people will cost a little more, but wages will rise! we shall see the building of stables and dairies, a good trade in churns, and the foundation of new industries laid. i, myself, have not the least interest in this plan. i am not a cowherd, nor do i desire to become one. i am moved by the single desire to be useful to the laboring classes. [expressions of approbation.] _pierre._ i am happy to see in this assembly statesmen so pure, enlightened, and devoted to the interests of the people. [cheers.] i admire their self-denial, and cannot do better than follow such noble examples. i support their motion, and i also make one to exclude poitou hogs. it is not that i want to become a swineherd or pork dealer, in which case my conscience would forbid my making this motion; but is it not shameful, gentlemen, that we should be paying tribute to these poor poitevin peasants who have the audacity to come into our own market, take possession of a business that we could have carried on ourselves, and, after having inundated us with sausages and hams, take from us, perhaps, nothing in return? anyhow, who says that the balance of trade is not in their favor, and that we are not compelled to pay them a tribute in money? is it not plain that if this poitevin industry were planted in paris, it would open new fields to parisian labor? moreover, gentlemen, is it not very likely, as mr. lestiboudois said, that we buy these poitevin salted meats, not with our income, but our capital? where will this land us? let us not allow greedy, avaricious and perfidious rivals to come here and sell things cheaply, thus making it impossible for us to produce them ourselves. aldermen, paris has given us its confidence, and we must show ourselves worthy of it. the people are without labor, and we must create it, and if salted meat costs them a little more, we shall, at least, have the consciousness that we have sacrificed our interests to those of the masses, as every good alderman ought to do. [thunders of applause.] _a voice._ i hear much said of the poor people; but, under the pretext of giving them labor, you begin by taking away from them that which is worth more than labor itself--wood, butter, and soup. _pierre, paul and jean._ vote, vote. away with your theorists and generalizers! let us vote. [the three motions are carried.] third tableau. _twenty years after._ _son._ father, decide; we must leave paris. work is slack, and everything is dear. _father._ my son, you do not know how hard it is to leave the place where we were born. _son._ the worst of all things is to die there of misery. _father._ go, my son, and seek a more hospitable country. for myself, i will not leave the grave where your mother, sisters and brothers lie. i am eager to find, at last, near them, the rest which is denied me in this city of desolation. _son._ courage, dear father, we will find work elsewhere--in poitou, normandy or brittany. they say that the industry of paris is gradually transferring itself to those distant countries. _father._ it is very natural. unable to sell us wood and food, they stopped producing more than they needed for themselves, and they devoted their spare time and capital to making those things which we formerly furnished them. _son._ just as at paris, they quit making handsome furniture and fine clothes, in order to plant trees, and raise hogs and cows. though quite young, i have seen vast storehouses, sumptuous buildings, and quays thronged with life on those banks of the seine which are now given up to meadows and forests. _father._ while the provinces are filling up with cities, paris becomes country. what a frightful revolution! three mistaken aldermen, aided by public ignorance, have brought down on us this terrible calamity. _son._ tell me this story, my father. _father._ it is very simple. under the pretext of establishing three new trades at paris, and of thus supplying labor to the workmen, these men secured the prohibition of wood, butter, and meats. they assumed the right of supplying their fellow-citizens with them. these articles rose immediately to an exorbitant price. nobody made enough to buy them, and the few who could procure them by using up all they made were unable to buy anything else; consequently all branches of industry stopped at once--all the more so because the provinces no longer offered a market. misery, death, and emigration began to depopulate paris. _son._ when will this stop? _father._ when paris has become a meadow and a forest. _son._ the three aldermen must have made a great fortune. _father._ at first they made immense profits, but at length they were involved in the common misery. _son._ how was that possible? _father._ you see this ruin; it was a magnificent house, surrounded by a fine park. if paris had kept on advancing, master pierre would have got more rent from it annually than the whole thing is now worth to him. _son._ how can that be, since he got rid of competition? _father._ competition in selling has disappeared; but competition in buying also disappears every day, and will keep on disappearing until paris is an open field, and master pierre's woodland will be worth no more than an equal number of acres in the forest of bondy. thus, a monopoly, like every species of injustice, brings its own punishment upon itself. _son._ this does not seem very plain to me, but the decay of paris is undeniable. is there, then, no means of repealing this unjust measure that pierre and his colleagues adopted twenty years ago? _father._ i will confide my secret to you. i will remain at paris for this purpose; i will call the people to my aid. it depends on them whether they will replace the _octroi_ on its old basis, and dismiss from it this fatal principle, which is grafted on it, and has grown there like a parasite fungus. _son._ you ought to succeed on the very first day. _father._ no; on the contrary, the work is a difficult and laborious one. pierre, paul and jean understand one another perfectly. they are ready to do anything rather than allow the entrance of wood, butter and meat into paris. they even have on their side the people, who clearly see the labor which these three protected branches of business give, who know how many wood-choppers and cow-drivers it gives employment to, but who cannot obtain so clear an idea of the labor that would spring up in the free air of liberty. _son._ if this is all that is needed, you will enlighten them. _father._ my child, at your age, one doubts at nothing. if i wrote, the people would not read; for all their time is occupied in supporting a wretched existence. if i speak, the aldermen will shut my mouth. the people will, therefore, remain long in their fatal error; political parties, which build their hopes on their passions, attempt to play upon their prejudices, rather than to dispel them. i shall then have to deal with the powers that be--the people and the parties. i see that a storm will burst on the head of the audacious person who dares to rise against an iniquity which is so firmly rooted in the country. _son._ you will have justice and truth on your side. _father._ and they will have force and calumny. if i were only young! but age and suffering have exhausted my strength. _son._ well, father, devote all that you have left to the service of the country. begin this work of emancipation, and leave to me for an inheritance the task of finishing it. fourth tableau. _the agitation._ _jacques bonhomme._ parisians, let us demand the reform of the _octroi_; let it be put back to what it was. let every citizen be free to buy wood, butter and meat where it seems good to him. _the people._ hurrah for liberty! _pierre._ parisians, do not allow yourselves to be seduced by these words. of what avail is the freedom of purchasing, if you have not the means? and how can you have the means, if labor is wanting? can paris produce wood as cheaply as the forest of bondy, or meat at as low price as poitou, or butter as easily as normandy? if you open the doors to these rival products, what will become of the wood cutters, pork dealers, and cattle drivers? they cannot do without protection. _the people._. hurrah for protection! _jacques._ protection! but do they protect you, workmen? do not you compete with one another? let the wood dealers then suffer competition in their turn. they have no right to raise the price of their wood by law, unless they, also, by law, raise wages. do you not still love equality? _the people._ hurrah for equality! _pierre._ do not listen to this factious fellow. we have raised the price of wood, meat, and butter, it is true; but it is in order that we may give good wages to the workmen. we are moved by charity. _the people._ hurrah for charity! _jacques._ use the _octroi_, if you can, to raise wages, or do not use it to raise the price of commodities. the parisians do not ask for charity, but justice. _the people._ hurrah for justice! _pierre._ it is precisely the dearness of products which will, by reflex action, raise wages. _the people._ hurrah for dearness! _jacques._ if butter is dear, it is not because you pay workmen well; it is not even that you may make great profits; it is only because paris is ill situated for this business, and because you desired that they should do in the city what ought to be done in the country, and in the country what was done in the city. the people have no _more_ labor, only they labor at something else. they get no _more_ wages, but they do not buy things as cheaply. _the people._ hurrah for cheapness! _pierre._ this person seduces you with his fine words. let us state the question plainly. is it not true that if we admit butter, wood, and meat, we shall be inundated with them, and die of a plethora? there is, then, no other way in which we can preserve ourselves from this new inundation, than to shut the door, and we can keep up the price of things only by causing scarcity artificially. _a very few voices._ hurrah for scarcity! _jacques._ let us state the question as it is. among all the parisians we can divide only what is in paris; the less wood, butter and meat there is, the smaller each one's share will be. there will be less if we exclude than if we admit. parisians, individual abundance can exist only where there is general abundance. _the people._ hurrah for abundance! _pierre._ no matter what this man says, he cannot prove to you that it is to your interest to submit to unbridled competition. _the people._ down with competition! _jacques._ despite all this man's declamation, he cannot make you _enjoy_ the sweets of restriction. _the people._ down with restriction! _pierre._ i declare to you that if the poor dealers in cattle and hogs are deprived of their livelihood, if they are sacrificed to theories, i will not be answerable for public order. workmen, distrust this man. he is an agent of perfidious normandy; he is under the pay of foreigners. he is a traitor, and must be hanged. [the people keep silent.] _jacques._ parisians, all that i say now, i said to you twenty years ago, when it occurred to pierre to use the _octroi_ for his gain and your loss. i am not an agent of normandy. hang me if you will, but this will not prevent oppression from being oppression. friends, you must kill neither jacques nor pierre, but liberty if it frightens you, or restriction if it hurts you. _the people._ let us hang nobody, but let us emancipate everybody. xiv. something else. --what is restriction? --a partial prohibition. --what is prohibition? --an absolute restriction. --so that what is said of one is true of the other? --yes, comparatively. they bear the same relation to each other that the arc of the circle does to the circle. --then if prohibition is bad, restriction cannot be good. --no more than the arc can be straight if the circle is curved. --what is the common name for restriction and prohibition? --protection. --what is the definite effect of protection? --to require from men _harder labor for the same result_. --why are men so attached to the protective system? --because, since liberty would accomplish the same result _with less labor_, this apparent diminution of labor frightens them. --why do you say _apparent_? --because all labor economized can be devoted to _something else_. --what? --that cannot and need not be determined. --why? --because, if the total of the comforts of france could be gained with a diminution of one-tenth on the total of its labor, no one could determine what comforts it would procure with the labor remaining at its disposal. one person would prefer to be better clothed, another better fed, another better taught, and another more amused. --explain the workings and effect of protection. --it is not an easy matter. before taking hold of a complicated instance, it must be studied in the simplest one. --take the simplest you choose. --do you recollect how robinson crusoe, having no saw, set to work to make a plank? --yes. he cut down a tree, and then with his ax hewed the trunk on both sides until he got it down to the thickness of a board. --and that gave him an abundance of work? --fifteen full days. --what did he live on during this time? --his provisions. --what happened to the ax? --it was all blunted. --very good; but there is one thing which, perhaps, you do not know. at the moment that robinson gave the first blow with his ax, he saw a plank which the waves had cast up on the shore. --oh, the lucky accident! he ran to pick it up? --it was his first impulse; but he checked himself, reasoning thus: "if i go after this plank, it will cost me but the labor of carrying it and the time spent in going to and returning from the shore. "but if i make a plank with my ax, i shall in the first place obtain work for fifteen days, then i shall wear out my ax, which will give me an opportunity of repairing it, and i shall consume my provisions, which will be a third source of labor, since they must be replaced. now, _labor is wealth_. it is plain that i will ruin myself if i pick up this stranded board. it is important to protect my _personal labor_, and now that i think of it, i can create myself additional labor by kicking this board back into the sea." --but this reasoning was absurd! --certainly. nevertheless it is that adopted by every nation which _protects_ itself by prohibition. it rejects the plank which is offered it in exchange for a little labor, in order to give itself more labor. it sees a gain even in the labor of the custom house officer. this answers to the trouble which robinson took to give back to the waves the present they wished to make him. consider the nation a collective being, and you will not find an atom of difference between its reasoning and that of robinson. --did not robinson see that he could use the time saved in doing _something else_? --what '_something else_'? --so long as one has wants and time, one has always _something_ to do. i am not bound to specify the labor that he could undertake. --i can specify very easily that which he would have avoided. --i assert, that robinson, with incredible blindness, confounded labor with its result, the end with the means, and i will prove it to you. --it is not necessary. but this is the restrictive or prohibitory system in its simplest form. if it appears absurd to you, thus stated, it is because the two qualities of producer and consumer are here united in the same person. --let us pass, then, to a more complicated instance. --willingly. some time after all this, robinson having met friday, they united, and began to work in common. they hunted for six hours each morning and brought home four hampers of game. they worked in the garden for six hours each afternoon, and obtained four baskets of vegetables. one day a canoe touched at the island of despair. a good-looking stranger landed, and was allowed to dine with our two hermits. he tasted, and praised the products of the garden, and before taking leave of his hosts, said to them: "generous islanders, i dwell in a country much richer in game than this, but where horticulture is unknown. it would be easy for me to bring you every evening four hampers of game if you would give me only two baskets of vegetables." at these words robinson and friday stepped on one side, to have a consultation, and the debate which followed is too interesting not to be given _in extenso_: _friday._ friend, what do you think of it? _robinson._ if we accept we are ruined. _friday._ is that certain? calculate! _robinson._ it is all calculated. hunting, crushed out by competition, will be a lost branch of industry for us. _friday._ what difference does that make, if we have the game? _robinson._ theory! it will not be the product of our labor. _friday._ yes, it will, since we will have to give vegetables to get it. _robinson._ then what shall we make? _friday._ the four hampers of game cost us six hours' labor. the stranger gives them to us for two baskets of vegetables, which take us but three hours. thus three hours remain at our disposal. _robinson._ say rather that they are taken from our activity. there is our loss. _labor is wealth_, and if we lose a fourth of our time we are one-fourth poorer. _friday._ friend, you make an enormous mistake. the same amount of game and vegetables and three free hours to boot make progress, or there is none in the world. _robinson._ mere generalities. what will we do with these three hours? _friday._ we will do _something else_. _robinson._ ah, now i have you. you can specify nothing. it is very easy to say _something else--something else_. _friday._ we will fish. we will adorn our houses. we will read the bible. _robinson._ utopia! is it certain that we will do this rather than that? _friday._ well, if we have no wants, we will rest. is rest nothing? _robinson._ when one rests one dies of hunger. _friday._ friend, you are in a vicious circle. i speak of a rest which diminishes neither our gains nor our vegetables. you always forget that by means of our commerce with this stranger, nine hours of labor will give us as much food as twelve now do. _robinson._ it is easy to see that you were not reared in europe. perhaps you have never read the _moniteur industriel_? it would have taught you this: "all time saved is a dear loss. eating is not the important matter, but working. nothing which we consume counts, if it is not the product of our labor. do you wish to know whether you are rich? do not look at your comforts, but at your trouble." this is what the _moniteur industriel_ would have taught you. i, who am not a theorist, see but the loss of our hunting. _friday._ what a strange perversion of ideas. but-- _robinson._ no _buts_. besides, there are political reasons for rejecting the interested offers of this perfidious stranger. _friday._ political reasons! _robinson._ yes. in the first place he makes these offers only because they are for his advantage. _friday._ so much the better, since they are for ours also. _robinson._ then by these exchanges we shall become dependent on him. _friday._ and he on us. we need his game, he our vegetables, and we will live in good friendship. _robinson._ fancy! do you want i should leave you without an answer? _friday._ let us see; i am still waiting a good reason. _robinson._ supposing that the stranger learns to cultivate a garden, and that his island is more fertile than ours. do you see the consequences? _friday._ yes. our relations with the stranger will stop. he will take no more vegetables from us, since he can get them at home with less trouble. he will bring us no more game, since we will have nothing to give in exchange, and we will be then just where you want us to be now. _robinson._ short-sighted savage! you do not see that after having destroyed our hunting, by inundating us with game, he will kill our gardening by overwhelming us with vegetables. _friday._ but he will do that only so long as we give him _something else_; that is to say, so long as we find _something else_ to produce, which will economize our labor. _robinson._ _something else--something else!_ you always come back to that. you are very vague, friend friday; there is nothing practical in your views. the contest lasted a long time, and, as often happens, left each one convinced that he was right. however, robinson having great influence over friday, his views prevailed, and when the stranger came for an answer, robinson said to him: "stranger, in order that your proposition may be accepted, we must be quite sure of two things: "the first is, that your island is not richer in game than ours, for we will struggle but with _equal arms_. "the second is, that you will lose by the bargain. for, as in every exchange there is necessarily a gainer and a loser, we would be cheated, if you were not. what have you to say?". "nothing, nothing," replied the stranger, who burst out laughing, and returned to his canoe. --the story would not be bad if robinson was not so foolish. --he is no more so than the committee in hauteville street. --oh, there is a great difference. you suppose one solitary man, or, what comes to the same thing, two men living together. this is not our world; the diversity of occupations, and the intervention of merchants and money, change the question materially. --all this complicates transactions, but does not change their nature. --what! do you propose to compare modern commerce to mere exchanges? --commerce is but a multitude of exchanges; the real nature of the exchange is identical with the real nature of commerce, as small labor is of the same nature with great, and as the gravitation which impels an atom is of the same nature as that which attracts a world. --thus, according to you, these arguments, which in robinson's mouth are so false, are no less so in the mouths of our protectionists? --yes; only error is hidden better under the complication of circumstances. --well, now, select some instance from what has actually occurred. --very well; in france, in view of custom and the exigencies of the climate, cloth is an useful article. is it the essential thing _to make it, or to have it_? --a pretty question! to have it, we must make it. --that is not necessary. it is certain that to have it some one must make it; but it is not necessary that the person or country using it should make it. you did not produce that which clothes you so well, nor france the coffee it uses for breakfast. --but i purchased my cloth, and france its coffee. --exactly, and with what? --with specie. --but you did not make the specie, nor did france. --we bought it. --with what? --with our products which went to peru. --then it is in reality your labor that you exchange for cloth, and french labor that is exchanged for coffee? --certainly. --then it is not absolutely necessary to make what one consumes? --no, if one makes _something else_, and gives it in exchange. --in other words, france has two ways of procuring a given quantity of cloth. the first is to make it, and the second is to make _something else_, and exchange _that something else_ abroad for cloth. of these two ways, which is the best? --i do not know. --is it not that which, _for a fixed amount of labor, gives the greatest quantity of cloth_? --it seems so. --which is best for a nation, to have the choice of these two ways, or to have the law forbid its using one of them at the risk of rejecting the best? --it seems to me that it would be best for the nation to have the choice, since in these matters it always makes a good selection. --the law which prohibits the introduction of foreign cloth, decides, then, that if france wants cloth, it must make it at home, and that it is forbidden to make that _something else_ with which it could purchase foreign cloth? --that is true. --and as it is obliged to make cloth, and forbidden to make _something else_, just because the other thing would require less labor (without which france would have no occasion to do anything with it), the law virtually decrees, that for a certain amount of labor, france shall have but one yard of cloth, making it itself, when, for the same amount of labor, it could have had two yards, by making _something else_. --but what other thing? --no matter what. being free to choose, it will make _something else_ only so long as there is _something else_ to make. --that is possible; but i cannot rid myself of the idea that the foreigners may send us cloth and not take something else, in which case we shall be prettily caught. under all circumstances, this is the objection, even from your own point of view. you admit that france will make this _something else_, which is to be exchanged for cloth, with less labor than if it had made the cloth itself? --doubtless. --then a certain quantity of its labor will become inert? --yes; but people will be no worse clothed--a little circumstance which causes the whole misunderstanding. robinson lost sight of it, and our protectionists do not see it, or pretend not to. the stranded plank thus paralyzed for fifteen days robinson's labor, so far as it was applied to the making of a plank, but it did not deprive him of it. distinguish, then, between these two kinds of diminution of labor, one resulting in _privation_, and the other in _comfort_. these two things are very different, and if you assimilate them, you reason like robinson. in the most complicated, as in the most simple instances, the sophism consists in this: _judging of the utility of labor by its duration and intensity, and not by its results_, which leads to this economic policy, _a reduction of the results of labor, in order to increase its duration and intensity_. xv. the little arsenal of the free trader. --if they say to you: there are no absolute principles; prohibition may be bad, and restriction good-- reply: restriction _prohibits_ all that it keeps from coming in. --if they say to you: agriculture is the nursing mother of the country-- reply: that which feeds a country is not exactly agriculture, but _grain_. --if they say to you: the basis of the sustenance of the people is agriculture-- reply: the basis of the sustenance of the people is _grain_. thus a law which causes _two_ bushels of grain to be obtained by agricultural labor at the expense of four bushels, which the same labor would have produced but for it, far from being a law of sustenance, is a law of starvation. --if they say to you: a restriction on the admission of foreign grain leads to more cultivation, and, consequently, to a greater home production-- reply: it leads to sowing on the rocks of the mountains and the sands of the sea. to milk and steadily milk, a cow gives more milk; for who can tell the moment when not a drop more can be obtained? but the drop costs dear. --if they say to you: let bread be dear, and the wealthy farmer will enrich the artisans-- reply: bread is dear when there is little of it, a thing which can make but poor, or, if you please, rich people who are starving. --if they insist on it, saying: when food is dear, wages rise-- reply by showing that in april, , five-sixths of the workingmen were beggars. --if they say to you: the profits of the workingmen must rise with the dearness of food-- reply: this is equivalent to saying that in an unprovisioned vessel everybody has the same number of biscuits whether he has any or not. --if they say to you: a good price must be secured for those who sell grain-- reply: certainly; but good wages must be secured to those who buy it. --if they say to you: the land owners, who make the law, have raised the price of food without troubling themselves about wages, because they know that when food becomes dear, wages _naturally_ rise-- reply: on this principle, when workingmen come to make the law, do not blame them if they fix a high rate of wages without troubling themselves to protect grain, for they know that if wages are raised, articles of food will _naturally_ rise in price. --if they say to you: what, then, is to be done? reply: be just to everybody. --if they say to you: it is essential that a great country should manufacture iron-- reply: the most essential thing is that this great country _should have iron_. --if they say to you: it is necessary that a great country should manufacture cloth. reply: it is more necessary that the citizens of this great country _should have cloth_. --if they say to you: labor is wealth-- reply: it is false. and, by way of developing this, add: a bleeding is not health, and the proof of it is, that it is done to restore health. --if they say to you: to compel men to work over rocks and get an ounce of iron from a ton of ore, is to increase their labor, and, consequently, their wealth-- reply: to compel men to dig wells, by denying them the use of river water, is to add to their _useless_ labor, but not their wealth. --if they say to you: the sun gives his heat and light without requiring remuneration-- reply: so much the better for me, since it costs me nothing to see distinctly. --and if they reply to you: industry in general loses what you would have paid for lights-- retort: no, for having paid nothing to the sun, i use that which it saves me in paying for clothes, furniture and candles. --so, if they say to you: these english rascals have capital which pays them nothing-- reply: so much the better for us; they will not make us pay interest. --if they say to you: these perfidious englishmen find iron and coal at the same spot-- reply: so much the better for us; they will not make us pay anything for bringing them together. --if they say to you: the swiss have rich pastures which cost little-- reply: the advantage is on our side, for they will ask for a lesser quantity of our labor to furnish our farmers oxen and our stomachs food. --if they say to you: the lands in the crimea are worth nothing, and pay no taxes-- reply: the gain is on our side, since we buy grain free from those charges. --if they say to you: the serfs of poland work without wages-- reply: the loss is theirs and the gain is ours, since their labor is deducted from the price of the grain which their masters sell us. --then, if they say to you: other nations have many advantages over us-- reply: by exchange, they are forced to let us share in them. --if they say to you: with liberty we shall be swamped with bread, beef _a la mode_, coal, and coats-- reply: we shall be neither cold nor hungry. --if they say to you: with what shall we pay? reply: do not be troubled about that. if we are to be inundated, it will be because we are able to pay. if we cannot pay we will not be inundated. --if they say to you: i would allow free trade, if a stranger, in bringing us one thing, took away another; but he will carry off our specie-- reply: neither specie nor coffee grow in the fields of beauce or come out of the manufactories of elbeuf. for us to pay a foreigner with specie is like paying him with coffee. --if they say to you: eat meat-- reply: let it come in. --if they say to you, like the _presse_: when you have not the money to buy bread with, buy beef-- reply: this advice is as wise as that of vautour to his tenant, "if a person has not money to pay his rent with, he ought to have a house of his own." --if they say to you, like the _presse_: the state ought to teach the people why and how it should eat meat-- reply: only let the state allow the meat free entrance, and the most civilized people in the world are old enough to learn to eat it without any teacher. --if they say to you: the state ought to know everything, and foresee everything, to guide the people, and the people have only to let themselves be guided-- reply: is there a state outside of the people, and a human foresight outside of humanity? archimedes might have repeated all the days of his life, "with a lever and a fulcrum i will move the world," but he could not have moved it, for want of those two things. the fulcrum of the state is the nation, and nothing is madder than to build so many hopes on the state; that is to say, to assume a collective science and foresight, after having established individual folly and short-sightedness. --if they say to you: my god! i ask no favors, but only a duty on grain and meat, which may compensate for the heavy taxes to which france is subjected; a mere little duty, equal to what these taxes add to the cost of my grain-- reply: a thousand pardons, but i, too, pay taxes. if, then, the protection which you vote yourself results in burdening for me, your grain with your proportion of the taxes, your insinuating demand aims at nothing less than the establishment between us of the following arrangement, thus worded by yourself: "since the public burdens are heavy, i, who sell grain, will pay nothing at all; and you, my neighbor, the buyer, shall pay two parts, to wit, your share and mine." my neighbor, the grain dealer, you may have power on your side, but not reason. --if they say to you: it is, however, very hard for me, a tax payer, to compete in my own market with foreigners who pay none-- reply: first, this is not _your_ market, but _our_ market. i who live on grain, and pay for it, must be counted for something. secondly. few foreigners at this time are free from taxes. thirdly. if the tax which you vote repays to you, in roads, canals and safety, more than it costs you, you are not justified in driving away, at my expense, the competition of foreigners who do not pay the tax but who do not have the safety, roads and canals. it is the same as saying: i want a compensating duty, because i have fine clothes, stronger horses and better plows than the russian laborer. fourthly. if the tax does not repay what it costs, do not vote it. fifthly. if, after you have voted a tax, it is your pleasure to escape its operation, invent a system which will throw it on foreigners. but the tariff only throws your proportion on me, when i already have enough of my own. --if they say to you: freedom of commerce is necessary among the russians _that they may exchange their products with advantage_ (opinion of m. thiers, april, )-- reply: this freedom is necessary everywhere, and for the same reason. --if they say to you: each country has its wants; it is according to that that _it must act_ (m. thiers)-- reply: it is according to that that _it acts of itself_ when no one hinders it. --if they say to you: since we have no sheet iron, its admission must be allowed (m. thiers)-- reply: thank you, kindly. --if they say to you: our merchant marine must have freight; owing to the lack of return cargoes our vessels cannot compete with foreign ones-- reply: when you want to do everything at home, you can have cargoes neither going nor coming. it is as absurd to wish for a navy under a prohibitory system as to wish for carts where all transportation is forbidden. --if they say to you: supposing that protection is unjust, everything is founded on it; there are moneys invested, and rights acquired, and it cannot be abandoned without suffering-- reply: every injustice profits some one (except, perhaps, restriction, which in the long run profits no one), and to use as an argument the disturbance which the cessation of the injustice causes to the person profiting by it, is to say that an injustice, only because it has existed for a moment, should be eternal. xvi. the right and the left hand. [_report to the king._] sire--when we see these men of the _libre echange_ audaciously disseminating their doctrines, and maintaining that the right of buying and selling is implied by that of ownership (a piece of insolence that m. billault has criticised like a true lawyer), we may be allowed to entertain serious fears as to the destiny of _national labor_; for what will frenchmen do with their arms and intelligences when they are free? the ministry which you have honored with your confidence has naturally paid great attention to so serious a subject, and has sought in its wisdom for a _protection_ which might be substituted for that which appears compromised. it proposes to you to forbid your faithful subjects the use of the right hand. sire, do not wrong us so far as to think that we lightly adopted a measure which, at the first glance, may appear odd. deep study of the _protective system_ has revealed to us this syllogism, on which it entirely rests: the more one labors, the richer one is. the more difficulties one has to conquer, the more one labors. _ergo_, the more difficulties one has to conquer, the richer one is. what is _protection_, really, but an ingenious application of this formal reasoning, which is so compact that it would resist the subtlety of m. billault himself? let us personify the country. let us look on it as a collective being, with thirty million mouths, and, consequently, sixty million arms. this being makes a clock, which he proposes to exchange in belgium for ten quintals of iron. "but," we say to him, "make the iron yourself." "i cannot," says he; "it would take me too much time, and i could not make five quintals while i can make one clock." "utopist!" we reply; "for this very reason we forbid your making the clock, and order you to make the iron. do not you see that we create you labor?" sire, it will not have escaped your sagacity, that it is just as if we said to the country, _labor with the left hand, and not with the right_. the creation of obstacles to furnish labor an opportunity to develop itself, is the principle of the _restriction_ which is dying. it is also the principle of the _restriction_ which is about to be created. sire, to make such regulations is not to innovate, but to preserve. the efficacy of the measure is incontestable. it is difficult--much more difficult than one thinks--to do with the left hand what one was accustomed to do with the right. you will convince yourself of it, sire, if you will condescend to try our system on something which is familiar to you,--like shuffling cards, for instance. we can then flatter ourselves that we have opened an illimitable career to labor. when workmen of all kinds are reduced to their left hands, consider, sire, the immense number that will be required to meet the present consumption, supposing it to be invariable, which we always do when we compare differing systems of production. so prodigious a demand for manual labor cannot fail to bring about a considerable increase in wages; and pauperism will disappear from the country as if by enchantment. sire, your paternal heart will rejoice at the thought that the benefits of this regulation will extend over that interesting portion of the great family whose fate excites your liveliest solicitude. what is the destiny of women in france? that sex which is the boldest and most hardened to fatigue, is, insensibly, driving them from all fields of labor. formerly they found a refuge in the lottery offices. these have been closed by a pitiless philanthropy; and under what pretext? "to save," said they, "the money of the poor." alas! has a poor man ever obtained from a piece of money enjoyments as sweet and innocent as those which the mysterious urn of fortune contained for him? cut off from all the sweets of life, how many delicious hours did he introduce into the bosom of his family when, every two weeks, he put the value of a day's labor on a _quatern_. hope had always her place at the domestic hearth. the garret was peopled with illusions; the wife promised herself that she would eclipse her neighbors with the splendor of her attire; the son saw himself drum-major, and the daughter felt herself carried toward the altar in the arms of her betrothed. to have a beautiful dream is certainly something. the lottery was the poetry of the poor, and we have allowed it to escape them. the lottery dead, what means have we of providing for our _proteges_?--tobacco, and the postal service. tobacco, certainly; it progresses, thanks to heaven, and the distinguished habits which august examples have been enabled to introduce among our elegant youth. but the postal service! we will say nothing of that, but make it the subject of a special report. then what is left to your female subjects except tobacco? nothing, except embroidery, knitting, and sewing, pitiful resources, which are more and more restricted by that barbarous science, mechanics. but as soon as your ordinance has appeared, as soon as the right hands are cut off or tied up, everything will change face. twenty, thirty times more embroiderers, washers and ironers, seamstresses and shirt-makers, would not meet the consumption (_honi soit qui mal y pense_) of the kingdom; always assuming that it is invariable, according to our way of reasoning. it is true that this supposition might be denied by cold-blooded theorists, for dresses and shirts would be dearer. but they say the same thing of the iron which france gets from our mines, compared to the vintage it could get on our hillsides. this argument can, therefore, be no more entertained against _left-handedness_ than against _protection_; for this very dearness is the result and the sign of the excess of efforts and of labors, which is precisely the basis on which, in one case, as in the other, we claim to found the prosperity of the working classes. yes, we make a touching picture of the prosperity of the sewing business. what movement! what activity! what life! each dress will busy a hundred fingers instead of ten. no longer will there be an idle young girl, and we need not, sire, point out to your perspicacity the moral results of this great revolution. not only will there be more women employed, but each one of them will earn more, for they cannot meet the demand, and if competition still shows itself, it will no longer be among the workingwomen who make the dresses, but the beautiful ladies who wear them. you see, sire, that our proposition is not only conformable to the economic traditions of the government, but it is also essentially moral and democratic. to appreciate its effect, let us suppose it realized; let us transport ourselves in thought into the future; let us imagine the system in action for twenty years. idleness is banished from the country; ease and concord, contentment and morality, have entered all families together with labor; there is no more misery and no more prostitution. the left hand being very clumsy at its work, there is a superabundance of labor, and the pay is satisfactory. everything is based on this, and, as a consequence, the workshops are filled. is it not true, sire, that if utopians were to suddenly demand the freedom of the right hand, they would spread alarm throughout the country? is it not true that this pretended reform would overthrow all existences? then our system is good, since it cannot be overthrown without causing great distress. however, we have a sad presentiment that some day (so great is the perversity of man) an association will be organized to secure the liberty of right hands. it seems to us that we already hear these free-right-handers speak as follows in the salle montesquieu: "people, you believe yourselves richer because they have taken from you one hand; you see but the increase of labor which results to you from it. but look also at the dearness it causes, and the forced decrease in the consumption of all articles. this measure has not made capital, which is the source of wages, more abundant. the waters which flow from this great reservoir are directed into other channels; the quantity is not increased, and the definite result is, for the nation, as a whole, a loss of comfort equal to the excess of the production of several millions of right hands, over several millions of left hands. then let us form a league, and, at the expense of some inevitable disturbances, let us conquer the right of working with both hands." happily, sire, there will be organized an _association for the defense of left-handed labor_, and the _sinistrists_ will have no trouble in reducing to nothing all these generalities and realities, suppositions and abstractions, reveries and utopias. they need only to exhume the _moniteur industriel_ of , and they will find, ready-made, arguments against _free trade_, which destroy so admirably this _liberty of the right hand_, that all that is required is to substitute one word for another. "the parisian _free trade_ league never doubted but that it would have the assistance of the workingmen. but the workingmen can no longer be led by the nose. they have their eyes open, and they know political economy better than our diplomaed professors. _free trade_, they replied, will take from us our labor, and labor is our real, great, sovereign property; _with labor, with much labor, the price of articles of merchandise is never beyond reach_. but without labor, even if bread should cost but a penny a pound, the workingman is compelled to die of hunger. now, your doctrines, instead of increasing the amount of labor in france, diminish it; that is to say, you reduce us to misery." (number of october , .) "it is true, that when there are too many manufactured articles to sell, their price falls; but as wages decrease when these articles sink in value, the result is, that, instead of being able to buy them, we can buy nothing. thus, when they are cheapest, the workingman is most unhappy." (gauthier de rumilly, _moniteur industriel_ of november .) it would not be ill for the sinistrists to mingle some threats with their beautiful theories. this is a sample: "what! to desire to substitute the labor of the right hand for that of the left, and thus to cause a forced reduction, if not an annihilation of wages, the sole resource of almost the entire nation! "and this at the moment when poor harvests already impose painful sacrifices on the workingman, disquiet him as to his future, and make him more accessible to bad counsels and ready to abandon the wise course of conduct he had hitherto adhered to!" we are confident, sire, that thanks to such wise reasonings, if a struggle takes place, the left hand will come out of it victorious. perhaps, also, an association will be formed in order to ascertain whether the right and the left hand are not both wrong, and if there is not a third hand between them, in order to conciliate all. after having described the _dexterists_ as seduced by the _apparent liberality of a principle, the correctness of which has not yet been verified by experience_, and the _sinistrists_ as encamping in the positions they have gained, it will say: "and yet they deny that there is a third course to pursue in the midst of the conflict; and they do not see that the working classes have to defend themselves, at the same moment, against those who wish to change nothing in the present situation, because they find their advantage in it, and against those who dream of an economic revolution of which they have calculated neither the extent nor the significance." (_national_ of october .) we do not desire, however, to hide from your majesty the fact that our plan has a vulnerable side. they may say to us: in twenty years all left hands will be as skilled as right ones are now, and you can no longer count on _left-handedness_ to increase the national labor. we reply to this, that, according to learned physicians, the left side of the body has a natural weakness, which is very reassuring for the future of labor. finally, sire, consent to sign the law, and a great principle will have prevailed: _all wealth comes from the intensity of labor._ it will be easy for us to extend it, and vary its application. we will declare, for instance, that it shall be allowable to work only with the feet. this is no more impossible (for there have been instances) than to extract iron from the mud of the seine. there have even been men who wrote with their backs. you see, sire, that we do not lack means of increasing national labor. if they do begin to fail us, there remains the boundless resource of amputation. if this report, sire, was not intended for publication, we would call your attention to the great influence which systems analogous to the one we submit to you, are capable of giving to men in power. but this is a subject which we reserve for consideration in private counsel. xvii. supremacy by labor. "as in a time of war, supremacy is attained by superiority in arms, can, in a time of peace, supremacy be secured by superiority in labor?" this question is of the greatest interest at a time when no one seems to doubt that in the field of industry, as on that of battle, _the stronger crushes the weaker_. this must result from the discovery of some sad and discouraging analogy between labor, which exercises itself on things, and violence, which exercises itself on men; for how could these two things be identical in their effects, if they were opposed in their nature? and if it is true that in manufacturing as in war, supremacy is the necessary result of superiority, why need we occupy ourselves with progress or social economy, since we are in a world where all has been so arranged by providence that one and the same result, oppression, necessarily flows from the most antagonistic principles? referring to the new policy toward which commercial freedom is drawing england, many persons make this objection, which, i admit, occupies the sincerest minds. "is england doing anything more than pursuing the same end by different means? does she not constantly aspire to universal supremacy? sure of the superiority of her capital and labor, does she not call in free competition to stifle the industry of the continent, reign as a sovereign, and conquer the privilege of feeding and clothing the ruined peoples?" it would be easy for me to demonstrate that these alarms are chimerical; that our pretended inferiority is greatly exaggerated; that all our great branches of industry not only resist foreign competition, but develop themselves under its influence, and that its infallible effect is to bring about an increase in general consumption capable of absorbing both foreign and domestic products. to-day i desire to attack this objection directly, leaving it all its power and the advantage of the ground it has chosen. putting english and french on one side, i will try to find out in a general way, if, even though by superiority in one branch of industry, one nation has crushed out similar industrial pursuits in another one, this nation has made a step toward supremacy, and that one toward dependence; in other words, if both do not gain by the operation, and if the conquered do not gain the most by it. if we see in any product but a cause of labor, it is certain that the alarm of the protectionists is well founded. if we consider iron, for instance, only in connection with the masters of forges, it might be feared that the competition of a country where iron was a gratuitous gift of nature, would extinguish the furnaces of another country, where ore and fuel were scarce. but is this a complete view of the subject? are there relations only between iron and those who make it? has it none with those who use it? is its definite and only destination to be produced? and if it is useful, not on account of the labor which it causes, but on account of the qualities which it possesses, and the numerous services for which its hardness and malleability fit it, does it not follow that foreigners cannot reduce its price, even so far as to prevent its production among us, without doing us more good, under the last statement of the case, than it injures us, under the first? please consider well that there are many things which foreigners, owing to the natural advantages which surround them, hinder us from producing directly, and in regard to which we are placed, _in reality_, in the hypothetical position which we examined relative to iron. we produce at home neither tea, coffee, gold nor silver. does it follow that our labor, as a whole, is thereby diminished? no; only to create the equivalent of these things, to acquire them by way of exchange, we detach from our general labor a _smaller_ portion than we would require to produce them ourselves. more remains to us to use for other things. we are so much the richer and stronger. all that external rivalry can do, even in cases where it absolutely keeps us from any certain form of labor, is to encourage our labor, and increase our productive power. is that the road to _supremacy_, for foreigners? if a mine of gold were to be discovered in france, it does not follow that it would be for our interests to work it. it is even certain that the enterprise ought to be neglected, if each ounce of gold absorbed more of our labor than an ounce of gold bought in mexico with cloth. in this case, it would be better to keep on seeing our mines in our manufactories. what is true of gold is true of iron. the illusion comes from the fact that one thing is not seen. that is, that foreign superiority prevents national labor, only under some certain form, and makes it superfluous under this form, but by putting at our disposal the very result of the labor thus annihilated. if men lived in diving-bells, under the water, and had to provide themselves with air by the use of pumps, there would be an immense source of labor. to destroy this labor, _leaving men in this condition_, would be to do them a terrible injury. but if labor ceases, because the necessity for it has gone; because men are placed in another position, where air reaches their lungs without an effort, then the loss of this labor is not to be regretted, except in the eyes of those who appreciate in labor, only the labor itself. it is exactly this sort of labor which machines, commercial freedom, and progress of all sorts, gradually annihilate; not useful labor, but labor which has become superfluous, supernumerary, objectless, and without result. on the other hand, protection restores it to activity; it replaces us under the water, so as to give us an opportunity of pumping; it forces us to ask for gold from the inaccessible national mine, rather than from our national manufactories. all its effect is summed up in this phrase--_loss of power_. it must be understood that i speak here of general effects, and not of the temporary disturbances occasioned by the transition from a bad to a good system. a momentary disarrangement necessarily accompanies all progress. this may be a reason for making the transition a gentle one, but not for systematically interdicting all progress, and still less for misunderstanding it. they represent industry to us as a conflict. this is not true; or is true only when you confine yourself to considering each branch of industry in its effects on some similar branch--in isolating both, in the mind, from the rest of humanity. but there is something else; there are its effects on consumption, and the general well-being. this is the reason why it is not allowable to assimilate labor to war as they do. in war, _the strongest overwhelms the weakest_. in labor, _the strongest gives strength to the weakest_. this radically destroys the analogy. though the english are strong and skilled; possess immense invested capital, and have at their disposal the two great powers of production, iron and fire, all this is converted into the _cheapness_ of the product; and who gains by the cheapness of the product?--he who buys it. it is not in their power to absolutely annihilate any portion of our labor. all that they can do is to make it superfluous through some result acquired--to give air at the same time that they suppress the pump; to increase thus the force at our disposal, and, which is a remarkable thing, to render their pretended supremacy more impossible, as their superiority becomes more undeniable. thus, by a rigorous and consoling demonstration, we reach this conclusion: that _labor_ and _violence_, so opposed in their nature, are, whatever socialists and protectionists may say, no less so in their effects. all we required, to do that, was to distinguish between _annihilated_ labor and _economized_ labor. having less iron _because_ one works less, or having more iron _although_ one works less, are things which are more than different,--they are opposites. the protectionists confound them; we do not. that is all. be convinced of one thing. if the english bring into play much activity, labor, capital, intelligence, and natural force, it is not for the love of us. it is to give themselves many comforts in exchange for their products. they certainly desire to receive at least as much as they give, and _they make at home the payment for that which they buy elsewhere_. if then, they inundate us with their products, it is because they expect to be inundated with ours. in this case, the best way to have much for ourselves is to be free to choose between these two methods of production: direct production or indirect production. all the british machiavelism cannot lead us to make a bad choice. let us then stop assimilating industrial competition with war; a false assimilation, which is specious only when two rival branches of industry are isolated, in order to judge of the effects of competition. as soon as the effect produced on the general well-being is taken into consideration, the analogy disappears. in a battle, he who is killed is thoroughly killed, and the army is weakened just that much. in manufactures, one manufactory succumbs only so far as the total of national labor replaces what it produced, _with an excess_. imagine a state of affairs where for one man, stretched on the plain, two spring up full of force and vigor. if there is a planet where such things happen, it must be admitted that war is carried on there under conditions so different from those which obtain here below, that it does not even deserve that name. now, this is the distinguishing character of what they have so inappropriately called an _industrial war_. let the belgians and english reduce the price of their iron, if they can, and keep on reducing it, until they bring it down to nothing. they may thereby put out one of our furnaces--kill one of our soldiers; but i defy them to hinder a thousand other industries, more profitable than the disabled one, immediately, and, as a necessary consequence of this very cheapness, resuscitating and developing themselves. let us decide that supremacy by labor is impossible and contradictory, since all superiority which manifests itself among a people is converted into cheapness, and results only in giving force to all others. let us, then, banish from political economy all these expressions borrowed from the vocabulary of battles: _to struggle with equal arms, to conquer, to crush out, to stifle, to be beaten, invasion, tribute_. what do these words mean? squeeze them, and nothing comes out of them. we are mistaken; there come from them absurd errors and fatal prejudices. these are the words which stop the blending of peoples, their peaceful, universal, indissoluble alliance, and the progress of humanity. part iii. spoliation and law.[ ] [footnote : on the th of april, , after a very curious discussion, which was reproduced in the _moniteur_, the general council of agriculture, manufactures and commerce issued the following order: "political economy shall be taught by the government professors, not merely from the theoretical point of view of free trade, but also with special regard to the facts and legislation which control french industry." it was in reply to this decree that bastiat wrote the pamphlet _spoliation and law_, which first appeared in the _journal des economistes_, may , .] _to the protectionists of the general council of manufactures:_ gentlemen--let us for a few moments interchange moderate and friendly opinions. you are not willing that political economy should believe and teach free trade. this is as though you were to say, "we are not willing that political economy should occupy itself with society, exchange, value, law, justice, property. we recognize only two principles--oppression and spoliation." can you possibly conceive of political economy without society? or of society without exchange? or of exchange without a relative value between the two articles, or the two services, exchanged? can you possibly conceive the idea of _value_, except as the result of the _free_ consent of the exchangers? can you conceive of one product being _worth_ another, if, in the barter, one of the parties is not _free_? is it possible for you to conceive of the free consent of two parties without liberty? can you possibly conceive that one of the contracting parties is deprived of his liberty unless he is oppressed by the other? can you possibly conceive of an exchange between an oppressor and one oppressed, unless the equivalence of the services is altered, or unless, as a consequence, law, justice, and the rights of property have been violated? what do you really want? answer frankly. you are not willing that trade should be free! you desire, then, that it shall not be free? you desire, then, that trade shall be carried on under the influence of oppression? for if it is not carried on under the influence of oppression, it will be carried on under the influence of liberty, and that is what you do not desire. admit, then, that it is law and justice which embarrass you; that that which troubles you is property--not your own, to be sure, but another's. you are altogether unwilling to allow others to freely dispose of their own property (the essential condition of ownership); but you well understand how to dispose of your own--and of theirs. and, accordingly, you ask the political economists to arrange this mass of absurdities and monstrosities in a definite and well-ordered system; to establish, in accordance with your practice, the theory of spoliation. but they will never do it; for, in their eyes, spoliation is a principle of hatred and disorder, and the most particularly odious form which it can assume is _the legal form_. and here, mr. benoit d' azy, i take you to task. you are moderate, impartial, and generous. you are willing to sacrifice your interests and your fortune. this you constantly declare. recently, in the general council, you said: "if the rich had only to abandon their wealth to make the people rich we should all be ready to do it." [hear, hear. it is true.] and yesterday, in the national assembly, you said: "if i believed that it was in my power to give to the workingmen all the work they need, i would give all i possess to realize this blessing. unfortunately, it is impossible." although it pains you that the sacrifice is so useless that it should not be made, and you exclaim, with basile, "money! money! i detest it--but i will keep it," assuredly no one will question a generosity so retentive, however barren. it is a virtue which loves to envelop itself in a veil of modesty, especially when it is purely latent and negative. as for you, you will lose no opportunity to proclaim it in the ears of all france from the tribune of the _luxembourg_ and the _palais legislatif_. but no one desires you to abandon your fortune, and i admit that it would not solve the social problem. you wish to be generous, but cannot. i only venture to ask that you will be just. keep your fortune, but permit me also to keep mine. respect my property as i respect yours. is this too bold a request on my part? suppose we lived in a country under a free trade _regime_, where every one could dispose of his property and his labor at pleasure. does this make your hair stand? reassure yourself, this is only an hypothesis. one would then be as free as the other. there would, indeed, be a law in the code, but this law, impartial and just, would not infringe our liberty, but would guarantee it, and it would take effect only when we sought to oppress each other. there would be officers of the law, magistrates and police; but they would only execute the law. under such a state of affairs, suppose that you owned an iron foundry, and that i was a hatter. i should need iron for my business. naturally i should seek to solve this problem: "how shall i best procure the iron necessary for my business with the least possible amount of labor?" considering my situation, and my means of knowledge, i should discover that the best thing for me to do would be to make hats, and sell them to a belgian who would give me iron in exchange. but you, being the owner of an iron foundry, and considering my case, would say to yourself: "i shall be obliged to _compel_ that fellow to come to my shop." you, accordingly, take your sword and pistols, and, arming your numerous retinue, proceed to the frontier, and, at the moment i am engaged in making my trade, you cry out to me: "stop that, or i will blow your brains out!" "but, my lord, i am in need of iron." "i have it to sell." "but, sir, you ask too much for it." "i have my reasons for that." "but, my good sir, i also have my reasons for preferring cheaper iron." "well, we shall see who shall decide between your reasons and mine! soldiers, advance!" in short, you forbid the entry of the belgian iron, and prevent the export of my hats. under the condition of things which we have supposed (that is, under a _regime_ of liberty), you cannot deny that that would be, on your part, manifestly an act of oppression and spoliation. accordingly, i should resort to the law, the magistrate, and the power of the government. they would intervene. you would be tried, condemned, and justly punished. but this circumstance would suggest to you a bright idea. you would say to yourself: "i have been very simple to give myself so much trouble. what! place myself in a position where i must kill some one, or be killed! degrade myself! put my domestics under arms! incur heavy expenses! give myself the character of a robber, and render myself liable to the laws of the country! and all this in order to compel a miserable hatter to come to my foundry to buy iron at my price! what if i should make the interest of the law, of the magistrate, of the public authorities, my interests? what if i could get them to perform the odious act on the frontier which i was about to do myself?" enchanted by this pleasing prospect, you secure a nomination to the chambers, and obtain the passage of a law conceived in the following terms: section . there shall be a tax levied upon everybody (but especially upon that cursed hat-maker). sec. . the proceeds of this tax shall be applied to the payment of men to guard the frontier in the interest of iron-founders. sec. . it shall be their duty to prevent the exchange of hats or other articles of merchandise with the belgians for iron. sec. . the ministers of the government, the prosecuting attorneys, jailers, customs officers, and all officials, are entrusted with the execution of this law. i admit, sir, that in this form robbery would be far more lucrative, more agreeable, and less perilous than under the arrangements which you had at first determined upon. i admit that for you it would offer a very pleasant prospect. you could most assuredly laugh in your sleeve, for you would then have saddled all the expenses upon me. but i affirm that you would have introduced into society a vicious principle, a principle of immorality, of disorder, of hatred, and of incessant revolutions; that you would have prepared the way for all the various schemes of socialism and communism. you, doubtless, find my hypothesis a very bold one. well, then, let us reverse the case. i consent for the sake of the demonstration. suppose that i am a laborer and you an iron-founder. it would be a great advantage to me to buy hatchets cheap, and even to get them for nothing. and i know that there are hatchets and saws in your establishment. accordingly, without any ceremony, i enter your warehouse and seize everything that i can lay my hands upon. but, in the exercise of your legitimate right of self-defense, you at first resist force with force; afterwards, invoking the power of the law, the magistrate, and the constables, you throw me into prison--and you do well. oh! ho! the thought suggests itself to me that i have been very awkward in this business. when a person wishes to enjoy the property of other people, he will, unless he is a fool, act _in accordance_ with the law, and not _in violation_ of it. consequently, just as you have made yourself a protectionist, i will make myself a socialist. since you have laid claim to the _right to profit_, i claim the _right to labor_, or to the instruments of labor. for the rest, i read my louis blanc in prison, and i know by heart this doctrine: "in order to disenthrall themselves, the common people have need of tools to work with; it is the function of the government to provide them." and again: "if one admits that, in order to be really free, a man requires the ability to exercise and to develop his faculties, the result is that society owes each of its members instruction, without which the human mind is incapable of development, and the instruments of labor, without which human activities have no field for their exercise. but by what means can society give to each one of its members the necessary instruction and the necessary instruments of labor, except by the intervention of the state?" so that if it becomes necessary to revolutionize the country, i also will force my way into the halls of legislation. i also will pervert the law, and make it perform in my behalf and at your expense the very act for which it just now punished me. my decree is modeled after yours: section . there shall be taxes levied upon every citizen, and especially upon iron founders. sec. . the proceeds of this tax shall be applied to the creation of armed corps, to which the title of the _fraternal constabulary_ shall be given. sec. . it shall be the duty of the _fraternal constabulary_ to make their way into the warehouses of hatchets, saws, etc., to take possession of these tools, and to distribute them to such workingmen as may desire them. thanks to this ingenious device, you see, my lord, that i shall no longer be obliged to bear the risks, the costs, the odium, or the scruples of robbery. the state will rob for me as it has for you. we shall both be playing the same game. it remains to be seen what would be the condition of french society on the realization of my second hypothesis, or what, at least, is the condition of it after the almost complete realization of the first hypothesis. i do not desire to discuss here the economy of the question. it is generally believed that in advocating free trade we are exclusively influenced by the desire to allow capital and labor to take the direction most advantageous to them. this is an error. this consideration is merely secondary. that which wounds, afflicts, and is revolting to us in the protective system, is the denial of right, of justice, of property; it is the fact that the system turns the law against justice and against property, when it ought to protect them; it is that it undermines and perverts the very conditions of society. and to the question in this aspect i invite your most serious consideration. what is law, or at least what ought it to be? what is its rational and moral mission? is it not to hold the balance even between all rights, all liberties, and all property? is it not to cause justice to rule among all? is it not to prevent and to repress oppression and robbery wherever they are found? and are you not shocked at the immense, radical, and deplorable innovation introduced into the world by compelling the law itself to commit the very crimes to punish which is its especial mission--by turning the law in principle and in fact against liberty and property? you deplore the condition of modern society. you groan over the disorder which prevails in institutions and ideas. but is it not your system which has perverted everything, both institutions and ideas? what! the law is no longer the refuge of the oppressed, but the arm of the oppressor! the law is no longer a shield, but a sword! the law no longer holds in her august hands a scale, but false weights and measures! and you wish to have society well regulated! your system has written over the entrance of the legislative halls these words: "whoever acquires any influence here can obtain his share of the legalized pillage." and what has been the result? all classes of society have become demoralized by shouting around the gates of the palace: "give me a share of the spoils." after the revolution of february, when universal suffrage was proclaimed, i had for a moment hoped to have heard this sentiment: "no more pillage for any one, justice for all." and that would have been the real solution of the social problem. such was not the case. the doctrine of protection had for generations too profoundly corrupted the age, public sentiments and ideas. no. in making inroads upon the national assembly, each class, in accordance with your system, has endeavored to make the law an instrument of rapine. there have been demanded heavier imposts, gratuitous credit, the right to employment, the right to assistance, the guaranty of incomes and of minimum wages, gratuitous instruction, loans to industry, etc., etc.; in short, every one has endeavored to live and thrive at the expense of others. and upon what have these pretensions been based? upon the authority of your precedents. what sophisms have been invoked? those that you have propagated for two centuries. with you they have talked about _equalizing the conditions of labor_. with you they have declaimed against ruinous competition. with you they have ridiculed the _let alone_ principle, that is to say, _liberty_. with you they have said that the law should not confine itself to being just, but should come to the aid of suffering industries, protect the feeble against the strong, secure profits to individuals at the expense of the community, etc., etc. in short, according to the expression of mr. charles dupin, socialism has come to establish the theory of robbery. it has done what you have done, and that which you desire the professors of political economy to do for you. your cleverness is in vain, _messieurs protectionists_, it is useless to lower your tone, to boast of your latent generosity, or to deceive your opponents by sentiment. you cannot prevent logic from being logic. you cannot prevent mr. billault from telling the legislators, "you have granted favors to one, you must grant them to all." you cannot prevent mr. cremieux from telling the legislators: "you have enriched the manufacturers, you must enrich the common people." you cannot prevent mr. nadeau from saying to the legislators: "you cannot refuse to do for the suffering classes that which you have done for the privileged classes." you cannot even prevent the leader of your orchestra, mr. mimerel, from saying to the legislators: "i demand twenty-five thousand subsidies for the workingmen's savings banks;" and supporting his motion in this manner: "is this the first example of the kind that our legislation offers? would you establish the system that the state should encourage everything, open at its expense courses of scientific lectures, subsidize the fine arts, pension the theatre, give to the classes already favored by fortune the benefits of superior education, the most varied amusements, the enjoyment of the arts, and repose for old age; give all this to those who know nothing of privations, and compel those who have no share in these benefits to bear their part of the burden, while refusing them everything, even the necessaries of life? "gentlemen, our french society, our customs, our laws, are so made that the intervention of the state, however much it may be regretted, is seen everywhere, and nothing seems to be stable or durable if the hand of the state is not manifest in it. it is the state that makes the sevres porcelain, and the gobelin tapestry. it is the state that periodically gives expositions of the works of our artists, and of the products of our manufacturers; it is the state which recompenses those who raise its cattle and breed its fish. all this costs a great deal. it is a tax to which every one is obliged to contribute. everybody, do you understand? and what direct benefit do the people derive from it? of what direct benefit to the people are your porcelains and tapestries, and your expositions? this general principle of resisting what you call a state of enthusiasm we can understand, although you yesterday voted a bounty for linens; we can understand it on the condition of consulting the present crisis, and especially on the condition of your proving your impartiality. if it is true that, by the means i have indicated, the state thus far seems to have more directly benefited the well-to-do classes than those who are poorer, it is necessary that this appearance should be removed. shall it be done by closing the manufactories of tapestry and stopping the exhibitions? assuredly not; _but by giving the poor a direct share in this distribution of benefits_." in this long catalogue of favors granted to some at the expense of all, one will remark the extreme prudence with which mr. mimerel has left the tariff favors out of sight, although they are the most explicit manifestations of legal spoliation. all the orators who supported or opposed him have taken upon themselves the same reserve. it is very shrewd! possibly they hope, _by giving the poor a direct participation in this distribution of benefits_, to save this great iniquity by which they profit, but of which they do not whisper. they deceive themselves. do they suppose that after having realized a partial spoliation by the establishment of customs duties, other classes, by the establishment of other institutions, will not attempt to realize universal spoliation? i know very well you always have a sophism ready. you say: "the favors which the law grants us are not given to the _manufacturer_, but to _manufactures_. the profits which it enables us to receive at the expense of the consumers are merely a trust placed in our hands. they enrich us, it is true, but our wealth places us in a position to expend more, to extend our establishments, and falls like refreshing dew upon the laboring classes." such is your language, and what i most lament is the circumstance that your miserable sophisms have so perverted public opinion that they are appealed to in support of all forms of legalized spoliation. the suffering classes also say. "let us by act of the legislature help ourselves to the goods of others. we shall be in easier circumstances as the result of it; we shall buy more wheat, more meat, more cloth, and more iron; and that which we receive from the public taxes will return in a beneficent shower to the capitalists and landed proprietors." but, as i have already said, i will not to-day discuss the economical effects of legal spoliation. whenever the protectionists desire, they will find me ready to examine the _sophisms of the ricochets_, which, indeed, may be invoked in support of all species of robbery and fraud. we will confine ourselves to the political and moral effects of exchange legally deprived of liberty. i have said: the time has come to know what the law is, and what it ought to be. if you make the law for all citizens a palladium of liberty and of property; if it is only the organization of the individual law of self-defense, you will establish, upon the foundation of justice, a government rational, simple, economical, comprehended by all, loved by all, useful to all, supported by all, entrusted with a responsibility perfectly defined and carefully restricted, and endowed with imperishable strength. if, on the other hand, in the interests of individuals or of classes, you make the law an instrument of robbery, every one will wish to make laws, and to make them to his own advantage. there will be a riotous crowd at the doors of the legislative halls, there will be a bitter conflict within; minds will be in anarchy, morals will be shipwrecked; there will be violence in party organs, heated elections, accusations, recriminations, jealousies, inextinguishable hates, the public forces placed at the service of rapacity instead of repressing it, the ability to distinguish the true from the false effaced from all minds, as the notion of justice and injustice will be obliterated from all consciences, the government responsible for everything and bending under the burden of its responsibilities, political convulsions, revolutions without end, ruins over which all forms of socialism and communism attempt to establish themselves; these are the evils which must necessarily flow from the perversion of law. such, consequently, gentlemen, are the evils for which you have prepared the way by making use of the law to destroy freedom of exchange; that is to say, to abolish the right of property. do not declaim against socialism; you establish it. do not cry out against communism; you create it. and now you ask us economists to make you a theory which will justify you! _morbleu!_ make it yourselves. part iv. capital and interest. my object in this treatise is to examine into the real nature of the interest of capital, for the purpose of proving that it is lawful, and explaining why it should be perpetual. this may appear singular, and yet, i confess, i am more afraid of being too plain than too obscure. i am afraid i may weary the reader by a series of mere truisms. but it is no easy matter to avoid this danger, when the facts, with which we have to deal, are known to every one by personal, familiar, and daily experience. but, then, you will say, "what is the use of this treatise? why explain what everybody knows?" but, although this problem appears at first sight so very simple, there is more in it than you might suppose. i shall endeavor to prove this by an example. mondor lends an instrument of labor to-day, which will be entirely destroyed in a week, yet the capital will not produce the less interest to mondor or his heirs, through all eternity. reader, can you honestly say that you understand the reason of this? it would be a waste of time to seek any satisfactory explanation from the writings of economists. they have not thrown much light upon the reasons of the existence of interest. for this they are not to be blamed; for at the time they wrote, its lawfulness was not called in question. now, however, times are altered; the case is different. men, who consider themselves to be in advance of their age, have organized an active crusade against capital and interest; it is the productiveness of capital which they are attacking; not certain abuses in the administration of it, but the principle itself. a journal has been established to serve as a vehicle for this crusade. it is conducted by m. proudhon, and has, it is said, an immense circulation. the first number of this periodical contains the electoral manifesto of the _people_. here we read, "the productiveness of capital, which is condemned by christianity under the name of usury, is the true cause of misery, the true principle of destitution, the eternal obstacle to the establishment of the republic." another journal, _la ruche populaire_, after having said some excellent things on labor, adds, "but, above all, labor ought to be free; that is, it ought to be organized in such a manner, _that money lenders and patrons, or masters, should not be paid_ for this liberty of labor, this right of labor, which is raised to so high a price by the trafficers of men." the only thought that i notice here, is that expressed by the words in italics, which imply a denial of the right to interest. the remainder of the article explains it. it is thus that the democratic socialist, thoré, expresses himself: "the revolution will always have to be recommenced, so long as we occupy ourselves with consequences only, without having the logic or the courage to attack the principle itself. this principle is capital, false property, interest, and usury, which by the old _regime_, is made to weigh upon labor. "ever since the aristocrats invented the incredible fiction, _that capital possesses the power of reproducing itself_, the workers have been at the mercy of the idle. "at the end of a year, will you find an additional crown in a bag of one hundred shillings? at the end of fourteen years, will your shillings have doubled in your bag? "will a work of industry or of skill produce another, at the end of fourteen years? "let us begin, then, by demolishing this fatal fiction." i have quoted the above, merely for the sake of establishing the fact, that many persons consider the productiveness of capital a false, a fatal, and an iniquitous principle. but quotations are superfluous; it is well known that the people attribute their sufferings to what they call _the trafficing in man by man_. in fact, the phrase _tyranny of capital_ has become proverbial. i believe there is not a man in the world, who is aware of the whole importance of this question: "is the interest of capital natural, just, and lawful, and as useful to the payer as to the receiver?" you answer, no; i answer, yes. then we differ entirely; but it is of the utmost importance to discover which of us is in the right; otherwise we shall incur the danger of making a false solution of the question, a matter of opinion. if the error is on my side, however, the evil would not be so great. it must be inferred that i know nothing about the true interests of the masses, or the march of human progress; and that all my arguments are but as so many grains of sand, by which the car of the revolution will certainly not be arrested. but if, on the contrary, mm. proudhon and thoré are deceiving themselves, it follows, that they are leading the people astray--that they are showing them the evil where it does not exist; and thus giving a false direction to their ideas, to their antipathies, to their dislikes, and to their attacks. it follows, that the misguided people are rushing into a horrible and absurd struggle, in which victory would be more fatal than defeat, since, according to this supposition, the result would be the realization of universal evils, the destruction of every means of emancipation, the consummation of its own misery. this is just what m. proudhon has acknowledged, with perfect good faith. "the foundation stone," he told me, "of my system is the _gratuitousness of credit_. if i am mistaken in this, socialism is a vain dream." i add, it is a dream, in which the people are tearing themselves to pieces. will it, therefore, be a cause for surprise, if, when they awake, they find themselves mangled and bleeding? such a danger as this is enough to justify me fully, if, in the course of the discussion, i allow myself to be led into some trivialities and some prolixity. capital and interest. i address this treatise to the workmen of paris, more especially to those who have enrolled themselves under the banner of socialist democracy. i proceed to consider these two questions: st. is it consistent with the nature of things, and with justice, that capital should produce interest? nd. is it consistent with the nature of things, and with justice, that the interest of capital should be perpetual? the working men of paris will certainly acknowledge that a more important subject could not be discussed. since the world began, it has been allowed, at least in part, that capital ought to produce interest. but latterly it has been affirmed, that herein lies the very social error which is the cause of pauperism and inequality. it is, therefore, very essential to know now on what ground we stand. for if levying interest from capital is a sin, the workers have a right to revolt against social order, as it exists; it is in vain to tell them that they ought to have recourse to legal and pacific means, it would be a hypocritical recommendation. when on the one side there is a strong man, poor, and a victim of robbery--on the other, a weak man, but rich, and a robber--it is singular enough, that we should say to the former, with a hope of persuading him, "wait till your oppressor voluntarily renounces oppression, or till it shall cease of itself." this cannot be; and those who tell us that capital is, by nature, unproductive, ought to know that they are provoking a terrible and immediate struggle. if, on the contrary, the interest of capital is natural, lawful, consistent with the general good, as favorable to the borrower as to the lender, the economists who deny it, the tribunes who traffic in this pretended social wound, are leading the workmen into a senseless and unjust struggle, which can have no other issue than the misfortune of all. in fact, they are arming labor against capital. so much the better, if these two powers are really antagonistic; and may the struggle soon be ended! but if they are in harmony, the struggle is the greatest evil which can be inflicted on society. you see, then, workmen, that there is not a more important question than this: "is the interest of capital lawful or not?" in the former case, you must immediately renounce the struggle to which you are being urged; in the second, you must carry it on bravely, and to the end. productiveness of capital--perpetuity of interest. these are difficult questions. i must endeavor to make myself clear. and for that purpose i shall have recourse to example rather than to demonstration; or rather, i shall place the demonstration in the example. i begin by acknowledging, that, at first sight, it may appear strange that capital should pretend to a remuneration; and, above all, to a perpetual remuneration. you will say, "here are two men. one of them works from morning till night, from one year's end to another; and if he consumes all which he has gained, even by superior energy, he remains poor. when christmas comes, he is no forwarder than he was at the beginning of the year, and has no other prospect but to begin again. the other man does nothing, either with his hands or his head; or, at least, if he makes use of them at all, it is only for his own pleasure; it is allowable for him to do nothing, for he has an income. he does not work, yet he lives well; he has everything in abundance, delicate dishes, sumptuous furniture, elegant equipages; nay, he even consumes, daily, things which the workers have been obliged to produce by the sweat of their brow; for these things do not make themselves; and, as far as he is concerned, he has had no hand in their production. it is the workmen who have caused this corn to grow, polished this furniture, woven these carpets; it is our wives and daughters who have spun, cut out, sewed, and embroidered these stuffs. we work, then, for him and ourselves; for him first, and then for ourselves, if there is anything left. but here is something more striking still. if the former of these two men, the worker, consumes within the year any profit which may have been left him in that year, he is always at the point from which he started, and his destiny condemns him to move incessantly in a perpetual circle, and a monotony of exertion. labor, then, is rewarded only once. but if the other, the 'gentleman,' consumes his yearly income in the year, he has, the year after, in those which follow, and through all eternity, an income always equal, inexhaustible, _perpetual_. capital, then, is remunerated, not only once or twice, but an indefinite number of times! so that, at the end of a hundred years, a family, which has placed , francs, at five per cent., will have had , francs; and this will not prevent it from having , more, in the following century. in other words, for , francs, which represent its labor, it will have levied, in two centuries, a ten-fold value on the labor of others. in this social arrangement, is there not a monstrous evil to be reformed? and this is not all. if it should please this family to curtail its enjoyments a little--to spend, for example, only francs, instead of , --it may, without any labor, without any other trouble beyond that of investing francs a year, increase its capital and its income in such rapid progression, that it will soon be in a position to consume as much as a hundred families of industrious workmen. does not all this go to prove, that society itself has in its bosom a hideous cancer, which ought to be eradicated at the risk of some temporary suffering?" these are, it appears to me, the sad and irritating reflections which must be excited in your minds by the active and superficial crusade which is being carried on against capital and interest. on the other hand, there are moments in which, i am convinced, doubts are awakened in your minds, and scruples in your conscience. you say to yourselves sometimes, "but to assert that capital ought not to produce interest, is to say that he who has created instruments of labor, or materials, or provisions of any kind, ought to yield them up without compensation. is that just? and then, if it is so, who would lend these instruments, these materials, these provisions? who would take care of them? who even would create them? every one would consume his proportion, and the human race would never advance a step. capital would be no longer formed, since there would be no interest in forming it. it will become exceedingly scarce. a singular step toward gratuitous loans! a singular means of improving the condition of borrowers, to make it impossible for them to borrow at any price! what would become of labor itself? for there will be no money advanced, and not one single kind of labor can be mentioned, not even the chase, which can be pursued without money in hand. and, as for ourselves, what would become of us? what! we are not to be allowed to borrow, in order to work in the prime of life, nor to lend, that we may enjoy repose in its decline? the law will rob us of the prospect of laying by a little property, because it will prevent us from gaining any advantage from it. it will deprive us of all stimulus to save at the present time, and of all hope of repose for the future. it is useless to exhaust ourselves with fatigue; we must abandon the idea of leaving our sons and daughters a little property, since modern science renders it useless, for we should become trafficers in men if we were to lend it on interest. alas! the world which these persons would open before us as an imaginary good, is still more dreary and desolate than that which they condemn, for hope, at any rate, is not banished from the latter." thus in all respects, and in every point of view, the question is a serious one. let us hasten to arrive at a solution. our civil code has a chapter entitled, "on the manner of transmitting property." i do not think it gives a very complete nomenclature on this point. when a man by his labor has made some useful things--in other words, when he has created a _value_--it can only pass into the hands of another by one of the following modes: as a gift, by the right of inheritance, by exchange, loan, or theft. one word upon each of these, except the last, although it plays a greater part in the world than we may think. a gift, needs no definition. it is essentially voluntary and spontaneous. it depends exclusively upon the giver, and the receiver cannot be said to have any right to it. without a doubt, morality and religion make it a duty for men, especially the rich, to deprive themselves voluntarily of that which they possess, in favor of their less fortunate brethren. but this is an entirely moral obligation. if it were to be asserted on principle, admitted in practice, or sanctioned by law, that every man has a right to the property of another, the gift would have no merit, charity and gratitude would be no longer virtues. besides, such a doctrine would suddenly and universally arrest labor and production, as severe cold congeals water and suspends animation, for who would work if there was no longer to be any connection between labor and the satisfying of our wants? political economy has not treated of gifts. it has hence been concluded that it disowns them, and that it is therefore a science devoid of heart. this is a ridiculous accusation. that science which treats of the laws resulting from the _reciprocity of services_, had no business to inquire into the consequences of generosity with respect to him who receives, nor into its effects, perhaps still more precious, on him who gives; such considerations belong evidently to the science of morals. we must allow the sciences to have limits; above all, we must not accuse them of denying or undervaluing what they look upon as foreign to their department. the right of inheritance, against which so much has been objected of late, is one of the forms of gift, and assuredly the most natural of all. that which a man has produced, he may consume, exchange, or give; what can be more natural than that he should give it to his children? it is this power, more than any other, which inspires him with courage to labor and to save. do you know why the principle of right of inheritance is thus called in question? because it is imagined that the property thus transmitted is plundered from the masses. this is a fatal error; political economy demonstrates, in the most peremptory manner, that all value produced is a creation which does no harm to any person whatever. for that reason, it may be consumed, and, still more, transmitted, without hurting any one; but i shall not pursue these reflections, which do not belong to the subject. exchange is the principal department of political economy, because it is by far the most frequent method of transmitting property, according to the free and voluntary agreements of the laws and effects of which this science treats. properly speaking, exchange is the reciprocity of services. the parties say between themselves, "give me this, and i will give you that;" or, "do this for me, and i will do that for you." it is well to remark (for this will throw a new light on the notion of value), that the second form is always implied in the first. when it is said, "do this for me, and i will do that for you," an exchange of service for service is proposed. again, when it is said, "give me this, and i will give you that," it is the same as saying, "i yield to you what i have done, yield to me what you have done." the labor is past, instead of present; but the exchange is not the less governed by the comparative valuation of the two services; so that it is quite correct to say, that the principle of _value_ is in the services rendered and received on account of the productions exchanged, rather than in productions themselves. in reality, services are scarcely ever exchanged directly. there is a medium, which is termed _money_. paul has completed a coat, for which he wishes to receive a little bread, a little wine, a little oil, a visit from a doctor, a ticket for the play, etc. the exchange cannot be effected in kind; so what does paul do? he first exchanges his coat for some money, which is called _sale_; then he exchanges this money again for the things which he wants, which is called _purchase_; and now, only, has the reciprocity of services completed its circuit; now, only, the labor and the compensation are balanced in the same individual,--"i have done this for society, it has done that for me." in a word, it is only now that the exchange is actually accomplished. thus, nothing can be more correct than this observation of j.b. say: "since the introduction of money, every exchange is resolved into two elements, _sale_ and _purchase_. it is the reunion of these two elements which renders the exchange complete." we must remark, also, that the constant appearance of money in every exchange has overturned and misled all our ideas; men have ended in thinking that money was true riches, and that to multiply it was to multiply services and products. hence the prohibitory system; hence paper money; hence the celebrated aphorism, "what one gains the other loses;" and all the errors which have ruined the earth, and imbrued it with blood.[ ] after much research it has been found, that in order to make the two services exchanged of equivalent value, and in order to render the exchange _equitable_, the best means was to allow it to be free. however plausible, at first sight, the intervention of the state might be, it was soon perceived that it is always oppressive to one or other of the contracting parties. when we look into these subjects, we are always compelled to reason upon this maxim, that _equal value_ results from liberty. we have, in fact, no other means of knowing whether, at a given moment, two services are of the same value, but that of examining whether they can be readily and freely exchanged. allow the state, which is the same thing as force, to interfere on one side or the other, and from that moment all the means of appreciation will be complicated and entangled, instead of becoming clear. it ought to be the part of the state to prevent, and, above all, to repress artifice and fraud; that is, to secure liberty, and not to violate it. i have enlarged a little upon exchange, although loan is my principal object: my excuse is, that i conceive that there is in a loan an actual exchange, an actual service rendered by the lender, and which makes the borrower liable to an equivalent service,--two services, whose comparative value can only be appreciated, like that of all possible services, by freedom. now, if it is so, the perfect lawfulness of what is called house-rent, farm-rent, interest, will be explained and justified. let us consider the case of _loan_. [footnote : this error will be combated in a pamphlet, entitled "_cursed money_."] suppose two men exchange two services or two objects, whose equal value is beyond all dispute. suppose, for example, peter says to paul, "give me ten sixpences, i will give you a five-shilling piece." we cannot imagine an equal value more unquestionable. when the bargain is made, neither party has any claim upon the other. the exchanged services are equal. thus it follows, that if one of the parties wishes to introduce into the bargain an additional clause, advantageous to himself, but unfavorable to the other party, he must agree to a second clause, which shall re-establish the equilibrium, and the law of justice. it would be absurd to deny the justice of a second clause of compensation. this granted, we will suppose that peter, after having said to paul, "give me ten sixpences, i will give you a crown," adds, "you shall give me the ten sixpences _now_, and i will give you the crown-piece _in a year_;" it is very evident that this new proposition alters the claims and advantages of the bargain; that it alters the proportion of the two services. does it not appear plainly enough, in fact, that peter asks of paul a new and an additional service; one of a different kind? is it not as if he had said, "render me the service of allowing me to use for my profit, for a year, five shillings which belong to you, and which you might have used for yourself"? and what good reason have you to maintain that paul is bound to render this especial service gratuitously; that he has no right to demand anything more in consequence of this requisition; that the state ought to interfere to force him to submit? is it not incomprehensible that the economist, who preaches such a doctrine to the people, can reconcile it with his principle of _the reciprocity of services_? here i have introduced cash; i have been led to do so by a desire to place, side by side, two objects of exchange, of a perfect and indisputable equality of value. i was anxious to be prepared for objections; but, on the other hand, my demonstration would have been more striking still, if i had illustrated my principle by an agreement for exchanging the services or the productions themselves. suppose, for example, a house and a vessel of a value so perfectly equal that their proprietors are disposed to exchange them even-handed, without excess or abatement. in fact, let the bargain be settled by a lawyer. at the moment of each taking possession, the ship-owner says to the citizen, "very well; the transaction is completed, and nothing can prove its perfect equity better than our free and voluntary consent. our conditions thus fixed, i shall propose to you a little practical modification. you shall let me have your house to-day, but i shall not put you in possession of my ship for a year; and the reason i make this demand of you is, that, during this year of _delay_, i wish to use the vessel." that we may not be embarrassed by considerations relative to the deterioration of the thing lent, i will suppose the ship-owner to add, "i will engage, at the end of the year, to hand over to you the vessel in the state in which it is to-day." i ask of every candid man, i ask of m. proudhon himself, if the citizen has not a right to answer, "the new clause which you propose entirely alters the proportion or the equal value of the exchanged services. by it, i shall be deprived, for the space of a year, both at once of my house and of your vessel. by it, you will make use of both. if, in the absence of this clause, the bargain was just, for the same reason the clause is injurious to me. it stipulates for a loss to me, and a gain to you. you are requiring of me a new service; i have a right to refuse, or to require of you, as a compensation, an equivalent service." if the parties are agreed upon this compensation, the principle of which is incontestable, we can easily distinguish two transactions in one, two exchanges of service in one. first, there is the exchange of the house for the vessel; after this, there is the delay granted by one of the parties, and the compensation correspondent to this delay yielded by the other. these two new services take the generic and abstract names of _credit_ and _interest_. but names do not change the nature of things; and i defy any one to dare to maintain that there exists here, when all is done, a service for a service, or a reciprocity of services. to say that one of these services does not challenge the other, to say that the first ought to be rendered gratuitously, without injustice, is to say that injustice consists in the reciprocity of services--that justice consists in one of the parties giving and not receiving, which is a contradiction in terms. to give an idea of interest and its mechanism, allow me to make use of two or three anecdotes. but, first, i must say a few words upon capital. there are some persons who imagine that capital is money, and this is precisely the reason why they deny its productiveness; for, as m. thoré says, crowns are not endowed with the power of reproducing themselves. but it is not true that capital and money are the same thing. before the discovery of the precious metals, there were capitalists in the world; and i venture to say that at that time, as now, everybody was a capitalist, to a certain extent. what is capital, then? it is composed of three things: st. of the materials upon which men operate, when these materials have already a value communicated by some human effort, which has bestowed upon them the principle of remuneration--wool, flax, leather, silk, wood, etc. nd. instruments which are used for working--tools, machines, ships, carriages, etc. rd. provisions which are consumed during labor--victuals, stuffs, houses, etc. without these things, the labor of man would be unproductive, and almost void; yet these very things have required much work, especially at first. this is the reason that so much value has been attached to the possession of them, and also that it is perfectly lawful to exchange and to sell them, to make a profit of them if used, to gain remuneration from them if lent. now for my anecdotes. the sack of corn. mathurin, in other respects as poor as job, and obliged to earn his bread by day-labor, became, nevertheless, by some inheritance, the owner of a fine piece of uncultivated land. he was exceedingly anxious to cultivate it. "alas!" said he, "to make ditches, to raise fences, to break the soil, to clear away the brambles and stones, to plough it, to sow it, might bring me a living in a year or two; but certainly not to-day, or to-morrow. it is impossible to set about farming it, without previously saving some provisions for my subsistence until the harvest; and i know, by experience, that preparatory labor is indispensable, in order to render present labor productive." the good mathurin was not content with making these reflections. he resolved to work by the day, and to save something from his wages to buy a spade and a sack of corn; without which things, he must give up his fine agricultural projects. he acted so well, was so active and steady, that he soon saw himself in possession of the wished-for sack of corn. "i shall take it to the mill," said he, "and then i shall have enough to live upon till my field is covered with a rich harvest." just as he was starting, jerome came to borrow his treasure of him. "if you will lend me this sack of corn," said jerome, "you will do me a great service; for i have some very lucrative work in view, which i cannot possibly undertake, for want of provisions to live upon until it is finished." "i was in the same case," answered mathurin, "and if i have now secured bread for several months, it is at the expense of my arms and my stomach. upon what principle of justice can it be devoted to the realization of _your_ enterprise instead of _mine_?" you may well believe that the bargain was a long one. however, it was finished at length, and on these conditions: first. jerome promised to give back, at the end of the year, a sack of corn of the same quality, and of the same weight, without missing a single grain. "this first clause is perfectly just," said he, "for without it mathurin would _give_, and not _lend_." secondly. he engaged to deliver _five litres_ on _every hectolitre_. "this clause is no less just than the other," thought he; "for without it mathurin would do me a service without compensation; he would inflict upon himself a privation--he would renounce his cherished enterprise--he would enable me to accomplish mine--he would cause me to enjoy for a year the fruits of his savings, and all this gratuitously. since he delays the cultivation of his land, since he enables me to realize a lucrative labor, it is quite natural that i should let him partake, in a certain proportion, of the profits which i shall gain by the sacrifice he makes of his own." on his side, mathurin, who was something of a scholar, made this calculation: "since, by virtue of the first clause, the sack of corn will return to me at the end of a year," he said to himself, "i shall be able to lend it again; it will return to me at the end of the second year; i may lend it again, and so on, to all eternity. however, i cannot deny that it will have been eaten long ago. it is singular that i should be perpetually the owner of a sack of corn, although the one i have lent has been consumed for ever. but this is explained thus: it will be consumed in the service of jerome. it will put it into the power of jerome to produce a superior value; and, consequently, jerome will be able to restore me a sack of corn, or the value of it, without having suffered the slightest injury; but quite the contrary. and as regards myself, this value ought to be my property, as long as i do not consume it myself; if i had used it to clear my land, i should have received it again in the form of a fine harvest. instead of that, i lend it, and shall recover it in the form of repayment. "from the second clause, i gain another piece of information. at the end of the year, i shall be in possession of five litres of corn, over the that i have just lent. if, then, i were to continue to work by the day, and to save a part of my wages, as i have been doing, in the course of time i should be able to lend two sacks of corn; then three; then four; and when i should have gained a sufficient number to enable me to live on these additions of five litres over and above each, i shall be at liberty to take a little repose in my old age. but how is this? in this case, shall i not be living at the expense of others? no, certainly, for it has been proved that in lending i perform a service; i complete the labor of my borrowers; and only deduct a trifling part of the excess of production, due to my lendings and savings. it is a marvellous thing, that a man may thus realize a leisure which injures no one, and for which he cannot be envied without injustice." the house. mondor had a house. in building it, he had extorted nothing from any one whatever. he owed it to his own personal labor, or, which is the same thing, to labor justly rewarded. his first care was to make a bargain with an architect, in virtue of which, by means of a hundred crowns a year, the latter engaged to keep the house in constant good repair. mondor was already congratulating himself on the happy days which he hoped to spend in this retreat, declared sacred by our constitution. but valerius wished to make it his residence. "how can you think of such a thing?" said mondor; "it is i who have built it; it has cost me ten years of painful labor, and now you would enjoy it!" they agreed to refer the matter to judges. they chose no profound economists--there were none such in the country. but they found some just and sensible men; it all comes to the same thing: political economy, justice, good sense, are all the same thing. now here is the decision made by the judges: if valerius wishes to occupy mondor's house for a year, he is bound to submit to three conditions. the first is, to quit at the end of the year, and to restore the house in good repair, saving the inevitable decay resulting from mere duration. the second, to refund to mondor the francs, which the latter pays annually to the architect to repair the injuries of time; for these injuries taking place whilst the house is in the service of valerius, it is perfectly just that he should bear the consequences. the third, that he should render to mondor a service equivalent to that which he receives. as to this equivalence of services, it must be freely discussed between mondor and valerius. the plane. a very long time ago there lived, in a poor village, a joiner, who was a philosopher, as all my heroes are, in their way. james worked from morning till night with his two strong arms, but his brain was not idle, for all that. he was fond of reviewing his actions, their causes, and their effects. he sometimes said to himself, "with my hatchet, my saw, and my hammer, i can make only coarse furniture, and can only get the pay for such. if i only had a _plane_, i should please my customers more, and they would pay me more. it is quite just; i can only expect services proportioned to those which i render myself. yes! i am resolved, i will make myself a _plane_." however, just as he was setting to work, james reflected further: "i work for my customers days in the year. if i give ten to making my plane, supposing it lasts me a year, only days will remain for me to make my furniture. now, in order that i be not the loser in this matter, i must gain henceforth, with the help of the plane, as much in days, as i now do in . i must even gain more; for unless i do so, it would not be worth my while to venture upon any innovations." james began to calculate. he satisfied himself that he should sell his finished furniture at a price which would amply compensate for the ten days devoted to the plane; and when no doubt remained on this point, he set to work. i beg the reader to remark, that the power which exists in the tool to increase the productiveness of labor, is the basis of the solution which follows. at the end of ten days, james had in his possession an admirable plane, which he valued all the more for having made it himself. he danced for joy--for, like the girl with her basket of eggs, he reckoned all the profits which he expected to derive from the ingenious instrument; but more fortunate than she, he was not reduced to the necessity of saying good-bye to calf, cow, pig, and eggs, together. he was building his fine castles in the air, when he was interrupted by his acquaintance william, a joiner in the neighboring village. william having admired the plane, was struck with the advantages which might be gained from it. he said to james: _w._ you must do me a service. _j._ what service? _w._ lend me the plane for a year. as might be expected, james at this proposal did not fail to cry out, "how can you think of such a thing, william? well, if i do you this service, what will you do for me in return?" _w._ nothing. don't you know that a loan ought to be gratuitous? don't you know that capital is naturally unproductive? don't you know fraternity has been proclaimed? if you only do me a service for the sake of receiving one from me in return, what merit would you have? _j._ william, my friend, fraternity does not mean that all the sacrifices are to be on one side; if so, i do not see why they should not be on yours. whether a loan should be gratuitous i don't know; but i do know that if i were to lend you my plane for a year, it would be giving it to you. to tell you the truth, that is not what i made it for. _w._ well, we will say nothing about the modern maxims discovered by the socialist gentlemen. i ask you to do me a service; what service do you ask of me in return? _j._ first, then, in a year, the plane will be done for, it will be good for nothing. it is only just, that you should let me have another exactly like it; or that you should give me money enough to get it repaired; or that you should supply me the ten days which i must devote to replacing it. _w._ this is perfectly just. i submit to these conditions. i engage to return it, or to let you have one like it, or the value of the same. i think you must be satisfied with this, and can require nothing further. _j._ i think otherwise. i made the plane for myself, and not for you. i expected to gain some advantage from it, by my work being better finished and better paid, by an improvement in my condition. what reason is there that i should make the plane, and you should gain the profit? i might as well ask you to give me your saw and hatchet! what a confusion! is it not natural that each should keep what he has made with his own hands, as well as his hands themselves? to use without recompense the hands of another, i call slavery; to use without recompense the plane of another, can this be called fraternity? _w._ but, then, i have agreed to return it to you at the end of a year, as well polished and as sharp as it is now. _j._ we have nothing to do with next year; we are speaking of this year. i have made the plane for the sake of improving my work and my condition; if you merely return it to me in a year, it is you who will gain the profit of it during the whole of that time. i am not bound to do you such a service without receiving anything from you in return; therefore, if you wish for my plane, independently of the entire restoration already bargained for, you must do me a service which we will now discuss; you must grant me remuneration. and this was done thus: william granted a remuneration calculated in such a way that, at the end of the year, james received his plane quite new, and in addition, a compensation, consisting of a new plank, for the advantages of which he had deprived himself, and which he had yielded to his friend. it was impossible for any one acquainted with the transaction to discover the slightest trace in it of oppression or injustice. the singular part of it is, that, at the end of the year, the plane came into james' possession, and he lent it again; recovered it, and lent it a third and fourth time. it has passed into the hands of his son, who still lends it. poor plane! how many times has it changed, sometimes its blade, sometimes its handle. it is no longer the same plane, but it has always the same value, at least for james' posterity. workmen! let us examine into these little stories. i maintain, first of all, that the _sack of corn_ and the _plane_ are here the type, the model, a faithful representation, the symbol, of all capital; as the five litres of corn and the plank are the type, the model, the representation, the symbol, of all interest. this granted, the following are, it seems to me, a series of consequences, the justice of which it is impossible to dispute. st. if the yielding of a plank by the borrower to the lender is a natural, equitable, lawful remuneration, the just price of a real service, we may conclude that, as a general rule, it is in the nature of capital to produce interest. when this capital, as in the foregoing examples, takes the form of an _instrument of labor_, it is clear enough that it ought to bring an advantage to its possessor, to him who has devoted to it his time, his brains, and his strength. otherwise, why should he have made it? no necessity of life can be immediately satisfied with instruments of labor; no one eats planes or drinks saws, except, indeed, he be a conjurer. if a man determines to spend his time in the production of such things, he must have been led to it by the consideration of the power which these instruments add to his power; of the time which they save him; of the perfection and rapidity which they give to his labor; in a word, of the advantages which they procure for him. now, these advantages, which have been prepared by labor, by the sacrifice of time which might have been used in a more immediate manner, are we bound, as soon as they are ready to be enjoyed, to confer them gratuitously upon another? would it be an advance in social order, if the law decided thus, and citizens should pay officials for causing such a law to be executed by force? i venture to say, that there is not one amongst you who would support it. it would be to legalize, to organize, to systematize injustice itself, for it would be proclaiming that there are men born to render, and others born to receive, gratuitous services. granted, then, that interest is just, natural, and lawful. nd. a second consequence, not less remarkable than the former, and, if possible, still more conclusive, to which i call your attention, is this: _interest is not injurious to the borrower_. i mean to say, the obligation in which the borrower finds himself, to pay a remuneration for the use of capital, cannot do any harm to his condition. observe, in fact, that james and william are perfectly free, as regards the transaction to which the plane gave occasion. the transaction cannot be accomplished without the consent of the one as well as of the other. the worst which can happen is, that james may be too exacting; and in this case, william, refusing the loan, remains as he was before. by the fact of his agreeing to borrow, he proves that he considers it an advantage to himself; he proves, that after every calculation, including the remuneration, whatever it may be, required of him, he still finds it more profitable to borrow than not to borrow. he only determines to do so because he has compared the inconveniences with the advantages. he has calculated that the day on which he returns the plane, accompanied by the remuneration agreed upon, he will have effected more work, with the same labor, thanks to this tool. a profit will remain to him, otherwise he would not have borrowed. the two services of which we are speaking are exchanged according to the law which governs all exchanges, the law of supply and demand. the claims of james have a natural and impassable limit. this is the point in which the remuneration demanded by him would absorb all the advantage which william might find in making use of a plane. in this case, the borrowing would not take place. william would be bound either to make a plane for himself, or to do without one, which would leave him in his original condition. he borrows, because he gains by borrowing. i know very well what will be told me. you will say, william may be deceived, or, perhaps, he may be governed by necessity, and be obliged to submit to a harsh law. it may be so. as to errors in calculation, they belong to the infirmity of our nature, and to argue from this against the transaction in question, is objecting the possibility of loss in all imaginable transactions, in every human act. error is an accidental fact, which is incessantly remedied by experience. in short, everybody must guard against it. as far as those hard necessities are concerned, which force persons to burdensome borrowings, it is clear that these necessities exist previously to the borrowing. if william is in a situation in which he cannot possibly do without a plane, and must borrow one at any price, does this situation result from james having taken the trouble to make the tool? does it not exist independently of this circumstance? however harsh, however severe james may be, he will never render the supposed condition of william worse than it is. morally, it is true, the lender will be to blame; but, in an economical point of view, the loan itself can never be considered responsible for previous necessities, which it has not created, and which it relieves, to a certain extent. but this proves something to which i shall return. the evident interests of william, representing here the borrowers, there are many jameses and planes. in other words, lenders and capitals. it is very evident, that if william can say to james--"your demands are exorbitant; there is no lack of planes in the world;" he will be in a better situation than if james' plane was the only one to be borrowed. assuredly, there is no maxim more true than this--service for service. but let us not forget, that no service has a fixed and absolute value, compared with others. the contracting parties are free. each carries his requisitions to the farthest possible point; and the most favorable circumstance for these requisitions is the absence of rivalship. hence it follows, that if there is a class of men more interested than any other, in the formation, multiplication, and abundance of capitals, it is mainly that of the borrowers. now, since capitals can only be formed and increased by the stimulus and the prospect of remuneration, let this class understand the injury they are inflicting on themselves, when they deny the lawfulness of interest, when they proclaim that credit should be gratuitous, when they declaim against the pretended tyranny of capital, when they discourage saving, thus forcing capitals to become scarce, and consequently interests to rise. rd. the anecdote i have just related enables you to explain this apparently singular phenomenon, which is termed the duration or perpetuity of interest. since, in lending his plane, james has been able, very lawfully, to make it a condition, that it should be returned to him, at the end of a year, in the same state in which it was when he lent it, is it not evident that he may, at the expiration of the term, lend it again on the same conditions. if he resolves upon the latter plan, the plane will return to him at the end of every year, and that without end. james will then be in a condition to lend it without end; that is, he may derive from it a perpetual interest. it will be said, that the plane will be worn out. that is true; but it will be worn out by the hand and for the profit of the borrower. the latter has taken into account this gradual wear, and taken upon himself, as he ought, the consequences. he has reckoned that he shall derive from this tool an advantage, which will allow him to restore it in its original condition, after having realized a profit from it. as long as james does not use this capital himself, or for his own advantage--as long as he renounces the advantages which allow it to be restored to its original condition--he will have an incontestable right to have it restored, and that independently of interest. observe, besides, that if, as i believe i have shown, james, far from doing any harm to william, has done him a _service_ in lending him his plane for a year; for the same reason, he will do no harm to a second, a third, a fourth borrower, in the subsequent periods. hence you may understand, that the interest of a capital is as natural, as lawful, as useful, in the thousandth year, as in the first. we may go still further. it may happen, that james lends more than a single plane. it is possible, that by means of working, of saving, of privations, of order, of activity, he may come to lend a multitude of planes and saws; that is to say, to do a multitude of services. i insist upon this point--that if the first loan has been a social good, it will be the same with all the others; for they are all similar, and based upon the same principle. it may happen, then, that the amount of all the remunerations received by our honest operative, in exchange for services rendered by him, may suffice to maintain him. in this case, there will be a man in the world who has a right to live without working. i do not say that he would be doing right to give himself up to idleness--but i say, that he has a right to do so; and if he does so, it will be at nobody's expense, but quite the contrary. if society at all understands the nature of things, it will acknowledge that this man subsists on services which he receives certainly (as we all do), but which he lawfully receives in exchange for other services, which he himself has rendered, that he continues to render, and which are quite real, inasmuch as they are freely and voluntarily accepted. and here we have a glimpse of one of the finest harmonies in the social world. i allude to _leisure_: not that leisure that the warlike and tyrannical classes arrange for themselves by the plunder of the workers, but that leisure which is the lawful and innocent fruit of past activity and economy. in expressing myself thus, i know that i shall shock many received ideas. but see! is not leisure an essential spring in the social machine? without it, the world would never have had a newton, a pascal, a fenelon; mankind would have been ignorant of all arts, sciences, and of those wonderful inventions, prepared originally by investigations of mere curiosity; thought would have been inert--man would have made no progress. on the other hand, if leisure could only be explained by plunder and oppression--if it were a benefit which could only be enjoyed unjustly, and at the expense of others, there would be no middle path between these two evils; either mankind would be reduced to the necessity of stagnating in a vegetable and stationary life, in eternal ignorance, from the absence of wheels to its machine--or else it would have to acquire these wheels at the price of inevitable injustice, and would necessarily present the sad spectacle, in one form or other, of the antique classification of human beings into masters and slaves. i defy any one to show me, in this case, any other alternative. we should be compelled to contemplate the divine plan which governs society, with the regret of thinking that it presents a deplorable chasm. the stimulus of progress would be forgotten, or, which is worse, this stimulus would be no other than injustice itself. but, no! god has not left such a chasm in his work of love. we must take care not to disregard his wisdom and power; for those whose imperfect meditations cannot explain the lawfulness of leisure, are very much like the astronomer who said, at a certain point in the heavens there ought to exist a planet which will be at last discovered, for without it the celestial world is not harmony, but discord. well, i say that, if well understood, the history of my humble plane, although very modest, is sufficient to raise us to the contemplation of one of the most consoling, but least understood, of the social harmonies. it is not true that we must choose between the denial or the unlawfulness of leisure; thanks to rent and its natural duration, leisure may arise from labor and saving. it is a pleasing prospect, which every one may have in view; a noble recompense, to which each may aspire. it makes its appearance in the world; it distributes itself proportionably to the exercise of certain virtues; it opens all the avenues to intelligence; it ennobles, it raises the morals; it spiritualizes the soul of humanity, not only without laying any weight on those of our brethren whose lot in life devotes them to severe labor, but relieving them gradually from the heaviest and most repugnant part of this labor. it is enough that capitals should be formed, accumulated, multiplied; should be lent on conditions less and less burdensome; that they should descend, penetrate into every social circle, and that, by an admirable progression, after having liberated the lenders, they should hasten the liberation of the borrowers themselves. for that end, the laws and customs ought to be favorable to economy, the source of capital. it is enough to say, that the first of all these conditions is, not to alarm, to attack, to deny that which is the stimulus of saving and the reason of its existence--interest. as long as we see nothing passing from hand to hand, in the character of loan, but _provisions_, _materials_, _instruments_, things indispensable to the productiveness of labor itself, the ideas thus far exhibited will not find many opponents. who knows, even, that i may not be reproached for having made great effort to burst what may be said to be an open door. but as soon as _cash_ makes its appearance as the subject of the transaction (and it is this which appears almost always), immediately a crowd of objections are raised. money, it will be said, will not reproduce itself, like your _sack of corn_; it does not assist labor, like your _plane_; it does not afford an immediate satisfaction, like your _house_. it is incapable, by its nature, of producing interest, of multiplying itself, and the remuneration it demands is a positive extortion. who cannot see the sophistry of this? who does not see that cash is only a transient form, which men give at the time to other _values_, to real objects of usefulness, for the sole object of facilitating their arrangements? in the midst of social complications, the man who is in a condition to lend, scarcely ever has the exact thing which the borrower wants. james, it is true, has a plane; but, perhaps, william wants a saw. they cannot negotiate; the transaction favorable to both cannot take place, and then what happens? it happens that james first exchanges his plane for money; he lends the money to william, and william exchanges the money for a saw. the transaction is no longer a simple one; it is decomposed into two parts, as i explained above in speaking of exchange. but, for all that, it has not changed its nature; it still contains all the elements of a direct loan. james has still got rid of a tool which was useful to him; william has still received an instrument which perfects his work and increases his profits; there is still a service rendered by the lender, which entitles him to receive an equivalent service from the borrower; this just balance is not the less established by free mutual bargaining. the very natural obligation to restore at the end of the term the entire _value_, still constitutes the principle of the duration of interest. at the end of a year, says m. thoré, will you find an additional crown in a bag of a hundred pounds? no, certainly, if the borrower puts the bag of one hundred pounds on the shelf. in such a case, neither the plane, nor the sack of corn, would reproduce themselves. but it is not for the sake of leaving the money in the bag, nor the plane on the hook, that they are borrowed. the plane is borrowed to be used, or the money to procure a plane. and if it is clearly proved that this tool enables the borrower to obtain profits which he would not have made without it, if it is proved that the lender has renounced creating for himself this excess of profits, we may understand how the stipulation of a part of this excess of profits in favor of the lender, is equitable and lawful. ignorance of the true part which cash plays in human transactions, is the source of the most fatal errors. i intend devoting an entire pamphlet to this subject. from what we may infer from the writings of m. proudhon, that which has led him to think that gratuitous credit was a logical and definite consequence of social progress, is the observation of the phenomenon which shows a decreasing interest, almost in direct proportion to the rate of civilization. in barbarous times it is, in fact, cent. per cent., and more. then it descends to eighty, sixty, fifty, forty, twenty, ten, eight, five, four, and three per cent. in holland, it has even been as low as two per cent. hence it is concluded, that "in proportion as society comes to perfection, it will descend to zero by the time civilization is complete. in other words, that which characterizes social perfection is the gratuitousness of credit. when, therefore, we shall have abolished interest, we shall have reached the last step of progress." this is mere sophistry, and as such false arguing may contribute to render popular the unjust, dangerous, and destructive dogma, that credit should be gratuitous, by representing it as coincident with social perfection, with the reader's permission i will examine in a few words this new view of the question. what is _interest_? it is the service rendered, after a free bargain, by the borrower to the lender, in remuneration for the service he has received by the loan. by what law is the rate of these remunerative services established? by the general law which regulates the equivalent of all services; that is, by the law of supply and demand. the more easily a thing is procured, the smaller is the service rendered by yielding it or lending it. the man who gives me a glass of water in the pyrenees, does not render me so great a service as he who allows me one in the desert of sahara. if there are many planes, sacks of corn, or houses, in a country, the use of them is obtained, other things being equal, on more favorable conditions than if they were few; for the simple reason, that the lender renders in this case a smaller _relative service_. it is not surprising, therefore, that the more abundant capitals are, the lower is the interest. is this saying that it will ever reach zero? no; because, i repeat it, the principle of a remuneration is in the loan. to say that interest will be annihilated, is to say that there will never be any motive for saving, for denying ourselves, in order to form new capitals, nor even to preserve the old ones. in this case, the waste would immediately bring a void, and interest would directly reappear. in that, the nature of the services of which we are speaking does not differ from any other. thanks to industrial progress, a pair of stockings, which used to be worth six francs, has successively been worth only four, three, and two. no one can say to what point this value will descend; but we can affirm, that it will never reach zero, unless the stockings finish by producing themselves spontaneously. why? because the principle of remuneration is in labor; because he who works for another renders a service, and ought to receive a service. if no one paid for stockings, they would cease to be made; and, with the scarcity, the price would not fail to reappear. the sophism which i am now combating has its root in the infinite divisibility which belongs to _value_, as it does to matter. it appears, at first, paradoxical, but it is well known to all mathematicians, that, through all eternity, fractions may be taken from a weight without the weight ever being annihilated. it is sufficient that each successive fraction be less than the preceding one, in a determined and regular proportion. there are countries where people apply themselves to increasing the size of horses, or diminishing in sheep the size of the head. it is impossible to say precisely to what point they will arrive in this. no one can say that he has seen the largest horse or the smallest sheep's head that will ever appear in the world. but he may safely say that the size of horses will never attain to infinity, nor the heads of sheep to nothing. in the same way, no one can say to what point the price of stockings nor the interest of capitals will come down; but we may safely affirm, when we know the nature of things, that neither the one nor the other will ever arrive at zero, for labor and capital can no more live without recompense than a sheep without a head. the arguments of m. proudhon reduce themselves, then, to this: since the most skillful agriculturists are those who have reduced the heads of sheep to the smallest size, we shall have arrived at the highest agricultural perfection when sheep have no longer any heads. therefore, in order to realize the perfection, let us behead them. i have now done with this wearisome discussion. why is it that the breath of false doctrine has made it needful to examine into the intimate nature of interest? i must not leave off without remarking upon a beautiful moral which may be drawn from this law: "the depression of interest is proportioned to the abundance of capitals." this law being granted, if there is a class of men to whom it is more important than to any other that capitals be formed, accumulate, multiply, abound, and superabound, it is certainly the class which borrows them directly or indirectly; it is those men who operate upon _materials_, who gain assistance by _instruments_, who live upon _provisions_, produced and economized by other men. imagine, in a vast and fertile country, a population of a thousand inhabitants, destitute of all capital thus defined. it will assuredly perish by the pangs of hunger. let us suppose a case hardly less cruel. let us suppose that ten of these savages are provided with instruments and provisions sufficient to work and to live themselves until harvest time, as well as to remunerate the services of eighty laborers. the inevitable result will be the death of nine hundred human beings. it is clear, then, that since nine hundred and ninety men, urged by want, will crowd upon the supports which would only maintain a hundred, the ten capitalists will be masters of the market. they will obtain labor on the hardest conditions, for they will put it up to auction, or the highest bidder. and observe this--if these capitalists entertain such pious sentiments as would induce them to impose personal privations on themselves, in order to diminish the sufferings of some of their brethren, this generosity, which attaches to morality, will be as noble in its principle as useful in its effects. but if, duped by that false philosophy which persons wish so inconsiderately to mingle with economic laws, they take to remunerating labor largely, far from doing good, they will do harm. they will give double wages, it may be. but then, forty-five men will be better provided for, whilst forty-five others will come to augment the number of those who are sinking into the grave. upon this supposition, it is not the lowering of wages which is the mischief, it is the scarcity of capital. low wages are not the cause, but the effect of the evil. i may add, that they are to a certain extent the remedy. it acts in this way; it distributes the burden of suffering as much as it can, and saves as many lives as a limited quantity of sustenance permits. suppose now, that instead of ten capitalists, there should be a hundred, two hundred, five hundred--is it not evident that the condition of the whole population, and, above all, that of the "prolétaires,"[ ] will be more and more improved? is it not evident that, apart from every consideration of generosity, they would obtain more work and better pay for it?--that they themselves will be in a better condition to form capitals, without being able to fix the limits to this ever-increasing facility of realizing equality and well-being? would it not be madness in them to admit such doctrines, and to act in a way which would drain the source of wages, and paralyze the activity and stimulus of saving? let them learn this lesson, then; doubtless, capitals are good for those who possess them: who denies it? but they are also useful to those who have not yet been able to form them; and it is important to those who have them not, that others should have them. [footnote : common people.] yes, if the "prolétaires" knew their true interests, they would seek, with the greatest care, what circumstances are, and what are not favorable to saving, in order to favor the former and to discourage the latter. they would sympathize with every measure which tends to the rapid formation of capitals. they would be enthusiastic promoters of peace, liberty, order, security, the union of classes and peoples, economy, moderation in public expenses, simplicity in the machinery of government; for it is under the sway of all these circumstances that saving does its work, brings plenty within the reach of the masses, invites those persons to become the formers of capital who were formerly under the necessity of borrowing upon hard conditions. they would repel with energy the warlike spirit, which diverts from its true course so large a part of human labor; the monopolizing spirit, which deranges the equitable distribution of riches, in the way by which liberty alone can realize it; the multitude of public services, which attack our purses only to check our liberty; and, in short, those subversive, hateful, thoughtless doctrines, which alarm capital, prevent its formation, oblige it to flee, and finally to raise its price, to the special disadvantage of the workers, who bring it into operation. well, and in this respect is not the revolution of february a hard lesson? is it not evident, that the insecurity it has thrown into the world of business, on the one hand; and, on the other, the advancement of the fatal theories to which i have alluded, and which, from the clubs, have almost penetrated into the regions of the legislature, have everywhere raised the rate of interest? is it not evident, that from that time the "prolétaires" have found greater difficulty in procuring those materials, instruments, and provisions, without which labor is impossible? is it not that which has caused stoppages; and do not stoppages, in their turn, lower wages? thus there is a deficiency of labor to the "prolétaires," from the same cause which loads the objects they consume with an increase of price, in consequence of the rise of interest. high interest, low wages, means in other words that the same article preserves its price, but that the part of the capitalist has invaded, without profiting himself, that of the workman. a friend of mine, commissioned to make inquiry into parisian industry, has assured me that the manufacturers have revealed to him a very striking fact, which proves, better than any reasoning can, how much insecurity and uncertainty injure the formation of capital. it was remarked, that during the most distressing period, the popular expenses of mere fancy had not diminished. the small theaters, the fighting lists, the public houses, and tobacco depôts, were as much frequented as in prosperous times. in the inquiry, the operatives themselves explained this phenomenon thus: "what is the use of pinching? who knows what will happen to us? who knows that interest will not be abolished? who knows but that the state will become a universal and gratuitous lender, and that it will wish to annihilate all the fruits which we might expect from our savings?" well! i say, that if such ideas could prevail during two single years, it would be enough to turn our beautiful france into a turkey--misery would become general and endemic, and, most assuredly, the poor would be the first upon whom it would fall. workmen! they talk to you a great deal upon the _artificial_ organization of labor;--do you know why they do so? because they are ignorant of the laws of its _natural_ organization; that is, of the wonderful organization which results from liberty. you are told, that liberty gives rise to what is called the radical antagonism of classes; that it creates, and makes to clash, two opposite interests--that of the capitalists and that of the "prolétaires." but we ought to begin by proving that this antagonism exists by a law of nature; and afterwards it would remain to be shown how far the arrangements of restraint are superior to those of liberty, for between liberty and restraint i see no middle path. again, it would remain to be proved, that restraint would always operate to your advantage, and to the prejudice of the rich. but, no; this radical antagonism, this natural opposition of interests, does not exist. it is only an evil dream of perverted and intoxicated imaginations. no; a plan so defective has not proceeded from the divine mind. to affirm it, we must begin by denying the existence of god. and see how, by means of social laws, and because men exchange amongst themselves their labors, and their productions, see what a harmonious tie attaches the classes, one to the other! there are the landowners; what is their interest? that the soil be fertile, and the sun beneficent: and what is the result? that corn abounds, that it falls in price, and the advantage turns to the profit of those who have had no patrimony. there are the manufacturers; what is their constant thought? to perfect their labor, to increase the power of their machines, to procure for themselves, upon the best terms, the raw material. and to what does all this tend? to the abundance and low price of produce; that is, that all the efforts of the manufacturers, and without their suspecting it, result in a profit to the public consumer, of which each of you is one. it is the same with every profession. well, the capitalists are not exempt from this law. they are very busy making schemes, economizing, and turning them to their advantage. this is all very well; but the more they succeed, the more do they promote the abundance of capital, and, as a necessary consequence, the reduction of interest? now, who is it that profits by the reduction of interest? is it not the borrower first, and finally, the consumers of the things which the capitals contribute to produce? it is, therefore, certain that the final result of the efforts of each class, is the common good of all. you are told that capital tyrannizes over labor. i do not deny that each one endeavors to draw the greatest possible advantage from his situation; but, in this sense, he realizes only that which is possible. now, it is never more possible for capitals to tyrannize over labor, than when they are scarce; for then it is they who make the law--it is they who regulate the rate of sale. never is this tyranny more impossible to them, than when they are abundant; for, in that case, it is labor which has the command. away, then, with the jealousies of classes, ill-will, unfounded hatreds, unjust suspicions. these depraved passions injure those who nourish them in their hearts. this is no declamatory morality; it is a chain of causes and effects, which is capable of being rigorously, mathematically demonstrated. it is not the less sublime, in that it satisfies the intellect as well as the feelings. i shall sum up this whole dissertation with these words: workmen, laborers, "prolétaires," destitute and suffering classes, will you improve your condition? you will not succeed by strife, insurrection, hatred, and error. but there are three things which cannot perfect the entire community without extending these benefits to yourselves; these things are--peace, liberty, and security. up-to-date business home study circle library edited by seymour eaton up to date business including lessons in banking, exchange, business geography, finance, transportation and commercial law from the chicago record new york the doubleday & mcclure co. copyright, , , , by the chicago record copyright, by seymour eaton copyright, , , by victor f. lawson contents i general business information page i. commercial terms and usages ii. commercial terms and usages (_continued_) iii. bank cheques iv. bank cheques (_continued_) v. bank cheques (_continued_) vi. bank drafts vii. promissory notes viii. the clearing-house system ix. commercial drafts x. foreign exchange xi. letters of credit xii. joint-stock companies xiii. protested paper xiv. paper offered for discount xv. corporations xvi. bonds xvii. transportation xviii. transportation papers examination paper ii business geography trade features i. the trade features of the british isles ii. the trade features of france iii. " " " " germany iv. " " " " spain and italy v. " " " " russia vi. " " " " india vii. " " " " china viii. " " " " japan ix. " " " " africa x. " " " " australia and australasia xi. " " " " south america xii. " " " " canada xiii. " " " " the united states examination paper iii finance, trade, and transportation i. national and state banks ii. savings banks and trust companies iii. corporations and stock companies iv. borrowing and loaning money v. collaterals and securities vi. cheques, drafts, and bills of exchange vii. the clearing-house system viii. commercial credits and mercantile agencies ix. bonds x. transportation by rail xi. freight transportation xii. railroad rates xiii. stock and produce exchanges xiv. storage and warehousing examination paper iv commercial law i. the different kinds of contracts ii. the parties to a contract iii. the parties to a contract (_continued_) iv. the consideration in contracts v. the essentials of a contract vi. contracts by correspondence vii. what contracts must be in writing viii. contracts for the sale of merchandise ix. the warranties of merchandise x. common carriers xi. the carrying of passengers xii. on the keeping of things xiii. concerning agents xiv. the law relating to bank cheques xv. the law relating to leases xvi. liability of employers to employés xvii. liability of employers to employés (_continued_) examination paper v preparing copy for the press and proof-reading i. preparing copy ii. on the names and sizes of type iii. the terms used in printing iv. marks used in proof-reading illustrations i general business information page a poorly drawn cheque a carefully drawn cheque a cheque drawn so as to insure payment to proper party a cheque payable to order a blank indorsement a cheque made to obtain money for immediate use a certified cheque a cheque for the purchase of a draft a bank draft ordinary form of promissory note a promissory note filled out in an engraved blank a special form for a promissory note the advantages of the clearing-house system the route of a cheque backs of two paid cheques a sight draft developed from letter a sight draft an accepted ten-day sight draft an accepted sight draft a time draft foreign exchange a bill of exchange (private) a bill of exchange (banker's) first page of a letter of credit second page of a letter of credit a certificate of stock in a national bank a certificate of stock in a manufacturing company a protest a private bond a shipping receipt ("original") a steamship bill of lading a local waybill ii business geography london the natural centre of the world's trade british mercantile marine london bridge the coal-fields of england the manchester ship canal the great manufacturing districts of england france compared in size with the states of illinois and texas street scene in paris, showing the bourse approximate size of the german empire north central germany, showing the ship canal and the leading commercial centres spain compared in size with california italy and its chief commercial centres russia, the british empire, and the united states compared moscow comparative sizes of india and the united states china and its chief trade centres japan's relation to eastern asia the partition of africa australia the most prosperous part of south america trade centres of canada and trunk railway lines export trade of united states and great britain compared united states manufactures and internal trade compared with the manufactures and internal trade of all other countries principal articles of domestic exports of the united states iii finance, trade, and transportation the bank of england showing cheque raised from $ . to $ . a certified cheque a bank draft a bill of exchange illustrating cheque collections a mercantile agency inquiry form specimens of interest coupons judge thomas m. cooley, first chairman of the interstate commerce commission the paris bourse interior view of new york stock exchange v preparing copy for the press and proof-reading a printer's proof a printer's corrected proof general business information i. commercial terms and usages [illustration] there is a distinction between the usage of the names commerce and business. the interchange of products and manufactured articles between countries, or even between different sections of the same country, is usually referred to as _commerce_. the term _business_ refers more particularly to our dealings at home--that is, in our own town or city. sometimes this name is used in connection with a particular product, as the _coal_ business or the _lumber_ business, or in connection with a particular class, as the _dry-goods_ business or the _grocery_ business. the name _commerce_, however, seldom admits of a limited application. in the united states trade is synonymous with _business_. the word traffic applies more especially to the conveyance than to the exchange of products; thus we refer to _railroad_ traffic or _lake_ traffic. products, when considered articles of trade, are called _merchandise, goods, wares_. the term merchandise has the widest meaning, and includes all kinds of movable articles bought or sold. goods is applied more particularly to the supplies of a merchant. wares is commonly applied to utensils, as _glassware_, _hardware_, etc. gross commonly means coarse or bulky. in trade it is used with reference to both money and goods. the _gross_ weight of a package includes the weight of the case or wrappings. the larger sum in an account or bill--that is, the sum of money before any allowance or deductions are made--is the _gross_ amount of the bill. the word net is derived from a latin word meaning neat, clean, unadulterated, and indicates the amount of goods or money after all the deductions have been made. to say that a price is _net_ is to indicate that no further discount will be made. the word firm relates to solidity, establishment, strength, and in a business sense signifies two or more persons united in partnership for the purpose of trading. the word house is very frequently used in the same sense. in mercantile usage _house_ does not mean the building in which the business is conducted, but the men who own the business, including, perhaps, the building, stock, plant, and business reputation. the name concern is often used in a very similar way. the name market expresses a locality for the sale of goods, and in commerce is often used to denote cities or even countries. we say that boston is a leather market, meaning that a large number of boston merchants buy and sell leather. in the same sense we call chicago a grain market, or new orleans a cotton market. in its more restricted sense the name _market_ signifies a building or place where meat or produce is bought and sold. we say that the _market is flooded_ with a particular article when dealers are carrying more of that article than they can find sale for. there is _no market_ for any product when there is no demand. the money market is _tight_ or _close_ when it is difficult to borrow money from banks and money-lenders. ii. commercial terms and usages (_continued_) the natural resources of a country are mainly the mineral commodities and agricultural produce that it yields. the lumber and fish produced in a country are also among its natural resources. the positions and industries of cities are usually fixed by natural conditions, but the most powerful agent is the personal energy of enterprising and persevering men, who, by superior education, or scientific knowledge, or practical foresight, have often been able to found industrial centres in situations which no geographical considerations would suggest or explain. commission merchants receive and sell goods belonging to others for a compensation called a commission. a selling agent is a person who represents a manufacturing establishment in its dealings with the trade. the factory may be located in a small town, while the selling agent has his office and samples in the heart of a great city. as regards the quantity of goods bought or sold in a single transaction, trade is divided into wholesale and retail. the wholesale dealer sells to other dealers, while the retail dealer sells to the consumer--that is, the person who _consumes_, or uses, the goods. a jobber is one who buys from importers and manufacturers and sells to retailers. he is constantly in the market for bargains. the names jobber and wholesaler are often used in the same sense, but a jobber sometimes sells to wholesalers. wholesale has reference to the quantity the dealer sells, and not to the source from which he buys, or the person to whom he sells. the wholesaler, as a rule, deals in staples--that is, goods which are used season after season--though of course there are wholesalers in practically all businesses. wholesale dealers send out travellers or drummers, who carry samples of the goods. frequently the traveller starts out with his samples from six months to a year in advance of the time of delivery. it is quite a common thing for the retailer to order from samples merchandise which at the time of placing the order may not even be manufactured. by the price of a commodity is meant its value estimated in money, or the amount of money for which it will exchange. the exchangeable value of commodities depends at any given period partly upon the expense of production and partly upon the relation of supply and demand. prices are affected by the creation of monopolies, by the opening of new markets, by the obstructing of the ordinary channels of commercial intercourse, and by the anticipation of these and other causes. it is the business of the merchant to acquaint himself with every circumstance affecting the prices of the goods in which he deals. the entire world is the field of the modern merchant. he buys raw and manufactured products wherever he can buy cheapest, and he ships to whatever market pays him the highest price. our corner grocer or produce-dealer may furnish us with beef from texas, potatoes from egypt, celery from michigan, onions from jamaica, coffee from java, oranges from spain, and a hundred other things from as many different points; and yet, so complete is the interlocking of the world's commercial interests, and so great is the speed of transportation, that he can supply us with these necessaries under existing conditions more easily and readily than if they were all grown on an adjoining farm. iii. bank cheques a cheque is an order for money, drawn by one who has funds in the bank. it is payable on demand. in reality, it is a _sight draft_ on the bank. banks provide blank cheques for their customers, and it is a very simple matter to fill them out properly. in writing in the amount begin at the extreme left of the line. the illustration given below shows a poorly written cheque and one which could be very easily _raised_. a fraudulent receiver could, for instance write, "_ninety_" before the "_six_" and " " before the figure " ," and in this way raise the cheque from $ to $ . if this were done and the cheque cashed, the maker, and not the bank, would become responsible for the loss. you cannot hold other people responsible for your own carelessness. a cheque has been raised from $ to $ by writing the words "_and ninety_" after the words "_one hundred_." one of the ciphers in the figures was changed to a " " by adding a tail to it. it is wise to draw a running line, thus ~~~~~~, after the amount in words, thus preventing any additional writing. [illustration: a poorly drawn cheque.] the illustration on page shows a cheque carefully and correctly drawn. the signature should be in your usual style, familiar to the paying teller. sign your name the same way all the time. have a characteristic signature, as familiar to your friends as is your face. a cheque is a draft or order upon your bank, and it need not necessarily be written in the prescribed form. such an order written on a sheet of note-paper with a lead-pencil might be in every way a legally good cheque. [illustration: a carefully drawn cheque.] usually cheques should be drawn "_to order_." the words "_pay to the order of john brown_" mean that the money is to be paid to john brown, or to any person that he _orders_ it paid to. if a cheque is drawn "_pay to john brown or bearer_" or simply "_pay to bearer_," any person that is the bearer can collect it. the paying teller may ask the person presenting the cheque to write his name on the back, simply to have it for reference. in writing and signing cheques use good black ink and let the copy dry a little before a blotter is used. _the subject of indorsements will be treated in a subsequent lesson._ iv. bank cheques (_continued_) the banks of this country make it a rule not to cash a cheque that is drawn payable to order, unless the person presenting the cheque is known at the bank, or unless he satisfies the paying teller that he is really the person to whom the money should be paid. it must be remembered however, that a cheque drawn to order and then indorsed in blank by the payee is really payable to bearer, and if the paying teller is satisfied that the payee's signature is genuine he will not likely hesitate to cash the cheque. in england all cheques apparently properly indorsed are paid without identification. [illustration: a cheque drawn so as to insure payment to proper party.] in drawing a cheque in favour of a person not likely to be well known in banking circles, write his address or his business after his name on the face of the cheque. for instance, if you should send a cheque to john brown, st. louis, it might possibly fall into the hands of the wrong john brown; but if you write the cheque in favour of "john brown, west avenue, st. louis," it is more than likely that the right person will collect it. if you wish to get a cheque cashed where you are unknown, and it is not convenient for a friend who has an account at the bank to go with you for the purpose of identification, ask him to place his signature on the back of your cheque, and you will not likely have trouble in getting it cashed at the bank where your friend keeps his account. by placing his signature upon the back of the cheque he guarantees the bank against loss. a bank is responsible for the signatures of its depositors, but it cannot be supposed to know the signatures of indorsers. the reliable identifier is in reality the person who is responsible. indorsing cheques in indorsing cheques note the following points: . write across the back--not lengthwise. . if your indorsement is the first, write it about two inches from the top of the back; if it is not the first indorsement, write immediately under the last indorsement. . do not indorse wrong end up; the top of the back is the left end of the face. . write your name as you are accustomed to write it, no matter how it is written on the face. if you are depositing the cheque write or stamp "for deposit" or "pay to ______bank______," as may be the custom, over your signature. this is hardly necessary if you are taking the cheque yourself to the bank. a cheque with a simple or blank indorsement on the back is payable to bearer, and if lost the finder might succeed in collecting it; but if the words "for deposit" appear over the name the bank officials understand that the cheque is intended to be deposited, and they will not cash it. . if you wish to make the cheque payable to some particular person by indorsing, write "pay to ______(name)______ or order," and under this write your own name as you are accustomed to sign it. . do not carry around indorsed cheques loosely. such cheques are payable to bearer and may be collected by any one. . if you receive a cheque which has been transferred to you by a blank indorsement (name of indorser only), and you wish to hold it a day or two, write over the indorsement the words "pay to the order of (yourself--writing your own name)." this is allowable legally. the cheque cannot then be collected until you indorse it. [illustration: a cheque payable to order and a blank indorsement.] . an authorised stamped indorsement is as good as a written one. whether such indorsements are accepted or not depends upon the regulations of the clearing-house in the particular city in which they are offered for deposit. the written indorsement is considered safer for transmission of out-of-town collections. . if you are indorsing for a company, or society, or corporation, write first the name of the company (this may be stamped on) and then your own name, followed by the word "treas." . if you have power of attorney to indorse for some particular person, write his name, followed by your own, followed by the word "attorney" or "atty.," as it is usually written. . it is sometimes permissible to indorse the payee's name thus, "by ______(your own name)." this may be done by a junior member of a concern when the person authorised to indorse cheques is absent and the cheques are deposited and not cashed. . do not write any unnecessary information on the back of your cheque. a story is told of a woman who received a cheque from her husband, and when cashing it wrote "your loving wife" above her name on the back. v. bank cheques (_continued_) if you wish to draw money from your own account, the most approved form of cheque is written "pay to the order of _cash_." this differs from a cheque drawn to "_bearer_." the paying teller expects to see yourself, or some one well known to him as your representative, when you write "cash." if you write "pay to the order of (_your own name_)" you will be required to indorse your cheque before you can get it cashed. if your note is due at your own bank and you wish to draw a cheque in payment, write "pay to the order of _bills payable_." if you wish to write a cheque to draw money for wages, write "pay to the order of _pay-roll_." if you wish to write a cheque to pay for a draft which you are buying, write "pay to the order of _n. y. draft and exchange_," or whatever the circumstances may call for. [illustration: a cheque made to obtain money for immediate use.] if you wish to stop the payment of a cheque which you have issued you should notify the bank at once, giving full particulars. banks have a custom, after paying and charging cheques, of cancelling them by punching or making some cut through their face. these cancelled cheques are returned to the makers at the end of each month. if you have deposited a cheque and it is returned through your bank marked "_no funds_," it signifies that the cheque is worthless and that the person upon whose account it was drawn has no funds to meet it. your bank will charge the amount to your account. the best thing to do in such a case is to hold the cheque as evidence of the debt, and write the person who sent it to you, giving particulars and asking for an explanation. if you wish to use your cheque to pay a note due at some other bank, or in buying real estate, or stocks, or bonds, you may find it necessary to get the cheque _certified_. this is done by an officer of the bank, who writes or stamps across the face of the cheque the words "_certified"_ or "_good when properly indorsed_," and signs his name. (_see illustration._) the amount will immediately be deducted from your account, and the bank, by guaranteeing your cheque, becomes responsible for its payment. banks will usually certify any cheque drawn upon them if the depositor has the amount called for to his credit, no matter who presents the cheque, and this certifying makes it feasible for a man to carry in his pocket any amount of actual cash. if you should get a cheque certified and then not use it, deposit it in your bank, otherwise your account will be short the amount for which the cheque is drawn. in canada all cheques are presented to the "ledger-keeper" for certification before being presented to the paying teller. [illustration: a certified cheque.] the usefulness of banks banks are absolutely necessary to the success of modern commercial enterprises. they provide a place for the safe-keeping of money and securities, and they make the payment of bills much more convenient than if currency instead of cheques were the more largely used. but the great advantage of a banking institution to a business man is the opportunity it affords him of borrowing money, of securing cash for the carrying on of his business while his own capital is locked up in merchandise or in the hands of his debtors. another important advantage is to be found in the facilities afforded by banks for the collection of cheques, notes, and drafts. vi. bank drafts a draft is a formal demand for the payment of money. your bank cheque is your sight draft on your bank. it is not so stated, but it is so understood. a cheque differs from an ordinary commercial draft, both in its wording and in its purpose. the bank is obliged to pay your cheque if it holds funds of yours sufficient to meet it, while the person upon whom your draft is drawn may or may not honour it at his pleasure. a cheque is used for paying money to a creditor, while a draft is used as a means of collecting money from a debtor. nearly all large banks keep money on deposit with one or more of the banks located in the great commercial centres. they call these centrally located banks their _correspondents_. the larger banks have correspondents in new york, chicago, boston, and other large cities. as business men keep money on deposit with banks to meet their cheques, so banks keep money on deposit with other banks to meet their drafts. a bank draft is simply the bank's cheque, drawn upon its deposit with some other bank. banks sell these cheques to their customers, and merchants make large use of them in paying bills in distant cities. these drafts, or cashiers' cheques, as they are sometimes called, pass as cash anywhere within a reasonable distance of the money centre upon which they are drawn. bankers' drafts on new york would, under ordinary financial conditions, be considered cash anywhere in the united states. a draft on a foreign bank is usually called a bill of exchange. [illustration: a cheque for the purchase of a draft.] cheques have come to be quite generally used for the payment of bills even at long distances. if a business man desires to close an important contract requiring cash in advance he sends a bank draft, if at a distance, or a certified cheque, if in the same city. if he desires simply to pay a debt he sends his own personal cheque. bank drafts are quite generally used by merchants in the west to pay bills in the east. a draft on new york bought in san francisco is cash when it reaches new york, while a san francisco cheque is not cash until it returns and is cashed by the bank upon which it is drawn. in the ordinary course of business cheques are considered cash no matter upon what bank drawn. the bank receiving them on deposit gives the depositor credit at once, even though it may take a week before the value represented by the cheque is in the possession of the bank. [illustration: a bank draft.] all wholesale transactions and a large proportion of retail transactions are completed by the passing of instruments of credit--notes, cheques, drafts, etc.; a part only of the retail trade is conducted by actual currency-bills and "change." banks handle the bulk of these transferable titles and deal to a very small extent--that is, proportionally--in actual money. the notes, drafts, bills of exchange, and bank cheques are representative of the property passing by title in money from the producers to the consumers. a small proportion--perhaps six or eight per cent.--of these transactions is conducted by the use of actual bank or legal-tender notes. this trade in instruments of credit amounts in the united states to fifty billions of dollars yearly. vii. promissory notes [illustration: ordinary form of promissory note.] a promissory note is a written promise to pay a specified sum of money. at the time of the note's issue--that is, when signed and delivered--two parties are connected with it, the _maker_ and the _payee_. the maker is the person who signs or promises to pay the note; the payee is the person to whom or to whose order the note is made payable. negotiable in a commercial sense means _transferable_, and a negotiable note is a note which can be transferred from one person to another. a note to be made negotiable must contain the word _bearer_ or the word _order_--that is, it must be payable either _to bearer_, or _to the order_ of the payee. a non-negotiable note is payable to a particular person _only_. a note may be written on any kind of paper, in ink or pencil. it is wise, however, to use ink to prevent changes. all stationers sell blank forms for notes which are easily filled in. the samples of notes which appear in this lesson are selected simply to illustrate to students the fact that there are a great many special forms of notes in common use. the wording differs slightly in different states. the date of a note is a matter of the first importance. some bankers and business men consider it better to draw notes payable at a certain fixed time, as, "_i promise to pay on the th of march, _." the common custom is to make notes payable a certain number of days or months after date. a note made or issued on sunday is void. the day of maturity is the day upon which a note becomes legally due. in several of the states a note is not legally due until three days, called days of grace, after the expiration of the time specified in the note. [illustration: a promissory note filled out on an engraved blank.] the words value received, which usually appear upon notes, are not necessary legally. thousands of good notes made without any value consideration are handled daily. the promise to pay of a negotiable note must be unconditional. it cannot be made to depend upon any contingency whatever. notes that are made in settlement of genuine business transactions come under the head of regular, legitimate business paper. an accommodation note is one which is signed, or indorsed, simply as an accommodation, and not in settlement of an account or in payment of an indebtedness. with banks accommodation paper has a deservedly hard reputation. however, there are all grades and shades of accommodation paper, though it represents no actual business transaction between the parties to it, and rests upon no other foundation than that of mutual agreement. no contract is good without a consideration, but this is only true between the original parties to a note. the third party or innocent receiver or holder of a note has a good title, and can recover its value, even though it was originally given without a valuable consideration. an innocent holder of a note which had been originally lost or stolen has a good title to it if he received it for value. [illustration: a special form for a promissory note.] a note does not draw interest until after maturity, unless the words with interest appear on the face. notes draw interest after maturity and until paid, at the legal rate. a note should be presented for payment upon the exact day of maturity. notes made payable at a bank, or at any other place, must be presented for payment at the place named. when no place is specified the note is payable at the maker's place of business or at his residence. in finding the date of maturity it is important to remember that when a note is drawn _days after date_ the actual days must be counted, and when drawn _months after date_ the time is reckoned by months. to discount a note is to sell it at a discount. the rates of discount vary according to the security offered, or the character of the loan, or the state of the money market. for ordinary commercial paper the rates run from four to eight per cent. notes received and given by commercial houses and discounted by banks are not usually for a longer period than four months. viii. the clearing-house system in large cities cheques representing millions of dollars are deposited in the banks every day. the separate collection of these would be almost impossible were it not for the clearing-house system. each large city has its clearing-house. it is an establishment formed by the banks themselves, and for their own convenience. the leading banks of a city connect themselves with the clearing-house of that city, and through other banks with the clearing-houses of other cities, particularly new york. country banks connect themselves with one or more clearing-houses through city banks, which do their business for them. the new york banks, largely through private bankers, branches of foreign banking houses, connect themselves with london, so that each bank in the world is connected indirectly with every other bank in the world, and in london is the final clearing-house of the world. [illustration: the advantages of the clearing-house system.] suppose that the above diagram represents the banks and clearing-house of a city, and also the two business houses of brown and smith. brown keeps his money on deposit in bank e, and smith in bank b. brown sends (by mail) a cheque to smith in payment of a bill. now, smith can come all the way to bank e, and, if he is properly identified, can collect the cheque. he does not do this, however, but deposits brown's cheque in bank b, the bank where he does his banking business. now, b cannot send to e to get the money. it could do this, perhaps, if it had only one cheque, but it has taken in hundreds of cheques, some, perhaps, on every bank in town, and on many banks out of town. it would take a hundred messengers to collect them. so, instead of b's going to e, they meet half-way, or at a central point called a clearing-house, and there collect their cheques. b may have $ in cheques on e, and e may have $ in cheques on b, so that the exchange can be made--that is, the cheques can be paid by e paying the difference of $ , which is done, not direct, but through the officers of the clearing-house. now bank e's messenger carries brown's cheque back with him and enters it up against brown's account. this in simple language is the primary idea of the clearing-house. the clearings in new york in one day amount to from one to two hundred millions of dollars. by clearings we mean the value of the cheques which are _cleared_--that is, which change hands through the clearing-house. usually once a week (in some cities oftener) the banks of a city make to their clearing-house a report, based on daily balances, of their condition. [illustration: the route of a cheque.] to illustrate the connection between banks at distant points let us suppose that b of media, pennsylvania, who keeps his money on deposit in the first national bank of media, sends a cheque in payment of a bill to k of south evanston, illinois. k deposits the cheque in the citizens bank of his town and receives immediate credit for it upon his bank-book, just the same as though the cheque were drawn upon the same or a near-by bank. the citizens bank simply sends the cheque, with other distant cheques, to its correspondent, the national bank of the republic, chicago, on deposit, in many instances in about the same sense that k deposited the cheque in the citizens bank. the national bank of the republic sends the cheque, with other cheques, to its new york correspondent, the national park bank. it may possibly send to philadelphia direct, or even to media; but this is very unlikely. the national park bank sends the cheque to its philadelphia correspondent, say the penn national bank. now the clearing-house clerk of the penn national carries the cheque to the philadelphia clearing-house and enters it, with other cheques, on the first national of media. custom, however, differs very greatly in this particular. many near-by country banks clear through city banks; others clear less directly. if the first national bank of philadelphia is known at the clearing-house as the representative of the first national bank of media it likely has money belonging to this media bank on deposit. in that case the cheque is charged up against the account of the first national of philadelphia. this bank then sends the cheque to the first national of media, by which it is charged up against b. this system of collection of cheques is about as perfect as is the post-office system of carrying registered mail. [illustration: backs of two paid cheques.] now, the banks and clearing-houses through which the cheque passes on its way _home_ stamp their indorsements and other information upon the back. our illustration shows the backs of two cheques which have "travelled." millions of dollars are collected by banks daily in this way, and all without expense to their customers. it is estimated that these collections cost the new york city banks more than two million dollars a year in loss of interest while the cheques are _en route_. ten thousand collection letters are sent out daily by the banks of new york city alone. ix. commercial drafts a commercial draft bears a close resemblance to a letter from one person to another requesting that a certain sum of money be paid to the person who calls, or to the bank or firm for whom he is acting. for instance, the draft shown in the first illustration might be worded something like this: _st. louis, mo., feb. , ._ _mr. robert elsmere,_ _jefferson city, mo._ _my dear sir:_ _will you kindly pay to the messenger from the ---- bank who will call to-morrow the sum of three hundred and ninety-seven dollars and charge to my account?_ _yours, very truly,_ _david grieve._ [illustration: a sight draft developed from the above letter.] commercial usage, however, recognises a particular form in which this letter is to be written, and the address of the person for whom it is intended is usually written at the lower left-hand corner instead of on an envelope. commercial drafts usually reach the persons upon whom they are drawn through the medium of the banks rather than directly by mail. let us illustrate. suppose that a of chicago owes b of buffalo $ , and b desires to collect the amount by means of a draft. he fills in a blank draft, signs it, and addresses it on the lower left-hand corner to a. instead of sending it by mail he takes it to his bank--that is, deposits it for collection. it will reach a chicago bank in about the same way that cheques for collection go from one place to another. a messenger from the chicago bank will carry the draft to a's office and present it for payment or for acceptance. if it is a _sight_ draft--that is, a draft payable when a sees it--he may give cash for it at once and take the draft as his receipt. if he has not the money convenient he may write across the face "accepted, payable at (his) bank," as in the illustration. it will then reach his bank and be paid as his personal cheque would be, and should be entered in his cheque-book. banks usually give one day upon sight drafts. the draft will not be presented a second time, but will be held at the bank until the close of the banking hours the next day, where a can call to pay if he chooses. leniency in the matter of time will depend largely upon b's instructions and the bank's attitude toward a. if the draft is a time draft--that is, if b gives a time, a certain number of days, in which to pay it--a, if he wishes to pay the draft, _accepts_ it. he does this by writing the word _accepted_ with the date and his signature across the face of the draft. he may make it payable at his bank as he would a note, if he so desires. he then returns the draft to the messenger, and if the time is long the draft is returned to b; if only a few days, the bank holds it for collection. [illustration: no. . a sight draft.] [illustration: no. . an accepted ten-day sight draft.] [illustration: no. . an accepted sight draft.] [illustration: no. . a time draft.] an accepted draft is really a promissory note, though it is more often called an _acceptance_. when a man pays or accepts a draft he is said to _honour_ it. in the foregoing illustration a is not obliged either to pay or to accept the draft. it is not binding upon him any more than a letter would be. he can refuse payment just as easily and as readily as he could decline to pay a collector who calls for payment of a bill. of course, if a man habitually refuses to honour legitimate drafts it may injure his credit with banks and business houses. it is a very common thing to collect distant accounts by means of commercial drafts. a debtor is more likely to meet--that is, _to pay_--a draft than he is to reply to a letter and inclose his cheque. it is really more convenient, and safer, too, for there is some risk in sending personal cheques through the mail. there are some houses that make all their payments by cheques, while there are others which prefer to have their creditors at a distance draw on them for the amounts due. if a business man who has been accustomed to honour drafts continues for a period to dishonour them, the banks through which the drafts pass naturally conclude that he is unable to meet his liabilities. some houses deposit their drafts for collection in their home banks, while others have a custom of sending them direct to some bank in or near the place where the debtor resides. if the place is a very small one the collection is sometimes made through one of the express companies. when goods are sold for distinct periods of credit, and it is generally understood that maturing accounts are subject to sight drafts, there should be no need of notifying the debtor in advance. some houses, however, make a general custom of sending notices ten days in advance, stating that a draft will be drawn if cheque is not received in the meantime. notice the illustrations. the protest notice at the left of nos. , , and is intended for the bank presenting the draft for payment. the reason for this will be fully explained in our lesson on protested paper. (see lesson xiii.) no. shows an accepted draft payable to the order of a bank in the city upon which it is drawn. no. is payable to the order of a bank in the city of the drawer. no. is a sight draft payable to the order of a bank and accepted payable at a bank. no. is a time draft payable to "_ourselves_"--that is, the pennsylvania steel company. drafts are often discounted at banks before acceptance where the credit of the drawer is good. in such cases the drafts which are dishonoured are charged up against the drawer's account. x. foreign exchange it is quite in order that we should follow lessons on the clearing-house and commercial drafts with a lesson on foreign exchange. we learned in the last lesson that commercial drafts are made use of to facilitate the collection of accounts. they are simply formal demands for the payment of legitimate debts. when these formal demands are made upon foreign debtors they are called bills of exchange; and the process of buying and selling these drafts, the drafts themselves, and the fluctuations in price, all are included in the general name _exchange_. [illustration: foreign exchange.] to illustrate the principles of exchange let us suppose that the following transactions have occurred: . c of boston has sold goods, £ , to h of hamburg. . d of chicago has sold goods, £ , to f of glasgow. . m of chicago has sold goods, £ , to k of london. . e of philadelphia has sold goods, £ , to r of paris. . p of new york has sold goods, £ , to g of paris. c draws on h for £ , sells the draft to a banking-house in boston; they send to bank a of new york, and the new york bank to their london correspondent, say bank b, with instructions to collect from hamburg. d draws in a similar way on f. e draws on r, and p on g. suppose that m instead of drawing on k receives a draft drawn by bank b of london on bank a of new york, payable to m's order. america has sold goods worth £ , to europe. europe . . . . . . owes £ , to . . . . . . america but b has paid a £ . --------------- b . . . . . . therefore owes £ , to . . . . . . a now it will cost b a considerable sum of money to ship £ , in gold to a, for all exchanges between europe and america are payable in gold. suppose that s of new york owes t of london £ , , and t draws on s and takes the draft to bank b in london and offers it for sale. will b offer more or less than £ , for the bill of exchange or draft? he will offer more. it will be cheaper for him to pay a premium for the draft than to ship gold, for he can send this draft to bank a to pay his indebtedness, and a can collect from s. in the money market in new york there is a constant supply of exchanges (drafts) on london, and in london a constant supply of exchanges on new york. experience has shown that at all times the number of persons in europe indebted to american business houses is about (though of course not actually) the same as the number of persons in america indebted to european houses. hence when a of new york wishes to make a payment to b of london he does not send the actual money, but goes into the market--that is, to a banker doing a foreign business--and buys a draft, called a bill of exchange, which is in reality the banker's order on his london correspondent, asking the latter to pay the money to the person named. it may be that about the same time some london merchant who owes money in new york goes to the very same london banker and buys a draft on the new york bank. in this way the one draft cancels the other, and when there is a difference at the end of the week or month the actual gold is sent across to balance the account. these exchanges have a sort of commodity value, and like all commodities, depend upon the law of supply and demand. when gold is being shipped abroad we say that the balance of trade is against us--that is, we are buying more from europe than europe is buying from us, and the gold is shipped to pay the balance or difference. the _par_ of the currency of any two countries means, among merchants, the equivalency of a certain amount of the (coin) currency of the one in the (coin) currency of the other, supposing the currencies of both to be of the precise weight and purity fixed by the respective mints. the par of exchange between great britain and the united states is . - / ; that is, £ sterling is worth $ . - / . exchange is quoted daily in new york and other city papers at . , . , . - / , etc., for sight bills and at a higher rate for sixty-day bills. business men who are accustomed to watching fluctuations in exchange rates use the quotations as a sort of barometer to foretell trade conditions. the imports and exports of bullion (uncoined gold) are the real test of exchange. if bullion is stationary, flowing neither into nor out of a country, its exchanges may be truly said to be at par; and on the other hand, if bullion is being exported from a country, it is a proof that the exchange is against it; and conversely if there be large importations. the cost of conveying bullion from one country to another forms the limit within which the rise and fall of the _real_ exchange between them must be confined. if, for illustration, a new york merchant owes a debt in london and exchange costs him, say, two per cent., and the cost of shipping the gold is only one per cent., it will be to his advantage to pay the debt by sending the actual coin across. a favourable _real_ exchange operates as a duty on exportation and as a bounty on importation. [illustration: a bill of exchange (private).] it is to the interest of merchants or bankers who deal in foreign bills to buy them where they are the cheapest and to sell them where they are the dearest. for this reason it might often be an advantage for a new york merchant to buy a bill on london to pay a debt in paris. [illustration: a bill of exchange (banker's).] two illustrations of bills of exchange are given in this lesson. each is drawn in duplicate. the original is sold or sent abroad, while the duplicate is preserved as a safeguard against the loss of the original. when one is paid the other is of no value. notice the similarity between bills of exchange as shown here and commercial drafts as shown in our last lesson. the first form shows a draft made by a coal company upon a steamship company to pay for coal supplied to a particular steamer. suppose that the steamship company has a contract with robert hare powel & co. of philadelphia to supply coal to their steamers. the steamer _cardiff_, when in port at philadelphia, is supplied; the bill is certified to by the engineer; the master (captain) of the vessel signs powel & co.'s draft (and in doing this really makes it the captain's draft); the bill is receipted. now powel & co. sell this exchange (draft) on london to a broker or banker doing a foreign business. it is forwarded to london and presented in due time at the office of the wales navigation company for payment. the second form shows a bill of exchange drawn by a philadelphia banking house upon a london banking house and payable to the order of the firm buying the draft. c. h. bannerman & co. will send this bill (the original) to pay an account in europe. the first form bears the same relation to a commercial draft that the second does to a cashier's cheque. [illustration: first page of a letter of credit.] xi. letters of credit the usual instruments of credit by means of which travellers abroad draw upon their deposits at home are known as circular letters of credit. these forms of credit are of such common use that every one should be familiar with their form. we reproduce here a facsimile of the first and second pages of a circular letter for £ , copied with slight change of names from an actual instrument. the first page shows the credit proper authorising the various correspondents of the bank issuing it to pay the holder, whose signature is given on its face, money to the extent of £ . the names of the banks who are authorised to advance money upon the letter are usually printed upon the third and fourth pages, though letters issued by well-known banking houses are usually recognised by any banking house to which they are presented. the second illustration shows how the holder of a particular letter availed himself of its advantages. it gives the names of the banks to which he presented his letter, and the amounts paid by each. with such a letter a traveller could make a trip around the world and not have in his pocket at any one time more gold or silver or bills than would be necessary to meet immediate expenses. suppose that a. b. is about to make a european trip. he goes to a bank doing a foreign business, say brown bros. & co. of new york city, and asks for a circular letter for £ , for which he is obliged to pay about $ . copies of a. b.'s signature are left with brown bros. & co., and may perhaps be forwarded to their foreign banking houses. when a. b. presents himself at a glasgow or paris bank with his letter of credit, and asks for a payment upon it, the banker asks him to sign a draft on brown bros. & co., new york, or more likely on their london bank, for the amount required, which amount is immediately indorsed on the second page of the letter of credit, so that when the indorsements equal the face the letter is fully paid. a. b. is simply drawing upon his own account--that is, upon the money he deposited to secure the letter of credit. payment is usually made upon the simple identification or comparison of signatures. if a traveller should lose his letter of credit he should notify at once the bank issuing it and, if possible, the banks upon which drawn. [illustration: second page of a letter of credit (used).] there are several other forms of travellers' credits in use. the _cheque bank_, an english institution with a branch in new york city, issues to travellers a book of cheques, each of which can be filled up only to a limited amount, as shown by printed and perforated notices appearing on the face. for instance, for £ one can buy a cheque-book containing fifty blank cheques, each good, when properly filled up, for £ . each of these cheques is really a certified cheque, only it is certified in advance of issue. any of the thousand or more foreign banks which are agents for the _cheque bank_ sell these cheque-books, and cash the cheques when presented. the amounts that may be short drawn go toward the cost of a new cheque-book, or may be returned in cash. the american and other express companies have forms of travellers' cheque-books very similar to those issued by the _cheque bank_. xii. joint-stock companies to organise a stock company it is necessary for a number of persons to come together and make a certificate to the effect that they propose to form a company to bear a certain name, for the purpose of transacting a certain kind of business at a certain place. the certificate states that they propose to issue a certain number of shares of stock at a certain price per share, that the capital stock is to be a certain amount, and that the company is to continue to exist for a definite period of time. blank forms for such certificate are supplied by the secretary of the state where the company is being organised, and when such certificate is properly filled out, signed, and delivered to him, he issues a license, or charter, to the persons making such certificate, giving them permission to open books, sell stock, and carry on the enterprise outlined. state laws regarding stock companies differ very largely. students of this course who desire to know the law in any particular state can easily secure the information by writing to the secretary of that state. the usual par value of a share of stock is $ . that is, if a company organises with a capital of $ , , there will be shares to sell. each person who buys or subscribes for the stock--that is, who joins the company--receives a certificate of stock. our illustrations show two examples; one of a national bank, and the other of a manufacturing company. these certificates are transferable at the pleasure of the owners. the transfer is made usually by a form of indorsement on the back of the certificate, but to be legal the transfer must be recorded on the books of the company. [illustration: a certificate of stock in a national bank.] the men subscribing in this way become responsible for the good management of the business and are obliged to act according to the laws of the state in which the company is organised. usually they are not responsible individually for the liabilities of the concern beyond the amounts of their individual subscriptions. [illustration: a certificate of stock in a manufacturing company.] every person who subscribes for stock owns a part of the business and is called a shareholder. all the shareholders meet together, and out of their number they choose a certain number of directors. the directors choose a president and other necessary officers, and in a general way direct the policy of the company. as a rule directors have no salaries attached to their positions. general meetings of shareholders are held once a year to elect the directors and to hear the reports of the officers. the student should be familiar in a general way with the different classes of stock and with the technical terms familiar to stock companies. the more important of these matters are as follows: directors. all the shareholders meet together and out of their number choose a certain number of directors. the directors choose a president and other necessary officers and fix the amount of salary which shall be paid such officers for their work. capital stock. this name is given to the gross capital for which the company is organised, without any reference to its value or to whether it has been fully paid in or not. the _paid-in capital_ is the amount received from the stockholders on the shares for which they have subscribed. dividends. the directors of the company, after paying the expenses and laying by a certain amount for contingencies, divide the profits among the shareholders. these profits are called dividends, and in successful concerns such dividends as are declared quarterly, semiannually, or annually usually amount to good interest on the shareholders' investments. treasury stock. it often occurs that a new company finds it necessary to set aside a certain number of shares to be sold from time to time to secure working capital. such stock is held in the treasury until it is needed, and is called treasury stock. preferred stock. preferred stock is stock which is guaranteed certain advantages over ordinary stock. it is usually given to secure some obligation of the company, and upon it dividends are declared in preference to common stock. that is to say, if a man holds a share of preferred stock he will receive interest thereon out of the profits of the business before such profits are given in the form of dividends to shareholders generally. preferred stock can be issued only when authorised by the charter of the company. the interest on the investment in the case of preferred stock is more sure, but the security itself is not any more secure than in the case of common stock. guaranteed stock. guaranteed stock differs from preferred stock in this--that it is entitled to the guaranteed dividend (interest) before all other classes of stock, whether the company earns the necessary amount in any one year or not. this right is carried over from year to year, thus rendering the shares absolutely secured as to interest. watered stock. when stock is issued to the shareholders without increase of actual capital the stock is said to have been _watered_. a company may organise for, say, $ , , and may want to increase to $ , without adding to the number of its shareholders. each holder of _one_ share will, in this instance, receive _four_ new shares, and in future instead of receiving a dividend on one share will receive a dividend on five shares. the object of this is, quite commonly, to avoid state laws requiring certain corporations to pay excess of profit over a stated rate per cent. into the state treasury. forfeited stock. stock is usually sold on certain explicit conditions, such as the paying of ten per cent. down and the balance in installments at stated intervals. if the conditions which are agreed to by the shareholder are not met his stock is declared _forfeited_, or he can be sued in the same manner as upon any other contract. assessments. some companies organise with the understanding that a certain percentage of the nominal value of the shares is to be paid at the time of subscribing, and that future payments are to be made at such times and in such amounts as the company may require. under these conditions the stockholders are assessed whenever money is needed. such assessments are uniform on all stockholders. surplus fund. it is not customary to pay a larger dividend than good interest. the profits remaining after the expenses and dividends are paid are credited to what is called a surplus fund. this fund is the property of the shareholders and is usually invested in good securities. franchise. a franchise is a right granted by the state to individuals or to corporations. the franchise of a railroad company is the right to operate its road. such franchise has a value entirely distinct from the value of the plant or of the ordinary property of the corporation. sinking fund. a sinking fund is a fund set aside yearly for the purpose at some future time of sinking--that is, paying a debt. xiii. protested paper when a note is presented for payment at maturity and is not paid it is usually protested; that is, a notary public makes a formal statement that the note was presented for payment and payment was refused. notice of such protest is sent to the maker of the note and to each indorser. the bank should never hand to its notary any paper for protest until it has made sure that its non-payment has not been brought about by some error or misunderstanding. quite often, even though the paper has been made payable at a bank, the notary sends a messenger with the note to the maker to make a formal demand for payment. in taking in collection paper, banks should obtain clear instructions from its owners as to whether or not it should be protested in case of non-payment. it by no means follows that a formal protest is not desired because the paper bears no indorsements. many banks make it a rule to protest all unpaid paper unless otherwise ordered. we often see attached to the end of a draft a little slip with the words: "_no protest; tear this off before protesting._" this is simply private advice to the banker informing him that the drawer does not wish to have the draft protested. it may be that he does not wish to wrong or injure the credit of or add to the expense of his debtor; or it may be that he considers the account doubtful and does not wish to add to his own loss the cost of protest fees. to hold an indorser, he must be properly notified of the non-payment of the note; and whether this has been done is a question of fact. if he was not properly notified this defence will avail whenever it is clearly proved. a great variety of defences may be successfully made by an indorser. a few of these defences are here briefly noticed: one is usury; another is the maker's discharge by the holder; nor can he be held when he has paid the note; nor when its issue was unlawful, nor when the note was non-negotiable, nor when his indorsement was procured by fraud. finally, an indorser may avail himself of any defence existing between the holder and the maker or principal debtor. this is evidently a just principle, for the holder should have no more rights against an indorser than he has against the maker. if, therefore, the maker can interpose some just claim as a partial or complete defence the indorser should be permitted to avail himself of this claim. in order to recover from an indorser it must be proven that a formal and proper demand for payment was made upon the maker. the formal protest is usually undisputed evidence of this. the maker is liable in any event. [illustration: a protest.] to make the indorser's liability absolute it is necessary to demand payment at the specified place on the last day of the period for which the note was given, and to give due notice of non-payment to the indorser. for, as the contract requires the maker to pay at maturity, the indorser may presume, unless he has received a notice to the contrary, that the maker has paid the obligation. ordinarily a notice of an indorsement by a partnership need not be sent to each member. even after the partnership has been dissolved a notice to one partner is sufficient to bind the other members. if the note is owned jointly (that is, by parties who are not business partners) the indorsers are not liable as partners but as individuals. in such a case the notice of non-payment should be sent to each. our illustration shows a facsimile of a protest notice. xiv. paper offered for discount one of the most valuable parts of a banker's education is to learn whom to trust. every bank should have a well-organised and thoroughly equipped credit department, in charge of some one who can be relied upon to investigate carefully all names referred to him by the officers. a banker has the right to expect the fullest confidence on the part of the borrower, and the borrower should furnish him with a complete and detailed statement of the condition of his affairs. it is safe to conclude that when a borrower refuses absolutely to give any information as to his financial condition his credit is not in the most favourable shape. many of the banks have blank forms which they, from time to time, ask borrowers to fill out. these statements show in detail the assets and liabilities of the firm in question; they show the notes which are outstanding, the mortgages on real estate, and many other particulars, including the personal or individual credit of members of the firm, if a partnership. in estimating the value of paper offered for discount the following points should be considered: . the total net worth of the borrower. . the character of his business; whether it is speculative or staple. . the borrower's record and standing in the community and his business habits. . whether he is in enterprise abreast with modern ideas and methods. . the character of the merchandise owned by the borrower. what would it bring under the hammer? groceries and raw material can usually be turned into cash at a forced sale at very small discount from current prices. not so with hardware, glass, dry goods, boots and shoes, books, etc. machinery and fixtures are not a bankable asset upon which to base credit. the banker should note his borrower's bills payable. why did he give notes? are they met promptly? many houses prefer to sell their own paper in the open market, and keep their banks open for accommodations when they are unable to secure outside credit. the insurance carried should be considered; also the volume of business done. a large business on moderate capital, with long credits, will naturally have large liabilities, while a small business with a liberal capital and short credits should have small liabilities. paper offered for discount is of a variety of kinds. the larger proportion of it is from customers of the borrower who have extended their credit by paying their accounts in notes instead of in cash. such paper is really, though having two names, very little better than single-name paper, for it is not the maker's credit, but the payee's, which the bank usually considers. many very small notes offered for discount usually indicate a very needy condition. there are many firms which carry two or more bank accounts, and others who sell their paper to out-of-town banks. in buying paper it is important to ascertain whether the firm is in the habit of taking up paper at one bank by floating a loan at another. paper may be classified for purposes of discount as follows: . bills drawn by shippers on the houses to which the goods are shipped. . bills drawn by importers against commodities placed in brokers' hands for sale. . bills arising out of our manifold trades and industries. . drafts with bills of lading attached. . paper having personal indorsements. . paper secured by collateral. . one-name paper. xv. corporations stock companies are in a sense corporations, but the name corporation has in its common application a broader meaning. public corporations are those which are created exclusively for the public interest, as cities, towns, counties, colleges, etc. private corporations are created wholly or in part for the pecuniary benefit of the members, as railroad companies, banks, etc. corporate bodies whose members at discretion fill by appointment all vacancies occurring in their membership are sometimes called _close corporations_. in this country the power to be a corporation is a franchise which can only exist through the legislature. in municipal corporations the members are the citizens; the number is indefinite; one ceases to be a member when he moves from the town or city, while every new resident becomes a member when by law he becomes entitled to the privileges of local citizenship. the laws which corporations may make for their own government are made under the several heads of by-laws, ordinances, rules, and regulations. these laws may be made by the governing body for any object not foreign to the corporate purposes. a municipal corporation, for example, makes ordinances for the cleaning and lighting of its streets, for the government of its police force, for the supply of water to its citizens, and for the punishment of all breaches of its regulations. a railway corporation establishes regulations for signals, for the running of trains, for freight connections, for the conduct of its passengers, and for hundreds of other things. but such by-laws and regulations must be in harmony with the charter of the corporation and with the general law of the land. for instance, a municipal corporation could not enforce a by-law forbidding the use of its streets by others than its own citizens, because by general law all highways are open to the common use of all the people. again, a railway corporation could not make a rule that it would carry goods for one class of persons only, because as a common carrier the law requires that it carry impartially for all. as a general rule private corporations organised under the laws of one state are permitted to do business in other states. it is quite often to the advantage of a company to organise under the laws of one state for the purpose of doing business in another. for instance, there are many companies chartered under the laws of maine with headquarters in boston. the massachusetts laws require that a large proportion of the capital be actually paid in at the time of organising, while the maine law has no such provision. for similar reasons many large companies doing business in new york or philadelphia are organised under the laws of new jersey. a corporation may make an assignment just as may an individual. if all the members die the property interests pass to the rightful heirs, and under ordinary conditions the corporation still exists. a franchise is a right granted by the state or by a municipal corporation to individuals or to a private corporation. the franchise of a railroad company is the right to operate its road. such franchise has a value entirely distinct from the value of the plant or the ordinary property of the corporation. an unlimited liability corporation is one in which the stockholders are liable as partners, each for the full indebtedness. a limited liability corporation is one in which the stockholders, in case of the failure of the corporation, are liable for the amount of their subscriptions. the name _limited_ is required by law to appear after the name of the company. if a subscription is entirely paid up there is no further liability--that is to say, the property of a shareholder cannot be attached for any debts of the company. understand clearly that the name _limited_ printed after the name of a company does not indicate in any way that the capital or credit of the company is limited, only that the liability of the shareholders of the company is limited to the amounts of their shares. a double liability corporation is one in which, in case of failure, the stockholders are further liable for amounts equal to their subscriptions. all national banks are double liability companies. if a owns $ stock in a national bank, and the bank fails, he loses his stock; and if the liabilities of the bank are large he may be obliged to pay a part or the whole of an additional $ . xvi. bonds when a railroad company, or a city or any other corporation desires to borrow money it is a common practice to issue instruments of credit called bonds. a bond means something that binds. bonds bear the same relation to the resources of a corporation that mortgages do to real estate. corporation bonds are issued for a period of years. they usually have coupons attached which are cut off and presented at regular intervals for the payment of interest. a bondholder of a corporation runs less risk than a stockholder, first, as to interest: the corporation is obliged to pay interest on its bonds, but may at its own pleasure _pass_ its dividends; secondly, the bondholder is a creditor, while the stockholder of the corporation is the debtor. on the other hand, if a concern is very successful, a shareholder may receive large dividends, while the bondholder receives only the stipulated interest. a _bond_ is evidence of debt, specifying the interest, and stating when the principal shall be paid; a _certificate of stock_ is evidence that the owner is a part-owner in the corporation or company, not a creditor, and he has no right to regain his money except by the sale of his stock, or through the winding up of the company's business. the name debentures is given to a form of municipal bond in common use. nearly all the large sums of money used by states and cities for the building of state or municipal buildings, bridges, canals, water-works, etc., are raised through the issue of bonds (_debentures_), which are sold, usually at a price a little below par, to large financial institutions, banks, and insurance companies. generally speaking, such bonds are good _securities_, and are marketable anywhere. [illustration: a private bond.] at different times the united states government has issued bonds to relieve the treasury. these bonds are absolutely safe and are always marketable. _registered bonds_ have the name of the buyer _registered_; _unregistered bonds_ are payable to _bearer_. _municipal bonds_ are issued by cities and other municipalities to raise money for local improvements. if proper precautions are taken by buyers, municipal securities may be considered among the safest and most remunerative investments. when a new railroad enterprise is undertaken its promoters often expect to make the road not only supply the money for its construction but also give working capital in addition. this is done by the issue of mortgage bonds. default in the payment of interest throws the road into the hands of a receiver. the securities immediately fall in value and are perhaps bought up by a syndicate of crafty speculators who are permitted to reorganise the road and its management. this is the history of many of our roads. there are exceptional cases, of course, but the investor should be familiar with the facts before buying railroad mortgages. a bottomry bond is a kind of mortgage peculiar to shipping. it is a conveyance of the ship as security for advances made to the owner. if the ship is lost the creditor loses his money and has no claim against the owner personally. it is allowable for a loan made upon such a bond to bear any rate of interest in excess of the legal rate. a vessel arriving in a foreign port may require repairs and supplies before she can proceed farther on her voyage, and in occasions of this kind a bottomry bond is given. the owner or master pledges the keel or _bottom_ of the ship--a part, in fact, for the whole--as security. we have now upon the market stocks and bonds representing all conceivable kinds of property. not only are properties of many kinds used to issue bonds upon, but many kinds of bonds are often issued upon the same property. thus we find among our railroads not only first, second, and third mortgage bonds, but income bonds, dividend bonds, convertible bonds, consolidated bonds, redemption bonds, renewal bonds, sinking-fund bonds, collateral trust bonds, equipment bonds, etc., until they lap and overlap in seemingly endless confusion. receiver's certificates are issued by receivers of corporations, companies, etc., in financial difficulties, to secure operating capital; they are granted first rights upon the property and are placed above prior lien and first mortgage bonds. xvii. transportation the most common effect of cheapened transportation is to increase the distance at which it is possible for producer and consumer to deal with each other. to the producer it offers a wider market and to the consumer a more varied source of supply. on the whole, cheapened transportation is more uniformly beneficial to the consumer; its temporary advantage to the producer very often leads to overproduction. it has the effect also of bringing about nearly uniform prices the world over. the time was when nearness to market was of the greatest possible advantage. at the present time a farmer can raise his celery in michigan or his beets in dakota and market them in new york city about as easily as though he lived on long island. it is no longer location which determines the business to be carried on in a particular place, but natural advantages more or less independent of location. but the railroad or the steamboat very often determines where a new business shall be developed. it is this quickening and cheapening of transportation that has given such stimulus in the present day to the growth of large cities. it enables them to draw cheap food from a far larger territory, and it causes business to locate where the widest selling connection is to be had, rather than where the goods or raw materials are most easily procured. it is the quick and comfortable transportation facilities which our large cities possess that have given strength to the great shopping centres. shoppers for thirty or forty miles around can easily reach these centres, and the result is that trade gathers in centres rather than at local points. a city of a million population in the most productive agricultural section of country could not be fed if the food had to reach the city by teaming. with this growth of trade centres comes the increased gain of large dealers at the expense of the small; with it comes organised speculation and its attendant results, good and evil. prior to the completion of the organisation of trunk or through lines, freight was compelled to break bulk and suffer trans-shipment at the end of each line, where a new corporation took up the traffic and carried it beyond. to prevent this breaking of bulk and to expedite the carriage of freight, fast freight lines on separate capitalisation were organised. the purpose of the interstate-commerce law is largely to prevent discrimination and corruption in freight charges, to secure for every person and place just and equal treatment at the hands of the transportation companies. the freight rates are arranged and regulated by the traffic associations, and the various conditions and compromises necessary have made both classifications and rates about as complicated as anything possibly could be. the name differential as applied to freight rates refers to the differences which are made by railroad companies. certain roads are by agreement allowed to charge a lower rate than others running to the same points. to and from each of the eastern cities there are two classes of roads--the _standard_ lines and the _differential_ lines. the standard lines have the advantage of more direct connections; the differential lines reach the freight destinations by circuitous routes, in some instances by almost double the mileage. with a view to equalising these conditions the general traffic associations allow the differential lines to carry freight at a lower rate per mile than the rate charged by the standard lines. the transportation business of the united states is so varied and complicated that a proper study of its freight tariffs and classifications would require much more space than can be given the subject in these lessons. xviii. transportation papers the common transportation papers, familiar to all shippers, are the ( ) _shipping receipt_, ( ) _bill of lading_, ( ) _waybill_. original receipts, stating marks and quantities of goods, go with each separate lot of merchandise to the freight sheds or vessels, and these are summed up in a formal bill of lading, for which they are exchanged when all the cases or bundles belonging to the particular shipment have been delivered. the duplicate receipt, or the part commonly marked _invoice_, is kept by the receiver of the freight, and the other end, commonly marked _original_, is given to the drayman. in making ordinary shipments it is not usual or necessary to make out a formal bill of lading. of course, when no bill of lading is made out, the receipt should be preserved by the shipper. the full contract is usually printed on the receipt, but it must be remembered that a receipt is not a negotiable instrument and cannot be used as security for money. [illustration: a shipping receipt (original).] a bill of lading is an acknowledgment by a transportation company of the receipt of goods specified, and contracts for their delivery at a certain place, under conditions stated thereon, upon payment of freight and expenses. bills of lading are negotiable and maybe transferred by indorsement, but are of no value apart from the goods to which they give title. a bill of lading goes with certain _named_ goods and cannot be transferred to other goods, even though of precisely the same kind and price. marine bills of lading are usually made in triplicate; one is kept by the shipper, another by the vessel, and the third is sent by mail to the person to receive the goods. [illustration: a steamship bill of lading.] the parties to a bill of lading are three--the shipper, the consignee, and the transportation company. the declaration of having received the goods in good order and condition, and the consequent obligation, subsequently expressed, of delivering them in like good order and condition, is sensibly lessened in its importance by the additional clause now adopted by almost all transportation companies--namely: "contents and condition of contents of packages unknown." should the goods or part of them be shipped in a damaged condition, or in a bad condition of packing, a note to that effect should be made by the transportation company on the bill of lading, which ceases then to be a _clean bill of lading_. [illustration: a local waybill.] like any other instrument of credit, a bill of lading may be deposited with a creditor as security for money advanced (or it may be transferred to a buyer) by means of indorsement, and the property or goods will be thereby either mortgaged or assigned. acting upon this principle, the shipper declares in the bill of lading that the goods shall be delivered unto the consignee or his assigns. when a shipper is unable to insert the name of the consignee at the time the bill of lading is made out, a _bill to order_ is drawn up wherein the consignee's name is superseded by the words _shipper's order_, or simply _order_; it being thus understood that the goods shall be delivered to whomsoever presents, at point of destination, the bill of lading duly indorsed by the shipper. by such a simple arrangement as a _bill to order_ the merchant is enabled to sell the goods while they are at sea, or in transit, and a consignment of merchandise may change hands several times before arriving at its destination. when a case of merchandise to be shipped has been properly entered and weighed it is then ready to be _manifested_ or _waybilled_, as no shipment is allowed to go forward without a waybill. the waybill is simply a memorandum of the consignment, together with full and complete shipping directions, giving also the number of the car into which the case has been loaded, and the point to which the car is "carded." the freight conductor has waybills for all goods which he carries. they are turned over with the merchandise to the agent of the railroad at the point of destination. our illustrations show ( ) _a shipping receipt_--the half marked "_original_"; ( ) _a steamship bill of lading_; ( ) _a local waybill_. examination paper note.--_the following questions are set as an indication of the sort of knowledge a student should possess who has carefully read the several papers of this course. the paper covers only about the first half of the course. the student is recommended to write out the answers carefully. only such answers need be attempted as can be made from a study of the lessons._ . what in a general sense is meant when we speak of the currency of a country? . enumerate some of the advantages afforded to the community and to commerce in general by banking institutions. . a bank cheque is a demand order for money, drawn by one who has funds in the bank. how does a cheque differ from an order on john smith to pay bearer a certain sum of money? . why is it important that cheques should be very carefully drawn? . (_a_) a cheque has no date. does this make it void? (_b_) how about a cheque dated months ago? (_c_) is a cheque dated on sunday good? (_d_) why are cheques sometimes dated ahead? (_e_) are you at liberty to print your own form of cheque? (_f_) is it necessary that your cheque be written on the prescribed blank form? (_g_) how would you write a cheque for cents? . how would you word a cheque to give to a person who is unknown at your bank, but who wishes to draw the money over the counter? . you are sending a cheque through the mails to john brown, philadelphia. how will you prevent the cheque from falling into the hands of the wrong john brown? . you identify a. b. at your bank. the cheque a. b. presented turns out to be a forgery. are you responsible? . a. b. transfers a cheque to you by a blank indorsement. it is then payable to bearer. how can you legally make it payable to your own order? . what is meant by power-of-attorney? how should an attorney indorse cheques for any person for whom he is acting? . if a note were about to be transferred to you by indorsement and delivery in payment of a debt, would it make any difference to you whether or not it was overdue? explain in full. . tell how you would receipt for a payment of a note. why is not an ordinary separate receipt sufficient? . why are notes protested? why is a formal protest sometimes desired even though the paper bears no indorsements? . if an indorser is compelled to pay a note, against whom has he a good claim? note to the foregoing examination paper it is a mistake to answer questions for a student if he is able of himself to find the answers. a question which sets a student thinking, even though he cannot immediately find a satisfactory answer, affords educational training of considerable value. a few of the answers to the foregoing questions are as follows: . (_a_) not necessarily so. (_b_) such a cheque would under ordinary conditions be all right. cheques should be presented as soon after date as convenient. (_c_) cheques dated on sunday are very commonly paid. cheques or notes delivered on sunday are void. the delivery makes the contract, not the dating. (_d_) that the maker may have a few days in which to deposit sufficient money to meet them. (_e_) you are at liberty to print your own form of cheque or to write it out in full if you wish. (_g_) write the words "_seventy-five cents_" plainly along the money line. . yes. business geography the trade features of the great commercial nations i. the trade features of the british isles london as a food consumer london is the greatest seat of trade and commerce in the world. its commercial greatness is evidenced by its greatness of population. its inhabitants number over , , . the houses in which this vast population lives, would, if placed end to end, make a continuous street that would stretch across all europe and asia. the mere effort of providing food for this vast population necessitates an enormous commerce. half a million of beeves are required every year to supply its meat market; also , , sheep and , , fowls. to supply its fish market , , pounds of fish are required, and , , oysters. grain, flour, fruit, butter, eggs, cheese, sugar, tea, and coffee, are brought to london daily in such quantities that the prices of these commodities all the world over are based upon what they will fetch in london. whole nations and provinces and districts get their subsistence from industries that have for their end the supplying of some of this enormous food demand. denmark, for example, owes its entire prosperity of recent years to its profitable manufacture of butter for the london market. brittany and normandy, in france, are almost wholly occupied in supplying that market with poultry and eggs. the islands of jersey and guernsey derive their principal wealth, not, as might be supposed, from the sale of milk and butter, but from the supplying of london with potatoes. canada during the last six or eight years has built up with london an immense trade in cheese, a trade that exceeds in importance any other that canada has, while even our own home states--illinois, iowa, and wisconsin, for example--have found new sources of wealth in catering to the london dairy trade. "elgin" and "ames" creamery butters are products well known to the london consumer. london the commercial centre of the world what is the reason of london's wonderful prosperity? already its population is one fifth the entire population of england and wales, and it is increasing at the rate of about per cent. per decade. three hundred people are added to the number every day in the year, a rate of , inhabitants in the course of the year. it is now one half greater than the total population of all ireland. london's scotch population is almost as numerous as that of edinburgh, while its irish population is quite as numerous as that of dublin. every civilised country is represented among its people, and every civilised tongue is spoken among them. a sea of brick and mortar, even now fifteen miles long and ten miles broad, it is growing at the rate of a new house every hour of its existence. its streets are already , miles in length, and these are spreading out so rapidly that every year many whole villages and townships are enmeshed by them. every day , , people enter london by railway, and at least , people have occupations in it in the daytime who reside beyond its limits at night. fifty thousand people have occupations in it in the night-time who reside beyond its limits during the day. it is the largest importing centre in great britain, and the largest in the world, and its exports are exceeded only by liverpool, and not always by liverpool. it is also the centre of the world's financial business. for example, traders in the east indies who ship cargoes of spices and other eastern produce to america, draw in settlement on london rather than on new york, while traders in america who ship cargoes of cotton to marseilles or riga, draw in settlement on london rather than on paris or st. petersburg. what is it that thus makes london the chief seat of population in the world, the commercial metropolis of the world, the great financial clearing-house of the world? london the centre of the land surface of the globe [illustration: london the natural centre of the world's trade.] london stands as nearly as possible in the centre of the land surface of the globe. its situation, therefore, eminently adapts it to be the great centre of the world's trade--the great distributing centre of the world's products. its ships can go to the farthest parts of the earth, and, loading themselves with the natural products of these parts, can bring them to its docks without breaking bulk, deposit them there for assortment, and then take them away again to other parts of the earth, and do this more economically than the ships of almost any other port in the world. but a greater reason is to be found in the fact that for centuries the british people have pursued a definite policy of manufacture, trade, and commerce, and have had the good fortune to have had that policy interfered with in a less degree than any other nation in the world by commerce-destroying war, whether internal or external. and whenever britain has been in external wars her navy has been able to protect her commercial interests. london, being the capital of the kingdom and its chief seat of trade, has naturally derived the principal benefit from these many years of peaceful industry and commerce. then, again, london is favourably adapted to trade in respect to its own country. it is a seaport, sixty miles inland, and is connected by navigable canals with all the other chief manufacturing and commercial centres of the country. its railway facilities, too, are so complete that there is not a manufacturing town in the whole island that is not within fifteen hours of freightage from it. then, too, the peculiar configuration of the coast-line of great britain makes every point on the island within an hour or two of carriage from a seaport. finally, all british seaports are in trade connection with london by a coasting service unequalled in the world for cheapness, completeness, and efficiency. in a word, london stands not only in the centre of the land surface of the globe, but also at the commercial centre of its own home territory--that is to say, within easy reach both by water and by land of all the trading and producing interests of a people that for centuries have been leaders in commercial and manufacturing industry and enterprise. great britain's commercial policy but that which more than anything else has made london the great trade centre of the world has been the policy, now for many years adopted by the british people, of allowing the goods and products of all other nations to enter their ports untaxed. every port in britain is a free port of entry for all imported merchandise except spirits, tobacco, wine, tea, coffee, cocoa, and chicory; and ships of all nations are allowed to trade at british ports upon terms exactly the same as those laid down for british ships. the result is that britain has become the entrepôt or distributing mart for the produce of the world. ships of all nations are found at her wharves, and commodities from all parts of the world brought in those ships are found in her warehouses. her mercantile navy numbers , vessels, and of these are steamships. the tonnage of these vessels amounts to over , , tons, and of this nearly , , is engaged in the foreign trade alone. her mercantile sailors number over , men, and over , of these are engaged in the foreign trade. london is, of course, the chief gainer from this perfect unrestriction of trade. twenty-seven per cent. of the whole trade of the country is in its hands. its merchants do business in every seaport on the globe, and the trade of great britain with ports in europe, the levant, egypt, india, the east indies, china, japan, and australasia, is almost wholly controlled by them. its shipping embraces the finest trading fleets known to commerce. its docks and wharves extend on either side of the thames for twenty-four miles from london bridge down to gravesend, and are the largest and finest in the world. [illustration: british mercantile marine. compared with that of other countries.] london the clearing-house of the world a similar explanation is to be given of the fact that london is the great financial centre of the world. the same policy which has made britain a great trading country has also made her a great manufacturing country. the food products of all the world pour in upon her shores, and britain has become a cheap place to live in. her artisans are supplied with the best food that the world can produce, and this at prices that are practically what the british demand makes them to be. the british artisan is therefore both well fed and cheaply fed. as a consequence of this, british manufactures are produced more efficiently and more cheaply than those of most other nations, and they are therefore exported enormously to every quarter of the globe. london, from its accessibility with respect to the great manufacturing centres at home, and from its trade connections and facilities for trade abroad, is the great distributing centre of this enormous manufacture. london exporters have accounts for goods sold by them all the world over. there is, therefore, no quarter of the world where money is not constantly owing to london; or, if not to london, then to manchester, birmingham, sheffield, leeds, glasgow, or some other manufacturing centre in close financial touch with london. in this, then, lies the explanation of the financial supremacy of london. no matter in what quarter of the world money is owed by any place, the final destination of that money is london; for in almost all cases it will be found that the locality to which the money is owed, if it be not london, will itself be a debtor to london. london, therefore, from necessity, and as a matter of custom and convenience, has become the great clearing-house of the world. the final adjustments of the indebtedness of all the commercial centres of the world are made there. [illustration: london bridge.] great britain the creditor nation of the world one other reason for the financial supremacy of london lies in the enormous wealth of britain. for now almost half a century britain has been importing far more than she has been exporting, and the total volume of her import and export trade is more than quadruple what it was in . the consequence is that not only has britain been accumulating wealth, but she has been accumulating it enormously. her accumulated savings, therefore, have been at the world's disposal, and she has had so much money to invest that she has become the creditor nation of the world. the total investments of british capital in foreign countries (in loans, railways, manufacturing syndicates, etc.) is estimated to be the enormous sum of over $ , , , . london, of course, is the investing, controlling, and supervising counting-house for all this capital. and as so much british capital finds in london its place of investment, it naturally follows that nearly all the remaining unemployed capital of the world, that seeks investment, either is sent to london as a market, or else assumes a price for investment elsewhere which the current price of capital in london warrants it to assume. the london market rate of capital, therefore, determines its market rate in every other commercial centre of the world. great britain a beehive of mercantile and manufacturing industry britain like all other civilised countries, was originally an agricultural country. although for some centuries she has been one of the chief manufacturing and mercantile countries of the world, it has been only during the past one hundred years, and especially during the past fifty years, that her development in manufactures and in commerce has been remarkable. britain is still, in respect of quality, the foremost agricultural country on the globe. her breeds of horses, cattle, sheep, and swine are the standard breeds from which almost all other breeds derive their origin, and by which from time to time they are improved. and nowhere is the raising of grains and roots for food of man and beast pursued with more skill and success than in britain. but agriculture is fast ceasing to be an important industry of britain. two million acres less are under cultivation now than were cultivated fifty years ago. the total amount of wheat raised is sufficient only for three months' consumption of the people; the remaining quantity needed must be supplied by importation. three fifths of the total population of the island live in towns, and only a small proportion of the population that live in the country is actually supported by agriculture. agriculture, in fact, supports only fifteen per cent. of the population in all britain, and in england only ten per cent. three and a half times as many people are personally engaged in manufactures as in rural pursuits. for three quarters of a century the population in towns and cities has been growing four times faster than the population of the rural parts. at the same time the working power of the urban population has been constantly growing more effective. in fifty years, by the general adoption of machinery, the effective working power of the british workman has been increased sixfold. in england eighty-six per cent. of the total work of the country is done by steam, and in scotland ninety per cent. great britain, therefore, has become practically one great beehive of mercantile and manufacturing industry. agriculture as a general occupation of the people, except in the production of the finer food products, such as choice beef and mutton and high-grade dairy products, is no longer profitable. indeed, during the last fifteen years the plant (including land) employed in agricultural industries has been depreciating in value at the rate of $ , , yearly; that is, in these fifteen years the enormous sum of $ , , , of capital employed in agriculture has been obliterated. but the gain to capital employed in profitable mercantile and manufacturing pursuits has much more than compensated for this enormous loss in agriculture. great britain's coal-fields and iron deposits one reason for the great development which britain has made as a manufacturing and trading nation lies in the fact that britain was the first nation to utilise on a large scale the power of steam as a help to manufacture and trade. the steam-engine was a british invention. the first railways were built in britain. the first steamship to cross the atlantic was a british enterprise. a second reason lies in the fact that when britain began to use steam as a motive power she found her supplies of coal so near her iron mines, and so near her clays and earths needed for her potteries, that from the very first she was able to manufacture cheaply and undersell most of her competitors. her coal-fields have an area of over , square miles, and wherever her coal-beds are other natural products have been found near by, so that her manufacturing areas and her coal areas are almost identical. taking liverpool, manchester, birmingham, wolverhampton, sheffield, leeds, newcastle, durham, bristol, stoke, carlisle, cardiff, swansea, glasgow, paisley, and dundee as centres, around each of these lies a coal area of such richness as amply sustains it in its commercial and manufacturing pre-eminence. london is almost the only great commercial centre of britain that does not lie in the midst of or quite adjacent to a rich coal and other mineral region. but london is within easy distance, not only by rail, but also by canal and by coastwise sailing, of every coal-field and mineral deposit of britain. london, however, is an importing and exporting centre rather than a manufacturing centre. [illustration: the coal-fields of england.] london's special trade features the commercial supremacy attained by many of the large cities of britain is not wholly due to natural causes, or even to ordinary causes. much of it is due to extraordinary enterprise and forethought on the part of their citizens. london, for example, is the centre of the wool trade of britain. the woollen manufacturers of britain use about , tons of wool annually, and three fourths of this is imported. other cities that lie near the seats of the great woollen manufactures--liverpool, for example--have tried to secure a share of this vast importation of wool, but london, because of the special attention it gives to this trade, manages to keep almost the whole of the trade in its own hands. similarly, london almost wholly monopolises the trade of england with arabia, india, the east indies, china, and japan. it is therefore the great emporium for tea, coffee, sugar, spices, indigo, and raw silk. it also enjoys the bulk of britain's trade in fruits (oranges, lemons, currants, raisins, figs, dates, etc.) and in wines, olive oil, and madder, with the countries that lie about the mediterranean. by virtue partly of its situation, but largely because of the enterprise of its merchants, it absorbs nearly the whole of britain's french trade, and of england's trade with germany, belgium, holland, and denmark. this includes principally wines (from france), and butter, eggs, and vegetables. another great branch of its trade is that with the ports of the baltic, including those of russia, the imports comprising, besides wheat and wool, tallow, timber, hemp, and linseed. the tobacco imported from virginia into england goes almost wholly to london; so does almost the whole of the central american and south american trade in fine woods, dye-stuffs, drugs, sugar, hides, india-rubber, coffee, and diamonds. quite a large share of the trade of britain with canada is concentrated in london; also, more than one half of the trade of england with the west indies, the imports from the latter country comprising principally sugar, molasses, fruit, rum, coffee, cocoa, fine woods, and ginger. the special trade features of glasgow, liverpool, and manchester the great commercial centres of britain after london are glasgow ( , ), liverpool ( , ) and manchester ( , , including salford). all these cities have derived the greater portion of their size from the progress they have made during the present century. all, of course, owe their progress and their prosperity largely to their natural advantages of situation, etc. liverpool stands on the margin of the atlantic, "the mediterranean of the modern world," and thus enjoys the principal share of the trade with america, especially that with the united states. great britain's imports from the united states amount to over $ , , per annum, and her exports to the united states (exclusive of bullion, etc.) to over $ , , . (formerly the exports to the united states were twice this amount.) of this vast trade, amounting to one fifth of britain's total trade with the world, liverpool enjoys the lion's share. nearly all the cotton, not merely of the united states but of the world, that is used in europe is sent to liverpool for distribution. similarly, glasgow, situated with its aspect directed toward the same maritime routes, enjoys also an immense transatlantic trade both north and south. and manchester, situated in the very heart of the richest coal districts of the kingdom, and within easy reach of the great cotton port, liverpool, has built up a cotton-manufacturing industry surpassing that of all the rest of the world. the business enterprise of glasgow, liverpool, and manchester but the natural advantages of situation possessed by these great cities have been grandly supplemented by the enterprise of their inhabitants. glasgow is only a river port. for twenty miles below its site the clyde is naturally narrow, shallow, and shoal-encumbered. in places it is naturally not more than fifteen inches deep. by the expenditure of no less a sum than $ , , this shallow stream has been converted into a continuous harbour, lined on either side for miles with wharves and docks, and easily capable of accommodating the largest and finest merchant ships afloat. as a consequence of this enterprise glasgow has become the greatest ship-building port in the world. no less than twenty shipyards--in efficiency and magnitude of the very highest class--are to be found along the banks of the once shallow, impassable clyde, between glasgow proper and the river's mouth. similarly, the enterprise of the ship merchants of liverpool has converted a port, that high tides and impassable bars would naturally render unfit for modern ships, into the greatest shipping port in the world. one hundred million dollars were spent in making the improvement, but $ , , is the annual revenue derived therefrom in dock dues alone. and because of this enterprise liverpool can now boast of controlling one fourth of all the imports of the kingdom, and two fifths of all the exports, and of handling three fourths of all the grain and provision trade of the kingdom, and of having the largest grain warehouses in the world. [illustration: the manchester ship canal.] but manchester, a wholly inland city, forty miles distant from liverpool, its nearest port, has outdone even glasgow and liverpool in its endeavour to bring the sea to its own doors. it also has spent $ , , --not, however, in amounts spread over a number of years, and as occasion seemed to demand, but all at once, in one lump sum, in one huge enterprise. it has built a canal to the mersey where it is navigable, thirty-five and one half miles in length, and sufficiently deep and wide, so that the whole of its vast importation of cotton, and the whole of its vast manufacture of cotton and other textile fabrics, and as much else as may be desired, may be brought in from the sea or taken to the sea in merchant vessels of the very largest size now afloat. and it has done this in the face of engineering difficulties, and of obstacles raised against it by jealous competing interests that were almost insurmountable. great britain's specialisation of her industries in definite centres in no part of the world are manufacture and trade carried on with such strict regard to the conditions of economic production and the economic handling of goods as in the british isles. the free-trade policy of the empire permits everywhere within its borders not merely national but world-wide competition; and yet it is but truth to say that wherever great britain attempts to sell her goods abroad every nation and every community in the world rises against her. even her colonies are against her. her markets are open to every one's trade, and yet in almost every market in the world which she does not absolutely control barriers are raised against her trade. she is able to sell goods in foreign markets only because, despite these barriers, she is able to undersell all competitors in them, or to give better value for the same money than they. even when she obtains the control of new markets, as she has in india, china, egypt, west africa, etc., she allows every nation to trade in these markets on precisely the same terms as she herself trades in them. in the face of this world-wide competition, therefore, the industries of britain would cease to exist if every condition conducive to economy of production--climatic suitability, availability of cheap motive power, accessibility to cheap raw material, and accessibility to natural and cheap means of transportation--were not taken advantage of to the utmost. but this is just what britain does. she does take advantage to the utmost of conditions conducive to economy of production; and this is why, to a degree nowhere else attempted in the world, she has specialised her industries in definite favouring localities. the natural aptitudes of communities in great britain for special industries a result of this specialisation of industries in definite centres is that a natural aptitude for the industry specialised in a locality is developed among the inhabitants of the locality, and this, being stimulated by association, is transmitted from generation to generation with ever-increasing efficiency. again, this inherited aptitude of the community for the industry historically associated with it is a prime element in the economic prosecution of the industry. also, in turn, it acts as an important influence in continuing the industry in the locality where once it has been successfully specialised. in no country in the world, outside of asia, have great industries had such long-continued successful existence in definite localities as in britain. and therefore in no country in the world do the natural aptitudes of communities for special industries constitute such an important element of economic industrial production. a community of efficient "smiths," for example, has existed in and about birmingham since the fifteenth century. as a consequence of this the birmingham country has for several centuries been the greatest seat of the metal or hardware industries in the world. again, the manufacture of woollen cloths has been an industry successfully specialised in west yorkshire from the fourteenth century. it results that nowhere in the world is the woollen manufacture carried on more prosperously than in west yorkshire to-day. the potteries of staffordshire have been in existence time out of mind, and in the eighteenth century they took a pre-eminent place among the industries of the world. they hold that place of pre-eminence now, even though since then the methods of manufacture have been several times revolutionised. the cotton manufactures of great britain but the influence which more than anything else has determined the specialisation of industries in certain places in britain rather than in others has been the presence of coal-fields. in only a very few instances have great industries been maintained in districts that are not coal-producing. the busiest industrial centre in all britain is, perhaps, south lancashire, the great seat of the cotton manufacture. south lancashire is one great coal-field. liverpool, the great cotton port of the world, is at one edge of this field. manchester, the cotton metropolis of the world, is at the other edge. between and near these two chief towns is a whole nest of large towns and cities--preston, burnley, blackburn, rochdale, bolton, bury, ashton, stockport, oldham, etc.--every one of which is wholly devoted to the cotton interest. from their position all these towns obtain both their motive power and their raw material at the lowest possible cost. but, in addition to its advantages of cheap coal and cheap raw material, south lancashire has one other great advantage in favour of its special industry--its climate is eminently suited to the industry. its atmosphere is moist, and not too moist, and its temperature is not too cold. cotton thread can be spun and woven in lancashire which elsewhere would break. in scarcely any other place in england has cotton-weaving or cotton-spinning ever proved a success. the cotton industry of scotland is not so localised as it is in england, but paisley ( , ) is famous all the world over for its identification with the manufacture of cotton thread. ireland has no important cotton manufactures except in belfast. one third of the cotton manufactured in the world is manufactured in the united kingdom. the total product is about , miles of cloth daily. the number of separate mills is over . the annual product is $ , , , which is one hundred times what it was one hundred years ago. the quantity of raw cotton imported annually to sustain this immense production is , , pounds. [illustration: the great manufacturing districts of england.] the woollen manufactures of great britain a second great industry of great britain is its woollen manufacture. this industry is specialised in england, principally in west yorkshire, a district which is as well supplied with coal as is south lancashire. leeds ( , ) and bradford ( , ) are the two principal seats of the industry, but huddersfield and halifax are also important "cloth towns," and many other communities are identified with the manufacture of woollens. the noted "west of england" cloths are made principally in gloucestershire, where their manufacture in the town of stroud is a survival of an ancient industry once general throughout the whole county. in scotland there are two centres of the woollen industry. the first and most important is in southeast scotland, where, in the valley of the tweed (in galashiels, hawick, jedburgh, etc.), the celebrated "scotch tweeds" are manufactured. the second is in the valley of the teith (stirling, bannockburn, etc.). at one time the sheep that were pastured on the wolds of yorkshire were the chief supply of the raw material for this industry in the whole of britain, but that time is now long past. the total annual import of wool into the united kingdom is about , pounds, of which about one half is retained for home manufacture. two thirds of this import comes from australia. the number of wool and worsted factories in the kingdom aggregates over . the value of the woollen goods produced annually is about $ , , , which is about one fourth of the total product of the world. the linen manufactures of great britain the third great textile manufacture of the united kingdom is that of linens. this is the one manufacture in which ireland surpasses her sister kingdoms, england and scotland. the cultivation of flax and the spinning of linen yarn have been domestic industries throughout all ireland from time immemorial. but at the present time the linen-manufacturing industry of ireland is almost wholly concentrated in belfast. in scotland, which now almost rivals ireland in the extent and perfection of her linen manufactures, the industry is principally located in fifeshire and forfarshire, especially in the towns of dundee and dunfermline, the latter town being greatly famed for its napery and table linens. linen, like cotton, requires a peculiar atmospheric condition of temperature and moisture for its manufacture, and only in few localities has the linen industry been successfully established. the total value of the annual linen manufacture of the united kingdom is $ , , . other textile manufactures of great britain the annual value of the total manufacture of textile fabrics in the british isles is about $ , , , --not far short, indeed, of one fourth of the total manufacture of textile fabrics in all the world. great britain has over $ , , , invested in her textile industry, and one half of her total exports consists of textile manufactures. cotton, woollen, and linen cloths are the chief staples of this industry, but there are many other branches of it and many other localities in which it is specialised besides the ones already mentioned. leicester ( , ), which, like so many other manufacturing cities of england, lies at the centre of a coal-field, is the chief seat of the woollen hosiery manufacture. dumfries is the chief seat of the woollen hosiery manufacture in scotland. kidderminster, in worcestershire, is the chief seat of the "brussels" carpet industry; wilton, in wiltshire, of the wilton carpet industry. kilmarnock, in ayrshire, is the chief seat of the carpet manufacture in scotland. nottingham ( , ) is the metropolis of the cotton hosiery and lace manufacture of england. norwich ( , ), in eastern england, has a noted manufacture of muslins and fine dress-goods. the norwich textile manufacture is an instance of the continuance of an industry in a community historically associated with it, although its seat is far removed from a coal-field. the silk manufacture of great britain is almost entirely confined to the county of derby and adjacent districts in england. macclesfield, in cheshire, is the chief centre. coventry is noted for its silk ribbons and gauzes. but the manufacture of silk in britain is not prospering like that of her other textile fabrics. in fact, in forty years it has depreciated three fourths. british silk manufacturers are not as adept in weighting their products with dyes as their french competitors are, and in consequence english silks, though intrinsically better than french silks, look inferior and therefore cannot be sold at profitable prices. but, on the other hand, the jute manufacture of great britain is increasing by leaps and bounds. established only sixty years ago, the value of its annual output is now twice that of the whole manufacture of silk, and in twenty-five years has tripled. the chief seat of this industry is dundee ( , ), in scotland. the hardware manufactures of great britain the textile manufactures of great britain are in the aggregate first in importance, but the hardware manufactures come a close second. the total amount of great britain's hardware products is about $ , , , or one fourth of the total product of the world, and of this about one third is exported. even more than her textile fabrics, the hardware manufactures of great britain are associated with her coal-fields. the most distinctive "hardware centre" is that one which is identified with the great coal-field in the middle of england known as the "black country." birmingham ( , ), the chief place in this centre, is unrivalled in the world for the multifariousness and extent of its metal manufactures. it is literally true that everything from a "needle to an anchor" is made within its limits. but though its industries comprise principally those of iron and steel, its manufactures in gold, silver, copper, zinc, lead, and aluminium are also very important. birmingham, too, is unrivalled in the world in the application of art to metal work. its manufacture of jewellery, and gold and silver ornaments, is enormous. its manufacture of small wares is also enormous. for example, it turns out , , pens weekly. its manufacture of buttons runs into the hundreds of thousands of millions. wolverhampton ( , ), also in the black country, is noted for its manufacture of heavy hardware and machinery. so also in oldham, in the lancashire district. so also in leeds, in the west yorkshire district. sheffield ( , ), also in yorkshire, is historically identified with its celebrated cutlery manufacture, an industry that first began there because of the quality and abundance of the grindstones found near by. with the coal-beds of durham and cumberland are identified the great ship-building and locomotive-building industries of newcastle ( , ), sunderland ( , ), and darlington, on the northeast side of england, and the great steel manufactures (the largest in the kingdom) and ship-building industries of barrow-on-furness, on the northwest side. with the coal-fields of south wales (noted for its smokeless coal) are identified the smelting industries of swansea ( , ). ores of copper especially, but also of silver, zinc, and lead, are brought from all over the world to swansea to be smelted. these south wales coal-fields also account for the fact that in respect to amount of tonnage cardiff ( , ) is one of the chief ports for exports in the world, ranking in this respect next after new york. the exports of coal from cardiff are now , , tons annually. ii. the trade features of france france a richly favoured country france by nature is one of the most highly favoured countries in the world. its climate is genial. its temperature is so varied that almost every vegetable, grain or fruit needed for the sustenance of man may be raised within its borders. its soil, though not surprisingly fertile, yet yields abundantly such products as are suited to it. its mineral resources, especially in coal, iron, lead, marble, and salt, are very considerable. its area is compact. its facilities for foreign commerce are unsurpassed. it lies between the two bodies of water--the atlantic and the mediterranean--of greatest commercial importance in the world. and its people, especially those in rural parts, are exceptionally frugal and industrious. but france as a nation has not made the progress in the world that its natural advantages call for. it has been cursed with expensive and unstable governments and sanguinary wars. its upper classes, the natural leaders of its peoples, are excessively fond of pleasure and military glory, and the energies of the nation have been much misdirected. as a consequence, despite its natural advantages, france is losing ground among the nations of the world. its national debt amounts to nearly $ , , , , the largest national debt known in history, being per head of population seventeen and one half times as great as that of germany, six times as great as that of the united states, and much more than one and one half times as great as that of great britain. but, what is of more serious consequence, the vitality of its people seems debilitated. for years the annual number of births in france has been steadily decreasing, while the annual number of deaths has been more or less increasing. over a great part of the country the number of deaths annually exceeds the number of births. in numerous years this is so for the whole country. the birth rate is the lowest in europe. the death rate, while not the highest, is yet higher than in many other countries. as a consequence of all this the population of france is almost stationary. during the last seventy years it has increased only per cent., while that of great britain has increased per cent., germany per cent., russia per cent., and europe as a whole per cent. and even this increase, small as it is, is largely due to immigration from other countries. nor is the emigration of frenchmen to their colonies or to other countries to be set down as a sufficient explanation. the french are averse to emigration. at the present time the number of frenchmen residing abroad is only a little more than half a million, while of foreigners residing in france the number is not far short of a million and a quarter. [illustration: france, compared in size with the states of illinois and texas.] the french a thrifty, frugal people when france is compared with other countries in respect of commercial development and progress, the results will in almost every particular turn out unfavourable to france. for example, since the close of the napoleonic wars eighty-three years ago the national trade of great britain has quadrupled, while that of france has only trebled. at the close of the franco-german war france was eighteen per cent. ahead of germany in the carrying power of her shipping. now germany is seventy per cent. ahead of france in that respect. but it must be remembered that the franco-german war cost france in army expenses and in indemnity no less a sum than $ , , , . the effect of that tremendous expenditure upon the prosperity of the nation can be estimated by one comparison. since that war the annual average savings per inhabitant in france have been $ . for the same period the annual average savings per inhabitant in great britain have been $ . . had that war not occurred the average annual savings per inhabitant in france would have been $ . . in short, no people in europe are comparable with the working classes of the french people in frugality and thrift, and because of this characteristic, if france were well governed, its prosperity would be equal to that of any country in the world, and this would be so in spite of the fact that france's interest bill imposes a tax of $ . a year on every inhabitant of the country. [illustration: street scene in paris, showing the bourse.] the importance of agriculture in france france has one element of stability, one characteristic inducive of thriftiness, that most other countries of europe lack. in most other european countries the land is held by few proprietors. in france it is held by many. in great britain and ireland, for example, the land that is devoted to agriculture is held by only , proprietors. in france it is held by , , proprietors. there are also , , district farms in france, though only sixty per cent. of the farm land of the country is cultivated by the owners. it follows from this that agriculture has in france a hold upon the affections and self-interest of the people that it has in no other country in the world. about forty-two per cent. of the total population of the country able to work are employed in agricultural pursuits. agriculture, therefore, is one of the most important industries of france. one fifth of the total earnings of her people are made in agriculture. it cannot be said, however, that agriculture in france is pursued as successfully as it is in some other countries--in great britain, for example. france, with sometimes the exception of russia, is the largest wheat-grower of all the nations of europe, but its production of grain per acre is not more than four sevenths that of great britain, while its production of grain per farming hand is only two thirds that of great britain. but so much of the agricultural effort of france is devoted to such industries as can be carried on in small farms or holdings--potato-raising, for example, and fruit-raising and poultry-raising--that the total money product per acre in france is not far short of what it is in great britain. that is to say, while agriculture is more profitably carried on in great britain than in france, it proportionately supports a larger number of people in france than in great britain. france's waterways and railways france, like germany, is well supplied with navigable rivers, and these, with its canals, constitute a complete network of navigable waterways that cover all the country and greatly promote the internal commerce of the nation. these navigable rivers aggregate miles, and the navigable canals over miles. the tonnage of goods carried on these waterways compares quite favourably with that carried by the railways. the railways aggregate , miles. the distinctive and important manufactures of france the most distinctive manufacture of france, the one in which she surpasses all other countries of the world, is the silk manufacture. france's total production of silk is not far short of one third of the total production of the world. lyons ( , ), on the rhone, is the chief seat of the industry, having had this pre-eminence ever since the jacquard loom was invented there at the beginning of this century. its production is not far short of three fourths of the total production of the country. the most important manufacture of france, however, is her manufacture of woollens. in this manufacture she comes next after great britain, her total production being a little ahead of that of both germany and the united states. her woollen mills number over . her consumption of wool for this industry is about three fourths that of great britain, but the value of her production is only two thirds that of britain. lille ( , ) and rheims ( , ) are the chief seats of the woollen industry. of about equal value with the woollen manufacture of france is its hardware manufacture, but the importance of france's hardware manufacture is national rather than international. of next importance is the manufacture of cottons and linens. the chief seats of these industries are, for cottons, rouen ( , ), the "manchester of france," and for linens, lille. near lille is cambrai, the chief place of manufacture for that finer class of linens known as cambrics. a second distinctive manufacture of france is that of glass and porcelain. in this manufacture france quite equals great britain in respect of value, and surpasses her in respect of the artistic character of the wares. limoges ( , ) and st. cloud (near paris) are the chief seats of the french porcelain manufacture. it is at st. cloud that the celebrated "sèvres" porcelain is made. paris and the great seaports of france paris ( , , ) is, of course, the chief trade centre of all france, but the trade interests of paris are general rather than special. the manufactures that are most localised in paris are those of articles of luxury, such as jewellery, perfumery, gloves, fancy wares, novelties, and fashionable boots and shoes. paris is also a great financial centre. marseilles ( , ), one of the oldest cities in europe, is the great seaport of france. its trade amounts to over $ , , annually, and it ranks next after hamburg among the great seaports of central europe. its specialty is its great trade with the mediterranean and the east. the opening of the suez canal has been of incalculable advantage to marseilles. next as shipping port comes havre ( , ), at the mouth of the seine, with a total trade not far short of that of marseilles. havre is in reality the port or "haven" of paris. it is the great depot for french imports from north and south america. these comprise principally cotton, tobacco, wheat, animal produce, and wool. its import of south american wool is enormous, for three fourths of the wool used in france now comes from the region of the la plata. recently the seine has been deepened and now both rouen and paris may be considered seaports. by this means paris has direct water communication with london, and is, indeed, the third seaport in the country. next comes bordeaux ( , ), the chief place of export for french wines and brandies. about twenty years ago the wine industry of france suffered tremendous loss from the ravages of the insect phylloxera. over , , acres of vineyard, representing a value of $ , , , , were wholly or partially ruined by this terrible pest. the plague, however, has now been stamped out, but nearly , , acres of vineyards have been permanently destroyed and have been devoted to potatoes and the sugar-beet root. the result is that the production of wine in france is now less than what is needed for home consumption, and over fifty per cent. more wine is imported than is exported. the remaining great shipping ports are dunkerque ( , ) and boulogne ( , ). calais ( , ) has a great passenger trade with england. iii. the trade features of germany germany the most prosperous nation in continental europe the greatest and most prosperous commercial nation in the old world after great britain is germany. its population is , , , as against france's , , ; and while france's population is scarcely increasing at all, germany's population is increasing the most rapidly of any in europe. since the franco-prussian war france has gained in population only a little over , , , while germany in the same time has gained , , . in the middle of the present century the populations of germany and france were equal, being each about , , . since that date germany's population has increased by about fifty per cent. and france's by only about ten per cent. similarly, the commerce of germany not only greatly exceeds that of france, but is growing much faster than that of france. the total exports and imports of germany, exclusive of bullion, now foot up to nearly $ , , , a year. the total exports and imports of france, exclusive of bullion, foot up to only $ , , , a year. the total commerce of germany is therefore about one third more than that of france. at the close of the franco-prussian war the total commerce of france considerably exceeded that of germany. the character of germany's industries changing germany, like england, is rapidly changing the character of her industries and becoming a manufacturing and commercial nation instead of an agricultural nation. this is the cause of her well-known anxiety to secure control of territories in africa, asia, etc., as exclusive markets for her manufactures, for, unlike england, germany is at present a believer in exclusion in trade, both at home and in her colonies. fifty years ago about four sevenths of the people of germany were engaged in agriculture; now only about one third of the people are so employed. the growth of the great cities of germany is eight times faster than that of the rural districts, and in fifty years the aggregate population of the six largest cities of the empire--berlin, hamburg, leipzig, munich, breslau, and dresden--has grown sixfold, namely, from , to , , . in fifty years, too, the manufactures of germany have nearly doubled, the commerce nearly trebled, the shipping increased more than fivefold, and the mining output more than sixfold. while all this is true, it nevertheless is also true that the area of cultivated soil in germany is double what it was fifty years ago. but this is because much land, formerly waste or in pasture, has been brought under cultivation. yet even now only one half of the land of germany is cultivated, and thirty-three per cent. of the total food consumption of the people has to be imported. fifty years ago only five per cent. of the total food consumption was imported, and this small fraction consisted almost wholly of luxuries. germany's success in technical education [illustration: approximate size of the german empire. note.--the population of that part of the united states included within the circle is about , , . the population of the german empire is about , , .] germany's prosperity and progress cannot wholly be measured by statistics. no one can predict what it will be, for it is partly based upon elements that unfortunately other countries have not taken much account of. germany pays greater attention to the practical education of her people than any other nation in the world. her system of technical education extends over the whole empire, and provides technical instruction for every class of the people and for every occupation of the people--night schools for those already engaged in life's work, agricultural schools, forestry schools, commercial schools, mining schools, naval schools, and schools in every branch of manufacturing industry, besides, of course, schools for the education of those intending to follow the learned professions. as a consequence of this very general provision of technical education, there is engaged in german manufacturing pursuits a class of workmen not found in the workshops of any other country--men of industrial skill and experience, and at the same time of the highest scientific technical attainments in the branches of science that bear particularly upon their work. these men work at salaries that in other countries would be considered absurdly low. in almost all other countries the possession of a sound scientific education is a passport to social distinction, and every profession is open to him who is deserving to enter it. in germany, however, the learned professions, and especially the official positions of the army and navy, are almost the exclusive preserves of those who are born to social rank. the educated commoner, therefore, has to betake himself to manufacture, trade, or commerce. it follows that scientific skill and intelligence are more generally diffused in german commercial industries than in those of all other nations. so far, however, the german artisan has not been the equal in special technical skill of his more rigidly specialised english competitor, and as a consequence of this more than one sixth of germany's total imports consist of goods brought from england--principally the finer sort of textile fabrics and articles of iron and steel. this inferiority in specialisation in the german workmen cannot continue long, and the successful rivalry of germany with the manufacturing pre-eminence of great britain may soon be a startling fact. germany's mines and hardware manufactures it is in the development of her mines and of manufactures in which minerals are employed that germany has made most noticeable progress. she produces four times as much coal as france, and she has over separate iron-mines. her production of iron has increased tenfold in fifty years. she employs over , men in her mines, and by the use of labour-saving machinery one man can now produce as much as three men could produce fifty years ago. her hardware manufactures are one sixth of her total manufactures, and in the past half century they have increased sixfold. they are now double those of france, and are only one fourth less than those of great britain. she has factories devoted to the making of machinery alone. two of these--krupp's at essen, and borsig's at berlin--are among the largest in the world. krupp's employs , men, has steam-engines, and covers an area of acres. borsig's employs , men, and in fifty years, starting from nothing, has turned out nearly locomotives. one of krupp's hammers (a fifty-ton hammer) cost $ , . germany's internal trade germany's commercial energies up to the present have been mainly concentrated on her internal trade. the total amount of this trade foots up to $ , , , , against france's $ , , , , and in fifty years it has trebled, while that of france has scarcely doubled. germany has more miles of railway than any other country in the world except the united states, her mileage being nearly , , against france's , and great britain's , . her natural and artificial waterways are also the best in europe, and her vast production of mineral wealth is transported from mine to foundry and factory, and her vast production of lumber and grain is transported from forest and field to seaport, largely by means of water carriage. the rhine, the elbe, the oder, and the vistula are all navigable throughout their whole courses through german territory, while the weser and the danube are also navigable throughout great parts of their courses. all these navigable rivers are interconnected by canals. the total length of possible river navigation is nearly miles, while the total length of canals and canalised rivers is miles. besides, in there was completed the kaiser wilhelm canal, a lockless sea-going vessel canal, twenty-nine feet six inches deep and sixty-one miles long, connecting the north sea and the baltic, and constructed at a cost of nearly $ , , . this canal effects a saving of almost one whole day for commercial steamers, and of three days for all sailing-vessels, engaged in the baltic and north sea trade. germany's foreign trade but while it is true that germany's internal trade is her most important trade, it is also true that her foreign trade has during the last half century made more progress than that of any other european country, and during the last three or four decades more progress than even that of the united states. since it has increased six and two third times, while that of great britain has increased six times, and france only four and one fifth times. it is now second in the world, being more than half of that of great britain, ahead of that of the united states,[ ] and very considerably ahead of that of france, while in it was much less than half of that of great britain, less than that of the united states, and considerably less than that of france. germany, however, is not well favoured with respect to seaports, for in its transmarine trade it is largely dependent on foreign seaports--namely, ports in belgium, holland, france, italy, and austria. rotterdam in holland and antwerp in belgium are much more favourably situated with respect to the commerce of its chief mining and manufacturing regions than any of its own ports. there are only two german seaports with water of depth sufficient to accommodate the deep-drawing vessels in which foreign commerce is now mainly carried on--namely, cuxhaven, the outport of hamburg, sixty-five miles from hamburg, and bremerhaven, the outport of bremen, thirty-five miles from bremen, though recent improvements in the navigation of the elbe allow vessels of even twenty-six feet draught to ascend the elbe wholly to hamburg. but hamburg ( , ), for the reason that for centuries it was a free port of entry, has built up a very large foreign trade, being the fifth in the world in this respect, london, new york, liverpool, and rotterdam, alone being ahead of it. hamburg's foreign trade is almost one half greater than the whole foreign trade of all other german ports put together, while the foreign trade of bremen is about one fourth that of hamburg. bremen, like hamburg, was for centuries a free port of entry, but in both hamburg and bremen gave up in great part their free port privileges and entered the general customs union of the empire. both cities were extremely loath to give up their ancient unique commercial privileges, for they feared an immense loss of trade in doing so, but it was hoped that what they lost in foreign commerce would be made up to them in increased commerce with other parts of the empire. one reason for the great development of germany's foreign trade in late years is found in the facilities that it possesses for rapid transit to and from italy by means of tunnels through the alps. [illustration: north central germany, showing the ship canal and the leading commercial arteries.] footnote: [ ] during the last two or three years the foreign trade of the united states has greatly expanded and has exceeded that of germany, and is making a close push upon that of great britain. the above statement was intended to represent the situation as existing during a period of some years. the special trade centres of germany berlin ( , , ), the capital of the empire, is a chief seat of machinery manufacture. for many years frankfort-on-the-main enjoyed the pre-eminence of being next to london the greatest money market in the world; but since the establishment of the german empire frankfort's financial business has been absorbed by berlin. leipzig ( , ) has the distinction of being the seat of a book-publishing trade that turns out over , , volumes in a year, amounting in value to $ , , . leipzig has also the honour of being the greatest fur market in the world. dantzig ( , ) is germany's chief port on the baltic, and the chief seat of its great export trade in timber, grain, flax, hemp, and potatoes. its harbour, however, is closed in winter because of ice. dresden ( , ) is noted for its porcelain manufacture, but the porcelain is not manufactured chiefly in dresden, but in meissen, fifteen miles from dresden. munich ( , ) manufactures largely the national beverage, beer. finally, nuremberg ( , ), in southern germany, is remarkable for its continuance into modern days of manufactures for centuries carried on domestically. of these the most noted are watches, clocks, pencils, and toys. iv. trade features of spain and italy italy, turkey, and spain, the three decadent nations of europe the mediterranean from the very earliest epochs of civilisation has been a chief highway of trade, and along its shores every sort of commercial activity has been prosecuted. for centuries and centuries the nations upon the borders, especially those upon its northern borders, were the leading nations of the world, and their empire, indeed, comprised the empire of the world. but during the last two or three centuries, and especially during the nineteenth century, commercial pre-eminence and pre-eminence in empire have departed from the mediterranean. italy, the ruler of the whole ancient world, and even in modern times a ruler of almost equal potency; turkey, during the middle ages a chief power both in europe and in asia; spain, for two centuries at the beginning of our modern epoch a chief power in europe and the mistress of almost the whole western world as well,--these countries have all sunk to positions of comparative insignificance, and italy alone shows signs of effectual regeneration. and yet on the whole earth's surface there are no lands more richly endowed by nature as abodes for man than italy, turkey, and spain. spain: its trade and its special trade centres spain, because of the varied climate of her several parts, is capable of producing almost all the edible fruits and grains known to both temperate and tropical regions. though there are some desert areas, a great portion of the soil is abundantly productive, and were agriculture pursued with the same skill as it is in other countries--in england and scotland, for example--spain would be one of the richest agricultural regions on the globe. but not only is agriculture very inefficiently pursued, but the country is also sparsely inhabited (only to the square mile, as compared with to the square mile in italy) and only one fourth of it is cultivated. as a consequence only those products are raised in spain in which, because of her advantages of climate, etc., she has least competition. the principal commercial agricultural product is wine, the vine being cultivated in every province in the kingdom. six hundred million gallons of wine are raised annually, which is more in value than the total quantity of grain raised. only one fifth of this, however, is exported (principally to france), and even of this the greater portion is wine of inferior grade, used for mixing. the remaining agricultural products of spain exported are chiefly oranges, lemons, grapes, raisins, nuts, olives, and onions. of these over $ , , worth go to england annually. england and france, indeed, enjoy the great bulk of spain's foreign trade, but of late years germany and the united states are taking a small share of it. the mineral wealth of spain is enormous, and as the mines are often controlled by foreign capital they are worked with energy. the iron ore of the basque provinces of the north and the copper ore of the district about cadiz have been renowned for ages. thirty-five million dollars' worth of copper, iron, lead, silver, and quicksilver are exported to great britain annually. there are manufactures of cottons, woollens, linens, and silks, but none of these can be said to be very prosperous, although during the last twenty-five years, owing to a high protective tariff, the quantity of raw material used in textile manufacture in spain has doubled. spain produces excellent wool, but her woollen manufacture is unable to use it all and one fourth is exported. similarly, although spain is especially rich in iron-fields, she gets about one third of the hardware she needs for her own consumption from england. the total area of spain's coal-fields is estimated at miles, but hitherto little coal has been mined, partly because it is somewhat inaccessible. four million dollars' worth of coal is annually imported from england. whole mountains of rock salt exist, but little is mined and none is exported, although bay salt obtained in the south is exported to the fishermen of cornwall. another important export is esparto grass, which is sent to england to be used in paper-making. and still another is cork, although portugal, which adjoins spain, is the chief seat of the cork-producing industry. madrid ( , ) is the capital and largest city. barcelona ( , ) is the chief seaport of spain and the chief manufacturing centre. valencia ( , ), in the southeast, and seville ( , ) and malaga ( , ), in the south, are the principal seats of the fruit export trade of the country. cadiz ( , ), spain's principal naval seaport, has a famous export trade in sherry wines. the total population of spain is , , . [illustration: spain compared in size with california.] italy's lamentable condition italy's condition is in some respects better than that of spain, but in others worse. its population is , , , being three times more to the square mile than that of spain, and fifty per cent. more to the square mile than that of france. since the population has increased forty-five per cent., and this notwithstanding the fact that the loss by emigration is equal to one half of the natural increase from the surplus of births over deaths. two million people of italian birth are to-day residing in foreign countries. again, the italians, except those in the southern parts (the italians of naples and vicinity, for example), are the most industrious people in europe, with a special aptitude for gardening and tillage. in fifty years they have reclaimed , , acres from forest, and increased the area of land under cultivation by one hundred per cent. in fifty years, too, they have trebled the amount of capital invested in agriculture. since they have increased the amount of material which they use in their textile manufactures (cotton, wool, silk, and linen) nearly fivefold. since they have increased their external commerce two and one half times. finally, since , they have increased their internal trade two and one quarter times. but all these signs of prosperity in italy are negatived by the constantly increasing magnitude of her national debt. this now amounts to more than $ , , , , or more than two and one half times the total net national debt of the united states, and about one fourth more than the total national, state, county, municipal, and school-district debts of the united states. and this vast debt for a people of , , is exclusive of the provincial and communal debts, which amount to $ , , additional. italy since her reorganisation as a kingdom in has set out to be a first-class military and naval power, and the cost is more than she can stand. she has a permanent army of nearly , men, , of whom she keeps under arms constantly. she has a fleet of seventeen battleships, two coast-defence ships, eighteen cruisers, and torpedo craft, most of these being of modern type and first-class rating. she spends on her army nearly $ , , annually, and on her navy nearly $ , , annually. this, with an annual interest payment of $ , , , all unproductive expenditure, makes a demand upon her revenue that is draining her people of their life's blood. every sort of taxation is resorted to--direct and indirect; land, house, and income; succession duties, registration charges, and stamps for commercial papers; customs, excise and octroi; besides government monopolies; and all this exclusive of communal taxation. and yet since there has been an annual deficit of national revenue under national expenditure averaging $ , , . as a consequence of these taxes, and of the repressive effect they have upon industrial enterprise, the net earnings of the country per inhabitant are lower in italy than in any other european state except turkey, russia, and greece--lower, even, than in the danubian states and portugal and spain. italy's trade and special trade centres the most distinctive natural product of italy is silk, and the amount of raw and thrown silk exported is about $ , , annually. silk culture is carried on all over the kingdom, though the industry flourishes most extensively in piedmont and lombardy, in the north. over , people are engaged in rearing silkworms, and the annual cocoon harvest approximates , , pounds. silk-"throwing," or-spinning, is the principal manufacturing industry, and the amount of silk spun and exported is about , tons, most of which goes to france. after silk the products of the country that constitute the principal exports are olive oil, fruit (oranges, lemons, grapes, almonds, figs, dates, and pistachio nuts), and wine (in casks). the olive-oil export and the fruit export are each about a fifth of the export of silk, and the wine export about a sixth. other important and characteristic exports are raw hemp and flax, sulphur, eggs, manufactured coral, woods and roots used for dyeing and tanning, rice, marble, and straw-plaiting. the principal import is wheat, for agriculture, though generally pursued, is still in a backward state of efficiency, and the average grain crop is only one third what it is in great britain. one eighth the total amount of wheat needed to support the people has to be imported. in fact, the total amount of food-stuffs raised in the kingdom is much less than the amount required, being, for example, per inhabitant, not more than one half of what is raised in france. in particular, there is a deficiency of meat, and the amount of meat raised per inhabitant is the lowest in europe. as a consequence the italians are poorly fed, and it is estimated that four per cent. of the annual death loss is occasioned by impoverishment of blood due to insufficiency of wholesome food. after wheat and raw cotton, the next principal import is coal, for italy has no workable coal-fields. as far as possible water power is used as a motive power instead of coal, especially in the iron industries. an important import also is fish, for, owing to the great number of fast days which the italian people observe, and to the dearness and scarcity of meat, fish is a very general article of consumption. six million dollars' worth is imported annually, and perhaps an equal amount is obtained from local fisheries, for there are over , vessels and boats and over , men engaged in this industry. after silk-throwing, the most characteristic italian manufacturing industries are those which are of an artistic or semi-artistic nature, such as the making of fine earthenware, porcelain, glassware, mosaics, and lace. venice ( , ) and genoa ( , ) are still the principal seaports and trade centres of italy, but in commercial importance these famous cities are only the mere shadows of what they once were. naples ( , ), the largest city, is a place of little enterprise, for its imports, principally cereals, are three or four times the value of its exports, which are mainly cheap country produce. milan ( , ) and turin ( , ) are the great trade centres of the north interior, and the most prosperous places in the kingdom, being the chief seats of the silk-throwing industry. milan is also the chief seat of the italian cutlery manufacture. palermo ( , ) and messina ( , ), in sicily, are the chief ports for the export of italian fruits, and also of italian fish (anchovies, tunnies, etc.). rome ( , ) and florence ( , ) owe their chief importance to their art interest and to their historic associations, but florence has an important manufacture of fine earthenware and mosaics. rome is the chief seat of government. catania ( , ), in sicily, is the chief seat of the italian sulphur export trade. leghorn ( , ), the port of florence, is the chief seat of the export straw-plaiting trade. it should be noted that notwithstanding italy's extent of coast-line a large part of her foreign commerce is transacted northward by means of the railways that tunnel the alps. [illustration: italy and its chief commercial centres.] v. the trade features of russia russia, a country whose future is a problem the position of russia in the world is a sort of problem. its area is immense. more than one seventh of the land surface of the globe is included within its compact borders. of this vast territory the area of european russia alone is only a fourth; but even so it is larger than the area of all other european states put together. the population of russia is over , , , of which over , , belong to european russia. but taking even european russia this is a population of only fifty-four to the square mile, the lowest proportion in europe, except in sweden and norway. and the population is increasing. the birth rate is the highest in the world. and though the death rate is very heavy, being fifty per cent. more than it is in england, the increase from births is so great that the population doubles in forty-six years. there is thus apparently a prospect that russia will, in the near future, play an important part in the drama of nations, her capacities and capabilities for growth seem so prodigious. and yet there is a reverse side to the picture. of the , , inhabitants of european russia , , belong to a cultured, progressive class, quite the equal of any people in europe. but the remainder are principally a low grade of peasantry, not long removed from slavery. the principal occupation of these peasantry is farming. but their farms are small, not more than ten acres apiece, and the total revenue they get from them does not average more than $ a year per farm. the food of these peasantry is the poorest in europe. in the main it consists of rye bread and mushroom soup, worth about four cents a day. the houses are often mere huts, not more than five feet square. women as well as men work in the fields, and yet the total amount of food raised is not more per head of population than one tenth of what is raised by the peasantry of france. the value of food raised per acre, too, is but little more than one third of the average per acre for all europe. [illustration: russia, the british empire, the united states compared.] russia a country of social extremes the degradation of the peasantry of russia is not simply material. it is also moral. in the language of a recent traveller, "they are the drunkenest people in europe." the principal intoxicant is a sort of whisky called "vodka." with drunkenness exist also dirtiness, idleness, dishonesty, and untruthfulness. and as yet little has been done to ameliorate this degradation. ignorance prevails everywhere. even of the young people of the peasant class more than eighty per cent. can neither read nor write. there is no middle class. the gulf between the upper class and the lower is so wide as to be absolutely impassable. and for the most part the upper class is quite content to have this state of affairs continue. the "artels" of the russian peasants there is, however, some hope for the lower classes of russia. this is because of the prevalence among them, especially in villages, towns, and cities, of a communal custom in which self-restraint and self-government are necessary conditions of existence. in every branch of common industry "artels" are found; that is, communistic organisations, where all labour for a common purse in accordance with rules and regulations determined by the members of the organisations. these "artels" have done much toward increasing the industry, the honesty, the truthfulness, the thrift, and also the sobriety of their members. they exist throughout all russia, but in some parts more prevalently than in others. as yet, however, they scarcely affect the character and condition of the rural peasantry, and it is these who are most in need of elevation. it should be said, too, that the government is doing something to lessen the evil of drunkenness. russia principally an agricultural country russia's principal business is agriculture. more than one half her whole internal trade is agricultural. her agricultural products are one and one half times greater than the products of her manufactures and ten times greater than her mining products or her imports. and though her production of grain per acre is the lowest in all europe except italy, spain, and portugal, and her total production of all food products per acre by far the lowest in europe (not more than one third that of spain, which is next lowest), yet she manages to export a larger quantity of grain than any other country in europe, france only sometimes excepted. russia's export of grain for some years past has averaged , , bushels a year. her export of wheat alone has averaged , , bushels a year, or considerably more than a fifth of the total wheat export of the world. the explanation of this enormous export of wheat from so poor a country is that three fourths of the people live on rye. among the peasants wheat bread is practically unknown, and nothing could be more pathetic than the hard rye lumps which passed as bread during the last famine. other agricultural exports (besides grain) are flax, hemp, oil-seed cake, linseed and grass seed, butter, eggs, wool, hides, and hogs' bristles. wood, lumber, and timber are also extensively exported. england is russia's best customer. the amount of england's annual importation of the above products (including grain) exceeds $ , , . russia's mineral wealth in minerals russia is enormously wealthy, but the mining lands are not diffused throughout the empire but confined to definite areas. nor can they be said to be energetically worked. the great gold-fields of the ural mountains would not pay expenses as worked at present were they not supplied with convict labour. owing to the heavy import duty which is imposed on pig-iron nearly all the iron now needed for the iron manufactures of the empire is obtained at home, but this amounts to only pounds per inhabitant, as against pounds per inhabitant used in britain. coal is very abundant, especially in the valley of the donetz, but fire-wood is so plentiful for domestic purposes, and water power so plentiful for heavy manufactures, that the amount of coal mined in all russia is only one twelfth that mined in germany, and only one twenty-fourth that mined in britain. over , , tons of coal are imported despite very heavy protective duties. there is one mineral product, however, in which russia excels all other european countries. this is petroleum. the oil-springs on the caspian sea produce an annual yield of crude petroleum of an average value of $ , , . the value of the petroleum and petroleum products exported in was over $ , , . russia's trade and manufactures despite russia's resources in farm products and in minerals, yet, owing to the ignorance and degradation of her people, she is a poor country, and her exports are always more than her imports. her total wealth per inhabitant is only $ , as against $ per inhabitant for germany, $ for france, and $ for great britain and ireland. her total foreign trade is only $ per inhabitant, whereas the foreign trade of her neighbour, germany, is $ per inhabitant. her total internal trade is only $ per inhabitant, whereas even in greece the internal trade is $ per inhabitant, while in germany it is $ per inhabitant, and in the united states $ per inhabitant. the reason of all this is the lack of energy and industry in the people. their earnings per inhabitant average only cents a day. another reason is the lack of modern labour-saving devices. comparing inhabitant with inhabitant, russia has only one sixth of the steam power which germany has. one half of all the manufactures of the country are produced domestically--that is, without motive power or machinery. no industry in russia is fully up to the needs of the people when judged by the standards of other countries. for example, notwithstanding the severity of the climate, only two pounds of raw wool per inhabitant are consumed in russia's woollen manufactures, as against seven pounds consumed in germany, and the total annual value of all manufactures is only $ per inhabitant, as against $ in germany, and $ in britain. notwithstanding these unfavourable comparisons, the factory industries of russia are making progress. in seventy years the textile factories have increased fivefold and in thirty years twofold. in sixty years the cotton-manufacturing industry has increased sevenfold, and in fifteen years twofold. until recently russia exported wool. now she imports more wool than she exports. ninety years ago in russia iron was dearer than bread, and the peasants used wooden plough-shares and left their horses unshod. now the consumption of hardware, though still per inhabitant the smallest in europe, is yet in the aggregate the fourth in europe, although even so it is only two ninths what it is in britain. beet-root sugar-making is also a new industry, and , tons are made annually, the number of sugar works being . the beet-root crop of the country amounts to nearly , , tons annually. but the consumption of sugar per inhabitant is only seven pounds annually, as against eighteen pounds per inhabitant in germany. a universal industry throughout russia is tanning, and russia leather, with its fragrant birch-oil odour, is a highly prized commodity the world over. but the amount manufactured is only , tons yearly, and the quantity exported is inconsiderable. russia's railways and navigable rivers the most characteristic physical feature of european russia is its _flatness_. in consequence its rivers are almost all navigable, and, as the most important of them are interconnected by canals, the facilities for transportation which they afford are very considerable. altogether the length of inland navigation thus afforded amounts to nearly , miles. this abundance of navigation facilities has retarded the growth of railways, but there are already , miles of finished railway in european russia alone. the total length of railway in all russia built and in building is , miles. the most important railway enterprise in the empire is the trans-siberian railway, which will afford through communication from the baltic to the pacific. the shortest possible distance between these two bodies of water is miles. the length of the railway will be miles, and its cost, it is supposed, will be $ , , . it is to be completed by . russia's cities and towns [illustration: moscow.] st. petersburg (with suburbs , , ), the capital of russia, is, like most european capitals, an important trade centre as well as the seat of government. its manufactures are general and numerous, but the chief ones are those concerned in making munitions of war. until st. petersburg was not a seaport, but in that year a canal was built which now permits vessels drawing twenty-two feet of water to enter its docks. its harbour, however, is closed with ice from november to may. near st. petersburg is reval, the chief cotton port of russia. the raw cotton importation of russia averages about $ , , annually, most of which comes direct from the united states. moscow ( , ), the ancient capital of russia, is also a great manufacturing city, but its principal importance is derived from the fact that it is the great centre of the internal trade of russia. warsaw ( , ), the capital of polish russia, is a great railway centre, and the principal entrepôt of railway traffic between russia and the rest of europe. lÓdz ( , ), also in polish russia, is the great cotton-manufacturing centre of the empire. odessa ( , ) is the chief seaport of russia. it has an immense export trade in grain, tallow, iron, linseed, wood, hides, cordage, sailcloth, tar, and beef. riga ( , ), the chief port of russia on the baltic, has a large export trade with england in characteristic russian produce. kieff ( , ) is the centre of the russian sugar-refining industry. astrakhan ( , ), on the volga delta, is noted for its sturgeon fisheries, and its export of caviare, amounting, it is said, to $ , , yearly. tula ( , ) is the sheffield of russia. even in there were cutlery establishments in tula, but the manufacture was then principally domestic. it is now a city of factories, for it stands on a large coal and iron field. nijni-novgorod ( , ) is noted for its fair, an asiatic institution which modern civilisation will no doubt soon disestablish. once a year merchants to the number of , come to nijni-novgorod from all over russia, and even from india and china, to exchange their wares. the value of the exchange sometimes amounts to $ , , . orenburg ( , ), on the ural, is the terminal depot of the caravan trade of asiatic russia. archangel ( , ), on the white sea, is the chief emporium of trade in the north, with exports of characteristic northern produce. baku, on the caspian sea, is the chief seat of the petroleum industry of russia. all the towns and cities above named have grown enormously during the last twenty years. vi. the trade features of india india's past and present compared to the student of civilisation india is one of the most interesting countries in the world. it has always been one of the most fertile and populous regions of the globe. for centuries it was thought to be one of the richest. in consequence it has, time and time again, been the scene of invasion, conquest, and spoliation. but its riches never consisted so much in natural treasure as in the savings of an industrious and frugal people. since the year european nations have had much to do with india, especially england, france, portugal, and holland. during the last years, however, england has been the dominant power there. whatever may be said as to the motive of england's interference in india's affairs in the first place, it can only be said that the present influence of england in india is immensely beneficial to the country. india's prosperity on the whole is now comparable with that of any civilised nation on the globe. and a people that once, because of repeated conquest and spoliation, had lost all sense of honour and self-respect, are now, under the benign influence of peace, law, order, and security, rapidly becoming honourable, self-reliant, and enterprising, and ambitious to possess all the rights and privileges of modern civilisation. india's size and population india is a much larger and more populous country than most people think it to be. in shape it is somewhat like a huge kite, each of whose diameters is over miles long, or more than the distance across the atlantic from ireland to newfoundland. its territory is about , , square miles. of this area, over , , square miles, a territory considerably greater than the territory of all the states of europe (including the british isles) except russia, is directly under british control. the remainder is indirectly under british control. the population is , , , of which , , are directly under british control and , , indirectly so. this population is made up of people who speak seventy-eight different languages, of which twenty languages are spoken by not less than , , persons each. india's great fertility india owes much of its fertility to the fact that its soil is constantly being replenished by alluvium brought down from its high mountains by its immense rivers. the valleys of the indus ( miles long), the ganges ( miles long), and the brahmapootra ( miles long) include an area of , , square miles, a part of which, the indus-ganges plain, consists of a great stretch of alluvial soil whose fertility is as rich as that of any portion of the globe. one hundred and eighty millions of people live in this plain. so finely pulverised is its soil that for a distance of almost miles not even a pebble can be found in it. and so fertile is it that there are some agricultural districts in the plain where the population exceeds to the square mile. in that part of the plain which the ganges waters, , , of people find support on the soil by agriculture, at a density of over persons to the square mile, which is persons more to the square mile than the density of belgium, the most thickly populated country in europe. india's irrigation canals and river embankments but, fertile as is the soil of india, and propitious to agricultural industry as is its climate generally, its climate is not always favourable. it suffers periodically from excess of drought. as a consequence artificial irrigation has to be resorted to, or much of this fertile country would oftentimes be a desert. in british india alone , miles of irrigation canals are under the control of the government, , of which have been constructed by the present (british) government--works of vast dimensions and the highest engineering skill. altogether , , acres in british india are dependent for their necessary supply of moisture upon general irrigation, and , , upon irrigation canals. were it not for these irrigation canals, , , acres in scinde (northwestern india) would be a perpetual desert, for scinde is almost wholly rainless. on the other hand, in a great part of india the rainfall is excessive. some districts indeed are the wettest on the globe. in assam, for example (which is also one of the hottest places in india), the rainfall is inches yearly, and it has been . as a consequence rivers in india often overflow their banks. therefore to protect the country on the lower river reaches from floods the british government has built over miles of embankments. india's mineral resources at one time india was famed for its wealth in precious minerals and precious stones. poets often celebrated its golden resources. but its wealth in this respect was always fabulous rather than real. india is in reality poor in minerals. it has a good deal of iron--iron of the choicest quality. it has also a good deal of coal, but its coal is poor, owing to its superabundance of ash. it has also a little copper and tin. it has gold-mines that are worked. diamonds, too, are found in southern india, and numerously so. the celebrated koh-i-nur ( carats) was an indian product. but neither diamond-hunting nor gold-mining is any longer a profitable industry in india. the principal mineral industry of india is salt-mining, pursued in the punjaub, where there are solid cliffs of pure salt. owing to the fact that the people of india are mostly vegetarians ( , , of hindoos would rather die than eat flesh), salt is a necessary article of diet and a universal commodity. its production, therefore, is controlled by the government as a means of raising revenue. india's wonderful agricultural resources [illustration: comparative sizes of india and the united states.] the real wealth of india lies in the luxuriance and economic value of its vegetation. as a consequence the principal industry is agriculture. only one tenth of the people live in towns. two thirds of the adult males in the country are engaged wholly in tilling the soil. every sort of agricultural product known to commerce is raised in india; for from the high levels on the mountain sides to the low levels on the coasts the vegetation of the whole world is produced within its borders. even in wheat india competes in the world's markets with countries like russia and argentina. in british india had , , acres of wheat under cultivation, and (though a dearth year) an exportation of $ , , . in the exportation was $ , , . the district known as the central provinces of india has become one of the most important wheat areas in the world. but the principal agricultural product of india is rice. british india alone has , , acres of rice under cultivation, and an annual exportation of $ , , . in all the coast regions rice is grown universally, and also in the lower parts of the river plains, especially in the ganges valley. it is the staple food of the people everywhere except on the higher levels. on the higher levels millet and maize (corn) are the staple foods. the next important agricultural product of india is cotton, of which $ , , worth in the raw state is exported annually, besides what is used at home. the american civil war was the great cause of the starting of the cotton-growing industry in india. the next important agricultural product is jute, of which the export in the raw state is about $ , , . no country in the world can compete with india in the production of this fibre, for jute is very exhaustive of the soil, and in the ganges valley, where it is principally raised, the soil is annually replenished by alluvium. a fifth great agricultural product is tea, in which india now leads the world. england uses twice as much india tea as china tea, the reason being that india teas are produced with all the economic care of a high-class english or american manufactured product. the value of the tea export of india is about $ , , . other chief agricultural products are opium (which is a government monopoly), oil seeds, hides, and skins, indigo (in which india excels the world, the value of the export being $ , , ), coffee (the best grown anywhere--except perhaps that of arabia and java--though the bean is sometimes injured in transit), raw wool, lac (for dyeing), cinchona or peruvian bark (which since it has been raised in india, has greatly reduced the price of quinine), raw silk, raw sugar, tobacco, and spices. spices are produced abundantly in india, but their quality is not equal to east indian spices. also the cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco of india, though produced plentifully, are inferior in quality to those of the united states. nor are the wheat and corn of india so good as the wheat and corn of the united states and canada. improved cultivation will, however, in time improve the quality of all these products. of exports of natural products not agricultural the principal are wood (chiefly teak, the most valuable timber known for ship-building, and sal, a most valuable wood for carpentry) and saltpetre. india's growing manufactures though india is now chiefly an agricultural country her people from time immemorial have been adepts in manufacturing. the domestic textile manufactures and the domestic metal manufactures of india were for ages among the most beautiful and ingenious in the world. these domestic manufactures are principally pursued in small villages, of which there are over half a million in india. but under the influences of modern civilisation introduced by british rule, the domestic industries of the country are now giving way to factory industries. these have already become well established, and are rapidly increasing in number and importance. the stability of india as a nation is now so well assured that capital can be had there as cheaply as in england or the united states. besides, co-operative or joint-stock enterprises are becoming common. the indian people, with their natural aptitude for weaving, make the best of textile operatives, and india bids fair soon to become a formidable rival of western nations in textile manufactures. in twenty years the cotton spindles have increased sixfold. in ten years the cotton output has increased twofold. bombay has become one of the greatest cotton centres in the world, a sort of liverpool and manchester combined. it has practically shut the doors of india to english manufactured cottons of the cheaper grades. bombay manufactured cotton is even sent to england in immense quantities, but the principal export is to china. the total export of indian manufactured cotton is $ , , . another important modern manufacture is that of jute. the jute factories of bengal are now competing with those of scotland, and the total export is $ , , . a similar development is expected in iron manufactures, for already iron-smelting has begun. but, notwithstanding these developments, india still remains a tremendous market for the manufactured goods of england, especially in cottons and hardware and machinery. the value of the annual cotton importation from england is $ , , , equal to the total of england's exportation of goods of every sort to the united states. the value of the annual hardware and machinery importation from england is $ , , . india's external and internal trade the total yearly value of the exports of india amounts to the enormous sum of $ , , , more than a third of the total exportation of the united states for the banner year .[ ] of this england receives about one half. the total yearly value of the imports of india (exclusive of bullion) amounts to $ , , , which is considerably more than a third of the total importation of the united states. of this england sends out about two thirds. (india is therefore england's best customer, although from the united states england purchases vastly more.) of the internal trade of india no statistics are available, but with the rapid advances in modern conveniences for doing business which the country is adopting, the internal trade is also enormously increasing. already , miles of railway are built and opened, and , miles of canals and canalised river navigation. railways are rapidly being constructed in every part of the country. over , miles of metalled roads for highways and , of unmetalled roads are now maintained by the government as public works. there are , miles of telegraph routes. the government highways and canals as well as the railways are all splendidly engineered and solidly built works. the greatness of india is only just beginning. footnote: [ ] the total exports of the united states for the years and have exceeded $ , , , , each year. in the year they were about $ , , , . india's cities and towns calcutta ( , ) is the capital of the empire of india and the second city in the british empire. although situated on an arm of the delta of the ganges, eighty miles inland, calcutta is an immense seaport, but its sea-going privileges can be maintained only by great engineering works, because of the silt which the ganges is constantly bringing down and depositing in its seaward channels. calcutta enjoys almost a monopoly of the whole trade of the ganges and brahmapootra valleys, and until the building of the suez canal it had almost a monopoly of the outward trade of the whole hindustan peninsula. its total trade is even yet very large, aggregating for outward and inward business together about $ , , per annum, a sum which can be appreciated from the fact that it is about equal to the total import trade of the whole of the united states. bombay ( , ), the second city of the indian empire, owes its eminence to three things: ( ) the opening of the suez canal, which has made it the port of india nearest england; ( ) the starting of the cotton-growing industry in india, owing to the american civil war (the cotton-growing district of india is adjacent to bombay); and ( ) the development of the railway system of india, which is making bombay rather than calcutta the natural ocean outlet for the trade of the country. madras ( , ), the third city of india, is also the third seaport. but it has no natural harbour, and its shore is surf-beaten and for months together exposed to the full fury of the northeast monsoons. an artificial harbour, however, has recently been built. besides the cities above mentioned there is one (hyderabad) with a population of over , ; there are two (lucknow and benares) with a population of over , each, and eleven more with a population of over , each. there are besides forty-seven towns with a population more than , each, and over a thousand towns with a population of about , each. vii. the trade features of china the vastness of china's area and population china, to the student of commerce, is the most interesting country on the globe. the reason for this is that its area is so large, its population so vast, and its chances for development so magnificent. the total area of the empire, according to late estimates, is , , square miles. other estimates make it , , square miles. the greatness of this area may be understood from a few comparisons. it is about one twelfth of the total land surface of the globe. it is two and one fourth times the size of european russia. it is almost one and one half times the total area of the united states, exclusive of alaska. but all of this territory is not of equal commercial interest. the chinese empire consists of six parts: china proper, manchuria, mongolia, tibet, jungaria, and eastern turkestan. because of recent treaties, which give to russia the right to build and "control" railways in manchuria--ostensibly for the purpose of securing for the great russian trans-siberian railway a shorter route to vladivostok, its pacific terminus--manchuria becomes practically a russian possession. turkestan, jungaria, tibet, and mongolia are thinly inhabited countries, scarcely semi-civilised. but the part which remains when these "dependencies" are left out of consideration--china proper--is at once one of the largest, most thickly populated, and most fertile countries on the face of the globe, and one also of the most richly endowed in mineral products. its area is , , square miles. its population is , , . its population per square mile is not far short of . that is to say, its area is more than eleven times that of great britain and ireland, and almost one half that of the united states, exclusive of alaska; its population is ten times that of great britain and ireland, and more than six times that of the united states; while its population per square mile is greater than that of any european or american country except great britain (which, however, it nearly equals), holland, and belgium. in fact, more than one fourth of the total population of the globe is concentrated within the boundaries of china proper. china a country of great trade possibilities the great commercial nations of the world are now all trying to get shares of the trade of this vast and populous country. for not only is china (proper) large and populous, but it is also wealthy, for its inhabitants are both industrious and frugal, and, besides, as compared with the people of european countries they have been greatly spared the disastrous commerce-destroying effects of war, both foreign and internecine. centuries ago the chinese had made great progress toward civilisation. their skill in the manufacturing arts, and in agriculture and horticulture, was for ages superior to that of western nations. but, unfortunately for their advancement, they are conservative, self-conceited, and averse to improvement, especially if they have to learn improvement of others. as yet they have almost wholly ignored the ideas and methods of modern western civilisation. they have scarcely any railways, but few steamships, almost no steam-power manufactories, and no telephones. the only modern improvement which they have made much use of is the telegraph. some years ago (in ) a european company secured the privilege of building a short railway from shanghai, but it was scarcely built before the government got fearful of its influence and bought it up and stopped its running. but the chinese people are not averse to foreign trade; on the contrary, they are rather fond of it. if only the thing could happen in china that happened in japan--that is to say, if only the government could fall into the hands of rulers who were open-minded to improvement and inclined to be progressive--the rush that china would make toward civilisation and the adoption of modern trade methods and modern processes of manufacture would be startling. china's foreign trade at present the foreign trade of china is largely in the hands of the english. in the year the foreign export trade of china amounted to $ , , . of this amount $ , , was with great britain and her dependencies; $ , , with the united states; something over $ , , with the continent of europe exclusive of russia, and less than $ , , with russia. in the same year the foreign import trade of china was $ , , , of which $ , , was with great britain and her dependencies; a little over $ , , with the united states; $ , , with the continent of europe exclusive of russia, and $ , , with russia. (the rest of her trade was principally with japan.) the policy of the government of china has always been to prevent or restrict foreign trade; and even to-day foreign trade can be carried on in only twenty-six chinese ports--the so-called "treaty ports." the policy of great britain has been to secure by treaty as large a privilege of trading with china as possible; then to throw open the privilege to the world, but to follow it up with such commercial activity on her own part as would secure to her the lion's share of the resulting trade. of the twenty-six ports now by treaty open to the world for trade, twenty-three have been secured by great britain and three by japan. china's exports, imports, and resources china's principal exports are tea and silk, tea constituting about one third and silk (principally raw silk) fully one half of her total export trade. other principal exports are sugar, straw braid (one twentieth of her total exportation), hides, paper, chinaware, and pottery. her principal imports are opium and cotton goods, opium constituting a fifth, and cotton goods considerably more than a half, of her total import trade. other principal imports are woollen goods, metal goods and machinery, coal, and kerosene oil. a considerable importation is also made of raw cotton. but if china only had the blessing of an enlightened and progressive government this disposition of exports and imports would not long continue. china's resources of coal are among the finest and certainly among the largest in the whole world. her coal-fields, indeed, are estimated to be twenty times as great as those of all europe combined. much of this coal, too, is of the purest quality, and much of it very accessible to the miner. and near her coal-fields are vast deposits of some of the richest iron ores in the world. again, a great portion of the soil of china is extremely fertile. there are indeed two regions, one of "red soil" and another, much vaster, of "yellow soil," that are among the most fertile in the world. it is because of the extent and fertility of the yellow soil of china that "yellow" is the imperial colour, and the emperor called the "yellow lord." the climate, too, of china permits almost the whole range of useful vegetable products to be raised. the growth of cotton is already very great, because for seven centuries cotton has been the staple cloth for the clothing of the people. and already it is being manufactured by modern machinery. but both the growth of cotton and its manufacture by modern methods would be enormously increased if only facilities for internal transportation existed, and freedom from unjust taxation could be secured. if, in short, china only had railways and a good and enlightened system of government her progress and prosperity would soon make the western world envious. but her government is not only stupidly unprogressive, it is also disastrously wasteful. about seventy per cent. of the whole revenue of the country is lost to the public use through the malfeasance of officials. and only about miles of railway have as yet been opened, although it must be said that or miles more are under construction. possibilities of increased foreign trade with china there are, however, even now several ways in which foreign trade with china may be increased. two of these are the supplying her people with woollen goods, and the supplying them with wheat and flour. the winters of a great part of china are so cool that warm garments are necessary. at present these are made principally of padded cotton. owing to the density of the population pasturage is scarce, and sheep are almost unknown. for an indefinite time, therefore, there will be a demand for woollen goods in china, a demand that will constantly increase as the superior convenience of woollen garments over garments of padded cotton becomes more and more known to the people. and though rice is now the staple food of the people even of all classes, the wealthy classes are fond of wheat bread and obtain it when possible. but the agriculture of the country does not permit of the profitable growth of wheat and flour, and wheat if used must be imported. the principal trading cities of china the cities of china are large and numerous. peking ( , , ?), the capital, is not open to foreign trade. in fact, it has no trade of any sort, and derives its whole importance from being the seat of government. but tientsin ( , ), the port of peking, and an important "treaty port," has a large trade, both foreign and local. tientsin and peking are connected by rail, and since the russian government has obtained the right of connecting peking with the trans-siberian railway, it is more than likely that in time tientsin will become a terminus of that railway. of "treaty ports" other than tientsin the principal are shanghai, hankow, foochow, hangchow, amoy, and canton. shanghai ( , ) exceeds all other ports of china put together in the amount of its foreign trade. its foreign trade is, indeed, almost three fifths of that of the whole empire. and of the total number of foreigners residing in china (in said to be , , of whom were british subjects and americans) about one half reside in shanghai. shanghai is, indeed, the new york of china, and if railways were only built from it (as has been proposed) to the capital, peking, and up the yang-tse-kiang to hankow, and by way of the coast cities to canton, china would begin a new era in her career. hankow ( , ), on the yang-tse-kiang, about miles from its mouth, is the chief emporium of the tea-producing area of china. ocean-going steamships ascend the river to hankow for their cargoes. foochow ( , ) also has a great tea export trade. hangchow ( , ), one of the most beautiful cities in china, is also the chief city for the manufacture of silks, and of gold and silver ware, lacquered ware, and fans. amoy ( , ) has the best harbour in china and an immense import trade, ranking in that respect next after shanghai. canton ( , , ?) is the largest city in the chinese empire. a considerable portion of its inhabitants live in boats. of these "house-boats" there are said to be , . the foreign trade of canton is next to that of shanghai. once it was superior, now it is much inferior. its manufactures, however, are still important and include silk, cotton, glass, porcelain, paper, sugar, lacquered ware, and ivory goods and metal goods. nanking ( , ), once the capital of china and once the largest city in the world, is now comparatively a small city. although a treaty port, its commerce is not important. it was once famous for its beautiful tower of porcelain, feet high, but that is now destroyed. there are many other large cities in china. [illustration: china and its chief trade centres.] hongkong hongkong ( , ) is a small island belonging to great britain situated in the mouth of the canton river, seventy-five miles from the city of canton. its population is made up principally of chinese, who have been attracted there by its trade privileges. the british population is only , , even including the garrison of . almost the whole population reside in the capital, victoria, for the island itself is a barren rock. forty-four per cent. of the total foreign trade of china passes through hongkong. its harbour is one of the finest in the world. it has magnificent docks. its port is entirely free, and there is even no custom-house. it is calculated that the foreign trade transacted by its merchants amounts to $ , , a year, exclusive of what passes through its port without breaking bulk. the whole of the vast export trade of china in silk and tea is largely handled by hongkong firms. other commodities of which hongkong is the chief trade centre for china are opium, flour, salt, earthenware, oil, cotton, and cotton goods and woollen goods, which it imports from other countries and exports to china; and sugar, rice, amber, sandal-wood, ivory, and betel, which it imports from china and exports to other countries. its trade is not confined to great britain, but includes france, germany, the united states, and all other trading nations. but of course great britain has the greatest share. viii. the trade features of japan japan the great britain of asia japan consists of a group of islands situated to the east of the continent of asia, somewhat as the british isles are situated to the west of the continent of europe. but the japan islands are of volcanic origin and are very numerous. there are said to be of them. however, there are only four that are of important size, and it is these that are usually thought of when japan is spoken of. the area of these four islands is , miles, which is almost a fourth more than that of great britain and ireland. the population (census of ) is , , , which is , , more than that of great britain and ireland. the population per square mile is , which, though large, is not quite so large as that of great britain. if, however, we do not take into consideration the northern island (yezo), which is still partly inhabited by uncivilised aborigines, the population per square mile is , which is considerably in excess of that of both china and great britain and ireland, though still considerably less than that of england alone. the above statistics do not include the island of formosa (area , miles, population almost , , ), which was transferred from china to japan in , at the close of the late chino-japanese war. japan's wonderful transformation the significant thing about japan is the rapidity with which it has become transformed from a semi-civilised nation into one of the great nations of the modern world. until the year japan was an unprogressive, unenlightened country of the usual asiatic type, scarcely differing in any way from an inland province of china of to-day. in that year a revolution took place which put the whole power of the empire into the hands of the present mikado, or emperor. immediately japan began to assimilate western ideas of civilisation and to adopt western methods of trade, commerce, manufacture, government, and education. until the government remained an absolute monarchy. in that year the mikado voluntarily promulgated a constitution by which a legislative parliament, or "imperial diet," and an executive cabinet of state ministers were instituted, so that the government of japan is now as "constitutional" as that of germany or great britain. the government is in other ways thoroughly modern. education, for example, is almost as well looked after as in germany or new england. there are kindergartens established, technical schools, and normal schools for the training of teachers (one being for the training of high-school teachers), besides elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, special schools ( of these), and universities. the university of tokio is an imperial institution, supported entirely by the government, with colleges in law, science, medicine, literature, engineering, and agriculture. education, between the ages of six and fourteen, is compulsory. the army, too, is wholly a modern affair. it consists of , men, and an idea of its modernness may be gathered from the fact that an important part of its organisation is its training schools and colleges. even the non-commissioned officers are specially trained and educated. altogether the students in the military schools and colleges of japan number . the navy, too, as is well known, is both modern and efficient. it consists of battleships and high-class cruisers, besides other vessels,--torpedo craft, gunboats, convoy ships, etc.,--and it is intended to build an immense fleet of battleships and cruisers, and torpedo craft in addition. japan's agriculture japan being of volcanic origin, much of its soil is unfit for cultivation. the total productive area amounts to less than thirty per cent., and even of this only a small portion is capable of being tilled by modern methods. at present only twelve per cent. of the whole surface of the country is devoted to agriculture, even including pasturing. there is, however, but little pasturing, and the principal implement of cultivation is the spade. the modern plough is unknown. but manure (principally domestic manure and fish refuse) is very generously used, and by this means the returns are abundant. the principal food crop is rice. other food crops are wheat, barley, and the soya bean, but these not numerously so. the principal cultivated products for purposes of commerce are the mulberry tree (for supporting the silkworm), the tea plant, the lacquer tree, and the camphor tree. rice also is grown for export as well as for home consumption, and cotton is very largely grown for home manufacture. no milk, butter, or cheese is produced, scarcely any meat, no wood, and scarcely any leather. (for boots and shoes paper is used instead of leather.) of cattle there are only , , , as compared with , , in the british isles, although the population of japan is considerably the greater. of horses there are , , , and the raising of horses is much encouraged by the government, but principally for military purposes. horses, indeed, are but little employed. in cities, for purposes of carriage and cartage, men are used instead of horses. even in rural districts horses are unknown for farming purposes, and not even the hand-cart or wheelbarrow is used. everything is carried. fruit is much raised,--oranges, apples, walnuts, plums, peaches, and grapes,--but japanese fruits are of very inferior quality. flowers are raised everywhere in great variety and in great abundance, and the chrysanthemum is the emblem of the country and is used on postage stamps. japan's manufactures: their future possibilities the future of japan depends upon its manufactures, but these also are not without their difficulties. the mineral wealth of the country is very great, principally in coal and iron. on the northern island alone (yezo) the coal deposits are two thirds those of all great britain. unfortunately, however, owing to the mountainous character of the country, railways in japan are difficult to construct, and the transportation of coal or of ore is difficult and expensive. as the coal deposits and iron deposits are not near together charcoal has been used for smelting purposes. iron, therefore, so far, has not been produced profitably, and its production has decreased. but silver is mined abundantly, and also kaolin, or the raw material used in the manufacture of the beautiful porcelain of the country. copper and antimony are also large articles of export. the principal manufactures of japan as yet are the textiles, especially silk and cotton. in these modern methods are used, although so far the productions of the native domestic looms are superior to those of the factory looms. the production of textiles by machinery has increased fourfold in ten years, and now amounts to about $ , , annually. this, however, is not a large amount, being less than the textile production of any important state in europe, even switzerland, or sweden and norway, and is only one twentieth that of the united states. until recently the factory owner in japan has had the advantage of cheap labour. but the japanese artisan is also becoming "modernised," and is now demanding higher wages, and enforcing his demand by "strikes." and for all their deftness in domestic manufacture japanese workmen are not yet as skilful in machine labour as british or american workmen. it follows, therefore, that textile manufacturing in japan, especially the manufacture of cotton and wool, is not yet out of its tentative or probationary stage. but japan, having the advantage of an extensive home market for cotton goods (like the chinese, the japanese common people wear cotton garments all the year round, in winter padding them for warmth), and having the raw material at her own door (she already grows a large proportion of all the raw cotton she needs), and having, too, an abundance of coal at hand, must needs become a great cotton-manufacturing country. the same conditions hold with regard to the possibilities of japan's silk manufactures. possibilities of increased foreign trade with japan as in the case of china, the possibilities of increased trade with japan lie principally in woollen manufactures and in breadstuffs. in addition there is a fair chance of increased trade in metal manufactures. the use of woollen garments in japan in winter is extending even to the middle and working classes. and inasmuch as the country does not raise sheep, and is, indeed, not well able to raise sheep, such woollen clothing, woollen cloth, or raw wool as is used must be imported. hitherto the woollen manufactures which have been established in the country have not been very successful, and the probability is that japan's import trade in woollen clothing and woollen cloths will increase year by year. similarly, from the fact that the agriculture of the country is not adapted to the growth of wheat, nor seems ever likely to be so adapted, and also from the fact that both the higher and the middle classes of japan are rapidly adopting european and american habits of living, it is very probable that the importation of wheat and wheat flour into japan will also continue to increase year by year. and from the difficulty there is of smelting iron cheaply it is probable that the importation of iron and iron goods (which in raw iron, iron and steel rails, iron small wares and nails, spinning and other machinery, and steel ships, already amounts to $ , , a year) is likewise likely to increase greatly year by year also. japan's modern trade facilities owing to the irregular conformation of the surface of the country, good roads in japan can scarcely be said to exist. but , miles of roads have been built, of which the state maintains about one fourth. there are also miles of railway, of which the state owns and maintains about one fourth also. there are , miles of telegraph routes, with , miles of wire; miles of telephone routes, with miles of wire; and miles of submarine cable routes, with miles of wire. the country also has a merchant navy of steam vessels of modern type and sailing-vessels of modern type, besides native craft. owing to the irregular and rocky nature of the coast-line and the great number of small islands which exist, numerous lighthouses are needed; but japan's lighthouse system is one of the best in the world. japan's foreign trade japan has a foreign trade of $ , , annually in exports and $ , , annually in imports. of the export trade the principal part, running from a fourth to a third, is with the united states. the next largest part is with france, the next with hongkong, the next with china, and the next with great britain. but great britain's direct share is not more than a twelfth. of the import trade the principal part, almost one third, is with great britain. the united states' share is about a twelfth, and that of france about one twenty-fifth. the principal exports are raw silk (about one third of the whole), silk goods (about one tenth of the whole), tea, coal, copper, rice, and matches. the export of matches amounts to $ , , annually. characteristic exports, though they do not figure largely in the total amount, are floor rugs, lacquered ware, porcelain ware, fans, umbrellas, bronze ware, repoussé work, paper ware and papier-mâché, fibre carpets, and camphor. there is also a large export of fish, shellfish, cuttlefish, edible seaweed, and mushrooms to china and other asiatic countries. the chief import is raw cotton (almost one fifth of the whole). other important imports are sugar (although she raises almost , , pounds of sugar herself annually), cotton yarn, cotton goods, woollen cloths, flannels and blankets, kerosene oil, watches, and articles of iron and steel as above enumerated. the fishing industry is a very important one and over , , people are engaged in it. the number of fishing-boats is about , . the fish trade, which includes seaweed, is (when not for home consumption) principally with china. [illustration: japan's relation to eastern asia.] japan's special trade centres the foreign commerce of japan, like that of china, is allowed to be carried on only at certain ports, called "treaty ports," of which there are nineteen, the principal being yokohama, osaka, nagasaki, hakodate, niigata, and kobe. the two principal cities, not treaty ports, are tokio and kioto. tokio ( , , ) is the capital and chief centre of the political, commercial, and literary activity of the empire. in many respects tokio is a "modern" city. its educational features are excellent. its sanitation also is good. kioto ( , ) was formerly the capital, but after the revolution of it was superseded in this respect by tokio. yokohama ( , ), distant from tokio eighteen miles, is the chief place of the empire for foreign trade. its foreign trade, indeed, is more than half that of the whole empire, being about $ , , annually. osaka ( , ) is in respect to population the second city of the empire, but its foreign trade is not large and is carried on principally at hiogo, a port near it. niigata ( , ) is the only treaty port on the west side of japan, the surf caused by the winter monsoon making the flat west coast of the country very dangerous for shipping for half the year. other important ports are kobe ( , ) and nagasaki ( , ). nagoya ( , ) is an important inland town. ix. the trade features of africa africa fifteen years ago within a period of about fifteen years the continent of africa has been the scene of a vast partition. at the beginning of that period the amount of african territory that was subject to european control was comparatively small. the british were firmly established in south africa, and had possessions along the coasts elsewhere principally in the west. the french were firmly established in algeria and in senegal. the portuguese had their ancient settlements in mozambique and lower guinea. morocco on the northwest and abyssinia in the northeast were more or less well-established governments that were independent. egypt in the extreme northeast, with tributary possessions extending along the nile into the far interior of the continent, was also a more or less well-established government that possessed a quasi-independence, though it was nominally dependent upon turkey. but elsewhere, except in a few other places controlled by european authority, the whole continent may be described as having been in its original state of savagery or semi-savagery. no government existed anywhere that was either beneficent or stable. the slave-traffic abounded everywhere. european spheres of influence in africa the european governments that had possessions in africa were all doing their best to suppress the slave-traffic. but they could not take very salutary steps in this direction without exercising authority beyond the territorial limits they were supposed to occupy. gradually, for these reasons, and also for the reason that they were all anxious to extend their commercial dealings in africa, they began to exercise authority beyond their old-time territorial limits. in this way began the establishment on the part of european nations of what are known as "spheres of influence" in africa. at first england and france were the only nations that were at all active in establishing these spheres of influence. later on germany and italy and other nations began to establish them also. beginning, therefore, with the years and there has been a general establishment and gradual extension of these spheres until now the whole continent has been practically parcelled out among a few european powers. the great partition of africa [illustration: the partition of africa.] the ancient empire of morocco still exists in an independent state. abyssinia, though italy attempted to subjugate it, is again also independent. the little republic of liberia is nominally independent. some territory in the very heart of the sahara or great desert is yet in its aboriginal independence. but elsewhere, throughout the whole continent, africa is either british, or french, or german, or belgian, or portuguese, or italian. spain's holding is not worth mentioning. italy's holding also is scarcely worth mentioning. portugal's holding has not been increased in the recent "scramble"--only made more definite. france's holding, however, has been enormously increased, and is now the largest ( , , square miles), although much of the french area is barren desert, and much of the rest of it uninhabitable by white people. great britain's holding also has been greatly increased, but not nearly so much so as it would have been if in the earlier years of the scramble the british government had not been singularly blind to the actions of other governments in the matter. germany, too, has got a substantial holding ( , square miles). the kongo free state, which, though nominally independent, is practically under the suzerainty of belgium, and must look to belgium for the funds with which to promote its development, is also a substantial possession, being a little less than germany's holding-- , square miles. great britain in africa great britain's holding, however, in the partitioned continent comprises its best portions. much of africa is uninhabitable by white men. wherever, however, white men can live--except in northern africa--there great britain has managed to get control. excluding the shore of the mediterranean, the best part of africa, considered from the view points of colonisation and commerce, is what is now known as "british south africa." this is an immense area--an area of almost , , square miles. it comprises ( ) that whole southern portion of the continent known as cape colony, and ( ) that portion of the great central plateau of the continent which extends from cape colony northward to lakes nyassa and tanganyika--all except the two boer republics, the orange free state and the south african republic. british east africa ( , square miles) includes the territory of uganda, north of lake victoria, a territory which from the character of its native population and its possibilities of trade has been called the "pearl of africa." british west africa ( , square miles) includes the basin of the lower niger, the most densely peopled area in all africa, the seat of the great fula-hausa empire of sokoto-gandu, the wealthiest and greatest trading nation in the continent. furthermore, in the northeast, great britain exercises "protectorate control" over egypt--a control that is likely to be instrumental in reclaiming for egypt, and thus for civilisation and commerce under british authority, the whole of egypt's ancient possessions along the nile as far at least as uganda. the total area of the british possessions in africa, exclusive of the two boer republics and egypt, is over , , square miles. the "dominion of south africa" "south africa" is practically "british south africa." the german portion is either largely barren or else inaccessible. the portuguese portion is only a narrow strip along the east coast, much of which is too unhealthy for habitation other than by natives. the two boer republics are rapidly filling up with british people, are being developed by british capital, and must in time become confederated with the states that environ them. one of them, too, is already under british suzerainty. british south africa, however, is as yet only a name. it has no real existence except in hope. the aspiration of statesmen in southern africa is that all the territories of southern africa under british control shall form one confederation, and that in this confederation the orange free state and the south african republic shall join. the territories entering into this confederation would therefore be as follows: the self-governing colonies of cape colony and natal, the crown colony of basutoland, the protectorates of bechuanaland and zululand, the territory now administered by the british south africa company, popularly known as "rhodesia," and the british central africa protectorate, with in addition the two boer republics previously mentioned. the length of this proposed south african dominion would be miles. its width would be from to miles. and, as said above, its area would be about , , square miles. mr. stanley predicts that in a hundred years the "dominion of south africa" will have a white population of , , , and a coloured population of , , . south africa's agricultural possibilities of south africa as above defined cape colony and natal are at present the most important portions. their climate is in some respects the finest in the world. their soil is of remarkable richness. the number of distinct species of indigenous plants found upon it is greater than for any other equal area on the globe. the same remark was once true of the animals found in south africa, which again is testimony to the great fertility of the soil. but a serious drawback is the insufficiency and uncertainty of the rain supply. irrigation, however, is practised, and wherever irrigation is possible the land may be made to blossom like the rose. agriculture, however, is only indifferently pursued. the vine in cape colony produces more abundantly, very much more abundantly than anywhere else in the world, and yet neither grape-raising nor wine-making can be said to be successful. pasturing is the principal occupation of the people in rural districts. there are , , sheep in cape colony, and , , goats. natal, which is warmer, has , sheep. another principal occupation is ostrich-farming. the ostrich, once wild in south africa, is now bred domestically. cape colony has , ostriches. ostrich feathers fetch from $ to $ a pound. the raising of cattle is another principal occupation, and draught cattle are much used for transport purposes. cape colony has , , cattle; natal, , , . the principal food crops are wheat and maize, but little is raised for export. in natal, sugar is an important product, and also tea. many magnificent timber woods are found, but the trees are stunted and little timber is exported. much has been wasted by fires. the great agricultural possibilities of south africa are wool, mohair (the hair of the angora goat), fruit, wine, and skins. the breadstuffs of south africa will probably all be needed for home consumption. south africa's great mineral wealth all the world over south africa is famous for its diamond-mines and its gold-mines. the diamonds are found principally in griqualand, north of the orange river, now a part of cape colony, but they are also found in the orange free state. the diamond areas are very circumscribed, the diamond-bearing "pipes" being supposed to be craters of extinct volcanoes. the principal "pipes" are at kimberley ( , ), in griqualand. these constitute the richest diamond-fields in the world. it is estimated that over $ , , worth of diamonds have been taken out of kimberley since their first discovery there in . the largest south african diamond yet found was worth $ , , but many other large ones have been found. the annual diamond export now is about $ , , . for the export was $ , , ; for a little less. the production and export are strictly limited, so that prices may not depreciate. next in interest to the diamond-fields are the gold-mines. these so far have been found principally in the south african republic, or "transvaal" as it is popularly called, in the "rand," or "reef," near the far-famed town of johannesburg ( , ). since gold was first discovered in the rand ( ) $ , , worth has been taken out. the annual output now is nearly $ , , , but it is estimated that before the rand can be exhausted $ , , , worth of gold must be taken out--an amount much greater than the total public debt of the united states, national, state, and municipal. but north of the transvaal, in rhodesia, especially in mashonaland, is a territory popularly called the "land of ophir," where mining operations are only just begun, but where gold is supposed to be even more richly stored than in the transvaal. of this district the newly built town of salisbury is the centre. other mineral products of south africa are coal in natal, mined at newcastle, and copper in the northwest of cape colony, shipped at port nolloth. south africa's foreign trade the import trade of south africa so far consists of almost everything needed by the inhabitants except meat, flour, vegetables, and fruit, for there are as yet almost no manufactures. the principal exports are: ( ) gold, $ , , per annum, including that from the transvaal; ( ) diamonds, $ , , ; ( ) wool, $ , , ; ( ) mohair, the hair of the angora goat, $ , , ; ( ) ostrich feathers, over $ , , ; ( ) hides and skins, $ , , ; and ( ) copper ore, $ , , . the export of wine and fruit, for the production of which the country is so well suited, and also of grain, is inconsiderable. shipping ports and railways of south africa british south africa, like all of africa, is wanting in seaports. in fact, it has but few. however, it has one, walfish bay, which territorially does not belong to it, inasmuch as it is in the middle of the coast of german southwest africa--the only port in that coast. the principal port in british south africa is cape town ( , ), which is also the capital and principal place. the next principal ports are, for cape colony, port elizabeth ( , ) and east london, and for natal, durban. lorenzo marquez, on delagoa bay, and beira, at the mouth of the pungwe, both in portuguese east africa, are natural ports for northern british south africa, and are used as such, railways being constructed from them into the interior. railroad-making, indeed, is now the all-important matter in south africa. lines are already built from cape town, port elizabeth, east london, durban, and lorenzo marquez to the diamond-fields of kimberley and the gold-mines of johannesburg. these also give to the pastoral and agricultural parts of the interior facilities of access to the sea. but the line from cape town to kimberley is being rapidly extended northward to salisbury, the central point of the gold-fields of rhodesia, and already has reached bulawayo, miles from cape town. the line from beira is also to end at salisbury. already a telegraph line extending from salisbury northward has reached the west shore of lake nyassa, and by the close of this year ( ) it will reach the south end of lake tanganyika. it is proposed that the railroad from bulawayo shall follow this same route, and it is the dream (or shall we say the hope?) of the empire-builders of south africa that this railway shall before many years be so far advanced northward that it will meet the railway that is now being built from cairo southward through the continent along the nile. mr. stanley predicts that the "cape to cairo" railway will be an accomplished fact before . the white population of south africa, even including the boer republics, is still less than , . x. the trade features of australia australia and australasia the term australasia, as now generally used, comprises australia (including tasmania) and new zealand, and a number of small neighbouring islands. so used it practically denotes a british possession; for such islands as are comprised by the term and yet do not belong to great britain are comparatively unimportant. but when we speak of australasia, we are generally thinking of australia, for australia is so large and important that it seems to overshadow the other parts of australasia. but in respect to politics or commerce australia is not one country; it is divided into several self-governing colonies. these are, in order of importance, victoria, new south wales, south australia, queensland, and west australia. but a movement is now being made to unite all these colonies, and tasmania as well, into one "australian confederation," just as the several provinces of canada, which were once independent colonies, have been united into one "dominion of canada." this confederation scheme, however, has not yet been accomplished.[ ] new zealand, because of its distance ( miles) from australia, has so far shown no desire to enter into this confederation. footnote: [ ] since the above was written the scheme has been developed a very considerable way toward completion. the name of the confederation is to be "the commonwealth of australia." the area and climate of australia australia is a continent not only in name but in fact. its area, including tasmania, is almost , , square miles, which is about the area of the united states exclusive of alaska, and only about one fourth less than the area of the continent of europe. fully two fifths of this area lie within the torrid zone, and of the rest, even in victoria, the part farthest from the equator, the climate is so warm that it corresponds with that of spain, southern france, and italy. but over so vast a territory great differences of climate must occur, and consequently of products also. a general description of the climate and products of australia is therefore impossible. yet there are several characteristics which appertain to the whole continent. the chief of these are ( ) the great dryness of the atmosphere--not merely its lack of rain, but its absolute freedom from moisture; ( ) the remarkable inequality, or want of regularity, in the rainfall. occasionally the rainfall is excessive, but a more frequent and serious cause of trouble is excessive drought. the continent on every side has a low coast region, where the rainfall is heavier and the temperature generally hotter than in the corresponding table-land interior to it. but the vast table-land of the interior has comparatively little rain, and indeed in some parts of it, especially in the centre and west, the rainfall is so slight that the country is practically a desert. but even when all the desert areas of australia are excluded from calculation there still remains in the interior plateau, toward the east and south, an immense area of country of great fertility and productiveness. the murray river alone drains an area of , square miles, one sixth of the whole continent, a great part of which is of exceeding richness. in these fertile parts irrigation by artesian wells has been tried, and always with great success. and it is thought that almost the whole continent can be regained for agriculture, or at least for sheep-pasturing, by similar means; for even in the arid and so-called desert parts of the interior, there is very little soil that is not really fertile, for all of it is covered with thick brushwood. moisture alone is needed to make it bear crops abundantly. and this dryness of the atmosphere which prevails throughout the whole continent is not without its compensations. it renders the climate exceedingly healthful. australia a continent of peculiarities australia has many peculiarities. it has only one large river, and even that in summer becomes a series of isolated pools. it has no high mountain range, its principal mountains being only a series of ramparts marking off the lower coast lands from the interior plateau. again, its native quadrupeds are entirely different from those of other continents, being almost all, whether little or big, "marsupials," or "pouch-bearers," like the kangaroo. its birds are mostly songless. its flowers, for the most part, have no scent. its trees are leaved vertically and cast no shade. its indigenous inhabitants have made no progress toward civilisation. when europeans first came to the country they found no native animal that could be put to any use, nor any native fruit, vegetable, or grain that could be utilised for food. still, all european domestic animals thrive abundantly in the country, and so do all european fruits, grasses, grains, and vegetables. the english rabbits, indeed, have become a terrible pest. as many as , , of them have been killed in a year without any apparent diminution in their numbers. over $ , , a year has at times been spent to exterminate them, all to no effect. victoria victoria, the smallest of the australian colonies, had until recently the largest population (june, , , , ) and also the largest trade. in both respects, however, it is at present surpassed by new south wales. victoria has owed its past pre-eminence to its gold production. gold was discovered in the colony in , and for years the output of the precious mineral was not less than $ , , per annum. the present output of gold in victoria, however, is only $ , , per annum. richer, however, than the gold-mines of victoria is the fertility of its soil. a large part of the soil is exceedingly fertile--with irrigation one of the finest fruit-bearing soils in the world. the arboreal vegetation of the country is magnificent. trees thirty feet in diameter rise to the height of feet without a single lateral branch, and then feet to feet higher still. pear-trees grow to the height of eighty feet, with trunks three feet in diameter. but as yet wool-growing, wheat-raising, and vine-growing are the principal agricultural occupations of the people. the principal agricultural export is wool--$ , , worth per annum. but a considerable portion of this comes from new south wales. the sheep kept number , , , the cattle , , . but the colony still remains principally a mining community. five ninths of the population live in towns. yet there are few towns, and two fifths of the whole population live in melbourne--a city almost exactly as large as boston. melbourne melbourne ( , ; with suburbs, , ), the capital city of victoria and the chief city in australia, is also one of the most beautiful cities in the world. its parliament buildings, town hall, post-office, treasury, mint, law courts, public libraries, picture galleries, theatres, churches, and clubs are all edifices of architectural magnificence and beauty, while its boulevards, parks and gardens are equally splendid. at one time money flowed freely and great commercial recklessness prevailed. but though melbourne has sustained several severe depressions its present condition is prosperous and its future is assured. it is, however, a pleasure-loving city, and it is as much on this account as on account of its great beauty that it is called "the paris of the southern hemisphere." nowhere else in the world, perhaps, are indoor amusements--the theatre, concerts, etc.--or outdoor amusements--cricket, football, horse-racing, etc.--more devotedly patronised than in melbourne. other important places in victoria are ballarat ( , ) and sandhurst ( , ), both mining towns, and geelong ( , ) locally noted for its manufacture of "tweeds." new south wales [illustration: australia. shaded portions show where the rainfall is sufficiently abundant.] new south wales (population , , ) is the oldest colony of australia and the parent of both victoria and queensland. of all the colonies, it has, perhaps, the greatest range of productions. on the low coast lands its soil is of extraordinary fertility, and even in the dry interior, when irrigation is employed, the fertility is still extraordinary. as yet, however, but one acre out of every two hundred is under cultivation, the chief agricultural occupation being pasturing. over , , sheep are kept, principally the merino. grass grows everywhere, and even the summits of the mountains are covered. drought, however, is a terrible drawback, and sometimes tremendous losses occur. in over , , sheep perished, and in over , , . the total wool production is very large, averaging $ , , a year. the export of hides, skins, leather, and chilled meat, principally mutton, amounts to $ , , annually. chilled mutton and beef are sent direct to london, though the passage takes five or six weeks by steamer and twelve to sixteen weeks by sailing-vessel. scarcely less important than its agricultural products are the mineral products of new south wales. its coal-mines are the finest on the continent, and $ , , worth of coal is exported annually, besides what is consumed locally. its gold production, though not very large, is general throughout the whole colony. its silver-mines in silverton and broken hill are among the most famous in the world, and its tin-bearing lands comprise over , , acres. the foregoing comprise the staple products--the production of industries already well established. but fruit-growing, including all fruits, from apples, pears, and peaches, to olives and oranges, is a rapidly developing industry, no country in the world being better suited to it. wine-making, too, is quickly coming forward, the new south wales wines equalling in flavour those of france and spain. wheat-growing, cotton-growing, and even rice-growing are also in their several districts rapidly extending and prosperous pursuits. the development of new south wales has only just begun. sydney (including suburbs , ) is the capital and by far the largest city. sydney, like melbourne, is a beautiful city, but its beauty is natural rather than artificial, and it is well entitled to its name, "queen of the south." it is situated on port jackson, one of the finest and most beautiful harbours on the globe. sydney is the headquarters of all the various lines of steamships--british, american, french, italian, etc.--that trade with australia, and is indeed one of the great seaports of the world. south australia south australia ( , in ) occupies the whole central part of the continent from north to south. but as only a very small portion of this vast area is settled--the southeast corner--it may be described as in characteristics resembling victoria. its principal industry is wheat-growing. south australia is indeed the great granary of the continent, and is destined to be one of the great granaries of the world. like the other divisions of australia, south australia, when once drought has been overcome by irrigation, is destined to become a great fruit country, its warm, moistureless climate being peculiarly well suited to the ripening of fruits of exquisite flavours. already its olives are pronounced the finest in the world. the principal city and chief port is adelaide (with suburbs , ). like other australian ports, adelaide possesses excellent steamboat shipping facilities. in the north, on the timor sea, is port darwin, likely to be an important trade centre. queensland the most interesting of all the australian colonies is queensland (population , ), for it is a tropical country with a climate so salubrious that white people can live in it and be comfortable and healthy. the heat, instead of being enervating, is stimulating and bracing. a great portion of its soil is of unsurpassed fertility. the only drawback is the unequal distribution throughout the year of the rainfall. but wherever irrigation wells are sunk the climate becomes highly suitable for sheep-raising, and also for the growing of many kinds of fruit. there are already , , sheep and , , cattle in the colony, and wool is exported to the amount of $ , , annually. other agricultural exports are frozen beef and mutton, and hides and skins. wool is the chief export. the second export in importance is gold, which reaches $ , , per annum. tin is also exported, and coal, though little worked, is abundant. developing exports are sugar ($ , , per annum), arrowroot, cotton, tobacco, rice, and coffee. a difficulty, however, in the development of these products is the labour question. white men cannot work in the plantations. chinese prefer to work in the mines. the natives won't work anywhere. no negroes are obtainable. as a consequence polynesians have to be imported. brisbane ( , ) is the capital and chief city and port. west australia west australia (population , ), the largest of all the australian colonies, has only been recently settled, and its constitution as a self-governing colony dates only from . a large part of its area has never been explored, and a large part is known to be scrub desert. but there is scarcely any part of it, even of its "scrub" areas, but that will support sheep when once artesian wells have been sunk, and large portions of the colony, especially along the coasts, are as fertile as need be. and the climate, though very dry, is exceedingly healthful. perth ( , ) is the capital. albany is the principal port. the immense resources of australia. its probable future australia is undoubtedly on the eve of a period of great development. its resources are known to be immense. its climate has been found most favourable to human health, and the objectionable feature of the climate, the smallness and irregularity of the rainfall, has been studied and become understood and found remediable. once the confederation that is now in process of formation takes place, there is no doubt that australia will enter upon a new and prosperous commercial era. owing to the fact that its chief opportunities for wealth lie in the development of its natural resources, it is probable that for some time to come almost all the manufactured goods australia needs will have to be imported. already its importation amounts to $ , , , of which, of course, great britain supplies the principal share. this importation is principally clothing and materials for clothing, but it also comprises hardware and machinery, and in fact everything required by a highly civilised and money-spending people, except breadstuffs and provisions. the magnitude of this importation may be comprehended from the fact that it is more than one third of the total exportation of the united states for any year save one up to , including our immense export of breadstuffs, provisions, and cotton. and besides the articles of export already mentioned--wool, meats, hides, skins, minerals, fruits, etc.--there is one other australian resource that is capable of almost indefinite development. this is its timber. the eucalyptus or gum-tree prevails almost universally in australia, and some of its commonest varieties, being both strong and indestructible by insects, are of almost unequalled value for ship-building, railway ties, and dock and harbour construction. that the australians are fully alive to the importance of developing their foreign trade is seen in the efforts they have made to provide facilities for bringing their products to ocean ports. there are , miles of railway, almost every mile of which has been built by the governments. this is one mile of railway for every inhabitants, as against one mile for every inhabitants in the united states. these railways run wholly to and from the seaboard. there are no manufacturing towns to be catered to. australian trade consists wholly in exchanging home-raised natural products for imported manufactures. equally remarkable with the railroad enterprise of the australians is their enterprise in telegraphic construction and the establishment of cable communications. for example, a telegraph line miles long, running across the continent from adelaide to port darwin, has been built by the province of south australia so as to connect with a cable from port darwin to java, singapore, etc., and thus with europe and america. for at least miles this telegraph line runs through one of the most desolate and inaccessible regions in the world. xi. the trade features of south america south america, a fertile continent with drawbacks south america is an immense but very fertile continent, whose natural resources are as yet scarcely begun to be utilised. though not so large as north america, it has a far greater area of productive soil--and, indeed, much of its soil is quite unsurpassed in fertility. it suffers, however, from two great drawbacks. . a great portion of its area (four fifths) lies within the torrid zone. in the low coast regions of this torrid area, and also in the low forest regions watered by the great flat rivers of the interior, the climate is for the most part unendurable to white men. . south america has been unfortunate in its settlement and colonisation. until in recent years colonisation as understood in anglo-saxon communities has scarcely been attempted in south america at all. all the earlier immigrations from the old world were prompted by the thought of getting gold and silver and precious stones--if need were by the spoliation and enslavery of the natives. only a small proportion of the population--not more than a quarter of the whole--consists of whites, and these are principally from spain and portugal. these conquerors of the continent have not in the main succeeded in establishing either stable forms of government or high types of civilisation. furthermore, the mixed races--the mestizos or metis, as they are called, the descendants of the earlier europeans and the natives--instead of advancing in civilisation have for some time past been retrograding. then, again, there is a large negro element, the descendants of africans once imported as slaves, to still further complicate the race question; and there is a considerable element partly negro and partly indian. in only one state, argentina, can affairs be said to be really prosperous, and even in argentina the civilisation developed by its prosperity is gross and material rather than refined and intellectual. the next most prosperous and important states are brazil and chile. perhaps uruguay, though the smallest of all the states, should be placed after argentina. the remaining independent states of the continent--venezuela, colombia, ecuador, peru, bolivia, and paraguay--are all states of the prevailing south american type. their governments are more or less unstable. they are terribly burdened with debt, and their credit is such that they must pay high rates of interest. the civilisation once introduced among their native races by the zeal of spanish missionaries is deteriorating if not vanishing. and even among their leading classes there is much to be desired in the observance of the ordinary principles of right and wrong. european immigration in south america all the south american states enumerated above, with the exception of brazil, were first taken possession of and "settled" by the spanish, and the spanish language still remains in them the language of government, education, and society. brazil was first taken possession of and "settled" by the portuguese, and in brazil the portuguese language prevails, just as elsewhere in the continent the spanish language prevails. among the natives many different languages are found, but in brazil a "common language" is used, one introduced by the original portuguese missionaries, and understood by nearly all the tribes. between brazil and venezuela is a triangular piece of country called guiana, which, unlike the rest of south america, is still under the control of european powers. it consists of three parts--french guiana, dutch guiana, and british guiana--colonies of france, holland, and great britain, respectively. leaving out guiana, south america has received its entire civilisation from spain and portugal, and, with the exception of argentina, uruguay, and brazil, there has been little or no emigration to any south american country except from these two european countries. to argentina, however, there has been a large emigration from italy especially, but also from france, great britain (mainly from ireland and wales), germany, and sweden. a similar emigration has taken place to uruguay, though the foreigners in uruguay are principally basques, a people that live on the border-land between spain and france, but are neither spanish nor french. in brazil the immigration, where it has not been portuguese, has been chiefly italian and german, and in the temperate region of the extreme south of brazil a large german population exists. everywhere in south america the parts most prosperous are the parts that have come most directly under the influence of recent european emigration. the argentine republic the argentine republic, or "argentina," as it is popularly called, is the most prosperous and most important of all the south american states. its area ( , , square miles) is equal to the total area of the states of the united states east of the mississippi and missouri, including the dakotas, missouri, arkansas, and louisiana. although a portion of this vast area is not of much value for agricultural purposes, especially in patagonia, a very large portion of it does consist of soil of great fertility, while the climate, which for the most part is a temperate one, is such as is well suited to europeans and white people generally. the population may , , was , , . of this population it is estimated that over , are italians, , french, , recently emigrated spaniards, , english, and , germans and swedes. the language of the government and of the schools is spanish. at one time in argentina there was a disposition to take the united states as a model in everything, but of late years there has been a tendency toward taking france as a model in manners and customs. this disposition to imitate european peoples is particularly true of the wealthy classes. argentina's rapid progress the pride and boast of argentina has been its rapid progress. in the thirty years ending the immigration was over a million. from to it was from , a year to , a year. in , owing to the financial crisis of that year, it fell away almost to nothing. since it has gradually increased until now it is about , a year again. in the population was only , , . now it is over , , . similarly the capital city, buenos ayres, has made an increase not easily paralleled. in its population was only , . in it was , . by the census of it was , . to-day it is said to be , . of this number about one half are foreigners. the high protective tariff established by argentina in had the effect of instituting many small industries in buenos ayres, and to this cause the exceedingly rapid growth of its population is partly attributable. argentina's agriculture and manufactures the great prosperity of argentina has been due to the extent and immediate availability of its agricultural resources, for its forest wealth remains undeveloped, and its mineral resources are comparatively scanty. its vast treeless and stoneless plains have needed no "improvements" to make them fit for settlement, and the soil which covers them being of virgin richness bears crop after crop without fertilising and with very little cultivation. immigrants arrive in the country without a dollar and in twenty years are owners of estates of acres each. in no country in the world has agricultural extension been more rapid. in twenty years the acreage under cultivation increased per cent. the amount under cultivation in wheat alone increased per cent. the wheat production averages , , bushels, which is not far short of one fourth of the total wheat export of the united states. the production for was , , bushels, although the amount exported was much less than that. the wheat product is indeed very variable, owing to droughts and locusts, for, like australia, argentina is uncertain in its rainfall. the corn crop is steadier, and in amounted (for export alone) to , , bushels. more important in the aggregate than the direct products of the soil are the indirect products. there are , , cattle kept in argentina, , , sheep, and , , horses. the total exportation of animals and animal products amounts to $ ,- , . of this exportation the principal item is wool, the wool-clip of argentina being, in weight, one seventh of the total wool-clip of the world. unfortunately, however, argentina wool is very dirty, and when washed reduces to one third, while australian wool reduces only to two thirds or three fifths and is free from seeds. the profit accruing to the argentina wool-grower is thereby lessened. but, nevertheless, wool-growing in argentina is a very profitable industry, and many farmers (principally irish settlers) have from , to , sheep each. cattle-farming is carried on mostly by native argentines, and many cattle farms are stocked with as many as , cattle and horses each. the great exports of argentina, therefore, after wheat and corn and wool, are hides and skins, tallow, chilled beef, and mutton and bones. there are five factories in buenos ayres engaged wholly in chilling mutton, and the export of chilled mutton to great britain alone is $ , , a year. another growing agricultural product is wine, the yearly production being , , gallons. notwithstanding argentina's magnificent forest areas, but little timber is exported or even manufactured for home consumption. the other principal manufacturing industries are carriage-, cart-, and harness-making, cigarette- and match-making, preserving and tinning meat, brewing, flour- and corn-milling, and the making of macaroni. buenos ayres [illustration: the most prosperous part of south america.] buenos ayres, the capital of argentina, is the largest city not only in south america but in the whole southern hemisphere. the la plata, at whose mouth it stands, affords navigation into all the northern parts of the republic, as well as into the neighbouring states of uruguay, paraguay, brazil, and bolivia. the riverside at buenos ayres is at all times of the year a perfect forest of masts and smoke-stacks belonging to the shipping that supplies this navigation. recently, at a cost of $ , , , the river, which here is shallow, has been deepened and new wharves and docks have been built, and ocean-going vessels of the deepest draught (which formerly used to be lightened fourteen miles away) can now unload or be loaded right in the very heart of the city. the total commerce of the republic amounts to $ , , or $ , , a year, and of this trade buenos ayres transacts seven eighths in imports and three fifths in exports. the amount of this trade secured by the united states is about a tenth, running from $ , , to $ , , . in it was only $ , , . the principal export trade is with france ($ , , ), great britain ($ , , ), germany ($ , , ), and belgium. great britain does not buy argentina wool. the principal import trade is with great britain ($ , , ), germany ($ , , ), france ($ , , ), and italy. the buenos ayreans are fond of display and of dress and of ornamentation, and the importations from france and italy are principally of goods to gratify this fondness. there is a considerable exportation of wheat, flour, tobacco, and maté (paraguay tea) to brazil and other south american states. buenos ayres is the centre of the argentina railway system, which consists of about miles of road. there are , miles of telegraph routes. the national debt amounts to $ , , . the provincial debts amount to about $ , , . the taxation amounts to nearly ten per cent. of the earnings of the people, as against four and one half per cent. in canada and five per cent. in australia. brazil brazil is a much larger and more populous country than argentina. its area ( , , square miles) is as large as that of all the united states, less half of alaska. a great portion of this area is of superlatively tropical richness of production. but, unfortunately, the most fertile parts of brazil are the parts least fit for settlement by white men. the population by the last census is approximately , , , but less than , , of this population are pure whites. the negroes that were lately slaves number over , , , and there are supposed to be about , , indians. intermediate between the indians and negroes and the white population are the numerous mixed races or half-breeds. agriculture is the chief industry, but is of two kinds: the tropical agriculture of the central and south central seaboard, which is carried on principally by negro and mulatto labour, and the agriculture of the temperate region of the extreme south, which is carried on mainly by colonists from europe, the recent european emigration being almost wholly directed toward that region. almost the whole of the interior of brazil still remains unsettled and untilled. the coffee yield of brazil is enormous and is its principal product. the production amounts to , , bags or over , , , pounds annually, which is more than two thirds of the total amount of coffee used in the world. labour for coffee cultivation is scarce and dear, and in the earlier stages of the production of the berry the brazilian coffee gets badly treated. but machinery is used wherever possible, and in the later stages of the production the brazilian coffee gets the best attention that skill can devise. as a consequence the coffee product of brazil is rising in the estimation of coffee-users. the shrubs are cultivated under palm-trees so as to keep them from the intense heat of the sun. three or four harvests of berries are obtained in a year. rio janeiro and santos are the two chief centres of the coffee industry. next to coffee the chief tropical product is sugar, the export of which is about , tons annually, principally from pernambuco. other products of the tropical area of brazil are cocoa and cotton, from the cultivated coast regions, and rubber and brazil-nuts, from the dense forests of the lower amazon; also dyewoods and cabinet woods, drugs, and diamonds. for many years brazil was celebrated for its diamonds--obtained chiefly from a town in the interior named diamantina. the present diamond production is not large. from the temperate agricultural region of the south, dried beef, hides, and tallow are the chief exports. the greatest customer of brazilian produce is the united states, which takes $ , , worth. great britain is next, with $ , , worth (in rubber alone in $ , , ). brazil gets her goods principally from great britain, the united states, france, and germany--from great britain $ , , , from the united states $ , , . the imports include almost all articles needed for domestic and manufacturing purposes--particularly cottons and woollens, ironware, machinery, lumber, flour, rice, dried meats, kerosene, butter, and fish. there are, however, cotton factories established in brazil, with capital to the value of $ , , , and cotton manufacturing is protected by very heavy duties. but agricultural machinery and such like manufactures are very lightly taxed. the principal food of the people is manioc flour (tapioca). rio janeiro rio janeiro ( , ), the capital and principal city, though a poor-looking place, is situated on a magnificent harbour--one of the very finest in the world. about vessels, with tonnage amounting to , , tons, enter rio janeiro with foreign trade annually. nine thousand miles of railway have been built in brazil and more are in course of construction, and , miles of telegraph routes have been built. rio janeiro is the chief railway centre, but other centres are rio grande do sul, in the temperate regions of the south, and bahia and pernambuco, in the tropical regions. the public (national) debt of brazil is not far short of $ , , , , bearing interest (a great part of it) at from four to six per cent. per annum. xii. the trade features of canada canada, practically an independent federal republic the dominion of canada comprises all that portion of the continent of north america north of the united states--except alaska and newfoundland and the coast of labrador. (newfoundland and the labrador coast is a colony in direct relationship to great britain.) canada is entirely self-governing and self-maintaining, and its connection with great britain is almost wholly a matter of loyalty and affection. it consists ( ) of seven provinces: ontario, quebec, nova scotia, new brunswick, prince edward island, manitoba, and british columbia, which, in their self-governing powers and their relation to the general government, correspond very closely to our states; ( ) of four territories--assiniboia, alberta, saskatchewan, and athabasca, which correspond somewhat to our territories; ( ) of four other territories--ungava, franklin, mackenzie, and yukon, which are administered by the general government; and ( ) the district of keewatin, which is under the jurisdiction of the lieutenant-governor of manitoba. the capital of the whole dominion is ottawa. each province has its own capital. size, soil, climate, and population of canada the area of canada is immense. it figures up to , , square miles, which is almost , square miles more than the total area of the united states exclusive of alaska, and not far short of being equal to the area of all europe. but almost , square miles of this area are taken up by lakes and rivers; and a much greater portion than this, under present conditions of civilisation, is wholly uninhabitable, being either too cold or too barren. yet when all the necessary allowances have been made there still remains in canada an immense area with soil fertile enough and climate favourable enough for all the purposes of a highly civilised population. over , square miles are already occupied, and of the occupied area fully one half has been "improved." the older provinces are, acre for acre, as suitable for agricultural pursuits as the adjoining states of the union. manitoba, the "prairie province," is almost one vast wheat field, with a productivity for wheat unequalled anywhere except in the red river valley of minnesota and dakota. the manitoba grain harvest foots up to , , bushels. british columbia is a land of almost infinite possibilities, not only because of its mineral and timber resources, but also because of its capabilities for agriculture and fruit-growing. the territories are so vast an area that no general description of them is possible, but it may be said that the great wheat valley of the saskatchewan, the sheltered grazing country of alberta, and the great wheat plains of the peace river valley in athabasca, are regions adapted in soil and climate to sustain a hardy and vigorous people. the population of canada is comparatively small. it is estimated at , , . over , , people of canadian birth reside in the united states, and the number of americans residing in canada is only , . out of the , , persons who came to canada as immigrants in a period of forty years, no fewer than , , , or fifty four per cent., came over into the united states. it is stated that this exodus has ceased, and that if any great movement of population now exists it is toward canada. canada's forest wealth canada, like all new countries, depends for her prosperity upon the development and exportation of her natural products. these are of four great classes: ( ), the products of her forests; ( ), the products of her mines; ( ), the products of her fisheries; ( ), her agricultural products. canada's forest resources, when both extent and quality are considered, are the finest in the world. the forest area uncut was in nearly , , square miles, or more than one third of the area of the whole country. the annual value of the timber and lumber produced is about $ , , . the annual value of the timber and lumber exported is about $ , , . two thirds of this goes to great britain, and over $ , , in lumber and logs goes to the united states. quebec and ontario have unlimited supplies of spruce for wood-pulp manufacture, the annual output of which reaches , tons. the uncut lumber of british columbia, which includes douglas pine, menzies fir, spruce, red and yellow cedar, and hemlock, is estimated to be , , , cubic feet. canada's mineral resources canada is just beginning to realise the largeness of her mineral resources. the most talked of gold-mines are those of the klondike district, the extent of which is still uncertain. much more definitely known and almost as productive are the gold-mines of british columbia and the newly discovered gold-fields of the rainy river district in northern ontario. more important than the gold-mines of canada are its coal-fields. these are principally in nova scotia and british columbia. the latter province is destined to be the coal-supplying region for the whole pacific coast of north america. the yearly output at present is about , , tons; the yearly output of nova scotia is about , , tons, principally produced by american capital. in alberta there are said to be coal-fields having an area of , square miles. iron is found in abundance in both british columbia and ontario. ontario has in its nickel-mines of sudbury a mineral treasure not found elsewhere in equal abundance in the world. experts have estimated that , , tons of this ore are actually in sight. ontario produces petroleum and salt. silver, copper, lead, asbestos, plumbago, mica, etc., are found in varying quantities. canada imports annually from the united states nearly $ , , worth of coal and coke. canada's fisheries the fisheries of the gulf of st. lawrence and of the shallow waters bordering on nova scotia and newfoundland have for centuries been the most productive in the world. the canadian fishing interest in these waters is very great. cod, mackerel, haddock, halibut, herring, smelts, and salmon, are the principal fish, and the annual "take" is about $ , , . about $ , , worth of whitefish, salmon-trout, herring, pickerel, and sturgeon are produced annually from the canadian lakes. the salmon-fishing of the rivers and great sea-inlets of british columbia brings about $ , , annually. about one half of the total product is exported to great britain and the united states. canada's agricultural produce agriculture, including stock-raising, dairying and fruit-growing, is canada's greatest industry. over , , acres are under crop and about , , under pasture. over , , acres are under wheat cultivation. ontario exports more than twice as much cheese as the whole of the united states, and her cheese product is recognised as the finest in the world. canada exports to great britain alone $ , , worth of cheese annually. in , in ontario alone, creameries turned out over , , pounds of butter at an average net receipt of - / cents a pound. by the cold-storage facilities provided by the government canadian butter can be sent even from far inland points to liverpool or london without the slightest deterioration. england buys $ , , worth of canadian bacon and hams annually, and canadian beef is already famous on the london market. american corn for stock-feeding is admitted to canada free of duty and about $ , , worth is imported annually. a great deal of eastern and southern canada is well adapted to fruit-raising. the niagara-st. clair peninsula of ontario is especially famous for its peaches and grapes. canada's trade with the united states canada has made a great effort in the direction of encouraging home manufactures, but her most progressive and most staple industries are those concerned in the conversion of the raw products of the country into articles of common merchandise. her steam horse-power in proportion to population is the largest in the world. the capital invested in factories as a whole amounts to over $ , , , with an annual output of over $ , , . her total annual importation is now over $ , , . more than half of this is from the united states. canada's total annual exportation is about $ , , . of this over one third goes to the united states. canada's total trade with the united states is about forty one per cent. of her total trade with all countries, and almost equal to her total trade with great britain. canada's total trade with the united states is exceeded only by that of great britain, germany, and france, and her import trade with the united states is exceeded only by that of great britain and germany. [illustration: trade centres of canada and trunk railway lines.] canadian cities montreal ( , ) is the commercial metropolis of canada. it is situated on an island in the st. lawrence river, and, though miles from the open ocean, the largest sea-going vessels reach its wharves with ease. it is the headquarters of canada's two great railways--the canadian pacific system, with its miles of road, and the grand trunk system, with its miles of road. through passenger-trains run from montreal to vancouver on the pacific coast, a distance of nearly miles. montreal is the centre also of the great inland navigation system of canada. toronto ( , ), the capital of the province of ontario, is the second city of canada. while toronto has a great local trade and many important manufactures, it is specially noted as an educational centre. quebec ( , ) is the oldest city of canada and one of the oldest upon the continent. halifax ( , ), the eastern terminus of the canadian railway system, has one of the finest harbours in the world. winnipeg ( , ) is destined to be the centre of the great inland trade of canada. xiii. the trade features of the united states the character of our export trade having reviewed the industrial and trading conditions of the other great commercial nations of the world, it should now remain for us to review these conditions in the united states. but the united states is so large a country, and its trading and industrial interests are so diversified and extensive, that it would be impossible for us in the limits of our space even barely to touch upon all these interests. so that with respect to the "trade features of the united states" we shall simply confine ourselves to one part of the subject--namely, the character, extent, and importance of our foreign trade. and we shall, further, have to restrict ourselves in the main to our exports. these will be found to be principally not manufactures, but the products of our great agricultural, mining, and forest industries. the total value of the manufactures of the united states amounts in round numbers to the immense sum of $ , , , annually, a sum considerably more than a third (it is thirty five per cent.) of the total value of the annual manufactures of the world. but only a very small portion of this vast output is exported. the greater portion of it is used to sustain the still vaster internal trade of our country, a trade which amounts to more than $ , , , annually, an amount not far short of being one third of the total internal trade of the world, and not far short of being twice the internal trade of great britain and ireland, the country whose internal trade comes next to ours. our exports, therefore, are not in the main manufactured goods, but breadstuffs, provisions, and raw materials, the production of our farms, our plantations, our forests, and our mines. but principally they are the products of our farms and our plantations, for with the exception of cotton we do not export much raw material. nearly all the raw material we produce (other than cotton) we use in our own manufactures. and even this is not enough, for in addition we have to import considerable quantities of raw material for our manufactures from other countries, the principal items being raw sugar, raw silk, raw wool, chemicals of various kinds including dye-stuffs, hides and skins, lumber, tin, nickel, and paper stock. our export trade in detail our total exportation for the twelve months ended june , , amounted to the unprecedented sum of nearly $ , , , ($ , , , ).[ ] this is an amount almost a quarter of a billion dollars greater than ever before, the only years when the export even approximated this amount being and , when the exportation was slightly over a billion dollars in each case. of this exportation the sum of $ , , , or seventy one per cent. of the whole, was for the products of agriculture, the principal items being ( ) "breadstuffs," including wheat and wheat flour, corn and cornmeal, oats and oatmeal, rye and rye flour, $ , , ; ( ) cotton, $ , , ; ( ) "provisions," including beef and tallow, bacon and hams, pork and lard, oleomargarine, and butter and cheese, $ , , ; ( ) animals, including cattle, horses, sheep, and hogs, $ , , ; ( ) raw tobacco, $ , , ; ( ) oil-cake, $ , , , and ( ) fruits and nuts, $ , , . the exports of the products of our mines amounted to only . per cent. of the total export, or scarcely $ , , , the principal items being ( ) coal and coke, $ , , ; ( ) crude petroleum, $ , , , and ( ) copper ore. the exports of the products of the forest amounted to only three per cent. of the total export, or $ , , , the principal items being ( ) sawed and hewn timber, logs, lumber, shingles, and staves, $ , , , and ( ) naval stores, including resin, tar, turpentine, and pitch, $ , , . the exports of the products of our fisheries amounted to only $ , , , or less than one half of one per cent. of the total exports. the exports of the products of our manufactures, according to the official returns, amounted to $ , , , or twenty four per cent. of the total export. but this sum included many items which represent raw natural products converted merely into material for subsequent manufacture, as, for example, pig- and bar-iron, planed boards, sole leather, ingot- and bar-copper, cotton-seed oil, and pig- and bar-zinc. the principal items in the true "manufactures" list are ( ) machinery, including metal-working machinery, steam-engines and locomotives, electrical machinery, pumping machinery, sewing-machines, typewriting-machines and printing-presses, and railway rails, hardware, and nails, $ , , ; ( ) refined petroleum, $ , , ; ( ) manufactures of cotton, $ , , ; ( ) vegetable oils and essences, $ , , ; ( ) agricultural implements, $ , , ; ( ) cycles, $ , , ; ( ) paper and stationery, $ , , ; ( ) furniture and other manufactures of wood, $ , , ; ( ) tobacco and cigarettes, $ , , ; ( ) fertilisers, $ , , ; ( ) boots and shoes, harness, and rubber shoes, $ , , ; ( ) telegraph, telephone, and other instruments, $ , , ; ( ) bags, cordage, and twine, $ , , ; ( ) books and pamphlets, $ , , ; ( ) sugar, syrup, molasses, candy, and confectionery, $ , , ; ( ) spirits, including brandy and whisky, $ , , ; and ( ) clocks and watches, $ , , . footnote: [ ] for the year ending june , , the total exportation amounted to $ , , , . our exports and those of great britain compared the significance of these figures descriptive of our export trade will be better understood from a few comparisons. our total exportation for the year - was, as said before, in round numbers, $ , , , . for the year previous it was over $ , , , . the exportation of great britain for the year was $ , , , . for the year it was almost the same amount. for the year it was $ , , , . but whereas our exportation of breadstuffs, provisions, animals, fruit, etc., and of raw materials, such as cotton, lumber, ores, etc., amounts to probably or per cent. of our total exportation, while our exportation of manufactured goods amounts to not more than or per cent., the exportation of breadstuffs, provisions, raw material, etc., which great britain makes is not more than one sixth, or per cent., of her total exportation, while her exportation of manufactured goods is five sixths, or per cent., of her total exportation. for example, great britain's export of textiles alone amounts to over $ , , a year (for $ , , ), while our total export of textiles, including cottons, woollens, silks, and fibres, is not more than $ , , a year. great britain's total export of hardware and machinery amounts to over $ , , a year; our total export of these articles does not amount to more than a third of this sum. on the other hand, great britain's total export of raw materials of all sorts is not more than $ , , a year, while ours of cotton alone is almost two and one-third times that sum. and while great britain exports no breadstuffs or provisions to speak of, our exportation of these articles (including animals) amounts to the enormous sum of $ , , a year. our imports and those of great britain compared [illustration: export trade of the united states and great britain compared.] similar differences with respect to our import trade and that of great britain are observable. our imports do not amount to more than from $ , , to $ , , a year. for the year ended june , , they were $ , , . for the year ended june , , they were $ , , . the imports of great britain, on the other hand, amount to over $ , , , a year. for the year they were $ , , , . for the year they were $ , , , . but, while our imports, with the exception of coffee, sugar, tea, fruits, and fish, consist chiefly of manufactured articles, such as woollen goods, cotton goods, silk goods, and iron and steel goods, with only moderate amounts of raw material (for example, hides, skins, and furs, $ , , ; raw silk, $ , , ; raw wool, $ , , ), great britain, besides importing coffee, sugar, tea, fruits, and fish, the same as we do, and manufactured goods to a far greater amount than we do (not less than $ , , annually), imports likewise an enormous quantity of raw material for her manufactures, all duty free, and a still more enormous quantity of breadstuffs, provisions, etc., also all duty free. for example, for the year her imports of raw materials for her manufactures were not less than $ ,- , , while her imports of duty-free food products were not less than $ , , . the difference between the two countries, therefore, so far as their foreign trades are concerned is simply this: the united states is an immense exporter of food-stuffs, and also of raw materials for foreign manufacture; but for the raw materials for her own manufacture she depends principally upon her own products. in comparison she is only a moderate exporter of manufactured goods. great britain, on the other hand, is an enormous importer and consumer of food-stuffs and also of raw materials for her manufactures. she, in fact, depends very largely upon other countries for her food products and her raw materials, and obtains them wherever she can, very largely from the united states. she is also an enormous exporter of manufactures. [illustration: the united states manufactures and internal trade compared with the manufactures and internal trade of all other countries.] our cotton production and cotton export the one article of export that is of greatest importance in our commerce is cotton. the production of cotton in the united states is enormous. it is not far short of , , , pounds per annum. this is probably four times the amount produced upon the whole globe elsewhere. our export amounts annually to about , , , pounds, with a total value of about $ , , . our greatest competitors in the world's cotton markets are egypt and india. the export of cotton from egypt amounts to $ , , annually. the export of cotton from india amounts to $ , , annually. at least one half of our export of cotton goes to great britain. our next greatest customers are (in order) germany, france, italy, spain, and russia. we send about $ , , worth annually to japan, and $ , , worth annually to canada. all our southeastern states produce cotton, but the states that produce it most plentifully are (in order) texas (about one third of the whole), georgia, mississippi, and alabama. the area under cultivation in the whole country is about , , acres, which is about one sixth of the area devoted to corn, wheat, and oats, or one half the area devoted to hay. the areas of greatest cotton production are ( ) the "yazoo bottom," a strip on the left bank of the mississippi extending from memphis to vicksburg, and ( ) the upper part of the right bank of the tombigbee. the productivity of cotton is much higher in the united states than it is in india, averaging not far short of pounds per acre, as against less than pounds in india. in india, however, the cotton crop has been grown on the same soil for ages, whereas in the united states the practice is to substitute new soils for old ones as soon as crops begin to fail. on the other hand, the united states cotton crop is much less per acre than the crop in egypt. there the yield per acre is from pounds to pounds. the remedy for this defect of productivity in our cotton crop as compared with that of egypt is manuring. where the manuring is properly attended to our cotton crop is comparable with egypt's. but the cotton of egypt is of better quality than the great mass of the cotton crop of the united states (the "upland" cotton crop). on the other hand in the low, flat islands off the coast of georgia and south carolina a species of cotton grows ("sea-island" cotton) which is the finest in the world, its fibres being the longest, finest, and straightest, of all cotton fibres produced anywhere, and the most beautiful in appearance in the mass. of this "sea-island" cotton about three to four million dollars' worth is exported annually at a price averaging from two and one fourth to two and three fourth times the value per pound of the "upland" cotton. the great cotton ports of our country are (in order of amount of exportation) new orleans, galveston, savannah, new york, charleston, mobile, and wilmington. new orleans' export is about a third of the whole, and galveston's about a fifth. our production and export of breadstuffs the item in the official returns that figures largest for exports is that which is set down as breadstuffs. this term includes wheat, corn, oats, rye, and other grains, and the flours or meals made from these. for the year ending june , , our total export of breadstuffs was $ , , . this is an enormous increase over the year before, when the amount was not quite $ , , .[ ] a large part of this increase was due to the high prices for breadstuffs which prevailed in the european markets during the past autumn and winter, but a part of the increase was due to an increased acreage and to good crops. the main products that composed this vast exportation were: wheat, $ , , ; wheat flour, $ , , ; corn, $ , , ; cornmeal, $ , , ; oats and oatmeal, $ , , ; rye and rye flour, $ , , , and barley, $ , , . the magnitude of our breadstuffs exportation can be judged from the magnitude and importance of our exports of wheat and flour as compared with those of other countries. our average wheat export is two and one half times that of russia, four and one third times that of argentina, five and one half times that of india, and almost twenty-five times that of canada, while it is also four and one half times that of all other countries in the world combined. our flour export ($ , , ) is without a rival. the export from canada is now not much more than $ , , a year, and the export from hungary not more than $ , , a year, and these are the only countries with which we have to compete in the western european markets. still it must be remembered that hungarian flour, owing to the dryness of the climate in which it is made, is the best in the world, while the flour of canada made from manitoba hard wheat is alike unsurpassed. as a rule much more than one half of our total exports of breadstuffs goes to great britain. germany is our next best customer, but her imports of our breadstuffs are not more that a fifth to a tenth of those of great britain. france comes next, but her importation of our breadstuffs is still more uncertain, ranging from a half to a hundredth of that of great britain. our other principal customers for our breadstuffs are ( ) the other states of europe, ( ) canada, ( ) the countries of south america, ( ) the west indies, ( ) hongkong, ( ) the islands of the pacific, and ( ) british africa. our exportation of breadstuffs to japan and china (direct)[ ] is still inconsiderable. since the close of the war of the rebellion our exportation of wheat has increased thirtyfold and our exportation of flour fifteenfold. our chief wheat-growing states are minnesota and california, each with about , , bushels a year; then kansas, north dakota, illinois, and south dakota, each with about , , bushels a year; and then ohio, indiana, nebraska, pennsylvania, missouri, and michigan. the best wheat is grown in the deep black soil, rich in organic matter, of the red river valley of minnesota, and in the dry, sunny climate of california. the total yield for was , , bushels, which was about , , bushels more than recent averages. the estimate for this year ( ) is over , , bushels, which was also the yield for . the total area sown to wheat was for several years about , , acres, but the average is now increased to about , , acres. large as is the gross production of our wheat, however, the yield per acre is somewhat small, being only from to bushels as against bushels in ontario, in manitoba, - / in new zealand, and in great britain. in fact, the wheat yield per acre is lowest in the united states of all the great wheat-producing countries of the world, except australia ( to - / ), italy ( - / ), germany ( - / ), india ( - / ), and russia ( ). but far greater than our production of wheat is our production of corn. of corn we have nearly , , acres under cultivation and a production of nearly , , , bushels. our export of corn, however, is proportionately not large, and figures only to about , , bushels a year, with a value (including cornmeal) of about $ , , . as is well known, chicago is the great commercial centre of the continent for breadstuffs. new york is the great port of export for the atlantic seaboard, san francisco for the pacific seaboard. duluth is the great receiving point for the wheat of the red river valley and the northern mississippi. buffalo is the great point where the wheat brought down from chicago, duluth, etc., in barges, "whale-backs," and immense propellers, is trans-shipped to the small boats of the erie canal for carriage to new york. minneapolis is the great milling point of the continent, its mills being the largest and most capacious in the world. footnotes: [ ] for the year ending june , , the amount was $ , , . [ ] a portion of the exportation of breadstuffs made to hongkong is no doubt intended for consumption in china and japan. our export of provisions and animals [illustration: principal articles of domestic exports of the united states. (for the year ended june , .)] the next most important item in our list of exports is provisions. but, like "breadstuffs," "provisions" also is a composite term, including two main divisions, "meat products" and "dairy products." practically there are three main divisions, "beef products," "hog products," and "dairy products." we have in these great products of our country an export trade of $ , , per annum, and if we add "animals," a similar item, we have $ , , more, or a total of $ , , per annum. our export of fresh beef is nearly , , pounds a year. almost the whole of this goes to great britain. our export of canned beef runs from , , to , , pounds a year. about three fifths of this goes to great britain, the remainder going principally to germany and other parts of europe and to british africa. we have about , , cattle upon our farms and ranches, and our production of beef is estimated to be the enormous amount of , , , pounds a year, which is between a third and a fourth of the total quantity produced throughout the world. of course the greater portion of this is retained for our own home consumption, for we eat more meat per inhabitant than any other people in the world except the english. in addition to our beef we export about , cattle annually, more than seven eighths of which are taken by great britain, our other principal customers being the west indies and canada. the principal export, however, among our "provisions" is our hog products. we export annually of these products , , pounds of pork, , , pounds of bacon and hams, and , , pounds of lard, with a value greater than $ , , . as with our beef products, so with our hog products--by far the greatest share goes to great britain. great britain, however, does not import largely of our pork or of our lard. and though she purchases from us over four fifths of our total export of bacon and hams, she does not pay for them so much as she does for the bacon and hams of ireland, denmark, and canada. the reason for this is that as a rule our corn-fed bacon and hams are too fat--a fault that could be easily remedied. after great britain our next best customers for our hog products are germany (principally in lard), the netherlands, sweden, and the west indies (the latter principally in pork). we keep on our farms from , , to , , hogs, and our production reaches nearly to , , , pounds of pork, bacon, hams, lard, etc., per annum. a great drawback to our swine-raising industry is the terrible swine plague which so frequently devastates our swine herds. were this plague stamped out by thorough preventive measures our swine industry would soon become very much larger and more profitable. the third principal item in our provisions export trade is "dairy produce." our export of butter now amounts to , , pounds a year. our cheese export, once much greater, is now about , , pounds a year. as in our beef products and in our hog products so again in our dairy products great britain is our chief customer. but our butter export to great britain is only one twelfth of her total importation of butter, and our cheese export to great britain is only about one eighth of her total importation of cheese. our cheese has lost its hold on the english market because of its relative deterioration of quality, and its export is not more than a half or a third of what it once was. much of our butter also is not suited to the english taste. but both our cheese and our butter are now improving in quality. our great competitor in the cheese export trade is canada. canada's export of cheese to great britain is $ , , annually, while ours is only a fifth of that amount. our great competitor in butter is denmark. denmark's export of butter to great britain is $ , , while ours is not more than a fourteenth of that sum. our competitors in the markets of britain for cattle are canada and argentina, but their exports together, however, are less than a third of ours. our competitors in the british markets for the sale of meats are principally the australasian colonies and argentina, but their principal exportation so far is chilled mutton, which they send to britain to the amount of many million dollars annually (argentina alone $ , , a year, new zealand alone $ , , a year), while our exportation of mutton is practically nil. we do, however, export $ , , worth of sheep a year, but in this item we are frequently far exceeded by canada. chicago is, of course, the great commercial centre of the continent for "provisions" and "live stock," and new york the great shipping port. of the entire export trade of the whole country new york does two fifths. baltimore comes next with about one ninth. then (in order) come philadelphia, boston, and new orleans. the chief centres of our great provision and live-stock trade, other than chicago, are cincinnati, kansas city, indianapolis, buffalo, and omaha. our foreign carrying trade one aspect of our foreign trade is not so well understood as it ought to be. our foreign commerce is carried on largely in foreign ships. the reason is that no vessel is allowed to be registered as belonging to a united states owner unless she is built in the united states, and it therefore seems as if our ship-builders could not compete (in price) in the building of steel and iron ships with those of great britain and germany. formerly, when wooden ships were used, our foreign trade was carried on in our own vessels, and our "clipper" sailing vessels beat the world. in seventy per cent. in value of our foreign trade was carried in american vessels. since that date the proportion has decreased steadily until in - it was only eleven per cent., and for - it was even less than this. during the five years - it averaged barely twenty per cent. taking into consideration tonnage only the proportion at present varies from twenty five to thirty per cent., showing that the american vessels are used for carrying the cheaper sorts of goods. the aggregate tonnage burden of vessels belonging to the united states registered as engaged in the foreign trade was for , tons. for the same year the aggregate tonnage burden of vessels belonging to great britain engaged in the foreign trade was considerably more than ten times that amount. of our export trade to europe united states vessels carry only five and one half per cent., and of our export trade to africa only four and one half per cent. but of our export trade to asia and oceanica our own vessels carry twenty six and one half per cent., while of our export trade to other countries on the american continent our own vessels carry nearly forty per cent. but as our atlantic trade is seventy six per cent. of the whole, and as our trade elsewhere than on the atlantic is more than one third carried by sailing-vessels, it is evident how largely our steamship ocean carrying trade has been allowed to fall into the hands of foreigners. seven tenths of our total export trade, and nearly two thirds of our total foreign trade, both export and import, are carried in british vessels. the next greatest carriers of our foreign trade are, first, the germans, then ourselves, then the norwegians, then the dutch, then the french, then the belgians. examination papers note.--_the following questions are given for the purpose of indicating to the student the sort of knowledge he ought to be possessed of after he has made a careful study of the papers of the course. the student is recommended to write out carefully the answers to the questions asked. only such answers need be attempted as can be made from a careful study of the papers._ _part i_ . great britain. give as full an account as you can of the causes which have made london the great commercial centre of the world. . great britain. england is said to be "a beehive of mercantile and manufacturing industry." give reasons for this statement and also show how england has become such. . great britain. (_a_) describe the foreign trade of great britain. (_b_) describe the steps taken by liverpool, manchester, and glasgow to improve their natural facilities for external trade. . france. (_a_) describe the conditions which ( ) conduce toward, and ( ) militate against, france's being a great commercial nation. (_b_) give an account of the distinctive manufactures of france. . germany. (_a_) give an account of what germany has accomplished in technical education. (_b_) compare germany and france as commercial nations. (_c_) give a brief account of germany's foreign trade. . spain and italy. (_a_) why are spain, italy, and turkey sometimes called "the three decadent nations of europe"? (_b_) give some account of spain's foreign trade. (_c_) give an account of the conditions that militate against italy's prosperity as a trading nation. . russia. (_a_) describe the social condition of the russian people. (_b_) what are the "artels" of russia? (_c_) describe russia's export trade. . india. (_a_) describe the present condition of the manufactures of india. (_b_) give a brief account of india's trade--( ) external, ( ) internal. . china. (_a_) give an account of china's size, population, and trade resources. (_b_) give an account of china's present foreign trade. (_c_) give an account of the trade possibilities of china, and show in what manner an increase of the foreign trade of china is most likely first to occur. . japan. (_a_) describe the transformation which in recent times has been witnessed in the japanese nation. (_b_) describe japan's manufactures. (_c_) show in what respects an increase in the foreign trade of japan is presently possible. _part ii_ . africa. (_a_) describe the "partition of africa." (_b_) describe more particularly great britain's possessions in africa. (_c_) describe south africa's mineral wealth. . australia. (_a_) describe australia's "peculiarities." (_b_) enumerate the political divisions of australia, and for each describe briefly ( ) its climate, ( ) its resources and trade. . south america. (_a_) describe the social and political condition of the various peoples of south america. (_b_) describe the agricultural resources and export trade of argentina. (_c_) describe ( ) the resources, and ( ) the export and import trade, of brazil. . canada. (_a_) describe canada's resources ( ) in forest wealth, ( ) in minerals, ( ) in fisheries. (_b_) describe canada's agricultural trade. (_c_) describe canada's trade with the united states. . the united states. (_a_) describe the export trade of the united states. (_b_) compare our export trade with that of great britain. (_c_) compare our import trade with that of great britain. . the united states. (_a_) describe our cotton production and our cotton export trade. (_b_) describe briefly our export trade in "breadstuffs." (_c_) describe briefly our export trade in "provisions" and "animals." finance, trade, and transportation[ ] i. national and state banks origin of banking institutions [illustration: the bank of england, showing the threadneedle street entrance.] the world has had its bankers and money-changers for thousands of years. babylonian tablets have been found which record banking transactions which took place in the reign of nebuchadnezzar. modern banking institutions, however, had their origin in the twelfth century. the first institution of this character in europe was the bank of venice, founded a. d. . it was based upon a forced loan of the republic. funds deposited in it could not be withdrawn, but were transferable on the books at the pleasure of the owners. the bank of genoa was founded in , and for many years was one of the principal banks of europe. it was the first to issue circulating notes; these were negotiable only by indorsement--that is to say, they were not made payable to bearer. this was a long step in advance of the earlier system of deposit transfers which was also employed by this bank. the bank of amsterdam, established in , was the earliest considerable institution of the kind which looked to the promotion of commerce. the bank of hamburg, established in , was a bank of deposit and circulation based upon fine silver bars. the deposits were confined to silver. the bank of england is more than years old and is to-day acknowledged to be the greatest financial institution in the world. nearly all the paper money of england is issued by this bank. this currency is based partly upon securities and partly upon deposits of coin. there are three or four banks in the united states more than one hundred years old. in robert morris, then superintendent of finance, submitted to congress a plan for the establishment of the bank of north america at philadelphia. in the state of massachusetts incorporated the massachusetts bank. the bank of new york was chartered in . footnote: [ ] suggestions as to method of study . read the lessons as printed very carefully. the aim will be to give fundamental knowledge as to the organisation and conduct of modern business. . books will not be necessary. the student, however, who wishes to make a more thorough study of the national banking system will find excellent chapters on the subject in "carroll's principles and practice of finance" (new york: putnams) and "white's money and banking" (boston: ginn & co.). . take up the papers of the course paragraph by paragraph and ask yourself the reason why each is introduced. discuss with your friends the advantages or disadvantages of particular requirements. our national banking system the national banking system of the united states was established by an act of congress in , revised in , and amended by later legislation. the great advantage of the system, it is said, is the feature of uniformity, the fact that it brings the banking business of the whole united states under one authority and under the supervision of one set of administrative officers. the note-issuing department is subordinate in its public usefulness to the facilities afforded by banks and clearing-houses for the interchange of credits. the essential features of national banks are briefly set forth as follows: . there is a bureau of the treasury department having charge of all matters relating to national banks, the chief officer of which is the comptroller of the currency. . any number of persons, not less than five, may form an association for banking purposes, to continue not more than twenty years, but renewable for twenty years with the approval of the comptroller. . the powers of the bank are limited to the discounting of promissory notes, drafts, bills of exchange, and other evidences of debt; receiving deposits, dealing in exchange, coin, and bullion, loaning money on personal security, and issuing circulating notes. it cannot hold real estate except such as may be necessary for the transaction of its business, or such as may have been taken as security for debts previously contracted in good faith. . there can be no national banks anywhere of less capital than $ , , and these small ones are restricted to places of not more than inhabitants. in cities of more than and less than , inhabitants there can be no bank of less than $ , capital, and in cities of , inhabitants or more none of less than $ , . one half of the capital must be paid in before the bank can begin business and the remainder must be paid in monthly instalments of at least ten per cent. each. . shareholders are liable for the debts of the bank to an amount equal to the par value of their shares in addition to the amount invested therein. . each bank having a capital exceeding $ , must deposit in the treasury of the united states registered interest-bearing bonds to an amount not less than $ , . those having a capital of $ , or less must deposit bonds equal to one fourth of their capital stock. each bank may issue circulating notes to the amount of ninety per cent. of the market value of the bonds deposited by it, but not exceeding ninety per cent. of the par value of the same, and not exceeding ninety per cent. of the paid-in capital of the bank; but no bank is compelled to issue circulating notes. no bank-notes shall be issued smaller than $ . the notes are receivable at par for all dues to the united states except duties on imports, and are payable for all debts owing by the united states within the united states except interest on the public debt and in redemption of the national currency. . every bank in certain designated cities, called reserve cities, must keep a reserve of lawful money equal to twenty five per cent. of its deposits. all other banks must keep a like reserve of fifteen per cent., but three fifths of the said fifteen per cent. may consist of balances on deposit in banks approved by the comptroller in the reserve cities. . each bank must keep on deposit in the treasury of the united states lawful money equal to five per cent. of its circulation as a fund for redeeming the same. this five per cent. may be counted as part of its lawful reserve. this does not relieve banks from the duty of redeeming their notes at their own counters on demand. . one tenth of the net profits must be carried to the surplus fund until it is equal to twenty per cent. of the capital. . a bank must not lend more than one tenth of its capital to one person, corporation or firm, directly or indirectly, nor lend money on the security of its own shares, nor be the purchaser or holder of its own shares unless taken as security for a debt previously contracted in good faith, and if so taken they must be sold within six months under penalty of being put in liquidation. . each bank must make to the comptroller not less than five reports each year, showing its condition at times to be designated by him, and he may call for special reports from any particular bank whenever he chooses to do so. . each bank must pay to the treasurer of the united states a tax equal to one per cent. per annum on the average amount of its notes in circulation. the shares are liable to taxation by the states in which they are situated at the same rate as other moneyed capital owned by the citizens of such states. . any gain arising from lost and destroyed notes inures to the benefit of the united states. . the comptroller has the absolute appointment of all receivers and fixes their compensation. all moneys realised from the assets are paid into the treasury to the credit of the comptroller, and all dividends are paid out by him. . over-certification of cheques is strictly prohibited, rendering officers or clerks liable to imprisonment. . national bank directors are by law individually liable for the full amount of losses resulting from violations of the national banking laws. state banks upon the establishment of the national banking system the greater number of the banks incorporated under the laws of the several states were organised as national banks. with others, however, the rights of issue did not outweigh some inconveniences of the national system, and as a result there is now an important class of banks, and loan and trust companies, organised under state legislation and carrying on a deposit and loan business. the regulations under which they work are necessarily diverse, and the amount of public supervision over them varies in different states. the state banks in existence when the national banking system was organised were obliged to retire their note circulation, owing to the fact that the government imposed a tax of ten per cent. on their circulation. the object of the tax was to secure the retirement of the state bank-notes to make room for the circulation of the national banks. the internal mechanism of state banks differs but slightly from that of national banks. ii. savings banks and trust companies savings banks nearly $ , , , is deposited in the savings banks of the united states. this large sum represents the savings of about , , people. the primary idea of a savings bank and of the post-office and other forms of saving institutions in foreign countries is to encourage thrift among the masses of the people. the older savings banks, especially those in the eastern states, have no capital stock. that is to say, they are mutual in their form of organisation. their capital is the accumulated deposits of a large number of people. the depositors are the owners. when taxes and other expenses are paid and a proper reserve set aside, the remaining profits go in the form of interest to the depositors. many of the savings banks in the western states are capitalised as are other financial institutions, and on the pacific coast they have capital stock or its equivalent in the form of a reserve fund in which the majority of the depositors are not interested otherwise than so far as it affords security for their deposits. as these banks are the custodians of the surplus savings of large numbers of people the laws of the several states have hedged them about with many safeguards, not only for the protection of the depositors but of the institutions themselves. it is eminently right and proper that the state, through its bank commissioners or otherwise, should so far supervise the operations of savings banks as to see that they perform their part of their contract with depositors. safety, at best, is relative only; there is no absolute safety for the twenty-dollar piece a man has in his pocket, whether he is on the street, at his office, or by his own fireside. we are reminded that 'riches take to themselves wings' and that 'thieves break through and steal.' no savings bank can keep money on hand or deposit it or loan it with absolute safety. all is comparative. it is a peculiarity of money that each dollar requires watching; general supervision is insufficient; hence it is that the safety of moneyed institutions depends upon the capacity and honesty of those in control, and not upon adherence to arbitrary rules. no set of rules can be adopted that will bind dishonest men nor that will compensate for want of experience and ability of honest ones. there is really no conflict between commercial and savings banks. in fact, a large number of the commercial banks of a country allow interest upon average balances and standing deposits in the same manner as savings banks. primarily the savings bank creates wealth, while the commercial bank handles it; the savings banks are creative, while the commercial banks are administrative. the aim of the savings bank is to gather money and invest it safely and thus bring profit to the depositor; the aim of the commercial bank is to lend money at fixed charges and thus bring profit to the institution. the former opens its doors to savers, the latter to borrowers. one serves by receiving and keeping and the other by lending. the savings bank aims at making men savers as well as producers. it offers the aid of the strong, who can manage well, to the weak and inexperienced. if the , , depositors of savings in the united states were to hide away their own savings nearly $ , , , would be withdrawn from circulation. the savings bank invests its money. its managers are as a rule intelligent men, competent to make safe investments in solid securities. the best savings banks are conservative and do not encourage speculation. the rules and regulations of savings banks differ largely. in some institutions deposits of a dime at a time are accepted; in others a dollar is the limit. deposits usually begin to draw interest on the first day of each quarter, but they are entitled to it only if they remain until the end of the half-year. thus money deposited on the st of january is entitled to six months' interest on the st of july, though it is not entitled to any interest if withdrawn in june. some few banks allow interest to begin on the st of each month. most savings banks do not permit money to be withdrawn short of thirty days' notice. students of this course who are interested in securing definite information upon this subject regarding any particular bank should apply to that bank for a set of its rules and regulations for the information of depositors. trust companies there has grown up in this country a class of financial institutions which take a sort of middle ground between the commercial bank and the savings bank, so far as their service to the public is concerned. these are what are known as trust companies. national banks are prohibited by law from making loans on real estate, and though state banks are not hedged in this way, as a matter of good banking they usually avoid loans of this character. the policy of commercial banks is to make a great many comparatively small loans on short-time paper, while that of the trust company is to make large loans on long-time securities. the deposits of trust companies consist largely of undisturbed sums such as might be set aside by administrators, executors, trustees, committees, societies, or from private estates. they are such as are not likely to fluctuate greatly in amount. from the very nature of their deposits trust companies find it convenient and profitable to make larger loans and at longer periods than do ordinary banks. trust companies not only receive moneys upon deposit subject to cheque and for savings, and loan money on commercial paper and other securities, as do commercial banks; but they also act as agents, trustees, executors, administrators, assignees, receivers for individual properties, and corporations. they frequently assist as promoters or reorganisers of corporations and in the sale of stocks, bonds, and securities. they act also as agents for the payment of obligations maturing at future dates, such as the premiums on insurance, interest on mortgages and bonds, etc. trust companies are organised under the laws of the state in which they exist and are usually subject to all the supervision required in the case of state banks. iii. corporations and stock companies[ ] corporations stock companies are usually referred to as corporations, though all corporations are not stock companies. a corporation is a body consisting usually of several persons empowered by law to act as one individual. there are two principal classes--( ) public corporations and ( ) private corporations. public corporations are not stock companies; private corporations usually are. public corporations are created for the public interest, such as cities, towns, universities, hospitals, etc.; private corporations, such as railways, banks, manufacturing companies, etc., are created usually for the profit of the members. corporate bodies whose members at discretion fill by appointment all vacancies occurring in their membership are sometimes called close corporations. power to be a corporation is a franchise in the united states the power to be a corporation is a franchise which can only exist through the legislature. there are two distinct methods in which corporations may be called into being: first, by a specific grant of the franchise to the members, and, second, by a general grant which becomes operative in favour of particular persons when they organise for the purpose of availing themselves of its provisions. when the specific grant is made it is called a charter. in the case of private corporations the charter must be accepted by the members, since corporate powers cannot be forced upon them against their will; but the charter is sufficiently accepted by their acting under it. when special charters are not granted individuals may voluntarily associate, and by complying with the provisions of certain state laws may take to themselves corporate powers. in some of the states private corporations are not suffered to be created otherwise than under general laws, and in others public corporations are created in the same way. footnote: [ ] for a preliminary treatment of the subject of this lesson the student is referred to part i. of this book, entitled "general business information," especially lessons xii. and xv. a corporation must have a name a corporation must have a name by which it shall be known in law and in the transaction of its business. the name is given to it in its charter or articles of association and must be adhered to. the necessity for the use of the corporate name in the transaction of business follows from the fact that in corporate affairs the law knows the corporation as an individual and takes no notice of the constituent members. corporate interests in municipal corporations in the united states the members are the citizens; the number is indefinite; one ceases to be a member when he moves from the town or city, while every new resident becomes a member when by law he becomes entitled to the privileges of local citizenship. in corporations created for the emolument of their members interests are represented by shares, which may be transferred by their owners, and the assignee becomes entitled to the rights of membership when the transfer is recorded; and if the owner dies his personal representative becomes a member for the time being. in such corporations also shares may be sold in satisfaction of debts against their owners. advantages of corporations and joint-stock companies over partnerships the following are given as a few of the advantages which are claimed for corporations and joint-stock companies over partnerships: . union of capital without the active service of the investors. . better facilities for borrowing. it is a common thing for a partnership to be changed to a stock company for the express purpose of raising money by the issue of bonds or stock. . limited agency of directors. a partner may pledge and sell the partnership property, may buy goods on account of the partnership, may borrow money and contract debts in the name and on the account of the partnership. directors of a joint-stock company must act in accordance with the provisions of the by-laws of the company. . the continuous existence of a company. . new shareholders are admitted more easily than new partners. . a retiring partner is still liable for existing debts. a shareholder may retire absolutely by selling his stock and having it legally transferred. iv. borrowing and loaning money[ ] the money market money, like other articles of commerce, has for hundreds of years had its fields for the production of the raw products, its manufacturing establishments, its markets and exchange centres, its sellers and buyers, its wholesale and retail dealers, and its brokers and commission merchants. out of this trade in actual coin has grown a trade in paper notes, which are really only promises to pay coin, and out of this latter trade has grown up during recent years a still further enormous trade in securities representing all kinds of property. very often these securities are based solely upon the credit of the names attached to them, so that our modern system of borrowing and loaning money is really a system of borrowing and loaning credit. when our government borrows $ , , , as it did a few years ago, it gives "its bond" that the money will be paid. when states, or cities, or railroads, or other corporations borrow money they issue bonds guaranteeing payment at a particular time. when an individual borrows money he gives his "bond" in the form of a promissory note. these bonds pass from hand to hand and have a fairly constant value in the money market. they really represent the money trade to a much larger extent than does actual coin, so that the borrowing or loaning of money really means, to a very large extent, simply the borrowing or loaning of credit. if we borrow a $ gold piece we borrow money; if we borrow a $ bill or an indorser's name for the back of our note we simply borrow credit--in the one instance the credit of the united states and in the other the credit of the man who indorses our paper. footnote: [ ] the student is also referred to part i. ("general business information"), lesson ix. borrowing from banks it is the business of a bank to loan money to responsible persons within reasonable limits. the regular customer of the bank is entitled to and will receive the first consideration if the demand is larger than the bank can safely meet. a business man should not hesitate, when occasion requires, to offer his bank any paper he may want discounted, if in his opinion it is good, nor should he be offended if his banker refuses to take it even without giving reasons. a portion of the loans of many banks consists of investments in solid bonds, but the bulk of the loans of banks is made on commercial paper. time and demand loans are made upon collaterals of many descriptions. the larger banks loan on an average from $ , to $ , a day. banks _discount_ paper for their depositors--and simply term the operation discounting; but when they go outside of their line of depositors in making investments in time paper they call it _buying_ paper. they generally buy from private bankers and note brokers. national banks are prohibited from loaning over ten per cent. of their capital to any one individual or corporation except upon paper representing actually existing merchandise. what are collaterals? if a business man borrow $ from a bank on his note and give ten shares of stock to the bank, to be held by it simply as security, the stock thus given would be termed collateral. these collaterals are not the bank's property and the bank is responsible for their safe keeping. if coupons mature while bonds are being held as collateral, the owners are usually allowed to collect the amount for which they sell. sometimes one note is given as collateral security for another which is discounted. accommodation paper notes and acceptances that are made in settlement of genuine business transactions come under the head of regular, legitimate business paper. an accommodation note or acceptance is one which is signed or indorsed or accepted simply as an accommodation and not in settlement of an account or in payment of an indebtedness. with banks accommodation paper has a deservedly hard reputation. however, there are all grades and shades of accommodation paper, though it represents no actual business transaction between the parties to it and rests upon no other foundation than that of mutual agreement. no contract is good without a consideration, but this is only true between the original parties to a note. the third party, or innocent receiver or holder of a note, has a good title and can recover its value even though it was originally given without a valuable consideration. an innocent holder of a note which had been originally lost or stolen has a good title to it if he received it for value, the law justly protecting such a holder against the fault or carelessness of others. note brokers merchants sell a great many of their notes in the open market--that is, to note brokers. the banks buy these notes from the note brokers. the assistance of the broker who handles commercial paper is a necessary and valuable aid to the purchasing bank. fully three fourths of all the paper purchased by banks in large cities is purchased upon the simple recommendation of the note brokers. as a rule these brokers simply transfer the paper without guaranteeing by indorsement its payment. notes bought by banks from note brokers without their indorsement are held to be guaranteed by them to be all right in all points except that which covers the question of whether they will be paid or not. the bank uses its best judgment in taking the risk. if the note dealer in selling notes to a bank makes what he believes to be fair and honest representations regarding any particular paper--statements of such a straightforward type that upon them no charge of false pretenses can be made to rest--he simply guarantees the note genuine as to names, date, amount, etc., and that in selling it he conveys a good title to the paper. as business men, however, they are very cautious and are exceedingly anxious that the paper they sell shall be paid, and as a rule they make good any losses which grow out of apparent misrepresentations on their part. bankers' rates for loans in loaning money on demand, when it is strictly understood between bank and borrower that the money so advanced is positively minute money--money returnable at any minute when the bank calls for it--banks usually charge low rates of interest. when interest rates are high bankers prefer to deal in long-time paper. this general rule is reversed when the situation is reversed. bankers aim also to scatter and locate their maturities so that as the seasons roll around they will not have very large amounts maturing at one time and very small amounts at another. they plan also to be "in funds" at those seasons when there is always a large and profitable demand for money. for instance, in the centres of the cotton-manufacturing interest the banks count on a large demand for money between october and january, when the bulk of the purchases to supply the mills are made. again, among those who operate and deal in wool there is an active demand for money in the wool-clip in the spring months. the wheat and corn crops are autumn consumers of money. midwinter and midsummer in the north are usually periods of comparative stagnation in the money market. all these things affect rates, and the successful banker is he who from observation and large experience shows the most skill in timing his money supply. v. collaterals and securities two distinct classes of securities there are two distinct classes of mortgage securities--one class based upon the actual value and the other upon the earning value of the property. when a man lends money upon a dwelling-house he bases his estimate of security upon ( ) the cost of the property, ( ) its location, ( ) the average value of adjoining properties, and ( ) the general character of the locality; that is to say, the value of the property is the basis of the security. on the other hand, the lender of money upon railway mortgages, for instance (that is, the buyer of securities known as railway mortgages), considers the general earnings of the road rather than the cost of building and equipping the road as the correct basis upon which to estimate the value of the security. these two classes of securities differ in other particulars. the value of the mortgage upon ordinary real estate is constant and the security itself is not so likely to change ownership, while the value of the railway mortgage may vary with the success or failure of the road, and the security itself is in the market constantly as a speculative property. the whole property of a railroad company, considered simply as real estate and equipment, is usually worth but a small fraction of the amount for which it is mortgaged. the creditors, as a rule, depend for the security of their money upon the business of the company. we have already learned that collaterals are mortgages, stocks, bonds, etc., placed temporarily in the hands of lenders as additional security for money borrowed. the student will note, further, that the borrowing value of such securities depends very largely upon the character of the property represented. mortgages as securities a mortgage is a conveyance of property for the purpose of securing debt, with the condition that if the debt is paid the conveyance is to become void. a mortgage in form is really a deed of the land, with a special clause stating that the grant is not absolute but only for the security of the debt. it is usual for the debtor at the time of executing the mortgage to execute also a bond or promissory note in favour of the creditor for the amount of the debt. this is called a mortgage note. mortgages are frequently given in cases where there is a debt existing to secure or indemnify the mortgagee against some liability which he may possibly incur on behalf or for the benefit of the mortgagor. for instance, when a man has indorsed another's note for the latter's accommodation or gone on his bond as surety the latter may execute to the former a mortgage of indemnity. the power of a corporation to mortgage its property is usually regulated by its character or by the general law under which it is organised. all mortgages must be recorded in the office of the register of deeds for the county in which the property is located. the object of recording is to give notice of the existence of the mortgage to any one who might wish to purchase the land or to take a mortgage upon it. there may be several mortgages upon the same property. the first mortgagee is entitled to be paid in full first, then the second, and so on. the mortgagee may use his mortgage as security for loans or he may assign it as he pleases. when the requirements of a mortgage are not met the holder has under certain conditions the right to foreclose--that is, to advertise the property for sale and, within a time fixed by law, to sell it to satisfy the mortgage. it is usual for the mortgagor to insure the property for the benefit of the mortgagee. although the terms of corporation mortgages are similar to those on real estate such as is represented by dwelling-houses, the commercial conditions make it inconvenient or impossible to foreclose and sell such properties. to stop all business of a railway or to shut down the work of a manufacturing concern would not only result in injury to the public but would reduce largely the earning value of the property. to overcome this difficulty where an active concern is financially embarrassed, the court appoints a receiver, who is responsible for the proper conduct of the business until a satisfactory reorganisation or sale is accomplished. mortgages upon improved property, if properly graduated in amount, should be safe and profitable investments. the buyer, however, must exercise great care and good judgment. should there be collusion between the loaning agent and the land-owner, the money advanced may be largely in excess of the actual property value. villages with less than a dozen houses are often the sites of investment companies doing business under pretentious names and offering mortgage investments at interest rates which by the local conditions are impossible. one of the devices of these enterprising companies is to offer their own guarantees as to both principal and interest of all mortgages negotiated by them. the investor should be sure of two things: ( ) the safety of the principal, and ( ) regularity in the payment of the interest. there is great danger of default from causes not anticipated by the mortgagor and over which he has no control. stocks as securities to make a profitable investment in stocks the buyer must anticipate the future. a mill that may be working day and night this year may be obliged to shut down entirely next year. a business which is open to public competition must take its chances on its future success. the greater the earnings, the more certain the competition. many corporations owning monopolies by virtue of patent rights have made large fortunes, but there is always the possibility of new discovery. electricity has succeeded gas; the telephone is competing with the telegraph; the trolley is cutting into the profits of railways. a good thing in stocks to-day does not necessarily mean a good thing next year. railroad stocks are of such varied character that it is impossible here to make more than general statements. many of our railroad stocks bring prices far above par and pay liberal interest on investments. some of them are so profitable that they are really not on the market and cannot easily be bought. others represent roads loaded down with mortgages and other obligations so heavy as to make the stock really a liability rather than a resource to its owner. the stock quotations represent in a general way the comparative value of these securities. of recent stock electric-railway stock is the most popular and in many instances the most profitable. the introduction of electric power has reduced the working expense one half and in most instances has doubled the traffic without any reduction in fares. the buyer should make sure that the road is in a busy community able to sustain it, that its franchise will protect it from dangerous competition, and that the securities have been legally issued. substitution securities there have recently been formed several large companies whose business it is to issue bonds on the security of other bonds. the idea is similar to that of real-estate title insurance. such companies are supposed to have superior facilities for investigating securities. they purchase those which they consider good and at the best prices possible. these they deposit with some trust company or banking institution. with these bonds which they buy as their original property they issue new bonds of their own, which they sell to the public and which they guarantee. the differences in prices and in interest make up their profits. loans and investments with the growth of wealth we find increasing numbers of persons who want to invest their means in good securities. to do this successfully and safely is a very difficult question. it is even more difficult to keep money profitably employed than to make it. changes and innovations are of continual occurrence. not only are new securities constantly coming upon the market, but new subjects as a basis of their production are industriously sought after. every newly discovered force or process in mechanics means the appearance of another detachment of paper securities. the war of the rebellion popularised the _coupon bond_, in consequence of its adoption by the government, and made it the favourite form of investment paper. railroads and other corporations soon availed themselves of the confidence which that species of paper inspired, and states, cities, and counties were soon flooding the country with obligations carrying long coupon attachments. many persons have purchased and paid good prices for mortgage coupon bonds, giving them no control over their security, who would have rejected share certificates standing for an equal interest in the property pledged and giving them the right to participate in its management, with the possibility of a greater return for their money. many of the states through careless legislation have permitted corporations to decide for themselves the amounts of obligations they might put out, and the privilege has been very much abused. we now have stocks and bonds upon the market representing nearly all conceivable kinds of property--telegraph and telephone companies, mining companies, cattle ranches, grain farms, water-works, canals, bridges, oil- and gas-wells, electric lighting, trolley companies, factories and mills, patent rights, steamboat lines, apartment-houses, etc. not only are properties of many kinds used to issue bonds upon, but many kinds of bonds are often issued upon the same properties. one issue of bonds is sometimes made the basis of other issues. some one has said that there never was a time in the history of the world when it was so easy to invest money--and to lose it. of the securities that are offered with first-class recommendations it is probable that about one third are actually good, one third have some value, and one third are practically worthless. in making investments the first and main thing to be studied is safety. never buy a security of any kind without having read it. do not buy what are commonly known as _cheap securities_. do not rely solely upon the advice of a broker; he may have personal interest to serve. by far the greater number of losses to investors have been in securities purchased exclusively on the recommendation of interested commission men. it is a mistake to give preference to _listed_ securities--that is, those reported on the stock-exchange lists. stocks are too often listed simply for speculative purposes, and the price represents not so much the value of the property as the pitch of the speculation at the time. securities in the long run must stand upon their merits. as a rule the best time for an experienced investor to buy is when others are unloading. vi. cheques, drafts, and bills of exchange[ ] bank cheques [illustration: showing cheque raised from $ . to $ . .] a cheque is an order for money, drawn by one who has funds in the bank, payable on demand. banks provide blank cheques for their customers and it is a very simple matter to fill them out properly. in writing in the amount begin at the extreme left of the line. the illustrations given here show a poorly-written cheque and a copy of the same cheque after it has been "raised." the original cheque was for $ . and shows very careless arrangement. it was a very easy matter for the fraudulent receiver to change the "seven" to "seventy" and to add a cipher to the amount in figures. the running line was written in on the raised cheque to deceive the bank. in this case mr. carter and not the bank must suffer the loss. mr. carter cannot hold the bank responsible for his carelessness. drawers of cheques should exercise the greatest care in writing in the amount to prevent changes or additions. draw a running line, thus: ~~~_nine_~~~ before and after the amount written in words. if the words are commenced close to the left margin the running line will be necessary only at the right. the signature should be in your usual style familiar to the paying teller. the plain, freely written signature is the most difficult to forge. usually cheques are drawn "to order." the words "pay to the order of john brown" mean that the money is to be paid to john brown or to any person he "orders" it paid to. by indorsing the cheque in blank (see indorsements) he makes it payable to bearer. if a cheque is drawn "pay to bearer" any person--that is, the bearer--can collect it. the paying teller may ask the person cashing the cheque to write his name on the back, simply to have it for reference. safety devices to prevent the fraudulent alteration of cheques are of almost endless variety, but there has not been a preventive against forgery and alterations yet invented, which has not been successfully overcome by swindlers. a machine for punching out the figures is in common use, but the swindler has successfully filled in the holes with paper-pulp and punched other figures to suit his purposes. the safest cheques are those carefully written upon what is known as safety paper. footnote: [ ] a part of the matter of this lesson has already appeared in part i. of this book ("general business information"), but it is here repeated to preserve the connection. identification when cheques are paid the banks of this country make it a rule not to cash a cheque that is drawn payable to order unless the person presenting the cheque is known at the bank--or unless he satisfies the paying teller that he is really the person to whom the money is to be paid. it must be remembered, however, that a cheque drawn to order and then indorsed in blank by the payee is really payable to bearer, and if the paying teller is satisfied that the payee's signature is genuine he probably will not hesitate to cash the cheque. in england all cheques apparently properly indorsed are paid without identification. in drawing a cheque in favour of a person not likely to be well known in banking circles, write his address or his business after his name on the face of the cheque. for instance, if you should send a cheque to john smith, boston, it may possibly fall into the hands of the wrong john smith; but if you write the cheque in favour of "john smith, tremont street, boston," it is more than likely that the right person will collect it. if you wish to get a cheque cashed where you are unknown, and it is not convenient for a friend who has an account at the bank to go with you for the purpose of identification, ask him to place his signature on the back of your cheque and it is likely you will not have trouble in getting it cashed. by placing his signature on the back of the cheque he guarantees the bank against loss. a bank is responsible for the signatures of its depositors, but it cannot be supposed to know the signatures of indorsers. the reliable identifier is in reality the person who is responsible. cheques for special purposes if you wish to draw money from your own account the most approved form of cheque is written "pay to the order of _cash_." this differs from a cheque drawn to "_bearer_." the paying teller expects to see you yourself or some one well known to him as your representative when you write "_cash_." if you write "pay to the order of (your own name)" you will be required to indorse your own cheque before you can get it cashed. if you wish to draw a cheque to pay a note write "pay to the order of _bills payable_." if you wish to write a cheque to draw money for wages write "pay to the order of _pay-roll_." if you wish to write a cheque to pay for a draft which you are buying write "pay to the order of _n. y. draft and exchange_," or whatever the circumstances may call for. cheque indorsements in indorsing a cheque remember that the left end of the face is the top when you turn it over. write your name as you are accustomed to write it. if you are depositing the cheque, a blank indorsement--that is, an indorsement with simply your name--will answer; or you can write or stamp "pay to the order of (the bank in which you deposit)" and follow with your signature. either indorsement makes the cheque the absolute property of the bank. if you wish to transfer the cheque by indorsement to some particular person write "pay to the order of (naming the person)" and follow with your own signature; or you may simply write your name on the back. the latter form would be considered unwise if you were sending the cheque through the mail, for the reason that a blank indorsement makes the cheque payable to bearer. an authorised stamped indorsement is as good as a written one. whether such indorsements are accepted or not depends upon the regulations of the clearing-house in the particular city in which they are offered for deposit. the numbering of cheques [illustration: a certified cheque.] cheques should be numbered, so that each can be accounted for. the numbers are for your convenience and not for the convenience of the bank. it is important that your cheque-book be correctly kept, so that you can tell at any time how much money you have in the bank. at the end of each month your small bank-book should be left at the bank, so that the bookkeeper may balance it. it may happen that your bank-book will show a larger balance than your cheque-book. you will understand by this, if both have been correctly kept, that there are cheques outstanding which have not yet been presented at your bank for payment. you can find out which these are by checking over the paid cheques that have been returned to you with your bank-book. the unpaid cheques may be presented at any time, so that your actual balance is that shown by your cheque-book. cheques should be presented for payment as soon after date as possible. certified cheques [illustration: a bank draft.] if you wish to use your cheque to pay a note due at some other bank than your own, or in buying real estate or stocks or bonds you may find it necessary to get your cheque certified. this is done by an officer of the bank, who writes or stamps across the face of the cheque the words "certified" or "good when properly indorsed" and signs his name. (see illustration, p. .) the amount will immediately be deducted from your account, and the bank by guaranteeing your cheque becomes responsible for its payment. if you should get a cheque certified and then not use it deposit it in your bank, otherwise your account will be short the amount for which it is drawn. bank drafts [illustration: a bill of exchange.] nearly all banks keep money on deposit in other banks in large commercial centres--for instance, in new york or chicago. they call these banks their new york or chicago correspondents. a bank draft is simply the bank's cheque drawing upon its deposit with some other bank. (see illustration, p. .) banks sell these cheques to their customers, and merchants make large use of them in making remittances from one part of the country to another. these drafts or cashiers' cheques, as they are sometimes called, pass as cash anywhere within a reasonable distance of the money centre upon which they are drawn. bills of exchange a draft on a foreign bank is commonly called a bill of exchange. bills of exchange are usually drawn in duplicate and sometimes in triplicate. (see illustration, p. .) only one bill is collected, the others simply serving in the meantime as receipts. these bills are used to pay accounts in foreign countries, just as drafts on new york or chicago are used to pay indebtedness at home. vii. the clearing-house system[ ] the clearing-house system a modern institution the clearing-house is a comparatively modern institution, the edinburgh bankers claiming the credit of establishing the first one. the earliest clearing-house of whose transactions we have any record is that of london, founded about . for fully seventy-five years the london clearing-house and that of edinburgh were the only organisations of the kind known to exist. the monetary systems of most european countries centring around one great national bank located at the capital of each, found in this a means of effecting mercantile settlements. the new york clearing-house was established in , from which date the american clearing-house system has grown to enormous proportions. no country in the world has so large a need of clearing-houses, for in no country is the bank cheque so generally used in the payment of ordinary accounts. transfer of credits in clearing-houses the purpose of the clearing-house is largely to facilitate the transfer of credits. this is explained by the following illustration: suppose that brown and smith keep their money on deposit in bank a and that brown gives smith his cheque for $ and smith deposits it in the bank to his (smith's) credit. the officers of the bank will subtract $ from brown's account and add the same amount to smith's account. no actual money need be touched. it is simply a matter of arithmetic and bookkeeping. credit has been transferred from brown to smith. if all the people of a city kept their money in one central bank there would be no need of a clearing-house. the bookkeepers of the bank would be kept busy transferring credits from one customer to another on the books of the bank. but if brown keeps his money in bank a and smith keeps his money in bank b it is necessary that bank a and bank b come together somewhere to conveniently make the credit transfer, and this is practically what they do in the clearing-house. then, again, if bank a should be located in san francisco and bank b in boston, the difficulty of transfer of credit is greatly increased. through the agency of clearing-houses located in money centres and of co-operation between banks at distant points, the transfer of credits between business men located anywhere in the united states, or for that matter in the world, has become a comparatively simple matter. if it were not for the agency of this system it would be utterly impossible for a great city to do the business of a single day. all the actual money in all the banks and stores and safes and pockets of new york city to-day would fall far short if used to pay to-day's transactions. it is estimated that the cash transactions of a single day are fifty times greater than the actual cash changing hands in one day. so that the great bulk of the business of the country, both cash and credit, is done on a system of credit transfers made possible wholly through the agency of our banking system. footnote: [ ] see also lesson viii. of part i. of this book ("general business information"). organisation of clearing-houses each large city has its clearing-house system. to establish a clearing-house a number of banks associate themselves together, under certain regulations, for the purpose of exchanging daily at one time and place the cheques and other commercial paper which they hold against each other. the usual officers are a president, a secretary, a treasurer, and manager, and a clearing-house committee. the cheques, etc., which the banks take to the clearing-house are called the clearing-house exchanges, and the total amount of paper exchanged is called the day's clearings. those banks which bring a less amount than they take away are obliged to make the difference good in cash or its equivalent within a fixed time upon the same day. suppose, for illustration, that a clearing-house association consists of five banks--a, b, c, d, and e--and that bank a took to the clearing-house cheques against b, c, d, and e amounting to $ , , and that b, c, d, and e took to the clearing-house cheques against a amounting to $ , . then a is on this particular day a debtor bank, and owes the clearing-house, or the other banks through the clearing-house, $ . the payment of the balances by the debtor banks and the receipt of the balances by the creditor banks complete each day's transactions. as the total amount brought to the clearing-house is always the same as the amount taken away, so the balances due from the debtor banks must be exactly equal to the amounts due the creditor banks. the clearings in new york city in one day amount to from $ , , to $ , , , and the actual cash handled, if any, need only be for the actual debit balances. usually once a week (in some cities oftener) the banks of a city make to their clearing-house a report, based on daily balances, of their condition. the clearing-house establishes a fellowship among banks that has already proved in times of money panics of the greatest service to themselves and the community. payment of balances in clearing-houses clearing-house certificates are made use of in many cities for the payment of balances by debtor banks. these are issued against gold deposited with one of the associated banks. they are numbered, registered, and countersigned by the proper officer, and are used only in settlements between the banks. various methods of making settlements are in use. in some of the cities the balances are paid by drafts on new york or other money centres. the debtor bank sells some creditor bank new york exchange, and receives in return a cheque or order on the clearing-house, which when presented makes the debits and credits balance. it is estimated that the actual cash employed in new york clearings is less than one half of one per cent. of the balances. how distant banks are connected by the clearing-house system [illustration: illustrating cheque collections.] to illustrate the connection between banks at distant points let us suppose that b of haverhill, mass., who keeps his money on deposit in the first national bank of that city, sends a cheque to s of waconia, wis., in payment of a bill. s deposits the cheque in the farmers' bank of waconia and receives immediate credit for it in his bank-book, just the same as though the cheque were drawn upon the same or a near-by bank. the farmers' bank deposits the cheque, with other cheques, in, say, the first national bank of minneapolis, or it may send the cheque to its correspondent in new york--say the ninth national--asking to be credited with the amount. for sake of illustration, suppose that the cheque is deposited with the first national of minneapolis. now, this bank has a correspondent in chicago--the commercial national--and a correspondent in new york--the national bank of the republic. if sent to the commercial national, this bank has a correspondent in boston--the eliot bank, where the cheque would be sent. now, the first national of haverhill has a correspondent in boston--the national revere bank. the eliot bank would likely take this cheque to the boston clearing-house as a charge against the revere bank. the revere bank would deduct the amount from the first national of haverhill's deposit and send the paid cheque to the haverhill bank, where at the close of the month it would be handed to b, showing on the back the indorsement of s, and stamping representing all the banks through whose hands it passed. if the farmers' bank of waconia had sent direct to its new york correspondent, the ninth national, this bank would have sent to its boston correspondent, the north national, and the cheque would have been charged up through the clearing-house against the revere bank. if the first national of minneapolis had sent direct to its new york correspondent, the national bank of the republic, this bank would have sent to its boston correspondent, the shawmut national, etc. as a rule, banks collect by whatever route seems most convenient or advantageous. it is estimated that millions of dollars are lost to the banks each year on account of the time consumed by cheques en route. viii. commercial credits and mercantile agencies how the world's trade is largely transacted upon credit it is estimated that about ninety per cent. of the world's trade is transacted upon credit. and in no country of the world are commercial credits so freely granted as in the united states. this is a land of seemingly unlimited faith in humanity, and yet a land in which hazardous speculation, extravagance, and bankruptcy have often prevailed. statistics show that about ninety-five per cent. of our merchants "fail to succeed," and yet no other country can boast of such wealth, industrial energy, and generous confidence in business integrity. while credit is not money, in that it cannot settle a debt, it must be considered a very powerful agent in the creation of capital. credit is another name for trust. the business world bases its confidence or trust in men upon their character and resources. and the extent of this trust becomes the only limitation of the business man's purchasing power. he who can show conclusively the ability and disposition to fulfil obligations, has it within his power to command the capital or merchandise of others. credit is one of the fruits of a higher civilisation and a settled condition of a country's business. it bespeaks a quality of government, too, that is not to be depreciated. the nations that are most successfully and equitably governed and show the most stable conditions of currency also show us the most extensive and efficient credit systems. it is abundantly true that these same nations have on many occasions passed through periods of great distress from failures widespread and panics severe, but it must also be borne in mind that these very bankruptcies are more often the abuse of prosperity than the product of adversity. over-confidence in men and things has resulted in speculation and precipitated bankruptcy. and if it be urged that to the undue expansion of credit is traceable the greater number of our financial disasters, it may be said with still greater force that all our impetus to industrial achievement has been and still is dependent upon the generous exercise of credit. the construction of our railroads and canals, the operation of our mines, the improvement of our great farm areas, the building of our towns and cities, and the development of our extensive manufacturing interests are all the result of the trust reposed in men and the industrial interests they represent. the importance of a high standard of credit to business men reticence on the part of business men respecting their financial position may seriously impair their credit. it is universally regarded by the intelligent business man to be good policy to make known his condition. a refusal to do so throws a suspicion and doubt upon his financial ability, and at some future time when confidence in his integrity may be essential to the very life of his business, he may find the necessary help unobtainable. an applicant for credit should be willing to prove himself worthy of it. but the keen competition among merchants eager for sales often enables the buyer to obtain credit without the necessity of giving very much evidence as to his commercial standing. since some risks must be taken merchants frequently conclude to accept an account because of its possible acceptance by some competitor. if business is to be had risks must be taken, is the theory. when former customers apply for credit the merchant is guided by the record made in previous dealings. a business man's ledger is a very valuable history of credits. it is his compass in a sea of doubt. if upon the inspection of an old account it be discovered that in former years the customer paid cash and discounted his bills, and that later his method of payment was by promissory notes, and that on several occasions he asked for special favours, such as dating bills ahead or the privilege of renewal of notes, one is able to read a certain unmistakable sign of degeneracy in the customer's credit. new orders from such a customer will bear scrutiny; and a closer attention to the present condition of the account may save the firm from some bad debts. while it is possible to-day to determine the average losses from bad debts in the various lines of business, individual risks cannot be accepted on that basis. each requires special study. if an applying customer paints his financial condition in roseate colours, let him be willing to reduce his statement to writing, and when his signature is affixed his statement is much more reliable, because he knows of the impending liability of fraud if he has misrepresented. men averse to transforming an oral statement to writing have discredited themselves immediately. men who mean to be honest may be optimistic in picturing prospects and be inclined to set an unreasonable value upon their property and extent of business. it may be easier to tell the absolute truth about one's liabilities, because they are such persistently real things; but assets have elastic qualities in many men's minds and seem capable of any extension in an emergency. buyers who impress themselves most favourably upon the business house are frank in their statements. the explicit, candid man of few words will merit consideration. the cringing or pleading kind predisposes one unfavourably. stephen girard said of one who in tears asked for a loan: "the man who cries when he comes to borrow will cry when he comes to pay." to determine the right of a buyer to credit and the safe limit of credit to be extended to him is the seller's serious problem. it is customary to request references in order to discover how other firms regard the applicant's credit. but these references may be cautious of reply. a selfish desire to retain the customer for themselves, or the higher motive of a desire to be true to the interests of both the inquirer and the customer may produce dubious or very incomplete reports. if a bank be among the references one does not place too much stress upon a very favourable reply from it, because a merchant usually learns the lesson of expediency in making a friend of his banker. and, moreover, one endeavours to reveal only the best side of his business affairs to the bank. favourable replies from several firms showing a uniform line of credit go a great way toward reaching a safe conclusion. but in these days of vast and multifarious interests there has developed, as a result of this desire for adequate knowledge respecting men's credit, an agency for the exclusive purpose of arriving at definite and reliable evidence upon financial matters; and after years of experience men have learned to depend upon these mercantile agencies as the most valuable and trustworthy assistants. mercantile agencies mercantile agencies had their origin in the system adopted by several prominent firms of keeping on record all the information obtainable relating to their customers. in "the mercantile agency of new york city" began its history, and was the forerunner of the present great agencies whose record books of credits and ratings include the names of all the business houses and corporations in this country and canada. the pioneer institution of this character in the united states was the one bearing at present the name of "r. g. dun & co.," an outgrowth of "the mercantile agency of new york city." since it has borne the name of mr. dun, who was formerly a partner with mr. douglass when the agency was known as "b. douglass & co." another popular and influential concern is the one known as "the bradstreet company," familiarly spoken of as "bradstreet's." besides these two leaders there are many others, whose reports on credits are limited to particular lines of trade. the larger agencies soon found it necessary to establish branches in all the business sections of the country. a particular field of investigation is allotted to each branch, and an interchange of information is in constant progress. [illustration: a mercantile agency inquiry form.] to be a recipient of the valuable information afforded by these agencies business men, by paying an annual fee, are enrolled as subscribers and furnished with books of ratings, as they are called. besides this book special type-written reports with elaborate details respecting a firm's credit are sent upon the request of the subscriber. the volume of information recorded in these agencies concerning any one's credit is obtained through the effort of officials of the agencies known as reporters. these men of experience, integrity, and discernment are seekers after truths. usually each reporter has a distinct line of trade assigned him for research and investigation. this brings him into intimate acquaintanceship with every trader in his particular field. he is a constant solicitor of the banker and merchant for facts. his business is not merely to gather information respecting the resources of business men, but to investigate rumours that in themselves may be detrimental to one's credit, and to disprove them where possible and sustain and support the credit of a house. too often it is supposed that the reporter is seeking evidences of weakness when in reality his business is most frequently that of discovering elements of strength. information is freely given him as he interviews men whose businesses and experiences are the depositories for a wealth of credit information. he soon becomes a confidant of the merchant himself, who not only tells him all he knows about the customers and their accounts upon his books, but his own business affairs as well. indeed, the relation becomes so very reciprocal that the reporter often furnishes information to the merchant in the interview on some matter of credit of pressing notice. in this way a corroboration of facts or the denial of a rumour may be effected. he inspects the books of the offices of public record to find the evidence of mortgages, judgments, and transfers of property, and have the same recorded on the agency's books. it is the reporter who finally has gathered the information that determines a firm's ability to have and to hold a line of credit. it is essential to the life of the agency that its reports be honest and free from any element of doubt. the public confidence in the reliability of the reports will determine the prosperity of the company. perhaps at first glance it would seem as if the system of reporting financial information was a serious discrimination against the men of smaller capital and in favour of the wealthy. but mere capital is not the only element entering into an estimate of one's ability to pay. character and reputation are powerful forces in assisting a merchant in determining credit. an agency discloses facts and not opinions. and it is within the range of possibility of any one to create and maintain his credit. capital may grow gradually but credit is sometimes established or destroyed by a single act. the facts obtained by mercantile agencies are not public property. they are given in confidence and for the sole purpose of aiding the business with respect to the propriety of granting credit. the private reports are for the eyes of the interested inquirer and not the curious. whenever some particular item of interest finds its way to an agency that would affect one's credit seriously, such as the giving of chattel mortgage or the confession of a judgment or the sale and transfer of property, it is customary to send unsolicited a special report of these facts to all subscribers on the agency's books who have ever at any time made inquiry concerning the firm. one might expect that these agencies expose themselves to risk of prosecution for libel, but since no malice is ever intended in any report circulated, and since it rarely occurs that damaging reports are sent out by these institutions unless abundantly confirmed, there is little opportunity for litigation of this sort. another field of usefulness of the mercantile agency is in the exposure of the absconding debtor and his whereabouts, and also the dishonest trader who in arranging a fraudulent failure may be striving to open many new accounts. the unusual demands for reports respecting such a one lead to careful investigation. instead of a restrictive tendency a mercantile agency promotes the expansion of credit and yet permits of proper conservatism. it opens to the trader as a market for his merchandise every new and trustworthy account. it curbs speculation, stimulates diligence in business, habituates punctuality, and develops character. when we remember that the present annual internal commerce of our country is estimated at about , , tons of merchandise carried an average distance of miles, and that this volume of trade is worth over $ , , , , we are forced to admit that the unique system of these credit agencies has done much to further and make possible this commercial prosperity. ix. bonds united states, state, and municipal bonds when a country borrows money it gives a guaranty that the money will be returned at a particular time and that interest will be paid at regular intervals at a fixed rate. this guaranty is called a bond. in actual practice, instead of borrowing the money required and then giving bonds for its return, countries usually issue the bonds first, and sell them to the highest bidder. for instance, if our government needed to borrow $ , , it would issue bonds for this amount, stating definitely the rate of interest to be paid, and call for bids. if the rate of interest were four per cent. and a buyer paid more than $ for a $ bond he would, of course, make less than four per cent. upon his investment. such bonds are absolutely safe and always marketable on account of our strong financial standing among the nations of the world. similar bonds are issued by states, cities, towns, school districts, etc. they are not mortgages in the ordinary sense, and their worth consists entirely in the ability of the issuer through its taxing power to meet the obligations incurred. municipal bonds are issued by cities and other municipalities to raise money for local improvements. bonds and certificates of stock a bond is evidence of debt, specifying the interest and stating when the principal shall be paid; a certificate of stock is evidence that the owner is a part owner in the company, not a creditor of the company, and having no right to regain his money except by the sale of the stock or the winding up of the company's business. bonds issued by stock companies and corporations are really mortgages upon their resources. such a bond is usually secured by a mortgage upon the company's plant, franchises, and assets, or some part thereof. corporate bonds can only be issued by the consent and direction of the shareholders of the company or corporation. at the present time a mortgage securing the payment of corporate bonds is usually placed in the hands of a trustee--generally some trust company--which is supposed to act in behalf of the bondholders as a unit and which is empowered by the language of the bond, in the event of the failure of the corporation to perform the obligations it assumes in said bond, to foreclose the mortgage and divide the proceeds of sale among the bondholders.--carroll. classes of corporation bonds corporation bonds are of many classes, differing widely in their value as securities. only a few of the more important classes can be mentioned here. first mortgage bonds constitute, as the name implies, a first lien upon the property of the company issuing them. it is important in estimating the value of such securities to know whether they include only the property of the corporation at the time the bonds were issued or whether they are so worded as to include all property owned or acquired by the corporation. second and third mortgage bonds are second and third liens. the interest upon second and third mortgage bonds is paid only after the interest upon first mortgage bonds is satisfied. when bonds are issued to take up and put into one fund all previously issued mortgage bonds, the new bonds are sometimes called consolidated mortgage bonds. holders of previously issued bonds are not obliged to exchange them for any new securities. income bonds are usually secured by a mortgage on the earnings of the corporation issuing them. interest on such bonds must be paid before dividends are declared to stockholders. it is customary when such bonds are issued to set aside a percentage of the earnings as a sinking fund to meet the bonds at maturity. bonds are issued against all conceivable kinds of securities. not only are properties of many kinds used to issue bonds upon, but many kinds of bonds are often issued upon the same properties. this is especially true of railways, where mortgages of various kinds often lap and overlap in almost endless confusion. sinking funds money set aside by a municipality or corporation to _sink_ a debt at a certain future time is called a sinking fund. for instance, if a city should issue twenty-year bonds for $ , to secure money for street improvements the entire debt would fall due in twenty years, but to avoid having such a large amount fall due in one year, a proportional sum is set aside each year as a sinking fund--that is, to _sink_, or reduce, or wipe out the indebtedness when the bonds mature. bonds are not paid in advance of maturity. interest coupons [illustration: specimens of interest coupons.] most bonds have interest coupons attached. these are cut off and presented for payment as they mature. for instance, a four per cent. bond for $ would draw $ interest yearly. this sum would be paid in two instalments of $ each. if the bond were for twenty years there would be at the date of issue forty interest coupons, each calling for $ and collectable at intervals of six months. x. transportation by rail the growth of our railroad system a railway map of the united states shows that most parts of our country have a thickly woven net of railroads. the mileage of our railroad lines is now , miles, the actual length of track on these roads being about , miles. the significance of these large figures becomes more manifest when a comparison is made between the length of our railroads and the length of those of europe and those of the world. the railroads in the united states comprise over four ninths of the total railway mileage of the world, and are considerably longer than the railroads of all the countries of europe combined. the facts are shown graphically by the following diagram: mileage in europe , mileage in u. s. , total for the world , the history of the construction of american railroads covers a period of seventy years. the greater part of our mileage has been built since . the following table and diagram illustrate the growth of our railway net during each decade: year | miles ------|-------- | | , | , | , | , | , | , | , it will be noted that the decades of most rapid railway development were the one from to , following the discovery of gold in california, and the two between and . we added , miles to our railway net between and --a record that no other country has equalled. by we seem to have met the more urgent demands for new lines, and we are now annually building less than miles of new roads. the face value of the capital now invested in american railroads is $ , , , . the number of persons employed in the railway service is , . the railway corporation the agents that do the work of transportation by rail are the railway corporations. these "artificial persons" are created by the several states and intrusted with the performance of services of a public nature. in all the german states and to a large degree in many other european states, the governments themselves provide the means of transportation by rail; but in the united states the ownership and management of the railroads is rightly regarded to be a task of greater magnitude than the administrative department of our government is as yet able to cope with. the growth of the railway corporations of the united states has been typical of the evolution of industrial organisation in this country. the early railway corporations were small. the philadelphia, wilmington and baltimore railroad, for instance, comprised the lines of four companies. in the road connecting albany and buffalo included the lines of seven companies. during the last fifty years most of the small companies have united to form the corporations which now operate our large railway systems. though the last statistical report of the interstate commerce commission--the one for the year ended june , --contains financial reports from companies, there were only "independent operating roads," the remainder of the companies being subsidiary organisations. this report shows that forty-four of these operating companies have an aggregate mileage that equals nearly six tenths of the total railway mileage of the united states. indeed, the statistician to the interstate commerce commission declared in that "over per cent. of the business of the railways and per cent. of their earnings fall under the control of less than forty associations of business men." the pennsylvania system affords a good concrete illustration of railway consolidation. that corporation, with its miles of road, was built up by the union of over railroad companies, and it now comprises within its organisation corporations--most, though not all, of which are subsidiary railroad companies. this one railway system does one seventh of the entire freight business performed by all the railroads of the united states and handles one eighth of all the passenger traffic. the freight service of railroads the freight business of the railroads of the united states is much larger than their passenger service, the earnings from freight being nearly three times that from the passenger traffic. it is only in some of the new england states, the most densely populated parts of the united states, that the passenger receipts equal the freight earnings. the industrial conditions of the united states necessitate the movement of great quantities of bulky freight long distances. our principal grain-fields are from to miles from the manufacturing districts and seaboard cities. our richest iron deposits are in the states adjacent to lake superior hundreds of miles from the coal-beds of illinois, ohio, and pennsylvania. most of the cotton crop is moved long distances to reach the mills of new england and great britain. in fact, most of the products of our fields, forests, mines, and factories are marketed over wide areas. the average distance travelled by each ton of freight moved during the year ended june , , was . miles; and, as the railroads carried , , tons that year, the number of tons carried one mile was , , , . a comparison of the revenues received from the freight and passenger services by the american, german, french, and british railways is instructive. for each dollar received from the passenger traffic the american railroads earn $ . from their freight business, the german roads $ . , the french $ . and the british railways $ . . the united kingdom has the greatest volume of passenger traffic per population of any country in the world. american passenger traffic on railroads relatively undeveloped the long distances of the united states necessitate a large freight traffic but act as a hindrance to travel. it is a generally accepted but erroneous supposition that americans travel more than any other people. a comparison of the passenger traffic in the united states with that in the united kingdom, germany, and france reveals some surprising facts. the figures are for . the number of passengers carried one mile per mile of road upon the railroads of the united states was , , in france the number was , , in germany , , and in the united kingdom , . the average distance which the briton travels per year by rail is miles; for the american the distance is miles, for the frenchman miles, and for the german miles. the englishman takes . trips per year on an average, the german . , the frenchman . , and the american . . americans travel extensively, but it is evident from the foregoing comparisons that the possibility of developing the passenger service in this country has by no means reached its limit. relation of transportation on railroads to economic organisation the economic changes which have accompanied the great development of transportation that has taken place during the last fifty years have revolutionised our industrial and social life. among the effects of developed transportation upon the economic organisation may be noted: first, that relations of producers and consumers have been fundamentally changed by placing a larger market at the service of both. many classes of commodities are now bought and sold in a world market that were formerly restricted to local trade. second, improved transportation has made the prices of commodities more uniform for different producers and consumers. the variations due to situation have been lessened. in a like manner there has been a decrease in those time variations in prices that result from changes in the supply of commodities. improved transportation also makes prices lower--not only because it reduces the costs of moving the raw materials of manufacture and the finished products of industry, but also because it enables the merchant to turn his stock oftener and thus do business with less expenses for capital. as a third effect of improved transportation may be mentioned the acceleration which it has given to the growth of cities. cheap and efficient transportation has led manufacturers to locate their plants where they can command a large supply of labour and where they have the greatest advantages for the distribution of their products. the great manufacturing establishments are now located in chicago, new york, philadelphia, pittsburg, and the other large cities. conditions of transportation have become a stronger factor than even the location of the sources of raw materials in determining where an industry shall be established. the effect of the railroad upon the location of agriculture has been no less potent. the railroad has brought new agricultural regions into cultivation and destroyed the profits of cereal agriculture in many parts of the eastern states. another important consequence of improved transportation and communication has been that of bringing the nations of the world into closer economic and social relations. with the growing solidarity of the economic interests of the countries of the world, with the multiplication of the intellectual and other social ties that unite the nations, their political relations inevitably change, and for the better. nothing is doing more to advance the attainments of the cherished ideal of international amity than is the development of transportation. xi. freight transportation by rail the origin of railroad traffic associations the performance of the transportation services necessitates the co-operation of carriers. when the government owns and operates the railroads of a country they are managed by a single authority, and the different parts of the railway system are fully co-ordinated; but when the railroads are operated by a large number of independent corporations, co-operation can be secured only by means of traffic associations composed of representatives of the railway companies, and intrusted with the power of making arrangements affecting joint traffic, and settling questions involving the interests of two or more companies. two distinct causes brought about the establishment of railway traffic associations. the first cause was the necessity of co-operation to facilitate the joint business of connecting lines. through tickets, joint fares and rates, through bills of lading, the interchange of cars between connecting roads, and the settlement of joint accounts led to the establishment of co-operative freight lines, car-service associations, claim associations, and various other general and local organisations for the promotion of the joint transportation business. the other cause of co-operation among the railways was the necessity of regulating competition. this cause first became potent after the process of consolidation had brought about the formation of numerous large railway systems, and had inaugurated the violent competition which led to discriminations in transportation charges, rate wars, and the other evils which have combined to produce "the railway question." the competitive struggles of rival railway systems began to be violent shortly after , and soon led to the formation of railway traffic associations, with enlarged powers. the classification of freight, the determination of rates on competitive traffic, and the apportionment of that traffic, or of the earnings from it, among the competitors became functions of the associations. the work of albert fink the man who did more than any other person to develop traffic associations and to promote the co-operation of competing railroads was the late albert fink. it was his master mind that organised and put into successful operation in the southern railway and steamship association. the following year albert fink succeeded in organising the great trunk lines connecting the north atlantic seaboard and the states north of the ohio river. though smaller traffic associations similar to these two organisations had been previously established where but few obstacles had to be overcome, it was fink who first organised traffic associations including all the competing railroads serving large sections of the country. in discussing the work of traffic associations, which are to-day concerns of really enormous magnitude, railway pooling and the classification of freight especially demand consideration. railroad pooling railroad pools are agreements entered into by competing carriers, by which the railroads provide for the division with each other of their competitive traffic, or of the earnings from that traffic in accordance with stipulated ratios. thus there are traffic pools and money pools. during the decade preceding , the year when the present interstate commerce law was enacted, most traffic associations had the pooling feature, and most of the competitive railway traffic was pooled, thus eliminating all competition in rates. pooling agreements have never been legal in this country. being illegal by the common law, they could not be enforced in the courts. section of the interstate commerce law made it unlawful for the carriers subject to the act to pool their freights or the earnings from their freight traffic, and made it necessary for the traffic associations to reorganise without the pooling agreements. until march , , it was supposed that the associations, without pooling agreements, were legal; but, on that date, in the case of the united states _vs._ the trans-missouri freight association, the united states supreme court held that the law of july , , popularly known as the sherman anti-trust law, applied to railways, and made it illegal for railway companies to contract with each other to maintain rates. thus at the present time traffic associations are permitted neither to contain a pooling feature nor to provide arrangements for the enforcement or maintenance of rates, although the charges may be reasonable and be sanctioned by all the carriers interested. the associations may now legally exercise those functions which are connected with the joint business of their members, and they may act as bureaus of information regarding the competitive traffic. they have no power to make or to maintain rates. traffic associations including pooling should be legalised the best performance of the service of transportation by rail requires the fullest possible co-ordination of the different parts of our transportation system and the largest attainable measure of co-operation among the agents who perform the service. section of the act of and the law of july, , as far as the latter relates to railways, are based on an unsound theory. provision having been made for that kind and measure of governmental regulation of railway rates that will insure reasonable charges, the railways should be permitted to co-operate in rate-making and be given power to pool their competitive business. classification of railroad freight there are thousands of varieties of freight offered to the railroads for transportation. if each class of commodities were charged the same freight rate per ton per mile, the charges upon many articles of prime necessity, such as coal, lumber, and grain, would be so high as to prevent their being moved, while the rates on goods of high value per bulk would be much lower than they could readily pay. classification must precede the fixing of rate schedules. the railroads are interested in adjusting their charges to services performed in such a manner as to insure the greatest possible amount of traffic at rates that are properly remunerative. the public is interested in having the necessary revenues of the railroads so levied as to make the burdens as light as possible. to accomplish this a careful grouping of commodities is necessary. the goods are usually classified in five or six large divisions. the official classification referred to below has six classes. the first class consists of articles of high value, the sixth class of bulky commodities of low value, such as iron ore, lumber, grain in bulk, etc. in practice, however, the number of classes is at least doubled. goods of especially high value are made to pay once and a half, double, treble or quadruple the regular first-class rate. a commodity is also frequently placed in more than one class, the rating of classification being lower for car-load lots than for less than car-load shipments. the classification is further extended by omitting certain articles from the list of those classified. live stock and coal are illustrations of articles to which so-called "commodity," as distinct from "classification," rates are given. the individual shippers are constantly endeavouring to have their goods given commodity rates, and the effort of the railroad companies is to reduce the number of articles excepted from classification. commodity tariffs have been a fruitful source of unjust discrimination. from this description of freight classifications it will be perceived that the main basis upon which the grouping of commodities rests is the relative value of the goods. the gradations cannot, however, be made strictly according to value. the goods are frequently put into a lower class than their value would warrant in order to stimulate their production and shipment or to develop the industries depending upon those articles. at first each railroad worked out a classification of its own, and there were practically as many classifications as there were railway systems. the disadvantages of this soon became apparent with the development of long-distance traffic. the multiplicity of classifications made it difficult for shippers or purchasers to ascertain in advance what the charges on consignments would be; there was a constant tendency to increase the number of commodity tariffs, and unjust personal and local discriminations were in consequence made more numerous. it became evident that there would be great advantages in having one uniform classification for the whole united states. this ideal has not been reached yet, but the number of classifications has been practically reduced to three--the official, applying to the traffic north of the potomac and ohio and west of the mississippi; the southern, in force among the railroads in the southern states, and the western, which obtains in the territory west of the mississippi river. this amalgamation of the classifications has been brought about chiefly by the traffic associations and as the result of the enactment of the interstate commerce law. in order to avoid the discriminations prohibited by that law it was necessary to abandon the system of a separate classification for each railway. it is to be hoped that the attainment of the ideal of uniform classification will not be long delayed. the conduct of the freight business of railroads--transportation papers the manner in which the freight business is conducted affords a good illustration of the high degree of development to which modern business methods have attained. freight is accepted by each railroad for shipment not only to all points on its own system, but also practically to every railway station in the country, and even to many foreign cities. a waybill containing the initials of the number of the car used, the name of the consignor, the name and address of the consignee, the description and weight of the articles sent, the freight class and rate of the goods, and the total amount of freight charges, accompanies each shipment and is delivered to the agent at the place to which the goods are shipped. for the goods thus accepted for transportation, manifests, or "bills of lading," are issued to the consignor, which, like other representatives of property, may be transferred by the owner or may be deposited in a bank subject to draft. bills of lading are of two general kinds--"straight consignment bills" and "order bills." when a straight consignment bill of lading is issued the goods must be delivered to the consignee or to the person to whom he may order them delivered. an order bill of lading is one that may be transferred upon indorsement. the following concise description of an order bill of lading is taken from the "book of general instructions to freight agents," issued by the pennsylvania railroad company: when freight is consigned to "order" it is, as a rule, for the purpose of securing the payment at destination of a draft for the value of the property. the draft is usually attached to the bill of lading and sent through a bank for collection from the party at destination, who is to be notified of the arrival of the freight. the payment of the draft secures to the payer the possession of the bill of lading, which must be indorsed by the party to whose order the property is consigned. xii. railroad rates transportation charges have such a general and vital relation to industrial and social welfare that the problem of the just and equitable distribution of their assessment is one of paramount economic and political consequence. a consideration of the main factors which influence the railway companies in fixing charges should precede a discussion of the regulation of transportation by the government. general factors which determine railroad rates and fares the factors which have most weight in fixing schedules of rates and fares are what it will cost to perform the several services, what the services are worth to those for whom they are to be rendered, and the extent to which there is competition among rival carriers to secure the traffic concerned. though on the face of things it would seem that the railways should fix the charges for their various services in accordance with the costs of performing those services, it is neither practicable for them to do so nor is it desirable from the standpoint of public welfare that such a criterion should be adopted. it is impracticable for the railroads to base their charges upon cost of service, because it is impossible to determine accurately the elements which enter into the cost of performing the particular transportation service. the modern railroad is a very complex mechanism, employed in the performance of a multitude of different services. no railroad official is able to say just how much of the company's total expenses are to be charged against any one particular freight or passenger service. the cost of service would be an undesirable basis of rates, because the railroads would derive such a small part of their total necessary revenues from the carriage of goods having a high value in proportion to bulk and weight, that they would be obliged to charge much higher rates than they now do upon the cruder products of the farm, forest, and mine. these products are the basic materials of industry, and the lowest possible rate for their transportation is essential to social and economic progress. value of service and value of commodities value of service is a more desirable basis for rates and fares than cost of service. by charging according to value of service is meant that the shippers of commodities and the passengers who travel shall contribute to the railroad's aggregate expenses in proportion to the value which they derive from the transportation service. the rates and fares may cover a part or all of the value of the service obtained. in either case they are fixed with reference to that value and not with regard to the cost involved in performing the work of transportation. the levy of rates and fares in accordance with this theory, which is usually called "charging what the traffic will bear," is considered by most people to distribute transportation charges properly, because it is claimed that the true measure of a shipper's or a passenger's ability to pay for a desired service is the value which he will thereby derive. that this theory, nevertheless, does not afford an altogether satisfactory basis of charges, particularly in the freight traffic, may be readily shown. while it is true that the amount of value added by transportation to goods of low value is less for each unit of weight or bulk than the amount of value which is acquired by an equal weight or bulk of high-priced commodities, yet the _percentage_ increase in value is greater in the case of the goods of low cost. expensive articles can be carried long distances without adding very much to their cost to the consumers. measured in their percentages, then, the value of the service of transportation is relatively much lower in the case of the higher-priced commodities. the freight charges on wheat range from twenty to forty per cent. of its farm value, while the rate on shoes is possibly two per cent. of their factory price. that these charges are levied in accordance with the real ability of the articles to pay would be hard to establish. a partial theory of railroad freight rates without attempting in this connection to formulate a complete theory of freight rates, it may be said that there are three factors to which weight should be given in fixing charges: first, _the cost of service_. the total costs of transportation, including a fair return on invested capital, must be covered by total receipts. furthermore, the minimum rate charged any particular class of commodities ought to be sufficient to pay the operating expenses incurred in transporting the goods. second, _the value of the service_. this fixes the maximum rate that may be charged. were the railroads to charge more than the service is worth to the shipper the service would not be desired. third, _the value of the commodities_. between the minimum rate fixed by the operating expenses and the maximum charge determined by the value of the service actual rates may vary through a wide possible range. in determining what rates within this range will be theoretically most just and least discriminatory, consideration should be given both to the value of the service and--more than is the case at present--to the value of the articles transported. by doing this rates will be paid by the various articles of freight more nearly in proportion to their ability to pay. the effect of competition on railroad rates and fares whatever theory of rates may be accepted as ideally best, it cannot be strictly adhered to under the existing conditions of active competition obtaining in the united states. actual charges have to be fixed and revised to meet the varying circumstances under which railway traffic is conducted. this competition takes several distinct forms. one is that between railways and waterways. a large part of the domestic traffic of the united states has the choice of transportation by rail or by water on the great lakes and the tributary canals, by the navigable rivers, or by one of the many ocean routes followed by our coastwise commerce. there is also the competition of rival railways connecting common termini or serving the same cities. these forms of competition are the ones most frequently noted; but they perhaps exercise a less potent influence over rates than what is known as competition through the markets or through the channels of trade. the competition between rival centres of commerce and industry--between the atlantic cities and the gulf ports, for instance, or between the manufactures of new york and philadelphia and those of chicago or cincinnati for the markets of the southern states, to cite another example--is a force that must be considered in making rates and fares. even towns served by only one railway and by no waterway enjoy the benefits of this industrial competition. unless the railroad can give the industries in these local towns rates that will enable them to market their products, the industries will decline and the railway will lose its traffic. an interesting result of the competition of roads connecting common termini or joining a common industrial region with seaboard points is that the road whose line is the longest and whose expenses of transportation are greatest is obliged to charge the lowest rate. the short lines can charge more because they compete for traffic under more favourable circumstances. the lower charge of the longer line is called a differential rate, and it is customary for the shorter or "standard" lines to agree to allow the "differential" line a stipulated differential rate. this is the concession which the standard lines are obliged to make to temper competition and to prevent rate wars. the grand trunk, running from chicago to boston by way of montreal, is a good example of a differential line, and the new york central is a good instance of a standard line. governmental regulation of railroad transportation it is a maxim of common law that transportation charges must be reasonable, and the exaction of an unreasonable rate by a public carrier is a common-law misdemeanour punishable by the courts. but when, as the result of severe competition of railroads with waterways and with each other, unjust discriminations between persons, between places, and as regards classes of traffic--the abuses which constitute the railway question--became prevalent, the common-law provisions applying to railway charges were given statutory form and were supplemented and extended by such legislation as the circumstances peculiar to the situation seemed to demand. the comprehensive railway- and canal-traffic act passed by great britain in has been the model adopted for much of the railway legislation in the united states. the constitution of the united states gives congress power to regulate commerce "among the several states," but the jurisdiction over intrastate traffic lies with the state governments. the states began to pass general laws for the regulation of railroads fully twenty years before congress acted, and two thirds of the states have established commissions to administer those laws. the interstate commerce law after fifteen years of agitation and investigation the existing interstate commerce law was enacted in . the law prohibits unreasonable rates and unjust discriminations between persons, places, and classes of traffic, prohibits pooling agreements, provides penalties for the violation of the law, and establishes a commission of five men to administer and enforce the statute. fortunately for the commission and for the country the first chairman of that body was the eminent jurist, thomas m. cooley, whose master mind did much to give vitality to the law. during the first five years after the law was passed it secured a fairly efficient regulation of interstate railway commerce, but recent decisions of the united states supreme court have so weakened the law that at present the commission has very little power. the commission can investigate complaints and make reports, it can collect statistical information, it can and does informally adjust many differences between shippers and carriers; but, to quote from the last report of the commission, "it has ceased to be a body for the regulation of interstate carriers." legislation to amend and strengthen the interstate commerce law is urgently needed. [illustration: judge thomas m. cooley. (first chairman of the interstate commerce commission.)] xiii. stock and produce exchanges the stock exchange the stock exchanges of the world must not be considered simply as noisy congregations of brokers speculating in securities under the guise of legitimate business. they really play an important and necessary part in the financial mechanism of the country, and are instruments of enormous value in subdividing and distributing capital, and in directing its employment in great commercial and industrial enterprises. the largest stock exchange of the world is that of london. it is not only the centre of the english market for stocks and securities but, like the bank of england, it is linked internationally with nearly all the financial centres of the world. almost every reputable security is marketable in london, either through the ordinary channels provided by arbitrage dealers, who buy in the cheaper and sell in the dearer markets, or through the agency of trusts and investment concerns. the magnitude and extent of the financial resources of the london stock exchange are enormous. its advantages to the business public outweigh altogether the drawbacks imposed by the too-speculative spirit of mankind. it is a great business barometer, extremely sensitive to all conditions likely to disturb the world's finances. the london stock exchange has scarcely more than one hundred years of history. in the early part of the century the elder rothschild was one of the giants "on 'change," and it was in this business that he amassed the great fortune which makes the name of his house a synonym for money power. the membership of the london exchange is not limited to a fixed number, as in paris and new york. in the paris bourse all agents are strictly forbidden to trade on their own account. [illustration: the paris bourse.] the new york stock exchange was formed in . there are members. members are elected and must be nominated by two men who will say that they would accept the uncertified cheque of the nominee for $ , . the initiation fee is $ , . memberships have sold as high as $ , , and the market value of a seat on the exchange varies only slightly from year to year. [illustration: interior view of new york stock exchange.] there are stock exchanges in all large cities, and scattered throughout the country in convenient centres are grain and produce exchanges, cotton exchanges, petroleum exchanges, etc. these exchanges are really the central markets for the commodities they represent. commodity exchanges deal in actual products, even though the dealers handle nothing but warehouse receipts or promises to deliver. stock exchanges deal in credits and securities, which may or may not have a tangible value back of them. there is no reason why bonds and shares should not be publicly dealt in--and in large quantities--as well as dry goods, corn or cotton; but, unfortunately, few stock exchanges confine their transactions wholly to legitimate business. you will look in vain in the quotations for the stock of dozens of corporations whose securities are among the choicest investments. it is upon fluctuations that stock speculations prosper, and it is often true that the largest profits are made on the poorest stocks. transactions are quickly collected and reported to the world. in hundreds of offices in new york, chicago, and other american cities may be seen a little instrument called a _ticker_, which automatically prints abbreviated names of stocks, with their prices, on a narrow ribbon of paper. these _tickers_ are rented to these offices by the telegraph companies, and as fast as the sales are made the quotations are ticked off in thousands of offices in all parts of the united states. technical terms of stock exchanges the term _bull_ is applied to those who are purchasers of stock for long account, with the purpose of advancing prices, as the tendency of a bull is to elevate everything within his reach. the term _bear_ is applied to those who sell short stock, with the purpose of depreciating values. the _bear_ operates for a decline in prices. the broker's charge for his services is called a _commission_, which in the new york stock exchange is one eighth of one per cent. each way on a par value of the security purchased or sold. a _point_ means one per cent. on the par value of a stock or bond. _stock privileges_ or _puts_ and _calls_ are extensively dealt in abroad and to some extent here. a _put_ is an agreement in the form of a written or printed contract filled out to suit the case, whereby the signer of it agrees to accept upon one day's notice, except on the day of expiration, a certain number of shares of a given stock at a stipulated price. a _call_ is the reverse of a _put_, giving its owner the right to demand the stock under the same conditions. a _put_ may serve as an insurance to an investor against a radical decline in the value of stocks he owns; a _call_ may be purchased by a man whose property is not immediately available, but who may desire to be placed in a position to procure the shares at the _call_ price, if they are not below that in the open market when he secures the necessary funds. the speculator usually trades on _margins_. if he has $ to invest he buys $ worth of stock, his $ being ten per cent. of the total amount. he expects to sell again before the remaining amount falls due. the _margin_ is usually placed by the speculator in the hands of a broker as a guaranty against loss. although these brokers are really agents for others, yet _on 'change_ they stand in the mutual relationship of principals. a _margin_ is merely a partial payment, but a broker buying stock for a client on _margin_ is compelled to wholly pay for it. if he has not the necessary capital his usual custom is to borrow from banks or money-lenders, pledging the stock as collateral security. in foreign exchanges the element of credit enters more largely into the conduct of business. where the credit of the client in london is established his broker does not, ordinarily, call on him for any cash until the next "settlement day." a _wash sale_ is a fictitious transaction made by two members acting in collusion for the purpose of swelling the volume of apparent business in a security and thus giving a false impression of its value. stocks sell _dividend-on_ between the time the dividend is declared and the day the books of the company close for transfer; after that they sell _ex-dividend_, in which case the dividend does not go to the buyer. when a company decides not to declare a dividend it is said to _pass its dividend_. to sell stock _buyer _ is to give the buyer the privilege of taking it on the day of purchase or on any of the three following days, without interest; and to sell stock _seller _ is to give the seller the privilege of delivering it on the day of purchase or on any one of the three following days without interest. _buyer _ is a little lower and _seller _ a little higher than _regular way_ when the market is in a normal condition. _bucket shops_ are establishments conducted nominally for the transaction of a stock-exchange business but really for the registration of bets or wagers, usually for small amounts, on the rise or fall of the prices of stocks, there being no transfer or delivery of the commodities nominally dealt in. there are thousands of these counterfeit concerns throughout the country conducted without any regard for legitimate commercial enterprises. future delivery grain is stored in warehouses until needed for milling or shipment. when we speak of _december wheat_ we mean wheat that is to be delivered to the buyer in december. the carrying charges include storage, interest, and insurance, so that wheat sold for _may delivery_ would necessarily bring a higher price than wheat sold for december delivery. carrying charges are in favour of the _short_ seller. when sold for immediate delivery it is known as _cash grain_. xiv. storage and warehousing bonded warehouses there is a government regulation that an importer who does not wish to pay immediately the customs duties on his goods may have them stored in a warehouse, provided he furnish a bond with a surety that he will pay the duty within three years or export the goods to some other country. it is also a requisite that the goods be deposited in a bonded warehouse in the care and custody of its proprietor, who also must furnish the government with a bond of indemnity. the bond of the proprietor is a general bond and usually covers what might be considered a fair amount of total values due the government at any time. officers of the united states are stationed at the bonded warehouse during business hours. these are there in evidence of the government's proprietary interest in the merchandise stored. when an importer makes entry at the custom house for bonding his goods, he at that time provides the security required. by a recent decision of the treasury department at washington goods in bond are in the joint custody of the united states government and the proprietor of the warehouse, and after the government has received its customs duties for the goods they are in the proprietor's sole possession. the government cannot interfere to enforce delivery of the goods to the importer. the claim of the warehouse proprietor for storage charges becomes a first lien after the government's claim is satisfied. when the importer has paid both customs and storage charges he is privileged to remove his goods. warehouse regulations it is the duty of united states storekeepers to check off the goods as they are received at the warehouse and to report the same to the custom house; and when goods are to be withdrawn to see that delivery is not made until a custom house permit is presented. upon payment of the import duty on goods in bond at the custom house at any time after importation, the customs officials issue a warehouse permit to the importer ordering the united states storekeeper in charge of the bonded warehouse to deliver the goods to the importer, and upon presentation of the permit the goods are released unless the proprietor holds them subject to storage charges. goods may be held in bond for three years with the duty unpaid, but after that time either the duty must be paid or the goods exported. if shipped to another country and afterward re-imported the goods would again be entitled to the three-year privilege. if goods are not exported and the customs charges are due and unpaid, the government may dispose of the goods at public sale to obtain its claim. goods arriving by steamer and unclaimed lie at the wharf forty-eight hours. if the owner does not appear to make entry for them within that time, after the entry for the vessel has been made, the goods are sent to a bonded warehouse and remain there on what is known as a general order, and if they stand there unclaimed for a year they may, at the expiration of that time, be sold by the government. the capital of a warehouse is its storage space. the rates vary from / to / of a cent per cubic foot. the charges may be based on the amount of space consumed and the weight of the merchandise. the latter often determines the floor elevation to which the goods may be assigned. the more convenient of access the storage location is, the greater the cost. warehouse receipts are issued as evidence of storage. all merchandise is conveniently bulked for numbering and marking, and these distinguishing marks appear on the receipts. negotiable and non-negotiable receipts are issued as the needs of the owner may require. the former permit advances to be made by bankers upon the merchandise as collateral security. free warehouses these differ from bonded warehouses only in the fact that the government has no control or interest in them. they are only for the storage of imported goods on which the customs duty has been paid or for goods imported free of duty or for merchandise of domestic production and manufacture. they are managed entirely by the proprietor, and the contracts for storage are, of course, between the proprietor of the warehouse and the owner of the goods. the storage rates in free warehouses are considerably lower than for goods stored in bonded warehouses--the latter being a much more expensive business to conduct. there is no time limit in free warehouses. goods may remain indefinitely. when they remain from six months to a year the charges are collected usually at certain periods to avoid accumulation. experience shows that goods in free warehouses do not stay so long as those in bond. the articles commonly found in these houses are domestic and imported wools, cotton, canned goods, peanuts, yarns, cotton piece goods, mattings, dry goods, etc. perishable goods, of course, do not find their way into bonded or free warehouses. these are placed in cold storage. banking features of warehousing many of the warehouses find it advantageous to do a banking business in connection with the storage features. very frequently, for the convenience of the importer, goods are consigned to the warehouse and sent subject to a sight draft for the amount of the invoice. the warehouse company will pay the draft with the exception of about twenty per cent., which the importer is expected to furnish. if the duty is paid then the value upon which a loan is estimated is based upon the market value of the goods in this country. after the draft has been satisfied the goods are placed in the stores of the warehouse company subject to the customs and storage charges. the amount advanced by the company bears interest at current money rates. in illustration let us suppose bonded goods to be shipped and invoiced at $ , , customs duty $ , and the goods consigned to a bonded warehouse. the draft ($ , ) is sent to the warehousing company, which advances $ , and together with the $ received from the importer pays the draft. the $ loan made by the company is then charged to the importer at the usual interest rate, and when the borrower withdraws his merchandise from storage he will have to pay the government the $ customs duty and pay back his loan of $ to the warehouse company, together with interest and storage charges. if any portion of the goods stored is withdrawn for use in the business of the importer, the company will rebate a proportionate amount of the interest. if goods decline in value as collateral in storage the company will demand additional margin for its protection. if goods appreciate in value the loan may be increased. the market value of the goods is ascertained by the appraisement of some expert, who receives a commission for his services. cold storage the cold-storage warehouse is the natural result of the necessities of our great agricultural interests in the preservation of perishable products so sensitive to the deteriorating effects of temperature. the solution of the problem of the preservation of dairy products, meats, fish, poultry, fruits, and vegetables has developed a system that has eliminated the seasons and made possible the equalisation of prices of the finer class of edibles. the cornering of products and the creation of unreasonable prices are avoided. no article becomes a glut on the market as formerly. when there is a surplus of eggs and fruit, prices may be maintained by putting them in cold storage for a few days and offering them on the market when the conditions of trade warrant. temperature requirements for cold storage prior to the year cold storage was dependent upon the employment of ice, but in the evolution of the cold-storage warehouse ice is no longer a requisite. in fact, the temperature obtained by the employment of ice precluded a thermometric register much below the freezing point. the accepted temperature for butter and eggs was formerly ° to °; but through the introduction of mechanical refrigeration, which has revolutionised the business economically as well as physically, eggs now are held in storage at a temperature of ° and butter from ° to °. under the former method of ice storage, goods that were offered on the market as "held goods"--that is, as coming from a cold storage--always brought several cents under the prices of fresh merchandise. but the remarkable modern methods of cold storage permit the carrying of dairy products for a number of months and their successful sale afterward in competition with fresh goods. eggs stored in march are taken out in the following november and have commanded as high and often higher prices than the fresh commodity. eggs have been kept two years and found perfectly sweet when used. in freezing poultry and fish the temperature now frequently given is zero and under. poultry does not carry so well as other merchandise. although it is possible to keep it for two years, yet it loses its flavour. five or six months' storage is its usual average limit. certain temperatures are maintained in the various compartments of a cold-storage warehouse according to the requirements of the products, and these temperatures are made possible by forcing through pipes arranged around each compartment a brine composed of about ninety-five per cent. of pure salt whose temperature has been reduced by the action of the chemicals. when a shipper stores his goods there is an implied contract with the storage company that the temperature required for the product will be furnished and maintained. failure to do this renders the company liable for any damage to property. so vital is this feature of the business, which is really the only liability assumed by the company, that the custom prevails of taking the temperature of each room as often as five times in every twenty-four hours, and keeping the record in temperature books open to the inspection of the shippers. a room filled with merchandise may not vary in temperature one degree in six months. cold-storage centres chicago very naturally is the leading cold-storage centre. its situation in the heart of the productive area and its advantages as a distributing centre have given it its prestige. but in the last two or three years the eastern cities, new york, philadelphia, and boston, have developed enormous cold-storage facilities, and chicago no longer is absolute in her dictation to the markets of the world. when it is remembered that the dairy interests of our country during the last three years averaged an annual value of $ , , , and that the greater portion of this found its way into cold-storage warehouses, the importance of this new and very necessary business is readily appreciated. cold-storage charges the cold-storage charges for eggs in thirty-dozen cases would be about cents per case for the first month and cents for every additional month. butter in sixty-pound tubs would be charged at the rate of cents per tub for each month. cheese would cost one tenth of a cent a pound per month. the rates of eastern cities are usually higher than in the west. about ninety per cent. of the storage business of the east is in goods shipped from the west. the refrigerator car is a valuable adjunct to the business. the temperature of the cars is about °. although no ice is used in the modern cold-storage plant, yet the ice has become a very valuable by-product. since all the facilities for its manufacture are at hand it has become a matter of commercial expediency to employ them to the company's profit in the production and sale of a commodity indispensable to modern life. questions for review . give some particulars in which the bank of england differs from our larger national banks. . a bank cheque is a demand order for money drawn by one who has funds in the bank. how does a cheque differ from an order on a---- b---- to pay bearer a certain sum of money? . you are sending a cheque through the mails to john brown, chicago. how will you prevent the cheque from falling into the hands of the wrong brown? . you identify a---- b---- at your bank. the cheque a---- b---- presented turns out to be a forgery. are you responsible? . what is meant by power of attorney? how should an attorney indorse cheques for any person for whom he is acting? . what is a certified cheque? brown gives a an ordinary cheque for $ , and b a certified cheque for $ . he fails before either cheque is presented. why is b's security for his claim considered better than a's? . show how all the banks of the united states are connected through the clearing-house system. . how do state and national banks differ as to their organisation? . a national bank has a capital of half a million. a customer asks for a loan of $ , on indorsed paper. can the bank legally grant the loan? . give some particulars of the liabilities of the officers and directors of national banks. . what is meant by borrowing money on _collaterals_? how is this done? . tell how it is possible for a young man of good character, but without friends who have financial standing, to secure bonds for his faithful conduct in a responsible position. . when rates are high bankers prefer to deal in long-time paper. why? . account for the fact that london is the financial centre of the world. . explain in detail the business of a note broker, giving some particulars of his responsibility in connection with the paper handled. . enumerate the leading items of resource and liability in a national-bank statement. . a bank receives from the comptroller of the treasury $ , in new bank-notes of its own issue. what ledger entry? a bank retires $ , of its own bank-notes. what entry? . discuss fully the points which should enter into a proper estimate of the value of paper offered for discount. . give the successive and necessary steps in the formation of a joint stock company. . why are companies which properly exist and belong in one state sometimes organised under the laws of another state? . explain very fully the difference as to resource and liability between a bondholder and a stockholder. . how may a stock company be dissolved? . what is the difference between a voluntary association, such as a society or club, and a stock company? . explain very fully the meaning of _limited_ when it forms part of the legal title of a company. . is it legal to sell shares of stock and issue mortgage bonds upon the same property? what relationship do they bear one to the other? examination paper note.--_the following questions are given as a means by which the student may test for himself whether he has attentively pursued the lessons of the course or not. it is recommended that each student as he finishes the course write out the answers to the questions in full. only such answers need be attempted as the student can frame from a careful study of the course._ . (_a_) give some particulars in which the bank of england differs from our larger national banks. (_b_) enumerate some of the advantages afforded to the community and to commerce in general by banking institutions. (_c_) how do private banks and trust companies differ from national banks? . (_a_) what is a stock certificate? how does it differ from a mortgage bond? (_b_) at what rate must united states per cents be bought to net . per cent.? (_c_) give the successive and necessary steps in the formation of a stock company. how can the stock of a company or corporation be increased? . (_a_) what provision is usually made for the redemption of municipal bonds which have a long period to run? (_b_) what is meant when we say that a certain railway is in the hands of a receiver? (_c_) give some of the advantages which stock companies have over partnerships. . (_a_) tell how you would receipt for a payment on a note. why is not an ordinary separate receipt sufficient? (_b_) discuss fully the points which should enter into a proper estimate of the value of paper offered for discount. (_c_) explain in detail the business of a note broker, giving some particulars of his responsibility in connection with the paper handled. . (_a_) what are the advantages to the banks of a city of their central clearing-house? (_b_) show by a diagram how collections are made between distant points. (_c_) what is a certified check? . (_a_) enumerate some of the abuses of rate discrimination in the united states and tell how they are met. (_b_) what are the advantages to the public of freight organisations which arrange for through service? (_c_) explain in detail the methods adopted by leading and competing railway lines to regulate and adjust freight rates. (_d_) what are _differentials_? how are ( ) through and ( ) local passenger rates regulated? . (_a_) give the particulars in which a warehouse receipt resembles and differs from ( ) a promissory note, ( ) a bill of lading. (_b_) what are the advantages to the importer of bonded warehouses? (_c_) what are the duties of our foreign consuls with reference to the importation of goods? commercial law i. the different kinds of contracts commercial law relates to contracts. these are made by almost every one. a person cannot ride in a street-car without making a contract with the company for carrying him. if he goes into a store and buys a cigar, a stick of candy, or a tin whistle, he has made a contract with the man behind the counter, who owns the store or is his salesman. tramps and thieves are about the only persons who live without making contracts. in that respect they are like the birds of the air, getting whatever they desire whenever the chance is seen. a contract has been defined as an agreement to do or not to do some particular thing. these are the words used by one of the greatest of american judges. the reader may turn to his dictionary and find other definitions that contain more, if he pleases, but this will answer our purpose. all contracts may be put into three classes, and each of these will be briefly explained. first, sealed and unsealed contracts. what do we mean by a contract that is sealed? it is one to which the person who signs it adds, after his name, a seal. but what is a seal? it may consist of sealing-wax, stamped in a peculiar manner, or a wafer made of sealing-wax, or a paper wafer. in the olden times when people could hunt and fight but were not able to write their names, they put a seal at the end of a contract made by them; in other words, the seal supplied the place of a name. each person's seal differed from the seal of every other. it had its origin really in the ignorance of the people. as they were unable to write their names these distinct signs or marks, called seals, were put on instead of their signatures. with the changes brought by time the form of this device or seal, required by law, is much simpler than it was centuries ago. indeed, in every state persons use the letters "l. s.," with brackets around them, instead of a seal. they mean "the place of a seal," and are just as good in every way as any kind of seal that might be used. here are two of the forms of seals in most common use: [illustration] any contract that has a seal after the name of the signer is a sealed contract, and every other is called an unsealed, oral, or verbal contract. if a contract was written and a seal was added after the signer's name, and there was another exactly like it in form, but without a seal, this would be called an unsealed or verbal contract, and in law would differ in some important respects from the other. this is true in every state except california, where the difference between sealed and unsealed contracts is no longer known. the second class of contracts are called express and implied contracts. by an express contract is meant one that is made either in writing or in words. but the reader may ask, are not all contracts of this kind? by no means. many contracts exist between people which have not been put into words. suppose a should ask b for employment and it should be given to him, but no word should pass between them about the price to be paid. the law would _imply_ that b must pay him whatever his work was reasonably worth. if a should come at the end of the week for his pay and b should say to him: "i never made any bargain with you concerning the price, and i am unwilling to pay you anything," a could, if he understood the law, say to b: "you told me to work, and the law _implies_ that you must pay me whatever my work is worth." how much would the law give him for his work? just what the employer was paying other men for the same kind of work. another class of contracts are called executed and executory. an executed contract is one that is finished, done, completed. if i should go into a store and ask the price of a book and say to the salesman, "i will take it," and give him the money, and take the book with me, this would be an executed contract. an executory contract is one that is to be completed. suppose the salesman did not have the book and i should say to him, "please get it for me and i will come in next week and pay you for it," this would be an executory contract; and it would remain so until i came in and got the book, as i had promised to do, and paid the price. these are the three most general classes of contracts made by persons in daily life. almost all persons make contracts of each kind during their lives. sealed contracts are not as common as unsealed ones, yet they are frequently made. every deed for the sale of land or lease for the use of it is a sealed contract. ii. the parties to a contract to every contract there must be two or more persons or parties. when robinson crusoe was on his island all alone, eating breadfruit and entertaining himself by throwing stones at the monkeys, he perhaps had a good time, but he could not make any contracts. but as soon as friday came along they could make contracts, trade, and cheat each other as much as they pleased. a contract, therefore, is one of the incidents of society. a person sailing in a balloon alone could not make a contract, but if two were in the basket they might amuse themselves by swapping jack-knives or neckties, and these exchanges would be completed or executed contracts and would possess, as we shall soon see, every element of a contract. again, persons must be able, or competent, to make contracts. what kind of ability or competency must a person have? not every person can make a contract, even though he may wish to do so. a minor, or person less than twenty-one years of age, though he may be very wise and weigh perhaps two hundred and fifty pounds, can make very few contracts which the law regards as binding. in fact, the only contracts that a minor can make for which he is bound are for necessaries--clothing, food, and shelter. nor can he make contracts even for these things in unlimited quantities. a minor could not go into a store and buy six overcoats and bind himself to pay for them. the storekeeper must have common sense in selling to him and keep within a reasonable limit. in one of the well-known cases a minor bought a dozen pairs of trousers, half a dozen hats, as many canes, besides a large supply of other things, and, refusing afterward to pay the bill, the merchant sued him, and the jury decided that he must pay. the case, however, was appealed to a higher court, which took a different view of his liability. the judge who wrote the opinion for the court said that the merchant must have known that the minor could not make any personal use of so many trousers, canes, and hats, and ought not to have sold him so many. in short, the court thought that the merchant himself was a young minor in intelligence and ought to have known better than to sell such a bill to a person under age. of course it is not always easy to answer this question, what are necessaries? much depends on the condition of the person who buys. a merchant would be safe in selling more to a minor living in an affluent condition of life than to another living in a much humbler way. quite recently the question has been considered whether a dentist's bill is a necessity, and the court decided that it was a proper thing for a minor to preserve his teeth and to this end use the arts of the dentist. again, is a bicycle a necessity? if one is using it daily in going to and from his work, surely it is a necessity. but if one is using it merely for pleasure a different rule would apply, and a minor could not be compelled to pay for it. cigars, liquors, theatre tickets are luxuries; so the courts have said on many occasions. the courts, in fact, regard a minor as hardly able to contract even for necessaries, and he is required to pay for them for the reason that as he needs them for his comfort and health he ought to pay for them. in other words, his duty or obligation to pay rests rather on the ground of an implied contract (which has been already explained) than of an express one. the force of this reasoning we shall immediately see. suppose a minor should say to a merchant who was unwilling to sell to minors,--having had, perhaps, sad experience in the way of not collecting bills of them,--"i am not a minor and so you can safely trust me. i wish to go into business and wish you would sell me some goods." suppose that, relying on his statement, the merchant should sell him hats or other merchandise for which he would afterward decline to pay, on the ground that he was a minor. suppose he proved that he really was one--could the merchant compel him to pay the bill? he could not compel him to fulfil his contract, because, as we have already said, the law does not permit a minor to make a contract except for necessaries. the court, then, would say to the merchant: "it is true that you sold the goods to this minor; he has indeed lied to you; still the court cannot regard a contract as existing between you and him." on the other hand, a court will not permit a person to defraud another, and the merchant could make the minor pay for the _deceit_ or _wrong_ that he had practised on him; and the measure of this wrong would be the value of the goods he had bought. thus the court would render justice to the merchant without admitting that the minor could make a legal contract for the goods that he had actually bought and taken away. iii. the parties to a contract (_continued_) in the former article we told our readers that there were some persons who could not make contracts, and among these were infants or minors. in most of the states a person, male or female, is a minor until he or she is twenty-one years old. in some of the states, among them illinois, a female ceases to be a minor at eighteen years of age. by the roman law a minor did not reach his majority until the end of his twenty-fourth year, and this rule has been adopted in france, spain, holland, and some parts of germany. the french law, though, has been changed, with one noteworthy exception. a woman cannot make a contract relating to her marriage without the consent of her parents until she is twenty-five. among the greeks and early romans women never passed beyond the period of minority, but were always subject to the guardianship of their parents until they were married. married women are another class of persons who cannot make every kind of a contract like a man. once a married woman had but very little power to make contracts. however great might have been her wealth before marriage, as soon as she entered into this blissful state the law kindly relieved her of all except her real estate, giving it to her husband. on the other hand, he was obliged to pay her bills, which was one of his great pleasures, especially if she was a constant traveller to the silk and diamond stores. she could still keep her real estate in her own name, but that was about all. her husband took everything else; he could claim her pocket-book, if he pleased, and was obliged to support her in sickness or health, in sweetness or in any other "ness." the law has been greatly changed in all civilised countries in this regard, and to-day in most states she can make almost any kind of a contract. in some states, however, it is even now said that she cannot agree to pay the debt of another, but this is, perhaps, the only limit on her power to contract. she can engage in business, buy and sell, transfer notes, make contracts relating to the sale and leasing of her real estate, insure it, build houses, and do a thousand other things quite as freely as if there were no husband around. the most of these changes widening her authority to make contracts have come within the last fifty years. of course, unmarried women can make contracts like men, and many of them know it. another class who cannot make contracts are drunken persons. once the law regarded a drunken man as fully responsible for his acts, and if he made a contract he was obliged to execute or fulfil it. he could not shield himself by saying he did not know what he was doing at the time. the court sternly frowned on him and said: "no matter what was your condition at the time of making it, you must carry it out." this was the penalty for his misdeed. it may be the courts thought that by requiring him to fulfil his contracts he would be more careful and restrain his appetite. whatever the courts may have thought, they have changed their opinions regarding his liability for his contracts made under such conditions. now they hold that he need not carry them out if he desires to escape from them. there is, however, one exception to this rule. if he has given a note in the ordinary form, and this has been taken by a third person in good faith who did not know of the maker's condition at the time of making it, he must pay. but, we repeat, the third person must act in good faith in taking it, for if he knew that the maker was drunk at that time he cannot require him to pay any more than the person to whom it was first given. one other class may be briefly mentioned--the insane. they are regarded in the law quite the same as minors. for their own protection the law does not hold them liable on any contracts except those for necessaries. these are binding for the same reasons as the contracts of minors, in order that they may be able to get such things as they need for their health and comfort. for if the law were otherwise, then, of course, merchants would be afraid to sell to them. but as merchants can now safely sell to them whatever they truly need in the way of clothing, food, etc., to make themselves comfortable, so, on the other hand, the insane, like minors, must pay for these things, and it is right that they should. iv. the consideration in contracts having explained who can make contracts, we are now ready to take another step. besides having parties, there must be a consideration for every contract. this is rather a long word, but no shorter can be found to put in its place. what do we mean by this term? we mean that there must be some actual gain or loss to one or both parties to a contract, otherwise it is not valid. if, for example, a should say to b, "i will give you $ to-morrow," b, perhaps, might go away very happy, thinking that with this money he could buy a bicycle or some other fine thing; indeed, it was just the sum for which he was longing; so on the morrow he goes to a for his money. he promptly appears, but a says to him: "i have changed my mind, and will not give you the $ ." b asks: "did you not promise to give me this money?" "certainly." "well, why will you not fulfil your promise?" a replies: "i was a fool when i made that promise; you are not going to give me anything for it, so i am unwilling to give the money to you." suppose b in his sorrow should go to a lawyer, thinking, perhaps, that he could compel a by some legal proceeding to pay over the money. what would the lawyer tell him? why, he would say: "did you promise to give a anything for the $ ?" "no, sir." "then the law will not help you out. you cannot get the money from him by any legal method. perhaps you can get $ worth of fun in licking him for not giving you the money, but you cannot get the cash. but, mind, perhaps you had better not try to get your fun in that way, for this is contrary to law, and he might get much more than $ out of you in the way of damages for licking him." in every case, therefore, there must be _something for something_. now this something may be a thousand things. it may be money or merchandise or work. in short, there is no end of the things that may serve as a consideration of a contract. an example may be given to explain what is meant by this. a man had been speculating in stocks, and one of the rules of the stock board is that a margin or sum of money that is to be paid for stock must be paid in every case. it may be that an additional margin or sum must be paid under some circumstances. the speculator in this particular case was unwilling to pay this margin, and he said to the broker: "if you will do as i wish, and not put up this margin, i will save you from any loss that may result from such conduct." it was contrary to the rules of that stock exchange for the broker not to put up the margin, and the consequence was that he was put off the floor; in other words, the board would not permit him to act as a member. of course, as he could not buy and sell any more stock, he lost money; and he went to his customer, the speculator, and told him that he was losing money in consequence of carrying out his order about the margin. the speculator said he was sorry, but he could not help it. the broker then insisted that the speculator must make good his daily loss in consequence of doing as he had promised. this the speculator would not do. the broker then sued him for the amount of his loss. the speculator defended on the ground that there was no consideration for the agreement he had made with the broker about the margin. the court said that the loss which the broker had suffered in consequence of carrying out his contract with the speculator was a good consideration for the contract and must be made good. _when a contract is sealed the law implies that there is consideration_, and there need not be an actual one consisting of money, labour, or any other thing. this seems like an exception to the rule requiring a consideration in all cases, but the reason is this: when a sealed contract is made, the law supposes or assumes that each party made it, clearly knowing its nature--made it carefully, slowly, and, consequently, that either a consideration had been or would be given. if, therefore, one of the parties should refuse to fulfil it the other could sue him in a court of law. the person who sought to have it carried out would not be obliged to show that he had given any consideration on his part for the undertaking, because the seal appended to his name would imply that a consideration had been given. a deed for a piece of land is a good illustration of a sealed instrument. the law assumes whenever such a deed is given that the seller received a consideration for his land. the money paid was a consideration received by the seller, and the land was the consideration received by the buyer. each gives a consideration of some kind for the consideration received from the other; and this is true in all cases. v. the essentials of a contract in our last paper we told our readers that there must be a _consideration in every contract_. sometimes this is _illegal_, and when it is the effect is the same as would be the giving of _no consideration_. suppose a robber having stolen money from a bank should afterward offer to return a certain portion if he is assured that he will not be arrested and compelled to change the style of his clothing and his place of residence for a season. he cannot endure the thought of missing a game of football; and as for striped clothes, though very comfortable, perhaps, he is sure they would not be becoming. suppose this agreement to return a part should be put in writing, and after fulfilling it he should be sued by the bank for the remainder, and also prosecuted by the state for committing the theft. very naturally he would present the writing in court to show that he had been discharged from the crime and also from the payment of any more money. but this writing would not clear him either from prosecution for the criminal offence or from liability to return the rest of the money. the bank would say that although he had returned a part, this was not a proper consideration for its agreement not to sue him; it had no right to make such an agreement, and consequently it could sue the robber for the remainder of the money just as though no agreement had ever been made. another illustration may be given. suppose a person having made a bet and lost is unable to pay the money and gives his note for the amount. when the note becomes due the holder or owner sues him for the money. he defends, as he is unwilling to pay, by saying there was no legal consideration for the note. the money he promised to pay was only a wager, which the law regards as illegal. and this would be a good defence. if the consideration is partly legal and partly illegal and can be divided then there can be a _recovery of the legal part_. suppose a man owed another $ for borrowed money and also a wager for the same amount, and had given his note for $ . when it became due if the owner sued him he could recover only the $ of borrowed money; this much and no more, for the reason that the consideration could be divided, the legal part from the illegal part. if no separation was possible then the note would be void and the owner could get nothing. a person cannot recover for a _voluntary service_ that he has rendered to another. a man would be very mean indeed who refused to pay another for any service rendered to him that was truly valuable; yet if he would not do so the man rendering the service could get nothing through the law. suppose that a person when walking along a road should see some cattle astray in a corn-field having a good time with a farmer's corn. he knows they are in the field for business and in a short time, unless driven out, will get the best of nature and down her efforts in corn-raising. in the kindness of his heart he jumps over the fence and succeeds in driving them away. suppose there happens to be among the number an unruly animal which is unwilling to leave such a tempting field of plunder and turns on him and gores him, and he is taken to a hospital. the farmer finds out who drove out the animals, and of his injury, but declines to give him any reward whatever. can the man recover anything? the law says not, because the service is purely voluntary. the question has often been asked whether a person who has made a contract to work for another and has broken it can recover for the worth of his service during the period he was employed. some courts have said that a person thus breaking his contract cannot afterward recover anything, because he does not come into court with clean hands. other courts have said that though he can recover nothing on the contract he has broken, he can nevertheless recover on a contract which the law implies in such a case for the worth of his service during the period of his employment. on the other hand, the employer can set off against his claim any injury that he may have sustained. suppose he could show that the service was of no worth to him; that he was injured rather than benefited by what he did; then the employé could get nothing. the courts have been inclined of late years to uphold an employé in recovering whatever his service was worth--not, however, as done by virtue of an express or actual contract with the employer. he cannot sue on that; in other words, he cannot take advantage of his own wrong to recover anything from his employer, but he may recover on the contract which the law implies, as we have explained, as much as his service was worth to his employer, and no more. another element in a contract is the meeting of minds of both parties. _both must understand the matter in the same sense._ for example, a person offered to sell another "good barley" for a stated price, and the other offered to buy "fine barley" at the price mentioned. there was no contract between these persons, because it was shown that "good barley" and "fine barley" were different things in the trade. this, therefore, is one of the essential elements of a contract--the meeting of the minds of the contracting parties. whether they have assented or not is a question of fact, to be found out like any other question of fact. sometimes offers are made on time, and when they are several interesting questions may arise. suppose a and b are negotiating for the sale and purchase of a piece of land. a says to b: "i will give you a week to think the matter over." soon after parting a meets c, to whom he mentions his offer to b. c says: "i will give you a great deal more for the land and pay you now." "very well," says a; "the land is yours." and he at once writes a letter to b saying that he has withdrawn his offer, as another person has offered him more for the land and that he has sold it to him. now b might be very much surprised by this letter. very likely he would think a was a hard man and perhaps a dishonest one. perhaps he would go to a lawyer and ask him if he could compel a to sell the land to him if he accepted his offer within the time mentioned and paid to him the money. the lawyer would tell him--if he understood his business--that a had a perfect right to withdraw his offer, even though it was made on time. this would probably be brand-new knowledge to b, but he would know what to do on the next occasion. is this true in all cases? it certainly is of all offers made in that manner. how, then, can a person who makes an offer to another on time be compelled to regard it? the way is simple enough. the person to whom the offer is made should give something--a consideration--to a, who makes the offer, for the delay. then he would be bound by it. but the courts would say to b, if nothing were given: "why should a's offer bind him so long as he is to get no compensation or consideration for it?" and we shall see again and again in these papers _this element of consideration is ever present, and must be to make transactions legal_. so with respect to an offer on time--if the person to whom it is made is really desirous of having it continue, in order to find out whether he can raise the money to pay, or for some reason, he can make the offer binding by giving to the offerer a consideration for the specified time, whatever that may be. vi. contracts by correspondence _a great many contracts are made by correspondence._ a person writes a letter to another offering to sell him merchandise at a stated price. the other replies saying that he will accept the offer. is a contract made at the time of writing his letter and putting it into the post-office, or not until it is received by the person who made the offer? the law in this country is that a contract is made between two persons in that way as soon as the answer is written and put into the post-office beyond the reach of the acceptor. the post-office usually is the agent of the person who uses it, but when a person sends an offer to another by mail the post-office is regarded a little differently. it is the agent of the person who sends the offer and also his agent in bringing back the reply. consequently, when this is put into the hands of the agent the law regards the offerer as bound by his offer. in like manner, if a creditor should send a letter to his debtor asking him to send a cheque for his debt and he should comply, the post-office would be the agent of the creditor in carrying that cheque, because he requested his debtor to use this means in sending his cheque to him. but when a request is not made and a debtor sends a cheque on his own account, the post-office is his agent for carrying it to his creditor. a person making an offer by letter can of course withdraw it through the telephone or telegraph if he likes at any time before the letter has been received by the other party. suppose the price of things is rising and a, finding that his goods are also advancing, should, after making an offer of some of them by letter, send a telegram stating what he had written and withdrawing his offer. this would be a proper thing for him to do. if, on the other hand, a's offer had been received by b before his withdrawal and accepted, then a would be bound by it. can b, after mailing his letter of acceptance and before it has been received by a, withdraw his acceptance? no, he cannot--for the reason above given, that the post-office is the agent of a, in carrying both his offer and b's reply. if this were not so, if the post-office were the agent of b in sending his reply, then of course it could be revoked or withdrawn at any time before it reached a. suppose a should send an offer and afterward a withdrawal and the withdrawal should be received first. notwithstanding this, however, if the person to whom the offer was sent should accept the offer, could he not bind a? one can readily see that all the proof would be in the possession of b, the acceptor. if he were a man without regard for his honour and insisted that he received the offer first, a might be unable to offer any proof to the contrary and fail to win his case should b sue him. but the principle of law is plain enough; the only difficulty is in its application. doubtless cases of this kind constantly happen in which the acceptor has taken advantage of the other to assent to an offer actually received after its withdrawal. suppose b should in fact receive a's offer first in consequence of the neglect of the telegraph company to deliver a's message of withdrawal promptly, which if delivered as it should have been would have reached b before the letter containing the offer, what then? a doubtless would be bound by his offer, but perhaps he could look to the telegraph company for any loss growing out of the affair. if he could show that he had been injured by fulfilling the contract the telegraph company might be obliged to pay this. let us carry the inquiry a little further. suppose the messenger on receiving the telegram took it to b's office and it was closed and he made diligent inquiry concerning b's whereabouts and was unable to find him. suppose he had gone off to a horse race or to a football game, would it be the duty of the messenger boy to hunt him up at one of these places? by no means. if b was not at his place of business when he ought to have been, the company would not be bound to deliver the message to him elsewhere, except at his house, unless he had left a special direction with the company concerning its delivery. generally a telegraph company states very clearly its mode of delivering messages and the time when it will do so, the place, etc., to which it will take them, and it is not obliged to hunt all over creation to find the person to whom a message is addressed. that would be a very unreasonable rule to apply. therefore, if the company did its duty a could not recover anything from it. would a, then, it may be asked, be obliged to fulfil his contract with b? he has sent his withdrawal, which if delivered in time would have been received by b before the letter containing the offer. b, however, is away from his place of business, and perhaps is where he ought not to be--perhaps he is playing poker or doing something worse--ought a under such circumstances to be held by his offer? this is a closer question and one that we will leave our readers to think over. surely a would have a strong reason for claiming that he ought not to be held under such conditions. a person who makes an offer cannot turn it into an acceptance. an old uncle offered by letter to buy his nephew's horse for $ , adding: "if i hear no more about the matter i consider the horse as mine." the uncle, not hearing from the nephew, proceeded to take the horse. at this stage of the proceedings, however, the nephew was not inclined to suffer his good old uncle to make the contract entirely himself, and refused to give up the horse. the court said that one person could not do all the contracting himself, and this is what he virtually undertook to do. if a person could, by correspondence or otherwise, make a contract in this manner, one can readily see the dangers that might follow. some positive act must be put forth by the other party showing or indicating his assent before it will be regarded as given. a person, in truth, is not obliged to pay any attention to an offer of this kind. rewards are often made. they are found almost every day among the newspaper advertisements. these are binding under various conditions. an interesting question has been raised in the case of a runaway horse whose owner has made an offer to any finder who returns him. suppose a person at the time of catching the animal did not know of the reward but does know of it when returning the beast to his owner; can he claim the reward? this question has somewhat puzzled the judges, but the more recent opinion is that the catcher can claim the reward like a person who knew at the time of stopping the pleasure of the runaway. of course, there is no question concerning these rewards when they are known at the time of acting on them. in one of the cases tried not long since, an old farmer offered a reward of $ to any one who would find the person who had stolen his harness and also $ to the man who would prosecute the thief. the harness, in truth, was worth not even this small sum and the thief still less. yet he was caught and prosecuted, and then the prosecutor and finder claimed the rewards. the farmer's excitement had cooled off by this time and he was not so loud and liberal as he was at the time of finding out his loss. he refused to pay, saying that he did not really mean to offer these sums as rewards, and the court decided in his favour, declaring that his offer of reward could not be regarded strictly as one, but rather "as an explosion of wrath." in another case a man's house was burning up and his wife was inside, and he offered any one $ who would go in and bring her out--"dead or alive." a brave fellow went in and rescued her. then he claimed the reward. was the man who made the offer obliged to pay, and could he not have escaped by insisting that this was simply "an explosion of affection" and not strictly an offer or promise of reward? he tried to hold on to his money, but the court held that this was an offer he must pay. possibly after the recovery of his wife his valuation of her had changed somewhat from what it was while his house was burning up. one or two more cases may be given. some persons who prepared "carbolic-smoke balls" offered to pay £ to any person who contracted influenza after having used one of the balls in the manner clearly set forth and for a stated period. this offer was in the form of a newspaper advertisement. a person bought one of them and followed carefully all the directions about its use. the influenza, though, did not disappear as advertised, so he sued to recover the offer; and, having proved clearly that he had complied faithfully with the directions and had not been cured, the court said that the owners must pay up and compelled them to give him the £ offered. another case may be briefly mentioned. a offered to sell b his farm for $ . b offered $ , which offer was declined. then b offered to pay $ . by that time a had changed his mind and declined to accept b's offer. then b sued to get the farm, offering to pay the money; but the court held that b had declined a's offer and consequently that, as a had not made any other offer, there was no contract. finally, it may be added that the phrase "by return mail" does not always mean by the next mail, although the person to whom the offer is made cannot delay his answer long. on the other hand, the person to whom such a letter may be addressed can bind the other by an acceptance very quickly after the receipt of the offer, although not literally by the first mail going out. vii. what contracts must be in writing _some contracts must be in writing to be valid_; for instance, contracts relating to the sale and leasing of lands. this writing must be signed by the person who is charged with having made it. suppose that a has sold his farm to b for an agreed sum and refuses to give him a deed on his payment of the amount or offer to pay, and b wishes to compel a to carry out or execute his agreement. b must show a writing signed by a to that effect, otherwise the court will not pay any attention to the matter. on the other hand, if a claims that such an agreement has been made with b, who is unwilling to pay the money and receive the deed, he must show in court a writing signed by b that he has agreed to purchase the farm at a stated price and to receive a deed of the same. if such a writing is not forthcoming when required, he cannot recover anything from him. this is the meaning of the phrase, therefore, that a writing must be signed by the party charged with having made the agreement. _the writing need not be very formal._ it need not specify the amount that is to be paid; in other words, it need not specify the consideration. some courts say, however, that it must contain this fact or statement. it may be in pencil. i presume it would be sufficient if written on a blackboard with chalk. but it must be a writing of some kind signed by the party to be charged; that is the essential thing. the courts have also said that this writing need not be on a single piece of paper. if the two parties have made an agreement by a series of letters, an offer on the one side and an acceptance on the other, and the agreement can be fully shown from the series of letters, this is sufficient writing. if a man buys a farm and pays a part of the price and goes away saying that he will pay the remainder within a week, expecting then to do so and receive a deed, the seller, if he chooses, can escape giving that deed and parting with his farm. the payment of a part of the money does not bind the bargain, nor will the courts, though knowing this, compel the seller to give such a deed. the reader may ask, if this is the law, cannot the farmer practise a fraud on the buyer by receiving his money and keeping it and the farm too? he cannot do both things. if he refuses to give the deed he must, on the other hand, return the money; if he refuses to do this the buyer can compel him by a proper legal proceeding to refund the amount. in this way the buyer gets his money back again, but not the farm that he bought. it is said that this statute is as often used as a shield to protect men in doing wrong as in preventing frauds. in numberless cases persons, just like the farmer imagined, have used this statute as a means to protect them in not carrying out their agreements. this happens every day. this statute also relates to other matters. one clause says that an executor or administrator cannot be required to pay anything at all out of his own pocket on any promise that he has made unless it be in writing. every one knows about the duties of an executor or administrator. an executor is one who settles the estate of a person who has died leaving a will directing what shall be done with his wealth. an administrator is a person who settles the estate of a deceased person leaving no will. he is appointed by the law, which fully states his duties. let us suppose that an executor is employed to settle an estate, and that he employs a carpenter to make some repairs on a house belonging to the estate. the contract is fairly enough made between the carpenter and the executor. let us also suppose that he has no lien on the house for the work that he has done, or that he has lost his lien by reason of not having filed it in time, as the law requires. afterward he goes to the executor and demands payment for the repairs that he has made. let us suppose that the estate is insolvent and cannot pay all of its debts in full. at the time of making this contract neither party supposed this would happen. but, unhappily, debts have come to light so large and numerous that there is not property enough to pay all the creditors everything that is due them. the executor says to the carpenter: "there is not property enough to pay all of the creditors and you, unfortunately, must fare like all of the rest, and you cannot be paid a larger percentage on your share than the others." to the carpenter this would be unwelcome news, and he would doubtless say to the executor: "i made this contract with you expecting that you would pay me, and if the property of the estate is not sufficient you ought to pay me this. i am a poor man and cannot afford to lose any of my hard-earned money." the executor might say to him: "i am as poor as you and i cannot afford to pay you out of my own pocket, and in law you cannot compel me to do this." and, in truth, the carpenter could not do this unless the executor had made a contract in writing, agreeing in any event to pay whether there was money enough belonging to the estate or not. another clause says that _a person cannot be required to pay the debt of another unless the agreement is in writing_. if a went into a store to buy goods and b should be a little afraid to trust him, and c, a friend of a's, should happen to be present and say to the merchant, "let a have these goods and if he does not pay you i will," this would be the promise to pay the debt of another; and if a should not pay it c could shield himself behind this statute and escape without paying anything. there is another clause relating to the sale of ordinary merchandise. the law says that _contracts for ordinary merchandise must be in writing if the amount is over_ $ . in some states the amount is $ . long ago it was decided that this statute did not relate to contracts for work, and they therefore must be carried out or fulfilled in the same manner as though no statute existed, _for work is not merchandise_. viii. contracts for the sale of merchandise to make a contract of sale there must be, as we have seen, two or more parties, and a consideration must also be given. the sale is complete when the _property_, or _title_, or _ownership_ in the thing bought passes from the seller to the buyer. it is not necessary in order to make a valid sale to deliver the thing bought. if the _title_ or _ownership_ in the thing is not transferred, the sale still remains incomplete. the law supposes or assumes that a person will always pay for a thing purchased. if i should go into a store, inquire the price of a book, and, after learning the price, should say to the salesman, "i will take the book," and he should wrap it up and give it to me and i should then walk out with the book under my arm, he doubtless would come to me and say in his politest manner: "why, sir, you have forgotten to pay me for it." suppose i should say: "oh, yes; but i will come in to-morrow and pay." but if i happened to be a stranger, and especially if there was a suspicious look about me, and he should say they did not give credit in that store, and i was still inclined to walk out with my book, he could insist that there had been no sale and that i must give the book to him. the law would protect him in taking it from me if he did not use undue force. the law assumes, unless some different rule exists, that the buyer will always pay for the thing purchased, yet in law there is no sale unless the purchase money is actually paid. of course, credit may be given in a store--that may be the practice; and if it is understood between buyer and seller that credit is to be given, then a sale is complete as soon as the bargain is struck. indeed, so complete is the sale that if the buyer should say to the salesman, "i will leave this here and return and take it in a short time," and during his absence the store should be burned up and everything perish, the buyer would be obliged to pay for the book. in other words, after it had been sold, if still kept there the seller would be merely the keeper, or bailee, which is the legal term, and he would be obliged to use only ordinary care in keeping it. suppose a thief should come in and take it away--would the seller be responsible for the loss? not if he had used the same care in protecting it as in protecting his own property. another illustration may be used to bring out the nature of a sale more clearly. suppose i have bought a particular work in a store, either paying cash or buying it on credit, if that be the practice of the store, and i should say to the salesman: "i am going down street and on my return will call and take the book." during my absence i meet a friend and tell him of my purchase, and he should say to me: "i am very desirous to get that work; i am sure there is no other copy in town. will you not sell it to me?" suppose i gave him an order, directed to the seller, requesting him to deliver the work to the person to whom i have sold it. if he should take the order to the store he could claim the book as his own and the original seller would be obliged to give it to him. _it is very important_, however, in many cases _to make a delivery of the thing sold_. as we have already stated, the title as between the buyer and seller is actually changed or transferred at the time of making the sale and it is therefore complete. but if a delivery of the thing sold is not actually made and another person should come along and wish to buy it, and the seller should prove to be, as he sometimes is, deceitfully wicked, and should sell and deliver it to him, the second buyer would get a good title and could hold it just as securely as though it had not been previously sold to another. of course, the second buyer must be an innocent person, knowing nothing about the first or prior sale. if he did not know and pays the money for the thing he has bought and takes it away, he gets a perfectly good title as against the first buyer. if he was not innocent the first buyer could claim it and the second one would lose his money unless he was able to get it back again from the seller. of course, such a transaction is a fraud on the part of the seller. therefore it is safer in all ordinary transactions for the buyer to take the thing he has purchased unless he is sure that the seller is a perfectly honest man, who will not practise any such fraud upon him. suppose the seller had things in his keeping that had been sold but not taken away, and should fail in business, or that persons to whom he owed money should sue him and try to hold not only all of the goods still owned by him but even those which he had sold. could they succeed as against a person who had bought them in perfectly good faith? it is said that the buyer in such cases can get his goods after clearly showing that he had bought them and paid for them; but the evidence of his purchase must be perfectly clear, otherwise the court will not permit him to take them away and he will lose them. if a merchant is to deliver a thing as a part of the contract of sale, then, of course, he must do this; otherwise he is liable for his failure to carry out his contract. this rule applies to most purchases that are made in stores. the merchant intends to deliver the thing sold, the buyer purchases expecting this will be done, and the price paid for them is enough to cover the cost of taking them to the buyer's house; in other words, the price of the goods, whatever it may be, is intended to be enough to pay the merchant for his cost in delivering them, and in such cases the contract is not complete until a delivery has actually taken place. again, if the thing purchased is a part of a mass of goods, a separation must be made to complete the contract. if a man should buy barrels of oil which were a part of barrels, a separation of some kind must be made of the particular ones sold. if one should buy trees in a nursery, to make the contract complete the particular trees must in some way be known, either by rows or every other tree--in short, in some way the trees must be clearly set apart. if part of a mass of timber is bought, the particular logs must be marked or in some way pointed out from the other part of the mass. this rule applies to all things bought that form a part of a large mass. the mode of pointing them out depends on the nature of the thing; a different kind of separation must be made in some cases from what is necessary in others. ix. the warranties of merchandise the rule of law in buying is, _the buyer must look out for himself_; and if things are not what he supposed they were he has no rightful claim against the seller. the maxim of the law is, "_let the purchaser beware_"--let him take care of himself. the rule of the roman law was different. it was the duty of the seller to tell the buyer of all the defects known by him in the thing sold, and if he did not he was responsible for any loss caused by any defect or imperfection found after purchasing that was known by the seller before. the modern principle may be looked at from two points of view. first, _the seller need not make known any defects which the buyer can find out himself_. suppose a man is thinking of buying a horse that is (though he does not know it) blind in one eye. the law says that the buyer ought to be able to see such a defect quite as readily as the seller, and if he does not the fault is his own. blindness in one eye is quite as easily seen as would be the lack of an ear or tail. and this principle applies very generally in all purchases. it covers all visible defects. nor can any one find much fault with this rule, because the buyer generally has as good eyesight as the seller, and if he takes pains, as he should, he is able to discover all ordinary defects. furthermore, the buyer doubtless often knows quite as much about the things he purchases as the seller. but the courts also say that it applies to other defects. suppose a horse has the heaves or the rheumatism, which is known to the seller but of which the buyer has no knowledge whatever. the seller is not obliged to make known this defect to the buyer, and if he is silly enough to purchase on his own wisdom he must abide by the consequences. if he does inquire and is deceived, that is another thing. but if he asks no questions, or the seller does not deceive him in any way, the seller is not responsible for defects known by him at the time of the sale. this also is a well-understood rule. _the seller_, we repeat, _must not deceive the buyer_. in one of the well-known cases a man owned a ship that he was desirous of selling. she was unsound in several places and the seller put her in such a position that her defects could not be readily found out. he did this for the purpose of deceiving the buyer and succeeded. when the buyer learned how he had been tricked he began a legal proceeding to get back a part of the money that he had paid, and won his case. and rightfully, too, for the reason that the seller had deceived him, which he had no right to do. another case may be stated of a man who was desirous of purchasing a picture, supposing that it was once in the collection of an eminent man. the seller knew perfectly well that the picture did not come from that collection and that the buyer was acting under a delusion. he did not say that the picture had belonged to the collection or had not; he was silent, although he knew that the buyer would not purchase it if he knew the truth about its former ownership. for some reason or other the buyer did not make any inquiry of the seller, or if he did was not told. but after purchasing the picture the buyer learned that he was mistaken and that the seller knew this at the time of making the sale. he sought to recover the money he had paid and succeeded, the court saying that a fraud had been practised upon him; that it was the duty of the seller, knowing what was passing in the mind of the buyer, to have told him the truth about the former ownership of the picture. it will be seen, therefore, that _the seller must not deceive the buyer in any way or practise any fraud on him_; if he does he will be responsible for the loss or injury befalling the other. what, then, ought a buyer to do in purchasing a horse, for example, in order to guard himself against the unwelcome discovery of disease or other defect? clearly, _he ought to require the seller to give him a warranty_. a proper way is, if the transaction be an important one, to have the warranty in writing and signed by the seller. it need not be very long; a few words usually are enough. there is a very important difference that every one ought to understand between words that are spoken at a sale, which are mere representations, and words that form a warranty of the thing sold. if i should go into a store to buy a piece of flannel, and ask the salesman if it was all wool, and he should assure me that it was, and i, ignorant of the quality of the material, and desirous of buying a piece of all-wool flannel, should say to him: "i know nothing about it; i rely entirely on your statement," and he should say: "it is all right; all wool, and no cotton," his words would be a warranty, and if the flannel proved to be made partly of straw or cotton, or something besides wool, i could sue the seller on his warranty, and recover for the loss i had suffered, whatever that might be. but suppose i were a flannel manufacturer myself, and knew at the time he was saying this to me that the flannel was partly cotton; in short, knew a great deal more about it than he did, and was not deceived in any way by what he said, his words would not be a warranty, because my action in buying the flannel would not be influenced by them. what test, then, is to be applied? evidently whether or not the buyer acts on the words spoken and is deceived by them. if, relying on them, he buys and is deceived or misled to his loss or injury, then the words will be taken as a warranty and protect the buyer. if, on the other hand, he is not deceived by what is told him, and he buys on his own knowledge and judgment, then the words are not a warranty. one or two other points may be briefly noticed. the law says that _the seller always warrants the title to the thing sold_--in other words, that he is the owner. he may not say one word about the matter, but the law implies that he is the owner and would not sell a thing that did not belong to him. if he should prove not to be the owner, the buyer could recover for his loss. _another point about adulterations._ the common law does not regard an article as adulterated, giving the buyer the right to claim something back, unless it has been materially changed by the foreign substance. all, or nearly all, of the states have made statutes within recent years, or re-enacted old ones, holding sellers strictly responsible for the quality, especially of provisions, sold. these statutes generally require the seller to sell absolutely pure articles, and he cannot shield himself by saying that he was ignorant and innocent of their nature if they proved to be other than pure articles. if a grocer should sell cotton-seed oil for olive oil, even though doing so ignorantly, without any intention to deceive, he would nevertheless be held liable under the statutes that now exist in most of the states; and public opinion strongly favours the strict execution of these statutes. x. common carriers _what is meant by a common carrier?_ a person or company that is obliged to carry merchandise or passengers for a price or compensation from place to place. a common carrier cannot select his business, like a private carrier, but _must_ carry all merchandise that is offered; or, if he is a carrier of persons, all persons who desire to go and are willing to respect all reasonable regulations that relate to carrying them. _the principal common carriers are railroads, steamboats, and canal companies._ the liability of common carriers is very important to all who travel or send merchandise. a common carrier is liable for all losses not happening by the act of god or by the public enemy. by "act of god" is meant unavoidable calamity, such as lightning and tempests, and by "public enemy" is meant a nation at war with another. once these were the only exceptions. carriers were therefore insurers of the goods left with them to be carried to some other place. this early rule of law fixing their liability has been greatly changed. carriers can now make a contract relieving themselves of all liability for losses in carrying goods except those arising from their own negligence. the courts in a few cases have said that they can relieve themselves even from this, but this is not generally the law. they can, though, by special contract relieve themselves from all other liability. a railroad company, therefore, can make a contract for carrying wheat from chicago to new york, relieving itself from all liability for loss by fire unless this shall be caused by its negligence. if a fire should occur without any negligence on the part of the company and goods on the way should be destroyed, it could not be held responsible for the loss if there was such a contract between the shipper and carrier. _a carrier is no longer an insurer for the safe carrying of goods._ the courts have permitted carriers to thus lessen their liability because they are willing to take goods at lower prices than they would if they were to be responsible for all losses. they now virtually say to the shippers: "if you are willing to be your own insurers, or insure in insurance companies, and hold us for no losses except those arising from our own negligence, we are willing to carry your goods at a much lower rate." and, as shippers are willing to take the risks themselves for the sake of getting lower rates, the practice has become universal for lessening the liability of carriers in the manner described. suppose that goods are burned up by fire. the shipper must be the loser unless he can show that it was caused by the negligence of the carrier. as he often can show this, he imagines that the carrier is still living under the old law and is liable as he was in the early days of railroad and steamboat companies. in truth, this is not so. his liability is measured by his contract, and there can be no recovery for any loss unless negligence on the carrier's part is clearly shown, and in many cases this is not easily done. though common or public carriers are obliged to take and transport almost everything, _they may make reasonable regulations about the packing, etc., of merchandise_. suppose a shipper were to come to a railroad company's clerk with a quantity of glass not in boxes, and should say to him, "i wish this glass to be carried to new york"; and the clerk should say to him that the rules of the company required all glass to be packed in boxes lined with straw, and that the rule could not be set aside, however short might be the distance. very likely the shipper would say to the agent: "this is expensive; i wish you to take it as it is." and if he should say to the agent that he was willing to run the risk of breakage, then, perhaps, the clerk might take it in; yet, even on those terms, some carriers would not. at all events, if the clerk should insist on following the rules, the shipper could not justly complain, for this rule is a very reasonable one, as the courts have many times declared. suppose a shipper should ask a carrier to take a load of potatoes or apples to montreal in very cold weather. the carrier says to him: "there is danger of the apples being frozen. i am unwilling to carry them unless you will take the risk of their freezing." he could insist on these terms, because it would be unreasonable to require carriers to transport such merchandise and keep their cars heated. they are not made in that way and every shipper knows it, nor are carriers required to heat them. the courts have said that any reasonable regulations respecting the merchandise to be carried, the packing, etc., must be respected. a carrier could refuse positively to carry dynamite or powder unless it was packed in a very careful manner. doubtless many things are carried in ways quite contrary to the regulations, without the knowledge of the carrying companies. packages are rarely examined and things may be put within, out of sight, of which carriers know nothing. a carrier is not required to have cars enough to carry all goods on unusual occasions. but it must have enough to carry without delay all that come from day to day. xi. the carrying of passengers millions ride on steamboats, in the street-cars, and by steam-railways, and the question is an important one with them. _what are the rights and duties of company and passenger? first, it is the duty of a company carrying passengers to provide every one with a seat._ this rule does not apply to street-cars but it does to steam-railways. in some cases it is said of the street-car passengers that those who use the straps pay the money from which dividends are paid. but the rule is otherwise that applies to railway companies. they must furnish seats for their passengers and cannot demand fares until seats are secured. having taken him on board and seated him, what degree of care must the company use in carrying the passenger? it may seem strange to say that the company is not obliged to use as much care as in carrying a barrel of apples or an animal. goods must be moved, kept dry, perhaps, and cared for in other ways. an animal must be fed. in carrying cattle stops must be made for rest. but the passenger takes care of himself. he gets in and out and provides his own rations. therefore the law puts on the carrier the duty of using only a reasonable degree of care in taking him from place to place. in other words, the railway is not an insurer of life, as it is of goods or other merchandise. as passengers are of themselves able to get around and use some care with respect to their own movements, the law lessens the responsibility. perhaps the reader would like to know _what the company must do in carrying a passenger's baggage_. this is a very practical question. if he takes his grip in the seat with him, he alone is responsible for its safety. if some one should get in the seat beside him and in going out should take the grip along with him, the owner could not ask the company to make good his loss. on the other hand, if he delivers his grip to the company, then the company is bound by the same rule as when carrying other goods and merchandise. the price paid for his ticket is also enough to pay the cost of carrying his trunk or other baggage, therefore the carrier cannot escape paying for its loss when having possession of it on the ground that the service is purely voluntary and without compensation. as the company gets compensation it must pay for any loss while taking baggage from one place to another unless the loss or damage should be due to no fault or negligence of the company. every now and then we receive a cheque for a trunk or other piece of baggage stating that in the event of loss the company will not be responsible beyond a certain amount--$ , or $ , or other sum. is that statement on the cheque worth anything? the courts have held that if one of these cheques is taken by a passenger and he reads it he is bound thereby. this is a contract between carrier and passenger, consequently he is bound by the figures mentioned under ordinary circumstances. this rule is just and is based on a good reason. as every one knows, whenever a trunk is lost it is very difficult for the carrier to get any proof of the real value of its contents. all the evidence is in the hands of the passenger. if he is without a conscience and apparently proves that the things in it were worth $ or $ , he may succeed in getting this much, although it might have been full of shavings. it is because of much experience of this kind that carriers have tried to limit the amount for which they will be responsible, and so long as they do this in a fair, open way the law regards their conduct with favour. if, however, a passenger receives such a cheque and at once puts it in his pocket and does not know its true nature, then the courts have held that he was not bound by any limit of this kind. again, a person has no business to put diamonds and rubies and jewellery and the like in his trunk. if he does and they are lost, he cannot compel the carrier to pay for them. the courts have said that passengers have no right to put such things in their trunks expecting to make carriers pay for them when they are lost. if there are things of unusual value in a trunk, the carrier should be informed or else the owner should assume the risk. one word more. an express company is a common carrier and is bound by the same rules as other carriers except so far as such rules may be changed by definite contract. when a definite contract is made, then the rules of ordinary carriers do not apply. xii. on the keeping of things there are some principles of every-day importance relating to the keeping of things. in our last lecture was mentioned the carriage of merchandise by common carriers. they not only carry merchandise--they also keep it. when merchandise reaches its destination and shippers have had a reasonable time to take it away, but neglect to do so, a common carrier is no longer liable for its safe keeping as a common carrier but only as a warehouseman. what do we mean by this? as we have seen, a common carrier, unless he makes a special contract for carrying the merchandise, is liable for everything lost or injured except "by the act of god or the public enemy"; or, as we have already said, he is an insurer for safely taking and keeping the merchandise while it is in his charge. when the merchandise has reached the final station, and the person to whom it is shipped or sent has had ample time to take it away and does not do so, the carrier still keeps the merchandise in his warehouse or depot, but he is no longer liable as a carrier for keeping it but simply as a warehouseman. in other words, if goods are kept by him for this longer period, he is liable for their loss only in the event of gross negligence on his part. if a fire should break out and the goods be burned, unless it happened by his own gross negligence, he would not be liable for the loss. so, too, if a thief should break into his warehouse and steal the goods, he would not be liable for the theft unless it was shown that he was grossly negligent in not providing a safer building. if the rats and mice should destroy the goods while they were in the common carrier's building, the same rule would apply; or if they were injured or destroyed in any other manner, he would not be responsible for the loss unless gross negligence was shown. different rules apply, depending on whether the keeper, or bailee, gets any compensation for storage. in our lecture relating to sales we stated that the seller would not be liable for the loss of anything intrusted to his keeping after it had been bought of him unless he was grossly negligent, for the reason that no reward or compensation is paid to him for storage. there are, therefore, two rules which govern many cases. if a person keeps a thing for a reward or compensation, then he is bound by a stricter rule of diligence than in those cases in which he receives nothing for his service. this accords with the common reason of mankind. evidently if a person keeps a thing simply as an act of kindness, he ought not to be responsible in the same sense that one is held responsible who is paid a fixed price for such service. another good illustration is that of a bank which keeps the bonds of a depositor in its safe for his accommodation. the bank does not pretend to be a safe-deposit company or anything of the kind, but it has a large vault and wishes to accommodate its customers by keeping their stocks and bonds and other articles for them while they are off on vacations or for other reasons. it is a common thing for a customer to go to his bank, especially in the country, and ask the cashier to keep his valuables during his absence. the cashier is willing to comply, and the things are intrusted to him; but as the bank receives no compensation for this service it is not responsible for their loss unless it is grossly negligent in the matter. suppose they are put in the safe among other valuables belonging to the bank and a robber breaks in and takes them away--is the bank responsible? certainly not. on the other hand, if the customer should leave his valuables at a safe-deposit company, a different rule would apply, because that company charges him for keeping the articles. it is therefore bound by a stricter rule than the bank. it must use the greatest care, and if neglectful in any respect it is responsible for the consequences. suppose a person should say to me: "will you be good enough to leave this package with a jeweller on your way down street?" i say to my friend: "certainly, with the greatest pleasure." what degree of care must i use in carrying that package? only ordinary care. suppose in going along the street a thief, without my knowledge, should walk beside me and slip his hand into my pocket and take the package, and on my arrival at the jewellery store i should find that it was gone. should i be responsible for the loss? certainly not, because i had neither received nor expected to receive any reward for taking the package to the store. of course, if it could be shown that i was unnecessarily negligent in carrying the parcel, the owner might be justified in claiming damages. one thing more may be added. if a bailee should be a scoundrel and sell the thing left with him for safe-keeping and receive the money, the true owner could, nevertheless, claim the thing wherever he could find it. the owner would not get a good title. this rule of law applies to everything except negotiable paper. a person who buys that in good faith, honestly, not knowing that it was stolen, and pays money, gets a good title. _this is the only exception to the above rule in the law._ xiii. concerning agents very many persons act as agents for others. much of the business of modern times is carried on by persons of this class. all the managers of corporations are agents of the railways, banks, manufacturing companies, and the like. they are to be seen everywhere. every salesman is an agent. in short, _the larger part of the modern commerce of the world is done by agents_. agents are of two kinds, special and general; and there are important differences between the two. a general agent is a person who transacts all the business of the person hiring or appointing him, called a principal, or all his business of a particular kind. a principal might have several general agents for the different kinds of business in which he was engaged. suppose he has a cotton-factory and a store and a farm; he might have three general agents, each managing one of these enterprises. a general agent may be appointed in different ways. this may be done by a written contract. very often, however, no such contract is made, and the person comes to act in a different way. a cashier of a bank, for example, is a general agent to transact its business, but the mode of appointing him rarely consists of anything more than a resolution of the board of directors. more often than otherwise his appointment is purely verbal, by word of mouth. and, again, the authority of an agent thus to act is often found out by his acts, known and approved by his principal, or in other ways. suppose that a should manage b's store for him, buying and selling merchandise with a's knowledge; by thus putting him before the world as b's agent the law would say that he really was so, and b would be bound by his acts within a limit soon to be explained. this, perhaps, is the more common way in which the world learns of the authority of an agent's act. he does a great variety of things which it is well known must be within the knowledge of his principal or employer and, as they are known by the employer and the employer says nothing in the way of disowning or repudiating these acts, he is bound by them. sometimes, indeed, persons pretend to be agents for others when really they have no authority to act. when this is done, and the person for whom they are pretending to act finds out what they are doing, then it is his immediate duty to take such action as the circumstances require to disown the acts of such pretenders. if this is not done he may be bound by them. his action in adopting or approving is called the ratifying of an agent's act; and when this is done the agent's action is just as valid as though authority had been given to him to act in the beginning. the principal's conduct in thus ratifying an agent's acts relates back to the time when the agent first began to act. a special agent is appointed to do a particular thing and this is more often done in writing. perhaps the most common illustration is the appointment of some one to act for another at the annual meeting of a corporation to vote on stock. such a person is called a proxy, and persons often act as through another in this manner. sometimes one person serves as a proxy or agent for a very large number of shareholders. the liability of a principal for the acts of a general agent are very different from his liability for the acts of a special agent. in the former case the principal is said to be responsible for all the acts of his agent that are within the general scope of his business. in other words, if it is generally known that a is acting as the general agent of b in conducting his business,--we will say managing his cotton-factory,--a will bind his principal b for everything done by him as general agent in conducting that business. suppose a was acting as a general agent of an insurance company and, among other things, was told by the president or board of directors of the company not to insure property in a given place below a stated rate. suppose a person should go to this agent, desiring to have his property insured, but at a lower rate, and suppose that the agent should finally yield and make a lower rate as requested. could his company repudiate the contract? clearly not, for it was a's duty to make contracts for insuring properties. if the insured knew that the agent had been expressly limited in the rates for insuring and that he was going contrary to his instructions in making the lower rate, then, indeed, the company would not be bound by the contract. otherwise it could not repudiate the act, for it would fall within the general principle that a principal is bound by the acts of his agent done within the general scope of his business or employment; and such a contract clearly would be within the limit. for, indeed, this is the very business of the agent--to effect insurance. the only thing necessary, therefore, for a person doing business with a general agent is to find out whether he is such an agent; and when this is learned then a person can safely transact business with him, doing anything within the general scope of his powers, unless the person actually knows that some limit or restriction has been put upon the agent. it is not his duty to find out what the powers of a general agent are, but simply whether he is a general agent or not. but the rule is very different that applies to the liability of a principal who employs a special agent. in such cases it is the duty of the person doing business with him to inquire what his powers are, for the principal will not be bound beyond these. such an inquiry, therefore, must be made. he must ask the agent to show the authority under which he is appointed, or in some way clearly convince the other what his powers are before any business can be safely done. the authority of a special agent is often stated in writing, and the paper is called a power of attorney. _in selling land an agent should always have such a power_, because a good title to land can only be given in writing, and this power of attorney should be copied in the records kept for this purpose with the deed itself to show by what authority the agent acted in selling the land. every now and then when a person buys a piece of land and examines the title to find out whether it is perfect or not, he discovers that somewhere in the chain of title a deed was made by the agent of the seller instead of the seller himself, and the buyer had forgotten to put the power of attorney on record with his deed. the omission to do this is often serious. it is in truth just as important for an agent to have a proper power of attorney in such a case as to give a proper deed for his principal, and the one paper should be recorded quite as much as the other, as both are parts of the same story. _sometimes an agent appoints a subagent._ this may be orally or in writing. a good illustration is that of the collection of a cheque deposited with a bank. suppose a cheque is deposited in a bank in chicago drawn on a bank in newark, n. j. the chicago bank is, in the first instance, the agent for collecting it. the bank would send the cheque to another in new york, which would be its subagent, and that bank in turn would send it to a third bank in newark, which would be a subagent of the new york bank. thus there would be two subagents, besides the agent, employed in collecting the cheque. there is an important question relating to the liability of one of these agents or subagents in the event of the negligent performance of the duty; which is responsible? generally, it is said, if the general agent appoints a subagent he is nevertheless responsible for his act. suppose a street contractor employs a subagent to repair a street and he digs a hole and improperly guards it and some one falls into the place and is injured, can the person thus injured look to the contractor or to the subcontractor for compensation for his injury? the contractor is liable in such cases. it may be added, however, that although he is liable to the person injured, he may be able to recover of the subcontractor or subagent. but this rule does not apply to the banks in every state. in some of them the first bank in which the cheque was deposited is liable for the negligence of others that may be afterward employed in collecting it, and this rule prevails in the federal courts. in a larger number of states the first bank fully performs its duty in selecting a proper or reputable agent, and in sending the cheque to it for collection. should the second or subagent be neglectful, the depositor of the cheque could compel that agent, and not the first, to make its loss good. xiv. the law relating to bank cheques a cheque has come to be one of the most common of all writings. almost everybody receives more or less of them. there are some principles that ought to be understood by every holder or receiver of a cheque which, we fear, are not as well known as they should be. _first of all, a person ought to present his cheque for payment soon after receiving it._ some people are quite negligent in this matter and carry cheques around in their pocket-books for several days before presenting them for payment. it may not be convenient to take them to a bank, and so they are carried around; perhaps their owners forget they have them. they ought not to do so, for the reason that the maker of a cheque really says to the holder: "this is an order that i give to you on my bank for the money mentioned. if you go at once you can get payment, but i do not promise to keep it there always for you--only for a short time." now if a person is willing to accept a cheque at all, he ought to present it within the time the holder intended, and if he does not and the bank fails, the loss falls on the holder and not on the maker. _what time does the law fix for presenting cheques for payment?_ the rule everywhere is that the holder must present a cheque received by him, if drawn on a bank in the place where he lives, on the day of receiving it or on the next day. if the cheque is drawn on a bank at a distance, out of town, then he should send it to that bank, either directly or by leaving it with another bank for that purpose, on the same day as he received it or the next day. in other words, _he must take steps to collect the cheque either on the day of receiving it or the following one_. a friend of mine gave a cheque to a merchant in payment of a small bill. both lived in the same town, where the bank on which the cheque was drawn was also located. about a week afterward the bank failed and the merchant wrote to him, stating the unwelcome fact and that the cheque had not been collected and desired him to send another. i asked my friend if he complied with the request, and he said: "certainly." i told him that he ought not to have done so, for he was under no obligation either in law or morals to do such a thing. had he known the above rule he would not have sent the second cheque, for it was pure negligence on the part of the merchant in not presenting it--in fact, on the same day it was received. a person may, of course, hold a cheque for a much longer period than the time above mentioned and present it and receive payment, but the point that we are trying to make clear is that _the risk of holding it_ during this period _is the holder's and not the risk of the maker of the cheque_. i suppose the merchant in the above case had, perhaps, lost the cheque. every now and then one is mislaid and, consequently, is not presented for payment when it should be, but the maker ought not to suffer for the negligence of the receiver of his cheque. the rule of law that we have given is founded on justice, and if the receiver is negligent in not presenting it as he should, the holder ought not to suffer. _it is the duty of a bank to pay a cheque just as it is drawn, and if it makes any mistakes it must suffer._ the reason for this rule is that the maker does not expect to see his cheque again after it leaves his hand, and when he puts his money in a bank for safe-keeping the bank virtually says to him that it will pay only on his order just as he has written. it will guard his interests carefully and pay no forged cheques or cheques that have been altered in dates or amounts, to his injury. now, it is quite a common thing for cheques to be forged, and still more common for them to be raised. a scoundrel gets a cheque that is genuine, ordering a bank to pay $ , and changes it to $ . he presents it for payment and it is paid. by and by the depositor finds out that he has not as much money in the bank as he supposed he had there. what has happened? some one has altered one of his cheques and drawn out too much. he goes to the bank and makes inquiry, learns that this is so, and then demands that it shall make the amount good to him. usually a bank is obliged to pay. there is one limit to this rule. _a man making a cheque must be careful to write it in such a way that changes or alterations cannot easily be made._ if he is careless, leaving ample space so that changes can be made in the amount, then he will be considered negligent, and a bank would not be obliged to make good his loss. if, on the other hand, he is careful in drawing his cheques then a bank's duty to protect him is plain, and it is liable in the event of neglecting to do so. a few years ago a man drew a cheque for $ , dated it three days ahead, and left it with his clerk, directing him to draw the money on the day written in the cheque and pay the men who worked for him, and went away. the clerk thought that he would like to keep that money himself and take a little journey also, so he changed the date to one day earlier, went into the bank on that day and drew the money, and started for the klondike or some other place. the maker of the cheque soon found out what had happened and demanded of the bank to make the amount good. the bank said to him: "suppose the clerk had waited one day longer and then drawn the money, you would have been the loser just the same." the man admitted all this, but replied, nevertheless, that he had not changed the date; that the bank ought to have seen the alteration before paying, and as it did not it was negligent in that regard, and the bank was obliged to lose. when a person takes a cheque he naturally supposes that the bank on which it is drawn owes the money to him because he can truly demand it. _suppose a bank refuses to pay, can the holder then sue the bank for money?_ in six states--illinois, south carolina, missouri, kentucky, colorado, and texas--the holder of such a cheque can sue the bank and get his money. the courts in those states say that a cheque is an assignment or transfer of the amount of money stated to the holder of the cheque from the time that the cheque was given him. the law in all of the other states is otherwise, and a bank for a good reason can decline to pay a cheque, and, in any event, the holder cannot sue the bank for the amount. if it will not pay he must look to the maker and not the bank for payment. of course, _a cheque must always be drawn against a deposit, and it is a fraud on the part of a person to draw a cheque on a bank when he has no money there_. sometimes mistakes are made by banks in their bookkeeping, and they think they have not the money to pay when in truth they have. in such cases they sometimes decline to pay, but even if they had the money the law says that there is no contract between the holder of a cheque and the bank on which it is drawn, and therefore the holder cannot sue it should it refuse to pay. this rule, however, is rather losing ground and the other is coming into more general favour--that a cheque does operate to transfer the money of the maker to the holder and, consequently, that he has a right to sue the bank for the money. cheques are made payable either to bearer or order. if a cheque is made payable to bearer it can be transferred from one person to another simply by handing it to him--by delivery; but if a cheque is made payable to order, then the person who receives it, if wishing to transfer it to some one else, must write his name on the back. if he writes his name on the back it is called a blank indorsement, and this form is often used in transferring cheques. if, however, a person intends to send a cheque through the mail he should never write it payable to bearer, but always payable to the order of a particular person, so as to require his name to be written thereon in order to make a good transfer. this is a much safer way of sending cheques than simply by making them payable to bearer. xv. the law relating to leases a lease is an agreement, and, as every one knows, usually relates to the hiring of lands and houses. _if the agreement is to be for a longer period than one year it should be in writing_, for if it be not either party can avoid it, not morally but in law. the statute of frauds, which has been explained, would shield either party in not carrying out such an agreement if it were not in writing if by its terms it was to last for a longer period than one year. there is another very important reason for putting such an agreement in writing. much of the law relating to the two parties, landlord and tenant, is one-sided and in favour of the landlord. our law on that subject is based on the english law. it was imported in the early colonial days, and, though it has been greatly changed by statute and by decisions of the courts, it is still very one-sided, as we shall see before finishing this paper. for this reason, especially, all leases relating to houses and stores or other buildings, even for a short period, should be in writing, with the rights and duties of both parties fully stated, so that both may clearly know what to do and to expect. unless something is said in the lease concerning repairs the landlord is not obliged to make any. this statement shows at once the need of having a written lease. if the house is out of order--the locks, blinds, doors, and windows are not in good order--the tenant cannot claim anything of the landlord or require him to put them in good condition. even if a house should become unfit for habitation in consequence of fire, or is blown down, or is flooded with water, the landlord is not bound to do anything unless he has stated that he will in his lease. a fire broke out not long since in a large warehouse and burned it so completely as to render it wholly unfit for use; indeed, all the merchandise in it was wholly consumed. nevertheless, when the lease expired and the tenants refused to pay as they had agreed to do, the landlord brought a legal proceeding against them to compel them to pay during the entire period, as though they had been staying there and selling goods and making money, and they were compelled to pay. _this is the common law on the subject_, and every tenant is bound to pay in such cases unless he has clearly stated in his lease that he is not to be holden in the event of the destruction of the building by fire, flood, lightning, or other cause. furthermore, it may be added that leases nowadays are often furnished with blank spaces to be filled up with names, the amounts to be paid, times of payment, etc., and persons often sign them without even reading them. they should not do this. they should be careful to read them over two or three times or more, until they fully understand them and are sure of their nature before signing or executing them. people are still more negligent in taking out insurance policies without reading them. they are very long and parts of them are printed in fine type and, perhaps, are quite difficult, especially for old eyes, to read. in truth some of the most important parts are put in the finest print--some of the exceptions against loss and other matters, which, we are quite sure, if a person when taking out a policy should read over and understand he would insist on having changed. if a house becomes unfit for living therein by its own fault--for example, if it is overrun with rats, or becomes so decayed that the weather invades and is thereby rendered unfit--the tenant, so the law says, has indeed the privilege of quitting, if he did not know these things at the time of entering; but if he did, he would be required to live there, however much he might dislike the company of rats or the presence of the snow or rain, and also to pay his rent; or, if quitting for that reason, he would still be responsible for the rent as he would if living in the house. an eminent legal writer has stated the principle in this way: the tenant can leave if the defect was not known or anticipated by him, or known or anticipated if he had made a reasonable investigation or inquiry before he took the lease. a tenant is not required to make general repairs without an agreement, but he must make those that are necessary to preserve the house from injury by rain and wind. if the shingles are blown off or panes of glass are broken others must be put in their places; and it is said that he would be bound even for ornamental repairs, like paper and painting, if he made an agreement to return the house in good order. a tenant of a farm must manage and cultivate it by the same rules of husbandry as are practised in his vicinity, and if his lease ends by any event that is uncertain and could neither have been foreseen nor foretold, he is entitled to the annual crop sowed or planted by him while he was in possession. as we have stated, if the house is wholly destroyed the tenant must still pay the rent, for the reason, which to many may seem absurd, that the law regards the land as the principal thing and the house as secondary. it is true that a man, in the event of his house burning down, might pitch a tent on the ground and live there, but it would be a decidedly chilly way of living, especially in the winter-time, in the northern part of our country. if a tenant should agree to return and deliver the house at the end of the term in good order and condition, reasonable wear and tear only excepted, he would be obliged to rebuild the house if it burned down. once more, we ask, in view of these things, ought he not to make a written lease and well understand its terms before signing it? the times for paying rent are usually specified in the lease, if one is made. when they are not the tenant is governed by the usage of the country or place where he lives. when nothing is said about underletting the whole or a part to some one else the tenant has a right to do this, but remains bound to the landlord for his rent. generally when written leases are made there is a clause stating that the tenant cannot underlet any portion or all without the landlord's consent. _a tenant is not responsible for taxes unless it is expressly agreed that he shall pay them._ if a lease be for a fixed time the tenant loses all right or interest in the land as soon as the lease comes to an end, and he must leave then or the landlord may turn him out at once, or, in other language, eject him. if, however, he stays there longer with the consent of the landlord he is then called a tenant at will and cannot be turned out by the landlord without giving a notice to him to quit. the statutes of the several states have fixed the length of time that a notice must be given by the landlord to his tenant before he can turn him out. in many states a notice of thirty days must be given; sometimes sixty days' notice is required, or even longer. it is an important question _what things a tenant may take away with him at the expiration of his lease_. of course, there is no question whatever with respect to many things. besides his wife and children he may take all his furniture and other movable property. but there are many things fixed to the house by the tenant that he desires to remove if he has the right to do so, and many questions have been asked and decided by the courts relating to this subject. the method of fastening them to the house is the test usually applied to determine whether they can be taken away or not. if they are fastened by screws in such a way as to show that the tenant intended to take them away, he can do so, otherwise he cannot. in modern times the rule has been changed in favour of the tenant, and whatever he can remove without injuring the house, leaving it in as good condition as it would otherwise be, he can take away; for example, ornamental chimney-pieces, coffee-mills, cornices that are furnished with screws, furnaces, stoves, looking-glasses, pumps, gates, fence rails, barns or stables on blocks, etc. on the other hand, a barn placed on the ground cannot be removed, nor benches fastened to the house, nor trees, plants, and hedges not belonging to a gardener by trade, nor locks and keys. of course, all these things may be changed by the written lease, and it should be clearly stated what things may be removed concerning which any doubt may arise. we have heard of a case in which a tenant put a pier-glass into a house, fastening it by means of cement. he asked and was given the landlord's permission to do this at the time of putting it in, but when the lease ended the landlord would not allow him to take it out, and an appeal was made to a court, which decided in favour of the landlord. doubtless this decision is correct. if the glass could have been taken away without injuring the wall then it belonged to the tenant. this shows the need of putting such matters in writing; otherwise the tenant will suffer unless the landlord be a man of the highest integrity. xvi. liability of employer to employÉs persons who are employed in mills, in erecting buildings, by railroad companies, and others, are frequently injured while pursuing their employment, and the question has often arisen whether the employer was liable for the injury thus suffered by them. the more important of these questions we propose to answer in this and the following lecture, as they are matters of every-day importance to many people. first of all, an employé to recover anything for the loss that may have happened must show that in some way _his employer was negligent_. he cannot get something simply because he has been injured. the law in no country has ever said that he could. in all cases he must show that his employer failed in his duty in some way toward him to lay the foundation of an action against him. this is the first principle to keep clearly in mind. again, it is said that an employé cannot recover if the injury has happened to him in consequence of the negligence of a fellow-servant. by this is meant a person engaged in the same common employment. it is not always easy to determine whether two persons employed by the same company are fellow-servants, as we shall soon see, but the principle of law is plain enough that in all cases where they are thus acting as fellow-servants they cannot recover for any injury. the law says this is one of the risks that a person takes when he enters the service of another. suppose a person is at work mining coal and is injured by another person working by his side through his negligence. however severely injured he may be he cannot get anything, because the person through whose negligence he has been injured is a fellow-workman. but many employés may have the same common employer and yet not be fellow-servants. for example, a brakeman would be a fellow-servant with the conductor and engineer and other persons running on the same train or on other trains belonging to the same company, but he would not be a fellow-servant working in the same line of employment with those who are engaged in the repair-shop of the company. this statement is quite sufficient to show the difficulty there is sometimes in deciding whether a person is a fellow-servant or not. if a person is injured through the negligence of another employed by the same company who is not a fellow-servant, then he can recover if there are no other difficulties in the way, otherwise he cannot. it does not follow that fellow-servants are of the same grade or rank; the test is whether they are acting in the same line of employment. the brakeman's position is not so high as that of the engineer or conductor, yet all three are acting in the same line of employment, and if any one of them was injured by another in that part of the service the employer would not be liable. in a very large number of cases, therefore, employers are not liable for accidents happening to their employés, because they are injured through the negligence of other employés engaged in the same line or subdivision of the common service. perhaps employers escape more frequently on this ground than on any other from paying anything for losses. yet there is another ground on which they often escape paying anything. an employé is supposed when making his contract with his employer to take on himself all the ordinary risks arising from his employment. these in many cases are very numerous. he does not assume extraordinary risks, but he does assume all ordinary risks that are likely to happen to him. employés are injured every day and yet can recover nothing, because their injury is simply a common one, the risk of which they have assumed. would it not be possible to make an employer liable for them all? undoubtedly an employé could make a contract of this kind if he wished and his employer was willing to do so, but if they did the employer would be unwilling to pay as high wages. the greater the risk assumed by the employé the larger is the compensation paid; the one thing is graded by the other. it was stated when considering the rights and duties of common carriers that they have been lessening their liabilities; on the other hand, they are carrying for smaller prices than they once did. doubtless a carrier would be willing to assume more risks--every kind of risk, in short--if he were paid enough for it, but shippers ordinarily are willing to assume many risks for the sake of the lower rates and insure their risks in insurance companies. just so the working-men prefer higher wages and assume many risks of their employment. there is nothing unfair in this. for example, the persons who are engaged in making white lead run an unusual risk in pursuing their employment. it is said nowadays that if they use the utmost care in protecting themselves from inhaling the fumes that arise in some stages of this process, they can live quite as long as other people. but unless they do exercise every precaution their system finally becomes charged with the poison that arises from this process and their lives are shortened. they well understand this before beginning the work; they are told of the risks and are paid high wages. if, therefore, they undertake such employment, well knowing the risks, they have no right to complain if their health after a time suffers. no fraud has been practised on them, and we do not know that they do complain if they suffer any ill effects from their work. xvii. liability of employers to employÉs (_continued_) in our last lecture we stated some of the principles relating to the liabilities of employers to their employés; in this lesson the subject will be continued. _an employer is bound to use some care or precaution, and if he does not will be responsible for his neglect._ one of these is he must employ persons who are fit for the work they are set to do. if an employer in mining should put a man to work by the side of another to mine coal who he knew was not a skilful workman, and, in consequence of this unskilful workman's unskilfulness, other miners were injured, he would be responsible for hiring such a man. every one will see the justice of this rule. _the employer must also give proper instructions to the person employed whenever he does not understand his duties._ if a person is employed to run a laundry machine who does not understand how to work it, and other employés are injured through his ignorance, the employer would be liable. he must, therefore, tell such a person what to do; he has no right to hazard the lives of others by putting any one who has no knowledge of a machine to work without instructing him properly. again, if a person pretends to be capable, and the employer, believing him, engages him, and it is soon found out that he is not, then it is the duty of the employer either to dismiss him or to give him proper instructions. the rule, however, on this subject is not the same everywhere. it is sometimes said that if an employé continues to work by the side of another after knowing that this other is incompetent, it is his duty to give notice to the employer, and if the employer continues to employ him, to quit. if he does not he assumes the greater risk arising from his knowledge of the incompetency of the other. _it is the duty of the employer to furnish proper appliances for his workmen._ he must furnish proper tools and machinery and safe scaffolding, and in every respect must show a reasonable degree of care in all these particulars. but the courts say that he is not obliged to exercise the _utmost_ care, because the employé takes on himself some risk with respect to the tools and machinery he uses. for example, it is said that employers are not obliged to use the latest appliances that are known or appear in the market for the use of their workmen. if an employer has an older one that has been in use for years, and the employés have found out all the dangers attending its use, and a new one appears that is less dangerous to use, the law does not require the employer to throw the older one away and get the other. it is true that in many states within the last few years statutes have been passed by the legislatures requiring employers to be much more careful than they were formerly in protecting their machinery. many injuries have happened from the use of belting, and the statutes in many cases have stated what must be done in the way of enclosing belts, and of putting screens around machinery, and in various ways of so protecting it that persons will be less liable to suffer. furthermore, inventors have been very busy in inventing machinery with this end in view. the old-fashioned car-coupler was a very dangerous device, and many a poor fellow has been crushed between cars when trying to couple them. a coupler has been made in which this danger no longer exists; in truth, there has been a great advance in this direction. _an employer must also select suitable materials on which to work._ this is a well-known principle. if he does not, then he is responsible for the consequences. in one of the cases a person was injured while erecting a scaffolding from the breaking of a knotty timber. the testimony was that the knot was visible on the surface and if the stick had been examined the defect would have been seen. that seemed a slight defect, surely, but the consequence of using the timber was very serious, and the court rightly held that as this defect could have been seen, had the timber been properly examined, the employer was responsible for the injury to a workman who was injured by the breaking of it. _an employer must also select suitable places for his employés._ in one of the cases a court said a master does not warrant his servant's safety. he does, however, agree to adopt and keep proper means with which to carry on the business in which they are employed. among these is the providing of a suitable place for doing his work without exposure to dangers that do not come within the reasonable scope of his employment. in one of the cases a company stored a quantity of dynamite so near a place where an employé was working that he was killed by its explosion. the court held that it was negligence on the part of the company in requiring its employé to work so near the place where this explosive material was kept. it is said that if an employé knows that a machine which he is to operate is defective when accepting employment he can recover nothing for the consequences. he assumes the risk whenever he thus engages to work. if the service be especially perilous and yet he clearly understands the nature of it and is injured when performing it, he can get nothing. doubtless in many of these cases he is paid a larger sum for working under such conditions. whatever may be the truth in this regard, the principle of law is well understood that, if he has a full knowledge of the risk of his situation and makes no complaint about the nature of the machinery that he is to operate, he accepts the risks, however great they may be. in one of the cases an employé was injured by the kick of a horse belonging to his employer, but he recovered nothing, because he understood the vicious nature of the animal. the horse had kicked others; in fact, its reputation for kicking was well known, and the employé began work with his eyes wide open. this rule also applies if tools, machinery, etc., become defective and the employé continues to work after the defects are found out. of course, every one knows that tools wear out and machinery becomes weaker, and that is one of the natural consequences of using them. and so it is regarded as one of the risks ordinarily taken by an employé, and therefore he can get nothing whenever he is injured through the operation of a defective machine caused by the natural wear and tear of time. examination paper note.--_the following questions are given as an indication of the sort of knowledge a student ought to possess after a careful study of the course. the student is advised to write out the answers. only such answers need be attempted as can be framed from the lessons._ . (_a_) what is a contract? (_b_) what is the difference between a simple and a special contract? (_c_) what contracts can be made by a minor? when and how can he ratify them? (_d_) if a person makes a contract to work for one year and breaks it after working six months can he collect six months' wages? (_e_) give illustrations of six different kinds of contracts. . (_a_) when is it necessary that contracts be in writing? (_b_) in what case is a failure of consideration a good defence to a contract? (_c_) is a consideration required to make an offer binding? (_d_) is the delivery of goods essential to make a sale complete? . (_a_) what are the different kinds of warranties? (_b_) suppose a should buy goods and pay for them, but not take them away, and afterward b should buy them and take them away--could a recover the goods from b? . (_a_) what is the difference between a public and a private carrier? (_b_) must a public carrier take everything offered? (_c_) what rules of liability apply to common carriers, and how can they be modified? preparing copy for the press and proof-reading i. preparing copy our purpose in these few lessons is to give some explicit directions as to the general make-up of manuscripts intended for printing. every person who has even a business card or a circular to print should have a knowledge of the common phraseology of a printing house. as to paper, the size in most common use for manuscripts is what is known as _letter_. the sheets in any case should be of uniform size. avoid all eccentricity and affectation in the preparation of your manuscript, or "copy," as printers call it. the more matter-of-fact and businesslike it is the better. if at all possible have your manuscript type-written, and under no circumstances should you roll the sheets when preparing them for the mails. there are a number of large publishing houses which positively refuse to touch rolled manuscripts. the very first impression created by such a manuscript is one of extreme irritation. a rolled proof is pretty nearly as discouraging, yet many printers still follow the annoying practice of rolling their proofs. every printing establishment of any note has its methods and customs as regards orthography, the use of capitals and of punctuation. as a rule it is best to leave doubtful points to the printer. any little deviation desired may be easily remedied in the proofs. paragraphs should be boldly indicated by setting the line well back in the "copy." extract matter included in the text should be clearly shown, either by marking it down the side with a vertical line from beginning to end or by setting the whole well back within the compass of the text. such matter is commonly set in slightly smaller type. with regard to the corrections in the proofs it must be remembered that the more carefully an article is written the smaller the expense for author's corrections. this charge is often a great source of contention between the author and the printer, and, altogether, is an unsatisfactory item. a printer is bound, with certain reservations, to follow the "copy" supplied. if he does that and the author does not make any alterations there is no extra charge and nothing to wrangle about. a small correction, trivial as it may seem to the inexperienced, may involve much trouble to the printer. a word inserted or deleted may cause a page to be altered throughout, line by line, and a few words may possibly affect several pages. the charges made for corrections are based on the time consumed in making the necessary alterations. ii. on the names and sizes of type the beauty of printed matter depends very largely upon the selection of a suitable style of type. for books and newspaper work there are in use two general classes known as (_a_) _old style_, (_b_) _modern_. these names refer to the shape of the letter and not to its size. the several sizes of type commonly used in all plain work are as follows: . pearl. . agate. . nonpareil. . minion. . brevier. . bourgeois. . long primer. . small pica. . pica. . english. . great primer. pica is universally considered as the standard type, just as the _foot_ is the standard of measurement. the twelfth part of a pica is the unit, called a _point_, by which type bodies are measured. in many printing offices the type is known as _ -point_, _ -point_, _ -point_, _etc._, instead of as _nonpareil_, _brevier_, _long primer_, _etc._ the following specimens show the sizes of the type in common use: [illustration: sample type faces pearl, agate, nonpareil, minion, brevier, bourgeois, primer, small pica, pica, english, primer.] the student must bear in mind the fact that these names refer to the _size_ of the type. for instance, there may be a dozen different styles of brevier or of pica; a particular specimen of printing may be entirely in long primer, yet some words may be capitals, others italic, others boldface, and so on. agate is the size of type used in measuring advertisements. there are fourteen agate lines in an inch. a complete series of type of a particular size is called a _font_; as a font of brevier, or of pica. such a font would include: capitals small capitals lower-case _italic capitals_ _italic lower-case_. also _figures_, _fractions_, _points_, _references_, _braces_, _signs_, _etc._ printers divide a font of letters into two classes: . _the upper-case_ } _sorts._ . _the lower-case_ } the _upper-case sorts_ are _capitals_, _small capitals_, _references_, _dashes_, _braces_, _signs_, etc. the _lower-case sorts_ consist of _small letters_, _figures_, _points_, _spaces_, etc. type lines are often bulked out by the insertion of thin strips of lead, this being called _leading_. where no leads are employed the matter is said to be _solid_. iii. the terms used in printing composition. this is the name given by printers to the work of setting the type. the compositor holds in his hand a _composing-stick_, into which he places the type letter by letter, adding the spaces where necessary. a great deal of the newspaper work of the present day is set by type machines. distributing. the type of a particular page or article after it has been used on the press or for electrotyping is distributed letter by letter in the _cases_. this work is much more rapid than composition. type to be used a second time is said to be _standing_ or is called _standing matter_. spaces. spaces are short blank types and are used to separate one word from another. to enable a compositor to space evenly and to "justify" properly, these spaces are cast to various thicknesses. an _em quadrat_ is a short blank type, in thickness equal to the letter _m_ of the font to which it belongs. quadrats are of various sizes. calendered paper. this name is given to very highly rolled or glazed paper such as is used in illustrated work. _laid_ paper has a slightly ribbed surface. _antique_ paper is rough and usually untrimmed at the edges. it is made in imitation of old styles. caps. and lower-case. these names are used to designate capitals and small letters. clarendon. this name is commonly given to a _bold_ and _black-faced type_, such as used in text-books to bring out prominently particular words. dummy. an imitation in style and size of a book or pamphlet that is wanted, usually made up with blank paper. electrotype. electrotype or stereotype plates are made from type. books are usually printed from such plates. galley proof. as the type is set up it is removed from the composing-stick to long forms called _galleys_. a proof taken of the whole galley at once is called a _galley proof_. book work should be revised in galleys before it is made up into pages. impression. a _flat-pull_ or first impression is a simple proof usually pulled in job offices by laying a sheet of damp paper on the inked type and pounding with a flat-surfaced weight to get the impression. indent. to set a line some distance forward, as in the case of a new paragraph. letterpress. printed matter from type as distinguished from plate printing. make-up. to measure off type matter into pages. off-set. it frequently occurs that as the result of insufficient drying or from other causes the impression of one sheet appears on the back of another; such work is said to _off-set_. overlays. in making ready for the press the pressman finds it necessary to add here and there, by pasting, thicknesses of paper to his roller to bring out properly the light and shade of an illustration or to get an even ink impression from the type or plates. this work is called _making overlays_. in expensive illustrated work specialists are engaged solely for the purpose of making overlays. press proof. the final proof passed by the author or publisher. process-blocks. blocks produced by the photoengraving and other mechanical processes. query. a mark made on a proof by the printer to call attention to a possible error, sometimes expressed by a note of interrogation (?). register. the exact adjustment of pages back to back in printing the second side of a sheet. signature. the letter or figure at the foot of a sheet to guide the binder in folding; also used by printers to identify any particular sheet. the various marks and signs used by printers will be explained in the lesson on proof-reading. iv. marks used in proof-reading the most important of the signs used in making corrections for the printer are as follows: . [illustration] delete or expunge. . [illustration] a turned letter. . [illustration] wrong-font letter. . [illustration] change capital to small letter, ("lower-case"). . [illustration] insert period. . [illustration] transpose words or letters as indicated. . [illustration] change roman to _italic_. . [illustration] change _italic_ to roman. . [illustration] space to be inserted. . [illustration] matter wrongly altered to remain as it was originally. dots are placed under the matter. . [illustration] a bad or battered letter. . [illustration] space to be reduced. . [illustration] close up. . [illustration] push down space or lead. . [illustration] new paragraph. . [illustration] something foreign between the lines, or a wrong-font space making the type crooked. . [illustration] line to be indented one _em_ of its own body. when letters or words are set double or are required to be taken out a line is drawn through the superfluous word or letter and the mark no. , called _dele_, placed opposite on the margin. (_dele_ is latin for _take out_.) a turned letter is noted by drawing a line through it and writing the mark no. on the margin. if letters or words require to be altered to make them more conspicuous a parallel line or lines must be made underneath the word or letter--namely, for capitals, _three lines_; for small capitals, _two lines_; and for italic, _one line_; and on the margin opposite the line where the alteration occurs the sign _caps._, _small caps._, or _ital._ must be written. where a letter of a different font is improperly introduced into the page it is noted by drawing a line through it and writing _w. f._ (_wrong font_) on the margin. where a word has been left out or is to be added a _caret_ must be made in the place where it should come in and the word written on the margin. a caret is made thus: ^ where letters stand crooked they are noted by a line, but where a page hangs lines are drawn across the entire part affected. where a faulty letter appears it is denoted by making a cross under it and placing a similar mark on the margin. where several words are left out or where new matter is to be added the added matter is written wherever convenient, and a line is drawn from the place of omission to the written words. in making a correction in a proof always mark the wrong letter or word through and insert the alteration in the margin, not in the middle of the printed matter, because it is liable to be overlooked if there is no marginal reference to the correction. to keep the different corrections distinct finish each off with a stroke, thus /; and to make the alterations more clear or less crowded mark those relating to the left-hand portion on the left margin and those relating to the right-hand portion on the right margin. * * * * * the hints given here are intended for the general public and not for the printer, and to the student of these lessons let us say that the first essential of good proof-reading is clearness. be very sure that the printer will understand the changes which you desire him to make. quite often it is an advantage if you wish a particular style of type used to cut out a sample of that style and paste it on your copy or on your proof, indicating that you want it to be used. instructions to the printer written either on the copy or on the proof should be surrounded by a line to separate them from the text, or to prevent any confusion with other written matter intended as copy or as corrections. when the corrections have been duly made and approved by the author or editor it is customary to write the word "press" on the top of the first page. if intermediate proofs are wanted, mark on the proofs returned to the printer "send revise." the final or "press" proof is always retained by the printer in case of any dispute. it is his voucher, and he retains it for future reference. it is a good plan to make corrections in a different coloured ink from that used by the printer's proof-reader. if you are having a pamphlet or book printed the different proofs will reach you in the following order: . _galley proofs._ . _revised proofs_ (if any). . _page proofs._ . _foundry proofs._ [illustration: a printer's proof.] so far as possible, make all the necessary changes while the type is in galleys. once made up into pages, a very slight change, particularly such a change as the crossing out or addition of a sentence, may make a great deal of trouble. when the pages are passed upon they are sent to the foundry for casting. the foundry proofs are the last proofs pulled. corrections made on these make it necessary to alter the electrotype plates, which is rather an expensive process. to change a word, a piece of the metal plate has to be cut out and another with the new word soldered in. [illustration: a printer's corrected proof.] a page is said to _overrun_ if it is too long. if the space to be occupied is limited it is a good plan to adapt your copy to it by counting the words and by comparing the count with that of some printed page in the same size of type. return proofs to your printer or publisher as promptly as possible. as a rule printing houses cannot afford to keep type locked up and unused waiting for the return of proofs. there are many imperfections in typography, such as wrong-font and inverted letters, awkward and irregular spacing, uneven pages or columns, crooked words and lines, etc., which it is the business of the printing house to correct. no book or pamphlet, therefore, ought to go to press until it has been read and revised by an experienced reader. strict uniformity should always be preserved in the use of capitals, in spelling, and in punctuation. where authors have their manuscripts type-written and make two or three revises upon the type-written sheets before their copy is turned over to the publishing house, the labour of proof-reading and the expenses of corrections are reduced to a minimum. the errors shown in our illustration are more numerous than are likely to appear in any proof sent out from a publishing house. +------------------------------------------------+ | transcriber's notes | +________________________________________________+ | | | page favorable changed to favourable | | favor changed to favour | | ( ) changed to . | | contantly changed to constantly | | ierland change to ireland | | battle-ships changed to battleships | | bread-stuffs changed to breadstuffs | | duplicated "from" deleted | | bread-stuffs change to breadstuffs | | june, changed to june , | | proportiona t changed to proportion at| | duplicated "in" deleted | | typewritten changed to type-written | | everyday changed to every-day | | comma added after figures | | colored changed to coloured | | nessary changed to necessary | +------------------------------------------------+ fundamentals of prosperity what they are and whence they come by roger w. babson _president babson statistical organization_ new york chicago fleming h. revell company london and edinburgh copyright, , by fleming h. revell company new york: fifth avenue chicago: north wabash ave. london: paternoster square edinburgh: princes street contents foreword i. honesty or steel doors? ii. faith the searchlight of business iii. industry vs. opportunity iv. coÖperation--success by helping the other fellow v. our real resources vi. study the human soul vii. boost the other fellow viii. what truly counts ix. what figures show x. where the church falls down xi. the future church foreword some two thousand years ago the greatest teacher who ever walked the earth advised the people of judea not to build their houses on the sand. what he had in mind was that they were looking too much to the structure above ground, and too little to the spiritual forces which must be the foundation of any structure which is to stand. following the war we enjoyed the greatest prosperity this country has ever witnessed;--the greatest activity, the greatest bank clearings, the greatest foreign trade, the greatest railroad gross earnings, the highest commodity prices. we then constructed a ten-story building on a foundation meant for only a two or three story building. hence the problem confronting us business men is to strengthen the foundation or else see the structure fall. i am especially glad of the opportunity to write for business men. there are two reasons:--first, because i feel that the business men are largely responsible for having this ten-story structure on a foundation made for one of only two or three stories; secondly, because i believe such men alone have the vision, the imagination and the ability to strengthen the foundation and prevent the structure from falling. the fact is, we have become crazy over material things. we are looking only at the structure above ground. we are trying to get more smoke from the chimney. we are looking at space instead of service, at profits instead of volume. with our eyes focused on the structure above ground, we have lost sight of those human resources, thrift, imagination, integrity, vision and faith which make the structure possible. i feel that only by the business men can this foundation be strengthened before the inevitable fall comes. when steel rails were selling at $ a ton, compared with only $ a ton a few years previous, our steel plants increased their capacity twenty-five per cent. increased demand, you say? no, the figures don't show it. only thirty-one million tons were produced in , compared with thirty-nine million tons in . people have forgotten the gospel of service. the producing power per man has fallen off from fifteen to twenty per cent. we have all been keen on developing consumption. we have devoted nine-tenths of our thought, energy and effort to developing consumption. this message is to beg of every reader to give more thought to developing production, to the reviving of a desire to produce and the realization of joy in production. we are spending millions and millions in every city to develop the good-will of customers, to develop in customers a desire to buy. this is all well and good, but we can't continue to go in one direction indefinitely. we cannot always get steam out of the boiler without feeding the furnace. the time has come when in our own interests, in the interests of our communities, our industry, and of the nation itself, for a while we must stop adding more stories to this structure. instead, we must strengthen the foundations upon which the entire structure rests. r. w. b. i honesty or steel doors? while fifty-one per cent of the people have their eyes on the goal of integrity, our investments are secure; but with fifty-one per cent of them headed in the wrong direction, our investments are valueless. the first fundamental of prosperity is integrity. while on a recent visit to chicago, i was taken by the president of one of the largest banks to see his new safety deposit vaults. he described these--as bank presidents will--as the largest and most marvellous vaults in the city. he expatiated on the heavy steel doors and the various electrical and mechanical contrivances which protect the stocks and bonds deposited in the institution. while at the bank a person came in to rent a box. he made the arrangements for the box, and a box was handed to him. in it he deposited some stocks and bonds which he took from his pocket. then the clerk who had charge of the vaults went to a rack on the wall and took out a key and gave it to the man who had rented the box. the man then put the box into one of the little steel compartments, shut the door and turned the key. he then went away feeling perfectly secure on account of those steel doors and various mechanical and electrical contrivances existing to protect his wealth. i did not wish to give him a sleepless night so i said nothing; but i couldn't help thinking how easy it would have been for that poorly-paid, humpbacked clerk to make a duplicate of that key before he delivered it to the renter of that box. with such a duplicate, the clerk could have made that man penniless within a few minutes after he had left the building. the great steel door and the electrical and mechanical contrivances would have been absolutely valueless. of course the point i am making is that the real security which that great bank in chicago had to offer its clientele lay not in the massive stone columns in front of its structure; nor in the heavy steel doors; nor the electrical and mechanical contrivances. the real strength of that institution rested in the honesty,--the absolute integrity--of its clerks. * * * * * that afternoon i was talking about the matter with a business man. we were discussing securities, earnings and capitalization. he seemed greatly troubled by the mass of figures before him. i said to him: "instead of pawing over these earnings and striving to select yourself the safest bond, you will do better to go to a reliable banker or bond-house and leave the decision with him." "why," he said, "i couldn't do that." "mr. jones," i went on, "tell me the truth! after you buy a bond or a stock certificate, do you ever take the trouble to see if it is signed and countersigned properly? moreover, if you find it signed, is there any way by which you may know whether the signature is genuine or forged?" "no," he said, "there isn't. i am absolutely dependent on the integrity of the bankers from whom i buy the securities." and when you think of it, there is really no value at all in the pieces of paper which one so carefully locks up in these safety deposit boxes. there is no value at all in the bank-book which we so carefully cherish. there is no value at all in those deeds and mortgages upon which we depend so completely. the value rests _first_, in the integrity of the lawyers, clerks and stenographers who draw up the papers; _secondly_, in the integrity of the officers who sign the documents; _thirdly_, in the integrity of the courts and judges which would enable us to enforce our claims; and _finally_, in the integrity of the community which would determine whether or not the orders of the court will be executed. these things which we look upon as of great value:--the stocks, bonds, bank-books, deeds, mortgages, insurance policies, etc., are merely nothing. while fifty-one per cent. of the people have their eyes on the goal of integrity, our investments are secure; but with fifty-one per cent. of them headed in the wrong direction, our investments are valueless. so the first fundamental of prosperity is integrity. without it there is no civilization, there is no peace, there is no security, there is no safety. mind you also that this applies just as much to the man who is working for wages as to the capitalist and every owner of property. integrity, however, is very much broader than the above illustration would indicate. integrity applies to many more things than to money. integrity requires the seeking after, as well as the dispensing of, truth. it was this desire for truth which founded our educational institutions, our sciences and our arts. all the great professions, from medicine to engineering, rest upon this spirit of integrity. only as they so rest, can they prosper or even survive. integrity is the mother of knowledge. the desire for truth is the basis of all learning, the value of all experience and the reason for all study and investigation. without integrity as a basis, our entire educational system would fall to the ground; all newspapers and magazines would become sources of great danger and the publication of books would have to be suppressed. our whole civilization rests upon the assumption that people are honest. with this confidence shaken, the structure falls. and it should fall, for, unless the truth be taught, the nation would be much better off without its schools, newspapers, books and professions. better have no gun at all, than one aimed at yourself. the corner-stone of prosperity is the stone of integrity. ii faith the searchlight of business this religion which we talk about for an hour a week, on sunday, is not only the vital force which protects our community, but it is the vital force which makes our communities. the power of our spiritual forces has not yet been tapped. about three years ago i was travelling in south america. when going from sao paulo up across the tablelands to rio janeiro, i passed through a little poverty-stricken indian village. it was some , feet above sea level; but it was located at the foot of a great water-power. this water-power, i was told, could easily develop from , to , horse-power for twelve months of the year. at the base of this waterfall lived these poverty-stricken indians, plowing their ground with broken sticks, bringing their corn two hundred miles on their backs from the seacoast, and grinding it by hand between two stones. yet,--with a little faith and vision, they could have developed that water-power, even though in a most primitive manner, and with irrigation, could have made that poverty-stricken valley a veritable garden of eden. they simply lacked _faith_. they lacked vision. they were unwilling, or unable, to look ahead to do something for the next generation and trust to the lord for the results. i met the head man of the village and said to him: "why is it that you don't do something to develop this power?" "why, if we started to develop this thing," he answered, "by the time we got it done, we would be dead." indians had lived there for the last two hundred years lacking the vision. no one in that community had the foresight or vision to think or see beyond the end of his day. it was lack of faith which stood between them and prosperity. hence, the second great fundamental of prosperity is that intangible "something,"--known as faith, vision, hope, whatever you may call it. the writer of the book of proverbs says: "where there is no vision, the people perish." statistics teach that where there is no vision, civilization never gets started! the tangible things which we prize so highly,--buildings, railroads, steamships, factories, power plants, telephones, aeroplanes, etc., are but the result of faith and vision. these things are only symptoms of conditions, mere barometers which register the faith and vision of mankind. this religion which we talk about for an hour a week, on sunday, is not only the vital force which protects our community, but it is the vital force which _makes_ our communities. _the power of our spiritual forces has not yet been tapped!_ our grandchildren will look back upon us and wonder why we neglected our trust and our opportunity, just as we look back on those poor indians in brazil who plowed with crooked sticks, grinding their corn between stones and hauling it on their backs two hundred miles from the seaboard. * * * * * these statements are not the result of any special interest as a churchman. i am not a preacher. i am simply a business man, and my work is almost wholly for bankers, brokers, manufacturers, merchants and investors. the concern with which i am associated has one hundred and eighty people in a suburb of boston who are collecting, compiling and distributing statistics on business conditions. we have only one source of income, and that is from the clients who pay us for an analysis of the situation. therefore you may rest assured that it is impossible for us to do any propaganda work in the interests of any one nation, sect, religion or church. the only thing we can give clients is a conclusion based on a diagnosis of a given situation. as probably few of you readers are clients of ours, may i quote from a bulletin which we recently sent to these bankers and manufacturers? "the need of the hour is not more legislation. the need of the hour is more religion. more religion is needed everywhere, from the halls of congress at washington, to the factories, the mines, the fields and the forests. it is one thing to talk about plans or policies, but a plan or policy without a religious motive is like a watch without a spring or a body without the breath of life. the trouble, to-day, is that we are trying to hatch chickens from sterile eggs. we may have the finest incubator in the world and operate it according to the most improved regulations--moreover, the eggs may appear perfect specimens--but unless they have the germ of life in them all our efforts are of no avail." i have referred to the fact that the security of our investments is absolutely dependent upon the faith, the righteousness and the religion of other people. i have stated that the real strength of our investments is due, not to the distinguished bankers of america, but rather to the poor preachers. i now go farther than that and say that the development of the country as a whole is due to this _something_, this indescribable _something_, this combination of faith, thrift, industry, initiative, integrity and vision, which these preachers have developed in their communities. faith and vision do not come from the wealth of a nation. it's the faith and vision which produce the wealth. the wealth of a country does not depend on its raw materials. raw materials are to a certain extent essential and to a great extent valuable; but the nations which to-day are richest in raw materials are the poorest in wealth. even when considering one country--the united states--the principle holds true. the coal and iron and copper have been here in this country for thousands of years, but only within the last fifty years have they been used. water-powers exist even to-day absolutely unharnessed. look the whole world over and there has been no increase in raw materials. there existed one thousand years ago more raw materials than we have to-day, but we then lacked men with a vision and the faith to take that coal out of the ground, to harness the water-powers, to build the railroads and to do other things worth while. so i say, the second great fundamental of prosperity is faith. iii industry vs. opportunity industry is the mother of invention. struggle, sacrifice and burning midnight oil have produced the cotton gin, the sewing machine, the printing press, the steam engine, the electric motor, the telephone, the incandescent lamp and the other great inventions of civilization. some religious enthusiasts think only of the "lilies of the fields" and forget the parable of the talents. a few years ago i was employed by one of the largest publishing houses in the country to make a study of america's captains of industry. the real purpose of the study was to discover some industry or some man that could be helped greatly through national advertising. in connection with that study of those captains of industry, i tabulated their ancestry. these were the seventy greatest manufacturers, merchants and railroad builders, the leading men who have made america by developing the fields, the forests, the mines and the industries. what did i find? i found that only five per cent. of these captains of industry are the sons of bankers; only ten per cent. of them are the sons of manufacturers; fifteen per cent. of them are the sons of merchants, while over thirty per cent. of them are the sons of poor preachers and farmers. why is it that ministers' sons hold a much more important place in the industrial development of america than the sons of bankers? the ministers' sons inherit no wealth, they have no more than their share of college education; they are not especially religious as the world measures religion. in fact, there is an old saying about "ministers' sons and deacons' daughters." i would be false to my reputation as a statistician to hold up these captains of industry as saintly examples for young men to follow. but the fact remains nevertheless that these men are creating america to-day. now, what's the reason? the reason is that these men have a combination of the two traits already mentioned and a third added thereto;--namely, the habit of work. they have inherited a certain rugged integrity from their mothers and a gift of vision from their fathers which, when combined with the habit of work--forced upon them by their family's meager income--means _power_. integrity is a dry seed until put in the ground of faith and allowed to grow. but faith with works is prosperity. a man may be honest and wonder why he does not get ahead; a man may have vision and still remain only a dreamer; but when integrity and vision are combined with hard work, the man prospers. it is the same with classes and nations. it has been said that genius is the author of invention. statistics do not support this statement. the facts show that industry is the mother of invention. struggle, sacrifice and burning midnight oil have produced the cotton gin, the sewing machine, the printing press, the steam engine, the electric motor, the telephone, the incandescent lamp and the other great inventions of civilization. why is it that most of the able men in our great industries came from the country districts? the reason is that the country boy is trained to work. statistics indicate that very seldom does a child, brought up in a city apartment house, amount to much; while the children of well-to-do city people are seriously handicapped. the great educator of the previous generation was not the public school, but rather the _wood box_. those of us parents who have not a wood box for our children to keep filled, or chores for them to do, are unfortunate. run through the list of the greatest captains of industry, as they come to your mind. how many of the men who are really directing the country's business gained their position through inherited wealth? you will find them astonishingly few. there is no "divine right of kings" in business. in fact, statistics show us that the very things which most people think of as advantages, namely, wealth and "not having to work" are really obstacles which are rarely surmounted. industry and thrift are closely allied. economic studies show clearly that ninety-five per cent. of the employers are employers because they systematically saved money. any man who systematically saves money from early youth automatically becomes an employer. he may employ thousands or he may have only two or three clerks in a country store, but he nevertheless is an employer. these same studies show that ninety-five per cent. of the wage workers are wage workers because they have systematically spent their money as fast as they have earned it. they of necessity remain wage workers. these are facts which no labour leader can disprove and which are exceedingly significant. this is especially striking when one considers that the employer often started out at the same wages and in the same community as his wage workers. the employer was naturally industrious and thrifty; while those who remained wage workers were not. the development of this nation through the construction of the transcontinental railways, the financing of the western farms, and the building of our cities is largely due to the old new england doctrine that laziness and extravagance are sins. in some western communities it is popular to laugh at these new england traits; but had it not been for them, these western communities would never have existed. the industry and thrift developed by the old new england religion were the basis of our national growth. i especially desire to emphasize this point because of the position of certain religious enthusiasts who think only of "the lilies of the field" and forget the parable of the talents. it is a fact that the third fundamental of prosperity is industry. iv coÖperation--success by helping the other fellow our industrial system has resulted in making many men economic eunuchs. the salvation of our cities, the salvation of our industries and the salvation of our nation depend on discovering something which will revive in man that desire to produce and joy in production which he had instinctively when he was a small boy. a few days ago i was present at a dinner of business men in boston who were called together in order to secure some preferential freight rates for massachusetts. the principal theme of that gathering was to boom massachusetts at the expense of the rest of the country. at the close of the dinner i was asked to give my opinion and said: "let us see how many things there are in this room that we could have were we dependent solely on massachusetts. the chairs and furniture are from michigan; the cotton is from georgia; the linen from ireland; the silver from mexico; the glassware from pennsylvania; the paper from maine; the paint from missouri; the clock from connecticut--and so on." finally i got the courage to ask if there was a single thing in the room that did not originate from some state other than massachusetts. those men were absolutely helpless in finding a single thing. the same fact applies in a general way to every state and every home. look about, where you are sitting now. how many things are there in the room just where you are,--there is a table, a chair, a shoe, a coat, a necktie, a cigar, a lampshade, a piano, a basket--for all of these you are dependent upon others. the same fact is true when we analyze one staple like shoes which, primarily, are made of leather. where does the leather come from? just follow that leather from the back of the steer until you buy it in the form of shoes. think where that steer was raised, and where the leather was tanned. think of all the men engaged in the industry from the cow-punchers to the salesmen in the stores. but there is more than leather involved in shoes. there is cotton in the shoe lacing and lining. there is metal in the nails and eyelets. not only must different localities coöperate to produce a shoe; but various industries must give and take likewise. civilization is ultimately dependent on the ability of men to coöperate. the best barometer of civilization is the desire and ability of men to coöperate. the willingness to share with others,--the desire to work with others is the great contribution which christianity has given to the world. the effect of this new spirit is most thrilling when one considers the clothes which he has on his back, the food which he has on the table, the things which he has in the house, and thinks of the thousands of people whose labour has directly contributed toward these things. now this clearly shows that the fourth great fundamental of prosperity is coöperation, the willingness and ability of men to coöperate, to serve one another, to help one another, to give and to take. but the teachings of jesus along these lines have a very much broader application than when applied merely to raw materials, or even manufactured products. as we can begin to prosper only when we develop into finished products the raw materials of the fields, mines and forests, so we can become truly prosperous only as we develop the greatest of all resources,--the human resources. not only does christianity demand that we seek to help and build up others; but our own prosperity depends thereon as well. * * * * * when in washington, during the war, i had a wonderful opportunity of meeting the representatives of both labour and capital. i had some preconceived ideas on the labour question when i went to washington; but now they are all gone. i am perfectly willing, now, to agree with the wage worker, to agree with the employer, to agree with both or to agree with neither. but this one thing i am sure of, and that is that the present system doesn't work. the present system is failing in getting men to produce. by nature man likes to produce. our boy, as soon as he can toddle out-of-doors, starts instinctively to make a mud pie. when he gets a little older he gets some boards, shingles and nails and builds a hut. just as soon as he gets a knife, do you have to show him how to use it? he instinctively begins to make a boat or an arrow or perhaps something he has never seen. why? because in his soul is a natural desire to produce and an inborn joy in production. but what happens to most of these boys after they grow up? our industrial system has resulted in almost stultifying men economically and making most of them economically non-productive. why? i don't know. i simply say it happens and the salvation of our industries depends on discovering something which will revive in man that desire to produce and that joy in production which he had instinctively when he was a small boy. increased wages will not do it. shorter hours will not do it. the wage worker must feel right and the employer must feel right. it is all a question of feeling. feelings rule this world,--not things. the reason that some people are not successful with collective bargaining and profit sharing and all these other plans is because they think that men act according to what they say, or according to what they learn, or according to that in which they agree. men act according to their _feelings_, and "good feeling" is synonymous with the spirit of coöperation. one cannot exist without the other and prosperity cannot continue without both. hence the fourth fundamental of prosperity is coöperation. v our real resources we have gone daffy over things like steam, electricity, water power, buildings, railroads, and ships and we have forgotten the human soul upon which all of these things depend and from which all of these things originate. two captains of industry were standing, one day, on the bridge at niagara looking at the great falls. one man turned to the other and said: "behold the greatest source of undeveloped power in america." "no. the greatest source of undeveloped power in america is the soul of man," the other replied. i was talking with a large manufacturer the other day, and he told me that he was supporting scholarships in four universities to enable young men to study the raw materials which he is using in his plant. i asked him if he was supporting any scholarships to study the human element in his plant, and he said "no." yet when asked for definite figures, it appeared that eighty per cent. of every dollar which he spends, goes for labour, and only twenty per cent. goes for materials. he is endowing four scholarships to study the twenty per cent. and is not doing a thing to study the eighty per cent.! statistics show that the greatest undeveloped resources in america are not our mines or our forests or our streams, but rather the human souls of the men and women who work for us. this is most significant when one resorts to statistics and learns that everything that we have,--every improvement, every railroad, every ship, every building costing in excess of $ , , every manufacturing concern employing over twenty men, yes, every newspaper and book worth while, has originated and been developed in the minds of less than two per cent. of the people. the solution of our industrial problems and the reduction of the cost of living depend not on fighting over what is already produced, but upon producing more. this means that this two per cent. must be increased to four per cent., and then to six per cent. if all the good things which we now have, come from the enterprise of only two per cent., it is evident that we would all have three times as much if the two per cent were increased to six per cent. jesus was absolutely right in his contention that if we would seek first the kingdom of god and his righteousness all these other things would naturally come to us. this is what jesus had in mind when he urged people to give and serve, promising that such giving and serving should be returned to them a hundred fold or more. jesus never preached unselfishness or talked sacrifice as such, but only urged his hearers to look through to the end, see what the final result would be and do what would be best for them in the long run. jesus urged his followers to consider the spiritual things rather than the material, and the eternal things rather than the temporal; but not in the spirit of sacrifice. the only sacrifice which jesus asked of his people was the same sacrifice which the farmer makes when he throws his seed into the soil. the story of the loaves and fishes is still taught as a miracle, but the day will come when it will not be considered such. the same is true regarding the incident when jesus found that his disciples had been fishing all night without results and he suggested that they cast the net on the other side. they followed his advice and the net immediately filled with so many fishes that they could hardly pull it up. if we to-day would give more thought to the spiritual and less to the material, we would have more in health, happiness, and prosperity. the business men to-day would be far better off if--like the fishermen of galilee--we would take jesus' advice and cast our net on "the other side." we are told that with sufficient faith we could remove mountains. have mountains ever been removed or tunnelled without faith? the bridging of rivers, the building of railroads, the launching of steamships, and the creation of all industries are dependent on the faith of somebody. too much credit is given both to capital and labour in the current discussions of to-day. the real credit for most of the things which we have is due to some human soul which supplied the faith that was the mainspring of every enterprise. furthermore in most instances this human soul owes this germ of faith to some little country church with a white steeple and old-fashioned furnishings. the reason i say "old-fashioned" church is because our fathers were more willing to rely upon the power of faith than many of us to-day. what they lacked in many other ways was more than compensated by their faith in god. they got, through faith, "that something" which men to-day are trying to get through every other means. all the educators, all the psychologists, all the inspirational writers cannot put into a man the vision and the will to do things which are gained by a clear faith. most of us to-day are frantically trying to invent a machine which will solve our problems, when all the while we have the machine within us, if we will only set it going. that machine is the human soul. the great problem to-day is to develop the human soul, to develop this wonderful machine which each one of us has between his ears. only as this is developed can we solve our other problems. when we give as much thought to the solution of the human problem as we give to the solution of the steam problem or the electrical problem, we will have no labour problem. we have gone daffy over things like steam, electricity, water-power, buildings, railroads and ships, and we have forgotten the human soul upon which all of these things depend and from which all of these things originate. vi study the human soul the first step is to give more thought and attention to people, to establish more points of contact. let us do humanly, individually, man to man, what we are trying to do in a great big way. i was visiting the home of a famous manufacturer recently and he took me out to his farm. he showed me his cattle. above the head of each heifer and each cow was the pedigree. the most careful record was kept of every animal. he had a blue-print in his library at home of every one of those animals. yet when we began later to talk about the labour problem in his own plant and i asked him how many of his people he knew personally, he told me,--i quote his words: "why, they are all alike to me, mr. babson. i don't know one from the other." later in the evening--it was during the christmas vacation--a young fellow drove up to the house in a fancy automobile, came in and asked for this manufacturer's only daughter in order to take her to a party. i didn't like the looks of the fellow very well. after they had gone out, i said to the father: "who is that chap?" the father replied: "i don't know; some friend of mary's." the father had every one of his cows blue-printed, but he didn't know the name of the man who came to get his daughter and who didn't deliver her until two o'clock the next morning! that man was neglecting the human soul, both in his factory and in his home. * * * * * i repeat that we have gone crazy over structures above ground. we are absolutely forgetting the greatest of our resources,--the great spiritual resource, upon which everything depends. how shall we develop these resources? certainly we are not developing this great spiritual resource in the public schools. the educational system was originally founded by the church to train the children in the fundamentals of righteousness. gradually, but constantly, we have drifted away from this goal and to-day the purpose for which our schools were started has been almost entirely lost. in some states it is now a criminal offence for a school superintendent to ask a prospective school teacher what she believes or whether she has any religion whatever! under these conditions, is it surprising that the spiritual resources of our children are lying dormant? much of the prosperity of this nation is due to the family prayers which were once daily held in the homes of our fathers. to a very large extent this custom has gone by. whatever the arguments pro and con may be, the fact nevertheless remains that such family prayers nurtured and developed these spiritual resources to which the prosperity of the nation is due. the custom of family prayers should be revived along with many other good new england customs which some modern radicals may ridicule, but to which they owe all that they possess. the masses to-day are getting their real education from the daily newspapers. many of these newspapers have much good material, but the great effort of the daily press is not to make _producers_, but rather to make _consumers_. the policy of the daily press is not to get people to serve, but rather to get them to buy. not only is the larger portion of the newspapers given up to advertising, but most of this advertising is of non-essentials, if not of luxuries. with this advertising constantly before the people of the country, it is but natural that the material things should seem of greatest importance. to remedy this situation is a great problem to-day facing the christian business men of this country. what shall we do about it? the first step is to give more thought and attention to people, and to establish more points of contact. let us do humanly, individually, man to man, what we are trying to do in a great big way. another method to develop this human resource is to give people responsibility. moreover, we must do so if the nation is to be truly prosperous. vii boost the other fellow just as our property is safe only as the other fellow's property is safe, just as our daughter is safe only as the other fellow's daughter is safe, so it also is true that in order to develop the human soul in other men, we have to give those men something. my little girl has a black cat; about once in four months this cat has kittens. opposite our place is a man who has an airedale dog. when that dog comes across the street and that cat has no kittens, the cat immediately "beats it" as fast as she can, with the dog after her. but when that dog comes across the street and that cat has the responsibility of some kittens, she immediately turns on the dog and the _dog_ "beats it" with the cat after him. it is the same dog, the same cat, and the same backyard; but in one instance the cat has no responsibilities and in the other case she has. responsibilities develop faith, vision, courage, initiative, and other things that make the world go round. just as our property is safe, only as the other fellow's property is safe; just as our daughter is safe, only as the other fellow's daughter is safe; so is it also true that, in order to develop the human soul in other men, we have to give those men something. we must give them a chance. we must give them opportunity. we must give them a boost. all of us are simply storage batteries. we get out of life what we put into life. we care for others, not in accordance with what they do for us, but rather in accordance with what we have done for them. i am quite often asked about investments. well, there are times, about once in three or four years--during panics, when every one is scared to death--that i invest in stocks. there are other times when i advise the purchase of bonds. the fact is, however, that i have not made my money investing either in stocks or bonds. what money i have made has come from investing in boys and girls, young men and young women. there is a common belief current to-day that only people with experience are worth while. but i say: quit looking for the experienced salesmen and trying to make a man out of him; get a _man_, and then make a salesman of him. i have a young man in my business who was delivering trunks for an express company twelve years ago. to-day he is my sales manager and has built our gross from $ , to $ , , . one of my best experts, a man who is sought for by the leading chambers of commerce all over the land, was a carpenter on my garage nine years ago. another one of my experts, a man the demand for whose services i cannot supply, never acquired recognition until he was over forty-five years of age. i found him keeping hens at wellesley farms! a young lady in my office to whom i pay $ a week and who is worth, to me, $ , a week, i picked up at $ a week twelve years ago. such cases exist everywhere. you men yourselves know them. you look over your own organizations. who are the men who are really doing things? are they the men you acquired ready-made from other concerns? no! they are the men that have been taken up and developed. these are the men that have made money for you and have created the business enterprise of which you are the head. yet when we have reached a point of prestige, and have a big business, we are tempted to say: "i haven't time to develop any more people, i have got to get them already made." this is a big mistake. * * * * * i beg my readers--those who have them--to get your foremen together. say to the partners or the officials of your concern: "haven't we given too much thought to developing the structure? aren't we piling too many stories one upon another with too little thought to the foundation?" then go out and look over your plant and select a few people in each department to whom you will give a real opportunity. start in to develop them and thereby strengthen the foundation of the business and the prosperity of the nation. viii what truly counts the greatest resources in the world to-day are human resources, not resources of iron, copper and lumber. the great need of the hour is to strengthen this human foundation and you business men are the one group that can do it. when it comes to the sale of goods, the same principle applies. eighty per cent. of our sales organizations are devoted to selling to ten per cent. of the population. we have forgotten to consider whether or not goods are needed. we only consider whether or not they are being bought. we are forgetting to establish new markets, but rather are scrambling over the markets already secured. tremendous opportunities exist in developing new industries, in creating new communities, in relocating the center of production from one community to another community to match up with the center of consumption. we have forgotten the latent power in the human soul, in the individual, in the community, in the different parts of the country. we have forgotten those human possibilities upon which all prosperity ultimately depends. i cannot perhaps emphasize this any more than by saying that the foundation of progress is spiritual, not material. the greatest resources of the world to-day are human resources,--not resources of iron, copper and lumber. the great need of the hour is to strengthen this human foundation and revive in men a desire to produce and a joy in service. business men are the one group that can do it. they understand the emotions, understand the importance of the intangible things. they understand how to awaken in people new motives. so my appeal is not to wait too long to revive man and awaken the soul which is slumbering to-day. the nation is only a mass of individuals. the true prosperity of a country depends upon the same qualities as the true prosperity of its people. as religion is necessary for the man, it is also necessary for the nation. as the soul of man needs to be developed, so also does the soul of the nation. * * * * * let me tell one more personal incident. not long ago i was at my washington office spending the week. while there a little western union messenger girl came in to apply for a position. it was in the afternoon--about half-past five. i was struck with the intelligence of the girl's face and asked her two or three questions. she was tired. i asked her to sit down. i was astonished to hear her story. she had been born and brought up in the mountains of west virginia,--many miles from civilization. her father and mother died when she was four years old. she had been living with an old grandfather and brother. when i began to talk with her i found her to have a most remarkable acquaintance with emerson, with thoreau, with bernard shaw and with the old eastern writers. i said to her: "how is it that you are delivering telegrams in a khaki suit and a soldier cap?" she replied: "because i could get nothing else to do. i lived down there in the mountains just as long as i could. i had to get to the city where i could express myself and develop my finer qualities. when i got to washington there was nothing that i could do. they asked me if i could typewrite, but i had never seen a typewriter. finally, after walking the streets for a while, i got a job as a western union messenger." i wrote mrs. babson and made arrangements to have the girl come to wellesley and work for a few months with the babson organization. i saw in her certain qualities which, if developed, should make her very useful to someone somewhere. she came to wellesley. about a month after her arrival i was obliged to leave on a two months' trip and mrs. babson invited her up to dine the night before i left. i told her that i was going to speak while away on "america's undeveloped resources." after dinner she went to my desk and took her pen and scribbled these lines and said: "perhaps during your talk on america's greatest undeveloped resources you will give those men a message from a western union girl." these are the lines she wrote. they are by ella wheeler wilcox. i gave a beggar from my little store of wealth some gold; he spent the shining ore, and came again and yet again, still cold and hungry, as before. i gave a thought--and through that thought of mine, he found himself, the man supreme, divine, fed, clothed and crowned with blessing manifold; and now he begs no more. the mind of man is a wonderful thing, but unless the soul of man is awakened he must lack faith, power, originality, ambition,--those vital elements which make a man a real producer. i do not say that you can awaken this force in every soul. if you are an employer, perhaps only a few of all your employees can be made to understand. but this much is certain,--in every man or woman in whom you can loose the power of this invisible something, you will mobilize a force, not only for his or her good, but for the good and perhaps the very salvation of your own business. ix what figures show panics are caused by spiritual causes rather than financial. prosperity is the result of righteousness rather than of material things. the large black areas on the adjoining chart are formed by combining and plotting current figures on new building, crops, clearings, immigration, total foreign trade, money, failures, commodity prices, railroad earnings, stock prices and politics in order to give a composite view of business in the united states. (when interstate commerce reports of earnings of all united states railroads became available, january, , this record was substituted in place of the earnings of ten representative roads which had been used previous to that time. revised scales for monetary figures were also introduced, in august, .) [illustration] the line x-y represents the country's net gain or growth. based on the economic theory that "action and reaction are equal when the two factors of time and intensity are multiplied to form an area," the sums of the areas above and below said line x-y must, over sufficiently long periods of time, be equal, provided enough subjects are included, properly weighed and combined. an area of prosperity is always followed by an area of depression; an area of depression in turn is always followed by an area of prosperity. the areas, however, need not have the same shapes. it will be seen that each area is divided into halves by a narrow white line. this is to emphasize the fact that the first halves of areas below the x-y line are really reactions from the extravagance, inefficiency and corruption which existed during the latter half of the preceding "prosperity" area. contrariwise, the first halves of areas above the x-y line are really reactions from the economy, industry and righteousness developed during the hard times just preceding. the high points of the stock market have come in the early part of the prosperity areas and the low points have come about the beginning of the depression areas. in the war held down prices of all securities. the highest prices of bonds have usually come about the end of the depression areas and high money rates, and lowest bond prices at about the end of the prosperity areas. but what causes these fluctuations in business and prices? statistics show that panics are caused by spiritual causes, rather than financial, and that prosperity is the result of righteousness rather than of material things. hence, the importance to industry and commerce of the forces already mentioned. these spiritual forces are the true fundamentals of prosperity. this in turn leads us to consider from where they come and upon what we are to depend for their further development. the following pages will give the answer. * * * * * what are the sources of these fundamentals of prosperity? where do we get this faith, integrity, industry, coöperation and interest in the soul of man upon which civilization is based? as already explained, we do not get it from the raw materials. we have always had the raw materials. we do not get it from education. from a statistical point of view germany is the best educated country in the world. it has the least illiteracy. it has the largest percentage of scientific culture. no, these three fundamentals do not come from education. they do not come from the inheritance of property. i mentioned in the preceding pages the investigation we made of leading captains of industry in america, the men who head the various greatest industries in this country. out of this group of men, only ten per cent. inherited their business, while only fifteen per cent. received special education. this shows that the source of these qualities is from something more than wealth or education. we are striving and even slaving to lay up property for our children, when statistics clearly show that the more we lay up for them the worse off they are going to be. if statistics demonstrate any one thing, they demonstrate that the less money we leave our children the better off they will be; not only spiritually and physically, but also financially. when it comes to the question of education, we work and economize to give our children an education and to send our children to college. yet statistics show that only a small percentage of these leading business men are college graduates. the success of individuals, the success of communities, the success of nations, depends on these fundamentals,--integrity, faith, industry, brotherly kindness and an interest in the soul of man. to what do we owe these great fundamental qualities? _statistics show clearly that we owe them to religion._ yes, and to the old-fashioned religion of our forefathers. moreover, i say this not as a churchman. i would give the same message if i were speaking to a group of bankers or a group of engineers. i was first brought into the church through the christian endeavour society, but i was really converted to the bible teachings through a study of statistics. to religion we owe our civilization and to the church we owe our religion. all there is in the world to-day that is worth while comes from men filled with, and from groups actuated by, these fundamentals of integrity, faith, industry, brotherly love and those other factors which come only through god. the church to-day deserves the credit for keeping these factors before the world. hence, it is evident that the people of america have not the bankers to thank for their security and prosperity, but rather the preachers and the churches. to these men we are obligated for our growth and development. x where the church falls down become saturated with christ's principles, be clean and upright, coöperate with one another, have faith, serve, trust the almighty for the results, and you will never have to worry about property. "if you will do these things, all of the others will be given to you." there are two groups of people who criticize the church. first, there are those who claim great love for their fellow-men, but do not go to church because it is allied with the property interests of the community. i believe that to be the fundamental reason why the wage workers, labour leaders, socialists and radicals are not interested in the church. they believe that the church is too closely allied with property. i have been severely criticized myself for presenting the church as a defender of property and as a means of making your home, your business and your securities safer. such critics are perfectly conscientious and the church suffers much because those people, in their love for humanity, are antagonistic to the church. the second group are those defenders of property who look upon the church as impractical; who consider the golden rule as something all right for the minister to talk about on sundays, but something useless to try to follow during the week. those men criticize the church for preaching love, for talking the sermon on the mount, and for being what they say is "impractical." so the church suffers to-day by having both of these groups stand off alone. neither of them is interested in the church, the most important organization in america. it is the church which has created america, which has developed our schools, which has created our homes, which has built our cities, which has developed our industries, which has made our hospitals, charities, and which has done everything that is worth while in america. yet to-day, the church is the most discarded industry of all, because it has not the coöperation of either of the above groups,--the radical group which claims to be interested only in humanity and not in property, and the propertied group which frankly says that it is primarily interested in property and not humanity. it seems that we should stop side-stepping this question. instead we should face it squarely and answer both of these criticisms. my answer is as follows: jesus was not interested in property, _per se_. there is no question but that jesus had no interest in property. these things which look so important to us,--houses, roads, taxation, buildings, fields, crops, foreign trade, ships,--it is very evident were insignificant to jesus. when any of jesus' disciples came to him to settle some property question, he pushed them aside and said he was too busy to consider it. i am sure that if jesus were here to-day, he would tell us all that we are idiots for striving so to accumulate things--building ourselves bigger houses, getting bigger bank accounts and more automobiles. hence, when the socialist or the radical or the labour leader complains to me, i frankly admit this fact. without doubt the church should emphasize that property _of itself_ is of no value, and the only things worth while in life are happiness and the health and the freedom which come from living an upright, simple life. on the other hand, and this point i wish to emphasize just as strongly, jesus took the position throughout his teachings, that if his disciples would simply get saturated with his fundamentals, if they would be clean and upright, if they would coöperate with one another, if they would have faith to serve and trust the almighty for the results, they would never have to worry about property. property would take care of itself. jesus emphasized, first, that they should not think of property; but he always closed his discourses by some such statement as this: "if you will do these things, all of the others will be given to you." it is absolutely impossible for any individual to develop the above fundamentals of prosperity,--faith, integrity, industry and brotherly kindness--without being successful. i care not whether he is a doctor, teacher, banker, lawyer, business man or manufacturer. that same thing is true of groups and of nations. it is fundamental law, "whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." those who serve will be served; those who knock will be knocked; those who boost will be boosted. we are paid in the coin that we give. we are forgiven as we forgive. if we are friendly, we will make friends. statistics show that the church is the greatest factor in the worldly success of men, groups and nations. some readers may have seen a book written by professor carver of harvard entitled, "the religion worth having." in that book the author discusses the various denominations of christianity. then he says most conclusively that the religion worth having, the religion that will survive, is the religion which produces the most. yet this production will not come by seeking production _per se_, but rather by the development of these fundamental characteristics which have been described. try as you will you cannot separate the factor of religion from economic development. in the work conducted by my organization at wellesley hills we study the trend of religious interest as closely as we do the condition of the banks or the supply of and demand for commodities. statistics of church membership form one of the best barometers of business conditions. we have these figures charted back for the past fifty years. whenever this line of religious interest turns downward and reaches a low level, history shows that it is time to prepare for a reaction and depression in business conditions. every great panic we have ever had has been foreshadowed by a general decline in observance of religious principles. on the other hand, when the line of religious interest begins to climb and the nation turns again to the simple mode of living laid by in the bible, then it is time to make ready for a period of business prosperity. xi the future church the time is coming when the church will awake to its great opportunities. the greatest industry in america but the most backward and inefficiently operated, is still in the stage-coach class. of course the church is very far from developed. the church is in the same position to-day as were the water-powers fifty years ago. the church has great resources; but these resources are sadly undeveloped. from an efficiency point of view, from an organization point of view, from a production point of view, the church to-day is in the stage-coach class. it holds within itself the keys of prosperity. it holds within itself the salvation and solution of our industrial, commercial and international problems. yet it is working, or at least the protestant branch is open, only three or four hours a week. the church has the greatest opportunity to-day of any industry. it is the least developed industry, the most inefficiently operated, and the most backward in its methods. let us shut our eyes and look ahead at what it will be twenty-five years from now. let us imagine five churches within a radius of five miles. all of them now operating independently. each one open only a few hours a week. twenty-five years from now these five churches will be linked up together under a general manager who will not be a parson, but who will be a business man. to-day the preacher of our churches is a combination of preacher, business manager, and salesman. he is the service department, the finance department and everything but the janitor. the church is being operated to-day as a college would be operated with one professor, who would be president, treasurer, general manager, and everything else. the church is being operated to-day as a factory with simply a production man and no one to tend the finances or the sales. manufacturers reading this book know how long a factory could be run with only a superintendent and no one to sell or finance the proposition. twenty-five years from to-day, instead of the pastor being at the head of the church and a few good people doing voluntary work, there will be four or five churches of the same denomination united under one general manager. i do not mean by this that four of them will be closed. they will all be open much more than they are now; but they will all be under one general manager and will be taking orders from that general manager. twenty-five years from to-day the churches will be self-supporting. the days of begging will be over. religion has been cheapened by singing about "salvation's free for you and me." when we have our legal difficulties, we go to a lawyer and pay him; when we have a pain we go to a doctor and pay him; if we want our children taught we pay the price; but if we want our children instructed in the fundamentals of prosperity upon which their future depends, we send them to a sunday school for a half-hour a week with the possibility of having them taught by a silly girl who doesn't know her work. in any event the parent seldom takes the trouble to ascertain the quality of the teaching. the time is coming when the church will awake to its great principles and opportunities. the greatest industry in america is still the most backward and most inefficiently operated. when these four or five churches are combined, the preacher will not have to spend half the week in preparing a different sermon every sunday. he will have two weeks or a month to prepare that sermon. he will have time and have the "pep" and energy to deliver it to you so you won't go to sleep while sitting in the pews. the audience will then hear the same preacher only once each month, and the preacher will then have more than one congregation to appeal to. the same man is not going to be expected to preach on love, hate, the league of nations, how to settle labour disputes and the health of the community and every other subject. all of these men will preach the salvation of jesus, but each one will specialize in one particular phase of the christian life, such as faith, integrity, industry, coöperation. then we will take more stock in our preachers because they won't pretend to know every subject. then the preacher will not be of lesser intelligence than the average audience. fifty years ago the ablest men in every community were the preachers, the doctors, and the lawyers. they were the only college graduates of the town and were looked up to. to-day, while we pay our salesmanagers from $ , to $ , a year, and lawyers and doctors large fees, we pay our preachers only miserable salaries. it's a damnable disgrace to all of us. i often think that if jesus were to come back to us, that he would take for his text that thought from the sermon on the mount, "if you have aught against your neighbour, before you enter into your worship go and square up." i think that when he came in to speak to us on sunday morning, he would say: "gentlemen, i suggest that before we have this service, we raise funds to pay the preacher a decent salary." * * * * * just before i went to brazil i was the guest of the president of the argentine republic. after lunching one day we sat in his sun parlour looking out over the river. he was very thoughtful. he said, "mr. babson, i have been wondering why it is that south america with all its great natural advantages is so far behind north america notwithstanding that south america was settled before north america." then he went on to tell how the forests of south america had two hundred and eighty-six trees that can be found in no book of botany. he told me about many ranches that had thousands of acres under alfalfa in one block. he mentioned the mines of iron, coal, copper, silver, gold; all those great rivers and water-powers which rival niagara. "why is it, with all these natural resources, south america is so far behind north america?" he asked. well, those of you who have been there know the reason. but, being a guest, i said: "mr. president, what do you think is the reason?" he replied: "i have come to this conclusion. south america was settled by the spanish who came to south america in search of _gold_, but north america was settled by the pilgrim fathers who went there in search of _god_." friends, let us as american citizens never kick down the ladder by which we climbed up. let us never forget the foundation upon which all permanent prosperity is based. _printed in the united states of america_ [ transcriber's note: every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation; changes (corrections of spelling) made to the original text are listed at the end of this file. ] the clock that had no hands and nineteen other essays about advertising by herbert kaufman new york george h. doran company copyright, by the chicago tribune copyright, george h. doran company the·plimpton·press [w·d·o] norwood·mass·u·s·a contents page the clock that had no hands the cannon that modernized japan the tailor who paid too much the man who retreats before his defeat the dollar that can't be spent the pass of thermopylae the perambulating showcase how alexander untied the knot if it fits you, wear this cap you must irrigate your neighborhood cato's follow-up system how to write retail advertising copy the difference between amusing and convincing some don'ts when you do advertise the doctor whose patients hang on the horse that drew the load the cellar hole and the sewer hole the neighborhood of your advertising the mistake of the big steak the omelette soufflé the clock that had no hands newspaper advertising is to business, what hands are to a clock. it is a direct and _certain_ means of letting the public know _what you are doing_. in these days of intense and vigilant commercial contest, a dealer who does not advertise is like _a clock that has no hands_. he has no way of recording his movements. he can no more expect a twentieth century success with nineteenth century methods, than he can wear the same sized shoes as a _man_, which fitted him in his _boyhood_. his father and mother were content with neighborhood shops and bobtail cars; nothing better could be had in their day. they were accustomed to _seek_ the merchant instead of being sought _by_ him. they dealt "around the corner" in one-story shops which depended upon the _immediate friends_ of the dealer for support. so long as the city was made up of such neighborhood units, each with a full outfit of butchers, bakers, clothiers, jewelers, furniture dealers and shoemakers, it was possible for the proprietors of these little establishments to exist and make a profit. but as population increased, transit facilities spread, sections became specialized, block after block was entirely devoted to stores, and mile after mile became solely occupied by homes. the purchaser and the storekeeper _grew farther and farther apart_. it was _necessary_ for the merchant to find a _substitute_ for his direct personality, which _no longer served_ to draw customers to his door. _he had to have a bond between the commercial center and the home center._ rapid transit eliminated distance but advertising was necessary to inform people _where_ he was located and _what he had to sell_. it was a natural outgrowth of changed conditions--the beginning of _a new era_ in trade which no longer relied upon personal acquaintance for success. something more wonderful than the fabled philosopher's stone came into being, and the beginnings of _fortunes which would pass the hundred million mark and place tradesmen's daughters_ upon _oriental thrones_ grew from this new force. within fifty years it has become as vital to industry as _steam_ to _commerce_. advertising is _not_ a _luxury_ nor a _debatable policy_. _it has proven its case._ its record is traced in the skylines of cities where a hundred towering buildings stand as a lesson of reproach to the men who had the _opportunity_ but _not_ the _foresight_, and furnish a constant inspiration to the _young merchant_ at the _threshold_ of his career. the cannon that modernized japan business is no longer a man to man contact, in which the seller and the buyer establish a _personal_ bond, any more than battle is a hand-to-hand grapple wherein bone and muscle and sinew decide the outcome. _trade_ as well as _war_ has changed aspect--_both are now fought at long range_. just as a present day army of heroes would have no opportunity to display the _individual_ valor of its members, just so a merchant who counts upon his direct acquaintanceship for success, is a relic of the past--_a business dodo_. japan changed her policy of exclusion to foreigners, after a fleet of warships battered down the satsuma fortifications. the samurai, who had hitherto considered their blades and bows efficient, discovered that one cannon was mightier than all the swords in creation--_if they could not get near enough to use them_. japan profited by the lesson. she did not wait until _further_ ramparts were pounded to pieces but was satisfied with her _one_ experience and proceeded to modernize her methods. the merchant who doesn't advertise is pretty much in the same position as that in which japan stood when her eyes were opened to the fact that _times had changed_. the long range publicity of a competitor will as surely destroy his business as the cannon of the foreigners crumbled the walls of satsuma. unless you take the lesson to heart, unless you _realize_ the importance of advertising, not only as a means of _extending_ your business but for _defending_ it as well, you must be prepared to face the consequences of a folly as great as that of a duelist who expects to survive in a contest in which his _adversary_ bears a _sword twice the length of his own_. don't think that it's _too late_ to begin because there are so many stores which have had the advantage of years of cumulative advertising. the city is growing. it will grow even more next year. it needs _increased trading facilities_ just as it's hungry for new neighborhoods. _but it will never again support neighborhood stores._ newspaper advertising has reduced the value of being _locally prominent_, and five cent street car fares have cut out the advantage of being "_around the corner_." a store five miles away, can reach out through the columns of the daily newspaper and draw your next door neighbor to its aisles, while you sit by and see the people on your own block enticed away, without your being able to retaliate or secure _new_ customers to take their place. it is not a question of your ability to _stand the cost_ of advertising but of being able to _survive without it_. the thing you have to consider is not only an _extension_ of your business but of holding _what you already have_. advertising is an _investment_, the cost of which is in the same proportion to its _returns_ as _seeds_ are to the _harvest_. and it is just as preposterous for you to consider publicity as an expense, as it would be for a farmer to hesitate over purchasing a _fertilizer_, if he discovered that he could _profitably increase_ his crops by _employing_ it. the tailor who paid too much i was buying a cigar last week when a man dropped into the shop and after making a purchase told the proprietor that he had started a clothes shop around the corner and quoted him prices, with the assurance of best garments and terms. after he left the cigar man turned to me and said: "enterprising fellow, that, he'll get along." "but he _won't_," i replied, "and, furthermore, i'll wager you that he hasn't the sort of clothes shop that will _enable_ him to." "what made you think that?" queried the man behind the counter. "his theories are wrong," i explained; "he's relying upon word of mouth publicity to build up his business and he can't _interview enough individuals_ to compete with a merchant, who has sense enough to say the _same_ things he told you, to a _hundred thousand_ men, while he is telling it to _one_. besides, his method of advertising is _too expensive_. suppose he sees a _hundred_ persons every day. first of all, he is robbing his business of its necessary direction and besides, he is spending too much to reach every man he solicits." "i don't quite follow you." "well, as the proprietor of a clothes shop his own time is so valuable that i am very conservative in my estimate when i put the cost of his soliciting at five cents a head. "now, if he were _really_ able and clever he would discover that he can talk to hundreds of thousands of people at a tenth of a cent per individual. there is not a newspaper in town the advertising rate of which is $ . per thousand circulation, for a space big enough in which to _display what he said to you_." "i never looked at it _that_ way," said the cigar man. it's only "_the man who hasn't looked at it that way_," who hesitates for an instant over the advisability and profitableness of newspaper publicity. newspaper advertising is the cheapest channel of communication ever established by man. a thousand letters with one-cent stamps, will easily cost fifteen dollars and not one envelope in ten will be opened because _the very postage_ is an invitation to the wastebasket. if there were anything _cheaper_ rest assured that the greatest merchants in america would not spend individual sums ranging up to _half a million dollars a year and over_, upon this form of attracting trade. the man who retreats before his defeat advertising _isn't_ magic. there is no element of the black art about it. in its best and highest form it is _plain_ talk, _sane_ talk--_selling_ talk. its results are in proportion to the _merit_ of the subject advertised and the _ability_ with which the advertising is done. there are two great obstacles to advertising profit, and both of them arise from ignorance of the _real_ functions and workings of publicity. the first is to advertise _promises_ which will not be _fulfilled_,--because all that advertising can do when it _accomplishes most_, is to influence the reader to _investigate_ your claims. _if you promise the earth and deliver the moon, advertising will not pay you._ if you bring men and women to your store on _pretense_ and fail to _make good_, advertising will have _harmed_ you, because it has only drawn attention to the fact that you are to be _avoided_. it is as _unjust_ to charge advertising with _failure_ under these conditions, as it would be for your _neighbor_ to rob a bank and make you responsible for _his_ misdeed. in brief, _advertised_ dishonesty is _even more profitless_ than _unexploited_ deception. the other great error in advertising is to expect more _out_ of advertising than there is _in_ it. _advertising is seed which a merchant plants in the confidence of the community._ he must allow time for it to _grow_. every successful advertiser has to be _patient_. the time that it takes to arrive at results rests entirely with the ability and determination devoted to the work. but you cannot turn back when you have traveled half way and declare that the _path_ is wrong. you can't advertise for a _week_, and because your store isn't crowded, say it hasn't _paid_ you. it takes a certain period to attract the attention of readers. everybody doesn't see what you print the _first_ time it appears. more will notice your copy the _second day_, _a great many more_ at the end of a month. you cannot expect to win the confidence of the community to the same degree that other men have obtained it, without taking pretty much the same length of time that _they_ did. but you _can_ cut short the period between your introduction to your reader and his introduction to your _counters_, by spending _more_ effort in preparing your _copy_ and displaying a greater amount of convincingness. you mustn't act like the little girl who sowed a garden and came out the _next day_ expecting to find it in _full bloom_. her father had to explain to her that plants require _roots_ and that, although she could not _see_ what was going on, _the seeds were doing their most important work just before the flowers showed above ground_. so _advertising is_ doing its most _important_ work before the big results eventuate, and to abandon the money which has been invested just before results arrive, is not only foolish but childish. _it would be just as logical for a farmer to desert his fields because he cannot harvest his corn a week after he planted it._ advertising does not require _faith_--merely _common sense_. if it is begun in doubt and relinquished before normal results can be _reasonably_ looked for, the fault does not lie with the newspaper nor with publicity--the blame is solely on the head of the coward who _retreated before he was defeated_. the dollar that can't be spent every dollar spent in advertising is not only a _seed_ dollar which _produces a profit_ for the merchant, but is actually _retained_ by him even _after he has paid it to the publisher_. advertising creates _a good will_ equal to the cost of the publicity. advertising _really costs nothing_. while it _uses_ funds it does not _use them up_. it helps the founder of a business to grow rich and then _keeps_ his business alive after his death. _it eliminates the personal equation._ it perpetuates confidence _in the store_ and makes it possible for a merchant _to withdraw_ from _business_ without having the _profits_ of the business _withdrawn_ from _him_. it changes a _name_ to an _institution_--an institution which will _survive_ its builder. it is really an _insurance policy_ which costs nothing--_pays_ a premium each year instead of _calling for_ one and renders it possible to change the entire personnel of a business without disturbing its prosperity. advertising renders the _business_ stronger than the _man_--independent of his presence. it permanentizes systems of merchandising, the track of which is left for others to follow. a business which is _not_ advertised _must_ rely upon the _personality_ of its proprietor, and personality in business is a decreasing factor. the public _does not want to know the man_ who owns the store--it isn't interested in _him_ but in his goods. when an unadvertised business is sold it is only worth as much as its _stock of goods and its fixtures_. there is no good will to be paid for--_it does not exist_--it has _not_ been _created_. the name over the door _means nothing_ except to the limited stream of people from the immediate neighborhood, any of whom could tell you _more_ about some store ten miles away which has regularly delivered its shop news to their breakfast table. it is as _shortsighted_ for a man to build a business which _dies with his death_ or ceases with his inaction, as it _is unfair_ for him not to provide for the _continuance of its income to his family_. the pass of thermopylae xerxes once led a million soldiers out of persia in an effort to capture greece, but his invasion failed utterly, because a spartan captain had entrenched a hundred men in a narrow mountain pass, which controlled the road into lacedaemon. _the man who was first on the ground had the advantage._ advertising is full of opportunities for men who are _first_ on the ground. there are hundreds of advertising passes waiting for some one to occupy them. the first man who realizes that his line will be helped by publicity, has a _tremendous opportunity_. he can gain an advantage over his competitors that they can never possess. those who _follow_ him must spend more money to _equal_ his returns. they must not only _invest as much_, _to get as much_, but they must as well, spend an extra sum to _counteract_ the influence that he has _already established_ in the community. whatever men sell, whether it is actual merchandise or brain vibrations, can be _more easily_ sold with the aid of advertising. not one half of the businesses which _should_ be exploited are appearing in the newspapers. _trade grows as reputation grows and advertising spreads reputation._ if you are engaged in a line which is waiting for an advertising pioneer, realize what a wonderful chance you have of being the first of your kind to appeal directly to the public. you stand a better chance of leadership than those who have handicapped their strength, by permitting you to _get on the ground_ before they could outstrip you. you gain a prestige that those who _follow_ you, must spend more money to _counteract_. if your particular line is _similar_ to some other trade or business which has _already_ been introduced to the reading public, it's up to you to start in _right now_ and join your competitors in contesting for the attention of the community. the longer you _delay_ the more you _decrease_ your chances of _surviving_. every man who outstrips you is another _opponent_, who must be met and grappled with, for _the right of way_. the perambulating showcase the newspaper is a _huge_ shop window, carried about the city and delivered daily into hundreds of thousands of homes, to be examined at the leisure of the reader. this shop window is unlike the actual plate glass showcase only in _one_ respect--it makes display of _descriptions_ instead of _articles_. you have often been impressed by the difference between the decorations of two window-trimmers, each of whom employed the same materials for his work. the one drew your attention and held it by the grace and cleverness and art manifested in his display. the other realized so little of the possibilities in the materials placed at his disposal, that unless some one called your attention to his mediocrities you would have gone on unconscious of their existence. an advertiser must know that he gets his results in accordance with the _skill_ exercised in preparing his verbal displays. he must make people _stop_ and pause. _his copy has to stand out._ he must not only make a show of things that are attractive to the eye but are attractive to the people's needs, as well. the window-trimmer must not make the mistake of thinking that the showiest stocks are the most salable. the advertiser must not make the mistake of thinking that the showiest words are the most clinching. windows are too few in number to be used with indiscretion. the good merchant puts those goods back of his plate glass which nine people out of ten will want, once they have seen them. the good advertiser tells about goods which nine readers out of ten will buy, if they can be convinced. newspaper space itself is only the window, just as the showcase is but a frame for merchandise pictures. a window on a crowded street, in the best neighborhood, where prosperous persons pass continually, is more desirable, than one in a cheap, sparsely settled neighborhood. an advertisement in a newspaper with the most readers and the most _prosperous_ ones, possesses a great advantage over the same copy, in a medium circulating among persons who possess less means. it would be foolish for a shop to build its windows in an alley-way--and just as much so to put its advertising into newspapers which are distributed among "alley-dwellers." how alexander untied the knot alexander the great was being shown the gordian knot. "it can't be untied," they told him; "every man who tried to do so, failed." but alexander was not discouraged because the _rest_ had flunked. he simply realized that he would have to go at it in a _different_ way. and instead of wasting time with his _fingers_, he drew his sword and _slashed_ it apart. every day a great business general is shown some knot which has proven too much for his competitors, and he succeeds, because he finds a way to _cut_ it. the fumbler has no show so long as there is a brother merchant who doesn't waste time trying to accomplish the impossible--who takes lessons from the _failures_ about him and avoids the methods which were their downfall. the knottiest problems in trade are: --the problem of location. --the problem of getting the crowds. --the problem of keeping the crowds. --the problem of minimizing fixed expenses. --the problem of creating a valuable good will. none of these knots is going to be untied by fumbling fingers. they are too complicated. they're all inextricably involved--so twisted and entangled that they can't be solved singly--like the gordian knot _they must be cut through at one stroke_. and you can't cut the knot with anything but advertising--because: --a store that is constantly before the people makes its own neighborhood. --crowds can be brought from anywhere by daily advertising. --customers can always be held by inducements. --fixed expenses can only be reduced by increasing the volume of sales. --good will can only be created through publicity. advertising is breeding new giants every year and making them more powerful every hour. publicity is the sustaining food of a _powerful_ store and the only strengthening nourishment for a _weak_ one. the retailer who delays his entry into advertising must pay the penalty of his procrastination by facing more giant competitors as each month of opportunity slips by. personal ability as a close purchaser and as a clever seller, doesn't count for a hang, so long as other men are equally well posted and wear the sword of publicity to boot. they are able to tie your business into constantly closer knots, while you cannot retaliate, because there is no knot which their advertising cannot cut for them. yesterday you lost a customer--today they took one--tomorrow they'll get another. you cannot cope with their competition because you haven't the weapon with which to oppose it. you can't untie your gordian knot because it can't be _untied_--you've got to _cut_ it. you must become an advertiser or you must pay the penalty of incompetence. you not only require the newspaper to fight for a more _hopeful tomorrow_, but to keep _today's_ situation from becoming _hopeless_. if it fits you, wear this cap advertising isn't a crucible with which lazy, bigoted and incapable merchants can turn incompetency into success--but one into which brains and tenacity and courage _can_ be poured and changed into dollars. it is only a short cut across the fields--_not_ a moving platform. you can't "get there" without "going some." it's a game in which the _worker_--not the _shirker_--gets rich. by its measurement every man stands for what he _is_ and for what he _does_, _not_ for what he _was_ and what he _did_. every day in the advertising world is _another_ day and has to be taken care of with the same energy as its _yesterday_. the quitter _can't survive_ where the _plugger_ has the ghost of a chance. advertising doesn't take the place of business talent or business management. it simply tells what a business _is_ and _how_ it is managed. the snob whose father _created_ and who is content to live on what was _handed_ to him, can't stand up against the man who knows he _must build for himself_. what makes _you_ think that _you_ are entitled to prosper as well as a competitor who _works twice as hard_ for his prosperity? why should as many people deal at _your_ store, as patronize a shop that makes an endeavor to _get_ their trade and shows them that it is _worth while_ to come to its doors? why should a newspaper send as many customers to _you_, in _half_ the time it took to fill an establishment which advertised _twice_ as long and _paid twice as much_ for its publicity? this is the day when the _best_ man wins--after he _proves_ that he _is_ the best man--when the _best_ store wins, when it has shown that it _is_ the best store--when the best _goods_ win, after they've been _demonstrated to be_ the best goods. if you want the _plum_ you can't get it by lying under the _tree_ with your mouth open waiting for it to drop--too many other men are willing to climb out on the limb and risk their necks in their eagerness to get it away from you. it is a _man's_ game--this advertising--just hanging on and tugging and straining all the time to _get_ and _keep_ ahead. it is the finite expression of the law of competition, which sits in blind-folded justice over the markets of the world. you must irrigate your neighborhood half a century ago there were ten million acres of land, within a thousand miles of chicago, upon which not even a blade of grass would grow. today upon these very deserts are wonderful orchards and tremendous wheatfields. _the soil itself was full of possibilities. what the land needed was water._ in time there came farmers who knew that they could not expect the streams _to come to them_, and so they dug ditches and _led the water to their properties_ from the surrounding rivers and lakes; they tilled the earth with their _brains_ as well as their _plows_--they became rich through _irrigation_. advertising has made thousands of men rich, just because they recognized the possibilities of utilizing the newspapers to bring streams of buyers into neighborhoods that could be made busy locations by irrigation--_by drawing people from other sections_. the successful retailer is the man who keeps the stream of purchasers coming his way. it isn't the _spot itself_ that makes the _store_ pay--it's the _man_ who makes the _spot_ pay. centers of trade are not selected by the public--they are created by the force which _controls_ the public--the newspapers. new neighborhoods for business are being constantly built up by men who have located themselves in streets which they have changed from deserted by-ways into teeming, jostling thoroughfares, through advertising irrigation. the storekeeper who whines that his neighborhood holds him back is squinting at the truth--_he is hurting the neighborhood_. if it lacks streams of buyers, he can easily enough secure them by reaching out through the columns of the daily and inducing people from _other_ sections to come to him. every time he influences a customer of a competitor he is not only irrigating his _own_ field but is diverting the streams upon which a _non-advertising_ merchant depends for existence. men and women who live next door to a shop that does not plead for their custom will eventually be drawn to an establishment _miles_ away because they have been made to believe in some advantage to be gained thereby. the circulation of _every_ daily is nothing less than a _reservoir_ of buyers, from which shoppers stream in the direction that promises the _most value_ for the _least money_. the magic development of the desert lands, has its parallel in merchandising of men who consider the newspaper an irrigating power which can make _two_ customers grow where _one_ grew before. cato's follow-up system if a man lambasted you on the eye and walked away and waited a week before he repeated the performance, he wouldn't hurt you very badly. between attacks you would have an opportunity to recover from the effect of the first blow. but if he smashed you and _kept mauling_, each impact of his fist would find you less able to stand the hammering, and a half-dozen jabs would probably _knock you down_. now advertising is, after all, a matter of _hitting the eye of the public_. if you allow too great an interval to elapse between insertions of copy the effect of the first advertisement will have worn _away_ by the time you hit again. you may continue your scattered talks over a stretch of years, but you will not derive the same benefit that would result from a greater concentration. in other words, by appearing in print _every_ day, you are able to get the benefit of the impression created _the day before_, and as each piece of copy makes its appearance, the result of your publicity on the reader's mind is more pronounced--you mustn't stop short of a _knock-down impression_. _persistence is_ the foundation of advertising success. regularity of insertion is _just as important_ as clever phrasing. the man who _hangs on_ is the man who _wins out_. cato the elder is an example to every merchant who _uses_ the newspapers and should be an inspiration to every storekeeper who does _not_. for twenty years he arose daily in the roman senate and cried out for the destruction of carthage. in the beginning he found his conferees very unresponsive. but he _kept on_ every day, month after month and year after year, sinking into the minds of all the necessity of destroying carthage, until he set all the senate thinking upon the subject and _in the end_ rome sent an army across the mediterranean and ended the reign of the hannibals and hamilcars over northern africa. _the persistent utterances of a single man did it._ the history of every mercantile success is _parallel_. the advertiser who does not let a day slip by without having his say, is bound to be heard and have his influence felt. every insertion of copy brings stronger returns, because it has the benefit of what has been said _before_, until the public's attention is like an eye that has been so repeatedly struck, that the _least touch_ of suggestion will feel like a blow. how to write retail advertising copy a skilled layer of mosaics works with small fragments of stone--they fit into more places than the _larger_ chunks. the skilled advertiser works with small words--they fit into _more_ minds than _big_ phrases. the simpler the language the greater certainty that it will be understood by the _least intelligent reader_. the construction engineer plans his road-bed where there is a _minimum of grade_--he works along the lines of _least resistance_. the advertisement which runs into mountainous style is badly surveyed--_all minds are not built for high grade thinking_. advertising must be simple. when it is tricked out with the jewelry and silks of literary expression, it looks as much out of place as _a ball dress at the breakfast table_! the buying public is only interested in _facts_. people read advertisements to find out _what you have to sell_. the advertiser who can fire the _most facts_ in the shortest time gets the _most returns_. blank cartridges _make noise but they do not hit_--blank talk, however clever, is only wasted space. you force your salesmen to keep to solid facts--you don't allow _them_ to sell muslin with quotations from omar or trousers with excerpts from marie corelli. you must not tolerate in your _printed selling talk_ anything that you are not willing to countenance in _personal salesmanship_. cut out clever phrases if they are inserted to the sacrifice of clear explanations--_write copy as you talk_. only be more brief. publicity is costlier than conversation--ranging in price downward from $ a line; talk is not cheap but the most expensive commodity in the world. sketch in your ad to the stenographer. then you will be so busy "_saying it_" that you will not have time to bother about the gewgaws of writing. afterwards take the typewritten manuscript and cut out every word and every line that can be erased without omitting an important detail. what _remains_ in the _end_ is all that _really counted_ in the _beginning_. cultivate brevity and simplicity. "savon français" may _look_ smarter, but more people will _understand_ "french soap." sir isaac newton's explanation of gravitation covers _six pages_ but the schoolboy's terse and homely "what goes up must come down" clinches the whole thing in _six words_. _indefinite talk wastes_ space. it is not % productive. the copy that omits prices sacrifices half its pulling power--it has a tendency to bring _lookers_ instead of _buyers_. it often creates false impressions. some people are bound to conceive the idea that the goods are _higher priced_ than in _reality_--others, by the same token, are just as likely to infer that the prices are _lower_ and go away thinking that you have exaggerated your statements. the reader must be _searched out_ by the copy. big space is cheapest because it _doesn't waste a single eye_. publicity must be on the _offensive_. there are far too many advertisers who keep their lights on top _of_ their bushel--the average citizen _hasn't time_ to overturn your bushel. small space is expensive. like a _one-flake snowstorm_, there is not enough of it to lay. space is a _comparative matter_ after all. it is not a case of _how much_ is used as _how it is used_. the passengers on the limited express may realize that jones has tacked a twelve-inch shingle on every post and fence for a stretch of five miles, but they are _going too fast_ to make out what the shingles say, yet the two feet letters of brown's big bulletin board on top of the hill leap at them before they have a chance to dodge it. and at that it doesn't cost nearly so much as the _sum total_ of jones' dinky display. just so advertisements attractively displayed every day or every other day for a year in one big newspaper, will find the eye of _all_ readers, no matter how rapidly they may be "going" through the advertising pages and produce more results than a _dozen_ piking pieces of copy scattered through _half a dozen_ dailies. the difference between amusing and convincing an advertiser must realize that there is a vast difference between _amusing_ people and _convincing_ them. it does not pay to be "smart" at the line rate of the average first class daily. i suppose that i could draw the attention of everybody on the street by painting half of my face red and donning a suit of motley. i might have a sincere purpose in wishing _to attract_ the crowd, but i would be deluding myself if i mistook the nature of their attention. the new advertiser is especially prone to misjudge between amusing and convincing copy. a humorous picture _may_ catch the eyes of _every_ reader, but it won't pay as well as an illustration of _some piece of merchandise_ which will strike the eye of every _buyer_. merchants secure varying results from the same advertising space. the publisher delivers to each _the same quality of readers_, but the advertiser who plants _flippancy_ in the minds of the community won't attain the benefit that is secured by the merchant who imprints _clinching_ arguments there. always remember that the advertising sections of newspapers are no different than farming lands. and it is as preposterous to hold the publisher responsible for the outcome of unintelligent copy as it would be unjust to blame the soil for bad seed and poor culture. _every advertiser gets exactly the same number of readers from a publisher and the same readers_--after that it's up to him--the results fluctuate in accordance with the intelligence and the pulling power of the _copy_ which is inserted. some don'ts when you do advertise the _price_ of the gun never hits the _bull's eye_. and the _bang_ seldom rattles the bells. it's the _hand on the trigger_ that cuts the _real_ figger. the _aim's_ what amounts--_that's_ what makes _record_ counts-- are _you_ hitting or just _wasting_ shells? _don't_ forget that the man who writes your copy is the man who aims your policy. when you stop to reflect what your _space_ costs and that the wrong talk is just _noise_--_bang_ without _biff_--you must see the necessity and _sanity_ of putting the _right man behind the gun_. _don't_ tolerate an ambition on your ad-man's part to indulge in a lurking desire to be a literary light. people read his advertising to discover what your buyers have just brought from the market and what you are asking for "o. n. t." they buy the _newspaper_ for information and recreation and are satisfied with the degree of poetry and persiflage dished up in its _reading_ columns. _don't exaggerate._ poetic licenses are not valid in business prose. the american people _don't_ want to be humbugged and the merchant who figures upon too many fools, finds _himself_ looking into a mirror, usually about a half hour after the sheriff has come to look over the premises. _don't imitate._ advertising is a _special measure_ garment. businesses are not built in _ready-made_ sizes. copy which fits somebody else's selling plans, won't fit your store without sagging at the chest or riding up at the collar. duplicated _argument_ and duplicated _results_ are not twins. your policy of publicity must be _specially_ measured from your policy of merchandising. _don't put your advertising in charge of an amateur._ let somebody else stand the expense of his educational blunders. remember you are making a plea before the bar of public confidence. your ad-writer is an advocate. _like a bad lawyer, he can lose a good case by not making the most of the facts at hand._ _don't get the "sales" habit._ "sales" are stimulants. when held too often their effect is _weakening_. the merchant who continually yells "_bargain_" is like the old hen who was always crying "fox." when the real article did come along, none of her chicks _believed it_. _don't use fine print._ make it easy for the reader to find out about your business. there are ten million pairs of eyeglasses worn in america, and every owner of them buys something. _and don't start unless you mean to stick._ the patron saint of the successful advertiser _hates a quitter_. the doctor whose patients hang on out in china _all_ things are _not_ topsy turvy. _physicians are paid for keeping people well_ and when their patients fall ill, their weekly remittances are stopped. the chinese judge a medical man not by the number of years _he_ lives, but by the length of time his patrons survive. an advertising medium must be judged in the same way. the fact that it has _age_ to its credit isn't so important as the _age of its advertising patronage_. whenever a daily continues to display the store talk of the same establishment year after year, it's a pretty sure sign that the merchant has _made money_ out of that newspaper, because no publication can continue to be a losing investment to its customers over a stretch of time, without the fact being discovered. and when a newspaper is not only able to boast of an honor roll of stores that have continued to appear in its pages for a stretch of decades, but at the same time demonstrates that it carries _more_ business than its competitors, it has _proven its superiority_ as plainly as a mountain peak which rises above its fellows. the combination of _stability and progress_ is the strongest virtue that a newspaper can possess. _only the fit survive_--reputation is a _difficult_ thing to _get_ and a harder thing to _hold_--it takes _merit_ to _earn_ it and _character_ to _maintain_ it. there is a vast difference between _fame_ and _notoriety_, and just as much difference between a _famous newspaper_ and a _notorious one_. just as a manufacturer is always eager to install his choicest stocks in a store which has earned the respect of the community, just so a retailer should be anxious to insert his name in a newspaper which has _earned the respect of its readers_. the manufacturer feels that he will receive a square deal from a store which has age to its credit. he can expect as much from a newspaper which is a credit to its age! the newspaper which outlives the rest does so because it was _best fitted to_--it had to _earn_ the confidence of its readers--and _keep it_. it had to be a _better_ newspaper than any other and _better_ newspapers go to the homes of _better_ buyers. every bit of its circulation has the element of _quality and staying power_. and it is the _respectable_, _home-loving_ element of every community--not the touts and the gamblers--toward which the merchant must look for his business _vertebrae_--he cannot find buyers unless he uses the _newspaper_ that enters their homes. and when _he does_ enter their homes he must not confuse the sheet that comes in the back gate with the newspaper that is delivered at the front door. the horse that drew the load a moving van came rolling down the street the other day with a big spirited percheron in the center and two wretched nags on either side. the percheron was _doing all the work_, and it seemed that he would have got along far better in single harness, than he managed with his inferior mates _retarding_ his speed. the advertiser who selects a group of newspapers usually harnesses two _lame_ propositions to every _pulling_ newspaper on his list, and just as the van driver probably dealt out an _equal_ portion of feed to each of his animals, just so many a merchant is paying practically the same rate to a _weak_ daily, that he is allowing the _sturdy profitable sheet_. unfortunately the accepted custom of inserting the _same_ advertisement in _every_ paper acts to the distinct disadvantage of the _meritorious_ medium. the advertiser charges the sum total of his _expense_ against the sum total of his _returns_, and thereby does _himself and the best puller an injustice_, by crediting the less productive sheets with results that they have _not_ earned. it's the _pulling power_ of the newspaper as well as the horse that proves its value, and if advertisers were as level headed as they should be, they would take the trouble to put every daily in which they advertise _on trial_ for at least a month and advertise a different department or article in each, carefully tabulating the returns. if this were done, fifty per cent of the advertising now carried in weaker newspapers would be withdrawn and the patronage of the stronger sheets would _advance_ in that proportion. _there are newspapers in many a city that are, single handed, able to build up businesses._ their circulation is solid muscle and sinew--_all pull_. it isn't the number of copies _printed_ but the number of copies that reach the hands of buyers--it isn't the number of _readers_ but the number of readers with _money_ to spend--it isn't the _bulk_ of a circulation but the amount of the circulation which is _available_ to the advertiser--it isn't _fat_ but _brawn_--that tell in the long run. there are certain earmarks that indicate these strengths and weaknesses. they are as plain to the observing eye as the signs of the woods are significant to the trapper. the _news_ columns tell you what you can expect out of the _advertising_ columns. a newspaper _always finds_ the class of readers to which it is _edited_. when its mental tone is _low_ and its moral tone is _careless_ depend upon it--_the readers match the medium_. no gun can hit a target _outside_ of its range. no newspaper can aim its policy in _one_ direction and score in _another_. no advertiser can find a different class of men and women than the publisher has found for himself. he is judged by the company he keeps. _if he lies down with dogs he will arise with fleas._ the cellar hole and the sewer hole a coal cart stopped before an office building in washington and the driver dismounted, removed the cover from a manhole, ran out his chute, and proceeded to empty the load. an old negro strolled over and stood watching him. suddenly the black man glanced down and immediately burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter, which continued for several minutes. the cart driver looked at him in amusement. "say, uncle," he asked, "do you always laugh when you see coal going into a cellar?" the negro sputtered around for a few moments and then holding his hands to his aching sides managed to say, "_no, sah, but i jest busts when i sees it goin' down a sewer._" the advertiser who displays lack of judgment in selecting the newspapers which carry his copy often confuses the _sewer_ and the _cellar_. all the money that is put _into_ newspapers isn't taken _out_ again, by any means. the fact that all dailies possess a certain physical likeness, doesn't necessarily signify a similarity in character, and it's _character_ in a newspaper that brings returns. the editor who conducts a journalistic sewer, finds a _different_ class of readers than the publisher who respects himself enough to respect his readers. what goes into a newspaper largely determines the class of homes into which the newspaper goes. an irresponsible, scandal-mongering, muck-raking sheet is certainly not supported by the buying classes of people. it _may be_ perused by thousands of readers, but such readers are seldom purchasers of advertised goods. it's the clean-cut, steady, normal-minded citizens who form the bone and sinew and muscle of the community. it's the sane, self-respecting, _dependable_ newspaper that enters their homes and it's the _home_ sale that indicates the strength of an advertising medium. no clean-minded father of a family wishes to have his wife and children brought in contact with the most maudlin and banal phases of life. he defends them from the sensational editor and the unpleasant advertiser. he subscribes to _a newspaper which he does not fear to leave about the house_. therefore, the respectable newspaper can always be counted upon to produce more sales than one which may even own a larger _circulation_ but whose distribution is in ten editions among unprofitable citizens. you can no more expect to sell goods to people who _haven't money_, than you can hope _to pluck oysters from rose-bushes_. it isn't the number of readers _reached_, but the number of readers whose _purses_ can be reached, that constitutes the value of circulation. it's one thing to arouse _their attention_, but it's a far different thing to get _their money_. _the mind may be willing, but the pocketbook may be weak._ if you had the choice of a thousand acres of desert land or a hundred acres of oasis, you'd select the fertile spot, realizing that the larger tract had less value because it would be less productive. the advertiser who really understands how he is spending his money, takes care that he is not pouring his money into _deserts and sewers_. the neighborhood of your advertising circulation is a commodity which must be bought with the same common sense used in selecting potatoes, cloth and real estate. _it can be measured and weighed_--it is _merchandise_ with a _provable_ value. it varies just as much as the grocer's green stuff, the tailor's fabrics and the lots of the real estate man. your cook refuses to accept green and rotten tomatoes at the price of perfect ones. she does not calculate the number of vegetables that are _delivered_ to her, but those that she _can use_. when your wife selects a piece of cloth she first makes sure that it will serve the purpose she has in view. when you buy a piece of property you consider _the neighborhood_ as well as the _ground_. just so when you buy _advertising_ you must find out how much of the circulation you _can use_. you must judge the _neighborhoods_ where your copy will be read, with the same thoughtfulness that you devoted to selecting the spot where your goods are sold. a dealer in precious stones would be foolish to open up in a tenement district, and equally short-sighted, to tell about his jewelry in a newspaper largely distributed there. out of ten thousand men and women who might _see_ what he had to say not ten of them could _afford to buy his goods_. these ten thousand readers would be mass without muscle. he could make them _willing_ to do business with him, but _their incomes wouldn't let them become customers_. one of the greatest mistakes in publicity is _to drop your lines where the fish can't take your bait_. circulation is, as you see, a very interesting subject, but very few people know anything about it. it would surprise you to know that this ignorance often extends to the business offices of newspapers. i have known publishers to continually mistake the _class of_ their readers and have met hundreds of them who had the most fantastic ideas upon the figures of their circulation. while i would not be so harsh as to accuse them of anything more than being _mistaken_, none the less their tendency to infect _others_ with this misinformation renders it extremely advisable for _you to_ become a member of the missouri society--and "_be shown_." don't rely solely on circulation statements. you don't understand the tricks in their making. make the newspaper which carries your advertisement show you the list of its advertisers. a newspaper which prints the most advertising, month after month, year after year, is always the best medium. this is equally true in new york, chicago, philadelphia, kenosha and walla walla. the mistake of the big steak watch out for _waste_ in circulation. find out _where_ your story is going to be _read_. don't pay for planting the seed of publicity in a spot where you are not going to _harvest_ the results. the manufacturer of soap who has his goods on sale from oskaloosa to timbuctoo doesn't care _how widely_ a newspaper circulation is scattered. whoever reads about his product is near to _some_ store or other where it is sold--but you have just _one_ store. buying advertising circulation is very much like ordering a steak--if the waiter brings you a porter-house twice as big as your _digestion_ can handle, you've paid twice as much as the steak was worth to _you_, even if it _is_ worth the price to the restaurant man. you derive your profit not from the circulation that your _advertisement_ gets, but from circulation _that gets people to buy_. if two newspapers offer you their columns and one shows a distribution almost entirely within the city and in towns that rely upon your city for buying facilities, your business can digest all of its influence. if the other has _as much circulation_, but only _one third_ of it is in _local territory_, mere bulk cannot establish its value to _you_--_it's another case of the big steak_--you pay for more than you can digest. that part of its influence which is concentrated where men and women can't get your _goods_ after you get their _attention_, is _sheer waste_. by dividing the number of copies he prints into his line rate, a publisher may fallaciously demonstrate to you that his space is sold as low as that of his stronger competitors, but if half his circulation is too _far away to bring buyers_, his real _rate_ is double what it seems. he is like the butcher who weighs in all the bone and sinew and fat and charges you as much for the _waste_ as he does for the _meat_. the omelette soufflé there is a vast distinction between distribution for the sake of increasing the _circulation figures_ and distribution for the sake of increasing the number of _advertising responses_. there is a difference between a circulation which strikes the _same_ reader several times in the _same_ day and the circulation which does _not_ repeat the individual. there is a difference between circulation which is concentrated into an area from which every reader can be expected to come to your establishment, if you can _interest_ him, and a circulation that spreads over half a dozen states and shows its greatest volume in territory so far from your establishment that you can't get a buyer out of ten thousand readers. you've got to weigh and measure all these things when you weigh and measure circulation figures. it isn't the number of copies _printed_, but the number of copies _sold_--not the number of papers _distributed_, but the number of papers distributed in _responsive_ territory--not the number of readers _reached_, but the number of readers who have the price to _buy_ what you want to _sell_--that determine the value of circulation to _you_. you can take a single egg and whip it into an omelette soufflé which _seems_ to be a _whole plateful_, but the extra bulk is just _hot air_ and _sugar_--the change in form has not increased the amount of egg _substance_ and it's the _substance_ in circulation, just as it is the _nutrition_ in the egg, that _counts_. [ transcriber's note: the following is a list of corrections made to the original. the first line is the original line, the second the corrected one. pronounced--you musn't stop short of a _knock-down impression_. pronounced--you mustn't stop short of a _knock-down impression_. ] [frontispiece: phillips brooks] "the best-loved man in new england." "the ideal life, the life full of completion, haunts us all. we feel the thing we ought to be beating beneath the thing we are." "_first, be a man._" architects of fate or, steps to success and power a book designed to inspire youth to character building, self-culture and noble achievement by orison swett marden author of "pushing to the front or, success under difficulties" _illustrated with sixteen fine portraits of eminent persons_ "all are architects of fate working in these walls of time." "our to-days and yesterdays are the blocks with which we build." "let thy great deed be thy prayer to thy god." toronto william briggs wesley buildings montreal: c. w. coates halifax: s. f. huestis copyright, , by orison swett marden. _all rights reserved._ preface. the demand for more than a dozen editions of "pushing to the front" during its first year and its universally favorable reception, both at home and abroad, have encouraged the author to publish this companion volume of somewhat similar scope and purpose. the two books were prepared simultaneously, and the story of the first, given in its preface, applies equally well to this. inspiration to character-building and worthy achievement is the keynote of the present volume, its object, to arouse to honorable exertion youth who are drifting without aim, to awaken dormant ambitions in those who have grown discouraged in the struggle for success, to encourage and stimulate to higher resolve those who are setting out to make their own way, with perhaps neither friendship nor capital other than a determination to get on in the world. nothing is so fascinating to a youth with high purpose, life, and energy throbbing in his young blood as stories of men and women who have brought great things to pass. though these themes are as old as the human race, yet they are ever new, and more interesting to the young than any fiction. the cry of youth is for life! more life! no didactic or dogmatic teaching, however brilliant, will capture a twentieth-century boy, keyed up to the highest pitch by the pressure of an intense civilization. the romance of achievement under difficulties, of obscure beginnings and triumphant ends; the story of how great men started, their struggles, their long waitings, amid want and woe, the obstacles overcome, the final triumphs; examples, which explode excuses, of men who have seized common situations and made them great, of those of average capacity who have succeeded by the use of ordinary means, by dint of indomitable will and inflexible purpose: these will most inspire the ambitious youth. the author teaches that there are bread and success for every youth under the american flag who has the grit to seize his chance and work his way to his own loaf; that the barriers are not yet erected which declare to aspiring talent, "thus far and no farther"; that the most forbidding circumstances cannot repress a longing for knowledge, a yearning for growth; that poverty, humble birth, loss of limbs or even eyesight, have not been able to bar the progress of men with grit; that poverty has rocked the cradle of the giants who have wrung civilization from barbarism, and have led the world up from savagery to the gladstones, the lincolns, and the grants. the book shows that it is the man with one unwavering aim who cuts his way through opposition and forges to the front; that in this electric age, where everything is pusher or pushed, he who would succeed must hold his ground and push hard; that what are stumbling-blocks and defeats to the weak and vacillating, are but stepping-stones and victories to the strong and determined. the author teaches that every germ of goodness will at last struggle into bloom and fruitage, and that true success follows every right step. he has tried to touch the higher springs of the youth's aspiration; to lead him to high ideals; to teach him that there is something nobler in an occupation than merely living-getting or money-getting; that a man may make millions and be a failure still; to caution youth not to allow the maxims of a low prudence, dinned daily into his ears in this money-getting age, to repress the longings for a higher life; that the hand can never safely reach higher than does the heart. the author's aim has been largely through concrete illustrations which have pith, point, and purpose, to be more suggestive than dogmatic, in a style more practical than elegant, more helpful than ornate, more pertinent than novel. the author wishes to acknowledge valuable assistance from mr. arthur w. brown, of w. kingston, r. i. o. s. m. bowdoin st., boston, mass. december , . contents. chapter i. wanted--a man god after a _man_. wealth is nothing, fame is nothing. _manhood is everything_. ii. dare dare to live thy creed. conquer your place in the world. all things serve a brave soul. iii. the will and the way find a way or make one. everything is either pusher or pushed. the world always listens to a man with a will in him. iv. success under difficulties there is scarcely a great truth or doctrine but has had to fight its way to recognition through detraction, calumny, and persecution. v. uses or obstacles the great sculptor cares little for the human block as such; it is the statue he is after; and he will blast, hammer, and chisel with poverty, hardships, anything to get out the man. vi. one unwavering aim find your purpose and fling your life out to it. try to be somebody with all your might. vii. sowing and reaping what is put into the first of life is put into the whole of life. _start right_. viii. self-help self-made or never made. the greatest men have risen from the ranks. ix. work and wait don't risk a life's superstructure upon a day's foundation. x. clear grit the goddess of fame or of fortune has been won by many a poor boy who had no friends, no backing, or anything but pure grit and invincible purpose to commend him. xi. the grandest thing in the world manhood is above all riches and overtops all titles; character is greater than any career. xii. wealth in economy "hunger, rags, cold, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach, are disagreeable; but debt is infinitely worse than all." xiii. rich without money to have nothing is not poverty. whoever uplifts civilization is rich though he die penniless, and future generations will erect his monument. xiv. opportunities where you are "how speaks the present hour? _act_." don't wait for great opportunities. _seize common occasions and make them great_. xv. the might of little things there is nothing small in a world where a mud-crack swells to an amazon, and the stealing of a penny may end on the scaffold. xvi. self-mastery guard your weak point. be lord over yourself. list of portraits. chap. i. phillips brooks . . . . . . . . . _frontispiece_ ii. oliver hazard perry iii. walter scott iv. william hickling prescott v. john bunyan vi. richard arkwright vii. victor hugo viii. james a. garfield (missing from book) ix. thomas alva edison x. andrew jackson xi. john greenleaf whittier (missing from book) xii. alexander hamilton xiii. ralph waldo emerson xiv. thomas jefferson xv. louis agassiz xvi. james russell lowell architects of fate. chapter i. wanted--a man. "wanted; men: not systems fit and wise, not faiths with rigid eyes, not wealth in mountain piles, not power with gracious smiles, not even the potent pen: wanted; men." run ye to and fro through the streets of jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man.--jeremiah. all the world cries, where is the man who will save us? we want a man! don't look so far for this man. you have him at hand. this man,--it is you, it is i, it is each one of us! . . . how to constitute one's self a man? nothing harder, if one knows not how to will it; nothing easier, if one wills it.--alexandre dumas. "'tis life, not death for which we pant! 'tis life, whereof our nerves are scant: more life and fuller, that we want." i do not wish in attempting to paint a man to describe an air-fed, unimpassioned, impossible ghost. my eyes and ears are revolted by any neglect of the physical facts, the limitations of man.--emerson. but nature, with a matchless hand, sends forth her nobly born, and laughs the paltry attributes of wealth and rank to scorn; she moulds with care a spirit rare, half human, half divine, and cries exulting, "who can make a gentleman like mine?" eliza cook. "in a thousand cups of life," says emerson, "only one is the right mixture. the fine adjustment of the existing elements, where the well-mixed man is born with eyes not too dull, nor too good, with fire enough and earth enough, capable of receiving impressions from all things, and not too susceptible, then no gift need be bestowed on him. he brings his fortune with him." diogenes sought with a lantern at noontide in ancient athens for a perfectly honest man, and sought in vain. in the market place he once cried aloud, "hear me, o men;" and, when a crowd collected around him, he said scornfully: "i called for men, not pygmies." the world has a standing advertisement over the door of every profession, every occupation, every calling; "wanted--a man." wanted, a man who will not lose his individuality in a crowd, a man who has the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say "no," though all the world say "yes." wanted, a man who, though he is dominated by a mighty purpose, will not permit one great faculty to dwarf, cripple, warp, or mutilate his manhood; who will not allow the over-development of one facility to stunt or paralyze his other faculties. wanted, a man who is larger than his calling, who considers it a low estimate of his occupation to value it merely as a means of getting a living. wanted, a man who sees self-development, education and culture, discipline and drill, character and manhood, in his occupation. a thousand pulpits vacant in a single religious denomination, a thousand preachers standing idle in the market place, while a thousand church committees scour the land for men to fill those same vacant pulpits, and scour in vain, is a sufficient indication, in one direction at least, of the largeness of the opportunities of the age, and also of the crying need of good men. wanted, a man who is well balanced, who is not cursed with some little defect or weakness which cripples his usefulness and neutralizes his powers. wanted, a man of courage, who is not a coward in any part of his nature. wanted, a man who is symmetrical, and not one-sided in his development, who has not sent all the energies of his being into one narrow specialty, and allowed all the other branches of his life to wither and die. wanted, a man who is broad, who does not take half views of things. wanted, a man who mixes common sense with his theories, who does not let a college education spoil him for practical, every-day life; a man who prefers substance to show, who regards his good name as a priceless treasure. wanted, a man "who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to heed a strong will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself." god calls a man to be upright and pure and generous, but he also calls him to be intelligent and skillful and strong and brave. the world wants a man who is educated all over; whose nerves are brought to their acutest sensibility, whose brain is cultured, keen, incisive, penetrating, broad, liberal, deep; whose hands are deft; whose eyes are alert, sensitive, microscopic, whose heart is tender, broad, magnanimous, true. the whole world is looking for such a man. although there are millions out of employment, yet it is almost impossible to find just the right man in almost any department of life. every profession and every occupation has a standing advertisement all over the world: "wanted--a man." rousseau, in his celebrated essay on education, says: "according to the order of nature, men being equal, their common vocation is the profession of humanity; and whoever is well educated to discharge the duty of a man cannot be badly prepared to fill any of those offices that have a relation to him. it matters little to me whether my pupil be designed for the army, the pulpit, or the bar. nature has destined us to the offices of human life antecedent to our destination concerning society. to live is the profession i would teach him. when i have done with him, it is true he will be neither a soldier, a lawyer, nor a divine. _let him first be a man_; fortune may remove him from one rank to another as she pleases, he will be always found in his place." a little, short doctor of divinity in a large baptist convention stood on a step and said he thanked god he was a baptist. the audience could not hear and called "louder." "get up higher," some one said. "i can't," he replied. "to be a baptist is as high as one can get." but there is something higher than being a baptist, and that is being a _man_. as emerson says, talleyrand's question is ever the main one; not, is he rich? is he committed? is he well-meaning? has he this or that faculty? is he of the movement? is he of the establishment? but is he anybody? does he stand for something? he must be good of his kind. that is all that talleyrand, all that state street, all that the common sense of mankind asks. when garfield was asked as a young boy, "what he meant to be," he answered: "first of all, i must make myself a man, if i do not succeed in that, i can succeed in nothing." montaigne says our work is not to train a soul by itself alone, nor a body by itself alone, but to train a man. one great need of the world to-day is for men and women who are good animals. to endure the strain of our concentrated civilization, the coming man and woman must have an excess of animal spirits. they must have a robustness of health. mere absence of disease is not health. it is the overflowing fountain, not the one half full, that gives life and beauty to the valley below. only he is healthy who exults in mere animal existence; whose very life is a luxury; who feels a bounding pulse throughout his body, who feels life in every limb, as dogs do when scouring over the field, or as boys do when gliding over fields of ice. pope, the poet, was with sir godfrey kneller, the artist, one day, when the latter's nephew, a guinea slave-trader, came into the room. "nephew," said sir godfrey, "you have the honor of seeing the two greatest men in the world." "i don't know how great men you may be," said the guinea man, "but i don't like your looks. i have often bought a much better man than either of you, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas." sydney smith said, "i am convinced that digestion is the great secret of life, and that character, virtue and talents, and qualities are powerfully affected by beef, mutton, pie crust, and rich soups. i have often thought i could feed or starve men into virtues or vices, and affect them more powerfully with my instruments of torture than timotheus could do formerly with his lyre." what more glorious than a magnificent manhood, animated with the bounding spirits of overflowing health? it is a sad sight to see thousands of students graduated every year from our grand institutions, whose object is to make stalwart, independent, self-supporting men, turned out into the world saplings instead of stalwart oaks, "memory-glands" instead of brainy men, helpless instead of self-supporting, sickly instead of robust, weak instead of strong, leaning instead of erect. "so many promising youths, and never a finished man!" the character sympathizes with and unconsciously takes on the nature of the body. a peevish, snarling, ailing man cannot develop the vigor and strength of character which is possible to a healthy, robust, jolly man. there is an inherent love in the human mind for wholeness, a demand that man shall come up to the highest standard; and there is an inherent protest or contempt for preventable deficiency. nature too demands that man be ever at the top of his condition. the giant's strength with the imbecile's brain will not be characteristic of the coming man. man has been a dwarf of himself, but a higher type of manhood stands at the door of this age knocking for admission. as we stand upon the seashore while the tide is coming in, one wave reaches up the beach far higher than any previous one, then recedes, and for some time none that follows comes up to its mark, but after a while the whole sea is there and beyond it, so now and then there comes a man head and shoulders above his fellow-men, showing that nature has not lost her ideal, and after a while even the average man will overtop the highest wave of manhood yet given to the world. apelles hunted over greece for many years, studying the fairest points of beautiful women, getting here an eye, there a forehead and there a nose, here a grace and there a turn of beauty, for his famous portrait of a perfect woman which enchanted the world. so the coming man will be a composite, many in one. he will absorb into himself not the weakness, not the follies, but the strength and the virtues of other types of men. he will be a man raised to the highest power. he will be self-centred, equipoised, and ever master of himself. his sensibility will not be deadened or blunted by violation of nature's laws. his whole character will be impressible, and will respond to the most delicate touches of nature. what a piece of work--this coming man! "how noble in reason. how infinite in faculties. in form and motion how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god. the beauty of the world. the paragon of animals." the first requisite of all education and discipline should be man-timber. tough timber must come from well grown, sturdy trees. such wood can be turned into a mast, can be fashioned into a piano or an exquisite carving. but it must become timber first. time and patience develop the sapling into the tree. so through discipline, education, experience, the sapling child is developed into hardy mental, moral, physical timber. what an aid to character building would be the determination of the young man in starting out in life to consider himself his own bank; that his notes will be accepted as good or bad, and will pass current everywhere or be worthless, according to his individual reputation for honor and veracity; that if he lets a note go to protest, his bank of character will be suspected; if he lets two or three go to protest, public confidence will be seriously shaken; that if they continue to go to protest, his reputation will be lost and confidence in him ruined. if the youth should start out with the fixed determination that every statement he makes shall be the exact truth; that every promise he makes shall be redeemed to the letter; that every appointment shall be kept with the strictest faithfulness and with full regard for other men's time, if he should hold his reputation as a priceless treasure, feel that the eyes of the world are upon him, that he must not deviate a hair's breadth from the truth and right; if he should take such a stand at the outset, he would, like george peabody, come to have almost unlimited credit and the confidence of all, and would have developed into noble man-timber. what are palaces and equipages; what though a man could cover a continent with his title-deeds, or an ocean with his commerce, compared with conscious rectitude, with a face that never turns pale at the accuser's voice, with a bosom that never throbs with the fear of exposure, with a heart that might be turned inside out and disclose no stain of dishonor? to have done no man a wrong; to have put your signature to no paper to which the purest angel in heaven might not have been an attesting witness; to walk and live, unseduced, within arm's length of what is not your own, with nothing between your desire and its gratification but the invisible law of rectitude;--_this is to be a man_. "he that of such a height hath built his mind, and reared the dwelling of his thought so strong as neither fear nor hope can shake the frame of his resolved powers; nor all the wind of vanity or malice pierce to wrong his settled peace, or to disturb the same; what a fair seat hath he; from whence he may the boundless wastes and wilds of man survey." [_lines found in one of the books of beecher's library._] a man is never so happy as when he is _totus in se_; as when he suffices to himself, and can walk without crutches or a guide. said jean paul richter: "i have made as much out of myself as could be made of the stuff, and no man should require more." man is the only great thing in the universe. all the ages have been trying to produce a perfect model. only one complete man has yet been evolved. the best of us are but prophecies of what is to come. what constitutes a state? not high-raised battlement or labored mound, thick wall or moated gate; not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned; not bays and broad-armed ports, where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride; not starred and spangled courts, where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride. no: men, high-minded men, with powers as far above dull brutes endued in forest, brake, or den, as beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude,-- men who their duties know, but know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain, prevent the long-aimed blow, and crush the tyrant while they rend the chain. william jones. god give us men. a time like this demands strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands: men whom the lust of office does not kill; men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; men who possess opinions and a will; men who have honor--men who will not lie; men who can stand before a demagogue and scorn his treacherous flatteries without winking; tall men sun-crowned, who live above the fog in public duty, and in private thinking. anon. open thy bosom, set thy wishes wide, and let in manhood--let in happiness; admit the boundless theatre of thought from nothing up to god . . . which makes a man! young. "the wisest man could ask no more of fate than to be simple, modest, manly, true." in speech right gentle, yet so wise; princely of mien, yet softly mannered; modest, deferent, and tender-hearted, though of fearless blood. edwin arnold. chapter ii. dare. the spartans did not inquire how many the enemy are, but where they are.--agis ii. what's brave, what's noble, let's do it after the high roman fashion, and make death proud to take us.--shakespeare. better, like hector, in the field to die, than, like a perfumed paris, turn and fly. longfellow. let me die facing the enemy.--bayard. who conquers me, shall find a stubborn foe.--byron. courage in danger is half the battle.--plautus. no great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty. george eliot. fortune befriends the bold.--dryden. tender handed stroke a nettle, and it stings you for your pains; grasp it like a man of mettle, and it soft as silk remains. aaron hill. we make way for the man who boldly pushes past us.--bovÃ�e. man should dare all things that he knows is right, and fear to do nothing save what is wrong. phebe cary. soft-heartedness, in times like these, shows softness in the upper story. lowell. o friend, never strike sail to fear. come into port grandly, or sail with god the seas.--emerson. to stand with a smile upon your face against a stake from which you cannot get away--that, no doubt, is heroic. but the true glory is resignation to the inevitable. to stand unchained, with perfect liberty to go away, held only by the higher claims of duty, and let the fire creep up to the heart,--this is heroism.--f. w. robertson. "steady, men! every man must die where he stands!" said colin campbell to the ninety-third highlanders at balaklava, as an overwhelming force of russian cavalry came sweeping down. "ay, ay, sir colin! we'll do that!" was the cordial response from men many of whom had to keep their word by thus obeying. * * * * * * [illustration: commodore perry] "we have met the enemy and they are ours." "he either fears his fate too much or his deserts too small, that dares not put it to the touch, to gain or lose it all." * * * * * * "bring back the colors," shouted a captain at the battle of the alma, when an ensign maintained his ground in front, although the men were retreating. "no," cried the ensign, "bring up the men to the colors." "to dare, and again to dare, and without end to dare," was danton's noble defiance to the enemies of france. "the commons of france have resolved to deliberate," said mirabeau to de breze, who brought an order from the king for them to disperse, june , . "we have heard the intentions that have been attributed to the king; and you, sir, who cannot be recognized as his organ in the national assembly,--you, who have neither place, voice, nor right to speak,--you are not the person to bring to us a message of his. go, say to those who sent you that we are here by the power of the people, and that we will not be driven hence, save by the power of the bayonet." when the assembled senate of rome begged regulus not to return to carthage to fulfill an illegal promise, he calmly replied: "have you resolved to dishonor me? torture and death are awaiting me, but what are these to the shame of an infamous act, or the wounds of a guilty mind? slave as i am to carthage, i still have the spirit of a roman. i have sworn to return. it is my duty. let the gods take care of the rest." the courage which cranmer had shown since the accession of mary gave way the moment his final doom was announced. the moral cowardice which had displayed itself in his miserable compliance with the lust and despotism of henry displayed itself again in six successive recantations by which he hoped to purchase pardon. but pardon was impossible; and cranmer's strangely mingled nature found a power in its very weakness when he was brought into the church of st. mary at oxford on the st of march, to repeat his recantation on the way to the stake. "now," ended his address to the hushed congregation before him,--"now i come to the great thing that troubleth my conscience more than any other thing that ever i said or did in my life, and that is the setting abroad of writings contrary to the truth; which here i now renounce and refuse as things written by a hand contrary to the truth which i thought in my heart, and written for fear of death to save my life, if it might be. and, forasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, my hand therefore shall be the first punished; for if i come to the fire it shall be the first burned." "this was the hand that wrote it," he again exclaimed at the stake, "therefore it shall suffer first punishment;" and holding it steadily in the flame, "he never stirred nor cried till life was gone." "oh, if i were only a man!" exclaimed rebecca bates, a girl of fourteen, as she looked from the window of a lighthouse at scituate, mass., during the war of , and saw a british warship anchor in the harbor. "what could you do?" asked sarah winsor, a young visitor. "see what a lot of them the boats contain, and look at their guns!" and she pointed to five large boats, filled with soldiers in scarlet uniforms, who were coming to burn the vessels in the harbor and destroy the town. "i don't care, i'd fight," said rebecca. "i'd use father's old shotgun--anything. think of uncle's new boat and the sloop! and how hard it is to sit here and see it all, and not lift a finger to help. father and uncle are in the village and will do all they can. how still it is in the town! there is not a man to be seen." "oh, they are hiding till the soldiers get nearer," said sarah, "then we'll hear the shots and the drum." "the drum!" exclaimed rebecca, "how can they use it? it is here. father brought it home last night to mend. see! the first boat has reached the sloop. oh! they are going to burn her. where is that drum? i've a great mind to go down and beat it. we could hide behind the sandhills and bushes." as flames began to rise from the sloop the ardor of the girls increased. they found the drum and an old fife, and, slipping out of doors unnoticed by mrs. bates, soon stood behind a row of sandhills. "rub-a-dub-dub, rub-a-dub-dub," went the drum, and "squeak, squeak, squeak," went the fife. the americans in the town thought that help had come from boston, and rushed into boats to attack the redcoats. the british paused in their work of destruction; and, when the fife began to play "yankee doodle," they scrambled into their boats and rowed in haste to the warship, which weighed anchor and sailed away as fast as the wind would carry her. a woman's piercing shriek suddenly startled a party of surveyors at dinner in a forest of northern virginia on a calm, sunny day in . the cries were repeated in quick succession, and the men sprang through the undergrowth to learn their cause. "oh, sir," exclaimed the woman as she caught sight of a youth of eighteen, but a man in stature and bearing; "you will surely do something for me! make these friends release me. my boy,--my poor boy is drowning, and they will not let me go!" "it would be madness; she will jump into the river," said one of the men who was holding her; "and the rapids would dash her to pieces in a moment!" throwing on his coat, the youth sprang to the edge of the bank, scanned for a moment the rocks and whirling currents, and then, at sight of part of the boy's dress, plunged into the roaring rapids. "thank god, he will save my child!" cried the mother, and all rushed to the brink of the precipice; "there he is! oh, my boy, my darling boy! how could i leave you?" but all eyes were bent upon the youth struggling with strong heart and hope amid the dizzy sweep of the whirling currents far below. now it seemed as if he would be dashed against a projecting rock, over which the water flew in foam, and anon a whirlpool would drag him in, from whose grasp escape would seem impossible. twice the boy went out of sight, but he had reappeared the second time, although frightfully near the most dangerous part of the river. the rush of waters here was tremendous, and no one had ever dared to approach it, even in a canoe, lest he should be dashed to pieces. the youth redoubled his exertions. three times he was about to grasp the child, when some stronger eddy would toss it from him. one final effort he makes; the child is held aloft by his strong right arm, but a cry of horror bursts from the lips of every spectator as boy and man shoot over the falls and vanish in the seething waters below. "there they are!" shouted the mother a moment later, in a delirium of joy. "see! they are safe! great god, i thank thee!" and sure enough they emerged unharmed from the boiling vortex, and in a few minutes reached a low place in the bank and were drawn up by their friends, the boy senseless, but still alive, and the youth almost exhausted. "god will give you a reward," solemnly spoke the grateful woman. "he will do great things for you in return for this day's work, and the blessings of thousands besides mine will attend you." the youth was george washington. "your grace has not the organ of animal courage largely developed," said a phrenologist, who was examining wellington's head. "you are right," replied the iron duke, "and but for my sense of duty i should have retreated in my first fight." that first fight, on an indian field, was one of the most terrible on record. in the reverses which followed napoleon, he met the allies at arcis. a live shell having fallen in front of one of his young battalions, which recoiled and wavered in expectation of an explosion, napoleon, to reassure them, spurred his charger toward the instrument of destruction, made him smell the burning match, waited unshaken for the explosion, and was blown up. rolling in the dust with his mutilated steed, and rising without a wound amid the plaudits of his soldiers, he calmly called for another horse, and continued to brave the grape-shot, and to fly into the thickest of the battle. when general jackson was a judge and was holding court in a small settlement, a border ruffian, a murderer and desperado, came into the court-room with brutal violence and interrupted the court. the judge ordered him to be arrested. the officer did not dare to approach him. "call a posse," said the judge, "and arrest him." but they also shrank in fear from the ruffian. "call me, then," said jackson; "this court is adjourned for five minutes." he left the bench, walked straight up to the man, and with his eagle eye actually cowed the ruffian, who dropped his weapons, afterwards saying, "there was something in his eye i could not resist." one of the last official acts of the late president carnot, of france, was the sending of a medal of the french legion of honor to a little american girl, who lives in indiana. while a train on the pan handle railroad, having on board several distinguished frenchmen, was bound to chicago and the world's fair, jennie carey, who was then ten years old, discovered that a trestle was on fire, and that if the train, which was nearly due, entered it a dreadful wreck would take place. thereupon she ran out upon the track to a place where she could be seen from some little distance. then she took off her red flannel skirt and, when the train came in view, waved it back and forth across the track. it was seen, and the train stopped. on board of it were seven hundred people, many of whom must have suffered death but for jennie's courage and presence of mind. when they returned to france, the frenchmen brought the occurrence to the notice of president carnot, and the result was the sending of the medal of this famous french society, the purpose of which is the honoring of bravery and merit, wherever they may be found. after the battle of fort donelson, the wounded were hauled down the hill in rough board wagons, and most of them died before they reached st. louis. one blue-eyed boy of nineteen, with both arms and both legs shattered, had lain a long time and was neglected. he said, "why, you see they couldn't stop to bother with us because they had to take the fort. when they took it we all forgot our sufferings and shouted for joy, even to the dying." louis ix. of france was captured by the turks at the battle of mansoora, during the seventh crusade, and his wife marguerite, with a babe at the breast, was in damietta, many miles away. the infidels surrounded the city, and pressed the garrison so hard that it was decided to capitulate. the queen summoned the knights, and told them that she at least would die in armor upon the ramparts before the enemy should become masters of damietta. "before her words they thrilled like leaves when winds are in the wood; and a deepening murmur told of men roused to a loftier mood." grasping lance and shield, they vowed to defend their queen and the cross to the last. damietta was saved. pyrrhus marched to sparta to reinstate the deposed cleonymus, and quietly pitched his tents before laconia, not anticipating resistance. in consternation, the spartans in council decided to send their women to crete for safety. but the women met and asked queen archidamia to remonstrate. she went to the council, sword in hand, and told the men that their wives did not care to live after sparta was destroyed. "we are brave men's mothers, and brave men's wives; we are ready to do and dare; we are ready to man your walls with our lives, and string your bows with our hair." they hurried to the walls and worked all night, aiding the men in digging trenches. when pyrrhus attacked the city next day, his repulse was so emphatic that he withdrew from laconia. charles v. of spain passed through thuringia in , on his return to swabia after the battle of muehlburg. he wrote to catherine, countess dowager of schwartzburg, promising that her subjects should not be molested in their persons or property if they would supply the spanish soldiers with provisions at a reasonable price. on approaching eudolstadt, general alva and prince henry of brunswick, with his sons, invited themselves, by a messenger sent forward, to breakfast with the countess, who had no choice but to ratify so delicate a request from the commander of an army. just as the guests were seated at a generous repast, the countess was called from the hall and told that the spaniards were using violence and driving away the cattle of the peasants. quietly arming all her retinue, she bolted and barred all the gates and doors of the castle, and returned to the banquet to complain of the breach of faith. general alva told her that such was the custom of war, adding that such trifling disorders were not to be heeded. "that we shall presently see," said catharine; "my poor subjects must have their own again, or, as god lives, prince's blood for oxen's blood!" the doors were opened, and armed men took the places of the waiters behind the chairs of the guests. henry changed color; then, as the best way out of a bad scrape, laughed loudly, and ended by praising the splendid acting of his hostess, and promising that alva should order the cattle restored at once. not until a courier returned, saying that the order had been obeyed, and all damages settled satisfactorily, did the armed waiters leave. the countess then thanked her guests for the honor they had done her castle, and they retired with protestations of their distinguished consideration. it was the heroic devotion of an indian girl that saved the life of captain john smith, when the powerful king powhatan had decreed his death. ill could the struggling colony spare him at that time. when the consul shouted that the bridge was tottering, lartius and herminius sought safety in flight. but horatius strode still nearer the foe, the single champion of his country and liberty, and dared the ninety thousand to come on. dead stillness fell upon the tuscans, so astonished were they at the audacity of the roman. he first broke the awful silence, so deep that his clear, strong voice could be heard by thousands in both armies, between which rolled the tiber, as he denounced the baseness and perfidy of the invaders. not until his words were drowned by the loud crash of fiercely disrupturing timbers, and the sullen splash of the dark river, did his enemies hurl their showers of arrows and javelins. then, dexterously warding off the missiles with his shield, he plunged into the tiber. although stabbed in the hip by a tuscan spear which lamed him for life, he swam in safety to rome. "it is a bad omen," said eric the red, when his horse slipped and fell on the way to his ship, moored on the coast of greenland, in readiness for a voyage of discovery. "ill-fortune would be mine should i dare venture now upon the sea." so he returned to his house, but his young son leif decided to go, and, with a crew of thirty-five men, sailed southward in search of the unknown shore upon which captain biarni had been driven by a storm, while sailing in another viking ship two or three years before. the first land that they saw was probably labrador, a barren, rugged plain. leif called this country heluland, or the land of flat stones. sailing onward many days, he came to a low, level coast thickly covered with woods, on account of which he called the country markland, probably the modern nova scotia. sailing onward, they came to an island which they named vinland on account of the abundance of delicious wild grapes in the woods. this was in the year . here where the city of newport, r. i., stands, they spent many months, and then returned to greenland with their vessel loaded with grapes and strange kinds of wood. the voyage was successful, and no doubt eric was sorry he had been frightened by the bad omen. may , , napoleon carried the bridge at lodi, in the face of the austrian batteries. fourteen cannon--some accounts say thirty--were trained upon the french end of the structure. behind them were six thousand troops. napoleon massed four thousand grenadiers at the head of the bridge, with a battalion of three hundred carbineers in front. at the tap of the drum the foremost assailants wheeled from the cover of the street wall under a terrible hail of grape and canister, and attempted to pass the gateway to the bridge. the front ranks went down like stalks of grain before a reaper; the column staggered and reeled backward, and the valiant grenadiers were appalled by the task before them. without a word or a look of reproach, napoleon placed himself at their head, and his aids and generals rushed to his side. forward again, this time over heaps of dead that choked the passage, and a quick run, counted by seconds only, carried the column across two hundred yards of clear space, scarcely a shot from the austrians taking effect beyond the point where the platoons wheeled for the first leap. so sudden and so miraculous was it all that the austrian artillerists abandoned their guns instantly, and their supports fled in a panic instead of rushing to the front and meeting the french onslaught. this napoleon had counted on in making the bold attack. the contrast between napoleon's slight figure and the massive grenadiers suggested the nickname "little corporal." the great secret of the success of joan of arc was the boldness of her attacks. when stephen of colonna fell into the hands of base assailants, and they asked him in derision, "where is now your fortress?" "here," was his bold reply, placing his hand upon his heart. it was after the mexican war when general mcclellan was employed as a topographical engineer in surveying the pacific coast. from his headquarters at vancouver he had gone south to the columbia river with two companions, a soldier and a servant. one evening he received word that the chiefs of the columbia river tribes desired to confer with him. from the messenger's manner he suspected that the indians meant mischief. he warned his companions that they must be ready to leave camp at a moment's notice. mounting his horse, he rode boldly into the indian village. about thirty chiefs were holding council. mcclellan was led into the circle, and placed at the right hand of saltese. he was familiar with the chinook jargon, and could understand every word spoken in the council. saltese made known the grievance of the tribes. two indians had been captured by a party of white pioneers and hanged for theft. retaliation for this outrage seemed indispensable. the chiefs pondered long, but had little to say. mcclellan had been on friendly terms with them, and was not responsible for the forest executions. still, he was a white man, and the chiefs had vowed vengeance against the race. the council was prolonged for hours before sentence was passed, and then saltese, in the name of the head men of the tribes, decreed that mcclellan should immediately be put to death in retaliation for the hanging of the two indian thieves. mcclellan had said nothing. he had known that argument and pleas for justice or mercy would be of no avail. he had sat motionless, apparently indifferent to his fate. by his listlessness he had thrown his captors off their guard. when the sentence was passed he acted like a flash. flinging his left arm around the neck of saltese, he whipped out his revolver and held it close to the chief's temple. "revoke that sentence, or i shall kill you this instant!" he cried, with his fingers clicking the trigger. "i revoke it!" exclaimed saltese, fairly livid from fear. "i must have your word that i can leave this council in safety." "you have the word of saltese," was the quick response. mcclellan knew how sacred was the pledge which he had received. the revolver was lowered. saltese was released from the embrace of the strong arm. mcclellan strode out of the tent with his revolver in his hand. not a hand was raised against him. he mounted his horse and rode to his camp, where his two followers were ready to spring into the saddle and to escape from the villages. he owed his life to his quickness of perception, and to his accurate knowledge of indian character. in , rufus choate spoke to an audience of nearly five thousand in lowell in favor of the candidacy of james buchanan for the presidency. the floor of the great hall began to sink, settling more and more as he proceeded with his address, until a sound of cracking timber below would have precipitated a stampede with fatal results but for the coolness of b. f. butler, who presided. telling the people to remain quiet, he said that he would see if there were any cause for alarm. he found the supports of the floor in so bad a condition that the slightest applause would be likely to bury the audience in the ruins of the building. returning rather leisurely to the platform, he whispered to choate as he passed, "we shall all be in ---- in five minutes," then he told the crowd that there was no immediate danger if they would slowly disperse, although he thought it prudent to adjourn to a place where there would be no risk whatever. the post of danger, he added, was on the platform, which was most weakly supported, therefore he and those with him would be the last to leave. no doubt many lives were saved by his coolness. many distinguished foreign and american statesmen were present at a fashionable dinner party where wine was freely poured, but schuyler colfax, then vice-president of the united states, declined to drink from a proffered cup. "colfax dares not drink," sneered a senator who had already taken too much. "you are right," said the vice-president, "i dare not." when grant was in houston several years ago, he was given a rousing reception. naturally hospitable, and naturally inclined to like a man of grant's make-up, the houstonites determined to go beyond any other southern city in the way of a banquet and other manifestations of their good-will and hospitality. they made great preparations for the dinner, the committee taking great pains to have the finest wines that could be procured for the table that night. when the time came to serve the wine, the head-waiter went first to grant. without a word the general quietly turned down all the glasses at his plate. this movement was a great surprise to the texans, but they were equal to the occasion. without a single word being spoken, every man along the line of the long tables turned his glasses down, and there was not a drop of wine taken that night. a deep sewer at noyon, france, had been opened for repairs, and carelessly left at night without covering or lights to warn people of danger. late at night four men stumbled in, and lay some time before their situation was known in the town. no one dared go to the aid of the men, then unconscious from breathing noxious gases, except catherine vassen, a servant girl of eighteen. she insisted on being lowered at once. fastening a rope around two of the men, she aided in raising them and restoring them to consciousness. descending again, she had just tied a rope around a third man, when she felt her breath failing. tying another rope to her long, curly hair, she swooned, but was drawn up with the man, to be quickly revived by fresh air and stimulants. the fourth man was dead when his body was pulled up, on account of the delay from the fainting of catherine. two french officers at waterloo were advancing to charge a greatly superior force. one, observing that the other showed signs of fear, said, "sir, i believe you are frightened." "yes, i am," was the reply, "and if you were half as much frightened, you would run away." "that's a brave man," said wellington, when he saw a soldier turn pale as he marched against a battery; "he knows his danger, and faces it." "there are many cardinals and bishops at worms," said a friend to luther, "and they will burn your body to ashes as they did that of john huss." luther replied: "although they should make a fire that should reach from worms to wittenberg, and that should flame up to heaven, in the lord's name i would pass through it and appear before them." he said to another: "i would enter worms though there were as many devils there as there are tiles upon the roofs of the houses." another said: "duke george will surely arrest you." he replied: "it is my duty to go, and i will go, though it rain duke georges for nine days together." "here i stand, i cannot do otherwise, god help me," exclaimed luther at the diet of worms, facing his foes. a western paper recently invited the surviving union and confederate officers to give an account of the bravest act observed by each during the civil war. colonel thomas w. higginson said that at a dinner at beaufort, s. c., where wine flowed freely and ribald jests were bandied, dr. miner, a slight, boyish fellow who did not drink, was told that he could not go until he had drunk a toast, told a story, or sung a song. he replied: "i cannot sing, but i will give a toast, although i must drink it in water. it is 'our mothers.'" the men were so affected and ashamed that some took him by the hand and thanked him for displaying courage greater than that required to walk up to the mouth of a cannon. it took great courage for the commercial quaker, john bright, to espouse a cause which called down upon his head the derision and scorn and hatred of the parliament. for years he rested under a cloud of obloquy, but bright was made of stern stuff. it was only his strength of character and masterly eloquence, which saved him from political annihilation. to a man who boasted that his ancestors came over with the conquerors, he replied, "i never heard that they did anything else." a tory lordling said, when bright was ill, that providence had inflicted upon bright, for the measure of his talents, disease of the brain. when bright went back into the commons he replied: "this may be so, but it will be some consolation to the friends and family of the noble lord to know that that disease is one which even providence cannot inflict upon him." "when a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard," says holmes, "he is often surprised to find it come off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away timid adventurers." it takes courage for a young man to stand firmly erect while others are bowing and fawning for praise and power. it takes courage to wear threadbare clothes while your comrades dress in broadcloth. it takes courage to remain in honest poverty when others grow rich by fraud. it takes courage to say "no" squarely when those around you say "yes." it takes courage to do your duty in silence and obscurity while others prosper and grow famous although neglecting sacred obligations. it takes courage to unmask your true self, to show your blemishes to a condemning world, and to pass for what you really are. it takes courage and pluck to be outvoted, beaten, laughed at, scoffed, ridiculed, derided, misunderstood, misjudged, to stand alone with all the world against you, but "they are slaves who dare not be in the right with two or three." "there is never wanting a dog to bark at you." "an honest man is not the worse because a dog barks at him." "let any man show the world that he feels afraid of its bark, and 'twill fly at his heels. let him fearlessly face it, 't will leave him alone, and 't will fawn at his feet if he fling it a bone." we live ridiculously for fear of being thought ridiculous. "'tis he is the coward who proves false to his vows, to his manhood, his honor, for a laugh or a sneer: 'tis he is the hero who stands firm, though alone, for the truth and the right without flinching or fear." the youth who starts out by being afraid to speak what he thinks will usually end by being afraid to think what he wishes. how we shrink from an act of our own. we live as others live. custom or fashion dictates, or your doctor or minister, and they in turn dare not depart from their schools. dress, living, servants, carriages, everything must conform, or be ostracized. who dares conduct his household or business affairs in his own way, and snap his fingers at dame grundy? many a man has marched up to the cannon's mouth in battle who dared not face public opinion or oppose mrs. grundy. it takes courage for a public man not to bend the knee to popular prejudice. it takes courage to refuse to follow custom when it is injurious to his health and morals. to espouse an unpopular cause in congress requires more courage than to lead a charge in battle. how much easier for a politician to prevaricate and dodge an issue than to stand squarely on his feet like a man. as a rule, eccentricity is a badge of power, but how many women would not rather strangle their individuality than be tabooed by mrs. grundy? yet fear is really the only thing to fear. "whoever you may be," said sainte-beuve, "great genius, distinguished talent, artist honorable or amiable, the qualities for which you deserve to be praised will all be turned against you. were you a virgil, the pious and sensible singer _par excellence_, there are people who will call you an effeminate poet. were you a horace, there are people who will reproach you with the very purity and delicacy of your taste. if you were a shakespeare, some one will call you a drunken savage. if you were a goethe, more than one pharisee will proclaim you the most selfish of egotists." as the strongest man has a weakness somewhere, so the greatest hero is a coward somewhere. peter was courageous enough to draw his sword to defend his master, but he could not stand the ridicule and the finger of scorn of the maidens in the high priest's hall, and he actually denied even the acquaintance of the master he had declared he would die for. "i will take the responsibility," said andrew jackson, on a memorable occasion, and his words have become proverbial. not even congress dared to oppose the edicts of john quincy adams. if a man would accomplish anything in this world, he must not be afraid of assuming responsibilities. of course it takes courage to run the risk of failure, to be subjected to criticism for an unpopular cause, to expose one's self to the shafts of everybody's ridicule, but the man who is not true to himself, who cannot carry out the sealed orders placed in his hands at his birth, regardless of the world's yes or no, of its approval or disapproval, the man who has not the courage to trace the pattern of his own destiny, which no other soul knows but his own, can never rise to the true dignity of manhood. all the world loves courage; youth craves it; they want to hear about it, they want to read about it. the fascination of the "blood and thunder" novels and of the cheap story papers for youth are based upon this idea of courage. if the boys cannot get the real article, they will take a counterfeit. don't be like uriah heep, begging everybody's pardon for taking the liberty of being in the world. there is nothing attractive in timidity, nothing lovable in fear. both are deformities and are repulsive. manly courage is dignified and graceful. the worst manners in the world are those of persons conscious "of being beneath their position, and trying to conceal it or make up for it by style." bruno, condemned to be burned alive in rome, said to his judge: "you are more afraid to pronounce my sentence than i am to receive it." anne askew, racked until her bones were dislocated, never flinched, but looked her tormentor calmly in the face and refused to abjure her faith. "we are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other." "half a man's wisdom goes with his courage," said emerson. physicians used to teach that courage depends on the circulation of the blood in the arteries, and that during passion, anger, trials of strength, wrestling or fighting, a large amount of blood is collected in the arteries, and does not pass to the veins. a strong pulse is a fortune in itself. "rage," said shaftesbury, "can make a coward forget himself and fight." "i should have thought fear would have kept you from going so far," said a relative who found the little boy nelson wandering a long distance from home. "fear?" said the future admiral, "i don't know him." "doubt indulged becomes doubt realized." to determine to do anything is half the battle. "to think a thing is impossible is to make it so." _courage is victory, timidity is defeat_. that simple shepherd-lad, david, fresh from his flocks, marching unattended and unarmed, save with his shepherd's staff and sling, to confront the colossal goliath with his massive armor, is the sublimest audacity the world has ever seen. "dent, i wish you would get down, and see what is the matter with that leg there," said grant, when he and colonel dent were riding through the thickest of a fire that had become so concentrated and murderous that his troops had all been driven back. "i guess looking after your horse's legs can wait," said dent; "it is simply murder for us to sit here." "all right," said grant, "if you don't want to see to it, i will." he dismounted, untwisted a piece of telegraph wire which had begun to cut the horse's leg, examined it deliberately, and climbed into his saddle. "dent," said he, "when you've got a horse that you think a great deal of, you should never take any chances with him. if that wire had been left there for a little time longer he would have gone dead lame, and would perhaps have been ruined for life." wellington said that at waterloo the hottest of the battle raged round a farmhouse, with an orchard surrounded by a thick hedge, which was so important a point in the british position that orders were given to hold it at any hazard or sacrifice. at last the powder and ball ran short and the hedges took fire, surrounding the orchard with a wall of flame. a messenger had been sent for ammunition, and soon two loaded wagons came galloping toward the farmhouse. "the driver of the first wagon, with the reckless daring of an english boy, spurred his struggling and terrified horses through the burning heap; but the flames rose fiercely round, and caught the powder, which exploded in an instant, sending wagon, horses, and rider in fragments into the air. for an instant the driver of the second wagon paused, appalled by his comrade's fate; the next, observing that the flames, beaten back for the moment by the explosion, afforded him one desperate chance, sent his horses at the smouldering breach and, amid the deafening cheers of the garrison, landed his terrible cargo safely within. behind him the flames closed up, and raged more fiercely than ever." at the battle of friedland a cannon-ball came over the heads of the french soldiers, and a young soldier instinctively dodged. napoleon looked at him and smilingly said: "my friend, if that ball were destined for you, though you were to burrow a hundred feet under ground it would be sure to find you there." when the mine in front of petersburg was finished, the fuse was lighted, and the union troops were drawn up ready to charge the enemy's works as soon as the explosion should make a breach. but seconds, minutes, and tens of minutes passed, without a sound from the mine, and the suspense became painful. lieutenant doughty and sergeant kees volunteered to examine the fuse. through the long subterranean galleries they hurried in silence, not knowing but they were advancing to a horrible death. they found the defect, fired the train anew, and soon a terrible upheaval of earth gave the signal to march to victory. at the battle of copenhagen, as nelson walked the deck slippery with blood and covered with the dead, he said: "this is warm work, and this day may be the last to any of us in a moment. but, mark me, i would not be elsewhere for thousands." at the battle of trafalgar, when nelson was shot and was being carried below, he covered his face, that those fighting might not know their chief had fallen. in a skirmish at salamanca, while the enemy's guns were pouring shot into his regiment, sir william napier's men became disobedient. he at once ordered a halt, and flogged four of the ringleaders under fire. the men yielded at once, and then marched three miles under a heavy cannonade as coolly as if it were a review. execute your resolutions immediately. thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried. does competition trouble you? work away; what is your competitor but a man? _conquer your place in the world_, for all things serve a brave soul. combat difficulty manfully; sustain misfortune bravely; endure poverty nobly; encounter disappointment courageously. the influence of the brave man is a magnetism which creates an epidemic of noble zeal in all about him. every day sends to the grave obscure men, who have only remained in obscurity because their timidity has prevented them from making a first effort; and who, if they could have been induced to begin, would, in all probability, have gone great lengths in the career of usefulness and fame. "no great deed is done," says george eliot, "by falterers who ask for certainty." the brave, cheerful man will survive his blighted hopes and disappointments, take them for just what they are, lessons and perhaps blessings in disguise, and will march boldly and cheerfully forward in the battle of life. or, if necessary, he will bear his ills with a patience and calm endurance deeper than ever plummet sounded. he is the true hero. then to side with truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be just; then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, doubting in his abject spirit, till his lord is crucified. lowell. our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt. shakespeare. after the great inward struggle was over, and he had determined to remain loyal to his principles, thomas more walked cheerfully to the block. his wife called him a fool for staying in a dark, damp, filthy prison when he might have his liberty by merely renouncing his doctrines, as some of the bishops had done. but he preferred death to dishonor. his daughter allowed the power of love to drive away fear. she remained true to her father when all others, even her mother, had forsaken him. after his head had been cut off and exhibited on a pole on london bridge, the poor girl begged it of the authorities, and requested that it be buried in the coffin with her. her request was granted, for her death occurred soon. when sir walter raleigh came to the scaffold he was very faint, and began his speech to the crowd by saying that during the last two days he had been visited by two ague fits. "if, therefore, you perceive any weakness in me, i beseech you ascribe it to my sickness rather than to myself." he took the axe and kissed the blade, and said to the sheriff: "'t is a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases." don't waste time dreaming of obstacles you may never encounter, or in crossing bridges you have not reached. don't fool with a nettle! grasp with firmness if you would rob it of its sting. to half will and to hang forever in the balance is to lose your grip on life. abraham lincoln's boyhood was one long struggle with poverty, with little education, and no influential friends. when at last he had begun the practice of law, it required no little daring to cast his fortune with the weaker side in politics, and thus imperil what small reputation he had gained. only the most sublime moral courage could have sustained him as president to hold his ground against hostile criticism and a long train of disaster; to issue the emancipation proclamation; to support grant and stanton against the clamor of the politicians and the press; and through it all to do the right as god gave him to see the right. lincoln never shrank from espousing an unpopular cause when he believed it to be right. at the time when it almost cost a young lawyer his bread and butter to defend the fugitive slave, and when other lawyers had refused, lincoln would always plead the cause of the unfortunate whenever an opportunity presented. "go to lincoln," people would say, when these hounded fugitives were seeking protection; "he's not afraid of any cause, if it's right." as salmon p. chase left the court room after making an impassioned plea for the runaway slave girl matilda, a man looked at him in surprise and said: "there goes a fine young fellow who has just ruined himself." but in thus ruining himself chase had taken the first important step in a career in which he became governor of ohio, united states senator from ohio, secretary of the united states treasury, and chief justice of the united states supreme court. at the trial of william penn for having spoken at a quaker meeting, the recorder, not satisfied with the first verdict, said to the jury: "we will have a verdict by the help of god, or you shall starve for it." "you are englishmen," said penn; "mind your privileges, give not away your right." at last the jury, after two days and two nights without food, returned a verdict of "not guilty." the recorder fined them forty marks apiece for their independence. what cared christ for the jeers of the crowd? the palsied hand moved, the blind saw, the leper was made whole, the dead spake, despite the ridicule and scoffs of the spectators. what cared wendell phillips for rotten eggs, derisive scorn, and hisses? in him "at last the scornful world had met its match." were beecher and gough to be silenced by the rude english mobs that came to extinguish them? no! they held their ground and compelled unwilling thousands to hear and to heed. did anna dickinson leave the platform when the pistol bullets of the molly maguires flew about her head? she silenced those pistols by her courage and her arguments. "what the world wants is a knox, who dares to preach on with a musket leveled at his head, a garrison, who is not afraid of a jail, or a mob, or a scaffold erected in front of his door. "storms may howl around thee, foes may hunt and hound thee: shall they overpower thee? never, never, never." when general butler was sent with nine thousand men to quell the new york riots, he arrived in advance of his troops, and found the streets thronged with an angry mob, which had already hanged more than one man to lamp-posts. without waiting for his men, butler went to the place where the crowd was most dense, overturned an ash barrel, stood upon it, and began: "delegates from five points, fiends from hell, you have murdered your superiors," and the blood-stained crowd quailed before the courageous words of a single man in a city which mayor fernando wood could not restrain with the aid of police and militia. "our enemies are before us," exclaimed the spartans at thermopylae. "and we are before them," was the cool reply of leonidas. "deliver your arms," came the message from xerxes. "come and take them," was the answer leonidas sent back. a persian soldier said: "you will not be able to see the sun for flying javelins and arrows." "then we will fight in the shade," replied a lacedemonian. what wonder that a handful of such men checked the march of the greatest host that ever trod the earth. "it is impossible," said a staff officer, when napoleon gave directions for a daring plan. "impossible!" thundered the great commander, "_impossible_ is the adjective of fools!" napoleon went to the edge of his possibility. grant never knew when he was beaten. when told that he was surrounded by the enemy at belmont, he quietly replied: "well, then we must cut our way out." the courageous man is an example to the intrepid. his influence is magnetic. he creates an epidemic of nobleness. men follow him, even to the death. the spirit of courage will transform the whole temper of your life. "the wise and active conquer difficulties by daring to attempt them. sloth and folly shiver and sicken at the sight of trial and hazard, and make the impossibility they fear." "the hero," says emerson, "is the man who is immovably centred." emin pasha, the explorer of africa, was left behind by his exploring party under circumstances that were thought certainly fatal, and his death was reported with great assurance. early the next winter, as his troop was on its toilsome but exciting way through central africa, it came upon a most wretched sight. a party of natives had been kidnapped by the slave-hunters, and dragged in chains thus far toward the land of bondage. but small-pox had set in, and the miserable company had been abandoned to their fate. emin sent his men ahead, and stayed behind in this camp of death to act as physician and nurse. how many lives he saved is not known, though it is known that he nearly lost his own. the age of chivalry is not gone by. this is as knightly a deed as poet ever chronicled. a mouse that dwelt near the abode of a great magician was kept in such constant distress by its fear of a cat, that the magician, taking pity on it, turned it into a cat itself. immediately it began to suffer from its fear of a dog, so the magician turned it into a dog. then it began to suffer from fear of a tiger. the magician therefore turned it into a tiger. then it began to suffer from fear of hunters, and the magician said in disgust: "be a mouse again. as you have only the heart of a mouse, it is impossible to help you by giving you the body of a nobler animal." men who have dared have moved the world, often before reaching the prime of life. it is astonishing what daring to begin and perseverance have enabled even youths to achieve. alexander, who ascended the throne at twenty, had conquered the known world before dying at thirty-three. julius caesar captured eight hundred cities, conquered three hundred nations, and defeated three million men, became a great orator and one of the greatest statesmen known, and still was a young man. washington was appointed adjutant-general at nineteen, was sent at twenty-one as an ambassador to treat with the french, and won his first battle as a colonel at twenty-two. lafayette was made general of the whole french army at twenty. charlemagne was master of france and germany at thirty. condé was only twenty-two when he conquered at rocroi. galileo was but eighteen when he saw the principle of the pendulum in the swinging lamp in the cathedral at pisa. peel was in parliament at twenty-one. gladstone was in parliament before he was twenty-two, and at twenty-four he was lord of the treasury. elizabeth barrett browning was proficient in greek and latin at twelve; de quincey at eleven. robert browning wrote at eleven poetry of no mean order. cowley, who sleeps in westminster abbey, published a volume of poems at fifteen. n. p. willis won lasting fame as a poet before leaving college. macaulay was a celebrated author before he was twenty-three. luther was but twenty-nine when he nailed his famous thesis to the door of the bishop and defied the pope. nelson was a lieutenant in the british navy before he was twenty. he was but forty-seven when he received his death wound at trafalgar. charles the twelfth was only nineteen when he gained the battle of narva; at thirty-six, cortez was the conqueror of mexico; at thirty-two, clive had established the british power in india. hannibal, the greatest of military commanders, was only thirty when, at cannae, he dealt an almost annihilating blow at the republic of rome; and napoleon was only twenty-seven when, on the plains of italy, he outgeneraled and defeated, one after another, the veteran marshals of austria. equal courage and resolution are often shown by men who have passed the allotted limit of life. victor hugo and wellington were both in their prime after they had reached the age of threescore years and ten. george bancroft wrote some of his best historical work when he was eighty-five. gladstone ruled england with a strong hand at eighty-four, and was a marvel of literary and scholarly ability. "not every vessel that sails from tarshish will bring back the gold of ophir. but shall it therefore rot in the harbor? no! give its sails to the wind!" shakespeare says: "he is not worthy of the honeycomb that shuns the hive because the bees have stings." "the brave man is not he who feels no fear, for that were stupid and irrational; but he whose noble soul its fear subdues and bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from." the inscription on the gates of busyrane: "be bold." on the second gate: "be bold, be bold, and ever more be bold;" the third gate: "be not too bold." many a bright youth has accomplished nothing of worth simply because he did not dare to commence. begin! begin!! begin!!! whatever people may think of you, do that which you believe to be right. be alike indifferent to censure or praise.--pythagoras. fear makes man a slave to others. this is the tyrant's chain. anxiety is a form of cowardice embittering life.--channing. courage is generosity of the highest order, for the brave are prodigal of the most precious things. our blood is nearer and dearer to us than our money, and our life than our estate. women are more taken with courage than with generosity.--colton. who chooses me must give and hazard all he hath. _merchant of venice_, inscription on leaden casket. i dare to do all that may become a man: who dares do more is none. shakespeake. for man's great actions are performed in minor struggles. there are obstinate and unknown braves who defend themselves inch by inch in the shadows against the fatal invasion of want and turpitude. there are noble and mysterious triumphs which no eye sees, no renown rewards, and no flourish of trumpets salutes. life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment, and poverty are battlefields which have their heroes.--victor hugo. who waits until the wind shall silent keep, who never finds the ready hour to sow, who watcheth clouds, will have no time to reap. helen hunt jackson. quit yourselves like men.-- samuel iv. . chapter iii. the will and the way. "the 'way' will be found by a resolute will." "i will find a way or make one." nothing is impossible to the man who can will.--mirabeau. a politician weakly and amiably in the right is no match for a politician tenaciously and pugnaciously in the wrong.--e. p. whipple. the iron will of one stout heart shall make a thousand quail; a feeble dwarf, dauntlessly resolved, will turn the tide of battle, and rally to a nobler strife the giants that had fled. tupper. "man alone can perform the impossible. they can who think they can. character is a perfectly educated will." the education of the will is the object of our existence. for the resolute and determined there is time and opportunity.--emerson. invincible determination, and a right nature, are the levers that move the world.--president porter. in the lexicon of youth which fate reserves for a bright manhood there is no such word as fail.--bulwer. perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of countenance and make a seeming difficulty give way.--jeremy collier. when a firm and decisive spirit is recognized, it is curious to see how the space clears around a man and leaves him room and freedom.--john foster. the star of the unconquered will, he rises in my breast, serene, and resolute and still, and calm and self-possessed. longfellow. "as well can the prince of orange pluck the stars from the sky, as bring the ocean to the wall of leyden for your relief," was the derisive shout of the spanish soldiers when told that the dutch fleet would raise that terrible four months' siege of . but from the parched lips of william, tossing on his bed of fever at rotterdam, had issued the command: "_break down the dikes: give holland back to ocean:_" and the people had replied: "better a drowned land than a lost land." they began to demolish dike after dike of the strong lines, ranged one within another for fifteen miles to their city of the interior. it was an enormous task; the garrison was starving; and the besiegers laughed in scorn at the slow progress of the puny insects who sought to rule the waves of the sea. but ever, as of old, heaven aids those who help themselves. on the first and second of october a violent equinoctial gale rolled the ocean inland, and swept the fleet on the rising waters almost to the camp of the spaniards. the next morning the garrison sallied out to attack their enemies, but the besiegers had fled in terror under cover of the darkness. the next day the wind changed, and a counter tempest brushed the water, with the fleet upon it, from the surface of holland. the outer dikes were replaced at once, leaving the north sea within its old bounds. when the flowers bloomed the following spring, a joyous procession marched through the streets to found the university of leyden, in commemoration of the wonderful deliverance of the city. * * * * * * [illustration: walter scott] "the wizard of the north." "so nigh is grandeur to our dust, so near is god to man, when duty whispers low, 'thou must,' the youth replies, 'i can.'" * * * * * * at a dinner party given in , at the residence of chancellor kent, in new york city, some of the most distinguished men in the country were invited, and among them was a young and rather melancholy and reticent frenchman. professor morse was one of the guests, and during the evening he drew the attention of mr. gallatin, then a prominent statesman, to the stranger, observing that his forehead indicated great intellect. "yes," replied mr. gallatin, touching his own forehead with his finger, "there is a great deal in that head of his: but he has a strange fancy. can you believe it? he has the idea that he will one day be the emperor of france. can you conceive anything more absurd?" it did seem absurd, for this reserved frenchman was then a poor adventurer, an exile from his country, without fortune or powerful connections, and yet, fourteen years later, his idea became a fact,--his dream of becoming napoleon iii. was realized. true, before he accomplished his purpose there were long dreary years of imprisonment, exile, disaster, and patient labor and hope, but he gained his ambition at last. he was not scrupulous as to the means employed to accomplish his ends, yet he is a remarkable example of what pluck and energy can do. when it was proposed to unite england and america by steam, dr. lardner delivered a lecture before the royal society "proving" that steamers could never cross the atlantic, because they could not carry coal enough to produce steam during the whole voyage. the passage of the steamship sirius, which crossed in nineteen days, was fatal to lardner's theory. when it was proposed to build a vessel of iron, many persons said: "iron sinks--only wood can float:" but experiments proved that the miracle of the prophet in making iron "swim" could be repeated, and now not only ships of war, but merchant vessels, are built of iron or steel. a will found a way to make iron float. mr. ingram, publisher of the "london illustrated news," who lost his life on lake michigan, walked ten miles to deliver a single paper rather than disappoint a customer, when he began life as a newsdealer at nottingham, england. does any one wonder that such a youth succeeded? once he rose at two o'clock in the morning and walked to london to get some papers because there was no post to bring them. he determined that his customers should not be disappointed. this is the kind of will that finds a way. there is scarcely anything in all biography grander than the saying of young henry fawcett, gladstone's last postmaster-general, to his grief-stricken father, who had put out both his eyes by bird-shot during a game hunt: "never mind, father, blindness shall not interfere with my success in life." one of the most pathetic sights in london streets, long afterward, was henry fawcett, m. p., led everywhere by a faithful daughter, who acted as amanuensis as well as guide to her plucky father. think of a young man, scarcely on the threshold of active life, suddenly losing the sight of both eyes and yet, by mere pluck and almost incomprehensible tenacity of purpose, lifting himself into eminence, in any direction, to say nothing of becoming one of the foremost men in a country noted for its great men. most youth would have succumbed to such a misfortune, and would never have been heard from again. but fortunately for the world, there are yet left many fawcetts, many prescotts, parkmans, cavanaghs. the courageous daughter who was eyes to her father was herself a marvelous example of pluck and determination. for the first time in the history of oxford college, which reaches back centuries, she succeeded in winning the post which had only been gained before by great men, such as gladstone,--the post of senior wrangler. this achievement had had no parallel in history up to that date, and attracted the attention of the whole civilized world. not only had no woman ever held this position before, but with few exceptions it had only been held by men who in after life became highly distinguished. who can deny that where there is a will, as a rule, there's a way? when grant was a boy he could not find "can't" in the dictionary. it is the men who have no "can't" in their dictionaries that make things move. "circumstances," says milton, "have rarely favored famous men. they have fought their way to triumph through all sorts of opposing obstacles." the true way to conquer circumstances is to be a greater circumstance yourself. yet, while desiring to impress in the most forcible manner possible the fact that will-power is necessary to success, and that, other things being equal, the greater the will-power, the grander and more complete the success, we cannot indorse the preposterous theory that there is nothing in circumstances or environments, or that any man, simply because he has an indomitable will, may become a bonaparte, a pitt, a webster, a beecher, a lincoln. we must temper determination with discretion, and support it with knowledge and common sense, or it will only lead us to run our heads against posts. we must not expect to overcome a stubborn fact by a stubborn will. we merely have the right to assume that we can do anything within the limit of our utmost faculty, strength, and endurance. obstacles permanently insurmountable bar our progress in some directions, but in any direction we may reasonably hope and attempt to go, we shall find that the obstacles, as a rule, are either not insurmountable or else not permanent. the strong-willed, intelligent, persistent man will find or make a way where, in the nature of things, a way can be found or made. every schoolboy knows that circumstances do give clients to lawyers and patients to physicians; place ordinary clergymen in extraordinary pulpits; place sons of the rich at the head of immense corporations and large houses, when they have very ordinary ability and scarcely any experience, while poor young men with extraordinary abilities, good education, good character, and large experience, often have to fight their way for years to obtain even very ordinary situations. every one knows that there are thousands of young men, both in the city and in the country, of superior ability, who seem to be compelled by circumstances to remain in very ordinary positions for small pay, when others about them are raised by money or family influence into desirable places. in other words, we all know that the best men do not always get the best places: circumstances do have a great deal to do with our position, our salaries, and our station in life. many young men who are nature's noblemen, who are natural leaders, are working under superintendents, foremen, and managers infinitely their inferiors, but whom circumstances have placed above them and will keep there, unless some emergency makes merit indispensable. no, the race is not always to the swift. every one knows that there is not always a way where there is a will, that labor does not always conquer all things; that there are things impossible even to him that wills, however strongly; that one cannot always make anything of himself he chooses; that there are limitations in our very natures which no amount of will-power or industry can overcome; that no amount of sun-staring can ever make an eagle out of a crow. the simple truth is that a will strong enough to keep a man continually striving for things not wholly beyond his powers will carry him in time very far toward his chosen goal. the greatest thing a man can do in this world is to make the most possible out of the stuff that has been given to him. this is success, and there is no other. while it is true that our circumstances or environments do affect us, in most things they do not prevent our growth. the corn that is now ripe, whence comes it, and what is it? is it not large or small, stunted wild maize or well-developed ears, according to the conditions under which it has grown? yet its environments cannot make wheat of it. nor can our circumstances alter our nature. it is part of our nature, and wholly within our power, greatly to change and to take advantage of our circumstances, so that, unlike the corn, we can rise much superior to our natural surroundings simply because we can thus vary and improve the surroundings. in other words, man can usually build the very road on which he is to run his race. it is not a question of what some one else can do or become, which every youth should ask himself, but what can i do? how can i develop myself into the grandest possible manhood? so far, then, from the power of circumstances being a hindrance to men in trying to build for themselves an imperial highway to fortune, these circumstances constitute the very quarry out of which they are to get paving-stones for the road. while it is true that the will-power cannot perform miracles, yet that it is almost omnipotent, that it can perform wonders, all history goes to prove. as shakespeare says:-- "men at some time are masters of their fates: the fault, dear brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings." "there is nobody," says a roman cardinal, "whom fortune does not visit once in his life: but when she finds he is not ready to receive her, she goes in at the door, and out through the window." opportunity is coy. the careless, the slow, the unobservant, the lazy fail to see it, or clutch at it when it has gone. the sharp fellows detect it instantly, and catch it when on the wing. show me a man who is, according to popular prejudice, a victim of bad luck, and i will show you one who has some unfortunate crooked twist of temperament that invites disaster. he is ill-tempered, or conceited, or trifling; lacks character, enthusiasm, or some other requisite for success. disraeli says that man is not the creature of circumstances, but that circumstances are the creatures of men. what has chance ever done in the world? has it built any cities? has it invented any telephones, any telegraphs? has it built any steamships, established any universities, any asylums, any hospitals? was there any chance in caesar's crossing the rubicon? what had chance to do with napoleon's career, with wellington's, or grant's, or von moltke's? every battle was won before it was begun. what had luck to do with thermopylae, trafalgar, gettysburg? our successes we ascribe to ourselves; our failures to destiny. man is not a helpless atom in this vast creation, with a fixed position, and naught to do but obey his own polarity. believe in the power of will, which annihilates the sickly, sentimental doctrine of fatalism,--you must but can't, you ought but it is impossible. give me the man "who breaks his birth's invidious bar, and grasps the skirts of happy chance, and breasts the blows of circumstance, and grapples with his evil star." it is only the ignorant and superficial who believe in fate. "the first step into thought lifts this mountain of necessity." "fate is unpenetrated causes." "they may well fear fate who have any infirmity of habit or aim: but he who rests on what he is has a destiny beyond destiny, and can make mouths at fortune." the indomitable will, the inflexible purpose, will find a way or make one. there is always room for a man of force. "he who has a firm will," says goethe, "moulds the world to himself." "people do not lack strength," says victor hugo, "they lack will." "he who resolves upon any great end, by that very resolution has scaled the great barriers to it, and he who seizes the grand idea of self-cultivation, and solemnly resolves upon it, will find that idea, that resolution, burning like fire within him, and ever putting him upon his own improvement. he will find it removing difficulties, searching out, or making means; giving courage for despondency, and strength for weakness." nearly all great men, those who have towered high above their fellows, have been remarkable above all things else for their energy of will. of julius caesar it was said by a contemporary that it was his activity and giant determination, rather than his military skill, that won his victories. the youth who starts out in life determined to make the most of his eyes and let nothing escape him which he can possibly use for his own advancement; who keeps his ears open for every sound that can help him on his way, who keeps his hands open that he may clutch every opportunity, who is ever on the alert for everything which can help him to get on in the world, who seizes every experience in life and grinds it up into paint for his great life's picture, who keeps his heart open that he may catch every noble impulse, and everything which may inspire him,--that youth will be sure to make his life successful; there are no "ifs" or "ands" about it. if he has his health, nothing can keep him from final success. no tyranny of circumstances can permanently imprison a determined will. the world always stands aside for the determined man. will makes a way, even through seeming impossibilities. "it is the half a neck nearer that shows the blood and wins the race; the one march more that wins the campaign: the five minutes more of unyielding courage that wins the fight." again and again had the irrepressible carter harrison been consigned to oblivion by the educated and moral element of chicago. nothing could keep him down. he was invincible. a son of chicago, he had partaken of that nineteenth century miracle, that phoenix-like nature of the city which, though she was burned, caused her to rise from her ashes and become a greater and a grander chicago, a wonder of the world. carter harrison would not down. he entered the democratic convention and, with an audacity rarely equaled, in spite of their protest, boldly declared himself their candidate. every newspaper in chicago, save the "times," his own paper, bitterly opposed his election: but notwithstanding all opposition, he was elected by twenty thousand majority. the aristocrats hated him, the moral element feared him, but the poor people believed in him: he pandered to them, flattered them, till they elected him. while we would not by any means hold carter harrison up to youth as a model, yet there is a great lesson in his will-power and wonderful tenacity of purpose. "the general of a large army may be defeated," said confucius, "but you cannot defeat the determined mind of a peasant." the poor, deaf pauper, kitto, who made shoes in the almshouse, and who became the greatest of biblical scholars, wrote in his journal, on the threshold of manhood: "i am not myself a believer in impossibilities: i think that all the fine stories about natural ability, etc., are mere rigmarole, and that every man may, according to his opportunities and industry, render himself almost anything he wishes to become." years ago, a young mechanic took a bath in the river clyde. while swimming from shore to shore he discerned a beautiful bank, uncultivated, and he then and there resolved to be the owner of it, and to adorn it, and to build upon it the finest mansion in all the borough, and name it in honor of the maiden to whom he was espoused. "last summer," says a well-known american, "i had the pleasure of dining in that princely mansion, and receiving this fact from the lips of the great shipbuilder of the clyde." that one purpose was made the ruling passion of his life, and all the energies of his soul were put in requisition for its accomplishment. lincoln is probably the most remarkable example on the pages of history, showing the possibilities of our country. from the poverty in which he was born, through the rowdyism of a frontier town, the rudeness of frontier society, the discouragement of early bankruptcy, and the fluctuations of popular politics, he rose to the championship of union and freedom. lincoln's will made his way. when his friends nominated him as a candidate for the legislature, his enemies made fun of him. when making his campaign speeches he wore a mixed jean coat so short that he could not sit down on it, flax and tow-linen trousers, straw hat, and pot-metal boots. he had nothing in the world but character and friends. when his friends suggested law to him, he laughed at the idea of his being a lawyer. he said he hadn't brains enough. he read law barefoot under the trees, his neighbors said, and he sometimes slept on the counter in the store where he worked. he had to borrow money to buy a suit of clothes to make a respectable appearance in the legislature, and walked to take his seat at vandalia,--one hundred miles. while he was in the legislature, john f. stuart, an eminent lawyer of springfield, told him how clay had even inferior chances to his, had got all of the education he had in a log schoolhouse without windows or doors; and finally induced lincoln to study law. see thurlow weed, defying poverty and wading through the snow two miles, with rags for shoes, to borrow a book to read before the sap-bush fire. see locke, living on bread and water in a dutch garret. see heyne, sleeping many a night on a barn floor with only a book for his pillow. see samuel drew, tightening his apron strings "in lieu of a dinner." see young lord eldon, before daylight copying coke on littleton over and over again. history is full of such examples. he who will pay the price for victory needs never fear final defeat. why were the roman legionaries victorious? "for romans, in rome's quarrels, spared neither land nor gold, nor son, nor wife, nor limb nor life, in the brave days of old." fowell buxton, writing to one of his sons, says: "i am sure that a young man may be very much what he pleases." dr. mathews has well said that "there is hardly a word in the whole human vocabulary which is more cruelly abused than the word 'luck.' to all the faults and failures of men, their positive sins and their less culpable shortcomings, it is made to stand a godfather and sponsor. go talk with the bankrupt man of business, who has swamped his fortune by wild speculation, extravagance of living, or lack of energy, and you will find that he vindicates his wonderful self-love by confounding the steps which he took indiscreetly with those to which he was forced by 'circumstances,' and complacently regarding himself as the victim of ill-luck. go visit the incarcerated criminal, who has imbued his hands in the blood of his fellow-man, or who is guilty of less heinous crimes, and you will find that, joining the temptations which were easy to avoid with those which were comparatively irresistible, he has hurriedly patched up a treaty with conscience, and stifles its compunctious visitings by persuading himself that, from first to last, he was the victim of circumstances. go talk with the mediocre in talents and attainments, the weak-spirited man who, from lack of energy and application, has made but little headway in the world, being outstripped in the race of life by those whom he had despised as his inferiors, and you will find that he, too, acknowledges the all-potent power of luck, and soothes his humbled pride by deeming himself the victim of ill-fortune. in short, from the most venial offense to the most flagrant, there is hardly any wrong act or neglect to which this too fatally convenient word is not applied as a palliation." paris was in the hands of a mob, the authorities were panic-stricken, for they did not dare to trust their underlings. in came a man who said, "i know a young officer who has the courage and ability to quell this mob." "send for him; send for him; send for him," said they. napoleon was sent for, came, subjugated the mob, subjugated the authorities, ruled france, then conquered europe. what a lesson is napoleon's life for the sickly, wishy-washy, dwarfed, sentimental "dudes," hanging about our cities, country, and universities, complaining of their hard lot, dreaming of success, and wondering why they are left in the rear in the great race of life. success in life is dependent largely upon the willpower, and whatever weakens or impairs it diminishes success. the will can be educated. that which most easily becomes a habit in us is the will. learn, then, to will decisively and strongly; thus fix your floating life, and leave it no longer to be carried hither and thither, like a withered leaf, by every wind that blows. "it is not talent that men lack, it is the will to labor; it is the purpose, not the power to produce." it was this insatiable thirst for knowledge which held to his task, through poverty and discouragement, john leyden, a scotch shepherd's son. barefoot and alone, he walked six or eight miles daily to learn to read, which was all the schooling he had. his desire for an education defied the extremest poverty, and no obstacle could turn him from his purpose. he was rich when he discovered a little bookstore, and his thirsty soul would drink in the precious treasures from its priceless volumes for hours, perfectly oblivious of the scanty meal of bread and water which awaited him at his lowly lodging. nothing could discourage him from trying to improve himself by study. it seemed to him that an opportunity to get at books and lectures was all that any man could need. before he was nineteen, this poor shepherd boy with no chance had astonished the professors of edinburgh by his knowledge of greek and latin. hearing that a surgeon's assistant in the civil service was wanted, although he knew nothing whatever of medicine, he determined to apply for it. there were only six months before the place was to be filled, but nothing could daunt him, and in six months' time he actually took his degree with honor. walter scott, who thought this one of the most remarkable illustrations of perseverance, helped to fit him out, and he sailed for india. webster was very poor even after he entered dartmouth college. a friend sent him a recipe for greasing his boots. webster wrote and thanked him, and added: "but my boots need other doctoring, for they not only admit water, but even peas and gravel-stones." yet he became one of the greatest men in the world. sydney smith said: "webster was a living lie, because no man on earth could be as great as he looked." carlyle said of him: "one would incline at sight to back him against the world." what seemed to be luck followed stephen girard all his life. no matter what he did, it always seemed to others to turn to his account. his coming to philadelphia seemed a lucky accident. a sloop was seen one morning off the mouth of delaware bay floating the flag of france and a signal of distress. young girard was captain of this sloop, and was on his way to a canadian port with freight from new orleans. an american skipper, seeing his distress, went to his aid, but told him the american war had broken out, and that the british cruisers were all along the american coast, and would seize his vessel. he told him his only chance was to make a push for philadelphia. girard did not know the way, and had no money. the skipper loaned him five dollars to get the service of a pilot who demanded his money in advance. his sloop passed into the delaware just in time to avoid capture by a british war vessel. he sold the sloop and cargo in philadelphia, and began business on the capital. being a foreigner, unable to speak english, short, stout, and with a repulsive face, blind in one eye, it was hard for him to get a start. but he was not the man to give up. he had begun as a cabin boy at thirteen, and for nine years sailed between bordeaux and the french west indies. he improved every leisure minute at sea, mastering the art of navigation. at the age of eight he first discovered that he was blind in one eye. his father, evidently thinking that he would never amount to anything, would not help him to an education beyond that of mere reading and writing, but sent his younger brothers to college. the discovery of his blindness, the neglect of his father, and the chagrin of his brothers' advancement, soured his whole life. when he began business for himself in philadelphia, there seemed to be nothing he would not do for money. he bought and sold anything, from groceries to old junk. he bottled wine and cider, from which he made a good profit. everything he touched prospered. in , he resumed the new orleans and st. domingo trade, in which he had been engaged at the breaking out of the revolution. here great success again attended him. he had two vessels lying in one of the st. domingo ports when the great insurrection on that island broke out. a number of the rich planters fled to his vessels with their valuables, which they left for safe keeping while they went back to their estates to secure more. they probably fell victims to the cruel negroes, for they never returned, and girard was the lucky possessor of $ , which the goods brought in philadephia. everybody, especially his jealous brother merchants, attributed his great success to his luck. while undoubtedly he was fortunate in happening to be at the right place at the right time, yet he was precision, method, accuracy, energy itself. he left nothing to chance. his plans and schemes were worked out with mathematical care. his letters, written to his captains in foreign ports, laying out their routes and giving detailed instruction from which they were never allowed to deviate under any circumstances, are models of foresight and systematic planning. he never left anything of importance to others. he was rigidly accurate in his instructions, and would not allow the slightest departure from them. he used to say that while his captains might save him money by deviating from instructions once, yet they would cause loss in ninety-nine other cases. once, when a captain returned and had saved him several thousand dollars by buying his cargo of cheese in another port than that in which he had been instructed to buy, girard was so enraged, although he was several thousand dollars richer, that he discharged the captain on the spot, notwithstanding the latter had been faithful in his service for many years, and thought he was saving his employer a great deal of money by deviating from his instructions. girard lived in a dingy little house, poorer than that occupied by many of his employees. he married a servant girl of great beauty, but she proved totally unfitted for him, and died at last in the insane asylum. girard never lost a ship, and many times what brought financial ruin to many others, as the war of , only increased his wealth. what seemed luck with him was only good judgment and promptness in seizing opportunities, and the greatest care and zeal in improving them to their utmost possibilities. luck is not god's price for success: that is altogether too cheap, nor does he dicker with men. the mathematician tells you that if you throw the dice, there are thirty chances to one against your turning up a particular number, and a hundred to one against your repeating the same throw three times in succession: and so on in an augmenting ratio. what is luck? is it, as has been suggested, a blind man's buff among the laws? a ruse among the elements? a trick of dame nature? has any scholar defined luck? any philosopher explained its nature? any chemist shown its composition? is luck that strange, nondescript fairy, that does all things among men that they cannot account for? if so, why does not luck make a fool speak words of wisdom; an ignoramus utter lectures on philosophy? many a young man who has read the story of john wanamaker's romantic career has gained very little inspiration or help from it toward his own elevation and advancement, for he looks upon it as the result of good luck, chance, or fate. "what a lucky fellow," he says to himself as he reads; "what a bonanza he fell into." but a careful analysis of wanamaker's life only enforces the same lesson taught by the analysis of most great lives, namely, that a good mother, a good constitution, the habit of hard work, indomitable energy, a determination which knows no defeat, a decision which never wavers, a concentration which never scatters its forces, courage which never falters, a self-mastery which can say no, and stick to it, an "ignominious love of detail," strict integrity and downright honesty, a cheerful disposition, unbounded enthusiasm in one's calling, and a high aim and noble purpose insure a very large measure of success. youth should be taught that there is something in circumstances; that there is such a thing as a poor pedestrian happening to find no obstruction in his way, and reaching the goal when a better walker finds the drawbridge up, the street blockaded, and so fails to win the race; that wealth often does place unworthy sons in high positions, that family influence does gain a lawyer clients, a physician patients, an ordinary scholar a good professorship; but that, on the other hand, position, clients, patients, professorships, manager's and superintendent's positions do not necessarily constitute success. he should be taught that in the long run, as a rule, _the best man does win the best place_, and that persistent merit does succeed. there is about as much chance of idleness and incapacity winning real success, or a high position in life, as there would be in producing a paradise lost by shaking up promiscuously the separate words of webster's dictionary, and letting them fall at random on the floor. fortune smiles upon those who roll up their sleeves and put their shoulders to the wheel; upon men who are not afraid of dreary, dry, irksome drudgery, men of nerve and grit who do not turn aside for dirt and detail. the youth should be taught that "he alone is great, who, by a life heroic, conquers fate;" that "diligence is the mother of good luck;" that, nine times out of ten, what we call luck or fate is but a mere bugbear of the indolent, the languid, the purposeless, the careless, the indifferent; that the man who fails, as a rule, does not see or seize his opportunity. opportunity is coy, is swift, is gone, before the slow, the unobservant, the indolent, or the careless can seize her:-- "in idle wishes fools supinely stay: be there a will and wisdom finds a way." it has been well said that the very reputation of being strong willed, plucky, and indefatigable is of priceless value. it often cows enemies and dispels at the start opposition to one's undertakings which would otherwise be formidable. "if eric's in robust health, and has slept well, and is at the top of his condition, and thirty years old at his departure from greenland," says emerson, "he will steer west and his ships will reach newfoundland. but take eric out and put in a stronger and bolder man, and the ships will sail six hundred, one thousand, fifteen hundred miles further, and reach labrador and new england. there is no chance in results." obstacles tower before the living man like mountain chains, stopping his path and hindering his progress. he surmounts them by his energy. he makes a new path over them. he climbs upon them to mountain heights. they cannot stop him. they do not much delay him. he transmutes difficulties into power, and makes temporary failures into stepping-stones to ultimate success. how many might have been giants who are only dwarfs. how many a one has died "with all his music in him." it is astonishing what men who have come to their senses late in life have accomplished by a sudden resolution. arkwright was fifty years of age when he began to learn english grammar and improve his writing and spelling. benjamin franklin was past fifty before he began the study of science and philosophy. milton, in his blindness, was past the age of fifty when he sat down to complete his world-known epic, and scott at fifty-five took up his pen to redeem an enormous liability. "yet i am learning," said michael angelo, when threescore years and ten were past, and he had long attained the highest triumphs of his art. even brains are second in importance to will. the vacillating man is always pushed aside in the race of life. it is only the weak and vacillating who halt before adverse circumstances and obstacles. a man with an iron will, with a determination that nothing shall check his career, if he has perseverance and grit, is sure to succeed. we may not find time for what we would like, but what we long for and strive for with all our strength, we usually approximate if we do not fully reach. hunger breaks through stone walls; stern necessity will find a way or make one. success is also a great physical as well as mental tonic, and tends to strengthen the will-power. dr. johnson says: "resolutions and success reciprocally produce each other." strong-willed men, as a rule, are successful men, and great success is almost impossible without it. a man who can resolve vigorously upon a course of action, and turns neither to the right nor the left, though a paradise tempt him, who keeps his eyes upon the goal, whatever distracts him, is sure of success. we could almost classify successes and failures by their various degrees of will-power. men like sir james mackintosh, coleridge, la harpe, and many others who have dazzled the world with their brilliancy, but who never accomplished a tithe of what they attempted, who were always raising our expectations that they were about to perform wonderful deeds, but who accomplished nothing worthy of their abilities, have been deficient in will-power. one talent with a will behind it will accomplish more than ten without it. the great linguist of bologna mastered a hundred languages by taking them singly, as the lion fought the bulls. i wish it were possible to show the youth of america the great part that the will might play in their success in life and in their happiness also. the achievements of will-power are simply beyond computation. scarcely anything in reason seems impossible to the man who can will strong enough and long enough. how often we see this illustrated in the case of a young woman who suddenly becomes conscious that she is plain and unattractive; who, by prodigious exercise of her will and untiring industry, resolves to redeem herself from obscurity and commonness; and who not only makes up for her deficiencies, but elevates herself into a prominence and importance which mere personal attractions could never have given her. charlotte cushman, without a charm of form or face, climbed to the very top of her profession. how many young men, stung by consciousness of physical deformity or mental deficiencies, have, by a strong persistent exercise of will-power, raised themselves from mediocrity and placed themselves high above those who scorned them. history is full of examples of men and women who have redeemed themselves from disgrace, poverty, and misfortune, by the firm resolution of an iron will. the consciousness of being looked upon as inferior, as incapable of accomplishing what others accomplish; the sensitiveness at being considered a dunce in school, has stung many a youth into a determination which has elevated him far above those who laughed at him, as in the case of newton, of adam clark, of sheridan, wellington, goldsmith, dr. chalmers, curran, disraeli, and hundreds of others. "whatever you wish, that you are; for such is the force of the human will, joined to the divine, that whatever we wish to be seriously, and with a true intention, that we become." while this is not strictly true, yet there is a deal of truth in it. it is men like mirabeau, who "trample upon impossibilities;" like napoleon, who do not wait for opportunities, but make them; like grant, who has only "unconditional surrender" for the enemy, who change the very front of the world. "we have but what we make, and every good is locked by nature in a granite hand, sheer labor must unclench." what cares henry l. bulwer for the suffocating cough, even though he can scarcely speak above a whisper? in the house of commons he makes his immortal speech on the irish church just the same. "i can't, it is impossible," said a foiled lieutenant, to alexander. "be gone," shouted the conquering macedonian, "there is nothing impossible to him who will try." were i called upon to express in a word the secret of so many failures among those who started out in life with high hopes, i should say unhesitatingly, they lacked will-power. they could not half will. what is a man without a will? he is like an engine without steam, a mere sport of chance, to be tossed about hither and thither, always at the mercy of those who have wills. i should call the strength of will the test of a young man's possibilities. can he will strong enough, and hold whatever he undertakes with an iron grip? it is the iron grip that takes the strong hold on life. what chance is there in this crowding, pushing, selfish, greedy world, where everything is pusher or pushed, for a young man with no will, no grip on life? "the truest wisdom," said napoleon, "is a resolute determination." an iron will without principle might produce a napoleon; but with character it would make a wellington or a grant, untarnished by ambition or avarice. "the undivided will 't is that compels the elements and wrings a human music from the indifferent air." chapter iv. success under difficulties. victories that are easy are cheap. those only are worth having which come as the result of hard fighting.--beecher. man owes his growth chiefly to that active striving of the will, that encounter with difficulty, which we call effort; and it is astonishing to find how often results that seemed impracticable are thus made possible.--epes sargent. i know no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign mind as that tenacity of purpose which, through all change of companions, or parties, or fortunes, changes never, bates no jot of heart or hope, but wearies out opposition and arrives at its port.--emerson. yes, to this thought i hold with firm persistence; the last result of wisdom stamps it true; he only earns his freedom and existence who daily conquers them anew. goethe. little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them.--washington irving. "i have here three teams that i want to get over to staten island," said a boy of twelve one day in to the innkeeper at south amboy, n. j. "if you will put us across, i'll leave with you one of my horses in pawn, and if i don't send you back six dollars within forty-eight hours you may keep the horse." the innkeeper asked the reason for this novel proposition, and learned that the lad's father had contracted to get the cargo of a vessel stranded near sandy hook, and take it to new york in lighters. the boy had been sent with three wagons, six horses, and three men, to carry the cargo across a sand-spit to the lighters. the work accomplished, he had started with only six dollars to travel a long distance home over the jersey sands, and reached south amboy penniless. "i'll do it," said the innkeeper, as he looked into the bright honest eyes of the boy. the horse was soon redeemed. * * * * * * [illustration: william hickling prescott] how can you keep a determined man from success: place stumbling-blocks in his way, and he uses them for stepping-stones. imprison him, and he produces the "pilgrim's progress." deprive him of eyesight, and he writes the "conquest of mexico." * * * * * * "my son," said this same boy's mother, on the first of may, , when he asked her to lend him one hundred dollars to buy a boat, having imbibed a strong liking for the sea; "on the twenty-seventh of this month you will be sixteen years old. if, by that time, you will plow, harrow, and plant with corn the eight-acre lot, i will advance you the money." the field was rough and stony, but the work was done in time, and well done. from this small beginning cornelius vanderbilt laid the foundation of a colossal fortune. he would often work all night; and, as he was never absent from his post by day, he soon had the best business in new york harbor. in , when it was expected that new york would be attacked by british ships, all the boatmen except cornelius put in bids to convey provisions to the military posts around new york, naming extremely low rates, as the contractor would be exempted from military duty. "why don't you send in a bid?" asked his father. "of what use?" replied young vanderbilt; "they are offering to do the work at half price. it can't be done at such rates." "well," said his father, "it can do no harm to try for it." so, to please his father, but with no hope of success, cornelius made an offer fair to both sides, but did not go to hear the award. when his companions had all returned with long faces, he went to the commissary's office and asked if the contract had been given. "oh, yes," was the reply; "that business is settled. cornelius vanderbilt is the man. what?" he asked, seeing that the youth was apparently thunderstruck, "is it you?" "my name is cornelius vanderbilt," said the boatman. "well," said the commissary, "don't you know why we have given the contract to you?" "no." "why, it is because we want this business _done_, and we know you'll do it." character gives confidence. in he owned two or three of the finest coasting schooners in new york harbor, and had a capital of nine thousand dollars. seeing that steam-vessels would soon win supremacy over those carrying sails only, he gave up his fine business to become the captain of a steamboat at one thousand dollars a year. for twelve years he ran between new york city and new brunswick, n. j. in he began business as a steamboat owner, in the face of opposition so bitter that he lost his last dollar. but the tide turned, and he prospered so rapidly that he at length owned over one hundred steamboats. he early identified himself with the growing railroad interests of the country, and became the richest man of his day in america. barnum began the race of business life barefoot, for at the age of fifteen he was obliged to buy on credit the shoes he wore at his father's funeral. he was a remarkable example of success under difficulties. there was no keeping him down; no opposition daunted him, no obstacles were too great for him to overcome. think of a man being ruined at fifty years of age; yes, worse than ruined, for he was heavily in debt besides. yet on the very day of his downfall he begins to rise again, wringing victory from defeat by his indomitable persistence. "eloquence must have been born with you," said a friend to j. p. curran. "indeed, my dear sir, it was not," replied the orator, "it was born some three and twenty years and some months after me." speaking of his first attempt at a debating club, he said: "i stood up, trembling through every fibre, but remembering that in this i was but imitating tully, i took courage and had actually proceeded almost as far as 'mr. chairman,' when, to my astonishment and terror, i perceived that every eye was turned on me. there were only six or seven present, and the room could not have contained as many more; yet was it, to my panic-stricken imagination, as if i were the central object in nature, and assembled millions were gazing upon me in breathless expectation. i became dismayed and dumb. my friends cried, 'hear him!' but there was nothing to hear." he was nicknamed "orator mum," and well did he deserve the title until he ventured to stare in astonishment at a speaker who was "culminating chronology by the most preposterous anachronisms." "i doubt not," said the annoyed speaker, "that 'orator mum' possesses wonderful talents for eloquence, but i would recommend him to show it in future by some more popular method than his silence." stung by the taunt, curran rose and gave the man a "piece of his mind," speaking quite fluently in his anger. encouraged by this success, he took great pains to become a good speaker. he corrected his habit of stuttering by reading favorite passages aloud every day slowly and distinctly, and spoke at every opportunity. bunyan wrote his "pilgrim's progress" on the untwisted papers used to cork the bottles of milk brought for his meals. gifford wrote his first copy of a mathematical work, when a cobbler's apprentice, on small scraps of leather; and rittenhouse, the astronomer, first calculated eclipses on his plow handle. a poor irish lad, so pitted by smallpox that boys made sport of him, earned his living by writing little ballads for street musicians. eight cents a day was often all he could earn. he traveled through france and italy, begging his way by singing and playing the flute at the cottages of the peasantry. at twenty-eight he was penniless in london, and lived in the beggars' quarters in axe lane. in his poverty, he set up as a doctor in the suburbs of london. he wore a second-hand coat of rusty velvet, with a patch on the left breast which he adroitly covered with his three-cornered hat during his visits; and we have an amusing anecdote of his contest of courtesy with a patient who persisted in endeavoring to relieve him of his hat, which only made him press it more devoutly to his heart. he often had to pawn his clothes to keep from starving. he sold his "life of voltaire" for twenty dollars. after great hardship he managed to publish his "polite learning in europe," and this brought him to public notice. next came "the traveller," and the wretched man in a fleet street garret found himself famous. his landlady once arrested him for rent, but dr. johnson came to his relief, took from his desk the manuscript of the "vicar of wakefield," and sold it for three hundred dollars. he spent two years revising "the deserted village" after it was first written. generous to a fault, vain and improvident, imposed on by others, he was continually in debt; although for his "history of the earth and animated nature" he received four thousand dollars, and some of his works, as, for instance, "she stoops to conquer," had a large sale. but in spite of fortune's frown and his own weakness, he won success and fame. the world, which so often comes too late with its assistance and laurels, gave to the weak, gentle, loving author of "the vicar of wakefield" a monument in the poets' corner of westminster abbey. the poor, scrofulous, and almost blind boy, samuel johnson, was taken by his mother to receive the touch of queen anne, which was supposed to heal the "king's evil." he entered oxford as a servant, copying lectures from a student's notebooks, while the boys made sport of the bare feet showing through great holes in his shoes. some one left a pair of new shoes at his door, but he was too proud to be helped, and threw them out of the window. he was so poor that he was obliged to leave college, and at twenty-six married a widow of forty-eight. he started a private school with his wife's money; but, getting only three pupils, was obliged to close it. he went to london, where he lived on nine cents a day. in his distress he wrote a poem in which appeared in capital letters the line, "slow rises worth by poverty depressed," which attracted wide attention. he suffered greatly in london for thirteen years, being arrested once for a debt of thirteen dollars. at forty he published "the vanity of human wishes," in which were these lines:-- "then mark what ills the scholar's life assail; toil, envy, want, the patron and the jail." when asked how he felt about his failures, he replied: "like a monument,"--that is, steadfast, immovable. he was an indefatigable worker. in the evenings of a single week he wrote "rasselas," a beautiful little story of the search for happiness, to get money to pay the funeral expenses of his mother. with six assistants he worked seven years on his dictionary, which made his fortune. his name was then in everybody's mouth, and when he no longer needed help, assistance, as usual, came from every quarter. the great universities hastened to bestow their degrees, and king george invited him to the palace. lord mansfield raised himself by indefatigable industry from oatmeal porridge and poverty to affluence and the lord chief justice's bench. of five thousand articles sent every year to "lippincott's magazine," only two hundred were accepted. how much do you think homer got for his iliad? or dante for his paradise? only bitter bread and salt, and going up and down other people's stairs. in science, the man who discovered the telescope, and first saw heaven, was paid with a dungeon: the man who invented the microscope, and first saw earth, died from starvation, driven from his home. it is very clear indeed that god means all good work and talk to be done for nothing. shakespeare's "hamlet" was sold for about twenty-five dollars; but his autograph has sold for five thousand dollars. during the ten years in which he made his greatest discoveries, isaac newton could hardly pay two shillings a week to the royal society of which he was a member. some of his friends wanted to get him excused from this payment, but he would not allow them to act. there are no more interesting pages in biography than those which record how emerson, as a child, was unable to read the second volume of a certain book, because his widowed mother could not afford the amount (five cents) necessary to obtain it from the circulating library. linnaeus was so poor when getting his education, that he had to mend his shoes with folded paper, and often had to beg his meals of his friends. who in the days of the first empire cared to recall the fact that napoleon, emperor and king, was once forced to borrow a louis from talma, when he lived in a garret on the quai conti? david livingstone at ten years of age was put into a cotton factory near glasgow. out of his first week's wages he bought a latin grammar, and studied in the night schools for years. he would sit up and study till midnight unless his mother drove him to bed, notwithstanding he had to be at the factory at six in the morning. he mastered virgil and horace in this way, and read extensively, besides studying botany. so eager and thirsty for knowledge was he, that he would place his book before him on the spinning-jenny, and amid the deafening roar of machinery would pore over its pages. george eliot said of the years of close work upon her "romola," "i began it a young woman, i finished it an old woman." one of emerson's biographers says, referring to his method of rewriting, revising, correcting, and eliminating: "his apples were sorted over and over again, until only the very rarest, the most perfect, were left. it did not matter that those thrown away were very good and helped to make clear the possibilities of the orchard, they were unmercifully cast aside." carlyle's books were literally wrung out of him. the pains he took to satisfy himself of a relatively insignificant fact were incredible. before writing his essay on diderot, he read twenty-five volumes at the rate of one per day. he tells edward fitzgerald that for the twentieth time he is going over the confused records of the battle of naseby, that he may be quite sure of the topography. "all the performances of human art, at which we look with praise and wonder," says johnson, "are instances of the resistless force of perseverance: it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united with canals. if a man was to compare the effect of a single stroke of the pickaxe, or of one impression of the spade, with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are leveled, and oceans bounded, by the slender force of human beings." the rev. eliphalet nott, a pulpit orator, was especially noted for a sermon on the death of alexander hamilton, the great statesman, who was shot in a duel by aaron burr. although nott had managed in some way to get his degree at brown university, he was at one time so poor after he entered the ministry that he could not buy an overcoat. his wife sheared their only cosset sheep in january, wrapped it in burlap blankets to keep it from freezing, carded and spun and wove the wool, and made it into an overcoat for him. great men never wait for opportunities; they make them. nor do they wait for facilities or favoring circumstances; they seize upon whatever is at hand, work out their problem, and master the situation. a young man determined and willing will find a way or make one. a franklin does not require elaborate apparatus; he can bring electricity from the clouds with a common kite. a watt can make a model of the condensing steam-engine out of an old syringe used to inject the arteries of dead bodies previous to dissection. a dr. black can discover latent heat with a pan of water and two thermometers. a newton can unfold the composition of light and the origin of colors with a prism, a lens, and a piece of pasteboard. a humphry davy can experiment with kitchen pots and pans, and a faraday can experiment on electricity by means of old bottles, in his spare minutes while a book-binder. when science was in its cradle the marquis of worcester, an english nobleman, imprisoned in the tower of london, was certainly not in a very good position to do anything for the world, but would not waste his time. the cover of a vessel of hot water blown on before his eyes led to a series of observations, which he published later in a book called "century of inventions." these observations were a sort of text-book on the power of steam, which resulted in newcomen's steam-engine, which watt afterward perfected. a ferguson maps out the heavenly bodies, lying on his back, by means of threads with beads stretched between himself and the stars. not in his day of bodily strength and political power, but blind, decrepit, and defeated with his party, milton composed "paradise lost." great men have found no royal road to their triumph. it is always the old route, by way of industry and perseverance. the farmer boy, elihu b. washburn, taught school at ten dollars per month, and early learned the lesson that it takes one hundred cents to make a dollar. in after years he fought "steals" in congress, until he was called the "watchdog of the treasury." from his long membership he became known as the "father of the house." he administered the oath to schuyler colfax as speaker three times. he recommended grant as colonel of a regiment of volunteers. the latter, when president, appointed him secretary of state, and, later, minister to france. during the reign of the commune, the representatives of nearly all other foreign nations fled in dismay, but washburn remained at his post. shells exploded close to his office, and fell all around it, but he did not leave even when paris was in flames. for a time he was really the minister of all foreign countries, in paris; and represented prussia for almost a year. the emperor william conferred upon him the order of the red eagle, and gave him a jeweled star of great value. how could the poor boy, elihu burritt, working nearly all the daylight in a blacksmith's shop, get an education? he had but one book in his library, and carried that in his hat. but this boy with no chance became one of america's wonders. when teaching school, garfield was very poor. he tore his only blue jean trousers, but concealed the rents by pins until night, when he retired early that his boarding mistress might mend his clothes. "when you get to be a united states senator," said she, "no one will ask what kind of clothes you wore when teaching school." although michael angelo made himself immortal in three different occupations, his fame might well rest upon his dome of st. peter as an architect, upon his "moses" as a sculptor, and upon his "last judgment" as a painter; yet we find by his correspondence now in the british museum, that when he was at work on his colossal bronze statue of pope julius ii., he was so poor that he could not have his younger brother come to visit him at bologna, because he had but one bed in which he and three of his assistants slept together. "i was always at the bottom of my purse," said zola, in describing the struggles of his early years of authorship. "very often i had not a sou left, and not knowing, either, where to get one. i rose generally at four in the morning, and began to study after a breakfast consisting of one raw egg. but no matter, those were good times. after taking a walk along the quays, i entered my garret, and joyfully partaking of a dinner of three apples, i sat down to work. i wrote, and i was happy. in winter i would allow myself no fire; wood was too expensive--only on fête days was i able to afford it. but i had several pipes of tobacco and a candle for three sous. a three-sous candle, only think of it! it meant a whole night of literature to me." james brooks, once the editor and proprietor of the "new york daily express," and later an eminent congressman, began life as a clerk in a store in maine, and when twenty-one received for his pay a hogshead of new england rum. he was so eager to go to college that he started for waterville with his trunk on his back, and when he was graduated he was so poor and plucky that he carried his trunk on his back to the station when he went home. when elias howe, harassed by want and woe, was in london completing his first sewing-machine, he had frequently to borrow money to live on. he bought beans and cooked them himself. he also borrowed money to send his wife back to america. he sold his first machine for five pounds, although it was worth fifty, and then he pawned his letters patent to pay his expenses home. the boy arkwright begins barbering in a cellar, but dies worth a million and a half. the world treated his novelties just as it treats everybody's novelties--made infinite objection, mustered all the impediments, but he snapped his fingers at their objections, and lived to become honored and wealthy. there is scarcely a great truth or doctrine but has had to fight its way to public recognition in the face of detraction, calumny, and persecution. "everywhere," says heine, "that a great soul gives utterance to its thoughts, there also is a golgotha." nearly every great discovery or invention that has blessed mankind has had to fight its way to recognition, even against the opposition of the most progressive men. even sir charles napier fiercely opposed the introduction of steam power into the royal navy. in the house of commons, he exclaimed, "mr. speaker, when we enter her majesty's naval service and face the chances of war, we go prepared to be hacked in pieces, to be riddled by bullets, or to be blown to bits by shot and shell; but mr. speaker, we do not go prepared to be boiled alive." he said this with tremendous emphasis. "will any one explain how there can be a light without a wick?" asked a member of parliament, when william murdock, toward the close of the eighteenth century, said that coal gas would give a good light, and could be conveyed into buildings in pipes. "do you intend taking the dome of st. paul's for a gasometer?" was the sneering question of even the great scientist, humphry davy. walter scott ridiculed the idea of lighting london by "smoke," but he soon used it at abbotsford, and davy achieved one of his greatest triumphs by experimenting with gas until he had invented his safety lamp. titian used to crush the flowers to get their color, and painted the white walls of his father's cottage in tyrol with all sorts of pictures, at which the mountaineers gazed in wonder. "that boy will beat me one day," said an old painter as he watched a little fellow named michael angelo making drawings of pot and brushes, easel and stool, and other articles in the studio. the barefoot boy did persevere until he had overcome every difficulty and become a master of his art. william h. prescott was a remarkable example of what a boy with "no chance" can do. while at college, he lost one eye by a hard piece of bread thrown during a "biscuit battle," then so common after meals; and, from sympathy, the other eye became almost useless. but the boy had pluck and determination, and would not lead a useless life. he set his heart upon being a historian, and turned all his energies in that direction. by the aid of others' eyes, he spent ten years studying before he even decided upon a particular theme for his first book. then he spent ten years more, poring over old archives and manuscripts, before he published his "ferdinand and isabella." what a lesson in his life for young men! what a rebuke to those who have thrown away their opportunities and wasted their lives! "galileo with an opera-glass," said emerson, "discovered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena than any one since with the great telescopes. columbus found the new world in an undecked boat." surroundings which men call unfavorable cannot prevent the unfolding of your powers. from the plain fields and lowlands of avon came the shakespearean genius which has charmed the world. from among the rock-ribbed hills of new hampshire sprang the greatest of american orators and statesmen, daniel webster. from the crowded ranks of toil, and homes to which luxury is a stranger, have often come the leaders and benefactors of our race. indeed, when christ came upon earth, his early abode was a place so poor and so much despised that men thought he could not be the christ, asking, in utter astonishment, "can any good thing come out of nazareth?" "i once knew a little colored boy," said frederick douglass, "whose mother and father died when he was but six years old. he was a slave, and had no one to care for him. he slept on a dirt floor in a hovel, and in cold weather would crawl into a meal-bag head foremost, and leave his feet in the ashes to keep them warm. often he would roast an ear of corn and eat it to satisfy his hunger, and many times has he crawled under the barn or stable and secured eggs, which he would roast in the fire and eat. that boy did not wear pantaloons, as you do, but a tow-linen shirt. schools were unknown to him, and he learned to spell from an old webster's spelling-book, and to read and write from posters on cellar and barn doors, while boys and men would help him. he would then preach and speak, and soon became well known. he became presidential elector, united states marshal, united states recorder, united states diplomat, and accumulated some wealth. he wore broadcloth, and didn't have to divide crumbs with the dogs under the table. that boy was frederick douglass. what was possible for me is possible for you. don't think because you are colored you can't accomplish anything. strive earnestly to add to your knowledge. so long as you remain in ignorance, so long will you fail to command the respect of your fellow-men." where shall we find an illustration more impressive than in abraham lincoln, whose life, career, and death might be chanted by a greek chorus as at once the prelude and the epilogue of the most imperial theme of modern times? born as lowly as the son of god, in a hovel; of what real parentage we know not, reared in penury, squalor, with no gleam of light, nor fair surrounding; a young manhood vexed by weird dreams and visions; with scarcely a natural grace; singularly awkward, ungainly even among the uncouth about him: it was reserved for this remarkable character, late in life, to be snatched from obscurity, raised to supreme command at a supreme moment, and intrusted with the destiny of a nation. the great leaders of his party were made to stand aside; the most experienced and accomplished men of the day, men like seward, and chase, and sumner, statesmen famous and trained, were sent to the rear, while this strange figure was brought by unseen hands to the front, and given the reins of power. the story is told of a man in london deprived of both legs and arms, who managed to write with his mouth and perform other things so remarkable as to enable him to earn a fair living. he would lay certain sheets of paper together, pinning them at the corner to make them hold. then he would take a pen and write some verses; after which he would proceed to embellish the lines by many skillful flourishes. dropping the pen from his mouth, he would next take up a needle and thread, also with his mouth, thread the needle, and make several stitches. he also painted with a brush, and was in many other ways a wonderful man. instead of being a burden to his family he was the most important contributor to their welfare. arthur cavanagh, m. p., was born without arms or legs, yet it is said that he was a good shot, a skillful fisherman and sailor, and one of the best cross country riders in ireland. he was a good conversationalist, and an able member of parliament. he ate with his fork attached to his stump of an arm, and wrote holding his pen in his teeth. in riding he held the bridle in his mouth, his body being strapped to the saddle. he once lost his means of support in india, but went to work with his accustomed energy, and obtained employment as a carrier of dispatches. people thought it strange that gladstone should appoint blind henry fawcett postmaster-general of great britain; but never before did any one fill the office so well. john b. herreshoff, of bristol, r. i., although blind since he was fifteen years old, is the founder and head of one of the most noted shipbuilding establishments in the world. he has superintended the construction of some of the swiftest torpedo boats and steam and sailing yachts afloat. he frequently takes his turn at the wheel in sailing his vessels on trial trips. he is aided greatly by his younger brother nathaniel, but can plan vessels and conduct business without him. after examining a vessel's hull or a good model of it, he will give detailed instructions for building another just like it, and will make a more accurate duplicate than can most boat-builders whose sight is perfect. the rev. william h. milburn, who lost his sight when a child, studied for the ministry, and was ordained before he attained his majority. in ten years he traveled about , miles in missionary work. he has written half a dozen books, among them a very careful history of the mississippi valley. he has long been chaplain of the lower house of congress. blind fanny crosby, of new york, was a teacher of the blind for many years. she has written nearly three thousand hymns, among which are "pass me not, o gentle saviour," "rescue the perishing," "saviour more than life to me," and "jesus keep me near the cross." nor are these by any means the only examples of blind people now doing their full share of the world's work. in the united states alone there are engaged in musical occupation one hundred and fifty blind piano tuners, one hundred and fifty blind teachers of music in schools for the blind, five hundred blind private teachers, one hundred blind church organists, fifteen or more blind composers and publishers of music, and several blind dealers in musical instruments. _there is no open door to the temple of success_. every one who enters makes his own door, which closes behind him to all others, not even permitting his own children to pass. nearly forty years ago, on a rainy, dreary day in november, a young widow in philadelphia sat wondering how she could feed and clothe three little ones left dependent by the death of her husband, a naval officer. happening to think of a box of which her husband had spoken, she opened it, and found therein an envelope containing directions for a code of colored light signals to be used at night on the ocean. the system was not complete, but she perfected it, went to washington, and induced the secretary of the navy to give it a trial. an admiral soon wrote that the signals were good for nothing, although the idea was valuable. for months and years she worked, succeeding at last in producing brilliant lights of different colors. she was paid $ , for the right to manufacture them in our navy. nearly all the blockade runners captured in the civil war were taken by the aid of the coston signals, which are also considered invaluable in the life saving service. mrs. coston introduced them into several european navies, and became wealthy. a modern writer says that it is one of the mysteries of our life that genius, that noblest gift of god to man, is nourished by poverty. its greatest works have been achieved by the sorrowing ones of the world in tears and despair. not in the brilliant salon, not in the tapestried library, not in ease and competence, is genius usually born and nurtured; but often in adversity and destitution, amidst the harassing cares of a straitened household, in bare and fireless garrets, with the noise of squalid children, in the turbulence of domestic contentions, and in the deep gloom of uncheered despair. this is its most frequent birthplace, and amid scenes like these unpropitious, repulsive, wretched surroundings, have men labored, studied, and trained themselves, until they have at last emanated from the gloom of that obscurity the shining lights of their times; have become the companions of kings, the guides and teachers of their kind, and exercised an influence upon the thought of the world amounting to a species of intellectual legislation. chauncey jerome's education was limited to three months in the district school each year until he was ten, when his father took him into his blacksmith shop at plymouth, conn., to make nails. money was a scarce article with young chauncey. he once chopped a load of wood for one cent, and often chopped by moonlight for neighbors at less than a dime a load. his father died when he was eleven, and his mother was forced to send chauncey out, with tears in his eyes and a little bundle of clothes in his hand, to earn a living on a farm. his new employer kept him at work early and late chopping down trees all day, his shoes sometimes full of snow, for he had no boots until he was nearly twenty-one. at fourteen he was apprenticed for seven years to a carpenter, who gave him only board and clothes. several times during his apprenticeship he carried his tools thirty miles on his back to his work at different places. after he had learned his trade he frequently walked thirty miles to a job with his kit upon his back. one day he heard people talking of eli terry, of plymouth, who had undertaken to make two hundred clocks in one lot. "he'll never live long enough to finish them," said one. "if he should," said another, "he could not possibly sell so many. the very idea is ridiculous." chauncey pondered long over this rumor, for it had long been his dream to become a great clock-maker. he tried his hand at the first opportunity, and soon learned to make a wooden clock. when he got an order to make twelve at twelve dollars apiece he thought his fortune was made. one night he happened to think that a cheap clock could be made of brass as well as of wood, and would not shrink, swell, or warp appreciably in any climate. he acted on the idea, and became the first great manufacturer of brass clocks. he made millions at the rate of six hundred a day, exporting them to all parts of the globe. "the history of the english people" was written while j. r. green was struggling against a mortal illness. he had collected a vast store of materials, and had begun to write, when his disease made a sudden and startling progress, and his physicians said they could do nothing to arrest it. in the extremity of ruin and defeat he applied himself with greater fidelity to his work. the time that might still be left to him for work must henceforth be wrested, day by day, from the grasp of death. the writing occupied five months, while from hour to hour and day to day his life was prolonged, his doctors said, by the sheer force of his own will and his inflexible determination to finish the "making of england." he lay, too weak to lift a book, or to hold a pen, dictating every word, sometimes through hours of intense suffering. yet so conscientious was he that, driven by death as he was, the greater part of the book was rewritten five times. when it was done he began the "conquest of england," wrote it, reviewed it, and then, dissatisfied with it, rejected it all and began again. as death laid its cold fingers on his heart, he said: "i still have some work to do that i know is good. i will try to win but one week more to write it down." it was not until he was actually dying that he said, "i can work no more." "what does he know," said a sage, "who has not suffered?" schiller produced his greatest tragedies in the midst of physical suffering almost amounting to torture. handel was never greater than when, warned by palsy of the approach of death, and struggling with distress and suffering, he sat down to compose the great works which have made his name immortal in music. mozart composed his great operas, and last of all his "requiem," when oppressed by debt and struggling with a fatal disease. beethoven produced his greatest works amidst gloomy sorrow, when oppressed by almost total deafness. perhaps no one ever battled harder to overcome obstacles which would have disheartened most men than demosthenes. he had such a weak voice, and such an impediment in his speech, and was so short of breath, that he could scarcely get through a single sentence without stopping to rest. all his first attempts were nearly drowned by the hisses, jeers, and scoffs of his audiences. his first effort that met with success was against his guardian, who had defrauded him, and whom he compelled to refund a part of his fortune. he was so discouraged by his defeats that he determined to give up forever all attempts at oratory. one of his auditors, however, believed the young man had something in him, and encouraged him to persevere. he accordingly appeared again in public, but was hissed down as before. as he withdrew, hanging his head in great confusion, a noted actor, satyrus, encouraged him still further to try to overcome his impediment. he stammered so much that he could not pronounce some of the letters at all, and his breath would give out before he could get through a sentence. finally, he determined to be an orator cost what it might. he went to the seashore and practiced amid the roar of the breakers with small pebbles in his mouth, in order to overcome his stammering, and at the same time accustom himself to the hisses and tumults of his audience. he overcame his short breath by practicing speaking while running up steep and difficult places on the shore. his awkward gestures were also corrected by long and determined drill before a mirror. disheartened by the expense of removing the troublesome seeds, southern planters were seriously considering the abandonment of cotton culture. to clean a pound of cotton required the labor of a slave for a day. eli whitney, a young man from new england, teaching school in georgia, saw the state of affairs, and determined to invent a machine to do the work. he worked in secret for many months in a cellar, and at last made a machine which cleaned the cotton perfectly and rapidly. just as success crowned his long labor thieves broke into the cellar and stole his model. he recovered the model, but the principle was stolen, and other machines were made without his consent. in vain he tried to protect his right in the courts, for southern juries would almost invariably decide against him. he had started the south in a great industry, and added millions to her wealth, yet the courts united with the men who had infringed his patents to rob him of the reward of his ingenuity and industry. at last he abandoned the whole thing in disgust, and turned his attention to making improvements in firearms, and with such success that he accumulated a fortune. robert collyer, who brought his bride in the steerage when he came to america at the age of twenty-seven, worked at the anvil nine years in pennsylvania, and then became a preacher, soon winning national renown. a shrewd observer says of john chinaman: "no sooner does he put his foot among strangers than he begins to work. no office is too menial or too laborious for him. he has come to make money, and he will make it. his frugality requires but little: he barely lives, but he saves what he gets; commences trade in the smallest possible way, and is continually adding to his store. the native scorns such drudgery, and remains poor; the chinaman toils patiently on, and grows rich. a few years pass by, and he has warehouses; becomes a contractor for produce; buys foreign goods by the cargo; and employs his newly imported countrymen, who have come to seek their fortune as he did. he is not particularly scrupulous in matters of opinion. he never meddles with politics, for they are dangerous and not profitable; but he will adopt any creed, and carefully follow any observances, if, by so doing, he can confirm or improve his position. he thrives with the spaniard, and works while the latter sleeps. he is too quick for the dutchman, and can smoke and bargain at the same time. he has harder work with the englishman, but still he is too much for him, and succeeds. climate has no effect on him: it cannot stop his hands, unless it kills him; and if it does, he dies in harness, battling for money till his last breath. whoever he may be, and in whatever position, whether in his own or a foreign country, he is diligent, temperate, and uncomplaining. he keeps the word he pledges, pays his debts, and is capable of noble and generous actions. it has been customary to speak lightly of him, and to judge a whole people by a few vagabonds in a provincial seaport, whose morals and manners have not been improved by foreign society." columbus was dismissed as a fool from court after court, but he pushed his suit against an incredulous and ridiculing world. rebuffed by kings, scorned by queens, he did not swerve a hair's breadth from the overmastering purpose which dominated his soul. the words "new world" were graven upon his heart; and reputation, ease, pleasure, position, life itself if need be, must be sacrificed. threats, ridicule, ostracism, storms, leaky vessels, mutiny of sailors, could not shake his mighty purpose. you cannot keep a determined man from success. place stumbling-blocks in his way and he takes them for stepping-stones, and on them will climb to greatness. take away his money, and he makes spurs of his poverty to urge him on. cripple him, and he writes the waverley novels. lock him up in a dungeon, and he composes the immortal "pilgrim's progress." put him in a cradle in a log cabin in the wilderness of america, and in a few years you will find him in the capitol at the head of the greatest nation on the globe. would it were possible to convince the struggling youth of to-day that all that is great and noble and true in the history of the world is the result of infinite pains-taking, perpetual plodding, of common every-day industry! when lavoisier the chemist asked that his execution might be postponed for a few days in order to ascertain the results of the experiments he was conducting in prison, the communists refused to grant the request, saying: "the republic has no need of philosophers." dr. priestley's house was burned and his chemical library destroyed by a mob shouting: "no philosophers," and he was forced to flee from his country. bruno was burned in rome for revealing the heavens, and versalius [transcriber's note: vesalius?] was condemned for dissecting the human body; but their names shall live as long as time shall last. kossuth was two years in prison at buda, but he kept on working, undaunted. john hunter said: "the few things i have been enabled to do have been accomplished under the greatest difficulties, and have encountered the greatest opposition." roger bacon, one of the profoundest thinkers the world has produced, was terribly persecuted for his studies in natural philosophy, yet he persevered and won success. he was accused of dealing in magic, his books were burned in public, and he was kept in prison for ten years. even our own revered washington was mobbed in the streets because he would not pander to the clamor of the people and reject the treaty which mr. jay had arranged with great britain. but he remained firm, and the people adopted his opinion. the duke of wellington was mobbed in the streets of london and his windows were broken while his wife lay dead in the house; but the "iron duke" never faltered in his course, or swerved a hair's breadth from his purpose. william phips, when a young man, heard some sailors on the street, in boston, talking about a spanish ship, wrecked off the bahama islands, which was supposed to have money on board. young phips determined to find it. he set out at once, and, after many hardships, discovered the lost treasure. he then heard of another ship, wrecked off port de la plata many years before. he set sail for england and importuned charles ii. for aid. to his delight the king fitted up the ship rose algier for him. he searched and searched for a long time in vain. he had to return to england to repair his vessel. james ii. was then on the throne, and he had to wait for four years before he could raise money to return. his crew mutinied and threatened to throw him overboard, but he turned the ship's guns on them. one day an indian diver went down for a curious sea plant and saw several cannon lying on the bottom. they proved to belong to the wreck for which he was looking, sunk fifty years before. he had nothing but dim traditions to guide him, but he returned to england with $ , , . the king made him high sheriff of new england, and he was afterward made governor of massachusetts bay colony. ben jonson, when following his trade of a mason, worked on lincoln's inn in london with trowel in hand and a book in his pocket. joseph hunter was a carpenter in youth, robert burns a plowman, keats a druggist, thomas carlyle and hugh miller masons. dante and descartes were soldiers. andrew johnson was a tailor. cardinal wolsey, defoe, and kirke white were butchers' sons. faraday was the son of a blacksmith, and his teacher, humphry davy, was an apprentice to an apothecary. kepler was a waiter boy in a german hotel, bunyan a tinker, copernicus the son of a polish baker. the boy herschel played the oboe for his meals. marshal ney, the "bravest of the brave," rose from the ranks. his great industry gained for him the name of "the indefatigable." soult served fourteen years before he was made a sergeant. when made foreign minister of france he knew very little of geography, even. richard cobden was a boy in a london warehouse. his first speech in parliament was a complete failure; but he was not afraid of defeat, and soon became one of the greatest orators of his day. seven shoemakers sat in congress during the first century of our government: roger sherman, henry wilson, gideon lee, william graham, john halley, h. p. baldwin, and daniel sheffey. a constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to bring success from inhospitable surroundings, is the price of all great achievements. the man who has not fought his way up to his own loaf, and does not bear the scar of desperate conflict, does not know the highest meaning of success. the money acquired by those who have thus struggled upward to success is not their only, or indeed their chief reward. when, after years of toil, of opposition, of ridicule, of repeated failure, cyrus w. field placed his hand upon the telegraph instrument ticking a message under the sea, think you that the electric thrill passed no further than the tips of his fingers? when thomas a. edison demonstrated in menlo park that the electric light had at last been developed into a commercial success, do you suppose those bright rays failed to illuminate the inmost recesses of his soul? edward everett said: "there are occasions in life in which a great mind lives years of enjoyment in a single moment. i can fancy the emotion of galileo when, first raising the newly constructed telescope to the heavens, he saw fulfilled the grand prophecy of copernicus, and beheld the planet venus crescent like the moon. it was such another moment as that when the immortal printers of mentz and strasburg received the first copy of the bible into their hands, the work of their divine art; like that when columbus, through the gray dawn of the th of october, , beheld the shores of san salvador; like that when the law of gravitation first revealed itself to the intellect of newton; like that when franklin saw, by the stiffening fibres of the hemp cord of his kite, that he held the lightning in his grasp, like that when leverrier received back from berlin the tidings that the predicted planet was found." "observe yon tree in your neighbor's garden," says zanoni to viola in bulwer's novel. "look how it grows up, crooked and distorted. some wind scattered the germ, from which it sprung, in the clefts of the rock. choked up and walled round by crags and buildings, by nature and man, its life has been one struggle for the light. you see how it has writhed and twisted,--how, meeting the barrier in one spot, it has labored and worked, stem and branch, towards the clear skies at last. what has preserved it through each disfavor of birth and circumstances--why are its leaves as green and fair as those of the vine behind you, which, with all its arms, can embrace the open sunshine? my child, because of the very instinct that impelled the struggle,--because the labor for the light won to the light at length. so with a gallant heart, through every adverse accident of sorrow, and of fate, to turn to the sun, to strive for the heaven; this it is that gives knowledge to the strong and happiness to the weak." "each petty hand can steer a ship becalmed; but he that will govern her and carry her to her ends, must know his tides, his currents; how to shift his sails; what she will bear in foul, what in fair weathers; what her springs are, her leaks, and how to stop them; what strands, what shelves, what rocks to threaten her; the forces and the natures of all winds, gusts, storms, and tempests; when her keel plows hell, and deck knocks heaven; then to manage her becomes the name and office of a pilot." chapter v. uses of obstacles. nature, when she adds difficulties, adds brains.--emerson. many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties.--spurgeon. the good are better made by ill, as odors crushed are sweeter still. rogers. aromatic plants bestow no spicy fragrance while they grow; but crushed or trodden to the ground, diffuse their balmy sweets around. goldsmith. as night to stars, woe lustre gives to man.--young. there is no possible success without some opposition as a fulcrum: force is always aggressive and crowds something.--holmes. the more difficulties one has to encounter, within and without, the more significant and the higher in inspiration his life will be.--horace bushmill. adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.--horace. for gold is tried in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity.--sirach. though losses and crosses be lessons right severe, there's wit there ye'll get there, ye'll find no other where. burns. possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.--hazlitt. "adversity is the prosperity of the great." no man ever worked his way in a dead calm.--john neal. "kites rise against, not with, the wind." "many and many a time since," said harriet martineau, referring to her father's failure in business, "have we said that, but for that loss of money, we might have lived on in the ordinary provincial method of ladies with small means, sewing and economizing and growing narrower every year; whereas, by being thrown, while it was yet time, on our own resources, we have worked hard and usefully, won friends, reputation, and independence, seen the world abundantly, abroad and at home; in short, have truly lived instead of vegetating." * * * * * * [illustration: john bunyan] "sculptor of souls, i lift to thee encumbered heart and hands; spare not the chisel, set me free, however dear the bands. * * * * * * "i do believe god wanted a grand poem of that man," said george macdonald of milton, "and so blinded him that he might be able to write it." two of the three greatest epic poets of the world were blind,--homer and milton; while the third, dante, was in his later years nearly, if not altogether, blind. it almost seems as though some great characters had been physically crippled in certain respects so that they would not dissipate their energy, but concentrate it all in one direction. "i have been beaten, but not cast down," said thiers, after making a complete failure of his first speech in the chamber of deputies. "i am making my first essay in arms. in the tribune, as under fire, a defeat is as useful as a victory." a distinguished investigator in science said that when he encountered an apparently insuperable obstacle, he usually found himself upon the brink of some discovery. "returned with thanks" has made many an author. failure often leads a man to success by arousing his latent energy, by firing a dormant purpose, by awakening powers which were sleeping. men of mettle turn disappointments into helps as the oyster turns into pearl the sand which annoys it. "let the adverse breath of criticism be to you only what the blast of the storm wind is to the eagle,--a force against him that lifts him higher." a kite would not fly unless it had a string tying it down. it is just so in life. the man who is tied down by half a dozen blooming responsibilities and their mother will make a higher and stronger flight than the bachelor who, having nothing to keep him steady, is always floundering in the mud. if you want to ascend in the world tie yourself to somebody. "it was the severe preparation for the subsequent harvest," said pemberton leigh, the eminent english lawyer, speaking of his early poverty and hard work. "i learned to consider indefatigable labor as the indispensable condition of success, pecuniary independence as essential alike to virtue and happiness, and no sacrifice too great to avoid the misery of debt." when napoleon's companions made sport of him on account of his humble origin and poverty he devoted himself entirely to books, and soon rising above them in scholarship, commanded their respect. soon he was regarded as the brightest ornament of the class. "to make his way at the bar," said an eminent jurist, "a young man must live like a hermit and work like a horse. there is nothing that does a young lawyer so much good as to be half starved." thousands of men of great native ability have been lost to the world because they have not had to wrestle with obstacles, and to struggle under difficulties sufficient to stimulate into activity their dormant powers. no effort is too dear which helps us along the line of our proper career. poverty and obscurity of origin may impede our progress, but it is only like the obstruction of ice or debris in the river temporarily forcing the water into eddies, where it accumulates strength and a mighty reserve which ultimately sweeps the obstruction impetuously to the sea. poverty and obscurity are not insurmountable obstacles, but they often act as a stimulus to the naturally indolent, and develop a firmer fibre of mind, a stronger muscle and stamina of body. if the germ of the seed has to struggle to push its way up through the stones and hard sod, to fight its way up to sunlight and air, and then to wrestle with storm and tempest, with snow and frost, the fibre of its timber will be all the tougher and stronger. "do you wish to live without a trial?" asks a modern teacher. "then you wish to die but half a man. without trial you cannot guess at your own strength. men do not learn to swim on a table. they must go into deep water and buffet the waves. hardship is the native soil of manhood and self-reliance. trials are rough teachers, but rugged schoolmasters make rugged pupils. a man who goes through life prosperous, and comes to his grave without a wrinkle, is not half a man. difficulties are god's errands. and when we are sent upon them we should esteem it a proof of god's confidence. we should reach after the highest good." "if you wish to rise," said talleyrand, "make enemies." there is good philosophy in the injunction to love our enemies, for they are often our best friends in disguise. they tell us the truth when friends flatter. their biting sarcasm and scathing rebuke are often mirrors which reveal us to ourselves. these unkind stings and thrusts are spurs which urge us on to grander success and nobler endeavor. friends cover our faults and rarely rebuke; enemies drag out to the light all our weaknesses without mercy. we dread these thrusts and exposures as we do the surgeon's knife, but are the better for them. they reach depths before untouched, and we are led to resolve to redeem ourselves from scorn and inferiority. we are the victors of our opponents. they have developed in us the very power by which we overcome them. without their opposition we could never have braced and anchored and fortified ourselves, as the oak is braced and anchored for its thousand battles with the tempests. our trials, our sorrows, and our griefs develop us in a similar way. the man who has triumphed over difficulties bears the signs of victory in his face. an air of triumph is seen in every movement. john calvin, who made a theology for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was tortured with disease for many years, and so was robert hall. the great men who have lifted the world to a higher level were not developed in easy circumstances, but were rocked in the cradle of difficulties and pillowed on hardships. "the gods look on no grander sight than an honest man struggling with adversity." "then i must learn to sing better," said anaximander, when told that the very boys laughed at his singing. strong characters, like the palm-tree, seem to thrive best when most abused. men who have stood up bravely under great misfortune for years are often unable to bear prosperity. their good fortune takes the spring out of their energy, as the torrid zone enervates races accustomed to a vigorous climate. some people never come to themselves until baffled, rebuffed, thwarted, defeated, crushed, in the opinion of those around them. trials unlock their virtues; defeat is the threshold of their victory. it is defeat that turns bone to flint; it is defeat that turns gristle to muscle; it is defeat that makes men invincible; it is defeat that has made those heroic natures that are now in the ascendency, and that has given the sweet law of liberty instead of the bitter law of oppression. difficulties call out great qualities, and make greatness possible. how many centuries of peace would have developed a grant? few knew lincoln until the great weight of the war showed his character. a century of peace would never have produced a bismarck. perhaps phillips and garrison would never have been known to history had it not been for slavery. "will he not make a great painter?" was asked in regard to an artist fresh from his italian tour. "no, never," replied northcote. "why not?" "because he has an income of six thousand pounds a year." in the sunshine of wealth a man is, as a rule, warped too much to become an artist of high merit. a drenching shower of adversity would straighten his fibres out again. he should have some great thwarting difficulty to struggle against. the best tools receive their temper from fire, their edge from grinding; the noblest characters are developed in a similar way. the harder the diamond, the more brilliant the lustre, and the greater the friction necessary to bring it out. only its own dust is hard enough to make this most precious stone reveal its full beauty. the spark in the flint would sleep forever but for friction; the fire in man would never blaze but for antagonism. the friction which retards a train upon the track, robbing the engine of a fourth of its power, is the very secret of locomotion. oil the track, remove the friction, and the train will not move an inch. the moment man is relieved of opposition or friction, and the track of his life is oiled with inherited wealth or other aids, that moment he often ceases to struggle and therefore ceases to grow. "it is this scantiness of means, this continual deficiency, this constant hitch, this perpetual struggle to keep the head above water and the wolf from the door, that keeps society from falling to pieces. let every man have a few more dollars than he wants, and anarchy would follow." suddenly, with much jarring and jolting, an electric car came to a standstill just in front of a heavy truck that was headed in an opposite direction. the huge truck wheels were sliding uselessly round on the car tracks that were wet and slippery from rain. all the urging of the teamster and the straining of the horses in vain,--until the motorman quietly tossed a shovelful of sand on the track under the heavy wheels, then the truck lumbered on its way. "friction is a very good thing," remarked a passenger. the philosopher kant observes that a dove, inasmuch as the only obstacle it has to overcome is the resistance of the air, might suppose that if only the air were out of the way it could fly with greater rapidity and ease. yet if the air were withdrawn, and the bird should try to fly in a vacuum, it would fall instantly to the ground unable to fly at all. the very element that offers the opposition to flying is at the same time the condition of any flight whatever. rough seas and storms make sailors. emergencies make giant men. but for our civil war the names of its grand heroes would not be written among the greatest of our time. the effort or struggle to climb to a higher place in life has strength and dignity in it, and cannot fail to leave us stronger for the struggle, even though we miss the prize. from an aimless, idle, and useless brain, emergencies often call out powers and virtues before unknown and suspected. how often we see a young man develop astounding ability and energy after the death of a parent, or the loss of a fortune, or after some other calamity has knocked the props and crutches from under him. the prison has roused the slumbering fire in many a noble mind. "robinson crusoe" was written in prison. the "pilgrim's progress" appeared in bedford jail. the "life and times" of baxter, eliot's "monarchia of man," and penn's "no cross, no crown," were written by prisoners. sir walter raleigh wrote "the history of the world" during his imprisonment of thirteen years. luther translated the bible while confined in the castle of wartburg. for twenty years dante worked in exile, and even under sentence of death. his works were burned in public after his death; but genius will not burn. take two acorns from the same tree, as nearly alike as possible; plant one on a hill by itself, and the other in the dense forest, and watch them grow. the oak standing alone is exposed to every storm. its roots reach out in every direction, clutching the rocks and piercing deep into the earth. every rootlet lends itself to steady the growing giant, as if in anticipation of fierce conflict with the elements. sometimes its upward growth seems checked for years, but all the while it has been expending its energy in pushing a root across a large rock to gain a firmer anchorage. then it shoots proudly aloft again, prepared to defy the hurricane. the gales which sport so rudely with its wide branches find more than their match, and only serve still further to toughen every minutest fibre from pith to bark. the acorn planted in the deep forest shoots up a weak, slender sapling. shielded by its neighbors, it feels no need of spreading its roots far and wide for support. take two boys, as nearly alike as possible. place one in the country away from the hothouse culture and refinements of the city, with only the district school, the sunday-school, and a few books. remove wealth and props of every kind; and, if he has the right kind of material in him, he will thrive. every obstacle overcome lends him strength for the next conflict. if he falls, he rises with more determination than before. like a rubber ball, the harder the obstacle he meets the higher he rebounds. obstacles and opposition are but apparatus of the gymnasium in which the fibres of his manhood are developed. he compels respect and recognition from those who have ridiculed his poverty. put the other boy in a vanderbilt family. give him french and german nurses; gratify every wish. place him under the tutelage of great masters and send him to harvard. give him thousands a year for spending money, and let him travel extensively. the two meet. the city lad is ashamed of his country brother. the plain, threadbare clothes, hard hands, tawny face, and awkward manner of the country boy make sorry contrast with the genteel appearance of the other. the poor boy bemoans his hard lot, regrets that he has "no chance in life," and envies the city youth. he thinks that it is a cruel providence that places such a wide gulf between them. they meet again as men, but how changed! it is as easy to distinguish the sturdy, self-made man from the one who has been propped up all his life by wealth, position, and family influence, as it is for the shipbuilder to tell the difference between the plank from the rugged mountain oak and one from the sapling of the forest. if you think there is no difference, place each plank in the bottom of a ship, and test them in a hurricane at sea. when god wants to educate a man, he does not send him to school to the graces, but to the necessities. through the pit and the dungeon joseph came to a throne. we are not conscious of the mighty cravings of our half divine humanity; we are not aware of the god within us until some chasm yawns which must be filled, or till the rending asunder of our affections forces us to become conscious of a need. paul in his roman cell; john huss led to the stake at constance; tyndale dying in his prison at amsterdam; milton, amid the incipient earthquake throes of revolution, teaching two little boys in aldgate street; david livingstone, worn to a shadow, dying in a negro hut in central africa, alone,--what failures they might all to themselves have seemed to be, yet what mighty purposes was god working out by their apparent humiliations! two highwaymen chancing once to pass a gibbet, one of them exclaimed: "what a fine profession ours would be if there were no gibbets!" "tut, you blockhead," replied the other, "gibbets are the making of us; for, if there were no gibbets, every one would be a highwayman." just so with every art, trade, or pursuit; it is the difficulties that scare and keep out unworthy competitors. "success grows out of struggles to overcome difficulties," says smiles. "if there were no difficulties, there would be no success. in this necessity for exertion we find the chief source of human advancement,--the advancement of individuals as of nations. it has led to most of the mechanical inventions and improvements of the age." "stick your claws into me," said mendelssohn to his critics when entering the birmingham orchestra. "don't tell me what you like but what you don't like." john hunter said that the art of surgery would never advance until professional men had the courage to publish their failures as well as their successes. "young men need to be taught not to expect a perfectly smooth and easy way to the objects of their endeavor or ambition," says dr. peabody. "seldom does one reach a position with which he has reason to be satisfied without encountering difficulties and what might seem discouragements. but if they are properly met, they are not what they seem, and may prove to be helps, not hindrances. there is no more helpful and profiting exercise than surmounting obstacles." it is said that but for the disappointments of dante, florence would have had another prosperous lord mayor; and the ten dumb centuries continued voiceless, and the ten other listening centuries (for there will be ten of them, and more) would have had no "divina commedia" to hear! it was in the madrid jail that cervantes wrote "don quixote." he was so poor that he could not even get paper during the last of his writing, and had to write on scraps of leather. a rich spaniard was asked to help him, but the rich man replied: "heaven forbid that his necessities should be relieved, it is his poverty that makes the world rich." "a constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to bring success from inhospitable surroundings, is the price of all great achievements." "she sings well," said a great musician of a promising but passionless cantatrice, "but she wants something, and in that something, everything. if i were single, i would court her, i would marry her; i would maltreat her; i would break her heart, and in six months she would be the greatest singer in europe." "he has the stuff in him to make a good musician," said beethoven of rossini, "if he had only been well flogged when a boy; but he is spoiled by the ease with which he composes." we do our best while fighting desperately to attain what the heart covets. martin luther did his greatest work, and built up his best character, while engaged in sharp controversy with the pope. later in life his wife asks, "doctor, how is it that whilst subject to papacy we prayed so often and with such fervor, whilst now we pray with the utmost coldness and very seldom?" when lord eldon was poor, lord thurlow withheld a promised commissionership of bankruptcy, saying that it was a favor not to give it then. "what he meant was," said eldon, "that he had learned i was by nature very indolent, and it was only want that could make me very industrious." waters says that the struggle to obtain knowledge and to advance one's self in the world strengthens the mind, disciplines the faculties, matures the judgment, promotes self-reliance, and gives one independence of thought and force of character. "the gods in bounty work up storms about us," says addison, "that give mankind occasion to exert their hidden strength, and throw out into practice virtues that shun the day, and lie concealed in the smooth seasons and the calms of life." the hothouse plant may tempt a pampered appetite or shed a languid odor, but the working world gets its food from fields of grain and orchards waving in the sun and free air, from cattle that wrestle on the plains, from fishes that struggle with currents of river or ocean; its choicest perfumes from flowers that bloom unheeded, and in wind-tossed forests finds its timber for temples and for ships. "i do not see," says emerson, "how any man can afford, for the sake of his nerves and his nap, to spare any action in which he can partake. it is pearls and rubies to his discourse. drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom. the true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed by as a loss of power." kossuth called himself "a tempest-tossed soul, whose eyes have been sharpened by affliction." benjamin franklin ran away, and george law was turned out of doors. thrown upon their own resources, they early acquired the energy and skill to overcome difficulties. as soon as young eagles can fly the old birds tumble them out and tear the down and feathers from their nest. the rude and rough experience of the eaglet fits him to become the bold king of birds, fierce and expert in pursuing his prey. boys who are bound out, crowded out, kicked out, usually "turn out," while those who do not have these disadvantages frequently fail to "come out." "it was not the victories but the defeats of my life which have strengthened me," said the aged sidenham poyntz. almost from the dawn of history, oppression has been the lot of the hebrews, yet they have given the world its noblest songs, its wisest proverbs, its sweetest music. with them persecution seems to bring prosperity. they thrive where others would starve. they hold the purse-strings of many nations. to them hardship has been "like spring mornings, frosty but kindly, the cold of which will kill the vermin, but will let the plant live." in one of the battles of the crimea a cannon-ball struck inside the fort, crashing through a beautiful garden. but from the ugly chasm there burst forth a spring of water which ever afterward flowed a living fountain. from the ugly gashes which misfortunes and sorrows make in our hearts, perennial fountains of rich experience and new joys often spring. don't lament and grieve over lost wealth. the creator may see something grand and mighty which even he cannot bring out as long as your wealth stands in the way. you must throw away the crutches of riches and stand upon your own feet, and develop the long unused muscles of manhood. god may see a rough diamond in you which only the hard hits of poverty can polish. god knows where the richest melodies of our lives are, and what drill and what discipline are necessary to bring them out. the frost, the snows, the tempests, the lightnings, are the rough teachers that bring the tiny acorn to the sturdy oak. fierce winters are as necessary to it as long summers. it is its half-century's struggle with the elements for existence, wrestling with the storm, fighting for its life from the moment that it leaves the acorn until it goes into the ship, that gives it value. without this struggle it would have been character-less, stamina-less, nerve-less, and its grain would have never been susceptible of high polish. the most beautiful as well as the strongest woods are found not in tropical climates, but in the severe climates, where they have to fight the frosts and the winter's cold. many a man has never found himself until he has lost his all. adversity stripped him only to discover him. obstacles, hardships are the chisel and mallet which shape the strong life into beauty. the rough ledge on the hillside complains of the drill, of the blasting powder which disturbs its peace of centuries: it is not pleasant to be rent with powder, to be hammered and squared by the quarryman. but look again: behold the magnificent statue, the monument, chiseled into grace and beauty, telling its grand story of valor in the public square for centuries. the statue would have slept in the marble forever but for the blasting, the chiseling, and the polishing. the angel of our higher and nobler selves would remain forever unknown in the rough quarries of our lives but for the blastings of affliction, the chiseling of obstacles, and the sand-papering of a thousand annoyances. who has not observed the patience, the calm endurance, the sweet loveliness chiseled out of some rough life by the reversal of fortune or by some terrible affliction. how many business men have made their greatest strides toward manhood, have developed their greatest virtues, when the reverses of fortune have swept away everything they had in the world; when disease had robbed them of all they held dear in life. often we cannot see the angel in the quarry of our lives, the statue of manhood, until the blasts of misfortune have rent the ledge, and difficulties and obstacles have squared and chiseled the granite blocks into grace and beauty. many a man has been ruined into salvation. the lightning which smote his dearest hopes opened up a new rift in his dark life, and gave him glimpses of himself which, until then, he had never seen. the grave buried his dearest hopes, but uncovered possibilities in his nature of patience, endurance, and hope which he never dreamed he possessed before. "adversity is a severe instructor," says edmund burke, "set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves, as he loves us better too. he that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. our antagonist is our helper. this conflict with difficulty makes us acquainted with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. it will not suffer us to be superficial." men who have the right kind of material in them will assert their personality, and rise in spite of a thousand adverse circumstances. you cannot keep them down. every obstacle seems only to add to their ability to get on. "under different circumstances," says castelar, "savonarola would undoubtedly have been a good husband, a tender father, a man unknown to history, utterly powerless to print upon the sands of time and upon the human soul the deep trace which he has left, but misfortune came to visit him, to crush his heart, and to impart that marked melancholy which characterizes a soul in grief, and the grief that circled his brows with a crown of thorns was also that which wreathed them with the splendor of immortality. his hopes were centred in the woman he loved, his life was set upon the possession of her, and when her family finally rejected him, partly on account of his profession, and partly on account of his person, he believed that it was death that had come upon him, when in truth it was immortality." the greatest men will ever be those who have risen from the ranks. it is said that there are ten thousand chances to one that genius, talent, and virtue shall issue from a farmhouse rather than from a palace. the youth opie earned his bread by sawing wood, but he reached a professorship in the royal academy. when but ten years old he showed the material he was made of by a beautiful drawing on a shingle. antonio canova was the son of a day laborer. thorwaldsen's parents were poor, but, like hundreds of others, they did with their might what their hands found to do, and ennobled their work. they rose by being greater than their calling, as arkwright rose above mere barbering, bunyan above tinkering, wilson above shoemaking, lincoln above rail-splitting, and grant above tanning. by being first-class barbers, tinkers, shoemakers, rail-splitters, tanners, they acquired the power which enabled them to become great inventors, authors, statesmen, generals. adversity exasperates fools, dejects cowards, draws out the faculties of the wise and industrious, puts the modest to the necessity of trying their skill, awes the opulent, and makes the idle industrious. neither do uninterrupted success and prosperity qualify men for usefulness and happiness. the storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill, and fortitude of the voyager. the martyrs of ancient times, in bracing their minds to outward calamities, acquired a loftiness of purpose and a moral heroism worth a lifetime of softness and security. a man upon whom continuous sunshine falls is like the earth in august: he becomes parched and dry and hard and close-grained. men have drawn from adversity the elements of greatness. if you have the blues, go and see the poorest and sickest families within your knowledge. the darker the setting, the brighter the diamond. don't run about and tell acquaintances that you have been unfortunate; people do not like to have unfortunate men for acquaintances. beethoven was almost totally deaf and burdened with sorrow when he produced his greatest works. schiller wrote his best books in great bodily suffering. he was not free from pain for fifteen years. milton wrote his leading productions when blind, poor, and sick. "who best can suffer," said he, "best can do." bunyan said that, if it were lawful, he could even pray for greater trouble, for the greater comfort's sake. "do you know what god puts us on our backs for?" asked dr. payson, smiling, as he lay sick in bed. "no," replied the visitor. "in order that we may look upward." "i am not come to condole but to rejoice with you," said the friend, "for it seems to me that this is no time for mourning." "well, i am glad to hear that," said dr. payson, "it is not often i am addressed in such a way. the fact is i never had less need of condolence, and yet everybody persists in offering it; whereas, when i was prosperous and well, and a successful preacher, and really needed condolence, they flattered and congratulated me." a german knight undertook to make an immense aeolian harp by stretching wires from tower to tower of his castle. when he finished the harp it was silent; but when the breezes began to blow he heard faint strains like the murmuring of distant music. at last a tempest arose and swept with fury over his castle, and then rich and grand music came from the wires. ordinary experiences do not seem to touch some lives--to bring out any poetry, any higher manhood. not until the breath of the plague had blasted a hundred thousand lives, and the great fire had licked up cheap, shabby, wicked london, did she arise, phoenix-like, from her ashes and ruin, a grand and mighty city. true salamanders live best in the furnace of persecution. "every man who makes a fortune has been more than once a bankrupt, if the truth were known," said albion tourgée. "grant's failure as a subaltern made him commander-in-chief, and for myself, my failure to accomplish what i set out to do led me to what i never had aspired to." the appeal for volunteers in the great battle of life, in exterminating ignorance and error, and planting high on an everlasting foundation the banner of intelligence and right, is directed to _you_. burst the trammels that impede your progress, and cling to hope. place high thy standard, and with a firm tread and fearless eye press steadily onward. not ease, but effort, not facility, but difficulty, makes men. toilsome culture is the price of great success, and the slow growth of a great character is one of its special necessities. many of our best poets "are cradled into poetry by wrong, and learn in suffering what they teach in song." byron was stung into a determination to go to the top by a scathing criticism of his first book, "hours of idleness," published when he was but nineteen years of age. macaulay said, "there is scarce an instance in history of so sudden a rise to so dizzy an eminence as byron reached." in a few years he stood by the side of such men as scott, southey, and campbell, and died at thirty-seven, that age so fatal to genius. many an orator like "stuttering jack curran," or "orator mum," as he was once called, has been spurred into eloquence by ridicule and abuse. this is the crutch age. "helps" and "aids" are advertised everywhere. we have institutes, colleges, universities, teachers, books, libraries, newspapers, magazines. our thinking is done for us. our problems are all worked out in "explanations" and "keys." our boys are too often tutored through college with very little study. "short roads" and "abridged methods" are characteristic of the century. ingenious methods are used everywhere to get the drudgery out of the college course. newspapers give us our politics, and preachers our religion. self-help and self-reliance are getting old fashioned. nature, as if conscious of delayed blessings, has rushed to man's relief with her wondrous forces, and undertakes to do the world's drudgery and emancipate him from eden's curse. but do not misinterpret her edict. she emancipates from the lower only to call to the higher. she does not bid the world go and play while she does the work. she emancipates the muscles only to employ the brain and heart. the most beautiful as well as the strongest characters are not developed in warm climates, where man finds his bread ready made on trees, and where exertion is a great effort, but rather in a trying climate and on a stubborn soil. it is no chance that returns to the hindoo ryot a penny and to the american laborer a dollar for his daily toil; that makes mexico with its mineral wealth poor, and new england with its granite and ice rich. it is rugged necessity, it is the struggle to obtain, it is poverty the priceless spur, that develops the stamina of manhood, and calls the race out of barbarism. labor found the world a wilderness and has made it a garden. as the sculptor thinks only of the angel imprisoned in the marble block, so nature cares only for the man or woman shut up in the human being. the sculptor cares nothing for the block as such; nature has little regard for the mere lump of breathing clay. the sculptor will chip off all unnecessary material to set free the angel. nature will chip and pound us remorselessly to bring out our possibilities. she will strip us of wealth, humble our pride, humiliate our ambition, let us down from the ladder of fame, will discipline us in a thousand ways, if she can develop a little character. everything must give way to that. wealth is nothing, position is nothing, fame is nothing, _manhood is everything_. not ease, not pleasure, not happiness, but a _man_, nature is after. in every great painting of the masters there is one idea or figure which stands out boldly beyond everything else. every other idea or figure on the canvas is subordinate to it, but pointing to the central idea, finds its true expression there. so in the vast universe of god, every object of creation is but a guideboard with an index-finger pointing to the central figure of the created universe--man. nature writes this thought upon every leaf, she thunders it in every creation. it is exhaled from every flower; it twinkles in every star. oh, what price will nature not pay for a man! ages and aeons were nothing for her to spend in preparing for his coming, or to make his existence possible. she has rifled the centuries for his development, and placed the universe at his disposal. the world is but his kindergarten, and every created thing but an object-lesson from the unseen universe. nature resorts to a thousand expedients to develop a perfect type of her grandest creation. to do this she must induce him to fight his way up to his own loaf. she never allows him once to lose sight of the fact that it is the struggle to attain that develops the man. the moment we put our hand upon that which looks so attractive at a distance, and which we struggled so hard to reach, nature robs it of its charm by holding up before us another prize still more attractive. "life," says a philosopher, "refuses to be so adjusted as to eliminate from it all strife and conflict and pain. there are a thousand tasks that, in larger interests than ours, must be done, whether we want them or no. the world refuses to walk upon tiptoe, so that we may be able to sleep. it gets up very early and stays up very late, and all the while there is the conflict of myriads of hammers and saws and axes with the stubborn material that in no other way can be made to serve its use and do its work for man. and then, too, these hammers and axes are not wielded without strain or pang, but swung by the millions of toilers who labor with their cries and groans and tears. nay, our temple-building, whether it be for god or man, exacts its bitter toll, and fills life with cries and blows. the thousand rivalries of our daily business, the fiercer animosities when we are beaten, the even fiercer exultation when we have beaten, the crashing blows of disaster, the piercing scream of defeat,--these things we have not yet gotten rid of, nor in this life ever will. why should we wish to get rid of them? we are here, my brother, to be hewed and hammered and planed in god's quarry and on god's anvil for a nobler life to come." only the muscle that is used is developed. the constantly cheerful man, who survives his blighted hopes and disappointments, who takes them just for what they are, lessons, and perhaps blessings in disguise, is the true hero. there is a strength deep bedded in our hearts of which we reck but little, till the shafts of heaven have pierced its fragile dwelling. must not earth be rent before her gems are found? mrs. hemans. "if what shone afar so grand turns to ashes in the hand, on again, the virtue lies in the struggle, not the prize." "the hero is not fed on sweets, daily his own heart he eats; chambers of the great are jails, and head-winds right for royal sails." "so many great illustrious spirits have conversed with woe, have in her school been taught, as are enough to consecrate distress, and make ambition even wish the frown beyond the smile of fortune." then welcome each rebuff, that turns earth's smoothness rough, each sting, that bids not sit nor stand but go. browning. chapter vi. one unwavering aim. life is an arrow--therefore you must know what mark to aim at, how to use the bow-- then draw it to the head and let it go. henry van dyke. the important thing in life is to have a great aim, and to possess the aptitude and perseverance to attain it.--goethe. concentration alone conquers.--c. buxton. "he who follows two hares is sure to catch neither." "a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." let every one ascertain his special business and calling, and then stick to it if he would be successful.--franklin. "digression is as dangerous as stagnation in the career of a young man in business." every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.--bulwer. genius is intensity.--balzac. "why do you lead such a solitary life?" asked a friend of michael angelo. "art is a jealous mistress," replied the artist; "she requires the whole man." during his labors at the sistine chapel, according to disraeli, he refused to meet any one, even at his own house. "that day we sailed westward, which was our course," were the simple but grand words which columbus wrote in his journal day after day. hope might rise and fall, terror and dismay might seize upon the crew at the mysterious variations of the compass, but columbus, unappalled, pushed due west and nightly added to his record the above words. "cut an inch deeper," said a member of the old guard to the surgeon probing his wound, "and you will find the emperor,"--meaning his heart. by the marvelous power of concentrated purpose napoleon had left his name on the very stones of the capital, had burned it indelibly into the heart of every frenchman, and had left it written in living letters all over europe. france to-day has not shaken off the spell of that name. in the fair city on the seine the mystic "n" confronts you everywhere. oh, the power of a great purpose to work miracles! it has changed the face of the world. napoleon knew that there were plenty of great men in france, but they did not know the might of the unwavering aim by which he was changing the destinies of europe. he saw that what was called the "balance of power" was only an idle dream; that, unless some master-mind could be found which was a match for events, the millions would rule in anarchy. his iron will grasped the situation; and like william pitt, he did not loiter around balancing the probabilities of failure or success, or dally with his purpose. there was no turning to the right nor to the left; no dreaming away time, nor building air-castles; but one look and purpose, forward, upward and onward, straight to his goal. he always hit the bull's-eye. his great success in war was due largely to his definiteness of aim. he was like a great burning-glass, concentrating the rays of the sun upon a single spot; he burned a hole wherever he went. the secret of his power lay in his ability to concentrate his forces upon a single point. after finding the weak place in the enemy's ranks, he would mass his men and hurl them like an avalanche upon the critical point, crowding volley upon volley, charge upon charge, till he made a breach. what a lesson of the power of concentration there is in this man's life! he was able to focus all his faculties upon the smallest detail, as well as upon an empire. but, alas! napoleon was himself defeated by violation of his own tactics,--the constantly repeated crushing force of heavy battalions upon one point. to succeed to-day a man must concentrate all the faculties of his mind upon one unwavering aim, and have a tenacity of purpose which means death or victory. every other inclination which tempts him from his aim must be suppressed. new jersey has many ports, but they are so shallow and narrow that the shipping of the entire state amounts to but little. on the other hand, new york has but one ocean port, and yet it is so broad, deep, and grand, that it leads america in its enormous shipping trade. she sends her vessels into every port of the world, while the ships of her neighbor are restricted to local voyages. a man may starve on a dozen half-learned trades or occupations; he may grow rich and famous upon one trade thoroughly mastered, even though it be the humblest. even gladstone, with his ponderous yet active brain, says he cannot do two things at once; he throws his entire strength upon whatever he does. the intensest energy characterizes everything he undertakes, even his recreation. if such concentration of energy is necessary for the success of a gladstone, what can we common mortals hope to accomplish by "scatteration?" all great men have been noted for their power of concentration which makes them oblivious of everything outside their aim. victor hugo wrote his "notre dame" during the revolution of , while the bullets were whistling across his garden. he shut himself up in one room, locking his clothes up, lest they should tempt him to go out into the street, and spent most of that winter wrapped in a big gray comforter, pouring his very life into his work. genius is intensity. abraham lincoln possessed such power of concentration that he could repeat quite correctly a sermon to which he had listened in his boyhood. dr. o. w. holmes, when an andover student, riveted his eyes on the book he was studying as though he were reading a will that made him heir to a million. a new york sportsman, in answer to an advertisement, sent twenty-five cents for a sure receipt to prevent a shotgun from scattering, and received the following; "dear sir: to keep a gun from scattering put in but a single shot." it is the men who do one thing in this world who come to the front. who is the favorite actor? it is a jefferson, who devotes a lifetime to a "rip van winkle," a booth, an irving, a kean, who plays one character until he can play it better than any other man living, and not the shallow players who impersonate all parts. it is the man who never steps outside of his specialty or dissipates his individuality. it is an edison, a morse, a bell, a howe, a stephenson, a watt. it is adam smith, spending ten years on the "wealth of nations." it is gibbon, giving twenty years to his "decline and fall of the roman empire." it is a hume, writing thirteen hours a day on his "history of england." it is a webster, spending thirty-six years on his dictionary. it is a bancroft, working twenty-six years on his "history of the united states." it is a field, crossing the ocean fifty times to lay a cable, while the world ridicules. it is a newton, writing his "chronology of ancient nations" sixteen times. it is a grant, who proposes to "fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." these are the men who have written their names prominently in the history of the world. a one-talent man who decides upon a definite object accomplishes more than the ten-talent man who scatters his energies and never knows exactly what he will do. the weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers upon one thing, can accomplish something; the strongest, by dispersing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. drop after drop, continually falling, wears a passage through the hardest rock. the hasty tempest, as carlyle points out, rushes over it with hideous uproar and leaves no trace behind. a great purpose is cumulative; and, like a great magnet, it attracts all that is kindred along the stream of life. a yankee can splice a rope in many different ways; an english sailor only knows one way, but that is the best one. it is the one-sided man, the sharp-edged man, the man of single and intense purpose, the man of one idea, who turns neither to the right nor to the left, though a paradise tempt him, who cuts his way through obstacles and forges to the front. the time has gone forever when a bacon can span universal knowledge; or when, absorbing all the knowledge of the times, a dante can sustain arguments against fourteen disputants in the university of paris, and conquer in them all. the day when a man can successfully drive a dozen callings abreast is a thing of the past. concentration is the keynote of the century. scientists estimate that there is energy enough in less than fifty acres of sunshine to run all the machinery in the world, if it could be concentrated. but the sun might blaze out upon the earth forever without setting anything on fire; although these rays focused by a burning-glass would melt solid granite, or even change a diamond into vapor. there are plenty of men who have ability enough; the rays of their faculties, taken separately, are all right, but they are powerless to collect them, to bring them all to bear upon a single spot. versatile men, universal geniuses, are usually weak, because they have no power to concentrate their talents upon one point, and this makes all the difference between success and failure. chiseled upon the tomb of a disappointed, heart-broken king, joseph ii. of austria, in the royal cemetery at vienna, a traveler tells us, is this epitaph: "here lies a monarch who, with the best of intentions, never carried out a single plan." sir james mackintosh was a man of remarkable ability. he excited in every one who knew him the greatest expectations. many watched his career with much interest, expecting that he would dazzle the world. but there was no purpose in his life. he had intermittent attacks of enthusiasm for doing great things, but his zeal all evaporated before he could decide what to do. this fatal defect in his character kept him balancing between conflicting motives; and his whole life was almost thrown away. he lacked power to choose one object and persevere with a single aim, sacrificing every interfering inclination. he vacillated for weeks trying to determine whether to use "usefulness" or "utility" in a composition. one talent utilized in a single direction will do infinitely more than ten talents scattered. a thimbleful of powder behind a ball in a rifle will do more execution than a carload of powder unconfined. the rifle-barrel is the purpose that gives direct aim to the powder, which otherwise, no matter how good it might be, would be powerless. the poorest scholar in school or college often, in practical life, far outstrips the class leader or senior wrangler, simply because what little ability he has he employs for a definite object, while the other, depending upon his general ability and brilliant prospects, never concentrates his powers. "a sublime self-confidence," says e. p. whipple, "springing not from self-conceit, but from an intense identification of the man with his object, lifts him altogether above the fear of danger and death, and communicates an almost superhuman audacity to his will." * * * * * * [illustration: richard arkwright] what a sublime spectacle is that of a man going straight to his goal, cutting his way through difficulties, and surmounting obstacles which dishearten others, as though they were stepping-stones. * * * * * * it is fashionable to ridicule the man of one idea, but the men who have changed the front of the world have been men of a single aim. no man can make his mark on this age of specialties who is not a man of one idea, one supreme aim, one master passion. the man who would make himself felt on this bustling planet, who would make a breach in the compact conservatism of our civilization, must play all his guns on one point. a wavering aim, a faltering purpose, has no place in the nineteenth century. "mental shiftlessness" is the cause of many a failure. the world is full of unsuccessful men who spend their lives letting empty buckets down into empty wells. "mr. a. often laughs at me," said a young american chemist, "because i have but one idea. he talks about everything, aims to excel in many things; but i have learned that, if i ever wish to make a breach, i must play my guns continually upon one point." this great chemist, when an obscure schoolmaster, used to study by the light of a pine knot in a log cabin. not many years later he was performing experiments in electro-magnetism before english earls, and subsequently he was at the head of one of the largest scientific institutes of this country. this man was the late professor henry, of the smithsonian institution, washington. douglas jerrold once knew a man who was familiar with twenty-four languages but could not express a thought in one of them. we should guard against a talent which we cannot hope to practice in perfection, says goethe. improve it as we may, we shall always, in the end, when the merit of the matter has become apparent to us, painfully lament the loss of time and strength devoted to such botching. an old proverb says: "the master of one trade will support a wife and seven children, and the master of seven will not support himself." _it is the single aim that wins_. men with monopolizing ambitions rarely live in history. they do not focus their powers long enough to burn their names indelibly into the roll of honor. edward everett, even with his magnificent powers, disappointed the expectations of his friends. he spread himself over the whole field of knowledge and elegant culture; but the mention of the name of everett does not call up any one great achievement as does that of names like garrison and phillips. voltaire called the frenchman la harpe an oven which was always heating, but which never cooked anything. hartley coleridge was splendidly endowed with talent, like sir james mackintosh, but there was one fatal lack in his character--he had no definite purpose, and his life was a failure. unstable as water, he could not excel. southey, his uncle, says: "coleridge has two left hands." he was so morbidly shy from living alone in his dreamland that he could not open a letter without trembling. he would often rally from his purposeless life, and resolve to redeem himself from the oblivion he saw staring him in the face; but, like mackintosh, he remained a man of promise merely to the end of his life. the world always makes way for the man with a purpose in him, like bismarck or grant. look at rufus choate, concentrating all his attention first on one juryman, then on another, going back over the whole line again and again, until he has burned his arguments into their souls; until he has hypnotized them with his purpose; until they see with his eyes, think his thoughts, feel his sensations. he never stopped until he had projected his mind into theirs, and permeated their lives with his individuality. there was no escape from his concentration of purpose, his persuasive rhetoric, his convincing logic. "carry the jury at all hazards," he used to say to young lawyers; "move heaven and earth to carry the jury, and then fight it out with the judge on the law questions as best you can." the man who succeeds has a programme. he fixes his course and adheres to it. he lays his plans and executes them. he goes straight to his goal. he is not pushed this way and that every time a difficulty is thrown in his path; if he can't get over it he goes through it. constant and steady use of the faculties under a central purpose gives strength and power, while the use of faculties without an aim or end only weakens them. the mind must be focused on a definite end, or, like machinery without a balance-wheel, it will rack itself to pieces. this age of concentration calls, not for educated men merely, not for talented men, not for geniuses, not for jacks-of-all-trades, but for men who are trained to do one thing as well as it can be done. napoleon could go through the drill of his soldiers better than any one of his men. _stick to your aim_. the constant changing of one's occupation is fatal to all success. after a young man has spent five or six years in a dry goods store, he concludes that he would rather sell groceries, thereby throwing away five years of valuable experience which will be of very little use to him in the grocery business; and so he spends a large part of his life drifting around from one kind of employment to another, learning part of each, but all of none, forgetting that experience is worth more to him than money, and that the years devoted to learning his trade or occupation are the most valuable. half-learned trades, no matter if a man has twenty, will never give him a good living, much less a competency, while wealth is absolutely out of the question. how many young men fail to reach the point of efficiency in one line of work before they get discouraged and venture into something else. how easy to see the thorns in one's own profession or vocation, and only the roses in that of another. a young man in business, for instance, seeing a physician riding about town in his carriage, visiting his patients, imagines that a doctor must have an easy, ideal life, and wonders that he himself should have embarked in an occupation so full of disagreeable drudgery and hardships. he does not know of the years of dry, tedious study which the physician has consumed, the months and perhaps years of waiting for patients, the dry detail of anatomy, the endless names of drugs and technical terms. scientists tell us that there is nothing in nature so ugly and disagreeable but intense light will make it beautiful. the complete mastery of one profession will render even the driest details interesting. the consciousness of thorough knowledge, the habit of doing everything to a finish, gives a feeling of strength, of superiority, which takes the drudgery out of an occupation. the more completely we master a vocation the more thoroughly we enjoy it. in fact, the man who has found his place and become master in it could scarcely be induced, even though he be a farmer, or a carpenter, or grocer, to exchange places with a governor or congressman. to be successful is to _find your sphere and fill it, to get into your place and master it_. there is a sense of great power in a vocation after a man has reached the point of efficiency in it, the point of productiveness, the point where his skill begins to tell and bring in returns. up to this point of efficiency, while he is learning his trade, the time seems to have been almost thrown away. but he has been storing up a vast reserve of knowledge of detail, laying foundations, forming his acquaintances, gaining his reputation for truthfulness, trustworthiness, and integrity, and in establishing his credit. when he reaches this point of efficiency, all the knowledge and skill, character, influence, and credit thus gained come to his aid, and he soon finds that in what seemed almost thrown away lies the secret of his prosperity. the credit he established as a clerk, the confidence, the integrity, the friendships formed, he finds equal to a large capital when he starts out for himself and takes the highway to fortune; while the young man who half learned several trades, and got discouraged and stopped just short of the point of efficiency, just this side of success, is a failure because he didn't go far enough; he did not press on to the point at which his acquisition would have been profitable. in spite of the fact that nearly all very successful men have made a life work of one thing, we see on every hand hundreds of young men and women flitting about from occupation to occupation, trade to trade, in one thing to-day and another to-morrow,--just as though they could go from one thing to another by turning a switch, as if they could run as well on another track as on the one they have left, regardless of the fact that no two careers have the same gauge, that every man builds his own road upon which another's engine cannot run either with speed or safety. this fickleness, this disposition to shift about from one occupation to another, seems to be peculiar to american life, so much so that, when a young man meets a friend whom he has not seen for some time, the commonest question to ask is, "what are you doing now?" showing the improbability or uncertainty that he is doing to-day what he was doing when they last met. some people think that if they "keep everlastingly at it" they will succeed, but this is not so. working without a plan is as foolish as going to sea without a compass. a ship which has broken its rudder in mid-ocean may "keep everlastingly at it," may keep on a full head of steam, driving about all the time, but it never arrives anywhere, it never reaches any port unless by accident, and if it does find a haven, its cargo may not be suited to the people, the climate, or conditions among which it has accidentally drifted. the ship must be directed to a definite port, for which its cargo is adapted, and where there is a demand for it, and it must aim steadily for that port through sunshine and storm, through tempest and fog. so a man who would succeed must not drift about rudderless on the ocean of life. he must not only steer straight toward his destined port when the ocean is smooth, when the currents and winds serve, but he must keep his course in the very teeth of the wind and the tempest, and even when enveloped in the fogs of disappointment and mists of opposition. the cunarders do not stop for fogs or storms; they plow straight through the rough seas with only one thing in view, their destined port, and no matter what the weather is, no matter what obstacles they encounter, their arrival in port can be predicted to within a few hours. it is practically certain, too, that the ship destined for boston will not turn up at fort sumter or at sandy hook. on the prairies of south america there grows a flower that always inclines in the same direction. if a traveler loses his way and has neither compass nor chart, by turning to this flower he will find a guide on which he can implicitly rely; for no matter how the rains descend or the winds blow, its leaves point to the north. so there are many men whose purposes are so well known, whose aims are so constant, that no matter what difficulties they may encounter, or what opposition they may meet, you can tell almost to a certainty where they will come out. they may be delayed by head winds and counter currents, but they will _always head for the port_ and will steer straight towards the harbor. you know to a certainty that whatever else they may lose, they will not lose their compass or rudder. whatever may happen to a man of this stamp, even though his sails may be swept away and his mast stripped to the deck, though he may be wrecked by the storms of life, the needle of his compass will still point to the north star of his hope. whatever comes, his life will not be purposeless. even a wreck that makes its port is a greater success than a full-rigged ship with all its sails flying, with every mast and rope intact; which merely drifts into an accidental harbor. to fix a wandering life and give it direction is not an easy task, but a life which has no definite aim is sure to be frittered away in empty and purposeless dreams. "listless triflers," "busy idlers," "purposeless busybodies," are seen everywhere. a healthy, definite purpose is a remedy for a thousand ills which attend aimless lives. discontent, dissatisfaction, flee before a definite purpose. an aim takes the drudgery out of life, scatters doubts to the winds, and clears up the gloomiest creeds. what we do without a purpose begrudgingly, with a purpose becomes a delight, and no work is well done nor healthily done which is not enthusiastically done. it is just that added element which makes work immortal. mere energy is not enough, it must be concentrated on some steady, unwavering aim. what is more common than "unsuccessful geniuses," or failures with "commanding talents"? indeed, "unrewarded genius" has become a proverb. every town has unsuccessful educated and talented men. but education is of no value, talent is worthless, unless it can do something, achieve something. men who can do something at everything, and a very little at anything, are not wanted in this age. in paris, a certain monsieur kenard announced himself as a "public scribe, who digests accounts, explains the language of flowers, and sells fried potatoes." jacks-at-all-trades are at war with the genius of the times. what this age wants is young men and women who can do one thing without losing their identity or individuality, or becoming narrow, cramped, or dwarfed. nothing can take the place of an all-absorbing purpose; education will not, genius will not, talent will not, industry will not, will-power will not. the purposeless life must ever be a failure. what good are powers, faculties, unless we can use them for a purpose? what good would a chest of tools do a carpenter unless he could use them? a college education, a head full of knowledge, are worth little to the men who cannot use them to some definite end. the man without a purpose never leaves his mark upon the world. he has no individuality; he is absorbed in the mass, lost in the crowd, weak, wavering, incompetent. his outlines of individuality and angles of character have been worn off, planed down to suit the common thought until he has, as a man, been lost in the throng of humanity. "he who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces as, to idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity." what a great directness of purpose may be traced in the career of pitt, who lived--ay, and died--for the sake of political supremacy. from a child, the idea was drilled into him that he must accomplish a public career worthy of his illustrious father. even from boyhood he bent all his energy to this one great purpose. he went straight from college to the house of commons. in one year he was chancellor of the exchequer; two years later he was prime minister of england, and reigned virtually king for a quarter of a century. he was utterly oblivious of everything outside his aim; insensible to the claims of love, art, literature, living and steadily working for the sole purpose of wielding the governing power of the nation. his whole soul was absorbed in the overmastering passion for political power. "consider, my lord," said rowland hill to the prime minister of england, "that a letter to ireland and the answer back would cost thousands upon thousands of my affectionate countrymen more than a fifth of their week's wages. if you shut the post office to them, which you do now, you shut out warm hearts and generous affections from home, kindred, and friends." the lad learned that it cost to carry a letter from london to edinburgh, four hundred and four miles, one eighteenth of a cent, while the government charged for a simple folded sheet of paper twenty-eight cents, and twice as much if there was the smallest inclosure. against the opposition and contempt of the post-office department he at length carried his point, and on january , , penny postage was established throughout great britain. mr. hill was chosen to introduce the system, at a salary of fifteen hundred pounds a year. his success was most encouraging, but at the end of two years a tory minister dismissed him without paying for his services, as agreed. the public was indignant, and at once contributed sixty-five thousand dollars; and, at the request of queen victoria, parliament voted him one hundred thousand dollars and ten thousand dollars a year for life. christ knew that one affection rules in man's life when he said, "no man can serve two masters." one affection, one object, will be supreme in us. everything else will be neglected and done with half a heart. one may have subordinate plans, but he can have but one supreme aim, and from this aim all others will take their character. it is a great purpose which gives meaning to life, it unifies all our powers, binds them together in one cable; makes strong and united what was weak, separated, scattered. "painting is my wife and my works are my children," replied michael angelo when asked why he did not marry. "smatterers" are weak and superficial. of what use is a man who knows a little of everything and not much of anything? it is the momentum of constantly repeated acts that tells the story. "let thine eyes look straight before thee. ponder the path of thy feet and let all thy ways be established. turn not to the right hand nor to the left." one great secret of st. paul's power lay in his strong purpose. nothing could daunt him, nothing intimidate. the roman emperor could not muzzle him, the dungeon could not appall him, no prison suppress him, obstacles could not discourage him. "this one thing i do" was written all over his work. the quenchless zeal of his mighty purpose burned its way down through the centuries, and its contagion will never cease to fire the hearts of men. "try and come home somebody," said the fond mother to gambetta as she sent him off to paris to school. poverty pinched this lad hard in his little garret study and his clothes were shabby, but what of that? he had made up his mind to get on in the world. for years this youth was chained to his desk and worked like a hero. at last his opportunity came. jules favre was to plead a great cause on a certain day; but, being ill, he chose this young man, absolutely unknown, rough and uncouth, to take his place. for many years gambetta had been preparing for such an opportunity, and he was equal to it, for he made one of the greatest speeches that up to that time had ever been made in france. that night all the papers in paris were sounding the praises of this ragged, uncouth bohemian, and soon all france recognized him as the republican leader. this sudden rise was not due to luck or accident. he had been steadfastly working and fighting his way up against opposition and poverty for just such an occasion. had he not been equal to it, it would only have made him ridiculous. what a stride; yesterday, poor and unknown, living in a garret, to-day, deputy elect, in the city of marseilles, and the great republican leader! the gossipers of france had never heard his name before. he had been expelled from the priest-making seminary as totally unfit for a priest and an utterly undisciplinable character. in two weeks, this ragged son of an italian grocer arose in the chamber, and moved that the napoleon dynasty be disposed of and the republic be declared established. when louis napoleon had been defeated at sedan and had delivered his sword to william of prussia, and when the prussian army was marching on paris, the brave gambetta went out of the besieged city in a balloon barely grazed by the prussian guns, landed in amiens, and by almost superhuman skill raised three armies of , men, provided for their maintenance, and directed their military operations. a german officer said, "this colossal energy is the most remarkable event of modern history, and will carry down gambetta's name to remote posterity." this youth who was poring over his books in an attic while other youths were promenading the champs Ã�lysées, although but thirty-two years old, was now virtually dictator of france, and the greatest orator in the republic. what a striking example of the great reserve of personal power, which, even in dissolute lives, is sometimes called out by a great emergency or sudden sorrow, and ever after leads the life to victory! when gambetta found that his first speech had electrified all france, his great reserve rushed to the front, he was suddenly weaned from dissipation, and resolved to make his mark in the world. nor did he lose his head in his quick leap into fame. he still lived in the upper room in the musty latin quarter, and remained a poor man, without stain of dishonor, though he might easily have made himself a millionaire. when gambetta died the "figaro" said, "the republic has lost its greatest man." american boys should study this great man, for he loved our country, and made our republic the pattern for france. there is no grander sight in the world than that of a young man fired with a great purpose, dominated by one unwavering aim. he is bound to win; the world stands one side and lets him pass; it always makes way for the man with a will in him. he does not have one half the opposition to overcome that the undecided, purposeless man has who, like driftwood, runs against all sorts of snags to which he must yield, because he has no momentum to force them out of his way. what a sublime spectacle it is to see a youth going straight to his goal, cutting his way through difficulties, and surmounting obstacles, which dishearten others, as though they were but stepping-stones! defeat, like a gymnasium, only gives him new power; opposition only doubles his exertions, dangers only increase his courage. no matter what comes to him, sickness, poverty, disaster, he never turns his eye from his goal. "duos qui sequitur lepores, neutrum capit." chapter vii. sowing and reaping. be not deceived; god is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.--galatians. sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a character; sow a character, and you reap a destiny.--g. d. boardman. just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined.--pope. how use doth breed a habit in a man.--shakespeare. all habits gather, by unseen degrees, as brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas. dryden. infinite good comes from good habits which must result from the common influence of example, intercourse, knowledge, and actual experience--morality taught by good morals.--plato. the chains of habit are generally too small to be felt till they are too strong to be broken.--samuel johnson. man is first startled by sin; then it becomes pleasing, then easy, then delightful, then frequent, then habitual, then confirmed. then man is impenitent, then obstinate, then he is damned.--jeremy taylor. "rogues differ little. each began as a disobedient son." in the great majority of things, habit is a greater plague than ever afflicted egypt.--john foster. you cannot in any given case, by any sudden and single effort, will to be true if the habit of your life has been insincere.--f. w. robertson. the tissue of the life to be, we weave with colors all our own; and in the field of destiny, we reap as we have sown. whittier. "gentlemen of the jury, you will now consider your verdict," said the great lawyer, lord tenterden, as he roused from his lethargy a moment, and then closed his eyes forever. "tête d'armée" (head of the army), murmured napoleon faintly; and then, "on the wings of a tempest that raged with unwonted fury, up to the throne of the only power that controlled him while he lived, went the fiery soul of that wonderful warrior." "give dayrolles a chair," said the dying chesterfield with his old-time courtesy, and the next moment his spirit spread its wings. "young man, keep your record clean," thrilled from the lips of john b. gough as he sank to rise no more. what power over the mind of man is exercised by the dominant idea of his life "that parts not quite with parting breath!" it has shaped his purpose throughout his earthly career, and he passes into the great unknown, moving in the direction of his ideal; impelled still, amid the utter retrocession of the vital force, by all the momentum resulting from his weight of character and singleness of aim. * * * * * * [illustration: victor hugo] "every one is the son of his own works." "cast forth thy act, thy word, into the ever-living, ever-working universe: it is seed-grain that cannot die." * * * * * * "it is a beautiful arrangement in the mental and moral economy of our nature, that that which is performed as a duty may, by frequent repetitions, become a habit, and the habit of stern virtue, so repulsive to others, may hang around the neck like a wreath of flowers." cholera appeared mysteriously in toulon, and, after a careful examination, the medical inspectors learned that the first victims were two sailors on the montebello, a government transport, long out of service, anchored at the entrance to the port. for many years the vessel had been used for storing old, disused military equipments. some of these had belonged to french soldiers who had died before sebastopol. the doctors learned that the two poor sailors were seized, suddenly and mortally, a few days after displacing a pile of equipments stored deep in the hold of the montebello. the cholera of toulon came in a direct line from the hospital of varna. it went to sleep, apparently gorged, on a heap of the cast-off garments of its victims, to awaken thirty years later to victorious and venomous life. professor bonelli, of turin, punctured an animal with the tooth of a rattlesnake. the head of this serpent had lain in a dry state for sixteen years exposed to the air and dust, and, moreover, had previously been preserved more than thirty years in spirits of wine. to his great astonishment an hour afterward the animal died. so habits, good or bad, that have been lost sight of for years will spring into a new life to aid or injure us at some critical moment, as kernels of wheat which had been clasped in a mummy's hand four thousand years sprang into life when planted. they only awaited moisture, heat, sunlight, and air to develop them. in jefferson's play, rip van winkle, after he had "sworn off," at every invitation to drink said, "well, this time don't count." true, as professor james says, he may not have counted it, as thousands of others have not counted it, and a kind heaven may not count it, but it is being counted none the less. down among his nerve cells and fibres the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. nothing we ever do is in strict scientific literalness wiped out. there is a tendency in the nervous system to repeat the same mode of action at regularly recurring intervals. dr. combe says that all nervous diseases have a marked tendency to observe regular periods. "if we repeat any kind of mental effort at the same hour daily, we at length find ourselves entering upon it without premeditation when the time approaches." "the great thing in all education is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. it is to fund and capitalize our acquisition, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund. for this we must make automatic and habitual, as soon as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we would guard against the plague." the nervous system is a living phonograph, infinitely more marvelous than that of edison. no sound, however feeble, however slight, can escape being recorded in its wonderful mechanism. although the molecules of this living machine may all be entirely changed many times during a lifetime, yet these impressions are never erased or lost. they become forever fixed in the character. like rip van winkle, the youth may say to himself, i will do this just once "just to see what it is like," no one will ever know it, and "i won't count this time." the country youth says it when he goes to the city. the young man says it when he drinks "just to be social." americans, who are good church people at home, say it when in paris and vienna. yes, "just to see what it is like" has ruined many a noble life. many a man has lost his balance and fallen over the precipice into the sink of iniquity while just attempting "to see what it was like." "if you have been pilot on these waters twenty-five years," said a young man to the captain of a steamer, "you must know every rock and sandbank in the river." "no, i don't, but i know where the deep water is." just one little lie to help me out of this difficulty; "i won't count this." just one little embezzlement; no one will know it, and i can return the money before it will be needed. just one little indulgence; i won't count it, and a good night's sleep will make me all right again. just one small part of my work slighted; it won't make any great difference, and, besides, i am usually so careful that a little thing like this ought not to be counted. but, my young friend, it will be counted, whether you will or not; the deed has been recorded with an iron pen, even to the smallest detail. the recording angel is no myth; it is found in ourselves. its name is memory, and it holds everything. we think we have forgotten thousands of things until mortal danger, fever, or some other great stimulus reproduces them to the consciousness with all the fidelity of photographs. sometimes all one's past life will seem to pass before him in an instant; but at all times it is really, although unconsciously, passing before him in the sentiments he feels, in the thoughts he thinks, in the impulses that move him apparently without cause. "our acts our angels are, or good or ill, our fatal shadows that walk by us still." in a fable one of the fates spun filaments so fine that they were invisible, and she became a victim of her cunning, for she was bound to the spot by these very threads. father schoenmaker, missionary to the indians, tried for years to implant civilization among the wild tribes. after fifteen years' labor he induced a chief to lay aside his blanket, the token of savagery; but he goes on to say, "it took fifteen years to get it off, and just fifteen minutes to get it on him again." physiologists say that dark-colored stripes similar to those on the zebra reappear, after a hundred or a thousand generations, on the legs and shoulders of horses, asses, and mules. large birds on sea islands where there are no beasts to molest them lose the power of flight. after a criminal's head had been cut off his breast was irritated, and he raised his hands several times as if to brush away the exciting cause. it was said that the cheek of charlotte corday blushed on being struck by a rude soldier after the head had been severed from the body. humboldt found in south america a parrot which was the only living creature that could speak a word of the language of a lost tribe. the bird retained the habit of speech after his teachers had died. caspar hauser was confined, probably from birth, in a dungeon where no light or sound from the outer world, could reach him. at seventeen he was still a mental infant, crying and chattering without much apparent intelligence. when released, the light was disagreeable to his eyes; and, after the babbling youth had been taught to speak a few words, he begged to be taken back to the dungeon. only cold and dismal silence seemed to satisfy him. all that gave pleasure to others gave his perverted senses only pain. the sweetest music was a source of anguish to him, and he could eat only his black crust without violent vomiting. deep in the very nature of animate existence is that principle of facility and inclination, acquired by repetition, which we call habit. man becomes a slave to his constantly repeated acts. in spite of the protests of his weakened will the trained nerves continue to repeat the acts even when the doer abhors them. what he at first chooses, at last compels. man is as irrevocably chained to his deeds as the atoms are chained by gravitation. you can as easily snatch a pebble from gravitation's grasp as you can separate the minutest act of life from its inevitable effect upon character and destiny. "children may be strangled," says george eliot, "but deeds never, they have an indestructible life." the smirched youth becomes the tainted man. practically all the achievements of the human race are but the accomplishments of habit. we speak of the power of gladstone to accomplish so much in a day as something marvelous; but when we analyze that power we find it composed very largely of the results of habit. his mighty momentum has been rendered possible only by the law of the power of habit. he is now a great bundle of habits, which all his life have been forming. his habit of industry no doubt was irksome and tedious at first, but, practiced so conscientiously and persistently, it has gained such momentum as to astonish the world. his habit of thinking, close, persistent, and strong, has made him a power. he formed the habit of accurate, keen observation, allowing nothing to escape his attention, until he could observe more in half a day in london than a score of men who have eyes but see not. thus he has multiplied himself many times. by this habit of accuracy he has avoided many a repetition; and so, during his lifetime, he has saved years of precious time, which many others, who marvel at his achievements, have thrown away. gladstone early formed the habit of cheerfulness, of looking on the bright side of things, which, sydney smith says, "is worth a thousand pounds a year." this again has saved him enormous waste of energy, as he tells us he has never yet been kept awake a single hour by any debate or business in parliament. this loss of energy has wasted years of many a useful life, which might have been saved by forming the economizing habit of cheerfulness. the habit of happy thought would transform the commonest life into harmony and beauty. the will is almost omnipotent to determine habits which virtually are omnipotent. the habit of directing a firm and steady will upon those things which tend to produce harmony of thought would produce happiness and contentment even in the most lowly occupations. the will, rightly drilled, can drive out all discordant thoughts, and produce a reign of perpetual harmony. our trouble is that we do not half will. after a man's habits are well set, about all he can do is to sit by and observe which way he is going. regret it as he may, how helpless is a weak man bound by the mighty cable of habit, twisted from the tiny threads of single acts which he thought were absolutely within his control! drop a stone down a precipice. by the law of gravitation it sinks with rapidly increasing momentum. if it falls sixteen feet the first second, it will fall forty-eight feet the next second, and eighty feet the third second, and one hundred and forty-four feet the fifth second, and if it falls for ten seconds it will in the last second rush through three hundred and four feet till earth stops it. habit is cumulative. after each act of our lives we are not the same person as before, but quite another, better or worse, but not the same. there has been something added to, or deducted from, our weight of character. "there is no fault nor folly of my life," said ruskin; "that does not rise against me and take away my joy, and shorten my power of possession, of sight, of understanding; and every past effort of my life, every gleam of righteousness or good in it, is with me now to help me in my grasp of this hour and its vision." "many men of genius have written worse scrawls than i do," said a boy at rugby when his teacher remonstrated with him for his bad penmanship; "it is not worth while to worry about so trivial a fault." ten years later, when he had become an officer in the crimea, his illegible copy of an order caused the loss of many brave men. "resist beginning" was an ancient motto which is needed in our day. the folly of the child becomes the vice of the youth, and then the crime of the man. in one hundred and forty-seven of the eight hundred and ninety-seven inmates of auburn state prison were there on a second visit. what brings the prisoner back the second, third, or fourth time? it is habit which drives him on to commit the deed which his heart abhors and which his very soul loathes. it is the momentum made up from a thousand deviations from the truth and right, for there is a great difference between going just right and a little wrong. it is the result of that mysterious power which the repeated act has of getting itself repeated again and again. when a woman was dying from the effects of her husband's cruelty and debauchery from drink she asked him to come to her bedside, and pleaded with him again for the sake of their children to drink no more. grasping his hand with her thin, long fingers, she made him promise her: "mary, i will drink no more till i take it out of this hand which i hold in mine." that very night he poured out a tumbler of brandy, stole into the room where she lay cold in her coffin, put the tumbler into her withered hand, and then took it out and drained it to the bottom. john b. gough told this as a true story. how powerless a man is in the presence of a mighty habit, which has robbed him of will-power, of self-respect, of everything manly, until he becomes its slave! walpole tells of a gambler who fell at the table in a fit of apoplexy, and his companions began to bet upon his chances of recovery. when the physician came they refused to let him bleed the man because they said it would affect the bet. when president garfield was hanging between life and death men bet heavily upon the issue, and even sold pools. no disease causes greater horror or dread than cholera; yet when it is once fastened upon a victim he is perfectly indifferent, and wonders at the solicitude of his friends. his tears are dried; he cannot weep if he would. his body is cold and clammy and feels like dead flesh, yet he tells you he is warm, and calls for ice water. have you never seen similar insensibility to danger in those whose habits are already dragging them to everlasting death? etherized by the fascinations of pleasure, we are often unconscious of pain while the devil amputates the fingers, the feet and hands, or even the arms and legs of our character. but oh, the anguish that visits the sad heart when the lethe passes away, and the soul becomes conscious of virtue sacrificed, of manhood lost. the leper is often the last to suspect his danger, for the disease is painless in its early stages. a leading lawyer and public official in the sandwich islands once overturned a lighted lamp on his hand, and was surprised to find that it caused no pain. at last it dawned upon his mind that he was a leper. he resigned his offices and went to the leper's island, where he died. so sin in its early stages is not only painless but often even pleasant. the hardening, deadening power of depraving habits and customs was strikingly illustrated by the romans. under nero, the taste of the people had become so debauched and morbid that no mere representation of tragedy would satisfy them. their cold-blooded selfishness, the hideous realism of "a refined, delicate, aesthetic age," demanded that the heroes should actually be killed on the stage. the debauched and sanguinary romans reckoned life worthless without the most thrilling experiences of horror or delight. tragedy must be genuine bloodshed, comedy, actual shame. when "the conflagration" was represented on the stage they demanded that a house be actually burned and the furniture plundered. when "laureolus" was played they demanded that the actor be really crucified and mangled by a bear, and he had to fling himself down and deluge the stage with his own blood. prometheus must be really chained to his rock, and dirce in very fact be tossed and gored by the wild bull, and orpheus be torn to pieces by a real bear, and icarus was compelled to fly, even though it was known he would be dashed to death. when the heroism of "mucius scaevola" was represented, a real criminal was compelled to thrust his hand into the flame without a murmur, and stand motionless while it was being burned. hercules was compelled to ascend the funeral pyre, and there be burned alive. the poor slaves and criminals were compelled to play their parts heroically until the flames enveloped them. the pirate gibbs, who was executed in new york, said that when he robbed the first vessel his conscience made a hell in his bosom; but after he had sailed for years under the black flag, he could rob a vessel and murder all the crew, and lie down and sleep soundly. a man may so accustom himself to error as to become its most devoted slave, and be led to commit the most fearful crimes in order to defend it, or to propagate it. when gordon, the celebrated california stage-driver, was dying, he put his foot out of the bed and swung it to and fro. when asked why he did so, he replied, "i am on the down grade and cannot get my foot on the brake." in our great museums you see stone slabs with the marks of rain that fell hundreds of years before adam lived, and the footprint of some wild bird that passed across the beach in those olden times. the passing shower and the light foot left their prints on the soft sediment; then ages went on, and the sediment hardened into stone; and there the prints remain, and will remain forever. so the child, so soft, so susceptible to all impressions, so joyous to receive new ideas, treasures them all up, gathers them all into itself, and retains them forever. a tribe of indians attacked a white settlement and murdered the few inhabitants. a woman of the tribe, however, carried away a very young infant, and reared it as her own. the child grew up with the indian children, different in complexion, but like them in everything else. to scalp the greatest possible number of enemies was, in his view, the most glorious thing in the world. while he was still a youth he was seen by some white traders, and by them conducted back to civilized life. he showed great relish for his new life, and especially a strong desire for knowledge and a sense of reverence which took the direction of religion, so that he desired to become a clergyman. he went through his college course with credit, and was ordained. he fulfilled his function well, and appeared happy and satisfied. after a few years he went to serve in a settlement somewhere near the seat of war which was then going on between britain and the united states, and before long there was fighting not far off. he went forth in his usual dress--black coat and neat white shirt and neckcloth. when he returned he was met by a gentleman of his acquaintance, who was immediately struck by an extraordinary change in the expression of his face and the flush on his cheek, and also by his unusually shy and hurried manner. after asking news of the battle the gentleman observed, "but you are wounded?" "no." "not wounded! why, there is blood upon the bosom of your shirt!" the young man quickly crossed his hands firmly upon his breast; and his friend, supposing that he wished to conceal a wound which ought to be looked to, pulled open his shirt, and saw--what made the young man let fall his hands in despair. from between his shirt and his breast the friend took out--a bloody scalp! "i could not help it," said the poor victim of early habits, in an agonized voice. he turned and ran, too swiftly to be overtaken, betook himself to the indians, and never more appeared among the whites. an indian once brought up a young lion, and finding him weak and harmless, did not attempt to control him. every day the lion gained in strength and became more unmanageable, until at last, when excited by rage, he fell upon his master and tore him to pieces. so what seemed to be an "innocent" sin has grown until it strangled him who was once its easy master. beware of looking at sin, for at each view it is apt to become better looking. habit is practically, for a middle-aged person, fate; for is it not practically certain that what i have done for twenty years i shall repeat to-day? what are the chances for a man who has been lazy and indolent all his life starting in to-morrow morning to be industrious; or a spendthrift, frugal; a libertine, virtuous; a profane, foul-mouthed man, clean and chaste? a grecian flute-player charged double fees for pupils who had been taught by inferior masters, on the ground that it was much harder to undo than to form habits. habit tends to make us permanently what we are for the moment. we cannot possibly hear, see, feel, or experience anything which is not woven in the web of character. what we are this minute and what we do this minute, what we think this minute, will be read in the future character as plainly as words spoken into the phonograph can be reproduced in the future. "the air itself," says babbage, "is one vast library on whose pages are written forever all that man has ever said, whispered, or done." every sin you ever committed becomes your boon companion. it rushes to your lips every time you speak, and drags its hideous form into your imagination every time you think. it throws its shadow across your path whichever way you turn. like banquo's ghost, it will not down. you are fastened to it for life, and it will cling to you in the vast forever. do you think yourself free? you are a slave to every sin you ever committed. they follow your pen and work their own character into every word you write. rectitude is only the confirmed habit of doing what is right. some men cannot tell a lie: the habit of truth telling is fixed, it has become incorporated with their nature. their characters bear the indelible stamp of veracity. you and i know men whose slightest word is unimpeachable; nothing could shake our confidence in them. there are other men who cannot speak the truth: their habitual insincerity has made a twist in their characters, and this twist appears in their speech. "i never in my life committed more than one act of folly," said rulhière one day in the presence of talleyrand. "but where will it end?" inquired the latter. it was lifelong. one mistake too many makes all the difference between safety and destruction. how many men would like to go to sleep beggars and wake up rothschilds or astors? how many would fain go to bed dunces and wake up solomons? you reap what you have sown. those who have sown dunce-seed, vice-seed, laziness-seed, always get a crop. they that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind. habit, like a child, repeats whatever is done before it. oh, the power of a repeated act to get itself repeated again and again! but, like the wind, it is a power which we can use to force our way in its very teeth as does the ship, and thus multiply our strength, or we can drift with it without exertion upon the rocks and shoals of destruction. what a great thing it is to "start right" in life. every young man can see that the first steps lead to the last, with all except his own. no, his little prevarications and dodgings will not make him a liar, but he can see that they surely will in john smith's case. he can see that others are idle and on the road to ruin, but cannot see it in his own case. there is a wonderful relation between bad habits. they all belong to the same family. if you take in one, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem, you will soon have the whole. a man who has formed the habit of laziness or idleness will soon be late at his engagements; a man who does not meet his engagements will dodge, apologize, prevaricate, and lie. i have rarely known a perfectly truthful man who was always behind time. you have seen a ship out in the bay swinging with the tide and the waves; the sails are all up, and you wonder why it does not move, but it cannot, for down beneath the water it is anchored. so we often see a young man apparently well equipped, well educated, and we wonder that he does not advance toward manhood and character. but, alas! we find that he is anchored to some secret vice, and he can never advance until he cuts loose. "the first crime past compels us into more, and guilt grows _fate_ that was but _choice_ before." "small habits, well pursued betimes, may reach the dignity of crimes." thousands can sympathize with david when he cried, "my sins have taken such hold upon me that i am not able to look up; my heart faileth me." like the damned spot of blood on lady macbeth's hand, these foul spots on the imagination will not out. what a penalty nature exacts for physical sins. the gods are just, and "of our pleasant vices make instruments to plague us." plato wrote over his door, "let no one ignorant of geometry enter here." the greatest value of the study of the classics and mathematics comes from the habits of accurate and concise thought which it induces. the habit-forming portion of life is the dangerous period, and we need the discipline of close application to hold us outside of our studies. washington at thirteen wrote one hundred and ten maxims of civility and good behavior, and was most careful in the formation of all habits. franklin, too, devised a plan of self-improvement and character building. no doubt the noble characters of these two men, almost superhuman in their excellence, are the natural result of their early care and earnest striving towards perfection. fielding, describing a game of cards between jonathan wild, of pilfering propensities, and a professional gambler, says: "such was the power of habit over the minds of these illustrious persons, that mr. wild could not keep his hands out of the count's pockets, though he knew they were empty; nor could the count abstain from palming a card, though he was well aware mr. wild had no money to pay him." "habit," says montaigne, "is a violent and treacherous schoolmistress. she, by little and little, slyly and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority, but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the aid of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance against which we have no more the courage nor the power so much as to lift up our eyes." it led a new york man actually to cut off his hand with a cleaver under a test of what he would resort to, to get a glass of whiskey. it has led thousands of nature's noblemen to drunkards' and libertines' graves. gough's life is a startling illustration of the power of habit, and of the ability of one apparently a hopeless slave to break his fetters and walk a free man in the sunlight of heaven. he came to america when nine years old. possessed of great powers of song, of mimicry, and of acting, and exceedingly social in his tastes, a thousand temptations "widened and strewed with flowers the way down to eternal ruin." "i would give this right hand to redeem those terrible seven years of dissipation and death," he would often say in after years when, with his soul still scarred and battered from his conflict with blighting passion, he tearfully urged young men to free themselves from the chains of bestial habits. in the laboratory of faraday a workman one day knocked into a jar of acid a silver cup; it disappeared, was eaten up by the acid, and could not be found. the question came up whether it could ever be found. the great chemist came in and put certain chemicals into the jar, and every particle of the silver was precipitated to the bottom. the mass was then sent to a silversmith, and the cup restored. so a precious youth who has fallen into the sink of iniquity, lost, dissolved in sin, can only be restored by the great chemist. what is put into the first of life is put into the whole of life. "out of a church of twenty-seven hundred members, i have never had to exclude a single one who was received while a child," said spurgeon. it is the earliest sin that exercises the most influence for evil. benedict arnold was the only general in the revolution that disgraced his country. he had great military talent, wonderful energy, and a courage equal to any emergency. but arnold _did not start right_. even when a boy he was despised for his cruelty and his selfishness. he delighted in torturing insects and birds that he might watch their sufferings. he scattered pieces of glass and sharp tacks on the floor of the shop he was tending, to cut the feet of the barefooted boys. even in the army, in spite of his bravery, the soldiers hated him, and the officers dared not trust him. let no man trust the first false step of guilt; it hangs upon a precipice, whose steep descent in last perdition ends. young years ago there was a district lying near westminster abbey, london, called the "devil's acre,"--a school for vicious habits, where depravity was universal; where professional beggars were fitted with all the appliances of imposture; where there was an agency for the hire of children to be carried about by forlorn widows and deserted wives, to move the compassion of street-giving benevolence; where young pickpockets were trained in the art and mystery which was to conduct them in due course to an expensive voyage for the good of their country to botany bay. victor hugo describes a strange association of men in the seventeenth century who bought children and distorted and made monstrosities of them to amuse the nobility with; and in cultured boston there is an association of so-called "respectable men," who have opened thousands of "places of business" for deforming men, women, and children's souls. but we deform ourselves with agencies so pleasant that we think we are having a good time, until we become so changed and enslaved that we scarcely recognize ourselves. vice, the pleasant guest which we first invited into our heart's parlor, becomes vulgarly familiar, and intrenches herself deep in our very being. we ask her to leave, but she simply laughs at us from the hideous wrinkles she has made in our faces, and refuses to go. our secret sins defy us from the hideous furrows they have cut in our cheeks. each impure thought has chiseled its autograph deep into the forehead, too deep for erasure, and the glassy, bleary eye adds its testimony to our ruined character. the devil does not apply his match to the hard coal; but he first lights the shavings of "innocent sins," and the shavings the wood, and the wood the coal. sin is gradual. it does not break out on a man until it has long circulated through his system. murder, adultery, theft, are not committed in deed until they have been committed in thought again and again. "don't write there," said a man to a boy who was writing with a diamond pin on a pane of glass in the window of a hotel. "why not?" inquired the boy. "because you can't rub it out." yet the glass might have been broken and all trace of the writing lost, but things written upon the human soul can never be removed, for the tablet is immortal. "in all the wide range of accepted british maxims," said thomas hughes, "there is none, take it all in all, more thoroughly abominable than this one, as to the sowing of wild oats. look at it on what side you will, and i defy you to make anything but a devil's maxim of it. what man, be he young, old, or middle-aged, sows, that, and nothing else, shall he reap. the only thing to do with wild oats is to put them carefully into the hottest part of the fire, and get them burnt to dust, every seed of them. if you sow them, no matter in what ground, up they will come with long, tough roots and luxuriant stalks and leaves, as sure as there is a sun in heaven. the devil, too, whose special crop they are, will see that they thrive, and you, and nobody else, will have to reap them." we scatter seeds with careless hand, and dream we ne'er shall see them more; but for a thousand years their fruit appears, in weeds that mar the land. john keble. theodora boasted that she could draw socrates' disciples away from him. "that may be," said the philosopher, "for you lead them down an easy descent whereas i am forcing them to mount to virtue--an arduous ascent and unknown to most men." "when i am told of a sickly student," said daniel wise, "that he is 'studying himself to death,' or of a feeble young mechanic, or clerk, that his hard work is destroying him, i study his countenance, and there, too often, read the real, melancholy truth in his dull, averted, sunken eye, discolored skin, and timid manner. these signs proclaim that the young man is in some way violating the laws of his physical nature. he is secretly destroying himself. yet, say his unconscious and admiring friends, 'he is falling a victim to his own diligence!' most lame and impotent conclusion! he is sapping the very source of life, and erelong will be a mind in ruins or a heap of dust. young man, beware of his example! 'keep thyself pure;' observe the laws of your physical nature, and the most unrelaxing industry will never rob you of a month's health, nor shorten the thread of your life; for industry and health are companions, and long life is the heritage of diligence." "how shall i a habit break?" as you did that habit make. as you gathered, you must lose; as you yielded, now refuse. thread by thread the strands we twist till they bind us neck and wrist. thread by thread the patient hand must untwine ere free we stand. as we builded, stone by stone, we must toil, unhelped, alone, till the wall is overthrown. but remember, as we try, lighter every test goes by; wading in, the stream grows deep toward the centre's downward sweep; backward turn, each step ashore shallower is than that before. ah, the precious years we waste leveling what we raised in haste; doing what must be undone, ere content or love be won! first across the gulf we cast kite-borne threads till lines are passed, and habit builds the bridge at last. john boyle o'reilly. chapter viii. self-help. i learned that no man in god's wide earth is either willing or able to help any other man.--pestalozzi. what i am i have made myself.--humphry davy. be sure, my son, and remember that the best men always make themselves.--patrick henry. hereditary bondsmen, know ye not who would be free themselves must strike the blow? byron. god gives every bird its food, but he does not throw it into the nest.--j. g. holland. never forget that others will depend upon you, and that you cannot depend upon them.--dumas, fils. our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, which we ascribe to heaven.--shakespeare. the best education in the world is that got by struggling to obtain a living.--wendell phillips. every person has two educations, one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives himself.--gibbon. what the superior man seeks is in himself: what the small man seeks is in others.--confucius. who waits to have his task marked out, shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled. lowell. in battle or business, whatever the game, in law, or in love, it's ever the same: in the struggle for power, or scramble for pelf, let this be your motto, "rely on yourself." saxe. let every eye negotiate for itself, and trust no agent. shakespeare. "colonel crockett makes room for himself!" exclaimed a backwoods congressman in answer to the exclamation of the white house usher to "make room for colonel crockett!" this remarkable man was not afraid to oppose the head of a great nation. he preferred being right to being president. though rough, uncultured, and uncouth, crockett was a man of great courage and determination. garfield was the youngest member of the house of representatives when he entered, but he had not been in his seat sixty days before his ability was recognized and his place conceded. he stepped to the front with the confidence of one who belonged there. he succeeded because all the world in concert could not have kept him in the background, and because when once in the front he played his part with an intrepidity and a commanding ease that were but the outward evidences of the immense reserves of energy on which it was in his power to draw. [illustration: james a. garfield (missing from book)] "take the place and attitude which belong to you," says emerson, "and all men acquiesce. the world must be just. it leaves every man with profound unconcern to set his own rate." grant was no book soldier. some of his victories were contrary to all instructions in military works. he did not dare to disclose his plan to invest vicksburg, and he even cut off all communication on the mississippi river for seven days that no orders could reach him from general halleck, his superior officer; for he knew that halleck went by books, and he was proceeding contrary to all military theories. he was making a greater military history than had ever been written up to that time. he was greater than all books of tactics. the consciousness of power is everything. that man is strongest who owes most to himself. "man, it is within yourself," says pestalozzi, "it is in the inner sense of your power that resides nature's instrument for your development." richard arkwright, the thirteenth child, in a hovel, with no education, no chance, gave his spinning model to the world, and put a sceptre in england's right hand such as the queen never wielded. "a person under the firm persuasion that he can command resources virtually has them," says livy. solario, a wandering gypsy tinker, fell deeply in love with the daughter of the painter coll' antonio del fiore, but was told that no one but a painter as good as the father should wed the maiden. "will you give me ten years to learn to paint, and so entitle myself to the hand of your daughter?" consent was given, coll' antonio thinking that he would never be troubled further by the gypsy. about the time that the ten years were to end the king's sister showed coll' antonio a madonna and child, which the painter extolled in terms of the highest praise. judge of his surprise on learning that solario was the artist. but later, his son-in-law surprised him even more by his rare skill. louis philippe said he was the only sovereign in europe fit to govern, for he could black his own boots. when asked to name his family coat-of-arms, a self-made president of the united states replied, "a pair of shirtsleeves." "poverty is uncomfortable, as i can testify," said james a. garfield; "but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself. in all my acquaintance i have never known a man to be drowned who was worth the saving." it is not the men who have inherited most, except it be in nobility of soul and purpose, who have risen highest; but rather the men with no "start" who have won fortunes, and have made adverse circumstances a spur to goad them up the steep mount, where "fame's proud temple shines afar." to such men, every possible goal is accessible, and honest ambition has no height that genius or talent may tread, which has not felt the impress of their feet. you may leave your millions to your son, but have you really given him anything? you cannot transfer the discipline, the experience, the power which the acquisition has given you; you cannot transfer the delight of achieving, the joy felt only in growth, the pride of acquisition, the character which trained habits of accuracy, method, promptness, patience, dispatch, honesty of dealing, politeness of manner have developed. you cannot transfer the skill, sagacity, prudence, foresight, which lie concealed in your wealth. it meant a great deal for you, but means nothing to your heir. in climbing to your fortune, you developed the muscle, stamina, and strength which enabled you to maintain your lofty position, to keep your millions intact. you had the power which comes only from experience, and which alone enables you to stand firm on your dizzy height. your fortune was experience to you, joy, growth, discipline, and character; to him it will be a temptation, an anxiety, which will probably dwarf him. it was wings to you, it will be a dead weight to him; it was education to you and expansion of your highest powers; to him it may mean inaction, lethargy, indolence, weakness, ignorance. you have taken the priceless spur--necessity--away from him, the spur which has goaded man to nearly all the great achievements in the history of the world. you thought it a kindness to deprive yourself in order that your son might begin where you left off. you thought to spare him the drudgery, the hardships, the deprivations, the lack of opportunities, the meagre education, which you had on the old farm. but you have put a crutch into his hand instead of a staff; you have taken away from him the incentive to self-development, to self-elevation, to self-discipline and self-help, without which no real success, no real happiness, no great character is ever possible. his enthusiasm will evaporate, his energy will be dissipated, his ambition, not being stimulated by the struggle for self-elevation, will gradually die away. if you do everything for your son and fight his battles for him, you will have a weakling on your hands at twenty-one. "my life is a wreck," said the dying cyrus w. field, "my fortune gone, my home dishonored. oh, i was so unkind to edward when i thought i was being kind. if i had only had firmness enough to compel my boys to earn their living, then they would have known the meaning of money." his table was covered with medals and certificates of honor from many nations, in recognition of his great work for civilization in mooring two continents side by side in thought, of the fame he had won and could never lose. but grief shook the sands of life as he thought only of the son who had brought disgrace upon a name before unsullied, the wounds were sharper than those of a serpent's tooth. during the great financial crisis of maria mitchell, who was visiting england, asked an english lady what became of daughters when no property was left them. "they live on their brothers," was the reply. "but what becomes of the american daughters," asked the english lady, "when there is no money left?" "they earn it," was the reply. men who have been bolstered up all their lives are seldom good for anything in a crisis. when misfortune comes, they look around for somebody to lean upon. if the prop is not there down they go. once down, they are as helpless as capsized turtles, or unhorsed men in armor. many a frontier boy has succeeded beyond all his expectations simply because all props were knocked out from under him and he was obliged to stand upon his own feet. "a man's best friends are his ten fingers," said robert collyer, who brought his wife to america in the steerage. young men who are always looking for something to lean upon never amount to anything. there is no manhood mill which takes in boys and turns out men. what you call "no chance" may be your "only chance." don't wait for your place to be made for you; make it yourself. don't wait for somebody to give you a lift; lift yourself. henry ward beecher did not wait for a call to a big church with a large salary. he accepted the first pastorate offered him, in a little town near cincinnati. he became literally the light of the church, for he trimmed the lamps, kindled the fires, swept the rooms, and rang the bell. his salary was only about $ a year,--but he knew that a fine church and great salary cannot make a great man. it was work and opportunity that he wanted. he felt that if there was anything in him work would bring it out. "physiologists tell us," says waters, "that it takes twenty-eight years for the brain to attain its full development. if this is so, why should not one be able, by his own efforts, to give this long-growing organ a particular bent, a peculiar character? why should the will not be brought to bear upon the formation of the brain as well as of the backbone?" the will is merely our steam power, and we may put it to any work we please. it will do our bidding, whether it be building up a character, or tearing it down. it may be applied to building up a habit of truthfulness and honesty, or of falsehood and dishonor. it will help build up a man or a brute, a hero or a coward. it will brace up resolution until one may almost perform miracles, or it may be dissipated in irresolution and inaction until life is a wreck. it will hold you to your task until you have formed a powerful habit of industry and application, until idleness and inaction are painful, or it will lead you into indolence and listlessness until every effort will be disagreeable and success impossible. "the first thing i have to impress upon you is," says j. t. davidson, "that a good name must be the fruit of one's own exertion. you cannot possess it by patrimony; you cannot purchase it with money; you will not light on it by chance; it is independent of birth, station, talents, and wealth; it must be the outcome of your own endeavor, and the reward of good principles and honorable conduct. of all the elements of success in life none is more vital than self-reliance,--a determination to be, under god, the creator of your own reputation and advancement. if difficulties stand in the way, if exceptional disadvantages oppose you, all the better, as long as you have pluck to fight through them. i want each young man here (you will not misunderstand me) to have faith in himself and, scorning props and buttresses, crutches and life-preservers, to take earnest hold of life. many a lad has good stuff in him that never comes to anything because he slips too easily into some groove of life; it is commonly those who have a tough battle to begin with that make their mark upon their age." when beethoven was examining the work of moscheles, he found written at the end "finis, with god's help." he wrote under it "man, help yourself." a young man stood listlessly watching some anglers on a bridge. he was poor and dejected. at length, approaching a basket filled with fish, he sighed, "if now i had these i would be happy. i could sell them and buy food and lodgings." "i will give you just as many and just as good," said the owner, who chanced to overhear his words, "if you will do me a trifling favor." "and what is that?" asked the other. "only to tend this line till i come back; i wish to go on a short errand." the proposal was gladly accepted. the old man was gone so long that the young man began to get impatient. meanwhile the fish snapped greedily at the hook, and he lost all his depression in the excitement of pulling them in. when the owner returned he had caught a large number. counting out from them as many as were in the basket, and presenting them to the youth, the old fisherman said, "i fulfill my promise from the fish you have caught, to teach you whenever you see others earning what you need to waste no time in foolish wishing, but cast a line for yourself." a white squall caught a party of tourists on a lake in scotland, and threatened to capsize the boat. when it seemed that the crisis was really come the largest and strongest man in the party, in a state of intense fear, said, "let us pray." "no, no, my man," shouted the bluff old boatman; "_let the little man pray. you take an oar._" the greatest curse that can befall a young man is to lean. the grandest fortunes ever accumulated or possessed on earth were and are the fruit of endeavor that had no capital to begin with save energy, intellect, and the will. from croesus down to rockefeller the story is the same, not only in the getting of wealth, but also in the acquirement of eminence; those men have won most who relied most upon themselves. it has been said that one of the most disgusting sights in this world is that of a young man with healthy blood, broad shoulders, presentable calves, and a hundred and fifty pounds, more or less, of good bone and muscle, standing with his hands in his pockets longing for help. "the male inhabitants in the township of loaferdom, in the county of hatework," says a printer's squib, "found themselves laboring under great inconvenience for want of an easily traveled road between poverty and independence. they therefore petitioned the powers that be to levy a tax upon the property of the entire county for the purpose of laying out a macadamized highway, broad and smooth, and all the way down hill to the latter place." "it is interesting to notice how some minds seem almost to create themselves," says irving, "springing up under every disadvantage, and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles." "every one is the artificer of his own fortune," says sallust. man is not merely the architect of his own fortune, but he must lay the bricks himself. bayard taylor, at twenty-three, wrote: "i will become the sculptor of my own mind's statue." his biography shows how often the chisel and hammer were in his hands to shape himself into his ideal. "i have seen none, known none, of the celebrities of my time," said samuel cox. "all my energy was directed upon one end, to improve myself." "man exists for culture," says goethe; "not for what he can accomplish, but for what can be accomplished in him." when young professor tyndall was in the government service, he had no definite aim in life until one day a government official asked him how he employed his leisure time. "you have five hours a day at your disposal," said he, "and this ought to be devoted to systematic study. had i at your age some one to advise me as i now advise you, instead of being in a subordinate position, i might have been at the head of my department." the very next day young tyndall began a regular course of study, and went to the university of marburg, where he became noted for his indomitable industry. he was so poor that he bought a cask, and cut it open for a bathtub. he often rose before daylight to study, while the world was slumbering about him. labor is the only legal tender in the world to true success. the gods sell everything for that, nothing without it. you will never find success "marked down." the door to the temple of success is never left open. every one who enters makes his own door which closes behind him to all others. circumstances have rarely favored great men. they have fought their way to triumph over the road of difficulty and through all sorts of opposition. a lowly beginning and a humble origin are no bar to a great career. the farmers' boys fill many of the greatest places in legislatures, in syndicates, at the bar, in pulpits, in congress, to-day. boys of lowly origin have made many of the greatest discoveries, are presidents of our banks, of our colleges, of our universities. our poor boys and girls have written many of our greatest books, and have filled the highest places as teachers and journalists. ask almost any great man in our large cities where he was born, and he will tell you it was on a farm or in a small country village. nearly all of the great capitalists of the city came from the country. "'t is better to be lowly born." the founder of boston university left cape cod for boston to make his way with a capital of only four dollars. like horace greeley, he could find no opening for a boy; but what of that? he made an opening. he found a board, and made it into an oyster stand on the street corner. he borrowed a wheelbarrow, and went three miles to an oyster smack, bought three bushels of oysters, and wheeled them to his stand. soon his little savings amounted to $ , and then he bought a horse and cart. this poor boy with no chance kept right on till he became the millionaire isaac rich. chauncey jerome, the inventor of machine-made clocks, started with two others on a tour through new jersey, they to sell the clocks, and he to make cases for them. on his way to new york he went through new haven in a lumber wagon, eating bread and cheese. he afterward lived in a fine mansion in new haven. self-help has accomplished about all the great things of the world. how many young men falter, faint, and dally with their purpose because they have no capital to start with, and wait and wait for some good luck to give them a lift. but success is the child of drudgery and perseverance. it cannot be coaxed or bribed; pay the price and it is yours. where is the boy to-day who has less chance to rise in the world than elihu burritt, apprenticed to a blacksmith, in whose shop he had to work at the forge all the daylight, and often by candle-light? yet, he managed, by studying with a book before him at his meals, carrying it in his pocket that he might utilize every spare moment, and studying nights and holidays, to pick up an excellent education in the odds and ends of time which most boys throw away. while the rich boy and the idler were yawning and stretching and getting their eyes open, young burritt had seized the opportunity and improved it. at thirty years of age he was master of every important language in europe and was studying those of asia. what chance had such a boy for distinction? probably not a single youth will read this book who has not a better opportunity for success. yet he had a thirst for knowledge, and a desire for self-improvement, which overcame every obstacle in his pathway. a wealthy gentleman offered to pay his expenses at harvard; but no, he said he could get his education himself, even though he had to work twelve or fourteen hours a day at the forge. here was a determined boy. he snatched every spare moment at the anvil and forge as though it were gold. he believed, with gladstone, that thrift of time would repay him in after years with usury, and that waste of it would make him dwindle. think of a boy working nearly all the daylight in a blacksmith's shop, and yet finding time to study seven languages in a single year! if the youth of america who are struggling against cruel circumstances, to do something and be somebody in the world, could only understand that ninety per cent. of what is called genius is merely the result of persistent, determined industry, is in most cases downright hard work, that it is the slavery to a single idea which has given to many a mediocre talent the reputation of being a genius, they would be inspired with new hope. it is interesting to note that the men who talk most about genius are the men who like to work the least. the lazier the man, the more he will have to say about great things being done by genius. the greatest geniuses have been the greatest workers. sheridan was considered a genius, but it was found that the "brilliants" and "off-hand sayings" with which he used to dazzle the house of commons were elaborated, polished and repolished, and put down in his memorandum book ready for any emergency. genius has been well defined as the infinite capacity for taking pains. if men who have done great things could only reveal to the struggling youth of to-day how much of their reputations was due to downright hard digging and plodding, what an uplift of inspiration and encouragement they would give. how often i have wished that the discouraged, struggling youth could know of the heart-aches, the head-aches, the nerve-aches, the disheartening trials, the discouraged hours, the fears and despair involved in works which have gained the admiration of the world, but which have taxed the utmost powers of their authors. you can read in a few minutes or a few hours a poem or a book with only pleasure and delight, but the days and months of weary plodding over details and dreary drudgery often required to produce it would stagger belief. the greatest works in literature have been elaborated and elaborated, line by line, paragraph by paragraph, often rewritten a dozen times. the drudgery which literary men have put into the productions which have stood the test of time is almost incredible. lucretius worked nearly a lifetime on one poem. it completely absorbed his life. it is said that bryant rewrote "thanatopsis" a hundred times, and even then was not satisfied with it. john foster would sometimes linger a week over a single sentence. he would hack, split, prune, pull up by the roots, or practice any other severity on whatever he wrote, till it gained his consent to exist. chalmers was once asked what foster was about in london. "hard at it," he replied, "at the rate of a line a week." dickens, one of the greatest writers of modern fiction, was so worn down by hard work that he looked as "haggard as a murderer." even lord bacon, one of the greatest geniuses that ever lived, left large numbers of mss. filled with "sudden thoughts set down for use." hume toiled thirteen hours a day on his "history of england." lord eldon astonished the world with his great legal learning, but when he was a student too poor to buy books, he had actually borrowed and copied many hundreds of pages of large law books, such as coke upon littleton, thus saturating his mind with legal principles which afterward blossomed out into what the world called remarkable genius. matthew hale for years studied law sixteen hours a day. speaking of fox, some one declared that he wrote "drop by drop." rousseau says of the labor involved in his smooth and lively style: "my manuscripts, blotted, scratched, interlined, and scarcely legible, attest the trouble they cost me. there is not one of them which i have not been obliged to transcribe four or five times before it went to press. . . . some of my periods i have turned or returned in my head for five or six nights before they were fit to be put to paper." it is said that waller spent a whole summer over ten lines in one of his poems. beethoven probably surpassed all other musicians in his painstaking fidelity and persistent application. there is scarcely a bar in his music that was not written and rewritten at least a dozen times. his favorite maxim was, "the barriers are not yet erected which can say to aspiring talent and industry 'thus far and no further.'" gibbon wrote his autobiography nine times, and was in his study every morning, summer and winter, at six o'clock; and yet youth who waste their evenings wonder at the genius which can produce "the decline and fall of the roman empire," upon which gibbon worked twenty years. even plato, one of the greatest writers that ever lived, wrote the first sentence in his "republic" nine different ways before he was satisfied with it. burke's famous "letter to a noble lord," one of the finest things in the english language, was so completely blotted over with alterations when the proof was returned to the printing-office that the compositors refused to correct it as it was, and entirely reset it. burke wrote the conclusion of his speech at the trial of hastings sixteen times, and butler wrote his famous "analogy" twenty times. it took virgil seven years to write his georgics, and twelve years to write the aeneid. he was so displeased with the latter that he attempted to rise from his deathbed to commit it to the flames. haydn was very poor; his father was a coachman and he, friendless and lonely, married a servant girl. he was sent away from home to act as errand boy for a music teacher. he absorbed a great deal of information, but he had a hard life of persecution until he became a barber in vienna. here he blacked boots for an influential man, who became a friend to him. in this poor boy's oratorio, "the creation," came upon the musical world like the rising of a new sun which never set. he was courted by princes and dined with kings and queens; his reputation was made; there was no more barbering, no more poverty. but of his eight hundred compositions, "the creation" eclipsed them all. he died while napoleon's guns were bombarding vienna, some of the shot falling in his garden. the greatest creations of musicians were written with an effort, to fill the "aching void" in the human heart. frederick douglass, america's most representative colored man, born a slave, was reared in bondage, liberated by his own exertions, educated and advanced by sheer pluck and perseverance to distinguished positions in the service of his country, and to a high place in the respect and esteem of the whole world. when a man like lord cavanagh, without arms or legs, manages to put himself into parliament, when a man like francis joseph campbell, a blind man, becomes a distinguished mathematician, a musician, and a great philanthropist, we get a hint as to what it means to make the most possible out of ourselves and opportunities. perhaps ninety-nine out of a hundred under such unfortunate circumstances would be content to remain helpless objects of charity for life. if it is your call to acquire money power instead of brain power, to acquire business power instead of professional power, double your talent just the same, no matter what it may be. a glover's apprentice of glasgow, scotland, who was too poor to afford even a candle or a fire, and who studied by the light of the shop windows in the streets, and when the shops were closed climbed the lamp-post, holding his book in one hand, and clinging to the lamp-post with the other,--this poor boy, with less chance than almost any boy in america, became the most eminent scholar of scotland. francis parkman, half blind, became one of america's greatest historians in spite of everything, because he made himself such. personal value is a coin of one's own minting; one is taken at the worth he has put into himself. franklin was but a poor printer's boy, whose highest luxury at one time was only a penny roll, eaten in the streets of philadelphia. richard arkwright, a barber all his earlier life, as he rose from poverty to wealth and fame, felt the need of correcting the defects of his early education. after his fiftieth year he devoted two hours a day, snatched from his sleep, to improving himself in orthography, grammar, and writing. michael faraday was a poor boy, son of a blacksmith, who apprenticed him at the age of thirteen to a bookbinder in london. michael laid the foundations of his future greatness by making himself familiar with the contents of the books he bound. he remained at night, after others had gone, to read and study the precious volumes. lord tenterden was proud to point out to his son the shop where his father had shaved for a penny. a french doctor once taunted fléchier, bishop of nismes, who had been a tallow-chandler in his youth, with the meanness of his origin, to which he replied, "if you had been born in the same condition that i was, you would still have been but a maker of candles." the duke of argyle, walking in his garden, saw a latin copy of newton's "principia" on the grass, and supposing that it had been taken from his library, called for some one to carry it back. edmund stone, however, the son of the duke's gardener, claimed it. "yours?" asked the surprised nobleman. "do you understand geometry, latin, and newton?" "i know a little of them," replied edmund. "but how," asked the duke, "came you by the knowledge of all these things?" "a servant taught me to read ten years since," answered stone. "does one need to know anything more than the twenty-four letters, in order to learn everything else that one wishes?" the duke was astonished. "i first learned to read," said the lad; "the masons were then at work upon your house. i approached them one day and observed that the architect used a rule and compasses, and that he made calculations. i inquired what might be the meaning and use of these things, and i was informed that there was a science called arithmetic. i purchased a book of arithmetic and learned it. i was told that there was another science called geometry; i bought the necessary books and learned geometry. by reading i found that there were good books on these sciences in latin, so i bought a dictionary and learned latin. i understood, also, that there were good books of the same kind in french; i bought a dictionary, and learned french. this, my lord, is what i have done; it seems to me that we may learn everything when we know the twenty-four letters of the alphabet." edwin chadwick, in his report to the british parliament, stated that children, working on half time, that is, studying three hours a day and working the rest of their time out of doors, really made the greatest intellectual progress during the year. business men have often accomplished wonders during the busiest lives by simply devoting one, two, three, or four hours daily to study or other literary work. james watt received only the rudiments of an education at school, for his attendance was irregular on account of delicate health. he more than made up for all deficiencies, however, by the diligence with which he pursued his studies at home. alexander v. was a beggar; he was "born mud, and died marble." william herschel, placed at the age of fourteen as a musician in the band of the hanoverian guards, devoted all his leisure to philosophical studies. he acquired a large fund of general knowledge, and in astronomy, a science in which he was wholly self-instructed, his discoveries entitle him to rank with the greatest astronomers of all time. george washington was the son of a widow, born under the roof of a westmoreland farmer; almost from infancy his lot had been the lot of an orphan. no academy had welcomed him to its shade, no college crowned him with its honors; to read, to write, to cipher, these had been his degrees in knowledge. shakespeare learned little more than reading and writing at school, but by self-culture he made himself the great master among literary men. burns, too, enjoyed few advantages of education, and his youth was passed in almost abject poverty. james ferguson, the son of a half-starved peasant, learned to read by listening to the recitations of one of his elder brothers. while a mere boy he discovered several mechanical principles, made models of mills and spinning-wheels, and by means of beads on strings worked out an excellent map of the heavens. ferguson made remarkable things with a common penknife. how many great men have mounted the hill of knowledge by out-of-the-way paths. gifford worked his intricate problems with a shoemaker's awl on a bit of leather. rittenhouse first calculated eclipses on his plow-handle. _a will finds a way_. julius caesar, who has been unduly honored for those great military achievements in which he appears as the scourge of his race, is far more deserving of respect for those wonderful commentaries, in which his military exploits are recorded. he attained distinction by his writings on astronomy, grammar, history, and several other subjects. he was one of the most learned men and one of the greatest orators of his time. yet his life was spent amid the turmoil of a camp or the fierce struggle of politics. if he found abundant time for study, who may not? frederick the great, too, was busy in camp the greater part of his life, yet whenever a leisure moment came, it was sure to be devoted to study. he wrote to a friend, "i become every day more covetous of my time, i render an account of it to myself, and i lose none of it but with great regret." columbus, while leading the life of a sailor, managed to become the most accomplished geographer and astronomer of his time. when peter the great, a boy of seventeen, became the absolute ruler of russia, his subjects were little better than savages, and in himself, even, the passions and propensities of barbarism were so strong that they were frequently exhibited during his whole career. but he determined to transform himself and the russians into civilized people. he instituted reforms with great energy, and at the age of twenty-six started on a visit to the other countries of europe for the purpose of learning about their arts and institutions. at saardam, holland, he was so impressed with the sights of the great east india dockyard, that he apprenticed himself to a shipbuilder, and helped build the st. peter, which he promptly purchased. continuing his travels, after he had learned his trade, he worked in england in paper-mills, saw-mills, rope-yards, watchmaker's shops, and other manufactories, doing the work and receiving the treatment of a common laborer. while traveling, his constant habit was to obtain as much information as he could beforehand with regard to every place he was to visit, and he would demand, "let me see all." when setting out on his investigations, on such occasions, he carried his tablets in his hand, and whatever he deemed worthy of remembrance was carefully noted down. he would often leave his carriage, if he saw the country people at work by the wayside as he passed along, and not only enter into conversation with them, on agricultural affairs, but accompany them to their houses, examine their furniture, and take drawings of their implements of husbandry. thus he obtained much minute and correct knowledge, which he would scarcely have acquired by other means, and which he afterward turned to admirable account in the improvement of his own country. the ancients said, "know thyself;" the nineteenth century says, "help thyself." self-culture gives a second birth to the soul. a liberal education is a true regeneration. when a man is once liberally educated, he will generally remain a man, not shrink to a manikin, nor dwindle to a brute. but if he is not properly educated, if he has merely been crammed and stuffed through college, if he has merely a broken-down memory from trying to hold crammed facts enough to pass the examination, he will continue to shrink and shrivel and dwindle, often below his original proportions, for he will lose both his confidence and self-respect, as his crammed facts, which never became a part of himself, evaporate from his distended memory. many a youth has made his greatest effort in his graduating essay. but, alas! the beautiful flowers of rhetoric blossomed only to exhaust the parent stock, which blossoms no more forever. in strasburg geese are crammed with food several times a day by opening their mouths and forcing the pabulum down the throat with the finger. the geese are shut up in boxes just large enough to hold them, and are not allowed to take any exercise. this is done in order to increase enormously the liver for _pâté de fois gras_. so are our youth sometimes stuffed with education. what are the chances for success of students who "cut" recitations or lectures, and gad, lounge about, and dissipate in the cities at night until the last two or three weeks, sometimes the last few days, before examination, when they employ tutors at exorbitant prices with the money often earned by hard-working parents, to stuff their idle brains with the pabulum of knowledge; not to increase their grasp or power of brain, not to discipline it, not for assimilation into the mental tissue to develop personal power, but to fatten the memory, the liver of the brain; to fatten it with crammed facts until it is sufficiently expanded to insure fifty per cent. in the examination. true teaching will create a thirst for knowledge, and the desire to quench this thirst will lead the eager student to the pierian spring. "man might be so educated that all his prepossessions would be truth, and all his feelings virtues." every bit of education or culture is of great advantage in the struggle for existence. the microscope does not create anything new, but it reveals marvels. to educate the eye adds to its magnifying power until it sees beauty where before it saw only ugliness. it reveals a world we never suspected, and finds the greatest beauty even in the commonest things. the eye of an agassiz could see worlds which the uneducated eye never dreamed of. the cultured hand can do a thousand things the uneducated hand cannot do. it becomes graceful, steady of nerve, strong, skillful, indeed it almost seems to think, so animated is it with intelligence. the cultured will can seize, grasp, and hold the possessor, with irresistible power and nerve, to almost superhuman effort. the educated touch can almost perform miracles. the educated taste can achieve wonders almost past belief. what a contrast this, between the cultured, logical, profound, masterly reason of a gladstone and that of the hod-carrier who has never developed or educated his reason beyond what is necessary to enable him to mix mortar and carry brick. "culture comes from the constant choice of the best within our reach," says bulwer. "continue to cultivate the mind, to sharpen by exercise the genius, to attempt to delight or instruct your race; and, even supposing you fall short of every model you set before you, supposing your name moulder with your dust, still you will have passed life more nobly than the unlaborious herd. grant that you win not that glorious accident, 'a name below,' how can you tell but that you may have fitted yourself for high destiny and employ, not in the world of men, but of spirits? the powers of the mind cannot be less immortal than the mere sense of identity; their acquisitions accompany us through the eternal progress, and we may obtain a lower or a higher grade hereafter, in proportion as we are more or less fitted by the exercise of our intellect to comprehend and execute the solemn agencies of god." but be careful to avoid that over-intellectual culture which is purchased at the expense of moral vigor. an observant professor of one of our colleges has remarked that "the mind may be so rounded and polished by education, so well balanced, as not to be energetic in any one faculty. in other men not thus trained, the sense of deficiency and of the sharp, jagged corners of their knowledge leads to efforts to fill up the chasms, rendering them at last far better educated men than the polished, easy-going graduate who has just knowledge enough to prevent consciousness of his ignorance. while all the faculties of the mind should be cultivated, it is yet desirable that it should have two or three rough-hewn features of massive strength. young men are too apt to forget the great end of life which is to be and do, not to read and brood over what other men have been and done." in a gymnasium you tug, you expand your chest, you push, pull, strike, run, in order to develop your physical self; so you can develop your moral and intellectual nature only by continued effort. "i repeat that my object is not to give him knowledge but to teach him how to acquire it at need," said rousseau. all learning is self-teaching. it is upon the working of the pupil's own mind that his progress in knowledge depends. the great business of the master is to teach the pupil to teach himself. "thinking, not growth, makes manhood," says isaac taylor. "accustom yourself, therefore, to thinking. set yourself to understand whatever you see or read. to join thinking with reading is one of the first maxims, and one of the easiest operations." "how few think justly of the thinking few: how many never think who think they do." chapter ix. work and wait. what we do upon some great occasion will probably depend on what we already are; and what we are will be the result of previous years of self-discipline.--h. p. liddon. in all matters, before beginning, a diligent preparation should be made.--cicero. i consider a human soul without education like marble in a quarry which shows none of its inherent beauties until the skill of the polisher sketches out the colors, makes the surface shine, and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot, and vein that runs throughout the body of it.--addison. many a genius has been slow of growth. oaks that flourish for a thousand years do not spring up into beauty like a reed.--george henry lewes. use your gifts faithfully, and they shall be enlarged; practice what you know, and you shall attain to higher knowledge.--arnold. all good abides with him who waiteth wisely.--thoreau. the more haste, ever the worse speed.--churchill. haste trips up its own heels, fetters and stops itself.--seneca. "wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast." how can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed-time of character?--thoreau. i call a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both public and private, of peace and war.--milton. the safe path to excellence and success, in every calling, is that of appropriate preliminary education, diligent application to learn the art and assiduity in practicing it.--edward everett. the more you know, the more you can save yourself and that which belongs to you, and do more work with less effort.--charles kingsley. "i was a mere cipher in that vast sea of human enterprise," said henry bessemer, speaking of his arrival in london in . although but eighteen years old, and without an acquaintance in the city, he soon made work for himself by inventing a process of copying bas-reliefs on cardboard. his method was so simple that one could learn in ten minutes how to make a die from an embossed stamp for a penny. having ascertained later that in this way the raised stamps on all official papers in england could easily be forged, he set to work and invented a perforated stamp which could not be forged nor removed from a document. at the public stamp office he was told by the chief that the government was losing , pounds a year through the custom of removing stamps from old parchments and using them again. the chief also appreciated the new danger of easy counterfeiting. so he offered bessemer a definite sum for his process of perforation, or an office for life at eight hundred pounds a year. bessemer chose the office, and hastened to tell the good news to a young woman with whom he had agreed to share his fortune. in explaining his invention, he told how it would prevent any one from taking a valuable stamp from a document a hundred years old and using it a second time. * * * * * * [illustration: thomas alva edison] "the wizard of menlo park." "what the world wants is men who have the nerve and the grit to work and wait, whether the world applaud or hiss." * * * * * * "yes," said his betrothed, "i understand that; but, surely, if all stamps had a date put upon them they could not at a future time be used without detection." this was a very short speech, and of no special importance if we omit a single word of four letters; but, like the schoolboy's pins which saved the lives of thousands of people annually by not getting swallowed, that little word, by keeping out of the ponderous minds of the british revenue officers, had for a long period saved the government the burden of caring for an additional income of , pounds a year. and the same little word, if published in its connection, would render henry's perforation device of far less value than a last year's bird's nest. henry felt proud of the young woman's ingenuity, and suggested the improvement at the stamp office. as a result his system of perforation was abandoned and he was deprived of his promised office, the government coolly making use from that day to this, without compensation, of the idea conveyed by that little insignificant word. so bessemer's financial prospects were not very encouraging; but, realizing that the best capital a young man can have is a capital wife, he at once entered into a partnership which placed at his command the combined ideas of two very level heads. the result, after years of thought and experiment, was the bessemer process of making steel cheaply, which has revolutionized the iron industry throughout the world. his method consists simply in forcing hot air from below into several tons of melted pig-iron, so as to produce intense combustion; and then adding enough spiegel-eisen (looking-glass iron), an ore rich in carbon, to change the whole mass to steel. he discovered this simple process only after trying in vain much more difficult and expensive methods. "all things come round to him who will but wait." the great lack of the age is want of thoroughness. how seldom you find a young man or woman who is willing to take time to prepare for his life work. a little education is all they want, a little smattering of books, and then they are ready for business. "can't wait" is characteristic of the century, and is written on everything; on commerce, on schools, on society, on churches. can't wait for a high school, seminary, or college. the boy can't wait to become a youth, nor the youth a man. youth rush into business with no great reserve of education or drill; of course they do poor, feverish work, and break down in middle life, and many die of old age in the forties. everybody is in a hurry. buildings are rushed up so quickly that they will not stand, and everything is made "to sell." not long ago a professor in one of our universities had a letter from a young woman in the west, asking him if he did not think she could teach elocution if she could come to the university and take twelve lessons. our young people of to-day want something, and want it quickly. they are not willing to lay broad, deep foundations. the weary years in preparatory school and college dishearten them. they only want a "smattering" of an education. but as pope says,-- "a little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again." the shifts to cover up ignorance, and "the constant trembling lest some blunder should expose one's emptiness," are pitiable. short cuts and abridged methods are the demand of the hour. but the way to shorten the road to success is to take plenty of time to lay in your reserve power. you can't stop to forage your provender as the army advances; if you do the enemy will get there first. hard work, a definite aim, and faithfulness, will shorten the way. don't risk a life's superstructure upon a day's foundation. unless you have prepared yourself to profit by your chance, the opportunity will only make you ridiculous. a great occasion is valuable to you just in proportion as you have educated yourself to make use of it. beware of that fatal facility of thoughtless speech and superficial action which has misled many a young man into the belief that he could make a glib tongue or a deft hand take the place of deep study or hard work. patience is nature's motto. she works ages to bring a flower to perfection. what will she not do for the greatest of her creation? ages and aeons are nothing to her, out of them she has been carving her great statue, a perfect man. johnson said a man must turn over half a library to write one book. when an authoress told wordsworth she had spent six hours on a poem, he replied that he would have spent six weeks. think of bishop hall spending thirty years on one of his works. owens was working on the "commentary to the epistle to the hebrews" for twenty years. moore spent several weeks on one of his musical stanzas which reads as if it were a dash of genius. carlyle wrote with the utmost difficulty, and never executed a page of his great histories till he had consulted every known authority, so that every sentence is the quintessence of many books, the product of many hours of drudging research in the great libraries. to-day, "sartor resartus" is everywhere. you can get it for a mere trifle at almost any bookseller's, and hundreds of thousands of copies are scattered over the world. but when carlyle brought it to london in , it was refused almost contemptuously by three prominent publishers. at last he managed to get it into "fraser's magazine," the editor of which conveyed to the author the pleasing information that his work had been received with "unqualified disapprobation." henry ward beecher sent a half dozen articles to the publisher of a religious paper to pay for his subscription, but they were respectfully declined. the publishers of the "atlantic monthly" returned miss alcott's manuscript, suggesting that she had better stick to teaching. one of the leading magazines ridiculed tennyson's first poems, and consigned the young poet to oblivion. only one of ralph waldo emerson's books had a remunerative sale. washington irving was nearly seventy years old before the income from his books paid the expenses of his household. in some respects it is very unfortunate that the old system of binding boys out to a trade has been abandoned. to-day very few boys learn any trade. they pick up what they know, as they go along, just as a student crams for a particular examination, just to "get through," without any effort to see how much he may learn on any subject. think of an american youth spending twelve years with michael angelo, studying anatomy that he might create the masterpiece of all art; or with da vinci devoting ten years to the model of an equestrian statue that he might master the anatomy of the horse. most young american artists would expect, in a quarter of that time, to sculpture an apollo belvidere. while michael angelo was painting the sistine chapel he would not allow himself time for meals or to dress or undress; but he kept bread within reach that he might eat when hunger impelled, and he slept in his clothes. a rich man asked howard burnett to do a little thing for his album. burnett complied and charged a thousand francs. "but it took you only five minutes," objected the rich man. "yes, but it took me thirty years to learn how to do it in five minutes." "i prepared that sermon," said a young sprig of divinity, "in half an hour, and preached it at once, and thought nothing of it." "in that," said an older minister, "your hearers are at one with you, for they also thought nothing of it." what the age wants is men who have the nerve and the grit to work and wait, whether the world applaud or hiss. it wants a bancroft, who can spend twenty-six years on the "history of the united states;" a noah webster, who can devote thirty-six years to a dictionary; a gibbon, who can plod for twenty years on the "decline and fall of the roman empire;" a mirabeau, who can struggle on for forty years before he has a chance to show his vast reserve, destined to shake an empire; a farragut, a von moltke, who have the persistence to work and wait for half a century for their first great opportunities; a garfield, burning his lamp fifteen minutes later than a rival student in his academy; a grant, fighting on in heroic silence, when denounced by his brother generals and politicians everywhere; a field's untiring perseverance, spending years and a fortune laying a cable when all the world called him a fool; a michael angelo, working seven long years decorating the sistine chapel with his matchless "creation" and the "last judgment," refusing all remuneration therefor, lest his pencil might catch the taint of avarice; a titian, spending seven years on the "last supper;" a stephenson, working fifteen years on a locomotive; a watt, twenty years on a condensing engine; a lady franklin, working incessantly for twelve long years to rescue her husband from the polar seas; a thurlow weed, walking two miles through the snow with rags tied around his feet for shoes, to borrow the history of the french revolution, and eagerly devouring it before the sap-bush fire; a milton, elaborating "paradise lost" in a world he could not see, and then selling it for fifteen pounds; a thackeray, struggling on cheerfully after his "vanity fair" was refused by a dozen publishers; a balzac, toiling and waiting in a lonely garret, whom neither poverty, debt, nor hunger could discourage or intimidate; not daunted by privations, not hindered by discouragements. it wants men who can work and wait. when a young lawyer daniel webster once looked in vain through all the law libraries near him, and then ordered at an expense of fifty dollars the necessary books, to obtain authorities and precedents in a case in which his client was a poor blacksmith. he won his cause, but, on account of the poverty of his client, only charged fifteen dollars, thus losing heavily on the books bought, to say nothing of his time. years after, as he was passing through new york city, he was consulted by aaron burr on an important but puzzling case then pending before the supreme court. he saw in a moment that it was just like the blacksmith's case, an intricate question of title, which he had solved so thoroughly that it was to him now as simple as the multiplication table. going back to the time of charles ii. he gave the law and precedents involved with such readiness and accuracy of sequence that burr asked in great surprise if he had been consulted before in the case. "most certainly not," he replied, "i never heard of your case till this evening." "very well," said burr, "proceed," and, when he had finished, webster received a fee that paid him liberally for all the time and trouble he had spent for his early client. albert bierstadt first crossed the rocky mountains with a band of pioneers in , making sketches for the paintings of western scenes for which he had become famous. as he followed the trail to pike's peak, he gazed in wonder upon the enormous herds of buffaloes which dotted the plains as far as the eye could reach, and thought of the time when they would have disappeared before the march of civilization. the thought haunted him and found its final embodiment in "the last of the buffaloes" in . to perfect this great work he had spent twenty years. everything which endures, which will stand the test of time, must have a deep, solid foundation. in rome the foundation is often the most expensive part of an edifice, so deep must they dig to build on the living rock. fifty feet of bunker hill monument is under ground; unseen and unappreciated by those who tread about that historic shaft, but it is this foundation, apparently thrown away, which enables it to stand upright, true to the plumb-line through all the tempests that lash its granite sides. a large part of every successful life must be spent in laying foundation stones under ground. success is the child of drudgery and perseverance and depends upon "knowing how long it takes to succeed." havelock joined the army at twenty-eight, and for thirty-four years worked and waited for his opportunity; conscious of his power, "fretting as a subaltern while he saw drunkards and fools put above his head." but during all these years he was fitting himself to lead that marvelous march to lucknow. it was many years of drudgery and reading a thousand volumes that enabled george eliot to get fifty thousand dollars for "daniel deronda." how came writers to be famous? by writing for years without any pay at all; by writing hundreds of pages for mere practice work; by working like galley-slaves at literature for half a lifetime. it was working and waiting many long and weary years that put one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars into "the angelus." millet's first attempts were mere daubs, the later were worth fortunes. schiller "never could get done." dante sees himself "growing lean over his divine comedy." it is working and waiting that gives perfection. "i do not remember," said beecher, "a book in all the depths of learning, nor a scrap in literature, nor a work in all the schools of art, from which its author has derived a permanent renown, that is not known to have been long and patiently elaborated." endurance is a much better test of character than any one act of heroism, however noble. the pianist thalberg said he never ventured to perform one of his celebrated pieces in public until he had played it at least fifteen hundred times. he laid no claim whatever to genius; he said it was all a question of hard work. the accomplishments of such industry, such perseverance, would put to shame many a man who claims genius. before edmund kean would consent to appear in that character which he acted with such consummate skill, the gentleman villain, he practiced constantly before a glass, studying expression for a year and a half. when he appeared upon the stage, byron, who went to see him with moore, said he never looked upon so fearful and wicked a face. as the great actor went on to delineate the terrible consequences of sin, byron fainted. "for years i was in my place of business by sunrise," said a wealthy banker who had begun without a dollar, "and often i did not leave it for fifteen or eighteen hours." _festina lente_--hasten slowly--is a good latin motto. patience, it is said, changes the mulberry leaf to satin. the giant oak on the hillside was detained months or years in its upward growth while its roots took a great turn around some rock, in order to gain a hold by which the tree was anchored to withstand the storms of centuries. da vinci spent four years on the head of mona lisa, perhaps the most beautiful ever painted, but he left therein, an artistic thought for all time. said captain bingham: "you can have no idea of the wonderful machine that the german army is and how well it is prepared for war. a chart is made out which shows just what must be done in the case of wars with the different nations. and every officer's place in the scheme is laid out beforehand. there is a schedule of trains which will supersede all other schedules the moment war is declared, and this is so arranged that the commander of the army here could telegraph to any officer to take such a train and go to such a place at a moment's notice. when the franco-prussian war was declared, von moltke was awakened at midnight and told of the fact. he said coolly to the official who aroused him, 'go to pigeonhole no. ---- in my safe and take a paper from it and telegraph as there directed to the different troops of the empire.' he then turned over and went to sleep and awoke at his usual hour in the morning. every one else in berlin was excited about the war, but von moltke took his morning walk as usual, and a friend who met him said, 'general, you seem to be taking it very easy. aren't you afraid of the situation? i should think you would be busy.' 'ah,' replied von moltke, 'all of my work for this time has been done long beforehand and everything that can be done now has been done.'" that is done soon enough which is done well. soon ripe, soon rotten. he that would enjoy the fruit must not gather the flower. he who is impatient to become his own master is more likely to become his own slave. better believe yourself a dunce and work away than a genius and be idle. one year of trained thinking is worth more than a whole college course of mental absorption of a vast series of undigested facts. the facility with which the world swallows up the ordinary college graduate who thought he was going to dazzle mankind should bid you pause and reflect. but just as certainly as man was created not to crawl on all fours in the depths of primeval forests, but to develop his mental and moral faculties, just so certainly he needs education, and only by means of it will he become what he ought to become,--man, in the highest sense of the word. ignorance is not simply the negation of knowledge, it is the misdirection of the mind. "one step in knowledge," says bulwer, "is one step from sin; one step from sin is one step nearer to heaven." a learned clergyman was thus accosted by an illiterate preacher who despised education: "sir, you have been to college, i presume?" "yes, sir," was the reply. "i am thankful," said the former, "that the lord opened my mouth without any learning." "a similar event," retorted the clergyman, "happened in balaam's time." "if a cloth were drawn around the eyes of praxiteles' statue of love," says bulwer, "the face looked grave and sad; but as the bandage was removed, a beautiful smile would overspread the countenance. even so does the removal of the veil of ignorance from the eyes of the mind bring radiant happiness to the heart of man." a young man just graduated told the president of trinity college that he had completed his education, and had come to say good-by. "indeed," said the president, "i have just begun my education." many an extraordinary man has been made out of a very ordinary boy; but in order to accomplish this we must begin with him while he is young. it is simply astonishing what training will do for a rough, uncouth, and even dull lad, if he has good material in him, and comes under the tutelage of a skilled educator before his habits have become confirmed. even a few weeks' or months' drill of the rawest and roughest recruits in the late civil war so straightened and dignified stooping and uncouth soldiers, and made them so manly, erect, and courteous in their bearing, that their own friends scarcely knew them. if this change is so marked in the youth who has grown to maturity, what a miracle is possible in the lad who is taken early and put under a course of drill and systematic training, both physical, mental, and moral. how many a man who is now in the penitentiary, in the poorhouse, or among the tramps, or living out a miserable existence in the slums of our cities, bent over, uncouth, rough, slovenly, has possibilities slumbering within the rags, which would have developed him into a magnificent man, an ornament to the human race instead of a foul blot and scar, had he only been fortunate enough early in life to have come under efficient and systematic training. laziness begins in cobwebs and ends in iron chains. the more business a man has, the more he can do, for be learns to economize his time. the industry that acquired riches, according to a wise teacher, the patience that is required in obtaining them, the reserved self-control, the measuring of values, the sympathy felt for fellow-toilers, the knowledge of what a dollar costs to the average man, the memory of it--all these things are preservative. but woe to the young farmer who hates farming; does not like sowing and reaping; is impatient with the dilatory and slow path to a small though secure fortune in the neighborhood where he was born, and comes to the city, hoping to become suddenly rich, thinking that he can break into the palace of wealth and rob it of its golden treasures! edison described his repeated efforts to make the phonograph reproduce an aspirated sound, and added: "from eighteen to twenty hours a day for the last seven months i have worked on this single word 'specia.' i said into the phonograph 'specia, specia, specia,' but the instrument responded 'pecia, pecia, pecia.' it was enough to drive one mad. but i held firm, and i have succeeded." the road to distinction must be paved with years of self-denial and hard work. horace mann, the great author of the common school system of massachusetts, was a remarkable example of that pluck and patience which can work and wait. his only inheritance was poverty and hard work. but he had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and a determination to get on in the world. he braided straw to get money to buy books which his soul thirsted for. to jonas chickering there were no trifles in the manufacture of a piano. others might work for salaries, but he was working for fame and fortune. neither time nor pains were of any account to him compared with accuracy and knowledge. he could afford to work and wait, for quality, not quantity, was his aim. fifty years ago the piano was a miserable, instrument compared with the perfect mechanism of to-day. chickering was determined to make a piano which would yield the fullest, richest volume of melody with the least exertion to the player, and one which would withstand atmospheric changes and preserve its purity and truthfulness of tone. and he strove patiently and persistently till he succeeded. "thy life, wert thou the pitifullest of all the sons of earth, is no idle dream, but a solemn reality," said carlyle. "it is thy own. it is all thou hast to comfort eternity with. work then like a star, unhasting, yet unresting." gladstone was bound to win; although he had spent many years of preparation for his life work, in spite of the consciousness of marvelous natural endowments which would have been deemed sufficient by many young men, and notwithstanding he had gained the coveted prize of a seat in parliament, yet he decided to make himself master of the situation; and amid all his public and private duties, he not only spent eleven terms more in the study of the law, but he studied greek constantly and read every well written book or paper he could obtain, so determined was he that his life should be rounded out to its fullest measure, and that his mind should have broad and liberal culture. emperor william i. was not a genius, but the secret of his power lay in tireless perseverance. a friend says of him, "when i passed the palace at berlin night after night, however late, i always saw that grand imperial figure standing beside the green lamp, and i used to say to myself, 'that is how the imperial crown of germany was won.'" ole bull said, "if i practice one day, i can see the result. if i practice two days my friends can see it; if i practice three days the great public can see it." the habit of seizing every bit of knowledge, no matter how insignificant it may seem at the time, every opportunity, every occasion, and grinding them all up into experience, cannot be overestimated. you will find use for all of it. webster once repeated an anecdote with effect which he heard fourteen years before, and which he had not thought of in the mean time. it exactly fitted the occasion. "it is an ill mason that rejects any stone." webster was once urged to speak on a subject of great importance, but refused, saying he was very busy and had no time to master the subject. "but," replied his friend, "a very few words from you would do much to awaken public attention to it." webster replied, "if there be so much weight in my words, it is because i do not allow myself to speak on any subject until my mind is imbued with it." on one occasion webster made a remarkable speech before the phi beta kappa society at harvard, when a book was presented to him, but after he had gone, his "impromptu" speech, carefully written out, was found in the book which he had forgotten to take away. demosthenes was once urged to speak on a great and sudden emergency, but replied, "i am not prepared." in fact, it was thought by many that demosthenes did not possess any genius whatever, because he never allowed himself to speak on any subject without thorough preparation. in any meeting or assembly, when called upon, he would never rise, even to make remarks, it was said, without previously preparing himself. alexander hamilton said, "men give me credit for genius. all the genius i have lies just in this: when i have a subject in hand i study it profoundly. day and night it is before me. i explore it in all its bearings. my mind becomes pervaded with it. then the effort which i make the people are pleased to call the fruit of genius; it is the fruit of labor and thought." the law of labor is equally binding on genius and mediocrity. are the results so distant that you delay the preparation in the hope that fortuitous good luck may make it unnecessary? as well might the husbandman delay sowing his seed until the spring and summer are past and the ground hardened by the frosts of a rigorous winter. as well might one who is desirous of enjoying firm health inoculate his system with the seeds of disease, and expect at such time as he may see fit to recover from its effects, and banish the malady. nelaton, the great surgeon, said that if he had four minutes in which to perform an operation, on which a life depended, he would take one minute to consider how best to do it. "many men," says longfellow, "do not allow their principles to take root, but pull them up every now and then, as children do flowers they have planted, to see if they are growing." we must not only work, but wait. "the spruce young spark," says sizer, "who thinks chiefly of his mustache and boots and shiny hat, of getting along nicely and easily during the day, and talking about the theatre, the opera, or a fast horse, ridiculing the faithful young fellow who came to learn the business and make a man of himself, because he will not join in wasting his time in dissipation, will see the day, if his useless life is not earlier blasted by vicious indulgences, when he will be glad to accept a situation from his fellow-clerk whom he now ridicules and affects to despise, when the latter shall stand in the firm, dispensing benefits and acquiring fortune." "i have been watching the careers of young men by the thousand in this busy city of new york for over thirty years," said dr. cuyler, "and i find that the chief difference between the successful and the failures lies in the single element of staying power. permanent success is oftener won by holding on than by sudden dash, however brilliant. the easily discouraged, who are pushed back by a straw, are all the time dropping to the rear--to perish or to be carried along on the stretcher of charity. they who understand and practice abraham lincoln's homely maxim of 'pegging away' have achieved the solidest success." "when a man has done his work," says ruskin, "and nothing can any way be materially altered in his fate, let him forget his toil, and jest with his fate if he will, but what excuse can you find for willfulness of thought at the very lime when every crisis of fortune hangs on your decisions? a youth thoughtless, when all the happiness of his home forever depends on the chances or the passions of the hour! a youth thoughtless, when the career of all his days depends on the opportunity of a moment! a youth thoughtless, when his every action is a foundation-stone of future conduct, and every imagination a foundation of life or death! be thoughtless in any after years, rather than now--though, indeed, there is only one place where a man may be nobly thoughtless, his deathbed. nothing should ever be left to be done there." the duke of wellington became so discouraged because he did not advance in the army that he applied for a much inferior position in the customs department, but was refused. napoleon had applied for every vacant position for seven years before he was recognized, but meanwhile he studied with all his might, supplementing what was considered a thorough military education by researches and reflections which in later years enabled him easily to teach the art of war to veterans who had never dreamed of his novel combinations. reserves which carry us through great emergencies are the result of long working and long waiting. collyer declares that reserves mean to a man also achievement,--"the power to do the grandest thing possible to your nature when you feel you must, or some precious thing will be lost,--to do well always, but best in the crisis on which all things turn; to stand the strain of a long fight, and still find you have something left, and so to never know you are beaten, because you never are beaten." every defeat is a waterloo to him who has no reserves. he only is independent in action who has been earnest and thorough in preparation and self-culture. "not for school, but for life, we learn;" and our habits--of promptness, earnestness, and thoroughness, or of tardiness, fickleness, and superficiality--are the things acquired most readily and longest retained. "one who reads the chronicles of discoveries is struck with the prominent part that accident has played in such annals. for some of the most useful processes and machinery the world is indebted to apparently chance occurrences. inventors in search of one object have failed in their quest, but have stumbled on something more valuable than that for which they were looking. saul is not the only man who has gone in search of asses and found a kingdom. astrologers sought to read from the heavens the fate of men and the fortune of nations, and they led to a knowledge of astronomy. alchemists were seeking for the philosopher's stone, and from their efforts sprung the science of chemistry. men explored the heavens for something to explain irregularities in the movements of the planets, and discovered a star other than the one for which they were looking. a careless glance at such facts might encourage the delusion that aimless straying in bypaths is quite as likely to be rewarded as is the steady pressing forward, with fixed purpose, towards some definite goal. "but it is to be remembered that the men who made the accidental discoveries were men who were looking for something. the unexpected achievement was but the return for the toil after what was attained. others might have encountered the same facts, but only the eye made eager by the strain of long watching would be quick to note the meaning. if vain search for hidden treasure has no other recompense, it at least gives ability to detect the first gleam of the true metal. men may wake at times surprised to find themselves famous, but it was the work they did before going to sleep, and not the slumber, that gave the eminence. when the ledge has been drilled and loaded and the proper connections have been made, a child's touch on the electric key may be enough to annihilate the obstacle, but without the long preparation the pressure of a giant's hand would be without effect. "in the search for truth and the shaping of character the principle remains the same as in science and literature. trivial causes are followed by wonderful results, but it is only the merchantman who is on the watch for goodly pearls who is represented as finding the pearl of great price." to vary the language of another, the three great essentials to success in mental and physical labor are practice, patience, and perseverance, but the greatest of these is perseverance. let us, then, be up and doing, with a heart for any fate; still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labor and to wait. longfellow. chapter x. clear grit. i shall show the cinders of my spirits through the ashes of my chance. shakespeare. what though ten thousand faint, desert, or yield, or in weak terror flee! heed not the panic of the multitude; thine be the captain's watchword,--victory! horatius bonar. better to stem with heart and hand the roaring tide of life, than lie, unmindful, on its flowery strand, of god's occasions drifting by! better with naked nerve to hear the needles of this goading air, than in the lap of sensual ease forego the godlike power to do, the godlike aim to know. whittier. let fortune empty her whole quiver on me, i have a soul that, like an ample shield, can take in all, and verge enough for more. dryden. there's a brave fellow! there's a man of pluck! a man who's not afraid to say his say, though a whole town's against him. longfellow. our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.--goldsmith. attempt the end and never stand to doubt; nothing's so hard but search will find it out. herrick. the barriers are not yet erected which shall say to aspiring talent, "thus far and no farther."--beethoven. "friends and comrades," said pizarro, as he turned toward the south, after tracing with his sword upon the sand a line from east to west, "on that side are toil, hunger, nakedness, the drenching storm, desertion, and death; on this side, ease and pleasure. there lies peru with its riches; here, panama and its poverty. choose, each man, what best becomes a brave castilian. for my part, i go to the south." so saying, he crossed the line and was followed by thirteen spaniards in armor. thus, on the little island of gallo in the pacific, when his men were clamoring to return to panama, did pizarro and his few volunteers resolve to stake their lives upon the success of a desperate crusade against the powerful empire of the incas. at the time they had not even a vessel to transport them to the country they wished to conquer. is it necessary to add that all difficulties yielded at last to such resolute determination? * * * * * * [illustration: andrew jackson] "old hickory." "stick to your aim: the mongrel's hold will slip, but only crowbars loose the bull-dog's grip." "the nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blenches, the thought that never wanders,--these are the masters of victory." * * * * * * "perseverance is a roman virtue, that wins each godlike act, and plucks success e'en from the spear-proof crest of rugged danger." at a time when abolitionists were dangerously unpopular, a crowd of brawny cape cod fishermen had made such riotous demonstrations that all the speakers announced, except stephen foster and lucy stone, had fled from an open-air platform. "you had better run, stephen," said she, "they are coming." "but who will take care of you?" asked foster. "this gentleman will take care of me," she replied, calmly laying her hand within the arm of a burly rioter with a club, who had just sprung upon the platform. "wh--what did you say?" stammered the astonished rowdy, as he looked at the little woman; "yes, i'll take care of you, and no one shall touch a hair of your head." with this he forced a way for her through the crowd, and, at her earnest request, placed her upon a stump and stood guard with his club while she delivered an address so effective that the audience offered no further violence, and even took up a collection of twenty dollars to repay mr. foster for the damage his clothes had received when the riot was at its height. "when you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as if you could not hold on a minute longer," said harriet beecher stowe, "never give up then, for that's just the place and time that the tide'll turn." charles sumner said, "three things are necessary: first, backbone; second, backbone; third, backbone." while digging among the ruins of pompeii, which was buried by the dust and ashes from an eruption of vesuvius, a. d. , the workmen found the skeleton of a roman soldier in the sentry-box at one of the city's gates. he might have found safety under sheltering rocks close by; but, in the face of certain death, he had remained at his post, a mute witness to the thorough discipline, the ceaseless vigilance and fidelity which made the roman legionaries masters of the known world. bulwer, describing the flight of a party amid the dust, and ashes, and streams of boiling water, and huge hurtling fragments of scoria, and gusty winds, and lurid lightnings, continues: "the air was now still for a few minutes; the lamp from the gate streamed out far and clear; the fugitives hurried on. they gained the gate. they passed by the roman sentry. the lightning flashed over his livid face and polished helmet, but his stern features were composed even in their awe! he remained erect and motionless at his post. that hour itself had not animated the machine of the ruthless majesty of rome into the reasoning and self-acting man. there he stood amidst the crashing elements; he had not received the permission to desert his station and escape." the world admires the man who never flinches from unexpected difficulties, who calmly, patiently, and courageously grapples with his fate, who dies, if need be, at his post. "clear grit" always commands respect. it is that quality which achieves, and everybody admires achievement. in the strife of parties and principles, backbone without brains will carry against brains without backbone. "a politician weakly and amiably in the right is no match for a politician tenaciously and pugnaciously in the wrong." you cannot, by tying an opinion to a man's tongue, make him the representative of that opinion; at the close of any battle for principles, his name will be found neither among the dead nor among the wounded, but among the missing. the "london times" was an insignificant sheet published by mr. walter and was steadily losing money. john walter, jr., then only twenty-seven years old, begged his father to give him full control of the paper. after many misgivings, the father finally consented. the young journalist began to remodel the establishment and to introduce new ideas everywhere. the paper had not attempted to mould public opinion, and had no individuality or character of its own. the audacious young editor boldly attacked every wrong, even the government, when he thought it corrupt. thereupon the public customs, printing, and the government advertisements were withdrawn. the father was in utter dismay. the son he was sure would ruin the paper and himself. but no remonstrance could swerve him from his purpose, to give the world a great journal which should have weight, character, individuality, and independence. the public soon saw that a new power stood behind the "times"; that its articles meant business; that new life and new blood and new ideas had been infused into the insignificant sheet; that a man with brains and push and tenacity of purpose stood at the helm,--a man who could make a way when he could not find one. among other new features foreign dispatches were introduced, and they appeared in the "times" several days before their appearance in the government organs. the "leading article" also was introduced to stay. but the aggressive editor antagonized the government, and his foreign dispatches were all stopped at the outpost, while those of the ministerial journalists were allowed to proceed. but nothing could daunt this resolute young spirit. at enormous expense he employed special couriers. every obstacle put in his way, and all opposition from the government, only added to his determination to succeed. enterprise, push, grit were behind the "times," and nothing could stay its progress. walter was the soul of the paper, and his personality pervaded every detail. in those days only three hundred copies of the "times" could be struck off in an hour by the best presses, and walter had duplicate and even triplicate types set. then he set his brain to work, and finally the walter press, throwing off , copies, both sides printed, per hour, was the result. it was the th of november, , that the first steam printed paper was given to the world. walter's tenacity of purpose was remarkable. he shrank from no undertaking, and neglected no detail. "mean natures always feel a sort of terror before great natures, and many a base thought has been unuttered, many a sneaking vote withheld, through the fear inspired by the rebuking presence of one noble man." as a rule, pure grit, character, has the right of way. in the presence of men permeated with grit and sound in character, meanness and baseness slink out of sight. mean men are uncomfortable, dishonesty trembles, hypocrisy is uncertain. lincoln, being asked by an anxious visitor what he would do after three or four years if the rebellion was not subdued, replied: "oh, there is no alternative but to keep pegging away." "it is in me and it shall come out," said sheridan, when told that he would never make an orator, as he had failed in his first speech in parliament. he became known as one of the foremost orators of his day. when a boy henry clay was very bashful and diffident, and scarcely dared recite before his class at school, but he determined to become an orator. so he committed speeches and recited them in the cornfields, or in the barn with the horse and cows for an audience. look at garrison reading this advertisement in a southern paper: "five thousand dollars will be paid for the head of w. l. garrison by the governor of georgia." behold him again; a broadcloth mob is leading him through the streets of boston by a rope. he is hurried to jail. see him return calmly and unflinchingly to his work, beginning at the point at which he was interrupted. note this heading in the "liberator," the type of which he set himself in an attic on state street, in boston: "i am in earnest, i will not equivocate, i will not excuse, i will not retreat a single inch, and i will be heard." was garrison heard? ask a race set free largely by his efforts. even the gallows erected in front of his own door did not daunt him. he held the ear of an unwilling world with that burning word "freedom," which was destined never to cease its vibrations until it had breathed its sweet secret to the last slave. if impossibilities ever exist, popularly speaking, they ought to have been found somewhere between the birth and the death of kitto, that deaf pauper and master of oriental learning. but kitto did not find them there. in the presence of his decision and imperial energy they melted away. kitto begged his father to take him out of the poorhouse, even if he had to subsist like the hottentots. he told him that he would sell his books and pawn his handkerchief, by which he thought he could raise about twelve shillings. he said he could live upon blackberries, nuts, and field turnips, and was willing to sleep on a hayrick. here was real grit. what were impossibilities to such a resolute will? patrick henry voiced that decision which characterized the great men of the revolution when he said, "is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? forbid it, almighty god! i know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" grit is a permanent, solid quality, which enters into the very structure, the very tissues of the constitution. a weak man, a wavering, irresolute man, may be "spunky" upon occasion, he may be "plucky" in an emergency; but pure "grit" is a part of the very character of strong men alone. lord erskine was a plucky man; he even had flashes of heroism, and when he was with weaker men, he was thought to have nerve and even grit; but when he entered the house of commons, although a hero at the bar, the imperiousness, the audacious scorn, and the intellectual supremacy of pitt disturbed his equanimity and exposed the weak places in his armor. in pitt's commanding presence he lost his equilibrium. his individuality seemed off its centre; he felt fluttered, weak, and uneasy. many of our generals in the late war exhibited heroism. they were "plucky," and often displayed great determination, but grant had pure "grit" in the most concentrated form. he could not be moved from his base; he was self-centred, immovable. "if you try to wheedle out of him his plans for a campaign, he stolidly smokes; if you call him an imbecile and a blunderer, he blandly lights another cigar; if you praise him as the greatest general living, he placidly returns the puff from his regalia; and if you tell him he should run for the presidency, it does not disturb the equanimity with which he inhales and exhales the unsubstantial vapor which typifies the politician's promises. while you are wondering what kind of creature this man without a tongue is, you are suddenly electrified with the news of some splendid victory, proving that behind the cigar, and behind the face discharged of all tell-tale expression, is the best brain to plan and the strongest heart to dare among the generals of the republic." demosthenes was a man who could rise to sublime heights of heroism, but his bravery was not his normal condition and depended upon his genius being aroused. he had "pluck" and "spunk" on occasions, but lincoln had pure "grit." when the illustrated papers everywhere were caricaturing him, when no epithet seemed too harsh to heap upon him, when his methods were criticised by his own party, and the generals in the war were denouncing his "foolish" confidence in grant, and delegations were waiting upon him to ask for that general's removal, the great president sat with crossed legs, and was reminded of a story. lincoln and grant both had that rare nerve which cares not for ridicule, is not swerved by public clamor, can bear abuse and hatred. there is a mighty force in truth and in the sublime conviction and supreme self-confidence behind it, in the knowledge that truth is mighty and the conviction and confidence that it will prevail. pure grit is that element of character which enables a man to clutch his aim with an iron grip, and keep the needle of his purpose pointing to the star of his hope. through sunshine and storm, through hurricane and tempest, through sleet and rain, with a leaky ship, with a crew in mutiny, it perseveres; in fact, nothing but death can subdue it, and it dies still struggling. the man of grit carries in his very presence a power which controls and commands. he is spared the necessity of declaring himself, for his grit speaks in his every act. it does not come by fits and starts, it is a part of his very life. it inspires a sublime audacity and a heroic courage. many of the failures of life are due to the want of grit or business nerve. it is unfortunate for a young man to start out in business life with a weak, yielding disposition, with no resolution or backbone to mark his own course and stick to it, with no ability to say "no" with an emphasis, obliging this man by investing in hopeless speculation, and rather than offend a friend, indorsing a questionable note. a little boy was asked how he learned to skate. "oh, by getting up every time i fell down," he replied. whipple tells a story of masséna which illustrates the masterful purpose that plucks victory out of the jaws of defeat. "after the defeat at essling, the success of napoleon's attempt to withdraw his beaten army depended on the character of masséna, to whom the emperor dispatched a messenger, telling him to keep his position for two hours longer at aspern. this order, couched in the form of a request, required almost an impossibility; but napoleon knew the indomitable tenacity of the man to whom he gave it. the messenger found masséna seated on a heap of rubbish, his eyes bloodshot, his frame weakened by his unparalleled exertions during a contest of forty hours, and his whole appearance indicating a physical state better befitting the hospital than the field. but that steadfast soul seemed altogether unaffected by bodily prostration; half dead as he was with fatigue, he rose painfully and said, 'tell the emperor that i will hold out for two hours.' and he kept his word." "often defeated in battle," said macaulay of alexander the great, "he was always successful in war." he might have said the same of washington, and, with appropriate changes, of all who win great triumphs of any kind. in the battle of marengo, the austrians considered the day won. the french army was inferior in numbers, and had given way. the austrian army extended its wings on the right and on the left, to follow up the french. then, though the french themselves thought the battle lost, and the austrians were confident it was won, napoleon gave the command to charge; and, the trumpet's blast being given, the old guard charged down into the weakened centre of the enemy, cut it in two, rolled the two wings up on either side, and the battle was won for france. "never despair," says burke, "but if you do, work on in despair." once when marshal ney was going into battle, looking down at his knees which were smiting together, he said, "you may well shake; you would shake worse yet if you knew where i am going to take you." it is victory after victory with the soldier, lesson after lesson with the scholar, blow after blow with the laborer, crop after crop with the farmer, picture after picture with the painter, and mile after mile with the traveler, that secures what all so much desire--success. a promising harvard student was stricken with paralysis of both legs. physicians said there was no hope for him. the lad determined to continue his college studies. the examiners heard him at his bedside, and in four years he took his degree. he resolved to make a critical study of dante, to do which he had to learn italian and german. he persevered in spite of repeated attacks of illness and partial loss of sight. he was competing for the university prize. think of the paralytic lad, helpless in bed, competing for a prize, fighting death inch by inch. what a lesson! before his book was published or the prize awarded, the brave student died, but the book was successful. he meant that his life should not be a burden or a failure, and he was not only graduated from the best college in america, but competed successfully for the university prize, and made a valuable contribution to literature. professor l. t. townsend, the famous author of "credo," is another triumph of grit over environment. he had a hard struggle as a boy, but succeeded in working his way through amherst college, living on forty-five cents a week. orange judd was a remarkable example of success through grit. he earned corn by working for farmers, carried it on his back to mill, brought back the meal to his room, cooked it himself, milked cows for his pint of milk per day, and lived on mush and milk for months together. he worked his way through wesleyan university, and took a three years' post-graduate course at yale. congressman william w. crapo, while working his way through college, being too poor to buy a dictionary, actually copied one, walking from his home in the village of dartmouth, mass., to new bedford to replenish his store of words and definitions from the town library. oh, the triumphs of this indomitable spirit of the conqueror! this it was that enabled franklin to dine on a small loaf in the printing-office with a book in his hand. it helped locke to live on bread and water in a dutch garret. it enabled gideon lee to go barefoot in the snow, half starved and thinly clad. it sustained lincoln and garfield on their hard journeys from the log cabin to the white house. president chadbourne put grit in place of his lost lung, and worked thirty-five years after his funeral had been planned. lord cavanagh put grit in the place of arms and legs, and went to parliament in spite of his deformity. henry fawcett put grit in place of eyesight, and became the greatest postmaster-general england ever had. prescott also put grit in place of eyesight, and became one of america's greatest historians. francis parkman put grit in place of health and eyesight, and became the greatest historian of america in his line. thousands of men have put grit in place of health, eyes, ears, hands, legs, and yet have achieved marvelous success. indeed, most of the great things of the world have been accomplished by grit and pluck. you cannot keep a man down who has these qualities. he will make stepping-stones out of his stumbling-blocks, and lift himself to success. at fifty, barnum was a ruined man, owing thousands more than he possessed, yet he resolutely resumed business once more, fairly wringing success from adverse fortune, and paying his notes at the same time. again and again he was ruined, but phoenix-like, he rose repeatedly from the ashes of his misfortune each time more determined than before. it was the last three days of the first voyage of columbus that told. all his years of struggle and study would have availed nothing if he had yielded to the mutiny. it was all in those three days. but what days! "it is all very well," said charles j. fox, "to tell me that a young man has distinguished himself by a brilliant first speech. he may go on, or he may be satisfied with his first triumph; but show me a young man who has not succeeded at first, and nevertheless has gone on, and i will back that young man to do better than most of those who have succeeded at the first trial." cobden broke down completely the first time he appeared on a platform in manchester, and the chairman apologized for him. but he did not give up speaking till every poor man in england had a larger, better, and cheaper loaf. see young disraeli, sprung from a hated and persecuted race; without opportunity, pushing his way up through the middle classes, up through the upper classes, until he stands self-poised upon the topmost round of political and social power. scoffed, ridiculed, rebuffed, hissed from the house of commons, he simply says, "the time will come when you will hear me." the time did come, and the boy with no chance swayed the sceptre of england for a quarter of a century. one of the most remarkable examples in history is disraeli, forcing his leadership upon that very party whose prejudices were deepest against his race, and which had an utter contempt for self-made men and interlopers. imagine england's surprise when she awoke to find this insignificant hebrew actually chancellor of the exchequer. he was easily master of all the tortures supplied by the armory of rhetoric; he could exhaust the resources of the bitterest invective; he could sting gladstone out of his self-control; he was absolute master of himself and his situation. you can see that this young man intends to make his way in the world. a determined audacity is in his very face. he is a gay fop. handsome, with the hated hebrew blood in his veins, after three defeats in parliamentary elections he was not the least daunted, for he knew his day would come, as it did. lord melbourne, the great prime minister, when this gay young fop was introduced to him, asked him what he wished to be. "prime minister of england," was his audacious reply. one of the greatest preachers of modern times, lacordaire, failed again and again. everybody said he would never make a preacher, but he was determined to succeed, and in two years from his humiliating failures he was preaching in notre dame to immense congregations. the boy thorwaldsen, whose father died in the poor-house, and whose education was so scanty that he had to write his letters over many times before they could be posted, by his indomitable perseverance, tenacity, and grit, fascinated the world with the genius which neither his discouraging father, poverty, nor hardship could suppress. william h. seward was given a thousand dollars by his father to go to college with; this was all he was to have. the son returned at the end of the freshman year with extravagant habits and no money. his father refused to give him more, and told him he could not stay at home. when the youth found the props all taken out from under him, and that he must now sink or swim, he left home moneyless, returned to college, graduated at the head of his class, studied law, was elected governor of new york, and became lincoln's great secretary of state during the civil war. louisa m. alcott wrote the conclusion to "an old-fashioned girl" with her left hand in a sling, one foot up, head aching, and no voice. she proudly writes in her diary, "twenty years ago i resolved to make the family independent if i could. at forty, that is done. debts all paid, even the outlawed ones, and we have enough to be comfortable. it has cost me my health, perhaps." she earned two hundred thousand dollars by her pen. mrs. frank leslie often refers to the time she lived in her carpetless attic while striving to pay her husband's obligations. she has fought her way successfully through nine lawsuits, and has paid the entire debt. she manages her ten publications entirely herself, signs all checks and money-orders, makes all contracts, looks over all proofs, and approves the make-up of everything before it goes to press. she has developed great business ability, which no one dreamed she possessed. garfield said, "if the power to do hard work is not talent, it is the best possible substitute for it." the triumph of industry and grit over low birth and iron fortune in america, this land of opportunity, ought to be sufficient to put to shame all grumblers over their hard fortune and those who attempt to excuse aimless, shiftless, successless men because they have no chance. the fear of ridicule and the dread of humiliation often hinder one from taking decisive steps when it is plainly a duty, so that courage is a very important element of decision. in a new england academy a pupil who was engaged to assist the teacher was unable to solve a problem in algebra. the class was approaching the problem, and he was mortified because, after many trials, he was obliged to take it to the teacher for solution. the teacher returned it unsolved. what could he do? he would not confess to the class that he could not solve it, so, after many futile attempts, he went to a distant town to seek the assistance of a friend who, he believed, could do the work. but, alas! his friend had gone away, and would not be back for a week. on his way back he said to himself, "what a fool! am i unable to perform a problem in algebra, and shall i go back to my class and confess my ignorance? i can solve it and i will." he shut himself in his room, determined not to sleep until he had mastered the problem, and finally he won success. underneath the solution he wrote, "obtained monday evening, september , at half past eleven o'clock, after more than a dozen trials that have consumed more than twenty hours of time." during a winter in the war of , general jackson's troops, unprovided for and starving, became mutinous and were going home. but the general set the example of living on acorns; then rode before the rebellious line and threatened with death the first mutineer that should try to leave. the race is not always to the swift, the battle is not always to the strong. horses are sometimes weighted or hampered in the race, and this is taken into account in the result. so in the race of life the distance alone does not determine the prize. we must take into consideration the hindrances, the weights we have carried, the disadvantages of education, of breeding, of training, of surroundings, of circumstances. how many young men are weighted down with debt, with poverty, with the support of invalid parents or brothers and sisters, or friends? how many are fettered with ignorance, hampered by inhospitable surroundings, with the opposition of parents who do not understand them? how many a round boy is hindered in the race by being forced into a square hole? how many are delayed in their course because nobody believes in them, because nobody encourages them, because they get no sympathy and are forever tortured for not doing that against which every fibre of their being protests, and every drop of their blood rebels? how many have to feel their way to the goal, through the blindness of ignorance and lack of experience? how many go bungling along from the lack of early discipline and drill in the vocation they have chosen? how many have to hobble along on crutches because they were never taught to help themselves, but to lean upon a father's wealth or a mother's indulgence? how many are weakened for the journey of life by self-indulgence, by dissipation, by "life-sappers;" how many are crippled by disease, by a weak constitution, by impaired eyesight or hearing? when the prizes of life shall be awarded by the supreme judge, who knows our weaknesses and frailties, the distance we have run, the weights we have carried, the handicaps, will all be taken into account. not the distance we have run, but the obstacles we have overcome, the disadvantages under which we have made the race, will decide the prizes. the poor wretch who has plodded along against unknown temptations, the poor woman who has buried her sorrows in her silent heart and sewed her weary way through life, those who have suffered abuse in silence, and who have been unrecognized or despised by their fellow-runners, will often receive the greater prize. "the wise and active conquer difficulties, by daring to attempt them: sloth and folly shiver and sink at sight of toil and hazard, and make the impossibility they fear." tumble me down, and i will sit upon my ruins, smiling yet: tear me to tatters, yet i'll be patient in my necessity: laugh at my scraps of clothes, and shun me as a fear'd infection: yet scare-crow like i'll walk, as one neglecting thy derision. robert herrick. chapter xi. the grandest thing in the world. "one ruddy drop of manly blood the surging sea outweighs." "manhood overtops all titles." the truest test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops; no, but the kind of man the country turns out.--emerson. hew the block off, and get out the man.--pope. eternity alone will reveal to the human race its debt of gratitude to the peerless and immortal name of washington.--james a. garfield. better not be at all than not be noble. tennyson. be noble! and the nobleness that lies in other men, sleeping, but never dead, will rise in majesty to meet thine own. lowell. virtue alone out-builds the pyramids: her monuments shall last when egypt's fall. young. were one so tall to touch the pole, or grasp creation in his span, he must be measured by his soul, the mind's the measure of the man. watts. we live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; in feelings, not in figures on a dial. we should count time by heart-throbs. he most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best. bailey. "good name in man or woman is the immediate jewel of their souls." but this one thing i know, that these qualities did not now begin to exist, cannot be sick with my sickness, nor buried in my grave.--emerson. a moor was walking in his garden when a spanish cavalier suddenly fell at his feet, pleading for concealment from pursuers who sought his life in revenge for the killing of a moorish gentleman. the moor promised aid, and locked his visitor in a summer-house until night should afford opportunity for his escape. not long after the dead body of his son was brought home, and from the description given he knew the spaniard was the murderer. he concealed his horror, however, and at midnight unlocked the summer-house, saying, "christian, the youth whom you have murdered was my only son. your crime deserves the severest punishment. but i have solemnly pledged my word not to betray you, and i disdain to violate a rash engagement even with a cruel enemy." then, saddling one of his fleetest mules, he said, "flee while the darkness of night conceals you. your hands are polluted with blood; but god is just; and i humbly thank him that my faith is unspotted, and that i have resigned judgment to him." [illustration: john greenleaf whittier (missing from book)] character never dies. as longfellow says:-- "were a star quenched on high, for ages would its light, still traveling downward from the sky, shine on our mortal sight. "so when a great man dies, for years beyond our ken, the light he leaves behind him lies upon the paths of men." the character of socrates was mightier than the hemlock, and banished the fear and sting of death. who can estimate the power of a well-lived life? _character is power_. hang this motto in every school in the land, in every home, in every youth's room. mothers, engrave it on every child's heart. you cannot destroy one single atom of a garrison, even though he were hanged. the mighty force of martyrs to truth lives; the candle burns more brilliantly than before it was snuffed. "no varnish or veneer of scholarship, no command of the tricks of logic or rhetoric, can ever make you a positive force in the world;" but your character can. when the statue of george peabody, erected in one of the thoroughfares of london, was unveiled, the sculptor story was asked to speak. twice he touched the statue with his hand, and said, "that is my speech. that is my speech." what could be more eloquent? character needs no recommendation. it pleads its own cause. "show me," said omar the caliph to amru the warrior, "the sword with which you have fought so many battles and slain so many infidels." "ah!" replied amru, "the sword without the arm of the master is no sharper nor heavier than the sword of farezdak the poet." so one hundred and fifty pounds of flesh and blood without character is of no great value. napoleon was so much impressed with the courage and resources of marshal ney, that he said, "i have two hundred millions in my coffers, and i would give them all for ney." in agra, india, stands the taj mahal, the acme of oriental architecture, said to be the most beautiful building in the world. it was planned as a mausoleum for the favorite wife of shah jehan. when the latter was deposed by his son aurungzebe, his daughter jahanara chose to share his captivity and poverty rather than the guilty glory of her brother. on her tomb in delhi were cut her dying words: "let no rich coverlet adorn my grave; this grass is the best covering for the tomb of the poor in spirit, the humble, the transitory jahanara, the disciple of the holy men of christ, the daughter of the emperor shah jehan." travelers who visit the magnificent taj linger long by the grass-green sarcophagus in delhi, but give only passing notice to the beautiful jamma masjid, a mausoleum afterwards erected in her honor. some writer has well said that david of the throne we cannot always recall with pleasure, but david of the psalms we never forget. the strong, sweet faith of the latter streams like sunlight through even the closed windows of the soul, long after the wearied eye has turned with disgust from all the gilded pomp and pride of the former. robertson says that when you have got to the lowest depths of your heart, you will find there not the mere desire of happiness, but a craving as natural to us as the desire for food,--the craving for nobler, higher life. "private benjamin owen, ---- regiment, vermont volunteers, was found asleep at his post while on picket duty last night. the court-martial has sentenced him to be shot in twenty-four hours, as the offense occurred at a critical time." "i thought when i gave bennie to his country," said farmer owen as he read the above telegram with dimming eyes, "that no other father in all this broad laud made so precious a gift. he only slept a minute,--just one little minute,--at his post, i know that was all, for bennie never dozed over a duty. how prompt and trustworthy he was! he was as tall as i, and only eighteen! and now they shoot him because he was found asleep when doing sentinel duty!" just then bennie's little sister blossom answered a tap at the door, and returned with a letter. "it is from him," was all she said. dear father,--for sleeping on sentinel duty i am to be shot. at first, it seemed awful to me; but i have thought about it so much now that it has no terror. they say that they will not bind me, nor blind me; but that i may meet my death like a man. i thought, father, that it might have been on the battlefield, for my country, and that, when i fell, it would be fighting gloriously; but to be shot down like a dog for nearly betraying it,--to die for neglect of duty! oh, father, i wonder the very thought does not kill me! but i shall not disgrace you. i am going to write you all about it; and when i am gone, you may tell my comrades; i cannot now. you know i promised jemmie carr's mother i would look after her boy; and, when he fell sick, i did all i could for him. he was not strong when he was ordered back into the ranks, and the day before that night i carried all his baggage, besides my own, on our march. toward night we went in on double-quick, and the baggage began to feel very heavy. everybody was tired; and as for jemmie, if i had not lent him an arm now and then, he would have dropped by the way. i was all tired out when we came into camp; and then it was jemmie's turn to be sentry, and i could take his place; but i was too tired, father. i could not have kept awake if a gun had been pointed at my head; but i did not know it until,--well, until it was too late. they tell me to-day that i have a short reprieve,--given to me by circumstances,--"time to write to you," our good colonel says. forgive him, father, he only does his duty; he would gladly save me if he could; and do not lay my death up against jemmie. the poor boy is broken-hearted, and does nothing but beg and entreat them to let him die in my stead. i can't bear to think of mother and blossom. comfort them, father! tell them i die as a brave boy should, and that, when the war is over, they will not be ashamed of me, as they must be now. god help me: it is very hard to bear! good-by, father. to-night, in the early twilight, i shall see the cows all coming home from pasture, and precious little blossom standing on the back stoop, waiting for me,--but i shall never, never come! god bless you all! "god be thanked!" said mr. owen reverently; "i knew bennie was not the boy to sleep carelessly." late that night a little figure glided out of the house and down the path. two hours later the conductor of the southward mail lifted her into a car at mill depot. next morning she was in new york, and the next she was admitted to the white house at washington. "well, my child," said the president in pleasant, cheerful tones, "what do you want so bright and early this morning?" "bennie's life, please, sir," faltered blossom. "bennie? who is bennie?" asked mr. lincoln. "my brother, sir. they are going to shoot him for sleeping at his post," said the little girl. "i remember," said the president; "it was a fatal sleep. you see, child, it was a time of special danger. thousands of lives might have been lost through his culpable negligence." "so my father said; but poor bennie was so tired, sir, and jemmie so weak. he did the work of two, sir, and it was jemmie's night, not his; but jemmie was too tired, and bennie never thought about himself,--that he was tired, too." "what is that you say, child? come here; i do not understand." he read bennie's letter to his father, which blossom held out, wrote a few lines, rang his bell, and said to the messenger who appeared, "send this dispatch at once." then, turning to blossom, he continued: "go home, my child, and tell that father of yours, who could approve his country's sentence, even when it took the life of a child like that, that abraham lincoln thinks the life far too precious to be lost. go back, or--wait until to-morrow; bennie will need a change after he has so bravely faced death, he shall go with you." "god bless you, sir," said blossom. _not all the queens are crowned._ two days later, when the young soldier came with his sister to thank the president, mr. lincoln fastened the strap of a lieutenant upon his shoulder, saying, "the soldier that could carry a sick comrade's baggage, and die for the act without complaining, deserves well of his country." when telegrams poured in announcing terrible carnage upon battlefields in our late war, and when president lincoln's heart-strings were nearly broken over the cruel treatment of our prisoners at andersonville, belle isle, and libby prison, he never once departed from his famous motto, "with malice toward none, with charity for all." when it was reported that among those returned at baltimore from southern prisons, not one in ten could stand alone from hunger and neglect, and many were so eaten and covered by vermin as to resemble those pitted by smallpox, and so emaciated that they were living skeletons, not even these reports could move the great president to retaliate in kind upon the southern prisoners. among the slain on the battlefield at fredericksburg was the body of a youth upon which was found next the heart a photograph of lincoln. upon the back of it were these words: "god bless president lincoln." the youth had been sentenced to death for sleeping at his post, but had been pardoned by the president. david dudley field said he considered lincoln the greatest man of his day. webster, clay, calhoun, and others were great, each in one way, but lincoln was great in many ways. there seemed to be hidden springs of greatness in this man that would gush forth in the most unexpected way. the men about him were at a loss to name the order of his genius. horace greeley was almost as many-sided, but was a wonderful combination of goodness and weakness, while lincoln seemed strong in every way. after lincoln had signed the emancipation proclamation he said, "the promise must now be kept; i shall never recall one word." bishop hamilton, of salisbury, bears the following testimony to the influence for good which gladstone, when a school-fellow at eton, exercised upon him. "i was a thoroughly idle boy; but i was saved from worse things by getting to know gladstone." at oxford we are told the effect of his example was so strong that men who followed him there ten years later declare "that undergraduates drank less in the forties because gladstone had been so courageously abstemious in the thirties." the rev. john newton said, "i see in this world two heaps of human happiness and misery; now if i can take but the smallest bit from one heap and add it to the other, i carry a point; if as i go home a child has dropped a half-penny, and by giving it another i can wipe away its tears, i feel i have done something." a holy hermit, who had lived for six years in a cave of the thebaid, fasting, praying, and performing severe penances, spending his whole life in trying to make himself of some account with god, that he might be sure of a seat in paradise, prayed to be shown some saint greater than himself, in order that he might pattern after him to reach still greater heights of holiness. the same night an angel came to him and said, "if thou wouldst excel all others in virtue and sanctity, strive to imitate a certain minstrel who goes begging and singing from door to door." the hermit, much chagrined, sought the minstrel and asked him how he had managed to make himself so acceptable to god. the minstrel hung down his head and replied, "do not mock me, holy father; i have performed no good works, and i am not worthy to pray. i only go from door to door to amuse people with my viol and my flute." the hermit insisted that he must have done some good deeds. the minstrel replied, "nay, i know of nothing good that i have done." "but how hast thou become a beggar? hast thou spent thy substance in riotous living?" "nay, not so," replied the minstrel. "i met a poor woman running hither and thither, distracted, because her husband and children had been sold into slavery to pay a debt. i took her home and protected her from certain sons of belial, for she was very beautiful. i gave her all i possessed to redeem her family and returned her to her husband and children. is there any man who would not have done the same?" the hermit shed tears, and said in all his life he had not done as much as the poor minstrel. "a good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor than silver or gold." a gentleman, traveling through west virginia, went to a house, and procured food for himself and companion and their horses. he wanted to make payment, but the woman was ashamed to take pay for a mere act of kindness. he pressed the money upon her. finally she said, "if you don't think i'm mean, i'll take one quarter of a dollar from you, so as to look at it now and then, for there has been no money in this house for a year." do not take the world's estimate of success. the real height of the washington monument is not measured between the capstone and the earth, but includes the fifty feet of solid masonry below. many of the most successful lives are like the rivers of india which run under ground, unseen and unheard by the millions who tread above them. but have these rivers therefore no influence? ask the rich harvest fields if they feel the flowing water beneath. the greatest worth is never measured. it is only the nearest stars whose distances we compute. that life whose influence can be measured by the world's tape-line of dollars and corn is not worth the measuring. all the forces in nature that are the most powerful are the quietest. we speak of the rolling thunder as powerful; but gravitation, which makes no noise, yet keeps orbs in their orbits, and the whole system in harmony, binding every atom in each planet to the great centre of all attraction, is ten thousand times ten thousand times more powerful. we say the bright lightning is mighty; so it is when it rends the gnarled oak into splinters, or splits solid battlements into fragments; but it is not half so powerful as the gentle light that comes so softly from the skies that we do not feel it, that travels at an inconceivable speed, strikes and yet is not felt, but exercises an influence so great that the earth is clothed with verdure through its influence, and all nature beautified and blessed by its ceaseless action. the things that make no noise, make no pretension, may be really the strongest. the most conclusive logic that a preacher uses in the pulpit will never exercise the influence that the consistent piety of character will exercise over all the earth. the old sicilian story relates how pythias, condemned to death through the hasty anger of dionysius of syracuse, asked that he might go to his native greece, and arrange his affairs, promising to return before the time appointed for his execution. the tyrant laughed his request to scorn, saying that when he was once safe out of sicily no one would answer for his reappearance. at this juncture, damon, a friend of the doomed man, offered to become surety for him, and to die in his stead if he did not come back in time. dionysius was surprised, but accepted the proposition. when the fatal day came, pythias had not reached syracuse, but damon remained firm in his faith that his friend would not fail him. at the very last hour pythias appeared and announced himself ready to die. but such touching loyalty moved even the iron heart of dionysius; accordingly he ordered both to be spared, and asked to be allowed to make a third partner in such a noble friendship. it is a grander thing to be nobly remembered than to be nobly born. when attila, flushed with conquest, appeared with his barbarian horde before the gates of rome in , pope leo alone of all the people dared go forth and try to turn his wrath aside. a single magistrate followed him. the huns were awed by the fearless majesty of the unarmed old man, and led him before their chief, whose respect was so great that he agreed not to enter the city, provided a tribute should be paid to him. blackie thinks there is no kind of a sermon so effective as the example of a great man, where we see the thing done before us,--actually done,--the thing of which we were not even dreaming. it was said that when washington led the american forces as commanding officer, it "doubled the strength of the army." when general lee was in conversation with one of his officers in regard to a movement of his army, a plain farmer's boy overheard the general's remark that he had decided to march upon gettysburg instead of harrisburg. the boy telegraphed this fact to governor curtin. a special engine was sent for the boy. "i would give my right hand," said the governor, "to know if this boy tells the truth." a corporal replied, "governor, i know that boy; it is impossible for him to lie; there is not a drop of false blood in his veins." in fifteen minutes the union troops were marching to gettysburg, where they gained a victory. character is power. the great thing is to be a man, to have a high purpose, a noble aim, to be dead in earnest, to yearn for the good and the true. "your lordships," said wellington in parliament, "must all feel the high and honorable character of the late sir robert peel. i was long connected with him in public life. we were both in the councils of our sovereign together, and i had long the honor to enjoy his private friendship. in all the course of my acquaintance with him, i never knew a man in whose truth and justice i had greater confidence, or in whom i saw a more invariable desire to promote the public service. in the whole course of my communication with him, i never knew an instance in which he did not show the strongest attachment to truth; and i never saw in the whole course of my life the smallest reason for suspecting that he stated anything which he did not firmly believe to be the fact." "the secretary stood alone," said grattan of the elder pitt. "modern degeneracy had not reached him. original and unaccommodating, the features of his character had the hardihood of antiquity. his august mind overawed majesty; and one of his sovereigns thought royalty so impaired in his presence, that he conspired to remove him, in order to be relieved from his superiority. no state chicanery, no narrow system of vicious politics, sunk him to the level of the vulgar great; but, overbearing, persuasive, and impracticable, his object was england, his ambition, fame. a character so exalted, so unsullied, so various, so authoritative, astonished a corrupt age, and the treasury trembled at the name of pitt through all the classes of venality. corruption imagined, indeed, that she had found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the inconsistency of his policy, and much of the ruin of his victories; but the history of his country and the calamities of the enemy answered and refuted her. upon the whole, there was in this man something that could create, subvert, or reform; an understanding, a spirit, and an eloquence to summon mankind to united exertion, or to break the bonds of slavery asunder, and to rule the wilderness of free minds with unbounded authority; something that could establish or overwhelm an empire, and strike a blow in the world that would resound through the universe." pitt was paymaster-general for george ii. when a subsidy was voted a foreign office, it was customary for the office to claim one half per cent. for honorarium. pitt astonished the king of sardinia by sending him the sum without any deduction, and further astonished him by refusing a present as a compliment to his integrity. he was a poor man. washington would take no pay as commander-in-chief of the continental armies. he would keep a strict account of his expenses; and these, he doubted not, would be discharged. remember, the main business of life is not to do, but to become; an action itself has its finest and most enduring fruit in character. in , after george peabody moved to london, there came a commercial crisis in the united states. many banks suspended specie payments. many mercantile houses went to the wall, and thousands more were in great distress. edward everett said, "the great sympathetic nerve of the commercial world, credit, as far as the united states were concerned, was for the time paralyzed." probably not a half dozen men in europe would have been listened to for a moment in the bank of england upon the subject of american securities, but george peabody was one of them. his name was already a tower of strength in the commercial world. in those dark days his integrity stood four-square in every business panic. peabody retrieved the credit of the state of maryland, and, it might almost be said, of the united states. his character was the magic wand which in many a case changed almost worthless paper into gold. merchants on both sides of the atlantic procured large advances from him, even before the goods consigned to him had been sold. thackeray says, "nature has written a letter of credit upon some men's faces which is honored wherever presented. you cannot help trusting such men; their very presence gives confidence. there is a 'promise to pay' in their very faces which gives confidence, and you prefer it to another man's indorsement." _character is credit._ with most people, as with most nations, "things are worth what they will sell for," and the dollar is mightier than the sword. as good as gold has become a proverb--as though it were the highest standard of comparison. themistocles, having conceived the design of transferring the government of greece from the hands of the lacedaemonians into those of the athenians, kept his thoughts continually fixed on this great project. being at no time very nice or scrupulous in the choice of his measures, he thought anything which could tend to the accomplishment of the end he had in view just and lawful. accordingly in an assembly of the people one day, he intimated that he had a very important design to propose; but he could not communicate it to the public at large, because the greatest secrecy was necessary to its success, and he therefore desired that they would appoint a person to whom he might explain himself on the subject. aristides was unanimously selected by the assembly, which deferred entirely to his opinion. themistocles, taking him aside, told him that the design he had conceived was to burn the fleet belonging to the rest of the grecian states, which then lay in a neighboring port, when athens would assuredly become mistress of all greece. aristides returned to the assembly, and declared to them that nothing could be more advantageous to the commonwealth than the project of themistocles, but that, at the same time, nothing in the world could be more unfair. the assembly unanimously declared that, since such was the case, themistocles should wholly abandon his project. a tragedy by aeschylus was once represented before the athenians, in which it was said of one of the characters, "that he cared not more to be just than to appear so." at these words all eyes were instantly turned upon aristides as the man who, of all the greeks, most merited that distinguished reputation. ever after he received, by universal consent, the surname of the just,--a title, says plutarch, truly royal, or rather truly divine. this remarkable distinction roused envy, and envy prevailed so far as to procure his banishment for years, upon the unjust suspicion that his influence with the people was dangerous to their freedom. when the sentence was passed by his countrymen, aristides himself was present in the midst of them, and a stranger who stood near, and could not write, applied to him to write for him on his shell-ballot. "what name?" asked the philosopher. "aristides," replied the stranger. "do you know him, then?" said aristides, "or has he in any way injured you?" "neither," said the other, "but it is for this very thing i would he were condemned. i can go nowhere but i hear of aristides the just." aristides inquired no further, but took the shell, and wrote his name on it as desired. the absence of aristides soon dissipated the apprehensions which his countrymen had so idly indulged. he was in a short time recalled, and for many years after took a leading part in the affairs of the republic, without showing the least resentment against his enemies, or seeking any other gratification than that of serving his countrymen with fidelity and honor. the virtues of aristides did not pass without reward. he had two daughters, who were educated at the expense of the state, and to whom portions were allotted from the public treasury. the strongest proof, however, of the justice and integrity of aristides is, that notwithstanding he had possessed the highest employments in the republic, and had the absolute disposal of its treasures, yet he died so poor as not to leave money enough to defray the expenses of his funeral. men of character are the conscience of the society to which they belong; they, and not the police, guarantee the execution of the laws. their influence is the bulwark of good government. it was said of the first emperor alexander of russia, that his personal character was equivalent to a constitution. of montaigne, it was said that his high reputation for integrity was a better protection for him than a regiment of horse would have been, he being the only man among the french gentry who, during the wars of the fronde, kept his castle gates unbarred. there are men, fortunately for the world, who would rather be right than be president. fisher ames, while in congress, said of roger sherman, of connecticut: "if i am absent during a discussion of a subject, and consequently know not on which side to vote, when i return i always look at roger sherman, for i am sure if i vote with him, i shall vote right." character gravitates upward, as with a celestial gravitation, while mere genius, without character, gravitates downward. how often we see in school or college young men, who are apparently dull and even stupid, rise gradually and surely above others who are without character, merely because the former have an upward tendency in their lives, a reaching-up principle, which gradually but surely unfolds, and elevates them to positions of honor and trust. there is something which everybody admires in an aspiring soul, one whose tendency is upward and onward, in spite of hindrances and in defiance of obstacles. we may try to stifle the voice of the mysterious angel within, but it always says "yes" to right actions and "no" to wrong ones. no matter whether we heed it or not, no power can change its decision one iota. through health, through disease, through prosperity and adversity, this faithful servant stands behind us in the shadow of ourselves, never intruding, but weighing every act we perform, every word we utter, pronouncing the verdict "right" or "wrong." francis horner, of england, was a man of whom sydney smith said, that "the ten commandments were stamped upon his forehead." the valuable and peculiar light in which horner's history is calculated to inspire every right-minded youth is this: he died at the age of thirty-eight, possessed of greater influence than any other private man, and admired, beloved, trusted, and deplored by all except the heartless and the base. no greater homage was ever paid in parliament to any deceased member. how was this attained? by rank? he was the son of an edinburgh merchant. by wealth? neither he nor any of his relatives ever had a superfluous sixpence. by office? he held but one, and that for only a few years, of no influence, and with very little pay. by talents? his were not splendid, and he had no genius. cautious and slow, his only ambition was to be right. by eloquence? he spoke in calm, good taste, without any of the oratory that either terrifies or seduces. by any fascination of manner? his was only correct and agreeable. by what was it, then? merely by sense, industry, good principles and a good heart, qualities which no well constituted mind need ever despair of attaining. it was the force of his character that raised him; and this character was not impressed on him by nature, but formed, out of no peculiarly fine elements, by himself. there were many in the house of commons of far greater ability and eloquence. but no one surpassed him in the combination of an adequate portion of these with moral worth. horner was born to show what moderate powers, unaided by anything whatever except culture and goodness, may achieve, even when these powers are displayed amidst the competition and jealousies of public life. "when it was reported in paris that the great napoleon was dead, i passed the palais royal," says a french writer, "where a public crier called, 'here's your account of the death of bonaparte.' this cry which once would have appalled all europe fell perfectly flat. i entered," he adds, "several cafés, and found the same indifference,--coldness everywhere; no one seemed interested or troubled. this man, who had conquered europe and awed the world, had inspired neither the love nor the admiration of even his own countrymen. he had impressed the world with his marvelousness, and had inspired astonishment but not love." emerson says that napoleon did all that in him lay to live and thrive without moral principle. it was the nature of things, the eternal law of man and of the world, which balked and ruined him; and the result, in a million attempts of this kind, will be the same. his was an experiment, under the most favorable conditions, to test the powers of intellect without conscience. never elsewhere was such a leader so endowed, and so weaponed; never has another leader found such aids and followers. and what was the result of this vast talent and power, of these immense armies, burned cities, squandered treasures, immolated millions of men, of this demoralized europe? he left france smaller, poorer, feebler than he found her. a hundred years hence what difference will it make whether you were rich or poor, a peer or a peasant? but what difference may it not make whether you did what was right or what was wrong? "the 'vicar of wakefield,'" said george william curtis, "was sold, through dr. johnson's mediation, for sixty pounds; and ten years after, the author died. with what love do we hang over its pages! what springs of feeling it has opened! goldsmith's books are influences and friends forever, yet the five thousandth copy was never announced, and oliver goldsmith, m. d., often wanted a dinner! horace walpole, the coxcomb of literature, smiled at him contemptuously from his gilded carriage. goldsmith struggled cheerfully with his adverse fate, and died. but then sad mourners, whom he had aided in their affliction, gathered around his bed, and a lady of distinction, whom he had only dared to admire at a distance, came and cut a lock of his hair for remembrance. when i see goldsmith, thus carrying his heart in his hand like a palm branch, i look on him as a successful man, whom adversity could not bring down from the level of his lofty nature." dr. maudsley tells us that the aims which chiefly predominate--riches, position, power, applause of men--are such as inevitably breed and foster many bad passions in the eager competition to attain them. hence, in fact, come disappointed ambition, jealousy, grief from loss of fortune, all the torments of wounded self-love, and a thousand other mental sufferings,--the commonly enumerated moral causes of insanity. they are griefs of a kind to which a rightly developed nature should not fall a prey. there need be no envy nor jealousy, if a man were to consider that it mattered not whether he did a great thing or some one else did it, nature's only concern being that it should be done; no grief from loss of fortune, if he were to estimate at its true value that which fortune can bring him, and that which fortune can never bring him; no wounded self-love, if he had learned well the eternal lesson of life,--self-renunciation. soon after his establishment in philadelphia franklin was offered a piece for publication in his newspaper. being very busy, he begged the gentleman would leave it for consideration. the next day the author called and asked his opinion of it. "well, sir," replied franklin, "i am sorry to say i think it highly scurrilous and defamatory. but being at a loss on account of my poverty whether to reject it or not, i thought i would put it to this issue: at night, when my work was done, i bought a two-penny loaf, on which i supped heartily, and then, wrapping myself in my great coat, slept very soundly on the floor till morning, when another loaf and mug of water afforded a pleasant breakfast. now, sir, since i can live very comfortably in this manner, why should i prostitute my press to personal hatred or party passion for a more luxurious living?" one cannot read this anecdote of our american sage without thinking of socrates' reply to king archelaus, who had pressed him to give up preaching in the dirty streets of athens, and come and live with him in his splendid courts: "meal, please your majesty, is a half-penny a peck at athens, and water i get for nothing!" during alexander's march into africa he found a people dwelling in peace, who knew neither war nor conquest. while he was interviewing the chief two of his subjects brought a case before him for judgment. the dispute was this: the one had bought of the other a piece of ground, which, after the purchase, was found to contain a treasure, for which he felt bound to pay. the other refused to receive anything, stating that when he sold the ground he sold it with all the advantages apparent or concealed which it might be found to afford. the king said, "one of you has a daughter and the other a son; let them be married and the treasure given to them as a dowry." alexander was surprised, and said, "if this case had been in our country it would have been dismissed, and the king would have kept the treasure." the chief said, "does the sun shine on your country, and the rain fall, and the grass grow?" alexander replied, "certainly." the chief then asked, "are there any cattle?" "certainly," was the reply. the chief replied, "then it is for these innocent cattle that the great being permits the rain to fall and the grass to grow." a good character is a precious thing, above rubies, gold, crowns, or kingdoms, and the work of making it is the noblest labor on earth. professor blackie of the university of edinburgh said to a class of young men: "money is not needful; power is not needful; liberty is not needful; even health is not the one thing needful; but character alone is that which can truly save us, and if we are not saved in this sense, we certainly must be damned." it has been said that "when poverty is your inheritance, virtue must be your capital." during the american revolution, while general reed was president of congress, the british commissioners offered him a bribe of ten thousand guineas to desert the cause of his country. his reply was, "gentlemen, i am poor, very poor; but your king is not rich enough to buy me." "when le père bourdaloue preached at rouen," said père arrius, "the tradesmen forsook their shops, lawyers their clients, physicians their sick, and tavern-keepers their bars; but when i preached the following year i set all things to rights,--every man minded his own business." "i fear john knox's prayers more than an army of ten thousand men," said mary, queen of scotland. when pope paul iv. heard of the death of calvin he exclaimed with a sigh, "ah, the strength of that proud heretic lay in--riches? no. honors? no. but nothing could move him from his course. holy virgin! with two such servants, our church would soon be mistress of both worlds." garibaldi's power over his men amounted to fascination. soldiers and officers were ready to die for him. his will power seemed to enslave them. in rome he called for forty volunteers to go where half of them would be sure to be killed and the others probably wounded. the whole battalion rushed forward; and they had to draw lots, so eager were all to obey. what power of magic lies in a great name! there was not a throne in europe that could stand against washington's character, and in comparison with it the millions of the croesuses would look ridiculous. what are the works of avarice compared with the names of lincoln, grant, or garfield? a few names have ever been the leaven which has preserved many a nation from premature decay. "but strew his ashes to the wind whose sword or voice has served mankind-- and is he dead, whose glorious mind lifts thine on high?-- to live in hearts we leave behind is not to die." mr. gladstone gave in parliament, when announcing the death of princess alice, a touching story of sick-room ministration. the princess' little boy was ill with diphtheria, the physician had cautioned her not to inhale the poisoned breath; the child was tossing in the delirium of fever. the mother took the little one in her lap and stroked his fevered brow; the boy threw his arms around her neck, and whispered, "kiss me, mamma;" the mother's instinct was stronger than the physician's caution; she pressed her lips to the child's, but lost her life. at a large dinner-party given by lord stratford after the crimean war, it was proposed that every one should write on a slip of paper the name which appeared most likely to descend to posterity with renown. when the papers were opened every one of them contained the name of florence nightingale. leckey says that the first hospital ever established was opened by that noble christian woman, fabiola, in the fourth century. the two foremost names in modern philanthropy are those of john howard and florence nightingale. not a general of the crimean war on either side can be named by one person in ten. the one name that rises instantly, when that carnival of pestilence and blood is suggested, is that of a young woman just recovering from a serious illness, florence nightingale. a soldier said, "before she came there was such cussin' and swearin'; and after that it was as holy as a church." she robbed war of half its terrors. since her time the hospital systems of all the nations during war have been changed. no soldier was braver and no patriot truer than clara barton, and wherever that noble company of protestant women known as the red cross society,--the cross, i suppose, pointing to calvary, and the red to the blood of the redeemer,--wherever those consecrated workers seek to alleviate the condition of those who suffer from plagues, cholera, fevers, flood, famine, there this tireless angel moves on her pathway of blessing. and of all heroes, what nobler ones than these, whose names shine from the pages of our missionary history? i never read of mrs. judson, mrs. snow, miss brittain, miss west, without feeling that the heroic age of our race has just begun, the age which opens to woman the privilege of following her benevolent inspirations wheresoever she will, without thinking that our christianity needs no other evidence. "duty is the cement without which all power, goodness, intellect, truth, happiness, and love itself can have no permanence, but all the fabric of existence crumbles away from under us and leaves us at last sitting in the midst of a ruin, astonished at our own desolation." a constant, abiding sense of duty is the last reason of culture. "i slept and dreamed that life is beauty; i woke and found that life is duty." we have no more right to refuse to perform a duty than to refuse to pay a debt. moral insolvency is certain to him who neglects and disregards his duty to his fellow-men. nor can we hire another to perform our duty. the mere accident of having money does not release you from your duty to the world. nay, it increases it, for it enables you to do a larger and nobler duty. if your money is not clean, if there is a dirty dollar in your millions, you have not succeeded. if there is the blood of the poor and unfortunate, of orphans and widows, on your bank account, you have not succeeded. if your wealth has made others poorer, your life is a failure. if you have gained it in an occupation that kills, that shortens the lives of others, that poisons their blood, or engenders disease, if you have taken a day from a human life, if you have gained your money by that which has debauched other lives, you have failed. remember that a question will be asked you some time which you cannot evade, the right answer to which will fix your destiny forever: "how did you get that fortune?" are other men's lives in it; are others' hope and happiness buried in it; are others' comforts sacrificed to it; are others' rights buried in it; are others' opportunities smothered in it; others' chances strangled by it; has their growth been stunted by it; their characters stained by it; have others a smaller loaf, a meaner home? if so, you have failed; all your millions cannot save you from the curse, "thou hast been weighed in the balance and found wanting." when walter scott's publisher and printer failed and $ , of debt stared them in the face, friends came forward and offered to raise money enough to allow him to arrange with his creditors. "no," said he proudly, "this right hand shall work it all off; if we lose everything else, we will at least keep our honor unblemished." what a grand picture of manliness, of integrity in this noble man, working like a dray-horse to cancel that great debt, throwing off at white heat the "life of napoleon," "woodstock," "the tales of a grandfather," articles for the "quarterly," and so on, all written in the midst of great sorrow, pain, and ruin. "i could not have slept soundly," he writes, "as i now can under the comfortable impression of receiving the thanks of my creditors, and the conscious feeling of discharging my duty as a man of honesty. i see before me a long, tedious, and dark path, but it leads to stainless reputation. if i die in the harness, as is very likely, i shall die with honor." one of the last things he uttered was, "i have been, perhaps, the most voluminous author of my day, and it is a comfort to me to think that i have tried to unsettle no man's faith, to corrupt no man's principles, and that i have written nothing which, on my deathbed, i would wish blotted out." although agassiz refused to lecture even for a large sum of money, yet he left a greater legacy to the world, and left even more money to harvard university ($ , ) than he would have left if he had taken the time to lecture for money. faraday had to choose between a fortune of nearly a million and a life of almost certain poverty if he pursued science. he chose poverty and science, and earned a name never to be erased from the book of fame. beecher says that we are all building a soul-house for eternity; yet with what differing architecture and what various care! what if a man should see his neighbor getting workmen and building materials together, and should say to him, "what are you building?" and he should answer, "i don't exactly know. i am waiting to see what will come of it." and so walls are reared, and room is added to room, while the man looks idly on, and all the bystanders exclaim, "what a fool he is!" yet this is the way many men are building their characters for eternity, adding room to room, without plan or aim, and thoughtlessly waiting to see what the effect will be. such builders will never dwell in "the house of god, not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." some people build as cathedrals are built, the part nearest the ground finished; but that part which soars towards heaven, the turrets and the spires, forever incomplete. many men are mere warehouses full of merchandise--the head and heart are stuffed with goods. like those houses in the lower streets of cities which were once family dwellings, but are now used for commercial purposes, there are apartments in their souls which were once tenanted by taste, and love, and joy, and worship; but they are all deserted now, and the rooms are filled with material things. chapter xii. wealth in economy. economy is half the battle of life.--spurgeon. economy is the parent of integrity, of liberty and ease, and the beauteous sister of temperance, of cheerfulness and health.--dr. johnson. can anything be so elegant as to have few wants and to serve them one's self? as much wisdom can be expended on a private economy as on an empire.--emerson. riches amassed in haste will diminish; but those collected by hand and little by little will multiply.--goethe. no gain is so certain as that which proceeds from the economical use of what you have.--latin proverb. beware of little extravagances: a small leak will sink a big ship.--franklin. better go to bed supperless than rise with debts.--german proverb. debt is like any other trap, easy enough to get into, but hard enough to get out of.--h. w. shaw. sense can support herself handsomely in most countries on some eighteen pence a day; but for phantasy, planets and solar systems will not suffice.--macaulay. economy, the poor man's mint.--tupper. i can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse; borrowing only lingers and lingers it out; but the disease is incurable.--shakespeare. whatever be your talents, whatever be your prospects, never speculate away on the chance of a palace that which you may need as a provision against the workhouse.--bulwer. not for to hide it in a hedge, nor for a train attendant, but for the glorious privilege of being independent. burns. "we shan't get much here," whispered a lady to her companion, as john murray blew out one of the two candles by whose light he had been writing when they asked him to contribute to some benevolent object. he listened to their story and gave one hundred dollars. "mr. murray, i am very agreeably surprised," said the lady quoted; "i did not expect to get a cent from you." the old quaker asked the reason for her opinion; and, when told, said, "that, ladies, is the reason i am able to let you have the hundred dollars. it is by practicing economy that i save up money with which to do charitable actions. one candle is enough to talk by." * * * * * * [illustration: alexander hamilton] "the moses of colonial finance." "poverty is a condition which no man should accept, unless it is forced upon him as an inexorable necessity or as the alternative of dishonor." "comfort and independence abide with those who can postpone their desires." * * * * * * emerson relates the following anecdote: "an opulent merchant in boston was called on by a friend in behalf of a charity. at that time he was admonishing his clerk for using whole wafers instead of halves; his friend thought the circumstance unpropitious; but to his surprise, on listening to the appeal, the merchant subscribed five hundred dollars. the applicant expressed his astonishment that any person who was so particular about half a wafer should present five hundred dollars to a charity; but the merchant said, "it is by saving half wafers, and attending to such little things, that i have now something to give." "how did you acquire your great fortune?" asked a friend of lampis, the shipowner. "my great fortune, easily," was the reply, "my small one, by dint of exertion." four years from the time marshall field left the rocky new england farm to seek his fortune in chicago he was admitted as a partner in the firm of coaley, farwell & co. the only reason the modest young man gave, to explain his promotion when he had neither backing, wealth, nor influence, was that he saved his money. if a man will begin at the age of twenty and lay by twenty-six cents every working day, investing at seven per cent. compound interest, he will have thirty-two thousand dollars when he is seventy years old. twenty cents a day is no unusual expenditure for beer or cigars, yet in fifty years it would easily amount to twenty thousand dollars. even a saving of one dollar a week from the date of one's majority would give him one thousand dollars for each of the last ten of the allotted years of life. "what maintains one vice would bring up two children." such rigid economy, such high courage, enables one to surprise the world with gifts even if he is poor. in fact, the poor and the middle classes give most in the aggregate to missions and hospitals and to the poor. only frugality enables them to outdo the rich on their own ground. but miserliness or avariciousness is a different thing from economy. the miserly is the miserable man, who hoards money from a love of it. a miser who spends a cent upon himself where another would spend a quarter does it from parsimony, which is a subordinate characteristic of avarice. of this the following is an illustration: "true, i should like some soup, but i have no appetite for the meat," said the dying ostervalde; "what is to become of that? it will be a sad waste." and so the rich paris banker would not let his servant buy meat for broth. a writer on political economy tells of the mishaps resulting from a broken latch on a farmyard gate. every one going through would shut the gate, but as the latch would not hold it, it would swing open with every breeze. one day a pig ran out into the woods. every one on the farm went to help get him back. a gardener jumped over a ditch to stop the pig, and sprained his ankle so badly as to be confined to his bed for two weeks. when the cook returned, she found that her linen, left to dry at the fire, was all badly scorched. the dairymaid in her excitement left the cows untied, and one of them broke the leg of a colt. the gardener lost several hours of valuable time. yet a new latch would not have cost five cents. guy, the london bookseller, and afterward the founder of the great hospital, was a great miser, living in the back part of his shop, eating upon an old bench, and using his counter for a table, with a newspaper for a cloth. he did not marry. one day he was visited by "vulture" hopkins, another well-known miser. "what is your business?" asked guy, lighting a candle. "to discuss your methods of saving money," was the reply, alluding to the niggardly economy for which guy was famous. on learning hopkins's business he blew out the light, saying, "we can do that in the dark." "sir, you are my master in the art," said the "vulture;" "i need ask no further. i see where your secret lies." yet that kind of economy which verges on the niggardly is better than the extravagance that laughs at it. either, when carried to excess, is not only apt to cause misery, but to ruin the character. "lay by something for a rainy day," said a gentleman to an irishman in his service. not long afterwards he asked patrick how much he had added to his store. "faith, nothing at all," was the reply; "i did as you bid me, but it rained very hard yesterday, and it all went--in drink." "wealth, a monster gorged 'mid starving populations." but nowhere and at no period were these contrasts more startling than in imperial rome. there a whole population might be trembling lest they should be starved by the delay of an alexandrian corn-ship, while the upper classes were squandering fortunes at a single banquet, drinking out of myrrhine and jeweled vases worth hundreds of pounds, and feasting on the brains of peacocks and the tongues of nightingales. as a consequence, disease was rife, men were short-lived. at this time the dress of roman ladies displayed an unheard-of splendor. the elder pliny tells us that he himself saw lollia paulina dressed for a betrothal feast in a robe entirely covered with pearls and emeralds, which had cost , , sesterces, and which was known to be less costly than some of her other dresses. gluttony, caprice, extravagance, ostentation, impurity, rioted in the heart of a society which knew of no other means by which to break the monotony of its weariness or alleviate the anguish of its despair. the expense ridiculously bestowed on the roman feasts passes all belief. suetonius mentions a supper given to vitellius by his brother, in which, among other articles, there were two thousand of the choicest fishes, seven thousand of the most delicate birds, and one dish, from its size and capacity, named the aegis or shield of minerva. it was filled chiefly with the liver of the scari, a delicate species of fish, the brains of pheasants and peacocks, and the tongues of parrots, considered desirable chiefly because of their great cost. "i hope that there will not be another sale," exclaimed horace walpole, "for i have not an inch of room nor a farthing left." a woman once bought an old door-plate with "thompson" on it because she thought it might come in handy some time. the habit of buying what you don't need because it is cheap encourages extravagance. "many have been ruined by buying good pennyworths." "where there is no prudence," said dr. johnson, "there is no virtue." the eccentric john randolph once sprang from his seat in the house of representatives, and exclaimed in his piercing voice, "mr. speaker, i have found it." and then, in the stillness which followed this strange outburst, he added, "i have found the philosopher's stone: it is _pay as you go_." many a young man seems to think that when he sees his name on a sign he is on the highway to fortune, and he begins to live on a scale as though there was no possible chance of failure; as though he were already beyond the danger point. unfortunately congress can pass no law that will remedy the vice of living beyond one's means. "the prosperity of fools shall destroy them." "however easy it may be to make money," said barnum, "it is the most difficult thing in the world to keep it." money often makes the mare--run away with you. very few men know how to use money properly. they can earn it, lavish it, hoard it, waste it, but to deal with it _wisely_, as a means to an end, is an education difficult of acquirement. after a large stained-glass window had been constructed an artist picked up the discarded fragments and made one of the most exquisite windows in europe for another cathedral. so one boy will pick up a splendid education out of the odds and ends of time which others carelessly throw away, or gain a fortune by saving what others waste. it has become a part of the new political economy to argue that a debt on a church or a house or a firm is a desirable thing to develop character. when the young man starts out in life with the old-fashioned idea strong in his mind that debt is bondage and a disgrace, that a mortgage is to be shunned like the cholera, and that to owe a dollar that you cannot pay, unless overtaken by misfortune, is nothing more or less than stealing, then he is bound in so much at least to succeed, and save his old age from being a burden upon his friends or the state. to do your best you must own every bit of yourself. if you are in debt, part of you belongs to your creditors. nothing but actual sin is so paralyzing to a young man's energies as debt. the "loose change" which many young men throw away carelessly, or worse, would often form the basis of a fortune and independence. the earnings of the people of the united states, rich and poor, old and young, male and female, amount to an average of less than fifty cents a day. but it is by economizing such savings that one must get his start in business. the man without a penny is practically helpless, from a business point of view, except so far as he can immediately utilize his powers of body and mind. besides, when a man or woman is driven to the wall, the chance of goodness surviving self-respect and the loss of public esteem is frightfully diminished. "money goes as it comes." "a child and a fool imagine that twenty years and twenty shillings can never be spent." live between extravagance and meanness. don't save money and starve your mind. "the very secret and essence of thrift consists in getting things into higher values. spend upward, that is, for the higher faculties. spend for the mind rather than for the body, for culture rather than for amusement. some young men are too stingy to buy the daily papers, and are very ignorant and narrow." "there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty." "don't squeeze out of your life and comfort and family what you save." liberal, not lavish, is nature's hand. even god, it is said, cannot afford to be extravagant. when he increased the loaves and fishes, he commanded to gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost. "nature uses a grinding economy," says emerson, "working up all that is wasted to-day into to-morrow's creation; not a superfluous grain of sand for all the ostentation she makes of expense and public works. she flung us out in her plenty, but we cannot shed a hair or a paring of a nail but instantly she snatches at the shred and appropriates it to her general stock." last summer's flowers and foliage decayed in autumn only to enrich the earth this year for other forms of beauty. nature will not even wait for our friends to see us, unless we die at home. the moment the breath has left the body she begins to take us to pieces, that the parts may be used again for other creations. mark the following contrast:-- . . man, to the plow; man, tally-ho; wife, to the cow; wife, piano; girl, to the sow; miss, silk and satin; boy, to the mow; boy, greek and latin; and your rents will be netted. and you'll all be gazetted. _hone's works._ _the times._ more than a lifetime has elapsed since the above was published, but instead of returning to the style of , our farmers have out-heroded herod in the direction of the fashion, of , and many a farmhouse, like the home of artemas [transcriber's note: artemus?] ward, may be known by the cupola and the mortgage with which it is decorated. it is by the mysterious power of economy, it has been said, that the loaf is multiplied, that using does not waste, that little becomes much, that scattered fragments grow to unity, and that out of nothing or next to nothing comes the miracle of something. it is not merely saving, still less, parsimony. it is foresight and arrangement, insight and combination, causing inert things to labor, useless things to serve our necessities, perishing things to renew their vigor, and all things to exert themselves for human comfort. english working men and women work very hard, seldom take a holiday, and though they get nearly double the wages of the same classes in france, yet save very little. the millions earned by them slip out of their hands almost as soon as obtained to satisfy the pleasures of the moment. in france every housekeeper is taught the art of making much out of little. "i am simply astonished," writes an american lady stopping in france, "at the number of good wholesome dishes which my friend here makes for her table from things, which at home, i always throw away. dainty little dishes from scraps of cold meat, from hard crusts of bread, delicately prepared and seasoned, from almost everything and nothing. and yet there is no feeling of stinginess or want." "i wish i could write all across the sky, in letters of gold," says rev. william marsh, "the one word, savings-bank." boston savings-banks have $ , , on deposit, mostly saved in driblets. josiah quincy used to say that the servant girls built most of the palaces on beacon street. "so apportion your wants that your means may exceed them," says bulwer. "with one hundred pounds a year i may need no man's help; i may at least have 'my crust of bread and liberty.' but with five thousand pounds a year i may dread a ring at my bell; i may have my tyrannical master in servants whose wages i cannot pay; my exile may be at the fiat of the first long-suffering man who enters a judgment against me; for the flesh that lies nearest my heart some shylock may be dusting his scales and whetting his knife. every man is needy who spends more than he has; no man is needy who spends less. i may so ill manage, that with five thousand pounds a year i purchase the worst evils of poverty,--terror and shame; i may so well manage my money, that with one hundred pounds a year i purchase the best blessings of wealth,--safety and respect." edmund burke, speaking on economic reform, quoted from cicero: "magnum vectigal est parsimonia," accenting the second word on the first syllable. lord north whispered a correction, when burke turned the mistake to advantage. "the noble lord hints that i have erred in the quantity of a principal word in my quotation; i rejoice at it, sir, because it gives me an opportunity of repeating the inestimable adage,--'magnum vectigal est parsimonia.'" the sentiment, meaning "thrift is a good income," is well worthy of emphatic repetition by us all. washington examined the minutest expenditures of his family, even when president of the united states. he understood that without economy none can be rich, and with it none need be poor. "i make a point of paying my own bills," said wellington. john jacob astor said that the first thousand dollars cost him more effort than all of his millions. boys who are careless with their dimes and quarters, just because they have so few, never get this first thousand, and without it no fortune is possible. to find out uses for the persons or things which are now wasted in life is to be the glorious work of the men of the next generation, and that which will contribute most to their enrichment. economizing "in spots" or by freaks is no economy at all. it must be done by management. learn early in life to say "i can't afford it." it is an indication of power and courage and manliness. dr. franklin said, "it is not our own eyes, but other people's, that ruin us." "fashion wears out more apparel than the man," says shakespeare. "of what a hideous progeny of ill is debt the father," said douglas jerrold. "what meanness, what invasions of self-respect, what cares, what double-dealing! how in due season it will carve the frank, open face into wrinkles; how like a knife it will stab the honest heart. and then its transformations,--how it has been known to change a goodly face into a mask of brass; how with the evil custom of debt has the true man become a callous trickster! a freedom from debt, and what nourishing sweetness may be found in cold water; what toothsomeness in a dry crust; what ambrosial nourishment in a hard egg! be sure of it, he who dines out of debt, though his meal be a biscuit and an onion, dines in 'the apollo.' and then, for raiment, what warmth in a threadbare coat, if the tailor's receipt be in your pocket! what tyrian purple in the faded waistcoat, the vest not owed for; how glossy the well-worn hat, if it covers not the aching head of a debtor! next, the home sweets, the outdoor recreation of the free man. the street door falls not a knell in his heart, the foot on the staircase, though he lives on the third pair, sends no spasm through his anatomy; at the rap of his door he can crow 'come in,' and his pulse still beats healthfully. see him abroad! how he returns look for look with any passenger. poverty is a bitter draught, yet may, and sometimes can with advantage, be gulped down. though the drinker makes wry faces, there may, after all, be a wholesome goodness in the cup. but debt, however courteously it may be offered, is the cup of siren; and the wine, spiced and delicious though it be, is poison. my son, if poor, see hyson in the running spring; see thy mouth water at a last week's roll; think a threadbare coat the only wear; and acknowledge a whitewashed garret the fittest housing-place for a gentleman; do this, and flee debt. so shall thy heart be at rest, and the sheriff confounded." "whoever has sixpence is sovereign over all men to the extent of that sixpence," says carlyle; "commands cooks to feed him, philosophers to teach him, kings to mount guard over him,--to the extent of that sixpence." if a man owes you a dollar, he is almost sure to owe you a grudge, too. if you owe another money, you will be apt to regard him with uncharitable eyes. why not economize before getting into debt instead of pinching afterwards? communities which live wholly from hand to mouth never make much progress in the useful arts. savings mean power. _comfort and independence abide with those who can postpone their desires._ "hunger, rags, cold, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach, are disagreeable," says horace greeley, "but debt is infinitely worse than them all." many a ruined man dates his downfall from the day when he began borrowing money. debt demoralized daniel webster, and theodore hook, and sheridan, and fox, and pitt. mirabeau's life was made wretched by duns. "annual income," says micawber, "twenty pounds; annual expenditure, nineteen six, result--happiness. annual income, twenty pounds; annual expenditure, twenty pounds ought and six, result--misery." "we are ruined," says colton, "not by what we really want, but by what we think we do. therefore never go abroad in search of your wants; if they be real wants, they will come home in search of you; for he that buys what he does not want will soon want what he cannot buy." the honorable course is to give every man his due. it is better to starve than not to do this. it is better to do a small business on a cash basis than a large one on credit. _owe no man anything_, wrote st. paul. it is a good motto to place in every purse, in every counting-room, in every church, in every home. economy is of itself a great revenue.--cicero. chapter xiii. rich without money. let others plead for pensions; i can be rich without money, by endeavoring to be superior to everything poor. i would have my services to my country unstained by any interested motive.--lord collingwood. ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, where wealth accumulates and men decay. goldsmith. pennilessness is not poverty, and ownership is not possession; to be without is not always to lack, and to reach is not to attain; sunlight is for all eyes that look up, and color for those who choose.--helen hunt. i ought not to allow any man, because he has broad lands, to feel that he is rich in my presence. i ought to make him feel that i can do without his riches, that i cannot be bought,--neither by comfort, neither by pride,--and although i be utterly penniless, and receiving bread from him, that he is the poor man beside me.--emerson. to be content with what we possess is the greatest and most secure of riches.--cicero. there is no riches above a sound body and no joy above the joy of the heart.--ecclesiastes. where, thy true treasure? gold says, "not in me;" and "not in me," the diamond. gold is poor; india's insolvent: seek it in thyself. young. he is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.--socrates. a great heart in a little house is of all things here below that which has ever touched me most.--lacordaire. my crown is in my heart, not on my head, nor decked with diamonds and indian stones, nor to be seen: my crown is called content; a crown it is, that seldom kings enjoy. shakespeake. many a man is rich without money. thousands of men with nothing in their pockets, and thousands without even a pocket, are rich. * * * * * * [illustration: ralph waldo emerson] "the sage of concord." "i revere the person who is riches: so i cannot think of him as alone, or poor, or exiled, or unhappy." * * * * * * a man born with a good, sound constitution, a good stomach, a good heart and good limbs, and a pretty good headpiece, is rich. good bones are better than gold, tough muscles than silver, and nerves that carry energy to every function are better than houses and land. "heart-life, soul-life, hope, joy, and love, are true riches," said beecher. why should i scramble and struggle to get possession of a little portion of this earth? this is my world now; why should i envy others its mere legal possession? it belongs to him who can see it, enjoy it. i need not envy the so-called owners of estates in boston and new york. they are merely taking care of my property and keeping it in excellent condition for me. for a few pennies for railroad fare whenever i wish i can see and possess the best of it all. it has cost me no effort, it gives me no care; yet the green grass, the shrubbery, and the statues on the lawns, the finer sculptures and the paintings within, are always ready for me whenever i feel a desire to look upon them. i do not wish to carry them home with me, for i could not give them half the care they now receive; besides, it would take too much of my valuable time, and i should be worrying continually lest they be spoiled or stolen. i have much of the wealth of the world now. it is all prepared for me without any pains on my part. all around me are working hard to get things that will please me, and competing to see who can give them the cheapest. the little i pay for the use of libraries, railroads, galleries, parks, is less than it would cost to care for the least of all i use. life and landscape are mine, the stars and flowers, the sea and air, the birds and trees. what more do i want? all the ages have been working for me; all mankind are my servants. i am only required to feed and clothe myself, an easy task in this land of opportunity. a millionaire pays thousands of pounds for a gallery of paintings, and some poor boy or girl comes in, with open mind and poetic fancy, and carries away a treasure of beauty which the owner never saw. a collector bought at public auction in london, for one hundred and fifty-seven guineas, an autograph of shakespeare; but for nothing a schoolboy can read and absorb the riches of "hamlet." why should i waste my abilities pursuing this will-o'-the-wisp "enough," which is ever a little more than one has, and which none of the panting millions ever yet overtook in his mad chase? is there no desirable thing left in this world but gold, luxury, and ease? "want is a growing giant whom the coat of have was never large enough to cover." "a man may as soon fill a chest with grace, or a vessel with virtue," says phillips brooks, "as a heart with wealth." shall we seek happiness through the sense of taste or of touch? shall we idolize our stomachs and our backs? have we no higher missions, no nobler destinies? shall we "disgrace the fair day by a pusillanimous preference of our bread to our freedom"? in the three great "banquets" of plato, xenophon, and plutarch the food is not even mentioned. what does your money say to you: what message does it bring to you? does it say to you, "eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die"? does it bring a message of comfort, of education, of culture, of travel, of books, of an opportunity to help your fellow-man, or is the message "more land, more thousands and millions"? what message does it bring you? clothes for the naked, bread for the starving, schools for the ignorant, hospitals for the sick, asylums for the orphans, or of more for yourself and none for others? is it a message of generosity or of meanness, breadth or narrowness? does it speak to you of character? does it mean a broader manhood, a larger aim, a nobler ambition, or does it cry "more, more, more"? are you an animal loaded with ingots, or a man filled with a purpose? he is rich whose mind is rich, whose thought enriches the intellect of the world. it is a sad sight to see a soul which thirsts not for truth or beauty or the good. a sailor on a sinking vessel in the caribbean sea eagerly filled his pockets with spanish dollars from a barrel on board while his companions, about to leave in the only boat, begged him to seek safety with them. but he could not leave the bright metal which he had so longed for and idolized, and was prevented from reaching shore by his very riches, when the vessel went down. "who is the richest of men," asked socrates? "he who is content with the least, for contentment is nature's riches." in more's "utopia" gold was despised. criminals were forced to wear heavy chains of it, and to have rings of it in their ears; it was put to the vilest uses to keep up the scorn of it. bad characters were compelled to wear gold head-bands. diamonds and pearls were used to decorate infants, so that the youth would discard and despise them. "ah, if the rich were as rich as the poor fancy riches!" exclaims emerson. many a rich man has died in the poorhouse. in excavating pompeii a skeleton was found with the fingers clenched round a quantity of gold. a man of business in the town of hull, england, when dying, pulled a bag of money from under his pillow, which he held between his clenched fingers with a grasp so firm as scarcely to relax under the agonies of death. oh! blind and wanting wit to choose, who house the chaff and burn the grain; who hug the wealth ye cannot use, and lack the riches all may gain. william watson. poverty is the want of much, avarice the want of everything. a poor man was met by a stranger while scoffing at the wealthy for not enjoying themselves. the stranger gave him a purse, in which he was always to find a ducat. as fast as he took one out another was to drop in, but he was not to begin to spend his fortune until he had thrown away the purse. he takes ducat after ducat out, but continually procrastinates and puts off the hour of enjoyment until he has got "a little more," and dies at last counting his millions. a beggar was once met by fortune, who promised to fill his wallet with gold, as much as he might please, on condition that whatever touched the ground should turn at once to dust. the beggar opens his wallet, asks for more and yet more, until the bag bursts. the gold falls to the ground, and all is lost. when the steamer central america was about to sink, the stewardess, having collected all the gold she could from the staterooms, and tied it in her apron, jumped for the last boat leaving the steamer. she missed her aim and fell into the water, the gold carrying her down head first. in the year a rich miser lived in padua, who was so mean and sordid that he would never give a cent to any person or object, and he was so afraid of the banks that he would not deposit with them, but would sit up nights with sword and pistol by him to guard his idol hoard. when his health gave way from anxiety and watching he built an underground treasure-chamber, so arranged that if any burglar ever entered, he would step upon a spring which would precipitate him into a subterranean river, where he could neither escape nor be heard. one night the miser went to his chest to see that all was right, when his foot touched the spring of the trap, and he was hurled into the deep, hidden stream. "one would think," said boswell, "that the proprietor of all this (keddlestone, the seat of lord scarsfield) must be happy." "nay, sir," said johnson, "all this excludes but one evil, poverty." john duncan, the illegitimate child of a scottish weaver, was ignorant, near-sighted, bent, a miserable apology for a human being, and at last a pauper. if he went upon the street he would sometimes be stoned by other boys. the farmer, for whom he watched cattle, was cruel to him, and after a rainy day would send him cold and wet to sleep on a miserable bed in a dark outhouse. here he would empty the water from his shoes, and wring out his wet clothes and sleep as best he might. but the boy had a desire to learn to read, and when, a little later, he was put to weaving, he persuaded a schoolgirl, twelve years old, to teach him. he was sixteen when he learned the alphabet, after which his progress was quite rapid. he was very fond of plants, and worked overtime for several months to earn five shillings to buy a book on botany. he became a good botanist, and such was his interest in the study that at the age of eighty he walked twelve miles to obtain a new specimen. a man whom he met became interested at finding such a well-stored mind in such a miserable body, poorly clad, and published an account of his career. many readers sent him money, but he saved it, and left it in his will to found eight scholarships and offer prizes for the encouragement of the study of natural science by the poor. his small but valuable library was left for a similar use. franklin said money never made a man happy yet; there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. the more a man has, the more he wants. instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one. a great bank account can never make a man rich. it is the mind that makes the body rich. no man is rich, however much money or land he may possess, who has a poor heart. if that is poor, he is poor indeed, though he own and rule kingdoms. he is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has. who would not choose to be a millionaire of deeds with a lincoln, a grant, a florence nightingale, a childs; a millionaire of ideas with emerson, with lowell, with shakespeare, with wordsworth; a millionaire of statesmanship with a gladstone, a bright, a sumner, a washington? some men are rich in health, in constant cheerfulness, in a mercurial temperament which floats them over troubles and trials enough to sink a shipload of ordinary men. others are rich in disposition, family, and friends. there are some men so amiable that everybody loves them; some so cheerful that they carry an atmosphere of jollity about them. some are rich in integrity and character. one of the first great lessons of life is to learn the true estimate of values. as the youth starts out in his career, all sorts of wares will be imposed upon him, and all kinds of temptations will be used to induce him to buy. his success will depend very largely upon his ability to estimate properly, not the apparent but the real value of everything presented to him. vulgar wealth will flaunt her banner before his eyes, and claim supremacy over everything else. a thousand different schemes will be thrust into his face with their claims for superiority. every occupation and vocation will present its charms in turn, and offer its inducements. the youth who would succeed must not allow himself to be deceived by appearances, but must place the emphasis of life where it belongs. no man, it is said, can read the works of john ruskin without learning that his sources of pleasure are well-nigh infinite. there is not a flower, nor a cloud, nor a tree, nor a mountain, nor a star; not a bird that fans the air, nor a creature that walks the earth; not a glimpse of sea or sky or meadow-greenery; not a work of worthy art in the domains of painting, sculpture, poetry, and architecture; not a thought of god as the great spirit presiding over and informing all things, that is not to him a source of the sweetest pleasure. the whole world of matter and of spirit and the long record of human art are open to him as the never-failing fountains of his delight. in these pure realms he seeks his daily food and has his daily life. there is now and then a man who sees beauty and true riches everywhere, and "worships the splendor of god which he sees bursting through each chink and cranny." phillips brooks, thoreau, garrison, emerson, beecher, agassiz, were rich without money. they saw the splendor in the flower, the glory in the grass, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. they knew that the man who owns the landscape is seldom the one who pays the taxes on it. they sucked in power and wealth at first hands from the meadows, fields, and flowers, birds, brooks, mountains, and forest, as the bee sucks honey from the flowers. every natural object seemed to bring them a special message from the great author of the beautiful. to these rare souls every natural object was touched with power and beauty; and their thirsty souls drank it in as a traveler on a desert drinks in the god-sent water of the oasis. to extract power and real wealth from men and things seemed to be their mission, and to pour it out again in refreshing showers upon a thirsty humanity. they believed that man's most important food does not enter by the mouth. they knew that man could not live by estates, dollars, and bread alone, and that if he could he would only be an animal. they believed that the higher life demands a higher food. they believed in man's unlimited power of expansion, and that this growth demands a more highly organized food product than that which merely sustains animal life. they saw a finer nutriment in the landscape, in the meadows, than could be ground into flour, and which escaped the loaf. they felt a sentiment in natural objects which pointed upward, ever upward to the author, and which was capable of feeding and expanding the higher life until it should grow into a finer sympathy and fellowship with the author of the beautiful. they believed that the creation thunders the ten commandments, and that all nature is tugging at the terms of every contract to make it just. they could feel this finer sentiment, this soul lifter, this man inspirer, in the growing grain, in the waving corn, in the golden harvest. they saw it reflected in every brook, in every star, in every flower, in every dewdrop. they believed that nature together with human nature were man's great schoolmasters, that if rightly used they would carve his rough life into beauty and touch his rude manner with grace. "more servants wait on man than he'll take notice of." but if he would enjoy nature he must come to it from a higher level than the yardstick. he must bring a spirit as grand and sublime as that by which the thing itself exists. we all live on far lower levels than we need to do. we linger in the misty and oppressive valleys, when we might be climbing the sunlit hills. god puts into our hands the book of life, bright on every page with open secrets, and we suffer it to drop out of our hands unread. emerson says, "we have come into a world which is a living poem. everything is as i am." nature provides for us a perpetual festival; she is bright to the bright, comforting to those who will accept comfort. we cannot conceive how a universe could possibly be created which could devise more efficient methods or greater opportunities for the delight, the happiness, and the real wealth of human beings than the one we live in. the human body is packed full of marvelous devices, of wonderful contrivances, of infinite possibilities for the happiness and riches of the individual. no physiologist nor scientist has ever yet been able to point out a single improvement, even in the minutest detail, in the structure of the human body. no inventor has ever yet been able to suggest an improvement in this human mechanism. no chemist has ever been able to suggest a superior combination in any one of the elements which make up the human structure. one of the first things to do in life is to learn the natural wealth of our surroundings, instead of bemoaning our lot, for, no matter where we are placed, there is infinitely more about us than we can ever understand, than we can ever exhaust the meaning of. "thank heaven there are still some matthew arnolds who prefer the heavenly sweetness of light to the eden of riches." arnold left only a few thousand dollars, but yet was he not one of the richest of men? what the world wants is young men who will amass golden thoughts, golden wisdom, golden deeds, not mere golden dollars; young men who prefer to have thought-capital, character-capital, to cash-capital. he who estimates his money the highest values himself the least. "i revere the person," says emerson, "who is riches; so that i cannot think of him as alone, or poor, or exiled, or unhappy." raphael was rich without money. all doors opened to him, and he was more than welcome everywhere. his sweet spirit radiated sunshine wherever he went. henry wilson was rich without money. so scrupulous had he been not to make his exalted position a means of worldly gain, that when this natick cobbler, the sworn friend of the oppressed, whose one question as to measures or acts was ever "is it right; will it do good?" came to be inaugurated as vice-president of the country, he was obliged to borrow of his fellow-senator, charles sumner, one hundred dollars to meet the necessary expenses of the occasion. mozart, the great composer of the "requiem," left barely enough money to bury him, but he has made the world richer. a rich mind and noble spirit will cast a radiance of beauty over the humblest home, which the upholsterer and decorator can never approach. who would not prefer to be a millionaire of character, of contentment, rather than possess nothing but the vulgar coins of a croesus? whoever uplifts civilization is rich though he die penniless, and future generations will erect his monument. are we tender, loving, self-denying, and honest, trying to fashion our frail life after that of the model man of nazareth? then, though our pockets are often empty, we have an inheritance which is as overwhelmingly precious as it is eternally incorruptible. an asiatic traveler tells us that one day he found the bodies of two men laid upon the desert sand beside the carcass of a camel. they had evidently died from thirst, and yet around the waist of each was a large store of jewels of different kinds, which they had doubtless been crossing the desert to sell in the markets of persia. the man who has no money is poor, but one who has nothing but money is poorer than he. he only is rich who can enjoy without owning; he who is covetous is poor though he have millions. there are riches of intellect, and no man with an intellectual taste can be called poor. he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he purposes to remove. he is rich as well as brave who can face poverty and misfortune with cheerfulness and courage. we can so educate the will power that it will focus the thoughts upon the bright side of things, and upon objects which elevate the soul, thus forming a habit of happiness and goodness which will make us rich. the habit of making the best of everything and of always looking on the bright side of everything is a fortune in itself. he is rich who values a good name above gold. among the ancient greeks and romans honor was more sought after than wealth. rome was imperial rome no more when the imperial purple became an article of traffic. this is the evil of trade, as well as of partisan politics. as emerson remarks, it would put everything into market,--talent, beauty, virtue, and man himself. diogenes was captured by pirates and sold as a slave. his purchaser released him, and gave him charge of his household and of the education of his children. he despised wealth and affectation, and lived in a tub. "do you want anything?" asked alexander the great, forcibly impressed by the abounding cheerfulness of the philosopher under such circumstances. "yes," replied diogenes, "i want you to stand out of my sunshine and not to take from me what you cannot give me." "were i not alexander," exclaimed the great conqueror, "i would be diogenes." brave and honest men do not work for gold. they work for love, for honor, for character. when socrates suffered death rather than abandon his views of right morality, when las casas endeavored to mitigate the tortures of the poor indians, they had no thought of money or country. they worked for the elevation of all that thought, and for the relief of all that suffered. "i don't want such things," said epictetus to the rich roman orator who was making light of his contempt for money-wealth; "and besides," said the stoic, "you are poorer than i am, after all. you have silver vessels, but earthenware reasons, principles, appetites. my mind to me a kingdom is, and it furnishes me with abundant and happy occupation in lieu of your restless idleness. all your possessions seem small to you; mine seem great to me. your desire is insatiate, mine is satisfied." "do you know, sir," said a devotee of mammon to john bright, "that i am worth a million sterling?" "yes," said the irritated but calm-spirited respondent, "i do; and i know that it is all you are worth." a bankrupt merchant, returning home one night, said to his noble wife, "my dear, i am ruined; everything we have is in the hands of the sheriff." after a few moments of silence the wife looked into his face and asked, "will the sheriff sell you?" "oh, no." "will the sheriff sell me?" "oh, no." "then do not say we have lost everything. all that is most valuable remains to us,--manhood, womanhood, childhood. we have lost but the results of our skill and industry. we can make another fortune if our hearts and hands are left us." what power can poverty have over a home where loving hearts are beating with a consciousness of untold riches of head and heart? paul was never so great as when he occupied a prison cell; and jesus christ reached the height of his success when, smitten, spat upon, tormented, and crucified, he cried in agony, and yet with triumphant satisfaction, "it is finished." "character before wealth," was the motto of amos lawrence, who had inscribed on his pocket-book, "what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" if you make a fortune let every dollar of it be clean. you do not want to see in it drunkards reel, orphans weep, widows moan. your riches must not make others poorer and more wretched. alexander the great wandered to the gates of paradise, and knocked for entrance. "who knocks?" demanded the guardian angel. "alexander." "who is alexander?" "alexander,--the alexander,--alexander the great,--the conqueror of the world." "we know him not," replied the angel; "this is the lord's gate; only the righteous enter here." don't start out in life with a false standard; a truly great man makes official position and money and houses and estates look so tawdry, so mean and poor, that we feel like sinking out of sight with our cheap laurels and gold. _millions look trifling beside character_. a friend of professor agassiz, an eminent practical man, once expressed his wonder that a man of such abilities should remain contented with such a moderate income as he received. "i have enough," was agassiz's reply. "i have no time to waste in making money. life is not sufficiently long to enable a man to get rich and do his duty to his fellow-men at the same time." how were the thousands of business men who lost every dollar they had in the chicago fire enabled to go into business at once, some into wholesale business, without money? their record was their bank account. the commercial agencies said they were square men; that they had always paid one hundred cents on a dollar; that they had paid promptly, and that they were industrious and dealt honorably with all men. this record was as good as a bank account. _they drew on their character_. character was the coin which enabled penniless men to buy thousands of dollars' worth of goods. their integrity did not burn up with their stores. the best part of them was beyond the reach of fire and could not be burned. what are the toil-sweated productions of wealth piled up in vast profusion around a girard, or a rothschild, when weighed against the stores of wisdom, the treasures of knowledge, and the strength, beauty, and glory with which victorious virtue has enriched and adorned a great multitude of minds during the march of a hundred generations? "lord, how many things are in the world of which diogenes hath no need!" exclaimed the stoic, as he wandered among the miscellaneous articles at a country fair. "there are treasures laid up in the heart--treasures of charity, piety, temperance, and soberness. these treasures a man takes with him beyond death when he leaves this world." (buddhist scriptures.) is it any wonder that our children start out with wrong ideals of life, with wrong ideas of what constitutes success? the child is "urged to get on," to "rise in the world," to "make money." the youth is constantly told that nothing succeeds like success. false standards are everywhere set up for him, and then the boy is blamed if he makes a failure. it is all very well to urge youth on to success, but the great mass of mankind can never reach or even approximate the goal constantly preached to them, nor can we all be rich. one of the great lessons to teach in this century of sharp competition and the survival of the fittest is how to be rich without money, and to learn how to do without success, according to the popular standard. gold cannot make the miser rich, nor can the want of it make the beggar poor. in the poem, "the changed cross," a weary woman is represented as dreaming that she was led to a place where many crosses lay, crosses of divers shapes and sizes. the most beautiful one was set in jewels of gold. it was so tiny and exquisite that she changed her own plain cross for it, thinking she was fortunate in finding one so much lighter and lovelier. but soon her back began to ache under the glittering burden, and she changed it for another cross very beautiful and entwined with flowers. but she soon found that underneath the flowers were piercing thorns which tore her flesh. at last she came to a very plain cross without jewels, without carving, and with only the word, "love," inscribed upon it. she took this one up and it proved the easiest and best of all. she was amazed, however, to find that it was her old cross which she had discarded. it is easy to see the jewels and the flowers in other people's crosses, but the thorns and heavy weight are known only to the bearers. how easy other people's burdens seem to us compared with our own. we do not appreciate the secret burdens which almost crush the heart, nor the years of weary waiting for delayed success--the aching hearts longing for sympathy, the hidden poverty, the suppressed emotion in other lives. william pitt, the great commoner, considered money as dirt beneath his feet compared with the public interest and public esteem. his hands were clean. the object for which we strive tells the story of our lives. men and women should be judged by the happiness they create in those around them. noble deeds always enrich, but millions of mere money may impoverish. _character is perpetual wealth_, and by the side of him who possesses it the millionaire who has it not seems a pauper. compared with it, what are houses and lands, stocks and bonds? "it is better that great souls should live in small habitations than that abject slaves should burrow in great houses." plain living, rich thought, and grand effort are real riches. invest in yourself, and you will never be poor. floods cannot carry your wealth away, fire cannot burn it, rust cannot consume it. "if a man empties his purse into his head," says franklin, "no man can take it from him. an investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." "there is a cunning juggle in riches. i observe," says emerson, "that they take somewhat for everything they give. i look bigger, but i am less, i have more clothes, but am not so warm; more armor, but less courage; more books, but less wit." howe'er it be, it seems to me, 't is only noble to be good. kind hearts are more than coronets, and simple faith than norman blood. tennyson. chapter xiv. opportunities where you are. to each man's life there comes a time supreme; one day, one night, one morning, or one noon, one freighted hour, one moment opportune, one rift through which sublime fulfillments gleam, one space when fate goes tiding with the stream, one once, in balance 'twixt too late, too soon, and ready for the passing instant's boon to tip in favor the uncertain beam. ah, happy he who, knowing how to wait, knows also how to watch and work and stand on life's broad deck alert, and at the prow to seize the passing moment, big with fate, from opportunity's extended hand, when the great clock of destiny strikes now! mary a. townsend. once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, in the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side. lowell. what is opportunity to a man who can't use it? an unfecundated egg, which the waves of time wash away into nonentity.--george eliot. a thousand years a poor man watched before the gate of paradise: but while one little nap he snatched, it oped and shut. ah! was he wise? w. b. alger. our grand business is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.--carlyle. a man's best things are nearest him, lie close about his feet. r. m. milnes. the secret of success in life is for a man _to be ready for his opportunity_ when it comes.--disraeli. "there are no longer any good chances for young men," complained a law student to daniel webster. "there is always room at the top," replied the great lawyer. * * * * * * [illustration: thomas jefferson] "the world is all gates, all opportunities to him who can use them.' "'t is never offered twice, seize then the hour when fortune smiles and duty points the way." * * * * * * no chance, no opportunities, in a land where many poor boys become rich men, where newsboys go to congress, and where those born in the lowest stations attain the highest positions? the world is all gates, all opportunities to him who will use them. but, like bunyan's pilgrim in the dungeon of giant despair's castle, who had the key of deliverance all the time with him but had forgotten it, we fail to rely wholly upon the ability to advance all that is good for us which has been given to the weakest as well as the strongest. we depend too much upon outside assistance. "we look too high for things close by." a baltimore lady lost a valuable diamond bracelet at a ball, and supposed that it was stolen from the pocket of her cloak. years afterward she washed the steps of the peabody institute, pondering how to get money to buy food. she cut up an old, worn-out, ragged cloak to make a hood, when lo! in the lining of the cloak she discovered the diamond bracelet. during all her poverty she was worth $ , but did not know it. many of us who think we are poor are rich in opportunities, if we could only see them, in possibilities all about us, in faculties worth more than diamond bracelets. in our large eastern cities it has been found that at least ninety-four out of every hundred found their first fortune at home, or near at hand, and in meeting common every-day wants. it is a sorry day for a young man who cannot see any opportunities where he is, but thinks he can do better somewhere else. some brazilian shepherds organized a party to go to california to dig gold, and took along a handful of translucent pebbles to play checkers with on the voyage. after arriving in san francisco, and after they had thrown most of the pebbles away, they discovered that they were diamonds. they hastened back to brazil, only to find that the mines from which the pebbles had been gathered had been taken up by others and sold to the government. the richest gold and silver mine in nevada was sold for $ by the owner to get money to pay his passage to other mines, where he thought he could get rich. professor agassiz told the harvard students of a farmer who owned a farm of hundreds of acres of unprofitable woods and rocks, and concluded to sell out and get into a more profitable business. he decided to go into the coal-oil business; he studied coal measures and coal-oil deposits, and experimented for a long time. he sold his farm for $ , and engaged in his new business two hundred miles away. only a short time after the man who bought his farm discovered upon it a great flood of coal-oil, which the farmer had previously ignorantly tried to drain off. hundreds of years ago there lived near the shore of the river indus a persian by the name of ali hafed. he lived in a cottage on the river bank, from which he could get a grand view of the beautiful country stretching away to the sea. he had a wife and children, an extensive farm, fields of grain, gardens of flowers, orchards of fruit, and miles of forest. he had a plenty of money and everything that heart could wish. he was contented and happy. one evening a priest of buddha visited him, and, sitting before the fire, explained to him how the world was made, and how the first beams of sunlight condensed on the earth's surface into diamonds. the old priest told that a drop of sunlight the size of his thumb was worth more than large mines of copper, silver, or gold; that with one of them he could buy many farms like his; that with a handful he could buy a province, and with a mine of diamonds he could purchase a kingdom. ali hafed listened, and was no longer a rich man. he had been touched with discontent, and with that all wealth vanishes. early the next morning he woke the priest who had been the cause of his unhappiness, and anxiously asked him where he could find a mine of diamonds. "what do you want of diamonds?" asked the astonished priest. "i want to be rich and place my children on thrones." "all you have to do is to go and search until you find them," said the priest. "but where shall i go?" asked the poor farmer. "go anywhere, north, south, east, or west." "how shall i know when i have found the place?" "when you find a river running over white sands between high mountain ranges, in those white sands you will find diamonds," answered the priest. the discontented man sold the farm for what he could get, left his family with a neighbor, took the money he had at interest, and went to search for the coveted treasure. over the mountains of arabia, through palestine and egypt, he wandered for years, but found no diamonds. when his money was all gone and starvation stared him in the face, ashamed of his folly and of his rags, poor ali hafed threw himself into the tide and was drowned. the man who bought his farm was a contented man, who made the most of his surroundings, and did not believe in going away from home to hunt for diamonds or success. while his camel was drinking in the garden one day, he noticed a flash of light from the white sands of the brook. he picked up a pebble, and pleased with its brilliant hues took it into the house, put it on the shelf near the fireplace, and forgot all about it. the old priest of buddha who had filled ali hafed with the fatal discontent called one day upon the new owner of the farm. he had no sooner entered the room than his eye caught that flash of light from the stone. "here's a diamond! here's a diamond!" the old priest shouted in great excitement. "has ali hafed returned?" said the priest. "no," said the farmer, "nor is that a diamond. that is but a stone." they went into the garden and stirred up the white sand with their fingers, and behold, other diamonds more beautiful than the first gleamed out of it. so the famous diamond beds of golconda were discovered. had ali hafed been content to remain at home, had he dug in his own garden, instead of going abroad in search for wealth, and reaping poverty, hardships, starvation, and death, he would have been one of the richest men in the world, for the entire farm abounded in the richest of gems. you have your own special place and work. find it, fill it. scarcely a boy or girl will read these lines but has much better opportunity to win success than garfield, wilson, franklin, lincoln, harriet beecher stowe, frances willard, and thousands of others. but to succeed you must be prepared to seize and improve the opportunity when it comes. remember that four things come not back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity. it is one of the paradoxes of civilization that the more opportunities are utilized, the more new ones are thereby created. new openings are as easy to fill as ever to those who do their best; although it is not so easy as formerly to obtain distinction in the old lines, because the standard has advanced so much and competition has so greatly increased. "the world is no longer clay," said emerson, "but rather iron in the hands of its workers, and men have got to hammer out a place for themselves by steady and rugged blows." thousands of men have made fortunes out of trifles which others pass by. as the bee gets honey from the same flower from which the spider gets poison, so some men will get a fortune out of the commonest and meanest things, as scraps of leather, cotton waste, slag, iron filings, from which others get only poverty and failure. there is scarcely a thing which contributes to the welfare and comfort of humanity, not an article of household furniture, a kitchen utensil, an article of clothing or of food, that is not capable of an improvement in which there may be a fortune. opportunities? they are all around us. edison found them in a baggage car. forces of nature plead to be used in the service of man, as lightning for ages tried to attract his attention to the great force of electricity, which would do his drudgery and leave him to develop the god-given powers within him. there is power lying latent everywhere waiting for the observant eye to discover it. first find out what the world needs and then supply that want. an invention to make smoke go the wrong way in a chimney might be a very ingenious thing, but it would be of no use to humanity. the patent office at washington is full of wonderful devices of ingenious mechanism, but not one in hundreds is of use to the inventor or to the world. and yet how many families have been impoverished, and have struggled for years amid want and woe, while the father has been working on useless inventions. a. t. stewart, as a boy, lost eighty-seven cents when his capital was one dollar and a half in buying buttons and thread which shoppers did not call for. after that he made it a rule never to buy anything which the public did not want, and so prospered. it is estimated that five out of every seven of the millionaire manufacturers began by making with their own hands the articles which made their fortunes. one of the greatest hindrances to advancement in life is the lack of observation and of the inclination to take pains. an observing man, the eyelets of whose shoes pulled out, but who could not afford to get another pair, said to himself, "i will make a metallic lacing hook, which can be riveted into the leather;" he was so poor that he had to borrow a sickle to cut the grass in front of his hired tenement. now he is a very rich man. an observing barber in newark, n. j., thought he could make an improvement in shears for cutting hair, invented clippers, and became rich. a maine man was called in from the hayfield to wash clothes for his invalid wife. he had never realized what it was to wash before. finding the method slow and laborious, he invented the washing-machine, and made a fortune. a man who was suffering terribly with toothache said to himself, there must be some way of filling teeth which will prevent their aching. so he invented the principle of gold filling for teeth. the great things of the world have not been done by men of large means. ericsson began the construction of the screw propellers in a bathroom. the cotton-gin was first manufactured in a log cabin. john harrison, the great inventor of the marine chronometer, began his career in the loft of an old barn. parts of the first steamboat ever run in america were set up in the vestry of a church in philadelphia by fitch. mccormick began to make his famous reaper in a gristmill. the first model dry dock was made in an attic. clark, the founder of clark university of worcester, mass., began his great fortune by making toy wagons in a horse shed. farquhar made umbrellas in his sitting-room, with his daughter's help, until he sold enough to hire a loft. edison began his experiments in a baggage car on the grand trunk railroad when a newsboy. as soon as the weather would permit, the jamestown colonists began to stroll about the country digging for gold. in a bank of sand some glittering particles were found, and the whole settlement was in a state of excitement. fourteen weeks of the precious springtime, which ought to have been given to plowing and planting, were consumed in this stupid nonsense. even the indians ridiculed the madness of the men who, for imaginary grains of gold, were wasting their chances for a crop of corn. michael angelo found a piece of discarded carrara marble among waste rubbish beside a street in florence, which some unskillful workman had cut, hacked, spoiled, and thrown away. no doubt many artists had noticed the fine quality of the marble, and regretted that it should have been spoiled. but michael angelo still saw an angel in the ruin, and with his chisel and mallet he called out from it one of the finest pieces of statuary in italy, the young david. the lonely island of nantucket would not be considered a very favorable place to win success and fame. but maria mitchell, on seventy-five dollars a year, as librarian of the nantucket athenaeum, found time and opportunity to become a celebrated astronomer. lucretia mott, one of america's foremost philanthropists and reformers, who made herself felt over a whole continent, gained much of her reputation as a preacher on nantucket island. "why does not america have fine sculptors?" asked a romping girl, of watertown, mass., in . her father, a physician, answered that he supposed "an american could be a stone-cutter, but that is a very different thing from being a sculptor." "i think," said the plucky maiden, "that if no other american tries it i will." she began her studies in boston, and walked seven miles to and fro daily between her home and the city. the medical schools in boston would not admit her to study anatomy, so she had to go to st. louis. subsequently she went to rome, and there, during a long residence, and afterward, modeled and carved very beautiful statuary which made the name of harriet g. hosmer famous. begin where you are; work where you are; the hour which you are now wasting, dreaming of some far-off success, may be crowded with grand possibilities. patrick henry was called a lazy boy, a good-for-nothing farmer, and he failed as a merchant. he was always dreaming of some far-off greatness, and never thought he could be a hero among the corn and tobacco and saddlebags of virginia. he studied law six weeks, when he put out his shingle. people thought he would fail, but in his first case he showed that he had a wonderful power of oratory. it then first dawned upon him that he could be a hero in virginia. from the time the stamp act was passed and henry was elected to the virginia house of burgesses, and he had introduced his famous resolution against the unjust taxation of the american colonies, he rose steadily until he became one of the brilliant orators of america. in one of his first speeches upon this resolution he uttered these words, which were prophetic of his power and courage: "caesar had his brutus, charles the first his cromwell, and george the third--may profit by their example. if this be treason, make the most of it." the great natural philosopher, faraday, who was the son of a blacksmith, wrote, when a young man, to humphry davy, asking for employment at the royal institution. davy consulted a friend on the matter. "here is a letter from a young man named faraday, he has been attending my lectures, and wants me to give him employment at the royal institution--what can i do?" "do? put him to washing bottles; if he is good for anything he will do it directly; if he refuses he is good for nothing." but the boy who could experiment in the attic of an apothecary shop with an old pan and glass vials during every moment he could snatch from his work saw an opportunity in washing bottles, which led to a professorship at the royal academy at woolwich. tyndall said of this boy with no chance, "he is the greatest experimental philosopher the world has ever seen." he became the wonder of his age in science. there is a legend of an artist who long sought for a piece of sandal-wood, out of which to carve a madonna. he was about to give up in despair, leaving the vision of his life unrealized, when in a dream he was bidden to carve his madonna from a block of oak wood which was destined for the fire. he obeyed, and produced a masterpiece from a log of common firewood. many of us lose great opportunities in life by waiting to find sandal-wood for our carvings, when they really lie hidden in the common logs that we burn. one man goes through life without seeing chances for doing anything great, while another close beside him snatches from the same circumstances and privileges opportunities for achieving grand results. anna dickinson began life as a school-teacher. adelaide neilson was a child's nurse. charlotte cushman's parents were poor. the renowned jeanne d'arc fed swine. christine nilsson was a poor swedish peasant, and ran barefoot in childhood. edmonia lewis, the colored sculptor, overcame the prejudice against her sex and color, and pursued her profession in italy. maria mitchell, the astronomer, was the daughter of a poor man who taught school at two dollars per week. these are but a few of the many who have struggled with fate and risen to distinction through their own personal efforts. opportunities? they are everywhere. "america is another name for opportunities. our whole history appears like a last effort of divine providence in behalf of the human race." never before were there such grand openings, such chances, such opportunities. especially is this true for girls and young women. a new era is dawning for them. hundreds of occupations and professions, which were closed to them only a few years ago, are now inviting them to enter. when i hear of a young woman entering the medical profession, or beginning the study of law, or entering school with a view to teaching, i feel like congratulating her for thus asserting her individuality. we cannot all of us perhaps make great discoveries like newton, faraday, edison, and thompson. we cannot all of us paint immortal pictures like an angelo or a raphael. but we can all of us make our lives sublime, by _seizing common occasions and making them great_. what chance had the young girl, grace darling, to distinguish herself, living on those barren lighthouse rocks alone with her aged parents? but while her brothers and sisters, who moved to the cities to win wealth and fame, are not known to the world, she became more famous than a princess. this poor girl did not need to go to london to see the nobility; they came to the lighthouse to see her. right at home this young girl had won fame which the regal heirs might envy, and a name which will never perish from the earth. she did not wander away into dreamy distance for fame and fortune, but did her best where duty had placed her. if you want to get rich, study yourself and your own wants. you will find that millions have the same wants. the safest business is always connected with man's prime necessities. he must have clothing and a dwelling; he must eat. he wants comforts, facilities of all kinds for pleasure, luxuries, education, and culture. any man who can supply a great want of humanity, improve any methods which men use, supply any demand of comfort, or contribute in any way to their well-being, can make a fortune. "we cannot doubt," said edward everett, "that truths now unknown are in reserve to reward the patience and the labors of future lovers of truth, which will go as far beyond the brilliant discoveries of the last generation as these do beyond all that was known to the ancient world." the golden opportunity is never offered twice; seize then the hour when fortune smiles and duty points the way; nor shrink aside to 'scape the spectre fear, nor pause, though pleasure beckon from her bower; but bravely bear thee onward to the goal. anon. for the distant still thou yearnest, and behold the good so near; if to use the good thou learnest, thou wilt surely find it here. goethe. do not, then, stand idly waiting for some greater work to do; fortune is a lazy goddess-- she will never come to you. go and toil in any vineyard, do not fear to do or dare; if you want a field of labor, you can find it anywhere. ellen h. gates. why thus longing, thus forever sighing, for the far-off, unattained and dim, while the beautiful, all around thee lying offers up its low, perpetual hymn? harriet winslow. work for the good that is nighest; dream not of greatness afar: that glory is ever the highest which shines upon men as they are. w. morley punshon. chapter xv. the might of little things. little strokes fell great oaks.--franklin. think naught a trifle, though it small appear; small sands the mountain, moments make the year, and trifles, life. young. "scorn not the slightest word or deed, nor deem it void of power; there's fruit in each wind-wafted seed, that waits its natal hour." it is but the littleness of man that seeth no greatness in trifles.--wendell phillips. he that despiseth small things shall fall by little and little.--ecclesiasticus. often from our weakness our strongest principles of conduct are born; and from the acorn, which a breeze has wafted, springs the oak which defies the storm.--bulwer. the creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.--emerson. men are led by trifles.--napoleon i. "a pebble on the streamlet scant has turned the course of many a river; a dewdrop on the baby plant has warped the giant oak forever." the mother of mischief is no bigger than a midge's wing.--scotch proverb. "the bad thing about a little sin is that it won't stay little." "a little bit of patience often makes the sunshine come, and a little bit of love makes a very happy home; a little bit of hope makes a rainy day look gay, and a little bit of charity makes glad a weary way." "arletta's pretty feet, glistening in the brook, made her the mother of william the conqueror," says palgrave's "history of normandy and england." "had she not thus fascinated duke robert the liberal, of normandy, harold would not have fallen at hastings, no anglo-norman dynasty could have arisen, no british empire." * * * * * * [illustration: agassiz] small things become great when a great soul sees them. trifles light as air sometimes suggest to the thinking mind ideas which revolutionize the world. * * * * * * we may tell which way the wind blew before the deluge by marking the ripple and cupping of the rain in the petrified sand now preserved forever. we tell the very path by which gigantic creatures, whom man never saw, walked to the river's edge to find their food. the tears of veturia and volumnia saved rome from the volscians when nothing else could move the vengeful heart of coriolanus. it was little greece that rolled back the overflowing tide of asiatic luxury and despotism, giving instead to europe and america models of the highest political freedom yet attained, and germs of limitless mental growth. a different result at plataea had delayed the progress of the human race more than ten centuries. among the lofty alps, it is said, the guides sometimes demand absolute silence, lest the vibration of the voice bring down an avalanche. the power of observation in the american indian would put many an educated man to shame. returning home, an indian discovered that his venison, which had been hanging up to dry, had been stolen. after careful observation he started to track the thief through the woods. meeting a man on the route, he asked him if he had seen a little, old, white man, with a short gun, and with a small bob-tailed dog. the man told him he had met such a man, but was surprised to find that the indian had not even seen the one he described. he asked the indian how he could give such a minute description of the man whom he had never seen. "i knew the thief was a little man," said the indian, "because he rolled up a stone to stand on in order to reach the venison; i knew he was an old man by his short steps; i knew he was a white man by his turning out his toes in walking, which an indian never does; i knew he had a short gun by the mark it left on the tree where he had stood it up; i knew the dog was small by his tracks and short steps, and that he had a bob-tail by the mark it left in the dust where he sat." two drops of rain, falling side by side, were separated a few inches by a gentle breeze. striking on opposite sides of the roof of a court-house in wisconsin, one rolled southward through the rock river and the mississippi to the gulf of mexico; while the other entered successively the fox river, green bay, lake michigan, the straits of mackinaw, lake huron, st. clair river, lake st. clair, detroit river, lake erie, niagara river, lake ontario, the st. lawrence river, and finally reached the gulf of st. lawrence. how slight the influence of the breeze, yet such was the formation of the continent that a trifling cause was multiplied almost beyond the power of figures to express its momentous effect upon the destinies of these companion raindrops. who can calculate the future of the smallest trifle when a mud crack swells to an amazon, and the stealing of a penny may end on the scaffold? who does not know that the act of a moment may cause a life's regret? a trigger may be pulled in an instant, but the soul returns never. a spark falling upon some combustibles led to the invention of gunpowder. irritable tempers have marred the reputation of many a great man, as in the case of edmund burke and of thomas carlyle. a few bits of seaweed and driftwood, floating on the waves, enabled columbus to stay a mutiny of his sailors which threatened to prevent the discovery of a new world. there are moments in history which balance years of ordinary life. dana could interest a class for hours on a grain of sand; and from a single bone, such as no one had ever seen before, agassiz could deduce the entire structure and habits of an animal so accurately that subsequent discoveries of complete skeletons have not changed one of his conclusions. a cricket once saved a military expedition from destruction. the commanding officer and hundreds of his men were going to south america on a great ship, and, through the carelessness of the watch, they would have been dashed upon a ledge of rock had it not been for a cricket which a soldier had brought on board. when the little insect scented the land, it broke its long silence by a shrill note, and this warned them of their danger. "strange that a little thing like that should cause a man so much pain!" exclaimed a giant, as he rolled in his hand and examined with eager curiosity the acorn which his friend the dwarf had obligingly taken from the huge eye into which it had fallen just as the colossus was on the point of shooting a bird perched in the branches of an oak. sometimes a conversation, or a sentence in a letter, or a paragraph in an article, will help us to reproduce the whole character of the author; as a single bone, a fish scale, a fin, or a tooth, will enable the scientist and anatomist to reproduce the fish or the animal, although extinct for ages. by gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation. a little boy in holland saw water trickling from a small hole near the bottom of a dike. he realized that the leak would rapidly become larger if the water was not checked, so he held his hand over the hole for hours on a dark and dismal night until he could attract the attention of passers-by. his name is still held in grateful remembrance in holland. the beetling chalk cliffs of england were built by rhizopods, too small to be clearly seen without the aid of a magnifying-glass. what was so unlikely as that throwing an empty wine-flask in the fire should furnish the first notion of a locomotive, or that the sickness of an italian chemist's wife and her absurd craving for reptiles for food should begin the electric telegraph? madame galvani noticed the contraction of the muscles of a skinned frog which was accidentally touched at the moment her husband took a spark from an electrical machine. she gave the hint which led to the discovery of galvanic electricity, now so useful in the arts and in transmitting vocal or written language. m. louis pasteur was usher in the lyceum. thursdays he took the boys to walk. a student took his microscope to examine insects, and allowed pasteur to look through it. this was the starting of the boy on the microscopic career which has made men wonder. he was almost wild with enthusiasm at the new world which the microscope revealed. a stamp act to raise , pounds produced the american revolution, a war that cost , , pounds. what mighty contests rise from trivial things! congress met near a livery stable to discuss the declaration of independence. the members, in knee breeches and silk stockings, were so annoyed by flies, which they could not keep away with their handkerchiefs, that it has been said they cut short the debate, and hastened to affix their signatures to the greatest document in history. "the fate of a nation," says gladstone, "has often depended upon the good or bad digestion of a fine dinner." a young man once went to india to seek his fortune, but, finding no opening, he went to his room, loaded his pistol, put the muzzle to his head, and pulled the trigger. but it did not go off. he went to the window to point it in another direction and try it again, resolved that if the weapon went off he would regard it as a providence that he was spared. he pulled the trigger and it went off the first time. trembling with excitement he resolved to hold his life sacred, to make the most of it, and never again to cheapen it. this young man became general robert clive, who, with but a handful of european soldiers, secured to the east india company and afterwards to great britain a great and rich country with two hundred millions of people. the cackling of a goose aroused the sentinels and saved rome from the gauls, and the pain from a thistle warned a scottish army of the approach of the danes. "had acre fallen," said napoleon, "i should have changed the face of the world." henry ward beecher came within one vote of being elected superintendent of a railway. if he had had that vote america would probably have lost its greatest preacher. what a little thing fixes destiny! in the earliest days of cotton spinning, the small fibres would stick to the bobbins, and make it necessary to stop and clear the machinery. although this loss of time reduced the earnings of the operatives, the father of robert peel noticed that one of his spinners always drew full pay, as his machine never stopped. "how is this, dick?" asked mr. peel one day; "the on-looker tells me your bobbins are always clean." "ay, that they be," replied dick ferguson. "how do you manage it, dick?" "why, you see, meester peel," said the workman, "it is sort o' secret! if i tow'd ye, yo'd be as wise as i am." "that's so," said mr. peel, smiling; "but i'd give you something to know. could you make all the looms work as smoothly as yours?" "ivery one of 'em, meester," replied dick. "well, what shall i give you for your secret?" asked mr. peel, and dick replied, "gi' me a quart of ale every day as i'm in the mills, and i'll tell thee all about it." "agreed," said mr. peel, and dick whispered very cautiously in his ear, "chalk your bobbins!" that was the whole secret, and mr. peel soon shot ahead of all his competitors, for he made machines that would chalk their own bobbins. dick was handsomely rewarded with money instead of beer. his little idea has saved the world millions of dollars. trifles light as air often suggest to the thinking mind ideas which have revolutionized the world. a poor english boy was compelled by his employer to deposit something on board a ship about to start for algiers, in accordance with the merchant's custom of interesting employees by making them put something at risk in his business and so share in the gain or loss of each common venture. the boy had only a cat, which he had bought for a penny to catch mice in the garret where he slept. in tears, he carried her on board the vessel. on arriving at algiers, the captain learned that the dey was greatly annoyed by rats, and loaned him the cat. the rats disappeared so rapidly that the dey wished to buy the cat, but the captain would not sell until a very high price was offered. with the purchase-money was sent a present of valuable pearls for the owner of tabby. when the ship returned the sailors were greatly astonished to find that the boy owned most of the cargo, for it was part of the bargain that he was to bring back the value of his cat in goods. the london merchant took the boy into partnership; the latter became very wealthy, and in the course of business loaned money to the dey who had bought the cat. as lord mayor of london, our cat merchant was knighted, and became the second man in the city,--sir richard whittington. when john williams, the martyr missionary of erromanga, went to the south sea islands, he took with him a single banana-tree from an english nobleman's conservatory; and now, from that single banana-tree, bananas are to be found throughout whole groups of islands. before the negro slaves in the west indies were emancipated a regiment of british soldiers was stationed near one of the plantations. a soldier offered to teach a slave to read on condition that he would teach a second, and that second a third, and so on. this the slave faithfully carried out, though severely flogged by the master of the plantation. being sent to another plantation, he repeated the same thing there, and when at length liberty was proclaimed throughout the island, and the bible society offered a new testament to every negro who could read, the number taught through this slave's instrumentality was found to be no less than six hundred. a famous ruby was offered to the english government. the report of the crown jeweler was that it was the finest he had ever seen or heard of, but that one of the "facets" was slightly fractured. that invisible fracture reduced its value thousands of dollars, and it was rejected from the regalia of england. it was a little thing for the janitor to leave a lamp swinging in the cathedral at pisa, but in that steady swaying motion the boy galileo saw the pendulum, and conceived the idea of thus measuring time. "i was singing to the mouthpiece of a telephone," said edison, "when the vibrations of my voice caused a fine steel point to pierce one of my fingers held just behind it. that set me to thinking. if i could record the motions of the point and send it over the same surface afterward, i saw no reason why the thing would not talk. i determined to make a machine that would work accurately, and gave my assistants the necessary instructions, telling them what i had discovered. that's the whole story. the phonograph is the result of the pricking of a finger." it was a little thing for a cow to kick over a lantern left in a shanty, but it laid chicago in ashes, and rendered homeless a hundred thousand people. you turned a cold shoulder but once, you made but one stinging remark, yet it lost you a friend forever. some little weakness, some self-indulgence, a quick temper, want of decision, are little things, you say, when placed beside great abilities, but they have wrecked many a career. the parliament of great britain, the congress of the united states, and representative governments all over the world have come from king john signing the magna charta. bentham says, "the turn of a sentence has decided many a friendship, and, for aught we know, the fate of many a kingdom." the sight of a stranded cuttlefish led cuvier to an investigation which made him one of the greatest natural historians in the world. the web of a spider suggested to captain brown the idea of a suspension bridge. a man, looking for a lost horse, picked up a stone in the idaho mountains which led to the discovery of a rich gold mine. an officer apologized to general o. m. mitchel, the astronomer, for a brief delay, saying he was only a few moments late. "i have been in the habit of calculating the value of the thousandth part of a second," was mitchel's reply. a missing marriage certificate kept the hod-carrier of hugh miller from establishing his claim to the earldom of crawford. the masons would call out, "john, yearl of crawford, bring us anither hod o' lime." not long ago the great steamship umbria was stopped in mid-atlantic by a flaw in her engine shaft. the absence of a comma in a bill which passed through congress several years ago cost our government a million dollars. a single misspelled word prevented a deserving young man from obtaining a situation as instructor in a new england college. a cinder on the eyeball will conquer a napoleon. some little weakness, as lack of courtesy, want of decision, a bad temper, may nullify the labor of years. "i cannot see that you have made any progress since my last visit," said a gentleman to michael angelo. "but," said the sculptor, "i have retouched this part, polished that, softened that feature, brought out that muscle, given some expression to this lip, more energy to that limb, etc." "but they are trifles!" exclaimed the visitor. "it may be so," replied the great artist, "but trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle." that infinite patience which made michael angelo spend a week in bringing out a muscle in a statue with more vital fidelity to truth, or gerhard dow a day in giving the right effect to a dewdrop on a cabbage leaf, makes all the difference between success and failure. by scattering it upon a sloping field of grain so as to form, in letters of great size, "effects of gypsum," franklin brought this fertilizer into general use in america. by means of a kite he established principles in the science of electricity of such broad significance that they underlie nearly all the modern applications of that science, with probably boundless possibilities of development in the future. more than four hundred and fifty years have passed since laurens coster amused his children by cutting their names in the bark of trees, in the land of windmills, and the monks have laid aside forever their old trade of copying books. from that day monarchies have crumbled, and liberty, lifting up her head for the first time among the nations of the earth, has ever since kept pace with the march of her sister, knowledge, up through the centuries. yet how simple was the thought which has borne such a rich harvest of benefit to mankind. as he carved the names of his prattling children it occurred to him that if the letters were made in separate blocks, and wet with ink, they would make clear printed impressions better and more rapidly than would the pen. so he made blocks, tied them together with strings, and printed a pamphlet with the aid of a hired man, john gutenberg. people bought the pamphlets at a slight reduction from the price charged by the monks, supposing that the work was done in the old way. coster died soon afterward, but young gutenberg kept the secret, and experimented with metals until he had invented the metal type. in an obscure chamber in strasburg he printed his first book. at about this time a traveler called upon charles vii. of france, who was so afraid somebody would poison him that he dared eat but little, and made his servants taste of every dish of food before he ate any. he looked with suspicion upon the stranger; but when the latter offered a beautiful copy of the bible for only seven hundred and fifty crowns, the monarch bought it at once. charles showed his bible to the archbishop, telling him that it was the finest copy in the world, without a blot or mistake, and that it must have taken the copyist a lifetime to write it. "why!" exclaimed the archbishop in surprise, "i bought one exactly like it a few days ago." it was soon learned that other rich people in paris had bought similar copies. the king traced the book to john faust, of strasburg, who had furnished gutenberg money to experiment with. the people said that faust must have sold himself to the devil, and he only escaped burning at the stake by divulging the secret. william caxton, a london merchant who went to holland to purchase cloth, bought a few books and some type, and established a printing-office in westminster chapel, where he issued, in , "the game of chess," the first book printed in england. the cry of the infant moses attracted the attention of pharaoh's daughter, and gave the jews a lawgiver. a bird alighting on the bough of a tree at the mouth of the cave where mahomet lay hid turned aside his pursuers, and gave a prophet to many nations. a flight of birds probably prevented columbus from discovering this continent, for when he was growing anxious, martin alonzo pinzon persuaded him to follow a flight of parrots toward the southwest; for to the spanish seamen of that day it was good luck to follow in the wake of a flock of birds when on a voyage of discovery. but for his change of course columbus would have reached the coast of florida. "never," wrote humboldt, "had the flight of birds more important consequences." the children of a spectacle-maker placed two or more pairs of the spectacles before each other in play, and told their father that distant objects looked larger. from this hint came the telescope. "of what use is it?" people asked with a sneer, when franklin told of his discovery that lightning and electricity are identical. "what is the use of a child?" replied franklin; "it may become a man." "he who waits to do a great deal of good at once," said dr. johnson, "will never do any." do good with what thou hast, or it will do thee no good. every day is a little life; and our whole life but a day repeated. those that dare lose a day are dangerously prodigal, those that dare misspend it, desperate. what is the happiness of your life made up of? little courtesies, little kindnesses, pleasant words, genial smiles, a friendly letter, good wishes, and good deeds. one in a million--once in a lifetime--may do a heroic action. the atomic theory is the true one. many think common fractions vulgar, but they are the components of millions. he is a great man who sees great things where others see little things, who sees the extraordinary in the ordinary. ruskin sees a poem in the rose or the lily, while the hod-carrier would perhaps not go a rod out of his way to see a sunset which ruskin would feed upon for a year. napoleon was a master of trifles. to details which his inferior officers thought too microscopic for their notice he gave the most exhaustive attention. nothing was too small for his attention. he must know all about the provisions, the horse fodder, the biscuits, the camp kettles, the shoes. when the bugle sounded for the march to battle, every officer had his orders as to the exact route which he should follow, the exact day he was to arrive at a certain station, and the exact hour he was to leave, and they were all to reach the point of destination at a precise moment. it is said that nothing could be more perfectly planned than his memorable march which led to the victory of austerlitz, and which sealed the fate of europe for many years. he would often charge his absent officers to send him perfectly accurate returns, even to the smallest detail. "when they are sent to me, i give up every occupation in order to read them in detail, and to observe the difference between one monthly return and another. no young girl enjoys her novel as much as i do these returns." the captain who conveyed napoleon to elba was astonished with his familiarity with all the minute details connected with the ship. napoleon left nothing to chance, nothing to contingency, so far as he could possibly avoid it. everything was planned to a nicety before he attempted to execute it. wellington too was "great in little things." he knew no such things as trifles. while other generals trusted to subordinates, he gave his personal attention to the minutest detail. the history of many a failure could be written in three words, "lack of detail." how many a lawyer has failed from the lack of details in deeds and important papers, the lack of little words which seemed like surplusage, and which involved his clients in litigation, and often great losses! how many wills are contested from the carelessness of lawyers in the omission or shading of words, or ambiguous use of language! physicians often fail to make a reputation through their habitual blundering, carelessness in writing prescriptions, failure to give minute instruction. the world is full of blunderers; business men fail from a disregard of trifles; they go to the bank to pay a note the day after it has gone to protest; they do not pay their bills promptly; do not answer their letters promptly or file them away accurately; their books do not quite balance; they do not know exactly how they stand, they have a contempt for details. "my rule of conduct has been that whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well," said nicolas poussin, the great french painter. when asked the reason why he had become so eminent in a land of famous artists he replied, "because i have neglected nothing." not even helen of troy, it is said, was beautiful enough to spare the tip of her nose; and if cleopatra's had been an inch shorter mark antony would never have become infatuated with her wonderful charms, and the blemish would have changed the history of the world. anne boleyn's fascinating smile split the great church of rome in twain, and gave a nation an altered destiny. napoleon, who feared not to attack the proudest monarchs in their capitols, shrank from the political influence of one independent woman in private life, madame de staël. had not scott sprained his foot his life would probably have taken a different direction. cromwell was about to sail for america when a law was passed prohibiting emigration. at that time he was a profligate, having squandered all his property. but when he found that he could not leave england he reformed his life. had he not been detained who can tell what the history of great britain would have been? when one of his friends asked scopas the thessalian for something that could be of little use to him, he answered, "it is in these useless and superfluous things that i am rich and happy." it was the little foxes that spoiled the vines in solomon's day. mites play mischief now with our meal and cheese, moths with our woolens and furs, and mice in our pantries. more than half our diseases are produced by infinitesimal creatures called microbes. most people call fretting a minor fault, a foible, and not a vice. there is no vice except drunkenness which can so utterly destroy the peace, the happiness, of a home. "we call the large majority of human lives obscure," says bulwer, "presumptuous that we are! how know we what lives a single thought retained from the dust of nameless graves may have lighted to renown?" the theft of a diamond necklace from a french queen convulsed europe. from the careful and persistent accumulation of innumerable facts, each trivial in itself, but in the aggregate forming a mass of evidence, a darwin extracts his law of evolution, and linnaeus constructs the science of botany. a pan of water and two thermometers were the tools by which dr. black discovered latent heat, and a prism, a lens, and a sheet of pasteboard enabled newton to unfold the composition of light and the origin of colors. an eminent foreign savant called on dr. wollaston, and asked to be shown over those laboratories of his in which science had been enriched by so many great discoveries, when the doctor took him into a little study, and, pointing to an old tea tray on the table, on which stood a few watch glasses, test papers, a small balance, and a blow-pipe, said, "there is my laboratory." a burnt stick and a barn door served wilkie in lieu of pencil and paper. a single potato, carried to england by sir walter raleigh in the sixteenth century, has multiplied into food for millions, driving famine from ireland again and again. it seemed a small thing to drive william brewster, john robinson, and the poor people of austerfield and scrooby into perpetual exile, but as pilgrims they became the founders of a mighty people. a cloud may hide the sun which it cannot extinguish. "behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth." "a look of vexation or a word coldly spoken, or a little help thoughtlessly withheld, may produce long issues of regret." it was but a little dispute, a little flash of temper, the trigger was pulled in an instant, but the soul returned never. a few immortal sentences from garrison and phillips, a few poems from lowell and whittier, and the leaven is at work which will not cease its action until the whipping-post and bodily servitude are abolished forever. "for want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was lost, and all," says poor richard, "for want of a horse-shoe nail." a single remark dropped by an unknown person in the street led to the successful story of "the bread-winners." a hymn chanted by the barefooted friars in the temple of jupiter at rome led to the famous "decline and fall of the roman empire." "do little things now," says a persian proverb; "so shall big things come to thee by and by asking to be done." god will take care of the great things if we do not neglect the little ones. "words are things," says byron, "and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions think." "i give these books for the founding of a college in this colony;" such were the words of ten ministers who in the year assembled at the village of branford a few miles east of new haven. each of the worthy fathers deposited a few books upon the table around which they were sitting; such was the founding of yale college. "he that has a spirit of detail," says webster, "will do better in life than many who figured beyond him in the university." the pyramid of knowledge is made up of little grains of information, little observations picked up from everywhere. for a thousand years asia monopolized the secret of silk culture, and at rome the product was sold for its weight in gold. during the sixth century, at the request of justinian, two persian monks brought a few eggs from china to europe in a hollow cane. the eggs were hatched by means of heat, and asia no longer held the monopoly of the silk business. in comparison with ferdinand, preparing to lead forth his magnificent army in europe's supreme contest with the moors, how insignificant seemed the visionary expedition of columbus, about to start in three small shallops across the unknown ocean. but grand as was the triumph of ferdinand, it now seems hardly worthy of mention in comparison with the wonderful achievement of the poor genoese navigator. only one hundred and ninety-two athenians perished in the battle of marathon, but europe was saved from a host which is said to have drunk rivers dry, and to have shaken the solid earth as they marched. great men are noted for their attention to trifles. goethe once asked a monarch to excuse him, during an interview, while he went to an adjoining room to jot down a stray thought. hogarth would make sketches of rare faces and characteristics upon his finger-nails upon the streets. indeed, to a truly great mind there are no little things. "the eye of the understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see objects through small crannies or holes, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances," said bacon. trifles light as air suggest to the keen observer the solution of mighty problems. bits of glass arranged to amuse children led to the discovery of the kaleidoscope. goodyear discovered how to vulcanize rubber by forgetting, until it became red hot, a skillet containing a compound which he had before considered worthless. confined in the house by typhoid fever, helmholtz, with a little money which he had saved by great economy, bought a microscope which led him into the field of science where he became so famous. a ship-worm boring a piece of wood suggested to sir isambard brunei the idea of a tunnel under the thames at london. tracks of extinct animals in the old red sandstone led hugh miller on and on until he became the greatest geologist of his time. sir walter scott once saw a shepherd boy plodding sturdily along, and asked him to ride. this boy was george kemp, who became so enthusiastic in his study of sculpture that he walked fifty miles and back to see a beautiful statue. he did not forget the kindness of sir walter, and, when the latter died, threw his soul into the design of the magnificent monument erected in edinburgh to the memory of the author of "waverley." a poor boy applied for a situation at a bank in paris, but was refused. as he left the door, he picked up a pin. the bank president saw this, called the boy back, and gave him a situation from which he rose until he became the greatest banker of paris,--laffitte. it was the turning point in theodore parker's life when he picked up a stone to throw at a turtle. something within him said, "don't do it," and he didn't. he went home and asked his mother what it was in him that said "don't;" and she taught him the purpose of that inward monitor which he ever after chose as his guide. it is said that david hume became a deist by being appointed in a debating society to take the side of infidelity. voltaire could not erase from his mind the impression of a poem on infidelity committed at the age of five. the "arabian nights" aroused the genius of coleridge. a massachusetts soldier in the civil war observed a bird hulling rice, and shot it; taking its bill for a model, he invented a hulling machine which has revolutionized the rice business. a war between france and england, costing more than a hundred thousand lives, grew out of a quarrel as to which of two vessels should first be served with water. the quarrel of two indian boys over a grasshopper led to the "grasshopper war." george iv. of england fell in a fit, and a village apothecary bled him, restoring him to consciousness. the king made him his physician, a position of great honor and profit. many a noble ship has stranded because of one defective timber, when all other parts were strong. guard the weak point. no object the eye ever beheld, no sound however slight caught by the ear, or anything once passing the turnstile of any of the senses, is ever let go. the eye is a perpetual camera imprinting upon the sensitive mental plates, and packing away in the brain for future use every face, every tree, every plant, flower, hill, stream, mountain, every scene upon the street, in fact, everything which comes within its range. there is a phonograph in our natures which catches, however thoughtless and transient, every syllable we utter, and registers forever the slightest enunciation, and renders it immortal. these notes may appear a thousand years hence, reproduced in our descendants, in all their beautiful or terrible detail. all the ages that have been are rounded up into the small space we call "to-day." every life spans all that precedes it. to-day is a book which contains everything that has transpired in the world up to the present moment. the millions of the past whose ashes have mingled with the dust for centuries still live in their destinies through the laws of heredity. nothing has ever been lost. all the infinitesimals of the past are amassed into the present. the first acorn had wrapped up in it all the oak forests on the globe. "least of all seeds, greatest of all harvests," seems to be one of the great laws of nature. all life comes from microscopic beginnings. in nature there is nothing small. the microscope reveals as great a world below as the telescope above. all of nature's laws govern the smallest atoms, and a single drop of water is a miniature ocean. the strength of a chain lies in its weakest link, however large and strong all the others may be. we are all inclined to be proud of our strong points, while we are sensitive and neglectful of our weaknesses. yet it is our greatest weakness which measures our real strength. a soldier who escapes the bullets of a thousand battles may die from the scratch of a pin, and many a ship has survived the shocks of icebergs and the storms of ocean only to founder in a smooth sea from holes made by tiny insects. drop by drop is instilled into the mind the poison which blasts many a precious life. how often do we hear people say, "oh, it's only ten minutes, or twenty minutes, till dinner time; there's no use doing anything," or use other expressions of a like effect? why, it is just in these little spare bits of time, these odd moments, which most people throw away, that men who have risen have gained their education, written their books, and made themselves immortal. _small things become great when a great soul sees them_. the noble or heroic act of one man has sometimes elevated a nation. many an honorable career has resulted from a kind word spoken in season or the warm grasp of a friendly hand. it is the little rift within the lute, that by and by will make the music mute, and, ever widening, slowly silence all. tennyson. "it was only a glad 'good-morning,' as she passed along the way, but it spread the morning's glory over the livelong day." "only a thought in passing--a smile, or encouraging word, has lifted many a burden no other gift could have stirred. only!--but then the onlys make up the mighty all." chapter xvi. self-mastery. give me that man that is not passion's slave, and i will wear him in my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart. shakespeare. strength of character consists of two things,--power of will and power of self-restraint. it requires two things, therefore, for its existence,--strong feelings and strong command over them.--f. w. robertson. "self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, these three alone lead life to sovereign power." the bravest trophy ever man obtained is that which o'er himself himself hath gained. earl of stirling. real glory springs from the conquest of ourselves; and without that the conqueror is naught but the veriest slave.--thomson. whatever day makes man a slave takes half his worth away.--odyssey. chain up the unruly legion of thy breast. lead thine own captivity captive, and be caesar within thyself.--thomas browne. he who reigns within himself, and rules passions, desires, and fears, is more than a king.--milton. he that is slow to anger is better than the mighty: and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.--bible. self-trust is of the essence of heroism.--emerson. man who man would be must rule the empire of himself. p. b. shelley. "ah! diamond, you little know the mischief you have wrought," said sir isaac newton, returning from supper to find that his dog had upset a lighted taper upon the laborious calculations of years, which lay in ashes before him. then he went calmly to work to reproduce them. the man who thus excelled in self-mastery surpassed all his predecessors and contemporaries in mastering the laws of nature. * * * * * * [illustration: james russell lowell] "we rise by the things that are under our feet; by what we have mastered of good or gain: by the pride deposed and the passion slain, and the vanquished ills that we hourly meet." * * * * * * the sun was high in the heavens when a man called at the house of pericles to abuse him. the man's anger knew no bounds. he vented his spite in violent language until he paused from sheer exhaustion, and saw that it was quite dark without. he turned to go home, when pericles calmly called a servant, and said, "bring a lamp and attend this man home." is any argument needed to show the superiority of pericles? the gladiators who were trained to tight in the coliseum were compelled to practice the most graceful postures of falling and the finest attitudes to assume in dying, in case they were vanquished. they were obliged to eat food which would make the blood thick in order that they should not die quickly when wounded, thus giving the spectators prolonged gratification by the spectacle of their agonies. each had to take this oath: "we swear that we will suffer ourselves to be bound, scourged, burned, or killed by the sword, or whatever eumolpus ordains, and thus, like freeborn gladiators, we religiously devote both our souls and our bodies to our master." they were trained to exercise sublime self-control even when dying a cruel death. the american minister at st. petersburg was summoned one morning to save a young, dissolute, reckless american youth, poe, from the penalties incurred in a drunken debauch. by the minister's aid young poe returned to the united states. not long after this the author of the best story and poem competed for in the "baltimore visitor" was sent for, and behold, the youth who had taken both prizes was that same dissolute, reckless, penniless, orphan youth, who had been arrested in st. petersburg,--pale, ragged, with no stockings, and with his threadbare but well brushed coat buttoned to the chin to conceal the lack of a shirt. young poe took fresh courage and resolution, and for a while showed that he was superior to the appetite which was striving to drag him down. but, alas, that fatal bottle! his mind was stored with riches, yet he died in moral poverty. this was a soldier's epitaph:-- "here lies a soldier whom all must applaud, who fought many battles at home and abroad! but the hottest engagement he ever was in, was the conquest of self, in the battle of sin." in , when a committee visited abraham lincoln at his home in springfield, ill., to notify him of his nomination as president, he ordered a pitcher of water and glasses, "that they might drink each other's health in the best beverage god ever gave to man." "let us," he continued, "make it as unfashionable to withhold our names from the temperance pledge as for husbands to wear their wives' bonnets in church, and instances will be as rare in one case as the other." burns exercised no control over his appetites, but gave them the rein:-- "thus thoughtless follies laid him low and stained his name." "the first and best of victories," says plato, "is for a man to conquer himself; to be conquered by himself is, of all things, the most shameful and vile." self-control is at the root of all the virtues. let a man yield to his impulses and passions, and from that moment he gives up his moral freedom. "teach self-denial and make its practice pleasurable," says walter scott, "and you create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer." stonewall jackson, early in life, determined to conquer every weakness he had, physical, mental, and moral. he held all of his powers with a firm hand. to his great self-discipline and self-mastery he owed his success. so determined was he to harden himself to the weather that he could not be induced to wear an overcoat in winter. "i will not give in to the cold," he said. for a year, on account of dyspepsia, he lived on buttermilk and stale bread, and wore a wet shirt next his body because his doctor advised it, although everybody else ridiculed the idea. this was while he was professor at the virginia military institute. his doctor advised him to retire at nine o'clock; and, no matter where he was, or who was present, he always sought his bed on the minute. he adhered rigidly through life to this stern system of discipline. such self-training, such self-conquest, gives one great power over others. it is equal to genius itself. it is a good plan to form the habit of ranking our various qualities, marking our strongest point one hundred and all the others in proportion, in order to make the lowest mark more apparent, and enabling us to try to raise or strengthen it. a man's industry, for example, may be his strongest point, one hundred, his physical courage may be fifty; his moral courage, seventy-five; his temper, twenty-five; with but ten for self-control,--which, if he has strong appetites and passions, will be likely to be the rock on which he will split. he should strive in every way to raise it from one of the weakest qualities to one of the strongest. it would take but two or three minutes a day to rank ourselves in such a table by noting the exercise of each faculty for the day. if you have worked hard and faithfully, mark industry one hundred. if you have lost your temper, and, in consequence, lost your self-control, and made a fool of yourself, indicate it by a low mark. this will be an incentive to try to raise it the next day. if you have been irritable, indicate it by a corresponding mark, and redeem yourself on the morrow. if you have been cowardly where you should have been brave, hesitating where you should have shown decision, false where you should have been true, foolish where you should have been wise, tardy where you should have been prompt; if you have prevaricated where you should have told the exact truth; if you have taken the advantage where you should have been fair, have been unjust where you should have been just, impatient where you should have been patient, cross where you should have been cheerful, so indicate by your marks. you will find this a great aid to character building. it is a subtle and profound remark of hegel's that the riddle which the sphinx, the egyptian symbol of the mysteriousness of nature, propounds to oedipus is only another way of expressing the command of the delphic oracle, "know thyself." and when the answer is given the sphinx casts herself down from her rock. when man knows himself, the mysteriousness of nature and her terrors vanish. the command by the ancient oracle at delphos is of eternal significance. add to it its natural complement--help thyself--and the path to success is open to those who obey. _guard your weak point_. moral contagion borrows fully half its strength from the weakness of its victims. have you a hot, passionate temper? if so, a moment's outbreak, like a rat-hole in a dam, may flood all the work of years. one angry word sometimes raises a storm that time itself cannot allay. a single angry word has lost many a friend. a quaker was asked by a merchant whom he had conquered by his patience how he had been able to bear the other's abuse, and replied: "friend, i will tell thee. i was naturally as hot and violent as thou art. i observed that men in a passion always speak loud, and i thought if i could control my voice i should repress my passion. i have therefore made it a rule never to let my voice rise above a certain key, and by a careful observance of this rule, i have, by the blessing of god, entirely mastered my natural tongue." mr. christmas of the bank of england explains that the secret of his self-control under very trying circumstances was due to a rule learned from the great pitt, never to lose his temper during banking hours from nine to three. when socrates found in himself any disposition to anger, he would check it by speaking low, in opposition to the motions of his displeasure. if you are conscious of being in a passion, keep your mouth shut, lest you increase it. many a person has dropped dead in a rage. fits of anger bring fits of disease. "whom the gods would destroy they first make mad." "keep cool," says webster, "anger is not argument." "be calm in arguing," says george herbert, "for fierceness makes error a fault, and truth discourtesy." to be angry with a weak man is to prove that you are not strong yourself. "anger," says pythagoras, "begins with folly and ends with repentance." you must measure the strength of a man by the power of the feelings he subdues, not by the power of those which subdue him. de leon, a distinguished spanish poet, after lying years in dungeons of the inquisition, dreary, and alone, without light, for translating part of the scriptures into his native tongue, was released and restored to his professorship. a great crowd thronged to hear his first lecture, out of curiosity to learn what he might say about his imprisonment. but the great man merely resumed the lecture which had been so cruelly broken off five years before, just where he left it, with the words "heri discebamus" (yesterday we were teaching). what a lesson in this remarkable example of self-control for those who allow their tongues to jabber whatever happens to be uppermost in their minds! did you ever see a man receive a flagrant insult, and only grow a little pale, bite his quivering lip, and then reply quietly? did you ever see a man in anguish stand as if carved out of solid rock, mastering himself? have you not seen one bearing a hopeless daily trial remain silent and never tell the world what cankered his home peace? that is strength. "he who, with strong passions, remains chaste; he who, keenly sensitive, with manly power of indignation in him, can be provoked, and yet restrain himself and forgive,--these are strong men, the spiritual heroes." "you will be remembered only as the man who broke my nose," said young michael angelo to the man torrigiano, who struck him in anger. what sublime self-control for a quick-tempered man! "you ask whether it would not be manly to resent a great injury," said eardley wilmot: "i answer that it would be manly to resent it, but it would be godlike to forgive it." that man has conquered his tongue who can allow the ribald jest or scurrilous word to die unspoken on his lips, and maintain an indignant silence amid reproaches and accusations and sneers and scoffs. "he is a fool who cannot be angry," says english, "but he is a wise man who will not." peter the great made a law in that a nobleman who should beat his slave should be regarded as insane, and a guardian appointed to look after his property and person. this great monarch once struck his gardener, who took to his bed and died. peter, hearing of this, exclaimed with tears in his eyes, "alas! i have civilized my own subjects; i have conquered other nations; yet have i not been able to civilize or conquer myself." the same monarch, when drunk, rushed upon admiral le fort with a sword. le fort, with great self-possession, bared his breast to receive the stroke. this sobered peter, and afterwards he asked the pardon of le fort. peter said, "i am trying to reform my country, and i am not yet able to reform myself." self-conquest is man's last and greatest victory. a medical authority of highest repute affirms that excessive labor, exposure to wet and cold, deprivation of sufficient quantities of necessary and wholesome food, habitual bad lodging, sloth and intemperance, are all deadly enemies to human life, but they are none of them so bad as violent and ungoverned passion,--that men and women have frequently lived to an advanced age in spite of these, but that instances are very rare where people of irascible tempers live to extreme old age. it was the self-discipline of a man who had never looked upon war until he was forty that enabled oliver cromwell to create an army which never fought without annihilating, yet which retired into the ranks of industry as soon as the government was established, each soldier being distinguished from his neighbors only by his superior diligence, sobriety, and regularity in the pursuits of peace. how sweet the serenity of habitual self-command! when does a man feel more a master of himself than when he has passed through a sudden and severe provocation in silence or in undisturbed good humor? whether teaching the rules of an exact morality, answering his corrupt judges, receiving sentence of death, or swallowing the poison, socrates was still calm, quiet, undisturbed, intrepid. it is a great thing to have brains, but it is vastly greater to be able to command them. the duke of wellington had great power over himself, although his natural temper was extremely irritable. he remained at the duchess of richmond's ball till about three o'clock on the morning of the th of june, , "showing himself very cheerful," although he knew that a desperate battle was awaiting him. on the field of waterloo he gave his orders at the most critical moments without the slightest excitement. napoleon, having made his arrangements for the terrible conflict of the next day (jena and auerstadt), retired to his tent about midnight, and calmly sat down to draw up a plan of study and discipline for madame campan's female school. "keep cool, and you command everybody," says st. just. "he that would govern others first should be the master of himself," says massinger. he who has mastered himself, who is his own caesar, will be stronger than his passion, superior to circumstances, higher than his calling, greater than his speech. self-control is the generalship which turns a mob of raw recruits into a disciplined army. the rough man has become the polished and dignified soldier, in other words, the man has got control of himself, and knows how to use himself. the human race is under constant drill. our occupations, difficulties, obstacles, disappointments, if used aright, are the great schoolmasters which help us to possess ourselves. the man who is master of himself will not be a slave to drudgery, but will keep in advance of his work. he will not rob his family of that which is worth more than money or position; he will not be the slave of his occupation, not at the mercy of circumstances. his methods and system will enable him to accomplish wonders, and yet give him leisure for self-culture. the man who controls himself works to live rather than lives for work. the man of great self-control, the man who thinks a great deal and says little, who is self-centred, well balanced, carries a thousand times more weight than the man of weak will, always wavering and undecided. if a man lacks self-control he seems to lack everything. without it he can have no patience, no power to govern himself, he can have no self-reliance, for he will always be at the mercy of his strongest passion. if he lacks self-control, the very backbone, pith, and nerve of character are lacking also. the discipline which is the main end in education is simply control acquired over one's mental faculties; without this discipline no man is a strong and accurate thinker. "prove to me," says mrs. oliphant, "that you can control yourself, and i'll say you're an educated man; and, without this, all other education is good for next to nothing." the wife of socrates, xanthippe, was a woman of a most fantastical and furious spirit. at one time, having vented all the reproaches upon socrates her fury could suggest, he went out and sat before the door. his calm and unconcerned behavior but irritated her so much the more; and, in the excess of her rage, she ran upstairs and emptied a vessel upon his head, at which he only laughed and said that "so much thunder must needs produce a shower." alcibiades his friend, talking with him about his wife, told him he wondered how he could bear such an everlasting scold in the same house with him. he replied, "i have so accustomed myself to expect it, that it now offends me no more than the noise of carriages in the street." how many men have in their chain of character one weak link. they may be weak in the link of truthfulness, politeness, trustworthiness, temper, chastity, temperance, courage, industry, or may have some other weakness which wrecks their success and thwarts a life's endeavor. he who would succeed must hold all his faculties under perfect control; they must be disciplined, drilled, until they obey the will. think of a young man just starting out in life to conquer the world being at the mercy of his own appetites and passions! he cannot stand up and look the world in the face when he is the slave of what should be his own servants. he cannot lead who is led. there is nothing which gives certainty and direction to the life of a man who is not his own master. if he has mastered all but one appetite, passion, or weakness, he is still a slave; it is the weakest point that measures the strength of character. seneca, one of the greatest of the ancient philosophers, said that "we should every night call ourselves to account. what infirmity have i mastered to-day? what passion opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired?" and then he follows with the profound truth that "our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift." if you cannot at first control your anger, learn to control your tongue, which, like fire, is a good servant, but a hard master. five words cost zacharias forty weeks' silence. there is many a man whose tongue might govern multitudes if he could only govern his tongue. anger, like too much wine, hides us from ourselves, but exposes us to others. general von moltke, perhaps the greatest strategist of this century, had, as a foundation for his other talents, the power to "hold his tongue in seven languages." a young man went to socrates to learn oratory. on being introduced, he talked so incessantly that socrates asked for double fees. "why charge me double?" asked the young fellow. "because," said the orator, "i must teach you two sciences: the one how to hold your tongue, the other how to speak." the first is the more difficult. half the actual trouble of life would be saved if people would remember that silence is golden, when they are irritated, vexed, or annoyed. to feel provoked or exasperated at a trifle, when the nerves are exhausted, is, perhaps, natural to us in our imperfect state. but why put into the shape of speech the annoyance which, once uttered, is remembered; which may burn like a blistering wound, or rankle like a poisoned arrow? if a child be crying or a friend capricious, or a servant unreasonable, be careful what you say. do not speak while you feel the impulse of anger, for you will be almost certain to say too much, to say more than your cooler judgment will approve, and to speak in a way that you will regret. be silent until the "sweet by and by," when you will be calm, rested, and self-controlled. "seest thou a man that is hasty in his words? there is more hope of a fool than of him." "silence," says zimmerman, "is the safest response for all the contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy." in rhetoric, as emerson truly says, this art of omission is the chief secret of power. "everything tells in favor of the man who talks but little. the presumption is that he is a superior man; and if, in point of fact, he is not a sheer blockhead, the presumption then is that he is very superior indeed." grant was master of the science of silence. the self-controlled are self-possessed. "sir, the house is on fire!" shrieked a frightened servant, running into dr. lawson's study. "go and tell your mistress," said the preoccupied professor, without looking up from the book he was reading; "you know i have no charge of household matters." a woman whose house was on fire threw a looking-glass out of the window, and carried a pair of andirons several rods to a safe place beside a stone wall. "presence of mind and courage in distress are more than armies to procure success." xenophon tells us that at one time the persian princes had for their teachers the four best men in the kingdom. ( ) the wisest man to teach wisdom. ( ) the bravest to teach courage. ( ) the most just to train the moral nature. ( ) the most temperate to teach self-control. we have them all in the bible, and in christ our teacher, an example. "if it is a small sacrifice to discontinue the use of wine," said samuel j. may, "do it for the sake of others; if it is a great sacrifice, do it for your own sake." how many of nature's noblemen, who might be kings if they could control themselves, drink away their honor, reputation, and money in glasses of "wet damnation," more costly than the vinegar in which cleopatra dissolved her pearls. experience shows that, quicker than almost any other physical agency, alcohol breaks down a man's power of self-control. but the physical evils of intemperance, great as they are, are slight, compared with the moral injury it produces. it is not simply that vices and crimes almost inevitably follow the loss of rational self-direction, which is the invariable accompaniment of intoxication; manhood is lowered and finally lost by the sensual tyranny of appetite. the drunken man has given up the reins of his nature to a fool or a fiend, and he is driven fast to base or unutterably foolish ends. with almost palsied hand, at a temperance meeting, john b. gough signed the pledge. for six days and nights in a wretched garret, without a mouthful of food, with scarcely a moment's sleep, he fought the fearful battle with appetite. weak, famished, almost dying, he crawled into the sunlight; but he had conquered the demon, which had almost killed him. gough used to describe the struggles of a man who tried to leave off using tobacco. he threw away what he had, and said that was the end of it; but no, it was only the beginning of it. he would chew camomile, gentian, toothpicks, but it was of no use. he bought another plug of tobacco and put it in his pocket. he wanted a chew awfully, but he looked at it and said, "you are a weed, and i am a _man_. i'll master you if i die for it;" and he did, while carrying it in his pocket daily. natural appetites, if given rein, will not only grow monstrous and despotic, but artificial appetites will be created which, like a ghastly frankenstein, develop a kind of independent life and force, and then turn on their creator to torment him without pity, and will mock his efforts to free himself from this slavery. the victim of strong drink is one of the most pitiable creatures on earth, he becomes half beast, or half demon. oh, the silent, suffering tongues that whisper "don't," but the will lies prostrate, and the debauch goes on. what a mute confession of degradation there is in the very appearance of a confirmed sot. behold a man no longer in possession of himself; the flesh is master; the spiritual nature is sunk in the mire of sensuality, and the mental faculties are a mere mob of enfeebled powers under bondage to a bestial or mad tyrant. as challis says:-- "once the demon enters, stands within the door; peace and hope and gladness dwell there nevermore." many persons are intemperate in their feelings; they are emotionally prodigal. passion is intemperance; so is caprice. there is an intemperance even in melancholy and mirth. the temperate man is not mastered by his moods; he will not be driven or enticed into excess; his steadfast will conquers despondency, and is not unbalanced by transient exhilarations, for ecstasy is as fatal as despair. temper is subjected to reason and conscience. how many people excuse themselves for doing wrong or foolish acts by the plea that they have a quick temper. but he who is king of himself rules his temper, turning its very heat and passion into energy that works good instead of evil. stephen girard, when he heard of a clerk with a strong temper, was glad to employ him. he believed that such persons, taught self-control, were the best workers. controlled temper is an element of strength; wisely regulated, it expends itself as energy in work, just as heat in an engine is transmuted into force that drives the wheels of industry. cromwell, william the silent, wordsworth, faraday, washington, and wellington were men of prodigious tempers, but they were also men whose self-control was nearly perfect. george washington's faculties were so well balanced and combined that his constitution was tempered evenly with all the elements of activity, and his mind resembled a well organized commonwealth. his passions, which had the intensest vigor, owed allegiance to reason; and with all the fiery quickness of his spirit, his impetuous and massive will was held in check by consummate judgment. he had in his composition a calm which was a balance-wheel, and which gave him in moments of highest excitement the power of self-control, and enabled him to excel in patience, even when he had most cause for disgust. it was said by an enemy of william the silent that an arrogant or indiscreet word never fell from his lips. how brilliantly could carlyle write of heroism, courage, self-control, and yet fly into a rage at a rooster crowing in a neighbor's yard. a self-controlled mind is a free mind, and freedom is power. "i call that mind free," says channing, "which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as an angel from heaven, which, whilst consulting others, inquires still more of the oracle within itself, and uses instructions from abroad, not to supersede, but to quicken and exalt its own energies. i call that mind free which is not passively framed by outward circumstances, which is not swept away by the torrent of events, which is not the creature of accidental impulse, but which bends events to its own improvement, and acts from an inward spring, from immutable principles which it has deliberately espoused. i call that mind free which protects itself against the usurpations of society, which does not cower to human opinion, which feels itself accountable to a higher tribunal than man's, which respects a higher law than fashion, which respects itself too much to be the slave or tool of the many or the few. i call that mind free which through confidence in god and in the power of virtue has cast off all fear but that of wrong-doing, which no menace or peril can enthrall, which is calm in the midst of tumults, and possesses itself though all else be lost. i call that mind free which resists the bondage of habit, which does not mechanically repeat itself and copy the past, which does not live on its old virtues, which does not enslave itself to precise rules, but which forgets what is behind, listens for new and higher monitions of conscience, and rejoices to pour itself forth in fresh and higher exertions. i call that mind free which is jealous of its own freedom, which guards itself from being merged in others, which guards its empire over itself as nobler than the empire of the world." be free--not chiefly from the iron chain but from the one which passion forges--be the master of thyself. if lost, regain the rule o'er chance, sense, circumstance. be free. ephraim peabody. "it is not enough to have great qualities," says la rochefoucauld; "we should also have the management of them." no man can call himself educated until every voluntary muscle obeys his will. every human being is conscious of two natures. one is ever reaching up after the good, the true, and the noble,--is aspiring after all that uplifts, elevates, and purifies. it is the god-side of man, the image of the creator, the immortal side, the spiritual side. it is the gravitation of the soul faculties toward their maker. the other is the bestial side which gravitates downward. it does not aspire, it grovels; it wallows in the mire of sensualism. like the beast, it knows but one law, and is led by only one motive, self-indulgence, self-gratification. when neither hungry nor thirsty, or when gorged and sated by over-indulgence, it lies quiet and peaceful as a lamb, and we sometimes think it subdued. but when its imperious passion accumulates, it clamors for satisfaction. you cannot reason with it, for it has no reason, only an imperious instinct for gratification. you cannot appeal to its self-respect, for it has none. it cares nothing for character, for manliness, for the spiritual. these two natures are ever at war, one pulling heavenward, the other, earthward. nor do they ever become reconciled. either may conquer, but the vanquished never submits. the higher nature may be compelled to grovel, to wallow in the mire of sensual indulgence, but it always rebels and enters its protest. it can never forget that it bears the image of its maker, even when dragged through the slough of sensualism. the still small voice which bids man look up is never quite hushed. if the victim of the lower nature could only forget that he was born to look upward, if he could only erase the image of his maker, if he could only hush the voice which haunts him and condemns him when he is bound in slavery, if he could only enjoy his indulgences without the mockery of remorse, he thinks he would be content to remain a brute. but the ghost of his better self rises as he is about to partake of his delight, and robs him of the expected pleasure. he has sold his better self for pleasure which is poison, and he cannot lose the consciousness of the fearful sacrifice he has made. the banquet may be ready, but the hand on the wall is writing his doom. give me that soul, superior power, that conquest over fate, which sways the weakness of the hour, rules little things as great: that lulls the human waves of strife with words and feelings kind, and makes the trials of our life the triumphs of our mind. charles swain. reader, attend--whether thy soul soars fancy's flights above the pole, or darkly grubs this earthly hole, in low pursuits: know prudent, cautious self-control is wisdom's root. burns. the king is the man who can.--carlyle. i have only one counsel for you--be master.--napoleon. ah, silly man, who dream'st thy honor stands in ruling others, not thyself. thy slaves serve thee, and thou thy slave: in iron bands thy servile spirit, pressed with wild passions, raves. wouldst thou live honored?--clip ambition's wing: to reason's yoke thy furious passions bring: thrice noble is the man who of himself is king. phineas fletcher. "not in the clamor of the crowded street, not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves are triumph and defeat." none [illustration: book-cover the young man in business the day's work series] the day's work series the young man in business by edward bok boston l. c. page & company mdcccc copyright, by edward bok. all rights reserved colonial press electrotyped and printed by c. h. simonds & co. boston, u. s. a. the young man in business. a well-known new york millionaire gave it as his opinion not long ago that any young man possessing a good constitution and a fair degree of intelligence might acquire riches. the statement was criticised--literally picked to pieces--and finally adjudged as being extravagant. the figures then came out, gathered by a careful statistician, that of the young men in business in new york city, sixty per cent, were earning less than $ , per year, only twenty per cent, had an income of $ , , and barely five per cent, commanded salaries in excess of the latter figure. the great majority of young men in new york city--that is, between the ages of twenty-three and thirty--were earning less than twenty dollars per week. on the basis, therefore, that a young man must be established in his life-profession by his thirtieth year, it can hardly be said that the average new york young man in business is successful. of course, this is measured entirely from the standpoint of income. it is true that a young man may not, in every case, receive the salary his services merit, but, as a general rule, his income is a pretty accurate indication of his capacity. now, as every young man naturally desires to make a business success, it is plain from the above statement that something is lacking; either the opportunities, or the capabilities in the young men themselves. no one conversant with the business life of any of our large cities can, it seems to me, even for a single moment, doubt the existence of good chances for young men. take any large city as a fair example: new york, boston, philadelphia, or chicago, and in each instance there exist more opportunities than there are young men capable of embracing them. the demand is far in excess of the supply. positions of trust are constantly going begging for the right kind of young men to fill them. but such men are not common; or, if they be, they have a most unfortunate way of hiding their light under a bushel, so much so that business men cannot see even a glimmer of its rays. let a position of any real importance be open, and it is the most difficult kind of a problem to find any one to fill it satisfactorily. business men are constantly passing through this experience. young men are desired in the great majority of positions because of their progressive 'ideas and capacity to endure work; in fact, "young blood," as it is called, is preferred in nine positions out of every ten, nowadays. the chances for business success for any young man are not wanting. the opportunities exist, plenty of them. the trouble is that the average young man of to-day is incapable of filling them, or, if he be not exactly incapable (i gladly give him the benefit of the doubt), he is unwilling to fill them, which is even worse. that exceptions can be brought up to controvert i know, but i am dealing with the many, not with the few. the average young man in business to-day is nothing more nor less than a plodder,--a mere automaton. he is at his office at eight or nine o'clock in the morning; is faithful in the duties he performs; goes to luncheon at twelve, gets back at one; takes up whatever he is told to do until five, and then goes home. his work for the day is done. one day is the same to him as another; he has a certain routine of duties to do, and he does them day in and day out, month in and month out. his duties are regulated by the clock. as that points, so he points. verily, it is true of him that he is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. no special fault can be found with his work. given a particular piece of work to do, he does it just as a machine would. such a young man, too, generally considers himself hard-worked--often overworked and underpaid; wondering all the time why his employer doesn't recognize his value and advance his salary. "i do everything i am told to do," he argues, "and i do it well. what more can i do?" this is simply a type of a young man to be found in thousands of offices and stores. he goes to his work each day with no definite point nor plan in view; he leaves it with nothing accomplished. he is a mere automaton. let him die, and his position can be filled in twenty-four hours. if he detracts nothing from his employer's business, he certainly adds nothing to it. he never advances an idea; is absolutely devoid of creative powers; his position remains the same after he has been in it for five years as when he came to it. * * * * * now, i would not for a moment be understood as belittling the value of faithfulness in an employee. but, after all, faithfulness is nothing more nor less than a negative quality. by faithfulness a man may hold a position a lifetime. he will keep it just where he found it. but by the exercise of this single quality he does not add to the importance of the position any more than he adds to his own value. it is not enough that it may be said of a young man that he is faithful; he must be something more. the willingness and capacity to be faithful to the smallest detail must be there, serving only, however, as a foundation upon which other qualities are built. altogether too many young men are content to remain in the positions in which they find themselves. the thought of studying the needs of the next position just above them never seems to enter their minds. it is possible for every young man to rise above his position, and it makes no difference how humble that position may be, nor under what disadvantages he may be placed. but he must be alert. he must not be afraid of work, and of the hardest kind of work. he must study not only to please, but he must go a step beyond. it is essential, of course, that he should first of all fill the position for which he is engaged. no man can solve the problem of business before he understands the rudiments of the problem itself. once the requirements of a position are understood and mastered, then its possibilities should be undertaken. it is foolish, as some young men argue, that to go beyond their special position is impossible with their employers. the employer never existed who will prevent the cream of his establishment from rising to the surface. the advance of an employee always means the advance of the employer's interests. an employer would rather pay a young man five thousand dollars a year than five hundred. what is to the young man's interest is much more to the interest of his employer. a five-hundred-dollar clerkship is worth just that amount and nothing more to an employer. but a five-thousand-dollar man is generally worth five times that sum to a business. a young man makes of a position exactly what he chooses: a millstone around his neck, or a stepping-stone to larger success. the possibilities lie in every position; seeing and embracing them rest with its occupant. the lowest position can be so filled as to lead up to the next and become a part of it. one position should be only the chrysalis for the development of new strength to master the requirements of another position above it. * * * * * the average young man is extremely anxious to get into a business position in which there are what he calls "prospects" for advancement. it is usually one of his first questions, "what are my prospects here?" he seems to have the notion that the question of his "prospects" or advancement is one entirely in the hands of his employer, whereas it rarely occurs to him that it is a matter resting entirely with himself. an employer has, of course, the power of promotion, but that is all. he cannot advance a young man unless the young man first demonstrates that he is worthy of advancement. every position offers prospects; every business house has in it the possibility of a young man's bettering himself. but it depends upon him, first. if he is of the average come-day go-day sort, and does his work in a mechanical or careless fashion, lacking that painstaking thoroughness which is the basis of successful work, his prospects are naught. and they will be no greater with one concern than with another, although he may identify himself with a score during a year. if, on the contrary, he buckles down to work, and makes himself felt from the moment he enters his position, no matter how humble that may be, his advancement will take care of itself. an employer is very quick to discover merit in an employee, and if a young man is fitted to occupy a higher position in the house than he is filling, it will not be long before he is promoted. there are, of course, instances where the best work that a young man can do goes for nothing and fails of rightful appreciation, and where such a condition is discovered, of course the young man must change the condition and go where his services will receive proper recognition and value. but this happens only in a very small minority of cases. in the vast majority of cases where the cry of inappreciation is heard, it is generally the fact that the crier is unworthy of more than he receives. no employer can tell a young man just what his prospects are. that is for the young man himself to demonstrate. he must show first what is in him, and then he will discover for himself what his prospects are. because so many young men stand, still does not prove that employers are unwilling to advance them, but simply shows that the great run of young men do not possess those qualities which entitle them to advancement. there are exceptional cases, of course; but as a rule a man gets in this world about what he is worth, or not very far from it. there is not by any means as much injustice done by the employer to the employee as appears on the surface. leaving aside all question of principle, it would be extremely poor policy for a business man to keep in a minor position a young man who, if promoted, would expand and make more money for the house. * * * * * and right here a word or two may perhaps be fitly said about the element of "luck" entering into business advancement. it is undeniable that there are thousands of young men who believe that success in business is nothing else than what they call "luck." the young men who forge ahead are, in their estimation, simply the lucky ones, who have had influence of some sort or other to push them along. when a young man gets into that frame of mind which makes him believe that "luck" is the one and only thing which can help him along, or that it is even an element in business, it may be safely said that he is doomed to failure. the only semblance to "influence" there is in business is found where, through a friendly word, a chance is opened to a young man. but the only thing that "influence" can do begins and ends with an opportunity. the strongest influence that can be exerted in a young man's behalf counts for very little if he is found to be incapable of embracing that chance. and so far as "luck" is concerned, there is no such thing in a young man's life or his business success. the only lucky young man is he who has a sound constitution, with good sense to preserve it; who knows some trade or profession thoroughly or is willing to learn it and sacrifice everything to its learning; who loves his work and has industry enough to persevere in it; who appreciates the necessity of self-restraint in all things, and who tempers his social life to those habits which refresh and not impair his constitution. that is luck,--the luck of having common sense. that is the only luck there is,--the only luck worth having; and it is something which every right-minded young man may have if he goes about it the right way. things in this world never just happen. there is always a reason for everything. so with success. it is not the result of luck; it is not a thing of chance. it comes to men only because they work hard and intelligently for it, and along legitimate lines. * * * * * now a word about a young man's salary. it is human nature to wish to make all the money we honestly can: to get just as large a return for our services as possible. there is no qualifying that statement, and as most of the comforts of this life are had through the possession of sufficient money, it is perfectly natural that the subject of what we earn should be prominent in our minds. but too many young men put the cart before the horse in this question of salary. it is their first consideration. they are constantly asking what salaries are paid in different business callings, and whether this profession or that trade is more financially productive. the question seems to enter into their deliberations as a qualifying factor as to whether they shall enter a certain trade or profession. i never could quite see the point of this nor the reason for it. of what significance to you or to me are the salaries which are paid to others? they signify nothing. if the highest salary paid to the foremost men in a certain profession is $ , per year, what does that fact prove? there is no obstacle to some one's else going into that same profession and earning $ , . the first consideration, when a young man thinks of going into business, is not which special trade or profession is most profitable, but which particular line he is most interested in and best fitted for. what matters it to a man that fortunes are made in the law if he has absolutely no taste or ability for that profession? of what value is it to a young man who loves mechanical engineering to know that there are doctors who earn large incomes? what difference do the productive possibilities of any line of work make to us if we are not by nature fitted for that work? when a young man is always thinking of the salary he is receiving, or the salary he "ought to get," he gives pretty good proof that he is not of a very superior make. the right sort of a young fellow doesn't ever-lastingly concern himself about salary. ability commands income. but a young man must start with ability, not with salary. that takes care of itself. * * * * * now, a substantial business success means several things. it calls, in the first place, for concentration. there is no truth more potent than that which tells us we cannot serve god and mammon. nor can any young man successfully serve two business interests, no matter how closely allied; in fact, the more closely the interests the more dangerous are they. the human mind is capable of just so much clear thought, and generally it does not extend beyond the requirements of one position in these days of keen competition. if there exists a secret of success, it lies, perhaps, in concentration more than in any other single element. during business hours a man should be in business. his thoughts should be on nothing else. diversions of thought are killing to the best endeavors. the successful mastery of business questions calls for a personal interest, a forgetfulness of self, that can only come from the closest application and the most absolute concentration. i go so far in my belief of concentration to business interests in business hours as to argue that a young man's personal letters should not be sent to his office address, nor should he receive his social friends at his desk. business hours are none too long in the great majority of our offices, and, with a rest of one hour for luncheon, no one has a right to lop off fifteen minutes here to read an irrelevant personal letter, or fifteen minutes there to talk with a friend whose conversation distracts the mind from the problems before it. a young man cannot draw the line between his business life and his social life too closely. it is all too true of thousands of young men that they are better conversant during the base-ball season with the batting average of some star player, or the number of men "put out at second" by some other player, than they are with the details of their business. digression is just as dangerous as stagnation in the career of a young man in business. there is absolutely no position worth the having in business life to-day to which a care of other interests can be added. let a man attempt to serve the interests of one master, and if he serves him well he has his hands and his head full. there is a class of ambitious young men who have what they choose to call "an anchor to the windward" in their business. that is, they maintain something outside of their regular position. they do this from necessity, they claim. one position does not offer sufficient scope for their powers or talents; does not bring them sufficient income, and they are "forced," they explain, to take on something in addition. i have known such young men. but, so far as i have been able to discern, the trouble does not lie so much with the position they occupy as with themselves. when a man turns away from the position he holds to outside affairs, he turns just so far away from the surest path of success. to do one thing perfectly is better than to do two things only fairly well. it was told me once, of one of our best known actors, that outside of his stage knowledge he knew absolutely nothing. but he acted well,--so well that he stands at the head of his profession, and has an income of five figures several times over. all around geniuses are rare--so rare that we can hardly find them. to know one thing absolutely means material success and commercial and mental superiority. i dare say that if some of our young men understood more fully than they do the needs of the positions they occupy, the necessity for outside work would not exist. stagnation in a young man's career is but a synonym for starvation, since there is no such thing as standing still in the business world. we go either backward or forward; we never stand still. when a young man fails to keep abreast of the possibilities of his position he recedes constantly, though perhaps unconsciously. the young man who progresses is he who enters into the spirit of the business of his employer, and who points out new methods to him, advances new ideas, suggests new channels and outputs. there is no more direct road to the confidence of an employer than for him to see that any one of his clerks has an eye eager for the possibilities of business. that young man commands the attention of his chief at once, and when a vacancy occurs he is apt to step into it, if, indeed, he does not forge over the shoulders of others. young men who think clearly, can conceive good ideas and carry them out, are not so plentiful that even a single one will be lost sight of. it is no special art, and it reflects but little credit upon any man simply to fill a position. that is expected of him; he is engaged to do that, and it is only a fair return for a certain payment made. the art lies in doing more than was bargained for; in proving greater than was expected; in making more of a position than has ever been made before. a quick conception is needed here, the ability to view a broad horizon; for it is the liberal-minded man, not the man of narrow limitations, who makes the success of to-day. a young man showing such qualities to an employer does not remain in one position long. * * * * * two traps in which young men in business often fall are a disregard for small things, and an absolute fear of making mistakes. one of the surest keys to success lies in thoroughness. no matter how great may be the enterprise undertaken a regard for the small things is necessary. just as the little courtesies of every-day life make life the worth living, so the little details form the bone and sinew of a great success. a thing half or three-quarters done is worse than not done at all. let a man be careful of the small things in business, and he can generally be relied upon for the greater ones. the man who can overcome small worries is greater than the man who can override great obstacles. when a young man becomes so ambitious for large success that he overlooks the small things, he is pretty apt to encounter failure. there is nothing in business so infinitesimal that we can afford to do it in a slipshod fashion. it is no art to answer twenty letters in a morning when they are, in reality, only half answered. when we commend brevity in business letters, we do not mean brusqueness. nothing stamps the character of a house so clearly as the letters it sends out. the fear of making mistakes keeps many a young man down. of course, errors in business are costly, and it is better not to make them. but, at the same time, i would not give a snap of the fingers for a young man who has never made mistakes. but there are mistakes and mistakes; some easy to be excused; others not to be overlooked in the case of any employee. a mistake of judgment is possible with us all; the best of us are not above a wrong decision. and a young man who holds back for fear of making mistakes loses the first point of success. a young man in business nowadays, with an ambition to be successful, must also be careful of his social life. it is not enough that he should take care of himself during the day. to social dissipations at night can be traced the downfall of hundreds upon hundreds of young men. the idea that an employer has no control over a young man's time away from the office is a dangerous fallacy. an employer has every right to ask that those into whose hands he entrusts responsibilities shall follow social habits which will not endanger his interests upon the morrow. so far as social life is concerned, young men generally run to both extremes. either they do not go out at all, which is stagnating, or they go out too much, which is deadly. only here and there is found one who knows the happy medium. a certain amount of social diversion is essential to everybody, boy, man, girl, or woman. and particularly so to a young man with a career to make. to come into contact with the social side of people is broadening; it is educative. "to know people," says a writer, "you must see them at play." social life can be made a study at the same time that it is made a pleasure. to know the wants of people, to learn their softer side, you must come into contact with their social natures. no young man can afford to deny himself certain pleasures, or a reasonable amount of contact with people in the outer world. it is to his advantage that people should know he exists,--what his aims and aspirations are. his evening occupations should be as widely different as possible from those which occupy his thoughts in the daytime. the mind needs a change of thought as well as the body needs a change of raiment. the familiar maxim, "all work and no play makes jack a dull boy," contains a vast amount of truth. at the same time, nothing is more injurious to the chances of a young man in business than an overindulgence in the pleasures of what, for the want of a better word, we call "society." it is a rough but a true saying that "a man cannot drink whisky and be in business." perhaps a softer interpretation of the idea would be this: that a man cannot be in society and be in business. this is impossible, and nothing that a young man can bear in mind will stand him to such good account as this fact. no mind can be fresh in the morning that has been kept at a tension the night before by late hours, or befogged by indulgence in late suppers. we need more sleep at twenty-five than we do at fifty, and the young man who grants himself less than eight hours' sleep every night just robs himself of so much vitality. the loss may not be felt or noticed at present, but the process of sleeping is only nature's banking system of principal and interest. a mind capable of the fulfilment of its highest duties should be not only receptive to ideas, but quick to comprehend a point. with a fresh mind and a clear brain, a young man has two of the greatest levers of success. these cannot be retained under social indulgences. the dissipation of a night has its invariable influence upon the work of the morrow. i do not preach total abstinence from any habits to which human nature is prone. every man ought to know what is good for him and what is injurious to his best interests. an excess of anything is injurious, and a young man on the threshold of a business career cannot afford to go to the extreme in any direction. he should husband his resources, for he will need them all. for no success is easily made nowadays. appearances are tremendously deceptive in this respect. we see men making what we choose to regard and call quick success, because at a comparatively early age they acquire position or means. but one needs only to study the conditions of the business life of to-day to see how impossible it is to achieve any success except by the very hardest work. no young man need approach a business career with the idea that success is easy. the histories of successful men tell us all too clearly the lessons of patience and the efforts of years. some men compass a successful career in less time than others. and if the methods employed are necessarily different, the requirements are precisely the same. it is a story of hard work in every case, of close application and of a patient mastery of the problem in hand. advantages of education will come in at times and push one man ahead of another. but a practical business knowledge is apt to be a greater possession. * * * * * i know there are thousands of young men who feel themselves incompetent for a business career because of a lack of early education. and here might come in--if i chose to discuss the subject, which i do not--the oft-mooted question of the exact value of a college education to the young man in business. but i will say this: a young man need not feel that the lack of a college education will stand in any respect whatever in the way of his success in the business world. no college on earth ever made a business man. the knowledge acquired in college has fitted thousands of men for professional success, but it has also unfitted other thousands for a practical business career. a college training is never wasted, although i have seen again and again five-thousand-dollar educations spent on five-hundred-dollar men. where a young man can bring a college education to the requirements of a practical business knowledge, it is an advantage. but before our american colleges become an absolute factor in the business capacities of men their methods of study and learning will have to be radically changed. i have had associated with me both kinds of young men, collegiate and non-collegiate, and i must say that those who had a better knowledge of the practical part of life have been those who never saw the inside of a college and whose feet never stepped upon a campus. college-bred men, and men who never had college advantages, have succeeded in about equal ratios. the men occupying the most important commercial positions in new york to-day are self-made, whose only education has come to them from contact with that greatest college of all, the business world. far be it from me to depreciate the value of a college education. i believe in its advantages too firmly. but no young man need feel hampered because of the lack of it. if business qualities are in him they will come to the surface. it is not the college education; it is the young man. without its possession as great and honorable successes have been made as with it. men are not accepted in the business world upon their collegiate diplomas, nor on the knowledge these imply. * * * * * there are a great many young men in business to-day who grow impatient. they are in a position for a certain time; they are satisfactory to their employers, and then, because they are not promoted, they grow restless. these young men generally overlook a point or two. in the first place, they overlook the very important point that between the years of twenty and twenty-five a young man acquires rather than achieves. it is the learning period of life, the experience-gaining time. knowledge that is worth anything does not come to us until we are past twenty-five. the mind, before that age, is incapable of forming wise judgment. the great art of accurate decision in business matters is not acquired in a few weeks of commercial life. it is the result of years. it is not only the power within him, but also the experience behind him, that makes a successful business man. the commercial world is only a greater school than the one of slates and slate-pencils. no boy, after attending school for five years, would consider himself competent to teach. and surely five years of commercial apprenticeship will not fit a young man to assume a position of trust, nor give him the capacity to decide upon important business matters. in the first five years, yes, the first ten years, of a young man's business life, he is only in the primary department of the great commercial world. it is for him, then, to study methods, to observe other men--in short, to learn and not to hope to achieve. that will come later. business, simple as it may look to the young man, is, nevertheless, a very intricate affair, and it is only by years of closest study that we master an understanding of it. the electric atmosphere of the american business world is all too apt to make our young men impatient. they want to fly before they can even walk well. ambition is a splendid thing in any young man. but he must not forget that, like fire and water, it makes a good servant but a poor master. getting along too fast is just as injurious as getting along too slow. a young man between twenty and twenty-five must be patient. i know patience is a difficult thing to cultivate, but it is among the first lessons we must learn in business. a good stock of patience, acquired in early life, will stand a man in good stead in later years. it is a handy thing to have and draw upon, and makes a splendid safety-valve. because a young man, as he approaches twenty-five, begins to see things more plainly than he did five years before, he must not get the idea that he is a business man yet, and entitled to a man's salary. if business questions, which he did not understand five years before, now begin to look clearer to him, it is because he is passing through the transitory state that separates the immature judgment of the young man from the ripening penetration of the man. he is simply beginning. afterward he will grow, and his salary will grow as he grows. but rome wasn't built in a day, and a business man isn't made in a night. as experience comes, the judgment will become mature, and by the time the young man reaches thirty he will begin to realize that he didn't know as much at twenty-five as he thought he did. when he is ready to learn from others he will begin to grow wise. and when he reaches that state where he is willing to concede that he hasn't a "corner" on knowledge in this world, he will be stepping out of the chrysalis of youth. * * * * * there is another point upon which young men are often in doubt, and that is, just how far it pays to be honest in business. "does it really pay to be honest in business?" they ask, and they are sincere and in earnest in the question. now, the simple fact of the matter is that a business success is absolutely impossible upon any other basis than one of the strictest honesty. the great trouble with young men, nowadays, is that their ideas are altogether too much influenced by a few unfortunate examples of apparent success which are prominent--too prominent, alas!--in american life to-day. these "successful men"--for the most part identified in some way with politics--are talked about incessantly; interviewed by reporters; buy lavish diamonds for their wives, and build costly houses,--all of which is duly reported in the newspapers. young men read these things and ask themselves, "if he can do it, why not i?" then they begin to look around for some "short cut to success," as one young fellow expressed it to me not long ago. it is owing to this practice of "cutting across lots" in business that scores of young men find themselves, after awhile in tight places. and the man who has once had about him an unsavory taint in his business methods rarely, very rarely, rids himself of that atmosphere in the eyes of his acquaintances. how often we see some young man in business, representative of the very qualities that should win success. every one agrees that he is brilliant. "he is clever," is the general verdict. his manner impresses one pleasantly, he is thoroughly businesslike, is energetic, and yet, somehow, he never seems to stick to one place. people wonder at it, and excuse it on the ground that he hasn't found the right place. but some day the secret is explained. "yes, he is clever," says some old business man, "but do you know he isn't--well, he isn't quite safe!" "quite safe!" how much that expresses; how clearly that defines hundreds and hundreds of the smartest young men in business to-day. he is everything else--but he isn't "quite safe!" he is not dishonest in any way, but he is, what is equally as bad, not quite reliable. to attain success he has, in other words, tried to "cut across lots." and rainbow-chasing is really a very commendable business in comparison to a young man's search for the "royal road to success." no success worth attaining is easy; the greater the obstacles to overcome, the surer is the success when attained. "royal roads" are poor highways to travel in any pursuit, and especially in a business calling. it is strange how reluctant young men are to accept, as the most vital truth in life, that the most absolute honesty is the only kind of honesty that succeeds in business. it isn't a question of religion or religious beliefs. honesty does not depend upon any religious creed or dogma that was ever conceived. it is a question of a young man's own conscience. he knows what is right and what is wrong. and yet, simple as the matter is, it is astonishing how difficult it is of understanding. an honest course in business seems too slow to the average young man. "i can't afford to plod along. i must strike and strike quickly," is the sentiment. ah, yes, my friend, but not dishonestly. no young man can afford even to think of dishonesty. success on honorable lines may sometimes seem slower in coming, but when it does come it outrivals in permanency all the so-called successes gained by other methods. to look at the methods of others is always a mistake. the successes of to-day are not given to the imitator, but to the originator. it makes no difference how other men may succeed--their success is theirs and not yours. you cannot partake of it. every man is a law unto himself. the most absolute integrity is the one and the only sure foundation of success. such a success is lasting. other kinds of success may seem so, but it is all in the seeming, and not in the reality. let a young man swerve from the path of honesty, and it will surprise him how quickly every avenue of permanent success is closed against him. it is the young man of unquestioned integrity who is selected for the important position. no business man ever places his affairs in the hands of a young man whom he feels he cannot unhesitatingly trust. and to be trusted means to be honest. honesty, and that alone, commands confidence. an honest life, well directed, is the only life for a young man to lead. it is the one life that is compatible with the largest and surest business success. * * * * * and so it is easy enough for any young man to succeed, provided he is willing to bear in mind a few very essential truths. and they are: above all things he should convince himself that he is in a congenial business. whether it be a trade or a profession,--both are honorable and profitable,--let him satisfy himself, above everything else, that it enlists his personal interest. if a man shows that he has his work at heart his success can be relied on. personal interest in any work will bring other things; but all the other essentials combined cannot create personal interest. that must exist first; then two-thirds of the battle is won. fully satisfied that he is in the particular line of business in which he feels a stronger, warmer interest than in any other, then he should remember: first--that, whatever else he may strive to be, he must be absolutely honest. from honorable principles he never should swerve. there can be no half-way compromise. second--he must be alert, alive to every opportunity. he cannot afford to lose a single point, for that single point may prove to be the very link that would make complete the whole chain of a business success. third--he must ever be willing to learn, never overlooking the fact that others have long ago forgotten what he has still to learn. firmness of decision is an admirable trait in business. the young man whose opinions can be tossed from one side to the other is poor material. but youth is full of errors, and caution is a strong trait. fourth--if he be wise he will entirely avoid the use of liquors. if the question of harm done by intoxicating liquor is an open one, the question of the actual good derived from it is not. fifth--let him remember that a young man's strongest recommendation is his respectability. some young men, apparently successful, may be flashy in dress, loud in manner, disrespectful to women and irreverent toward sacred things. but the young man who is respectable always wears best. the way a young man carries himself in his private life ofttimes means much to him in his business career. no matter where he is, or in whose company, respectability, and all that it implies, will always command respect. * * * * * if any young man wishes a set of rules even more concise, here it is: get into a business you like. devote yourself to it. be honest in everything. be cautious. think carefully about a thing before you act. sleep eight hours every night. do everything that means keeping in good health. don't worry. worry kills more men than work does. avoid liquors of all kinds. if you must smoke, smoke moderately. shun discussion on two points,--religion and politics. marry a good woman, and have your own home. copyright, , by mrs. elmer black a terminal market system new york's most urgent need some observations, comments and comparisons of european markets [illustration] _by_ mrs. elmer black member of the advisory board of the new york terminal market commission contents page foreword the markets of the united states the markets of the british isles the markets of the german empire the markets of france the markets of austria-hungary the markets of holland the markets of belgium comments illustrations covent garden market smithfield in the olden days delivering meat at smithfield today inside smithfield market billingsgate fish market, london berlin's terminal market interior of the berlin central market ground plan of the munich market munich's modern terminal market the paris halles, exterior view the paris halles; keen morning buyers a drastic inspection foreword in the belief that the establishment of a first-class _terminal market_ system, worthy of twentieth century requirements, is a matter of vital importance to every family in new york, i have spent considerable time during the past few months investigating markets on both sides of the atlantic. as a result i am more than ever conscious of the need for an enlightened public opinion to support the efforts of the terminal market commission to secure this benefit for our community. i am convinced that our fellow-citizens will approve the requisite expenditure once they are roused to a realization of the inadequacy of our food-distributing centers. in the hope that my investigations may aid in the accomplishment of this reform, i have prepared these observations, comments and comparisons. it is true that the problem of the high cost of living is afflicting the old lands of europe, the newer countries like new zealand, as well as our own wide territories of the united states. the causes vary, according to local conditions; but everywhere it is agreed that a potent force for the amelioration of the condition of the consumers is found in the establishment of efficient terminal markets under municipal control for all progressive cities. with wise administration, stringent inspection and sound safeguards, these municipal markets benefit both producers and consumers. they eliminate considerable intermediate expense, delay and confusion. last but not least they return a profit to the city treasury. it is because our new york markets achieve none of these beneficent results that i issue this plea for the establishment of an adequate _terminal market_ system. i appeal to all who have the welfare of their city at heart to add the force of their opinion to the accomplishment of this civic improvement. [illustration: madeleine black (signature) (mrs. elmer black)] united states new york, with over , , inhabitants, has no effective market system. the buildings are out of repair, there is little or no organization, and the superintendent has testified before the new york food investigation commission (march , ) that on their administration last year there was _a loss to the city treasury of $ , _. to that must be added due consideration of the inconvenience to the consumers, producers and dealers, and the extra cost of handling entailed by the lack of modern market methods. the city has almost quadrupled its population in a generation, but the markets remain about as they were. many other cities in the united states not only testify to the value of municipal markets as a means for lowering prices to the consumer, but so guard their interests as to provide a very different balance sheet. boston has a profit on its markets of $ , , baltimore $ , , new orleans $ , , buffalo $ , , cleveland (ohio) $ , , washington (d. c.) $ , , nashville (tenn.) $ , , indianapolis $ , , rochester (n. y.) $ , , and st. paul (minn.) $ , . if the following facts concerning municipal markets are studied, also, it will be seen that no city in any way comparable to new york fails to make the municipal markets yield advantages both to the community and the city treasury. the british isles london naturally serves as a starting point for a tour of european investigation. the british capital has, indeed, features that render it comparable in a peculiar degree with new york. the population of both, including their outer ring of suburbs, is over five millions. in each case there is access to the open sea by means of a noble waterway over which passes the commerce of the seven seas. railroads supplement the water-borne cargoes with home-grown produce, fresh from the farms for the use of urban kitchens. london's markets do not afford the unbroken example of municipal control that they would if a new system were to be created at the present day. precedent looms large in british administration and even now there are only two ways of establishing a market--by parliamentary authority and royal charter. king henry iii covenanted by charter with the city of london not to grant permission to anyone else to set up a market within a radius of seven miles of the guildhall, and this privilege was subsequently confirmed by a charter granted by edward iii in . but of late years the city corporation has waived its rights and allowed markets to be established in various districts wherever a real necessity has been shown to exist. in fact the markets of london have grown with the city, keeping pace with its requirements. [illustration: covent garden market the morning rush of farm and garden produce for london consumers.] there remains, however, the fact that certain corporation markets and covent garden market serve as great wholesale terminals, connected more or less unofficially with the numerous local markets in the outlying districts. chief among the corporation markets is smithfield, covering about eight acres, and costing altogether $ , , . there are to be found wholesale meat, poultry and provision markets, with sections for the sale, wholesale and retail, of vegetables and fish. in the last twenty years the development of cold storage processes has lowered the quantity of home-killed meat and remarkably increased the importation of refrigerated supplies. last year the wholesale market disposed of , tons of meat, of which . per cent came from overseas. ten years ago the united states supplied per cent of the smithfield meat, but now these supplies have fallen off enormously and the last report of the markets committee says: "the united states, in particular for domestic needs, is within measurable distance of becoming a competitor with england for the output of south america." south america and australasia are, indeed, the chief producers today for the british market. this has developed a great cold storage business in london. all told london can accommodate , , carcases of mutton, reckoning each carcase at pounds. over per cent of england's imported meat passes through smithfield, and railroad access is arranged to the heart of the market. the great northern railway company has a lease from the corporation on , feet of basement works under the meat market, with hydraulic lifts to the level of the market hall, and inclined roadways for vehicular traffic. most of the tenants at smithfield are commission salesmen, who pay weekly rents for their shops and stalls at space rates, all the fittings being supplied. last year these rents brought in $ , . there is a toll of a farthing on every pounds of meat sold, which together with cold storage, weighing and other charges amounted in the same period to $ , . the meat sales are entirely wholesale, except on saturday afternoons, when there is a retail "people's market," where thousands of the very poor buy cheap joints. [illustration: smithfield in the olden days from an old print dated .] [illustration: delivering meat at smithfield today there is an inclined road by the tree in the center of the picture, leading to the special railroad freight depot. cars are also run directly under the market and their cargoes are delivered by hydraulic lifts to the stands above.] the inspection is very strict, every precaution is taken to ensure cleanliness, and breaches of the regulations are punished by fines or imprisonment. all condemned carcases are sent to a patent podewill destructor to be reduced by steam pressure and rolling to a powder, which is disposed of as an agricultural fertilizer. on these central meat markets there is a _profit of about $ , _. the corporation also controls a great live cattle market at islington, covering seventy-five acres. over $ , , have been spent on this market and the modern slaughterhouses attached thereto. these slaughterhouses are not regarded as a remunerative concern, but are provided because they afford hygienic methods, and private slaughterhouses in london are decreasing rapidly. last year , cattle, , sheep, , calves and , swine were slaughtered there, the charges being cents a head for cattle, cents for sheep, cents for calves, and cents for hogs. mainly on account of the extensions and improvements, this market is not being run at a profit at present, but its public utility is held to justify the outlay. nor does the deptford cattle market, of thirty acres, maintained on the banks of the thames to deal with live cattle imported from abroad, pay its way. but there has been a serious decline in imported stock in late years, especially from america. at this market extreme precautions are taken to prevent the entry of cattle disease that might spread infection to british flocks and herds. all animals landed there must be slaughtered within ten days and submitted to rigid inspection. all hides and offal are immediately disinfected. five hundred cattle can be unloaded from vessels at deptford in twenty minutes. last year , animals were killed, the meat being sent for sale to smithfield and whitechapel. billingsgate, the famous fish market of london, is also administered by the corporation. its records cover over six hundred years. it is hampered by narrow street approaches, but a very expeditious system of direct delivery of fish from the thames side of the market building enables the licensed auctioneers to dispose of supplies very quickly. steam carriers collect the fish from the fleets around the coast and deliver them packed in ice at billingsgate every night. billingsgate market has cost the city $ , , . stand prices are high, but there is keen competition whenever a vacancy occurs. last year the receipts amounted to $ , . the auctioneers dealt with , tons of fish, of which , were water-borne and , land-borne. _the city profited to the extent of over $ , _ on this fish trade. [illustration: inside smithfield market the city of london corporation's $ , , terminal--one of the aisles with wholesale stands on each side.] on the wholesale and retail meat, fruit, vegetable and fish market at leadenhall there is also a profit of over $ , . _on the entire municipal market enterprises of the city there is a profit of $ , ._ the markets are regarded with especial interest by the corporation and the committee which regulates them is considered one of the most important in the whole administration of the city. in order to keep abreast of the times most of the profit is expended on improvements and extensions. covent garden, london's great fruit, flower and vegetable market, is owned by the duke of bedford, whose family have held it for hundreds of years. in the past century they have spent $ , on extensions and improvements. of the present modern buildings, the fruit hall cost $ , and the flower building $ , . formerly the producers were chiefly concerned in the market, holding their stands at a yearly rental. but with the expansion of london the growers have gradually given place to dealers and commission men, who pay twenty-five cents a day per square foot of space, and on the produce, at a regular scale, according to its nature. on flowers there is no toll, but each stand holder pays a fixed rental. though this market has direct access neither to river nor railroad, it still retains its premier position among the wholesale markets of england. as the approaches are extremely narrow, most of the produce has to be carried on the heads of hundreds of porters from the wagons outside into the market buildings. as it is under private ownership, no figures are issued, but there is known to be a huge profit on the market. for outer london there are fruit and vegetable markets at stratford, in the east, kew in the west, the borough in the south and two railroad markets in the north. birmingham, england's chief midland city, has owned its markets since , administering them through a markets and fairs committee. since the profits have been somewhat reduced, owing to outlay on improvements and extensions; but although the city has expended $ , , on the markets, the profits have paid off more than half of that indebtedness, besides relieving taxation in other directions. not far away is the small city of kidderminster, that may be mentioned as affording a demonstration of provincial municipal enterprise, under more restricted conditions. on its vegetable market it makes a _profit of $ , _, and on its butter market _a profit of $ , _. the population of the city is only , . another midland city, wolverhampton, makes a _profit of nearly $ , _. [illustration: billingsgate fish market, london the thames side of the market, showing the steam carriers unloading their cargoes direct into the sale room.] liverpool, the great northern port on the mersey, has spent $ , , on six municipal markets. the only market to lose money is the cattle market, which shows a deficit of $ , . liverpool has a cold storage capacity for , , carcases. on the whole municipal market enterprise, in this city of , people, there is an average annual _profit of $ , _. manchester serves not only its own area but surrounding industrial centers, with a total population of nearly , , . there are twelve markets and four slaughterhouses. since the city has benefited by their administration to the extent of _$ , , profit_. next to that of london, the fish market here is the largest in england. its annual profit is well over $ , , in addition to heavy extension payments in late years. dublin, the capital of what is often called 'the distressful isle,' makes _a profit of $ , _ on the food market and _$ , more_ on the cattle market, while edinburgh, scotland's chief city, makes about _$ , a year on municipal markets_. statistics are available of something like other british towns and cities, ranging from a population of , upwards, where there is the conviction born of experience that municipal markets pay not merely in profits, but in convenience to the community, and they have a powerful influence in keeping prices down. germany perhaps more than any other country in the world germany places reliance on municipal markets, because of the peculiar pressure of the problem of the high cost of living in the cities of the fatherland. on several occasions, during the last twelve months, the butchers' stalls have been raided by women in protest against the ten per cent increase in one year on the price of meat. and when, to meet the clamor, the government reduced the hitherto prohibitive import duties on meat by one-half and the inland railroad charges by one-third, it was on condition that the meat brought in should be for delivery to municipal markets or co-operative societies only. the result has been an immediate fall in retail prices ranging up to fifty per cent. [illustration: berlin's terminal market an outside view of one section of the $ , , central market that caters for the needs of consumers in the german capital.] berlin's two million people since have had a splendid terminal market on the alexanderplatz, consisting of two great adjoining halls, with direct access to the city railroad. one of these halls is entirely wholesale, while the other is partly wholesale and partly retail. meat, fish, fruit and vegetables are dealt with under the same roof by upwards of , producers and dealers. the whole market cost $ , , , of which $ , , was for the main market and $ , , was for the slaughterhouses, which are most elaborately equipped to ensure sanitation and cleanliness. great as the market is, the pressure of business has grown so much that a project is on foot to construct more accommodation at a cost of $ , , . the market is maintained by stand rentals and administrative charges and by a fund established for the improvement and extension of the system. on the entire enterprise, when all charges have been met and interest paid, there is _a profit of over $ , a year_. a committee of eleven, partly city councillors and partly selected representatives of the public, administer the markets with ninety-three officials to ensure the carrying out of their orders. the regulations are most elaborate, especially as regards the inspection of foods, which is conducted by a department having a staff of six hundred. a healthy competition is created by the system of sales, which may be conducted by the producer himself, or through an approved wholesale dealer, or through one of the six municipal sales commissioners. these municipal sales commissioners have to give bonds on appointment and are not allowed to have any interest in the trade of the market beyond a small percentage on sales. producers living at a distance can have their business carried through by them under conditions so well understood and respected as to ensure confidence. though the municipal sales commissioners handle less than a quarter of the sales, they nevertheless act as a check on the private dealers, especially as they issue a regular report on the average wholesale prices. moreover the purchasers benefit by these market arrangements, for if they buy from a regularly authorized dealer they can file a claim with the administration if the supplies delivered are faulty and if their case is proved the account will be rectified. about fifty railroad car loads can be handled at once at the market, but when extended accommodation is provided it is intended to deal with two hundred carloads simultaneously. on supplies thus delivered a railroad tax is collected from the receivers for maintaining rail connections, and this yields an annual profit of $ , . [illustration: interior of the berlin central market the fish section of the great municipal market of the german capital.] of the stand holders, nine-tenths are monthly tenants, and the remainder pay by the day. the highest charge is . cents per square meter a day for meat stalls. the fish sold comes mainly from geestemunde, at the mouth of the weser, and is sold under the strictest conditions, only a small commission being allowed to be added by the dealers. the slaughterhouses deal with wagons daily and for the use of the butchers and the market generally , square meters of distilled water are produced every day, valued at four cents the square meter. eight thousand pipes conduct the water to every part of the market. to ensure cleanliness, bathrooms and rooms for drying clothes are established for the use of the butchers, who are charged two and a half cents a bath. in inspecting the carcases the veterinaries take the most minute precautions. from every animal four samples are taken, at different parts of the body, and each of these samples is submitted to tests for twenty minutes. in an average year , carcases are condemned and destroyed, as well as , diseased parts. whenever possible the inspectors cut away diseased portions, and the remainder of the carcase, after being sterilized, is sent to the markets known as the freibank, for sale to the very poor. this proportion is not so startling when it is considered that something like two million animals are slaughtered every year, of which more than half are pigs. until recently germany used to export a large number of prime animals to the london market, but the demands of home consumers now prevent this and the export trade has practically ceased. in fact germany, in common with the rest of europe, is now competing for the world's refrigerated supplies. storm doors and windbreaks are provided at the entrances to the markets and wagons are only allowed inside at certain hours and through specified doorways. thus there is an absence of dust, and a carefully arranged series of windows ensure ample ventilation. all dealers have to unpack their stock at least once every seven days, for the destruction of unsound articles. all supplies of unripe fruit, horseflesh and artificial butter have to carry labels disclosing their real nature. attached to the market is a hospital with skilled attendance, for cases of sickness or injury happening on the market premises. as in most other centers, the establishment of the market led to the peddlers entering into outside competition. they bought their supplies wholesale inside, and then offered them cheaply outside, free from stand rentals and other charges. this menace to the prosperity of the market grew so great that the peddlers' traffic in adjacent streets was prohibited and strictly limited elsewhere. this measure, in fact, is deemed essential in every city where municipal markets are conducted successfully. [illustration: ground plan of the munich market in front is seen the toll-house and receiving station, then the great market hall and, in the upper part of the picture, the restaurant and administration offices. the sidetracks on the right facilitate the rapid distribution of produce sold at the market. under the great market hall are large refrigeration chambers connected directly with the railroad.] cologne completed a million dollar market in , with a cold storage plant and connections with the state and narrow gauge railways. nearly half the space is taken up by wholesale dealers in fruit and vegetables. the chief fault of the market is the remoteness from the center of the town. at first it had a great success but, on this account, it has not been entirely maintained. encouraged by that initial prosperity, the city authorities bought a nearer site, but the subsequent decrease in the market's popularity has caused the postponement of extensions. though the market does not pay the five per cent on capital that is required, the present administration, even with its drawbacks, does succeed in making a profit of about three per cent on the capital invested, last year's income amounting to $ , . hamburg is peculiarly situated as to its market conditions. the market halls of hamburg and altona adjoin, but while the former is under the control of the hamburg senate, the latter is subject to the laws of the prussian government and administered by the altona city authorities. each has a large hall, with a considerable portion of the space used for auctions. the senate of hamburg appoints two auctioneers and altona one; but, while the latter is a salaried official, the former are two hamburg auctioneers approved by the government for the special market business, on undertaking not to trade on their own account. the trade of the chief market is in fish. with the altona market, the hamburg market and the geestemunde market, the sales in this section of germany are the most important in the fatherland for fresh sea fish, and salted herrings. about a fourth comes in fishing cutters or steam trawlers direct alongside the market halls, while the remaining three-fourths come from denmark by rail or by ships from england, scotland and norway. often there are three or four special fish trains from the north in a day, while twenty-five to thirty steamers bring the regular supply of imported fish. the auctioneers derive their revenue from a four per cent charge on sales of the cargoes of german fishing vessels and five per cent on imported supplies. out of this they pay half of one per cent to the government on the german and one per cent on the foreign sales. no fees are charged to importers and dealers using the auction section of the fish market. out of the percentage paid to the government by the auctioneers is provided light and water, the cleansing of the halls and the carting away of refuse for destruction. strict regulations govern the inspection of the fish and to ensure the destruction of those that have deteriorated they are sprinkled with petroleum immediately on detection. [illustration: munich terminal market the world's most modern distribution center for foodstuffs.] steam fishing boats using the market quays pay cents for hours' use, seagoing sailing cutters cents, river sailing cutters cents, and small boats cents, in which charges the use of electric and other hoists is included. from these markets almost the whole of germany receives its sea fish supplies, for the distribution of which most of the leading dealers have branch houses in the principal cities. there are also two markets--one in hamburg and one in altona--for the sale of farm produce, mostly transported thither by boats. besides these, there is a big auction for imported fruit, conducted by private firms. all these hamburg markets are prosperous, and their utility to the community is universally acknowledged. frankfort's market system dates back to , when the first hall was erected at a cost of $ , . it has stands on the main floor renting at $ . per two square meters a month, payable in advance, while there is space for more in the galleries at cents per two square meters a month. nearby is a second hall, built in at a cost of $ , . a third hall followed in at a cost of $ , , while in further extensions were determined on and there are fresh projects now under consideration. besides these covered markets the city has a paved and fenced square that has been used since as an open market, where stands are rented at cents a day. sixty per cent of the stands in the market halls are rented by the month and forty per cent by the day. tuesdays and fridays are reserved for wholesale trading. a market commission rules the markets and the police enforce their regulations, the violation of which is liable to cost the offender $ . in fines or imprisonment up to eight days. munich, with a population of half a million, has the most modern of all the european municipal markets. it was opened in february, , and embodies the improvements suggested by experience of market administration in other cities. the total cost was $ , , of which $ , was spent on four communicating iron market halls, with their cellar accommodation underneath, $ , on a receiving and toll department, $ , on a group of adjacent buildings, including a post-office, restaurant and beer-garden, and $ , on roadways. the whole establishment covers , square meters, of which the market halls occupy , square meters. at the northern extremity of the buildings is the toll and receiving department, where produce is delivered at special sidings connected with the south railway station of the city. next comes a succession of lofty halls, with covered connections, terminating in a small retail section and the administration offices. at the northern end of the great market is a section where express delivery traffic is dealt with, while the western side is occupied with sidings for loading produce sold to buyers from other german centers. below the toll house and the market generally are vast cold storage cellars and refrigerating plants for the preservation of surplus supplies till the demand in the market above calls for their delivery. each market hall is devoted to a separate section of produce, and the cellars below are correspondingly distinct, so that there is an absence of confusion, orderliness is ensured, and rapid deliveries facilitated. across this underground space from north to south run three roadways, while down the center, from east to west, a further broad aisle is provided, with an equipment of great hydraulic lifts. there are nine of these lifts altogether for heavy consignments, while each stand-owner in the market has, in addition, a small lift connecting his stand and storage cellar. both market halls and underground cellars are so constructed as to facilitate ventilation and complete cleanliness. the floors are of concrete and every stand is fitted with running water, with which all the fittings have to be scoured every day. there is both roof and side light, and ample ventilation, while the entrances are wind-screened, to prevent dust. electric light is used underground, and the cellars are inspected as strictly as the upper halls, to ensure due attention to hygiene. in the center of each market hall there are offices and writing rooms for those using the markets. in the restaurant can be served with meals at one time, or they can be accommodated with seats in the beer-garden. associated with this market establishment is a great cattle market and range of slaughterhouses on a neighboring site. the live cattle market dates back for centuries, but the present accommodation was only completed in may, , at a total cost of $ , , . last year , animals were sold, including , swine and , calves. in the slaughterhouses , of these were killed, besides , horses and dogs. about twenty-five per cent of the animals reach the market by road from neighboring farms, while seventy-five per cent come by rail. for the inspection of all flesh foods there are very strict rules, enforced by the chief veterinary surgeon, dr. müller, and a staff of specially trained assistants. as in berlin, extensive bathrooms are provided for the slaughterhouse staff, and baths are available at nominal charges. though the new market halls have not been established long enough to provide a definite financial statement, the live-cattle market and slaughterhouses do afford an indication of the success of municipal administration in munich. last year the income was $ , and the expenditure $ , , thus showing a profit of $ , . the new produce halls are certainly the best equipped in the world, and the only element of doubt as to their success arises from the fact that three old-fashioned open markets are nearer the center of the city and for that reason are even now preferred by many retailers. this fact emphasises the importance of selecting a central position in establishing a municipal terminal market. france paris has one of the most skilfully organized municipal market systems in europe. the chief food distribution center for the , , parisians is established at the halles centrales, a series of ten pavilions covering twenty-two acres of ground and intervening streets. altogether this great terminal market has cost the city more than $ , , . most of the pavilions are entirely for the wholesale trade, but some are used as retail markets to a limited extent. retail traders are being decreased gradually, so that whereas in there were , retail stands there are now only . the total receipts of the halles centrales and thirty local markets amount to $ , , , of which _about $ , , is profit_. there is a general advance in the wholesale trade, but the local covered markets or marchés de quartier, are not progressing in the same way, so the city does not quite maintain a steady level of market profit. [illustration: the halles centrales, paris an outside view, showing how the supplies overflow into the adjacent streets, notwithstanding the provision of twenty-two acres of covered pavilions.] the reasons given for the falling off of the retail trade are various, but the principal causes appear to be ( ) the growth of big stores, with local branches, that deliver the goods at the door, thus relieving the purchaser of the necessity of taking home market supplies; ( ) the number of perambulating produce salesmen, who sell from carts in the street at low rates, having neither store rent nor market tolls to pay, and ( ) the growth of co-operative societies. a complicated and severe code of regulations governs the markets. commission salesmen at the halles centrales must be french citizens of unblemished record and must give a bond of not less than $ , in proof of solvency. producers may have their supplies sold either at auction or by private treaty, as they prefer, and as none of the agents are allowed to do business for themselves the distant growers have confidence in the market methods. in the retail markets each dealer in fresh meat pays just under $ . a week in all, while dealers in salted meats, fish, game and vegetables pay a much lower rate. all, however, in the covered markets pay three taxes--one for the right to occupy a stand, one for the cleaning and arranging of the markets, and one for the maintenance of guardians and officials. in the open markets the stands are rented by the day, week, or year, the rate for the day ranging from ten to thirty cents, according to space. several of these local markets have charters dating back to pre-revolution days, that cannot now be annulled. it would be difficult to devise a more thorough system of inspection. an average year's seizures include half a million pounds of meat, , pounds of fruit and vegetables and half a million pounds of salt water fish. thus the paris market arrangements provide an admirable central clearing house, where supplies are inspected and sold under such conditions as to prevent the artificial raising of prices. it also acts as a feeder to the marchés de quartier, to the great convenience of local consumers. moreover the producer is safeguarded, for on his supplies a small fixed percentage only can be charged by the salesman, and the current market prices are made public by agents especially detailed for that purpose. havre, the well-known french seaport, with a population of , , has a profit of over six per cent on the halles centrales and ten per cent on the fish market. all told there is _a profit of $ , _ on the twelve municipal markets. [illustration: keen morning buyers in the game section of the paris halles centrales.] the halles centrales occupy an entire square in the center of the city and cost $ , , exclusive of the site. gardeners and farmers are not permitted to sell their produce on the way to the market and are only allowed to deliver to storekeepers after the wholesale markets are closed. here, as elsewhere where the markets are successful, every precaution is taken to avoid the prosperity of the market being dissipated by sales in the surrounding neighborhood. the annual rents for butchers are very moderate, ranging from $ . to $ . , vegetable dealers $ . to $ . ; dairy produce dealers $ . to $ . , fishmongers $ . to $ . . in the wholesale markets there is an annual trade turnover worth well above $ , , , of which fish represents $ , . so far from the fishermen finding the fish market detrimental to their interests, they welcome it and cheerfully observe the rule forbidding sales on the quays or transit sheds except under special permits. lyons, with a population of half a million, may be taken as the best example of a flourishing french provincial city at a considerable distance from the sea. the principal market, la halle, is known all over france for its public auctions. accommodation is provided for stalls, rented at cents a day per square meter for fruit, vegetables and cheese, while other stalls for meat and fish are rented at cents per square meter. at the morning auctions, held at the rear of the hall, are sold immense quantities of fish, oysters, lobsters, game, poultry, butter, cheese, eggs, fruit and vegetables. there is a rule that all supplies must come from outside lyons, so that local store men cannot there dispose of surplus stocks, but dealers in other french cities often thus relieve themselves when overloaded. these auctions not only enable local dealers to distribute supplies at cheap rates to the small stores all over the city, but wide awake housewives can frequently tell just what the stores gave wholesale for the produce offered to them retail later in the day, so a check can be kept on overcharges. the auctioneers are given a monopoly of selling for ten years, on binding themselves to pay to the city a sum equal to two per cent on the total annual sales. the minimum is fixed at $ , for one stand or $ , for four stands, to be paid to the municipal treasury. two per cent is added to the purchase price of every payment made by buyers at auction, and if this does not amount to $ , per stand for the year, the auctioneer has to make up the difference. the poorer classes benefit largely by these sales, banding together to buy wholesale and then dividing their purchases. [illustration: a drastic inspection of refrigerated chinese pork at the port of liverpool.] there are also seventeen markets for general retail trade in lyons. the terminal market of la halle cost the city $ , . the company which built it was given a concession for fifty years, on a division of profits arrangement, but within sixteen months the utility of the market as an advantageous enterprise for the city was so clearly demonstrated that the municipality bought the company out. austria-hungary vienna, with , , people to supply, has a magnificently managed system of forty-five markets, seven of which are located in large, well-ventilated halls, all kept spotlessly clean. market commissioners appointed by the municipality conduct the business of the markets according to strict regulations, enforcing a rigid inspection of all products as well as weights and measures. violations of these rules are punishable by fines of about $ . , imprisonment for hours or exclusion from the markets. such penalties are enforced when buyers are defrauded, dealers oppose the market authority, or exceed the charges that are posted in the market. not merely land and water produce, but general farm and household requisites, are sold at these markets. outside buying is strictly controlled, owners of boats on the danube or wagons on the public streets paying toll to the municipality on any sales. _over $ , profit_ is the average annual yield of the markets to the city treasury, and it is generally agreed that the market system tends to keep down the price of foodstuffs to normal levels. buda-pesth has , people and a very complete market system, under which, though only nominal rentals are charged, there is _a profit of over $ , _. there is one large wholesale terminal market, while six local markets cater for the retail requirements of all quarters of the city. all salesmen are carefully selected; criminals and diseased persons being rigidly excluded. though a wide variety of articles are sold in the smaller markets besides farm produce, storekeepers are not allowed to rent stalls, so the market men and farmers alone have the use of the buildings. the regulations under which they trade were drawn up by a market commission and confirmed by ministerial decrees. these regulations are regarded in europe as a model of comprehensiveness and their observance ensures close attention to hygiene. among the rules is one insisting on the placing of all waste paper in the public refuse receptacles, while another compels the use of new, clean paper only in wrapping up food products. stalls are rented from four to ten cents a day, according to the accommodation. supplies come by boat, rail and wagon, and when there is pressure on the interior market space sales are allowed from the boats and wagons at a toll of ten cents a day. otherwise only merchandise is allowed to be sold outside the market halls. not only must no fish, game, meat or poultry be sold without first being passed by the veterinary inspectors, but none of these articles of diet must be brought to market packed in straw, cloth or paper. unripe fruit must not be sold to children. every day a bulletin issued by the market commission sets out the wholesale prices, while a weekly list gives the retail prices, but in the latter case the note is added that the market commission will not be responsible for any controversy that may arise. all the stocks held by the market traders are insured by the municipality, though not to their full value. not only have these markets proved beneficial to the consumers generally, but the market men are unanimous as to their advantage, for they afford a ready and inexpensive means of doing a large business. holland amsterdam, with a population of , , has all the local markets under the control of the municipality. they are divided into five districts, each managed by a director or market master, responsible to the city council. two of the markets are covered, but the remainder are open and are situated by the side of the canals, along which the produce is brought in boats from the farms around. on the administration of the markets in an average year there is _a profit of $ , _, but there is a law against making a profit on municipal enterprises, so the surplus is spent on local improvements. rotterdam, another great dutch seaport, operates its markets under similar conditions and makes _a profit of $ , _, of which $ , comes from the cattle and meat markets. belgium brussels, possessing a population of half a million, reaps considerable advantage from its picturesque municipal markets, four of which are covered, while several are in the open air. the renting of space to standholders at the central market is according to the highest bidder, provided the price is not below $ . per month for meat, $ . for poultry and game, $ . for fruit, vegetables, butter and cheese. both producers and dealers sell at these markets, all their supplies being subjected to drastic inspection regulations. all meats are tested by the municipal veterinary surgeon and his staff, while a communal chemist regulates the milk, butter and general dairy produce. the cleansing of the markets is done by the department of public cleanliness. some of the public markets are managed by a contractor, who receives $ . a year for setting up the stalls and keeping them in good order. he deposits a security on undertaking his contract and in default of a satisfactory performance of his work the commune does it and charges him with it. comments it has been testified that new york's annual food supply costs, at the railroad and steamer terminals, $ , , . but the consumers pay $ , , for it. the balance of $ , , does not necessarily indicate that any particular section of middle-men have been exacting excessive profits. it merely demonstrates that too many people handle the produce between the farm and the fireside. the provision of an adequate terminal market system for new york would apply the remedy. new york stands alone, for a city of its importance, in having to face an annual deficit on its markets. the results elsewhere prove that the deficit could be turned into a profit by the creation of a terminal market system, equipped and administered on twentieth century lines. america is exporting less foodstuffs than formerly. the annual value has fallen $ , , in eleven years. the growth of the manufacturing population and the relative decrease of the agricultural population, together with the gradual impoverishment of much of our farm land, will soon make conditions worse unless we organize our food distribution. the first step for new york is the establishment of a terminal market system. it is estimated that new york's population will continue to grow at the rate of fully , a year, so this problem admits of no further procrastination. in natural resources america is the richest country in the world. other nations have to import vast quantities of produce because of the restricted area of their territory, the comparative unfruitfulness of their soil, or their adverse climatic conditions. we have a wide land of boundless fertility, never wholly in the grip of winter's cold. yet we no more escape the high cost of living than these less favored peoples overseas. they have partially compensated for their disadvantages by organizing their markets, while we have neglected that important branch of civic enterprise. everywhere in europe, the provision of adequate terminal markets under municipal control is pointed to as a powerful aid in keeping food prices down. there is a lesson in that for new york and other american cities. there is a lesson also for growers in up-state districts, for experience shows that with adequate markets, supplying produce at lower rates, there comes a demand for more farm and garden stuff and a greater variety of it. this directly aids in developing rural prosperity and enhances the value of agricultural land. i believe a marked improvement will be shown if a bureau is maintained to inform farmers as to the demands of the market and the best method of packing, preparing and despatching their produce so as to reach the market in prime condition. not only will that aid the market, but it will have a powerful influence in arresting "the drift from the land" to the cities. the municipality should select central positions for its markets, with rail and river access. it should have effective control not only over the markets but the adjacent streets, wharves, and railroad sidings, so as to obviate evasion of the market tolls. the rentals should not be high, and no sub-letting should be allowed under any circumstances. under such conditions, with wise administration, new york's terminal market system could be made a model that would be studied by other cities in an age when economic questions absorb the attention of all our public-spirited men and women. in the interests of the people's health and happiness, no less than in consideration of the municipal finances, all should rally to the support of those who are seeking to secure the consummation of this urgent reform at the earliest possible moment consistent with a full consideration of all its aspects. the willett press, new york * * * * * transcriber's notes moved illustrations to paragraph breaks. removed period from "per cent" for consistency. removed hyphen from "to-day" for consistency. transcriber notes: . several misprints corrected. a complete list of corrections may be found at the end of the text. . symbol of a hand pointing right has been replaced with a right arrow: ==>. how to succeed; or, stepping-stones to fame and fortune. [illustration] ...by... orison swett marden, a.m., m.d. author of "pushing to the front; or, success under difficulties," and "architects of fate; or, steps to success and power." * * * * * published by the christian herald, louis klopsch, proprietor, bible house, new york. copyright, , by louis klopsch. contents chapter. page. i. first, be a man, ii. seize your opportunity, iii. how did he begin? iv. out of place, v. what shall i do? vi. will you pay the price? vii. foundation stones, viii. the conquest of obstacles, ix. dead in earnest, x. to be great, concentrate, xi. at once, xii. thoroughness, xiii. trifles, xiv. courage, xv. will power, xvi. guard your weak point, xvii. stick, xviii. save, xix. live upward, xx. sand, xxi. above rubies, xxii. moral sunshine, xxiii. hold up your head, xxiv. books and success, xxv. riches without wings, how to succeed. chapter i. first, be a man. the great need at this hour is manly men. we want no goody-goody piety; we have too much of it. we want men who will do right, though the heavens fall, who believe in god, and who will confess him. --rev. w. j. dawson. all the world cries, where is the man who will save us? we want a man! don't look so far for this man. you have him at hand. this man--it is you, it is i; it is each one of us!... how to constitute one's self a man? nothing harder, if one knows not how to will it; nothing easier, if one wills it. --alexander dumas. "i thank god i am a baptist," said a little, short doctor of divinity, as he mounted a step at a convention. "louder! louder!" shouted a man in the audience; "we can't hear." "get up higher," said another. "i can't," replied the doctor, "to be a baptist is as high as one can get." but there is something higher than being a baptist, and that is being a _man_. rousseau says: "according to the order of nature, men being equal, their common vocation is the profession of humanity; and whoever is well educated to discharge the duty of a man cannot be badly prepared to fill any of those offices that have a relation to him. it matters little to me whether my pupil be designed for the army, the pulpit, or the bar. to live is the profession i would teach him. when i have done with him, it is true he will be neither a soldier, a lawyer, nor a divine. _let him first be a man_; fortune may remove him from one rank to another, as she pleases, he will be always found in his place." "first of all," replied the boy james a. garfield, when asked what he meant to be, "i must make myself a man; if i do not succeed in that, i can succeed in nothing." "hear me, o men," cried diogenes, in the market place at athens; and, when a crowd collected around him, he said scornfully, "i called for men, not pigmies." one great need of the world to-day is for men and women who are good animals. to endure the strain of our concentrated civilization, the coming man and woman must have an excess of animal spirits. they must have a robustness of health. mere absence of disease is not health. it is the overflowing fountain, not the one half full, that gives life and beauty to the valley below. only he is healthy who exults in mere animal existence; whose very life is a luxury; who feels a bounding pulse throughout his body; who feels life in every limb, as dogs do when scouring over the field, or as boys do when gliding over fields of ice. dispense with the doctor by being temperate; the lawyer by keeping out of debt; the demagogue, by voting for honest men; and poverty, by being industrious. "nephew," said sir godfrey kneller, the artist, to a guinea slave trader, who entered the room where his uncle was talking with alexander pope, "you have the honor of seeing the two greatest men in the world." "i don't know how great men you may be," said the guinea man, as he looked contemptuously upon their diminutive physical proportions, "but i don't like your looks; i have often bought a much better man than either of you, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas." a man is never so happy as when he suffices to himself, and can walk without crutches or a guide. said jean paul richter: "i have made as much out of myself as could be made of the stuff, and no man should require more." "the body of an athlete and the soul of a sage," wrote voltaire to helvetius; "these are what we require to be happy." although millions are out of employment in the united states, how difficult it is to find a thorough, reliable, self-dependent, industrious man or woman, young or old, for any position, whether as a domestic servant, an office boy, a teacher, a brakeman, a conductor, an engineer, a clerk, a bookkeeper, or whatever we may want. it is almost impossible to find a really _competent_ person in any department, and oftentimes we have to make many trials before we can get a position fairly well filled. it is a superficial age; very few prepare for their work. of thousands of young women trying to get a living at typewriting, many are so ignorant, so deficient in the common rudiments even, that they spell badly, use bad grammar, and know scarcely anything of punctuation. in fact, they murder the english language. they can copy, "parrot like," and that is about all. the same superficiality is found in nearly all kinds of business. it is next to impossible to get a first-class mechanic; he has not learned his trade; he has picked it up, and botches everything he touches, spoiling good material and wasting valuable time. in the professions, it is true, we find greater skill and faithfulness, but usually they have been developed at the expense of mental and moral breadth. the merely professional man is narrow; worse than that, he is in a sense an artificial man, a creature of technicalities and specialties, removed alike from the broad truth of nature and from the healthy influence of human converse. in society, the most accomplished man of mere professional skill is often a nullity; he has sunk his personality in his dexterity. "the aim of every man," said humboldt, "should be to secure the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole." some men impress us as immense possibilities. they seem to have a sweep of intellect that is grand; a penetrative power that is phenomenal; they seem to know everything, to have read everything, to have seen everything. nothing seems to escape the keenness of their vision. but somehow they are forever disappointing our expectations. they raise great hopes only to dash them. they are men of great promise, but they never pay. there is some indefinable want in their make-up. what the world needs is a clergyman who is broader than his pulpit, who does not look upon humanity with a white neckcloth ideal, and who would give the lie to the saying that the human race is divided into three classes: men, women and ministers. wanted, a clergyman who does not look upon his congregation from the standpoint of old theological books, and dusty, cobweb creeds, but who sees the merchant as in his store, the clerk as making sales, the lawyer pleading before the jury, the physician standing over the sick bed; in other words, who looks upon the great throbbing, stirring, pulsing, competing, scheming, ambitious, impulsive, tempted, mass of humanity as one of their number, who can live with them, see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and experience their sensations. the world has a standing advertisement over the door of every profession, every occupation, every calling: "wanted--a man." wanted, a lawyer, who has not become the victim of his specialty, a mere walking bundle of precedents. wanted, a shopkeeper who does not discuss markets wherever he goes. a man should be so much larger than his calling, so broad and symmetrical in his culture, that he would not talk shop in society, that no one would suspect how he gets his living. nothing is more apparent in this age of specialties than the dwarfing, crippling, mutilating influence of occupations or professions. specialties facilitate commerce, and promote efficiency in the professions, but are often narrowing to individuals. the spirit of the age tends to doom the lawyer to a narrow life of practice, the business man to a mere money-making career. think of a man, the grandest of god's creations, spending his life-time standing beside a machine for making screws. there is nothing to call out his individuality, his ingenuity, his powers of balancing, judging, deciding. he stands there year after year, until he seems but a piece of mechanism. his powers, from lack of use, dwindle to mediocrity, to inferiority, until finally he becomes a mere part of the machine he tends. wanted, a man who will not lose his individuality in a crowd, a man who has the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say "no," though all the world say "yes." wanted, a man who, though he is dominated by a mighty purpose, will not permit one great faculty to dwarf, cripple, warp, or mutilate his manhood; who will not allow the over-development of one faculty to stunt or paralyze his other faculties. wanted, a man who is larger than his calling, who considers it a low estimate of his occupation to value it merely as a means of getting a living. wanted, a man who sees self-development, education and culture, discipline and drill, character and manhood, in his occupation. as nature tries every way to induce us to obey her laws by rewarding their observance with health, pleasure and happiness, and punishes their violation by pain and disease, so she resorts to every means to induce us to expand and develop the great possibilities she has implanted within us. she nerves us to the struggle, beneath which all great blessings are buried, and beguiles the tedious marches by holding up before us glittering prizes, which we may almost touch, but never quite possess. she covers up her ends of discipline by trial, of character building through suffering by throwing a splendor and glamour over the future; lest the hard, dry facts of the present dishearten us, and she fail in her great purpose. how else could nature call the youth away from all the charms that hang around young life, but by presenting to his imagination pictures of future bliss and greatness which will haunt his dreams until he resolves to make them real. as a mother teaches her babe to walk, by holding up a toy at a distance, not that the child may reach the toy, but that it may develop its muscles and strength, compared with which the toys are mere baubles; so nature goes before us through life, tempting us with higher and higher toys, but ever with one object in view--the development of the man. in every great painting of the masters there is one idea or figure which stands out boldly beyond everything else. every other idea or figure on the canvas is subordinate to this idea or figure, and finds its real significance not in itself, but, pointing to the central idea, finds its true expression there. so in the vast universe of god, every object of creation is but a guide-board with an index finger pointing to the central figure of the created universe--man. nature writes this thought upon every leaf; she thunders it in every creation; it exhales from every flower; it twinkles in every star. open thy bosom, set thy wishes wide, and let in manhood--let in happiness; admit the boundless theatre of thought from nothing up to god ... which makes a man! --young. chapter ii. seize your opportunity. "the blowing winds are but our servants when we hoist a sail." you must come to know that each admirable genius is but a successful diver in that sea whose floor of pearls is all your own. --emerson. who waits until the wind shall silent keep, who never finds the ready hour to sow, who watcheth clouds, will have no time to reap. --helen hunt jackson. the secret of success in life is for a man _to be ready for his opportunity_ when it comes. --disraeli. do the best you can where you are; and, when that is accomplished, god will open a door for you, and a voice will call, "come up hither into a higher sphere." --beecher. our grand business is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. --carlyle. "when i was a boy," said general grant, "my mother one morning found herself without butter for breakfast, and sent me to borrow some from a neighbor. going into the house without knocking, i overheard a letter read from the son of a neighbor, who was then at west point, stating that he had failed in examination and was coming home. i got the butter, took it home, and, without waiting for breakfast ran to the office of the congressman for our district. 'mr. hamer,' i said, 'will you appoint me to west point?' 'no, ---- is there, and has three years to serve.' 'but suppose he should fail, will you send me?' mr. hamer laughed. 'if he don't go through, no use for you to try, uly.' 'promise me you will give me the chance, mr. hamer, anyhow.' mr. hamer promised. the next day the defeated lad came home, and the congressman, laughing at my sharpness, gave me the appointment. now," said grant, "it was my mother's being without butter that made me general and president." but he was mistaken. it was his own shrewdness to see the chance, and the promptness to seize it, that urged him upward. "there is nobody," says a roman cardinal, "whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she finds he is not ready to receive her, she goes in at the door, and out through the window." opportunity is coy. the careless, the slow, the unobservant, the lazy fail to see it, or clutch at it when it has gone. the sharp fellows detect it instantly, and catch it when on the wing. the utmost which can be said about the matter is, that circumstances will, and do combine to help men at some periods of their lives, and combine to thwart them at others. thus much we freely admit; but there is no fatality in these combinations, neither any such thing as "luck" or "chance," as commonly understood. they come and go like all other opportunities and occasions in life, and if they are seized upon and made the most of, the man whom they benefit is fortunate; but if they are neglected and allowed to pass by unimproved, he is unfortunate. "charley," says moses h. grinnell to a clerk born in new york city, "take my overcoat tip to my house on fifth avenue." mr. charley takes the coat, mutters something about "i'm not an errand boy. i came here to learn business," and moves reluctantly. mr. grinnell sees it, and at the same time one of his new england clerks says, "i'll take it up." "that is right, do so," says mr. g., and to himself he says, "that boy is smart, he will work," and he gives him plenty to do. he gets promoted, gets the confidence of business men as well as of his employers, and is soon known as a successful man. the youth who starts out in life determined to make the most of his eyes and let nothing escape him which he can possibly use for his own advancement, who keeps his ears open for every sound that can help him on his way, who keeps his hands open that he may clutch every opportunity, who is ever on the alert for everything which can help him to get on in the world, who seizes every experience in life and grinds it up into paint for his great life's picture, who keeps his heart open that he may catch every noble impulse and everything which may inspire him, will be sure to live a successful life; there are no ifs or ands about it. if he has his health, nothing can keep him from success. _zion's herald_ says that isaac rich, who gave one million and three quarters to found boston university of the methodist episcopal church, began business thus: at eighteen he went from cape cod to boston with three or four dollars in his possession, and looked about for something to do, rising early, walking far, observing closely, reflecting much. soon he had an idea: he bought three bushels of oysters, hired a wheelbarrow, found a piece of board, bought six small plates, six iron forks, a three-cent pepper-box, and one or two other things. he was at the oyster-boat buying his oysters at three o'clock in the morning, wheeled them three miles, set up his board near a market, and began business. he sold out his oysters as fast as he could get them, at a good profit. in that same market he continued to deal in oysters and fish for forty years, became king of the business, and ended by founding a college. his success was won by industry and honesty. "give me a chance," says haliburton's stupid, "and i will show you." but most likely he has had his chance already and neglected it. "well, boys," said mr. a., a new york merchant, to his four clerks one winter morning in , "this is good news. peace has been declared. now _we_ must be up and doing. we shall have our hands full, but we can do as much as anybody." he was owner and part owner of several ships lying dismantled during the war, three miles up the river, which was covered with ice an inch thick. he knew that it would be a month before the ice yielded for the season, and that thus the merchants in other towns where the harbors were open, would have time to be in the foreign markets before him. his decision therefore was instantly taken. "reuben," he continued, addressing one of his clerks, "go and collect as many laborers as possible to go up the river. charles, do you find mr.----, the rigger, and mr.----, the sailmaker, and tell them i want them immediately. john, engage half-a-dozen truckmen for to-day and to-morrow. stephen, do you hunt up as many gravers and caulkers as you can, and hire them to work for me." and mr. a. himself sallied forth to provide the necessary implements for icebreaking. before twelve o'clock that day, upward of an hundred men were three miles up the river, clearing the ships and cutting away ice, which they sawed out in large squares, and then thrust under the main mass to open up the channel. the roofing over the ships was torn off, and the clatter of the caulkers' mallets was like to the rattling of a hail-storm, loads of rigging were passed up on the ice, riggers went to and fro with belt and knife, sailmakers busily plied their needles, and the whole presented an unusual scene of stir and activity and well-directed labor. before night the ships were afloat, and moved some distance down the channel; and by the time they had reached the wharf, namely, in some eight or ten days, their rigging and spars were aloft, their upper timbers caulked, and everything ready for them to go to sea. thus mr. a. competed on equal terms with the merchants of open seaports. large and quick gains rewarded his enterprise, and then his neighbors spoke depreciatingly of his "good luck." but, as the writer from whom we get the story says, mr. a. was equal to his opportunity, and this was the secret of his good fortune. a baltimore lady lost a valuable diamond bracelet at a ball, and supposed it was stolen from the pocket of her cloak. years afterward, she walked the streets near the peabody institute to get money to purchase food. she cut up an old, worn out, ragged cloak to make a hood of, when lo! in the lining of the cloak, she discovered the diamond bracelet. during all her poverty she was worth thirty-five hundred dollars, but did not know it. many of us who think we are poor are rich in opportunities if we could only see them, in possibilities all about us, in faculties worth more than diamond bracelets, in power to do good. in our large eastern cities it has been found that at least ninety-four out of every hundred found their first fortune at home, or near at hand, and in meeting common everyday wants. it is a sorry day for a young man who cannot see any opportunities where he is, but thinks he can do better somewhere else. several brazilian shepherds organized a party to go to california to dig gold, and took along a handful of clear pebbles to play checkers with on the voyage. they discovered after arriving at sacramento, after they had thrown most of the pebbles away, that they were all diamonds. they returned to brazil only to find that the mines had been taken up by others and sold to the government. the richest gold and silver mine in nevada was sold for forty-two dollars by the owner, to get money to pay his passage to other mines where he thought he could get rich. professor agassiz told the harvard students of a farmer who owned a farm of hundreds of acres of unprofitable woods and rocks, and concluded to sell out and try some more remunerative business. he studied coal measures and coal oil deposits, and experimented for a long time. he sold his farm for two hundred dollars and went into the oil business two hundred miles away. only a short time afterward the man who bought the farm discovered a great flood of coal oil, which the farmer had ignorantly tried to drain off. a man was once sitting in an uncomfortable chair in boston talking with a friend as to what he could do to help mankind. "i should think it would be a good thing," said the friend, "to begin by getting up an easier and cheaper chair." "i will do it," he exclaimed, leaping up and examining the chair. he found a great deal of rattan thrown away by the east india merchant ships, whose cargoes were wrapped in it. he began the manufacture of rattan chairs and other furniture, and has astonished the world by what he has done with what was before thrown away. while this man was dreaming about some far off success, he at that very time had fortune awaiting only his ingenuity and industry. if you want to get rich, study yourself and your own wants. you will find millions of others have the same wants, the same demands. the safest business is always connected with men's prime necessities. they must have clothing, dwellings; they must eat. they want comforts, facilities of all kinds, for use and pleasure, luxury, education, culture. any man who can supply a great want of humanity, improve any methods which men use, supply any demand or contribute in any way to their well-being, can make a fortune. but it is detrimental to the highest success to undertake anything merely because it is profitable. if the vocation does not supply a human want, if it is not healthful, if it is degrading, if it is narrowing, don't touch it. a selfish vocation never pays. if it belittles the manhood, blights the affections, dwarfs the mental life, chills the charities and shrivels the soul, don't touch it. choose that occupation, if possible, which will be the most helpful to the largest number. it is estimated that five out of every seven of the millionaire manufacturers began by making with their own hands the articles on which they made their fortune. one of the greatest hindrances to advancement and promotion in life is the lack of observation and the disinclination to take pains. a keen, cultivated observation will see a fortune where others see only poverty. an observing man, the eyelets of whose shoes pulled out, but who could ill afford to get another pair, said to himself, "i will make a metallic lacing hook, which can be riveted into the leather." he succeeded in doing so and now he is a very rich man. an observing barber in newark, n. j., thought he could make an improvement on shears for cutting hair, and invented "clippers" and became very rich. a maine man was called from the hayfield to wash out the clothes for his invalid wife. he had never realized what it was to wash before. he invented the washing-machine and made a fortune. a man who was suffering terribly with toothache, said to himself, "there must be some way of filling teeth to prevent them aching;" he invented gold filling for teeth. the great things of the world have not been done by men of large means. want has been the great schoolmaster of the race: necessity has been the mother of all great inventions. ericsson began the construction of a screw-propeller in a bath-room. john harrison, the great inventor of the marine chronometer, began his career in the loft of an old barn. parts of the first steamboat ever run in america were set up in the vestry of an old church in philadelphia by fitch. mccormick began to make his famous reaper in an old grist-mill. the first model dry-dock was made in an attic. clark, the founder of clark university of worcester, mass., began his great fortune by making toy wagons in a horse-shed. opportunities? they crowd around us. forces of nature plead to be used in the service of man, as lightning for ages tried to attract his attention to electricity, which would do his drudgery and leave him to develop the god-given powers within him. there is power lying latent everywhere, waiting for the observant eye to discover it. first find out what the people need and then supply that want. an invention to make the smoke go the wrong way in a chimney might be a very ingenious thing, but it would be of no use to humanity. the patent office at washington is full of wonderful devices, ingenious mechanism; not one in hundreds is of earthly use to the inventor or to the world, and yet how many families have been impoverished and have struggled for years mid want and woe, while the father has been working on useless inventions. these men did not study the wants of humanity. a. t. stewart, as a boy, lost eighty-seven cents when his capital was one dollar and a half, in buying buttons and thread which people would not purchase. after that he made it a rule never to buy anything which people did not want. the first thing a youth, entering the city to make his home there, needs to do is to make himself a necessity to the person who employs him, according to the boston _herald_. whatever he may have been at home, it counts for nothing until he has done something that makes known the quality of the stuff that is in him. if he shirks work, however humble it may be, the work will soon be inclined to shirk him. but the youth who comes into a city to make his way in the world, and is not afraid of doing his best whether he is paid for it or not, is not long in finding remunerative employment. the people who seem so indifferent to employing young people from the country are eagerly watching for the newcomers, but they look for qualities of character and service in actual work before they manifest confidence or give recognition. it is the youth who is deserving that wins his way to the front, and when once he has been tested his promotion is only a question of time. it is the same with young women. there are seemingly no places for them where they can earn a decent living, but the moment they fill their places worthily there is room enough for them, and progress is rapid. what the city people desire most is to find those who have ability to take important places, and the question of gaining a position in the city resolves itself at once into the question of what the young persons have brought with them from home. it is the staying qualities that have been in-wrought from childhood which are now in requisition, and the success of the boy or girl is determined by the amount of energetic character that has been developed in the early years at home. take up the experience of every man or woman who has made a mark in the city for the last hundred years, and it has been the sterling qualities of the home training that have constituted the success of later years. don't think you have no chance in life because you have no capital to begin with. most of the rich men of to-day began poor. the chances are you would be ruined if you had capital. you can only use to advantage what has become a part of yourself by your earning it. it is estimated that not one rich man's son in ten thousand dies rich. god has given every man a capital to start with; we are born rich. he is rich who has good health, a sound body, good muscles; he is rich who has a good head, a good disposition, a good heart; he is rich who has two good hands, with five chances on each. equipped? every man is equipped as only god could equip him. what a fortune he possesses in the marvelous mechanism of his body and mind. it is individual effort that has accomplished everything worth accomplishing in this world. money to start with is only a crutch, which, if any misfortune knocks it from under you, would only make your fall all the more certain. chapter iii. how did he begin? there can be no doubt that the captains of industry to-day, using that term in its broadest sense, are men who began life as poor boys. --seth low. poverty is very terrible, and sometimes kills the very soul within us, but it is the north wind that lashes men into vikings; it is the soft, luscious south wind which lulls them to lotus dreams. --ouida. 'tis a common proof, that lowliness is young ambition's ladder --shakespeare. "fifty years ago," said hezekiah conant, the millionaire manufacturer and philanthropist of pawtucket, r. i., "i persuaded my father to let me leave my home in dudley, mass., and strike out for myself. so one morning in may, , the old farm horse and wagon was hitched up, and, dressed in our sunday clothes, father and i started for worcester. our object was to get me the situation offered by an advertisement in the worcester county _gazette_ as follows: boy wanted. wanted immediately.--at the _gazette_ office, a well disposed boy, able to do heavy rolling. worcester, may . "the financial inducements were thirty dollars the first year, thirty-five the next, and forty dollars the third year and board in the employer's family. these conditions were accepted, and i began work the next day. the _gazette_ was an ordinary four-page sheet. i soon learned what 'heavy rolling' meant for the paper was printed on a 'washington' hand-press, the edition of about copies requiring two laborious intervals of about ten hours each, every week. the printing of the outside was generally done friday and kept me very busy all day. the inside went to press about three or four o'clock tuesday afternoon, and it was after three o'clock on wednesday morning before i could go to bed, tired and lame from the heavy rolling. in addition, i also had the laborious task of carrying a quantity of water from the pump behind the block around to the entrance in front, and then up two flights of stairs, usually a daily job. i was at first everybody's servant. i was abused, called all sorts of nicknames, had to sweep out the office, build fires in winter, run errands, post bills, carry papers, wait on the editor, in fact i led the life of a genuine printer's devil; but when i showed them at length that i had learned to set type and run the press, i got promoted, and another boy was hired to succeed to my task, with all its decorations. that was my first success, and from that day to this i have never asked anybody to get me a job or situation, and never used a letter of recommendation; but when an important job was in prospect the proposed employers were given all facilities to learn of my abilities and character. if some young men are easily discouraged, i hope they may gain encouragement and strength from my story. it is a long, rough road at first, but, like the ship on the ocean, you must lay your course for the place where you hope to land, and take advantage of all favoring circumstances." "don't go about the town any longer in that outlandish rig. let me give you an order on the store. dress up a little, horace." horace greeley looked down on his clothes as if he had never before noticed how seedy they were, and replied: "you see, mr. sterrett, my father is on a new place, and i want to help him all i can." he had spent but six dollars for personal expenses in seven months, and was to receive one hundred and thirty-five from judge j. m. sterrett of the erie _gazette_ for substitute work. he retained but fifteen dollars and gave the rest to his father, with whom he had moved from vermont to western pennsylvania, and for whom he had camped out many a night to guard the sheep from wolves. he was nearly twenty-one; and, although tall and gawky, with tow-colored hair, a pale face and whining voice, he resolved to seek his fortune in new york city. slinging his bundle of clothes on a stick over his shoulder, he walked sixty miles through the woods to buffalo, rode on a canal boat to albany, descended the hudson in a barge, and reached new york, just as the sun was rising, august , . for days horace wandered up and down the streets, going into scores of buildings and asking if they wanted "a hand;" but "no" was the invariable reply. his quaint appearance led many to think he was an escaped apprentice. one sunday at his boarding-place he heard that printers were wanted at "west's printing-office." he was at the door at five o'clock monday morning, and asked the foreman for a job at seven. the latter had no idea that the country greenhorn could set type for the polyglot testament on which help was needed, but said: "fix up a case for him and we'll see if he _can_ do anything." when the proprietor came in, he objected to the newcomer and told the foreman to let him go when his first day's work was done. that night horace showed a proof of the largest and most correct day's work that had then been done. in ten years horace was a partner in a small printing-office. he founded the _new yorker_, the best weekly paper in the united states, but it was not profitable. when harrison was nominated for president in , greeley started _the log cabin_, which reached the then fabulous circulation of ninety thousand. but on this paper at a penny a copy, he made no money. his next venture was the new york _tribune_, price one cent. to start it he borrowed a thousand dollars and printed five thousand copies of the first number. it was difficult to give them all away. he began with six hundred subscribers, and increased the list to eleven thousand in six weeks. the demand for the _tribune_ grew faster than new machinery could be obtained to print it. it was a paper whose editor always tried to be _right_. at the world's fair in new york in president pierce might have been seen watching a young man exhibiting a patent rat trap. he was attracted by the enthusiasm and diligence of the young man, but never dreamed that he would become one of the richest men in the world. it seemed like small business for jay gould to be exhibiting a rat trap, but he did it well and with enthusiasm. in fact he was bound to do it as well as it could be done. young gould supported himself by odd jobs at surveying, paying his way by erecting sundials for farmers at a dollar apiece, frequently taking his pay in board. thus he laid the foundation for the business career in which he became so rich. fred. douglass started in life with less than nothing, for he did not own his own body, and he was pledged before his birth to pay his master's debts. to reach the starting-point of the poorest white boy, he had to climb as far as the distance which the latter must ascend if he would become president of the united states. he saw his mother but two or three times, and then in the night, when she would walk twelve miles to be with him an hour, returning in time to go into the field at dawn. he had no chance to study, for he had no teacher, and the rules of the plantation forbade slaves to learn to read and write. but somehow, unnoticed by his master, he managed to learn the alphabet from scraps of paper and patent medicine almanacs, and no limits could then be placed to his career. he put to shame thousands of white boys. he fled from slavery at twenty-one, went north and worked as a stevedore in new york and new bedford. at nantucket he was given an opportunity to speak in an anti-slavery meeting, and made so favorable an impression that he was made agent of the anti-slavery society of massachusetts. while traveling from place to place to lecture, he would study with all his might. he was sent to europe to lecture, and won the friendship of several englishmen, who gave him $ , with which he purchased his freedom. he edited a paper in rochester, n. y., and afterward conducted the _new era_ in washington. for several years he was marshal of the district of columbia. he became the first colored man in the united states, the peer of any man in the country, and died honored by all in . "what has been done can be done again," said the boy with no chance who became lord beaconsfield, england's great prime minister. "i am not a slave, i am not a captive, and by energy i can overcome greater obstacles." jewish blood flowed in his veins, and everything seemed against him, but he remembered the example of joseph, who became prime minister of egypt four thousand years before, and that of daniel, who was prime minister to the greatest despot of the world five centuries before the birth of christ. he pushed his way up through the lower classes, up through the middle classes, up through the upper classes, until he stood a master, self-poised upon the topmost round of political and social power. rebuffed, scorned, ridiculed, hissed down in the house of commons, he simply said, "the time will come when you shall hear me." the time did come, and the boy with no chance but a determined will, swayed the sceptre of england for a quarter of a century. "i learned grammar when i was a private soldier on the pay of sixpence a day," said william cobbett. "the edge of my berth, or that of the guard-bed, was my seat to study in; my knapsack was my bookcase; a bit of board lying on my lap was my writing table, and the task did not demand anything like a year of my life. i had no money to purchase candles or oil; in winter it was rarely that i could get any evening light but that of the fire, and only my turn, even of that. to buy a pen or a sheet of paper i was compelled to forego some portion of my food, though in a state of half starvation. i had no moment of time that i could call my own, and i had to read and write amidst the talking, laughing, singing, whistling, and bawling of at least half a score of the most thoughtless of men, and that, too, in the hours of their freedom from all control. think not lightly of the _farthing_ i had to give, now and then, for pen, ink, or paper. that farthing was, alas! a great sum to me. i was as tall as i am now, and i had great health and great exercise. the whole of the money not expended for us at market was _twopence a week_ for each man. i remember, and well i may! that upon one occasion i had, after all absolutely necessary expenses, on a friday, made shift to have a half-penny in reserve, which i had destined for the purchase of a red herring in the morning, but when i pulled off my clothes at night, so hungry then as to be hardly able to endure life, i found that i had lost my half-penny. i buried my head under the miserable sheet and rug, and cried like a child. "if i, under such circumstances, could encounter and overcome this task," he added, "is there, can there be in the world, a youth to find any excuse for its non-performance?" "i have talked with great men," lincoln told his fellow-clerk and friend, greene, according to _mcclure's magazine_, "and i do not see how they differ from others." he made up his mind to put himself before the public, and talked of his plans to his friends. in order to keep in practice in speaking he walked seven or eight miles to debating clubs. "practicing polemics," was what he called the exercise. he seems now for the first time to have begun to study subjects. grammar was what he chose. he sought mentor graham, the schoolmaster, and asked his advice. "if you are going before the public," mr. graham told him, "you ought to do it." but where could he get a grammar? there was but one in the neighborhood, mr. graham said, and that was six miles away. without waiting for more information the young man rose from the breakfast-table, walked immediately to the place, borrowed this rare copy of kirkham's grammar, and before night was deep in its mysteries. from that time on for weeks he gave every moment of his leisure to mastering the contents of the book. frequently he asked his friend greene to "hold the book" while he recited, and when puzzled by a point he would consult mr. graham. lincoln's eagerness to learn was such that the whole neighborhood became interested. the greenes lent him books, the schoolmaster kept him in mind and helped him as he could, and even the village cooper let him come into his shop and keep up a fire of shavings sufficiently bright to read by at night. it was not long before the grammar was mastered. "well," lincoln said to his fellow-clerk, greene, "if that's what they call science, i think i'll go at another." he had made another discovery--that he could conquer subjects. the poor and friendless lad, george peabody, weary, footsore and hungry, called at a tavern in concord, n. h., and asked to be allowed to saw wood for lodging and breakfast. half a century later he called there again, but then george peabody was one of the greatest millionaire bankers of the world. bishop fowler says: "it is one of the greatest encouragements of our age, that ordinary men with extraordinary industry reach the highest stations." greeley's father, because the boy tried to yoke the off ox on the near side, said: "ah! that boy will never get along in the world. he'll never know enough to come in when it rains." he was too poor to wear stockings. but horace persevered, and became one of the greatest editors of his century. handel's father hated music, and would not allow a musical instrument in the house; but the boy with an aim secured a little spinet, hid it in the attic, where he practiced every minute he could steal without detection, until he surprised the great players and composers of europe by his wonderful knowledge of music. he was very practical in his work, and studied the taste and sensitiveness of audiences until he knew exactly what they wanted; then he would compose something to supply the demand. he analyzed the effect of sounds and combinations of sounds upon the senses, and wrote directly to human needs. his greatest work, "the messiah," was composed in dublin for the benefit of poor debtors who were imprisoned there. the influence of this masterpiece was tremendous. it was said it out-preached the preacher, out-prayed prayers, reformed the wayward, softened stony hearts, as it told the wonderful story of redemption, in sound. a. t. stewart began life as a teacher in new york at $ a year. he soon resigned and began that career as a merchant in which he achieved a success almost without precedent. honesty, one price, cash on delivery, and business on business principles were his invariable rules. absolute regularity and system reigned in every department. in fifty years he made a fortune of from thirty to forty million dollars. he was nominated as secretary of the treasury in , but it was found that the law forbids a merchant to occupy that position. he offered to resign, or to give the entire profits of his business to the poor of new york as long as he should remain in office. president grant declined to accept such an offer. poor kepler struggled with constant anxieties, and told fortunes by astrology for a livelihood, saying that astrology as the daughter of astronomy ought to keep her mother; but fancy a man of science wasting precious time over horoscopes. "i supplicate you," he writes to moestlin, "if there is a situation vacant at tübingen, do what you can to obtain it for me, and let me know the prices of bread and wine and other necessaries of life, for my wife is not accustomed to live on beans." he had to accept all sorts of jobs; he made almanacs, and served anyone who would pay him. who could have predicted that the modest, gentle boy, raphael, without either riches or noted family, would have worked his way to such renown, or that one of his pictures, but sixty-six and three-quarter inches square (the mother of jesus), would be sold to the empress of russia, for $ , ? his ansedei madonna, was bought by the national gallery for $ , . think of michael angelo working for six florins a month, and eighteen years on st. peter's for nothing! dr. johnson was so afflicted with king's-evil that he lost the use of one eye. the youth could not even engage in the pastimes of his mates, as he could not see the gutter without bending his head down near the street. he read and studied terribly. finally a friend offered to send him to oxford, but he failed to keep his promise, and the boy had to leave. he returned home, and soon afterward his father died insolvent. he conquered adverse fortune and bodily infirmities with the fortitude of a true hero. ichabod washburn, a poor boy born near plymouth rock, was apprenticed to a blacksmith in worcester, mass., and was so bashful that he scarcely dared to eat in the presence of others; but he determined that he would make the best wire in the world, and would contrive ways and means to manufacture it in enormous quantities. at that time there was no good wire made in the united states. one house in england had the monopoly of making steel wire for pianos for more than a century. young washburn, however, had grit, and was bound to succeed. his wire became the standard everywhere. at one time he made , yards of iron wire daily, consuming twelve tons of metal, and requiring the services of seven hundred men. he amassed an immense fortune, of which he gave away a large part during his life, and bequeathed the balance to charitable institutions. john jacob astor left home at seventeen to acquire a fortune. his capital consisted of two dollars, and three resolutions,--to be honest, to be industrious and not to gamble. two years later he reached new york, and began work in a fur store at two dollars a week and his board. soon learning the details of the business, he began operations on his own account. by giving personal attention to every purchase and sale, roaming the woods to trade with the indians, or crossing the atlantic to sell his furs at a great profit in england, he soon became the leading fur dealer in the united states. his idea of what constitutes a fortune expanded faster than his acquisitions. at fifty he owned millions; at sixty his millions owned him. he invested in land, becoming in time the richest owner of real estate in america. generous to his family, he seldom gave much for charity. he once subscribed fifty dollars for some benevolent purpose, when one of the committee of solicitation said, "we did hope for more, mr. astor. your son gave us a hundred dollars." "ah!" chuckled the rich furrier, "william has a rich father. mine was poor." elihu burritt wrote in a diary kept at worcester, whither he went to enjoy its library privileges, such entries as these: "monday, june , headache, pages cuvier's 'theory of the earth,' pages of french, hours' forging. tuesday, june , lines hebrew, danish, lines bohemian, lines polish, names of stars, hours' forging. wednesday, june , lines hebrew, lines syriac, hours' forging." he mastered eighteen languages and thirty-two dialects. he became eminent as the "learned blacksmith," and for his noble work in the service of humanity. edward everett said of the manner in which this boy with no chance acquired great learning: "it is enough to make one who has good opportunities for education hang his head in shame." "i was born in poverty," said vice-president henry wilson. "want sat by my cradle. i know what it is to ask a mother for bread when she has none to give. i left my home at ten years of age, and served an apprenticeship of eleven years, receiving a month's schooling each year, and, at the end of eleven years of hard work, a yoke of oxen and six sheep, which brought me eighty-four dollars. i never spent the sum of one dollar for pleasure, counting every penny from the time i was born till i was twenty-one years of age. i know what it is to travel weary miles and ask my fellow-men to give me leave to toil. * * * in the first month after i was twenty-one years of age, i went into the woods, drove a team, and cut mill-logs. i rose in the morning before daylight and worked hard till after dark, and received the magnificent sum of six dollars for the month's work! each of these dollars looked as large to me as the moon looks to-night." "many a farmer's son," says thurlow weed, "has found the best opportunities for mental improvement in his intervals of leisure while tending 'sap-bush.' such, at any rate, was my own experience. at night you had only to feed the kettles and keep up the fires, the sap having been gathered and the wood cut before dark. during the day we would always lay in a good stock of 'fat-pine' by the light of which, blazing bright before the sugar-house, in the posture the serpent was condemned to assume, as a penalty for tempting our first grandmother, i passed many a delightful night in reading. i remember in this way to have read a history of the french revolution, and to have obtained from it a better and more enduring knowledge of its events and horrors and of the actors in that great national tragedy, than i have received from all subsequent reading. i remember also how happy i was in being able to borrow the books of a mr. keyes after a two-mile tramp through the snow, shoeless, my feet swaddled in remnants of rag carpet." "that fellow will beat us all some day," said a merchant, speaking of john wanamaker and his close attention to his work. what a prediction to make of a young man who started business with a little clothing in a hand cart in the streets of philadelphia. but this youth had _the indomitable spirit of a conqueror in him_, and you could not keep him down. general grant said to george w. childs, "mr. wanamaker could command an army." his great energy, method, industry, economy, and high moral principle, attracted president harrison, who appointed him postmaster-general. jacques aristide boucicault began his business life as an employé in a dry goods house in a small provincial town in france. after a few years he went to paris, where he prospered so rapidly that in he became a partner and later the sole proprietor of the bon marché, then only a small shop, which became under his direction the most unique establishment in the world. his idea was to establish a combined philanthropic and commercial house on a large scale. every one who worked for him was advanced progressively, according to his length of employment and the value of the services he rendered. he furnished free tuition, free medical attendance, and a free library for employés; a provident fund affording a small capital for males and a marriage portion for females at the expiration of ten or fifteen years of service; a free reading room for the public; and a free art gallery for artists to exhibit their paintings or sculptures. after his sudden death in , his only son carried forward his father's projects until he, too, died in , when his widow, marguerite guerin, continued and extended his business and beneficent plans until her death in . so well did this family lay the foundations of a building covering , square feet, with many accessory buildings of smaller size, and of a business employing persons with sales amounting to nearly $ , , annually, that every department is still conducted with all its former success in accordance with the instructions of the founders. they are here no longer in their bodily presence, but their spirit, their ideas, still pervade the vast establishment. everything is still sold at a small profit and at a price plainly marked, and any article which may have ceased to please the purchaser can, without the slightest difficulty, be exchanged or its value refunded. when james gordon bennett was forty years old, he collected all his property, three hundred dollars, and in a cellar with a board upon two barrels for a desk, himself his own type setter, office boy, publisher, newsboy, clerk, editor, proof-reader and printer's devil, he started the new york _herald_. in all his literary work up to this time he had tried to imitate franklin's style; and, as is the fate of all imitators, he utterly failed. he lost twenty years of his life trying to be somebody else. he first showed the material he was made of in the "salutatory," of the _herald_, viz., "our only guide shall be good, sound and practical common-sense applicable to the business and bosoms of men engaged in everyday life. we shall support no party, be the organ of no faction or coterie, and care nothing for any election or any candidate from president down to constable. we shall endeavor to record facts upon every public and proper subject stripped of verbiage and coloring, with comments when suitable, just, independent, fearless and good-tempered." joseph hunter was a carpenter, robert burns a ploughman, keats a druggist, thomas carlyle a mason, hugh miller a stone mason. rubens, the artist, was a page, swedenborg, a mining engineer. dante and descartes were soldiers. ben johnson was a brick layer and worked at building lincoln inn in london with trowel in hand and a book in his pocket. jeremy taylor was a barber. andrew johnson was a tailor. cardinal wolsey was a butcher's son. so were defoe and kirke white. michael faraday was the son of a blacksmith. he even excelled his teacher, sir humphry davy, who was an apprentice to an apothecary. virgil was the son of a porter, homer of a farmer, pope of a merchant, horace of a shopkeeper, demosthenes of a cutler, milton of a money scrivener, shakespeare of a wool stapler, and oliver cromwell of a brewer. john wanamaker's first salary was $ . per week. a. t. stewart began his business life as a school teacher. james keene drove a milk wagon in a california town. joseph pulitzer, proprietor of the new york _world_, once acted as stoker on a mississippi steamboat. when a young man, cyrus field was a clerk in a new england store. george w. childs was an errand boy for a bookseller at $ a month. andrew carnegie began work in a pittsburg telegraph office at $ a week. c. p. huntington sold butter and eggs for what he could get a pound or dozen. whitelaw reid was once a correspondent of a newspaper in cincinnati at $ per week. adam forepaugh was once a butcher in philadelphia. sarah bernhardt was a dressmaker's apprentice. adelaide neilson began life as a child's nurse. miss braddon, the novelist, was a utility actress in the provinces. charlotte cushman was the daughter of poor people. mr. w. o. stoddard, in his "men of business," tells a characteristic story of the late leland stanford. when eighteen years of age his father purchased a tract of woodland, but had not the means to clear it as he wished. he told leland that he could have all he could make from the timber if he would leave the land clear of trees. a new market had just then been created for cord wood, and leland took some money that he had saved, hired other choppers to help him, and sold over two thousand cords of wood to the mohawk and hudson river railroad at a net profit of $ . he used this sum to start him in his law studies, and thus, as mr. stoddard says, chopped his way to the bar. it is said that the career of benjamin franklin is full of inspiration for any young man. when he left school for good he was only twelve years of age. at first he did little but read. he soon found, however, that reading, alone, would not make him an educated man, and he proceeded to act upon this discovery at once. at school he had been unable to understand arithmetic. twice he had given it up as a hopeless puzzle, and finally left school almost hopelessly ignorant upon the subject. but the printer's boy soon found his ignorance of figures extremely inconvenient. when he was about fourteen he took up for the _third time_ the "_cocker's arithmetic_," _which had baffled him at school_, and _ciphered all through it with ease and pleasure_. he then mastered a work upon navigation, which included the rudiments of geometry, and thus tasted "the inexhaustible charm of mathematics." he pursued a similar course, we are told, in acquiring the art of composition, in which, at length, he excelled most of the men of his time. when he was but a boy of sixteen, he wrote so well that the pieces which he slyly sent to his brother's paper were thought to have been written by some of the most learned men in the colony. henry clay, the "mill-boy of the slashes," was one of seven children of a widow too poor to send him to any but a common country school, where he was drilled only in the "three r's." but he used every spare moment to study without a teacher, and in after years he was a king among self-made men. the most successful man is he who has triumphed over obstacles, disadvantages and discouragements. it is goodyear in his rude laboratory enduring poverty and failure until the pasty rubber is at length hardened; it is edison biding his time in baggage car and in printing office until that mysterious light and power glows and throbs at his command; it is carey on his cobbler's bench nourishing the great purpose that at length carried the message of love to benighted india;--these are the cases and examples of true success. chapter iv. out of place. the high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man, is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment and happiness. --emerson. the art of putting the right man in the right place is perhaps the first in the science of government, but the art of finding a satisfactory position for the discontented is the most difficult. --talleyrand. it is a celebrated thought of socrates, that if all the misfortunes of mankind were cast into a public stock, in order to be equally distributed among the whole species, those who now think themselves the most unhappy would prefer the share they are already possessed of, before that which would fall to them by such a division. --addison. i was born to other things. --tennyson. how many a rustic milton has passed by, stifling the speechless longings of his heart, in unremitting drudgery and care! how many a vulgar cato has compelled his energies, no longer tameless then, to mould a pin, or fabricate a nail. --shelley. "but i'm good for something," pleaded a young man whom a merchant was about to discharge for his bluntness. "you are good for nothing as a salesman," said his employer. "i am sure i can be useful," said the youth. "how? tell me how." "i don't know, sir, i don't know." "nor do i," said the merchant, laughing at the earnestness of his clerk. "only don't put me away, sir, don't put me away. try me at something besides selling. i cannot sell; i know i cannot sell." "i know that, too," said the principal; "that is what is wrong." "but i can make myself useful somehow," persisted the young man; "i know i can." he was placed in the counting-house, where his aptitude for figures soon showed itself, and in a few years he became not only chief cashier in the large store, but an eminent accountant. "out of an art," says bulwer, "a man may be so trivial you would mistake him for an imbecile--at best, a grown infant. put him into his art, and how high he soars above you! how quietly he enters into a heaven of which he has become a denizen, and unlocking the gates with his golden key, admits you to follow, an humble reverent visitor." a man out of place is like a fish out of water. its fins mean nothing, they are only a hindrance. the fish can do nothing but flounder out of its element. but as soon as the fins feel the water, they mean something. fifty-two per cent of our college graduates studied law, not because, in many cases, they have the slightest natural aptitude for it, but because it is put down as the proper road to promotion. a man never grows in personal power and moral stamina when out of his place. if he grows at all, it is a narrow, one-sided, stunted growth, not a manly growth. nature abhors the slightest perversion of natural aptitude or deviation from the sealed orders which accompany every soul into this world. a man out of place is not half a man. he feels unmanned, unsexed. he cannot respect himself, hence he cannot be respected. you can enter all kinds of horses for a race, but only those which have natural adaptation for speed will make records; the others will only make themselves ridiculous by their lumbering, unnatural exertions to win. how many truck and family-horse lawyers make themselves ridiculous by trying to speed on the law track, where courts and juries only laugh at them. the effort to redeem themselves from scorn may enable them by unnatural exertions to become fairly passable, but the same efforts along the line of their strength or adaptation would make them kings in their line. "jonathan," said mr. chace, when his son told of having nearly fitted himself for college, "thou shalt go down to the machine-shop on monday morning." it was many years before jonathan escaped from the shop to work his way up to the position of a man of great influence as a united states senator from rhode island. galileo was sent to the university at pisa at seventeen, with the strict injunction not to neglect medical subjects for the alluring study of philosophy or literature. but when he was eighteen he discovered the great principle of the pendulum by a lamp left swinging in the cathedral. john adams' father was a shoemaker; and, trying to teach his son the art, gave him some "uppers" to cut out by a pattern which had a three-cornered hole in it to hang it up by. the future statesman followed the pattern, hole and all. there is a tradition that tennyson's first poems were published at the instigation of his father's coachman. his grandfather gave the lad ten shillings for writing an elegy on his grandmother. as he handed it to him, he said; "there, that's the first money you ever earned by your poetry, and take my word for it, it will be the last." murillo's mother had marked her boy for a priest, but nature had already laid her hand upon him and marked him for her own. his mother was shocked on returning from church one day to find that the child had taken down the sacred family picture, "jesus and the lamb," and had painted his own hat on the saviour's head, and had changed the lamb into a dog. the poor boy's home was broken up, and he started out on foot and alone to seek his fortune. all he had was courage and determination to make something of himself. he not only became a famous artist, but a man of great character. "let us people who are so uncommonly clever and learned," says thackeray, "have a great tenderness and pity for the folks who are not endowed with the prodigious talents which we have. i have always had a regard for dunces,--those of my own school days were among the pleasantest of the fellows, and have turned out by no means the dullest in life; whereas, many a youth who could turn off latin hexameters by the yard, and construe greek quite glibly, is no better than a feeble prig now, with not a pennyworth more brains than were in his head before his beard grew." "in the winter of , there set in a great flood upon the town of sidmouth, the tide rose to a terrible height. in the midst of this sublime and terrible storm, dame partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house, with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the atlantic ocean. the atlantic was roused. mrs. partington's spirit was up: but i need not tell you the contest was unequal; the atlantic ocean beat mrs. partington. she was excellent at a slop or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest." how many dame partingtons there are of both sexes, and in every walk of life! the young swan is restless and uneasy until she finds the element she has never before seen. then, "with archéd neck between her white wings mantling proudly, rows her state with oary feet." what a wretched failure was that of haydon the painter. he thought he failed through the world's ingratitude or injustice, but his failure was due wholly to his being out of place. his bitter disappointments at his half successes were really pitiable because to him they were more than failures. he had not the slightest sense of color, yet went through life under the delusion that he was an artist. "if it is god's will to take any of my children by death, i hope it may be isaac," said the father of dr. isaac barrow. "why do you tell that blockhead the same thing twenty times over?" asked john wesley's father. "because," replied his mother, "if i had told him but nineteen times, all my labor would have been lost, while now he will understand and remember." a man out of place may manage to get a living, but he has lost the buoyancy, energy and enthusiasm which are as natural to a man in his place as his breath. he is industrious, but he works mechanically and without heart. it is to support himself and family, _not because he cannot help it_. dinner time does not come two hours before he realizes it; a man out of place is constantly looking at his watch and thinking of his salary. if a man is in his place he is happy, joyous, cheerful, energetic, fertile in resources. the days are all too short for him. all his faculties give their consent to his work; say "yes" to his occupation. he is a man; he respects himself and is happy because all his powers are at play in their natural sphere. there is no compromising of his faculties, no cramping of legal acumen upon the farm; no suppressing of forensic oratorical powers at the shoemaker's bench; no stifling of exuberance of physical strength, of visions of golden crops and blooded cattle amid the loved country life in the dry clergyman's study, composing sermons to put the congregation to sleep. to be out of place is demoralizing to all the powers of manhood. we can't cheat nature out of her aim; if she has set all the currents of your life toward medicine or law, you will only be a botch at anything else. will-power and application cannot make a farmer of a born painter any more than a lumbering draught horse can be changed into a race horse. when the powers are not used along the line of their strength they become demoralized, weakened, deteriorated. self-respect, enthusiasm and courage ooze out; we become half-hearted and success is impossible. scott was called the great blockhead while in edinburgh college. grant's mother called the future general and president, "useless grant," because he was so unhandy and dull. erskine had at length found his place as a lawyer; he carried everything before him at the bar. had he remained in the navy he would probably never have been heard from. when elected to parliament, his lofty spirit was chilled by the cold sarcasm and contemptuous indifference of pitt, whom he was expected by his friends to annihilate. but he was again out of his place; he was shorn of his magic power and his eloquent tongue faltered from a consciousness of being out of his place. gould failed as a storekeeper, tanner and surveyor and civil engineer, before he got into a railroad office where he "struck his gait." when extracts from james russell lowell's poem at harvard were shown his father at rome, instead of being pleased the latter said, "james promised me when i left home, that he would give up poetry and stick to books. i had hoped that he had become less flighty." the world is full of people at war with their positions. man only grows when he is developing along the lines of his own individuality, and not when he is trying to be somebody else. all attempts to imitate another man, when there is no one like you in all creation, as the pattern was broken when you were born, is not only to ruin your own pattern, but to make only an echo of the one imitated. there is no strength off the lines of our own individuality. anywhere else we are dwarfs, weaklings, echoes, and the echo even of a great man is a sorry contrast to even the smallest human being who is himself. chapter v. what shall i do? no man ever made an ill-figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them. --swift. blessed is he who has found his work,--let him ask no other blessing. --carlyle. whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line of talent. be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing. --sydney smith. he who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause. --beecher. i am glad to think i am not bound to make the world go round; but only to discover and to do, with cheerful heart, the work that god appoints. --jean ingelow. "do that which is assigned you," says emerson, "and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. there is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of phidias, or trowel of the egyptians, or the pen of moses or dante, but different from all these." "i felt that i was in the world to do something, and thought i must," said whittier, thus giving the secret of his great power. it is the man who must enter law, literature, medicine, the ministry, or any other of the overstocked professions, who will succeed. his certain call--that is, his love for it, and his fidelity to it--are the imperious factors of his career. if a man enters a profession simply because his grandfather made a great name in it, or his mother wants him to, with no love or adaptability for it, it were far better for him to be a day laborer. in the humbler work, his intelligence may make him a leader; in the other career he might do as much harm as a boulder rolled from its place upon a railroad track, a menace to the next express. lowell said: "it is the vain endeavor to make ourselves what we are not, that has strewn history with so many broken purposes, and lives left in the rough." "the age has no aversion to preaching as such," said phillips brooks, "it may not listen to your preaching." but though it may not listen to your preaching, it will wear your boots, or buy your flour, or see stars through your telescope. it has a use for every person, and it is his business to find out what that use is. the following advertisement appeared several times in a paper without bringing a letter: "wanted.--situation by a practical printer, who is competent to take charge of any department in a printing and publishing house. would accept a professorship in any of the academies. has no objection to teach ornamental painting and penmanship, geometry, trigonometry, and many other sciences. has had some experience as a lay preacher. would have no objection to form a small class of young ladies and gentlemen to instruct them in the higher branches. to a dentist or chiropodist he would be invaluable; or he would cheerfully accept a position as bass or tenor singer in a choir." at length there appeared this addition to the notice: "p.s. will accept an offer to saw and split wood at less than the usual rates." this secured a situation at once, and the advertisement was seen no more. don't wait for a higher position or a larger salary. enlarge the position you already occupy; put originality of method into it. fill it as it never was filled before. be more prompt, more energetic, more thorough, more polite than your predecessor or fellow-workmen. study your business, devise new modes of operation, be able to give your employer points. the art lies not in giving satisfaction merely, not in simply filling your place, but in doing better than was expected, in surprising your employer; and the reward will be a better place and a larger salary. "he that hath a trade," says franklin, "hath an estate; and he that hath a calling hath a place of profit and honor. a ploughman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees." _follow your bent._ you cannot long fight successfully against your aspirations. parents, friends, or misfortune may stifle and suppress the longings of the heart, by compelling you to perform unwelcome tasks; but, like a volcano, the inner fire will burst the crusts which confine it and pour forth its pent-up genius in eloquence, in song, in art, or in some favorite industry. beware of "a talent which you cannot hope to practice in perfection." nature hates all botched and half-finished work, and will pronounce her curse upon it. your talent is your _call_. your legitimate destiny speaks in your character. if you have found your place, your occupation has the consent of every faculty of your being. if possible, choose that occupation which focuses the largest amount of your experience and tastes. you will then not only have a congenial vocation, but will utilize largely your skill and business knowledge, which is your true capital. there is no doubt that every person has a special adaptation for his own peculiar part in life. a very few--the geniuses, we call them--have this marked in an unusual degree, and very early in life. a man's business does more to make him than anything else. it hardens his muscles, strengthens his body, quickens his blood, sharpens his mind, corrects his judgment, wakes up his inventive genius, puts his wits to work, starts him on the race of life, arouses his ambition, makes him feel that he is a man and must fill a man's shoes, do a man's work, bear a man's part in life, and show himself a man in that part. no man feels himself a man who is not doing a man's business. a man without employment is not a man. he does not prove by his works that he is a man. a hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle do not make a man. a good cranium full of brains is not a man. the bone and muscle and brain must know how to do a man's work, think a man's thoughts, mark out a man's path, and bear a man's weight of character and duty before they constitute a man. whatever you do in life, be greater than your calling. most people look upon an occupation or calling as a mere expedient for earning a living. what a mean, narrow view to take of what was intended for the great school of life, the great man-developer, the character-builder; that which should broaden, deepen, heighten, and round out into symmetry, harmony and beauty, all the god-given faculties within us! how we shrink from the task and evade the lessons which were intended for the unfolding of life's great possibilities into usefulness and power, as the sun unfolds into beauty and fragrance the petals of the flower. "girls, you cheapen yourselves by lack of purpose in life," says rena l. miner. "you show commendable zeal in pursuing your studies; your alertness in comprehending and ability in surmounting difficult problems have become proverbial; nine times out of ten you outrank your brothers thus far; but when the end is attained, the goal reached, whether it be the graduating certificate from a graded school, or a college diploma, for nine out of every ten it might as well be added thereto, 'dead to further activity,' or, 'sleeping until marriage shall resurrect her.' "crocheting, placquing, dressing, visiting, music, and flirtations, make up the sum total for the expense and labor expended for your existence. if forced to earn your support, you are content to stand behind a counter, or teach school term after term in the same grade, while the young men who graduated with you walk up the grades, as up a ladder, to professorship and good salary, from which they swing off into law, physics, or perhaps the legislative firmament, leaving difficulties and obstacles like nebulæ in their wake.--you girls, satisfied with mediocrity, have an eye mainly for the 'main chance'--marriage. if you marry wealthy,--which is marrying well according to the modern popular idea,--you dress more elegantly, cultivate more fashionable society, leave your thinking for your husband and your minister to do for you, and become in the economy of life but a sentient nonentity. if you are true to the grand passion, and accept with it poverty, you bake, brew, scrub, spank the children, and talk with your neighbor over the back fence for recreation, spending the years literally like the horse in a treadmill, all for the lack of a purpose,--a purpose sufficiently potent to convert the latent talent into a gem of living beauty, a creative force which makes all adjuncts secondary, like planets to their central sun. choose some one course or calling, and master it in all its details, sleep by it, swear by it, work for it, and, if marriage crowns you, it can but add new glory to your labor." dr. hall says that the world has urgent need of "girls who are mother's right hand; girls who can cuddle the little ones next best to mamma, and smooth out the tangles in the domestic skein when things get twisted; girls whom father takes comfort in for something better than beauty, and the big brothers are proud of for something that outranks the ability to dance or shine in society. next, we want girls of sense,--girls who have a standard of their own regardless of conventionalities, and are independent enough to live up to it; girls who simply won't wear a trailing dress on the street to gather up microbes and all sorts of defilement; girls who don't wear a high hat to the theatre, or lacerate their feet with high heels and endanger their health with corsets; girls who will wear what is pretty and becoming and snap their fingers at the dictates of fashion when fashion is horrid and silly. and we want good girls,--girls who are sweet, right straight out from the heart to the lips; innocent and pure and simple girls, with less knowledge of sin and duplicity and evil-doing at twenty than the pert little schoolgirl of ten has all too often. and we want careful girls and prudent girls, who think enough of the generous father who toils to maintain them in comfort, and of the gentle mother who denies herself much that they may have so many pretty things, to count the cost and draw the line between the essentials and non-essentials; girls who strive to save and not to spend; girls who are unselfish and eager to be a joy and a comfort in the home rather than an expense and a useless burden. we want girls with hearts,--girls who are full of tenderness and sympathy, with tears that flow for other people's ills, and smiles that light outward their own beautiful thoughts. we have lots of clever girls, and brilliant girls, and witty girls. give us a consignment of jolly girls, warm-hearted and impulsive girls; kind and entertaining to their own folks, and with little desire to shine in the garish world. with a few such girls scattered around, life would freshen up for all of us, as the weather does under the spell of summer showers." chapter vi. will you pay the price? the gods sell anything and to everybody at a fair price. --emerson. all desire knowledge, but no one is willing to pay the price. --juvenal. there is no royal path which leads to geometry. --euclid. there is no road to success but through a clear, strong purpose. a purpose underlies character, culture, position, attainment of whatever sort. --t. t. munger. remember you have not a sinew whose law of strength is not action; you have not a faculty of body, mind, or soul, whose law of improvement is not energy. --e. b. hall. "we have but what we make, and every good is locked by nature in a granite hand, sheer labor must unclench." "oh, if i could thus put a dream on canvas!" exclaimed an enthusiastic young artist, pointing to a most beautiful painting. "dream on canvas!" growled the master, "it is the ten thousand touches with the brush you must learn to put on canvas that make your dream." "there is but one method of attaining excellence," said sydney smith, "and that is hard labor." "if only milton's imagination could have conceived his visions," says waters, "his consummate industry alone could have carved the immortal lines which enshrine them. if only newton's mind could reach out to the secrets of nature, even his genius could only do it by the homeliest toil. the works of bacon are not midsummer-night's dreams, but, like coral islands, they have risen from the depths of truth, and formed their broad surfaces above the ocean by the minutest accretions of persevering labor. the conceptions of michael angelo would have perished like a night's phantasy, had not his industry given them permanence." salvini contributes the following to the _century_ as to his habits of study before he had established himself as a past master of tragedy: "i imposed upon myself a new method of study. while i was busying myself with the part of saul, i read and reread the bible, so as to become impregnated with the appropriate sentiments, manners and local color. when i took up othello, i pored over the history of the venetian republic and that of the moorish invasion of spain. i studied the passions of the moors, their art of war, their religious beliefs, nor did i overlook the romance of giraldi cinthio, in order the better to master that sublime character. i did not concern myself about a superficial study of the words, or of some point of scenic effect, or of greater or less accentuation of certain phrases with a view to win passing applause; a vaster horizon opened out before me--an infinite sea on which my bark could navigate in security, without fear of falling in with reefs." his method was not new, but he considered it so, and gives his opinion in quotation-marks. he speaks of characters with which, his name is not always associated by writers on the stage, but is correct, i think, in the main. many years ago a little boy entered harrow school and was put in a class beyond his years, wherein all the other boys had the advantage of previous instruction. his master used to reprove his dullness, but all his efforts could not raise him from the lowest place in the class. the boy finally procured the elementary books which the other boys had studied. he devoted the hours of play and many of the hours of sleep to mastering the elementary principles of these books. this boy was soon at the head of his class and the pride of harrow. the statue of that boy, sir william jones, stands to-day in st. paul's cathedral; for he lived to be the greatest oriental scholar of europe. "what is the secret of success in business?" asked a friend of cornelius vanderbilt. "secret! there is no secret about it," replied the commodore; "all you have to do is to attend to your business and go ahead." if you would adopt vanderbilt's method, know your business, attend to it, and keep down expenses until your fortune is safe from business perils. "work or starve," is nature's motto,--and it is written on the stars and the sod alike,--starve mentally, starve morally, starve physically. it is an inexorable law of nature that whatever is not used, dies. "nothing for nothing," is her maxim. if we are idle and shiftless by choice, we shall be nerveless and powerless by necessity. the mottoes of great men often give us glimpses of the secret of their characters and success. "work! work! work!" was the motto of sir joshua reynolds, david wilkie, and scores of other men who have left their mark upon the world. voltaire's motto was "toujours au travail" (always at work). scott's maxim was "never be doing nothing." michael angelo was a wonderful worker. he even slept in his clothes ready to spring to his work as soon as he awoke. he kept a block of marble in his bedroom that he might get up in the night and work when he could not sleep. his favorite device was an old man in a go-cart, with an hour-glass upon it, bearing this inscription: "ancora imparo" (still i'm learning). even after he was blind he would ask to be wheeled into the belvidere, to examine the statues with his hands. cobden used to say, "i'm working like a horse without a moment to spare." it was said that handel, the musician, did the work of a dozen men. nothing ever daunted him. he feared neither ridicule nor defeat. lord palmerston worked like a slave, even in his old age. being asked when he considered a man in his prime, he replied, "seventy-nine," that being his own age. humboldt was one of the world's great workers. in summer he arose at four in the morning for thirty years. he used to say work was as much of a necessity as eating or sleeping. sir walter scott was a phenomenal worker. he wrote the "waverley novels" at the rate of twelve volumes a year. he averaged a volume every two months during his whole working life. what an example is this to the young men of to-day, of the possibilities of an earnest life! edmund burke was one of the most prodigious workers that ever lived. george stephenson used to work at meal time, getting out loads of coal while the miners were at dinner in order that he might earn a few extra shillings to buy a spelling-book and an arithmetic. his associates thought he was very foolish, and asked him what good it would do to learn to read and cipher. he told them he was determined to improve his mind; so he studied whenever he could snatch a minute before the engine's fire, and in every possible situation until he had a good, practical, common-sense education. garibaldi's father decided that guiseppe should be a minister, because the boy was so sorry for a cricket which lost its leg. samuel morse's father concluded that his son would preach well because he could not keep his head above water in a dangerous attempt to catch bait in the mystic river. president dwight told young morse he would never make a painter, and hinted that he never would amount to much any way if he did not study more. although under the teaching of west and allston in london, he became a tolerable portrait painter, he did not find his sphere until returning from england on a sailing vessel, he heard professor jackson explain an electrical experiment in paris, when the thought of the telegraph flashed into his mind and he found no rest, until he flashed over the wire the first message, "what hath god wrought!" on the experimental line between baltimore and washington: this was may , . william h. vanderbilt was by far the wealthiest man in the world. chauncey m. depew estimated his fortune at two hundred millions. he left his eight children ten millions each, except cornelius and william k., who had sixty-five millions each. commodore vanderbilt, his father, amassed a fortune of eighty millions of dollars in his own lifetime, and that too at a time when it was more difficult to make money than it is now. mr. c. p. huntington is a good example of a self-made man. his father was a connecticut farmer. the farm was left to him, but he traded it off for a lot of clocks which he peddled in mining districts for gold dust and nuggets. he and mark hopkins formed a partnership and opened a hardware store in california. they united with leland stanford in the construction of a railroad, and they all got rich rapidly. mr. huntington is one of the greatest railroad operators of the country. he always acted upon the principle that he would control the stock of any road in which he was interested. he is one of the most methodical men of all the millionaires of this country. he is very plain in his manner, strictly temperate, and very abstemious in his living. he said he never knew what it was to be tired. russell sage used to keep a grocery store in troy, n. y. he finally associated himself with jay gould, who used to be a constant borrower of money of him. mr. sage probably keeps more ready money on hand than any other millionaire. he can nearly always control ten millions or more at call. he has never speculated in stocks to any extent. mr. sage's word is as good as any bond. he has no taste for ordinary diversions, except driving. philip d. armour, who has the appearance of a prosperous farmer, was born on a farm near watertown, n. j. he became fired with a desire to see the "boundless west." his mind seemed to run to hogs, and with a financial instinct he made up his mind that there was a fortune in transporting the hogs from where they were so plenty to where there were so few of them and so many to eat them. he could now purchase every hog in the world and then have money left to buy a railroad or two. mrs. hetty green is probably the richest woman in the world. her fortune has grown from the little industry of her father in new bedford, mass. she has raised the nine millions left her by her father and nine millions left her by her aunt to thirty millions. she is a woman of great ability and courage. she once took with her five millions of dollars of securities in a satchel on a street car to deposit with her banker on wall street. the probabilities are that billionaires will be as plentiful in the twentieth century as millionaires are to-day, through hard work, self-denial, rigid economy, method, accuracy, and strict temperance, for not one of the self-made millionaires are intemperate. john d. rockefeller never tastes intoxicating liquor. he seems as unvarying in his method and system as the laws of the universe. jay gould did not use wine or intoxicating liquor of any kind. mr. huntington does not even drink coffee, while william waldorf astor merely takes a sip of wine for courtesy's sake. not one of the leading millionaires uses tobacco, and not one of them is profane. very rich men are almost always honest in their dealings, so far as their word is concerned. william waldorf astor, until recently, has been considered the richest man in the world, but john d. rockefeller surpasses him now, it is said. the whole wealth of croesus was little more than the income of this modern croesus for one year. mr. rockefeller controls about eighty or ninety millions of capital stock in the standard oil trust. the standard oil company is one of the best managed corporations in the world. two centuries and a quarter ago, a little, tempest-tossed, weather-beaten bark, barely escaped from the jaws of the wild atlantic, landed upon the bleakest shore of new england. from her deck disembarked a hundred and one careworn exiles. to the casual observer no event could seem more insignificant. the contemptuous eye of the world scarcely deigned to notice it. yet the famous vessel that bore cæsar and his fortunes, carried but an ignoble freight compared with that of the mayflower. though landed by a treacherous pilot upon a barren and inhospitable coast, they sought neither richer fields nor a more congenial climate, but liberty and opportunity. a lady once asked turner the secret of his great success. "i have no secret, madam, but hard work." "this is a secret that many never learn, and they don't succeed because they fail to learn it. labor is the genius that changes the world from ugliness to beauty, and the great curse to a great blessing." see balzac, in his lonely garret, toiling, toiling, waiting, waiting, amid poverty and hunger, but neither hunger, debt, poverty nor discouragement could induce him to swerve a hair's breadth from his purpose. he could wait, even while a world scoffed. "mankind is more indebted to industry than to ingenuity," says addison; "the gods set up their favors at a price and industry is the purchaser." rome was a mighty nation while industry led her people, but when her great conquests of wealth and slaves placed her citizens above work, that moment her glory began to fade, and vice and corruption, induced by idleness, doomed the proud city to an ignominious history. even cicero, rome's great orator, said, "all artisans are engaged in a disgraceful occupation;" and aristotle said, "the best regulated states will not permit a mechanic to be a citizen, for it is impossible for one who lives the life of a mechanic, or hired servant, to practice a life of virtue. some were born to be slaves." but, fortunately there came a mightier than rome, cicero or aristotle, whose magnificent life and example forever lifted the false ban from labor and redeemed it from disgrace. he gave dignity to the most menial service, and significance to labor. christ did not say, "come unto me all ye pleasure hunters, ye indolent and ye lazy;" but "come all ye that _labor_ and are _heavy laden_." columbus was a persistent and practical, as well as an intellectual hero. he went from one state to another, urging kings and emperors to undertake the first visiting of a world which his instructed spirit already discerned in the far-off seas. he first tried his own countrymen at genoa, but found none ready to help him. he then went to portugal, and submitted his project to john ii., who laid it before his council. it was scouted as extravagant and chimerical. nevertheless, the king endeavored to steal columbus's idea. a fleet was sent forth in the direction indicated by the navigator, but, being frustrated by storms and winds, it returned to lisbon after four days' voyaging. columbus returned to genoa, and again renewed his propositions to the republic, but without success. nothing discouraged him. the finding of the new world was the irrevocable object of his life. he went to spain, and landed at the town of palos, in andalusia. he went by chance to a convent of franciscans, knocked at the door and asked for a little bread and water. the prior gratefully received the stranger, entertained him, and learned from him the story of his life. he encouraged him in his hopes, and furnished him with an admission to the court of spain, then at cordova. king ferdinand received him graciously, but before coming to a decision he desired to lay the project before a council of his wisest men at salamanca. columbus had to reply, not only to the scientific arguments laid before him, but to citations from the bible. the spanish clergy declared that the theory of the antipodes was hostile to the faith. the earth, they said, was an immense flat disk; and if there was a new earth beyond the ocean, then all men could not be descended from adam. _columbus was considered a fool._ still bent on his idea, he wrote to the king of england, then to the king of france, without effect. at last, in , columbus was introduced by louis de saint angel to queen isabella of spain. the friends who accompanied him pleaded his cause with so much force and conviction that he at length persuaded the queen to aid him. lord ellenborough was a great worker. he had a very hard time in getting a start at the bar, but was determined never to relax his industry until success came to him. when he was worked down to absolute exhaustion, he had this card which he kept constantly before his eyes, lest he might be tempted to relax his efforts: "read or starve." show me a man who has made fifty thousand dollars, and i will show you in that man an equivalent of energy, attention to detail, trustworthiness, punctuality, professional knowledge, good address, common sense, and other marketable qualities. the farmer respects his savings bank book not unnaturally, for it declares with all the solemnity of a sealed and stamped document that for a certain length of time he rose at six o'clock each morning to oversee his labors, that he patiently waited upon seasonable weather, that he understood buying and selling. to the medical man, his fee serves as a medal to indicate that he was brave enough to face small pox and other infectious diseases, and his self-respect is fostered thereby. the barrister's brief is marked with the price of his legal knowledge, of his eloquence, or of his brave endurance during a period of hope-deferred brieflessness. a rich man asked howard burnett to do a little thing for his album. burnett complied and charged a thousand francs. "but it took you only five minutes," objected the rich man. "yes, but it took me thirty years to learn how to do it in five minutes." "i prepared that sermon," said a young sprig of divinity, "in half an hour, and preached it at once, and thought nothing of it." "in that," said an older minister, "your hearers are at one with you, for they also thought nothing of it." virgil seems to have accomplished about four lines a week; but then they have lasted eighteen hundred years and will last eighteen hundred more. seven years virgil is said to have expended in the composition of the georgics, and they could all be printed in about seven columns of an ordinary newspaper. tradition reports that he was in the habit of composing a few lines in the morning and spending the rest of the day in polishing them. campbell used to say that if a poet made one good line a week, he did very well indeed; but moore thought that if a poet did his duty, he could get a line done every day. what an army of young men enters the success-contest every year as raw recruits! many of them are country youths flocking to the cities to buy success. their young ambitions have been excited by some book, or fired by the story of some signal success, and they dream of becoming astors or girards, stewarts or wanamakers, vanderbilts or goulds, lincolns or garfields, until their innate energy impels them to try their own fortune in the magic metropolis. but what are you willing to pay for "success," as you call it, young man? do you realize what that word means in a great city in the nineteenth century, where men grow gray at thirty and die of old age at forty,--where the race of life has become so intense that the runners are treading on the heels of those before them; and "woe to him who stops to tie his shoestring?" do you know that only two or three out of every hundred will ever win permanent success, and only because they have kept everlastingly at it; and that the rest will sooner or later fail and many die in poverty because they have given up the struggle. there are multitudes of men who never rely wholly upon themselves and achieve independence. they are like summer vines, which never grow even ligneous, but stretch out a thousand little hands to grasp the stronger shrubs; and if they cannot reach them, they lie dishevelled in the grass, hoof-trodden, and beaten of every storm. it will be found that the first real movement upward will not take place until, in a spirit of resolute self-denial, indolence, so natural to almost every one, is mastered. necessity is, usually, the spur that sets the sluggish energies in motion. poverty, therefore, is often of inestimable value as an incentive to the best endeavors of which we are capable. chapter vii. foundation stones. in all matters, before beginning, a diligent preparation should be made. --cicero. how great soever a genius may be, ... certain it is that he will never shine in his full lustre, nor shed the full influence he is capable of, unless to his own experience he adds that of other men and other ages. --bolingbroke. it is for want of the little that human means must add to the wonderful capacity for improvement, born in man, that by far the greatest part of the intellect, innate in our race, perishes undeveloped and unknown. --edward everett. if any man fancies that there is some easier way of gaining a dollar than by squarely earning it, he has lost his clue to his way through this mortal labyrinth and must henceforth wander as chance may dictate. --horace greeley. what we do upon some great occasion will probably depend on what we already are; and what we are will be the result of previous years of self-discipline. --h. p. liddon. learn to labor and to wait. --longfellow. "what avails all this sturdiness?" asked an oak tree which had grown solitary for two hundred years, bitterly handled by frosts and wrestled by winds. "why am i to stand here useless? my roots are anchored in rifts of rocks; no herds can lie down under my shadow; i am far above singing birds, that seldom come to rest among my leaves; i am set as a mark for storms, that bend and tear me; my fruit is serviceable for no appetite; it had been better for me to have been a mushroom, gathered in the morning for some poor man's table, than to be a hundred-year oak, good for nothing." while it yet spoke, the axe was hewing at its base. it died in sadness, saying as it fell, "weary ages for nothing have i lived." the axe completed its work. by and by the trunk and root form the knees of a stately ship, bearing the country's flag around the world. other parts form keel and ribs of merchantmen, and having defied the mountain storms, they now equally resist the thunder of the waves and the murky threat of scowling hurricanes. other parts are laid into floors, or wrought into wainscoting, or carved for frames of noble pictures, or fashioned into chairs that embosom the weakness of old age. thus the tree, in dying, came not to its end, but to its beginning of life. it voyaged the world. it grew to parts of temples and dwellings. it held upon its surface the soft tread of children and the tottering steps of patriarchs. it rocked in the cradle. it swayed the limbs of age by the chimney corner, and heard, secure within, the roar of those old, unwearied tempests that once surged about its mountain life. all its early struggles and hardships had enabled it to grow tough and hard and beautiful of grain, alike useful and ornamental. "sir, you have been to college, i presume?" asked an illiterate but boastful exhorter of a clergyman. "yes, sir," was the reply. "i am thankful," said the former, "that the lord opened my mouth without any learning." "a similar event," retorted the clergyman, "happened in balaam's time." why not allow the schoolboy to erase from his list of studies all subjects that appear to him useless? would he not erase every thing which taxed his pleasure and freedom? would he not obey the call of his blood, rather than the advice of his teacher? ignorant men who have made money tell him that the study of geography is useless; his tea will come over the sea to him whether he knows where china is or not; what difference does it make whether verbs agree with their subjects or not? why waste time learning geometry or algebra? who keeps accounts by these? learning spoils a man for business, they tell him; they begrudge the time and money spent in education. they want cheap and rapid transit through college for their children. veneer will answer every practical purpose for them, instead of solid mahogany, or even paint and pine will do. it is said that the editors of the dictionary of american biography who diligently searched the records of living and dead americans, found , names worthy of a place in their six volumes of annals of successful men, and , or more than one-third of them, were college-educated men. one in forty of the college educated attained a success worthy of mention, and but one in , of those not so educated; so that the college-bred man had two hundred and fifty times the chances for success that others had. medical records, it is said, show that but five per cent. of the practicing physicians of the united states are college graduates; and yet forty-six per cent. of the physicians who became locally famous enough to be mentioned by those editors came from that small five per cent. of college educated persons. less than four per cent. of the lawyers were college-bred, yet they furnished more than one-half of all who became successful. not one per cent. of the business men of the country were college educated, yet that small fraction of college-bred men had seventeen times the chances of success that their fellow men of business had. in brief, the college-educated lawyer has fifty per cent. more chances for success than those not so favored; the college-educated physician, forty-six per cent. more; the author, thirty-seven per cent. more; the statesman, thirty-three per cent.; the clergyman, fifty-eight per cent.; the educator, sixty-one per cent.; the scientist, sixty-three per cent. you should therefore get the best and most complete education that it is possible for you to obtain. knowledge, then, is one of the secret keys which unlock the hidden mysteries of a successful life. "i do not remember," said beecher, "a book in all the depths of learning, nor a scrap in literature, nor a work in all the schools of art, from which its author has derived a permanent renown, that is not known to have been long and patiently elaborated." "you are a fool to stick so close to your work all the time," said one of vanderbilt's young friends; "we are having our fun while we are young, for when will we if not now?" but cornelius was either earning more money by working overtime, or saving what he had earned, or at home asleep, recruiting for the next day's labor and preparing for a large harvest later. like all successful men, he made finance a study. when he entered the railroad business, it was estimated that his fortune was thirty-five or forty million dollars. "the spruce young spark," says sizer, "who thinks chiefly of his mustache and boots and shiny hat, of getting along nicely and easily during the day, and talking about the theatre, the opera, or a fast horse, ridiculing the faithful young fellow who came to learn the business and make a man of himself, because he will not join in wasting his time in dissipation, will see the day, if his useless life is not earlier blasted by vicious indulgences, when he will be glad to accept a situation from his fellow-clerk whom he now ridicules and affects to despise, when the latter shall stand in the firm, dispensing benefits and acquiring fortune." "when a man has done his work," says ruskin, "and nothing can any way be materially altered in his fate, let him forget his toil, and jest with his fate if he will; but what excuse can you find for willfulness of thought at the very time when every crisis of fortune hangs on your decisions? a youth thoughtless, when all the happiness of his home forever depends on the chances or the passions of the hour! a youth thoughtless, when the career of all his days depends on the opportunity of a moment! a youth thoughtless, when his every action is a foundation-stone of future conduct, and every imagination a foundation of life or death! be thoughtless in any after years, rather than now--though, indeed, there is only one place where a man may be nobly thoughtless, his deathbed. nothing should ever be left to be done there." "on to berlin," was the shout of the french army in july, ; but, to the astonishment of the world, the french forces were cut in two and rolled as by a tidal wave into metz and around sedan. soon two french armies and the emperor surrendered, and german troopers paraded the streets of captured paris. but as men thought it out, as professor wells tells us, they came to see that it was not france that was beaten, but only louis napoleon and a lot of nobles, influential only because they bore titles or were favorites. louis napoleon, the feeble bearer of a great name, was emperor because of that name and criminal daring. by a series of happy accidents he had gained credit in the crimean war, and at magenta and solferino. but the unmasking time came in the franco-prussian war, as it always comes when sham, artificial toy-men meet genuine self-made men. and such were the german leaders,--william, strong, upright, warlike, "every inch a king;" von roon, minister of war, a master of administrative detail; bismarck, the master mind of european politics; and, above all, von moltke, chief of staff, who hurled armies by telegraph, as he sat at his cabinet, as easily as a master moves chessmen against a stupid opponent. said captain bingham: "you can have no idea of the wonderful machine that the german army is and how well it is prepared for war. a chart is made out which shows just what must be done in the case of wars with the different nations. and every officer's place in the scheme is laid out beforehand. there is a schedule of trains which will supersede all other schedules the moment war is declared, and this is so arranged that the commander of the army here could telegraph to any officer to take such a train and go to such a place at a moment's notice. when the franco-prussian war was declared, von moltke was awakened at midnight and told of the fact. he said coolly to the official who aroused him, 'go to pigeonhole no. ---- in my safe and take a paper from it and telegraph as there directed to the different troops of the empire.' he then turned over and went to sleep and awoke at his usual hour in the morning. every one else in berlin was excited about the war, but von moltke took his morning walk as usual, and a friend who met him said, 'general, you seem to be taking it very easy. aren't you afraid of the situation? i should think you would be busy.' 'ah,' replied von moltke, 'all of my work for this time has been done long beforehand, and everything that can be done now has been done.'" "a rare man this von moltke!" exclaims professor wells; "one who made himself ready for his opportunities beyond all men known to the modern world. of an impoverished family, he rose very slowly and by his own merit. he yielded to no temptation, vice, or dishonesty, of course, nor to the greater and ever present temptation to idleness, for he constantly worked to the limit of human endurance. he was ready for every emergency, not by accident, but because he made himself ready by painstaking labor, before the opportunity came. his favorite motto was, '_help yourself and others will help you_.' hundreds of his age in the prussian army were of nobler birth, thousands of greater fortune, but he made himself superior to them all by extraordinary fidelity and diligence. "the greatest master of strategy the world has ever seen was sixty-six years at school to himself before he was ready for his task. though born with the century, and an army officer at nineteen, he was an old man when, in , as prussian chief of staff, he crushed austria at sadowa and drove her out of germany. four years later the silent, modest soldier of seventy, ready for the still greater opportunity, smote france, and changed the map of europe. glory and the field-marshal's baton, after fifty-one years of hard work! no wonder louis napoleon was beaten by such men as he. all louis napoleons have been, and always will be. opportunity always finds out frauds. it does not make men, but shows the world what they have made of themselves." sir henry havelock joined the army of india in his twenty-eighth year, and waited till he was sixty-two for the opportunity to show himself fitted to command and skillful to plan. during those four and thirty years of waiting, he was busy preparing himself for that march to lucknow which was to make him famous as a soldier. farragut, "the viking of our western clime who made his mast a throne," began his naval career as a mere boy, and was sixty-four years old before he had an opportunity to distinguish himself; but when the great test of his life came, the reserve of half a century's preparation made him master of the situation. alexander hamilton said, "men give me credit for genius. all the genius i have lies just in this: when i have a subject in hand i study it profoundly. day and night it is before me. i explore it in all its bearings. my mind becomes pervaded with it. then the effort which i make the people are pleased to call the fruit of genius; it is the fruit of labor and thought." the law of labor is equally binding on genius and mediocrity. "fill up the cask! fill up the cask!" said old dr. bellamy when asked by a young clergyman for advice about the composition of sermons. "fill up the cask! and then if you tap it anywhere you will get a good stream. but if you put in but little, it will dribble, dribble, dribble, and you must tap, tap, tap, and then you get but a small stream, after all." "the merchant is in a dangerous position," says dr. w. w. patton, "whose means are in goods trusted out all over the country on long credits, and who in an emergency has no money in the bank upon which to draw. a heavy deposit, subject to a sight-draft, is the only position of strength. and he only is intellectually strong, who has made heavy deposits in the bank of memory, and can draw upon his faculties at any time, according to the necessities of the case." they say that more life, if not more labor, was spent on the piles beneath the st. petersburg church of st. isaac's, to get a foundation, than on all the magnificent marbles and malachite which have since been lodged in it. fifty feet of bunker hill monument is under ground, unseen, and unappreciated by the thousands who tread about that historic shaft. the rivers of india run under ground, unseen, unheard, by the millions who tramp above, but are they therefore lost? ask the golden harvest waving above them if it feels the water flowing beneath? the superstructure of a lifetime cannot stand upon the foundation of a day. c. h. parkhurst says that in manhood, as much as in house-building, the foundation keeps asserting itself all the way from the first floor to the roof. the stones laid in the underpinning may be coarse and inelegant, but, even so, each such stone perpetuates itself in silent echo clear up through to the finial. the body is in that respect like an old stradivarius violin, the ineffable sweetness of whose music is outcome and quotation from the coarse fibre of the case upon which its strings are strung. it is a very pleasant delusion that what we call the higher qualities and energies of a person maintain that self-centered kind of existence that enables them to discard and contemn all dependence upon what is lower and less refined than themselves, but it is a delusion that always wilts in an atmosphere of fact. climb high as we like our ladder will still require to rest on the ground; and it is probable that the keenest intellectual intuition, and the most delicate throb of passion would, if analysis could be carried so far, be discovered to have its connections with the rather material affair that we know as the body. lincoln took the postmastership for the sake of reading all the papers that came to town. he read everything he could lay his hands on; the bible, shakespeare, pilgrim's progress, life of washington and life of franklin, life of henry clay, �sop's fables; he read them over and over again until he could almost repeat them by heart; but he never read a novel in his life. his education came from the newspapers and from his contact with men and things. after he read a book he would write out an analysis of it. what a grand sight to see this long, lank, backwoods student, lying before the fire in a log cabin without floor or windows, after everybody else was abed, devouring books he had borrowed but could not afford to buy! "i have been watching the careers of young men by the thousand in this busy city of new york for over thirty years," said dr. cuyler, "and i find that the chief difference between the successful and the failures lies in the single element of staying power. permanent success is oftener won by holding on than by sudden dash, however brilliant. the easily discouraged, who are pushed back by a straw, are all the time dropping to the rear--to perish or to be carried along on the stretcher of charity. they who understand and practice abraham lincoln's homely maxim of 'pegging away' have achieved the solidest success." it is better to deserve success than to merely have it; few deserve it who do not attain it. there is no failure in this country for those whose personal habits are good, and who follow some honest calling industriously, unselfishly, and purely. if one desires to succeed, he must pay the price, work. no matter how weak a power may be, rational use will make it stronger. no matter how awkward your movements may be, how obtuse your senses, or how crude your thought, or how unregulated your desires, you may by patient discipline acquire, slowly indeed but with infallible certainty, grace and freedom of action, clearness and acuteness of perception, strength and precision of thought, and moderation of desire. it would go very far to destroy the absurd and pernicious association of genius and idleness, to show that the greatest poets, orators, statesmen, and historians--men of the most imposing and brilliant talents--have actually labored as hard as the makers of dictionaries and arrangers of indexes; and the most obvious reason why they have been superior to other men, is, that they have taken more pains. even the great genius, lord bacon, left large quantities of material entitled "sudden thoughts set down for use." john foster was an indefatigable worker. "he used to hack, split, twist, and pull up by the roots, or practice any other severity on whatever did not please him." chalmers was asked in london what foster was doing. "hard at it" he said, "at the rate of a line a week." when a young lawyer, daniel webster once looked in vain through all the libraries near him, and then ordered at an expense of $ the necessary books, to obtain authorities and precedents in a case in which his client was a poor blacksmith. he won his case, but, on account of the poverty of his client, only charged $ , thus losing heavily on the books bought, to say nothing of his time. years after, as he was passing through new york city, he was consulted by aaron burr on an important but puzzling case then pending before the supreme court. webster saw in a moment that it was just like the blacksmith's case, an intricate question of title, which he had solved so thoroughly that it was to him simple as the multiplication table. going back to the time of charles ii., he gave the law and precedents involved with such readiness and accuracy of sequence that burr asked, in great surprise: "mr. webster, have you been consulted before in this case?" "most certainly not. i never heard of your case till this evening." "very well," said burr, "proceed." and when he had finished, webster received a fee that paid him liberally for all the time and trouble he had spent for his early client. what the age wants is men who have the nerve and the grit to work and wait, whether the world applaud or hiss. it wants a bancroft, who can spend twenty-six years on the "history of the united states;" a noah webster, who can devote thirty-six years to a dictionary; a gibbon, who can plod for twenty years on the "decline and fall of the roman empire;" a mirabeau, who can struggle on for forty years before he has a chance to show his vast reserve, destined to shake an empire; a farragut, a von moltke, who have the persistence to work and wait for half a century for their first great opportunities; a garfield, burning his lamp fifteen minutes later than a rival student in his academy; a grant, fighting on in heroic silence, when denounced by his brother generals and politicians everywhere; a field's untiring perseverance, spending years and a fortune laying a cable when all the world called him a fool; a michael angelo, working seven long years decorating the sistine chapel with his matchless "creation" and the "last judgment," refusing all remuneration therefor, lest his pencil might catch the taint of avarice; a titian, spending seven years on the "last supper;" a stephenson, working fifteen years on a locomotive; a watt, twenty years on a condensing engine; a lady franklin, working incessantly for twelve long years to rescue her husband from the polar seas; a thurlow weed, walking two miles through the snow with rags tied around his feet for shoes, to borrow the history of the french revolution, and eagerly devouring it before the sap-bush fire; a milton, elaborating "paradise lost" in a world he could not see, and then selling it for fifteen pounds; a thackeray, struggling on cheerfully after his "vanity fair" was refused by a dozen publishers; a balzac, toiling and waiting in a lonely garret, whom neither poverty, debt, nor hunger could discourage or intimidate; not daunted by privations, not hindered by discouragements. it wants men who can work and wait. that is done soon enough which is done well. soon ripe, soon rotten. he that would enjoy the fruit must not gather the flower. he who is impatient to become his own master is more likely to become his own slave. better believe yourself a dunce and work away than a genius and be idle. one year of trained thinking is worth more than a whole college course of mental absorption of a vast series of undigested facts. the facility with which the world swallows up the ordinary college graduate who thought he was going to dazzle mankind should bid you pause and reflect. but just as certainly as man was created not to crawl on all fours in the depths of primeval forests, but to develop his mental and moral faculties, just so certainly he needs education, and only by means of it will he become what he ought to become,--man, in the highest sense of the word. ignorance is not simply the negation of knowledge, it is the misdirection of the mind. "one step in knowledge," says bulwer, "is one step from sin; one step from sin is one step nearer to heaven." chapter viii. the conquest of obstacles. nature, when she adds difficulties, adds brains. --emerson. exigencies create the necessary ability to meet and conquer them. --wendell phillips. many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties. --spurgeon. the rugged metal of the mine must burn before its surface shine. --byron. when a man looks through a tear in his own eye, that is a lens which opens reaches in the unknown, and reveals orbs no telescope could do. --beecher. no man ever worked his way in a dead calm. --john neal. "kites rise against, not with, the wind." then welcome each rebuff, that turns earth's smoothness rough, each sting, that bids not sit nor stand, but go. --browning. "what a fine profession ours would be if there were no gibbets!" said one of two highwaymen who chanced to pass a gallows. "tut, you blockhead," replied the other, "gibbets are the making of us; for, if there were no gibbets, every one would be a highwayman." just so with every art, trade, or pursuit; it is the difficulties that scare and keep out unworthy competitors. "life," says a philosopher, "refuses to be so adjusted as to eliminate from it all strife and conflict and pain. there are a thousand tasks, that, in larger interests than ours, must be done, whether we want them or no. the world refuses to walk upon tiptoe, so that we may be able to sleep. it gets up very early and stays up very late, and all the while there is the conflict of myriads of hammers and saws and axes with the stubborn material that in no other way can be made to serve its use and do its work for man. and then, too, these hammers and axes are not wielded without strain or pang, but swung by the millions of toilers who labor with their cries and groans and tears. nay, our temple building, whether it be for god or man, exacts its bitter toll, and fills life with cries and blows. the thousand rivalries of our daily business, the fierce animosities when we are beaten, the even fiercer exultation when we have beaten, the crashing blows of disaster, the piercing scream of defeat--these things we have not yet gotten rid of, nor in this life ever will. why should we wish to get rid of them? we are here, my brother, to be hewed and hammered and planed in god's quarry and on god's anvil for a nobler life to come." only the muscle that is used is developed. "troubles are often the tools by which god fashions us for better things," said beecher. "far up the mountain side lies a block of granite, and says to itself, 'how happy am i in my serenity--above the winds, above the trees, almost above the flight of birds! here i rest, age after age, and nothing disturbs me.' "yet what is it? it is only a bare block of granite, jutting out of the cliff, and its happiness is the happiness of death. "by and by comes the miner, and with strong and repeated strokes he drills a hole in its top, and the rock says, 'what does this mean?' then the black powder is poured in, and with a blast that makes the mountain echo, the block is blown asunder, and goes crashing down into the valley. 'ah!' it exclaims as it falls, 'why this rending?' then come saws to cut and fashion it; and humbled now, and willing to be nothing, it is borne away from the mountain and conveyed to the city. now it is chiseled and polished, till, at length, finished in beauty, by block and tackle it is raised, with mighty hoistings, high in air, to be the top-stone on some monument of the country's glory." "it is this scantiness of means, this continual deficiency, this constant hitch, this perpetual struggle to keep the head above water and the wolf from the door, that keeps society from falling to pieces. let every man have a few more dollars than he wants, and anarchy would follow." "do you wish to live without a trial?" asks a modern teacher. "then you wish to die but half a man. without trial you cannot guess at your own strength. men do not learn to swim on a table. they must go into deep water and buffet the waves. hardship is the native soil of manhood and self-reliance. trials are rough teachers, but rugged schoolmasters make rugged pupils. a man who goes through life prosperous, and comes to his grave without a wrinkle, is not half a man. difficulties are god's errands. and when we are sent upon them we should esteem it a proof of god's confidence. we should reach after the highest good." suddenly, with much jarring and jolting, an electric car came to a standstill just in front of a heavy truck that was headed in an opposite direction. the huge truck wheels were sliding uselessly round on the car tracks that were wet and slippery from rain. all the urging of the teamster and the straining of the horses were in vain--until the motorman quietly tossed a shovelful of sand on the track under the heavy wheels, and then the truck lumbered on its way. "friction is a very good thing," remarked a passenger. there is a beautiful tale of scandinavian mythology. a hero, under the promise of becoming a demi-god, is bidden in the celestial halls to perform three test-acts of prowess. he is to drain the drinking-horn of thor. then he must run a race with a courser so fleet that he fairly spurns the ground under his flying footsteps. then he must wrestle with a toothless old woman, whose sinewy hands, as wiry as eagle claws in the grapple, make his very flesh to quiver. he is victorious in them all. but as the crown of success is placed upon his temples, he discovers for the first time that he has had for his antagonist the three greatest forces of nature. he raced with thought, he wrestled with old age, he drank the sea. nature, like the god of nature, wrestles with us as a friend, not an enemy, wanting us to gain the victory, and wrestles with us that we may understand and enjoy her best blessings. every greatest and highest earthly good has come to us unfolded and enriched by this terrible wrestling with nature. a curious society still exists in paris composed of dramatic authors who meet once a month and dine together. their number has no fixed limit, only every member to be eligible must have been hissed. an eminent dramatist is selected for chairman and holds the post for three months. his election generally follows close upon a splendid failure. some of the world-famous ones have enjoyed this honor. dumas, jr., zola and offenbach have all filled the chair and presided at the monthly dinner. these dinners are given on the last friday of the month, and are said to be extraordinarily hilarious. "i do believe god wanted a grand poem of that man," said george macdonald of milton, "and so blinded him that he might be able to write it." "returned with thanks" has made many an author. failure often leads a man to success by arousing his latent energy, by firing a dormant purpose, by awakening powers which were sleeping. men of mettle turn disappointments into helps as the oyster turns into pearls the sand which annoys it. "let the adverse breath of criticism be to you only what the blast of the storm wind is to the eagle,--a force against him that lifts him higher." "i do not see," says emerson, "how any man can afford, for the sake of his nerves and his nap, to spare any action in which he can partake. it is pearls and rubies to his discourse. drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom. the true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed by as a loss of power." "adversity is a severe instructor," says edmund burke, "set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves, as he loves us better too. he that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. our antagonist is our helper. this conflict with difficulty makes us acquainted with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. it will not suffer us to be superficial." strong characters, like the palm tree, seem to thrive best when most abused. men who have stood up bravely under great misfortune for years are often unable to bear prosperity. their good fortune takes the spring out of their energy, as the torrid zone enervates races accustomed to a vigorous climate. some people never come to themselves until baffled, rebuffed, thwarted, defeated, crushed, in the opinion of those around them. trials unlock their virtues; defeat is the threshold of their victory. "every man who makes a fortune has been more than once a bankrupt, if the truth were known," said albion tourgée. "grant's failure as a subaltern made him commander-in-chief, and for myself, my failure to accomplish what i set out to do led me to what i never had aspired to." "what is defeat?" asked wendell phillips. "nothing but education." and a life's disaster may become the landmark from which there has begun a new era, a broader life for man. "to make his way at the bar," said an eminent jurist, "a young man must live like a hermit and work like a horse. there is nothing that does a young lawyer so much good as to be half starved." we are the victors of our opponents. they have developed in us the very power by which we overcome them. without their opposition we could never have braced and anchored and fortified ourselves, as the oak is braced and anchored for its thousand battles with the tempests. our trials, our sorrows, and our griefs develop us in a similar way. "obstacles," says mitchell, "are great incentives. i lived for whole years upon virgil and found myself well off." poverty, horace tells us, drove him to poetry. nothing more unmans a man than to take away from him the spur of necessity, which urges him onward and upward to the goal of his ambition. man is naturally lazy, and wealth induces indolence. the great object of life is development, the unfolding and drawing out of our powers, and whatever tempts us to a life of indolence or inaction, or to seek pleasure merely, whatever furnishes us a crutch when we can develop our muscles better by walking, all helps, guides, props, whatever tempts to a life of inaction, in whatever guise it may come, is a curse. i always pity the boy or girl with inherited wealth, for the temptation to hide their talents in a napkin, undeveloped, is very, very great. it is not natural for them to walk when they can ride, to go alone when they can be helped. quentin matsys was a blacksmith at antwerp. when in his twentieth year he wished to marry the daughter of a painter. the father refused his consent. "wert thou a painter," said he, "she should be thine; but a blacksmith--never!" "_i will be_ a painter," said the young man. he applied to his new art with so much perseverance that in a short time he produced pictures which gave a promise of the highest excellence. he gained for his reward the fair hand for which he sighed, and rose ere long to a high rank in his profession. take two acorns from the same tree, as nearly alike as possible; plant one on a hill by itself, and the other in the dense forest, and watch them grow. the oak standing alone is exposed to every storm. its roots reach out in every direction, clutching the rocks and piercing deep into the earth. every rootlet lends itself to steady the growing giant, as if in anticipation of fierce conflict with the elements. sometimes its upward growth seems checked for years, but all the while it has been expending its energy in pushing a root across a large rock to gain a firmer anchorage. then it shoots proudly aloft again, prepared to defy the hurricane. the gales which sport so rudely with its wide branches find more than their match, and only serve still further to toughen every minutest fibre from pith to bark. the acorn planted in the deep forest shoots up a weak, slender sapling. shielded by its neighbors, it feels no need of spreading its roots far and wide for support. take two boys, as nearly alike as possible. place one in the country away from the hothouse culture and refinements of the city, with only the district school, the sunday school, and a few books. remove wealth and props of every kind; and, if he has the right kind of material in him, he will thrive. every obstacle overcome lends him strength for the next conflict. if he falls, he rises with more determination than before. like a rubber ball, the harder the obstacle he meets the higher he rebounds. obstacles and opposition are but apparatus of the gymnasium in which the fibres of his manhood are developed. he compels respect and recognition from those who have ridiculed his poverty. put the other boy in a vanderbilt family. give him french and german nurses; gratify every wish. place him under the tutelage of great masters and send him to harvard. give him thousands a year for spending money, and let him travel extensively. the two meet. the city lad is ashamed of his country brother. the plain, threadbare clothes, hard hands, tawny face, and awkward manner of the country boy make sorry contrast with the genteel appearance of the other. the poor boy bemoans his hard lot, regrets that he has "no chance in life," and envies the city youth. he thinks that it is a cruel providence that places such a wide gulf between them. they meet again as men, but how changed! it is as easy to distinguish the sturdy, self-made man from the one who has been propped up all his life by wealth, position, and family influence, as it is for the shipbuilder to tell the difference between the plank from the rugged mountain oak and one from the sapling of the forest. if you think there is no difference, place each plank in the bottom of a ship, and test them in a hurricane at sea. the athlete does not carry the gymnasium away with him, but he carries the skill and muscle which give him his reputation. the lessons you learn at school will give you strength and skill in after life, and power, just in proportion to the accuracy, the clearness of perception with which you learn your lessons. the school was your gymnasium. you do not carry away the greek and latin text-books, the geometry and algebra into your occupations any more than the athlete carries the apparatus of the gymnasium, but you carry away the skill and the power if you have been painstaking, accurate and faithful. "it is in me, and it _shall_ come out!" and it did. for richard brinsley sheridan became the most brilliant, eloquent and amazing statesman of his day. yet if his first efforts had been but moderately successful, he might have been content with mere mediocrity. it was his defeats that nerved him to strive for eminence and win it. but it took hard, persistent work in his case to secure it, just as it did in that of so many others. byron was stung into a determination to go to the top by a scathing criticism of his first book, "hours of idleness," published when he was but nineteen years of age. macaulay said, "there is scarce an instance in history of so sudden a rise to so dizzy an eminence as byron reached." in a few years he stood by the side of such men as scott, southey and campbell. many an orator like "stuttering jack curran," or "orator mum," as he was once called, has been spurred into eloquence by ridicule and abuse. where the sky is gray and the climate unkindly, where the soil yields nothing save to the diligent hand, and life itself cannot be supported without incessant toil, man has reached his highest range of physical and intellectual development. the most beautiful and the strongest animals, as a rule, have come from the same narrow belt of latitude which has produced the heroes of the world. the most beautiful as well as the strongest characters are not developed in warm climates, where man finds his bread ready made on trees, and where exertion is a great effort, but rather in a trying climate and on a stubborn soil. it is no chance that returns to the hindoo ryot a penny and to the american laborer a dollar for his daily toil; that makes mexico with her mineral wealth poor, and new england with its granite and ice rich. it is rugged necessity, it is the struggle to obtain, it is poverty the priceless spur, that develops the stamina of manhood, and calls the race out of barbarism. labor found the world a wilderness and has made it a garden. the law of adaptation by which conditions affect an organism is simple and well known. it is that which callouses the palm of the oarsman, strengthens the waist of the wrestler, fits the back to its burden. it inexorably compels the organism to adapt itself to its conditions, to like them, and so to survive them. as soon as young eagles can fly the old birds tumble them out and tear the down and feathers from their nest. the rude and rough experience of the eaglet fits him to become the bold king of birds, fierce and expert in pursuing his prey. benjamin franklin ran away and george law was turned out of doors. thrown upon their own resources, they early acquired the energy and skill to overcome difficulties. boys who are bound out, crowded out, kicked out, usually "turn out," while those who do not have these disadvantages frequently fail to "come out." from an aimless, idle and useless brain, emergencies often call out powers and virtues before unknown and unsuspected. how often we see a young man develop astounding ability and energy after the death of a parent or the loss of a fortune, or after some other calamity has knocked the props and crutches from under him. the prison has roused the slumbering fire in many a noble mind. "robinson crusoe" was written in prison. the "pilgrim's progress" appeared in bedford jail. the "life and times" of baxter, eliot's "monarchia of man," and penn's "no cross, no crown," were written by prisoners. sir walter raleigh wrote "the history of the world" during his imprisonment of thirteen years. luther translated the bible while confined in the castle of wartburg. for twenty years dante worked in exile, and even under sentence of death. his works were burned in public after his death; but genius will not burn. adversity exasperates fools, dejects cowards, draws out the faculties of the wise and industrious, puts the modest to the necessity of trying their skill, awes the opulent, and makes the idle industrious. neither do uninterrupted success and prosperity qualify men for usefulness and happiness. the storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill and fortitude of the voyager. the martyrs of ancient times, in bracing their minds to outward calamities, acquired a loftiness of purpose and a moral heroism worth a lifetime of softness and security. a man upon whom continuous sunshine falls is like the earth in august: he becomes parched and dry and hard and close-grained. men have drawn from adversity the elements of greatness. if you have the blues, go and see the poorest and sickest families within your knowledge. the darker the setting, the brighter the diamond. don't run about and tell acquaintances that you have been unfortunate; people do not like to have unfortunate men for acquaintances. this is the crutch age. "helps" and "aids" are advertised everywhere. we have institutes, colleges, universities, teachers, books, libraries, newspapers, magazines. our thinking is done for us. our problems are all worked out in "explanations" and "keys." our boys are too often tutored through college with very little study. "short roads" and "abridged methods" are characteristic of the century. ingenious methods are used everywhere to get the drudgery out of the college course. newspapers give us our politics, and preachers our religion. self-help and self-reliance are getting old fashioned. nature, as if conscious of delayed blessings, has rushed to man's relief with her wondrous forces, and undertakes to do the world's drudgery and emancipate him from eden's curse. chapter ix. dead in earnest. it is the live coal that kindles others, not the dead. what made demosthenes the greatest of all orators was that he appeared the most entirely possessed by the feelings he wished to inspire. the effect produced by charles fox, who by the exaggerations of party spirit, was often compared to demosthenes, seems to have arisen wholly from this earnestness, which made up for the want of almost every grace, both of manner and style. --anon. twelve poor men taken out of boats and creeks, without any help of learning, should conquer the world to the cross. --stephen carnock. for his heart was in his work, and the heart giveth grace unto every art. --longfellow. he did it with all his heart and prospered. --ii. chronicles. the only conclusive evidence of a man's sincerity is that he gives himself for a principle. words, money, all things else are comparatively easy to give away; but when a man makes a gift of his daily life and practice, it is plain that the truth, whatever it may be, has taken possession of him. --lowell. "the emotions," says whipple, "may all be included in the single word 'enthusiasm,' or that impulsive force which liberates the mental power from the ice of timidity as spring loosens the streams from the grasp of winter, and sends them forth in a rejoicing rush. the mind of youth, when impelled by this original strength and enthusiasm of nature, is keen, eager, inquisitive, intense, audacious, rapidly assimilating facts into faculties and knowledge into power, and above all teeming with that joyous fullness of creative life which radiates thoughts as inspirations, and magnetizes as well as informs." "columbus, my hero," exclaims carlyle, "royalist sea-king of all! it is no friendly environment this of thine, in the waste, deep waters; around thee mutinous discouraged souls, behind thee disgrace and ruin, before thee the unpenetrated veil of night. brother, these wild water-mountains, bounding from their deep bases (ten miles deep, i am told), are not there on thy behalf! meseems _they_ have other work than floating thee forward:--and the huge winds, that sweep from ursa major to the tropics and equator, dancing their giant-waltz through the kingdoms of chaos and immensity, they care little about filling rightly or filling wrongly the small shoulder-of-mutton sails in this cockle skiff of thine! thou art not among articulate-speaking friends, my brother; thou art among immeasurable dumb monsters, tumbling, howling wide as the world here. secret, far-off, invisible to all hearts but thine, there lies a help in them: see how thou wilt get at that. patiently thou wilt wait till the mad southwester spend itself, saving thyself by dexterous science of defence the while: valiantly, with swift decision, wilt thou strike in, when the favoring east wind, the possible, springs up. mutiny of men thou wilt sternly repress; weakness, despondency, thou wilt cheerily encourage: thou wilt swallow down complaint, unreason, weariness, weakness of others and thyself;--how much wilt thou swallow down? there shall be a depth of silence in thee, deeper than this sea, which is but ten miles deep: a silence unsoundable; known to god only. thou shalt be a great man. yes, my world-soldier, thou of the world marine-service,--thou wilt have to be greater than this tumultuous unmeasured world here round thee is: thou, in thy strong soul, as with wrestler's arms, shall embrace it, harness it down; and make it bear thee on,--to new americas, or whither god wills!" with what concentration of purpose did washington put the whole weight of his character into the scales of our cause in the revolution! with what earnest singleness of aim did lincoln in the cabinet, grant in the field, throw his whole soul into the contest of our civil war? the power of phillips brooks, at which men wondered, lay in his tremendous earnestness. "no matter what your work is," says emerson, "let it be yours; no matter if you are a tinker or preacher, blacksmith or president, let what you are doing be organic, let it be in your bones, and you open the door by which the affluence of heaven and earth shall stream into you." again, he says: "god will not have his works made manifest by cowards. a man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. it is a deliverance which does not deliver. in the attempt, his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope." "i do not know how it is with others when speaking on an important question," said henry clay; "but on such occasions i seem to be unconscious of the external world. wholly engrossed by the subject before me, i lose all sense of personal identity, of time, or of surrounding objects." "i have been so busy for twenty years trying to save the souls of other people," said livingstone, "that i had forgotten that i have one of my own until a savage auditor asked me if i felt the influence of the religion i was advocating." "well, i've worked hard enough for it," said malibran when a critic expressed his admiration of her d in alt, reached by running up three octaves from low d; "i've been chasing it for a month. i pursued it everywhere,--when i was dressing, when i was doing my hair; and at last i found it on the toe of a shoe that i was putting on." "people smile at the enthusiasm of youth," said charles kingsley; "that enthusiasm which they themselves secretly look back at with a sigh, perhaps unconscious that it is partly their own fault that they ever lost it." "should i die this minute," said nelson at an important crisis, "want of frigates would be found written on my heart." said dr. arnold, the celebrated instructor: "i feel more and more the need of intercourse with men who take life in earnest. it is painful to me to be always on the surface of things. not that i wish for much of what is called religious conversation. that is often apt to be on the surface. but i want a sign which one catches by a sort of masonry, that a man knows what he is about in life. when i find this it opens my heart with as fresh a sympathy as when i was twenty years younger." archimedes, the greatest geometer of antiquity, was consulted by the king in regard to a gold crown suspected of being fraudulently alloyed with silver. while considering the best method of detecting any fraud, he plunged into a full bathing tub; and, with the thought that the water that overflowed must be equal in weight to his body, he discovered the method of obtaining the bulk of the crown compared with an equally heavy mass of pure gold. excited by the discovery, he ran through the streets undressed, crying, "i have found it." equally celebrated is his remark, "give me where to stand and i will move the world." his only remark to the roman soldier who entered his room while engaged in geometrical study, was, "don't step on my circle." refusing to follow the soldier to marcellus, who had captured the city, he was killed on the spot. he is said to have remarked, "my head, but not my circle." "every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world," says emerson, "is the triumph of some enthusiasm. the victories of the arabs after mahomet, who, in a few years, from a small and mean beginning, established a larger empire than that of rome, is an example. they did they knew not what. the naked derar, horsed on an idea, was found an overmatch for a troop of cavalry. the women fought like men and conquered the roman men. they were miserably equipped, miserably fed. they were temperance troops. there was neither brandy nor flesh needed to feed them. they conquered asia and africa and spain on barley. the caliph omar's walking-stick struck more terror into those who saw it than another man's sword." horace vernet's enthusiasm and devotion to the one idea of his life knew no bounds. he had himself lashed to the mast in a terrible gale on the mediterranean when all others on board were seized with terror, and with great delight sketched the towering waves which threatened every minute to swallow the vessel. several writers tell the story that a great artist, giotto, about to paint the crucifixion, induced a poor man to let him bind him upon a cross in order that he might get a better idea of the terrible scene that he was about to put upon the canvas. he promised faithfully that he would release his model in an hour, but to the latter's horror the painter seized a dagger and plunged it into his heart; and, while the blood was streaming from the ghastly wound, painted his death agony. beecher was a very dull boy and was the last member of the family of whom anything was expected. he had a weak memory, and disliked study. he shunned society and wanted to go to sea. even when he went to college many of his classmates stood ahead of him, who have fallen into oblivion. but when he was converted his whole life changed: he was full of enthusiasm, hopefulness and zeal. nothing was too menial for him to undertake to carry his purpose. he chopped wood, built the fire in his little church in lawrenceburg, ind., of only eighteen members, cleaned the lamps, swept the floor and washed the windows. he built the fire, baked, washed, when his wife was ill. the pent-up enthusiasm of his ambitious life burst the barriers of his inhospitable surroundings until he blossomed out into america's greatest pulpit orator. when handel was a little boy he bought a clavichord, hid it in the attic, and went there at night to play upon it, muffling the strings with small pieces of fine woolen cloth so that the sounds should not wake the family. michael angelo neglected school to copy drawings which he dared not carry home. murillo filled the margin of his school-book with drawings. dryden read polybius before he was ten years old. le brum, when a boy, drew with a piece of charcoal on the walls of the house. pope wrote excellent verses at fourteen. blaise pascal, the french mathematician, composed at sixteen a tract on the conic sections. professor agassiz was so enthusiastic in his work and so loved the fishes, the fowl and the cattle that it is said these creatures would die for him to give him their skeletons. his father wanted him to fit for commercial life, but the fish haunted him day and night. confucius said that "he was so eager in the pursuit of knowledge that he forgot his food;" and that, "in the joy of its attainment, he forgot his sorrows;" and that "he did not even perceive that old age was coming on." "that boy tries to make himself useful," said an employer of the errand boy, george w. childs. it is this trying to be useful and helpful that promotes us in life. once, when mr. harvey, an accomplished mathematician, was in a bookseller's shop, he saw a poor lad of mean appearance enter and write something on a slip of paper and give it to the proprietor. on inquiry he found this was a poor deaf boy, kitto, who afterward became one of the most noted biblical scholars in the world, and who wrote his first book in the poor-house. he had come to borrow a book. when a lad he had fallen backward from a ladder thirty-five feet upon the pavement with a load of slates that he was carrying to the roof. the poor lad was so thirsty for books that he would borrow from booksellers who would loan them to him out of pity, read them and return them. the _youth's companion_ says that mr. edison in his new biography--his "life and inventions"--describes the accidental method by which he discovered the principle of the phonograph. there is a kind of accident that happens only to a certain kind of man. "i was singing to the mouthpiece of a telephone," mr. edison says, "when the vibrations of the voice sent the fine steel point into my finger. that set me to thinking. if i could record the actions of the point, and send the point over the same surface afterward, i saw no reason why the thing would not talk. "i tried the experiment first on a slip of telegraph paper and found that the point made an alphabet. i shouted the words 'halloo! halloo!' into the mouthpiece, ran the paper back over the steel point, and heard a faint 'halloo! halloo!' in return. "i determined to make a machine that would work accurately, and gave my assistants instructions, telling them what i had discovered. they laughed at me. that's the whole story. the phonograph is the result of the pricking of a finger." it is one thing to hit upon an idea, however, and another thing to carry it out to perfection. the machine would talk, but, like many young children, it had difficulty with certain sounds--in the present case with aspirants and sibilants. mr. edison's biographers say, but the statement is somewhat exaggerated: "he has frequently spent from fifteen to twenty hours daily, for six or seven months on a stretch, dinning the word 'spezia,' for example, into the stubborn surface of the wax. 'spezia,' roared the inventor, 'pezia' lisped the phonograph in tones of ladylike reserve, and so on through thousands of graded repetitions till the desired results were obtained. "the primary education of the phonograph was comical in the extreme. to hear those grave and reverend signors, rich in scientific honors, patiently reiterating: mary had a little lamb, a little lamb, _lamb_, lamb, and elaborating that point with anxious gravity, was to receive a practical demonstration of the eternal unfitness of things." milton, when blind, old and poor, showed a royal cheerfulness and never "bated one jot of heart or hope, but steered right onward." dickens' characters seemed to possess him, and haunt him day and night until properly portrayed in his stories. at a time when it was considered dangerous to society in europe for the common people to read books and listen to lectures on any but religious subjects, charles knight determined to enlighten the masses by cheap literature. he believed that a paper could be instructive and not be dull, cheap without being wicked. he started the _penny magazine_, which acquired a circulation of , the first year. knight projected the _penny cyclopedia_, the _library of entertaining knowledge_, _half-hours with the best authors_, and other useful books at a low price. his whole adult life was spent in the work of elevating the common people by cheap, yet wholesome, publications. he died in poverty, but grateful people have erected a noble monument over his ashes. demosthenes roused the torpid spirits of his countrymen to a vigorous effort to preserve their independence against the designs of an ambitious and artful prince, and philip had just reason to say he was more afraid of that man than of all the fleets and armies of the athenians. horace greeley was a hampered genius who never had a chance to show himself until he started the _tribune_, into which he poured his whole individuality, life and soul. emerson lost the first years of his life trying to be somebody else. he finally came to himself and said: "if a single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the whole world will come round to him in the end." "though we travel the world over to find the beautiful we must carry it with us or we find it not." "the man that stands by himself the universe stands by him also." "take michael angelo's course, 'to confide in one's self and be something of worth and value.'" "none of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone." many unknown writers would make fame and fortune if, like bunyan and milton and dickens and george eliot and scott and emerson, they would write their own lives in their mss., if they would write about things they have seen, that they have felt, that they have known. it is life thoughts that stir and convince, that move and persuade, that carry their very iron particles into the blood. the real heaven has never been outdone by the ideal. neither poverty nor misfortune could keep linnæus from his botany. the english and austrian armies called napoleon the one-hundred-thousand-man. his presence was considered equal to that force in battle. the lesson he teaches is that which vigor always teaches--that there is always room for it. to what heaps of cowardly doubts is not that man's life an answer. chapter x. to be great, concentrate. let every one ascertain his special business and calling, and then stick to it. --franklin. "he who follows two hares is sure to catch neither." none sends his arrow to the mark in view, whose hand is feeble, or his aim untrue. --cowper. he who wishes to fulfill his mission must be a man of one idea, that is, of one great overmastering purpose, overshadowing all his aims, and guiding and controlling his entire life. --bate. the shortest way to do anything is to do only one thing at a time. --cecil. the power of concentration is one of the most valuable of intellectual attainments. --horace mann. the power of a man increases steadily by continuance in one direction. --emerson. careful attention to one thing often proves superior to genius and art. --cicero. "it puffed like a locomotive," said a boy of the donkey engine; "it whistled like the steam-cars, but it didn't go anywhere." the world is full of donkey-engines, of people who can whistle and puff and pull, but they don't go anywhere, they have no definite aim, no controlling purpose. the great secret of napoleon's power lay in his marvelous ability to concentrate his forces upon a single point. after finding the weak place in the enemy's ranks he would mass his men and hurl them upon the enemy like an avalanche until he made a breach. what a lesson of the power of concentration there is in that man's life! he was such a master of himself that he could concentrate his powers upon the smallest detail as well as upon an empire. when napoleon had anything to say he always went straight to his mark. he had a purpose in everything he did; there was no dilly-dallying nor shilly-shallying; he knew what he wanted to say, and said it. it was the same with all his plans; what he wanted to do, he did. he always hit the bull's eye. his great success in war was due largely to his definiteness of aim. he knew what he wanted to do, and did it. he was like a great burning glass, concentrating the rays of the sun upon a single spot; he burned a hole wherever he went. the sun's rays scattered do no execution, but concentrated in a burning glass, they melt solid granite; yes, a diamond, even. there are plenty of men who have ability enough, the rays of their faculties taken separately are all right; but they are powerless to collect them, to concentrate them upon a single object. they lack the burning glass of a purpose, to focalize upon one spot the separate rays of their ability. versatile men, universal geniuses, are usually weak, because they have no power to concentrate the rays of their ability, to focalize them upon one point, until they burn a hole in whatever they undertake. this power to bring all of one's scattered forces into one focal point makes all the difference between success and failure. the sun might blaze out upon the earth forever without burning a hole in it or setting anything on fire; whereas a very few of these rays concentrated in a burning glass would, as stated, transform a diamond into vapor. sir james mackintosh was a man of marvelous ability. he excited in everybody who knew him great expectations, but there was no purpose in his life to act as a burning glass to collect the brilliant rays of his intellect, by which he might have dazzled the world. most men have ability enough, if they could only focalize it into one grand, central, all-absorbing purpose, to accomplish great things. "to encourage me in my efforts to cultivate the power of attention," said a friend of john c. calhoun, "he stated that to this end he had early subjected his mind to such a rigid course of discipline, and had persisted without faltering until he had acquired a perfect control over it; that he could now confine it to any subject as long as he pleased, without wandering even for a moment; that it was his uniform habit, when he set out alone to walk or ride, to select a subject for reflection, and that he never suffered his attention to wander from it until he was satisfied with its examination." "my friend laughs at me because i have but one idea," said a learned american chemist; "but i have learned that if i wish ever to make a breach in a wall, i must play my guns continually upon one point." "it is his will that has made him what he is," said an intimate friend of philip d. armour, the chicago millionaire. "he fixes his eye on something ahead, and no matter what rises upon the right or the left he never sees it. he goes straight in pursuit of the object ahead, and overtakes it at last. he never gives up what he undertakes." while horace greeley would devote a column of the new york _tribune_ to an article, thurlow weed would treat the same subject in a few words in the albany _evening journal_, and put the argument into such shape as to carry far more conviction. "if you would be pungent," says southey, "be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams--the more they are condensed the deeper they burn." "the only valuable kind of study," said sydney smith, "is to read so heartily that dinner-time comes two hours before you expected it; to sit with your livy before you and hear the geese cackling that saved the capitol, and to see with your own eyes the carthaginian sutlers gathering up the rings of the roman knights after the battle of cannæ, and heaping them into bushels, and to be so intimately present at the actions you are reading of, that when anybody knocks at the door it will take you two or three seconds to determine whether you are in your own study or on the plains of lombardy, looking at hannibal's weather-beaten face and admiring the splendor of his single eye." "never study on speculation," says waters; "all such study is vain. form a plan; have an object; then work for it; learn all you can about it, and you will be sure to succeed. what i mean by studying on speculation is that aimless learning of things because they may be useful some day; which is like the conduct of the woman who bought at auction a brass door-plate with the name of thompson on it, thinking it might be useful some day!" "i resolved, when i began to read law," said edward sugden, afterward lord st. leonard, "to make everything i acquired perfectly my own, and never go on to a second reading till i had entirely accomplished the first. many of the competitors read as much in a day as i did in a week; but at the end of twelve months my knowledge was as fresh as on the day it was acquired, while theirs had glided away from their recollection." "very often," says sidney smith, "the modern precept of education is, 'be ignorant of nothing.' but my advice is, have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, that you may avoid the calamity of being ignorant of all things." "lord, help me to take fewer things into my hands, and to do them well," is a prayer recommended by paxton hood to an overworked man. "many persons seeing me so much engaged in active life," said edward bulwer lytton, "and as much about the world as if i had never been a student, have said to me, 'when do you get time to write all your books? how on earth do you contrive to do so much work?' i shall surprise you by the answer i made. the answer is this--i contrive to do so much work by never doing too much at a time. a man to get through work well must not overwork himself; or, if he do too much to-day, the reaction of fatigue will come, and he will be obliged to do too little to-morrow. now, since i began really and earnestly to study, which was not till i had left college, and was actually in the world, i may perhaps say that i have gone through as large a course of general reading as most men of my time. i have traveled much and i have seen much; i have mixed much in politics, and in the various business of life; and in addition to all this, i have published somewhere about sixty volumes, some upon subjects requiring much special research. and what time do you think, as a general rule, i have devoted to study, to reading, and writing? not more than three hours a day; and, when parliament is sitting, not always that. but then, during these three hours, i have given my whole attention to what i was about." "the things that are crowded out of a life are the test of that life. not what we would like, but what we long for and strive for with all our might we attain." "one great cause of failure of young men in business," says carnegie, "is lack of concentration. they are prone to seek outside investments. the cause of many a surprising failure lies in so doing. every dollar of capital and credit, every business-thought, should be concentrated upon the one business upon which a man has embarked. he should never scatter his shot. it is a poor business which will not yield better returns for increased capital than any outside investment. no man or set of men or corporation can manage a business-man's capital as well as he can manage it himself. the rule, 'do not put all your eggs in one basket,' does not apply to a man's life-work. put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket, is the true doctrine--the most valuable rule of all." "a man must not only desire to be right," said beecher, "he must _be_ right. you may say, 'i wish to send this ball so as to kill the lion crouching yonder, ready to spring upon me. my wishes are all right, and i hope providence will direct the ball.' providence won't. you must do it; and if you do not, you are a dead man." the ruling idea of milton's life and the key to his mental history is his resolve to produce a great poem. not that the aspiration in itself is singular, for it is probably shared in by every poet in his turn. as every clever schoolboy is destined by himself or his friends to become lord-chancellor, and every private in the french army carries in his haversack the baton of a marshal, so it is a necessary ingredient of the dream of parnassus that it should embody itself in a form of surpassing brilliance. what distinguishes milton from the crowd of youthful literary aspirants, _audax juventa_, is his constancy of resolve. he not only nourished through manhood the dream of youth, keeping under the importunate instincts which carry off most ambitions in middle life into the pursuit of place, profit, honor--the thorns which spring up and smother the wheat--but carried out his dream in its integrity in old age. he formed himself for this achievement and no other. study at home, travel abroad, the arena of political controversy, the public service, the practice of the domestic virtues, were so many parts of the schooling which was to make a poet. bismarck adopted it as the aim of his public life "to snatch germany from austrian oppression," and to gather round prussia, in a north german confederation, all the states whose tone of thought, religion, manners and interest "were in harmony with those of prussia." "to attain this end," he once said in conversation, "i would brave all dangers--exile, the scaffold itself. what matter if they hang me, provided the rope with which i am hung binds this new germany firmly to the prussian throne?" it is related of greeley that, when he was writing his "american conflict," he found it necessary to conceal himself somewhere, to prevent constant interruptions. he accordingly took a room in the bible house, where he worked from ten in the morning till five in the afternoon, and then appeared in the sanctum, seemingly as fresh as ever. cooper institute is the evening school which peter cooper, as long ago as , resolved to found some day, when he was looking about as an apprentice for a place where he could go to school evenings. through all his career in various branches of business he never lost sight of this object; and, as his wealth increased, he was pleased that it brought nearer the realization of his dream. "see a great lawyer like rufus choate," says dr. storrs, "in a case where his convictions are strong and his feelings are enlisted. he saw long ago, as he glanced over the box, that five of those in it were sympathetic with him; as he went on he became equally certain of seven; the number now has risen to ten; but two are still left whom he feels that he has not persuaded or mastered. upon them he now concentrates his power, summing up the facts, setting forth anew and more forcibly the principles, urging upon them his view of the case with a more and more intense action of his mind upon theirs, until one only is left. like the blow of a hammer, continually repeated until the iron bar crumbles beneath it, his whole force comes with ceaseless percussion on that one mind till it has yielded, and accepts the conviction on which the pleader's purpose is fixed. men say afterward, 'he surpassed himself.' it was only because the singleness of his aim gave unity, intensity, and overpowering energy to the mind." "the foreman of the jury, however," said whipple, "was a hard-hearted, practical man, a model of business intellect and integrity, but with an incapacity of understanding any intellect or conscience radically differing from his own. mr. choate's argument, as far as the facts and the law were concerned, was through in an hour. still he went on speaking. hour after hour passed, and yet he continued to speak with constantly increasing eloquence, repeating and recapitulating, without any seeming reason, facts which he had already stated and arguments which he had already urged. the truth was, as i gradually learned, that he was engaged in a hand-to-hand--or rather in a brain-to-brain and a heart-to-heart--contest with the foreman, whose resistance he was determined to break down, but who confronted him for three hours with defiance observable in every rigid line of his honest countenance. 'you fool!' was the burden of the advocate's ingenious argument. 'you rascal!' was the phrase legibly printed on the foreman's incredulous face. but at last the features of the foreman began to relax, and at the end the stern lines melted into acquiescence with the opinion of the advocate, who had been storming at the defences of his mind, his heart, and his conscience for five hours, and had now entered as victor. the verdict was 'not guilty.'" "he who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces as, to idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity." it is generally thought that when a man is said to be dissipated in his habits he must be a drinking man, or a gambler, or licentious, or all three; but dissipation is of two kinds, coarse and refined. a man can dissipate or scatter all of his mental energies and physical power by indulging in too many respectable diversions, as easily as in habits of a viler nature. property and its cares make some men dissipated; too many friends make others. the exactions of "society," the balls, parties, receptions, and various entertainments constantly being given and attended by the _beau monde_, constitute a most wasting species of dissipation. others, again, fritter away all their time and strength in political agitations, or in controversies and gossip; others in idling with music or some other one of the fine arts; others in feasting or fasting, as their dispositions and feelings incline. but the man of concentration of purpose is never a dissipated man in any sense, good or bad. he has no time to devote to useless trifling of any kind, but puts in as many strokes of faithful work as possible toward the attainment of some definite good. chapter xi. at once. note the sublime precision that leads the earth over a circuit of , , miles back to the solstice at the appointed moment without the loss of one second--no, not the millionth part of a second--for ages and ages of which it traveled that imperial road. --edward everett. despatch is the soul of business. --chesterfield. unfaithfulness in the keeping of an appointment is an act of clear dishonesty. you may as well borrow a person's money as his time. --horace mann. by the street of by-and-by one arrives at the house of never. --cervantes. the greatest thief this world has ever produced is procrastination, and he is still at large. --h. w. shaw. "oh, how i do appreciate a boy who is always on time!" says h. c. bowen. "how quickly you learn to depend on him, and how soon you find yourself intrusting him with weightier matters! the boy who has acquired a reputation for punctuality has made the first contribution to the capital that in after years makes his success a certainty!" "nothing commends a young man so much to his employers," says john stuart blackie, "as accuracy and punctuality in the conduct of his business. and no wonder. on each man's exactitude depends the comfortable and easy going of his machine. if the clock goes fitfully nobody knows the time of day; and, if your task is a link in the chain of another man's work, you are his clock, and he ought to be able to rely on you." "the whole period of youth," said ruskin, "is one essentially of formation, edification, instruction. there is not an hour of it but is trembling with destinies--not a moment of which, once passed, the appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck on the cold iron." "to-morrow, didst thou say?" asked cotton. "go to--i will not hear of it. to-morrow! 't is a sharper who stakes his penury against thy plenty--who takes thy ready cash and pays thee naught but wishes, hopes and promises, the currency of idiots. _to-morrow!_ it is a period nowhere to be found in all the hoary registers of time, unless perchance in the fool's calendar. wisdom disclaims the word, nor holds society with those that own it. 'tis fancy's child, and folly is its father; wrought of such stuffs as dreams are; and baseless as the fantastic visions of the evening." oh, how many a wreck on the road to success could say: "i have spent all my life in the pursuit of to-morrow, being assured that to-morrow has some vast benefit or other in store for me." "i give it as my deliberate and solemn conviction," said dr. fitch, "that the individual who is tardy in meeting an appointment will never be respected or successful in life." "if a man has no regard for the time of other men," said horace greeley, "why should he have for their money? what is the difference between taking a man's hour and taking his five dollars? there are many men to whom each hour of the business day is worth more than five dollars." a man who keeps his time will keep his word; in truth, he cannot keep his word unless he _does_ keep his time. when the duchess of sutherland came late, keeping the court waiting, the queen, who was always vexed by tardiness, presented her with her own watch, saying, "i am afraid your's does not keep good time." "then you must get a new watch, or i another secretary," replied washington, when his secretary excused the lateness of his attendance by saying that his watch was too slow. "i have generally found that a man who is good at an excuse is good for nothing else," said franklin to a servant who was always late, but always ready with an excuse. one of the best things about school and college life is that the bell which strikes the hour for rising, for recitations, or for lectures, teaches habits of promptness. every young man should have a watch which is a good timekeeper; one that is _nearly_ right encourages bad habits, and is an expensive investment at any price. wear threadbare clothes if you must, but never carry an inaccurate watch. "five minutes behind time" has ruined many a man and many a firm. "he who rises late," says fuller, "must trot all day, and shall scarcely overtake his business at night." some people are too late for everything but ruin; when a nobleman apologized to george iii. for being late, and said, "better late than never," the king replied, "no, i say, _better never than late_." "better late than never" is not half so good a maxim as "better never late." if samuel budgett was even a minute late at an appointment he would apologize; he was as punctual as a chronometer. punctuality is contagious. napoleon infused promptness into his officers every minute. what power there is in promptness to take the drudgery out of a disagreeable task. "a singular mischance has happened to some of our friends," said hamilton. "at the instant when he ushered them into existence, god gave them work to do, and he also gave them a competency of time; so much that if they began at the right moment and wrought with sufficient vigor, their time and their work would end together. but a good many years ago a strange misfortune befell them. a fragment of their allotted time was lost. they cannot tell what became of it, but sure enough, it has dropped out of existence; for just like two measuring lines laid alongside the one an inch shorter than the other, their work and their time run parallel, but the work is always ten minutes in advance of the time. they are not irregular. they are never too soon. their letters are posted the very minute after the mail is closed. they arrive at the wharf just in time to see the steamboat off, they come in sight of the terminus precisely as the station gates are closing. they do not break any engagement nor neglect any duty; but they systematically go about it too late, and usually too late by about the same fatal interval." of tours, the wealthy new orleans ship-owner, it is said that he was as methodical and regular as a clock, and that his neighbors were in the habit of judging of the time of the day by his movements. "how," asked a man of sir walter raleigh, "do you accomplish so much and in so short a time?" "when i have anything do, i go and do it," was the reply. the man who always acts promptly, even if he makes occasional mistakes, will succeed when a procrastinator will fail--even if he have the better judgment. when asked how he got through so much work, lord chesterfield replied: "because i never put off till morrow what i can do to-day." dewitt, pensionary of holland, answered the same question: "nothing is more easy; never do but one thing at a time, and never put off until to-morrow what can be done to-day." walter scott was a very punctual man. this was the secret of his enormous achievements. he made it a rule to answer all letters the day they were received. he rose at five. by breakfast time he had broken the neck of the day's work, as he used to say. writing to a youth who had obtained a situation and asked him for advice, he gave this counsel: "beware of stumbling over a propensity which easily besets you from not having your time fully employed--i mean what the women call dawdling. do instantly whatever is to be done, and take the hours of recreation after business, never before it." frederick the great had a maxim: "time is the only treasure of which it is proper to be avaricious." leibnitz declared that "the loss of an hour is the loss of a part of life." napoleon, who knew the value of time, remarked that it was the quarter hours that won battles. the value of minutes has been often recognized, and any person watching a railway clerk handing out tickets and change during the last few minutes available must have been struck with how much could be done in these short periods of time. at the appointed hour the train starts and by and by is carrying passengers at the rate of sixty miles an hour. in a second you are carried twenty-nine yards. in one twenty-ninth of a second you pass over one yard. now, one yard is quite an appreciable distance, but one twenty-ninth of a second is a period which cannot be appreciated. the father of the webster brothers, before going away to be gone for a week, gave his boys a stint to cut a field of corn, telling them that after it was done, if they had any time left, they might do what they pleased. the boys looked the field over on monday morning and concluded they could do all the work in three days, so they decided to play the first three days. thursday morning they went to the field, but it looked so much larger than it did on monday morning, that they decided they could not possibly do it in three days, and rather than not do it all, they would not touch it. when the angry father returned, he called ezekiel to him and asked him why they had not harvested the corn. "what have you been doing?" said the stern father. "nothing, father." "and what have you been doing, daniel?" "helping zeke, sir." how many boys, and men, too, waste hours and days "helping zeke!" "remember the world was created in six days," said napoleon to one of his officers. "ask for whatever you please except time." railroads and steamboats have been wonderful educators in promptness. no matter who is late they leave right on the minute. it is interesting to watch people at a great railroad station, running, hurrying, trying to make up time, for they well know when the time arrives the train will leave. factories, shops, stores, banks, everything opens and closes on the minute. the higher the state of civilization the prompter is everything done. in countries without railroads, as in eastern countries, everything is behind time. everybody is indolent and lazy. the world knows that the prompt man's bills and notes will be paid on the day they are due, and will trust him. people will give him credit, for they know they can depend upon him. but lack of promptness will shake confidence almost as quickly as downright dishonesty. the man who has a habit of dawdling or listlessness will show it in everything he does. he is late at meals, late at work, dawdles on the street, loses his train, misses his appointments, and dawdles at his store until the banks are closed. everybody he meets suffers more or less from his malady, for dawdling becomes practically a disease. "you will never find time for anything," said charles buxton; "if you want time you must make it." the best work we ever do is that which we do now, and can never repeat. "too late," is the curse of the unsuccessful, who forget that "one to-day is worth two to-morrows." time accepts no sacrifice; it admits of neither redemption nor atonement. _it is the true avenger._ your enemy may become your friend,--your injurer may do you justice,--but time is inexorable, and has no mercy. then stay the present instant, dear horatio: imprint the marks of wisdom on its wings. 'tis of more worth than kingdoms! far more precious than all the crimson treasures of life's fountain. o! let it not elude thy grasp; but, like the good old patriarch upon record, hold the fleet angel fast until he bless thee. --nathaniel cotton. chapter xii. thoroughness. doing well depends upon doing completely. --persian proverb. he who does well will always have patrons enough. --plautus. if a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door. --emerson. i hate a thing done by halves. if it be right, do it boldly; if it be wrong, leave it undone. --gilpin. no two things differ more than hurry and dispatch. hurry is the mark of a weak mind, dispatch of a strong one. * * * like a turnstile, he (the weak man) is in everybody's way, but stops nobody; he talks a great deal, but says very little; looks into everything, but sees nothing; and has a hundred irons in the fire, but very few of them are hot, and with those few that are he only burns his fingers. --colton. "make me as good a hammer as you know how," said a carpenter to the blacksmith in a new york village before the first railroad was built; "six of us have come to work on the new church, and i've left mine at home." "as good a one as i know how?" asked david maydole, doubtfully, "but perhaps you don't want to pay for as good a one as i know how to make." "yes, i do," said the carpenter, "i want a good hammer." it was indeed a good hammer that he received, the best, probably, that had ever been made. by means of a longer hole than usual, david had wedged the handle in its place so that the head could not fly off, a wonderful improvement in the eyes of the carpenter, who boasted of his prize to his companions. they all came to the shop next day, and each ordered just such a hammer. when the contractor saw the tools, he ordered two for himself, asking that they be made a little better than those for his men. "i can't make any better ones," said maydole; "when i make a thing, i make it as well as i can, no matter whom it is for." the storekeeper soon ordered two dozen, a supply unheard of in his previous business career. a new york dealer in tools came to the village to sell his wares, and bought all the storekeeper had, and left a standing order for all the blacksmith could make. david might have grown very wealthy by making goods of the standard already attained; but throughout his long and successful life he never ceased to study still further to perfect his hammers in the minutest detail. they were usually sold without any warrant of excellence, the word "maydole" stamped on the head being universally considered a guaranty of the best article the world could produce. character is power, and is the best advertisement in the world. "yes," said he one day to the late james parton, who told this story, "i have made hammers in this little village for twenty-eight years." "well," replied the great historian, "by this time you ought to make a pretty good hammer." "no, i can't," was the reply, "i can't make a pretty good hammer. i make the best hammer that's made. my only care is to make a perfect hammer. if folks don't want to pay me what they're worth, they're welcome to buy cheaper ones somewhere else. my wants are few, and i'm ready any time to go back to my blacksmith's shop, where i worked forty years ago, before i thought of making hammers. then i had a boy to blow by bellows, now i have one hundred and fifteen men. do you see them over there watching the heads cook over the charcoal furnace, as your cook, if she knows what she is about, watches the chops broiling? each of them is hammered out of a piece of iron, and is tempered under the inspection of an experienced man. every handle is seasoned three years, or until there is no shrink left in it. once i thought i could use machinery in manufacturing them; now i know that a perfect tool can't be made by machinery, and every bit of the work is done by hand." "in telling this little story," said parton, "i have told thousands of stories. take the word 'hammer' out of it, and put 'glue' in its place, and you have the history of peter cooper. by putting in other words, you can make the true history of every great business in the world which has lasted thirty years." "we have no secret," said manager daniel j. morrill, of the cambria iron works, employing seven thousand men, at johnstown, pa. "we always try to beat our last batch of rails. that is all the secret we've got, and we don't care who knows it." "i don't try to see how cheap a machine i can produce, but how good a machine," said the late john c. whitin, of northbridge, mass., to a customer who complained of the high price of some cotton machinery. business men soon learned what this meant; and when there was occasion to advertise any machinery for sale, new england cotton manufacturers were accustomed to state the number of years it had been in use and add, as an all-sufficient guaranty of northbridge products, "whitin make." put thoroughness into your work: it pays. "the accurate boy is always the favored one," said president tuttle. if a carpenter must stand at his journeyman's elbow to be sure his work is right, or if a cashier must run over his bookkeeper's columns, he might as well do the work himself as employ another to do it in that way. "mr. girard, can you not assist me by giving me a little work?" asked one john smith, who had formerly worked for the great banker and attracted attention by his activity. "assistance--work--ah? you want work?" "yes sir; it's a long time since i've had anything to do." "very well, i shall give you some. you see dem stone yondare?" "yes, sir." "very well; you shall fetch and put them in this place; you see?" "yes sir." "and when you done, come to me at my bank." smith finished his task, reported to mr. girard, and asked for more work. "ah, ha, oui. you want more work? very well; you shall go place dem stone where you got him. understandez? you take him back." "yes, sir." again smith performed the work and waited on mr. girard for payment. "ah, ha, you all finish?" "yes, sir." "very well; how much money shall i give you?" "one dollar, sir." "dat is honest. you take no advantage. dare is your dollar." "can i do anything else for you?" "oui, come here when you get up to-morrow. you shall have more work." smith was punctual, but for the third time, and yet again for the fourth, he was ordered to "take dem stone back again." when he called for his pay in the evening stephen girard spoke very cordially. "ah, monsieur smit, you shall be my man; you mind your own business and do it, ask no questions, you do not interfere. you got one vife?" "yes, sir." "ah, dat is bad. von vife is bad. any little chicks?" "yes, sir, five living." "five? dat is good; i like five. i like you, monsieur smit; you like to work; you mind your business. now i do something for your five little chicks. there: take these five pieces of paper for your five little chicks; you shall work for them; you shall mind your own business, and your little chicks shall never want five more." in a few years mr. smith became one of the wealthiest and most respected merchants of philadelphia. it is difficult to estimate the great influence upon a life of the early formed habit of doing everything to a finish, not leaving it half done, or pretty nearly done, but completely done. nature finishes every little leaf, even to every little rib, its edges and stem, as exactly and perfectly as though it were the only leaf to be made that year. even the flower that blooms in the mountain dell, where no human eye will ever behold it, is finished with the same perfection and exactness of form and outline, with the same delicate shade of color, with the same completeness of beauty, as though it was made for royalty in the queen's garden. "perfection to the finish" is a motto which every youth should adopt. "how did you attain such excellence in your profession?" was asked of sir joshua reynolds. "by observing one simple rule, namely, to make each picture the best," he replied. the discipline of being exact is uplifting. progress is never more rapid than it is when we are studying to be accurate. the effort educates all the powers. arthur helps says: "i do not know that there is anything except it be humility, which is so valuable, as an incident of education, as accuracy: and accuracy can be taught. direct lies told to the world are as dust in the balance when weighed against the falsehoods of inaccuracy." too many youths enter upon their business in a languid, half-hearted way, and do their work in a slipshod manner. the consequence is that they inspire neither admiration nor confidence on the part of their superiors, and cut off almost every chance of success. there is a loose, perfunctory method of doing one's work that never merits advance, and very rarely wins it. instead of buckling to their task with all the force they possess, they merely touch it with the tips of their fingers, their rule apparently being, the maximum of ease with the minimum of work. the principle of strafford, the great minister of charles i., is indicated by his motto, the one word "thorough." it was said of king hezekiah, "in every work that he began, he did it with all his heart and prospered." the stone-cutter goes to work on a stone and most patiently shapes it. he carves that bit of fern, putting all his skill and taste into it. and by-and-by the master says, "well done," and takes it away and gives him another block and tells him to work on that. and so he works on that from the rising of the sun till the going down of the same, and he only knows that he is earning his bread. and he continues to put all his skill and taste into his work. he has no idea what use will be made of these few stones which he has been carving, until afterward, when, one day, walking along the street, and looking up at the front of the art gallery, he sees the stones upon which he has worked. he did not know what they were for, but the architect did. and as he stands looking at his work on that structure which is the beauty of the whole street, he says: "i am glad i did it well." and every day as he passes that way, he says to himself exultingly, "i did it well." he did not draw the design, nor plan the building, and he knew nothing of what use was to be made of his work: but he took pains in cutting those stems; and when he saw they were a part of that magnificent structure, his soul rejoiced. work that is not finished, is not work at all; it is merely a botch. we often see this defect of incompleteness in a child, which increases in youth. all about the house, everywhere, there are half-finished things. it is true that children often become tired of things which they begin with enthusiasm; but there is a great difference in children about finishing what they undertake. a boy, for instance, will start out in the morning with great enthusiasm to dig his garden over; but, after a few minutes, his enthusiasm has evaporated, and he wants to go fishing. he soon becomes tired of this, and thinks he will make a boat. no sooner does he get a saw and knife and a few pieces of board about him than he makes up his mind that really what he wanted to do, after all, was to play ball, and this, in turn, must give way to something else. one watch, set right, will do to set many by; but, on the other hand, one that goes wrong may be the means of misleading a whole neighborhood. the same may be said of the example we individually set to those around us. "whatever i have tried to do in life," said dickens, "i have tried with all my heart to do well. what i have devoted myself to, i have devoted myself to completely." it is no disgrace to be a shoemaker, but it is a disgrace for a shoemaker to make bad shoes. a traveler, recently returned from jerusalem, found, in conversation with humboldt, that the latter was as conversant with the streets and houses of jerusalem as he was himself. on being asked how long it was since he had visited it, the aged philosopher replied: "i have never been there; but i expected to go sixty years since, and i prepared myself." so noted for excellency was everything bearing the brand of george washington, that a barrel of flour marked "george washington, mount vernon," was exempted from the customary inspection in the west india ports. pascal, the most wonderful mathematical genius of his time, whose work on conic sections, at sixteen, descartes refused to believe could be produced at that age, is considered to have fixed the french language, as luther did the german, by his writings. none of his provincial letters, with the exception of the last three, was more than eight quarto pages in length, yet he devoted twenty days to the writing of a single letter, and one of them was written no less than thirteen times. the night the tasmania was wrecked, the captain had given the course north by west, sixty-seven degrees. he had taken account of eddies and currents. the second officer, overlooking these, ordered the helmsman to make it north by west, fifty-seven degrees, but to bring the ship around so gently that the captain wouldn't know it. hence her destruction. rev. mr. maley, of the ohio conference of the methodist church, had the habit of greatly exaggerating anything he talked about. his brethren at conference told him that this habit was growing on him, and rendering him unpopular in the ministry. mr. maley heard them patiently, and then said: "brethren, i am aware of the truth of all you have said, and have shed barrels of tears over it." there is a great difference between going just right and a little wrong. chapter xiii. trifles. in the elder days of art builders wrought with greatest care each minute and unseen part, for the gods see everywhere. --longfellow. think naught a trifle, though it small appear, small sands the mountain, moments make the year, and trifles, life. --young. the smallest hair throws its shadow. --goethe. he that despiseth small things shall fall little by little. --ecclesiastes. it is the little rift within the lute, that by and by will make the music mute, and ever widening slowly silence all. --tennyson. "a pebble in the streamlet scant has turned the course of many a river: a dewdrop on the baby plant has warped the giant oak forever." it is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit of life. --smiles. "only!--but then the onlys make up the mighty all." "my rule of conduct has been that whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well," said nicolas poussin, the great french painter. when asked the reason why he had become so eminent in a land of famous artists he replied, "because i have neglected nothing." "do little things now," says a persian proverb; "so shall big things come to thee by and by asking to be done." god will take care of the great things if we do not neglect the little ones. a gentleman advertised for a boy to assist him in his office, and nearly fifty applicants presented themselves to him. out of the whole number he in a short time selected one and dismissed the rest. "i should like to know," said a friend, "on what ground you selected that boy, who had not a single recommendation?" "you are mistaken," said the gentleman, "he had a great many. he wiped his feet when he came in, and closed the door after him, showing that he was careful. he gave up his seat instantly to that lame old man, showing that he was kind and thoughtful. he took off his cap when he came in, and answered my questions promptly and respectfully, showing that he was polite and gentlemanly. he picked up the book which i had purposely laid upon the floor, and replaced it on the table, while all the rest stepped over it, or shoved it aside; and he waited quietly for his turn, instead of pushing and crowding, showing that he was honest and orderly. when i talked to him, i noticed that his clothes were carefully brushed, his hair in nice order, and his teeth as white as milk; and when he wrote his name, i noticed that his finger-nails were clean, instead of being tipped with jet, like that handsome little fellow's, in the blue jacket. don't you call those letters of recommendation? i do; and i would give more for what i can tell about a boy by using my eyes ten minutes, than for all the fine letters he can bring me." "least of all seeds, greatest of all harvests," seems to be one of the great laws of nature. all life comes from microscopic beginnings. in nature there is nothing small. the microscope reveals as great a world below as the telescope above. all of nature's laws govern the smallest atoms, and a single drop of water is a miniature ocean. "i cannot see that you have made any progress since my last visit," said a gentleman to michael angelo. "but," said the sculptor, "i have retouched this part, polished that, softened that feature, brought out that muscle, given some expression to this lip, more energy to that limb, etc." "but they are trifles!" exclaimed the visitor. "it may be so," replied the great artist, "but trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle." that infinite patience which made michael angelo spend a week in bringing out a muscle in a statue with more vital fidelity to truth, or gerhard dow a day in giving the right effect to a dewdrop on a cabbage leaf, makes all the difference between success and failure. "of what use is it?" people asked with a sneer, when franklin told of his discovery that lightning and electricity are identical. "what is the use of a child?" replied franklin; "it may become a man." in the earliest days of cotton spinning, the small fibres would stick to the bobbins, and make it necessary to stop and clear the machinery. although this loss of time reduced the earnings of the operatives, the father of robert peel noticed that one of his spinners always drew full pay, as his machine never stopped. "how is this, dick?" asked mr. peel one day; "the on-looker tells me your bobbins are always clean." "ay, that they be," replied dick ferguson. "how do you manage it, dick?" "why, you see, meester peel," said the workman, "it is sort o' secret! if i tow'd ye, yo'd be as wise as i am." "that's so," said mr. peel, smiling; "but i'd give you something to know. could you make all the looms work as smoothly as yours?" "ivery one of 'em, meester," replied dick. "well, what shall i give you for your secret?" asked mr. peel, and dick replied, "gi' me a quart of ale every day as i'm in the mills, and i'll tell thee all about it." "agreed," said mr. peel, and dick whispered very cautiously in his ear, "chalk your bobbins!" that was the whole secret, and mr. peel soon shot ahead of all his competitors, for he made machines that would chalk their own bobbins. dick was handsomely rewarded with money instead of beer. his little idea has saved the world millions of dollars. the totality of a life at any moment is the product mainly of little things. trifling choices, insignificant exercises of the will, unimportant acts often repeated,--things seemingly of small account,--these are the thousand tiny sculptors that are carving away constantly at the rude block of our life, giving it shape and feature. indeed the formation of character is much like the work of an artist in stone. the sculptor takes a rough, unshapen mass of marble, and with strong, rapid strokes of mallet and chisel quickly brings into view the rude outline of his design; but after the outline appears then come hours, days, perhaps even years, of patient, minute labor. a novice might see no change in the statue from one day to another; for though the chisel touches the stone a thousand times, it touches as lightly as the fall of a rain-drop, but each touch leaves a mark. the smallest thing becomes respectable when regarded as the commencement of what has advanced or is advancing into magnificence. the crude settlement of romulus would have remained an insignificant circumstance and might have justly sunk into oblivion, if rome had not at length commanded the world. beecher says that men, in their property, are afraid of conflagrations and lightning strokes; but if they were building a wharf in panama, a million madrepores, so small that only the microscope could detect them, would begin to bore the piles down under the water. there would be neither noise nor foam; but in a little while, if a child did but touch the post, over it would fall as if a saw had cut it through. men think, with regard to their conduct, that, if they were to lift themselves up gigantically and commit some crashing sin, they should never be able to hold up their heads; but they will harbor in their souls little sins, which are piercing and eating them away to inevitable ruin. lichens, of themselves of little value, prepare the way for important vegetation. they deposit, in dying, an acid which wears away the rock and prepares the mould necessary for the nourishment of superior plants. it was but a tiny rivulet trickling down the embankment that started the terrible johnstown flood and swept thousands into eternity. one noble heroic act has elevated a nation. franklin's whole career was changed by a torn copy of cotton mather's essays to do good. taking up a stone to throw at a turtle was the turning point in theodore parker's life. as he raised the stone something within him said, "don't do it," and he didn't. he went home and asked his mother what it was in him that said "don't." she told him it was conscience. small things become great when a great soul sees them. a child, when asked why a certain tree grew crooked, answered, "somebody trod upon it when it was a little fellow." by gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation. a little boy in holland saw water trickling from a small hole near the bottom of a dike. he realized that the leak would rapidly become larger if the water was not checked, so he held his hand over the hole for hours on a dark and dismal night until he could attract the attention of passers-by. his name is still held in grateful remembrance in holland. we may tell which way the wind blew before the deluge by marking the ripple and cupping of the rain in the petrified sand now preserved forever. we tell the very path by which gigantic creatures, whom man never saw, walked to the river's edge to find their food. the tears of virgilia and volumnia saved rome from the volscians when nothing else could move the vengeful heart of coriolanus. not even helen of troy, it is said, was beautiful enough to spare the tip of her nose; and if cleopatra's had been an inch shorter mark antony would never have become infatuated with her wonderful charms, and the blemish would have changed the history of the world. anne boleyn's fascinating smile split the great church of rome in twain, and gave a nation an altered destiny. napoleon, who feared not to attack the proudest monarchs in their capitals, shrank from the political influence of one independent woman in private life, madame de staël. it was a little thing for a cow to kick over a lantern left in a shanty, but it laid chicago in ashes, and rendered homeless a hundred thousand people. the discovery of glass was due to a mere accident--the building of a fire on the sand; and the bayonet, first made at bayonne, in france, owes its existence to the fact that a basque regiment, being hard pressed by the enemy, one of the soldiers suggested that, as their ammunition was exhausted, they should fix their long knives into the barrels of their muskets, which was done, and the first bayonet-charge was made. a jest led to a war between two great nations. the presence of a comma in a deed, lost to the owner of an estate five thousand dollars a month for eight months. the battle of corunna was fought and sir john moore's life sacrificed, in , through a dragoon stopping to drink while bearing despatches. "you do no work," said the scissors to the rivet. "where would your work be," said the rivet to the scissors, "if i didn't keep you together?" every day is a little life; and our whole life but a day repeated. those that dare lose a day are dangerously prodigal; those that dare misspend it, desperate. what is the happiness of your life made up of? little courtesies, little kindnesses, pleasant words, genial smiles, a friendly letter, good wishes, and good deeds. one in a million--once in a lifetime--may do a heroic action. we call the large majority of human lives _obscure_. presumptuous that we are! how know we what lives a single thought retained from the dust of nameless graves may have lighted to renown? chapter xiv. courage. quit yourselves like men. -- samuel iv. . cowards have no luck. --elizabeth kulman. he has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear. --emerson. to dare is better than to doubt, for doubt is always grieving; 'tis faith that finds the riddles out; the prize is for believing. --henry burton. --walk boldly and wisely in that light thou hast; there is a hand above will help thee on. --bailey's festus. "have hope! though clouds environ now, and gladness hides her face in scorn, put thou the shadow from thy brow-- no night but hath its morn." "our enemies are before us," exclaimed the spartans at thermopylæ. "and we are before them," was the cool reply of leonidas. "deliver your arms," came the message from xerxes. "come and take them," was the answer leonidas sent back. a persian soldier said: "you will not be able to see the sun for flying javelins and arrows." "then we will fight in the shade," replied a lacedemonian. what wonder that a handful of such men checked the march of the greatest host that ever trod the earth. "the hero," says emerson, "is the man who is immovably centred." darius the great sent ambassadors to the athenians, to demand earth and water, which denoted submission. the athenians threw them into a ditch and told them, there was earth and water enough. "bring back the colors," shouted a captain at the battle of the alma, when an ensign maintained his ground in front, although the men were retreating. "no," cried the ensign, "bring up the men to the colors." "to dare, and again to dare, and without end to dare," was danton's noble defiance to the enemies of france. shakespeare says: "he is not worthy of the honeycomb that shuns the hives because the bees have stings." "it is a bad omen," said eric the red, when his horse slipped and fell on the way to his ship, moored on the coast of greenland, in readiness for a voyage of discovery. "ill-fortune would be mine should i dare venture now upon the sea." so he returned to his house; but his young son leif decided to go, and with a crew of thirty-five men, sailed southward in search of the unknown shore upon which captain biarni had been driven by a storm, while sailing in another viking ship two or three years before. the first land that they saw was probably labrador, a barren, rugged plain. leif called this country heluland, or the land of flat stones. sailing onward many days, he came to a low, level coast thickly covered with woods, on account of which he called the country markland, probably the modern nova scotia. sailing onward, they came to an island which they named vinland, on account of the abundance of delicious wild grapes in the woods. this was in the year . here where the city of newport, r. i., stands, they spent many months, and then returned to greenland with their vessel loaded with grapes and strange kinds of wood. the voyage was successful, and no doubt eric was sorry he had been frightened by the bad omen. "not every vessel that sails from tarshish will bring back the gold of ophir. but shall it therefore rot in the harbor? no! give its sails to the wind!" men who have dared have moved the world, often before reaching the prime of life. it is astonishing what daring to begin and perseverance have enabled even youths to achieve. alexander, who ascended the throne at twenty, had conquered the whole known world before dying at thirty-three. julius cæsar captured eight hundred cities, conquered three hundred nations, and defeated three million men, became a great orator and one of the greatest statesmen known, and still was a young man. washington was appointed adjutant-general at nineteen, was sent at twenty-one as an ambassador to treat with the french, and won his first battle as a colonel at twenty-two. lafayette was made general of the whole french army at twenty. charlemagne was master of france and germany at thirty. condé was only twenty-two when he conquered at rocroi. galileo was but eighteen when he saw the principle of the pendulum in the swinging lamp in the cathedral at pisa. peel was in parliament at twenty-one. gladstone was in parliament before he was twenty-two, and at twenty-four he was a lord of the treasury. elizabeth barrett browning was proficient in greek and latin at twelve; de quincey at eleven. robert browning wrote at eleven poetry of no mean order. cowley, who sleeps in westminster abbey, published a volume of poems at fifteen. n. p. willis won lasting fame as a poet before leaving college. macaulay was a celebrated author before he was twenty-three. luther was but twenty-nine when he nailed his famous thesis to the door of the bishop and defied the pope. nelson was a lieutenant in the british navy before he was twenty. he was but forty-seven when he received his death wound at trafalgar. charles the twelfth was only nineteen when he gained the battle of narva; at thirty-six cortes was the conqueror of mexico; at thirty-two clive had established the british power in india. hannibal, the greatest of military commanders, was only thirty when, at cannæ, he dealt an almost annihilating blow at the republic of rome; and napoleon was only twenty-seven when, on the plains of italy, he out-generaled and defeated, one after another, the veteran marshals of austria. equal courage and resolution are often shown by men who have passed the allotted limit of life. victor hugo and wellington were both in their prime after they had reached the age of threescore years and ten. george bancroft wrote some of his best historical work when he was eighty-five. gladstone ruled england with a strong hand at eighty-four, and was a marvel of literary and scholarly ability. "your grace has not the organ of animal courage largely developed," said a phrenologist, who was examining wellington's head. "you are right," replied the iron duke, "and but for my sense of duty i should have retreated in my first fight." that first fight, on an indian field, was one of the most terrible on record. grant never knew when he was beaten. when told that he was surrounded by the enemy at belmont, he quietly replied: "well, then, we must cut our way out." when general jackson was a judge and was holding court in a small settlement, a border ruffian, a murderer and desperado, came into the court-room with brutal violence and interrupted the court. the judge ordered him to be arrested. the officer did not dare approach him. "call a posse," said the judge, "and arrest him." but they also shrank with fear from the ruffian. "call me, then," said jackson; "this court is adjourned for five minutes." he left the bench, walked straight up to the man, and with his eagle eye actually cowed the ruffian, who dropped his weapons, afterward saying: "there was something in his eye i could not resist." lincoln never shrank from espousing an unpopular cause when he believed it to be right. at the time when it almost cost a young lawyer his bread and butter to defend the fugitive slave, and when other lawyers had refused, lincoln would always plead the cause of the unfortunate whenever an opportunity presented. "go to lincoln," people would say, when these bounded fugitives were seeking protection; "he's not afraid of any cause, if it's right." abraham lincoln's boyhood was one long struggle with poverty, with little education and no influential friends. when at last he had begun the practice of law it required no little daring to cast his fortune with the weaker side in politics, and thus imperil what small reputation he had gained. only the most sublime moral courage could have sustained him as president to hold his ground against hostile criticism and a long train of disaster; to issue the emancipation proclamation; to support grant and stanton against the clamor of the politicians and the press; and through it all to do the right as god gave him to see the right. "doubt indulged becomes doubt realized." to determine to do anything is half the battle. "to think a thing is impossible is to make it so." "courage is victory, timidity is defeat." don't waste time dreaming of obstacles you may never encounter, or in crossing bridges you have not reached. don't fool with a nettle! grasp with firmness if you would rob it of its sting. to half will and to hang forever in the balance is to lose your grip on life. execute your resolutions immediately. thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried. does competition trouble you? work away; what is your competitor but a man? _conquer your place in the world_, for all things serve a brave soul. combat difficulty manfully; sustain misfortune bravely; endure poverty nobly; encounter disappointment courageously. the influence of the brave man is a magnetism which creates an epidemic of noble zeal in all about him. every day sends to the grave obscure men, who have only remained in obscurity because their timidity has prevented them from making a first effort; and who, if they could have been induced to begin, would in all probability have gone great lengths in the career of usefulness and fame. "no great deed is done," says george eliot, "by falterers who ask for certainty." a mouse that dwelt near the abode of a great magician was kept in such constant distress by its fear of a cat that the magician, taking pity on it, turned it into a cat itself. immediately it began to suffer from its fear of a dog, so the magician turned it into a dog. then it began to suffer from fear of a tiger, and the magician turned it into a tiger. then it began to suffer from its fear of huntsmen, and the magician, in disgust, said, "be a mouse again. as you have only the heart of a mouse it is impossible to help you by giving you the body of a nobler animal." and the poor creature again became a mouse. young commodore oliver h. perry, not twenty-eight years old, was intrusted with the plan to gain control of lake erie. with great energy perry directed the construction of nine ships, carrying fifty-four guns, and conquered commodore barclay, a veteran of european navies, with six vessels, carrying sixty-three guns. perry had no experience in naval battles before this. to believe a business impossible is the way to make it so. feasible projects often miscarry through despondency, and are strangled at birth by a cowardly imagination. a ship on a lee shore stands out to sea to escape shipwreck. shrink and you will be despised. one of napoleon's drummer boys won the battle of arcola. napoleon's little army of fourteen thousand men had fought fifty thousand austrians for seventy-two hours; the austrians' position enabled them to sweep the bridge of arcola, which the french had gained and which they must hold to win the battle. the drummer boy, on the shoulders of his sergeant (who swam across the river with him), beat the drum all the way across the river, and when on the opposite end of the bridge he beat his drum so vigorously that the austrians, remembering the terrible french onslaught of the day before, fled in terror, thinking the french army was advancing upon them. napoleon dated his great confidence in himself from this drum. this boy's heroic act was represented in stone on the front of the pantheon of paris. two days before the battle of jena napoleon said: "my lads, you must not fear death: when soldiers brave death they drive him into the enemy's ranks." arago says, in his autobiography, that when he was puzzled and discouraged with difficulties he met with in his early studies in mathematics some words he found on the waste leaf of his text-book caught his attention and interested him. he found it to be a short letter from d'alembert to a young person, disheartened like himself, and read: "go on, sir, go on. the difficulties you meet with will resolve themselves as you advance. proceed and light will dawn and shine with increasing clearness on your path." "that maxim," he said, "was my greatest master in mathematics." overtaken near a rocky coast by a sudden storm of great violence, the captain of a french brig gave orders to put out to sea; but in spite of all the efforts of the crew they could not steer clear of the rocks, and alter struggling for a whole day they felt a violent shock, accompanied by a horrible crash. the boats were lowered, but only to be swept away by the waves. as a last resort the captain proposed that some sailors should swim ashore with a rope, but not a man would volunteer. "captain," said the little twelve-year-old cabin boy, jacques, timidly, "you don't wish to expose the lives of good sailors like these; it does not matter what becomes of a little cabin boy. give me a ball of strong string, which will unroll as i go on; fasten one end around my body, and i promise you that within an hour the rope shall be well fastened to the shore or i will perish in the attempt." before anyone could stop him he leaped overboard. his head was soon seen like a black point rising above the waves and then it disappeared in the distance and mist, and but for the occasional pull upon the ball of cord all would have thought him dead. at length it fell as if slackened and the sailors looked at one another in silence, when a quick, violent pull, followed by a second and a third, told that jacques had reached the shore. a strong rope was fastened to the cord and pulled to the shore, and by its aid many of the sailors were rescued. in miss prudence crandall, a quaker schoolmistress of canterbury, conn., opened her school to negro children as well as to whites. the whole place was thrown into uproar; town meetings were called to denounce her; the most vindictive and inhuman measures were taken to isolate the school from the support of the townspeople; stores and churches were closed against teacher and pupils; public conveyances were denied them; physicians would not attend them; miss crandall's own friends dared not visit her; the house was assailed with rotten eggs and stones and finally set on fire. yet the cause was righteous and the opposition proved vain and fruitless. public opinion is often radically wrong. staunch old admiral farragut--he of the true heart and the iron will--said to another officer of the navy, "dupont, do you know why you didn't get into charleston with your ironclads?" "oh, it was because the channel was so crooked." "no, dupont, it was not that." "well, the rebel fire was perfectly horrible." "yes, but it wasn't that." "what was it, then?" "_it was because you didn't believe you could go in._" "i have tried lord howe on most important occasions. he never asked me _how_ he was to execute any service entrusted to his charge, but always went straight forward and _did it_." so answered sir edward hawke, when his appointment of howe for some peculiarly responsible duty was criticized on the ground that howe was the junior admiral in the fleet. there is a tradition among the indians that manitou was traveling in the invisible world and came upon a hedge of thorns, then saw wild beasts glare upon him from the thicket, and after awhile stood before an impassable river. as he determined to proceed, the thorns turned out phantoms, the wild beasts powerless ghosts, and the river only a shadow. when we march on obstacles disappear. many distinguished foreign and american statesmen were present at a fashionable dinner party where wine was freely poured, but schuyler colfax, then vice-president of the united states, declined to drink from a proffered cup. "colfax does not drink," sneered a senator who had already taken too much. "you are right," said the vice-president, "i dare not." a western party recently invited the surviving union and confederate officers to give an account of the bravest act observed by each during the civil war. colonel thomas w. higginson said that at a dinner at beaufort, s. c., where wine flowed freely and ribald jests were bandied, dr. miner, a slight, boyish fellow who did not drink, was told that he could not go until he had drunk a toast, told a story, or sung a song. he replied: "i cannot sing, but i will give a toast, although i must drink it in water. it is 'our mothers.'" the men were so affected and ashamed that some took him by the hand and thanked him for displaying courage greater than that required to walk up to the mouth of a cannon. when grant was in houston several years ago, he was given a rousing reception. naturally hospitable, and naturally inclined to like a man of grant's make-up, the houstonites determined to go beyond any other southern city in the way of a banquet and other manifestations of their good-will and hospitality. they made great preparations for the dinner, the committee taking great pains to have the finest wines that could be procured for the table at night. when the time came to serve the wine, the head-waiter went first to grant. without a word the general quietly turned down all the glasses at his plate. this movement was a great surprise to the texans, but they were equal to the occasion. without a single word being spoken, every man along the line of the long tables turned his glasses down, and there was not a drop of wine taken that night. don't be like uriah heep, begging everybody's pardon for taking the liberty of being in the world. there is nothing attractive in timidity, nothing lovable in fear. both are deformities and are repulsive. manly courage is dignified and graceful. the worst manners in the world are those of persons conscious "of being beneath their position, and trying to conceal it or make up for it by style." it takes courage for a young man to stand firmly erect while others are bowing and fawning for praise and power. it takes courage to wear threadbare clothes while your comrades dress in broadcloth. it takes courage to remain in honest poverty when others grow rich by fraud. it takes courage to say "no" squarely when those around you say "yes." it takes courage to do your duty in silence and obscurity while others prosper and grow famous although neglecting sacred obligations. it takes courage to unmask your true self, to show your blemishes to a condemning world, and to pass for what you really are. chapter xv. will-power. in the moral world there is nothing impossible if we can bring a thorough will to do it. --w. humboldt. it is firmness that makes the gods on our side. --voltaire. stand firm, don't flutter. --franklin. people do not lack strength they lack will. --victor hugo. perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of countenance and make a seeming difficulty give way. --jeremy collier. when a firm, decisive spirit is recognized, it is curious to see how the space clears around a man and leaves him room and freedom. --john foster. "do you know," asked balzac's father, "that in literature a man must be either a king or a beggar?" "very well," replied his son, "_i will be a king._" after ten years of struggle with hardship and poverty, he won success as an author. "why do you repair that magistrate's bench with such great care?" asked a bystander of a carpenter who was taking unusual pains. "because i wish to make it easy against the time when i come to sit on it myself," replied the other. he did sit on that bench as a magistrate a few years later. "_i will be marshal of france and a great general_," exclaimed a young french officer as he paced his room with hands tightly clenched. he became a successful general and a marshal of france. "there is so much power in faith," says bulwer, "even when faith is applied but to things human and earthly, that let a man but be firmly persuaded that he is born to do some day, what at the moment seems impossible, and it is fifty to one but what he does it before he dies." there is about as much chance of idleness and incapacity winning real success, or a high position in life, as there would be in producing a paradise lost by shaking up promiscuously the separate words of webster's dictionary, and letting them fall at random on the floor. fortune smiles upon those who roll up their sleeves and put their shoulders to the wheel; upon men who are not afraid of dreary, dry, irksome drudgery, men of nerve and grit who do not turn aside for dirt and detail. "is there one whom difficulties dishearten?" asked john hunter. "he will do little. is there one who will conquer? that kind of a man never fails." "circumstances," says milton, "have rarely favored famous men. they have fought their way to triumph through all sorts of opposing obstacles." "we have a half belief," said emerson, "that the person is possible who can counterpoise all other persons. we believe that there may be a man _who is a match for events_,--one who never found his match,--against whom other men being dashed are broken,--one who can give you any odds and beat you." the simple truth is that a will strong enough to keep a man continually striving for things not wholly beyond his powers will carry him in time very far toward his chosen goal. at nineteen bayard taylor walked to philadelphia, thirty miles, to find a publisher for fifteen of his poems. he wanted to see them printed in a book; but no publisher would undertake it. he returned to his home whistling, however, showing that his courage and resolution had not abated. in europe he was often forced to live on twenty cents a day for weeks on account of his poverty. he returned to london with only thirty cents left. he tried to sell a poem of twelve hundred lines, which he had in his knapsack, but no publisher wanted it. of that time he wrote: "my situation was about as hopeless as it is possible to conceive." but his will defied circumstances and he rose above them. for two years he lived on two hundred and fifty dollars a year in london, earning every dollar of it with his pen. his untimely death in , at fifty-four, when minister to berlin, was lamented by the learned and great of all countries. we are told of a young new york inventor who about twenty years ago spent every dollar he was worth in an experiment, which, if successful, would introduce his invention to public notice and insure his fortune, and, what he valued more, his usefulness. the next morning the daily papers heaped unsparing ridicule upon him. hope for the future seemed vain. he looked around the shabby room where his wife, a delicate little woman, was preparing breakfast. he was without a penny. he seemed like a fool in his own eyes; all these years of hard work were wasted. he went into his chamber, sat down, and buried his face in his hands. at length, with a fiery heat flashing through his body, he stood erect. "it _shall_ succeed!" he said, shutting his teeth. his wife was crying over the papers when he went back. "they are very cruel," she said. "they don't understand." "i'll make them understand," he replied cheerfully. "it was a fight for six years," he said afterward. "poverty, sickness and contempt followed me. i had nothing left but the _dogged determination_ that it should succeed." it did succeed. the invention was a great and useful one. the inventor is now a prosperous and happy man. napoleon was a terrible example of what the power of will can accomplish. he always threw his whole force of body and mind direct upon his work. imbecile rulers and the nations they governed went down before him in succession. he was told that the alps stood in the way of his armies,--"there shall be no alps," he said, and the road across the simplon was constructed, through a district formerly almost inaccessible. "impossible," said he, "is a word only to be found in the dictionary of fools." he was a man who toiled terribly; sometimes employing and exhausting four secretaries at a time. he spared no one, not even himself. his influence inspired other men, and put a new life into them. "i made my generals out of mud," he said. to think we are able is almost to be so--to determine upon attainment, is frequently attainment itself. thus, earnest resolution has often seemed to have about it almost a savor of omnipotence. the strength of suwarrow's character lay in his power of willing, and, like most resolute persons, he preached it up as a system. before pizarro, d'almagro and de luque obtained any associates or arms or soldiers, and with a very imperfect knowledge of the country or the powers they were to encounter, they celebrated a solemn mass in one of the great churches, dedicating themselves to the conquest of peru. the people expressed their contempt at such a monstrous project, and were shocked at such sacrilege. but these decided men continued the service and afterward retired for their great preparation with an entire insensibility to the expressions of contempt. their firmness was absolutely invincible. the world has deplored the results of this expedition, but there is a great lesson for us in the firmness of decision of its leaders. such firmness would keep to its course and retain its purpose unshaken amidst the ruins of the world. at the battle of marengo the french army was supposed to be defeated; but, while bonaparte and his staff were considering their next move, dessaix suggested that there was yet time to retrieve their disaster, as it was only about the middle of the afternoon. napoleon rallied his men, renewed the fight, and won a great victory over the austrians, though the unfortunate dessaix lost his own life on that field. what has chance ever done in the world? has it built any cities? has it invented any telephones, any telegraphs? has it built any steamships, established any universities, any asylums, any hospitals? was there any chance in cæsar's crossing the rubicon? what had chance to do with napoleon's career, with wellington's, or grant's, or von moltke's? every battle was won before it was begun. what had luck to do with thermopylæ, trafalgar, gettysburg? our successes we ascribe to ourselves; our failures to destiny. a vacillating man, no matter what his abilities, is invariably pushed to the wall in the race of life by a determined will. it is he who resolves to succeed, and who at every fresh rebuff begins resolutely again, that reaches the goal. the shores of fortune are covered with the stranded wrecks of men of brilliant ability, but who have wanted courage, faith and decision, and have therefore perished in sight of more resolute but less capable adventurers, who succeeded in making port. hundreds of men go to their graves in obscurity, who have been obscure only because they lacked the pluck to make a first effort, and who, could they only have resolved to begin, would have astonished the world by their achievements and successes. the fact is, as sydney smith has well said, that in order to do anything in this world that is worth doing, we must not stand shivering on the bank, and thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can. is not this a grand privilege of man, immortal man, that though he may not be able to stir a finger; that though a moth may crush him; that merely by a righteous will, he is raised above the stars; that by it he originates a good in the universe, which the universe could not annihilate; a good which can defy extinction, though all created energies of intelligence or matter were combined against it? a man whose moral nature is ascendant is not the subject, but the superior of circumstances. he is free; nay, more, he is a king; and though this sovereignty may have been won by many desperate battles, once on the throne, and holding the sceptre with a firm grasp, he has a royalty of which neither time nor accident can strip him. what can you do with a man who has an invincible purpose in him; who never knows when he is beaten; and who, when his legs are shot off, will fight on the stumps? difficulties and opposition do not daunt him. he thrives upon persecution; it only stimulates him to more determined endeavor. give a man the alphabet and an iron will, and who shall place bounds to his achievements! imprison a galileo for his discoveries in science, and he will experiment with the straw in his cell. deprive euler of his eyesight, and he but studies harder upon mental problems, thus developing marvelous powers of mathematical calculation. lock up the poor bedford tinker in jail, and he will write the finest allegory in the world, or will leave his imperishable thoughts upon the walls of his cell. burn the body of wycliffe and throw the ashes into the severn; but they will be swept to the ocean, which will carry them, permeated with his principles, to all lands. _the world always listens to a man with a will in him._ you might as well snub the sun as such men as bismarck and grant. hope would storm the castle of despair; it gives courage when despondency would give up the battle of life. he is the best doctor who can implant _hope_ and courage in the human soul. so he is the greatest man who can inspire us to the grandest achievements. "our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky gives us free scope; and only backward pulls our slow designs when we ourselves are dull." "how much i could do if i only tried." chapter xvi. guard your weak point. he that is slow to anger is better than the mighty: and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city. --bible. the first and best of victories is for a man to conquer himself: to be conquered by himself is, of all things, the most shameful and vile. --plato. the worst education which teaches self-denial is better than the best which teaches everything else and not that. --john sterling. most powerful is he who has himself in his own power. --seneca. the energy which issues in growth, or assimilates knowledge, must originate in self and be self-directed. --thomas j. morgan. the foes with which they waged their strife were passion, self and sin; the victories that laureled life, were fought and won within. --edward h. dewart. "i'll sign it after awhile," a drunkard would reply, when repeatedly urged by his wife to sign the pledge; "but i don't like to break off at once, the best way is to get used to a thing." "very well, old man," said his wife, "see if you don't fall into a hole one of these days, with no one to help you out." not long after, when intoxicated, he did fall into a shallow well, but his shouts for help were fortunately heard by his wife. "didn't i tell you so?" she asked. "it's lucky i was in hearing or you might have drowned." he took hold of the bucket and she tugged at the windlass; but when he was near the top her grasp slipped and down he went into the water again. this was repeated until he screamed: "look here, you're doing that on purpose, i know you are." "well, now, i am," admitted the wife. "don't you remember telling me it's best to get used to a thing by degrees? i'm afraid if i bring you up sudden, you would not find it wholesome." finding that his case was becoming desperate, he promised to sign the pledge at once. his wife raised him out immediately, but warned him that if ever he became intoxicated and fell into the well again, she would leave him there. a man captured a young tiger and resolved to make a pet of it. it grew up like a kitten, fond and gentle. there was no evidence of its savage, bloodthirsty nature, and it seemed perfectly harmless. but one day while the master was playing with his pet, the rough tongue upon his hand started the blood from a scratch. the moment the beast tasted blood, his ferocious tiger nature was roused, and he rushed upon his master to tear him to pieces. sometimes the appetite for drink, which was thought to be buried years ago, is roused by the taste or the smell of "the devil in solution," and the wretched victim finds himself a helpless slave to the passion which he thought dead. when a young man, hugh miller once drank the two glasses of whiskey which fell to his share at the usual treat of drink of the masons with whom he worked. on reaching home he tried to read bacon's essays, his favorite book, but he could not distinguish the letters or comprehend the meaning. "the condition into which i had brought myself was, i felt, one of degradation," said he. "i had sunk, by my own act, for the time, to a lower level of intelligence than that on which it was my privilege to be placed; and though the state could have been no very favorable one for forming a resolution, i in that hour determined that i should never again sacrifice my capacity of intellectual enjoyment to a drinking usage; and with god's help i was enabled to hold by the determination." in a certain manufacturing town an employer one saturday paid to his workmen $ in crisp new bills that had been secretly marked. on monday $ of those identical bills were deposited in the bank by the saloon-keepers. when the fact was made known, the workmen were so startled by it that they helped to make the place a no-license town. the times would not be so "hard" for the workmen if the saloons did not take in so much of their wages. if they would organize a strike against the saloons, they would find the result to be better than an increase of wages, and to include an increase of savings. how often we might read the following sign over the threshold of a youthful life: "for sale, grand opportunities, for a song;" "golden chances for beer;" "magnificent opportunities exchanged for a little sensual enjoyment;" "for exchange, a beautiful home, devoted wife, lovely children, for drink;" "for sale, cheap, all the magnificent possibilities of a brilliant life, a competence, for one chance in a thousand at the gambling table;" "for exchange, bright prospects, a brilliant outlook, a cultivated intelligence, a college education, a skilled hand, an observant eye, valuable experience, great tact, all exchanged for rum, for a muddled brain, a bewildered intellect, a shattered nervous system, poisoned blood, a diseased body, for fatty degeneration of the heart, for bright's disease, for a drunkard's liver." with almost palsied hand, at a temperance meeting, john b. gough signed the pledge. for six days and nights in a wretched garret, without a mouthful of food, with scarcely a moment's sleep, he fought the fearful battle with appetite. weak, famished, almost dying, he crawled into the sunlight; but he had conquered the demon which had almost killed him. gough used to describe the struggles of a man who tried to leave off using tobacco. he threw away what he had, and said that was the end of it; but no, it was only the beginning of it. he would chew camomile, gentian, tooth-picks, but it was of no use. he bought another plug of tobacco and put it in his pocket. he wanted a chew awfully, but he looked at it and said, "you are a _weed_, and i am a _man_. i'll master you if i die for it;" and he did, while carrying it in his pocket daily. there was an abbot that desired a piece of ground that lay conveniently for him. the owner refused to sell; yet with much persuasion he was contented to let it. the abbot hired it and covenanted only to farm it for one crop. he had his bargain, and sowed it with acorns--a crop that lasted three hundred years. so satan asks to get possession of our souls by asking us to permit some small sin to enter, some one wrong that seems of no great account. but when once he has entered and planted the seeds and beginnings of evil, he holds his ground. "teach self-denial and make its practice pleasurable," says walter scott, "and you create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer." thomas a. edison was once asked why he was a total abstainer. he said, "i thought i had a better use for my head." byron could write poetry easily, for it was merely indulging his natural propensity; but to curb his temper, soothe his discontent, and control his animal appetites was a very different thing. at all events, it seemed so great to him that he never seriously attempted self-conquest. let every youth who would not be shipwrecked on life's voyage cultivate this one great virtue, "self-control." there is nothing so important to a youth starting out in life as a thoroughly trained and cultivated will; everything depends upon it. if he has it, he will succeed; if he does not have it, he will fail. "the first and best of victories," says plato, "is for a man to conquer himself; to be conquered by himself is, of all things, the most shameful and vile." "silence," says zimmerman, "is the safest response for all the contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy." "he is a fool who cannot be angry," says english, "but he is a wise man who will not." seneca, one of the greatest of the ancient philosophers, said that "we should every night call ourselves to account. what infirmity have i mastered to-day? what passion opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired?" and then he follows with the profound truth that "our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift." if you cannot at first control your anger, learn to control your tongue, which, like fire, is a good servant, but a hard master. it does no good to get angry. some sins have a seeming compensation or apology, a present gratification of some sort, but anger has none. a man feels no better for it. it is really a torment, and when the storm of passion has cleared away, it leaves one to see that he has been a fool. and he has made himself a fool in the eyes of others too. the wife of socrates, xanthippe, was a woman of a most fantastical and furious spirit. at one time, having vented all the reproaches upon socrates her fury could suggest, he went out and sat before the door. his calm and unconcerned behavior but irritated her so much the more; and, in the excess of her rage, she ran upstairs and emptied a vessel upon his head, at which he only laughed and said that "so much thunder must needs produce a shower." alcibiades, his friend, talking with him about his wife, told him he wondered how he could bear such an everlasting scold in the same house with him. he replied, "i have so accustomed myself to expect it, that it now offends me no more than the noise of carriages in the street." it is said of socrates, that whether he was teaching the rules of an exact morality, whether he was answering his corrupt judges, or was receiving sentence of death, or swallowing the poison, he was still the same man; that is to say, calm, quiet, undisturbed, intrepid--in a word, wise to the last. "it is not enough to have great qualities," says la rochefoucauld; "we should also have the management of them." no man can call himself educated until every voluntary muscle obeys his will. "you ask whether it would not be manly to resent a great injury," said eardley wilmot; "i answer that it would be manly to resent it, but it would be godlike to forgive it." "he who, with strong passions, remains chaste; he who, keenly sensitive, with manly power of indignation in him, can be provoked, and yet restrain himself and forgive--these are strong men, the spiritual heroes." to feel provoked or exasperated at a trifle, when the nerves are exhausted, is, perhaps, natural to us in our imperfect state. but why put into the shape of speech the annoyance which, once uttered, is remembered; which may burn like a blistering wound, or rankle like a poisoned arrow? if a child be crying or a friend capricious, or a servant unreasonable, be careful what you say. do not speak while you feel the impulse of anger, for you will be almost certain to say too much, to say more than your cooler judgment will approve, and to speak in a way that you will regret. be silent until the "sweet by and by," when you will be calm, rested, and self-controlled. but self-respect must be accompanied by self-conquest, or our strong feelings may prove but runaway horses. he who would command others must first learn to obey, and he who would command his own powers must learn to be submissive to the still small voice within. discipline the passions, curb pride and impatience, restrain all hasty impulses. deny yourself the gratification of any desire not sanctioned by reason. shame and its consequent degradation follow the loss of our own good opinion rather than the esteem of others. too many yield in the perpetual conflict between temptation to gratify the coarser appetites and aspiration for the good, the true, and the beautiful. voices unheard by those around us whisper "don't," but too often self-respect is lost, the will lies prostrate, and the debauch goes on. such battles must be fought by all; be ours the victory born of self-control, aided by that heaven which always helps him who prays while putting his own shoulder to the wheel. no man had a better heart or more thoroughly hated oppression than edmund burke. he possessed neither experience in affairs, nor a tranquil judgment, nor the rule over his own spirit, so that his genius, under the impulse of his bewildering passions, wrought much evil to his country and to europe, even while he rendered noble service to the cause of commercial freedom, to ireland, and to america. burns could not resist the temptation to utter his clever sarcasms at another's expense, and one of his biographers has said that he made a hundred enemies for every ten jokes he made. but burns could no more control his appetite than his tongue. "thus thoughtless follies laid him low and stained his name." xanthus, the philosopher, told his servant that on the morrow he was going to have some friends to dine, and asked him to get the best thing he could find in the market. the philosopher and his guests sat down the next day at the table. they had nothing but tongue--four or five courses of tongue--tongue cooked in this way, and tongue cooked in that way, and the philosopher lost his patience, and said to his servant, "didn't i tell you to get the best thing in the market?" he said, "i did get the best thing in the market. isn't the tongue the organ of sociality, the organ of eloquence, the organ of kindness, the organ of worship?" then xanthus said, "to-morrow i want you to get the worst thing in the market." and on the morrow the philosopher sat at the table, and there was nothing there but tongue--four or five courses of tongue--tongue in this shape, and tongue in that shape--and the philosopher again lost his patience, and said, "didn't i tell you to get the worst thing in the market?" the servant replied, "i did; for isn't the tongue the organ of blasphemy, the organ of defamation, the organ of lying?" "i can reform my people," said peter the great, "but i cannot reform myself." he forbade all russians to wear beards, and to quell the insurrection which resulted, he had revolters beheaded. with a hatchet he began the ghastly work. he had his own son beheaded. he who cannot resist temptation is not a man. he is wanting in the highest attributes of humanity. the honor and nobleness of the old "knight-errantry" consisted in defending the innocence of men and protecting the chastity of women against the assaults of others. but the truer and nobler knighthood protects the property and the character, the innocence and the chastity of others against one's self. we should all be posted upon our weak points, for after all there are many emergencies in life when these weak points, not our strong ones, will measure our manhood and our strength. many a woman whom a mouse would frighten out of her wits would not shrink from assisting in terrible surgical operations in our city or war hospitals, and many an officer and soldier who would walk up to the cannon's mouth without a tremor in battle, would not dare to say his soul was his own in a society parlor. many a great statesman has quailed before the ringer of scorn of a fellow-congressman, and has been completely cowed by a hiss from the gallery or a ridiculing paragraph in a newspaper. we all have tender spots, weak spots, and a man can never know his strength who does not study his weaknesses. "violent passions and ardent feelings are seldom found united with complete self-command; but when they are they form the strongest possible character, for there is all the power of clear thought and cool judgment impelled by the resistless energy of feeling. this combination washington possessed; for in his impetuosity there was no foolish rashness, and in his passion no injustice. besides, whatever violence there might be within, the explosion seldom came to the surface, and when it did it was arrested at once by the stern mandate of his will. he never lost the mastery of himself in any emergency, and in 'ruling his spirit' showed himself greater than in 'taking a city.' "it is one of the astonishing things in his life that, amid the perfect chaos of feeling into which he was thrown,--amid the distracted counsels and still more distracted affairs that surrounded him,--he never once lost the perfect equilibrium of his own mind. the contagion of fear and doubt and despair could not touch him. he did not seem susceptible to the common influences which affect men. his soul poised on its own centre, reposed calmly there through all the storms that beat for seven years on his noble breast. the ingratitude and folly of those who should have been his allies, the insults of his foes, and the frowns of fortune never provoked him into a rash act, or deluded him into a single error." horace mann says that there must be a time when the vista of the future, with all its possibilities of glory and of shame, first opens to the vision of youth. then is he summoned to make his choice between truth and treachery; between honor and dishonor; between purity and profligacy; between moral life and moral death. and as he doubts or balances between the heavenward or hellward course; as he struggles to rise or consents to fall; is there in all the universe of god a spectacle of higher exultation or of deeper pathos? within him are the appetites of a brute and the attributes of an angel; and when these meet in council to make up the roll of his destiny and seal his fate, shall the beast hound out the seraph? shall the young man, now conscious of the largeness of his sphere and of the sovereignty of his choice, wed the low ambitions of the world, and seek, with their emptiness, to fill his immortal desires? because he has a few animal wants that must be supplied, shall he become all animal,--an epicure and an inebriate,--and blasphemously make it the first doctrine of his catechism,--"the chief end of man?"--to glorify his stomach and enjoy it? because it is the law of self-preservation that he shall provide for himself, and the law of religion that he shall provide for his family, when he has one, must he, therefore, cut away all the bonds of humanity that bind him to his race, forswear charity, crush down every prompting of benevolence, and if he can have the palace and equipage of the prince, and the table of a sybarite, become a blind man, and a deaf man, and a dumb man, when he walks the streets where hunger moans and nakedness shivers? the strong man is the one who ever keeps himself under strict discipline, who never once allows the lower to usurp the place of the higher in him; who makes his passions his servants and never allows them to be his master; who is ever led by his mind and not by his inclinations. he drills and disciplines his desires and keeps the roots of his life under ground, and never allows them to interfere with his character. he is never the slave of his inclinations, nor the sport of impulse. he is the commander of himself and heads his ship due north even in the wildest tempests of passion. he is never the slave of his strongest desire. a noted teacher has said that the propensities and habits are as teachable as latin and greek, while they are infinitely more essential to happiness. we are very largely the creatures of our wills. by constantly looking on the bright side of things, by viewing everything hopefully, by setting the face as a flint every hour of every day toward all that is harmonious and beautiful in life, and refusing to listen to the discord or to look at the ugly side of life, by constantly directing the thought toward what is noble, grand and true, we can soon form habits which will develop into a beautiful character, a harmonious and well-rounded life. we are creatures of habit, and by knowing the laws of its formation we can, in a little while, build up a network of habit about us, which will protect us from most of the ugly, selfish and degrading things of life. in fact, the only real happiness and unalloyed satisfaction we get out of life, is the product of self-control. it is the great guardian of all the virtues, without which none of them is safe. it is the sentinel, which stands on guard at the door of life, to admit friends and exclude enemies. "i call that mind free," says channing, "which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as an angel from heaven, which, whilst consulting others, inquires still more of the oracle within; itself, and uses instructions from abroad, not to supersede, but to quicken and exalt its own energies. i call that mind free which is not passively framed by outward circumstances, which is not swept away by the torrent of events, which is not the creature of accidental impulse, but which bends events to its own improvement, and acts from an inward spring, from immutable principles which it has deliberately espoused. i call that mind free which protects itself against the usurpations of society, which does not cower to human opinion, which feels itself accountable to a higher tribunal than man's, which respects a higher law than fashion, which respects itself too much to be the slave or tool of the many or the few. i call that mind free which through confidence in god and in the power of virtue has cast off all fear but that of wrong-doing, which no menace or peril can enthrall, which is calm in the midst of tumults, and possesses itself though all else be lost. i call that mind free which resists the bondage of habit, which does not mechanically repeat itself and copy the past, which does not live on its old virtues, which does not enslave itself to precise rules, but which forgets what is behind, listens for new and higher monitions of conscience, and rejoices to pour itself forth in fresh and higher exertions. i call that mind free which is jealous of its own freedom, which guards itself from being merged in others, which guards its empire over itself as nobler than the empire of the world." chapter xvii. stick. patience is the courage of the conqueror; it is the virtue, _par excellence_, of man against destiny, of the one against the world, and of the soul against matter. therefore this is the courage of the gospel; and its importance, in a social view--its importance to races and institutions--cannot be too earnestly inculcated. --bulwer. perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of countenance, and make a seeming impossibility give way. --jeremy collier. to bear is to conquer fate. --campbell. the nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blenches, the thought that never wanders,--these are the masters of victory. --burke. let us, then, be up and doing, with a heart for any fate; still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labor and to wait. --longfellow. "how long did it take you to learn to play?" asked a young man of geradini. "twelve hours a day for twenty years," replied the great violinist. layman beecher's father, when asked how long it took him to write his celebrated sermon on the "government of god," replied, "about forty years." "if you will study a year i will teach you to sing well," said an italian music teacher to a pupil who wished to know what can be hoped for with study; "if two years, you may excel. if you will practice the scale constantly for three years, i will make you the best tenor in italy; if for four years, you may have the world at your feet." perceiving that caffarelli had a fine tenor voice and unusual talent, a teacher offered to give him a thorough musical education free of charge, provided the pupil would promise never to complain of the course of instruction given. the first year the master gave nothing but the scales, compelling the youth to practice them over and over again. the second year it was the same, the third, and the fourth, the conditions of the bargain being the only reply to any question in relation to a change from such monotonous drill. the fifth year the teacher introduced chromatics and thorough bass, and, at its close, when caffarelli looked for something more brilliant and interesting, the master said: "go, my son, i can teach you nothing more. you are the first singer of italy and of the world." the _mastery_ of scales and diatonics gave him power to sing anything. "keep at the helm," said president porter; "steer your own ship, and remember that the great art of commanding is to take a fair share of the work. strike out. assume your own position. put potatoes in a cart, over a rough road, and the small ones go to the bottom." "never depend upon your genius," said john ruskin, in the words of joshua reynolds; "if you have talent, industry will improve it; if you have none, industry will supply the deficiency." "the only merit to which i lay claim," said hugh miller, "is that of patient research--a merit in which whoever wills may rival or surpass me; and this humble faculty of patience when rightly developed may lead to more extraordinary development of ideas than even genius itself." titian, the greatest master of color the world has seen, used to say: "white, red and black, these are all the colors that a painter needs, but he must know how to use them." it took fifty years of constant, hard practice to bring him to his full mastery. "how much grows everywhere if we do but wait!" exclaims carlyle. "not a difficulty but can transfigure itself into a triumph; not even a deformity, but if our own soul have imprinted worth on it, will grow dear to us." persistency is characteristic of all men who have accomplished anything great. they may lack in some other particular, have many weaknesses, or eccentricities, but the quality of persistence is never absent in a successful man. no matter what opposition he meets or what discouragements overtake him, he is always persistent. drudgery cannot disgust him, obstacles cannot discourage him, labor cannot weary him. he will persist, no matter what comes or what goes; it is a part of his nature. he could almost as easily stop breathing. it is not so much brilliancy of intellect or fertility of resource as persistency of effort, constancy of purpose, that makes a great man. persistency always gives confidence. everybody believes in the man who persists. he may meet misfortunes, sorrows and reverses, but everybody believes that he will ultimately triumph because they know there is no keeping him down. "does he keep at it, is he persistent?" is the question which the world asks of a man. even the man with small ability will often succeed if he has the quality of persistence, where a genius without persistence would fail. "how hard i worked at that tremendous shorthand, and all improvement appertaining to it," said dickens. "i will only add to what i have already written of my perseverance at this time of my life, and of a patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured within me, and which i know to be the strong point of my character, if it have any strength at all, that there, on looking back, i find the source of my success." "i am sorry to say that i don't think this is in your line," said woodfall the reporter, after sheridan had made his first speech in parliament. "you had better have stuck to your former pursuits." with head on his hand sheridan mused for a time, then looked up and said, "it is in me, and it shall come out of me." from the same man came that harangue against warren hastings which the orator fox called the best speech ever made in the house of commons. "the man who is perpetually hesitating which of two things he will do first," said william wirt, "will do neither." the man who resolves, but suffers his resolution to be changed by the first counter-suggestion of a friend--who fluctuates from opinion to opinion, from plan to plan, and veers like a weather-cock to every point of the compass, with every breath of caprice that blows, can never accomplish anything great or useful. instead of being progressive in anything, he will be at best stationary, and, more probably, retrograde in all. great writers have ever been noted for their tenacity of purpose. their works have not been flung off from minds aglow with genius, but have been elaborated and elaborated into grace and beauty, until every trace of their efforts has been obliterated. bishop butler worked twenty years incessantly on his "analogy," and even then was so dissatisfied that he wanted to burn it. rousseau says he obtained the ease and grace of his style only by ceaseless inquietude, by endless blotches and erasures. virgil worked eleven years on the �neid. the note-books of great men like hawthorne and emerson are tell-tales of enormous drudgery, of the years put into a book which may be read in an hour. montesquieu was twenty-five years writing his "esprit de louis," yet you can read it in sixty minutes. adam smith spent ten years on his "wealth of nations." a rival playwright once laughed at euripides for spending three days on three lines, when he had written five hundred lines. "but your five hundred lines in three days will be dead and forgotten, while my three lines will live forever," replied euripides. sir fowell buxton thought he could do as well as others, if he devoted twice as much time and labor as they did. ordinary means and extraordinary application have done most of the great things in the world. defoe offered the manuscript of robinson crusoe to many booksellers and all but one refused it. addison's first play, rosamond, was hissed off the stage, but the editor of the spectator and tattler was made of stern stuff and was determined that the world should listen to him, and it did. david livingstone said: "those who have never carried a book through the press can form no idea of the amount of toil it involves. the process has increased my respect for authors a thousand-fold. i think i would rather cross the african continent again than undertake to write another book." "for the statistics of the negro population of south america alone," says robert dale owen, "i examined more than a hundred and fifty volumes." another author tells us that he wrote paragraphs and whole pages of his book as many as fifty times. it is said of one of longfellow's poems that it was written in four weeks, but that he spent six months in correcting and cutting it down. bulwer declared that he had rewritten some of his briefer productions as many as eight or nine times before their publication. one of tennyson's pieces was rewritten fifty times. john owen was twenty years on his "commentary on the epistle to the hebrews;" gibbon on his "decline and fall," twenty years; and adam clark, on his "commentary," twenty-six years. carlyle spent fifteen years on his "frederick the great." a great deal of time is consumed in reading before some books are prepared. george eliot read books before she wrote "daniel deronda." allison read before he completed his history. it is said of another that he read , and wrote only two books. virgil spent several years on the georgics, which could be printed in two columns of an ordinary newspaper. "generally speaking," said sydney smith, "the life of all truly great men has been a life of intense and incessant labor. they have commonly passed the first half of life in the gross darkness of indigent humility,--overlooked, mistaken, condemned by weaker men,--thinking while others slept, reading while others rioted, feeling something within them that told them they should not always be kept down among the dregs of the world. and then, when their time has come, and some little accident has given them their first occasion, they have burst out into the light and glory of public life, rich with the spoils of time, and mighty in all the labors and struggles of the mind." malibran said: "if i neglect my practice a day, i see the difference in my execution; if for two days, my friends see it; and if for a week, all the world knows my failure." constant, persistent struggle she found to be the price of her marvelous power. "if i am building a mountain," said confucius, "and stop before the last basketful of earth is placed on the summit, i have failed." "young gentlemen," said francis wayland, "remember that nothing can stand day's work." america will never produce any great art until our resources are developed and we get more time. as a people we have not yet learned the art of patience. we do not know how to wait. think of an american artist spending seven, eight, ten, and even twelve years on a single painting as did titian, michael angelo and many of the other old masters. think of an american sculptor spending years and years upon a single masterpiece, as did the greeks and romans. we have not yet learned the secret of working and waiting. "the single element in all the progressive movements of my pencil," said the great david wilkie, "was persevering industry." the kind of ability which most men rank highest is that which enables its possessor to do what he undertakes, and attain the object of his ambition or desire. "the reader of a newspaper does not see the first insertion of an ordinary advertisement," says a french writer. "the second insertion he sees, but does not read; the third insertion he reads; the fourth insertion he looks at the price; the fifth insertion he speaks of it to his wife; the sixth insertion he is ready to purchase, and the seventh insertion he purchases." the large fees which make us envy the great lawyer or doctor are not remuneration for the few minutes' labor of giving advice, but for the mental stores gathered during the precious spare moments of many a year while others were sleeping or enjoying holidays. a client will frequently object to paying fifty dollars for an opinion written in five minutes, but such an opinion could be written only by one who has read a hundred law books. if the lawyer had not previously read those books, but should keep a client waiting until he could read them with care, there would be fewer complaints that fees of this kind are not earned. we are told that perseverance built the pyramids on egypt's plains, erected the gorgeous temple at jerusalem, inclosed in adamant the chinese empire, scaled the stormy, cloud-capped alps, opened a highway through the watery wilderness of the atlantic, leveled the forests of the new world, and reared in its stead a community of states and nations. perseverance has wrought from the marble block the exquisite creations of genius, painted on canvas the gorgeous mimicry of nature, and engraved on a metallic surface the viewless substance of the shadow. perseverance has put in motion millions of spindles, winged as many flying shuttles, harnessed thousands of iron steeds to as many freighted cars, and sent them flying from town to town and nation to nation; tunneled mountains of granite, and annihilated space with the lightning's speed. perseverance has whitened the waters of the world with the sails of a hundred nations, navigated every sea and explored every land. perseverance has reduced nature in her thousand forms to as many sciences, taught her laws, prophesied her future movements, measured her untrodden spaces, counted her myriad hosts of worlds, and computed their distances, dimensions, and velocities. "whoever is resolved to excel in painting, or, indeed, in any other art," said reynolds, "must bring all his mind to bear upon that one object from the moment that he rises till he goes to bed." "if you work hard two weeks without selling a book," wrote a publisher to an agent, "you will make a success of it." "know thy work and do it," said carlyle; "and work at it like a hercules. one monster there is in the world--an idle man." chapter xviii. save. if you want to test a young man and ascertain whether nature made him for a king or a subject, give him a thousand dollars and see what he will do with it. if he is born to conquer and command, he will put it quietly away till he is ready to use it as opportunity offers. if he is born to serve, he will immediately begin to spend it in gratifying his ruling propensity. --parton. the man who builds, and lacks wherewith to pay, provides a home from which to run away. --young. buy what thou hast no need of, and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessaries. for age and want save while you may: no morning sun lasts a whole day. --franklin. whatever be your talents, whatever be your prospects, never speculate away on a chance of a palace that which you may need as a provision against the workhouse. --bulwer. "what do you do with all these books?" "oh, that library is my 'one cigar a day,'" was the response. "what do you mean?" "mean! just this: when you bothered me so about being a man, and learning to smoke, i'd just been reading about a young fellow who bought books with money that others would have spent in smoke, and i thought i'd try and do the same. you remember, i said i should allow myself one cigar a day." "yes." "well, i never smoked. i just put by the price of a five-cent cigar every day, and as the money accumulated i bought books--the books you see there." "do you mean to say that those books cost no more than that? why there are dollars' worth of them." "yes, i know there are. i had six years more of my apprenticeship to serve when you persuaded me to 'be a man.' i put by the money i have told you of, which of course at five cents a day amounted to $ . a year or $ . in six years. i keep those books by themselves, as a result of my apprenticeship cigar-money; and if you'd done as i did, you would by this time have saved many, many more dollars than that, and been in business besides." if a man will begin at the age of twenty and lay by twenty-six cents every working day, investing at per cent. compound interest, he will have thirty-two thousand dollars when he is seventy years old. twenty cents a day is no unusual expenditure for beer or cigars, yet in fifty years it would easily amount to twenty thousand dollars. even a saving of one dollar a week from the date of one's majority would give him one thousand dollars for each of the last ten of the allotted years of life. "what maintains one vice would bring up two children." who does not feel honored by his relationship to dr. franklin, whether as a townsman or a countryman, or even as belonging to the same race? who does not feel a sort of personal complacency in that frugality of his youth which laid the foundation for so much competence and generosity in his mature age; in that wise discrimination of his outlays, which held the culture of the soul in absolute supremacy over the pleasures of the sense; and in that consummate mastership of the great art of living, which has carried his practical wisdom into every cottage in christendom, and made his name immortal? and yet, how few there are among us who would not disparage, nay, ridicule and contemn a young man who should follow franklin's example. washington examined the minutest expenditures of his family, even when president of the united states. he understood that without economy none can be rich, and with it none need be poor. napoleon examined his domestic bills himself, detected overcharges and errors. unfortunately congress can pass no law that will remedy the vice of living beyond one's means. "we are ruined," says colton, "not by what we really want, but by what we think we do. therefore never go abroad in search of your wants; if they be real wants, they will come home in search of you; for he that buys what he does not want will soon want what he cannot buy." "i hope that there will not be another sale," exclaimed horace walpole, "for i have not an inch of room nor a farthing left." a woman once bought an old door-plate with "thompson" on it because she thought it might come in handy some time. the habit of buying what you don't need because it is cheap encourages extravagance. "many have been ruined by buying good pennyworths." barnum tells the story of one of his acquaintances, whose wife would have a new and elegant sofa, which in the end cost him thirty thousand dollars. when the sofa reached the house it was found necessary to get chairs "to match," then sideboards, carpets, and tables, "to correspond" with them, and so on through the entire stock of furniture, when at last it was found that the house itself was quite too small and old-fashioned for the furniture, and a new one was built "to correspond" with the sofa and _et ceteras_: "thus," added my friend, "running up an outlay of $ , caused by that single sofa, and saddling on me in the shape of servants, equipage, and the necessary expenses attendant on keeping up a fine 'establishment' a yearly outlay of eleven thousand dollars, and a habit of extravagance which was a constant menace to my prosperity." cicero said: "not to have a mania for buying, is to possess a revenue." many are carried away by the habit of bargain-buying. "here's something wonderfully cheap; let's buy it." "have you any use for it?" "no, not at present; but it is sure to come in useful, some time." "annual income," says macawber, "twenty pounds; annual expenditure, nineteen six, result--happiness. annual income, twenty pounds; annual expenditure, twenty pounds ought and six, result--misery." "hunger, rags, cold, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach, are disagreeable," says horace greeley; "but debt is infinitely worse than them all." "if i had but fifty cents a week to live on," said greeley, "i'd buy a peck of corn and parch it before i'd owe any man a dollar." to find out uses for the persons or things which are now wasted in life is to be the glorious work of the men of the next generation, and that which will contribute most to their enrichment. economizing "in spots" or by freaks is no economy at all; it must be done by management. let us learn the meaning of economy. economy is a high, humane office, a sacrament, when its aim is great; when it is the prudence of simple tastes, when it is practiced for freedom, or love or devotion. much of the economy we see in houses is of a base origin, and is best kept out of sight. parched corn eaten to-day that i may have roast fowl for my dinner on sunday, is a baseness, but parched corn and a house with one apartment, that i may be free of all perturbations, that i may be serene and docile to what the mind shall speak, and girt and road-ready for the lowest mission of knowledge or good will, is frugality for gods and heroes. like many other boys p. t. barnum picked up pennies driving oxen for his father, but unlike many other boys he would invest these earnings in knick-knacks which he would sell to others on every holiday, thus increasing his pennies to dollars. the eccentric john randolph once sprang from his seat in the house of representatives, and exclaimed in his piercing voice, "mr. speaker, i have found it." and then, in the stillness which followed this strange outburst, he added, "i have found the philosopher's stone: it is _pay as you go_." in france, all classes, the men as well as the women, study the economy of cookery and practice it; and there, as many travelers affirm, the people live at one-third the expense of englishmen or americans. there they know how to make savory messes out of remnants that others would throw away. there they cook no more for each day than is required for that day. with them the art ranks with the fine arts, and a great cook is as much honored and respected as a sculptor or a painter. the consequence is, as ex-secretary mccullough thinks, a french village of inhabitants could be supported luxuriously on the waste of one of our large american hotels, and he believes that the entire population of france could be supported on the food which is literally wasted in the united states. professor blot, who resided for some years in the united states, remarks, pathetically, that here, "where the markets rival the best markets of europe, it is really a pity to live as many do live. there are thousands of families in moderately good circumstances who have never eaten a loaf of really good bread, nor tasted a well-cooked steak, nor sat down to a properly prepared meal." there are many who think that economy consists in saving cheese parings and candle ends, in cutting off two pence from the laundress' bill, and doing all sorts of little, mean, dirty things. economy is not meanness. the misfortune is also that this class of persons let their economy apply only in one direction. they fancy they are so wonderfully economical in saving a half-penny, where they ought to spend two-pence, that they think they can afford to squander in other directions. _punch_, in speaking of this "one idea" class of people, says, "they are like a man who bought a penny herring for his family's dinner, and then hired a coach and four to take it home." i never knew a man to succeed by practicing this kind of economy. true economy consists in always making the income exceed the out-go. wear the old clothes a little longer, if necessary; dispense with the new pair of gloves, live on plainer food if need be. so that under all circumstances, unless some unforeseen accident occurs, there will be a margin in favor of the income. a penny here and a dollar there placed at interest go on accumulating, and in this way the desired result is obtained. "i wish i could write all across the sky in letters of gold," says rev. william marsh, "the one word, savings bank." boston savings banks have $ , , on deposit, mostly saved in driblets. josiah quincy used to say that the servant girls built most of the palaces on beacon street. "nature uses a grinding economy," says emerson, "working up all that is wasted to-day into to-morrow's creation; not a superfluous grain of sand for all the ostentation she makes of expense and public works. she flung us out in her plenty, but we cannot shed a hair or a paring of a nail but instantly she snatches at the shred and appropriates it to her general stock. last summer's flowers and foliage decayed in autumn only to enrich the earth this year for other forms of beauty. nature will not even wait for our friends to see us, unless we die at home. the moment the breath has left the body she begins to take us to pieces, that the parts may be used again for other creations." "so apportion your wants that your means may exceed them," says bulwer. "with one hundred pounds a year i may need no man's help; i may at least have 'my crust of bread and liberty.' but with £ a year i may dread a ring at my bell; i may have my tyrannical master in servants whose wages i cannot pay; my exile may be at the fiat of the first long-suffering man who enters a judgment against me; for the flesh that lies nearest my heart some shylock may be dusting his scales and whetting his knife. every man is needy who spends more than he has; no man is needy who spends less. i may so ill manage, that with £ a year i purchase the worst evils of poverty--terror and shame; i may so well manage my money, that with £ a year i purchase the best blessings of wealth: safety and respect." chapter xix. live upward. "do what thou dost as if the stake were heaven, and this thy last deed ere the judgment day." if you wish to reach the highest begin at the lowest. --publius syrus. what is a man, if his chief good, and market of his time, be but to sleep, and feed? a beast, no more. sure he, that made us with such large discourse, looking before, and after, gave us not that capability and godlike reason to rust in us unused. --shakespeare. ambition is the spur that makes man struggle with destiny. it is heaven's own incentive to make purpose great and achievement greater. --anonymous. "not failure, but low aim, is crime." "endeavor to be first in thy calling, whatever it may be; neither let anyone go before thee in well doing." o may i join the choir invisible of those immortal dead who live again in minds made better by their presence; live in pulses stirred to generosity, in deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn for miserable aims that end with self, in thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, and with their mild persistence urge man's search to vaster issues. --george eliot. "alexander, cæsar, charlemagne and myself have founded empires," said napoleon to montholon at st. helena; "but upon what did we rest the creations of our genius? upon force. jesus christ alone founded his empire on love, and at this moment millions of men would die for him. i die before my time and my body will be given back to worms. such is the fate of him who has been called the great napoleon. what an abyss between my deep misery and the eternal kingdom of christ, which is proclaimed, loved and adored, and which is extended over the whole earth. call you this dying? is it not rather living? the death of christ is the death of a god." "no true man can live a half life," says phillips brooks, "when he has genuinely learned that it is a half life. the other half, the higher half, must haunt him." "ideality," says horace mann, "is only the _avant courier_ of the mind; and where that in a healthy and normal state goes i hold it to be a prophecy that realization can follow." "if the certainty of future fame bore milton rejoicing through his blindness, or cheered galileo in his dungeon," writes bulwer, "what stronger and holier support shall not be given to him who has loved mankind as his brothers and devoted his labors to their cause?--who has not sought, but relinquished, his own renown?--who has braved the present censures of men for their future benefit, and trampled upon glory in the energy of benevolence? will there not be for him something more powerful than fame to comfort his sufferings and to sustain his hopes?" "if i live," wrote rufus choate in his diary in september, , "all blockheads which are shaken at certain mental peculiarities shall know and feel a reasoner, a lawyer and a man of business." i have read that none of the humbler races have the muscle by which man turns his eye upward, though i am not anatomist enough to be sure of the fact. "show me a contented slave," says burke, "and i will show you a degraded man." "they truly are faithful," says one writer, "who devote their entire lives to amendment." general grant said of the chinese wall: "i believe that the labor expended on this wall could have built every railroad in the united states, every canal and highway, and most, if not all, our cities." "the real benefactors of mankind," says emerson, "are the men and women who can raise their fellow beings out of the world of corn and money, who make them forget their bank account by interesting them in their higher selves; who can raise mere money-getters into the intellectual realm, where they will cease to measure greatness and happiness by dollars and cents; who can make men forget their stomachs and feast on being's banquet." "men are not so much mistaken in desiring to advance themselves," said beecher, "as in judging what will be an advance, and what the right method of obtaining it. an ambition which has conscience in it will always be a laborious and faithful engineer, and will build the road and bridge the chasms between itself and eminent success by the most faithful and minute performances of duty. the liberty to go higher than we are is given only when we have fulfilled amply the duty of our present sphere. thus men are to rise upon their performances and not upon their discontent. and this is the secret and golden meaning of the command to be _content_ in whatever sphere we are placed. it is not to be the content of indifference, of indolence, of unambitious stupidity, but the content of industrious fidelity. when men are building the foundations of vast structures they must needs labor far below the surface, and in disagreeable conditions. but every course of stone which they lay raises them higher; and at length, when they reach the surface, they have laid such solid work under them that they need not fear now to carry up their walls, through towering stories, till they overlook the whole neighborhood. a man proves himself fit to go higher who shows that he is faithful where he is. a man that will not do well in his present place, because he longs to be higher, is fit neither to be where he is nor yet above it; he is already too high and should be put lower." do that which is assigned thee and thou canst not hope too much, or dare too much. what a man does, that he has. in himself is his might. don't waste life on doubts and fears. spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it. tradition says that when solomon received the gift of an emerald vase from the queen of sheba he filled it with an elixir which he only knew how to prepare, one drop of which would prolong life indefinitely. a dying criminal begged for a drop of the precious fluid, but solomon refused to prolong a wicked life. when good men asked for it they were refused, or failed to obtain it when promised, as the king would forget or prefer not to open the vase to get but a single drop. when at last the king became ill, and bade his servants bring the vase, he found that the contents had all evaporated. so it is often with our hope, our faith, our ambition, our aspiration. a man cannot aspire if he looks down. god has not created us with aspirations and longings for heights to which we cannot climb. live upward. the unattained still beckons us toward the summit of life's mountains, into the atmosphere where great souls live and breathe and have their being. even hope is but a promise of the possibility of its own fulfillment. life should be lived in earnest. it is no idle game, no farce to amuse and be forgotten. it is a stern reality, fuller of duties than the sky of stars. you cannot have too much of that yearning which we call aspiration, for, even though you do not attain your ideal, the efforts you make will bring nothing but blessing; while he who fails of attaining mere worldly goals is too often eaten up with the canker-worm of disappointed ambition. to all will come a time when the love of glory will be seen to be but a splendid delusion, riches empty, rank vain, power dependent, and all outward advantages without inward peace a mere mockery of wretchedness. the wisest men have taken care to uproot selfish ambition from their breasts. shakespeare considered it so near a vice as to need extenuating circumstances to make it a virtue. who has not noticed the power of love in an awkward, crabbed, shiftless, lazy man? he becomes gentle, chaste in language, energetic. love brings out the poetry in him. it is only an idea, a sentiment, and yet what magic it has wrought. nothing we can see has touched the man, yet he is entirely transformed. not less does ambition completely transform a human being, for a woman thirsting for fame can work where a man equally resolute would faint. he despises ease and sloth, welcomes toil and hardship, and shakes even kingdoms to gratify his master passion. mere ambition has impelled many a man to a life of eminence and usefulness; its higher manifestation, aspiration, has led him beyond the stars. if the aim be right the life in its details cannot be far wrong. your heart must inspire what your hands execute, or the work will be poorly done. the hand cannot reach higher than does the heart. but do not strive to reach impossible goals. it is wholly in your power to develop yourself, but not necessarily so to make yourself a king. how many presidents of the united states or prime ministers of england are chosen within the working lifetime of a man? what if a thousand young men resolve to become president or prime minister? while such prizes are within your reach, remember that your will must be tremendous and your qualifications of the highest order, or you cannot hope to secure them. too many are deluded by ambition beyond their power of attainment, or tortured by aspirations totally disproportionate to their capacity for execution. you may, indeed, confidently hope to become eminent in usefulness and power, but only as you build upon a broad foundation of self-culture; while, as a rule, specialists in ambition as in science are apt to become narrow and one-sided. darwin was very fond of poetry and music when young, but after devoting his life to science, he was surprised to find shakespeare tedious. he said that, if he were to live his life again, he would read poetry and hear music every day, so as not to lose the power of appreciating such things. god asks no man whether he will accept life. that is not the choice. you _must_ take it. the only choice is _how_. "when i found i was black," said dumas, "i resolved to live as if i were white, and so force men to look below my skin." in the collection of the massachusetts historical society is a prospectus used by longfellow in canvassing, on one of the blank leaves of which are the skeleton stanzas of "excelsior," which he was evidently evolving as he trudged from house to house. "disregarding the honors that most men value and looking to the truth," said plato, "i shall endeavor in reality to live as virtuously as i can; and, when i die, to die so. and i invite all other men to the utmost of my power; and you, too, i invite to this contest, which, i affirm, surpasses all contests here." "did you ever hear of a man who had striven all his life faithfully and singly toward an object, and in no measure obtained it?" asked thoreau. "if a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated? did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them,--that it was a vain endeavor?" "o if the stone can only have some vision of the temple of which it is to be a part forever," exclaimed phillips brooks, "what patience must fill it as it feels the blows of the hammer, and knows that success for it is simply to let itself be wrought into what shape the master wills." man never reaches heights above his habitual thought. it is not enough now and then to mount on wings of ecstasy into the infinite. we must habitually dwell there. the great man is he who abides easily on heights to which others rise occasionally and with difficulty. don't let the maxims of a low prudence daily dinned into your ears lower the tone of your high ambition or check your aspirations. hope lifts us step by step up the mysterious ladder, the top of which no eye hath ever seen. though we do not find what hope promised, yet we are stronger for the climbing, and we get a broader outlook upon life which repays the effort. indeed, if we do not follow where hope beckons, we gradually slide down the ladder in despair. strive ever to be at the top of your condition. a high standard is absolutely necessary. chapter xx. "sand." i shall show the cinders of my spirits through the ashes of my chance. --shakespeare. perseverance is a virtue that wins each god-like act, and plucks success e'en from the spear-proof crest of rugged danger. --william harvard. never say "fail" again. --richelieu. it is the one neck nearer that wins the race and shows the blood; the one pull more of the oar that proves the "beefiness of the fellow," as oxford men say; it is the one march more that wins the campaign; the five minutes' more persistent courage that wins the fight. though your force be less than another's, you equal and out-master your opponent if you continue it longer and concentrate it more. --smiles. "i know no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign mind as that tenacity of purpose which, through all changes of companions, or parties, or fortunes, changes never, bates no jot of heart or hope, but wearies out opposition and arrives at its port." "well done, tommy brooks!" exclaimed his teacher in pleased surprise when the dunce of the school spoke his piece without omitting a single word. the other boys had laughed when he rose, for they expected a bad failure. but when the rest of the class had tried, the teacher said tommy had done the best of all, and gave him the prize. "and now tell me," said she, "how you learned the poem so well." "please, ma'am, it was the snail on the wall that taught me how to do it," said tommy. at this the other pupils laughed aloud, but the teacher said: "you need not laugh, boys, for we may learn much from such things as snails. how did the snail teach you, tommy?" "i saw it crawl up the wall little by little," replied the boy. "it did not stop nor turn back, but went on, and on; and i thought i would do the same with the poem. so i learned it little by little, and did not give up. by the time the snail reached the top of the wall, i had learned the whole poem." "i may here impart the secret of what is called good and bad luck," said addison. "there are men who, supposing providence to have an implacable spite against them, bemoan in the poverty of old age the misfortunes of their lives. luck forever runs against them, and for others. one with a good profession lost his luck in the river, where he idled away his time a-fishing. another with a good trade perpetually burnt up his luck by his hot temper, which provoked all his employes to leave him. another with a lucrative business lost his luck by amazing diligence at everything but his own business. another who steadily followed his trade, as steadily followed the bottle. another who was honest and constant to his work, erred by his perpetual misjudgment,--he lacked discretion. hundreds lose their luck by indulging sanguine expectations, by trusting fraudulent men, and by dishonest gains. a man never has good luck who has a bad wife. i never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings and strictly honest, who complained of his bad luck. a good character, good habits, and iron industry are impregnable to the assaults of the ill luck that fools are dreaming of. but when i see a tatterdemalion creeping out of a grocery late in the forenoon with his hands stuck into his pockets, the rim of his hat turned up, and the crown knocked in, i know he has had bad luck,--for the worst of all luck is to be a sluggard, a knave, or a tippler." "you have a difficult subject," said anthony trollope at niagara falls, to an artist who had attempted to draw the spray of the waters. "all subjects are difficult," was the reply, "to a man who desires to do well." "but yours, i fear, is impossible," said trollope. "you have no right to say so till i have finished my picture," protested the artist. "tell louisa to stick to her teaching; she can never succeed as a writer." when her father delivered the rejected manuscript of a story sent to james t. fields, editor of the _atlantic monthly_, with the above message, miss alcott said, "tell him i _will_ succeed as a writer, and some day i shall write for the _atlantic_." not long after she sent an article to the _atlantic_ and received a check for $ . with the money she said she bought "a second hand carpet for the parlor, a bonnet for her sister, shoes and stockings for herself." her father was calling upon longfellow some time after this, when longfellow took the _atlantic_, and said, "i want to read to you emerson's fine poem upon thoreau's flute." mr. alcott interrupted him with delight and said, "my daughter louisa wrote that." "men talk as if victory were something fortunate," says emerson. "_work is victory._ wherever work is done victory is obtained. _there is no chance and no blanks._ you want but one verdict; if you have your own, you are secure of the rest. but if witnesses are wanted, witnesses are near." "young gentlemen," said francis wayland, "remember that nothing can stand day's work." alexander the great exclaimed to his soldiers, disaffected after a long campaign, "go home and tell them that you left alexander to conquer the world alone." "we discount only our own bills, and not those of private persons," said the cashier of the bank of england, when a large bill was offered drawn by anselm rothschild of frankfort, on nathan rothschild of london. "private persons!" exclaimed nathan, when told of the cashier's remark; "i will make these gentlemen see what sort of private persons we are." three weeks later he presented a five-pound note at the bank at the opening of the office. the teller counted out five sovereigns, looking surprised that baron rothschild should have troubled himself about such a trifle. the baron examined the coins one by one, weighing them in the balance, as he said "the law gave him the right to do," put them into a little canvas bag, and offered a second, then a third, fourth, fiftieth, thousandth note. when a bag was full he handed it to a clerk in waiting, and proceeded to fill another. in seven hours he had changed £ , , and, with nine employes of his house similarly engaged, had occupied the tellers so busily in changing $ , , worth of notes that no one else could receive attention. the bankers laughed, but the next morning rothschild appeared with his nine clerks and several drays to carry away the gold, remarking, "these gentlemen refuse to pay my bills; i have sworn not to keep theirs. they can pay at their leisure, only i notify them that i have enough to employ them for two months." the smiles faded from the features of the bank officials, as they thought of a draft of $ , , in gold which they did not hold. next morning notice was given in the newspapers that the bank of england would pay rothschild's bills as well as its own. "well," said barnum to a friend in , "i am going to buy the american museum." "buy it!" exclaimed the astonished friend, who knew that the showman had not a dollar; "what do you intend buying it with?" "brass," was the prompt reply, "for silver and gold have i none." every one interested in public entertainments in new york knew barnum, and knew the condition of his pocket; but francis olmstead, who owned the museum building, consulted numerous references all telling of "a good showman, who would do as he agreed," and accepted a proposition to give security for the purchaser. mr. olmstead was to appoint a money-taker at the door, and credit barnum toward the purchase with all above expenses and an allowance of fifty dollars per month to support his wife and three children. mrs. barnum gladly assented to the arrangement, and offered, if need be, to cut down the household expenses to a little more than a dollar a day. some six months later mr. olmstead happened to enter the ticket office at noon, and found barnum eating for dinner a few slices of bread and some corned beef. "is this the way you eat your dinner?" he asked. "i have not eaten a warm dinner since i bought the museum, except on the sabbath; and i intend never to eat another until i get out of debt." "ah! you are safe, and will pay for the museum before the year is out," said mr. olmstead, slapping the young man approvingly on the shoulder. he was right, for in less than a year barnum had paid every cent out of the profits of the establishment. a noted philosopher said: "the favors of fortune are like steep rocks; only eagles and creeping things mount to the summit." lord campbell, who became chief justice and lord chancellor of england and amassed a large fortune, began life as a drudge in a printing office. a little observation shows us that, as a rule, the men who accomplish the most in the world are the most useful, and sensible members of society, the men who are depended upon most in emergencies, the men of backbone and stamina, the bone and sinew of their communities; the men who can always be relied upon, who are healthiest and happiest, are, as a rule, of ordinary mental calibre and medium capacity. but with persistent and untiring industry, these are they, after all, who carry the burdens and reap the prizes of life. it is the men and women who keep everlastingly at it, who do not believe themselves geniuses, but who know that if they ever accomplish anything great, they must do it by common drudgery and persistent industry and with an unwavering aim in one pursuit. those who believe themselves geniuses are apt to scatter their efforts and thus fritter away their great energies without accomplishing anything in proportion to their high promise. often the men who promise the most pay the least. mrs. frank leslie often refers to the time she lived in her carpetless attic while striving to pay her husband's obligations. she has fought her way successfully through nine lawsuits, and has paid the entire debt. she manages her ten publications entirely herself, signs all checks and money-orders, makes all contracts, looks over all proofs, and approves the make-up of everything before it goes to press. she has developed great business ability, which no one dreamed she possessed. a little boy was asked how he learned to skate. "oh, by getting up every time i fell down," he replied. the boy thorwaldsen, whose father died in the poorhouse, and whose education was so scanty that he had to write his letters over many times before they could be posted, by his indomitable perseverance, tenacity and grit, fascinated the world with the genius which neither his discouraging father, poverty, nor hardship could repress. "it is all very well," said charles j. fox, "to tell me that a young man has distinguished himself by a brilliant first speech. he may go on, or he may be satisfied with his first triumph; but show me a young man who has not succeeded at first, and nevertheless has gone on, and i will back that young man to do better than most of those who have succeeded at the first trial." it was the last three days of the first voyage of columbus that told. all his years of struggle and study would have availed nothing if he had yielded to the mutiny. it was all in those three days. but what days! "often defeated in battle," said macaulay of alexander the great, "he was always successful in war." he might have said the same of washington, and, with appropriate changes, of all who win great triumphs of any kind. one of the greatest preachers of modern times, lacordaire, failed again and again. everybody said he would never make a preacher, but he was determined to succeed, and in two years from his humiliating failures he was preaching in notre dame to immense congregations. orange judd was a remarkable example of success through grit. he earned corn by working for farmers, carried it on his back to mill, brought back the meal to his room, cooked it himself, milked cows for his pint of milk per day, and lived on mush and milk for months together. he worked his way through wesleyan university, and took a three years' post-graduate course at yale. oh, the triumphs of this indomitable spirit of the conqueror! this it was that enabled franklin to dine on a small loaf in the printing-office with a book in his hand. it helped locke to live on bread and water in a dutch garret. it enabled gideon lee to go barefoot in the snow, half starved and thinly clad. it sustained lincoln and garfield on their hard journeys from the log cabin to the white house. the very reputation of being strong-willed, plucky, and indefatigable is of priceless value. it often cowes enemies and dispels at the start opposition to one's undertakings which would otherwise be formidable. "when you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as if you could not hold on a minute longer," said harriet beecher stowe, "never give up then, for that's just the place and time that the tide'll turn." "never despair," says burke, "but if you do, work on in despair." once when marshal ney was going into battle, looking down at his knees which were smiting together, he said, "you may well shake; you would shake worse yet if you knew where i am going to take you." "go it, william!" an old boxer was overheard saying to himself in the midst of a fight; "at him again!--never say 'die'!" a striking incident is related of the early experience of george law, who, in his day, was one of the most conspicuous financiers and capitalists of new york city. when he was a young man he went to new york, poor and friendless. one day he was walking along the streets, hungry, not knowing where his next meal would come from, and passed a new building in course of erection. through some accident one of the hod carriers fell from the structure and dropped dead at his feet. young law, in his desperation, applied for the job to take the dead man's place, and the place was given him. he went to work, and this was how one of the wealthiest and shrewdest new york business men got his start. see young disraeli, sprung from a hated and persecuted race; without opportunity, pushing his way up through the middle classes, up through the upper classes, until he stands self-poised upon the topmost round of political and social power. scoffed, ridiculed, rebuffed, hissed from the house of commons, he simply says, "the time will come when you will hear me." the time did come, and the boy with no chance swayed the sceptre of england for a quarter of a century. if impossibilities ever exist, popularly speaking, they ought to have been found somewhere between the birth and the death of kitto, that deaf pauper and master of oriental learning. but kitto did not find them there. in the presence of his decision and imperial energy they melted away. kitto begged his father to take him out of the poorhouse, even if he had to subsist like the hottentots. he told him that he would sell his books and pawn his handkerchief, by which he thought he could raise about twelve shillings. he said he could live upon blackberries, nuts and field turnips, and was willing to sleep on a hayrick. here was real grit. what were impossibilities to such a resolute will? patrick henry voiced that decision which characterized the great men of the revolution when he said, "is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? forbid it, almighty god! i know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" look at garrison reading this advertisement in a southern paper: "five thousand dollars will be paid for the head of w. l. garrison by the governor of georgia." behold him again; a broadcloth mob is leading him through the streets of boston by a rope. he is hurried to jail. see him return calmly and unflinchingly to his work, beginning at the point at which he was interrupted. note this heading in the _liberator_, the type of which he set himself in an attic on state street, in boston: "i am in earnest, i will not equivocate, i will not excuse, i will not retreat a single inch, and i will be heard." was garrison heard? ask a race set free largely by his efforts. even the gallows erected in front of his own door did not daunt him. he held the ear of an unwilling world with that burning word "freedom," which was destined never to cease its vibrations until it had breathed its sweet secret to the last slave. at a time when abolitionists were dangerously unpopular, a crowd of brawny cape cod fishermen had made such riotous demonstrations that all the speakers announced, except stephen foster and lucy stone, had fled from an open-air platform. "you had better run, stephen," said she; "they are coming." "but who will take care of you?" asked foster. "this gentleman will take care of me," she replied, calmly laying her hand within the arm of a burly rioter with a club, who had just sprung upon the platform. "wh--what did you say?" stammered the astonished rowdy, as he looked at the little woman; "yes, i'll take care of you, and no one shall touch a hair of your head." with this he forced a way for her through the crowd, and, at her earnest request, placed her upon a stump and stood guard with his club while she delivered an address so effective that the audience offered no further violence, and even took up a collection of twenty dollars to repay mr. foster for the damage his clothes had received when the riot was at its height. "luck is ever waiting for something to turn up," says cobden; "labor, with keen eyes and strong will, will turn up something. luck lies in bed, and wishes the postman would bring him the news of a legacy; labor turns out at six o'clock, and with busy pen or ringing hammer lays the foundation of a competence. luck whines; labor whistles. luck relies on chance; labor, on character." there is no luck, for all practical purposes, to him who is not striving, and whose senses are not all eagerly attent. what are called accidental discoveries are almost invariably made by those who are looking for something. a man incurs about as much risk of being struck by lightning as by accidental luck. there is, perhaps, an element of luck in the amount of success which crowns the efforts of different men; but even here it will usually be found that the sagacity with which the efforts are directed and the energy with which they are prosecuted measure pretty accurately the luck contained in the results achieved. apparent exceptions will be found to relate almost wholly to single undertakings, while in the long run the rule will hold good. two pearl-divers, equally expert, dive together and work with equal energy. one brings up a pearl, while the other returns empty-handed. but let both persevere and at the end of five, ten or twenty years it will be found that they succeeded almost in exact proportion to their skill and industry. lincoln, being asked by an anxious visitor what he would do after three or four years if the rebellion was not subdued, replied: "oh, there is no alternative but to keep pegging away." "it is in me and it shall come out," said sheridan, when told that he would never make an orator, as he had failed in his first speech in parliament. he became known as one of the foremost orators of his day. it takes great courage to fight a lost cause when there is no hope even of victory. to contest every inch of ground with as much persistency and enthusiasm as if we were assured of victory; this is true courage. the world admires the man who never flinches from unexpected difficulties, who calmly, patiently, and courageously grapples with his fate; who dies, if need be, at his post. president chadbourne put grit in place of his lost lung, and worked thirty-five years after his funeral had been planned. henry fawcett put grit in place of eyesight, and became the greatest postmaster-general england ever had. prescott also put grit in place of eyesight, and became one of america's greatest historians. francis parkman put grit in place of health and eyesight, and became the greatest historian of america in his line. thousands of men have put grit in place of health, eyes, ears, hands, legs, and yet have achieved marvelous success. indeed, most of the great things of the world have been accomplished by grit and pluck. you cannot keep a man down who has these qualities. he will make stepping-stones out of his stumbling-blocks, and lift himself to success. grit and pluck are not always exhibited only by poor boys who have no chance, for there are many notable examples of pluck, persistence and real grit among youth in good circumstances, who never have to fight their way to their own loaf. mr. mifflin, who has recently become the head of the celebrated publishing firm of houghton, mifflin & co., is a notable example of persistency, push and grit. after graduating at harvard and traveling abroad, he was determined, although not obliged to work for a living, to get a position at the riverside press in cambridge. he called upon the late mr. houghton and asked him for a situation. mr. houghton told him that he had no opening, and that, even if he had, he did not believe that a graduate from harvard who had money and who had traveled abroad would ever be willing to begin at the bottom and do the necessary drudgery, for boy's pay. mr. mifflin protested that he was not afraid of hard work, and that he was willing to do anything and take any sort of a position, if he could only learn the business. but mr. houghton would not give him any encouragement. again and again mr. mifflin came to the riverside press, and pressed his suit, but to no purpose. mr. mifflin persuaded his father to intercede for him, but mr. houghton succeeded in convincing him that it would be very unwise for his son to attempt it. but young mifflin was determined not to give up. finally, mr. houghton, out of admiration for his persistence and pluck, made a place for him, which had been occupied by a boy, for $ a week. young mifflin took hold of the work with such earnestness, and showed so much pluck and determination, that mr. houghton soon called him into the office and raised his pay to $ a week from the time he began. although the young man lived in boston, he was always at the riverside press in cambridge early in the morning, and would frequently remain after all the others had gone. mr. houghton happened to go in late one night, after everybody had gone, as he supposed, and was surprised to find mr. mifflin there, taking one of the presses apart. of course such a young man would be advanced. these are the boys who become the heads of firms. it is victory after victory with the soldier, lesson after lesson with the scholar, blow after blow with the laborer, crop after crop with the farmer, picture after picture with the painter, and mile after mile with the traveler, that secures what all so much desire--success. stick to the thing and carry it through. believe you were made for the place you fill, and that no one else can fill it as well. put forth your whole energies. be awake, electrify yourself; go forth to the task. only once learn to carry a thing through in all its completeness and proportion, and you will become a hero. you will think better of yourself; others will think better of you. the world in its very heart admires the stern, determined doer. chapter xxi. above rubies. the best way to settle the quarrel between capital and labor is by allopathic doses of peter-cooperism. --talmage. in the sublimest flights of the soul, rectitude is never surmounted, love is never outgrown. --emerson. "one ruddy drop of manly blood the surging sea outweighs." virtue alone out-builds the pyramids: her monuments shall last when egypt's fall. --young. he believed that he was born, not for himself, but for the whole world. --lucan. wherever man goes to dwell, his character goes with him. --african proverb. the spirit of a single mind makes that of multitudes take one direction, as roll the waters to the breathing wind. --byron. "no, say what you have to say in her presence, too," said king cleomenes of sparta, when his visitor anistagoras asked him to send away his little daughter gorgo, ten years old, knowing how much harder it is to persuade a man to do wrong when his child is at his side. so gorgo sat at her father's feet, and listened while the stranger offered more and more money if cleomenes would aid him to become king in a neighboring country. she did not understand the matter, but when she saw her father look troubled and hesitate, she took hold of his hand and said, "papa, come away--come, or this strange man will make you do wrong." the king went away with the child, and saved himself and his country from dishonor. character is power, even in a child. when grown to womanhood, gorgo was married to the hero leonidas. one day a messenger brought a tablet sent by a friend who was a prisoner in persia. but the closest scrutiny failed to reveal a single word or line on the white waxen surface, and the king and all his noblemen concluded that it was sent as a jest. "let me take it," said queen gorgo; and, after looking it all over, she exclaimed, "there must be some writing underneath the wax!" they scraped away the wax and found a warning to leonidas from the grecian prisoner, saying that xerxes was coming with his immense host to conquer all greece. acting on this warning, leonidas and the other kings assembled their armies and checked the mighty host of xerxes, which is said to have shaken the earth as it marched. "i fear john knox's prayers more than an army of ten thousand men," said mary, queen of scotland. "the man behind the sermon," said william m. evarts, "is the secret of john hall's power." in fact if there is not a man with a character behind it nothing about it is of the slightest consequence. thackeray says, "nature has written a letter of credit upon some men's faces which is honored wherever presented. you can not help trusting such men; their very presence gives confidence. there is a 'promise to pay' in their very faces which gives confidence, and you prefer it to another man's indorsement." _character is credit._ in the great monetary panic of , a meeting was called of the various bank presidents of new york city. when asked what percentage of specie had been drawn during the day, some replied fifty per cent., some even as high as seventy-five per cent., but moses taylor of the city bank said: "we had in the bank this morning, $ , ; this evening, $ , ." while other banks were badly "run," the confidence in the city bank under mr. taylor's management was such that people had deposited in that institution what they had drawn from other banks. character gives confidence. "there is no such thing as a small country," said victor hugo. "the greatness of a people is no more affected by the number of its inhabitants than the greatness of an individual is measured by his height." "it is the nature of party in england," said john russell, "to ask the assistance of men of genius, but to follow the guidance of men of character." "a handful of good life," says george herbert, "is worth a bushel of learning." "i have read," emerson says, "that they who listened to lord chatham felt that there was something finer in the man than anything which he said." it has been complained of carlyle that when he has told all his facts about mirabeau they do not justify his estimate of the latter's genius. the gracchi, agis, cleomenes, and others of plutarch's heroes do not in the record of facts equal their own fame. sir philip sidney and sir walter raleigh are men of great figure and of few deeds. we cannot find the smallest part of the personal weight of washington in the narrative of his exploits. the authority of the name of schiller is too great for his books. this inequality of the reputation to the works or the anecdotes is not accounted for by saying that the reverberation is longer than the thunder-clap; but something resided in these men which begot an expectation that outran all their performance. the largest part of their power was latent. this is that which we call character,--a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. what others effect by talent or eloquence, the man of character accomplishes by some magnetism. "half his strength he puts not forth." his victories are by demonstration of superiority, and not by crossing bayonets. he conquers, because his arrival alters the face of affairs. "o iole! how didst thou know that hercules was a god?" "because," answered iole, "i was content the moment my eyes fell on him. when i beheld theseus, i desired that i might see him offer battle, or at least drive his horses in the chariot-race; but hercules did not wait for a contest; he conquered whether he stood, or walked, or sat, or whatever else he did." "show me," said omar the caliph to amru the warrior, "the sword with which you have fought so many battles and slain so many infidels." "ah," replied amru, "the sword without the arm of the master is no sharper nor heavier than the sword of farezdak the poet." so one hundred and fifty pounds of flesh and blood without character is of no great value. "no man throws away his vote," says francis willard, "when he places it in the ballot-box with his conviction behind it. the party which elected lincoln in polled only seven thousand votes in . revolutions never go backward, and the fanaticisms of to-day are the victories of to-morrow." "o sir, we are beaten," exclaimed the general in command of sheridan's army, retreating before the victorious early. "no, sir," replied the indignant sheridan; "you are beaten, but this army is not beaten." drawing his sword, he waved it above his head, and pointed it at the pursuing host, while his clarion voice rose above the horrid din in a command to charge once more. the lines paused, turned,-- "and with the ocean's mighty swing, when heaving to the tempest's wing, they hurled them on the foe;" and the confederate army was wildly routed. when war with france seemed imminent, in , president adams wrote to george washington, then a private citizen in retirement at mount vernon: "we must have your name, if you will permit us to use it; there will be more efficacy in it than in many an army." character is power. when pope paul iv. heard of the death of calvin he exclaimed with a sigh, "ah, the strength of that proud heretic lay in--riches? no! honors? no! but nothing could move him from his course. holy virgin! with two such servants, our church would soon be mistress of both worlds." eighteen hundred years ago, when night closed over the city of pompeii, a lady sat in her house nursing her son of ten years of age. the child had been ill for some days; his form was wasted, his little limbs were shrunk; and we may imagine with what infinite anxiety she watched every motion of the helpless one, whose existence was so dear. what did take place we know with an exactness very remarkable. that distant mountain which reared its awful head on the shore of the bay, vesuvius, was troubled that same night with an eruption, and threw into the air such clouds of pumice-stones that the streets and squares of pompeii became filled, and gradually the stones grew higher and higher, until they reached the level of the windows. there was no chance of escape then by the doors; and those who attempted to get away stepped out of their first floor windows and rushed over the sulphurous stones--a short distance only, for they were quickly overpowered by the poisonous vapors and fell dead. after the stones there fell ashes, and after ashes hot water fell in showers, which changed the ashes into clay. those who ran out of their houses during the fall of stones were utterly consumed, while those who waited until the ashes began to fall perished likewise, but their bodies were preserved by the ashes and water which fell upon them. the pompeiian mother we have mentioned opened the window of her house when she thought the fall of stones was over, and with the child in her arms took a few hurried steps forward, when, overpowered by the sulphur, she fell forward, at which moment the shower of ashes began to fall, and quickly buried mother and child. the hot water afterward changed into a mould; the ashes and the sun baked the fatal clay to such a degree of hardness that it has endured to the present day. a short time ago the spot where mother and child lay was found, liquid plaster-of-paris was poured into the mould formed by the bodies, and then the mould was broken up, leaving the plaster-cast whole. thus one touching incident in the terrible tragedy of eighteen centuries ago has been preserved for the admiration and respect of posterity. _the arms and legs of the child showed a contraction and emaciation which could only result from illness._ of the mother only the right arm was preserved; she fell upon the ashes, and the remaining portion of her body was consumed. _but the right hand still clasped the legs of the child_; on her arm were two gold bracelets, and on her fingers were two gold rings--one set with an emerald, the other with a cut amethyst. this touching illustration of _a mother's love_ now rests in the museum of the celebrated city. "i was sitting with grant once," says general fisk, "when a major-general entered, dressed in the uniform of his rank, who said: 'boys, i have a good story to tell you. i believe there are no ladies present.' grant said, 'no, but there are gentlemen present.'" mr. george w. childs, in referring to this trait, said: "another great trait of his character was his purity in every way. i never heard him express or make an indelicate allusion in any way or shape. there is nothing i ever heard that man say that could not be repeated in the presence of women." the writer has heard of several incidents illustrating his answer to impure stories. on one occasion, when grant formed one of a dinner-party of american gentlemen in a foreign city, conversation drifted into references to questionable affairs, when he suddenly rose and said, "gentlemen, please excuse me; i will retire." when attila, flushed with conquest, appeared with his barbarian horde before the gates of rome in , pope leo alone of all the people dared go forth and try to turn his wrath aside. a single magistrate followed him. the huns were awed by the fearless majesty of the unarmed old man, and led him before their chief, whose respect was so great that he agreed not to enter the city, provided a tribute should be paid to him. wellington said that napoleon's presence in the french army was equivalent to forty thousand additional soldiers, and richter said of the invincible luther, "his words were half battles." "i know no great men," says voltaire, "except those who have rendered great services to the human race." men are measured by what they do; not by what they seem or possess. francis horner, of england, was a man of whom sydney smith said, that "the ten commandments were stamped upon his forehead." the valuable and peculiar light in which horner's history is calculated to inspire every right-minded youth is this: he died at the age of thirty-eight, possessed of greater influence than any other private man, and admired, beloved, trusted, and deplored by all except the heartless and the base. no greater homage was ever paid in parliament to any deceased member. how was this attained? by rank? he was the son of an edinburgh merchant. by wealth? neither he nor any of his relatives ever had a superfluous sixpence. by office? he held but one; and that for only a few years, of no influence, and with very little pay. by talents? his were not splendid, and he had no genius. cautious and slow, his only ambition was to be right. by eloquence? he spoke in calm, good taste, without any of the oratory that either terrifies or seduces. by any fascination of manner? his was only correct and agreeable. by what was it, then? merely by sense, industry, good principles and a good heart, qualities which no well constituted mind need ever despair of attaining. it was the force of his character that raised him; and this character was not impressed on him by nature, but formed, out of no peculiarly fine elements, by himself. there were many in the house of commons of far greater ability and eloquence. but no one surpassed him in the combination of an adequate portion of these with moral worth. horner was born to show what moderate powers, unaided by anything whatever except culture and goodness, may achieve, even when these powers are displayed amidst the competition and jealousies of public life. a hundred years hence what difference will it make whether you were rich or poor, a peer or a peasant? but what difference may it not make whether you did what was right or what was wrong? at a large dinner-party given by lord stratford after the crimean war, it was proposed that every one should write on a slip of paper the name which appeared most likely to descend to posterity with renown. when the papers were opened everyone of them contained the name of florence nightingale. professor blackie, of the university of edinburgh, said to a class of young men: "money is not needful; power is not needful; liberty is not needful; even health is not the one thing needful; but character alone is that which can truly save us, and if we are not saved in this sense, we certainly must be damned." it has been said that "when poverty is your inheritance, virtue must be your capital." "hence it was," said franklin, speaking of the influence of his known integrity of character, "that i had so much weight with my fellow-citizens. i was but a bad speaker, never eloquent, subject to much hesitation in my choice of words, hardly correct in language, and yet i generally carried my point." when a man's character is gone, all is gone. all peace of mind, all complacency in himself is fled forever. he despises himself. he is despised by his fellow-men. within is shame and remorse; without neglect and reproach. he is of necessity a miserable and useless man; he is so even though he be clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day. it is better to be poor; it is better to be reduced to beggary; it is better to be cast into prison, or condemned to perpetual slavery, than to be destitute of a good name or endure the pains and the evils of a conscious worthlessness of character. the time is soon coming when, by the common consent of mankind, it will be esteemed more honorable to have been john pounds, putting new and beautiful souls into the ragged children of the neighborhood while he mended his father's shoes, than to have sat upon the british throne. the time now is when, if queen victoria, in one of her magnificent progresses through her realms, were to meet that more than american queen, miss dix, in her "circumnavigation of charity" among the insane, the former should kneel and kiss the hand of the latter; and the ruler over more than a hundred millions of people should pay homage to the angel whom god has sent to the maniac. "at your age," said to a youth an old man who had honorably held many positions of trust and responsibility, "both position and wealth appear enduring things; but at mine a man sees that nothing lasts but character." several eminent clergymen were discussing the qualities of self-made men. they each admitted that they belonged to that class, except a certain bishop, who remained silent, and was intensely absorbed in the repast. the host was determined to draw him out, and so, addressing him, said: "all at this table are self-made men, unless the bishop is an exception." the bishop promptly replied, "i am not made yet," and the reply contained a profound truth. so long as life lasts, with its discipline of joy or sorrow, its opportunities for good or evil, so long our characters are being shaped and fixed. milton said: "he who would write heroic poems, must make his whole life an heroic poem." we are responsible for our thoughts, and unless we could command them, mental and moral excellence would be impossible. charles kingsley has well said: "let any one set his heart to do what is right and nothing else, and it will not be long ere his brow is stamped with all that goes to make up the heroic expression, with noble indignation, noble self-restraint, great hopes, great sorrows, perhaps even with the print of the martyr's crown of thorns." said james martineau: "god insists on having a concurrence between our practice and our thoughts. if we proceed to make a contradiction between them, he forthwith begins to abolish it, and if the will will not rise to the reason, the reason must be degraded to the will." "when i say, in conducting your understanding," says sidney smith, "love knowledge with a great love, with a vehement love, with a love co-eval with life--what do i say but love innocence, love virtue, love purity of conduct, love that which, if you are rich and great, will vindicate the blind fortune which has made you so, and make them call it justice; love that which, if you are poor, will render your poverty respectable, and make the proudest feel that it is unjust to laugh at the meanness of your fortunes; love that which will comfort you, adorn you, and never quit you--which will open to you the kingdom of thought, and all the boundless regions of conception as an asylum against the cruelty, the injustice, and the pain that may be your lot in the world--that which will make your motives habitually great and honorable, and light up in an instant a thousand noble disdains at the very thought of meanness and of fraud?" the arabs express this by a parable that incarnates, as is their wont, the word in the recital. king nimrod, say they, one day summoned his three sons into his presence. he ordered to be set before them three urns under seal. one of the urns was of gold, another of amber, and the third of clay. the king bade the eldest of his sons choose among the urns that which appeared to him to contain the treasure of greatest price. the eldest chose the vase of gold, on which was written the word "empire." he opened it and found it full of blood. the second chose the amber vase whereon was written the word "glory." he opened it and found it contained the ashes of the great men who had made a sensation in the world. the third son took the only remaining vase, the one of clay; he found it quite empty, but on the bottom the potter had written the word "god." "which of these vases weighs the most?" asked the king of the courtiers. the men of ambition replied it was the vase of gold; the poets and conquerors, the amber one; the sages that it was the empty vase, because a single letter of the name god weighs more than the entire globe. we are of the opinion of the sages. we believe the greatest things are great but in the proportion of divinity they contain. "although genius always commands admiration," says smiles, "character most secures respect. the former is more the product of brain-power, the latter of heart-power; and in the long run it is the heart that rules in life. men of genius stand to society in the relation of its intellect, as men of character of its conscience; and while the former are admired, the latter are followed. "commonplace though it may appear, this doing of one's duty embodies the highest ideal of life and character. there may be nothing heroic about it; but the common lot of men is not heroic. and though the abiding sense of duty upholds man in his highest attitudes, it also equally sustains him in the transaction of the ordinary affairs of every-day existence. the most influential of all the virtues are those which are the most in request for daily use. they wear the best and last the longest. we can always better understand and appreciate a man's real character by the manner in which he conducts himself toward those who are the most nearly related to him, and by his transaction of the seemingly commonplace details of daily duty, than by his public exhibition of himself as an author, an orator, or a statesman. intellectual culture has no necessary relation to purity or excellence of character. "on the contrary, a condition of comparative poverty is compatible with character in its highest form. a man may possess only his industry, his frugality, his integrity, and yet stand high in the rank of true manhood. "character is property. it is the noblest of possessions. it is an estate in the general good-will and respect of men; and they who invest in it--though they may not become rich in this world's goods--will find their reward in esteem and reputation fairly and honorably won. without principles, a man is like a ship without rudder or compass, left to drift hither and thither with every wind that blows." what a contrast is afforded by the lives of bacon and more. bacon sought office with as much desire as more avoided it; bacon used as much solicitation to obtain it as more endured to accept it, and each, when in it, was equally true to his character. more was simple, as bacon was ostentatious. more was as incorruptible as bacon was venal. more spent his private fortune in office, and bacon spent the wages of corruption there. both left office poor in worldly goods; but while more was rich in honor and good deeds, bacon was poor in everything; poor in the mammon for which he bartered his integrity; poor in the gawd for which he sacrificed his peace; poor in the presence of the worthless; covered with shame in the midst of the people; trusting his fame to posterity, of which posterity is only able to say, that the wisest of men was adviser to the silliest of kings, yet that such a king had a sort of majesty when morally compared with the official director of his conscience. both more and bacon served each a great purpose for the world. more illustrated the beauty of holiness; bacon expounded the infinitude of science. bacon became the prophet of intellect; more, the martyr of conscience. the one pours over our understandings the light of knowledge; but the other inflames our hearts with the love of virtue. all have read of the proud egyptian king who ordered a colossal staircase built in his new palace, and was chagrined to find that he required a ladder to climb from one step to the next. a king's legs are as short as those of a beggar. so, too, a prince's ability to enjoy the pleasures of life is no greater than that of a pauper. "all that is valuable in this world is to be had for nothing. genius, beauty, health, piety, love, are not bought and sold. the richest man on earth would vainly offer a fortune to be qualified to write a verse like milton, or to compose a melody like mozart. you may summon all the physicians, but they cannot procure for you the sweet, healthful sleep which the tired laborer gets without price. let no man, then, call himself a proprietor. he owns but the breath as it traverses his lips and the idea as it flits across his mind; and of that breath he may be deprived by the sting of a bee, and that idea, perhaps, truly belongs to another." "we live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths: in feelings, not in figures on a dial. we should count time by heart-throbs. he most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best; and he whose heart beats quickest lives the longest." chapter xxii. moral sunshine. i have gout, asthma, and seven other maladies, but am otherwise very well. --sidney smith. the inborn geniality of some people amounts to genius. --whipple. this one sits shivering in fortune's smile, taking his joy with bated, doubtful breath; this other, gnawed by hunger, all the while laughs in the teeth of death. --t. b. aldrich. there is no real life but cheerful life. --addison. next to the virtue, the fun in this world is what we can least spare. --agnes strickland. joy in one's work is the consummate tool. --phillips brooks. joy is the mainspring in the whole of endless natures calm rotation. joy moves the dazzling wheels that roll in the great timepiece of creation. --schiller. "he is as stiff as a poker," said a friend of a man who could never be coaxed or tempted to smile. "stiff as a poker," exclaimed another, "why he would set an example to a poker." even christians are not celebrated for entering into the _joy_ of their lord. we are told that "pascal would not permit himself to be conscious of the relish of his food; he prohibited all seasonings and spices, however much he might wish for and need them; and he actually died because he forced his diseased stomach to receive at each meal a certain amount of aliment, neither more nor less, whatever might be his appetite at the time, or his utter want of appetite. he wore a girdle armed with iron spikes, which he was accustomed to drive in upon his body (his fleshless ribs) as often as he thought himself in need of such admonition. he was annoyed and offended if any in his hearing might chance to say that they had just seen a beautiful woman. he rebuked a mother who permitted her own children to give her their kisses. toward a loving sister, who devoted herself to his comfort, he assumed an artificial harshness of manner for the _express purpose_, as he acknowledged, of revolting her sisterly affection." and all this sprung from the simple principle that earthly enjoyment was inconsistent with religion. we should fight against every influence which tends to depress the mind, as we would against a temptation to crime. a depressed mind prevents the free action of the diaphragm and the expansion of the chest. it stops the secretions of the body, interferes with the circulation of the blood in the brain, and deranges the entire functions of the body. scrofula and consumption often follow protracted depressions of mind. that "fatal murmur" which is heard in the upper lobes of the lungs in the first stages of consumption, often follows depressed spirits after some great misfortune or sorrow. victims of suicide are almost always in a depressed state from exhausted vitality, loss of nervous energy, dyspepsia, worry, anxiety, trouble, or grief. "mirth is god's medicine," says a wise writer; "everybody ought to bathe in it. grim care, moroseness, anxiety--all the rust of life, ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth." it is better than emery. every man ought to rub himself with it. a man without mirth is like a wagon without springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every pebble over which it runs. a man with mirth is like a chariot with springs, in which one can ride over the roughest roads and scarcely feel anything but a pleasant rocking motion. "i have told you," said southey, "of the spaniard who always put on spectacles when about to eat cherries, in order that the fruit might look larger and more tempting. in like manner i make the most of my enjoyments; and though i do not cast my eyes away from my troubles, i pack them in as small a compass as i can for myself, and never let them annoy others." we all know the power of good cheer to magnify everything. travelers are told by the icelanders, who live amid the cold and desolation of almost perpetual winter, that "iceland is the best land the sun shines upon." "you are on the shady side of seventy, i expect?" was asked of an old man. "no," was the reply, "i am on the sunny side; for i am on the side nearest to glory." a cheerful man is pre-eminently a useful man. he does not cramp his mind, nor take half-views of men and things. he knows that there is much misery, but that misery need not be the rule of life. he sees that in every state people may be cheerful; the lambs skip, birds sing and fly joyously, puppies play, kittens are full of joyance, the whole air full of careering and rejoicing insects; that everywhere the good outbalances the bad, and that every evil has its compensating balm. "bishop fénelon is a delicious man," said lord peterborough; "i had to run away from him to prevent his making me a christian." hume, the historian, never said anything truer than--"to be happy, the person must be cheerful and gay, not gloomy and melancholy. a propensity to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow, real poverty." dr. johnson once remarked with his point and pith that the custom of looking on the bright side of every event was better than having a thousand pounds a year income. but hume rated the value in dollars and cents of cheerfulness still higher. he said he would rather have a cheerful disposition always inclined to look on the bright side of things than to be master of an estate with , pounds a year. "we have not fulfilled every duty, unless we have fulfilled that of being pleasant." "if a word or two will render a man happy," said a frenchman, "he must be a wretch indeed, who will not give it. it is like lighting another man's candle with your own, which loses none of its brilliancy by what the other gains." the sensible young man, in theory at least, chooses for his wife one who will be able to keep his house, to be the mother of sturdy children, one who will of all things meet life's experiences with a sweet temper. it is impossible to imagine a pleasant home with a cross wife, mother or sister, as its presiding genius. and it is a rule, with exceptions, that good appetite and sound sleep induce amiability. if, with these advantages, a girl or woman, boy or man, is still snappish or surly, why it must be due to her or his total depravity. some things she should not do; she shouldn't dose herself, or study up her case, or plunge suddenly into vigorous exercise. moderation is a safe rule to begin with, and, indeed, to keep on with--moderation in study, in work, in exercise, in everything except fresh air, good, simple food, and sleep. few people have too much of these. the average girl at home can find no more sanitary gymnastics than in doing part of the lighter housework. this sort of exercise has object, and interest, and use, which raises it above mere drill. add to this a merry romp with younger brothers and sisters, a brisk daily walk, the use for a few moments twice a day of dumb bells in a cool, airy room, and it is safe to predict a steady advance toward that ideal state of being in which we forget our bodies and just enjoy ourselves. "it is not work that kills men," says beecher; "it is worry. work is healthy; you can hardly put more on a man than he can bear. but worry is rust upon the blade. it is not movement that destroys the machinery, but friction." helen hunt says there is one sin which seems to be everywhere, and by everybody is underestimated and quite too much overlooked in valuations of character. it is the sin of fretting. it is as common as air, as speech; so common that unless it rises above its usual monotone we do not even observe it. watch any ordinary coming together of people, and we see how many minutes it will be before somebody frets--that is, makes more or less complaint of something or other, which probably every one in the room, or car, or on the street corner knew before, and which most probably nobody can help. why say anything about it? it is cold, it is hot, it is wet, it is dry, somebody has broken an appointment, ill-cooked a meal; stupidity or bad faith somewhere has resulted in discomfort. there are plenty of things to fret about. it is simply astonishing, how much annoyance and discomfort may be found in the course of every-day living, even of the simplest, if one only keeps a sharp eye out on that side of things. some people seem to be always hunting for deformities, discords and shadows, instead of beauty, harmony and light. we are born to trouble, as sparks fly upward. but even to the sparks flying upward, in the blackest of smoke, there is a blue sky above, and the less time they waste on the road, the sooner they will reach it. fretting is all time wasted on the road. about two things we should never fret, that which we cannot help, and that which we can help. better find one of your own faults than ten of your neighbor's. it is not the troubles of to-day, but those of to-morrow and next week and next year, that whiten our heads and wrinkle our faces. "every man we meet looks as if he'd gone out to borrow trouble, with plenty of it on hand," said a french lady driving in new york. the pendulum of a certain clock began to calculate how often it would have to swing backward and forward in the week and in the month to come; then looking further into the future, it made a calculation for a year, etc. the pendulum got frightened and stopped. do one day's work at a time. do not worry about the trouble of to-morrow. most of the trouble in life is borrowed trouble, which never actually comes. "as all healthy action, physical, intellectual and moral, depends primarily on cheerfulness," says e. p. whipple, "and as every duty, whether it be to follow a plow or to die at the stake, should be done in a cheerful spirit, the exploration of the sources and conditions of this most vigorous, exhilarating and creative of the virtues may be as useful as the exposition of any topic of science or system of prudential art." christ, the great teacher, did not shut himself up with monks, away from temptation of the great world outside. he taught no long-faced, gloomy theology. he taught the gospel of gladness and good cheer. his doctrines are touched with the sunlight, and flavored with the flowers of the fields. the birds of the air, the beasts of the field, and happy, romping children are in them. true piety is cheerful as the day. cranmer cheers his brother martyrs, and latimer walks with a face shining with cheerfulness to the stake, upholds his fellow's spirits, and seasons all his sermons with pleasant anecdotes. "nothing will supply the want of sunshine to peaches," said emerson, "and to make knowledge valuable, you must have the cheerfulness of wisdom." in answer to the question, "how shall we overcome temptation," a noted writer said, "cheerfulness is the first thing, cheerfulness is the second, and cheerfulness is the third." a habit of cheerfulness, enabling one to transmute apparent misfortunes into real blessings, is a fortune to a young man or young woman just crossing the threshold of active life. he who has formed a habit of looking at the bright, happy side of things, who sees the glory in the grass, the sunshine in the flowers, sermons in stones, and good in everything, has a great advantage over the chronic dyspeptic, who sees no good in anything. his habitual thought sculptures his face into beauty and touches his manner with grace. we often forget that the priceless charm which will secure to us all these desirable gifts is within our reach. it is the charm of a sunny temper, a talisman more potent than station, more precious than gold, more to be desired than fine rubies. it is an aroma, whose fragrance fills the air with the odors of paradise. "it is from these enthusiastic fellows," says an admirer, "that you hear--what they fully believe, bless them!--that all countries are beautiful, all dinners grand, all pictures superb, all mountains high, all women beautiful. when such a one has come back from his country trip, after a hard year's work, he has always found the cosiest of nooks, the cheapest houses, the best of landladies, the finest views, and the best dinners. but with the other the case is indeed altered. he has always been robbed; he has positively seen nothing; his landlady was a harpy, his bedroom was unhealthy, and the mutton was so tough that he could not get his teeth through it." "he goes on to talk of the sun in his glory," says izaak walton, "the fields, the meadows, the streams which they have seen, the birds which they have heard; he asks what would the blind and deaf give to see and hear what they have seen." of lord holland's sunshiny face, rogers said: "he always comes to breakfast like a man upon whom some sudden good fortune has fallen." but oh, for the glorious spectacles worn by the good-natured man!--oh, for those wondrous glasses, finer than the claude lorraine glass, which throw a sunlit view over everything, and make the heart glad with little things, and thankful for small mercies! such glasses had honest izaak walton, who, coming in from a fishing expedition on the river lea, burst out into such grateful little talks as this: "let us, as we walk home under the cool shade of this honeysuckle hedge, mention some of the thoughts and joys that have possessed my soul since we two met. and that our present happiness may appear the greater, and we more thankful for it, i beg you to consider with me, how many do at this very time lie under the torment of the gout or the toothache, and this we have been free from; and let me tell you, that every misery i miss is a new blessing." the hypochondriac who nurses his spleen never looks forward cheerfully, but lounges in his invalid chair, and croaks like a raven, foreboding woe. "ah," says he, "you will never succeed; these things always fail." the thug of india, whose prayer is a homicide, and whose offering is the body of a victim, is melancholy. the fijiian, waiting to smash the skull of a victim, and to prepare a bakola for his gods, is gloomy as fear and death. the melancholy of the eastern jews after their black fast, and the ill-temper of monks and nuns after their fridays and wednesdays, is very observable; it is the recompense which a proud nature takes out of the world for its selfish sacrifice. melancholia is the black bile which the greeks presumed overran and pervaded the bodies of such persons; and fasting does undoubtedly produce this. "i once talked with a rosicrucian about the great secret," said addison. "he talked of it as a spirit that lived in an emerald, and converted everything that was near it to the highest perfection. 'it gives lustre to the sun,' said he, 'and water to the diamond. it irradiates every metal, and enriches lead with the property of gold. it brightens smoke into flame, flame into light, and light into glory. a single ray dissipates pain and care from the person on whom it falls.' then i found his great secret was content." my crown is in my heart, not on my head: not decked with diamonds and indian stones, nor to be seen: my crown is called content: a crown it is, that seldom kings enjoy. --shakespeare. yet, with a heart that's ever kind, a gentle spirit gay, you've spring perennial in your mind, and round you make a may. --thackeray. chapter xxiii. hold up your head. thoroughly to believe in one's own self, so one's self were thorough, were to do great things. --tennyson. if there be a faith that can remove mountains, it is faith in one's own power. --marie ebner-eschenbach. let no one discourage self-reliance; it is, of all the rest, the greatest quality of true manliness. --kossuth. it needs a divine man to exhibit anything divine. * * * trust thyself; every breast vibrates to that iron string. accept the place that divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. great men have always done so. * * * nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind. --emerson. this above all,--to thine own self be true; and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. --shakespeare. "yes," said a half-drunken man in a cellar to a parish visitor, a young girl, "i am a tough and a drunkard, and am just out of jail, and my wife is starving; but that doesn't give you the right to come into my house without knocking to ask questions." another zealous girl declared in a reform club in new york city that she always went to visit the poor in her carriage, with the crest on the door and liveried servants. "it gives me authority," she said. "they listen to my words with more respect." the fräulein barbara, who founded the home for degraded and drunken sailors in london, used other means to gain influence over them. "i too," she would say, taking the poor applicant by the hand when he came to her door, "i, too, as well as you, am one of those for whom christ died. we are brother and sister, and will help each other." an english artist, engaged in painting a scene in the london slums, applied to the board of guardians of the poor in chelsea for leave to sketch into it, as types of want and wretchedness, certain picturesque paupers then in the almshouse. the board refused permission on the ground that "a man does not cease to have self-respect and rights because he is a pauper, and that his misfortunes should not be paraded before the world." the incident helps to throw light on the vexed problem of the intercourse of the rich with the poor. kind but thoughtless people, who take up the work of "slumming," intent upon elevating and reforming the needy classes, are apt to forget that these unfortunates have self-respect and rights and sensitive feelings. "but i am not derided," said diogenes, when some one told him he was derided. "only those are ridiculed who feel the ridicule and are discomposed by it." dr. franklin used to say that if a man makes a sheep of himself the wolves will eat him. not less true is it that if a man is supposed to be a sheep, wolves will very likely try to eat him. "o god, assist our side," prayed the prince of anhalt-dessau, a general in the prussian service, before going into battle. "at least, avoid assisting the enemy, and leave the result to me." "if a man possesses the consciousness of what he is," said schelling, "he will soon also learn what he ought to be; let him have a theoretical respect for himself, and a practical will soon follow." a person under the firm persuasion that he can command resources virtually has them. "humility is the part of wisdom, and is most becoming in men," said kossuth; "but let no one discourage self-reliance; it is, of all the rest, the greatest quality of true manliness." froude wrote: "a tree must be rooted in the soil before it can bear flowers or fruit. a man must learn to stand upright upon his own feet, to respect himself, to be independent of charity or accident. it is on this basis only that any superstructure of intellectual cultivation worth having can possibly be built." "i think he is a most extraordinary man," said john j. ingalls, speaking of grover cleveland. "while the senate was in session to induct hendricks into office, i had an opportunity to study cleveland, as he sat there like a sphinx. he occupied a seat immediately in front of the vice-president's stand, and from where i sat, i had an unobstructed view of him. "i wanted to fathom, if possible, what manner of a man it was who had defeated us and taken the patronage of the government over to the democracy. we had a new master, so to speak, and a democrat at that, and i looked him over with a good deal of curiosity. "there sat a man, the president of the united states, beginning his rule over the destinies of sixty millions of people, who less than three years before was an obscure lawyer, scarcely known outside of erie county, shut up in a dingy office over a livery stable. he had been mayor of the city of buffalo at a time when a crisis in its affairs demanded a courageous head and a firm hand and he supplied them. the little prestige thus gained made him the democratic nominee for governor, and at a time (his luck still following him) when the republican party of the state was rent with dissensions. he was elected, and (still more luck) by the unprecedented and unheard of majority of nearly , votes. two years later his party nominated him for president and he was elected. "there sat this man before me, wholly undisturbed by the pageantry of the occasion, calmly waiting to perform his part in the drama, just as an actor awaits his cue to appear on a stage. it was his first visit to washington. he had never before seen the capitol and knew absolutely nothing of the machinery of government. all was a mystery to him, but a stranger not understanding the circumstances would have imagined that the proceedings going on before him were a part of his daily life. "the man positively did not move a limb, shut an eye or twitch a muscle during the entire hour he sat in the senate chamber. nor did he betray the faintest evidence of self-consciousness or emotion, and as i thought of the dingy office over the livery stable but three years before he struck me as a remarkable illustration of the possibilities of american citizenship. "but the most marvelous exhibition of the man's nerve and of the absolute confidence he has in himself was yet to come. after the proceedings in the senate chamber cleveland was conducted to the east end of the capitol to take the oath of office and deliver his inaugural address. he wore a close buttoned prince albert coat, and between the buttons he thrust his right hand, while his left he carried behind him. in this position he stood until the applause which greeted him had subsided, when he began his address. "i looked for him to produce a manuscript, but he did not, and as he progressed in clear and distinct tones, without hesitation, i was amazed. with sixty millions of people, yes, with the entire civilized world looking on, this man had the courage to deliver an inaugural address making him president of the united states as coolly and as unconcernedly as if he were addressing a ward meeting. it was the most remarkable spectacle this or any other country has ever beheld." believe in yourself; you may succeed when others do not believe in you, but never when you do not believe in yourself. "ah! john hunter, still hard at work!" exclaimed a physician on finding the old anatomist at the dissecting table. "yes, doctor, and you'll find it difficult to meet with another john hunter when i am gone." "heaven takes a hundred years to form a great genius for the regeneration of an empire and afterward rests a hundred years," said kaunitz, who had administered the affairs of his country with great success for half a century. "this makes me tremble for the austrian monarchy after my death." "isn't it beautiful that i can sing so?" asked jenny lind, naïvely, of a friend. "my lord," said william pitt in to the duke of devonshire, "i am sure that i can save this country and that nobody else can." he did save it. what seems to us disagreeable egotism in others is often but a strong expression of confidence in their ability to attain. great men have usually had great confidence in themselves. wordsworth felt sure of his place in history and never hesitated to say so. dante predicted his own fame. kepler said it did not matter whether his contemporaries read his books or not. "i may well wait a century for a reader since god has waited six thousand years for an observer like myself." "fear not," said julius cæsar to his pilot frightened in a storm, "thou bearest cæsar and his good fortunes." when the directory at paris found that napoleon had become in one month the most famous man in europe they determined to check his career, and appointed kellerman his associate in command. napoleon promptly, but respectfully, tendered his resignation, saying, "one bad general is better than two good ones; war, like government, is mainly decided by tact." this decision immediately brought the directory to terms. emperor francis was extremely anxious to prove the illustrious descent of his prospective son-in-law. napoleon refused to have the account published, remarking, "i had rather be the descendant of an honest man than of any petty tyrant of italy. i wish my nobility to commence with myself and derive all my titles from the french people. i am the rudolph of hapsburg of my family. my patent of nobility dates from the battle of montenotte." when napoleon was informed that the british government had decreed that he should be recognized only as general, he said, "they cannot prevent me from being myself." an englishman asked napoleon at elba who was the greatest general of the age, adding, "i think wellington." to which the emperor replied, "he has not yet measured himself against me." "well matured and well disciplined talent is always sure of a market," said washington irving; "but it must not cower at home and expect to be sought for. there is a good deal of cant, too, about the success of forward and impudent men, while men of retiring worth are passed over with neglect. but it usually happens that those forward men have that valuable quality of promptness and activity, without which worth is a mere inoperative property. a barking dog is often more useful than a sleeping lion." "self-respect is the early form in which greatness appears." "you may deceive all the people some of the time," said lincoln, "some of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time." we cannot deceive ourselves any of the time, and the only way to enjoy our own respect is to deserve it. what would you think of a man who would neglect himself and treat his shadow with the greatest respect? "self-reliance is a grand element of character," says michael reynolds. "it has won olympic crowns and isthmian laurels; it confers kinship with men who have vindicated their divine right to be held in the world's memory." chapter xxiv. books and success. ignorance is the curse of god, knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. --shakespeare. prefer knowledge to wealth; for the one is transitory, the other perpetual. --socrates. if a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. an investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. --franklin. my early and invincible love of reading, i would not exchange for the treasures of india. --gibbon. if the crowns of all the kingdoms of the empire were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, i would spurn them all. --f�nelon. who of us can tell what he had been, had cadmus never taught the art that fixes into form the thought,-- had plato never spoken from his cell, or his high harp blind homer never strung? --bulwer. when friends grow cold and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and common-place, these only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sorrow. --washington irving. "do you want to know," asks robert collyer, "how i manage to talk to you in this simple saxon? i read bunyan, crusoe, and goldsmith when i was a boy, morning, noon, and night. all the rest was task work; these were my delight, with the stories in the bible, and with shakespeare, when at last the mighty master came within our doors. the rest were as senna to me. these were like a well of pure water, and this is the first step i seem to have taken of my own free will toward the pulpit. * * * i took to these as i took to milk, and, without the least idea what i was doing, got the taste for simple words into the very fibre of my nature. there was day-school for me until i was eight years old, and then i had to turn in and work thirteen hours a day. * * * * from the days when we used to spell out crusoe and old bunyan there had grown up in me a devouring hunger to read books. it made small matter what they were, so they were books. half a volume of an old encyclopædia came along--the first i had ever seen. how many times i went through that i cannot even guess. i remember that i read some old reports of the missionary society with the greatest delight. "there were chapters in them about china and labrador. yet i think it is in reading, as it is in eating, when the first hunger is over you begin to be a little critical, and will by no means take to garbage if you are of a wholesome nature. and i remember this because it touches this beautiful valley of the hudson. i could not go home for the christmas of , and was feeling very sad about it all, for i was only a boy; and sitting by the fire, an old farmer came in and said: 'i notice thou's fond of reading, so i brought thee summat to read.' it was irving's 'sketch book.' i had never heard of the work. i went at it, and was 'as them that dream.' no such delight had touched me since the old days of crusoe. i saw the hudson and the catskills, took poor rip at once into my heart, as everybody has, pitied ichabod while i laughed at him, thought the old dutch feast a most admirable thing, and long before i was through, all regret at my lost christmas had gone down with the wind, and i had found out there are books and books. that vast hunger to read never left me. if there was no candle, i poked my head down to the fire; read while i was eating, blowing the bellows, or walking from one place to another. i could read and walk four miles an hour. the world centred in books. there was no thought in my mind of any good to come out of it; the good lay in the reading. i had no more idea of being a minister than you elder men who were boys then, in this town, had that i should be here to-night to tell this story. now, give a boy a passion like this for anything, books or business, painting or farming, mechanism or music, and you give him thereby a lever to lift his world, and a patent of nobility, if the thing he does is noble. there were two or three of my mind about books. we became companions, and gave the roughs a wide berth. the books did their work, too, about that drink, and fought the devil with a finer fire." "in education," says herbert spencer, "the process of self-development should be encouraged to the fullest extent. children should be led to make their own investigations, and to draw their own inferences. they should be _told_ as little as possible, and induced to _discover_ as much as possible. humanity has progressed solely by self-instruction; and that to achieve the best results each mind must progress somewhat after the same fashion, is continually proved by the marked success of self-made men." "my books," said thomas hood, "kept me from the ring, the dog-pit, the tavern, and the saloon. the associate of pope and addison, the mind accustomed to the noble though silent discourse of shakespeare and milton, will hardly seek or put up with low or evil company or slaves." "when i get a little money," said erasmus, "i buy books, and if any is left, i buy food and clothes." "hundreds of books read once," says robertson, "have passed as completely from us as if we had never read them; whereas the discipline of mind got by writing down, not copying, an abstract of a book which is worth the trouble fixes it on the mind for years, and, besides, enables one to read other books with more attention and more profit." "this habit of reading, i make bold to tell you," says trollope, "is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasures that god has prepared for his creatures. other pleasures may be more ecstatic; but the habit of reading is the only enjoyment i know, in which there is no alloy." the bible was begun in the desert in arabia ages before homer sang and flourished in asia minor. millions of books have since gone into oblivion. empires have risen and fallen. revolutions have swept over and changed the earth. it has always been subject to criticism and obloquy. mighty men have sought its overthrow. works of greek poets who catered to men's depraved tastes have, in spite of everything, perished. the bible is a book of religion; and can be tried by no other standard. "read plutarch," said emerson, "and the world is a proud place peopled with men of positive quality, with heroes and demi-gods standing around us who will not let us sleep." "there is no business, no avocation whatever," says wyttenbach, "which will not permit a man, who has an inclination, to give a little time, every day, to the studies of his youth." "all the sport in the park," said lady jane grey, "is but a shadow of that pleasure i find in plato." "in the lap of eternity," said heinsius, "among so many divine souls, i take my seat with so lofty a spirit and such sweet content, that i pity all the great ones and rich men, that have not this happiness." "death itself divides not the wise," says bulwer. "thou meetest plato when thine eyes moisten over the phædo. may homer live with all men forever!" "when a man reads," says president porter, "he should put himself into the most intimate intercourse with his author, so that all his energies of apprehension, judgment and feeling may be occupied with, and aroused by, what his author furnishes, whatever it may be. if repetition or review will aid him in this, as it often will, let him not disdain or neglect frequent reviews. if the use of the pen, in brief or full notes, in catchwords or other symbols, will aid him, let him not shrink from the drudgery of the pen and the commonplace book." "reading is to the mind," says addison, "what exercise is to the body. as by the one health is preserved, strengthened and invigorated, by the other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished and confirmed." "there is a world of science necessary in choosing books," said bulwer. "i have known some people in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the last light book in fashion. one might as well take a rose draught for the plague! light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. i am told that goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that was new to him. ah! goethe was a physician who knew what he was about." "when i served when a young man in india," said a distinguished english soldier and diplomatist; "when it was the turning point in my life; when it was a mere chance whether i should become a mere card-playing, hooka-smoking lounger, i was fortunately quartered for two years in the neighborhood of an excellent library, which was made accessible to me." "books," says e. p. whipple, "are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time." "as a rule," said benjamin disraeli, "the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information." "you get into society, in the widest sense," says geikie, "in a great library, with the huge advantage of needing no introductions, and not dreading repulses. from that great crowd you can choose what companions you please, for in the silent levees of the immortals there is no pride, but the highest is at the service of the lowest, with a grand humility. you may speak freely with any, without a thought of your inferiority; for books are perfectly well-bred, and hurt no one's feelings by any discriminations." sir william waller observed, "in my study, i am sure to converse with none but wise men, but abroad it is impossible for me to avoid the society of fools." "it is the glorious prerogative of the empire of knowledge," says webster, "that what it gains it never loses. on the contrary, it increases by the multiple of its own power; all its ends become means, all its attainments help to new conquests." "at this hour, five hundred years since their creation," says de quincey, "the tales of chaucer, never equaled on this earth for their tenderness and for life of picturesqueness, are read familiarly by many in the charming language of their natal day, and by others in the modernization of dryden, of pope, and wordsworth. at this hour, one thousand eight hundred years since their creation, the pagan tales of ovid, never equaled on this earth for the gayety of their movement and the capricious graces of their narrative, are read by all christendom." "there is no past so long as books shall live," says lytton. "no wonder cicero said that he would part with all he was worth so he might live and die among his books," says geikie. "no wonder petrarch was among them to the last, and was found dead in their company. it seems natural that bede should have died dictating, and that leibnitz should have died with a book in his hand, and lord clarendon at his desk. buckle's last words, 'my poor book!' tell a passion that forgot death; and it seemed only a fitting farewell when the tear stole down the manly cheeks of scott as they wheeled him into his library, when he had come back to abbotsford to die. southey, white-haired, a living shadow, sitting stroking and kissing the books he could no longer open or read, is altogether pathetic." "no entertainment is so cheap as reading," says mary wortley montagu; "nor any pleasure so lasting." good books elevate the character, purify the taste, _take the attractiveness out of low pleasures_, and lift us upon a higher plane of thinking and living. it is not easy to be mean directly after reading a noble and inspiring book. the conversation of a man who reads for improvement or pleasure will be flavored by his reading; but it will not be about his reading. perhaps no other thing has such power to lift the poor out of his poverty, the wretched out of his misery, to make the burden-bearer forget his burden, the sick his sufferings, the sorrower his grief, the downtrodden his degradation, as books. they are friends to the lonely, companions to the deserted, joy to the joyless, hope to the hopeless, good cheer to the disheartened, a helper to the helpless. they bring light into darkness, and sunshine into shadow. "twenty-five years ago, when i was a boy," said rev. j. a. james, "a school-fellow gave me an infamous book, which he lent me for only fifteen minutes. at the end of that time it was returned to him, but that book has haunted me like a spectre ever since. i have asked god on my knees to obliterate that book from my mind, but i believe that i shall carry down with me to the grave the spiritual damage i received during those fifteen minutes." did homer and plato and socrates and virgil ever dream that their words would echo through the ages, and aid in shaping men's lives in the nineteenth century? they were mere infants when on earth in comparison with the mighty influence and power they now yield. every life on the american continent has in some degree been influenced by them. christ, when on earth, never exerted one millionth part of the influence he wields to-day. while he reigns supreme in few human hearts, he touches all more or less, the atheist as well as the saint. on the other hand who shall say how many crimes were committed the past year by wicked men buried long ago? their books, their pictures, their terrible examples, live in all they reach, and incite to evil deeds. how important, then, is the selection of books which are to become a part of your being. knowledge cannot be stolen from us. it cannot be bought or sold. we may be poor, and the sheriff may come and sell our furniture, or drive away our cow, or take our pet lamb, and leave us homeless and penniless; but he cannot lay the law's hand upon the jewelry of our minds. "good books and the wild woods are two things with which man can never become too familiar," says george w. cable. "the friendship of trees is a sort of self-love and is very wholesome. all inanimate nature is but a mirror, and it is greater far to have the sense of beauty than it is to be only its insensible depository. "the books that inspire imagination, whether in truth or fiction; that elevate the thoughts, are the right kind to read. our emotions are simply the vibrations of our soul. "the moment fiction becomes mendacious it is bad, for it induces us to believe a lie. fiction purely as fiction must be innocent and beautiful, and its beauty must be more than skin deep. every field of art is a playground and we are extra pleased when the artist makes that field a gymnasium also." cotton mather's "essay to do good" read by the boy franklin influenced the latter's whole life. he advised everybody to read with a pen in hand and to make notes of all they read. james t. fields visited jesse pomeroy, the boy murderer, in jail. pomeroy told him he had been a great reader of "blood and thunder" stories; that he had read sixty dime novels about scalping and other bloody performances; and he thought there was no doubt that these books had put the horrible thoughts into his mind which led to his murderous acts. many a boy has gone to sea and become a rover for life under the influence of marryat's novels. abbott's "life of napoleon," read at the age of seven years, sent one boy whom i knew to the army before he was fourteen. many a man has committed crime from the leavening, multiplying influence of a bad book read when a boy. the chaplain of newgate prison in london, in one of his annual reports to the lord mayor, referring to many fine-looking lads of respectable parentage in the city prison, said that he discovered that "all these boys, without exception, had been in the habit of reading those cheap periodicals" which were published for the alleged amusement of youth of both sexes. there is not a police court or a prison in this country where similar cases could not be found. one can hardly measure the moral ruin that has been caused in this generation by the influence of bad books. in the parlor window of the old mossy vicarage where coleridge spent his dreamy childhood lay a well-thumbed copy of that volume of oriental fancy, the "arabian nights," and he has told us with what mingled desire and apprehension he was wont to look at the precious book, until the morning sunshine had touched and illuminated it, when, seizing it hastily, he would carry it off in triumph to some leafy nook in the vicarage garden, and plunge delightedly into its maze of marvels and enchantments. beecher said that ruskin's works taught him the secret of seeing, and that no man could ever again be quite the same man or look at the world in the same way after reading him. samuel drew said, "locke's 'essay on the understanding' awakened me from stupor, and induced me to form a resolution to abandon the groveling views i had been accustomed to maintain." an english tanner, whose leather gained a great reputation, said he should not have made it so good if he had not read carlyle. the lives of washington and henry clay, which lincoln borrowed from neighbors in the wilderness, and devoured by the light of the cabin fire, inspired his life. in his early manhood he read paine's "age of reason," and volney's "ruins," which so influenced his mind that he wrote an essay to prove the unreliability of the bible. these two books nearly unbalanced his moral character. but, fortunately, the books which fell into his hands in after years corrected this evil influence. the trend of many a life for good or ill, for success or failure, has been determined by a single book. the books which we read early in life are those which influence us most. when garfield was working for a neighbor he read "sinbad the sailor" and the "pirate's own book." these books revealed a new world to him, and his mother with difficulty kept him from going to sea. he was fascinated with the sea life which these books pictured to his young imagination. the "voyages of captain cook" led william carey to go on a mission to the heathen. "the imitation of christ" and taylor's "holy living and dying" determined the character of john wesley. "shakespeare and the bible," said john sharp, "made me archbishop of york." the "vicar of wakefield" awakened the poetical genius in goethe. "i have been the bosom friend of leander and romeo," said lowell. "i seem to go behind shakespeare, and to get my intelligence at first hand. sometimes, in my sorrow, a line from spenser steals in upon my memory as if by some vitality and external volition of its own, like a blast from the distant trump of a knight pricking toward the court of faerie, and i am straightway lifted out of that sadness and shadow into the sunshine of a previous and long-agone experience." "who gets more enjoyment out of eating," asks amos r. wells, "the pampered millionaire, whose tongue is the wearied host of myriads of sugary, creamy, spicy guests, or the little daughter of the laborer, trotting about all the morning with helpful steps, who has come a long two miles with her father's dinner to eat it with him from a tin pail? and who gets the more pleasure out of reading, the satiated fiction-glutton, her brain crammed with disordered fragments of countless scenes of adventure, love and tragedy, impatient of the same old situations, the familiar characters, the stale plots--she or the girl who is fired with a love for history, say, who wants to know all about the grand old, queer old socrates, and then about his friends, and then about the times in which he lived, and then about the way in which they all lived, then about the socratic legacy to the ages? why, will that girl ever be done with the feast? can you not see, looking down on her joy with a blessing, the very lord of the banquet, who has ordered all history and ordained that the truth he fashions shall be stranger always than the fiction man contrives? take the word of a man who has made full trial of both. solid reading is as much more interesting and attractive than frivolous reading as solid living is more recreative than frivolous living." "i solemnly declare," said sidney smith, "that but for the love of knowledge, i should consider the life of the meanest hedger and ditcher as preferable to that of the greatest and richest man in existence; for the fire of our minds is like the fires which the persians burn in the mountains, it flames night and day, and is immortal, and not to be quenched! upon something it must act and feed--upon the pure spirit of knowledge, or upon the foul dregs of polluting passions. therefore, when i say, in conducting your understanding, love knowledge with a great love, with a vehement love, with a love co-eval with life--what do i say but love innocence, love virtue, love purity of conduct, love that which, if you are rich and great, will vindicate the blind fortune which has made you so, and make men call it justice; love that which, if you are poor, will render your poverty respectable, and make the proudest feel it unjust to laugh at the meanness of your fortunes; love that which will comfort you, adorn you, and never quit you--which will open to you the kingdom of thought, and all the boundless regions of conception, as an asylum against the cruelty, the injustice, and the pain that may be your lot in the world--that which will make your motives habitually great and honorable, _and light up in an instant a thousand noble disdains at the very thought of meanness and of fraud_?" do i feel like hearing an eloquent sermon? spurgeon and beecher, whitefield, hall, collyer, phillips brooks, canon farrar, dr. parker, talmage, are all standing on my bookcase, waiting to give me their greatest efforts at a moment's notice. do i feel indisposed, and need a little recreation? this afternoon i will take a trip across the atlantic, flying against the wind and over breakers without fear of seasickness on the ocean greyhounds. i will inspect the world renowned liverpool docks; take a run up to hawarden, call on mr. gladstone; fly over to london, take a run through the british museum and see the wonderful collection from all nations; go through the national art gallery, through the houses of parliament, visit windsor castle and buckingham palace, call upon queen victoria, the prince of wales; take a run through the lake region and call upon the great writers, visit oxford and cambridge; cross the english channel, stop at rouen, where joan of arc was burned to death by the english, take a flying trip to paris, visit the tomb of napoleon, the louvre gallery; take a peep at one of the greatest pieces of sculpture in existence, the venus de milo (which a rich and ignorant person offered to buy if they would give him a fresh one), take a glance at some of the greatest paintings in existence along the miles of galleries; take a peep into the grand opera house, the grandest in the world (to make room for which buildings were demolished), promenade through the champs de elysée, pass under the triumphal arch of napoleon, take a run out to versailles and inspect the famous palace of louis xiv., upon which he spent perhaps $ , , . do i desire to hear eloquent speeches? through my books i can enter the parliament and listen to the thrilling oratory of disraeli, of gladstone, of bright, of o'connor; they will admit me to the floor of the senate, where i can hear the matchless oratory of a webster, of a clay, of a calhoun, of a sumner, of everett, of wilson. they will pass me into the roman forum, where i can hear cicero, or to the rostrums of greece, where i may listen spell-bound to the magic oratory of a demosthenes. "no matter how poor i am," says channing; "no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling; if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof; if milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of paradise, and shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom,--i shall not pine for the want of intellectual companionship, and i may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where i live." "with the dead there is no rivalry," says macaulay. "in the dead there is no change. plato is never sullen; cervantes is never petulant; demosthenes never comes unseasonably; dante never stays too long; no difference of political opinion can alienate cicero; no heresy can excite the horror of bossuet." "heed not the idle assertion that literary pursuits will disqualify you for the active business of life," says alexander h. everett. "reject it as a mere imagination, inconsistent with principle, unsupported by experience." the habit of reading may become morbid. there is a novel-reading disease. there are people who are almost as much tied to their novels as an intemperate man is tied to his bottle. the more of these novels they read, the weaker their minds become. they remember nothing; they read for the stimulus; their reasoning powers become weaker and weaker, their memory more treacherous. the mind is ruined for healthy intellectual food. they have no taste for history or biography, or anything but cheap, trashy, sensational novels. the passive reception of other men's thoughts is not education. beware of intellectual dram drinking and intellectual dissipation. it is emasculating. beware of the book which does not make you determined to go and do something and be something in the world. the great difference between the american graduate and the graduates from the english universities is that the latter have not read many books superficially, but a few books well. the american graduate has a smattering of many books, but has not become master of any. the same is largely true of readers in general; they want to know a little of everything. they want to read all the latest publications, good, bad and indifferent, if it is only new. as a rule our people want light reading, "something to read" that will take up the attention, kill time on the railroad or at home. as a rule english people read more substantial books, older books, books which have established their right to exist. they are not so eager for "recent publications." joseph cook advises youth to always make notes of their reading. mr. cook uses the margins of his books for his notes, and marks all of his own books very freely, so that every volume in his library becomes a notebook. he advises all young men and young women to keep commonplace books. we cannot too heartily recommend this habit of taking notes. it is a great aid to memory, and it helps wonderfully to locate or to find for future use what we have read. it helps to assimilate and make our own whatever we read. the habit of taking notes of lectures and sermons is an excellent one. one of the greatest aids to education is the habit of writing out an analysis or a skeleton of a book or article after we have read it; also of a sermon or a lecture. this habit has made many a strong, vigorous thinker and writer. in this connection we cannot too strongly recommend the habit of saving clippings from our readings wherever possible of everything which would be likely to assist us in the future. these scrap-books, indexed, often become of untold advantage, especially if in the line of our work. much of what we call genius in great men comes from these note-books and scrap-books. how many poor boys and girls who thought they had "no chance" in life have been started upon noble careers by the grand books of smiles, todd, mathews, munger, whipple, geikie, thayer, and others. you should bring your mind to the reading of a book, or to the study of any subject, as you take an axe to the grindstone; not for what you get from the stone, but for the sharpening of the axe. while it is true that the facts learned from books are worth more than the dust from the stone, even in much greater ratio is the mind more valuable than the axe. bacon says: "some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; morals grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend." chapter xxv. riches without wings. walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called. --eph. iv. i. abundance consists not alone in material possession, but in an uncovetous spirit. --selden. less coin, less care; to know how to dispense with wealth is to possess it. --reynolds. rich, from the very want of wealth, in heaven's best treasures, peace and health. --gray. money never made a man happy yet; there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. the more a man has, the more he wants. instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one. --franklin. there are treasures laid up in the heart, treasures of charity, piety, temperance, and soberness. these treasures a man takes with him beyond death, when he leaves this world. --buddhist scriptures. "it is better to get wisdom than gold; for wisdom is better than rubies, and all things that may be desired are not to be compared to it." "better a cheap coffin and a plain funeral after a useful, unselfish life, than a grand mausoleum after a loveless, selfish life." i ought not to allow any man, because he has broad lands, to feel that he is rich in my presence. i ought to make him feel that i can do without his riches, that i cannot be bought--neither by comfort, neither by pride,--and although i be utterly penniless, and receiving bread from him, that he is the poor man beside me. --emerson. "i don't want such things," said epictetus to the rich roman orator who was making light of his contempt for money-wealth; "and besides," said the stoic, "you are poorer than i am, after all. you have silver vessels, but earthenware reasons, principles, appetites. my mind to me a kingdom is, and it furnishes me with abundant and happy occupation in lieu of your restless idleness. all your possessions seem small to you; mine seem great to me. your desire is insatiate, mine is satisfied." "lord, how many things are in the world of which diogenes hath no need!" exclaimed the stoic, as he wandered among the miscellaneous articles at a country fair. "one would think," said boswell, "that the proprietor of all this (keddlestone, the seat of lord scarsfield) must be happy." "nay, sir," said johnson, "all this excludes but one evil, poverty." "what property has he left behind him?" people ask when a man dies; but the angel who receives him asks, "what good deeds hast thou sent before thee?" "what is the best thing to possess?" asked an ancient philosopher of his pupils. one answered, "nothing is better than a good eye,"--a figurative expression for a liberal and contented disposition. another said, "a good companion is the best thing in the world;" a third chose a good neighbor; and a fourth, a wise friend. but eleazar said: "a good heart is better than them all." "true," said the master; "thou hast comprehended in two words all that the rest have said, for he that hath a good heart will be contented, a good companion, a good neighbor, and will easily see what is fit to be done by him." "my kingdom for a horse," said richard iii. of england amid the press of bosworth field. "my kingdom for a moment," said queen elizabeth on her death-bed. and millions of others, when they have felt earth, its riches and power slipping from their grasp, have shown plainly that deep down in their hearts they value such things at naught when really compared with the blessed light of life, the stars and flowers, the companionship of friends, and far above all else, the opportunity of growth and development here and of preparation for future life. queen caroline matilda of denmark wrote on the window of her prison, with her diamond ring: "oh, keep me innocent; make others great." "these are my jewels," said cornelia to the campanian lady who asked to see her gems; and she pointed with pride to her boys returning from school. the reply was worthy the daughter of scipio africanus and wife of tiberius gracchus. the most valuable production of any country is its crop of men. "i will take away thy treasures," said a tyrant to a philosopher. "nay, that thou canst not," was the retort; "for, in the first place, i have none that thou knowest of. my treasure is in heaven, and my heart is there." some people are born happy. no matter what their circumstances are they are joyous, content and satisfied with everything. they carry a perpetual holiday in their eye and see joy and beauty everywhere. when we meet them they impress us as just having met with some good luck, or that they have some good news to tell you. like the bees that extract honey from every flower, they have a happy alchemy which transmutes even gloom into sunshine. in the sick room they are better than the physician and more potent than drugs. all doors open to these people. they are welcome everywhere. we make our own worlds and people them, while memory, the scribe, faithfully registers the account of each as we pass the milestones dotting the way. are we not, then, responsible for the inhabitants of our little worlds? we should fill them with the true, the beautiful and the good, since we are endowed with the faculty of creating. "genius," says whipple, "may almost be defined as the faculty of acquiring poverty." it is the men of talent who make money out of the work of the men of genius. somebody has truly said, that the greatest works have brought the least benefit to their authors. they were beyond the reach of appreciation before appreciation came. there is an eastern legend of a powerful genius, who promised a beautiful maiden a gift of rare value if she would pass through a field of corn and, without pausing, going backward, or wandering hither and thither, select the largest and ripest ear,--the value of the gift to be in proportion to the size and perfection of the ear she should choose. she passed through the field, seeing a great many well worth gathering, but always hoping to find a larger and more perfect one, she passed them all by, when, coming to a part of the field where the stalks grew more stunted, she disdained to take one from these, and so came through to the other side without having selected any. a man may make millions and be a failure still. money-making is not the highest success. the life of a well-known millionaire was not truly successful. he had but one ambition. he coined his very soul into dollars. the almighty dollar was his sun, and was mirrored in his heart. he strangled all other emotions and hushed and stifled all nobler aspirations. he grasped his riches tightly, till stricken by the scythe of death; when, in the twinkling of an eye, he was transformed from one of the richest men who ever lived in this world to one of the poorest souls that ever went out of it. lincoln always yearned for a rounded wholeness of character; and his fellow lawyers called him "perversely honest." nothing could induce him to take the wrong side of a case, or to continue on that side after learning that it was unjust or hopeless. after giving considerable time to a case in which he had received from a lady a retainer of two hundred dollars, he returned the money, saying: "madam, you have not a peg to hang your case on." "but you have earned that money," said the lady. "no, no," replied lincoln, "that would not be right. i can't take pay for doing my duty." agassiz would not lecture at five hundred dollars a night, because he had no time to make money. charles sumner, when a senator, declined to lecture at any price, saying that his time belonged to massachusetts and the nation. spurgeon would not speak for fifty nights in america at one thousand dollars a night, because he said he could do better: he could stay in london and try to save fifty souls. all honor to the comparative few in every walk of life who, amid the strong materialistic tendencies of our age, still speak and act earnestly, inspired by the hope of rewards other than gold or popular favor. these are our truly great men and women. they labor in their ordinary vocations with no less zeal because they give time and thought to higher things. king midas, in the ancient myth, asked that everything he touched might be turned to gold, for then, he thought, he would be perfectly happy. his request was granted, but when his clothes, his food, his drink, the flowers he plucked, and even his little daughter, whom he kissed, were all changed into yellow metal, he begged that the golden touch might be taken from him. he had learned that many other things are intrinsically far more valuable than all the gold that was ever dug from the earth. the "beggarly homer, who strolled, god knows when, in the infancy and barbarism of the world," was richer far than croesus and added more wealth to the world than the rothschilds, the vanderbilts and goulds. an arab who fortunately escaped death after losing his way in the desert, without provisions, tells of his feelings when he found a bag full of pearls, just as he was about to abandon all hope. "i shall never forget," said he, "the relish and delight that i felt on supposing it to be dried wheat, nor the bitterness and despair i suffered on discovering that the bag contained pearls." it is an interesting fact in this money-getting era that a poor author, or a seedy artist, or a college president with frayed coat-sleeves, has more standing in society and has more paragraphs written about him in the papers than many a millionaire. this is due, perhaps, to the malign influence of money-getting and to the benign effect of purely intellectual pursuits. as a rule every great success in the money world means the failure and misery of hundreds of antagonists. every success in the world of intellect and character is an aid and profit to society. character is a mark cut upon something, and this indelible mark determines the only true value of all people and all their work. dr. hunter said: "no man was ever a great man who wanted to be one." artists cannot help putting themselves and their own characters into their works. the vulgar artist cannot paint a virtuous picture. the gross, the bizarre, the sensitive, the delicate, all come out on the canvas and tell the story of his life. who would not choose to be a millionaire of deeds with a lincoln, a grant, a florence nightingale, a childs; a millionaire of ideas with emerson, with lowell, with shakespeare, with wordsworth; a millionaire of statesmanship with a gladstone, a bright, a sumner, a washington? some men are rich in health, in constant cheerfulness, in a mercurial temperament which floats them over troubles and trials enough to sink a shipload of ordinary men. others are rich in disposition, family, and friends. there are some men so amiable that everybody loves them; some so cheerful that they carry an atmosphere of jollity about them. some are rich in integrity and character. "who is the richest of men?" asked socrates. "he who is content with the least, for contentment is nature's riches." "do you know, sir," said a devotee of mammon to john bright, "that i am worth a million sterling?" "yes," said the irritated but calm-spirited respondent, "i do; and i know that it is all you are worth." a bankrupt merchant, returning home one night, said to his noble wife, "my dear, i am ruined; everything we have is in the hands of the sheriff." after a few moments of silence the wife looked into his face and asked, "will the sheriff sell you?" "oh, no." "will the sheriff sell me?" "oh, no." "then do not say we have lost everything. all that is most valuable remains to us--manhood, womanhood, childhood. we have lost but the results of our skill and industry. we can make another fortune if our hearts and hands are left us." "we say a man is 'made'," said beecher. "what do we mean? that he has got the control of his lower instincts, so that they are only fuel to his higher feelings, giving force to his nature? that his affections are like vines, sending out on all sides blossoms and clustering fruits? that his tastes are so cultivated that all beautiful things speak to him, and bring him their delights? that his understanding is opened, so that he walks through every hall of knowledge, and gathers its treasures? that his moral feelings are so developed and quickened that he holds sweet commerce with heaven? o, no--none of these things. he is cold and dead in heart, and mind, and soul. only his passions are alive; but--he is worth five hundred thousand dollars! "and we say a man is 'ruined.' are his wife and children dead? o, no. have they had a quarrel, and are they separated from him? o, no. has he lost his reputation through crime? no. is his reason gone? o, no; it is as sound as ever. is he struck through with disease? no. he has lost his property, and he is ruined. the _man_ ruined! when shall we learn that 'a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth?'" "how is it possible," asks an ancient philosopher, "that a man who has nothing, who is naked, houseless, without a hearth, squalid, without a slave, without a city, can pass a life that flows easily? see, god has sent you a man to show you that it is possible. look at me who am without a city, without a house, without possessions, without a slave; i sleep on the ground; i have no wife, no children, no prætorium, but only the earth and heavens, and one poor cloak. and what do i want? am i not without sorrow? am i not without fear? am i not free? when did any of you see me failing in the object of my desire? or even falling into that which i would avoid? did i ever blame god or man? did i ever accuse any man? did any of you ever see me with a sorrowful countenance?" "you are a plebeian," said a patrician to cicero. "i am a plebeian," replied the great roman orator; "the nobility of my family begins with me, that of yours will end with you." no man deserves to be crowned with honor whose life is a failure, and he who lives only to eat and drink and accumulate money is surely not successful. the world is no better for his living in it. he never wiped a tear from a sad face, never kindled a fire upon a frozen hearth. there is no flesh in his heart; he worships no god but gold. why should i scramble and struggle to get possession of a little portion of this earth? this is my world now; why should i envy others its mere legal possession? it belongs to him who can see it, enjoy it. i need not envy the so-called owners of estates in boston and new york. they are merely taking care of my property and keeping it in excellent condition for me. for a few pennies for railroad fare whenever i wish i can see and possess the best of it all. it has cost me no effort, it gives me no care; yet the green grass, the shrubbery, and the statues on the lawns, the finer sculptures and paintings within, are always ready for me whenever i feel a desire to look upon them. i do not wish to carry them home with me, for i could not give them half the care they now receive; besides, it would take too much of my valuable time, and i should be worrying continually lest they be spoiled or stolen. i have much of the wealth of the world now. it is all prepared for me without any pains on my part. all around me are working hard to get things that will please me, and competing to see who can give them the cheapest. the little i pay for the use of libraries, railroads, galleries, parks, is less than it would cost to care for the least of all i use. life and landscape are mine, the stars and flowers, the sea and air, the birds and trees. what more do i want? all the ages have been working for me; all mankind are my servants. i am only required to feed and clothe myself, an easy task in this land of opportunity. there is scarcely an idea more infectious or potent than the love of money. it is a yellow fever, decimating its votaries and ruining more families in the land, than all the plagues or diseases put together. instances of its malevolent power occur to every reader. almost every square foot of land of our continent during the early buccaneer period (some call it the march of civilization), has been ensanguined through the madness for treasure. read the pages of our historian prescott, and you will see that the whole anti-puritan history of america resolves itself into an awful slaughter for gold. discoveries were only side issues. speak, history, who are life's victors? unroll thy long scroll and say, have they won who first reached the goal, heedless of a brother's rights? and has he lost in life's great race who stopped "to raise a fallen child, and place him on his feet again," or to give a fainting comrade care; or to guide or assist a feeble woman? has he lost who halts before the throne when duty calls, or sorrow, or distress? is there no one to sing the pæan of the conquered who fell in the battle of life? of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed in the strife? of the low and humble, the weary and broken-hearted, who strove and who failed, in the eyes of men, but who did their duty as god gave them to see it? "we have yet no man who has leaned _entirely_ on his character, and eaten angel's food," said emerson; "who, trusting to his sentiments, found life made of miracles; who, working for _universal aims_, found himself fed, he knew not how; clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, and yet it was done by his own hands." at a time when it was considered dangerous to society in europe for the common people to read books and listen to lectures on any but religious subjects, charles knight determined to enlighten the masses by cheap literature. he believed that a paper might be instructive and not be dull, cheap without being wicked. he started the "penny magazine," which acquired a circulation of two hundred thousand the first year. knight projected the "penny cyclopedia," the "library of entertaining knowledge," "half-hours with the best authors," and other useful works at a low price. his whole adult life was spent in the work of elevating the common people by cheap, yet wholesome publications. he died in poverty, but grateful people have erected a noble monument over his ashes. how many rich dwellings there are, crowded with every appointment of luxury, that are only glittering caverns of selfishness and discontent! "better a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith." "no man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger," says beecher. "it is the heart that makes a man rich. he is rich or poor according to what he _is_, not according to what he _has_." if our thoughts are great and noble, no mean surroundings can make us miserable. it is the mind that makes the body rich. howe'er it be, it seems to me, 'tis only noble to be good. kind hearts are more than coronets, and simple faith than norman blood. --tennyson. be noble! and the nobleness that lies in other men, sleeping, but never dead, will rise in majesty to meet thine own. --lowell. pushing to the front or, success under difficulties, by orison swett marden. a book of inspiration and help to the youth of america who long to be somebody and to do something in the world, many of whom, hedged in as it were by iron walls of circumstances feel that they have "no chance in life." ==> passed through _a dozen editions its first year_. it is used _in boston and other public schools_, and has been republished and heartily received in foreign countries. =with fine full-page portraits. crown vo., $ . .= * * * * * a modern wonder. it should be in the hands of every american youth. --_bishop newman_. it is the most stimulating and suggestive book for young men i ever read. --_mrs. mary a. livermore_. best book of the kind ever written. --_golden rule_. there is an uplift on every page, and wisdom in every paragraph. --_epworth herald_. i have read with unusual interest your book "pushing to the front." it cannot but be an inspiration to every boy or girl who reads it. --_wm. mckinley_. a most interesting and valuable book to the youth of america. --_senator henry cabot lodge_. an admirable book, a timely contribution of advice and inspiration to youth. --_chauncey m. depew_. the author has done a most valuable service to the young life of the country. --_bishop j. h. vincent_. * * * * * sold by all booksellers. sent, postpaid, by houghton, mifflin & co., new york and boston. a new, handsomely illustrated magazine. * * * * * success edited by orison swett marden. _author of "pushing to the front, or success under difficulties;" "architects of fate," etc._ * * * * * the key note of the magazine will be to inspire, encourage and stimulate to higher purposes all who are anxious to add to their knowledge and culture, and to make the most of themselves and their opportunities. * * * * * features. the following departments and subjects will be given especial attention: the progress of the world, self-culture, civics, "what career?" health, science and invention, literature, correspondence, editorial talks, stories of great lives, healthful sports, poetry, short historical stories, opportunities for girls, the young man in business, problems, incidents and anecdotes, miscellaneous reading. * * * * * partial list of contributors. charles dudley warner. edna dean proctor. george w. cable. thos. wentworth higginson. oliver optic. hezekiah butterworth. bishop john p. newman. frank h. vincent. dr. booker t. washington. abby morton diaz. john ritchie, jr. marie a. molineux. rev. dr. david gregg. rev. dr. j. l. withrow. dr. a. h. campbell. henry wood. mary a. livermore. bishop j. h. vincent. rev. edward everett hale. john wanamaker. william m. thayer. harriet prescott spofford. justice john m. harlan. rev. dr. r. s. mcarthur. mrs. sarah white lee. a. e. winship. helen m. winslow. frank h. vizetelly. rev. dr. alexander mckenzie. dr. ellen a. wallace. a.d. mayo. cyrus c. adams. * * * * * =subscription, $ . per year.= ==> =_send in your name for descriptive prospectus, illustrated premium list, and free sample copy._= * * * * * success publishing co., boston, mass. architects of fate or, steps to success and power, by orison swett marden. a book of inspiration to character-building, self-culture, to a full and rich manhood and womanhood, by most invigorating examples of noble achievement. it is characterized by the same remarkable qualities as its companion volume "pushing to the front." =with fine full-page portraits. crown vo., pages, $ . .= * * * * * "architects of fate," like "pushing to the front," is a remarkable book, and of immense value in the training of youth. there is inspiration, encouragement and helpfulness on every page. --_edward everett hale._ there are enough brilliant sayings and lively anecdotes in this book to supply an after-dinner speaker or conversationalist for a lifetime. it is wise, witty, inspiring. --_woman's journal._ it will be a missionary of the highest type wherever it goes. --_new york times._ artistic, logical, stimulating mentally and morally. --_rev. dr. lorimer._ it teaches the lofty aim, the high resolve, the fixed purpose, the pure ideal. --_phila. public ledger._ an ideal book for youth. --_n. y. herald._ * * * * * sold by all booksellers. sent, postpaid, by houghton, mifflin & co., new york and boston. transcriber's list of corrections location original correction chapter vii. diction-tionary [_at line break_] dictionary chapter xi. more of less more or less chapter xv. battle of life, battle of life. chapter xvi. philsopher philosopher chapter xix. impossbile impossible chapter xx. notoble notable chapter xxi. conquerers conquerors success [_advertisement_] dr. brooker t. washington. dr. booker t. washington. the complete english tradesman by _daniel defoe_ [london , edinburgh ] contents author's preface introduction chapter i the tradesman in his preparations while an apprentice chapter ii the tradesman's writing letters chapter iii the trading style chapter iv of the tradesman acquainting himself with all business in general chapter v diligence and application in business chapter vi over-trading chapter vii of the tradesman in distress, and becoming bankrupt chapter viii the ordinary occasions of the ruin of tradesmen chapter ix of other reasons for the tradesman's disasters: and, first, of innocent diversions chapter x of extravagant and expensive living; another step to a tradesman's disaster chapter xi of the tradesman's marrying too soon chapter xii of the tradesman's leaving his business to servants chapter xiii of tradesmen making composition with debtors, or with creditors chapter xiv of the unfortunate tradesman compounding with his creditors chapter xv of tradesmen ruining one another by rumour and clamour, by scandal and reproach chapter xvi of the tradesman's entering into partnership in trade, and the many dangers attending it chapter xvii of honesty in dealing, and lying chapter xviii of the customary frauds of trade, which honest men allow themselves to practise, and pretend to justify chapter xix of fine shops, and fine shows chapter xx of the tradesman's keeping his books, and casting up his shop chapter xxi of the tradesman letting his wife be acquainted with his business chapter xxii of the dignity of trade in england more than in other countries chapter xxiii of the inland trade of england, its magnitude, and the great advantage it is to the nation in general chapter xxiv of credit in trade, and how a tradesman ought to value and improve it: how easily lost, and how hard it is to be recovered chapter xxv of the tradesman's punctual paying his bills and promissory notes under his hand, and the credit he gains by it author's preface the title of this work is an index of the performance. it is a collection of useful instructions for a young tradesman. the world is grown so wise of late, or (if you will) fancy themselves so, are so _opiniatre_, as the french well express it, so self-wise, that i expect some will tell us beforehand they know every thing already, and want none of my instructions; and to such, indeed, these instructions are not written. had i not, in a few years' experience, seen many young tradesmen miscarry, for want of those very cautions which are here given, i should have thought this work needless, and i am sure had never gone about to write it; but as the contrary is manifest, i thought, and think still, the world greatly wanted it. and be it that those unfortunate creatures that have thus blown themselves up in trade, have miscarried for want of knowing, or for want of practising, what is here offered for their direction, whether for want of wit, or by too much wit, the thing is the same, and the direction is equally needful to both. an old experienced pilot sometimes loses a ship by his assurance and over confidence of his knowledge, as effectually as a young pilot does by his ignorance and want of experience--this very thing, as i have been informed, was the occasion of the fatal disaster in which sir cloudesley shovel, and so many hundred brave fellows, lost their lives in a moment upon the rocks of scilly.[ ] he that is above informing himself when he is in danger, is above pity when he miscarries--a young tradesman who sets up thus full of himself, and scorning advice from those who have gone before him, like a horse that rushes into the battle, is only fearless of danger because he does not understand it. if there is not something extraordinary in the temper and genius of the tradesmen of this age, if there is not something very singular in their customs and methods, their conduct and behaviour in business; also, if there is not something different and more dangerous and fatal in the common road of trading, and tradesmen's management now, than ever was before, what is the reason that there are so many bankrupts and broken tradesmen now among us, more than ever were known before? i make no doubt but there is as much trade now, and as much gotten by trading, as there ever was in this nation, at least in our memory; and if we will allow other people to judge, they will tell us there is much more trade, and trade is much more gainful; what, then, must be the reason that the tradesmen cannot live on their trades, cannot keep open their shops, cannot maintain themselves and families, as well now as they could before? something extraordinary must be the case. there must be some failure in the tradesman--it can be nowhere else--either he is less sober and less frugal, less cautious of what he does, whom he trusts, how he lives, and how he behaves, than tradesmen used to be, or he is less industrious, less diligent, and takes less care and pains in his business, or something is the matter; it cannot be but if he had the same gain, and but the same expense which the former ages suffered tradesmen to thrive with, he would certainly thrive as they did. there must be something out of order in the foundation; he must fail in the essential part, or he would not fail in his trade. the same causes would have the same effects in all ages; the same gain, and but the same expense, would just leave him in the same place as it would have left his predecessor in the same shop; and yet we see one grow rich, and the other starve, under the very same circumstances. the temper of the times explains the case to every body that pleases but to look into it. the expenses of a family are quite different now from what they have been. tradesmen cannot live as tradesmen in the same class used to live; custom, and the manner of all the tradesmen round them, command a difference; and he that will not do as others do, is esteemed as nobody among them, and the tradesman is doomed to ruin by the fate of the times. in short, there is a fate upon a tradesman; either he must yield to the snare of the times, or be the jest of the times; the young tradesman cannot resist it; he must live as others do, or lose the credit of living, and be run down as if he were bankrupt. in a word, he must spend more than he can afford to spend, and so be undone; or not spend it, and so be undone. if he lives as others do, he breaks, because he spends more than he gets; if he does not, he breaks too, because he loses his credit, and that is to lose his trade. what must he do?[ ] the following directions are calculated for this exigency, and to prepare the young tradesman to stem the attacks of those fatal customs, which otherwise, if he yields to them, will inevitably send him the way of all the thoughtless tradesmen that have gone before him. here he will be effectually, we hope, encouraged to set out well; to begin wisely and prudently; and to avoid all those rocks which the gay race of tradesmen so frequently suffer shipwreck upon. and here he will have a true plan of his own prosperity drawn out for him, by which, if it be not his own fault, he may square his conduct in an unerring manner, and fear neither bad fortune nor bad friends. i had purposed to give a great many other cautions and directions in this work, but it would have spun it out too far, and have made it tedious. i would indeed have discoursed of some branches of home trade, which necessarily embarks the inland tradesman in some parts of foreign business, and so makes a merchant of the shopkeeper almost whether he will or no. for example, almost all the shopkeepers and inland traders in seaport towns, or even in the water-side part of london itself, are necessarily brought in to be owners of ships, and concerned at least in the vessel, if not in the voyage. some of their trades, perhaps, relate to, or are employed in, the building, or fitting, or furnishing out ships, as is the case at shoreham, at ipswich, yarmouth, hull, whitby, newcastle, and the like. others are concerned in the cargoes, as in the herring fishery at yarmouth and the adjacent ports, the colliery at newcastle, sunderland, &c., and the like in many other cases. in this case, the shopkeeper is sometimes a merchant adventurer, whether he will or not, and some of his business runs into sea-adventures, as in the salt trade at sheffield, in northumberland, and durham, and again at limington; and again in the coal trade, from whitehaven in cumberland to ireland, and the like. these considerations urged me to direct due cautions to such tradesmen, and such as would be particular to them, especially not to launch out in adventures beyond the compass of their stocks,[ ] and withal to manage those things with due wariness. but this work had not room for those things; and as that sort of amphibious tradesmen, for such they are, trading both by water and by land, are not of the kind with those particularly aimed at in these sheets, i thought it was better to leave them quite out than to touch but lightly upon them. i had also designed one chapter or letter to my inland tradesmen, upon the most important subject of borrowing money upon interest, which is one of the most dangerous things a tradesman is exposed to. it is a pleasant thing to a tradesman to see his credit rise, and men offer him money to trade with, upon so slender a consideration as five per cent. interest, when he gets ten per cent. perhaps twice in the year; but it is a snare of the most dangerous kind in the event, and has been the ruin of so many tradesmen, that, though i had not room for it in the work, i could not let it pass without this notice in the preface. . interest-money eats deep into the tradesman's profits, because it is a payment certain, whether the tradesman gets or loses, and as he may often get double, so sometimes he loses, and then his interest is a double payment; it is a partner with him under this unhappy circumstance, namely, that it goes halves when he gains, but not when he loses. . the lender calls for his money when he pleases, and often comes for it when the borrower can ill spare it; and then, having launched out in trade on the supposition of so much in stock, he is left to struggle with the enlarged trade with a contracted stock, and thus he sinks under the weight of it, cannot repay the money, is dishonoured, prosecuted, and at last undone, by the very loan which he took in to help him. interest of money is a dead weight upon the tradesman, and as the interest always keeps him low, the principal sinks him quite down, when that comes to be paid out again. payment of interest, to a tradesman, is like cicero bleeding to death in a warm bath;[ ] the pleasing warmth of the bath makes him die in a kind of dream, and not feel himself decay, till at last he is exhausted, falls into convulsions, and expires. a tradesman held up by money at interest, is sure to sink at last by the weight of it, like a man thrown into the sea with a stone tied about his neck, who though he could swim if he was loose, drowns in spite of all his struggle. indeed, this article would require not a letter, but a book by itself; and the tragical stories of tradesmen undone by usury are so many, and the variety so great, that they would make a history by themselves. but it must suffice to treat it here only in general, and give the tradesmen a warning of it, as the trinity-house pilots warn sailors of a sand, by hanging a buoy upon it, or as the eddystone light-house upon a sunk rock, which, as the poet says, 'bids men stand off, and live; come near, and die.' for a tradesman to borrow money upon interest, i take to be like a man going into a house infected with the plague; it is not only likely that he may be infected and die, but next to a miracle if he escapes. this part being thus hinted at, i think i may say of the following sheets, that they contain all the directions needful to make the tradesman thrive; and if he pleases to listen to them with a temper of mind willing to be directed, he must have some uncommon ill luck if he miscarries. footnotes: [ ] [october , .--admiral shovel, with the confederate fleet from the mediterranean, as he was coming home, apprehended himself near the rocks of scilly about noon, and the weather being hazy, he brought to and lay by till evening, when he made a signal for sailing. what induced him to be more cautious in the day than in the night is not known; but the fleet had not been long under sail before his own ship, the _association_, with the _eagle_ and _romney_, were dashed to pieces upon the rocks called the _bishop and his clerks_, and all their men lost; the _ferdinand_ was also cast away, and but twenty-four of her men saved. admiral byng, perceiving the misfortune, altered his course, whereby he preserved himself and the rest of the fleet which sailed after him.--_salmon's chronological historian_. london, .] [ ] [there is much reason for receiving all such complaints as the above with caution. the extravagance of the present, in contrast with the frugality of a past age, has always been a favourite topic of declamation, and appears to have no other foundation than whim. indeed, it is next to impossible that any great body of men could exist in the circumstances described in the text.] [ ] [stock is in this book invariably used for what we express by the term _capital_.] [ ] [cicero is here given by mistake for seneca, who thus suffered death by order of the tyrant nero.] introduction being to direct this discourse to the tradesmen of this nation, it is needful, in order to make the substance of this work and the subject of it agree together, that i should in a few words explain the terms, and tell the reader who it is we understand by the word tradesman, and how he is to be qualified in order to merit the title of _complete_. this is necessary, because the said term tradesman is understood by several people, and in several places, in a different manner: for example, in the north of britain, and likewise in ireland, when you say a tradesman, you are understood to mean a mechanic, such as a smith, a carpenter, a shoemaker, and the like, such as here we call a handicraftsman. in like manner, abroad they call a tradesman such only as carry goods about from town to town, and from market to market, or from house to house, to sell; these in england we call petty chapmen, in the north pethers, and in our ordinary speech pedlars. but in england, and especially in london, and the south parts of britain, we take it in another sense, and in general, all sorts of warehouse-keepers, shopkeepers, whether wholesale dealers or retailers of goods, are called tradesmen, or, to explain it by another word, trading men: such are, whether wholesale or retail, our grocers, mercers, linen and woollen drapers, blackwell-hall factors, tobacconists, haberdashers, whether of hats or small wares, glovers, hosiers, milliners, booksellers, stationers, and all other shopkeepers, who do not actually work upon, make, or manufacture, the goods they sell. on the other hand, those who make the goods they sell, though they do keep shops to sell them, are not called tradesmen, but handicrafts, such as smiths, shoemakers, founders, joiners, carpenters, carvers, turners, and the like; others, who only make, or cause to be made, goods for other people to sell, are called manufacturers and artists, &c. thus distinguished, i shall speak of them all as occasion requires, taking this general explication to be sufficient; and i thus mention it to prevent being obliged to frequent and further particular descriptions as i go on. as there are several degrees of people employed in trade below these, such as workmen, labourers, and servants, so there is a degree of traders above them, which we call merchants; where it is needful to observe, that in other countries, and even in the north of britain and ireland, as the handicraftsmen and artists are called tradesmen, so the shopkeepers whom we here call tradesmen, are all called merchants; nay, even the very pedlars are called travelling merchants.[ ] but in england the word merchant is understood of none but such as carry on foreign correspondences, importing the goods and growth of other countries, and exporting the growth and manufacture of england to other countries; or, to use a vulgar expression, because i am speaking to and of those who use that expression, such as trade beyond sea. these in england, and these only, are called merchants, by way of honourable distinction; these i am not concerned with in this work, nor is any part of it directed to them. as the tradesmen are thus distinguished, and their several occupations divided into proper classes, so are the trades. the general commerce of england, as it is the most considerable of any nation in the world, so that part of it which we call the home or inland trade, is equal, if not superior, to that of any other nation, though some of those nations are infinitely greater than england, and more populous also, as france and germany in particular. i insist that the trade of england is greater and more considerable than that of any other nation, for these reasons: . because england produces more goods as well for home consumption as for foreign exportation, and those goods all made of its own produce or manufactured by its own inhabitants, than any other nation in the world. . because england consumes within itself more goods of foreign growth, imported from the several countries where they are produced or wrought, than any other nation in the world. and-- . because for the doing this england employs more shipping and more seamen than any other nation, and, some think, than all the other nations, of europe. hence, besides the great number of wealthy merchants who carry on this great foreign _negoce_ [_negotium_ (latin) business], and who, by their corresponding with all parts of the world, import the growth of all countries hither--i say, besides these, we have a very great number of considerable dealers, whom we call tradesmen, who are properly called warehouse-keepers, who supply the merchants with all the several kinds of manufactures, and other goods of the produce of england, for exportation; and also others who are called wholesalemen, who buy and take off from the merchants all the foreign goods which they import; these, by their corresponding with a like sort of tradesmen in the country, convey and hand forward those goods, and our own also, among those country tradesmen, into every corner of the kingdom, however remote, and by them to the retailers, and by the retailer to the last consumer, which is the last article of all trade. these are the tradesmen understood in this work, and for whose service these sheets are made public. having thus described the person whom i understand by the english tradesman, it is then needful to inquire into his qualifications, and what it is that renders him a finished or complete man in his business. . that he has a general knowledge of not his own particular trade and business only--that part, indeed, well denominates a handicraftsman to be a complete artist; but our complete tradesman ought to understand all the inland trade of england, so as to be able to turn his hand to any thing, or deal in any thing or every thing of the growth and product of his own country, or the manufacture of the people, as his circumstances in trade or other occasions may require; and may, if he sees occasion, lay down one trade and take up another when he pleases, without serving a new apprenticeship to learn it. . that he not only has a knowledge of the species or kinds of goods, but of the places and peculiar countries where those goods, whether product or manufacture, are to be found; that is to say, where produced or where made, and how to come at them or deal in them, at the first hand, and to his best advantage. . that he understands perfectly well all the methods of correspondence, returning money or goods for goods, to and from every county in england; in what manner to be done, and in what manner most to advantage; what goods are generally bought by barter and exchange, and what by payment of money; what for present money, and what for time; what are sold by commission from the makers, what bought by factors, and by giving commission to buyers in the country, and what bought by orders to the maker, and the like; what markets are the most proper to buy every thing at, and where and when; and what fairs are proper to go to in order to buy or sell, or meet the country dealer at, such as sturbridge, bristol, chester, exeter; or what marts, such as beverly, lynn, boston, gainsborough, and the like. in order to complete the english tradesman in this manner, the first thing to be done is lay down such general maxims of trade as are fit for his instruction, and then to describe the english or british product, being the fund of its inland trade, whether we mean its produce as the growth of the country, or its manufactures, as the labour of her people; then to acquaint the tradesman with the manner of the circulation where those things are found, how and by what methods all those goods are brought to london, and from london again conveyed into the country; where they are principally bought at best hand, and most to the advantage of the buyer, and where the proper markets are to dispose of them again when bought. these are the degrees by which the complete tradesman is brought up, and by which he is instructed in the principles and methods of his commerce, by which he is made acquainted with business, and is capable of carrying it on with success, after which there is not a man in the universe deserves the title of a complete tradesman, like the english shopkeeper. footnotes: [ ] [this misuse of the term _merchant_ continues to exist in scotland to the present day.] chapter i the tradesman in his preparations while an apprentice the first part of a trader's beginning is ordinarily when he is very young, i mean, when he goes as an apprentice, and the notions of trade are scarcely got into his head; for boys go apprentices while they are but boys; to talk to them in their first three or four years signifies nothing; they are rather then to be taught submission to families, and subjection to their masters, and dutiful attendance in their shops or warehouses; and this is not our present business. but after they have entered the fifth or sixth year, they may then be entertained with discourses of another nature; and as they begin then to look forward beyond the time of their servitude, and think of setting up and being for themselves, i think then is the time to put them upon useful preparations for the work, and to instruct them in such things as may qualify them best to enter upon the world, and act for themselves when they are so entered. the first thing a youth in the latter part of his time is to do, is to endeavour to gain a good judgment in the wares of all kinds that he is likely to deal in--as, for example, if a draper, the quality of cloths; if a stationer, the quality of papers; if a grocer, the quality of sugars, teas, &c.; and so on with all other trades. during the first years of a young man's time, he of course learns to weigh and measure either liquids or solids, to pack up and make bales, trusses, packages, &c., and to do the coarser and laborious part of business; but all that gives him little knowledge in the species and quality of the goods, much less a nice judgment in their value and sorts, which however is one of the principal things that belong to trade. it is supposed that, by this time, if his master is a man of considerable business, his man is become the eldest apprentice, and is taken from the counter, and from sweeping the warehouse, into the counting-house, where he, among other things, sees the bills of parcels of goods bought, and thereby knows what every thing costs at first hand, what gain is made of them, and if a miscarriage happens, he knows what loss too; by which he is led of course to look into the goodness of the goods, and see the reason of things: if the goods are not to expectation, and consequently do not answer the price, he sees the reason of that loss, and he looks into the goods, and sees where and how far they are deficient, and in what; this, if he be careful to make his observations, brings him naturally to have a good judgment in the goods. if a young man neglects this part, and passes over the season for such improvement, he very rarely ever recovers it; for this part has its season, and that more remarkable than in many other cases, and that season lost, never comes again; a judgment in goods taken in early, is never lost, and a judgment taken in late is seldom good. if the youth slips this occasion, and, not minding what is before him, goes out of his time without obtaining such a skill as this in the goods he is to deal in, he enters into trade without his most useful tools, and must use spectacles before his time. for want of this knowledge of the goods, he is at a loss in the buying part, and is liable to be cheated and imposed upon in the most notorious manner by the sharp-sighted world, for his want of judgment is a thing that cannot be hid; the merchants or manufacturers of whom he buys, presently discover him; the very boys in the wholesalemen's warehouses, and in merchant's warehouses, will play upon him, sell him one thing for another, show him a worse sort when he calls for a better, and, asking a higher price for it, persuade him it is better; and when they have thus bubbled him, they triumph over his ignorance when he is gone, and expose him to the last degree. besides, for want of judgment in the goods he is to buy, he often runs a hazard of being cheated to a very great degree, and perhaps some time or other a tradesman may be ruined by it, or at least ruin his reputation. when i lived abroad, i had once a commission sent me from a merchant in london, to buy a large parcel of brandy: the goods were something out of my way, having never bought any in that country before. however, it happened that i had frequently bought and imported brandies in england, and had some judgment in them, so much that i ventured to buy without taking a cooper with me, which was not usual in that place. the first parcel of brandy i saw was very good, and i bought freely to the value of about £ , and shipped them for england, where they gave very good satisfaction to my employer. but i could not complete my commission to my mind in that parcel. some days after, some merchants, who had seen me buy the other, and thought me a novice in the business, and that i took no cooper to taste the brandy, laid a plot for me, which indeed was such a plot as i was not in the least aware of; and had not the little judgment which i had in the commodity prevented, i had been notoriously abused. the case was thus:--they gave me notice by the same person who helped me to the sight of the first brandy, that there was a cellar of extraordinary good brandy at such a place, and invited me to see it. accordingly i went in an afternoon, and tasted the brandy, being a large parcel, amounting to about £ . i liked the goods very well; but the merchant, as they called him, that is to say, the knave appointed to cheat the poor stranger, was cunningly out of the way, so that no bargain was to be made that night. but as i had said that i liked the brandy, the same person who brought me an account of them, comes to my lodgings to treat with me about the price. we did not make many words: i bade him the current price which i had bought for some days before, and after a few struggles for five crowns a-tun more, he came to my price, and his next word was to let me know the gage of the cask; and as i had seen the goods already, he thought there was nothing to do but to make a bargain, and order the goods to be delivered. but young as i was, i was too old for that too; and told him, i could not tell positively how many i should take, but that i would come in the afternoon, and taste them again, and mark out what i wanted. he seemed uneasy at that, and pretended he had two merchants waiting to see them, and he could sell them immediately, and i might do him a prejudice if i made him wait and put them off, who perhaps might buy in the mean time. i answered him coldly, i would not hinder him selling them by any means if he could have a better chapman, that i could not come sooner, and that i would not be obliged to take the whole parcel, nor would i buy any of them without tasting them again: he argued much to have me buy them, seeing, as he said, i had tasted them before, and liked them very well. 'i did so,' said i, 'but i love to have my palate confirm one day what it approved the day before.' 'perhaps,' says he, 'you would have some other person's judgment of them, and you are welcome to do so, sir, with all my heart; send any body you please:' but still he urged for a bargain, when the person sent should make his report; and then he had his agents ready, i understood afterwards, to manage the persons i should send. i answered him frankly, i had no great judgment, but that, such as it was, i ventured to trust to it; i thought i had honest men to deal with, and that i should bring nobody to taste them for me but myself. this pleased him, and was what he secretly wished; and now, instead of desiring me to come immediately, he told me, that seeing i would not buy without seeing the goods again, and would not go just then, he could not be in the way in the afternoon, and so desired i would defer it till next morning, which i readily agreed to. in the morning i went, but not so soon as i had appointed; upon which, when i came, he seemed offended, and said i had hindered him--that he could have sold the whole parcel, &c. i told him i could not have hindered him, for that i had told him he should not wait for me, but sell them to the first good customer he found. he told me he had indeed sold two or three casks, but he would not disoblige me so much as to sell the whole parcel before i came. this i mention, because he made it a kind of a bite upon me, that i should not be alarmed at seeing the casks displaced in the cellar. when i came to taste the brandy, i began to be surprised. i saw the very same casks which i had touched with the marking-iron when i was there before, but i did not like the brandy by any means, but did not yet suspect the least foul play. i went round the whole cellar, and i could not mark above three casks which i durst venture to buy; the rest apparently showed themselves to be mixed, at least i thought so. i marked out the three casks, and told him my palate had deceived me, that the rest of the brandy was not for my turn. i saw the man surprised, and turn pale, and at first seemed to be very angry, that i should, as he called it, disparage the goods--that sure i did not understand brandy, and the like--and that i should have brought somebody with me that did understand it. i answered coldly, that if i ventured my money upon my own judgment, the hazard was not to the seller, but to the buyer, and nobody had to do with that; if i did not like his goods, another, whose judgment was better, might like them, and so there was no harm done: in a word, he would not let me have the three casks i had marked, unless i took more, and i would take no more--so we parted, but with no satisfaction on his side; and i afterwards came to hear that he had sat up all the night with his coopers, mixing spirits in every cask, whence he drew off a quantity of the right brandy, and corrupted it, concluding, that as i had no judgment to choose by but my own, i could not discover it; and it came out by his quarrelling with the person who brought me to him, for telling him i did not understand the goods, upon which presumption he ventured to spoil the whole parcel. i give you this story as a just caution to a young tradesman, and to show how necessary it is that a tradesman should have judgment in the goods he buys, and how easily he may be imposed upon and abused, if he offers to buy upon his own judgment, when really it is defective. i could enlarge this article with many like examples, but i think this may suffice. the next thing i recommend to an apprentice at the conclusion of his time, is to acquaint himself with his master's chapmen;[ ] i mean of both kinds, as well those he sells to, as those he buys of, and, if he is a factor, with his master's employers. but what i aim at now is the chapmen and customers whom his master chiefly sells to. i need not explain myself not to mean by this the chance customers of a retailer's shop, for there can be no acquaintance, or very little, made with them; i mean the country shopkeepers, or others, who buy in parcels, and who buy to sell again, or export as merchants. if the young man comes from his master, and has formed no acquaintance or interest among the customers whom his master dealt with, he has, in short, slipt or lost one of the principal ends and reasons of his being an apprentice, in which he has spent seven years, and perhaps his friends given a considerable sum of money. for a young man coming out of his time to have his shop or warehouse stocked with goods, and his customers all to seek, will make his beginning infinitely more difficult to him than it would otherwise be; and he not only has new customers to seek, but has their characters to seek also, and knows not who is good and who not, till he buys that knowledge by his experience, and perhaps sometimes pays too dear for it. it was an odd circumstance of a tradesman in this city a few years ago, who, being out of his time, and going to solicit one of his master's customers to trade with him, the chapman did not so much as know him, or remember that he had ever heard his name, except as he had heard his master call his apprentice jacob. i know some masters diligently watch to prevent their apprentices speaking to their customers, and to keep them from acquainting themselves with the buyers, that when they come out of their times they may not carry the trade away with them. to hinder an apprentice from an acquaintance with the dealers of both sorts, is somewhat like laban's usage of jacob, namely, keeping back the beloved rachel, whom he served his seven years' time for, and putting him off with a blear-eyed leah in her stead; it is, indeed, a kind of robbing him, taking from him the advantage which he served his time for, and sending him into the world like a man out of a ship set on shore among savages, who, instead of feeding him, are indeed more ready to eat him up and devour him.[ ] an apprentice who has served out his time faithfully and diligently, ought to claim it as a debt to his indentures, that his master should let him into an open acquaintance with his customers; he does not else perform his promise to teach him the art and mystery of his trade; he does not make him master of his business, or enable him as he ought to set up in the world; for, as buying is indeed the first, so selling is the last end of trade, and the faithful apprentice ought to be fully made acquainted with them both. next to being acquainted with his master's customers and chapmen, the apprentice, when his time is near expiring, ought to acquaint himself with the books, that is to say, to see and learn his master's method of book-keeping, that he may follow it, if the method is good, and may learn a better method in time, if it is not. the tradesman should not be at a loss how to keep his books, when he is to begin his trade; that would be to put him to school when he is just come from school; his apprenticeship is, and ought in justice to be, a school to him, where he ought to learn every thing that should qualify him for his business, at least every thing that his master can teach him; and if he finds his master either backward or unwilling to teach him, he should complain in time to his own friends, that they may some how or other supply the defect. a tradesman's books are his repeating clock, which upon all occasions are to tell him how he goes on, and how things stand with him in the world: there he will know when it is time to go on, or when it is time to give over; and upon his regular keeping, and fully acquainting himself with his books, depends at least the comfort of his trade, if not the very trade itself. if they are not duly posted, and if every thing is not carefully entered in them, the debtor's accounts kept even, the cash constantly balanced, and the credits all stated, the tradesman is like a ship at sea, steered without a helm; he is all in confusion, and knows not what he does, or where he is; he may be a rich man, or a bankrupt--for, in a word, he can give no account of himself to himself, much less to any body else. his books being so essential to his trade, he that comes out of his time without a perfect knowledge of the method of book-keeping, like a bride undrest, is not fit to be married; he knows not what to do, or what step to take; he may indeed have served his time, but he has not learned his trade, nor is he fit to set up; and be the fault in himself for not learning, or in his master for not teaching him, he ought not to set up till he has gotten some skilful person to put him in a way to do it, and make him fully to understand it. it is true, there is not a great deal of difficulty in keeping a tradesman's books, especially if he be a retailer only; but yet, even in the meanest trades, they ought to know how to keep books. but the advice is directed to those who are above the retailer, as well as to them; if the book-keeping be small, it is the sooner learned, and the apprentice is the more to blame if he neglects it. besides, the objection is much more trifling than the advice. the tradesman cannot carry on any considerable trade without books; and he must, during his apprenticeship, prepare himself for business by acquainting himself with every thing needful for his going on with his trade, among which that of book-keeping is absolutely necessary. the last article, and in itself essential to a young tradesman, is to know how to buy; if his master is kind and generous, he will consider the justice of this part, and let him into the secret of it of his own free will, and that before his time is fully expired; but if that should not happen, as often it does not, let the apprentice know, that it is one of the most needful things to him that can belong to his apprenticeship, and that he ought not to let his time run over his head, without getting as much insight into it as possible; that therefore he ought to lose no opportunity to get into it, even whether his master approves of it or no; for as it is a debt due to him from his master to instruct him in it, it is highly just he should use all proper means to come at it. indeed, the affair in this age between masters and their apprentices, stands in a different view from what the same thing was a few years past; the state of our apprenticeship is not a state of servitude now, and hardly of subjection, and their behaviour is accordingly more like gentlemen than tradesmen; more like companions to their masters, than like servants. on the other hand, the masters seem to have made over their authority to their apprentices for a sum of money, the money taken now with apprentices being most exorbitantly great, compared to what it was in former times. now, though this does not at all exempt the servant or apprentice from taking care of himself, and to qualify himself for business while he is an apprentice, yet it is evident that it is no furtherance to apprentices; the liberties they take towards the conclusion of their time, are so much employed to worse purposes, that apprentices do not come out of their times better finished for business and trade than they did formerly, but much the worse: and though it is not the proper business and design of this work to enlarge on the injustice done both to master and servant by this change of custom, yet to bring it to my present purpose, it carries this force with it, namely, that the advice to apprentices to endeavour to finish themselves for business during the time of the indenture, is so much the more needful and seasonable. nor is this advice for the service of the master, but of the apprentice; for if the apprentice neglects this advice, if he omits to qualify himself for business as above, if he neither will acquaint himself with the customers, nor the books, nor with the buying part, nor gain judgment in the wares he is to deal in, the loss is his own, not his master's--and, indeed, he may be said to have served not himself, but his master--and both his money and his seven years are all thrown away. footnotes: [ ] [individuals dealt with.] [ ] [it would be hard to doubt that defore was sincere in this pleading of the rights of the apprentice; but its morality is certainly far from clear. the master may have gained customers with difficulty, by the exercise of much ingenuity, patience, and industry, or through some peculiar merit of his own. indeed, it is always to be presumed that a tradesman's customers are attached to him from some of these causes. of course, it would be hard if his apprentices, instead of collecting customers for themselves by the same means, seduced away those of his master. the true and direct object of an apprenticeship is to acquire a trade, not to acquire customers.] chapter ii the tradesman's writing letters as plainness, and a free unconstrained way of speaking, is the beauty and excellence of speech, so an easy free concise way of writing is the best style for a tradesman. he that affects a rumbling and bombast style, and fills his letters with long harangues, compliments, and flourishes, should turn poet instead of tradesman, and set up for a wit, not a shopkeeper. hark how such a young tradesman writes, out of the country, to his wholesale-man in london, upon his first setting up. 'sir--the destinies having so appointed it, and my dark stars concurring, that i, who by nature was framed for better things, should be put out to a trade, and the gods having been so propitious to me in the time of my servitude, that at length the days are expired, and i am launched forth into the great ocean of business, i thought fit to acquaint you, that last month i received my fortune, which, by my father's will, had been my due two years past, at which time i arrived to man's estate, and became major, whereupon i have taken a house in one of the principal streets of the town of----, where i am entered upon my business, and hereby let you know that i shall have occasion for the goods hereafter mentioned, which you may send to me by the carrier.' this fine flourish, and which, no doubt, the young fellow dressed up with much application, and thought was very well done, put his correspondent in london into a fit of laughter, and instead of sending him the goods he wrote for, put him either first upon writing down into the country to inquire after his character, and whether he was worth dealing with, or else it obtained to be filed up among such letters as deserved no answer. the same tradesman in london received by the post another letter, from a young shopkeeper in the country, to the purpose following:-- 'being obliged, sir, by my late master's decease, to enter immediately upon his business, and consequently open my shop without coming up to london to furnish myself with such goods as at present i want, i have here sent you a small order, as underwritten. i hope you will think yourself obliged to use me well, and particularly that the goods may be good of the sorts, though i cannot be at london to look them out myself. i have enclosed a bill of exchange for £ , on messrs a.b. and company, payable to you, or your order, at one-and-twenty days' sight; be pleased to get it accepted, and if the goods amount to more than that sum, i shall, when i have your bill of parcels, send you the remainder. i repeat my desire, that you will send me the goods well sorted, and well chosen, and as cheap as possible, that i may be encouraged to a further correspondence. i am, your humble servant, c.k.' this was writing like a man that understood what he was doing; and his correspondent in london would presently say--'this young man writes like a man of business; pray let us take care to use him well, for in all probability he will be a very good chapman.' the sum of the matter is this: a tradesman's letters should be plain, concise, and to the purpose; no quaint expressions, no book-phrases, no flourishes, and yet they must be full and sufficient to express what he means, so as not to be doubtful, much less unintelligible. i can by no means approve of studied abbreviations, and leaving out the needful copulatives of speech in trading letters; they are to an extreme affected; no beauty to the style, but, on the contrary, a deformity of the grossest nature. they are affected to the last degree, and with this aggravation, that it is an affectation of the grossest nature; for, in a word, it is affecting to be thought a man of more than ordinary sense by writing extraordinary nonsense; and affecting to be a man of business, by giving orders and expressing your meaning in terms which a man of business may not think himself bound by. for example, a tradesman at hull writes to his correspondent at london the following letter:-- 'sir, yours received, have at present little to reply. last post you had bills of loading, with invoice of what had loaden for your account in hamburgh factor bound for said port. what have farther orders for, shall be dispatched with expedition. markets slacken much on this side; cannot sell the iron for more than s. wish had your orders if shall part with it at that rate. no ships since the th. london fleet may be in the roads before the late storm, so hope they are safe: if have not insured, please omit the same till hear farther; the weather proving good, hope the danger is over. my last transmitted three bills exchange, import £ ; please signify if are come to hand, and accepted, and give credit in account current to your humble servant.' i pretend to say there is nothing in all this letter, though appearing to have the face of a considerable dealer, but what may be taken any way, _pro_ or _con_. the hamburgh factor may be a ship, or a horse--be bound to hamburgh or london. what shall be dispatched may be one thing, or any thing, or every thing, in a former letter. no ships since the th, may be no ships come in, or no ships gone out. the london fleet being in the roads, it may be the london fleet from hull to london, or from london to hull, both being often at sea together. the roads may be yarmouth roads, or grimsby, or, indeed, any where. by such a way of writing, no orders can be binding to him that gives them, or to him they are given to. a merchant writes to his factor at lisbon:-- 'please to send, per first ship, chests best seville, and pipes best lisbon white. may value yourself per exchange £ sterling, for the account of above orders. suppose you can send the sloop to seville for the ordered chests, &c. i am.' here is the order to send a cargo, with a _please to send_; so the factor may let it alone if he does not please.[ ] the order is chests seville; it is supposed he means oranges, but it may be chests orange-trees as well, or chests of oil, or any thing. lisbon white, may be wine or any thing else, though it is supposed to be wine. he may draw £ , but he may refuse to accept it if he pleases, for any thing such an order as that obliges him. on the contrary, orders ought to be plain and explicit; and he ought to have assured him, that on his drawing on him, his bills should be honoured--that is, accepted and paid. i know this affectation of style is accounted very grand, looks modish, and has a kind of majestic greatness in it; but the best merchants in the world are come off from it, and now choose to write plain and intelligibly: much less should country tradesmen, citizens, and shopkeepers, whose business is plainness and mere trade, make use of it. i have mentioned this in the beginning of this work, because, indeed, it is the beginning of a tradesman's business. when a tradesman takes an apprentice, the first thing he does for him, after he takes him from behind his counter, after he lets him into his counting-house and his books, and after trusting him with his more private business--i say, the first thing is to let him write letters to his dealers, and correspond with his friends; and this he does in his master's name, subscribing his letters thus:-- i am, for my master, a.b. and company, your humble servant, c.d. and beginning thus:--sir, i am ordered by my master a.b. to advise you that-- or thus:-- sir, by my master's order, i am to signify to you that orders for goods ought to be very explicit and particular, that the dealer may not mistake, especially if it be orders from a tradesman to a manufacturer to make goods, or to buy goods, either of such a quality, or to such a pattern; in which, if the goods are made to the colours, and of a marketable goodness, and within the time limited, the person ordering them cannot refuse to receive them, and make himself debtor to the maker. on the contrary, if the goods are not of a marketable goodness, or not to the patterns, or are not sent within the time, the maker ought not to expect they should be received. for example-- the tradesman, or warehouseman, or what else we may call him, writes to his correspondent at devizes, in wiltshire, thus:-- 'sir--the goods you sent me last week are not at all for my purpose, being of a sort which i am at present full of: however, if you are willing they should lie here, i will take all opportunities to sell them for your account; otherwise, on your first orders, they shall be delivered to whoever you shall direct: and as you had no orders from me for such sorts of goods, you cannot take this ill. but i have here enclosed sent you five patterns as under, marked to ; if you think fit to make me fifty pieces of druggets of the same weight and goodness with the fifty pieces, no. a.b., which i had from you last october, and mixed as exactly as you can to the enclosed patterns, ten to each pattern, and can have the same to be delivered here any time in february next, i shall take them at the same price which i gave you for the last; and one month after the delivery you may draw upon me for the money, which shall be paid to your content. your friend and servant. p.s. let me have your return per next post, intimating that you can or cannot answer this order, that i may govern myself accordingly. _to mr h.g., clothier, devizes_.' the clothier, accordingly, gives him an answer the next post, as follows:-- 'sir--i have the favour of yours of the d past, with your order for fifty fine druggets, to be made of the like weight and goodness with the two packs, no. a.b., which i made for you and sent last october, as also the five patterns enclosed, marked to , for my direction in the mixture. i give you this trouble, according to your order, to let you know i have already put the said fifty pieces in hand; and as i am always willing to serve you to the best of my power, and am thankful for your favours, you may depend upon them within the time, that is to say, some time in february next, and that they shall be of the like fineness and substance with the other, and as near to the patterns as possible. but in regard our poor are very craving, and money at this time very scarce, i beg you will give me leave (twenty or thirty pieces of them being finished and delivered to you at any time before the remainder), to draw fifty pounds on you for present occasion; for which i shall think myself greatly obliged, and shall give you any security you please that the rest shall follow within the time. as to the pack of goods in your hands, which were sent up without your order, i am content they remain in your hands for sale on my account, and desire you will sell them as soon as you can, for my best advantage. i am,' &c. here is a harmony of business, and every thing exact; the order is given plain and express; the clothier answers directly to every point; here can be no defect in the correspondence; the diligent clothier applies immediately to the work, sorts and dyes his wool, mixes his colours to the patterns, puts the wool to the spinners, sends his yarn to the weavers, has the pieces brought home, then has them to the thicking or fulling-mill, dresses them in his own workhouse, and sends them up punctually by the time; perhaps by the middle of the month. having sent up twenty pieces five weeks before, the warehouse-keeper, to oblige him, pays his bill of £ , and a month after the rest are sent in, he draws for the rest of the money, and his bills are punctually paid. the consequence of this exact writing and answering is this-- the warehouse-keeper having the order from his merchant, is furnished in time, and obliges his customer; then says he to his servant, 'well, this h.g. of devizes is a clever workman, understands his business, and may be depended on: i see if i have an order to give that requires any exactness and honest usage, he is my man; he understands orders when they are sent, goes to work immediately, and answers them punctually.' again, the clothier at devizes says to his head man, or perhaps his son, 'this mr h. is a very good employer, and is worth obliging; his orders are so plain and so direct, that a man cannot mistake, and if the goods are made honestly and to his time, there's one's money; bills are cheerfully accepted, and punctually paid; i'll never disappoint him; whoever goes without goods, he shall not.' on the contrary, when orders are darkly given, they are doubtfully observed; and when the goods come to town, the merchant dislikes them, the warehouseman shuffles them back upon the clothier, to lie for his account, pretending they are not made to his order; the clothier is discouraged, and for want of his money discredited, and all their correspondence is confusion, and ends in loss both of money and credit. footnotes: [ ] [the practice of trade now sanctions courteous expressions of this kind.] chapter iii the trading style in the last chapter i gave my thoughts for the instruction of young tradesmen in writing letters with orders, and answering orders, and especially about the proper style of a tradesman's letters, which i hinted should be plain and easy, free in language, and direct to the purpose intended. give me leave to go on with the subject a little farther, as i think it is useful in another part of the tradesman's correspondence. i might have made some apology for urging tradesmen to write a plain and easy style; let me add, that the tradesmen need not be offended at my condemning them, as it were, to a plain and homely style--easy, plain, and familiar language is the beauty of speech in general, and is the excellency of all writing, on whatever subject, or to whatever persons they are we write or speak. the end of speech is that men might understand one another's meaning; certainly that speech, or that way of speaking, which is most easily understood, is the best way of speaking. if any man were to ask me, which would be supposed to be a perfect style, or language, i would answer, that in which a man speaking to five hundred people, of all common and various capacities, idiots or lunatics excepted, should be understood by them all in the same manner with one another, and in the same sense which the speaker intended to be understood--this would certainly be a most perfect style. all exotic sayings, dark and ambiguous speakings, affected words, and, as i said in the last chapter, abridgement, or words cut off, as they are foolish and improper in business, so, indeed, are they in any other things; hard words, and affectation of style in business, is like bombast in poetry, a kind of rumbling nonsense, and nothing of the kind can be more ridiculous. the nicety of writing in business consists chiefly in giving every species of goods their trading names, for there are certain peculiarities in the trading language, which are to be observed as the greatest proprieties, and without which the language your letters are written in would be obscure, and the tradesmen you write to would not understand you--for example, if you write to your factor at lisbon, or at cadiz, to make you returns in hardware, he understands you, and sends you so many bags of pieces of eight. so, if a merchant comes to me to hire a small ship of me, and tells me it is for the pipin trade, or to buy a vessel, and tells me he intends to make a pipiner of her, the meaning is, that she is to run to seville for oranges, or to malaga for lemons. if he says he intends to send her for a lading of fruit, the meaning is, she is to go to alicant, denia, or xevia, on the coast of spain, for raisins of the sun, or to malaga for malaga raisins. thus, in the home trade in england: if in kent a man tells me he is to go among the night-riders, his meaning is, he is to go a-carrying wool to the sea-shore--the people that usually run the wool off in boats, are called owlers--those that steal customs, smugglers, and the like. in a word, there is a kind of slang in trade, which a tradesman ought to know, as the beggars and strollers know the gipsy cant, which none can speak but themselves; and this in letters of business is allowable, and, indeed, they cannot understand one another without it. a brickmaker being hired by a brewer to make some bricks for him at his country-house, wrote to the brewer that he could not go forward unless he had two or three loads _of spanish_, and that otherwise his bricks would cost him six or seven chaldrons of coals extraordinary, and the bricks would not be so good and hard neither by a great deal, when they were burnt. the brewer sends him an answer, that he should go on as well as he could for three or four days, and then the _spanish_ should be sent him: accordingly, the following week, the brewer sends him down two carts loaded with about twelve hogsheads or casks of molasses, which frighted the brickmaker almost out of his senses. the case was this:-the brewers formerly mixed molasses with their ale to sweeten it, and abate the quantity of malt, molasses, being, at that time, much cheaper in proportion, and this they called _spanish_, not being willing that people should know it. again, the brickmakers all about london, do mix sea-coal ashes, or laystal-stuff, as we call it, with the clay of which they make bricks, and by that shift save eight chaldrons of coals out of eleven, in proportion to what other people use to burn them with, and these ashes they call _spanish_. thus the received terms of art, in every particular business, are to be observed, of which i shall speak to you in its turn: i name them here to intimate, that when i am speaking of plain writing in matters of business, it must be understood with an allowance for all these things--and a tradesman must be not only allowed to use them in his style, but cannot write properly without them--it is a particular excellence in a tradesman to be able to know all the terms of art in every separate business, so as to be able to speak or write to any particular handicraft or manufacturer in his own dialect, and it is as necessary as it is for a seaman to understand the names of all the several things belonging to a ship. this, therefore, is not to be understood when i say, that a tradesman should write plain and explicit, for these things belong to, and are part of, the language of trade. but even these terms of art, or customary expressions, are not to be used with affectation, and with a needless repetition, where they are not called for. nor should a tradesman write those out-of-the-way words, though it is in the way of the business he writes about, to any other person, who he knows, or has reason to believe, does not understand them--i say, he ought not to write in those terms to such, because it shows a kind of ostentation, and a triumph over the ignorance of the person they are written to, unless at the very same time you add an explanation of the terms, so as to make them assuredly intelligible at the place, and to the person to whom they are sent. a tradesman, in such cases, like a parson, should suit his language to his auditory; and it would be as ridiculous for a tradesman to write a letter filled with the peculiarities of this or that particular trade, which trade he knows the person he writes to is ignorant of, and the terms whereof he is unacquainted with, as it would be for a minister to quote the chrysostome and st austin, and repeat at large all their sayings in the greek and the latin, in a country church, among a parcel of ploughmen and farmers. thus a sailor, writing a letter to a surgeon, told him he had a swelling on the north-east side of his face--that his windward leg being hurt by a bruise, it so put him out of trim, that he always heeled to starboard when he made fresh way, and so run to leeward, till he was often forced aground; then he desired him to give him some directions how to put himself into a sailing posture again. of all which the surgeon understood little more than that he had a swelling on his face, and a bruise in his leg. it would be a very happy thing, if tradesmen had all their _lexicon technicum_ at their fingers' ends; i mean (for pray, remember, that i observe my own rule, not to use a hard word without explaining it), that every tradesman would study so the terms of art of other trades, that he might be able to speak to every manufacturer or artist in his own language, and understand them when they talked one to another: this would make trade be a kind of universal language, and the particular marks they are obliged to, would be like the notes of music, an universal character, in which all the tradesmen in england might write to one another in the language and characters of their several trades, and be as intelligible to one another as the minister is to his people, and perhaps much more. i therefore recommend it to every young tradesman to take all occasions to converse with mechanics of every kind, and to learn the particular language of their business; not the names of their tools only, and the way of working with their instruments as well as hands, but the very cant of their trade, for every trade has its _nostrums_, and its little made words, which they often pride themselves in, and which yet are useful to them on some occasion or other. there are many advantages to a tradesman in thus having a general knowledge of the terms of art, and the cant, as i call it, of every business; and particularly this, that they could not be imposed upon so easily by other tradesmen, when they came to deal with them. if you come to deal with a tradesman or handicraft man, and talk his own language to him, he presently supposes you understand his business; that you know what you come about; that you have judgment in his goods, or in his art, and cannot easily be imposed upon; accordingly, he treats you like a man that is not to be cheated, comes close to the point, and does not crowd you with words and rattling talk to set out his wares, and to cover their defects; he finds you know where to look or feel for the defect of things, and how to judge their worth. for example:-- what trade has more hard words and peculiar ways attending it, than that of a jockey, or horse-courser, as we call them! they have all the parts of the horse, and all the diseases attending him, necessary to be mentioned in the market, upon every occasion of buying or bargaining. a jockey will know you at first sight, when you do but go round a horse, or at the first word you say about him, whether you are a dealer, as they call themselves, or a stranger. if you begin well, if you take up the horse's foot right, if you handle him in the proper places, if you bid his servant open his mouth, or go about it yourself like a workman, if you speak of his shapes or goings in the proper words--'oh!' says the jockey to his fellow, 'he understands a horse, he speaks the language:' then he knows you are not to be cheated, or, at least, not so easily; but if you go awkwardly to work, whisper to your man you bring with you to ask every thing for you, cannot handle the horse yourself, or speak the language of the trade, he falls upon you with his flourishes, and with a flux of horse rhetoric imposes upon you with oaths and asseverations, and, in a word, conquers you with the mere clamour of his trade. thus, if you go to a garden to buy flowers, plants, trees, and greens, if you know what you go about, know the names of flowers, or simples, or greens; know the particular beauties of them, when they are fit to remove, and when to slip and draw, and when not; what colour is ordinary, and what rare; when a flower is rare, and when ordinary--the gardener presently talks to you as to a man of art, tells you that you are a lover of art, a friend to a florist, shows you his exotics, his green-house, and his stores; what he has set out, and what he has budded or enarched, and the like; but if he finds you have none of the terms of art, know little or nothing of the names of plants, or the nature of planting, he picks your pocket instantly, shows you a fine trimmed fuz-bush for a juniper, sells you common pinks for painted ladies, an ordinary tulip for a rarity, and the like. thus i saw a gardener sell a gentleman a large yellow auricula, that is to say, a _running away_, for a curious flower, and take a great price. it seems, the gentleman was a lover of a good yellow; and it is known, that when nature in the auricula is exhausted, and has spent her strengh in showing a fine flower, perhaps some years upon the same root, she faints at last, and then turns into a yellow, which yellow shall be bright and pleasant the first year, and look very well to one that knows nothing of it, though another year it turns pale, and at length almost white. this the gardeners call a _run flower_, and this they put upon the gentleman for a rarity, only because he discovered at his coming that he knew nothing of the matter. the same gardener sold another person a root of white painted thyme for the right _marum syriacum;_ and thus they do every day. a person goes into a brickmaker's field to view his clamp, and buy a load of bricks; he resolves to see them loaded, because he would have good ones; but not understanding the goods, and seeing the workmen loading them where they were hard and well burnt, but looked white and grey, which, to be sure, were the best of the bricks, and which perhaps they would not have done if he had not been there to look at them, they supposing he understood which were the best; but he, in the abundance of his ignorance, finds fault with them, because they were not a good colour, and did not look red; the brickmaker's men took the hint immediately, and telling the buyer they would give him red bricks to oblige him, turned their hands from the grey hard well-burnt bricks to the soft _sammel_[ ] half-burnt bricks, which they were glad to dispose of, and which nobody that had understood them would have taken off their hands. i mention these lower things, because i would suit my writing to the understanding of the meanest people, and speak of frauds used in the most ordinary trades; but it is the like in almost all the goods a tradesman can deal in. if you go to warwickshire to buy cheese, you demand the cheese 'of the first make,' because that is the best. if you go to suffolk to buy butter, you refuse the butter of the first make, because that is not the best, but you bargain for 'the right rowing butter,' which is the butter that is made when the cows are turned into the grounds where the grass has been mowed, and the hay carried off, and grown again: and so in many other cases. these things demonstrate the advantages there are to a tradesman, in his being thoroughly informed of the terms of art, and the peculiarities belonging to every particular business, which, therefore, i call the language of trade. as a merchant should understand all languages, at least the languages of those countries which he trades to, or corresponds with, and the customs and usages of those countries as to their commerce, so an english tradesman ought to understand all the languages of trade, within the circumference of his own country, at least, and particularly of such as he may, by any of the consequences of his commerce, come to be any way concerned with. especially, it is his business to acquaint himself with the terms and trading style, as i call it, of those trades which he buys of, as to those he sells to; supposing he sells to those who sell again, it is their business to understand him, not his to understand them: and if he finds they do not understand him, he will not fail to make their ignorance be his advantage, unless he is honester and more conscientious in his dealings than most of the tradesmen of this age seem to be. footnotes: [ ] [_sammel_ is a term of art the brickmakers use for those bricks which are not well burnt, and which generally look of a pale red colour, and as fair as the other, but are soft.] chapter iv of the tradesman acquainting himself with all business in general it is the judgment of some experienced tradesmen, that no man ought to go from one business to another, and launch out of the trade or employment he was bred to: _tractent fabrilia fabri_--'every man to his own business;' and, they tell us, men never thrive when they do so. i will not enter into that dispute here. i know some good and encouraging examples of the contrary, and which stand as remarkable instances, or as exceptions to the general rule: but let that be as it will, sometimes providence eminently calls upon men out of one employ into another, out of a shop into a warehouse, out of a warehouse into a shop, out of a single hand into a partnership, and the like; and they trade one time here, another time there, and with very good success too. but i say, be that as it will, a tradesman ought so far to acquaint himself with business, that he should not be at a loss to turn his hand to this or that trade, as occasion presents, whether in or out of the way of his ordinary dealing, as we have often seen done in london and other places, and sometimes with good success. this acquainting himself with business does not intimate that he should learn every trade, or enter into the mystery of every employment. that cannot well be; but that he should have a true notion of business in general, and a knowledge how and in what manner it is carried on; that he should know where every manufacture is made, and how bought at first hand; that he should know which are the proper markets, and what the particular kinds of goods to exchange at those markets; that he should know the manner how every manufacture is managed, and the method of their sale. it cannot be expected that he should have judgment in the choice of all kinds of goods, though in a great many he may have judgment too: but there is a general understanding in trade, which every tradesman both may and ought to arrive to; and this perfectly qualifies him to engage in any new undertaking, and to embark with other persons better qualified than himself in any new trade, which he was not in before; in which, though he may not have a particular knowledge and judgment in the goods they are to deal in or to make, yet, having the benefit of the knowledge his new partner is master of, and being himself apt to take in all additional lights, he soon becomes experienced, and the knowledge of all the other parts of business qualifies him to be a sufficient partner. for example--a.b. was bred a dry-salter, and he goes in partner with with c.d., a scarlet-dyer, called a bow-dyer, at wandsworth. as a salter, a.b. has had experience enough in the materials for dyeing, as well scarlets as all other colours, and understands very well the buying of cochineal, indigo, galls, shumach, logwood, fustick, madder, and the like; so that he does his part very well. c.d. is an experienced scarlet-dyer; but now, doubling their stock, they fall into a larger work, and they dye bays and stuffs, and other goods, into differing colours, as occasion requires; and this brings them to an equality in the business, and by hiring good experienced servants, they go on very well together. the like happens often when a tradesman turns his hand from one trade to another; and when he embarks, either in partnership or out of it, in any new business, it is supposed he seldom changes hands in such a manner without some such suitable person to join with, or that he has some experienced head workman to direct him, which, if that workman proves honest, is as well as a partner. on the other hand, his own application and indefatigable industry supply the want of judgment. thus, i have known several tradesmen turn their hands from one business to another, or from one trade entirely to another, and very often with good success. for example, i have seen a confectioner turn a sugar-baker; another a distiller; an apothecary turn chemist, and not a few turn physicians, and prove very good physicians too; but that is a step beyond what i am speaking of. but my argument turns upon this--that a tradesman ought to be able to turn his hand to any thing; that is to say, to lay down one trade and take up another, if occasion leads him to it, and if he sees an evident view of profit and advantage in it; and this is only done by his having a general knowledge of trade, so as to have a capacity of judging: and by but just looking upon what is offered or proposed, he sees as much at first view as others do by long inquiry, and with the judgment of many advisers. when i am thus speaking of the tradesman's being capable of making judgment of things, it occurs, with a force not to be resisted, that i should add, he is hereby fenced against bubbles and projects, and against those fatal people called projectors, who are, indeed, among tradesmen, as birds of prey are among the innocent fowls--devourers and destroyers. a tradesman cannot be too well armed, nor too much cautioned, against those sort of people; they are constantly surrounded with them, and are as much in jeopardy from them, as a man in a crowd is of having his pocket picked--nay, almost as a man is when in a crowd of pickpockets. nothing secures the tradesman against those men so well as his being thoroughly knowing in business, having a judgment to weigh all the delusive schemes and the fine promises of the wheedling projector, and to see which are likely to answer, or which not; to examine all his specious pretences, his calculations and figures, and see whether they are as likely to answer the end as he takes upon him to say they will; to make allowances for all his fine flourishes and outsides, and then to judge for himself. a projector is to a tradesman a kind of incendiary; he is in a constant plot to blow him up, or set fire to him; for projects are generally as fatal to a tradesman as fire in a magazine of gunpowder. the honest tradesman is always in danger, and cannot be too wary; and therefore to fortify his judgment, that he may be able to guard against such people as these, is one of the most necessary things i can do for him. in order, then, to direct the tradesman how to furnish himself thus with a needful stock of trading knowledge, first, i shall propose to him to converse with tradesmen chiefly: he that will be a tradesman should confine himself within his own sphere: never was the gazette so full of the advertisements of commissions of bankrupt as since our shopkeepers are so much engaged in parties, formed into clubs to hear news, and read journals and politics; in short, when tradesmen turn statesmen, they should either shut up their shops, or hire somebody else to look after them. the known story of the upholsterer is very instructive,[ ] who, in his abundant concern for the public, ran himself out of his business into a jail; and even when he was in prison, could not sleep for the concern he had for the liberties of his dear country: the man was a good patriot, but a bad shopkeeper; and, indeed, should rather have shut up his shop, and got a commission in the army, and then he had served his country in the way of his calling. but i may speak to this more in its turn. my present subject is not the negative, what he should not do, but the affirmative, what he should do; i say, he should take all occasions to converse within the circuit of his own sphere, that is, dwell upon the subject of trade in his conversation, and sort with and converse among tradesmen as much as he can; as writing teaches to write--_scribendo discis scribere_--so conversing among tradesmen will make him a tradesman. i need not explain this so critically as to tell you i do not mean he should confine or restrain himself entirely from all manner of conversation but among his own class: i shall speak to that in its place also. a tradesman may on occasion keep company with gentlemen as well as other people; nor is a trading man, if he is a man of sense, unsuitable or unprofitable for a gentleman to converse with, as occasion requires; and you will often find, that not private gentlemen only, but even ministers of state, privy-councillors, members of parliament, and persons of all ranks in the government, find it for their purpose to converse with tradesmen, and are not ashamed to acknowledge, that a tradesman is sometimes qualified to inform them in the most difficult and intricate, as well as the most urgent, affairs of government; and this has been the reason why so many tradesmen have been advanced to honours and dignities above their ordinary rank, as sir charles duncombe, a goldsmith; sir henry furnese, who was originally a retail hosier; sir charles cook, late one of the board of trade, a merchant; sir josiah child, originally a very mean tradesman; the late mr lowndes, bred a scrivener; and many others, too many to name. but these are instances of men called out of their lower sphere for their eminent usefulness, and their known capacities, being first known to be diligent and industrious men in their private and lower spheres; such advancements make good the words of the wise man--'seest thou a man diligent in his calling, he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men.[ ] in the mean time, the tradesman's proper business is in his shop or warehouse, and among his own class or rank of people; there he sees how other men go on, and there he learns how to go on himself; there he sees how other men thrive, and learns to thrive himself; there he hears all the trading news--as for state news and politics, it is none of his business; there he learns how to buy, and there he gets oftentimes opportunities to sell; there he hears of all the disasters in trade, who breaks, and why; what brought such and such a man to misfortunes and disasters; and sees the various ways how men go down in the world, as well as the arts and management, by which others from nothing arise to wealth and estates. here he sees the scripture itself thwarted, and his neighbour tradesman, a wholesale haberdasher, in spite of a good understanding, in spite of a good beginning, and in spite of the most indefatigable industry, sink in his circumstances, lose his credit, then his stock, and then break and become bankrupt, while the man takes more pains to be poor than others do to grow rich. there, on the other hand, he sees g.d., a plodding, weak-headed, but laborious wretch, of a confined genius, and that cannot look a quarter of a mile from his shop-door into the world, and beginning with little or nothing, yet rises apace in the mere road of business, in which he goes on like the miller's horse, who, being tied to the post, is turned round by the very wheel which he turns round himself; and this fellow shall get money insensibly, and grow rich even he knows not how, and no body else knows why. here he sees f.m. ruined by too much trade, and there he sees m.f. starved for want of trade; and from all these observations he may learn something useful to himself, and fit to guide his own measures, that he may not fall into the same mischiefs which he sees others sink under, and that he may take the advantage of that prudence which others rise by. all these things will naturally occur to him, in his conversing among his fellow-tradesmen. a settled little society of trading people, who understand business, and are carrying on trade in the same manner with himself, no matter whether they are of the very same trades or no, and perhaps better not of the same--such a society, i say, shall, if due observations are made from it, teach the tradesman more than his apprenticeship; for there he learned the operation, here he learns the progression; his apprenticeship is his grammar-school, this is his university; behind his master's counter, or in his warehouse, he learned the first rudiments of trade, but here he learns the trading sciences; here he comes to learn the _arcana_, speak the language, understand the meaning of every thing, of which before he only learned the beginning: the apprenticeship inducts him, and leads him as the nurse the child; this finishes him; there he learned the beginning of trade, here he sees it in its full extent; in a word, there he learned to trade, here he is made a complete tradesman. let no young tradesman object, that, in the conversation i speak of, there are so many gross things said, and so many ridiculous things argued upon, there being always a great many weak empty heads among the shopkeeping trading world: this may be granted without any impeachment of what i have advanced--for where shall a man converse, and find no fools in the society?--and where shall he hear the weightiest things debated, and not a great many empty weak things offered, out of which nothing can be learned, and from which nothing can be deduced?--for 'out of nothing, nothing can come.' but, notwithstanding, let me still insist upon it to the tradesman to keep company with tradesmen; let the fool run on in his own way; let the talkative green-apron rattle in his own way; let the manufacturer and his factor squabble and brangle; the grave self-conceited puppy, who was born a boy, and will die before he is a man, chatter and say a great deal of nothing, and talk his neighbours to death--out of every one you will learn something--they are all tradesmen, and there is always something for a young tradesman to learn from them. if, understanding but a little french, you were to converse every day a little among some frenchmen in your neighbourhood, and suppose those frenchmen, you thus kept company with, were every one of them fools, mere ignorant, empty, foolish fellows, there might be nothing learnt from their sense, but you would still learn french from them, if it was no more than the tone and accent, and the ordinary words usual in conversation. thus, among your silly empty tradesmen, let them be as foolish and empty other ways as you can suggest, though you can learn no philosophy from them, you may learn many things in trade from them, and something from every one; for though it is not absolutely necessary that every tradesman should be a philosopher, yet every tradesman, in his way, knows something that even a philosopher may learn from. i knew a philosopher that was excellently skilled in the noble science or study of astronomy, who told me he had some years studied for some simile, or proper allusion, to explain to his scholars the phenomena of the sun's motion round its own axis, and could never happen upon one to his mind, till by accident he saw his maid betty trundling her mop: surprised with the exactness of the motion to describe the thing he wanted, he goes into his study, calls his pupils about him, and tells them that betty, who herself knew nothing of the matter, could show them the sun revolving about itself in a more lively manner than ever he could. accordingly, betty was called, and bidden bring out her mop, when, placing his scholars in a due-position, opposite not to the face of the maid, but to her left side, so that they could see the end of the mop, when it whirled round upon her arm. they took it immediately--there was the broad-headed nail in the centre, which was as the body of the sun, and the thrums whisking round, flinging the water about every way by innumerable little streams, describing exactly the rays of the sun, darting light from the centre to the whole system. if ignorant betty, by the natural consequences of her operation, instructed the astronomer, why may not the meanest shoemaker or pedlar, by the ordinary sagacity of his trading wit, though it may be indeed very ordinary, coarse, and unlooked for, communicate something, give some useful hint, dart some sudden thought into the mind of the observing tradesman, which he shall make his use of, and apply to his own advantage in trade, when, at the same time, he that gives such hint shall himself, like betty and her mop, know nothing of the matter? every tradesman is supposed to manage his business his own way, and, generally speaking, most tradesmen have some ways peculiar and particular to themselves, which they either derived from the masters who taught them, or from the experience of things, or from something in the course of their business, which had not happened to them before. and those little _nostrums_ are oftentime very properly and with advantage communicated from one to another; one tradesman finds out a nearer way of buying than another, another finds a vent for what is bought beyond what his neighbour knows of, and these, in time, come to be learned of them by their ordinary conversation. i am not for confining the tradesman from keeping better company, as occasion and leisure requires; i allow the tradesman to act the gentleman sometimes, and that even for conversation, at least if his understanding and capacity make him suitable company to them, but still his business is among those of his own rank. the conversation of gentlemen, and what they call keeping good company, may be used as a diversion, or as an excursion, but his stated society must be with his neighbours, and people in trade; men of business are companions for men of business; with gentlemen he may converse pleasantly, but here he converses profitably; tradesmen are always profitable to one another; as they always gain by trading together, so they never lose by conversing together; if they do not get money, they gain knowledge in business, improve their experience, and see farther and farther into the world. a man of but an ordinary penetration will improve himself by conversing in matters of trade with men of trade; by the experience of the old tradesmen they learn caution and prudence, and by the rashness and the miscarriages of the young, they learn what are the mischiefs that themselves may be exposed to. again, in conversing with men of trade, they get trade; men first talk together, then deal together--many a good bargain is made, and many a pound gained, where nothing was expected, by mere casual coming to talk together, without knowing any thing of the matter before they met. the tradesmen's meetings are like the merchants' exchange, where they manage, negociate, and, indeed, beget business with one another. let no tradesman mistake me in this part; i am not encouraging them to leave their shops and warehouses, to go to taverns and ale-houses, and spend their time there in unnecessary prattle, which, indeed, is nothing but sotting and drinking; this is not meeting to do business, but to neglect business. of which i shall speak fully afterwards. but the tradesmen conversing with one another, which i mean, is the taking suitable occasions to discourse with their fellow tradesmen, meeting them in the way of their business, and improving their spare hours together. to leave their shops, and quit their counters, in the proper seasons for their attendance there, would be a preposterous negligence, would be going out of business to gain business, and would be cheating themselves, instead of improving themselves. the proper hours of business are sacred to the shop and the warehouse. he that goes out of the order of trade, let the pretence of business be what it will, loses his business, not increases it; and will, if continued, lose the credit of his conduct in business also. footnotes: [ ] [the story of the political upholsterer forms the subject of several amusing papers by addison in the _tatler_.] [ ] [to stand in the presence of a prince is the highest mark of honour in the east, as to sit is with us.] chapter v diligence and application in business solomon was certainly a friend to men of business, as it appears by his frequent good advice to them. in prov. xviii. , he says, 'he that is slothful in business, is brother to him that is a great waster:' and in another place, 'the sluggard shall be clothed in rags,' (prov. xxiii. ), or to that purpose. on the contrary, the same wise man, by way of encouragement, tells them, 'the diligent hand maketh rich,' (prov. x. ), and, 'the diligent shall bear rule, but the slothful shall be under tribute.' nothing can give a greater prospect of thriving to a young tradesman, than his own diligence; it fills himself with hope, and gives him credit with all who know him; without application, nothing in this world goes forward as it should do: let the man have the most perfect knowledge of his trade, and the best situation for his shop, yet without application nothing will go on. what is the shop without the master? what the books without the book-keeper? what the credit without the man? hark how the people talk of such conduct as the slothful negligent trader discovers in his way. 'such a shop,' says the customer, 'stands well, and there is a good stock of goods in it, but there is nobody to serve but a 'prentice-boy or two, and an idle journeyman: one finds them always at play together, rather than looking out for customers; and when you come to buy, they look as if they did not care whether they showed you any thing or no. one never sees a master in the shop, if we go twenty times, nor anything that bears the face of authority. then, it is a shop always exposed, it is perfectly haunted with thieves and shop-lifters; they see nobody but raw boys in it, that mind nothing, and the diligent devils never fail to haunt them, so that there are more outcries of 'stop thief!' at their door, and more constables fetched to that shop, than to all the shops in the row. there was a brave trade at that shop in mr--'s time: he was a true shopkeeper; like the quack doctor, you never missed him from seven in the morning till twelve, and from two till nine at night, and he throve accordingly--he left a good estate behind him. but i don't know what these people are; they say there are two partners of them, but there had as good be none, for they are never at home, nor in their shop: one wears a long wig and a sword, i hear, and you see him often in the mall and at court, but very seldom in his shop, or waiting on his customers; and the other, they say, lies a-bed till eleven o'clock every day, just comes into the shop and shows himself, then stalks about to the tavern to take a whet, then to child's coffee-house to hear the news, comes home to dinner at one, takes a long sleep in his chair after it, and about four o'clock comes into the shop for half an hour, or thereabouts, then to the tavern, where he stays till two in the morning, gets drunk, and is led home by the watch, and so lies till eleven again; and thus he walks round like the hand of a dial. and what will it all come to?--they'll certainly break, that you may be sure of; they can't hold it long.' 'this is the town's way of talking, where they see an example of it in the manner as is described; nor are the inferences unjust, any more than the description is unlike, for such certainly is the end of such management, and no shop thus neglected ever made a tradesman rich. on the contrary, customers love to see the master's face in the shop, and to go to a shop where they are sure to find him at home. when he does not sell, or cannot take the price offered, yet the customers are not disobliged, and if they do not deal now, they may another time: if they do deal, the master generally gets a better price for his goods than a servant can, besides that he gives better content; and yet the customers always think they buy cheaper of the master too. i seem to be talking now of the mercer or draper, as if my discourse were wholly bent and directed to them; but it is quite contrary, for it concerns every tradesman--the advice is general, and every tradesman claims a share in it; the nature of trade requires it. it is an old anglicism, 'such a man drives a trade;' the allusion is to a carter, that with his voice, his hands, his whip, and his constant attendance, keeps the team always going, helps himself, lifts at the wheel in every slough, doubles his application upon every difficulty, and, in a word, to complete the simile, if he is not always with his horses, either the wagon is set in a hole, or the team stands still, or, which is worst of all, the load is spoiled by the waggon overthrowing. it is therefore no improper speech to say, such a man drives his trade; for, in short, if trade is not driven, it will not go. trade is like a hand-mill, it must always be turned about by the diligent hand of the master; or, if you will, like the pump-house at amsterdam, where they put offenders in for petty matters, especially beggars; if they will work and keep pumping, they sit well, and dry and safe, and if they work very hard one hour or two, they may rest, perhaps, a quarter of an hour afterwards; but if they oversleep themselves, or grow lazy, the water comes in upon them and wets them, and they have no dry place to stand in, much less to sit down in; and, in short, if they continue obstinately idle, they must sink; so that it is nothing but _pump_ or _drown_, and they may choose which they like best. he that engages in trade, and does not resolve to work at it, is _felo de se_; it is downright murdering himself; that is to say, in his trading capacity, he murders his credit, he murders his stock, and he starves, which is as bad as murdering, his family. trade must not be entered into as a thing of light concern; it is called business very properly, for it is a business _for_ life, and ought to be followed as one of the great businesses _of_ life--i do not say the chief, but one of the great businesses of life it certainly is--trade must, i say, be worked at, not played with; he that trades in jest, will certainly break in earnest; and this is one reason indeed why so many tradesmen come to so hasty a conclusion of their affairs. there was another old english saying to this purpose, which shows how much our old fathers were sensible of the duty of a shopkeeper: speaking of the tradesman as just opening his shop, and beginning a dialogue with it; the result of which is, that the shop replies to the tradesman thus: 'keep me, and i will keep thee.' it is the same with driving the trade; if the shopkeeper will not keep, that is, diligently attend to his shop, the shop will not keep, that is, maintain him: and in the other sense it is harsher to him, if he will not drive his trade, the trade will drive him; that is, drive him out of the shop, drive him away. all these old sayings have this monitory substance in them; namely, they all concur to fill a young tradesman with true notions of what he is going about; and that the undertaking of a trade is not a sport or game, in which he is to meet with diversions only, and entertainment, and not to be in the least troubled or disturbed: trade is a daily employment, and must be followed as such, with the full attention of the mind, and full attendance of the person; nothing but what are to be called the necessary duties of life are to intervene; and even these are to be limited so as not to be prejudicial to business. and now i am speaking of the necessary things which may intervene, and which may divide the time with our business or trade, i shall state the manner in a few words, that the tradesman may neither give too much, nor take away too much, to or from any respective part of what may be called his proper employment, but keep as due a balance of his time as he should of his books or cash. the life of man is, or should be, a measure of allotted time; as his time is measured out to him, so the measure is limited, must end, and the end of it is appointed. the purposes for which time is given, and life bestowed, are very momentous; no time is given uselessly, and for nothing; time is no more to be unemployed, than it is to be ill employed. three things are chiefly before us in the appointment of our time: . necessaries of nature. . duties of religion, or things relating to a future life. . duties of the present life, namely, business and calling. i. necessities of nature, such as eating and drinking; rest, or sleep; and in case of disease, a recess from business; all which have two limitations on them, and no more; namely, that they be . referred to their proper seasons. . used with moderation. both these might give me subject to write many letters upon; but i study brevity, and desire rather to hint than dwell upon things which are serious and grave, because i would not tire you. ii. duties of religion: these may be called necessities too in their kind, and that of the sublimest nature; and they ought not to be thrust at all out of their place, and yet they ought to be kept in their place too. iii. duties of life, that is to say, business, or employment, or calling, which are divided into three kinds: . labour, or servitude. . employment. . trade. by labour, i mean the poor manualist, whom we properly call the labouring man, who works for himself indeed in one respect, but sometimes serves and works for wages, as a servant, or workman. by employment, i mean men in business, which yet is not properly called trade, such as lawyers, physicians, surgeons, scriveners, clerks, secretaries, and such like: and by trade i mean merchants and inland-traders, such as are already described in the introduction to this work. to speak of time, it is divided among these; even in them all there is a just equality of circumstances to be preserved, and as diligence is required in one, and necessity to be obeyed in another, so duty is to be observed in the third; and yet all these with such a due regard to one another, as that one duty may not jostle out another; and every thing going on with an equality and just regard to the nature of the thing, the tradesman may go on with a glad heart and a quiet conscience. this article is very nice, as i intend to speak to it; and it is a dangerous thing indeed to speak to, lest young tradesmen, treading on the brink of duty on one side, and duty on the other side, should pretend to neglect their duty to heaven, on pretence that i say they must not neglect their shops. but let them do me justice, and they will do themselves no injury; nor do i fear that my arguing on this point should give them any just cause to go wrong; if they will go wrong, and plead my argument for their excuse, it must be by their abusing my directions, and taking them in pieces, misplacing the words, and disjointing the sense, and by the same method they may make blasphemy of the scripture. the duties of life, i say, must not interfere with one another, must not jostle one another out of the place, or so break in as to be prejudicial to one another. it is certainly the duty of every christian to worship god, to pay his homage morning and evening to his maker, and at all other proper seasons to behave as becomes a sincere worshipper of god; nor must any avocation, either of business or nature, however necessary, interfere with this duty, either in public or in private. this is plainly asserting the necessity of the duty, so no man can pretend to evade that. but the duties of nature and religion also have such particular seasons, and those seasons so proper to themselves, and so stated, as not to break in or trench upon one another, that we are really without excuse, if we let any one be pleaded for the neglect of the other. food, sleep, rest, and the necessities of nature, are either reserved for the night, which is appointed for man to rest, or take up so little room in the day, that they can never be pleaded in bar of either religion or employment. he, indeed, who will sleep when he should work, and perhaps drink when he should sleep, turns nature bottom upwards, inverts the appointment of providence, and must account to himself, and afterwards to a higher judge, for the neglect. the devil--if it be the devil that tempts, for i would not wrong satan himself--plays our duties often one against another; and to bring us, if possible, into confusion in our conduct, subtly throws religion out of its place, to put it in our way, and to urge us to a breach of what we ought to do: besides this subtle tempter--for, as above, i won't charge it all upon the devil--we have a great hand in it ourselves; but let it be who it will, i say, this subtle tempter hurries the well-meaning tradesman to act in all manner of irregularity, that he may confound religion and business, and in the end may destroy both. when the tradesman well inclined rises early in the morning, and is moved, as in duty to his maker he ought, to pay his morning vows to him either in his closet, or at the church, where he hears the six o'clock bell ring to call his neighbours to the same duty--then the secret hint comes across his happy intention, that he must go to such or such a place, that he may be back time enough for such other business as has been appointed over-night, and both perhaps may be both lawful and necessary; so his diligence oppresses his religion, and away he runs to transact his business, and neglects his morning sacrifice to his maker. on the other hand, and at another time, being in his shop, or his counting-house, or warehouse, a vast throng of business upon his hands, and the world in his head, when it is highly his duty to attend it, and shall be to his prejudice to absent himself--then the same deceiver presses him earnestly to go to his closet, or to the church to prayers, during which time his customer goes to another place, the neighbours miss him in his shop, his business is lost, his reputation suffers; and by this turned into a practice, the man may say his prayers so long and so unseasonably till he is undone, and not a creditor he has (i may give it him from experience) will use him the better, or show him the more favour, when a commission of bankrupt comes out against him. thus, i knew once a zealous, pious, religious tradesman, who would almost shut up his shop every day about nine or ten o'clock to call all his family together to prayers; and yet he was no presbyterian, i assure you; i say, he would almost shut up his shop, for he would suffer none of his servants to be absent from his family worship. this man had certainly been right, had he made all his family get up by six o'clock in the morning, and called them to prayers before he had opened his shop; but instead of that, he first suffered sleep to interfere with religion, and lying a-bed to postpone and jostle out his prayers--and then, to make god almighty amends upon himself, wounds his family by making his prayers interfere with his trade, and shuts his customers out of his shop; the end of which was, the poor good man deceived himself, and lost his business. another tradesman, whom i knew personally well, was raised in the morning very early, by the outcries of his wife, to go and fetch a midwife. it was necessary, in his way, to go by a church, where there was always, on that day of the week, a morning sermon early, for the supplying the devotion of such early christians as he; so the honest man, seeing the door open, steps in, and seeing the minister just gone up into the pulpit, sits down, joins in the prayers, hears the sermon, and goes very gravely home again; in short, his earnestness in the worship, and attention to what he had heard, quite put the errand he was sent about out of his head; and the poor woman in travail, after having waited long for the return of her husband with the midwife, was obliged (having run an extreme hazard by depending on his expedition) to dispatch other messengers, who fetched the midwife, and she was come, and the work over, long before the sermon was done, or that any body heard of the husband: at last, he was met coming gravely home from the church, when being upbraided with his negligence, in a dreadful surprise he struck his hands together, and cried out, 'how is my wife? i profess i forgot it!' what shall we say now to this ill-timed devotion, and who must tempt the poor man to this neglect? certainly, had he gone for the midwife, it had been much more his duty, than to go to hear a sermon at that time. i knew also another tradesman, who was such a sermon-hunter, and, as there are lectures and sermons preached in london, either in the churches or meeting-houses, almost every day in the week, used so assiduously to hunt out these occasions, that whether it was in a church or meeting-house, or both, he was always abroad to hear a sermon, at least once every day, and sometimes more; and the consequence was, that the man lost his trade, his shop was entirely neglected, the time which was proper for him to apply to his business was misapplied, his trade fell off, and the man broke. now it is true, and i ought to take notice of it also, that, though these things happen, and may wrong a tradesman, yet it is oftener, ten times for once, that tradesmen neglect their shop and business to follow the track of their vices and extravagence--some by taverns, others to the gaming-houses, others to balls and masquerades, plays, harlequins, and operas, very few by too much religion. but my inference is still sound, and the more effectually so as to that part; for if our business and trades are not to be neglected, no, not for the extraordinary excursions of religion, and religious duties, much less are they to be neglected for vices and extravagances. this is an age of gallantry and gaiety, and never was the city transposed to the court as it is now; the play-houses and balls are now filled with citizens and young tradesmen, instead of gentlemen and families of distinction; the shopkeepers wear a differing garb now, and are seen with their long wigs and swords, rather than with aprons on, as was formerly the figure they made. but what is the difference in the consequences? you did not see in those days acts of grace for the relief of insolvent debtors almost every session of parliament, and yet the jails filled with insolvents before the next year, though ten or twelve thousand have been released at a time by those acts. nor did you hear of so many commissions of bankrupt every week in the gazette, as is now the case; in a word, whether you take the lower sort of tradesman, or the higher, where there were twenty that failed in those days, i believe i speak within compass if i say that five hundred turn insolvent now; it is, as i said above, an age of pleasure, and as the wise man said long ago, 'he that loves pleasure shall be a poor man'--so it is now; it is an age of drunkenness and extravagance, and thousands ruin themselves by that; it is an age of luxurious and expensive living, and thousands more undo themselves by that; but, among all our vices, nothing ruins a tradesman so effectually as the neglect of his business: it is true, all those things prompt men to neglect their business, but the more seasonable is the advice; either enter upon no trade, undertake no business, or, having undertaken it, pursue it diligently: drive your trade, that the world may not drive you out of trade, and ruin and undo you. without diligence a man can never thoroughly understand his business and how should a man thrive, when he does not perfectly know what he is doing, or how to do it? application to his trade teaches him how to carry it on, as much as his going apprentice taught him how to set it up. certainly, that man shall never improve in his trading knowledge, that does not know his business, or how to carry it on: the diligent tradesman is always the knowing and complete tradesman. now, in order to have a man apply heartily, and pursue earnestly, the business he is engaged in, there is yet another thing necessary, namely, that he should delight in it: to follow a trade, and not to love and delight in it, is a slavery, a bondage, not a business: the shop is a bridewell, and the warehouse a house of correction to the tradesman, if he does not delight in his trade. while he is bound, as we say, to keep his shop, he is like the galley-slave chained down to the oar; he tugs and labours indeed, and exerts the utmost of his strength, for fear of the strapado, and because he is obliged to do it; but when he is on shore, and is out from the bank, he abhors the labour, and hates to come to it again. to delight in business is making business pleasant and agreeable; and such a tradesman cannot but be diligent in it, which, according to solomon, makes him certainly rich, and in time raises him above the world and able to instruct and encourage those who come after him. chapter vi over-trading it is an observation, indeed, of my own, but i believe it will hold true almost in all the chief trading towns in england, that there are more tradesmen undone by having too much trade, than for want of trade. over-trading is among tradesmen as over-lifting is among strong men: such people, vain of the strengh, and their pride prompting them to put it to the utmost trial, at last lift at something too heavy for them, over-strain their sinews, break some of nature's bands, and are cripples ever after. i take over-trading to be to a shopkeeper as ambition is to a prince. the late king of france, the great king louis, ambition led him to invade the dominions of his neighbours; and while upon the empire here, or the states-general there, or the spanish netherlands on another quarter, he was an over-match for every one, and, in their single capacity, he gained from them all; but at last pride made him think himself a match for them all together, and he entered into a declared war against the emperor and the empire, the kings of spain and great britain, and the states of holland, all at once. and what was the consequence? they reduced him to the utmost distress, he lost all his conquests, was obliged, by a dishonourable peace, to quit what he had got by encroachment, to demolish his invincible towns, such as pignerol, dunkirk, &c., the two strongest fortresses in europe; and, in a word, like a bankrupt monarch, he may, in many cases, be said to have died a beggar. thus the strong man in the fable, who by main strength used to rive a tree, undertook one at last which was too strong for him, and it closed upon his fingers, and held him till the wild beasts came and devoured him. though the story is a fable, the moral is good to my present purpose, and is not at all above my subject; i mean that of a tradesman, who should be warned against over-trading, as earnestly, and with as much passion, as i would warn a dealer in gunpowder to be wary of fire, or a distiller or rectifier of spirits to moderate his furnace, lest the heads of his stills fly off, and he should be scalded to death. for a young tradesman to over-trade himself, is like a young swimmer going out of his depth, when, if help does not come immediately, it is a thousand to one but he sinks, and is drowned. all rash adventures are condemned by the prudent part of mankind; but it is as hard to restrain youth in trade, as it is in any other thing, where the advantage stands in view, and the danger out of sight; the profits of trade are baits to the avaricious shopkeeper, and he is forward to reckon them up to himself, but does not perhaps cast up the difficulty which there may be to compass it, or the unhappy consequences of a miscarriage. for want of this consideration, the tradesman oftentimes drowns, as i may call it, even within his depth--that is, he sinks when he has really the substance at bottom to keep him up--and this is all owing to an adventurous bold spirit in trade, joined with too great a gust of gain. avarice is the ruin of many people besides tradesmen; and i might give the late south sea calamity for an example in which the longest heads were most overreached, not so much by the wit or cunning of those they had to deal with as by the secret promptings of their own avarice; wherein they abundantly verified an old proverbial speech or saying, namely, 'all covet, all lose;' so it was there indeed, and the cunningest, wisest, sharpest, men lost the most money. there are two things which may be properly called over-trading, in a young beginner; and by both which tradesmen are often overthrown. . trading beyond their stock. . giving too large credit. a tradesman ought to consider and measure well the extent of his own strengh; his stock of money, and credit, is properly his beginning; for credit is a stock as well as money. he that takes too much credit is really in as much danger as he that gives too much credit; and the danger lies particularly in this, if the tradesman over-buys himself, that is, buys faster than he can sell, buying upon credit, the payments perhaps become due too soon for him; the goods not being sold, he must answer the bills upon the strength of his proper stock--that is, pay for them out of his own cash; if that should not hold out, he is obliged to put off his bills after they are due, or suffer the impertinence of being dunned by the creditor, and perhaps by servants and apprentices, and that with the usual indecencies of such kind of people. this impairs his credit, and if he comes to deal with the same merchant, or clothier, or other tradesman again, he is treated like one that is but an indifferent paymaster; and though they may give him credit as before, yet depending that if he bargains for six months, he will take eight or nine in the payment, they consider it in the price, and use him accordingly; and this impairs his gain, so that loss of credit is indeed loss of money, and this weakens him both ways. a tradesman, therefore, especially at his beginning, ought to be very wary of taking too much credit; he had much better slip the occasion of buying now and then a bargain to his advantage, for that is usually the temptation, than buying a greater quantity of goods than he can pay for, run into debt, and be insulted, and at last ruined. merchants, and wholesale dealers, to put off their goods, are very apt to prompt young shopkeepers and young tradesmen to buy great quantities of goods, and take large credit at first; but it is a snare that many a young beginner has fallen into, and been ruined in the very bud; for if the young beginner does not find a vent for the quantity, he is undone; for at the time of payment the merchant expects his money, whether the goods are sold or not; and if he cannot pay, he is gone at once. the tradesman that buys warily, always pays surely, and every young beginner ought to buy cautiously; if he has money to pay, he need never fear goods to be had; the merchants' warehouses are always open, and he may supply himself upon all occasions, as he wants, and as his customers call. it may pass for a kind of an objection here, that there are some goods which a tradesman may deal in, which are to be bought at such and such markets only, and at such and such fairs only, that is to say, are chiefly bought there; as the cheesemongers buy their stocks of cheese and of butter, the cheese at several fairs in warwickshire, as at atherston fair in particular, or at fair in gloucestershire, and at sturbridge fair, near cambridge; and their butter at ipswich fair, in suffolk; and so of many other things; but the answer is plain: those things which are generally bought thus, are ready money goods, and the tradesman has a sure rule for buying, namely, his cash. but as i am speaking of taking credit, so i must be necessarily supposed to speak of such goods as are bought upon credit, as the linen-draper buys of the hamburgh and dutch merchants, the woollen-draper of the blackwell-hall men, the haberdasher of the thread merchants, the mercer of the weavers and italian merchants, the silk-man of the turkey merchants, and the like; here they are under no necessity of running deep into debt, but may buy sparingly, and recruit again as they sell off. i know some tradesmen are very fond of seeing their shops well-stocked, and their warehouses full of goods, and this is a snare to them, and brings them to buy in more goods than they want; but this is a great error, either in their judgment or their vanity; for, except in retailers' shops, and that in some trades where they must have a great choice of goods, or else may want a trade, otherwise a well-experienced tradesman had rather see his warehouse too empty than too full: if it be too empty, he can fill it when he pleases, if his credit be good, or his cash strong; but a thronged warehouse is a sign of a want of customers, and of a bad market; whereas, an empty warehouse is a sign of a nimble demand.[ ] let no young tradesman value himself upon having a very great throng of goods in hand, having just a necessary supply to produce a choice of new and fashionable goods--nay, though he be a mercer, for they are the most under the necessity of a large stock of goods; but i say, supposing even the mercer to have a tolerable show and choice of fashionable goods, that gives his shop a reputation, he derives no credit at all from a throng of old shopkeepers, as they call them, namely, out-of-fashion things: but in other trades it is much more a needful caution; a few goods, and a quick sale, is the beauty of a tradesman's warehouse, or shop either; and it is his wisdom to keep himself in that posture that his payments may come in on his front as fast as they go out in his rear; that he may be able to answer the demands of his merchants or dealers, and, if possible, let no man come twice for his money. the reason of this is plain, and leads me back to where i began; credit is stock, and, if well supported, is as good as a stock, and will be as durable. a tradesman whose credit is good, untouched, unspotted, and who, as above, has maintained it with care, shall in many cases buy his goods as cheap at three or four months' time of payment, as another man shall with ready money--i say in some cases, and in goods which are ordinarily sold for time, as all our manufactures, the bay trade excepted, generally are. he, then, that keeps his credit unshaken, has a double stock--i mean, it is an addition to his real stock, and often superior to it: nay, i have known several considerable tradesmen in this city who have traded with great success, and to a very considerable degree, and yet have not had at bottom one shilling real stock; but by the strength of their reputation, being sober and diligent, and having with care preserved the character of honest men, and the credit of their business, by cautious dealing and punctual payments, they have gone on till the gain of their trade has effectually established them, and they have raised estates out of nothing. but to return to the dark side, namely, over-trading; the second danger is the giving too much credit. he that takes credit may give credit, but he must be exceedingly watchful; for it is the most dangerous state of life that a tradesman can live in, for he is in as much jeopardy as a seaman upon a lee-shore. if the people he trusts fail, or fail but of a punctual compliance with him, he can never support his own credit, unless by the caution i am now giving; that is, to be very sure not to give so much credit as he takes. by the word _so much_, i must be understood thus--either he must sell for shorter time than he takes, or in less quantity; the last is the safest, namely, that he should be sure not to trust out so much as he is trusted with. if he has a real stock, indeed, besides the credit he takes, that, indeed, makes the case differ; and a man that can pay his own debts, whether other people pay him or no, that man is out of the question--he is past danger, and cannot be hurt; but if he trusts beyond the extent of his stock and credit, even _he_ may be overthrown too. there were many sad examples of this in the time of the late war,[ ] and in the days when the public credit was in a more precarious condition that it has been since--i say, sad examples, namely, when tradesmen in flourishing circumstances, and who had indeed good estates at bottom, and were in full credit themselves, trusted the public with too great sums; which, not coming in at the time expected, either by the deficiency of the funds given by parliament, and the parliament themselves not soon making good those deficiencies, or by other disasters of those times; i say, their money not coming in to answer their demands, they were ruined, at least their credit wounded, and some quite undone, who yet, had they been paid, could have paid all their own debts, and had good sums of money left. others, who had ability to afford it, were obliged to sell their tallies and orders at forty or fifty per cent. loss; from whence proceeded that black trade of buying and selling navy and victualling bills and transport debts, by which the brokers and usurers got estates, and many thousands of tradesmen were brought to nothing; even those that stood it, lost great sums of money by selling their tallies: but credit cannot be bought too dear; and the throwing away one half to save the other, was much better than sinking under the burden; like sailors in a storm, who, to lighten the ship wallowing in the trough of the sea, will throw the choicest goods overboard, even to half the cargo, in order to keep the ship above water, and save their lives. these were terrible examples of over-trading indeed; the men were tempted by the high price which the government gave for their goods, and which they were obliged to give, because of the badness of the public credit at that time; but this was not sufficient to make good the loss sustained in the sale of the tallies, so that even they that sold and were able to stand without ruin, were yet great sufferers, and had enough to do to keep up their credit. this was the effect of giving over-much credit; for though it was the government itself which they trusted, yet neither could the government itself keep up the sinking credit of those whom it was indebted to; and, indeed, how should it, when it was not able to support its own credit? but that by the way. i return to the young tradesman, whom we are now speaking about. it is his greatest prudence, therefore, after he has considered his own fund, and the stock he has to rest upon--i say, his next business is to take care of his credit, and, next to limiting his buying-liberty, let him be sure to limit his selling. could the tradesman buy all upon credit, and sell all for ready money, he might turn usurer, and put his own stock out to interest, or buy land with it, for he would have no occasion for one shilling of it; but since that is not expected, nor can be done, it is his business to act with prudence in both parts--i mean of taking and giving credit--and the best rule to be given him for it is, never to give so much credit as he takes, by at least one-third part. by giving credit, i do not mean, that even all the goods which he buys upon credit, may not be sold upon credit; perhaps they are goods which are usually sold so, and no otherwise; but the alternative is before him thus--either he must not give so much credit in quantity of goods, or not so long credit in relation to time--for example: suppose the young tradesman buys ten thousand pounds' value of goods on credit, and this ten thousand pounds are sold for eleven thousand pounds likewise on credit; if the time given be the same, the man is in a state of apparent destruction, and it is a hundred to one but he is blown up: perhaps he owes the ten thousand pounds to twenty men, perhaps the eleven thousand pounds is owing to him by two hundred men--it is scarce possible that these two hundred petty customers of his, should all so punctually comply with their payments as to enable him to comply with his; and if two or three thousand pounds fall short, the poor tradesman, unless he has a fund to support the deficiency, must be undone. but if the man had bought ten thousand pounds at six or eight months' credit, and had sold them all again as above to his two hundred customers, at three months' and four months' credit, then it might be supposed all, or the greatest part of them, would have paid time enough to make his payments good; if not, all would be lost still. but, on the other hand, suppose he had sold but three thousand pounds' worth of the ten for ready money, and had sold the rest for six months' credit, it might be supposed that the three thousand pounds in cash, and what else the two hundred debtors might pay in time, might stop the months of the tradesman's creditors till the difference might be made good. so easy a thing is it for a tradesman to lose his credit in trade, and so hard is it, once upon such a blow, to retrieve it again. what need, then, is there for the tradesman to guard himself against running too far into debt, or letting other people run too far into debt to him; for if they do not pay him, he cannot pay others, and the next thing is a commission of bankrupt, and so the tradesman may be undone, though he has eleven thousand pounds to pay ten with? it is true, it is not possible in a country where there is such an infinite extent of trade as we see managed in this kingdom, that either on one hand or another it can be carried on, without a reciprocal credit both taken and given; but it is so nice an article, that i am of opinion as many tradesmen break with giving too much credit, as break with taking it. the danger, indeed, is mutual, and very great. whatever, then, the young tradesman omits, let him guard against both his giving and taking too much credit. but there are divers ways of over-trading, besides this of taking and giving too much credit; and one of these is the running out into projects and heavy undertakings, either out of the common road which the tradesman is already engaged in, or grasping at too many undertakings at once, and having, as it is vulgarly expressed, too many irons in the fire at a time; in both which cases the tradesman is often wounded, and that deeply, sometimes too deep to recover. the consequences of those adventures are generally such as these: first, that they stock-starve the tradesman, and impoverish him in his ordinary business, which is the main support of his family; they lessen his strength, and while his trade is not lessened, yet his stock is lessened; and as they very rarely add to his credit, so, if they lessen the man's stock, they weaken him in the main, and he must at last faint under it. secondly, as they lessen his stock, so they draw from it in the most sensible part--they wound him in the tenderest and most nervous part, for they always draw away his ready money; and what follows? the money, which was before the sinews of his business, the life of his trade, maintained his shop, and kept up his credit in the full extent of it, being drawn off, like the blood let out of the veins, his trade languishes, his credit, by degrees, flags and goes off, and the tradesman falls under the weight. thus i have seen many a flourishing tradesman sensibly decay; his credit has first a little suffered, then for want of that credit trade has declined--that is to say, he has been obliged to trade for less and less, till at last he is wasted and reduced: if he has been wise enough and wary enough to draw out betimes, and avoid breaking, he has yet come out of trade, like an old invalid soldier out of the wars, maimed, bruised, sick, reduced, and fitter for an hospital than a shop--such miserable havoc has launching out into projects and remote undertakings made among tradesmen. but the safe tradesman is he, that avoiding all such remote excursions, keeps close within the verge of his own affairs, minds his shop or warehouse, and confining himself to what belongs to him there, goes on in the road of his business without launching into unknown oceans; and content with the gain of his own trade, is neither led by ambition or avarice, and neither covets to be greater nor richer by such uncertain and hazardous attempts. footnotes: [ ] [the keeping of a half empty shop will not suit the necessities of trade in modern times. instead of following the advice of defoe, therefore, the young tradesman is recommended to keep a sufficient stock of every kind of goods in which he professes to deal. a shopkeeper can hardly commit a greater blunder than allow himself to _be out_ of any article of his trade. one of his chief duties ought to consist in keeping up a _fresh stock_ of every article which there is a chance of being sought for, and, while avoiding the imprudence of keeping too large a stock of goods--which comes nearest to defoe's meaning--it is certain that, by having on hand an abundant choice, the shop gains a name, and has the best chance of securing a concourse of customers.] [ ] [the war of the spanish succession, concluded by the treaty of utrecht, .] chapter vii of the tradesman in distress, and becoming bankrupt in former times it was a dismal and calamitous thing for a tradesman to break. where it befell a family, it put all into confusion and distraction; the man, in the utmost terror, fright, and distress, ran away with what goods he could get off, as if the house were on fire, to get into the friars[ ] or the mint; the family fled, one one way, and one another, like people in desperation; the wife to her father and mother, if she had any, and the children, some to one relation, some to another. a statute (so they vulgarly call a commission of bankrupt) came and swept away all, and oftentimes consumed it too, and left little or nothing, either to pay the creditors or relieve the bankrupt. this made the bankrupt desperate, and made him fly to those places of shelter with his goods, where, hardened by the cruelty of the creditors, he chose to spend all the effects which should have paid the creditors, and at last perished in misery. but now the case is altered; men make so little of breaking, that many times the family scarce removes for it. a commission of bankrupt is so familiar a thing, that the debtor oftentimes causes it to be taken out in his favour, that he may sooner be effectually delivered from all his creditors at once, the law obliging him only to give a full account of himself upon oath to the commissioners, who, when they see his integrity, may effectually deliver him from all further molestation, give him a part even of the creditors' estate; and so he may push into the world again, and try whether he cannot retrieve his fortunes by a better management, or with better success for the future. some have said, this law is too favourable to the bankrupt; that it makes tradesmen careless; that they value not breaking at all, but run on at all hazards, venturing without forecast and without consideration, knowing they may come off again so cheap and so easy, if they miscarry. but though i cannot enter here into a long debate upon that subject, yet i may have room to say, that i differ from those people very much; for, though the terror of the commission is in some measure abated, as indeed it ought to be, because it was before exorbitant and unreasonable, yet the terror of ruining a man's family, sinking his fortunes, blasting his credit, and throwing him out of business, and into the worst of disgrace that a tradesman can fall into, this is not taken away, or abated at all; and this, to an honest trading man, is as bad as all the rest ever was or could be. nor can a man be supposed, in the rupture of his affairs, to receive any comfort, or to see through his disasters into the little relief which he may, and at the same time cannot be sure he shall, receive, at the end of his troubles, from the mercy of the commission. these are poor things, and very trifling for a tradesman to entertain thoughts of a breach from, especially with any prospect of satisfaction; nor can any tradesman with the least shadow of principle entertain any thought of breaking, but with the utmost aversion, and even abhorrence; for the circumstances of it are attended with so many mortifications, and so many shocking things, contrary to all the views and expectations that a tradesman can begin the world with, that he cannot think of it, but as we do of the grave, with a chillness upon the blood, and a tremor in the spirits. breaking is the death of a tradesman; he is mortally stabbed, or, as we may say, shot through the head, in his trading capacity; his shop is shut up, as it is when a man is buried; his credit, the life and blood of his trade, is stagnated; and his attendance, which was the pulse of his business, is stopped, and beats no more; in a word, his fame, and even name, as to trade is buried, and the commissioners, that act upon him, and all their proceedings, are but like the executors of the defunct, dividing the ruins of his fortune, and at last, his certificate is a kind of performing the obsequies for the dead, and praying him out of purgatory. did ever tradesman set up on purpose to break? did ever a man build himself a house on purpose to have it burnt down? i can by no means grant that any tradesman, at least in his senses, can entertain the least satisfaction in his trading, or abate any thing of his diligence in trade, from the easiness of breaking, or the abated severities of the bankrupt act. i could argue it from the nature of the act itself, which, indeed, was made, and is effectual, chiefly for the relief of creditors, not debtors; to secure the bankrupt's effects for the use of those to whom it of right belongs, and to prevent the extravagant expenses of the commission, which before were such as often devoured all, ruining both the bankrupt and his creditors too. this the present law has providently put a stop to; and the creditors now are secure in this point, that what is to be had, what the poor tradesman has left, they are sure to have preserved for, and divided among them, which, indeed, before they were not. the case is so well known, and so recent in every tradesman's memory, that i need not take up any more of your time about it. as to the encouragements in the act for the bankrupt, they are only these--namely, that, upon his honest and faithful surrender of his affairs, he shall be set at liberty; and if they see cause, they, the creditors, may give him back a small gratification for his discovering his effects, and assisting to the recovery of them; and all this, which amounts to very little, is upon his being, as i have said, entirely honest, and having run through all possible examinations and purgations, and that it is at the peril of his life if he prevaricates. are these encouragements to tradesmen to be negligent and careless of the event of things? will any man in his wits fail in his trade, break his credit, and shut up his shop, for these prospects? or will he comfort himself in case he is forced to fail--i say, will he comfort himself with these little benefits, and make the matter easy to himself on that account? he must have a very mean spirit that can do this, and must act upon very mean principles in life, who can fall with satisfaction, on purpose to rise no higher than this; it is like a man going to bed on purpose to rise naked, pleasing himself with the thoughts that, though he shall have no clothes to put on, yet he shall have the liberty to get out of bed and shift for himself. on these accounts, and some others, too long to mention here, i think it is out of doubt, that the easiness of the proceedings on commissions of bankrupt can be no encouragement to any tradesman to break, or so much as to entertain the thoughts of it, with less horror and aversion than he would have done before this law was made. but i must come now to speak of the tradesman in his real state of mortification, and under the inevitable necessity of a blow upon his affairs. he has had losses in his business, such as are too heavy for his stock to support; he has, perhaps, launched out in trade beyond his reach: either he has so many bad debts, that he cannot find by his books he has enough left to pay his creditors, or his debts lie out of his reach, and he cannot get them in, which in one respect is as bad; he has more bills running against him than he knows how to pay, and creditors dunning him, whom it is hard for him to comply with; and this, by degrees, sinks his credit. now, could the poor unhappy tradesman take good advice, now would be his time to prevent his utter ruin, and let his case be better or worse, his way is clear. if it be only that he has overshot himself in trade, taken too much credit, and is loaded with goods; or given too much credit, and cannot get his debts in; but that, upon casting up his books, he finds his circumstances good at bottom, though his credit has suffered by his effects being out of his hands; let him endeavour to retrench, let him check his career in trade--immediately take some extraordinary measures to get in his debts, or some extraordinary measures, if he can, to raise money in the meantime, till those debts come in, that he may stop the crowd of present demands. if this will not do, let him treat with some of his principal creditors, showing them a true and faithful state of his affairs, and giving them the best assurances he can of payment, that they may be easy with him till he can get in his debts; and then, with the utmost care, draw in his trade within the due compass of his stock, and be sure never to run out again farther than he is able to answer, let the prospect of advantage be what it will; and by this method he may perhaps recover his credit again, at least he may prevent his ruin. but this is always supposing the man has a firm bottom, that he is sound in the main, and that his stock is at least sufficient to pay all his debts. but the difficulty which i am proposing to speak of, is when the poor tradesman, distressed as above in point of credit, looking into his affairs, finds that his stock is diminished, or perhaps entirely sunk--that, in short, he has such losses and such disappointments in his business, that he is not sound at bottom; that he has run too far, and that his own stock being wasted or sunk, he has not really sufficient to pay his debts; what is this man's business?--and what course shall he take? i know the ordinary course with such tradesmen is this:--'it is true,' says the poor man, 'i am running down, and i have lost so much in such a place, and so much by such a chapman that broke, and, in short, so much, that i am worse than nothing; but come, i have such a thing before me, or i have undertaken such a project, or i have such an adventure abroad, if it suceeds, i may recover again; i'll try my utmost; i'll never drown while i can swim; i'll never fall while i can stand; who knows but i may get over it?' in a word, the poor man is loth to come to the fatal day; loth to have his name in the gazette, and see his wife and family turned out of doors, and the like; who can blame him? or who is not, in the like case, apt to take the like measures?--for it is natural to us all to put the evil day far from us, at least to put it as far off as we can. though the criminal believes he shall be executed at last, yet he accepts of every reprieve, as it puts him within the possibility of an escape, and that as long as there is life there is hope; but at last the dead warrant comes down, then he sees death unavoidable, and gives himself up to despair. indeed, the malefactor was in the right to accept, as i say, of every reprieve, but it is quite otherwise in the tradesman's case; and if i may give him a rule, safe, and in its end comfortable, in proportion to his circumstances, but, to be sure, out of question, just, honest, and prudent, it is this:-- when he perceives his case as above, and knows that if his new adventures or projects should fail, he cannot by any means stand or support himself, i not only give it as my advice to all tradesmen, as their interest, but insist upon it, as they are honest men, they should break, that is, stop in time: fear not to do that which necessity obliges you to do; but, above all, fear not to do that early, which, if omitted, necessity will oblige you to do late. first, let me argue upon the honesty of it, and next upon the prudence of it. certainly, honesty obliges every man, when he sees that his stock is gone, that he is below the level, and eating into the estate of other men, to put a stop to it, and to do it in time, while something is left. it has been a fault, without doubt, to break in upon other men's estates at all; but perhaps a plea may be made that it was ignorantly done, and they did not think they were run so far as to be worse than nothing; or some sudden disaster may have occasioned it, which they did not expect, and, it may be, could not foresee; both which may indeed happen to a tradesman, though the former can hardly happen without his fault, because he ought to be always acquainting himself with his books, stating his expenses and his profits, and casting things up frequently, at least in his head, so as always to know whether he goes backward or forward. the latter, namely, sudden disaster, may happen so to any tradesman as that he may be undone, and it may not be his fault; for ruin sometimes falls as suddenly as unavoidably upon a tradesman, though there are but very few incidents of that kind which may not be accounted for in such a manner as to charge it upon his prudence. some cases may indeed happen, some disasters may befall a tradesman, which it was not possible he should foresee, as fire, floods of water, thieves, and many such--and in those cases the disaster is visible, the plea is open, every body allows it, the man can have no blame. a prodigious tide from the sea, joined with a great fresh or flood in the river dee, destroyed the new wharf below the roodee at west chester, and tore down the merchants' warehouses there, and drove away not only all the goods, but even the buildings and altogether, into the sea. now, if a poor shopkeeper in chester had a large parcel of goods lying there, perhaps newly landed in order to be brought up to the city, but were all swept away, if, i say, the poor tradesman were ruined by the loss of those goods on that occasion, the creditors would see reason in it that they should every one take a share in the loss; the tradesman was not to blame. likewise in the distress of the late fire which began in thames street, near bear quay, a grocer might have had a quantity of goods in a warehouse thereabouts, or his shop might be there, and the goods perhaps might be sugars, or currants, or tobacco, or any other goods in his way, which could not be easily removed; this fire was a surprise, it was a blast of powder, it was at noonday, when no person coud foresee it. the man may have been undone and be in no fault himself, one way or other; no man can reasonably say to him, why did you keep so many goods upon your hands, or in such a place? for it was his proper business both to have a stock of goods, and to have them in such a place; every thing was in the right position, and in the order which the nature of his trade required. on the other hand, if it was the breaking of a particular chapman, or an adventure by sea, the creditors would perhaps reflect on his prudence; why should any man trust a single chapman so much, or adventure so much in one single bottom, and uninsured, as that the loss of it would be his undoing? but there are other cases, however, which may happen to a tradesman, and by which he may be at once reduced below his proper stock, and have nothing left to trade on but his credit, that is to say, the estates of his creditors. in such a case, i question whether it can be honest for any man to continue trading; for, first, it is making his creditors run an unjust hazard, without their consent; indeed, if he discovers his condition to one or two of them, who are men of capital stocks, and will support him, they giving him leave to pay others off, and go on at their risks, that alters the case; or if he has a ready money trade, that will apparently raise him again, and he runs no more hazards, but is sure he shall at least run out no farther; in these two cases, and i do not know another, he may with honesty continue. on the contrary, when he sees himself evidently running out, and declining, and has only a shift here and a shift there, to lay hold on, as sinking men generally do; and knows, that unless something extraordinary happen, which, perhaps, also is not probable, he must fall, for such a man to go on, and trade in the ordinary way, notwithstanding losses, and hazards--in such a case, i affirm, he cannot act the honest man, he cannot go on with justice to his creditors, or his family; he ought to call his creditors together, lay his circumstances honestly before them, and pay as far as it will go. if his creditors will do any thing generously for him, to enable him to go on again, well and good, but he cannot honestly oblige them to run the risk of his unfortunate progress, and to venture their estates on his bottom, after his bottom is really nothing at all but their money. but i pass from the honesty to the prudence of it--from what regards his creditors, to what regards himself--and i affirm, nothing can be more imprudent and impolite, as it regards himself and his family, than to go on after he sees his circumstances irrecoverable. if he has any consideration for himself, or his future happiness, he will stop in time, and not be afraid of meeting the mischief which he sees follows too fast for him to escape; be not so afraid of breaking, as not to break till necessity forces you, and that you have nothing left. in a word, i speak it to every declining tradesman, if you love yourself, your family, or your reputation, and would ever hope to look the world in the face again, _break_ in time. by breaking in time you will first obtain the character of an honest, though unfortunate man; it is owing to the contrary course, which is indeed the ordinary practice of tradesmen, namely, not to break till they run the bottom quite out, and have little or nothing left to pay; i say, it is owing to this, that some people think all men that break are knaves. the censure, it is true, is unjust, but the cause is owing to the indiscretion, to call it no worse, of the poor tradesmen, who putting the mischief as far from them as they can, trade on to the last gasp, till a throng of creditors coming on them together, or being arrested, and not able to get bail, or by some such public blow to their credit, they are brought to a stop or breach of course, like a man fighting to the last gasp who is knocked down, and laid on the ground, and then his resistance is at an end; for indeed a tradesman pushing on under irresistable misfortunes is but fighting with the world to the last drop, and with such unequal odds, that like the soldier surrounded with enemies, he must be killed; so the debtor must sink, it cannot be prevented. it is true, also, the man that thus struggles to the last, brings upon him an universal reproach, and a censure, that is not only unavoidable, but just, which is worse; but when a man breaks in time, he may hold up his face to his creditors, and tell them, that he could have gone on a considerable while longer, but that he should have had less left to pay them with, and that he has chosen to stop while he may be able to give them so considerable a sum as may convince them of his integrity. we have a great clamour among us of the cruelty of creditors, and it is a popular clamour, that goes a great way with some people; but let them tell us when ever creditors were cruel, when the debtor came thus to them with fifteen shillings in the pound in his offer. perhaps when the debtor has run to the utmost, and there appears to be little or nothing left, he has been used roughly; and it is enough to provoke a creditor, indeed, to be offered a shilling or half-a-crown in the pound for a large debt, when, had the debtor been honest, and broke in time, he might have received perhaps two-thirds of his debt, and the debtor been in better condition too. break then in time, young tradesman, if you see you are going down, and that the hazard of going on is doubtful; you will certainly be received by your creditors with compassion, and with a generous treatment; and, whatever happens, you will be able to begin the world again with the title of an honest man--even the same creditors will embark with you again, and be more forward to give you credit than before. it is true, most tradesmen that break merit the name of knave or dishonest man, but it is not so with all; the reason of the difference lies chiefly in the manner of their breaking--namely, whether sooner or later. it is possible, he may be an honest man who cannot, but he can never be honest that can, and will not pay his debts. now he, that, being able to pay fifteen shillings in the pound, will struggle on till he sees he shall not be able to pay half-a-crown in the pound, this man was able to pay, but would not, and, therefore, as above, cannot be an honest man. in the next place, what shall we say to the peace and satisfaction of mind in breaking, which the tradesman will always have when he acts the honest part, and breaks betimes, compared to that guilt and chagrin of the mind, occasioned by a running on, as i said, to the last gasp, when they have little to pay? then, indeed, the tradesman can expect no quarter from his creditors, and will have no quiet in himself. i might instance here the miserable, anxious, perplexed life, which the poor tradesman lives under; the distresses and extremities of his declining state; how harassed and tormented for money; what shifts he is driven to for supporting himself; how many little, mean, and even wicked things, will even the religious tradesman stoop to in his distress, to deliver himself--even such things as his very soul would abhor at another time, and for which he goes perhaps with a wounded conscience all his life after! by giving up early, all this, which is the most dreadful part of all the rest, would be prevented. i have heard many an honest unfortunate man confess this, and repent, even with tears, that they had not learned to despair in trade some years sooner than they did, by which they had avoided falling into many foul and foolish actions, which they afterwards had been driven to by the extremity of their affairs. footnotes: [ ] [whitefriars, in the neighbourhood of the temple, london. this and the mint were sanctuaries for debtors.] chapter viii the ordinary occasions of the ruin of tradesmen since i have given advice to tradesmen, when they fell into difficulties, and find they are run behind-hand, to break in time, before they run on too far, and thereby prevent the consequences of a fatal running on to extremity, it is but just i should give them some needful directions, to avoid, if possible, breaking at all. in order to this, i will briefly inquire what are the ordinary originals of a tradesman's ruin in business. to say it is negligence, when i have already pressed to a close application and diligence; that it is launching into, and grasping at, more business than their stock, or, perhaps, their understandings, are able to manage, when i have already spoken of the fatal consequences of over-trading; to say it is trusting carelessly people unable to pay, and running too rashly into debt, when i have already spoken of taking and giving too much credit--this would all be but saying the same thing over again--and i am too full of particulars, in this important case, to have any need of tautologies and repetitions; but there are a great many ways by which tradesmen precipitate themselves into ruin besides those, and some that need explaining and enlarging upon. . some, especially retailers, ruin themselves by fixing their shops in such places as are improper for their business. in most towns, but particularly in the city of london, there are places as it were appropriated to particular trades, and where the trades which are placed there succeed very well, but would do very ill any where else, or any other trades in the same places; as the orange-merchants and wet-salters about billingsgate, and in thames street; the coster-mongers at the three cranes; the wholesale cheesemongers in thames street; the mercers and drapers in the high streets, such as cheapside, ludgate street, cornhill, round court, and grace-church street, &c. pray what would a bookseller make of his business at billingsgate, or a mercer in tower street, or near the custom-house, or a draper in thames street, or about queen-hithe? many trades have their peculiar streets, and proper places for the sale of their goods, where people expect to find such shops, and consequently, when they want such goods, they go thither for them; as the booksellers in st paul's churchyard, about the exchange, temple, and the strand, &c., the mercers on both sides ludgate, in round court, and grace-church and lombard streets; the shoemakers in st martins le grand, and shoemaker row; the coach-makers in long-acre, queen street, and bishopsgate; butchers in eastcheap; and such like. for a tradesman to open his shop in a place unresorted to, or in a place where his trade is not agreeable, and where it is not expected, it is no wonder if he has no trade. what retail trade would a milliner have among the fishmongers' shops on fishstreet-hill, or a toyman about queen-hithe? when a shop is ill chosen, the tradesman starves; he is out of the way, and business will not follow him that runs away from it: suppose a ship-chandler should set up in holborn, or a block-maker in whitecross street, an anchor-smith at moorgate, or a coachmaker in redriff, and the like! it is true, we have seen a kind of fate attend the very streets and rows where such trades have been gathered together; and a street, famous some years ago, shall, in a few years after, be quite forsaken; as paternoster row for mercers, st paul's churchyard for woollen-drapers; both the eastcheaps for butchers; and now you see hardly any of those trades left in those places. i mention it for this reason, and this makes it to my purpose in an extraordinary manner, that whenever the principal shopkeepers remove from such a street, or settled place, where the principal trade used to be, the rest soon follow--knowing, that if the fame of the trade is not there, the customers will not resort thither: and that a tradesman's business is to follow wherever the trade leads. for a mercer to set up now in paternoster row, or a woollen-draper in st paul's churchyard, the one among the sempstresses, and the other among the chair-makers, would be the same thing as for a country shopkeeper not to set up in or near the market-place.[ ] the place, therefore, is to be prudently chosen by the retailer, when he first begins his business, that he may put himself in the way of business; and then, with god's blessing, and his own care, he may expect his share of trade with his neighbours. . he must take an especial care to have his shop not so much crowded with a large bulk of goods, as with a well-sorted and well-chosen quantity proper for his business, and to give credit to his beginning. in order to this, his buying part requires not only a good judgment in the wares he is to deal in, but a perfect government of his judgment by his understanding to suit and sort his quantities and proportions, as well to his shop as to the particular place where his shop is situated; for example, a particular trade is not only proper for such or such a part of the town, but a particular assortment of goods, even in the same way, suits one part of the town, or one town and not another; as he that sets up in the strand, or near the exchange, is likely to sell more rich silks, more fine hollands, more fine broad-cloths, more fine toys and trinkets, than one of the same trade setting up in the skirts of the town, or at ratcliff, or wapping, or redriff; and he that sets up in the capital city of a county, than he that is placed in a private market-town, in the same county; and he that is placed in a market-town, than he that is placed in a country village. a tradesman in a seaport town sorts himself different from one of the same trade in an inland town, though larger and more populous; and this the tradesman must weigh very maturely before he lays out his stock. sometimes it happens a tradesman serves his apprenticeship in one town, and sets up in another; and sometimes circumstances altering, he removes from one town to another; the change is very important to him, for the goods, which he is to sell in the town he removes to, are sometimes so different from the sorts of goods which he sold in the place he removed from, though in the same way of trade, that he is at a great loss both in changing his hand, and in the judgment of buying. this made me insist, in a former chapter, that a tradesman should take all occasions to extend his knowledge in every kind of goods, that which way soever he may turn his hand, he may have judgment in every thing. in thus changing his circumstances of trade, he must learn, as well as he can, how to furnish his shop suitable to the place he is to trade in, and to sort his goods to the demand which he is like to have there; otherwise he will not only lose the customers for want of proper goods, but will very much lose by the goods which he lays in for sale, there being no demand for them where he is going. when merchants send adventures to our british colonies, it is usual with them to make up to each factor what they call a _sortable cargo_; that is to say, they want something of every thing that may furnish the tradesmen there with parcels fit to fill their shops, and invite their customers; and if they fail, and do not thus sort their cargoes, the factors there not only complain, as being ill sorted, but the cargo lies by unsold, because there is not a sufficient quantity of sorts to answer the demand, and make them all marketable together. it is the same thing here: if the tradesman's shop is not well sorted, it is not suitably furnished, or fitted to supply his customers; and nothing dishonours him more than to have people come to buy things usual to be had in such shops, and go away without them. the next thing they say to one another is, 'i went to that shop, but i could not be furnished; they are not stocked there for a trade; one seldom finds any thing there that is new or fashionable:' and so they go away to another shop; and not only go away themselves, but carry others away with them--for it is observable, that the buyers or retail customers, especially the ladies, follow one another as sheep follow the flock; and if one buys a beautiful silk, or a cheap piece of holland, or a new-fashioned thing of any kind, the next inquiry is, where it was bought; and the shop is presently recommended for a shop well sorted, and for a place where things are to be had not only cheap and good, but of the newest fashion, and where they have always great choice to please the curious, and to supply whatever is called for. and thus the trade runs away insensibly to the shops which are best sorted. . the retail tradesman in especial, but even every tradesman in his station, must furnish himself with a competent stock of patience; i mean, that patience which is needful to bear with all sorts of impertinence, and the most provoking curiosity, that it is possible to imagine the buyers, even the worst of them, are or can be guilty of. a tradesman behind his counter must have no flesh and blood about him, no passions, no resentment. he must never be angry; no, not so much as seem to be so. if a customer tumbles him five hundred pounds' worth of goods, and scarce bids money for any thing--nay, though they really come to his shop with no intent to buy, as many do, only to see what is to be sold, and if they cannot be better pleased than they are at some other shop where they intend to buy, it is all one, the tradesman must take it, and place it to the account of his calling, that it is his business to be ill used, and resent nothing; and so must answer as obligingly to those that give him an hour or two's trouble and buy nothing, as he does to those who in half the time lay out ten or twenty pounds. the case is plain: it is his business to get money, to sell and please; and if some do give him trouble and do not buy, others make him amends, and do buy; and as for the trouble, it is the business of his shop. i have heard that some ladies, and those, too, persons of good note, have taken their coaches and spent a whole afternoon in ludgate street or covent garden, only to divert themselves in going from one mercer's shop to another, to look upon their fine silks, and to rattle and banter the journeymen and shopkeepers, and have not so much as the least occasion, much less intention, to buy any thing; nay, not so much as carrying any money out with them to buy anything if they fancied it: yet this the mercers who understand themselves know their business too well to resent; nor if they really knew it, would they take the least notice of it, but perhaps tell the ladies they were welcome to look upon their goods; that it was their business to show them; and that if they did not come to buy now, they might perhaps see they were furnished to please them when they might have occasion. on the other hand, i have been told that sometimes those sorts of ladies have been caught in their own snare; that is to say, have been so engaged by the good usage of the shopkeeper, and so unexpectedly surprised with some fine thing or other that has been shown them, that they have been drawn in by their fancy against their design, to lay out money, whether they had it or no; that is to say, to buy, and send home for money to pay for it. but let it be how and which way it will, whether mercer or draper, or what trade you please, the man that stands behind the counter must be all courtesy, civility, and good manners; he must not be affronted, or any way moved, by any manner of usage, whether owing to casualty or design; if he sees himself ill used, he must wink, and not see it--he must at least not appear to see it, nor any way show dislike or distaste; if he does, he reproaches not only himself but his shop, and puts an ill name upon the general usuage of customers in it; and it is not to be imagined how, in this gossiping, tea-drinking age, the scandal will run, even among people who have had no knowledge of the person first complaining. 'such a shop!' says a certain lady to a citizen's wife in conversation, as they were going to buy clothes; 'i am resolved i won't go to it; the fellow that keeps it is saucy and rude: if i lay out my money, i expect to be well used; if i don't lay it out, i expect to be well treated.' 'why, madam,' says the citizen, 'did the man of the shop use your ladyship ill?' _lady_.--no, i can't say he used me ill, for i never was in his shop. _cit._--how does your ladyship know he does so then? _lady_.--why, i know he used another lady saucily, because she gave him a great deal of trouble, as he called it, and did not buy. _cit._--was it the lady that told you so herself, madam? _lady_.--i don't know, really, i have forgot who it was; but i have such a notion in my head, and i don't care to try, for i hate the sauciness of shopkeepers when they don't understand themselves. _cit._--well; but, madam, perhaps it may be a mistake--and the lady that told you was not the person neither? _lady_.--oh, madam, i remember now who told me; it was my lady tattle, when i was at mrs whymsy's on a visiting day; it was the talk of the whole circle, and all the ladies took notice of it, and said they would take care to shun that shop. _cit._--sure, madam, the lady was strangely used; did she tell any of the particulars? _lady_.--no; i did not understand that she told the particulars, for it seems it was not to her, but to some other lady, a friend of hers; but it was all one; the company took as much notice of it as if it had been to her, and resented it as much, i assure you. _cit._--yet, and without examining the truth of the fact. _lady_.--we did not doubt the story. _cit._--but had no other proof of it, madam, than her relation? _lady_.--why, that's true; nobody asked for a proof; it was enough to tell the story. _cit._--what! though perhaps the lady did not know the person, or whether it was true or no, and perhaps had it from a third or fourth hand--your ladyship knows any body's credit may be blasted at that rate. _lady_.--we don't inquire so nicely, you know, into the truth of stories at a tea-table. _cit._--no, madam, that's true; but when reputation is at stake, we should be a little careful too. _lady_.--why, that's true too. but why are you so concerned about it, madam? do you know the man that keeps the shop? _cit._--no otherwise, madam, than that i have often bought there, and i always found them the most civil, obliging people in the world. _lady_.--it may be they know you, madam. _cit._--i am persuaded they don't, for i seldom went but i saw new faces, for they have a great many servants and journeymen in the shop. _lady_.--it may be you are easy to be pleased; you are good-humoured yourself, and cannot put their patience to any trial. _cit._--indeed, madam, just the contrary; i believe i made them tumble two or three hundred pounds' worth of goods one day, and bought nothing; and yet it was all one; they used me as well as if i had laid out twenty pounds. _lady_.--why, so they ought. _cit._--yes, madam, but then it is a token they do as they ought, and understand themselves. _lady_.--well, i don't know much of it indeed, but thus i was told. _cit._--well, but if your ladyship would know the truth of it, you would do a piece of justice to go and try them. _lady_.--not i; besides, i have a mercer of my acquaintance. _cit._--well, madam, i'll wait on your ladyship to your own mercer, and if you can't find any thing to your liking, will you go and try the other shop? _lady_.--oh! i am sure i shall deal if i go to my mercer. _cit._--well, but if you should, let us go for a frolic, and give the other as much trouble as we can for nothing, and see how he'll behave, for i want to be satisfied; if i find them as your ladyship has been told, i'll never go there any more. _lady_.--upon that condition i agree--i will go with you; but i will go and lay out my money at my own mercer's first, because i wont be tempted. _cit._--well, madam, i'll wait on your ladyship till you have laid out your money. after this discourse they drove away to the mercer's shop where the lady used to buy; and when they came there, the lady was surprised--the shop was shut up, and nobody to be seen. the next door was a laceman's, and the journeyman being at the door, the lady sent her servant to desire him to speak a word or two to her; and when he came, says the lady to him, pray, how long has mr--'s shop been shut up? _laceman_.--about a month, madam. _lady_.--what! is mr--dead? _laceman_.--no, madam, he is not dead. _lady_.--what then, pray? _laceman_.--something worse, madam; he has had some misfortunes. _lady_.--i am very sorry to hear it, indeed. so her ladyship made her bow, and her coachman drove away. the short of the story was, her mercer was broke; upon which the city lady prevailed upon her ladyship to go to the other shop, which she did, but declared beforehand she would buy nothing, but give the mercer all the trouble she could; and so said the other. and to make the thing more sure, she would have them go into the shop single, because she fancied the mercer knew the city lady, and therefore would behave more civilly to them both on that account, the other having laid out her money there several times. well, they went in, and the lady asked for such and such rich things, and had them shown her, to a variety that she was surprised at; but not the best or richest things they could show her gave her any satisfaction--either she did not like the pattern, or the colours did not suit her fancy, or they were too dear; and so she prepares to leave the shop, her coach standing at a distance, which she ordered, that they might not guess at her quality. but she was quite deceived in her expectation; for the mercer, far from treating her in the manner as she had heard, used her with the utmost civility and good manners. she treated him, on the contrary, as she said herself, even with a forced rudeness; she gave him all the impertinent trouble she was able, as above; and, pretending to like nothing he showed, turned away with an air of contempt, intimating that his shop was ill furnished, and that she should be easily served, she doubted not, at another. he told her he was very unhappy in not having any thing that suited her fancy--that, if she knew what particular things would please her, he would have them in two hours' time for her, if all the french and italian merchants' warehouses in london, or all the weavers' looms in spitalfields, could furnish them. but when that would not do, she comes forward from his back shop, where she had plagued him about an hour and a half; and makes him the slight compliment of (in a kind of a scornful tone too), 'i am sorry i have given you so much trouble.' 'the trouble, madam, is nothing; it is my misfortune not to please you; but, as to trouble, my business is to oblige the ladies, my customers; if i show my goods, i may sell them; if i do not show them, i cannot; if it is not a trouble to you, i'll show you every piece of goods in my shop; if you do not buy now, you may perhaps buy another time.' and thus, in short, he pursued her with all the good words in the world, and waited on her towards the door. as she comes forward, there she spied the city lady, who had just used the partner as the lady had used the chief master; and there, as if it had been by mere chance, she salutes her with, 'your servant, cousin; pray, what brought you here?' the cousin answers, 'madam, i am mighty glad to see your ladyship here; i have been haggling here a good while, but this gentleman and i cannot bargain, and i was just going away.' 'why, then,' says the lady, 'you have been just such another customer as i, for i have troubled the gentleman mercer this two hours, and i cannot meet with any thing to my mind.' so away they go together to the door; and the lady gets the mercer to send one of his servants to bid her coachman drive to the door, showing him where the fellow stood. while the boy was gone, she takes the city lady aside, and talking softly, the mercer and his partner, seeing them talk together, withdrew, but waited at a distance to be ready to hand them to the coach. so they began a new discourse, as follows:-- _lady_.--well, i am satisfied this man has been ill used in the world. _cit._--why, madam, how does your ladyship find him? _lady_.--only the most obliging, most gentleman-like man of a tradesman that ever i met with in my life. _cit._--but did your ladyship try him as you said you would? _lady_.--try him! i believe he has tumbled three thousand pounds' worth of goods for me. _cit._--did you oblige him to do so? _lady_.--i forced him to it, indeed, for i liked nothing. _cit._--is he well stocked with goods? _lady_.--i told him his shop was ill furnished. _cit._--what did he say to that? _lady_.--say! why he carried me into another inner shop, or warehouse, where he had goods to a surprising quantity and value, i confess. _cit._--and what could you say, then? _lady_.--say! in truth i was ashamed to say any more, but still was resolved not to be pleased, and so came away, as you see. _cit._--and he has not disobliged you at all, has he? _lady_.--just the contrary, indeed. (here she repeated the words the mercer had said to her, and the modesty and civility he had treated her with.) _cit._--well, madam, i assure you i have been faithful to my promise, for you cannot have used him so ill as i have used his partner--for i have perfectly abused him for having nothing to please me--i did as good as tell him i believed he was going to break, and that he had no choice. _lady_.--and how did he treat you? _cit._-just in the same manner as his partner did your ladyship, all mild and mannerly, smiling, and in perfect temper; for my part, if i was a young wench again, i should be in love with such a man. _lady_.--well, but what shall we do now? _cit._--why, be gone. i think we have teazed them enough; it would be cruel to bear-bait them any more. _lady_.--no, i am not for teazing them any more; but shall we really go away, and buy nothing? _cit._--nay, that shall be just as your ladyship pleases--you know i promised you i would not buy; that is to say, unless you discharge me of that obligation. _lady_.--i cannot, for shame, go out of this shop, and lay out nothing. _cit._--did your ladyship see any thing that pleased you? _lady_.--i only saw some of the finest things in england--i don't think all the city of paris can outdo him. _cit._--well, madam, if you resolve to buy, let us go and look again. _lady_.--'come, then.' and upon that the lady, turning to the mercer--'come, sir,' says she, 'i think i will look upon that piece of brocade again; i cannot find in my heart to give you all this trouble for nothing.' 'madam,' says the mercer, 'i shall be very glad if i can be so happy as to please you; but, i beseech your ladyship, don't speak of the trouble, for that is the duty of our trade; we must never think our business a trouble.' upon this the ladies went back with him into his inner shop, and laid out between sixty and seventy pounds, for they both bought rich suits of clothes, and used his shop for many years after. the short inference from this long discourse is this: that here you see, and i could give many examples very like this, how, and in what manner, a shopkeeper is to behave himself in the way of his business--what impertinences, what taunts, flouts, and ridiculous things, he must bear in his business, and must not show the least return, or the least signal of disgust--he must have no passions, no fire in his temper--he must be all soft and smooth: nay, if his real temper be naturally fiery and hot, he must show none of it in his shop--he must be a perfect complete hypocrite, if he will be a complete tradesman.[ ] it is true, natural tempers are not to be always counterfeited--the man cannot easily be a lamb in his shop, and a lion in himself; but let it be easy or hard, it must be done, and it is done. there are men who have, by custom and usage, brought themselves to it, that nothing could be meeker and milder than they, when behind the counter, and yet nothing be more furious and raging in every other part of life--nay, the provocations they have met with in their shops have so irritated their rage, that they would go upstairs from their shop, and fall into phrensies, and a kind of madness, and beat their heads against the wall, and mischief themselves, if not prevented, till the violence of it had gotten vent, and the passions abate and cool. nay, i heard once of a shopkeeper that behaved himself thus to such an extreme, that, when he was provoked by the impertinence of the customers, beyond what his temper could bear, he would go upstairs and beat his wife, kick his children about like dogs, and be as furious for two or three minutes as a man chained down in bedlam, and when the heat was over, would sit down and cry faster then the children he had abused; and after the fit was over he would go down into his shop again, and be as humble, as courteous, and as calm as any man whatever--so absolute a government of his passions had he in the shop, and so little out of it; in the shop a soul-less animal that can resent nothing, and in the family a madman; in the shop meek like the lamb, but in the family outrageous like a lybian lion. the sum of the matter is this: it is necessary for a tradesman to subject himself, by all the ways possible, to his business; his customers are to be his idols: so far as he may worship idols by allowance, he is to bow down to them and worship them;[ ] at least, he is not any way to displease them, or show any disgust or distaste at any thing they say or do. the bottom of it all is, that he is intending to get money by them; and it is not for him that gets money by them to offer the least inconvenience to them by whom he gets it; but he is to consider, that, as solomon says, 'the borrower is servant to the lender,' so the seller is servant to the buyer. when a tradesman has thus conquered all his passions, and can stand before the storm of impertinence, he is said to be fitted up for the main article, namely, the inside of the counter. on the other hand, we see that the contrary temper, nay, but the very suggestion of it, hurries people on to ruin their trade, to disoblige the customers, to quarrel with them, and drive them away. we see by the lady above, after having seen the ways she had taken to put this man out of temper--i say, we see it conquered her temper, and brought her to lay out her money cheerfully, and be his customer ever after. a sour, morose, dogmatic temper would have sent these ladies both away with their money in their pockets; but the man's patience and temper drove the lady back to lay out her money, and engaged her entirely. footnotes: [ ] paternoster row has long been the chief seat of the bookselling and publishing trade in london; and there are now some splendid shops of mercers or haberdashers in st paul's churchyard, also in ludgate hill adjoining. [ ] [the necessity here insisted on seems a hard one, and scarcely consistent with a just morality. yet, if the tradesman takes a right view of his situation, he will scarcely doubt the propriety of defoe's advice. he must consider, that, in his shop, he is, as it were, acting a part. he performs a certain character in the drama of our social arrangements, one which requires all the civility and forbearance above insisted on. he is not called upon, in such circumstances, to feel, speak, and act, as he would find himself in honour required to do in his private or absolutely personal capacity--in his own house, for instance, or in any public place where he mingled on a footing of equality with his fellow-citizens. accordingly, there is such a general sense of the justifiableness of his conducting himself in this submissive spirit, that no one would think of imputing it to him as a fault; but he would be more apt to be censured or ridiculed if he had so little sense as to take offence, in his capacity of tradesman, at any thing which it would only concern him to resent if it were offered to him in his capacity as a private citizen. an incident, somewhat like that so dramatically related by defoe, occurred a few years ago in the northern capital. a lady had, through whim, pestered a mercer in the manner related in the text, turning over all his goods, and only treating him with rudeness in return. when she finally turned to leave the shop, to inquire, as she said, for better and cheaper goods elsewhere, she found that a shower was falling, against which she had no protection. the tradesman, who had politely shown her to the door, observing her hesitate on the threshold at sight of the rain, requested her to wait a moment, and, stepping backwards for his umbrella, instantly returned, and, in the kindest accents, requested her to accept the loan of it. she took it, and went away, but in a few minutes returned it, in a totally different frame of spirit, and not only purchased extensively on this occasion, but became a constant customer for the future. another tradesman in the same city was so remarkable for his imperturbable civility, that it became the subject of a bet--an individual undertaking to irritate him, or, if he failed, to forfeit a certain sum. he went to the shop, and caused an immense quantity of the finest silks to be turned over, after which he coolly asked for a pennyworth of a certain splendid piece of satin. 'by all means,' said the discreet trader; 'allow me, sir, to have your penny.' the coin was handed to him, and, taking up the piece of satin, and placing the penny on the end of it, he cut round with his scissors, thus detaching a little bit of exactly the size and shape of the piece of money which was to purchase it. this, with the most polite air imaginable, he handed to his customer, whose confusion may be imagined.] [ ] [it appears to the editor that the case is here somewhat over-stated. while imperterbable good temper and civility are indispensible in the shopkeeper, it is not impossible that he may also err in displaying a _too great obsequiousness_ of _manner_. this, by disgusting the common sense and good taste of customers, may do as much harm as want of civility. a too _pressing_ manner, likewise, does harm, by causing the customer to feel as if he were _obliged_ to purchase. the medium of an easy, obliging, and good-humoured manner, is perhaps what suits best. but here, as in many other things, it is not easy to lay down any general rule. much must be left to the goos sense and _tact_ of the trader.] chapter ix of other reasons for the tradesman's disasters: and, first, of innocent diversions a few directions seasonably given, and wisely received, will be sufficient to guide a tradesman in a right management of his business, so as that, if he observes them, he may secure his prosperity and success: but it requires a long and serious caveat to warn him of the dangers he meets with in his way. trade is a straight and direct way, if they will but keep in it with a steady foot, and not wander, and launch out here and there, as a loose head and giddy fancy will prompt them to do. the road, i say, is straight and direct; but there are many turnings and openings in it, both to the right hand and to the left, in which, if a tradesman but once ventures to step awry, it is ten thousand to one but he loses himself, and very rarely finds his way back again; at least if he does, it is like a man that has been lost in a wood; he comes out with a scratched face, and torn clothes, tired and spent, and does not recover himself in a long while after. in a word, one steady motion carries him up, but many things assist to pull him down; there are many ways open to his ruin, but few to his rising: and though employment is said to be the best fence against temptations, and he that is busy heartily in his business, temptations to idleness and negligence will not be so busy about him, yet tradesmen are as often drawn from their business as other men; and when they are so, it is more fatal to them a great deal, than it is to gentlemen and persons whose employments do not call for their personal attendance so much as a shop does. among the many turnings and bye-lanes, which, as i say, are to be met with in the straight road of trade, there are two as dangerous and fatal to their prosperity as the worst, though they both carry an appearance of good, and promise contrary to what they perform; these are-- i. pleasures and diversions, especially such as they will have us call innocent diversions. ii. projects and adventures, and especially such as promise mountains of profit _in nubibus_ [in the clouds], and are therefore the more likely to ensnare the poor eager avaricious tradesman. . i am now to speak of the first, namely, pleasures and diversions. i cannot allow any pleasures to be innocent, when they turn away either the body or the mind of a tradesman from the one needful thing which his calling makes necessary, and that necessity makes his duty--i mean, the application both of his hands and head to his business. those pleasures and diversions may be innocent in themselves, which are not so to him: there are very few things in the world that are simply evil, but things are made circumstantially evil when they are not so in themselves: killing a man is not simply sinful; on the contrary, it is not lawful only, but a duty, when justice and the laws of god or man require it; but when done maliciously, from any corrupt principle, or to any corrupted end, is murder, and the worst of crimes. pleasures and diversions are thus made criminal, when a man is engaged in duty to a full attendance upon such business as those pleasures and diversions necessarily interfere with and interrupt; those pleasures, though innocent in themselves, become a fault in him, because his legal avocations demand his attendance in another place. thus those pleasures may be lawful to another man, which are not so to him, because another man has not the same obligation to a calling, the same necessity to apply to it, the same cry of a family, whose bread may depend upon his diligence, as a tradesman has. solomon, the royal patron of industry, tells us, 'he that is a lover of pleasure, shall be a poor man.' i must not doubt but solomon is to be understood of tradesmen and working men, such as i am writing of, whose time and application is due to their business, and who, in pursuit of their pleasures, are sure to neglect their shops, or employments, and i therefore render the words thus, to the present purpose--'the tradesman that is a lover of pleasure, shall be a poor man.' i hope i do not wrest the scripture in my interpretation of it; i am sure it agrees with the whole tenor of the wise man's other discourses. when i see young shopkeepers keep horses, ride a-hunting, learn dog-language, and keep the sportsmen's brogue upon their tongues, i will not say i read their destiny, for i am no fortuneteller, but i do say, i am always afraid for them; especially when i know that either their fortunes and beginnings are below it, or that their trades are such as in a particular manner to require their constant attendance. as to see a barber abroad on a saturday, a corn-factor abroad on a wednesday and friday, or a blackwell-hall man on a thursday, you may as well say a country shopkeeper should go a-hunting on a market-day, or go a-feasting at the fair day of the town where he lives; and yet riding and hunting are otherwise lawful diversions, and in their kind very good for exercise and health. i am not for making a galley-slave of a shopkeeper, and have him chained down to the oar; but if he be a wise, a prudent, and a diligent tradesman, he will allow himself as few excursions as possible. business neglected is business lost; it is true, there are some businesses which require less attendance than others, and give a man less occasion of application; but, in general, that tradesman who can satisfy himself to be absent from his business, must not expect success; if he is above the character of a diligent tradesman, he must then be above the business too, and should leave it to somebody, that, having more need of it, will think it worth his while to mind it better. nor, indeed, is it possible a tradesman should be master of any of the qualifications which i have set down to denominate him complete, if he neglects his shop and his time, following his pleasures and diversions. i will allow that the man is not vicious and wicked, that he is not addicted to drunkenness, to women, to gaming, or any such things as those, for those are not woundings, but murder, downright killing. a man may wound and hurt himself sometimes, in the rage of an ungoverned passion, or in a phrensy or fever, and intend no more; but if he shoots himself through the head, or hangs himself, we are sure then he intended to kill and destroy himself, and he dies inevitably. for a tradesman to follow his pleasures, which indeed is generally attended with a slighting of his business, leaving his shop to servants or others, it is evident to me that he is indifferent whether it thrives or no; and, above all, it is evident that his heart is not in his business; that he does not delight in it, or look on it with pleasure. to a complete tradesman there is no pleasure equal to that of being in his business, no delight equal to that of seeing himself thrive, to see trade flow in upon him, and to be satisfied that he goes on prosperously. he will never thrive, that cares not whether he thrives or no. as trade is the chief employment of his life, and is therefore called, by way of eminence, _his business_, so it should be made the chief delight of his life. the tradesman that does not love his business, will never give it due attendance. pleasure is a bait to the mind, and the mind will attract the body: where the heart is, the object shall always have the body's company. the great objection i meet with from young tradesmen against this argument is, they follow no unlawful pleasures; they do not spend their time in taverns, and drinking to excess; they do not spend their money in gaming, and so stock-starve their business, and rob the shop to supply the extravagant losses of play; or they do not spend their hours in ill company and debaucheries; all they do, is a little innocent diversion in riding abroad now and then for the air, and for their health, and to ease their thoughts of the throng of other affairs which are heavy upon them, &c. these, i say, are the excuses of young tradesmen; and, indeed, they are young excuses, and, i may say truly, have nothing in them. it is perhaps true, or i may grant it so for the present purpose, that the pleasure the tradesman takes is, as he says, not unlawful, and that he follows only a little innocent diversion; but let me tell him, the words are ill put together, and the diversion is rather recommended from the word _little_, than from the word _innocent_: if it be, indeed, but little, it may be innocent; but the case is quite altered by the extent of the thing; and the innocence lies here, not in the nature of the thing, not in the diversion or pleasure that is taken, but in the time it takes; for if the man spends the time in it which should be spent in his shop or warehouse, and his business suffers by his absence, as it must do, if the absence is long at a time, or often practised--the diversion so taken becomes criminal to him, though the same diversion might be innocent in another. thus i have heard a young tradesman, who loved his bottle, excuse himself, and say, 'it is true, i have been at the tavern, but i was treated, it cost me nothing.' and this, he thinks, clears him of all blame; not considering that when he spends no money, yet he spends five times the value of the money in time. another says, 'why, indeed, i was at the tavern yesterday all the afternoon, but i could not help it, and i spent but sixpence.' but at the same time perhaps it might be said he spent five pounds' worth of time, his business being neglected, his shop unattended, his books not posted, his letters not written, and the like--for all those things are works necessary to a tradesman, as well as the attendance on his shop, and infinitely above the pleasure of being treated at the expense of his time. all manner of pleasures should buckle and be subservient to business: he that makes his pleasure be his business, will never make his business be a pleasure. innocent pleasures become sinful, when they are used to excess, and so it is here; the most innocent diversion becomes criminal, when it breaks in upon that which is the due and just employment of the man's life. pleasures rob the tradesman, and how, then, can he call them innocent diversions? they are downright thieves; they rob his shop of his attendance, and of the time which he ought to bestow there; they rob his family of their due support, by the man's neglecting that business by which they are to be supported and maintained; and they oftentimes rob the creditors of their just debts, the tradesman sinking by the inordinate use of those innocent diversions, as he calls them, as well by the expense attending them, as the loss of his time, and neglect of his business, by which he is at last reduced to the necessity of shutting up shop in earnest, which was indeed as good as shut before. a shop without a master is like the same shop on a middling holiday, half shut up, and he that keeps it long so, need not doubt but he may in a little time more shut it quite up. in short, pleasure is a thief to business; how any man can call it innocent, let him answer that does so; it robs him every way, as i have said above: and if the tradesman be a christian, and has any regard to religion and his duty, i must tell him, that when upon his disasters he shall reflect, and see that he has ruined himself and his family, by following too much those diversions and pleasures which he thought innocent, and which perhaps in themselves were really so, he will find great cause to repent of that which he insisted on as innocent; he will find himself lost, by doing lawful things, and that he made those innocent things sinful, and those lawful things unlawful to him. thus, as they robbed his family and creditors before of their just debts--for maintenance is a tradesman's just debt to his family, and a wife and children are as much a tradesman's real creditors as those who trusted him with their goods--i say, as his innocent pleasures robbed his family and creditors before, they will rob him now of his peace, and of all that calm of soul which an honest, industrious, though unfortunate, tradesman meets with under his disasters. i am asked here, perhaps, how much pleasure an honest-meaning tradesman may be allowed to take? for it cannot be supposed i should insist that all pleasure is forbidden him, that he must have no diversion, no spare hours, no intervals from hurry and fatigue; that would be to pin him down to the very floor of his shop, as john sheppard was locked down to the floor of his prison. the answer to this question every prudent tradesman may make for himself: if his pleasure is in his shop, and in his business, there is no danger of him; but if he has an itch after exotic diversions--i mean such as are foreign to his shop, and to his business, and which i therefore call _exotic_--let him honestly and fairly state the case between his shop and his diversions, and judge impartially for himself. so much pleasure, and no more, may be innocently taken, as does not interfere with, or do the least damage to his business, by taking him away from it. every moment that his trade wants him in his shop or warehouse, it is his duty to be there; it is not enough to say, i believe i shall not be wanted; or i believe i shall suffer no loss by my absence. he must come to a point and not deceive himself; if he does, the cheat is all his own. if he will not judge sincerely at first, he will reproach himself sincerely at last; for there is no fraud against his own reflections: a man is very rarely a hypocrite to himself. the rule may be, in a few words, thus: those pleasures or diversions, and those only, can be innocent, which the man may or does use, or allow himself to use, without hindrance of, or injury to, his business and reputation. let the diversions or pleasures in question be what they will, and how innocent soever they are in themselves, they are not so to him, because they interrupt or interfere with his business, which is his immediate duty. i have mentioned the circumstance which touches this part too, namely, that there may be a time when even the needful duties of religion may become faults, and unseasonable, when another more needful attendance calls for us to apply to it; much more, then, those things which are only barely lawful. there is a visible difference between the things which we may do, and the things which we must do. pleasures at certain seasons are allowed, and we may give ourselves some loose to them; but business, i mean to the man of business, is that needful thing, of which it is not to be said it _may_, but it _must_ be done. again, those pleasures which may not only be lawful in themselves, but which may be lawful to other men, yet are criminal and unlawful to him. to gentlemen of fortunes and estates, who being born to large possessions, and have no avocations of this kind, it is certainly lawful to spend their spare hours on horseback, with their hounds or hawks, pursuing their game; or, on foot, with their gun and their net, and their dogs to kill the hares or birds, &c.--all which we call sport. these are the men that can, with a particular satisfaction, when they come home, say they have only taken an innocent diversion; and yet even in these, there are not wanting some excesses which take away the innocence of them, and consequently the satisfaction in their reflection, and therefore it was i said it was lawful to them to spend their spare hours--by which i am to be understood, those hours which are not due to more solemn and weighty occasions, such as the duties of religion in particular. but as this is not my present subject, i proceed; for i am not talking to gentlemen now, but to tradesmen. the prudent tradesman will, in time, consider what he ought or ought not to do, in his own particular case, as to his pleasures--not what another man may or may not do. in short, nothing of pleasure or diversion can be innocent to him, whatever it may be to another, if it injures his business, if it takes either his time, or his mind, or his delight, or his attendance, from his business; nor can all the little excuses, of its being for his health, and for the needful unbending the bow of the mind, from the constant application of business, for all these must stoop to the great article of his shop and business; though i might add, that the bare taking the air for health, and for a recess to the mind, is not the thing i am talking of--it is the taking an immoderate liberty, and spending an immoderate length of time, and that at unseasonable and improper hours, so as to make his pleasures and diversions be prejudicial to his business--this is the evil i object to, and this is too much the ruin of the tradesmen of this age; and thus any man who calmly reads these papers will see i ought to be understood. nor do i confine this discourse to the innocent diversions of a horse, and riding abroad to take the air; things which, as above, are made hurtful and unlawful to him, only as they are hindrances to his business, and are more or less so, as they rob his shop or warehouse, or business, or his attendance and time, and cause him to draw his affections off from his calling. but we see other and new pleasures daily crowding in upon the tradesman, and some which no age before this have been in danger of--i mean, not to such an excess as is now the case, and consequently there were fewer tradesmen drawn into the practice. the present age is a time of gallantry and gaiety; nothing of the present pride and vanity was known, or but very little of it, in former times: the baits which are every where laid for the corruption of youth, and for the ruin of their fortunes, were never so many and so mischievous as they are now. we scarce now see a tradesman's apprentice come to his fifth year, but he gets a long wig and a sword, and a set of companions suitable; and this wig and sword, being left at proper and convenient places, are put on at night after the shop is shut, or when they can slip out to go a-raking in, and when they never fail of company ready to lead them into all manner of wickedness and debauchery; and from this cause it is principally that so many apprentices are ruined, and run away from their masters before they come out of their times--more, i am persuaded, now, than ever were to be found before. nor, as i said before, will i charge the devil with having any hand in the ruin of these young fellows--indeed, he needs not trouble himself about them, they are his own by early choice--they anticipate temptation, and are as forward as the devil can desire them to be. these may be truly said to be drawn aside of their own lusts, and enticed--they need no tempter. but of these i may also say, they seldom trouble the tradesmen's class; they get ruined early, and finish the tradesman before they begin, so my discourse is not at present directed much to them; indeed, they are past advice before they come in my way. indeed, i knew one of these sort of gentlemen-apprentices make an attempt to begin, and set up his trade--he was a dealer in what they call crooked-lane wares: he got about £ from his father, an honest plain countryman, to set him up, and his said honest father exerted himself to the utmost to send him up so much money. when he had gotten the money, he took a shop near the place where he had served his time, and entering upon the shop, he had it painted, and fitted up, and some goods he bought in order to furnish it; but before that, he was obliged to pay about £ of the money to little debts, which he had contracted in his apprenticeship, at two or three ale-houses, for drink and eatables, treats, and junketings; and at the barber's for long perukes, at the sempstress's for fine holland-shirts, turn-overs, white gloves, &c, to make a beau of him, and at several other places. when he came to dip into this, and found that it wanted still £ or £ to equip him for the company which he had learned to keep, he took care to do this first; and being delighted with his new dress, and how like a gentleman he looked, he was resolved, before he opened a shop, to take his swing a little in the town; so away he went, with two of his neighbour's apprentices, to the play-house, thence to the tavern, not far from his dwelling, and there they fell to cards, and sat up all night--and thus they spent about a fortnight; the rest just creeping into their masters' houses, by the connivance of their fellow-servants, and he getting a bed in the tavern, where what he spent, to be sure, made them willing enough to oblige him--that is to say, to encourage him to ruin himself. they then changed their course, indeed, and went to the ball, and that necessarily kept them out the most part of the night, always having their supper dressed at the tavern at their return; and thus, in a few words, he went on till he made way through all the remaining money he had left, and was obliged to call his creditors together, and break before he so much as opened his shop--i say, his creditors, for great part of the goods which he had furnished his shop with were unpaid for; perhaps some few might be bought with ready money. this man, indeed, is the only tradesman that ever i met with, that set up and broke before his shop was open; others i have indeed known make very quick work of it. but this part rather belongs to another head. i am at present not talking of madmen, as i hope, indeed, i am not writing to madmen, but i am talking of tradesmen undone by lawful things, by what they call innocent and harmless things--such as riding abroad, or walking abroad to take the air, and to divert themselves, dogs, gun, country-sport, and city-recreation. these things are certainly lawful, and in themselves very innocent; nay, they may be needful for health, and to give some relaxation to the mind, hurried with too much business; but the needfulness of them is so much made an excuse, and the excess of them is so injurious to the tradesman's business and to his time, which should be set apart for his shop and his trade, that there are not a few tradesmen thus lawfully ruined, as i may call it--in a word, lawful or unlawful, their shop is neglected, their business goes behind-hand, and it is all one to the subject of breaking, and to the creditor, whether the man was undone by being a knave, or by being a fool; it is all one whether he lost his trade by scandalous immoral negligence, or by sober or religious negligence. in a word, business languishes, while the tradesman is absent, and neglects it, be it for his health or for his pleasure, be it in good company or in bad, be it from a good or an ill design; and if the business languishes, the tradesman will not be long before he languishes too; for nothing can support the tradesman but his supporting his trade by a due attendance and application.[ ] footnotes: [ ] [in the above admirable series of plain-spoken advices, the author has omitted one weighty reason why young tradesmen should not spend their evenings in frivolous, or otherwise improper company. the actual loss of time and of money incurred by such courses of conduct, is generally of less consequence than the losses arising from habitual distraction of mind, and the acquisition of an acquaintanceship with a set of idle or silly companions. it is of the utmost importance that young tradesmen should spend their leisure hours in a way calculated to soothe the feelings, and enlarge the mind; and in the present day, from the prevalance of literature, and other rational means for amusement, they have ample opportunities of doing so.] chapter x of extravagant and expensive living; another step to a tradesman's disaster hitherto i have written of tradesmen ruined by lawful and innocent diversions; and, indeed, these are some of the most dangerous pits for a tradesman to fall into, because men are so apt to be insensible of the danger: a ship may as well be lost in a calm smooth sea, and an easy fair gale of wind, as in a storm, if they have no pilot, or the pilot be ignorant or unwary; and disasters of that nature happen as frequently as any others, and are as fatal. when rocks are apparent, and the pilot, bold and wilful, runs directly upon them, without fear or wit, we know the fate of the ship--it must perish, and all that are in it will inevitably be lost; but in a smooth sea, a bold shore, an easy gale, the unseen rocks or shoals are the only dangers, and nothing can hazard them but the skilfulness of the pilot: and thus it is in trade. open debaucheries and extravagances, and a profusion of expense, as well as a general contempt of business, these are open and current roads to a tradesman's destruction; but a silent going on, in pursuit of innocent pleasures, a smooth and calm, but sure neglect of his shop, and time, and business, will as effectually and as surely ruin the tradesman as the other; and though the means are not so scandalous, the effect is as certain. but i proceed to the other. next to immoderate pleasures, the tradesman ought to be warned against immoderate expense. this is a terrible article, and more particularly so to the tradesman, as custom has now, as it were on purpose for their undoing, introduced a general habit of, and as it were a general inclination among all sorts of people to, an expensive way of living; to which might be added a kind of necessity of it; for that even with the greatest prudence and frugality a man cannot now support a family with the ordinary expense, which the same family might have been maintained with some few years ago: there is now ( ) a weight of taxes upon almost all the necessaries of life, bread and flesh excepted, as coals, salt, malt, candles, soap, leather, hops, wine, fruit, and all foreign consumptions; ( ) a load of pride upon the temper of the nation, which, in spite of taxes and the unusual dearess of every thing, yet prompts people to a profusion in their expenses. this is not so properly called a _tax_ upon the tradesmen; i think rather, it may be called _a plague_ upon them: for there is, first, the dearness of every necessary thing to make living expensive; and secondly, an unconquerable aversion to any restraint; so that the poor will be like the rich, and the rich like the great, and the great like the greatest--and thus the world runs on to a kind of distraction at this time: where it will end, time must discover. now, the tradesman i speak of, if he will thrive, he must resolve to begin as he can go on; and if he does so, in a word, he must resolve to live more under restraint than ever tradesmen of his class used to do; for every necessary thing being, as i have said, grown dearer than before, he must entirely omit all the enjoyment of the unnecessaries which he might have allowed himself before, or perhaps be obliged to an expense beyond the income of his trade: and in either of these cases he has a great hardship upon him. when i talk of immoderate expenses, i must be understood not yet to mean the extravagances of wickedness and debaucheries; there are so many sober extravagances, and so many grave sedate ways for a tradesman's ruin, and they are so much more dangerous than those hair-brained desperate ways of gaming and debauchery, that i think it is the best service i can do the tradesmen to lay before them those sunk rocks (as the seamen call them), those secret dangers in the first place, that they may know how to avoid them; and as for the other common ways, common discretion will supply them with caution for those, and their senses will be their protection. the dangers to the tradesmen whom i am directing myself to, are from lawful things, and such as before are called innocent; for i am speaking to the sober part of tradesmen, who yet are often ruined and overthrown in trade; and perhaps as many such miscarry, as of the mad and extravagant, particularly because their number far exceeds them. expensive living is a kind of slow fever; it is not so open, so threatening and dangerous, as the ordinary distemper which goes by that name, but it preys upon the spirits, and, when its degrees are increased to a height, is as fatal and as sure to kill as the other: it is a secret enemy, that feeds upon the vitals; and when it has gone its full length, and the languishing tradesman is weakened in his solid part, i mean his stock, then it overwhelms him at once. expensive living feeds upon the life and blood of the tradesman, for it eats into the two most essential branches of his trade, namely, his credit and his cash; the first is its triumph, and the last is its food: nothing goes out to cherish the exorbitance, but the immediate money; expenses seldom go on trust, they are generally supplied and supported with ready money, whatever are not. this expensive way of living consists in several things, which are all indeed in their degree ruinous to the tradesman; such as . expensive house-keeping, or family extravagance. . expensive dressing, or the extravagance of fine clothes. . expensive company, or keeping company above himself. . expensive equipages, making a show and ostentation of figure in the world. i might take them all in bulk, and say, what has a young tradesman to do with these? and yet where is there a tradesman now to be found, who is not more or less guilty? it is, as i have said, the general vice of the times; the whole nation are more or less in the crime; what with necessity and inclination, where is the man or the family that lives as such families used to live? in short, good husbandry and frugality is quite out of fashion, and he that goes about to set up for the practice of it, must mortify every thing about him that has the least tincture of frugality; it is the mode to live high, to spend more than we get, to neglect trade, contemn care and concern, and go on without forecast, or without consideration; and, in consequence, it is the mode to go on to extremity, to break, become bankrupt and beggars, and so going off the trading stage, leave it open for others to come after us, and do the same.[ ] to begin with house-keeping. i have already hinted, that every thing belonging to the family subsistence bears a higher price than usual, i may say, than ever; at the same time i can neither undertake to prove that there is more got by selling, or more ways to get it, i mean to a tradesman, than there was formerly; the consequence then must be, that the tradesmen do not grow rich faster than formerly; at least we may venture to say this of tradesmen and their families, comparing them with former times, namely, that there is not more got, and i am satisfied there is less laid up, than was then; or, if you will have it, that tradesmen get less and spend more than they ever did. how they should be richer than they were in those times, is very hard to say. that all things are dearer than formerly to a house-keeper, needs little demonstration; the taxes necessarily infer it from the weight of them, and the many things charged; for, besides the things enumerated above, we find all articles of foreign importation are increased by the high duties laid on them; such as linen, especially fine linen; silk, especially foreign wrought silk: every thing eatable, drinkable, and wearable, are made heavy to us by high and exorbitant customs and excises, as brandies, tobacco, sugar; deals and timber for building; oil, wine, spice, raw silks, calico, chocolate, coffee, tea; on some of these the duties are more than doubled: and yet that which is most observable is, that such is the expensive humour of the times, that not a family, no, hardly of the meanest tradesman, but treat their friends with wine, or punch, or fine ale; and have their parlours set off with the tea-table and the chocolate-pot--treats and liquors all exotic, foreign and new among tradesmen, and terrible articles in their modern expenses; which have nothing to be said for them, either as to the expense of them, or the helps to health which they boast of: on the contrary, they procure us rheumatic bodies and consumptive purses, and can no way pass with me for necessaries; but being needless, they add to the expense, by sending us to the doctors and apothecaries to cure the breaches which they make in our health, and are themselves the very worst sort of superfluities. but i come back to necessaries; and even in them, family-expenses are extremely risen, provisions are higher rated--no provisions that i know of, except only bread, mutton, and fish, but are made dearer than ever--house-rent, in almost all the cities and towns of note in england, is excessively and extremely dearer, and that in spite of such innumerable buildings as we see almost everywhere raised up, as well in the country as in london, and the parts adjacent. add to the rents of houses, the wages of servants. a tradesman, be he ever so much inclined to good husbandry, cannot always do his kitchen-work himself, suppose him a bachelor, or can his wife, suppose him married, and suppose her to have brought him any portion, be his bedfellow and his cook too. these maid-servants, then, are to be considered, and are an exceeding tax upon house-keepers; those who were formerly hired at three pounds to four pounds a-year wages, now demand five, six and eight pounds a-year; nor do they double anything upon us but their wages and their pride; for, instead of doing more work for their advance of wages, they do less: and the ordinary work of families cannot now be performed by the same number of maids, which, in short, is a tax upon the upper sort of tradesmen, and contributes very often to their disasters, by the extravagant keeping three or four maid-servants in a house, nay, sometimes five, where two formerly were thought sufficient. this very extravagance is such, that talking lately with a man very well experienced in this matter, he told me he had been making his calculations on that very particular, and he found by computation, that the number of servants kept by all sorts of people, tradesmen as well as others, was so much increased, that there are in london, and the towns within ten miles of it, take it every way, above a hundred thousand more maid-servants and footmen, at this time in place, than used to be in the same compass of ground thirty years ago;[ ] and that their wages amounted to above forty shillings a-head per annum, more than the wages of the like number of servants did amount to at the same length of time past; the advance to the whole body amounting to no less than two hundred thousand pounds a-year. indeed, it is not easy to guess what the expense of wages to servants amounts to in a year, in this nation; and consequently we cannot easily determine what the increase of that expense amounts to in england, but certainly it must rise to many hundred thousand pounds a-year in the whole. the tradesmen bear their share of this expense, and indeed too great a share, very ordinary tradesmen in london keeping at least two maids, and some more, and some a footman or two besides; for it is an ordinary thing to see the tradesmen and shopkeepers of london keep footmen, as well as the gentlemen: witness the infinite number of blue liveries, which are so common now that they are called the tradesmen's liveries; and few gentlemen care to give blue to their servants for that very reason. in proportion to their servants, the tradesmen now keep their tables, which are also advanced in their proportion of expense to other things: indeed, the citizen's and tradesmen's tables are now the emblems, not of plenty, but of luxury, not of good house-keeping, but of profusion, and that of the highest kind of extravagance; insomuch, that it was the opinion of a gentleman who had been not a traveller only, but a nice observer of such things abroad, that there is at this time more waste of provisions in england than in any other nation in the world, of equal extent of ground; and that england consumes for their whole subsistence more flesh than half europe besides; that the beggars of london, and within ten miles round it, eat more white bread than the whole kingdom of scotland,[ ] and the like. but this is an observation only, though i believe it is very just; i am bringing it in here only as an example of the dreadful profusion of this age, and how an extravagant way of expensive living, perfectly negligent of all degrees of frugality or good husbandry, is the reigning vice of the people. i could enlarge upon it, and very much to the purpose here, but i shall have occasion to speak of it again. the tradesman, whom i am speaking to by way of direction, will not, i hope, think this the way for him to thrive, or find it for his convenience to fall in with this common height of living presently, in his beginning; if he comes gradually into it after he has gotten something considerable to lay by, i say, if he does it then, it is early enough, and he may be said to be insensibly drawn into it by the necessity of the times; because, forsooth, it is a received notion, 'we must be like other folks:' i say, if he does fall into it then, when he will pretend he cannot help it, it is better than worse, and if he can afford it, well and good; but to begin thus, to set up at this rate, when he first looks into the world, i can only say this, he that begins in such a manner, it will not be difficult to guess where he will end; for a tradesman's pride certainly precedes his destruction, and an expensive living goes before his fall. we are speaking now to a tradesman, who, it is supposed, must live by his business, a young man who sets up a shop, or warehouse, and expects to get money; one that would be a rich tradesman, rather than a poor, fine, gay man; a grave citizen, not a peacock's feather; for he that sets up for a sir fopling flutter, instead of a complete tradesman, is not to be thought capable of relishing this discourse; neither does this discourse relish him; for such men seem to be among the incurables, and are rather fit for an hospital of fools (so the french call our bedlam) than to undertake trade, and enter upon business. trade is not a ball, where people appear in masque, and act a part to make sport; where they strive to seem what they really are not, and to think themselves best dressed when they are least known: but it is a plain visible scene of honest life, shown best in its native appearance, without disguise; supported by prudence and frugality; and like strong, stiff, clay land, grows fruitful only by good husbandry, culture, and manuring. a tradesman dressed up fine, with his long wig and sword, may go to the ball when he pleases, for he is already dressed up in the habit; like a piece of counterfeit money, he is brass washed over with silver, and no tradesman will take him for current; with money in his hand, indeed, he may go to the merchant's warehouse and buy any thing, but no body will deal with him without it: he may write upon his edged hat, as a certain tradesman, after having been once broke and set up again, 'i neither give nor take credit:' and as others set up in their shops, 'no trust by retail,' so he may say, 'no trust by wholesale.' in short, thus equipped, he is truly a tradesman in masquerade, and must pass for such wherever he is known. how long it may be before his dress and he may suit, it not hard to guess. some will have it that this expensive way of living began among the tradesmen first, that is to say, among the citizens of london; and that their eager resolved pursuit of that empty and meanest kind of pride, called imitation, namely, to look like the gentry, and appear above themselves, drew them into it. it has indeed been a fatal custom, but it has been too long a city vanity. if men of quality lived like themselves, men of no quality would strive to live not like themselves: if those had plenty, these would have profusion; if those had enough, these would have excess; if those had what was good, these would have what was rare and exotic; i mean as to season, and consequently dear. and this is one of the ways that have worn out so many tradesmen before their time. this extravagance, wherever it began, had its first rise among those sorts of tradesmen, who, scorning the society of their shops and customers, applied themselves to rambling to courts and plays; kept company above themselves, and spent their hours in such company as lives always above them; this could not but bring great expense along with it, and that expense would not be confined to the bare keeping such company abroad, but soon showed itself in a living like them at home, whether the tradesmen could support it or no. keeping high company abroad certainly brings on visitings and high treatings at home; and these are attended with costly furniture, rich clothes, and dainty tables. how these things agree with a tradesman's income, it is easy to suggest; and that, in short, these measures have sent so many tradesmen to the mint and to the fleet, where i am witness to it that they have still carried on their expensive living till they have come at last to starving and misery; but have been so used to it, they could not abate it, or at least not quite leave it off, though they wanted the money to pay for it. nor is the expensive dressing a little tax upon tradesmen, as it is now come up to an excess not formerly known to tradesmen; and though it is true that this particularly respects the ladies (for the tradesmen's wives now claim that title, as they do by their dress claim the appearance), yet to do justice to them, and not to load the women with the reproach, as if it were wholly theirs, it must be acknowledged the men have their share in dress, as the times go now, though, it is true, not so antic and gay as in former days; but do we not see fine wigs, fine holland shirts of six to seven shillings an ell, and perhaps laced also, all lately brought down to the level of the apron, and become the common wear of tradesmen--nay, i may say, of tradesmen's apprentices--and that in such a manner as was never known in england before? if the tradesman is thriving, and can support this and his credit too, that makes the case differ, though even then it cannot be said to be suitable; but for a tradesman to begin thus, is very imprudent, because the expense of this, as i said before, drains the very life-blood of his trade, taking away his ready money only, and making no return, but the worst of return, poverty and reproach; and, in case of miscarriage, infinite scandal and offence. i am loth to make any part of my writing a satire upon the women; nor, indeed, does the extravagance either of dress or house-keeping, lie all, or always, at the door of the tradesmen's wives--the husband is often the prompter of it; at least he does not let his wife into the detail of his circumstances, he does not make her mistress of her own condition, but either flatters her with notions of his wealth, his profits, and his flourishing circumstances, and so the innocent woman spends high and lives great, believing that she is in a condition to afford it, and that her husband approves of it; at least, he does not offer to retrench or restrain her, but lets her go on, and indeed goes on with her, to the ruin of both. i cannot but mention one thing here (though i purpose to give you one discourse on that subject by itself), namely, the great and indispensable obligation there is upon a tradesman always to acquaint his wife with the truth of his circumstances, and not to let her run on in ignorance, till she falls with him down the precipice of an unavoidable ruin--a thing no prudent woman would do, and therefore will never take amiss a husband's plainness in that particular case. but i reserve this to another place, because i am rather directing my discourse at this time to the tradesman at his beginning, and, as it may be supposed, unmarried. next to the expensive dressing, i place the expensive keeping company, as one thing fatal to a tradesman, and which, if he would be a complete tradesman, he should avoid with the utmost diligence. it is an agreeable thing to be seen in good company; for a man to see himself courted and valued, and his company desired by men of fashion and distinction, is very pleasing to any young tradesman, and it is really a snare which a young tradesman, if he be a man of sense, can very hardly resist. there is in itself indeed nothing that can be objected against, or is not very agreeable to the nature of man, and that not to his vicious part merely, but even to his best faculties; for who would not value himself upon being, as above, rendered acceptable to men both in station and figure above themselves? and it is really a piece of excellent advice which a learned man gave to his son, always to keep company with men above himself, not with men below himself. but take me now to be talking, as i really am, not to the man merely, but to his circumstances, if he were a man of fortune, and had the view of great things before him, it would hold good; but if he is a young tradesman, such as i am now speaking of, who is newly entered into business, and must depend upon his said business for his subsistence and support, and hopes to raise himself by it--i say, if i am talking to such a one, i must say to him, that keeping company as above, with men superior to himself in knowledge, in figure, and estate, is not his business; for, first, as such conversation must necessarily take up a great deal of his time, so it ordinarily must occasion a great expense of money, and both destructive of his prosperity; nay, sometimes the first may be as fatal to him as the last, and it is oftentimes true in that sense of trade, that while by keeping company he is drawn out of his business, his absence from his shop or warehouse is the most fatal to him; and while he spends one crown in the tavern, he spends forty crowns' worth of his time; and with this difference, too, which renders it the worse to the tradesman, namely, that the money may be recovered, and gotten up again, but the time cannot. for example-- . perhaps in that very juncture a person comes to his warehouse. suppose the tradesman to be a warehouse-keeper, who trades by commission, and this person, being a clothier in the country, comes to offer him his business, the commission of which might have been worth to him thirty to forty or fifty pounds per annum; but finding him abroad, or rather, not finding him at home and in his business, goes to another, and fixes with him at once. i once knew a dealer lose such an occasion as this, for an afternoon's pleasure, he being gone a-fishing into hackney-marsh. this loss can never be restored, this expense of time was a fatal expense of money; and no tradesman will deny but they find many such things as this happen in the course of trade, either to themselves or others. . another tradesman is invited to dinner by his great friend; for i am now speaking chiefly upon the subject of keeping high company, and what the tradesman sometimes suffers by it; it is true, that there he finds a most noble entertainment, the person of quality, and that professes a friendship for him, treats him with infinite respect, is fond of him, makes him welcome as a prince--for i am speaking of the acquaintance as really valuable and good in itself--but then, see it in its consequences. the tradesman on this occasion misses his 'change, that is, omits going to the exchange for that one day only, and not being found there, a merchant with whom he was in treaty for a large parcel of foreign goods, which would have been to his advantage to have bought, sells them to another more diligent man in the same way; and when he comes home, he finds, to his great mortification, that he has lost a bargain that would have been worth a hundred pounds buying; and now being in want of the goods, he is forced to entreat his neighbour who bought them to part with some of them at a considerable advance of price, and esteem it a favour too. who now paid dearest for the visit to a person of figure?--the gentleman, who perhaps spent twenty shillings extraordinary to give him a handsome dinner, or the tradesman who lost a bargain worth a hundred pounds buying to go to eat it? . another tradesman goes to 'change in the ordinary course of his business, intending to speak with some of the merchants, his customers, as is usual, and get orders for goods, or perhaps an appointment to come to his warehouse to buy; but a snare of the like kind falls in his way, and a couple of friends, who perhaps have little or no business, at least with him, lay hold of him, and they agree to go off change to the tavern together. by complying with this invitation, he omits speaking to some of those merchants, as above, who, though he knew nothing of their minds, yet it had been his business to have shown himself to them, and have put himself in the way of their call; but omitting this, he goes and drinks a bottle of wine, as above, and though he stays but an hour, or, as we say, but a little while, yet unluckily, in that interim, the merchant, not seeing him on the exchange, calls at his warehouse as he goes from the exchange, but not finding him there either, he goes to another warehouse, and gives his orders to the value of £ or £ , to a more diligent neighbour of the same business; by which he (the warehouse-keeper) not only loses the profit of selling that parcel, or serving that order, but the merchant is shown the way to his neighbour's warehouse, who, being more diligent than himself, fails not to cultivate his interest, obliges him with selling low, even to little or no gain, for the first parcel; and so the unhappy tradesman loses not his selling that parcel only, but loses the very customer, which was, as it were, his peculiar property before. all these things, and many more such, are the consequences of a tradesman's absence from his business; and i therefore say, the expense of time on such light occasions as these, is one of the worst sorts of extravagance, and the most fatal to the tradesman, because really he knows not what he loses. above all things, the tradesman should take care not to be absent in the season of business, as i have mentioned above; for the warehouse-keeper to be absent from 'change, which is his market, or from his warehouse, at the times when the merchants generally go about to buy, he had better be absent all the rest of the day. i know nothing is more frequent, than for the tradesman, when company invites, or an excursion from business presses, to say, 'well, come, i have nothing to do; there is no business to hinder, there is nothing neglected, i have no letters to write;' and the like; and away he goes to take the air for the afternoon, or to sit and enjoy himself with a friend--all of them things innocent and lawful in themselves; but here is the crisis of a tradesman's prosperity. in that very moment business presents, a valuable customer comes to buy, an unexpected bargain offers to be sold; another calls to pay money; and the like: nay, i would almost say, but that i am loth to concern the devil in more evils than he is guilty of--that the devil frequently draws a man out of his business when something extraordinary is just at hand for his advantage. but not, as i have said, to charge the devil with what he is not guilty of, the tradesman is generally his own tempter; his head runs off from his business by a secret indolence; company, and the pleasure of being well received among gentlemen, is a cursed snare to a young tradesman, and carries him away from his business, for the mere vanity of being caressed and complimented by men who mean no ill, and perhaps know not the mischief they do to the man they show respect to; and this the young tradesman cannot resist, and that is in time his undoing. the tradesman's pleasure should be in his business, his companions should be his books; and if he has a family, he makes his excursions up stairs, and no farther; when he is there, a bell or a call brings him down; and while he is in his parlour, his shop or his warehouse never misses him; his customers never go away unserved, his letters never come in and are unanswered. none of my cautions aim at restraining a tradesman from diverting himself, as we call it, with his fireside, or keeping company with his wife and children: there are so few tradesmen ruin themselves that way, and so few ill consequences happen upon an uxorious temper, that i will not so much as rank it with the rest; nor can it be justly called one of the occasions of a tradesman's disasters; on the contrary, it is too often that the want of a due complacency there, the want of taking delight there, estranges the man from not his parlour only, but his warehouse and shop, and every part of business that ought to engross both his mind and his time. that tradesman who does not delight in his family, will never long delight in his business; for, as one great end of an honest tradesman's diligence is the support of his family, and the providing for the comfortable subsistence of his wife and children, so the very sight of, and above all, his tender and affectionate care for his wife and children, is the spur of his diligence; that is, it puts an edge upon his mind, and makes him hunt the world for business, as hounds hunt the woods for their game. when he is dispirited, or discouraged by crosses and disappointments, and ready to lie down and despair, the very sight of his family rouses him again, and he flies to his business with a new vigour; 'i must follow my business,' says he, 'or we must all starve, my poor children must perish;' in a word, he that is not animated to diligence by the very sight and thought of his wife and children being brought to misery and distress, is a kind of a deaf adder that no music will charm, or a turkish mute that no pity can move: in a word, he is a creature not to be called human, a wretch hardened against all the passions and affections that nature has furnished to other animals; and as there is no rhetoric of use to such a kind of man as that, so i am not talking to such a one, he must go among the incurables; for, where nature cannot work, what can argument assist? footnotes: [ ] [now, as in defoe's time, a common observer is apt to be impressed with the idea, that expenses, with a large part of the community, exceed gains. certainly, this is true at all times with a certain portion of society, but probably at no time with a large portion. there is a tendency to great self-deception in all such speculations; and no one ever thinks of bringing them to the only true test--statistical facts. the reader ought, therefore, to pay little attention to the complaints in the text, as to an increased extravagance in the expenses of tradesmen, and only regard the general recommendation, and the reasons by which that recommendation is enforced, to live within income.] [ ] [there can be little doubt, that the calculation of this experienced gentleman is grossly inconsistent with the truth. nevertheless, this part of defoe's work contains some curious traits of manners, which are probably not exaggerated] [ ] [defoe, from his having been employed for several years in scotland at the time of the union, must have well known how rare was then the use of white or wheaten bread in that country.] chapter xi of the tradesman's marrying too soon it was a prudent provision which our ancestors made in the indenture of tradesmen's apprentices, that they should not contract matrimony during their apprenticeship; and they bound it with a penalty that was then thought sufficient. however, custom has taken off the edge of it since; namely, that they who did thus contract matrimony should forfeit their indentures, that is to say, should lose the benefit of their whole service, and not be made free. doubtless our forefathers were better acquainted with the advantages of frugality than we are, and saw farther into the desperate consequences of expensive living in the beginning of a tradesman's setting out into the world than we do; at least, it is evident they studied more and practised more of the prudential part in those cases, than we do. hence we find them very careful to bind their youth under the strongest obligations they could, to temperance, modesty, and good husbandry, as the grand foundations of their prosperity in trade, and to prescribe to them such rules and methods of frugality and good husbandry, as they thought would best conduce to their prosperity. among these rules this was one of the chief--namely, 'that they should not wed before they had sped?' it is an old homely rule, and coarsely expressed, but the meaning is evident, that a young beginner should never marry too soon. while he was a servant, he was bound from it as above; and when he had his liberty, he was persuaded against it by all the arguments which indeed ought to prevail with a considering man--namely, the expenses that a family necessarily would bring with it, and the care he ought to take to be able to support the expense before he brought it upon himself. on this account it is, i say, our ancestors took more of their youth than we now do; at least, i think, they studied well the best methods of thriving, and were better acquainted with the steps by which a young tradesman ought to be introduced into the world than we are, and of the difficulties which those people would necessarily involve themselves in, who, despising those rules and methods of frugality, involved themselves in the expense of a family before they were in a way of gaining sufficient to support it. a married apprentice will always make a repenting tradesman; and those stolen matches, a very few excepted, are generally attended with infinite broils and troubles, difficulties, and cross events, to carry them on at first by way of intrigue, to conceal them afterwards under fear of superiors, to manage after that to keep off scandal, and preserve the character as well of the wife as of the husband; and all this necessarily attended with a heavy expense, even before the young man is out of his time; before he has set a foot forward, or gotten a shilling in the world; so that all this expense is out of his original stock, even before he gets it, and is a sad drawback upon him when it comes. nay, this unhappy and dirty part is often attended with worse consequences still; for this expense coming upon him while he is but a servant, and while his portion, or whatever it is to be called, is not yet come into his hand, he is driven to terrible exigencies to supply this expense. if his circumstances are mean, and his trade mean, he is frequently driven to wrong his master, and rob his shop or his till for money, if he can come at it: and this, as it begins in madness, generally ends in destruction; for often he is discovered, exposed, and perhaps punished, and so the man is undone before he begins. if his circumstances are good, and he has friends that are able, and expectations that are considerable, then his expense is still the greater, and ways and means are found out, or at least looked for, to supply the expense, and conceal the fact, that his friends may not know it, till he has gotten the blessing he expects into his hands, and is put in a way to stand upon his own legs; and then it comes out, with a great many grieving aggravations to a parent to find himself tricked and defeated in the expectations of his son's marrying handsomely, and to his advantage; instead of which, he is obliged to receive a dish-clout for a daughter-in-law, and see his family propagated by a race of beggars, and yet perhaps as haughty, as insolent, and as expensive, as if she had blessed the family with a lady of fortune, and brought a fund with her to have supported the charge of her posterity. when this happens, the poor young man's case is really deplorable. before he is out of his time, he is obliged to borrow of friends, if he has any, on pretence his father does not make him a sufficient allowance, or he trenches upon his master's cash, which perhaps, he being the eldest apprentice, is in his hands; and this he does, depending, that when he is out of his time, and his father gives him wherewith to set up, he will make good the deficiency; and all this happens accordingly so that his reputation as to his master is preserved, and he comes off clear as to dishonesty in his trust. but what a sad chasm does it make in his fortune! i knew a certain young tradesman, whose father, knowing nothing of his son's measures, gave him £ to set up with, straining himself to the utmost for the well introducing his son into the world; but who, when he came to set up, having near a year before married the servant-maid of the house where he lodged, and kept her privately at a great expense, had above £ of his stock already wasted and sunk, before he began for himself; the consequence of which was, that going in partner with another young man, who had likewise £ to begin with, he was, instead of half of the profits, obliged to make a private article to accept of a third of the trade; and the beggar-wife proving more expensive, by far, than the partner's wife (who married afterwards, and doubled his fortune), the first young man was obliged to quit the trade, and with his remaining stock set up by himself; in which case his expenses continuing, and his stock being insufficient, he sank gradually, and then broke, and died poor. in a word, he broke the heart of his father, wasted what he had, and could never recover it, and at last it broke his own heart too. but i shall bring it a little farther. suppose the youth not to act so grossly neither; not to marry in his apprenticeship, not to be forced to keep a wife privately, and eat the bread he never got; but suppose him to be entered upon the world, that he has set up, opened shop, or fitted up his warehouse, and is ready to trade, the next thing, in the ordinary course of the world, at this time is _a wife_; nay, i have met with some parents, who have been indiscreet enough themselves to prompt their sons to marry as soon as they are set up; and the reason they give for it is, the wickedness of the age, that youth are drawn in a hundred ways to ruinous matches or debaucheries, and are so easily ruined by the mere looseness of their circumstances, that it is needful to marry them to keep them at home, and to preserve them diligent, and bind them close to their business. this, be it just or not, is a bad cure of an ill disease; it is ruining the young man to make him sober, and making him a slave for life to make him diligent. be it that the wife he shall marry is a sober, frugal, housewifely woman, and that nothing is to be laid to her charge but the mere necessary addition of a family expense, and that with the utmost moderation, yet, at the best, he cripples his fortune, stock-starves his business, and brings a great expense upon himself at first, before, by his success in trade, he had laid up stock enough to support the charge. first, it is reasonable to suppose, that at his beginning in the world he cannot expect to get so good a portion with a wife, as he might after he had been set up a few years, and by his diligence and frugality, joined to a small expense in house-keeping, had increased both his stock in trade and the trade itself; then he would be able to look forward boldly, and would have some pretence for insisting on a fortune, when he could make out his improvements in trade, and show that he was both able to maintain a wife, and able to live without her. when a young tradesman in holland or germany goes a-courting, i am told the first question the young woman asks of him, or perhaps her friends for her, is, 'are you able to pay the charges?' that is to say, in english, 'are you able to keep a wife when you have got her?' the question is a little gothic indeed, and would be but a kind of gross way of receiving a lover here, according to our english good breeding; but there is a great deal of reason in the inquiry, that must be confessed; and he that is not able to _pay the charges_, should never begin the journey; for, be the wife what she will, the very state of life that naturally attends the marrying a woman, brings with it an expense so very considerable, that a tradesman ought to consider very well of it before he engages. but it is to be observed, too, that abundance of young tradesmen, especially in england, not only marry early, but by the so marrying they are obliged to take up with much less fortunes in their haste, than when they allow themselves longer time of consideration. as it stands now, generally speaking, the wife and the shop make their first show together; but how few of these early marriages succeed--how hard such a tradesman finds it to stand, and support the weight that attends it--i appeal to the experience of those, who having taken this wrong step, and being with difficulty got over it, are yet good judges of that particular circumstance in others that come after them.[ ] i know it is a common cry that is raised against the woman, when her husband fails in business, namely, that it is the wife has ruined him; it is true, in some particular cases it may be so, but in general it is wrong placed--they may say marrying has ruined the man, when they cannot say his wife has done it, for the woman was not in fault, but her husband. when a tradesman marries, there are necessary consequences, i mean of expenses, which the wife ought not be charged with, and cannot be made accountable for--such as, first, furnishing the house; and let this be done with the utmost plainness, so as to be decent; yet it must be done, and this calls for ready money, and that ready money by so much diminishes his stock in trade; nor is the wife at all to be charged in this case, unless she either put him to more charge than was needful, or showed herself dissatisfied with things needful, and required extravagant gaiety and expense. secondly, servants, if the man was frugal before, it may be he shifted with a shop, and a servant in it, an apprentice, or journeyman, or perhaps without one at first, and a lodging for himself, where he kept no other servant, and so his expenses went on small and easy; or if he was obliged to take a house because of his business and the situation of his shop, he then either let part of the house out to lodgers, keeping himself a chamber in it, or at the worst left it unfurnished, and without any one but a maid-servant to dress his victuals, and keep the house clean; and thus he goes on when a bachelor, with a middling expense at most. but when he brings home a wife, besides the furnishing his house, he must have a formal house-keeping, even at the very first; and as children come on, more servants, that is, maids, or nurses, that are as necessary as the bread he eats--especially if he multiplies apace, as he ought to suppose he may--in this case let the wife be frugal and managing, let her be unexceptionable in her expense, yet the man finds his charge mount high, and perhaps too high for his gettings, notwithstanding the additional stock obtained by her portion. and what is the end of this but inevitable decay, and at last poverty and ruin? nay, the more the woman is blameless, the more certain is his overthrow, for if it was an expense that was extravagant and unnecessary, and that his wife ran him out by her high living and gaiety, he might find ways to retrench, to take up in time, and prevent the mischief that is in view. a woman may, with kindness and just reasoning, be easily convinced, that her husband cannot maintain such an expense as she now lives at; and let tradesmen say what they will, and endeavour to excuse themselves as much as they will, by loading their wives with the blame of their miscarriage, as i have known some do, and as old father adam, though in another case, did before them, i must say so much in the woman's behalf at a venture. it will be very hard to make me believe that any woman, that was not fit for bedlam, if her husband truly and timely represented his case to her, and how far he was or was not able to maintain the expense of their way of living, would not comply with her husband's circumstances, and retrench her expenses, rather than go on for a while, and come to poverty and misery. let, then, the tradesman lay it early and seriously before his wife, and with kindness and plainness tell her his circumstances, or never let him pretend to charge her with being the cause of his ruin. let him tell her how great his annual expense is; for a woman who receives what she wants as she wants it, that only takes it with one hand, and lays it out with another, does not, and perhaps cannot, always keep an account, or cast up how much it comes to by the year. let her husband, therefore, i say, tell her honestly how much his expense for her and himself amounts to yearly; and tell her as honestly, that it is too much for him, that his income in trade will not answer it; that he goes backward, and the last year his family expenses amounted to so much, say £ --for that is but an ordinary sum now for a tradesman to spend, whatever it has been esteemed formerly--and that his whole trade, though he made no bad debts, and had no losses, brought him in but £ the whole year, so that he was £ that year a worse man than he was before, that this coming year he had met with a heavy loss already, having had a shopkeeper in the country broke in his debt £ , and that he offered but eight shillings in the pound, so that he should lose £ by him, and that this, added to the £ run out last year, came to £ , and that if they went on thus, they should be soon reduced. what could the woman say to so reasonable a discourse, if she was a woman of any sense, but to reply, she would do any thing that lay in her to assist him, and if her way of living was too great for him to support, she would lessen it as he should direct, or as much as he thought was reasonable?--and thus, going hand in hand, she and he together abating what reason required, they might bring their expenses within the compass of their gettings, and be able to go on again comfortably. but now, when the man, finding his expenses greater than his income, and yet, when he looks into those expenses, finds that his wife is frugal too, and industrious, and applies diligently to the managing her family, and bringing up her children, spends nothing idly, saves every thing that can be saved; that instead of keeping too many servants, is a servant to every body herself; and that, in short, when he makes the strictest examination, finds she lays out nothing but what is absolutely necessary, what now must this man do? he is ruined inevitably--for all his expense is necessary; there is no retrenching, no abating any thing. this, i say, is the worst case of the two indeed; and this man, though he may say he is undone by marrying, yet cannot blame the woman, and say he is undone by his wife. this is the very case i am speaking of; the man should not have married so soon; he should have staid till he had, by pushing on his trade, and living close in his expense, increased his stock, and been what we call beforehand in the world; and had he done thus, he had not been undone by marrying. it is a little hard to say it, but in this respect it is very true, there is many a young tradesman ruined by marrying a good wife--in which, pray take notice that i observe my own just distinction: i do not say they are ruined or undone by a good wife, or by their wives being good, but by their marrying--their unseasonable, early, and hasty marrying--before they had cast up the cost of one, or the income of the other--before they had inquired into the necessary charge of a wife and a family, or seen the profits of their business, whether it would maintain them or no; and whether, as above, they could pay the charges, the increasing necessary charge, of a large and growing family. how to persuade young men to consider this in time, and beware and avoid the mischief of it, that is a question by itself. let no man, then, when he is brought to distress by this early rashness, turn short upon his wife, and reproach her with being the cause of his ruin, unless, at the same time, he can charge her with extravagant living, needless expense, squandering away his money, spending it in trifles and toys, and running him out till the shop could not maintain the kitchen, much less the parlour; nor even then, unless he had given her timely notice of it, and warned her that he was not able to maintain so large a family, or so great an expense, and that, therefore, she would do well to consider of it, and manage with a straiter hand, and the like. if, indeed, he had done so, and she had not complied with him, then she had been guilty, and without excuse too; but as the woman cannot judge of his affairs, and he sees and bears a share in the riotous way of their living, and does not either show his dislike of it, or let her know, by some means or other, that he cannot support it, the woman cannot be charged with being his ruin--no, though her way of extravagant expensive living were really the cause of it. i met with a short dialogue, the other day, between a tradesman and his wife, upon such a subject as this, some part of which may be instructing in the case before us. the tradesman was very melancholy for two or three days, and had appeared all that time to be pensive and sad, and his wife, with all her arts, entreaties, anger, and tears, could not get it out of him; only now and then she heard him fetch a deep sigh, and at another time say, he wished he was dead, and the like expressions. at last, she began the discourse with him in a respectful, obliging manner, but with the utmost importunity to get it out of him, thus:-- _wife_.--my dear, what is the matter with you? _husb._--nothing. _wife_.--nay, don't put me off with an answer that signifies nothing; tell me what is the matter, for i am sure something extraordinary is the case--tell me, i say, do tell me. [_then she kisses him._] _husb._--prithee, don't trouble me. _wife_.--i will know what is the matter _husb._--i tell you nothing is the matter--what should be the matter? _wife_.--come, my dear, i must not be put off so; i am sure, if it be any thing ill, i must have my share of it; and why should i not be worthy to know it, whatever it is, before it comes upon me. _husb._--poor woman! [_he kisses her_.] _wife_.--well, but let me know what it is; come, don't distract yourself alone; let me bear a share of your grief, as well as i have shared in your joy. _husb._--my dear, let me alone, you trouble me now, indeed. _[still he keeps her off_.] _wife_.--then you will not trust your wife with knowing what touches you so sensibly? _husb._--i tell you, it is nothing, it is a trifle, it is not worth talking of. _wife_.--don't put me off with such stuff as that; i tell you, it is not for nothing that you have been so concerned, and that so long too; i have seen it plain enough; why, you have drooped upon it for this fortnight past, and above. _husb._--ay, this twelvemonth, and more. _wife_.--very well, and yet it is nothing. _husb._--it is nothing that you can help me in. _wife_.--well, but how do you know that? let me see, and judge whether i can, or no. _husb._--i tell you, you cannot. _wife_.--sure it is some terrible thing then. why must not i know it? what! are you going to break? come, tell me the worst of it. _husb._--break! no, no, i hope not--break! no, i'll never break. _wife_.--as good as you have broke; don't presume; no man in trade can say he won't break. _husb._--yes, yes; i can say i won't break. _wife_.--i am glad to hear it; i hope you have a knack, then, beyond other tradesmen. _husb._--no, i have not neither; any man may say so as well as i; and no man need break, if he will act the part of an honest man. _wife_.--how is that, pray? _husb._--why, give up all faithfully to his creditors, as soon as he finds there is a deficiency in his stock, and yet that there is enough left to pay them. _wife_.--well, i don't understand those things, but i desire you would tell me what it is troubles you now; and if it be any thing of that kind, yet i think you should let me know it. _husb._--why should i trouble you with it? _wife_.--it would be very unkind to let me know nothing till it comes and swallows you up and me too, all on a sudden; i must know it, then; pray tell it me now. _husb._--why, then, i will tell you; indeed, i am not going to break, and i hope i am in no danger of it, at least not yet. _wife_.--i thank you, my dear, for that; but still, though it is some satisfaction to me to be assured of so much, yet i find there is something in it; and your way of speaking is ambiguous and doubtful. i entreat you, be plain and free with me. what is at the bottom of it?--why won't you tell me?--what have i done, that i am not to be trusted with a thing that so nearly concerns me? _husb._--i have told you, my dear; pray be easy; i am not going to break, i tell you. _wife_.--well, but let us talk a little more seriously of it; you are not going to break, that is, not just now, not yet, you said; but, my dear, if it is then not just at hand, but may happen, or is in view at some distance, may not some steps be taken to prevent it for the present, and to save us from it at last too. _husb._--what steps could you think of, if that were the case? _wife_.--indeed it is not much that is in a wife's power, but i am ready to do what lies in me, and what becomes me; and first, pray let us live lower. do you think i would live as i do, if i thought your income would not bear it? no, indeed. _husb._--you have touched me in the most sensible part, my dear; you have found out what has been my grief; you need make no further inquiries. _wife_.--was that your grief?--and would you never be so kind to your wife as to let her know it? _husb._--how could i mention so unkind a thing to you? _wife_.--would it not have been more unkind to have let things run on to destruction, and left your wife to the reproach of the world, as having ruined you by her expensive living? _husb._--that's true, my dear; and it may be i might have spoke to you at last, but i could not do it now; it looks so cruel and so hard to lower your figure, and make you look little in the eyes of the world, for you know they judge all by outsides, that i could not bear it. _wife_.--it would be a great deal more cruel to let me run on, and be really an instrument to ruin, my husband, when, god knows, i thought i was within the compass of your gettings, and that a great way; and you know you always prompted me to go fine, to treat handsomely, to keep more servants, and every thing of that kind. could i doubt but that you could afford it very well? _husb._--that's true, but i see it is otherwise now; and though i cannot help it, i could not mention it to you, nor, for ought i know, should i ever have done it. _wife_.--why! you said just now you should have done it. _husb._--ay, at last, perhaps, i might, when things had been past recovery. _wife_.--that is to say, when you were ruined and undone, and could not show your head, i should know it; or when a statute of bankrupt had come out, and the creditors had come and turned us out of doors, then i should have known it--that would have been a barbarous sort of kindness. _husb._--what could i do? i could not help it. _wife_.--just so our old acquaintance g--w--did; his poor wife knew not one word of it, nor so much as suspected it, but thought him in as flourishing circumstances as ever; till on a sudden he was arrested in an action for a great sum, so great that he could not find bail, and the next day an execution on another action was served in the house, and swept away the very bed from under her; and the poor lady, that brought him £ portion, was turned into the street with five small children to take care of. _husb._--her case was very sad, indeed. _wife_.--but was not he a barbarous wretch to her, to let her know nothing of her circumstances? she was at the ball but the day before, in her velvet suit, and with her jewels on, and they reproach her with it every day. _husb._--she did go too fine, indeed. _wife_.--do you think she would have done so, if she had known any thing of his circumstances? _husb._--it may be not. _wife_.--no, no; she is a lady of too much sense, to allow us to suggest it. _husb._--and why did he not let her have some notice of it? _wife_.--why, he makes the same dull excuse you speak of; he could not bear to speak to her of it, and it looked so unkind to do any thing to straiten her, he could not do it, it would break his heart, and the like; and now he has broke her heart. _husb._--i know it is hard to break in upon one's wife in such a manner, where there is any true kindness and affection; but-- _wife_.--but! but what? were there really a true kindness and affection, as is the pretence, it would be quite otherwise; he would not break his own heart, forsooth, but chose rather to break his wife's heart! he could not be so cruel to tell her of it, and therefore left her to be cruelly and villanously insulted, as she was, by the bailiffs and creditors. was that his kindness to her? _husb._--well, my dear, i have not brought you to that, i hope. _wife_.--no, my dear, and i hope you will not; however, you shall not say i will not do every thing i can to prevent it; and, if it lies on my side, you are safe. _husb._--what will you do to prevent it? come, let's see, what can you do? _wife_.--why, first, i keep five maids, you see, and a footman; i shall immediately give three of my maids warning, and the fellow also, and save you that part of the expense. _husb._--how can you do that?--you can't do your business. _wife_.--yes, yes, there's nobody knows what they can do till they are tried; two maids may do all my house-business, and i'll look after my children myself; and if i live to see them grown a little bigger, i'll make them help one another, and keep but one maid; i hope that will be one step towards helping it. _husb_.--and what will all your friends and acquaintance, and the world, say to it? _wife_.--not half so much as they would to see you break, and the world believe it be by my high living, keeping a house full of servants, and do nothing myself. _husb_.--they will say i am going to break upon your doing thus, and that's the way to make it so. _wife_.--i had rather a hundred should say you were going to break, than one could say you were really broke already. _husb_.--but it is dangerous to have it talked of, i say. _wife_.--no, no; they will say we are taking effectual ways to prevent breaking. _husb_.--but it will put a slur upon yourself too. i cannot bear any mortifications upon you, any more than i can upon myself. _wife_.--don't tell me of mortifications; it would be a worse mortification, a thousand times over, to have you ruined, and have your creditors insult me with being the occasion of it. _husb_.--it is very kind in you, my dear, and i must always acknowledge it; but, however, i would not have you straiten yourself too much neither. _wife_.--nay, this will not be so much a mortification as the natural consequence of other things; for, in order to abate the expense of our living, i resolve to keep less company. i assure you i will lay down all the state of living, as well as the expense of it; and, first, i will keep no visiting days; secondly, i'll drop the greatest part of the acquaintance i have; thirdly, i will lay down our treats and entertainments, and the like needless occasions of expense, and then i shall have no occasion for so many maids. _husb_.--but this, my dear, i say, will make as much noise almost, as if i were actually broke. _wife_.--no, no; leave that part to me. _husb_.--but you may tell me how you will manage it then. _wife_.--why, i'll go into the country. _husb_.--that will but bring them after you, as it used to do. _wife_.--but i'll put off our usual lodgings at hampstead, and give out that i am gone to spend the summer in bedfordshire, at my aunt's, where every body knows i used to go sometimes; they can't come after me thither. _husb_.--but when you return, they will all visit you. _wife_.--yes, and i will make no return to all those i have a mind to drop, and there's an end of all their acquaintance at once. _husb_.--and what must i do? _wife_.--nay, my dear, it is not for me to direct that part; you know how to cure the evil which you sensibly feel the mischief of. if i do my part, i don't doubt you know how to do yours. _husb_.--yes, i know, but it is hard, very hard. _wife_.--nay, i hope it is no harder for you than it is for your wife. _husb_.--that is true, indeed, but i'll see. _wife_.--the question to me is not whether it is hard, but whether it is necessary. _husb_.--nay, it is necessary, that is certain. _wife_.--then i hope it is as necessary to you as to your wife. _husb_.--i know not where to begin. _wife_.--why, you keep two horses and a groom, you keep rich high company, and you sit long at the fleece every evening. i need say no more; you know where to begin well enough. _husb_.--it is very hard; i have not your spirit, my dear. _wife_.--i hope you are not more ashamed to retrench, than you would be to have your name in the gazette. _husb_.--it is sad work to come down hill thus. _wife_.--it would be worse to fall down at one blow from the top; better slide gently and voluntarily down the smooth part, than to be pushed down the precipice, and be dashed all in pieces. there was more of this dialogue, but i give the part which i think most to the present purpose; and as i strive to shorten the doctrine, so i will abridge the application also; the substance of the case lies in a few particulars, thus:-- i. the man was melancholy, and oppressed with the thoughts of his declining circumstances, and yet had not any thought of letting his wife know it, whose way of living was high and expensive, and more than he could support; but though it must have ended in ruin, he would rather let it have gone on till she was surprised in it, than to tell her the danger that was before her. his wife very well argues the injustice and unkindness of such usage, and how hard it was to a wife, who, being of necessity to suffer in the fall, ought certainly to have the most early notice of it--that, if possible, she might prevent it, or, at least, that she might not be overwhelmed with the suddenness and the terror of it. ii. upon discovering it to his wife, or rather her drawing the discovery from him by her importunity, she immediately, and most readily and cheerfully, enters into measures to retrench her expenses, and, as far as she was able, to prevent the blow, which was otherwise apparent and unavoidable. hence it is apparent, that the expensive living of most tradesmen in their families, is for want of a serious acquainting their wives with their circumstances, and acquainting them also in time; for there are very few ladies so unreasonable, who, if their husbands seriously informed them how things stood with them, and that they could not support their way of living, would not willingly come into measures to prevent their own destruction. iii. that it is in vain, as well as unequal, for a tradesman to preach frugality to his wife, and to bring his wife to a retrenching of her expenses, and not at the same time to retrench his own; seeing that keeping horses and high company is every way as great and expensive, and as necessary to be abated, as any of the family extravagances, let them be which they will. all this relates to the duty of a tradesman in preventing his family expenses being ruinous to his business; but the true method to prevent all this, and never to let it come so far, is still, as i said before, not to marry too soon; not to marry, till by a frugal industrious management of his trade in the beginning, he has laid a foundation for maintaining a wife, and bringing up a family, and has made an essay by which he knows what he can and cannot do, and also before he has laid up and increased his stock, that he may not cripple his fortune at first, and be ruined before he has begun to thrive. footnotes: [ ] [defoe's views on the subject of the too early marrying of young tradesmen, are in every particular sound. though there are instances of premature marriages followed by no evil result, but rather the contrary, there can be no doubt, that the only prudent course is to wait till a settlement in life, and a regular income, have been secured. a young man, anxious for other reasons to marry, is sometimes heard to express his conviction that he might live more cheaply married than single. there could be no assertion more inconsistent with all common experience. even if no positively ruinous consequences arise from an over-early marriage, it almost always occasions much hardship. it saddens a period of life which nature has designed to be peculiarly cheerful. the whole life of such a man becomes like a year in which there has been no may or june. the grave cares of matrimony do not appear to be naturally suitable to the human character, till the man has approached his thirtieth, and the woman her twenty-fourth year.] chapter xii of the tradesman's leaving his business to servants it is the ordinary excuse of the gentlemen tradesmen of our times, that they have good servants, and that therefore they take more liberty to be out of their business, than they would otherwise do. 'oh!' says the shopkeeper, 'i have an apprentice--it is an estate to have such a servant. i am as safe in him as if i had my eye upon the business from morning till night; let me be where i will, i am always satisfied he is at home; if i am at the tavern, i am sure he is in the counting-house, or behind the counter; he is never out of his post. 'and then for my other servants, the younger apprentices,' says he, 'it is all one as if i were there myself--they would be idle it may be, but he won't let them, i assure you; they must stick close to it, or he will make them do it; he tells them, boys do not come apprentices to play, but to work; not to sit idle, and be doing nothing, but to mind their master's business, that they may learn how to do their own.' 'very well; and you think, sir, this young man being so much in the shop, and so diligent and faithful, is an estate to you, and so indeed it is; but are your customers as well pleased with this man, too, as you are? or are they as well pleased with him, as they would be, if you were there yourself?' 'yes, they are,' says the shopkeeper; 'nay, abundance of the customers take him for the master of the shop, and don't know any other; and he is so very obliging, and pleases so well, giving content to every body, that, if i am at any other part of the shop, and see him serving a customer, i never interrupt them, unless sometimes (he is so modest) he will call me, and turning to the ladies say, "there's my master, madam; if you think he will abate you any thing, i'll call him;" and sometimes they will look a little surprised, and say, "is that your master? indeed, we thought you had been the master of the shop yourself."' 'well,' said i, 'and you think yourself very happy in all this, don't you? pray, how long has this young gentleman to serve? how long is it before his time will be out?' 'oh, he has almost a year and a half to serve,' says the shopkeeper. 'i hope, then,' said i, 'you will take care to have him knocked on the head, as soon as his time is out.' 'god forbid,' says the honest man; 'what do you mean by that?' 'mean!' said i, 'why, if you don't, he will certainly knock your trade on the head, as soon as the year and a half comes to be up. either you must dispose of him, as i say, or take care that he does not set up near you, no, not in the same street; if you do, your customers will all run thither. when they miss him in the shop, they will presently inquire for him; and as, you say, they generally take him for the master, they will ask whether the gentleman is removed that kept the shop before.' all my shopkeeper could say, was, that he had got a salve for that sore, and that was, that when timothy was out of his time, he resolved to take him in partner. 'a very good thing, indeed! so you must take timothy into half the trade when he is out of his time, for fear he should run away with three-quarters of it, when he sets up for himself. but had not the master much better have been timothy himself?--then he had been sure never to have the customers take timothy for the master; and when he went away, and set up perhaps at next door, leave the shop, and run after him.' it is certain, a good servant, a faithful, industrious, obliging servant, is a blessing to a tradesman, and, as he said, is an estate to his master; but the master, by laying the stress of his business upon him, divests himself of all the advantages of such a servant, and turns the blessing into a blast; for by giving up the shop as it were to him, and indulging himself in being abroad, and absent from his business, the apprentice gets the mastery of the business, the fame of the shop depends upon him, and when he sets up, certainly follows him. such a servant would, with the master's attendance too, be very helpful, and yet not be dangerous; such a servant is well, when he is visibly an assistant to the master, but is ruinous when he is taken for the master. there is a great deal of difference between a servant's being the stay of his master, and his being the stay of his trade: when he is the first, the master is served by him; and when he is gone, he breeds up another to follow his steps; but when he is the last, he carries the trade with him, and does his master infinitely more hurt than good. a good tradesman has a great deal of trouble with a bad servant, but must take heed that he is not wounded by a good one--the extravagant idle vagrant servant hurts himself, but the diligent servant endangers his master. the greater reputation the servant gets in his business, the more care the master has upon him, lest he gets within him, and worms him out of his business. the only way to prevent this, and yet not injure a diligent servant, is that the master be as diligent as the servant; that the master be as much at the shop as the man. he that will keep in his business, need never fear keeping his business, let his servant be as diligent as he will. it is a hard thing that a tradesman should have the blessing of a good servant, and make it a curse to him, by his appearing less capable than his man. let your apprentice be in the business, but let the master be at the head of the business at all times. there is a great deal of difference between being diligent in the business _in_ the shop, and leading the whole business _of_ the shop. an apprentice who is diligent may be master of his business, but should never be master of the shop; the one is to be useful to his master, the other is to be master of his master; and, indeed, this shows the absolute necessity of diligence and application in a tradesman, and how, for want of it, that very thing which is the blessing of another tradesman's business is the ruin of his. servants, especially apprentices, ought to be considered, as they really are, in their moveable station, that they are here with you but seven years, and that then they act or move in a sphere or station of their own: their diligence is now for you, but ever after it is for themselves; that the better servants they have been while they were with you, the more dangerous they will be to you when you part; that, therefore, though you are bound in justice to them to let them into your business in every branch of it, yet you are not bound to give your business away to them; the diligence, therefore, of a good servant in the master's business, should be a spur to the master's diligence to take care of himself. there is a great deal of difference also between trusting a servant in your business, and trusting him with your business: the first is leaving your business with him, the other is leaving your business to him. he that trusts a servant in his business, leaves his shop only to him; but he that leaves his business to his servant, leaves his wife and children at his disposal--in a word, such a trusting, or leaving the business to the servant, is no less than a giving up all to him, abandoning the care of his shop and all his affairs to him; and when such a servant is out of his time, the master runs a terrible risk, such as, indeed, it is not fit any tradesman should run--namely, of losing the best of his business. what i have been now saying, is of the tradesman leaving his business to his apprentices and servants, when they prove good, when they are honest and diligent, faithful, and industrious; and if there are dangers even in trusting good servants, and such as do their duty perfectly well, what, then, must it be when the business is left to idle, negligent, and extravagant servants, who both neglect their masters' business and their own, who neither learn their trade for themselves, nor regard it for the interest of their masters? if the first are a blessing to their masters, and may only be made dangerous by their carrying away the trade with them when they go, these are made curses to their masters early, for they lose the trade for themselves and their masters too. the first carry the customers away with them, the last drive the customers away before they go. 'what signifies going to such a shop?' say the ladies, either speaking of a mercer or a draper, or any other trade; 'there is nothing to be met with there but a crew of saucy boys, that are always at play when you come in, and can hardly refrain it when you are there: one hardly ever sees a master in the shop, and the young rude boys hardly mind you when you are looking on their goods; they talk to you as if they cared not whether you laid out your money or no, and as if they had rather you were gone, that they might go to play again. i will go there no more, not i.' if this be not the case, then you are in danger of worse still, and that is, that they are often thieves--idle ones are seldom honest ones--nay, they cannot indeed be honest, in a strict sense, if they are idle: but by dishonest, i mean downright thieves; and what is more dangerous than for an apprentice, to whom the whole business, the cash, the books, and all is committed, to be a thief? for a tradesman, therefore, to commit his business thus into the hand of a false, a negligent, and a thievish servant, is like a man that travels a journey, and takes a highwayman into the coach with him: such a man is sure to be robbed, and to be fully and effectually plundered, because he discovers where he hides his treasure. thus the tradesman places his confidence in the thief, and how should he avoid being robbed? it is answered, that, generally tradesmen, who have any considerable trust to put into the hands of an apprentice, take security of them for their honesty by their friends, when their indentures are signed; and it is their fault then, if they are not secure. true, it is often so; but in a retail business, if the servant be unfaithful, there are so many ways to defraud a master, besides that of merely not balancing the cash, that it is impossible to detect them; till the tradesman, declining insensibly by the weight of the loss, is ruined and undone. what need, then, has the tradesman to give a close attendance, and preserve himself from plunder, by acquainting himself in and with his business and servants, by which he makes it very difficult for them to deceive him, and much easier to him to discover it if he suspects them. but if the tradesman lives abroad, keeps at his country-house or lodgings, and leaves his business thus in the hands of his servants, committing his affairs to them, as is often the case; if they prove thieves, negligent, careless, and idle, what is the consequence?--he is insensibly wronged, his substance wasted, his business neglected; and how shall a tradesman thrive under such circumstances? nay, how is it possible he should avoid ruin and destruction?--i mean, as to his business; for, in short, every such servant has his hand in his master's pocket, and may use him as he pleases. again, if they are not thieves, yet if they are idle and negligent, it is, in some cases, the same thing; and i wish it were well recommended to all such servants as call themselves honest, that it is as criminal to neglect their master's business as to rob him; and he is as really a thief who robs him of his time, as he that robs him of his money. i know, as servants are now, this is a principle they will not allow, neither does one servant in fifty act by it; but if the master be absent, the servant is at his heels--that is to say, is as soon out of doors as his master, and having none but his conscience to answer to, he makes shift to compound with himself, like a bankrupt with his creditor, to pay half the debt--that is to say, half the time to his master, and half to himself, and think it good pay too. the point of conscience, indeed, seems to be out of the question now, between master and servant; and as few masters concern themselves with the souls, nay, scarce with the morals of their servants, either to instruct them, or inform them of their duty either to god or man, much less to restrain them by force, or correct them, as was anciently practised, so, few servants concern themselves in a conscientious discharge of their duty to their masters--so that the great law of subordination is destroyed, and the relative duties on both sides are neglected; all which, as i take it, is owing to the exorbitant sums of money which are now given with servants to the masters, as the present or condition of their apprenticeship, which, as it is extravagant in itself, so it gives the servant a kind of a different figure in the family, places him above the ordinary class of servants hired for wages, and exempts him from all the laws of family government, so that a master seems now to have nothing to do with his apprentice, any other than in what relates to his business. and as the servant knows this, so he fails not to take the advantage of it, and to pay no more service than he thinks is due; and the hours of his shop business being run out, he claims all the rest for himself, without the above restraint. nor will the servants, in these times, bear any examinations with respect to the disposing of their waste time, or with respect to the company they keep, or the houses or places they go to. the use i make of it is this, and herein it is justly applicable to the case in hand; by how much the apprentices and servants in this age are loose, wild, and ungovernable, by so much the more should a master think himself obliged not to depend upon them, much less to leave his business to them, and dispense with his own attendance in it. if he does, he must have much better luck then his neighbours, if he does not find himself very much wronged and abused, seeing, as i said above, the servants and apprentices of this age do very rarely act from a principle of conscience in serving their master's interest, which, however, i do not see they can be good christians without. i knew one very considerable tradesman in this city, and who had always five or six servants in his business, apprentices and journeymen, who lodged in his house; and having a little more the spirit of government in him than most masters i now meet with, he took this method with them. when he took apprentices, he told them beforehand the orders of his family, and which he should oblige them to; particularly, that they should none be absent from his business without leave, nor out of the house after nine o'clock at night; and that he would not have it thought hard, if he exacted three things of them:-- . that, if they had been out, he should ask them where they had been, and in what company? and that they should give him a true and direct answer. . that, if he found reason to forbid them keeping company with any particular person, or in any particular house or family, they should be obliged to refrain from such company. . that, in breach of any of those two, after being positively charged with it, he would, on their promising to amend it, forgive them, only acquainting their friends of it; but the second time, he would dismiss them his service, and not be obliged to return any of the money he had with them. and to these he made their parents consent when they were bound; and yet he had large sums of money with them too, not less than £ each, and sometimes more. as to his journeymen, he conditioned with them as follows:-- . they should never dine from home without leave asked and obtained, and telling where, if required. . after the shutting in of the shop, they were at liberty to go where they pleased, only not to be out of the house after nine o'clock at night. . never to be in drink, or to swear, on pain of being immediately dismissed without the courtesy usual with such servants, namely, of a month's warning. these were excellent household laws; but the question is, how shall a master see them punctually obeyed, for the life of all laws depends upon their being well executed; and we are famous in england for being remiss in that very point; and that we have the best laws the worst executed of any nation in the world. but my friend was a man who knew as well how to make his laws be well executed, as he did how to make the laws themselves. his case was thus: he kept a country-house about two miles from london, in the summer-time, for the air of his wife and children, and there he maintained them very comfortably: but it was a rule with him, that he who expects his servants to obey his orders, must be always upon the spot with them to see it done: to this purpose he confined himself to lie always at home, though his family was in the country; and every afternoon he walked out to see them, and to give himself the air too; but always so ordered his diversions, that he was sure to be at home before nine at night, that he might call over his family, and see that they observed orders, that is, that they were all at home at their time, and all sober. as this was, indeed, the only way to have good servants, and an orderly family, so he had both; but it was owing much, if not all, to the exactness of his government; and would all masters take the same method, i doubt not they would have the like success; but what servants can a man expect when he leaves them to their own government, not regarding whether they serve god or the devil? now, though this man had a very regular family, and very good servants, yet he had this particular qualification, too, for a good tradesman, namely, that he never left his business entirely to them, nor could any of them boast that they were trusted to more than another. this is certainly the way to have regular servants and to have business thrive; but this is not practised by one master to a thousand at this time--if it were, we should soon see a change in the families of tradesmen, and that very much for the better: nor, indeed, would this family government be good for the tradesman only, but it would be the servant's advantage too; and such a practice, we may say, would in time reform all the next age, and make them ashamed of us that went before them. if, then, the morals of servants are thus loose and debauched, and that it is a general and epidemic evil, how much less ought tradesmen of this age to trust them, and still less to venture their all upon them, leave their great design, the event of all their business with them, and go into the country in pursuit of their pleasure. the case of tradesmen differs extremely in this age from those in the last, with respect to their apprentices and servants; and the difference is all to the disadvantage of the present age, namely, in the last age, that is to say, fifty or sixty years ago, for it is not less, servants were infinitely more under subjection than they are now, and the subordination of mankind extended effectually to them; they were content to submit to family government; and the just regulations which masters made in their houses were not scorned and contemned, as they are now; family religion also had some sway upon them; and if their masters did keep good orders, and preserve the worship of god in their houses, the apprentices thought themselves obliged to attend at the usual hours for such services; nay, it has been known, where such orders have been observed, that if the master of the family has been sick, or indisposed, or out of town, the eldest apprentice has read prayers to the family in his place. how ridiculous, to speak in the language of the present times, would it be for any master to expect this of a servant in our days! and where is the servant that would comply with it? nay, it is but very rarely now that masters themselves do it; it is rather thought now to be a low step, and beneath the character of a man in business, as if worshipping god were a disgrace, and not an honour, to a family, or to the master of a family; and i doubt not but in a little while more, either the worship of god will be quite banished out of families, or the better sort of tradesmen, and such as have any regard to it, will keep chaplains, as other persons of quality do. it is confessed, the first is most probable, though the last, as i am informed, is already begun in the city, in some houses, where the reader of the parish is allowed a small additional salary to come once a-day, namely, every evening, to read prayers in the house. but i am not talking on this subject; i am not directing myself to citizens or townsmen, as masters of families, but as heads of trade, and masters in their business; the other part would indeed require a whole book by itself, and would insensibly run me into a long satirical discourse upon the loss of all family government among us; in which, indeed, the practice of house-keepers and heads of families is grown not remiss only in all serious things, but even scandalous in their own morals, and in the personal examples they show to their servants, and all about them. but to come back to my subject, namely, that the case of tradesmen differs extremely from what it was formerly: the second head of difference is this; that whereas, in former times, the servants were better and humbler than they are now, submitted more to family government, and to the regulations made by their masters, and masters were more moral, set better examples, and kept better order in their houses, and, by consequence of it, all servants were soberer, and fitter to be trusted, than they are now; yet, on the other hand, notwithstanding all their sobriety, masters did not then so much depend upon them, leave business to them, and commit the management of their affairs so entirely to their servants, as they do now. all that i meet with, which masters have to say to this, is contained in two heads, and these, in my opinion, amount to very little. i. that they have security for their servants' honesty, which in former times they had not. ii. that they receive greater premiums, or present-money, now with their apprentices, than they did formerly. the first of these is of no moment; for, first, it does not appear that apprentices in those former days gave no security to their masters for their integrity, which, though perhaps not so generally as now, yet i have good reason to know was then practised among tradesmen of note, and is not now among inferior tradesmen: but, secondly, this security extends to nothing, but to make the master satisfaction for any misapplications or embezzlements which are discovered, and can be proved, but extend to no secret concealed mischiefs: neither, thirdly, do those securities reach to the negligence, idleness, or debaucheries of servants; but, which is still more than all the rest, they do not reach to the worst of robbery between the servant and his master, i mean the loss of his time; so that still there is as much reason for the master's inspection, both into his servants and their business, as ever. but least of all does this security reach to make the master any satisfaction for the loss of his business, the ill management of his shop, the disreputation brought upon it by being committed to servants, and those servants behaving ill, slighting, neglecting, or disobliging customers; this does not relate to securities given or taken, nor can the master make himself any amends upon his servant, or upon his securities, for this irrecoverable damage. he, therefore, that will keep up the reputation of his shop, or of his business, and preserve his trade to his own advantage, must resolve to attend it himself, and not leave it to servants, whether good or bad; if he leaves it to good servants, they improve it for themselves, and carry the trade away with them when they go; if to bad servants, they drive his customers away, bring a scandal upon his shop, and destroy both their master and themselves. secondly, as to the receiving great premiums with their apprentices, which, indeed, is grown up to a strange height in this age, beyond whatever it was before, it is an unaccountable excess, which is the ruin of more servants at this time than all the other excesses they are subject to, nay, in some respect it is the cause of it all; and, on the contrary, is far from being an equivalent to their masters for the defect of their service, but is an unanswerable reason why the master should not leave his business to their management. this premium was originally not a condition of indenture, but was a kind of usual or customary present to the tradesman's wife to engage her to be kind to the youth, and take a motherly care of him, being supposed to be young when first put out. by length of time this compliment or present became so customary as to be made a debt, and to be conditioned for as a demand, but still was kept within bounds, and thirty or forty pounds was sufficient to a very good merchant, which now is run up to five hundred, nay, to a thousand pounds with an apprentice; a thing which formerly would have been thought monstrous, and not to be named. the ill consequences of giving these large premiums are such and so many, that it is not to be entered upon in such a small tract as this; nor is it the design of this work: but it is thus far to the purpose here--namely, as it shows that this sets up servants into a class of gentlemen above their masters, and above their business; and they neither have a sufficient regard to one or other, and consequently are the less fit to be trusted by the master in the essential parts of his business; and this brings it down to the case in hand. upon the whole, the present state of things between masters and servants is such, that now more than ever the caution is needful and just, that he that leaves his business to the management of his servants, it is ten to one but he ruins his business and his servants too. ruining his business is, indeed, my present subject; but ruining his servants also is a consideration that an honest, conscientious master ought to think is of weight with him, and will concern himself about. servants out of government are like soldiers without an officer, fit for nothing but to rob and plunder; without order, and without orders, they neither know what to do, or are directed how to do it. besides, it is letting loose his apprentices to levity and liberty in that particular critical time of life, when they have the most need of government and restraint. when should laws and limits be useful to mankind but in their youth, when unlimited liberty is most fatal to them, and when they are least capable of governing themselves? to have youth left without government, is leaving fire in a magazine of powder, which will certainly blow it all up at last, and ruin all the houses that are near it. if there is any duty on the side of a master to his servant, any obligation on him as a christian, and as a trustee for his parents, it lies here--to limit and restrain them, if possible, in the liberty of doing evil; and this is certainly a debt due to the trust reposed in masters by the parents of the youth committed to them. if he is let loose here, he is undone, of course, and it may be said, indeed, he was ruined by his master; and if the master is afterwards ruined by such a servant, what can be said for it but this? he could expect no other. to leave a youth without government is indeed unworthy of any honest master; he cannot discharge himself as a master; for instead of taking care of him he indeed casts him off, abandons him, and, to put it into scripture words, he leads him into temptation: nay, he goes farther, to use another scripture expression: he delivers him over to satan. it is confessed--and it is fatal both to masters and servants at this time--that not only servants are made haughty, and above the government of their masters, and think it below them to submit to any family government, or any restraints of their masters, as to their morals and religion; but masters also seem to have given up all family government, and all care or concern for the morals and manners, as well as for the religion of their servants, thinking themselves under no obligation to meddle with those things, or to think any thing about them, so that their business be but done, and their shop or warehouse duly looked after. but to bring it all home to the point in hand, if it is so with the master and servant, there is the less room still for the master of such servants to leave any considerable trust in the hands of such apprentices, or to expect much from them, to leave the weight of their affairs with them, and, living at their country lodgings, and taking their own diversions, depend upon such servants for the success of their business. this is indeed abandoning their business, throwing it away, and committing themselves, families, and fortunes, to the conduct of those, who, they have all the reason in the world to believe, have no concern upon them for their good, or care one farthing what becomes of them. chapter xiii of tradesmen making composition with debtors, or with creditors there is an alternative in the subject of this chapter, which places the discourse in the two extremes of a tradesman's fortunes. i. the _fortunate tradesman_, called upon by his poor unfortunate neighbour, who is his debtor, and is become insolvent, to have compassion on him, and to compound with him for part of his debt, and accept his offer in discharge of the whole. ii. the _unfortunate tradesman_ become insolvent and bankrupt himself, and applying himself to his creditor to accept of a composition, in discharge of his debt. i must confess, a tradesman, let his circumstances be what they will, has the most reason to consider the disasters of the unfortunate, and be compassionate to them under their pressures and disasters, of any other men; because they know not--no, not the most prosperous of them--what may be their own fate in the world. there is a scripture proverb, if i may call it so, very necessary to a tradesman in this case, 'let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.' n.b. it is not said, let him that standeth take heed, but him _that thinketh_ he standeth. men in trade can but think they stand; and there are so many incidents in a tradesman's circumstances, that sometimes when he thinks himself most secure of standing, he is in most danger of falling. if, then, the contingent nature of trade renders every man liable to disaster that is engaged in it, it seems strange that tradesmen should be outrageous and unmerciful to one another when they fall; and yet so it is, that no creditor is so furious upon an unhappy insolvent tradesman, as a brother-tradesman of his own class, and who is at least liable to the same disaster, in the common event of his business. nay, i have lived to see--such is the uncertainty of human affairs, and especially in trade--the furious and outrageous creditor become bankrupt himself in a few years, or perhaps months after, and begging the same mercy of others, which he but just before denied to his not more unfortunate fellow-tradesman, and making the same exclamations at the cruelty and hard-heartedness of his creditors in refusing to comply with him, when, at the same time, his own heart must reproach him with his former conduct; how inexorable he was to all the entreaties and tears of his miserable neighbour and his distressed family, who begged his compassion with the lowest submission, who employed friends to solicit and entreat for them, laying forth their misery in the most lively expressions, and using all the arguments which the most moving distress could dictate, but in vain. the tradesman is certainly wrong in this, as compassion to the miserable is a debt of charity due from all mankind to their fellow-creatures; and though the purse-proud tradesman may be able to say he is above the fear of being in the like circumstances, as some may be, yet, even then, he might reflect that perhaps there was a time when he was not so, and he ought to pay that debt of charity, in acknowledgement of the mercy that has set him above the danger. and yet, speaking in the ordinary language of men who are subject to vicissitudes of fortune, where is the man that is sure he shall meet with no shock? and how have we seen men, who have to-day been immensely rich, be to-morrow, as it were, reduced to nothing! what examples were made in this city of such precipitations within the memory of some living, when the exchequer shutting up ruined the great bankers of lombard street.[ ] to what fell sir robert viner--the great alderman backwell--the three brothers of the name of forth, of whom king charles ii. made that severe pun, that '_three-fourths_ of the city were broke?' to what have we seen men of prodigious bulk in trade reduced--as sir thomas cook, sir basil firebrass, sheppard, coggs, and innumerable bankers, money-scriveners, and merchants, who thought themselves as secure against the shocks of trade, as any men in the world could be? not to instance our late south sea directors, and others, reduced by the terrible fate of bubbles, whose names i omit because they yet live, though sinking still under the oppression of their fortunes, and whose weight i would be far from endeavouring to make heavier. why, then, should any tradesman, presuming on his own security, and of his being out of the reach of disaster, harden his heart against the miseries and distresses of a fellow-tradesman, who sinks, as it were, by his side, and refuse to accept his offer of composition; at least, if he cannot object against the integrity of his representations, and cannot charge him with fraud and deceit, breaking with a wicked design to cheat and delude his creditors, and to get money by a pretended breach? i say, why should any tradesman harden his heart in such a case, and not, with a generous pity, comply with a reasonable and fair proposal, while it is to be had? i do acknowledge, if there is an evident fraud, if he can detect the bankrupt in any wicked design, if he can prove he has effects sufficient to pay his debts, and that he only breaks with a purpose to cheat his creditors, and he conceals a part of his estate, when he seems to offer a sincere surrender; if this be the case, and it can be made appear to be so--for in such a case, too, we ought to be very sure of the fact--then, indeed, no favour is due, and really none ought to be shown. and, therefore, it was a very righteous clause which was inflicted on the fraudulent bankrupt, in a late act of parliament, namely, that in case he concealed his effects, and that it appeared he had, though upon his oath, not given in a full account of his estate, but willingly and knowingly concealed it, or any part of it, with design to defraud his creditors, he should be put to death as a felon: the reason and justice of which clause was this, and it was given as the reason of it when the act was passed in the house of commons, namely, that the act was made for the relief of the debtor, as well as of the creditor, and to procure for him a deliverance on a surrender of his effects; but then it was made also for the relief of the creditor, too, that he might have as much of his debt secured to him as possible, and that he should not discharge the debtor with his estate in his pocket, suffering him to run away with his (the creditor's) money before his face. also it was objected, that the act, without a penalty, would be only an act to encourage perjury, and would deliver the hard-mouthed knave that could swear what he pleased, and ruin and reject the modest conscientious tradesman, that was willing and ready to give up the utmost farthing to his creditors. on this account the clause was accepted, and the act passed, which otherwise had been thrown out. now, when the poor insolvent has thus surrendered his all, stript himself entirely upon oath, and that oath taken on the penalty of death if it be false, there seems to be a kind of justice due to the bankrupt. he has satisfied the law, and ought to have his liberty given him _as a prey_, as the text calls it, jer. xxxix. ., that he may try the world once again, and see, if possible, to recover his disasters, and get his bread; and it is to be spoken in honour of the justice as well as humanity of that law for delivering bankrupts, that there are more tradesmen recover themselves in this age upon their second endeavours, and by setting up again after they have thus failed and been delivered, than ever were known to do so in ten times the number of years before. to break, or turn bankrupt, before this, was like a man being taken by the turks; he seldom recovered liberty to try his fortune again, but frequently languished under the tyranny of the commissioners of bankrupt, or in the mint, or friars, or rules of the fleet, till he wasted the whole estate, and at length his life, and so his debts were all paid at once. nor was the case of the creditor much better--i mean as far as respected his debt, for it was very seldom that any considerable dividend was made; on the other hand, large contributions were called for before people knew whether it was likely any thing would be made of the debtor's effects or no, and oftentimes the creditor lost his whole debt, contribution-money and all; so that while the debtor was kept on the rack, as above, being held in suspense by the creditors, or by the commissioners, or both, he spent the creditor's effects, and subsisted at their expense, till, the estate being wasted, the loss fell heavy on every side, and generally most on those who were least able to bear it. by the present state of things, this evil is indeed altered, and the ruin of the creditor's effects is better prevented; the bankrupt can no more skulk behind the door of the mint and rules, and prevent the commissioners' inspection; he must come forth, be examined, give in an account, and surrender himself and effects too, or fly his country, and be seen here no more; and if he does come in, he must give a full account upon oath, on the penalty of his neck. when the effects are thus surrendered, the commissioners' proceedings are short and summary. the assignees are obliged to make dividends, and not detain the estate in their own hands, as was the case in former days, till sometimes they became bankrupts themselves, so that the creditors are sure now what is put into the hands of the assignees, shall in due time, and without the usual delay, be fairly divided. on the other hand, the poor debtor having honestly discharged his part, and no objection lying against the sincerity of the discovery, has a certificate granted him, which being allowed by the lord chancellor, he is a clear man, and may begin the world again, as i have said above. the creditor, being thus satisfied that the debtor has been faithful, does not answer the end of the act of parliament, if he declines to assent to the debtor's certificate; nor can any creditor decline it, but on principles which no man cares to own--namely, that of malice, and the highest resentment, which are things a christian tradesman will not easily act upon. but i come now to the other part of the case; and this is supposing a debtor fails, and the creditors do not think fit to take out a commission of bankrupt against him, as sometimes is the case, at least, where they see the offers of the debtor are any thing reasonable: my advice in such case is (and i speak it from long experience in such things), that they should always accept the first reasonable proposal of the debtor; and i am not in this talking on the foot of charity and mercy to the debtor, but of the real and undoubted interest of the creditor; nor could i urge it, by such arguments as i shall bring, upon any other foundation; for, if i speak in behalf of the debtor, i must argue commiseration to the miserable, compassion and pity of his family, and a reflection upon the sad changes which human life exposes us all to, and so persuade the creditor to have pity upon not him only, but upon all families in distress. but, i say, i argue now upon a different foundation, and insist that it is the creditor's true interest, as i hinted before, that if he finds the debtor inclined to be honest, and he sees reason to believe he makes the best offer he can, he should accept the first offer, as being generally the best the debtor can make;[ ] and, indeed, if the debtor be wise as well as honest, he will make it so, and generally it is found to be so. and there are, indeed, many reasons why the first offers of the debtor are generally the best, and why no commission of bankrupt ordinarily raises so much, notwithstanding all its severities, as the bankrupt offers before it is sued out--not reckoning the time and expense which, notwithstanding all the new methods, attend such things, and are inevitable. for example-- when the debtor, first looking into his affairs, sees the necessity coming upon him of making a stop in trade, and calling his creditors together, the first thought which by the consequence of the thing comes to be considered, is, what offers he can make to them to avoid the having a commission sued out against him, and to which end common prudence, as well as honest principles, move him to make the best offers he can. if he be a man of sense, and, according to what i mentioned in another chapter, has prudently come to a stop in time, before things are run to extremities, and while he has something left to make an offer of that may be considerable, he will seldom meet with creditors so weak or so blind to their own interest not to be willing to end it amicably, rather than to proceed to a commission. and as this is certainly best both for the debtor and the creditor, so, as i argued with the debtor, that he should be wise enough, as well as honest enough, to break betimes, and that it was infinitely best for his own interest, so i must add, on the other hand, to the creditor, that it is always his interest to accept the first offer; and i never knew a commission make more of an estate, where the debtor has been honest, than he (the debtor) proposed to give them without it. it is true, there are cases where the issuing out a commission may be absolutely necessary. for example-- . where the debtor is evidently knavish, and discovers himself to be so, by endeavours to carry off his effects, or alter the property of the estate, confessing judgments, or any the usual ways of fraud, which in such cases are ordinarily practised. or-- . where some creditors, by such judgments, or by attachments of debts, goods delivered, effects made over, or any other way, have gotten some of the estate into their hands, or securities belonging to it, whereby they are in a better state, as to payment, than the rest. or-- . where some people are brought in as creditors, whose debts there is reason to believe are not real, but who place themselves in the room of creditors, in order to receive a dividend for the use of the bankrupt, or some of his family. in these, and such like cases, a commission is inevitable, and must be taken out; nor does the man merit to be regarded upon the foot of what i call compassion and commiseration at all, but ought to be treated like a _rapparee_,[ ] or plunderer, who breaks with a design to make himself whole by the composition; and as many did formerly, who were beggars when they broke, be made rich by the breach. it was to provide against such harpies as these that the act of parliament was made; and the only remedy against them is a commission, in which the best thing they can do for their creditors is to come in and be examined, give in a false account upon oath, be discovered, convicted of it, and sent to the gallows, as they deserve. but i am speaking of honest men, the reverse of such thieves as these, who being brought into distress by the ordinary calamities of trade, are willing to do the utmost to satisfy their creditors. when such as these break in the tradesman's debt, let him consider seriously my advice, and he shall find--i might say, he shall _always_ find, but i do affirm, he shall _generally_ find--the first offer the best, and that he will never lose by accepting it. to refuse it is but pushing the debtor to extremities, and running out some of the effects to secure the rest. first, as to collecting in the debts. supposing the man is honest, and they can trust him, it is evident no man can make so much of them as the bankrupt. ( .) he knows the circumstances of the debtors, and how best to manage them; he knows who he may best push at, and who best forbear. ( .) he can do it with the least charge; the commissioners or assignees must employ other people, such as attorneys, solicitors, &c., and they are paid dear. the bankrupt sits at home, and by letters into the country, or by visiting them, if in town, can make up every account, answer every objection, judge of every scruple, and, in a word, with ease, compared to what others must do, brings them to comply. next, as to selling off a stock of goods. the bankrupt keeps open the shop, disperses or disposes of the goods with advantage; whereas the commission brings all to a sale, or an outcry, or an appraisement, and all sinks the value of the stock; so that the bankrupt can certainly make more of the stock than any other person (always provided he is honest, as i said before), and much more than the creditors can do. for these reasons, and many others, the bankrupt is able to make a better offer upon his estate than the creditors can expect to raise any other way; and therefore it is their interest always to take the first offer, if they are satisfied there is no fraud in it, and that the man has offered any thing near the extent of what he has left in the world to offer from. if, then, it be the tradesman's interest to accept of the offer made, there needs no stronger argument to be used with him for the doing it; and nothing is more surprising to me than to see tradesmen, the hardest to come into such compositions, and to push on severities against other tradesmen, as if they were out of the reach of the shocks of fortune themselves, or that it was impossible for them ever to stand in need of the same mercy--the contrary to which i have often seen. to what purpose should tradesmen push things to extremities against tradesmen, if nothing is to be gotten by it, and if the insolvent tradesman will take proper measures to convince the creditor that his intentions are honest? the law was made for offenders; there needs no law for innocent men: commissions are granted to manage knaves, and hamper and entangle cunning and designing rogues, who seek to raise fortunes out of their creditors' estates, and exalt themselves by their own downfall; they are not designed against honest men, neither, indeed, is there any need of them for such. let no man mistake this part, therefore, and think that i am moving tradesmen to be easy and compassionate to rogues and cheats: i am far from it, and have given sufficient testimony of the contrary; having, i assure you, been the only person who actually formed, drew up, and first proposed that very cause to the house of commons, which made it felony to the bankrupt to give in a false account. it cannot, therefore, be suggested, without manifest injustice, that i would with one breath prompt creditors to be easy to rogues, and to cheating fraudulent bankrupts, and with another make a proposal to have them hanged. but i move the creditor, on account of his own interest, always to take the first offer, if he sees no palpable fraud in it, or sees no reason to suspect such fraud; and my reason is good, namely, because i believe, as i said before, it is generally the best. i know there is a new method of putting an end to a tradesman's troubles, by that which was formerly thought the greatest of all troubles; i mean a fraudulent method, or what they call taking out friendly statutes; that is, when tradesmen get statutes taken out against themselves, moved first by some person in kindness to them, and done at the request of the bankrupt himself. this is generally done when the circumstances of the debtor are very low, and he has little or nothing to surrender; and the end is, that the creditors may be obliged to take what there is, and the man may get a full discharge. this is, indeed, a vile corruption of a good law, and turning the edge of the act against the creditor, not against the debtor; and as he has nothing to surrender, they get little or nothing, and the man is as effectually discharged as if he had paid twenty shillings in the pound; and so he is in a condition to set up again, take fresh credit, break again, and have another commission against him; and so round, as often as he thinks fit. this, indeed, is a fraud upon the act, and shows that all human wisdom is imperfect, that the law wants some repairs, and that it will in time come into consideration again, to be made capable of disappointing the people that intend to make such use of it. i think there is also wanting a law against twice breaking, and that all second commissions should have some penalty upon the bankrupt, and a third a farther penalty, and if the fourth brought the man to the gallows, it could not be thought hard; for he that has set up and broke, and set up again, and broke again, and the like, a third time, i think merits to be hanged, if he pretends to venture any more. most of those crimes against which any laws are published in particular, and which are not capital, have generally an addition of punishment upon a repetition of the crime, and so on--a further punishment to a further repetition. i do not see why it should not be so here; and i doubt not but it would have a good effect upon tradesmen, to make them cautious, and to warn them to avoid such scandalous doings as we see daily practised, breaking three or four, or five times over; and we see instances of some such while i am writing this very chapter. to such, therefore, i am so far from moving for any favour, either from the law, or from their creditors, that i think the only deficiency of the law at this time is, that it does not reach to inflict a corporal punishment in such a case, but leaves such insolvents to fare well, in common with those whose disasters are greater, and who, being honest and conscientious, merit more favour, but do not often find it. footnotes: [ ] [this event took place in , charles ii. finding it necessary to suspend the national payments for a year.] [ ] [the truth of this continues to be matter of daily observation in our own times.] [ ] [a name applied, in the seventeenth century, to a certain class of robbers in ireland.] chapter xiv of the unfortunate tradesman compounding with his creditors this is what in the last chapter i called an alternative to that of the fortunate tradesman yielding to accept the composition of his insolvent debtor. the poor unhappy tradesman, having long laboured in the fire, and finding it is in vain to struggle, but that whether he strives or not strives, he must break; that he does but go backward more and more, and that the longer he holds out, he shall have the less to offer, and be the harder thought of, as well as the harder dealt with--resolves to call his creditors together in time, while there is something considerable to offer them, and while he may have some just account to give of himself, and of his conduct, and that he may not be reproached with having lived on the spoil, and consumed their estates; and thus, being satisfied that the longer he puts the evil day from him, the heavier it will fall when it comes; i say, he resolves to go no farther, and so gets a friend to discourse with and prepare them, and then draws up a state of his case to lay before them. first, he assures them that he has not wasted his estate, either by vice and immorality, or by expensive and riotous living, luxury, extravagance, and the like. secondly, he makes it appear that he has met with great losses, such as he could not avoid; and yet such and so many, that he has not been able to support the weight of them. thirdly, that he could have stood it out longer, but that he was sensible if he did, he should but diminish the stock, which, considering his debts, was properly not his own; and that he was resolved not to spend one part of their debts, as he had lost the other. fourthly, that he is willing to show them his books, and give up every farthing into their hands, that they might see he acted the part of an honest man to them. and, fifthly, that upon his doing so, they will find, that there is in goods and good debts sufficient to pay them fifteen shillings in the pound; after which, and when he has made appear that they have a faithful and just account of every thing laid before them, he hopes they will give him his liberty, that he may try to get his bread, and to maintain his family in the best manner he can; and, if possible, to pay the remainder of the debt. you see i go all the way upon the suggestion of the poor unfortunate tradesman being critically honest, and showing himself so to the full satisfaction of his creditors; that he shows them distinctly a true state of his case, and offers his books and vouchers to confirm every part of his account. upon the suggestion of his being thus sincerely honest, and allowing that the state of his account comes out so well as to pay fifteen shillings in the pound, what and who but a parcel of outrageous hot-headed men would reject such a man? what would they be called, nay, what would they say of themselves, if they should reject such a composition, and should go and take out a commission of bankrupt against such a man? i never knew but one of the like circumstances, that was refused by his creditors; and that one held them out, till they were all glad to accept of half what they said should be first paid them: so may all those be served, who reject such wholesome advice, and the season for accepting a good offer, when it was made them. but i return to the debtor. when he looks into his books, he finds himself declined, his own fortune lost, and his creditors' stock in his hands wasted in part, and still wasting, his trade being for want of stock much fallen off, and his family expense and house-rent great; so he draws up the general articles thus:-- stock debtor to cash of my father (being my stock) to begin with in trade £ to cash of my father-in-law, being my wife's portion to household-goods, plate, &c. of both to profits in trade for ten years, as by the yearly balance in the journal appears to debts abroad esteemed good, as by the ledger appears to goods in the warehouse at the prime cost plate and some small jewels of my wife's left, and old household-goods altogether ------------ £ estate deficient to balance ------------ £ stock creditor by losses by bad debts in trade, in the year £ by do. by do. by do. by do. by do. by the south sea stock, by do. in trade, by do. by do. by do. by house-keeping and expenses, taxes included, as by the cash-book appears, for ten years by house-rents at £ per annum by credits now owing to sundry persons, as by the ledger appears ---------------- £ ================ this account is drawn out to satisfy himself how his condition stands, and what it is he ought to do: upon the stating which account he sees to his affliction that he has sunk all his own fortune and his wife's, and is a thousand pounds worse than nothing in the world; and that, being obliged to live in the same house for the sake of his business and warehouse, though the rent is too great for him, his trade being declined, his credit sunk, and his family being large, he sees evidently he cannot go on, and that it will only be bringing things from bad to worse; and, above all the rest, being greatly perplexed in his mind that he is spending other people's estates, and that the bread he eats is not his own, he resolves to call his creditors all together, lay before them the true state of his case, and lie at their mercy for the rest. the account of his present and past fortune standing as it did, and as appears above, the result is as follows, namely, that he has not sufficient to pay all his creditors, though his debts should prove to be all good, and the goods in his warehouse should be fully worth the price they cost, which, being liable to daily contingencies, add to the reasons which pressed him before to make an offer of surrender to his creditors both of his goods and debts, and to give up all into their hands. the state of his case, as to his debts and credits, stands as follows:-- his debts esteemed good, as by the ledger, are £ his goods in the warehouse --------------- £ his creditors demands, as by the same ledger appears, are £ this amounts to fifteen shillings in the pound upon all his debts, which, if the creditors please to appoint an assignee or trustee to sell the goods, and collect the debts, he is willing to surrender wholly into their hands, hoping they will, as a favour, give him his household goods, as in the account, for his family use, and his liberty, that he may seek out for some employment to get his bread. the account being thus clear, the books exactly agreeing, and the man appearing to have acted openly and fairly, the creditors meet, and, after a few consultations, agree to accept his proposals, and the man is a free man immediately, gets fresh credit, opens his shop again, and, doubling his vigilance and application in business, he recovers in a few years, grows rich; then, like an honest man still, he calls all his creditors together again, tells them he does not call them now to a second composition, but to tell them, that having, with god's blessing and his own industry, gotten enough to enable him, he was resolved to pay them the remainder of his old debt; and accordingly does so, to the great joy of his creditors, to his own very great honour, and to the encouragement of all honest men to take the same measures. it is true, this does not often happen, but there have been instances of it, and i could name several within my own knowledge. but here comes an objection in the way, as follows: it is true this man did very honestly, and his creditors had a great deal of reason to be satisfied with his just dealing with them; but is every man bound thus to strip himself naked? perhaps this man at the same time had a family to maintain, and had he no debt of justice to them, but to beg his household goods back of them for his poor family, and that as an alms?-and would he not have fared as well, if he had offered his creditors ten shillings in the pound, and took all the rest upon himself, and then he had reserved to himself sufficient to have supported himself in any new undertaking? the answer to this is short and plain, and no debtor can be at a loss to know his way in it, for otherwise people may make difficulties where there are none; the observing the strict rules of justice and honesty will chalk out his way for him. the man being deficient in stock, and his estate run out to a thousand pounds worse than nothing by his losses, &c, it is evident all he has left is the proper estate of his creditors, and he has no right to one shilling of it; he owes it them, it is a just debt to them, and he ought to discharge it fairly, by giving up all into their hands, or at least to offer to do so. but to put the case upon a new foot; as he is obliged to make an offer, as above, to put all his effects, books, and goods into their power, so he may add an alternative to them thus, namely--that if, on the other hand, they do not think proper to take the trouble, or run the risk, of collecting the debts, and selling the goods, which may be difficult, if they will leave it to him to do it, he will undertake to pay them--shillings in the pound, and stand to the hazard both of debts and goods. having thus offered the creditors their choice, if they accept the proposal of a certain sum, as sometimes i know they have chosen to do, rather than to have the trouble of making assignees, and run the hazard of the debts, when put into lawyers' hands to collect, and of the goods, to sell them by appraisement; if, i say, they choose this, and offer to discharge the debtor upon payment, suppose it be of ten or twelve shillings in the pound in money, within a certain time, or on giving security for the payment; then, indeed, the debtor is discharged in conscience, and may lawfully and honestly take the remainder as a gift given him by his creditors for undertaking their business, or securing the remainder of their debt to them--i say, the debtor may do this with the utmost satisfaction to his conscience. but without thus putting it into the creditors' choice, it is a force upon them to offer them any thing less than the utmost farthing that he is able to pay; and particularly to pretend to make an offer as if it were his utmost, and, as is usual, make protestations that it is the most he is able to pay (indeed, every offer of a composition is a kind of protestation that the debtor is not able to pay any more)--i say, to offer thus, and declare he offers as much as possible, and as much as the effects he has left will produce, if his effects are able to produce more, he is then a cheat; for he acts then like one that stands at bay with his creditors, make an offer, and if the creditors do not think fit to accept of it, they must take what methods they think they can take to get more; that is to say, he bids open defiance to their statutes and commissions of bankrupt, and any other proceedings: like a town besieged, which offers to capitulate and to yield upon such and such articles; which implies, that if those articles are not accepted, the garrison will defend themselves to the last extremity, and do all the mischief to the assailants that they can. now, this in a garrison-town, i say, may be lawful and fair, but in a debtor to his creditor it is quite another thing: for, as i have said above, the debtor has no property in the effects which he has in his hands; they are the goods and the estate of the creditor; and to hold out against the creditor, keep his estate by violence, and make him accept of a small part of it, when the debtor has a larger part in his power, and is able to give it--this is not fair, much less is it honest and conscientious; but it is still worse to do this, and at the same time to declare that it is the utmost the debtor can do; this, i say, is still more dishonest, because it is not true, and is adding falsehood to the other injustice. thus, i think, i have stated the case clearly, for the conduct of the debtor; and, indeed, this way of laying all before the creditors, and putting it into their choice, seems a very happy method for the comfort of the debtor, cast down and dejected with the weight of his circumstances; and, it may be, with the reproaches of his own conscience too, that he has not done honestly in running out the effects of his creditors, and making other families suffer by him, and perhaps poor families too--i say, this way of giving up all with an honest and single desire to make all the satisfaction he is able to his creditors, greatly heals the breach in his peace, which his circumstances had made before; for, by now doing all that is in his power, he makes all possible amends for what is past, i mean as to men; and they are induced, by this open, frank usage, to give him the reward of his honesty, and freely forgive him the rest of the debt. there is a manifest difference to the debtor, in point of conscience, between surrendering his whole effects, or estate, to his creditors for satisfaction of their debts, and offering them a composition, unless, as i have said, the composition is offered, as above, to the choice of the creditor. by surrendering the whole estate, the debtor acknowledges the creditors' right to all he has in his possession, and gives it up to them as their own, putting it in their full power to dispose of it as they please. but, by a composition, the debtor, as i have said above, stands at bay with the creditors, and, keeping their estates in his hands, capitulates with them, as it were, sword in hand, telling them he can give them no more, when perhaps, and too often it is the case, it is apparent that he is in condition to offer more. now, let the creditors consent to these proposals, be what it will; and, however voluntary it may be pretended to be, it is evident that a force is the occasion of it, and the creditor complies, and accepts the proposal, upon the supposition that no better conditions can be had. it is the plain language of the thing, for no man accepts of less than he thinks he can get: if he believed he could have more, he would certainly get it if he could. and if the debtor is able to pay one shilling more than he offers, it is a cheat, a palpable fraud, and of so much he actually robs his creditor. but in a surrender the case is altered in all its parts; the debtor says to his creditors, 'gentlemen, there is a full and faithful account of all i have left; it is your own, and there it is; i am ready to put it into your hands, or into the hands of whomsoever you shall appoint to receive it, and to lie at your mercy.' this is all the man is able to do, and therefore is so far honest; whether the methods that reduced him were honest or no, that is a question by itself. if on this surrender he finds the creditors desirous rather to have it digested into a composition, and that they will voluntarily come into such a proposal, then, as above, they being judges of the equity of the composition, and of what ability the debtor is to perform it, and, above all, of what he may or may not gain by it, if they accept of such a composition, instead of the surrender of his effects, then the case alters entirely, and the debtor is acquitted in conscience, because the creditor had a fair choice, and the composition is rather their proposal to the debtor, than the debtor's proposal to them. thus, i think, i have stated the case of justice and conscience on the debtor's behalf, and cleared up his way, in case of a necessity, to stop trading, that he may break without wounding his conscience, as well as his fortunes; and he that thinks fit to act thus, will come off with the reputation of an honest man, and will have the favour of his creditors to begin again, with whatever he may have as to stock; and sometimes that favour is better to him than a stock, and has been the raising of many a broken tradesman, so that his latter end has been better than his beginning. chapter xv of tradesmen ruining one another by rumour and clamour, by scandal and reproach i have dwelt long upon the tradesman's management of himself, in order to his due preserving both his business and his reputation: let me bestow one chapter upon the tradesman for his conduct among his neighbours and fellow-tradesmen. credit is so much a tradesman's blessing that it is the choicest ware he deals in, and he cannot be too chary of it when he has it, or buy it too dear when he wants it; it is a stock to his warehouse, it is current money in his cash-chest, it accepts all his bills, for it is on the fund of his credit that he has any bills to accept; demands would else be made upon the spot, and he must pay for his goods before he has them--therefore, i say, it accepts all his bills, and oftentimes pays them too; in a word, it is the life and soul of his trade, and it requires his utmost vigilance to preserve it. if, then, his own credit should be of so much value to him, and he should be so nice in his concern about it, he ought in some degree to have the same care of his neighbour's. religion teaches us not to slander and defame our neighbour, that is to say, not to raise or promote any slander or scandal upon his good name. as a good name is to another man, and which the wise man says, 'is better than life,' the same is credit to a tradesman--it is the life of his trade; and he that wounds a tradesman's credit without cause, is as much a murderer in trade, as he that kills a man in the dark is a murderer in matters of blood. besides, there is a particular nicety in the credit of a tradesman, which does not reach in other cases: a man is slandered in his character, or reputation, and it is injurious; and if it comes in the way of a marriage, or of a preferment, or post, it may disappoint and ruin him; but if this happens to a tradesman, he is immediately and unavoidably blasted and undone; a tradesman has but two sorts of enemies to encounter with, namely, thieves breaking open his shop, and ill neighbours blackening and blasting his reputation; and the latter are the worst thieves of the two, by a great deal; and, therefore, people should indeed be more chary of their discourse of tradesmen, than of other men, and that as they would not be guilty of murder. i knew an author of a book, who was drawn in unwarily, and without design, to publish a scandalous story of a tradesman in london. he (the author) was imposed upon by a set of men, who did it maliciously, and he was utterly ignorant of the wicked design; nor did he know the person, but rashly published the thing, being himself too fond of a piece of news, which he thought would be grateful to his readers; nor yet did he publish the person's name, so cautious he was, though that was not enough, as it proved, for the person was presently published by those who had maliciously done it. the scandal spread; the tradesman, a flourishing man, and a considerable dealer, was run upon by it with a torrent of malice; a match which he was about with a considerable fortune was blasted and prevented, and that indeed was the malicious end of the people that did it; nor did it stop there--it brought his creditors upon him, it ruined him, it brought out a commission of bankrupt against him, it broke his heart, and killed him; and after his death, his debts and effects coming in, there appeared to be seven shillings in the pound estate, clear and good over and above all demands, all his debts discharged, and all the expenses of the statute paid. it was to no purpose that the man purged himself of the crime laid to his charge--that the author, who had ignorantly and rashly published the scandal, declared himself ignorant; the man was run down by a torrent of reproach; scandal oppressed him; he was buried alive in the noise and dust raised both against his morals and his credit, and yet his character was proved good, and his bottom in trade was so too, as i have said above. it is not the least reason of my publishing this to add, that even the person who was ignorantly made the instrument of publishing the scandal, was not able to retrieve it, or to prevent the man's ruin by all the public reparation he could make in print, and by all the acknowledgement he could make of his having been ignorantly drawn in to do it. and this i mention for the honest tradesman's caution, and to put him in mind, that when he has unwarily let slip anything to the wounding the reputation of his neighbour tradesman, whether in his trading credit, or the credit of his morals, it may not be in his power to unsay it again, that is, so as to prevent the ruin of the person; and though it may grieve him as long as he lives, as the like did the author i mention, yet it is not in his power to recall it, or to heal the wound he has given; and that he should consider very well of beforehand. a tradesman's credit and a virgin's virtue ought to be equally sacred from the tongues of men; and it is a very unhappy truth, that as times now go, they are neither of them regarded among us as they ought to be. the tea-table among the ladies, and the coffee-house among the men, seem to be places of new invention for a depravation of our manners and morals, places devoted to scandal, and where the characters of all kinds of persons and professions are handled in the most merciless manner, where reproach triumphs, and we seem to give ourselves a loose to fall upon one another in the most unchristian and unfriendly manner in the world. it seems a little hard that the reputation of a young lady, or of a new-married couple, or of people in the most critical season of establishing the characters of their persons and families, should lie at the mercy of the tea-table; nor is it less hard, that the credit of a tradesman, which is the same thing in its nature as the virtue of a lady, should be tossed about, shuttle-cock-like, from one table to another, in the coffee-house, till they shall talk all his creditors about his ears, and bring him to the very misfortune which they reported him to be near, when at the same time he owed them nothing who raised the clamour, and owed nothing to all the world, but what he was able to pay. and yet how many tradesmen have been thus undone, and how many more have been put to the full trial of their strength in trade, and have stood by the mere force of their good circumstances; whereas, had they been unfurnished with cash to have answered their whole debts, they must have fallen with the rest. we need go no farther than lombard street for an exemplification of this truth. there was a time when lombard street was the only bank, and the goldsmiths there were all called bankers. the credit of their business was such, that the like has not been seen in england since, in private hands: some of those bankers, as i have had from their own mouths, have had near two millions of paper credit upon them at a time; that is to say, have had bills under their hands running abroad for so much at a time. on a sudden, like a clap of thunder, king charles ii. shut up the exchequer, which was the common centre of the overplus cash these great bankers had in their hands. what was the consequence? not only the bankers who had the bulk of their cash there, but all lombard street, stood still. the very report of having money in the exchequer brought a run upon the goldsmiths that had no money there, as well as upon those that had, and not only sir robert viner, alderman backwell, farringdon, forth, and others, broke and failed, but several were ruined who had not a penny of money in the exchequer, and only sunk by the rumour of it; that rumour bringing a run upon the whole street, and giving a check to the paper credit that was run up to such an exorbitant height. i remember a shopkeeper who one time took the liberty (foolish liberty!) with himself, in public company in a coffee-house, to say that he was broke. 'i assure you,' says he, 'that i am broke, and to-morrow i resolve to shut up my shop, and call my creditors together.' his meaning was, that he had a brother just dead in his house, and the next day was to be buried, when, in civility to the deceased, he kept his shop shut; and several people whom he dealt with, and owed money to, were the next day invited to the funeral, so that he did actually shut up his shop, and call some of his creditors together. but he sorely repented the jest which he put upon himself. 'are you broke?' says one of his friends to him, that was in the coffee-house; 'then i wish i had the little money you owe me' (which however, it seems, was not much). says the other, still carrying on his jest, 'i shall pay nobody, till, as i told you, i have called my people together.' the other did not reach his jest, which at best was but a dull one, but he reached that part of it that concerned himself, and seeing him continue carelessly sitting in the shop, slipped out, and, fetching a couple of sergeants, arrested him. the other was a little surprised; but however, the debt being no great sum, he paid it, and when he found his mistake, told his friends what he meant by his being broke. but it did not end there; for other people of his neighbours, who were then in the coffee-house, and heard his discourse, and had thought nothing more of it, yet in the morning seeing his shop shut, concluded the thing was so indeed, and immediately it went over the whole street that such a one was broke; from thence it went to the exchange, and from thence into the country, among all his dealers, who came up in a throng and a fright to look after him. in a word, he had as much to do to prevent his breaking as any man need to desire, and if he had not had very good friends as well as a very good bottom, he had inevitably been ruined and undone. so small a rumour will overset a tradesman, if he is not very careful of himself; and if a word in jest from himself, which though indeed no man that had considered things, or thought before he spoke, would have said (and, on the other hand, no man who had been wise and thinking would have taken as it was taken)--i say, if a word taken from the tradesman's own mouth could be so fatal, and run such a dangerous length, what may not words spoken slyly, and secretly, and maliciously, be made to do? a tradesman's reputation is of the nicest nature imaginable; like a blight upon a fine flower, if it is but touched, the beauty of it, or the flavour of it, or the seed of it, is lost, though the noxious breath which touched it might not reach to blast the leaf, or hurt the root; the credit of a tradesman, at least in his beginning, is too much at the mercy of every enemy he has, till it has taken root, and is established on a solid foundation of good conduct and success. it is a sad truth, that every idle tongue can blast a young shopkeeper; and therefore, though i would not discourage any young beginner, yet it is highly beneficial to alarm them, and to let them know that they must expect a storm of scandal and reproach upon the least slip they make: if they but stumble, fame will throw them down; it is true, if they recover, she will set them up as fast; but malice generally runs before, and bears down all with it; and there are ten tradesmen who fall under the weight of slander and an ill tongue, to one that is lifted up again by the common hurry of report. to say i am broke, or in danger of breaking, is to break me: and though sometimes the malicious occasion is discovered, and the author detected and exposed, yet how seldom is it so; and how much oftener are ill reports raised to ruin and run down a tradesman, and the credit of a shop; and like an arrow that flies in the dark, it wounds unseen. the authors, no nor the occasion of these reports, are never discovered perhaps, or so much as rightly guessed at; and the poor tradesman feels the wound, receives the deadly blow, and is perhaps mortally stabbed in the vitals of his trade, i mean his trading credit, and never knows who hurt him. i must say, in the tradesman's behalf, that he is in such a case to be esteemed a sacrifice to the worst and most hellish of all secret crimes, i mean envy; which is made up of every hateful vice, a complication of crimes which nothing but the worst of god's reasonable world can be guilty of; and he will indeed merit and call for every honest man's pity and concern. but what relief is this to him? for, in the meantime, though the devil himself were the raiser of the scandal, yet it shall go about; the blow shall take, and every man, though at the same time expressing their horror and aversion at the thing, shall yet not be able, no not themselves, to say they receive no impression from it. though i know the clamour or rumour was raised maliciously, and from a secret envy at the prosperity of the man, yet if i deal with him, it will in spite of all my abhorrence of the thing, in spite of all my willingness to do justice, i say it will have some little impression upon me, it will be some shock to my confidence in the man; and though i know the devil is a liar, a slanderer, a calumniator, and that his name _devil_ is derived from it; and that i knew, if that, as i said, were possible, that the devil in his proper person raised and began, and carried on, this scandal upon the tradesman, yet there is a secret lurking doubt (about him), which hangs about me concerning him; the devil is a liar, but he may happen to speak truth just then, he may chance to be right, and i know not what there may be in it, and whether there may be any thing or no, but i will have a little care, &c. thus, insensibly and involuntarily, nay, in spite of friendship, good wishes, and even resolution to the contrary, it is almost impossible to prevent our being shocked by rumour, and we receive an impression whether we will or not, and that from the worst enemy; there is such a powerful sympathy between our thoughts and our interest, that the first being but touched, and that in the lightest manner imaginable, we cannot help it, caution steps on in behalf of the last, and the man is jealous and afraid, in spite of all the kindest and best intentions in the world. nor is it only dangerous in case of false accusations and false charges, for those indeed are to be expected fatal; but even just and true things may be as fatal as false, for the truth is not always necessary to be said of a tradesman: many things a tradesman may perhaps allow himself to do, and may be lawfully done, but if they should be known to be part of his character, it would sink deep into his trading fame, his credit would suffer by it, and in the end it might be his ruin; so that he that would not set his hand to his neighbour's ruin, should as carefully avoid speaking some truths, as raising some forgeries upon him. of what fatal consequence, then, is the raising rumours and suspicions upon the credit and characters of young tradesmen! and how little do those who are forward to raise such suspicions, and spread such rumours, consult conscience, or principle, or honour, in what they do! how little do they consider that they are committing a trading murder, and that, in respect to the justice of it, they may with much more equity break open the tradesman's house, and rob his cash-chest, or his shop; and what they can carry away thence will not do him half the injury that robbing his character of what is due to it from an upright and diligent conduct, would do. the loss of his money or goods is easily made up, and may be sometimes repaired with advantage, but the loss of credit is never repaired; the one is breaking open his house, but the other is burning it down; the one carries away some goods, but the other shuts goods out from coming in; one is hurting the tradesman, but the other is undoing him. credit is the tradesman's life; it is, as the wise man says, 'marrow to his bones;' it is by this that all his affairs go on prosperously and pleasantly; if this be hurt, wounded, or weakened, the tradesman is sick, hangs his head, is dejected and discouraged; and if he does go on, it is heavily and with difficulty, as well as with disadvantage; he is beholding to his fund of cash, not his friends; and he may be truly said to stand upon his own legs, for nothing else can do it. and therefore, on the other hand, if such a man is any way beholding to his credit, if he stood before upon the foundation of his credit, if he owes any thing considerable, it is a thousand to one but he sinks under the oppression of it; that is to say, it brings every body upon him--i mean, every one that has any demand upon him--for in pushing for their own, especially in such cases, men have so little mercy, and are so universally persuaded that he that comes first is first served, that i did not at all wonder, that in the story of the tradesman who so foolishly exposed himself in the coffee-house, as above, his friend whom he said the words to, began with him that very night, and before he went out of the coffee-house; it was rather a wonder to me he did not go out and bring in half-a-dozen more upon him the same evening. it is very rarely that men are wanting to their own interest; and the jealousy of its being but in danger, is enough to make men forget, not friendship only, and generosity, but good manners, civility, and even justice itself, and fall upon the best friends they have in the world, if they think they are in the least danger of suffering by them. on these accounts it is, and many more, that a tradesman walks in continual jeopardy, from the looseness and inadvertency of men's tongues, ay, and women's too; for though i am all along very tender of the ladies, and would do justice to the sex, by telling you, they were not the dangerous people whom i had in view in my first writing upon this subject, yet i must be allowed to say, that they are sometimes fully even with the men, for ill usage, when they please to fall upon them in this nice article, in revenge for any slight, or but pretended slight, put upon them. it was a terrible revenge a certain lady, who was affronted by a tradesman in london, in a matter of love, took upon him in this very article. it seems a tradesman had courted her some time, and it was become public, as a thing in a manner concluded, when the tradesman left the lady a little abruptly, without giving a good reason for it, and, indeed, she afterwards discovered, that he had left her for the offer of another with a little more money, and that, when he had done so, he reported that it was for another reason, which reflected a little on the person of the lady; and in this the tradesman did very unworthily indeed, and deserved her resentment: but, as i said, it was a terrible revenge she took, and what she ought not to have done. first, she found out who it was that her former pretended lover had been recommended to, and she found means to have it insinuated to her by a woman-friend, that he was not only rakish and wicked, but, in short, that he had a particular illness, and went so far as to produce letters from him to a quack-doctor, for directions to him how to take his medicines, and afterwards a receipt for money for the cure; though both the letters and receipt also, as afterwards appeared, were forged, in which she went a dismal length in her revenge, as you may see. then she set two or three female instruments to discourse her case in all their gossips' companies, and at the tea-tables wherever they came, and to magnify the lady's prudence in refusing such a man, and what an escape she had had in being clear of him. 'why,' says a lady to one of these emissaries, 'what was the matter? i thought she was like to be very well married.' 'oh no, madam! by no means,' says the emissary. 'why, madam,' says another lady, 'we all know mr h----; he is a very pretty sort of a man.' 'ay, madam,' says the emissary again, 'but you know a pretty man is not all that is required.' 'nay,' says the lady again, 'i don't mean so; he is no beauty, no rarity that way; but i mean a clever good sort of a man in his business, such as we call a pretty tradesman.' 'ay,' says the lady employed, 'but that is not all neither.' 'why,' says the other lady, 'he has a very good trade too, and lives in good credit.' 'yes,' says malice, 'he has some of the first, but not too much of the last, i suppose.' 'no!' says the lady; 'i thought his credit had been very good.' 'if it had, i suppose,' says the first, 'the match had not been broke off.' 'why,' says the lady, 'i understood it was broken off on his side.' 'and so did i,' says another. 'and so did i, indeed,' says a third. 'oh, madam!' says the tool, 'nothing like it, i assure you.' 'indeed,' says another, i understood he had quitted mrs----, because she had not fortune enough for him, and that he courted another certain lady, whom we all know.' then the ladies fell to talking of the circumstances of his leaving her, and how he had broken from her abruptly and unmannerly, and had been too free with her character; at which the first lady, that is to say, the emissary, or tool, as i call her, took it up a little warmly, thus:-- . _lady_.--well, you see, ladies, how easily a lady's reputation may be injured; i hope you will not go away with it so. . _lady_.--nay, we have all of us a respect for mrs----, and some of us visit there sometimes; i believe none of us would be willing to injure her. . _lady_.--but indeed, ladies, she is very much injured in that story. . _lady_.--indeed, it is generally understood so, and every body believes it. . _lady_.--i can assure you it is quite otherwise in fact. . _lady_.--i believe he reports it so himself, and that with some very odd things about the lady too. . _lady_.--the more base unworthy fellow he. . _lady_.--especially if he knows it to be otherwise. . _lady_.--especially if he knows the contrary to be true, madam. . _lady_.--is that possible? did he not refuse her, then? . _lady_.--nothing like it, madam; but just the contrary. . _lady_.--you surprise me! . _lady_.--i am very glad to hear it, for her sake. . _lady_.--i can assure you, madam, she had refused him, and that he knows well enough, which has been one of the reasons that has made him abuse her as he has done. . _lady_.--indeed, she has been used very ill by him, or somebody for him. . _lady_.--yes, he has reported strange things, but they are all lies. . _lady_.--well; but pray, madam, what was the reason, if we may be so free, that she turned him off after she had entertained him so long? . _lady_.--oh, madam! reason enough; i wonder he should pretend, when he knew his own circumstances too, to court a lady of her fortune. . _lady_.--why, are not his circumstances good, then? . _lady_.--no, madam. good! alas, he has no bottom. . _lady_.--no bottom! why, you surprise me; we always looked upon him to be a man of substance, and that he was very well in the world. . _lady_.--it is all a cheat, madam; there's nothing in it; when it came to be made out, nothing at all in it. . _lady_.--that cannot be, madam; mr ---- has lived always in good reputation and good credit in his business. . _lady_.--it is all sunk again then, if it was so; i don't know. . _lady_.--why did she entertain him so long, then? . _lady_.--alas! madam, how could she know, poor lady, till her friends inquired into things? but when they came to look a little narrowly into it, they soon found reason to give her a caution, that he was not the man she took him for. . _lady_.--well, it is very strange; i am sure he passed for another man among us. . _lady_.--it must be formerly, then, for they tell me his credit has been sunk these three or four years; he had need enough indeed to try for a greater fortune, he wants it enough. . _lady_.--it is a sad thing when men look out for fortunes to heal their trade-breaches with, and make the poor wife patch up their old bankrupt credit. . _lady_.--especially, madam, when they know themselves to be gone so far, that even with the addition they can stand but a little while, and must inevitably bring the lady to destruction with them. . _lady_.--well, i could never have thought mr ---- was in such circumstances. . _lady_.--nor i; we always took him for a ten thousand pound man. . _lady_.--they say he was deep in the bubbles, madam. . _lady_.--nay, if he was gotten into the south sea, that might hurt him indeed, as it has done many a gentleman of better estates than he. . _lady_.--i don't know whether it was the south sea, or some other bubbles, but he was very near making a bubble of her, and £ into the bargain. . _lady_.--i am glad she has escaped him, if it be so; it is a sign her friends took a great deal of care of her. . _lady_.--he won't hold it long; he will have his desert, i hope; i don't doubt but we shall see him in the gazette quickly for a bankrupt. . _lady_.--if he does not draw in some innocent young thing that has her fortune in her own hands to patch him up. . _lady_.--i hope not, madam; i hear he is blown where he went since, and there, they say, they have made another discovery of him, in a worse circumstance than the other. . _lady_.--how, pray? . _lady_.--nothing, madam, but a particular kind of illness, &c. i need say no more. . _lady_.--you astonish me! why, i always thought him a very civil, honest, sober man. . _lady_.--this is a sad world, madam; men are seldom known now, till it is too late; but sometimes murder comes out seasonably, and so i understand it is here; for the lady had not gone so far with him, but that she could go off again. . _lady_.--nay, it was time to go off again, if it were so. . _lady_.--nay, madam, i do not tell this part of my own knowledge; i only heard so, but i am afraid there is too much in it. thus ended this piece of hellish wildfire, upon the character and credit of a tradesman, the truth of all which was no more than this--that the tradesman, disliking his first lady, left her, and soon after, though not presently, courted another of a superior fortune indeed, though not for that reason; and the first lady, provoked at being cast off, and, as she called it, slighted, raised all this clamour upon him, and persecuted him with it, wherever she was able. such a discourse as this at a tea-table, it could not be expected would be long a secret; it ran from one tittle-tattle society to another; and in every company, snow-ball like, it was far from lessening, and it went on, till at length it began to meet with some contradiction, and the tradesman found himself obliged to trace it as far and as well as he could. but it was to no purpose to confront it; when one was asked, and another was asked, they only answered they heard so, and they heard it in company in such a place, and in such a place, and some could remember where they had it, and some could not; and the poor tradesman, though he was really a man of substance, sank under it prodigiously: his new mistress, whom he courted, refused him, and would never hear any thing in his favour, or trouble herself to examine whether it were true or no--it was enough, she said, to her, that he was laden with such a report; and, if it was unjust, she was sorry for it, but the misfortune must be his, and he must place it to the account of his having made some enemies, which she could not help. as to his credit, the slander of the first lady's raising was spread industriously, and with the utmost malice and bitterness, and did him an inexpressible prejudice; every man he dealt with was shy of him; every man he owed any thing to came for it, and, as he said, he was sure he should see the last penny demanded; it was his happiness that he had wherewith to pay, for had his circumstances been in the least perplexed, the man had been undone; nay, as i have observed in another case, as his affairs might have lain, he might have been able to have paid forty shillings in the pound, and yet have been undone, and been obliged to break, and shut up his shop. it is true, he worked through it, and he carried it so far as to fix the malice of all the reports pretty much upon the first lady, and particularly so far as to discover that she was the great reason of his being so positively rejected by the other; but he could never fix it so upon her as to recover any damages of her, only to expose her a little, and that she did not value, having, as she said wickedly, had her full revenge of him, and so indeed she had. the sum of the matter is, and it is for this reason i tell you the story, that the reputation of a tradesman is too much at the mercy of men's tongues or women's either; and a story raised upon a tradesman, however malicious, however false, and however frivolous the occasion, is not easily suppressed, but, if it touches his credit, as a flash of fire it spreads over the whole air like a sheet; there is no stopping it. my inference from all this shall be very brief; if the tongues of every ill-disposed envious gossip, whether man-gossip or woman-gossip, for there are of both sorts, may be thus mischievous to the tradesman, and he is so much at the mercy of the tattling slandering part of the world, how much more should tradesmen be cautious and wary how they touch or wound the credit and character of one another. there are but a very few tradesmen who can say they are out of the reach of slander, and that the malice of enemies cannot hurt them with the tongue. here and there one, and those ancient and well established, may be able to defy the world; but there are so many others, that i think i may warn all tradesmen against making havoc of one another's reputation, as they would be tenderly used in the same case. and yet i cannot but say it is too much a tradesman's crime, i mean to speak slightly and contemptibly of other tradesman, their neighbours, or perhaps rivals in trade, and to run them down in the characters they give of them, when inquiry may be made of them, as often is the case. the reputation of tradesmen is too often put into the hands of their fellow-tradesmen, when ignorant people think to inform themselves of their circumstances, by going to those whose interest it is to defame and run them down. i know no case in the world in which there is more occasion for the golden rule, do as you would be done unto; and though you may be established, as you may think, and be above the reach of the tongues of others, yet the obligation of the rule is the same, for you are to do as you would be done unto, supposing that you were in the same condition, or on a level with the person. it is confessed that tradesmen do not study this rule in the particular case i am now speaking of. no men are apter to speak slightly and coldly of a fellow-tradesman than his fellow-tradesmen, and to speak unjustly so too; the reasons for which cannot be good, unless it can be pleaded for upon the foundation of a just and impartial concern in the interest of the inquirer; and even then nothing must be said but what is consistent with strict justice and truth: all that is more than that, is mere slander and envy, and has nothing of the christian in it, much less of the neighbour or friend. it is true that friendship may be due to the inquirer, but still so much justice is due to the person inquired of, that it is very hard to speak in such cases, and not be guilty of raising dust, as they call it, upon your neighbour, and at least hurting, if not injuring him. it is, indeed, so difficult a thing, that i scarce know what stated rule to lay down for the conduct of a tradesman in this case:--a tradesman at a distance is going to deal with another tradesman, my neighbour; and before he comes to bargain, or before he cares to trust him, he goes, weakly enough perhaps, to inquire of him, and of his circumstances, among his neighbours and fellow-tradesmen, perhaps of the same profession or employment, and who, among other things, it may be, are concerned by their interest, that this tradesman's credit should not rise too fast. what must be done in this case? if i am the person inquired of, what must i do? if i would have this man sink in his reputation, or be discredited, and if it is for my interest to have him cried down in the world, it is a sore temptation to me to put in a few words to his disadvantage; and yet, if i do it in gratification of my private views or interest, or upon the foot of resentment of any kind whatever, and let it be from what occasion it will, nay, however just and reasonable the resentment is, or may be, it is utterly unjust and unlawful, and is not only unfair as a man, but unchristian, and is neither less nor more than a secret revenge, which is forbidden by the laws of god and man. if, on the other hand, i give a good character of the man, or of his reputation, i mean, of his credit in business, in order to have the inquirer trust him, and at the same time know or believe that he is not a sound and good man (that is, as to trade, for it is his character in trade that i am speaking of), what am i doing then? it is plain i lay a snare for the inquirer, and am at least instrumental to his loss, without having really any design to hurt him; for it is to be supposed, before he came to me to inquire, i had no view of acting any thing to his prejudice. again, there is no medium, for to refuse or decline giving a character of the man, is downright giving him the worst character i can--it is, in short, shooting him through the head in his trade. a man comes to me for a character of my neighbouring tradesman; i answer him with a repulse to his inquiry thus-- _a_.--good sir, do not ask me the character of my neighbours--i resolve to meddle with nobody's character; pray, do not inquire of me. _b_.--well, but, sir, you know the gentleman; you live next door to him; you can tell me, if you please, all that i desire to know, whether he is a man in credit, and fit to be trusted, or no, in the way of his business. _a_.--i tell you, sir, i meddle with no man's business; i will not give characters of my neighbours--it is an ill office--a man gets no thanks for it, and perhaps deserves none. _b_.--but, sir, you would be willing to be informed and advised, if it were your own case. _a_.--it may be so, but i cannot oblige people to inform me. _b_.--but you would entreat it as a favour, and so i come to you. _a_.--but you may go to any body else. _b_.--but you are a man of integrity; i can depend upon what you say; i know you will not deceive me; and, therefore, i beg of you to satisfy me. _a_.--but i desire you to excuse me, for it is what i never do--i cannot do it. _b_.--but, sir, i am in a great strait; i am just selling him a great parcel of goods, and i am willing to sell them too, and yet i am willing to be safe, as you would yourself, if you were in my case. _a_.--i tell you, sir, i have always resolved to forbear meddling with the characters of my neighbours--it is an ill office. besides, i mind my own business; i do not enter into the inquiries after other people's affairs. _b_.--well, sir, i understand you, then; i know what i have to do. _a_.--what do you mean by that? _b_.--nothing, sir, but what i suppose you would have me understand by it. _a_.--i would have you understand what i say--namely, that i will meddle with nobody's business but my own. _b_.--and i say i understand you; i know you are a good man, and a man of charity, and loth to do your neighbours any prejudice, and that you will speak the best of every man as near as you can. _a_.--i tell you, i speak neither the best nor the worst--i speak nothing. _b_.--well, sir, that is to say, that as charity directs you to speak well of every man, so, when you cannot speak well, you refrain, and will say nothing; and you do very well, to be sure; you are a very kind neighbour. _a_.--but that is a base construction of my words; for i tell you, i do the like by every body. _b_.--yes, sir, i believe you do, and i think you are in the right of it--am fully satisfied. _a_.--you act more unjustly by me than by my neighbour; for you take my silence, or declining to give a character, to be giving an ill character. _b_.--no, sir, not for an ill character. _a_.--but i find you take it for a ground of suspicion. _b_.--i take it, indeed, for a due caution to me, sir; but the man may be a good man for all that, only-- _a_.--only what? i understand you--only you won't trust him with your goods. _b_.--but another man may, sir, for all that, so that you have been kind to your neighbours and to me too, sir--and you are very just. i wish all men would act so one by another; i should feel the benefit of it myself among others, for i have suffered deeply by ill tongues, i am sure. _a_.--well, however unjust you are to me, and to my neighbour too, i will not undeceive you at present; i think you do not deserve it. he used a great many more words with him to convince him that he did not mean any discredit to his neighbour tradesman; but it was all one; he would have it be, that his declining to give his said neighbour a good character was giving him an ill character, which the other told him was a wrong inference. however, he found that the man stood by his own notion of it, and declined trusting the tradesman with the goods, though he was satisfied he (the tradesman) was a sufficient man. upon this, he was a little uneasy, imagining that he had been the cause of it, as indeed he had, next to the positive humour of the inquirer, though it was not really his fault; neither was the construction the other made of it just to his intention, for he aimed at freeing himself from all inquiries of that nature, but found there was no prevailing with him to understand it any other way than he did; so, to requite the man a little in his own way, he contrived the following method: he met with him two or three days after, and asked him if he had sold his goods to the person his neighbour? 'no,' says he; 'you know i would not.' 'nay,' says the other, 'i only knew you said so; i did not think you would have acted so from what i said, nor do i think i gave you any reason.' 'why,' says he, 'i knew you would have given him a good character if you could, and i knew you were too honest to do it, if you were not sure it was just.' 'the last part i hope is true, but you might have believed me honest too, in what i did say, that i had resolved to give no characters of any body.' 'as to that, i took it, as any body would, to be the best and modestest way of covering what you would not have be disclosed, namely, that you could not speak as you would; and i also judged that you therefore chose to say nothing.' 'well, i can say no more but this; you are not just to me in it, and i think you are not just to yourself neither.' they parted again upon this, and the next day the first tradesman, who had been so pressed to give a character of his neighbour, sent a man to buy the parcel of goods of the other tradesman, and offering him ready money, bought them considerably cheaper than the neighbour-tradesman was to have given for them, besides reckoning a reasonable discount for the time, which was four months, that the first tradesman was to have given to his neighbour. as soon as he had done, he went and told the neighbour-tradesman what he had done, and the reason of it, and sold the whole parcel to him again, giving the same four months' credit for them as the first man was to have given, and taking the discount for time only to himself, gave him all the advantage of the buying, and gave the first man the mortification of knowing it all, and that the goods were not only for the same man, but that the very tradesman, whom he would not believe when he declined giving a character of any man in general, had trusted him with them. he pretended to be very angry, and to take it very ill; but the other told him, that when he came to him for a character of the man, and he told him honestly, that he would give no characters at all, that it was not for any ill to his neighbour that he declined it, he ought to have believed him; and that he hoped, when he wanted a character of any of his neighbours again, he would not come to him for it. this story is to my purpose in this particular, which is indeed very significant; that it is the most difficult thing of its kind in the world to avoid giving characters of our neighbouring tradesmen; and that, let your reasons for it be what they will, to refuse giving a character is giving a bad character, and is generally so taken, whatever caution or arguments you use to the contrary. in the next place, it is hard indeed, if an honest neighbour be in danger of selling a large parcel of goods to a fellow, who i may know it is not likely should be able to pay for them, though his credit may in the common appearance be pretty good at that time; and what must i do? if i discover the man's circumstances, which perhaps i am let into by some accident, i say, if i discover them, the man is undone; and if i do not, the tradesman, who is in danger of trusting him, is undone. i confess the way is clear, if i am obliged to speak at all in the case: the man unsound is already a bankrupt at bottom, and must fail, but the other man is sound and firm, if this disaster does not befall him: the first has no wound given him, but negatively; he stands where he stood before; whereas the other is drawn in perhaps to his own ruin. in the next place, the first is a knave, or rather thief, for he offers to buy, and knows he cannot pay; in a word, he offers to cheat his neighbour; and if i know it, i am so far confederate with him in the cheat. in this case i think i am obliged to give the honest man a due caution for his safety, if he desires my advice; i cannot say i am obliged officiously to go out of my way to do it, unless i am any way interested in the person--for that would be to dip into other men's affairs, which is not my proper work; and if i should any way be misinformed of the circumstances of the tradesman i am to speak of, and wrong him, i may be instrumental to bring ruin causelessly upon him. in a word, it is a very nice and critical case, and a tradesman ought to be very sure of what he says or does in such a case, the good or evil fate of his neighbour lying much at stake, and depending too much on the breath of his mouth. every part of this discourse shows how much a tradesman's welfare depends upon the justice and courtesy of his neighbours, and how nice and critical a thing his reputation is. this, well considered, would always keep a tradesman humble, and show him what need he has to behave courteously and obligingly among his neighbours; for one malicious word from a man much meaner than himself, may overthrow him in such a manner, as all the friends he has may not be able to recover him; a tradesman, if possible, should never make himself any enemies. but if it is so fatal a thing to tradesmen to give characters of one another, and that a tradesman should be so backward in it for fear of hurting his neighbour, and that, notwithstanding the character given should be just, and the particular reported of him should be true, with how much greater caution should we act in like cases where what is suggested is really false in fact, and the tradesman is innocent, as was the case in the tradesman mentioned before about courting the lady. if a tradesman may be ruined and undone by a true report, much more may he be so by a false report, by a malicious, slandering, defaming tongue. there is an artful way of talking of other people's reputation, which really, however some people salve the matter, is equal, if not superior, in malice to the worst thing they can say; this is, by rendering them suspected, talking doubtfully of their characters, and of their conduct, and rendering them first doubtful, and then strongly suspected. i don't know what to say to such a man. a gentleman came to me the other day, but i knew not what to say; i dare not say he is a good man, or that i would trust him with five hundred pounds myself; if i should say so, i should belie my own opinion. i do not know, indeed, he may be a good man at bottom, but i cannot say he minds his business; if i should, i must lie; i think he keeps a great deal of company, and the like. another, he is asked of the currency of his payments, and he answers suspiciously on that side too; i know not what to say, he may pay them at last, but he does not pay them the most currently of any man in the street, and i have heard saucy boys huff him at his door for bills, on his endeavouring to put them off; indeed, i must needs say i had a bill on him a few weeks ago for a hundred pounds, and he paid me very currently, and without any dunning, or often calling upon, but it was i believe because i offered him a bargain at that time, and i supposed he was resolved to put a good face upon his credit. a tradesman, that would do as he would be done by, should carefully avoid these people who come always about, inquiring after other tradesman's characters. there are men who make it their business to do thus; and as they are thereby as ready to ruin and blow up good fair-dealing tradesmen as others, so they do actually surprise many, and come at their characters earlier and nearer than they expect they would. tradesmen, i say, that will thus behave to one another, cannot be supposed to be men of much principle, but will be apt to lay hold of any other advantage, how unjust soever, and, indeed, will wait for an occasion of such advantages; and where is there a tradesman, but who, if he be never so circumspect, may some time or other give his neighbour, who watches for his halting, advantage enough against him. when such a malicious tradesman appears in any place, all the honest tradesmen about him ought to join to expose him, whether they are afraid of him or no: they should blow him among the neighbourhood, as a public nuisance, as a common _barrettor_, or raiser of scandal; by such a general aversion to him they would depreciate him, and bring him into so just a contempt, that no body would keep him company, much less credit any thing he said; and then his tongue would be no slander, and his breath would be no blast, and nobody would either tell him any thing, or hear any thing from him: and this kind of usage, i think, is the only way to put a stop to a defamer; for when he has no credit of his own left, he would be unable to hurt any of his neighbour's. chapter xvi of the tradesman's entering into partnership in trade, and the many dangers attending it there are some businesses which are more particularly accustomed to partnerships than others, and some that are very seldom managed without two, three, or four partners, and others that cannot be at all carried on without partnership; and there are those again, in which they seldom join partners together. mercers, linen-drapers, banking goldsmiths, and such considerable trades, are often, and indeed generally, carried on in partnership; but other meaner trades, and of less business, are carried on, generally speaking, single-handed. some merchants, who carry on great business in foreign ports, have what they call houses in those ports, where they plant and breed up their sons and apprentices; and these are such as i hinted could not carry on their business without partnership. the trading in partnership is not only liable to more hazards and difficulties, but it exposes the tradesman to more snares and disadvantages by a great deal, than the trading with a single hand does; and some of those snares are these:-- . if the partner is a stirring, diligent, capable man, there is danger of his slipping into the whole trade, and, getting in between you and home, by his application, thrusting you at last quite out; so that you bring in a snake into your chimney corner, which, when it is warmed and grown vigorous, turns about at you, and hisses you out of the house. it is with the tradesman, in the case of a diligent and active partner, as i have already observed it was in the case of a trusty and diligent apprentice, namely, that if the master does not appear constantly at the head of the business, and make himself be known by his own application and diligence to be what he is, he shall soon look to be what he is not, that is to say, one not concerned in the business. he will never fail to be esteemed the principal person concerned in the shop, and in the trade, who is principally and most constantly found there, acting at the head of every business; and be it a servant or a partner, the master or chief loses himself extremely by the advances the other makes of that kind; for, whenever they part again, either the apprentice by being out of his time, or the partner by the expiration of the articles of partnership, or by any other determination of their agreement, the customers most certainly desire to deal with the man whom they have so often been obliged by; and if they miss him, inquire after and follow him. it is true, the apprentice is the more dangerous of the two, because his separation is supposed to be more certain, and generally sooner than the partner; the apprentice is not known, and cannot have made his interest among the buyers, but for perhaps a year, or a year and a half, before his time expired: sooner than that he could not put himself in the way of being known and observed; and then, when his time is out, he certainly removes, unless he is taken into the shop as a partner, and that, indeed, prolongs the time, and places the injury at a greater distance, but still it makes it the more influencing when it comes; and unless he is brought some how or other into the family, and becomes one of the house, perhaps by marriage, or some other settled union with the master, he never goes off without making a great chasm in the master's affairs, and the more, by how much he has been more diligent and useful in the trade, the wounds of which the master seldom if ever recovers. if the partner were not an apprentice, but that they either came out of their times together, or near it, or had a shop and business before, but quitted it to come in, it may then be said that he brought part of the trade with him, and so increased the trade when he joined with the other in proportion to what he may be said to carry away when he went off; this is the best thing that can be said of a partnership; and then i have this to add, first, that the tradesman who took the partner in has a fair field, indeed, to act in with his partner, and must take care, by his constant attendance, due acquaintance with the customers, and appearing in every part of the business, to maintain not his interest only, but the appearance of his interest, in the shop or warehouse, that he may, on every occasion, and to every customer, not only be, but be known to be, the master and head of the business; and that the other is at best but a partner, and not a chief partner, as, in case of his absence and negligence, will presently be suggested; for he that chiefly appears will be always chief partner in the eye of the customers, whatever he is in the substance of the thing. this, indeed, is much the same case with what is said before of a diligent servant, and a negligent master, and therefore i forbear to enlarge upon it; but it is so important in both cases, that indeed it cannot well be mentioned too often: the master's full application, in his own person, is the only answer to both. he that takes a partner only to ease him of the toil of his business, that he may take his pleasure, and leave the drudgery, as they call it, to the partner, should take care not to do it till about seven years before he resolves to leave off trade, that, at the end of the partnership, he may be satisfied to give up the trade to his partner, or see him run away with it, and not trouble himself about it. but if he takes a partner at his beginning, with an intent, by their joint enlarged stock, to enlarge their business, and so carry on a capital trade, which perhaps neither of them were able to do by themselves, and which is the only justifiable reason for taking a partner at all, he must resolve then to join with his partner, not only in stock, but in mutual diligence and application, that the trade may flourish by their joint assistance and constant labour, as two oxen yoked together in the same draught, by their joint assistance, draw much more than double what they could either of them draw by their single strength; and this, indeed, is the only safe circumstance of a partnership: then, indeed, they are properly partners when they are assistants to one another, whereas otherwise they are like two gamesters striving to worm one another out, and to get the mastery in the play they are engaged in. the very word _partner_ imports the substance of the thing, and they are, as such, engaged to a mutual application, or they are no more partners, but rather one is the trading gentleman, and the other is the trading drudge; but even then, let them depend, the drudge will carry away the trade, and the profit too, at last. and this is the way how one partner may honestly ruin another, and for ought i know it is the only one: for it cannot be said but that the diligent partner acts honestly in acting diligently, and if the other did the same, they would both thrive alike; but if one is negligent and the other diligent, one extravagant and expensive, the other frugal and prudent, it cannot be said to be his fault that one is rich and the other poor--that one increases in the stock, and the other is lessened, and at last worked quite out of it. as a partner, then, is taken in only for ease, to abate the first tradesman's diligence, and take off the edge of his application, so far a partner, let him be as honest and diligent as he will, is dangerous to the tradesman--nay, the more honest and the more diligent he is, the more dangerous he is, and the more a snare to the tradesman that takes him in; and a tradesman ought to be very cautious in the adventure, for, indeed, it is an adventure--that he be not brought in time to relax his diligence, by having a partner, even contrary to his first intention; for laziness is a subtle insinuating thing, and it is a sore temptation to a man of ease and indolence to see his work done for him, and less need of him in the business than used to be, and yet the business to go on well too; and this danger is dormant, and lies unseen, till after several years it rises, as it were, out of its ambuscade, and surprises the tradesman, letting him see by his loss what his neglect has cost him. . but there are other dangers in partnership, and those not a few; for you may not only be remiss and negligent, remitting the weight of the business upon him, and depending upon him for its being carried on, by which he makes himself master, and brings you to be forgot in the business; but he may be crafty too, and designing in all this, and when he has thus brought you to be as it were _nobody_, he shall make himself be all _somebody_ in the trade, and in that particular he by degrees gets the capital interest, as well as stock in the trade, while the true original of the shop, who laid the foundation of the whole business, brought a trade to the shop, or brought commissions to the house, and whose the business more particularly is, is secretly supplanted, and with the concurrence of his own negligence--for without that it cannot be--is, as it were, laid aside, and at last quite thrust out. thus, whether honest or dishonest, the tradesman is circumvented, and the partnership is made fatal to him; for it was all owing to the partnership the tradesman was diligent before, understood his business, and kept close to it, gave up his time to it, and by employing himself, prevented the indolence which he finds breaking insensibly upon him afterwards, by being made easy, as they call it, in the assistance of a partner. . but there are abundance of other cases which make a partnership dangerous; for if it be so where the partner is honest and diligent, and where he works into the heart of the business by his industry and application, or by his craft and insinuation, what may it not be if he proves idle and extravagant; and if, instead of working him out, he may be said to play him out of the business, that is to say, prove wild, expensive, and run himself and his partner out by his extravagance? there are but too many examples of this kind; and here the honest tradesman has the labouring oar indeed; for instead of being assisted by a diligent industrious partner, whom on that account he took into the trade, he proves a loose, extravagant, wild fellow, runs abroad into company, and leaves him (for whose relief he was taken in) to bear the burden of the whole trade, which, perhaps, was too heavy for him before, and if it had not been so, he had not been prevailed with to have taken in a partner at all. this is, indeed, a terrible disappointment, and is very discouraging, and the more so, because it cannot be recalled; for a partnership is like matrimony, it is almost engaged in for better or for worse, till the years expire; there is no breaking it off, at least, not easily nor fairly, but all the inconveniences which are to be feared will follow and stare in your face: as, first, the partner in the first place draws out all his stock; and this sometimes is a blow fatal enough, for perhaps the partner cannot take the whole trade upon himself, and cannot carry on the trade upon his own stock: if he could, he would not have taken in a partner at all. this withdrawing the stock has sometimes been very dangerous to a partner; nay, has many times been the overthrow and undoing of him and of the family that is left. he that takes a partner into his trade on this account--namely, for the support of his stock, to enjoy the assistance of so much cash to carry on the trade, ought seriously to consider what he shall be able to do when the partner, breaking off the partnership, shall carry all his stock, and the improvement of it too, with him: perhaps the tradesman's stock is not much increased, perhaps not at all; nay, perhaps the stock is lessened, instead of being increased, and they have rather gone backward than forward. what shall the tradesman do in such a case? and how shall he bear the breach in his stock which that separation would make? thus he is either tied down to the partner, or the partner is pinned down to him, for he cannot separate without a breach. it is a sad truth to many a partner, that when the partnership comes to be finished and expired, the man would let his partner go, but the other cannot go without tearing him all to pieces whom he leaves behind him; and yet the partner being loose, idle, and extravagant, in a word, will ruin both if he stays. this is the danger of partnership in some of the best circumstances of it; but how hazardous and how fatal is it in other cases! and how many an honest and industrious tradesman has been prevailed with to take in a partner to ease himself in the weight of the business, or on several other accounts, some perhaps reasonable and prudent enough, but has found himself immediately involved in a sea of trouble, is brought into innumerable difficulties, concealed debts, and unknown incumbrances, such as he could no ways extricate himself out of, and so both have been unavoidably ruined together! these cases are so various and so uncertain, that it is not easy to enumerate them: but we may include the particulars in a general or two. . one partner may contract debts, even in the partnership itself, so far unknown to the other, as that the other may be involved in the danger of them, though he was not at all concerned in, or acquainted with, them at the same time they were contracted. . one partner may discharge debts for both partners; and so, having a design to be knavish, may go and receive money, and give receipts for it, and not bringing it to account, or not bringing the money into cash, may wrong the stock to so considerable a sum as may be to the ruin of the other partner. . one partner may confess judgment, or give bonds, or current notes in the name, and as for the account of the company, and yet convert the effects to his own private use, leaving the stock to be answerable for the value. . one partner may sell and give credit, and deliver parcels of goods to what sum, or what quantity, he thinks fit, and to whom, and so, by his indiscretion, or perhaps by connivance and knavery, lose to the stock what parcel of goods he pleases, to the ruin of the other partner, and bring themselves to be both bankrupt together. . nay, to sum up all, one partner may commit acts of bankruptcy without the knowledge of the other, and thereby subject the united stock, and both or all the partners, to the danger of a commission, when they may themselves know nothing of it till the blow is given, and given so as to be too late to be retrieved. all these, and many more, being the ill consequences and dangers of partnership in trade, i cannot but seriously warn the honest industrious tradesman, if possible, to stand upon his own legs, and go on upon his own bottom; to pursue his business diligently, but cautiously, and what we call fair and softly; not eagerly pushing to drive a vast trade, and enjoy but half of it, rather carry on a middling business, and let it be his own. there may be cases, indeed, which may have their exceptions to this general head of advice; partnerships may sometimes prove successful, and in some particular business they are more necessary than in others, and in some they tell us that they are absolutely necessary, though the last i can by no means grant; but be that as it will, there are so many cases more in number, and of great consequence too, which miscarry by the several perplexed circumstances, differing tempers, and open knavery of partners, that i cannot but give it as a friendly advice to all tradesmen--if possible, to avoid partnerships of all kinds. but if the circumstances of trade require partnerships, and the risk must be run, i would recommend to the tradesman not to enter into partnerships, but under the following circumstances:-- . not to take in any partner who should be allowed to carry on any separate business, in which the partnership is not concerned. depend upon it, whatever other business your partner carries on, you run the risk of it as much as you do of your own; and you run the risk with this particular circumstance too, that you have the hazard without the profit or success: that is, without a share in the profit or success, which is very unequal and unfair. i know cunning men will tell you, that there may be provision made so effectually in the articles of partnership, that the stock in partnership should be concerned in no other interest or engagements but its own; but let such cunning gentlemen tell me, if the partner meets with a disappointment in his other undertakings, which wounds him so deep as to break him, will it not affect the partnership thus far? . that it may cause his stock to be drawn hastily out, and perhaps violently too. . that it touches and taints the credit of the partner to be concerned with such a man; and though a man's bottom may support him, if it be very good, yet it is a blow to him, touches his credit, and makes the world stand a little at a stay about him, if it be no more, for a while, till they see that he shows himself upon the exchange, or at his shop-door again, in spite of all the apprehensions and doubts that have been handed about concerning him. either of these are so essential to the tradesman, whose partner thus sinks by his own private breaches, in which the parnership is not concerned, that it is worth while to caution the tradesman against venturing. and i must add, too, that many a tradesman has fallen under the disaster by the partner's affairs thus affecting him, though the immediate losses which the partner had suffered have not been charged upon him; and yet i believe it is not so easy to avoid being fallen upon for those debts also. it is certain, as i formerly noted, rumour will break a tradesman almost at any time. it matters not, at first, whether the rumour be true or false. what rumour can sit closer to a man in business--his own personal misfortunes excepted--than such as this-_that his partner is broke?_ that his partner has met with a loss, suppose an insurance, suppose a fall of stocks, suppose a bubble or a cheat, or we know not what, the partner is sunk, no man knows whether the partnership be concerned in it or no; and while it is not known, every man will suppose it, for mankind always think the worst of every thing. what can be a closer stroke at the poor tradesman? he knows not what his partner has done; he has reason to fear the worst; he even knows not himself, for a while, whether he can steer clear of the rocks or no; but soon recovers, knows his own circumstances, and struggles hard with the world, pays out his partner's stock, and gets happily over it. and it is well he does so, for that he is at the brink of ruin must be granted; and where one stands and keeps up his reputation and his business, there are twenty would be undone in the same circumstance. who, then, would run the venture of a partner, if it were possible to avoid it? and who, if they must have a partner, would have one that was concerned in separate business, in which the partnership was not engaged? . if you must have a partner, always choose to have the partner rather under than over you; by this i mean, take him in for a fifth, a fourth, or at most a third, never for a half. there are many reasons to be given for this, besides that of having the greater share of profits, for that i do not give as a reason here at all; but the principal reasons are these:--first, in case of any disaster in any of the particular supposed accidents which i have mentioned, and that you should be obliged to pay out your partner's stock, it will not be so heavy, or be so much a blow to you: and, secondly, you preserve to yourself the governing influence in your own business; you cannot be overruled, overawed, or dogmatically told, it shall, or shall not, be thus, or thus. he that takes in a partner for a third, has a partner servant; he that takes him in for a half, has a partner master--that is to say, a director, or preceptor: let your partner have always a lesser interest in the business than yourself, and be rather less acquainted with the business than yourself, at least not better. you should rather have a partner to be instructed, than a partner to instruct you; for he that teaches you, will always taunt you. . if you must have a partner, let him always be your junior, rather than your senior; by this i mean, your junior in business, whether he is so in years or not. there are many reasons why the tradesman should choose this, and particularly the same as the other of taking him in for a junior or inferior part of the trade--that is to say, to maintain the superiority of the business in his own hands; and this i mention, not at all upon account of the pride or vanity of the superiority, for that is a trifle compared to the rest; but that he may have the more authority to inspect the conduct of his partner, in which he is so much and so essentially concerned; and to inquire whether he is doing any thing, or taking any measures, dangerous or prejudicial to the stock, or to the credit of the partnership, that so if he finds any thing, he may restrain him, and prevent in time the mischief which would otherwise be inevitable to them both. there are many other advantages to a tradesman who is obliged to take a partner, by keeping in his own hands the major part of the trade, which are too long to repeat here; such as his being always able to put a check to any rash adventure, any launching out into bubbles and projects, and things dangerous to the business: and this is a very needful thing in a partnership, that one partner should be able to correct the rash resolves of another in hazardous cases. by this correcting of rash measures, i mean over-ruling them with moderation and temper, for the good of the whole, and for their mutual advantage. the romans frequently had two generals, or consuls, to command their armies in the field: one of which was to be a young man, that by his vigour and sprightly forwardness he might keep up the spirits and courage of the soldiers, encourage them to fight, and lead them on by his example; the other an old soldier, that by his experience in the military affairs, age, and counsels, he might a little abate the fire of his colleague, and might not only know how to fight, but know when to fight, that is to say, when to avoid fighting; and the want of this lost them many a victory, and the great battle of cannae in particular, in which , romans were killed in one day. to compare small things with great, i may say it is just so in the affair of trade. you should always join a sober grave head, weighed to business, and acquainted with trade, to the young trader, who having been young in the work will the easier give up his judgment to the other, and who is governed with the solid experience of the other; and so you join their ways together, the rash and the sedate, the grave and the giddy. again, if you must go into partnership, be sure, if possible, you take nobody into partnership but such as whose circumstances in trade you are fully acquainted with. such there are frequently to be had among relations and neighbours, and such, if possible, should be the man that is taken into partnership, that the hazard of unsound circumstances may be avoided. a man may else be taken into partnership who may be really bankrupt even before you take him; and such things have been done, to the ruin of many an honest tradesman. if possible, let your partner be a beginner, that his stock may be reasonably supposed to be free and unentangled; and let him be one that you know personally, and his circumstances, and did know even before you had any thoughts of engaging together. all these cautions are with a supposition that the partner must be had; but i must still give it as my opinion, in the case of such tradesmen as i have all along directed myself to, that if possible they should go on single-handed in trade; and i close it with this brief note, respecting the qualifications of a partner, as above, that, next to no partner, such a partner is best. chapter xvii of honesty in dealing, and lying there is some difference between an honest man and an honest tradesman; and though the distinction is very nice, yet, i must say, it is to be supported. trade cannot make a knave of an honest man, for there is a specific difference between honesty and knavery which can never be altered by trade or any other thing; nor can that integrity of mind which describes and is peculiar to a man of honesty be ever abated to a tradesman; the rectitude of his soul must be the same, and he must not only intend or mean honestly and justly, but he must do so; he must act honestly and justly, and that in all his dealings; he must neither cheat nor defraud, over-reach nor circumvent his neighbour, nor indeed anybody he deals with; nor must he design to do so, or lay any plots or snares to that purpose in his dealing, as is frequent in the general conduct of too many, who yet call themselves honest tradesmen, and would take it very ill to have any one tax their integrity. but after all this is premised, there are some latitudes, like poetical licences in other cases, which a tradesman is and must be allowed, and which by the custom and usage of trade he may give himself a liberty in, which cannot be allowed in other cases to any man, no, nor to the tradesman himself out of his business--i say, he may take some liberties, but within bounds; and whatever some pretenders to strict living may say, yet that tradesman shall pass with me for a very honest man, notwithstanding the liberty which he gives himself of this kind, if he does not take those liberties in an exorbitant manner; and those liberties are such as these. . the liberty of asking more than he will take. i know some people have condemned this practice as dishonest, and the quakers for a time stood to their point in the contrary practice, resolving to ask no more than they would take, upon any occasion whatsoever, and choosing rather to lose the selling of their goods, though they could afford sometimes to take what was offered, rather than abate a farthing of the price they had asked; but time and the necessities of trade made them wiser, and brought them off of that severity, and they by degrees came to ask, and abate, and abate again, just as other business tradesmen do, though not perhaps as some do, who give themselves a fuller liberty that way. indeed, it is the buyers that make this custom necessary; for they, especially those who buy for immediate use, will first pretend positively to tie themselves up to a limited price, and bid them a little and a little more, till they come so near the sellers' price, that they, the sellers, cannot find in their hearts to refuse it, and then they are tempted to take it, notwithstanding their first words to the contrary. it is common, indeed, for the tradesman to say, 'i cannot abate anything,' when yet they do and can afford it; but the tradesman should indeed not be understood strictly and literally to his words, but as he means it, namely, that he cannot reasonably abate, and that he cannot afford to abate: and there he may be in earnest, namely, that he cannot make a reasonable profit of his goods, if he is obliged to abate, and so the meaning is honest, that he cannot abate; and yet rather than not take your money, he may at last resolve to do it, in hopes of getting a better price for the remainder, or being willing to abate his ordinary gain, rather than disoblige the customer; or being perhaps afraid he should not sell off the quantity; and many such reasons may be given why he submits to sell at a lower price than he really intended, or can afford to do; and yet he cannot be said to be dishonest, or to lie, in saying at first he cannot, or could not, abate. a man in trade is properly to be said not to be able to do what he cannot do to his profit and advantage. the english cannot trade to hungary, and into slavonia--that is to say, they cannot do it to advantage; but it is better for them to trade to venice with their goods, and let the venetians carry on a trade into hungary through dalmatia, croatia, &c, and the like in other places. to bring it down to particular cases: one certain merchant cannot deal in one sort of goods which another merchant is eminent for; the other merchant is as free to the trade as he, but he cannot do it to profit; for he is unacquainted with the trade, and it is out of his way, and therefore he cannot do it. thus, to the case in hand. the tradesman says he cannot sell his goods under such a price, which in the sense of his business is true; that is to say, he cannot do it to carry on his trade with the usual and reasonable advantage which he ought to expect, and which others make in the same way of business. or, he cannot, without underselling the market, and undervaluing the goods, and seeming to undersell his neighbour-shopkeepers, to whom there is a justice due in trade, which respects the price of sale; and to undersell is looked upon as an unfair kind of trading. all these, and many more, are the reasons why a tradesman may be said not to lie, though he should say he _cannot_ abate, or _cannot_ sell his goods under such a price, and yet may after think fit to sell you his goods something lower than he so intended, or can afford to do, rather than lose your custom, or rather than lose the selling of his goods, and taking your ready money, which at that time he may have occasion for. in these cases, i cannot say a shopkeeper should be tied down to the literal meaning of his words in the price he asks, or that he is guilty of lying in not adhering stiffly to the letter of his first demand; though, at the same time, i would have every tradesman take as little liberty that way as may be: and if the buyer would expect the tradesman should keep strictly to his demand, he should not stand and haggle, and screw the shopkeeper down, bidding from one penny to another, to a trifle within his price, so, as it were, to push him to the extremity, either to turn away his customer for a sixpence, or some such trifle, or to break his word: as if he would say, i will force you to speak falsely, or turn me away for a trifle. in such cases, if, indeed, there is a breach, the sin is the buyer's: at least, he puts himself in the devil's stead, and makes himself both tempter and accuser; nor can i say that the seller is in that case so much to blame as the buyer. however, it were to be wished that on both sides buying and selling might be carried on without it; for the buyer as often says, 'i won't give a farthing more,' and yet advances, as the seller says, 'i can't abate a farthing,' and yet complies. these are, as i call them, _trading lies_; and it were to be wished they could be avoided on both sides; and the honest tradesman does avoid them as much as possible, but yet must not, i say, in all cases, be tied up to the strict, literal sense of that expression, _i cannot abate_, as above.[ ] . another trading licence is that of appointing, and promising payments of money, which men in business are oftentimes forced to make, and forced to break, without any scrupple; nay, and without any reproach upon their integrity. let us state this case as clearly as we can, and see how it stands as to the morality of it, for that is the point in debate. the credit usually given by one tradesman to another, as particularly by the merchant to the wholesale-man, and by the wholesale-man to the retailer, is such, that, without tying the buyer up to a particular day of payment, they go on buying and selling, and the buyer pays money upon account, as his convenience admits, and as the seller is content to take it. this occasions the merchant, or the wholesale-man, to go about, as they call it, _a-dunning_ among their dealers, and which is generally the work of every saturday. when the merchant comes to his customer the wholesale-man, or warehouse-keeper, for money, he tells him, 'i have no money, sir; i cannot pay you now; if you call next week, i will pay you.' next week comes, and the merchant calls again; but it is the same thing, only the warehouseman adds, 'well, i will pay you next week, _without fail.'_ when the week comes, he tells him he has met with great disappointments, and he knows not what to do, but desires his patience another week: and when the other week comes, perhaps he pays him, and so they go on. now, what is to be said for this? in the first place, let us look back to the occasion. this warehouse-keeper, or wholesale-man, sells the goods which he buys of the merchant--i say, he sells them to the retailers, and it is for that reason i place it first there. now, as they buy in smaller quantities than he did of the merchant, so he deals with more of them in number, and he goes about among them the same saturday, to get in money that he may pay his merchant, and he receives his bag full of promises, too, every where instead of money, and is put off from week to week, perhaps by fifty shopkeepers in a day; and their serving him thus obliges him to do the same to the merchant. again, come to the merchant. except some, whose circumstances are above it, they are by this very usage obliged to put off the blackwell-hall factor, or the packer, or the clothier, or whoever they deal with, in proportion; and thus promises go round for payment, and those promises are kept or broken as money comes in, or as disappointments happen; and all this while there is no breach of honesty, or parole; no lying, or supposition of it, among the tradesmen, either on one side or other. but let us come, i say, to the morality of it. to break a solemn promise is a kind of prevarication; that is certain, there is no coming off of it; and i might enlarge here upon the first fault, namely, of making the promise, which, say the strict objectors, they should not do. but the tradesman's answer is this: all those promises ought to be taken as they are made--namely, with a contingent dependence upon the circumstances of trade, such as promises made them by others who owe them money, or the supposition of a week's trade bringing in money by retail, as usual, both of which are liable to fail, or at least to fall short; and this the person who calls for the money knows, and takes the promise with those attending casualties; which if they fail, he knows the shopkeeper, or whoever he is, must fail him too. the case is plain, if the man had the money in cash, he need not make a promise or appointment for a farther day; for that promise is no more or less than a capitulation for a favour, a desire or condition of a week's forbearance, on his assurance, that if possible he will not fail to pay him at the time. it is objected, that the words _if possible_ should then be mentioned, which would solve the morality of the case: to this i must answer, that i own i think it needless, unless the man to whom the promise was made could be supposed to believe the promise was to be performed, whether it were possible or no; which no reasonable man can be supposed to do. there is a parallel case to this in the ordinary appointment of people to meet either at place or time, upon occasions of business. two friends make an appointment to meet the next day at such a house, suppose a tavern at or near the exchange: one says to the other, 'do not fail me at that time, for i will certainly be there;' the other answers, 'i will not fail.' some people, who think themselves more religious than others, or at least would be thought so, object against these positive appointments, and tell us we ought to say, 'i will, if it pleases god.' or i will, life and health permitting;[ ] and they quote the text for it, where our saviour expressly commands to use such a caution, and which i shall say nothing to lessen the force of. but to say a word to our present custom. since christianity is the public profession of the country, and we are to suppose we not only are christians ourselves, but that all those we are talking to, or of, are also christians, we must add that christianity supposes we acknowledge that life, and all the contingencies of life, are subjected to the dominion of providence, and liable to all those accidents which god permits to befall us in the ordinary course of our living in the world, therefore we expect to be taken in that sense in all such appointments; and it is but justice to us as christians, in the common acceptation of our words, that when i say, _i will certainly_ meet my friend at such a place, and at such a time, he should understand me to mean, if it pleases god to give me life and health, or that his providence permits me to come, or, as the text says, 'if the lord will;' for we all know that unless the lord will, i cannot meet, or so much as live. not to understand me thus, is as much as to say, you do not understand me to be a christian, or to act like a christian in any thing; and on the other hand, they that understand it otherwise, i ought not to understand them to be christians. nor should i be supposed to put any neglect or dishonour upon the government of providence in the world, or to suggest that i did not think myself subjected to it, because i omitted the words in my appointment. in like manner, when a man comes to me for money, i put him off: that, in the first place, supposes i have not the money by me, or cannot spare it to pay him at that time; if it were otherwise, it may be supposed i would pay him just then. he is then perhaps impatient, and asks me when i will pay him, and i tell him at such a time. this naturally supposes, that by that time i expect to be supplied, so as to be able to pay; i have current bills, or promises of money, to be paid me, or i expect the ordinary takings in my shop or warehouse will supply me to make good my promise: thus my promise is honest in its foundation, because i have reason to expect money to come in to make me in a condition to perform it; but so it falls out, contrary to my expectation, and contrary to the reason of things, i am disappointed, and cannot do it; i am then, indeed, a trespasser upon my creditor, whom i ought to have paid, and i am under affliction enough on that account, and i suffer in my reputation for it also; but i cannot be said to be a liar, an immoral man, a man that has no regard to my promise, and the like; for at the same time i have perhaps used my utmost endeavour to do it, but am prevented by many several men breaking promise with me, and i am no way able to help myself. it is objected to this, that then i should not make my promises absolute, but conditional. to this i say, that the promises, as is above observed, are really not absolute, but conditional in the very nature of them, and are understood so when they are made, or else they that hear them do not understand them, as all human appointments ought to be understood; i do confess, it would be better not to make an absolute promise at all, but to express the condition or reserve with the promise, and say, 'i will if i can,' or, 'i will if people are just to me, and perform their promises to me.' but to this i answer, the importunity of the person who demands the payment will not permit it--nothing short of a positive promise will satisfy--they never believe the person intends to perform if he makes the least reserve or condition in his promise, though, at the same time, they know that even the nature of the promise and the reason of the promise strongly implies the condition--i say, the importunity of the creditor occasions the breach, which he reproaches the debtor with the immorality of.[ ] custom, indeed, has driven us beyond the limits of our morals in many things, which trade makes necessary, and which we cannot now avoid; so that if we must pretend to go back to the literal sense of the command; if our yea must be yea, and our nay nay; if no man must go beyond, or defraud his neighbour; if our conversation must be without covetousness, and the like--why, then, it is impossible for tradesmen to be christians, and we must unhinge all business, act upon new principles in trade, and go on by new rules--in short, we must shut up shop, and leave off trade, and so in many things we must leave off living; for as conversation is called life, we must leave off to converse: all the ordinary communication of life is now full of lying; and what with table-lies, salutation-lies, and trading-lies, there is no such thing as every man speaking truth with his neighbour. but this is a subject would launch me out beyond the bounds of a chapter, and make a book by itself. i return to the case particularly in hand--promises of payment of money. men in trade, i say, are under this unhappy necessity, they are forced to make them, and they are forced to break them; the violent pressing and dunning, and perhaps threatening too, of the creditor, when the poor shopkeeper cannot comply with his demand, forces him to promise; in short, the importunate creditor will not be otherwise put off, and the poor shopkeeper, almost worried, and perhaps a little terrified too, and afraid of him, is glad to do and say any thing to pacify him, and this extorts a promise, which, when the time comes, he is no more able to perform than he was before, and this multiplies promises, and consequently breaches, so much of which are to be placed to the accounts of force, that i must acknowledge, though the debtor is to blame, the creditor is too far concerned in the crime of it to be excused, and it were to be wished some other method could be found out to prevent the evil, and that tradesmen would resolve with more courage to resist the importunities of the creditor, be the consequence what it would, rather than break in upon their morals, and load their consciences with the reproaches of it for all their lives after. i remember i knew a tradesman, who, labouring long under the ordinary difficulties of men embarrassed in trade, and past the possibility of getting out, and being at last obliged to stop and call his people together, told me, that after he was broke, though it was a terrible thing to him at first too, as it is to most tradesmen, yet he thought himself in a new world, when he was at a full stop, and had no more the terror upon him of bills coming for payment, and creditors knocking at his door to dun him, and he without money to pay. he was no more obliged to stand in his shop, and be bullied and ruffled by his creditors, nay, by their apprentices and boys, and sometimes by porters and footmen, to whom he was forced to give good words, and sometimes strain his patience to the utmost limits: he was now no more obliged to make promises, which he knew he could not perform, and break promises as fast as he made them, and so lie continually both to god and man; and, he added, the ease of his mind which he felt upon that occasion was so great, that it balanced all the grief he was in at the general disaster of his affairs; and, farther, that even in the lowest of his circumstances which followed, he would not go back to live as he had done, in the exquisite torture of want of money to pay his bills and his duns. nor was it any satisfaction to him to say, that it was owing to the like breach of promise in the shopkeepers, and gentlemen, and people whom he dealt with, who owed him money, and who made no conscience of promising and disappointing him, and thereby drove him to the necessity of breaking his own promises; for this did not satisfy his mind in the breaches of his word, though they really drove him to the necessity of it: but that which lay heaviest upon him was the violence and clamour of creditors, who would not be satisfied without such promises, even when he knew, or at least believed, he should not be able to perform. nay, such was the importunity of one of his merchants, that when he came for money, and he was obliged to put him off, and to set him another day, the merchant would not be satisfied, unless he would swear that he would pay him on that day without fail. 'and what said you to him?' said i. 'say to him!' said he, 'i looked him full in the face, and sat me down without speaking a word, being filled with rage and indignation at him; but after a little while he insisted again, and asked me what answer i would make him, at which i smiled, and asked him, if he were in earnest? he grew angry then, and asked me if i laughed at him, and if i thought to laugh him out of his money? i then asked him, if he really did expect i should swear that i would pay him the next week, as i proposed to promise? he told me, yes, he did, and i should swear it, or pay him before he went out of my warehouse. i wondered, indeed, at the discourse, and at the folly of the merchant, who, i understood afterwards, was a foreigner; and though i thought he had been in jest at first, when he assured me he was not, i was curious to hear the issue, which at first he was loth to go on with, because he knew it would bring about all the rest; but i pressed him to know--so he told me that the merchant carried it to such a height as put him into a furious passion, and, knowing he must break some time or other, he was resolved to put an end to his being insulted in that manner; so at last he rose up in a rage, told the merchant, that as no honest man could take such an oath, unless he had the money by him to pay it, so no honest man could ask such a thing of him; and that, since he must have an answer, his answer was, he would not swear such an oath for him, nor any man living, and if he would not be satisfied without it, he might do his worst--and so turned from him; and knowing the man was a considerable creditor, and might do him a mischief, he resolved to shut up that very night, and did so, carrying all his valuable goods with him into the mint, and the next day he heard that his angry creditor waylaid him the same afternoon to arrest him, but he was too quick for him; and, as he said, though it almost broke his heart to shut up his shop, yet that being delivered from the insulting temper of his creditor, and the perpetual perplexities of want of money to pay people when they dunned him, and, above all, from the necessity of making solemn promises for trifling sums, and then breaking them again, was to him like a load taken off his back when he was weary, and could stand under it no longer; it was a terror to him, he said, to be continually lying, breaking faith with all mankind, and making promises which he could not perform. this necessarily brings me to observe here, and it is a little for the ease of the tradesman's mind in such severe cases, that there is a distinction to be made in this case between wilful premeditated lying, and the necessity men may be driven to by their disappointments, and other accidents of their circumstances, to break such promises, as they had made with an honest intention of performing them. he that breaks a promise, however solemnly made, may be an honest man, but he that makes a promise with a design to break it, or with no resolution of performing it, cannot be so: nay, to carry it farther, he that makes a promise, and does not do his endeavour to perform it, or to put himself into a condition to perform it, cannot be an honest man. a promise once made supposes the person willing to perform it, if it were in his power, and has a binding influence upon the person who made it, so far as his power extends, or that he can within the reach of any reasonable ability perform the conditions; but if it is not in his power to perform it, as in this affair of payment of money is often the case, the man cannot be condemned as dishonest, unless it can be made appear, either . that when he made the promise, he knew he should not be able to perform it; or, . that he resolved when he made the promise not to perform it, though he should be in a condition to do it. and in both these cases the morality of promising cannot be justified, any more than the immorality of not performing it. but, on the other hand, the person promising, honestly intending when he made the appointment to perform it if possible, and endeavouring faithfully to be able, but being rendered unable by the disappointment of those on whose promises he depended for the performance of his own; i cannot say that such a tradesman can be charged with lying, or with any immorality in promising, for the breach was not properly his own, but the people's on whom he depended; and this is justified from what i said before, namely, that every promise of that kind supposes the possibility of such a disappointment, even in the very nature of its making; for, if the man were not under a moral incapacity of payment, he would not promise at all, but pay at the time he promised. his promising, then, implies that he has only something future to depend upon, to capacitate him for the payment; that is to say, the appointments of payment by other tradesmen, who owe him (that promises) the money, or the daily supply from the ordinary course of his trade, suppose him a retailer in a shop, and the like; all which circumstances are subject to contingencies and disappointments, and are known to be so by the person to whom the promise is made; and it is with all those contingencies and possibilities of disappointment, that he takes or accepts the tradesman's promise, and forbears him, in hopes that he will be able to perform, knowing, that unless he receives money as above, he cannot. i must, however, acknowledge, that it is a very mortifying thing to a tradesman, whether we suppose him to be one that values his credit in trade, or his principle as to honest dealing, to be obliged to break his word; and therefore, where men are not too much under the hatches to the creditor, and they can possibly avoid it, a tradesman should not make his promises of payment so positive, but rather conditional, and thereby avoid both the immorality and the discredit of breaking his word; nor will any tradesman, i hope, harden himself in a careless forwardness to promise, without endeavouring or intending to perform, from any thing said in this chapter; for be the excuse for it as good as it will, as to the point of strict honesty, he can have but small regard to his own peace of mind, or to his own credit in trade, who will not avoid it as much as possible. footnotes: [ ] [the practice of haggling about prices is now very properly abandoned by all respectable dealers in goods, greatly to the comfort of both sellers and buyers.] [ ] [it was a fashion of trade in defoe's time, and down to a somewhat later period, to thrust the phrase 'god willing' into almost every promise or announcement, the purport of which might possibly be thwarted by death or any other accident. the phrase, in particular, appeared at the beginning of all letters in which a merchant announced his design of visiting retail dealers in the provinces; as, 'god willing, i shall have the honour of waiting on you on the th proximo:' hence english _riders_, or commercial travellers, came to be known in scotland by the nickname of god-willings.' this pious phraseology seems now to be banished from all mercantile affairs, except the shipping of goods.] [ ] [notwithstanding all this ingenious reasoning, we cannot help thinking that it would be better if conditional promises were made in conditional language. it is not necessarily to be understood in all cases that a direct unreserved promise means something conditional, so that there is a liability to being much deceived and grievously disappointed by all such promises. a sound morality certainly demands that the tradesman should use the practices described in the text as rarely, and with as much reluctance, as possible, and that, like other men, he should make his words, as nearly as may be, the echo of his thoughts.] chapter xviii of the customary frauds of trade, which honest men allow themselves to practise, and pretend to justify as there are trading lies which honest men tell, so there are frauds in trade, which tradesmen daily practise, and which, notwithstanding, they think are consistent with their being honest men. it is certainly true, that few things in nature are simply unlawful and dishonest, but that all crime is made so by the addition and concurrence of circumstances; and of these i am now to speak: and the first i take notice of, is that of taking and repassing, or putting off, counterfeit or false money. it must be confessed, that calling in the old money in the time of the late king william was an act particularly glorious to that reign, and in nothing more than this, that it delivered trade from a terrible load, and tradesmen from a vast accumulated weight of daily crime. there was scarce a shopkeeper that had not a considerable quantity or bag full of false and unpassable money; not an apprentice that kept his master's cash, but had an annual loss, which they sometimes were unable to support, and sometimes their parents and friends were called upon for the deficiency. the consequence was, that every raw youth or unskilful body, that was sent to receive money, was put upon by the cunning tradesmen, and all the bad money they had was tendered in payment among the good, that by ignorance or oversight some might possibly be made to pass; and as these took it, so they were not wanting again in all the artifice and sleight of hand they were masters of, to put it off again; so that, in short, people were made bites and cheats to one another in all their business; and if you went but to buy a pair of gloves, or stockings, or any trifle, at a shop, you went with bad money in one hand, and good money in the other, proffering first the bad coin, to get it off, if possible, and then the good, to make up the deficiency, if the other was rejected. thus, people were daily upon the catch to cheat and surprise one another, if they could; and, in short, paid no good money for anything, if they could help it. and how did we triumph, if meeting with some poor raw servant, or ignorant woman, behind a counter, we got off a counterfeit half-crown, or a brass shilling, and brought away their goods (which were worth the said half-crown or shilling, if it had been good) for a half-crown that was perhaps not worth sixpence, or for a shilling not worth a penny: as if this were not all one with picking the shopkeeper's pocket, or robbing his house! the excuse ordinarily given for this practice was this--namely, that it came to us for good; we took it, and it only went as it came; we did not make it, and the like; as if, because we had been basely cheated by a, we were to be allowed to cheat b; or that because c had robbed our house, that therefore we might go and rob d. and yet this was constantly practised at that time over the whole nation, and by some of the honestest tradesmen among us, if not by all of them. when the old money was, as i have said, called in, this cheating trade was put to an end, and the morals of the nation in some measure restored--for, in short, before that, it was almost impossible for a tradesman to be an honest man; but now we begin to fall into it again, and we see the current coin of the kingdom strangely crowded with counterfeit money again, both gold and silver; and especially we have found a great deal of counterfeit foreign money, as particularly portugal and spanish gold, such as moydores and spanish pistoles, which, when we have the misfortune to be put upon with them, the fraud runs high, and dips deep into our pockets, the first being twenty-seven shillings, and the latter seventeen shillings. it is true, the latter being payable only by weight, we are not often troubled with them; but the former going all by tale, great quantities of them have been put off among us. i find, also, there is a great increase of late of counterfeit money of our own coin, especially of shillings, and the quantity increasing, so that, in a few years more, if the wicked artists are not detected, the grievance may be in proportion as great as it was formerly, and perhaps harder to be redressed, because the coin is not likely to be any more called in, as the old smooth money was. what, then, must be done? and how must we prevent the mischief to conscience and principle which lay so heavy upon the whole nation before? the question is short, and the answer would be as short, and to the purpose, if people would but submit to the little loss that would fall upon them at first, by which they would lessen the weight of it as they go on, as it would never increase to such a formidable height as it was at before, nor would it fall so much upon the poor as it did then. first, i must lay it down as a stated rule or maxim, in the moral part of the question--that to put off counterfeit base money for good money, knowing it to be counterfeit, is dishonest and knavish. nor will it take off from the crime of it, or lessen the dishonesty, to say, 'i took it for good and current money, and it goes as it comes;' for, as before, my having been cheated does not authorise me to cheat any other person, so neither was it a just or honest thing in that person who put the bad money upon me, if they knew it to be bad; and if it were not honest in them, how can it be so in me? if, then, it came by knavery, it should not go by knavery--that would be, indeed, to say, it goes as it comes, in a literal sense; that is to say, it came by injustice, and i shall make it go so: but that will not do in matters of right and wrong. the laws of our country, also, are directly against the practice; the law condemns the coin as illegal--that is to say, it is not current money, or, as the lawyers style it, it is not lawful money of england. now, every bargain or agreement in trade, is in the common and just acceptation, and the language of trade, made for such a price or rate, in the current money of england; and though you may not express it in words at length, it is so understood, as much as if it were set down in writing. if i cheapen any thing at a shop, suppose it the least toy or trifle, i ask them, 'what must you have for it?' the shopkeeper answers--so much; suppose it were a shilling, what is the english but this--one shilling of lawful money of england? and i agree to give that shilling; but instead of it give them a counterfeit piece of lead or tin, washed over, to make it look like a shilling. do i pay them what i bargained for? do i give them one shilling of lawful money of england? do i not put a cheat upon them, and act against justice and mutual agreement? to say i took this for the lawful money of england, will not add at all, except it be to the fraud; for my being deceived does not at all make it be lawful money: so that, in a word, there can be nothing in that part but increasing the criminal part, and adding one knave more to the number of knaves which the nation was encumbered with before. the case to me is very clear, namely, that neither by law, justice, nor conscience, can the tradesman put off his bad money after he has taken it, if he once knows it to be false and counterfeit money. that it is against the law is evident, because it is not good and lawful money of england; it cannot be honest, because you do not pay in the coin you agreed for, or perform the bargain you made, or pay in the coin expected of you; and it is not just, because you do not give a valuable consideration for the goods you buy, but really take a tradesman's goods away, and return dross and dirt to him in the room of it. the medium i have to propose in the room of this, is, that every man who takes a counterfeit piece of money, and knows it to be such, should immediately destroy it--that is to say, destroy it as money, cut it in pieces; or, as i have seen some honest tradesmen do, nail it up against a post, so that it should go no farther. it is true, this is sinking so much upon himself, and supporting the credit of the current coin at his own expense, and he loses the whole piece, and this tradesmen are loth to do: but my answer is very clear, that thus they ought to do, and that sundry public reasons, and several public benefits, would follow to the public, in some of which he might have his share of benefit hereafter, and if he had not, yet he ought to do it. first, by doing thus, he puts a stop to the fraud--that piece of money is no more made the instrument to deceive others, which otherwise it might do; and though it is true that the loss is only to the last man, that is to say, in the ordinary currency of the money, yet the breach upon conscience and principle is to every owner through whose hands that piece of money has fraudulently passed, that is to say, who have passed it away for good, knowing it to be counterfeit; so that it is a piece of good service to the public to take away the occasion and instrument of so much knavery and deceit. secondly, he prevents a worse fraud, which is, the buying and selling such counterfeit money. this was a very wicked, but open trade, in former days, and may in time come to be so again: fellows went about the streets, crying '_brass money, broken or whole;'_ that is to say, they would give good money for bad. it was at first pretended that they were obliged to cut it in pieces, and if you insisted upon it, they would cut it in pieces before your face; but they as often got it without that ceremony, and so made what wicked shifts they could to get it off again, and many times did put it off for current money, after they had bought it for a trifle. thirdly, by this fraud, perhaps, the same piece of money might, several years after, come into your hands again, after you had sold it for a trifle, and so you might lose by the same shilling two or three times over, and the like of other people; but if men were obliged to demolish all the counterfeit money they take, and let it go no farther, they they would be sure the fraud could go no farther, nor would the quantity be ever great at a time; for whatever quantity the false coiners should at any time make, it would gradually lessen and sink away, and not a mass of false and counterfeit coin appear together, as was formerly the case, and which lost the nation a vast sum of money to call in. it has been the opinion of some, that a penalty should be inflicted upon those who offered any counterfeit money in payment; but besides that, there is already a statute against uttering false money, knowing it to be such. if any other or farther law should be made, either to enforce the statute, or to have new penalties added, they would still fall into the same difficulties as in the act. . that innocent men would suffer, seeing many tradesmen may take a piece of counterfeit money in tale with other money, and really and _bona fide_ not know it, and so may offer it again as innocently as they at first took it ignorantly; and to bring such into trouble for every false shilling which they might offer to pay away without knowing it, would be to make the law be merely vexatious and tormenting to those against whom it was not intended, and at the same time not to meddle with the subtle crafty offender whom it was intended to punish, and who is really guilty. . such an act would be difficultly executed, because it would still be difficult to know who did knowingly utter false money, and who did not; which is the difficulty, indeed, in the present law--so that, upon the whole, such a law would no way answer the end, nor effectually discover the offender, much less suppress the practice. but i am not upon projects and schemes--it is not the business of this undertaking. but a general act, obliging all tradesmen to suppress counterfeit money, by refusing to put it off again, after they knew it to be counterfeit, and a general consent of tradesmen to do so; this would be the best way to put a stop to the practice, the morality of which is so justly called in question, and the ill consequences of which to trade are so very well known; nor will any thing but a universal consent of tradesmen, in the honest suppressing of counterfeit money, ever bring it to pass. in the meantime, as to the dishonesty of the practice, however popular it is grown at this time, i think it is out of question; it can have nothing but custom to plead for it, which is so far from an argument, that i think the plea is criminal in itself, and really adds to its being a grievance, and calls loudly for a speedy redress. another trading fraud, which, among many others of the like nature, i think worth speaking of, is the various arts made use of by tradesmen to set off their goods to the eye of the ignorant buyer. i bring this in here, because i really think it is something of kin to putting off counterfeit money; every false gloss put upon our woollen manufactures, by hot-pressing, folding, dressing, tucking, packing, bleaching, &c, what are they but washing over a brass shilling to make it pass for sterling? every false light, every artificial side-window, sky-light, and trunk-light we see made to show the fine hollands, lawns, cambrics, &c. to advantage, and to deceive the buyer--what is it but a counterfeit coin to cheat the tradesman's customers?--an _ignis fatuus_ to impose upon fools and ignorant people, and make their goods look finer than they are? but where in trade is there any business entirely free from these frauds? and how shall we speak of them, when we see them so universally made use of? either they are honest, or they are not. if they are not, why do we, i say, universally make use of them?--if they are honest, why so much art and so much application to manage them, and to make goods appear fairer and finer to the eye than they really are?--which, in its own nature, is evidently a design to cheat, and that in itself is criminal, and can be no other. and yet there is much to be said for setting goods out to the best advantage too; for in some goods, if they are not well dressed, well pressed, and packed, the goods are not really shown in a true light; many of our woollen manufactures, if brought to market rough and undressed, like a piece of cloth not carried to the fulling or thicking mill, it does not show itself to a just advantage, nay, it does not show what it really is; and therefore such works as may be proper for so far setting it forth to the eye may be necessary. for example: the cloths, stuffs, serges, druggets, &c, which are brought to market in the west and northern parts of england, and in norfolk, as they are bought without the dressing and making up, it may be said of them that they are brought to market unfinished, and they are bought there again by the wholesale dealers, or cloth-workers, tuckers, and merchants, and they carry them to their warehouses and workhouses, and there they go through divers operations again, and are finished for the market; nor, indeed, are they fit to be shown till they are so; the stuffs are in the grease, the cloth is in the oil, they are rough and foul, and are not dressed, and consequently not finished; and as our buyers do not understand them till they are so dressed, it is no proper finishing the goods to bring them to market before--they are not, indeed, properly said to be made till that part is done. therefore i cannot call all those setting-out of goods to be knavish and false; but when the goods, like a false shilling, are to be set out with fraud and false colours, and made smooth and shining to delude the eye, there, where they are so, it is really a fraud; and though in some cases it extremely differs, yet that does not excuse the rest by any means. the packers and hot-pressers, tuckers, and cloth-workers, are very necessary people in their trades, and their business is to set goods off to the best advantage; but it may be said, too, that their true and proper business is to make the goods show what really they are, and nothing else. it is true, as above, that in the original dress, as a piece of cloth or drugget, or stuff, comes out of the hand of the maker, it does not show itself as it really is, nor what it should and ought to show: thus far these people are properly called finishers of the manufactures, and their work is not lawful only, but it is a doing justice to the manufacture. but if, by the exuberances of their art, they set the goods in a false light, give them a false gloss, a finer and smoother surface than really they have: this is like a painted jade, who puts on a false colour upon her tawny skin to deceive and delude her customers, and make her seem the beauty which she has no just claim to the name of. so far as art is thus used to show these goods to be what they really are not, and deceive the buyer, so far it is a trading fraud, which is an unjustifiable practice in business, and which, like coining of counterfeit money, is making goods to pass for what they really are not; and is done for the advantage of the person who puts them off, and to the loss of the buyer, who is cheated and deceived by the fraud. the making false lights, sky-lights, trunks, and other contrivances, to make goods look to be what they are not, and to deceive the eye of the buyer, these are all so many brass shillings washed over, in order to deceive the person who is to take them, and cheat him of his money; and so far these false lights are really criminal, they are cheats in trade, and made to deceive the world; to make deformity look like beauty, and to varnish over deficiencies; to make goods which are ordinary in themselves appear fine; to make things which are ill made look well; in a word, they are cheats in themselves, but being legitimated by custom, are become a general practice; the honestest tradesmen have them, and make use of them; the buyer knows of it, and suffers himself to be so imposed upon; and, in a word, if it be a cheat, as no doubt it is, they tell us that yet it is a universal cheat, and nobody trades without it; so custom and usage make it lawful, and there is little to be said but this, _si populus vult decepi, decipiatur_--if the people will be cheated, let them be cheated, or they shall be cheated. i come next to the setting out their goods to the buyer by the help of their tongue; and here i must confess our _shop rhetoric_ is a strange kind of speech; it is to be understood in a manner by itself; it is to be taken, not in a latitude only, but in such a latitude as indeed requires as many flourishes to excuse it, as it contains flourishes in itself. the end of it, indeed, is corrupt, and it is also made up of a corrupt composition; it is composed of a mass of rattling flattery to the buyer, and that filled with hypocrisy, compliment, self-praises, falsehood, and, in short, a complication of wickedness; it is a corrupt means to a vicious end: and i cannot see any thing in it but what a wise man laughs at, a good man abhors, and any man of honesty avoids as much as possible. the shopkeeper ought, indeed, to have a good tongue, but he should not make a common prostitute of his tongue, and employ it to the wicked purpose of abusing and imposing upon all that come to deal with him. there is a modest liberty, which trading licence, like the poetic licence, allows to all the tradesmen of every kind: but tradesmen ought no more to lie behind the counter, than the parsons ought to talk treason in the pulpit. let them confine themselves to truth, and say what they will. but it cannot be done; a talking rattling mercer, or draper, or milliner, behind his counter, would be worth nothing if he should confine himself to that mean silly thing called _truth_--they must lie; it is in support of their business, and some think they cannot live without it; but i deny that part, and recommend it, i mean to the tradesmen i am speaking of, to consider what a scandal it is upon trade, to pretend to say that a tradesman cannot live without lying, the contrary to which may be made appear in almost every article. on the other hand, i must do justice to the tradesmen, and must say, that much of it is owing to the buyers--they begin the work, and give the occasion. it was the saying of a very good shopman once upon this occasion, 'that their customers would not be pleased without lying; and why,' said he, 'did solomon reprove the buyer?--he said nothing to the shopkeeper--"it is naught, it is naught," says the buyer; "but when he goes away, then he boasteth" (prov. xx. .) the buyer telling us,' adds he, 'that every thing is worse than it is, forces us, in justifying its true value, to tell them it is better than it is.' it must be confessed, this verbose way of trading is most ridiculous, as well as offensive, both in buyer and seller; and as it adds nothing to the goodness or value of the goods, so, i am sure, it adds nothing to the honesty or good morals of the tradesman, on one side or other, but multiplies trading-lies on every side, and brings a just reproach on the integrity of the dealer, whether he be the buyer or seller. it was a kind of a step to the cure of this vice in trade, for such it is, that there was an old office erected in the city of london, for searching and viewing all the goods which were sold in bulk, and could not be searched into by the buyer--this was called _garbling_; and the garbler having viewed the goods, and caused all damaged or unsound goods to be taken out, set his seal upon the case or bags which held the rest, and then they were vouched to be marketable, so that when the merchant and the shopkeeper met to deal, there was no room for any words about the goodness of the wares; there was the garbler's seal to vouch that they were marketable and good, and if they were otherwise, the garbler was answerable. this respected some particular sorts of goods only, and chiefly spices and drugs, and dye-stuffs, and the like. it were well if some other method than that of a rattling tongue could be found out, to ascertain the goodness and value of goods between the shopkeeper and the retail buyer, that such a flux of falsehoods and untruths might be avoided, as we see every day made use of to run up and run down every thing that is bought or sold, and that without any effect too; for, take it one time with another, all the shopkeeper's lying does not make the buyer like the goods at all the better, nor does the buyer's lying make the shopkeeper sell the cheaper. it would be worth while to consider a little the language that passes between the tradesman and his customer over the counter, and put it into plain homespun english, as the meaning of it really imports. we would not take that usage if it were put into plain words--it would set all the shopkeepers and their customers together by the ears, and we should have fighting and quarrelling, instead of bowing and curtseying, in every shop. let us hark a little, and hear how it would sound between them. a lady comes into a mercer's shop to buy some silks, or to the laceman's to buy silver laces, or the like; and when she pitches upon a piece which she likes, she begins thus: _lady_.--i like that colour and that figure well enough, but i don't like the silk--there is no substance in it. _mer._--indeed, madam, your ladyship lies--it is a very substantial silk. _lady_.-no, no! you lie indeed, sir; it is good for nothing; it will do no service. _mer._--pray, madam, feel how heavy it is; you will find it is a lie; the very weight of it may satisfy you that you lie, indeed, madam. _lady_.--come, come, show me a better piece; i am sure you have better. _mer._--indeed, madam, your ladyship lies; i may show you more pieces, but i cannot show you a better; there is not a better piece of silk of that sort in london, madam. _lady_.--let me see that piece of crimson there. _mer._--here it is, madam. _lady_.--no, that won't do neither; it is not a good colour. _mer_.--indeed, madam, you lie; it is as fine a colour as can be dyed. _lady_.--oh fy! you lie, indeed, sir; why, it is not in grain. _mer_.--your ladyship lies, upon my word, madam; it is in grain, indeed, and as fine as can be dyed. i might make this dialogue much longer, but here is enough to set the mercer and the lady both in a flame, and to set the shop in an uproar, if it were but spoken out in plain language, as above; and yet what is all the shop-dialect less or more than this? the meaning is plain--it is nothing but _you lie_, and _you lie_--downright billingsgate, wrapped up in silk and satin, and delivered dressed finely up in better clothes than perhaps it might come dressed in between a carman and a porter. how ridiculous is all the tongue-padding flutter between miss tawdry, the sempstress, and tattle, my lady's woman, at the change-shop, when the latter comes to buy any trifle! and how many lies, indeed, creep into every part of trade, especially of retail trade, from the meanest to the uppermost part of business!--till, in short, it is grown so scandalous, that i much wonder the shopkeepers themselves do not leave it off, for the mere shame of its simplicity and uselessness. but habits once got into use are very rarely abated, however ridiculous they are; and the age is come to such a degree of obstinate folly, that nothing is too ridiculous for them, if they please but to make a custom of it. i am not for making my discourse a satire upon the shopkeepers, or upon their customers: if i were, i could give a long detail of the arts and tricks made use of behind the counter to wheedle and persuade the buyer, and manage the selling part among shopkeepers, and how easily and dexterously they draw in their customers; but this is rather work for a ballad and a song: my business is to tell the complete tradesman how to act a wiser part, to talk to his customers like a man of sense and business, and not like a mountebank and his merry-andrew; to let him see that there is a way of managing behind a counter, that, let the customer be what or how it will, man or woman, impertinent or not impertinent--for sometimes, i must say, the men customers are every jot as impertinent as the women; but, i say, let them be what they will, and how they will, let them make as many words as they will, and urge the shopkeeper how they will, he may behave himself so as to avoid all those impertinences, falsehoods, follish and wicked excursions which i complain of, if he pleases. it by no means follows, that because the buyer is foolish, the seller must be so too; that because the buyer has a never-ceasing tongue, the seller must rattle as fast as she; that because she tells a hundred lies to run down his goods, he must tell another hundred to run them up; and that because she belies the goods one way, he must do the same the other way. there is a happy medium in these things. the shopkeeper, far from being rude to his customers on one hand, or sullen and silent on the other, may speak handsomely and modestly, of his goods; what they deserve, and no other; may with truth, and good manners too, set forth his goods as they ought to be set forth; and neither be wanting to the commodity he sells, nor run out into a ridiculous extravagance of words, which have neither truth of fact nor honesty of design in them. nor is this middle way of management at all less likely to succeed, if the customers have any share of sense in them, or the goods he shows any merit to recommend them; and i must say, i believe this grave middle way of discoursing to a customer, is generally more effectual, and more to the purpose, and more to the reputation of the shopkeeper, than a storm of words, and a mouthful of common, shop-language, which makes a noise, but has little in it to plead, except to here and there a fool that can no otherwise be prevailed with. it would be a terrible satire upon the ladies, to say that they will not be pleased or engaged either with good wares or good pennyworths, with reasonable good language, or good manners, but they must have the addition of long harangues, simple, fawning, and flattering language, and a flux of false and foolish words, to set off the goods, and wheedle them in to lay out their money; and that without these they are not to be pleased. but let the tradesman try the honest part, and stand by that, keeping a stock of fashionable and valuable goods in his shop to show, and i dare say he will run no venture, nor need he fear customers; if any thing calls for the help of noise, and rattling words, it must be mean and sorry, unfashionable, and ordinary goods, together with weak and silly buyers; and let the buyers that chance to read this remember, that whenever they find the shopkeeper begins his noise, and makes his fine speeches, they ought to suppose he (the shopkeeper) has trash to bring out, and believes he has fools to show it to. chapter xix of fine shops, and fine shows it is a modern custom, and wholly unknown to our ancestors, who yet understood trade, in proportion to the trade they carried on, as well as we do, to have tradesmen lay out two-thirds of their fortune in fitting up their shops. by fitting up, i do not mean furnishing their shops with wares and goods to sell--for in that they came up to us in every particular, and perhaps went beyond us too--but in painting and gilding, fine shelves, shutters, boxes, glass-doors, sashes, and the like, in which, they tell us now, it is a small matter to lay out two or three hundred pounds, nay, five hundred pounds, to fit up a pastry-cook's, or a toy-shop. the first inference to be drawn from this must necessarily be, that this age must have more fools than the last: for certainly fools only are most taken with shows and outsides. it is true, that a fine show of goods will bring customers; and it is not a new custom, but a very old one, that a new shop, very well furnished, goes a great way to bringing a trade; for the proverb was, and still is, very true, that every body has a penny for a new shop; but that a fine show of shelves and glass-windows should bring customers, that was never made a rule in trade till now. and yet, even now, i should not except so much against it, if it were not carried on to such an excess, as is too much for a middling tradesman to bear the expense of. in this, therefore, it is made not a grievance only, but really scandalous to trade; for now, a young beginner has such a tax upon him before he begins, that he must sink perhaps a third part, nay, a half part, of his stock, in painting and gilding, wainscoting and glazing, before he begins to trade, nay, before he can open his shop. as they say of building a watermill, two-thirds of the expense lies under the water; and when the poor tradesman comes to furnish his shop, and lay in his stock of goods, he finds a great hole made in his cash to the workmen, and his show of goods, on which the life of his trade depends, is fain to be lessened to make up his show of boards, and glass to lay them in. nor is this heavy article to be abated upon any account; for if he does not make a good show, he comes abroad like a mean ordinary fellow, and nobody of fashion comes to his shop; the customers are drawn away by the pictures and painted shelves, though, when they come there, they are not half so well filled as in other places, with goods fit for a trade; and how, indeed, should it be otherwise? the joiners and painters, glaziers and carvers, must have all ready money; the weavers and merchants may give credit; their goods are of so much less moment to the shopkeeper, that they must trust; but the more important show must be finished first, and paid first; and when that has made a deep hole in the tradesman's stock, then the remainder may be spared to furnish the shop with goods, and the merchant must trust for the rest. it will hardly be believed in ages to come, when our posterity shall be grown wiser by our loss, and, as i may truly say, at our expense, that a pastry-cook's shop, which twenty pounds would effectually furnish at a time, with all needful things for sale, nay, except on an extraordinary show, as on twelfth-day at night for cakes, or upon some great feast, twenty pounds can hardly be laid out at one time in goods for sale, yet that fitting up one of these shops should cost upwards of £ in the year --let the year be recorded--the fitting up to consist of the following particulars:-- . sash windows, all of looking-glass plates, inches by inches in measure. . all the walls of the shop lined up with galley-tiles, and the back shop with galley-tiles in panels, finely painted in forest-work and figures. . two large pier looking-glasses and one chimney glass in the shop, and one very large pier-glass seven feet high in the back shop. . two large branches of candlesticks, one in the shop, and one in the back room. . three great glass lanterns in the shop, and eight small ones. . twenty-five sconces against the wall, with a large pair of silver standing candlesticks in the back room, value £ . . six fine large silver salvers to serve sweetmeats. . twelve large high stands of rings, whereof three silver, to place small dishes for tarts, jellies, &c., at a feast. . painting the ceiling, and gilding the lanterns, the sashes, and the carved work, £ . these, with some odd things to set forth the shop, and make a show, besides small plate, and besides china basins and cups, amounted to, as i am well informed, above £ . add to this the more necessary part, which was:-- . building two ovens, about £ . . twenty pounds in stock for pies, cheese-cakes, &c. so that, in short, here was a trade which might be carried on for about £ or £ stock, required £ expenses to fit up the shop, and make a show to invite customers. i might give something of a like example of extravagance in fitting up a cutler's shop, _anglicé_ a toyman, which are now come up to such a ridiculous expense, as is hardly to be thought of without the utmost contempt: let any one stop at the temple, or at paul's corner, or in many other places. as to the shops of the more considerable trades, they all bear a proportion of the humour of the times, but do not call for so loud a remark. leaving, therefore, the just reflection which such things call for, let me bring it home to the young tradesman, to whom i am directing this discourse, and to whom i am desirous to give solid and useful hints for his instruction, i would recommend it to him to avoid all such needless expenses, and rather endeavour to furnish his shop with goods, than to paint and gild it over, to make it fine and gay; let it invite customers rather by the well-filled presses and shelves, and the great choice of rich and fashionable goods, that one customer being well-served may bring another; and let him study to bring his shop into reputation for good choice of wares, and good attendance on his customers; and this shall bring a throng to him much better, and of much better people, than those that go in merely for a gay shop. let the shop be decent and handsome, spacious as the place will allow, and let something like the face of a master be always to be seen in it; and, if possible, be always busy, and doing something in it, that may look like being employed: this takes as much with the wiser observers of such things, as any other appearance can do. i have heard of a young apothecary, who setting up in a part of the town, where he had not much acquaintance, and fearing much whether he should get into business, hired a man acquainted with such business, and made him be every morning between five and six, and often late in the evenings, working very hard at the great mortar; pounding and beating, though he had nothing to do with it, but beating some very needless thing, that all his neighbours might hear it, and find that he was in full employ, being at work early and late, and that consequently he must be a man of vast business, and have a great practice: and the thing was well laid, and took accordingly; for the neighbours, believing he had business, brought business to him; and the reputation of having a trade, made a trade for him. the observation is just: a show may bring some people to a shop, but it is the fame of business that brings business; and nothing raises the fame of a shop like its being a shop of good trade already; then people go to it, because they think other people go to it, and because they think there is good choice of goods; their gilding and painting may go a little way, but it is the having a shop well filled with goods,[ ] having good choice to sell, and selling reasonable--these are the things that bring a trade, and a trade thus brought will stand by you and last; for fame of trade brings trade anywhere. it is a sign of the barrenness of the people's fancy, when they are so easily taken with shows and outsides of things. never was such painting and gilding, such sashings and looking-glasses among the shopkeepers, as there is now; and yet trade flourished more in former times by a gread deal that it does now, if we may believe the report of very honest and understanding men. the reason, i think, cannot be to the credit of the present age, nor it it to the discredit of the former; for they carried on their trade with less gaiety, and with less expense, than we do now.[ ] my advice to a young tradesman is to keep the safe middle between these extremes; something the times must be humoured in, because fashion and custom must be followed; but let him consider the depth of his stock, and not lay out half his estate upon fitting up his shop, and then leave but the other half to furnish it; it is much better to have a full shop, than a fine shop; and a hundred pounds in goods will make a much better show than a hundred pounds' worth of painting and carved work; it is good to make a show, but not to be _all show._ it is true, that painting and adorning a shop seems to intimate, that the tradesman has a large stock to begin with, or else they suggest he would not make such a show; hence the young shopkeepers are willing to make a great show, and beautify, and paint, and gild, and carve, because they would be thought to have a great stock to begin with; but let me tell you, the reputation of having a great stock is ill purchased, when half your stock is laid out to make the world believe it; that is, in short, reducing yourself to a small stock to have the world believe you have a great one; in which you do no less than barter the real stock for the imaginary, and give away your stock to keep the name of it only. i take this indeed to be a french humour, or a spice of it turned english; and, indeed, we are famous for this, that when we do mimic the french, we generally do it to our hurt, and over-do the french themselves. the french nation are eminent for making a fine outside, when perhaps within they want necessaries; and, indeed, a gay shop and a mean stock is something like the frenchman with his laced ruffles, without a shirt. i cannot but think a well-furnished shop with a moderate outside is much better to a tradesman, than a fine shop and few goods; i am sure it will be much more to his satisfaction, when he casts up his year's account, for his fine shop will weigh but sorrily in his account of profit and loss; it is all a dead article; it is sunk out of his first money, before he makes a shilling profit, and may be some years a-recovering, as trade may go with him. it is true that all these notions of mine in trade are founded upon the principle of frugality and good husbandry; and this is a principle so disagreeable to the times, and so contrary to the general practice, that we shall find very few people to whom it is agreeable. but let me tell my young tradesmen, that if they must banish frugality and good husbandry, they must at the same time banish all expectation of growing rich by their trade. it is a maxim in commerce, that money gets money, and they that will not frugally lay up their gain, in order to increase their gain, must not expect to gain as they might otherwise do; frugality may be out of fashion among the gentry, but if it comes to be so among tradesmen, we shall soon see that wealthy tradesmen will be hard to find; for they who will not save as well as gain, must expect to go out of trade as lean as they began. some people tell us indeed in many cases, especially in trade, that putting a good face upon things goes as far as the real merit of the things themselves; and that a fine, painted, gilded shop, among the rest, has a great influence upon the people, draws customers, and brings trade; and they run a great length in this discourse by satirising on the blindness and folly of mankind, and how the world are to be taken in their own way; and seeing they are to be deluded and imposed upon in such an innocent way, they ought to be so far deluded and imposed upon, alluding to the old proverbial saying, '_si populus vult decipi, decipiatur;' _that it is no fraud, no crime, and can neither be against conscience, nor prudence; for if they are pleased with a show, why should they not have it? and the like. this way of talking is indeed plausible; and were the fact true, there might be more in it than i think there is. but i do not grant that the world is thus to be deluded; and that the people do follow this rule in general--i mean, go always to a fine shop to lay out their money. perhaps, in some cases, it may be so, where the women, and the weakest of the sex too, are chiefly concerned; or where the fops and fools of the age resort; and as to those few, they that are willing to be so imposed upon, let them have it. but i do not see, that even this extends any farther than to a few toy-shops, and pastry-cooks; and the customers of both these are not of credit sufficient, i think, to weigh in this case: we may as well argue for the fine habits at a puppet-show and a rope-dancing, because they draw the mob about them; but i cannot think, after you go but one degree above these, the thing is of any weight, much less does it bring credit to the tradesman, whatever it may do to the shop. the credit of a tradesman respects two sorts of people, first, the merchants, or wholesale men, or makers, who sell him his goods, or the customers, who come to his shop to buy. the first of these are so far from valuing him upon the gay appearance of his shop, that they are often the first that take an offence at it, and suspect his credit upon that account: their opinion upon a tradesman, and his credit with them, is raised quite another way, namely, by his current pay, diligent attendance, and honest figure; the gay shop does not help him at all there, but rather the contrary. as to the latter, though some customers may at first be drawn by the gay appearance and fine gilding and painting of a shop, yet it is the well sorting a shop with goods, and the selling good pennyworths, that will bring trade, especially after the shop has been open some time: this, and this only, establishes the man and the credit of the shop. to conclude: the credit raised by the fine show of things is also of a different kind from the substantial reputation of a tradesman; it is rather the credit of the shop, than of the man; and, in a word, it is no more or less than a net spread to catch fools; it is a bait to allure and deceive, and the tradesman generally intends it so. he intends that the customers shall pay for the gilding and painting his shop, and it is the use he really makes of it, namely, that his shop looking like something eminent, he may sell dearer than his neighbours: who, and what kind of fools can so be drawn in, it is easy to describe, but satire is none of our business here. on the contrary, the customers, who are the substantial dependence of a tradesman's shop, are such as are gained and preserved by good usage, good pennyworths, good wares, and good choice; and a shop that has the reputation of these four, like good wine that needs no bush, needs no painting and gilding, no carved works and ornaments;[ ] it requires only a diligent master and a faithful servant, and it will never want a trade. footnotes: [ ] [in another place, the author recommends a light stock, as showing a nimble trade. there can be little doubt that he is more reasonable here. a considerable abundance of goods is certainly an attraction to a shop. no doubt, a tradesman with little capital would only be incurring certain ruin having a larger stock than he could readily pay for. he must needs keep a small stock, if he would have a chance at all of doing well in the world. but this does not make it the less an advantage to a tradesman of good capital to keep an abundant and various stock of goods.] [ ] [it is really curious to find in this chapter the same contrast drawn between the _old_ and the _new_ style of fitting up shops, and carrying on business, as would be drawn at the present day by nine out of every ten common observers. the notion that the shops of the past age were plain, while those of the present are gaudy, and that the tradesmen of a past age carried on all their business in a quiet way and with little expense, is as strongly impressed on the minds of the present generation, as it is here seen to have been on those of defoe's contemporaries, a hundred and twenty years ago, although it is quite impossible that the notion can be just in both cases. the truth probably is, that in defoe's time, and at all former times, there were conspicuous, but not very numerous, examples of finely decorated shops, which seemed, and really were, very much of a novelty, as well as a rather striking exception from the style in which such places in general were then, and had for many years been furnished. so far, however, from these proving, as defoe anticipates, a warning to future generations, the general appearance of shops has experienced a vast improvement since those days; and the third-rate class are now probably as fine as the first-rate were at no distant period. at the same time, as in the reign of the first george, we have now also a few shops fitted up in a style of extraordinary and startling elegance, and thus forming that contrast with the general appearance of shops for the last forty years, which makes old people, and many others, talk of all the past as homely and moderate, and all the present as showy and expensive.] [ ] [the author seems here to carry his objections to decoration to an extreme. good usage, good pennyworths, good wares, and good choice, are doubtless the four cardinal points of business; but a handsome shop also goes a considerable way in attracting customers, and is a principle which no prudent tradesman will despise.] chapter xx of the tradesman's keeping his books, and casting up his shop it was an ancient and laudable custom with tradesmen in england always to balance their accounts of stock, and of profit and loss, at least once every year; and generally it was done at christmas, or new-year's tide, when they could always tell whether they went backward or forward, and how their affairs stood in the world; and though this good custom is very much lost among tradesmen at this time, yet there are a great many that do so still, and they generally call it _casting up shop. _to speak the truth, the great occasion of omitting it has been from the many tradesmen, who do not care to look into things, and who, fearing their affairs are not right, care not to know how they go at all, good or bad; and when i see a tradesman that does not cast up once a-year, i conclude that tradesman to be in very bad circumstances, that at least he fears he is so, and by consequence cares not to inquire. as casting up the shop is the way to know every year whether he goes backward or forward, and is the tradesman's particular satisfaction, so he must cast up his books too, or else it will be very ominous to the tradesman's credit. now, in order to doing this effectually once a-year, it is needful the tradesman should keep his books always in order; his day-book duly posted, his cash duly balanced, and all people's accounts always fit for a view. he that delights in his trade will delight in his books; and, as i said that he that will thrive must diligently attend his shop or warehouse, and take up his delight there, so, i say now, he must also diligently keep his books, or else he will never know whether he thrives or no. exact keeping his books is one essential part of a tradesman's prosperity. the books are the register of his estate, the index of his stock. all the tradesman has in the world must be found in these three articles, or some of them:-- goods in the shop; money in cash; debts abroad. the shop will at any time show the first of these upon a small stop to cast it up; the cash-chest and bill-box will show the second at demand; and the ledger when posted will show the last; so that a tradesman can at any time, at a week's notice, cast up all these three; and then, examining his accounts, to take the balance, which is a real trying what he is worth in the world. it cannot be satisfactory to any tradesman to let his books go unsettled, and uncast up, for then he knows nothing of himself, or of his circumstances in the world; the books can tell him at any time what his condition is, and will satisfy him what is the condition of his debts abroad. in order to his regular keeping his books, several things might be said very useful for the tradesman to consider: i. every thing done in the whole circumference of his trade must be set down in a book, except the retail trade; and this is clear, if the goods are not in bulk, then the money is in cash, and so the substance will be always found either there, or somewhere else; for if it is neither in the shop, nor in the cash, nor in the books, it must be stolen and lost. ii. as every thing done must be set down in the books, so it should be done at the very time of it; all goods sold must be entered in the books before they are sent out of the house; goods sent away and not entered, are goods lost; and he that does not keep an exact account of what goes out and comes in, can never swear to his books, or prove his debts, if occasion calls for it. i am not going to set down rules here for book-keeping, or to teach the tradesman how to do it, but i am showing the necessity and usefulness of doing it at all. that tradesman who keeps no books, may depend upon it he will ere long keep no trade, unless he resolves also to give no credit. he that gives no trust, and takes no trust, either by wholesale or by retail, and keeps his cash all himself, may indeed go on without keeping any books at all; and has nothing to do, when he would know his estate, but to cast up his shop and his cash, and see how much they amount to, and that is his whole and neat estate; for as he owes nothing, so nobody is in debt to him, and all his estate is in his shop; but i suppose the tradesman that trades wholly thus, is not yet born, or if there ever were any such, they are all dead. a tradesman's books, like a christian's conscience, should always be kept clean and clear; and he that is not careful of both will give but a sad account of himself either to god or man. it is true, that a great many tradesmen, and especially shopkeepers, understand but little of book-keeping; but it is as true that they all understand something of it, or else they will make but poor work of shopkeeping. i knew a tradesman that could not write, and yet he supplied the defect with so many ingenious knacks of his own, to secure the account of what people owed him, and was so exact doing it, and then took such care to have but very short accounts with any body, that he brought up his method to be every way an equivalent to writing; and, as i often told him, with half the study and application that those things cost him, he might have learned to write, and keep books too. he made notches upon sticks for all the middling sums, and scored with chalk for lesser things. he had drawers for every particular customer's name, which his memory supplied, for he knew every particular drawer, though he had a great many, as well as if their faces had been painted upon them; he had innumerable figures to signify what he would have written, if he could; and his shelves and boxes always put me in mind of the egyptian hieroglyphics, and nobody understood them, or any thing of them, but himself. it was an odd thing to see him, when a country-chap, came up to settle accounts with him; he would go to a drawer directly, among such a number as was amazing: in that drawer was nothing but little pieces of split sticks, like laths, with chalk-marks on them, all as unintelligible as the signs of the zodiac are to an old school-mistress that teaches the horn-book and primer, or as arabic or greek is to a ploughman. every stick had notches on one side for single pounds, on the other side for tens of pounds, and so higher; and the length and breadth also had its signification, and the colour too; for they were painted in some places with one colour, and in some places with anther; by which he knew what goods had been delivered for the money: and his way of casting up was very remarkable, for he knew nothing of figures; but he kept six spoons in a place on purpose, near his counter, which he took out when he had occasion to cast up any sum, and, laying the spoons in a row before him, he counted upon them thus: one, two, three, and another, one odd spoon, and t'other | | | | | | by this he told up to six; if he had any occasion to tell any farther, he began again, as we do after the number ten in our ordinary numeration; and by this method, and running them up very quick, he would count any number under thirty-six, which was six spoons of six spoons, and then, by the strength of his head, he could number as many more as he pleased, multiplying them always by sixes, but never higher. i give this instance to show how far the application of a man's head might go to supply the defect, but principally to show (and it does abundantly show it) what an absolute necessity there is for a tradesman to be very diligent and exact in keeping his books, and what pains those who understand their business will always take to do it. this tradesman was indeed a country shopkeeper; but he was so considerable a dealer, that he became mayor of the city which he lived in (for it was a city, and that a considerable city too), and his posterity have been very considerable traders in the same city ever since, and they show their great-grandfather's six counting spoons and his hieroglyphics to this day. after some time, the old tradesman bred up two of his sons to his business, and the young men having learned to write, brought books into the counting-house, things their father had never used before; but the old man kept to his old method for all that, and would cast up a sum, and make up an account with his spoons and his drawers, as soon as they could with their pen and ink, if it were not too full of small articles, and that he had always avoided in his business. however, as i have said above, this evidently shows the necessity of book-keeping to a tradesman, and the very nature of the thing evidences also that it must be done with the greatest exactness. he that does not keep his books exactly, and so as that he may depend upon them for charging his debtors, had better keep no books at all, but, like my shopkeeper, score and notch every thing; for as books well kept make business regular, easy, and certain, so books neglected turn all into confusion, and leave the tradesman in a wood, which he can never get out of without damage and loss. if ever his dealers know that his books are ill kept, they play upon him, and impose horrid forgeries and falsities upon him: whatever he omits they catch at, and leave it out; whatever they put upon him, he is bound to yield to; so that, in short, as books well kept are the security of the tradesman's estate, and the ascertaining of his debts, so books ill kept will assist every knavish customer or chapman to cheat and deceive him. some men keep a due and exact entry or journal of all they sell, or perhaps of all they buy or sell, but are utterly remiss in posting it forward to a ledger; that is to say, to another book, where every parcel is carried to the debtor's particular account. likewise they keep another book, where they enter all the money they receive, but, as above, never keeping any account for the man; there it stands in the cash-book, and both these books must be ransacked over for the particulars, as well of goods sold, as of the money received, when this customer comes to have his account made up; and as the goods are certainly entered when sold or sent away, and the money is certainly entered when it is received, this they think is sufficient, and all the rest superfluous. i doubt not such tradesmen often suffer as much by their slothfulness and neglect of book-keeping, as might, especially if their business is considerable, pay for a book-keeper; for what is such a man's case, when his customer, suppose a country dealer, comes to town, which perhaps he does once a-year (as in the custom of other tradesmen), and desires to have his account made up? the london tradesman goes to his books, and first he rummages his day-book back for the whole year, and takes out the foot[ ] of all the parcels sent to his chapman, and they make the debtor side of the account; then he takes his cash-book, if it deserves that name, and there he takes out all the sums of money which the chapman has sent up, or bills which he has received, and these make the creditor side of the account; and so the balance is drawn out, and this man thinks himself a mighty good accountant, that he keeps his books exactly; and so perhaps he does, as far as he keeps them at all; that is to say, he never sends a parcel away to his customer, but he enters it down, and never receives a bill from him, but he sets it down when the money is paid; but now take this man and his chap, together, as they are making up this account. the chapman, a sharp clever tradesman, though a countryman, has his pocket-book with him, and in it a copy of his posting-book, so the countrymen call a ledger, where the london tradesman's accounts are copied out; and when the city tradesman has drawn out his account, he takes it to his inn and examines it by his little book, and what is the consequence? if the city tradesman has omitted any of the bills which the country tradesman has sent him up, he finds it out, and is sure to put him in mind of it. 'sir,' says he, 'you had a bill from me upon mr a.g. at such a time, for thirty pounds, and i have your letter that you received the money; but you have omitted it in the account, so that i am not so much in your debt by thirty pounds, as you thought i was.' 'say you so!' says the city tradesman; 'i cannot think but you must be mistaken.' 'no, no!' says the other, 'i am sure i can't be mistaken, for i have it in my book; besides, i can go to mr a.g., whom the bill was drawn upon, and there is, to be sure, your own endorsement upon it, and a receipt for the money.' 'well,' says the citizen, 'i keep my books as exact as any body--i'll look again, and if it be there i shall find it, for i am sure if i had it, it is in my cash-book.' 'pray do, then,' says the countryman, 'for i am sure i sent it you, and i am sure i can produce the bill, if there be occasion.' away goes the tradesman to his books, which he pretends he keeps so exact, and examining them over again, he finds the bill for thirty pounds entered fairly, but in his running the whole year over together, as well he might, he had overlooked it, whereas, if his cash-book had been duly posted every week, as it ought to have been, this bill had been regularly placed to account. but now, observe the difference: the bill for thirty pounds being omitted, was no damage to the country tradesman, because he has an account of it in his book of memorandums, and had it regularly posted in his books at home, whatever the other had, and also was able to bring sufficient proof of the payment; so the london tradesman's omission was no hurt to him. but the case differs materially in the debtor side of the account; for here the tradesman, who with all his boasts of keeping his books exactly, has yet no ledger, which being, as i have said, duly posted, should show every man's account at one view; and being done every week, left it scarce possible to omit any parcel that was once entered in the day-book or journal--i say, the tradesman keeping no ledger, he looks over his day-book for the whole year past, to draw up the debtor side of his customer's account, and there being a great many parcels, truly he overlooks one or two of them, or suppose but one of them, and gives the chapman the account, in which he sums up his debtor side so much, suppose £ , s.: the chapman examining this by his book, as he did the cash, finds two parcels, one £ , s., and the other £ , s., omitted; so that by his own book his debtor side was £ , s.; but being a cunning sharp tradesman, and withal not exceeding honest, 'well, well,' says he to himself, 'if mr g. says it is no more than £ , s. what have i to do to contradict him? it is none of my business to keep his books for him; it is time enough for me to reckon for it when he charges me.' so he goes back to him the next day, and settles accounts with him, pays him the balance in good bills which he brought up with him for that purpose, takes a receipt in full of all accounts and demands to such a day of the month, and the next day comes and looks out another parcel of goods, and so begins an account for the next year, like a current chapman, and has the credit of an extraordinary customer that pays well, and clears his accounts every year; which he had not done had he not seen the advantage, and so strained himself to pay, that he might get a receipt in full of all accounts. it happens some years after that this city tradesman dies, and his executors finding his accounts difficult to make up, there being no books to be found but a day-book and a cash-book, they get some skilful book-keeper to look into them, who immediately sees that the only way to bring the accounts to a head, is to form a ledger out of the other two, and post every body's account into it from the beginning; for though it were a long way back, there is no other remedy. in doing this, they come to this mistake, among a great many others of the like kind in other chapmen's accounts; upon this they write to the chapman, and tell him they find him debtor to the estate of the deceased in such a sum of money, and desire him to make payment. the country shopkeeper huffs them, tells them he always made up accounts with mr. g., the deceased, once a-year, as he did with all his other chapmen, and that he took his receipt in full of all accounts and demands, upon paying the balance to him at such a time; which receipt he has to show; and that he owes him nothing, or but such a sum, being the account of goods bought since. the executors finding the mistake, and how it happened, endeavour to convince him of it; but it is all one-he wants no convincing, for he knows at bottom how it is; but being a little of a knave himself, or if you please, not a little, he tells them he cannot enter into the accounts so far back--mr g. always told him he kept his books very exactly, and he trusted to him; and as he has his receipt in full, and it is so long ago, he can say nothing to it. from hence they come to quarrel, and the executors threaten him with going to law; but he bids them defiance, and insists upon his receipt in full; and besides that, it is perhaps six years ago, and so he tells them he will plead the statute of limitations upon them; and then adds, that he does not do it avoid a just debt, but to avoid being imposed upon, he not understanding books so well as mr g. pretended to do; and having balanced accounts so long ago with him, he stands by the balance, and has nothing to say to their mistakes, not he. so that, in short, not finding any remedy, they are forced to sit down by the loss; and perhaps in the course of twenty years' trade, mr g. might lose a great many such parcels in the whole; and had much better have kept a ledger; or if he did not know how to keep a ledger himself, had better have hired a book-keeper to have come once a-week, or once a-month, to have posted his day-book for him. the like misfortune attends the not balancing his cash, a thing which such book-keepers as mr g. do not think worth their trouble; nor do they understand the benefit of it. the particulars, indeed, of this article are tedious, and would be too long for a chapter; but certainly they that know any thing of the use of keeping an exact cash-book, know that, without it, a tradesman can never be thoroughly satisfied either of his own not committing mistakes, or of any people cheating him, i mean servants, or sons, or whoever is the first about him. what i call balancing his cash-book, is, first, the casting up daily, or weekly, or monthly, his receipts and payments, and then seeing what money is left in hand, or, as the usual expression of the tradesman is, what money is in cash; secondly, the examining his money, telling it over, and seeing how much he has in his chest or bags, and then seeing if it agrees with the balance of his book, that what is, and what should be, correspond. and here let me give tradesmen a caution or two. . never sit down satisfied with an error in the cash; that is to say, with a difference between the money really in the cash, and the balance in the book; for if they do not agree, there must be a mistake somewhere, and while there is a mistake in the cash, the tradesman cannot, at least he ought not to be, easy. he that can be easy with a mistake in his cash, may be easy with a gang of thieves in his house; for if his money does not come right, he must have paid something that is not set down, and that is to be supposed as bad as if it were lost; or he must have somebody about him that can find the way to his money besides himself, that is to say, somebody that should not come to it; and if so, what is the difference between that and having a gang of thieves about him?--for every one that takes money out of his cash without his leave, and without letting him know it, is so far a thief to him: and he can never pretend to balance his cash, nor, indeed, know any thing of his affairs, that does not know which way his money goes. . a tradesman endeavouring to balance his cash, should no more be satisfied if he finds a mistake in his cash one way, than another--that is to say, if he finds more in cash than by the balance of his cash-book ought to be there, than if he finds less, or wanting in cash. i know many, who, when they find it thus, sit down satisfied, and say, 'well, there is an error, and i don't know where it lies; but come, it is an error on the right hand; i have more cash in hand than i should have, that is all, so i am well enough; let it go; i shall find it some time or other.' but the tradesman ought to consider that he is quite in the dark; and as he does not really know where it lies, so, for ought he knows, the error may really be to his loss very considerably--and the case is very plain, that it is as dangerous to be over, as it would be to be under; he should, therefore, never give it over till he has found it out, and brought it to rights. for example: if there appears to be more money in the cash than there is by the balance in the cash-book, this must follow--namely, that some parcel of money must have been received, which is not entered in the book; now, till the tradesman knows what sum of money this is, that is thus not entered, how can he tell but the mistake may be quite the other way, and the cash be really wrong to his loss? thus, my cash-book being cast up for the last month, i find, by the foot of the leaf, there is cash remaining in hand to balance £ , s. d. to see if all things are right, i go and tell my money over, and there, to my surprise, i find £ , s. d. in cash, so that i have £ there more than i should have. now, far from being pleased that i have more money by me than i should have, my inquiry is plain, 'how comes this to pass?' perhaps i puzzle my head a great while about it, but not being able to find out, i sit down easy and satisfied, and say, 'well, i don't much concern myself about it; it is better to be so than £ missing; i cannot tell where it lies, but let it lie where it will, here is the money to make up the mistake when it appears.' but how foolish is this! how ill-grounded the satisfaction! and how weak am i to argue thus, and please myself with the delusion! for some months after, it appears, perhaps, that whereas there was £ entered, received of mr b.k., the figure was mistaken, and set down for a figure of , for the sum received was £ ; so that, instead of having £ more in cash than there ought to be, i have s. wanting in my cash, which my son or my apprentice stole from me when they put in the money, and made the mistake of the figures to puzzle the book, that it might be some time before it should be discovered. upon the whole, take it as a rule, the tradesman ought to be as unsatisfied when he finds a mistake to his gain in his cash, as when he finds it to his loss; and it is every whit as dangerous, nay, it is the more suspicious, because it seems to be laid as a bait for him to stop his mouth, and to prevent further inquiries; and it is on that account that i leave this caution upon record, that the tradesman may be duly alarmed. the keeping a cash-book is one of the nicest parts of a tradesman's business, because there is always the bag and the book to be brought together, and if they do not exactly speak the same language, even to a farthing, there must be some omission; and how big or how little that omission may be, who knows, or how shall it be known, but by casting and recasting up, telling, and telling over and over again, the money? if there is but twenty shillings over in the money, the question is, 'how came it there?' it must be received somewhere, and of somebody, more than is entered; and how can the cash-keeper, be he master or servant, know but more was received with it, which is not, and should have been, entered, and so the loss may be the other way? it is true, in telling money there may have been a mistake, and he that received a sum of money may have received twenty shillings too much, or five pounds too much--and such a mistake i have known to be made in the paying and receiving of money--and a man's cash has been more perplexed, and his mind more distracted about it, than the five pounds have been worth, because he could not find it out, till some accident has discovered it;[ ] and the reason is, because not knowing which way it could come there, he could not know but some omission might be made to his loss another way, as in the case above mentioned. i knew, indeed, a strong waterman, who drove a very considerable trade, but, being an illiterate tradesman, never balanced his cash-book for many years, nor scarce posted his other books, and, indeed, hardly understood how to do it; but knowing his trade was exceedingly profitable, and keeping his money all himself, he was easy, and grew rich apace, in spite of the most unjustifiable, and, indeed, the most intolerable, negligence; but lest this should be pleaded as an exception to my general rule, and to invalidate the argument, give me leave to add, that, though this man grew rich in spite of indolence, and a neglect of his book, yet, when he died, two things appeared, which no tradesman in his wits would desire should be said of him. i. the servants falling out, and maliciously accusing one another, had, as it appeared by the affidavits of several of them, wronged him of several considerable sums of money, which they received, and never brought into the books; and others, of sums which they brought into the books, but never brought into the cash; and others, of sums which they took ready money in the shop, and never set down, either the goods in the day-book, or the money into the cash-book; and it was thought, though he was so rich as not to feel it, that is, not to his hurt, yet that he lost three or four hundred pounds a-year in that manner, for the two or three last years of his life; but his widow and son, who came after him, having the discovery made to them, took better measures afterwards. ii. he never did, or could know, what he was worth, for the accounts in his books were never made up; nor when he came to die, could his executors make up any man's account, so as to be able to prove the particulars, and make a just demand of their debt, but found a prodigious number of small sums of money paid by the debtors, as by receipts in their books and on their files, some by himself, and some by his man, which were never brought to account, or brought into cash; and his man's answer being still, that he gave all to the master, they could not tell how to charge him by the master's account, because several sums, which the master himself received, were omitted being entered in the same manner, so that all was confusion and neglect; and though the man died rich, it was in spite of that management that would have made any but himself have died poor. exact book-keeping is to me the effect of a man whose heart is in his business, and who intends to thrive. he that cares not whether his books are kept well or no, is in my opinion one that does not much care whether he thrives or no; or else, being in desperate circumstances, knows it, and that he cannot, or does not thrive, and so matters not which way it goes. it is true, the neglect of the books is private and secret, and is seldom known to any body but the tradesman himself, at least till he comes to break, and be a bankrupt, and then you frequently hear them exclaim against him, upon that very account. 'break!' says one of the assignees; 'how should he but break?--why, he kept no books; you never saw books kept in such a scandalous manner in your life; why, he has not posted his cash-book, for i know not how many months; nor posted his day-book and journal at all, except here and there an account that he perhaps wanted to know the balance of; and as for balancing his cash, i don't see any thing of that done, i know not how long. why, this fellow could never tell how he went on, or how things stood with him: i wonder he did not break a long time ago.' now, the man's case was this: he knew how to keep his books well enough, perhaps, and could write well enough; and if you look into his five or six first years of trade, you find all his accounts well kept, the journal duly posted, the cash monthly balanced; but the poor man found after that, that things went wrong, that he went backwards, and that all went down-hill, and he hated to look into his books. as a profligate never looks into his conscience, because he can see nothing there but what terrifies and affrights him, makes him uneasy and melancholy, so a sinking tradesman cares not to look into his books, because the prospect there is dark and melancholy. 'what signify the accounts to me?' says he; 'i can see nothing in the books but debts that cannot pay, and debtors that will never pay; i can see nothing there but how i have trusted my estate away like a fool, and how i am to be ruined for my easiness, and being a sot:' and this makes him throw them away, and hardly post things enough to make up when folks call to pay; or if he does post such accounts as he has money to receive from, that's all, and the rest lie at random, till, as i say, the assignees come to reproach him with his negligence. whereas, in truth, the man understood his books well enough, but had no heart to look in them, no courage to balance them, because of the afflicting prospect of them. but let me here advise tradesmen to keep a perfect acquaintance with their books, though things are bad and discouraging; it keeps them in full knowledge of what they are doing, and how they really stand; and it brings them sometimes to the just reflections on their circumstances which they ought to make; so to stop in time, as i hinted before, and not let things run too far before they are surprised and torn to pieces by violence. and, at the worst, even a declining tradesman should not let his books be neglected; if his creditors find them punctually kept to the last, it will be a credit to him, and they would see he was a man fit for business; and i have known when that very thing has recommended a tradesman so much to his creditors, that after the ruin of his fortunes, some or other of them have taken him into business, as into partnership, or into employment, only because they knew him to be qualified for business, and for keeping books in particular. but if we should admonish the tradesman to an exact and regular care of his books, even in his declining fortunes, much more should it be his care in his beginning, and before any disaster has befallen him. i doubt not, that many a tradesman has miscarried by the mistakes and neglect of his books; for the losses that men suffer on that account are not easily set down; but i recommend it to a tradesman to take exact care of his books, as i would to every man to take care of his diet and temperate living, in order to their health; for though, according to some, we cannot, by all our care and caution, lengthen out life, but that every one must and shall live their appointed time,[ ] yet, by temperance and regular conduct, we may make that life more comfortable, more agreeable, and pleasant, by its being more healthy and hearty; so, though the exactest book-keeping cannot be said to make a tradesman thrive, or that he shall stand the longer in his business, because his profit and loss do not depend upon his books, or the goodness of his debts depend upon the debtor's accounts being well posted, yet this must be said, that the well keeping of his books may be the occasion of his trade being carried on with the more ease and pleasure, and the more satisfaction, by having numberless quarrels, and contentions, and law-suits, which are the plagues of a tradesman's life, prevented and avoided; which, on the contrary, often torment a tradesman, and make his whole business be uneasy to him for want of being able to make a regular proof of things by his books. a tradesman without his books, in case of a law-suit for a debt, is like a married woman without her certificate. how many times has a woman been cast, and her cause not only lost, but her reputation and character exposed, for want of being able to prove her marriage, though she has been really and honestly married, and has merited a good character all her days? and so in trade, many a debt has been lost, many an account been perplexed by the debtor, many a sum of money been recovered, and actually paid over again, especially after the tradesman has been dead, for want of hits keeping his books carefully and exactly when he was alive; by which negligence, if he has not been ruined when he was living, his widow and children have been ruined after his decease; though, had justice been done, he had left them in good circumstances, and with sufficient to support them. and this brings me to another principal reason why a tradesman should not only keep books, but be very regular and exact in keeping them in order, that is to say, duly posted, and all his affairs exactly and duly entered in his books; and this is, that if he should be surprised by sudden or unexpected sickness, or death, as many are, and as all may be, his accounts may not be left intricate and unsettled, and his affairs thereby be perplexed. next to being prepared for death, with respect to heaven and his soul, a tradesman should be always in a state of preparation for death, with respect to his books; it is in vain that he calls for a scrivener or lawyer, and makes a will, when he finds a sudden summons sent him for the grave, and calls his friends about him to divide and settle his estate; if his business is in confusion below stairs, his books out of order, and his accounts unsettled, to what purpose does he give his estate among his relations, when nobody knows where to find it? as, then, the minister exhorts us to take care of our souls, and make our peace with heaven, while we are in a state of health, and while life has no threatening enemies about it, no diseases, no fevers attending; so let me second that advice to the tradesman always to keep his books in such a posture, that if he should be snatched away by death, his distressed widow and fatherless family may know what is left for them, and may know where to look for it. he may depend upon it, that what he owes to any one they will come fast enough for, and his widow and executrix will be pulled to pieces for it, if she cannot and does not speedily pay it. why, then, should he not put her in a condition to have justice done her and her children, and to know how and of whom to seek for his just debts, that she may be able to pay others, and secure the remainder for herself and her children? i must confess, a tradesman not to leave his books in order when he dies, argues him to be either. . a very bad christian, who had few or no thoughts of death upon him, or that considered nothing of its frequent coming unexpected and sudden without warning; or, . a very unnatural relation, without the affections of a father, or a husband, or even of a friend, that should rather leave what he had to be swallowed up by strangers, than leave his family and friends in a condition to find, and to recover it. again, it is the same case as in matters religious, with respect to the doing this in time, and while health and strength remain. for, as we say very well, and with great reason, that the work of eternity should not be left to the last moments; that a death-bed is no place, and a sick languishing body no condition, and the last breath no time, for repentance; so i may add, neither are these the place, the condition, nor the time, to make up our accounts. there is no posting the books on a death-bed, or balancing the cash-book in a high fever. can the tradesman tell you where his effects lie, and to whom he has lent or trusted sums of money, or large quantities of goods, when he is delirious and light-headed? all these things must be done in time, and the tradesman should take care that his books should always do this for him, and then he has nothing to do but make his will, and dispose of what he has; and for the rest he refers them to his books, to know where every thing is to be had. footnotes: [ ] [the sum at the bottom, or _foot_, of the account.] [ ] [this reminds the editor of an amusing anecdote he has heard, illustrative of the diseased accuracy, as it may be called, of a certain existing london merchant. on reckoning up his household book one year, he found that he had expended one penny more than was accounted for, and there was accordingly an error to that extent in his reckoning. the very idea of an error, however trifling the amount, gave him great uneasiness, and he set himself with the greatest anxiety to discover, if possible, the occasion. he employed the by-hours of weeks in the vain attempt; but at length, having one day to cross waterloo bridge, where there is a pontage of a penny for foot passengers, he all at once, to his inconceivable joy, recollected having there disbursed the coin in question about a twelvemonth before.] [ ] [the correct doctrine is, we _may_ not, by our utmost care and diligence, avoid the causes of an early and premature death; but he who acts according to the rules which promote health, and avoids all things which tend to endanger it, has a much better chance of living to the natural period appointed for human life than he who acts otherwise--besides, as stated in the text, making his life more agreeable. the author's illustration would be more properly drawn if we were to say, 'the tradesman, by keeping exact accounts, may not succeed in contending against certain unfavourable circumstances, no more than the man who lives according to the just rules of nature may thereby succeed in eviting other evils that tend to cut short life; but as the temperate man is most likely to be healthy, so is the tradesman, who keeps exact accounts, most likely to thrive in business.'] chapter xxi of the tradesman letting his wife be acquainted with his business it must be acknowledged, that as this chapter seems to be written in favour of the women, it also seems to be an officious, thankless benefaction to the wives; for that, as the tradesman's ladies now manage, they are above the favour, and put no value upon it. on the contrary, the women, generally speaking, trouble not their heads about it, scorn to be seen in the counting house, much less behind the counter; despise the knowledge of their husbands' business, and act as if they were ashamed of being tradesmen's wives, and never intended to be tradesmen's widows. if this chosen ignorance of theirs comes some time or other to be their loss, and they find the disadvantage of it too late, they may read their fault in their punishment, and wish too late they had acted the humbler part, and not thought it below them to inform themselves of what it is so much their interest to know. this pride is, indeed, the great misfortune of tradesmen's wives; for, as they lived as if they were above being owned for the tradesman's wife, so, when he dies, they live to be the shame of the tradesman's widow. they knew nothing how he got his estate when he was alive, and they know nothing where to find it when he is dead. this drives them into the hands of lawyers, attorneys, and solicitors, to get in their effects; who, when they have got it, often run away with it, and leave the poor widow in a more disconsolate and perplexed condition than she was in before. it is true, indeed, that this is the women's fault in one respect, and too often it is so in many, since the common spirit is, as i observed, so much above the tradesman's condition; but since it is not so with every body, let me state the case a little for the use of those who still have ther senses about them; and whose pride is not got so much above their reason, as to let them choose to be tradesmen's beggars, rather than tradesmen's widows. when the tradesman dies, it is to be expected that what estate or effects he leaves, is, generally speaking, dispersed about in many hands; his widow, if she is left executrix, has the trouble of getting things together as well as she can; if she is not left executrix, she has not the trouble indeed, but then it is looked upon that she is dishonoured in not having the trust; when she comes to look into her affairs, she is more or less perplexed and embarrassed, as she has not or has acquainted herself, or been made acquainted, with her husband's affairs in his lifetime. if she has been one of those gay delicate ladies, that valuing herself upon her being a gentlewoman, and that thought it a step below herself, when she married this mechanic thing called a tradesman, and consequently scorned to come near his shop, or warehouse, and by consequence acquainting herself with any of his affairs,[ ] or so much as where his effects lay, which are to be her fortune for the future--i say, if this has been her case, her folly calls for pity now, as her pride did for contempt before; for as she was foolish in the first, she may be miserable in the last part of it; for now she falls into a sea of trouble, she has the satisfaction of knowing that her husband has died, as the tradesmen call it, well to pass, and that she is left well enough; but she has at the same time the mortification of knowing nothing how to get it in, or in what hands it lies. the only relief she has is her husband's books, and she is happy in that, but just in proportion to the care he took in keeping them; even when she finds the names of debtors, she knows not who they are, or where they dwell, who are good, and who are bad; the only remedy she has here, if her husband had ever a servant, or apprentice, who was so near out of his time as to be acquainted with the customers, and with the books, then she is forced to be beholden to him to settle the accounts for her, and endeavour to get in the debts; in return for which she is forced to give him his time and freedom, and let him into the trade, make him master of all the business in the world, and it may be at last, with all her pride, has to take him for a husband; and when her friends upbraid her with it, that she should marry her apprentice boy, when it may be she was old enough to be his mother, her answer is, 'why, what could i do? i see i must have been ruined else; i had nothing but what lay abroad in debts, scattered about the world, and nobody but he knew how to get them in. what could i do? if i had not done it, i must have been a beggar.' and so, it may be, _she is_ at last too, if the boy of a husband proves a brute to her, as many do, and as in such unequal matches indeed most such people do. thus, that pride which once set her above a kind, diligent, tender husband, and made her scorn to stoop to acquaint herself with his affairs, by which, had she done it, she had been tolerably qualified to get in her debts, dispose of her shop-goods, and bring her estate together--the same pride sinks her into the necessity of cringing to a scoundrel, and taking her servant to be her master. this i mention for the caution of those ladies who stoop to marry men of business, and yet despise the business they are maintained by; that marry the tradesman, but scorn the trade. if madam thinks fit to stoop to the man, she ought never to think herself above owning his employment; and as she may upon occasion of his death be left to value herself upon it, and to have at least her fortune and her children's to gather up out of it, she ought not to profess herself so unacquainted with it as not to be able to look into it when necessity obliges her. it is a terrible disaster to any woman to be so far above her own circumstances, that she should not qualify herself to make the best of things that are left her, or to preserve herself from being cheated, and being imposed upon. in former times, tradesmen's widows valued themselves upon the shop and trade, or the warehouse and trade, that were left them; and at least, if they did not carry on the trade in their own names, they would keep it up till they put it off to advantage; and often i have known a widow get from £ to £ for the good-will, as it is called, of the shop and trade, if she did not think fit to carry on the trade; if she did, the case turned the other way, namely, that if the widow did not put off the shop, the shop would put off the widow; and i may venture to say, that where there is one widow that keeps on the trade now, after a husband's decease, there were ten, if not twenty, that did it then. but now the ladies are above it, and disdain it so much, that they choose rather to go without the prospect of a second marriage, in virtue of the trade, than to stoop to the mechanic low step of carrying on a trade; and they have their reward, for they do go without it; and whereas they might in former times match infinitely to their advantage by that method, now they throw themselves away, and the trade too.[ ] but this is not the case which i particularly aim at in this chapter. if the women will act weakly and foolishly, and throw away the advantages that he puts into their hands, be that to them, and it is their business to take care of that; but i would have them have the opportunity put into their hands, and that they may make the best of it if they please; if they will not, the fault is their own. but to this end, i say, i would have every tradesman make his wife so much acquainted with his trade, and so much mistress of the managing part of it, that she might be able to carry it on if she pleased, in case of his death; if she does not please, that is another case; or if she will not acquaint herself with it, that also is another case, and she must let it alone; but he should put it into her power, or give her the offer of it. first, he should do it for her own sake, namely, as before, that she may make her advantage of it, either for disposing herself and the shop together, as is said above, or for the more readily disposing the goods, and getting in the debts, without dishonouring herself, as i have observed, and marrying her 'prentice boy, in order to take care of the effects--that is to say, ruining herself to prevent her being ruined. secondly, he should do it for his children's sake, if he has any, that if the wife have any knowledge of the business, and has a son to breed up to it, though he be not yet of age to take it up, she may keep the trade for him, and introduce him into it, that so he may take the trouble off her hands, and she may have the satisfaction of preserving the father's trade for the benefit of his son, though left too young to enter upon it at first. thus i have known many a widow that would have thought it otherwise below her, has engaged herself in her husbands's business, and carried it on, purely to bring her eldest son up to it, and has preserved it for him, and which has been an estate to him, whereas otherwise it must have been lost, and he would have had the world to seek for a new business. this is a thing which every honest affectionate mother would, or at least should, be so willing to do for a son, that she, i think, who would not, ought not to marry a tradesman at all; but if she would think herself above so important a trust for her own children, she should likewise think herself above having children by a tradesman, and marry somebody whose children she would act the mother for. but every widow is not so unnatural, and i am willing to suppose the tradesman i am writing to shall be better married, and, therefore, i give over speaking to the woman's side, and i will suppose the tradesman's wife not to be above her quality, and willing to be made acquainted with her husband's affairs, as well as to be helpful to him, if she can, as to be in a condition to be helpful to herself and her family, if she comes to have occasion. but, then, the difficulty often lies on the other side the question, and the tradesman cares not to lay open his business to, or acquaint his wife with it; and many circumstances of the tradesman draw him into this snare; for i must call it a snare both to him and to her. i. the tradesman is foolishly vain of making his wife a gentlewoman, and, forsooth, he will have her sit above in the parlour, and receive visits, and drink tea, and entertain her neighbours, or take a coach and go abroad; but as to the business, she shall not stoop to touch it; he has apprentices and journeymen, and there is no need of it. ii. some trades, indeed, are not proper for the women to meddle in, or custom has made it so, that it would be ridiculous for the women to appear in their shops; that is, such as linen and woollen drapers, mercers, booksellers, goldsmiths, and all sorts of dealers by commission, and the like--custom, i say, has made these trades so effectually shut out the women, that, what with custom, and the women's generally thinking it below them, we never, or rarely, see any women in those shops or warehouses. iii. or if the trade is proper, and the wife willing, the husband declines it, and shuts her out--and this is the thing i complain of as an unjustice upon the woman. but our tradesmen, forsooth, think it an undervaluing to them and to their business to have their wives seen in their shops--that is to say, that, because other trades do not admit them, therefore they will not have their trades or shops thought less masculine or less considerable than others, and they will not have their wives be seen in their shops. iv. but there are two sorts of husbands more who decline acquainting their wives with their business; and those are, ( .) those who are unkind, haughty, and imperious, who will not trust their wives, because they will not make them useful, that they may not value themselves upon it, and make themselves, as it were, equal to their husbands. a weak, foolish, and absurd suggestion! as if the wife were at all exalted by it, which, indeed, is just the contrary, for the woman is rather humbled and made a servant by it: or, ( .) the other sort are those who are afraid their wives should be let into the grand secret of all--namely, to know that they are bankrupt, and undone, and worth nothing. all these considerations are foolish or fraudulent, and in every one of them the husband is in the wrong--nay, they all argue very strongly for the wife's being, in a due degree, let into the knowledge of their business; but the last, indeed, especially that she may be put into a posture to save him from ruin, if it be possible, or to carry on some business without him, if he is forced to fail, and fly; as many have been, when the creditors have encouraged the wife to carry on a trade for the support of her family and children, when he perhaps may never show his head again. but let the man's case be what it will, i think he can never call it a hard shift to let his wife into an acquaintance with his business, if she desires it, and is fit for it; and especially in case of mortality, that she may not be left helpless and friendless with her children when her husband is gone, and when, perhaps, her circumstances may require it. i am not for a man setting his wife at the head of his business, and placing himself under her like a journeyman, like a certain china-seller, not far from the east india house, who, if any customers came into the shop that made a mean, sorry figure, would leave them to her husband to manage and attend them; but if they looked like quality, and people of fashion, would come up to her husband, when he was showing them his goods, putting him by with a 'hold your tongue, tom, and let me talk.' i say, it is not this kind, or part, that i would have the tradesman's wife let into, but such, and so much, of the trade only as may be proper for her, not ridiculous, in the eye of the world, and may make her assisting and helpful, not governing to him, and, which is the main thing i am at, such as should qualify her to keep up the business for herself and children, if her husband should be taken away, and she be left destitute in the world, as many are. thus much, i think, it is hard a wife should not know, and no honest tradesman ought to refuse it; and above all, it is a great pity the wives of tradesmen, who so often are reduced to great inconvenience for want of it, should so far withstand their own felicity, as to refuse to be thus made acquainted with their business, by which weak and foolish pride they expose themselves, as i have observed, to the misfortune of throwing the business away, when they may come to want it, and when the keeping it up might be the restoring of their family, and providing for their children. for, not to compliment tradesmen too much, their wives are not all ladies, nor are their children all born to be gentlemen. trade, on the contrary, is subject to contingencies; some begin poor, and end rich; others, and those very many, begin rich, and end poor: and there are innumerable circumstances which may attend a tradesman's family, which may make it absolutely necessary to preserve the trade for his children, if possible; the doing which may keep them from misery, and raise them all in the world, and the want of it, on the other hand, sinks and suppresses them. for example:-- a tradesman has begun the world about six or seven years; he has, by his industry and good understanding in business, just got into a flourishing trade, by which he clears five or six hundred pounds a-year; and if it should please god to spare his life for twenty years or more, he would certainly be a rich man, and get a good estate; but on a sudden, and in the middle of all his prosperity, he is snatched away by a sudden fit of sickness, and his widow is left in a desolate despairing condition, having five children, and big with another; but the eldest of these is not above six years old, and, though he is a boy, yet he is utterly incapable to be concerned in the business; so the trade which (had his father lived to bring him up in his shop or warehouse) would have been an estate to him, is like to be lost, and perhaps go all away to the eldest apprentice, who, however, wants two years of his time. now, what is to be done for this unhappy family? 'done!' says the widow; 'why, i will never let the trade fall so, that should be the making of my son, and in the meantime be the maintenance of all my children.' 'why, what can you do, child?' says her father, or other friends; 'you know nothing of it. mr ---- did not acquaint you with his business.' 'that is true,' says the widow; 'he did not, because i was a fool, and did not care to look much into it, and that was my fault. mr ---- did not press me to it, because he was afraid i might think he intended to put me upon it; but he often used to say, that if he should drop off before his boys were fit to come into the shop, it would be a sad loss to them--that the trade would make gentlemen of a couple of them, and it would be great pity it should go away from them.' 'but what does that signify now, child?' adds the father; 'you see it is so; and how can it be helped?' 'why,' says the widow, 'i used to ask him if he thought i could carry it on for them, if such a thing should happen?' 'and what answer did he make?' says the father. 'he shook his head,' replied the widow, 'and answered, "yes, i might, if i had good servants, and if i would look a little into it beforehand."' 'why,' says the father, 'he talked as if he had foreseen his end.' 'i think he did foresee it,' says she, 'for he was often talking thus.' 'and why did you not take the hint then,' says her father, 'and acquaint yourself a little with things, that you might have been prepared for such an unhappy circumstance, whatever might happen?' 'why, so i did,' says the widow, 'and have done for above two years past; he used to show me his letters, and his books, and i know where he bought every thing; and i know a little of goods too, when they are good, and when bad, and the prices; also i know all the country-people he dealt with, and have seen most of them, and talked with them. mr---- used to bring them up to dinner sometimes, and he would prompt my being acquainted with them, and would sometimes talk of his business with them at table, on purpose that i might hear it; and i know a little how to sell, too, for i have stood by him sometimes, and seen the customers and him chaffer with one another.' 'and did your husband like that you did so?' says the father. 'yes,' says she, 'he loved to see me do it, and often told me he did so; and told me, that if he were dead, he believed i might carry on the trade as well as he.' 'but he did not believe so, i doubt,' says the father. 'i do not know as to that, but i sold goods several times to some customers, when he has been out of the way.' 'and was he pleased with it when he came home? did you do it to his mind?' 'nay, i have served a customer sometimes when he has been in the warehouse, and he would go away to his counting-house on purpose, and say, "i'll leave you and my wife to make the bargain," and i have pleased the customer and him too.' 'well,' says the father, 'do you think you could carry on the trade?' 'i believe i could, if i had but an honest fellow of a journeyman for a year or two to write in the books, and go abroad among customers.' 'well, you have two apprentices; one of them begins to understand things very much, and seems to be a diligent lad.' 'he comes forward, indeed, and will be very useful, if he does not grow too forward, upon a supposition that i shall want him too much: but it will be necessary to have a man to be above him for a while.' 'well,' says the father, 'we will see to get you such a one.' in short, they got her a man to assist to keep the books, go to exchange, and do the business abroad, and the widow carried on the business with great application and success, till her eldest son grew up, and was first taken into the shop as an apprentice to his mother; the eldest apprentice served her faithfully, and was her journeyman four years after his time was out; then she took him in partner to one-fourth of the trade, and when her son came of age, she gave the apprentice one of her daughters, and enlarged his share to a third, gave her own son another third, and kept a third for herself to support the family. thus the whole trade was preserved, and the son and son-in-law grew rich in it, and the widow, who grew as skilful in the business as her husband was before her, advanced the fortunes of all the rest of her children very considerably. this was an example of the husband's making the wife (but a little) acquainted with his business; and if this had not been the case, the trade had been lost, and the family left just to divide what the father left; which, as they were seven of them, mother and all, would not have been considerable enough to have raised them above just the degree of having bread to eat, and none to spare. i hardly need give any examples where tradesmen die, leaving nourishing businesses, and good trades, but leaving their wives ignorant and destitute, neither understanding their business, nor knowing how to learn, having been too proud to stoop to it when they had husbands, and not courage or heart to do it when they have none. the town is so full of such as these, that this book can scarce fall into the hands of any readers but who will be able to name them among their own acquaintance. these indolent, lofty ladies have generally the mortification to see their husbands' trades catched up by apprentices or journeymen in the shop, or by other shopkeepers in the neighbourhood, and of the same business, that might have enriched them, and descended to their children; to see their bread carried away by strangers, and other families flourishing on the spoils of their fortunes. and this brings me to speak of those ladies, who, though they do, perhaps, for want of better offers, stoop to wed a trade, as we call it, and take up with a mechanic; yet all the while they are the tradesmen's wives, they endeavour to preserve the distinction of their fancied character; carry themselves as if they thought they were still above their station, and that, though they were unhappily yoked with a tradesman, they would still keep up the dignity of their birth, and be called gentlewomen; and in order to this, would behave like such all the way, whatever rank they were levelled with by the misfortune of their circumstances. this is a very unhappy, and, indeed, a most unseasonable kind of pride; and if i might presume to add a word here by way of caution to such ladies, it should be to consider, before they marry tradesmen, the great disadvantages they lay themselves under, in submitting to be a tradesman's wife, but not putting themselves in a condition to take the benefit, as well as the inconvenience of it; for while they are above the circumstances of the tradesman's wife, they are deprived of all the remedy against the miseries of a tradesman's widow; and if the man dies, and leaves them little or nothing but the trade to carry on and maintain them, they, being unacquainted with that, are undone. a lady that stoops to marry a tradesman, should consider the usage of england among the gentry and persons of distinction, where the case is thus: if a lady, who has a title of honour, suppose it be a countess, or if she were a duchess, it is all one--if, i say, she stoop to marry a private gentleman, she ceases to rank for the future as a countess, or duchess, but must be content to be, for the time to come, what her husband can entitle her to, and no other; and, excepting the courtesy of the people calling her my lady duchess, or the countess, she is no more than plain mrs such a one, meaning the name of her husband, and no other. thus, if a baronet's widow marry a tradesman in london, she is no more my lady, but plain mrs----, the draper's wife, &c. the application of the thing is thus: if the lady think fit to marry a mechanic, say a glover, or a cutler, or whatever it is, she should remember she is a glover's wife from that time, and no more; and to keep up her dignity, when fortune has levelled her circumstances, is but a piece of unseasonable pageantry, and will do her no service at all. the thing she is to inquire is, what she must do if mr----, the glover, or cutler, should die? whether she can carry on the trade afterwards, or whether she can live without it? if she find she cannot live without it, it is her prudence to consider in time, and so to acquaint herself with the trade, that she may be able to do it when she comes to it. i do confess, there is nothing more ridiculous than the double pride of the ladies of this age, with respect to marrying what they call below their birth. some ladies of good families, though but of mean fortune, are so stiff upon the point of honour, that they refuse to marry tradesmen, nay, even merchants, though vastly above them in wealth and fortune, only because they are tradesmen, or, as they are pleased to call them, though improperly, mechanics; and though perhaps they have not above £ or £ to their portion, scorn the man for his rank, who does but turn round, and has his choice of wives, perhaps, with two, or three, or four thousand pounds, before their faces. the gentlemen of quality, we see, act upon quite another foot, and, i may say, with much more judgment, seeing nothing is more frequent than when any noble family are loaded with titles and honour rather than fortune, they come down into the city, and choose wives among the merchants' and tradesmen's daughters to raise their families; and i am mistaken, if at this time we have not several duchesses, countesses, and ladies of rank, who are the daughters of citizens and tradesmen, as the duchess of bedford, of a----e, of wharton, and others; the countess of exeter, of onslow, and many more, too many to name, where it is thought no dishonour at all for those persons to have matched into rich families, though not ennobled; and we have seen many trading families lay the foundation of nobility by their wealth and opulence--as mr child, for example, afterwards sir josiah child, whose posterity by his two daughters are now dukes of beaufort and of bedford, and his grandson lord viscount castlemain, and yet he himself began a tradesman, and in circumstances very mean. but this stiffness of the ladies, in refusing to marry tradesmen, though it is weak in itself, is not near so weak as the folly of those who first do stoop to marry thus, and yet think to maintain the dignity of their birth in spite of the meanness of their fortune, and so, carrying themselves above that station in which providence has placed them, disable themselves from receiving the benefit which their condition offers them, upon any subsequent changes of their life. this extraordinary stiffness, i have known, has brought many a well-bred gentlewoman to misery and the utmost distress, whereas, had they been able to have stooped to the subsequent circumstances of life, which providence also thought fit to make their lot, they might have lived comfortably and plentifully all their days. it is certainly every lady's prudence to bring her spirit down to her condition; and if she thinks fit, or it is any how her lot to marry a tradesman, which many ladies of good families have found it for their advantage to do--i say, if it be her lot, she should take care she does not make that a curse to her, which would be her blessing, by despising her own condition, and putting herself into a posture not to enjoy it. in all this, i am to be understood to mean that unhappy temper, which i find so much among the tradesman's wives at this time, of being above taking any notice of their husband's affairs, as if nothing were before them but a constant settled state of prosperity, and it were impossible for them to taste any other fortune; whereas, that very hour they embark with a tradesman, they ought to remember that they are entering a state of life full of accidents and hazards, and that innumerable families, in as good circumstances as theirs, fall every day into disasters and misfortunes, and that a tradesman's condition is liable to more casualties than any other life whatever. how many widows of tradesmen, nay, and wives of broken and ruined tradesmen, do we daily see recover themselves and their shattered families, when the man has been either snatched away by death, or demolished by misfortunes, and has been forced to fly to the east or west indies, and forsake his family in search of bread? women, when once they give themselves leave to stoop to their own circumstances, and think fit to rouse up themselves to their own relief, are not so helpless and shiftless creatures as some would make them appear in the world; and we see whole families in trade frequently recovered by their industry: but, then, they are such women as can stoop to it, and can lay aside the particular pride of their first years; and who, without looking back to what they have been, can be content to look into what providence has brought them to be, and what they must infallibly be, if they do not vigorously apply to the affairs which offer, and fall into the business which their husbands leave them the introduction to, and do not level their minds to their condition. it may, indeed, be hard to do this at first, but necessity is a spur to industry, and will make things easy where they seem difficult; and this necessity will humble the minds of those whom nothing else could make to stoop; and where it does not, it is a defect of the understanding, as well as of prudence, and must reflect upon the senses as well as the morals of the person. footnotes: [ ] [most of the wives of tradesmen above a certain rather humble condition would now smile at the idea of their being expected to attend their husbands' shops, in order to form an intimate acquaintance with their affairs. doubtless, however, in the days of defoe, when the capitals of tradesmen were less, when provision for widows by insurance upon lives was not practised, and when the comparative simplicity of the modes of conducting business admitted it, a female in that situation would only be exercising a prudent caution, and doing nothing in the least inconsistent with the delicacy of her sex, in obeying the rules laid down in the text.] [ ] [the number of widows, or at least females, carrying on trade in england, is still very considerable. in scotland, it is a comparatively rare case. a native of the northern part of the island is apt to be strongly impressed with this fact, when, in the large manufacturing towns of england, he sees female names in so many cases inscribed upon the waggons used in the transport of goods. the complaint in the text, that females have, to such an extent, ceased to carry on the business of their deceased husbands, is probably, like many other complaints of the same kind already pointed out, merely a piece of querulousness on the part of our author, or the result of a very common mental deception.] chapter xxii of the dignity of trade in england more than in other countries it is said of england, by way of distinction, and we all value ourselves upon it, that it is a trading country; and king charles ii., who was perhaps that prince of all the kings that ever reigned in england, that best understood the country and the people that he governed, used to say, 'that the tradesmen were the only gentry in england.' his majesty spoke it merrily, but it had a happy signification in it, such as was peculiar to the bright genius of that prince, who, though he was not the best governor, was the best acquainted with the world of all the princes of his age, if not of all the men in it; and, though it be a digression, give me leave, after having quoted the king, to add three short observations of my own, in favour of england, and of the people and trade of it, and yet without the least partiality to our own country. i. we are not only a trading country, but the greatest trading country in the world. ii. our climate is the most agreeable climate in the world to live in. iii. our englishmen are the stoutest and best men (i mean what we call men of their hands) in the world. these are great things to advance in our own favour, and yet to pretend not to be partial too; and, therefore, i shall give my reasons, which i think support my opinion, and they shall be as short as the heads themselves, that i may not go too much off from my subject. . we are the greatest trading country in the world, because we have the greatest exportation of the growth and product of our land, and of the manufacture and labour of our people; and the greatest importation and consumption of the growth, product, and manufactures of other countries from abroad, of any nation in the world.[ ] . our climate is the best and most agreeable, because a man can be more out of doors in england than in other countries. this was king charles ii.'s reason for it, and i cannot name it, without doing justice to his majesty in it. . our men are the stoutest and best, because, strip them naked from the waist upwards, and give them no weapons at all but their hands and heels, and turn them into a room, or stage, and lock them in with the like number of other men of any nation, man for man, and they shall beat the best men you shall find in the world. from this digression, which i hope will not be disagreeable, as it is not very tedious, i come back to my first observation, that england is a trading country, and two things i offer from that head. first, our tradesmen are not, as in other countries, the meanest of our people. secondly, some of the greatest and best, and most flourishing families, among not the gentry only, but even the nobility, have been raised from trade, owe their beginning, their wealth, and their estates, to trade; and, i may add, thirdly, those families are not at all ashamed of their original, and, indeed, have no occasion to be ashamed of it. it is true, that in england we have a numerous and an illustrious nobility and gentry; and it is true, also, that not so many of those families have raised themselves by the sword as in other nations, though we have not been without men of fame in the field too. but trade and learning have been the two chief steps by which our gentlemen have raised their relations, and have built their fortunes; and from which they have ascended up to the prodigious height, both in wealth and number, which we see them now risen to. as so many of our noble and wealthy families are raised by, and derive from trade, so it is true, and, indeed, it cannot well be otherwise, that many of the younger branches of our gentry, and even of the nobility itself, have descended again into the spring from whence they flowed, and have become tradesmen; and thence it is, that, as i said above, our tradesmen in england are not, as it generally is in other countries, always of the meanest of our people. indeed, i might have added here, that trade itself in england is not, as it generally is in other countries, the meanest thing the men can turn their hand to; but, on the contrary, trade is the readiest way for men to raise their fortunes and families; and, therefore, it is a field for men of figure and of good families to enter upon. n.b. by trade we must be understood to include navigation, and foreign discoveries, because they are, generally speaking, all promoted and carried on by trade, and even by tradesmen, as well as merchants; and the tradesmen are at this time as much concerned in shipping (as owners) as the merchants; only the latter may be said to be the chief employers of the shipping. having thus done a particular piece of justice to ourselves, in the value we put upon trade and tradesmen in england, it reflects very much upon the understanding of those refined heads, who pretend to depreciate that part of the nation, which is so infinitely superior in number and in wealth to the families who call themselves gentry, or quality, and so infinitely more numerous. as to the wealth of the nation, that undoubtedly lies chiefly among the trading part of the people; and though there are a great many families raised within few years, in the late war, by great employments, and by great actions abroad, to the honour of the english gentry; yet how many more families among the tradesmen have been raised to immense estates, even during the same time, by the attending circumstances of the war, such as the clothing, the paying, the victualling and furnishing, &c, both army and navy! and by whom have the prodigious taxes been paid, the loans supplied, and money advanced upon all occasions? by whom are the banks and companies carried on?--and on whom are the customs and excises levied? have not the trade and tradesmen born the burden of the war?--and do they not still pay four millions a-year interest for the public debts? on whom are the funds levied, and by whom the public credit supported? is not trade the inexhausted fund of all funds, and upon which all the rest depend? as is the trade, so in proportion are the tradesmen; and how wealthy are tradesmen in almost all the several parts of england, as well as in london! how ordinary is it to see a tradesman go off the stage, even but from mere shopkeeping, with from ten to forty thousand pounds' estate, to divide among his family!--when, on the contrary, take the gentry in england from one end to the other, except a few here and there, what with excessive high living, which is of late grown so much into a disease, and the other ordinary circumstances of families, we find few families of the lower gentry, that is to say, from six or seven hundred a-year downwards, but they are in debt and in necessitous circumstances, and a great many of greater estates also. on the other hand, let any one who is acquainted with england, look but abroad into the several counties, especially near london, or within fifty miles of it. how are the ancient families worn out by time and family misfortunes, and the estates possessed by a new race of tradesmen, grown up into families of gentry, and established by the immense wealth, gained, as i may say, behind the counter, that is, in the shop, the warehouse, and the counting-house! how are the sons of tradesmen ranked among the prime of the gentry! how are the daughters of tradesmen at this time adorned with the ducal coronets, and seen riding in the coaches of the best of our nobility! nay, many of our trading gentlemen at this time refuse to be ennobled, scorn being knighted, and content themselves with being known to be rated among the richest commoners in the nation. and it must be acknowledged, that, whatever they be as to court-breeding and to manners, they, generally speaking, come behind none of the gentry in knowledge of the world. at this very day we see the son of sir thomas scawen matched into the ducal family of bedford, and the son of sir james bateman into the princely house of marlborough, both whose ancestors, within the memory of the writer of these sheets, were tradesmen in london; the first sir william scawen's apprentice, and the latter's grandfather a porter upon or near london bridge. how many noble seats, superior to the palaces of sovereign princes (in some countries) do we see erected within few miles of this city by tradesmen, or the sons of tradesmen, while the seats and castles of the ancient gentry, like their families, look worn out, and fallen into decay. witness the noble house of sir john eyles, himself a merchant, at giddy-hall near rumford; sir gregory page on blackheath, the son of a brewer; sir nathaniel mead near wealgreen, his father a linen-draper, with many others too long to repeat; and, to crown all, the lord castlemains at wanstead, his father sir josiah child, originally a tradesman. it was a smart, but just repartee, of a london tradesman, when a gentleman, who had a good estate too, rudely reproached him in company, and bade him hold his tongue, for he was no gentleman. 'no, sir,' says he, 'but i can buy a gentleman, and therefore i claim a liberty to speak among gentlemen.' again, in how superior a port or figure (as we now call it) do our tradesmen live, to what the middling gentry either do or can support! an ordinary tradesman now, not in the city only, but in the country, shall spend more money by the year, than a gentleman of four or five hundred pounds a-year can do, and shall increase and lay up every year too, whereas the gentleman shall at the best stand stock still, just where he began, nay, perhaps decline; and as for the lower gentry, from a hundred pounds a-year to three hundred, or thereabouts, though they are often as proud and high in their appearance as the other--as to them, i say, a shoemaker in london shall keep a better house, spend more money, clothe his family better, and yet grow rich too. it is evident where the difference lies; _an estate's a pond, but a trade's a spring_: the first, if it keeps full, and the water wholesome, by the ordinary supplies and drains from the neighbouring grounds, it is well, and it is all that is expected; but the other is an inexhausted current, which not only fills the pond, and keeps it full, but is continually running over, and fills all the lower ponds and places about it. this being the case in england, and our trade being so vastly great, it is no wonder that the tradesmen in england fill the lists of our nobility and gentry; no wonder that the gentlemen of the best families marry tradesmen's daughters, and put their younger sons apprentices to tradesmen; and how often do these younger sons come to buy the elder son's estates, and restore the family, when the elder, and head of the house, proving rakish and extravagant, has wasted his patrimony, and is obliged to make out the blessing of israel's family, where the younger son bought the birthright, and the elder was doomed to serve him. trade is so far here from being inconsistent with a gentleman, that, in short, trade in england makes gentlemen, and has peopled this nation with gentlemen; for after a generation or two the tradesmen's children, or at least their grand-children, come to be as good gentlemen, statesmen, parliament-men, privy-counsellors, judges, bishops, and noblemen, as those of the highest birth and the most ancient families, and nothing too high for them. thus the late earl of haversham was originally a merchant; the late secretary craggs was the son of a barber; the present lord castlemain's father was a tradesman; the great-grandfather of the present duke of bedford the same; and so of several others. nor do we find any defect either in the genius or capacities of the posterity of tradesmen, arising from any remains of mechanic blood, which it is pretended should influence them, but all the gallantry of spirit, greatness of soul, and all the generous principles, that can be found in any of the ancient families, whose blood is the most untainted, as they call it, with the low mixtures of a mechanic race, are found in these; and, as is said before, they generally go beyond them in knowledge of the world, which is the best education. we see the tradesmen of england, as they grow wealthy, coming every day to the herald's office, to search for the coats-of-arms of their ancestors, in order to paint them upon their coaches, and engrave them upon their plate, embroider them upon their furniture, or carve them upon the pediments of their new houses; and how often do we see them trace the registers of their families up to the prime nobility, or the most ancient gentry of the kingdom! in this search we find them often qualified to raise new families, if they do not descend from old; as was said of a certain tradesman of london that if he could not find the ancient race of gentlemen from which he came, he would begin a new race, who should be as good gentlemen as any that went before them. they tell us a story of the old lord craven, who was afterwards created earl of craven by king charles ii., that, being upbraided with his being of an upstart nobility, by the famous aubery, earl of oxford, who was himself of the very ancient family of the veres, earls of oxford, the lord craven told him, he (craven) would cap pedigrees with him (oxford) for a wager. the earl of oxford laughed at the challenge, and began reckoning up his famous ancestors, who had been earls of oxford for a hundred years past, and knights for some hundreds of years more; but when my lord craven began, he read over his family thus:--'i am william lord craven; my father was lord mayor of london, and my grandfather was the lord knows who; wherefore i think my pedigree as good as yours, my lord.' the story was merry enough, but is to my purpose exactly; for let the grandfather be who he would, his father, sir william craven, who was lord mayor of london, was a wholesale grocer, and raised the family by trade, and yet nobody doubts but that the family of craven is at this day as truly noble, in all the beauties which adorn noble birth and blood, as can be desired of any family, however ancient, or anciently noble. in italy, and especially at venice, we see every day the sons of merchants, and other trades, who grow in wealth and estates, and can advance for the service of their country a considerable sum of money, namely, , to , dollars, are accepted to honour by the senate, and translated into the list of the nobility, without any regard to the antiquities of their families, or the nobility of blood; and in all ages the best kings and sovereign princes have thought fit to reward the extraordinary merit of their subjects with titles of honour, and to rank men among their nobility, who have deserved it by good and great actions, whether their birth and the antiquity of their families entitled them to it or not. thus in the late wars between england and france, how was our army full of excellent officers, who went from the shop, and from behind the counter, into the camp, and who distinguished themselves there by their merit and gallant behaviour. and several such came to command regiments, and even to be general officers, and to gain as much reputation in the service as any; as colonel pierce, wood, richards, and several others that might be named. all this confirms what i have said before, namely, that trade in england neither is nor ought to be levelled with what it is in other countries; nor the tradesmen depreciated as they are abroad, and as some of our gentry would pretend to do in england; but that, as many of our best families rose from trade, so many branches of the best families in england, under the nobility, have stooped so low as to be put apprentices to tradesmen in london, and to set up and follow those trades when they have come out of their times, and have thought it no dishonour to their blood. to bring this once more home to the ladies, who are so scandalised at that mean step, which they call it, of marrying a tradesman--it may be told them for their humiliation, that, however they think fit to act, sometimes those tradesmen come of better families than their own; and oftentimes, when they have refused them to their loss, those very tradesmen have married ladies of superior fortune to them, and have raised families of their own, who in one generation have been superior to those nice ladies both in dignity and estate, and have, to their great mortification, been ranked above them upon all public occasions. the word tradesman in england does not sound so harsh as it does in other countries; and to say _a gentleman-tradesman_, is not so much nonsense as some people would persuade us to reckon it: and, indeed, as trade is now flourishing in england, and increasing, and the wealth of our tradesmen is already so great, it is very probable a few years will show us still a greater race of trade-bred gentlemen, than ever england yet had. the very name of an english tradesman will, and does already obtain in the world; and as our soldiers by the late war gained the reputation of being some of the best troops in the world, and our seamen are at this day, and very justly too, esteemed the best sailors in the world, so the english tradesmen may in a few years be allowed to rank with the best gentlemen in europe; and as the prophet isaiah said of the merchants of tyre, that 'her traffickers were the honourable of the earth,' (isaiah, xxiii. .) in the meantime, it is evident their wealth at this time out-does that of the like rank of any nation in europe; and as their number is prodigious, so is their commerce; for the inland commerce of england--and it is of those tradesmen, or traffickers, that i am now speaking in particular--is certainly the greatest of its kind of any in the world; nor is it possible there should ever be any like it, the consumption of all sorts of goods, both of our own manufacture, and of foreign growth, being so exceeding great. if the english nation were to be nearly inquired into, and its present opulence and greatness duly weighed, it would appear, that, as the figure it now makes in europe is greater than it ever made before--take it either in king edward iii.'s reign, or in queen elizabeth's, which were the two chief points of time when the english fame was in its highest extent--i say, if its present greatness were to be duly weighed, there is no comparison in its wealth, the number of its people, the value of its lands, the greatness of the estates of its private inhabitants; and, in consequence of all this, its real strength is infinitely beyond whatever it was before, and if it were needful, i could fill up this work with a very agreeable and useful inquiry into the particulars. but i content myself with turning it to the case in hand, for the truth of fact is not to be disputed--i say, i turn it to the case in hand thus: whence comes it to be so?--how is it produced? war has not done it; no, nor so much as helped or assisted to it; it is not by any martial exploits; we have made no conquests abroad, added no new kingdoms to the british empire, reduced no neighbouring nations, or extended the possession of our monarchs into the properties of others; we have grained nothing by war and encroachment; we are butted and bounded just where we were in queen elizabeth's time; the dutch, the flemings, the french, are in view of us just as they were then. we have subjected no new provinces or people to our government; and, with few or no exceptions, we are almost for dominion where king edward i. left us; nay, we have lost all the dominions which our ancient kings for some hundreds of years held in france--such as the rich and powerful provinces of normandy, poictou, gascoigne, bretagne, and acquitaine; and instead of being enriched by war and victory, on the contrary we have been torn in pieces by civil wars and rebellions, as well in ireland as in england, and that several times, to the ruin of our richest families, and the slaughter of our nobility and gentry, nay, to the destruction even of monarchy itself, and this many years at a time, as in the long bloody wars between the houses of lancaster and york, the many rebellions of the irish, as well in queen elizabeth's time, as in king charles i.'s time, and the fatal massacre, and almost extirpation of the english name in that kingdom; and at last, the late rebellion in england, in which the monarch fell a sacrifice to the fury of the people, and monarchy itself gave way to tyranny and usurpation, for almost twenty years. these things prove abundantly that the rising greatness of the british nation is not owing to war and conquests, to enlarging its dominion by the sword, or subjecting the people of other countries to our power; but it is all owing to trade, to the increase of our commerce at home, and the extending it abroad. it is owing to trade, that new discoveries have been made in lands unknown, and new settlements and plantations made, new colonies placed, and new governments formed in the uninhabited islands, and the uncultivated continent of america; and those plantings and settlements have again enlarged and increased the trade, and thereby the wealth and power of the nation by whom they were discovered and planted. we have not increased our power, or the number of our subjects, by subduing the nations which possessed those countries, and incorporating them into our own, but have entirely planted our colonies, and peopled the countries with our own subjects, natives of this island; and, excepting the negroes, which we transport from africa to america, as slaves to work in the sugar and tobacco plantations, all our colonies, as well in the islands as on the continent of america, are entirely peopled from great britain and ireland, and chiefly the former; the natives having either removed farther up into the country, or by their own folly and treachery raising war against us, been destroyed and cut off. as trade alone has peopled those countries, so trading with them has raised them also to a prodigy of wealth and opulence; and we see now the ordinary planters at jamaica and barbadoes rise to immense estates, riding in their coaches and six, especially at jamaica, with twenty or thirty negroes on foot running before them whenever they please to appear in public. as trade has thus extended our colonies abroad, so it has, except those colonies, kept our people at home, where they are multiplied to that prodigious degree, and do still continue to multiply in such a manner, that if it goes on so, time may come that all the lands in england will do little more than serve for gardens for them, and to feed their cows; and their corn and cattle be supplied from scotland and ireland. what is the reason that we see numbers of french, and of scots, and of germans, in all the foreign nations in europe, and especially filling up their armies and courts, and that you see few or no english there? what is the reason, that when we want to raise armies, or to man navies in england, we are obliged to press the seamen, and to make laws and empower the justices of the peace, and magistrates of towns, to force men to go for soldiers, and enter into the service, or allure them by giving bounty-money, as an encouragement to men to list themselves?--whereas the people of other nations, and even the scots and irish, travel abroad, and run into all the neighbour nations, to seek service, and to be admitted into their pay. what is it but trade?--the increase of business at home, and the employment of the poor in the business and manufactures of this kingdom, by which the poor get so good wages, and live so well, that they will not list for soldiers; and have so good pay in the merchants' service, that they will not serve on board the ships of war, unless they are forced to do it? what is the reason, that, in order to supply our colonies and plantations with people, besides the encouragement given in those colonies to all people that will come there to plant and to settle, we are obliged to send away thither all our petty offenders, and all the criminals that we think fit to spare from the gallows, besides what we formerly called the kidnapping trade?--that is to say, the arts made use of to wheedle and draw away young vagrant and indigent people, and people of desperate fortunes, to sell themselves--that is, bind themselves for servants, the numbers of which are very great. it is poverty fills armies, mans navies, and peoples colonies. in vain the drums beat for soldiers, and the king's captains invite seamen to serve in the armies for fivepence a-day, and in the royal navy for twenty-three shillings per month, in a country where the ordinary labourer can have nine shillings a-week for his labour, and the manufacturers earn from twelve to sixteen shillings a-week for their work, and while trade gives thirty shillings per month wages to the seamen on board merchant ships. men will always stay or go, as the pay gives them encouragement; and this is the reason why it has been so much more difficult to raise and recruit armies in england, than it has been in scotland and ireland, france and germany. the same trade that keeps our people at home, is the cause of the well living of the people here; for as frugality is not the national virtue of england, so the people that get much spend much; and as they work hard, so they live well, eat and drink well, clothe warm, and lodge soft--in a word, the working manufacturing people of england eat the fat, and drink the sweet, live better, and fare better, than the working poor of any other nation in europe; they make better wages of their work, and spend more of the money upon their backs and bellies, than in any other country. this expense of the poor, as it causes a prodigious consumption both of the provisions, and of the manufactures of our country at home, so two things are undeniably the consequence of that part. . the consumption of provisions increases the rent and value of the lands, and this raises the gentlemen's estates, and that again increases the employment of people, and consequently the numbers of them, as well those who are employed in the husbandry of land, breeding and feeding of cattle, &c, as of servants in the gentlemen's families, who, as their estates increase in value, so they increase their families and equipages. . as the people get greater wages, so they, i mean the same poorer part of the people, clothe better, and furnish better, and this increases the consumption of the very manufactures they make; then that consumption increases the quantity made, and this creates what we call inland trade, by which innumerable families are employed, and the increase of the people maintained, and by which increase of trade and people the present growing prosperity of this nation is produced. the whole glory and greatness of england, then, being thus raised by trade, it must be unaccountable folly and ignorance in us to lessen that one article in our own esteem, which is the only fountain from whence we all, take us as a nation, are raised, and by which we are enriched and maintained. the scripture says, speaking of the riches and glory of the city of tyre--which was, indeed, at that time, the great port or emporium of the world for foreign commerce, from whence all the silks and fine manufactures of persia and india were exported all over the western world--'that her merchants were princes;' and, in another place, 'by thy traffic thou hast increased thy riches.' (ezek. xxviii. .) certain it is, that our traffic has increased our riches; and it is also certain, that the flourishing of our manufactures is the foundation of all our traffic, as well our merchandise as our inland trade. the inland trade of england is a thing not easily described; it would, in a word, take up a whole book by itself; it is the foundation of all our wealth and greatness; it is the support of all our foreign trade, and of our manufacturing, and, as i have hitherto written, of the tradesmen who carry it on. i shall proceed with a brief discourse of the trade itself. footnotes: [ ] [we have here a pleasing trait of the superior sagacity of defoe, in as far as it was a prevalent notion down to his time, and even later (nor is it, perhaps, altogether extinguished yet), that the prosperity of a country was marked by its excess of exports over imports. defoe justly ranks the amount of importation on a level with that of exportation, as indicative of the well-being of the country.] chapter xxiii of the inland trade of england, its magnitude, and the great advantage it is to the nation in general i have, in a few words, described what i mean by the inland trade of england, in the introduction to this work. it is the circulation of commerce among ourselves. i. for the carrying on our manufactures of several kinds in the several counties where they are made, and the employing the several sorts of people and trades needful for the said manufactures. ii. for the raising and vending provisions of all kinds for the supply of the vast numbers of people who are employed every where by the said manufactures. iii. for the importing and bringing in from abroad all kinds of foreign growth and manufactures which we want. iv. for the carrying about and dispersing, as well our own growth and manufactures as the foreign imported growth and manufactures of other nations, to the retailer, and by them to the last consumer, which is the utmost end of all trade; and this, in every part, to the utmost corner of the island of great britain and ireland. this i call inland trade, and these circulators of goods, and retailers of them to the last consumer, are those whom we are to understand by the word tradesmen, in all the parts of this work; for (as i observed in the beginning) the ploughmen and farmers who labour at home, and the merchant who imports our merchandise from abroad, are not at all meant or included, and whatever i have been saying, except where they have been mentioned in particular, and at length. this inland trade is in itself at this time the wonder of all the world of trade, nor is there any thing like it now in the world, much less that exceeds it, or perhaps ever will be, except only what itself may grow up to in the ages to come; for, as i have said on all occasions, it is still growing and increasing. by this prodigy of a trade, all the vast importation from our own colonies is circulated and dispersed to the remotest corner of the island, whereby the consumption is become so great, and by which those colonies are so increased, and are become so populous and so wealthy as i have already observed of them. this importation consists chiefly of sugars and tobacco, of which the consumption in great britain is scarcely to be conceived of, besides the consumption of cotton, indigo, rice, ginger, pimento or jamaica pepper, cocoa or chocolate, rum and molasses, train-oil, salt-fish, whale-fin, all sorts of furs, abundance of valuable drugs, pitch, tar, turpentine, deals, masts, and timber, and many other things of smaller value; all which, besides the employing a very great number of ships and english seamen, occasion again a very great exportation of our own manufactures of all sorts to those colonies; which being circulated again for consumption there, that circulation is to be accounted a branch of home or inland trade, as those colonies are on all such occasions esteemed as a branch of part of ourselves, and of the british government in the world. this trade to our west indies and american colonies, is very considerable, as it employs so many ships and sailors, and so much of the growth of those colonies is again exported by us to other parts of the world, over and above what is consumed among us at home; and, also, as all those goods, and a great deal of money in specie, is returned hither for and in balance of our own manufactures and merchandises exported thither--on these accounts some have insisted that more real wealth is brought into great britain every year from those colonies, than is brought from the spanish west indies to old spain, notwithstanding the extent of their dominion is above twenty times as much, and notwithstanding the vast quantity of gold and silver which they bring from the mines of mexico, and the mountains of potosi.[ ] whether these people say true or no, is not my business to inquire here; though, if i may give my opinion, i must acknowledge that i believe they do; but be it so or not, it is certain that it is an infinitely extended trade, and daily increasing; and much of it, if not all, is and ought to be esteemed as an inland trade, because, as above, it is a circulation among ourselves. as the manufactures of england, particularly those of wool (cotton wool included), and of silk, are the greatest, and amount to the greatest value of any single manufacture in europe,[ ] so they not only employ more people, but those people gain the most money, that is to say, have the best wages for their work of any people in the world; and yet, which is peculiar to england, the english manufactures are, allowing for their goodness, the cheapest at market of any in the world, too. even france itself, after all the pains they are at to get our wool, and all the expense they have been at to imitate our manufactures, by getting over our workmen, and giving them even greater wages than they had here, have yet made so little proficiency in it, and are so far from outselling us in foreign markets, that they still, in spite of the strictest prohibitions, send hither, and to holland and germany, for english broad-cloths, druggets, duroys, flannels, serges, and several other sorts of our goods, to supply their own. nor can they clothe themselves to their satisfaction with their own goods; but if any french gentleman of quality comes over hither from france, he is sure to bring no more coats with him than backs, but immediately to make him new clothes as soon as he arrives, and to carry as many new suits home with him at his return, as he can get leave to bring ashore when he comes there--a demonstration that our manufacture exceeds theirs, after all their boasts of it, both in goodness and in cheapness, even by their own confession. but i am not now to enter upon the particular manufactures, but the general trade in the manufacture; this particular being a trade of such a magnitude, it is to be observed for our purpose, that the greatness of it consists of two parts:-- . the consumption of it at home, including our own plantations and factories. . the exportation of it to foreign parts, exclusive of the said plantations and factories. it is the first of these which is the subject of my present discourse, because the tradesmen to whom, and for whose instruction these chapters are designed, are the people principally concerned in the making all these manufactures, and wholly and solely concerned in dispersing and circulating them for the home consumption; and this, with some additions, as explained above, i call _inland trade_. the home-consumption of our own goods, as it is very great, so it has one particular circumstance attending it, which exceedingly increases it as a trade, and that is, that besides the numbers of people which it employs in the raising the materials, and making the goods themselves as a manufacture--i say, besides all this, there are multitudes of people employed, cattle maintained, with waggons and carts for the service on shore, barges and boats for carriage in the rivers, and ships and barks for carrying by sea, and all for the circulating these manufactures from one place to another, for the consumption of them among the people. so that, in short, the circulation of the goods is a business not equal, indeed, but bearing a very great proportion to the trade itself. this is owing to another particular circumstance of our manufacture, and perhaps is not so remarkably the case of any other manufacture or country in europe, namely, that though all our manufactures are used and called for by almost all the people, and that in every part of the whole british dominion, yet they are made and wrought in their several distinct and respective countries in britain, and some of them at the remotest distance from one another, hardly any two manufactures being made in one place. for example: the broad-cloth and druggets in wilts, gloucester, and worcestershire; serges in devon and somersetshire; narrow-cloths in yorkshire and staffordshire; kerseys, cottons, half-thicks, duffields, plains, and coarser things, in lancashire and westmoreland; shalloons in the counties of northampton, berks, oxford, southampton, and york; women's-stuffs in norfolk; linsey-woolseys, &c, at kidderminster; dimmeties and cotton-wares at manchester; flannels at salisbury, and in wales; tammeys at coventry; and the like. it is the same, in some respects, with our provisions, especially for the supply of the city of london, and also of several other parts: for example, when i speak of provisions, i mean such as are not made use of in the county where they are made and produced. for example: butter, in firkins, in suffolk and yorkshire; cheese from cheshire, wiltshire, warwickshire, and gloucestershire; herrings, cured red, from yarmouth in norfolk; coals, for fuel, from northumberland and durham; malt from the counties of hertford, essex, kent, bucks, oxford, berks, &c. and thus of many other things which are the proper produce of one part of the country only, but are from thence dispersed for the ordinary use of the people into many, or perhaps into all the other counties of england, to the infinite advantage of our inland commerce, and employing a vast number of people and cattle; and consequently those people and cattle increasing the consumption of provisions and forage, and the improvement of lands; so true it is, and so visible, that trade increases people, and people increase trade. this carriage of goods in england from those places is chiefly managed by horses and waggons; the number of which is not to be guessed at, nor is there any rule or art that can be thought of, by which any just calculation can be made of it, and therefore i shall not enter upon any particular of it at this time; it is sufficient to say, what i believe to be true, namely, that it is equal to the whole trade of some nations, and the rather because of the great improvement of land, which proceeds from the employing so many thousands of horses as are furnished for this part of business. in other countries, and indeed, in most countries in europe, all their inland trade, such as it is, is carried on by the convenience of navigation, either by coastings on the sea, or by river-navigation. it is true, our coasting trade is exceedingly great, and employs a prodigious number of ships, as well from all the shores of england to london, as from one port to another. but as to our river-navigation, it is not equal to it, though in some places it is very great too; but we have but a very few navigable rivers in england, compared with those of other countries; nor are many of those rivers we have navigable to any considerable length from the sea. the most considerable rivers in england for navigation are as follows:--the thames, the trent, the severn, the wye, the ouse, the humber, the air, and the calder. these are navigable a considerable way, and receive several other navigable rivers into them; but except these there are very few rivers in england which are navigable much above the first town of note within their mouth. most of our other greatest and most navigable rivers are navigable but a very little way in; as the northern ouse but to york, the orwell but to ipswich, the yare but to norwich; the tyne itself but a very little above newcastle, not in all above twelve miles; the tweed not at all above berwick; the great avon but to bristol; the exe but to exeter; and the dee but to chester: in a word, our river-navigation is not to be named for carriage, with the vast bulk of carriage by pack-horses and by waggons; nor must the carriage by pedlars on their backs be omitted.[ ] this carriage is the medium of our inland trade, and, as i said, is a branch of the trade itself. this great carriage is occasioned by the situation of our produce and manufactures. for example--the taunton and exeter serges, perpetuanas, and duroys, come chiefly by land; the clothing, such as the broad-cloth and druggets from wilts, gloucester, worcester, and shropshire, comes all by land-carriage to london, and goes down again by land-carriages to all parts of england; the yorkshire clothing trade, the manchester and coventry trades, all by land, not to london only, but to all parts of england, by horse-packs--the manchester men being, saving their wealth, a kind of pedlars, who carry their goods themselves to the country shopkeepers every where, as do now the yorkshire and coventry manufacturers also. now, in all these manufactures, however remote from one another, every town in england uses something, not only of one or other, but of all the rest. every sort of goods is wanted every where; and where they make one sort of goods, and sell them all over england, they at the same time want other goods from almost every other part. for example: norwich makes chiefly woollen stuffs and camblets, and these are sold all over england; but then norwich buys broad-cloth from wilts and worcestershire, serges and sagathies from devon and somersetshire, narrow cloth from yorkshire, flannel from wales, coal from newcastle, and the like; and so it is, _mutatis mutandis_, of most of the other parts. the circulating of these goods in this manner, is the life of our inland trade, and increases the numbers of our people, by keeping them employed at home; and, indeed, of late they are prodigiously multiplied; and they again increase our trade, as shall be mentioned in its place. as the demand for all sorts of english goods is thus great, and they are thus extended in every part of the island, so the tradesmen are dispersed and spread over every part also; that is to say, in every town, great or little, we find shopkeepers, wholesale or retail, who are concerned in this circulation, and hand forward the goods to the last consumer. from london, the goods go chiefly to the great towns, and from those again to the smaller markets, and from those to the meanest villages; so that all the manufactures of england, and most of them also of foreign countries, are to be found in the meanest village, and in the remotest corner of the whole island of britain, and are to be bought, as it were, at every body's door. this shows not the extent of our manufactures only, but the usefulness of them, and how they are so necessary to mankind that our own people cannot be without them, and every sort of them, and cannot make one thing serve for another; but as they sell their own, so they buy from others, and every body here trades with every body: this it is that gives the whole manufacture so universal a circulation, and makes it so immensely great in england. what it is abroad, is not so much to our present purpose. again, the magnitude of the city of london adds very considerably to the greatness of the inland trade; for as this city is the centre of our trade, so all the manufactures are brought hither, and from hence circulated again to all the country, as they are particularly called for. but that is not all; the magnitude of the city influences the whole nation also in the article of provisions, and something is raised in every county in england, however remote, for the supply of london; nay, all the best of every produce is brought hither; so that all the people, and all the lands in england, seem to be at work for, or employed by, or on the account of, this overgrown city. this makes the trade increase prodigiously, even as the city itself increases; and we all know the city is very greatly increased within few years past. again, as the whole nation is employed to feed and clothe this city, so here is the money, by which all the people in the whole nation seem to be supported and maintained. i have endeavoured to make some calculation of the number of shopkeepers in this kingdom, but i find it is not to be done--we may as well count the stars; not that they are equal in number neither, but it is as impossible, unless any one person corresponded so as to have them numbered in every town or parish throughout the kingdom. i doubt not they are some hundreds of thousands, but there is no making an estimate--the number is in a manner infinite. it is as impossible likewise to make any guess at the bulk of their trade, and how much they return yearly; nor, if we could, would it give any foundation for any just calculation of the value of goods in general, because all our goods circulate so much, and go so often through so many hands before they come to the consumer. this so often passing every sort of goods through so many hands, before it comes into the hands of the last consumer, is that which makes our trade be so immensely great. for example, if there is made in england for our home-consumption the value of £ , worth of any particular goods, say, for example, that it be so many pieces of serge or cloth, and if this goes through ten tradesmen's hands, before it comes to the last consumer, then there is £ , , returned in trade for that £ , worth of goods; and so of all the sorts of goods we trade in. again, as i said above, all our manufactures are so useful to, and depend on, one another so much in trade, that the sale of one necessarily causes the demand of the other in all parts. for example, suppose the poorest countryman wants to be clothed, or suppose it be a gentleman wants to clothe one of his servants, whether a footman in a livery, or suppose it be any servant in ordinary apparel, yet he shall in some part employ almost every one of the manufacturing counties of england, for making up one ordinary suit of clothes. for example: if his coat be of woollen-cloth, he has that from yorkshire; the lining is shalloon from berkshire; the waistcoat is of callamanco from norwich; the breeches of a strong drugget from devizes, wiltshire; the stockings being of yarn from westmoreland; the hat is a felt from leicester; the gloves of leather from somersetshire; the shoes from northampton; the buttons from macclesfield in cheshire, or, if they are of metal, they come from birmingham, or warwickshire; his garters from manchester; his shirt of home-made linen of lancashire, or scotland. if it be thus of every poor man's clothing, or of a servant, what must it be of the master, and of the rest of the family? and in this particular the case is the same, let the family live where they will; so that all these manufactures must be found in all the remotest towns and counties in england, be it where you will. again, take the furnishing of our houses, it is the same in proportion, and according to the figure and quality of the person. suppose, then, it be a middling tradesman that is going to live in some market-town, and to open his shop there; suppose him not to deal in the manufacture, but in groceries, and such sort of wares as the country grocers sell. this man, however, must clothe himself and his wife, and must furnish his house: let us see, then, to how many counties and towns, among our manufactures, must he send for his needful supply. nor is the quantity concerned in it; let him furnish himself as frugally as he pleases, yet he must have something of every necessary thing; and we will suppose for the present purpose the man lived in sussex, where very few, if any, manufactures are carried on; suppose he lived at horsham, which is a market-town in or near the middle of the county. for his clothing of himself--for we must allow him to have a new suit of clothes when he begins the world--take them to be just as above; for as to the quality or quantity, it is much the same; only, that instead of buying the cloth from yorkshire, perhaps he has it a little finer than the poor man above, and so his comes out of wiltshire, and his stockings are, it may be, of worsted, not of yarn, and so they come from nottingham, not westmoreland; but this does not at all alter the case. come we next to his wife; and she being a good honest townsman's daughter, is not dressed over fine, yet she must have something decent, being newly married too, especially as times go, when the burghers' wives of horsham, or any other town, go as fine as they do in other places: allow her, then, to have a silk gown, with all the necessaries belonging to a middling tolerable appearance, yet you shall find all the nation more or less concerned in clothing this country grocer's wife, and furnishing his house, and yet nothing at all extravagant. for example: her gown, a plain english mantua-silk, manufactured in spitalfields; her petticoat the same; her binding, a piece of chequered-stuff, made at bristol and norwich; her under-petticoat, a piece of black callamanco, made at norwith--quilted at home, if she be a good housewife, but the quilting of cotton from manchester, or cotton-wool from abroad; her inner-petticoats, flannel and swanskin, from salisbury and wales; her stockings from tewksbury, if ordinary, from leicester, if woven; her lace and edgings from stony stratford the first, and great marlow the last; her muslin from foreign trade, as likewise her linen, being something finer than the man's, may perhaps be a guilick-holland; her wrapper, or morning-gown, a piece of irish linen, printed at london; her black hood, a thin english lustring; her gloves, lamb's-skin, from berwick and northumberland, or scotland; her ribands, being but very few, from coventry, or london; her riding-hood, of english worsted-camblet, made at norwich. come next to the furniture of their house. it is scarce credible, to how many counties of england, and how remote, the furniture of but a mean house must send them, and how many people are every where employed about it; nay, and the meaner the furniture, the more people and places employed. for example: the hangings, suppose them to be ordinary linsey-woolsey, are made at kidderminster, dyed in the country, and painted, or watered, at london; the chairs, if of cane, are made at london; the ordinary matted chairs, perhaps in the place where they live; tables, chests of drawers, &c., made at london; as also looking-glass; bedding, &c., the curtains, suppose of serge from taunton and exeter, or of camblets, from norwich, or the same with the hangings, as above; the ticking comes from the west country, somerset and dorsetshire; the feathers also from the same country; the blankets from whitney in oxfordshire; the rugs from westmoreland and yorkshire; the sheets, of good linen, from ireland; kitchen utensils and chimney-furniture, almost all the brass and iron from birmingham and sheffield; earthen-ware from stafford, nottingham, and kent; glass ware from sturbridge in worcestershire, and london. i give this list to explain what i said before, namely, that there is no particular place in england, where all the manufactures are made, but every county or place has its peculiar sort, or particular manufacture, in which the people are wholly employed; and for all the rest that is wanted, they fetch them from other parts.[ ] but, then, as what is thus wanted by every particular person, or family, is but in small quantities, and they would not be able to send for it to the country or town where it is to be bought, there are shopkeepers in every village, or at least in every considerable market-town, where the particulars are to be bought, and who find it worth their while to furnish themselves with quantities of all the particular goods, be they made where and as far off as they will; and at these shops the people who want them are easily supplied. nor do even these shopkeepers go or send to all the several counties where those goods are made--that is to say, to this part for the cloth, or to that for the lining; to another for the buttons, and to another for the thread; but they again correspond with the wholesale dealers in london, where there are particular shops or warehouses for all these; and they not only furnish the country shopkeepers, but give them large credit, and sell them great quantities of goods, by which they again are enabled to trust the tailors who make the clothes, or even their neighbours who wear them; and the manufacturers in the several counties do the like by those wholesale dealers who supply the country shops. through so many hands do all the necessary things pass for the clothing a poor plain countryman, though he lived as far as berwick-upon-tweed; and this occasions, as i have said, a general circulation of trade, both to and from london, from and to all the parts of england, so that every manufacture is sold and removed five or six times, and perhaps more, before it comes at the last consumer. this method of trade brings another article in, which also is the great foundation of the increase of commerce, and the prodigious magnitude of our inland trade is much owing to it; and that is giving credit, by which every tradesman is enabled to trade for a great deal more than he otherwise could do. by this method a shopkeeper is able to stock his shop, or warehouses, with two or three times as much goods in value, as he has stock of his own to begin the world with, and by that means is able to trust out his goods to others, and give them time, and so under one another--nay, i may say, many a tradesman begins the world with borrowed stocks, or with no stock at all, but that of credit, and yet carries on a trade for several hundreds, nay, for several thousands, of pounds a-year. by this means the trade in general is infinitely increased--nay, the stock of the kingdom in trade is doubled, or trebled, or more, and there is infinitely more business carried on, than the real stock could be able to manage, if no credit were to be given; for credit in this particular is a stock, and that not an imaginary, but a real stock; for the tradesman, that perhaps begins but with five hundred, or one thousand pounds' stock, shall be able to furnish or stock his shop with four times the sum in the value of goods; and as he gives credit again, and trusts other tradesmen under him, so he launches out into a trade of great magnitude; and yet, if he is a prudent manager of his business, he finds himself able to answer his payments, and so continually supply himself with goods, keeping up the reputation of his dealings, and the credit of his shop, though his stock be not a fifth, nay, sometimes not a tenth part, in proportion to the returns that he makes by the year: so that credit is the foundation on which the trade of england is made so considerable. nor is it enough to say, that people must and will have goods, and that the consumption is the same; it is evident that consumption is not the same; and in those nations where they give no credit, or not so much as here, the trade is small in proportion, as i shall show in its place. footnotes: [ ] [the amount of trade produced by the british colonies is still great; but it has been ascertained that it is not profitable to the nation at large, as much more is paid from the public purse for the military protection required by the colonies, than returns to individuals through the medium of business.] [ ] [the cotton manufacture has now the prominence which, in defoe's time, was due to those of wool and silk.] [ ] [it is scarcely necessary to remind the reader, that the canal navigation of england has come into existence since the date of this work--the railway communication is but of yesterday.] [ ] [since defoe's time, little alteration has taken place in the locality of a number of manufactures in england; but, in the interval, an entire change has been effected in scotland, which now possesses various manufactures of importance in the commercial economy of the nation. we need only allude to the cambrics, gauzes, and silks of paisley; the cottons and other goods of glasgow; the plaidings of stirlingshire; the stockings of hawick; the printing-paper of mid-lothian; the carpets and bonnets of kilmarnock; the iron of muirkirk and carron; the linens of fife and dundee; and the shawls of edinburgh.] chapter xxiv of credit in trade, and how a tradesman ought to value and improve it: how easily lost, and how hard it is to be recovered credit is, or ought to be, the tradesman's _mistress_; but i must tell him too, he must not think of ever casting her off, for if once he loses her, she hardly ever returns; and yet she has one quality, in which she differs from most of the ladies who go by that name--if you court her, she is gone; if you manage so wisely as to make her believe you really do not want her, she follows and courts you. but, by the way, no tradesman can be in so good circumstances as to say he does not want, that is, does not stand in need of credit. credit, next to real stock, is the foundation, the life and soul, of business in a private tradesman; it is his prosperity; it is his support in the substance of his whole trade; even in public matters, it is the strengh and fund of a nation. we felt, in the late wars, the consequence of both the extremes--namely, of wanting and of enjoying a complete fund of credit. credit makes war, and makes peace; raises armies, fits out navies, fights battles, besieges towns; and, in a word, it is more justly called the sinews of war than the money itself,[ ] because it can do all these things without money--nay, it will bring in money to be subservient, though it be independent. credit makes the soldier fight without pay, the armies march without provisions, and it makes tradesmen keep open shop without stock. the force of credit is not to be described by words; it is an impregnable fortification, either for a nation, or for a single man in business; and he that has credit is invulnerable, whether he has money or no; nay, it will make money, and, which is yet more, it will make money without an intrinsic, without the _materia medica_ (as the doctors have it); it adds a value, and supports whatever value it adds, to the meanest substance; it makes paper pass for money, and fills the exchequer and the banks with as many millions as it pleases, upon demand. as i said in last chapter, it increases commerce; so, i may add, it makes trade, and makes the whole kingdom trade for many millions more than the national specie can amount to. it may be true, as some allege, that we cannot drive a trade for more goods than we have to trade with, but then it is as true, that it is by the help of credit that we can increase the quantity, and that more goods are made to trade with than would otherwise be; more goods are brought to market than they could otherwise sell; and even in the last consumption, how many thousands of families wear out their clothes before they pay for them, and eat their dinner upon tick with the butcher! nay, how many thousands who could not buy any clothes, if they were to pay for them in ready money, yet buy them at a venture upon their credit, and pay for them as they can! trade is anticipated by credit, and it grows by the anticipation; for men often buy clothes before they pay for them, because they want clothes before they can spare the money; and these are so many in number, that really they add a great stroke to the bulk of our inland trade. how many families have we in england that live upon credit, even to the tune of two or three years' rent of their revenue, before it comes in!--so that they must be said to _eat the calf in the cow's belly_. this encroachment they make upon the stock in trade; and even this very article may state the case: i doubt not but at this time the land owes to the trade some millions sterling; that is to say, the gentlemen owe to the tradesmen so much money, which, at long run, the rents of their lands must pay. the tradesmen having, then, trusted the landed men with so much, where must they have it but by giving credit also to one another? trusting their goods and money into trade, one launching out into the hands of another, and forbearing payment till the lands make it good out of their produce, that is to say, out of their rents. the trade is not limited; the produce of lands may be and is restrained. trade cannot exceed the bounds of the goods it can sell; but while trade can increase its stock of cash by credit, it can increase its stock of goods for sale, and then it has nothing to do but to find a market to sell at; and this we have done in all parts of the world, still by the force of our stocks being so increased. thus, credit raising stock at home, that stock enables us to give credit abroad; and thus the quantity of goods which we make, and which is infinitely increased at home, enables us to find or force a vent abroad. this is apparent, our home trade having so far increased our manufacture, that england may be said to be able almost to clothe the whole world; and in our carrying on the foreign trade wholly upon the english stocks, giving credit to almost all the nations of the world; for it is evident, our stocks lie at this time upon credit in the warehouses of the merchants in spain and portugal, holland and germany, italy and turkey; nay, in new spain and brazil. the exceeding quantity of goods thus raised in england cannot be supposed to be the mere product of the solid wealth and stocks of the english people; we do not pretend to it; the joining those stocks to the value of goods, always appearing in england in the hands of the manufacturers, tradesmen, and merchants, and to the wealth which appears in shipping, in stock upon land, and in the current coin of the nation, would amount to such a prodigy of stock, as not all europe could pretend to. but all this is owing to the prodigious thing called credit, the extent of which in the british trade is as hard to be valued, as the benefit of it to england is really not to be described. it must be likewise said, to the honour of our english tradesman, that they understand how to manage the credit they both give and take, better than any other tradesmen in the world; indeed, they have a greater opportunity to improve it, and make use of it, and therefore may be supposed to be more ready in making the best of their credit, than any other nations are. hence it is that we frequently find tradesmen carrying on a prodigious trade with but a middling stock of their own, the rest being all managed by the force of their credit; for example, i have known a man in a private warehouse in london trade for forty thousand pounds a-year sterling, and carry on such a return for many years together, and not have one thousand pounds' stock of his own, or not more--all the rest has been carried on upon credit, being the stocks of other men running continually through his hands; and this is not practised now and then, as a great rarity, but is very frequent in trade, and may be seen every day, as what in its degree runs through the whole body of the tradesmen in england.[ ] every tradesman both gives and takes credit, and the new mode of setting it up over their shop and warehouse doors, in capital letters, _no trust by retail_, is a presumption in trade; and though it may have been attempted in some trades, was never yet brought to any perfection; and most of those trades, who were the forwardest to set it up, have been obliged to take it down again, or act contrary to it in their business, or see some very good customers go away from them to other shops, who, though they have not brought money with them, have yet good foundations to make any tradesmen trust them, and who do at proper times make payments punctual enough. on the contrary, instead of giving no trust by retail, we see very considerable families who buy nothing but on trust; even bread, beer, butter, cheese, beef, and mutton, wine, groceries, &c, being the things which even with the meanest families are generally sold for ready money. thus i have known a family, whose revenue has been some thousands a-year, pay their butcher, and baker, and grocer, and cheesemonger, by a hundred pounds at a time, and be generally a hundred more in each of their debts, and yet the tradesmen have thought it well worth while to trust them, and their pay has in the end been very honest and good. this is what i say brings land so much in debt to trade, and obliges the tradesman to take credit of one another; and yet they do not lose by it neither, for the tradesmen find it in the price, and they take care to make such families pay warmly for the credit, in the rate of their goods; nor can it be expected it should be otherwise, for unless the profit answered it, the tradesman could not afford to be so long without his money. this credit takes its beginning in our manufactures, even at the very first of the operation, for the master manufacturer himself begins it. take a country clothier, or bay-maker, or what other maker of goods you please, provided he be one that puts out the goods to the making; it is true that the poor spinners and weavers cannot trust; the first spin for their bread, and the last not only weave for their bread, but they have several workmen and boys under them, who are very poor, and if they should want their pay on saturday night, must want their dinner on sunday; and perhaps would be in danger of starving with their families, by the next saturday. but though the clothier cannot have credit for spinning and weaving, he buys his wool at the stapler's or fellmonger's, and he gets two or three months' credit for that; he buys his oil and soap of the country shopkeeper, or has it sent down from his factor at london, and he gets longer credit for that, and the like of all other things; so that a clothier of any considerable business, when he comes to die, shall appear to be £ or £ in debt. but, then, look into his books, and you shall find his factor at blackwell hall, who sells his cloths, or the warehouse-keeper who sells his duroys and druggets, or both together, have £ worth of goods in hand left unsold, and has trusted out to drapers, and mercers, and merchants, to the value of £ more; and look into his workhouse at home, namely, his wool-lofts, his combing-shop, his yarn-chamber, and the like, and there you will find it--in wool unspun, and in yarn spun, and in wool at the spinners', and in yarn at and in the looms at the weavers'; in rape-oil, gallipoli oil, and perhaps soap, &c, in his warehouses, and in cloths at the fulling-mill, and in his rowing-shops, finished and unfinished, £ worth of goods more; so that, though this clothier owed £ at his death, he has nevertheless died in good circumstances, and has £ estate clear to go among his children, all his debts paid and discharged. however, it is evident, that at the very beginning of this manufacturer's trade, his £ stock is made £ , , by the help of his credit, and he trades for three times as much in the year; so that £ stock makes £ , stock and credit, and that together makes £ , a-year returned in trade. when you come from him to the warehouse-keeper in london, there you double and treble upon it, to an unknown degree; for the london wholesale man shall at his death appear to have credit among the country clothiers for £ , or £ , , nay, to £ , , and yet have kept up an unspotted credit all his days. when he is dead, and his executors or widow come to look into things, they are frightened with the very appearance of such a weight of debts, and begin to doubt how his estate will come out at the end of it. but when they come to cast up his books and his warehouse, they find, in debts abroad, perhaps £ , in goods in his warehouse £ , so that, in a word, the man has died immensely rich; that is to say, worth between £ , and £ , , only that, having been a long standard in trade, and having a large stock, he drove a very great business, perhaps to the tune of £ , or £ , a-year; so that, of all the £ , owing, there may be very little of it delivered above four to six months, and the debtors being many of them considerable merchants, and good paymasters, there is no difficulty in getting in money enough to clear all his own debts; and the widow and children being left well, are not in such haste for the rest but that it comes in time enough to make them easy; and at length it all comes in, or with but a little loss. as it is thus in great things, it is the same in proportion with small; so that in all the trade of england, you may reckon two-thirds of it carried on upon credit; in which reckoning i suppose i speak much within compass, for in some trades there is four parts of five carried on so, and in some more. all these things serve to show the infinite value of which credit is to the tradesman, as well as to trade itself; and it is for this reason i have closed my instructions with this part of the discourse. credit is the choicest jewel the tradesman is trusted with; it is better than money many ways; if a man has £ , in money, he may certainly trade for £ , , and if he has no credit, he cannot trade for a shilling more. but how often have we seen men, by the mere strength of their credit, trade for ten thousand pounds a-year, and have not one groat of real stock of their own left in the world! nay, i can say it of my own knowledge, that i have known a tradesman trade for ten thousand pounds a-year, and carry it on with full credit to the last gasp, then die, and break both at once; that is to say, die unsuspected, and yet, when his estate has been cast up, appear to be five thousand pounds worse than nothing in the world: how he kept up his credit, and made good his payments so long, is indeed the mystery, and makes good what i said before, namely, that as none trade so much upon credit in the world, so none know so well how to improve and manage credit to their real advantage, as the english tradesmen do; and we have many examples of it, among our bankers especially, of which i have not room to enter at this time into the discourse, though it would afford a great many diverting particulars.[ ] i have mentioned on several occasions in this work, how nice and how dainty a dame this credit is, how soon she is affronted and disobliged, and how hard to be recovered, when once distasted and fled; particularly in the story of the tradesman who told his friends in a public coffee-house that he was broke, and should shut up his shop the next day. i have hinted how chary we ought to be of one another's credit, and that we should take care as much of our neighbour tradesman's credit as we would of his life, or as we would of firing his house, and, consequently, the whole street. let me close all with a word to the tradesman himself, that if it be so valuable to him, and his friends should be all so chary of injuring his reputation, certainly he should be very chary of it himself. the tradesman that is not as tender of his credit as he is of his eyes, or of his wife and children, neither deserves credit, nor will long be master of it. as credit is a coy mistress, and will not easily be courted, so she is a mighty nice touchy lady, and is soon affronted; if she is ill used, she flies at once, and it is a very doubtful thing whether ever you gain her favour again. some may ask me here, 'how comes it to pass, since she is so nice and touchy a lady, that so many clowns court and carry her, and so many fools keep her so long?' my answer is, that those clowns have yet good breeding enough to treat her civilly; he must be a fool indeed that will give way to have his credit injured, and sit still and be quiet-that will not bustle and use his utmost industry to vindicate his own reputation, and preserve his credit. but the main question for a tradesman in this case, and which i have not spoken of yet, is, 'what is the man to do to preserve his credit? what are the methods that a young tradesman is to take, to gain a good share of credit in his beginning, and to preserve and maintain it when it is gained?'[ ] every tradesman's credit is supposed to be good at first. he that begins without credit, is an unhappy wretch of a tradesman indeed, and may be said to be broke even before he sets up; for what can a man do, who by any misfortune in his conduct during his apprenticeship, or by some ill character upon him so early, begins with a blast upon his credit? my advice to such a young man would be, not to set up at all; or if he did, to stay for some time, till by some better behaviour, either as a journeyman, or as an assistant in some other man's shop or warehouse, he had recovered himself; or else to go and set up in some other place or town remote from that where he has been bred; for he must have a great assurance that can flatter himself to set up, and believe he shall recover a lost reputation. but take a young tradesman as setting up with the ordinary stock, that is to say, a negative character, namely, that he has done nothing to hurt his character, nothing to prejudice his behaviour, and to give people a suspicion of him: what, then, is the first principle on which to build a tradesman's reputation? and what is it he is to do? the answer is short. two things raise credit in trade, and, i may say, they are the only things required; there are some necessary addenda, but these are the fundamentals. . industry. . honesty. i have dwelt upon the first; the last i have but a few words to say to, but they will be very significant; indeed, that head requires no comment, no explanations or enlargements: nothing can support credit, be it public or private, but honesty; a punctual dealing, a general probity in every transaction. he that once breaks through his honesty, violates his credit--once denominate a man a knave, and you need not forbid any man to trust him. even in the public it appears to be the same thing. let any man view the public credit in its present flourishing circumstances, and compare it with the latter end of the years of king charles ii. after the exchequer had been shut up, parliamentary appropriations misapplied, and, in a word, the public faith broken; who would lend? seven or eight per cent, was given for anticipations in king william's time, though no new fraud had been offered, only because the old debts were unpaid; and how hard was it to get any one to lend money at all! but, after by a long series of just and punctual dealing, the parliament making good all the deficient funds, and paying even those debts for which no provision was made, and the like, how is the credit restored, the public faith made sacred again, and how money flows into the exchequer without calling for, and that at three or four per cent. interest, even from foreign countries as well as from our own people! they that have credit can never want money; and this credit is to be raised by no other method, whether by private tradesmen, or public bodies of men, by nations and governments, but by a general probity and an honest punctual dealing. the reason of this case is as plain as the assertion; the cause is in itself; no man lends his money but with an expectation of receiving it again with the interest. if the borrower pays it punctually without hesitations and defalcations, without difficulties, and, above all, without compulsion, what is the consequence?--he is called an honest man, he has the reputation of a punctual fair dealer. and what then?--why, then, he may borrow again whenever he will, he may take up money and goods, or anything, upon his bare words, or note; when another man must give bondsmen, or _mainprize_, that is, a pawn or pledge for security, and hardly be trusted to neither. this is credit. it is not the quality of the person would give credit to his dealing; not kings, princes, emperors, it is all one; nay, a private shopkeeper shall borrow money much easier than a prince, if the credit of the tradesman has the reputation of being an honest man. not the crown itself can give credit to the head that wears it, if once he that wears it comes but to mortgage his honour in the matter of payment of money. who would have lent king charles ii. fifty pounds on the credit of his word or bond, after the shutting up the exchequer? the royal word was made a jest of, and the character of the king was esteemed a fluttering trifle, which no man would venture upon, much less venture his money upon. in king william's time the case was much the same at first; though the king had not broken his credit then with any man, yet how did they break their faith with the whole world, by the deficiency of the funds, the giving high and ruinous interest to men almost as greedy as vultures, the causing the government to pay great and extravagant rates for what they bought, and great premiums for what they borrowed--these were the injuries to the public for want of credit; nor was it in the power of the whole nation to remedy it; on the contrary, they made it still grow worse and worse, till, as above, the parliament recovered it. and how was it done? not but by the same method a private person must do the same, namely, by doing justly, and fairly, and honestly, by every body. thus credit began to revive, and to enlarge itself again; and usury, which had, as it were, eaten up mankind in business, declined, and so things came to their right way again. the case is the same with a tradesman; if he shuffles in payment, bargains at one time, and pays at another, breaks his word and his honour in the road of his business, he is gone; no man will take his bills, no man will trust him. the conclusion is open and clear: the tradesman cannot be too careful of his credit, he cannot buy it too dear, or be too careful to preserve it: it is in vain to maintain it by false and loose doing business; by breaking faith, refusing to perform agreements, and such shuffling things as those; the greatest monarch in europe could not so preserve his credit. nothing but probity will support credit; just, and fair, and honourable dealings give credit, and nothing but the same just, and fair, and honourable dealings will preserve it. footnotes: [ ] [how strikingly was this proved in the last war, when the british government obtained credit for no less than six hundred millions to conduct warlike operations, and by these means was ultimately victorious.] [ ] [the author's praises of credit must be received with caution. if his descriptions of the credit system of his own day are true, an improvement has since taken place, as business neither is nor can be now carried on to such an extent upon credit--a circumstance that redounds to the advantage of all parties.] [ ] [defoe speaks of such cases as if there were something laudable in them, whereas it is obviously for the interest of all honest traders, that no such men should be allowed to carry on business.] [ ] [defoe almost appears in this place to lay capital out of the question, and to represent credit as all in all. credit is a matter of great consequence; but we must not attempt to carry on business by its means alone. it should only be considered as an aid to capital. those who, without capital, endeavour to set up in business by means of credit, or, when capital is exhausted, attempt to struggle on by means of credit alone, will, in general, only have a life of anxiety and dispeace for their pains.] chapter xxv of the tradesman's punctual paying his bills and promissory notes under his hand, and the credit he gains by it as i said that credit is maintained by just and honourable dealing, so that just dealing depends very much upon the tradesman's punctual payment of money in all the several demands that are upon him. the ordinary demands of money upon a tradesman are-- i. promises of money for goods bought at time. ii. bills drawn upon him; which, generally speaking, are from the country, that is to say, from some places remote from where he lives. or, iii. promissory notes under his hand, which are passed oftentimes upon buying goods: bought also at time, as in the first head. iv. bonds bearing interest, given chiefly for money borrowed at running interest. . promises of money for goods bought at time. this indeed is the loosest article in a tradesman's payments; and it is true that a tradesman's credit is maintained upon the easiest terms in this case of any other that belongs to trade; for in this case not one man in twenty keeps to his time; and so easy are tradesmen to one another, that in general it is not much expected, but he that pays tolerably well, and without dunning, is a good man, and in credit; shall be trusted any where, and keeps up a character in his business: sometimes he pays sooner, sometimes later, and is accounted so good a customer, that though he owes a great deal, yet he shall be trusted any where, and is as lofty and touchy if his credit be called in question, as if he paid all ready money. and, indeed, these men shall often buy their goods as cheap upon the credit of their ordinary pay, as another man shall that brings his money in his hand; and it is reasonable it should be so, for the ready-money man comes and buys a parcel here and a parcel there, and comes but seldom, but the other comes every day, that is to say, as often as he wants goods, buys considerably, perhaps deals for two or three thousand pounds a-year with you, and the like, and pays currently too. such a customer ought indeed to be sold as cheap to, as the other chance customer for his ready money. in this manner of trade, i say, credit is maintained upon the easiest terms of any other, and yet here the tradesman must have a great care to keep it up too; for though it be the easiest article to keep up credit in, yet even in this article the tradesman may lose his credit, and then he is undone at once; and this is by growing (what in the language of trade is called) long-winded, putting off and putting off continually, till he will bear dunning; then his credit falls, his dealer that trusted him perhaps a thousand pounds previously, that esteemed him as good as ready money, now grows sick of him, declines him, cares not whether he deals with him or no, and at last refuses to trust him any longer. then his credit is quite sunk and gone, and in a little after that his trade is ruined and the tradesman too; for he must be a very extraordinary tradesman that can open his shop after he has outlived his credit: let him look which way he will, all is lost, nobody cares to deal with him, and, which is still worse, nobody will trust him. . bills drawn upon him from the country, that is to say, from some places remote from where he now dwells: it is but a little while ago since those bills were the loosest things in trade, for as they could not be protested, so they would not (in all their heats) always sue for them, but rather return them to the person from whom they received them. in the meantime, let the occasion be what it will, the tradesman ought on all occasions to pay these notes without a public recalling and returning them, and without hesitation of any kind whatsoever. he that lets his bills lie long unpaid, must not expect to keep his credit much after them. besides, the late law for noting and protesting inland bills, alters the case very much. bills now accepted, are protested in form, and, if not punctually paid, are either returned immediately, or the person on whom they are drawn is liable to be sued at law; either of which is at best a blow to the credit of the acceptor. a tradesman may, without hurt to his reputation, refuse to accept a bill, for then, when the notary comes he gives his reasons, namely, that he refuses to accept the bill for want of advice, or for want of effects in his hands for account of the drawer, or that he has not given orders to draw upon him; in all which cases the non-acceptance touches the credit of the drawer; for in trade it is always esteemed a dishonourable thing to draw upon any man that has not effects in his hands to answer the bill; or to draw without order, or to draw and not give advice of it; because it looks like a forwardness to take the remitter's money without giving him a sufficient demand for it, where he expects and ought to have it. a tradesman comes to me in london, and desires me to give him a bill payable at bristol, for he is going to the fair there, and being to buy goods there, he wants money at bristol to pay for them. if i give him a bill, he pays me down the money upon receipt of it, depending upon my credit for the acceptance of the bill. if i draw this bill where i have no reason to draw it, where i have no demand, or no effects to answer it, or if i give my correspondent no advice of it, i abuse the remitter, that is, the man whose money i take, and this reflects upon my credit that am the drawer, and the next time this tradesman wants money at bristol fair, he will not come to me. 'no,' says he, 'his last bills were not accepted.' or, if he does come to me, then he demands that he should not pay his money till he has advice that my bills are accepted. but, on the other hand, if bills are right drawn, and advice duly given, and the person has effects in his hands, then, if he refuses the bill, he says to the notary he does not accept the bill, but gives no reason for it, only that he says absolutely, 'i will not accept it--you may take that for an answer;' or he adds, 'i refuse to accept it, for reasons best known to myself.' this is sometimes done, but this does not leave the person's credit who refuses, so clear as the other, though perhaps it may not so directly reflect upon him; but it leaves the case a little dubious and uncertain, and men will be apt to write back to the person who sent the bill to inquire what the drawer says to it, and what account he gives, or what character he has upon his tongue for the person drawn upon. as the punctual paying of bills when accepted, is a main article in the credit of the acceptor, so a tradesman should be very cautious in permitting men to draw upon him where he has not effects, or does not give order; for though, as i said, it ought not to affect his reputation not to accept a bill where it ought not to be drawn, yet a tradesman that is nice of his own character does not love to be always or often refusing to accept bills, or to have bills drawn upon him where he has no reason to accept them, and therefore he will be very positive in forbidding such drawing; and if, notwithstanding that, the importunities of the country tradesman oblige him to draw, the person drawn upon will give smart and rough answers to such bills; as particularly, 'i refuse to accept this bill, because i have no effects of the drawer's to answer it.' or thus, 'i refuse to accept this bill, because i not only gave no orders to draw, but gave positive orders not to draw.' or thus, 'i neither will accept this bill, nor any other this man shall draw;' and the like. this thoroughly clears the credit of the acceptor, and reflects grossly on the drawer. and yet, i say, even in this case a tradesman does not care to be drawn upon, and be obliged to see bills presented for acceptance, and for payment, where he has given orders not to draw, and where he has no effects to answer. it is the great error of our country manufacturers, in many, if not in most, parts of england at this time, that as soon as they can finish their goods, they hurry them up to london to their factor, and as soon as the goods are gone, immediately follow them with their bills for the money, without waiting to hear whether the goods are come to a market, are sold, or in demand, and whether they are likely to sell quickly or not; thus they load the factor's warehouse with their goods before they are wanted, and load the factor with their bills, before it is possible that he can have gotten cash in his hand to pay them. this is, first, a direct borrowing money of their factor; and it is borrowing, as it were, whether the factor will lend or no, and sometimes whether he can or no. the factor, if he be a man of money, and answers their bills, fails not to make them pay for advancing; or sells the goods to loss to answer the bills, which is making them pay dear for the loan; or refuses their bills, and so baulks both their business and their credit. but if the factor, willing to oblige his employers, and knowing he shall otherwise lose their commission, accepts the bills on the credit of the goods, and then, not being able to sell the goods in time, is also made unable to pay the bills when due--this reflects upon his credit, though the fault is indeed in the drawer whose effects are not come in; and this has ruined many an honest factor. first, it has hurt him by drawing large sums out of his cash, for the supply of the needy manufacturer, who is his employer, and has thereby made him unable to pay his other bills currently, even of such men's drafts who had perhaps good reason to draw. secondly, it keeps the factor always bare of money, and wounds his reputation, so that he pays those very bills with discredit, which in justice to himself he ought not to pay at all, and the borrower has the money, at the expense of the credit of the lender; whereas, indeed, the reproach ought to be to him that borrows, not to him that lends--to him that draws where there are no effects to warrant his draft, not to him that pays where he does not owe. but the damage lies on the circumstances of accepting the bill, for the factor lends his employer the money the hour he accepts the bill, and the blow to his credit is for not paying when accepted. when the bill is accepted, the acceptor is debtor to the person to whom the bill is payable, or in his right to every indorser; for a bill of exchange is in this case different from a bond, namely, that the right of action is transferable by indorsement, and every indorser has a right to sue the acceptor in his own name, and can transfer that right to another; whereas in a bond, though it be given to me by assignment, i must sue in the name of the first person to whom the bond is payable, and he may at any time discharge the bond, notwithstanding my assignment. tradesmen, then, especially such as are factors,[ ] are unaccountably to blame to accept bills for their employers before their goods are sold, and the money received, or within reach: if the employers cannot wait, the reproach should lie on them, not on the factor; and, indeed, the manufacturers all over england are greatly wrong in that part of their business; for, not considering the difference between a time of demand and a time of glut, a quick or a dead market, they go on in the same course of making, and, without slackening their hands as to quantity, crowd up their goods, as if it were enough to them that the factor had them, and that they were to be reckoned as sold when they were in his hands: but would the factor truly represent to them the state of the market--that there are great quantities of goods in hand unsold, and no present demand, desiring them to slack their hands a little in making; and at the same time back their directions in a plain and positive way, though with respect too, by telling them they could accept no more bills till the goods were sold. this would bring the trade into a better regulation, and the makers would stop their hands when the market stopped; and when the merchant ceased to buy, the manufacturers would cease to make, and, consequently, would not crowd or clog the market with goods, or wrong their factors with bills. but this would require a large discourse, and the manufacturers' objections should be answered, namely, that they cannot stop, that they have their particular sets of workmen and spinners, whom they are obliged to keep employed, or, if they should dismiss them, they could not have them again when a demand for goods came, and the markets revived, and that, besides, the poor would starve. these objections are easy to be answered, though that is not my present business; but thus far it is to my purpose--it is the factor's business to keep himself within compass: if the goods cannot be sold, the maker must stay till they can; if the poor must be employed, the manufacturer is right to keep them at work if he can; but if he cannot, without oppressing the factor, then he makes the factor employ them, not himself; and i do not see the factor has any obligation upon him to consider the spinners and weavers, especially not at the expense of his own credit, and his family's safety. upon the whole, all tradesmen that trade thus, whether by commission from the country, or upon their own accounts, should make it the standing order of their business not to suffer themselves to be overdrawn by their employers, so as to straiten themselves in their cash, and make them unable to pay their bills when accepted. it is also to be observed, that when a tradesman once comes to suffer himself to be thus overdrawn, and sinks his credit in kindness to his employer, he buys his employment so dear as all his employer can do for him can never repay the price. and even while he is thus serving his employer, he more and more wounds himself; for suppose he does (with difficulty) raise money, and, after some dunning, does pay the bills, yet he loses in the very doing it, for he never pays them with credit, but suffers in reputation by every day's delay. in a word, a tradesman that buys upon credit, that is to say, in a course of credit, such as i have described before, may let the merchant or the warehouse-keeper call two or three times, and may put him off without much damage to his credit; and if he makes them stay one time, he makes it up again another, and recovers in one good payment what he lost in two or three bad ones. but in bills of exchange or promissory notes, it is quite another thing; and he that values his reputation in trade should never let a bill come twice for payment, or a note under his hand stay a day after it is due, that is to say, after the three days _of grace,_ as it is called. those three days, indeed, are granted to all bills of exchange, not by law, but by the custom of trade: it is hard to tell how this custom prevailed, or when it began, but it is one of those many instances which may be given, where custom of trade is equal to an established law; and it is so much a law now in itself, that no bill is protested now, till those three days are expired; nor is a bill of exchange esteemed due till the third day; no man offers to demand it, nor will any goldsmith, or even the bank itself, pay a foreign bill sooner. but that by the way. bills of exchange being thus sacred in trade, and inland bills being (by the late law for protesting them, and giving interest and damage upon them) made, as near as can be, equally sacred, nothing can be of more moment to a tradesman than to pay them always punctually and honourably. let no critic cavil at the word _honourably_, as it relates to trade: punctual payment is the honour of trade, and there is a word always used among merchants which justifies my using it in this place; and that is, when a merchant draws a bill from abroad upon his friend at london, his correspondent in london answering his letter, and approving his drawing upon him, adds, that he shall be sure to _honour_ his bill when it appears; that is to say, to accept it. likewise, when the drawer gives advice of his having drawn such a bill upon him, he gives an account of the sum drawn, the name of the person it is payable to, the time it is drawn at, that is, the time given for payment, and he adds thus--'i doubt not your giving my bill due honour;' that is, of accepting it, and paying it when it is due. this term is also used in another case in foreign trade only, namely--a merchant abroad (say it be at lisbon, or bourdeaux) draws a bill of £ sterling upon his correspondent at london: the correspondent happens to be dead, or is broke, or by some other accident the bill is not accepted; another merchant on the exchange hearing of it, and knowing, and perhaps corresponding with, the merchant abroad who drew the bill, and loth his credit should suffer by the bill going back protested, accepts it, and pays it for him. this is called accepting it for the honour of the drawer; and he writes so upon the bill when he accepts it, which entitles him to re-draw the same with interest upon the drawer in lisbon or bourdeaux, as above. this is, indeed, a case peculiar to foreign commerce, and is not often practised in home trade, and among shopkeepers, though sometimes i have known it practised here too: but i name it on two accounts, first--to legitimate the word honourable, which i had used, and which has its due propriety in matters of trade, though not in the same acceptation as it generally receives in common affairs; and, secondly, to let the tradesman see how deeply the honour, that is, the credit of trade, is concerned in the punctual payment of bills of exchange, and the like of promissory notes; for in point of credit there is no difference, though in matter of form there is. there are a great many variations in the drawing bills from foreign countries, according as the customs and usages of merchants direct, and according as the coins and rates of exchange differ, and according as the same terms are differently understood in several places; as the word _usance_, and _two usance,_ which is a term for the number of days given for payment, after the date of the bill; and though this is a thing particularly relating to merchants, and to foreign commerce, yet as the nature of bills of exchange is pretty general, and that sometimes an inland tradesman, especially in seaport towns, may be obliged to take foreign accepted bills in payment for their goods; or if they have money to spare (as sometimes it is an inland tradesman's good luck to have), may be asked to discount such bills--i say, on this account, and that they may know the value of a foreign bill when they see it, and how far it has to run, before it has to be demanded, i think it not foreign to the case before me, to give them the following account:-- . as to the times of payment of foreign bills of exchange, and the terms of art ordinarily used by merchants in drawing, and expressed in the said bills: the times of payment are, as above, either-- ( .) at sight; which is to be understood, not the day it is presented, but three days (called days of grace) after the bill is accepted: ( .) usance: ( .) two usance.[ ] usance between london and all the towns in the states generals' dominions, and also in the provinces now called the austrian netherlands [belgium], is one month. and two usance is two months; reckoning not from the acceptance of the bill, but from the date of it. usance between london and hamburgh is two months, venice is three months; and double usance, or two usance, is double that time. usance payable at florence or leghorn, is two months; but from thence payable at london, usance is three months. usance from london to rouen or paris, is one month; but they generally draw at a certain number of days, usually twenty-one days' sight. usance from london to seville, is two months; as likewise between london and lisbon, and oporto, to or from. usance from genoa to rome is payable at rome ten days after sight. usance between antwerp and genoa, naples or messina, is two months, whether to or from. usance from antwerp or amsterdam, payable at venice, is two months, payable in bank. there are abundance of niceties in the accepting and paying of bills of exchange, especially foreign bills, which i think needless to enter upon here; but this i think i should not omit, namely-- that if a man pays a bill of exchange before it is due, though he had accepted it, if the man to whom it was payable proves a bankrupt after he has received the money, and yet before the bill becomes due, the person who voluntarily paid the money before it was due, shall be liable to pay it again to the remitter; for as the remitter delivered his money to the drawer, in order to have it paid again to such person as he should order, it is, and ought to be, in his power to divert the payment by altering the bill, and make it payable to any other person whom he thinks fit, during all the time between the acceptance and the day of payment. this has been controverted, i know, in some cases, but i have always found, that by the most experienced merchants, and especially in places of the greatest business abroad, it was always given in favour of the remitter, namely, that the right of guiding the payment is in him, all the time the bill is running; and no bill can or ought to be paid before it is due, without the declared assent of the remitter, signified under his hand, and attested by a public notary. there are, i say, abundance of niceties in the matter of foreign exchanges, and in the manner of drawing, accepting, and protesting bills; but as i am now speaking with, and have confined my discourse in this work to, the inland tradesmen of england, i think it would be as unprofitable to them to meddle with this, as it would be difficult to them to understand it.[ ] i return, therefore, to the subject in hand, as well as to the people to whom i have all along directed my discourse. though the inland tradesmen do not, and need not, acquaint themselves with the manner of foreign exchanges, yet there is a great deal of business done by exchange among ourselves, and at home, and in which our inland trade is chiefly concerned; and as this is the reason why i speak so much, and repeat it so often to the tradesman for whose instruction i am writing, that he should maintain the credit of his bills, so it may not be amiss to give the tradesman some directions concerning such bills. he is to consider, that, in general, bills pass through a number of hands, by indorsation from one to another, and that if the bill comes to be protested afterwards and returned, it goes back again through all those hands with this mark of the tradesman's disgrace upon it, namely, that it has been accepted, but that the man who accepted it is not able to pay it, than which nothing can expose the tradesman more. he is to consider that the grand characteristic of a tradesman, and by which his credit is rated, is this of paying his bills well or ill. if any man goes to the neighbours or dealers of a tradesman to inquire of his credit, or his fame in business, which is often done upon almost every extraordinary occasion, the first question is, 'how does he pay his bills?' as when we go to a master or mistress to inquire the character of a maid-servant, one of the first questions generally is of her probity, 'is she honest?' so here, if you would be able to judge of the man, your first question is, 'what for a paymaster is he? how does he pay his bills?'--strongly intimating, and, indeed, very reasonably, that if he has any credit, or any regard to his credit, he will be sure to pay his bills well; and if he does not pay his bills well, he cannot be sound at bottom, because he would never suffer a slur there, if it were possible for him to avoid it. on the other hand, if a tradesman pays his bills punctually, let whatever other slur be upon his reputation, his credit will hold good. i knew a man in the city, who upon all occasions of business issued promissory notes, or notes under his hand, at such or such time, and it was for an immense sum of money that he gave out such notes; so that they became frequent in trade, and at length people began to carry them about to discount, which lessened the gentleman so much, though he was really a man of substance, that his bills went at last at twenty per cent, discount or more; and yet this man maintained his credit by this, that though he would always take as much time as he could get in these notes, yet when they came due they were always punctually paid to a day; no man came twice for his money. this was a trying case, for though upon the multitude of his notes that were out, and by reason of the large discount given upon them, his credit at first suffered exceedingly, and men began to talk very dubiously of him, yet upon the punctual discharge of them when due, it began presently to be taken notice of, and said openly how well he paid his notes; upon which presently the rate of his discount fell, and in a short time all his notes were at _par_; so that punctual payment, in spite of rumour, and of a rumour not so ill grounded as rumours generally are, prevailed and established the credit of the person, who was indeed rich at bottom, but might have found it hard enough to have stood it, if, as his bills had a high discount upon them, they had been ill paid too. all which confirms what i have hitherto alleged, namely, of how much concern it is for a tradesman to pay his bills and promissory notes very punctually. i might argue here how much it is his interest to do so, and how it enables him to coin as many bills as he pleases--in short, a man whose notes are currently paid, and the credit of whose bills is established by their being punctually paid, has an infinite advantage in trade; he is a bank to himself; he can buy what bargains he pleases; no advantage in business offers but he can grasp at it, for his notes are current as another man's cash; if he buys at time in the country, he has nothing to do but to order them to draw for the money when it is due, and he gains all the time given in the bills into the bargain. if he knows what he buys, and how to put it off, he buys a thousand pounds' worth of goods at once, sells them for less time than he buys at, and pays them with their own money. i might swell this discourse to a volume by itself, to set out the particular profit that such a man may make of his credit, and how he can raise what sums he will, by buying goods, and by ordering the people whom he is to pay in the country, to draw bills on him. nor is it any loss to those he buys of, for as all the remitters of money know his bills, and they are currently paid, they never scruple delivering their money upon his bills, so that the countryman or manufacturer is effectually supplied, and the time given in the bill is the property of the current dealer on whom they are drawn. but, then, let me add a caution here for the best of tradesmen not to neglect--namely, as the tradesman should take care to pay his bills and notes currently, so, that he may do it, he must be careful what notes he issues out, and how he suffers others to draw on him. he that is careful of his reputation in business, will also be cautious not to let any man he deals with over draw him, or draw upon him before the money drawn for his due. and as to notes promissory, or under his hand, he is careful not to give out such notes but on good occasions, and where he has the effects in his hand to answer them; this keeps his cash whole, and preserves his ability of performing and punctually paying when the notes become due; and the want of this caution has ruined the reputation of a tradesman many times, when he might otherwise have preserved himself in as good credit and condition as other men. all these cautions are made thus needful on account of that one useful maxim, that the tradesman's _all_ depends upon his punctual complying with the payment of his bills. footnotes: [ ] [by factors, defoe seems to mean the class of persons whom we now name commission-agents.] [ ] [all bills and promissory notes, inland or foreign, payable in this country, are allowed three days of grace beyond the actual period expressed upon them; thus, a bill drawn at thirty days after date, is payable only on the thirty-third day. if bills be not presented for payment on the last day of grace, they cannot be protested, and consitute only an evidence of the debt for legal recovery. if the last day of grace be a sunday, the bill is presentible on the saturday previous.] [ ] [in consequence of the great extension of commerce since the time of defoe, a short explanation of the principle and practice of drawing foreign bills of exchange now seems necessary. foreign bills of exchange are used, in order to avoid the necessity of transmitting actual money from one country to another. a merchant, for instance, in nova scotia, is owing £ to a manufacturer in glasgow: he seeks out some one who is a creditor to that amount to some person in britain; we shall say he finds a captain in the army who wishes to draw £ from his agent in london. to this captain the nova scotia merchant pays £ , and gets his order or bill on the london agent, which bill he sends to the manufacturer in glasgow, and the manufacturer transmits the bill to london for payment; any banker, indeed, will give him the money for it, deducting a small commission. thus two debts are liquidated, without the transmission of a farthing in money. the demand for bills in foreign countries to send to great britain, has the effect of raising them to a premium, which is called the rate of exchange, and is a burden which falls on the purchaser of the bill. foreign bills of exchange drawn on parties in great britain, have expressed upon them the number of days after sight at which they are to be payable. thus, a merchant on receiving a foreign bill drawn at 'thirty days after sight,' hastens to get it 'sighted,' or shown to the party on whom it is drawn, and that party accepts it, at the same time marking the date of doing so. the bill is then complete and negociable, and is presented for payment to the acceptor at the end of the time specified, allowing the usual three days of grace. should the bill not be accepted on being 'sighted,' it is a dishonoured bill, and is returned with a legal protest to the foreign correspondent. to avert, as far as possible, the loss of foreign bills by shipwreck, a set of three bills is drawn for each transaction, called first, second, and third, of the same tenor. for example: 'thirty days after sight pay this my first bill of exchange, for the sum of £ sterling; second and third of the same tenor being unpaid.' this first bill is first sent, and by next conveyance the second is sent. should the first arrive safely, the second, on making its appearance, is destroyed. the third is retained by the foreign correspondent till he hear whether the former two have arrived at their destination, and is sent only if they have been lost. on receiving whichever comes first, it is the duty of the receiver to communicate intelligence of the fact to the sender.] generously made available by the internet archive/canadian libraries) _barbara weinstock lectures on the morals of trade_ higher education and business standards. by willard eugene hotchkiss. creating capital: money-making as an aim in business. by frederick l. lipman. is civilization a disease? by stanton coit. social justice without socialism. by john bates clark. the conflict between private monopoly and good citizenship. by john graham brooks. commercialism and journalism. by hamilton holt. the business career in its public relations. by albert shaw. higher education and business standards by willard eugene hotchkiss director of business education at the university of minnesota boston and new york houghton mifflin company _the riverside press cambridge_ copyright, , by the regents of the university of california all rights reserved _published march _ barbara weinstock lectures on the morals of trade this series will contain essays by representative scholars and men of affairs dealing with the various phases of the moral law in its bearing on business life under the new economic order, first delivered at the university of california on the weinstock foundation. higher education and business standards last summer, when we reached california for a year's sojourn, we had the good fortune to secure a house with a splendid garden. a few weeks ago, after the early warm days of a california february had opened up the first blossoms of the season, our little five-year-old discovered that the garden furnished a fine outlet for her enterprise, and she soon produced two gorgeous--i will not say beautiful--bouquets. barring a certain doubt about her mother's approval, she was well satisfied with her achievement, she felt a sense of completeness in what she had done--and well she might, for she had not left a visible bud. there is a strong tendency to go at business the way helen went at the garden. she knew what to do with bouquets; raw material for making them was within her reach; what more natural than to turn it, in the most obvious and simple way, into the product for which it was designed. from her standpoint such a procedure was entirely correct--she was making bouquets for herself and her friends; every one in her circle would share the benefit of her industry. whenever in the past business enterprise has proceeded from a similar viewpoint, we have stood aside and let it proceed; it was not our garden; we were quite willing to take the rôle of disinterested spectators. recently we have discovered that it is our garden; we have learned that we are not disinterested; we now see that business plays a large part in the life of every one of us. that being the case, we assume the right to question its processes, its underlying policies, and its results. we are gradually coming to think of business in terms of an integrated and unified national life. we desire the national life to be both wholesome and secure. what the public really wants from business, then, is a contribution to national welfare, and it has become convinced that, by taking thought, it can make the contribution more certain and more uniform than it has been in the past. many business men share this view; with varying zeal they are trying to work out standards of organization that will insure the kind of regard for general welfare which the public has come to demand. this is the new idea in business; it has already taken deep root; but it needs to be further developed. we have the difficult task of reducing an idea to a practical working plan. how shall we go about it? fortunately the idea itself contains a hint for further procedure. a new attitude in business must be coupled with a new attitude in public policy. when my enterprising child made an onslaught on the garden it would have been easy enough to punish her; but it is doubtful if mere punishment gets very far in a case of that sort. unless we can teach the child to enjoy the garden without destroying it, the restraining influence of punishment will be no stronger than the memory of its pain or the fear of its repetition. this memory of the past and fear of the future usually wage a most unequal contest with the vivid and alluring temptation of the present. but should not the child be restrained? as far as necessary to protect the garden, and perhaps also to make her conscious of an authority in the world outside of her own will, yes--but that is not the main task. the main task is to educate her, to develop an understanding of the garden, to get her in the frame of mind in which she will derive her greatest enjoyment when she cultivates it and sees it grow, and when she restricts her picking to a reasonable share of what the garden produces. in the actual case before us, the child was after quick and easy results, the only kind she could comprehend; she was unable to look upon the garden as a living thing whose life and health must be preserved to-day in order that it may yield returns to-morrow and next week. analyzed with adult understanding, her essential fault was a failure to get beyond immediate results and to view the garden from a long-time angle. we ought not to expect her to do this now, but we do expect her to do it when she is grown up. we expect in time so to educate her that she will be able to think of the garden in terms of permanence and growth and to make an effective use of it from that standpoint; and this same education in long-time effectiveness is what we want in business. business standards must be discussed from the standpoint of efficiency, but efficiency needs to be interpreted. we may as well admit at the start that the efficiency ideal is not entirely in good repute at this moment.[ ] if i may import an expression from england, we have been somewhat "fed up" with efficiency during the recent past and the ration has been rather too much for our digestion. [ ] at the time this was written, in the spring of , it will be recalled, the german war machine for nearly two years had been demonstrating its efficiency; the allies had not yet matched it, and we did not like the work that efficiency was doing. away back in the eighties, before the dominance of business in american society had been questioned, efficiency, as the term was then understood, had a place among the elect; it was the intimate associate of business success. then came the muck-raker, and with him came also anti-trust cases and insurance investigations. we turned our attention to labor outbreaks, to graft prosecutions, and to land steals. we talked about "malefactors of great wealth." we even became interested in schedule k. and so, during the first decade of the new century a whole train of revelations, incidents, and phrases tempered our regard for business and brought many business practices under the ban of law and hostile sentiment. efficiency was in bad company and suffered in reputation. but efficiency was able to prove an alibi; we were told that the thing which posed as efficiency was not efficiency, but special privilege, and we were again persuaded of the great service a regenerate and socialized efficiency could render. just at this point came the outbreak in europe; efficiency was again caught in bad company, and we began to hear such phrases as the "moral breakdown of efficiency," "efficiency, a false ideal," and others of similar import. in an article bearing the title, "moral breakdown of efficiency," published in the "century" for june, , it was maintained that pursuit of efficiency had led and was still leading civilization on a downward path. in addition to the reputation of keeping bad company, efficiency has to bear the odium of many foolish and inefficient deeds performed by its self-appointed prophets. the quest for efficiency has called forth in business a new functionary known as the "efficiency expert." many of these men have done a vast amount of valuable work, but many others have not. while the real expert has been raising the level of business organization, the others have been piling up a large wastage of poor work and lost confidence. but these are side issues. the main fact stands out above them. we have been steadily adding to the burdens on industrial and commercial equipment; even more have we increased the stresses and the strains on human life. a devastating war is now suddenly taking up the slack, and the slow and painful task of making the world efficient must be hastened in order that society may bear the load. in these circumstances we need not apologize for making efficiency the main support of business standards. nor need we assume, as does the author just cited, that the efficiency ideal in any way conflicts with the ideal of moral responsibility and service. of course, if we reflect, the abstract and impersonal thing which engineers define as the ratio between energy expended and result obtained has no moral quality in itself. whatever of morality or lack of morality the word "efficiency" calls forth is given to it by the manner in which the terms of the ratio are defined. it is for society to make the definitions. society may determine the forms and the limitations under which it will have business energy expended, and it may decide what are the social ends toward which it will have business effort contribute. guided by wise social policy, efficiency and service go hand in hand. since business is subject to control by society, it follows that the efficiency factors in a particular business, in a whole industry, or in business generally, must adjust themselves to the decisions that society has made, and they must also take account of decisions that it may make in the future. and these decisions are not all recorded in the law or even in the vague thing we call public opinion. laws and opinions of particular groups, group morality, individual morality, even inertia, and a long list of more subtle and often capricious reactions are channels through which social purpose finds expression. it is worth our while to consider how these reactions may affect practical administration. no reflection is needed to see that in proportion as business men fail to take account of forces outside the business, in that proportion they are likely to miscalculate the results of business policies. striking examples of such miscalculation are found in the experience of mr. george m. pullman back in the nineties, and of mr. patterson, of the national cash register company, a decade later. each of these men, with apparent good faith, undertook to surround his laborers with conditions of physical, mental, and moral uplift, and each undertook to do it as an act of paternal bounty. each of them, as far as we can judge, expected appreciation, gratitude, and increased efficiency. but they failed to take account of the group consciousness of their laborers; they did not know what the laborers were thinking; and because the laborers were thinking something different from what the employers thought, policies intended to arouse gratitude aroused instead resentment and a strike. but there are many things besides too much paternalism that may result in a strike. another concern of international dimensions and one whose officers, i can vouch, are men of high character and public spirit, also found itself confronted with a strike in . this was a highly organized business. for years its sales department had tried to seek out the highest grade of talent, and the result was a selling and distributing organization that was the model and the envy of competitors. but questions of employment seem to have gone by default, the general policy being confined to a sincere but vague good-will toward employees and acceptance of things as they were. the issues of the strike were issues with which we are all familiar. on the workers' side, grievances and no workable machinery for redress; result: organization, concerted group action, force. on the other side, there was a personal readiness to hear grievances, coupled with insistence on the ancient right of the employer to conduct his own business in his own way, without interference from employees or the public. after weeks of deadlock the strain of a distressing situation, losses from the interruption of business, regard for public opinion and the opinion of friends, combined with their own desire to do the right thing, induced the employers, probably against their best judgment, to recede from their position. an agreement was made providing for increased wages, standardization of piece-work, a preferential shop, and appointment by the firm of a person to hear grievances and to coöperate with a representative of the union in securing redress. the union in this case was fortunate in being represented by a high-minded man who was a real statesman. the firm selected a trained economist as labor expert, and he soon had an employment department in operation. together these men and their colleagues have kept peace in the concern and have developed and expanded the machinery for settling disputes into a model of industrial-relations organization. some four years after the strike the business head of the firm testified in a public hearing that he should scarcely know how to conduct his business without the organization which now obtains for dealing collectively with labor. he also in the same hearing expressed the view that a large employer is a trustee of the public, responsible for the measure of public welfare in which his business results; and this man, remember, is not a reformer or even a radical, but just a successful business man. in this bit of labor history there were, no doubt, many fortunate but uncontrollable factors which, otherwise combined, would have brought a less happy result. but two things stand out: first, the laborers listened to wise counsel--they were well led; and second, the employers, when they consented to make an agreement, gave the plan adopted their genuine support. combining good citizenship with business sense they were able to understand the new social influences that make the formulas of a poor gauge of efficiency factors in . they are now enjoying the benefits of their willingness to learn. the effect of social forces is seen under different circumstances and from an entirely different angle in the present halting policy of american railroads.[ ] here, in addition to other social elements in the question, is the fact of definite government control. this circumstance has accustomed railway managers to look at both the internal and the public factors in their success. a number of years ago, before mr. justice brandeis became a member of the supreme court, he pointed out, as many others have since done, that the railroads were looking too much to the government factor, and too little to the economy and effectiveness of their own internal administration. even though we concede this point, it is still clear that the highest efficiency of our railroads must wait upon a clarification of policy with respect to the great social fact affecting railway operation--the fact of government control. we may not approve the precise manner in which the railroads respond to this fact, but obviously they cannot be efficient and ignore it. [ ] referring to the situation early in when this sentence was written. examples, ranging all the way from accepted and enforceable legal restrictions to the interplay of the most subtle group sentiments, could be multiplied at will to bring out the presence of the social factor in efficiency standards. were it not that internal business policies, on the one hand, and public policy toward business, on the other, are so frequently vitiated by failure to reckon with the probable reactions which a particular measure will call forth, i should not retard the discussion to emphasize a point so obvious. but though the presence of social factors is obvious, how to measure them is not obvious. general principles that bear on a specific case are hard to locate and difficult to apply. even the broad lines of social and business policy are not always clear, and the probable trend of future policy is still less clear. just what are the principles that are being worked put in order to determine the forms and the limitations under which business energy shall be expended, and how do they differ from those followed a generation ago? take the other side of the efficiency ratio: toward what results are we trying to have business energy directed? again, what are the instruments with which society is enforcing its purpose? how effective are they, how effective are they likely to become? finally, what bearing will this social effectiveness or lack of effectiveness have on standards of business efficiency for the generation about to begin its work? even though we cannot answer these questions to-day, we have, to-day, the task of educating the generation that must answer them. more than this, the education we provide for the generation about to begin its work will determine, in no small measure, the kind of answers the future will give. it is, therefore, of great importance that in our ideals and our policies for educating future business men we should try to anticipate the social environment in which these men will do their work. we are in the habit of speaking of the present as a time of transition--the end of the old and the beginning of the new. in a very real sense every period is a period of transition. society is always in motion, but that motion at times is accelerated and at other times retarded. clearly we are living now in a period of acceleration--a period which must be interpreted not so much in terms of where we are, as of whence we came and whither we are going. this means that we cannot hope to prepare an educational chart for the future without understanding the past. in our study of business we are always emphasizing the "long-time point of view," and we fall back upon this convenient phrase to harmonize many discrepancies between our so-called scientific principles and present facts. on the whole, we are well justified in assuming these long-time harmonies, but it will not do to overlook the fact that many important and legitimate enterprises have to justify themselves from a short-time viewpoint. of more importance still is the fact that in this country enterprises of the latter sort have predominated in the past. this circumstance has a very marked bearing on the nature of our task, when we try to approach business from the standpoint of education. there are strong historical and temperamental reasons why nineteenth-century americans were inclined to take a short-time view of business situations. our fathers were pioneers, and the pioneer has neither the time, the capital, the information, the social insight, nor the need to build policies for a distant future. the pioneer must support himself from the land; he must get quick results, and he must get them with the material at hand. every one of our great industries--steel, oil, textiles, packing, milling, and the rest--has its early story colored with pioneer romance. the same romantic atmosphere gave a setting of lights and shadows to merchandising and finance and most of all to transportation. whether we view these nineteenth-century activities from the standpoint of private business or of public policy, they bear the same testimony to the pioneer attitude of mind. considering our business life in its national aspects, our two greatest enterprises in the nineteenth century were the settlement of the continent and the building-up of a national industry. in both these enterprises we gave the pioneer spirit wide range. with respect to the latter, industrial policy before was summed up in three items: protective tariff, free immigration, and essential immunity from legal restraints. this is not the place to justify or condemn a policy of _laissez-faire_, or to strike a balance of truth and error in the intricate arguments for protection and free trade; nor need we here trace the industrial or social results of immigration. we need only point out that the policy in general outline illustrates the attitude of the pioneer. the thing desired was obvious; obvious instruments were at hand--immediate means used for immediate ends. from his viewpoint, the question of best means or of ultimate ends did not need to be considered. in building our railways and settling our lands the pioneer spirit operated still more directly, and in this connection it has produced at the same time its best and its worst results. the problem of transportation and settlement was not hard to analyze; its solution seemed to present no occasion for difficult scientific study or for a long look into the future. the nation had lands, it wanted settlers, it wanted railroads. if half the land in a given strip of territory were offered at a price which would attract settlers, the settlers would insure business for a railroad. the other half of the land, turned over to a railroad company, would give a basis for raising capital to build the line. with a railroad in operation, land would increase in value, the railroad could sell to settlers at an enhanced price and with one stroke recover the cost of building and add new settlers to furnish more business. in its theory and its broad outline the land-grant policy is not hard to defend. the difficulties came with execution. we know that in actual operation the policy meant reckless speculation and dishonest finance. we know that no distinction in favor of the public was made between ordinary farm lands, forest lands, mineral lands, and power sites. we know that the beneficiaries of land grants were permitted to exchange ordinary lands for lands of exceptional value without any adequate _quid pro quo_; and we know that there were no adequate safeguards against theft. wholesale alienation of public property was intended to secure railroads and settlers, but the government did not see to it that the result was actually achieved. speculation impeded the railways in doing their part of the task, while individuals enriched themselves from the proceeds of grants or withheld the grants from settlement to become the basis of future speculative enterprises. all this seems to show that in execution at least our policy from a national standpoint was short-sighted. careful analysis and a more painstaking effort to look ahead might have brought more happy results. and how about the railroads from the standpoint of private enterprise? a railway financier once described a western railway as "a right of way and a streak of rust." the phrase was applicable to many railways. deterioration and lack of repairs were, of course, responsible for part of the condition it suggests, but much of the fault went back to original construction. it was the wonder and the reproach of european engineers that their so-called reputable american colleagues would risk professional standing on such temporary and flimsy structures as the original american lines. poor road bed; poor construction; temporary wooden trestles across dangerous spans--everything the opposite of what sound engineering science seemed to demand. why did not the owners of the roads exercise business foresight to provide for reasonably solid construction? what seems like an obvious and easy answer to all these questions is that both the government and the road were controlled in many cases, as the people of california well know, by the same men, and these men were privately interested. as public servants or as officers of corporations they were supposed to be promoting settlement and transportation; as individuals they were promoting their own fortunes. this result was secured by the appropriation of public lands and the conversion of investments which the public lands supported. that this sort of thing occurred on a large scale and that it involved the violation of both public and private trusts is fairly clear. public sentiment has judged and condemned the men who in their own interests thus perverted national policy; and we approve the verdict. but it is not so easy to condemn the policy itself or to indict the generation that adopted it. looking at the matter from the standpoint of the nation, it was precisely the inefficiency and the corruption in government which augmented the theoretical distrust of government and made it unthinkable to the people of the seventies, that the government should build and operate railways directly. the land-grant policy entailed corruption and waste, of course; but what mattered a few million acres of land! no one had heard of a conservation problem at the close of the civil war. resources were limitless; without enterprise, without labor and capital, without transportation they had no value, they were free goods. the great public task of the nineteenth century was to settle the continent and make these resources available for mankind. this task it performed with nineteenth-century methods. from our standpoint they may have been wasteful methods, but they did get results. in its historical setting, the viewpoint from which the task of settlement was approached was not so far wrong. when we examine the counts against the railroads as private enterprises, we find that the poor construction, which from our point of vantage looks like dangerous, wasteful, hand-to-mouth policy, is only in part explained by the fact of reckless and dishonest finance. i am advised by an eminent and discriminating observer that the distinguished italian engineer to whom argentina entrusted the building of its railroad to patagonia, produced a structure which in engineering excellence is the equal of any in the united states to-day. but the funds are exhausted and the patagonia railroad is halted one hundred and fifty miles short of its goal; there are no earnings to maintain the investment. the reaction of high interest rates on the practical sense of american capitalists and engineers has made operation at the earliest possible moment and with the smallest possible investment of capital the very essence of american railway building in new territory. actual earnings are expected to furnish capital, or a basis for credit, with which to make good early engineering defects. all this, of course, is but another way of saying that the criterion of engineering efficiency is not "perfection," but "good enough." this distinction has placed a large measure of genuine efficiency to the credit of american engineers, and it explains why americans have done many things that others were unwilling to undertake. it is a great thing to build a fine railroad in patagonia, but i am sure we all rejoice that the first pacific railroad did not have its terminus in the nevada sagebrush. the standard of technical perfection set by the italian engineer did not fit the facts. it is not the failure to attain his standard but the failure to measure up to a well-considered standard of "good enough" that stands as an indictment against american railway enterprise. viewed in historical perspective the business environment of the pioneer appears to have been dominated by two outstanding facts: one, seemingly inexhaustible resources; the other, a set of political and economic doctrines which told him that these resources must be developed by individual initiative and not by the state. the faster the resources were developed the more rapidly the nation became economically independent and economically great, and since they could not be developed by the state it is not strange that private initiative was stimulated by offering men great and immediate rewards. these rewards have encouraged individuals and associations of individuals to aspire to a quick achievement of great economic power, and their aspirations have been realized. such achievements have been a dominating feature of our business life, and we have regarded them as an index of national greatness. abundance of resources, if it did not make this the best way, at least made it an obvious way, for the nineteenth century to solve its business problems. from our vantage point we can see that serious mistakes were made. when we set the foresight of our fathers against our own informed and chastened hindsight their methods appear clumsy and amateurish. but in the main they did solve their problems: they gave us a settled continent; they gave us transportation and diversified industry. we now have our garden and the tools with which to work it. if the pioneer allowed the children to pick flowers and in some cases to run away with the plants and the soil, he did not fail to develop the estate. our inheritance from the pioneer is not only material but psychological. the pioneer attitude of mind has made a real contribution to our business standards. the very magnitude of our enterprises, the fact that we have had to develop our methods as we went, our success in approaching problems that way, have given us a confidence in ourselves and a readiness to undertake big things without counting the cost. this readiness is a large, perhaps a dominant, factor in our contribution to world progress. it is not an accident that the greatest problems of mountain railway building have been met and solved by american engineers, or that they have carried a great railroad under two rivers to the heart of our greatest city. these in a private way, and the panama canal in a public way, are typical of american engineering enterprise. as with engineering, so with general business. our pioneer managers did not lack imagination; they were not afraid to undertake; they were not constrained by worry lest they make mistakes. they made many mistakes. some were corrected, others ignored, but many more were concealed by an abundant success. the pioneer could afford to do the next thing and let the distant thing take care of itself, and in large measure he escaped the penalties which normally follow a failure to look ahead. substantial forces have tended to keep the pioneer spirit alive. if some resources have been depleted, other resources have been found to take their place. scientific discovery, invention, and the development of technique have placed new forces at our command. products have been multiplied, but the demand for products has multiplied faster. we have been able to continue offering men great and immediate rewards for the development of new enterprises. as labor was needed, our neighbors have continued to supply it. the result is that our business has continued to go ahead without being too much concerned about the direction in which it was going. business has eagerly appropriated the results of science without itself becoming scientific. the difficult way of science makes slow progress against the dazzling rewards of unbridled daring. so many strong but untrained men have been enriched by seizing upon the immediate and obvious circumstance--there has been so little necessity for sparing materials or men and so little penalty for waste--that we have developed a national impatience with the slow and tedious process of finding out. along with our technical and business enterprise, with the courage and imagination of which we are justly proud, a too easy success has given us a tendency to drop into a comfortable and optimistic frame of mind. imagination, intuition, power to picture the future interplay of forces, courage and capacity for quick action--all these qualities are as essential to-day as they ever were to business success. the pioneer environment reacting on our native temperament has given us these qualities in full measure, but it has also given us a habit of doing things in a hit-or-miss fashion. our very imagination and courage applied to wrong circumstances and in perverted form have often borne the fruit of national defects. there is a strong inclination to assume that the old approach to problems will bring the same results that it did in the past, and to forget that we are living in a new world. the problems confronting the pioneer were not the problems we face to-day. it requires great ability to draft a prospectus; in many of our greatest enterprises drafting the prospectus has been the crucial task. but a prospectus is not a going concern. there is a vast difference between promotion and administration. in the promotional stage of our business life we were solving problems made up of unknown quantities, problems for which the only angle of approach was found in the formula _x_+_y_=_z_. we still have and shall always have problems of the _x_+_y_=_z_ type, but if we apply that formula to a problem in which + = we are not likely to get the best results. business may not yet be a science, but it is rapidly becoming scientific. scientific inquiry is all the while carrying new factors from the category of the unknown to that of the known, and by so doing it is setting a new standard of business efficiency. the more brilliant qualities, like courage and imagination, must be coupled with capacity for investigation and analysis, with endless patience in seeking out the twos and the fours and eliminating them from the equation. when it is possible by scientific research to distinguish a right way and a wrong way to do a task, it is not an evidence of courage or imagination but of folly to act on a faulty and imperfect reckoning with the facts. the person who uses scientific method takes account of all his known forces; he prepares his materials, controls his processes and isolates his factors so as to reveal the bearing of every step in the process upon an ultimate and often a far distant result. in other words, he tries at every stage to build upon a sure foundation. his trained imagination and judgment working on known facts set the limit on what he may expect to find, and interpret what he does find, all along the way. in so far as particular business enterprises have rested on engineering, chemistry, biology, and other sciences, a scientific method of approach has long had large use in business; but the scientist in business has usually been a salaried expert--a man apart from the management--and it has been his results, and not necessarily his methods, that have influenced business practice. we are now coming to understand that scientific method is the only sure approach to all problems; it is a thing of universal application, and far from being confined to the technical departments of business, where the technical scientists hold sway in their particular specialties, it may have its widest application in working out the problems of management. the way in which a man trained in scientific method may determine business practice in a scientific manner finds illustration in a multitude of practical business problems, ranging all the way from the simplest office detail to the most far-reaching questions of policy. to cite an example, of the simpler sort: if an item in an order sheet is identical for eight out of ten orders is it better to have a clerk typewrite the eight repetitions along with the two deviations or to use a rubber stamp? of course, there are not one or two, but many, items in an order sheet and the repetitions and deviations are not the same for all items. in practical application, the rubber-stamp method means a rack of rubber stamps placed in the most advantageous position. it requires also a decision as to the precise percentage of repetitions which makes the stamp advantageous. then arises the further question, why not have the most numerous repetitions numbered and keyed and thus avoid the necessity of transcribing them at all? the rule-of-thumb approach to this kind of problem would proceed from speculations concerning the effect of interrupting the process to use the stamp, the result of such interruptions on the accuracy of work, difficulties in the way of necessary physical adjustments, and many other questions that would occur to the practical manager. the scientific method of approach would first inquire whether there are any principles derived from previous motion study or other investigations, that apply to the case in hand. in accord with such principles it would then proceed, as far as possible, to eliminate neutral or disturbing third factors and to arrange a test. the results of the test would lead, either to a continuance of the old practice, or to the establishment of a new practice for a certain period, after which, if serious difficulties were not revealed, the new practice would be definitely installed. it should be emphasized at this point, that there is a fundamental difference between investigations or tests which contemplate an immediate modification of practice and those investigations in which research--that is, the discovery of new truths--is the sole object. tests which are carried on within the business must never lose sight of the fact that a business is a going concern and that it is impracticable and usually undesirable to transform a business into a research laboratory. scientific methods in business should not be confused with the larger problem of scientific business research. this larger task, if undertaken by the individual business concern, is the work of a separate department. for business generally, it will have to be conducted either by the government, or by business-research endowments. the point at which, in practical business, research should give place to action is a question that wise counsel and the sound sense of the trained executive must determine. an example of the contrast between a scientific and a rule-of-thumb approach, as applied to a question of major policy, is found in discussions of the relative advantages of a catalogue and mail-order policy over against a policy of distribution by traveling salesmen. a few years ago the head of one of the largest wholesale organizations in the united states, talking with an intimate friend, expressed fear that his house, which employed salesmen, might be at a dangerous disadvantage with its chief competitor, which did an exclusively mail-order business. the friend comforted him with the assurance that there are many buyers who prefer to be visited by salesmen and to have goods displayed before them. this fact, he held, would always give an adequate basis for the prosperity of a house that employed the salesman method of distribution. neither the fear nor the assurance here expressed reveals a scientific attitude of mind. careful analysis shows, on the one hand, that the mail-order policy is not the most effective means of cultivating intensively a well populated territory. on the other hand, it shows that the expense of sending salesmen to distant points in sparsely populated areas more than absorbs the profits from their sales. individual concerns have arrived at these conclusions by experiment and accurate cost-keeping and have succeeded in reaching a scientific decision as to which territories should be cultivated by salesmen and which ones should be covered exclusively through advertising and the distribution of catalogues and other literature. the difficulty that business men find in applying scientific method consistently in the analysis of their problems is strikingly revealed in the labor policy of the great majority of industrial concerns. while many men of scientific training are dealing with problems of employment, probably no concern has undertaken to make a scientific analysis to determine what are the foundations of permanent efficiency of the labor force which they employ. this is not surprising, when we remember how complicated is the problem and how short the time during which we have been emphasizing the human relations as distinguished from the material or mechanistic aspect of business organization. to state even a simple problem of management, like the one concerning the order sheet, set forth above, is to reveal some of the difficulties of analysis which characterize all subject-matter having to do with human activity. this means that we should not expect results too quickly nor should we be disappointed if the first results of efforts at scientific analysis are not absolutely conclusive. as soon as we recognize that business is primarily a matter of human relations, that it has to do with groups and organizations of human beings, we see that scientific analysis of it cannot proceed in exactly the same way as with units of inanimate matter. the reaction of human relations to changed influences, frequently cannot be predicted until the changes occur. business, in other words, is a social science and, like all social sciences, must deal primarily with contingent rather than exact data; likewise conclusions drawn from scientific analysis must in large measure be contingent rather than exact. although we cannot always isolate our factors, control our processes, and otherwise apply scientific method, with results as conclusive as those obtained in laboratories of chemistry, physics, or biology, we need not therefore reject scientific method in favor of a rule-of-thumb. we should, however, be suspicious of too sweeping claims based on any but the most careful and painstaking analysis of facts by persons who are thoroughly trained in the kind of analysis they undertake. while a scientific approach will help in solving many problems of business detail, the substitution of scientific method for a rule-of-thumb approach will realize its object most completely in the influences exerted upon fundamental long-time policy, influences which cannot bear fruit in a day or a year. the circumstances of our history have retarded the acceptance of a long-time scientific viewpoint in business, but forces now at work are making powerfully for a scientific approach to business management. first among these is a realization that our resources are measured in finite terms. we have begun to take account of what we have, and we are able in a rough way to figure the loss from what we have squandered. the situation is not desperate, but we can see that it may become so. to insure against possible disaster in the future we need to exercise effective economy in turning resources into finished goods, and we need to eliminate waste in the distribution and the consumption of these goods. in private business the need for such economy is reflected in rising prices for raw materials. in its public aspect we have labeled the problem, conservation. a second force making for a scientific approach to business is found in the beginnings of a social policy to which i have referred. this policy is showing itself in limitations upon the way in which materials and men may be utilized and in a sharper definition of the business man's obligations to employees, to competitors and consumers. as long as resources are to be had for the asking, while cheap labor can be imported and utilized without restraint, and where no questions are asked in marketing the product, there is not the right incentive to do things in a scientific way. as business becomes more and more the subject of legal definition, as the tendency grows of regarding it as a definite service, performed under definite limitations, and for definite social ends, margins will be narrowed and it will become increasingly necessary to do things in the right way. the scientific approach to business has made great progress during the past decade. out of the hostile criticism to which so-called big business has been subjected have come several government investigations and court records, in which policies of different concerns have been explained, criticized, and compared. besides, business men themselves have become less jealous of trade secrets and have shown an increasing inclination to compare results. a good illustration of this tendency is seen in the growth of "open price associations" and in the spirit in which credit men, sales managers' associations, and other business groups exchange information. in the same spirit, business and trade journals have given a large exposition of individual experience and increasing attention to questions of fundamental importance. more significant still has been the scientific management propaganda. mr. brandeis's dramatic exposition of this movement in the railway rate cases in at once made it a matter of public interest. later discussion may not have extended acceptance of scientific management, but it has not caused interest in it to flag. the movement has become essentially a cult. its prophet, the late frederick taylor, by ignoring trade-unionism and labor psychology in the exposition of his doctrines, at once drew down upon them the hostility of organized labor; the movement was branded as another speeding-up device. more serious than the antagonism has been the spirit in which some of the scientific management enthusiasts--not all--have met it. they seem to assume that their science is absolute and inexorable, that it eliminates disturbing factors and hence needs no adjustment to adapt it to the difficulties met in its application. this air of omniscient dogmatism, together with the disasters of false prophets, has somewhat compromised the movement and has diminished its direct influence. however, business men have been stirred up. they have become accustomed to using the words "science" and "business" in the same sentence. they are in a receptive attitude for ideas. the indirect influence has been great. a final, and probably in the long-run the most permanent, influence making for the extension of scientific method in business has been the new viewpoint from which universities have been approaching the task of educating men for business. prior to , university education for business in the few universities that attempted anything of the sort was confined to such branches of applied economics as money and banking, transportation, corporation finance, commercial geography, with accounting and business law to give it a professional flavor. there were also general courses labeled commercial organization and industrial organization, but these were almost entirely descriptive of the general business fabric of the country, and had but the most remote bearing on the internal problems of organization and management which an individual business man has to face. the assumption was that a man who was looking forward to business would probably do well to secure some information about business, but there was little attempt at definite professional training of the kind given to prospective lawyers, physicians, or engineers. within the past few years universities have begun to undertake seriously the development of professional training for business. the result has been that through organized research and through investigations by individual teachers and students, the universities are gathering up the threads of different tendencies toward scientific business and are themselves contributing important scientific results. out of all this there is emerging a body of principles and of tested practice which constitutes an appropriate subject-matter for a professional course of study, and points the way to still further research. one of the earliest results of an approach to business in an attitude of scientific research, is the discovery that there are certain fundamental principles which are alike for all lines of business, however diverse the subject-matter to which analysis is applied. substituting the principle of likeness for diversity as the starting-point of business analysis, has far-reaching consequences not only for education and research but for management as well. first among these consequences is the fact that search for elements of likeness leads at once to replacing the trade or industry with the function as the significant unit both of research and organization. if we start our study of business by separating manufacturing, railroading, merchandising, banking, and the rest, with a large number of more or less logical subdivisions in each field, and then try to work out a body of principles applicable to each subdivision, we soon run into endless combinations and lose all sense of unity in business as a whole. as soon, however, as we approach business from the standpoint of accounting, sales management, employment, executive control, and when we find that lessons in statistics, advertising, moving materials, or executive management, learned in connection with a factory, can be carried over with but slight adaptation to the management of a store, we at once get a manageable body of material on which to work. recognition of the principle of likeness and of its corollary, analysis by function rather than by trade, marks perhaps the greatest single step yet taken in the development of scientific business. the principle, however, has its dangers. analysis by function implies functional specialization in research and a similar tendency in business practice. without specialization there can be no adequate analysis of any large and complex body of facts. with too intense specialization there is always danger that the assembling and digesting of facts, and especially the conclusions drawn from them, will reflect some peculiar slant of an individual or of a particular specialty. the accountant does not always go after the same facts as the sales manager, and even with the same facts the two are likely to draw quite different conclusions as to their bearing on a general policy. specialization, too, may result in setting an intense analysis of one group of facts over against a very superficial view of other facts--or again, an intense analysis of the same facts from one viewpoint with failure to consider them from another, and perhaps equally important, viewpoint. unless these weaknesses are corrected, the business will lack balance; the work of departments will not harmonize; there will be no fundamental policy; goods sold on a quality basis will be manufactured on a price basis--all of which leads to disastrous results. scientific method is the first article in the creed by which business training must be guided. the growing necessity for critical and searching analysis of business problems, justifies all the effort we can put forth to develop plans for training into a structure of which scientific method shall be the corner-stone. but analysis is not all. following analysis must come synthesis. somewhere all the facts and conclusions must be assembled and gathered up into a working plan. it is this task of leveling up rough places in the combined work of department specialists, that puts the training and insight of both the executive and the director of research to the most severe test. it is a mark of a well-trained executive that in performing his task he instinctively follows principles instead of trusting alone to momentary intuitions, however valuable and necessary these may be. and here it is that the second article in the creed of business training appears. the executive's task is primarily to adjust human relations, and the nature of the principles by which these adjustments are made, determines the relations of a concern to its laborers, to competitors, to customers, and to the public. if the executive comes to his task without a mind and spirit trained to an appreciation of human relations, he is not likely so to synthesize the work of his subordinates as to make for either maximum efficiency within the business or its maximum contribution to the life of the state. the term "executive" in large and highly organized concerns is likely to mean the head of a department. a large proportion of the department heads now in business are men of purely empirical training. their horizon is likely to be limited and to center too much in the departmental viewpoint. they may perhaps be able to see the whole business, but if they do, they will probably see it exclusively from the inside. there is frequently nothing in their business experience that has made them think of the great forces at work in society at large. as the bulk of business has been organized in the past, there has been no department in which, automatically and in the regular course of business, a view looking outward is brought to bear. if it came at all, it was reflected back from the larger relations and the larger social contacts of the head of the business. many general executives have been promoted from the position of head of department at a period in life when their habits of thought had become crystallized, and it was not natural that they should entirely change those habits with the change in their responsibilities. besides, the economics of competition and a strong group sentiment among business men have tended to make them resist social influences which might react upon the policies of their own business. superficial conclusions drawn from such experiments as those of pullman and of patterson, to which reference has been made, have seemed to justify such resistance and have fortified men in the belief that business and response to social influence should be kept separate in water-tight compartments. more recently men have been coming to understand the fundamental defects in the pullman and the original cash register plans and have come to realize that even a separate welfare department may be successfully incorporated in a business, if only certain fundamental policies are followed in its management. still more significant is the view looking-outward and the consequent harmonizing of social and business motives, which is coming in the ordinary development of business policies as a result of their more fundamental analysis. perhaps the greatest step toward a fuller consideration of facts on the outside is taken, when a business creates a separate department of employment. it is hard to see how the head of an employment department can have the largest measure of success if he sees only the facts on the inside. a comprehensive application of scientific method to problems of employment leads a long way into analysis of the social facts affecting the people who are employed. from different angles the same thing is true in other departments of business, notably so in the case of advertising and sales. one of the most obvious outside facts which affect sales, is the location and density of the population, and yet it is a fact which frequently is neglected. another outside fact, which ultimately advertisers will have to consider, is the consuming power of population. they have been very keen to study our psychological reactions, and in doing this they have undertaken the entire charge of the evolution of our wants. but they have not always gone at their work from the long-time point of view. sometime they will have to take account of the fact that unwise consumption impairs efficiency and depletes the purchasing power from which advertisers must be paid. the next step in the scientific analysis of business is to provide for more ample analysis of facts on the outside. weakness at this point explains the defects in many plans for the welfare of employees, it explains the defects in scientific management, mentioned above, and it explains many other shortcomings in projects for increasing the effectiveness of business. but men who approach business from the standpoint of university research are not free from the same danger. in their effort to orient themselves with the business facts, they get the business point of view and run the risk of centering attention too much on materials and material forces. even psychological reactions of men and women may be analyzed from the standpoint of their mechanics, without ever going back to those impelling motives which have their roots in the human instincts and complex social reactions of which the men and women are a part. approached from the standpoint of scientific method, the field of conflict between different interests in business and between so-called "good business" and "good ethics" becomes measurably narrowed. i do not mean to give science the sole credit for achievements along this line. more frequently advance in moral standards has been forced on unwilling victims through legislation, public opinion, or class struggle, and then men have discovered, as a happy surprise after the event, that "good ethics" was profitable. but science has done something, and might have done still more, if our efforts at scientific analysis had not been so often underweighted on the human side. these very discoveries of harmony between wholesome practice and good business constitute a part of the body of fact of which a truly scientific method must take account. when a review of all the cases in which compulsion has changed existing methods shows an almost invariable adaptation and a tendency toward better results after the level of competition is raised, a man of scientific training immediately asks the question, whether a fundamental law is not at work. a glance at social legislation during the last century reveals some interesting uniformities. every step in the development of the english factory acts as they stood at the beginning of the present war, starting with the first child labor bill in and ending with the shop regulation act of , had been taken against the protest of the most vocal elements in the trades concerned. in nearly every case investigation will show, either that the requirements of the measure enacted fell considerably below the practice of the best concerns, or that the whole industry was in need of some outside impulse to start it in the way of more efficient organization. as long as it is permissible to employ five women and five children to tend five machines, there is not the right incentive to make adjustments by which all five of them can be tended by one man. in this country in our forty-nine jurisdictions we have been going forty-nine times over the experience of england and other countries, in connection with each effort to force up the competitive level. we have seemed to be quite unable to apply the most obvious lessons of experience either at home or abroad to new cases, and yet essentially the same uniformity of adaptation has occurred here as abroad. like our employer, whom a strike impelled to adopt an advanced policy toward labor, we find after the event that we should not know how to do business under the standards in force before the law compelled a change. enforcement of the sherman anti-trust law has been frequently cited as an example of unwise government interference. with respect to many of the incidents of enforcements, criticism has been well founded. but the net result of that enforcement has been a much sounder body of law on the important subject of fair and unfair competition. besides, we now have in the federal trade commission the beginnings of an administrative organization for dealing with the whole subject of monopoly and restraint of trade. and more than all this, we have a better prospect than ever before, of some sort of mutual respect between government and business, and of honest coöperation in working out their mutual problems. it is not likely that the anti-trust law has prevented honest men from earning legitimate profits from legitimate business service to anything like the extent which would be indicated by the vigor with which it has been opposed. but even if it has, we have received something for the price paid. and so the list might be lengthened, pure food and drugs, meat inspection, public service regulation, industrial safety, and the rest,--in nearly every case, from a purely business point of view, opposition, in so far as it related to the main point of government policy, has been a mistake. refusal of the business men affected to accept a policy of regulation has tended to shut them out of the councils in making adjustments of detail. this fact has hindered the government in performing a service which in most cases both the public and the business needed to have done. even when we admit, as obviously we must, the persistence of conflict between different interests with respect to a large mass of business detail, the fact of group influences and social control still remains an important consideration to which business analysis must give due weight. there has been a large mass of business in this country, in which the community has been unable to recognize any productive service; it has been regarded only as a means of acquisition for those who pursue it. legislation, public opinion, and the evolution of enforceable standards within particular business groups are tending all the while to narrow the sphere of purely acquisitive business. with respect to that great mass of business which has both an acquisitive and a productive side, these forces are gradually bringing us to an attitude of mind in which we regard gain as a by-product of service. the public is also recognizing that the purpose of goods and services is to promote individual and community welfare, and as fast as public policy to that end can be worked out, it is carrying emphasis even beyond specific products and services to the social ends for which these products and services exist. in these ways society too is trying, clumsily perhaps, to take a long-time view of its business and to conserve the human values that make for progress. obviously it is but a partial and incomplete analysis of a business situation that omits these human factors; a working policy that fails to anticipate their force and then to reduce the zone of conflict to its lowest limits is neglecting an important element in the definition of long-time efficiency. and business men are beginning to see this. a few weeks ago the manager of a large department store in san francisco was kind enough to show me his record of departmental profits for a number of months. the fluctuation in relative profits of different departments month by month was apparent, especially the fact that after a certain month several departments which had previously earned high profits became relatively much less profitable. i asked the manager to explain, and he did in this way: at the time when the change occurred a new policy had been inaugurated by which employment of help had been centralized and standardized for the whole concern. as a result, when certain departments which had been decidedly sub-standard with respect to wages were brought up to standard, they were unable to earn anything like the profits which they had previously shown. without going into the question of the connection between high wages and profits, of which this incident in my opinion was an exception, it was clear to the manager as to me that the increase in wages in these particular departments had been accompanied by an immediate loss in profits. furthermore, the manager was unable to determine, from figures available before and after the change, that this loss had been directly compensated by gains in other departments. in order to get his viewpoint concerning the change at issue, i asked him two questions: ( ) why was he willing to make a change of such a fundamental character without being able to ascertain in advance whether or not it would be profitable? ( ) in the absence of facts that could be incorporated in the accounts, was it his belief that the change would in time be profitable, and if so, how did he reach his conclusion? his response to the first question revealed to me an intensely natural but nevertheless complex motive. he said, substantially, that he was confident that standardized employment was the only acceptable policy, from the standpoint of the general manager. given the necessity of standardizing, it was necessary for the general reputation of the business to standardize upward rather than downward. he wanted his business to be regarded as one in which the best standards of employments obtained. furthermore, he added, "california will soon have a minimum wage law, and i want this business to be well in advance of any wage standards which may be imposed by law." answering the second question more specifically, the manager recognized the advertising value of a reputation for having good conditions of employment. he had discovered no tendency for general profits to diminish or for the rate of increase to be retarded more than temporarily. in the absence of definite facts to the contrary he considered it safe to assume that as soon as the business should become adjusted to the new standards, standardization of wages upward would be profitable for the business as a whole. he wanted to make the change voluntarily and to commence operating successfully on the new basis in advance of competitors. it is scarcely possible to discuss this sort of business situation with a progressive manager, without feeling that he does not approach business exclusively from the standpoint of gain; in other words, to use the phrase of adam smith, he is not exclusively an "economic man." the manager of a modern business, on the contrary, is a man very much like the rest of us, and being such a man he is first of all desirous of conforming to whatever standards are in way of acceptance by that part of society in which he moves. obviously, these standards are made up of both selfishness and altruism, with selfishness tending all the time to become more enlightened as society advances. as we come to distinguish more clearly between reward for service and mere one-sided gain, there occurs a parallel change in men's motives; they become more sensitive to social disfavor and to social esteem and less and less willing to devote their lives to activity by which no one but themselves is benefited. in this reaction of altruism with enlightened selfishness there emerges in men's minds a new concept of their own interest and a better understanding of the kind of business policy that in the long-run brings them the greatest reward. of course, this does not mean that enlightened selfish interest has ceased, or that it will ever cease, to be a motive force in business. but there is a vast difference between selfishness untempered with other motives and selfishness eager for the esteem of one's fellows. clearly it is a task of higher education to help promote response to the more enlightened motives. the difficulty which even men of advanced university training have in taking full account of human factors indicates something of the nature and importance of the task. the so-called "scientifically trained" manager tends to undervalue the human factor of his equation. his analysis is likely to be overweighted on the material side. when the university starts--as it is starting and should start--to train future executives, it needs to analyze its own problem, and take full account of the dangers against which it has to guard. otherwise the training itself will be overweighted on the material side and will perpetuate the weakness that it ought to correct. the greatest danger in this connection, as i see it, arises out of the distinction between the so-called "cultural" and the "vocational" point of view. this distinction comes to us with a large mass of traditional authority, and we have classified subjects and erected barriers on the assumption that the distinction is real. as far as the training of business executives is concerned, i am confident that the distinction is one which ought never to be made. it is a great misfortune, when young men and women who are preparing for a serious career are permitted to think of culture as a non-functioning ornament; equally unfortunate is it for them to think of their prospective vocations as activities devoid of cultural association. a few days ago a student who had already selected his profession and was anxious to be about it confided to me, as many others have done, how distasteful he was finding the task of "working off his culture." does any one really suppose that the sophomore who is "working off his culture" under faculty compulsion, in order to get his college degree, is really absorbing from his study anything which, as the faculty assumes, makes him a better man and yet, as he himself believes, contributes nothing to effectiveness in his profession? or take the case of the man who devotes himself with professional earnestness to his two, three, or four years of college work--will he find that he has invested his time and his money on a purely ornamental luxury that has no relation to his later work? the first great element of training which the university can give to future business men is a mastery of scientific method as a means of analyzing problems and synthesizing results. quite as fundamental as this is the development of an intelligent and sympathetic approach to questions of human relationship. only the beginning steps in the direction of business efficiency can be taken while attention is confined to the material and mechanistic side of business organization. no secure basis for permanent efficiency can be established until we are prepared to go deeply into the question of human motives and to understand something of the complex reactions that come from individual and group associations. without such a basis we cannot hope for a nationally effective business organization. business is a form of coöperation through which men exercise control over natural forces and thereby produce things with which to satisfy human wants. any subject well taught, which gives an insight into human relations or into nature and man's control over it, will help prepare a person to deal with the intricate problem of human relations in business--that is, if the student has studied the subject in an attitude of mind to see its bearing on what he is preparing to do. the question is not so much one of too few or too many so-called culture subjects, but rather of the attitude of mind in which all subjects are undertaken. it is a question of getting such a survey of the great facts of human experience and of so pointing their significance as to enable men to approach a problem of human relationship with sympathy and something of a long-time dynamic viewpoint. when this is accompanied by a mastery of scientific method, the foundations are reasonably secure. without such foundations, secured either in college or out, analysis of problems in a specialized business field is almost sure to be one-sided and incomplete. the kind of professional training that i would suggest for the future business executive would be laid on the foundation of a college course of two, three, or four years in which the viewpoint and the varied methods of study in several diverse branches of knowledge had been thoroughly instilled. when the student passed to the professional study of business he would be expected to master the fundamentals of business organization and management, including the basic elements of subjects like accounting, finance, and other divisions of organization common to all lines of business. all of these studies would be pursued with constant reference to the fact that business is carried on in a community in which certain public policies are enforced and in recognition of the fact that business should conform to these policies and help to make them effective in contributing to public welfare. as the student advances, the course would proceed toward greater and greater specialization, and would finally culminate in an intensive study of some fairly narrow business problem, pursued until the student has mastered it in principle and in detail. the result of his study would be set forth in dignified readable english which an intelligent layman could comprehend and which would make the article acceptable for publication in a journal of standing. professional study of business, then, should give students a comprehensive many-sided survey of business and a thorough grasp of scientific method as used in analyzing business facts. it should prepare the student to think complicated business problems through to the end and to put the results of his thinking together into an effective working plan. finally, it should maintain an atmosphere in which business problems are regarded in a large and public-spirited way. we are well under way with professional training for business; but if students fail to get the general educational foundation for it, it will not accomplish the best results. if the two, three, or four years of college study is regarded as something purely ornamental and irrelevant, while they are getting it, if it fails to arouse an appreciation both of scientific method and of human values, or if these values are thought of as something to forget when the student comes to the analysis of practical problems, the university will not have done what it might do for the promotion of high standards of efficiency in business. in all of the discussions i have tried to point out how emphasis in business is gradually shifting from acquisition, to production and service; how there are gradually evolving in business, professional standards of fitness, of conduct, and of motive; and how more and more these standards enter into the measuring of business success. our educational assumptions still rest too largely on the old dollar standard of success with its well-known inferences about the blood-and-iron equipment with which that success can be attained. psychologists tell us that we tend to get what we expect. if we fail to create enthusiasm for the opportunity for service in business; if we assume that young persons who enter business are going to measure their returns in dollars alone; or if we continue to feature, as we have done, the break between the so-called "cultural" and the professional parts of the university course, there will be danger that we shall continue to get the thing for which we plan. there can be no doubt that many of our old assumptions about the relative dignity and social distinction attaching to different kinds of study, as well as the assumption of a purely mercenary motive in business, have impeded a wholesome reaction between higher education and business standards. these assumptions have created an atmosphere--an objective and subjective attitude of mind, a set of motives and desires, of appreciations and valuations, all of which stand in the way of the most far-reaching educational results. so far as these assumptions can be rationally explained, they rest on ideas that are in part mistaken, in part exaggerated, and in part obsolete. the application of scientific method to business has created an entirely new relationship between business and education. scientific analysis and social policy are establishing a new connection between the material and the human facts of business. in the new atmosphere the business executive requires those fine qualities of mind and spirit, and the ability to command these qualities for a given task, which peculiarly it is the work of the university to cultivate. in proportion as universities have vigorously undertaken this work, and have applied scientific method to their own problem of articulating it with higher education in general, the line of approach to professional business training has become increasingly clear. among the notable developments of the past decade has been a shifting of emphasis from the training of specialists to the training of business executives. as preparation for executive work comes to be generally recognized as an appropriate field for systematic professional study, the standards that scientific method has already achieved will become fixed and better standards of business efficiency and service will emerge. _the riverside press_ cambridge · massachusetts u · s · a none sam lambert and the new way store a book for clothiers and their clerks published by grand rapids show case co. grand rapids: michigan copyright, , grand rapids show case co. grand rapids, mich. chapter i. sam lambert had the best clothing store in medeena county--a corner store on the main street of medeena opposite the court house square. medeena had four clothing stores, not counting the blue front, down by the depot, with its collection of cheap watches in the window, a yellow guitar, two large accordions and a fiddle with a broken e string. everybody in the county knew sam lambert. as a merchant and a citizen he was a whole bunch of live wires. a big-boned, free-hearted fellow--lucky enough to just escape being run for sheriff, as some thought he was too good natured, the "gang" was afraid he was not pliant enough, and sam didn't want to be away from the store. sam took great pride in his clothing business and kept pace with the most advanced ideas in the trade. he was awake to the marvelous development of the ready-to-wear business. he carried the best and took a positive delight in each season's new models. he recalled the old days of "hand-me-downs," and he had lived to see the two best tailors in medeena take to bushelling "ready" garments, with less and less of that to be done--principally changing a button or shortening a trouser's length. sam was broad-gauge in everything he did. he sold his goods at the marked price, for cash only--got a decent profit and told you so. why shouldn't he? he had a sense of style. he was keenly alive to the artistry of clothes and his enthusiasm was contagious. sam was firmly convinced that a man has to spend money to make money in the clothing business. he said that a part of the value you deliver to a customer consists in giving him a better opinion of himself: making him feel like a king for a day and that the best is none too good for him. "a store," he would tell the boys, "cannot be run on the low gear. you must keep her keyed up. relax when the store is empty, but when you go to meet a customer put on the tension--take a brace--get spring into your step--learn to bunch your vitality and get it across. but keep your energy inside. "don't bounce and don't talk too much. keep yourself in hand. be quiet but alert. "concentrate! for the time being there is but one person in the world and that is the customer, and the most interesting thing in life is the thing he came in to see. "you can size up your man while you are going forward to meet him. but by all means take him easy. undue interest might embarrass him. suppose he only wants a pair of c. socks; if he does, there is a test of your ability that you may not realize. "many a clerk who can close a twenty dollar transaction with tact and dispatch never seems able to handle a ten cent sale so that the customer goes out feeling pleased with himself. "nine men out of ten who come into the store are self-conscious. the thing to do is to make your man feel that his requirement is important simply because it is his requirement. "a good salesman keeps his own personality in the background: he keeps the store and the sale in the background. he puts all the emphasis on service to the customer, and to do this he must mentally put himself in the customer's place. "try to be as interested in the customer's finding what he wants as if the article was for yourself; but don't insist on his taking only the thing that appeals to you. "quietly dominate the sale, but leave him plenty of room for the exercise of his own taste and ideas. "most men, though they may not show it, are slightly on the defensive when they come into a clothing store. that is why it is so very important that there be no talking or laughing among the clerks. "you may find it hard to realize the effect of a whisper or a titter on the part of the store's help when a customer is present. in nearly every case the man becomes sensitive or resentful and thinks he is being ridiculed. "try it yourself sometime by going into a strange store in another line of business in a distant city: when you hear a laugh or a remark passed among the clerks, see if you don't wonder if there isn't something wrong with your clothes or feel sure that comment is being made on your appearance or behavior. "there is another form of impatience or self-consciousness on the part of a customer who is more or less acquainted with the store. he hurries past everyone in front, headed for the part of the store where he thinks the goods he wants are kept. "it is bad policy to step in front of him or otherwise impede his progress. if there is no one to wait on him follow quietly and be on hand when he lands at his destination. "a clerk often wonders why customers persist in doing this. "it is because they have an idea of the location of what they want and blindly strike out for it with a certain nervous desire to cover the intermediate ground as quickly as possible. "remember that while you feel perfectly at home in the store, few customers do. it is your business to put them at ease and certainly to do nothing to make them uncomfortable. "when a man comes in for a suit of clothes he usually has some sort of a mental picture of the thing he desires. an idea, clearly defined or hazy, is in his mind as to the general color and effect of the suit he wants. "it is something he has noticed worn by someone else--looked at in a show window, or seen in an illustration. "in most cases it will not be the thing he finally buys. it may be a chalk-line stripe or a shepherd's plaid worn by a drummer who boarded the . lightning express. in the glow of the lamps and the bustle and excitement of the station platform the thing looked possible: but confronted in the store with the very style and pattern he backs away from it, though 'it looked good on the other man.' "find out what he has in mind; meet it as nearly as you can and get it out of the way. otherwise he will not concentrate on other goods. he will hold to this mental picture and measure everything you show him by it--much to your disadvantage. "one of the worst possible things is to ask a man about what price suit he wants. "keep price in the background. time enough to feel him out on that subject. no man likes to have you take the measure of his pocket-book. "you must use your judgment in gauging him as to what to show him. "the important thing is to get at the picture he has in mind, and the price too, if you can do so without asking him to name the figure. "never ask a customer how he liked the last suit you sold him. let by-gones be by-gones. this is a new deal. whether he was entirely satisfied is not the point now. don't raise dangerous questions. "there are a dozen reasons why his last purchase may not be remembered with pleasure--reasons that have nothing to do with the value he received or the actual merit of the clothes. "if he voluntarily mentions the last suit with praise take it as a natural occurrence and pass it over; you will try to do even better by him this time. "if he complains of his last purchase don't argue. leave the subject as soon as possible and get down to the question in hand. "have confidence in your goods, in your prices and in yourself as a salesman. "there are more sales lost for lack of firmness and decision at the right time than for any other cause. "among the clerks in the best and biggest of stores there are ten good openers of a sale to one good closer. "be a closer. "it requires judgment and decision of character, but you can learn to do it. "when a woman goes into a cloak and suit department, she is not satisfied to buy until she has been made to feel that she has pretty well canvassed the assortment, seen practically everything in the stock at the range and along the line she is seeking. "she has merchandise imagination and thinks of the possible garments back there in the stock that she might have liked better. "in this regard a man is somewhat easier to handle. "it is a fact often demonstrated that clerks can close a sale more quickly where the stock is kept on hangers instead of piled on tables. "the preliminaries are more quickly covered. having walked down the line the customer is better satisfied that the whole selection is placed at his disposal. "there is no secret about it. nothing held back. no mysterious pile of garments on a table that he cannot see. "note the tendency of the customer to investigate a pile of coats--lifting up the corners and looking at the patterns. "a coat in plain view, taken off the hanger, is more obviously a thoughtful selection of a garment definitely suited for him and he is the more ready to make it his own. "the important thing in closing a sale is to narrow down the choice as soon as you can to one or two strong possibilities, flanked by a bad one--that is, a style or a pattern that you know the customer doesn't want. "when this point is reached it is well to move the customer away from the rest of the stock, say to some distant corner where he can stand on a rug and look in the mirror-- "where his whole attention can be given to one suit, or at most a choice between two. "a sale must be opened easily. the customer should never be made to feel that he is being restricted in his selection. but the moment you can form an idea of what he wants you can probably think of just the thing for him. "if you handle him right he accepts your knowledge of the assortment, instead of demanding a complete canvass of the stock. "it is then you may know that you have established his confidence. "in a comparatively short time you can narrow him down to a choice where by a tactful show of firmness you can help him decide. "in the handling of almost every sale there is a point beyond which the customer begins to flounder and show indecision. "the weak salesman leads him on and on with no stopping point--no place to close--and the prospective sale fades to a 'just looking today' excuse. "this is a universal fault among retail clerks. "the test of salesmanship is in closing a sale. "be a closer! "never guy a customer or 'kid him along' for the amusement of a by-stander or a fellow clerk. this is a common practice in some clothing stores. the offender is usually a self-satisfied clerk who has had just enough success as a salesman to make him egotistical. "he thinks he is a regular dare-devil and that by making sport of his customer he may win a reputation as the village cut-up. his favorite victim is some half-witted fellow--tho' a customer who is partly deaf may do and he is always ready for a yokel or a foreigner. "there is no doubt," said sam lambert, "that the medal for the longest ears and the loudest bray in the clothing business belongs to this smart aleck type of clerk known as a 'kidder'. "to say nothing of the respect he owes the customer, it is astonishing how he can presume to work his cheap little side-play on any human being, when even a dog is sensitive to ridicule and knows when he is being laughed at." chapter ii. no one questioned sam lambert's power as a business getter, nor the alertness of his store-keeping methods. he was prodigal of his own energy--never spared himself. he looked after the important things and left details to others. as with every man who is a constructive force in the world of affairs, sam's friends and relatives shook their heads--said that he needed a balance-wheel. this was dinned into his ears so often that he finally came to believe it. so after many sunday afternoon business discussions, it was arranged that he was to take into the business his wife's cousin, one lemuel stucker, who had spent twenty years saving $ as general manager for a flour and feed concern. stucker had worked out elaborate sets of figures to prove the needed economies of management. he was so tireless and sincere, so careful and exact, that it was with a great sense of relief that sam turned the store over to him. here, at last, was a man who could lift from his shoulders the daily burden of management. sam's real interest in the change, as those who knew him might have guessed, was a desire for new enterprise. he had long had an eye on a fine opening for a clothing store in the neighboring town of bridgeville, twenty miles away, and he lost no time in carrying out this project. during the ensuing year he was so engrossed with the bridgeville branch that medeena rarely saw him, and lemuel stucker's rather discouraging reports on the state of business were attributed to lem's conservatism and natural depression of mind. lem was sam's opposite in almost every particular. a small, sallow man with a black shoe-string necktie and a look of general regret. he spent most of his time untying knots in pieces of string, picking up bits of wrapping paper and sharpening short lead-pencils, and he was great on buying brooms. his effect on the store was one of immediate and prevalent blight. you may wonder why the boys did not complain of conditions to sam, but lem was manager--and there is something so virtuous and convincing about a first-class retrencher. his wise saws and thrifty sayings are infectious and he makes everybody so low-spirited that they are ready to catch anything. no more good window displays--tacks, colored cheesecloth and other accessories cost money, and the sun was bad for the goods. no more trim on the counters and shelves. stop the high-power electric light in front of the store and reduce the lamps inside. these things did not all occur at once, but so gradually that it was hard to realize just what had happened to the store. the windows got streaky and the inside of the store looked dingy and cold. then the conservative spirit got into the buying. nothing but black cheviots with a few drab and gray worsteds. perhaps it was just as well, for when a customer came into the store and saw stucker he thought it was raining outside. sam lambert had always prided himself on keeping alive what he called the "buying spirit" in the store. nowadays a customer got a sense of caution. the feeling was one of disapproval of all extravagance. instead of purchasing a suit, the man wondered where his next month's rent was coming from, bought a pair of cottonade pants and hurried home. trade fell off steadily. affairs went on this way for a twelvemonth and then something happened. two of sam's principal competitors were reported to be remodeling their stores--and what was more, they were going to put in wardrobe systems and carry all their garments on hangers. this aroused sam and he made an immediate investigation. he found that one of the stores had contracted for the old type of wooden wall cabinets where the clothes hung behind panelled doors. but the other was installing glass wardrobes, where the stock would be on view. this discovery cut sam like a knife. he investigated further, and was delighted to find that his wardrobe competitor, with the temptation to save a few dollars, had ordered a second-rate type of glass wardrobe, with pull-out rods that swing inside the case, without a locking device to prevent them from breaking the glass. without saying anything to stucker he telegraphed the best wardrobe concern in the country to send their representative at once. chapter iii. at eleven o'clock the following day a quiet man wearing double-lens spectacles and a pre-occupied air came into the store, asked for mr. lambert and was directed to the rear where stucker was showing sam the wisdom of leaving the night covers over the black goods during the day to protect the stock from dust. sam was so keyed up on the wardrobe question that he heard only about half that stucker was saying. when the man with the spectacles arrived sam guessed his mission without waiting for a word of greeting. "you," said sam, "are here to talk wardrobes; let's see what you've got." "before i talk wardrobes, or, if you please, the new way system," began the salesman, "i would prefer to get a fair idea of the amount and kind of stock you carry and how you care for it now." "just as i thought," interrupted stucker. "you're afraid our stock is too big for your wardrobe capacity. "well, i don't want to discourage you, but when you count the suits on the table, don't forget to add about dozen pair of knee pants and odd trousers stored in case-goods boxes under the tables. "remember too, that when you take the tables out, you must find another place for our last years sweaters, mufflers, caps, gloves and underwear, as well as all our advance stock of shirts, hosiery and ties which we keep under the tables because we have no room for them on our side shelving. you can see it is piled to the ceiling now; and all that on top is active stock." "that reminds me, mr. stucker, of a joke your friend jones, over at dennisville, played on sakes, his partner. "before we remodelled their store, they had a lot of money tied up in stock piled under the tables like you have. most of it was odds and ends--left overs of many seasons that jones knew even a clearance sale would not clean up. "he inventoried the lot and shipped dozen pair of knee pants to new york, and wrote the auctioneer to send a check for whatever amount they brought. "the funny part of it, sakes never discovered that the stock was gone until about three weeks later, when he noticed a check in the mail and asked jones what it was for. "you can do the same thing, mr. stucker, with your stock under the tables, and the check you will get will help buy new way sectional shelving that will give you about three times the capacity your furnishing department has now; so it will not be necessary to climb to the ceiling for your active stock or dig under the tables for your out of season goods. "before we discuss detail, mr. lambert," continued the salesman, "i have something to say about the practical arrangement of the inside of the store. "the business of a store is to sell goods. a customer may come in for one item. you want him to buy two or three or a half a dozen. the easier you make it for him, the less he has to cross and recross the store to complete his purchases--the more goods you will sell him. "what you want--what every merchant wants--and what few have--is a practical, natural selling arrangement of the goods. "the invention of a practical wardrobe merely made the right plan possible. "our business is to suggest the plan and fit the wardrobe arrangement to the needs of a store. "every clothing store has its own individuality. each problem must be worked out on the ground with a full knowledge of the stock and the business, the history of the store, the nature of its trade and the personality of its proprietor." sam's interest was excited. this point of view was new to him, but he could see the truth of it and he was impatient to get at the heart of the matter as far as his own store was concerned. "you're right," he said, "about the personality and individuality of a store; and for that reason don't tell me to put the furnishing goods shelving down the middle of the store. this is a clothing store and not a haberdashery." "mr. lambert," said the salesman, "you have hit the nail squarely on the head. this is a double room, a very different problem from that of a single store. i looked over the place of one of your competitors this morning. he also has a double store with much the same arrangement as yours and i find that he is making a mistake--adopting a plan that is about five years behind the times. "you see, in the earlier days of the wardrobe, there was no such thing as a center wardrobe. therefore the clothing had to be hung against the wall in pull-out cabinets. when the clothing went to the side walls the furnishings had to move to the center floor space. "such an arrangement is not practical for a double store and the effect is bad. it kills the first impression of a big store. the shelving will look bare if it is not trimmed, and if it is trimmed your big double room looks like two small stores divided by a wall. "the center shelving will always have stock boxes piled on top and that will throw one side of the store always in shadow. besides, this arrangement divides the trade and screens half of it from view. "the stock is cut in two and looks small. "one salesman can not wait on the furnishing goods trade without neglecting half of it all the time. if you have two clerks, a customer must be taken from one side to the other for his ties or underwear, and there you are again, both on one side at the same time. "if another customer came along they'd have to stop in the middle of a sale and refer him to a clerk around in the other aisle. "a furnishing goods department should be continuous. the sale of a shirt will lead to the purchase of a tie or a collar or hosiery. the goods should be in sight so that they automatically suggest themselves. "you enter this store and the first impression you get is a big clothing store. that is what you want. clothing dominates the store. furnishing goods and hats are important and necessary side lines. no one would mistake it for a haberdasher's. you have been known from the beginning as the leading clothier. that's the reputation you want to keep. "mr. lambert, one of the important problems of this store is to house your stock in new fixtures and at the same time widen your aisles. "you can not see how that is possible. it is really the only problem i have to solve for you, and it is easy." the little man with the big spectacles had things moving. he was not much of a salesman but he knew all about merchandising in a retail store. and he certainly was familiar with every store fixture and selling device that had ever been invented, its good and bad points, where it was practical and where it was not. "before a merchant puts money into store equipment," said the wardrobe man, "he ought to be sure that he is getting the very latest and most improved models. he owes this to himself as a protection for his investment. "there is always a temptation to save a few dollars by adopting a poor imitation or some out-of-date device. "the latest and best is the cheapest in the end, especially when you consider convenience and durability. "a pretty safe guide is to see what the biggest and best stores everywhere are installing today. "you will find such merchants as john wanamaker in his philadelphia and new york stores equipping his clothing departments solely with new way crystal wardrobes; "browning, king & company in seventeen cities; "schuman, kennedy, posner, talbot company, jordan-marsh & company, leopold morse company, mccullough & parker in boston; "george muse company in atlanta; "mullen & bluett of los angeles; "becker of san francisco; "burkhardt of cincinnati; "lazarus, and meyer israel of new orleans; "and more than a thousand others--all the representative stores of their localities. "these men have selected the new way crystal wardrobes after careful comparison with every other device on the market. "they have found the new way crystal wardrobe the most sightly and compact--having the largest capacity with the greatest ease of operation. "they find that they show the goods better; that the clerks can work faster from them; that half a dozen clerks can sell from one wardrobe at the same time; that one boy can keep the stock in good shape where four were inadequate under any other plan. "they find that the new way people have basic patents on special features, such as the new way disappearing doors that divide in the center, and slide into the ends of the wardrobe and do not project into the aisle. "the new way revolving rack with the patent locking device, which works loaded or unloaded with equal ease--no friction, no leverage, no noise. "they find the new way low center wardrobes give an unobstructed view all over the store and are the only wardrobes made that are entirely practical for grouping in front of a furnishing or hat department. "likewise the high double deck wall wardrobes have more than double the capacity of tables." the wardrobe man illustrated his talk with photographs and backed his arguments with figures. the upshot of it was that he made a complete ground plan of the lambert store with a modern selling arrangement and new way fixtures in their proper places. but before stucker would admit the wisdom of the improvement, he argued it from every point of view. "the farmer trade," he said, "would imagine that they would have to pay higher prices for clothing to make up the cost of new fixtures." this, mind you, today when the farmer is the most enlightened member of the community--when he is using progressive methods in marketing his own product, to reduce his costs and increase his profits! lem acknowledged that the clothiers who are handling the finest merchandise are fitting up their stores with new way crystal wardrobes, and he didn't like to admit that the lambert store didn't sell high grade merchandise. he conceded that fine goods in every other line of trade are treated with the care and respect they deserve, otherwise they would suffer in the handling and cease to be fine merchandise. finally, lem admitted that the discerning public does judge a merchant's stock by the way he treats it, so that the store with new way wardrobes as a feature is not only the most progressive store, but in practically every instance the most prosperous in the clothing trade of its locality. after sam had given the order his one thought was impatience for the completion of the job. "i must have that stuff all installed so that i can have my opening a week ahead of the other people. "here, stucker," called sam to that gloomy soul, who had gone behind a stock of work-shirts, while the order was being signed, "we'll let you dispose of the old fixtures. that's a job that's just about your size. "i tell you, stucker, a natural-born retrencher has his virtues. but if you give him rope enough he will retrench you out of business. he never builds anything. if it wasn't for the creative man there would be nothing to retrench. "the retrencher is all right if you don't pay him too much. he is worth about $ a month, because you can find fifty of them in any old man's home that you can hire for less money than that. "no, lem, i won't be unfair. you're not as bad as all that. it takes all kinds of people to make a world and there is plenty of room for both of us in this business--there always will be leaks to stop and work to do for an earnest man who has the interest of the store at heart. "the fault has been in the division of our labor. i'll show you the way we can get the best out of ourselves." "sam," said lem, "i reckon i've been looking at the world through a crack in the fence and i'll have to widen out my view a little. you give me the books and the sales slips to look after. in the meantime i'm going to make the most exact inventory this store ever had and be ready to check in the fresh stock that is to go in these new way wardrobes. "my talents are all right if i don't try to cover too much territory." the two men shook hands. all was in readiness on the day set. everybody in medeena county came to the grand opening, and sam lambert's new way store is doing the business of the town. observations on the effects of the corn laws, and of a rise or fall in the price of corn on the agriculture and general wealth of the country by the rev. t.r. malthus, professor of political economy at the east india college, hertfordshire. london: printed for j. johnson and co., st. paul's church-yard. . observations, &c. &c. a revision of the corn laws, it is understood, is immediately to come under the consideration of the legislature. that the decision on such a subject, should be founded on a correct and enlightened view of the whole question, will be allowed to be of the utmost importance, both with regard to the stability of the measures to be adopted, and the effects to be expected from them. for an attempt to contribute to the stock of information necessary to form such a decision, no apology can be necessary. it may seem indeed probable, that but little further light can be thrown on a subject, which, owing to the system adopted in this country, has been so frequently the topic of discussion; but, after the best consideration which i have been able to give it, i own, it appears to me, that some important considerations have been neglected on both sides of the question, and that the effects of the corn laws, and of a rise or fall in the price of corn, on the agriculture and general wealth of the state, have not yet been fully laid before the public. if this be true, i cannot help attributing it in some degree to the very peculiar argument brought forward by dr smith, in his discussion of the bounty upon the exportation of corn. those who are conversant with the wealth of nations, will be aware, that its great author has, on this occasion, left entirely in the background the broad, grand, and almost unanswerable arguments, which the general principles of political economy furnish in abundance against all systems of bounties and restrictions, and has only brought forwards, in a prominent manner, one which, it is intended, should apply to corn alone. it is not surprising that so high an authority should have had the effect of attracting the attention of the advocates of each side of the question, in an especial manner, to this particular argument. those who have maintained the same cause with dr smith, have treated it nearly in the same way; and, though they may have alluded to the other more general and legitimate arguments against bounties and restrictions, have almost universally seemed to place their chief reliance on the appropriate and particular argument relating to the nature of corn. on the other hand, those who have taken the opposite side of the question, if they have imagined that they had combated this particular argument with success, have been too apt to consider the point as determined, without much reference to the more weighty and important arguments, which remained behind. among the latter description of persons i must rank myself. i have always thought, and still think, that this peculiar argument of dr smith, is fundamentally erroneous, and that it cannot be maintained without violating the great principles of supply and demand, and contradicting the general spirit and scope of the reasonings, which pervade the wealth of nations. but i am most ready to confess, that, on a former occasion, when i considered the corn laws, my attention was too much engrossed by this one peculiar view of the subject, to give the other arguments, which belong to it, their due weight. i am anxious to correct an error, of which i feel conscious. it is not however my intention, on the present occasion, to express an opinion on the general question. i shall only endeavour to state, with the strictest impartiality, what appear to me to be the advantages and disadvantages of each system, in the actual circumstances of our present situation, and what are the specific consequences, which may be expected to result from the adoption of either. my main object is to assist in affording the materials for a just and enlightened decision; and, whatever that decision may be, to prevent disappointment, in the event of the effects of the measure not being such as were previously contemplated. nothing would tend so powerfully to bring the general principles of political economy into disrepute, and to prevent their spreading, as their being supported upon any occasion by reasoning, which constant and unequivocal experience should afterwards prove to be fallacious. we must begin, therefore, by an inquiry into the truth of dr smith's argument, as we cannot with propriety proceed to the main question, till this preliminary point is settled. the substance of his argument is, that corn is of so peculiar a nature, that its real price cannot be raised by an increase of its money price; and that, as it is clearly an increase of real price alone which can encourage its production, the rise of money price, occasioned by a bounty, can have no such effect. it is by no means intended to deny the powerful influence of the price of corn upon the price of labour, on an average of a considerable number of years; but that this influence is not such as to prevent the movement of capital to, or from the land, which is the precise point in question, will be made sufficiently evident by a short inquiry into the manner in which labour is paid and brought into the market, and by a consideration of the consequences to which the assumption of dr smith's proposition would inevitably lead. in the first place, if we inquire into the expenditure of the labouring classes of society, we shall find, that it by no means consists wholly in food, and still less, of course, in mere bread or grain. in looking over that mine of information, for everything relating to prices and labour, sir frederick morton eden's work on the poor, i find, that in a labourer's family of about an average size, the articles of house rent, fuel, soap, candles, tea, sugar, and clothing, are generally equal to the articles of bread or meal. on a very rough estimate, the whole may be divided into five parts, of which two consist of meal or bread, two of the articles above mentioned, and one of meat, milk, butter, cheese, and potatoes. these divisions are, of course, subject to considerable variations, arising from the number of the family, and the amount of the earnings. but if they merely approximate towards the truth, a rise in the price of corn must be both slow and partial in its effects upon labour. meat, milk, butter, cheese, and potatoes are slowly affected by the price of corn; house rent, bricks, stone, timber, fuel, soap, candles, and clothing, still more slowly; and, as far as some of them depend, in part or in the whole, upon foreign materials (as is the case with leather, linen, cottons, soap, and candles), they may be considered as independent of it; like the two remaining articles of tea and sugar, which are by no means unimportant in their amount. it is manifest therefore that the whole of the wages of labour can never rise and fall in proportion to the variations in the price of grain. and that the effect produced by these variations, whatever may be its amount, must be very slow in its operation, is proved by the manner in which the supply of labour takes place; a point, which has been by no means sufficiently attended to. every change in the prices of commodities, if left to find their natural level, is occasioned by some change, actual or expected, in the state of the demand or supply. the reason why the consumer pays a tax upon any manufactured commodity, or an advance in the price of any of its component parts, is because, if he cannot or will not pay this advance of price, the commodity will not be supplied in the same quantity as before; and the next year there will only be such a proportion in the market, as is accommodated to the number of persons who will consent to pay the tax. but, in the case of labour, the operation of withdrawing the commodity is much slower and more painful. although the purchasers refuse to pay the advanced price, the same supply will necessarily remain in the market, not only the next year, but for some years to come. consequently, if no increase take place in the demand, and the advanced price of provisions be not so great, as to make it obvious that the labourer cannot support his family, it is probable, that he will continue to pay this advance, till a relaxation in the rate of the increase of population causes the market to be under-supplied with labour; and then, of course, the competition among the purchasers will raise the price above the proportion of the advance, in order to restore the supply. in the same manner, if an advance in the price of labour has taken place during two or three years of great scarcity, it is probable that, on the return of plenty, the real recompense of labour will continue higher than the usual average, till a too rapid increase of population causes a competition among the labourers, and a consequent diminution of the price of labour below the usual rate. this account of the manner in which the price of corn may be expected to operate upon the price of labour, according to the laws which regulate the progress of population, evidently shows, that corn and labour rarely keep an even pace together; but must often be separated at a sufficient distance and for a sufficient time, to change the direction of capital. as a further confirmation of this truth, it may be useful to consider, secondly, the consequences to which the assumption of dr smith's proposition would inevitably lead. if we suppose, that the real price of corn is unchangeable, or not capable of experiencing a relative increase or decrease of value, compared with labour and other commodities, it will follow, that agriculture is at once excluded from the operation of that principle, so beautifully explained and illustrated by dr smith, by which capital flows from one employment to another, according to the various and necessarily fluctuating wants of society. it will follow, that the growth of corn has, at all times, and in all countries, proceeded with a uniform unvarying pace, occasioned only by the equable increase of agricultural capital, and can never have been accelerated, or retarded, by variations of demand. it will follow, that if a country happened to be either overstocked or understocked with corn, no motive of interest could exist for withdrawing capital from agriculture, in the one case, or adding to it in the other, and thus restoring the equilibrium between its different kinds of produce. but these consequences, which would incontestably follow from the doctrine, that the price of corn immediately and entirely regulates the prices of labour and of all other commodities, are so directly contrary to all experience, that the doctrine itself cannot possibly be true; and we may be assured, that, whatever influence the price of corn may have upon other commodities, it is neither so immediate nor so complete, as to make this kind of produce an exception to all others. that no such exception exists with regard to corn, is implied in all the general reasonings of the wealth of nations. dr smith evidently felt this; and wherever, in consequence, he does not shift the question from the exchangeable value of corn to its physical properties, he speaks with an unusual want of precision, and qualifies his positions by the expressions much, and in any considerable degree. but it should be recollected, that, with these qualifications, the argument is brought forward expressly for the purpose of showing, that the rise of price, acknowledged to be occasioned by a bounty, on its first establishment, is nominal and not real. now, what is meant to be distinctly asserted here is, that a rise of price occasioned by a bounty upon the exportation or restrictions upon the importation of corn, cannot be less real than a rise of price to the same amount, occasioned by a course of bad seasons, an increase of population, the rapid progress of commercial wealth, or any other natural cause; and that, if dr smith's argument, with its qualifications, be valid for the purpose for which it is advanced, it applies equally to an increased price occasioned by a natural demand. let us suppose, for instance, an increase in the demand and the price of corn, occasioned by an unusually prosperous state of our manufactures and foreign commerce; a fact which has frequently come within our own experience. according to the principles of supply and demand, and the general principles of the wealth of nations, such an increase in the price of corn would give a decided stimulus to agriculture; and a more than usual quantity of capital would be laid out upon the land, as appears obviously to have been the case in this country during the last twenty years. according to the peculiar argument of dr smith, however, no such stimulus could have been given to agriculture. the rise in the price of corn would have been immediately followed by a proportionate rise in the price of labour and of all other commodities; and, though the farmer and landlord might have obtained, on an average, seventy five shillings a quarter for their corn, instead of sixty, yet the farmer would not have been enabled to cultivate better, nor the landlord to live better. and thus it would appear, that agriculture is beyond the operation of that principle, which distributes the capital of a nation according to the varying profits of stock in different employments; and that no increase of price can, at any time or in any country, materially accelerate the growth of corn, or determine a greater quantity of capital to agriculture. the experience of every person, who sees what is going forward on the land, and the feelings and conduct both of farmers and landlords, abundantly contradict this reasoning. dr smith was evidently led into this train of argument, from his habit of considering labour as the standard measure of value, and corn as the measure of labour. but, that corn is a very inaccurate measure of labour, the history of our own country will amply demonstrate; where labour, compared with corn, will be found to have experienced very great and striking variations, not only from year to year, but from century to century; and for ten, twenty, and thirty years together;( *) and that neither labour nor any other commodity can be an accurate measure of real value in exchange, is now considered as one of the most incontrovertible doctrines of political economy, and indeed follows, as a necessary consequence, from the very definition of value in exchange. but to allow that corn regulates the prices of all commodities, is at once to erect it into a standard measure of real value in exchange; and we must either deny the truth of dr smith's argument, or acknowledge, that what seems to be quite impossible is found to exist; and that a given quantity of corn, notwithstanding the fluctuations to which its supply and demand must be subject, and the fluctuations to which the supply and demand of all the other commodities with which it is compared must also be subject, will, on the average of a few years, at all times and in all countries, purchase the same quantity of labour and of the necessaries and conveniences of life. there are two obvious truths in political economy, which have not infrequently been the sources of error. it is undoubtedly true, that corn might be just as successfully cultivated, and as much capital might be laid out upon the land, at the price of twenty shillings a quarter, as at the price of one hundred shillings, provided that every commodity, both at home and abroad, were precisely proportioned to the reduced scale. in the same manner as it is strictly true, that the industry and capital of a nation would be exactly the same (with the slight exception at least of plate), if, in every exchange, both at home or abroad, one shilling only were used, where five are used now. but to infer, from these truths, that any natural or artificial causes, which should raise or lower the values of corn or silver, might be considered as matters of indifference, would be an error of the most serious magnitude. practically, no material change can take place in the value of either, without producing both lasting and temporary effects, which have a most powerful influence on the distribution of property, and on the demand and supply of particular commodities. the discovery of the mines of america, during the time that it raised the price of corn between three and four times, did not nearly so much as double the price of labour; and, while it permanently diminished the power of all fixed incomes, it gave a prodigious increase of power to all landlords and capitalists. in a similar manner, the fall in the price of corn, from whatever cause it took place, which occurred towards the middle of the last century, accompanied as it was by a rise, rather than a fall in the price of labour, must have given a great relative check to the employment of capital upon the land, and a great relative stimulus to population; a state of things precisely calculated to produce the reaction afterwards experienced, and to convert us from an exporting to an importing nation. it is by no means sufficient for dr smith's argument, that the price of corn should determine the price of labour under precisely the same circumstances of supply and demand. to make it applicable to his purpose, he must show, in addition, that a natural or artificial rise in the price of corn, or in the value of silver, will make no alteration in the state of property, and in the supply and demand of corn and labour; a position which experience uniformly contradicts. nothing then can be more evident both from theory and experience, than that the price of corn does not immediately and generally regulate the prices of labour and all other commodities; and that the real price of corn is capable of varying for periods of sufficient length to give a decided stimulus or discouragement to agriculture. it is, of course, only to a temporary encouragement or discouragement, that any commodity, where the competition is free, can be subjected. we may increase the capital employed either upon the land or in the cotton manufacture, but it is impossible permanently to raise the profits of farmers or particular manufacturers above the level of other profits; and, after the influx of a certain quantity of capital, they will necessarily be equalized. corn, in this respect, is subjected to the same laws as other commodities, and the difference between them is by no means so great as stated by dr smith. in discussing therefore the present question, we must lay aside the peculiar argument relating to the nature of corn; and allowing that it is possible to encourage cultivation by corn laws, we must direct our chief attention to the question of the policy or impolicy of such a system. while our great commercial prosperity continues, it is scarcely possible that we should become again an exporting nation with regard to corn. the bounty has long been a dead letter; and will probably remain so. we may at present then confine our inquiry to the restrictions upon the importation of foreign corn with a view to an independent supply. the determination of the question, respecting the policy or impolicy of continuing the corn laws, seems to depend upon the three following points:-- first, whether, upon the supposition of the most perfect freedom of importation and exportation, it is probable that great britain and ireland would grow an independent supply of corn. secondly, whether an independent supply, if it do not come naturally, is an object really desirable, and one which justifies the interference of the legislature. and, thirdly, if an independent supply be considered as such an object, how far, and by what sacrifices, are restrictions upon importation adapted to attain the end in view. of the first point, it may be observed, that it cannot, in the nature of things, be determined by general principles, but must depend upon the size, soil, facilities of culture, and demand for corn in the country in question. we know that it answers to almost all small well-peopled states, to import their corn; and there is every reason to suppose, that even a large landed nation, abounding in a manufacturing population, and having cultivated all its good soil, might find it cheaper to purchase a considerable part of its corn in other countries, where the supply, compared with the demand, was more abundant. if the intercourse between the different parts of europe were perfectly easy and perfectly free, it would be by no means natural that one country should be employing a great capital in the cultivation of poor lands, while at no great distance, lands comparatively rich were lying very ill cultivated, from the want of an effectual demand. the progress of agricultural improvement ought naturally to proceed more equably. it is true indeed that the accumulation of capital, skill, and population in particular districts, might give some facilities of culture not possessed by poorer nations; but such facilities could not be expected to make up for great differences in the quality of the soil and the expenses of cultivation. and it is impossible to conceive that under very great inequalities in the demand for corn in different countries, occasioned by a very great difference in the accumulation of mercantile and manufacturing capital and in the number of large towns, an equalization of price could take place, without the transfer of a part of the general supply of europe, from places where the demand was comparatively deficient, to those where it was comparatively excessive. according to oddy's european commerce, the poles can afford to bring their corn to danzig at thirty two shillings a quarter. the baltic merchants are said to be of opinion that the price is not very different at present; and there can be little doubt, that if the corn growers in the neighbourhood of the baltic could look forward to a permanently open market in the british ports, they would raise corn expressly for the purpose. the same observation is applicable to america; and under such circumstances it would answer to both countries, for many years to come, to afford us supplies of corn, in much larger quantities than we have ever yet received from them. during the five years from to , both inclusive, the bullion price of corn was about seventy five shillings per quarter; yet, at this price, it answered to us better to import some portion of our supplies than to bring our land into such a state of cultivation as to grow our own consumption. we have already shown how slowly and partially the price of corn affects the price of labour and some of the other expenses of cultivation. is it credible then that if by the freedom of importation the prices of corn were equalized, and reduced to about forty five or fifty shillings a quarter, it could answer to us to go on improving our agriculture with our increasing population, or even to maintain our produce in its actual state? it is a great mistake to suppose that the effects of a fall in the price of corn on cultivation may be fully compensated by a diminution of rents. rich land which yields a large net rent, may indeed be kept up in its actual state, notwithstanding a fall in the price of its produce: as a diminution of rent may be made entirely to compensate this fall and all the additional expenses that belong to a rich and highly taxed country. but in poor land, the fund of rent will often be found quite insufficient for this purpose. there is a good deal of land in this country of such a quality that the expenses of its cultivation, together with the outgoings of poor rates, tithes and taxes, will not allow the farmer to pay more than a fifth or sixth of the value of the whole produce in the shape of rent. if we were to suppose the prices of grain to fall from seventy five shillings to fifty shillings the quarter, the whole of such a rent would be absorbed, even if the price of the whole produce of the farm did not fall in proportion to the price of grain, and making some allowance for a fall in the price of labour. the regular cultivation of such land for grain would of course be given up, and any sort of pasture, however scanty, would be more beneficial both to the landlord and farmer. but a diminution in the real price of corn is still more efficient, in preventing the future improvement of land, than in throwing land, which has been already improved, out of cultivation. in all progressive countries, the average price of corn is never higher than what is necessary to continue the average increase of produce. and though, in much the greater part of the improved lands of most countries, there is what the french economists call a disposable produce, that is, a portion which might be taken away without interfering with future production, yet, in reference to the whole of the actual produce and the rate at which it is increasing, there is no part of the price so disposable. in the employment of fresh capital upon the land to provide for the wants of an increasing population, whether this fresh capital be employed in bringing more land under the plough or in improving land already in cultivation, the main question always depends upon the expected returns of this capital; and no part of the gross profits can be diminished without diminishing the motive to this mode of employing it. every diminution of price not fully and immediately balanced by a proportionate fall in all the necessary expenses of a farm, every tax on the land, every tax on farming stock, every tax on the necessaries of farmers, will tell in the computation; and if, after all these outgoings are allowed for, the price of the produce will not leave a fair remuneration for the capital employed, according to the general rate of profits and a rent at least equal to the rent of the land in its former state, no sufficient motive can exist to undertake the projected improvement. it was a fatal mistake in the system of the economists to consider merely production and reproduction, and not the provision for an increasing population, to which their territorial tax would have raised the most formidable obstacles. on the whole then considering the present accumulation of manufacturing population in this country, compared with any other in europe, the expenses attending enclosures, the price of labour and the weight of taxes, few things seem less probable, than that great britain should naturally grow an independent supply of corn; and nothing can be more certain, than that if the prices of wheat in great britain were reduced by free importation nearly to a level with those of america and the continent, and if our manufacturing prosperity were to continue increasing, it would incontestably answer to us to support a part of our present population on foreign corn, and nearly the whole probably of the increasing population, which we may naturally expect to take place in the course of the next twenty or twenty five years. the next question for consideration is, whether an independent supply, if it do not come naturally, is an object really desirable and one which justifies the interference of the legislature. the general principles of political economy teach us to buy all our commodities where we can have them the cheapest; and perhaps there is no general rule in the whole compass of the science to which fewer justifiable exceptions can be found in practice. in the simple view of present wealth, population, and power, three of the most natural and just objects of national ambition, i can hardly imagine an exception; as it is only by a strict adherence to this rule that the capital of a country can ever be made to yield its greatest amount of produce. it is justly stated by dr smith that by means of trade and manufactures a country may enjoy a much greater quantity of subsistence, and consequently may have a much greater population, than what its own lands could afford. if holland, venice, and hamburg had declined a dependence upon foreign countries for their support, they would always have remained perfectly inconsiderable states, and never could have risen to that pitch of wealth, power, and population, which distinguished the meridian of their career. although the price of corn affects but slowly the price of labour, and never regulates it wholly, yet it has unquestionably a powerful influence upon it. a most perfect freedom of intercourse between different nations in the article of corn, greatly contributes to an equalization of prices and a level in the value of the precious metals. and it must be allowed that a country which possesses any peculiar facilities for successful exertion in manufacturing industry, can never make a full and complete use of its advantages; unless the price of its labour and other commodities be reduced to that level compared with other countries, which results from the most perfect freedom of the corn trade. it has been sometimes urged as an argument in favour of the corn laws, that the great sums which the country has had to pay for foreign corn during the last twenty years must have been injurious to her resources, and might have been saved by the improvement of our agriculture at home. it might with just as much propriety be urged that we lose every year by our forty millions worth of imports, and that we should gain by diminishing these extravagant purchases. such a doctrine cannot be maintained without giving up the first and most fundamental principles of all commercial intercourse. no purchase is ever made, either at home or abroad, unless that which is received is, in the estimate of the purchaser, of more value than that which is given; and we may rest quite assured, that we shall never buy corn or any other commodities abroad, if we cannot by so doing supply our wants in a more advantageous manner, and by a smaller quantity of capital, than if we had attempted to raise these commodities at home. it may indeed occasionally happen that in an unfavourable season, our exchanges with foreign countries may be affected by the necessity of making unusually large purchases of corn; but this is in itself an evil of the slightest consequence, which is soon rectified, and in ordinary times is not more likely to happen, if our average imports were two millions of quarters, than if, on an average, we grew our own consumption. the unusual demand is in this case the sole cause of the evil, and not the average amount imported. the habit on the part of foreigners of supplying this amount, would on the contrary rather facilitate than impede further supplies; and as all trade is ultimately a trade of barter, and the power of purchasing cannot be permanently extended without an extension of the power of selling, the foreign countries which supplied us with corn would evidently have their power of purchasing our commodities increased, and would thus contribute more effectually to our commercial and manufacturing prosperity. it has further been intimated by the friends of the corn laws, that by growing our own consumption we shall keep the price of corn within moderate bounds and to a certain degree steady. but this also is an argument which is obviously not tenable; as in our actual situation, it is only by keeping the price of corn up, very considerably above the average of the rest of europe, that we can possibly be made to grow our own consumption. a bounty upon exportation in one country, may be considered, in some degree, as a bounty upon production in europe; and if the growing price of corn in the country where the bounty is granted be not higher than in others, such a premium might obviously after a time have some tendency to create a temporary abundance of corn and a consequent fall in its price. but restrictions upon importation cannot have the slightest tendency of this kind. their whole effect is to stint the supply of the general market, and to raise, not to lower, the price of corn. nor is it in their nature permanently to secure what is of more consequence, steadiness of prices. during the period indeed, in which the country is obliged regularly to import some foreign grain, a high duty upon it is effectual in steadily keeping up the price of home corn, and giving a very decided stimulus to agriculture. but as soon as the average supply becomes equal to the average consumption, this steadiness ceases. a plentiful year will occasion a sudden fall; and from the average price of the home produce being so much higher than in the other markets of europe, such a fall can be but little relieved by exportation. it must be allowed, that a free trade in corn would in all ordinary cases not only secure a cheaper, but a more steady, supply of grain. to counterbalance these striking advantages of a free trade in corn, what are the evils which are apprehended from it? it is alleged, first, that security is of still more importance than wealth, and that a great country likely to excite the jealousy of others, if it become dependent for the support of any considerable portion of people upon foreign corn, exposes itself to the risk of having its most essential supplies suddenly fail at the time of its greatest need. that such a risk is not very great will be readily allowed. it would be as much against the interest of those nations which raised the superabundant supply as against the one which wanted it, that the intercourse should at any time be interrupted; and a rich country, which could afford to pay high for its corn, would not be likely to starve, while there was any to be purchased in the market of the commercial world. at the same time it should be observed that we have latterly seen the most striking instances in all quarters, of governments acting from passion rather than interest. and though the recurrence of such a state of things is hardly to be expected, yet it must be allowed that if anything resembling it should take place in future, when, instead of very nearly growing our own consumption, we were indebted to foreign countries for the support of two millions of our people, the distresses which our manufacturers suffered in would be nothing compared with the wide-wasting calamity which would be then experienced. according to the returns made to parliament in the course of the last session, the quantity of grain and flour exported in rather exceeded, than fell short of, what was imported; and in , although the average price of wheat was one hundred and twenty five shillings the quarter, the balance of the importations of grain and flour was only about one hundred thousand quarters. from , partly from the operation of the corn laws passed in , but much more from the difficulty and expense of importing corn in the actual state of europe and america, the price of grain had risen so high and had given such a stimulus to our agriculture, that with the powerful assistance of ireland, we had been rapidly approaching to the growth of an independent supply. though the danger therefore may not be great of depending for a considerable portion of our subsistence upon foreign countries, yet it must be acknowledged that nothing like an experiment has yet been made of the distresses that might be produced, during a widely extended war, by the united operation, of a great difficulty in finding a market for our manufactures, accompanied by the absolute necessity of supplying ourselves with a very large quantity of corn. dly. it may be said, that an excessive proportion of manufacturing population does not seem favourable to national quiet and happiness. independently of any difficulties respecting the import of corn, variations in the channels of manufacturing industry and in the facilities of obtaining a vent for its produce are perpetually recurring. not only during the last four or five years, but during the whole course of the war, have the wages of manufacturing labour been subject to great fluctuations. sometimes they have been excessively high, and at other times proportionably low; and even during a peace they must always remain subject to the fluctuations which arise from the caprices of taste and fashion, and the competition of other countries. these fluctuations naturally tend to generate discontent and tumult and the evils which accompany them; and if to this we add, that the situation and employment of a manufacturer and his family are even in their best state unfavourable to health and virtue, it cannot appear desirable that a very large proportion of the whole society should consist of manufacturing labourers. wealth, population and power are, after all, only valuable, as they tend to improve, increase, and secure the mass of human virtue and happiness. yet though the condition of the individual employed in common manufacturing labour is not by any means desirable, most of the effects of manufactures and commerce on the general state of society are in the highest degree beneficial. they infuse fresh life and activity into all classes of the state, afford opportunities for the inferior orders to rise by personal merit and exertion, and stimulate the higher orders to depend for distinction upon other grounds than mere rank and riches. they excite invention, encourage science and the useful arts, spread intelligence and spirit, inspire a taste for conveniences and comforts among the labouring classes; and, above all, give a new and happier structure to society, by increasing the proportion of the middle classes, that body on which the liberty, public spirit, and good government of every country must mainly depend. if we compare such a state of society with a state merely agricultural, the general superiority of the former is incontestable; but it does not follow that the manufacturing system may not be carried to excess, and that beyond a certain point the evils which accompany it may not increase further than its advantages. the question, as applicable to this country, is not whether a manufacturing state is to be preferred to one merely agricultural but whether a country the most manufacturing of any ever recorded in history, with an agriculture however as yet nearly keeping pace with it, would be improved in its happiness, by a great relative increase to its manufacturing population and relative check to its agricultural population. many of the questions both in morals and politics seem to be of the nature of the problems de maximis and minimis in fluxions; in which there is always a point where a certain effect is the greatest, while on either side of this point it gradually diminishes. with a view to the permanent happiness and security from great reverses of the lower classes of people in this country, i should have little hesitation in thinking it desirable that its agriculture should keep pace with its manufactures, even at the expense of retarding in some degree the growth of manufactures; but it is a different question, whether it is wise to break through a general rule, and interrupt the natural course of things, in order to produce and maintain such an equalization. dly. it may be urged, that though a comparatively low value of the precious metals, or a high nominal price of corn and labour, tends rather to check commerce and manufactures, yet its effects are permanently beneficial to those who live by the wages of labour. if the labourers in two countries were to earn the same quantity of corn, yet in one of them the nominal price of this corn were twenty five per cent higher than in the other, the condition of the labourers where the price of corn was the highest, would be decidedly the best. in the purchase of all commodities purely foreign; in the purchase of those commodities, the raw materials of which are wholly or in part foreign, and therefore influenced in a great degree by foreign prices, and in the purchase of all home commodities which are taxed, and not taxed ad valorem, they would have an unquestionable advantage: and these articles altogether are not inconsiderable even in the expenditure of a cottager. as one of the evils therefore attending the throwing open our ports, it may be stated, that if the stimulus to population, from the cheapness of grain, should in the course of twenty or twenty five years reduce the earnings of the labourer to the same quantity of corn as at present, at the same price as in the rest of europe, the condition of the lower classes of people in this country would be deteriorated. and if they should not be so reduced, it is quite clear that the encouragement to the growth of corn will not be fully restored, even after the lapse of so long a period. thly. it may be observed, that though it might by no means be advisable to commence an artificial system of regulations in the trade of corn; yet if, by such a system already established and other concurring causes, the prices of corn and of many commodities had been raised above the level of the rest of europe, it becomes a different question, whether it would be advisable to risk the effects of so great and sudden a fall in the price of corn, as would be the consequence of at once throwing open our ports. one of the cases in which, according to dr smith, "it may be a matter of deliberation how far it is proper to restore the free importation of foreign goods after it has been for some time interrupted, is, when particular manufactures, by means of high duties and prohibitions upon all foreign goods which can come into competition with them, have been so far extended as to employ a great multitude of hands.( *)" that the production of corn is not exempted from the operation of this rule has already been shown; and there can be no doubt that the interests of a large body of landholders and farmers, the former to a certain extent permanently, and the latter temporarily, would be deeply affected by such a change of policy. these persons too may further urge, with much appearance of justice, that in being made to suffer this injury, they would not be treated fairly and impartially. by protecting duties of various kinds, an unnatural quantity of capital is directed towards manufactures and commerce and taken from the land; and while, on account of these duties, they are obliged to purchase both home-made and foreign goods at a kind of monopoly price, they would be obliged to sell their own at the price of the most enlarged competition. it may fairly indeed be said, that to restore the freedom of the corn trade, while protecting duties on various other commodities are allowed to remain, is not really to restore things to their natural level, but to depress the cultivation of the land below other kinds of industry. and though, even in this case, it might still be a national advantage to purchase corn where it could be had the cheapest; yet it must be allowed that the owners of property in land would not be treated with impartial justice. if under all the circumstances of the case, it should appear impolitic to check our agriculture; and so desirable to secure an independent supply of corn, as to justify the continued interference of the legislature for this purpose, the next question for our consideration is; fifthly, how far and by what sacrifices, restrictions upon the importation of foreign corn are calculated to attain the end in view. with regard to the mere practicability of effecting an independent supply, it must certainly be allowed that foreign corn may be so prohibited as completely to secure this object. a country with a large territory, which determines never to import corn, except when the price indicates a scarcity, will unquestionably in average years supply its own wants. but a law passed with this view might be so framed as to effect its object rather by a diminution of the people than an increase of the corn: and even if constructed in the most judicious manner, it can never be made entirely free from objections of this kind. the evils which must always belong to restrictions upon the importation of foreign corn, are the following: . a certain waste of the national resources, by the employment of a greater quantity of capital than is necessary for procuring the quantity of corn required. . a relative disadvantage in all foreign commercial transactions, occasioned by the high comparative prices of corn and labour, and the low value of silver, as far as they affect exportable commodities. . some check to population, occasioned by a check to that abundance of corn, and demand for manufacturing labours, which would be the result of a perfect freedom of importation. . the necessity of constant revision and interference, which belongs to almost every artificial system. it is true, that during the last twenty years we have witnessed a very great increase of population and of our exported commodities, under a high price of corn and labour; but this must have happened in spite of these high prices, not in consequence of them; and is to be attributed chiefly to the unusual success of our inventions for saving labour and the unusual monopoly of the commerce of europe which has been thrown into our hands by the war. when these inventions spread and europe recovers in some degree her industry and capital, we may not find it so easy to support the competition. the more strongly the natural state of the country directs it to the purchase of foreign corn, the higher must be the protecting duty or the price of importation, in order to secure an independent supply; and the greater consequently will be the relative disadvantage which we shall suffer in our commerce with other countries. this drawback may, it is certain, ultimately be so great as to counterbalance the effects of our extraordinary skill, capital and machinery. the whole, therefore, is evidently a question of contending advantages and disadvantages; and, as interests of the highest importance are concerned, the most mature deliberation is required in its decision. in whichever way it is settled, some sacrifices must be submitted to. those who contend for the unrestrained admission of foreign corn, must not imagine that the cheapness it will occasion will be an unmixed good; and that it will give an additional stimulus to the commerce and population of the country, while it leaves the present state of agriculture and its future increase undisturbed. they must be prepared to see a sudden stop put to the progress of our cultivation, and even some diminution of its actual state; and they must be ready to encounter the as yet untried risk, of making a considerable proportion of our population dependent upon foreign supplies of grain, and of exposing them to those vicissitudes and changes in the channels of commerce to which manufacturing states are of necessity subject. on the other hand, those who contend for a continuance and increase of restrictions upon importation, must not imagine that the present state of agriculture and its present rate of eminence can be maintained without injuring other branches of the national industry. it is certain that they will not only be injured, but that they will be injured rather more than agriculture is benefited; and that a determination at all events to keep up the prices of our corn might involve us in a system of regulations, which, in the new state of europe which is expected, might not only retard in some degree, as hitherto, the progress of our foreign commerce, but ultimately begin to diminish it; in which case our agriculture itself would soon suffer, in spite of all our efforts to prevent it. if, on weighing fairly the good to be obtained and the sacrifices to be made for it, the legislature should determine to adhere to its present policy of restrictions, it should be observed, in reference to the mode of doing it, that the time chosen is by no means favourable for the adoption of such a system of regulations as will not need future alterations. the state of the currency must throw the most formidable obstacles in the way of all arrangements respecting the prices of importation. if we return to cash payments, while bullion continues of its present value compared with corn, labour, and most other commodities; little alteration will be required in the existing corn laws. the bullion price of corn is now very considerably under sixty three shillings, the price at which the high duty ceases according to the act of . if our currency continues at its present nominal value, it will be necessary to make very considerable alterations in the laws, or they will be a mere dead letter and become entirely inefficient in restraining the importation of foreign corn. if, on the other hand, we should return to our old standard, and at the same time the value of bullion should fall from the restoration of general confidence, and the ceasing of an extraordinary demand for bullion; an intermediate sort of alteration will be necessary, greater than in the case first mentioned, and less than in the second. in this state of necessary uncertainty with regard to our currency, it would be extremely impolitic to come to any final regulation, founded on an average which would be essentially influenced by the nominal prices of the last five years. to these considerations it may be added, that there are many reasons to expect a more than usual abundance of corn in europe during the repose to which we may now look forward. such an abundance( *) took place after the termination of the war of louis xiv, and seems still more probable now, if the late devastation of the human race and interruption to industry should be succeeded by a peace of fifteen or twenty years. the prospect of an abundance of this kind, may to some perhaps appear to justify still greater efforts to prevent the introduction of foreign corn; and to secure our agriculture from too sudden a shock, it may be necessary to give it some protection. but if, under such circumstances with regard to the price of corn in europe, we were to endeavour to retain the prices of the last five years, it is scarcely possible to suppose that our foreign commerce would not in a short time begin to languish. the difference between ninety shillings a quarter and thirty two shillings a quarter, which is said to be the price of the best wheat in france, is almost too great for our capital and machinery to contend with. the wages of labour in this country, though they have not risen in proportion to the price of corn, have been beyond all doubt considerably influenced by it. if the whole of the difference in the expense of raising corn in this country and in the corn countries of europe was occasioned by taxation, and the precise amount of that taxation as affecting corn, could be clearly ascertained; the simple and obvious way of restoring things to their natural level and enabling us to grow corn, as in a state of perfect freedom, would be to lay precisely the same amount of tax on imported corn and grant the same amount in a bounty upon exportation. dr smith observes, that when the necessities of a state have obliged it to lay a tax upon a home commodity, a duty of equal amount upon the same kind of commodity when imported from abroad, only tends to restore the level of industry which had necessarily been disturbed by the tax. but the fact is that the whole difference of price does not by any means arise solely from taxation. a part of it, and i should think, no inconsiderable part, is occasioned by the necessity of yearly cultivating and improving more poor land, to provide for the demands of an increasing population; which land must of course require more labour and dressing, and expense of all kinds in its cultivation. the growing price of corn therefore, independently of all taxation, is probably higher than in the rest of europe; and this circumstance not only increases the sacrifice that must be made for an independent supply, but enhances the difficulty of framing a legislative provision to secure it. when the former very high duties upon the importation of foreign grain were imposed, accompanied by the grant of a bounty, the growing price of corn in this country was not higher than in the rest of europe; and the stimulus given to agriculture by these laws aided by other favourable circumstances occasioned so redundant a growth, that the average price of corn was not affected by the prices of importation. almost the only sacrifice made in this case was the small rise of price occasioned by the bounty on its first establishment, which, after it had increased operated as a stimulus to cultivation, terminated in a period of cheapness. if we were to attempt to pursue the same system in a very different state of the country, by raising the importation prices and the bounty in proportion to the fall in the value of money, the effects of the measure might bear very little resemblance to those which took place before. since great britain has added nearly four millions and a half to her population, and with the addition of ireland probably eight millions, a greater proportion i believe than in any other country in europe; and from the structure of our society and the great increase of the middle classes, the demands for the products of pasture have probably been augmented in a still greater proportion. under these circumstances it is scarcely conceivable that any effects could make us again export corn to the same comparative extent as in the middle of the last century. an increase of the bounty in proportion to the fall in the value of money, would certainly not be sufficient; and probably nothing could accomplish it but such an excessive premium upon exportation, as would at once stop the progress of the population and foreign commerce of the country, in order to let the produce of corn get before it. in the present state of things then we must necessarily give up the idea of creating a large average surplus. and yet very high duties upon importation, operating alone, are peculiarly liable to occasion great fluctuations of price. it has been already stated, that after they have succeeded in producing an independent supply by steady high prices, an abundant crop which cannot be relieved by exportation, must occasion a very sudden fall.( *) should this continue a second or third year, it would unquestionably discourage cultivation, and the country would again become partially dependent. the necessity of importing foreign corn would of course again raise the price of importation, and the same causes might make a similar fall and a subsequent rise recur; and thus prices would tend to vibrate between the high prices occasioned by the high duties on importation and the low prices occasioned by a glut which could not be relieved by exportation. it is under these difficulties that the parliament is called upon to legislate. on account of the deliberation which the subject naturally requires, but more particularly on account of the present uncertain state of the currency, it would be desirable to delay any final regulation. should it however be determined to proceed immediately to a revision of the present laws, in order to render them more efficacious, there would be some obvious advantages, both as a temporary and permanent measure, in giving to the restrictions the form of a constant duty upon foreign corn, not to act as a prohibition, but as a protecting, and at the same time, profitable tax. and with a view to prevent the great fall that might be occasioned by a glut, under the circumstances before adverted to, but not to create an average surplus, the old bounty might be continued, and allowed to operate in the same way as the duty at all times, except in extreme cases. these regulations would be extremely simple and obvious in their operations, would give greater certainty to the foreign grower, afford a profitable tax to the government, and would be less affected even by the expected improvement of the currency, than high importation prices founded upon any past average.( *) notes: . from the reign of edward iii to the reign of henry vii, a day's earnings, in corn, rose from a pack to near half a bushel, and from henry vii to the end of elizabeth, it fell from near half a bushel to little more than half a peck. . wealth of nations, b. iv, c. , p. . . the cheapness of corn, during the first half of the last century, was rather oddly mistaken by dr. smith for a rise in the value of silver. that it was owing to peculiar abundance was obvious, from all other commodities rising instead of falling. . the sudden fall of the price of corn this year seems to be a case precisely to point. it should be recollected however that quantity always in some degree balances cheapness. . since sending the above to the press i have heard of the new resolutions that are to be proposed. the machinery seems to be a little complicated, but if it will work easily and well, they are greatly preferable to those which were suggested last year. to the free exportation asked, no rational objection can of course be made, though its efficiency in the present state of things may be doubted. with regard to the duties, if any be imposed, there must always be a queston of degree. the principal objection which i see to the present scale, is that with an average price of corn in the actual state of the currency, there will be a pretty strong competition of foreign grain; whereas with an average price on the restoration of the currency, foreign competition will be absolutely and entirely excluded. [transcriber's note: the sentence it is alleged, first, that security is of still more importance than wealth, and that a great country likely to excite the jealousy of others, if it become dependent for the support of any considerable portion of people upon foreign corn, exposes itself to the risk of having its most essential supplies suddenly fail at the time of its greatest need. originally read: it is alleged, first, that security is of still more importance than wealth, and that a great country likely to excite the jealousy of others, if its it become dependent for the support of any considerable portion of people upon foreign corn, exposes itself to the risk of having its most essential supplies suddenly fail at the time of its greatest need. this was probably a printer's error.] how department stores are carried on by w. b. phillips [illustration] new york dodd, mead & company contents. introduction, general principles, the management, the system, advertising, the buying organization, receiving goods, taking care of stock, serving customers, exchanging goods, floor managers and ushers, making out checks, inspecting, checking and parcelling goods, collecting goods for delivery, delivering goods, stables, cash office, check office, or auditing department, c. o. d. business, the mail-order business, catalogues, receiving and opening mail, book-keeping, buying, checking, etc., assembling and packing mail-order goods, goods sent by mail, correspondence, paying for goods, etc., filing correspondence, special orders, returned goods, exchanges and complaints, samples, keeping employees' time, employing help, paying wages, watchmen, general rules for employees, mechanical section, introduction. no other branch of business can bear comparison with the wonderful results achieved by department stores, such a success as has made them the wonder of modern merchandising. these stores, that have grown to greatness from small beginnings, have a force and power behind them that commands general interest. their store-keeping rests upon certain well-defined principles, and not upon chance, sensations or experiments. it is not the intention in this volume to prejudice public opinion against department stores. no attempt has been made to enumerate any reasons why they exist and flourish, nor any effort made to prove that they are a necessity, or otherwise. whether they promote and build up the best interests of the people and country at large, or are detrimental to them, is a question on which intelligent opinion is largely divided. the fact remains--a plain indisputable fact--that they do exist; that they have had a tremendous growth in recent years, both in europe and america; that organizations of this character beginning a few years ago have developed into the largest and most successful mercantile institutions in the world. the author, from several years' practical experience, having been closely identified with the policy adopted, and with all the detail of system employed, in running one of the largest department stores on this continent, having visited at different times the trade centers of america, and examined carefully into the systems employed in other stores of a similar character, and made careful comparisons, is satisfied that the enquiring public will appreciate the endeavor to give them an intelligent idea of "how department stores are carried on." general principles. one of the great underlying principles of modern department stores is cash. buying and selling for cash. cash and one price. some deviations are made from this rule, according to existing conditions in different business centers; but this is exceptional, the larger percentage of trade being strictly cash, and this fact has contributed largely to the general success. a few years ago nobody sold for cash. nobody in those days marked the price on goods in plain figures and stuck to it. to-day this is done, and is acknowledged to be highly satisfactory. the first aim is to get the best and choicest goods direct from the makers; and, second, to have the lowest prices, thus enlarging the purchasing power of every dollar. a department store is different from the ordinary store, by being big enough to deal in almost everything that people need; handling merchandise of every class that goes well together for all sorts of people; providing the means of doing everything quickly, easily, cheaply. a store large enough to accommodate thousands of shoppers arranged to serve a purpose. floor upon floor filled with merchandise, broad aisles, easy stairways, elevators to do the stair climbing, cash system for quick and easy change-making, with all the newest ideas in store mechanism; places to sit, wait, meet, lunch, talk and rest; in short, an ideal place to shop in. everything done that can be done to study the convenience of customers and look after their interests. this constitutes one of the greatest factors in the success of modern retailing. looking after the customer. looking after them in such a manner that the service is an attraction in itself, that shopping is made easy and comfortable. service is what these stores are for. complete service in every detail, beginning with the purchase of the goods, and ending with delivery to customers, guaranteeing every article sold to be exactly as represented, or cheerfully refunding the money. the development of these great businesses is largely the product of better service, and this service has been effective in winning the favor of shoppers. the strength of these organizations, while centered in well-known principles strictly adhered to, is backed up by a well-defined system of government, including all departments, and the development of this system has had a great deal to do with the success of present-day business. the principles referred to build up and support the business, but it is the careful management and perfect system which controls. the management. the central point around which the whole organization of department stores gather is the man, or men, who put up the capital; who own, control and manage the business; and who insist that the profits shall be consistent with their expectations. they not only put up the cash, but define the policy of the business, and organize and develop the system under which it operates. the organizing and executive ability, as well as the faculty of knowing men, must be largely displayed; knowing men, and how to combine them; knowing how to use their capabilities and energies, how to bring out all their qualifications and all their ambitions. the management must be of large perspective and broad experience, make a close study of store-keeping ways and methods, be quick to take advantage of every new idea in service and appointments, and enterprising in everything that goes to make a business strong and successful. associated with the head of the business, usually selected from active workers who live with the business every day, are a few who are taken into intimate relations with the business policy, and who very materially assist in its development, and in the working out and building up of the system by which the business is carried on. capable, intelligent, energetic, lieutenants, who are intensely interested, and who exhibit no lack of earnestness or energy; who are imbued with implicit faith and confidence in whatever may be advocated and decided upon, and who direct their best efforts to its accomplishment. the system. the system that dresses the windows with attractive goods, that provides the special bargains, that furnishes such a variety of goods comprising nearly everything that people wear or use, that gives a courteous and agreeable service under all conditions, that provides a place to rest when fatigued, that enables shopping to be done under such favorable circumstances, that delivers all purchases promptly, and if a mistake has been made in the selection, or for any reason goods bought are not satisfactory, presents no difficulty in their being exchanged or the money refunded; the system which does all this and more is not the result of accident or chance, but there is a vast machinery behind it all which directs and controls. but the system must do much more than this. it must provide for getting at results, and it is in this respect that the perfection of the system is reached. while the store space is divided up into little stores or departments, under different heads, who are given every possible leeway in the buying of goods and management of stocks, yet each head is made directly responsible for everything in connection with this part of the business. each department is charged with the goods bought and with the expense of selling, and credited with the sales made. each section pays its proper share of all general expenses, such as delivering goods, lighting, heating, elevator service, fixtures, rent, etc. the system employed enables the head of the business to always know the true condition of each section. it enables him to know, if desired, what each individual salesperson does; how much the total business is of any department on any day; what the expenses are for any given time; and these facts are not obtained spasmodically, but are regularly recorded and made use of. lack of knowledge of the condition of any department does not exist. success, or the lack of it, is apparent at once. the truth of eternal vigilance being the price of success is here acknowledged, and in no other business organization is more special care and attention paid to knowing constantly just what the actual results are. advertising. someone has said, "the time to advertise is all the time," and among modern business organizations none more thoroughly recognize and strictly adhere to this statement than department stores. nowhere else is the science, the art, of advertising more intelligently understood, appreciated and applied. advertising is recognized as the pulse of the business, the great vitalizing force. the importance of the relation of advertising to business cannot possibly be exaggerated, and for this reason it is considered most seriously. a recognized authority has said, "advertising taken seriously in the retail business makes the policy of the business. it is the fundamental thing, the corner stone. therefore, it demands the attention of the head of the business. i cannot think of any concern so large in its affairs, so extended in its ramifications, with so many responsibilities resting upon the head of the business, as to make the advertising subservient to the general management of the business, to make the head of the business ignore the advertising. the manager of a department, and the salespeople who are to sell the goods, should be told the policy of the head of the business so far as advertising is concerned, and the way the matter is to be presented to the public, so as to arouse the interest of all. it is important that the man at the head should vitalize the business by making everybody feel and know that the advertising, the address to the public, is made in conformity with his wishes, under his supervision, and is absolutely part of his plans for disposing of his merchandise. this being so, the proposition that the advertising of a well-ordered establishment makes the policy of the business is really correct." many methods are made use of to present and keep the business before the public, but preëminently the best and most satisfactory is the newspaper. its columns are recognized as the very best medium for business notices, going as it does into the homes of the people regularly, filled with the world's news, with information for everybody, about everything from everywhere. the newspaper column is the merchant's platform, his pulpit from which he speaks to the public. it gives his words thousands of tongues. it is in this way he reaches his audience and tells them about his goods and business. he must talk straight, and his address must be interesting and readable, and, above everything else, true. it must always have the true ring of honesty, and advertisements are becoming more truthful every day, as business men realize that it must be true or it will fail. people judge and form their estimate of a business by the honesty with which their advertisements are lived up to, soon find the truth-telling places, and trade gravitates that way with absolute certainty. lying advertisements never built a permanent and successful business. advertising of to-day is honest, or meant to be, and, every day, people are gaining more confidence in it, and are understanding more and more that it is a necessary and legitimate part of this business; in other words, a "store bulletin," to which they can refer as an honest statement of what the store has to offer them. advertising properly means attractive news, news of daily importance, news which is appreciated and taken advantage of by the most wide-awake, economical and thrifty. news that must not get old by repetition. there is nothing more important about the business than advertising. of what use to have tons of merchandise to sell if the people are not told about it, told about it regularly? keeping everlastingly at it. hammering away day after day. continuous effort in the right direction, systematic, persistent. the advertising must be clear, logical and convincing; containing exact and definite information, telling the store news plainly and honestly, telling the people what the store can do for them, telling it often and in the right way. some departments may be systematized so fine that they don't require such undivided attention; but the advertising can't run along like this, but must have constant and careful thought. every advertisement must have careful consideration. carelessness or neglect will lead to serious results. spasmodic advertising won't do. one might as well expect to close the store one day and open it the next. it must be regular, just as regular as the day comes. attractive advertising becomes a department of the paper, and people expect it--look for it with the same interest as other features. it is keeping the business prominently before the people and asking persistently for their trade that brings the business. advertising is the greatest force, the most powerful lever, for facilitating business. there is a generally-accepted theory that advertising pays, but department stores prove by facts that the theory is true. there has been considerable talk about the uncertainty of advertising; but thoroughly understood and skillfully used in the interest of department stores, it has become a most powerful factor in contributing to their general success. back of department store success, are earnestness, persistence, concentration, energy; but between these and achievement stands advertising. "as the business grows and is prosperous, it is due to the controlling factors of system, merchandise and advertising, but advertising is the dynamic force which vitalizes all the rest." with this understanding of the important relation of advertising to business, a decision is arrived at as to the amount of advertising appropriation the business demands, not a fixed amount--no more or no less--but about the amount expected to be spent, which depends upon the amount of business necessary to be done, and is determined by the percentage of profits. a selection is made of the best daily papers, space secured, and "the advertising department" is ready for business. this department is under the direct management of the advertising manager, or "ad. writer." he has a distinct recognition as one having a separate profession, and must, if the best results are obtained, be confidentially taken into the inner workings of the firm. he must be familiar with the history of the business, its progress and development. while he may not require to know the exact amount of money made, yet he must know which departments are weak and which are strong. the strength of the best departments must be maintained and increased, and the weaker ones built up. he should know what the goods cost, where made, how bought, etc., and receive the hearty coöperation of the buyers, to obtain the necessary information to write up his appeal so as to secure a hearty response from the buying public. he must give an individuality to the store advertising, and see that every advertisement is backed up honestly, every promise fulfilled, and that the information he gives the public is absolutely true. he must keep on file a complete record of all advertising, and should keep in constant touch with each department's daily sales, with a view to continual comparison with previous records. he must know what other stores are advertising and see that his prices do not run higher than competing figures. all window dressing, wagon cards, display cards and interior decorations should come under his supervision. he must decide the amount of newspaper space for each department; and though heads of departments may take issue with his decisions, yet, as head of the advertising, he does what he thinks is best, usually giving space according to the money-making abilities of the departments. he must understand the goods he is advertising, know all about their uses and superior qualities, go in amongst the salespeople and customers, and talk with them, in order to write convincing money-bringing, trade-building advertisements. copy should be submitted by departments at least two days before advertisement appears, in order that he may give it proper attention, prepare the cuts used in illustrating, have his copy to the papers early, proof carefully read, and any corrections made. he must study the character of his illustrations, the display part of the advertisement, and having secured a distinctive cut or style of the firm name must stick to it, as it adds an individuality to the advertising. the type used must also be selected, usually good, clear and legible, easily read, but characteristic, so that it distinguishes his ads. from all others, and advertisements should always appear in the same position on the same page, so that the public know just where to find them. he must not only look after all the detail connected with the advertising, but must be able to analyze the conditions which confront him, grasp every possibility of the field, be wide awake to every change, sensitive to every trade throb, and have such a command of the english language as will express his ideas in a captivating and original manner. he is the artist who, having the ability and talent, either inherent or acquired, paints the picture that attracts; and who, when backed up by good merchandise, right prices, perfect system and careful management, becomes a great business force and an indispensable adjunct to present-day business. the buying organization. a large force of experienced buyers are constantly employed, who visit the world's markets at regular intervals in search of new goods. the aim is to save all intermediate profit, by buying direct from the makers, making direct connection between the manufacturer and consumer, and thus getting as near as possible to the actual cost of production. hundreds of thousands of dollars are represented in the several stocks purchased. assortments must be complete at all times, and there must be a constant income of new goods. as fast as one thing sells, another must take its place, and no interest must be overlooked in the buying. buying in great quantities, they are enabled to send buyers regularly to the great manufacturing centers and leading sources of supply. prices are low in proportion as orders are large, and ready cash secures the best trade discounts. to collect such a wealth of goods and have styles and qualities just right, means a good deal. it means that the whole range of merchandise must be known. to get the best in the world for the money, and keep assortments complete the season through, calls for careful calculation. the varied human needs of civilization are to be satisfied, and each buyer in his own particular lines must be a man of large experience, of most excellent judgment, and high mercantile ability. they must know the merchandise they buy, that such a factory has the best reputation for one line, that this mill excels in another class, never buying anything simply because it is cheap, but picking out the best manufactures in each department, always maintaining a strict standard of reliability; and that the goods are well bought is demonstrated by the persistent growth of the business. they buy to unusual advantage by reason of ready money and the great outlet for all classes of merchandise. several of the largest stores render valuable assistance to their buyers by establishing permanent foreign buying offices, thus enabling them to keep in close touch with the newest styles and novelties; and from these offices the shipment of a considerable amount of foreign goods is managed, the service being so facilitated and systematized that a prompt and rapid delivery of goods is effected. but the buyers' duties do not end with the purchase of goods. he is also manager of the department which is made up of the various lines he buys, and is responsible for the proper management of the same. in his absence while buying, he must provide a capable assistant to represent him and the department, one whose services are esteemed as second only to his own, and who, if need be, in many instances is quite capable of acting as buyer and manager in his stead. he is given almost complete control of everything pertaining to his department, must sell the goods he buys, and his permanent position depends entirely upon the success with which his department is handled. as "head of a department," he is expected to comply with the rules of the house and set an example to all those under him. he should be first in the department in the morning and last to leave in the evening. he should be thoroughly acquainted with all rules pertaining to employees, and any new instructions which may be issued from time to time, and see that they are carried out. he is expected to use his best efforts to aid salespeople in making sales, instruct inexperienced help how to handle and display goods, how to wait on customers, make out checks, and, in fact, see that all duties are intelligently understood. it is not sufficient that new, inexperienced help be given a number and salesbook and told to go ahead, but thorough instructions must be given as to the methods of doing business. in order that enquiries of customers may be intelligently answered, he should know the location of all the stocks of the house. if travelers' samples are to be examined, it should be done in the sample room provided for that purpose, and in forenoons only. only in special cases is it permissible to examine samples in the afternoon, as he is expected to be in his department during the busy hours of every day, to watch the trade and see that customers are properly waited upon. certain expenses are almost wholly within the control of heads of departments, and must be watched by them with the greatest care. this is especially true as applied to the amount of help employed. by using care and judgment, it is often possible to do with less help, and thus reduce the cost of selling. this is largely supplemented by watching the sales of each salesperson, and enquiring carefully into any cases where there is a falling below the average percentage of cost. he should see that all advertised goods are properly displayed at the counters, and that all the people in that section are promptly notified of all particulars, such as quantities to be sold, price, etc. he should see that all slow-moving goods are reported promptly, and goods must not be allowed to get old, but be moved out quickly. any goods that do not move readily _must_ be got rid of--cleared out--whatever cash value they have must be secured, and at once, and no matter at what sacrifice; it being considered best to get what you can for them immediately, and replace the stock with something that will sell readily. he should furnish a complete statement of stock to be purchased and hand the same to the office a reasonable time before going on a purchasing trip, and must have the sanction of the office to the same. buyers are expected to respect the limits placed and not to exceed the figures sanctioned; but if the market is showing any special lots of goods which in his judgment should be bought, or he is confident that a saving will be effected on goods which are likely to rise in value by buying heavier, considerable latitude is permitted. all business correspondence for the house should be handled through the regular correspondence office, be submitted for approval, and signed only by those authorized. the buyer's work bears such important relations to the business, both in the selection of goods and in the direct management of his department, that his qualifications must be the best, in order to render such a service as is desired and demanded. receiving goods. a general receiving room for all case goods and packages is provided. space is allotted to each department, and all goods bought must pass through this room before going into stock. porters prepare all goods for examination, by removing lids of cases, opening packages, putting aside all paper, canvas, etc., which is held for reference until goods are checked, and goods are then placed in proper department space ready for the department managers. heads of departments are usually notified each day of all goods to be marked off the following day, and furnished with invoices of the same. the receiving room is usually open for checking purposes from a. m. to a. m. only, and goods must not be checked off nor removed from this room during any other hour of the day, except by special permission. goods are called off by assistants, checker compares with invoice, selling price and stock number are entered on goods, and selling price marked on invoice. until properly marked off, no goods are allowed to be sent out of the receiving room. if goods do not come up to sample, and are to be returned, it must be done at once, and shipper advised. in case of errors or shortages, they must be certified to by two or three competent persons. all invoices should be returned to the office as soon as goods are marked off. receiving room should be closed at o'clock sharp, at which time all department managers and assistants should be back in the selling departments. heavy goods, such as furniture, wall paper, etc., are received in their respective stock rooms and checked off in the same manner. goods should never be received without an invoice. taking care of stock. salespersons must keep in good order all stock under their charge. customers of the house, as well as those in authority, readily recognize who takes an interest in the business, by the display and arrangement of the stock. no excuse can be taken for merchandise that does not present a clean, attractive and presentable appearance. every article should be properly marked or tagged, and each piece of goods ticketed in plain, neat figures, so that a glance will tell price, size, etc. no matter what the stock is, it should be attractively displayed, and the display changed regularly, having a suitable card on all goods so exhibited. when a sale is completed and clerks are through showing goods, they should be replaced as soon as possible, thus avoiding confusion and keeping the selling space clear and in good shape for new business. serving customers. all customers should be waited upon with equal promptness and politeness, no matter whether the purchase is large or small, whether it is simply an enquiry or an exchange of goods. there should be no favorites among customers. first come, first served. a customer who is being served should never be left because a liberal buyer, who is well known, approaches the counter. goods must not be misrepresented. customers buy upon the understanding that they can get their money back without argument, therefore only true representation must be made. exaggerated statements, or trickery in selling goods, is not permitted. in all matters relating to the business of the house the greatest courtesy is required. clerks are expected to accommodate themselves, as far as possible, to the peculiarities of those they are serving, being civil and polite in their attentions. should articles asked for be in another department, customers should be informed where they may be obtained; and if clerks don't know, they should refer to the floor manager. if clerks don't happen to have just the article the customer asks for, they should show the nearest they have in stock, and if that won't answer the purpose, consult the head of the department, and possibly it could be procured. they should try and understand what the customer wishes and get it as near as possible, never showing too many goods at a time, as it is confusing and often results in the loss of a sale. if a second customer is waiting, a disengaged clerk should be called. if all are busy, customer should be asked to be seated until one is disengaged. the undue urging of merchandise upon customers is not countenanced, nor yet is indifference in the slightest degree permitted. while large sales are important factors with all salespeople, and largely form the basis for salary paid, yet genuine interest in their duties, the exercise of patience, showing goods pleasantly and cheerfully, polite attention and care in waiting upon customers, are also very important factors in the recognition of value of services. clerks should always leave a good impression and never let customers go away feeling that they have been treated in an overbearing or uncivil manner, as it hurts the clerks personally and also the house. the interests of employer and employee being identical, better opportunity for advancement and greater compensation is assured the more the store prospers. upon all matters, under all conditions, the greatest courtesy is insisted upon. exchanging goods. the general understanding existing with department stores concerning merchandise sold is, that if for any reason it is not satisfactory it may be returned and exchanged or money refunded, on customer's request. this understanding, however, has some qualifications,--such as articles that have been worn, when such a time has elapsed between the purchase and return as to render articles unsalable, goods made to order according to measurements, toilet goods, etc.; but, with few exceptions, the almost unalterable rule is to exchange cheerfully, to avoid unnecessary questions or remarks, rather preferring to be occasionally the subject of imposition than to leave an unpleasant impression. where an exchange is desired in the same department as purchase was originally made, an exchange bill is issued. should the customer select other goods of less value than the exchange bill, the cash office, when new check and exchange bill are received, will return the difference in change. the exchange bill, when signed by the head of a department, or one authorized, is good for its value in any department; and should the customer not be able to make a suitable selection, this bill, when properly stamped or signed, is good for cash on presentation. these exchanges, as collected and audited, are usually deducted from each department's daily sales. floor managers and ushers. floor managers must be thoroughly familiar with and see to the enforcement of the rules of the house, as applied to their sections. they must see that each department in their division is promptly prepared for business, covers off, and everything in order, and must have a general supervision over their division. aisle space, circles and fixtures must be kept scrupulously clean. all cardboard, paper, twine, boxes, etc., removed from goods sold during the day, must be sent from the departments at regular intervals, and not allowed to accumulate and present an untidy appearance, being first thoroughly examined, to see that no goods are contained. sweeping should be avoided as much as possible during the day, but the departments at all times must be neat and clean in appearance. they should not allow cash boys or parcel boys to loiter in their division, and should see that all customers are properly served, and the greatest courtesy and politeness shown them, whether buying or simply looking at goods. strangers from out of town visiting the store should be made to feel at home, and particular attention paid them. should they desire to be shown through the store, it should be arranged. they should be impressed with the manner of doing business, and this effect is best secured where consideration is shown them. it is better to answer the inquiries of customers by accompanying them to the department asked for and requesting a salesperson to wait on them, rather than pointing to that department, and much better to name the salesperson than to use the word "forward." they should see that goods do not collect at any time at the parcel desks, but that they are removed by carriers promptly. they should attend, in case of sickness or accident, to any customer, see that they are taken at once to the place provided, and report the same. any claims or complaints of customers should be referred to them, and their best efforts used to adjust any errors made, and, where necessary, refer them to the complaint department. they should see that customers returning goods for exchange, or desiring money returned, are promptly and properly served. they should bring to the notice of the house the existence of inefficient or inattentive help, and report anything which in their judgment should have attention. making out checks, etc. this is not as simple as it may appear, and to master it thoroughly requires time, care and attention. whether it is filling out a purchasing ticket, a c. o. d. check, or a regular sales check, special care must be exercised, as one cannot afford to exhaust the patience of customers by exhibiting a lack of knowledge. every check in a check book should be accounted for: a spoiled check should be marked "nil" or "void," be signed by one in authority and sent to the cashier. quantity, goods and prices should always be written plainly, all blanks properly filled out, plain, neat writing, and particularly good figures. salespeople are usually held responsible for all errors made in checks or on purchasing tickets, and should always use their own book. they should always mention to customer the amount of money received, and enter the amount on their check at once. many people strictly honest might forget what money they handed in, and when change is returned might claim that the bill given was of a larger denomination. repeating the amount received will avoid argument afterwards. duplicates should be closely examined, to see that the black-leaf impression is good. change should be counted in giving it to customer, and where goods are to be sent, the name and address given should be repeated. the use of purchasing tickets should be encouraged. customers should be asked if they intend making further purchases, and the use of purchasing ticket suggested. the delay in settling for each purchase is thus avoided and customers' time is saved, as they can pay for all purchases at once. salespersons should see that their department letter is on their check book. check books should commence with no. and run consecutively to the end, and should be examined to see that none are missing, and checks should never be altered. all checks should be sent to the cash office immediately upon being made out. inspecting, checking and parcelling goods. parcel desks are usually conveniently located at all counters, for the purpose of examining and wrapping goods sold. all goods sold, whether taken by customers or sent by the delivery, should first pass through the parcel desk. goods sold should be passed to the parcel desk by the salesperson with the bill, and they should always be examined carefully, to see that they correspond. price, quantity, number of yards, etc., should be checked and goods should be examined, to insure their being in perfect condition, not cracked, soiled, or injured in any way. should goods when compared with bill be found short or over, marked wrong, or not satisfactory in any way, they should be returned to the salesperson at once, with refusal to parcel goods until everything is o. k. parcels should not be given to customers, but handed back to the salesperson direct. every taken parcel should have the sales number marked on the outside. when parcels are to be sent, the address should be on the bill and also on the address slip, and they should always compare. care should be exercised in handling goods likely to be soiled, crushed, broken or damaged. where necessary, they should be put in boxes or sent to be specially packed. every parcel should be securely and properly wrapped, using no more paper or twine than is necessary. goods to be sent should not be held at the desk, and if carriers delay unnecessarily in calling, the matter should be reported to the head of the department or floor manager. attention should be paid to the order in which parcels are handed up, so that customers will receive their purchases in the order in which they have been served. all desk supplies, such as paper, bags, twine, purchasing tickets, etc., should be obtained in the morning, at which time the stock-supply room should be open. collecting goods for delivery. goods to be delivered are usually divided into two classes, individual purchases styled "sent parcels," and collective purchases made on purchasing tickets. checks for sent parcels when made out in salesperson's check book in duplicate, with name and address slip and hour of delivery, should be separated, one half going to the cash office with the cash received, and the other half going with the goods. checks made out for purchases on purchasing tickets are usually different in color from ordinary sales checks, and are attached to purchasing tickets. as made out by salespersons in duplicate, one half is detached with address and sent with the goods, and the other half remains attached to the purchasing ticket until the purchase is completed. goods sold are immediately wrapped, carriers called and goods are delivered through slides, elevators, etc., direct to the shipping-room floors. sent parcels are separated from others and address label attached. goods bought on purchasing ticket are placed in compartments whose number corresponds with the number on checks received with goods. as customers finish buying, they visit the pay office, where cards are handed in, totalled, cash paid, instructions as to delivery entered on the card, which is handed to the sorting section. goods are here checked with card, to see that they correspond by number and amount, the address is carefully examined, when parcels are wrapped and passed to the delivery section, where they are assorted as to routes, entered on drivers' sheets by name, address, number of parcels, and checked off when given to drivers. salespeople are always kept informed as to the regular hours of deliveries, and signal bells are usually rung notifying each department before each delivery closes. no parcels should be promised for that delivery after the bell rings, and all goods to be sent by that delivery should be in the delivery room a few minutes after the bell rings. all arrangements for special deliveries should be made at the pay office, and all parcels should go by the delivery marked, if received on time. delivering goods. drivers should know their routes thoroughly, so as to deliver with as much despatch as possible. when delivering, they should wear uniforms (a portion of the expense of which is usually paid by the house). they should be kept neat and clean, and when repairing is needed it should be done promptly. drivers are usually held responsible for damages or breakages, resulting through carelessness or neglect, either to goods or rig, and must account for horse covers, blankets, rugs, etc., with which they may be supplied. drivers should always weight their horses when leaving the wagon. each driver should be given sufficient money for making change, which he must have with him on each delivery for c. o. d. parcels, and excuses, as a rule, are not accepted for the non-delivery of a parcel on account of inability to make change. drivers should not allow c. o. d. parcels to be opened without an order. customers should be told that this rule cannot be broken; but if they pay for goods that are not satisfactory they can be returned and the money will be refunded. drivers are held responsible for all parcels entered on their sheets, and should check off these parcels at the store, placing them in the wagon in the order of delivery as near as possible, thus saving time in sorting up their loads while on the route. amounts due on c. o. d. parcels should be compared with entry on c. o. d. sheets, to avoid mistakes. when the delivery is completed, sheets should be signed and returned, and if, for any reason, any parcels have not been delivered, satisfactory explanations should be given. any repairs needed should be reported upon arrival at the stables. notes should be made of any complaints from customers and the same reported. when instructions are given to call for customer's goods, they should be got at the first opportunity and handed over to the proper person. if not able to obtain them, the reason should be given. under no circumstances should passengers be carried while delivering goods. special instructions are usually issued for extra deliveries before holidays, or on extra busy days. stables. the stables are usually models of neatness and perfect in arrangements, every modern convenience being brought into use, providing accommodation for a delivery system of hundreds of horses and wagons used daily in delivering goods in the city and suburbs. heated throughout with steam, lighted by electricity, and electric power applied to rotary brushes for grooming, hydraulic elevator service capable of lifting tons of feed and grain to upper floors, basement fitted up with complete blacksmith shop for horse shoeing, wagon and sleigh repairing. ground floor space is usually devoted to wagons, each having its respective station. easy stairways provided for horses to reach the upper floors, which are constructed to bear almost unlimited weight, divided into rows of stalls with aisle space between. harness rooms, cleaning rooms, harness repair shop, hospital for sick horses, paint room, etc., together with the most modern machinery for grinding and chopping feed. the stables must always be kept clean and well ventilated. horses must never be taken out without being fed, watered, cleaned and properly shod: a lame or sick horse should never be used. harness should be washed and cleaned regularly, wagons oiled, tightened up and kept clean. nothing should be allowed to leave the stables except in first-class condition. all repairs should be attended to at once. wagons should be at the store in time for all deliveries. a record should be kept of the men's time and sent to the office regularly. drivers' and stablemen's wages should be obtained on pay day; the pay roll should be signed by each one, and returned to the office. all c. o. d. money received from drivers at night should be put in sealed envelopes and placed in safe keeping. a watch should be kept in the stables at night, and a regular patrol made to see that all horses are properly fastened, blankets on and everything in good shape. wagons should be washed at night and wagon signs thoroughly cleaned. all wagons should be examined carefully, and a written report handed in of all repairs needed, together with wagon number. all fire pails, hose and appliances to be used in the event of fire should be examined regularly, to see that they are all in good working order. general cash office. a central cash office is established for receiving all receipts from sales made, and arranged for quick and easy change-making. as a customer makes a purchase, a duplicate of the check or bill made out for the same, together with money received from customer, are sent direct to the cash office, the most improved method being by pneumatic cash carriers. as received, checks are placed on file and any change returned to clerk. thus the totals of checks and receipts of each cashier's desk must agree. each cashier makes up a report of the amount of cash received, and cash is given head cashier, who recounts it. the checks of each cashier are kept separate and sent to the auditing office, where they are totalled, and this total must agree with the amount of cash in the head cashier's hands, and correspond with the amount on cashier's report. check office, or auditing department. this department should make up the total receipts of each cashier by the sales checks received, compare them with cashier's report, and recheck until they are found correct. it should also make up each department's sales, arrange each salesperson's checks into original book form by number, and report any missing checks, auditing all checks and reporting any errors. the work of obtaining the different totals required is greatly facilitated by the use of adding machines, which insure both accuracy and despatch. this auditing of checks thus provides a positive check upon the amount of cash received by each individual cashier, furnishes an accurate account of the exact amount of business done by each department, and the total daily business done by the house, besides showing the exact amount of goods sold by each individual salesperson, which may be made use of to estimate their value as compared with each other, and largely governs the individual wages paid. c. o. d. business. large amounts are represented in the business as sold and paid for, cash on delivery, and, therefore, this branch is given special attention. special c. o. d. books are furnished every department, and such special care exercised in recording the amount to be paid, address, etc., as will prevent any errors or misunderstandings. all c. o. d. parcels are entered upon special sheets or books provided drivers, and are checked off as paid in by drivers at the c. o. d. office with the record kept there, which should show the customer's name and address, department that goods were bought in, who sold them, the amount of the c. o. d., the date and amount paid. where goods are sent to distant towns, and considerable time must elapse before returns can be made, these outstanding c. o. d.'s must be watched closely, checked up regularly; and in the event of any unnecessary delay corresponded about, and such knowledge obtained as will furnish accurate information about each individual account. the mail-order business. the mail-order trade as associated with department stores began in a very small way: it began with a few requests from customers out of town asking for samples and prices of certain goods, a few letters of enquiry regarding one thing and another. these requests and enquiries, properly answered, brought in the first orders, which were carefully filled to the satisfaction of the customers. they told their friends about it, and more enquiries were answered, more orders received. this encouraged some effort, and special circulars or booklets were issued telling about the store and goods. these were mailed to regular customers, and a few thousand extra sent to carefully-selected names of possible customers, until gradually extra help was required to attend to these orders, to answer the correspondence, etc.; and it was found necessary to systematize this branch of the work, to organize and establish a "mail-order department." the mail-order trade grew up side by side with the store trade. when the store was young and variety of goods small, the mail-order trade was limited; but as the store grew, as extra space was needed for increased service, and new goods and new departments were rapidly added, the mail-order trade increased in proportion, keeping abreast of it all the time. mail-order customers could not know but very little about the house they dealt with except through advertisements, or from hearsay, and, therefore, the reputation of the business depended upon the goods sent and the treatment they received. the foundation of this business was well laid from the beginning. the principles inculcated were that a clear understanding must exist between the house and the customers--that goods would not be misrepresented, that customers would be told in plain words what they were, and that they would be found to be exactly as represented, or that their money would be refunded; and that's what they wanted. the management and method were perfected, and the responsibility of handling the business fully recognized, and an honest endeavor made to satisfy every reasonable demand. they realized that it is one thing to create a business of this kind, and another thing to retain it; that it costs more to get a new customer than to retain one already secured. anything, therefore, that would destroy the confidence of a customer in the house or leave an impression that would tend to injure trade must be strongly condemned, and to strengthen this position a personal interest in every order was encouraged and insisted upon. mail-order buyers must learn to interpret the customers' wants, and see that the detail of every order is carefully attended to. the correspondence must contain the fullest explanations; the goods must always be properly checked, packed and shipped; and every head of every department must take a lively interest in this work, and impart that interest to the salespeople; and only so far as this personal interest extends, from cash boy to president, does the business prosper. upon this foundation has been raised a business of such proportions that it scarcely knows any limits, and wherever telephone or telegraph, mail or express, reaches, there you will find this business represented. distance makes no difference. customers served at any time and in any place. catalogues, representative of the entire stocks of these large houses, are issued from time to time, and regularly find their way into the people's homes, no expense being spared to keep customers informed regarding goods and prices. the methods employed have won their trade, and fair treatment retains it. the tremendous growth of this business is the most satisfactory proof that it has succeeded. it clearly demonstrates that they have the confidence of their customers everywhere, that buying in this way is becoming better understood and appreciated; and that the method of shopping by mail is no longer an experiment, but, beyond argument, is an acknowledged success. a perfectly organized mail-order department is a distributing agency for the whole country, requiring a perfect system, demanding intelligence, exactitude, and promptness, carefulness in filling, and despatch in sending orders. it reaches out for the trade of people in distant towns and villages. these places are full of bright, intelligent people, whose ability to buy is unquestioned. they are reached only by intelligent and truthful advertising. the mails take the counters of the big stores to the doors of these people. they like to shop by mail. they like to get samples and catalogues, and to make a selection of city goods, being strongly impressed that they get something different from what the local dealer supplies; something their neighbors haven't got, something stylish, exclusive. the means of communication are better and quicker than ever before. whoever can write a letter can send for nearly everything they want. wherever the catalogue goes the store goes. some of the appeals made, statements advanced, and arguments used to influence and encourage trade among out-of-town customers might be classified as follows: whenever you order, always bear this in mind, that if you don't get goods as represented, back goes your money to you as soon as you want it. the smallest order you send will receive the same prompt and careful attention as if it were ever so large. where you and your neighbors order together, goods can be packed separately and forwarded in one shipment, thus making the charges low. selling goods at fair prices every day should interest you. it may be a satisfaction to select goods yourself, but your orders by mail will be promptly and faithfully executed. out-of-town customers always get the benefit of any reduction in the price of goods. freight is a small item where customers are saved many times the cost of transportation. you are at absolutely no risk whatever in ordering by mail, as you always get the best and pay the least. samples and prices are sent free of charge, therefore there need be no hesitation in asking for them. a trial order will convince you that it will be filled carefully and promptly. if goods are not all right, you don't have to keep them. the goods offered are bought for cash in large quantities, sold direct to customers for cash and not through agents, therefore the traveling man's salary and expenses, the middleman's profits, his losses and poor accounts, are not paid by you. mistakes are rarely made; but always rectified. where there is the slightest cause for complaint, if you write fully, everything will always promptly be made right. the bigger saving is made on the bigger order you send. no charge is made for packing goods, and they always open up in first-class condition. your money is refunded every time if you are not satisfied. goods are bought direct from the manufacturer, and then go direct to you. your smallest order will be filled at the same price as the customer who buys a thousand dollars worth. goods marked at one price only. isn't it much more satisfactory and much easier to sit down at home, look over the catalogue, select the goods required and mail your order, than to depend upon stores where the stock is small as well as assortments incomplete, and get something that does not give you half satisfaction, notwithstanding that you do pay an extravagant price? if an error is made, and it's not your fault, you are not asked to pay any expense incurred. some of the most successful men of the day give you in the catalogue sent the benefit of their thought, experience and hard work. it may be a surprise to compare catalogue prices with others, but always a favorable one for the catalogue. confidence in the goods offered at the prices asked was established long ago. the man is prosperous who saves a dollar on this and a half dollar on that: the prices quoted help you in this direction. the goods offered are _exceptional_, on account of the price; and _rare_, because of their exclusive style. honest value is guaranteed for every cent you send, or it is sent back again. it pays you to deal where no false representations are made, but where goods are sold exactly as advertised. the goods offered are honest, the prices are right, customers are every-day honest people; and that's why it's easy to do business together. you don't save the freight when you buy at home; the freight and a big profit as well are added in the price. the whole truth of the matter is--_what promises are made, are kept_. it is the belief engendered in the truth of these and other statements, the influence they exert in convincing, and the persistent method of keeping it up, that attracts this particular trade; and the faithfulness with which all promises are kept, all obligations fulfilled, that builds the business up on the lines of perfect confidence and retains it. all may not be agreed upon the effect the response to this method of doing business has upon the country at large; but it is, nevertheless, a fact that the people everywhere are giving their material support to houses whose advocated policy is to supply them everything on which they can save them money, and it has proved to be a pronounced success to the promoters. the possibilities of increased trade through the medium of the mail-order department appear almost unlimited. the amount of business that may be done has evidently never yet been measured, and no other branch of the business is apparently as capable of as large development as the mail-order trade. catalogues. the general catalogue of department stores stands in the same relation to the mail-order trade as the newspaper does to the store trade. it is the chief medium for mail-order advertising. though supplemented in various ways by special advertising, yet the catalogue stands distinctly alone as the indispensable means for securing and retaining the trade of out-of-town customers; and bearing this important relation to the business, extraordinary care is exercised in its preparation from start to finish. it is the silent traveler, the individual salesman; and as the highly successful representative salesman must have qualifications that bring business, so the catalogue must have the essentials which will insure successful results. these consist of appearance, paper, printing, illustration, arrangement, description, goods, prices, etc.; all of which must be thoroughly understood and intelligently carried out, not only in the relations they bear to each other, but also in the relations they all bear to the general effect and result. the quantity to be issued is first decided, depending upon the number of present customers to be provided for, and the additional quantity required for extra circulation to influence new trade, which increase depends upon the amount of new business likely to be done, and the appropriation for which is usually determined upon a percentage of the profits. next in order for consideration, is the size of the catalogue. the number of pages varies slightly, according as it is a spring or fall issue, and any increase from previous issues is governed by the addition of new stocks into the business. if new departments have been added, additional space must be made in the catalogue to provide for them. the paper is next selected. the size of the sheet must be accurately determined and the weight fixed, having due reference to the weight of the book when completed, as the postage for mailing is an important factor in the cost, and an extra ounce over weight might mean a great additional expense. the inside paper should be light but strong, and of such a color and finish as to produce the best effect with whatever character of cuts are used in illustrating. particular attention must be paid to the cover paper, it must be of suitable weight and color and of a high finish, capable of producing a superior cut in colors, and extra strong, in order to stand handling. tons of paper are required for the issue of a catalogue, which is usually bought direct from the mills, being manufactured expressly to order as to size, quality and finish specified, and delivered as required. the cover design must be decided upon early, giving the artist time to fully complete his drawing, and the engraver time to execute his best work. it must also pass through experimental stages with the printer, possibly proving in a variety of colors, criticising and comparing, until the best effect is secured and selection is made; and to do this and work off thousands of covers, and have each one perfect, the work must not be hurried. the cover design must be good, both front and back. it should interest and attract, and at first glance create a favorable impression. it should be a quick-acting advertisement, characteristic of the business, telling the reader instantly what it is about, so distinctly individual and striking that it insures attention like a flash. a good cover design is a most important feature of any catalogue, requiring originality of conception and the best artistic engraving and printing skill in its execution. such a cover is always worth infinitely more than it costs. arrangements are next made with engraving companies whose artists and engravers are to prepare the drawings and provide the cuts used in illustrating the catalogue, and whose abilities and resources are sometimes taxed severely to get the work out as required. the quantity to be issued and the size of the book being determined, paper selected, and artists and engravers secured, the work of compiling the catalogue begins. general catalogues are issued semi-annually, usually in march and september. a definite date is fixed when the catalogue is to be completed, and everyone associated with it in any way must work to that end; not always easily accomplished, but possible, and therefore insisted upon. blank books are usually provided heads of departments, who are expected to use them, thus preserving a uniformity in the preparation of copy, and facilitating the work of the catalogue manager and printer. for months previous to the issue of the catalogue the buyers have been securing goods from everywhere, planning ahead, anticipating the wants of customers by making extensive preparations for the future. the world's markets must be visited and examined into, finding out what is new in this line, what change in that, whether this new idea in lamp goods is what the people will want, what designs in baby carriages are new and attractive, whether this style of boys' clothing is correct or not, knowing the latest ideas in gloves, laces, ribbons, handkerchiefs, fancy goods, etc.; securing the newest and most fashionable dress fabrics, knowing what styles in millinery, jackets, mantles, blouses, wrappers, etc., will prevail; seeking out, buying and arranging for quantities and deliveries to meet the demands of the trade--in fact, going over the whole range of merchandise. the department manager's selections from these goods, as to quality, variety and price, must be carefully made, keeping in view the character of the trade appealed to and being governed in this by his experience and knowledge of its requirements. his descriptions must be accurate and short, but comprehensive, telling exactly what the goods are, giving the facts in a clear, truthful and intelligent manner. he must illustrate his goods where possible, the better to enable the customer to form an opinion as to the shape, style, appearance, etc. valuable assistance is rendered heads of departments in this particular by the catalogue manager, who, by reason of his work, has made careful comparison of other catalogues, and has kept in constant touch with everything new in the way of illustrating, and is, therefore, ready with ideas and suggestions, which are utilized to the best advantage. goods to be illustrated are set aside, the artist is given full instructions as to what is desired, style and size of cut required, grouping of articles or figures, etc., and the work is put in hand. drawings are submitted to catalogue manager, who with head of department examines the work, suggests the necessary changes, criticises carefully, points out any defects, and, when satisfactory, passes them. each drawing must be examined minutely. the pose of this figure, the artistic arrangement of this group of figures, whether the arm is too short or too long, or any part out of proper proportion; the way this skirt hangs, and the effect that fold produces, the completeness and accuracy with which the detail of trimming is shown; whether this hat or bonnet should be shown with front, side, or back view, the faces to be baby-like, youthful, or otherwise, thus indicating who suitable and intended for; in fact, all the detail of all drawings should be examined most carefully, to know that they are exact representations of the goods, with a suggestion as to their uses, and that the effect is pleasing and attractive. the finished cuts soon follow, with proofs of the same. these proofs should be clear and distinct. the illustrations assist in selling the goods, are a necessary expense, and must do justice to the goods. copy, when handed in from department managers to catalogue department, should be accompanied with all the cuts to be used. each cut should be numbered and its corresponding number should appear in the copy where the cut is intended to go, and, where possible, all goods should be numbered, to facilitate ordering, care being exercised that no numbers are duplicated. the copy, as submitted, must all be carefully read by the catalogue manager, all cuts examined and compared as to numbers, etc., to see that none are missing and that all appear in their proper places; anything not satisfactory must be explained, the grammatical construction should be carefully watched, and he is expected to satisfy himself fully that everything about the copy is positively o. k. before passing it. a complete record should be kept of the number of pages of copy handed in from each department, and the number of cuts received, together with date. also when copy and cuts are given to printer, and when and what proofs are returned from printer and given back to the several departments, as, where copy and proofs are passing through so many different hands at different times, a constant check should be kept on it. the copy and cuts, when submitted and passed, are handed over to the printer, an effort being made to get them in his hands in the order they should appear in the catalogue, which greatly facilitates his work in many ways, and materially assists in getting the whole catalogue completed much more quickly. proofs of the catalogue, as set up, are very carefully examined, the arrangement of matter and cuts given special attention, and when every page is entirely satisfactory it is finally o. k.'d. electrotype or stereotype plates are then made from the type, and these plates handed over to the pressroom, when the work of printing begins. as fast as possible, the forms are printed, folded, gathered and stitched, covers put on, books trimmed and completed. special attention is given to preparation of index; every page is gone over carefully, and, as far as possible, every line of goods appearing in the catalogue is alphabetically arranged in the index, thus providing an easy reference to whatever goods customers may wish to select. certain space in catalogue is devoted to giving instructions to shoppers by mail, and too much care cannot be exercised in their preparation. they should be short, but cover the ground completely, giving customers whatever information they need to order intelligently, anticipating all contingencies, thus preventing delay, misunderstanding and inconvenience. people are forgetful, and this information, if referred to, acts as a constant reminder. the special points emphasized to customers are--to always write their name, post office, and state or province, state how much money is enclosed, how and where they want goods shipped, and, if goods are ordered by mail, to enclose sufficient extra for postage and, where necessary, for insurance or registration. they are requested to send remittances by express order, post office order, or other safe means, and cautioned against sending by unregistered mail; to order by number and page in catalogue, and, when requesting samples sent, to state definitely what is required, color, quality, price, etc., so that a suitable selection may be forwarded. where goods for any reason are returned, they are specially reminded to put their name on the parcel, so that it may be identified at once. they are encouraged to order by freight where possible, to economize on the charges, and to club together with other customers in ordering, for the same reason. they are told definitely what to do in case of delays, complaints or exchanges, and sufficient information is given and classified in such a manner that, if referred to and made use of as intended, there is very little liability of any serious difficulty arising. it won't do to take it for granted that customers always understand what to do. they must be reminded of certain requirements under certain conditions, and largely educated in this direction, and, therefore, instructions to shoppers by mail bear no unimportant relation to the business, and must always be clear, intelligent and complete. the general arrangement of the catalogue should be studied, with a view to having departments of a similar character grouped together, thus assisting in the general effect. economy of space should be studied on every page. while cuts should, as far as possible, be of uniform size, yet they must be no larger than actually necessary to show goods properly, as space occupied by cuts larger than are needed is money wasted. position and arrangement of cuts can be so studied as to greatly reduce the cost of space. printed matter must be set close to cuts, and while type selected must be clear and easy to read, yet it must not be large. an understanding should exist with the printer that the matter must be set to save space wherever consistent, and any carelessness or neglect in this respect should be observed and effectually stopped at once. a saving of five pages in a catalogue by watching the size of cuts, their arrangement, the setting of the type, etc., if the issue should be say two hundred thousand, means a million pages of paper saved, outside of any saving in composition, presswork, etc. such arrangements should be made with the printers as will insure good work throughout. the good effect desired in the special care exercised in preparation of copy, getting drawings and cuts made, etc., can be largely reduced by hasty and careless composition, poor ink, and lack of proper attention to presswork and binding. the printer, therefore, should be wisely selected, one in whom confidence can be placed, who knows how to set it up in the way it will look well, and will use his knowledge so that the catalogue, as representative of the business, will be satisfactory in this particular. while the catalogue is being compiled and printed, catalogue wrappers are being addressed to customers, and everything prepared for mailing. the method of recording and permanently preserving customers' names and addresses is deserving of attention here. that most in vogue is a system of card indexing. the different towns in each state or province are written or printed on cards, and these are arranged alphabetically in suitable cases, and ruled so as to show by months and years the amount of business done in each town, and any other particulars required. the name of each customer in the various towns is entered on a separate record card, which is ruled, allowing space for the name and address, and so the date and amount of each purchase is shown as it occurs, space being left at the bottom of each column for total footings, and these individual cards are filed under the town they belong to. where the towns have a large population and the number of customers is correspondingly large, an auxiliary alphabetical index is used for easy reference. the information recorded on these cards may be entered direct from the orders themselves, or where the loose-leaf book system is used, the sheets may be detached as required, and the information registered direct from these sheets. each drawer or compartment in which cards are filed is labelled on the outside, to indicate its contents. thus, when recording an order, the first reference is to the town the order is from, and then under this town is found the card with customer's name, upon which entry is made, and the card put back in its proper place. these cards, therefore, show at all times the name and address of each customer, how much business each has done, and the total amount of business done in each town. previous to sending out catalogues, these cards are all gone over carefully, and where customers have not ordered within a certain time their cards are taken out. where two or more names in the same town, and evidently of the same family, appear, positive information is obtained and acted upon, with a view to preventing a waste of catalogues by sending more than one to the same family. the list is thoroughly examined, checked, revised, and all old, dead matter excluded before addressing catalogue wrappers, as sending out catalogues to names that do not respond is a dead loss of postage, printed matter and effort. a big advantage in keeping a mailing list on index cards is, that they can be distributed among a large number of writers, and thousands of wrappers written in a short time, which cannot be conveniently done where kept in books; and the card system also keeps the list neat and clean, while books, by reason of names being crossed out, etc., always present anything but a good appearance. when wrappers are addressed, they are all checked back and compared with cards, to insure absolute correctness. all the wrappers for one town are usually attached together and kept separate from other towns, and thus, when mailing, all the catalogues going to any one town are put in a bag or bags by themselves, which, while causing extra labor on the part of the sender, insures correctness, and enables post office employees to handle large quantities with great despatch. printed envelopes bearing the firm's name and address, and blank order forms, are usually enclosed for the benefit of the customers. the art of catalogue compiling and looking after its proper distribution entails hard and extremely careful work. when finished and sent out, it has to compete with other catalogues wherever it goes, and, as it is the representative of the business, it must be complete in every detail, in order to do its work well. while the catalogue has its distinctive place as "the steady trade bringer" from out-of-town customers, yet much is accomplished by special mail-order advertising. this embraces booklets, circulars, leaflets, etc.; little pamphlets properly illustrated and well written dropped into the people's homes through the medium of the letter, the parcel, or both. suggestions of seasonable goods, a special about furs when the weather is cold, rubbers and waterproofs during the rainy season, hints for weddings in june, light clothing for warm-weather wear, and so on through the whole range of merchandise, keeping the business before the public all the time with something new, attractive, seasonable. where "special sales" are inaugurated, such as "white goods sale," "special furniture sale," etc., shoppers from out of town are given an opportunity to participate in any advantages they may bring through the medium of the newspaper advertisement as far as it reaches, and through such special distribution of advertising matter relative to these sales as is consistent with anticipated profits. the christmas season is specially considered, the gift question in all its bearings duly studied, planned and provided for in advance. tuning the business up all the time, keeping at a safe distance any danger of a relapse or "that tired feeling," which may almost unsuspectingly creep into a business, by administering these special advertising tonics, new, interesting and helpful, the result of well-studied plans. this process of continual construction is not built up alone by keeping in constant touch with customers already secured, but by reaching out for new trade among new people. getting new names. regular customers, on request, readily contribute the names and addresses of possible customers in their immediate vicinity. special appeals made to special classes, for a consideration, usually result in securing satisfactory lists. these lists as received are compared with names already in use, and all duplicates struck out, thus providing against the possibility of sending the same matter to the same name twice. securing these new names is simply a part of the natural development of the catalogue trade. wisely considered, the development is both from within and from without. from within, by adding new stocks to the business from time to time, as space, resources and abilities permit; and from without, by adding new and increased numbers to the purchasing list. from within, by getting more goods to sell; and from without, by getting more people to buy. not only continuing to sell the same goods to the same people, but getting more goods for these same people, and more people to buy these goods. instead of having the _dollar_ sent to some other business for lack of goods, get that _dollar_ by having the goods, the effort being made to build up the business and develop it on the lines of selling all the people all their goods all the time. it is the understanding of this principle and its working out through the catalogue and all other auxiliary advertising, backed up by the goods required, that makes the possibilities of this trade. receiving and opening mail. while the catalogue is under course of construction, the whole mail-order system should be thoroughly gone over, tightened up, well oiled, improved where possible, and put in proper shape to handle the large volume of business which is bound to come immediately after the distribution of catalogues. where the mail is large, it is usually brought from the post office by wagon, the smaller deliveries being brought by regular post office carriers. all registered letters and parcels are carefully checked as to number, by actual count, and compared with number entered on post office registration sheets, before signing for them. envelopes are first cut open by one or more persons. registered letters are kept separate from all others, are distributed separately and accounted for before any ordinary mail is handled. each opener is held responsible for the number of letters received, which are checked back, totalled, and the totals must agree with the total number given out by the one in charge. in the event of any error, it must be examined into at once and everything made o. k. a positive check is kept upon all letters and every precaution exercised to prevent the possibility of mistakes or loss of any kind. ordinary unregistered letters are treated in the same careful manner. special tables are provided for mail openers, and each one occupies a separate space or division. when a letter is opened, the amount enclosed (whether in bills, express orders, drafts, checks, post office orders, stamps or silver) is carefully counted, checked and entered on the order, totalled and compared with the amount customer claims to have enclosed. if these agree, the amount is signed for by the opener or stamped with an initial stamp, and the envelope is also initialed. the money is usually placed directly on the order it belongs to, both are put in a box or basket specially provided for the purpose, and each succeeding letter, with the remittance it contains, follows in its regular order as opened, until the mail is all completed. in some cases the money and orders are separated at once. each letter or order is examined carefully, to see that the name and address are given, and if not, the envelope should be attached for reference. if any samples referring to orders are enclosed, they must be attached to the order, and care exercised in attaching measurement forms, plans, or any separate sheets bearing any relation to the order. should there be any difference in the amount received and the amount customer claims to have enclosed, the attention of the one in charge must be called to it at once, and, after thorough examination, be certified to by one or more. any omission of samples or enclosures of any kind, or any irregularities of any character, must be reported immediately, examined into, and certified to by those of recognized authority. ordinary mail, such as enquiries, requests for samples, etc., and all letters not containing money, are kept separate from letters with money enclosed. orders and money are collected, and the cashier checks and counts all money over again, comparing it with the amount entered on each order by the opener, and, where o. k., stamps each order and envelope with a duplicate consecutive numbering and date stamp. thus, at almost the first stage of handling an order, it receives its individual number, which is different from the number appearing on any other order, and is used to identify it through the different stages it may have to pass while being completed. envelopes are separated from orders, and each checker's envelopes put in a package by themselves for reference. should one be needed, the order is first examined, and, as it bears the checker's signature, reference is then made to that checker's package of envelopes, and the one bearing the same number as the order is easily and quickly found. book-keeping, buying, checking, etc. where the business is large, the country is usually divided up into districts or sections, each division being designated by a letter; thus one state or province would be known as "a," and another as "b," and these sections each usually have a head under the supervision of the manager. a simple form of cash book is largely made use of, by which the number and amount of each order only is entered under its proper division column. the totals of these columns must agree with the total amount of cash received. orders follow in their natural course to the book-keepers, who, under the date received, enter the orders in regular order by number, name and address, and credit the customer with the amount received. cashier and book-keepers are able to compare entries by number and amount, and should always agree. all orders, after being entered in the books, are generally examined by one or more appointed for this work, who note anything of importance on the order, marking it in such a manner as to attract special attention. bargains on sale that day, which are usually marked "rush," requests to have goods delivered by a certain time, enclosed with a shipment made by another house, or with goods already bought and holding; in fact, anything and everything requiring any particular or extra care, so that no omission of instructions will occur, and that the detail of each order shall be distinctly carried out. all requests for samples, catalogues, etc., are put in hand at once, so that this work is being done promptly, and while the other work in connection with the order is being carried on. all orders, after being examined, everything noted and all specials sorted out, are classified into large, small or medium. all orders for only one article, such as gloves, drugs, jewelry, books, etc., are separated from orders for miscellaneous merchandise, all credits referred to looked up, and everything put into complete shape for buyers to handle. as orders are distributed among the buyers, they are charged with the number received, and are individually held responsible for all orders while in their possession. in some cases buyers are not used, but orders are copied on requisition sheets, and sent to the different departments to be filled; but where a large retail business is done, the method of using buyers is largely adopted. the buyers' duties are many, and a great deal depends upon their ability and skill. they are expected to keep a record of all orders received and how disposed of. their orders must be read carefully and thoroughly understood; if they lack any information, such as color, size, samples, or any errors in extensions or additions, they must be observed, and, where necessary, consulted about. all requests for estimates or prices asked for on orders must be got from the proper department, written up clearly, and have the signature of one whose authority is recognized. where goods are going by express or freight, the buyers usually make use of a purchasing card. they are provided with check books, and, as they visit the different departments and make their selections, they make out a check in duplicate for each purchase, leaving both with the salesperson. the top check is sent with the goods to the mail-order sorting section, and the duplicate is sent to the cash office, just the same as though it were actual money. this duplicate check represents so much money and is taken in payment for goods. great care is exercised in making out these checks. not only is one half treated as cash, but the other half goes with the goods direct to the customers, showing them exactly how their money has been spent. these checks must be written plainly with good figures, and give a full description of goods, prices, etc. the date, exact time purchase is made, the department bought from, sales number and order number, must all appear on each check, and all have such important relations to the work that any omission or carelessness cannot be allowed. on their purchasing card they enter the number of the order they are buying, and enter this same number on every check belonging to that order, also entering each purchase as bought on the purchasing card by department, sales number, and amount. when the purchase is completed, the order and purchasing card are handed to a shipping clerk, who examines the order as to shipping instructions, enters the name and address and how goods are to be shipped on this card, when they are passed to a clerk who examines the order carefully, to see that everything has been bought correctly, no omissions made, all additions correct, and who, when satisfied that the order is executed properly in every particular, sends the order with proper charge slip attached back to the book-keeper, and the purchasing card is sent to the sorting or inspecting room, where goods in the meantime have been sent. assembling and packing mail-order goods. this assembling section is arranged to provide space for goods until each order is completed. under a system largely made use of by several houses, the original number stamped on the order and entered by the buyer on every check belonging to that order is here made use of as the sorting number. sorting tables are arranged for receiving goods, and are numbered from one to ten. checks accompany all goods, and if the number of the check is say , , the goods are placed on no. table; if check is number , , goods would be placed on no. table, and so on. the last figure on every check denotes the table it is to be placed on, and, as orders are numbered consecutively as they are received, the goods are very evenly distributed over the ten tables; and, as all numbers must end in some figure between one and ten, the ten tables thus provide for all numbers. shelving is partitioned off back of these tables with a space of about eighteen inches square in each compartment. these compartments are four or more high and as many in number as the business demands. while the last figure in any check number denotes the table it is to be placed on, so the last two figures are made use of to indicate what particular compartment the goods are to be placed in. thus, check no. , and goods go to no. table, and when placed go to no. compartment; no. , with goods go to no. table and no. compartment, and so on, sufficient space being provided for the repetition of these endings as required. no. , being entered on checks belonging to mr. blank's order, and this number appearing on his checks only, all his goods find their way to no. table, and are placed in no. compartment, and checks are filed in this compartment as goods are placed. the purchasing card used by the buyer, and on which the order number and all the items bought appear, is carefully compared with checks, and when checks representing all goods on this card are received the order is complete and ready for packing. all goods as received on sorting tables are opened up, looked over carefully, checked, weighed, measured, colors, sizes, qualities and quantities critically examined, compared with description, and particulars given on checks; and if not satisfactory must be set aside and refused until made o. k. when an order is complete, the goods and card are taken from this inspecting section and sent to the express or freight-packing section of the shipping room, each lot of goods being kept in a separate compartment until packed. experienced packers are employed, who again, and finally, compare goods with bills, and check everything carefully while packing. according to the nature of the goods, they are wrapped in paper, boxed, baled or crated, entered up in shipping books according to shipping instructions on card, and handed over to the different transportation companies as called for, and cards are filed for reference. goods sent by mail, correspondence, paying for goods, etc. where goods are ordered to go by mail, checks are made out as before, but with this usual difference, that buyers retain the top check and bring the goods with them. each item as bought is entered by department, sales number and amount on a shipping and charge sheet. when an order going by mail is all bought, it is carefully checked by the buyer, weighed, and the amount of postage determined as near as possible, when goods and order are handed to shipping clerk, who enters the name and address on the shipping slip, when all are passed to the mailing section, where goods are carefully checked, wrapped, weighed, amount of postage determined, parcels addressed, stamps put on, entered by name, address and amount of postage in a parcel-mailing book, and placed on sorting table, after which they are sorted and placed into different bags by state, province, or whatever division of parcels the post office authorities may name, that will facilitate rapid handling and quick despatch. should a parcel, when wrapped, require more postage than customer has allowed money for, it should be laid aside, and the head of division should determine whether to hold parcel and write for the additional amount required, omit something from the parcel, or allow the customer to remit the balance due. where small amounts are to be returned to customers, in some cases their particular parcels, as wrapped, may be left open at one end and placed on a separate table, where, after checking, a small envelope containing the amount to be returned may be enclosed in the parcel. these little envelopes may be prepared in advance and placed in separate divisions, all one-cent envelopes being in one space, all two-cent envelopes in another, and so on, so that the work can be done rapidly, and a great saving effected in postage on letters which otherwise would require to be written in order to return the balance due. all registered parcels are kept separate and signed for by the post office authorities. it is easy at any time, by reference, to find out exactly how a package was addressed, how much postage was put on the parcel, how much money was enclosed, whether registered or not, and just what mail it was sent out on. all orders, when properly checked, should be passed back to the book-keepers, who, having made the original entry and credited the cash when the order was first received and before goods were bought, may now refer to that order number, name and address again, and charge the customer with amount of goods sent, amount of postage paid, and cash returned, or remaining to be returned, thus balancing the account. a simple index system may be made use of for any debit or credit balances that may require to be kept. orders pass on to heads of divisions, who examine all carefully, sorting out any that may be replied to by form cards or letters, seeing that all necessary explanations and enquiries have been submitted, made and signed by those authorized, and that they are satisfactory, and who dictates all necessary replies. all replies, when dictated and type-written, are handed back for examination, and, when correct, are signed and given to cashier, who encloses any balance to be returned, keeping a record of the same by number and amount, when the letters are sent to the mailing section, stamped and mailed, and orders sent to be filed with copy of reply attached. the graphophone system of dictating and reproducing is largely made use of in place of shorthand where the business is large, and is found to greatly facilitate the handling of correspondence. personal representation of the customers by everyone associated with the different departments is especially encouraged. the buyer who visits the departments cannot be compelled to accept anything except what in her judgment is o. k. she represents the customers absolutely, stands in their place, and studies their interests at every turn, and this same personal interest is specially observed by every individual clerk in whatever relation they may bear to orders or goods passing through their hands. the payment for goods purchased by the mail-order department is extremely simple. the duplicate checks made out by buyers and given to salespeople when selecting goods represent so much money, and are sent to the cash office immediately. they are collected here and sent to the check office or auditing department daily, where they are all audited. the total amount of these checks represents the total amount of goods bought that day, and the mail-order cashier thus hands over the exact amount required to pay for goods received. as these checks also show the different departments goods have been purchased from, they are all sorted out by departments, and each department, therefore, receives credit for its share of the money. likewise is it easy to know at all times just what percentage of cost the total mail-order expense is upon the business done. the mail order expense properly consists of its share of light, heat, power and rental, sundry expenses, such as stationery, office fixtures, furniture and wages paid. the wages list, properly divided, should show how much is paid for buying, book-keeping, type-writing, samples, checking, packing, etc., and if wages paid in each division week by week and the amount of business done are compared with any previous week's expenses and business, the department is promptly made aware of any unnecessary increased expense, just exactly where that unnecessary increase is, and the remedy may be applied at once. the catalogue expense may also be readily arrived at. the total issue costs a certain amount, and according to the number of pages each department occupies, so in this proportion may be estimated each one's share in the expense. each department manager, knowing what his catalogue space may have cost for a certain issue, and what amount of business he may have done from that issue, can estimate exactly what percentage of cost his mail-order advertising is upon his sales, while the total catalogue expense for any one issue may be added to the other total mail-order expense for that time, and the exact percentage of cost may be arrived at upon the total amount of mail-order business done. such a system may be adopted and made actual use of that will point out at once the exact condition of every part of this business, and provide a safety valve which will indicate at all times the true profit or loss, and through just what channel that loss or gain accrues. filing correspondence. systems of filing differ, but where the business is large, one of two methods is largely adopted, that is filing either by number or place. when filed by number, the original number stamped on the order is made use of for filing purposes. where the place file is used, suitable boxes or drawers are arranged in cases, each box being labelled on the outside indicating its contents. these drawers are provided with cards on which are printed or written the different post offices in each state or province, and arranged for easy reference. thus all correspondence coming from any one town is filed together next its town card, and where the mail from any one town is large it may be subdivided by an alphabetical index. thus, to find mr. b.'s order from blank town reference is first made to the drawer which contains blank town, and under this town, among the bs, will be found mr. b.'s orders. one set of drawers may be made use of for each month's filing, and, therefore, as many sets of drawers are provided as will correspond with the number of months letters may be preserved. separate files may also be kept (usually alphabetical by name) for filing letters, such as those where customers have forgotten to give size, color, or measurements, where they have overlooked enclosing samples, or any omission or circumstance which may cause customers to be written to and their orders held for further information, or orders that may have any balance holding to credit, etc. the filing must be very accurately done, as constant reference is made, and it is of the utmost importance that any correspondence required shall be found with the greatest despatch. special orders. a special effort should be made to have the system so arranged that it will enable the mail-order department, as well as every other department in connection with the house, to know how many orders are partly bought and holding for goods which have been ordered that are not in stock, or that require to be made. the buyer who finds anything asked for on an order which a department cannot supply at once (and no checks should be taken unless the order can be filled promptly) should give someone appointed by each department full particulars of what is required, the number of the order, name of customer, description, size, or measurements of goods to be made or procured. when everything is bought, with these exceptions, the order should be then handed to a special mail-order clerk, who should note what is lacking to complete the order, and in a set of special department files (space being provided for each department) should place the holding order. he should visit the different departments, ascertaining particulars concerning each order, find out what efforts are being made to fill the same, and crowd these orders to completion, where necessary, writing customers explaining any cause of delay. as each department secures the goods required, the mail order department should be notified immediately, when the order may be quickly produced from its department file, check made out and order completed. it is easy to ascertain at any time through such a system exactly what goods each department lacks, and direct such efforts as will provide for the least possible lack of stock and the least possible delay in executing orders. returned goods, exchanges, and complaints. a separate section should be devoted to returned goods or exchanges. as goods are received the packages should be examined as to identification, whom and where from, and entered up alphabetically under the date received, with all particulars required, and goods placed in suitable compartments. when letter of explanation is received, goods are easily located, and both should be given to special exchange clerks, who will secure the necessary exchange bills and make such new selections as customers may desire. the cause of all goods returned should be thoroughly investigated in every instance, and where the fault lies with the house, the customer should be reimbursed for any extra expense incurred; and whatever department or individual is to blame should be made fully acquainted with their error, and such steps taken as will prevent a repetition of it. usually associated with this work is a special section, which should deal with all letters of complaint. the cause of all complaints should be fully enquired into and at once. there should be no delay whatever, but immediate answers insisted upon. explanations should be complete and to the entire satisfaction of customers, and any loss through carelessness or errors made good without reserve. each department and their help should be held strictly accountable for any claims which, upon investigation, show where the responsibility should rest. this feature of promptly adjusting all differences and satisfying every reasonable demand leads to continued and increased confidence, and should, therefore, be given very particular attention. samples. the preparation, selection and sending out of samples should receive the most careful attention. in some cases requests for samples are distributed among the different departments and are filled and sent to the sample department, but this method with progressive houses is considered slow, and for this reason alone unsatisfactory. the improved method is to cut from the piece such lengths of goods as are required. these are sent to the sample department with width, price and full particulars, where suitable paper printed in squares, the size of sample to be sent, are attached. these are sewn by machines driven by electric power and afterwards cut in proper sizes by electric cutting knife, prices inserted and placed in partitioned spaces in drawers arranged in suitable cabinets. as requests for samples are received, they are filled direct from these drawers, and sent out by the next mail. help is employed here who by long experience become familiar with all classes of sampleable goods, and who are under the direct management of one who thoroughly understands interpreting the customers' wants, and who bears no unimportant part to whatever measure of success may result from the sale of all goods by sample. keeping employees' time. this position requires a man of considerable firmness, as he comes in contact with every employee, and is bound to enforce the discipline of the house as applied to absentees and lates, regardless of any partiality or favoritism. he has direct charge of the cloakrooms, and must see that they are kept neat and clean, and that each individual has a certain space allotted. he should be on duty early and late, and should see that every one registers their time in passing in and out. a record of all employees going out on passes should be kept, and none should be accepted unless signed by those authorized. he should keep a record of employees' names and addresses, and have the same checked up regularly. he should supply wages department and also heads of departments with a report of all who are absent. where so many are under the charge of heads of departments, it is impossible for them to tell at once who may be absent. the time-keeper should notify them promptly every morning and noon, and they will thus be enabled to arrange immediately, so that the work done by absentees is provided for. he should not allow parcels of any kind to be carried in or out of the store, nor allow anyone to reënter the store after passing the time desk in going out, or return to the cloakrooms after passing the time desk going in. as part of the store help must go to dinner at one hour and part at another, he should regulate it so that those who go out one hour are back in their departments before others are notified, thus preventing crowding on stairways and passages. departments are usually notified by bells, and each is familiar with its particular signal. doors should be closed sharp on the minute, and all lates excluded. no matter what system for registering time is used, it is easy to determine who is late or absent, as on coming in all keys or time cards hanging on the time board are on one side of the time clock, and when the time is registered they are hung on the opposite side. those which have not been removed indicate at once who has not come in. time cards of any absent, who have not sent in a reason for absence, should be removed from the time board and such employees should secure permission from those authorized before their time can be again marked. lists of those going on holidays should be supplied time-keeper, and their cards should also be removed. the time-keeper should supply the wages department with correct time sheets, as desired. he should see that employees are orderly in passing in and out, and permit no loitering in the cloakrooms. a register is usually placed at the exit door, which should be signed by one appointed for each department or section of the store when leaving at night, certifying that all persons have left their department, and that all windows are secured, blinds down, etc. employing help. the hiring of help is largely centered in one individual for the entire store. departments requiring additional help should notify the employment office, and give particulars of the kind of help required, which fact should be noted and filed for reference, a preference being given former employees seeking reëngagement. the hours for engaging help are usually from to a. m., after which no applications are considered for that day. all applicants must be treated with courtesy. even though no immediate help is required, applicants in many cases are permitted to fill out application, which should be placed on file for reference, and a satisfactory applicant may then be notified as soon as a position is open. all applications should contain, as far as possible, full particulars concerning applicant. it should show the date of engagement, name, address, whether married or single, nationality, church denomination, where previously employed, for how long, and reasons for leaving. references should be given, who may be communicated with, and whose replies should be attached to application. application blank should show salary agreed upon and for what particular department employed. space should be provided for percentage record, and for transfer from one department to another, for increased salary recommendations, which are usually signed by heads of departments and passed by those appointed. they should be at all times a complete and permanent record of each employee. all help is usually engaged upon the distinct understanding and agreement that they are privileged to leave any day, or their services may be dispensed with at any time. a new employee, when given a time card or key, and the time-keeper has explained the system of registering time, etc., and allotted cloakroom space, is conducted to the head of the department or assistant. paying wages. the system of registering time furnishes accurate information for estimating wages. the time sheets kept by the time-keeper are here made use of. the name of each employee under the respective department each one is attached to, with number, rate of wages per week, number of days worked, actual wages due, etc., should be entered on the wages sheet. the total amount of money required on any pay day is given wages office, each individual's pay is placed in a pay envelope, sealed, numbered and entered in signature book. each head of a department, or one appointed, receives all wages for that department, signing for the same, and sees that they are distributed and signed for by each individual as received. the work is done accurately and with despatch, as thousands are by this method paid their weekly earnings in a very short time. watchmen. watchmen should report at the store each night, and as soon as the store is closed examine the leaving register, to see that each department has signed for everything having been left in perfect order. they should examine at once all doors and windows, seeing that they are securely fastened; also all other entrances to building, and all places where anyone might be concealed. they should report in writing anything irregular occurring during the night, leaving the same at the office, and repeat the report until the irregularity has been attended to. a regular patrol should be made throughout the entire building. an ingenious system of clock registration is made use of in some cases, which indicates upon examination in the morning the different stations each watchman has passed and the exact time of each passing during the entire night. in the event of fire or any other accident occurring during the night, such special instructions should be followed as will meet with the ready response of whatever assistance may be required. general rules for employees. rules for employees are in force in all large department stores. different stores differ in detail of rules, but the application is the same, all serving to build up the system of government which directs and controls the entire management. weekly examinations are held in some instances, and familiarity with the rules exacted, thus enforcing and maintaining system and discipline. the hours for opening and closing business vary at different seasons of the year, of which due notice is given. the opening hour is usually o'clock, at which time all employees are expected to be in their respective positions, all covers folded and put in proper places, stocks and counters dusted, and everything made ready for the day's business. all employees must enter and leave the store by employees' entrance, leaving all wraps, hats, rubbers, lunches, etc., in the cloakroom, which is conveniently arranged for this purpose. upon entering the store in the morning and upon leaving and returning at noon, and on going out at night, each individual records his or her time. if for good reason an employee is necessarily delayed, a permission pass may be obtained to commence work; but if late without a good reason being given, they cannot commence work until noon, and thus lose a half day's work and a half day's pay. attendance to business must be punctual and regular. continued lateness and absence would merit discharge. employees who are absent for any cause must notify the house at once, either the head of their department or time-keeper, and satisfactory reasons given for being absent. whenever a change of address is made, employees must report same to time-keeper at once. employees must never leave the store during business hours (except for dinner) without a pass signed by the head of the department and countersigned by one authorized. blank pass books are usually supplied heads of departments. these passes should give the names of employees, their numbers, what departments employed in, date and time of going out, and must be presented to the time-keeper, who will permit employees to go to the cloakroom for wraps and pass them out. employees must not leave their departments to go to any other part of the store without informing the head of the department, or assistant, and obtaining permission. employees desiring to purchase goods for themselves are expected to do so during the least busy hours, usually from to a. m. a pass to purchase must be obtained from the head of the department. this pass is exchanged for a purchasing card. all employees' purchases must be made on purchasing card and sent by the regular delivery. if for any reason a parcel cannot be sent by the regular delivery, and employee is to carry it home, these parcels must be o. k.'d by the proper party. a numbered check is given to the employee and a duplicate attached to the parcel. by presenting this check at the exit door, the package is delivered to the proper party. parcels are not allowed to be carried into the store by employees. the wagons call upon request and deliver packages to the parcel office, where they may be obtained. employees are to avoid gossiping and not allow their time to be taken up with friends who desire to visit with them during business hours. loud conversation to be avoided. business hours not to be occupied in reading books, papers, letter writing, needlework, etc. loafing or wasting time away from departments not allowed. extravagance and display in dress to be avoided. the use of striking colors and patterns is objectionable. the costume should be modest and neat in appearance. employees are expected to be courteous to each other, using the same dignity, respect, and care in add dressing others that they feel they are entitled to themselves. should clerks be deserving of censure, it should be done in a gentlemanly manner, not before other employees or customers, thus retaining the respect of each other. the use of gum or tobacco, eating nuts, fruits, candy, or lunches during business hours is strongly objected to. loitering around the outside of the building, on the corners or at the entrances, expectorating on the walks and giving the premises an untidy appearance will not be permitted. defacing the walls, counters or fixtures, or abusing the property in any way, means immediate dismissal. all employees must learn to obey the orders of those whose authority is recognized, and be governed by the rules and regulations of the house; not only because they must, but for their own individual interests, and the interests of the house in general. some rules may appear rigid, but they are deemed necessary, and, therefore, must be obeyed, and the living up to them is not intended to be a reflection on the self-respect of any one. mechanical section. underneath the selling space in these large stores lies the network of machinery, all necessary for the prompt and careful adjustment of each day's work, furnishing the power for heating, lighting, elevator service, etc. modern automatic sprinkler system always ready for an emergency, rendering the property and merchandise as nearly fireproof as possible, aided by a corps of properly-drilled firemen taken from the regular employees staff. pneumatic cash system connecting with every part of the store selling space; not only utilized for carrying cash, but also providing the means of ventilation, by using up and discharging thousands of cubic feet of impure air regularly, and bringing fresh air into the building constantly. complete staffs of engineers, carpenters, painters, etc., are almost constantly employed in looking after additions, alterations, and repairs, thus keeping the whole building in perfect condition. all are under the direct management of experts, whose mechanical skill is utilized to assist in rendering the store service complete, and whose services are recognised on an equality with those occupying the most responsible positions in connection with the business. +-----------------------------------------------+ | transcriber's note: | | | | typographical errors corrected in the text: | | | | page ever changed to every | | page call changed to called | | page wont changed to won't | +-----------------------------------------------+ generously made available by the internet archive/american libraries.) letter to the right honourable lord viscount melbourne, on the cause of the higher average price of grain in britain than on the continent. by sir george grant suttie, baronet, of preston grange. edinburgh: published by william blackwood and sons. . edinburgh: printed by andrew shortrede, thistle lane. letter. the average price of grain in britain has, for a long series of years, been higher than in the neighbouring countries of europe. it is of the utmost importance to ascertain the cause or causes of this higher price. the following appear to be the principal:-- st, scarcity, the effect of monopoly; d, the higher rate of taxation in this than in the neighbouring nations; d, the higher rate of the real wages of labour in this than in the other countries of europe. if it can be proved, that the first is the only cause of the higher average price of grain in britain, there can be no doubt that it is the interest of every class in the community to have it removed: if the second cause, the higher rate of taxation in britain, has the slightest influence on the price of grain, the question assumes a very different aspect: and if the third cause, the higher real wages of labour in britain, has any connection whatever with the higher average price of grain in britain, the question of the corn laws would then evidently connect itself with the best interests of the country. those who advocate the abolition of the corn laws, assume it to be proved, that the higher average price of grain in britain arises from scarcity, the effect of monopoly: as, therefore, the cause of the higher price of grain in britain would be removed by the abolition of the corn laws, they assert that the price here would be brought nearly to a level with the price on the continent, and that the evils which they consider britain labours under from a scarcity of food would be removed. now, i believe it will be admitted, that at no period of the history of britain has the average price of grain so far exceeded the price on the continent as during the present century; and i think it will also be admitted, that at no period of the history of britain, or of any other nation, has so rapid an increase taken place in the amount of the population, in the wealth, and, above all, in the amount of taxation actually levied from the people. the state of the case is this: it is asserted, that, for the last thirty-eight years, the inhabitants of britain have been labouring under the evil effects of a scarcity of food, as proved by the higher average price of grain in britain, when compared with the price on the continent. during the same period, the population has increased in a greater degree than during any former period; and the wealth of the country has increased to such an extent as to excite the wonder and envy of the world; and the substantial nature of this wealth is proved by the amount of the revenue raised from it by taxation, greatly exceeding the revenue of any other country. this view of the question must, i think, dispose any dispassionate person to doubt, that an absolute scarcity of food for the last thirty-eight years in britain has been the sole cause of the higher average price of grain during that period. in order to prove that a certain effect is produced by a given cause, it is desirable to shew, that the same effect could not be produced by any other cause; and this naturally leads me to consider how far the higher average price of grain in britain may arise from the other two causes. i think it is admitted, even by those who advocate the abolition of the corn laws, that the price of grain is influenced by taxation in the same way, but only to the same extent, as the price of manufactures. they admit that the wages of the labourers must be increased in proportion to the increase by taxation on the price of commodities consumed by them; and the great leading cause of complaint at the present moment on the part of the abolitionists and manufacturers, is, that in all articles requiring much manual labour, britain is at present, and must continue to be, undersold in future by the cheaper labour of the continent. now, it will not be denied, that manual labour enters to an infinitely greater extent into the production of food than into the production of any other manufacture. if, therefore the manufacturers complain, with justice, that the higher rate of taxation, by raising wages, prevents them from competing with continental manufacturers, the same argument applies to the agriculturist, only with infinitely greater force, in proportion to the trifling assistance which machinery has as yet afforded to manual labour in the production of food. the whole population of britain would not be able to do for the manufacturers in a year what the steam engine does for them in a day; but coal, the food, or moving power of the steam engine is absolutely cheaper in britain than in any country in the world. if it is admitted that the higher rate of taxation has any influence whatever in raising or maintaining the price of grain in this country, it must also be admitted, that some degree of protection is just and necessary. with respect to the higher real wages of labour, if there should appear the slightest ground for thinking that a higher rate of real wages has any tendency to raise or maintain the average price of grain in britain above the average price of the continent, any attempt to reduce that price by enabling foreign grain to supplant that of british growth in the home market, must be deprecated as an experiment of the most dangerous nature for the labouring classes of the community. i am aware that i am not entitled to assume, that the real wages of britain are higher than the real wages of the continent. those who advocate abolition of the corn laws, point unceasingly to the difference in price between the principal continental markets, such as hamburgh, danzig, berlin, and this country. i might, in the same way, point to the wages in britain as being at least four times the wages of these countries; but neither would be a fair mode of arriving at the true state of the case. divide the quarter of wheat, at the average price of each country, by the wages of each country, that will give the real wages of each. fortunately, mr jacob's report on the corn trade affords the most satisfactory means for instituting a comparison both as to the price of grain and the rate of real wages _in britain and in those countries_. from his report it appears that the average price of the quarter of wheat for five years, ending with , was s. in prussia. the average price of britain was, for the same period, s. the wages of prussia are stated to be s. d. per week, and of britain, s. per week. the real wages, therefore, the quantity of wheat the labourers could purchase, was double in britain what it was in prussia. in a national point of view, labour is the true standard of value; if it is admitted that labour in britain exchanges for a greater quantity of grain than it does in prussia, it follows that grain is cheaper in britain. i shall now advert to what may almost be termed a fourth cause for the higher average price of grain in britain--the cultivation of poor land. this the abolitionists maintain to be the necessary and natural consequence of monopoly. it would be an arduous task to enumerate all the pamphlets that have been written to prove the immense extent of poor lands at present cultivated in britain, that must be thrown out of cultivation, in order to supply the labouring population with cheaper bread. it must be borne in mind that britain, for the last thirty-eight years, has been on a starving system, as proved by the higher average price of grain during that period. the abolitionists being, however, a little startled at the fact, that a people in a state of starvation, as compared with prussia or poland, should have increased in population, in wealth, and in the ability to bear taxation, call to their aid the theory of the cultivation of poor lands. they say the people have not been absolutely starved, but their food has been raised on poor land by an immense and unnecessary expenditure of labour, and their infallible remedy is to throw these poor lands, amounting to a half, a third, or a fourth of the soils of britain, according to the theory of the different writers, out of cultivation. import, they say, the cheap grain, the produce of the fertile soils of prussia and poland, which being cheaper must be the produce of much less labour. though volumes have been written to prove the evil effects of cultivating the poor soils of britain, no one has yet, that i am aware of, devoted a single sentence to prove the fact. it is much easier to take the fact for granted, and then proceed to argue on it. the only argument i have ever heard adduced in favour of the theory, that poorer lands are cultivated in britain than in prussia or elsewhere, is, that the average price of grain is higher; but i never can admit the force of an argument deduced from such premises as these, that corn is high because poor land is cultivated, and that poor land is cultivated because corn is high. i shall now proceed to state a few facts taken from mr jacob's report, which prove the very reverse to be the truth. i may begin by observing, that to any one who has travelled over the north of germany or poland, any argument to prove that poorer land is cultivated in these countries than in britain is superfluous--the general aspect of these countries being that of a sandy desert. mr jacob states, that the land in prussia is cultivated by a class of persons in some respects slaves, and, in most respects, but little removed from that state; and that there is no class in this country with whom their condition can be compared. he states, that the average return of wheat, oats, barley, and rye, is four for one--in britain the same average is, at least, eight for one. he states, that the stock of sheep and cattle, in proportion to the surface, will be at least four times greater in britain than in prussia. in a country such as britain, maintaining four times the number of cattle, and giving double the return of grain per acre, it is rather too much to assume, without even an attempt at inquiry, that an immense extent of poor and unprofitable land is cultivated. the cultivation of poorer land in britain than in other countries, being the key-stone of the arch on which such a mass of argument rests, it seems most strange that no attempt should ever have been made to establish the fact. the higher price of grain may so clearly be produced by other causes besides monopoly, and the consequent cultivation of poorer land, that the abolitionists were bound to prove monopoly to be the sole agent. so far from doing this, many of their own champions admit the force of other causes, as being most efficient in maintaining the higher averages of grain in britain. colonel torrance, who, i believe, is considered a high authority with the abolitionists, states, that if, by taxing our land, we increase the expense of growing corn at home beyond the expense of producing it in other countries, our prices will be higher than theirs. in this opinion i fully agree with colonel torrance, though i do as decidedly differ in an opinion he states immediately preceding that above quoted, where he asserts that the happiest consequences follow from leaving importation free. when what he terms artificial sterility is produced by the pressure of taxation on the land, the colonel does not explain, in his elaborate work, how, if the cause of higher price is taxation, the same amount of taxation is to be paid by the land, when the value of its produce is reduced from the effects of importation. but even if we admit that a great reduction in the value of the agricultural produce in britain would not make it more difficult to collect the immense revenue required by this country, still the debt is considered to press with sufficient weight on the energies of the country as it is. as a permanent reduction in the value of the agricultural produce of britain would give the national creditor the power to purchase a much larger quantity of it than he now enjoys, to that extent it would increase the pressure of the debt, by adding most materially to its real value. in short, the british labourer consumes, or has the power of consuming, at least double the quantity of wheat that a prussian or polish labourer has. the soil of britain, in proportion to its cultivated surface, produces double the quantity of grain, and maintains four times the number of cattle that is maintained by the land in prussia or poland. taxation is admitted by all to raise the money price of grain; and, according to colonel torrance, taxation will even produce artificial sterility in land. the amount of the population engaged in british agriculture is less in proportion to the amount engaged in trade and manufactures than in any country in the world, yet this small proportion of the people of britain raises a larger supply of food for the whole population than is enjoyed by any nation of similar magnitude: the whole population consume, or has the power of consuming, double the quantity of food that the poles or prussians have. from these facts it is evident that the food of britain is produced by much less labour than the food of poland or prussia. indeed, if this was not the case, how could the immense population engaged in manufactures, and concentrated in the large cities of the empire, be supported? i hold, therefore, that i am justified in asserting that the higher rate of taxation in britain, and the higher rate of real wages, have a very powerful influence in maintaining the higher average price of grain in britain as estimated in money; that the theory of the cultivation of poorer land in britain than in the countries from which it is proposed we should obtain our supplies of grain, is utterly without foundation in fact; and that, on the contrary, the agricultural produce of britain is the result of less labour than in the neighbouring countries of europe; that labour in britain produces more grain, and also exchanges for more. it therefore follows, that the mode of introducing foreign corn into this country ought to be regulated so as not to interfere with the extension of cultivation in britain, or to prevent the produce from increasing, as it has hitherto done, in proportion to the increase of the population. edinburgh: printed by andrew shortrede, thistle lane. industrial progress and human economics by james hartness extra copies on request address all communications relative to industries to commissioner of industries, montpelier, vermont. this book is published by private funds _fellow citizen_: vermont's natural resources have been set forth in state publications, not adequately, but nevertheless, in well prepared publications. supplementing such publications this book deals with our human resources, showing the way by which our greatest resource--human energy--can be most effectively employed. it uses the welfare of man as the yardstick of measure rather than treating the subjects under the head of natural resources. at the present time the productive power of a day's work varies greatly throughout the country. it reaches its highest point where the most efficient implements and machines are used; where there is a high degree of special ability acquired by each executive and workman, such as has been attained in our highly specialized manufacturing industries, many of which may be found in our neighboring states. the upbuilding of such organizations is only in its infancy. there is now a natural drift away from congested cities to adjacent states where plants and homes may be spread out over larger areas. the personal side of this to each man is the supreme need of a better understanding of human economics; that is, he must know the best way to use his own energies, and since he must work in cooperation with others he should also know what constitutes the most effective and successful organization. as a skilled worker, as a scientist in some branch of the work, as an executive in charge of some department, as a manager, investor or banker, he must keenly sense the conditions on which progress is made. this book is written for the progressive young man as well as all those directly or indirectly interested in industrial development. it is at once a text book and a reference book, for, as a workman or executive advances he will find need of information on many of the points herein set forth. if the book has no immediate interest to you, please pass it along to another. faithfully yours, [signature: james hartness] _governor_. foreword. the purpose of this book is to indicate the natural way to increase our industrial development. to accomplish this there is set forth an outline of an industrial policy. this policy relates to procedure and methods for starting and managing industrial plants. it conforms to our economic conditions and offers the safest and easiest course. while it is written to create more desirable industrial establishments within the state and to increase the vitality of the existing plants, it is distinctly a guide for the individual, for it facilitates the progress of the man as well as that of the state. it is a practical policy that stimulates and energizes the industrial spirit and at the same time, directs our energies along the easiest road of progress in personal and state development. it sets forth certain fundamental principles that apply broadly to all activities, but specifically to manufacturing and the means and methods that must be employed to win in the industrial conquest. to the investor it provides the best measure by which he can estimate the economic soundness and prospects of an enterprise. it gives confidence in right projects, making money available for things that are right, and reducing the hazard of investments by eliminating the badly or indifferently managed organizations and those founded on unsound policies. to the men in an organization it is also of great value, for by it they can estimate their own prospects for progress. they risk not only their earning power but their chances for personal development. their chances in acquisition of high degree of ability and in advance from position to position also depends upon the policy of management and success of the enterprise. the loss of opportunity of any of these men really transcends the loss of money, for it involves the loss of personal development and all that that means. it is obvious too that the management of each organization will be of a more successful type when the entire personnel grasps the essentials of industrial development. when these essentials are understood and recognized as standards of measure there will be less conflict between the investors and the managers. then it will be possible for managers and all others to use all of their energies wholly for progressive work rather than using a large part of their time and energy explaining each move to the investors. managers need the support and confidence of the investors. every day requires a firm adherence to a definite policy. nothing less than the firmest determination will hold an organization to a true course. with a division of opinion, the natural drift is away from the standards on which modern success depends. not only is it necessary to have these principles understood by investors, but also by all whose opinions will in any way affect the spirit of the men in the organization. the whole scheme, as it is set forth, is true to the fundamentals of human economics, for it provides ways by which the energies of mind and body are used most effectively. it brings a progressive growth and creates in each the greatest productive capacity. so that, as individuals and as a state, we will produce the greatest value for a given amount of labor. it is the only way by which we can compete with other states and countries. it is the natural and inevitable way for vermonters to travel. conquest of peace. before the war vermont and the nation were approaching a serious economic crises. the war has accentuated the gravity of the situation, but has also demonstrated certain human characteristics that can be enlisted to correct our course. we found during the war that we were ready to take heroic action whenever an occasion demanded it--that there was a solidarity of purpose of our people. this characteristic must now be invoked. we must meet the conditions that confront us by unity of public opinion and team work. the conditions that confront us do not involve the possibility of immediate invasion of our country by a hostile nation, but they carry a burdensome penalty if we fail to take the right action. happily we are not required to risk our lives or even work harder, but we must recognize the plain facts that we are not sharing in the general economic progress of our neighboring states. in war the nation that wins the victory imposes a burden of tax on the conquered nation. in the conquest of peace the victorious nations also impose a burden on the losers. this burden is just as real as the burden imposed by war, for in both cases the losers are paying tribute to the winners. this applies to states, to communities, to families and to men. the situation calls for prompt attention and concerted action by the people of our state and country. in the conquest of peace success comes to those people who produce the greatest value with a given expenditure of energy, or, in other words, to the people who at the end of a day's, a year's or a life's work can measure their return in the largest value. dollars constitute our measures of value for they are our medium of exchange of our products of labor. if, to accomplish the same result, the man with inferior implements must work harder than the man with the best implements, it is very easy to see who has to pay tribute to the other in the market where values are compared and payment made for values. owing to the advance that has been made both in invention of implements and methods and in the organization of workers, there is now a marked difference in the value of the product of a day's work. a study of this situation shows the supreme need of action that will direct our energies as individuals and as a state in a way that will bring the largest value for a day's work. we must choose with care our work, our equipment and our methods of combining our efforts. there must be team work within each industrial plant and each plant must be in tune with the whole competing world. as a people we have not lagged behind, in fact we have been leaders in many important branches, but our enterprise has known no state boundaries, and many of our men and women have gone to other states. hence, while as a people we have been leaders, as a state we have been lagging behind the more active industrial states. vermont is very close to the most highly developed industrial center on the face of this globe. these centers, through coordination, invention and choice of work, have been able to produce greater values per man per day. men with the spirit of industry and a practical knowledge gained by experience in these highly developed centers go out from such centers and build up other industrial centers wherever the best opportunity appears. the nearest places to these centers are the most natural fields in which to start new organizations. but when no cooperating spirit is found near at hand, these carriers of industry go till they find better places. many have traveled past vermont because we were busy in other lines and our money was being sent to other states for investment. many of our own men left the town of windsor during the last sixty years, and from this one town there has been built a number of important industries in other states notably in massachusetts and connecticut. it is not necessary to assume that the industrial spirit has spread under the guidance of man or just by chance as these men of practical knowledge and enterprise have drifted. it may be that the successful new centers were merely a few of thousands of attempts in other places. our problem is to study the conditions under which these industries thrive and then see how we can establish these conditions. in this way we will be acting in harmony with the natural drift or natural law, if you prefer, and this is one of the purposes of this book. vermont favorably located. our nearness to these industrial states give us an advantage over more remote states, but it is not sufficient in itself to bring our share of industrial expansion. nevertheless it is one of the greatest advantages and constitutes one of the strong points on which we base our faith in our plan for greater industrial development. the next element to nearness to existing plants is the spirit and understanding of the people. vermont has the best spirit of industry but has not the fullest conception of industrial life and opportunity. it is this purpose of setting forth the principles of desirable industrial life that constitutes the next step. when these principles are understood, we will improve the chances for the acquisition of local industries through the coming of others from nearby states or by the establishment of new plants by some of our own people who are already well qualified to carry forward such enterprise. but whether it is brought about by these or any other means, the basic principle on which successful industries are built must be known and must constitute the policy of organization and management. the principles set forth are basic. they constitute the necessary addition of the practical knowledge of invention, management and general business knowledge gained in existing plants. industrial life calls for the best that is found in brain, enterprise and ability and should have every possible aid and cooperation. furthermore it should be protected from impractical promoters, impractical managers and obstructive theorists. it is actual work and accomplishment that counts. the workers and those who lead and cooperate with them should not have their combined efforts handicapped by those who have never done actual work or who have never been performing an essential service. indifference and misdirection are our greatest enemies in times of peace. these hinder our growth and if allowed to exist, will ultimately lead to our becoming a subservient people. we are all ready to accept these facts but may differ as to the best ways to use our energies. we are already making good progress in various branches of agriculture, granite and marble work, and in various branches of manufacturing of wood, textiles and metal, but a direct comparison with our manufacturing states shows that we do not bring into the state an adequate return for our labor. many of our young people migrate to more remunerative kinds of work in other states, and as already stated some of these vermonters have led in the creation and upbuilding of great industrial establishments. there are now many good chances to create new and energize our existing industries. some may ask why should we consider other industries when we can find many good opportunities in our present enterprises. the answer is that our people drift away to other states to get into these industries for there they have discovered that the best chance to produce a large value for a day's work is where best implements are used and where there is the best organization of workers. they have found that in some respects we are lagging behind in the use of best methods and best implements. our problem. without going further into the analysis of the conditions that confront us, it is obvious that an increase in the size and number of desirable industries is an object worthy of our attention and efforts. we have clearly in mind that more money flowing into the state will improve our entire economic situation. taxes, markets, population, schools, opportunities for vermonters and general improvement in all values and interests. the next thing to do is to get an industrial policy that will guide us in our course as individuals, managers, engineers, manufacturers, investors, progressive workers and as citizens. the idea must precede action and the action must precede results. the true idea will bring results of like character, hence the need of the fullest knowledge on which to form the idea. a simple outline of a desirable industry may be drawn through the following points: first: an ideal industry is an organization in which the energies of mind and body are most effectively employed. second: since man is something more than a physical body, his work must be one in which he feels an interest and satisfaction. third: since there are various kinds of implements to aid man in his work, a successful organization should use the most effective type. fourth: since man is a creature of habit and functions most effectively when he has acquired skill through experience, each one in the workshop and office should be experienced in his particular branch of the work. fifth: since the high skill of men is attained through repetition of operations, the management must subdivide the work into classes in which each man can become highly proficient. sixth: just as there is an individual skill and ability acquired by the individual, so there must be a group skill built up. the group skill is acquired by the coordination of the energies of all the workers so that the work flows naturally and evenly from worker to worker with the minimum hindrance. this coordination takes place naturally through experience. it only needs common sense supervision and a protection of the workers from the impractical interference of faddists. have faith in vermont. travelers through the west, particularly on the coast states bring back the story of optimism that seems to be characteristic of the enterprising people who migrated west in the early days. this spirit of optimism is not found in all parts of our country, and yet it is of high value. in new england for instance, in each state there is a state pride, but perhaps not to the extent that we find in the larger cities and in the west. here we are more interested in the success of our various branches of activities. vermonters have been notably free to go beyond state boundaries in the acquisition of trade or profession and in practice, but optimism, which is the parent of enterprise, has an excellent chance for existing in our state. the early history of industrial development shows it followed along the avenues of transportation--seaports and lakeports and railways. with the railways the industries spread to other states, notably ohio, indiana, illinois and michigan. now there is setting in a readjustment and the time is ripe for vermonters to use some of their spirit of enterprise within the boundaries of the old state. goods may be shipped to the best market from the top of our highest mountain at lower cost than it could be shipped from some remote competitors. there is every angle favorable except the full knowledge of the situation and the elements on which industrial success can now be achieved. the coming and use of machinery has been a most potent force in determining the economic rating of city and state, and it is in this respect that vermont has now its great opportunity, and it is in the field in which invention, the use of machinery, the right methods of building up an effective group of workers that there is the surest reward for the energy put forth by investors, organizers and workers. if you have grasped these facts; continue to study the elements of the plan; fit yourself as an experienced worker or executive in some branch of the work; see that the scheme of work is one that can successfully compete with other producers; then put your whole self into the work. if you wish to get the plan into your own consciousness and action, tell it to others. become a practical booster of the plan. it fits the future. it fits today. be a booster. it is right. it pays. our industrial policy. we must endeavor to establish desirable industries. the most desirable industries are those in which there is an opportunity for development of all the workers and a chance for the greatest number to find the best opportunity to acquire special skill and special ability. in such industries there should be the open door of progress so that those who are qualified for advancement can go forward from position to position with no barrier other than their own mental or physical limitations. special ability, skill and team work are only acquired by long specialized practice. these qualities constitute the most valuable assets on which to create a new concern. very elaborate systems have been designed for controlling the flow of the work through the plant and the division of the various activities between men and departments, but the real effective coordination must grow out of the actual working conditions of the workers. this natural evolution of the group's effectiveness as a single organization is one of greatest importance. the impractical theorist coming into an old plant will start in at once to rearrange the order of things irrespective of both the group habit-action and the habit-action of each man. changes must be most sparingly made, with the full knowledge that anything that interferes with the habit-action of the workers is a serious hindrance. all people concerned, whether as executives in the industry, or as investors, must remember that in a growing industry, individual skill as well as group skill of the whole organization greatly improves with continued action. under the process of continued action the average man can make a fair showing and with a reasonable degree of moral support will make good, while without it the ablest man will have a hard time and even fail if he is forced to accept changes that disturb continuity of action. the management must conform to the best world practice in engineering, industrial life, individual welfare and economics. it must have every element of organization kept in best condition. the spirit of the group is of great importance, for the organization goes forward on the congenial nature of each man's profession or work. each man's energies, both mental and physical, must be employed constructively with the minimum disturbance. his energies must be concentrated on his own particular work. this concentration applies to all workers and executives. this plan is based on the fact that, through continuity of attention and application to a given work, man acquires a special aptitude. it also recognizes that each man on the face of the earth, from the tramp along the railroad to the most highly developed scientist and executive, has a special knowledge and special ability that he has acquired by experience. it is needless to say that in competition with the whole world there must be alertness every day in the guidance of details of mechanism and business, and that it is not by the gathering together of a group of men at the end of the year or even once a month or once a week that business can be effectively managed; it is a continued application to the work every day and every hour that counts. there should be no absentee management. the men who manage must be in close touch with the work and the workers--not merely through written or oral reports, but by actual observation. travel, study and observation of other connections and work are necessary, but the home must be with the industrial plant and that must be the prime interest. limitations of man's progress. it is not contemplated that all men will become managers or office men. such positions are not of a kind that is satisfactory to many of our ablest men. some are happiest in work in which they acquire great skill. they are disturbed and made uncomfortable when required to solve mental problems. some of the greatest achievements have been wrought by such men, who have been highly honored in the past and such men will have more recognition as time goes on, for we are coming to understand the fact that we must depend on such men for special ability in the form of skill, whether it is in the surgery, mechanics, art or any other branch or division of work or the professions. such men are not talkers and do not force themselves into spectacular positions. to say that there is no progress for the surgeon if he cannot become manager of the hospital, nor for the skilled worker if he cannot become manager of the industrial plant, would not be in keeping with facts for we know that such men have made the greatest contribution to the world's welfare. this plan of individual progress should not be disturbing to the worker who has come to a standstill. it is the ideal toward which we must work. it can never be wholly attained, but such a policy will make a vast difference with the prospects of all workers and in the success of industrial organizations. protect the industrial spirit. industries and the workers should be protected from incompetent managers, investigators and impractical theorists. industries and the workers go forward by actual work, not on manipulation of stocks, bonds, laws and schemes to wreck or boost for temporary gain of some one interest. in general it is safe to have faith in the honesty of the workers and those who cooperate with them--at least we can start with the assumption that honesty and square dealing are not monopolized by other professions. if we will remember that an industry has a vitality the same as a man, that its life can be destroyed by an ignorant investigator with a probe poking into every nerve and muscle, we will make vermont a more natural place for industrial development and progress. the attitude of the workers and the general public should be cordial instead of antagonistic for every desirable industry is an asset of great value. in theory and law an industry belongs to the stockholders, at least it is for the stockholders to elect the board of directors who through practical officers manage the business; but, as a matter of actual fact, to the man who has the best job in the world for himself right in that organization, the life of the organization is of greater importance than it is to any one of the stockholders. in the same sense the existence of the industry is of greater value to many others in the organization and in the community than it is to the stockholders. hence, anything that interferes with the success of the organization injures many people. what is not an industry. perhaps it will be well to state first what does not constitute an industry. power, transportation facilities, fine buildings, fine machinery and a group of skilled workmen, a complete office staff and an elaborate system of fad management do not constitute an industry. such an aggregation might be likened to a cargo ship all ready for service excepting that it lacks a captain and navigating officer and some one to determine what kind of a cargo to take, where to go and how to get there. the greatest value of an industrial plant that has everything but a work to do and a leader to determine its major policies, lies in the skilled workers and able executives in work and office. the buildings and machinery come next in value, but the whole thing is worthless without the idea and the vision. "dead" organizations. in all cities we can see "dead" organizations. many of these companies that are actually "dead" seem to have life in them because they continue to move, but in many instances the motion is only due to the momentum of a push that was given years ago. a "dead" organization may show signs of life in its gradual growth in size, but its real character is to be seen in the extent to which it is departing from specialization or by the continued use of antiquated methods and buildings. the departure from specialization is generally due to either lack of courage to discard obsolete designs or to an inclination to consider the business from the selling end only. it takes courage to discard an old model and it also takes courage to refuse to build some new invention. the indifferent management carries the old and takes on the new. this policy covering many years creates a condition that is far removed from the specialization plan. the management that views everything from the selling side of the business is also inclined to go on indefinitely increasing the line of goods manufactured. the drift away from specialization may not be disasters today or tomorrow, especially, if there are no competitors who are specialists, but the inevitable result will be the burial of the "dead" organization when a real competitor comes into the field. the calamity of the existence of "dead" industrial organizations is something more than the ultimate loss to the stockholders, it is the deplorable stagnation in which the workers find themselves with their progress blocked by lifeless management. some industrial hows, whys and whats. how groups of men achieve the highest results in expenditure of given energy. what is necessary to establish such conditions. what are the most desirable opportunities. what are desirable industries. why the need of building up habit-action. how a group of men, through team work, acquires a group habit- action by which their product greatly exceeds the product of the same number of men working without cooperation. how the individual ability and skill, as well as the group ability and skill is only to be acquired by repetition that establishes habit-action. why repetition of operation is essential to acquisition of skill and special ability. what are the boundaries that divide the jack of all trades, the specialist and the victim of an overdose of repetition work. why industrial managers should know the cardinal principles of invention, of industrial engineering, industrial management, industrial relations and the human factor in engineering and in the industries. why a plant may be growing in size and paying dividends and may still be dead so far as the spirit of enterprise is concerned. why some men try to manage industrial plants regardless of the cardinal principles of progress of workers and the state. why the ideal conditions for the workers and executives can only be found in an industrial establishment that can successfully compete with others. these "whys", "whos" and "whats" are of importance to all and suggest a line of thought and interest in this industrial discussion. new industries. the first men to function in the creation of new industries are those who are already well grounded by long experience in some special form of industry. the new organizations must have men well qualified to direct each of its branches. in general it may be stated that a new organization must start with a superior article to manufacture and the elements of a superior organization. sometimes it is possible by invention alone to win without the aid of the modern plan of specialized organization. on the other hand, the success may be attained by superior organization without a superior article to manufacture, but in general it is better to combine all of the possible beneficial factors in a new organization. organizers should know the market possibilities. if possible, the product should be sold directly to the user. the contact with the ultimate user is of supreme importance in the development of the invention and the organization. in dealing through a selling agency the manufacturer is not in control of the whole business. the selling agent dictates the policy of the whole business. he dictates the policy of the manufacturing plant from the selling agent's needs and that seldom fits the manufacturing conditions. the selling department generally demands many changes in product and wide range of articles of manufacture, while the manufacturing conditions require that special skill and ability that can only be developed by continuity of action of a given kind, and this restricts the range of produce. if the head or one of the heads of a proposed organization knows the market condition and knows what can be done in the sale of a new article, then the question of invention and manufacture can be safely left to those who have been well grounded in such principles. that leaves only the question of the financial arrangements. the method of forming a stock company under the laws of vermont is very simple and people are generally well disposed to invest in the stock of the new company providing the men at the head are known to be competent--the inventor as an inventor, the business man as a business man and so on all the way through. the standards of measure of each one of the men and the standards of measure of conducting the business are set forth in other chapters. at this time it is sufficient to say that getting the capital is the easiest part of the job. the real work is the preliminary work of acquiring experience and devising plans. a plan to create a new industry does not call for disloyalty to the employer, for as a rule it is very foolish to attempt to compete with an established organization excepting on some business that gives the new organization an advantage by one or more of the following points: invention, simpler product, simpler methods, a higher degree of specialization, a more effective and direct scheme of sales or a better spirit of personnel. one of the essential things for the business man--if the business man is not the inventor--is to grasp the fact that his success is tied up to the inventor. the inventor is needed in the development all the way through, not only in guiding the form of the manufactured article, but in a large degree by dictating the process by which the article is to be manufactured. the inventor usually needs curbing to keep him from disturbing his own market by the creation of newer forms, but these matters are treated under the chapter of invention. the principle element to set forth now is that it is a waste of time and money for a few business men to buy a patent or an invention and then dispense with the service of the inventor. they are merely going to sea without a navigator. on the other hand it is equally true that the inventor must consider the business side of the problem and do all in his power to devise effective means to facilitate the process of manufacturing. the point to be made here is that there is no chance to win in this game by sharp practice. it is only through work and the combined work and energy of all the men in the organization that anyone can win. inventor's proportion. in the machine tool industries, one-third of the interest in the plant is given to the inventor. this, to the average investor appears to be an unfair proportion, but it is one of those cases in which the broadest vision is necessary, and a glance at the earning power of such organizations as well as the prestige of the inventions, will bear out the wisdom of the general plan in similar industries. the plan, however, should not be considered as something that boosts only one man or one group of men. if there is any attempt to exploit labor, the plan is wrong. the scheme must be fundamentally right so that each man coming into the workshop or the office of business finds there his best opportunity to develop and receive his best return for the use of his energies. it is hoped that succeeding chapters will build up confidence in the scheme that will make it possible for men to see the way to progress in this line, to have faith in each other and to know that their ultimate success will come through a spirit of cooperation, concentration of attention and energies of each man to his own special work so as to attain highest ability and last but not least, the complete coordination of all in one safe, sane industrious organization. manufacturers and new industries. one of the forces that operates against increase in the number of industrial establishments is the fact that we do not realize the need of human progress in our plants. men should progress from job to job until they reach their best achievement. some gain their greatest success in some manual work in which they acquire great skill and others go on to executive positions and even graduate to join other organizations or to start new industries. we fail to see this fundamental law regarding the growth of the manufacturing organization, and seldom realize the prime necessity of the fundamental law relating to specialization. we overlook the fact that stagnation in place of progress of the men in the plant is deadly to the organization, and feel that if we get an extra-efficient man in a certain position that he must be kept there regardless of his own opportunity for advancement. we fail to realize that progress all the way through the organization, should be encouraged--that while man is distinctly a creature of habit, his mind as well as his body must be considered, and that only by changes of a progressive nature does he develop most favorably. too often a manufacturer is opposed to the creation of other organizations by men from his own organization, when, as a matter of fact, it would be a great deal better for his own institution if he would encourage the growth of other plants that can be created by his own men. habit action, basis of skill and proficiency. we have many text books on the subject of industrial finance, of engineering, of invention, of industrial management, and all these books are written on the assumption that the human being knows his own kind. a study of our failures seems to reveal, however, that we have misunderstood the human being. for instance, while we know that skill and experience is invaluable, we make our mistake by underrating its value, or too often we limit its application to the hand worker. we say that skill of the pianist, the surgeon, the workman must be acquired by practice. we know that in many trades a workman must spend three, four or more years as an apprentice, and at least the same number of years is necessary of actual specialized practice in almost any department of work, but we overlook the fact that that special skill or that special ability on which modern success is based must be acquired under certain conditions. the oriole builds a nest unlike the robin's nest. each is qualified in its own work. we know that these birds would be sorely handicapped, and would probably be downright failures in providing nests in season for eggs, if each were required to work to plans and specifications of the other bird's nest. our fundamental error in understanding our own kind seems to lie in the fact that we fail to recognize that man is a creature of habit to an extent not quite equal to that of the lower animals, but nevertheless to a degree that positively stands in the way of any man who tries to create or manage an industry without giving due value to this one element. another way to say all this is that we must recognize experience is necessary--experience not only for the worker but for each one in the organization. the effect of this characteristic of habit action is so profound that any disturbance in a plant due to changing the position of benches or machinery or changing the character of the work sorely interferes with man's efficiency. on account of this characteristic the degree to which man's energies are most effectively employed goes in direct proportion to the degree in which there is a minimum of changes in the character of the work. the importance of this will be realized when we consider the question of competition, for that, in the last analysis, constitutes the measure of success. now, if we extend the plan of acquisition of special ability to embrace men in office as well as in the workshop we have covered the whole subject and have said nothing more than that it is necessary for all men in the office as well as in the workshop to have a special ability that has been acquired by experience. if it is as simple as this, why the need of saying it? the need is brought about by the painful fact that one of the characteristics of habit action is to continue on without change even after the mind has apparently recognized that a change should be made. success comes not from the mere _word_ knowledge of these things, but through action. specialization. of the many elements on which industrial development depends, the question of specialization looms large. under the general term "specialization" we include all plans and methods of work by which the scope of activity of man is concentrated. the highest degree of skill of artist or worker is attained by concentration of energies to a restricted range of work. it is through practice that the skill is acquired. the highest skill and highest ability is attained by the degree of interested attention and number of repetitions of a given kind of work. other things being equal, the practice, combined with keenness of interest, makes the most successful man in a given profession or work. repetition of operation becomes an automatic (habit) action in which man accomplishes the most work for a given expenditure of energy. these two results--proficiency and easy performance--are of greatest value, but repetition of action, like nearly all good things, is not without its drawbacks. an overdose of one kind of work with a limited range of action frequently leads to dulling the senses. this stultifying effect produces a most undesirable result. the harm begins when there is a loss of interest in the work, for it is through the interest that the progress is made. the dividing line between the good and bad results varies with different types of men. the simplest tasks may become of intense interest to the scientist and he may achieve great success in a work that to others seems monotonous drudgery. but with all its drawbacks it still is the best way for man to work and while we must labor to eliminate the condition of drudgery, we must face the plain fact that competition between men, industries, states and nations makes it absolutely necessary to specialize. specialization by the men and groups of men will determine the question of superiority of advance in science, industry, commerce, general wealth and welfare, as well as military strength in the time of war. while we have clearly before us the degrading effects of repetition of distasteful tasks; we must not ignore the other extreme. the opposite condition is the employment of energies of mind and body in ways that cannot produce high degree of ability. with such desultory use of energies, a day's work is of relatively small value, and there is no progress. of the two extremes we find the most prevalent to be the scatter-brain and scatter ability type. the industries of the higher type lead in providing the best implements and in organization of best team work by which each worker produces the greatest value for a given expenditure of energy. the essential bearing of these facts is that the worker as well as the business man should compare his work with the work of others with whom he is in competition. in these days of long distance transportation our competitors in the market may be a long distance away. if it is in agriculture, the question of climate, soil and degree to which highly efficient implements can be used, are important factors. if it is in the professions we must see how we can acquire the greatest proficiency and opportunity. this again involves the question of the extent to which we must specialize. the measure then of success is the value of our services as compared with the services of others. one of the important problems in industrial management is the extent to which specialization should be practiced. on one hand we see the ill effects of a routine repetition where there has been an overdose of repetition--one that has gone beyond the beneficial point--and on the other hand, we find that the greatest achievements in the sciences and professions have been wrought by those who have concentrated in a way that has given them a higher development. unfortunately in many of the industries, the development of machinery has gone forward with the sole end in view of dollars and cents, disregarding the effect on the worker. this is to be found in some of the industries in which originally there was an opportunity for the worker to have a keen interest in his work. mention is made of this situation as it comes about with certain stages of development of the manufacturing processes. it is unfortunate and something that the engineers and managers should endeavor to eliminate. we have very few of such industries in vermont; they can broadly be classed as undesirable industries. the fact that there are such industries should not in itself drive us from the scheme of working by which men specialize. we should, however, see to it that the degree of repetition of operation goes only to the beneficial extent. our greatest trouble in vermont has been the wasteful scattering of each man's energies over a variety of tasks. competition with the outer world makes it absolutely necessary that we use our energies in the most effective manner; that most effective manner is the one by which through repetition and experience we acquire skill and ability. the important matter to decide is the degree to which we can specialize. this degree varies with the work and the individual. to an alert and active mentality routine work becomes drudgery, while to the opposite type, mental work is annoying. in an industry, men gradually fit in with the most suitable work. each man's job should be one that is best for him. nothing has been said thus far regarding the invention of new forms of articles to manufacture, or of new methods of machinery for manufacturing articles. these elements and many others are necessary in order to complete a successful plant, but the fundamentals embraced in a statement regarding the habit-action of man represented by special ability and skill acquired by experience, and the habit-action of the group acquired in the same way, constitutes a measure in determining the way at ninety per cent of the cross roads in industrial progress. anyone undertaking the creation of a new organization or the management of a going concern must grasp these facts. the value of experience, if acquired in an industry where such fundamental principles have been recognized, should be given the highest rating. experience, however, in an industry where the energies of men were not most effectively employed and where there was not a recognition that the effective employment of man's energies require a general development of mind and body up to the man's capacity, cannot be counted as wholly good unless, through force of purpose, there is the strength to adopt a new path. [footnote]industrial management. [footnote text: a revision of material originally under title of human factor in works management by james hartness, published by mcgraw-hill publishing co., new york.] the navigator in preparing for a voyage carefully examines each of his instruments. he must know the present error of his chronometer and its rate of change, and its general reliability as indicated by its past record. he must also know errors in his compasses for each point, and he should have the fullest information regarding the degree of reliability of every other means on which his success depends; and, last but not least, he must accurately determine his starting-point or point of departure. in taking up the subject before us we will do well to follow his example. in doing so, our task will be to examine two principal elements: one, the means on which we depend for interpreting the information that is available; and the other, the source and character of the information. the means may be considered analogous to the navigator's instruments, and is no less a thing than the brain or mental machinery; and the information is simply the world about us as seen in the existing things, such as machinery, methods, popular notions, textbooks, etc., all of which may be classed as environments, and may be considered as analogous to the charts and other publications of our worthy example. like the mariner, we must determine the degree of reliability of all these sources of information and our means for interpreting observed facts. when we have ascertained this we will know what allowance to make from the "observed" to get the actual facts. with this knowledge we will be able to accurately determine both our starting-point and best course. the importance of considering our own minds will be seen when we realize that every new fact taken in must in a measure conform to the previous ideas. if some of these old ideas are erroneous, the mind must be more or less ready to discard them. it is very difficult to dislodge deep-seated convictions. contradictory ideas are not assimilated. only one of them is actually accepted. even when to the objective reasoning they seem false, they frequently continue to control our actions. since we are loaded with the popular ideas which we have absorbed from our environment, it will be well for us to begin by critically examining our environment and the process by which ideas have been taken in. this may enable us to put out some of the erroneous views, and perhaps more firmly fix the true ideas; thereby preparing the mind for a more ready acceptance of what otherwise would be barred out as contradictory. we shall not go deeply into the psychology of the subject, as it will not be necessary to go contrary to or beyond the well-known facts. we shall not try to locate the man or refer to him as the ego or inner man. we shall simply say that we know that we can use our brains to think on any subject, and we can use our senses to collect information regarding any chosen subject. our senses and mental faculties can be directed to consider one element in a business, and for the moment be unmindful of the many other elements. in other words, we can to a certain extent manage our mental processes. just as a horse can be managed, so may we manage our brains. a driver may carefully control the expenditure of energy and the course traveled, or he may throw the reins over the dash and allow the horse to go his own gait and route. in the same way we may manage or mismanage our brains. good results with moderate effort. a faster pace will not be advocated, for the present gait is overstrenuous. we hope, however, to point out a way by which good results may be obtained with, moderate effort. if, in the past, the brain has been found wanting, we should not lose confidence in its reliability until we have seen how it has been managed. under some conditions its interpretations are absolutely correct; in fact, under all conditions that would be called fair in testing other kinds of mechanism. unfortunately, these conditions have not always existed. opinions regarding important matters have been formed when accurate mentation has been impossible. physical condition of worker. if the use of the machine induces either an adverse mental attitude or physical condition of the worker, it will sooner or later be adverse to the economic success of the machine. we have indicated some of the problems and have suggested the well-known method of mental control for this purpose. a keen observer of men and machinery may not require as much of the so-called practical experience; another may need many years of actual work. the practical experience in the various departments of machine construction, its sale and its use, is undoubtedly almost absolutely necessary for the average man in this work. its value is primarily to give an opportunity to see things in actual operation. the shop affords an opportunity to see how a machine stands up to its work, where it is weak, and a thousand and one points that can best be seen in actual operation. but there is still another phase that is comprehended more readily by the practical experience, and this applies to the various departments of business as well as to the works. it is the knowledge of the men and their mental make-up and attitude. a keen observer soon realizes that successful life in the machinery world will not come easily to any one who lacks a good understanding of others in the field. capacity for new ideas. the assimilating capacity of the industrial world is the real gauge of the progress which should be indulged in. this capacity to take in new ideas and to work by new methods is not the same in all beings, and it is not the same in all organizations. there are ways by which it may be measurably increased. new views are more readily digestible if presented by enthusiastic advocates, as this stimulates an interest. any attempt to forcibly inject new ideas only results in indigestion. the assimilating capacity of an industrial organization can be greatly increased by any scheme that awakens an interest. the controlling policies should include advance in efficiency and generally in the quality of work turned out, but this advance should not involve a break in the output. it mould be based on a knowledge of the whole business. in other words, it should not only pay in the long run, but if possible it should pay from the moment it goes into effect. we have said that all changes should be of the digestible kind, and the feeding process should not be a stuffing process; that the ingestion should not exceed the digestion. we have also briefly mentioned the importance of keeping the digestion tuned up to the best speed by having the organization in a condition to most readily take in changes. that we must make some allowance for inertia of thought and habit in all mortals goes without saying, but the exact amount to be allowed is very difficult to estimate. successful management depends on the degree with which a man can estimate the receptivity of other beings with whom he deals. this knowledge of receptivity should include the thought and action of men all the way from the unskilled worker to the directors, and also that of all men in other organizations in any way affected by his organization. just as food is more digestible if agreeable to the palate, so this receptivity or assimilating power may be increased by presenting new ideas and methods in agreeable form. a full realization of the effect of this inertia of thought and habit makes the great efficiency of specialization more comprehensible. it is this human side that is the key, and if we do not act in full accord with it we will probably be working against a great handicap. the inertia works two ways. it hurts a progressive man just as much to be tied to a work that requires no brainwork as it hurts a sleepy member to be disturbed by progressive talk. money not the only dividend. the major policies of management that should be known to the inventor are those which have been adopted to make the business pay. not necessarily to pay in dollars and cents today, but to pay in every sense, and in the long run, in dollars and in other things. it cannot pay in dollars if the other things are missing. by other things are meant good organization built on best conditions of mind and body for each of the beings included in the organization. on such things the stability of the organization depends. no matter how much the manager of a business may wish to run it for other things exclusively, or for dollars exclusively, he will find that one is not attained without the other. he is forced to run a business for the dollar if he wishes to make an ideal organization for each member of the human family included in it. and vice versa, he must work toward best conditions for all the workers if he wishes to protect the capital invested by making a stable and fairly long-lived organization. this statement is inserted here to clear away doubts as to the real value or necessity of "making a business pay," and to make it clear that no thought is to be tolerated of any scheme of management adverse to the real interest of the workers. the men selected for each of the various positions should be men who are fitted to fill these very positions. this does not mean mere physical and mental fitness; it means each position should be filled by one who wants it, one who knows he is "better off" in it than in any other place he can find. dissatisfied men are burdens. it is better to have each position filled by a man who is barely competent to fill it than to have it filled by a man who should have a much better position. of course, this is the ideal, and all moves should be made in this direction whenever it is possible. as a rule, it is easier to find men on this basis than to find men who are bigger than the office. this scheme leads to more promotions in the organization and has a stimulating effect on all concerned. right placing of men. the management's chief business should be to take man as he is found on earth and place each one where he will accomplish the best results for both the organization and himself. barring the disgruntled, the uncongenial and the habitually inattentive, almost all men may be and should be profitably employed, the prime requisite being reasonably close attention to business. the thoughts must not habitually wander away from the work. intrigue disappears when the management quits looking for it, and assures everybody, by the general method of conducting the business, that there will be no chance to oust this or that man. that each man will be retained in his place if he will but give reasonable application to the general interest of the organization and the particular work of his office. the management does not "manage" if it perpetually changes its men. it should bolster up the man who lacks self-confidence; it should puncture false ambitions, and it should use men as they are found in the organization. it should not be inclined to "go back on" a man who has blundered or who has been found lacking in understanding. it should not be over-ready to embrace a stranger just because his faults are not known. the financial hazard of a business enterprise is greatly minimized by using men as they are found, and properly placing them at work or in offices for which they are qualified. unimportant details. we can neither regulate the complexity of our environment nor the number of problems which we must settle within a given time. but we can improve the conditions very much by avoiding overconcentration on unimportant details. the brain's best time and energy should be reserved for our own immediate problems; it should not be hampered by details of others. the various officers of an industrial organization should know the ins and outs of the thinking machine on which they depend for guidance. with such knowledge each brain will give the greatest results, and without such knowledge the best brain may be untrustworthy. one of the important characteristics of the mind is its tendency to lose sight of everything except the subject in mind. one danger is dodged by jumping into another which we have not seen. both dangers were plainly in sight to any one who had not concentrated on one of them. in the regular every-day business life, we seem to have ample time to consider each problem. but in reality our great length of time is offset by a great number of elements to consider, and a more profound effect of long continued teaching or molding of our environment. for years engineers have concentrated energies on the steam-engine of the reciprocating type. the master-minds have made important improvements in the design, and many have given up their entire existence to the science of analyzing the effects of each variation in conditions of working the steam. our textbooks, our teaching, our observation all concentrated our attention on this type. for some reason gustav delaval, followed by c.a. parsons and nikola tesla, broke away from this spell, and we have the steam turbine engine. these individuals are endowed with master-minds, but the task of producing the turbines was probably no greater than the task of others in improving the reciprocating type. in one case a great step has been taken. in the other, we have an example of men of undoubted ability laboring hard for entire lifetimes with relatively small gain. this example applies to more than the inventors' world. it has many parallels in the cold business management of a manufactory and in any one of its departments. business management requires the same kind of reasoning and getting away from the spell of environment. but this phase we shall consider later under another head. the point to be brought out here is the effect of the spell of environment in magnifying the importance of existing views and methods, and the deceptive part this trusty brain plays in binding us to unnecessarily hard work. cure for mind wandering. the mind should not be allowed to wander, for wander it will if it is not rationally directed. it should be furnished with some interest, either in the form of study that is taken up out of working hours, and which can be permitted to occupy the mind while work of the habit kind is being done, or, if it is not a study, there should be some wholesome interest or pleasure. music to some furnishes this need. music heard in the home or elsewhere will sometimes occupy the mind during working hours when the work is of a monotonous character. in some instances music has been provided during a certain part of the day, just for this need of workers who are employed in an occupation that in itself furnishes no mental nourishment. but these extreme cases do not represent the vast majority. they apply only to the needs of the mind of those engaged in a work in which they can awaken no interest. nearly all kinds of work offer a chance for the average man to get interested directly in the work itself. such an interest soon bears fruit in the results as well as in the comfort of the worker, and it is this phase on which we must depend for making specialization comfortable and profitable to the worker. it is this phase that is wholly overlooked by those mentioned above who have seen or felt the joy of work that comes to one who rambles into a new field. we fail to see that the same kind of mental pleasure may be obtained while working along the natural and efficient lines of habit, and that in one case we have had pleasure at great expense of wasted energy, and in the other case we may have made a true progress for ourselves and others by moving along the rational way. the manager's view. the important duty of weighing up these various views devolves on the management, and its action should be in accordance with the complete and corrected view. it must consider the subject from a top viewpoint, and must then act. the manager keeps in mind that the machines must be built, purchased, and used by human beings, so he carefully studies their peculiarities. he knows that change of thought or habit requires time. in looking over the history of one of the companies engaged in machine building, we find that the cost of the labor has been lowered to about one-fifth of the original. in view of this and the fact that a very slight change in model sometimes involves a temporary increase in the cost of labor three-fold or more, we see good reason for reluctance in making changes, even though we know that two or three years later the labor cost may drop as low as that previous to the change in model. the inventor, the promoter, the salesman, and the oversanguine manager do not always foresee such things. the manager sees the enthusiasm with which the selling organization hails the new model. he realizes that they know the faults of the previous type, and he also knows that no one knows the faults of the new, but he lets it go. some enthusiasm must be had, even if it be dearly purchased. he knows there will be many a troublesome delay due to the newness, even if the whole scheme proves very much better than the previous type. this manager knows that his business success rests on the facility with which the machines are satisfactorily built, the readiness of the buyers, and, last but not least, the facility with which the product is used. the facility with which the product will be used, to his mind, is almost beyond overestimation. sub-division of work. the division of work into separate operations makes it possible to divide the subject into relatively small sub-problems. this division of the subject itself brings it within the capacity of the lesser brains and makes it very much easier for a brain of greater power. in other words, the subdivision of work makes places in which all mental equipments may be used. it is of no benefit to any one to keep the problems difficult by making each man think out a process for accomplishing each one of a great variety of operations, when the work may be so divided that it is only necessary for him to think of just one little part of the whole. and we should not befog the issue by saying that this is degrading. some of the greatest scientists that the world has known have concentrated attention to the smallest conceivable part of this world, pieces so small that the microscope alone revealed them to the eye. there is a chance for the thinker in most any of these places that have grown out of this process of finest subdivision of work. the hardship comes only when the mind cannot get interested in the work. in many cases this is undoubtedly due to a misfit, but in most cases it seems to be due to a false notion that there is nothing there of interest. the subdivision of work must go on. if hindered in any one plant, industry or nation more than in others, the result will be a loss to that one, and on the other hand, the one that carries it to the most efficient point will become the most powerful. this subdivision develops greatest dexterity and skill, as well as the keenest comprehension of the ways and means of attaining a given end. and this dexterity of operation is more easily carried on than is the fumbling uncertainty of the work of the more primitive type. care in applying new theories. the manual worker's energies are so absorbed in the physical tasks that he is annoyed by any suggestion to change his method. if he were given the position at a desk he would probably be interested in the progressive schemes for betterment of methods of work or management of business. bearing this state of affairs in mind, it behooves the progressive man to approach the problem of applying his theories in a very careful manner. he must realize that the men in various parts of the work are under stress of every day's requirements that makes it very difficult to intelligently take up any new scheme of procedure. many an ideal doctrine is a beautiful thing in theory but of little value if its introduction requires an immense but unavailable energy to put it into practise. he must realize that it is the doing of work that counts and that the men who are doing things must not be annoyed. all plans for betterment must conform to the assimilating power of the men and must not cut off their food in time of change. in other words, the new plans should be so matched on to the old methods that the change to the new will not interrupt the production. we have seen that the most efficient way to use man's energies is to allow him to follow habit lines of thought and action, and that the highest efficiency is reached when these habits are habits of concentration of attention and are restricted to the smallest variety of work. progressive energy. progressive energy is so valuable that it needs no praise at this time. we have had its value stated so often that it is actually over-rated in the average mind. not that it has been over-valued, but that the reiteration has obscured the importance of other qualities. there should be a greater appreciation of the value of energies that are wholly employed in accomplishing results by old means and methods. progressive energy, when it is kept within certain bounds, is a prime asset of an industrial organization. it is like a wholesome amount of labor to man; it may be drawn upon without loss, and its use actually strengthens its source. but when it is not wisely kept in control it only annoys and interferes with real progress and real accomplishment of results. the only way to get work done is to let the worker move along habit lines. the only way to progress efficiently is to make the new ways and means lead off gradually from those in use. the progressive man who actually directs work along such lines is the most valuable to the world. the one who ignores the "moment of inertia" is a disturber, whether he is a director or a "hewer of wood and carrier of water". the man who is doing the real work in the world is not the so-called progressive. he is one who points out newer or better methods which may be easily established by a gradual exchange of old habits for new ones. profit by experience. in considering ways and means for efficient management of industrial organizations, it is not necessary to commence at the beginning of each plant. the method of dealing with the problems of existing plants is also applicable to new organizations, for a new organization is only new in a limited sense. it uses men of experience. it uses existing machines and implements. it follows existing methods of conducting business and in the general management of its affairs. even the so-called new method which may be the center around which the so-called new business is built contains very little that is new. the newest things in the ordinary industrial world contain many old and well-known elements. the very use of a so-called new method or machine as a center around which to build an organization is in itself so old that it is a confirmed habit with us to be lured on to investing in such things by the statement that some new process or means is to be employed. a really new thing that calls for wholly new ways and new means for manufacture is almost inconceivable. the nearer we approach to newness in the industrial world the thinner becomes the ice on which we are moving. therefore, let us know that when we advise following habit lines in all moves in management of an existing organization we imply that the same course should be taken in establishing a new company or organization. in both cases we should employ existing ways and means, experienced men and well-tried implements. both old and new should be conducted along the usual line in conformity with the state of the art, the habits of the workers, and other conditions indigenous to the locality. any scheme of going contrary to the existing customs and usage must be entered into with full knowledge of the great need of patience, force and courage to offset the barrier of inertia. dissipation of energies. this tendency to dissipate energies by wandering into other fields is not confined to the worker; it is a most common tendency of business men. a manager of an industrial establishment has to continually combat his tendency to divert the energies of the organization along new lines. he knows from past experience how dearly bought is each new method that is introduced into his organization. he knows for example that it would make all of his men tardy at the plant in the morning if at the hour of arising he has issued a request for each man to dress by carefully thinking out each move. he knows that the day's work would never be well done if he asked each one to think before acting. even conversation comes under the law of habit. it must follow the line that has been carefully thought out. we all know that when a man talks on subjects with which he is not familiar his words carry little weight. the so-called spontaneous utterances that seem so full of life and are apparently the product of flashed thought are either the welling up of some subconscious ideas quickly reconstructed to fit the situation or they are a haphazard jumble either meaningless or conveying an unintended impression. they are generally in the humorous line and frequently make an impression that was not anticipated by the utterer. the really useful talk and work is the result of wholesome habit of thought and action. tying up capital in stock in process of construction. the amount of capital tied up in raw material supplies, stock in process and finished product should not be greater than that which is necessary to get the greatest output per dollar of investment. in the machinery-building world there is no such thing as a steady long-lived demand for any machine. hence the proposition to build a locomotive or printing-press by methods employed in watch or sewing-machine manufacture is entirely ill-timed at least. for this reason the stock in process must not necessarily be considered insufficient if it appears to be on the hand-to-mouth plan. the dividing line between excessive and insufficient stock must be drawn in each individual case. raw material should be purchased in reasonable quantities with due regard to the price which varies with quantities but there should always be a regard for the amount of capital used for this purpose. any excess represents just that much extra capital unnecessarily risked in the business. there should be a constant supply of material throughout the entire work. the stock in process should flow through the plant in a rapid but thin stream. the quantity should be no greater than absolutely necessary to insure a steady supply for all of the workers, including the assembling and selling workers. an excessive stock of this or that piece, or of all pieces, means that much capital idle, and it also tends to slackness of management. frequently it is the outcome of carelessness. a slip-shod management that disregards this point will use no care in purchase of material or in putting in the shop orders. all that is needed is to just hurry forward the stock that "happens" to be "out", and at the same time allow the accumulation of the unneeded stock to go on unchecked. immense storerooms for keeping finished stock are shown with pride, unmindful of the fact that every dollar's worth of unnecessary stock on the shelves in the stockroom, every dollar's worth of unnecessary work in the plant, represents idle money and faulty management. if this money is to be retained in the business, the system should be changed so that the money will be put where it will bring the best return. the excessive stock in process is sometimes an outcome of blind progressiveness--the blindness that fails to see that there is as much money tied up in stock in process and in finished product as there is in the entire machinery equipment. an adaptable equipment facilitates keeping down the amount tied up in stock in process. the modern plant should take advantage of these modern methods and machines which tend toward profitable use of capital. such machines are highly developed and true to the controlling ideal of adaptability and largest output per dollar of investment. cost of the product. the practice of disregarding the profit, when considering changes in machine equipment, is the natural outgrowth of the separation of the mechanical and the business departments. the changes in the equipment are usually determined by the mechanical department, and this is done with particular regard for the quality of work and the cost per piece. the relation between the profit and the net labor cost is not considered. the cost of the product of the average machinery-building plant may be divided into three nearly equal parts: the material, the labor, and the burden; or, in four equal parts, if a reasonable interest charge is made for the use of the capital invested. the material is the iron, steel and other material that enters into the construction of the machine, and it is taken in the condition in which it usually comes to the machine shop. the burden includes all expenses and salaries necessary for the maintenance of the business. about one-half the amount paid for labor goes to the men who run the machine tools, and the other half is paid to workmen who do the other work, such as handwork, assembling, transporting, etc. therefore, the cost of machining is either one-sixth or one-eighth of the total cost. on top of the net cost of the product there should be a profit. if it is not there, the sooner something happens the better. if it is there, then it is proportioned to the volume of the output. therefore, both the size of the output and the labor cost should be kept in mind. the size of the profit per unit of output is not generally known to the mechanical departments. but even if it is not known, there is no reason for their being uninformed as to the importance of large output for cost of the plant. largest profit per dollar invested. one of the most satisfactory policies of management is that which tends toward getting the best return or profit per dollar of investment. we shall not refer to the quality of the product, the design, or any other elements which affect the good name and standing of the business, for it goes without saying that no business can be maintained where these are disregarded. the point to be brought out here is that, these thing being equal, the best scheme of management for profit is one that puts the capital where it will do the most good. the above statement is one with which all will agree, but strangely enough there has been a tendency to tie up capital in ways that actually throttle the output of the entire business. furthermore, this is frequently done by increasing the portion of the investment that is irrevocably tied to the existing product, thus not only reducing the earning power of each dollar invested, but also increasing the hazard by tying the capital to the present product, which soon may be unsuited to the market demand. one of the most common errors in this respect is the one that regards the reduction of the labor cost as the paramount consideration. reduction in labor cost has been the war-cry. the pay-roll has been talked about so much that it has seemed to become the whole thing. a man who declares that the labor cost per piece is not the most important element is at once branded as an advocate of old-fashioned methods. it is needless to give assurance that there is no intention to disregard the labor cost. the net cost per piece is a very important element, but it should neither eclipse the question of profit per dollar invested, nor the risk of the capital tied up. what is the gain if the means for reduction of the net labor cost reduces the profit more than the saving in labor? if doing so results in an actual loss of profit, why is it done? we can readily see that the overhopeful managers may disregard the risk of the money invested, but we cannot see why the relative importance, or rather unimportance, of the labor cost should be so disregarded. the machine tools in a plant usually determine its character. this character is not one that can be quickly changed, but every addition to the equipment does change it for better or worse. usually the installation of a new machine is hailed as a progressive move, just because the new machine works better than the old, but its effect may be very bad. it may be changing the character of the plant adversely to the interests of all concerned. therefore, the controlling spirit should see to it that each move is made on a basis that is economically sound. it is in these changes that the scheme of management has a chance to make a great difference in the earning power of the entire business. if too large a proportion of the total available capital is tied up in the machine equipment, the business is handicapped. there is a right amount which bears a certain relation to the total required to carry on the enterprise. with a given amount of capital for machine equipment, the output of the plant will be seriously throttled if the net cost of labor per piece machined is allowed to become the controlling element. the workers help bring success. the inventor, the officers, and mayhap the foreman, taken all together, do not and cannot make a successful machine or business without this supplemental work or ideas that come from actual work of all workers. this new kind of knowledge should not take away a man's courage; on the contrary, it should give him a true sense of value of existing, "going" things. with this knowledge he can confidently and earnestly push a machine that is the product of a good organization. he will know the great value of much experience and practise of each of the many men in the organization. he will neither kill the business by half-hearted indorsement, nor increase the hazard of investment by urging this or that modification. nor will he advocate this or that machine being added to a line that is already too great. the invention, the general organization, the proper direction of the business, are essential to success. but without that organization which is only obtained by actual, thoughtful experience of the men who do things, all the knowledge and industry of the leaders are utterly useless. this knowledge produces a new kind of confidence that has greater faith in the existing and running things than in the claims for something that has not had the development of practice. it is the confidence that knows that the right fundamental ideas and the policy of "sticking to one thing" will accomplish the best results. this is not a doctrine of optimism that holds there is no inferior machine. the "best" implies the existence of the inferior. in nearly all lines there are many grades from the best to the worst, but the loss of faith in the relative value of a machine is most commonly due to a lack of full knowledge of the other types, and it is this kind of loss of courage, confidence, or whatever it may be, that this chapter is intended to offset. have faith in your products. what has been said regarding the optimist, the pessimist, and the vacillating man, from the designing and manufacturing point of view of a machine business, applies with equal force to the business organization. the business is pushed forward by men who have confidence in the project and in the product. if these men lose their faith in their own business, they not only lose their usefulness as pushers and managers, but they become drags on the industry, and remain so until restored to normality. the hazard of investment is greatly increased by such conditions. instances without number have been observed in which men who have been successful have become unsuccessful through loss of confidence due to acquiring the "dangerous half-knowledge." the man who has acquired the dangerous half-knowledge should take a post graduate course in some institution where men are treated by all the most powerful agencies known to science. there may be no institutions of this kind in existence, but the great need will doubtless bring the establishment of many. the men who have lost faith in their own machinery should be told that no company can survive the effects of weak-kneed advocates. any company is better for a certain amount of aggressive competition. any company can stand more or less opposition from its friends the enemy, but no company can continue to exist under the blighting effects of the men who have lost this confidence in them or their product. the post graduate course for restoration of the near-wise man should include educational means of all kinds. the means should be especially adapted to the need of each student or patient. there might be a phonograph in each room, which should work all night and all day. this machine should repeat over and over a few short sentences like the following: "the only perfect machine is the one you do not know." "study the machines offered by your competitors, just to get the same degree of knowledge of the 'other' machines--not for the purpose of slandering or even mentioning--but just to restore your confidence in the relative value of your own machine." "don't try to get back your belief that your own machine is perfect--that has gone forever--only look at the other machines and learn that your own is the best." this kind of confidence will not be exuberant, but it will have marked efficiency in the cold gray world in which you are to again try your strength. specialization. we find that in keeping with the trend toward specialization, the machine shop is now manned and directed by specialists, whose close application to the technical science of their respective specialties has in a degree obscured other elements with which their interests should be coordinated. among these we generally find the so-called human element. this feature of specialization, which is the natural result of concentration and undivided attention to the work in hand, has entailed a string of consequences that has lessened the spirit of fellowship and co-operation. the workman in the old machine shop was known as a machinist, an apprentice or a helper. the machinist trade required skill at bench, vise and forge, and in the operation of the lathe and planer. it also required a general knowledge and resourcefulness which enabled the machinist to make good with the meager facilities. the large specialized shop of today was not known. today the machine shop is filled with a variety of machines which have grown out of the original types. each shop's equipment is selected to serve the needs of that shop, and since each shop has a special purpose, its equipment seldom includes the full range of machine-shop machinery. today the work flows through the machine shop in lots of large numbers of pieces of a kind, and each machine, as well as each worker, is kept at one kind of work and usually at one simple operation. the worker in the machine shop of today is no longer known as a machinist, because that term does not cover the present range of positions. even the term "all-round machinist" is no longer satisfactory. specialization has made so many divisions in the work that it has resulted in developing men for special branches, so that today we have relatively few men who can skillfully operate for instance the engine lathe and planer. even if there are those who ever had that ability, most of them have lost it through disuse. the workers are now designated by many names indicating their special work. the all-embracing term machine shop is divided into departments for drafting, designing, accounting, production, flow of work control, cost accounting and many other divisions. each calls for executives and workers having special titles. the subdivision of work has resulted in each executive and worker acquiring a high degree of ability and skill for work of his kind, and it keeps each one doing the highest class of work for which he is qualified so that his time is not wasted in the simpler operations which can be performed by men of lesser ability. we can readily see the economic gain that accrues when the worker becomes more efficient; first, though the greater skill acquired as a result of fewer operations to perform, and second, through the use of the highly developed special machines, for then he is able to produce a greater value for a given expenditure of effort. we can also see the gain that results from specialization by the executives, for each one's attention is concentrated to the management of a smaller range of work; but the average mortal has not yet reached the point of accepting the fact that to some extent there should be a division between mental and physical tasks. it is needless to say that no one in these days would suggest even a possibility of a general division of the work along the line between the abilities of the brain and hand and in these days of construction and operation of intricate mechanisms like electric and telephone instruments and machinery, aeroplane, automobiles, railroad machinery, machine shop machinery, army and navy machinery, from the smallest instrument and small arms to the big machines like the battleship. the need of the man in whom is combined the ability of brain and hand transcends any possibility of our meeting the demand. but specialization does require both kinds of division. the one that divides along the line between mental and physical tasks provides great opportunities for those men who have special ability at either the mental or physical tasks. it is undoubtedly true that the greatest achievements have been attained by those who have been unable to combine the great mental and physical ability. such men by nature and preference are most fitted and most comfortable in the positions in which there is a greater proportion of use for either the brains or fingers. every student of this subject early recognizes that the man at the physical task should not be unnecessarily distracted by the vexing problems of planning and directing the work. in some way this does not seem to fit a democracy, but rather seems to lead toward autocracy. however, let us keep in mind that specialization is essential, not only at each physical task, but at the tasks at which there may be expended a combination of the mental and physical, and also at those tasks that are wholly mental, and that a division should be made to get the best results from the whole organization. while it may seem autocratic to leave to one group the determination of the methods of work, and to another the task of doing the work, the fact remains that this is an element of specialization. that which seems so objectionable to a man with an alert mind, is not so objectionable when he realizes that many men of the highest type are happiest when given a chance to work out tasks unembarrassed by problems of procedure. while this has been one of the great tragedies of industrial life, when square pegs have been put in round holes, it is one of the most important questions that an engineer has to consider. the human view will make us all labor towards the complete elimination of degrading tasks, by changing machinery and processes so as to fit the various types of men available. through it all, we must see to it, that our scheme of work is true to the fundamental law of specialization, and that we recognize that there must be some division between the physical and mental tasks, and that this does not necessarily lead away from democracy. in fact, we must recognize there are two extremes. at one extreme we find the ideal of a highly specialized organization in which the greatest value in quality of work and quantity of output is possible through a complete co-ordination of the work of all types of men, each at his own kind of work, in which each can excel; and the other extreme in which we find a general disorganization which returns us to the primitive condition in which man's energies were most inefficiently used. such a state is the natural result of anarchy, and it is a state that would leave this or any other country an easy prey to a country in which specialization existed. one means team work of great wealth-producing capacity, and the other a state in which the struggle for mere existence would be severe. the salvation of the world will be worked out if there is at least one well disposed nation that stands firmly for specialized industrial organizations. this will result in both industrial and military supremacy--for it is now well known that military supremacy cannot exist without the highest types of machinery building shops. such a nation could dominate all others and could ultimately check the disorganizing activities of the well-intentioned but shortsighted reformers. the higher form fits our highest civilization and national security, and the other is a direct step toward chaos. nevertheless there is almost a stampede of sentiment against specialization and its product--the large industrial organization. this stampede has taken many of our otherwise well informed people, and now we are seeing its extreme effect in the iconoclastic fever that is raging in russia and elsewhere. we know that the individual, the industry or the nation that specializes will produce the greatest results with a given expenditure of energy, and we know that all this plan of specialization requires a co-ordination of the work of all. there should be brought about through specialization the highest degree of ability on the part of the executive officers, as well as the highest skill of the workers, and each man should have the satisfaction of knowing that no one on the face of the globe can excel him at his specialty, and furthermore that his energies are expended in the best way to produce value. many men have already realized this ideal. many industrial organizations have also attained it in a very high degree, and while there was a trend of some of the nations toward specialization before the war, there was developed in america a spirit of antagonism toward the large units that had grown up as a result of this specialization. not that specialization was objectionable, but that industrial supremacy of an organization was thought to be a distinct menace. since it is in these specialized industries that the individual should find his best opportunity to produce the greatest wealth for a given expenditure of effort, such organizations should be maintained and all others should be gradually changed over so as to make the most economical use of the man power of the nation. we have found by experience that industrial organizations are successful if they specialize. we have handed down to us the saying that "the jack of all trades is master of none". our brains accept these statements, we recognize them as facts, but owing to one of the irrational traits of the human being, it is one thing to believe and another to practice. it is one thing to superficially know that it is important for us to specialize as individuals, and it is quite another matter to bring ourselves to act in conformity with this fundamental law. the great economic gain or advantage possessed by the ford company, and many of the other companies in this country, is not due to the fact that they have selected a wonderful model that is superior to others in every way, but it is based on the fact that specialization makes it possible for the various officers and workers to become the foremost men in their respective offices. specialization of an industry becomes effective only when each man continues at a given job or work. shifting men about the plant is harmful, excepting in so far as it may be good to promote men from position to position to fit the development of the men and the industry. the plant can be wrecked by changing men from position to position without changing the product. it can also be, wrecked by changing the form of its product in fact any change, whether it is a change of the product or a change of the men, which interferes with the continuity of operation of a man along habit lines is an economic loss to that organization. we have stated that each man should specialize in order to produce the greatest value for a given expenditure of energy--that specialization of the industries is necessary. that each man has some special knowledge that fits his environment. that the skilled worker has a special knowledge for his duties. we have pointed out the need of a closer relationship between the specialists. that they are all interdependent and must cooperate. in setting forth the importance of the worker we must remember the equal importance of every other member of a well-balanced industry. lay directors and even lay chief officers are not necessarily a menace or even burdens, if they have a fair conception of human nature and the importance of each element in an organization, and the full necessity of coordination of all. they should know, however, that every man should be paid first in cash and second in honor, appreciation, esteem, good will inspiration, commendation for his good work and good qualities, careful consideration of his troubles and a genuine knowledge that his interests are being justly considered. invention the following chapter is given in its original form as a lecture to the engineering society of the stevens institute of technology. its value in furnishing a side-light on the subject of habit, to which the preceding chapters have been more directly applicable, lies in its emphasis on the importance of the inventor (or designer, if you prefer) having clearly before him at all times the effect of habits of thought and action both in himself and in all others. these modes must be both conserved and combated in himself when building up favorable mental state. he must build on habit in order to have his mind continue in its application to a chosen subject, and he must combat any tendency to follow habit lines of thought that may have been established by observation of the older forms or methods. his inventions must be of a kind that will be readily made, sold, and used by men whose habits of thought and action he cannot readily change. this should be of value not only to the designer, but also to those who direct or co-operate with him. in designing the parts of a machine, the need of trimming here and there, of giving up this or that ideal form just to get things together, must be seen and done unflinchingly. and in the same way the whole scheme must be made to conform to the economic conditions. if the machine under consideration is like a machine tool, and is to be offered for sale, then the manufacturing, selling, and use must be taken into account. in machine-tool design a wholly new invention is an exceedingly rare thing, and a successful new machine is still more rare. we must remember our own tendency to follow precedent, and we must make an effort to see the problem in its natural form without being misled by the solutions evolved by others. be practical. the toughened idealist may not look or act like an idealist, but in reality his idealism is one of the practically-wise construction. he allows his memory to hold all that is helpful of the past, both of the blunders or successes. the dreamer who has been toughened by experience is one who lets his rational brain have control. he ranks next to the stalwart knight of the eraser, because he has the courage to arrest the endless tinkering of design in order to get something done. he will not let the family freeze while he is thinking up some grand scheme of sawing and splitting wood by magic. a most cursory glance at the machinery in use in the world will show that the work has been done by imperfect machines. a study of the design of any machine brings out the innumerable shortcomings. if we see a machine that seems perfect, it is perfectly safe to set it down in black and white that we do not fully comprehend it. it is safe to say that the only perfect machine is the new model that is to be tried very soon. with these facts in mind it does not require very much courage to go ahead with an imperfect design, but unfortunately these thoughts will not stay in the mind of the average designer. they are crowded out by the flood of ideas for still further betterment. that is why it is just to give high rank to the man who had courage to go ahead and build, even when he realized the faults of a design. perhaps one of the aids to this action is the knowledge that the apparent opportunity to improve a design may only be apparent. in reality the change is only a change, and is no betterment, a very common outcome of such ideas. the knowledge of the great array of failures of such "improvements" is wholesome and helpful to bear in mind. the inventor sees opportunities to improve. the inventor, from his point of view, sees the great need and opportunity to improve the design of the machine being manufactured. he sees that the big machines are nothing but enlarged editions of the early and smaller ones. he knows that with a change of size there should be a change of design. he knows that although a granite rock weighing a few tons will not be kept suspended in air by a heavy wind, a small part of the same rock will be carried away by a breeze, and may be kept suspended by a very slight current of air. he knows that the small particle of granite has a greater superficial area in proportion to its weight. he sees on every hand that a change of dimensions frequently entails a change of design. he also sees the opportunity to effect a great saving by building the large machine for its special service, and not on the exact lines of the smallest model. the failure of the management to adopt his plans seems nothing less than unreasonableness to the inventor, for like other mortals he is a trifle slow at grasping the fact that no two beings have exactly the same point of view or the same quality of sight. another inventor sees a chance to make further improvements and he is disturbed because there is a ban on changes. he feels that the mechanical success of his previous work should be a sufficient guarantee of the economic advantage of the last proposed plan. if an attempt is made to show him that the ban on changes is absolutely necessary from an economic point of view, it is found that the reasoning does not get the same reaction in his mind as in that of the manager. to him the great advance of the new scheme fully warrants the temporary expense. improvements may be disasterous. improvements should be sparingly made. any improvement that requires a change in construction or operation may be disasterous financially. this may all seem extremely pessimistic. but it is only seemingly so. experience shows it to be the true view. if it is true, then the machine designer should know it. a mere knowledge of mechanism is insufficient for him. a large business experience cannot be purchased, and his success should not be contingent on the business ability of another. he should know how a machine should be designed, and should not depend too heavily on the views of the business men who have not a clear knowledge of the technical problem. perhaps some of you may feel that there are many other problems to be encountered before you will meet these which i have set forth. but we should remember that the mind holds some of such impressions a very long time. it holds them below the threshold of conscious thought, and under ideal working conditions it brings them above it when they are needed. if you have caught my meaning you will not be weakened in enthusiasm for new work, but you will be protected in a measure against some of the reaction due to disappointment. there is a great field for earnest workers, and it is easy to become one by working on the lines set forth. natural fitness. one of the first questions that arises in the mind of one who intends to undertake machine design is, what constitutes natural fitness for it. there seems to be no positive basis on which to determine in advance a natural fitness for this work, but there are certain temperamental characteristics that undoubtedly have much to do with the success. the temperament should be one favorable to continuity of thought along a given line, as well as one that will by nature take an intense interest in the subject. if these characteristics are missing, it may be due more to the distracting interests that in these days crowd in upon the mind, than to a lack of natural aptitude. the absorbing interest, however, is essential, and it may be developed by conforming to well-known principles of orthodox psychology. self-torture or hard driving is not nearly as helpful as a strong inner purpose to keep the chosen subject in the real center of conscious thought. the subject that comes to mind when there is a lull in the outside demands on the attention, or one that is insistent on taking possession of the mind, even when other matters are objectively more in evidence,--that subject is the one that holds the center of the inner attention. that is the controlling idea or purpose. ordinarily, it is some diversion; occasionally, the haunting bugbear of some unfinished work or obligation. if the mind is dominated by such ideas or any other than the real problem in hand, the individual is seriously handicapped. when a problem of machine design is undertaken, the mind must make it the real center of attraction. to one having an average endowment for such work, this is not a difficult task, but to get the best results it should be rightly undertaken. repeated thinking. a chosen subject is brought, with some lasting effect, to the center of attention by repeatedly bringing it into the mind at the moments of lull in the pressure of other affairs. the astronomers wait for the moment of best seeing, and the designer must wait for the actual psychological moment. the best seeing condition for the astronomer is due in a small measure to his own physical condition, and in a large measure to atmospheric conditions, but the most opportune time for clear-headed vision of the designer is due mostly to his own physical and mental condition. probably no two men have their minds equally affected by their environment or their physical condition, but the fact that there is a most favorable time and condition for such thought and work should continually be borne in mind. without this a man with natural endowment may try his wings at flight at an inopportune time, and if he fails he may be firmly convinced that he was never made for flying. this undoubtedly applies equally well to other kinds of work. it may not be strictly true of a perfectly normal man (if there be such a creature), but it is truly applicable to many workers in this and similar kinds of work. this phase is mentioned in order to make clear, not only how a designer should work, but the thought that should be kept uppermost in the mind of one who is trying to do this work. the physical condition is more or less dependent on the mood, and to a great extent the mood is dependent on the condition of the body. the strenuous gait is seldom the best, and, of course, the extremely indifferent one is of little value. the best for the average man is one born of a quiet environment, with mind and body in a fairly restful condition, or still better, in a rested and fresh condition. concentrating attention. the quiet end of the day is almost as good for clear thinking as the early morning, especially if the day has not been overstrenuous and the activities have been gradually tapered off. there are many instances that would seem to show that the strenuous gait is the best, but nearly all of these evidences are questionable. when finally simmered down, the good work done under high pressure is frequently due to latent ideas that were the product of quiet thinking. the mood and the dominant idea may be predicated as necessary. as already stated, the habit of thought most favorable for the persistence of a single group of ideas is attained by the practice of switching the attention back to the desired subject. this should be done at the opportune time. the subject should not be forced on a tired mind. it should not be taken in as a painful duty, but it should be made the one thing of interest. really valuable results can only come along the line of the dominant thought. all other work lacks directness. it follows precedent to an unnecessary extent. interest must be awakened, not forced. another way of saying all this is that the designer must get interested in the particular problem, and he must have an interest that crowds out all other thoughts, even thoughts of similar work. it is useless, however, to say, "get interested in the work," unless we suggest a way to awaken interest. surely, we know that interest does not come at mere bidding, and that it cannot be forced by hard work. but it can be induced by an easy process in a normal being, providing he has not already too firmly established a set of habit thoughts of another kind. the normal being, by persistent intention, can establish the desired thought habits by returning the preferred group of ideas to mind. interest is awakened by this comparatively easy process, and when a genuine interest exists, the actual work follows as a natural result, and it is a pleasure instead of a drudgery. this is not intended as preaching in any sense; but only to bring to mind facts known to all, with the view of implanting these facts in the mind of the machine designer. some designers have done excellent work with no thought of psychological problems. but in this more strenuous age it seems best to take advantage of every aid to the desired end. the intricacy of mechanism has reached such a state that new designers are almost overwhelmed with the mere thought of trying to comprehend the existing machines. but with the advance of the world of machinery, there has been a better comprehension of the working of the "thinking machine", and we must take advantage of this knowledge in order to win out. it is particularly needful now to study its most efficient use. we are getting to the point where mental energy saving methods should be used. it is not necessary to go beyond the bounds of orthodox science for schemes for getting the best results from a given mind. we have known for centuries that men tend to habits of thought as well as action,--that thought habits are like ruts, and these are encountered wherever the mind travels, and these ruts bring the mind back to a certain central group or community of groups of ideas. establishing useful ruts. the real secret of success is in establishing ruts of a useful kind, ruts with switches that may be operated by the mind at will, or that work automatically when the mind would otherwise wander. since even fleeting thoughts are germs of acts, it takes no great effort or self-torture if we will but understand the processes and smoke out the undesirable germs, and allow and encourage the growth of the preferred groups of thoughts. this may be called a lazy man's way of doing things, but it is the way to conserve the mental and physical energy, and it gets results. in saying that the problems of the work in hand should come automatically and agreeably into the mind when there is a lull in the impressions being made by other things, it is not the intention to convey the meaning that one must have no other interests. the mind gets its clearest view by the scheme already mentioned for creating interest, viz., by repeatedly bringing it back to the subject whenever it is found wandering. the best view for invention is that which reveals the most natural way for accomplishing the purpose for which the machine is wanted. it should not be born of precedent. it should not follow the lines thought out by other designers. it readily discovers the obsolete features in existing machines, features that were required in other days but have no use now. such things remain there just because later designers have followed blindly. all designers follow more or less. we have shown the great need of following the set habits of users, but we should make a distinct attempt to get back to nature; that is, to see just what is best for the purpose, and to get the most direct and natural means. if this is too much of a task, just hunt for the obsolete features. above all things, we must not try to follow another's work. we too often follow unwittingly and to our misfortune even when we try to keep out of the rut. machine designers who have done original work will tell us that it is easier to do good work by striking out on new lines than it is to follow the work of others, or even to tinker over some of their own inventions of other years. it requires more ability to take up the work of another and change it, than to start out in some original scheme. the machine builder knows that the success of any machine depends on the clear-sightedness of his designer and the oneness of purpose of all the heads of all the departments devoted to the construction, sale, and oversight of the running machines in the hands of the users. and last but not least, in these days of supremacy of specialization, he knows that success comes only to the largest group of men organized for this particular kind of work. all men are human beings. one of the first things we learn in the works or office is that all men are really human beings. the second one is that the meanest one is only so because of certain physical or mental conditions that are the direct result of natural law. usually it is not necessary to drag in heredity, for we find ample cause in his environment, within our range of vision. as a rule, a good understanding of men insures a wholesome regard for them, while failure to understand the other fellow (or the equivalent, the failure of the other fellow to understand us) may bring out many things that make us feel that he is not one whose feelings or interests should be considered. to any one that has had experience in the shop and a fairly well-rounded business and financial experience in this particular field of work, the other fellow is invariably a good fellow whenever there is a chance for a fairly complete understanding. if we can accept this statement tentatively, and follow it up by a determined purpose to actually feel it, then we have obtained something by the royal process that would have otherwise required much time and perhaps some unpleasant experiences. this knowledge is essential to success in designing machinery. true, many have been successful with a very different attitude, but engineers of the future must see to it that as many of the phases are as favorable as can be made so. regarding the absorption of the knowledge of working mechanism in the works this is greatly facilitated by a wholesome relationship with other workers, and it is greatly handicapped without it. therefore, it is one of the cardinal points for the machine designer to get thoroughly acquainted with others in the work so as to know their likes and dislikes, as well as the mechanical needs. the favorable features in machine designs are: directness of mechanism for the purpose; its simplicity and its efficiency; its adaptability to the habit of thought and action of makers and users. the obstacles to its success are any of the features it may have that cannot be readily comprehended by those who are to build, sell, buy, and use these devices. it is of little value for real success for a machine to be one that is readily understood by a draftsman or manager, or that it is one that may be made to perform wonders in the hands of a skilled expert. the real economic success depends on the number of machines that will be used. the number of machines that will be used depends on the readiness with which the real workers take hold and manipulate the machine. to get a true conception of the value of a machine, it is necessary to look at the showing of a business engaged in its manufacture. in estimating the value of a machine-building business for this purpose it is customary to speak of its "good will." easiest way to improve. inventions of complete novelty and of great economic value have attained success going in opposition to this principle of conformity to the habit of the world. but the easiest way is to direct improvements and inventions along lines that are the most readily assimilated by the minds of the beings to be considered, and this may be said to be one of the master-keys to economic success. the work of building the first model of a new machine may be under the direct supervision of the inventor, and if only one machine is to be made, the inventor can follow it wherever it is used. by patience and industry he may instruct some one in the use of it, but in these days there is no chance for a great economic success in making just one machine, or in fact any machine for which there is not a large market. hence, we will confine our attention to machines made in such large quantities that the complete supervision of manufacture, sale, and use is beyond the capacity of one person. for all such machinery the design must more or less conform to the thought and habits of work of all concerned. some of the most direct designs have failed to meet with success just because the inventor did things in an unusual way. the unusual way is a blind way, and is difficult to find. in some instances it amounts to no way at all, for it is never used. if a radical change in design is to be made, the new machine should be one that will be the most readily understood. obscure parts or unusual means should be avoided. if moving parts must be covered, some way should be provided for convenient observation. it is the obscure departure that is the most troublesome, and it is the obvious thing that offers the least resistance to progress. there is a chance to progress by obvious devices, and such progress is enjoyed by all, from the makers to the users. it stimulates their weak but wholesome appetite for progress. technical view insufficient. but whether the clear view of the designer is due to peculiar fitness for seeing such things, or to proper application, the fact remains that this clear view of the technical side is insufficient in itself. the man with the clear view must also realize that others do not get the same view. he must know that the mind automatically takes in things of interest to it and wards off others. even when the individual apparently tries to comprehend something in which he has no special interest, it only results in a superficial mental impression, one that has no appreciable effect on the actions. this failure of mankind in general to grasp the advantages of a new mechanism as it appears on paper is only a slight part of the troubles to be encountered by a progressive designer. he has to contend with habits of thought and action of all the human beings affected by the new machine. this includes the entire group of men in the manufacturing plant in which the machine must be made, the business organization both in this plant and the one in which it is to be used, and, after all this, the greatest obstacle of this kind is to be met in the man who uses the machine. for it is in his hands that a machine must prove its value. when we consider the inertia of mind and body, it is truly marvelous that there has been any progress in machine design. in fact, if the machine-building trade were in retrogression, with only a few new men being taken in there would be little or no excuse for making machine tools of new design. the older workers would get along about as well without the improved machines. this is not said in a spirit of fault finding. it is a great fact that we should grasp if we are to design machinery successfully. it is difficult for the man of sanguine temperament to really accept this view, and it is also hard for one who is continually searching for knowledge. but it must be appreciated, and all work must conform to this principle, if it is to be pushed forward along the lines of easiest progress. accepting this view is no barrier to progress. it will not ultimately delay the work of a reformer if he is induced to act in accordance with this principle. it only prevents a wreck. the knowledge of the force of habit of man should therefore be used in two ways: first, when the designer is trying to make the most natural machine for the purpose. then he must overcome his own tendency to follow precedent. second, when considering the kind of a machine that can be easily made, sold, and used, he must give due consideration to the inertia of others, for their inertia he cannot hope to quickly change. reformers in this world generally have a hard time whenever they under estimate the inertia of men's minds and bodies. a designer of machinery, by close application to his tasks, should obtain a clearer view than it is possible for others to possess, of the way a machine should be designed, made, and used. it is not necessary to assume he has a better brain. an ordinary mind applied to a given subject sees it more clearly than an abler mind which has not considered the subject with the right interest. inventions should not mix with details. in first working out the mechanical schemes no energy should be wasted in trying to make the sketches correct in proportion. the very functioning of the brain along the draftsman's line shifts it away from the inventive mood. the exact drawing frequently shows the necessity of change in general scheme, but that is only one of the after-steps. the fundamental idea is the starting-point, and must be sketched out as fully as possible without losing the very frail thread of thought. a clear view of the scheme is not to be obtained on demand. the schemer must wait in patience, as the astronomer waits for steady air, and, like the astronomer, he must have every facility in shipshape. the clear view is only clear to the watching eye. the coast-wise skipper in making a fog-bound harbor will see a buoy through a slight shift in fog, while a landsman might look in vain. the wanderer in the happy dreamland of mechanical scheming must not be looking for complete drawings, specifications, and working model of the invention he wishes to bring into the breathless and waiting world. he must be looking through the mist of the thickened senses as the skipper looks through the fog. the buoy and the scheme may be never so faintly shown, but yet with sufficient clearness to give a positive guide for the course. inventive schemes cannot be forced by strenuous effort. such effort may result in slight refinements of a given type, but never would have invented the delaval or tesla turbine. it is not my purpose to belittle the great work that has been done in improving existing machines, for this, after all, is the real great work that must be done. it is the work to which the world owes its greatest debt for progress in material wealth. furthermore, it is a phase that must be considered in connection with every invention before that invention can become of value to any one. but just now we must consider how the inventor must work while dreaming out the fundamental ideas of a mechanical scheme. the clear view of a mechanical scheme is more likely to come after a good night's rest, particularly if the schemer has retired with the problem in mind. there are times when invention comes under severe stress, hard physical work, and mental anxiety, but the most usual time is after a sleep which refreshed mind and body. after this the inventor brings his scheme to the drafting board, to patent office, to factory, and to the market, and in each case he encounters barriers. designing by the square foot. the ordinary work of machine design, in which well-known parts are grouped to accomplish a given end, without much thought of attaining anything approaching the best,--such designing is like painting a fence, so many square feet of paper should be covered per day. but the real higher type of work cannot be measured in this way. it requires the forethought, the close application, the keen interest, and the comfortable idea building. designing by the square foot is, however, a good preparation, and many a good brain has been developed by such work. the importance of designing a machine to meet all the conditions necessary to success from a mechanical and business standpoint is fully recognized by every one. but the grouping of the ideas in the mind while working out the various phases must not be hampered by the bewildering picture of all of these problems, each demanding consideration at every move. the phase in hand must have the concentrated attention, and the best conditions for its solution. the harmonizing is an after-process which must be worked out by a series of compromises after the various component elements have been almost independently considered. problems to consider. in taking up the problems of design of a machine, there will be found an almost endless number of elements to consider. the strictly mechanical problem of the best machine for the purpose never stands alone. what is the measure of the best machine? how much can be spent on its design and construction? how much work is to be done? an endless variety of questions at once crowd into the mind for answer. it is doubtful if all the elements could ever be tabulated in any form that would be a positive guide in shaping the final result, but in a general way the designer should make a fairly good guess at the kind of standard toward which he should work. there are, doubtless, men capable of carefully weighing the almost infinite number of variants, but such men usually lack the intuitive scheme of work, on which the inventive side of a designer depends. for the ordinary mortal the best process of working is to keep a vague picture of the whole requirement in mind while concentrating on some one phase. when the inventive qualities are to be called into use, the economic side, the business side, the manufacturing, the selling, the personal profit in cash or glory, all these must be absolutely crowded out of the center of the mental picture. even fleeting thoughts of other elements seem to prevent the inventive functioning of the mind. in like manner the problems of manufacturing, selling, patents, business organization, must each be given a separate consideration. the interval between taking up the various questions should be as wide as possible. the mind seems to require a previous notice of days or weeks or more in order to take up any one of these problems, at least, with any hope of success. the hero of the eraser. the drafting board may show that no such arrangement of parts can ever be made, that the whole scheme must be altered to make it practical. a real hero is required for the work of juggling the elements of a drafting board. he must have patient endurance and sufficient strength of character to use the eraser heroically, for the eraser is mightier than the pencil in the drafting-room. there are a thousand valiant knights armed with pencils to one stalwart pusher of the eraser. in the drafting-room the work of harmonizing must go on; compromises must be made between the ideal scheme of the dreamer and the requirements of the manufacturing and selling departments. next to the noble knight of the eraser comes the idealist who has been toughened by experience in the cold world. the idealist aims to design and construct a perfect machine. he is encouraged in his work by seeing a little clearer each day, month, and year of the time spent in the right kind of application to his work. he knows that the work of last year is faulty, that this year's work seems nearly perfect, excepting for a certain slight change that has just entered his mind. he cannot think of allowing any machine to be made without this later improvement. he is inclined to the optimistic view, his memory works best on the good work of the past, and is extremely poor in holding afresh the view of previous mistakes. none the grounds of an opinion on the policy of restricting the importation of foreign corn; intended as an appendix to "observations on the corn law" by the rev. t.r. malthus, professor of history and political economy in the east india college, hertfordshire. london: printed for john murray, albermarle street, and j. johnson and co., st. paul's church yard, . grounds, &c. the professed object of the observations on the corn laws, which i published in the spring of , was to state with the strictest impartiality the advantages and disadvantages which, in the actual circumstances of our present situation, were likely to attend the measures under consideration, respecting the trade in corn. a fair review of both sides of the question, without any attempt to conceal the peculiar evils, whether temporary or permanent, which might belong to each, appeared to me of use, not only to assist in forming an enlightened decision on the subject, but particularly to prepare the public for the specific consequences which were to be expected from that decision, on whatever side it might be made. such a preparation, from some quarter or other, seemed to be necessary, to prevent those just discontents which would naturally have arisen, if the measure adopted had been attended with results very different from those which had been promised by its advocates, or contemplated by the legislature. with this object in view, it was neither necessary, nor desirable, that i should myself express a decided opinion on the subject. it would hardly, indeed, have been consistent with that character of impartiality, which i wished to give to my statements, and in which i have reason to believe i in some degree succeeded.( *) these previous statements, however, having been given, and having, i hope, shewn that the decision, whenever it is made, must be a compromise of contending advantages and disadvantages, i have no objection now to state (without the least reserve), and i can truly say, wit the most complete freedom from all interested motives, the grounds of a deliberate, yet decided, opinion in favour of some restrictions on the importation of foreign corn. this opinion has been formed, as i wished the readers of the observations to form their opinions, by looking fairly at the difficulties on both sides of the question; and without vainly expecting to attain unmixed results, determining on which side there is the greatest balance of good with the least alloy of evil. the grounds on which the opinion so formed rests, are partly those which were stated in the observations, and partly, and indeed mainly, some facts which have occurred during the last year, and which have given, as i think, a decisive weight to the side of restrictions. these additional facts are-- st, the evidence, which has been laid before parliament, relating to the effects of the present prices of corn, together with the experience of the present year. dly, the improved state of our exchanges, and the fall in the price of bullion. and dly, and mainly, the actual laws respecting the exportation of corn lately passed in france. in the observations on the corn laws, i endeavoured to shew that, according to the general principles of supply and demand, a considerable fall in the price of corn could not take place, without throwing much poor lad out of cultivation, and effectually preventing, for a considerable time, all further improvements in agriculture, which have for their object an increase of produce. the general principles, on which i calculated upon these consequences, have been fully confirmed by the evidence brought before the two houses of parliament; and the effects of a considerable fall in the price of corn, and of the expected continuance of low prices, have shewn themselves in a very severe shock to the cultivation of the country and a great loss of agricultural capital. whatever may be said of the peculiar interests and natural partialities of those who were called upon to give evidence upon this occasion, it is impossible not to be convinced, by the whole body of it taken together, that, during the last twenty years, and particularly during the last seven, there has been a great increase of capital laid out upon the land, and a great consequent extension of cultivation and improvement; that the system of spirited improvement and high farming, as it is technically called, has been principally encouraged by the progressive rise of prices owing in a considerable degree, to the difficulties thrown in the way of importation of foreign corn by the war; that the rapid accumulation of capital on the land, which it had occasioned, had so increased our home growth of corn, that, notwithstanding a great increase of population, we had become much less dependent upon foreign supplies for our support; and that the land was still deficient in capital, and would admit of the employment of such an addition to its present amount, as would be competent to the full supply of a greatly increased population: but that the fall of prices, which had lately taken place, and the alarm of a still further fall, from continued importation, had not only checked all progress of improvement, but had already occasioned a considerable loss of agricultural advances; and that a continuation of low prices would, in spite of a diminution of rents, unquestionably destroy a great mass of farming capital all over the country, and essentially diminish its cultivation and produce. it has been sometimes said, that the losses at present sustained by farmers are merely the natural and necessary consequences of overtrading, and that they must bear them as all other merchants do, who have entered into unsuccessful speculations. but surely the question is not, or at least ought not to be, about the losses and profits of farmers, and the present condition of landholders compared with the past. it may be necessary, perhaps, to make inquiries of this kind, with a view to ulterior objects; but the real question respects the great loss of national wealth, attributed to a change in the spirit of our legislative enactments relating to the admission of foreign corn. we have certainly no right to accuse our farmers of rash speculation for employing so large a capital in agriculture. the peace, it must be allowed, was most unexpected; and if the war had continued, the actual quantity of capital applied to the land, might have been as necessary to save the country from extreme want in future, as it obviously was in , when, with the price of corn at above six guineas a quarter, we could only import a little more than , quarters. if, from the very great extension of cultivation, during the four or five preceding years, we had not obtained a very great increase of average produce, the distresses of that year would have assumed a most serious aspect. there is certainly no one cause which can affect mercantile concerns, at all comparable in the extent of its effects, to the cause now operating upon agricultural capital. individual losses must have the same distressing consequences in both cases, and they are often more complete, and the fall is greater, in the shocks of commerce. but i doubt, whether in the most extensive mercantile distress that ever took in this country, there was ever one fourth of the property, or one tenth of the number of individuals concerned, when compared with the effects of the present rapid fall of raw produce, combined with the very scanty crop of last year.( *) individual losses of course become national, according as they affect a greater mass of the national capital, and a greater number of individuals; and i think it must be allowed further, that no loss, in proportion to its amount, affects the interest of the nation so deeply, and vitally, and is so difficult to recover, as the loss of agricultural capital and produce. if it be the intention of the legislature fairly to look at the evils, as well as the good, which belongs to both sides of the question, it must be allowed, that the evidence laid before the two houses of parliament, and still more particularly the experience of the last year, shew, that the immediate evils which are capable of being remedied by a system of restrictions, are of no inconsiderable magnitude. . in the observations on the corn laws, i gave, as a reason for some delay in coming to a final regulation respecting the price at which foreign corn might be imported, the very uncertain state of the currency. i observed, that three different importation prices would be necessary, according as our currency should either rise to the then price of bullion, should continue at the same nominal value, or should take an intermediate position, founded on a fall in the value of bullion, owing to the discontinuance of an extraordinary demand for it, and a rise in the value of paper, owing to the prospect of a return to payments in specie. in the course of this last year, the state of our exchanges, and the fall in the price of bullion, shew pretty clearly, that the intermediate alteration which, i then contemplated, greater than in the case first mentioned, and less than in the second, is the one which might be adopted with a fair prospect of permanence; and that we should not now proceed under the same uncertainty respecting the currency, which we should have done, if we had adopted a final regulation in the early part of last year.( *) this intermediate alteration, however, supposes a rise in the value of paper on a return to cash payments, and some general fall of prices quite unconnected with any regulations respecting the corn trade.( *) but, if some fall of prices must take place from this cause, and if such a fall can never take place without a considerable check to industry, and discouragement to the accumulation of capital, it certainly does not seem a well-chosen time for the legislature to occasion another fall still greater, by departing at once from a system of restrictions which it had pursued with steadiness during the greatest part of the last century and, after having given up for a short period, had adopted again as its final policy in its two last enactments respecting the trade in corn. even if it be intended. finally, to throw open our ports, it might be wise to pass some temporary regulations, in order to prevent the very great shock which must take place, if the two causes here noticed, of the depreciation of commodities, be allowed to produce their full effect by contemporaneous action. . i stated, in the observations on the corn laws, that the cheapness and steadiness in the price of corn, which were promised by the advocates of restrictions, were not attainable by the measures they proposed; that it was really impossible for us to grow at home a sufficiency for our own consumption, without keeping up the price of corn considerably above the average of the rest of europe; and that, while this was the case, as we could never export to any advantage, we should always be liable to the variations of price, occasioned by the glut of a superabundant harvest; in short, that it must be allowed that a free trade in corn would, in all ordinary cases, not only secure a cheaper, but a more steady, supply of grain. in expressing this distinct opinion on the effects of a free trade in corn, i certainly meant to refer to a trade really free--that is, a trade by which a nation would be entitled to its share of the produce of the commercial world, according to its means of purchasing, whether that produce were plentiful or scanty. in this sense i adhere strictly to the opinion i then gave; but, since that period, an event has occurred which has shewn, in the clearest manner, that it is entirely out of our power, even in time of peace, to obtain a free trade in corn, or an approximation towards it, whatever may be our wishes on the subject. it has, perhaps, not been sufficiently attended to in general, when the advantages of a free trade in corn have been discussed, that the jealousies and fears of nations, respecting their means of subsistence, will very rarely allow of a free egress of corn, when it is in any degree scarce. our own statutes, till the very last year, prove these fears with regard to ourselves; and regulations of the same tendency occasionally come in aid of popular clamour in almost all countries of europe. but the laws respecting the exportation of corn, which have been passed in france during the last year, have brought this subject home to us in the most striking and impressive manner. our nearest neighbour, possessed of the largest and finest corn country in europe, and who, owing to a more favourable climate and soil, a more stationary and comparatively less crowded population, and a lighter weight of taxation, can grow corn at less than half our prices, has enacted, that the exportation of corn shall be free till the price rises to about forty nine shillings a quarter,( *) and that then it shall be entirely cease.( *) from the vicinity of france, and the cheapness of its corn in all years of common abundance, it is scarcely possible that our main imports should not come from that quarter as long as our ports are open to receive them. in this first year of open trade, our imports have been such, as to shew, that though the corn of the baltic cannot seriously depress our prices in an unfavourable season at home, the corn of france may make it fall below a growing price, under the pressure of one of the worst crops that has been known for a long series of years. i have at present before me an extract from a rouen paper, containing the prices of corn in fourteen different markets for the first week in october, the average of which appears to be about thirty eight shillings a quarter;( *) and this was after disturbances had taken place both at havre and dieppe, on account of the quantity exported, and the rise of prices which it had occasioned. it may be said, perhaps, that the last harvest of france has been a very favourable one, and affords no just criterion of its general prices. but, from all that i hear, prices have often been as low during the last ten years. and, an average not exceeding forty shillings a quarter may, i think, be conclusively inferred from the price at which exportation is by law to cease. at a time when, according to adam smith, the growing price in this country was only twenty eight shillings a quarter, and the average price, including years of scarcity, only thirty three shillings, exportation was not prohibited till the price rose to forty eight shillings. it was the intention of the english government, at that time, to encourage agriculture by giving vent to its produce. we may presume that the same motive influenced the government of france in the late act respecting exportation. and it is fair therefore to conclude, that the price of wheat, in common years, is considerably less than the price at which exportation is to cease. with these prices so near us, and with the consequent power of supplying ourselves with great comparative rapidity, which in the corn trade is a point of the greatest importance, there can be no doubt that, if our ports were open, our principal supplies of grain would come from france; and that, in all years of common plenty in that country, we should import more largely from it than from the baltic. but from this quarter, which would then become our main and most habitual source of supply, all assistance would be at once cut off, in every season of only moderate scarcity; and we should have to look to other quarters, from which it is an established fact, that large sudden supplies cannot be obtained, not only for our usual imports, and the natural variations which belong to them, but for those which had been suddenly cut off from france, and which our habitually deficient growth had now rendered absolutely necessary. to open our ports, under these circumstances, is not to obtain a free trade in corn; and, while i should say, without hesitation, that a free trade in corn was calculated to produce steadier prices than the system of restrictions with which it has been compared, i should, with as little hesitation say, that such a trade in corn, as has been described, would be subject to much more distressing and cruel variations, than the most determined system of prohibitions. such a species of commerce in grain shakes the foundations, and alters entirely the data on which the general principles of free trade are established. for what do these principles say? they say, and say most justly, that if every nation were to devote itself particularly to those kinds of industry and produce, to which its soil, climate, situation, capital, and skill, were best suited; and were then freely to exchange these products with each other, it would be the most certain and efficacious mode, not only of advancing the wealth and prosperity of the whole body of the commercial republic with the quickest pace, but of giving to each individual nation of the body the full and perfect use of all its resources. i am very far indeed from meaning to insinuate, that if we cannot have the most perfect freedom of trade, we should have none; or that a great nation must immediately alter its commercial policy, whenever any of the countries with which it deals passes laws inconsistent with the principles of freedom. but i protest most entirely against the doctrine, that we are to pursue our general principles without ever looking to see if they are applicable to the case before us; and that in politics and political economy, we are to go straight forward, as we certainly ought to do in morals, without any reference to the conduct and proceedings of others. there is no person in the least acquainted with political economy, but must be aware that the advantages resulting from the division of labour, as applicable to nations as well as individuals, depend solely and entirely on the power of exchanging subsequently the products of labour. and no one can hesitate to allow, that it is completely in the power of others to prevent such exchanges, and to destroy entirely the advantages which would otherwise result from the application of individual or national industry, to peculiar and appropriate products. let us suppose, for instance, that the inhabitants of the lowlands of scotland were to say to the highlanders, 'we will exchange our corn for your cattle, whenever we have a superfluity; but if our crops in any degree fail, you must not expect to have a single grain': would not the question respecting the policy of the present change, which is taking place in the highlands, rest entirely upon different grounds? would it not be perfectly senseless in the highlanders to think only of those general principles which direct them to employ the soil in the way that is best suited to it? if supplies of corn could not be obtained with some degree of steadiness and certainty from other quarters, would it not be absolutely necessary for them to grow it themselves, however ill adapted to it might be their soil and climate? the same may be said of all the pasture districts of great britain, compared with the surrounding corn countries. if they could only obtain the superfluities of their neighbours, and were entitled to no share of the produce when it was scarce, they could not certainly devote themselves with any degree of safety to their present occupations. there is, on this account, a grand difference between the freedom of the home trade in corn, and the freedom of the foreign trade. a government of tolerable vigour can make the home trade in corn really free. it can secure to the pasture districts, or the towns that must be fed from a distance, their share of the general produce, whether plentiful or scarce. it can set them quite at rest about the power of exchanging the peculiar products of their own labour for the other products which are necessary to them, and can dispense, therefore, to all its subjects, the inestimable advantages of an unrestricted intercourse. but it is not in the power of any single nation to secure the freedom of the foreign trade in corn. to accomplish this, the concurrence of many others is necessary; and this concurrence, the fears and jealousies so universally prevalent about the means of subsistence, almost invariably prevent. there is hardly a nation in europe which does not occasionally exercise the power of stopping entirely, or heavily taxing, its exports of grain, if prohibitions do not form part of its general code of laws. the question then before us is evidently a special, not a general one. it is not a question between the advantages of a free trade, and a system of restrictions; but between a specific system of restrictions formed by ourselves for the purpose of rendering us, in average years, nearly independent of foreign supplies, and the specific system of restricted importations, which alone it is in our power to obtain under the existing laws of france, and in the actual state of the other countries of the continent.( *) in looking, in the first place, at the resources of the country, with a view to an independent supply for an increasing population; and comparing subsequently the advantages of the two systems abovementioned, without overlooking their disadvantages, i have fully made up my mind as to the side on which the balance lies; and am decidedly of opinion, that a system of restrictions so calculated as to keep us, in average years, nearly independent of foreign supplies of corn, will more effectually conduce to the wealth and prosperity of the country, and of by far the greatest mass of the inhabitants, than the opening of our ports for the free admission of foreign corn, in the actual state of europe. of the resources of great britain and ireland for the further growth of corn, by the further application of capital to the land, the evidence laid before parliament furnishes the most ample testimony. but it is not necessary, for this purpose, to recur to evidence that may be considered as partial. all the most intelligent works which have been written on agricultural subjects of late years, agree in the same statements; and they are confirmed beyond a possibility of doubt, when we consider the extraordinary improvements, and prodigious increase of produce that have taken place latterly in some districts, which, in point of natural soil, are not superior to others that are still yielding the most scanty and miserable crops. most of the light soils of the kingdom might, with adequate capital and skill, be made to equal the improved parts of norfolk; and the vast tracts of clay lands that are yet in a degraded state almost all over the kingdom, are susceptible of a degree of improvement, which it is by no means easy to fix, but which certainly offers a great prospective increase of produce. there is even a chance (but on this i will not insist) of a diminution in the real price of corn,( *) owing to the extension of those great improvements, and that great economy and good management of labour, of which we have such intelligent accounts from scotland.( *) if these clay lands, by draining, and the plentiful application of lime and other manures, could be so far meliorated in quality as to admit of being worked by two horses and a single man, instead of three or four horses with a man and a boy, what a vast saving of labour and expense would at once be effected, at the same time that the crops would be prodigiously increased! and such an improvement may rationally be expected, from what has really been accomplished in particular districts. in short, if merely the best modes of cultivation, now in use in some parts of great britain, were generally extended, and the whole country was brought to a level, in proportion to its natural advantages of soil and situation, by the further accumulation and more equable distribution of capital and skill; the quantity of additional produce would be immense, and would afford the means of subsistence to a very great increase of population. in some countries possessed of a small territory, and consisting perhaps chiefly of one or two large cities, it never can be made a question, whether or not they should freely import foreign corn. they exist, in fact, by this importation; and being always, in point of population, inconsiderable, they may, in general, rely upon a pretty regular supply. but whether regular or not, they have no choice. nature has clearly told them, that if they increase in wealth and power to any extent, it can only be by living upon the raw produce of other countries. it is quite evident that the same alternative is not presented to great britain and ireland, and that the united empire has ample means of increasing in wealth, population, and power, for a very long course of years, without being habitually dependent upon foreign supplies for the means of supporting its inhabitants. as we have clearly, therefore, our choice between two systems, under either of which we may certainly look forwards to a progressive increase of population and power; it remains for us to consider in which way the greatest portion of wealth and happiness may be steadily secured to the largest mass of the people. . and first let us look to the labouring classes of society, as the foundation on which the whole fabric rests; and, from their numbers, unquestionably of the greatest weight, in any estimate of national happiness. if i were convinced, that to open our ports, would be permanently to improve the condition of the labouring classes of society, i should consider the question as at once determined in favour of such a measure. but i own it appears to me, after the most deliberate attention to the subject, that it will be attended with effects very different from those of improvement. we are very apt to be deceived by names, and to be captivated with the idea of cheapness, without reflecting that the term is merely relative, and that it is very possible for a people to be miserably poor, and some of them starving, in a country where the money price of corn is very low. of this the histories of europe and asia will afford abundant instances. in considering the condition of the lower classes of society, we must consider only the real exchangeable value of labour; that is, its power of commanding the necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries of life. i stated in the observations, and more at large in the inquiry into rents,( *) that under the same demand for labour, and the same consequent power of purchasing the means of subsistence, a high money price of corn would give the labourer a very great advantage in the purchase of the conveniences and luxuries of life. the effect of this high money price would not, of course, be so marked among the very poorest of the society, and those who had the largest families; because so very great a part of their earnings must be employed in absolute necessaries. but to all those above the very poorest, the advantage of wages resulting from a price of eighty shillings a quarter for wheat, compared with fifty or sixty, would in the purchase of tea, sugar, cotton, linens, soap, candles, and many other articles, be such as to make their condition decidedly superior. nothing could counterbalance this, but a much greater demand for labour; and such an increased demand, in consequence of the opening of our ports, is at best problematical. the check to cultivation has been so sudden and decisive, as already to throw a great number of agricultural labourers out of employment;( *) and in ireland this effect has taken place to such a degree, as to threaten the most distressing, and even alarming, consequences. the farmers, in some districts, have entirely lost the little capital they possessed; and, unable to continue in their farms, have deserted them, and left their labourers without the means of employment. in a country, the peculiar defects of which were already a deficiency of capital, and a redundancy of population, such a check to the means of employing labour must be attended with no common distress. in ireland, it is quite certain, that there are no mercantile capitals ready to take up those persons who are thus thrown out of work, and even in great britain the transfer will be slow and difficult. our commerce and manufactures, therefore, must increase very considerably before they can restore the demand for labour already lost; for the and a moderate increase beyond this will scarcely make up disadvantage of a low money price of wages. these wages will finally be determined by the usual money price of corn, and the state of the demand for labour. there is a difference between what may be called the usual price of corn and the average price, which has not been sufficiently attended to. let us suppose the common price of corn, for four years out of five, to be about l a quarter, and during the fifth year to be l . the average price of the five years will then be l s.; but the usual price will still be about l , and it is by this price, and not by the price of a year of scarcity, or even the average including it, that wages are generally regulated. if the ports were open, the usual price of corn would certainly fall, and probably the average price; but from at has before been said of the existing laws of france, and of the practice among the baltic nations of raising the tax on their exported corn in proportion to the demand for it, there is every reason to believe, that the fluctuations of price would be much greater. such would, at least, be my conclusion from theory; and, i think, it has been confirmed by the experience of the last hundred years. during this time, the period of our greatest importations, and of our greatest dependence upon foreign corn, was from to inclusive; and certainly in no fourteen years of the whole hundred were the fluctuations of price so great. in the price was s. a quarter; in , s.; in , s. a quarter; and, in , s. between the year and the rise was almost a triple, and in the short period from to , it rose from s. to s. and fell again to s.( *) i would not insist upon this existence as absolutely conclusive, on account of the mixture of accident in all such appeals to facts; but it certainly tends to confirm the probability of those great fluctuations which, according to all general principles, i should expect from the temper and customs of nations, with regard to the egress of corn, when it is scarce; and particularly from the existing laws of that country, which, in all common years, will furnish us with a large proportion of our supplies. to these causes of temporary fluctuations, during peace, should be added the more durable as well as temporary, fluctuations occasioned by war. without reference to the danger of excessive scarcity from another combination against us, if we are merely driven back at certain distant intervals upon our own resources, the experience of the present times will teach us not to estimate lightly the convulsion which attends the return, and the evils of such alternations of price. in the observations, i mentioned some causes of fluctuations which would attend the system of restrictions; but they are in my opinion inconsiderable, compared with those which have been just referred to. on the labouring classes, therefore, the effects of opening our ports for the free importation of foreign corn, will be greatly to lower their wages, and to subject them to much greater fluctuations of price. and, in this state of things, it will require a much greater increase in the demand for labour, than there is in any rational ground for expecting, to compensate to the labourer the advantages which he loses in the high money wages of labour, and the steadier and less fluctuating price of corn. . of the next most important class of society, those who live upon the profits of stock, one half probably are farmers, or immediately connected with farmers; and of the property of the other half, not above one fourth is engaged in foreign trade. of the farmers it is needless to say anything. it cannot be doubted that they will suffer severely from the opening of the ports. not that the profits of farming will not recover themselves, after a certain period, and be as great, or perhaps greater, than they were before; but this cannot take place till after a great loss of agricultural capital, or the removal of it into the channels of commerce and manufactures. of the commercial and manufacturing part of the society, only those who are directly engaged in foreign trade, will feel the benefit of the importing system. it is of course to be expected, that the foreign trade of the nation will increase considerably. if it do not, indeed, we shall have experienced a very severe loss, without anything like a compensation for it. and if this increase merely equals the loss of produce sustained by agriculture, the quantity of other produce remaining the same, it is quite clear that the country cannot possibly gain by the exchange, at whatever price it may buy or sell. wealth does not consist in the dearness or cheapness of the usual measure of value, but in the quantity of produce; and to increase effectively this quantity of produce, after the severe check sustained by agriculture, it is necessary that commerce should make a very powerful start. in the actual state of europe and the prevailing jealousy of our manufactures, such a start seems quite doubtful; and it is by no means impossible that we shall be obliged to pay for our foreign corn, by importing less of other commodities, as well as by exporting more of our manufactures. it may be said, perhaps, that a fall in the price of our corn and labour, affords the only chance to our manufacturers of retaining possession of the foreign markets; and that though the produce of the country may not be increased by the fall in the price of corn, such a fall is necessary to prevent a positive diminution of it. there is some weight undoubtedly in this argument. but if we look at the probable effects of returning peace to europe, it is impossible to suppose that, even with a considerable diminution in the price of labour, we should not lose some markets on the continent, for those manufactures in which we have no peculiar advantage; while we have every reason to believe that in others, where our colonies, our navigation, our long credits, our coals, and our mines come in question, as well as our skill and capital, we shall retain our trade in spite of high wages. under these circumstances, it seems peculiarly advisable to maintain unimpaired, if possible, the home market, and not to lose the demand occasioned by so much of the rents of land, and of the profits and capital of farmers, as must necessarily be destroyed by the check to our home produce. but in whatever way the country may be affected by the change, we must suppose that those who are immediately engaged in foreign trade will benefit by it. as those, however, form but a very small portion of the class of persons living on the profits of stock, in point of number, and not probably above a seventh or eighth in point of property, their interests cannot be allowed to weigh against the interests of so very large a majority. with regard to this great majority, it is impossible that they should not feel very widely and severely the diminution of their nominal capital by the fall of prices. we know the magic effect upon industry of a rise of prices. it has been noticed by hume, and witnessed by every person who has attended to subjects of this kind. and the effects of a fall are proportionately depressing. even the foreign trade will not escape its influence, though here it may be counterbalanced by a real increase of demand. but, in the internal trade, not only will the full effect of this deadening weight be experienced, but there is reason to fear that it may be accompanied with an actual diminution of home demand. there may be the same or even a greater quantity of corn consumed in the country, but a smaller quantity of manufactures and colonial produce; and our foreign corn may be purchased in part by commodities which were before consumed at home. in this case, the whole of the internal trade must severely suffer, and the wealth and enjoyments of the country be decidedly diminished. the quantity of a country's exports is a very uncertain criterion of its wealth. the quantity of produce permanently consumed at home is, perhaps, the most certain criterion of wealth to which we can refer. already, in all the country towns, this diminution of demand has been felt in a very great degree; and the surrounding farmers, who chiefly support them, are quite unable to make their accustomed purchases. if the home produce of grain be considerably diminished by the opening of our ports, of which there can be no doubt, these effects in the agricultural countries must be permanent, though not to the same extent as at present. and even if the manufacturing towns should ultimately increase, in proportion to the losses of the country, of which there is great reason to doubt, the transfer of wealth and population will be slow, painful, and unfavourable to happiness. . of the class of landholders, it may be truly said, that though they do not so actively contribute to the production of wealth, as either of the classes just noticed, there is no class in society whose interests are more nearly and intimately connected with the prosperity of the state. some persons have been of opinion, and adam smith himself among others, that a rise or fall of the price of corn does not really affect the interests of the landholders; but both theory and experience prove the contrary; and shew, that, under all common circumstances, a fall of price must be attended with a diminution of produce, and that a diminution of produce will naturally be attended with a diminution of rent.( *) of the effect, therefore, of opening the ports, in diminishing both the real and nominal rents of the landlords, there can be no doubt; and we must not imagine that the interest of a body of men, so circumstanced as the landlords, can materially suffer without affecting the interests of the state. it has been justly observed by adam smith, that 'no equal quantity of productive labour employed in manufactures can ever occasion so great a reproduction as in agriculture.' if we suppose the rents of land taken throughout the kingdom to be one fourth of the gross produce, it is evident, that to purchase the same value of raw produce by means of manufactures, would require one third more capital. every five thousand pounds laid out on the land, not only repays the usual profits of stock, but generates an additional value, which goes to the landlord. and this additional value is not a mere benefit to a particular individual, or set of individuals, but affords the most steady home demand for the manufactures of the country, the most effective fund for its financial support, and the largest disposable force for its army and navy. it is true, that the last additions to the agricultural produce of an improving country are not attended with a large proportion of rent;( *) and it is precisely this circumstance that may make it answer to a rich country to import some of its corn, if it can be secure of obtaining an equable supply. but in all cases the importation of foreign corn must fail to answer nationally, if it is not so much cheaper than the corn that can be grown at home, as to equal both the profits and the rent of the grain which it displaces. if two capitals of ten thousand pounds each, be employed, one in manufactures, and the other in the improvement of the land, with the usual profits, and withdrawn in twenty years, the one employed in manufactures will leave nothing behind it, while the one employed on the land will probably leave a rent of no inconsiderable value. these considerations, which are not often attended to, if they do not affect the ordinary question of a free trade in corn, must at least be allowed to have weight, when the policy of such a trade is, from peculiarity of situation and circumstances, rendered doubtful. . we now come to a class of society, who will unquestionably be benefited by the opening of our ports. these are the stockholders, and those who live upon fixed salaries.( *) they are not only, however, small in number, compared with those who will be affected in a different manner; but their interests are not so closely interwoven with the welfare of the state, as the classes already considered, particularly the labouring classes, and the landlords. in the observations, i remarked, that it was 'an error of the most serious magnitude to suppose that any natural or artificial causes, which should raise or lower the values of corn or silver, might be considered as matters of indifference; and that, practically, no material change could take place in the value of either, without producing both temporary and lasting effects, which have a most powerful influence on the distribution of property.' in fact, it is perfectly impossible to suppose that, in any change in the measure of value, which ever did, or ever can take place practically, all articles, both foreign and domestic, and all incomes, from whatever source derived, should arrange themselves precisely in the same relative proportions as before. and if they do not, it is quite obvious, that such a change may occasion the most marked differences in the command possessed by individuals and classes of individuals over the produce and wealth of the country. sometimes the changes of this kind that actually take place, are favourable to the industrious classes of society, and sometimes unfavourable. it can scarcely be doubted, that one of the main causes, which has enabled us hitherto to support, with almost undiminished resources, the prodigious weight of debt which has been accumulated during the last twenty years, is the continued depreciation of the measure in which it has been estimated, and the great stimulus to industry, and power of accumulation, which have been given to the industrious classes of society by the progressive rise of prices. as far as this was occasioned by excessive issues of paper, the stockholder was unjustly treated, and the industrious classes of society benefited unfairly at his expense. but, on the other hand, if the price of corn were now to fall to shillings a quarter, and labour and other commodities nearly in proportion, there can be no doubt that the stockholder would be benefited unfairly at the expense of the industrious classes of society, and consequently at the expense of the wealth and prosperity of the whole country. during the twenty years, beginning with and ending with , the average price of british corn per quarter was about eighty-three shillings; during the ten years ending with , ninety-two shillings; and during the last five years of the twenty, one hundred and eight shillings. in the course of these twenty years, the government borrowed near five hundred millions of real capital, for which on a rough average, exclusive of the sinking fund, it engaged to pay about five per cent. but if corn should fall to fifty shillings a quarter, and other commodities in proportion, instead of an interest of about five per cent. the government would really pay an interest of seven, eight, nine, and for the last two hundred millions, ten per cent. to this extraordinary generosity towards the stockholders, i should be disposed to make no kind of objection, if it were not necessary to consider by whom it is to be paid; and a moment's reflection will shew us, that it can only be paid by the industrious classes of society and the landlords, that is, by all those whose nominal incomes will vary with the variations in the measure of value. the nominal revenues of this part of the society, compared with the average of the last five years, will be diminished one half; and out of this nominally reduced income, they will have to pay the same nominal amount of taxation. the interest and charges of the national debt, including the sinking fund, are now little short of l millions a year; and these l millions, if we completely succeed in the reduction of the price of corn and labour, are to be paid in future from a revenue of about half the nominal value of the national income in . if we consider, with what an increased weight the taxes on tea, sugar, malt, leather, soap, candles, etc., etc. would in this case bear on the labouring classes of society, and what proportion of their incomes all the active, industrious middle orders of the state, as well as the higher orders, must pay in assessed taxes, and the various articles of the customs and excise, the pressure will appear to be absolutely intolerable. nor would even the ad valorem taxes afford any real relief. the annual fourty millions, must at all events be paid; and if some taxes fail, others must be imposed that will be more productive. these are considerations sufficient to alarm even the stockholders themselves, indeed, if the measure of value were really to fall, as we have supposed, there is great reason to fear that the country would be absolutely unable to continue the payment of the present interest of the national debt. i certainly do not think, that by opening our ports to the freest admission of foreign corn, we shall lower the price to fifty shillings a quarter. i have already given my reasons for believing that the fluctuations which in the present state of europe, a system of importation would bring with it, would be often producing dear years, and throwing us back again upon our internal resources. but still there is no doubt whatever, that a free influx of foreign grain would in all commonly favourable seasons very much lower its price. let us suppose it lowered to sixty shillings a quarter, which for periods of three or four years together is not improbable. the difference between a measure of value at compared with (the price at which it is proposed to fix the importation), is / per cent. this percentage upon millions amounts to a very formidable sum. but let us suppose that corn does not effectually regulate the prices of other commodities; and, making allowances on this account, let us take only , or even per cent. twenty per cent. upon millions amounts at once to millions--a sum which ought to go a considerable way towards a peace establishment; but which, in the present case, must go to pay the additional interest of the national debt, occasioned by the change in the measure of value. and even if the price of corn be kept up by restrictions to shillings a quarter, it is certain that the whole of the loans made during the war just terminated, will on an average, be paid at an interest very much higher than they were contracted for; which increased interest can, of course, only be furnished by the industrious classes of society. i own it appears to me that the necessary effect of a change in the measure of value on the weight of a large national debt is alone sufficient to make the question fundamentally different from that of a simple question about a free or restricted trade; and, that to consider it merely in this light, and to draw our conclusions accordingly, is to expect the same results from premises which have essentially changed their nature. from this review of the manner in which the different classes of society will be affected by the opening of our ports, i think it appears clearly, that very much the largest mass of the people, and particularly of the industrious orders of the state, will be more injured than benefited by the measure. i have now stated the grounds on which it appears to me to be wise and politic, in the actual circumstances of the country, to restrain the free importation of foreign corn. to put some stop to the progressive loss of agricultural capital, which is now taking place, and which it will be by no means easy to recover, it might be advisable to pass a temporary act of restriction, whatever may be the intention of the legislature in future. but, certainly it is much to be wished that as soon as possible, consistently with due deliberation, the permanent policy intended to be adopted with regard to the trade in corn should be finally settled. already, in the course of little more than a century, three distinct changes in this policy have taken place. the act of william, which gave the bounty, combined with the prohibitory act of charles ii was founded obviously and strikingly upon the principle of encouraging exportation and discouraging importation; the spirit of the regulations adopted in , and acted upon some time before, was nearly the reverse, and encouraged importation and discouraged exportation. subsequently, as if alarmed at the dependence of the country upon foreign corn, and the fluctuations of price which it had occasioned, the legislature in a feeble act of , and rather a more effective one in , returned again to the policy of restrictions. and if the act of be left now unaltered, it may be fairly said that a fourth change has taken place; as it is quite certain that, to proceed consistently upon a restrictive system, fresh regulations become absolutely necessary to keep pace with the progressive fall in the value of currency. such changes in the spirit of our legislative enactments are much to be deprecated; and with a view to a greater degree of steadiness in future, it is quite necessary that we should be so fully prepared for the consequences which belong to each system, as not to have our determinations shaken by them, when they occur. if, upon mature deliberation, we determine to open our ports to the free admission of foreign grain, we must not be disturbed at the depressed state, and diminished produce of our home cultivation; we must not be disturbed at our becoming more and more dependent upon other nations for the main support of our population; we must not be disturbed at the greatly increased pressure of the national debt upon the national industry; and we must not be disturbed at the fluctuations of price, occasioned by the very variable supplies, which we shall necessarily receive from france, in the actual state of her laws, or by the difficulty and expense of procuring large, and sudden imports from the baltic, when our wants are pressing. these consequences may all be distinctly foreseen. upon all general principles, they belong to the opening of our ports, in the actual state and relations of this country to the other countries of europe; and though they may be counterbalanced or more than counterbalanced, by other advantages, they cannot, in the nature of things, be avoided. on the other hand, if, on mature deliberation, we determine steadily to pursue a system of restrictions with regard to the trade in corn, we must not be disturbed at a progressive rise in the price of grain; we must not be disturbed at the necessity of altering, at certain intervals, our restrictive laws according to the state of the currency, and the value of the precious metals; we must not be disturbed at the progressive diminution of fixed incomes; and we must not be disturbed at the occasional loss or diminution of a continental market for some of our least peculiar manufactures, owing to the high price of our labour.( *) all these disadvantages may be distinctly foreseen. according to all general principles they strictly belong to the system adopted; and, though they may be counterbalanced, and more than counterbalanced, by other greater advantages, they cannot, in the nature of things, be avoided, if we continue to increase in wealth and population. those who promise low prices upon the restrictive system, take an erroneous view of the causes which determine the prices of raw produce, and draw an incorrect inference from the experience of the first half of the last century. as i have stated in another place,( *) a nation which very greatly gets the start of its neighbours in riches, without any peculiar natural facilities for growing corn, must necessarily submit to one of these alternatives--either a very high comparative price of grain, or a very great dependence upon other countries for it. with regard to the specific mode of regulating the importation of corn, if the restrictive system be adopted, i am not sufficiently acquainted with the details of the subject to be able to speak with confidence. it seems to be generally agreed, that, in the actual state of things, a price of about eighty shillings a quarter( *) would prevent our cultivation from falling back, and perhaps allow it to be progressive. but, in future, we should endeavour, if possible, to avoid all discussions about the necessity of protecting the british farmer, and securing to him a fair living profit. such language may perhaps be allowable in a crisis like the present. but certainly the legislature has nothing to do with securing to any classes of its subjects a particular rate of profits in their different trades. this is not the province of a government; and it is unfortunate that any language should be used which may convey such an impression, and make people believe that their rulers ought to listen to the accounts of their gains and losses. but a government may certainly see sufficient reasons for wishing to secure an independent supply of grain. this is a definite, and may be a desirable, object, of the same nature as the navigation act; and it is much to be wished, that this object, and not the interests of farmers and landlords, should be the ostensible, as well as the real, end which we have in view, in all our inquiries and proceedings relating to the trade in corn. i firmly believe that, in the actual state of europe, and under the actual circumstances of our present situation, it is our wisest policy to grow our own average supply of corn; and, in so doing, i feel persuaded that the country has ample resources for a great and continued increase of population, of power, of wealth, and of happiness. notes: . some of my friends were of different opinions as to the side, towards which my arguments most inclined. this i consider as a tolerably fair proof of impartiality. . mercantile losses are always comparatively partial; but the present losses, occasioned by the unusual combination of low prices, and scanty produce, must inflict a severe blow upon the whole mass of cultivators. there never, perhaps, was known a year more injurious to the interests of agriculture. . at the same time, i certainly now very much wish that some regulation had been adopted last year. it would have saved the nation a great loss of agricultural capital, which it will take some time to recover. but it was impossible to foresee such a year as the present--such a combination, as a very bad harvest, and very low prices. . i have very little doubt that the value of paper in this country has already risen, norwithstanding the increased issues of the bank. these increased issues i attribute chiefly to the great failures which have taken place among country banks, and the very great purchases which have been made for the continental markets, and, under these circumstances, increased issues might take place, accompanied even by a rise of value. but the currency has not yet recovered itself. the real exchange, during the last year, must have been greatly in our favour, although the nominal exchange is considerably against us. this shews, incontrovertibly, that our currency is still depreciated, in reference to the bullion currencies of the continent. a part, however, of this depreciation may still be owing to the value of bullion in europe not having yet fallen to its former level. . calculated at twenty-four livres the pound sterling. . it has been supposed by some, that this law cannot, and will not be executed: but i own i see no grounds for such an opinion. it is difficult to execute prohibitions against the exportation of corn, when it is in great plenty, but not when it is scarce. for ten years before , we had in this country, regularly exported on an average, above , quarters of wheat, and in that year there was at once an excess of importation. with regard to the alleged impotence of governments in this respect, it appears to me that facts shew their power rather than their weakness. to be convinced of this, it is only necessary to look at the diminished importations from america during the war, and particularly from the baltic after bonaparte's decrees. the imports from france and the baltic in , were by special licences, granted for purposes of revenue. such licences shewed strength rather than weakness; and might have been refused, if a greater object than revenue had at that time presented itself. . the average is francs, centimes, the hectolitre. the hectolitre is about - th less than winchester bushels, which makes the english quarter come to about shillings. . it appears from the evidence, that the corn from the baltic is often very heavily taxed, and that this tax is generally raised in proportion to our necessities. in a scarce year in this country we could never get any considerable quantity of corn from the baltic, without paying an enormous price for it. . by the real growing price of corn i mean the real quantity of labour and capital which has been employed to procure the last additions which have been made to the national produce. in every rich and improving country there is a natural and strong tendency to a constantly increasing price of raw produce, owing to the necessity of employing, progressively, land of an inferior quality. but this tendency may be partially counteracted by great improvements in cultivation, and economy of labour. see this subject treated in an inquiry into the nature and progress of rent, just published. . sir john sinclair's account of the husbandry of scotland: and the general report of scotland. . "inquiry into the nature and progress of rent, and the principles by which it is regulated." . i was not prepared to expect (as i intimated in the observations) so sudden a fall in the price of labour as has already taken place. this fall has been occasioned, not so much by the low price of corn, as by the sudden stagnation of agricultural work, occasioned by a more sudden check to cultivation than i foresaw. . i am strongly disposed to believe, that it is owning to the unwillingness of governments to allow the free egress of their corn, when it is scarce, that nations are practically so little dependent upon each other for corn, as they are found to be. according to all general principles they ought to be more dependent. but the great fluctuations in the price of corn, occasioned by this unwillingness, tend to throw each country back again upon its internal resources. this was remarkably the case with us in and , when the very high price, which we paid for foreign corn, gave a prodigious stimulus to our domestic agriculture. a large territorial country, that imports foreign corn, is exposed not infrequently to the fluctuations which belong to this kind of variable dependence, without obtaining the cheapness that ought to accompany a trade in corn really free. . see this subject treated in an inquiry into the nature and progress of rents. . inquiry into the nature and progress of rent. . it is to this class of persons that i consider myself as chiefly belonging. much the greatest part of my income is derived from a fixed salary and the interest of money in the funds. . it often happens that the high prices of a particular country may diminish the quantity of its exports without diminishing the value of their amount abroad; in which case its foreign trade is peculiarly advantageous, as it purchases the same amount of foreign commodities at a much less expense of labour and capital. . inquiry into the nature and progress of rent. . this price seems to be pretty fairly consistent with the idea of getting rid of that part of our high prices which belongs to excessive issues of paper, and retaining only that part which belongs to great wealth, combined with a system of restrictions. business correspondence volume i how to write the business letter: _ chapters on preparing to write the letter and finding the proper viewpoint; how to open the letter, present the proposition convincingly, make an effective close; how to acquire a forceful style and inject originality; how to adapt selling appeal to different prospects and get orders by letter-- proved principles and practical schemes illustrated by extracts from actual letters_ contents business correspondence volume i part i _preparing to write the letter_ chapter : what you can do with a postage stamp : the advantages of doing business by letter : gathering material and picking out talking points : when you sit down to write part ii _how to write the letter_ : how to begin a business letter : how to present your proposition : how to bring the letter to a close part iii _style--making the letter readable_ : "style" in letter writing--and how to acquire it : making the letter hang together : how to make letters original : making the form letter personal part iv _the dress of a business letter_ : making letterheads and envelopes distinctive : the typographical make-up of business letters : getting a uniform policy and quality in letters : making letters uniform in appearance part v _writing the sales letter_ : how to write the letter that will "land" the order : the letter that will bring an inquiry : how to close sales by letter : what to enclose with sales letters : bringing in new business by post card : making it easy for the prospect to answer part vi _the appeal to different classes_ : how to write letters that appeal to women : how to write letters that appeal to men : how to write letters that appeal to farmers what you can _do_ with a postage stamp part i--preparing to write the letter--chapter _last year [ ] fifteen billion letters were handled by the post office--one hundred and fifty for every person. just as a thousand years ago practically all trade was cash, and now only seven per cent involves currency, so nine-tenths of the business is done today by letter while even a few decades ago it was by personal word. you can get your prospect, turn him into a customer, sell him goods, settle complaints, investigate credit standing, collect your money_--all by letter. _and often better than by word of mouth. for, when talking, you speak to only one or two; by letter you can talk to a hundred thousand in a sincere, personal way. so the letter is the_ most important tool _in modern business--good letter writing is the business man's_ first requirement. * * * * * there is a firm in chicago, with a most interesting bit of inside history. it is not a large firm. ten years ago it consisted of one man. today there are some three hundred employees, but it is still a one-man business. it has never employed a salesman on the road; the head of the firm has never been out to call on any of his customers. but here is a singular thing: you may drop in to see a business man in syracuse or san francisco, in jacksonville or walla walla, and should you casually mention this man's name, the chances are the other will reply: "oh, yes. i know him very well. that is, i've had several letters from him and i feel as though i know him." sitting alone in his little office, this man was one of the first to foresee, ten years ago, the real possibilities of the letter. he saw that if he could write a man a thousand miles away the right kind of a letter he could do business with him as well as he could with the man in the next block. so he began _talking_ by mail to men whom he thought might buy his goods--talking to them in sane, human, you-and-me english. through those letters he sold goods. nor did he stop there. in the same human way he collected the money for them. he adjusted any complaints that arose. he did everything that any business man could do with customers. in five years he was talking not to a thousand men but to a million. and today, though not fifty men in the million have ever met him, this man's personality has swept like a tidal wave across the country and left its impression in office, store and factory--through letters--letters _alone_. this instance is not cited because it marks the employment of a new medium, but because it shows how the letter has become a universal implement of trade; how a commonplace tool has been developed into a living business-builder. the letter is today the greatest potential creator and transactor of business in the world. but wide as its use is, it still lies idle, an undeveloped possibility, in many a business house where it might be playing a powerful part. the letter is a universal implement of business--that is what gives it such great possibilities. it is the servant of every business, regardless of its size or of its character. it matters not what department may command its use--wherever there is a business in which men must communicate with each other, the letter is found to be the first and most efficient medium. analyze for a moment the departments of your own business. see how many points there are at which you could use _right_ letters to good advantage. see if you have not been overlooking some opportunities that the letter, at a small cost, will help develop. do you sell goods? the letter is the greatest salesman known to modern business. it will carry the story you have to tell wherever the mail goes. it will create business and bring back orders a thousand miles to the very hand it left. if you are a retailer, the letter will enable you to talk your goods, your store, your service, to every family in your town, or it will go further and build a counter across the continent for you. if you are a manufacturer or wholesaler selling to the trade, the letter will find prospects and win customers for you in remote towns that salesmen cannot profitably reach. but the letter is not only a direct salesman, it is a supporter of every personal sales force. judiciously centered upon a given territory, letters pave the way for the salesman's coming; they serve as his introduction. after his call, they keep reminding the prospect or customer of the house and its goods. or, trained by the sales manager upon his men, letters keep them in touch with the house and key up their loyalty. with regular and special letters, the sales manager is able to extend his own enthusiasm to the farthest limits of his territory. so in every phase of selling, the letter makes it possible for you to keep your finger constantly upon the pulse of trade. if you are a wholesaler or manufacturer, letters enable you to keep your dealers in line. if you are a retailer, they offer you a medium through which to keep your customers in the proper mental attitude toward your store, the subtle factor upon which retail credit so largely depends. if you sell on instalments, letters automatically follow up the accounts and maintain the inward flow of payments at a fraction of what any other system of collecting entails. do you have occasion to investigate the credit of your customers? the letter will quietly and quickly secure the information. knowing the possible sources of the data you desire you can send forth half a dozen letters and a few days later have upon your desk a comprehensive report upon the worth and reliability of almost any concern or individual asking credit favors. and the letter will get this information where a representative would often fail because it comes full-fledged in the frankness and dignity of your house. does your business involve in any way the collecting of money? letters today bring in ten dollars for every one that collectors receive on their monotonous round of homes and cashiers' cages. without the collection letter the whole credit system would be toppling about our ears. * * * * * the letter sells goods direct to consumers to dealers to agents indirect builds up lists secures names eliminates dead wood classifies live prospects opens up new territory through consumers creates demand directs trade through dealers shows possible profit introduces new lines aid to salesmen educates trade co-operation introduces backs up keeps lined up aid to dealers drums up trade holds customers develops new business handles men instruction about goods about territory about prospects how to systemize work inspiration ginger tales inspires confidence secures co-operation promotes loyalty collects money mercantile acts - retail acts - installment acts - petty acts persuasion emphasize house policy emphasize advanttagae of goods establishment of forced collections cost of forced collections cash-up proposition extension of accommodation pressure through threats of suit of shutting off credit of writing to references through legal avenues through legal agencies house collection bureaus regular collection bureaus through attorneys handles long range customers supplies personal contact shows interest in customer wins confidence develops re-order schemes builds up steady trade handles complaints adjusts investigates makes capital out of complaints wins back customers develops prestige gives personality to business builds up good will paves way for new customers _the practical uses of the business letter are almost infinite: selling goods, with distant customers, developing the prestige of the house--there is handling men, adjusting complaints, collecting money, keeping in touch scarcely an activity of modern business that cannot be carried on by letter_ * * * * * do you find it necessary to adjust the complaint of a client or a customer? a diplomatic letter at the first intimation of dissatisfaction will save many an order from cancellation. it will soothe ruffled feelings, wipe out imagined grievances and even lay the basis for firmer relations in the future. so you may run the gamut of your own business or any other. at every point that marks a transaction between concerns or individuals, you will find some way in which the letter rightly used, can play a profitable part. there is a romance about the postage stamp as fascinating as any story--not the romance contained in sweet scented notes, but the romance of big things accomplished; organizations developed, businesses built, great commercial houses founded. in a couple of men secured the agency for a firm manufacturing extracts and toilet preparations. they organized an agency force through letters and within a year the manufacturers were swamped with business, unable to fill the orders. then the men added one or two other lines, still operating from one small office. soon a storage room was added; then a packing and shipping room was necessary and additional warehouse facilities were needed. space was rented in the next building; a couple of rooms were secured across the street, and one department was located over the river--wherever rooms could be found. next the management decided to issue a regular mail-order catalogue and move to larger quarters where the business could be centered under one roof. a floor in a new building was rented--a whole floor. the employees thought it was extravagance; the managers were dubious, for when the business was gathered in from seven different parts of the city, there was still much vacant floor space. one year later it was again necessary to rent outside space. the management then decided to erect a permanent home and today the business occupies two large buildings and the firm is known all over the country as one of the big factors of mail-order merchandising. it has all been done by postage stamps. when the financial world suddenly tightened up in a wholesale dry goods house found itself hard pressed for ready money. the credit manager wrote to the customers and begged them to pay up at once. but the retailers were scared and doggedly held onto their cash. even the merchants who were well rated and whose bills were due, played for time. the house could not borrow the money it needed and almost in despair the president sat down and wrote a letter to his customers; it was no routine collection letter, but a heart-to-heart talk, telling them that if they did not come to his rescue the business that he had spent thirty years in building would be wiped out and he would be left penniless because he could not collect _his_ money. he had the bookkeepers go through every important account and they found that there was hardly a customer who had not, for one reason or another, at some time asked for an extension of credit. and to each customer the president dictated a personal paragraph, reminding him of the time accommodation had been asked and granted. then the appeal was made straight from the heart: "now, when i need help, not merely to tide me over a few weeks but to save me from ruin, will you not strain a point, put forth some special effort to help me out, just as i helped you at such and such a time?" "if we can collect $ , ," he had assured his associates, "i know we can borrow $ , , and that will probably pull us through." the third day after his letters went out several checks came in; the fourth day the cashier banked over $ , ; within ten days $ , had come in, several merchants paying up accounts that were not yet due; a few even offered to "help out the firm." the business was saved--by postage stamps. formality to the winds; stereotyped phrases were forgotten; traditional appeals were discarded and a plain talk, man-to-man, just as if the two were closeted together in an office brought hundreds of customers rushing to the assistance of the house with which they had been dealing. sixty-eight thousand dollars collected within two weeks when money was almost invisible--and by letter. truly there is romance in the postage stamp. twenty-five years ago a station agent wrote to other agents along the line about a watch that he could sell them at a low price. when an order came in he bought a watch, sent it to the customer and used his profit to buy stamps for more letters. after a while he put in each letter a folder advertising charms, fobs and chains; then rings, cuff buttons and a general line of jewelry was added. it soon became necessary to give up his position on the railroad and devote all his time to the business and one line after another was added to the stock he carried. today the house that started in this way has customers in the farthermost parts of civilization; it sells every conceivable product from toothpicks to automobiles and knockdown houses. two thousand people do nothing but handle mail; over , orders are received and filled every day; , men and women are on the payroll. it has all been done by mail. postage stamps bring to the house every year business in excess of $ , , . one day the head correspondent in an old established wholesale house in the east had occasion to go through some files of ten and twelve years before. he was at once struck with the number of names with which he was not familiar--former customers who were no longer buying from the house. he put a couple of girls at work making a list of these old customers and checking them up in the mercantile directories to see how many were still in business. then he sat down and wrote to them, asking as a personal favor that they write and tell him why they no longer bought of the house; whether its goods or service had not been satisfactory, whether some complaint had not been adjusted. there must be a reason, would they not tell him personally just what it was? eighty per cent of the men addressed replied to this personal appeal; many had complaints that were straightened out; others had drifted to other houses for no special reason. the majority were worked back into the "customer" files. three years later the accounting department checked up the orders received from these re-found customers. the gross was over a million dollars. the business all sprung from one letter. yes, there is romance in the postage stamp; there is a latent power in it that few men realize--a power that will remove commercial mountains and erect industrial pyramids. the advantages of doing _business_ by letter part i--preparing to write the letter--chapter _letters have their limitations and their advantages. the correspondent who is anxious to secure the best results should recognize the inherent weakness of a letter due to its lack of personality in order to reinforce these places. equally essential is an understanding of the letter's great_ natural advantages _so that the writer can turn them to account--make the most of them. it possesses qualities the personal representative lacks and this chapter tells how to take advantage of them_ * * * * * while it is necessary to know how to write a strong letter, it is likewise essential to understand both the limitations of letters and their advantages. it is necessary, on the one hand, to take into account the handicaps that a letter has in competition with a personal solicitor. offsetting this are many distinct advantages the letter has over the salesman. to write a really effective letter, a correspondent must thoroughly understand its carrying capacity. a salesman often wins an audience and secures an order by the force of a dominating personality. the letter can minimize this handicap by an attractive dress and force attention through the impression of quality. the letter lacks the animation of a person but there can be an individuality about its appearance that will assure a respectful hearing for its message. the personal representative can time his call, knowing that under certain circumstances he may find his man in a favorable frame of mind, or even at the door he may decide it is the part of diplomacy to withdraw and wait a more propitious hour. the letter cannot back out of the prospect's office; it cannot shape its canvass to meet the needs of the occasion or make capital out of the mood or the comments of the prospect. the correspondent cannot afford to ignore these handicaps under which his letter enters the prospect's office. rather, he should keep these things constantly in mind in order to overcome the obstacles just as far as possible, reinforcing the letter so it will be prepared for any situation it may encounter at its destination. explanations must be so clear that questions are unnecessary; objections must be anticipated and answered in advance; the fact that the recipient is busy must be taken into account and the message made just as brief as possible; the reader must be treated with respect and diplomatically brought around to see the relationship between _his_ needs and _your_ product. but while the letter has these disadvantages, it possesses qualities that the salesman lacks. the letter, once it lies open before the man to whom you wish to talk, is your counterpart, speaking in your words just as you would talk to him if you were in his office or in his home. that is, the _right_ letter. it reflects your personality and not that of some third person who may be working for a competitor next year. the letter, if clearly written, will not misrepresent your proposition; its desire for a commission or for increased sales will not lead it to make exaggerated statements or unauthorized promises. the letter will reach the prospect just as it left your desk, with the same amount of enthusiasm and freshness. it will not be tired and sleepy because it had to catch a midnight train; it will not be out of sorts because of the poor coffee and the cold potatoes served at the grand hotel for breakfast; it will not be peeved because it lost a big sale across the street; it will not be in a hurry to make the : local; it will not be discouraged because a competitor is making inroads into the territory. you have the satisfaction of knowing that the letter is immune from these ills and weaknesses to which flesh is heir and will deliver your message faithfully, promptly, loyally. it will not have to resort to clever devices to get past the glass door, nor will it be told in frigid tones by the guard on watch to call some other day. the courtesy of the mail will take your letter to the proper authority. if it goes out in a dignified dress and presents its proposition concisely it is assured of a considerate hearing. it will deliver its message just as readily to some garcia in the mountains of cuba as to the man in the next block. the salesman who makes a dozen calls a day is doing good work; letters can present your proposition to a hundred thousand prospects on the one forenoon. they can cover the same territory a week later and call again and again just as often as you desire. you cannot time the letter's call to the hour but you can make sure it reaches the prospect on the day of the week and the time of the month when he is most likely to give it consideration. you know exactly the kind of canvass every letter is making; you know that every call on the list is made. the salesman must look well to his laurels if he hopes to compete successfully with the letter as a selling medium. put the points of advantage in parallel columns and the letter has the best of it; consider, in addition, the item of expense and it is no wonder letters are becoming a greater factor in business. the country over, there are comparatively few houses that appreciate the full possibilities of doing business by mail. not many appreciate that certain basic principles underlie letter writing, applicable alike to the beginner who is just struggling to get a foothold and to the great mail-order house with its tons of mail daily. they are not mere theories; they are fundamental principles that have been put to the test, proved out in thousands of letters and on an infinite number of propositions. the correspondent who is ambitious to do by mail what others do by person, must understand these principles and how to apply them. he must know the order and position of the essential elements; he must take account of the letter's impersonal character and make the most of its natural advantages. writing letters that pull is not intuition; it is an art that anyone can acquire. but this is the point: _it must be acquired_. it will not come to one without effort on his part. fundamental principles must be understood; ways of presenting a proposition must be studied, various angles must be tried out; the effectiveness of appeals must be tested; new schemes for getting attention and arousing interest must be devised; clear, concise description and explanation must come from continual practice; methods for getting the prospect to order now must be developed. it is not a game of chance; there is nothing mysterious about it--nothing impossible, it is solely a matter of study, hard work and the intelligent application of proved-up principles. _gathering_ material and _picking_ out talking points part i--preparing to write the letter--chapter _arguments--prices, styles, terms, quality or whatever they may be--are effective only when used on the right "prospect" at the right time. the correspondent who has some message of value to carry gathers together a mass of "raw material"--facts, figures and specifications on which to base his arguments--and then he selects the particular talking points that will appeal to his prospect. by systematic tests, the relative values of various arguments may be determined almost to a scientific nicety. how to gather and classify this material and how to determine what points are most effective is the subject in this chapter_ * * * * * an architect can sit down and design your house on paper, showing its exact proportions, the finish of every room, the location of every door and window. he can give specific instructions for building your house but before you can begin operations you have got to get together the brick and mortar and lumber--all the material used in its construction. and so the correspondent-architect can point out the way to write a letter: how to begin, how to work up interest, how to present argument, how to introduce salesmanship, how to work in a clincher and how to close, but when you come to writing the letter that applies to your particular business you have first to gather the material. and just as you select cement or brick or lumber according to the kind of house you want to build, so the correspondent must gather the particular kind of material he wants for his letter, classify it and arrange it so that the best can be quickly selected. the old school of correspondents--and there are many graduates still in business--write solely from their own viewpoint. their letters are focused on "our goods," "our interests" and "our profits." but the new school of letter writers keep their own interests in the background. their sole aim is to focus on the viewpoint of the reader; find the subjects in which he is interested, learn the arguments that will appeal to him, bear down on the persuasion that will induce him to act at once. and so the successful correspondent should draw arguments and talking points from many sources; from the house, from the customer, from competitors, from the news of the day from his knowledge of human nature. "what shall i do first?" asked a new salesman of the general manager. "sell yourself," was the laconic reply, and every salesman and correspondent in the country could well afford to take this advice to heart. sell yourself; answer every objection that you can think of, test out the proposition from every conceivable angle; measure it by other similar products; learn its points of weakness and of superiority, know its possibilities and its limitations. convince yourself; sell yourself, and then you will be able to sell others. the first source of material for the correspondent is in the house itself. his knowledge must run back to the source of raw materials: the kinds of materials used, where they come from, the quality and the quantity required, the difficulties in obtaining them, the possibilities of a shortage, all the problems of mining or gathering the raw material and getting it from its source to the plant--a vast storehouse of talking points. then it is desirable to have a full knowledge of the processes of manufacture; the method of handling work in the factory, the labor saving appliances used, the new processes that have been perfected, the time required in turning out goods, the delays that are liable to occur--these are all pertinent and may furnish the strongest kind of selling arguments. and it is equally desirable to have inside knowledge of the methods in the sales department, in the receiving room and the shipping room. it is necessary for the correspondent to know the firm's facilities for handling orders; when deliveries can be promised, what delays are liable to occur, how goods are packed, the condition in which they are received by the customer, the probable time required in reaching the customer. another nearby source of information is the status of the customer's account; whether he is slow pay or a man who always discounts his bills. it is a very important fact for the correspondent to know whether the records show an increasing business or a business that barely holds its own. then a most important source--by many considered the most valuable material of all--is the customer himself. it may be laid down as a general proposition that the more the correspondent knows about the man to whom he is writing, the better appeal he can make. in the first place, he wants to know the size and character of the customer's business. he should know the customer's location, not merely as a name that goes on the envelope, but some pertinent facts regarding the state or section. if he can find out something regarding a customer's standing and his competition, it will help him to understand his problems. fortunate is the correspondent who knows something regarding the personal peculiarities of the man to whom he is writing. if he understands his hobbies, his cherished ambition, his home life, he can shape his appeal in a more personal way. it is comparatively easy to secure such information where salesmen are calling on the trade, and many large houses insist upon their representatives' making out very complete reports, giving a mass of detailed information that will be valuable to the correspondent. then there is a third source of material, scarcely less important than the study of the house and the customer, and that is a study of the competitors--other firms who are in the same line of business and going after the same trade. the broad-gauged correspondent never misses an opportunity to learn more about the goods of competing houses--the quality of their products, the extent of their lines, their facilities for handling orders, the satisfaction that their goods are giving, the terms on which they are sold and which managers are hustling and up to the minute in their methods. the correspondent can also find information, inspiration and suggestion from the advertising methods of other concerns--not competitors but firms in a similar line. then there are various miscellaneous sources of information. the majority of correspondents study diligently the advertisements in general periodicals; new methods and ideas are seized upon and filed in the "morgue" for further reference. where a house travels a number of men, the sales department is an excellent place from which to draw talking points. interviewing salesmen as they come in from trips and so getting direct information, brings out talking points which are most helpful as are those secured by shorthand reports of salesmen's conventions. many firms get convincing arguments by the use of detailed forms asking for reports on the product. one follow-up writer gets valuable pointers from complaints which he terms "reverse" or "left-handed" talking points. some correspondents become adept in coupling up the news of the day with their products. a thousand and one different events may be given a twist to connect the reader's interest with the house products and supply a reason for "buying now." the fluctuation in prices of raw materials, drought, late seasons, railway rates, fires, bumper crops, political discussions, new inventions, scientific achievements--there is hardly a happening that the clever correspondent, hard pressed for new talking points, cannot work into a sales letter as a reason for interesting the reader in his goods. * * * * * sources of material: / . sources / . raw materials --| . quality | | . supply | \ . price | | / . capacity of plant | plant | | . new equipment | . processes of --| . time saving | manufacture | devices | \ . improved methods /- . the house------| | | / . methods of | | | salesmen | | . knowledge of --| . policy of | | departments | credit dept. | | | . conditions in | | | receiving & | | \ shipping depts. | | | | . knowledge of | | costs | | | | . status of / . credit | | customer's --| standing | | account | . growing | | \ business | | | | / . old letters | | | . advertisements | | . documents --| . booklets, | | | circulars, etc. | | \ . testimonials | | | | / . acquaintances | | | of officers | \ . personnel of --| . interests & | firm | relations | \ of officers | | / . character or |- . the customers--| kind of business | | | | . size of business | | | | . length of time | | in business | | sources | . location & local of | conditions material | | | . competition | | | | . standing with | | customers | | | | . methods & policies | | | | . hobbies & personal | \ peculiarities | | / . quality | / . goods --| . extent of lines | | \ . new lines | | | | / . terms | | . policies --| . treatment of | | \ customers | | |- . competitors----| / . size of plant | | . capacity --| . equipment | | | . facilities for | | \ handling order | | | | / . new campaigns | \ . methods --| . advertising | \ . aggressiveness | | / . methods | | |- . other methods--| . advertising | (not | | competitors) \ . sales campaigns | | / . methods | / . supply houses --\ . capacity | | | | . general market \- . miscellaneous--| conditions | | . current events | | . advertising in \ general magazines * * * * * gathering the information is apt to be wasted effort unless it is classified and kept where it is instantly available. a notebook for ideas should always be at hand and men who write important sales letters should keep within reach scrapbooks, folders or envelopes containing "inspirational" material to which they can readily refer. the scrapbook, a card index or some such method for classifying and filing material is indispensable. two or three pages or cards may be devoted to each general subject, such as raw material, processes of manufacture, methods of shipping, uses, improvements, testimonials, and so forth, and give specific information that is manna for the correspondent. the data may consist of notes he has written, bits of conversation he has heard, extracts from articles he has read, advertisements of other concerns and circulars--material picked up from a thousand sources. one versatile writer uses heavy manila sheets about the size of a letterhead and on these he pastes the catch-lines, the unique phrases, the forceful arguments, the graphic descriptions and statistical information that he may want to use. several sheets are filled with metaphors and figures of speech that he may want to use some time in illuminating a point. these sheets are more bulky than paper but are easier to handle than a scrapbook, and they can be set up in front of the writer while he is working. another correspondent has an office that looks as if it had been decorated with a crazy quilt. whenever he finds a word, a sentence, a paragraph or a page that he wants to keep he pins or pastes it on the wall. "i don't want any systematic classification of this stuff," he explains, "for in looking for the particular word or point that i want, i go over so many other words and points that i keep all the material fresh in my mind. no good points are buried in some forgotten scrapbook; i keep reading these things until they are as familiar to me as the alphabet." it may be very desirable to keep booklets, pamphlets and bulky matter that cannot be pasted into a book or onto separate sheets in manila folders. this is the most convenient way for classifying and filing heavy material. or large envelopes may be used for this purpose. another favorite method of arrangement in filing talking points for reference is that of filing them in the order of their pulling power. this, in many propositions, is considered the best method. it is not possible, out of a list of arguments to tell, until after the try-out always, which will pull and which will not. those pulling best will be worked the most. only as more extensive selling literature is called for will the weaker points be pressed into service. no matter what system is used, it must be a growing system; it must be kept up to date by the addition of new material, picked up in the course of the day's work. much material is gathered and saved that is never used, but the wise correspondent does not pass by an anecdote, a good simile, a clever appeal or forcible argument simply because he does not see at the moment how he can make use of it. in all probability the time will come when that story or that figure of speech will just fit in to illustrate some point he is trying to make. nor does the correspondent restrict his material to the subject in which he is directly interested, for ideas spring from many sources and the advertisement of some firm in an entirely different line may give him a suggestion or an inspiration that will enable him to work up an original talking point. and so it will be found that the sources of material are almost unlimited--limited in fact, only by the ability of the writer to see the significance of a story, a figure of speech or an item of news, and connect it up with his particular proposition. but gathering and classifying material available for arguments is only preliminary work. a wide knowledge of human nature is necessary to select from these arguments those that will appeal to the particular prospect or class of prospects you are trying to reach. "when you sit down to write an important letter, how do you pick out your talking points?" this question was put to a man whose letters have been largely responsible for an enormous mail-order business. "the first thing i do," he replied, "is to wipe my pen and put the cork in the ink bottle." his answer summarizes everything that can be said about selecting talking points: before you start to write, study the proposition, picture in your mind the man to whom you are writing, get his viewpoint, pick out the arguments that will appeal to him and then write your letter to that individual. the trouble with most letters is that they are not aimed carefully, the writer does not try to find the range but blazes away in hopes that some of the shots will take effect. there are a hundred things that might be said about this commodity that you want to market. it requires a knowledge of human nature, and of salesmanship to single out the particular arguments and the inducement that will carry most weight with the individual to whom you are writing. for even if you are preparing a form letter it will be most effective if it is written directly at some individual who most nearly represents the conditions, the circumstances and the needs of the class you are trying to reach. only the new correspondent selects the arguments that are nearest at hand--the viewpoints that appeal to him. the high score letter writers look to outside sources for their talking points. one of the most fruitful sources of information is the men who have bought your goods. the features that induced them to buy your product, the things that they talk about are the very things that will induce others to buy that same product. find out what pleases the man who is using your goods and you may be sure that this same feature will appeal to the prospect. it is equally desirable to get information from the man who did not buy your machine--learn his reasons, find out what objections he has against it; where, in his estimation, it fell short of his requirements; for it is reasonably certain that other prospects will raise the same objections and it is a test of good salesmanship to anticipate criticisms and present arguments that will forestall such objections. in every office there should be valuable evidence in the files-- advertisements, letters, circulars, folders and other publicity matter that has been used in past campaigns. in the most progressive business houses, every campaign is thoroughly tested out; arguments, schemes, and talking points are proved up on test lists, the law of averages enabling the correspondent to tell with mathematical accuracy the pulling power of every argument he has ever used. the record of tests; the letters that have fallen down and the letters that have pulled, afford information that is invaluable in planning new campaigns. the arguments and appeals that have proved successful in the past can be utilized over and over again on new lists or given a new setting and used on old lists. the time has passed when a full volley is fired before the ammunition is tested and the range found. the capable letter writer tests out his arguments and proves the strength of his talking points without wasting a big appropriation. his letters are tested as accurately as the chemist in his laboratory tests the strength or purity of material that is submitted to him for analysis. how letters are keyed and tested is the subject of another chapter. no matter what kind of a letter you are writing, keep this fact in mind: never use an argument on the reader that does not appeal to you, the writer. know your subject; know your goods from the source of the raw material to the delivery of the finished product. and then in selling them, pick out the arguments that will appeal to the reader; look at the proposition through the eyes of the prospect; sell yourself the order first and you will have found the talking points that will sell the prospect. when you _sit down_ to write part i--preparing to write the letter--chapter _the weakness of most letters is not due to ungrammatical sentences or to a poor style, but to a wrong viewpoint: the writer presents a proposition from his own viewpoint instead of that of the reader. the correspondent has gone far towards success when he can_ visualize _his prospect, see his environments, his needs, his ambitions, and_ approach _the_ prospect _from_ this angle. _this chapter tells how to get the class idea; how to see the man to whom you are writing and that equally important qualification, how to get into the mood for writing--actual methods used by effective correspondents_ * * * * * when you call on another person or meet him in a business transaction you naturally have in mind a definite idea of what you want to accomplish. that is, if you expect to carry your point. you know that this end cannot be reached except by a presentation which will put your proposition in such a favorable light, or offer such an inducement, or so mould the minds of others to your way of thinking that they will agree with you. and so before you meet the other person you proceed to plan your campaign, your talk, your attitude to fit his personality and the conditions under which you expect to meet. an advertising man in an eastern mining town was commissioned to write a series of letters to miners, urging upon them the value of training in a night school about to be opened. now he knew all about the courses the school would offer and he was strong on generalities as to the value of education. but try as he would, the letters refused to take shape. then suddenly he asked himself, "what type of man am i really trying to reach?" and there lay the trouble. he had never met a miner face to face in his life. as soon as he realized this he reached for his hat and struck out for the nearest coal breaker. he put in two solid days talking with miners, getting a line on the average of intelligence, their needs--the point of contact. then he came back and with a vivid picture of his man in mind, he produced a series of letters that glowed with enthusiasm and sold the course. a number of years ago a printer owning a small shop in an ohio city set out to find a dryer that would enable him to handle his work faster and without the costly process of "smut-sheeting." he interested a local druggist who was something of a chemist and together they perfected a dryer that was quite satisfactory and the printer decided to market his product. he wrote fifteen letters to acquaintances and sold eleven of them. encouraged, he got out one hundred letters and sold sixty-four orders. on the strength of this showing, his banker backed him for the cost of a hundred thousand letters and fifty-eight thousand orders were the result. the banker was interested in a large land company and believing the printer must be a veritable wizard in writing letters, made him an attractive offer to take charge of the advertising for the company's minnesota and canada lands. the man sold his business, accepted the position--and made a signal failure. he appealed to the printers because he knew their problems--the things that lost them money, the troubles that caused them sleepless nights--and in a letter that bristled with shop talk he went straight to the point, told how he could help them out of at least one difficulty--and sold his product. but when it came to selling western land he was out of his element. he had never been a hundred miles away from his home town; he had never owned a foot of real estate; "land hunger" was to him nothing but a phrase; the opportunities of a "new country" were to him academic arguments--they were not realities. he lost his job. discouraged but determined, he moved to kansas where he started a small paper--and began to study the real estate business. one question was forever on his lips: "why did you move out here?" and to prospective purchasers, "why do you want to buy kansas land? what attracts you?" month after month he asked these questions of pioneers and immigrants. he wanted their viewpoint, the real motive that drove them westward. then he took in a partner, turned the paper over to him and devoted his time to the real estate business. today he is at the head of a great land company and through his letters and his advertising matter he has sold hundreds of thousands of acres to people who have never seen the land. but he tells them the things they want to know; he uses the arguments that "get under the skin." he spent years in preparing to write his letters and bought and sold land with prospects "face to face" long before he attempted to deal with them by letter. he talked and thought and studied for months before he dipped his pen into ink. now before he starts a letter, he calls to mind someone to whom he has sold a similar tract in the past; he remembers how each argument was received; what appeals struck home and then, in his letter, he talks to that man just as earnestly as if his future happiness depended upon making the one sale. the preparation to write the letter should be two-fold: knowing your product or proposition and knowing the man you want to reach. you have got to see the proposition through the eyes of your prospect. the printer sold his ink dryer because he looked at it from the angle of the buyer and later he sold real estate, but not until he covered up his own interest and presented the proposition from the viewpoint of the prospect. probably most successful letter writers, when they sit down to write, consciously or unconsciously run back over faces and characteristics of friends and acquaintances until they find someone who typifies the class they desire to reach. when writing to women, one man always directs his appeal to his mother or sister; if trying to interest young men he turns his mind back to his own early desires and ambitions. visualize your prospect. fix firmly in your mind some one who represents the class you are trying to reach; forget that there is any other prospect in the whole world; concentrate your attention and selling talk on this one individual. "if you are going to write letters that pull," says one successful correspondent, "you have got to be a regular spiritualist in order to materialize the person to whom you are writing; bring him into your office and talk to him face to face." "the first firm i ever worked for," he relates, "was andrew campbell & son. the senior campbell was a conservative old scotchman who had made a success in business by going cautiously and thoroughly into everything he took up. the only thing that would appeal to him would be a proposition that could be presented logically and with the strongest kind of arguments to back it up. the son, on the other hand, was thoroughly american; ready to take a chance, inclined to plunge and try out a new proposition because it was new or unique; the novelty of a thing appealed to him and he was interested because it was out of the ordinary. "whenever i have an important letter to write, i keep these two men in mind and i center all my efforts to convince them; using practical, commonsense arguments to convince the father, and enough snappy 'try-it-for-yourself' talk to win the young man." according to this correspondent, every firm in a measure represents these two forces, conservative and radical, and the strongest letter is the one that makes an appeal to both elements. a young man who had made a success in selling books by mail was offered double the salary to take charge of the publicity department of a mail-order clothing house. he agreed to accept--two months later. reluctantly the firm consented. the firm saw or heard nothing from him until he reported for work. he had been shrewd enough not to make the mistake of the printer who tried to sell land and so he went to a small town in northern iowa where a relative owned a clothing store and started in as a clerk. after a month he jumped to another store in southern minnesota. at each place--typical country towns--he studied the trade and when not waiting on customers busied himself near some other clerk so he could hear the conversation, find out the things the farmers and small town men looked for in clothes and learn the talking points that actually sell the goods. this man who had a position paying $ , a year waiting for him spent two months at $ a week preparing to write. a more conceited chap would have called it a waste of time, but this man thought that he could well afford to spend eight weeks and sacrifice nearly a thousand dollars learning to write letters and advertisements that would sell clothes by mail. at the end of the year he was given a raise that more than made up his loss. nor is he content, for every year he spends a few weeks behind the counter in some small town, getting the viewpoint of the people with whom he deals, finding a point of contact, getting local color and becoming familiar with the manner of speech and the arguments that will get orders. when he sits down to write a letter or an advertisement he has a vivid mental picture of the man he wants to interest; he knows that man's process of thinking, the thing that appeals to him, the arguments that will reach right down to his pocket-book. a man who sells automatic scales to grocers keeps before him the image of a small dealer in his home town. the merchant had fallen into the rut, the dust was getting thicker on his dingy counters and trade was slipping away to more modern stores. "mother used to send me on errands to that store when i was a boy," relates the correspondent, "and i had been in touch with it for twenty years. i knew the local conditions; the growth of competition that was grinding out the dealer's life. "i determined to sell him and every week he received a letter from the house--he did not know of my connection with it--and each letter dealt with some particular problem that i knew he had to face. i kept this up for six months without calling forth a response of any kind; but after the twenty-sixth letter had gone out, the manager came in one day with an order--and the cash accompanied it. the dealer admitted that it was the first time he had ever bought anything of the kind by mail. but i knew _his_ problems, and i connected them up with our scales in such a way that he _had_ to buy. "those twenty-six letters form the basis for all my selling arguments, for in every town in the country there are merchants in this same rut, facing the same competition, and they can be reached only by connecting their problems with our scales." no matter what your line may be, you have got to use some such method if you are going to make your letters pull the orders. materialize your prospect; overcome every objection and connect _their_ problems with _your_ products. when you sit down to your desk to write a letter, how do you get into the right mood? some, like mediums, actually work themselves into a sort of trance before starting to write. one man insists that he writes good letters only when he gets mad--which is his way of generating nervous energy. others go about it very methodically and chart out the letter, point by point. they analyze the proposition and out of all the possible arguments and appeals, carefully select those that their experience and judgment indicate will appeal strongest to the individual whom they are addressing. on a sheet of paper one man jots down the arguments that may be used and by a process of elimination, scratches off one after another until he has left only the ones most likely to reach his prospect. many correspondents keep within easy reach a folder or scrapbook of particularly inspiring letters, advertisements and other matter gathered from many sources. one man declares that no matter how dull he may feel when he reaches the office in the morning he can read over a few pages in his scrapbook and gradually feel his mind clear; his enthusiasm begins to rise and within a half hour he is keyed up to the writing mood. a correspondent in a large mail-order house keeps a scrapbook of pictures--a portfolio of views of rural life and life in small towns. he subscribes to the best farm papers and clips out pictures that are typical of rural life, especially those that represent types and show activities of the farm, the furnishings of the average farm house--anything that will make clearer the environment of the men and women who buy his goods. when he sits down to write a letter he looks through this book until he finds some picture that typifies the man who needs the particular article he wants to sell and then he writes to that man, keeping the picture before him, trying to shape every sentence to impress such a person. other correspondents are at a loss to understand the pulling power of his letters. a sales manager in a typewriter house keeps the managers of a score of branch offices and several hundred salesmen gingered up by his weekly letters. he prepares to write these letters by walking through the factory, where he finds inspiration in the roar of machinery, the activity of production, the atmosphere of actual creative work. there are many sources of inspiration. study your temperament, your work and your customers to find out under what conditions your production is the easiest and greatest. it is neither necessary nor wise to write letters when energies and interest are at a low ebb, when it is comparatively easy to stimulate the lagging enthusiasm and increase your power to write letters that bring results. how to _begin_ a business letter part ii--how to write the letter--chapter _from its saluation to its signature a business letter must hold the interest of the reader or fail in its purpose. the most important sentence in it is obviously the_ first _one, for upon it depends whether the reader will dip further into the letter or discard it into the waste basket_. in that first sentence the writer has his chance. _if he is really capable, he will not only attract the reader's interest in that first sentence, but put him into a receptive mood for the message that follows. here are some sample ways of "opening" a business letter_ * * * * * no matter how large your tomorrow morning's mail, it is probable that you will glance through the first paragraph of every letter you open. if it catches your attention by reference to something in which you are interested, or by a clever allusion or a striking head line or some original style, it is probable you will read at least the next paragraph or two. but if these paragraphs do not keep up your interest the letter will be passed by unfinished. if you fail to give the letter a full reading the writer has only himself to blame. he has not taken advantage of his opportunity to carry your interest along and develop it until he has driven his message home, point by point. in opening the letter the importance of the salutation must not be ignored. if a form letter from some one who does not know mr. brown, personally, starts out "dear mr. brown," he is annoyed. a man with self-respect resents familiarity from a total stranger--someone who has no interest in him except as a possible customer for his commodity. if a clerk should address a customer in such a familiar manner it would be looked upon as an insult. yet it is no uncommon thing to receive letters from strangers that start out with one of these salutations: "dear benson:" "my dear mr. benson:" "respected friend:" "dear brother:" while it is desirable to get close to the reader; and you want to talk to him in a very frank manner and find a point of personal contact, this assumption of friendship with a total stranger disgusts a man before he begins your letter. you start out with a handicap that is hard to overcome, and an examination of a large number of letters using such salutations are enough to create suspicion for all; too often they introduce some questionable investment proposition or scheme that would never appeal to the hard-headed, conservative business man. "dear sir" or "gentlemen" is the accepted salutation, at least until long correspondence and cordial relations justify a more intimate greeting. the ideal opening, of course, strikes a happy medium between too great formality on the one hand and a cringing servility or undue familiarity on the other hand. no one will dispute the statement that the reason so many selling campaigns fail is not because of a lack of merit in the propositions themselves but because they are not effectively presented. for most business men read their letters in a receptive state of mind. the letterhead may show that the message concerns a duplicating machine and the one to whom it is addressed may feel confident in his own mind that he does not want a duplicating machine. at the same time he is willing to read the letter, for it may give him some new idea, some practical suggestion as to how such a device would be a good investment and make money for him. he is anxious to learn how the machine may be related to his particular problems. but it is not likely that he has time or sufficient interest to wade through a long letter starting out: "we take pleasure in sending you under separate cover catalogue of our latest models of print-quicks, and we are sure it will prove of interest to you." * * * * * the man who has been sufficiently interested in an advertisement to send for a catalogue finds his interest cooling rapidly when he picks up a letter that starts out like this: "we have your valued inquiry of recent date, and we take pleasure in acknowledging," and so forth. * * * * * suppose the letter replying to his inquiry starts out in this style: "the picture on page of our catalogue is a pretty fair one, but i wish you could see the desk itself." * * * * * the reader's attention is immediately gripped and he reaches for the catalogue to look at the picture on page five. to get attention and arouse interest, avoid long-spun introductions and hackneyed expressions. rambling sentences and loose paragraphs have proved the graveyard for many excellent propositions. time-worn expressions and weather-beaten phrases are poor conductors, there, is too much resistance-loss in the current of the reader's interest. the best way to secure attention naturally depends upon the nature of the proposition and the class of men to whom the letter is written. one of the most familiar methods is that known to correspondents as the "mental shock." the idea is to put at the top of the letter a "stop! look! listen!" sign. examples of this style are plentiful: this means money to you--_big money_ let me pay your next month's rent read it--on our word it's worth reading stop shoveling your money into the furnace now listen! i want a personal word with you cut your light bill in half * * * * * such introductions have undoubtedly proved exceedingly effective at times, but like many other good things, the idea has been overworked. the catch-line of itself sells no goods and to be effective it must be followed by trip-hammer arguments. interest created in this way is hard to keep up. the correspondent may use a catch-line, just as the barker at a side show uses a megaphone--the noise attracts a crowd but it does not sell the tickets. it is the "spiel" the barker gives that packs the tent. and so the average man is not influenced so much by a bold catch-line in his letters as by the paragraphs that follow. some correspondents even run a catch-line in red ink at the top of the page, but these yellow journal "scare-heads" fall short with the average business proposition. then attention may be secured, not by a startling sentence but by the graphic way in which a proposition is stated. here is an opening that starts out with a clear-cut swing: "if we were to offer you a hundred-dollar bill as a gift we take it for granted that you would be interested. if, then, our goods will mean to you many times that sum every year isn't the proposition still more interesting? do you not want us to demonstrate what we say? are you not willing to invest a little of your time watching this demonstration?" * * * * * this reference to a hundred-dollar bill creates a concrete image in the mind of the reader. the letters that first used this attention-getter proved so effective that the idea has been worked over in many forms. here is the effective way one correspondent starts out: "if this letter were printed on ten-dollar bills it could scarcely be more valuable to you than the offer it now contains. you want money; we want your business. let's go into partnership." * * * * * here is a letter sent out by a manufacturer of printing presses: "if your press feeders always showed up on monday morning; if they were never late, never got tired, never became careless, never grumbled about working overtime, you would increase the output of your plant, have less trouble, make more money--that is why you will be interested in the speedwell automatic feeding attachment." * * * * * this paragraph summarizes many of the troubles of the employing printer. it "gets under his skin," it is graphic, depicting one of the greatest problems of his business and so he is certain to read the letter and learn more about the solution that it offers. this same paragraph might also be used as a good illustration of that effective attention-getter, the quick appeal to the problems that are of most concern to the reader. the one great trouble with the majority of letters is that they start out with "we" and from first to last have a selfish viewpoint: "we have your valued inquiry of recent date and, as per your request, we take pleasure in enclosing herewith a copy of our latest catalogue," and so forth. * * * * * don't begin by talking about yourself, your company, your business, your growth, your progress, your improved machinery, your increased circulation, your newly invested capital. the reader has not the faintest interest in you or your business until he can see some connection between it and his own welfare. by itself it makes no play whatever to his attention; it must first be coupled up with his problems and his needs. begin by talking about him, his company, his business, his progress, his troubles, his disappointments, his needs, his ambition. that is where he lives day and night. knock at that door and you will find him at home. touch upon some vital need in his business-- some defect or tangle that is worrying him--some weak spot that he wants to remedy--some cherished ambition that haunts him--and you will have rung the bell of his interest. a few openings that are designed to get the reader's attention and induce him to read farther, are shown here: "your letter reached me at a very opportune time as i have been looking for a representative in your territory." * * * * * "by using this code you can telegraph us for any special article you want and it will be delivered at your store the following morning. this will enable you to compete with the large mail-order houses. it will give you a service that will mean more business and satisfied customers." * * * * * "you can save the wages of one salesman in every department of your store. just as you save money by using a typewriter, addressograph, adding machine, cash register and other modern equipments, so you can save it by installing a simplex." * * * * * "don't you want to know how to add two thousand square feet of display to some department of your store in exchange for twenty feet of wall?" * * * * * "yes, there is a mighty good opening in your territory for hustling salesmen. you will receive a complete outfit by express so you can start at once." * * * * * keep the interest of the reader in mind. no matter how busy he is, he will find time to read your letter if you talk about his problems and his welfare. some correspondents, having taken only the first lesson in business letter writing, over-shoot the mark with a lot of "hot air" that is all too apparent. here is the opening paragraph from one of these writers: "by the concise and business-like character of your letter of inquiry we know that you would be very successful in the sale of our typewriters. this personal and confidential circular letter is sent only to a few of our selected correspondents whom we believe can be placed as general agents." * * * * * as a matter of fact, the gentleman to whom this letter was sent had written with a lead pencil on a post card asking for further particulars regarding propositions to salesmen. it is a good illustration of the form letter gone wrong. the inquirer had not written a concise and business-like letter and there was not the slightest reason why the firm should send him a personal and confidential proposition and if the proposition were really confidential, it would not be printed in a circular letter. here is the opening paragraph of a letter typical in its lack of originality and attention-getting qualities: "we are in receipt of yours of recent date and in reply wish to state that you will find under separate cover a copy of our latest catalogue, illustrating and describing our wonder lighting system. we are sure the information contained in this catalogue will be of interest to you." * * * * * not only is the paragraph devoid of interest-getting features, but it is written from the wrong standpoint--"we" instead of "you." re-write the paragraph and the reader is certain to have his interest stimulated: "the catalogue is too large to enclose with this letter and so you will find it in another envelope. you will find on page a complete description of the wonder system of lighting, explaining just how it will cut down your light bill. this system is adapted to use in stores, factories, public halls and homes--no matter what you want you will find it listed in this catalogue." * * * * * then it is possible to secure attention by some familiar allusion, some reference to facts with which the reader is familiar: "in our fathers' day, you know, all fine tableware was hand forged--that meant quality but high cost." * * * * * the opening statement secures the assent of the reader even before he knows what the proposition is. sometimes an allusion may be introduced that does not come home so pointedly to the reader but the originality of the idea appeals to him. by its very cleverness he is led to read further. here is the beginning of a letter sent out by an advertising man and commercial letter writer: "the prodigal son might have started home much sooner had he received an interesting letter about the fatted calf that awaited his coming. "the right sort of a letter would have attracted his attention, aroused his interest, created a desire and stimulated him to action." * * * * * then there is the opening that starts out with an appeal to human interest. it is the one opening where the writer can talk about himself and still get attention and work up interest: "let me tell you how i got into the mail order business and made so much money out of it." * * * * * "i wish i could have had the opportunity thirty years ago that you have today. did i ever tell you how i started out?" * * * * * "i have been successful because i have confidence in other people." * * * * * "i was talking to mr. phillips, the president of our institution, this morning, and he told me that you had written to us concerning our correspondence course." * * * * * these personal touches bring the writer and reader close together and pave the way for a man-to-man talk. then there is a way of getting attention by some novel idea, something unusual in the typography of the letter, some unusual idea. one mail-order man puts these two lines written with a typewriter across the top of his letterheads: "even if you had to pay to secure a copy of this letter--or had to take a day off to read it--you could not afford to fail to consider it." * * * * * few men would receive a letter like that without taking the time to read it, at least hurriedly, and if the rest of the argument is presented with equal force the message is almost sure to be carried home. another mail-order house sending out form letters under one-cent postage, inserts this sentence directly under the date line, to the right of the name and address: "leaving our letter unsealed for postal inspection is the best proof that our goods are exactly as represented." * * * * * the originality of the idea impresses one. there is no danger that the letter will be shunted into the waste basket without a reading. there are times when it is necessary to disarm the resentment of the reader in the very first paragraph, as, for instance, when there has been a delay in replying to a letter. an opening that is all too common reads: "i have been so extremely busy that your letter has not received my attention." * * * * * or the writer may be undiplomatic enough to say: "pardon delay. i have been so much engaged with other matters that i have not found time to write you." * * * * * the considerate correspondent is always careful that his opening does not rub the wrong way. one writer starts out by saying: "you have certainly been very patient with me in the matter of your order and i wish to thank you for this." * * * * * here are the first five paragraphs of a two-page letter from an investment firm. the length of the letter is greatly against it and the only hope the writer could have, would be in getting the attention firmly in the opening paragraph: "my dear mr. wilson: "i want to have a personal word with you to explain this matter. "i don't like to rush things; i believe in taking my time. i always try to do it. i want you to do the same thing, but there are exceptions to all rules: sometimes we cannot do things just the way we want to and at the same time reap all the benefits. "here is the situation. i went out to the oil fields of california and while there i did devote plenty and ample time to proper investigation. i went into the thing thoroughly. i went there intending to invest my own money if i found things right. "my main object in leaving for california was to investigate for my clients, but i would not advise my clients to invest their money unless the situation was such that i would invest my own money. that's where i stand--first, last and all the time. "i don't go into the torrid deserts in the heat of the summer and stay there for weeks just for fun. there is no fun or pleasure to it, let me tell you. it's hard work when one investigates properly, and i surely did it right. i guess you know that." * * * * * the letter is not lacking in style; the writer knows how to put things forcibly, but he takes up half a page of valuable space before he says anything vital to his subject. see how much stronger his letter would have been had he started with the fifth paragraph, following it with the fourth paragraph. the great weakness in many letters is padding out the introduction with non-essential material. it takes the writer too long to get down to his proposition. here is a letter from a concern seeking to interest agents: "we are in receipt of your valued inquiry and we enclose herewith full information in regard to the e. z. washing compound and our terms to agents. "we shall be pleased to mail you a washing sample post-paid on receipt of four cents in two-cent stamps or a full size can for ten cents, which amount you may subtract from your first order, thus getting the sample free. we would like to send you a sample without requiring any deposit but we have been so widely imposed upon by 'sample grafters' in the past that we can no longer afford to do this." * * * * * the first paragraph is hackneyed and written from the standpoint of the writer rather than that of the reader. the second paragraph is a joke. seven lines, lines that ought to be charged with magnetic, interest-getting statements, are devoted to explaining why ten cents' worth of samples are not sent free, but that this "investment" will be deducted from the first order. what is the use of saving a ten-cent sample if you lose the interest of a possible agent, whose smallest sales would amount to several times this sum? it is useless to spend time and thought in presenting your proposition and working in a clincher unless you get attention and stimulate the reader's interest in the beginning. practically everyone will read your opening paragraph--whether he reads further will depend upon those first sentences. do not deceive yourself by thinking that because your proposition is interesting to you, it will naturally be interesting to others. do not put all your thought on argument and inducements--the man to whom you are writing may never read that far. lead up to your proposition from the reader's point of view; couple up your goods with his needs; show him where he will benefit and he will read your letter through to the postscript. get his attention and arouse his interest--then you are ready to present your proposition. how to _present_ your proposition part ii--how to write the letter--chapter _after attention has been secured, you must lead quickly to your description and explanation; visualize your product and introduce your proof, following this up with arguments. the art of the letter writer is found in his ability to lead the reader along, paragraph by paragraph, without a break in the_ point _of_ contact _that has been established. then the proposition must be presented so clearly that there is no possibility of its being misunderstood, and the product or the service must be coupled up with the_ reader's needs _how this can be done is described in this chapter_ * * * * * after you have attracted attention and stimulated the interest of the reader, you have made a good beginning, but only a beginning; you then have the hard task of holding that interest, explaining your proposition, pointing out the superiority of the goods or the service that you are trying to sell and making an inducement that will bring in the orders. your case is in court, the jury has been drawn, the judge is attentive and the opposing counsel is alert--it is up to you to prove your case. good business letter, consciously or unconsciously usually contains four elements: description, explanation, argument and persuasion. these factors may pass under different names, but they are present and most correspondents will include two other elements--inducement and clincher. in this chapter we will consider description, explanation and argument as the vehicles one may use in carrying his message to the reader. an essential part of all sales letters is a clear description of the article or goods--give the prospect a graphic idea of how the thing you are trying to sell him looks, and this description should follow closely after the interest-getting introduction. to describe an article graphically one has got to know it thoroughly: the material of which it is made; the processes of manufacture; how it is sold and shipped--every detail about it. there are two extremes to which correspondents frequently go. one makes the description too technical, using language and terms that are only partially understood by the reader. he does not appreciate that the man to whom he is writing may not understand the technical or colloquial language that is so familiar to everyone in the house. for instance, if a man wants to install an electric fan in his office, it would be the height of folly to write him a letter filled with technical descriptions about the quality of the fan, the magnetic density of the iron that is used, the quality of the insulation, the kilowatts consumed--"talking points" that would be lost on the average business man. the letter that would sell him would give specific, but not technical information, about how the speed of the fan is easily regulated, that it needs to be oiled but once a year, and costs so much a month to operate. these are the things in which the prospective customer is interested. then there is the correspondent whose descriptions are too vague; too general--little more than bald assertions. a letter from a vacuum cleaner manufacturing company trying to interest agents is filled with such statements as: "this is the best hand power machine ever manufactured," "it is the greatest seller ever produced," "it sells instantly upon demonstration." no one believes such exaggerations as these. near the end of the letter--where the writer should be putting in his clincher, there is a little specific information stating that the device weighs only five pounds, is made of good material and can be operated by a child. if this paragraph had followed quickly after the introduction and had gone into further details, the prospect might have been interested, but it is probable that the majority of those who received the letter never read as far as the bottom of the second page. if a man is sufficiently interested in a product to write for catalogue and information, or if you have succeeded in getting his attention in the opening paragraph of a sales letter, he is certain to read a description that is specific and definite. the average man thinks of a work bench as a work bench and would be at a loss to describe one, but he has a different conception after reading these paragraphs from a manufacturer's letter: "just a word so you will understand the superiority of our goods. "our benches are built principally of maple, the very best michigan hard maple, and we carry this timber in our yards in upwards of a million feet at a time. it is piled up and allowed to air dry for at least two years before being used; then the stock is kiln dried to make sure that the lumber is absolutely without moisture or sap, and we know there can be no warping or opening of glue joints in the finished product. "our machinery is electrically driven, securing an even drive to the belt, thus getting the best work from all equipment--absolutely true cuts that give perfect joints to all work. "then, as to glue: some manufacturers contend that any glue that sticks will do. we insist there should be no question about glue joints; no 'perhaps' in our argument. that's why we use only the best by test; not merely sticking two pieces of wood together to try the joint quality, but glue that is scientifically tested for tenacity, viscosity, absorption, and for acid or coloring matter--in short, every test that can be applied." * * * * * this description is neither too technical nor too general; it carries conviction, it is specific enough to appeal to a master carpenter, and it is clear enough to be understood by the layman who never handled a saw or planer. it may be laid down as a principle that long description should ordinarily be made in circulars, folders or catalogues that are enclosed with the letter or sent in a separate envelope, but sometimes it is desirable to emphasize certain points in the letter. happy is the man who can eject enough originality into this description to make it easy reading. the majority of correspondents, in describing the parts of an automobile, would say: "the celebrated imperial wheel bearings are used, these do not need to be oiled oftener than once in six months." * * * * * a correspondent who knew how to throw light into dark places said: "imperial wheel bearings: grease twice a year and forget." * * * * * this "and forget" is such a clever stroke that you are carried on through the rest of the letter, and you are not bored with the figures and detailed description. in a similar way a sales manager, in writing the advertising matter for a motor cycle, leads up to his description of the motor and its capacity by the brief statement: "no limit to speed but the law." this is a friction clutch on the imagination that carries the reader's interest to the end. one writer avoids bringing technical descriptions into his letters, at the same time carrying conviction as to the quality of his goods: "this metal has been subjected to severe accelerated corrosion tests held in accordance with rigid specifications laid down by the american society for testing material, and has proven to corrode much less than either charcoal iron, wrought iron, or steel sheet. "a complete record of these tests and results will be found on the enclosed sheet." * * * * * then there are times when description may be almost entirely eliminated from the letter. for instance, if you are trying to sell a man a house and lot and he has been out to look at the place and has gone over it thoroughly, there is little more that you can say in the way of description. your letter must deal entirely with arguments as to why he should buy now--persuasion, inducement. or, if you are trying to sell him the typewriter that he has been trying out in his office for a month, description is unnecessary--the load your letter must carry is lightened. and there are letters in which explanation is unnecessary. if you are trying to get a man to order a suit of clothes by mail, you will not explain the use of clothes but you will bear down heavily on the description of the material that you put into these particular garments and point out why it is to his advantage to order direct of the manufacturers. but if you are presenting a new proposition, it is necessary to explain its nature, its workings, its principles and appliances. if you are trying to sell a fountain pen you will not waste valuable space in explaining to the reader what a fountain pen is good for and why he should have one, but rather you will give the reasons for buying your particular pen in preference to others. you will explain the self-filling feature and the new patent which prevents its leaking or clogging. it is not always possible to separate description and explanation. here is an illustration taken from a letter sent out by a mail-order shoe company: "i hope your delay in ordering is not the result of any lack of clear information about wearwells. let me briefly mention some of the features of wearwell shoes that i believe warrant you in favoring us with your order: (a) genuine custom style; (b) highest grade material and workmanship; (c) the best fit--thanks to our quarter-sized system--that it is possible to obtain in shoes; (d) thorough foot comfort and long wear; (e) our perfect mail-order service; and (f) the guaranteed proof of quality given in the specification tag sent with every pair." * * * * * this is a concise summary of a longer description that had been given in a previous letter and it explains why the shoes will give satisfaction. here is the paragraph by which the manufacturer of a time-recording device, writing about the advantages of his system puts in explanation plus argument: "every employee keeps his own time and cannot question his own record. all mechanism is hidden and locked. nothing can be tampered with. the clock cannot be stopped. the record cannot be beaten. "this device fits into any cost system and gives an accurate record of what time every man puts on every job. it serves the double purpose of furnishing you a correct time-on-job cost and prevents loafing. it stops costly leaks and enables you to figure profit to the last penny." * * * * * explanation may run in one of many channels. it may point out how the careful selection of raw material makes your product the best, or how the unusual facilities of your factory or the skill of your workmen, or the system of testing the parts assures the greatest value. you might explain why the particular improvements and the patents on your machines make it better or give it greater capacity. the description and the explanation must of necessity depend upon the character of the proposition, but it may be laid down as a general principle that the prospect must be made to understand thoroughly just what the article is for, how it is made, how it looks, how it is used, and what its points of superiority are. whenever possible, the description and explanation in the letter should be reinforced by samples or illustrations that will give a more graphic idea of the product. the prospect may be sufficiently familiar with the thing you are selling to relieve you of the necessity of describing and explaining, although usually these supports are necessary for a selling campaign. but it must be remembered that description and explanation alone do not make a strong appeal to the will. they may arouse interest and excite desire but they do not carry conviction as argument does. some letters are full of explanation and description but lack argument. the repair man from the factory may give a good explanation of how a machine works, but the chances are he would fall down in trying to sell the machine, unless he understood how to reinforce his explanations with a salesman's ability to use argument and persuasion. and so you must look well to your arguments, and the arguments that actually pull the most orders consist of proofs--cold, hard logic and facts that cannot be questioned. as you hope for the verdict of the jury you must prove your case. it is amazing how many correspondents fail to appreciate the necessity for arguments. pages will be filled with assertions, superlative adjectives, boastful claims of superiority, but not one sentence that offers proof of any statement, not one logical reason why the reader should be interested. "we know you will make a mint of money if you put in our goods." "this is the largest and most complete line in the country." "our factory has doubled its capacity during the last three years." "our terms are the most liberal that have ever been offered." "you are missing the opportunity of your lifetime if you do not accept this proposition." "we hope to receive your order by return mail, for you will never have such a wonderful opportunity again." such sentences fill the pages of thousands of letters that are mailed every day. "our system of inspection with special micrometer gauges insures all parts being perfect--within one-thousandth of an inch of absolute accuracy. this means, too, any time you want an extra part of your engine for replacement that you can get it and that it will fit. if we charged you twice as much for the white engine, we could not give you better material or workmanship." * * * * * now this is an argument that is worth while: that the parts of the engine are so accurately ground that repairs can be made quickly, and new parts will fit without a moment's trouble. the last sentence of the paragraph is of course nothing but assertion, but it is stated in a way that carries conviction. many correspondents would have bluntly declared that this was the best engine ever manufactured, or something of that kind, and made no impression at all on the minds of the readers. but the statement that the company could not make a better engine, even if it charged twice as much, sinks in. proof of quality is always one of the strongest arguments that can be used. a man wants to feel sure that he is given good value for his money, it matters not whether he is buying a lead pencil or an automobile. and next to argument of quality is the argument of price. here are some striking paragraphs taken from the letter sent out by a firm manufacturing gummed labels and advertising stickers: "we would rather talk quality than price because no other concern prints better stickers than ours--but we can't help talking price because no other concern charges as little for them as we do." * * * * * this is a strong statement but it is nothing more than a statement the writer, however, hastens to come forward with argument and proof: "you know we make a specialty of gummed labels--do nothing else. we have special machinery designed by ourselves--machinery that may be used by no other concern. this enables us to produce better stickers at a minimum expense. "all of our stickers are printed on the best stock, and double gummed, and, by the way, compare the gumming of our stickers with those put up by other concerns. we have built up a business and reputation on _stickers that stick and stay_." * * * * * if you were in the market for labels you would not hesitate to send an order to that firm, for the writer gives you satisfying reasons for the quality and the low price of his goods. the argument in favor of its goods is presented clearly, concisely, convincingly. the argument that will strike home to the merchant is one that points out his opportunity for gain. here is the way a wholesale grocer presented his proposition on a new brand of coffee: "you put in this brand of coffee and we stand back of you and push sales. our guarantee of quality goes with every pound we put out. ask the opinion of all your customers. if there is the least dissatisfaction, refund them the price of their coffee and deduct it from our next bill. so confident are we of the satisfaction that this coffee will give that we agree to take back at the end of six months all the remaining stock you have on hand--that is, if you do not care to handle the brand longer. "you have probably never sold guaranteed coffee before. you take no chances. the profit is as large as on other brands, and your customers will be impressed with the guarantee placed on every pound." * * * * * the guarantee and the offer of the free trial are possibly the two strongest arguments that can be used either with a dealer or in straight mail-order selling. among the arguments that are most effective are testimonials and references to satisfied users. if the writer can refer to some well-known firm or individual as a satisfied customer he strengthens his point. "when we showed this fixture to john wanamaker's man, it took just about three minutes to close the deal for six of them. since then they have ordered seventy-four more." * * * * * such references as this naturally inspire confidence in a proposition and extracts from letters may be used with great effect, provided the name and address of the writer is given, so that it will have every appearance of being genuine. a solicitor of patents at washington works into his letters to prospective clients quotations from manufacturers: "'we wish to be put in communication with the inventor of some useful novelty, instrument or device, who is looking for a way to market his invention. we want to increase our business along new lines and manufacture under contract, paying royalties to the patentee. "'if your clients have any articles of merit that they want to market, kindly communicate with us. our business is the manufacture of patented articles under contract and we can undoubtedly serve many of your clients in a profitable manner.'" * * * * * such extracts as these are intended to impress upon the inventor the desirability of placing his business with someone who has such a wide acquaintance and is in a position to put him in touch with manufacturers. to send a list of references may also prove a most convincing argument, especially if the writer can refer to some man or firm located near the one to whom he is writing. a mutual acquaintance forms a sort of connecting link that is a pulling force even though the reference is never looked up. in fact, it is only on occasions that references of this kind are investigated, for the mere naming of banks and prominent business men is sufficient to inspire confidence that the proposition is "on the square." after you have explained your proposition, described your goods and pointed out to the prospect how it is to his advantage to possess these goods, the time has come to make him an offer. one of the pathetic sins of business letter writers is to work in the price too early in the letter--before the prospect is interested in the proposition. the clever salesman always endeavors to work up one's interest to the highest possible pitch before price is mentioned at all. many solicitors consider it so essential to keep the price in the background until near the end of the canvass that they artfully dodge the question, "what is the cost?", until they think the prospect is sufficiently interested not to "shy" when the figure is mentioned. a letter from a company seeking to interest agents starts out awkwardly with a long paragraph: "we will be pleased to have you act as our salesman. we need a representative in your city. we know you will make a success." * * * * * then follows a second paragraph giving the selling price of a "complete outfit" although there has not been a line in the letter to warm up the reader, to interest him in the proposition, to point out how he can make money and show him where he will benefit by handling this particular line. after this poor beginning the letter goes on with its explanation and argument, but the message is lost--a message that might have borne fruit had the writer repressed his own selfish motives and pointed out how the reader would gain. there is then plenty of time to refer to the cost of the outfit. a letter from a manufacturing concern selling direct to the consumer starts out in this kill-interest fashion: "did you get our circular describing the merits of our celebrated wonderdown mattresses which cost, full size, $ each?" * * * * * an experienced correspondent would never commit such a blunder for he would not bring in the price until near the end of the letter; or, more likely, the dollar mark would not appear in the letter at all. it would be shown only in an enclosure--folder, circular, catalogue or price list. so important is this point that many schemes have been devised for keeping the cost in the back-ground and this is one of the principal reasons why many concerns are emphasizing more and more the free trial and selling on instalments. one manufacturing company makes a talking point out of the fact that the only condition on which it will sell a machine is to put it in a plant for a sixty-day trial; then if it is found satisfactory the purchaser has his option of different methods of payments: a discount for all cash or monthly instalments. there are many propositions successfully handled by gradually working up interest to the point where price can be brought in, then leading quickly to the inducement and the clincher. in such a letter the price could not be ignored very well and the effect is lost unless it is brought in at the proper place, directly following the argument. like all rules, there are exceptions to this. sometimes where the reader is familiar with the proposition it may be a good policy to catch his attention by a special price offer at the very beginning of the letter. this is frequently done in follow-up letters where it is reasonably certain that the preceding correspondence has practically exhausted explanation, description and arguments. the problem here is different and a special price may be the strongest talking point. then, of course, there are letters that are intended merely to arouse the interest of the reader and induce him to write for prices and further information. the purpose here is to stimulate the interest and induce the recipient to send in particulars regarding his needs and ask for terms. after a man's interest has been this far stimulated it is comparatively easy to quote prices without frightening him away. but in the majority of sales letters an offer must be made, for price, after all, is the one thing that is, to the reader, of first importance. most men want to know all about a proposition without the bother of further correspondence and so a specific offer should usually follow the arguments. how to bring the _letter_ to a close part ii--how to write the letter--chapter getting attention, _explaining a proposition and presenting arguments and proofs are essentials in every letter, but they merely lead up to the vital part_--getting action. _they must be closely followed by_ persuasion, inducement _and a_ clincher. _the well written letter works up to a climax and the order should be secured while interest is at its height. many correspondents stumble when they come to the close. this chapter shows how to make a get-away-- how to hook the order, or if the order is not secured--how to leave the way open to come back with a follow-up_ * * * * * nothing will take the place of arguments and logical reasons in selling an article or a service. but most salesmen will bear out the statement that few orders would be taken unless persuasion and inducement are brought into play to get the prospect's name onto the dotted line. persuasion alone sells few goods outside of the church fair but it helps out the arguments and proofs. the collector's troubles come mainly from sales that are made by persuasion, for the majority of men who are convinced by sound arguments and logical reasons to purchase a machine or a line of goods carry out their part of the bargain if they can. there are a good many correspondents who are clever enough in presenting their proposition, but display a most limited knowledge of human nature in using persuasions that rubs the prospect the wrong way. "why will you let a few dollars stand between you and success? why waste your time, wearing yourself out working for others? why don't you throw off the conditions which bind you down to a small income? why don't you shake off the shackles? why don't you rise to the opportunity that is now presented to you?" * * * * * such a letter is an insult to anyone who receives it, for it really tells him that he is a "mutt" and does not know it. compare the preceding paragraph with this forceful appeal: "remember, the men now in positions you covet did not tumble into them by accident. at one time they had nothing more to guide them than an opportunity exactly like this one. someone pointed out to them the possibilities and they took the chance and gradually attained their present success. have you the courage to make the start, grasp an opportunity, work out your destiny in this same way?" * * * * * this is persuasion by pointing out what others have done. it is the persuasion of example; an appeal that is dignified and inspirational. and here, as in all other parts of the letter, there is the tendency to make the appeal from the selfish standpoint--the profits that will accrue to the writer: "we strongly advise that you get a piece of this land at once. it is bound to increase in value. you can't lose. won't you cast your lot with us now? it is your last opportunity to get a piece of this valuable land at this extremely low price. take our word for it and make your decision now before it is too late." * * * * * a manufacturer of folding machines got away from this attitude and cleverly combined persuasion and inducement in an offer made to newspaper publishers during the month of october: "you want to try this folder thoroughly before you buy it and no better test can be given than during the holiday season when heavy advertising necessitates large editions. now, if you will put in one of these folders right away and use it every week, we will extend our usual sixty-day terms to january th. this will enable you to test it out thoroughly and, furthermore, you will not have to make the first payment until you have opportunity to make collections for the december advertising. this proposition must be accepted before oct. st." * * * * * such an inducement is timely and doubly effective on this account. the appeal reaches the newspaper man at the season of the year when he is busiest; just the time when he most needs a folder, and the manufacturer provides for the first payment at the time of year when the average publisher has the largest bank account. occasionally the most effective persuasion is a ginger talk, a regular "come on, boys," letter that furnishes the dynamic force necessary to get some men started: "there is no better time to start in this business than right now. people always spend money freely just before the holidays--get in the game and get your share of this loose coin. remember, we ship the day the order comes in. send us your order this afternoon and the goods will be at your door day after tomorrow. you can have several hundred dollars in the bank by this time next week. why not? all you need to do is to make the decision now. "unless you are blind or pretty well crippled up, you needn't expect that people will come around and drop good money into your hat. but they will loosen up if you go out after them with a good proposition such as this--and provided you get to them before the other fellow. the whole thing is to get started. get in motion! get busy! if you don't want to take time to write, telegraph at our expense. it doesn't make much difference how you start, the thing is to start. are you with us?" * * * * * now, there really is nothing in these two paragraphs except a little ginger, and a good deal of slang, but this may prove the most effective stimulant to a man's energy, the kind of persuasion to get him in motion. one thing to be constantly guarded against is exaggeration--"laying it on too thick." concerns selling goods on the instalment basis through agents who are paid on commission, find their hardest problem is to collect money where the proposition was painted in too glowing colors. the representative, thinking only of his commission on the sale, puts the proposition too strong, makes the inducement so alluring that the goods do not measure up to the salesman's claims. then the correspondent should be careful not to put the inducement so strong that it will attract out of curiosity rather than out of actual intent. many clever advertisements pull a large number of inquiries but few sales are made. it is a waste of time and money to use an inducement that does not stimulate an actual interest. many a mailing list is choked with deadwood--names that represent curiosity seekers and the company loses on both hands, for it costs money to get those names on the list and it costs more money to get them off the list. the correspondent should never attempt to persuade a man by assuming an injured attitude. because a man answers an advertisement or writes for information, does not put him under the slightest obligation to purchase the goods and he cannot be shamed into parting with his money by such a paragraph as this: "do you think you have treated us fairly in not replying to our letters? we have written to you time and again just as courteously as we know how; we have asked you to let us know whether or not you are interested; we have tried to be perfectly fair and square with you; and yet you have not done us the common courtesy of replying. do you think this is treating us just right? don't you think you ought to write us, and if you are not intending to buy, to let us know the reason?" * * * * * if the recipient reads that far down into his letter, it will only serve to make him mad. no matter what inducement the company may make him later, it is not probable that it can overcome the prejudice that such an insulting paragraph will have created. some of the correspondence schools understand how to work in persuasion cleverly and effectively. here is a paragraph that is dignified and persuasive: "remember also that this is the best time of the entire year to get good positions, as wholesalers and manufacturers all over the country will put on thousands of new men for the coming season. we are receiving inquiries right along from the best firms in the country who ask us to provide them with competent salesmen. we have supplied them with so many good men that they always look to us when additional help is required, and just now the demand is so great that we can guarantee you a position if you start the course this month." * * * * * persuasion plays a small part in selling general commodities, such as machinery, equipment, supplies, and the articles of every-day business, but correspondence courses, insurance, banking, building and loan propositions and various investment schemes can be pushed and developed by an intelligent use of this appeal. merged with the persuasion or closely following it should be some inducement to move the reader to "buy now." description, explanation, argument and even persuasion are not enough to get the order. a specific inducement is necessary. there are many things that we intend to buy sometime, articles in which we have become interested, but letters about them have been tucked away in a pigeon-hole until we have more time. it is likely that everyone of those letters would have been answered had they contained specific inducements that convinced us it would be a mistake to delay. in some form or another, gain is the essence of all inducements, for gain is the dynamic force to all our business movements. the most familiar form of inducement is the special price, or special terms that are good if "accepted within ten days." the inducement of free trial and free samples are becoming more widely used every day. the most effective letters are those that work in the inducement so artfully that the reader feels he is missing something if he does not answer. the skillful correspondent does not tell him bluntly that he will miss the opportunity of a life time if he does not accept a proposition; he merely suggests it in a way that makes a much more powerful impression. here is the way a correspondence school uses inducements in letters to prospective students in its mechanical drawing course. after telling the prospect about the purchase of a number of drawing outfits it follows with this paragraph: "it was necessary to place this large order in order to secure the sets at the lowest possible figure. knowing that this number will exceed our weekly sales, we have decided to offer these extra sets to some of the ambitious young men who have been writing to us. if you will fill out the enclosed scholarship blank and mail at once we will send you one of these handsome sets free, express prepaid. but this offer must be accepted before the last of the month. at the rate the scholarship blanks are now coming in, it is more than likely that the available sets will be exhausted before november st. it is necessary therefore that you send us your application at once." * * * * * it is not necessary to offer something for nothing in your inducement. in fact, a good reason is usually a better order getter than a good premium. make the man want your proposition--that is the secret of the good sales letter. if a man really wants your product he is going to get it sooner or later, and the selling letters that score the biggest results are those that create desire; following argument and reason with an inducement that persuades a man to part with his hard-earned money and buy your goods. it is a never-ending surprise--the number of correspondents who cleverly attract the interest of a reader, present their proposition forcibly and convincingly, following with arguments and inducements that persuade him to buy, and then, just as he is ready to reach for his check book, turn heel and leave him with the assurance that they will be pleased to give him further information when they could have had his order by laying the contract before him and saying, "sign here." there are plenty of good starters who are poor finishers. they get attention but don't get the order. they are winded at the finish; they stumble at the climax where they should be strongest, and the interest which they worked so hard to stimulate oozes away. they fail because they do not know how to close. as you hope for results, do not overlook the summary and the climax. do not forget to insert a hook that will land the order. time, energy and money are alike wasted in creating desire if you fail to crystallize it in action. steer your letter away from the hold-over file as dexterously as you steer it away from the waste basket. it is not enough to make your prospect want to order, you must make it easy for him to order by enclosing order blanks, return envelopes, instructions and other "literature" that will strengthen your arguments and whet his desire; and more than that, you must reach a real climax in your letters--tell the prospect what to do and how to do it. the climax is not a part distinct from the parts that have gone before. persuasion and inducement are but elements of the climax, working the prospect up to the point where you can insert a paragraph telling him to "sign and mail today." how foolish to work up the interest and then let the reader down with such a paragraph as this: "thanking you for your inquiry and hoping to be favored with your order, and assuring you it will be fully appreciated and receive our careful attention, we are." * * * * * such a paragraph pulls few orders. compare the foregoing with the one that fairly galvanizes the reader into immediate action: "send us a $ . bill now. if you are not convinced that this file is the best $ . investment ever made, we will refund your money for the mere asking. send today, while you have it in mind." * * * * * here is a paragraph not unlike the close of dozens of letters that you read every week: "trusting that we may hear from you in the near future and hoping we will have the pleasure of numbering you among our customers, we are," * * * * * such a close invites delay in answering. it is an order killer; it smothers interest, it delays action. but here is a close that is likely to bring the order if the desire has been created. "simply wrap a $ . bill in this letter and send to us at our risk." * * * * * a writer who does not understand the psychology of suggestion writes this unfortunate closing paragraph: "will you not advise us at an early date whether or not you are interested in our proposition? as you have not replied to our previous letters, we begin to fear that you do not intend to avail yourself of this wonderful opportunity, and we would be very glad to have you write us if this is a fact." * * * * * how foolish to help along one's indifference by the suggestion that he is not interested. just as long as you spend postage on a prospect treat him as a probable customer. assume that he is interested; take it for granted that there is some reason why he has not replied and present new arguments, new persuasion, new inducements for ordering now. a firm handling a line very similar to that of the firm which sent out the letter quoted above, always maintains the attitude that the prospect is going to order some time and its close fairly bristles with "do it now" hooks: "step right over to the telegraph office and send us your order by telegraph at our expense. with this business, every day's delay means loss of dollars to you. stop the leak! save the dollars! order today!" * * * * * another unfortunate ending is a groveling servility in which the writer comes on his knees, as it were, begging for the privilege of presenting his proposition again at some future time. here are the two last paragraphs of a three-paragraph letter sent out by an engraving company--an old established, substantial concern that has no reason to apologize for soliciting business, no reason for meeting other concerns on any basis except that of equality: "should you not be in the market at the present time for anything in our line of work, we would esteem it a great favor to us if you would file this letter and let us hear from you when needing anything in the way of engraving. if you will let us know when you are ready for something in this line we will deem it a privilege to send a representative to call on you. "trusting we have not made ourselves forward in this matter and hoping that we may hear from you, we are," * * * * * it is a safe prediction that this letter was written by a new sales manager who will soon be looking for another job. such an apologetic note, with such a lack of selling talk, such a street beggar attitude could never escape the waste basket. the salesman who starts out by saying, "you wouldn't be interested in this book, would you?" takes no orders. the letter that comes apologizing and excusing itself before it gets our attention, and, if it gets our attention, then lets down just as we are ready to sign an order, is headed straight for the car wheel plant. avoid in the closing paragraph, as far as possible, the participial phrases such as "thanking you," "hoping to be favored," "assuring you of our desire," and so forth. say instead, "we thank you," "it is a pleasure to assure you," or "may i not hear from you by return mail?" such a paragraph is almost inevitably an anti-climax; it affords too much of a let-down to the proposition. one of the essentials to the clinching of an order is the enclosures such as order blanks and return envelopes--subjects that are sufficiently important to call for separate chapters. the essential thing to remember in working up to the climax is to make it a climax; to keep up the reader's interest, to insert a hook that will get the man's order before his desire has time to cool off. your proposition is not a fireless cooker that will keep his interest warm for a long time after the heat of your letter has been removed--and it will be just that much harder to warm him up the second time. insert the hook that will get the order now, for there will never be quite such a favorable time again. "style" in letter writing-- and how to _acquire it_ part iii--style--making the letter readable--chapter specific statements _and_ concrete facts _are the substance of a business letter. but whether that letter is read or not, or whether those statements and facts are_ forceful _and_ effective, _is dependent upon the manner in which they are presented to the reader--upon the "style." what "style" is, and how it may be acquired and put to practical use in business correspondence, is described in this chapter_ * * * * * letter writing is a craft--selecting and arranging words in sentences to convey a thought clearly and concisely. while letters take the place of spoken language, they lack the animation and the personal magnetism of the speaker--a handicap that must be overcome by finding words and arranging them in sentences in such a way that they will attract attention quickly, explain a proposition fully, make a distinct impression upon the reader and move him to reply. out of the millions of messages that daily choke the mails, only a small per cent rise above the dead level of colorless, anemic correspondence. the great majority of business letters are not forcible; they are not productive. they have no style. the meat is served without a dressing. the letters bulge with solid facts, stale statements and indigestible arguments--the relishes are lacking. either the writers do not realize that effectiveness comes only with an attractive style or they do not know how a crisp and invigorating style can be cultivated. style has nothing to do with the subject matter of a letter. its only concern is in the language used--in the words and sentences which describe, explain and persuade, and there is no subject so commonplace, no proposition so prosaic that the letter cannot be made readable and interesting when a stylist takes up his pen. in choosing words the average writer looks at them instead of into them, and just as there are messages between the lines of a letter, just so are there half-revealed, half-suggested thoughts between the letters of words--the suggestiveness to which hawthorne referred as "the unaccountable spell that lurks in a syllable." there is character and personality in words, and shakespeare left a message to twentieth-century correspondents when he advised them to "find the eager words--faint words--tired words--weak words--strong words--sick words--successful words." the ten-talent business writer is the man who knows these words, recognizes their possibilities and their limitations and chooses them with the skill of an artist in mixing the colors for his canvas. to be clear, to be forceful, to be attractive--these are the essentials of style. to secure these elements, the writer must make use of carefully selected words and apt figures of speech. neglect them and a letter is lost in the mass; its identity is lacking, it fails to grip attention or carry home the idea one wishes to convey. an insipid style, is responsible for much of the ineffectiveness in business letters. few men will take the time to decipher a proposition that is obscured by ambiguous words and involved phrases. unless it is obviously to a man's advantage to read such a letter it is dropped into the waste basket, taking with it the message that might have found an interested prospect if it had been expressed clearly, logically, forcibly. the first essential for style is clearness--make your meaning plain. look to the individual words; use them in the simplest way-- distinctive words to give exactness of meaning and familiar words to give strength. words are the private soldiers under the command of the writer and for ease of management he wants small words--a long word is out of place, unwieldy, awkward. the "high-sounding" words that are dragged in by main force for the sake of effect weigh down the letter, make it logy. the reader may be impressed by the language but not by the thought. he reads the words and misses the message. avoid long, unfamiliar words. clothe your thoughts in words that no one can mistake--the kind of language that men use in the office and on the street. do not make the reader work to see your point; he is busy, he has other things to do--it is your proposition and it is to your interest to put in that extra work, those additional minutes that will make the letter easily understood. it is too much to expect the reader to exert himself to dig out _your_ meaning and then enthuse himself over _your_ proposition. the men who write pulling letters weigh carefully every sentence, not only pruning away every unessential word but using words of anglo-saxon origin wherever possible rather than words of latin derivation. "indicate your selection" was written as the catch line for a letter in an important selling campaign, but the head correspondent with unerring decision re-wrote it--"take your choice"--a simpler, stronger statement. the meaning goes straight to the reader's mind without an effort on his part. "we are unable to discern" started out the new correspondent in answering a complaint. "we cannot see" was the revision written in by the master correspondent--short, concise, to the point. "with your kind permission i should like to say in reply to your favor"--such expressions are found in letters every day--thousands of them. the reader is tired before the subject matter is reached. the correspondent who is thinking about the one to whom he is writing starts out briefly and to the point by saying, "this is in reply to your letter," or, "thank you for calling our attention to, and so forth." the reader is impressed that the writer means business. the attitude is not antagonistic; it commands attention. letters are unnaturally burdened with long words and stilted phrases, while in conversation one's thoughts seek expression through lines of least resistance--familiar words and short sentences. but in writing, these same thoughts go stumbling over long words and groping through involved phrases. proverbs are sentences that have lived because they express a thought briefly in short, familiar words. slang becomes popular because of the wealth of meaning expressed in a few words, and many of these sayings gradually work their way into respectability-- reluctantly admitted into the sanctuary of "literature" because of their strength, clearness, adaptability. while short words are necessary for force and vigor, it may be very desirable at times to use longer and less familiar words to bring out the finer shade of meaning. a subtle distinction cannot be ignored simply because one word is shorter than another. "donate" and "give" are frequently used as synonyms, but "give" should not be used because it is a short word when "donate" expresses the meaning more accurately. as a usual thing, "home" is preferable to "residence," but there are times when the longer word should be used. "declare" and "state," "thoroughfare" and "street"--there are thousands of illustrations on this point, and while the short, anglo-saxon word is always preferable, it should not be used when a longer word expresses more accurately the thought which the writer wishes to convey. many letter writers think that these rules are all right for college professors, journalists and authors, but impractical for the every-day business correspondent. some of the most successful companies in the country, however, have recognized the importance of these very points and have adopted strict rules that give strength and character to the letters that are sent out. for example, here is a paragraph taken from the book of instructions issued by a large manufacturing concern in the middle west: "don't use a long or big word where a short one will do as well or better. for example: 'begin' is better than 'commence'; 'home' or 'house' better than 'residence'; 'buy' better than 'purchase'; 'live' better than 'reside'; 'at once' better than 'immediately'; 'give' better than 'donate'; 'start' or 'begin' better than 'inaugurate.'" the selection of words is not the only thing that the writer must consider. the placing of words to secure emphasis is no less important. the strength of a statement may depend upon the adroitness with which the words are used. "not only to do one thing _well_ but to do that one thing _best_--this has been our aim and our accomplishment." in this sentence, taken from a letter, emphasis is laid upon the word "best" by its position. the manufacturer has two strong arguments to use on the dealer; one is the quality of the goods--so they will give satisfaction to the customer--and the other is the appearance of the goods so they will attract the customer. this is the sentence used by a clever writer: "we _charge_ you for the service quality--we _give_ you the appearance quality." the strength comes from the construction of the sentence throwing emphasis on "charge" and "give." "durability--that is our talking point. other machines are cheaper if you consider only initial cost; no other machine is more economical when its durability, its length of service is considered." here the unusual position of the word "durability," thrown at the beginning of the sentence, gives an emphasis that could not be obtained in any other way. and so the stylist considers not only the words he uses but he places them in the most strategic position in the sentence--the beginning. in the building of a climax this order of words is reversed since the purpose is to work up from the weakest to the strongest word or phrase. the description, "sweet, pure and sanitary," gives emphasis to the sanitary feature because it comes last and lingers longest in the mind. after the study of words, their meaning and position, the writer must look to completed sentences, and the man who succeeds in selling goods by mail recognizes first of all the force of concise statements. "you can pay more but you can't buy more." this statement strikes home with the force of a blow. "we couldn't improve the powder so we improved the box." there is nothing but assertion in this sentence, but it carries conviction. not a word is out of place. every word does duty. the idea is expressed concisely, forcibly. the simplicity of the sentence is more effective than pages of prosaic argument. here is a sentence taken from a letter of a correspondence school: "assuming that you are in search of valuable information that may increase your earning capacity by a more complete knowledge of any subject in which you may be interested, we desire to state most emphatically that your wages increase with your intelligence." this is not only ungrammatical, it is uninteresting. contrast it with the sentence taken from a letter from another correspondence school: "you earn more as you learn more." it is short, emphatic, thought producing. the idea is clearly etched into your mind. short sentences are plain and forceful, but when used exclusively, they become tiresome and monotonous. a short sentence is frequently most striking when preceding or following a long sentence--it gives variation of style. following a long sentence it comes as a quick, trip-hammer blow that is always effective. and there are times when the proposition cannot be brought out clearly by short sentences. then the long sentence comes to the rescue for it permits of comparisons and climaxes that short sentences cannot give. [illustration: _unique enclosures catch the eye and insure a reading of the letter. here are shown two facsimile bonds--one, an investment bond and the other a guarantee bond; a sample of the diploma issued by a correspondence school and a $ . certificate to apply on a course. the axe-blade booklet carries the message of a wholesale hardware house, and the coupon, when filled out, calls for a free sample of toilet preparation_.] [illustration: _neither printed descriptions nor pictures are as effective as actual samples of the product advertised. here are shown different methods of sending samples of dress goods, shirtings and cloth for other purposes. at the right are some pieces of wood showing different varnishes and wall decorations, and at the bottom are veneers that show different furniture finishes; the various colored pieces of leather are likewise used by furniture houses in showing the styles of upholstering_.] it is the long, rambling sentences that topple a letter over onto the waste basket toboggan. but the sentence with a climax, working up interest step by step, is indispensable. by eye test, by mechanical test, by erasure test and by strength test, orchard hill bond makes good its reputation as the best bond on the market for commercial use. there is nothing tiresome about such a sentence. there is no difficulty in following the writer's thought. * * * * * the letter the vehicle words short saxon specific individual phrases vivid natural figures idioms sentences clear forceful climatic polished paragraphs short uniform logical orderly the load ideas graphic technical clear complete statements facts proofs references testimony explanations specific technical clear complete arguments logical climatic conclusive convincing _there are two elements in every letter: the thought and the language in which that thought is expressed. the words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs are the vehicle which carries the load--explanations, arguments, appeal. neither can be neglected if the letter is to pull_ * * * * * here is another sentence showing the force to be attained through the use of a long sentence: "just as the physician may read medicine, just as the lawyer may read law, just so may a man now read business--the science of the game which enables some men to succeed where hosts of others fail; it is no longer enveloped in mystery and in darkness." there is no danger of the reader's becoming confused in the meaning and he is more deeply impressed because his interest has been gained by the gradual unfolding of the idea back of the sentence, the leading up to the important thought. and after the choice of words, the placing of words and the construction of a sentence comes that other essential element of style--the use of figures of speech, the illustrating of one's thought by some apt allusion. comparison adds force by giving the reader a mental picture of the unknown, by suggestions of similarity to familiar things. the language of the street, our conversational language, secures its color and expressiveness through figures of speech--the clever simile and the apt metaphor light up a sentence and lift it out of the commonplace. "don't hold yourself down," "don't be bottled up," "don't keep your nose on the grindstone"--these are the forceful figures used in the letters of a correspondence school. the most ignorant boy knows that the writer did not mean to be taken literally. such figures are great factors in business letters because they make the meaning clear. here is the attention-getting first sentence of another letter: "don't lull yourself to sleep with the talk that well enough should be let alone when practical salary-raising, profit-boosting help is within your reach." the sentence is made up of figures; you do not literally lull yourself to sleep with talk, you don't really boost profits, you don't actually reach out and grasp the help the letter offers. the figures merely suggest ideas, but they are vivid. a sales manager writes to the boys on the road regarding a contest or a spurt for records: "come on, boys. this is the last turn round the track. the track was heavy at the start but if none of you break on the home stretch you are bound to come under the wire with a good record." the salesman will read this sort of a letter and be inspired by its enthusiasm, when the letter would be given no more than a hurried glance if it said what it really means: "get busy! keep on the job! send in more orders." by framing your ideas in artistic figures of speech you bring out their colors, their lines, their fullest meanings--and more than that, you know your letters will be read. but in the attempt to add grace and attractiveness by some familiar allusion, one must not overlook the importance of facts--cold, plainly stated facts, which are often the shortest, most convincing argument. in the letter of an advertising concern is this plain statement: "last year our business was $ , , ahead of the year before." no figure of speech, no touch of the stylist could make such a profound impression as this brief, concise statement of fact. the average correspondent will agree that these are all essential elements of style--his problem is practical: how can he find the right words; how can he learn to put his proposition more clearly; how think up figures of speech that will light up the thought or illustrate the proportion. to some men an original style and the ability to write convincingly is a birthright. others have to depend less on inspiration and more on hard work. one man carries a note book in which he jots down, for future use, phrases, words and comparisons that he comes across while reading his morning paper on the way down town, while going through his correspondence, while listening to callers, while talking with friends at lunch, while attending some social affair--wherever he is, his eyes and ears are always alert to catch a good phrase, an unusual expression or a new figure of speech. at his first opportunity a notation is made in the ever-handy memorandum book. another man systematically reads articles by elbert hubbard, alfred henry lewis, samuel blythe and other writers whose trenchant pens replenish his storage with similes, metaphors and crisp expressions. the head of a mail-order sales department of a large publishing house keeps a scrapbook in which he pastes words, phrases, striking sentences and comparisons clipped from letters, advertisements, booklets, circulars, and other printed matter. each month he scans the advertisements in a dozen magazines and with a blue pencil checks every expression that he thinks may some time be available or offer a suggestion. it is but a few minutes' work for a girl to clip and paste in these passages and his scrapbooks are an inexhaustible mine of ideas and suggestions. another man, after outlining his ideas, dictates a letter and then goes over it sentence by sentence and word by word. with a dictionary and book of synonyms he tries to strengthen each word; he rearranges the words, writes and rewrites the sentences, eliminating some, reinforcing others and devising new ones until he has developed his idea with the precision of an artist at work on a drawing. the average correspondent, handling a large number of letters daily, has little time to develop ideas for each letter in this way, but by keeping before him a list of new words and phrases and figures of speech, they soon become a part of his stock in trade. then there are other letters to write--big selling letters that are to be sent out by the thousands and letters that answer serious complaints, letters that call for diplomacy, tact, and above all, clearness and force. on these important letters the correspondent can well afford to spend time and thought and labor. a day or several days may be devoted to one letter, but the thoughts that are turned over--the ideas that are considered, the sentences that are written and discarded, the figures that are tried out--are not wasted, but are available for future use; and by this process the writer's style is strengthened. he acquires clearness, force, simplicity and attractiveness--the elements that will insure the reading of his letters. and one thing that every correspondent can do is to send to the scrap-heap all the shelf-worn words and hand-me-down expressions such as, "we beg to acknowledge," "we beg to state;" "replying to your esteemed favor;" "the same;" "the aforesaid;" "we take great pleasure in acknowledging," and so on. they are old, wind-broken, incapable of carrying a big message. and the participial phrases should be eliminated, such as: "hoping to hear from you;" "trusting we will be favored;" "awaiting your reply," and so on, at the close of the letter. say instead, "i hope to hear from you;" or, "i trust we will receive your order;" or, "may we not hear from you?" interest the man quickly; put snap and sparkle in your letters. give him clear and concise statements or use similes and metaphors in your sentences--figures of speech that will turn a spot-light on your thoughts. pick out your words and put them into their places with the infinite care of a craftsman, but do not become artificial. use every-day, hard-working words and familiar illustrations that have the strength to carry your message without stumbling before they reach their goal. making the letter hang together part iii--style--making the letter readable--chapter _the letter writer looks to words, phrases and sentences to make the little impressions on the reader as he goes along. the letter as a whole also has to make a_ single impression--_clear-cut and unmistakable. the correspondent must use this combination shot-gun and rifle. to get this single rifle-shot effect a letter has to contain those elements of style that_ hold it together; _there must be a definite idea behind the letter; the message must have a unity of thought; it must be logically presented; it must have a continuity that carries the reader along without a break, and a climax that works him up and closes at the height of his enthusiasm_ * * * * * thinking is not easy for anyone. and it is too much to expect the average business man to analyze a proposition in which he is not interested. his thoughts tend to move in the course of least resistance. if you want him to buy your goods or pay your bill or hire you, present your arguments in a way that will require no great mental exertion on his part to follow you. a single idea behind the letter is the first requisite for giving it the hang-together quality and the punch that gets results. the idea cannot be conveyed to the reader unless it is presented logically. he won't get a single general impression from what you are saying to him unless there is unity of thought in the composition. he cannot follow the argument unless it has continuity; sequence of thought. and, finally no logic or style will work him up to enthusiasm unless it ends with a strong climax. these five principles--the idea behind, logic, unity of thought, continuity, climax--are the forces that holds the letter together and that gives it momentum. because these principles are laid down in text books does not mean that they are arbitrary rules or academic theories. they are based on the actual experiences of men ever since they began to talk and write. essay or sermon; oration or treatise; advertisement or letter; all forms of communication most easily accomplish their purpose of bringing the other man around to your way of thinking, if these proved principles of writing are followed. merely observing them will not necessarily make a letter pull, but violating them is certain to weaken it. you cannot hit a target with a rifle unless you have one shot in the barrel. the idea behind the letter is the bullet in the gun. to hit your prospect you must have a message--a single, definite, clearly-put message. that is the idea behind the letter. look at the letter on page . it gets nowhere. because the writer did not have this clear, definite idea of what he wanted to impress upon his prospect. not one reader in ten would have the shallowest dent made in his attention by this letter, as he would have had if the writer had started out, for instance, with one idea of impressing upon the reader the facilities of his establishment and the large number of satisfied customers for whom it does work. with this dominant idea in mind, a correspondent has got to explain it and argue it so logically that the reader is convinced. here is a letter from a manufacturer of gasoline engines: dear sir: i understand you are in the market for a gasoline engine and as ours is the most reliable engine made we want to call your attention to it. it has every modern improvement and we sell it on easy terms. the inventor of this machine is in personal charge of our factory and he is constantly making little improvements. he will tell you just what kind of an engine you need and we will be glad to quote you prices if you will call on us or write us, telling us what you need. hoping to hear from you, we are, yours truly, [signature: the madewell engine co.] * * * * * the letter is illogical, disjointed and lacking in that dominant idea that carries conviction. yet the writer had material at hand for a strong, logical selling letter. to have interested the prospect he should have told something specific about his engine. here is the letter, rewritten with due regard to the demands of unity, sequence, logic and climax: dear sir: a friend told me yesterday that you want a gas engine for irrigating, so i am sending you bulletin "b." do you notice that all its parts are in plain view and easy to get at? mr. wilbur, who invented this engine, had a good many years of practical experience installing gasoline engines before he started to manufacture his own, and he knows what it means to tighten up a nut or some other part without having to send to the factory for a special man with a special wrench to do the work. sparkers sometimes get gummed up. to take the wilbur sparker out you simply remove two nuts and out comes the sparker complete, and you cannot get it back the wrong way. it isn't much of a job to wipe the point off with a rag, is it? and the governor! just the same type of throttling governor that is used on the highest grade of steam engine, allowing you to speed her up or slow her down while the engine is running. that's mighty handy. few engines are built like this. it costs a good deal of extra money but it does give a lot of extra satisfaction. nothing shoddy about the equipment described in the bulletin, is there? no. we don't make these supplies ourselves, but we do watch out and see that the other fellow gives us the best in the market because we guarantee it. this sounds very nice on paper, you think. well, we have over four thousand customers in kansas. mr. w. o. clifford, who lives not so far from you, has used a wilbur for three years. ask him what he has to say about it. then you will want to know just what such an engine will cost you, and you will be tickled to death when you know how much money we can really save you. i don't mean that we will furnish you with a cheap machine at a high price, but a really high-grade machine at a low price. i await with much interest your reply telling us what you want. very truly yours, [signature: l. w. hamilton] * * * * * the commonest cause of a lack of punch in a letter is the temptation to get away from the main idea--unity of thought. this is what a mail-order house writes: "this is the largest catalogue of the kind ever issued, it will pay you to deal with our house. every machine is put together by hand and tested, and we will ship the day your order is received. "an examination of the catalogue will prove our claim that we carry the largest stock of goods in our line. should our goods appeal to you, we shall be glad to add you to our list of customers." * * * * * there is neither unity nor logic in a letter like this, although there is the suggestion of several good ideas. the fact that the house issues the largest catalogue of its kind might be so explained to me that it would convince me that here is the place i ought to buy. or, the fact that every machine is tested and put together by hand, if followed to a logical conclusion, would prove to me that i could rely on the quality of these goods. but when the writer doesn't stick to one subject for more than half a sentence, my attention will not cling to it and my mind is not convinced by a mere statement without proof. unity does not necessarily mean that the whole letter must be devoted to one point. a paragraph and even a sentence must have this quality of unity as much as the entire letter. and the paragraphs, each unified in itself, may bring out one point after another that will still allow the letter to retain its hang-together. in the letter quoted, not even the individual sentence retained unity. this writer might have presented all his points and maintained the unity of his letter, had he brought out and simplified one point in each paragraph: first: the size of the catalogue as an indication of the large stock carried by the house and the convenience afforded in buying. second: the quality of the machines; the care exercised in their assembling; the guarantee of the test, and the assurance that this gives the far-away purchaser. third: promptness in filling orders; what this means to the buyer and how the house is organized to give service. fourth: the desire to enroll new customers; not based solely on the selfish desires of the house, but on the idea that the more customers they can get, the bigger the business will grow, which will result in better facilities for the house and better service for each customer. and now, giving a unified paragraph to each of the ideas, not eliminating subordinate thoughts entirely, but keeping them subordinate and making them illuminate the central thought--would build up a unified, logical letter. in the arrangement of these successive ideas and paragraphs, the third element in the form is illustrated--continuity of thought. put a jog or a jar in the path of your letter and you take the chance of breaking the reader's attention. that is fatal. so write a letter that the reader will easily and, therefore, unconsciously and almost perforce, follow from the first word to the last--then your message reaches him. how to secure this continuity depends on the subject and on the prospect. appealing to the average man, association of thoughts furnishes the surest medium for continuity. if you lead a man from one point to another point that he has been accustomed to associating with the first point, then he will follow you without a break in his thought. from this follows the well-known principle that when you are presenting a new proposition, start your prospect's thoughts on a point that he knows, which is related to your proposition, for the transition is easiest from a known to a related unknown. an insurance company's letter furnishes a good example of continuity of ideas and the gradual increasing strength in each paragraph: "if you have had no sickness, and consequently, have never felt the humiliation of calling on strangers for sick benefits--even though it were only a temporary embarrassment--you are a fortunate man. "health is always an uncertain quantity--you have no assurance that next week or next month you will not be flat on your back--down and out as far as selling goods is concerned. and sickness not only means a loss of time but an extra expense in the way of hospital and doctor bills." * * * * * in the next paragraph the idea is further strengthened; a new thought is presented with additional force: "if there is one man on earth who needs protection by insurance against sickness it is you. there are two thousand one hundred and fifty ailments covering just such diseases as you, as a traveling man, expose yourself to every day." * * * * * these are specific facts, therefore decidedly forceful. then, while interest is at its height, another paragraph presents a specific offer: "we will protect you at an extremely low annual cost. we guarantee that the rate will not exceed $ . a year--that's less than two and a half cents a day. think of it--by paying an amount so small that you will never miss it, you will secure benefits on over two thousand sicknesses--any one of which you may contract tomorrow." * * * * * here is the logical presentation of subject matter by paragraphs, leading up from an interest-getting general statement to a specific proposition. break this continuity of ideas by a space filler or an inconsequential argument and the reader loses interest that it will be hard to regain. make this the test of each paragraph: if it does not illuminate the central thought, fit into the argument at that point, or add to the interest of the reader, eliminate it or bring it into conformity with the "idea behind the letter." and there must be an actual continuity of thought from paragraph to paragraph. merely inserting a catch-word or a conjunctive does not build a logical bridge. the letter from another insurance agent might have been saved if this test had been applied, for it was well written except where the writer forgot himself long enough to insert an irrelevant paragraph about his personal interest: "we are desirous of adding your name to our roll of membership because we believe that every man should be protected by insurance and because we believe this is the best policy offered. we are endeavoring to set a new record this month and are especially anxious to get your application right away." * * * * * the continuity of thought is broken. the preceding paragraphs have been working up the reader's interest in casualty insurance by pointing out the dangers to which he is exposed, the humiliating position in which it will place him and his family to be the recipients of charity in case of sickness or accident, and so on. then the writer short-circuits the reader's interest by a paragraph of generalities which call attention to his desire for profits-- things in which the prospect is not interested. most propositions can be developed in different ways, along different angles. the problem of the correspondent is to determine upon the way that will prove easiest for the reader to follow. he may have his path smoothed for him if he understands how facts, ideas and arguments will cohere in the reader's mind. it is much easier to follow a proposition if it is developed along some definite channel; if it follows the law of continuity, the law of similarity; of association or contrast, or of cause and effect. some epigrammatic thinker once said, "when you get through, stop!" this applies to letter writing as well as to speech. but don't stop a letter on the down grade. stop after you have given your hardest punch. this is what rhetoricians call the climax. a letter constructed along these principles of style will almost inevitably have a climax. if there is an idea behind the letter, if it is carried out logically, if the letter sticks to this one idea, if the argument is carried along step by step, proceeding from the general statement to the specific, from the attention-getting first sentence to the inducement, then you are working up your reader's interest to the point where with one final application of your entire idea to his own individual case, you have accomplished your climax, just as was done in the re-written letter about gasoline engines. a letter from a firm manufacturing a duplicating machine starts out by calling attention to the difficulty the personal salesmen has in getting an audience with the busy executive. the second paragraph shows how his time and "your money" is wasted in call-backs and in bench warming while the solicitor waits for an opportunity to be heard. the third paragraph tells how over-anxious the salesman is to close a sale when a few minutes is granted--and usually fails, at least the first time. the fourth paragraph shows how this costly process of selling can be reduced by using the mails; then follow a couple of specific paragraphs telling about the advantage of the company's machine. a paragraph on the saving on five thousand circulars that would pay for the machine brings the proposition home to the reader and then, with interest at the height, the last paragraph--the climax--urges the reader to fill out a post card to secure the additional information regarding capacity, quality of work and cost. logic, unity, sequence, climax--each does its part in carrying the load. the principles of style and form in letter writing do not reach their highest pulling power as long as the correspondent handles them like strange tools. the principles must, of course, first be learned and consciously applied. but to give your letter the touch of sincerity and of spontaneity; to give it the grip that holds and the hook that pulls, these principles must become a part of yourself. they must appear in your letters, not because you have consciously put them in but because your thinking and your writing possesses them. how to make letters original part iii--style--making the letter readable--chapter _the average business letter is machine-made. it is full of time-worn phrases, hackneyed expressions and commonplace observations that fail to jolt the reader out of the rut of the conventional correspondence to which he is accustomed: consequently it does not make an impression upon him. but occasionally a letter comes along that "gets under the skin," that_ stands out _from the rest because it has "human interest;" because it is original in its statements; because it departs from the prescribed hum-drum routine; because, in short, it reflects a live, breathing human being and not a mere set of rules_ * * * * * study the letters the janitor carries out in your waste-basket-- they lack the red blood of originality. except for one here and one there they are stereotyped, conventional, long, uninteresting, tiresome. they have no individuality; they are poor representatives of an alert, magnetic personality. yet there is no legerdemain about writing a good letter; it is neither a matter of luck nor of genius. putting in the originality that will make it pull is not a secret art locked up in the mental storerooms of a few successful writers; it is purely a question of study and the application of definite principles. a lawyer is successful only in proportion to the understanding he has of the law--the study he puts on his cases; a physician's success depends upon his careful consideration of every symptom and his knowledge of the effect of every drug or treatment that he may prescribe. and it is no different with correspondents. they cannot write letters that will pulsate with a vital message unless they study their proposition in detail, visualize the individuals to whom they are writing, consider the language they use, the method of presenting their arguments, their inducements--there is no point from the salutation to the signature that is beneath consideration. you cannot write letters that pull without hard study any more than the doctor can cure his patients or the lawyer win his cases without brain work. so many letters are insipid because the correspondents do not have time or do not appreciate the necessity for taking time to consider the viewpoint of their readers or for studying out new methods of presenting their proposition. yet the same respect that would be given to a salesman may be secured for a letter. any one of four attitudes will secure this attention. first of all, there may be a personal touch and an originality of thought or expression that commands immediate attention; in the second place, one can make use of the man-to-man appeal; then there is the always-forceful, never-to-be-forgotten "you" element; and finally, there are news items which are nearly always interest-getters. by any one of these appeals, or better, by a combination of appeals, a letter can be given an individuality, a vitality, that will make it rise above the underbrush of ordinary business correspondence. to begin with, vapid words and stereotyped expressions should be eliminated, for many a good message has become mired in stagnant language. so many correspondents, looking for the easiest road to travel, fall into the rut that has been worn wide and deep by the multitudes passing that way. the trouble is not the inability of writers to acquire a good style or express themselves forcibly; the trouble is mental inertia--too little analytical thought is given to the subject matter and too little serious effort is made to find an original approach. most business letters are cold, impersonal, indifferent: "our fall catalogue which is sent to you under separate cover;" "we take pleasure in advising you that;" "we are confident that our goods will give you entire satisfaction," and so on--hackneyed expressions without end--no personality--no originality--no vitality. the correspondent who has learned how to sell goods by mail uses none of these run-down-at-the-heel expressions. he interests the reader by direct, personal statements: "here is the catalogue in which you are interested;" "satisfaction? absolute! we guarantee it. we urge you not to keep one of our suits unless it is absolutely perfect;" "how did you find that sample of tobacco?" no great mental exertion is required for such introductions, yet they have a personal touch, and while they might be used over and over again they strike the reader as being original, addressed to him personally. everyone is familiar with the conventional letter sent out by investment concerns: "in response to your inquiry, we take pleasure in sending you herewith a booklet descriptive of the white cloud investment company." cut and dried--there is nothing that jars us out of our indifference; nothing to tempt us to read the proposition that follows. here is a letter that is certain to interest the reader because it approaches him with an original idea: "you will receive a copy of the pacific coast gold book under separate cover. don't look for a literary product because that's not its purpose. its object is to give you the actual facts and specific figures in reference to the gold-mining industry." * * * * * a correspondence school that has got past the stage where it writes, "we beg to call attention to our catalogue which is mailed under separate cover," injects originality into its letter in this way: "take the booklet we have mailed you and examine the side notes on drawing for profit and art training that apply to you individually and then go back over them carefully." * * * * * the reader, even though he may have had nothing more than the most casual interest is certain to finish that letter. here is the way a paper manufacturer puts convincing argument into his letter, making it original and personal: "take the sheet of paper on which this letter is written and apply to it every test you have ever heard of for proving quality. you will find it contains not a single trace of wood pulp or fillers but is strong, tough, long-fiber linen. take your pen and write a few words on it. you will find the point glides so smoothly that writing is a pleasure. then erase a word or two and write them again--do it twice, three or four times--repeated erasures, and still you will find the ink does not blot or spread in the least. this proves the hard body and carefully prepared finish." * * * * * even if a person felt sure that this same letter went to ten-thousand other men, there would be an individuality about it, a vividness that makes the strongest kind of appeal. in a town in central indiana two merchants suffered losses from fire. a few days later, one sent out this announcement to his customers: "we beg to announce that temporary quarters have been secured at main street, where we will be glad to see you and will endeavor to handle your orders promptly." * * * * * the second firm wrote to its customers: dear mr. brown: yes, it was a bad fire but it will not cripple the business. our biggest asset is not the merchandise in the store but the good-will of our customers--something that fires cannot damage. our store does not look attractive. it won't until repairs are made and new decorations are in, but the bargains are certainly attractive--low prices to move the stock and make room for the new goods that have been ordered. everything has gone on the bargain tables; some of the goods slightly damaged by water, but many of the suits have nothing the matter with them except a little odor of smoke that will disappear in a couple of days. come in and look at these goods. see the original price mark--you can have them at just one-half the amount. very truly yours, [signature: smith and deene] * * * * * here is originality; emphasis is laid on "good will" in a way that will strengthen this "asset." the merchant put a personal element into the letter; gave it an original appeal that made it not only a clever bit of advertising, but proclaimed him a live-wire business man. here is the letter sent out by a store fixture manufacturer: "if one of your salesmen should double his sales slips tomorrow you would watch to see how he did it. if he kept up this pace you would be willing to double his wages, wouldn't you? he would double his sales if he could display all his goods to every customer. that's the very thing which the derwin display fixture does--it shows all the goods for your salesman, yet you don't have to pay him a higher salary." * * * * * a merchant cannot read this letter without stopping to think about it. the appeal strikes home. he may have read a hundred advertisements of the derwin fixture, but this reaches him because of the originality of expression, the different twist that is given to the argument. there are no hackneyed expressions, no involved phrases, no unfamiliar words, no selfish motives. and then comes the man-to-man attitude, the letter in which the writer wins the reader's confidence by talking about "you and me." a western firm handling building materials of all kinds entered the mail-order field. one cannot conceive a harder line of goods to sell by mail, but this firm has succeeded by putting this man-to-man attitude into its letters: "if you could sit at my desk for an hour--if you might listen a few minutes to the little intimate things that men and women tell me-- their hopes, their plans for the home that will protect their families--their little secret schemes to make saved-up money stretch out over the building cost; if you could hear and see these sides of our business you would understand why we give our customers more than mere quality merchandise. we plan for you and give expert advice along with the material." * * * * * there is nothing cold or distant in this letter; it does not flavor of a soulless corporation. it is intimate, it is so personal that we feel we are acquainted with the writer. we would not need an introduction--and what is more, we trust him, believe in him. make the man feel that you and he are friends. write to the average college or university for a catalogue and it will be sent promptly with a stereotyped letter: "we are pleased to comply with your request," and so forth. but a little school in central iowa makes the prospective student feel a personal interest in the school and in its officers by this letter: my dear sir: the catalogue was mailed to you this morning. we have tried to make it complete and i believe it covers every important point. but i wish you could talk with me personally for half an hour--i wish you might go over our institution with me that i might point out to you the splendid equipment, the convenient arrangement, the attractive rooms, the ideal surroundings and the homelike places for room and board. won't you drop me a line and let me know what you think about our school? tell me what courses you are interested in and let me know if i cannot be of some personal assistance to you in making your plans. i hope to see you about the middle of september when our fall term opens. very cordially yours, [signature: wallace e. lee] president. * * * * * this letter, signed by the president of the institution, is a heart-to-heart talk that induces many students to attend that school in preference to larger, better-equipped colleges. a large suit house manufacturing women's garments uses this paragraph in a letter in response to a request for a catalogue: "and now as you look through this book we wish we could be privileged to sit there with you as you turn its pages. we would like to read aloud to you every word printed on pages , and . will you turn to those pages, please? sometimes we think the story told there of the making of a suit is the most interesting thing ever written about clothes--but then, we think columbia suits are the most wonderful garments in the world." * * * * * the letter creates a feeling of intimacy, of confidence in the writer, that no formal arguments, logical reasons or special inducements could ever secure. important as these two attitudes are--the personal appeal and the man-to-man appeal--they can be strengthened manifold by making use of that other essential, the "you" element in letters. the mistake of so many writers is that they think of their interests in the transaction rather than the interests of the men to whom they are writing. it is "we" this and "we" that. yet this "we" habit is a violation of the first rule of business correspondence. "we are very desirous of receiving an order from you." of course; the reader knows that. why call his attention to so evident a fact and give emphasis to the profit that you are going to make on the deal? to get his interest, show him where _he_ will gain through this proposition--precious little he cares how anxious you are to make a sale. mr. station agent-- brother railroader: as soon as you have told the fellow at the ticket window that the noon train is due at twelve o'clock and satisfied the young lady that her telegram will be sent at once and o.s.'d the way freight and explained to the grand mogul at the other end of the wire what delayed 'em, i'd like to chat with you just a minute. it's about a book--to tell the truth, just between you and me, i don't suppose it's a bit better book than you could write yourself if you had time. i simply wrote it because i'm an old railroad man and telegrapher myself and had time to write it. the title of the book is "at finnegan's cigar store," and the hero of the fourteen little stories which the booklet contains is mr station agent. the first story in the book, "how finnegan bought himself a diamond," is worth the price of that ten-cent cigar you're smoking, and that's all the book will cost you. i know you'll like it--i liked it myself. i'm so sure of it i am enclosing a ten-cent coin card for you to use in ordering it. a dime in the card and postage stamp on the letter will bring you the book by first mail. "nuff said." " " e. n. richardson. p. s.--i am enclosing another card for your night operator, if you have one--i'd hate to have him feel that i had slighted him. * * * * * _this letter, sent out under a one-cent stamp to , agents, pulled , replies with the money. the writer did not address them individually, but he knew how to flag the interest of a station agent--by working in familiar allusions he at once found the point of contact and made the letter so personal that it pulled enormous results_ * * * * * no other appeal is so direct, so effective, as that which is summed up in the words "you," "your business," "your profits," "your welfare." "it costs you too much to sell crockery, but your selling expense can be cut down by utilizing your space to better advantage;" "your easiest profits are those you make by saving expense;" "did you ever figure up the time that is wasted in your mailing department by sealing and stamping one letter at a time?"-- these are the letters that will be read through. keep before the reader _his_ interest. show him how your proposition would benefit him. this letter was sent to lady customers by a mail-order house: dear madam: you want a dress that does not sag--that does not grow draggy and dowdy? then you want to make it of linette--the new dress goods. you have seen the beautiful new look and rich luster charm of a high-priced fabric. you can find this same quality in linette at only thirty-nine cents a yard, and then--just think--it will stay in your dress through wearing, washing and wetting, and you will be surprised to see how easily dresses made of it may be washed and ironed and what long service the material will give. very truly yours. [signature: anderson & anderson] * * * * * in this letter there is not the faintest suggestion of the profits that the writer hopes to make by the sale. a man is going to listen just as long as you talk about him; a woman will keep on reading your letter as long as you talk about her. shout "you" and whisper "_me_" and your letter will carry home, straight to the heart of the reader. a capitalized "you" is often inserted in letters to give emphasis to this attitude. here is a letter from a clothing concern: dear madam, remember this--when we make your suit we make it for you just as much as if you were here in our work roomed and, furthermore, we guarantee that it will fit you just a perfectly as if you bought it of an individual tailor. we guarantee this perfection or we will refund your money at once without question, and pay the express charges both ways. we have tried hard to make this style-book interesting and beautiful to you and full of advantage for you. your friends will ask "who made your suit?" and we want you to be proud that it is your suit and that we made it. yours very truly, [signature: adams & adams ] * * * * * and there is yet another quality that is frequently most valuable to the correspondent in making his letter personal. it is the element of news value. news interests him especially when it is information about his business, his customers, his territory, his goods, his propositions. not only does the news interest appeal to the dealer because of its practical value to him, but it impresses him by your "up-to-the-minuteness" and it gives a dynamic force to your letters. tell a man a bit of news that affects his pocket book and you have his interest. offer to save him money and he will listen to your every word, and clever correspondents in manufacturing and wholesale establishments are always on the alert to find some selling value in the news of the day. one correspondent finds in the opening of lake navigation an excuse for writing a sales letter. if the season opens unusually early he points out to the retailer just how it may affect his business, and if the season opens late he gives this fact a news value that makes it of prime interest to the dealer. a shortage of some crop, a drought, a rainy season, a strike, a revolution or industrial disturbances in some distant country--these factors may have a far-reaching effect on certain commodities, and the shrewd sales manager makes it a point to tip off the firm's customers, giving them some practical advance information that may mean many dollars to them and his letter makes the reader feel that the house has his interests at heart. another news feature may be found in some event that can be connected with the firm's product. here is the way a manufacturer of stock food hitches his argument onto a bit of news: "no doubt you have read in your farm paper about the poland china that took first prize at the iowa state fair last week. you will be interested to know that this hog was raised and fattened on johnson's stock food." * * * * * this is the way a manufacturer of window screens makes capital out of a new product: "throw away that old, rusty, stationary fly screen that you used last season. you won't need it any more because you can substitute an adjustable one in its place. "how many times when you twisted and jerked at the old stationary screen did you wish for a really convenient one? the sort of screen you wanted is one which works on rollers from top to bottom so that it will open and close as easily and conveniently as the window itself. "that's just the way the ideal screen is made. it offers those advantages. it was placed on the market only a few months ago yet it is so practical and convenient that already we have been compelled to double the capacity of our factory to handle the growing business. "all the wood work is made to harmonize with the finish of your rooms. send the measure of your window and the colors you want and get a screen absolutely free for a week's trial. if you are not perfectly satisfied at the end of that time that it's the most convenient screen you ever used, you need send no money but merely return the screen at our expense. "the ideal screen is new; it is improved; it is the screen of tomorrow. are you looking for that kind?" * * * * * the news element may have its origin in some new feature, some attachment or patent that is of interest to the prospect. a manufacturer of furniture uses this approach effectively: "the head of my designing department. mr. conrad, has just laid on my desk a wonderful design for something entirely new in a dining room table. this proposed table is so unique, so new, so different from anything ever seen before, i am having the printer strike off some rough proofs of this designer's drawing, one of which i am sending you under separate cover." * * * * * this letter is manifestly a "today" product. it wins attention because it is so up to date, and a new article may possess the interest-compelling feature that will lead to an order. then there are the letters that tell of the purchase of goods. a retailer puts news value into his letter when he writes that he has purchased the entire stock of the bankrupt brown & brown at thirty-eight cents on the dollar and that the goods are to be placed on sale the following monday morning at prices that will make it a rare sales event. this is putting into the letter news value that interests the customer. it is original because it is something that could not have been written a week before and cannot be written by anyone else. then there are other elements of news of wide interest--the opening of a new branch office, the increase of facilities by the enlargement of a factory, the perfecting of goods by some new process of manufacture or the putting on the market of some new brand or line. these things may affect the dealer in a very material way and the news value is played up in the most convincing style. the correspondent can bear down heavily on the better service that is provided or the larger line of commodities that is offered. search through the catalogue of possibilities, and there is no other talking point that it seized upon more joyfully by the correspondent, for a news item, an actual occurrence or some new development that enables him to write forceful, interest-impelling letters, for the item itself is sufficient to interest the dealer or the consumer. all that is required of the correspondent is to make the most of his opportunity, seize upon this news element and mount it in a setting of arguments and persuasion that will result in new business, more orders, greater prestige. making the _form_ letter personal part iii--style--making the letter readable--chapter _over one-half of all the form letters sent out are thrown into the waste basket unopened. a bare_ one-third _are partly read and discarded while only_ one-sixth _of them--approximately per cent--are read through. this wasteful ratio is principally due to the carelessness or ignorance of the firms that send them out-- ignorance of the little touches that make all the difference between a personal and a "form letter." yet an increase of a mere one per cent in the number of form letters that are_ read _means a difference of hundreds--perhaps thousands of dollars to the sender. this article is based on the experiences of a house that sends out over a million form letters annually_ * * * * * there are three ways by which you can deliver a message to one of your customers: you can see him personally, you can telegraph or telephone him, or you can write him a letter. after you have delivered the message you may decide you would like to deliver the same message to other customers. to see each customer personally, to telegraph or telephone each one, or to write each a personal letter, would prove slow and expensive. so you send the same letter to _all_ your customers, since you wish to tell them all the same story. but you do not laboriously write all these letters on the typewriter; instead, you print them on some kind of duplicating machine. but it is not enough to print the body of the letter and send it out, for you know from your own point of view that the average man does not give a proposition presented to him in a circular letter, the same attention he gives to it when presented by a personal appeal. and so little plans and schemes are devised to make the letter look like a personally dictated message, not for the purpose of deceiving the reader, but to make your proposition more intimate. this form of presentation is merely a means to an end; just because a letter is duplicated a thousand times does not make the proposition any the less applicable to the reader. it may touch his needs just as positively as if he were the sole recipient. the reason the letter that one knows to be simply a circular fails to grip his attention, is because it fails to get close to him--it does not _look_ personal. so, if form letters are to escape the waste basket--if they are to win the prospect's attention and convince him--they must have all the ear-marks of a personally dictated communication. if a proposition is worth sending out it is worthy of a good dress and careful handling. all the principles of making the individual letter a personal message hold good with the form letter, except that greater pains must be taken to make each letter look personal. nothing should be put into the letter to a dozen or a thousand men that does not apply to each one individually. from the mechanical standpoint, there are five parts to a letter: superscription, body of the letter, signature, enclosures and envelope. in each of these five parts there are opportunities for original touches that make letters more than mere circulars. the superscription and the way it is inserted in a form letter is the most important feature in making it personal. no semblance of a regularly dictated letter can be given unless the date, name and address are filled in, and if this is not done carefully it is far better to open your letter with "dear sir," and thus acknowledge that it is a circular. to the left, and in exact alignment with the paragraphs in the body of the letter, should appear the name and address of the reader. if this superscription appears a fraction of an inch to either side of the margin the fill-in is evident. the style of type and the shade of the typewriter ribbons used in filling-in must match with absolute accuracy. this is vital and yet the most common error in form letters is imperfect alignment and conspicuously different colors of ink. to secure an exact match between the filled-in name and address and the body of the letter, it is necessary to use ink on the duplicating machine which matches your typewriter ribbon. the ink used on the duplicating machine can be mixed to correspond with the color of the ribbons. long experience has shown that violet or purple shades of ink are best for form letters, for these colors are the easiest to duplicate. black and blue are very difficult to handle because of the great variety of undertones which are put into these inks. duplicating machines which print through a ribbon give variable shades and the typist in filling in must watch carefully to see that her typewriter ribbons match the impressions made in the body of the letter, especially where the form letters are printed several months in advance and exposed to changing conditions. in departments where the stenographers fill in only a few letters a day, a piece of a "fill-in" ribbon is attached to the end of the regular ribbon and used for this purpose. for speed and better work, typists who do nothing but fill in form letters, overlay their work--that is, before one sheet is taken out of the machine another is started in. a scheme which is slower but gives accuracy, is to work backward on the name and address, writing the "gentlemen" or "dear madam" first, beginning flush with the margin. the town or city is next written, beginning on the paragraph or established margin line and then the name and the date are filled in. guides may be secured so that all sheets will be fed into the machine at one place, thus assuring an exact margin. too much emphasis cannot be laid on the necessity of doing this fill-in work carefully, or not at all. if letters are printed by means of some duplicating machine which prints through a ribbon, care must be taken that the first run from the fresh ribbon is filled in on the typewriter with an equally fresh typewriter ribbon. later when the machine ribbon is worn, giving a lighter impression, an older ribbon is used on the typewriters. this fill-in work is difficult, and even when done properly many firms adopt all kinds of little schemes to help out the personal appearance. separating the superscription from the body of the letter so that the immediate contrast is not so great, accomplishes this purpose. one familiar scheme is to print the shipping or sales terms of the company across the letterhead so that the first paragraph comes beneath the printed matter and the filled-in superscription above. then if there is a slight difference in shades of ink it is not so apparent. the same care must, however, be taken with the alignment. mr. l. b. burtis, elm ave., ravenswood, ill., dear sir: in reply to your letter of july d i take pleasure in enclosing the free book asked for. all that i ask is that you read the book-- no longer letter is necessary. everything i could say to you in this letter about my chest is in my book. i wrote every word of it so when you read it, i wish you would take it as a personal message from me. we deliver this chest to ravenswood at the price quoted in the book. this is all i am going to say. when you have selected the chest you wish, simply check it on the enclosed post card, and mail to me. promptly upon its receipt the chest will go to you subject to your approval. i shall be looking for your post card. very truly yours, old english chest company. * * * * * new york, july , , mr. l. b. burtis, elm ave., ravenswood, ill. dear sir: i enclose with pleasure the free book you asked for in your letter of july rd. all that i ask is that you read the book--no longer letter is necessary. everything i could say to you in this letter about my chest is in my book. i wrote every word of it so when you read it, i wish you would take it as a personal message from me. tho prices quoted you in this book include freight prepaid to ravenswood. this is all i am going to say. when you have selected the chest you wish, simply check it on the enclosed post card, and mail to me. promptly upon its receipt the chest will go to you subject to your approval. i shall be looking for your post card. very truly yours, old english chest company [signature: edward brown, pres. dict eb-ers.] * * * * * _the wrong and right way of handling form letters. in the first letter the type of the fill-in does not match and the lines are out of alignment. wide white space at both sides of the date "july d" and the town, "ravenswood," calls attention to the poor fill-in. the second letter shows the same fill-ins coming at the end of paragraphs. the second letter has a date line, personal signature and initials of dictator and stenographer--little touches that add to the personality of the letter_ * * * * * a similar scheme is to write the first paragraph or sentence in red ink. this is a somewhat expensive process, however, for the letter must be run through the duplicating machine twice and skill is required to secure an exact register. now that two-colored typewriter ribbons are in such general use the name and address and date are printed in red, eliminating the necessity of matching the ink of the body of the letter. this is an effective attention-getter, but unless carefully printed the impersonality is apparent. in certain kinds of communications where the more formal customs of social correspondence are sometimes employed, the letter is often opened with the salutation, "my dear sir." the full name and address is then written in the lower left corner, in alignment with the paragraphs of the body of the letter. some businesses, presenting a proposition to a limited number of persons, write the entire first paragraph. it is usually short and of course should be made pointedly personal. "typing" the name and address onto the form letter is another familiar scheme to make it more personal. use of a body fill-in is always effective. but the right way to do this is to phrase the letter so that the name, or date, or word, to be inserted, comes at the beginning or end of the paragraph, preferably at the end. otherwise the fill-in may be too short for the space allowed and the result is farcical. here is an all too common mistake: "you may be sure, mr. hall, that this machine is just as represented." * * * * * the advantage of having the fill-in at the end of the paragraph is because names vary so much in length that they seldom just fill the space that is left and when there is a long blank space, as in the sentence given above, the scheme is anything but effective. a manufacturer of automobiles, writing old customers who might wish to exchange their machines for newer models, added a real personal touch by filling in the serial number of each machine at the end of a line. another individual touch was added in this way: "you will be interested to know that we have recently sold one of our machines to a near neighbor of yours, mr. henry c. smith of rock creek." * * * * * this sentence was so phrased that the neighbor's name came at the end of a line and could be easily filled in. a furniture manufacturer works in a personal touch by closing a paragraph of his letter with this sentence: "you can find our liberal offer to ship freight pre-paid to rogers park on page of the catalogue." * * * * * the name of the town and page number of the catalogue came at the end of the sentence. another manufacturer opened his letter with this sentence: "on april , we received your inquiry." in this case, "on april ," was filled in at the beginning of the sentence. both schemes give the "one-man" attitude. a personal touch in the body of the letter indicates an individual communication--as it really is. there are four ways for making the body of the letter look like a regularly typewritten message: it may be typewritten, printed on a printing press, printed through a ribbon or printed by means of a stenciled waxed paper. firms sending out only a few form letters typewrite them so that no effort is necessary to give an individual touch. but the letter printed from typewriter type by means of an ordinary printing press is obviously nothing more than an ordinary circular. filling in the name and address by a typewriter is absolutely useless. it is usually advisable to print form letters by means of some duplicating process which prints through a ribbon. where a stencil is used, the waxed paper is put in the typewriter and the letter is written on it without a ribbon. here the stenciled letter replaces the usual type, and the impression secured can seldom be detected from a typewritten letter. a stencil can be made more quickly than type for the same letter can be set. then the exact touch of the typist is reproduced on the duplicated letters through the stencil. no stenographer can write a letter without making some words heavier than others, the distribution of the ink is not the same throughout, so absolute uniformity in the printed letter is not advisable. in printing the body of the letter select some process which gives the appearance of typewriting and then match the fill-in. one merchant secured an effective matching of fill-in and body by printing the form with a poorly-inked ribbon on the duplicating machine and then filling in the name and address with a typewriter ribbon that had been well used. while the general appearance of the letter was marred by this scheme, the impression was that of a letter written on a poor typewriter and it was effective. the business man, the clerk and the farmer--everyone visited by the postman--is becoming more and more familiar with letters. the day has passed when anyone is deceived by a carelessly handled form letter. unless a firm feels justified in spending the time and money to fill in the letter very carefully, it is much better to send it out frankly as a circular. nor is this always a weakness, for a clever touch can be added that introduces the personal elements. one mail-order house sent out a large mailing with this typewritten notice in the upper left corner of the letterhead: "you must pardon me for not filling in your name and address at the beginning of this letter, but the truth is i must get off fifty thousand letters tonight, and i have not the necessary stenographic force to fill in the name and address on each individual letter." * * * * * in spite of the fact that each man was frankly told that , other persons were receiving the same letter, the appeal was as personal as an individual message. another writer opened his communication in this way: "this letter is to you. and it is just as personal as if i had sat down and pounded it off on the typewriter myself, and i am sure that you, as a business man, appreciate that this is a personal message to you, even if i am writing a hundred thousand others at the same time." * * * * * this letter struck a popular and responsive chord, for each reader took it to himself as a frank, honest appeal, from a frank, honest business man. it was a direct personal communication because each reader felt that although it was duplicated a thousand times it nevertheless contained a live message. but the care that some writers take to make the form letter look personal, is the very thing that kills it. they make the letter too perfect. to avoid this result, leave an imperfect word, here and there, throughout the body of the letter. watch the setting up of the type to be sure the lines are not spaced out like a printed page. many correspondents imitate the common mistakes of the typewritten letter from the mechanical standpoint and in the language. time spent in correcting these errors with pen and ink is usually considered a paying investment. the tympan of the duplicating machine is sometimes made uneven so that the impression of a typewriter is still further carried out. some duplicating machines advertise that their type print "loose" for this very purpose. a favorite scheme with firms where letter presses are used is to blur the letter slightly after it has been filled in and signed. a word "xxx'd" out as by a typewriter lends an impression of the personal message, as does also the wrong spelling of a word, corrected by pen and ink. but fully as vital to the individuality of the letter is the manner in which it is closed. the signature of the form letter is a subject that deserves as careful consideration as the superscription and the body of the letter. the actual typewritten letter to henry brown is signed with pen and ink. even where the name of the company also appears at the end of the letter, the personal signature in ink is desirable. and when you write all the henry browns on your mailing list, you should apply the pen-and-ink signature to every letter. that is the only effective way. it is not so essential that the signature should be applied by the writer personally. often a girl writes the signature, saving the time of a busy department head. many firms use a rubber facsimile stamp for applying the signature, but it is not as effective, for it is seldom that the stamped name does not stand out as a mechanical signature. one concern adds the name of the company at the bottom of the letter and has a clerk mark initials underneath with pen and ink. the form letter has a heavy load which carries a row of hieroglyphics at the bottom of the page--the "x-y-z," the " , , ," the "dictated wml-or" and the twenty and one other key numbers and symbols common to the form letters of many houses. when a man receives such a letter, he is impressed by the mass of tangled mechanical operations the message has undergone; on its face he has the story of its mechanical make-up and its virility is lost, absolutely. then consider the various notes, stamped in a frankly mechanical manner at the bottom of the letter, such as, "dictated, but not read," "signed in the absence of mr. so-and-so." to the average man who finds one of these notes on the letter, there is the impression of a slap in the face. he does not like to be reminded that he may converse with the stenographer in the absence of the president. when a letter says "not read" he feels that the message was not of sufficient importance to warrant the personal attention of the writer. eliminate all such notes from the form letter. sometimes a postscript may suggest a note of personality. for instance, one firm writes underneath the signature: "i want you to look especially at the new model on page of the catalogue." this is effective if done with pen and ink, but if printed or stamped, it gives no additional tone of individuality to the letter. one manufacturer had a postscript written on an extra slip of paper which he pasted to the corner of the sheet. another concern writes out on a piece of white paper the blue-penciled postscript: "i'll send you this three-tool garden kit _free_ (express prepaid) if your order for the patent roller reaches me before the th." this is made into a zinc etching and printed in blue so perfectly that the postscript appears to have been applied with a blue pencil. still another postscript scheme is to write the form letter so that it just fills the first page, then to dictate and sign a paragraph for a second page--a most effective plan. then you must consider the enclosure that often goes with the letter. this frequently stamps it a circular. if you are offering a special discount or introductory sale price, for instance, it would be ridiculous to say in your letter, "this is a special price i am quoting to you," when the reader finds the same price printed on the circular. print the regular price, and then blot out the figures with a rubber stamp and insert the special price with pen and ink, or with a stamp. if you offer a special discount it is best to say so frankly: "i am making this special discount to a selected list of a few of our old friends. and in order that you may be sure of this discount i am enclosing the discount card which will entitle you to the special prices." * * * * * [illustration: _a series of letterheads that illustrate various uses of the product and so not only vary the appearance of successive letters but afford good advertising_.] [illustration: _for different departments, to handle different classes of correspondence or simply to vary their follow-up, varying letterheads are used_.] * * * * * the discount card should be filled-in with the name of the person written and stamped with a serial numbering machine. the date the special offer expires should also be stamped on the circular. in making a special offer to a "limited number of persons," the enclosure describing it and the return order blank should not be too elaborate or carefully prepared. it is more effective to make them inexpensive and give a careless appearance. aim to carry the impression that with a hundred or so you could not afford to do it better. do not let an opportunity pass to give the enclosure the same personal touch that you aim at in the letter. some houses even sign the reader's name to the card. a pencil or pen mark over some particular feature of the enclosure is another way to suggest personal attention. refer to the enclosure in a way that indicates individual attention. a correspondence school takes off the weight of the overload of enclosures by inserting this paragraph: "so in order that you may properly understand our proposition i am enclosing these circulars and application blanks. it is impossible to tell one whole story in a single letter, or even a series of letters. to make them perfectly plain i have asked my stenographer to number them with a pen, and i will refer to them in this letter in that order." * * * * * a manufacturer who has succeeded in the mail-order business turns down a page in his catalogue, and refers to it in this way: "i have turned down the corner of a page-- --in my catalogue that i particularly want you to read. on this page you will find pictured and described the best value in a single-seated carriage ever offered to the public. turn to this page now and see if you can afford not to investigate this proposition further." * * * * * a successful campaign prepared by a wholesale house consisted simply of a letter and a cheap-looking yellow circular, across the top of which had been printed with a typewriter duplicating machine this heading: "there is no time to prepare an elaborate circular--the time limit set on this offer is too short." * * * * * this idea was further strengthened by additional typewritten notes on the top and sides of the circular. the special offer and order blank appeared in typewriter type on the back of the circular. another scheme which pulled results for a tailor was this typewritten postscript: "the enclosed is a circular letter. if i sent it to you without this personal note, i fear you would be too busy to give it the attention it deserves. so i ask you now--in justice to your interests--to read this circular as carefully as if i had put the whole thing in a personal letter to you." * * * * * it is an easy matter to enclose a few typewritten names, so a paper manufacturer says in his answer to an inquiry: "i'm sending you a list of the printers in your immediate vicinity from whom you can secure our bond papers." * * * * * a land concern refers to an enclosed list in this way: "so you can investigate for yourself just what our proposition will do for you, i am having my stenographer make up a list of a few purchasers in your vicinity from whom you can secure first hand facts." * * * * * another concern typewrites the note "personal matter" on the enclosed return envelope to give added individuality to it. thus the return envelope contributes to the general impression of the one-man message. but whether it is the superscription, the body of the letter, the closing or the enclosure, there is one general principle that must be followed: first consider how you would handle the individual letter, then make the form letter similar. make the form letter talk as though it were intended for one man. keep this rule in mind and your form letters will pull. making _letterheads_ and _envelopes_ distinctive part iv--the dress of a business letter--chapter _the dress of a business letter reflects the character and the standing of a house no less than the dress of its personal representative. the quality of the paper, the kind of printing or engraving, the mechanical make-up--all these things contribute to the_ impression _a letter makes upon the recipient even_ before the message is read. _many letters come to nothing because their dress is unattractive, cheap, slovenly; and so progressive business men are learning to select their stationery with care to insure for it both tone and dignity. the kind of paper to select--the size, the tint and the quality--is described and explained in the following chapter_ * * * * * the first impression created by a business letter is based upon its outward appearance--upon its mechanical make-up, the quality of its paper, the grade of its printing or engraving; upon the superficial qualities that are apparent at a glance. the externals do not necessarily reflect the quality of the message within the letter. but the experienced business man, who is trained to make his estimate quickly, gets an impression of some kind--good, bad or indifferent--of every letter that comes before him, even before a word of that letter is read. in other words, the general appearance of the letter is the first appeal that it makes to the average man. the nearer that appearance conforms to the appearance of the letters from reputable concerns with which he is familiar, the more favorably he is impressed with it. the farther its appearance departs from the established and approved standards, the more forcibly will that letter force itself upon his attention. but whether the recipient is favorably or unfavorably impressed by this prominence depends upon the skill and ingenuity with which the letter is made up mechanically. generally speaking, business correspondence paper may be classified as follows: first: the _conventional_ stationery, that conforms to the established rules and the principal variation of which is in the quality of its paper and printing. second: the _individualistic_ stationery, that departs from the usual styles and is good to the extent that it meets the unusual requirements for which it is designed. third: the _eccentric_ stationery, which is usually merely a fanciful violation of the conventions for the purpose of being conspicuous. of these three types of business stationery, the first is essentially practical and sane; the second is forceful if it does not violate the fundamental rules of color and design, and if it has a peculiarly apt application; while the third is almost invariably in as poor taste as eccentricity in dress. the first consideration in the preparation of business stationery is the paper, or "stock." the quality of this "stock," like the quality of material of a suit of clothes, largely determines the taste, if not the resources of the owner. important messages may be written on cheap stationery; big men with big plans are sometimes clad in shoddy garments. but ninety-nine out of a hundred are not, and the hundredth man, who does not conform to the accepted order of things, is taking an unnecessary business risk of being wrongly classified. after a man has delivered his message, the quality of his clothes is not an important item. after a letter has been read, the quality of its paper is insignificant. but as the man is seen before he is heard, and the letter before it is read, it is good business to make both dress and stationery conform to approved styles. for instance, the average financial institution, such as a bank or trust company, takes every precaution to create an impression of strength and security. the heavy architecture of its building, the massive steel bars, its uniformed attendants the richness of its furnishings, all tend to insure a sense of reliability. does it use cheap stationery? on the contrary, it uses rich, heavy bond. the quality of its paper conforms to the dignity and wealth of the institution; indeed, so long has the public been trained to expect good letter paper from such concerns that it would be apt to mistrust, perhaps unconsciously, the house that resorted to cheap grades of stationery which is almost invariably associated with cheap concerns or with mere form letters issued in large quantities. stationery should be representative of the business from which it comes. the impression created by a well-dressed man, as well as of a well-dressed letter, is seldom analyzed; the first glance is generally sufficient to establish that impression. a letter soliciting an investment of money, if printed on cheap stock, may create such a tawdry impression as to be discarded instantly by the average business man, although the letter may come from an entirely reliable house and contain an excellent business proposition on good, substantial paper. for this reason, the letter that departs from the usual standards must assume unnecessary risks of being thrown away unread. to discriminate at a glance between important and inconsequential business letters, is what most men have been trained to do. it is not exaggeration to claim that the success of many business letters often depends upon the paper. the difference between the letter of an obscure country merchant or lawyer, and that of his well-known correspondent in the city, lies often in its mechanical appearance. the one, who is not trained to observe what he considers trifling items, uses paper that is cheap and easily available; the other, experienced in the details that tend to increase the dignity of the house, selects his stationery with care from a wider assortment. ninety-nine times out of a hundred the two letters may be identified at a distance. the message of one letter may be just as important as the other; but one is properly and the other is improperly "clothed." what the firm thinks about business stationery is not so important as what the recipients think. do not buy good stock because it pleases the "house," but because it influences the man to whom the house writes. first impressions are usually strongest and the first impression produced by a letter comes from the paper upon which it is written. some men seem to feel superior to creating a good impression. they do not want to stoop so low as to go to the best hotel. they will not buy a hat or an umbrella that can help them get business. their general idea is to bang their way into the market and succeed in their shirt sleeves, as it were, and on the strength of the goods. of course, if a man has time to succeed in his shirt sleeves, there is no objection to it. the idea of having as one's address the best hotel, or in writing one's business on the best paper, is not that a man could not succeed in his shirt sleeves, if he set out to, but that he has not time. he gets little things out of the way and proceeds to business. the quality of the paper must be largely influenced by the purpose, as well as by the quantity of the letters to be written. a firm that sends out hundreds of thousands of form letters to sell a small retail article in the rural districts, will not use an expensive stock; it will use a cheaper quality of paper. if the form letter goes to business or professional men in the city, the quality of the paper will be determined accordingly. in every instance, stock should be selected which will meet the expectations of the recipient. the fact that the recipient knows a form letter as such, largely nullifies its influence. a business man who sends out a large number of form letters a year claims that when he gets a reply beginning, "in response to your form letter," he knows that the effect of that letter is absolutely lost on a large percentage of this list who seldom or never bother to read such communications. and one of the distinguishing marks of such a letter is the poor quality of its paper. different grades of stationery may be used for the various departments. for inter-house or inter-department correspondence, an inexpensive paper is desirable. for many purposes, indeed, a low-priced stock is entirely permissible. but the higher the quality of paper, the more exclusive and personal that letter becomes, until, in the cases of executive heads of corporations, the stock used is of the best. one well-known corporation regularly uses six different grades of paper for its letters; one grade is engraved upon a thin bond of excellent quality and used by the president of the company when writing in his official capacity; another grade is engraved upon a good quality of linen paper and is used by the other officers, sales managers and heads of office departments when writing official letters to outside parties; when writing to officers or employees of their own concern, the same letterhead, lithographed on a less expensive grade of paper, is used; a fourth grade of bond paper is used by officers and department heads for their semi-official correspondence. the sixth grade is used only for personal letters of a social nature; it is of a high quality of linen stock, tinted. thus, the size, shape and quality of the paper and letterhead in each instance is made to conform to the best business and social usages. for business correspondence, custom allows but little leeway in the choice of paper. for print shops, advertising concerns, ink manufacturers, engravers, or paper manufacturers, stationery offers an opportunity to exploit their taste or products in an effective and legitimate manner. for most houses, however, a plain bond, linen, or the vellums and hand-made papers that are coming into favor, furnish the best letter paper. colors on correspondence paper are seldom used to good effect; the results are frequently glaring and cheap. when in doubt as to what tint to use in the paper stock, use white, which is always in good taste. tinted stock is occasionally used to good advantage as a "firm color." in such cases all the correspondence of that house has a uniform tint, which thus acquires an advertising value in attracting attention to itself among a mass of other letters. aside from this occasional and often doubtful advertising value, tinted stock tends toward the eccentric except in the cases of paper dealers, publishers, or printers who have a purpose in displaying typographical effects. many concerns use paper of various tints, each of which identifies the particular department from which it comes. thus, white paper may mark the letters from the executive department, blue from the selling department, and brown from the manufacturing department. but, even in such cases, the colors are used ordinarily only for inter-house or inter-department communications. the sheet should be of standard size; that is the letter sheet should be folded to fit exactly into the envelope that is used. only such paper stock should be selected as can hold ink readily. never select a stock that is not entirely serviceable on a typewriting machine. never sacrifice the practical to the eccentric in business stationery. an inferior quality of stationery is sometimes accepted by the shrewd observer either as a deliberate act to economize or as an indication of poor taste or indifference. a man who gets an estimate, for example, written on cheap paper, may be led to believe that the man who skimps on letter paper is apt to skimp on his work. so long as the paper represents the sender, just so long will the sender be judged by it. from a semi-business or social standpoint, stationery often plays an important role; many instances are recorded where a man's private note paper has been the means of eliminating his name from select, social lists. the lady who, in writing to an employment office for a butler, used her private stationery with the remark, "that is one more way of giving them to understand what sort of a butler i want," knew the effect produced by proper letter paper. in other words, the _stationery_ of a business house--the size, the proportions, the tint, the quality of its correspondence-paper-- offers the first of the several opportunities for the correspondent to put the recipient into a receptive state of mind toward the communication. it is an item that the shrewd correspondent does not ignore, because it offers him an opportunity--and the first opportunity--to score. the _typographical_ make-up of business letters part iv--the dress of a business letter--chapter _all business houses recognize the necessity for having printed letterheads and envelopes, but the variety of designs and styles are infinite. nothing, not even the paper, affords such an index to the character of the individual or firm as the typography of the envelope and letterhead. an impression, favorable or otherwise, is created_ before the letter is read. _this chapter describes the methods of printing, engraving and lithographing; the advantages of each process, and the difference in prices; the proper placing of date, name and address, the width of margins, spacing between lines--little points that contribute to the appearance of the letter and give it tone_ * * * * * the feature of a business letter that invariably commands the first conscious attention of the recipient is the name--printed or written--of the firm or individual from whom the letter comes. except when the correspondent intentionally omits this information for the purpose of inducing the recipient to notice a circular letter that he might otherwise ignore, the name and address of the sender is printed on the envelope. this is done for two reasons: it brings the name of the correspondent before the recipient immediately upon receipt of the letter; it tends to secure favorable attention, and it enables the post office authorities to return letters to the senders in case of non-delivery because of removals, death, wrong address or other causes. in either case, the interests of the correspondent are best served by printing this information in the upper left corner of the face of the envelope. it is this side of the envelope that bears the address and the stamp, and consequently the only side, under ordinary circumstances, that receives attention from either the postal officials or the recipient. when the sender's name is printed in this position, it is brought prominently to the attention of the recipient as the letter is placed before him. but even a more practical reason for putting this data in the upper left corner is that such a location on the envelope permits the post office rubber stamp, "_return to sender_," to be affixed, in case of need, without the confusion and annoyance that is caused when this address is printed on the back of the envelope, as is sometimes done. as a rule, the printed matter that appears on the envelope should consist merely of the name and address of the sender in plain, legible letters. in no case should the address be ambiguous. however many branch offices the firm may have, the use of more than one address on the envelope is apt to be confusing and may result in a communication's being returned to an office other than that from which it comes. to avoid this, only one address should be printed on the envelope, and that should be the address to which the correspondence is to be returned by the postal authorities in case of non-delivery to the addressee. the trade mark or other similar distinctive imprint of a firm may properly be used on the envelope, but only in cases where it will not tend to confuse or crowd the essential wording. the name of the person to whom the letter is to be returned is of considerable more practical value to the postman than a unique design with which the envelope may be adorned. the letterhead offers wider opportunities for an array of data. pictures of offices, buildings and factories, trade marks, lists of branch offices, cable codes and the names of officers and executive heads may be used, but too much reading matter leads to confusion. the tendency today is toward simplicity. the name and address of the firm, and the particular department or branch office from which the communication comes, is regarded as sufficient by many houses. the day of the letterhead gay with birds-eye views of the plant and much extraneous information seems to be passing, and money that was once spent in elaborate designs and plates is now put into the "quality" of the letter paper--and quality is usually marked by dignified simplicity and directness. letterheads may be mechanically produced by several different processes that range widely in costs. the principal methods of printing letterheads are: first: from type. second: from zinc or half-tone plates made from drawings--generally designated as "photo-engraving". third: from plates engraved on copper or steel. fourth: from lithograph plates, engraved on stone. fifth: from photogravure or similar engraved plates. generally speaking, letterheads printed from type are the cheapest. the costs of type composition for an ordinary letterhead will vary from fifty cents to four or five dollars, dependent upon the amount of work. the printing ranges in cost from one dollar a thousand sheets for one color to several times that amount, dependent upon the quality of ink and paper, and upon local conditions. many concerns are discarding letterheads printed from type, as more individuality can be shown in some form of engraved or lithographed work. good results may often be secured from "line cuts" or zinc plates-- which cost from five to ten cents a square inch, with a minimum charge ranging from fifty cents to a dollar--made from pen-and-ink drawings. good and distinctive lettering may often be secured in this way, where type matter does not offer the same opportunities. the cost of printing from zinc plates is practically the same as the cost of printing from type. if the drawings are made in water color, "wash" or oil, or if they contain fine crayon or pencil shadings, the reproductions must be made from half-tone plates. these cost from twelve cents to twenty cents a square inch, with a minimum rate that usually is equivalent to the cost of ten square inches. half-tones, however, can be printed only on an enamel or other smooth-surface paper, and cannot be used satisfactorily on a rough-surface paper as can zinc plates. copper or steel engravings are made from designs furnished either by the engraver or by some other designer. for simple engraved lettering such as is customarily used on business stationery, the cost of a copper plate is about ten cents a letter. for elaborate designs the costs increase proportionately. steel plates, which are more durable, cost about sixty per cent more. printing from such plates is considerably more expensive than the two processes previously described. engraved letterheads cost from six dollars upward a thousand for the printing, while the envelopes cost approximately two dollars and fifty cents a thousand. the envelopes are usually printed from steel dies, which cost about ten cents a letter. for large orders of stationery, exceeding , sheets, lithography offers economies in price and other advantages that render it more practical than metal engraving. the design is engraved upon stone and printed from the stone block. while the initial costs of lithography are high, ranging from $ . to $ . for the engraving (with an average cost of about $ . ), the price of printing is so moderate as to make this form of production popular among extensive users of business paper. lithography gives a smooth, uniform and permanent impression on the paper, and permits of an indeterminate "run." the cost of printing from lithographic plates is practically the same as from steel or copper plates. the savings effected in large orders is in the cost of the plates, for copper and steel must be renewed as they become worn down. the photogravure process is costly both in the plate-making and in the printing. while it gives a rich and uniform impression on the letter paper, and is highly valuable for reproducing pictures and ornate designs, it is adaptable only for special purposes and is not generally regarded as suitable for commercial work. a photogravure plate costs from seventy-five cents to one dollar and twenty-five cents a square inch, or about $ . to $ . for a letterhead. the printing costs about the same as for other engraved stationery. with other processes, somewhat similar in the market, this method of printing letterheads has not yet won extensive favor. it is now almost universally recognized that a letter should be written on one side of the sheet only. a copy should be kept of every communication that leaves the office. either a carbon copy may be made at the time the letter is written--six good copies can be made simultaneously on the average typewriter, although one is usually sufficient--or a letter-press copy can be made from the sheet after it is signed. both forms have been accepted by the courts as legal copies of correspondence. such copies are usually filed alphabetically either by the name of the company or individual to whom the letter is addressed. letter-press copies must necessarily be filed chronologically, even when separate books for each letter of the alphabet are maintained. in either case the search through the files for a letter copy is facilitated by placing the name, address and date of a letter at the top. for the same reason the date of a letter should be placed in the upper right corner of the page; the recipient must know when the communication is sent; it may have a bearing on other communications. the name and address of the addressee, similar to the address on the envelope, should in all cases be placed, as the formal salutation, in the upper left corner of the sheet, whether the correspondent be greeted "dear sir" or "gentlemen." not only does this establish at once the exact individual for whom the communication is intended but it facilitates the filing of the correspondence, both by the recipient and by the sender. the margins of a business letter, owing to the limitations of the typewriter, are usually variable. the space occupied by the letterhead must, of course, determine the margin at the top of the sheet. theoretically, the margins at the left and right should be exactly the same size; practically, however, the typewriter lines will vary in length and cause an uneven edge on the right side. in printing, the use of many-sized spaces not only between words but at times, between the letters themselves rectifies these variations, but the typewriter does not permit this. the more even the right margin is and the more uniform it is to the left margin, the better the effect. the margins should be about one and a half inches in width. the margin at the bottom should not be less than the side margins. should it be smaller, the page will appear cramped for space as the reading matter will be really running over into the margin--a typographical defect that is as noticeable on typewritten as on printed pages. the spacing between the lines and between the paragraphs of a business letter may vary to suit the tastes of the individual, although considerations of a practical nature tend to establish a few general principles. both for purposes of convenience and of economy, a letter should be as compact as possible, both in words and in mechanical production. it should not take up two sheets if the message can be written on one without undue crowding. hence most business letters are single spaced; that is, only one space on the typewriter separates the lines. even when a letter is short, it is advisable for purposes of uniformity, to use single spaces only. the first line of each paragraph is usually indented from five to fifteen points on the machine. each business house should establish exactly what this indentation shall be in order to secure uniformity in its correspondence. instead of indenting the first line, some concerns designate the paragraphs merely by separating them by double spacings, beginning the first line flush with the left margin. the best practice, however, seems to embody both of these methods, but the average business letter usually has its paragraphs separated by double spacing and indenting the first line. the address on the envelope, to which the salutation at the top of the letter should correspond, either exactly or in slightly condensed form, may be properly typewritten in various ways. the style that is most observed, however, and which has the stamp of general approval, provides for an indentation of about five points on each line of the address. between the lines the spacings may be either single or double but the latter is preferable. greater spacing tends to separate the address too much to allow it to be read quickly. another approved, though less popular form of address does not indent the lines at all. any radical departure from these forms should be made cautiously, especially if the various items of the address are separated from each other. the address, like a paragraph, is generally read as a unit--as a single, distinct idea. the closer the address conforms to the generally accepted forms, the more readily are the envelopes handled by the postoffice and the less danger of delay. getting a uniform _policy_ and _quality_ in letters part iv--the dress of a business letter--chapter _every correspondent naturally reflects his own personality in his letters. his distinguishing characteristics, good, bad and indifferent, inevitably tend to find expression in his correspondence_--unless those tendencies are guided. _that is exactly what the modern business house does. it directs the work of its correspondents by means of general and specific rules as well as by instruction in the policies of the house until ail of its letters are uniform in quality and bear the stamp of a consistent personality--the personality of "the house"_ * * * * * a number of years ago, the president of a company manufacturing carriages felt that he was not getting adequate results for the money he was spending in the mail sales department. one day he called a meeting of all his correspondents and asked each man what arguments he used in writing to prospects. he discovered that eight correspondents were using eight different lines of talk. one emphasized this feature of the carriage, a second based his argument on another feature, and no two correspondents were reaching prospects from the same angle or making use of the same arguments. "here are eight different approaches," said the president. "it is certain that one of these must be more effective than the other seven. they can't all be best. it is up to us to test them out and determine which one is best and then we will all use it." when the proposition was presented in this way, it was so elementary that everyone wondered why it had not been thought of before. a series of tests followed with the different arguments and presentations and by a process of elimination the company proved conclusively which was the strongest approach. then all of the correspondents used it in the first letter and the second strongest argument was used in the second letter, and so on through the follow-up. it was no longer left for each man to develop his arguments and his selling talk according to his own ideas. through tests, consultation and discussion, every point was considered and all the correspondence was on the same level. by adopting a uniform policy the efficiency of the sales department was increased, the quality of the letters was raised and the work was handled more expeditiously and more economically. one cannot write to all his customers and prospects; that is why it is necessary to have correspondents in the various departments. it is an easy matter to adopt rules and establish policies that will make their letters of a much higher standard and give them greater efficiency than if each went his own way without rule or regulation to guide him. every correspondent represents the house in a dignified manner and handles the subjects intrusted to his care in a way that will reflect the best thought and the most successful methods of the house. not everyone can be developed into a master correspondent but it is possible to establish a policy and enforce rules that will give quality and at least a fair measure of salesmanship to all letters. many businesses have grown so rapidly and the heads have been so absorbed in the problems of production and extending markets that little time or thought has been given to the work of the correspondents. and so it happens that in many concerns the correspondence is handled according to the whims, the theories and the personality of the various men who are in charge of the different departments. but there are other concerns that have recognized the desirability of giving individuality to all the mail that bears a house message. they have found that the quality can be keyed up and the letters, even though they may be written in a dozen different departments, all have the family resemblance and bear evidence of good parentage. and it may be certain that when all the letters from a house impart this tone, this atmosphere of quality and distinction, it is not because of chance. it is not because the correspondents all happen to use a similar policy. such letters imply a deliberate, persistent, intelligent effort to keep the correspondence from falling below a fixed level. such a policy represents one of the finer products of the process of systematically developing all the factors in modern business--the stamping of a strong individuality upon all of the correspondence of a large organization. to secure this uniformity in policy and in quality, it is necessary to adopt a set of clear, comprehensive rules and to impress upon the correspondents the full significance of the standing, the character and the traditions of the house. there are certain tendencies on the part of some correspondents that can be overcome by a general rule. for instance, there are the correspondents who try to be funny in their letters. attempts at humor should be forbidden for the day has gone when the salesman can get orders by telling a funny story. another correspondent may deal too largely in technicalities in his letters, using words and phrases that are not understood. then there is the correspondent who has an air of superiority in his letters and writes with impudence and his letters suggest a condescension on his part to explain a proposition; or the complaint department may have a man who grants an allowance or makes an adjustment but puts a sting into his letter that makes the reader wish he had never patronized the house. all such tendencies may be eradicated by a set of rules giving specific instruction on how to handle every point that comes up and the attitude that is to be assumed in answering complaints, collecting accounts, making sales, and so forth. and in order to have the letters reflect the house, rules have been adopted in some cases that cover every conceivable point from a broad policy in handling arguments to a specific rule regarding the use of commas. for instance, it is no longer left to the discretion of the correspondent to start his letter "john smith." a rule provides that all letters shall begin "mr. john smith." for the sake of dignity, a western mail-order house decided to use "dear sir" and "dear madam" in the first three letters that went to a customer. but on the third and succeeding letters this house uses the salutation "dear mr. smith" or "dear mrs. smith." this is a matter of policy, a rule that will keep the letters up to a fixed standard. * * * * * page from one firm's book of rules: _in a long letter, or where two or more subjects are treated, each subject must be introduced with an appropriate subhead. all letters, long or short, must carry a general subject head between the address and the first paragraph. this general head and the subheads must be in capitals, underscored with a single line, and as nearly as possible in the middle of the sheet from right to left. carefully avoid even the appearance of sarcasm. be wary of adjectives, particularly superlatives. "very," "great," "tremendous," "excellent," etc., have marred many an otherwise strong phrase and have propped needlessly many a good word, all-sufficient of itself. never use the first personal pronoun "i" when writing as blank company. "we" is the proper pronoun. where a personal reference is necessary, "the writer" may be used; but even this should be avoided wherever possible. don't forget that certain small words are in the language for a purpose. "and," "a," "the," are important, and their elimination often makes a letter bald, curt, and distinctly inelegant. carefully avoid such words and stock phrases as "beg to acknowledge," "beg to inquire," "beg to advise," etc. do not "beg" at all. do not say "kindly" for "please." do not say "enclosed herewith." herewith is superfluous. do not "reply" to a letter; "answer" it. you answer a letter and reply to an argument._ * * * * * in determining a uniformity in policy and quality, the rules may be grouped in three classes: those which determine the attitude of the writer; those that relate to the handling of subject matter; and then there are specific rules, such as the style of paper, the salutation, the subscription, signature, and so forth. the attitude and policy of the house must be determined according to the nature of the business and the ideas of the management. the same rules will not apply to all houses but this does not lessen the desirability of an established policy. for instance, one large corporation, selling entirely to dealers and to large contractors, forbids the use of the first person singular. under no consideration is the correspondent permitted to say "i". and if a personal reference is absolutely necessary, he must refer to "the writer". the rule is to say "we" and the correspondents are urged to avoid this personal pronoun, using the name of the company, as, "it has always been the practice of the workwell company," and so on. most mail-order houses, on the other hand, get just as far away from this formal attitude as possible. here it is the policy to get up close to the reader by a "you-and-me" attitude. some mail-order houses have letters written in the name of the company, signed by the writer as department manager, sales manager, or other officer. then there are other houses that omit the company name entirely in order to get away from the "soulless corporation" idea as much as possible, and letters to a customer are always signed by the same individual to get a personal relationship that is considered a most valuable asset. this does not mean merely the matter of the signature, but the entire attitude of the letter. "address your reply to me personally" is the spirit of these firms--a policy that has been adopted after tests have demonstrated that it is the one appeal most effective with the average mail-order customer. a large concern aims to make its points stand out more clearly by having the arguments presented in a one, two, three order, and each paragraph is introduced with a subject printed in capitals at the beginning of the first line, such as _location_, _terms_, _guarantee_. this company, dealing in lands, usually finds it necessary to write rather lengthy letters and the subject heads serve as guide-posts and tend to concentrate attention. one firm has barred all superlative adjectives, not merely to guard against exaggeration but because the superlative degree lacks conviction. the statement that "this is the best collar ever made" is not believed, but to say that it is a "fine" collar or a "good" collar for it is five-ply, and so forth, rings true. it is a better selling talk and so the superlative is not permitted. then there are other general policies that concerns have adopted, such as a rule that the price of articles cannot be mentioned in a letter. a printed enclosure gives this information and reference may be made to it, but the dollar mark does not appear in the letter itself. this policy has been adopted to emphasize upon readers the fact that the company quotes but one price to all, and it makes an effective selling talk out of the point that special discounts and "inside prices" are never given. as confidence is always the first essential in building up a mail-order business, this policy has done much towards increasing the standing and reputation of the houses using it. and then come certain specific instructions covering a multitude of details. for instance, the style of paper is a matter that progressive business houses no longer ignore. the policy of the house may be revealed in the envelope and letter paper before one has had time to read even the date line. some firms provide different grades of stationery for different departments, the sales letters going out in a much finer dress than letters from other departments. the style to use is largely a matter of personal taste and preference. the significant thing is not in the kind that is used by certain companies but the fact that progressive business houses now appreciate the necessity for a uniformity in stationery and in the manner of handling it. harmony of color is especially desirable--the tint of the paper, the color of the lithographing, embossing or printing, the color of the typewriter ribbon used and the color of the ink used in signing. none of these points are too small to be considered in the progressive business houses today. the closing is no less important than the opening and most rule books relieve the correspondent of all responsibility in deciding on what subscription to use or how to sign the letter. for instance, he is told that the house policy is to close with "yours truly" and that the name of the company is written with the typewriter followed by the signature of the writer and his title, such as "president," or "sales manager." a publishing house in the east for years clung to the established policy of having all letters go out in the name of the president. but it was finally decided by the executive committee that this policy tended to belittle the house, for it was obvious that no institution of any size could have all its mail handled directly from the president's office. it was argued that if the president's name were used only occasionally, greater prestige would be given to the letters that actually came from his office, and thereafter letters were signed by different department heads as "manager of sales," "advertising manager," "managing editor," "manager of collection department," and so forth. and just so one could go through the book of rules of any business house and find a good reason for every policy that has been adopted. for while it is desirable to have a "family resemblance" which is possible only through established rules, and while letters written under specific instructions have added dignity and character, yet there is back of each rule some additional significance, the force of some tested argument, the psychological effect of some timely suggestion. no longer do large manufacturing and mercantile houses send out their salesmen and allow each one to push his line as he sees best. many concerns require the salesmen to take a regular course of training to learn thoroughly the "house" attitude, and they are given instructions on the best way to present arguments and overcome objections--just so the men who sell by letter are now instructed in the best methods for getting results. the best way to secure a uniform policy is a practical question. some houses employ a correspondent expert to spend a few weeks in the correspondence department just the same as an expert auditor is employed to systematize the accounting department. in other houses the book of rules is a matter of evolution, the gradual adding of new points as they come up and as policies are tried out, a process of elimination determining those that should be adopted. in some concerns the correspondents have regular meetings to discuss their problems and to decide upon the best methods of meeting the situations that arise in their work. they read letters that have pulled, analyze the arguments and in this way try to raise the quality of their written messages. while it must be admitted that some men have a natural faculty of expressing themselves clearly and forcibly, the fact remains that letter writing is an art that may be acquired. it necessitates a capacity to understand the reader's attitude; it requires careful study and analysis of talking points, arguments and methods of presentation, but there is no copyright on good letters and any house can secure a high standard and be assured that distant customers are handled tactfully and skilfully if a uniform policy is worked out and systematically applied. making letters uniform in _appearance_ part iv--the dress of a business letter--chapter _business stationery should reflect the house that sends it out but unless specific rules are adopted there will be a lack of uniformity in arrangement, in style, in spelling, infolding--all the little mechanical details that contribute to an impression of_ character _and_ individuality. _definite instructions should be given to correspondents and stenographers so that letters, although written in a dozen different departments, will have a uniformity in appearance. what a book of instructions should contain and how rules can be adopted is described in this chapter_ * * * * * just as progressive business houses now aim to have their correspondence uniform in policy and quality, so too, they aim at uniformity in letter appearance--the mechanical production. it is obvious that if the letters sent out by a house are to have character, one style must be adopted and definite rules must be formulated for the guidance of the stenographers. the authorities differ on many points such as the use of capital letters, abbreviations, the use of figures, and so forth, and it is not to be expected that stenographers, trained at different schools and working in different departments, could produce uniformity unless they all follow specific instructions. and so the more progressive firms have adopted a fixed style and codified certain rules for the guidance of stenographers and typists. in the writing of a letter there are so many points that are entirely a matter of personal taste that a comprehensive rule book touches an almost infinite number of subjects, ranging from an important question of house policy to the proper way of folding the sheet on which the letter is written. it is not the purpose of this chapter to give a summary of the rules for punctuation and capitalization or to pass judgment on questions of style, but to emphasize the necessity for uniformity in all correspondence that a house sends out, and to call attention to a few of the more common errors that are inexcusable. as far as the impression created by an individual letter is concerned, it really makes very little difference whether the paragraphs are indented or begin flush with the line margin. but it is important that all the letters sent out by a house follow the same style. a stenographer should not be permitted to use the abbreviation "co." in one part of her letter and spell out the word "company" in the following paragraph. in formulating the rules, two things should be kept in mind-- clearness, to make the meaning of the writer plain; and a pleasing appearance that will make a favorable impression upon the reader. the sole purpose of punctuation marks is to help convey a thought so clearly that it cannot be misunderstood and experienced writers learn to use the proper marks almost intuitively. the rules are applied unconsciously. many correspondents in dictating designate the beginning and the close of each sentence but others leave this to the intelligence of the stenographer, and there is no better rule for those to whom such matters are left than to be liberal in the use of periods. avoid long, involved sentences. there is little danger of misunderstanding in short sentences. most of the rules can be made hard and fast--a simple regulation to do this or to avoid that. they should begin with the date line. instructions should be given as to the place for the date line: whether it should be written on one or two lines and whether the month should be expressed in figures or should be spelled out, and whether the year should be printed in full or abbreviated. there is a growing tendency to use figures, such as - - , and supplementary letters, such as "rd," "th," and so forth, are being eliminated. some firms are placing the date at the bottom of the letter at the left hand margin, although for convenience in making a quick reference the date line at the top of the letter is much to be preferred. * * * * * a page of instructions to stenographers: _city and date must be written about three spaces below the lowest printed matter on letterhead, as follows: chicago, date single space below, regulated so that it will precede and extend beyond "chicago" an equal distance, the end of date being in line with margin of body of letter; spell the month in full, followed by the date in figures, after which use comma; add year in figures and end with period. commence letter by addressing customer, then double space and follow with city and state (do not give street address) except where window envelope is to be used; double space and address as "dear sir" or "madam." also double space between this salutation and first paragraph. paragraphs must begin ten points from margin on a line with city. use single space, with double space between paragraphs. in closing use the phrase "yours very truly" and sign "the wilson-graham company." have correspondent's and stenographer's initials on line with margin on left hand side of sheet. margins must be regulated by length of letter to be written, using your judgment in this respect. the half size letterhead should be used for very short letters. envelopes must be addressed double space, with beginning of name, street address, city and state on marginal line, as per sample attached._ * * * * * the points that are suggested here, however, are entirely a matter of taste. there is no court of last resort to which appeal can be made as to the better method. each house must use its own judgment. the important thing is to secure uniformity. rules should govern the name of the addressee, whether it should be prefaced by such titles as "mr." or "messrs." the form of the salutation, the size of the margin, the spacing between lines and between paragraphs, the indentation of paragraphs, if any--all of these points should be covered by rules. the subscription, the placing of the dictator's and the stenographer's initials are all proper subjects for the instruction book. the use of capital letters is a disputed question with writers, printers and proofreaders. but there is a growing tendency to use the small letters wherever possible. one large firm in the east has this rule: "when in doubt regarding the use of a capital letter, don't. use a small letter." a great many business houses, for the sake of emphasis, capitalize the names of their own products. for instance: "in this catalogue you will find listed a very complete line of countershafts, magnetos, induction coils, lubricators, mufflers, spark coils, and a complete line of automobile accessories." * * * * * there is no rule that justifies such capitalization but it is a common practice in business correspondence. there are some correspondents who write a word or a sentence in capital letters for emphasis. occasionally this may be done to advantage but the tendency is to overwork the scheme. at best it is a lazy man's way of trying to secure emphasis without the mental exertion of thinking up some figure of speech or some original expression that will give force to his thought. the rule book should help out the stenographer in the use of numbers and prices. usage and a practical viewpoint both commend the use of figures for expressing sums of money. "twelve hundred dollars" may be understood but it takes longer to write and does not make such a sharp image in the mind of the reader as $ , . a common rule for figures is to spell out numbers under one hundred and to use numerals for larger amounts. the use of abbreviations should be restricted and an inflexible rule should be never to use a man's initials or abbreviate his given name if he spells it out. if you find by a letterhead that the one to whom you are writing spells out the name of his state it is wise to follow the trail. the errors in punctuation found in business correspondence are of infinite variety, although a surprising number of stenographers make similar errors in using hyphens for dashes and in misplacing quotation marks. here is a common error: "a model no. ,--the one we exhibited at the business show last week,--has been sold to a customer in new zealand." * * * * * there is no excuse for the comma used in connection with the dash and yet this construction is found in letters every day. unfortunately most typewriters do not have a dash and so the hyphen is used, but stenographers should be instructed to use two or, better yet, three hyphens without spacing (---), rather than a single hyphen as is so frequently seen. here is a sentence in which the girl was versatile enough to combine two styles in one sentence: "the auto---although it was completely overhauled a few days ago---could not be started." * * * * * in the first place, the single hyphen gives the appearance of a compound word, and placing a space on each side is scarcely less objectionable. insist upon two or three hyphens without spaces when a dash is wanted. quotation marks are another stumbling block. there is no occasion to put the name of well-known books, magazines, and newspapers in quotation marks. if you refer to harper's monthly the reader will get your meaning just as well without the quotation marks. many stenographers in writing a sentence that ends with a quoted word place the quotation mark first and the period or question mark following, as: johnson's last words to me were: "i will accept your terms". * * * * * put the period inside the fence where it belongs. this is a rule that is violated more often than it is observed, the confusion coming from an occasional exception where a punctuation mark has nothing to do with the quotation, as in the sentence: "may we not send you a trial order of our "x brand"? * * * * * here it is plain that the question mark should follow the quotation mark. there is no excuse for the frequent misplacing of these marks, for the quoted part of a sentence invariably shows the proper position for each mark. a chapter could be filled with errors to be avoided--only a few of the most common ones are mentioned here. this reference to them may suggest to the heads of correspondence departments the range of points to be covered in a rule book. some rule books go further and devote pages to faulty diction that must be avoided and print lists of words that should not be used and words that are "preferred". the folding of the typewritten page usually comes in for a rule and instructions are generally given regarding corrections--whether the pen can be used at all or if letters must be rewritten. with these rules laid down for the guidance of the stenographer, her mind is left free for other things that will contribute to her usefulness. it is no reflection on their knowledge of correct english to say that the majority of correspondents, working under high pressure, make mistakes that the stenographer must catch. it is extremely easy in dictating to mix up the tenses of verbs and to make other slips which most letter writers look to their stenographers to correct. it should be a hard and fast rule that an ungrammatical letter must never be sent out under any circumstances. some correspondents not only look to the stenographer to edit their "copy" but to come back for a new dictation if the meaning of a letter is not perfectly clear. the thought is that if the stenographer does not understand it, there is danger of its being misinterpreted by the one to whom it is addressed. many rule books include a list of trade terms and phrases that the most expert stenographer may never have met with in their previous work. legal terms are especially difficult to take down until a girl has become familiar with the unknown latin words. this may also be said of technical terms, mechanical terms, architectural and building terms, and so forth. it is a saving of time and annoyance in many offices to have a list of frequently used words that the new stenographer can study before she attempts to take dictations. it is not likely that any two business houses could adopt the same rules throughout. but this does not lessen the desirability of having specific instructions covering all these points, for without uniformity, the letters will not have the character, the dignity and the individuality that is desired by every concern. how to write the _letter_ that will "land" the _order_ part v--writing the sales letter--chapter _selling goods is considered the biggest problem in the business world. hard as it is to close a deal with the prospect right before you, it is infinitely harder to get his order when he is miles away and you must depend upon a type-written sheet to interest him in your proposition sufficiently to buy your goods. methods that have succeeded are described in this chapter and samples of order-bringing letters are given_ * * * * * the letter that is sent out unaided to make its own approach, open its own canvass and either complete a sale or pave the way to a sale may be called "the original sales letter." there has been no inquiry, no preliminary introduction of any kind. the letter is simply the substitute for the salesman who voluntarily seeks out his own prospect, presents his proposition and tries to land an order. such a letter undertakes a big task. it has a more difficult mission than the personal salesman, for it cannot alter its canvass on the spot to suit the prospect's mood. it must have its plan complete before it goes into the mail. it must be calculated to grip the attention, impel a reading, prompt a favorable decision and get back, in the return envelope, an order or at least a request for further information. the letter that can do that, a letter so clever and so convincing that it makes a man a thousand miles away put his hand into his pocket, take out his hard earned cash and buy a money order; or makes the shrewd man at the desk take up his pen, write a check and send it for the goods you have to sell, is a better employee than your star salesman because it gets the order at a fraction of the cost. and the man who can write the letter that will do that is a power in the business world--his capacity is practically unlimited. original sales letters are of two kinds: those that endeavor to perform the complete operation and secure the order and those that are intended merely as the first of a follow-up series or campaign. which to use will depend upon the nature and cost of your proposition. a simple, low-priced article may be sold with a single letter--the margin of profit may not warrant more than that. on an expensive, complicated article you cannot hope to do more in the initial letter than win your prospect's interest, or possibly start him toward the dealer who sells your goods. consider first the former. you are to write a single letter and make it an attention-getting, interest-winning, complete, convincing, order-bringing medium. there is no better way to do this than to put yourself in the position of the salesman who must do all these things in a single interview. you really must do more than the salesman, but this is the best way to get in your own mind the proper attitude toward your prospect. say to yourself, "i am now going into this man's office. he does not know me and does not know i am coming. this is the only chance i have to see him and i shall probably never see him again. i must concentrate all my knowledge of my proposition on this one selling talk and must tell him everything i can about it that will make him want to buy. i must say it in such a way that he will clearly understand; i must give him a good reason for buying today and i must make it easy for him to do so." then picture yourself in his office, seated beside his desk and proceed to _talk_ to him. above all, keep in mind that you are talking to _one_ man. no matter if your letter is to go to ten thousand people, each letter is individual. remember, it goes to one person. so when you write it, aim directly at one person. and _see_ him in your mind's eye. get as clear an idea as you can of the class your letter is going to and then picture the average man in that class. the best way is to pick out some friend or acquaintance who most nearly represents the class you want to reach and write the letter to him. you'll be surprised how much easier it is when you have a definite person in mind. and your letter will then be sure to have that much desired "personal touch." of prime importance in this single sales letter is the close, the clincher. your one big purpose is to get the order, and no matter how clever you may be three-fourths of the way through, if the letter falls short of clinching the order in the end, it may as well not have been written at all. here is an excellent example of one of these complete letters. note particularly the summing up, the guarantee offer and how easy the writer makes it to order: how to get a position and how to hold it is the title of a little book that business men and editors say is the most sensible and helpful thing ever printed on its subject contains the boiled-down experience of years. written by an expert correspondent and high-salaried writer of business literature who has hunted positions for himself, who has been all along the road up to places where he, in turn, has advertised for employees, read their letters, interviewed and engaged them--who is now with a company employing of both sexes and all grades from the $ a week office boy to a $ a week specialist. how to get a position and how to hold it treats of what one should be able to do before expecting to find a good position; takes up the matter of changes; advises how long to hold the old position; tells what kind of a new position to try for; explains the various ways of getting positions; suggests how the aid of prominent people can be enlisted; shows the kind of endorsements that count; teaches how to _write letters of application that command attention_; gives hints on preparing for the interview and on how to make the best impression; tells what should be done when you are selected for a position and take up your duties; deals with the question of salary before and after the engagement; with the bugbear of experience; the matter of hours; and gives pages of horse-sense on a dozen other important topics. the clear instructions for writing strong letters of application, and the model letters shown, are alone worth the price of the book. not one in a hundred--even among the well- educated--can write a letter of application that convinces. _how many of yours fail?_ the engagement usually depends on the interview; and the interview cannot, as a rule, be obtained without the impressive letter. consequently, the letter is of tremendous importance. if you carry out the suggestions set down in plain language in this little book, you can hardly fail to land a position. and i am offering the book for _twenty-five cents a copy_. just think of it! the principles and plans outlined in its pages have been the means of securing high-salaried positions for its author and for others, and this valuable information is yours for the price of five car rides. this is my offer: send me a -cent piece in the enclosed coin-card, or twenty-five cents in stamps, and i'll mail you a copy of how to get a position and how to hold it. if, after reading the book, you do not feel it is worth many times its cost, just tell me so and return the copy in good condition. i'll send your money back without any quibbling. could any offer be fairer? order today--now. next week there may come to your notice an opening that may be the chance of a lifetime--when my little book will be worth its weight in gold. besides, it tells how to create openings when none are advertised. you need not write me a letter. just write your full name and address on the back of this sheet and wrap your stamps up in it, or put your name and address on the coin-card after you have enclosed the -cent piece. i'll understand. write plainly. i am selling the book so cheaply that i cannot afford to have any copies go astray in the mails. yours truly, [signature: charles black] * * * * * now as to the other kind of original sales letter--the one that is merely the first of a series of three or more letters skillfully planned to build up interest until the climax, the purchasing point is reached. this letter is really a combination of the two kinds. if you can land the order with the first letter, you want to, of course. but you know you can expect to do this only in a small percentage of cases. so while you must put into the initial letter enough information to make your proposition clear and must give at least one good reason for buying, you must keep good convincing sales talk in reserve for the succeeding letters. and you must plan this first letter so that the re-enforcements to follow will logically support your introduction. this can best be illustrated by a clever first letter from a very successful series. the manufacturer of a $ fireless cooker planned a letter campaign to induce hardware dealers and department stores to buy a stock of his product. the first sales letter of the series scored strongly on one or two points and at the same time paved the way for the second letter: dear sir: are you ready for the woman who wants a fireless cooker but can't pay ten or fifteen dollars? the aggressive advertising done by the manufacturers of fireless cookers and the immense amount of reading matter published in women's magazines about the fireless method of cooking has stirred up a big demand. but just figure out how many of your customers can't afford to pay $ , $ or $ . think of the sales that could be made with a thoroughly reliable cooker at $ --one that you could feel safe in standing back of. it's here! we had the $ -idea, and we worked out the prettiest cooker you ever saw at any price. but we got together one day and figured out that the big market was for a low-priced cooker that every woman could buy. how to get a jenkins-quality cooker, one that a retailer would be proud to sell, down to the retail price of $ was the question. but we figured our manufacturing up into the tens of thousands, and the enclosed folder tells about the result. our advertising next month in the woman's home companion, ladies' home journal, ladies' world, good housekeeping, everybody's, cosmopolitan and mcclures will do big things for you if you have the jenkins $ fireless cooker in your window. we have a good sized stock on hand but they won't last long the way orders are coming in from far-sighted retailers. how would a dozen do as a starter for you? yours truly, [signature: black & black] * * * * * a letter of this kind should be effective because it gives enough information to make a sale in case the reader is an unusually good prospect, and at the same time it lays a good foundation for the second letter. are you willing to make more money on soap? yes, we suppose you are carrying many soaps, but when a distinctive soap is advertised as thoroughly as we are advertising wesinod, it actually creates new trade, and of course you aren't sorry to see new faces in the store. wesinod soap has the curative and beneficial effects of resinol ointment, which is now used so extensively by the medical profession. wesinod soap is more than a cleanser: it is a restorer, preserver and beautifier of the skin, and as such is attracting the favorable attention of women. enclosed is a reproduction of our advertisement in the magazines this month and a list of the magazines in which the copy appears. we are educating , , readers to feel the need of wesinod soap. a supply of our liberal samples and a trial order to be used in a window display will show you the possibilities. may we send samples and a trial gross? yours for more soap money, wesinod soap company * * * * * _this is a strong selling letter that interests the reader, disarms his natural objection to adding an additional line of soap and presents briefly convincing reasons for stocking with wesinod. while this letter is intended to get the order, it effectively paves the way for further correspondence_ * * * * * it is unnecessary to take up here the elements that should go into the sales letter--attention, interest, argument, proof, persuasion, inducement and the clincher. but it is well to emphasize three points that are especially important in the original letter in the series: confidence, price and the close. you may be sure, that unless you win the confidence of your prospect from the start, your whole campaign is going to be a waste of time, paper and postage. distrust and prejudice, once started, are hard things to overcome by mail, particularly when you are a concern or individual unknown to the man to whom you are writing. dear sir: ''if your magazine pulls as well as the blank monthly i will give you a twelve-page contract.'' that remark wasn't meant for our ears, but one of our solicitors couldn't help overhearing it. it was made by a prominent advertiser, too. we wish we could give his name, but when we asked permission to quote he smiled and said he'd rather not. so, we'll have to refer you to our advertising pages. but the remark speaks pretty well for the blank monthly, doesn't it? it's not surprising, though. the blank monthly goes into , homes. it is taken and read by the best class of technical, scientific and mechanically inclined men, representing one of the choicest classes of buyers in america. our subscribers are great buyers of things by mail. dozens of our advertisers have proved it. they don't sell shoddy or cheap goods, either. that's why we believe your advertising will pay in the blank monthly. if we didn't believe it, we shouldn't solicit your business. try your copy in the june issue, which goes to press on april -- last form may . if you send copy today, you will be sure to get in. very truly yours, [signature: m. o. williams] * * * * * _the quoted language gives the opening of this letter an interesting look. the first three paragraphs are strong. the fourth paragraph is merely assertive, and is weak. a fact or two from some advertiser's experience would be much better_ * * * * * and so with this in mind, be careful of the tone of your letter. be earnest, make reasonable statements, appeal to the intelligence or the experience of the reader and deal with specific facts rather than with mere assertions or claims. there is no inspiration to confidence in the time-worn claims of "strongest," "best," and "purest". tell the facts. instead of saying that an article is useful in a dozen different ways, mention some of the ways. when you declare that the cylinder of your mine pump is the best in the world, you are not likely to be believed; the statement slips off the mind like the proverbial water from a duck's back. but when you say that the cylinder is made of close-grained iron thick enough to be rebored, if necessary, you have created a picture that does not call for doubt. but watch out that you don't start an argument. brander mathews gives us a great thought when he says that "controversy is not persuasion." don't write a letter that makes the reader feel that he is being argued into something. give him facts and suggestions that he can't resist; let him feel that he has convinced himself. this paragraph fails of its purpose, simply because it argues. you can almost picture the writer as being "peevish" because his letters haven't pulled: "this stock is absolutely the safest and most staple you could buy. it will positively pay regular dividends. we stand back of these statements. you must admit, therefore, that it is a good buy for you. so why do you hesitate about buying a block of it?" * * * * * on the other hand, this appeals to the investor because it has genuine proof in it: "no stockholder of ours has lost a dollar through fluctuation in the price of the stock, though we have been doing business for fifteen years. our stock has been readily salable at all times. no dividend period has ever been missed. the quarterly dividend has never been less than - / per cent. during the depression of - our stock maintained itself at per cent above par when other industrial stocks were dropping to par or below. surely, here is an investment worth your investigation." * * * * * telling specific facts helps to produce conviction as well as to create confidence. not every one is a genius in the handling of words, but every writer of a letter that is to bristle with conviction must use his imagination. he must put himself mentally in the place of the typical customer he is addressing and use the arguments and facts that would convince him. the writer should try to see himself enjoying the foods or service--picture his satisfaction. then he has a better chance of reproducing his picture in the mind of the reader. for instance, read this paragraph of idle assertions: "buy our hams once and you will buy them always. all of our meat is from young hogs, and is not tough, but is high-grade. nothing but corn-fed stock is used. we guarantee the quality. we use good sugar in curing our hams, the best quality of saltpeter and some salt. the result is a natural flavor that can't be beat. we challenge competition." * * * * * and now contrast it with this real description of the same product, calculated to create confidence in the trademark it bears: "this mark certifies that the hog came from good stock, that it was corn-fed in order that it might be firm and sweet--that it was a barrow hog, so that the meat would be full-flavored and juicy--that it was a young hog, making the ham thin-skinned and tender--well-conditioned and fat, insuring the lean of the ham to be tasty and nutritious. the mark certifies that the ham was cured in a liquor nearly good enough to drink, made of granulated sugar, pure saltpeter and only a very little salt; this brings out all the fine, rich, natural flavor of the carefully selected meat, and preserves it without 'salty pickling.'" * * * * * note how much more graphic the second paragraph is than the first, and every statement is backed up by a logical reason. the testimony of other people, especially of those in positions of authority and those who would not be suspected of bias, has much convincing power. there is nothing in the contention that "testimonials are out of date." they constitute the strongest kind of support. but get testimonials that really say something. the man who writes and says that he got out of the book he bought from you an idea that enabled him to make a profit of $ the first week, says a thousand times more than the man who writes and merely says that he was pleased with his purchase. let price come in the letter just about where it would come in an oral canvass. the skillful salesman of high-priced shirts doesn't talk about the $ price until he has shown the shirt and impressed the customer. if price is the big thing--is lower than the reader is likely to imagine it would be--it may be made the leading point and introduced at the outset, but unless it is an attraction, it should be held back until strong description has prepared the reader for the price. the method of payment and delivery must be treated effectively in the closing paragraphs. the following plans all have their use: offer to send on free trial for ten days or longer; offer to send for free examination, payment to be made to express agent when examination has shown article to be satisfactory; offer to send on small payment, the small payment to be a guarantee against trifling, balance payable on examination; offer to sell on easy-payment plan; offer to sell for cash but with strong refunding guarantee; offer to supply article through local dealer on reader's authorization. with such an authorization, the advertiser has a good opening to stock the retailer. the price feature offers one of the best opportunities to give the letter real inducement. if the price is in any sense a special price, make it clear that it is. sometimes you can hang your whole letter on this one element. reduced price, if the reduction is set forth logically, is a strong feature. one publisher uses it in this fashion: "we have just sets of these books to sell at $ . . when the new edition is in, it will be impossible to get a set at less than $ . the old edition is just as good as the new, but we are entirely out of circular matter describing the green cloth binding, and as we don't want to print a new lot of circulars just to sell sets, we make this unusual offer. now is your chance." * * * * * advance in price is almost as strong. it's a lever to quick action: "on the st of october the rate of the messenger will go up to one dollar a line. if you place your order before the thirtieth of this month you can buy space to be used any time before january next at seventy-five cents a line. after the thirtieth, positively no orders will be accepted at less than one dollar a line. as a matter of fact our circulation entitles us to a dollar a line right now. "don't let this letter be covered up on your desk. attend to this matter now, or instruct your advertising agent to reserve space for you, and get a big bargain." * * * * * price, in this case is, in fact, a part of the close. it spurs the reader to "order now." setting a time limit, in which a proposal holds good, is also a strong closer. a large book publisher finds it effective to make a discount offer good if accepted within a certain number of days. guarantee offers are strong. don't content yourself with the old "absolutely guaranteed" expression. be definite. "order this buggy, and if, at the end of a month, you are not entirely satisfied that it is the biggest buggy value you ever had for the money, just write me, and i'll take the buggy back without quibbling. could any offer be fairer? i make it because i've sold of these buggies since january, and so far no man has asked for his money back." the sum-up is as important a part of the sales letter as it is of the lawyer's speech or brief. it should concentrate the whole strength of the letter at the close, as, for instance: "so you see that though our machine is apparently high-priced it is really cheaper by the year than another machine. our offer of a free trial right in your own plant gives you absolute protection. it is quite natural, of course, for us to be desirous of getting your order, but we do not see how you can, from your own point of view, afford not to put the bismarck in your factory." * * * * * and finally, help the prospect buy. the sales letter designed to bring the order must provide an easy method of ordering. in the first place, a great many people do not understand how to order. to others, making out an order is a task that is likely to be postponed. by making it easy for the reader to fill out a blank with a stroke or two of the pen, while the effect of the letter is strong, a great many orders will be secured that would otherwise be lost. it should be axiomatic that if a letter is expected to pull business through the mails it must place before the recipient every facility for making it easy and agreeable to reply and reply now. how this can best be done will be taken up more fully in a separate chapter on "making it easy to answer." one thing to remember particularly in the case of the original sales letter is that if possible it should have a definite scheme behind it. a reason for the offer, a reason for the letter itself. a safe-deposit vault was well advertised by sending out letters that contained a special pass to the vault with the name of the reader filled in. of course the letter gave a pressing invitation to call and allow the custodian to show the vault's interesting features. still another clever letter soliciting rentals of safe-deposit boxes proposed that in case the reader now had a box elsewhere, they would take the lease off his hands. in reality they merely gave him free rental until his other lease expired, but the scheme was cleverly planned. a buggy maker wrote enclosing duplicate specifications of a buggy he had just had made for his own personal use, and suggested that he would have another made for the reader exactly like it and turned under the same careful supervision. letters that give the reader something or offer to give him something have similar effect. the letter about a new facial cream will command extra attention because of the small sample of the cream enclosed. in fact, one cold cream company finds it an effective plan to send a sample and a sales letter to druggists' mailing lists or to names taken from telephone books, telling the reader in the final paragraph that the cream can be purchased at the local drug store. a letter offering a sample can of a high-grade coffee for the name of the reader's favorite grocer will bring a good response and afford the advertiser a strong hold on the grocer. a favorite method of securing savings depositors is to send a good "savings letter" that offers a free home-savings bank or a vest-pocket saver. even calendars may be given out more effectively by sending a letter and telling the reader that a good calendar has been saved for him and asking him to call at the office. a striking paragraph of a real estate dealer's soliciting letter is one that asserts that the dealer has a client with the cash who wants just about such a house as the reader of the letter owns. a real estate dealer, whose specialty is farms, has this telling sentence in his original letter: "somewhere there is a man who will buy your farm at a good price; i should like to find that man for you." there is hardly a product or a proposition that does not offer opportunity to put some scheme behind the letter. and such a plan doubles the appeal of the original sales letter. but once more, remember, not to put all your ammunition into the first letter. be prepared to come back in your second and third letters, not simply with varied repetitions, but with more reasons for buying. make your first letter as strong as you can, but at the same time--pave the way. the letter that will bring an _inquiry_ part v--writing the sales letter--chapter _comparatively few propositions can be sold in the first letter; in most campaigns it is enough to stimulate a man's interest and get him to reply. this chapter gives specific schemes that have proved successful in pulling answers--in making an opening for the heavy artillery of the follow-up_ * * * * * think what a problem you would have if you started out as a salesman to sell a certain article with no definite idea of where to find your prospects. you might interview a hundred men before you found one who was interested. that would be pretty slow and pretty expensive selling, wouldn't it? and think what it would mean if you were to send out broadcast a thousand expensive booklets and follow-up letters only to receive one reply from the one man with whom you effected a point of contact. that, too, would be a prohibitively costly method of selling. yet one or both these methods would in many cases be necessary were it not for the inquiry-bringing letter. the inquiry letter is a "feeler"--the advance agent of the selling campaign. it goes broadcast to find and put its finger on the man who is interested or who can be interested, and his reply labels him as the man whom it is worth while for your salesman to see, or, who is at least worth the expense and endeavor of a follow-up series. the inquiry letter is like the advertisement which asks you to send for a catalogue or booklet. the advertisement writer believes that if you are interested enough to write for the booklet, you will be interested enough to read his sales letters, and possibly become a purchaser. it is the same with the inquiry-bringing letter. it is simply a sieve for sifting out the likely prospects from the great mass of persons, who for many reasons cannot be brought around into a buying mood concerning your proposition. the great advantage of the letter which induces the recipient to express his interest in an inquiry, is that you not only make him put himself unconsciously under an obligation to read further details, but you give time for the thoughts that you have started to get in their work. the fact that a man has decided to ask for more information and has put that decision in writing is of considerable psychological value. the one thing the salesman hopes to find, and the one thing the letter writer strives to create, is a receptive mood on the part of his prospect. the moment a man answers the inquiry-letter, he has put himself into a frame of mind where he waits for and welcomes your subsequent sales talk. he looks forward with some interest to your second letter. at first there was just one person to the discussion. now there are two. in this respect the letter is like the magazine advertisement. give all the details of a $ piano in an advertisement of ordinary size, quoting the price at the close, and it is extremely unlikely to bring the reader to the point of deciding that he will buy the piano. it is better to deal with some point of interest about the piano and offer a fine piano book free. and right here it is worthy of mention that interesting books with such titles as "how to select a piano," "how to make money in real estate," "bank stocks as an investment," or "the way to have a beautiful complexion," make letters as well as advertisements draw inquiries of a good class. in other words, offer an inducement, give your man a _reason_ for answering. when you have written a letter calculated to draw inquiries, put yourself in the position of the man who is to get it and read it through from his standpoint. ask yourself whether _you_ would answer it if you received it. test it for a reason, an inducement, and see if it has the pulling power you want it to have. if you are offering a book, for example, impress the reader with the real value of the book, magnify its desirability in his mind. a paper company does this admirably when it writes: "the new condax specimen book is a beautiful thing--not a mere book of paper samples, understand, but a collection of art masterpieces and hand-lettered designs, printed with rare taste on the various kinds of condax papers. many have told us it is the finest example of printing they have ever seen come from the press. "we feel sure you would treasure the book just for its artistic merits, but we are not sending you one now because there is such a tremendous demand for it that we do not like to chance having a single copy go astray and we want yours to reach you personally. we are holding it for you and the enclosed card will bring it, carefully wrapped, by return mail." * * * * * of course such a book must be designed to do the proper work when it gets into the hands of the reader. it is a mistake to tell a great deal in the inquiry-bringing letter, unless you can reasonably hope to close a sale. a man will act on impulse in ordering a dollar article, but he isn't likely to be impulsive about an insurance policy. if you give him the entire canvass on an insurance policy at the first shot, it will have to be of extraordinary interest and convincing power to close the sale. the subject is new. the prospect has not had a chance to think over the facts. he is suspicious of your power; afraid of hastiness on his own part. he is likely to give himself the canvass and decide "no," before giving you any further chance. appeal to curiosity. arouse interest and leave it unsatisfied. remember that your inquiry letter is a definite part of your campaign. therefore it must be consistent with what is to follow and must pave the way naturally for it. seek replies only from those who can use and can afford to buy the article you have to sell. a maker of a specialty machine got out an inquiry letter along this line: "if you are tired of a salaried job, if you want to get into a big-paying, independent business of your own. i have a proposition that will interest you." * * * * * of course he got a big percentage of replies, for what man does not want a big-paying, independent business of his own? but when in his follow-up letter he stated his proposition, offering state rights to his machine for $ , , he shot over the heads of per cent of the men who had answered his first letter. his inquiry letter had completely failed of its purpose. it was not selective, it was general. dear sir: i should like to have you consider buying the enclosed series of talks on advertising for use in your paper. i am an expert advertising man and i have spent a great deal of time and energy on these talks. i know that they will produce results that will be very satisfactory to you for they are based on the real experience of an expert. the price of these talks--that is, the right to use the talks and illustrations in your city--is $ , which you must admit is dirt cheap, considering the quality of the matter. all the progressive publishers are jumping at the chance to get these talks at the low price i am quoting them. if you do not accept my offer, one of your competitors will certainly do so, and you will lose prestige. hoping to hear from you at once and promising careful attention to your valued favors, i am truly yours, [signature: g. l. lawrence] * * * * * _this letter has an unfortunate beginning. the writer starts by considering his own interests rather than those of the publisher. it is not tactful to begin with "i want-to-sell-you-something" talk. the second paragraph is merely an egotistic statement. no facts are furnished to impress the publisher. in the third paragraph price is introduced before desire is created. the fourth paragraph is a palpable boast that will not be believed and an insinuation that the publisher addressed may not be progressive. the suggestion about the competitor is likely to arouse antagonism. the close is hackneyed and the entire letter is rather an advertisement of the writer's inability rather than of his ability_ * * * * * do not deceive. nothing is gained by deception in a high grade venture. your offer to give away a first-class lot in a first-class suburban real estate campaign will make a good class of readers suspicious of you. and though you may get many inquiries from those who are looking for something for nothing, the chances are that the inquiries will be of a very poor quality. better get two per cent of first-class prospects than ten per cent that will only waste your time. you must not forget that it costs money to solicit people either by mail or by salesmen. how to increase your advertising receipts [sidenote: heading and first sentence introduce a subject of vital interest to publishers.] what would it be worth to you to have a dozen more local advertisers buying your space regularly? [sidenote: facts and arguments which show that the writer knows conditions.] how much money would it mean to have in the paper regularly just a few of those who advertise poorly and spasmodically for a short time, then drop out and whine that "advertising doesn't pay?" [sidenote: as he has had such wide experience he understands the situation and his words carry conviction--touch a tender spot with every publisher.] i know your problems. i have had soliciting experience as well as broad copywriting experience. i served three years on the advertising staff of the baltimore news--the paper for which mr. munsey recently paid $ , , . i know how hard it is to get a certain class of local advertisers started. i know how hard it is to keep them going after they once start. of course you know why some advertisers come in the paper but won't stay. they can't see where their money comes back, and the plain truth is that often it doesn't come back simply because these advertisers don't advertise intelligently. your solicitors are not all skillful copywriters. soliciting ability and copy-writing ability rarely go together. even if your solicitors were all good copy-writers, they wouldn't have time to study each advertiser's proposition exhaustively. but if you expect to keep your advertising receipts up to the high-water mark, you can't always do all soliciting and no helping. you must assist the advertiser to get the full value of the money he spends with you. how? this letter answers the question. [sidenote: clear and logical.] read the attached secrets of successful advertising. they are short, but they are interesting and they are practical. note the plain examples of the good and the bad. these talks will encourage advertisers to begin and will help those who come in to get the worth of their money. if you sent all of your customers and prospective customers a book on advertising--even if a suitable one were available--it might insult some. perhaps only a few would read it thoroughly. besides, it would probably cost you a hundred dollars. these short talks can be used on days when you are not pushed for space. you can see that they look readable. they can be read in a minute or two. the cost is insignificant, considering the results that are sure to come from this campaign of education. suppose only two or three new patrons came in as the result; you would get back your little investment over and over. who will educate your customers and prospective customers if you don't? [sidenote: an effective, confident close that commands respect and consideration.] i do not urge you. just read the articles. i know what you, as a progressive publisher, will think of them. let me hear from you as soon as convenient, for if you do not want the service, i shall want to offer it elsewhere. you are the only publisher in your city to whom i am now offering the service. i enclose stamp for the return of the sheets in the event that you do not keep them. yours for more and better advertising. [signature: m. b. andrews] * * * * * the question of how to open your inquiry letter is a big one. good beginnings are as varied as the proposition which the letter presents. the straight question usually commands attention. "do you get the best price for your goods?" "are you securing all the advertising patronage to which you are entitled?" "couldn't you use an extra pair of good trousers?" "do you collect per cent of your accounts?" openings of this kind rivet attention. with some letter-writers, the direct command style of opening is popular: "get more advertising. how? this letter answers the question." "wear tailor-made clothes at the price of ready-made." "make your money earn you six per cent." if these openings are chosen with the care that the advertising man uses in selecting headings for advertisements, attention will be secured. gentlemen: your easiest profits are those you make by saving expense. there is one way you can save rent; save wages; save damage to samples and still sell more goods. install a patent extension display rack in any department you like-- picture, linen, notions, sporting goods, etc., and you will add square feet of display for every foot you use. you will enable one salesman to do the work of two. you will save the time your salesmen now spend in getting out goods and putting them away. you will prevent the samples from becoming soiled. don't take the trouble to write us a letter, just pencil on the foot of this the name of the manager of the department you would like to begin with, and we will explain all about these display racks to him. yours very truly, [signature: smith and deene] p.s. marshall field & co., of chicago, bought the first extension display rack we sold and they have been buying ever since. their last order just received amounts to nearly a thousand dollars. can you afford not to investigate? * * * * * _the reference to easy profits at once interests every business man and the method of saving rent, saving wages and increasing sales is certain to be investigated. the third paragraph presents good argument--short and to the point. the letter is extremely easy to answer--just a few words with a pencil and that is all. proof of the merit of the article in its satisfactory use by a large wholesale house is cleverly brought out in the postscript_ * * * * * another good way to win the interest of the prospect is to offer to help him in his buying in some specific way. a firm selling diamonds by mail, for instance, does it in this fashion: "unless you are an experienced judge of precious stones, it is almost impossible to buy a diamond at random and be certain of getting value for your money. but you need not take chances. our best expert has written a booklet telling just how to determine diamond value, how to detect flaws, and explaining the choicest cuttings. whether or not you buy of us, this little book will be of inestimable value to you in buying stones. we will be glad to send you a copy for the asking." * * * * * still other writers follow the declarative form of opening. "allison preferred has advanced to in a week." "yesterday we sold for $ , cash a property that was put in our hands only tuesday." but inasmuch as the declarative form lacks a little of the inherent interest of the question or the command, it should deal with some point of particular "interest value" to the class addressed. style and interest value are just as important in the letter that is to draw an inquiry as in the letter designed to make a sale. some think that just because a letter is fairly certain to reach a man if properly addressed, it is easy to get a reply. far from it. unless there is a good reason for a man answering a letter, he isn't going to do it. suppose that a furniture dealer, on receiving a new stock of furniture, writes a letter like this to a list of several hundred women: "our fall stock of furniture arrived on saturday and is now on exhibition on our third floor. the showing is unsurpassed. here you will find something to suit you, whether you wish oak, mahogany, walnut or birch. we invite you to pay us a call." * * * * * some who would probably have come anyway may come in response to such a letter or may write for special information. but a letter of this kind is sure to bring results: dear mrs. brown: i remember that when you purchased the mahogany bed last march you expressed a desire to buy a dresser that would match. in the new lot of furniture that we put on our floors only yesterday are several dressers that would match your piece perfectly. come in and see them. i should like you to see also the dressing tables and chairs that match your dresser, even if you are not ready just now to get an entire set. * * * * * the first letter has little point to it. the second has personality and interest, and if signed by the salesman that sold the first piece of mahogany, is certain to bring the customer in if anything would. a strong method of closing letters of this sort is to have final paragraphs of this style: "may we tell you more? this won't put you under the least obligation. if we can't show you that it is to your interest to take up this matter, it is our fault--not yours. mail the card now and let us put all the facts before you." a post card or a postal card should be enclosed in all inquiry- bringing letters. the request for further details should be printed, so that the prospect has only to sign his name and mail the card. in other words, make it easy for the prospect to answer. another thing, don't print anything on the card that will make it appear that the prospect is committing himself. paragraphs of this sort have proved effective: "without committing myself, i give you permission to furnish me full information about the subject mentioned in your letter." the card method is particularly good if the inquiry is to be followed up by a solicitor, for the card may be sent conveniently to the solicitor who will take it with him when he calls. it sometimes pays to have all the inquiries from a territory sent on cards addressed to a certain solicitor, though the inquirer may think at the time of inquiring that the one whose name appears on the card merely is the correspondent that wrote the letter. the advantage is that a prospect who sends in a card addressed to "mr. h. e. carrington, care of the smith publishing company," has seen mr. carrington's name. when mr. carrington calls, the inquirer is sometimes flattered to think that the gentleman has been sent from the home office. as he has written a card to mr. carrington, he cannot with good grace deny an interview. the man who writes and offers to do something without putting the least obligation on the inquirer who accepts the offer is hard to turn down. a writer of advertisements, after a courteous criticism on advertisements that he doesn't like, closes in this way: "i think i can show that it is to your interest to use some copy of my construction. if i can't, certainly it won't be your fault. may i show you what i think is a more profitable way of advertising these goods? if when you see my copy you are not more than satisfied to pay my bill, there won't be any ill-feeling on my part. the decision will rest with you." * * * * * the inquiry bringing letter what it must do stimulate interest awake desire for further information give reason for answering make inducement for answering pave way for follow up call for immediate action what it must not do arouse idle curiosity create exaggerated ideas give full particulars misrepresent proposition waste arguments close way for further letters * * * * * a townsite company, selling town lots by mail, uses a device that gets replies when ordinary requests would be disregarded. as the close of a three-page form letter this paragraph is used: "we enclose letter that the railway company wrote us. please return it in the enclosed stamped envelope, and tell us what you think of our plan." * * * * * the next sheet following is a facsimile letter from a prominent railway official commending the plan, so making it easy for the prospect to add a few words of commendation. this is a clever scheme to coax a reply out of the prospect--and it is certain that he carefully reads the letter from the railroad company before he returns it. no matter what the nature of his letter it gives an opportunity for a personal reply. a clothing manufacturer has an effective method of drawing out a fresh inquiry or indication of interest from his mailing list by inquiring what satisfaction the reader got out of the last suit ordered, asking a criticism of service if the buyer has any to make, saying that anything that was wrong will be made right. writers of investment letters have found that it pays to emphasize the fact that only a small lot of stock is available. if the letter leads the prospect to believe that barrels of the stock will be sold, the effect will be prejudicial. the "limited quantity" idea is effective in selling other things. an investment letter that brought good results where the signer of the letter knew all those to whom the letter was sent made the statement that four or five shares of stock had been put aside for the prospect. practically no more information was given in the letter, but full information was offered on receipt of request. the request gave opportunity for the salesman to call. this "putting aside" idea may be applied to clothing and other commodities. its efficiency lies in the fact that it gives a definite point to the letter. in the letter that angles for an inquiry, do not tell too much. whet the appetite and arouse the curiosity. make them hungry to learn all about it, make them come back like oliver twist and ask for more. but it is fatal to paint a proposition in such brilliant colors that there is a chance for disappointment when the prospect gets his additional information. nor should an offer of a free booklet or free samples be made so alluring that the letter will be answered out of idle curiosity when the recipient is really not a prospect at all. schemes without number can be devised to get a reply and only enough should be put in such a letter to stimulate a reply, saving up the real arguments and the big talking points for the letter that aims on getting the actual order. how to _close_ sales by letter part v--writing the sales letter--chapter _suppose that your most obstinate "prospect"--a man in the next block on whom your cleverest salesman had used every tactic and had been rewarded only by polite turn-downs until he had lost hope-- should call up some afternoon and ask you to send over a salesman. would you despatch the office boy? or would you send your star salesman? yet if that prospect lived a hundred miles away and sent in a letter of inquiry, one out of two firms would entrust the reply to a second or third-rate correspondent--entirely forgetful that an inquiry is merely a clue to a sale, and not a result in itself. this chapter shows how to_ get the order _by letter_ * * * * * the man who inquires about your goods isn't "sold" by a long ways. he is simply giving you an opportunity to sell him. inquiries aren't _results_, they're simply _clues_ to possible sales, and if you are going to follow those clues up and make sales out of them, you need the best men you can find and the best letters those men can turn out to do it. inquiries of good quality are costly, frequently several times as costly as the advertiser figures in advance that he can afford to pay. yet, strange to say, many advertisers will employ $ or $ -a-week ability to write advertisements that will produce inquiries and then expect $ or $ men to turn them into sales. as a matter of fact nine times out of ten the hardest part of the transaction is to close the sale. an inquiry is merely an expression of interest. the reader of the advertisement says, in effect, "all right, i'm impressed. go ahead and show me." or, if he hasn't written in reply to an advertisement, he sends an inquiry and invites the manufacturer or dealer to tell what he has. to get the highest possible proportion of sales from each hundred inquiries, requires that the correspondent be as skillful in his written salesmanship as the successful man behind the counter is with his oral canvass and his showing of the goods. if the truth were known, it is lack of appreciation of this point that discourages most concerns trying to sell by mail, and it is the real secret of a large percentage of failures. a clock manufacturer notified the advertising manager of one of the big magazines that he had decided to discontinue his advertising. "the inquiries we get from your magazine," he wrote, "don't pan out." the advertising manager thought he saw the reason why and he made a trip down to the factory to investigate. reports showed that in two months his magazine had pulled over inquiries, yet out of that number just seven prospects had been sold. "will you let me see your follow-up letters?" he asked. they were brought out, and the advertising manager almost wept when he read them. awkward, hackneyed, blundering notes of acknowledgment, they lacked even the merest suggestion of salesmanship. they would kill rather than nourish the interest of the average prospect. he sent the set of letters up to the service bureau of his magazine and a new series of strong convincing letters, such as the clock deserved, were prepared. on the strength of these he got the advertiser back in and the next month out of inquiries, forty-six clocks were sold. think of the actual loss that manufacturer suffered simply because he did not really appreciate that inquiries aren't sales! get this firmly in mind and then get the proper attitude toward the inquirer. there is a big difference between the original sales letter and the answer to the inquiry. you haven't got to win his interest now. you've got that. but you have got to hold it and develop it to the buying point. your man has asked you something; has given you the chance to state your case. now state it in the most complete, convincing way you know how. dear sir: we are pleased to receive your request for "wilson's accounting methods," and a copy goes forward by today's mail. do not fail to notify us if it fails to reach you within a day of the receipt of this letter. your attention is particularly called to the descriptive matter on pages to , inclusive. we are confident that among the forty stock record forms there illustrated and described you will find a number that will save time and labor in your office. you will see that our stock forms are carried in two sizes-- by - / inches and by inches, the smaller size being furnished at $ a thousand and the larger size at $ . a thousand, assorted as you desire. should you desire special forms to meet your individual requirements, we can furnish them to order, printed from your copy, on one side of linen-bond stock--your choice of five colors--at $ . a thousand. on pages to you will find complete descriptions and order blanks of our special introductory outfits, ranging in price from $ to $ . we make these attractive offers to enable our customers to select outfits that can be installed at a very small cost, and we ship any of our stock outfits with the distinct understanding that if they are not entirely satisfactory they may be returned to us at our expense. under the liberal conditions we make, you incur no risk in placing an order, and we trust that we may be favored with one from you right away. by purchasing direct from us--the manufacturers--you eliminate all middleman's profits and are sure to get proper service. let us hear from you. very truly yours, [signature: anderson & anderson] * * * * * _a letter that sums up well the principal features of the goods described in detail in the catalogue and the strong points of the manufacturer's plan of selling. the letter is closely linked with the catalogue. such a letter as this is a strong support to the catalogue_ * * * * * a good way to get at this is to put yourself once more in the other man's place. what do _you_ like to get when _you_ answer an advertisement? and how do you like to get it? first of all you like a prompt answer. "i have had some experiences lately," says one business man, "that have made me feel that promptness and careful attention to all of a correspondent's requests are fully as important as the literary part of business correspondence. i am interested in an enterprise in which material of various kinds will be used--sample jars, mailing cases, and so forth. i have been writing to manufacturers in the effort to get samples and prices. "in several cases it really seemed to me as if the manufacturer was trying to test my patience by waiting from three days to a week before answering my letter. several of them forgot to send the samples they referred to in their letters. in other cases the matter of samples was overlooked for a few days after the letter was written or the samples were ordered forwarded from a distant factory without any explanation to me that the samples would be a few days late in arriving. in still other instances references were made to prices and sizes that were not clear, thus necessitating another letter and a further delay of a week or ten days. "as i had to have all the material before i could proceed with any of it, one man's delay tied up the whole job. "really when one has a chance to see the dowdy, indifferent way in which a great many business concerns take care of inquiries and prospective customers, the wonder is that there are so many successes and not more failures. "how refreshing it is to get a reply by return mail from an enterprising man who is careful to label every sample and to give you all the necessary information in complete form and to write in such a way as to make you feel you are going to get prompt, careful service if your order is placed with him. it is a pleasure to send business his way, and we do it, too, whenever we can." it is easy enough to look out for these things when a regular method is adopted. with a catalogue before him, the correspondent should dictate a memorandum, showing what samples or enclosures are to be sent and how each is to be marked. by referring to the memorandum, as he dictates, the references will be clear. cherish both carefulness and promptness. you don't know what you sometimes lose by being a day late. an inquirer often writes to several different concerns. some other correspondent replies by return mail, and the order may be closed before your belated letter gets in its work, particularly if the inquirer is in a hurry--as inquirers sometimes are. you may never learn why you lost the order. when you cannot give full attention to the request immediately, at least write the inquirer and tell how you will reply fully in a day or so or whenever you can. if you can truthfully say so, tell him that you have just what he wants and ask him to wait to get your full information before placing his order. in this way you may hold the matter open. dear sir: replying to your esteemed favor of recent date would say that we have noted your request for a sample of royal mixture and that same has been forwarded. this tobacco is absolutely without question the finest smoking tobacco on the market today. this statement will be substantiated by tens of thousands of smokers. we hope to receive your valued order at an early date and remain truly yours, [signature: brown & co.] * * * * * _the first paragraph of this letter is so hackneyed that it takes away all personality, and there is nothing in the second paragraph to build up a picture in the reader's mind of an enjoyable tobacco_ * * * * * now as to the style and contents of your letter, here's one thing that goes a long way. be cheerful. start your letter by acknowledging his inquiry as though you were glad to get it. "yours of the th received and contents noted," doesn't mean anything. but how about this: "i was glad to find on my desk this morning your letter of the th inquiring about the new model marlin." there's a personal touch and good will in that. a correspondence school answers a prospective student's inquiry like this: "i really believe that your letter of the th, which came to me this morning, will prove to be the most important letter that you ever wrote." an opening such as this clinches the man's interest again and carries him straight through to the end. don't miss an opportunity to score on the start. dear sir: your order for a sample pouch of royal mixture is greatly appreciated. the tobacco was mailed to-day. to appreciate the difference between royal mixture and the "others," just put a little of it on a sheet of white paper by the side of a pinch from a package of any other smoking tobacco manufactured. you won't need a microscope to see the difference in quality. smoke a pipeful and you will quickly notice how different in mellowness, richness and natural flavor royal mixture is from the store-bought kind. if you are not enthusiastic over its excellence i shall feel greatly disappointed. so many discriminating pipe smokers in all sections are praising it that it makes me believe that in "the aristocrat of smoking tobacco" i have produced an article that is in fact the best tobacco money can buy. royal mixture is all pure tobacco, and the cleanest, best-cured and finest leaf that the famous piedmont section of north carolina can produce. the quality is there, and will be kept as long as it is offered for sale. depend upon that. the more you smoke royal mixture the better you'll like it. this is not true of the fancy-named mixtures which owe their short-lived popularity to pretty labels, fancy tin boxes and doctored flavors. i give you quality in the tobacco instead of making you pay for a gold label and tin box. the only way to get it is by ordering from me. royal mixture goes right from factory to your pipe--you get it direct, and know you are getting it just right, moist and fresh. right now, to-day, is the time to order. a supply of royal mixture costs so little and means so much in pipe satisfaction that every hour of delay is a loss to you. it's too good to do without. money refunded promptly if you are not satisfied! if it is not asking too much of you, i would like to hear within a day or two just how the tobacco suits you. will you not write me about it? be critical, as i desire your candid opinion. respectfully yours, [signature: wallace e. lee] * * * * * _the letter is here rewritten, making it interesting from the first line to the last. it makes one feel that royal mixture is something unusually good_ * * * * * second, be sure you _answer_ the inquiry--every point in it. you know how provoked you are when you ask a question and the correspondent in replying fails to answer. be sure you answer all the questions of the inquiries you handle. give letters a final reading, to be sure. it is often advisable to quote the inquirer's questions or to use side-heads so he will understand you refer to the questions he asked. for example, suppose a real estate agent receives an inquiry about a farm. the inquiry can be clearly answered by adopting a style like this: we are very glad to give you details about the abbott farm in prescott county. location.--this farm is on the macadam road between frederick and whittsville, three miles from frederick. there is a flag station on the d. & l. railroad one and a quarter miles from the farm gate on the macadam road. transportation facilities.--there are six trains a day on the d. & l. road that will stop at the flag station mentioned. these trains give a four-hour service to baltimore. * * * * * this style of letter is a great aid to the writer in bringing related points together and thus strengthening description and argument. if the inquiry involves the sending of a catalogue, hook the letter and the enclosure together by specific references. it adds immensely to the completeness of your letter. and don't be afraid to repeat. no matter what is in the catalogue or booklet that is sent along with the letter, the letter should review concisely some of the most important points. the average person will pay closer attention to what is said in the letter than to what appears in the catalogue. the letter looks more personal. for example: on page you will see described more fully the cedar chest that we advertise in the magazines. pages to describe higher-priced chests. all these chests are of perfect workmanship and have the handsome dull egg-shell finish. the higher-priced models have the copper bands and the big-headed nails. use the order blank that appears on page of the catalogue, and be sure to read the directions for ordering that appear on page . * * * * * these descriptions and references tie the letters strongly to the enclosures and thus unify the entire canvass. the woman who gets a letter telling her that the refrigerator she inquired about is described and illustrated on page of the catalogue sent under separate cover, and then reads some quoted expressions from people in her town or state who have bought these refrigerators, is more likely to order than if a letter is sent, telling her merely that the catalogue has been mailed under separate cover; that it gives a complete description but that any special information will be given on request. the first method of replying makes it appear that the correspondent is enthusiastic about his refrigerators and really wants to sell the inquirer one. the second method is cold and indifferent. if your goods permit the sending of samples by all means enclose some with the letter. they permit the actual handling of the article, which is so great an advantage in selling over the counter. and then insure attention. no man, for example, will throw away a haberdasher's letter referring to spring shirts if samples are enclosed. the samples will get some attention, though the one who received them may not need shirts at the time. samples also give an opportunity to emphasize value. for instance, it is a good plan to say: "take these samples of outings to your local store and see if you can get anything at $ that is half as good as what we are offering you." the fact is, few people make such comparisons, but the invitation to compare is evidence of the advertiser's confidence. for that matter, few people ask for refund of money on honest merchandise, provided the refund is limited to a brief period; but the promise of instant refund when unsatisfactory goods are returned, is a great confidence-creator. it is not always possible for one correspondent to handle the entire inquiry. in that case it is well to let the answer indicate the care exercised in preparing it. a part of a letter may sometimes advantageously refer to some other correspondent who can deal more thoroughly with a technical matter under discussion. a large mail-order concern employs a man who can tell customers in a tactful way just how to make coffee and tea, and he makes satisfied customers out of many who otherwise would believe that they had received inferior goods. this same man is also an expert in adjusting by letter any troubles that may arise over the company's premium clocks, and so forth. unless such technical matters are extensive enough to require a separate letter, they can be introduced into other communications by merely saying: "on reading what you have written about the engine, our expert has this to say:" * * * * * dear sir: your esteemed inquiry has been received, and we are sending you one of our booklets. in case none of the samples suit you, let us know what colors you like and we will send more samples. we can save you money on trousers. a great many of the best dressers of new york and chicago are wearing trousers made by us. you run no risk in ordering, for if the trousers are not as i represent them or do not fit you, we will correct the mistake or refund your money. we urge you to order immediately, as we may not have in stock the patterns you prefer. trusting to receive your order at an early date. truly yours. [signature: edward brown] * * * * * _this letter starts out with a hackneyed opening and not enough emphasis is put on the samples. it is a mistake to make the suggestion that the samples sent may be unsuitable. the third paragraph starts out with an assertion unbacked by proof and the second sentence is a silly boast that no one believes. a man does not pay his tailor the full price until the trousers are completed. it is a weak selling plan to try to persuade a stranger to send the entire price to an advertiser whom he knows nothing about. the plea for an immediate order on the ground that the pattern may not be in stock later is a weak and unfortunate method of argument. the final paragraph is as hackneyed as the first, and fails to impress the reader_ * * * * * dear sir: here you are! this mail will bring you a sample book containing some of the neatest trousers patterns you have seen in a long time. tear off a strand from any of them and hold a match to it; if it doesn't "burn wool" the laugh is on me. you may wonder why i can undersell your local dealer and yet turn out trousers that "make good." certain conditions, of which i shall tell you, make this possible. in the first place, trousers are my specialty. other tailors want suit orders above all, but i have built up my business by specializing on trousers alone. i buy my fabrics from the manufacturers in large quantities at wholesale prices. the saving--the money that represents your retailer's profit--comes to you. i don't need an uptown "diamond-front" store, with an exorbitant rental. instead, i employ the best tailors i can find. the trousers i make are built, not shaped, to fit you. we don't press them into shape with a "goose," either. all our fabrics are shrunk before we cut them at all. sewn throughout with silk, the seams will not rip or give. and style--why, you will be surprised to see that trousers could have so much individuality. i could not afford to sell just one pair of trousers to each man at these prices. it costs me something to reach you--to get your first order. you will order your second pair just as naturally as you would call for your favorite cigar. i am enclosing three samples of $ london woolens. these have just come in--too late to place in the sample book. aren't they beauties? please don't forget that i guarantee to please you or to return your money cheerfully. i ask for the $ with order only to protect myself against triflers. may i look for an early order? yours, for high-grade trousers. [signature: chas r. greene] * * * * * _an interesting beginning, inviting proof of quality. facts show why low prices can be quoted, followed by graphic description and logical argument. the samples give point to the letter and the plain, fair selling plan makes an effective ending_ * * * * * then again, make your letter _clear_. good descriptions are just as important in answers to inquiries as in letters that have the task of both developing interest and closing a sale. all that has been said in previous chapters as to the value of graphic descriptions and methods of writing them applies with full force to this chapter. the letter that is a reply to an inquiry can properly give more detailed and specialized description than a letter that is not a reply to an inquiry, for in writing to one who has inquired the correspondent knows that the reader of the letter is interested and will give attention to details if they are given clearly and attractively. generally speaking, a sales letter that is in response to an inquiry should make it unnecessary for the reader to ask a second time for information before reaching a decision. and this leads to one big important point: do your best to close the sale in this first reply. don't leave loop holes and uncertainties that encourage further correspondence. give your letter an air of finality. lay down a definite buying proposition and then make it easy for your man to accept it. * * * * * what will make reply effective promptness completeness answer all questions give full details clearness make further letters unnecessary label samples plainly definite proposition guarantee of satisfaction make ordering easy inducement for quick action * * * * * guarantees, definite proposals, suggestions to use "the enclosed order blank," are important factors in effective closing paragraphs. don't put too much stress on the fact that you want to give more information. many correspondents actually encourage the inquirer to write again and ask for more information before ordering. try to get the order--not a lot of new questions. experiments show that the interest of an inquirer wanes rapidly after the receipt of the first response. in replying to inquiries, the chance of securing a sale with a third letter is much less than the chance with the first, for after receiving the first letter, if it is unconvincing, the inquirer is likely to come to an adverse decision that cannot afterwards be easily changed. in this respect, answers to inquirers are much like unsolicited letters sent out to non-inquirers and planned to create and build up interest. in a number of lines of business the third letter sent out in response to an inquiry barely pays for itself. for this reason, it is usually poor policy in handling this class of business to withhold some strong argument from the first letter in order to save it for the second or the third. better fire the -inch gun as soon as you have the range. if the first answer fails to land the order, the advertiser may follow up with an easier plan of payment, a smaller lot of the goods, or make some other such inducement. not all goods admit of offering small lots, but when this can be done, the argument may be made that there is no profit in such small orders, that the offer is only made to convince the inquirer of quality. some very successful correspondents close in the direct-command style: "don't delay; send your order now." "sit right down and let us have your order before you forget it." "it isn't necessary to write a letter; just write across the face of this letter 'i accept this trial offer', sign your name and send the sheet back to us in the enclosed envelope." such closing sentences are strong, because the reader is influenced to act immediately, and the loss that usually comes about by reason of people putting things off and forgetting is reduced. the third example is particularly good because it eliminates letter-writing, which is a task to many and something that is often put off until the matter is forgotten. other correspondents, instead of using the direct command style, close in this way: "we are having a big sale on these porch chairs. if you order immediately we can supply you, but we cannot promise to do so if you wait." "we know that if you place your order you will be more than well pleased with your investment." if prices are to be increased on the goods offered, the correspondent has a first-class opportunity to urge an immediate response: "there is just two weeks' time in which you can buy this machine at $ . so you can save $ by acting _immediately_." experience shows that the increased-price argument is a good closer. in the final sentences of the letter should be mentioned the premium or the discount that is given when the order is received before a certain date. these offers are effective closers in many cases. in making them it is well to say "provided your order is placed _in the mails_ not later than the th," for such a date puts all on the same footing no matter how distant they are from the advertiser. finally, don't overlook the opportunity to make even the signature to your letter contribute something. firm signatures are rather lacking in personality. "smith & brown clock co." hasn't much "pull" to it. but when the pen-written name of albert e. brown appears under this signature the letter has much more of the personal appeal. for this reason, many concerns follow the practice of having some one put a personal signature under the firm name. it is not desirable, of course, to have mail come addressed to individuals connected with the firm, but this can be avoided by having return envelopes, addressed to the firm, in every letter. in fact, a little slip may be enclosed reading: "no matter to whom you address an order or letter always address the envelope to the firm. this insures prompt attention." at least one large clothing concern has found it profitable to let its letters go out over such signatures as "alice farrar, for brown & co." those to whom miss farrar writes are informed that the inquiry has been turned over to her for personal attention--that she attends to all requests from that inquirer's section and will do her best to please, and so on. when methods of this kind are followed and it becomes necessary--because of the absence of the correspondent addressed--for some one else to answer a letter, it is well to say. "in the absence of miss farrar, i am answering your letter." never let an inquirer feel that the one he addresses is too busy to attend to his wants or is not interested enough to reply. when the busiest president of a business concern turns over to some one else a letter intended for the president's personal reading, the correspondent should say, "president parkins, after reading your letter, requests me to say for him," and so on. these little touches of personality and courtesy are never lost. they create a cumulative business asset of enormous value. what to enclose with _sales_ letters part v--writing the sales letter--chapter _sales have been made--and lost--by the printed matter enclosed with business correspondence. a mere mass of folders, cards and bric-a-brac is in itself not impressive to the "prospect_'" unless each item backs up a statement in the letter _and has a direct bearing on the sale_ _enclosures may be classified thus:_ first, _catalogues, price lists and detailed descriptive matter--to inform the prospect of the goods_; second, _testimonials and guarantees--to prove the claims made for the goods_; third, _return postals, addressed envelopes and order blanks--to make it easy for the prospect to buy the goods_ * * * * * the enclosure is to the letter what the supporting army is to the line of attack. it stands just behind the men at the front, ready to strengthen a point here, reinforce the line there, overwhelm opposition finally with strength and numbers. a clever sales letter may make the proper impression, it may have all the elements necessary to close the sale, but it is asking too much to expect it to handle the whole situation alone. the average prospect wants more than he finds in a letter before he will lay down his money. the very fact that a letter comes alone may arouse his suspicions. but if he finds it backed up by accompanying enclosures that take things up where the letter leaves off, answer his mental inquiries and pile up proof, the proposition is more certain to receive consideration. the whole principle of right use of enclosures is a matter of foreseeing what your man will want to know about your proposition and then giving it to him in clear convincing form and liberal measure. but enclosures must be as carefully planned as the letter itself. they are calculated to play a definite part, accomplish a definite end and the study of their effect is just as vital as the study of step-by-step progress of letter salesmanship. some letter writers seem to think that the only essential in enclosures is numbers and they stuff the envelope full of miscellaneous folders, booklets and other printed matter that does little more than bewilder the man who gets it. others make the mistake of not putting anything in with the letter to help the prospect buy. neither mistake is excusable, if the writer will only analyze his proposition and his prospect, consider what the man at the other end will want to know--then give him that--and more. and in order to live up to this cardinal rule of enclosures, simply confine your letter to _one_ article. seven of the best letter writers in the country have made exhaustive tests with descriptive folders. they have found that _one_ descriptive circular, with _one_ point, and _one_ idea pulls where the multiplicity of enclosures simply bewilders and prejudices the reader. these men have conclusively proved that overloaded envelopes do not bring results. in general the enclosure has three purposes: first, to give the prospect a more complete and detailed description of your goods; second to give him proof in plenty of their value; third, to make it easy for him to buy. on this basis let us classify the kinds of enclosures; that is, the mediums through which these three purposes may be accomplished. the first, the detailed description, is usually given in catalogue, booklet or circular, complete in its explanation and, if possible, illustrated. supplementing the catalogue or booklet, samples should be used whenever practicable for they help more than anything else can to visualize the goods in the prospect's eyes. proof is best supplied in two ways, through testimonials and guarantees; and the ways of preparing these for the prospect are endless in variety. third, you will make it easy to order through the use of order blanks, return cards, addressed envelopes, myriads of schemes that tempt the pen to the dotted line. the exact form of each of these elements is not of moment here so long as it is clear to the man who receives it. the point to be made is that one enclosure representing each of these elements-- description, proof, and easy ordering--should accompany the sales letter to back it up and make its attack effective. and now to take these up one by one and see the part each plays. when the prospect reads your letter, if it wins his interest, his first thought is "well, this sounds good, but i want to know more about it." and right there the circular comes to his assistance--and to yours. and on this circular depends very largely whether his interest is going to grow or die a natural death. if it is to lead him toward an order it must picture to him clearly just what your proposition is and at the same time it must contain enough salesmanship to carry on the efforts of the letter. and it is well to bear down hard on this: do not put material into your letter that properly belongs in the circular. link your letter up with the enclosure and lead the reader to it, but do not go into lengthy descriptions in the letter. concentrate there on getting your man interested. do that and you may depend on his devouring the enclosures to get the details. a common mistake in this line is to place a table of prices in the body of the letter. it is simply putting the cart before the horse. price in every sale should be mentioned last. it certainly should not be mentioned _before_ you have convinced your prospect that he wants your article. prices should be quoted at the end of the descriptive folder or on a separate slip of paper. this descriptive enclosure takes on many forms--a booklet, a circular, a folder, a simple sheet of specifications, a price list--but in all cases it is for the one purpose of reinforcing the argument made in the letter. when a proposition requires a booklet, the mistake is often made of making it so large and bulky that it cannot be enclosed with the letter. the booklet comes trailing along after the letter has been read and forgotten. sometimes the booklet never arrives. where possible it is much better to make the booklet of such a size that it may be enclosed in the same envelope with the letter. then you catch the prospect when his interest is at the highest point. it is embarrassing and ineffective to refer to "our booklet, mailed to you under separate cover." put the book with the letter. or, if you must send the booklet under separate cover, send it first and the letter later, so that each will arrive at about the same time. and now that you have put in a circular to help the letter, put in something to help the circular--a sample. here you have description visualized. in more ways than one the sample is by all odds the most valuable enclosure you can use. in reality, it does more--much more than help the circular with its description, it is concrete proof, in that it demonstrates your faith in the article and your readiness to let your prospect judge it on its merits. a two by three inch square of cloth, a bit of wood to show the finish, any "chip off the block" itself speaks more eloquently than all the paper and ink your money can buy. how irresistible becomes a varnish maker's appeal when he encloses in his letters a small varnished piece of wood, on the back of which he has printed, "this maple panel has been finished with two coats of ' ' floor varnish. hit it with a hammer. stamp on it. you may dent the wood, but you can't crack the varnish. this is _one_ point where ' ' varnish excels." * * * * * enclosures: circulars folders or booklets price list order blanks testimonials stuffers return post card return envelope coupons or certificates list of buyers samples * * * * * a manufacturer of a new composition for walls gives a more accurate idea of his product than could ever be learned from words and pictures by sending a small finished section of the board as it could be put on the wall. a knitting mill approaches perfection in sampling when it encloses a bit of cardboard on which are mounted a dozen samples of underwear, with prices pasted to each and a tape measure attached to aid in ordering. a roofing concern has the idea when it sends little sections of its various roof coatings. and at least one carriage maker encloses samples of the materials that go into his tops and seat covers. most unique samples are enclosed and because of their very novelty create additional interest in a proposition. a real estate company selling florida lands enclosed a little envelope of the soil taken from its property. to the farmer this little sample has an appeal that no amount of printed matter could equal. a company manufacturing cement has called attention to its product by making small cement souvenirs such as paper weights, levels, pen trays, and so forth, sending them out in the same enclosure with the letter or in a separate package. one manufacturer of business envelopes encloses with his letter his various grades of paper, made up into envelopes, each bearing the name of some representative concern that has used that particular grade. then in the lower corner of the envelope is stamped the grade, weight, price and necessary points that must be mentioned in purchasing. the various envelopes are of different sizes. on the back of each envelope is a blank form in which the purchaser can designate the printed matter wanted, and underneath, in small letters, the directions, "write in this form the printed matter you demand; pin your check to the envelope and mail to us." thus this one enclosure serves a number of purposes. first, it carries a testimonial of the strongest kind by bearing the names of prominent concerns that have used it; then, it is an actual sample of the goods; and lastly, it serves the purpose of an order blank. even a firm which sells a service instead of a product can effectively make use of the sample principle. one successful correspondence school encloses with each answer to an inquiry a miniature reproduction of the diploma that it gives its graduates. while the course itself is what the student buys, unquestionably the inspired desire to possess a diploma like the one enclosed plays its part in inducing him to enroll. a new york trust company gets the same effect by sending the prospective investor a specimen bond complete to the coupons which show exactly how much each is worth on definite dates through several succeeding years. here again the specimen bond is not actually the thing he buys but it is a facsimile and an excellent one in that it puts in concrete form an abstract article. possibly it is inadvisable to include a sample. then a picture of the article accomplishes the purpose. a grocer who writes his customers whenever he has some new brand of food product, always includes in his letter a post card with a full tinted picture of the article. for instance, with a new brand of olives he encloses a picture of the bottled olives, tinted to exactly represent the actual bottle and its contents, and underneath he prints the terse statement "delicious, tempting, nutricious." if his letter has not persuaded the housewife to try a bottle of the olives, the picture on the enclosure is apt to create the desire in her mind and lead to a purchase. an automobile dealer who knows the value of showing the man he writes a detailed picture of the machine, includes an actual photograph. even the reproduction of the photograph is insufficient to serve his purpose. the photograph is taken with the idea of showing graphically the strongest feature of the machine as a selling argument, and illustrating to the smallest detail the sales point in his letter. then, with pen and ink, he marks a cross on various mechanical parts of engine, body or running gear, and refers to them in his letter. to carry the photograph enclosure a step farther, one dealer of automobile trucks illustrates the idea of efficiency. he encloses with his letter a photograph of his truck fully loaded. in another photograph he shows the same truck climbing a heavy grade. then in his letter he says, "just see for yourself what this truck will do. estimate the weight of the load and then figure how many horses it would take to handle an equal load on a similar grade." in the sale of furniture, especially, is the actual photograph enclosed with the letter a convincing argument. fine carriages, hearses, and other high-grade vehicles are forcibly illustrated by photographs, and no other enclosure or written description is equally effective. after description and visualizing--through the medium of circular and sample--comes proof, and this you may demonstrate through any means that affords convincing evidence of worth. the two best are testimonials and guarantees, but the effectiveness of either depends largely on the form in which you present them. testimonials are often dry and uninteresting in themselves, yet rightly played up to emphasize specific points of merit they are powerful in value. the impression of their genuineness is increased a hundredfold if they are reproduced exactly as they are received. an eastern manufacturer has helped the prestige of his cedar chests tremendously with the testimonials he has received from buyers. letters from the wives of presidents, from prominent bankers and men in the public eye he has reproduced in miniature, and two or three of these are enclosed with every sales letter. an office appliance firm with a wealth of good testimonials to draw on sends each prospect letters of endorsement from others in his particular line of business. a correspondence school strengthens its appeal by having a number of booklets of testimonials each containing letters from students in a certain section of the country. the inquirer thus gets a hundred or more letters from students near his own home, some of whom he may even know personally. a variation of the testimonial enclosure is the list of satisfied users. such a list always carries weight, especially if the firms or individuals named are prominent. a trunk manufacturer, who issues a "trunk insurance certificate" to each customer, reproduces a score or more of these made out to well known men and submits them as proof of his product's popularity. another effective form of enclosure is a list of buyers since a recent date. one large electrical apparatus concern follows up its customers every thirty days, each time enclosing a list of important sales made since the previous report. another plan is that of a firm manufacturing printing presses. in making up its lists of sales it prints in one column the number of "wellington" presses the purchaser already had in use and the number of new ones he has ordered. the names of the great printing houses are so well known to the trade that it is tremendously effective to read that blank, previously operating ten wellingtons, has just ordered three more. second only to the testimony of the man who buys is the guarantee of the seller. mail-order houses are coming more and more to see the value of the "money-back" privilege. it is the one big factor that has put mail sales on a par with the deal across the counter. time was when sellers by mail merely hinted at a guarantee somewhere in their letter or circular and trusted that the prospect would overlook it. but it is often the winner of orders now and concerns are emphasizing this faith in their own goods by issuing a guarantee in certificate form and using it as an enclosure. a roofing concern forces its guarantee on the prospect's attention by giving it a legal aspect, printing in facsimile signatures of the president and other officials--and stamping the company's name. across the face of this guarantee is printed in red ink, the word "specimen." along the lower margin is printed, "this is the kind of a real guarantee we give you with each purchase of one of our stoves." a mail-order clothing firm sends a duplicate tag on which their guarantee is printed. across the tag of this sample guarantee is printed in red, "this guarantee comes tagged to your garment." the prospect who finds proof like this backing up a letter is forced to feel the worth-whileness of your goods or your proposition, and he draws forth his money with no sense of fear that he is chancing loss. the number and kind of enclosures you will put into your letter is entirely up to you. but before you allow a letter to go out, dig under the surface of each circular and see whether it really strengthens your case. apply this test; is the letter supported with amplified description, proof, materials for ordering? if it is, it is ready for the attack. you may find it best to put your description, your testimonials, your guarantee and your price list all in one circular. it is not a mistake to do so. but whether they are all in one enclosure or in separate pieces, they should be there. and in addition, put in your return card order blank or envelope or whatever will serve best to bring the order. when your letter with its aids is complete, consistent, equipped to get the order then, and only then, let it go into the mails. bringing in _new business_ by post card part v--writing the sales letter--chapter _methods of soliciting trade by mail are not confined to the letter or printed circular. the postal regulations are sufficiently broad to allow a generous leeway in the size and shape of communications that may be sent by mail, and as a result, a new field of salesmanship has been opened by the postal card. folders, return- postals and mailing cards have become part of the regular ammunition of the modern salesman, who has adapted them to his varied requirements in ways that bring his goods before me "prospect" with an emphasis that the letter often lacks--and sometimes at half the cost_ * * * * * the result-getting business man is always asking the reason why. he demands that a method, especially a selling plan, be basically right; that it have a principle behind it and that it stand the microscope of analysis and the test of trial. there are three reasons why the postal card is a business-getter. did you ever pause while writing a letter, sit back in your chair, and deplore the poverty of mere words? did you ever wish you dared to put in a little picture just at that point to _show_ your man what you were trying to say? of course you have if you have ever written a letter. that is reason one. did you ever watch a busy man going through his morning's mail? long letters he may read, short letters he is sure to glance through, but a post card he is certain to read. it is easy to read, it is to a degree informal and it is brother to a call on the 'phone. that is reason two. and the third reason is that no matter what the principles behind it, by actual test it brings the business. while primarily the postal mailing card is intended to aid the letter in many ways it does what the letter can never do. it can carry a design or an illustration without the least suggestion of effrontery, which a letter can not do without losing dignity. it can venture into clever schemes to cinch the interest. it is the acme of simplicity as means to win an inquiry. and withal it does its work at less cost than the letters. in general postal mailing cards may be classed as of three types: . the double or return post card. this consists simply of two ordinary post cards attached for convenience in mailing, sometimes closed at the loose edges by stickers but usually left open. the one carries the inquiry-seeking message; the other is for the reply. it is already addressed for returning and contains on the opposite side a standardized reply form to be signed. . the two or three or four folder mailing card. this gives greater space and opportunity for cleverness of appeal through design. the third or fourth fold may or may not be prepared for use as a reply card. instead of providing for the reply in this way, some of these folders hold a separate card by means of corner slots. in any case they fold to the size of the ordinary postal and are held by a stamp or sticker. . illustrated personal letters. these are in effect simply letters printed on heavier stock which fold into post card size. their advantage lies in the opportunity for illustration and an outside design or catch phrase to win attention. in some cases they are even filled in exactly in the manner of a form letter. which of these forms is best suited to your uses is a matter which the nature of your proposition and your method of selling must determine. whether you want to tell a long story or a short one, whether you want it to serve merely as a reminder or as your principal means of attack, these and other points must guide you. so to help you determine this, it is best to consider the post card here on the basis of its uses. there are four: . to get inquiries. . to _sell_ goods; to complete the transaction and get the order just as a letter would. . to cooperate with the dealer in bringing trade to his store. . to cooperate with the salesman in his work on dealer or consumer. inquiries may be inspired in two ways--either by using a very brief double card or folder which tells just enough to prompt a desire for more information or by a post card "letter" series which works largely on the lines of letters enclosed in envelopes. in the first instance the card or folder resorts to direct pertinent queries or suggestions of help that impel the reader to seek more details. an addressing machine manufacturer, for instance, sends his "prospects" a double folder with a return post card attached this message is little more than suggestive: "do you know that there is one girl in your addressing room who can do the work of ten if you will let her? all she needs is a regal to help her. give her that and you can cut nine names from your pay roll today. does that sound like good business? then let us tell you all about it. just mail the card attached. it puts you under not the slightest obligation. it simply enables us to show you how to save some of your good dollars." * * * * * such a card is virtually an inquiry-seeking advertisement done into post card form to insure reaching the individual. and for this reason it may be well to carry a design or illustration just as an advertisement would. a life insurance company has made good use of a post card folder, building it up around its selling point of low cost. the outside bears a picture of a cigar and the striking attention-getter "at the cost of your daily smoke--" the sentence is continued on the inside"--you can provide comfort for your family after you are gone, through a policy." then follows enough sales talk to interest the prospect to the point of urging him to tear off and send the return card for full information. many propositions can be exploited in this way. in other instances a much more complete statement must be made to elicit a reply. here the illustrated personal letter comes into use. and it is significant that in a number of specific cases these letters in post card form have been far more productive of inquiries than ordinary letters on the same proposition. their unique form, the accompanying illustrations, by their very contrast in method of approach, prompt a reading that the letter does not get. postal mailing cards may be used in two ways--either as a campaign in themselves or as steps in a follow-up series. they are especially good when your selling plan permits of goods being sent on approval or a free trial basis. then you can say, "simply drop the attached order card in the mail box and the goods will come to you by first express." a publishing house has sold thousands of low priced books on this basis, using merely a double post card. one section carries to the prospect an appealing description of the book and emphasizes the liberality of the offer. the return card bears a picture of the book itself and a clearly worded order, running something like this, "i will look at this book if you will send it charges prepaid. if i like it, i am to remit $ . within five days. if not, i am to return it at your expense." there can be no misunderstanding here. the simplicity of the card scheme itself appeals to prospects and brings back a big percentage of orders. a variation of the use of the postal as a direct sales medium is the employment of it to secure bank savings accounts. a banking house in chicago sent out folders to a large mailing list of property holders and renters in all parts of the city. as a special inducement to establishing savings accounts, this house offered each person, who returned an attached card, a small metal savings bank free, which could be kept in the home for the reception of dimes and nickels until filled--this small bank to be returned at intervals to the bank for the establishment of a permanent savings account. on the return card enclosed was a promise to send to the inquirer's home one of those small banks absolutely without cost to the receiver. here the simplicity of the scheme and method of proposing it again brought large returns. one manufacturer of dental cream sends out free samples upon request. the tube is wrapped in pasteboard, which proves to be a post card ready for signature and stamp--inviting the recipient to suggest the names of friends to whom samples can be sent. some concerns offer to send a free sample if names are sent in but this firm has achieved better results by sending the sample to all who ask and then diplomatically inviting them to reciprocate by furnishing the names of their friends. several large hotels have found valuable advertising in post cards that are distributed by their guests. these cards are left on the writing tables with an invitation to "mail one to some friend." a st. louis restaurant keeps a stack of post cards on the cashier's desk. they are printed in three colors and give views of the restaurant, emphasizing its cleanliness and excellent service. every month hundreds of these are mailed out by pleased customers and as a result the restaurant has built up a very large patronage of visitors--people from out of the city who are only too glad to go to some place that has been recommended to them. a most unusual use of post cards appeared in a st. louis street car. a prominent bondseller had arranged an attractive street car placard, discussing briefly the subject of bonds for investment purposes. in one corner of this placard was a wire-stitched pad of post cards, one of which passengers were invited to pull off. the card was mailable to the bondseller, and requested a copy of his textbook for investors. the prospect who sent the card was of course put upon the follow-up list and solicited for business. here, again, the uniqueness appeals to the public. as a cooperator with a letter follow-up, the card or folder is effective, because it introduces variety into the series, sometimes furnishing just the touch or twist that wins the order. in the follow-up series the double folder becomes especially adaptable, because of its simplicity. it usually refers to previous correspondence. for example, one suggests: "you evidently mislaid our recent letter. since its message is of such vital interest to your business--" the remainder of the message is given up to driving home a few of the fundamental points brought out in the previous letters. simple directions for filling out an attached return card are added. one double post card, used as a cooperator with a follow-up, calls attention to a sample previously mailed, asking a careful comparison of the grade of material and closes with a special inducement to replies in the form of a discount for five days. return cards, employing the absolute guarantee to insure confidence of fair dealing give clinching power. here is a sample: gentlemen:--please send me a ____ case for trial. it is clearly understood in signing this order that the shipment comes to me all charges prepaid and with your guarantee that you will promptly cancel the order, in case i am in any way dissatisfied. * * * * * * * a space is left at the bottom of the card for the person ordering to sign name and address. again the post card serves a similar purpose as a cooperator with the salesman. often between calls the house makes a special inducement to sales. here, either double post cards or folders give the advantage of simplicity; the return card offering a powerful incentive to immediate action on the part of the customer. the return card indicates to the house that the customer is interested and a salesman is called back to handle the order. one manufacturer, through use of the folder and card, wins a clever advantage for his salesmen. an attractive folder, with numerous illustrations, gives a fairly complete description of the firm's product. enclosed with the folder is a return card bearing the form reply, "dear sirs: i am interested in ----. please mail me a picture catalog of ----." and a space is left with directions for filling in name and address of the person replying. these cards when received are carefully filed and from them the salesmen gauge their calls on the prospects. here the advantage to the salesman is obvious, since his personal call assumes the nature of a favor to the prospect. from time to time, mailing folders or double post cards, are mailed between calls of the salesman, and serve to keep the proposition warm in the mind of the prospect. usually the postal or folder is a valuable aid in sending trade to the dealer. one manufacturer to stimulate business by creating orders for his retailer, sent out an elaborate series of mailing cards to the retailer's customers. enclosed with the folder were leaflets giving special features in the stock, which added value to the sales letter. handsomely engraved cards guaranteeing the material were also enclosed as a suggestion that the customer call on the retailer and the retailer's private business card was inserted. a western coffee dealer used mailing folders on lists of consumers supplied him by retailers. attractive designs on the outside of the folder create interest and put the consumer's mind in a receptive condition for considering the sales arguments embodied in the personal letter feature of the folder. a manufacturer of a contrivance for applying special paints builds an approach for the dealer's salesman with postal folders. the design on the outside of the folder indicates the simplicity with which the appliance may be operated. the sales letter inside gives minute directions for using the machine and calls attention to particular features by reference to the demonstration on the outside. as an entering wedge to orders, the letter offers a free trial and suggests that a salesman make a practical demonstration. the manufacturer has his dealer sign every letter and the return card enclosed gives only the address of the dealer. a varnish concern sent to a large mailing list a series of illustrated letters describing the use and advantage of its products. they appealed to the consumer and built up a trade for the local dealer. each letter contained both a return post card, addressed to the local dealer and a small pamphlet showing various grades of the varnish. the result of this follow-up system was twenty-five per cent more replies than the same number of envelope letters. one of the most successful campaigns ever conducted to introduce a new cigarette depended entirely upon postal letters. a series of five or six of these--well nigh masterpieces of sales talk--created the desire to try the product. enclosed with each folder was a card bearing a picture of the distinctive box in which the cigarettes were sold, so that the prospect could recognize it in the dealer's store. in another instance a book publisher created a demand for a new novel by mailing a series of single post cards bearing illustrations from the book. in this case the element of mystery was employed and the real purpose of the cards was not divulged until five or six had been sent and the book was ready to go on sale. whatever variety of card, folder or letter you choose to use, these features you should carefully observe: the style of writing and the design and mechanical make-up. the effectiveness of the mailing folder must depend upon the combination--ideas of attractiveness, simplicity and careful use of the personal letter feature. it must command attention by a forceful, intelligent approach. it must stand out sharply against the monotonous sameness of the business letter. the folder's appearance should be in accord with the class or type of men it goes to meet. its approach should contain sincerity, purpose, and originality. originality in shape hardly serves the purpose, because of the ridicule unusual shapes may give the proposition. the originality should be in the illustrations or catch phrases. this illustrative feature is all important because it virtually plays the part of the initial paragraph of the letter--it makes the point of contact and gets the attention. it corresponds to the illustrated headline of the advertisement. no rules can be laid down for it as it is a matter for individual treatment. colors that create a proper condition of mind through psychological effect must be taken into consideration in the attention-getting feature of the folder. there are certain color schemes which are known to create a particularly appropriate condition of mind. for instance, where quick action is wanted, a flaring color is effective. where pure sales arguments count most in stating a proposition, blacks and whites have been found the most adequate. soothing colors, such as soft browns and blues, have been found to appeal to the senses and serve to insure additional interest through a pleasant frame of mind. the right impression once gained, the style of the reading matter must make the most of it. many have hesitated to use the postal or folder because they fear for a certain loss, through lack of dignity, where the proposition demands an especially high-class approach. but to some folders, especially of the letter variety now in use, no such criticism could possibly be offered. really fine samples of these letters bear outside illustrations from photographs or the work of the best artists. their appearance outside and inside is given every possible attention to create the impression of distinct value. an appeal to the senses, as in the use of pleasing colors, is a feature of their make-up. the personal letter inside is perfect in details of typography; it is carefully filled in with prospect's or customer's name; care is taken to see that the filling-in process matches the body of the letter and a personal signature is appended to give a more intimate appeal. the cost of these folders, because of the high grade of reproduction and the art work, runs considerably above the usual business-getting letter of one-cent mailing. the lowest class of these folders cost approximately the same as the usual letter under two-cent mailing. any addition of special art work increases their cost proportionately, but the expense is frequently justified. these illustrated letters depend upon their power of suggestion, through graphic illustration and design, and upon the personal idea of the letter used for getting business. few enclosures, other than the return card, or reminder card, for filing purposes, are used. one physician, especially anxious of promoting a new remedy, sent out mailing folders describing his remedy and offered an absolute guarantee of results before payment. the return card enclosed with this folder was engraved with the name and address of the physician above and underneath his absolute guarantee. because the campaign was so unusual, it produced unexpectedly large returns. here, as in the usual business-getting letter, careful attention is given to details. the importance of attracting attention in the first paragraph by careful expression, followed by the creating of desire in the mind of the customer or prospect and the adding of conviction--and finally, the use of reason that compels action cannot be emphasized too strongly. a more appealing letter could scarcely be written than the following, used in the cigarette campaign previously mentioned. the outside of the folder carried an appropriate drawing by one of the best american artists and the whole folder gave an impression of the highest quality. note the easy style, designed to catch the reader as he first opens the folder and carry him along fascinated to the end: dear sir: [sidenote: attention-getter; natural and effective. explanation clear, and a desire is created through promise.] turn back in your mind for one minute to the best turkish cigarette you ever smoked. if you remember, it was not so much that the cigarette was fragrant, or that it had a particular flavor, or aroma, or mildness, that caused it to please you--it was the combination of all these qualities that made it so delicious. this means that the perfection of that cigarette was in the blend, the combination of rare tobacco, each giving forth some one quality. we have worked out a blend that produces a tobacco cigarette which satisfies _our_ ideal at least. we call the cigarette made of this brand pereso. we make no secret of the kind of tobacco used--the exact proportion and how to treat the rare leaves is our secret. to get a perfect aroma, we must take ---- tobacco: young sprigs of yellow so soft that the turks call it "golden leaf." we use ---- leaves for their flavor; they have marvelous fragrance as well a delicate mildness. [sidenote: giving conviction by details.] to get each of these tidbits of tobacco into perfect condition, so that their qualities will be at their prime when blended, is our profession. the pereso cigarette is the result. [sidenote: suggesting immediate action.] touch a match to a pereso cigarette after luncheon today. you will be delighted with its exquisite aroma, its fleeting fragrance and delicate mildness. [sidenote: strength in clincher lies in absolute guarantee.] if it is not better than the best cigarette you have ever smoked, allow us the privilege of returning the fifteen cents the package cost you. the original box with the remaining cigarettes, when handed to your dealer, will bring the refund. will you join us in a pereso cigarette today? very truly yours. [signature: adams & adams] * * * * * enclosed in this folder next to the letter was a card bearing a picture of the cigarettes in their box. at the bottom of the folder, underneath the letter, was the phrase: "all good dealers--fifteen cents a package." with the mailing card, as with the letter, guarantees, free trial offers and the like, help to strengthen the close of the proposition, win the confidence and bring back the answer. for example, a large watch company, wishing to appeal to a class of customers who had previously been listed and whose financial standing made its proposition secure, sent out folders signed by department heads asking the privilege of mailing a watch for examination and trial. the letter, which carefully described the advantages of the watch over other watches sold at similar prices, offered this trial without any cost to the prospect, only asking that if the watch suited his needs a draft be mailed to the company. the return card in this case contained an agreement by the firm to hold the prospect in no way obligated to the company, except through purchase. before returning the card to the company, the prospect was required to sign it, agreeing that, after a trial, either the watch or the money should be sent in. before you enter upon the use of mailing cards, be sure you understand the postal regulations regarding them. they are not complicated, but more than one concern has prepared elaborate folders only to be refused admittance to the mails because they did not follow specifications as to size and weight. postal laws require that all cards marked "post cards" be uniform in design and not less than three and three-fourths inches by four inches and not more than three and nine-sixteenths inches by five and nine-sixteenths inches in size. this means that all return cards, whether enclosed or attached, must be within authorized sizes to allow a first class postal rating. making it _easy_ for the prospect to _answer_ part v--writing the sales letter--chapter . _the mere physical effort of hunting up pen and paper by which to send in an order for_ something he really wants, _deters many a prospect from becoming a customer_. _the man who sells goods by mail must overcome this natural inertia by reducing the act of sending in an order or inquiry to its very simplest terms--by making it so easy for him to reply that he acts while the desire for the goods is still upon him. here are eighteen schemes for making it easy for the prospect to reply--and to reply now_ * * * * * there are few propositions so good that they will sell themselves. a man may walk into a store with the deliberate intention of buying a shirt, and if the clerk who waits on him is not a good salesman the customer may just as deliberately walk out of the store and go to the place across the street. lack of attention, over-anxiety to make a quick sale, want of tact on the part of the salesman--any one of a dozen things may switch off the prospective customer although he wants what you have for sale. even more likely is this to happen when you are trying to sell him by mail. he probably cares little or nothing about your offer; it is necessary to interest him in the limits of a page or two and convince him that he should have the article described. and even after his interest has been aroused and he is in a mood to reply, either with an order or a request for further information, he will be lost unless it is made easy for him to answer; unless it is almost as easy to answer as it is not to answer. a man's interest cools off rapidly; you must get his request for further information or his order before he picks up the next piece of mail. it is a daily experience to receive a letter or a circular that interests you a little--just enough so you put the letter aside for attention "until you have more time." instead of being taken up later, it is engulfed in the current of routine and quickly forgotten. had the offer riveted your attention strongly enough; had the inducements to act been forceful; had the means for answering been easy, you would probably have replied at once. make it so easy to answer that the prospect has no good reason for delaying. make him feel that it is to his interest in every way to act at once. do the hard work at your end of the line; exert yourself to overcome his natural inertia and have the order blank, or the coupon or the post card already for his signature. don't rely upon his enthusing himself over the proposition and then hunt up paper, pencil and envelope; lay everything before him and follow the argument and the persuasion with a clincher that is likely to get the order. in making it easy to answer, there are three important elements to be observed. you must create the right mental attitude, following argument and reason with a "do it now" appeal that the reader will find it hard to get away from. then the cost must be kept in the background, centering attention on the goods, the guarantee, and the free trial offer rather than upon the price. and finally, it is desirable to simplify the actual process--the physical effort of replying. the whole effort is wasted if there is lacking that final appeal that convinces a man he must act immediately. your opening may attract his attention; your arguments may convince him that he ought to have your goods; reason may be backed by persuasion that actually creates in him a desire for them, but unless there is a "do it this very minute" hook, and an "easy to accept" offer, the effort of interesting the prospect is wasted. * * * * * scheme --a special price for a limited period the most familiar form of inducement is a special price for a limited period, but this must be handled skillfully or it closes the gate against an effective follow-up. the time may be extended once, but even that weakens the proposition unless very cleverly worded; and to make a further cut in price prompts the prospect to wait for a still further reduction. * * * * * better look again and see if you have signed your name and written your town and state plainly. we get lots of orders every year that we can't fill because the address is incomplete or illegible. it is best to be on the safe side and write your name and address so plainly that there can be no possible mistake. did you? you don't have to use better keep an this order sheet. you o r d e r s h e e t exact copy of this can order any old way order for future you like. but using this reference. will save us both some bother * * * * * be sure to always sign the more careful you are keep a copy of your name and address. to fill out the following the order and if we get lots of orders blanks carefully and you do not hear with no sign of name clearly, the more certain from us in a or address. if your we are to get your order reasonable shipping station is filled promptly and length of time, different from your correctly. we're all long write us and post office be sure range mind readers and tell us just to give both can generally puzzle out what you ordered how an order is meant to and when you be but it takes lots of ordered it guess work value of order $ |cents date_______ ---------------------------|--- name____________________________ paid by p.o. money order | street or rural route___________ paid by exp. money order | post office_____________________ paid by draft | county__________________________ paid by check | shipping station________________ paid in currency | what railroad preferred_________ paid in silver | what express co preferred_______ paid in stamps | total amount paid | mark in square which way you want ------------------------------- this order sent___mail__express please don't write in this space __freight opened by_____booked by_____ o'k'd by______tagged by_____ shall we use our best judgment as routing_____________________ to manner of shipping and routing?____ if out of variety ordered have we your permission to substitute equal or better ______ in nearest variety ------------------------------------------------------------------ bu|qts|lbs|pts|oz|pkts|no|articles wanted |value ------------------------------------------------------------------ _________________________________________________|$______|cents___ _________________________________________________|$______|cents___ _________________________________________________|$______|cents___ _________________________________________________|$______|cents___ * * * * * _this order sheet simplifies ordering and assures accuracy. on the reverse side are printed several special offers, to which reference may readily be made. the sheet is made to fold up like an envelope and when the gummed edges are pasted down enclosures are perfectly safe_ * * * * * on some propositions the time limit can be worked over and over again on different occasions like special store sales. a large publishing house selling an encyclopedia never varies the price but it gets out special "christmas" offers, "withdrawal" sale offers, "special summer" offers--anything for a reason to send out some new advertising matter making a different appeal. and each proposition is good only up to a certain time. the letters must be mailed and postmarked before midnight of the last day, and this time limit pulls the prospect over the dead center of indecision and gets his order. the last day usually brings in more orders than any previous week. * * * * * fill out and mail this coupon to chicago supply co. i am interested in ___________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ send me free of cost mammoth illustrated catalog __ book of house and barn plants __ structural steel news __ heating and plumbing guide __ linoleum booklet __ book on roofing, siding, etc. __ gasoline engines __ clothing for men and boys __ ladies' wearing apparel__ sewing machine book __ harness and vehicles __ put cross in square opposite books you wish my name__________________________________________ town__________________________ state ____________ r.f.d.___________ box no.________ st. no.________ * * * * * _this coupon, used in advertisements and in printed matter, make it extremely easy to send for information on special subjects_ * * * * * scheme --the last chance to buy if it is desired to come right back at a prospect, some such paragraph as this is written: "only sets left! the success of our special offer surpassed all expectations. it will be necessary to issue another edition at once. the style of binding will be changed but otherwise the two editions will be the same. as we do not carry two styles on hand, we are willing to let you have one of the remaining sets at the same terms although our special offer expired saturday night." * * * * * and this appeal may pull even better than the first one--provided the proposition is "on the square." it is hard to put sincerity into a letter that is not based on an absolute truth. if "only sets left" is merely a salesman's bluff when in fact there are hundreds of sets on hand, the letter will have a hollow ring. * * * * * making it easy to answer creating desire time limit limited no. of articles cut price special terms reservation of stock or machine evading the cost free trial offer guarantee deferred payments "send bill" not an expense--an investment enclosures order blanks post cards money order applications coin cards addressed envelope * * * * * sincerity is the hardest thing in the world to imitate in a letter and absolute confidence is the key-stone to all mailorder selling. there are plenty of plausible reasons for making a time limit or a special offer. a large publishing house, selling both magazines and books by mail occasionally turns the trick by a human interest appeal: "i told the business manager that i believed i could bring our august sales up to equal those of the other months. "he laughed at me. always before they have fallen off about twenty per cent. "but i am going to do it--if you'll help me." * * * * * then the sales manager went on with a special offer; it was a legitimate offer which made a real inducement that proved one of the most successful the firm ever put out. scheme --low prices during dull seasons in making a special price the prospect must be given some plausible reason and sincere explanation for the reduction. a special arrangement with the manufacturer, cleaning out of stock, an introductory offer--some valid reason; and then state this reason in a frank, business-like way, making the story interesting and showing where it is to the advantage of both the prospect and yourself. "just to keep my men busy during the dull season i will make an extra pair of trousers at the same price ordinarily charged for a suit, on orders placed during july and august." * * * * * this offer sent out by a merchant tailor brought results, for he had a good reason for doing an extra service--he wanted to keep his help busied during the quiet months and the customer took advantage of the inducement. scheme --cut prices in exchange for names "if you will send us the names of your friends who might be interested" and "if you will show it to your friends" are familiar devices for they present a plausible excuse for cutting a price and serve the double purpose of giving the manufacturer or merchant new names for his mailing list. "a free sample if you send us your dealer's name" is reasonably certain to call for an immediate reply from most women, for they are always interested in samples. making a special introductory offer on some new device or appliance is certainly a legitimate reason for cutting the price. it is an inducement, moreover, that possesses a peculiar strength for a man likes to be the first one in his vicinity or in his line of business to adopt some improved method or system. scheme --the special "introductory price" there can be no excuse for the carelessness that makes a "special introductory price," and later in the same letter or in a follow-up calls attention to the "many satisfied users in your section." be sure your reason is real--then it rings true and incites prompt action like this offer: the wright copy holder sells the world over for $ . . we are certain, however, that once you see the holder actually increasing the output of your own typist you will want to equip your entire office with them. so, for a limited time only, we are going to make you an introductory price of $ . . send to-day for one of these holders and give it a thorough trial. then any time within thirty days, after you have watched the holder in actual use and seen it pay for itself, in actual increased output, order as many more as you want and we will supply them to you at the same introductory price of $ . each. after that time we must ask the regular price. * * * * * this is convincing. the prospect feels that if the holder were not all right it would not be sold on such terms, for the manufacturers expect that the one holder will give such satisfaction that it will lead to the sale of many more. "enclose $ . now in any convenient form and let the holder demonstrate for itself what it can save you every day. don't wait until tomorrow--but send your order today--right now." * * * * * this is the closing paragraph and if you are at all interested in copy holders it is likely you will place an order "now." and if you don't and if the order is not placed within ten days, the offer may be extended for two weeks and after that a "ten-day only" offer may pull forth an order. scheme --special terms to preferred customers a brokerage firm has found that a "pre-public announcement special offer to preferred clients only" in placing stocks and bonds is a good puller. the recipient is flattered by being classed with the "preferred clients" and is not unmindful of the opportunity of getting in on the proposition before there is any public announcement. * * * * * date _____________________ wilson safety razor co. dear sirs:--please send one standard wilson safety razor (price $ . ) very truly yours. (your) name _______________________ street and no _____________________ city ______________ state _________ ------------------------------------------------------------------ if the razor is to be sent through your dealer fill out below (dealer's) name ___________________ address ___________________________ city ______________ state _________ if you prefer that we send razor direct to you, please enclose remittance in either of the following forms cash (registered mail), money order, ny bank draft check the wilson safety razor co or the dealer who executes this order in accepting the $ . for the safety razor agrees with the purchaser that it is sold on days trial without any obligation or liability for use during that period. if for any reason the purchaser desires to return it within that period the seller upon shall upon receipt thereof refund the $ . the wilson safety razor co. * * * * * _this form of post card provides for two methods of ordering--the customer may take his choice_ * * * * * in influencing prompt action the time element and the special price are not the only "act now" inducements although they are the most common. a man had written to a firm that makes marine engines for prices but the first two or three letters had failed to call forth any further correspondence. so the sales manager wrote a personal letter in which the following paragraph appeared: "in looking over our correspondence i notice that you are particularly interested in a -horse power engine. i have an engine of that size on hand that i think will interest you. we have just received our exhibits from the motor boat shows. among these i noticed a h.p. engine and remembering your inquiry for this size engine, it occurred to me that this would make you an ideal engine for your boat." * * * * * this was cleverly worded, for although the company would contend that the exhibits were taken from stock, the possible buyer would feel confident that the engine exhibited at the show had been tested and tried in every way. if he were in the market at all, this would probably prove a magnet to draw an immediate reply--for it is always easy to reply if one is sufficiently interested. scheme --holding goods in reserve this "holding one in reserve for you" has proved effective with a typewriter company: "the factory is working to the limit these days and we are behind orders now. but we are going to hold the machine we have reserved for you a few days longer. after that we may have to use it to fill another order. sign and send us the enclosed blank to-day and let us place the machine where it will be of real service to you. remember it is covered by a guarantee that protects you against disappointment. if you don't like it, simply return it and back comes your money." * * * * * bond brokers frequently use this same idea, writing to a customer that a block of stock or a part of an issue of bonds had been reserved for him as it represented just the particular kind of investment that he always liked--and reasons follow showing how desirable the investment really is. in one form or another this scheme is widely used. when the order justifies the expense, a night telegram is sometimes sent stating that the machine can be held only one day more or something like that. this only is possible on special goods that cannot be readily duplicated. in all these offers and schemes the price is kept carefully in the background. many firms never mention the price in the letter, leaving that for the circular, folder or catalogue. scheme --the free trial offer instead of the price being emphasized, it is the free trial offer or the absolute guarantee that is held before the reader. "without even risking a cent you can use the wilbur on your farm free for days. we will ship it to you, freight prepaid, with the plain understanding that, should the wilbur not come up to every claim we make for it, we will take it off your hands, for we don't want anyone to keep the wilbur when he is not satisfied with it. thus, we agree to pay all charges and take all risk while you are testing and trying the wilbur for one whole month. "you see, we have a great deal of confidence in the wilbur or we could not afford to make you this square and generous offer, which leaves it entirely to you to say whether or not the wilbur fanning mill is a practical and money-making success. since the days' free trial proposition puts you to no risk whatever, you should take advantage of this opportunity and have a wilbur shipped right away on the free trial basis. "to prove it, all you have to do is to fill in, sign and mail this card. after days you can return the machine if you are willing." * * * * * not a word about price. all about the free trial and the fact that you are to be the judge of the machine's value. and not only the free trial but the absolute guarantee is emphasized. "your money back if not satisfactory" is the slogan of every successful mail-order house. frequently a facsimile of the guarantee accompanies the letter; always it is emphasized. scheme --the "your money back" offer a manufacturer of certain machines for shop use wastes little time in describing the machine or telling what all it will do. the broad assertion is made that after a month's use it would not be sold at the price paid for it, and instead of arguing the case and endeavoring to prove the statement, the company strives to make it easy to place a trial order. here are two of the three paragraphs that make up one of its letters: "to prove it, all you have to do is to fill in, sign and mail this card. after days you may return the machine if you want to. "try it out. never mind what we might say about the uses your shop men would be getting out of it--find out. it is easy. just send the card." * * * * * this is simplicity itself. the writer does not put us on the defensive by trying to argue with us. we are to be the judge and he compliments us by the inference that we "don't need to be told" but can judge for ourselves as to whether it is worth keeping. the price is held in the background and the actual ordering is nothing more than to sign a post card. there is no reason at all why we should delay; we could hardly turn the letter over to be filed without feeling that we were blind to our best interest in not replying. scheme --the discount for cash publishers of a magazine angle for renewals without boldly snatching for a man's pocketbook, by this presentation: "simply tell us _now_ to continue your subscription. remit at your convenience. better still, wrap a $ . bill in this post card--and mail to us today. we will send not only the twelve issues paid for, but will--as a cash discount--extend your subscription an extra two months." * * * * * here the cost is brought in almost as an afterthought, yet in a way that actually brings the cash with the renewal. "fill out the enclosed order and the goods will be shipped at once and billed in the regular way." * * * * * the payment is not in sight--it hasn't yet turned the corner. "billed in the regular way" catches our order where we would postpone action if it meant reaching down into our pockets and buying a money order or writing out a check. the payment looks afar off--and it will not seem so much if the account is paid along with the rest of the bills at the first of the month. scheme --the first installment as a "deposit" where goods are sold on "easy terms" and a first payment required, many correspondents refer to the remittance as a "deposit." in the strong guarantee it is expressly stated that in case of dissatisfaction, the "deposit" will be returned. even the deferring of the payment a few days helps to pull an order. it is not that a man is niggardly or that he does not want the article but it is the desire, rooted deep in human nature, to hold onto money after it has been hard earned. "to facilitate your prompt action, i am enclosing a convenient postal card order. our shipping department has had instructions to honor this as readily as they would your check. there is no need to send the customary initial payment in advance. simply sign and mail the enclosed card; when the file comes, pay the expressman the first payment of $ . ." * * * * * here the payment was very small and it was deferred only a few days, but long enough to make it _seem easier_, and the orders were much larger than when cash was required with the order. scheme --sending goods for inspection "take no risk" is the reassuring line in many advertisements and letters. "send no money--take no risk. we do not even ask you to make a deposit until you are satisfied that you need the verbest in your business. simply send the coupon today and the verbest goes forward at our risk." such offers pull best when simply worded and contain some such phrase as "without obligation on my part, you may send me." it gives reassurance that there is no catch and inspires the confidence that is the basis of the mail-order business. then there is the argument that the device or equipment will pay for itself--a powerful leverage when rightly applied. here is the way the manufacturer of a certain machine keeps the cost in the shadow: "there is no red tape to go through. simply sign the enclosed blank and forward to-day with the first payment of $ . . the challenge will go forward promptly. and the balance you can pay as the machine pays for itself--at the rate of seventeen cents a day." * * * * * simple, isn't it? you forget all about the cost. the paragraph is a cleverly worded "do it now" appeal and the cost is kept entirely in the background. scheme --the expense versus the investment argument a companion argument is that the device is not an expense but an investment. here there is no attempt to put the cost price in the background but to justify the outlay as a sound investment--a business proposition that is to be tested by the investment standard. this is a strong argument with the shrewd business man who figures the value of things not on the initial cost, but upon the profits they will earn and the dividends they will pay. the whole proposition must be shaped in such a way that it is easy for the prospect to buy. he must want to buy--and the experienced correspondent realizes that every word and phrase must be avoided that is capable of being misconstrued. there are no details so small that they do not have a bearing on the success of a campaign. scheme --the return postal filled in for mailing and now that you have made clear your proposition and shown your proof, now that you have led your prospect to the buying point, the next step is to make him send you the order. and the only way to do this is to follow the example of the good salesman: put the pen in his hand, your finger on the dotted line, and slip the order blank before him. the salesman does these things because he knows that he might lose the sale if he asked his prospect to hunt up a pen, a letterhead and some ink. he knows the value of making it easy to buy. and in selling by mail you must do the same. don't guide him on to a decision to order and then leave him at sea as to how to do it. show him exactly what to do. it is easy enough simply to say, "write me a letter," or, "send me $ . ." the very man you want most to sell may not know how to write a clearly worded order. even if he does, the fact that you ask him to go to the trouble of getting his writing materials may serve to postpone the act and lose him the desire to buy. so give him the order ready to sign, with as few changes as possible required. and give him an addressed return envelope to send it in. if no money is to be sent with the order, put it on a post card. "sign and mail the card" borders on the extreme of simplicity in buying. you cannot be too simple in your method of soliciting orders. if your proposition will admit of saying, "pin a dollar bill to this letter and mail," say it. if more details are needed, make them as simple as possible. * * * * * johnson dye order and coin card (be sure to address your envelope very plainly) johnson dye company boston, mass. send me __ packages of johnson dyes, at ten cents each, as marked in the order blank below. i enclose in this coin envelope below, total sign very plainly _______ cents name______________________________________ address_________number, street, or box, post office, county, state ------------------------------------------------------------------ don't fail to fill out this [words behind has he (any) johnson drawing of dyes for wool?_____ my dealer's name_________ envelope] has he (any) johnson dyes for cotton?____ address__________________ has he the johnson dye colors ordered write plainly below? _____ ------------------------- -------------------- johnson dyes johnson dyes for wool for cotton _______light blue _______light blue _______dark blue [envelope: put _______dark blue _______navy blue your money, coin _______navy blue _______brown or bill in here] _______brown _______seal brown _______seal brown _______green _______green _______dark green _______dark green _______pink _______pink _______scarlet _______scarlet _______crimson _______crimson _______cardinal red _______cardinal red _______turkey red _______turkey red _______garnet _______garnet _______black _______black _______purple _______purple _______yellow _______yellow _______orange _______orange _______gray _______gray * * * * * _a manila enclosure that contains a small envelope suitable for sending coins or bills. the directions not only cover all points on the order but give the company information for its follow-up_ * * * * * scheme --the money order ready for signature if you want him to send a money order, help him to get it by enclosing a money order application filled in except for his name. avoid the possibility of giving the order blank a legal appearance. simply have the order say, "send me ----" and as little more as is necessary. show the prospect that there are no strings or jokers in your blank. make it so simple that there is no possibility of misunderstanding its terms. if the article is one that is sold in much th same way to every purchaser, it is best to print the entire order, leaving only the date line and the signature line blank. if the purchaser has to choose between two styles of the article or between two quantities, the order blank may be printed, so that the quantity not wanted may be crossed out. scheme --ordering by marks in dealing with an unlettered class of people, it is well to put a footnote in very small type under optional lines or words and to instruct the purchaser to "cross out the style you do not want" or "put an x opposite the quantity ordered." in case of articles that are sold for cash and also on the easy payment plan, it is better to have two separate order blanks printed on different colors of paper, one plainly headed "cash order blank," and the other "easy payment order blank." avoid the "instalment plan." the name has lost standing of late; the wording "easy payment plan" is better and more suggestive. scheme --the coin card the coin-card method is a winner for sales under a dollar. the card, with its open holes inviting the quarter or the fifty-cent piece, and the order blank printed conveniently on the flap--captures much loose money. the post office department will furnish money order applications with the name of the advertiser printed in the proper spaces. these printed applications should be sent for the prospect's convenience in cases where a money order is likely to be used. they insure that the advertiser's name will come before postmaster's written in the preferred form, and they also relieve much of the hesitancy and embarrassment of the people that do not know how to make out an application. scheme --sending money at the other fellow's risk one of the best schemes for easy ordering invited the reader to fold a dollar bill in the letter "right now" and mail the letter at the risk of the firm. that effective closing removed the tendency to delay until a check or a money order could be secured. it took away the fear of loss in the mails. it largely increased the returns of the letter. it is sometimes an excellent plan to suggest that the reader sign and mail at once a postal card that is enclosed. if there is an inch or two of space at the bottom of the letter, a blank order or request may be written there that needs only a signature to make it complete. in the closing paragraph, direct the reader to sign and return the slip. an addressed envelope should always be enclosed. it will not always be used, but it will be used by most people, and it assures the correct address and facilitates the handling of incoming mail. how to write letters that _appeal_ to women part vi--the appeal to different classes--chapter _the two-page letter which a man would toss into the waste basket unread may be read by a woman with increasing interest at each paragraph. the average woman does not have a large correspondence; her mail is not so heavy but what she_ finds time to read every letter that appeals to her even slightly. _the printed heading may show a letter to be from a cloak company. she doesn't really need a new coat--and anyhow she could hardly afford it this fall--but she would just like to see what the styles are going to be like--and it doesn't cost anything to send for samples. yet if the writer of the letter is skilled and understands the subtle workings of a woman's mind_, the cloak is half sold by the time she fills out the postal card. _this chapter tells why_ * * * * * the more personal a letter is made the more successful it will prove. several large mail-order houses, handling thousands of letters every day, are gradually abandoning the use of form letters, making every communication personal. the additional expense is of course great but the increased business apparently justifies the new policy. the carelessness that sends out to women form letters beginning "dear sir" has squandered many an advertising appropriation. a man might not notice such a mistake or he might charitably blame it onto a stupid mailing clerk, but a woman--never. the mail-order houses with progressive methods not only guard against inexcusable blunders and tactless letters but they are studying the classes and the individuals with whom they are dealing. a mail may bring in two letters--one, from a farmer, laboriously scrawled on a bit of wrapping paper; the other, from a lady in town, written on the finest stationery. both may request catalogues and the same printed matter will be sent to each, but only the amateur correspondent would use the same form letter in reply. the book agent who rattles off to every prospect the set speech which the house furnished him with his prospectus either throws up the work as a "poor proposition" or changes his tactics, and the form letter that tries to wing all classes of individuals is most likely to miss all. in making an appeal to women, the first thing to be considered is the stationery. good quality of paper is a sound investment. saving money by use of cheap stationery is not economy for it prejudices the individual against the sender before the letter is ever opened. firms that cater to women of the better class follow out the current styles in writing paper. the "proper" size and shape of sheet and envelope immediately make a favorable impression. various tints may be used to good effect and, instead of a flaring lithographed letterhead, the firm's monogram may be stamped in the upper left-hand corner. the return card on the envelope should not be printed on the face but on the reverse flap. such a letter is suggestive of social atmosphere; it is complimentary to the lady. in beginning the letter it should strike at some vulnerable spot in feminine nature--but it must be so skillfully expressed that the motive is not apparent. if the line is anything that can be shown by sample, manage to work into the very beginning of the letter the fact that samples will be mailed free upon request. women never tire of looking at samples; they pull thousands of orders that could never have been landed with printed descriptions or illustrations. a most successful house selling suits and cloaks has proved conclusively that nothing will catch the attention of a woman so quickly as an offer of free samples or some reference to style and economy in woman's dress. it urges upon its correspondents the desirability of getting in this appeal in the very first sentence. letters from this house begin with some pointed reference: "becoming styles, we know, are what you want, together with quality and the greatest economy." or, "you know we guarantee you a perfect-fitting suit, of the prettiest materials in the market--whatever you may select." this letter has the personal signature of the sales manager: dear madam: i have been intending to write you ever since you sent for your republic style book, but i have been so busy in connection with our new building as to hardly find time. but you are no doubt now wondering just why, out of the many, many thousand requests for the republic style book, i should be so particularly interested in yours. and so i am going to tell you frankly my reason. it is this: in your community there is only a very small number of all the ladies who wear republic suits, and they all should wear them--and would wear them if they could but be made to know the real beauty of our suits. i want to show them just how beautiful a republic suit can be. so i ask you, would you like to have made for you this season, the most beautiful suit you ever had? would you like now, a suit more stylish, better fitting, more becoming, better made--more perfect--than any other suit you have had? if this interests you at all, then i am ready personally to see to it for you. a suit that is different from the ones worn by your acquaintances is what i am now speaking of; not different because made of some unusual material, or in some over-stylish design, but different because better. it is the difference of quality, of genius in its cutting, that i want your friends and neighbors to see and admire in your suit. now i am going to say to you very frankly that i have a reason for wanting to make your suit attract the admiration of your friends. i wish your suit to convince them that they, too, should have their suits made by the republic. would you care to have me tell you just how i propose to put this unusual grace and style into your suit? first, everything depends upon the lines of a suit--if its lines are beautiful, the suit is beautiful. now we have at the republic a chief designer, who is a genius in putting the greatest beauty and grace into the lines of his models. we say he is a genius, because a man can be a genius in designing just as a musician or any exceptionally skillful man may be said to be a genius. and when a highly trained cutter and an expert tailor make up one of this man's designs, the result is a suit that stands apart from all others, by reason of the attractiveness there always is in grace and style and beauty. such is the suit i offer to have made for you. but there is to be no increased cost to you for this special service. the price of every republic made-to-measure suit is plainly stated under its description in our style book. that is all you'll have to pay. if you wish you can have a dressmaker take your measurements and we will pay her for her trouble, as explained on the enclosed dressmaker's certificate. please read this certificate. "now, what am i to do?" you ask. simply send your order to me personally. just say, "make my suit as you agree in your letter." now if you wish other samples or information, write to me personally and i will take care of it for you. but, the sooner you get your order to me the better. please consider that we, at the republic, will always be glad to be of service to you. i, especially, will be pleased to have the opportunity of making you a suit of which you can be proud and of which we will be glad to have you say, "this is a republic suit." shall i hear from you soon? yours very respectfully, [signature: g. l. lawrence] * * * * * this letter was sent out on very tasty tinted stationery. it was written by someone who understood the subtle processes of the feminine mind. in the first place the lady is flattered because the sales manager himself writes to her and offers to give her order his personal attention. surely an opportunity to secure the very best suit the house can turn out! "it is the difference of _quality_, of genius in its cutting, that i want your friends and neighbors to see and admire in your suit." no fulsome flattery here; it is so delicately introduced that it appears entirely incidental, but the shaft strikes home. there is just enough left unsaid to stir the imagination. the logic and the matter-of-fact argument that would appeal to the man gives way to suggestion and persuasion and the necessity for prompt action is tactfully inserted at the proper place. in another letter from the same house the prospect was impressed by the great care used in making up garments: "in order that your measurements may be taken exactly right, we send you with this letter a 'republic' tape measure. this is the same kind that our cutters use and it is entirely accurate. "we send this tape measure to you because we want to avoid the least possibility of variation in your measurements. we want to make your suit perfect, and we will personally see to every detail of its making." * * * * * no battery of arguments and proofs could make the same appeal to the woman as the tape line sent in this way. the suggestion is more powerful with a woman when skillfully handled than statements, assertions and arguments. compare the subtle appeal in the above to the paragraphs taken from a letter sent out by a house that was trying to enter the mail-order field: "we want you to read our booklet carefully for it explains our methods of doing business fully. we are very particular about filling orders and know you will be pleased with any suit you may buy from us. "our financial standing should convince you that if anything is not right we will make it so. we guarantee satisfaction and solicit a trial order." * * * * * in the first place, the average woman would know nothing about the financial standing of the house. it is evident that the man who wrote the letter had been handling the correspondence with dealers and firms that necessarily keep posted on the rating of manufacturers. and the way the proposition is stated that "if anything is not right we will make it so" suggests that possibly the suit might not be satisfactory. but while women are susceptible to flattery there is danger of bungling, of making the effort so conscious that it is offensive. "your natural beauty will be enhanced by one of our suits for our cutter understands how to set off a woman's form and features so she is admired wherever she goes." the average woman is disgusted and reads no further. * * * * * how different arguments appeal to women style _foremost consideration_ price _secondary consideration_ quality _slight_ exclusiveness _valuable_ service _minor importance_ sentiment _effective_ flattery _expedient_ testimonials _impressive_ reputation _desirable_ * * * * * mere cleverness in expression will fall wide of the mark and facetiousness should be strictly avoided. it is better to depend on a very ordinary letter which will have little effect on the reader one way or the other than to offend her by too obvious flattery or an apparent attempt to make capital from a feminine weakness. arouse her curiosity--the curiosity of woman is proverbial, and a general store at nettleton, mississippi, found a "cousin elsie" letter, mailed at atlanta, georgia, to be the most effective advertising it ever sent out, for it aroused the greatest curiosity among the women of nettleton. here is a letter just as it was sent out, the name of the recipient filled in on the typewriter: my dear cousin:-- i know you will be surprised to get this letter. i spent such a delightful winter in california and wished so often that my dear nettleton kin could be with me. on my return trip, i met the wilson piano co's manager. he told me the nettleton supply co. was giving away one of its $ . pianos this year in advertising. i do hope that some of my ambitious cousins will get to work and get it. it will certainly be worth working for. then what do you think? the first thing when i came to the office this morning, i made an invoice of the millinery that the nettleton supply co's buyer had bought of our house and i was certainly surprised to know that such beautiful stuff is sold in a small town like nettleton. our salesman said that this is one of the nicest bills that he has sold this season. i met the buyer and talked with her about all of you and promised to attend the spring opening. i know it will be one of the best the house has had, as it will have so much pretty stuff to show. i will have only a day or two and i want to ask you and all my cousins to meet me at this opening. i am anxious to see you and this will be a good opportunity for us to meet. don't fail to meet me. i have lots of work to do and must bring this letter to a close. with a heart full of love for all the dear old nettleton folks and an extra lot for you, from, your cousin, elsie. p.s.--don't fail to come to the opening. i will be there if possible. miss smiley will let you know when to come. buy a pair of peters' shoes this spring; you will never regret it. * * * * * such letters could not be used very often but occasionally they are immensely effective. "mrs. elliott's troubles and how they were cured" have become famous in some parts of the country. written in long hand, they bore every resemblance to a social letter from a lady to some old neighbor and told how many of her housekeeping troubles had been ended by using a certain kind of furniture polish. the letters were written in such a chatty style that they were read through and passed around to other members of the family. my dear: i know you will be surprised to hear from me and i may as well confess that i am not altogether disinterested in writing you at this time but i am glad to say that the duty imposed upon me is a pleasure as well. you know some time ago after i had painted my floors, i wrote the company whose paint i used and they put my experiences in the form of a little booklet entitled "mrs. elliot's troubles." * * * * * _this is the first page of a facsimile hand-written letter that proved highly successful as it appealed to feminine curiosity and insured careful reading_ * * * * * the appeal to women must hover around her love of style and her desire for economy. bring in either subject deftly at the beginning of a letter and she will be an interested reader of all the sales talk that follows. several mail-order houses have trained women to handle this part of their correspondence for they are more apt in the use of feminine expressions. let a man try to describe some article as "perfectly splendid," or "really sweet" and he will stumble over it before he gets to the end of the sentence. yet when these same hackneyed phrases are brought in naturally by a woman who "feels just that way" about the garment she is describing, they will take hold of the reader in a way that is beyond the understanding of the masculine mind. in the appeal to women there is more in this tinge of off-hand refinement, the atmosphere, the enthusiasm shown and in the little personal touches, than in formidable arguments and logical reasons. what is triviality to a man is frequently the clinching statement with a woman. and so a fixed set of rules can not be formulated for writing letters to women. instead of a hard and fast rule, the correspondent must have in mind the ideas and the features that naturally appeal to the feminine mind and use them judiciously. dear madam: this mail is bringing to you a copy of our new catalogue, describing our complete line of hawkeye kitchen cabinets. the catalogue will tell you how you can do your kitchen work in half the usual time. it will tell you how to save your strength, time, and energy--how to relieve yourself of the burden of kitchen drudgery. aren't these things worth looking into? just try counting the unnecessary steps you take in preparing your next meal. calculate the time you lose in looking for articles that should be at your fingers' ends but are not. imagine, if you can, what it would save you if you could do away with your pantry, kitchen table, and cupboard and get all the articles needed in the preparation of a meal in one complete well-ordered piece of furniture that could be placed between the range and sink, so you could reach almost from one to the other. think of the steps it would save you. imagine a piece of furniture containing special places for everything--from the egg beater to the largest kitchen utensil--a piece of furniture that would arrange your provisions and utensils in such a systematic way that you could (in the dark) find almost anything you wanted. if you can draw in your mind a picture of such a piece of furniture, you will have some idea of what a buckeye kitchen cabinet is like. how, don't you want one of these automatic servants? don't you think you need it? if so, send for one now. don't put it off a single day. you have been without it too long already. it doesn't cost much to get a hawkeye. if you don't care to pay cash, you can buy on such easy payments that you will never miss the money--only five cents a day for a few months. you would think nothing of paying five cents a day street-car fare to keep from walking a few blocks in the pure air and sunshine, yet you are walking miles in your kitchen when one streetcar fare a day for a few months would do away with it. send your order right along and use the cabinet thirty days. if it doesn't do what we say it will, or if you do not consider that it is more than worth the money, send it back at our expense and we will refund whatever you have paid. that's fair, isn't it? we pay freight on all-cash orders yours truly, [signature: adams & adams] * * * * * _this letter is written in an easy, natural style, which is aided by the short paragraphs. the appeal to the imagination is skillful, and the homely illustration of the car-fare well chosen. the closing is in keeping with the general quality of the letter and was undoubtedly effective. this letter is a longer one than the man would read about a kitchen cabinet, but there are not too many details for women readers_ * * * * * all women, for instance, are influenced by what other women do, and there is no other touch more productive of sales than the reference to what some other customer has ordered, or what comments she has made. both in educational campaigns and in writing to regular customers on some specific proposition it is a good policy to work in some reference to a recent sale: "one of our very good customers from your neighborhood writes us that her new suit (style ) has caused her more perfectly delightful compliments than she ever had before." * * * * * such testimonials are to be found in every mail-order house that has attained even a moderate success, for women who are pleased are given to writing letters profuse in their expressions of appreciation. at times it is desirable to quote a whole letter, withholding, of course, the name of the writer. the most convincing letters to use are those that tell about first orders, or how some friend induced the writer to send in a trial order, or how she came to be a customer of the mail-order house. these personalities add a touch of human interest, they create an atmosphere that is real, they mean much to a woman. quoted letters are especially effective in getting a first order after a woman has become sufficiently interested to write in for a catalogue. here is one lifted from a letter sent out by the general manager of a suit house: dear mr. wardwell: you ask me to tell you how i came to send you my first order. i think i had written for your style book three seasons. each time i found many garments i liked. i found waists and dresses and skirts that were much prettier than the ones i could get elsewhere. and yet, some way or other, while i longed for these very garments, i did not order them. i think it was simply because i never had ordered by mail. one day when looking through your style book the thought came to me: "if you want this dress, why don't you stop hesitating and wondering and sit down right now and order it?" and i did--and ever since i have bought my suits, dresses, waists, almost everything, from you. * * * * * testimonial letters from prominent women, wives of distinguished men and others whose names are widely known, are always effective. a number of years ago mrs. frances cleveland, wife of the ex-president, wrote to a furniture factory for a cedar chest. the order was in mrs. cleveland's own handwriting and the letter was at once photographed and a facsimile enclosed with all the letters and advertising matter sent out by the furniture house. such things have an influence on the feminine mind that the skilled correspondent never overlooks. the reason that so many letters fail to pull is because the correspondents are not salesmen; they are unable to put actual selling talk into a letter. for after you have aroused a woman's curiosity and appealed to her love of style and her desire to economize, there has got to be some genuine, strong selling talk to get the order. the difference is brought out by a large chicago mail-order house which cites the customer who inquired about a certain ready made skirt in a -inch length which could not be supplied as the regular measurements run from to . a correspondent thinking only of the number of letters that can be answered in a day simply wrote, "we are very sorry we cannot supply the skirt you mention in the length you desire, because this garment is not made regularly in shorter lengths than inches. regretting our inability to serve you," and so forth. the letter inspector threw out the letter and dictated another: "we cannot furnish skirt, catalogue number h , in a -inch length, but we can supply it in a -inch length; this is the shortest length in which it is regularly made. you can have it altered to a -inch length at a small expense, and as the skirt is an unusually pretty style and of exceptionally good value, the price being only $ . , we trust you will favor us with your order." * * * * * this is letter-writing plus salesmanship. the correspondent did not spill over in his eagerness to get the order; he did not describe the skirt as the finest to be had nor insist that it was the most wonderful bargain in the catalogue. rather he told her it was an "unusually pretty style and of exceptionally good value." it was so simply told and so naturally that it carried conviction. it refers to style and to economy--two things that appeal to every woman. letters personally signed by the "expert corsetiere" of a large wholesale house were mailed to a selected list of lady customers in cities where the diana corsets were handled: dear madam; here's an incident that proves how important corsets are in wearing the new straight, hipless gowns. mrs. thompson, who is stouter than the new styles require, tried on a princess gown in a department store. the gown itself was beautiful, but it was most unbecoming and did not fit at all, tho it was the right size for her. mrs. thompson was about to give up in despair saying, "i can't wear the new styles"--when a saleswoman suggested that she be fitted with a diana corset in the model made for stout figures. the result was that the princess gown took the lines of the corset and fitted mrs. thompson perfectly. in fact the original lines of the gown were brought out to better advantage. this only goes to prove that with a good corset any gown will drape right and take the lines of the corset. you'll find it easy to wear the new long straight style gowns if you wear a diana corset in the model made for your style of figure. the dianas are made after the same models as the most expensive french corsets costing $ to $ . yet $ to $ buys a diana. the diana is not heavy and uncomfortable as so many of the new corsets are this year. the fabrics from which they are made are light and comfortable. at the same time, so closely meshed and firmly woven that with reasonable wear every diana corset is guaranteed to keep its good shape and style or you will receive a new corset without charge. the diana dealer, whose card is enclosed, invites you to call and see these new corsets. will you go in to see the diana today? very truly yours, [signature: grace la fountain] * * * * * the letter is in a chatty style that assures its being read. it does not say, "we have just the corset for you stout women"--but that is what it means. it interests and appeals especially to the stout women without reminding them offensively that they are too heavy to wear the styles in vogue. the national cloak company has studied the methods that take firm hold on the women and finds it necessary to bear down heavily on the guarantee of satisfaction. many women are inclined to be skeptical and hesitate long before sending money to an unknown house. so the national uses a guarantee tag insuring customers against dissatisfaction, sending these tags out with the goods. it assures the return of money if the order is not all right in every way and further agrees to pay all the express charges. free reference is made to this tag in the company's letters and it gives a certain concreteness to the guarantee feature. this tag makes its own argument, proves its own case. business men generally take it for granted that satisfaction goes with the goods; their experience enables them to size up a proposition quickly and if there is any flaw in the advertisements or the company's methods, they pass it by. but women, not so familiar with business affairs, must be approached from a different angle. little points must be explained and guarantees must be strongly emphasized. the formal letter which appeals to a man by going straight to the point would, by its very conciseness, offend the vanity of a woman. the successful correspondent never overlooks the susceptibility of a woman to flattery--but it must be the suggestion of flattery, the implied compliment, rather than the too obvious compliment. "the handsomest gown money will buy can't make you look well unless your corset is the correct shape." * * * * * this is the opening sentence in a letter advertising a particular corset. the lady is gracefully complimented by the intimation that she wears handsome gowns, yet there is not the slightest suggestion that the reference was dragged in as a part of the selling scheme. instead of insinuating that she must buy cheaply, let it be hinted that she is actuated by the very laudable motive of economy. "you would scarcely believe that such delicious coffee could be sold at cents--unless you happen to know that the flavor of coffee depends largely upon the blending." here the low price is emphasized but there is no hint of forced economy; rather it suggests that the best quality can be obtained without paying a high price. "you can offer your most particular guest a cup of regal coffee and know she has never tasted a more delicious flavor and fragrance." * * * * * this is the beginning of a letter that successfully introduced a new coffee. here is a tactful compliment--the taking for granted that the recipient entertains guests of some importance--guests who are particular and will notice her coffee. there are few things that the average woman is more concerned about than that her guests will be pleased with her refreshments. the suggestion that she herself would enjoy or even that her family would enjoy this coffee does not make such direct appeal to a woman as this assurance that it will please her particular guests. the house that uses the same kind of letter on men and women will never score such big results as the firm that understands the different processes of thinking and the different methods of making the appeal. with the man it is reason, logic, argument; with the woman it is suggestion, flattery, persuasion. the correspondent who aims to establish a large mail-order trade with women must study their whims, their prejudices, their weaknesses and their characteristics before he can make an appeal that brings in the orders and makes permanent customers of trial buyers. it is the little things--this subtle insight into feminine nature that marks the successful selling letter to the woman. they are not things that can be set down and numbered in a text book; they are qualities of mind that must be understood and delicately handled. rightly used they are more powerful than irrefutable arguments and indisputable facts. how to write letters that _appeal_ to men part vi--the appeal to different classes--chapter _one-half of the form letters sent out to men are thrown away unread. a bare_ one-third _are partly read before discarded, while only_ one-sixth _of them--approximately per cent--are read through. the reason why such a large proportion is ineffective is this: the letter-writer, through ignorance or carelessness, does not strike the notes that appeal to every man. here are some of the subtle ways by which correspondents have forced the attention of_ men _by appealing to traits distinctly masculine_ * * * * * if you received a dozen letters in your mail this morning it is probable that there were just twelve different angles to the appeals that were made. for most correspondents are not thinking about the man they are writing to but are concerned solely with thoughts about the propositions they have in hand--and that is why the great bulk of the letters that are opened in the morning pause at the desk only momentarily before continuing their way to the furnace room. it is the exceptional correspondent who stops to analyze his letters, looking at them from every viewpoint, and then tests out his conclusions, trying one appeal after another until he evolves certain principles that pull letter writing out of the class of uncertainties and enable him to depend upon definite returns. for there are appeals that are practically universal. appeal to a man's ambition and you have his interest: larger income, better position, some honor or recognition--touch these and no matter how busy, he will find time to read your message. you've got to have more money. your salary, without income, is not enough. the man who depends upon _salary alone_ to make him rich--well-to-do--or even comfortable, is making the mistake of his life. for the minute you stop working, the money stops coming in. lose a day and you lose a day's pay--while expenses go right on. don't you think it's time you got nature to work for you? a dollar put into a peach orchard will work for you days, nights and sundays. it never stops to sleep or eat but keeps on growing--growing-- _from the very minute you put your money in_. think of the difference between a dollar invested with us and increasing and yielding day by day and the dollar which you use to purchase a few moments idle diversion or pleasure. the latter is lost forever--the dollar put to earning with us earns forever. * * * * * "more money." that appeal strikes home. one glance at the letter and a man is interested. he may not have money to invest but the other letters will remain unopened until he finds out whether there is not some plan or scheme that will actually mean more money to him. the correspondence schools recognized the force of this appeal and developed it so systematically that it might be called the standard correspondence school argument. here is one of the best pulling arguments: pay-day--what does it mean to you? does your money "go 'round?" or does it fail to stop all the gaps made by last week's or month's bills? last week--according to actual, certified reports on file in our office--a. b. c. men got their salary raised as a direct result of becoming more proficient from studying a. b. c. courses. don't you think it's time that salary raise was coming _your way_? * * * * * the same product--a correspondence course--may use the line of appeal peculiarly appropriate to men--that of responsibility. such a letter leads out: if your expenses were doubled tomorrow could you meet them--without running heavily in debt? if you had to have more money on which to live--to support those dependent upon you--could you make it? you could if you had the training afforded by our course; it has doubled other men's salaries, it can do the same for you. * * * * * next to the appeal to ambition in strength is this appeal to responsibility. this is the burden of the arguments used by insurance companies, savings banks and various investment companies. an insurance company marketing a particularly strong investment policy, and which follows the plan of writing to the prospect direct from the home office, finds that such a letter as this pulls: our agent, mr. blank, no doubt has presented to you a majority of the many advantages of a ---- policy in the ----. but we want you to have in writing, and signed by an officer of the company, what we regard as _the_ main reason you should be with us. no civilized man can evade responsibility. should anything happen to you, you are responsible for that loss--to your business--your family--your friends. is your responsibility great enough--without the protection of the regal company--to "make good" your own loss? * * * * * but the kind of appeal to make is only one phase of the problem. of equal importance is the manner of making that appeal. on first glance it would be thought that the products which appeal specifically and exclusively to men would be marketed by talking points which have specifically and exclusively the masculine appeal. but such is not the case. men's clothes, as an instance, are marketed on the talking points, "need for suitable dress," "quality," "style," and similar arguments. these arguments are not the ones appealing merely to men; women are just as much interested in need of suitable dress and the quality and style of the garment worn as are the members of the opposite sex. but the general talking point may be extended, or rather restricted, so as to make an appeal to men along the lines of their exclusive experience: clothes are the outward index of the inner man. the business man who dresses so as to show his inherent neatness and orderliness has just that much advantage over his less careful competitors. the employee who meets the responsibilities and niceties of good business dress shows to his sharp-eyed employer that he is a man who is liable to meet the niceties and responsibilities of a better position. more than once has both business and advancement hinged on appearance. and good appearance never handicaps--never holds a man back. * * * * * how different arguments appeal to men price _foremost_ sentiment _useless_ style _slight_ quality _important_ flattery _doubtful_ exclusiveness _seldom_ testimonials _effective_ reputation _reassuring_ service _essential_ * * * * * this presentation is good "man copy" for it is based on that universal attribute--the desire to "get on" in business and as an employee. this letter has the right kind of appeal, rightly presented. compare that letter with the one sent out by a tailor to the professional men of his city: dear sir: i hope you will excuse the liberty i am taking in addressing you personally, but as it is on a matter that affects you very much and also your profession, i hope you will overlook the familiarity. as a physician you realize the importance of having good clothes and also of having them kept in good order, both from a social as well as a professional standpoint. being situated in your immediate neighborhood and having my store open a greater part of the day, i am sure the proximity will be a great convenience to you. i have had twenty-seven years' experience in making clothes and cleaning, pressing and repairing them. i do not think you need question my ability to do your work satisfactorily as i have made clothes for some of the most fastidious and aristocratic people in the world. sixteen years in london, england, making clothes for lords, dukes and other titled people should entitle me to your consideration. perhaps you may have some lady friends who need garments remodelled, cleaned, pressed or repaired, who would be glad to know of my shop. i assure you i will attend to all orders promptly and do your work as you want it. yours very truly. [signature: m. b. andrews] * * * * * _this letter begins with an apology and there is no inducement to patronize the tailor except his unbacked assertion that he made clothes for "titled people" for sixteen years_ * * * * * he starts out with an apology and his sentences are involved. his boast about the work he has done for titled nobility abroad indicates that he is a snob--the whole letter lacks conviction. sometimes a man-to-man appeal may have the heart interest that strikes a responsive chord. dear mr. smith: [sidenote: a statement that every man agrees with. good description.] an extra pair of dressy, well-made trousers is something every man can use--no matter how many suits he has. here is an opportunity to get a pair at exceedingly moderate cost. [sidenote: effective method of dealing with a real bargain.] you know how we make trousers--what substantial, well-selected patterns we carry; how carefully we cut, so as to get perfect fit in the crotch and around the waist; how we whip in a piece of silk around the upper edge of the waist; put in a strip to protect against wear at the front and back of the leg at the bottom; and sew on buttons so that they won't pull off. [sidenote: sending of samples greatly increases power of letter.] our season is winding up with a lot of patterns on hand containing just enough for one pair or two pairs of "burnham-made" trousers. see the enclosed sample. there's a good variety in dark patterns and a few light patterns, not a one sold regularly at less than $ . and some sold as high as $ . . [sidenote: this consideration for the old customer is sure to have a good effect.] these remnants won't go into the windows until saturday morning. we are notifying you, as a regular customer, that as long as these remnants last you can get a pair of trousers from any piece for $ . , or two pairs at the same time from the same measure for $ --workmanship just the same as if you paid the regular price. [sidenote: the last half of the closing sentence has much subtle power.] this is a real bargain, and we hope to see you before the best of the patterns are picked out. truly yours, the burnham company * * * * * _here is a letter sent out by a rival tailor. it grips attention in the first sentence and carries conviction. it prompts immediate action and every sentence carries an appeal. unlike the preceding letter, it does not talk about the writer but about the goods he has for sale--the bargains he offers_ * * * * * the manager and owner of a business which was in immediate need of money had tried out different sales letters with but fair success. his product sold to men; it would stand up under trial; the difficulty lay entirely in awakening interest in a highly competitive product. as there seemed scarcely a chance that the business might be made to live, the manager decided to take the public into his confidence--partly, perhaps, as extenuation for the failure he saw ahead. so he led out with a sales letter beginning with this appeal: suppose you had put every cent of money--every bit of your wide experience--every ounce of energy--into a business wouldn't you want to see it go--live? and if you _knew_--positively _knew_--that you had the test product of its kind in the world--wouldn't it spur you to still greater efforts--if you knew that there was danger of failure simply because the public was not prompt enough in responding? you, like hundreds and thousands of others, have had it in mind to buy of me _sometime_. it is vital to the life of my business that you make that _sometime_ now! * * * * * the pulling power of this letter was phenomenal; not only did thirty-five per cent of the list order, but twelve per cent in addition answered, stating that their orders could be depended upon later. in addition, there were scattering letters of encouragement and comment, making the total result a marker in the era of solicitation by mail. what made this particular letter pull, when dozens of other letters, written by the same man to the same list on the same proposition, had attained only mediocre results? the last letter made a distinctive appeal--to men--and particularly to men in business. for, since the time of "playing store," every man has met, in its many varied guises, the wolf of failure--and once a fellow business man is in the same plight, the man who loves fairness will do his part to help out. that these talking points that appeal to men are efficient is proved by such cases as just cited; once the man-to-man appeal is actually brought out, the response is immediate. while such appeals occasionally make a ten-strike, the average correspondent must rely upon logic and "reasons why" in making his appeal to men. the ability to reason from cause to effect, omitting none of the intermediate or connecting steps, has long been held to be a substantial part of the masculine mind. orators have found that logic--conviction--may have little or no effect on a feminine audience and yet prove the surest means of convincing an audience of men. school teachers early note that the feminine portion of the school lean towards grammar--which is imitative and illogical--while the boys are generally best in mathematics, which is a hard and fast "rule" study. similarly in business, the average man is used to "working with his pencil," and will follow a logical demonstration to the close, where a woman would not give it a passing glance. one of the latest selling campaigns, marketing town lots in various new towns between st. paul and the pacific coast, appeals to the logical note in the masculine mind, and grants a concession in a follow-up, even before it is asked for. this makes a particularly strong appeal to the man who has begun to think about the proposition and who senses that, somehow, it is not quite logical. we have a letter from a man who, like you, read our advertisement and sent for more information, including a copy of our contract, and he wrote as follows: "i don't like the forfeiture clause in your contract. under it, if a man paid you $ , and then lost his job and couldn't pay any more, you would have the right to gobble up all of his money and keep the lots too. you wouldn't dare to make a contract with me under which as soon as i had paid you $ you would deed to me the first lot mentioned in my contract--the lot at -----,--and then with each $ paid in on the contract, deed me the next lot named in my contract. if you would do this, i would take your contract in a minute, because i would have some land for my money i paid in, if i had to quit before i paid you the full $ , ." we took this man at his word, and have since thought that possibly there were others who regarded our contract as being too severe. if this was the reason that you did not invest with us, we ask you to examine the enclosed proof sheet, from the printer, of our new contract, and write us not only if it suits you, but if you can think of any other way to make it any more fair and equitable. * * * * * the illustration given is particularly good because it is anticipatory--nips an objection that may be just forming in the mind of the prospect. dear sir: we sent you a sample of our royal mixture tobacco in response to your request some time ago. we are anxious to know what you think about it. this is the best tobacco on the market today at the price, and as we know you would not have asked for a free sample unless you intended to buy more if you liked the sample, we hope to receive your order by return mail. very truly, [signature: morton and morton] * * * * * _a flat, insipid letter entirely without order-pulling force. the attempt to, twist the request for a free sample into an obligation to place an order strokes a man's intentions the wrong way_ * * * * * dear sir: well, how did you find the tobacco? i'm anxious to learn your opinion of boyal mixture, now that you've burned a bit of it in your pipe. i believe in this tobacco, and back it up with a guarantee that removes all risk so far as the customer is concerned. i refund money without argument if you are not satisfied. royal mixture is not intended for smokers who are satisfied with any old stuff that will burn and give off smoke. it is used by people who want nothing but the best and know it when they get it. it's the perfection of pipe tobacco. men who smoke my mixture for a month can't come down to common mixtures again. it spoils the taste for cheap tobacco. smoke a dozen pipes of it and you'll wonder how you ever got any comfort out of ordinary smoking tobacco. royal mixture is skillfully blended from clean, ripe leaves of the very best tobacco grown. it is neither too strong nor too mild--it is precisely what a knowing pipe smoker likes: fragrant, satisfying, delightful to nerves, nostrils and palate. there's a glorious, natural aroma about royal mixture which appeals to a gentleman's nostrils most favorably. particular pipe smokers praise it in the highest terms, and prove the sincerity of their praise by ordering it from month to month. shall i number you among the "regulars?" remember, you can't buy royal mixture from the retail shops. it goes direct from packer to purchaser and reaches you in perfect condition. the cost is so small, and as you take not a particle of risk but can secure full refund of money if dissatisfied, why hesitate to order? the responsibility is entirely upon me. every day you delay ordering means a distinct loss to you of greater pipe pleasure than you have ever experienced. won't you sit down now, while the matter is right before you, fill enclosed blank and mail me your order today--this minute? yours very truly, [signature: l. w. hamilton] * * * * * _here is the letter rewritten, explaining why this tobacco is superior. the appeal is cleverly worded to flatter the recipient into believing he is one of those who know and demand something a little better than common. the cost is kept in the background by the guarantee of satisfaction and the clincher prompts immediate action_ * * * * * appeals to men can be peppered with technical description and still interest and get results. the sales manager of a house selling cameras by mail says, in speaking of this principle: "we found it necessary to use an entirely different series of letters in selling our cameras to men and to women. generally speaking, men are interested in technical descriptions of the parts of the camera; women look at a camera from the esthetic side--as a means to an end. "in writing a sales letter to a man, i take up, for instance, the lens. this i describe in semi-technical terms, stating why this particular lens or combination of lenses will do the best work. then follows a description of the shutter--and so on through the principal parts until, if the prospect be seriously interested, i have demonstrated, first, that the camera will do the best work, and, second, that it is good value for the money. "in writing a letter, under the same conditions, to a woman, i put all technical description in an enclosure or accompanying folder and write a personal note playing up the fact that in after years it will be very pleasant to have pictures of self, family, baby, and friends. "these two appeals are the opposite poles of selling--the one logic and conviction, the other sentiment and persuasion." logic and conviction, in fact, are the keynotes to selling men by mail. men fear being "worked." on those occasions when they have been "worked," it has generally been through sentiment--through the arts of persuasion rather than a clearly-demonstrated conviction that the proposition was right. as a consequence, persuasion alone, without a mass of figures and solid arguments, does not convince a man. a land company uses a novel method of conviction along this line, aiming to get the prospect to furnish his own figures. the idea is, that these figures, prepared by the prospect himself, and the accuracy of which he himself vouches, will work conviction. the letter reads in part: suppose, ten years ago, you had paid down, say $ on a piece of cheap land. then from time to time you had paid in say $ per month on the same land. had you been able to buy then as you can buy from us now, your land would have been secured to you on your first payment. now figure out what you would have paid in at $ per month in ten years. now, remembering that well-selected land doubles in value once, at least, every five years, what would you be worth now, from your $ -a-month investment? * * * * * the letter proved the best puller of a series of try-outs sent to professional men and men on salaries. every man has, as a by-product of his every-day experience, certain more or less clearly defined impressions. with some men these are still in a sort of hazy formation; with others these vague ideas are almost a cult. the letter-writer who can tap one of these lines of thought gets results in a flash. such letter takes a basis of facts common to most men, blends them in the letter written, so as to form fixedly from the _prospect's own ideas and experiences_, a firm conviction that what the writer is saying is absolute truth. a single sentence that does not ring true to a man's experience is an obstacle over which the message will not carry. a company selling land in the west, sent out a five-page letter-- enough to smother whatever interest might have been attracted by the advertisement. here is the third paragraph from the letter: "as you were attracted by this investment opportunity after reading the straight facts regarding it, i have come to believe in your judgment as a careful and prudent person who recognizes the value of a good, permanent, promising investment." * * * * * that's enough! it is barely possible that the first few paragraphs might arouse the reader's interest enough to glance through the five pages, but this crude attempt to flatter him is such palpable "bunk" that he is convinced there is not the sincerity back of the letter to make it worth his while--and five pages more are headed for the car-wheel plant. the "man appeal" is one that draws strongly from man experience. ambition, responsibility, logical arguments, reasons why--these are the things that the correspondent keeps constantly before him. they all have root in experiences, habits of thought and customs which distinguish men; they are more exclusively masculine attributes that play an important part in the make-up of letters that rivet the attention of busy business men. how to write letters that _appeal_ to farmers part vi--the appeal to different classes--chapter _the farmer is a producer of necessities, hence he is a shrewd judge of what necessities are. more, he has always in mind a list of necessities that he intends to purchase--when he "can afford it." for this reason the letter that sells goods to him must either stimulate him to an immediate purchase of an article on his "want list," or to displace a necessity that is already there with something_ more _necessary. so the letter that sells goods to him must appeal to his needs--and give him detailed specifications to think about_ * * * * * "does it appeal to the farmer's need," is the overhead question which is back of all advertising directed at the man living on a farm. it is not necessary to go into proofs; the reasons are apparent. "all other things being equal," says the chief correspondent for one of the big mail-order houses, "the surest sale is the item that the farmer patron feels he must have. even after making money enough to be classed well-to-do, the farmer persists in his acquired mental habit--he tests every 'offer' put up to him by his need for it--or rather whether he can get along without it. this predisposition on the part of the audience to which the letter is addressed is to be borne in mind constantly--that the farmer thinks in terms of necessities." so the mail-order firm shapes its appeal to the farmer, emphasizing the need of the merchandise it is offering, and at the same time it bears down heavily on the advantages of buying direct. and while the easiest way to reach the farmer's purse is by appealing to his needs--the practical value of the article or goods advertised--the correspondent must keep constantly in mind the particular manner in which the appeal can best be made. the brief, concise statement that wins the approval of the busy business man would slide off the farmer's mind without arousing the slightest interest. the farmer has more time to think over a proposition--as he milks or hitches up, as he plows or drives to town, there is opportunity to turn a plan over and over in his mind. give him plenty to think about. the farmer's mail is not so heavy but what he has time to read a long letter if it interests him, and so the successful correspondent fills two or three pages, sometimes five or six, and gives the recipient arguments and reasons to ponder over during his long hours in the field. one of the most successful men in the mail-order business sometimes sends out a seven-page letter, filled with talking points. "it will save you money"--"i want you to compare the challenge with other machines"--"shafting of high carbon steel"--"gearings set in phosphorus bronze bushings"--"thirty days' free trial"--"try it with your money in your own pocket"--"$ , guaranty bond"--point after point like these are brought out and frequently repeated for emphasis. the head of the english department in the university would be pained at the lack of literary quality, but it is a farmer's letter and it follows the grooves of the brain in the man who is going to read its seven pages. and after all, the writer is not conducting a correspondence course in rhetoric; he is selling implements and is not going to chance losing an order because his proposition is not made perfectly clear--because it shoots over the head of the reader. and the correspondent not only tries to make his proposition clear but he tries to get up close to the recipient in a friendly way. the farmer is awed by formalities and so the writer who really appeals to him talks about "you and me." "you do that and i will do this-- then we will both be satisfied." one successful letter-salesman seldom fails to ask some direct question about the weather, the crops, the general outlook, but he knows how to put it so that it does not sound perfunctory and frequently the farmer will reply to this question without even referring to the goods that the house had written about. never mind! this letter is answered as promptly and carefully as if it had been an inquiry forecasting a large order. * * * * * how different arguments appeal to farmers price _paramount_ quality _essential_ style _unimportant_ sentiment _lacking_ flattery _useless_ exclusiveness _ineffective_ testimonials _reassuring_ reputation _valuable_ utility _vital_ service _appreciated_ * * * * * such attention helps to win the confidence of the farmer and the knowing correspondent never loses sight of the fact that the farmer is, from bitter experience, suspicious especially of propositions emanating from concerns that are new to him. after one or two satisfactory dealings with a house he places absolute faith in it but every legitimate mail-order concern is handicapped by the fact that unscrupulous firms are continually lying in wait for the unwary: the man with the county rights for a patent churn and his brother who leaves a fanning mill with a farmer to demonstrate and takes a receipt which turns up at the bank as a promissory note are teaching the farmers to be guarded. many of them can spot a gold brick scheme as soon as it is presented. therefore the correspondent has to keep before him the fact that the farmer is always wary; his letters must be so worded that no obscure phrase will arouse suspicion; no proposition will admit of two interpretations. so the guarantee and the free trial offer are essential features in letters that sell the farmer. in hundreds of letters from manufacturers of goods that are sold by mail to the farmer, nearly every one throws into prominence the guarantee and the free trial offer with money refunded if the purchase does not prove satisfactory. a manufacturer of farm implements puts this guarantee into the first person effectively. such a letter carries conviction; you are impressed by the fact that , farmers consider this spreader the best; the offer of comparison and demonstration seems conclusive that a comparison is not necessary; you feel that the man who bought a different kind of spreader must have acted hastily without investigating the merits of this particular machine. the farmer is usually open to conviction but he has to be "shown." after he has had successful dealings with a house for several years he readily accepts its assurance that something is just as good at a less price than what he would buy of a retailer, but he can most easily be won over by strong "why" copy. an educational campaign is almost always necessary for the farmer who has never bought goods by mail; to pull him out of the rut of established custom it is necessary to present facts and figures to convince him that the direct-to-the-consumer method is to his advantage. to get this to the eye and mind in a striking way is the first requisite. a cincinnati firm selling buggies uses a comparative table at the bottom of the first sheet of the first follow-up, as follows: * * * * * cost of retail plan cost of our plan actual factory cost of buggy.. $ . factory cost..... $ . factory selling expense....... . selling expense.. . salesmen's expense............ . our profit....... . factory profit................ . our selling ----- retailer's selling expense.... . price............ $ . retailer's profit............. . ----- dealer's selling price $ . * * * * * this makes the prospect stop and think if not stop and figure. another carriage manufacturing company uses a somewhat similar method of comparison but introduces it at a different point. between the first and second pages of a three-page follow-up, a sheet in facsimile handwriting is introduced forming a marked comparison, mechanically, to the typewriting preceding and following it: * * * * * * problems of dollars and cents saving easily solved. retail dealer's plan of figuring selling price. actual factory cost of buggy.................... $ . expense and salary, traveling salesman, about % . jobber's profit--at least % .................. . retail dealer's profit (figured very low)....... . losses from bad debts........................... . ----- retail dealer's selling price................... $ . my plan of figuring selling price. actual factory cost of buggy.................... $ . expense and salary of traveling salesman........ nothing jobber's profit................................. nothing retail dealer's profit.......................... nothing losses from bad debts........................... nothing my _one small gross_ profit................ . ----- my selling price................................ $ . * * * * * this "saving sheet" can not fail to attract greater attention by means of its form and place of introduction than though it were typewritten and in regular order. right-out-from-the-shoulder arguments and facts may also be used to good advantage in handling competition. what the farmer wants is to know whether the other goods are as represented; whether the proposition has any holes in it. if the seller can give him facts that prove his product better than others, honestly and fairly, it does not boost the competitor but helps to sell his own goods. a cream separator manufacturer claiming a simple machine now presents in his catalogue illustrations of the parts of other machines used in the actual separation of the cream from the milk. this comparison shows that his machine has fewer parts and consequently will stay in repair longer and clean easier--two important talking points. where a competing firm enters the field with a cheap quality of goods that would react against the trade, it is sometimes policy to put the facts before the prospective buyers. this was done by a winnipeg manufacturer of metal culverts after the following plan: "last may a firm manufacturing metal goods attempted to enter the culvert field in western canada. we sent out a letter to every councilor in manitoba and saskatchewan showing the weakness of its culverts. it looks as though our letter settled all chance of selling the kind of culvert it was making, for it immediately quit the campaign for business. we do not think a single culvert was sold. "the same company is again making an effort to enter the field, and we would be pleased to see it get a nice business if it sold a good culvert, but as long as it sells anything like the one now advertised we shall most vigorously oppose it because we are certain the culverts will not give satisfaction, and that will mean purchasers will be very much disappointed, and will have a tendency, as a result, to be opposed to all metal culverts; their disappointment will be so great that it will react against our company. "look at the illustration in the magazines of the nestable culvert--a man is pinching the metal on the lower section of the culvert back upon itself. there are very few machine shops in the country in which the heavy metal we use could be bent. at any rate, to bend back our metal, you would require a machine shop wherever you were doing your road work. take a sledge hammer the next time you see one of our culverts and prove to yourself the task that would be before you to bend our culverts. you simply could not do it." * * * * * the farmer who receives such a letter, if not entirely convinced, is at least reasonably certain to make an investigation before placing an order with the firm selling culverts that can be bent by hand. and it is probably a good thing for the mail-order business that such efforts are being made to protect the public against inferior goods. experience has shown that while offers to the farmer must be clear cut, the chances of pulling an order are increased if he is given a number of options as to price, plan of payment and different kinds of items open to purchase. he does not like to be restricted to one particular item, or one arbitrary form of payment. this fact was long ago recognized by the large catalogue houses, for they aim to offer several kinds and sizes under every item listed. it has been found that where both the number of items and options in a line is doubled or otherwise substantially increased, that the percentage of sales immediately increases. a company in canton, ohio, putting out a line of sprayers, offers on the back of its order sheet four sprayers of different prices and four forms of making payment for each sprayer. this gives the prospect sixteen options--one of which will look best to him, when he sends in his order. this information is printed on the back of the order sheet, where it can not get separated from it and where it will have a "last appeal." the mail-order houses have been vieing with each other in trying to find unique appeals to the farmer. to this end profit-sharing plans and various premium schemes have been introduced, in some cases with phenomenal results. while the farmer is no different from the ordinary public in wanting to get his money's worth he is open to conviction through smaller devices than is his city brother. and the "novelty device" appeals to him strongly. an ohio company putting out buggies as a main product, adds an insurance policy as a clincher. the purchaser is himself insured for one hundred dollars payable to his heirs in case of his death; the buggy carries an indemnity--not to exceed fifty dollars--covering accidents along the line of breakage or damage in accidents or smash-ups. this insurance, under the policy given, is kept in force a year. this extra not only acts as a sales argument but a basis for a talk like this: "the s. & w. pleasure vehicles have been tested by insurance company officials. they have been proved practically unbreakable, the material and durability surprising the insurance officials. insurance is not issued on sickly persons, weak buildings nor on inferior vehicles. it is because our vehicles are so well made that insurance is permitted." * * * * * this makes a convincing talking point, particularly to the man who is not familiar with accident indemnity, and to the young man who is about to buy a "rig" in which he may attempt to demonstrate that no other man can pass him on the road. when it comes to framing up a campaign there are many points, minor in themselves, but each having its significance, that it is well to consider. it frequently happens that not enough attention is paid to the stationery that is used for farmers, but all these things have their influence in prejudicing the recipient for or against a new house. "it is a good rule in writing the farmer to diversify your stationery," says a mail-order man who has sold a wide range of specialties. "the reason for this lies in the fact that when a farmer has been drummed about so much he may grow resentful at the persistence. we aim, not only to present the proposition very differently each time, but we use different size envelopes, different letterheads and markedly different enclosures in each follow-up. "particularly along rural routes, where the men folks are in the field when the carrier comes, i aim to change envelopes and letterheads. i never want the housewife to be able to say to the man of the house when he asks what mail came, that 'there's another letter from the firm that's trying to sell you a cream separator'." to make ordering easier and to get the farmer to "act now" a coupon or an enclosed postal card, good for a limited number of days is widely used. this makes it easier to send for catalogue or a free trial or whatever is advertised. it is a spur to action and results in adding to the mailing list, names of many persons who might never respond if they had to wait until they found pen or pencil and paper--and a convenient opportunity. a rebate check is another popular scheme for inducing the customer to order. an old mail-order house calls attention in the first form letter sent out with a catalogue to the fact that accompanying it is a check for one dollar to apply on the first order. this order is made out in the form of a personal check, filled in with the prospect's name. it is, to all intents and purposes, a personal check, only payable in goods instead of cash. similar use of the check method of exciting interest is also used by a detroit incubator manufacturer, who finds that many who have resisted other appeals answer to the chance to convert a check into a saving. this same firm also adds as a clincher an offer to pay the freight on certain lines of goods, so that the catalogue price becomes actual cost instead of cost plus freight charges. such inducements come home to the farmer; anything on the "something-for-nothing" order appeals to him. aside from the nature of the proposition and the way it is presented, there is the all-important element of seasonableness. the man who has always lived in the city might understand the general principles of mail-order selling and have a good proposition, but his success would be indifferent unless he understood the meaning of timeliness in reaching the farmer. if your letter or advertisement catches the eye of the farmer he will in all probability put it away in the shoe box back of the chimney until ready to buy; it would be almost impossible to train enough guns on him during the rush season to force his interest. it is a common experience with mail-order houses to receive replies to letters or advertisements six months or a year after they are sent out--sometimes years afterwards. the message was timely; it wormed its way into the farmer's "mental want list" and blossomed forth when he felt that he could afford the article. only a carefully kept record-of-returns sheet or book will show when sales can best be made on a particular item, and the shrewd manager will test out different items at different seasons before launching a big campaign which may be ill-timed. "the winter months are the best time for comprehensive information to soak in--but the letter generally is not the place for this. put personality in the letter--specifications in the circular." this is the advice of an experienced correspondent whose length of service enables him to speak authoritatively. "a winter letter may be long, verbose and full of interesting information; the farmer will read it carefully. this is the time to get in specifications, estimates, complicated diagrams and long arguments which require study. letters for the work months need to be short and snappy, both to insure reading and to act on a tired mind." and then finally the proposition must be made so plain that there is no possibility of its being misinterpreted. what a city man who is a wide reader gets at a glance, the ordinary farm owner or farmer's boy--often with only a rudimentary knowledge of english--must study over. "so needful is the observance of this principle in our business," says this manager, "that our sales letters have come to be almost a formula. first we state our proposition. we then proceed to take up each element of the offer and make it as plain and plausible as possible." in this case the elements are: . the thing offered. . time of trial. . freight paid. . return privilege. "all the letter is a plain exposition of , , , --the preceding paragraphs are summarized and connected. for instance, after the item offered has been treated and the length of trial made clear, the two are summarized thus: "the _separator_ we offer is not only the best that money can buy but it is _just what you need_--no wonder we are willing to give you days in which to try it. "but what about freight?" "just this." * * * * * "then we explain freight paid and return privilege. this gives a continuous and increasing summary straight through the letter, which closes with a recapitulation of the proposition. "the aim of putting several summaries of the proposition in all sales matter is so that there can be no possible mistake about the proposition, for thousands of propositions are turned down by people on farms simply because the reader does not quite understand everything." the farmer is in constant dread of "being caught" and there is little likelihood of his taking advantage of any offer that is not absolutely clear in his mind. the letter writer must realize what a point this is with the average farmer. what a city man does he can keep to himself; if he buys a gold brick he gets rid of it and forgets the transaction just as quickly as possible. but what the farmer does is neighborhood gossip. if one of those "slick city fellers" sells him something he can't use, every one knows it. make the proposition clear--so clear that every one in the family can understand it, for usually purchases are talked over for days before an order is finally sent out. take into account the farmer's suspicious nature and bear down heavily on the utility of the article. there is no hidden mystery in reaching the rural prospects but they must be handled with discretion and with an understanding of the prejudices, characteristics and viewpoints of the farmer. * * * * * transcriber's note: the original publication has been replicated faithfully except as shown in the list of changes at the end of the text. words in italics are indicated like _this_. text emphasized with bold characters or other treatment is shown like =this=. * * * * * [illustration: modern business] forging ahead in business [illustration: modern business] alexander hamilton institute astor place new york city _canadian address, c. p. r. bldg., toronto._ _australian address, a castlereagh street, sydney._ copyright, , by alexander hamilton institute contents page foreword--the law of success chapter i the modern business course and service ii the danger of specializing too early iii pushing beyond the half-way mark iv a personal problem v the question before you vi descriptive outline of the course vii advisory council, lecturers and staff advertisements organization of the alexander hamilton institute _advisory council_ joseph french johnson, d.c.s., ll.d. dean, new york university school of commerce, accounts and finance frank a. vanderlip, a.m., ll.d. financier t. coleman dupont, d.c.s. business executive john hays hammond, d.sc., ll.d. consulting engineer jeremiah w. jenks, ph.d., ll.d. research professor of government and public administration, new york university _special lecturers_ erastus w. bulkley, member of the firm, spencer trask and company herbert s. collins, vice-president, united cigar stores company henry m. edwards, auditor, new york edison company harrington emerson, efficiency engineer charles ernest forsdick, controller, union oil company orlando c. harn, chairman of sales, national lead company a. barton hepburn, chairman, advisory board, chase national bank, new york frederic h. hurdman, certified public accountant lawrence m. jacobs, vice-president, international banking corporation jackson johnson, chairman, international shoe company, st. louis fowler manning, director of sales, diamond match company finley h. mcadow, past president, national association of credit men general charles miller, former chairman of the board, galena-signal oil company melville w. mix, president, dodge manufacturing company emmett h. naylor, secretary-treasurer, writing paper manufacturers' association holbrook f. j. porter, consulting engineer welding ring, exporter arthur w. thompson, president, the philadelphia company of pittsburgh frederick s. todman, general manager, hirsch, lillienthal & company john c. traphagen, treasurer, mercantile trust and deposit company of new york john wanamaker, merchant walter n. whitney, vice-president, continental grocery stores, inc. _authors, collaborators and staff members_ albert w. atwood, a.b., the stock and produce exchange bruce barton, general publicity dwight e. beebe, b.l., collections ralph starr butler, a.b., marketing and merchandising geoffrey s. childs, b.c.s., office methods edwin j. clapp, ph.d., transportation and terminal facilities raymond j. comyns, b.c.s., personal salesmanship herbert f. debower, ll.b., business promotion roland p. falkner, ph.d., business statistics major b. foster, m.a., banking principles charles w. gerstenberg, ph.b., ll.b., finance leo greendlinger, m.c.s., c.p.a. (n. y.), financial and business statements j. anton dehaas, ph.d., foreign trade and shipping john hays hammond, consulting engineer edward r. hardy, ph.b., fire insurance warren f. hickernell, ph.d., business conditions solomon s. huebner, ph.d., marine insurance charles w. hurd, business correspondence jeremiah w. jenks, ph.d., ll.d., relation of government to business joseph french johnson, d.c.s., ll.d., economic problems; business ethics walter s. johnson, b.a., b.c.l., commercial law edward d. jones, ph.d., investments john g. jones, sales management dexter s. kimball, a.b., m.e., cost finding; factory management bernard lichtenberg, m.c.s., advertising principles frank l. mcvey, ph.d., ll.d., economics john t. madden, b.c.s., c.p.a. (n. y.), accounting practice mac martin, advertising campaigns g. f. michelbacher, m.s., compensation and liability insurance t. vassar morton, litt.b., credit practice bruce d. mudgett, ph.d., life insurance e. l. stewart patterson, domestic and foreign exchange frederic e. reeve, c.p.a., accounting principles jesse h. riddle, m.a., banking frederick c. russell, b.c.s., auditing bernard k. sandwell, b.a., international finance william w. swanson, ph.d., money and banking john b. swinney, a.b., merchandising william h. walker, ll.d., corporation finance the law of success during the winter of a slim, studious young man was working as assistant foreman in a greasy little machine shop at aurora, illinois. he was saving money with a view to spending the next year at the state university, and he was devoting every minute of his spare time to thought and reading. he was not making much of a stir in the world, and only a few of his close friends ever gave a second thought to his ambitions or prospects. one of these friends was a newspaper reporter, a recent harvard graduate. he, too, was interested in study, especially of financial questions, and he found it a pleasure to guide the reading of the young foreman. many an evening the two friends spent in the discussion of great economic and financial problems. though both men had their ambitions and dreams, it did not occur to either one that he would ever play a big part in solving these problems. a few years later the harvard graduate became financial editor of the _chicago tribune_ and brought in the younger man as his assistant. during their years of newspaper work together they continued to study and think, and their knowledge of business principles and methods gradually broadened. they were fitting themselves almost without knowing it to step forward into positions of leadership. today, the former reporter is the head of a great university school of commerce; the assistant foreman became the president of the largest bank in the united states. one of these men is joseph french johnson, now dean of the new york university school of commerce, accounts and finance. the other is frank a. vanderlip, the great financier. the life histories of most men who have succeeded in a large way are equally simple. they have looked ahead, they have planned, they have equipped themselves with all the business knowledge available, and success has followed. _success must follow._ the law of success is as definite as the law of gravity. here it is: _prepare in advance for opportunities._ it is not the dramatic moments of life that count. it is the quiet planning and reading of the man who is getting ready now for what is going to happen two, five or ten years from now. chapter i the modern business course and service as dean of new york university school of commerce, accounts and finance, joseph french johnson had for many years continually received letters requesting advice on what to read on business. these demands came not only from young men, but from mature and able executives, and sometimes even from the most successful business leaders. to all such requests dean johnson was obliged to reply that the only practical way to study the fundamental principles of business in a systematic manner was to attend the lectures in university schools of commerce. at that time the literature of business was scanty and for the most part of doubtful value. working alone, a man could get but little help in his efforts to widen and deepen his knowledge of business principles. it became evident that there was a great need for an organized, logical statement of the basic principles on which successful business is founded. it was determined to establish an institution which should meet the demand. after years of preparation the alexander hamilton institute was established in . the name in selecting the name, it was agreed that none could be so suitable as that of alexander hamilton. hamilton is perhaps chiefly remembered for his masterly statesmanship; but he was equally conspicuous as soldier, financier, author, organizer and practical economist. he was without doubt the greatest manager ever employed by the united states government. when he became the first secretary of the treasury, he found a chaotic government, without money, without credit, and without organization. he secured order, provided funds and created prosperity. he investigated the industries and directed the early commercial development of the united states. "he touched the dead corpse of the public credit, and it sprang upon its feet. he smote the rock of the nation's resources and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth." hamilton was a great executive and systematizer; he himself worked out an accounting system for the united states government which, with but slight modifications, remained in force for more than a hundred years. the plan the modern business course and service is a systematic, time-saving method of bringing to any man's office or home that business knowledge and training which he needs, but which he cannot acquire through his own experience. it is designed for the benefit of two groups of men: ( ) those who already are in executive or semi-executive positions; ( ) young men who have brains and the ambition to become business executives. it is intended, in general, for the men who are looking and moving ahead; for live, keen-witted, energetic men; for men who are not satisfied to remain in the ranks or in subordinate positions. these men may or may not have had a thorough school and college training; that is not an essential. they may or may not have wealth and high position; that is unimportant. but they _must_ have ability and enough serious purpose to spend a portion of their spare time in reading and thinking about business problems. the organization the modern business course and service is conducted by an organization made up of business and professional men and of university specialists in business subjects. inasmuch as such an institution derives its strength almost wholly from the men who are identified with it, a complete list of these men, with brief biographical notes to show who they are and what they have accomplished, is given in chapter vii, on pages to . the institute organization consists of four groups: advisory council authors and collaborators special lecturers institute staff _a._ consultant staff _b._ administrative staff business and educational authority of the highest standing is represented in the advisory council of the institute. _this advisory council_ consists of frank a. vanderlip, the financier; t. coleman dupont, the business executive; john hays hammond, the eminent engineer; joseph french johnson, dean of the new york university school of commerce; and jeremiah w. jenks, the statistician and economist. the council has general supervision and direction of the policies and activities of the institute. no important move of any kind is made without the sanction of this body. _the authors and collaborators_ are men prominent in educational and business circles. as authors, co-authors and collaborators they are responsible for the modern business volumes. their writing is done under the guidance and with the cooperation of the institute's editorial board. each one is chosen because of his particular training and ability in the field he covers. _the special lecturers_, whose business connections are stated on pages to , are men of high commercial standing who have devoted time and thought to preparing written lectures for the modern business course and service. these lectures present some of the results of their successful business experience. _the institute staff_ actively conducts the modern business course and service. many of the members of the staff are also members of the faculties of university schools of commerce. every member of the staff is a specialist who in some one business subject is entitled to rank as an authority. their names, business and university connections and official duties in the institute are stated on pages to . (a) _the consultant staff_ are the experts who do not give their entire time to the institute, but who are called upon for special information and advice whenever the occasion requires. (b) _the administrative staff_ consists of the senior and junior executives who are active in the administrative work of the organization. these men are heads of the departments responsible for the successful management of the alexander hamilton institute. subjects covered the modern business course and service brings to a subscriber the essential business knowledge that he does not acquire in his own experience. the subject matter of the course and service is treated under the following heads: . business and the man . economics--the science of business . business organization . plant management . marketing and merchandising . salesmanship and sales management . advertising principles . office administration . accounting principles . credit and collections . business correspondence . cost finding . advertising campaigns . corporation finance . transportation . foreign trade and shipping . banking . international exchange . insurance . the stock and produce exchanges . accounting practice and auditing . financial and business statements . investments . business and the government simple, elastic, workable the modern business course and service covers the essential subjects on which every business man should be well informed. when an enrolment is accepted, the institute undertakes, . _to supply the subscriber_ with the modern business text--the most complete and best organized treatment of business principles and practice that has yet been produced. . _to guide and illuminate_ his reading of the text by a series of modern business talks. . _to bring him into touch_ with the ideas and methods of some of the foremost business and professional men in the country through a series of modern business lectures. . _to give him facilities_ for applying and testing his knowledge of business principles through a series of modern business problems. . _to keep him informed_ on current business events and the trend of future affairs in the commercial world by means of monthly letters on business conditions. . _to acquaint him_ with important events covering the production and prices of general commodities and the current security market. . _to supply_ him with four modern business reports on important problems; the reports to be selected by him from an extensive list. . _to render personal service_ through answers to all inquiries in connection with his reading of the course. an enrolment for the modern business course and service covers a period of two years. during that time each subscriber is constantly in touch with the members of the institute staff. there are no rigid rules--no red tape--to restrict or annoy; instead, there is personal guidance and sincere cooperation. the more carefully you consider the plan, the more clearly you will see how well it is adapted to the needs of busy men who must make every minute and every ounce of effort produce the greatest possible results. you will see more clearly the actual scope of the modern business course and service if you keep in view its eight main features: --text --talks --lectures --problems --monthly letters --financial and trade reviews --reports --service --text the basis of the course and service is a series of twenty-four text-books prepared under the careful supervision of its editors, assisted by well-known authorities. in some cases the latter appear as authors, in others as collaborators in the preparation of the texts. dean joseph french johnson is editor-in-chief of the course. the managing editor is dr. roland p. falkner. associated with them is a large editorial staff which takes an active share in the writing and preparation of the course. the authors and collaborators are specialists who rank as authorities in their particular field. the series is widely recognized as the most important contribution yet made to business literature. the volumes in the modern business series are sold apart from the institute course only to universities for use as prescribed text-books in classroom work. among the universities which have used the institute's volumes as texts are: boston university brown university cedar crest college coe college college of the city of new york college of william and mary colorado college columbia university cornell university dartmouth college denver university drake university duquesne university elmira college georgetown university georgia school of technology grinnell college kansas state agricultural college lawrence college marquette university miami university middlebury college new hampshire college new york university northwestern university ohio state university ohio university oregon agricultural college pennsylvania state college purdue university queens university rose polytechnic institute south dakota state college state college of washington syracuse university toledo university trinity college tulane university vanderbilt university virginia polytechnic institute university of alabama university of akron university of arizona university of british columbia university of california university of chicago university of cincinnati university of colorado university of illinois university of indiana university of iowa university of kansas university of michigan university of minnesota university of nebraska university of oregon university of pittsburgh university of texas university of washington university of wisconsin washington and lee university yale university there are about three hundred and fifty pages in each of the twenty-four volumes. each volume is carefully indexed and contains, in addition to the text, a few review suggestions after each chapter which are of great value in mastering the subject. questions of commercial law as they affect each subject are discussed in the volume pertaining to that particular unit of the course. _business and the man_ _volume _ by joseph french johnson, d.c.s., ll.d., dean of new york university school of commerce, accounts and finance; chairman of the advisory council, alexander hamilton institute. _economics--the science of business_ _volume _ by joseph french johnson, d.c.s., ll.d., in collaboration with frank l. mcvey, ph.d., ll.d., president, university of kentucky. _business organization_ _volume _ by charles w. gerstenberg, ph.b., ll.b., professor of finance, and head of the department of finance, new york university school of commerce, with the collaboration of walter s. johnson, b.a., b.c.l., member of the bar of the province of quebec, lecturer on railway and constitutional law, mcgill university. _plant management_ _volume _ by dexter s. kimball, a.b., m.e., dean, engineering college, cornell university. _marketing and merchandising_ _volume _ prepared by the alexander hamilton institute in collaboration with ralph starr butler, a.b., advertising manager of the united states rubber company, and john b. swinney, a.b., superintendent of merchandising, winchester stores. _salesmanship and sales management_ _volume _ by john g. jones, vice-president and director of sales and advertising, alexander hamilton institute. _advertising principles_ _volume _ by herbert f. debower, ll.b., vice-president, alexander hamilton institute. _office administration_ _volume _ by geoffrey s. childs, b.c.s., office manager of the alexander hamilton institute. _accounting principles_ _volume _ by frederic e. reeve, c.p.a., and frederick c. russell, controller, alexander hamilton institute. _credit and collections_ _volume _ by dwight e. beebe, b.l., director of service of the alexander hamilton institute, and t. vassar morton, litt.b., bursar, alexander hamilton institute. _business correspondence_ _volume _ by charles w. hurd, associate editor, alexander hamilton institute, in collaboration with bruce barton, president, barton, durstine & osborn, inc. _cost finding_ _volume _ by dexter s. kimball, m.e., dean, engineering college, cornell university. _advertising campaigns_ _volume _ by mac martin, president of the mac martin advertising agency. _corporation finance_ _volume _ by william h. walker, ll.d., dean of duquesne university school of accounts, finance and commerce. _transportation_ _volume _ by edwin j. clapp, ph.d., formerly professor of economics, new york university. _foreign trade and shipping_ _volume _ by j. anton dehaas, ph.d., professor of foreign trade, new york university. _banking_ _volume _ by major b. foster, m.a., assistant to the executive committee, alexander hamilton institute, in collaboration with jesse h. riddle. _international exchange_ _volume _ prepared by the alexander hamilton institute in collaboration with e. l. stewart patterson, superintendent of the eastern townships branches, canadian bank of commerce. _insurance_ _volume _ prepared by the alexander hamilton institute, in collaboration with edward r. hardy, ph.b., lecturer on fire insurance, new york university school of commerce, assistant manager, new york fire insurance exchange; s. s. huebner, ph.d., professor of insurance, university of pennsylvania; g. f. michelbacher, m.a., actuary of the national workmen's compensation service bureau, and bruce d. mudgett, ph.d., associate professor of economics, university of minnesota. _the stock and produce exchanges_ _volume _ by albert w. atwood, a.b., associate in journalism, columbia university. _accounting practice and auditing_ _volume _ by john thomas madden, b.c.s., c.p.a. (n. y.), professor of accounting and head of the department of accounting, new york university school of commerce. _financial and business statements_ _volume _ by leo greendlinger, m.c.s., c.p.a. (n. y.), secretary and treasurer, alexander hamilton institute; formerly assistant professor of accounting, new york university school of commerce. _investments_ _volume _ by edward d. jones, ph.d., formerly professor of commerce and industry, university of michigan. _business and the government_ _volume _ by jeremiah w. jenks, ph.d., ll.d., research professor of government and public administration, new york university, member of advisory council, chairman of the board, alexander hamilton institute, in collaboration with john hays hammond, consulting engineer and publicist. --talks the modern business talks, which are sent fortnightly, are informal discussions of the principles treated in the text. as the name indicates, these talks bring up many specific points and cases, and show more clearly why and how the underlying principles of scientific business should be applied. they are particularly direct, practical and stimulating. their periodic visits serve to keep every subscriber in touch with the institute staff and alive to the importance of following the course systematically. the talks are prepared by members of the institute staff or other authorities. in the pamphlet which contains the talk the reading assignment for the following two weeks is suggested. on receiving the fortnightly instalment of new material, the subscriber will ordinarily read the talk before taking up the reading assignment, and thus get a bird's-eye view of the ground that is to be covered during the succeeding two weeks. some of the subjects discussed are: _the shortest way to the executive's chair_ _the market value of brains_ _sharing the product_ _pitfalls of partnership_ _a corporate venture_ _putting the message across_ _the dominance of salesmanship_ _leading the sales force_ _credit, the motive power of business_ _cost records as profit makers_ _overcoming corporation difficulties_ _the hundred thousand dollar letter_ _making advertising pay_ _the railway a public servant_ _building up your bank credit_ _cashing in on foreign trade_ _safeguards of insurance_ _what do you know about wall street?_ _the benefits of speculation_ _capitalizing the auditor's viewpoint_ _basing decisions on facts_ _reading accounting records_ _saving salesmen_ _holding the watch on your investment_ _satisfying your foreign customer_ --lectures the written modern business lectures, which are sent to subscribers monthly during the two-year course, have been especially prepared for the institute by eminent business executives, publicists and accountants, and reflect the experience of these men in successfully handling business problems. they are intended, first, to show how these men have actually applied the principles discussed in the modern business course; second, to give further information as to large and highly developed business concerns and their methods; and, third, to bring subscribers into closer touch with the wide circle of representative, successful men of affairs. some of the subjects of the lectures are: _essentials of a successful enterprise_ _the value of trade associations_ _marketing a nationally advertised product_ _retail store management_ _the creation of a selling organisation_ _efficient credit management_ _organising an accounting department_ _cost and efficiency records_ _marketability of securities_ _building a mail-order business_ _elements of effective advertising_ _the railway as a business developer_ _selling in foreign markets_ _how banks serve business_ _the foreign exchange field_ _the day's work in wall street_ _why business needs the auditor_ _the investment security business_ --problems one of the strongest features of the course is the series of twenty-four problems--such problems as accountants, financiers, bankers and business managers meet in practice--especially prepared for the course by members of the institute staff. each problem is a carefully worded statement of all the essential factors in some business situation; in other words, the situation is presented and described just as it might be in the report of a subordinate official to the head of a business enterprise. the problems are so arranged as to correspond closely to the assigned reading. for instance, after the subject of cost accounts has been discussed, a problem is given in which a knowledge of cost accounting principles is called for. thus, the problems serve not merely to test the subscriber's understanding and thinking power, but also to fix in his mind and make definite the statements and principles contained in the text volumes. when solutions to the problems are sent in, they are criticised, graded, and returned with suggestions for further study. solutions to the problems are not, however, required. some of the titles are: _the president's choice_ _advertising the ayer-hall saws_ _remodeling the rowland-johnson company's sales organization_ _a question of profits and financial condition_ _three foreign exchange situations_ _scudder's system to beat the market_ _the reorganisation of the industrial realty company_ _embarking in foreign trade_ _a fire and its consequences_ --monthly letter on business conditions a business executive must have a knowledge of the fundamental principles relating to the internal organization and management of a business. he should also have a basis of judging those external business conditions over which no one group of men has control, but to the trend of which every line of business must be adjusted in order to gain the maximum of profit and suffer the minimum of loss. the results of these studies are presented to the business man in a clear and concise manner in the monthly letter on business conditions. in order to keep subscribers informed regarding the state of business at home and abroad, and as a basis for applying the principles explained in the text, the monthly letters will prove most helpful. the economic experts of our business conditions bureau are constantly bringing together and interpreting facts and figures regarding bank clearings, pig iron production, unfilled steel orders, exports and imports, railroad earnings, and such indices of financial conditions as the reserves, loans and deposits of the federal reserve banks. the letters discuss political events and developments in the business world which have an influence upon price movements and conditions of activity or depression. the business man will find them particularly interesting, as they show him what to expect in the future by pointing out the present trend of affairs. --financial and trade reviews the financial and trade reviews are issued monthly by our bureau of business conditions and are designed to cover in a timely and interesting fashion the activities in the security market by analyzing individual and group securities and by presenting statistics on prices and earnings of standard stocks and bonds. the reviews cover the production and price trends of basic commodities and matters of interest in foreign fields. leading articles deal with current events of note and interest to the business community. the financial and trade review is a valuable supplement to the principles brought out in the regular reading schedule. --modern business reports the modern business reports are written by professional and trade experts and members of the institute staff, and cover both important business problems of general interest and technical subjects relating to accounting, sales, office methods, merchandising, production and other specialized departments. from time to time a descriptive list of these reports is sent to each subscriber. from these lists the subscriber may choose four reports at any time during the two-year period of his enrolment. these reports run from ten to fifty pages in length. each one is prepared in reference to some specific problem and is the result of special investigation. the subjects cover a wide field, and every subscriber will find among them a number which are of particular interest to him. the list of reports includes such titles as: _preparation for the accounting profession_ _profit sharing_ _territorial supervision of salesmen_ _advertising american goods in foreign markets_ _analysis of bank reports_ _promotion and organization of a public service corporation_ _the psychology and strategy of collecting_ _desk efficiency_ _how to read the financial page of a newspaper_ _employes' pension systems_ _evaluation of public utilities_. --service the reading matter of the modern business course is in itself of remarkable value; subscribers have told us over and over again that one volume, or sometimes one pamphlet, or one report, has brought them ideas worth vastly more than the fee for the course and service. this value is largely enhanced by the fact that back of the reading matter there is an organization of men who are anxious to cooperate in every way possible with each subscriber. this organization is equipped to render service at every stage of the subscriber's progress. first of all, certain members of the staff are assigned to the pleasant task of carrying on correspondence with subscribers. they make an earnest effort whenever a new enrolment is received to get into touch with the subscriber and learn under what conditions he is working, what experience and education he has had and what objects he has in view. with this information before them they can often make suggestions that are directly helpful and that mean a larger increase in the subscriber's personal benefit from his use of the course and service. furthermore, every one who thinks as he reads comes across statements and opinions which he does not fully understand or which he questions. the privilege of asking about any such statements or opinions is freely open to all subscribers. there is no limit whatever to the number of questions which may be submitted, based on the text or other reading matter of the course. the four great activities of business there are four fundamental activities in every business--production, marketing, financing, and accounting. on the following page you will see the whole field of business charted in such a way as to show clearly the relation of various business activities to each other. economics, the study of business conditions and business policies, is the hub of all business activity. radiating from it are the four grand divisions of business--production, marketing, financing, accounting. these in turn are subdivided into the more detailed activities which they include. the modern business course and service is a thorough treatment of all the divisions indicated. [illustration: economics accounting accounting principles financial and business statement accounting practice and auditing finance corporation finance banking credit and collections business organization insurance the stock and produce exchanges international exchange investments production marketing copyright , by alexander hamilton institute] a survey of modern business science all business activities may be classified under production, marketing, financing and accounting. for purposes of systematic study, each of these may be subdivided as shown above. in addition, there are two important forces which control business--man and government. for that reason a discussion of the relation between "business and the man" and "business and the government" naturally forms a part of the survey of modern business. the first two and the last two assignments in the modern business course and service cover these important subjects. the arrangement of the subjects has been carefully planned so that the maximum benefit will be derived by following the assignments in their regular order. in the chart you see the logical arrangement of these subjects as related to the business world. note that the order in which these subjects are treated in the course is not according to their arrangement in the chart. on the contrary, the more general subjects are first considered; then come the more complex--the specializations and enlargements upon the foundation subjects. this plan permits a progressive arrangement that makes for a broad understanding of the science of business. just as any university or college requires a knowledge of certain subjects before others can be taken up, because this more general knowledge is essential to a proper understanding of the more advanced, so we have arranged the subjects treated in the modern business course and service in a similar manner. texts, talks, lectures, problems, monthly letters, financial and trade reviews, reports and service--these are the important features of the modern business course and service. chapter ii the danger of specializing too early a great many young men think they have found a quick and easy road to success by concentrating their minds wholly on the jobs they happen to hold. it is perfectly true that a business man must not underestimate the importance of details. but it is also true that large success is always built upon a clear understanding of basic principles. the common fallacy that it is best for a man--especially a young man--to confine his thought and studies to his own specialty has in many instances proved ruinous. it is easily possible to specialize so much as to lose all sense of the importance of a broad, well-balanced business training. we all know the lawyer who is wrapped up in his quibbles; the accountant who sees nothing in business but a maze of figures; the advertising man who is so fascinated by "cleverness" that he forgets to try to sell goods; and the technical man who knows nothing about the commercial phases of his engineering problems. such men cannot take their places among the higher executives because they know little or nothing of business outside their own specialty, and they cannot know even that thoroughly while their general outlook remains so narrow. only half ready some years ago two young men of unusual promise graduated from a prominent school of mines and went to work for a big copper company as full-fledged mining engineers. they were located at an isolated camp, remote from civilization, and were given every chance to make good the prediction made for them at the time of graduation. these men soon proved that they knew a great deal about the mining of copper. their advancement was rapid, and within a comparatively short time one of them was appointed general manager and the other chief engineer. to all intents and purposes they were in complete charge of the company's interests in that locality. it was not long before the problems put up to these two mining experts ceased to be confined to the technical end of the business. the handling of a large number of men, the disposition of big sums of money, the necessity of using both men and money economically, the accounting and statistics of their operations, and a hundred other problems no less "practical" demanded the exercise of judgment on their part and a knowledge of business principles that neither their technical training nor their previous experience had supplied. unfortunately, these two--the general manager and the chief engineer--had their heads turned by their rapid advancement. they did not recognize the fact that a thorough business training would have made them well-nigh failure-proof, and they even expressed contempt for scientific study of such subjects as accounting, banking, organization, cost finding, selling and finance. in course of time the operations of the company made necessary the extension of its mining facilities, involving the erection of a concentrator and smelter at an expenditure of a little over $ , , . these men were in charge of selecting and arranging for the sites and erection of the plants. the work had gone forward to a considerable extent when one of the executive officers of the company from the east came to inspect the properties and the progress of the new work. he was so disappointed at the lack of business judgment displayed in the selection of the sites, the drawing of contracts and other matters, that he dismissed the chief engineer on the spot, and curtailed the authority of the general manager. he stated that thereafter he would select men who had some business as well as technical training. these men missed success because they lacked certain essential tools with which to build it. equipped with an elaborate professional kit gathered through years of painstaking study, they still lacked that knowledge of business principles which was necessary to enable them to turn their technical knowledge into results. every one who holds, or expects ever to hold, a position of business responsibility should be familiar with the whole field of modern business. the reasons for this are apparent to any one who has to do with the handling of large problems. it is necessary always to take into account _all_ the important factors in such problems. no matter how ably a marketing or an accounting difficulty may be met, the solution is worse than useless if it affects unfavorably any other phase of the business. a business executive cannot afford to make many serious mistakes. to guard against mistakes, he must be fortified with an all-round knowledge of business practice--not merely a partial or one-sided knowledge. the principles of production, marketing, financing and accounting are fundamental and apply to all lines of business. the man who says they do not apply because his business is "different" is simply exposing his failure to get down to rock bottom in his thinking. every business has its points of difference, just as every man has an individuality of his own. but we know that human nature, broadly speaking, is much the same in all. in a like sense all business moves along similar lines. it all consists of producing, marketing, financing and accounting. the broad principles of modern business science, therefore, govern all business. they are related to _your_ problems, no matter how "different" your business may appear to be on the surface. chapter iii pushing beyond the half-way mark there is always a danger of half-way success. a man may be at the head of an office, a department, a sales force, or a business, and yet be only a half-way success, if what he has so far accomplished be measured against his actual capacity. most men, in fact, possess native ability sufficient to carry them forward into bigger positions than those they now occupy. but to accomplish that result it is necessary to keep continually moving ahead. chief among the characteristics that carry men past the half-way mark on the road to success is eagerness to keep on learning more about business principles and business methods. the late marshall field said: "the man who puts ten thousand dollars additional capital into an established business is pretty certain of increased returns; and in the same way the man who puts additional capital into his brains--information, well directed thought and study of possibilities--will as surely--yes, more surely--get increased returns. there is no capital and no increase of capital safer and surer than that." the ablest men in business are constant students. many of the foremost business executives of the united states have for this reason welcomed an opportunity to enrol for the modern business course and service. this course and service brings to them in convenient, time-saving form, an explanation of working principles that have proved successful in every line of business. the kind of men enrolled presidents of big corporations are often enrolled for the modern business course and service along with ambitious younger men in their employ. among the , subscribers are such men as: h. s. kimball, president of the remington arms corporation john j. arnold, president of the bankers' union of foreign commerce and finance e. r. behrend, president of the hammermill paper company h. c. osborn, president, american multigraph sales company melville w. mix, president of the dodge manufacturing company william h. ingersoll, marketing manager of robt. h. ingersoll and brothers charles e. hires, president, hires root beer company p. w. litchfield, vice-president of the goodyear tire and rubber company ezra hershey, treasurer, hershey chocolate company william a. candler, secretary, coca-cola company george m. verity, president, american rolling mill company charles e. murnan, vice-president, united drug company w. f. macglashan, president, the beaver board companies h. d. carter, general manager, regal shoe company francis a. countway, president of lever brothers company (_manufacturers of lux and lifebuoy soap_) e. e. amick, vice-president, first national bank of kansas city raymond w. stevens, vice-president, illinois life insurance company roy w. howard, chairman of the board of directors, scripps-mcrae newspapers stephen b. mambert, vice-president, thomas a. edison industries s. l. avery, president, united states gypsum company --and scores of others equally prominent. these men, and thousands of other institute subscribers, know that a study of the principles which have brought unusual success to other men increases their own capacity for further achievement. great business organizations officers, department heads and juniors of a large number of important companies are enrolled for the modern business course and service. the prime purpose of the course and service is to develop the business knowledge and judgment of each subscriber, and the heads of these companies realize that the increased efficiency on the part of individuals which results from this training carries with it greater efficiency and profits for their companies. the tendency in large business organizations, unless the chief executives are unusually thoughtful and far-sighted, is to repress initiative and constructive thinking except on the part of the few men who direct the affairs. the modern business course and service counteracts this tendency. it encourages thought and initiative. it develops men. it stimulates the whole organization and makes possible more rapid expansion and larger earnings. among the progressive concerns in which a number of men have been making effective use of the modern business course and service are: _men enrolled_ american radiator company american telephone and telegraph company anaconda copper mining company armour and company bank of montreal barrett company bethlehem steel company burroughs adding machine company canadian bank of commerce commonwealth edison company of chicago cutler-hammer manufacturing company e. i. dupont de nemours and company eastman kodak company empire gas and fuel company equitable life assurance society fairbanks-morse and company federal reserve bank of dallas firestone tire and rubber company fisk rubber company ford motor company general electric company general motors corporation b. f. goodrich company goodyear tire and rubber company international harvester company johns-manville, inc jones and loughlin steel company national biscuit company national cash register company national city bank of new york newport mining company new york central railroad company new york telephone company otis elevator company pacific commercial company pacific telephone and telegraph company packard motor car company pennsylvania railroad company proctor and gamble company public service corporation of new jersey remington typewriter company sears, roebuck and company singer manufacturing company southern pacific railway company standard oil company the steel company of canada stone and webster engineering corporation studebaker corporation swift and company texas company underwood typewriter company united fruit company united shoe machinery company united states rubber company united states steel corporation western electric company western union telegraph company westinghouse electric and manufacturing company willys-overland company winchester repeating arms company f. w. woolworth company many of the men enrolled in these great companies are heads of their organizations; presidents and vice-presidents. most of them are important officials and department heads; a few are men with smaller responsibilities. the sound business reason which underlies the favorable action of so many great corporations is well expressed by president george m. verity, of the american rolling mill company, who says: "when i learned that some fifty of our men had decided to take up the modern business course and service, the stock of this company rose several points in my estimation." the following expressions regarding the value of the course to men in big corporations are typical of many that we have received: "we have been familiar with your course of instruction ever since it was first offered, and regard it as an excellent one for men engaged in the investment security business. a large number of our men are taking the course, and we have recommended it to many of our associates." spencer trask & company, _investment bankers, new york city._ "realizing my lack of experience, i subscribed to your course and found it of incalculable value. it gave me quickly the fundamentals of accounting, of which i had known nothing. it gave me a broad elementary insight into modern marketing methods. the volume on credits was also helpful. the course saved me many expensive blunders. "briefly, for one starting in a business of his own i consider the alexander hamilton institute course practically indispensable. in addition to its indirect value, i have been able to put a definite worth on this course, to myself and the firm, of many thousands of dollars." j. roy allen, _treasurer, mint products company, inc., mfrs. of "life savers."_ "the good that our people have received from the alexander hamilton institute course has been phenomenal. it is not only the most instructive and valuable treatise on live subjects for men who are training for business careers, but it is the most concise, instructive and clearly presented form of education, to our minds, that has been presented for the benefit of executives." charles e. murnan, _vice-president, united drug company, boston._ "in my long business experience i have never subscribed to anything from which i have received greater value, in which i have taken greater interest, and from which i have received greater inspiration for my work. i do not believe anyone can take up the work without finding it not only effective, but of great value." charles e. hires, _president, hires root beer company, philadelphia._ "my appreciation of the alexander hamilton institute course is based not only upon the broad scope of its appeal and the close co-ordination of the subjects treated, but also from the benefit that i have personally derived from following the course." stephen b. mambert, _vice-president and financial director, thomas a. edison industries._ "it seems to me that your modern business course affords an opportunity for the study of practical business methods and the acquisition of business knowledge which will be valuable to any man ambitious to succeed in business." f. w. hills, _comptroller, american smelting and refining co., new york._ "we had two building sites in view. when it came to a final decision i applied the principles which were laid down in the course; it became clear at once that the first site--which had originally seemed so attractive--was actually less desirable for our purposes. "knowing the fundamental principles, it was a simple matter to analyze the various requirements of this business step by step; as a result of this analysis we have a site even more suitable than the one originally contemplated; and we were able to buy it not merely on more favorable terms, but at an actual saving of more than $ , ." george h. borst, _president, twentieth century storage warehouse, philadelphia._ "my experience with the alexander hamilton institute leaves me only with the regret that i did not make contact with it at an earlier time." samuel g. mcmeen, _president, columbus railway and light company, columbus._ "i have been looking for something of this kind for some time past and am more than pleased that this should be brought to my attention." r. c. norberg, _general sales manager, willard storage battery company, cleveland._ "the exceedingly interesting manner in which the subjects are treated was an agreeable surprise to me. i became so absorbed in the reading that i am reluctant to lay it down when bed-time or meal-time arrives." v. j. faeth, _general manager, winterroth & co., piano merchants, new york city._ the unqualified indorsements of these successful executives, and the fact that a large number of men in almost every nationally known organization are enrolled, prove conclusively that there is a great need for training in business fundamentals. wherever the wheel of business turns--the need is great. it is a matter to be reckoned with by every man and concern in business. chapter iv a personal problem how is it possible that the modern business course and service should be helpful alike to the grizzled executive and to the young man who has not yet made his mark in business? why is it that in a great many organizations our list of subscribers begins with the president, includes practically all the officers and department heads, and ends with a selected group of men who as yet are in subordinate positions? the answer is simple. the main problem of every business man is the problem of developing himself. it makes no difference how great or how small a man's position may be, the only way to enlarge his influence and his income is first to enlarge himself. the greatest business men in the country are quickest to accept and apply this truth. it may sometimes appear as though a man becomes a bigger business man by being promoted into a bigger job. the truth is just the reverse. the big job naturally gravitates to the well-trained, capable man. if the job proves too large for the man, it doesn't take long for it to shrivel until it becomes a perfect fit. on the other hand, a man who really becomes bigger than his job simply grows out of it and into another; or he enlarges the job and its rewards to fit his measure. where do you belong? you are a member of one or the other of these two groups: ( ) those who have "arrived" ( ) those who are on their way toward success. there is, to be sure, a third group which unfortunately constitutes an overwhelming majority, the group made up of purposeless drifters who have no special ambitions and usually little native ability. to this group the institute has nothing to offer. they might refuse indignantly to sign a contract to work for the next ten years at the same salary they are now receiving. yet the end of the ten-year period will find most of them in the same position, or only a trifle ahead. find _your_ place and salary on this chart +------------------+ | president | | or | | general manager | |$ , to $ , | +---------+--------+ | +-------------------+---------+---------+-------------------+ | | | | +--------+--------+ +--------+--------+ +--------+--------+ +--------+--------+ | vice-president | | vice-president | | comptroller | | treas. & sec'y | | in charge of | | in charge of | | in charge of | | in charge of | | production | | marketing | | accounts | | finance | |$ , to $ , | |$ , to $ , | |$ , to $ , | |$ , to $ , | +--------+--------+ +--------+--------+ +--------+--------+ +--------+--------+ | | | | above this line are men who understand the fundamentals underlying all departments of business =============================================================================== below are the $ , and $ , men who by systematically training themselves can climb higher | | | | +--------+--------+ +--------+--------+ +--------+--------+ +--------+--------+ | _staff of_ | | _staff of_ | | _staff of_ | | _staff of_ | | cost department | |sales advertising| | accounting and | | credit and | | factory and | | correspondence | | statistical | | insurance | | office force | | and | | departments | | finance and | | | | transportation | | | | investment | | | | dept's | | | | departments | +--------+--------+ +--------+--------+ +--------+--------+ +--------+--------+ for there is only one power in the world that can lift a man, and that is the power of added knowledge and training. for years the alexander hamilton institute has specialized in one thing; it has only one course; its sole business is to take men who know one department of business, and by adding to their equipment a knowledge of the other fundamentals shown on the chart on the preceding page, to fit them for higher positions. if you already have reached a business position of large responsibility, that surely does not mean that you have stopped growing. the boundless opportunities that are open to all are beckoning you on. no noteworthy business man attains his full development until he is well past middle age. in fact, the man of real power never appears to have reached his limit. your real achievements are still ahead of you. as you look over the pages following, you will see that the brainiest executives in the country are using the modern business course and service as equipment for still bigger undertakings. if you are still trudging in the ranks, or if you have advanced only part way toward your goal, you will be keenly interested in the comments of those who have found the modern business course and service an immense help in hastening their progress. these men are rapidly forging ahead. they are setting a faster and faster pace. unless you are able to keep up with them, you must drift to the rear. because the young men of this generation are getting a better training than has been available in previous generations, the standards of business ability have risen and will continue to rise. yesterday, a man of limited experience and training was often able to force his way into an executive position; today, it is much more difficult to do so; tomorrow, it will be impossible. the business leaders of a few short years from now will be the men who today are preparing themselves for the duties of leadership. your gains you may ask: "_what can the institute do for me?_" the answer to your question is outlined in the "chart of the modern business course and service" which is printed on page . that chart shows how the organized knowledge about business principles and business practice which has been collected and classified by the alexander hamilton institute is transmitted to subscribers through the eight features of the course and service--text, talks, lectures, problems, monthly letters, financial and trade reviews, reports, and service. _in what ways can a business man cash in on this knowledge?_ a great many direct and practical benefits that naturally follow the use of the modern business course and service might be cited. seven of the most important are shown in the chart on the following page. the most obvious and direct benefit consists in a better understanding of sound business principles. the other benefits shown on the chart are: ability to plan effectively increased confidence in handling big deals ability to make quicker and more accurate decisions more leisure for recreation and constructive thought increased ability to handle men insurance against mistakes. the inevitable results of these gains in personal power and efficiency are larger income and a greater success in business. [illustration: _chart of the modern business course and service_ organized business knowledge collected and classified by alexander hamilton institute organization (advisory council, staff and special lecturers) transmitted to subscribers thru reports lectures talks texts problems service monthly letters this knowledge assimilated by the wide-awake business man results in better understanding of business principles ability to plan more effectively increased confidence in handling big problems quicker and more accurate decisions more time for constructive thinking greater ability to handle men knowledge that prevents mistakes larger income and greater success in business ] note on the following pages what subscribers for the modern business course and service have to say in that connection. better understanding a man cannot go far in business unless he _thinks_. and he must not only think, but think straight. his conclusions must be based on sound principles. unless a man is thinking along right lines, he will have little initiative, and his judgment will be poor. the necessity for every live business man to understand the principles upon which modern business is based cannot be overstated. the modern business course and service gives that understanding. it illuminates points that were obscure and it answers many puzzling questions. it lights up the road ahead, so that the business man can see more clearly the path that he should take. mr. wm. h. ingersoll, marketing manager for the famous ingersoll watch, says that the modern business course and service "gives the first coherent presentation of the entire subject of business. it gives one a perspective and an appreciation of essentials, as well as much knowledge regarding right and wrong methods of procedure." as a fair example of the manner in which the modern business course and service stimulates thought and leads to progressive action, even in companies that already were well organized and highly successful, take the following note from mr. norman w. wilson, vice-president of the hammermill paper company: "every moment's time i have devoted to it has been well rewarded. i want you to know what a high regard i have for the work you are doing and to know that i make it a point to encourage our people here to study your course." mr. j. h. hansen, president of the j. h. hansen cadillac company of omaha, emphasizes the practical information that the modern business course and service has brought to him: "when i located in nebraska as a salesman for the cadillac automobile, a representative of the institute persuaded me that i might just as well try for the big prizes in business as for one of the mediocre ones. the decision to enrol in the modern business course and service was a turning-point in my life. "i knew something about selling already. but now i began to see business as a whole, and the relation of each department to it. advertising and costs; accounting and office organization; the control of men, and corporation finance--all these elements, which are necessary if a man is to succeed in business for himself, came to me with the institute's help. "when the opportunity arrived i was ready for it. we organized our company and the first year did more than a million dollar business. "in my judgment, the reason why so many men never get into business for themselves or fail after they do get in, is because they are not prepared for their opportunity when it comes." mr. h. c. smith, president, allith-prouty manufacturing company, chicago, states why the modern business course and service is helpful without being revolutionary: "all men who have been successful must be credited with having good business principles. your course does not require changing these principles, but it will broaden one's own ideas and enable him to get greater results." increased confidence a great many men accomplish less than their abilities and energy entitle them to accomplish, simply because they do not feel sure of themselves. the boldest man alive becomes uncertain and timid in the face of unfamiliar difficulties. the man who follows the modern business course and service becomes acquainted at close range with business difficulties as well as with tried methods of overcoming them; he learns how to tackle such difficulties and goes forward without fear or misgivings. the series of modern business problems which constitute an important feature of the modern business course and service is especially intended to cultivate familiarity with difficult business situations and thereby to create self-confidence. they are problems of the kind which executives are constantly meeting. the man who can solve them successfully should have no difficulty when he meets similar problems that arise in his own work. a better and broader grasp of the principles and practices that underlie all business also suggests ways of widening the scope of one's business activity and gives the necessary confidence to go ahead and do it. mr. john mcbride, of mcbride's theatre ticket office, new york, wrote us after completing the modern business course: "the average man can double his faith in himself in a few months if he will master the fundamentals of business through your training." mr. w. h. schmelzel, president of the w. h. schmelzel company, of st. paul, minnesota, wrote after he had followed the course: "it is my personal opinion that every young business man of today depends a great deal on consultation or advice from a successful and experienced adviser or friend on all matters of a business nature. "in the early days of my business experience i was confronted with the task of making decisions preparing myself for the problems i was to solve in the years to follow. having been born and raised in a small town in a western state, i was content with advice and consultation of my acquaintances in matters pertaining to the thoughts i wished to carry out. "i was, therefore, eager to obtain assistance from a corps of experts in their particular line, and after giving your modern business course considerable scrutiny, and being informed on the class of men, that i felt confident of their success, and i realized that such a course had merit, and one which i could afford to consult, advise with and build my future with ideas and methods you had so ably worked out." quicker decisions is the ability to decide things quickly an inborn faculty? no, it is largely a habit of mind which anyone may cultivate in himself. however, we must bear in mind that it is necessary not only to decide quickly; there must be very few mistakes. this requires a mind that is trained to grasp a situation and to think accurately as well as rapidly. _the secret of quick and accurate decision is knowledge of principles._ if a man knows what principle applies in handling a given case, he has no difficulty in making up his mind and deciding what to do. if the balance sheet of a given concern were laid before you and you were asked to decide at once (assuming that the figures were correct) whether to ship a $ , order of goods to that company, possibly you would not know what to say. but if you were familiar with the definite principles of accounting and finance which would enable you to analyze that balance sheet and make it yield a vivid picture of the financial condition of the concern, you would not hesitate a moment. you would reply instantly. what decision meant to this man a young man, whose name we are not at liberty to give, told us of a dramatic incident which illustrates the value that keen business men attach to preparedness and quick decisions. up to about a year ago this young man was head accountant for his company. the board of directors had been in session about an hour one afternoon when a messenger came to his desk and told him that he was wanted in the board room. as he entered the room the president snapped at him, "would you advise us to issue a block of collateral trust bonds to finance a new addition to our factory which will cost about $ , ?" "no," said the accountant, "the company's credit is good enough for an issue of $ , one to three-year notes without security. if necessary, the new building could be mortgaged after construction, and, at the present rate, the business could pay off the whole loan in five years." a rapid-fire series of questions followed, covering the financial, advertising and sales policy of the firm, to each of which the accountant gave concentrated thought, quick decision and convincing reply. the president's final question was, "how would you like to become treasurer of this company at $ , a year?" in the letter that told of this incident this subscriber said: "i don't know whether i owe most to you or to my friend in the carnegie steel company who urged me to enrol for your course and service. i could have answered few if any of the questions asked me without the knowledge i gained from it. i found out later that the president knew all the time i was following your course, and wanted to prove to the rest of the directors that i could intelligently consider and discuss business problems." mr. charles c. chase, in the advertising department of brown company, of portland, maine, brings out another method of securing help in deciding questions that are outside the scope of his previous experience. he says: "to the fellows who have asked me about the course and what i believe it will do for them, i have said: "through a subscription to the course of the alexander hamilton institute you not only ally yourself with a "board of directors" whose combined business experience probably amounts to at least five hundred successful years--a board the members of which have had specialized experience in every important phase of business--but who have been assembled for the very definite purpose of helping men." this method is equally valuable to the executive, according to mr. lynn p. talley, deputy governor of the federal reserve bank of dallas: "whenever i am confronted with a problem relating to fundamental economic conditions of business practice or business policy, i find great comfort and satisfaction in taking down the volume relating to the subject and always find elucidation of the problems that confront me." mr. james p. robertson, of smith, robertson and company, seattle, says: "as a general reading course on business i can truthfully say it is high grade, and can recommend it to anyone interested in the study of business." mr. a. e. winger, president, american lithographic company, writes: "i think your course is an excellent one and am particularly impressed with the underlying thought that i find throughout the entire course--application of principles. it has been my experience that sound judgment is the most essential requisite of any executive, and that the judgment required in business today can best be formed by a thorough knowledge of business principles." mr. samuel cochrane, president, cochrane chemical company, jersey city, sums up the argument in this remark: "if i had enrolled with you a year or two ago, i should be better able to handle the problems put up to me every day." more leisure the secret of leisure is not to do less work, but to organize work so that a greater volume can be handled in less time. no active man wishes to cut down his productive efforts. a great many men, however, are so tied to their business tasks by detail and routine that they have little time or energy left for constructive thought. frequently they do not get enough recreation and physical exercise to keep them in prime condition. as a result, they are frittering away the best years of their life in handling small details that never bring them anywhere. to a greater or lesser extent, this is true of all of us. how to escape from the time-wasting energy-absorbing routine and details is a vital question. being "swamped with too much detail" is in reality a kind of business disease--and a very dangerous one. it is most likely to attack the officers of rapidly expanding concerns and energetic, ambitious men who are constantly taking on new responsibilities. unless one can shake off this disease, it will probably go on eating away more and more of his time and energy until he loses his grip on large affairs and to his chagrin, sees other men of smaller ability rising above him. it is as bad for a man to be "too busy" as for him to be not busy enough. as a matter of fact, it is unnecessary for any man to be so harassed with details--except as a temporary condition--that he cannot give a reasonable amount of time to recreation, reading and thought. the company burdened by the detail-type of executive is not getting what it pays for. his natural abilities are being diverted to things that cheaper men could do equally well. he owes it to his company, as well as to himself, to reorganize his work. cutting out the details it is necessarily true in all such cases that many of the over-busy man's duties recur day after day. they are of a semi-routine nature and could be made wholly routine by giving the proper instructions to some one else. in other words, this is a problem of organization similar to that of organizing a factory, a store, or a body of men. the principles that are discussed in the modern business course and service apply to an individual just as well as to a company. a man can organize his desk very much on the same plan that he would organize a factory. when he does so, he invariably finds that his efficiency is increased, his work is more productive, and he himself has more leisure. accordingly, any business man who desires to forge ahead should reduce the details of his work to routine which can be carried on without special thought. the modern business course and service is a direct and invaluable aid to the man who feels himself tied down by details. of course, we must consider in this connection the man who thinks that he is much busier than he really is. there are spare moments in every man's day. there is the half-hour before or after the evening meal; the time spent in traveling to and from work; the one or two evenings a week that even the busiest man should spend at home. the measure of a man's chances of success may readily be taken by learning the manner in which he uses--or wastes--his spare time. no better use can be made of these odd moments than in reading the modern business course. this reading is not tiring; it is recreative and stimulating. it will enable any man to organize his work so as to increase his leisure for reading and study. it will help him to rise to a higher level where his thought and energy will be more productive. many of the big business executives are investing their spare moments in just this way. they realize the great results that are bound to follow. it is unquestionably true that the use of one's spare moments count heavily in determining how much will be accomplished a year or two hence. the following also give their opinion: "for a good many years as a practising mining engineer, i gradually began to realize that there was something wrong with engineers in regard to their business success. something that seemed to stand between the most brilliant of men and success in business. after a long study of men and conditions, i subscribed to your course. from then on i began to take greater responsibilities and larger fees because of my added confidence and business knowledge. i truly feel that your course ferried me across to that phase of professional grasp where i became successful in business as a professional engineer." glenville a. collins, _consulting engineer of seattle._ much the same thoughts are admirably expressed by another busy executive, mr. j. h. carter, vice-president, national city bank of new york: "you will no doubt be interested to know that the class formed under the auspices of the city bank club to follow the alexander hamilton institute course, which you helped start about two years ago last spring, is just completing its study. "the majority of the original enrolment of fifty members have followed the course regularly. it has held the interest of the men throughout and has proved unusually stimulating and interesting. "the official staff of the bank has given the class its hearty moral support, and, in addition, has offered to refund a part of the fee to those completing the course successfully. we feel that this policy has not only encouraged the men, but has benefited the bank as well. "personally, i cannot speak too highly of the course. i feel that the time i have given to it during the past few years could not have been employed to greater advantage." increased ability to handle men there are just two factors that determine a man's competence to direct the work of other men: . his superior knowledge of the work in hand. . his ability to command respect. as a matter of fact, the second factor is almost wholly included in the first. the man who really knows what he is talking about always commands respect. the man who is largely a "bluff," no matter how "magnetic" or forceful his personality, is soon found out and retired in favor of the man of smaller pretensions, but more knowledge. the history of almost any business success demonstrates the truth of this statement. modern business affairs are so complex that it is wholly out of the question to put an untrained man in command. one might as well talk of putting an untrained man in charge of a modern battleship. in both positions broad-gauge knowledge and judgment are absolutely essential. the same principle applies equally to the minor commands. the leading business men of the country are for the most part quiet, self-controlled men, who think before they speak and who are constantly studying business problems. this is the type of man best fitted to control and direct the work of others. the man who develops himself, develops his ability to handle men. through the modern business course and service the training can be secured that makes for self-development and for success. t. h. bailey whipple, of the publicity department of the westinghouse electric company, writes: "your course unquestionably does for men what experience and native ability alone can never do." mr. g. e. lucas, office efficiency engineer, sayles finishing plants, says: "i am indeed glad that i took the opportunity to enrol for the modern business course and service. what i have obtained has been of very material benefit to me. my own experience bears on the experience of my other colleagues who have been getting help and information from you in the past two years. all the reports that we have obtained have been thoroughly satisfactory and very complete." the experience of mr. s. g. mcmeen, president, columbus railway power and light company, columbus, ohio, is equally to the point: "my experience began many years ago in technical lines and continued along them to engineering and construction practice. as often happens, this technical work led me into executive matters. it was in them that i missed some of the advantages enjoyed by men who have specialized earlier in commercial and financial work. "naturally i formed a habit of appropriating the needed knowledge wherever i might find it, and found much more than i could assimilate. the long-felt need, therefore, was for a source of classified information for reference and study, a source of training by the use of intelligent problems and a source of advice to which i might turn when in doubt. this source i found in the volumes, periodical literature and service of the alexander hamilton institute." larger income and success as the diagram on page indicates, the seven direct aids which subscribers obtain from the modern business course and service are: . better understanding of business principles . ability to plan more effectively . increased confidence in handling big problems . quicker and more accurate decisions . more time for constructive thinking . greater ability to handle men . knowledge that prevents mistakes all of these aids to personal efficiency are bound to result in increased income and greater success. even though a man should gain only slightly in any one of the seven qualities named, he would become a far better business man. he would either advance in position or expand his business--in either case raising himself to a higher level of income and success. the effect is all the more striking when a man increases his efficiency in respect to all seven qualities. to cite examples seems almost unnecessary. yet a few typical expressions from subscribers may be of interest: "it is very hard to put into words just how much good i have derived from the alexander hamilton institute course, but i do realize that as problems present themselves, they are much easier to solve, and i have a better conception of the future outlook of business since having the benefit of your course, and there is scarcely a day but what some matter comes up for which i use your course." mr. w. c. roose, _sec'y and gen. mgr._ _beacon shoe company_, _manchester, new hampshire_ "during the past two years my salary has increased more than %. this has been due to the rather remarkable increase the fuller brush company has had in sales. these sales are indirectly the result of the ideas i have received from your course." s. l. metcalf, _former vice-president and director of sales, fuller brushes, inc. now president, better brushes, inc., palmer, mass._ "to the man who has had the advantage of a college education this course opens up what might be called a vista of the business world in a very unique manner. the information obtained from this course, if acquired by the ordinary college man by actual experience, would require no less than a lifetime and it is presented in such a manner as to be readily assimilated in the short space of two years, devoting only odd hours to study." mr. e. j. bartells, _manager_ _wood pipe export company, seattle, washington_ a subscriber from a prosperous city in iowa recently called at the new york offices of the alexander hamilton institute, saying that he wanted to meet some of the men who had given him such valuable assistance. he is the controller of a large manufacturing company and a thoroughly trained and expert accountant. the thing that impressed him most about the plan of the modern business course and service was the opportunity it offered him of increasing his already extensive knowledge of the principles of finance, management, advertising, selling and organization, as well as accounting. "let me tell you what happened to me a few weeks ago," he said. "i found myself up against a problem that never had arisen in my previous experience. i was simply stumped. i sought help from various sources in attempting to find a satisfactory solution. then it occurred to me--the most obvious things often come to mind last--to look in the modern business texts for a ray of light. to my great delight, there i found a clear and definite statement of the very principles that should be applied. "i am frank to say to you," he concluded, "that this one bit of information was worth to me at least three times the price of your course." already this subscriber had realized a per cent dividend on his investment. of his subsequent gains we have no record. to the great majority of those who subscribe for the course and service the returns are simply incalculable. the training, the information and the ideas that they secure are a big--often an essential--factor in making their business careers happier and more successful. who can calculate the money value of a return of that kind? the moderate fee which is charged for the modern business course and service is based directly upon the cost of producing the literature included in the course and of maintaining the organization that conducts the course and service. the fee is small in itself; it shrinks into insignificance when compared with the returns. one of our subscribers was speaking only the literal truth when he said: "to the man of ability and brains, your course and service offers a _priceless_ means of developing these qualities to their highest efficiency." for the woman in business the modern business course and service makes the same appeal to the business woman as it does to the business man. consequently a number of women are enrolled for it. among these women are: mrs. e. m. simon, president, r. & h. simon company, union hill, new jersey miss sara f. jones, mgr. woman's dept., equitable life assurance society, chicago, illinois mrs. m. k. alexander, solicitor, equitable life assurance society, chicago, illinois miss mary r. cass, manager, f. n. burt company, buffalo, new york miss louise messner, accountant, petermann stores company, kearsarge, michigan miss s. f. troutman, secretary and assistant to treasurer, first presbyterian church, pittsburgh, pennsylvania mrs. n. m. favor, assistant cashier, the travelers insurance company, manchester, new hampshire today women are engaged in all branches of business. a great number of women occupy executive and other important positions in some of the large concerns of the country, and the number is steadily increasing. for the ambitious woman a career in business, with its great rewards and the possibilities of rendering worthy service, holds forth attractive opportunities. chapter v the question before you a serious business question is now confronting you. it is important that you should consider it fairly and calmly and that you should promptly make up your mind for or against it. the facts are all before you. the question is whether or not you should enrol for the modern business course and service. think over the arguments pro and con. you know that the course and service will bring you a better understanding of sound business principles; that it will give you increased self-confidence; ability to plan more effectively and to decide business questions more quickly and surely. you will find yourself with increased ability to handle men. you will probably enjoy more leisure; you will certainly earn a larger income. you are well enough acquainted with the standing and reputation of the men behind the alexander hamilton institute to know that the modern business course and service must be of the highest quality. and for the same reason you know that it naturally is offered to you at a very moderate fee. the fee for the modern business course and service is $ in the united states. this covers, without any additional expense, the texts, talks, lectures, problems monthly letters, financial and trade reviews, reports and all necessary personal help. the complete set of text volumes comes at once, and the other literature at convenient intervals. if the course is worth anything at all, the fee is slight in comparison with the results that will follow. the fee may be paid in convenient terms. make your decision certain objections may occur to you: _you have other uses for your money--_ no doubt; yet none of them is as necessary to your successful business career as the modern business course and service. _you are too busy--_ everybody who amounts to anything is busy; yet never "too busy" to acquire knowledge so important as this. _you have a debt to pay off, or a trip to take, or you would rather "think it over--"_ these arguments are unsound from every point of view. no man, in justice to himself, or to those who may be dependent upon him, should deny himself this opportunity to make an investment that will yield large dividends one, two and three years from today. in the coming struggle for world markets, there will be a great need for men of broad, executive training. for men who are prepared, there will be more opportunities to succeed in a big way than ever before. it is false economy, therefore, to postpone for a single day a decision that will enable you to push beyond the half-way mark and forge ahead in business. you are a business man, trained to make decisions. the simple facts are before you now. weigh the arguments; then act. chapter vi descriptive outline of the course in looking over the following detailed outline of the modern business course, you will see more clearly how closely every section is related to daily business practice. the italics after each title give the actual chapter headings; the following matter gives a brief discussion of the purpose and scope of each section of the course. business and the man "_scientific training for business_," _an introduction to the modern business course and service_ _nature and aim of business_ _the profit problem_ _economics and sociology_ _psychology_ _ethics of business_ _vision, or the idea_ _personal efficiency_ _health_ _the efficient business man_ _the executive_ _subordinate or junior officers_ _the rank-and-file worker_ _personality_ _character analysis_ _opportunity_ the most important thing in business is the human element--you. every man must have real ambition, high ideals, and a definite goal in mind before even a correct knowledge of business principles will help him to more than a half-way success. the purpose of this first section of the course is to discuss the viewpoint of the successful business man in an inspiring way, so that you may be inspired yourself and so that you may be able to inspire others about you. "scientific training for business" is an introduction to the whole modern business course and service. in it dean johnson tells you in what way you should read the course, how to get the most out of it, and how to use the equipment so as to bring results. the course begins with an analysis of business operations. it shows briefly what are the dominant features of business life which no man can afford to neglect. it then takes up the relation of personal qualities to business success; it shows what personal characteristics are helpful and how they may be cultivated; and it also points out the traits of mind, manners and morals which hinder men in their business career. the first point in understanding business problems and business principles is to approach them with the right attitude of mind. this section of the course serves to bring the reader into personal touch with the business problems which will engage his attention more in detail in the subsequent sections and thus furnishes a useful introduction to the entire course. economics--the science of business _purpose and scope of economics_ _fundamental concepts_ _land and capital_ _labor and enterprise_ _three fundamental laws_ _consumption of wealth_ _value and the consumer_ _value and the producer_ _value and the trader_ _money_ _credit_ _money, credit and prices_ _foreign trade_ _rent_ _interest_ _wages_ _profits_ economics is the foundation stone upon which the science of business is built. it underlies all business just as mathematics underlies all branches of engineering. it is the basic subject of the course, and its general principles should be thoroughly understood before taking up the subjects treated later. the book is written for the general reader, who has little or no knowledge of economic theory. it gives a clear idea of the business problems and forces with which business men deal and enables the reader to form intelligent judgments of his own. this section of the modern business course makes clear the laws governing the prices of goods, the wages of employes, the profits of employers, the processes of exchange, the functions of money and credit, and the rent of buildings and land. it takes up in comprehensive manner the problems raised by trade unions, by trusts, by governmental taxation and by the growing tendency toward governmental regulation of business. an understanding of all these live, interesting business problems is an essential part of the mental equipment of a broad-gauged business man, working under present-day conditions. business organization _purpose and forms of business organizations_ _sole proprietorship_ _general partnerships_ _limited partnerships_ _syndicates_ _business trusts_ _corporations as business units_ _general aspects of corporations_ _incorporation of companies_ _dissolution of corporations_ _stock and dividends_ _stockholders_ _meetings of stockholders_ _directors and officers_ _intercorporate relations_ _consolidations, sales and leases of assets_ _holding companies_ _illegal combinations_ if you are in business for yourself, or in some way become interested in a growing business, there is nothing that is of greater interest than your rights and the rights of other men who are in the concern. the application of the correct principles of production, marketing, financing and accounting are necessary to insure success, as they determine the profits of the business as a whole. every man goes into business to secure more income for himself, and the amount of his own income will depend, not only on the amount of the profits of the whole business, but on his own proportionate share of these profits. the division of the profits into shares depend almost entirely on the form of organization. moreover, when men enter business they hazard not only their time and a definite amount of wealth in the enterprise, but perhaps other wealth that was intended to be kept separate. indeed, embarking on a business venture may be but the beginning of the loss of the income of future years when all chance of profits has ceased and the business represents nothing but a lot of debts that remain to be liquidated. risk is an important element that is varied by the form of organization selected. this section traces briefly the rise of the corporation through the individual enterprise, the partnership and the joint stock company, and states the advantages and disadvantages of each of these forms of conducting business, as well as those of the corporation. this section of the course constitutes the first step in the study of corporate finance. plant management _the basis of modern industry_ _fundamental industrial principles_ _characteristics of modern industry_ _methods of organization and administration_ _coordinative influences_ _purchasing_ _storing material_ _planning and production departments_ _insuring results--securing industrial data_ _standards_ _the control of quality--inspection_ _rewarding labor--older methods_ _rewarding labor--new methods_ _comparison of wage systems--profit sharing_ _statistical records and reports_ _location of industrial plants_ _arrangement of industrial plants_ _practical limitations in applying industrial principles_ _problems of employment_ _employes' service_ _science and management_ modern management of industrial plants is characterized by planning and system. old processes and old methods no longer command respect because they are old. they have been subjected to searching analysis in the hope of finding better ways of doing things. we look today not for the history, but for the reasons of every phase of plant management. this is our aspect of the general industrial changes which have transformed modern industry and made it a high-powered productive instrument. it is not an isolated thing, but just as significant a part of modern business methods as are improved transportation, increased credit and present-day banking. in this part of the course, the relation of plant management to the characteristic development of modern life is first traced, and then the changes displayed which scientific methods have made in the conduct of manufacturing processes. these affect the structural organization of business, the relations of the directing and managing organs to one another. they also affect the operations of these managing units, the purchase and storage of materials, the routing and sequence of work, the best utilization of machinery and the like. the keynote of the volume is efficiency in productive effort and the principles which underlie it. marketing and merchandising _marketing: modern distribution_ _the field of marketing_ _study of the product_ _study of the market_ _trade channels_ _selling to the jobber_ _wholesale middlemen_ _selling to the retailer_ _selling through exclusive agencies_ _influencing retail sales_ _selling to the consumer_ _good-will and price maintenance_ _reaching the market and the complete campaign_ _merchandising: the jobber_ _modification of the jobber's service_ _problems of the jobber_ _retail competition_ _retail types_ _chain stores_ _mail-order selling_ _training the sales force_ _buying_ _stockkeeping_ _cooperation for service_ there are three different kinds of things that must be considered by everyone who has anything to sell. one group of considerations has to do only with personal salesmanship and sales management. another has to do only with advertising. still a third is concerned solely neither with personal salesmanship nor with advertising, but is common to both. before an effective force of salesmen can be selected and trained and an advertising campaign mapped out, the plan behind the personal selling and advertising campaign must be devised--the marketing methods must be determined. the considerations here may be grouped under three heads: the goods to be sold, the market for the goods, and the methods of reaching that market. a number of questions must be asked and answered about the things to be sold. for example: is there a ready demand or must one be created? is the commodity a necessity or a luxury? is it subject to seasonal variations? is the trade-mark well known? and so on. the first part of the text, marketing, concerns the problems of the manufacturer; the second part, merchandising, treats of the problems of the dealer, both wholesaler and retailer. between them they present a complete picture of the processes by which goods reach the consumer, and reveal the tendencies in modern distribution. salesmanship and sales management _salesmanship: the power of personal salesmanship_ _staples, branded staples and specialties_ _selling process--preliminary to the interview_ _selling process--the interview_ _selling process--the agreement_ _selling process--miscellaneous_ _human appeals that sell_ _development of character and caliber_ _the salesman's duties and responsibilities_ _cooperation, influence and friendship_ _sales management: the sales manager--his qualifications and duties_ _building an organization--selecting men_ _building an organization--training salesmen_ _selling methods and the selling equipment_ _compensation and territory_ _sales records_ _cooperation with salesmen_ _sales contests_ _sales conventions_ there is no subject which is more universally interesting to everyone in business than selling. salesmanship in its broadest sense is essentially the selling of one's point of view, the ability to start with the other fellow's point of view and lead his mind to accept yours. when an individual endeavors to influence another, he is practising salesmanship. in this broad sense, everyone will profit by a knowledge of the principles of salesmanship and selling methods. in this portion of the modern business course, the salesman is shown the necessity of learning something of his prospect previous to the interview. suggestions are also made for getting to see the buyer. the developments in a sale are discussed in such a way as to enable the salesman to build an effective, man-to-man transaction, and the human appeals that sell are outlined. after discussing the qualifications and duties of the sales manager, methods to be employed in the selecting, training and handling of men are detailed. the training of retail sales people is discussed. the planning of the salesman's equipment, the building of a sales manual, the apportionment of territory are gone into. methods of keeping sales records and statistics are outlined; directions given for the handling of sales contests and conventions, the editing of a house organ, and the apportioning of quotas. advertising principles _advertising--a constructive force in business_ _fundamentals of advertising_ _getting the advertisement seen_ _getting the advertisement read_ _making the advertisement understood_ _making the advertisement produce action_ _human appeals in advertising_ _word values in advertising_ _"getting the order" copy_ _"getting the inquiry" copy_ _"directing the reader" copy_ _"molding public opinion" copy_ _preparing the advertisement_ _layout of advertisements_ _booklets, catalogs and folders_ _drawings and reproductions_ _printing art in advertising_ _trade-marks, slogans and catch phrases_ _legal limits and restrictions on advertising_ considering the large number of progressive concerns entering the field of advertising each year, and profiting thereby, the average business man's lack of knowledge concerning advertising principles is lamentable. few have any ability either to write or to judge copy, and almost all are at a loss to deal intelligently with the printer. this section of the course discusses the various classes of copy divided according to the results each is designed to accomplish. the value of word tone in writing and how to secure it are indicated. instructions for preparing and laying out the advertisement are given. the technique of the printing art--type faces, paper, printing processes, half-tones and line-cut illustrations--is discussed. the advertising slogan, the package design and the various considerations in connection with the trade-mark are treated. the business man is prepared to correlate the principles of advertising with those of marketing methods, and to bring an understanding of both to his study of advertising problems of wholesale and retail merchandising. office administration _the office in modern business_ _location, planning and layout of the office_ _office equipment and supplies_ _office appliances_ _selection of employes_ _employment tests and records_ _training_ _stimulation of employes_ _filing_ _interdepartmental communications_ _office manuals_ _the worker's compensation_ _welfare_ _office organization_ _planning_ _office control_ _work reports and their use_ _the art of management_ it is only in recent years that individual business enterprises outside of the manufacturing field have grown to such importance as to bring a large number of employes under one management. today the problems of the office are no less urgent than those of the shop. office administration is in some respects like, in other respects unlike, plant management. it is alike in that it pursues the same ideals of efficiency. it is unlike in that machines and equipment fall into the background and the human element looms large in the foreground of office work. methods of conducting clerical work have, since the advent of the various office machines, of which the typewriter was the pioneer, undergone rapid transformation. underlying these changes there have been principles, more or less clearly recognized, which it is the aim of the text to discover and present in an orderly and systematic fashion. in few departments of office work have standardized processes based upon scientific principles made such headway as in the employment field. hiring employes for office work, training them for their duties, stimulating them to their best effort, adjusting wages to work performed, and providing for deserved promotions, are no longer casual occupations of some general offices, but the work and special concern of the trained office manager. here, as elsewhere, concentration and specialization are beginning to reveal the principles underlying successful effort. such principles concern not only the operations, but the organization of the office and its various parts. accounting principles _development and scope of accountancy_ _accounts and their purpose_ _classification of accounts_ _double entry bookkeeping_ _books of account_ _applying accounting principles--the original entries_ _applying accounting principles--the ledger records_ _applying accounting principles--summarizing results_ _columnar books_ _opening, operating and closing the books_ _the trial balance_ _economic summary_ _the balance sheet_ _single entry bookkeeping_ _continental system of bookkeeping_ _depreciation_ _methods of computing depreciation_ _labor-saving devices_ _internal checks_ as business becomes more complex we are more and more dependent upon accounting methods to show us the trend of the individual business in which we are interested. hence a knowledge of accounting principles is indispensable. yet, even among experienced bookkeepers, comparatively few have a clear understanding of the principles which underlie all correct methods of keeping financial records. this section of the course, therefore, starts with a clear explanation of the fundamental principles of bookkeeping, and progresses step by step until it reaches the most complicated cases of partnership and corporation accounting. within recent years the great importance of proper accounting methods in the conduct of business has come to be fully recognized. this section of the course should enable any executive or accountant to determine what accounting methods are best adapted to his own line of business. credit and collections _mercantile credit_ _book credit_ _documentary credit_ _granting credit--personal considerations_ _granting credit--business considerations_ _sources of credit information_ _cooperative methods in credit investigation_ _analysis of credit information_ _the credit man_ _credit management_ _collecting the money due_ _the collection manager and his work_ _principles underlying collection effort_ _collecting on a friendly basis_ _unfriendly stages of collection_ _credit protection_ _bankruptcy_ _the role of the credit department in developing business_ when a bill of goods is sold, the transaction is by no means complete--that is, if the sale is on credit. the purchaser must pay the bill. but some purchasers cannot pay, others will not; therefore caution must be exercised in granting credit, and pressure brought to bear in obtaining payment. often seekers after credit are foolishly offended at the questions they must answer. they do not realize how personal is the favor they are asking, nor do they usually understand the combination of factors which the credit man must consider. these factors range all the way from personal habits of the applicant to a survey of general business conditions. there is a well-organized machinery for gathering credit information both in this country and abroad. this machinery, however, should be supplemented by the personal observation of the salesmen, many of whom now fail to cooperate in the right spirit with the credit manager. the credit operation is incomplete till the goods are paid for; collections are the complement of credit granting, and they receive an extended treatment in the text. as a last resource, the law may be resorted to, as is evident in the treatment of credit protection and bankruptcy. the possibilities of the credit department as an agency in building up business, which have not always been understood, are set forth in the concluding chapter. business correspondence _letters that get action_ _seeing through the reader's eyes_ _the spirit of the letter_ _the proposition in the letter_ _the proposition analyzed_ _fundamentals of the presentation_ _the aid of formula in presentation_ _applying formulas to the presentation_ _routine and individual letters_ _adjusting complaints by letter_ _credit letters_ _collection letters_ _working the mailing list_ _planning the letter_ _writing the letter_ _mechanical form_ _getting the most out of words_ nearly all of us are constantly receiving and sending letters, and we know in our experience the common types--the nasty letter, the sloppy letter, the cold-as-an-iceberg letter, and, on the other hand, the direct yet cordial letter which makes us feel as if we had gripped a friendly hand. the profit-making influence of good correspondence can hardly be overestimated. a good sales letter may be the means of getting thousands of dollars' worth of business; a poor adjustment letter may be the cause of losing a worth-while customer. to a large extent business must be carried on by means of letters, and there are few subjects of more vital importance to the business man than business correspondence. business letters always have a direct purpose in view and there are certain underlying principles which should be observed in all business letters, whatever their particular purpose. but these letters serve many different purposes, and some of the prominent types and their characteristics are treated. especial attention is given to sales correspondence, which forms a most important branch of business correspondence. cost finding _the importance of cost finding_ _problems of cost finding_ _identification of costs_ _issuing and evaluating material_ _evaluation of labor costs_ _expense or burden_ _depreciation_ _distribution of factory expense_ _production centers and the supplementary rate_ _effect of volume of work on expense distribution_ _other features of expense distribution_ _distribution of administrative expense--résumé_ _assembling and recording costs_ _analysis and reduction of costs_ _predetermination of costs--materials and labor_ _predetermination of costs--expense_ _application of cost finding methods_ of late years, and as a direct result of growing competition in all branches of industrial enterprise, the subject of cost is receiving increased attention. every year sees hundreds of progressive concerns adopting methods designed to ascertain the real cost of producing and selling goods and of managing a business enterprise. manufacturers are no longer satisfied with merely making a profit. they want to know what lines are paying and what lines are not--not in a general way, but specifically in actual figures. they want to know which departments are producing economically and which are not. in this part of the course, the various methods of keeping track of costs are described and illustrated. particular attention is given to the mixed question of allotting general factory expense or burden. the possibilities of predicting costs are fully discussed and the significance of this development of cost finding methods is fully impressed upon the reader. the problem of costs is one of the widest application in business management and its significance in different lines of business is pointed out. advertising campaigns _the purpose of the campaign_ _analysis of demand and competition_ _the advertising appropriation_ _methods of identification_ _the advertising department_ _the advertising agency_ _advertising media_ _weighing circulation_ _weighing prestige_ _letters and direct advertising_ _sampling_ _how periodicals are used_ _the use of signs_ _campaigns to obtain distribution_ _campaigns to obtain dealer cooperation_ _mail-order campaigns_ _public sentiment campaigns_ _the trader's campaign_ _the campaign as a whole_ in the modern business course and service the study of advertising is divided into three parts. first, in marketing methods there is a complete presentation of the plan behind the campaign--of the things that have to be considered by anyone who has anything to sell, before he sends out salesmen or prepares advertising. the section of advertising principles shows what advertising can do for business, guides one in choosing the right advertising appeal, and treats of the technique of advertising, writing the copy, preparing the illustrations, and getting the advertisement before the public. there is much more to advertising, however, than the making of a preliminary study of the writing of advertisements. the advertiser has to consider problems of organization, methods of identifying his goods, his relation with agencies, the selection of media, distribution, dealer cooperation, and a host of other things, all of which have an important part in the complete campaign. this section deals with the many essential parts of an advertising campaign which have not been considered in preceding sections of the modern business course. it gathers together all the diverse considerations of the advertiser, shows their relation one to another, and binds them into a unified whole. corporation finance _the corporation; a preliminary sketch_ _capital of the corporation_ _capital stock_ _stock not paid in cash_ _trade credit and bank loans_ _short-term loans_ _mortgage bonds_ _collateral trust bonds_ _bonds secured by leases_ _miscellaneous bonds and preferred stock_ _amortization of bonds_ _capitalization_ _investment and maintenance of capital_ _income, dividends and surplus_ _promoting the new enterprise_ _promoting consolidations_ _selling stocks and bonds_ _financing the small company_ _financing reorganizations_ the advantages of the corporation have made it the most popular form of financial organization, and nearly all business men are now interested in one way or another in the formation or management of corporations, or in the buying and selling of the stock and securities of corporations. the stability of practically every business concern depends in a very large measure upon the keenness of judgment used in its financial management. this section of the course enables one to think along financial lines with accuracy and decision. the methods by which corporations are promoted and financed are fully described, and the principles that underlie successful corporate management are stated. the different kinds of bonds, such as mortgage bonds, collateral trust bonds, bonds secured by leases, etc., are explained and the methods of selling them discussed. there are sections on capital and its maintenance and a full discussion of income, dividends and surplus that will be of value to the executive and to the investor. in the last three chapters the application of the principles of corporation finance to the small company is fully described. transportation _the railroads and the shipping public_ _the government takes the railroads_ _government reorganization of railroads_ _railroad rates_ _classifications_ _rates in official classification and southeastern territory_ _transcontinental rates and the panama canal_ _export and import rates_ _special services and charges_ _terminal services and charges in new york_ _express and parcel post_ _the transportation act_ _inland water transportation_ business as it is conducted today would not be possible without the railroad. the corner grocery store as well as the big manufacturing company is directly affected by traffic, rates and methods. the prosperity of many a business and community is largely dependent upon relations with transportation companies. yet many business men are unfamiliar with even the elements of rate making and traffic handling. the war made great changes in railroad organization and when the railroads were returned at the close of the war to their former owners a new set of problems had to be faced. rail rates had assumed a new importance, labor and other costs had increased and both shipper and carrier were called upon to consider transportation in an entirely different light than before the war. all of these problems receive careful consideration in this text, and the tendencies of the times, so far as they have been clearly revealed, are pointed out. classifications, rates, special services, terminal facilities and charges are some of the specific questions discussed. foreign trade and shipping _foreign trade: relation of foreign trade to domestic business_ _the national aspect of foreign trade_ _the market_ _governmental trade promotion_ _private trade promotion_ _indirect exporting_ _direct exporting_ _the conditions of sale_ _the export department_ _cooperation for foreign trade_ _making an export shipment_ _importing_ _shipping: principles of ocean transportation_ _the freight service_ _ports and terminals_ _ocean freight rates_ _rate agreements_ _the merchant marine_ the events of recent years have turned the attention of business men of america once more to the problems of foreign trade. this section of the course describes the development of our trade with foreign countries. it describes various changes which are at work in this field and the methods by which foreign trade is conducted. intimately associated with this subject is that of shipping; the transportation problems involved in foreign trade, questions of routes, rates, registry and the like are given particular attention. the advantages and disadvantages of american and foreign shipping and the problems involved in the up-building of an american merchant marine receive careful consideration. banking _classes of banks_ _operations of a commercial bank_ _the bank statement_ _loans and discounts_ _establishing bank credit_ _bank notes_ _deposits and checks_ _the clearing house_ _bank organization and administration_ _banks and the government_ _american banking before the civil war_ _banking in europe_ _canadian banking system_ _the national banking system_ _banking reform in the united states_ _the federal reserve system_ _state banks and trust companies_ business concerns deal in bank credit every day. they have on deposit large amounts of their capital. they rely upon their banks' stability. and yet how few can read a bank statement with real insight and judgment. the fundamental principles underlying all banking operations are presented under this heading. the nature of money and its relation to credit and capital are described, and the conditions which lead to a general rise or fall of prices are set forth. the important banking and monetary experiences of the united states are reviewed and full descriptions of the banking systems of the united states, canada, england, france and germany are given. in connection with banking, the source of the banker's lending power and its relation to cash on hand are indicated, as well as the distinction between the bank note and the bank deposit, and the factors controlling the rate of discount. banking practice is in large part a study of the banking laws and customs prevalent in the united states, including those governing federal reserve banks, state banks and trust companies. the subject is fully discussed in this part of the course, as are also the technical aspects of banking in all details. international exchange _domestic exchange_ _federal reserve bank clearings_ _general aspects of foreign exchange_ _basal factors of exchange_ _restoration prospects for rates of exchange_ _foreign remittances_ _bills of exchange_ _a day in an exchange box_ _finance bills_ _arbitrage_ _rates of interest_ _gold shipments_ _sterling exchange_ _gold standard_ _gold exchange standard_ _silver and paper exchanges_ _london and new york as financial centers_ _war and the exchanges_ _tables_ the early part of this section of the course deals with inland exchange and describes the method by which settlements are made between different parts of the same country. when this is fully understood the problem of foreign exchange becomes very simple. it is the application of the same principles complicated only by the difference in money units between different countries. the "foreign exchange" department of banking is of such great importance and presents so many difficult questions that it deserves and is accorded special treatment. the reader is given a full description of the mechanism of the exchange market and is shown how money is made in foreign exchanges. he learns how the vast amount of export and import trade is made possible through the interrelations between the foreign exchange markets of new york, london, paris and other large centers. he also learns concretely how foreign shipments are financed and is given some valuable information concerning the influence of gold and other factors upon foreign exchange rates. an important feature of this section is a thorough discussion of the best methods of handling export shipments. many american and canadian manufacturers are considering the advisability of going after foreign trade with greater vigor. they are usually puzzled when it comes to considering how to finance these shipments, which are often a long time in transit. the growing importance of export trade makes this section of the course particularly valuable. insurance _risk and insurance_ _the life risks_ _life insurance protection_ _life policies and premiums_ _modification of the ordinary life policy_ _annuities and pensions_ _group insurance_ _functions of insurance carriers--the old line companies_ _assessment and fraternal insurance_ _government life insurance_ _accident and health insurance_ _liability insurance_ _workmen's compensation insurance--general features_ _workmen's compensation insurance--rate making_ _fire insurance_ _fire insurance policies_ _marine insurance_ _other forms of insurance_ insurance constitutes a form of investment in which we are all interested, as purchasers of life insurance, fire insurance, casualty insurance, marine insurance, or of any other of the various forms which have come into existence. to buy insurance properly, one should know the principles that underlie rates and insurance operations, and should be able to judge the policy which covers these various essentials. partnership and business insurance is much more used now than it has been heretofore and it is becoming an important element in adding to the stability of business. personal or life insurance occupies a large space in the text. the nature of the life risk is discussed as well as the means of protection through the straight life policy. the various motives which have prompted these variations and the effect of these modifications upon the premium or the price of insurance are clearly explained. various types of business organizations with divergent business methods have been devised for the purpose of conducting life insurance. the strength and weakness of the different organization forms are pointed out. another aspect of personal insurance is found in accident and health insurance. obligations toward others generally for personal injuries is the basis of liability and workmen's compensation insurance, of which the latter has had an almost mushroom development of late years. property insurance brings up diverse questions in fire insurance and in marine insurance. the stock and produce exchanges _functions of stock exchanges_ _leading stock exchanges_ _the new york stock exchange_ _stock exchange securities_ _execution of orders, transfers and settlements_ _methods of trading_ _the speculative transaction_ _relations of banks to the security market_ _quotations and news services_ _the curb market_ _benefits and evils of speculation_ _influences that affect stock prices_ _produce exchanges and their functions_ _the future contract_ _organized spot market_ _the chicago board of trade_ almost every man in business comes into contact with some one of the exchanges. therefore, a detailed description of the organization, operation and management of the principal security and raw material markets of the world is of inestimable value. this is the aim of this section of the modern business course and service. speculation in goods and in stocks exists because it performs an economic service. it saves the manufacturer of cotton goods or flour, for example, from gambling by an operation known as hedging. business men should understand how speculation performs this service. the volume closes with a discussion of corners and of the influences governing security and produce prices. accounting practice and auditing _accounting practice_ _proprietary accounts_ _repairs, renewals, depreciation and fluctuation_ _partnership problems at organization_ _partnership problems during operation_ _partnership dissolution_ _partnership dissolution illustrated_ _consignments and joint ventures_ _fiduciary accounting_ _insolvency accounts_ _corporations_ _branch accounts_ _auditing_ _the auditor and his work_ _scope of auditor's activity_ _procedure and methods_ _classes of audits_ _verification of the asset side of the balance sheet_ _verification of liabilities_ _reports and certificates_ this section deals with the application of the principles of accounting to the complicated problems that arise in practice. the correct method of treating the proprietary accounts under the different legal types of organization are considered. the management of surplus, the treatment of reserves, the relation between funds and reserves and the method of handling sinking funds are discussed at length. the differentiation between capital and revenue charges is perhaps the most difficult problem which the accountant has to face. the important principles involved in this problem are treated with numerous examples taken from actual cases. the difficult problems which arise in partnership and corporate accounting are fully explained. auditing is taken up from the business man's point of view rather than from the point of view of the practitioner. however, many points of interest to the practitioner and student are considered. the nature of the auditor's work is discussed and the different classes of engagements which auditors undertake are explained. the auditor renders a report on his work at the conclusion of his engagement and the form and contents of his report are treated at length. the subscriber is shown the difference in certificates which auditors attach to balance sheets and the proper method of interpreting them is discussed. financial and business statements _importance of classified information_ _statistical and graphical statements_ _auxiliary statements_ _analysis and interpretation of income statements_ _consolidated income statements_ _valuation and interpretation of fixed assets_ _valuation and interpretation of intangible assets_ _valuation and interpretation of current assets_ _valuation and interpretation of deferred assets_ _treasury stock and its treatment_ _interpretation of liabilities_ _surplus, reserves and dividends_ _sinking funds and other funds_ _relation of working capital and income to assets_ _consolidated balance sheets_ _private budgets_ _municipal budgets_ _interpretation of professional reports_ the business man must understand accounting as far as he uses accounting knowledge in interpreting the progress of his business. he wants not so much the details of accounting technique as the information necessary to enable him to use his accounting records properly. no one can expect to succeed in a big way without the ability to read financial and business statements--both on the lines and between the lines. in every business the executive deals with a great variety of reports, statements, statistics and charts. this volume is designed to set forth the principles and to describe the methods by which they should be interpreted. in the discussion of private and public budgets is included data that will be of the utmost value to every business man. you will find a thorough discussion of budget making and a clear outline of what should and what should not be done. instructions for the analysis of the reports and financial statements of industrial organizations and railway companies are set forth. investments _farm mortgages_ _urban real estate_ _public bonds of domestic origin_ _bonds of foreign origin_ _bonds and stock contrasted_ _bonds and stock classified_ _railway securities_ _analysis of railroad securities_ _public utility securities_ _industrial securities_ _mining securities_ _oil securities_ _the cycle of trade_ _investment barometers_ _the dream land of finance_ _general rules_ every successful business man at some time in his career has occasion to seek gilt-edge investments--either for his own surplus funds or for those of his company. the daily losses of investors' capital are evidence of the need for a volume which aims to qualify you to make the critical analysis of securities which is necessary to an intelligent estimate of their value. such topics as farm mortgages and urban real estate are thoroughly discussed and the opportunities in this new field for the investor are clearly explained. domestic bonds, foreign bonds, securities of industrials, railways and public utility corporations are analyzed in a way to help you make an intelligent estimate of their value. in this volume you will find a thorough study of the subjects of security fluctuation and trade cycles, together with information on the general rules and technique of trading. business and the government _business and the public in partnership_ _taxation and business_ _government, natural resources and the farmer_ _government encouragement of industries and commerce_ _public inspection of business_ _problems of employment_ _public service corporations_ _local public utilities_ _trusts and combinations_ _the postal service_ _should public management be extended?_ _the great war: its effects, its influence, its lessons_ the course opens with the personal relations of a man to a business and continues with an analysis of the various activities which constitute modern business. in this section it closes with the manifold relations of business to government. business is, as it were, in partnership with the government. in this partnership the government is active, as there are government departments aiming to promote business in manufactures and in trading. business, of course, cannot exist without government, and as the war demonstrated, government cannot exist without business. business is restive, however, under the close supervision wrought of war necessities. how far is such supervision justified in times of peace? this is a question both of principle and expediency and all its aspects are brought out in the discussion of specific problems, the tariff, trusts and corporations, public utilities, national and local, and the like. chapter vii advisory council _the advisory council has general supervision and direction of the policies and activities of the institute._ =joseph french johnson, d.c.s., ll.d.= _dean, new york university school of commerce, accounts and finance_ graduated harvard university, ; studied political science and economics in europe; began newspaper work on the springfield _republican_, ; moved to chicago, , and became financial editor of the chicago _tribune_; established the spokane (wash.) _spokesman_, , sold his interest, , and became professor of finance in the university of pennsylvania; appointed professor of political economy in new york university, ; dean of the school of commerce, accounts and finance since ; secretary of the special currency committee of the new york chamber of commerce in ; appointed by the national monetary commission to investigate and report on the canadian banking system, ; treasurer of the economic club of new york since ; director of the merchants' association of new york since ; received degree of doctor of commercial science from union college, ; member, new york chamber of commerce; member of mayor gaynor's commission on new sources of revenue for new york city, ; member of van tuyl commission to revise the banking law of state of new york, ; received degree of doctor of laws from hobart college, ; author of "money and currency," and "syllabus of money and banking," and author of the modern business text on "business and the man" and "economics--the science of business." =frank a. vanderlip, a.m., ll.d.= _financier_ educated at the universities of illinois and of chicago; after his graduation reporter on the chicago _tribune_, and later financial editor; also part owner and associate editor of the chicago _economist_; became private secretary to secretary of the treasury gage, march, ; appointed assistant secretary of the treasury, june, ; appointed vice-president of the national city bank of new york, ; delegate to the international conference of commerce and industry held at ostend, belgium, ; served as president of the national city bank of new york, - ; member, new york chamber of commerce; trustee, carnegie foundation; member of the council of new york university; director, union pacific railroad company, and of various industrial and banking corporations; author of "chicago street railways," "the american invasion of europe" and "business and education"; chairman, board of directors, american international corporation. =jeremiah w. jenks, ph.d., ll.d.= research professor of government and public administration, new york university graduated university of michigan, ; admitted to the michigan bar; graduate student, receiving degree of ph.d., university of halle, ; professor of political science, knox college, - ; professor of political economy, indiana university, - ; professor of political economy and politics, cornell university, - ; professor of government and director of the division of public affairs, new york university, - ; president of the american economic association, - ; expert agent of united states industrial commission engaged in the investigation of trusts and industrial combinations in the united states and europe, - ; expert adviser to the united states department of labor, - ; special commissioner of the united states war department to investigate questions of currency, labor and taxation in the orient, - ; special expert on currency reform for the government of mexico, ; member of the commission on international exchange to advise government of china on currency, - ; director of the far eastern bureau, since ; member of the united states immigration commission, - ; member, high commission of nicaragua, since ; author of "the trust problem," "the immigration problem," "citizenship and the schools," "great fortunes--the winning, the using," "the principles of politics," "great american issues" (written with john hays hammond), and of numerous government reports; and author of the modern business text on "business and the government." =t. coleman dupont, d.c.s.= _business executive_ educated at urbana university, chauncy hall school and massachusetts institute of technology; later surveyor for the louisville & southern exposition and engineer for the central coal & iron company; afterward engaged in extensive coal and iron mining, construction and management of public utilities; for thirteen years president of e. i. dupont de nemours powder company; president, central coal & iron company; president, mchenry coal company; president, johnson coal company; president, main jellico mountain coal company; president, johnstown passenger railway company; vice-president, greeley square hotel company; director, union national bank of wilmington; director, empire trust company; director, national surety company; member, republican national committee; chairman, republican state committee of delaware, . launched a comprehensive plan for remodeling central city. chairman of the inter-racial council. interested in one of the largest hotel companies in america, controlling waldorf-astoria, claridge, mcalpin, new willard. new york university, d.c.s., . =john hays hammond, d.sc., ll.d.= consulting engineer educated in public and private schools; graduated from sheffield scientific school (yale), ; appointed by the united states geological survey in to examine california and mexican gold fields; consulting engineer to union iron works, san francisco, and to central and southern pacific railroads; has made extensive examinations of properties in all parts of the world; became consulting engineer for barnato bros. in and later for cecil rhodes, with whom he was closely associated,; consulting engineer, consolidated gold fields co. of south africa and the randfontein estates gold mining co.; was one of the four leaders in reform movement in the transvaal, - ; after varied experience in london, he returned to the united states and became associated with some of the most important financial groups in this country, purchasing and promoting mining properties in this country and mexico; lecturer at columbia, harvard, yale and johns hopkins universities; president of the national republican league; president, american institute of mining engineers; fellow a.a.a.s.; member national civic federation, and other civic and political bodies; contributor to many scientific magazines; appointed by president taft as special ambassador and representative of the president at the coronation of king george v; president of the world court congress. honorary degrees: yale, a.m., ; stevens institute of technology, d.e., ; st. john's college, ll.d., ; university of pittsburgh, d.sc., ; collaborator on the modern business text "business and the government." staff _the members of the staff conduct the modern business course and service_ =bruce barton= _general publicity_ graduated from amherst college. managing editor _home herald_, chicago, - ; managing editor _housekeeper_, - ; assistant sales manager p. f. collier and son, - ; editor _every week_, - ; publicity director united war work campaign; president of barton, durstine and osborne, inc., advertising agents. author of "more power to you," "it's a good old world," "the making of george groton," and contributor to leading magazines and business papers. =dwight e. beebe, b.l.= _collections_ graduate of the university of wisconsin; for three years assistant to the sales manager of the westinghouse-nernst lamp company of pittsburgh; for three years connected with the publicity department of allis chalmers company, milwaukee; later associated with charles austin bates, new york city; appointed bursar of the alexander hamilton institute in . director of service since october, . collaborator on the modern business text on "credit and collections." =geoffrey s. childs, b.c.s.= _office methods_ educated at bryn athyn academy; graduate of new york university school of commerce, accounts and finance. formerly with trackless trolley company; and british and american mortgage company, new york city. assistant chief clerk, alexander hamilton institute, - . office manager of alexander hamilton institute since june, . collaborator on the modern business text on "office administration." =edwin j. clapp, ph.d.= _transportation and terminal facilities_ graduate of yale university; after graduation spent one year teaching at hill school, pottstown, pa.; two years as factory assistant and traveling salesman with the robin hood ammunition company; instructor in political economy, yale university, - ; assistant professor of trade and transportation, school of commerce, new york university, - ; special traffic commissioner to the directors of the port of boston, ; special adviser to the mayor and harbor commissioners of troy; professor of economics, new york university and lecturer on transportation in the school of commerce, accounts and finance, new york university, ; special adviser to the legal department of the new york, new haven and hartford railroad in its sound lines cases; author of "the navigable rhine," "the port of hamburg," "economic aspects of the war," "the port of boston," the modern business text on "transportation." =raymond j. comyns, b.c.s.= _personal salesmanship_ educated at new york university school of commerce, accounts and finance; connected with branch of the equitable life assurance society, - ; accessionist, new york botanical gardens, ; entered tenement house department, new york city, ; acting chief inspector of tenements, bronx borough, new york city, ; examiner of charitable institutions, new york city, - ; lecturer on salesmanship and sales management, new york university school of commerce, accounts and finance; representative in colorado of the alexander hamilton institute, - ; appointed staff secretary in charge of enrolments, ; assistant director of sales since ; co-author, modern business text on "salesmanship and sales management." =herbert f. debower, ll.b.= _advertising and sales policies_ _business promotion_ educated in the university of wisconsin; practiced law for two years; engaged in selling specialties for a number of years; since vice-president, member of the board of directors and chairman executive committee of the alexander hamilton institute; also director of various business corporations; author of the modern business text on "advertising principles." =roland p. falkner, ph.d.= _business statistics_ graduate of the wharton school of finance, university of pennsylvania; graduate student at the university of paris, berlin, leipsic and halle; - , associate professor of statistics, university of pennsylvania; - , statistician, u. s. senate committee on finance; - , secretary, international monetary conference; , chief, division of documents, library of congress; , special agent, bureau of census on statistics of crime; , commissioner of education for porto rico; , expert special agent in charge of school statistics for the u. s. industrial commission; , chairman of the commission of the united states to the republic of liberia; , financial representative of the republic of liberia; , assistant director of the census; , member joint land commission, united states-panama; since , lecturer, new york university; member international institute of statistics and other learned societies; contributor to various statistical and economic periodicals and has prepared several government reports; , associate editor, , managing editor of the alexander hamilton institute. =major b. foster, m.a.= _banking principles_ graduated from carson and newman college, ; principal of watauga academy, - ; graduate student in cornell university, - ; fellow in political economy at cornell university, - ; assistant professor of economics and former secretary of the new york university school of commerce, accounts and finance; author of several of the modern business reports and the modern business text on "banking." former assistant to the chairman of the federal reserve bank of new york, now assistant to executive committee, alexander hamilton institute. =leo greendlinger, m.c.s., c.p.a. (n. y.)= _financial and business statements_ graduate of the new york university school of commerce, accounts and finance; practising accountant; member of the accounting faculty of new york university, - ; formerly editor of the c.p.a. question department of _the journal of accountancy_; member of the new york state society of certified public accountants; member of the american institute of accountants; member of the executive committee and board of directors as well as secretary and treasurer of the alexander hamilton institute; author of "accountancy problems," vols.; and the modern business text on "financial and business statements." =j. anton dehaas= _foreign trade and shipping_ graduate of high school, the hague, holland; , diplomas in accounting, and french, german and dutch commercial correspondence, ; junior accountant with j. h. rosenboom, public accountant, the hague, holland, - ; a.b. stanford university, ; m.a. harvard university, ; ph.d. stanford university, ; special agent in europe of the california immigration committee, ; american representative for magnesiet werken, rotterdam, holland, ; instructor in economics, stanford university, - ; lecturer foreign trade school, san francisco, california, ; adjunct professor of business administration, university of texas, - ; professor of commerce, ohio state university, - ; examiner, federal trade commission, summer ; professor of commerce, university of washington, seattle, washington, ; lecturer on foreign trade, columbia university, new york, summer ; captain u. s. a., ; formerly professor of foreign trade at the commercial university at rotterdam, holland, - ; professor of foreign trade, new york university, . author of business organization and administration, and of modern business text on "foreign trade and shipping." =edward r. hardy, ph.b.= _insurance_ graduate of boston university; formerly librarian, insurance library association, boston; for several years engaged in investigations and administrative work for various insurance organizations; secretary and treasurer of the insurance society of new york, ; manager of the underwriters' association of the district of columbia, ; lecturer on insurance in new york university school of commerce, accounts and finance; assistant manager of the new york fire insurance exchange; co-editor of the "international insurance encyclopedia"; author of "history of fire insurance in massachusetts" and contributor on fire insurance in the modern business text on "insurance." =warren f. hickernell, ph.d.= _business conditions_ studied political economy at yale university. m.a., ; ph.d., . was economic expert with the immigration commission, , and the bureau of census, - . from until was managing editor of the brookmire economic service. author of "business cycles" and numerous articles on business and financial conditions. lecturer on "panics and depressions" at new york university school of commerce, accounts and finance. director, bureau of business conditions of the alexander hamilton institute, since august, . =solomon s. huebner, ph.d.= _marine insurance_ educated at university of wisconsin. b.s., ; m., . dr. huebner was a special lecturer on insurance and commerce in the university of pennsylvania, - ; assistant professor, - , and professor since . since dr. huebner has been expert in insurance to the united states shipping board and to the committee on the merchant marine and fisheries of the house of representatives. he has had charge of the congressional marine insurance investigation. while serving the committee on the merchant marine he had charge of the shipping investigation which led to creation of u. s. shipping board and played a prominent part in forming the u. s. shipping act. dr. huebner is a special lecturer on insurance in the columbia university school of business. he was expert for the committee on merchant marine and fisheries of the house of representatives. he is author of works on property insurance, ; life insurance, ; steamship agreements and affiliations in the american foreign and domestic trade, ; marine insurance, , and of the sections on marine insurance and life insurance in the modern business text on "insurance." =jeremiah w. jenks, ph.d., ll.d.= _relation of government to business_ (see advisory council.) =joseph french johnson, d.c.s., ll.d.= _economic problems_ _business ethics_ (see advisory council.) =walter s. johnson, k.c.= _commercial law_ educated in mcgill university (b.a., b.c.l.); member of the quebec bar; practising law in montreal; lecturer on the law of agency, the law of partnership and lease and constitutional history, mcgill university; collaborator in writing the modern business texts on "credit and the credit man" and "business organization"; author of the canadian modern business text on "commercial law"; editor, the quebec civil code. =edward d. jones, m.a. (hon.), ph.d.= _investments_ educated in ohio wesleyan university; graduated in with degree of b.s., m.a., ; entered university of wisconsin and received degree of ph.d. in ; instructor in statistics and economics, - ; assistant professor of economics and commercial geography, - , university of wisconsin; united states commissioner to paris exposition, - ; professor of business administration, university of michigan, - ; member of international association of arts and sciences, st. louis, ; holder of diploma and bronze medal, paris exposition, and gold medal, buffalo exposition; during the war with the general staff of the war department, and with the war industries board; member of american economic association, of american society of industrial engineers and of industrial relations association of america; now in charge of harvard university service in foreman training; author of "the economic crises," "the business administration," "the administration of industrial enterprises" and of the modern business text on "investments." =john g. jones= _sales management_ educated in public school and university college of wales, aberystwyth; came to america in and engaged in newspaper work and mining in montana and colorado; engaged in sales work since ; vice-president and director of sales and advertising of the alexander hamilton institute since ; also a director and member of the executive committee of alexander hamilton institute; special lecturer on salesmanship and sales management in the new york university school of commerce, accounts and finance; chairman of the international committee on business methods and industrial relations, industrial association of rotary clubs, - ; author of the modern business text on "salesmanship and sales management." =dexter s. kimball, a.b., m.e.= _cost finding_ practical work with pope and talbot, port gamble, washington, - ; entered shop of union iron works, san francisco, , continuing this practical work until ; graduated leland stanford university, ; entered the engineering department of the union iron works, ; designing engineer, anaconda mining company, ; assistant professor machine design, sibley college, - ; professor machine construction, - ; professor machine design and construction, - ; professor machine design and industrial engineering, - ; dean of the engineering colleges, cornell university; member of council on industrial education, new york state department of education, ; member of american society mechanical engineers; member of society for promotion of engineering education; author "elements of machine design" (with john h. barr), ; "industrial education," ; "principles of industrial organization," ; "elements of cost finding," ; contributor to scientific press; author of the modern business text on "cost finding" and "plant management." =bernard lichtenberg, m.c.s.= _advertising principles_ graduate of new york university school of commerce, accounts and finance. two years post-graduate study in advertising at new york university. formerly with the clark-hutchinson company, of boston; and with the business book bureau, new york city; office manager of the alexander hamilton institute, - ; assistant director of advertising since june, . co-author of the modern business text on "advertising principles." =frank l. mcvey, ph.d., ll.d.= _economics_ born in wilmington, ohio, november , ; educated in ohio wesleyan university and yale university, receiving degree of ph.d. in from the latter; also studied in england in . he became professor of economics in the university of minnesota in ; president of the state university of north dakota in - ; now president of the university of kentucky; chairman of north dakota state educational commission, ; member of north dakota state board of education; member of american economic association; member of american statistical association, and member of other commercial clubs and societies; secretary and founder of the minnesota academy of social sciences; member and chairman of minnesota tax commission, - , and member of other commissions and committees. author of numerous tracts, books and pamphlets, including "modern industrialism," "railway transportation," "the making of a town," and editor, national social science series; collaborator on the modern business text on "economics--the science of business." =john thomas madden, b.c.s., c.p.a. (n. y.)= _accounting practice_ born in worcester, mass.; graduate of new york university school of commerce, accounts and finance (summa cum laude); employed with swift & company's subsidiary interests in various capacities, - ; with leslie & company, chartered accountants, new york, - ; practising public accountant; instructor in accounting, new york university, - ; assistant professor of accounting, ; now professor of accounting and head of department of accounting, new york university; special lecturer in accounting, association of employes, new york edison company; treasurer, old colony club; president, american association of university instructors in accounting, - ; national president, alpha kappa psi fraternity, - ; and collaborator on the modern business text on "accounting practice and auditing." =mac martin= _advertising campaigns_ educated in minneapolis public schools; graduate of university of minnesota; president mac martin advertising agency; ex-president minneapolis advertising forum; agency service committee, american association of advertising agencies; professional lecturer in advertising at the university of minnesota; author "planning an advertising campaign for a manufacturer"; author "modern methods of merchandising"; author "martin's merchandising reporting service," and of the text on "advertising campaigns" in the modern business series. =g. f. michelbacher, m.s.= _compensation and liability insurance_ graduate of the university of california, ; teaching fellow in mathematics in the university, - ; lecturer in insurance and mathematics, - ; in charge of the preparation of the california schedule for rating permanent injuries, for the industrial accident board of the state of california, - ; later superintendent of the permanent disability rating department of the industrial accident commission of the state of california and superintendent of the claims department of the state compensation insurance fund; a year later became statistician of the national workmen's compensation service bureau in new york, - ; actuary of the bureau; secretary of the national council on workman's compensation insurance; contributor on liability and workman's compensation insurance to the modern business text on "insurance," also secretary of the national council on workmen's compensation insurance. =t. vassar morton, litt.b.= graduate rutgers college; engaged in sales work with the american hard rubber company; office manager of the voorhees rubber manufacturing company; afterward subscription credit and collection manager of doubleday, page and company; member of the national association of credit men; appointed bursar of the alexander hamilton institute october , . collaborator on the modern business text "credit and collections." =bruce d. mudgett, ph.d.= _life insurance_ graduate of university of idaho; one year of graduate work at columbia university and four years at university of pennsylvania; seven years instructor in insurance, wharton school of finance and commerce, university of pennsylvania; assistant professor of insurance, school of business administration, university of washington, seattle, washington. on leave - as statistical economist, bureau of research, war trade board, washington, d. c.; now associate professor of economics, university of minnesota. joint author with s. s. huebner of volume on life insurance; author of "the disability clause in life insurance contracts;" several articles in economic periodicals; contributor on life insurance to the modern business text on "insurance." =e. l. stewart patterson= _domestic and foreign exchange_ educated in england; entered eastern townships bank at sherbrooke in ; acted as accountant for this bank in granby and montreal, - ; became assistant manager at montreal in ; served three years ( - ) as assistant manager at sherbrooke; later became manager, and in assistant general manager; since amalgamation of the eastern townships bank with the canadian bank of commerce, in , has served as inspector at toronto, and is now superintendent of the eastern townships branches, with headquarters at sherbrooke; fellow of bankers' institute, london; of institute of banking of the united states; and member of the canadian bankers' association. collaborator on the modern business text on "international exchange." =frederic e. reeve, c.p.a.= _accounting_ born january , ; graduate of new york university school of commerce, accounts and finance, june, . c.p.a. degree, new york state, august, . former instructor in accounting at new york university school of commerce, accounts and finance. member of the firm of white and reeve, certified public accountants, - . since that date practising as a certified public accountant in new york city. collaborator on the modern business text on "accounting principles." =frederick c. russell, b.c.s.= _auditing_ graduate new york university school of commerce, accounts and finance. formerly accountant for carter, howe and company, manufacturing jewelers; connected with the auditing department of the new york telephone company; formerly instructor in accounting, new york university school of commerce; controller, alexander hamilton institute since . author of the modern business text on "accounting principles." =bernard k. sandwell, b.a.= _international finance_ graduated toronto university, ; began newspaper work in england, but returned to canada in ; editorial writer on toronto _news_; editorial writer and dramatic critic on montreal _herald_; specialized in economic subjects, and in was one of the founders of the montreal _financial times_ and became editor of that paper; resigned to take present post of assistant professor of economics, mcgill university, montreal; editor of the _canadian bookman_, ; national secretary canadian authors association; author of financial section of "canada and the great world war." =william w. swanson, ph.d.= _money and banking_ studied at queen's university, kingston, canada, and specialized in economic science under dr. adam shortt; graduated with honors in ; fellow at the university of chicago in the department of political economy, - ; graduated ph.d., ; author of "the establishment of the national banking system"; associate editor of the montreal _journal of commerce_, ; since special writer for the _journal of commerce_; contributor to _monetary times_ and other financial journals in canada; investigated the unemployment problem for the ontario government commission on unemployment, ; associate professor in economic science in queen's university, kingston, - ; professor of economics at the provincial university of saskatchewan, since . =john b. swinney, a.b.= _merchandising_ graduated at syracuse university in ; previous to entering college engaged in retail merchandising; - , superintendent of schools, springville, n. y.; - , with john wanamaker in retail merchandising; - , with longmans, green & company, in wholesale merchandising; assistant secretary in charge of service, alexander hamilton institute, - ; lecturer on wholesale merchandising in new york university school of commerce, accounts and finance, - ; editor harper's retail business series; professor of marketing, college of commerce and business administration, tulane university, . lecturer on merchandising in columbia university, . now superintendent of merchandising, the winchester stores (chain sporting goods and hardware stores). collaborator on the modern business text on "marketing and merchandising." =william h. walker, ll.d.= _financial problems_ educated in the wharton school of finance of university of pennsylvania; assistant purchasing agent, consolidated lithograph company; later engaged by the same company in the installation of cost systems and the organization of branch plants; a number of years superintendent and assistant manager, erie lithographing and printing company; resigned to become president of the grape products company; director and officer of numerous other corporations; engaged for many years in special study of finance, corporations and business efficiency; financial counsel to corporations; lecturer and writer on finance and corporations; in , appointed dean of the school of accounts, finance and commerce, duquesne university, pittsburgh; director, pittsburgh commercial club; member of pittsburgh tax commission and chairman of its committee on administration; author of the modern business text on "corporation finance." special lecturers _the special lecturers have prepared written lectures for the modern business course and service, presenting results of their successful business experience._ =erastus w. bulkley= _partner, spencer trask & company_ graduated from new york university in ; five years later receiving a degree from the new york college of pharmacy. following a short period of service with the pennsylvania railroad company, he entered the service of spencer trask & company, investment bankers, in , as assistant manager of their albany, new york, office. six years later he was appointed sales manager of the new york city office; in , he was admitted as a partner in that firm, and is at present an active member. he established the educational courses now in use by spencer trask & company for salesmen and office employes. he is recognized among investment bankers as a close student of finance, especially of the methods of distributing securities to individual investors. governor and chairman of the foreign relations committee of the investment bankers' association of america, - ; member of the advisory board of new york university school of commerce; member of the american economic association and of the american academy of political and social science. =herbert s. collins= _vice-president and general manager, united cigar stores company_ born in orleans county, new york; became a clerk in mr. whelan's cigar store, becoming the manager of the business; came to new york in , and was one of the first salesmen of the united cigar stores company; as sales manager mr. collins is credited with the development of window display in the united cigar stores; in the arrangement of goods visible from the sidewalk, he takes special interest, in order that it may dovetail with the other advertising of the store. =henry m. edwards= _auditor, new york edison company_ born in new york city; educated at college of the city of new york; had short experience in wholesale drygoods and fire insurance business; was connected successively with the office, manufacturing and selling organizations of john anderson and company, tobacco manufacturers; entered the employ of the manhattan electric light company, , as bookkeeper; subsequently appointed auditor of the company, and two years later was made director and secretary, which office he retained until the company, in , was consolidated with the edison electric illuminating company; was in charge of the financial operations incident to the consolidation of all the companies forming the present new york edison company, of which company he was made auditor; has been chairman of the accounting committee of the national electric light association, since ; author of "electric light accounts and their significance;" has contributed to trade journals and other magazines, many papers on accounting and financial subjects and has delivered many addresses on these subjects. =harrington emerson= _efficiency engineer_ born in trenton, n. j.; educated in paris, munich, vienna, athens; took the mechanical engineering course in royal polytechnic, munich; professor in university of nebraska, - ; after engaged in professional work with c., b. & q., union pacific and santa fe railways; now president of the emerson company, efficiency engineers; author of various important works which have had a strong influence on business methods, including "efficiency" and "twelve principles of efficiency." =charles ernest forsdick= _controller, union oil company_ born at greenwich, england; educated in the grammar schools there, later attended morden college and the shrewsbury schools; came to the united states in , and until was engaged in accounting work in the southern states; then became affiliated with the accounting department of the lehigh valley railroad company in philadelphia, of which company he became general bookkeeper; in mr. forsdick became associated with haskins and sells, certified public accountants in new york, with whom he remained for ten years; he became associate at large of the american association of public accountants and a member of the institute of accounts, and was for four years a member of the faculty of the new york university school of commerce, accounts and finance. =orlando c. harn= _advertising manager, national lead company_ born in dayton, ohio; educated in ohio wesleyan university and in cornell university; entered business as clerk in a retail book store, afterward engaged in newspaper and trade paper work; at one time advertising manager of h. j. heinz company; chairman, national advertising commission; for two terms president of the technical publicity association; was the second president of the association of national advertising managers; now advertising manager and chairman of the sales committee of the national lead company; originator of the "dutch boy" trade-mark. =a. barton hepburn= _chairman advisory board, chase national bank, new york_ born at colton, n. y.; graduated from middlebury college and received degrees of ll.d. and d.c.l. at st. lawrence, columbia and williams college. practised law in new york state, was appointed superintendent of the banking department for new york and later comptroller of the currency. in he was made president of the third national bank of new york, then vice-president of national city bank, and later president of the chase national bank of new york. he is director of a number of prominent financial, industrial and commercial organizations; trustee of middlebury college and rockefeller foundation; member of new york chamber of commerce and various scientific and literary societies. =lawrence m. jacobs= _vice-president, international banking corporation_ born in sturgis, michigan; graduated from the university of chicago in ; was sent by the government in to the philippine islands, china and japan; in he entered the national city bank of new york; in he was made foreign representative of the national city bank; when the national city bank acquired the international banking corporation and the international bank, he was made vice-president of the former and the president of the latter. =jackson johnson= _chairman of the board, international shoe company_ born in lagrange, alabama; entered the general store business in holly springs, mississippi; for five years engaged in the wholesale shoe business. in moved to st. louis, and was one of the leaders in organizing the roberts, johnson and rand shoe company; president of this company until , when the international shoe company was formed by the consolidation of the roberts, johnson and rand shoe company and the peters shoe company. in the friedman-shelby shoe company was purchased and became one of the sales branches of the international shoe company. mr. johnson was elected the first president of the international shoe company, a position which he held for five years, and until he was chosen chairman of the board the position which he now fills. is director in the first national bank in st. louis and the st. louis union trust company; member of the board of trustees of washington university. for two terms, ending november, , was president of the st. louis chamber of commerce and during his incumbency the activities of this organization were greatly extended and intensified. during the war he served the government as regional adviser to the war industries board. =fowler manning= _sales manager, diamond match company_ born in texas; entered business as a traveling salesman; he left the road to join the inside sales organization of the meyer brothers' drug company, st. louis, with a view to securing an insight into the methods employed in the sales management of a large successful business; specialized in sales organization and sales reorganization to broaden still further his experience in connection with specialty lines. =finley h. mcadow= _past president of the national association of credit men_ born in ohio; educated in ohio; entered chicago branch of chas. scribner's sons as bookkeeper; two years later he became assistant superintendent and cost accountant for racine (wis.) hardware manufacturing company; secretary and treasurer of staver brothers carriage company of chicago; has long been associated with the national association of credit men, having served with honor as director, and president of the chicago local association, and as director, vice-president and for two terms president of the national association of credit men. he is a lecturer on credits in central y. m. c. a. of chicago and credit manager of skinner brothers of chicago. =general charles miller= _former chairman of the board, galena-signal oil company_ born in alsace, france, educated in france; given degree of a.m., bucknell university; entered oil business, , and had been president galena-signal oil company since its organization; director in over forty industrial corporations; entered the civil war when twenty years of age; formerly mayor of franklin, pa.; commissioned in national guard of pennsylvania, , as major; promoted to brigadier general and major general commanding the national guard, retiring in ; decorated by french government as chevalier of legion of honor for eminent services to industry and commerce. =melville w. mix= _president, dodge manufacturing co._ born in atlanta, ill.; at the age of twenty-one entered employ of dodge manufacturing company of mishawaka, ind., and held various positions in the company; in he was elected vice-president and general manager, and in president of the company; was formerly president, american supply and machinery manufacturers' association; vice-president from indiana of national association of manufacturers; served two years as mayor of mishawaka, and later as member for indiana of louisiana exposition commission; was subsequently appointed by the governor of indiana as member of commission to investigate laws and conditions of woman labor and to recommend proper legislation in connection therewith. =emmett hay naylor= _secretary-treasurer, writing paper manufacturers' association_ educated in dartmouth college, new york law school, and graduate school of harvard university; for four years secretary of the springfield (mass.) board of trade; held honorary offices of president of the new england association of commercial executives and secretary-treasurer of the american association of commercial executives; later secretary-treasurer of the western new england chamber of commerce; now secretary-treasurer of the writing paper manufacturers' association; also secretary-treasurer of the cover paper and tissue paper manufacturers' association; special lecturer before the graduate schools of dartmouth college, harvard and new york universities; author of various magazine articles concerning the principles and possibilities of commercial organization work. =holbrook f. j. porter= _consulting engineer_ born in new york city; educated, lehigh university; served successively with several industrial corporations, - ; western representative, bethlehem steel company, - ; eastern representative, - ; vice-president and general manager, westinghouse-nernst lamp company, - ; consulting industrial engineer in independent practice in new york since . =welding ring= _exporter_ born in cornwall, n. y.; entered business in as clerk in an importing house; after spending a year in the importing establishment, spent several years in a grain and flour commission business; since that time has been engaged in exporting to australia, new zealand, south africa and europe; has visited all these countries, as well as china, japan and the east indies, and has studied their problems at close range; now senior member of the exporting firm of mailler and quereau; director and vice-president of the united states and australia steamship company; member of the new york chamber of commerce and chairman, executive committee of the produce exchange and maritime exchange; ex-president, exporters and importers' association; director, foreign trade council; trustee, williamsburg savings bank. =arthur webster thompson= _president, philadelphia company of pittsburgh_ born in erie, pa.; graduated in from allegheny college with the degree of civil engineer; was rodman on location work for the pittsburgh, buffalo and lake erie railroad; was appointed assistant division engineer of the baltimore and ohio railroad at pittsburgh in and gradually rose until in july, , he became vice-president of this railroad in charge of traffic and commercial development; is president of the board of trustees of allegheny college and a member of the following scientific societies: american railway association (vice-president); american society of civil engineers; american railway engineering association; engineers' society, western pennsylvania; american academy political and social science; is a director of the national bank of commerce and of the citizens company of baltimore, and chairman of the board of managers and director of the washington (d. c.) terminal company; member of the special committee on national defense, of the american railway association; appointed by the governor a member of the maryland preparedness and survey commission. =frederick s. todman= _general manager, hirsch, lillienthal & company_ born in new york city; educated in new york university, which institution later bestowed upon him the degree of master of commercial science; mr. todman early specialized in the subject of finance with particular reference to the work of wall street and the stock exchanges. on these subjects he has written extensively for the magazines and the public press; author of "brokerage accounts;" in identified with the financial department of the new york university school of commerce, accounts and finance. =john conselyea traphagen= _treasurer, mercantile trust and deposit company of new york_ educated in new york university; became manager of statistical department, standard statistics company, ; elected a director, , and vice-president of this company in ; became assistant secretary of the franklin trust company of new york, . he is now the treasurer of the mercantile trust and deposit company of new york; he is a trustee of the american savings bank, and secretary to reorganization committees of some of our largest railroad and street railway systems. =john wanamaker= _merchant_ at the age of fourteen was errand boy in a book store; later he became salesman in a clothing store; and at twenty-four founded a small clothing establishment in philadelphia; in he established his general store in philadelphia, and in revived the business of mr. a. t. stewart in new york; today the wanamaker stores in new york and philadelphia are among the largest of their kind; has been actively interested in politics and was postmaster-general of the united states in president harrison's cabinet, where his capacity for organization won him marked distinction; he has always been interested in philanthropic, religious and educational work; he founded the presbyterian hospital, and also the bethany presbyterian church sunday school; in he was given the decoration of officer of the legion of honor by the french government. =walter n. whitney= _vice-president, continental grocery stores, inc._ born in elmira, n. y.; educated in the public schools of buffalo, n. y.; began his business career in the central railway clearing house; three years later he entered the service of the larkin company. subsequently mr. whitney found his sphere in the advertising and selling departments, working his way through the various branches; in he originated and conducted an advertising and selling campaign that is said to have been one of the most successful campaigns in the history of larkin company. more than $ , , worth of business was credited to that campaign. later he was associated with the mail-order work of merrell-soule & company, manufacturers of food products at syracuse, n. y. he is now vice-president, continental grocery stores, inc. _summing it up_: isn't it true that many of the interests in your life are centered on your business progress? so much depends on your success or failure in business. your daily bread, your social position, your ambition, the welfare of your family, everything you expect to be and have may be decided for or against you by your accomplishments in business. do you consider as seriously your plans of how you are to succeed as you do your plans of what success you hope to attain? surely, since so much depends on it, isn't it your duty to take advantage of every possible opportunity to better your conditions right now? briefly stated, the modern business course and service offers you a thorough training in practical business knowledge--a training that prepares you to become a better business man. it is helping thousands of other men in a dollars and cents way. it can help you too. our subscribers do succeed faster, do accomplish more, do make more money than the average business man. the evidence is overwhelming. the value of the course and service is established. no thinking man can doubt it. the question is, are you willing to override the countless insignificant objections and consider the one big fundamental reason why you should enrol? are you willing to sacrifice a little time, a little money, a little effort in order to attain success in the biggest factor in your life--business? if you have confidence in your ability, if your ambitions are sincere--you can't decide against it. you will take this first step toward bigger business success now by joining the , other progressive men who are following the modern business course and service. press of andrew h. kellogg co., new york advertisements [illustration] the twenty-four volumes of modern business texts are printed on dull finished paper and bound in flexible fabrikoid. each volume is - / x - / inches in size and contains about pages. they are adapted for constant use, can be slipped into the pocket and carried without any trouble. the volumes in themselves constitute a complete business library. [illustration: cost records as profit makers the business that does not watch its costs is likely to have no profits to watch. ] this shows the cover of one of the talks in the modern business series. you receive one of these talks every two weeks with either a modern business lecture or a modern business problem. [illustration: building an organisation] prominent business men write these modern business lectures, showing from their own experience how the principles treated in the texts have been successfully applied by them. [illustration: scudder's system to "beat the market"] the solution of the modern business problems is optional with the subscriber. when he sends in his solution, the subscriber receives in return a personal letter of criticism and suggestions, together with a model solution of the problem. [illustration] coming as they do every month, these letters contain so concise and authoritative a summary of all important factors affecting current business that they are proving of immense practical value to our subscribers. [illustration: financial and trade review] these reviews are issued monthly. each review covers the current security market and analyzes securities, both individually and by groups. it discusses topics of business legislation and important current events and covers the production and prices of general commodities in a way which enables one to judge the trend of commodity prices. [illustration: federal income and excess profits taxes modern business report list] these reports cover specific problems and are replete with forms and illustrations; they show how a particular problem has been worked out and are the result of special investigation. * * * * * list of changes transcriber's note: blank pages have been deleted. some illustrations may have been moved. we have rendered consistent on a per-word-pair basis the hyphenation or spacing of such pairs when repeated in the same grammatical context. the publisher's inadvertent omissions of important punctuation have been corrected. other changes are listed below: page change [advertisements section added to table of contents.] frederic[frederick] s. todman, general manager, hirsch, [advertisements moved to end of publication; chapter header added.] _sellings[selling] stocks and bonds_ _interpretation of liabilties[liabilities]_ honary[honorary] degrees: yale, a.m., of minnesota tex[tax] commission, - , service bureau in new york, - [;] former[former] instructor in accounting advisor[adviser] to the war industries board. isn't lt[it] true that * * * * * * * * * * +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | transcriber's note: | | | | inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has | | been preserved. bolded text is represented =like so=. | | | | obvious typographical errors have been corrected. for | | a complete list, please see the end of this document. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * by albert sidney bolles, ph.d., ll.d. the modern law of banking banks and their depositors bank officers bank collections the national bank act and its judicial interpretation putnam's handy law book for the layman putnam's handy law book for the layman by albert sidney bolles, ph.d., ll.d. formerly professor of commercial law and banking in the university of pennsylvania, also lecturer on the same subjects in haverford college g.p. putnam's sons new york and london the knickerbocker press copyright, by albert sidney bolles published september, reprinted december, " march, july, " april, [illustration] made in the united states of america foreword what useful purpose can this book serve? most of the laws under which we live are kept, not from knowing them, but because the good sense of individuals leads them along legal ways. yet in many cases their good sense fails to discover the right way. thus, the receiver of a check on a bank must present it within a reasonable time after receiving it, and if he keeps it longer the risk of loss, should the bank fail, is his own. what is this reasonable time? one man says three days, another a week, another a month. so one's common sense fails to establish a definite reasonable time. it is needful to have the time fixed, and the law therefore has established a reasonable time. there are many cases like this in which one's common sense fails to furnish a correct, yet needful guide. this little book contains many of the legal principles that are in most frequent use, as readers will learn who carefully read it. again, if they do not always find an answer to their questions, it is believed that in many cases they will find enough law of a general nature from which they can safely solve their questions. they are therefore besought to do something more than merely consult this book for the purpose of finding ready and complete answers to their questions, to read it and become familiar with its contents. besides the law presented here the reader should learn to be cautious, and not trust too much his own judgment when no rule can be found for his guidance. many a person has written his own will, as he has a right to do, and after giving a legacy to a relative or friend has nullified the gift by having the legatee, through the testator's ignorance, sign as a witness. the writer knew a railway president who had the temerity to draw the writing containing an important contract between his railroad and another, and who, by unintentionally putting a comma in the wrong place, made his road instead of the other responsible for large losses. if this book shall make the reader cautious concerning the legality of his undertakings, it will be worth to him many times its price. a.s.b. contents page explanation of terms adopted child agency agreement to purchase land auctioneer automobile bailor and bailee bankruptcy beneficial associations broker carrier chattel mortgage chauffeur check citizen contracts corporations curtesy deceit deeds divisional tree dower drunkenness equitable remedies factor fire insurance fixtures garage keeper homestead husband and wife innkeeper land license lease legal remedies life insurance minor mortgage negotiable paper parent and child partnership patent payment prescriptive rights quasi contracts sale shipping statute of frauds statutes of limitation telegraph and telephone torts or wrongs warranty will workmen's compensation acts legal forms for everyday use index putnam's handy law book for the layman =explanation of terms.=--at the outset the explanation of a few terms, often used, may be helpful to the reader. among these are the terms statute and common law. statute law or statutes mean the laws enacted by the state legislature and by the federal congress. common law means the decisions made by the state and federal courts. these decisions may relate to the interpretation and application of statutes, or to the application of former decisions or precedents, or to the qualification and application of them, or to the making and application of new rules or principles where none exist that are needed to decide the case in hand. it is a rule of the most general application that legal decisions are precedents which are to be followed in other cases of the same character. the decisions of the highest court in each state must be followed by the lower courts, but no courts in any state are obliged to follow the decisions of the courts in any other state. the courts in every state must also follow the decisions of the federal courts in all matters of a national character. thus if a federal court decides the meaning or interpretation of a federal statute, a state court must follow the interpretation in a case requiring the application of that statute. again, common law decisions are not binding on the courts that make them like statutes or legislative commands. a decision may be modified or set aside when it is regarded as no longer applicable to the present condition of things. it may also be set aside or changed by legislative action. the common law is therefore always slowly changing like the ocean and is never at rest. the common law forms much the largest part of the great body of law under which we live. this book is a collection chiefly of common law principles; a few statutes are interwoven here and there to complete the subjects presented. the distinction also between civil and criminal law requires explanation. nearly all criminal law is founded on statutes, in other words the statutes, state and federal, define nearly all legal crimes known to society. it is therefore true that the field of crime is not fixed, is in truth always changing. thus formerly if a man bought goods on credit of another on the statement that he was worth fifty thousand dollars and the seller afterward learned that he was not worth fifty cents, the seller could sue the buyer to recover the value of the goods and for any additional loss, but could do no more. many, perhaps all the states, now declare by statute that such an act is a crime, and the offender can be prosecuted by the state and fined or imprisoned or both. and the wrongdoer may still be sued in a civil action for the loss to the seller as before. all crimes are prosecuted by the officers of the state chosen or appointed for that purpose. again, as in the case mentioned, the wrongful act has a double aspect. an individual who has been wronged may proceed against the wrongdoer to recover his loss; the state also has been wronged and may also proceed against him. a good illustration is a bank defaulter. the bank may proceed through a court of law to recover the money lost by him, or from those who have promised to make the bank good should he wrongfully take anything; the state may also proceed against him as a criminal for breaking a statute that forbids him from doing such a thing. furthermore, should the bank, as often happens, agree to accept a sum from the defaulter and not trouble him further, the agreement would be no bar to an action by the state against him. the terms law and equity are frequently used in the law books and require explanation. formerly there was no such term as equity in the common law. it came to be used as a supplement to the law to indicate ways of doing things unknown to the law, which ought to be done. thus if a man threatened to fill up your well because it stood, as he claimed, on his land, you had no preventive remedy at law. you could use some force to prevent him, you could not kill him, or put out his eyes, or treat him roughly. the law only gave you the right to proceed against him to recover money damages for the legal injury. a court of equity has a preventive remedy. if one threatens to fill up your well you can petition or pray the court to order that he shall refrain until there has been a legal hearing to determine whether he has any right to do so and the court will order him to desist until it has heard the case, and will enforce its order with a fine or penalty should he disobey. the term equity contains a larger element of justice than law; and the courts often say that an act is just or equitable, meaning that an act which is just or equitable may not always be a legal act. equity therefore is a broader term, and is in constant use in legal proceedings. another word frequently used in this book is action. when a person has wronged another, for example, has not paid a promissory note that is due, and the wronged party wishes to collect it through the courts, he brings an action, so called, against the wrongdoer for that purpose. sometimes the word suit is used. suit, or case in court, is a common expression. finally something should be said about courts of law. every state has three kinds or classes of courts. first a court in which suits are brought and tried relating to small matters, the recovery of money, for example, for one or two hundred dollars or less, also for small petty criminal offenses. next is a higher court in which suits for all larger matters are begun and tried, as well as appeals from the lower court. lastly is a third court of review, usually called the supreme court, composed in most of the states of five, or more often, seven judges, who review the decisions of the court below whenever application is made founded on erroneous matters, the wrongful admission of, or refusal to admit, evidence and the like, and their decisions form the great body of the common law. the federal government also has three courts corresponding somewhat to the courts established by the states. first is a court existing in every state called the district court, while some states, like new york, are divided into several districts. an appeal lies from its decision to the court of appeals consisting of three judges. there are nine of these courts, one for each circuit into which the united states is divided. lastly appeals may be taken from their decisions and also from the decisions of the supreme courts of the states to the supreme court of the united states consisting of nine judges. an appeal does not lie in every case decided by a state court or by the federal courts of appeal; only such cases as the highest court shall decide after application, made in proper form, may be appealed and heard by that tribunal. we have already explained the term equity. formerly there were courts to try and decide equity cases. england still maintains such courts and a few exist in the united states; new jersey and delaware are two of these states. the chief official of the court is called a chancellor, the others vice chancellors. instead of an action, as in a court of law, the preliminary proceeding is called a petition or bill, and while in substance it is similar to an action or complaint, used in a court of law, the form is quite different. the modern tendency of the law, considered in the most general way, is to fuse law and equity, and to endow law judges with equity powers. for further explanation see _legal remedies and equitable remedies_. =adopted child.=--children are sometimes adopted. by doing so the natural parents lose all personal rights and are relieved from all legal duties. the adopted parents acquire the right to the adopted child's custody and control, to his services and earnings, and they must maintain and educate him. in some states he becomes the heir of the adopted parent like a natural child, with some limitations. who can inherit an adopted child's property is not clearly settled. he can also inherit from his natural parent and kindred as if he had not been adopted. in massachusetts the courts hold that an adopted child will take like a natural child under a residuary clause in an adopted father's will giving all the property not otherwise devised to his child or children. see _parent and child_. =agency.=--much of the business of our day is done by agents or persons who represent others. the most general division is into general and special agents. a general agent is one who has authority to act for his principal or person he represents in all matters, quite as the principal himself could do; or in some of his matters. thus if a principal had a farm he might have a general agent to act as his farmer; if he owned a mill, another general agent who had charge of it. if he had two mills, he might have a general agent for each, and so on. a special agent is authorized to do a specific thing, to sell a home, buy a horse, or effect some particular end or purpose. while this distinction is plain enough in many cases, in others the lines run so close together that it is difficult to decide whether one is a general or special agent. whenever one acts as a general agent he is supposed to have all the authority that general agents possess who thus act for their principals, unless the person who is dealing with him knows of the restriction on his authority. suppose one goes to the office of a general insurance agent to get insurance on his home. a policy is taken and afterwards the house burns up. the company declines to pay because the agent made a lower rate than was authorized by his company. the insured however knew nothing about the restriction, and supposed that the agent had the same authority as other insurance agents have concerning rates. the company would be obliged to pay. but if the insured knew that restrictions had been put on the agent and that he was violating them in giving him the lower rate, the company would not be liable. one who deals with a special agent must find out what authority he possesses; therefore more care is needful in dealing with a special than with a general agent. his authority must be strictly pursued. thus it is said that a person dealing with him "acts at his own peril," is "put upon inquiry," "is chargeable with notice of the extent of his authority," "it is his duty to ascertain," "he is bound to inquire," "and if he does not he must suffer the consequences." in some cases the law creates an agency. thus an unpaid vendor of goods sometimes has authority to sell them, so has a pledgee of goods outside the authority conferred by the contract pledging them. a married woman whose husband does not supply her has a limited power to buy necessaries on her husband's credit, which prevails notwithstanding any objection he may make. a minor sometimes has the same power. a person can act as an agent for another who cannot act for himself. minors therefore can thus act. besides individuals, corporations often act for others. the authority of an agent may be given in writing, a power of attorney so called, or he may act, and often does, without written authority, especially a general agent. to this rule there is one well understood exception. if an agent is required in executing his authority to sign a deed or other writing, especially a sealed writing, his authority must also be equally great. in executing a deed therefore his authority must be in writing under seal, and when the deed is recorded, the agent's written authority should also be recorded; this is the usual practice. if this is not done, some person who afterward wished to purchase the land might object because the recorded title was defective. a particular usage or custom also affects an agent's powers. if the principal confers on him authority to transact business of a well-defined nature, bounded by well-defined usage and customs, the law presumes the agency was created with reference to them. this protection affects agents and third persons alike, the latter therefore who act in good faith in such dealings are protected against secret limitations of which they had no notice. an agent has no authority to purchase his principal's property. to do this, in a sense, would be to purchase of himself. the temptation to do this is sometimes very great, too great for him to withstand, and so he resorts to a crooked method for accomplishing his end. he sells the property to another party who afterward sells it back to him. the worst violators of this principle have been railway receivers, who have taken advantage of their position to get control of the property entrusted to them at a sum much less than its real value. such sales can be set aside by proper legal procedure. by the modern rule they are not void but are voidable, that is, can be set aside if the creditors or other interested parties wish to do so. whenever therefore one deals with a general agent and his authority is disputed, unless there be restrictions known to the person dealing with him, the liability of his principal turns on the answer to the general question, what authority do general agents like himself have. this is simply a question of fact, to be determined like every other question of fact by the court in which the controversy is pending. another way of rendering a principal liable for the act of his agent is by ratifying it. suppose a professed to be the agent of b in building a house for c, and built it so badly that c sued b to recover damages, whose defense was, that a was not his agent. suppose, however, that b accepted payment for the house, this would be a ratification of a's authority to act for b even if he did not have proper authority in the beginning. suppose a had authority to sell goods for b but not to collect payment, and someone should pay him and he ran off with the money, could his principal still collect the money of the buyer of the goods? this is a hard case, and has happened many times. the buyer usually is required to pay the second time. but if b, notwithstanding his direction to his agent not to collect payment, should receive it such conduct would operate as a ratification. whether the authorized act arises from a contract or from a wrong or tort, whoever with knowledge of all the facts adopts it as his own, or knowingly appropriates the benefits, which another has assumed to do in his behalf, will be deemed to have assumed responsibility for the act. of course, such action does not render an act valid that was invalid before; its character in this respect is not changed by anything the ratifier may do. can a forgery be ratified? the right of the state to pursue the forger cannot be defeated by its ratification, but so far as the act may be regarded merely as the act of an unauthorized agent, it may be ratified like any other. mechem says that if at the time of signing, the person doing so purported to act as agent, the act might be ratified. again, a principal cannot accept part of an agent's act and reject the remainder. the acceptance or rejection must be complete. in appointing an agent the principal has in mind the qualifications of the person appointed, he cannot therefore without his principal's consent, designate or substitute another person for himself. this rule though does not prevent him from employing other persons for a minor service. indeed, in many cases a general agency requires the employment of many persons to execute the business. how far one may go in thus employing others to execute the details, and how much ought to be done by the general agent himself, depends on the nature of the business. the inquiry would be one of fact, to what extent is a general agent in his particular business expected or assumed to do the things himself. one rule to guide an agent is this: when the act to be done is purely mechanical or ministerial, requiring no direction or personal skill, an agent may appoint a subagent. thus an agent who is appointed to execute a promissory note, or to sign a subscription agreement, or to execute a deed, may appoint another to do these things. likewise an agent who is authorized to sell real estate with discretionary power to fix the price and other terms, may employ a subagent to look up a purchaser, or to show the land to one who is desirous of purchasing. when a person is really acting as an agent, but this is not known by the persons with whom he is doing business, he is liable to them as if he were the principal. it often happens for various reasons that agents do not disclose their principals. suppose a dealer finds out that the agent presumably acting for himself was, in truth, acting for another, could the real principal be held responsible and the agent escape, or could both be held? the answer is, after discovering the real principal, both can be held, or either of them. the failure of an agent to disclose his agency will not make him individually liable if the other party knew that he was dealing with a principal with whom he had had dealings through the agent's predecessor. notice of the agency to one member of a firm is not sufficient notice to the firm to release the agent from personal responsibility in subsequent transactions with another member who did not know and was not informed of the agency. again, the liability must be determined by the conditions existing at the time of the contract, his subsequent disclosure will not relieve the agent. finally, while the agent may be held in such a case, the principal also is liable, except on instruments negotiable and under seal, on the discovery of his relationship as principal. while secret instructions to an agent that are unknown to persons dealing with him do not bind them, the principal is liable for any acts within the scope of his agent's authority connected with the business conducted by his agent for him. some very difficult questions arise in applying this rule. a car conductor is instructed to treat passengers civilly and to use no harsh means with them, save in extreme cases. how far may a conductor go with a disorderly passenger? very likely he would be justified in putting him off; suppose the conductor was angry and administered hard and needless kicks in the operation? his principal surely would not be liable, though the conductor doubtless would be. suppose in buying a railway ticket the agent loses his temper and calls you a liar and a thief, you would have an action against him for slander, unless you happened to be one, but you would have no action against his principal for the company did not employ him to slander its patrons; to do this was clearly not in the scope of his employment. an agent must not act for both parties in any transaction unless this is understood by both of them. nor can an agent receive any personal profit from a transaction. whatever profit there may be should be given to the principal. thus if an agent is authorized to buy a piece of property for his principal and buys it for himself, or hides the transaction under the name of another, the principal, after discovering what his agent has done, can proceed to obtain the property. an agent must be faithful and exercise reasonable skill and diligence. money belonging to the principal should be deposited in the principal's name, or, if in the agent's name, his agency should be added; otherwise if the bank failed the agent would be responsible for the loss. again, if the agent deposited the money in his own name the true owner could proceed against the bank to recover it. a principal is liable for the statements and representations of his agent that have been expressly authorized. he is also liable even for false and fraudulent representations made in the course of the agent's employment, especially those resulting in a contract from which the principal reaped a benefit. even though the statements may not have been expressly authorized, such authority may be implied by law because they are the natural and ordinary incidents of the agent's position. thus the position of a business manager often calls for a great variety of acts, orders, notices, and the like, and statements made while performing them are regarded as within the line of his duty. an agency may end at a fixed time, or when the particular object for creating it has been accomplished, or by agreement of the parties. in many cases an agency is created for an indefinite period, and in these either party can terminate it whenever he desires. there are some limitations to this principle. neither party can wantonly sever the relation at the loss of the other; and if one of them did he would be liable for the damage sustained by the other. likewise if the agent has an interest of his own in the undertaking the principal cannot terminate it before its completion without the agent's consent. such a rule is needful for his security. the bankruptcy of a business agent operates as a revocation of his authority, but not when the act to be done is of a personal nature like the execution of a deed. if the principal becomes insane and unable to exercise an intelligent direction of his business, his condition operates as a revocation or suspension for the time being of his agent's authority. if on recovering, he manifests no will to terminate his agent's authority, it may be considered as a mere suspension, and his assent to acts done during the suspension may be inferred from his forbearing to express dissent when they come to his knowledge. likewise an agent's insanity terminates or suspends the agency for the time being unless he has an interest of his own in the matter. partial derangement or monomania will not have that effect unless the mania relates to the agency, or destroys the agent's ability to perform it. again, the marriage of a principal in some cases, unless a statute has changed the common law, will revoke the power previously given, especially when its execution will defeat or impair rights acquired by marriage. thus should a man give a power of attorney to another to sell his homestead, but before effecting a sale the principal should marry, his marriage would revoke the power. by marrying the wife acquires an interest in the property which cannot be taken away from her without her consent by joining in a deed of conveyance with her husband. likewise the marriage of a woman would operate to revoke a power of attorney previously given by her whenever its execution would defeat the rights acquired by her husband. an agent's marriage usually will not affect the continuance of his agency. when an agency is terminated it is often needful for the principal to notify all customers for his protection, otherwise they might continue to do business with the agent, supposing he was thus acting, and involve him perhaps in heavy loss. this rule applies especially to partnerships, each member of which is an agent with general authority to do the kind of business in which it is engaged. if the authority of an agent in writing is revoked, but is still left with him and is shown to a third person who, having no knowledge of the revocation, makes a contract with him, the principal will be held for its execution. another rule of law may be given. the law assumes that any knowledge acquired by an agent concerning his principal's business, will be communicated to his principal, who is bound thereby. this rule though is often difficult to apply. thus, if a cashier of a bank should learn that a note was defective, which was afterward discounted by his bank, it would be regarded as having knowledge of the defect, because it was the cashier's duty to inform the proper officials before they discounted it. the death of either agent or principal terminates the agency except in cases of personal interest. and when an agent has appointed a substitute or subagent without direct authority, and for his own convenience, the agent's death annuls the authority of the subagent or substitute, even though the agent was given the right of substitution. but if the subagent's authority is derived directly from the principal, it is not affected by the agent's death. =agreement to purchase land.=--an agreement to purchase land must be in writing to be valid. oral or parol agreements may be made to do many things, but everywhere the law makes an exception of agreements relating to land purchases. a statute that is quite similar in the states requires this agreement to be in writing and signed by the party against whom it is to be enforced. thus if the seller wishes to enforce such an agreement, he must produce a writing signed by the purchaser; if the latter wishes to hold the seller, he must do the same thing. the better way is to have the writing signed by both parties. how complete must the writing be? it need not mention the sum to be paid for the land; it can be signed with a lead pencil: a stamp signature will suffice. the entire agreement need not be on one piece of paper. if it can be made out from written correspondence between the two parties this will be enough. to this rule of law are some exceptions. therefore if an oral agreement for the sale of land is followed by putting the buyer into possession, the law will compel the seller to give him a deed. the proceeding would consist of a petition addressed to a court of equity, which would inquire into the facts, and if they were true, would compel the seller to give the purchaser a deed of the land. the reason for making this exception is, the purchaser would be a trespasser had he no right to be there: to justify his possession the law permits him to prove, if he can, his purchase of the land; and if he has bought it, of course he ought to have a deed of his title. once, a purchaser who made an oral agreement and paid part of the purchase money could compel the seller to give him a deed, and many still think such action is sufficient to bind the bargain. this is no longer the law. the practice gave rise to much fraud: a would assert that he gave money to b to pay for land when in truth it was given for some other purpose. so the courts abandoned the rule founded on the part payment of the purchase price. a can however get back his money. an option to purchase land, contained in an agreement to sell, must be exercised within a reasonable time, if none is fixed in the agreement. see _deed_. =auctioneer.=--an auctioneer, employed by a person to sell his property, is primarily the owner's agent only, and he remains his exclusive agent to the moment when he accepts the purchaser's bid and knocks down the property to him. on accepting the bid the auctioneer is deemed to be the agent of the purchaser also, so far as is needful to complete the sale; he may therefore bind the purchaser by entering his name to the sale and by signing the memorandum thereof. his signing is sufficient to satisfy the statute of frauds in any state conferring on an agent authority to make and contract for the sale of real and personal property without requiring his authority to be in writing. his agency may begin before the time of the sale and continue after it. again, the entry of the purchaser's name must be made by the auctioneer or his clerk immediately on the acceptance of the bid and the striking down of the property at the place of sale. it cannot be made afterward. the auctioneer at the sale is the agent of the purchaser who by the act of bidding calls on him or his clerk to put down his name as the purchaser. in such case there is little danger of fraud. if the auctioneer could afterward do this he might change the name, substitute another, and so perpetrate a fraud. a sale by auction is complete by the sales act when the auctioneer announces its completion by the fall of the hammer, or in other customary manner. until such announcement is made, any bidder may retract his bid; and the auctioneer may withdraw the goods from sale unless the auction has been announced to be without reserve. authority may be conferred on an auctioneer in the same manner as on any other agent for the sale of similar property, verbally or in writing. even to make a contract for the sale of real estate, oral authority to the auctioneer is sufficient, in the absence of a statute to the contrary. authority to sell property does not of itself imply authority to sell it at auction, and the purchaser therefore who has notice of the agent's authority or knowledge sufficient to put him on inquiry, acquires no title to the property thus purchased. if goods are sent to an auction room to sell, this is deemed sufficient evidence of authority to sell them in that manner and to protect whoever buys them. as an auctioneer is ordinarily a special agent, the purchaser is supposed to know the terms and conditions imposed by the seller on the agent. the seller or owner therefore is not bound by any terms stated by the auctioneer differing from those given to him. if the owner has imposed no terms on him, then he has the implied authority usually existing in such cases. an auctioneer has authority to accept the bid most favorable to the seller when the sale is made without reserve and to strike down the property to the purchaser. he cannot therefore consistently with his duty to his principal refuse to accept bids, unless the bidder is irresponsible or refuses to comply with the terms of the sale. he is justified in rejecting the bids of insane persons, minors, drunken persons, trustees of the property, and perhaps in some cases of married women. an auctioneer cannot transfer his duty to another. this rule does not prevent him from employing others to do incidental things connected with the keeping and the moving of the property. he cannot sell on credit contrary to his instructions or custom; nor would he be secure in following custom if instructed to do otherwise. after the bid has been accepted the bidder has no authority to withdraw it without the owner's consent, nor can he be permitted to do so by the auctioneer. nor can he sell at private sale if his instruction is to sell publicly, nor can he justify himself even if he acted in good faith and sold the property for more than the minimum price fixed by the owners. nor can he sell the property to himself, nor authorize any other person to bid and purchase for him either directly or indirectly. it is impossible with good faith to combine the inconsistent capacities of seller and buyer, crier and bidder, in one and the same transaction. he has no authority to warrant the quality of property sold except custom or authority is expressly given to him. nor is he an insurer of the safety of the goods entrusted to him for sale; he must however use ordinary and reasonable care in keeping them. lastly, an auctioneer should disclose his principal and contract in his name. if one bought property therefore supposing it belonged to a, when in fact it belonged to b, through any manipulation of the auctioneer, the bidder would not be bound. =automobile.=--the members of the public have a right to use the public avenues for the purpose of travel and of transporting property: nor has the driver of horses any right in the road superior to the right of the driver of an automobile. each has the same rights, and each is equally restricted in exercising them by the corresponding rights of the other. again, the public ways are not confined to the original use of them, nor to horses and ordinary carriages. "the use to which the public thoroughfare may be put comprehends all modern means of carrying including the electric street railroad and automobile." it has been declared that the fact that motor vehicles may be novel and unusual in appearance and for that reason are likely to frighten horses which are unaccustomed to see them, is no reason why the courts should adopt the view of prohibiting such machines. the general rule is that all travelers have equal rights to use the highways. an automobile therefore has the same rights and no more than those of a footman. the mere fact that automobiles are run by motor power, and may be operated at a dangerous and high rate of speed, gives them no superior rights on the highway over other vehicles, any more so than would the driving of a race horse give the driver superior rights on the highway over his less fortunate neighbor who is pursuing his journey behind a slower horse. there is no authority or power in the state to exclude non-resident motorists from the public ways, nor have the states power to place greater restrictions or burdens on non-resident automobilists than those imposed on their own citizens. a license to operate an automobile is merely a privilege. it does not constitute a contract, consequently it does not necessarily pass to a purchaser of the vehicle, and may, for a good reason, be revoked. moreover the charge imposed for the privilege of operating a motor on the highway is not generally considered a tax, only a mere license or privilege fee. an automobile may be hired from the owner. this is called in law a bailment. the bailor is not responsible generally for any negligence of the hirer in operating the car. nor is the rule changed should the hirer be an unskilled person, unless he was an immature child or clearly lacking in mental capacity, or was intoxicated. where the owner of an automobile delivered it to another by agreement, who was to pay the purchase price from the money derived from its use, and thereafter had complete control of the machine, his negligence could not be charged to the seller. again, where an automobile is hired and the chauffeur is also furnished by the owner, who pays him for operating the car, and the hirer has no authority over him except to direct his ways of going, the chauffeur is regarded as the servant of the owner. he, therefore, and not the hirer is responsible for the negligence of the chauffeur. of course, the rule would be changed if the hirer assumed the management of the car: then the hirer alone would be liable for the chauffeur's negligence. a party who hires an automobile from another is bound to take only ordinary care of it and is not responsible for damage whenever ordinary prudence has been exercised while the car was in his custody. if lost through theft, or is injured as a result of violence, the hirer is only answerable when these consequences were clearly the result of his own imprudence or negligence. the hirer though must account for the loss or injury. having done this, the proof of negligence or want of care is thrown on the bailor. if the hirer should sell the automobile without authority to a third party, the owner or bailor may bring an action against even an innocent purchaser who believed that the hirer had the title and power to sell. there is an implied obligation on the hirer's part to use the car only for the purpose and in the manner for which it was hired. and if it is used in a different way and for a longer time, the hirer may be responsible for a loss even though this was inevitable. suppose the hirer misuses the car, what can the owner do? he can repossess himself, if this can be done peaceably, otherwise he must bring an action for the purpose. as the hirer acquires a qualified title to the property, he can maintain an action against all persons except the owner, and even against him so far as the contract of letting may set forth the relations between them. when an owner or hirer undertakes to convey a passenger to a specified place and, while on the way, the car breaks down, if it cannot be properly mended at the time and the owner or hirer is able to furnish another, the law requires him to do so and thus fulfil his contract. "the owner of a motor vehicle," says huddy, "is of course entitled to compensation for the use of the machine. if a definite sum is not stated in the contract between the parties, there arises an implied undertaking that the hirer shall pay a reasonable amount. one who uses another's automobile without consent or knowledge of the owner, may be liable to pay a reasonable hire therefor. in case the hirer is a corporation, there may arise the question whether the agent of the company making the contract has authority to bind the company. where a machine is hired for joy riding on sunday, it has been held that the contract is illegal and the hirer cannot recover for the use of the automobile." the speed of automobiles along the public highways may be regulated by law. a municipality may forbid the use of some kinds of motor vehicles on certain streets, but it cannot broadly exclude all of them from all the streets. the rules regulating travel on highways in this country are called, "the law of the road." the object of these rules is to prevent collisions and other accidents, which would be likely to occur if no regulations existed. a pedestrian who is about to cross a street may rely on the law of the road that vehicles will approach on the proper side of the street. this rule however does not apply to travelers walking along a rural highway. huddy says: "when overtaking or meeting such a person, it is the duty of both the pedestrian and the driver of the machine to exercise ordinary care to avoid a collision, but no rule is, as a general proposition, definitely prescribed as to which side of the pedestrian the passage shall be made." the law of the road requiring vehicles to pass each other on the right, contrary to the english custom, has been reënforced in many or all the states by statutory enactments, and applies also to automobiles. when, therefore, two vehicles meet and collide on a public highway, which is wide enough for them to pass with safety, the traveler on the wrong side of the road is responsible for the injury sustained by the other. but a traveler is not justified in getting his machine on the right-hand side of the road and then proceeding regardless of other travelers; on the contrary, the duty of exercising reasonable care to avoid injuries to others still continues. not only must each one pass to the right, but each must pass on his own side of the center line of the highway, or wrought part of the road. and when the road is covered with snow, travelers who meet must turn to the right of the traveled part of the road as it then appears, regardless of what would be the traveled part when the snow is gone. after passing the rear of the forward vehicle an automobilist must exercise reasonable care in turning back toward the right into the center of the highway, and if he turns too soon he may be liable for damages caused by striking or frightening the horses. "if two vehicles meet in the street, it is the duty of each of them, as seasonably as he can, to get each on his own right-hand side of the traveled way of the street." the rights of travelers along intersecting streets are equal, and each must exercise ordinary care to avoid injury to the other. an automobilist nearing an intersection should run at proper speed, have his car under reasonable control, and along the right-hand side of the street. if two travelers approach the street crossing at the same time neither is justified in assuming that the other will stop to let him pass. when one vehicle reaches the intersection directly in advance of the other, he is generally accorded the right of way, and the other should delay his progress to enable the other to pass in safety. the driver of an automobile may be charged with negligence if, without warning to a vehicle approaching from the rear, he turns or backs his machine and causes a collision. indeed, it is negligence for a chauffeur to back his machine on a city street or public highway without looking backward; and especially if one backs his car on a street car track without looking for street cars. if an obstruction exists on the right-hand side of a highway, the driver of a car may be justified in passing to the other side, and in driving along that side until he has passed the obstacle. under such circumstances he has a right to be on the left side temporarily; and if he exercises the proper degree of care while there, is not liable for injuries arising from a collision with another traveler. but if the obstruction is merely temporary, it may be the duty of the driver to wait for the removal and not to pass on the wrong side of the highway. an automobilist must exercise reasonable or ordinary care to avoid injury to other persons using the highway. what this is depends on many circumstances, and each case to some extent is decided by its own facts. consequently thousands of cases have already arisen, and doubtless they will still multiply as long as automobiles are used and their users are negligent. the competency of the driver is one of the unending questions. of course he should be physically fit, not subject to sudden attacks of dizziness, possessing sufficient strength and proper eyesight and a sober non-excitable disposition. it is said, that a chauffeur is not incompetent who requires glasses. but he certainly would be if his eyesight was poor and could not be aided by the use of them. the driver must at all times have his car under reasonable control so that he can stop in time to avoid injury. he must keep a reasonably careful lookout for other travelers in order to avoid collision; also for defects in the highway. if by reason of weather conditions, lights or other obstructions, he is unable to see ahead of him, he should stop his car. if there be no facilities for stopping for the night, a driver is not negligent should he proceed through the fog. passing to the liability of the owner of a car for the acts of his chauffeur, the general rule is, he is then liable when the chauffeur is acting within the scope of his owner's business. when the owner himself is riding in the car there is less difficulty in fixing the liability, but when the chauffeur uses the car without the owner's consent, he is not liable for the conduct of the driver. and this is especially so in using a car contrary to the owner's instructions and for the chauffeur's pleasure; or in using it for his own business with the owner's consent. and the same rule generally prevails whenever a member of a family uses his parent's car without his knowledge and consent, and especially when forbidden. but the parent is liable for the running of a car with his knowledge by a member of his family and for the convenience or pleasure of other members. see _chauffeur_; _garage keeper_. =bailor and bailee.=--to create this relation the property must be delivered to the bailee. though a minor cannot make such a contract, yet if property comes into his possession he must exercise proper care of it. should he hire a horse and kill the animal by rash driving, he would be liable for its value. a corporation may act as bailor or bailee, and an agent acting therefor would render the corporation liable unless he acted beyond the scope of his authority. suppose one picks up a pocketbook, does he become the owner? is he a bailee? yes, and must make an honest, intelligent effort to find the owner; if failing to do so, then he may retain it as his own, meanwhile his right as finder is perfect as against all others. should the true owner appear, whatever right the finder may have against him for recompense for the care and expense in keeping and preserving the property, his status as finder does not give him any lien unless the owner has offered a reward to whoever will restore the property. to this extent a lien thereon is thereby created. the statutes generally provide what a person must do who has found lost property. suppose a person appears who claims to be the owner of the thing found, what shall the finder do in the way of submitting it to his inspection? in one of the recent cases the court decided that it was a question of fact and not of law whether the finder of lost property had given a fair and reasonable opportunity for its identification before restoring it, and whether the claimant should have been given an opportunity to inspect it in order to decide whether it belonged to him. the finder does not take title to every article found and out of the possession of its true owner. to have even a qualified ownership the thing must be lost, and this does not happen unless possession has been lost casually and involuntarily so that the mind has no recourse to the event. a thing voluntarily laid down and forgotten is not lost within the meaning of the rule giving the finder title to lost property; and the owner of a shop, bank or other place where the thing has been left is the proper custodian rather than the person who was the discoverer. if a lost article is found on the surface of the ground, or the floor of a shop, in the public parlor of a hotel, or near a table at an open-air place of amusement, or in the car of a railroad it becomes, except as against the loser, the property of the finder, who appropriates it regardless of the place where it was found. once a boat was found adrift and the finder made the needful repairs to keep it from sinking, yet the owner was mean enough to refuse to pay for them. the court compelled him to make good the amount to the finder. the law regards the possession of an article which is lost as being that of the legal owner who was previously in possession, until the article is taken into the actual possession of the finder. if the finder does not know who the owner is and there is no clue to the ownership, there is no larceny although the finder takes the goods for himself and converts them to his own use. if the finder knows who the owner is or has a reasonable clue to the ownership, which he disregards, he is guilty of larceny. another class of cases must be noticed. very often articles are delivered to another to have work done on them, hides to be tanned, or raw materials to be worked up into fabrics. can a creditor of the bailee pounce on tanned hides or completed fabrics as belonging to him and take them in satisfaction of his debt? both parties have in truth an interest in the goods, and in general it may be said that the bailor cannot thus be deprived of his interest and may follow the goods and recover them or their value. if they are destroyed while executing the agreement, who must lose? if the bailee is not negligent or otherwise at fault, and the loss happened by internal defect or inevitable accident, the bailor would be the loser. and if workmen had been employed thereon, the bailor would also be obligated to pay for their labor. to what extent can a bailee limit his liability by agreement? a bailee who was a cold storage keeper, stated in his receipt "all damage to property is at the owner's risk." this limitation related, so a court decided, to loss resulting from the nature of the things stored. a bailee received some cheese and gave a receipt slating that it was to be kept at the owner's risk of loss from water. it was injured from the dripping of water from overhead pipes. the bailee was, notwithstanding his receipt, held liable. a bailor need not always be the owner of the thing bailed. he may be a lessee, agent, or having such possession and control as would justify him in thus acting. he should give the bailee notice of all the faults in the thing bailed that would expose him to danger or loss in keeping it. for example, if it were a kicking horse, he should warn the bailee to keep away from his legs. the courts have been often troubled about the degree of care required of bailees, as it differs under varying circumstances. a bank that permits a depositor to keep a box of jewelry or silver in its vault for his accommodation, while absent from home and without receiving any compensation therefor, is not required to exercise the same degree of care as a safe deposit company whose chief business is to do such things and is paid for its service. nevertheless a bank must exercise reasonable care, such care as is used in keeping its own things. suppose your package is stolen by the cashier or paying teller, is the bank responsible? that depends. if the bank knows or suspected the official was living a gay life, it ought not to keep him, and most banks would not. it is the better legal opinion, that a bank ought not to keep a president, cashier or other active official who is speculating in stocks, for the temptation to take securities not belonging to them has been too great in many cases for them to withstand. on the other hand if a long-trusted official, against whom no cause for suspicion had arisen, should steal a package from the safe, the bank would not be responsible for the loss any more than if it had been stolen by an outsider. the bank did not employ him to steal, but to perform the ordinary banking duties. a bailee is usually a keeper only. but the nature of the property may require something more to be done. if he is entrusted with a milch cow, he must have her milked, or with cattle in the winter time which require to be served with food, he must supply it, otherwise they would starve. if he is keeping a horse which is taken sick, proper treatment should be given. when the period of bailment is ended, the thing bailed must be returned. if it consisted of a flock of sheep, cattle and the like, all accessions must also be delivered. in many cases the bailee is not required to return the specific property, but other property of the same kind and quality. thus if one delivers wheat for safekeeping, which is put in an elevator, the contract is fulfilled by delivering other wheat of similar kind and quality; or, if the wheat is to be made into flour, by delivering the proper amount of the same quality as the specific wheat bailed. a bailee has a lien for his service and proper expenditures in caring for and preserving the thing bailed, but not for any other debt the bailor may owe him. and if the bailee is a finder who has bestowed labor on the article found in good faith, the same rule applies. agisters and livery-stable men have no lien at common law, like carriers for keeping the animals entrusted to them because they are under no obligation to take them into their keeping. in pennsylvania a different rule was long ago declared, and has ever since been maintained. as he can agree on terms, he may make such as are agreeable to both parties. elsewhere he can impose his own terms, and may demand his pay in advance, or create, by contract, a lien if he pleases. a person who is hired as a groom to a horse for a specified time and at a fixed price, has no lien on the horse for his service, but has a lien for feed, keeping and shoeing, which should have been furnished by the owner. a contract to do this is not necessary to create the lien, it arises as if the horse had been left for keep and care without saying more. =bankruptcy.=--before the enactment of the federal bankruptcy act of , every state had a bankruptcy act of its own, which was generally called an insolvency law. the federal act has superseded these by virtue of the power granted to congress in the federal constitution "to establish uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the united states." the united states district courts in the several states are made courts of bankruptcy and have power to adjudge all persons bankrupt who have their principal places of business, residence and domicile within their respective districts; and jurisdiction also over others who simply have property within their jurisdiction. any person who owes debts, or business corporation, may become a voluntary bankrupt. so may an alien. he may also become an involuntary bankrupt if he has had his principal place of business here, or has been domiciled within the jurisdiction of the court for the preceding six months, or has property within its jurisdiction. some corporations are still denied voluntary action, as well as minors and insane persons. who may become an involuntary bankrupt? any person, except a wage-earner, or farmer, any unincorporated company, and any corporation engaged principally in manufacturing, trading, printing, publishing, or mercantile pursuits, owing debts to the amount of one thousand dollars. what is a manufacturing corporation, within the meaning of the law, is not even yet fully known. a corporation engaged principally in smelting ores is one; and a mining corporation, whose principal business is to buy and sell ores, is deemed a trading corporation and may become an involuntary bankrupt. next we may inquire, what are acts of bankruptcy? one of them is an admission of a person's inability to pay his debts. and this may be done by a corporation through its properly organized officers. another act of bankruptcy is to convey, transfer, conceal or remove property with the intention to defraud creditors. and by concealment is meant the separation of some tangible thing like money from the debtor's estate, and secrete it from those who have a right to seize it for payment of their debts. the transfers of property covered by the act are those which the common law regards as fraudulent. if, for example, at the time of the transfer of his property one is so much indebted that it will embarrass him in paying his debts, the transfer will be deemed fraudulent; but a voluntary transfer, made by one who is free from debt, cannot be impeached by subsequent creditors. the intention to hinder, delay or defraud creditors is a question of fact to be ascertained by proper judicial inquiry. a general assignment for the benefit of creditors is an act of bankruptcy. likewise a general assignment for the benefit of creditors made by the majority of the board of directors and of the stockholders is an act of bankruptcy. a petition for the appointment of a receiver of a corporation under a state statute is not an assignment for the benefit of creditors and therefore is not an act of bankruptcy. another act of bankruptcy is to suffer or permit, when one is insolvent, any creditor to acquire a preference through legal proceedings. the term preference includes not only a transfer of property, but also the payment of money within four months from the time of filing his petition in bankruptcy. it is immaterial to whom the transfer is made if the purpose be to prefer one creditor to another. like a fraudulent transfer the intent to prefer must be proved, though this may sometimes be presumed, as when the necessary consequence of a transfer or payment made by an insolvent debtor is to liquidate the debt of one creditor to the entire or partial exclusion of others. passing to the filing of the petition a voluntary petitioner should file his petition in the court of bankruptcy in the judicial district where he has principally resided for the preceding six months. when there is no estate and no claim has been proved and no trustee has been appointed, a bankrupt may withdraw his petition on paying the costs and expenses. the petition must be accompanied by a schedule of the petitioner's property, showing its kind and amount, location, money value, and a list of his creditors and their residences when known, the amount due to them, the security they have, and a claim to legal exemptions, if having any. after filing a voluntary petition the judge makes an adjudication. he may do this ex parte, that is without notice to creditors. a petition may be filed against a person who is insolvent and has committed an act of bankruptcy within four months after such action. three or more creditors who have provable claims amounting to five hundred dollars in excess of securities held against a debtor may file the petition, or if all the creditors are less than twelve, then one of them may file the petition provided the debtor owes him the above stated amount. creditors holding claims which are secured, or have priority, must not be considered in determining the number of creditors and the amount of claims for instituting involuntary proceedings. the petition should state the names and residences of the petitioning creditors, also that of the bankrupt, his principal place of business, the nature of it, his act of bankruptcy, that it occurred within four months of the filing of the petition, and that the amount of the claims against him exceed five hundred dollars. the petition must be signed and properly verified, and may be afterward amended for cause in the interest of justice. on the filing of the petition a writ of subpoena is issued addressed to the bankrupt commanding him to appear before the court at the place and on the day mentioned to answer the petition. the next step, after serving the petition, is for the bankrupt to file his answer. meanwhile his property may be seized by a marshal or receiver on proof that he is neglecting it or that it is deteriorating. within ten days after one has been judicially declared to be a bankrupt, he must file in court a schedule of his property, including a list of his creditors and the security held by them. then follows the first meeting of the bankrupt's creditors, within thirty days after the adjudication. the judge or referee must be present at this meeting, also the bankrupt if required by the court. before proceeding with other business the referee may allow or disallow the claims of creditors presented at the meeting, and may publicly examine the bankrupt, or he may be examined at the instance of any creditor. at this meeting the creditors may elect a trustee. subsequent meetings may be held at any time and place by all the creditors whose claims have been allowed by written consent: the court also may call a meeting whenever one fourth of those who have proved their claims file a written request to that effect. only a creditor who owns a demand or provable claim can vote at creditors' meetings. nor can other creditors through filing objections to a claim prevent a bona fide claimant from voting. a creditor of an individual member of a bankrupt partnership cannot vote. nor can creditors holding claims that are secured or that have priority vote only to a limited extent, so far as their claims are on the same basis as other creditors. to entitle secured and preferred creditors to vote at the first meeting on the whole of their claims, they must surrender their securities or priorities. if a portion of a creditor's debt is secured and a portion is unsecured, he may vote on the unsecured portion. an attorney, agent, or proxy may represent and vote at creditors' meetings, first presenting written authority, which must be filed with the referee. the referee who presides at the first meeting makes up or decides on its membership. matters are decided at the meeting by a majority vote in number and amount of claims of all the creditors whose claims have been allowed and are present. the next stage in bankruptcy proceedings is the proving and allowance of claims. only such debts are provable as existed at the time of filing the petition. every debt which may be recovered either at law or in equity may be proved in bankruptcy. a claim barred by the statute of limitations is not provable, nor is a contingent liability. on the other hand a debt founded on a contract express or implied may be proved, for example, damages arising from a breach of a contract prior to the adjudication in bankruptcy. again, if there are agreements or covenants in a contract of a continuing character the bankrupt is still liable on them notwithstanding his discharge in bankruptcy. if the amount of a claim is unliquidated the act sets forth the mode of proceeding. among other claims that may be proved are judgments, debts founded on an open account, and rents. the claims of creditors who have received preferences are not allowed unless they surrender them. thus money paid on account by an insolvent debtor must be surrendered before a claim for the balance due on the account can be proved. if proceedings are begun by the trustee to set aside a preferential transfer to a creditor who puts in a defense, he cannot thereafter surrender his preference and prove his claim. if a creditor in proving his debt fails to mention his security, if he has any, he will be deemed to have elected to prove his claim as unsecured. claims that have been allowed may be reconsidered for a sufficient reason and reallowed or rejected in whole or in part, as justice may require, at any time before the closing of the estate. the reëxamination may be had on the application of the trustee or of any creditor by the referee, witnesses may be called to give evidence, and the referee may expunge or reduce the claim or adhere to the original allowance. the appointment of the trustee by the creditors at their first meeting is subject to the approval or disapproval of the referee or the judge. should the creditors make no appointment the court appoints one. as soon as he has been appointed it is the duty of the referee to notify him in person or by mail of his appointment. if he fails to qualify or a vacancy occurs, the creditors have an opportunity to make another appointment. if a trustee accepts he must give a bond with sureties for the faithful performance of his duties. he may also be removed for cause after notice by the judge only. should he die or be removed while serving, no suit that he was prosecuting or defending will abate but will be continued by his successor. the trustee represents the bankrupt debtor as the custodian of all his property that is not exempt; also the creditors, and gathers all the bankrupt's property from every source and protects and disposes of it for the best interests of the creditors, and pays their claims. in short, he succeeds to all the interests of the bankrupt, is an officer of the court and subject to its orders and directions. he must deposit all moneys received in one of the designated depositories, can disburse money only by check or draft, and at the final meeting of the creditors must present a detailed statement of his administration of the estate. during the period of settlement he must make a report to the court in writing of the condition of the estate, the money on hand, and other details within the first month after his appointment, and bi-monthly thereafter unless the court orders otherwise. the federal bankruptcy act prescribes what property passes to the trustee and also what is exempt. whatever property on which a levy could have been made by judicial process against the bankrupt passes to the trustee. on the other hand, the income given to a legatee for life under a will providing it shall not be subject to the claims of creditors does not pass to the trustee. if the bankrupt has an insurance policy with a cash surrender value payable to himself or personal representatives he may pay or secure this sum to the trustee and continue to hold the policy. and a policy of insurance payable to the wife, children, or other kin of the bankrupt is no part of the estate and does not pass to the trustee. after one month, and within a year from the adjudication of bankruptcy, the bankrupt may apply for a discharge. the petition must state concisely the orders of the court and the proceedings in his case. creditors must have at least ten days' notice by mail of the petition, and then the judge hears the application for discharge, and considers the proofs in opposition by the parties in interest. unless some creditor objects and specifies his ground of objection, the petition will be granted. the bankruptcy act states several reasons for refusing a discharge, especially when the bankrupt has concealed his property instead of making an honest, truthful statement respecting it, or has not kept proper books of account with the fraudulent intent to conceal his true financial condition and defraud his creditors. lastly a person may be punished by imprisonment for two years or less on conviction of having knowingly and fraudulently concealed, while a bankrupt or after his discharge, any property belonging to his estate as a bankrupt, or made a false oath in any bankruptcy proceeding, or made any false claim against his estate or used such a claim in making a composition with his creditors. =beneficial associations.=--beneficial associations possess a varied aspect, they are both social and business organizations. often the members are bound together by secret obligations and pledges. trades-unions have a double nature, they are created for both beneficial and business purposes. originally their beneficial character was the more important feature. benefit societies may be purely voluntary associations or incorporated either by statute or charter. the articles of association formed by the members are essentially an agreement among them by which they become bound to do specified things and incur liabilities. they thus establish a law for themselves somewhat like a charter of a corporation. they may adopt such rules as they like provided they are not contrary to the laws of the land. as the members, having made the rules, are presumed to know them, they are therefore bound by them. the legal status of such associations, their right to sue and be sued, the liability of the members to the public for the debts of the association, though most important questions, are not as well settled as they might be. in many states statutes exist defining their right to sue and be sued, and their liability to creditors. yet these statutes do not cover all cases. generally persons who associate for charitable or benevolent purposes do not regard themselves in a legal sense as partners. nevertheless in fixing their liability to creditors, dividing their property, and closing up their affairs, the courts often, though not always, treat their association as a partnership, and the members as partners. thus the highest court in new york declared that an unincorporated lodge, which had been mis-managed, was not a partnership. the members sought to dissolve the lodge, and distribute its property. the court said there was no power to compel the payment of dues, and the rights of a member ceased after his failure to meet his annual subscription. on the other hand, the supreme court in the same state held that the members of a voluntary association were liable to its creditors by common law principles. "where such a body of men join themselves together for social intercourse and pleasure, and assume a name under which they commence to incur liabilities by opening an account, they become jointly liable for any indebtedness thus incurred, and if either of them wishes to avoid his personal responsibility by withdrawal from the body, it is his duty to notify the creditors of such withdrawal." if one or more members order work to be done or purchase supplies, he or they are personally liable unless credit was given to the association. what can the members do? they cannot change the purpose for which the association was formed without the consent of all, still less can the executive board convert the association into a corporation. no member has a proprietary interest in the property, nor right to a proportionate part while he is a member, or after his withdrawal. should an association dissolve, then the members may divide its property among themselves. sometimes a quarrel springs up in one of these associations, the members divide, who shall have the property? the members of more than one church organization have fought this question, first among themselves, afterwards in the courts. suppose a quarrel breaks out in a branch association and two parties are formed, which of them is entitled to the property? the party that adheres to the laws and usages of the general organization is regarded as the true association, and is therefore entitled to the enjoyment of the property. though that party may be a minority of the faithful few, the members are enough to continue the organization. sometimes societies of a quasi religious character exist which persons join, surrendering their property and receiving support. suppose a member should leave, and afterwards sue to recover his property. this has been attempted, and usually ends in failure. are benefit societies charities? this question is important from the taxpayer's view, as charitable associations are taxed less than others or perhaps entirely relieved. an indiana court has decided that a corporation which promises to pay a fixed sum as a benefit during a member's illness--he of course paying his dues--is not a purely benevolent organization, and therefore not exempt from taxation. masonic lodges on the other hand, are generally regarded as charitable institutions. "the true test," says a judicial tribunal, "is to be found in the objects of the institution." again, a voluntary association may conduct in such a way as to create the impression or belief that it is a corporation, and is forbidden from denying its corporate liability for an injury or loss to a third person. it is a familiar rule that a person who transacts business with a partnership in the partnership name may hold all the members liable as partners, though he did not know all their names. this rule has sometimes been applied to a voluntary association, making it responsible as a corporation. the articles of association regulate the admission of members. a physician who applied for membership in a medical society was rejected because of unprofessional conduct. a code of medical ethics adopted by the society was declared to be binding only on the members, and therefore did not touch the conduct of one prior to his becoming a member of the society. if the membership of a society is confined to persons having the same occupation, a false representation concerning one's occupation would be a good reason for his expulsion. in admitting a member, if no form of election has been prescribed, each candidate must be elected separately. this must also be done at a regular meeting or at one properly called for that purpose. a call therefore to transact any business that may be legally presented is not sufficient. if a society requires a ceremony of initiation, is the election of a member so complete that he is entitled to benefits without proper initiation? in one of the cases the court said: "the entire system, its existence and objects, are based upon initiation. we think, there can be no membership without it, and no benefit, pecuniary or otherwise, without it." controversies concerning property rights of religious societies are generally decided by one of three rules: ( ) "was the property a fund which is in question devoted to the express terms of the gift, grant or sale by which it was acquired, to the support of any specific religious doctrine or belief or was it acquired for the general use of the society for religious purposes with no other limitation; ( ) is the society which owned it of the strictly independent or congregational form of church government, owing no submission to any organization outside of the congregation; ( ) or is it one of a number of such societies, united to form a more general body of churches, with ecclesiastical control in the general association over the members and societies of which it is composed." many benefit societies provide for the payment of money to their sick members. the rules providing for the payment of these may be changed at any time as the constitution or articles of association of a society may prescribe. consequently an amendment may be made diminishing the weekly allowance to a member who is sick, and also the time of allowing it. of course in applying for the benefits a member must follow the modes prescribed. the power to expel members is incident to every society or association unless organized primarily for gain. gainful corporations have no such power unless it has been granted by their charter or by statute. the revision of the list of members by dropping names is equivalent to the expulsion of those whose names are dropped, and by a majority vote or larger one as the rules of the society may require. nor can the power of expulsion be transferred from the general body to a committee or officer. the power to expel must be exercised in good faith, not arbitrarily or maliciously, and its sentence is conclusive like that of a judicial tribunal. nor will a court interfere with the decision of a society except: first, when the decision was contrary to natural justice and the member had no opportunity to explain the charge against him; secondly, when the rules of the association expelling him were not observed; thirdly, when its action against him was malicious. nor will a court interfere because there have been irregularities in the proceedings, unless these were of a grave character. the charges must be serious, a violation of a reasonable by-law is a sufficient charge. to obtain, by feigning a qualification which did not exist, membership in a trades-union is sufficient cause for expulsion; so is fraud in representing one's self in his application for membership when in fact he has an incurable disease. on the other hand, the following charges are not sufficient to justify expulsion or suspension: slander against the society, illegally drawing aid in time of sickness, defrauding the society out of a small sum of money, villifying a member, disrespectful and contemptuous language to associates, saying the lodge would not pay and never intended to pay, ungentlemanly conduct. in harmony with a fundamental rule of law, a member who has once been acquitted cannot be tried again for the same offense. as subordinate lodges of a benefit society are constituent parts of the superior governing body, there may be an expulsion from membership in a subordinate lodge for violating laws which generally caused expulsion from the society itself, and there may be a conditional expulsion or suspension. if an assessment is not paid at the fixed time, its non-payment, by the laws of the order, works a suspension, though a member may be restored by complying with the laws of the order. an appeal by a member of a subordinate lodge from a vote of expulsion does not abate by his death while the appeal is pending. if, therefore, the judgment of the lodge is reversed, the beneficiary of the member is entitled to the benefits due on the member's death. a member who has been wrongfully expelled may be restored by a mandamus proceeding issued by a court. before making the order the court will inquire into the facts and satisfy itself whether in expelling the applicant the society has properly acted in accord with its rules. unless some rule or statute forbids, a member of a voluntary association may withdraw at any time. when doing so, however, he cannot avoid any obligations incurred by him to the association. on the other hand, it cannot, after his withdrawal, impose any other obligations on him. it has often been attempted to hold the members of an association liable personally for a promised benefit in time of sickness. says bacon: "it may be a question of construction in each particular case whether the members are personally liable or not. the better rule seems to be that the members are not held personally liable." an association cannot by its constitution or by-laws confer judicial powers on its officers to adjudge a forfeiture of property rights, or to deprive lodges or members of their property and give it to another, or to other members. to allow associations to do this is contrary to public policy. for the same reason an agreement to refer future controversies to arbitration cannot be enforced; it in effect deprives a party of his rights under the law. he may do this in a known case, this indeed is constantly done, but one cannot bar himself in advance from a resort to the courts for some future controversy of which he has no knowledge at the time of the agreement. this is a rule of law of the widest application. =broker.=--a broker, unlike an auctioneer, usually has no special property in the goods he is authorized to sell. ordinarily also he must sell them in the name of the principal, and his sales are private. he receives a commission usually called brokerage. he can act only as the agent of the other party when the terms of the contract are settled and he is instructed to finish it. brokers are of many kinds. they relate to bills and notes, stocks, shipping, insurance, real estate, pawned goods, merchandise, etc. a bill and note broker who does not disclose the principal's name is liable like other agents as a principal. he is also held to an implied authority, not only to sell, but that the signatures of all the parties thereon are genuine. unless he indorses it he does not warrant their solvency. an insurance broker is ordinarily employed by the person seeking insurance, and is therefore unlike an insurance agent, who is a representative of an insurance company, and usually has the authority of a general agent. a delivery of a policy therefore, to an insurance broker, would be a delivery to his principal. he is a special agent. unless employed generally to keep up his principal's insurance, he has no implied authority to return a policy to be cancelled, and notice to him that a policy had ceased, would not be notice to his principal. an insurance broker must exercise reasonable care and diligence in selecting none but reliable companies, and in securing proper and sufficient policies to cover the risks placed to be covered by insurance; and if he selects companies which are then in good standing he would not be liable should they afterward become insolvent. merchandise brokers, unless factors, negotiate for the sale of merchandise without having possession or control of it. like other agents they must serve faithfully and cannot act for both parties, seller and buyer, in the same transaction, without the knowledge and consent of both. in many transactions he does thus represent both by their express or implied authority, and therefore binding both when signing for them. a real estate broker in the employ of his principal is bound to act for his principal alone, using his utmost good faith in his behalf. and a promise by one of the principals in an exchange of real estate, after the completion of the negotiations, to pay a commission to the other party's broker, to whom he owed nothing, is void for lack of a consideration. to gain his commission a broker must produce a person who was ready, able and willing both to accept and live up to the terms offered by the owner of the property. nor can a property owner escape payment of a broker's commission by selling the land himself and at a price less than the limit put on the broker. the business of a pawnbroker is legally regulated by statute, and the states usually require him to get a license. as the business may be prohibited, a municipality or other power may regulate and control his business. the rate of interest that he may charge is fixed by statute. the pawnee may lose his right by exacting unlawful interest. nor has the pawnee the right to retain possession against the true owner of any article that has been pawned without his consent or authority. if the true owner has entrusted it to someone to sell, who, instead of selling, pawns it, the pawner is protected in taking it as security. the sale of pawned goods is usually regulated by statute. if none exists, and there is no agreement between the parties, the sale must be public after due notice of the time and place of sale. if there is any surplus, arising from the sale, he must pay it to the pawner, and not apply it on another debt that he may owe the pawnee. the pawner, or an assignee or purchaser of the pawn ticket may redeem it within the time fixed by law or agreement, or even beyond the agreed time if the pawnee has not exercised his right of sale. subject to the pawnee's claim, the pawner has the same right over the article pawned as he had after pawning it, and may therefore sell and transfer his interest as before. lastly the pawner is liable for any deficiency after the sale of the thing pawned, unless released by statute. see _agency_. =carrier.=--carriers are of two kinds, private and public. a private carrier may contract orally or in writing, and must use such care in carrying the goods entrusted to him as a man of ordinary intelligence would of his own property. if he carries these gratuitously his obligation is still less, nevertheless he must even then take some care of them. suppose he agreed to carry a package for another to the latter's home, and on the way, being weary or sleepy, should sit down by the wayside where people often pass and fall asleep and on awakening should find the package missing, would he be responsible? authorities differ. suppose the package was a very valuable one. a court might hold that the man who gave it to him was a fool for entrusting such a package voluntarily with him. suppose however that he was a highly trustworthy man, well known throughout the neighborhood, then no fault could be imputed to either, and the owner would be obliged to bear the loss. common carriers are far more numerous and important. receiving a reward they are required to exercise more care in the business. the old rule of the common law was very strict, but this has been greatly modified. a carrier may modify the rule by contract, and the bill of lading received by the shipper is regarded as one, and sets forth his liability. in a general way he can relieve himself from all liability except from his own negligence, and there are cases which hold that he can relieve himself even from that if the shipper, for the sake of having his goods carried at a lower price, is willing to relieve him, in other words is willing to assume all the risk himself. a carrier can limit his liability for the loss of baggage entrusted to his care and when one receives a receipt describing the amount of the carrier's liability in the event of loss. nor can he hold the company on the plea of ignorance by declaring he has not read it, for it is his duty to read the receipt. again, a carrier is thus liable only when a traveler's baggage is entrusted to his care; if therefore he keeps his grip or umbrella and on looking around makes the painful discovery that he has been relieved of them, he cannot look to the carrier for compensation. the law requires carriers to carry all who pay their fare, and are in a sufficiently intelligent condition to take care of themselves. in like manner the law requires them to take all freight that may be offered, though it may make reasonable rules with regard to the time of receiving it, mode of packing, etc. a regulation therefore that furniture must be crated is reasonable, and a carrier may refuse to take it unless it is thus prepared for shipment. so also is a rule requiring glass to be boxed though the distance may be short for carrying it. a carrier may also object to carrying things out of season, potatoes or fruit for example in the winter in the northern states where there is great danger of freezing, unless the shipper assumes the risk. vast quantities of perishable goods are carried, but usually under definite regulations and contracts. so, too, the shipper must declare the nature of the thing carried. should he put diamonds in his trunk, he could not recover for their loss, for he has no business to carry such a valuable thing in that way. he must make known the contents for the carrier's protection. he cannot carry an explosive in secrecy. to attempt to do such a thing is a manifest wrong to the carrier. a carrier has a lien or right to hold the freight until the charge for transporting it is paid, but if it is delivered, the lien ceases and cannot be restored. if the carrier keeps it until the freight charge is paid discretion must be used, and unnecessary and unreasonable expense must not be incurred in so doing. a different rule applies to carrying passengers than applies to freight, because the latter is under its complete control, while passengers are not. nevertheless the law requires a high degree of care in carrying passengers, and is responsible in money damages should injury occur through the carrier's negligence. in many states statutes exist limiting the amount that a carrier must pay when life is lost through its negligence to five thousand dollars or other sum, while a much larger sum is often recovered for an injury, loss of a leg, arm or the like. from the carrier's point of view therefore it is often obliged to pay less for killing than for injuring people; this is one of the strange anomalies of the law. when a passenger is injured and no agreement can be made with the carrier for compensation, a suit is the result and the chief question is one of fact, the extent of the injury, and the degree of negligence of the carrier. if, on the other hand, the passenger was in fault himself and contributed to the injury then the more general rule is he can recover nothing. in some states the courts attempt to ascertain the negligence of both parties, when both are at fault, and then award a verdict in favor of the one least in fault. this is a difficult rule to apply however just it may seem to be. a passenger who stands on a platform or on the steps of a street car, when there is room inside, assumes all the risks himself. but if there is no room within and the conductor knows he is outside, and permits him to ride, he is under the same protection as other passengers. an interurban car had stopped and a who was carrying two valises attempted to board it. the act of the conductor, who was on the rear platform, in reaching down and taking one of the valises amounted to an invitation to a to board the car. in signaling to the motorman to start the car when a was stepping to the vestibule from the lower step, thus causing the injury to him, was negligence for which the company was liable. a sleeping car company operating in connection with ordinary trains is not a common carrier, nor an innkeeper as to the baggage of a passenger. yet it is liable for ordinary negligence in protecting passengers from loss by theft. in a well-considered case the judge said: "where a passenger does not deliver his property to a carrier, but retains the exclusive possession and control of it himself, the carrier is not liable in case of a loss, as for instance, where a passenger's pocket is picked, or his overcoat taken. a person asleep cannot retain manual possession or control of anything. the invitation to make use of the bed carries with it an invitation to sleep, and an implied agreement to take reasonable care of the guest's effects while he is in such a state that care upon his own part is impossible. i think it should keep a watch during the night, see to it that no unauthorized persons intrude themselves into the car, and take reasonable care to prevent thefts by occupants." there is a distinction between the great express companies of the country and local express companies receiving baggage from travelers for transportation to their immediate destination. in the latter case there is nothing in the nature of the transaction or the custom of the trade which should naturally lead the shipper to suppose that he was receiving and accepting the written evidence of a contract, and therefore he is not bound by the terms of the receipt received, unless there is other evidence that he assented thereto. though the united states is a common carrier for carrying mails, it cannot be held liable because it is a branch of the government. mail matter may be carried by private persons, but this is limited to special trips. by statute no person can establish any private express for carrying letters or packets by regular trips or at stated periods over any post route, or between towns, cities or other places where the mail is regularly carried. a public officer in performing his duties is exempt from all liability. but a postmaster is liable to a person injured by his negligence or misconduct and for the acts of a clerk or deputy authorized by him. the assistant unless thus shielded must answer for his own misconduct. a rider or driver employed by a contractor for carrying the mails is an assistant in the business of the government. although employed and paid, and liable to be discharged at pleasure by the contractor, the rider or driver is not engaged in his private service; he is employed in the public service and therefore the contractor is not liable for his conduct. =chattel mortgage.=--a chattel mortgage is a conveyance of personal property, as distinguished from real property, to secure the debt of the lender or mortgagor. the essence of the agreement is, if the mortgagor does not repay the money as he has agreed to do, the mortgagee becomes the owner of the property. until the mortgagor fails to execute his part of the agreement, he retains possession of the property. by statutes that have been enacted everywhere, the mortgagee's interest, or conditional title in the property conveyed to him, is secure by recording the deed even though the mortgagor still retains possession. the usual form of a chattel mortgage is a bill of sale with a conditional clause, stating the terms of the loan and that, on the mortgagor's failure to pay, the mortgagee may take possession of the property. any persons who are competent to make a contract may make a chattel mortgage, and an agent may act for another as in many other cases. when thus acting his authority may be either verbal, or written, or may be shown by ratification. persons also who have a common ownership in chattels, tenants in common or partners for example, may mortgage either their common or individual interests. a husband may give a chattel mortgage to his wife, and she in turn can give one to him. likewise a corporation may make such a mortgage. the law is broader in the way of permitting a minor, married woman, or corporation to be mortgagees when they cannot act as mortgagors of their property. two or more creditors may join in such a mortgage to secure their separate debts. if the debt of one of them is fraudulent, his fraud, while rendering the mortgage fraudulent as to him, will not affect its validity as to the other. how must the mortgaged property be described? with sufficient clearness to enable third persons to identify the property. the description must contain reasonable details and suggest inquiries which if followed will result in ascertaining the precise thing conveyed. a description of a baker's stock "stock on hand," would be too meager, so would be a description of "our books of account, and accounts due and to become due," but cattle described by their age, sex and location will satisfy the law, though the cattle of other owners should form part of the same herd, when they can be ascertained by following out the inquiries suggested by the mortgage. again, a description that is wholly false avoids the mortgage, but if it is false only in part, this may be rejected and the mortgage remain valid for the remainder. more generally the nature of the chattels conveyed determine largely the character of the description. thus animals may be described by weight, age, height, color and breed; vehicles by their style and manufacturer's name; furniture by piece or set; crops growing or to be grown by their location and year. a general claim of "all" articles in a stated place is regarded as sufficient. oral evidence is admissible to aid the description in identifying the subject-matter of the mortgage, and to explain the meaning and extent of the terms of the description. a mortgage may be given for a future advance of money. nor need the mortgage state that it is thus given; and the fact may be proved orally. but when the right of third parties are affected, such a mortgage is not valid against them unless the specific sum that is to be secured is set forth. likewise to render a mortgage secure against attaching creditors of the mortgagor, there must be a distinct statement of the condition or terms of the mortgage; in other words the creditors have a right to know what interest the mortgagee really has in the property that secures to him rights superior to their own. the rule should also be stated that where the rights of third parties are in issue, it must appear that the mortgagee acquired the mortgage before they had any rights to the property. the statutes require that chattel mortgages should be acknowledged and recorded. in some states the requirements are strict in respect to the disinterestedness of the official who takes the acknowledgment. an affidavit is another requirement. this must state several things, especially that the mortgage was given in good faith, and the nature and amount of the consideration. what may be mortgaged? in general, any personal property that may be sold; many of the statutes define it. they cover a life insurance policy, corporation stock, railway rolling stock, seamen's wages, growing crops and trees, profits from the use of a steamboat, premiums earned by a horse, book accounts, leasehold interests, nursery stock, besides many other things. whenever fixtures annexed to real estate retain the character of personal property they may be mortgaged. and when animals are mortgaged their natural increase are included. a mortgage made of an unfinished article will hold the article when finished if it can be identified. by the common law nothing could be mortgaged that was not in existence at the time of the mortgage. by statute a mortgage may cover after-acquired property, and this statute has become very important especially with merchants, manufacturers, and others who are constantly changing their stocks of goods. when the mortgagor fails to pay his debt, the right of the mortgagee to proceed in taking the property is usually regulated by statute, except when the parties have agreed themselves and in conformity with statute. the rights of the mortgagee depend in many cases on the title, whether that has passed to him by virtue of the mortgage, or whether it still remains conditionally in the mortgagor. where the mortgagor still retains the title, a clause is often put into the mortgage to the effect that, should the mortgagor default in payment, the mortgagee may take possession of the property and sell it; and such a provision is valid and enforcible. where the title is vested or transferred to the mortgagee by virtue of the mortgage, this is equivalent to giving him possession whenever he chooses to demand it. in other states the mortgagee's discretion is not so broad, before taking possession he must have reasonable grounds for believing himself insecure, that the mortgagor has done, or threatens to do, something that would impair the mortgagee's security. where the common law prevails and no statute has been enacted regulating the rights of parties, an important question is still unsettled in cases of a mortgage given on a stock of merchandise which permits the mortgagor to remain in possession and to sell the property mortgaged in the course of trade. can he do this? in many states such a mortgage is regarded as fraudulent to creditors, in other states if such a mortgage is not, on proper judicial inquiry, proved to be a fraud, it will be upheld. a provision in a mortgage that it shall cover after acquired property is regarded in some states as an executory agreement that it shall be held by the mortgagee as security; and the mortgagee may take possession of it, should the mortgagor fail to pay his debt, in accordance with his promise, before the rights of third persons have intervened. see _mortgage_. =chauffeur.=--in many states minors are forbidden by statute to run automobiles. if therefore the owner of a car permits a minor to drive his car, he may be held liable for the injuries resulting from the driver's negligence. should a chauffeur's license not disclose physical disabilities the license is not void, nor is he a trespasser in operating the machine on the highway. such a license though defective is valid until revoked by the proper authority. if discharged before the expiration of the term of his employment, an employer is still liable for his chauffeur's pay unless he has been unwilling or unable to fulfill his contract. if, however, he has been prevented by sickness or similar disability, he can recover, not perhaps the amount stated in the contract, but the worth of his services during the period of serving his employer. a chauffeur may recover damages from his employer for injuries received while operating his car. the basis of the action is his employer's negligence. if the engine "kicks back" while he is cranking the car, and the employer contributed to the result by moving the spark lever, he is liable. if he is injured while running a car from a defective brake of which he had knowledge, he cannot recover. but if the employer knew, and the chauffeur did not know that the brake was defective, he could recover if injured in consequence of it. the employer is under no duty to warn his chauffeur of obvious dangers, or instruct him in matters that he may be fairly supposed to understand. if a chauffeur is riding at the owner's request, who is driving the car, he may recover if injured by the negligence of the owner in running the machine. under the workmen's compensation laws a chauffeur who is injured while running his car beyond the speed limit prescribed by statute can recover nothing. nor is he justified by the custom of other chauffeurs in disregarding the rule. lastly, if the owner of a car is injured, physically or financially, by reason of the wrongful conduct of his chauffeur, he has a remedy against him. see _automobile_; _garage keeper_. =check.=--a check should be properly signed. a check signed by an individual with the word "agent," "treasurer," or other descriptive term, has sometimes been regarded as the check of the individual signer, and not that of a principal or company. the proper way is to sign the name of the principal or company, adding the name of the person by whom this is done, thus: "john smith by john doe, agent," or "the atlas co. by john king, treasurer," or other official designation. the statement will not accord with the view of many a reader, that a bank on which a check is drawn is under no legal agreement with the holder to pay it, whether the maker has a sufficient deposit or not. consequently, should the bank refuse to pay, the holder has no cause of action against the bank. the agreement to pay is between the bank and the depositor, and if the bank fails to fulfill its agreement with him, he has a just cause for complaint. sometimes a bank declines to pay supposing, through an error of bookkeeping perhaps, that the depositor has not money enough there to pay his check. in such a case, as the bank is in the wrong, if the depositor has suffered from loss of credit or in any other way from the bank's action, it must respond and make the loss good. suppose a person presents a check and the maker's deposit is not enough to pay the full amount, what can be done? usually the bank declines to pay. suppose the holder says he is willing to give up the check and take the amount in the bank? there is no reason why the bank should not accede to his wishes. suppose a bank should pay more than the amount on deposit through no fraud of the holder, from whom can it recover the amount? if the holder has been free from wrong in presenting the check, the bank cannot look to him, but to the drawer for repayment. if the maker of a check has no money in the bank, perhaps he may not be a depositor, he commits a fraud in making and giving his check to another, and the offense in many states is deemed a crime: likewise a person who receives such a check knowing its true nature is equally deep in the wrong. the law is very strict in its requirement of banks when paying the checks of customers. after a check has been delivered and has therefore passed beyond the maker's control, the law requires the greatest care on the part of a bank in paying it. the bank must be especially careful in examining the signature and the amount, and if the signature has been forged, or the amount changed, the bank is liable for an improper payment. once an employer gave his trusted clerk a post-dated check, which he was to present on the day specified, and, after drawing the money, was to pay this to his employees. the clerk changed the date to an earlier one, drew the money, kept it and fled. the court said the bank should have detected the alteration. the bank contended that had the clerk waited until the proper day, and then drawn the money, it would not have been liable. the court said that was not the case presented, the clerk did not wait. banks suffer, far more than the public knows, from the payment of raised checks, for it is quite impossible always to detect them, yet banks are held liable therefor. there are two rules relating to the payment of checks worth mentioning. one is, the maker of a check should use proper precaution in making it. he should write in a way that will not be likely to confuse the paying official. for instance, if in the above case the maker, intending to give a post-dated check, had written the date so imperfectly that the teller was misled, the bank would not have been liable for paying it, or for refusing to pay because there was not money enough in the bank at the time of presentation for payment. some persons are very careless in making figures; when they are, they cannot look to the bank for the ill consequence of their own neglect. again, if a bank paid forged checks, for example, which were returned with other checks on the balancing of a depositor's book, and months, perhaps years afterward, the depositor discovered the forgeries or forged indorsements, he could, notwithstanding the lapse of time, demand of the bank the sums wrongfully paid. this was a great hardship to banks, and has been corrected in many states by statutes and by the courts in others. the rule now is, the depositor must, within a reasonable time after the return of his bank book, examine it, also his checks, and, if payments have been improperly made, demand immediate correction. the holder of a check should demand payment within a reasonable time after he has received it. he may keep it longer if he pleases, but if he does, and the bank should fail, he cannot demand payment again from the maker of the check. he in effect says to the holder of the check when giving it to him, "present this check to the bank within the proper time and it will be paid, if you keep it longer, you do it at your risk." what is a reasonable time? the law has fixed it. if the bank is in the town or city where the holder of the check dwells, he must present it the day he received it, or the next day. if it is drawn on a bank outside, the check must be forwarded for presentment at the latest on the day after it is received. with respect to the first class of checks therefore if the maker and receiver are both depositors of the same bank, the operation on the part of the bank consists simply in debiting one account and crediting another with the amount; if checks are drawn on another bank in the same city the receiver usually deposits them in his own bank and they are paid through the clearing house the next day. a drawer may stop the payment of his check. and when he requests the bank to do so it must heed his instruction, and is liable if neglecting, though not always for the whole amount of the check. suppose the check was given for a bill which the maker actually owed, yet for some reason, after giving the check, he did not wish to pay. if it was actually due and undisputed it would be hardly just to require the bank to pay the check over again to the holder, this would be too much. but for whatever injury the maker of the check may have sustained the bank must make good. when a check has been certified by the bank on which it is drawn, the effect of the certification after the drawer has parted with it "is precisely as if the bank had paid the money upon that check instead of making a certificate of its being good." the check is charged up to the maker, or should be, and therefore as between him and the bank has been paid. =citizen.=--in modern usage this means a member of the body politic who owes allegiance to the nation and is entitled to public protection. one may be a citizen of the united states without being a citizen of any state, for example, a citizen of the district of columbia, or the territory of alaska. citizen-ship implies the duty of allegiance to the government, and the right of protection from it. a citizen of the united states who resides in a state owes a double allegiance, and can demand protection from each government. for the ordinary rights of person and property he looks to the state for protection. the rights for which he can seek the protection of the united states are only such as are established by the constitution and federal laws. for some purposes even a corporation may be included within the term citizen, for example the right to sue in the federal courts as a citizen of the incorporating state. by the fourteenth amendment of the federal constitution, all persons born in the united states and subject to its jurisdiction are citizens of the united states. in congress passed an act conferring citizenship on alien women who should marry american citizens. an american woman therefore who marries an alien takes the nationality of her husband. when her marital relation ends she may elect to retain her marital or her original citizenship. since minor children follow the status of their parent, by the marriage of an alien widow to an american citizen, her children also become american citizens. an alien may be naturalized. to do this he must have continuously resided in the united states for five years before his application, and he must have appeared in court at least two years before, and there declared his intention to become a citizen of the united states and to renounce allegiance to his former sovereign. he must prove by the oath of at least two persons his residence, also during that time that he has behaved as a man of good moral character and attached to the principles of the federal constitution. he must take an oath to support and defend the constitution and laws of the united states and renounce allegiance to any foreign prince. the naturalization of a person confers citizenship on his minor children if dwelling in the united states, also on his wife, unless she is of a race incapable of american citizenship. the rights of aliens, from the very beginning of the american government, have been expanded by treaty provisions and by liberal legislation. in nearly all the states resident aliens were given the right to take title to land, whether by deed or by inheritance, to hold such real estate and to transfer it by law or by descent. in some states they were given the right to vote and hold office. and at common law they were entitled to purchase, own and sell personal property, engage in business and to make contracts and wills. by the fourteenth amendment to the federal constitution their rights and privileges have been further secured. aliens owe to the country in which they reside a temporary and limited allegiance, that is, an obligation to obey its laws and subject themselves to the jurisdiction of the courts. a non-resident alien is not within the terms of the fourteenth amendment, indeed it is doubtful if he can ask any aid or relief under the state or federal constitutions. a statute therefore imposing a higher inheritance tax on property passing to a non-resident alien than on his property if he resided here is valid. non-resident aliens can acquire no rights incident to residence here except as permitted by the federal government. this power may be exercised, either through treaties made by the president and senate, or through statutes enacted by congress. so congress has excluded not only diseased, criminal, pauper and anarchist immigrants, but also contract and chinese laborers. =contracts.=--at the outset the various kinds of contracts should be explained so that the principles which apply to them may be better understood. one of the divisions is into simple contracts and specialties. a simple contract may be verbal or it may be in writing, but no seal is appended to the signatures of the parties. a specialty is in writing and a seal is added to the signature. a written contract may be a duplicate of another with a seal, yet the two belong to different classes and different rules of law apply to them as we shall learn. another classification is into executed and executory contracts. an executed contract, as the name implies, is completed, an executory contract is to be executed or completed. an unpaid promissory note is an executory contract, when paid it becomes an executed one. another classification is into express or implied contracts. an express contract is one actually made between two or more persons or parties; an implied contract is one that the law makes for the parties. suppose a man worked a day for another at his request, and nothing was said about payment, the law would require him to pay a reasonable sum for his day's work. another kind of contract technically called quasi contract differs somewhat from an implied contract and will be explained in another place. to every contract there must be two or more parties, who have the legal right to make it. not every person therefore who wishes to make a contract can legally do so. of those whose ability to contract are limited are minors or infants. the period of infancy is fixed by law, and is therefore a conventional, yet needful regulation. in most states infancy ends at the age of twenty-one, though some states fix a younger period, eighteen for women. a person becomes of age at the beginning of the day before his twenty-first birthday. the reason for this rule is, the law does not divide a day into a shorter period or time except when this is required in judicial proceedings. another class of incapable contractors are married women. their disability however has been largely removed by statutes in all the states, as we shall learn in another place. insane and drunken persons also are under disability to make contracts. by the old law a drunken man who made a contract was still liable, and required to fulfill as a penalty for his conduct. a more humane rule now prevails and he can be relieved, though like a minor, if he wishes to avoid a contract, he must return the thing purchased, in other words he can take no advantage of his act to the injury of the other contracting party. if however he has given a negotiable note that has passed into the possession of an innocent third person, who did not know of his drunkenness at the time of making it, he can be held for its payment. it is not quite so easy to state rules that apply to insane persons because their conditions vary so greatly. a person may be insane in some directions and yet his insanity may not be of a kind affecting his capacity to make at least some kind of contracts. again, he may have lucid intervals during which he is quite as capable of contracting as other persons. and again when an insane man has made a contract, the relief to which he is entitled depends on circumstances. in some cases he may repudiate it, a partial fulfillment only may be required. the law has much to say about the consideration that is an element in every contract; in other words, there must be a cause, something to be gained by the parties in every contract to sustain it. if a should promise to give to b a house next week, and on the day fixed for transferring it a should change his mind, he could not be compelled to transfer it, for the promise would be without any consideration or thing coming from b. but if the house had been transferred, a could not afterwards repent of his act and demand its return. an executed gift therefore, free from all fraudulent surroundings, is valid: the donor of an executory gift is free to withhold its execution. a consideration need bear no relation or adequacy to the other thing that is to be received. nothing is more frequent than a one-sided contract, in which one party has gained far more than the other. if the law attempted to adjust these cases, many more courts would be needed than now exist. we will briefly note the need of consideration in some classes of cases. first, a voluntary undertaking to work for another without compensation cannot be enforced. under this head is the promise to pay the debt of another. why should one do such a thing? let us remember that should one make such a promise and keep it, the money could not be recovered back, that is quite another thing. again, if a owed b a debt and delayed payment, and b should say to him, "if you will pay me half of it next week i will give up the rest," b would not be bound by his promise. suppose that b learning that a had ample means to pay, should sue him, a could not relieve himself from liability by offering to pay the amount a promised to take in settlement of the debt. but should b accept one half, in fulfillment of his promise, that would be the end of the matter. again should a bank defaulter make good the amount taken, and the directors, in consideration thereof, promise to take no steps towards his prosecution by the government, there would be no valid consideration to sustain the promise. the state would be just as free to prosecute him as before. very often such criminals are not prosecuted after returning all or a part of their unlawfully taken money, nevertheless no settlement of this kind stands in the way of prosecution. suppose a agreed to work for b for a month and, after working a week, should leave him without good reason, can he recover for his week's work? if he can get anything, he cannot claim it under his contract for he has broken it and therefore a court could not enforce it. if he can recover anything it is on the implied contract which the law makes, the worth of his work after deducting the loss to his employer. suppose the employer should prove that he had lost more by a's going away when he did than he had gained by his week's work, he could recover of b, for the rule works both ways. in some states he cannot recover anything, for, having broken his contract, he has no standing in court. suppose one signs his name to a subscription paper, calling for the payment of money, to build a church, for example, and the designated amount has been subscribed, can a subscriber refuse to pay? he cannot. suppose he withdraws before the subscriptions have been completed, what then? he can refuse. if a subscription has not been completed, death operates as a revocation and the subscriber's estate is not held for the amount. sometimes a moral obligation to pay money is a good consideration for a promising to pay it. thus if one owes another for a bill of goods, and the debt has ceased to be binding by lapse of time, yet he should afterwards promise to pay, he could be held on his promise because there was a good consideration for the debt. lastly a contract may be modified by mutual agreement without another consideration. another element in a contract is mutuality, a meeting of minds in the same sense. in every contract there is an offer made by one party and an acceptance or refusal by the other. when an acceptance occurs, there is a meeting of minds, or an assent. very often the parties do not understand each other, they acted hastily, ignorantly perhaps, their minds did not really meet in the same sense. in such cases there is no contract. generally the acceptance must be at the time of receiving the offer. if it is not, there is no meeting of minds, no assent. a person however may make an offer on time, this is common enough. when this is done the other party must furnish some kind of consideration to make the offer good for anything, otherwise the offerer can withdraw his offer whenever he pleases. many an offeree has been disappointed by the action of the other party in withdrawing his offer, yet the offerer has been clearly within his rights in doing so when he has received no consideration for giving the other party time to think over his offer. an eminent jurist has said "that an offer without more is an offer in the present to be accepted or refused when made. there is no time which a jury may consider reasonable or otherwise for the other party to consider it, except by the agreement or concession of the party making it. until it is accepted it may be withdrawn, though that be at the next instant after it is made, and a subsequent acceptance will be of no avail." if no time is given, or no consideration for the time given, an offer therefore may be withdrawn as soon as made if not accepted. a person may suddenly think of something which leads him to withdraw his offer as soon as it is out of his mouth, and in doing so is within his rights, but if he does not, how long does his offer last? a reasonable time. what this is depends on many things, one of the questions like so many others in the law to which no definite answer can be given. an offer to sell some real estate was accepted five days afterward, this was held to be within a reasonable time. one can readily imagine cases in which five days would not be thus regarded, or even five hours. when does assent occur in contracts made by correspondence? the rule is in nearly every state (massachusetts being the chief exception) where an offeree has received an offer by letter and has put his acceptance in the postoffice, the minds of the parties have met and made a contract. the post-office is the agency of the offerer both to carry his offer and bring back the return. if the offeree should use a different agency, the telegraph for instance, to convey his acceptance, it would not be binding until the offerer had received and accepted it. of course, an offerer by letter may withdraw his offer at any time. suppose he should receive an acceptance by letter or telegraph but deny it, and insist that no contract had been made. then the controversy would turn on the proof. if the acceptance had been by letter, and the offeree could prove that the offeree had written and mailed it, the offeree's proof would be complete. if the offeree sent a telegram, then he would be obliged to prove the delivery of the dispatch. suppose one should mail a letter of acceptance, but before its receipt by the offerer, should send a telegram declining the offer which was received before the letter of acceptance? the acceptance would stand, for as there had been a meeting of minds when the letter was put into the postoffice, the offeree could not afterwards withdraw his offer. a person who makes an offer cannot turn it into an acceptance. an old uncle wrote to his nephew that he would give thirty dollars for his horse and added, "if i hear no more about the matter, i consider the horse is mine." the game did not work, for no man can both make and accept an offer at the same time, and that is what the foxy uncle tried to do. offers and rewards are often made through the newspapers. thus the owner of a carbolic smoke ball offered to pay a specified sum to any one who suffered from influenza after using one of his smoke balls in accordance with directions if he was not cured. a person who failed to receive the benefit advertised recovered the reward. two other cases may be mentioned that illustrate the uncertainty of the law. an excited farmer offered the following reward, "harness stolen! owner offers $ to any one who will find the thief, and another $ to prosecute him!" the farmer cooled off and declined to pay after the thief was caught and the court relieved him, declaring that his advertisement was not an offer to pay a reward, but simply an explosion of wrath. in another case a man's house was burning, and he offered $ , to any one who would bring down his wife dead or alive. a brave fireman accomplished the feat. this offerer too cooled off and declined to pay, but he did not escape on the ground that this was only an explosion of affection, and was obliged to pay. lastly a contract dates from the time of acceptance, and is construed or interpreted by the law of the place where it was made. if it is to be performed in another place, then the parties must be governed by the law of that place in performing it. a contract having been made, next follows its execution. when a contract is not executed, or not executed properly, the party injured usually may recover his loss. sometimes the contract states what the offending or wrongful party must pay should he fail to execute it. many questions have arisen from such agreements. suppose a contractor agrees to build a home for another and to finish it within a fixed time, and, failing to do so, shall forfeit or pay to the other $ , as a penalty for his failure. one would think that if he failed to execute it the other party could demand the $ , . but the courts have a way of their own in looking at things. suppose the contractor's failure did not in fact result in any loss whatever to the other party? the courts in such a case are very reluctant to enforce the agreement. if there had been a loss, something like that amount, then the courts would compel him to pay. in other words, the most general rule is, notwithstanding such a clearly written agreement, the courts seek to do justice between the parties. whenever the parties do not attempt to fix the damages themselves, should their contract not be fulfilled, then the amount that may be recovered depends on a great variety of circumstances. suppose a woman should go to a store to buy a piece of silk. she asks if the piece shown to her by the saleswoman is all silk, who makes an affirmative reply. the buyer knows much more about it than the saleswoman, which is often the case in buying things, and knows it is half cotton, can the buyer recover anything? surely she has not been deceived. the seller may have tried to fool her but did not, and having failed, the buyer has no legal ground for an action. on the other hand, if the buyer was ignorant, knew nothing about silk and had been deceived by the seller, then she would have a clear case. this is one of the fundamentals in that large class of cases growing out of deceit. the party seeking redress, must have been deceived, and also injured by the deceit in order to recover. the remedies that may be employed whenever contracting parties have failed, or partly failed to fulfill their agreements or promises will be considered under other heads. see _deceit_; _drunkenness_; _quasi contract_. =corporations.=--there are many kinds of corporations. those most generally known are business corporations; and though many of them are very large, legally they are private corporations. a railroad corporation, though performing a public service, nevertheless is a private corporation. public corporations are formed for governing the people and are often called municipal corporations. they are created or chartered by the legislatures of the states wherein they exist. formerly, all private corporations in this country were granted charters by the legislative power, and many corporations are doing business by virtue of the authority thus granted to them. more recently general statutes have been enacted whereby individuals may form such corporations without the aid of a legislature. authority has been conferred on the courts, secretary of state, or other official to grant to individuals, who may apply for them, charters on complying with the requirements of these statutes. there are other kinds of corporations, religious, charitable and the like; only one other need be mentioned, to which the term quasi has been applied. these resemble corporations in some ways, and this is the reason for calling them quasi corporations. a county or school district is such a corporation. the supervisors of a county, or the trustees of a school district, can make contracts, own and manage real estate for their respective bodies, sue and be sued like the officers of other corporations. by the general comity existing between the states corporations created in one state are permitted to carry on any lawful business in another, and to acquire, hold and transfer property there like individuals. formation of corporations. formerly charters were granted to corporations for a long term of years, or forever. the policy of the law has changed in this regard, and the duration of their existence is limited to a comparatively short period. the life of a national bank is only for twenty years; at the end of that period the charter is renewed, and the charters of the older national banks have been renewed several times. perpetual charters are infrequently granted, and some of the older ones have been limited by legislative or judicial action. a private corporation had perpetual authority to build and maintain a bridge across the susquehanna river at harrisburg, nor could any other company build one within the distance of ten miles above or below. notwithstanding this clear and exclusive grant, another company was formed which attempted to build a bridge within a mile of the other. the old company tried to prevent by law the new company from building the bridge. the court said that "perpetual" did not mean literally perpetual, but a long time, that the old company had enjoyed its exclusive grant a long time, long enough, and that the new company was justified in its undertaking. a corporation has no heirs like an individual; it continues through succession, one sells his interest or stock to another, and thus it lives to the end of its charter unless it fails or, through some other event, comes to an end. suppose a stockholder buys all the stock of the other members, does the corporation still exist? it does for a limited time. how long? no court has answered this question. it depends on the particular case. the courts also say, that he can sell his stock to other individuals and thus practically revive a dying corporation. a stockholder who had bought all the stock of a corporation claimed that he should be taxed as a corporation, which was at a lower or favored rate than that paid by individuals. the court said the game would not work, that for the purposes of taxation the concern must be regarded as an individual. so the stockholder knew more after that decision than he did before. capital. every private corporation has a capital composed usually of money, which is advanced or paid by its members or shareholders. among the reasons for forming corporations two may be stated. it is a way for collecting money from many sources needful for an enterprise; the many contributors are like the small streams that unite and create a great reservoir. the other reason is, the contributors are free from the liabilities that attach to every member of a partnership for its entire indebtedness. a stockholder may indeed, if his corporation does not succeed, lose a part or all of the capital he has contributed, but no more or only a fixed amount, as will be hereafter explained. almost anyone can subscribe for stock, with a few limitations. a minor cannot subscribe for stock, nor can his guardian act for him. doubtless they do subscribe in some cases; the practical difficulties will be shown in another connection. a married woman cannot always subscribe, unless by virtue of a statute. what usually happens when she wishes to subscribe is to act through a friend, who, after the corporation is fully formed, transfers the stock to her. there is no legal stone in the way of such a course. sometimes fictitious subscriptions are made to induce others to subscribe for stock. whenever the fraud is found out an innocent subscriber can do one of three things. if he has paid for his stock, he can bring an action to recover it; if he has not paid, he can refuse to do so, and set up the fraud as a defense. he can do another thing, accept the stock and sue for the damage he has sustained by the deceit that has been practiced on him. the discovery of a fictitious subscriber among the number, after all have subscribed, where his action in subscribing did not affect their action, will not justify them in not fulfilling their obligation to pay for their shares. the issuing of a share certificate is not an essential condition of ownership. it is merely evidence of it, like the deed of a piece of real estate. all the shareholders of a corporation are the owners whether any certificates are issued to them or not. of course a stockholder desires to have his certificate for obvious reasons. whenever the capital stock of a company is increased, each shareholder has a right to his proportionate number of the new shares on fulfilling the terms on which they are issued before they can be offered to the public. occasionally a clique seeks to get control of a corporation by the issue of new stock and taking it among themselves. they can be defeated for the courts carefully guard the rights of all stockholders to take their shares of new stock before it can be offered to, and taken by others. of late years private corporations have been issuing a kind of stock, called preferred, that must be explained. formerly such stock was more like a loan of money to a company, and was issued primarily as the most feasible way of getting a fresh supply of money capital. the lenders or takers of the stock received a fixed per cent. on their money, which was paid before the common shareholders received anything. his preference or dividend was not guaranteed, but the probability of regular payment was so strong in most cases that his shares usually possessed a real value. preferred shareholders are not liable for the debts of their corporations, and the right to vote at any meeting of the shareholders is sometimes given to them, though not always. the tendency of the day is to confer this right on them. whether, when the amount of the preferred stock is increased, the preferred shareholders are entitled to subscribe for their proportionate amount, like common shareholders, is an open question. the authority of agents or commissioners to receive subscriptions is strictly regarded. they cannot refuse to receive a subscription made by a competent person, nor release a subscriber, nor vary the terms of subscription to anyone. a subscription for shares is a contract in writing and cannot be proved by oral evidence unless the original subscription paper has been lost. as the contract is an open one, any subscriber must inform himself of the legal consequences of subscribing, and cannot therefore refuse to execute it on the ground of ignorance or misunderstanding. suppose an agent who was soliciting subscriptions, in reply to questions concerning the laws relating to the proposed company, should give incorrect answers to a subscriber, these would furnish no ground for refusing to pay, as he has promised to do, for he could have found out what the laws were without inquiring of the agent. this may seem a hard rule, yet it has a wide application. in one sense it is true that every person can find out the law for himself, the books are open, the statutes especially may be easily found, but how many know enough to find the laws in which they are interested? of course if a person has been deceived by an agent, if a fraud has been practised on him, he can avoid his contract. thus a person who, unable to read a subscription paper, was induced to subscribe through misrepresentation of its contents, was not bound by it. if he wishes to act, he must lose no time after discovering the fraud that has been practiced on him. he cannot say, "i will abide by a company if successful, and will leave it if it fails." he must therefore decide at once either to continue his membership or withdraw. a company cannot purchase its own shares unless by charter or statute such action is clearly authorized. for, to do this is to reduce its assets or fund for paying its indebtedness, which the law will not permit to be done. if a company has no debts, a reduction in its capital made in an open manner in accordance with law, is legal. the tendency of the times everywhere is to increase the capitals of private corporations; reductions though are sometimes made to lessen especially the burden of taxation. a corporation has no lien on its stock for the indebtedness of the owner unless conferred by charter or statute. once such a lien could be established by usage or by-law under authority given to a corporation to regulate the transfer of its stock. the national banking law prohibits the creation of such liens, and the strong current of the law runs in this direction. but a bank can retain a dividend that has been declared to reduce the indebtedness of the owner to the bank for his stock. liability of shareholders. the liability of the shareholders of a corporation is very unlike that of members of a partnership. it was the liability of each partner for all the debts of a concern that kept many persons from forming that relation. the shareholders of many corporations are liable only for the amount they have contributed and paid, or have agreed to pay. national bank shareholders are liable for another sum, equal to the par value of their stock, provided as much may be needed to pay its debts should the bank fail. thus if a shareholder owned ten shares, having a par value of $ a share, he might be required to pay, should the bank fail, $ , more provided as much was needed to pay its debts. in a few states shareholders are required to pay twice the amount of the par value of the stock if as much may be needed to pay its indebtedness. if a corporation fail, one or more persons are usually appointed by a court to settle its affairs, who are called receivers. several years are sometimes required to settle the affairs of a corporation. first an inventory is made of its property, names of the debtors and creditors, and the amounts due from and to them, and as soon as its property can be converted into cash, dividends are declared and paid to the creditors; and this work is continued until there has been a disposition of all the property, and the amount received therefrom less the expense of the receivership, has been paid to the creditors. when the shareholders are required to pay more, as above explained, on the failure of their corporation, they are notified by the receiver how much and when they must pay. this requirement is based on an order from the court that appointed him, which, in turn, is based on information which he has furnished to the court of the amount that may be needed to pay the debts of the corporation. several assessments may be ordered, but they never exceed in the aggregate more than the amount of liability fixed by law, the amount or twice the amount of the par value of the stock subscribed. should shareholders decline to pay these assessments as ordered, the receiver sues them and obtains judgments, the proceeds of which are paid to the creditors. meetings. the power of a corporation vests or rests in its members. the charter and statutes provide that they shall meet, organize, elect officers, and adopt by-laws for the more detailed governing of the corporation. one of the most general principles pertaining to them is, the majority shall rule. this however may be modified by charter or statute. there are a few ancient charters which provide that, notwithstanding the quantity of stock a shareholder may own, he is entitled to only one vote. the writer knows of a case in which a shareholder bought nearly all the stock of a corporation and went to the annual meeting supposing that he could and would do as he pleased. on learning the unwelcome truth that he had only one vote like the others he quickly put on his hat and walked out. the statutes usually prescribe how notice of the joint meeting shall be given. they are not mandatory, but directory, hence if all the persons in a corporation should come together without any notice or call whatever, and accept the charter, and do any other thing needful to form the corporation, their action would be valid. where the regulations of a corporation definitely fix the place, the day, and hour of the annual meeting at which the directors are to be elected, no further notice of the meeting to the stockholders is needed unless required by its charter or by-laws. a case may arise in which other persons than those designated by statute may call a meeting. suppose a statute prescribes that the persons named in the certificate of incorporation, or any three of them, may call a meeting of the shareholders, and before giving notice all of them had died? then the meeting could be called by others. again, authority to create a corporation may fail through long delay in calling a meeting and organizing. should the notices for the first meeting not be given as the law requires, it is nevertheless valid if the shareholders have notice and join in waiving the mailing of the required notices. likewise a subscriber waives his notice of the first meeting when he afterwards offers to pay for his shares. if the by-laws require that an annual meeting shall be held at a particular time, and those whose duty it is to call it, forget to do so, it may be held afterwards, and the officers elected and other business transacted would be as valid as if the meeting had been held at the proper time. should the officer who ought to call a meeting refuse to do so he may be compelled by law to call it. this proceeding is called a mandamus, and is issued at the instance or request of the shareholders. "besides annual meetings, corporations hold many stated or regular meetings at monthly or other times. thus if a meeting of proprietors must be called by twelve of them, a call signed by eleven is defective. if a statute requires a committee of a society to sign the call, it cannot be signed by the clerk, nor by him for them. if the trustees of a corporation must issue the call, this cannot be done by the president. if exclusive authority to issue the call is vested in the directors, it cannot be exercised by the president and secretary. if the articles of association provide that meetings of shareholders may be called by the board of directors, or by any three shareholders, the president and cashier cannot issue a valid call. but if a board consists of three members and there is a vacancy, the other two may act and give the notice." a well understood distinction exists between the calling of regular and special meetings. regular meetings are held in the way set forth in the charter and by-laws of a corporation; special meetings are called at irregular times on proper authority. a notice for a special meeting must state the object of it, and no other business can be transacted. on the other hand unless the regular meeting is of great importance no mention need be made of its object in the notice. an authorized meeting may be adjourned from time to time without giving further notice, for it is only a continuation of the original meeting. says an eminent judge: whether a meeting is continued without interruption for many days, or is adjourned from day to day, or from time to time, many days intervening, it is evident that it must be considered the same meeting. a meeting may be legally held though one of its members is incapable, physically or mentally, from receiving notice. "the law cannot look into the capacity of the stockholders to transact business, but can only regard the capacity of the aggregate body when duly assembled." on the death of a stockholder, the purchaser, if the stock has been sold, should have it transferred, or give distinct notice to the company how notices of its meetings should be sent to him; if neglecting to do this, he cannot charge the corporation with neglect should it continue to send notices to the former address. two other points may be mentioned concerning notices. one is, they may be waived and this is often done. many a question though arises, what action amounts to a waiver of notice. if each shareholder attends in person or by proxy and participates in the meeting, he cannot afterward question its legality because he received no notice of it. an improper notice may also be cured by ratification. thus if a secretary calls a meeting instead of the directors, and his action is properly ratified by them, the call is effective. more generally, the action of a meeting will be declared valid where it appears that every stockholder who did not participate in the meeting ratified its action afterwards. an election of trustees of a church may be valid even though the notice lacked the proper length of time and the names of the trustees whose seats became vacant at the election, if it was fairly conducted and all who had the right to vote were present. likewise a stockholder who knows of the sale of his railroad, though not legally notified of the meeting which authorized its sale, and was not present, may be bound by its action through acquiescence. and a stockholder who, after receiving notice of a meeting called by the directors to consider their neglect of duty and who decides not to go, is not thereby prevented from taking action against them by the stockholders who did attend and authorized their unauthorized action. lastly a stockholder who was present cannot complain that notice was not given to others; the objection is personal. next we may inquire, who can vote at such meetings? unless prevented by charter, statute or by-law a stockholder may vote at any corporate meeting even though no certificate of stock has been issued to him. nor does his indebtedness for his stock prevent him from voting. on the other hand if inspectors were not bound by the record of ownership in the company's books and went behind them to find out the real ownership of the company's stock, they would often have a grave task before them. consequently in many, perhaps all of the states, only stockholders or those holding proxies for them can vote at a general election. by statute the stock record of ownership is usually made the conclusive test of the right to vote. stockholders who thus appear on the stock books at the date of a meeting are entitled to vote the stock. a trustee is the legal owner of stock standing in his name and may vote the stock for all purposes; but a testator may impose limitations on his voting power. should trustees under a will holding a majority of the stock of a corporation disagree, and one of them should be enjoined from voting it, a minority stockholder would be entitled to an injunction to restrain the other trustee from holding an election or voting the stock alone until the right to vote the stock had been legally decided. a different rule applies to a naked trustee who holds the title to the stock without any real interest in it. he can indeed vote, but in the way directed by the beneficiary or real owner. in colorado, by statute, perhaps in some other states, a person to whom stock has been issued as trustee without the knowledge of the owner, is not a bona fide stockholder and cannot vote. an executor has the power to vote the stock of his testator. and if one of joint executors issues a proxy authorizing the vote of the stock belonging to the estate, and the other executor is present at the stockholders' meeting, the vote of the stock by the executor who is present is deemed a revocation of the proxy given by his co-executor. and if a will gives to one of three executors the power to vote the stock, and directs the other two to give him a proxy for that purpose, which they decline to do, a court will order the proxy to be given. and whenever stock is held by executors who are not united in voting it, they cannot vote at all. a foreign executor should present to the inspectors of election an exemplified copy of his letters of administration, and having done so may vote on the stock standing in the testator's name. an administrator has the right to vote stock belonging to the estate, even though it has not been transferred to him in the corporation's books. a partner of a firm who owns stock in a corporation may represent the stock in all meetings. he may therefore receive and waive notice of them, vote when attending them, in short, participate in all matters. and on the death of a partner the surviving partner has the right to represent the partnership and vote on its stock. two other kinds of stockholders still require mention, sellers and purchasers of stock and pledgors and pledgees. until a transfer is entered on the books of a corporation, "the transferee, as between himself and the company, has no right beyond that of having the transfer properly entered. until that is done, the person in whose name the stock is entered on the books of the company is, as between himself and the company, the owner to all intents and purposes, and particularly for the purpose of an election." many questions have arisen between pledgors and pledgees about their rights to vote the pledged stock. of course, whenever an agreement has been made by them this must be respected. in other cases, if the record remains unchanged, the pledgor can vote the stock. but if the pledgor has transferred his right to vote the stock, he cannot ask a court to restore his right to vote it until the purpose for which it was pledged has been satisfied. again a pledgor who pledges his stock not in good faith as security for a loan, but to enable the pledgee to vote it and effect an unlawful purpose, cannot do this and so defeat a statute which provides that the real owner, the pledgor, may vote his stock. passing to the pledgee, whenever he is registered as owner of the stock on the company's books, its officers will not look behind these to ascertain whether he is the real owner or not when he is voting his stock. a court of equity though may do this, and enjoin a pledgee from voting the stock whenever the pledgor's rights would be affected. should the pledgor acquiesce for years in the control of the stock by the pledgee, who is the record owner, and not inform the company of his ownership until the holding of a contested election, he would be too late to claim the right to vote. finally when a certificate of stock has been assigned in blank as collateral security, which is often done, and never transferred to the pledgee on the books of the corporation, a memorandum only having been made on the stub of the certificate in the stock book, the pledgee is not a stockholder and cannot vote the stock. it may be added that notices of meetings should be sent to whoever has the right to vote the stock, to the pledgor if the stock still stands in his name, to the pledgee if the stock has been transferred to him and stands in his name. directors. shareholders manage their corporations through directors or trustees elected for that purpose. the business of some corporations is managed by trustees who are named in the charter and who fill vacancies in their number by electing others themselves, a self-perpetuating body. many savings banks especially are thus organized and continued. from their number they usually select a smaller number to manage or direct its affairs. the directors are always shareholders, unless the charter of a corporation permits the election of outsiders, a thing that rarely happens. the national banking act requires that every director shall own at least ten shares of stock, and many other corporations have similar requirements. the charter or statutes prescribe at least the minimum number that must be elected, but the maximum number is left to the stockholders themselves. a national bank must have five directors, not infrequently the board is composed of ten, fifteen, or even more. a director is chosen for some real service that he is likely or willing to perform. an individual may be chosen a bank director who may not be able to do much in directing the affairs of the bank, yet by reason of his wealth or business relations he may be able to attract business to the bank and thus greatly promote its prosperity. he is elected by a majority of the votes of the shareholders. more recently the cumulative system of voting has come into general favor. by this system a voter may cast as many votes for each of the candidates as he holds shares of stock, or he may distribute or cumulate his votes on a smaller number. "where the votes under such a system are cast and counted, the validity of the election must be determined precisely as in all other cases." where the shareholders have failed, whether voting cumulatively or otherwise, to elect a quorum of the new board, at an annual meeting of stockholders, it is the privilege of the shareholders to ask for successive voting for directors to fill the board. the ruling of a chairman on one occasion, that because of a tie further balloting could not proceed, and that the old board held over was arbitrary and illegal. a stockholder who has votes enough to elect himself and other directors by cumulating his shares in voting, but refrains from doing so in consequence of a verbal agreement among the stockholders that he shall be chosen president, which they fail to carry out, cannot obtain any satisfaction from a court. a court says in effect stockholders should not be trusted to make such agreements, and will not aid the tricked stockholder by ordering a new election. probably he will be fooled only once. having elected directors, the management of a corporation is confided to them. what authority do they possess? this is defined by charter, statute, by-law, and custom. says morawetz: "the rule limiting the authority of the power of the majority to the general supervision of the affairs of the corporation is established for the protection of the individual shareholders, as well as for reasons of practical consequence." directors also have wide discretion in delegating their authority. their rights and limitations in this regard are also bounded by charter, by-laws and usage. formerly bank directors loaned the money of their bank; this was their most important duty. of late years, especially in the larger cities, this business has been largely delegated to a committee, chosen from their number, or to two or three officials of the bank. the directors continue to meet, very much as before and at their meetings the action of those who have been entrusted with power to lend the bank's money is ratified. more and more authority to direct or do the greater things in a corporation are concentrated in the hands of a smaller number of individuals. time is ever becoming a more important element, a smaller number of men can act more quickly than a larger number, and so business must be more and more concentrated to be done efficiently. a director has no authority to act separately and independently. only as a board, properly convened, does he represent his corporation. while this is the law, he can and does in fact often act singly, and his action becomes effective to bind his corporation by ratification. such action plays a great part in the modern corporation. though a principal may at any time, as a general rule, revoke the authority he has given to an agent, this does not apply to the directors of corporations. says morawetz: "the majority of the board clearly have no power to expel an individual director, or to exclude him from inspecting the company's books and participating in its management, although they may believe him to be hostile to the interests of the association." a president or other official is chosen pursuant to the charter to serve for a year or other period, and is simply an agent in serving the corporation, he cannot be turned away like an ordinary agent. if he conducts fraudulently, he may be removed, but this is not an easy process as corporations long ago found out. directors in most cases receive no compensation though the practice is growing of rewarding them. unless this is fixed by charter or by the stockholders they can get nothing, for they cannot legally vote salaries to themselves. a director who performs a different service, serves as an attorney, for example, may receive compensation for it. this is a salutary rule of the law, which the courts everywhere do not hesitate to enforce. by another rule, hardly less important, directors cannot bind their corporation by any contract made with themselves, or represent their corporation in transactions wherein they have an interest. this is only another application of a rule of agency, that an agent cannot act at the same time for both parties. yet there is increasing difficulty in applying this rule because the business of corporations has become so intermingled, and also the business of directors, directly or indirectly, with that of the corporations they represent. from this state of things has come another rule, that the transactions between directors and their corporations are not actually void but voidable, in other words if they are tainted with fraud, they can be set aside provided proper action is taken as soon as the fraud is discovered. suppose directors had defrauded their corporation, but the fraud was not discovered until several years afterward. once it was held that they could shield themselves behind the statute of limitations (see _statute of limitations_) if the discovery of the fraud did not occur until after the statute had become effective to protect them. this is no longer the law. action however must be begun against them within the proper time after discovering the fraud, otherwise the statute may be interposed as a bar to proceeding against them. the complication of business has led to the adoption of another principle in managing corporations. a majority of the directors may lawfully act as opposed to the minority; in other words if a majority are not interested in a matter that concerns one or more of the minority directors, the interests of the corporation are supposed to be properly safeguarded. yet an illustration discloses the dangerous character of this method of doing business. suppose each director of a bank wished to obtain a loan of money from it. they could not legally make such loans, for no one would represent the bank. suppose a single director made such an application, that would be a proper thing for him to do and for them to grant, for the bank would be represented by all the directors except the applicant. suppose it were agreed in advance that each would make an application at different meetings that should be favorably regarded, the series of loans would be in fact only a single transaction in which the bank was not represented. the knowledge of a director or other officer is imputed to, or regarded in the law as known by the bank on all matters relating to it. thus if a director knew that a note was signed by a minor which was afterwards presented for discount at a directors' meeting at which this director was present, and he forgot to tell the directors what he knew and it was discounted, the bank would be regarded as having knowledge that the maker was a minor, who of course could not be held on the note. this principle has a very wide application, yet is very difficult to apply. the tendency of the law is to narrow the application of the rule, for directors do not in many cases impart their knowledge, either through forgetfulness or other cause, and it is not just to hold their corporation always for their unintentional neglect. often they are busy men, have greater interests of their own, and do not remember the things they learn about matters relating to their corporation, and if it were always held as knowing as much as they do on all occasions, the way of a corporation would be fraught with a grave peril. a proper distinction is made in the imputation of knowledge between that of a bank director for example who is engaged chiefly in some other business, and that of its president whose chief employment is the management of his bank. suppose he should learn about a defective note before it was presented for discount, the bank would be very properly charged with his knowledge, because it would be his clear duty to remember what he had learned and impart it to his fellow directors. directors sometimes go astray and cases are constantly arising to determine their liability. when a corporation has failed or passed a dividend nothing is more common than to accuse its directors of negligence, incompetence or fraud. the legal rule of liability is quite a different thing. let us try to give this in the fewest words possible. the charters of corporations, or statutes that apply to directors, prescribe some definite things which they must do or not do, and if these are violated they are clearly liable. the directors of a bank are required to make a statement of its affairs to a government official at a stated period, and if they neglect to do it, or intentionally make a wrong and deceptive one, they are liable. by many statutes they are forbidden to make loans above a certain amount, or a fixed proportion of their bank's capital, and if they violate this plain law they are liable. in all other cases where by charter or statute a plain rule of duty is prescribed for directors, they are liable, should they disregard it. besides these clearly defined lines of duty are other lines of duty in which the proper course of action is not so clearly defined, indeed is largely discretionary. from the nature of the business of almost any kind of corporation, it is impossible to prescribe in detail the course of action directors must follow. much must be left to their judgment. they must on all occasions be honest and free from fraud. this is one limitation. if they are guilty of doing things tainted or marked with fraud, they are liable. fraud may be of two kinds, omission and commission. if a director knew that his fellow directors were doing fraudulent things, and he kept away from directors' meetings because he did not wish to participate in their wrongdoing, or dared not go and try to stop them, or kept silent when he should have exposed them, he must suffer in the end as one of the number though entirely innocent of actual participation in the fraud. many a director knowing or suspecting with good reason that his fellow directors were running the corporation in an illegal manner, has quietly sold out leaving the stockholders to find out afterwards and from some other source about the wrongdoing of their agents. in all such cases of omission of duty a director is held responsible for the wrongs of his associates. recently a court has declared that a director who desires to escape further responsibility by resigning his position must make sure that his resignation reaches the board. if therefore he should send it to the secretary, who failed to deliver it to the board, his resignation would not be effective and he would still be responsible like the other directors for whatever the board might do. what acts are fraudulent are sometimes difficult to determine. different courts interpret the same act sometimes in different ways. they do not differ so much on the application of the principle--for all acts of fraud, whether of omission or commission, directors are liable. there is another series of acts for which they are liable, those of gross negligence. how gross must the act be? if it is so gross as to amount to a fraud, they are liable; if not so gross, if no fraud is found of any kind, nothing but negligence pure and simple, they are not liable at all. most courts though go further and declare that if they are guilty of gross negligence, even though the smell or taint of fraud is not perceptible, they are liable. what, then, is the nature of the acts that constitute gross negligence? these cannot be easily defined, they differ in each case; so each case stands by itself. this is the conclusion of the highest court in the land and which is followed by many others. the same case therefore may be regarded differently by different tribunals. thus some directors were tried not long since for wrecking a national bank. the lower court decided that all the directors were guilty of gross negligence, on appeal the reviewing court decided that the president only was guilty of fraud and acquitted the others. dividends. one of the most cheerful things a corporation can do is to declare a dividend, especially if it be a large one. until a dividend is declared the profits of a corporation are simply its assets, do not belong to the stockholders, and should it become insolvent must be used to pay creditors. but if a dividend has been declared and the corporation afterwards becomes insolvent before paying it, the stockholders may insist on its payment to them instead of paying it to the creditors. dividends must be paid from net profits. they can never be taken from the capital, for this would impair it and, if continued, result in the insolvency of the corporation. the laws everywhere forbid this, and, if violated, the directors are usually penalized. it is not an infrequent thing to declare a dividend that has not been earned in order to keep up the value of the stock, and enable the directors and their friends to sell out before the true condition of things has become public. such action is a palpable fraud which the law recognizes and for which the guilty ones must answer. nor can dividends be declared out of borrowed money, for this is no profit, though money may be temporarily borrowed for this purpose. a profit may have been actually made, which may not have been reduced to money, that will justify a corporation in borrowing to pay a dividend, assured that the loan will soon be repaid. but the rule or practice is hedged about with limitations. thus the premiums received by an insurance company and interest on its capital stock constitute the fund from which dividends are paid. unearned premiums that have been paid do not form a part of that fund, for, while the risk is still running, the company may be obliged to pay them out in settling losses. the profits of coal and other mining corporations may be divided without making any deduction for decrease in the value of the mine from extracting minerals. the same principle applies to all corporations organized to operate wasting property like a mine or patent, though in thus dividing all its net profits and accumulating no surplus the value of the property is lessened. except such cases, before a corporation can lawfully set apart its profit as a dividend, a sufficient sum must be set aside to represent the wear and tear for the purpose of creating a fund to renew and improve the property of the corporation. dividends illegally declared and paid, not based on profits may be recovered either by the corporation or by its representative for the benefit of creditors. the fact, says clark, that the directors acted in good faith under a misconception of the amount of profits possessed by the company or that were available for that purpose is immaterial. and if the capital stock of a company has been wrongfully paid away by the directors as dividends, it may be recovered by the creditors from anyone who is not an innocent receiver. whether a dividend shall be declared, and also the amount, are questions lying largely within the discretion of the directors. a company may earn a large net profit, yet the directors may think it should be used for improvements or kept for a future contingency in business, perhaps a time of business depression. courts will not interfere in such cases. corporations are sometimes organized with the well understood intention that the earnings shall be kept until a large surplus has been accumulated. on the other hand directors are not permitted to abuse their power; they must act in good faith. they cannot withhold dividends in order to depress the value of the property and buy its stock at a lower price. dividends must be distributed among the stockholders without unjust discrimination. "the dividends," said a court, "must be general on all the stock so that each stockholder will receive his proportionate share. the directors have no right to declare a dividend on any other principle. they cannot exclude any portion of the stockholders from an equal participation of the profits of the company." a stockholder cannot be deprived of his dividend because he purchased his stock a very short time before the action of the directors in declaring a dividend. on one occasion a person held bonds convertible into stock. shortly after the conversion a dividend was declared. he was as much entitled to his dividend as any other stockholder. to whom should the dividend be paid? to the person whose name appears as owner on the books of the company. but if a company has notice of a transfer of stock, a dividend subsequently declared should be paid to the purchaser even though the transfer was not registered. in pledging stock it is a common practice to declare that the pledgee shall be entitled to the dividends that are declared. if nothing is said, and the stock has been transferred on the books of the company, the pledgee is entitled to the dividends following the general rule above mentioned. a dividend may be payable in cash or property or a stock dividend may be made. such a dividend, if the stock is issued only to the extent of the surplus profits, is not a violation of the prohibition against reducing or withdrawing the capital stock by distribution among the stockholders. during recent years some important questions have arisen about dividends or income on stock given by will to the legatees or friends of the testator. dividends that are declared after a grant or bequest, though earned before, go to the legatee as income. this is not the rule everywhere. in some states the surplus profits accumulated during the testator's life, though not divided until after his death, belong to the estate, while the dividends or income earned and declared after his death are paid to the legatee or beneficiary mentioned in the will. again, a somewhat different rule applies to stock dividends. in some states these are regarded as an increase of capital and must be kept as a part of the estate; in other states such stock is regarded simply as another form of income and goes to the legatee like any other income flowing from the investment. the highest federal court has declared that when a distribution of earnings is made by a corporation among its stockholders, the question whether such distribution is an apportionment of additional stock representing capital, or a division of profits and income, depends upon the substance and intent of the action of the corporation, as manifested by its vote or resolution; and ordinarily a dividend declared in stock is to be deemed capital, and a dividend in money is to be deemed income of each share. a will bequeathed stock in a corporation in trust to pay the dividends as they accrued to a daughter of the testator during her lifetime. stock dividends were declared by the corporation from time to time and after the death of the testator, and these accumulated earnings were invested by the company in permanent works. after the testator's death the corporation was authorized by statute to increase its capital stock. the dividends were held to be accretions to the capital, and the income only was payable to the daughter for life. wrongs. passing from the action of directors in declaring dividends, the wrongs done by corporations may be stated. as it is an impersonal, artificial thing, a corporation cannot possibly commit a wrong or tort like a natural person. for many years this conception of a corporation, that it could not commit many of the well-known wrongs, could not slander a person for example, led to perplexing consequences. finally the principle was established that through its agents or servants a corporation could do wrong quite like an individual. thus a corporation may be guilty of malice, and may be punished for slander or libel, for a malicious prosecution, false representation, for trespass should its agents unlawfully enter on the land of another, for maintaining a nuisance and the like. a national bank is forbidden to certify the check of a depositor unless he has the amount of money stated in the check in the bank. and if this is done the certifying official and all others who participated with him in disregarding the law are made criminally liable, and on several occasions the law has been enforced. again, a corporation is liable for the negligence of its servants in performing their duties, and are constantly sued for their failures. a railroad company is sued for injuries to its passengers caused by the improper running of its trains; for its failure to carry and deliver freight in accordance with its obligations or agreements. street railways are constantly sued by passengers who are injured through the negligence of its officials. by statutes corporations are required to do many things and, if they fail, are liable for the consequences. these duties may be divided into two classes, those toward the public and those that affect their stockholders. their public duties may again be divided into those that are imposed on them by statute, and a still larger number by the common law. as we have seen, stockholders confide necessarily the management of their corporation to directors, who in most cases must necessarily have a largely discretionary power, and who, in turn, must appoint other agents to execute the details of the corporate business. these not infrequently fail through incompetence or neglect to perform their duties properly, and consequently corporations are subjected to lawsuits in which redress is sought by the injured parties. some of these wrongs for which they are liable to the public have been mentioned, it would require too much space to mention all. the injuries done to stockholders by their directors remain for consideration. unless directors are restricted by action of the stockholders at a stockholders' meeting, they have the authority prescribed by charter and statute; outside these, their authority is largely discretionary, and must be so. if, therefore, stockholders are dissatisfied with their directors, as they often are, their remedy is to elect others at the end of their term of service. if at the time of choosing them, the annual meeting, none are chosen, the directors hold over until they are again elected, or others are chosen in their places. after they have been chosen, no stockholder can interfere in any way with their discretionary authority unless he has a clear case calling for judicial action. "until a mistake," says morawetz, "on the part of the directors, individual stockholders have no right to appeal to the courts to define the line of policy to be pursued by the company. the courts therefore are quite unanimous in sustaining the action of directors so long as they act within the discretionary authority given them." occasions happen when the removal of directors is essential to the welfare of a corporation. suppose they are pursuing a course clearly ruinous to the company? in such a case the court will grant relief on the request of the stockholders whenever the corporation itself is unable or unwilling to do so. primarily the corporation should proceed against the directors, for the wrong is a corporate one. in many cases the corporation is so completely in their control that the stockholders are unable to do anything through it. in such case they must act in the name of, and in behalf of the company. and if they succeed in establishing their case, the courts will order the removal of the directors. sometimes the courts, instead of going so far, will enjoin them from doing wrongs that are feared. suppose it is feared that directors will declare a dividend that has not been earned, the courts on proper proof would enjoin them from making it. suppose it is feared they will issue more stock and divide all the shares among themselves instead of proportionately among all the stockholders as the law requires, in order to get control of the company, a court would not hesitate to restrain them. lastly may be considered a stockholder's rights to inspect the books of his company. this he may do at all proper times and for reasonable purposes. and if the right is refused the courts will aid him in making an inspection. what then is a proper purpose that justifies him in making the request? he cannot do so to satisfy some freak, or to annoy an official with whom he may be on bad terms. nor can he do it to obtain information to be used for stock-jobbing purposes. suppose he has reason for supposing that the books were falsified, that the stockholders were not receiving correct accounts of the expenditures and earnings of the company, a stockholder would certainly have a right to make an examination, and could also employ an agent, attorney, or expert accountant to do this for him, for his ignorance of bookkeeping methods might debar him from making an efficient examination were the right confined exclusively to himself. =curtesy.=--a husband acquires an interest or estate in land belonging to his wife after her death. to be entitled to it, there must be a legal marriage. even though it be unlawful, if not set aside during her life, his interest in her estate cannot be defeated by afterwards declaring the marriage void. curtesy does not extend to land nominally held by her, or as trustee. the wife must have had a child who might have inherited the estate. it is immaterial whether she acquired her estate before or after the birth of the child. as soon therefore as a child is born, his estate or interest begins and is perfected or consummated by her death, and may be taken at any time afterward for his debts. what may be the effect of a divorce is not well settled. in some states even though he is an innocent party, he forfeits his estate. this rule is founded on the idea that he is a voluntary party, and therefore need not have one; in other states his interest continues. as the husband's rights to such an estate have been abolished in many states, we refrain from adding more principles. =deceit.=--a seller is not liable for deceit when the knowledge, or way of obtaining it, is equally known by both parties. if one goes into a store to buy a bushel of apples that he has seen by the door and inquires the price and pays for them without making any inquiry concerning their quality, he cannot recover his money if half of them prove to be rotten unless the seller intentionally deceived him, for he might have inquired whether they were all like those on top and of good quality. but if the merchant should put fine ones on top in order to deceive a purchaser, he could recover for his loss. this rule has a wide application. suppose a seller keeps his store dimly lighted intentionally so that the inferior quality of his goods cannot be discerned, and a person should thereby be deceived and injured, he would have a good cause of action against the seller. suppose a ship was decayed in places, and these were intentionally so concealed that they could not easily be seen by one who was examining with the intention of purchasing, and he was thereby misled, the seller would be liable for the loss to the purchaser. of course, the prudent course is to obtain a warranty, or better still, whenever practicable, buy of one who has established a reputation for honest, fair dealing. suppose a man purchases a piece of land, generally supposed to be an ordinary farm, which contains, as he knows, a valuable coal mine, can the seller after the public knowledge of the mine, recover the land or a larger purchase price therefor? has the purchaser deceived him? did the law require the purchaser to make known his superior knowledge before purchasing? no, if it did, there would be no end to the confusion to which such a rule would lead. it is within ordinary experience that purchasers buy either knowing or supposing they will reap advantages from their contracts of which the seller is ignorant. there is no deception in this; but there is in withholding knowledge from the buyer of the quality or condition of a thing that affects its value, and which if known by him would probably prevent him from purchasing. suppose a horse is blind in one eye and the prudent horse trader says nothing. can the buyer recover? ordinarily he could not, for he ought to have looked, and if he did not know enough to look, either he should have obtained a warranty, or have employed a competent agent to purchase for him. suppose the old trader, skilled in his business, intentionally put his horse in the shadow so that the defective eye could not be seen, then the seller would surely have his remedy against him. if he put his horse there accidentally he would not. is a wink a deception for which the winker must answer in the law? a hardened dealer once went near a large meeting of men with a wagon load of bottles containing cold tea. the thirsty crowd soon came around. "one dollar a piece," he announced with a wink. the wink was effective and the bottles were quickly sold. they were filled with cold tea, and the buyers sued for the deceit that had been practiced on them. they failed, the court said that a wink was not enough. another court might have decided otherwise. =deeds.=--in selling and buying land several deeds are in use. the forms differ considerably in the different states. the most important of them is called a warranty deed, in which the seller not only conveys the title, but warrants or agrees to defend it against all attacks. suppose a sells a piece of land by warranty deed to b, who makes the unwelcome discovery that a mortgage is existing thereon. he notifies a and asks him to clear the title. suppose the mortgage has been paid, but the lender of the money, the mortgagee, forgot to give the proper deed to show that he had received payment. and suppose he was an ugly fellow who would not give the proper release. b could compel him to do so, and the expense must be borne by a because his deed of warranty required him to give a clear title. in such a deed the grantor or seller agrees or covenants to do usually four or more specific things: first, he asserts that he has a right to convey the land at the time of the sale. of course, if he has not, the agreement or covenant is at once broken and the buyer can proceed against him to make the title good, or to recover damages if he cannot retain the premises. the second covenant or agreement is to the effect that the seller has both the quantity and quality of land mentioned in the deed. the third covenant is that there are no encumbrances on the land, that is, no mortgages, no rights of others to pass over it, or to take earth, water or other things from the land. the fourth covenant is for the quiet enjoyment of the land, which is the most general form of warranty. there may be other covenants, often there are, while the four mentioned may be, and often are, modified. does such a warranty bind other persons than the warrantor, in other words are his heirs and persons to whom he may devise his lands also indefinitely bound by his warranty? the statutes in some states fix his liability. where none exist the law limits the liability of parties to the amount of assets or property they have received from the warrantor; if they have received nothing they are not liable for anything. a covenant to protect the buyer from encumbrances, claims, etc., does not always relieve him from the expense of a lawsuit. suppose a claims a right of way over b's land and insists on using it. b brings his action of trespass against him and wins. he cannot sue his grantor or seller to recover the expense of the suit, for the latter would reply, "you have won your case which is proof that the title is good as warranted, and therefore you have no claim against me." if, on the other hand, a had won his case b would then have a good cause of action against his covenantor. another kind of deed used in selling land is called an indenture. this is signed by all the parties, and copies are usually made and delivered to all of them. this deed also contains warrants or covenants like the one first described. another kind of deed is called a release or quit-claim. by this the grantor or party giving it conveys whatever interest he may have in the land. it is the deed always given by a mortgagee on the payment or discharge of his mortgage. it contains no warrants to do anything and therefore differs from a deed of warranty. sometimes a person conveys a piece of land knowing that the title is defective which the purchaser, notwithstanding the defect, is willing to buy. the seller may safely give a quit-claim deed for he thereby sells only whatever interest he may have. all the deeds above mentioned except an indenture, are signed only by the selling or granting party. they become effective by delivery. they are often called poll deeds. every grantor must append to his name a seal. once a seal was of the utmost importance in the days of ignorance when persons knew not how to write and each person had a seal of his own. as distinctive seals have long since disappeared, seals have less significance than formerly, nevertheless many legal rules are founded on the distinction between sealed and unsealed instruments. thus two written contracts may be exact duplicates except that one of them may have no seal. the law in most states regards the unsealed one as a mere oral or unwritten contract, to which are applied the same rules of evidence. the use of l.s., enclosed in brackets, thus [l.s.] is just as effective as a seal of wax or a wafer. in many states a corporation need not use its corporate seal, any other may be substituted. the federal rule especially requires the use of the corporate seal and that it be affixed by someone who was properly authorized to do this. by statute the names of two witnesses are required, and when omitted the deed is not only defective, but in some states at least is void. a witness need not write his name in the grantor's presence, if asked to sign in the proper place as a witness this will suffice. a lease of land is also a deed differing from those mentioned in conveying the use of land for a fixed period and on varying terms. a deed should be completed before delivering it, the same rule applies to most legal writings. unimportant alterations may be made, and if any are made, the question may prove difficult, are they important or not. of course if both parties agree to them, the validity of the deed is not impaired. whenever they do appear, in some states the law presumes they were made before delivering the deed, but this is not the rule everywhere. who can make or execute a deed? a minor cannot make a legal deed, and if he attempts to do so he can avoid or set it aside after he becomes of age whenever he acts with reasonable promptitude. if he does not thus act, his delay will be regarded as a ratifying of his previous action. what action will have this effect is a fact to be proved whenever the controversy arises. usually a deed need not be read to the grantee, nor can he avoid it because he did not know the contents, except when fraud has been practised on him. to a blind or ignorant man a different rule applies. the deed should be read to him, and if this is not done, or if it is wrongly read to him, he can have it set aside in a proper legal proceeding. delivery is essential; to do this two things are required. the grantor must give up the deed and the grantee must actually accept it, consequently the delivery of a deed after the grantor's death would not be valid. there must be an actual delivery by him, and though a deed may be completed in every other respect, it is not an effective deed. a deed therefore stolen from one's drawer and delivered to the grantee would not be valid, however innocent the grantee might be in receiving it. many difficulties have arisen in applying this rule. when the question comes before a court, it seeks after the intention of the parties, and is guided by it when ascertained. if therefore a deed were lying on a table and the grantor should say to the grantee, take it, and he did so, the delivery would be complete; but if he should get it in a surreptitious way there would be no legal delivery. suppose a deed were mailed to the grantee, or handed to another person to deliver to the grantee, this would be a good delivery. as soon as the deed has been delivered, it should be taken to the recorder's office to be recorded. every state has offices in the towns or counties for keeping a perfect copy of all deeds relating to the transfer of the lands within the limits of the town or county. the object of this is to protect purchasers, for, if this were not done, the owner of land might sell it to a purchaser a second time who knew nothing of the previous sale, and then someone would be the loser. to guard against such frauds the system of registration was established at an early day in american history. a purchaser therefore should take his deed at once to the proper recording office for record, and this is regarded as notice to the world from the time of delivering the deed to the recorder, who makes a note thereon of the day and hour it was left with him. suppose that some creditor of the grantor, not knowing of the sale, should attach the land as the property of the grantor to secure a debt due to him, could he hold it as against the purchaser? ordinarily the purchaser could still retain the land, and the same rule would apply between him and a second purchaser, though buying in good faith supposing the grantor was the real owner. in some states a statute protects the purchaser by giving him a fixed period of two or three months or more to record his deed. the safe rule is to leave the deed with the recorder as soon as possible after receiving it. it is a general practice to do another thing with deeds, to make or take an acknowledgment of them, and in some states this must be done before they can be recorded. this consists on the part of the grantor going before a proper officer, often a notary public, justice of the peace, clerk of a court of record, commissioner of deeds, and making oath that he has duly executed the above deed. this oath appears in the form of a certificate at the bottom of the deed or appended thereto and is signed by the officer, who also attaches his official seal. when a deed has thus been acknowledged it can be used in a legal proceeding as evidence without requiring further proof of its execution. but if it had not been acknowledged, then a court would require some proof that the deed had been made and delivered before accepting it as proof of the fact. when a married woman executes a deed the officer who took the acknowledgment of the deed must make an examination, apart from her husband, to ascertain whether or no her act was voluntary, and he must also record the fact. the acknowledgment should be made after the examination. a defective acknowledgment by a married woman is worthless, nor will any court compel her to make another one. should she make another deed, however, with a proper acknowledgment this would be legal. the officials who take acknowledgments possess different authority, some can take them only of land situated in their respective states; others have authority to take acknowledgments of deeds of land in every state. in all the states are commissioners of deeds, so called, who are authorized to act outside their own state. some persons who have an important conveyancing business have qualified themselves to thus act as commissioners for many states, and perform a highly useful service. if a mistake has been made in a deed can it be corrected? the general rule is it can be amended in all cases of fraud, accident, or mistake. how can this be done? if the grantor is unwilling to do right, the purchaser can by a proper application to a court, or court of equity, ask for the correction of the deed or such other relief as justice requires. suppose the grantor has declared in his deed that the land contains a hundred acres and a survey finds only fifty. this would be a palpable fraud and a court would, if requested, order the reconveyance of the land and return of the money. suppose the deed covered no land at all belonging to the grantor, this would be a still greater fraud. suppose the deed said one hundred acres more or less, and a survey found only fifty acres. the purchaser bought supposing that there was no such deficit, but perhaps a small one, what would a court do? doubtless it would hold that the grantor tried to deceive the other party and would grant relief. the land sold must be bounded or described. as land is increasing everywhere in value more pains is taken in describing it, than formerly. large tracts have been surveyed by the government and are indicated as sections, quarter sections, yet even these boundaries are sometimes imperfect, caused by incorrect surveys, whereby lands overlap, or otherwise have defective boundaries. one of the well-known rules is, monuments control corners and distances. this is founded on much experience, for this shows that courses differ from variations in the compass, changes in the surface, etc. though monuments may be moved intentionally or by natural causes, they can be more trusted in the long run of things. the location of a monument is a question of fact. it is sometimes said that natural monuments possess higher value than artificial ones, this depends on the character of the artificial one. a large stone set in a secure place surely is a better boundary than a wayward stream whose course is changed by every freshet. in marking the public lands of the western territories by statute monuments must designate the corners of the tract. but when these are lost then corners and distances become the guide. oral evidence may be admitted to establish the location of monuments, and even hearsay evidence may be used for the purpose. in a city lot courses and distances play a larger part in fixing the boundaries, and are more carefully defined. often the boundary is to the center of a dividing wall. the boundary of land by a non-navigable stream is to the center; and if one owns on both sides of such a stream he is the owner also of the bed. but if land is bounded by the bank or shore of a stream, or by other words of clearly evident exclusion, the stream is excluded. the rule is different that applies to a tidal navigable stream. in some states the boundary is high-water mark; in other states low-water. in both cases the riparian owner, so-called, may erect a wharf extending from his land subject to public control. the boundary of a natural pond or lake, either in its natural state or raised artificially, is low-water mark. nor is the law changed by the conversion of a fresh water pond into a salt pond by the hand of man. the boundary to an artificial pond is through the center. the title to the bed of all lakes, ponds, and navigable rivers to the ordinary high-water mark is vested in the states. thus the people who live around them may enjoy the waters the same as others enjoy tidal waters. nor is the state title affected by any manipulation of the land above the surface of the water. the same rules of law apply to land situated along public highways. if a deed should bound the land "by or along a highway," it would include the land to the center; only words of clearly intending exclusion have a different effect. if a deed should say "by the side" of a highway, it might be excluded and it might not, the courts do not agree. all agree that the intention of the parties should govern, but differ as to intention expressed in the words they have used. the law is full of such difficulties. if a highway is abandoned, the adjoining owners can extend their lines to the center, unless one of them can prove that he is entitled to more than one half. in investigating the title to real estate it is the duty of an attorney employed for that purpose, says justice trenchard, "to make a painstaking examination of the records and to report all facts relating to the title. he is, therefore, liable for any injury that may result to his client from negligence in the performance of his duties--that is, from a failure to exercise ordinary care and skill in discovering in the records and reporting all the deeds, mortgages, judgments, etc., that affect the title in respect to which he is employed." =divisional tree.=--when the base of a tree is wholly on the land of one owner the whole tree belongs to him. an adjoining owner, however, may cut off at the divisional line such branches as over-hang his land without notice and without reference to the length of time they have been growing. to do this he cannot go on the land of his neighbor, but must stay on his own land. a different rule applies to a tree that stands on a divisional line and both owners have an interest therein. =dower.=--dower is the interest that a wife has in her husband's land after his death, and consists, unless modified by statute, of the use of one third during her life. while both live her interest is so secured to her by law that he cannot sell and convey any of his land unless she unites with him in signing a proper deed of conveyance. in most states this interest or dower is paramount to the claims of her husband's creditors. but if there is any lien on the land at the time of his death, like a mortgage, she cannot claim a preference or priority over the mortgagee. she can claim her dower in any land belonging to her husband which her children, if she had any, could have inherited as the heirs of their father. when her dower is in mortgaged land, she cannot get possession until the mortgage has been paid. again, where land, wherein she has a dower interest, must be sold, her right to the proceeds follows the sale. if her husband was not in possession of the land claimed by him before and after marriage, her dower will not become effective until gaining possession. if he were only the nominal and not the real possessor, her dower will not attach to the land, nor if he were in possession as trustee, the real ownership belonging to another. a legal marriage is necessary to sustain a dower estate. whenever a marriage can be set aside for some illegality, and is not, it will sustain her dower on his death. so, too, her dower may be lost or barred by a legal separation; if she should re-marry, or the divorce is set aside, her dower would revive. her dower may also be lost should her husband legally part with his estate, or by any legal proceeding it should be taken away from him; thus, should another claim it and prove that he had the better title. in other words she loses her dower whenever her husband has no estate from which her dower can be carved out. it is true that an adverse claimant cannot give any title to her husband's land that would bar her right thereto. the reason for this rule is that, like a minor, her rights cannot be acquired against one who is unable by reason of age or other infirmity to protect himself. the wife is entitled to have dower assigned to her immediately after her husband's death. until this is done, she has the right of common law for the period of forty days, called quarantine, to reside in her husband's house, provided she does not marry during that time. dower may be assigned to her in two ways. one way is by direction of the court, which ascertains by proper evidence the extent, location and value of the husband's lands, and then directs the sheriff to carry out its order in assigning to her a specific portion for her use during life. the other way is by agreement. in some states money is assigned to her instead of land as dower. dower may be barred by agreement made before marriage. these arrangements, marriage settlements, are becoming more frequent with the increase of wealth and complexities respecting the holding of property. sometimes a testator provides for his widow in lieu of dower. in such a case she may accept the gift, or reject it and claim her dower rights. suppose a testator should own a large amount of land, and in his will should give her only a small amount of money in lieu of dower. if eager to get the most possible, she would reject the gift of money and claim her dower rights. on the other hand, suppose he had but very little or no real estate, then she doubtless would accept the money gift, unless she could claim a still larger sum by virtue of some statute made to fit such cases. dower does not exist in crops or trees severed from the land, but does exist in mines and quarries belonging to the husband which were opened and worked during his life. if lands have been exchanged by the husband, she can elect in which she shall take her dower, but not in both. there can be no dower in a mere personal privilege, or in a revocable license pertaining to land. the widow of a partner is ordinarily entitled to dower in so much of the partnership land as is left after the payment of the firm's debts and the adjustment of matters between the partners. but if an agreement among them that the land shall be considered as personal property for all purposes, then no dower therein can be claimed by the widow of any partner. a wife can release her inchoate dower or future expectation of receiving it by joining in a conveyance with her husband for that purpose. in order to make the election binding, it must be made with full knowledge on the widow's part of her husband's estate, and the relative value of her dower interest. the election is personal, and cannot be exercised by her representatives after her death, nor by creditors; and if insane, this cannot be done by any committee or guardian acting under the authority of a court. an absolute divorce, even though for the husband's fault, divests the wife of dower, unless her right is saved by statute. quite frequently, the statute provides that there shall be no dower in case of divorce for the wife's fault. occasionally it is provided by statute that divorce for the husband's fault shall not bar dower; and sometimes a statute requires dower to be assigned immediately upon divorce without awaiting the husband's death. it may be added that the principles of the common law relating to dower have been largely modified by statute in all the states. =drunkenness.=--the courts are reluctant to recognize intoxication as an excuse either for committing a crime or for repudiating a contract, but if from long continued intemperate habits a man has become actually insane or incompetent, his actual mental condition will be recognized whatever may have produced it. again, in making a contract the other party could hardly deal with a man badly intoxicated without knowing his condition, consequently the element of fraud appears, and the contract may be declared invalid either for lack of contracting capacity on the part of the drunken man, or for fraud on the part of the other in taking advantage of his condition. his fraud would be still greater if he had designedly caused the drunkenness of the other. either objection, however, renders the contract voidable rather than void, and should an intoxicated party, after he became sober ratify his contract, or fail to repudiate it and restore the consideration, if any, within a reasonable time, he would become bound. the courts are still more reluctant to admit intoxication as an excuse for criminal acts. the courts hold that one who voluntarily deprives himself of self-control must have intended the consequences, therefore it is everywhere held that one who voluntarily becomes intoxicated, although he did so with no purpose to commit a crime when intoxicated, cannot claim immunity from criminal responsibility, or even a mitigation of the penalty, though having no capacity to distinguish between right and wrong. and yet, like so many legal rules, there are some marked exceptions to this one. thus, since burglary is the entering of a house with the intent to commit a felony therein, one who blunders into a strange house because he is too drunk to know where he is or what he is doing has not committed the crime of burglary. so one who carried off the property of another through drunken ignorance does not commit larceny, as there is no intent in such a case to convert the property to the taker's own use. another application has been made in cases of assault with intent to kill a person. again, says peck, "if one is visibly intoxicated, it is the duty of those who come in contact with him to take his condition into account, and their use of due care will be judged in view of that fact. even if the drunken person and the other are both negligent, the sober party may be liable under the doctrine of the last clear chance, if he fails to exercise toward the drunken man the degree of care which is evidently required to avoid injuring him. especially is a common carrier, in dealing with a passenger who is on its car in an intoxicated condition, bound to take his helpless condition into account in removing him from the car or otherwise handling him, and not put him in a place of manifest danger to one in his condition." it has also been held that the intoxication of one who uttered a slander may be admissible in mitigation of the damages, as utterances of a drunken man could not seriously impair the reputation of any one. =equitable remedies.=--elsewhere we have told how courts of law differ from courts of equity. in some states no separate courts exist, and wherever legal proceedings are established by a code or system of statute law, the form of complaint addressed to a court is quite the same in an equity case as in any other. but in states where code practice has not been established, the mode of setting forth one's grievance or wrong is by a bill or petition, ending with a prayer for relief. we will now briefly state some of the things for which relief in equity may be sought. one of the most common things is to compel persons who refuse to perform their contracts to execute them. suppose one has agreed in writing properly signed to sell his farm to another, but is unwilling to give him a deed. it may be that he can get more for his farm, or he has made the discovery since selling it that it is worth much more, is underlaid with coal or oil, or that a railway is soon to be built near it that will enhance its value. if he went to a law court, all that it could do would be to compel the seller to give the purchaser such damages as he could prove he had sustained from the seller's failure to execute his agreement. but a court of equity can go further and compel the seller to give the purchaser a proper deed, the kind of deed mentioned in the agreement; or, if none was specified, the kind of deed usually given in such cases. this remedy cannot be always sought whenever the seller fails to execute his contracts. the important limitation is, when the law has an adequate remedy, and the injured person has no need of resorting to a court of equity. all the ordinary agricultural and manufactured products fall within this class, cotton, cattle, lumber, fruits, stock in trade and the like. but if a chattel has a sentimental value to the purchaser, a court of equity will decree that it must be delivered to him, because in such a case the damages would obviously be inadequate. the same rule applies to all articles of a unique or rare value that cannot be duplicated; also to patented or copyrighted things that cannot be procured in the open market. suppose one has purchased the stock of a bank or railroad company, which the seller refuses to deliver, has the buyer a legal remedy for damages, or an equitable remedy to compel the seller to deliver the stock, or has he the choice of remedies? the courts have divided on this question. the better rule is, if the stock can be readily bought in the open market, the buyer has only a law remedy to recover damages from the seller's failure to execute his contract; if the stock cannot be thus purchased, a money damage is not an adequate remedy, the purchaser wants the stock and he can, through a court of equity, compel the seller to deliver it to him. as government bonds can always be bought in the open market, a court of equity will not decree the specific execution of a contract for the delivery of the actual bonds purchased. if a has agreed to erect a building for b on his land and fails to do it, money damages are usually an adequate remedy, but if b cannot find any one else to do the work as well, or in as satisfactory manner, then a court of equity would compel a to fulfil his agreement. likewise if a landlord has agreed to repair his tenant's premises and neglects, the legal remedy is usually more satisfactory than a specific execution of the agreement, because work done under compulsion is not likely to be as well done as that done voluntarily. a contract to render personal services will not be enforced against a person who has agreed to perform them, for several reasons, one is that another person can be employed, another is that the thirteenth amendment to the federal constitution, forbidding involuntary servitude, cuts off the equitable remedy in such cases; of course the legal remedy for damages is still effective. a contract to give a mortgage to secure a loan of money may be enforced by the creditor, but a contract to lend money cannot be enforced by either party, because there is usually an open market for the lending and borrowing of money. likewise a contract to form a partnership cannot be enforced, for, if it were, the unwilling partner could dissolve it and thus nullify the action of the court. where one sells out his business, whether commercial or professional, and agrees not to compete with the buyer, equity will compel the seller to observe his contract unless it was illegal or an unreasonable restraint on trade. this limitation is important. thus a, a dentist in philadelphia, agreed with b, another dentist, not to practice in the city for ten years a certain method of extracting teeth. a continued to practice as before and b applied to a court of equity to enjoin him. he failed for the reason that no one ought to have a monopoly, so the court said, in any means or method for relieving human suffering, like the process in dispute. if an employee agrees not to divulge the trade secrets of his employer, equity will enforce the agreement, for damages given in a law court would be wholly inadequate. another class of cases must be mentioned relating to injuries to land. by the common law the only relief a landowner had against one who injured it in any way was an action of waste to recover money damages. a court of equity has power to issue a command to the person who threatens or attempts to commit injury ordering and directing him to desist from his purpose. this has been often used by the owners of land against their tenants who attempted to do things that would materially injure the property. this remedy is now often used to secure the owner and occupier of land in its proper use against those who attempt to commit a nuisance. while the occupier could recover damages if he sought the aid of a law court, equity will order the wrongdoer to abate the nuisance. such a remedy is much more effective than the legal one, because damages that may be recovered relate only to a past offense, while the equitable one prevents it from happening or from its continuance. promises not to do some particular act on a piece of land are often made in deeds conveying them; they are called covenants. equity will usually enforce these covenants, and will compel the wrongdoer to undo what he has done provided that relief is sought promptly. thus if a purchaser agrees not to build nearer the street than a stated line, he can be enjoined from disregarding it. a purchaser therefore who built two houses three feet beyond the agreed line was compelled to remove them. the remedy in such a case is an injunction. it may be temporary or permanent. quite often when one applies for an injunction, if the injury threatened is immediate, the court will immediately enjoin the party from proceeding and fix a time for a future hearing to decide whether the injunction shall be dissolved or made permanent. the time fixed for such a hearing is within the discretion of the court, and depends on the nature of the case. usually the time is quite short, enough to enable the parties to collect the evidence relating to the controversy. the hearing is conducted very much like any other trial, witnesses appear, all the evidence is given, and is reviewed by contending counsel, after which the judge announces his decision. some of the more noteworthy injunctions of recent days have been rendered against labor unions or their members who, having struck for higher wages, or other ends, have sought to picket the works of their employers and thus prevent them from employing other workers to take the places of the strikers. the unions contend that this is an improper use of the judicial power, whether it is or not no one will deny that it has been long exercised. in the early days of administering the patent law injunctions were granted against infringers. judges soon grew more cautious when they learned that patents were sometimes erroneously granted, and that, on acquiring a fuller knowledge of the controversy, there had been no infringement. the modern practice therefore is, unless the proof is very clear, to require a party who applies for an injunction to try his case first and establish his patent and then, if it has been infringed, an injunction will be issued. =factor.=--a factor receives and sells goods for a commission, is usually entrusted with their possession, and sells them in his own name. he has a special interest or property in them, and a lien thereon for advances in money that he may make to the owners. no formal mode of authorizing him to act is required, usually this is done by word only, and his authorized acts may be ratified by his principal. this authority is largely the outgrowth of usage. the authority of a factor to fix the terms of selling may be by agreement or by usage, like any other agent. limitations fixed by the principal are ordinarily binding on the factor, and, so far as they are chargeable with notice of them, third persons also. where goods are confided to a factor without instructions, authority to exercise a fair and reasonable discretion is implied. unless restricted by his principal, or by contrary usage, he may sell goods on a reasonable term of credit. if he is restricted to cash sales only, or is not protected by usage in selling on credit, he cannot do so. secret instructions would not affect the rights of a purchaser ignorant of them and relying on customary authority. a factor is employed to sell goods, and not to barter or exchange them, and if he should do this his principal could recover them. he may insure the goods, but is not required to do so unless instructed or is required by usage, which plays a large part in this matter and must be observed except as qualified by instructions. he cannot compound or compromise a claim for the purchase price, or discharge the debt on payment of a part only, or submit a disputed claim for arbitration, or rescind a sale, or discharge a purchaser from any part of his obligation, or extend the time of payment, or make, accept or indorse negotiable paper contrary to instructions or usage, or sell the goods thus entrusted to him for sale to himself. see _agency_. =fire insurance.=--insurance against loss by fire is now effected in companies organized for that purpose. two kinds exist, stock and mutual. in mutual companies the persons insured act together to insure each other. the members of some of the largest mutual companies are manufacturing corporations. the more general mode of conducting them is to require each member to pay a premium in advance for the amount insured which, unless unusual losses occur, will be enough to pay all the losses for the year. if it is not all needed, the balance is returned to the parties who paid the premiums, or is credited to them for the following year. if the losses exceed the premiums thus paid in advance, then an assessment is made on each member to cover the deficiency. generally the premium paid is more than enough to cover the losses, and a balance is returned or credited to the insured as above mentioned. as mutual companies do not take such risks as stock companies, the cost of insurance is less and therefore is carried in preference to insurance in stock companies, whenever it can be obtained. there is another way for paying for losses in mutual companies. instead of paying cash premiums in advance, the insured gives a bond or note well secured that he will pay in cash whenever a call is made on him to cover the losses that have been incurred at the end of the year or other period. this method is in vogue in some sections, because still less money is required to keep property insured. of course besides the money to pay losses another sum is required to pay the expense of management. it will be seen that the mutual plan is purely for protection against loss and no profit in the way of dividends is forthcoming, for the companies have no capital. it is true that some companies, instead of returning the unexpended premiums for losses retain them or a part of them and by so doing accumulate a surplus. many companies, however, return all the contributions not expended for management or losses and have no surplus, or only a very small one. stock insurance companies proceed on a different principle. they are organized to make money, a capital is subscribed, the rates of insurance or premiums are fixed and after paying the expense of management and loss, the balance is paid to the stockholders in the way of dividends. the business is one of unusual hazard, and only a rich person, who can afford to lose his money, ought to invest in the stock of such companies. their profits and losses vary greatly from year to year; and failures have been frequent. nevertheless some companies have a fine record, enough to tempt them to continue notwithstanding their trying reverses. as the contract of insurance is for an indemnity, the insured must have some interest in the property insured, otherwise the contract is a mere wager, which the law condemns. moreover the interest must continue and exist at the time of the loss. who, therefore, has an insurable interest? a bailee, a carrier of goods, a consignee who has authority to sell them, a factor, pledgee, warehouseman, an assignee for the benefit of creditors, an executor or administrator, an attachment creditor, but not a general creditor, a landlord, tenant, mortgagee of real or personal property, a lienor, for example, the holder of a mechanic's lien, a receiver, residuary legatee or devisee, a trustee, vendees and vendors of real and personal property, the owner of stock in a corporation, any agent who has the care and management of his principal's property, besides many others. but a fire insurance policy may be assigned as collateral security with the company's consent, and continue valid though the assignee has no interest in the property. this rule therefore is fundamental, and if the interest of the insured in the property has been extinguished after making his contract and prior to its loss by fire, he can get nothing from the company. likewise the property must have been in existence at the time of making the contract, if it was not, the policy is void. many stories are told of insuring ships after learning of their loss; such conduct is a palpable fraud. an insurance policy is a contract, of which the policy is evidence. a standard policy has been prescribed in several states by statute: in other states the parties are still free to make such terms as they please. it is usual for companies to execute blank policies in due form to be filled out and delivered by their agents. such policies are not valid until countersigned, unless the countersigning is waived. when does the policy become valid or binding on the insured? says a competent authority: "where a policy has been duly executed in compliance with an application on the part of the insured, so that the minds of the parties have fully met as to the terms and conditions of the contract, a manual delivery of the policy to the insured is not essential to render it binding on the company. if the contract has become binding by the issuance of the policy and the placing it in the hands of an agent for delivery, then the fact that such delivery is not actually made to the insured until after the loss has occurred, will not defeat recovery by the insured." the premium usually must be paid at the time of issuing the policy, unless a different agreement is made concerning it. credit may be given, and an agent generally has authority to do this. a valid payment may also be made in other means than money; a check or note may be given for it. an insurance policy may be assigned, though it usually contains a clause that the consent of the insurer is needful. when the policy contains this clause and the insurer without valid reason refuses to consent to an assignment, "the assignee acquires the same right as though consent had been given." consent to an assignment may be given by the president of the company, without formal vote by the directors. it may also be given by the secretary or by any other agent duly authorized. when can a policy be canceled? unless this right is reserved in the contract, or given by statute, the insurer cannot cancel the contract without the consent of the insured. it often is reserved, and if exercised, this must be done before a loss occurs, and a cancellation made afterwards, though without knowledge of it, is void. the motive for making it is not important. if, as a condition of cancellation, the unearned portion of the premium is to be returned, the failure to return it renders the cancellation worthless. nor is this effective until notice has been given to the insured. a court of equity will reform a contract of insurance on the ground of accident, fraud, and mistake. oral evidence is admissible to prove the fraud or mistake; it must, however, be clear before a court will grant relief. if mistake is the ground for asking relief, the insured must not have been guilty in causing it, and must act promptly after his discovery. this rule does not prevent him from seeking relief when the agent of the insurer has been negligent. furthermore it may be granted even after the happening of a loss. should there be a conflict between the written and printed portions of a policy, the written portion will be presumed to represent the intent of the parties. if, therefore, the printed portion excludes certain articles from the risk, and the written portion covers them, they are included. conditions also written or printed on the margin or back of the policy are regarded as portions of it, and these too will control the printed portions. besides, the written application is usually considered a part of the contract and the policy is construed or interpreted in connection with it. this is especially so where the proposals and conditions are attached to the policy. if the intent of the policy is not clear from the language used, the surrounding circumstances may be shown for the purpose of ascertaining the intent of the parties. the known usage of trade may also be taken into account in construing the language of a policy. the language of the policy should be so construed as to cover the property within the intention of the parties, and support, if possible, the contract of indemnity. mere clerical errors or mistakes in describing it may be corrected even after it has been destroyed. the location is an essential element, and the policy will not be stretched to cover property not within the description. if a building is described this does not include separate structures used in connection with it, nor fixtures constituting no part of the structure. unless expressly excepted, however, insurance covers those things which have been so annexed as to become a part of the realty but none others. the term store fixtures covers fittings, fixtures, furniture used in the course of trade, whether they are part of the realty or not. likewise the term "stock" used in a mercantile business includes everything usually kept for sale, in that business, but nothing more; while household furniture includes all articles necessary and convenient for housekeeping. with respect to future additions these are covered by the policy unless it is so drawn as to show a clear intent to exclude them. the risk usually begins with the date of the policy, unless it is effected by a preliminary contract. in such a case the risk begins from the date of the preliminary contract, and continues for the period fixed in the policy, or, if none has been fixed, for a reasonable time. a misrepresentation voids a policy generally. it must not only be false in fact, but the insured must have known that it was false when making it in a substantial and material respect. the misstatement of an agent of the insured will have the same effect. indeed, any fraud of the insured in procuring the policy has the effect of voiding it if the insurer chooses to do so. of course, the wrongful facts or acts of the insured possess a varied character. his conduct in concealing facts that ought to have been made known to the insurer may have that effect. thus to conceal a fact of which the insured had knowledge, and which, if known by the insurer the risk probably would not have been taken, is a fraud rightly available to the insurer. the parties to an insurance contract may agree that the questions put by the insurer and the answers given by the insured shall become a warranty. this, as experience has shown, is a simpler way of effecting a policy of insurance. when this is done a misrepresentation constitutes a breach of warranty and the contract becomes void. the modern policy provides that it shall be void if the insured "now has or shall hereafter make or procure any other contract of insurance, whether valid or not, on property covered in whole or in part by this policy." if the insured effects other insurance he must not forget to obtain consent of the insurer, and should he forget his good intention will not preserve his policy. nor can the insured protect himself by canceling the prior policy if he breaks the condition. nor does its expiration revive the subsequent policy. an overstatement of existing insurance under an express warranty will also violate the policy. while forgetfulness or good intention will not save the insured in such cases, insurance obtained by a third person without the knowledge of the insured on the same property will not endanger his rights under his policy. if a fire occurs and a loss results, this may be total or partial. in every case of loss fire must be the proximate cause of the loss. what loss is covered by a policy has been the subject of frequent controversy. damage by water used to extinguish a fire is usually covered; also damage to or loss of goods removed to prevent their destruction from fire in the insured or another building. likewise the loss caused by blowing up a building to check a fire, likewise damage from an explosion which is the direct result of a fire, "but an explosion due to the ignition of a match or spark of an explosive substance, no fire resulting, is not within the terms of an ordinary fire policy." the standard policies contain a clause relieving the insured from liability to pay for property stolen during the progress of a fire, or during the removal of property necessitated by fire. an exception of liability from lightning, unless followed by fire, excludes recovery unless there is loss from burning, but it is quite common to insure against loss from lightning as well as fire. unless there is a stipulation in the policy the insurer is not relieved from liability by mere negligence or carelessness of the insured or his servants though directly contributing to the loss; on the other hand, the insured who does not take reasonable care to avoid loss from his negligence or that of his servants may defeat recovery under his policy. this rule is not easy of application, cases of clearly proved negligence are numerous, also cases free from negligence, a third class of a doubtful nature. the field of the law is open in every direction to these. for a total loss the insurer is liable for the entire value of the property to the limit covered by the insurance. thus the loss of a building is total though some of the walls remain standing, but not when the remnant can be restored. in some states the statutes provide that in case of total loss the insurer shall be liable for the full amount of insurance, and shall not be allowed to show that the property was of less value than the amount insured. when the loss is partial the insurer is liable only for the amount of the loss, not exceeding the insurance. the policy may limit the amount of recovery to the cost of restoring or replacing the property, and in such cases this is often done instead of paying the loss in money. if each of several classes or items is separately valued, thereby separating the liability for them, the recovery for any one class or item is limited to the damage to the same. lastly, in fixing the loss the distinction between open and valued policies must be explained. a fire policy is generally written in such a way that the liability of the insurer depends on the amount of the loss to be determined after the loss has occurred. when this is done, the valuation of the property in the application for a policy or in the policy, does not fix the liability of the insurer, even though the loss be total. this is called an open policy. on the other hand the loss may be fixed by a stipulation in the policy, and which binds the insurer to pay the whole sum insured in case of total loss. this is called a valued policy. a policy is regarded as an open one, unless it appears to have been the intention of the parties on a fair and reasonable construction of its terms, to value the loss and so fix by contract the amount that may be recovered. =fixtures.=--a fixture is something annexed to land either temporarily or permanently. different rules apply to persons in different relations. the law favors removal by a tenant presuming that he does not put in things for the landlord's benefit, unless there is an agreement to that effect between them. on the other hand a different rule applies between the seller and purchaser of real estate. as between them the law presumes that the seller intended to keep the things affixed to the house, especially ranges and the like. on the other hand a somewhat different rule applies between mortgagor and mortgagee. the former is favored, but not so much as the tenant. suppose the mortgagor was a nurseryman, and the land was taken for the debt by the mortgagee, would it include the trees and shrubs that had been planted for sale? the courts have given an affirmative answer. the facts that are of special value in finding out whether a thing is a fixture or not are: ( ) the actual annexation of the article to the realty; ( ) the immediate object or purpose of the annexation; ( ) the adaptability for permanent or mere temporary use; ( ) and whether the article can be removed without material injury to the property to which it is annexed. see _lease_. =garage keeper.=--the garage has been said to be the modern substitute for the ancient livery stable. a garage man who receives the automobile of another to keep or repair--a service for which the owner is to pay a compensation--is a bailee for hire. while this relation of bailor and bailee exists, the owner is not ordinarily responsible for the negligence of the garageman or his servants in the care or operation of the automobile. a public garage is not a nuisance. even the storage of gasoline in suitable tanks set down in the earth is not a nuisance. yet the business may become a nuisance when conducted in some localities, or in an improper manner. the operation of a public garage may therefore be enjoined in a purely residential section within a short distance of large churches, a parochial school and houses. likewise the odors, the noise, and the fire hazard, which are occasioned by the construction and management of a garage, create a situation which justifies public regulation. a garage keeper is generally allowed a lien on an automobile for storage and repairs. if no price has been fixed in advance, the garage keeper is entitled to recover of the owner the reasonable value of the services and materials furnished. when the automobile is brought to the garage by a chauffeur, the garage keeper should assure himself of the chauffeur's authority to order repairs, especially those of a permanent nature. the garage keeper when storing a car for another for compensation must exercise reasonable care and prudence. if negligent he is liable for the damage. it is said that the liability of a garage keeper for hire is not affected by reason of the knowledge of the owner as to the place where the property is kept. its acceptance by the garageman imposes on him the duty of exercising due care for its safety and protection. but he is not an insurer of the property; and therefore is not liable for loss by fire unless he has been negligent. generally, in such a case the burden of proof is on the owner of the machine to show that the fire was caused by the negligence of the garageman. sometimes one keeps a car for another for accommodation, receiving no compensation therefor. one who thus serves another is liable only for gross negligence. the garage keeper must protect the property from theft. if he permits a machine to remain in an alley when it ought to have been inside his garage, he is liable. in one case a motorcyclist left his machine with a garage keeper to be kept over night, and also gave permission for its inspection by any one whom he might send around. a person appeared with a permit to inspect it who, under the permission, stole it and rode away. the garage keeper was rightfully held not liable. if a garage keeper or his servant negligently runs a machine left in his custody for storage or repairs, the garageman is liable for the damage resulting to the owner. at the expiration of the bailment he must deliver the machine to the owner or person authorized by him to receive it, and is liable if neglecting or refusing. he is also liable if delaying unreasonably to make repairs, or for making them unskillfully. lastly, if the car is driven by the garageman's servant while the bailment continues, the bailee, and not the owner, is responsible for any injury done to a third person by the servant's negligence. of course, if the driver was acting outside the scope of his authority, and was using the car for personal purposes, neither the garageman nor the owner would be responsible for whatever happened. see _automobile: chauffeur_. =homestead.=--a legal homestead is the home or residence of a family land owner, and includes a specific area varying in the several states. by the more general rule the land must be connected in a single piece, though in some states the pieces may be distinct. though divided by a highway this does not effect a separation, as the land therein belongs to the owner subject to the public rights to pass and repass and also use to keep the highway in repair. the peculiarity about a homestead is, it is protected by law from seizure by the owner's creditors. one of the most important questions relating to a homestead is, the meaning of the head of a family. the term is not limited to a man having a wife and children. it includes an unmarried man with whom his widowed sister and children reside; or a man who supports his mother; likewise an unmarried woman with whom the children of a deceased sister are living. nor need they live under the same roof, the essential thing is the relation and dependence existing between them. on the death of a husband owning a homestead the right survives to the widow, and usually to the minor children. some statutes give her the absolute estate, others a life interest; in some states she loses the homestead by a subsequent marriage. in most states the rights of surviving children end on attaining their majority. in many states the surviving husband is entitled to the homestead right, even though there be no children. a husband does not lose his homestead when his wife withdraws from the family under a decree of divorce. non-residents as a rule are not within the privilege of the homestead laws. on the dissolution of a marriage by divorce, as the wife ceases to be a member of the husband's family, she loses her rights to the homestead. the decree of divorce may, in the dissolution of the marriage, reserve to her the right, and if she is the owner of the homestead she may continue to occupy it as one. the mere desertion of husband or wife by the other spouse will not, in itself, destroy the character of the homestead although an entire dissolution of the family will have that effect. by the federal law every head of a family, or a person twenty-one years old and a citizen, or intended citizen, of the united states, if not the owner elsewhere in the united states of one hundred and sixty acres of land and has not previously obtained a federal homestead, is entitled to a quarter section or less of the public land. three things are necessary: ( ) an affidavit showing that the applicant comes under the law; ( ) a formal application; ( ) payment of the land office charges. when these things are done, the certificate of entry is delivered to the applicant and the entry is made. then the entryman must actually reside on and cultivate the land for three years, and at the end of that period, he is entitled to a patent. the lands thus acquired are not liable for any debts contracted prior to the issuing of the patent. the head of a family can sell or mortgage his homestead, whether he is solvent or not, nor can his creditors prevent its sale since they have no rights therein. and if he sells his homestead and with the proceeds buys another, the second is as fully protected from creditors as the other. from liability for most debts a homesteader is exempt, but not for all. generally the homestead is not exempt from taxes, but not everywhere from fines for public offenses or liability on official bonds. debts contracted prior to the acquisition of the homestead and pre-existing liens in most states are enforceable against the homestead. so are debts contracted in improving or preserving the homestead. these include materials furnished, also the wages of clerks, servants, laborers and mechanics. =husband and wife.=--the law, while regarding marriage as a contract, adds something more, for it cannot be terminated by the will or consent of the parties; a contract on the other hand in most cases can be. to constitute a marriage there must be an agreement or mutual assent by the parties. this agreement must be made freely, seriously and not as a joke. false representations of health, wealth, etc., do not invalidate the agreement, yet these may be grave enough to have that effect. consent may be obtained by deceit or compulsion so gross as to justify a court in declaring that the parties were never legally married. a person may be too defective mentally to give an intelligent assent. a subsequent mental weakening would be no ground for annulling a marriage. an illinois court recently remarked, it is a harsh rule that would permit a married man whose wife later in life became insane to put her away on account of her misfortune. if one were so intoxicated that he did not act intelligently, he could avoid his marriage. a male at common law can marry at fourteen, a female at twelve. by statute a later date, twenty-one for males and eighteen for females has been fixed in many states. the right to disaffirm a marriage on the ground of non-age, unlike the parties to a contract, applies to both parties. in this country marriage is regulated largely by the states, though a movement has been started to make marriage and divorce a matter of national regulation. as marriages are of higher character than other contracts relating to the ordinary dealings of men, even those that are prohibited by law are for reasons of public policy not always void. they are therefore not void, simply because the formalities prescribed by statute in obtaining the license and solemnizing the marriage have not been observed, when the parties afterward live together like other married people. a marriage ceremony is not void though performed by one outside his jurisdiction, or not having a license obtained at the proper place. persons who improperly grant licenses and solemnize marriages may themselves suffer legally, but their wrongful action cannot be visited on others. the principle still prevails in most states that a marriage which is good by the common law, though contrary to statutory forms unless there is an express prohibition, is a valid marriage. in a few states a common law marriage is invalid. a marriage that is valid by the law of the state where it was made, is valid everywhere. nevertheless, the courts have great difficulty in applying the principle. suppose that the resident of a state, for the purpose of evading its marriage laws, should go into another state and have the marriage solemnized, and then return, is the marriage valid in that state? no, but to lessen the rigor of the rule, the courts hold that both parties must have intended to evade the law, if, therefore, one of them was innocent the marriage was valid. after marriage the husband's domicile becomes that of his wife, and her refusal to follow him without good cause, would be in law a desertion. it is said that a promise before marriage not to take her away from her mother and friends will not justify her in refusing to go with him. if, however, she had immediately after marriage, determined to separate from him and to take legal steps to that end, she could legally remain. a married woman by the common law is answerable personally for her crimes as though she were unmarried, unless they were committed in her husband's presence. when together the law presumes she acted from his coercion, he therefore must be the sufferer, while she escapes. this rule though does not apply to the gravest crimes; for these both are liable. like so many other legal rules the difficulty is in applying it. how near to the husband must she be when committing a wrong to render him liable and escape herself. in one of the cases a married woman was properly indicted for unlawfully selling intoxicating liquors. at the time of selling them she was alone in the room, though she had sold them by her husband's order. as the law regards husband and wife as one person, many peculiar things flow from this relation. thus one cannot steal from the other; but either is criminally liable for an assault committed on the other. by statute in some states the right of either party to sue the other for wrongs has been greatly extended; nor is the husband liable for wrongs committed by his wife unless he participated in them. for example, in some states he is not liable for slanderous words spoken by her in his absence; in other states his liability continues. on the other hand, a wife who can manage and control her separate estate may in turn be liable for the wrongs of her husband while he is acting with authority as her agent. a husband has a right of action for damages against any person who alienates his wife's affections. nor can he be defeated by showing that he and his wife did not live happily together. such facts though may be used to prove that her society was worth less than it would have been had they lived happily, in fact, by money valuation was not worth three cents. a husband forfeits his right to sue others for entertainment when his own misconduct justified and actually caused the separation, otherwise his remedy is complete against all persons whatsoever who have lent their countenance to any agreement for breaking up his household. on the other hand, this is a one-sided rule in some states; in others a wife has the same right to sue for the alienation of her husband's affections as he has for the alienation of hers. by statute great changes have been made in the way of permitting married women to retain their property and manage it, and to do business. formerly, all the personal property of a married woman went immediately by law to her husband, and he became responsible for her debts. she still retained her real estate and the management of it. now, very generally, she also retains her personal property, also the income, very much as if she were unmarried. she often appoints him as her agent to manage her property, and when thus acting he is responsible to others and to her like any other agent. he may contract for erecting any building or improvement on her land, but should he contract in his own name for such improvement she cannot be held therefor, nor can any one who has done work or furnished materials put a lien thereon for them. it may be added that his right to act as her agent is never implied solely from the marital relation. a wife may act in a representative capacity as agent for her husband, or for other persons, and may execute a power conferred on her by deed or will. she may also be appointed to act as executor, administrator or guardian, though under the common law theory her husband's consent was needful to her acceptance of any of these undertakings. the common law relations of husband and wife have been greatly changed by statute since about . "it is now," says peck, "the usual rule of law throughout the united states, established in each state by its own statutes that the wife retains title to the property owned by her before marriage or acquired by her during the marriage, and the right to manage, use or sell it, without the concurrence of her husband. the right to contract, and to sue and be sued, naturally follows from her ownership and control of her property; in most of the states these rights are expressly conferred by statute; and in some they have been held to result by necessary implication." the husband is generally relieved from liability for her debts or for her torts, except for such debts as are for her support or that of the family, or are within her express or implied agency to act for him. the common law estate of dower and curtesy are retained in some of the states, in the larger number they are materially modified by statute, or wholly abolished and replaced by a right of succession to each other's property as defined by statute. the distinctive duties resting on a husband are to provide a home, to support his wife and children, to protect her and them from injury or insult. thus a husband has the same right to protect his wife, to assert and maintain her rights, even to kill a person, if necessary in her defense, that he would have in his own behalf. the duty of a husband to provide a home implies his right to select and fix the marital abode. the wife must live with him, and a refusal on her part to live in the home provided by him would constitute her a deserter. but he must select a home in good faith and in reasonable accordance with his means and their accustomed mode of life. it is his duty to maintain order and law in his household. he is therefore liable to prosecution should his wife carry on the illegal sale of liquor, or in other ways defy the law. a husband cannot chastise his wife, but he may use force to restrain her from committing a violent criminal wrong. says a competent author: "that depends rather on the right of every one to use reasonable efforts to prevent violence and crime than on any peculiar power of the husband over the wife, and it would also justify like restraint of the husband by the wife." it is the duty of the wife to assist in the maintenance of the family by such reasonable labor as the necessities of the family and their circumstances in life and financial position require; while the husband has no right to require her to do more than to care for the house and the family in the customary and proper manner. he cannot compel her to engage in business, to work for wages, nor to work for him in his business. the services of any kind which either may render to the other, or for the family, are rendered in consideration of the marriage relation, and of the mutual benefit received therefrom and neither has any right of action against the other for them. it should be noted that the legislative revolution for the benefit of married women has chiefly affected the property relations of husband and wife, while their personal rights remain quite as before. probably no single rule of the common law was so bitterly resented and so difficult to defend, as the vesting in the husband of the sole guardianship of their children. by statute in many states both parents are made guardian of them, and if they separate, the welfare of the children is regarded as the decisive question in fixing their guardianship, rather than the superior right of either parent. a husband and wife by the modern law may agree to live separately. the arrangement in some states is effected through a trustee, in others this may be done by the parties themselves. by this the parties may agree on the disposition and division of their property when this can be done freely and intelligently. a separation agreement made through fear of her husband cannot be sustained. a wife who voluntarily enters into an agreement of separation covering all property rights cannot, after her husband's death, have it set aside and then claim her rights in his estate, except in some states where community rights exist. on the other hand, her right to share in her husband's estate is not lost though she lives apart from him by agreement, unless this shows a clear intention to relinquish all claims to his estate. the husband must support his wife. this is the law everywhere. while they live together the law presumes that he has given her authority to purchase necessaries on his credit, and therefore a tradesman can recover who shows that they were thus living and that the things furnished befitted their condition in life. when she is living apart from her husband the presumption is the other way, and a tradesman cannot recover without proof of the fact of her husband's authority to let her have the goods. but when she is living apart from him for good cause, and would starve if the things needful to sustain life did not come from some source, she has an absolute right to pledge her husband's credit for them. what are the things for which she may pledge her husband's credit? those required to sustain life and preserve decency, besides other things to maintain her in her social condition. wearing apparel, furniture, jewelry, even legal expenses incurred in regaining her conjugal rights have been included. besides agreements to live separately, the law for several causes permits absolute separation. these are prescribed by statute, and vary greatly in the different states. adultery is a cause recognized in all of them, for which an absolute divorce can be granted. cruelty is another cause, almost as general, though more difficult to define. actual violence is not necessary to constitute cruelty, threats of violence with an intention to do bodily harm will suffice. again, the cruelty must be unmerited. if she has justly provoked the indignation of her husband, then his cruelty presents a different aspect. nevertheless, if his cruelty bears no relation to her wrongful beginnings, she still has good ground for separation. desertion is a general ground of divorce, the law in every state prescribing a period of time, quite often three years. the period must be continuous. an offer to return made by the deserted spouse in good faith at any time before the separation has run for the statutory period will bar a divorce, but not if the offer is made afterward. again, a husband who drives his wife away from him by his misconduct deserts her as clearly as if he had left her. to cease living together for the time fixed by statute is not desertion unless this was done intentionally. for example, separation on account of business, sickness, etc., is not desertion. not only must there be an intention to leave the other party, this must be without consent. another cause for divorce, quite generally recognized, is habitual drunkenness. this must be of a gross and confirmed nature. while other causes exist the most general have now been mentioned. in some states there is a more general ground, any reason rendering married life a failure. of course, much depends on the discretion, mental and moral make-up of a judge in applying the facts to a cause for separation that is so general. an agreement in advance to make a cause of divorce is everywhere condemned by the law. divorces are of two kinds: from the bond of marriage, often called absolute divorces, which put an end to the marriage relation and render the parties single; and divorces from bed and board, limited divorces, more accurately called judicial separations, in which the marriage relation is not dissolved, but the injured party is given the right to live separate from the other. in more than half of the american states no distinction is made between kind of divorce, all divorces are absolute, from the bond of marriage. the legal effect of divorces is still a grave matter. when a divorce has been legally granted by a state, the courts of every other state for obvious reasons recognize and try to uphold the decree or judgment, though not all of them, and consequently strange results follow. thus a person who was married and living in new york leaves his wife for good reason and goes to connecticut. after acquiring a legal residence there and proper standing in a court, he applies for a divorce, the proceedings are regular in every respect and a divorce is granted. he marries again and takes his wife to new york for a visit. there he is sued by the first wife for support, moreover, by the laws of new york he is an adulterer. in new york he is still married to the first wife, in connecticut to the second. if children are born of the second marriage they are legitimate as long as they live in connecticut, illegitimate should they go to new york. one of the latest legal writers on this difficult subject says: "foreign divorce judgments granted in states where the plaintiff had obtained an actual, bona fide residence, will doubtless continue to be recognized by the great majority of our states, but the states of new york, california, maryland, massachusetts, vermont, south carolina, pennsylvania, and possibly some other states, which have adopted the extreme new york doctrine, are permitted by the rule established in the haddock case--a decision by the supreme court of the united states--to continue to refuse recognition of divorce judgments in other states." =innkeeper.=--an innkeeper's house is a public place to which travelers may resort. he cannot therefore prohibit persons who come under that character in a proper manner and at suitable times from entering, so long as he can accommodate them. he is not obliged to receive one who cannot pay for his entertainment. indeed, he must exclude some persons who apply, notably thieves. he can refuse to admit all whom he has reason to believe will disturb the peace and safety of his guests; and can afterward exclude all who, though admitted, prove to be noisy and disturbers of the comfort and safety of others. and if having a stable he is under the same obligation to receive and care for horses as he is to receive the person to whom they belong. again, he is not required to provide a guest with the precise room he may select, but only reasonable and proper accommodations. if he refuses to do so he is liable in law to the applicant. in caring for the baggage of a guest, the law is not as well settled as it might be. a competent writer has said: "they are insurers of the property of their guests committed to their care, and are liable for its loss, unless caused by the act of god, a public enemy, or the neglect or fault of the owner or his servants." this strictness of liability, it is said is necessary to protect travelers against any collusion between the innkeeper and his servants, and to compel him to take care that no improper persons are admitted into his house. his charge for the entertainment of his guests is sufficient to cover this risk; he also has a lien on their property entrusted to his care to indemnify him against loss. by statute in many states innkeepers are exempt from loss by fires which are in no way caused by their own negligence or that of their servants. if a horse dies while in the innkeeper's charge, he is liable unless he can show facts that excuse him. if the goods of a guest are stolen by the innkeeper's servants or domestics, by another guest, or by someone outside the inn, the innkeeper must make restitution, for it is his duty to provide honest servants, and to exercise an exact vigilance over all persons coming into his house as guests or otherwise. his responsibility extends to all his servants and domestics, and he is bound in every event to pay for them if stolen, unless they were stolen by a servant or companion of the guest. illness or absence of the innkeeper does not excuse him. an innkeeper is not liable for the loss of a guest's property when this loss is due to the fault or negligence of the guest himself. thus an unnecessary display of money or valuables, or leaving them where they would tempt thieves, may be negligence. but failure to lock or bolt his door is not necessarily negligence on the part of a guest. it is only evidence of negligence. nor is an innkeeper exonerated when a theft is committed by a fellow guest with whom the owner of the property stolen had consented to occupy the same room. an innkeeper may make needful and reasonable regulations that are to be observed by his guests to secure the safety of his property. when they are made and brought to the knowledge of a guest he is bound by them. by contract, custom and statute the responsibility of an innkeeper may be changed. in many states by statute an innkeeper avoids liability for the valuables of his guest unless they are deposited with him. these statutes are construed strictly in favor of the guest. nor can an innkeeper even by these exempt himself from everything, for if a guest were required to deposit all he had to secure such protection, he would be in a strange fix. said a georgia court: "is the guest to deposit his valise there, and go and send for it to get out a clean shirt?" if a guest goes away, leaving his valise or other things with an innkeeper, he is not required after a reasonable time to observe such diligence in keeping them as he receives nothing in the way of compensation for so doing. keepers of lodging and boarding houses are not innkeepers, nor subject to their liabilities. the proprietor of such a house does not hold himself out to the world as prepared to supply accommodations for all who may apply, nor is he required to receive any persons unless he chooses to do so; an innkeeper's freedom is restricted in this respect. a house may have a double character of boarding house and inn. with transient persons who, without a definite contract, remain from day to day it is an inn; with those under definite contract it is a boarding house. =land license.=--a license is an authority to do something on another's land without acquiring ownership therein, and may be given orally, or it may be simply a permission to use or occupy. a license may be executory, relating to a future act, or it may relate to an act already done or executed. an executory license may be revoked at any time. thus a laid a water pipe by permission across b's land who afterward rendered the pipe useless by cutting it. a had no redress, for b was acting within his rights. a ought to have obtained written authority for such action. he could, however, remove the pipe or any other improvement he had made on the strength of the license granted to him. a license may be to do many things on another's land. thus one may have a license to flood land, erect buildings, pass overland, maintain a ditch, cut timber, use land for railroad purposes. a common form of license is a ticket of admission to enter another's land to witness a spectacle or similar purpose. no formality is needed to create a license. it may be in writing or be oral, or implied from the relations or conduct of the parties, as where a land owner assents to the doing of certain acts on his land. a person by opening a place of business licenses the public to enter therein for the purpose of transacting business. and a license to do a particular act necessarily involves any act essential thereto. a license is usually revocable at the pleasure of the licensor, even though it be in writing and under seal, or a consideration has been given. if the licensee has expended money and made improvements on the faith of the license, can it be revoked? on this question the courts divide. the more general opinion seems to be that a license coupled with a grant or interest cannot be revoked. or, if a license has in effect been so used as to become an easement it remains a burden on the land though sold to a purchaser, unless he had no knowledge of it. a license cannot be assigned by the licensee to another. again it is said that the revocation only affects the future exercise of the privilege, and does not prevent the licensee from removing structures or other movable articles placed by him thereon relying on the license, provided he does this within a reasonable time after the revocation. even should the owner of land sell, the sale would not operate as a revocation to one to remove trees that he had already cut under a contract of sale and removal. if a person grants a license to another to come on his land, he owes no duty to him except the negative one of not wantonly injuring or exposing him to danger. merchants invite the public into their stores to buy wares, but those who accompany them without any intention of purchasing are not invitees, they are mere licensees. the duty of the storekeeper to one who enters his premises by mere license is not to keep the premises in a non-hazardous state, but only to abstain from acts willfully injurious to him. =lease.=--a lease is for the use of land, usually for a few years or shorter period. the lessor is more generally known as the landlord, and the lessee as the tenant. the lease may be oral, though the better way is to put the agreement in writing. if it be for a house or other building the lessee should insist on this, otherwise he would fare much worse should the building be destroyed by fire. doubtless many do not know that, unless the lessee makes a specific agreement relieving himself, he is liable for the rent of a building, just the same if it is burned down as if he were still the occupier. this is the common law, which has been changed in some states by statute. if the lease is for more than a year, or other short period, the statute of frauds, so called, requires that it must be in writing. if the time be less, a verbal lease may be made, even though the lessee does not take immediate possession of the premises. if on the other hand, it exceeds the statutory period, it is not absolutely void, but continues during the joint wills of both parties, and may therefore cease at the will of either party. if the landlord wishes to terminate it, he must give the tenant notice to quit; should he disregard the law and take immediate possession he would be a trespasser. when the terms of a lease are in doubt, they are construed in favor of the tenant. a lease to a specified day continues during the whole of it, though custom or statute may prescribe a different rule. a term may also continue during the option of either of the parties to be ended on notice by the party exercising the option. the most usual agreements or covenants in a lease are on the part of the lessor for quiet enjoyment, which secures the tenant against any hindrance or disturbance of his possession and enjoyment of the premises from persons deriving their title from the landlord, or from any one else who claims to be the owner. also against all encumbrances, in other words, that no one has any easements or other rights in the premises. the landlord also usually agrees to repair, and often to renew the lease, and the lessee to pay rent, to insure and not to assign or underlet, without the landlord's consent. the parties may of course agree to do any other lawful thing, for example, sometimes the tenant agrees to make repairs, to reside in the premises, not to engage in some kinds of business, to cultivate the land, if the lease be of a farm, in a specified way. again though an oral lease for a term of years at a stated annual rent may not fulfill the requirement of the statute of frauds, the parties may conform to it and thus create a tenancy in fact from which the law will imply a leasing from year to year. if therefore the tenant with the acquiescence of the landlord continues in possession for several months after the expiration of the original term, a tenancy for another year will be created with a corresponding liability on the part of the tenant for a full year's rent. and the measure and extent of the tenant's liability would be the same, whether his continued occupancy related to the original lease, or to a subsequent one just like it, made as the first was soon to expire. the definite period for which a lease is given is called a term. if a lease is from the first day of january, it begins on the second day and lasts through the last day mentioned; in carefully drawn leases the number of days is fixed to avoid all dispute. a lease for a year with the privilege of remaining three years or longer does not mean a single period of three years, but three yearly periods as the tenant may elect. a lease may be made to take effect in the future, provided the time for taking possession is not so far away as to violate some statute to the contrary. a lease for an hundred years in some states is deemed a parting with the absolute title to lands though railroads make long leases running for ninety-nine years. if the length of the term is not definitely expressed in the lease, the time may be ascertained by other evidence. when a lease is to run for one or more years "from" a specified day, the corresponding day of the year is excluded from the term, unless a contrary custom exists. a lease to a specified day ends with its expiration. if there be a doubt on which of two days a lease terminates, the lessee may decide. more generally, leases of doubtful duration are construed in favor of the tenants. by statute in new york leases which do not specify the length of occupation, extend to the first of the following may after taking possession. a lease must describe clearly the premises, nor can a defective description be cured by outside evidence. any language will suffice that shows the intention of the parties. the words "grant," "demise," and "to farm let," have a technical meaning, and are generally used, but other words may be and often are used. a memorandum expressing the consent of the owner that another shall have immediate possession of the premises, and shall continue to occupy them at a specified rent and for a definite term, is a sufficient lease; in general, any agreement under which one person obtains the right of enjoyment to property of another, with his consent and in subordination. a distinction exists between a lease and an agreement for a lease, which should be understood, though it sometimes is not by the parties themselves. if the agreement is a lease, it cannot be changed by other evidence, for it is a completed contract; but if it is an agreement for a lease, then it is not complete and other evidence may be produced to show what the parties intended. how can the nature of the agreement be tested? by ascertaining whether it is complete or not. thus a wrote to b that he would take his home at a stipulated rent for two years if he would put in a furnace, with which offer b at once complied. this was a lease, for by putting in the furnace nothing more remained to be done. if he had not put in the furnace, or not before the time a was to take possession, there would have been no lease, unless a had waived his offer and taken possession. of course to make a valid lease there must be competent parties. a lease made by a minor is not void, but he may avoid or cancel it by some positive act. can he do this before attaining his majority? on this the authorities differ. again appears the risk of making contracts with minors, though the situation many times seems clearly to justify such action. a guardian may lease his minor's land for the period of his minority; if leased beyond, the ward may have the lease canceled for the excess. a lease terminates on the death of the ward, whatever may be the length of the term. a parent cannot lease the land of his minor child like a guardian. by common law a lease made by a married woman was avoided after her husband's death. the modern statutes excluding her husband's power of control over her property and authorizing her to take and hold property as if she were an unmarried woman, have abolished both his power to invalidate the lease and also her power to repudiate it after his death. a private corporation may make a lease of its property provided that in doing so it acts within its charter. a municipal corporation, while it may lease property belonging thereto of a private nature, cannot lease property which has been devoted to public use. a corporation whether public or private may take a lease of property so far as this may be a proper means of carrying out the purposes for which the corporation was created. executors and administrators may dispose of a lease belonging to the deceased, or make new leases for terms within the period covered by it. trustees have a still larger authority to lease the lands entrusted to them, unless restricted by the terms of their trusteeship, or by statute. though a member of a partnership, as we have seen, is an agent, he cannot make valid lease of partnership land. what may be leased? besides land, the right to a wharf, to flow with water the land of another, to go over another's land. an ordinary boarder, who has a room and boards in the house of another and who retains the possession and care of his room, is not a tenant. on the other hand the letting of an entire floor for lodgings may create a tenancy, and so may even a single room. a lease for an unlawful purpose is void, for example, for the sale of spirituous liquors contrary to law. if the premises are occupied by the lessee and his rent is paid as specified in the lease, this is regarded as a ratification by him of an invalid or void lease. to this rule are some exceptions. a rule of construction may here be added; if a blank form is used in making a lease and the printed and written parts or agreements are inconsistent, the matters written are regarded as expressing the intention of the parties. much might be said concerning the use of the premises. if a farm is rented and the lease is silent on the matter, the law presumes that the tenant will use it in a proper and husbandlike manner, like other exemplary farmers in that vicinity. he must cultivate the soil properly, preserve the timber, consume the hay as fodder to the cattle, if such be the custom, and keep the buildings and fences in repair. manure in the ordinary course of farming belongs to the farm. to manure made in livery stables a different rule applies and the tenant can remove it. if the lease be of a mill it usually provides how it shall be run, if it be a house in the city and nothing is said about its use the law implies that there shall be no waste or destruction beyond the ordinary wear and tear. to use the doors for firewood is not uncommon with tenants, unless they are not burnable, though surely it is not a proper use of a leased house. a farm tenant has the right to take and use material found on the land suitable and needful to repair the buildings, fences, also dead and fallen timber for fuel. he cannot use shrubbery and ornamental trees for this purpose, nor cut standing timber for this purpose. he is entitled also to the way going crop, but must remove it during his lease. he cannot go on the land afterward and remove crops, unless he was prevented by some good reason from removing them while he was in possession. can a lessee assign or sublet his lease? of course this may be forbidden, and often is by the lessor, without his consent. if the lease is silent this can be done. if the lessee die, his executor or administrator can assign the remainder of his term. a lease may also be assigned if the lessee become insolvent, also by a new partnership created by the addition or retirement of a member. a transfer by the lessee of the whole or a part of his interest for a part of the time is a sublease and not an assignment. and whenever a sublease is made, the rights of the original lessor are not changed, nor does he recognize in any way the sub-tenant unless by agreement, nor has he any right of action against him. of course there is nothing to prevent the parties from making any arrangement that may be agreeable to them. as the lessee may assign or sublet unless forbidden, so may the lessor part with his interest in the leased premises. when an assignment of it is made, the assignee may sue in his own name for rent accruing after the assignment. the lease of a private residence is not a warranty that it is reasonably fit for occupancy. thus saith the law. nor can a lessee, unless the lessor has misrepresented the healthfulness of the place, leave after the unwelcome discovery that it is not healthful. this seems to be rather harsh, but the rule is founded on the presumption that the lessee will examine the house before leasing and make proper inquiries about its healthfulness. by the common law the lessor was not required to make repairs. this has been changed in some states by statute. he is not required to make repairs needed and known to the tenant at the time of making his lease. hallways, staircases, elevators, and the like that are used in common by the tenants of a building and are under the landlord's control, must be kept in repair by him. if he shall let a many storied building to several tenants, to each tenant a story, who have exclusive possession thereof, the lessor will not be liable to any lessee for the damage caused by another. if the landlord agrees to make repairs and keep the tenement in good condition, he is required to keep it in essentially the same condition as it was when the tenant took possession. should the house or other building be destroyed by fire what then? an agreement to keep it in good repair imposes an obligation on the landlord's part to rebuild. but an agreement by the lessee to keep and leave it in good repair, does not require him to rebuild should it be destroyed by fire, or other cause without any fault of his own. if the lease provides that the insurance money, when the landlord has insured the premises, shall be applied to rebuild in the event of fire, he must regard his agreement, but if there be no such agreement, the tenant cannot compel his landlord to thus apply it. should the lessor fail to fulfill his agreement to repair, the tenant is not excused from paying his rent, nor justified in leaving the premises. his remedy is to sue his landlord for the damages or injury to himself. and even if the premises be destroyed by fire the tenant must continue to pay his rent unless he has been wise enough to relieve himself by a proper clause, or unless some kindly statute has been passed relieving him on the happening of such an event. no oral stipulation, that the parties should make covering the effect of loss by fire or other contingency, would be binding if contrary to the terms of the written lease. as this is the highest form of the agreement, all verbal stipulations to the contrary must give way. a tenant can make no permanent alteration without his landlord's consent; and should he do so and injure the premises the landlord may recover damages, or, if such an alteration is feared or threatened, he may prevent it by obtaining an injunction from a court ordering the tenant not to make it and penalizing him should the order be disobeyed. when a lease is renewed, the new lease may be regarded in two different ways. it may be considered as the continuation of the lease, and thereby protecting all the interests created under it. and this will be the case whenever the old lease clearly shows that if a renewal should be made this was the intention of the parties. when nothing is said, a renewed lease is a surrender of the old one and different conditions may arise. it is important therefore when providing for the renewal of a lease to specify what the parties intend, whether a renewal or continuation on the old terms, or a renewal on other terms to be fixed at another time. usually a lease specifies not only the amount of rent to be paid, but the time of payment. if silent, yearly rent is not due until the end of the year, quarterly rent at the end of the quarter, monthly rent at the end of the month. when a lessee is evicted or turned out of possession by his landlord, he is excused from paying rent. what, therefore, is an eviction? any act by the landlord, or by his agent, impairing the worth of the premises to the tenant, for example, the destruction of a summer house, turning rooting pigs into the premises, the erection of a new building rendering the leased premises unfit for occupation. one of the curious cases is the lease of a distillery which could not be run because the landlord prevented the lessee from getting a license. in like manner if the landlord is to furnish heat and fails to do so, the tenant is justified in leaving. more generally, any act by the landlord whereby the leased premises are rendered unfit or impossible for the purpose intended, and affecting the health and comfort of the tenant, is an eviction. the eviction must be done by the lessor. an act done by a wrongdoer, not under the lessor's order, will not justify the lessee in quitting. thus the darkening by an adjacent owner of the lessee's premises by erecting a structure, however injurious it might be, would not justify the lessee in quitting and refusing to pay his agreed rent. this is one of the risks taken when making the lease. suppose a person occupying state land is evicted by the state, must he continue to pay rent? in missouri the rent ceases, or if evicted of a part, he must pay rent on the remainder. in some states he must still continue to pay his rent and then demand compensation for his loss. sometimes land is rented on shares, a very common way in the olden time. when this is done, the relation of landlord and tenant may be created, or perhaps a partnership relation. if the farmer is to do the work of a servant of the owner of the farm, receiving in return therefor, a specified part of the crops, the agreement is one of hiring and not a lease. if the farmer has rightful possession of the use of the land, then the payment of his rent in produce does not affect his relation as a tenant. the natural increase of stock leased with a farm belongs to the tenant, and a landlord cannot recover for the death of cattle in the tenant's possession, unless he can prove his tenant's negligence. and if a lessee should sell part of the stock contrary to the lease, the purchaser would be liable therefor. a landlord often leases separate parts of a building to different tenants, while the stairways and passages to them, though intended for their use, are still under his control. he thus invites the tenants and other persons having relations with them to use the approaches to obtain access to their rooms or apartments, and is accordingly liable when they are not kept in proper repair; the same as any owner of structures either expressly or impliedly invites persons to enter them. if therefore he should leave elevator shafts, or hatchways unguarded, he would be clearly liable for the consequences. so, too, should a mill owner have a defective bridge to his mill, forming part of a common way thereto, he would be liable for the consequences. the lessor is liable if he leaves his premises with a way or cellar entrance, or coal hole inadequately guarded at the time the lessee takes possession, but not if the guard or covering gets out of repair during the tenancy, or is temporarily left unguarded by the tenant or some third person. if the hole or other dangerous place is made without proper authority, it is considered a nuisance and the owner is liable for all injuries whether he has rented the premises or not. who is liable for injuries caused to travelers by ice and snow on the pavement? this is a hard question to answer in a short space. if the ice or snow has accumulated by reason of a defective roof, then the landlord is liable because of its faulty construction. in some parts of the country it is most difficult to keep the walks safe in winter. experience has led the parties to make stipulations defining and fixing their liability. many states also have statutes and cities ordinances regulating the duties and liabilities of landlords and tenants. when a lease is about to expire a difficult question sometimes arises, what can the tenant take away with him? of course he can remove all his furniture and the things that can be separated without injury to the premises, but during his tenancy, he may have added things possessing a more permanent nature, called fixtures, these he cannot remove. the courts have had great difficulty in deciding in some cases what these are. in a general way it may be said that whatever a tenant adds to the premises can be removed, while he is still in possession, without material injury to it, but he cannot remove anything afterwards. suppose the tenant erects a building, can he remove it? one would not think of his building this for the benefit of his landlord. suppose he had built it on a foundation from which it could be easily removed, a court would have no difficulty in deciding that it belonged to the tenant. many cases have arisen about ranges and stoves. an ordinary stove of course can be removed; suppose it is affixed to the house in such a way that some portion of the wall will be detached by the removal, can this be done? not if the wall will be badly injured. how badly? this is a question of fact to be answered by inquiry in every case. among the fixtures that can be removed are hangings and tapestries, ornamental chimney pieces, wooden cornices, wainscoting affixed to the wall by screws and spikes, bells and bell wires, chandeliers, cisterns and sinks though fastened by nails and set into the floor, fire frame fixed in the fireplace, pipes for gas or water, grates removable without injury to the building, pumps, stoves, ranges and furnaces, gas ranges and water closet appliances, washtubs fastened to the house, gas fixtures and shelves. a greenhouse is not removable, nor gutters placed in the roof of a dwelling, nor a stairway, nor flowers, shrubs, or bushes planted for ornamental purposes. chattels placed by a tenant on leased premises for the purpose of carrying on his business or trade are generally regarded as personal property. annexations of this kind are called trade fixtures and the law is liberal in permitting their removal. show cases, counters and shelves, engines, boilers, machinery, tanks in a distillery, a bowling alley, bar fixtures, even buildings are removable. the same liberal rule applies to agricultural implements. a tenant, therefore, if wishing to remove whatever he may have added, should be careful about their nature, or protect himself by an effective agreement. =legal remedies.=--elsewhere we have shown how civil and criminal law differ. in criminal proceedings the state is a party and prosecutes offenders through agents or attorneys who are chosen or appointed for that purpose. in all civil offenses the person injured prosecutes the offender, through the courts established by the state for that purpose. suppose a owed b one hundred dollars for which he gave his promissory note payable in ninety days from date, and which on its maturity a declined to pay. b could then have recourse to a court of law to collect the money. if knowing nothing about the mode of proceeding he would employ a lawyer; if he was familiar with legal proceedings he could do this himself. what is the first step taken by a lawyer? he makes out a writ or complaint stating b's course of action against a--that he has loaned him a sum of money which he has not paid as he promised to do, and he is summoned to appear in court at a certain time and place and answer why he does not pay and the court is asked to render judgment against him, if there is no defense, for the money due with the addition of the costs incurred in seeking the aid of the court to collect the money. this writ, declaration, or complaint is given to the sheriff of the court where either a or b lives, who "serves" it on a. this service consists in reading a copy of it by the sheriff, or by one of his deputies or a constable, or other authorized person, to a, or in leaving a true and attested copy thereof with him, which has become the universal practice. this is the ordinary mode of beginning a legal action against a person or corporation. an action thus begun is followed by a trial of the case unless it is settled. usually the trial comes off within a few months, but not infrequently long delays occur. if, after the introduction of testimony, judgment is rendered in favor of b, an "execution" or order is issued by the court directing the sheriff to levy on a's property, whatever he may have, save a small sum, household furniture and the like, and sell it and turn over the proceeds to b in payment of his debt. if there was a balance left from the sale of a's property after satisfying the judgment of the court and the costs of the legal proceedings, it would be paid to a. this, in fewest words, is the mode of proceeding in a court of law to obtain redress in a civil suit or action. there are several kinds of actions or remedies used in different cases and these will now be explained. first, is the action of assumpsit. this is the form of action used whenever one sues to recover on all kinds of promises, those implied by the law as well as express promises, not under seal. they include all ordinary promises to do things either orally or in writing. next, is the action of covenant. this is used whenever one sues to recover for some failure on the part of a person who has given a deed or other sealed writing. suppose the purchaser of land discovered there was an unpaid mortgage thereon, though the deed covenants or declares that it is free from all encumbrances. the vendee or purchaser would sue to recover for a broken covenant. another action is replevin which is used to recover specific goods. suppose someone had taken my horse and refused to deliver the animal to me. the proper remedy would be replevin. suppose i did not wish to have the horse back, but only its value or worth. then the proper remedy would be an action of trover. another form of action in much use is called trespass. this is used to recover damages for injuries to persons and property. if a person knocked me down and i sued him to recover for the injury, trespass would be the proper form of action. in many states an action in tort instead of trespass is the proper remedy. if one should come upon my land and take away wood, grass, stone, or in any way injure it, trespass also would be the form of action. ejectment is the action employed to eject or turn out a wrongful possessor and recover possession of land. in this action the title or ownership of the land lies at the foundation; and the title to many a piece has been settled in an action of ejectment. one of the most familiar actions is habeas corpus, which is employed to recover a person's liberty from illegal restraint. as the actions of slander and libel have been described, only two others require notice, mandamus and quo warranto. the first of these is used to compel one to do something. a familiar example is that of a city which refuses to pay a judgment that has been rendered against it. the court in this action commands the city to pay, and it must obey unless there exists a legal defense. a quo warranto is the form of legal action to which a person resorts to get possession of an office to which he is entitled, but is denied him. suppose one is elected mayor of a city, but for some reason or other, the one in possession is determined to keep him out. he would bring this action and a court would then decide whether he was entitled to it or not, and if he were, the court would proceed to put him in possession. in many of the states, especially the newer ones, not all of these different forms of action are used. only one form, called a complaint, includes most of them. while the substitution of this has simplified the modes of redress, the substance of the complaint really embodies, as before, the different kinds of injuries above explained. =life insurance.=--the contract of life insurance is a mutual agreement whereby the insurer agrees on the payment of a fixed sum or premium to pay to a person designated in the policy on the happening of a contingency, usually death, a sum of money. by another form of insurance the insurance may be made payable at a fixed time, or before, should the insured die before that period. the contract to be valid must be for the benefit of one having an insurable interest, otherwise the contract is a wager, which the law condemns. this is sufficient if the person taking the insurance has such an interest arising from his relation to the insured as creditor and surety, or from the ties of blood or marriage that will justify a reasonable expectation of advantage or benefit from the continuation of his life. it is not needful that this expectation or benefit should possess a pecuniary valuation. the mutual legal rights and liabilities of father and minor child are sufficient to create an insurable interest on the part of each in the life of the other; also the relationship of brother and sister, and that of husband and wife. likewise a man and a woman who are engaged to be married; and a creditor has an insurable interest in the life of his debtor. and this interest covers not only the amount of the indebtedness, but also future advances, and the cost of taking out and keeping up the insurance. a partner who has advanced the capital of the business has an insurable interest in the life of his partner. more generally any person who invests money relying on the efforts of another to produce a return has an insurable interest in such person's life. a surety therefore has an insurable interest in the life of his principal; an executor in the life of a person who has granted an annuity to the testator; a common carrier even may insure against loss from injuries to passengers. but the relationship between uncle or aunt, nephew and niece and that of cousin is not sufficient to support a policy taken by one in the life of the other. a policy may be assigned to one who has no insurable interest if made in good faith, and not as a cloak for the procuring of insurance by one having no insurable interest. this rule does not prevail everywhere, but the courts which do not accept this rule usually protect the assignee who has paid the premiums to the amount of his payments, while the estate of the insured takes the balance that may come from the insurer, whenever the assignment of the policy is not invalid. an assignment to one who has an insurable interest as relative, creditor and the like, is always valid. a general agent, says justice mcclain, "may bind the company by an agreement as to rate of premiums, or other terms of the contract, even as against the express provisions of a policy subsequently issued, there being no negligence on the part of the insured in failing to advise himself as to the terms of the policy; but if the want of authority of the agent to vary the terms of the application is brought home to the applicant, oral communications of the insured to the agent are not to be considered in determining the validity of the insurance. if the agent has exceeded his authority as to the terms of the proposed contract, the company cannot reject that part which the agent was without authority to make and enforce the rest, but must accept or reject in toto." until a proposition for insurance has been accepted by the company there is no contract. delay in accepting an application which is subject to approval does not effect an acceptance. there may be a binding contract of insurance as soon as the company has accepted the application, or on the delivery and acceptance of it by the company's agent, when he has authority to do so. in order to complete the contract before issuing the policy there must be an agreement to this effect, and before the death of the applicant. the receipt by an agent for the first premium, or of a note therefor, subject to the approval of the application by the company, does not effect a contract between insurer and insured. some states have enacted statutes prescribing requirements for life insurance policies, or standard forms. delivery to a third person for the insured may be sufficient. the contract becomes complete when the policy is put in the mail, postage prepaid, for delivery in due course to the insured. delivery to the insured for examination of course does not effect any engagement on the part of the insurer, nor does a delivery on condition. it is often stated that the delivery shall not be effectual to create a contract unless the insured is alive and in good health when the policy is delivered and the first premium is paid. indeed, how could it be valid if the insurer is dead? and if the contract is with a person other than the insured as beneficiary, it would be void on the ground of mistake. likewise, under such a condition, a policy does not become effective, without a waiver, if the insured is in ill health at the time of its delivery or payment of the premium. unless waived by the company, there is usually a stipulation to the effect that the company shall not become bound until the first premium has been actually paid and accepted by the company or its authorized agent. but if the premium is actually paid by the agent of the company for the insured by virtue of an agreement between them, this will bind the company. the payment of the premium by a third person without the knowledge of the insured does not have the same effect. a general agent has authority to waive the stipulation, that the policy shall not take effect until the first premium is paid, though of course he may be restricted in this regard, but a special agent cannot waive this stipulation; though if he acts otherwise and the company ratifies his act, it is bound. a provision also that a policy shall not be valid unless the premium is paid when the insured is in good health may be waived by an agent who has authority to take applications, collect premiums and deliver policies. passing to the nature of the contract, if made in violation of a statute, or if contrary to public policy and this is known by both parties, it is void. thus a stipulation that a policy shall be payable though the insured may be executed for a crime is contrary to public policy and is therefore void. the same is true of a stipulation insuring against death by suicide while sane. it is against public policy to allow one person to have insurance on the life of another without his knowledge. a policy issued on a person beyond a specified age is prohibited by statute. what is the effect of fraud in negotiating and issuing policies? if the company or its agent perpetrates a fraud whereby one is induced to take out a policy, he can at his option declare it void, unless so negligent in acting as to work an acquiescence of it. but if acting in a proper way and time he can set up fraud as a defense in an action to get the premium for which the contract has stipulated; or he may sue to have the policy declared void and his premiums returned to him; or he may bring an action against the company or its agent, or both, to recover the damages he may have sustained by the fraud that has been practiced on him. on the other hand, if the insured has been wronged, the courts furnish relief, and perhaps may set the policy aside. mistake is a common ground of relief; it must in all cases be clearly proved. and if a policy is susceptible of two constructions, the ambiguity is to be resolved in favor of the insured. as the company framed the policy all of its provisions in its favor are strictly construed. it may be added that the construction which the parties themselves have put upon a contract of life insurance will be generally followed in determining their intention. again, the entire contract is to be construed together for the purpose of giving effect to each clause and as between general and specific provisions relating to the same matter the specific provisions control. in determining who is the beneficiary under the terms of a policy of life insurance the courts are governed by the intentions of the parties. they need not be named if they can be otherwise identified, and may be designated in a separate paper prepared for that purpose. the amount named in the policy generally fixes the liability of the company. to obviate the wager feature, the amount of insurance effected for a creditor on the life of his debtor ought to be limited to the amount of the debt with interest and premiums during the expectancy of the life insured. the risk is presumed to begin from the date of the policy and to continue until the happening of the contingency or time when payment is to be made by the insured. it may be added that words or figures written or printed on the margin of a policy of life insurance, on its back, or on a slip, with reference to the terms and conditions of the contract, constitute a part of it and must be considered in deciding its meaning. but representations made in a prospectus or circular issued by a life insurance company are no part of a contract. the payment of premiums to a general agent without notice of any limitation of his authority to receive payments will bind the company, but a different rule applies to a special agent. the premiums may be paid by the insured, or the beneficiary, or by the agent of the company whenever he has agreed to pay them for the insuring party. a discount allowed by the company for the punctual payment of premiums belongs not to the agent, but to the insured. cash is usually paid, though other arrangements also exist for taking notes, that are ultimately paid in cash or from the earnings of the company, and belong to the insured and would be paid to him. in mutual life insurance companies a portion of the premium is often paid in this manner. a policy of life insurance payable to the insured, or in the event of his death to his personal representatives, may be assigned unless forbidden by statute, therefore a policy payable to the wife of the insured, or another may be assigned by the united act of the insured and the beneficiary. thus a policy taken out for a wife's benefit is often assigned by her and her husband to his creditors to secure their debts. in some states statutes forbid the assignment of such policies for the benefit of creditors. the written assignment must be delivered to the assignee to be effective. on some occasions assignments have been declared valid where the intention was clearly proved though both the written assignment and the policy remained in the possession of the assignor. an assignee who holds a policy as security is entitled on its payment only to the amount of his claim and advances with interest, including premiums paid to keep the policy alive and thus preserve his security. more generally premiums paid for this purpose are chargeable on the proceeds of the insurance, but a mere volunteer who pays the premiums acquires no lien on the proceeds of the policy when it is paid. nor can one who ought to pay the premiums give a lien on the policy to another for money advanced by him to pay them; and an assignee who has promised to pay the premiums may be liable should he fail to keep the policy alive. contracts of reinsurance are often made by all insurance companies. in some states the reinsuring company becomes liable to an action by the beneficiary named in the original policy. where the reinsuring company, by agreement, undertakes to reinsure the members of the other company should they execute applications for that purpose, any member who does this is not required to be reexamined or comply with other conditions respecting his age or health. a policy may be canceled or surrendered by mutual agreement. after the death of the insured the rights of the parties become fixed, and there can be no cancellation. during his lifetime the insured may abandon his contract by refusing to pay the premiums, but an intention to abandon will not be presumed, nor will the taking out of a second policy before his failure to pay the premiums on the other establish an abandonment. if both parties treat the contract as void, neither can revive it without the consent of the other. as the beneficiary has a vested or definite interest in the contract, the insured cannot, by surrendering the policy, cut off the rights of the beneficiary without his or her consent unless permitted to do so by the contract itself. a surrender or cancellation of a policy may be avoided on the ground of mutual mistake. but the insured cannot seek cancellation on the ground that he thought it was something else when his mistake was simply his own in not reading the release. a policy may be rescinded whenever fraud has been practiced by either party. thus, should a greater premium be demanded than that stated in the contract this would be a good reason for rescinding on the part of the part of the insured. likewise, if he was induced to take out the insurance by the fraud of the company or its agent, unless he has lost his right to rescind through inaction or negligence. likewise, the company may rescind for fraud practiced by the insured by misrepresentation or other fraudulent acts concerning his age, health, etc. concealment of facts may and often does operate as a fraud on the company. says justice mcclain: "if the applicant has answered the questions asked in the application he is justified in assuming that no other information is desired. on the other hand if he wholly fails to answer questions the company waives information as to matters thus asked for by accepting the application without objection. if, however, the applicant purports to answer a question by giving only an incomplete answer, concealing facts which should properly be stated in response to the question, and these concealed facts are material, the policy is voidable." if a material change for the worse in the health of the applicant takes place after the application and medical examination, it is the duty of the applicant to disclose it. the failure to disclose facts of which the applicant is ignorant, or which are immaterial to the risk, is not ground for avoiding the policy. when a policy is surrendered or canceled by the contract or by statute, the insured may be entitled to the surrender value of his policy. the amount is to be determined by the period for which the policy has to run, the amount of the annual premium, the age of the insured, and the probability of the continuance of his life stated in the usual life tables. the value of an immatured paid-up policy is the unearned premium called the reserve and is to be computed in the same manner as that of a policy on which annual premiums are paid. the beneficiary is entitled to the surrender value as against the insured, as well as the creditors, unless the beneficiary has consented to giving them the preference. by a clause in the contract of insurance or by statute, the insured can convert his policy into a paid-up policy for such an amount as the premiums would have secured. these conversions often happen where the insured is unable or unwilling to continue to pay the premiums required to maintain the policy. formerly on the failure of the insured to pay, policies lapsed or were forfeited, and the insurance companies gained large sums from this source. this led to legislation and to the creation of paid-up policies. these are issued on somewhat different terms, but the principle in all of them is the same. =minor.=--the contracts of a minor are of two kinds, those for necessaries and other things. contracts for necessaries made by him the law will uphold. they are really implied contracts which the law will sustain for his benefit and protection. what are necessaries is a question of fact, not always easily answered. much depends on a minor's place in society and condition. the question is for a jury to decide, also whether the prices for them are reasonable or not. one of the well-known cases occurred many years ago. the bill against the minor was for more than a thousand dollars for twelve coats, seventeen vests, twenty-three pairs of trousers, five canes, fur caps, chip hats and other things, in less than six months. the jury rendered a verdict for almost the entire amount, but the reviewing court remarked that the bill made the members shudder, that the seller must have known that all these things were not needed for the minor's comfort within that short period, and the verdict was therefore set aside. the question is constantly arising, what are necessaries? a thing might be to one and not to another. thus a bicycle merely for pleasure would not be a necessity; one that is used to go to and from an individual's daily work would be. a dentist's bill for repairing one's teeth has been disputed, the law, though, generally favors the preservation of human teeth. education furnished to a minor may be a necessary thing, yet only when it is suitable to his wants and condition. should a minor repudiate a contract, the law is observed if he restores all that he has received, or that is capable of restoration. with respect to contracts for other things, they are not always void, but may be avoided. if they have not been executed, he can disavow them at any time. if nothing is done during infancy inaction operates generally as an affirmation. if he disaffirms a contract, he must return the thing purchased or received, or make the best restitution he can, for it would not be just to retain possession and refuse payment. a different rule applies to a minor who makes a fraudulent contract. suppose he buys goods assuring the seller that he is twenty-one years of age when in fact he is not, though nearly so. can the seller recover on his contract? no, but the law has another way of reaching him. he is liable in an action of deceit, and the amount or damage that may be recovered is that of the goods sold to him. a minor who has a parent or guardian cannot make a contract even for necessaries, nor is he under any obligation to pay his bills for them. should he be in need of such things and his guardian or parent be unwilling to furnish them, they can be compelled by law if having the means to provide him with whatever he requires. =mortgage.=--two kinds of mortgages are given, one kind is secured by real estate, the other kind by personal property. in both the borrower of money pledges his property as security while the money remains unpaid. during this period he usually remains in possession and control of the property, though not always. the borrower is called the mortgagor, the lender the mortgagee. the contract is in writing sealed, is in fact a deed. sometimes the contract is in two writings, the conveyance of the land and security in one, and the conditions or defeasance on which the conveyance is made in another. it is more usual, however, to set forth the transaction in a single writing or conveyance. a mortgage may be so made as to cover future advances, but it will not cover them in preference to advances or loans made by another without any knowledge of them. nor need another person who makes such a loan inquire whether a mortgagor has made any other loan, or for a larger amount than that stated on the public record, where the mortgage deed is recorded. for, it should be added, a mortgage deed is recorded like any other for the benefit of all parties, not only to secure the mortgagee from a later purchaser who might buy if knowing nothing of the prior mortgage, but from another who might be willing to lend on such security like himself; or from a creditor of the mortgagor who might attach the property as belonging to him, if he did not know of the existence of the mortgage. as the record is public, and may be examined by everyone, all who are interested in the property are supposed to examine it and thus find out whether it has been mortgaged, and if it has been, the conditions of the mortgage, and if they do not, their neglect is their own. improvements, additions of every kind to property after it has been mortgaged, become a part of it, and if the mortgagee takes future possession, they pass to him. but a difficult question arises sometimes, what additions or improvements are included? we have learned what they are whenever a tenancy relation exists. the law does not favor a mortgagor to the same extent. the test to apply is that of intention. if a mill has been mortgaged, the rule is very broad and the mortgage covers machinery attached by bolts and screws though removable without injury to the premises. if a mortgage has been given, by no evidence can it be shown that the deed was intended as an absolute or entire conveyance of the property. on the other hand by proper evidence it can be shown that an absolute conveyance was intended to be only a mortgage. this has been often done. one may ask, why does the rule not work both ways? there is a much stronger probability of making a mistake in the second case than in the other. one of the facts of great importance in such a dispute is the amount of the consideration or money paid. suppose a piece of land was worth $ and the deed mentioned only $ , unless there was some other explanation, there would be a strong probability that the parties intended only a mortgage which for some reason or other was not completed. again, it is a rule of law that an agreement which is in fact a mortgage cannot be changed in character by any other agreement made at the time between the parties relating to the repayment of the money and the return of the property. the law presumes that the entire transaction was embodied in the agreement. "once a mortgage always a mortgage." of course this rule does not prevent the parties from making any later arrangement they please about the property. a mortgage may be made with a power of sale whereby, should the debt be not paid at the time fixed, a valid title may be acquired by a purchase from the mortgagee. the mortgagee thus becomes a kind of trustee or agent for the debtor. this is a great responsibility to repose in the mortgagee, and he must perform the trust in good faith in every respect. he must proceed in a way that will best serve the interest of the mortgagor, and strictly observe the terms stated in the mortgage, otherwise the sale will not be valid and the mortgagor can recover his property. if there is a surplus after satisfying the mortgage debt it must be paid to the mortgagor, or, if he is dead, to his heir. such deeds of trust are made by large corporations to secure loans, and may be made to secure future advances as well as present ones. if the property is sold to satisfy the mortgage debt, the mortgagee cannot purchase it, unless authorized by statute, or by the terms of the mortgage; but if it is sold by an officer of the law, the mortgagee is as free to purchase it as any other individual. this rule, though, is denied by some courts, which hold he cannot because the officer is acting as the mortgagee's agent. a vendor or seller of property, may have for the money he is to receive a lien, which is nearly the same thing as a mortgage. a subsequent purchaser would be affected by this lien, however innocent he might be of its existence. but if the purchaser should mortgage the property to a third person, who should put his deed on record, he would gain a valid lien over the vendor. this lien is founded on the idea that the vendor holds the land in trust for the purchaser until he has paid for it, but is not recognized in every state. it is reasonable to suppose that the owner will not sell his land until he has been paid, or the purchase money has been secured. the lien will also prevail against any assignment that the vendor may make for the benefit of creditors, provided he enforces his lien before the assignee begins to execute his trust. much has been said about the notice of the vendor's lien. any reasonable notice will suffice, but what is such a notice to charge, for example, a second purchaser with knowledge? payment of a part of the money is held to be knowledge of the lien. again, a vendee who has paid any part of the purchase money before the delivery of the deed to him has a lien for the amount advanced. a third party who pays the purchase money to the vendor for the purchaser and takes a note for the amount does not have such a lien. the mortgagor in most states is regarded as the real owner and remains in possession; and the mortgagee has a lien, or security for his advance of money or whatever it may be. the mortgagor may sell his land at any time subject to the mortgage, in other words he cannot by any sale impair the mortgagee's security. on the other hand, the mortgagee can transfer, sell or assign his mortgage to another, and this is often done. both parties may insure the premises though the mortgagee cannot exceed his debt. if they are destroyed by fire, the mortgagor cannot claim to have the insurance applied in liquidation of the mortgage debt. the mortgagee, therefore, can first collect the insurance money and then proceed to collect the debt that is due to him from the mortgagor. if the sums collected from the two sources exceed the amount advanced to the mortgagor that is only the mortgagee's affair. but if he insures the property at the mortgagor's request or at his expense, then the mortgagor would have the benefit of the insurance. frequently several mortgages are made of the same property. the one that is the first recorded has the first lien, the one recorded next the second lien, and so on. and if the property is subsequently sold to pay the mortgage, the first mortgagee has the first claim to the money received, the second mortgagee next and so on. if there is not enough to pay all, the last mortgagee is the first to be cut off, or to receive less than the full amount due to him. if a testator devises mortgaged land, is the devisee or person who receives the land also entitled to the money due from the mortgagor? generally, but not everywhere. a bequest of money securities includes a note secured by mortgage. the mortgagor's interest in the land on his death, if leaving no will directing who shall take it, goes to his heirs, and not to his executor or administrator like other personal property. of course, if there were no other property that could be used to pay his debts, if he had any, it could be claimed and taken by his creditors for that purpose. the mortgage usually states a time for paying the debt, and if the terms are not observed, the mortgagee may proceed to take the property. this he cannot do in an arbitrary way, except in the case of mortgages in which the mortgagee is entrusted with power to sell the property and apply the money in payment of the debt. in other cases the mortgagee must apply to the court to fix a time for the sale of the property, if the mortgagor fails to make payment. the courts usually give the mortgagor a period of several weeks or months to pay, and if payment is not made at the end of this period, the land is sold by an officer of the court, who conveys the title to the new purchaser, and if there is any surplus left after satisfying the mortgage, this is returned to the mortgagor. if there is a deficit, he is still liable therefor. any person who is interested in a mortgaged estate has the right to redeem it; heirs, devisees, creditors. on the death of a mortgagor his heirs may call his executor or administrator to pay the mortgage out of the personal estate if there is any, and not from the sale of real estate, because it was given, so the law presumes, for the benefit of the personal estate belonging to the mortgagor. or, if the land has been given to a devisee, he can require the executor or administrator to pay the mortgage. again, if two persons are jointly liable for the debt, and one of them pays it, he may call on the other to contribute his portion. see _chattel mortgage_. =negotiable paper.=--by negotiable paper is meant paper that can be sold and transferred. the law on this subject is now regulated by a statute that is nearly uniform in almost all the states of the union. the courts are constantly applying it, and in doing so are putting their meaning or interpretation on the words of the statute. thus far they have looked with quite similar eyes, and no serious differences have arisen. the statute declares that a promissory note must be in writing and signed by the maker or drawer; that it must contain an unconditional promise or order to pay a certain sum of money on demand, or at a fixed future time to order or to bearer. and if the note is addressed to a drawee he must be named or indicated with reasonable certainty. a note may be written payable with interest or by stated installments, or with exchange, or with costs of collection, or an attorney's fee in case payment shall not be made at maturity. an unqualified order or promise to pay is unconditional within the meaning of the law even though it indicates a particular fund from which it is to be paid, or a statement of the transaction on which the note is based. thus the indorsement of the words "per contract" on the back of a note written at the time of its execution does not affect its negotiability. a note payable at a fixed future time may be at a fixed period after date or sight, or on or before a fixed future time specified therein, or on or at a fixed period after the occurrence of a specified event which is certain to happen, though the time of happening be uncertain. a note that is payable on a contingency is not negotiable, and the happening of the event does not cure the defect. likewise a note which contains an order or promise to do any act in addition to the payment of money is not negotiable. to this rule, though, are some exceptions. thus a note may be negotiable that authorizes the sale of collateral securities that have been delivered to the holder if the note is not paid at maturity. but a note stating that the title to property for which it is given shall remain in the payee, and that he shall have the right to declare the money due and take possession of the property whenever he may deem himself insecure "even before the maturity of the note," is not negotiable. again, the validity and negotiable character of a note is not affected by the fact that it is not dated, or does not specify the value given or the place where it is drawn, or the place where it is payable, or bears a seal, or designates a particular kind of current money in which payment is to be made. furthermore, a note is payable on demand when it is thus stated, or is payable at sight or on presentation. also an overdue note accepted or indorsed is regarded as payable on demand, so far as the maker is concerned. a note may be drawn payable to the order of a specified person, or to him or his order, or it may be drawn payable to the order of a payee who is not the maker, drawer or drawee, or it may be drawn payable to the order of the drawer or maker, or to the drawee, or to two or more payees jointly, or to one or some of several payees, or to the holder of an office for the time being. again, a note is payable to the bearer when it is thus expressed, or to a person named therein or bearer, or when it is payable to the order of a fictitious or non-existing person, and the fact is known to the person making it so payable, or when the name of the payee does not purport to be the name of any person, or when the only or last indorsement is an indorsement in blank. on one occasion funds were deposited in a bank in the name of a federal disbursing agent under treasury regulations that "any check drawn by a disbursing office upon moneys thus deposited must be in favor of the party by name to whom payment is to be made and payable to order." the disbursing officer fraudulently drew checks payable to fictitious payees and cashed them under forged indorsements of the fictitious payees' name. the court held that the checks were not payable to bearer and that the bank was not protected in paying them. a note is not invalid for the reason only that it is ante dated or post dated, provided this is not done for an illegal or fraudulent purpose. the person to whom it is delivered acquires the title from the date of delivery. if a note expressed to be payable at a fixed period after the date is issued undated, or the acceptance of such a note is ante dated, the holder may insert the true date of issue or acceptance. nor does the insertion of the wrong date avoid the note in the hands of a regular subsequent holder. more generally, when a note is wanting in any particular material, the holder or possessor has the authority to complete it by filling up the blanks. this authority extends to every incomplete feature of the note and may be used for inserting the date, amount, name of the payee, and time and place of payment. when authority is conferred on another to fill blanks it must be strictly followed. if a note is drawn payable with interest at the rate of __ per cent, it draws interest at the legal rate, although the blank is not filled. the presumption that a note was completed before it was signed and not afterwards does not arise in a note written in several inks and by different hands. and the purchaser of a note with an unfilled blank is put on inquiry respecting the authority of a person entrusted with an incomplete note. thus a signed blank forms of notes and left them with his attorney, but with no authority to complete and issue them until instructed. the attorney filled them up without further instructions and issued them to a person who knew they had been signed, that the attorney had a power of attorney to act for a, but did not attempt to read or otherwise ascertain its terms. a was not prevented from denying the validity of the notes. in another case a person who signed a number of notes in blank as to date, payee and amount, and left them in his desk in his office, whence they were stolen, filled in and indorsed to b for value before maturity and without notice of any defects, was nevertheless not liable on them. when therefore an incomplete instrument has not been delivered it cannot be completed and negotiated without authority, and if it is, it is not a valid contract in the hands of any holder as against the person whose signature was placed thereon before delivery. every contract on a negotiable note is incomplete and revocable until its delivery. as between the immediate parties, and also a remote party other than a holder in due course, the delivery, in order to be effectual, must be made either by the authority of the party making, drawing, accepting or indorsing as the case may be. the delivery may be shown to have been conditional, or for a special purpose only, and not for the purpose of transferring the property of the note. but where the note is in the hands of a holder in due course, a valid delivery thereof by all parties prior to him is conclusively presumed. when the language of a note is ambiguous the following rules of construction are applied: (a) if there is a discrepancy between the words and figures in expressing the amount, the words control, if the words are ambiguous or uncertain, reference may be had to the figures to fix the amount; (b) if the note provides for paying interest without specifying the date from which it is to run, the interest runs from the date of the note, if this is undated, from the issue of it; (c) if not dated a note will be considered as dated from the time of issue; (d) if there is a conflict between the written and printed provisions, the former will prevail; (e) if it is doubtful whether the instrument is a bill or note, the holder may elect which it shall be; (f) it is not clear in what capacity the person making the note intended to sign he is to be deemed an indorser; (g) when a note containing the words "i promise to pay" is signed by two or more persons, they are deemed to be jointly and severally liable thereon. the signature of any party may be made by a duly authorized agent. no particular form of appointment is necessary for this purpose, and the authority of the agent may be established as in other cases of agency. if, however, one signs as agent without disclosing his principal, he is personally liable. thus, a husband signed a note in his own name without adding more. as he had disclosed no principal, he was personally bound, and his wife, for whom he claimed to have signed the note, was not liable. the maker of a note added to his signature, "pastor of st. frances' church." this was regarded as his personal note, all besides his name were words merely of description. a person signed a note thus: "estate of william r. clark by william r. clark, jr., trustee." as he was not authorized to borrow on behalf of the trust and give a note as trustee, he was individually liable notwithstanding the form of the note. where the signature is forged or made without the authority of the person whose signature it purports to be it is wholly inoperative. thus a cashed a number of drafts and checks payable to b's order on a forged indorsement of b's name by b's bookkeeper, who appropriated the money to his own use. nevertheless, b recovered the amount of the drafts and checks from a, nor was his negligence in not examining the bookkeeper's books or accounts a good defense. in another case before a note was delivered to and accepted by the payee, a, whose name appeared on the back, was shown the note who said, "everything is all right." afterward he resisted payment on the ground of forgery. as the payee was induced to take the note on a's statement of its genuineness, he could not escape payment. every negotiable note is deemed to have been issued for a valuable consideration, and every person, whose signature appears thereon, to have become a party for the value. an accommodation party is one who has signed the note as maker, drawee, acceptor or indorser without receiving value therefor, and for the purpose of lending his name to some other person. such a person is liable on the note to a holder for value, though the latter knew he was only an accommodation party. what is meant by negotiating a note? by transferring it in a way whereby the transferee becomes the holder or owner. if payable to bearer it is negotiated by delivery; if payable to order it is negotiated by indorsement and delivery. an indorsement may be either special or in blank; and it may also be either restrictive, or qualified, or conditional. a special indorsement specifies the person to whom, or to whose order the note is payable. an indorsement in blank specifies no indorsee, and a note thus indorsed is payable to bearer and may be negotiated by delivery. the holder may convert a blank indorsement into a special one by writing over the signature of the indorser in blank any contract consistent with the character of the indorsement. by a qualified indorsement the indorser becomes a mere assignor of the note, and is made so by adding to his signature the words "without recourse," or others of similar import. such an indorsement does not impair the negotiable character of the note. when a note is payable to the order of two or more payees or indorsers who are not partners, all must indorse unless the one indorsing has authority to indorse for the others. again, where a note is drawn or indorsed to a person as cashier or other fiscal officer of a bank or corporation of which he is the officer, it may be negotiated by either the indorsement of the bank or corporation or by the indorsement of the officer. and where the name of a payee or indorser is wrongly designated or misspelled he may indorse the note as therein described, adding, if he thinks fit, his proper signature. the holder may at any time strike out any indorsement which is not necessary to the title. when this is done, he and all subsequent indorsers are thereby relieved from liability on the note. the holder of a negotiable note may sue thereon in his own name; and payment to him in due course discharges it. who is a holder in due course? one who holds a note on the following conditions: (a) that it is complete and regular on its face; (b) that he became the holder before it was overdue and without notice that it had been dishonored; (c) that he took it in good faith and for value; (d) that at the time of its negotiation to him he had no notice of any infirmity in the note or defect in the title of the person negotiating it. a note therefore, providing that any delinquency in the payment of interest "shall cause the whole note to immediately become due and collectable" is made overdue by the maker's failure to pay the interest when due, and a subsequent taker cannot be a holder in due course. to constitute notice of an infirmity in a note or defect in the title of the person negotiating it, the person to whom it is negotiated must have had such actual knowledge of the infirmity or defect that his action in taking the note amounted to bad faith, but merely suspicious circumstances are not enough to put a prudent man on inquiry. on the other hand if the purchaser does suspect and fails to investigate, lest a defense be disclosed to the maker of the note, he is not a purchaser in good faith. the maker of a note engages that he will pay it according to its terms and admits the signature of the payee and his capacity to indorse, and engages that on due presentation the draft will be accepted or paid or both, according to its terms, and that if it is dishonored, and the needful proceedings in consequence are taken, he will pay the amount. a person placing his signature on a note otherwise than as maker, drawer or acceptor is deemed to be an indorser unless he clearly indicates his intention to be bound in some other way. the negotiable instruments act fixes the liability of a person who is not a party to a note, and who indorses it before delivery. the law was in great confusion before this act established a definite rule. such a person is now liable as indorser in accordance with the following rules: (a) if the note is payable to the order of a third person, he is liable to the payee and to all subsequent parties; (b) if payable to the order of the maker or drawer, or if payable to bearer he is liable to all parties subsequent to the maker or drawer; (c) if he signs for the accommodation of the payee he is liable to all parties subsequent to the payee. presentment for payment is not necessary in order to charge the person primarily liable on a note, but if it is payable at a mentioned place and he is able and willing to pay it there at maturity, such action is equivalent to a tender of payment on his part. presentment for payment, of course, is needful to charge the drawee and indorsers. when the note is not payable on demand, presentment must be made on the day it falls due. when it is payable on demand, presentment must be made within a reasonable time after its issue. this rule does not apply to all bills of exchange. thus unreasonable delay in presenting a check will discharge the indorser whether such delay is a cause of loss to him or not. likewise a certificate of deposit payable on demand must be presented for payment within a reasonable time after its issue in order to hold the indorser. "the usage of trade or business includes the usage of banks relating to presentment of checks for payment. it is sufficient diligence to charge an indorser if a check on the bank in another place is forwarded through various banks for collection in accordance with the regular usage of the business, although presentment might have been more promptly made if a more direct course had been taken." presentment for payment must be made by the holder or by some person authorized by him to receive payment, at a reasonable hour on a business day and at a defined place, and to the person primarily liable thereon. and if he is absent or inaccessible then to any person who is at the place where presentment is made. if a note is payable at a bank the payor has until the close of banking hours to pay it, and if, before the close of the bank day, he deposits money enough to pay it a demand earlier in the day is premature. delay for presenting a note for payment is excused where the delay is caused by circumstances beyond the holder's control, and he is in no way negligent. nor need presentment for payment be made when after using reasonable diligence it cannot be made, or where the drawee of a bill is a fictitious person, and lastly where presentment, express or implied, has been waived. every negotiable note is payable at the time fixed therein. when the day of maturity falls on sunday or a holiday, the note is payable on the next succeeding business day. notes falling due on saturday are to be presented for payment on the next succeeding business day, except that notes payable on demand may, at the option of the holder, be presented for payment before twelve o'clock noon on saturday when that entire day is not a holiday. when the note is payable at a fixed period after the date, after sight, or after the happening of a specified event, the time of payment is determined by excluding the day from which the time is to begin to run, and includes the date of payment. and where a note is made payable at a bank it is equivalent to an order to the bank to pay it for the account of the principal debtor thereon. in accordance with the notation on the margin of a note the holder sent it for collection to a bank which held, as a special deposit, the maker's money. the cashier at maturity notified the maker who directed the cashier to pay the note. the cashier said "all right, your note is paid." the note was regarded as paid. when a negotiable note has been dishonored by non-acceptance or non-payment, notice of dishonor must be given to the drawer and to each indorser, and any drawer or indorser to whom such notice is not given is discharged. a written notice need not be signed and an insufficient notice may be supplemented by verbal communication. nor does misdescription of the note vitiate the notice unless the party to whom the notice is given is in fact misled thereby. the notice may be in writing or merely oral, and may be given in any terms which sufficiently identify the note and indicate that it has been dishonored by non-acceptance or non-payment. it may be delivered personally or through the mails. where the parties to be notified are partners, notice to any one of them is notice to all even though there has been a dissolution. but notice to joint parties who are not partners must be given to each of them, unless one of them has authority to receive the notice for the others. when the person giving, and the person who is to receive notice reside in the same place, it must be given within the following times: (a) if given at the place of business of the person who is to receive notice this must be done before the close of the business hours on the day; (b) if given at his residence it must be given before the usual hours of rest on the day following; (c) if sent by mail it must be deposited in the post office in time to reach him in usual course on the day following. if the parties reside in different places the notice must be sent within the following times: (a) if sent by mail it must be deposited in the post office in time to go by mail the day following the day of dishonor, or if there be no mail at a convenient hour on that day by the next mail thereafter; (b) if given otherwise than through the post office then within the time notice would have been received in due course of mail if it had been deposited in the post office had it been deposited in the post office as above described. if a party had added an address to his signature the notice must be sent to that address, if he has not, then the notice must be sent as follows: (a) either to the post office nearest to his place of residence or to the post office where he is accustomed to receive his letters, or if he lives in one place and has his place of business in another, notice may be sent to either place, or if sojourning in another place, the notice may be sent there. in any event if he receives the notice within the time specified, it will satisfy the law. of course notice may be waived; sometimes, also, it is quite impossible to give notice; whenever this happens the law does not require notice to be given. something should be added concerning alterations that are made occasionally in negotiable instruments. any alteration which changes the date, the sum payable either of principal or interest, the time or place of payment, the number or the relations of the parties, the medium or currency in which payment is to be made, or which adds a place of payment where no place of payment is specified, or any other change or addition which alters the effect of the instrument in any respect is a material one and ought not to be made. to add the words "with interest," with or without a fixed rate, is a material alteration. but the insertion by the payee of the words "interest" after the making of a note by authority of maker will not vitiate it. and if a note had the clause, "interest at __ per cent," the insertion of the legal rate would not be a material alteration since the legal import would not be changed. the position of a writing on a note is not important, for the effect of the contract is to be gathered from the four corners of the paper. the general rule is, if a memorandum written on an instrument in the margin or at the foot is made before or at the time of its execution, it is considered a part thereof, and if it affects the operation of the terms of the body of the instrument it is a material part. it follows that words written by a party on the margin of an instrument after its execution and delivery, constitute an alteration if intended to affect the terms of the instrument and would have such effect if they were there when the instrument was executed. a bill of exchange is an unconditional order in writing addressed by one person to another, signed by the person giving it, requiring the person to whom it is addressed to pay on demand or at a fixed determinable future time a certain sum of money to order or bearer. a bill of itself does not operate as an assignment of the funds in the hands of the drawee available for its payment, nor is the drawee liable on a bill until he accepts or agrees to pay it. an inland bill is one drawn and payable within a state. any other is a foreign bill. an indorsed promissory note and an accepted bill are very much the same thing, and that is why the law always treats of both together. the maker of a note incurs the same obligations as the acceptor of a bill, both are the parties primarily liable thereon, and the indorser of a note and the drawer of a note are both secondarily liable on proper notification of the failure of the primary parties to pay, as we have learned. the payees in both cases are the same. the acceptance of a bill is the signifying by the drawee that he has assented to the drawer's order, and must be in writing. an unconditional promise in writing to accept a bill before it is drawn is deemed an actual acceptance in favor of every person who on the faith thereof receives the bill for value. the drawee is allowed twenty-four hours after presentment to decide whether or not he will accept the bill; but the acceptance, if given, dates from the day of presentation. furthermore, an acceptance may be qualified as to time, acceptance of payment in part only and in other ways. when a foreign bill is not accepted it must be protested, which must specify the time and place of presentment, and other particulars, and is usually made by a notary public, though this can be done by other persons. =parent and child.=--a parent is legally as well as morally bound to support his children who are incapable to care for themselves. should a wife be divorced from her husband his duty to maintain the children would not fall on her, unless she also had the custody of them. a father's obligation to maintain his child continues until he is able to provide for himself. the legal obligation ceases by common law as soon as a child attains majority, however helpless he may be or great may be his father's wealth. a child that has property of his own, while his father's means are not enough, may be supported from his own means. even the principal may be used in this manner. generally if the father has ample means, he must use them to educate his child. when the father can use the child's fortune and how much, is sometimes a difficult question to answer. the education of a child is now largely regulated by statute. a parent may protect his child, even a homicide is justifiable. a parent can also correct his child. says an excellent authority: "the rights of parents result from their duties. as they are bound to maintain and educate their children, the law has given them such authority, and, in support of that authority, a right to the exercise of such discipline as may be requisite to the discharge of the sacred trust." see _adopted child_; _husband and wife_. =partnership.=--there may be a partnership in a single transaction, for example, to buy and sell a load of potatoes. persons may be liable as partners to others who had no intention of creating that relation. if a acts in such a way by speech or deeds as to create the belief in b that he is a partner, and thus believing b sells goods to the partnership, a is liable as a partner for them. on the other hand if b knew that a was not a partner, he could not hold him as one. in many cases it is difficult to determine whether one is a partner or not. many tests have been applied. the most general is that of intention. simply sharing in the profits and losses will not always suffice. this was long considered a proper test but it broke down after many applications. thus, suppose a clerk is paid by giving him a fixed percentage of the profits as a compensation, is he a partner? he was so regarded on one occasion, and the firm having failed he was made liable for all its debts. that is one of the consequences attending the relation, every partner is liable for the entire indebtedness of the amount he may have contributed. the clerk contributed nothing, nevertheless he was liable like the others. today the courts would decide such a case differently. it would inquire whether the partners intended to make him a partner, or only gave him a share of the profits as a mode of paying him for his service. the recent partnership act contains this test. a partnership may usually hold any kind of property, real and personal, and not infrequently is formed to cultivate or deal in land. a partner is a general agent. hence the risk of creating the relation. being a general agent he can bind his partnership for any acts within the scope of his authority. yet there are limitations. if a partnership was engaged in selling dry goods, a partner could hardly bind his partners by making a contract with a person for a quantity of iron, unless it was needed in rebuilding the store, or in some other connection with the business. he can make and indorse negotiable paper that is used in connection with the business. suppose he borrows money on his own note and he gives the money to his firm, is it responsible for the amount? this has proved a hard question for the courts. if the money though loaned on his note was for the benefit of the partnership, and it was known at the time that it was to be used in that way, the partnership would be liable; but if the money was to be used by the borrower and this was known and believed by the lender he could look only to the borrower for payment. the receiving of a new member constitutes a new partnership. it may reorganize the old partnership and become responsible for its debts, or it may not. unless recognized in some way by paying interest on them and the like, the new member does not become responsible for them. a partnership is formed usually by a definite agreement that is put in writing. yet it may be simply an oral agreement with very general terms about the contribution of capital or skill of the respective partners and their division of profits. they may and usually do have distinct fields of employment, each doing the thing for which he is, or supposed to be, best prepared. by reason of their general liability, in the olden days persons who wished to thus engage and yet not be responsible, were kept in the background, and were known as secret and dormant partners. if found out they were liable because they were to share in the profits. the fact that they were unknown when credit was given to the partnership at the time of selling goods to the concern did not shield them from liability after the discovery of their relation. the difficulty has since been removed in two ways, by incorporating the partners into a corporation whose powers and liabilities are fixed by law and therefore known to all, and by forming limited liability partnerships. these consist of two or more general partners, also special partners who contribute an amount of capital, of which the public is publicly informed. if such an association is unsuccessful, the special partners may indeed lose all, or a part of the capital they have contributed, but are liable for no more. this is a great improvement over the secret and dormant methods of getting the capital needed for partnership purposes. one of the matters that should be carefully guarded in forming a limited liability partnership is to contribute the full amount of capital advertised. if any deception is practiced, or mistake made, whereby a smaller amount is contributed, should the partnership not succeed, the special partners become liable as general partners for the full amount. once such a partnership was formed with three special partners who contributed each $ , , and at the end of two years were told that their profits individually were $ , . each was asked to contribute $ , more, and feeling happy over his venture, he put in $ , more, which, added to his profits, made up the required amount. when the concern failed a few years afterwards the books showed that neither special partner was ever entitled to $ , as profits. though innocent, for they had never examined the books, they were held as general partners for the entire indebtedness of the concern. an illegal contract made by a partner will not bind his partnership, for all parties are supposed to know the law, and an illegal bargain cannot be enforced, for example, an agreement to pay usurious interest. how may a partnership be dissolved? unless the time is fixed by agreement, it may be dissolved by any member whenever he pleases to do so, though he cannot act wantonly to the manifest injury of the others without making himself responsible for their loss. and if a partner should attempt to transfer his interest before the time fixed for ending the relation without good reason, to the manifest injury of the other partners, he can be legally restrained from taking such action. the death of a partner causes a dissolution. nor can executors or administrators succeed to his place, though they often do so for a short period to prevent the interruption of the business and to enable all parties to fare better than they would by its sudden ending. yet it is awkward for these officials to thus act, and in so doing they incur an unpleasant personal responsibility. to relieve them from this some states have passed statutes permitting them to thus act with the other partners under the direction and orders of the court having charge of the estate. a partner who retires should give notice of his retirement to relieve himself from future liability. for, should he neglect, and persons continued to sell on credit to the firm, supposing he was a member, he would be liable as before. the statutes in some states regulate his duty in this regard; it is one that he cannot safely omit. should a partnership fail, the general rule with respect to the assets is the partnership property must be used to pay partnership debts, and the individual property of partners to pay their individual debts. if a partner has anything left after paying his individual debts, it must be devoted to paying the partnership debts. if the partnership has anything left after paying its debts, this belongs to the partners in accordance with their agreement in contributing it and the earnings, and must be devoted to the payment of their individual debts. lastly concerning the authority of a liquidating partner. he can do many things, give renewal notes, make indorsements, collect debts due the partnership, and even revive an outlawed debt. of course the affairs of a partnership may be settled by some other person than a partner; not infrequently a receiver is appointed who acts under the order of the court that appointed him. an agreement between a liquidating partner and the other partners, to take all the property and pay all the debts, is limited in its effect to themselves and does not affect others. after the partnership assets have been transferred to a liquidating partner, or to any other person for liquidation, a debtor who has notice of the transfer is not justified in making a settlement with any one else. and if he should do so, the liquidator could require him to pay again to himself. =patent.=--in the united states the thing patentable is a new and useful art, machine, manufacture or composition of matter, or new and useful improvement thereof, or new, original and ornamental design for an article of manufacture. an idea, principle or law of nature is not patentable, but only the means for utilizing the idea or principle. many a great discovery has slipped away from the inventor or discoverer, because he sought to hold the discovery or invention of the principle as his own, instead of limiting his claim to the means or methods of putting his principle into use. morse's invention of telegraphy is one of them. an art or process is patentable as well as machinery, though the inventor may not know the abstract principles involved in his art. but he must know and describe the steps by which the result is accomplished. a composition of matter is a mechanical mixture or chemical combination of two or more substances; and an improvement is an addition to, or change in, a known art, machine, manufacture or composition of matter, which produces a useful result and is patentable if it amounts to invention. lastly "a patentable design may consist of a new and ornamental shape given to an article of manufacture, or of an ornamentation to be placed upon an article of old shape." it is said that the law relating to this subject intends that the patentability of a design shall be determined by its appeal to the eyes of the ordinary man, and not to the eyes of a jury of artists. design patents are granted for different periods, three years and a half, seven years and fourteen years, as the applicant may elect. the subject matter of a patent must be new and useful. it must be new not only to the patentee, but to all the people in this country, and at the time he filed his invention. the federal law, however, secures a patentee who had no knowledge that his invention had been discovered abroad and which had not been patented there, nor described in a printed publication. before the enactment of this law a patent was not granted without showing that the applicant was the original inventor with relation to every part of the world. much has been said concerning the novelty of an invention. this may be in the use of an old means in a new way; or a change of shape or form to produce new functions and results, but the changes must amount to invention, which is more than mere novelty. a foreign patent in order to invalidate an american patent must antedate the invention patented. a foreign patent exists as a patent only as of the date when the invention was published. in england an invention is not patented within the meaning of the act of congress until the enrollment of the complete specification. what is meant by a prior publication? it is a printed book, newspaper or document of a public nature disclosing the invention intended and actually employed for the purpose of informing the public. publication in a book of general circulation is sufficient; business catalogues or circulars are not such publications as are meant in the law. to defeat a patent on the ground of want of novelty the proof of prior use or knowledge must be convincing, sufficient to establish the fact beyond a reasonable doubt. the recollection of one witness concerning the peculiar construction of a piece of machinery, especially if the structure is one of complex character, is not enough evidence to defeat a patent. much less evidence, however, might be sufficient to prove that a very simple invention had been anticipated. to justify the granting of a patent it must be useful. if the invention be frivolous or pernicious, the inventor cannot secure for it legal protection. the use of the invention must not be contrary to public health or morals. it is not needful that the invention should be the best of its kind, or that it should accomplish all that the inventor claims for it. furthermore, its utility depends on the state of the art at the time of making the claim or issuing the patent; its subsequent inutility does not invalidate the patent. extensive use is evidence of utility. the presumption of law favors a patent, and the burden of proof is on the one attacking it to show that it is not useful. the infringement of an invention is in effect an admission of utility, because use implies utility. a patent also calls for the exercise of inventive power. though invention must be seen in every patent, it is difficult to define. says a former commissioner of patents, justice duell: "it is a matter resting in judgment and therefore no fixed rule for its determination is possible." some principles, however, assist in defining the term. "thus, it is declared that an act of invention is primarily mental and involves the conception or mental construction of a means not previously known for accomplishing a useful result. it is not the mere adaptation of old means by common reasoning, but is the construction of new means through an exercise of the creative faculties of the mind." between invention and discovery the patent laws draw no distinction. again, it has been often said that the design of the patent laws is to reward those who make a substantial invention or discovery, which is an additional step in the useful arts. the law never intended to grant a monopoly for every trifling device which would naturally occur to a skilled mechanic in the ordinary progress of manufacture. an article of manufacture is not patentable because means have been devised to make it more perfectly than before; it must be new in itself and not merely in its workmanship. a machine-made article therefore is not patentable simply because it is thus made, and no longer by hand. the substitution of an art, manufacture, or composition of matter of one element or device for another which does the same thing in the same way and accomplishes a similar result is not invention. even if the substituted part performs the function better, there is no patentable invention unless some new function or result is secured. changes therefore of the relative location of parts without changing the functions performed by them are not an invention, nor is the omission of a part with a corresponding omission of function. a patent can issue only to the inventor, or if he is dead to his executor or administrator. if there be two original inventors the one who first made it or brought it to this country is entitled to a patent. a patent granted on the application of a non-inventor is void. by first inventor is meant the one who first had a mental conception of the invention provided he exercised diligence in perfecting it. if there be a rival claimant the party who first reduced to practice the invention was, until the contrary fact is shown, the first inventor. one who merely utilizes the ideas of others is not an original inventor and is not entitled to a patent. in the united states any person, regardless of residence, citizenship or age may obtain a patent. an invention is reduced to practice when it is so far perfected that it may be put into practical and successful use. the machine may not be perfectly constructed, but it embodies all the essential elements of the invention. demonstration of its success by actual use is usually necessary, but not always. the reduction to practice must be by the applicant for a patent, or by his agent; to do this by a third party will not suffice. the person who first conceived the invention, but was later than his rival in reducing it to practice, is not regarded as the first inventor unless he exercised due diligence to perfect his invention after the time that his rival entered the field against him. two or more parties may contribute in developing an idea and producing an invention, which is truly the result of their joint mental efforts, and not the separate invention of either. in such case both must apply for the patent, which is granted to them jointly. but if a patent is thus issued to two and only one of them is the inventor, the patent is invalid. nor can one of two joint inventors make application and secure the patent on assignment from the other; both must join. the patent must issue on the application of and in the name of the real inventor even though he was employed to make it for the benefit of another. notwithstanding, the employer is the owner of the patent and may compel the patentee to transfer it to him. of course their respective rights may be changed by agreement. if no agreement exists, a company that employs a skilled workman to make improvements on its machinery is not entitled to the patents granted to the workman. says justice duell: "an employee, performing all the duties assigned to him in his department of service, may exercise his inventive faculties in any direction he chooses with the assurance that whatever invention he may thus conceive and perfect is his individual property. the company, however, has an implied license to make, use and sell the invention." where a party employs another to assist him in perfecting an invention the presumption is that the employer is the real inventor of the thing produced by their joint effort. on the other hand, where a person is employed to exercise his inventive skill, because he is known to be the possessor of it, edison for example, the presumption is in favor of the employee. government employees may secure patents on inventions made by them during their employment, after their relationship has ceased. the government may have an implied license to use the invention without any title thereto. patents may be issued and reissued to assignees on the application of inventors. on the death of an inventor before a patent has been issued to him, his executor or administrator may apply therefor, who takes the patent in trust for the heirs. a foreign executor or administrator may make a similar application. he must, however, present a proper certificate of his authority to act. likewise, a legally appointed guardian or conservator of an insane inventor may apply for and obtain a patent in trust for him. the inventor must apply to the commissioner of patents for letters patent which secure to him his invention. the application comprises a petition, specification, claims, oath, drawings if the nature of the invention may be thus shown, and a model, when this is required by the patent office. a fee of fifteen dollars also must be sent with the papers. the application must be signed by the inventor and two witnesses. the specification is the written description of the invention and of the manner and process of making, constructing, compounding, and using the invention; whatever it may be. he must describe not merely the principle of the invention, but the mode of applying it in such a clear, intelligible manner that those who are "skilled in the art" can, without other aid, use the invention. nothing should be left to experiment. the phrase "skilled in the art" means persons of ordinary skill. whether a description is clear, exact and sufficient is a question for the jury whenever it is a matter of legal contention. in describing an improvement the same rule is applied. the description should show clearly the nature of it. the description should distinguish between the old and the new. "a description in a patent for an improvement is sufficient if a practical mechanic acquainted with the construction of the old machine in which the improvement is made, can, with the aid of the patent and diagram, adopt the improvement." if an inventor intentionally conceals facts or misleads the public by an erroneous description, his patent is void. concerning the claim or claims with which the inventor concludes his specification many questions have arisen. first, the claim must be clearly stated so that the public may know what it is. the claim should not be too broad. several claims may be made, but they should not be varying phraseology for the same thing. they should state the physical structure or elements of mechanism by which the end or result is produced. the inventor must make oath that he believes himself to be the original and first inventor, that he does not believe that the thing was ever before known or used, and as to his citizenship. if dead or insane, the oath must be made by his executor, administrator, or other representative. after the application is granted another fee of twenty dollars must be paid. the commissioner of patents must make an examination for the purpose of deciding whether a patent may be granted or allowed. this examination is made by an examiner, whose decision, however, is not conclusive and may be set aside by the commissioner. the patent office is not confined to technical evidence in rejecting applications, but may base its action on anything disclosing the facts relating to the matter. when objection is made to the form of the application, an amendment may be made by the applicant or his attorney to correct the error; and this may be done at any time prior to the entry by the first examiner of a final order of rejection, and within one year from the date of the preceding action by the patent office. when two parties apply for a patent for substantially the same thing an interference is declared and the respective parties must present proofs in support of their claims. the question between them is priority of invention. the proceeding then is much like an equity trial with perhaps a wider latitude in admitting evidence bearing on the inquiry. the applicant, if dissatisfied with the rejection of his claim by the first examiner, or with the decision in an interference case, can appeal to the board of the examiners-in-chief, and if dissatisfied with their decision he may appeal to the commissioner in person, and if still dissatisfied he can appeal to the court of appeals of the district of columbia. all appeals must be taken from the patent office within a year, or a shorter period, if one has been fixed in a decision. the decision of the commissioner of patents in granting a patent is not conclusive that the inventor is the first and original inventor, but only prima facie, that is, in the absence of other evidence to the contrary. consequently, the question of patentability in every case may be reexamined in the courts. in the early days of administering the patent law an inventor often applied to a court for an injunction to prevent an infringer from continuing his work. the court, assuming that the patent had been properly granted, did not hesitate, on adequate proof of the infringement to grant the injunction. the courts were not slow in finding out that patents were sometimes granted that ought not to have been, and so the practice was changed and patentees were required to establish their right to a patent in a court of law before a court would enjoin an infringer, except in very clear cases. these hearings in the courts to decide the claims of patentees, are often prolonged, running through years to collect testimony, and are appealed from one court to another finally reaching the supreme federal tribunal. after a patent is thus judicially established injunctions are readily granted against all infringers. =payment.=--in making payment the parties to an agreement always have in mind cash, unless they otherwise agree. not every kind of money can be used, nor only in limited amounts. thus, if one owed another a thousand dollars he could not deliver to him, unless he were willing to accept them, one thousand silver dollar pieces, but only ten of them. nor can a debtor compel his creditor to receive one cent and five cent pieces to a greater amount than twenty-five cents. national bank notes may be paid or tendered to the government, and by one bank to another, yet they may be refused by an individual in payment of his debt. it is important, when one owes another and there is a dispute over the amount, that the debtor should tender or offer to pay his creditor the proper kind of money, because should he offer him some other kind, national bank notes for example instead of united states notes, or those issued by the federal reserve bank, and he declined to take them and should afterwards sue his debtor for the amount, the latter's offer to pay in national bank notes would be regarded as no payment, or even offer of payment. a note or check given for a bill of goods is not payment. in everyday affairs a check is thus given and received, in fact it is only a payment conditioned on payment of the check. consequently if it is not paid, the creditor can sue to recover on the check, or for the original goods as he might elect. in most cases he would ignore the check and sue for the original bill. suppose some one had endorsed the maker's check, then the creditor would probably sue on that in order to hold both parties. does a debtor who turns over a note to his creditor in payment, thereby cancel the debt? if he does not, of course the creditor can still sue the debtor; but if he turned the note over in actual payment, then his right to sue his debtor is gone. what was the intention of the two parties? this is a question of fact to be ascertained like any other. how shall the money be applied of one who owes several debts to the same person and makes a general payment? the debtor can make the application, if he does not, the creditor can do so; if neither does this, then the law applies it, first to the payment of interest that may be due on any of the debts, and the balance left, should there be any, to the payment of the principal. of several debts the law applies it to the oldest debt. again, if there is a surety for any of the debts, he may insist on the application of the money in order to be relieved. if a depositor in a bank has made a note payable there this is regarded very much like a check, it is a direction to the bank to pay it, especially by the negotiable instruments law. unless the maker of a note is insolvent, a bank can never pay the unmatured note of a depositor. nor can a bank apply a deposit, which is known to be trust money, or belonging to another person than the depositor to the payment of his note. generally a bank declines to pay a note that is overdue though there is no law, except in a few states, against paying it should the bank decide to do so. in all cases a depositor may make any application of his deposit he desires, for it is his own and the bank cannot divert it in any way against his direction. a receipt taken in payment of a debt is not conclusive evidence of payment and may be contradicted by other evidence, though it is regarded on its face as payment. when received, a receipt should be kept for at least six years, because it is such strong evidence of payment. after that period the statutes of limitation in most states have the effect of canceling a debt, on the theory or presumption that it has been paid. if the debtor afterward promises to pay, his new promise is valid though there is no consideration therefor, and he is legally required to pay the debt. should a receipt also contain any other statement or contract beside the payment of money, this would have the same effect as any other contract between the parties, and would be equally binding on them. the effect of a seal after the receiptor's name may be explained in this connection. a sued b and c for a debt. before trial he gave c a receipt stating that if he did not recover from b he would nevertheless not hold c liable. having failed in his suit against b, he sought to hold c notwithstanding his receipt releasing him. and he succeeded for the reason that his release was given without consideration and therefore was worthless. had a added after his name a seal this would have imported or implied a consideration and the receipt would have been an effective release. =prescriptive rights.=--a person may gain rights in the land of another by acting in such a way as to indicate that he clearly makes a claim to them. thus, if a man goes over the land of another in the same direction to his own land for a period of fifteen years or longer, the period differing in the several states, he acquires the right to continue, in other words he acquires a permanent right of way by such action. as such a right is contrary to the interest of another, it cannot be gained against a person who is incapable of preventing the acquisition of such a right if he pleases. such a right, therefore, cannot be gained against a minor, nor an insane person, nor any one who is incapable of defending his possessions. whether the right has been fully acquired is not always easily determined. suppose one claims a right of way over another's land, and the right is disputed. how often has he traveled that way? has the other person known of his going and said nothing? again, suppose a man sells another a piece of his farm away from a road, the law presumes that he intended to grant or permit the buyer to have ingress and egress to his land, otherwise he would not have purchased. this is called a way of necessity. can the purchaser choose any outlet he pleases? the law says he must exercise reasonable discretion in making his selection. when a way has been acquired by such use, the law is strict in confining the gainer in the use of it. thus a buys a piece of land of another for the purpose of erecting a house thereon. the use of the way thereto must be confined to a and his family, friends and those who come to see him on business. suppose a should decide to divide it into building lots, which would require a greatly increased use of the way. this could not be done without a new agreement with the seller. again, a tenant cannot by any use of the land acquire a right therein that will continue beyond his lease. if he had a long lease, say thirty years, and could gain a prescriptive right by an adverse use of fifteen or twenty years, he would, if gaining any prescriptive rights, be obliged to give them up at the end of his tenancy. in claiming a right of way the use need not be exclusive. other persons may also use the way with the same claim of right. the owner of land has no natural right to light or air and cannot complain that either has been cut off by the erection of buildings on adjoining land. he may, however, acquire, by grant or some other way, a right to have light and air enter a particular window, or other place, without interruption by the owner of adjacent land. nor can he acquire a right to light and air across another's land for his own house by simply erecting it on the edge of his own land while the adjoining land is unoccupied. to erect windows on that side is not an adverse use of the land adjoining. but a person may gain a right to light and air by presumption, and if one has acquired the right to maintain a window in a specified place he loses his right by closing it up and opening another of a different size in another place. and the same thing happens to one who tears down his house and builds a new one with windows of the same size and in the same places as in the old one. a person cannot maintain an action against another for cutting off his view unless the right has been expressly acquired. the general rule with respect to the use of water is, any person through whose land flows a stream may use it in a reasonable manner. what is such a use has occasioned many a legal dispute, especially among mill owners. each one of them located on a stream may use the water, but can they hold it back for any length of time? as a general rule this can be done for a short time in order to get the use of the power, if they could not, the water could run to waste and no one would derive any benefit. again, can any diversion be made of it? any use, almost, is a diversion. if one used water even to supply his cattle, it would be a diversion, yet such a use ordinarily is lawful. suppose one had a very large herd, then the use might be excessive especially in view of the needs of other users on the stream. a still more important question has arisen of late concerning the fouling of water. has a factory the right of putting its dyestuffs into the water, impairing its quality and rendering it unfit for use by all below? this cannot be legally done. can a stream be used as a sewer? naturally all the water in a valley flows downward and at last reaches a stream running through it. as population increases the use of streams becomes greater, and questions concerning their use more difficult. suppose a land owner on the hillside wishes to use all the surplus water, can he gather it and thus prevent its flowing to the land below? he can. can he build ditches or other obstructions whereby he can collect the water and pass it to the land below in other than the natural way? he cannot. on the other hand, the lower proprietor can, if he pleases, make an embankment that will prevent the water from coming upon his land. this, though, is not the law everywhere. the owners of a well may prevent its overflow and thereby cut off water that formerly ran into a stream. but the owner of a spring that flows into the land of another cannot change its course, nor exhaust the water, nor pollute it to the injury of another. nor can surface water be changed into a water course by impounding it. on the other hand this rule does not apply to water or springs beneath the surface. if in digging a well the source of supply to another is cut off, it is a loss for which there is no redress, unless the well has been dug maliciously. but where percolating water abounds and is obtained by artesian wells a land owner has no right to sink wells on his land and draw off the water supply of his neighbor. the right to cut ice is a natural one, and the owner of a lake or stream may cut a reasonable quantity, but not enough to diminish the water appreciably to the lower proprietor. while a person has the natural right also to the lateral support of his land, yet he cannot use it to the injury of another. this is a legal maxim. if, therefore, he should excavate to the edge of his land and his neighbor's building should in consequence fall down, would he be without redress? the rule is, the excavation must be made in a reasonable manner. this is a question of fact in every controversy of the kind. the owner of land adjoining a highway has no right to the lateral support of the soil of the street. therefore, if the grade of a street were lowered by proper authority and one's house located by the side of it should fall, he would have no redress against the city or other public body. =quasi contracts.=--a quasi contract is a legal obligation arising without the assent of one from the receipt of a benefit which, if retained, would be unjust. the law therefore compels him to make restitution. he is required to do this, not because he has promised to make restitution, but because he has received a benefit which he cannot justly retain. if one at the time of conferring a benefit on another confers it as a gift, it cannot afterward be claimed that the gift was conferred relying on a supposed contract. consequently, though the donor's intention may be subsequently altered, no obligation to make restitution will arise. nor does the failure of the donee to reciprocate the donor's generosity or indirectly reward him, create any right or claim on the donor's part to a return from the donee. where one, in the preservation of his own property or the promotion of his own interests, bestows some incidental advantage to another, there is no legal obligation to pay for the value of it. thus the owner of the lower part of a house is not liable for the advantage resulting to him from the repair of the roof by the owner of the upper part and roof. nor is one who has thickened and strengthened that part of an ancient party wall which is on his own land, in order to sustain the building he is erecting, entitled to recover from the adjoining owner who used the wall. nor can anything be recovered from the owner of a vessel by the underwriters who had her docked for repairs though by such docking the owner gained an important benefit. nor can one who in pumping out his quarry frees another quarry from water recover anything for the service. nor can one who is benefited by experiments made by another to test the value of patented inventions, in which both are interested, be legally required to pay for the benefit he has received. as no expectation of payment does presumptively arise when services are rendered by one member of a family to another member, one who claims payment for them must prove that they were not rendered as a gratuity, but on the legal supposition that he had a right to compensation. one who knows or who has reason to believe that compensation is expected for goods or services tendered to him ought not to accept them unless he intends to pay for them. if he does his act of acceptance will be regarded as a promise of payment, and can be enforced. but if one accepts goods or services without knowledge or reason to believe that compensation will be expected, what then? suppose a sends a barrel of apples to b supposing, from their previous course of dealing, that b will return them if he does not want them? b should either return them or pay. suppose b is misinformed and learns that a is giving a barrel of apples to each of his customers? then he would be justified in keeping them until he learned the truth. if, in making a contract it is taken for granted by both parties that a certain fact exists, which, if not existing, would make the contract impossible of execution, the contract is void. thus, in contracts for the sale of specific personal property, its existence at the time of the sale is generally assumed. if the property has perished or been destroyed, the contract is void. the same rule has been applied to the sale of non-existent reality, of the transfer of void or spurious securities, of the assignment of a void lease. in all these cases the money paid in misreliance on the void contract is recoverable. premiums paid on a policy of marine insurance by one who in reality had no goods on board, or for a voyage that was never begun, may be recovered. the existence of a risk is assumed by both parties, in fact there is no risk, consequently there was nothing to which the contract of insurance related. "a promise," says woodward, "which is so general or indefinite that it does not enable the courts to determine the nature and extent of the obligation assumed must be regarded as no promise at all. such has been the fate of a promise to pay good wages; a promise to convey a hundred acres of land, the land not being described; a promise to divide profits, no rate of division being indicated. instances might be multiplied. a benefit conferred, in the honest, though mistaken, belief that such a promise is binding ought in justice to be restored. restitution is accordingly enforced." the law requires some kinds of contracts to be executed in a particular manner. thus, by statute, many municipalities can make contracts, or those of a particular kind, only on sealed bids or proposals and after proper advertising for bids, etc. if these things are not done, the contract made in disregard of them is invalid. the courts of this country have got into deep confusion in applying this rule to private corporations. suppose a corporation makes a loan without proper authority and receives the money, can the lender recover it? the corporation had no right to borrow, of this the lender knew as well as the borrower. both parties are in the wrong. the highest court in this country has been more consistent than many of the state courts, and holds that a contract it cannot make for lack of legal power is not made and cannot be ratified. "no performance on either side can give the unlawful contract any validity, or be the foundation of any right of action upon it." nevertheless though a contract is unlawful and void because the corporation was unable to make it, a court strives to do justice between the parties by permitting property or money, parted with on faith of the unlawful contract, to be recovered back, or compensation to be made therefor. the lack of another legal requirement in making contracts gives rise to serious consequences. we have learned that the statute of frauds requires for the validity of many contracts that a memorandum of them be made in writing and signed by one or both contracting parties. by english law the statute provides a rule of evidence, that a writing must be shown as proof of a contract before the courts will consider it as having been made; by some of the american courts a contract that does not meet the requirements of the statute is held to be void; by other courts they declare that though the contract is not void it cannot be enforced. while the statute of frauds in some states is regarded as completely nullifying contracts not conforming to its requirements, they are not anywhere held to be illegal, that is, are not made in violation of law. "there appears," says woodward, "to be no reason of policy, therefore, for denying to a party thereto in a proper case, the aid of the court in obtaining quasi contractual relief, or the right to establish the justice of his quasi contractual demand by proving the terms of the unenforceable agreement. true, the evidence of the agreement in such a case, must be oral; but since the evidence is for the purpose of proving, not a contract as such, but a transaction resulting in an unjust benefit to the defendant, its introduction would seem not to contravene the statute." a purchaser of land under an oral contract, who is given possession and subsequently fails to pay, is liable for the use of the land to him while he has occupied it. though the act of the seller in giving the purchaser possession without conveying the title may not be regarded as a part performance of the contract of sale, yet the benefit resulting to the purchaser creates an obligation to make restitution which the courts will enforce. the improvement of land by the purchaser under an oral contract is an act which enables him to enforce the contract in equity. improvements made by a lessee under an oral lease within the statute are governed by the same rules as those of improvements made by a purchaser. if no benefit has been derived from the contract, nothing can be recovered. thus, a son worked for his father on his father's farm under an unenforceable contract with his uncle. the latter was under no quasi contractual obligation to pay the value of such service, since he had derived no benefit from them. likewise one who, relying on an unenforceable contract, constructed a wood-chopping machine that was not accepted could not recover for the value of his labor and materials. again, where one party by his own act or default has prevented the other party from fully performing his contract, the party thus preventing performance cannot take advantage of his own act or default, and screen himself from payment for what has been done under the contract. thus, if one party agrees with another to work on a house the law implies that the employee owns the building in which the work is to be done. this is a part of the contract whether the house is clearly specified or not. therefore, an employer who does not own the house, or parts with it before the work is completed, is liable to the other party. the destruction of a thing in the course of alteration or repair without the fault of the bailee is a case like that above mentioned. the labor and materials are expended in response to the desire of the owner of the property, and therefore it is just that he should pay for the property he destroyed. in one of the old cases a horse was sent to a farrier to be cured and was burnt before a cure was completely effected. nevertheless, the farrier was entitled to payment for what he had done. likewise, the owner of a ship that is destroyed by fire a few hours before the completion of repairs, cannot escape payment on the ground that he has reaped no advantage. as the illness or death of a contractor does not, like fire or shipwreck, deprive the other party of the fruits of what has been already done, the benefit resulting to him is more obvious, and the element of hardship is wanting that appears in many of the cases. the value of his services or the materials he may have used may therefore be recovered. in one of the cases a agreed that he and his wife should live in b's house and maintain him for life. as a's wife died the contract could not be performed. nevertheless, a recovered the value of the service he had rendered to b during the lifetime of his wife. wagering contracts either by statute or judicial decision are illegal and void in most or all the states. in many of them the statute permits the recovery of the money from the stakeholder or the winner. payment over to the winner after notice or demand by the loser is not a good defense in an action against the stakeholder. again, the winner is liable who, when receiving the money, knows that the stakeholder has been notified not to pay it over, or has received notice not to take it. the legality of contracts made or to be performed on sunday is determined generally by statute. generally, when a contract is made on sunday, or is fully performed on both sides, the money paid or other thing done in execution of it cannot be recovered. again, one who is induced by fraudulent representations to enter into a contract which is in violation of a sunday law is not so much in the wrong as the other, and consequently may recover a benefit he has conferred on the other party in performing the contract. if a member of a firm gives a promissory note signed by the partnership name, for a debt of his own, which his partner is compelled to pay, he may recover the money from the other. so, if a carrier by mistake delivered goods to the wrong person who keeps them, and the carrier is obliged to pay for their value, he can recover the amount of the other person who thus wrongfully keeps them. whenever a person makes a payment to another under such a mistake of the material facts as to create a belief in the existence of a liability which does not really exist, the money may be recovered back. such an obligation arises where money is paid as due on the basis of erroneous accounts, and on a true statement of account is found not to have been due. a voluntary payment with knowledge of all the facts cannot be recovered, even though there may have been no obligation to pay. a person cannot recover money paid under a mistake of fact who has received the equivalent for which he bargained, because there is no failure of consideration. nor is the fact immaterial that he need not, and would not have made the payment had he known the true state of things. a bank, for example, that pays the check of a depositor under the erroneous belief that it has sufficient funds, may not recover from the payee the excess to the depositor's credit. but if the purchaser of goods has paid the price, and the seller fails to deliver them, the purchaser may recover his money. and in any case, a person who has paid money under an agreement which he may rescind and does so, because there was a failure of consideration, may recover what he has paid. an action will lie against a person who sells goods as his own, but which do not belong to him, whenever the real owner claims them from the purchaser. in like manner an action will lie against a person who sells bills, notes, bonds, stock or other securities which prove to be worthless, or against a person who agrees to transfer the title to land which, for lack of title or other reason, cannot pass. as a rule, the consideration of a contract must totally fail to entitle a person to recover back the money he has paid. if the consideration has only partly failed, the remedy, if there is any, is for a breach of the contract, and not to recover back the money he has paid. thus, if an article is sold with a warranty of its quality, and it is not worthless, his remedy is an action to recover damages for a breach of the warranty, and not an action to recover back the money paid for the thing purchased. a liability cannot be imposed on a person without his act or consent. one man cannot force a benefit on another without his knowledge or consent, and then compel him to pay for it. "if a person," says clark, "intentionally and knowingly performs services for another or otherwise confers a benefit on him without his knowledge, so that he has no opportunity to refuse the benefit, the law will not create a liability to pay for it. so, where a person supplies another with goods, the latter supposing that he is being supplied by another person with whom he had contracted for the goods, the law will not even imply a promise to pay for the goods." where benefits are conferred by one person on another under such circumstances as to raise no promise in fact or in law to pay for them, he may, nevertheless, become liable by retaining them. thus, if a person were to receive goods from another reasonably but mistakenly believing them to be intended as a gift, and, after learning of his mistake, should retain them, when he might return them, or if he should receive part of the goods purchased from another, and retain them after failure of the latter to supply the rest of the goods, the law would compel him to pay for them. and the same rule applies where benefits are in any other way received under such circumstances as to create no contractual obligation, and are retained when they should in justice be returned. if, however, the benefits thus received are incapable of being returned, as where they consist of services, or of materials which have been used in repairing a house, no liability is created. =sale.=--by a contract to sell goods the seller agrees to transfer the property in them to the buyer for a consideration called the price. there is an important distinction between a contract to sell in the future and a present sale. the first is called an executory, the other an executed, sale. if the goods are to be transferred, there is an executed sale even though the price is not to be paid at the same time. but if the price is paid, and the goods are not then to pass, the transaction is a contract to sell, or an executory sale. both kinds of sales may be by deed or sealed contract as well as by parol or orally. sales and contracts to sell are based on mutual assent, the intent, therefore, of the parties fixes the nature and terms of the bargain. if the offerer understood the transaction to differ from that which his words plainly expressed, it is immaterial, "as his obligation must be measured by his overt acts." thus, if an offer to buy or sell is sent by telegraph, and is improperly transmitted by the telegraph company, an acceptance by the offeree creates a binding bargain. by using the telegraph as an agency of communication, the offerer makes himself responsible for the offer actually delivered. of course the telegraph company would be responsible to the offerer for any damage he may have suffered unless relieved by some neglect or fault of the sender of the message. a contract of sale may be conditional, for example, that the property shall not be transferred until the price is paid. though the property is transferred by the sale, promises or obligations may still be unperformed by the seller. or the transfer of the title may be conditional on payment of the price. in such sales the goods are delivered to the buyer, but the title is retained by the seller until payment. the capacity to buy and sell is regulated by the general law concerning the capacity to contract, transfer and acquire property. when necessaries are sold and delivered to a minor, or to an insane or drunken person, or to a married woman, who is lacking in mental capacity to make a contract, he must, by the general sales act, pay a reasonable price therefor. necessary goods by this act mean those suitable to the condition of the life of the minor or other persons above mentioned at the time of their purchase and delivery. as we have seen (see _minor_) a minor may avoid his contracts. the right to do this is given for his protection, and should not be stretched beyond his needs. therefore the right is confined to himself or his legal representatives. neither creditors, nor trustees, nor assignees in bankruptcy can do this, but his heirs can do this, and probably his guardian. by the common law a purchaser for value who did not know that the seller bought them of a minor could not retain them if the minor wished to reclaim them as his own. this rule has been changed by the sales act, and a bona fide purchaser is therefore safe in purchasing such goods even though the seller did buy them from a minor. as a minor may disaffirm his contract, any act clearly showing this intent is sufficient. "it was early settled," says williston, "that an infant's conveyance of realty could be avoided only after he attained his majority. in the case of personal property a sale may be avoided during his minority by an infant seller or buyer. though an infant may thus avoid his sales, purchases or contracts during infancy, he can make no effective ratification until he becomes of age, for an infant's ratification clearly can be no more effective than his original bargain." in the sales act the statute of frauds (see _statute of frauds_) has been reënacted, and provides that in a sale or contract to sell goods amounting to five hundred dollars or more, it cannot be enforced unless the buyer shall accept a part of the goods, or give something in earnest to bind the contract, or in part payment, or makes some note or memorandum in writing of the sale which is signed by the party or his agent against whom the other party seeks enforcement. this statute applies to a contract for goods that may be intended for future delivery, but not to goods that are to be manufactured by the seller especially for the buyer and are not suitable for sale to others in the ordinary course of the seller's business. the sales act contains an important section relating to the sale of an undivided share of goods. if the parties intend to effect a present sale, the buyer becomes an owner in common with the owner of the remaining shares. how important is this section may be easily learned. the grain of many owners is often mingled in an elevator. it is delivered to those who call for it, the kinds and quantities mentioned in the receipts given to them at the times of storing it. the grain in the elevator may be delivered many times before a particular depositor makes his demand. the elevator company must keep on hand enough grain to meet all outstanding receipts. each depositor thus retains title to some portion of the grain in the elevator. the company is the bailee with the power to change the bailor's separate ownership into an ownership in common with others of a larger mass, and back again. at any given moment all the holders of receipts for the grain are tenants in common of the amount in store, each owning a share and all owning the entire amount, each having the right to sell his share and demand its separation and delivery in accordance with custom and the terms of the receipt. when a party has specific goods which, without his knowledge, have perished partly or wholly, the buyer may treat the sale as avoided, or as transferring the property in all of the existing goods and as binding him to pay the full agreed price if the sale was indivisible, or if divisible the agreed price for the goods in which the property passes. one can readily imagine trouble when none of the goods have been destroyed but all are in a condition inferior to that supposed at the time of the bargain. in such a case the "only question is whether the article has been so far destroyed as no longer to answer the description of it given by the contract." the price may be fixed by the contract or in such a manner as the parties may agree, and may be made payable in personal or real property. when the price is not determined in the way mentioned in the sales act, the buyer must pay a reasonable price. this is a question of fact in each case. usually, the price, either in an executed sale or in a contract to sell, is fixed by the parties at the time of making the bargain. in the agreement to sell there must be a consideration on both sides to sustain it. sometimes the parties agree that the amount of the price shall vary according to the happening, or failure to happen, of a future event. such a contract may be a wager, which is forbidden by law, or it may be legal, as we shall soon learn. whenever no price has been fixed the law has established a rule, a reasonable price. it is the intention and understanding of the parties that a buyer who orders a barrel of flour from his grocer will pay a reasonable price. likewise a buyer who orders a carriage to be made for him and says nothing about the price. what is a reasonable price? generally the market price at the time and place fixed by the contract or by law for delivering the goods, but not always. under unusual conditions the market price does not furnish the only test. said the court in one of these cases: a reasonable price may or may not agree with the current price of the commodity at the place of shipment at the precise time of making it. the current price of the day may be highly unreasonable from accidental circumstances, by the action of the seller himself in purposely keeping back the supply. with respect to warranties the sales act provides that when the sale is made on a condition which is not performed, the party for whose benefit the condition was made may refuse to proceed with the contract or sale, or may waive performance of the condition. the nonperformance may be treated as a breach of warranty. thus time may be an important element in a contract, and an agreement to deliver goods by a specified time is a condition or warranty. and if there is a delay in delivering, unless it may be a trifling one, the buyer may refuse to accept the goods. a common condition in more recent times qualifying the obligation of the buyer is that the goods shall be satisfactory to him. by this is meant the satisfaction of the buyer after the exercise of an honest judgment. in new york and some other states a somewhat different rule prevails. unless the things covered by the contract involve personal taste, the contract imposes on the seller the requirement only that a reasonable man would be satisfied with performing it, thus not leaving the question of its satisfactory performance entirely to the buyer. this, williston says, is an arbitrary refusal of the court to enforce the contract that the parties made and seems unwarranted. warranties may be express or implied. by the sales act any affirmation of fact or any promise by the seller relating to the goods is an express warranty if the natural tendency of such affirmation or promise is to induce the buyer to purchase the goods, and if the buyer purchases the goods relying thereon. in a contract to sell or a sale, unless a contrary intention appears, there is an implied warranty on the part of the seller that in the case of a sale he has the right to sell the goods, also, in the case of a contract to sell them, he will have the right to do this at the time of passing the property. more briefly the seller warrants the title to the property which is the subject of sale. whether the seller is in or out of possession of the property, he can by appropriate words sell such interest as he may have therein. but persons also sell property not owned by themselves by authority of others or of the law. unless they expressly warrant the title they are not liable for lack of it. sales of this nature are made by a sheriff, or other judicial officer, auctioneer or mortgagee, assignee in bankruptcy, executor or administrator, guardian, or simply an agent. when there is a contract to sell, or a sale of goods by description, there is an implied warranty that they shall correspond with the description; and if the contract or sale is by sample, as well as by description, it is not sufficient that the bulk of the goods corresponds with the sample if these do not also correspond with the description. the sales act contains elaborate provisions relating to implied warranties of the quality of things sold. there is no implied warranty of the quality or fitness of goods for any particular purpose unless the buyer makes known to the seller the purpose for which they are required, and he also relies on the seller's judgment of their fitness for the use he intends to make of them. again, if the buyer has examined the goods there is no implied warranty of the defects which such an examination ought to have revealed. an implied warranty as to quality or fitness for a particular purpose may also be annexed by the usage of trade. there is an implied warranty that the bulk shall correspond with the sample in quality, and that the buyer shall have a reasonable opportunity of comparing the bulk with the sample. when does the transfer of ownership occur? when there is an unconditional contract to sell them the property therein passes to the buyer on the making of the contract, regardless of the time of payment or delivery or both. when goods are delivered to the buyer "on sale or return," giving the buyer an option to return them instead of paying the price, the property passes to the buyer on delivery, but the property may go back to the seller by returning or tendering the goods within the time specified in the contract. when the goods are delivered to the buyer on approval or on trial or other similar terms, the property passes to the buyer, ( ) when he signifies his approval or acceptance of them, ( ) or if he retains them beyond the time fixed for their return, or if none has been fixed, beyond a reasonable time. it is the duty of the seller to deliver the goods, and of the buyer to accept and pay for them, in accordance with the terms of the contract of sale. unless otherwise agreed, delivery of the goods and payment of the price are concurrent conditions, the seller, therefore, must be ready and willing to give possession of the goods to the buyer in exchange for the price, and the buyer must be willing and ready to pay the price in exchange for the possession of the goods. whether it is for the buyer to take possession of the goods or for the seller to send them to the buyer, is a question depending in each case on the contract, express or implied, between the parties. apart from contract, or usage of trade to the contrary, the place of delivery is the seller's place of business, if he have one, and if not, his residence. again, when by the contract of sale of goods no time for sending them has been fixed, the seller must send them within a reasonable time. vast quantities of goods are bought and sent forward to buyers, which are not to be delivered until payment. the sales act provides that where goods are shipped and by the bill of lading that is given for them they are to be delivered to the order of the buyer or of his agents, but possession of the bill of lading is to be retained by the seller or his agent, he thereby reserves his right to the possession of the goods as against the buyer. very often a buyer of wheat, for example, will draw a bill of exchange on his principal or company living in the place where the goods are to be delivered and will have it discounted by a bank using the money to pay the seller. the wheat may be in an elevator, or it may be in transit. in either case the bank receives a document, elevator receipt, or bill of lading, and thus becomes the real owner of the wheat, and can control it afterward until it is actually delivered to the consignee, whoever he may be. this is the bank's security for making the loan. the bank sends forward the bill of exchange to its correspondent bank in the place where the consignee lives and the wheat is to be delivered with instructions to deliver it when the bill is paid. with respect to speculative sales of stock, so well known by every one, a contract, says williston, giving one party or the other an option to carry out the transaction or not at pleasure, is not a wager, unless forbidden, as in some states is done by statute. a contract to sell goods in the future, which the seller does not own at the time is, aside from the statute, not only legal but common. "the test," says williston, "adopted in the absence of statute, distinguishes between contracts to buy and sell in which the actual delivery of the property is contemplated, and similar contracts in which it is contemplated merely that a settlement shall be made between the parties based on fluctuations in the market price. a contract of the former kind is legal; one of the latter kind is a wagering contract, and illegal." =shipping.=--the federal statutes require that every ship or vessel of the united states shall be registered or enrolled in the office of the collector of customs of the district that includes the home port of the vessel. none but citizens of the united states can have their vessels registered. consequently the sale of a vessel to a foreigner denationalizes her. if sold to an american, she must be registered anew. on arriving at a foreign port masters of vessels must deposit their registers with the consul or commercial agent at that port. enrollment is the term used to describe the registry of a vessel engaged in coastwise or inland navigation or commerce. registration is applied to vessels engaged in foreign commerce. license means the same as enrollment, but is applied to small vessels of twenty tons burden or less. the federal laws on this subject do not apply to vessels that are used on nonnavigable waters of the country. the title to a vessel may be acquired by purchase or building. if a vessel is built for a party no title thereto passes until she is ready for delivery and has been approved and accepted by him. this, however, is no arbitrary rule, and is often modified especially when payment is made in installments and during the construction of the vessel. nowadays many vessels are owned by corporations, and the rules that apply to corporations of course determine the ownership of their property. in other cases the several owners of a vessel are tenants in common, and not co-partners, unless by agreement they have established other relations among themselves. they may, of course, become partners and be governed by the rules that apply to persons thus related. when they are related as tenants in common one part owner has no power to bind the others in any way beyond the necessary and regular use of the vessel. he cannot sell or mortgage the interests of the others, draw drafts or notes in their name, apply the freight money earned to pay his individual debt, or procure insurance for the other owners. the majority rule governs in employing the vessel. the majority therefore have the right to control the use of the vessel on giving security to the minority, if required, to bring back and to restore to them the vessel, or if lost to pay them for the value of their shares. the minority owners in like manner may use the vessel if the majority are unwilling to employ her. a court of admiralty will in such a case act for the parties. each part owner is entitled to his share of the profits, and is also liable for the expenses of the vessel unless he has dissented from the voyage. but part owners who dissent from the voyage and take security for the safe return of the vessel are not entitled to share in the profits, nor are they liable for the expenses. a part owner may bind the others for necessary supplies and repairs required that are procured on credit, unless his general authority to do this has been restricted. the ship's husband or managing owner has authority to do whatever is necessary for the prosecution of the voyage and earning the freight money. for such purposes he is the agent of the owners and can bind them by his contracts, unless his authority is revoked or modified. any owner can sell his interest whenever he pleases, and all of them may authorize the sale of the entire vessel. a writing is required to pass the title, but as between the parties an oral sale and delivery will suffice, at common law. in many cases a bill of sale is required by statute. the writing should describe what things are transferred, but general terms such as appurtenances and necessaries have a fixed meaning which are understood. intention is the guide to determine what passes in such a sale, as in cases of fixtures already considered. when the bill of sale is executed the purchaser becomes entitled to all the benefits of ownership, and incurs all the liabilities. if the sale is unconditional, the purchaser is liable for supplies though he may never have taken possession of the vessel, and neither the master nor the merchant furnishing the supplies knew of the sale. the purchaser is not liable for repairs made and supplies furnished before the sale, unless he has agreed to pay for them, or the vessel was at sea at the time. if she was, the purchaser takes her subject to all encumbrances on her, and to all lawful contracts made by the master before learning of the purchase. a vessel may be mortgaged, and the federal statutes state how this shall be done. a shipbuilder may make a contract whereby he mortgages the vessel to be built in advance of its construction, and a lien attaches as it comes into existence. such a mortgage is postponed or comes after a maritime lien, that will soon be explained, but comes before the debts of general creditors. the mortgagor, so long as he retains possession, has all the rights of ownership, and all contracts made by him are valid which do not impair the security of the mortgage. when the mortgagee takes possession of the vessel he is entitled to all the earnings that accrue, but not to those which the mortgagor has reserved, even though they are for the current voyage. furthermore, his interest may be attached by his creditors. the discharge and foreclosure of mortgages on vessels are governed for the most part by the rules that apply to chattel mortgages. a mortgage on a vessel should be recorded, and many of the rules and usages that apply to the recording of deeds apply also to such mortgages. a contract may be made for a loan of money on the bottom of a vessel at a rate much greater than the usual rate of interest. such a loan is sanctioned to enable the master to obtain money for supplies or repairs at some foreign port where they could not be otherwise obtained. the loan is on the security of the vessel and if she never arrives, the lender loses his money. if she does arrive at the port of her destination, the borrower personally, as well as the vessel, is liable for the repayment of the loan with the agreed interest thereon. this maritime loan is highly regarded in legal tribunals, and is liberally construed by them to carry into effect the intention of the parties. such a loan or bond can be given by the master of the vessel only in case of necessity and great distress in a foreign port, where the owner is not present and has no representative with funds, and where the master has no other means of getting money. the master has a large discretion. "the necessity must be such as would induce a prudent owner to provide funds for the cost of them on the security of the ship, and that if the master did not take the money the voyage would be defeated or at least retarded." the general purpose of the loan is to effectuate the objects of the voyage and the safety of the ship. the appointment and employment of a master is wholly within the discretion of the owners. on his death or removal in a foreign port a successor may be appointed by the consul resident there of the country to which the vessel belongs, or by an agent of the owners, or by the consignees of the cargo who have advanced money for repairing the vessel. the registry acts of the united states require the putting of the master's name in the register, but if this is not done his authority is not impaired; and the one to whom the navigation and control of a vessel is entrusted is considered her master, although the name of another appears on the register. his contract may contain any stipulation to which the parties may agree. the right of a master to command his vessel is personal to him; and a sale by a master who is part owner of the vessel of his interest therein transfers no right to the command of the vessel which the other owners are bound to respect. whenever he becomes incapable of commanding by reason of sickness, insanity, or other reason, the command with the duties pertaining thereto devolves on the first mate until the appointment of another master; should he be absent or incapable of acting, then the second mate and so on down the rank of officers. the master must do all things for the protection and preservation of the several interests entrusted to him, the owners, charterers, cargo owners, underwriters. he must render a full and satisfactory account to the owners of the vessel of moneys secured and his disbursements before demanding any wages. at sea he is the supreme officer, has sole authority over both officers and crew to do justice to all persons under his command, and to protect passengers and seamen from bad treatment while they are on board. it is said that in respect to passengers he owes a higher and more delicate duty than he owes to the crew, but at the same time he has the necessary control over his passengers and may make proper regulations for their government to ensure their safety, promote their comfort and preserve decent order. he has authority to bind the owners when they are not present for expenditures needful in the way of repairs, supplies and other necessaries reasonably fit and proper for the safety of the vessel and the completion of the voyage. as the seamen who serve on a vessel are generally ignorant and improvident, the execution of shipping articles are required by federal statute where the vessel is bound on a foreign voyage, or from a port in one state to a port in another. if these articles are not made seamen have the right to leave the vessel at any time, and may recover the highest rate of wages paid at their shipping port. the articles must be signed by the seaman and by the master, and the contract must be executed before the vessel proceeds on its voyage. the seaman is not bound by any new or unusual stipulation put into the articles affecting his rights without full knowledge of it, and especially when he cannot read and the stipulation is not read and explained to him. once executed, the articles cannot be varied by a verbal agreement between master and seaman. the articles must specify clearly and definitely the nature of the intended voyage, the port at which it is to end and its duration. indefinite articles, leaving to the option of the master whether the voyage shall be long or to one or more foreign ports, or short to nearby domestic ports, are void. the articles must also state the amount of wages each seaman is to receive. articles are void that fix a forfeiture of wages in excess of the amount named in the statute, or restrict the time in which seamen must sue for their wages. the contract may be dissolved by cruel treatment by the master and by an abandonment of the vessel without the master's consent, but not by the death, disability, removal or resignation of the master and the substitution of another. besides the wages a seaman may recover, should the master break the contract, are his expenses in returning to the port of shipment including also general damages. claims for wages are "highly favored in admiralty courts," and discharges are not justified for trivial causes, nor for a single offense unless it is an aggravated one. such causes are continued disobedience or insubordination, rebellious conduct, gross dishonesty, embezzlement or theft, habitual drunkenness, habitually stirring up quarrels, or by his own fault rendering himself incapable of performing duty. the master must receive back a seaman when he has thus been discharged who repents and offers to return to his duty and make satisfaction, unless the offense was of an aggravated character. this is the general rule, though from its nature there is much room for its application. =statute of frauds.=--some contracts must be in writing to comply with a statute called the statute of frauds, which has been enacted with variations in all the states. one of the most important sections relates to the conveyance of real estate. this requires that the agreement for its sale must be in writing. (see _agreement for sale of land_.) another section relates to the sale of goods, wares and merchandise. this has not been enacted in every state. if the amount is above that mentioned in the statute, thirty to one hundred dollars, there must be a written contract or delivery and acceptance of the goods to constitute a contract. if a sells a bill of goods to b, who declines to receive them, and the contract is wholly verbal, he can shield himself behind this statute wherever it prevails. many questions therefore arise, what is a delivery and acceptance? a delivery of a key of a building containing the property is sufficient. the delivery of a bill of lading of goods properly indorsed, making entries of the goods sold, pointing them out or identifying them is enough to comply with the statute. whenever there has been a transfer of possession and control by the seller to the purchaser to which the latter has assented there has been a sale. or, more broadly, whenever there has been such action as to show clearly an intention to sell and accept the property the sale is complete. part payment of the purchase money for personal property is generally regarded as showing such intention. to a contract for the manufacture of a thing the statute does not apply. simple as this answer may be, the law soon gets into difficulties in deciding whether a contract is for the making of a thing, or for the thing itself; whether the important element is the skill or labor that is to be expended, or the thing without regard to the process of making. thus, if a contract is with one to paint a portrait, the statute would not apply, for the skill of the artist is the important thing purchased, and not the canvas, paint, etc., he must use. to a contract for a locomotive the statute would apply. "if the contract states or implies that the thing is to be made by the seller, and also blends together the price of the thing and compensation for work, labor, skill and material, so that they cannot be discriminated, it is not a contract of purchase and sale, but a contract of hiring and service, or a bargain by which one party undertakes to labor in a certain way for the other party," and the statute does not apply to it. =statutes of limitation.=--in all the states statutes have been enacted which provide that if the rights of parties to legal redress are not enforced within a specified period, the courts are closed to them. thus, in most states a statute provides that a holder or owner of a promissory note who neglects to sue the debtor within six years from its maturity cannot do so afterwards. the note is not absolutely void, though the law presumes it has been paid. as the note is not void, payment may be effected as we shall soon learn. suppose one is indebted to a merchant, if the debt is not paid within six years in most states and nothing has happened, the debt in popular language is outlawed, in other words cannot be collected by resort to law. the time begins to run as soon as the debt has accrued; if it be a debt to a merchant, as soon as one has stopped trading with him. to the operation of this rule are some important exceptions. it does not run in favor of a minor, married woman or insane or imprisoned person; or not whenever or wherever they are not capable of contracting. but a disability arising after the statute has begun to run in his favor will not prevent it from running. the statute of limitations generally bars the remedy or right to pursue the debtor in a court of law, it does not extinguish the right or debt, and therefore the right to pursue a debtor may be revived by a new promise to pay. one may ask, is not a debtor a foolish man to acknowledge that he is a debtor after the law has released him from his debt? yes, from a purely selfish point of view. nevertheless, the moral obligation remains, and happily all morality has not yet fled from the world. one may ask, is not such a promise void because there is no consideration received for it? no, for the reason that there was a consideration for the original obligation, and this is sufficient to sustain the renewed promise to pay it. in some states the statutes provide that such an acknowledgment to pay a debt after the statute has barred it, must be in writing, and signed by the debtor or his agent. the most general rule is, to remove the bar of the statute, there must be either an express promise to pay, or an acknowledgment of the debt accompanied by an expression of willingness to pay it. to simply acknowledge the existence of a debt is not enough, there must be indicated or expressed a willingness to pay. a debt may also be revived by part payment. payment on account of the principal, or payment of interest on the debt will prevent the statute from running against it. payment to have that effect must be made with reference to the original debt and in such a way as to effect an acknowledgment of it. while a debtor may always apply a payment to any one or more of different debts he owes his creditor, if he fails to do so the creditor can make the application even to a debt which is already barred by the statute, but his application will not remove the bar to the remainder of the debt. to have that effect the appropriation must be made by the debtor himself. statutes of limitation apply to many obligations, and the times or dates at which they become outlawed or outside the scope of legal redress, vary in the different states. in many of them an ordinary book account or negotiable note is outlawed after six years, and cannot be enforced after that time unless the debtor has revived it by a new promise or part payment. a judgment against one usually runs twenty years. =telegraph and telephone.=--though the business of a telegraph company is public in its nature, it is not a common carrier, and it may therefore set up reasonable regulations for the reception, transmission and delivery of messages. as it is a quasi public corporation, it must extend its services to all that apply therefor and offer to pay the charges. and if refusing it may be compelled to do these things. the company may charge more to one person than to another when the service is unlike, though not enough to amount to an unjust discrimination. the difference in charges must bear some relation to the different services rendered. a telephone company cannot legally discriminate between two competing telegraph companies by giving one the telephone call word "telegram" and thereby depriving the other telegraph company of business. nor can a telephone company legally charge a higher rental for a telephone to a telegraph company than to any other patron. nor can a telegraph company discriminate against another in refusing credit which is given to other responsible parties. a strike may be a sufficient excuse for failure to have sent messages promptly, though not excusing a railroad company for failure to deliver freight as if no strike had happened. a state may impose a penalty on a telegraph company for failure to deliver promptly in the state messages coming from other states. and a state may impose a penalty on a telegraph company for failure to perform its clear common law duty to transmit messages without unreasonable delay, and this statute applies to messages to points outside the state if it relates to delay within the state. a state statute prohibiting telegraph companies from limiting their liability for the transmission of telegrams within the state is constitutional. the state may prohibit a telegraph company from transmitting racetrack news. a telegraph company must transmit a message unless it contains indecent language. nor is it liable for libel in transmitting a telegram stating that a person had been bought up. it is reasonable for a telegraph company to close its office on holidays, except two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon, and therefore is not liable for delay in transmitting a message because of this delay. the unauthorized writing out and sending of a telegram in another person's name is a forgery. when a telegram must pass over two connecting lines the receiving company may require the sender to designate what route the message is to take, and to pay an extra charge for the words indicating such route. a telegraph company is not privileged in transmitting messages, but they should not be made public, except to produce them when legally required in court. under the new york statutes it is a criminal offense for a telegraph employee to divulge the contents of a telegram to any other person than the addressee, except when it relates to unlawful business. in that case the employee may give information to the public officer who is prosecuting the unlawful sender. it is a criminal offense to open or read a sealed telegram, or to tap a telegraph wire in order to read messages in course of transmission. in regulating the receipt, transmission and delivery of telegraph messages, the rules differ from those that are to be transmitted within the state from the rules for interstate messages. the rules with respect to the latter are governed by the interstate commerce act of , state messages are governed by the laws of their respective states. by the federal law, therefore, a telegraph company providing one rate for unrepeated messages, and another and higher rate for those repeated, may stipulate for a reasonable limitation of its responsibility when the lower rate is paid. and if the contract provides that for any damage resulting from sending the telegram, the sender must give notice within sixty days, he is bound by this stipulation, and is without redress if he delays to act beyond the time. =torts or wrongs.=--"a tort is an act or omission which unlawfully violates a person's right created by the law, and for which the appropriate remedy is a common law action for damages by the injured person." the right that is violated is private and not public, which marks off a tort from a crime. again, the wrongful act may be a violation of both a private and public right, in which case both the individual and the state have a remedy against the wrongdoer. thus a without excuse attacks b and bruises his nose. b has an action to recover damages against him for despoiling his countenance; the state also may proceed against him in a criminal action for his breach of the public peace. another illustration may be given. a clerk embezzles money from his bank. it sues him and perhaps his bondsmen and recovers the money. embezzlement, however, is a criminal offense, and the recovery of the money taken does not affect in any way the right of the state to proceed against the embezzler. indeed, an individual who has been wronged cannot by any restitution or settlement that he may make with the wrongdoer impair the right of the state to punish him. torts or wrongs are very numerous for which the wrongdoer may be held liable. the first to be mentioned is false imprisonment. the law punishes false imprisonment as a crime; the person unlawfully imprisoned also has a civil action for damages. a person is said to be imprisoned "in any case where he is arrested by force and against his will, although it be on the high street or elsewhere and not in a house." mere words are not an arrest. if an officer says, "i arrest you," and you run away, there is no arrest. but if an officer touches you and takes you into custody there is an arrest even though you run away afterward. a malicious prosecution is another wrong. a person who brings his action for this wrong must prove four things: first, that the prosecution has terminated in the complainant's favor; second, that it was instituted maliciously; third, that it was brought without probable cause; fourth, that it damaged or injured the complainant. the term malice means something more than "the intentional doing of a wrongful act to the injury of another without legal excuse." it means that the original prosecutor was actuated by some "improper or sinister motive." the term "probable cause" requires explanation. nothing is better settled, says one of the courts, than this, that when the person who brings such an action against another "submits his facts to his attorney, who advises they are sufficient, and he acts thereon in good faith, such advice is a defense to an action for malicious prosecution." that such advice may be a good defense a full and honest disclosure of all the facts must be made to him. such advice will not serve as a screen if based on a fragmentary, incomplete statement of facts. a very common tort is an assault and battery. a person who threatens another with immediate personal violence, having the means and opportunity for executing the threat, commits an assault for which damages may be recovered in a proper action. to raise a club over the head of another and threaten to strike if he speaks, would be an assault. "absence of intent," says burdick, "on the part of the defendant to put the plaintiff in fear of bodily harm, is pertinent to the defense that the injury was accidental, or due to a practical joke." a battery, as distinguished from an assault, is the inflicting of actual violence on a person, though the degree of violence is immaterial. the least touching of another in anger, or as a trespasser, is a battery. forcibly cutting the hair of a person without legal authority, or injuring the clothing on a person, or snatching an article from his hand, or cutting a rope or belt attached to him, or striking a horse on which one is riding, or that is attached to his carriage, or overturning a chair in which he is seated, is a battery; likewise, if the assailant throws a stone or missile which hits the other, or spits in his face. there may be a justifiable assault, the law has long recognized this. a public officer is justified in using force in performing his duty, so is a private individual in defending himself, his family or his property, or in enforcing lawful discipline at home, in school, on board a ship, or other public conveyance, or in restraining one mentally or physically incapacitated. another injury for which the law furnishes redress is that affecting reputation and character. it is true that the damages one may recover, however great, may be an inadequate redress, yet it is the best the law can do. the party injured by a libel or slander brings his action and wins his victory over his enemy, yet the battlefield remains and the scar of the wound inflicted. the issue in an action for defamation is not the character of the plaintiff, but the wrongfulness of the particular statement. therefore "it is not a defense to a libel or slander that the plaintiff has been guilty of offenses other than those imputed to him, or of offenses of a similar character; and such facts are not competent in mitigation of damages." as the gist of the tort consists of the injury done to one's reputation, the defamatory statement must have been published. a person has no cause of action against another for defamatory words spoken to him; they must have been heard by a third person. the plaintiff may make out a case by showing that the libel was contained on the back of a postal card, or by other evidence that makes it a matter of reasonable inference that the libelous matter was brought to the actual knowledge of a third person. a person who voluntarily engages in the interchange of opprobrious epithets and mutual vituperation and abuse has been held to license his antagonist to reply in like manner. "the right to answer a libel by libel is analogous to the right to defend one's self against an assault upon his person. the resistance may be carried to a successful termination, but the means used must be reasonable." common carriers, news-vendors, proprietors of circulating libraries and others who are merely unconscious vehicles for carrying defamation generally escape liability for its publication. if the publication of a libel is the result of the joint efforts of several persons, each is responsible for the wrong done to the plaintiff. if a writes a libel, and b prints it and c publishes it, the person wronged may sue all jointly, or either one of them separately. the publication of the same slander by different persons is not a joint tort, it is a distinct wrong done by each slanderer. there are distinctions between libel and slander that must be now stated. slander is applied to oral speech or its equivalent, libel to matters expressed in writing or print, pictures, effigies or other visible and permanent forms. libel is a criminal offense as well as a tort, while the slander of private persons is not a common law crime; but some forms of slander are crimes by statute. falsely and maliciously to charge one with committing a felony or other indictable offense involving moral turpitude is in some states a crime. scandalous matter is not necessary to make a libel. "it is enough if the defendant induces an ill opinion to be held of the plaintiff, or to make him contemptible or ridiculous." says burdick: "any censorious or ridiculing writing, picture or sign made intentionally and without just cause and excuse is a libel upon its victim. the degree of censure or ridicule is not material. if the language is such that others, knowing the circumstances, would reasonably think it defamatory of the person complaining of and injured by it, then it is actionable." in many cases of libels which affect the victim chiefly or solely in his office or vocation their tendency to cause injury is so clear that proof may be unnecessary. thus, to import insanity or incompetency to a professional man, or that a public official is dishonest and corrupt is actionable. and when a libelous publication is directed against a class or body of persons, for example, the medical staff of a public hospital, any member of the body may maintain an action for the wrong. a corporation has no character like a natural person to defend, but a defamatory charge which directly affects its credit and injures its business reputation is an actionable one. on the other hand as a corporation must transact its business and perform its duties through natural persons it is now well settled that a corporation is liable in damages for slander, as it is for other torts. slanderous words that are actionable have been thus classified by the united states supreme court: "( ) words falsely spoken of a person which impute to the party the commission of some criminal offense involving moral turpitude, for which the party, if the charge be true, may be indicted and punished; ( ) words falsely spoken of a person which impute that the party is infected with some infectious disease, where, if the charge is true, it would exclude him from society; ( ) defamatory words falsely spoken of a person which impute to the party unfitness to perform the duties of an office or employment of profit or the want of integrity in the discharge of his duties of such office or employment; ( ) defamatory words falsely spoken of a party which prejudice such party in his or her profession or trade." the damages may be either nominal, one dollar is often given in such cases, or compensatory, larger damages, as a punishment. the amount rendered is within the province of the jury, but courts do not hesitate to modify or set aside verdicts which are deemed excessive or too meager. the defenses in such actions may be briefly described. the truth of the charge is a complete defense to a civil action for slander or libel, because "the law will not permit a man to recover damages in respect to an injury to a character which he either does not or ought not to possess." a privileged communication is another defense. the heads of the executive departments of government are absolutely privileged for defamatory statements made by them while acting within the limits of their authority. their motives do not become the subject of inquiry in a civil suit for damages. judicial officers are shielded by this rule while discharging their duties. the publication of judicial proceedings is conditionally privileged. the condition is that the proceedings are public, are decent and fit for publication, that the reports are full and fair, and that their publication is not inspired by malice. says burdick: "the reports of such proceedings are usually made without reference to the individuals concerned, and for the information and benefit of the public. the law, therefore, presumes that they are made in good faith." the full and fair reports of parliamentary and legislative proceedings are also conditionally privileged as well as the reports of judicial proceedings, and for the same reasons. the publication of the proceedings of quasi public bodies, like state, medical, and ecclesiastical societies has been deemed conditionally privileged. but "professional publishers of news are not exempt, or a privileged class, from the consequences of damage done by false news. their communications are not privileged merely because made in public journals." statements rendered by mercantile or collection agencies to inquirers for business purposes are clearly privileged. but whether the circulation among all their subscribers of a sheet containing such statements is privileged is a disputed question among the courts. again, every statement made with the object of protecting some interest of the writer or speaker and which is reasonably necessary for such purpose is conditionally privileged. fair comment is another defense. the most frequent subjects of fair comment from which spring actions for defamations are the character and conduct of public men or candidates for office; and literary, artistic, or commercial productions offered to the public. whether a particular statement is an unfair aspersion of one's personal character, or a fair comment on his public conduct, is a question usually for the jury. at common law a defamer could not insist on an opportunity to retract or apologize, but he could give in evidence any apology or retraction to lessen the damages. this rule has formed the basis of a statute in some of the states. though attacked on constitutional grounds, it has been sustained in minnesota, north carolina and perhaps in other commonwealths. where it can be made, the apology and retraction must be full, fair, prompt. passing to private nuisances, a wrong or tort consists in wrongfully disturbing one in the reasonably comfortable use and enjoyment of his property. ordinarily the motive of the wrongdoer is not material in determining his maintenance of a nuisance. some things and trades are considered as nuisances of themselves, for example, a slaughter house in a large town, a pigsty near a dwelling house, a house of ill fame, the fouling of a spring, well or stream; keeping a large quantity of explosives near a public dwelling, or animals or other property dangerous to human life. likewise, a hospital that operates to destroy the peace, quiet and comfort of those in adjoining residences, affects their health and value of their property is a private nuisance, against which action may be taken for its removal or abatement. public cemeteries come under the same ban. they will not be adjudged a nuisance simply because they offend the fancy, delicacy, or fastidiousness of neighbors, or even depreciate the value of adjoining property. when a business is carried on, structures are erected, or excavations are made which are nuisances, the actor is liable in damages for them whether he exercised due care in constructing and maintaining them or not. the same rule applies to the owner or keeper of a savage and dangerous animal. acts of discomfort that amount to a nuisance are such as produce this effect to persons of ordinary sensibility who live in the locality where the nuisance exists. noises, odors, smoke, or dust may constitute an actionable nuisance in one locality and not in another. if the nuisances are from ordinary musical instruments in the dwelling of a neighbor, or from his children, yet are only of a kind that may be expected in such a neighborhood, they must be borne, unless prohibited by law. on the other hand, the same amount of noise caused by horses in the basement of an adjoining house is an actionable nuisance. a temporary annoyance is quite another thing. the erection of an iron building near a dwelling might, during the period of construction, cause great noise and discomfort, yet the occupier of the dwelling would have no remedy. but there is a limit to the conduct of the annoyer. he must act reasonably. he cannot blast rock, or hammer metal, or operate noisy steam drills at all hours of the day and night. he must conform to the habits of the community, and not unreasonably disturb his neighbors, during ordinary working hours. there is a distinction also between acts that annoy and those that injure adjoining property. generally acts of the latter kind are actionable. if one fixes his residence near a nuisance, formerly he had no remedy. this is no longer the law. when, however, a court is asked to enjoin or stop a useful and lawful business in a place, the court will inquire whether the business has long existed and the place has grown up by reason of its existence. if this prove to be the case a court will reluctantly interfere. yet, if the business is actually harmful to health or injurious to property, it will be enjoined however great the loss may be to the owner. while a land owner is not liable for a nuisance created on his land by a stranger, whose acts cannot in any way be attributed to him, he is liable for a nuisance resulting from a licensee's use of his property. thus, if a licensee by attaching a wire to a chimney converts it into a nuisance to passers-by, the land owner who knowingly permits the nuisance to continue will be liable for the damages that result. nor can one who has fouled a stream or the air, or who indulges in disturbing noises, defend himself for doing these things by showing that others did them before he began. as a person acts at his peril in maintaining a nuisance, so is the owner of trespassing cattle liable for all the harm done by them, whether he knows of their disposition to do harm or not. but he is not liable for harm done by them while they are driven along the highway without negligence on the driver's part; nor is he liable for mischief done by them to the person or personal property of one at other times without knowledge of their viciousness or other proof of negligence. nor is he liable by the common law as an insurer against all damage done by them when they escape from his land. when vicious animals are kept for any purpose and are a menace to human beings they are a nuisance. hence, they may be killed without incurring liability, and should they do damage their owner or responsible keeper must answer for it. if the animal be a vicious dog, the owner must exercise a degree of care commensurate with the danger to others following his escape from custody, and must secure it from injuring anyone who does not unlawfully provoke or intermeddle with the animal. by the early common law a person who started a fire, even for a needful and lawful purpose, was responsible for the consequences. this rule has been modified with time. "a person," says burdick, "does not start a fire on his land at his peril. if it spreads beyond his premises and harms others his liability for the harm must be grounded on his negligence. the same is true of his liability for electricity escaping from his control. in both cases the care he must exercise in guarding the dangerous element varies with the hazard to which it exposes others." the liability of a person who keeps explosives is not absolute, unless he is maintaining a nuisance. otherwise he is liable only when negligent. if he is ignorant of the character of the explosive, and without fault in not knowing, his duty of care is fixed by the apparent character of the article. suppose a carrier was carrying a trunk containing an explosive of which he had no knowledge or reason for supposing was there, surely he would not be held liable if it exploded and caused injury. the liability of a manufacturer, seller, lender, or user of things is not that of an insurer in making, selling, lending or using them. but he does incur liability whenever he fails to exercise such care as is fairly needful to protect others against the hazard in buying and using them. a druggist, therefore, who affixes a wrong label to a bottle of medicine and thereby injures a person who uses it is responsible. and the rule would apply whether the taker was the purchaser or some other person. when persons are invited on one's premises for mutual advantage, the inviter owes the duty of ordinary care. he is not an insurer of their safety, nor need he exercise extraordinary care in guarding them from harm, unless there was unusual danger. suppose a man had a way which persons used in going to and from his business, and he began to dig a well near the way and left the place unprotected during its construction, undoubtedly the owner would be liable. suppose the well was a considerable distance from the way where persons did not usually go and had no occasion for going. then he would not be liable. how far away from the road could he dig without thought of the public? the answer would depend on the facts in the case. a somewhat different rule has been applied to children. although a child of tender years who meets with an injury on the premises of a private owner may be a technical trespasser, yet the owner may be liable, if the things causing the injury have been left exposed and unguarded, and are of such a nature as to be attractive to children, appealing to their childish curiosity and instincts. unguarded premises, which are thus supplied with dangerous attractions, are regarded as holding out implied invitations to children. there has been a great deal of controversy over this important rule. those opposed say, if everywhere applied, it would render the owner of a fruit tree, for example, liable for damages to a trespassing boy who, in attempting to get the fruit, should fall from the tree and be injured. professor burdick, after a full review of the cases, says that the tide of judicial opinion is setting the other way. children, therefore, who invade the premises of a person without any right are trespassers like older people. the duty of caring for children remains with their parents and guardians; and if they are injured while unlawfully going on the land of others their parents cannot visit the consequences of their neglect on the owners of the land where the injuries happened. =warranty.=--the law, assuming that the purchaser knows or can find out the quality and worth of things, does not make an implied warranty of them generally. the legal maxim is, "let the purchaser beware." he must take care of himself. in many cases, though, he does obtain a warranty. he must, however, distinguish between this and a mere representation. it may be difficult to draw the line always, but it exists. a statement that is not intended as a warranty, made simply to awaken the buyer's interest in the thing for sale, is not a warranty. nor does the law imply a warranty from the payment of a full price. formerly, when a commodity was adulterated, it could be returned, and the courts became sorely troubled to defend an adulteration. more recently, statutes have cleared away the difficulty, and are a great protection to buyers. in many cases, doubtless, they know more about the quality and condition of the things they buy than the inexperienced salesmen who are behind the counters, so they need no protection from the law; when they do need it a warranty may serve a good purpose. in articles concerning which the seller does possess a superior knowledge, precious stones, drugs, medicines, and the like, the modern law has raised an implied warranty for the buyer's protection. in this class of cases the buyer and seller do not deal on equal terms. the vendor is professedly an expert. in a sale of food there is no longer an implied warranty of fitness, unless the buyer expressly or by inspection acquaints the seller with the purpose of the purchase and unless it appears that the buyer relies on the seller's skill and judgment. even then, if the buyer has examined the goods and has discovered a defect, there is no warranty. the burden of showing that he has made known his purpose and that he has relied on the seller is on the purchaser who claims the existence of an implied warranty. there is another implied warranty, that of the seller's title, when he is in possession of the goods. this is limited to persons who are acting for themselves, and not agents, trustees, officers of the law, who are acting for others. an innocent purchaser of goods, therefore, for a good consideration obtains a good title, even from a vendee who has obtained them by fraud, as against the original vendor. this rule, though very broad, does not prevent a lawful owner from recovering his property. thus, if a farmer's oxen were stolen and the thief should sell them as his own, and the purchaser should pay for them, nevertheless the farmer could recover them. the only exception to this rule is negotiable paper. this is made in order to surround it with greater protection. where goods are sold by sample there is a warranty that the goods will be like the sample, but there is no warranty of the sample itself. in one of the well-known cases hops were sold by sample, and after the hops had been delivered the discovery was made that they had been injured by heating. the buyer sued though failed to recover anything, for it was proved that they were like the sample, which had been shown several months before, and at that time the heating had not begun. as they were sold at the earlier period, their condition at the time of the delivery did not affect the sale. see _deceit_; _sale_. =will.=--a will is a disposition of one's property to take effect after his death. he is called a testator, and must possess a sound mind to make an effective will. he must be able to comprehend what he is doing. wills are often contested on the ground that the testator's mind was feeble and that undue influence was exercised over him in disposing of his property. married women can make wills like their husbands and so can a minor in many states. all of the states have enacted statutes on the subject which require various things; one of the most important is the witnessing of wills. generally, three witnesses are required. an eminent judge, not long since, made a will to please his wife leaving a large sum to found an institution. he was opposed to the thing. the astute judge had no witnesses, so he both fooled his wife and pleased himself, for his will was worthless. the statutes require the witnesses to sign in the testator's presence, who often give important testimony of his competency whenever his will is contested. as they may be called for this purpose, intelligence should be used in selecting persons to become witnesses. a witness who is competent at the time of signing does not become incompetent by reason of anything that may happen to him afterward. a witness should not be given anything in the will, for, if this is done, his act of witnessing in perhaps all the states violates the gift. though this may be the consequence the rest of the will is not thereby impaired. the property given is either real or personal. real property consists of land extending indefinitely upward and downward, every building thereon, every growing thing, likewise all minerals and in some cases even ice. personal property includes everything of a movable nature. a transformation is often effected. a tree while standing on the land is a part thereof; cut down it becomes personal property. a will should be in writing; and this in most states is a statutory requirement, to guard against the wrongs and frauds that might otherwise arise. a testator may write his own will, indeed to do so would be a good test of will-making capacity. if he is unable to write his name, he may make his mark. when this is done, there should be ample proof that he did so, for a mark can be so easily made by any one. a person to whom real estate is given is called a devisee; the receiver of personal property a legatee. when the testator gives real estate he must have regard to the laws of the state where it is situated; in giving personal property he is governed by the law of the state where he resides, his domicil. many a devise has been declared invalid, because the testator in devising it did not comply with the law of the state where the land was located. the principal ground on which wills are attacked is feebleness of mind, lack of mental capacity. the question assumes this form: did the testator at the time he executed his will have sufficient mental capacity to do it. an eminent jurist, chief justice redfield, has said that he must have undoubtedly sufficient active memory to perceive the more obvious relations of things to each other. even if unable to manage his business, he can nevertheless make a will if he knows what he is doing. again an insane person may make a will provided this is done during a lucid interval. many a person is insane only at times or on particular subjects and therefore may be competent to make a rational disposition of his property. some persons have curious religious beliefs, prejudices against persons, governments and institutions, and yet these vagaries may not impair their capacity to dispose of their property in a legal and rational manner. another requirement of a testator is that he must declare in the presence of the witnesses that it is his last will and testament. this is called a publication of the will. of course, his will must be completed when this is done. suppose a person makes several wills, which one of them is effective? the last one. a will should be dated, suppose this has been forgotten, what then? the last will must be established, if possible, by other evidence. suppose it is believed that the last will has been destroyed, and a prior will is found, can this be set up as establishing the testator's disposition of his property? it is not his last will, for he has made another. any person may be a devisee or legatee including married women, minors and corporations. if a bequest is made to a corporation not in existence, is it valid? by some courts this can be done, by others this power is denied to a testator. many a well-meant bequest to a noble charity has been smitten down because there was no legal donee then existing to receive the gift. a testator may bequeath property to a trustee who shall select the objects of the testator's bounty. the thing bequeathed must be described with sufficient clearness to identify it, nothing more is required. in some cases proper evidence may be used to identify things where the description in the will is ambiguous. a devise of lands may consist of the entire estate or interest of the testator, or he may give the devisee a lesser interest in them. it is a common thing for a testator to devise the use of land to a person during his lifetime, and after his death the entire interest or fee to another. he usually adds a final or residuary clause to his will to the effect, that all he may have which has not been bequeathed to any one specifically shall be given to one or more persons or objects named in his will. or, if a legacy shall lapse, that is, the person to whom it has been given shall die, or for any other reason cannot, or will not take it, it falls into the residuary portion and goes to the residuary legatee. if a will does not contain such a clause, and there is no statute in the way, then a lapsed legacy or other property, not covered by the will, goes to such persons as the law has prescribed whenever persons die leaving no will, or, in legal language, die intestate. a will takes effect from the testator's death and so does the validity of all the bequests. thus, should a person mentioned as legatee die before the testator, the legacy would be invalid. but many or all of the states have provided by statute for the continuation of these in many cases. thus, should a son, to whom his father has devised some land, die leaving children, they take it in place of their father. these statutes vary much, some limiting the substitution to the lineal heirs of the deceased, son, grandson, etc., others extending the substitutes to the collateral heirs of any devisee or legatee. again, by statute and common law a wife is entitled on the death of her husband to a specific portion of his property. should he not give her as much by his will, unless he had made an agreement with her before marriage with respect to what she was to receive, she may renounce her rights under her husband's will and claim what the law would give her as if he had made no will. a will can be revoked any time. the common way is to destroy it. another way is to dispose during his lifetime of his property. in one of the cases a testator had indorsed on his will in his own handwriting "canceled." though this was not signed, it was held to be a revocation. in another case a blind testator called for his will which was handed to him. he gave it back with the direction to put it in the fire. instead of doing so another piece of paper was substituted and burned. this was a downright fraud, and the court justly held that the will had been revoked. =workmen's compensation acts.=--who is entitled to compensation by these acts? the proper test to apply is, whether the employer possessed the power to control the other while at work at the machine or other thing from which the injury arose. says honnold: "in the ordinary acceptance of the term, one who is engaged to render services in a particular transaction is not an employee; the term employee embracing continuity of service and excluding those employed for a single and special transaction. it does not usually include physicians, pastors or professional nurses. it may, however, include those not engaged in manual labor, such as a school-teacher. the fact that a workman furnishes tools and materials, or undertakes to do a specified job will not prevent his being an employee. a deaconess, living and working in a hospital and receiving an annuity to cover clothing and expenses, is not an employee of the hospital," nor is an employee of a religious home for the aged who works around the house for which he is not paid any fixed amount. a director of a bank is not an employee within the meaning of the acts under consideration. to be an employee there must be a contract of service. this is not the same thing as a contract for services. by the latter relationship one is an independent contractor and excluded from the acts. the contract of service need not be actually made, it may be implied, for example, the case of a substitute who is engaged by an employee in accordance with custom. a contract of service is not created by the relation of landlord and tenant, carrier and passenger, bailor and bailee, nor by professional service, nor by forming a partnership, nor by performing manual labor beyond the employer's control. whether a contract of service arises from charitable work depends on the circumstances of the particular case. state employees are within these acts in some states, and excluded in others, likewise municipal employees. by the federal act the term "laborer" is used to designate men who do work that requires but little skill as distinguished from an artisan who practices an industrial art. the act includes a storekeeper, an inspector who performs no manual labor, a messenger in the government printing office, the master of a dredge, the matron of an indian school, a transit man, a surveyor, a clerk engaged in office work, an assistant veterinarian, a laboratory assistant, a dock master. compensation legislation is not limited to healthy employees. one's previous physical condition is of no consequence in determining the amount of relief to be afforded. nevertheless, it is a circumstance to be considered in ascertaining, when one has been injured, whether the injury resulted from the work or from his health. in some of the compensation acts minors are excluded, in other acts he is protected by them. an apprentice who is qualifying himself to operate an elevator is an employee within the minnesota act. many of the acts provide that the term employee shall include every person in the service of another under any contract of hire, except one whose employment is casual, or is not in the usual course of the trade, business profession or occupation of his employer. farm laborers are outside these acts in some states. thus, in massachusetts "the workmen's compensation act was not intended to confer its advantages upon farm laborers, or to impose its burdens upon farmers." but a farmer may adopt it if he desires. and any contract of insurance made by him under its terms is valid and enforceable. such an exemption, however, does not except employees working for one who is engaged in a commercial or other non-agricultural enterprise though he be a farmer. likewise, a farmer carrying on a market garden may procure insurance covering his drivers and helpers employed in distributing the produce of his farm without insuring other employees who are merely farm laborers. the right to compensation is determined by the character of the labor one is actually doing when the accident occurs, rather than by the fact that the employee occasionally does farm labor. thus, plowing is usually farm labor, but if it is done to make land ready for building a house it is not. if a farmer does not avail himself of the act for all of his employees, he may procure insurance for a limited portion of them. "if there are those," says chief justice rugg, "separable from others by classification and definition, whose labor is more exposed and dangerous, or whom he may desire to protect for any other reason, there is nothing in the act to prevent him from doing so." likewise, domestic servants are excluded by some of these acts, who are they? "a household servant is one who dwells under the same roof with the family under circumstances making him a member thereof." and his status is determined rather by his relation to the family than by his relation to the service. thus, a workman who is hired to tend the furnace, mow the lawn, and do odd jobs about the house, who has a room therein and eats at the family table, is a household servant. on the other hand, a chauffeur who is hired by the month to run the employer's private automobile, but is not living as a member of the family, is not a household servant. in many cases, however, he is one. while it is doubtful whether the test of living in the employer's house is the sole test of household service, it is essential that he is engaged in rendering service in the house, such as cleaning, cooking or washing. on one occasion, a porter in a saloon was sent upstairs by the proprietor to wash the windows in the apartment where the proprietor lived with his family. while thus engaged he fell to the sidewalk and was injured. the court regarded him as a household servant. many of the acts exclude from their protection casual employees. this term is a difficult one to define, and has been omitted in many of the acts. where this is done all employees engaged in the usual course of the trade, business, occupation, or profession of their employer, with some exceptions, receive compensation. ordinarily, an employment is casual when it is for a single day, or by the hour, but does not apply to one who is employed to render a service that recurs with some regularity. thus, one who is employed as a workman in a sawmill on such days as it was in operation for four months was not a casual employee. casual employment in the connecticut act means occasional or incidental employment. in california, if the length of employment is less than a week it is casual, even though contrary to agreement the employee took more than a week to do the work for which he was hired, and which a skillful employee could have finished within a week. "the question whether an employment is casual must be determined with reference to the scope and purpose of the hiring rather than with sole regard to the duration and regularity of the service. one who enters into a contract of employment for an entire season is not a casual employee merely because he may be required to work for only short and irregular periods." thus, a longshoreman who is employed at a certain sum per hour to help load a ship, having frequently rendered a similar service on other occasions, is not a casual employee; nor is one who keeps machinery and boats in order at an amusement park; nor is a boy who is called at irregular intervals for service in a butcher's shop when extra help is needed, or in the absence of a regular employee; nor is one who is employed during a packing season to drive for a packer whenever he is needed. the compensation law does not apply to independent contractors. it is difficult, however, to draw the line in many cases. generally, an independent contractor is one who exercises an independent employment and contracts to do a piece of work according to his own method, without being subject to the control of the employer. a test that is sometimes applied is, who has the right to direct what shall be done and when and how, and who has the right of general control. when, therefore, one exercises an independent employment, selects his own help and has the control of them, and the method of conducting the work, he is an independent contractor. again, he may change his relation for a time, and become an employee, or he may be a contractor for a part of his service and an employee for a part. thus, one who was injured while operating a launch to bring supplies to a dredge for his employer was an employee and not an independent contractor, though he was one in conducting the work of dredging. likewise, a physician who is employed on a salary by another physician, who in turn is serving a manufactory, is an employee of the latter and not an independent contractor, though he is still engaged to some extent in his own private practice. by the federal act an employee must be "employed by the united states to be entitled to its benefits." thus, a plate printer in the bureau of engraving and printing who is paid by the piece, and who bonds himself and hires and pays his own help, also the owner of a power boat chartered to the government and operated by the owner in its service, are contractors, and not federal employees. a workman, therefore, who is employed by a government contractor is not an employee of the government. on the other hand, one who is employed and carried on the pay rolls of the reclamation service, though working for the contractor, is employed by the government, likewise, a workman employed in the forest service who is working with others for county supervisors who, in turn, are executing a contract with the government. as public officers are not employees within the meaning of the compensation acts, they may be distinguished from others who are employees. unless the statute says so, a policeman is not an employee of the city which he serves, but an officer holding a public trust. on the other hand, a night policeman or marshal is an employee by the wisconsin law. firemen and deputy sheriffs on a fee basis are officers rather than employees. the compensation acts secure compensation not only for injured workmen, but should they die, to their dependents. who then is a dependent? "dependency," says honnold, "does not depend on an answer to the question whether the alleged dependents could support themselves without the earnings of the person who is no longer living, but whether they were in fact supported in whole or in part by such earnings intentionally by him. occasional gifts do not prove dependency, yet purely voluntary contributions may establish dependency. voluntary contributions of money, support or service by a brother to a sister or by a sister to a brother are not complete evidence of the dependency of either. compensation cannot be awarded to dependents who do not belong to the classes of relatives mentioned in the statutes." the phrase, actual dependents, means dependents in fact whether they are wholly or partially dependent. partial dependency, giving a right to compensation may exist though the contributions are at irregular intervals and of irregular amounts, and the dependent has other means of supporting himself. an employee contributed all of his earnings to his mother who was partially dependent on him for support. five other children contributed to the family fund. it was held that the mother was entitled to a weekly compensation equal to one half of the weekly compensation of her deceased son. a dependent who is an alien living in a foreign country is not debarred from receiving compensation. by some of the acts such compensation to nonresidents is limited to a father or mother. children who are entitled to compensation as dependents include stepchildren, illegitimate children, children adopted by the workman, also posthumous, legitimate and illegitimate. the federal act provides that if the injured artisan or laborer die within the year after his injury "leaving a widow, or a child or children under sixteen years of age, or a dependent parent, they shall be entitled to compensation." the word parent, while including both parents, does not include a stepfather or a stepmother, or a foster parent who has not been legally adopted. the question of dependence is one of fact; contributions by the deceased tend to establish this, but are not conclusive. the word child or children used in the act is not limited to a child or children born in wedlock, but includes illegitimate offspring, and children legally adopted. if an injured workman dies before he has made application for or received compensation, it may be paid from the date of the injury to the date of his death, as well as for the remainder of the year to his widow or family. the earnings of a workman are the basis for computing the amount of compensation he is to receive for an injury. these include anything that he receives for his labor that possesses a money value. in the way of illustrating more clearly what he may receive the outline of a section of the massachusetts act may be given. it provides what the workman may receive when his injury is partial from the insurance association which has become liable therefor. a weekly compensation equal to one half the difference between his average weekly wages before the injury and the average weekly wages which he is able to earn thereafter; but not more than ten dollars a week, nor for a longer period than three hundred weeks from the date of the injury. formerly, when injured, he received as compensation a sum fixed by agreement between himself and his employer; and if they could not agree, as often happened, then he sued his employer and the court decided the amount the employer must pay. these suits were often costly, long contested, and if the employee won his counsel often took such a large share as to leave a disappointing amount to the employee. on the other hand, many an employee magnified his injury, juries were usually sympathetic, especially if the employer was a corporation, and from the general dissatisfaction has been created the new system. having stated in the most general way what the law provides for a workman who has been injured, there remains the statement of what is done when the workman dies from his accident. the arizona law illustrates this as well as any other. when he dies within six months thereafter and leaves a widow, and a minor child or children dependent on his earnings for support and education, then the employer must pay to the personal representative of the deceased workman for the benefit of the widow and children a sum equal to twenty-four hundred times one half of the daily wages or earnings of the deceased, not exceeding in any case more than four thousand dollars. if the employer has insured the lives of his employees in an insurance company, for which the acts quite generally provide, then of course payment of the benefits are paid by the company to those who are entitled to them. some of the compensation acts provide compensation for both total and partial incapacity resulting from injuries which do not prove fatal. thus the connecticut act provides that loss of sight, the loss or paralysis of certain physical members, and incurable imbecility or insanity, resulting from the accident shall be "considered as causing total incapacity." for these and all other injuries resulting in total incapacity to work, there must be paid to the injured employee weekly, while incapacitated, compensation equal to half of his earnings at the time of the injury, for a maximum and minimum period. another section provides that in cases resulting in partial incapacity there must be paid to the injured employee a weekly compensation during his incapacity, equal to half the difference between his average weekly earnings before the injury and the amount he is able to earn thereafter with a maximum and minimum limitation of the amount within a limited period. legal forms for everyday use agreement for sale of land this agreement, entered into this ____ day of ________, __, by and between a.b. and c.d., witnesseth: that said a.b. has this day sold to c.d. the following described tract of land, to-wit: (describe) for the sum of $________, to be paid as hereinafter set forth, and upon the payment of which said a.b. agrees to convey to said c.d. the premises above described, free and clear from all incumbrances, by a deed of general warranty. and the said c.d. agrees to pay said a.b. for said premises the sum of $________, as follows: $________ with interest at ____ per cent on the ____ day of ________, __; the said a.b. agrees that said c.d. shall have immediate possession of said premises for the purpose of residence, cultivation, and improvement. in witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands this ____ day of ________, __. a.b. c.d. agreement concerning party wall this agreement, made this ____ day of ________, __, by and between a.b. and c.d., of the city of ________ ________, witnesseth: that, whereas, the said c.d. is the owner of the house and lot on the south side of ________ street, second lot east of ________ street, and the said a.b. is the owner of the lot adjoining the same next easterly thereof, on which said lot there now stands a party wall on a line parallel with ________ street; and forty-four feet easterly from said ________ street; and, whereas, the said a.b. has erected his dwelling-house several feet (one story) higher than the said c.d., whereby greater advantage may accrue to the said a.b. from said party wall. now, therefore, the said c.d., in consideration of the sum of $ , to him in hand paid, the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged, doth grant, covenant, promise, and agree with the said a.b., that he may peacefully and lawfully enjoy such party wall, to himself, his heirs, and assigns, the said c.d. reserving to himself the right to use the said portion of the party wall built by the said a.b., whenever he may wish to build higher than his house now is. it is further mutually understood and agreed, between the respective parties, that this agreement shall remain so long as the houses last, and shall pass to the heirs and assigns of the respective parties to these presents. witness our hands and seals, the day and year first above written. a.b. (l.s.) c.d. (l.s.) agreement for building this agreement, entered into this ____ day of ________, __, between a.b. and c.d. witnesseth: that the said a.b. hereby agrees with the said c.d. to erect for him on (describe land) a (dwelling-house) in conformity with the drawing and detailed specifications of one e.f., architect, the work to be performed in a substantial and workmanlike manner, and with the best materials of their respective kinds, the same to be furnished, together with all things necessary to erect and complete said building, at the cost and expense of the said a.b., payments to be made as follows: (specify terms) upon the certificate of the architect, provided that said estimates shall not at any time before the completion of said building exceed the basis of per cent of the value of the work so executed. and the said c.d. hereby agrees with said a.b. to pay to him the sum of $________ for the erection and completion of said building in the manner aforesaid, (monthly) estimates to be made by said e.f., architect, of the amount then due to said a.b. thereon, upon the presentation of which estimate said c.d. agrees to pay per cent of the same, the remaining per cent to be retained until the completion of said building. and on the completion of said work in the manner aforesaid to the satisfaction of said architect, and upon the presentation of his certificate to that effect, said c.d. agrees to pay said a.b. the balance remaining unpaid on said contract, including the fifteen per cent retained until the completion of the work. the said a.b. further agrees to complete said building as aforesaid and deliver the same to said c.d. on or before the ____ day of ________, __. in witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands this ____ day of ________, __. a.b. c.d. claim of lien by workman of sub-contractor a.b. to c.d., dr. june st, __. to twenty-five days' labor at carpenter work, at $ per day, upon the dwelling-house situated on lot b in block , in the city ________, ________ county, ________, which services were rendered on and before the st day of june, __, and then payable. (signed) c.d. agreement for work and labor this agreement, entered into this ____ day of ________, __, by and between a.b. and c.d., witnesseth: that the said a.b. agrees faithfully to labor for c.d. for the term of (six) months from the first day of ________, __, at farm labor, on the farm of said c.d., in ________ county, and to perform such other services as may be reasonable and just, for which services said c.d. agrees to pay said a.b. the sum of $________ per month (on the ____ day of ________, __.) in witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands this ____ day of ________, __. a.b. c.d. bond to perform a contract know all men by these presents, that, we a.b., as principal, and c.d., as surety, are held and firmly bound unto e.f., in the sum of $________, for the payment of which well and truly to be made we bind ourselves jointly and severally by these presents. dated this ____ day of ________, __. whereas, said a.b. had, by an agreement of this date, contracted in writing with said e.f. to (here describe the contract). now, therefore, the condition of this obligation is such that if the said a.b. shall do and perform all the stipulations and agreements contained in said written contract then this obligation to be null and void. otherwise to remain in full force and effect. in witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands this ____ day of ________, __. a.b. c.d. bill of sale know all men by these presents, that ________, of the first part, for and in consideration of the sum of ________, lawful money of the united states, to ________ in hand paid, at or before the ensealing and delivery of these presents by ________, of the second part, the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged, ha____ bargained and sold, and by these presents do grant and convey, unto the said part ________ of the second part, ________ executors, administrators, and assigns (description of property; or if detailed description is contained in schedule annexed, say, the goods and chattels particularly described in a schedule hereunto annexed and made a part of this instrument), to have and to hold the same unto the said part ________ of the second part, ________ executors, administrators, and assigns forever. and ________ do____ for ________ heirs, executors, administrators, covenant and agree, to and with the said part ________ of the second part, to warrant and defend the sale of the said property ________ hereby sold unto the said part ________ of the second part, ________ ________ executors, administrators, and assigns, against all and every person and persons whomsoever. in witness whereof, ________ have hereunto set ________ hand ________ and seal ________ the ____ day of ________ in the year one thousand nine hundred and ________. sealed and delivered in the presence of (acknowledgment clause.) bill of sale--shorter form know all men by these presents, that i ________ of the county of ________, in the state of ________, do hereby bargain, sell, and convey to said ________, the following described personal property now belonging to me, to-wit: (describe in detail). and i hereby covenant with said ________ ________, to warrant the title of said property to said ________ against the lawful claims of all persons whomsoever. in witness whereof i have hereunto set my hand this ____ day of ________, __. (signed) in the presence of ________ warranty deed know all men by these presents, that we ________, and ________, husband and wife, in consideration of the sum of $________, in hand paid, do hereby grant, bargain, sell, and convey to ________, of ________ county, ________, the following described real estate situate in the county of ________, and state of iowa, to-wit: (describe premises), to have and to hold to his heirs and assigns forever. together with all the tenements, hereditaments, and appurtenances thereto belonging. and we hereby covenant with said ________ that we are lawfully seized of said premises; that they are free from incumbrances; that we have good right and lawful authority to sell the same, and we covenant to warrant and defend the same against the lawful claims of all persons whomsoever. and the said ________, hereby relinquishes her right of dower in said premises. in witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands this ____ day of ________, __. in presence of ________ ________ ________ state of ________} ________ county. } on this ____ day of ________, __, before me, a justice of the peace in and for said county, personally came the above named ________, who are known to me to be the identical persons whose names are affixed to the above deed as grantors, and severally acknowledge the instrument to be their voluntary act, and deed. in witness whereof i have hereunto set my hand the day and year above written. a.b. justice of the peace. warranty deed in common use in new england know all men by these presents, that i, (the grantor) of (residence, town or city, county and state), (occupation), in consideration of (the amount paid) to me paid by (here name the grantee or purchaser, giving in like manner his residence and occupation), the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged, do hereby give, grant, bargain, sell and convey unto the said (name the grantee, and then describe the premises granted, minutely and accurately):-- to have and to hold the above-granted premises, to the said (name the grantee), his (hers or their) heirs and assigns, to his (or her or their) use and behoof forever. and then, the said (name the grantor), for (myself) and (my) heirs, executors, and administrators, do covenant with the said (name of the grantee), and with his heirs and assigns, that i am lawfully seized in fee simple of the aforegranted premises; that they are free from all incumbrances (if there be any incumbrances, as a mortgage or lien, or right of way, or drain, or air, or light, say excepting, and then describe the incumbrance), that i have good right to sell and convey the same to the said (name of the grantee), and his (or her) heirs and assigns forever as aforesaid; and that i will, and my heirs, executors, and administrators shall, warrant and defend the same to the said (name of the grantee), and his heirs and assigns forever, against the lawful claims and demands of all persons. in witness whereof, i the said (name of the grantor) and (name of his wife), wife of said grantor, in token of her release of all right and title of or to dower in the granted premises, have hereunto set our hands and seals this ____ day of ________ in the year of our lord ________ (signature) (seal) signed, sealed, and delivered in the presence of deed of indenture--short form this indenture, made the ____ day of ________, __, between ________ (insert occupation and residence), of the first part, and ________ (insert occupation and residence), of the second part, witnesseth: that the said part____ of the first part, in consideration of ________ dollars, lawful money of the united states, paid by the part____ of the second part, do ____ hereby grant and release unto the said part____ of the second part, ____h____ heirs and assigns forever (description of land). together with the appurtenances and all the estate and rights of the part____ of the first part in and to said premises. to have and to hold the above-granted premises unto the said part____ of the second part, ____h____ heirs and assigns forever. and that said part____ of the first part do____ covenant with said part____ of the second part, as follows: that the part____ of the first part will forever warrant the title to said premises. in witness whereof, the said part____ of the first part ha____ hereunto set ____h____ hand ____ and seal ____, the day and year first above written. in the presence of (acknowledgment clause.) quit claim deed know all men by these presents, that we, ________ and ________, husband and wife, in consideration of the sum of $________, in hand paid, do hereby sell and quit claim to ________ all our right, title and interest in and to the following described real estate, situate in the county of ________, and state of ________, to-wit: (describe premises) to have and to hold the above described premises to the said ________, and his heirs and assigns forever. in witness whereof, we have hereunto set our hands this ________ day of ________, __. in presence of ________ ________ ________ state of ________} ________ county. } on this ____ day of ________, __, before me, a justice of the peace, in and for said county, personally came the above named ________, who are known to me to be the identical persons whose names are affixed to the above deed as grantors, and severally acknowledged the instrument to be their voluntary act and deed. witness my hand the date above given. a.b. justice of the peace. quit claim deed--another form this indenture, made this ____ day of ________, in the year of our lord, __, between ________, of the first part, and ________, of the second part, witnesseth: that the said part____ of the first part, in consideration of the sum of ________ dollars, to ________, in hand paid by the said part____ of the second part, the receipt whereof is hereby confessed and acknowledged, ha____ bargained, sold, remised, and quitclaimed, and by these presents do____ bargain, sell, remise, and quitclaim unto the said part____ of the second part ________ and to ________, heirs and assigns forever, all ________ together with all and singular the hereditaments and appurtenances thereto belonging, or in anywise appertaining, and the reversion and reversions, remainder and remainders, rents, issues, and profits thereof, and all the estate, right, title, interest, claim, and demand whatsoever, of the said part____ of the first part, either in law or equity, of, in, and to the above-bargained premises, with the said hereditaments and appurtenances, to have and to hold the said ________ to the said part____ of the second part, ________ heirs and assigns, to the sole and only proper benefit and behoof of the said part____ of the second part, ________ heirs and assigns forever. in witness whereof, the part____ of the first part ha____ hereunto set ________ hand ____ and seal ____, the day and year first above written. sealed and delivered in the presence of (acknowledgment clause.) quit claim deed--short form in consideration of $ , to me in hand paid by c.d., i, a.b., hereby sell, grant, release, and quitclaim to said c.d., that certain lot (here insert description). to have and to hold the said released premises unto the said c.d., and his heirs and assigns forever. witness my hand and seal, this ____ day of ________, __. (acknowledgment clause.) a.b. (l.s.) mortgage know all men by these presents, that ________ and ________, husband and wife, in consideration of the sum of $________, to us in hand paid, do hereby grant, bargain, sell, and convey to ________ of ________, the following described real estate, to-wit: (describe premises). together with all the tenements and appurtenances thereunto belonging. and we do hereby covenant with said ________ that we are lawfully seized of said premises; and we will warrant and defend, the same against the lawful claims of all persons whomsoever. provided, however, and these presents are upon this express condition. that whereas ________ on the ____ day of ________, __, executed and delivered to ________ promissory notes, as follows: the first of said notes for the sum of $________, with interest from date, is due and payable ________, __, and the second of said notes for the sum of $________ with interest from date, is due and payable on the ____ day of ________, __. now if said ________ shall pay said notes and interest thereon, when they shall become due, then this conveyance shall be null and void, otherwise to remain in force and effect. in witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands this ________ day of ________, __. in presence of ________ ________ ________ acknowledgment as to deed. mortgage with power of sale this indenture, made the ____ day of ________ in the year ________ between ________ (name, residence, and occupation of mortgagor) party of the first part, and ________ (name, residence, and occupation of mortgagee) party of the second part, witnesseth: that the said party of the first part, in consideration of the sum of (the amount of the debt) to him duly paid before the delivery hereof, has bargained and sold, and by these presents does grant and convey to the said party of the second part, and his heirs and assigns forever, all (here describe the premises minutely and accurately) with the appurtenances, and all the estate, right, and title, and interest of the said party of the first part therein. this grant is intended as a security for the payment of (here describe the debt) which payments, if duly made, will render this conveyance void. and if default shall be made in the payment of the principal or interest above mentioned, then the said party of the second part, or his executors, administrators, or assigns, are hereby authorized to sell the premises above granted, or so much thereof as will be necessary to satisfy the amount then due with the costs and expenses allowed by law. in witness whereof, the said party of the first part has hereunto set his hand and seal the day and year first above written. (signature) (seal) sealed and delivered in the presence of state of } county of } ss. on the ____ day of ________ in the year one thousand nine hundred and ________ before me personally came (name of mortgagor) who is known to me to be the individual described in, and who executed the foregoing instrument, and acknowledged that he executed the same, as his free act and deed. chattel mortgage with power of sale know all men by these presents, that i, a.b., in consideration of the sum of $________ paid by c.d., have bargained and sold, and by these presents do hereby sell and convey to said c.d. the following goods, and chattels, to-wit: (describe the articles mortgaged, or refer to them as the goods and chattels mentioned in the schedule hereto annexed), and which is now in my possession. whereas, the said a.b. is justly indebted to c.d. in the sum of $________, payable on the ____ day of ________, __, with interest at ten per cent from the ____ day of ________, __ (upon a promissory note of even date herewith, or for goods sold and delivered). now the condition of the above obligation is such that if the said a.b. shall well and truly pay said c.d. said sum of money and interest when the same shall become due, then this conveyance shall be void, otherwise to remain in full force and effect. it is also agreed that said a.b. may retain possession of the said mortgaged property until said debt becomes due. but if default be made in the payment of said sum or any part thereof, the said c.d. and his assigns are hereby authorized to sell said goods and chattels, or so much thereof as will be necessary to satisfy the amount then due, together with the costs and expenses incurred by reason of said default. (signed) a.b. in the presence of e.f. mortgage on goods and chattels--another form know all men by these presents, that a.b., residing at ________, of the first part, for securing the payment of the ________, hereinafter mentioned, and in consideration of the sum of $ , to ________ in hand paid, at or before the ensealing and delivery of these presents, by c.d., of the second part, the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged, ha____ granted, bargained, sold, and assigned, and by these presents do ____ grant, bargain, sell, and assign unto the said part____ of the second part, all ________ now remaining and being ________. to have and to hold, all and singular, the goods and chattels above bargained and sold, or intended so to be, unto the said part____ of the second part, ________ executors, administrators, and assigns forever. and the said part____ of the first part, for ________ heirs, executors, and administrators, all and singular, the said goods and chattels above bargained and sold unto the said part____ of the second part, ________ executors, administrators, and assigns, against the said part____ of the first part, and against all and every person or persons whomsoever shall and will warrant, and by these presents forever defend. upon condition, that if the said part____ of the first part shall and do well and truly pay, or cause to be paid, unto the said part____ of the second part, ________ executors, administrators, or assigns, the sum of ________, then these presents and everything herein contained shall cease and be void. and the said part____ of the first part, for ________ executors, administrators, and assigns, do ________ covenant and agree to and with the said part____ of the second part, ________ executors, administrators, and assigns, to make punctual payment of the money hereby secured ________. and in case default shall be made in payment of the said sum above mentioned, or in case the said part____ of the second part shall sooner choose to demand the said goods and chattels, it shall and may be lawful for, and the said part____ of the first part do ________ hereby authorize and empower the said part____ of the second part, ________ executors, administrators, and assigns, with the aid and assistance of any person or persons, to enter and come into and upon the dwelling-house and premises of the said part____ of the first part, and in such other place or places as the said goods and chattels are or may be held or placed, and take and carry away the said goods and chattels to sell and dispose of the same for the best price they can obtain, at either public or private sale, and out of the money to retain and pay the said sum above mentioned, with the interest and all expenses and charges thereon, rendering the overplus (if any) unto the said part____ of the first part, ________ executors, administrators, and assigns. and until default be made in the payment of the aforesaid sum of money, the said part____ of the first part to remain and continue in quiet and peaceable possession of the said goods and chattels, and the full and free enjoyment of the same, unless the said part____ of the second part, ________ executors, administrators, or assigns, shall sooner choose to demand the same; and until such demand be made, the possession of the said part____ of the first part shall be deemed the possession of an agent or servant, for the sole benefit and advantage of his principal, the said part____ of the second part. in witness whereof, the said part____ of the first part, ha____ hereunto set ________ hand ____ and seal ________ this ____ day of ________, __. sealed and delivered in the presence of ________ county of ________ss.: on this ____ day of ________, __, before me came ________, to me known to be the person____ described in and who executed the foregoing instrument, and ________ acknowledged that ____ he ________ executed the same. notice of sale under chattel mortgage notice is hereby given that by virtue of a chattel mortgage, dated on the ____ day of ________, __, and duly filed in the office of the county clerk of ________ county, ________ on the ____ day of ________, __, and executed by a.b. to c.d. to secure the payment of the sum of $________, and upon which there is now due the sum of $________. default having been made in the payment of said sum, and no suit or other proceeding at law having been instituted to recover said debt or any part thereof, therefore, i will sell the property therein described, viz.: (here describe the articles substantially as in the mortgage) at public auction at the house of ________, in the (city, town, or precinct) of ________, in ________ county, on the ____ day of ________, at one o'clock p.m. of said date. c.d. mortgagee. dated ____, ________, __. assignment of mortgage this instrument, made this ____ day of ________, __, between ________, of the first part, and ________, of the second part, witnesseth: that the part____ of the first part, for a good and valuable consideration, to ________ in hand paid by the part____ of the second part, ha____ sold, assigned, transferred, and conveyed, and do____ hereby sell, assign, transfer, and convey to the part____ of the second part, a certain mortgage, bearing date the ____ day of ________, __, made by ________, recorded in the clerk's office of ________ county, in liber ________, of mortgages, at page ________, on the ____ day of ________, __, at ____ o'clock ____m., together with the bond accompanying said mortgage, and therein referred to, and all sums of money due and to grow due thereon. and the part____ of the first part hereby covenant that there is ________ due on the said bond and mortgage the sum of ________. in witness whereof, the part____ of the first part ha____ hereunto set ________ hand ____ and seal ____ the day and year first above written. (assignment clause.) agreement for lease this is to certify that i have, on this st day of ________, __, let and rented to c.d., lot ________, in block ________, in the city to ________, ________, together with the dwelling-house thereon, with all the appurtenances, and the sole and uninterrupted possession thereof for one year from this date, at the yearly rent of $________, payable quarterly in advance; rent to cease in case of the destruction of the premises by fire. (signed) a.b. lease this agreement, entered into this first day of ________, __, between a.b. and c.d., witnesseth: that the said a.b., in consideration of the covenants of the said c.d., hereinafter set forth, does hereby lease to the said c.d., from the first day of ________, __, to the ____ day of ________, __, the following described property, to-wit: (the southeast quarter of section , in township north, range east of th principal meridian). and the said c.d., in consideration of the leasing of the premises as above set forth, does hereby covenant and agree to pay said a.b. the rent following, to-wit: (insert terms and mode of payment). the said c.d. also covenants with the said a.b. that he will cultivate said land in a good and husband-like manner; that he will keep said premises in as good a condition as they now are; the usual wear and incidents by fire excepted, and that he will yield peaceable possession of the same to said a.b. at the expiration of said term. in witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands this ________ day of ________, __. a.b. c.d. in presence of e.f. lease--another form landlord and tenant's agreement this instrument, made and executed this ____ day of ________, __, between ________, of the ________, part____ of the first part, and ________, of the ________, part____ of the second part, witnesseth: that the part____ of the first part ha____ hereby let and rented to the part____ of the second part, and the part____ of the second part ha____ hereby hired and taken from the part____ of the first part, ________ for the term of ________ years ________ ---- to commence the ____ day of ________, __, at the yearly rent of ________ dollars, payable ________. and the part____ of the second part hereby covenant____ to and with the part____ of the first part to make punctual payment of the rent ________ in the manner aforesaid, and quit and surrender the premises at the expiration of said term, in as good state and condition as they are now in, reasonable use and wear thereof, and damages by the elements excepted, and further covenant____ that ____he____, the part____ of the second part, will not use or occupy said premises for any business or purpose deemed extra hazardous on account of fire. and further covenant____ that ____he____, the part____ of the second part, will not assign this lease or underlet the said premises, or any part thereof, to any persons whomsoever, without first obtaining the written consent of said part____ of the first part, and in case of not complying with this covenant, the part____ of the second part agree____ to forfeit and pay to the part____ of the first part the sum of ________ dollars, as and for liquidated damages which are hereby liquidated and fixed as damages and not as a penalty. this lease is made and accepted on this express condition, that in case the part____ of the second part should assign this lease or underlet the said premises, or any part thereof, without the written consent of the part____ of the first part, that then the part____ of the first part, his heirs or assigns, in his option, shall have the power and the right of terminating and ending this lease immediately, and be entitled to the immediate possession of said premises, and to take summary proceedings against the part____ of the second part, or any person or persons in possession as tenant, having had due and legal notice to quit and surrender the premises, holding over their term. it is further agreed between the parties, that in case said premises should be destroyed by fire before or during said term, that then this lease is to cease and determine; the rent ________ to be paid up to that time. in witness whereof, the parties have hereunto set their hands and seals the day and year first above written. in the presence of ________ ________ ________ farm lease this indenture, made the ____ day of ________ in the year of our lord, __, between a.b., of the city of ________, party of the first part, and c.d., of the same place, party of the second part, witnesseth: that the said party of the first part, in consideration of the rents, covenants, and agreements hereinafter mentioned, reserved, and contained on the part of the said party of the second part, his executors, administrators, and assigns, to be paid, kept, and performed, has demised and to farm let, unto the said party of the second part, his executors, administrators, and assigns, all (insert description), with the appurtenances, unto the said party of the second part, his executors, administrators, and assigns, from the ____ day of ________, __, for the term of ten years then next ensuing, yielding and paying therefor, unto the said party of the first part, his heirs or assigns, yearly and every year during the said term hereby granted, the yearly rent or sum of $________, in equal half-yearly payments, to-wit: on the st days of october and april in each and every year; provided, that if the yearly rent above reserved, or any part thereof, shall be unpaid on any day of payment whereon the same ought to be paid as aforesaid; or if default shall be made in any of the covenants or agreements herein contained, on the part of the said party of the second part, his heirs or assigns, to re-enter upon the said premises, and the same to have again, as in their first and former estate. and the said party of the second part does covenant and agree, with the said party of the first part, his heirs and assigns, that he, the said party of the second part, his executors, administrators, or assigns, will yearly and every year during the said term, pay unto the said party of the first part, his heirs or assigns, the yearly rent above reserved, on the days and in manner limited and prescribed as aforesaid, for the payment thereof, without any deduction or delay. and that the said party of the second part, his executors, administrators, or assigns, will, at his own proper costs and charges, bear, pay, and discharge all taxes, duties, and assessments, as may, during the said term hereby granted, be charged, assessed, or imposed upon the said demised premises. and that on the determination of the estate hereby granted, the said party of the second part, his executors, administrators, or assigns, shall and will leave and surrender unto the said party of the first part, his heirs or assigns, the said demised premises in as good stage and condition as they are now in, ordinary wear and damages by the elements excepted. and the said party of the first part does covenant and agree, with the said party of the second part, his executors, administrators, and assigns, that the said party of the second part, his executors, administrators, and assigns, paying the said yearly rent above reserved, and performing the covenants and agreements aforesaid on his part, the said party of the second part, his executors, administrators, and assigns, shall and may at all times during the said term hereby granted, peaceably have, hold, and enjoy the said demised premises, without any manner of trouble or hindrance of or from the said party of the first part, his heirs or assigns, or any other person or persons whomsoever. in witness whereof, the parties to these presents have hereunto set their hands and seals. sealed and delivered in the presence of ________ a.b. (l.s.) lease of furnished rooms memorandum. it is agreed by and between a.b. and c.d., as follows, viz.: the said a.b., in consideration of the rent hereinafter mentioned and agreed to be paid to him, hath letten to the said c.d. one room, up two flights of stairs forward, part of the now dwelling-house of the said a.b. situate on ________ street, in the city of ________, together with the furniture at present standing therein--that is to say: (insert furniture). to hold to the said c.d. for the term of two years, to commence from ________, __, at the yearly rent of $ , to be paid quarterly to the said a.b. the said c.d., in consideration hereof, agrees to pay the aforesaid yearly rent of $ , at the times above limited for payment thereof; and at the end of the term, or in case of any default in the payment, shall and will, on the request of the said a.b., or his assigns, immediately yield and deliver up to him or them, the peaceable and quiet possession of the said room, together with the whole furniture he, from the first entrance thereon, there found and possessed, in good, and sufficient plight and condition, reasonable wear and tear only excepted. in witness whereof the parties have signed this agreement, this ____ day of ________, __. a.b. c.d. assignment of lease for and in consideration of the sum of $________, to me in hand paid by e.f., i hereby assign and transfer to said e.f. a certain lease, bearing date ________, __, and made by a.b. to me, c.d., for (describe the premises), together with all and singular the buildings and appurtenances thereunto belonging, or in any wise appertaining, subject, however, to the rents hereafter to accrue and the covenants and conditions contained in said lease. c.d. assignment of lease--another form know all men by these presents, that i, a.b., the within-named lessee, for and in consideration of $ , to me in hand paid by c.d., of the town of franklin, county of albany, at and before the sealing and delivery hereof, the receipt whereof i do hereby acknowledge, have granted, assigned and set over, and by these presents do grant, assign and set over, unto the said c.d., his executors, administrators, and assigns, the within indenture of lease, and all that house and farm therein described, with the appurtenances, and also my estate, right, title, term of years yet to come, claim and demand whatsoever, of, in, to, or out of the same. to have and to hold the said house and farm, and the appurtenances thereof unto the said c.d., his executors, administrators, and assigns, for the residue of the term within mentioned, under the yearly rent and covenants within reserved and contained, on my part and behalf to be done, kept and performed. witness my hand and seal, this june , __. a.b. (l.s.) (acknowledgment.) notice to quit to c.d.: i hereby notify you to leave the premises now occupied by you, to-wit: (lot in block , in the city of ________, ________ county, ________.) if you fail to comply with this notice within three days after its service, i shall instigate legal proceedings to obtain possession of said premises. (signed) a.b. subscription to build a church whereas, the trustees of the church corporation, known as the "church of the puritans," are about erecting a church edifice for such corporation; now, we, the undersigned, for the purpose of such erection, hereby agree to and with such trustees and to and with each other, to pay to b.b., the treasurer of said corporation, the several sums by us set opposite our several names, for the purpose of such erection, and we hereby authorize and direct the said trustees to expend such sums in the erection of the same. the said sums are to be paid to the said treasurer on or before the st day of march, . names amount a.b. $ c.c. power of attorney know all men by these presents, that we ________ and ________, husband and wife of the county of ________, and state of ________, have made, constituted and appointed, and do hereby make, constitute and appoint ________ of the county of ________, and state of ________, our true and lawful attorney for us and in our names, place and stead, to sell and convey by a good and sufficient deed, with full covenants of warranty the following described real estate, to-wit: (describe), hereby giving and granting to our said attorney full power to do and perform every act and thing necessary to be done in the premises as fully as we could do if personally present, hereby ratifying and confirming all that our said attorney shall do by virtue hereof. in witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands this ____ day of ________, __. in the presence of ________ ________ ________ state of ________} ________ county. } on this ____ day of ________, __, before me, a justice of the peace in and for said county, personally came the above named ________ and ________, who are known to me to be the identical persons whose names are affixed to the above power of attorney as makers thereof, and severally acknowledged the instrument to be their voluntary act and deed. in witness whereof i have hereunto set my hand the day and year above written. a.b. justice of the peace. power of attorney to transfer stock know all men by these presents, that ________, for value received, ha____ bargained, sold, and assigned, and by these presents do bargain, sell, and assign unto ________, the following described stock, to-wit: ________ unto ________, belonging and held by certificate no. ________, in ________ name, and hereunto annexed, and do hereby constitute and appoint ________, true and lawful attorney, irrevocably, for ________, and in ________ name and stead, to ________ use, to assign and transfer the said stock unto ________ and for that purpose to make and execute the necessary acts of assignment and transfer, and an attorney, or attorneys under ________, for that purpose, to make and substitute, and to do all other lawful acts requisite for effecting the premises, hereby ratifying and confirming the same. in witness whereof ________ have hereunto set ________ hand ____ and seal ____ in the city of ________, the ____ day of ________, in the year of our lord, __. state of ohio, city and county of ________ss.: on the ____ day of ________, __, personally appeared before me ________, to me known to be the person ________ described in, and who executed the within instrument, and acknowledged the execution of the same for the uses and purposes therein mentioned. certificate of stock no. ________ no. of shares ________ par value of each, $________ the ________ company: this is to certify that ________ is the owner of ________ ________ shares of the capital stock of the ________ company, transferable only on the books of the company by the holder thereof, in person or by attorney, on the surrender of this certificate. in witness whereof, the said company has caused its corporate seal to be affixed, hereto, and this certificate to be signed by its president and treasurer. ________, n.y. ________, __. ________ president. ________ treasurer. on back of the certificate a blank transfer, in following form, should be printed. for value received, ________ hereby sell, assign, and transfer unto ________ shares of the within-mentioned stock, and do hereby constitute and appoint ________, attorney to transfer the same on the books of the company. witness my hand and seal, this ____ day of ________ ________, __. witness: ________ ________ (seal) agreement to sell shares of stock memorandum of agreement, made this ____ day of ________, __, between a.a., of the city of new york, of the first part, and b.b., of the same place, of the second part, witnesseth: that the said a.a. agrees to sell and convey to the said b.b., on or before the st day of may next, , shares of the capital stock of the new haven bank, for the price or sum of $ per share, and to make, execute, and deliver to the said b.b. all assignments, transfers, and conveyances necessary to assure the same to him, his heirs and assigns. in consideration whereof, the said b.b. agrees to pay unto the said a.a. the price or sum or $ for each and every share of the said stock so assigned, whenever, and as soon as the said assignment and the scrip of stock so assigned shall be properly executed and delivered to the said b.b. in witness whereof, the said parties have hereunto set their hands and seals, the day and year first above written. a.a. (l.s.) b.b. (l.s.) transfer of shares of stock know all men by these presents, that i, a.b., ________ for value received, have bargained, sold, assigned, and transferred, and by these presents do bargain, sell, assign, and transfer unto c.d., sixteen shares of the capital stock, standing in my name on the books of the ________ first national bank, and ________ do hereby constitute and appoint the said c.d., ________ my true and lawful attorney, irrevocable, for me and in my name and stead, but to his use, to sell, assign, transfer, and set over all or any part of the said stock, and for that purpose, to make and execute all necessary acts of assignment and transfer, and one or more persons to substitute with like full power, hereby ratifying and confirming all that my said attorney, or his substitute, or substitutes, shall lawfully do by virtue hereof. in witness whereof, i have hereunto set my hand and seal the ____ day of ________, __. a.b. (seal) assignment of policy of insurance know all men by these presents, that i, a.b., of the village of coxsackie, for and in consideration of $ , to me in hand paid by c.d. of the same place, the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged, have sold, assigned, transferred, and set over, and by these presents do sell, assign, transfer, and set over, unto the said c.d. the policy of insurance, known as policy no. , of the indemnity insurance company, and all sum and sums of money, interest benefit and advantage whatsoever, now due, or hereafter to arise, or to be had or made by virtue thereof, to have and to hold the same unto the said c.d., and his assigns forever. in witness whereof, i have hereto affixed my hand, this june , __ (a.b.) (acknowledgment.) assignment of patent right "whereas, letters-patent, bearing the date the th of january, , were granted and issued by the government of the united states, under the seal thereof, to a.b., of the town of bristol, of the state of pennsylvania, for (here state the nature of the invention) a more particular and full description thereof is annexed to the said letters-patents in a schedule; by which letters-patents the full and exclusive right and liberty of making and using the said invention, and of vending the same to others to be used, was granted to the said a.b., his heirs, executors, and administrators, or assigns, for the term of seventeen years, from the same date. now, know all men by these presents, that i, the said a.b., for and in consideration of the sum of $ , to me in hand paid, the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged, have granted, assigned and set over, and by these presents do grant, assign, and set over unto c.d., of the said town of bristol, his executors, administrators, and assigns, forever, the said letters-patent, and all my right, title and interest in and to the said invention, so granted unto me: to have and to hold the said letters-patent and invention, with all benefit, profit and advantage thereof, unto the said c.d., his executors, administrators, and assigns, in as full, ample, and beneficial manner, to all intents and purposes, as i, the said a.b., by virtue of the said letters-patent, may or might have or hold the same, for and during all the rest and residue of the term for which said letters-patent are granted. in witness whereof, i have hereto affixed my hand and seal, this th day of june, __. a.b. (l.s.) in the presence of e.f. g.h. (acknowledgment.) bond for payment of money (as in form no. , and then as follows): the condition of this obligation is such, that if the above-bounden a.b., his heirs, executors, and administrators, or any of them, shall well and truly pay, or cause to be paid, unto the above-named c.d., his executors, administrators, or assigns, the just and full sum of $ , , lawful money, as aforesaid, in manner following, to-wit: $ part thereof, on the ________ ____ day of ________ next ensuing the date hereof; $ more thereof on the ____ day of ________, the next following; and $ , the residue, and in full payment thereof, on the ____ day of ________, which will be in the year of ________; then this obligation to be void; but if default shall be made in payment of any or either of the said sums on the days and times hereinbefore mentioned and appointed for payment thereof, respectively, then this bond shall remain in full force and virtue. a.b. (l.s.) articles of co-partnership this agreement entered into this ____ day of ________, __, by and between a.b. and c.d., witnesseth, that said parties have formed a co-partnership for the purpose of carrying on the business of & ________ at ________, upon the following terms and conditions: first: the name and style of said co-partnership shall be a.b. & c.d., and shall continue ________ years from this date, unless sooner terminated by the death of either of said partners. second: the said a.b. shall contribute to the capital stock of said firm the sum of $________, and the said c.d. the sum of $________, and said partners shall be the owners of the stock in that proportion, and any further increase of the capital stock shall be contributed by said partners in the same ratio. third: all the profits which shall accrue to said partnership shall be equally divided between said partners; and all losses from whatever cause shall be borne by them in proportion to their interests in the stock of said firm. fourth: neither of said partners shall sign or in any manner become liable upon any promissory note or other obligation, for the accommodation of any person whatsoever, nor lend any of the co-partnership funds without the consent in writing of the other partner. fifth: neither party shall withdraw from the funds of the firm to exceed the sum of $________, per annum, in ________ in installments of not to exceed the sum of $________, but neither shall at any time be entitled to draw in excess of his share of the profits then earned. sixth: all transactions and accounts of the firm shall be kept in regular books, which shall be open at all times to the inspection of either party or their representatives. seventh: an invoice of stock shall be taken on the first day of january of each year, and the account between the parties settled at that time. and an invoice be taken and an account had at any other time when either partner shall demand the same in writing. eighth: no transaction outside of the ________ business shall be entered into by either of said partners without the consent in writing of his co-partner. and any violation of the terms of this agreement shall be sufficient cause for a dissolution of this co-partnership. in testimony whereof we have hereunto set our hands this ____ day of ________, __. a.b. c.d. in the presence of g.h. articles of co-partnership--another form articles of co-partnership, made this ____ day of ________, __, by and between a.b. and c.d. both of the city of ________, witnesseth that: the said parties hereby agree to form, and do form a co-partnership, for the purpose of carrying on the general produce and commission business on the following terms and articles of agreement, to the faithful performance of which they mutually engage and bind themselves, each to the other. the style and name of the co-partnership shall be b. and d., and shall commence on the ____ day of ________, __, and continue for the period of five years. each of the said parties agrees to contribute to the funds of the partnership the sum of $ , in cash, which shall be paid in, on or before the ____ day of ________, __, and each of said parties shall devote and give all his time and attention to the business, and to the care and superintendence of the same. all profits which may accrue to the said partnership shall be divided equally, and all losses happening to the said firm, whether from bad debts, depreciation of goods, or any other cause or accident, and all expenses of the business shall be borne by the said parties equally. all the purchases, sales transactions, and accounts of the said firm shall be kept in regular books, which shall be always open to the inspection of both parties and their regular representatives respectively. an account of stock shall be taken, and an account between the parties shall be settled as often as once a year, and as much oftener as either partner may desire, and in writing request. neither of the said parties shall subscribe any bond, sign or indorse any note of hand, accept, sign, or indorse any draft or bill of exchange, or assume any other liability, verbal or written, either in his own name or in the name of the firm, for the accommodation of any other person or persons whatsoever, without the consent in writing of the other party; nor shall either party lend any of the funds of the co-partnership without such consent of the other partner. no large purchase shall be made, nor any transaction out of the usual course of the business shall be undertaken by either of the partners, without previous consultation with, and the approbation of, the other partner. neither shall withdraw from the joint stock, at any time, more than his share of the profits of the business then earned nor shall either party be entitled to interest on his share of the capital; but if, at the expiration of the year, a balance of profits be found due to either partner, he shall be at liberty to withdraw the said balance, or to leave it in the business, provided the other partner consent thereto, and in that case be allowed interest on the said balance. at the expiration of the aforesaid term, or earlier dissolution of this co-partnership, if the said parties, or their legal representatives, cannot agree in the division of the stock then on hand, the whole co-partnership effects, except the debts due to the firm, shall be sold at public auction, at which both parties shall be at liberty to bid and purchase like other individuals, and the proceeds shall be divided, after payment of the debts of the firm, in the proportions aforesaid. for the purpose of securing the performance of the foregoing agreements, it is agreed, that either party, in case of any violation of them, or either of them, by the other, shall have the right to dissolve this co-partnership forthwith, on his becoming informed of such violation. in witness whereof, we, the said a.b. and c.d., have hereto set our hands, the day and year first above written. executed and delivered in the presence of (acknowledgment.) a.b. c.d. letter of credit a.b. & co ________: _gentlemen._--we will be responsible to you for goods sold to c.d., of ________, to an amount not exceeding ________ dollars (or, for cash advanced to c.d., of ________ not exceeding ________ dollars), (or, for credit secured by you to c.d., of ________, in the purchase of (describe the kind of goods), not exceeding the sum of ________ dollars) at any time before ________, __, unless this letter is revoked prior to said date; and providing you send notice to us by mail within ten days of the granting of such credit or making such payment, and also in case said c.d. should default in making payment of any part of any debt created by reason of this agreement when such payment shall become regularly due, then notice of such default shall be sent by mail to us within five days of such default. dated, ________ __. (signature) agreement for sale of physician's practice agreement made this ____ day of ________, __, between ________, hereinafter called the vendor, and ________, hereinafter called the purchaser. . whereas the said vendor has for many years past exercised his profession of physician and surgeon at ________, in the county of ________, and is now desirous of retiring from his practice at ________ aforesaid, and the said purchaser is desirous of establishing himself as a physician and surgeon at said ________, now therefore, the said vendor agrees to sell to the said purchaser, who agrees to purchase, the said practice and the good will and benefits thereof from the ____ day of ________ next, together with all the fixtures, furniture, medical books, surgical and other instruments and apparatus, and all the drugs, medicines, bottles, and other things now used therein, for the sum of ________ dollars; in confirmation of which purchase the purchaser, upon the execution of these presents, has paid the sum of ________ dollars by way of deposit and in part of the purchase money. . the said vendor further agrees that, on the payment of the residue of the said purchase money as hereinafter mentioned, he will fully and absolutely deliver over and assign to the said purchaser, his executors, administrators, or assigns, the said practice or business, and the good will thereof, for his and their own absolute use and benefit; and likewise the full and uninterrupted possession of the office in which the said practice is now carried on by him, together with the fixtures, furniture, books, instruments, apparatus, and things now used in and relating to the said practice. . the said vendor will introduce and recommend the said purchaser to his patients, friends, and others, as his successor; and will use his best endeavors to promote and increase the prosperity of the said practice or business. . the said vendor will not reside or practise either as physician or surgeon, or act directly or indirectly as partner or assistant to or with any other physician or surgeon practising ________ either at ________ aforesaid, or elsewhere, within ________ miles thereof. . the said purchaser, in consideration of the agreements on the part of the vendor hereinbefore contained, hereby further agrees to pay him, his executors, or administrators, ________ dollars, by installments as follows: one-half part thereof on the ____ day of ________ next, upon receiving the full and peaceable possession of the said practice, office, good will, fixtures, furniture, books, and things hereinbefore mentioned, and the remaining half part thereon on the ____ day of ________ next. in witness, etc. agreement between merchant and traveling salesman agreement made this ________ of ________, between ________ of ________, and ________ of ________, merchants and co-partners, doing business under the firm name and style of ________ & co., of the one part, and ________ of ________, traveling salesman of the other part. . the said salesman shall enter into the service of said firm as a traveler for them in their business of ________ merchants, for the period of ________ years from the ____ day of ________ __, subject to the general control of said firm. . the said salesman shall devote the whole of his time, attention, and energies to the performance of his duties as such salesman, and shall not, either directly or indirectly, alone or in partnership, be connected with or concerned in any other business or pursuit during the said term of ________ years. . the said salesman shall, subject to the control of the said firm, keep proper books of account, and make due and correct entries of the price of all goods sold, and of all transactions and dealings of and in relation to the said business, and shall serve the said firm diligently and according to his best abilities in all respects. . the fixed salary of the said salesman shall be the sum of ________ dollars per week for the first year, payable by the said firm weekly from the commencement of the said service, on the ____ day of ________, and ________ dollars per week for the third year, payable weekly in like manner, from the commencement of such respective years. . the reasonable traveling expenses and hotel bills of the said salesman, incurred in connection with the business of said firm, shall be paid by the said firm, and the said firm shall from week to week pay to the said salesman the said traveling expenses and hotel bills in addition to the said fixed salary. in witness, etc. ________ ________ agreement for the adoption of children this indenture made the ____ day of ________, __, between ________ of ________, party of the first part, and ________, of ________, and ________ his wife, parties of the second part. whereas the said party of the first part has two daughters, ________ and ________, now aged ________ and ________ years, respectively; and whereas the said parties of the second part are willing to adopt the said children subject to the conditions hereinafter contained, and on the part of the party of the first part to be observed: now this indenture witnesseth that the said parties covenant and agree as follows, that is to say: . the said parties of the second part shall adopt the said children, and shall, until the said children shall respectively attain the age of twenty-one years, or marry under that age, maintain, board, lodge, clothe, and educate them in a manner suitable to their station, and as if they were the lawful children of the parties of the second part and shall at the cost of the parties of the second part, and of the survivor of them, provide the said children with all necessaries, and discharge all the debts and liabilities which the said children or either of them may incur for necessaries, and indemnify the said party of the first part against all actions, claims, and demands in respect thereof. . the said party of the first part hereby nominates and appoints the said parties of the second part, during their lives, and after their respective deaths the person or persons to be nominated in that behalf, as is hereinafter mentioned, to be the guardians of the persons and estates of the said children until they shall attain the age of twenty-one years, or until they shall marry under that age respectively. . the said party of the first part shall not revoke the appointment hereby expressed to be made, and will not, by deed, will, or otherwise, appoint or apply for the appointment of any other person or persons to be guardian or guardians of the said children or either of them, or of their respective estates. . in case of the death of either of the parties of the second part before the said children shall attain the age of twenty-one years, or marry under that age respectively, it shall be lawful for the survivor of them, the said parties of the second part, by deed or will, to nominate and appoint any person or persons, from and after the decease of such survivor, to be guardian or guardians of the said children or either of them. . the said party of the first part shall not himself, nor shall any person or persons claiming under him, or acting under his authority, at any time or in any manner interfere with the training or management of the said children or either of them, or with their or her moral, intellectual, or religious education or instruction. . if the said party of the first part shall not perform and observe all and every of the stipulations herein contained and on his part to be performed and observed, then and in every such case it shall be lawful for the said parties of the second part, and the survivor of them, by notice in writing under their, his or her hands or hand, and addressed either to the party of the first part or to the person setting up such claim or demand, or so interfering as aforesaid, to put an end to the agreement hereby expressed to be made, and thereupon the same shall absolutely cease and determine; provided that in such event the said party of the first part, or his estate, shall be liable to pay and satisfy all debts and liabilities incurred by or in any wise for the benefit of the said children, or either of them, which at the time of such determination of this agreement shall not have been paid and satisfied. in witness, etc. release by ward of his guardian know all men by these presents, that i, a.b., of ________, son and heir of ________, deceased, in consideration of ________, by these presents remise, release, and forever discharge c.d., of ________, my guardian, of and from all manner of actions, suits, accounts, debts, dues, and demands whatsoever, which i ever had, now have, or which i or my executors or administrators, at any time hereafter, can or may have, claim or demand against the said c.d., his executors or administrators, for, touching, or concerning the management and disposition of any of the lands, tenements, or hereditaments of the said a.b., situate, etc., or any part thereof, or for or by reason of any money, rents, or other profits by him received out of the same, or any payments made thereof, during the minority of the said a.b., or by reason of any matter, cause or thing whatsoever, from the beginning of the world to the day of the date hereof. in witness whereof, i have hereunto set my hand and seal, this ____ day of ________, one thousand nine hundred and ________. (signature and seal) ________ in presence of (signature of witness) ________ ________ will in the name of god, amen: i, a.b., of the city of ________, in the county of ________, and state of ________, considering the uncertainty of this mortal life, and being of sound mind and memory, blessed be god for the same, do make and publish this my last will and testament, in manner and form following, that is to say: first: i direct that my funeral charges, the expenses of administering my estate, and all my debts be paid out of my personal property. if that be insufficient i authorize my executors, hereafter named, to sell so much of my real estate as may be necessary for that purpose. second: i give and bequeath to my beloved wife, c.b., the sum of $________, in lieu of dower, and of any distributive share in my estate to which she would otherwise be entitled. i also give and bequeath to my beloved wife the dwelling-house and lot on which i now reside. third: i hereby give the custody of my infant children during their minority, and while they remain unmarried, to my beloved wife, so long as she remains my widow; but if she shall die or marry again during the infancy of said children, then in that case, i commit their custody and tuition to my friend e.f., of said city and state. fourth: i give and bequeath all of the residue of my estate, real and personal, to my children, share and share alike, as tenants in common, to be paid to them as they respectively come of age. in case any one of my children shall die in my lifetime, leaving issue of descendants, i direct that his share shall not lapse, but shall be paid to such descendants, in equal proportions. fifth: i appoint my friend g.h. executor of this, my last will and testament, hereby revoking all former wills by me made. in witness whereof i have hereunto subscribed my name this st day of ________, in the year of our lord ________. a.b. we, whose names are hereunto subscribed, do hereby certify that a.b., the testator, subscribed his name to this instrument in our presence and in the presence of each of us, and declared at the same time in our presence and hearing that this instrument was his last will and testament, and we at his request, sign our names hereto in his presence as attesting witnesses. l.m., of the city of ________ n.o., of the city of ________ will--another form i, a.b., of the town of ________, in the county of ________, and state of________, declare this to be my last will and testament: i give and bequeath to my wife, c.b., ________ dollars, to be received by her in lieu of dower. to my son, e.b., ________ dollars (which said several legacies i direct to be paid within ________ after my decease). i give and devise to my son, e.b. aforesaid, his heirs and assigns, all (here designate the property), together with all the hereditaments and appurtenances thereunto belonging or in anywise appertaining. to have and to hold the premises above described to the said e.b., his heirs and assigns forever. i give and devise all the rest, residue, and remainder of my real property, of every name and nature whatsoever, to my said daughter, m.b. (and my daughter, o.b., to be divided equally between them, share and share alike). i give and bequeath all the rest, residue and remainder of my personal property, of what nature or kind soever, to my said wife, c.b. i hereby appoint e.b. the sole executor of this will, revoking all former wills by me made. in witness (etc., as in form ). will bequeathing legacies and appointing residuary legatee i, a.b., of ________, declare this to be my last will and testament. i bequeath to my wife, c.b., all the fixtures, prints, books, plate, linen, china, wines, liquors, provisions, household goods, furniture, chattels, and effects (other than money or securities for money), which shall at my death be in or about my dwelling-house and premises at ________. i bequeath to my said wife the sum of ________ dollars, to be paid to her within one month after my death, without interest. i also give and bequeath to my said wife the sum of ________ dollars. i also bequeath the following legacies to the several persons hereafter named: to my nephew, e.f., the sum of ________ dollars; to my cousin, g.h., the sum of ________ dollars; and to my friend, j.k., the sum of ________ dollars (and so on with other pecuniary legacies). i also bequeath to each of my domestic servants who shall be living with me at the time of my death in the capacity of (state the description of servants to whom the legacies are to be given), one year's wages, in addition to what may be due to them at that time. all the rest, residue and remainder of my real and personal estate, i devise and bequeath to r.s., his heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, absolutely forever. i appoint t.u. and v.w. executors of this my will. in witness, etc. articles of incorporation know all men by these presents. that we, ________, ________, ________, ________, ________, ________, do associate ourselves together for the purpose of forming and becoming a corporation in the state of ________, for the transaction of the business hereinafter described. . the name of the corporation shall be (give name). the principal place of transacting its business shall be in the city of ________, county of ________, and state of ________. . the nature of the business to be transacted by said corporation shall be the (give name of business) and the erection and maintenance of such buildings and structures as may be deemed necessary, and to purchase real estate as a site therefor, and especially to ________. . the authorized capital stock of said corporation shall be (state amount) thousand dollars in shares of $________ each, to be subscribed and paid as requested by the board of directors. . the existence of this corporation shall commence on the first day of ________, a.d., __, and continue during the period of ________ years. . the business of said corporation shall be conducted by a board of directors not to exceed five in number, to be elected by the stockholders; such election to take place at such time and be conducted in such manner as shall be prescribed by the by-laws of said corporation. . the officers of said corporation shall be a president, secretary and treasurer, who shall be chosen by the board of directors, and shall hold their office for the period of one year, and until their successors shall be elected and qualified. . the highest amount of indebtedness to which said corporation shall at any time subject itself shall be not more than ________ thousand dollars. . the manner of holding the meetings of stockholders for the election of officers, and the method of conducting the business of the corporation, shall be as provided by the by-laws, adopted by the board of directors. in witness whereof, the undersigned have hereunto set their hand this ____ day of ________ a.d., __. ________, ________, ________ ________, ________, ________ state of ________} ________ county. } on this ____ day of ________, __, before me, a.b., a justice of the peace, in and for the said county, personally appeared the above named ________, ________, ________, ________, who are personally known to me to be the identical persons whose names are affixed to the above articles, as parties thereto, and they severally acknowledged the instrument to be their voluntary act and deed. witness my hand the date aforesaid. a.b. justice of the peace. index acceptance and delivery, what constitutes, action, defined, actions, different kinds of, administrator, may dispose of lease, , ; can assign remainder of lease, adoption of children, form for or agreement for, . see _child, adopted_ adulteration of a commodity, advantage, incidental, agency, ; how created, ; post-office agency of offerer of contract, , agent, when authority must be in writing, ; cannot purchase principal's property, ; power affected by usage or custom, ; invalid act of, cannot be ratified, ; ratifying a forgery, ; cannot appoint a substitute, ; liability of, ; secret instructions to, ; cannot act for both parties, ; cannot receive profit from transaction, ; must be faithful, ; termination of relation of, , , ; duties of affected by insanity of principal, ; marriage of principal, ; must keep principal informed, ; liability of principal for acts and statements, , , , , , ; auctioneer owners, ; auctioneer purchaser's, , ; length of term of, ; for corporation, ; bailor as, ; broker as, ; may make chattel mortgage, ; how should sign checks, ; authority of to receive stock subscriptions, ; deception of releases subscriber, , ; corporation can do wrong through, ; can be appointed to examine books, ; has insurable interest in goods, ; state prosecutes through, agent, general, , , , ; partner is a, agent, special, , , ; insurance broker is a, agisters, alien, may become voluntary or involuntary bankrupt, ; woman who marries american, ; may be naturalized, , ; rights of, ; owes temporary and limited allegiance, ; non-resident, , animals, vicious, a nuisance, annoyances, temporary, apologies for slander and libel, appeals, court of, apprentices, and compensation acts, arbitration, assault and battery, a wrong, assent, mutual, basis of sales and contracts to sell, assets, disposition of in partnership failure, assignment. see _bankruptcy_: _patent_ associations, beneficial, ; social and business, ; voluntary, ; incorporated, ; articles and rules, ; legal status, ; members not partners, ; liability to creditors, , ; rights of members, ; recovery of property by members, ; exemption from taxation, ; admission of members, , ; initiation, ; property rights of religions, ; benefits to sick members, , ; power to expel, , ; expulsion in subordinate lodges, ; restoration of members, ; withdrawal of members, ; liability of members for promised benefit, , ; cannot confer judicial power on its officers, ; cannot defer future controversies to arbitration, assumpsit, action of, attorney. see _power of attorney_ auctioneer, ; owner's agent, ; purchaser's agent, , ; must bind purchaser, ; completes sale, ; authority, how conferred, ; a special agent, ; authority of, , ; has properties in goods to be sold, automobile, ; rights of owner, , ; no superior rights, ; non-resident driver, ; license, ; liability of bailor, , ; responsibility of hirer, ; sale of, by hirer, ; obligation on hirer's part, ; owner's redress of car misused, ; duty of owner or hirer when carrying passengers, ; compensation of owner, ; liability for using without owner's consent, ; liability of a corporation hirer, ; liability for joy riding, ; speed of, ; exclusion of, ; "the law of the road," , ; rights of pedestrian, , ; passing each other, ; backing, , ; meeting in street, ; at intersecting streets, ; obstructions in road, ; driver must use care to avoid injury, , ; competency of driver, ; must be under reasonable control, ; driving in a fog, ; liability of owner, see _chauffeur_, _garage keeper_ bacon, quoted, bailee, liability of a minor, ; corporation as, ; finder of lost property is, , ; rights of creditor of, ; liability of, , ; must be informed of all faults, , ; liability of bank as, ; liability of a safe deposit company as, ; usually a keeper only, ; exceptions, , ; return of property at end of bailment, ; lien for services, ; has insurable interest in goods, ; garage keeper is a, bailment, , - bailor, not responsible for negligence of hirer, ; may bring action against innocent purchaser, ; corporation as, ; and bailee, ; rights of, ; not always owner of thing bailed, ; must explain all faults, , bank, custodian of lost property, ; liability as bailee, ; not legally bound to pay check to holder, ; agreement to pay check is with depositor, ; responsible for payment of checks, ; not responsible for checks carelessly written, ; liability for forged checks, ; is liable if makes payment on stopped check, ; life of a national, ; can retain dividend, ; liability of national shareholders, , ; directors of national, ; directors of, , , ; who loans money of, ; president, , ; national cannot always certify a check, bankrupt, voluntary and involuntary defined, ; filing of petition of voluntary, ; withdrawal of petition, ; what must accompany petition, ; filing of petition against, , ; must file schedule of property, ; first meeting of creditors, ; subsequent meetings, ; represented by trustee, , , ; proving and allowing claims against, , ; insurance policy of, ; discharge of, ; punishment of, bankruptcy, ; federal act , , , ; courts of, ; voluntary and involuntary, ; acts of, defined, , ; procedure in, - beneficial associations. see _associations, beneficial_ benefit, conference of a, bid, authority of auctioneer to accept, bill and note broker, bill of exchange, definition, ; assignment of drawee's funds, ; similarity of, and endorsed note, bill of lading, , bill of sale, form for, boarding house, liability of keeper of, bonds, government, equity does not require delivery of actual bonds purchased, bottomry loan, broker, ; has no property in goods to be sold, ; must sell in principal's name, ; commission, , ; acts as agent, ; kinds of, , , . see _agency_ brokerage, building, form for agreement for, . see _real estate_, _land_ burglary, excused by drunkenness, buy and sell, regulations concerning capacity to, by-laws, neglect of, in holding meeting, capital, , , carrier, ; kinds, ; authority of private, ; required to use great care, ; may modify common law by contract, ; can limit liability, , ; must carry all responsible passengers, ; regulations for carrying freight, ; have lien to hold freight, ; statutes regarding loss of life, ; liability for injuries, , ; sleeping car company not common, ; liability for loss of baggage, ; distinction between general and local express companies, , ; united states common, for mails, . see _mails_ carrier common, duty to an intoxicated person, cattle, trespassing, liability of owner of, car, liability of principal for acts of conductor of, certificate of stock, form for, charities. see _associations, beneficial_ charters, of national banks, ; perpetual, chattel mortgage with power of sale form for, . see _mortgage, chattel_ chauffeur, physical fitness of, ; employer's liability for, ; minor as, ; license, ; liability of employer for pay of, ; employer's liability for injury to, ; injured, when speeding, , ; liable for injury to employer, ; authority of, to make repairs in garage, . see _automobile_; _garage_ check, ; signing of, ; bank not legally bound to pay, to holder, ; payment of, when funds insufficient, , ; banks responsible for payment of, ; two rules relating to payment of, ; forged, ; holder of, should deposit immediately, , ; drawer may stop payment of, ; certified, ; when given in payment, child, adopted, ; rights of natural and adopted parents, ; rights of inheritance, children, must be supported by parent, ; who have property, ; protection of, by parent, ; of workmen, and compensation acts, ; form for agreement for adoption of, . see _adopted child_, _husband and wife_ church, form for subscription to build a, citizen, ; definition of, ; duty of, ; double allegiance of, ; state protects ordinary rights of, ; protection of, defined by constitution and federal law, ; corporation may be included in term, ; who is, of united states, ; alien woman as, ; american woman loses rights by foreign marriage, ; alien may be naturalized, , coin, legal limit of, in payment, cold storage, compensation acts, workmen's, ; basis for computation of compensation under, complaint, action of, contract, ; kinds of, ; parties to, , ; consideration of, , , ; mutuality of, ; acceptance of, at time of offer, ; offer made on time, ; offer can be withdrawn, , ; acceptance after reasonable time, ; by correspondence, , ; acceptance of, by telegraph, ; withdrawal of, by telegraph, ; offers and rewards, , ; dates of, ; interpreted by law of place when made, ; execution of, ; damages for failure to execute, , ; effect of drunkenness on, , ; equity enforces, , , ; insurance policy is, , ; of insurance can be reformed by court of equity, ; responsibility of innkeeper may be changed by, ; life insurance, ; of a minor, ; to sell in the future, ; when necessary to be within, ; for manufacture not included in statute of frauds, ; form for bond to perform a, . see _deceit_, _drunkenness_, _quasi-contracts_ contract of service, contract, quasi. see _quasi contract_ contractors, independent, and compensation acts, conveyance of real estate, in statute of frauds, co-partnership, form for articles of, , corporate owners of vessels, corporation, cannot become a voluntary bankrupt, ; an involuntary bankrupt, ; definition of manufacturing, ; trading, ; through its officers can admit inability to pay debts, ; when paying benefits not exempt from taxes, ; liability for injuries, ; as mortgagee, ; may be included in term citizen, ; kinds of, , ; formation of, , ; perpetual charters, , ; has no heirs, ; continues through succession, ; purchase of stock by one member, ; capital of, ; reasons for forming, ; who can subscribe to stock of, ; fictitious subscriptions to stock of, ; stock certificates , ; capital stock increased ; rights of stockholders, ; preferred stock, ; subscriptions to shares is a contract, ; cannot purchase own shares, ; has no lien on its stock, ; liability of shareholders, , ; appointment of receivers, ; assessments on stock, ; meetings, ; power of, ; charter of, ; majority shall rule may be modified, ; who may call meetings, , ; annual meetings, ; regular meetings, ; special meetings, ; notices waived, , ; who can vote, , , ; right of transferee, ; directors of, - , , , , ; affairs handled by few men, ; failure of, ; dividends, , - ; wrongs of, ; liability for acts of agents, , ; owner of stock has insurable interest in goods, ; when private may make lease, ; municipal, and leases, ; may take lease, ; can sue for slander or libel, ; may be a devisee, or legatee, court, federal and state, , ; district, ; of appeal, ; of equity, , - , ; united states district, ; civil, covenants, , , , . see _deeds_ credit, letter of, form for, creditor, of bailee, ; assignment for benefit of, ; filing of petition against bankrupt, , ; claims of, , , ; election of trustee by, , ; right to vote at meetings, ; may object to discharge of bankrupt, ; liability of beneficial associations to, , ; several may join in giving mortgage, ; attachment has insurable interest in goods, crime, drunkenness as excuse for, ; how prosecuted, , . see _husband and wife_, _tort_ curtesy, , custom, when no defense to chauffeur, ; liability of innkeeper changed by, . see _usage_ damages, nominal and compensatory, death, of principal or agent, ; of stockholder before transfer, ; of partner, ; of husband, ; of homesteader, ; separation agreement cannot be set aside by, ; of ward terminates lease, ; lease made by wife terminated by husband's, ; of mortgagor, , ; of partner, ; of inventor, ; of a contractor, ; of master of vessel, ; of workman, debts and statutes of limitation, ; revival of, , deceit, ; when seller not liable, ; purchaser of land not liable, ; a wink not deception, decisions, highest court, deed, , ; several, used in land deal, ; warranty, ; what warrantor agrees to do, , ; encumbrances, ; indenture, ; release or quit-claim, ; poll, ; use of seal, ; witnesses, ; lease, ; completed before delivery, ; executor of, ; when must be read, ; delivery essential, , ; should be recorded, , ; acknowledgment, , ; execution of, by married woman, , ; commissioner of, ; correction of mistake, ; land must be bounded, , ; equity compels delivery of, ; of warranty, form for, , ; of indenture, form for, ; of quit-claim, form for, , ; of mortgage, form for, ; of mortgage with power of sale, form for, ; of mortgage on goods and chattels, form for, defenses, in actions for slander and libel, delay in telegraph messages, dependents of workmen, and compensation acts, deposits, how made by agent, . see _bank_; _check_ desertion, its effect on homestead, devise of lands, devisee, of mortgaged land, ; who may be a, , director, of corporation, - , , , discomfort acts of, wrongs, dividends, - , . see _corporation_ divisional tree, law relating to, divorce, effect of on dower right, ; effect of on homestead, ; for what causes granted, , ; absolute, ; legal effect of, , . see _husband and wife_ domicile, of bankrupt, ; husband's becomes wife's, dower, ; defined, ; paramount to claims of husband's creditors, ; mortgage has preference, ; legal marriage necessary, ; assignment of, ; may be barred, ; non-existence of, ; in exchanged lands, ; rights of partner's widow, ; can be released, ; effect of divorce, drunkenness, ; effect of, on contracts, , ; as excuse for crime, ; liability of sober party, , ; responsibility of common carrier, ; slander, earnings, the basis for computation of compensation, ejectment, action of, elevator, sale of grain in, employees, casual, and compensation acts, ; federal and compensation acts, employer and employee, relations as to patents, , ; compensation acts, , enrollment, of vessels, equitable remedies, - equity, court of, , , - , ; law and, eviction, , exchange, bill of. see _bill of exchange_, _note_, _negotiable paper_ executor, authority to vote at corporate meetings, ; a foreign, , ; may dispose of lease, , ; can assign remainder of lease, ; when, gets mortgagor's interest, ; when heirs may require, to pay, explosives, liability of keeper of, express company, distinction between general and local, , factor, ; employed to sell goods, ; has a lien on goods, ; authority of, ; limitations on, fixed by principal, ; use of credit, ; cannot exchange goods, ; may insure goods, ; cannot compound claim, ; has insurable interest in goods, . see _agency_ farm, tenant of, farm lease, form for, federal courts, federal employees, and compensation acts, finder, obligation of, as to lost property, , ; of property lost in hotel or railroad car, ; when has lien for services, ; see _bailor_ fire insurance. see _insurance, fire_ fires, starters of, liability of, fixtures, ; defined, , ; law favors tenant, seller, mortgagor, , ; what tenant can remove, , food, warranty in sale of, forgery, ratification of, ; of signature to negotiable paper, ; in a telegram, . see _check_; _negotiable paper_ forms, legal: agreement for sale of land, agreement concerning party wall, agreement for building, agreement for work and labor, agreement for lease, agreement to sell shares of stock, agreement for sale of physician's practice, agreement between merchant and traveling salesman, agreement for adoption of children, articles of co-partnership, , articles of incorporation, assignment of mortgage, assignment of lease, assignment of policy of insurance, assignment of patent right, bill of sale, bond to perform a contract, bond for payment of money, certificate of stock, chattel mortgage, with power of sale, claim of lien by workman, deed of indenture, deed of quit-claim, , deed of mortgage, deed of mortgage with power of sale, deed of mortgage on goods and chattels, deed of warranty, , lease, , lease, farm, lease of furnished rooms, letter of credit, notice of sale under mortgage, notice to quit, power of attorney, power of attorney, to transfer stock, release by ward of his guardian, subscription to build a church, transfer of shares of stock, will, , , frauds, statute of. see _statute of frauds_ furnished rooms, form for lease of, garage, keeper of a bailee for hire, ; owner's liability for car when in a, ; public, not a nuisance, ; lien of keeper of, for storage and repairs, ; care keeper of must use, ; liability of keeper of for negligence, ; keeper of not an insurer, ; keeper of must protect from theft, ; liability of keeper of for leaving car in alley, ; and for using car without permission, ; delivery of car by keeper of, ; liability of keeper of for delay in repairing, ; and for acts of servant, . see _automobile_, _chauffeur_, _bailment_ gift, cannot be recovered, grain, sale of, in elevator, guardian, who can act as, ; may make lease, ; of a minor, ; may apply for a patent, ; form for release of, by his ward, habeas corpus, action of, health of employees in relation to compensation acts, highway, , , . see _automobile_ homestead, agent's authority to sell, affected by owner's marriage, ; definition of, ; cannot be seized by creditors, ; head of family owning definition of, , ; effect of desertion and divorce on a, ; what land is included in, ; steps necessary to procure a, , ; residence required on a, ; liability of owner of, for debts, ; can be mortgaged, ; can be sold and other land bought, ; exemption from taxes, huddy, quoted, , husband and wife, ; marriage a contract, ; essentials of marriage, ; false representations, ; effect of deceit in obtaining consent, ; of compulsion, ; of insanity, ; legal age for marriage, ; void marriages, ; marriage license, ; marriage performed outside jurisdiction, ; common law marriage, , ; husband's domicile becomes that of wife, ; when wife can retain her domicile, ; husband's liability for wife's crimes, , ; wife still liable, ; cannot steal from each other, ; right to sue each other, ; wife's liability for husband's wrongs, ; alienation of affection, ; wife's right to retain and manage her estate, ; can appoint husband to act for her, ; may act for husband, ; and as executor, administrator or guardian, ; wife's right to sue and be sued, ; husband's liability for wife's debts, ; duty of husband to provide home, ; his right to defend wife, ; his duty to provide home, ; wife must live with husband, ; duties of husband and wife toward each other, , ; guardian of children, ; husband and wife may live separately, ; may divide property, , ; when separation agreement cannot be sustained, ; death and share of estate, ; right of wife to use husband's credit, . see _divorce_ ice, liability for, on pavement, imprisonment, false, a wrong, imprisoned person, and statute of limitation, incapacity of workman, partial or total, compensation for, incorporation, form for articles of, indecent language in a telegram, indenture, ; form for deed of, indorsement, see _negotiable paper_ infancy, period of, defined by-law, inheritance, adopted child, injunction, temporary and permanent ; against directors, ; against infringer of patent, ; to forbid tenants making alterations, innkeeper, ; persons must receive, ; persons must exclude, ; keeping of horses, ; liability for baggage, , , ; exempt from loss by fire, ; may make certain regulations, , ; keeper of boarding house not, insane person and statute of limitation, insanity, of principal, ; of agent, ; how affects bid at auction, ; of master of vessel, ; and wills, inspector, , insurance broker, , insurance, fire, when liable for acts of agent, ; kinds of companies, , ; mutual company preferred, ; mutual plan protects against loss only, ; stock company pays dividends, ; insured must have interest in property, ; who has insurable interest, ; policy, as collateral security, ; policy void, ; policy a contract, ; standard policy, ; when is policy binding, , ; premium, ; policy may be assigned, ; when policy can be cancelled, , ; contract reformed, ; written and printed parts of policy, ; written application part of contract, ; interpretation of meaning, ; language of policy, , ; clerical errors, ; what policy covers, , ; when risk begins, ; misrepresentation, , ; concealment of facts, ; questions and answers a warranty, ; policy void, ; loss, total or partial, ; damage by water, ; from explosion, ; from theft, ; from lightning, ; from negligence, ; total loss, ; partial loss, ; open and valued policies, ; see _agency_ insurance, life, ; definition, ; validity of the contract, ; assignment of policy, , ; authority of general agent to vary the agreement, ; no contract until policy accepted by company, ; state requirements, ; delivery of policy, ; authority of general and special agents, ; payment of first premium, ; void under conditions contrary to public welfare, ; proceeds on which policy may be set aside, ; determination of beneficiary, ; date of commencement of risk, ; payment of premiums, ; reinsurance contracts, ; cancellation or surrender, , ; rescinding of a policy, ; surrender or cancellation value, ; conversion of policy, insurance money, provision for, in lease, insurance policy, of bankrupt, ; form for assignment of, insurer, garage keeper not an, ; innkeeper is, interstate commerce commission, controls interstate telegraph business, invention, patentable or not, , ; requirements necessary to obtain a patent, ; element of novelty, ; prior publication, ; usefulness, ; exercise of inventive power necessary for a patent, ; reduction of to practice, ; employer presumed to be the real inventor, ; inventor must apply for a patent, ; specification of, ; improvement on, jewelry, keeping of, by bailor, ; see _carrier_, _innkeeper_ key, delivery of, constitutes delivery of goods, laborers, farm, and compensation acts, lake, title to land under and around, land, title to, bounded by navigable river, ; equity can forbid injuries to, ; equity will enforce covenants, ; devise of, in wills, ; form for agreement for sale of, land, agreement to purchase, ; must be in writing, ; how signed, ; how complete, ; oral agreement, , ; part payment, ; period of option to purchase, ; see _contract_, _statute of frauds_ land license, see _license_ land owner, liability of, for nuisances on his property, ; for safety of persons and children, landlord, see _lease_ larceny, law, common, , , ; statute, , ; courts of, ; civil and criminal, , ; and equity, , ; insolvency, lawsuit, mode of conducting, lease, ; defined, ; oral or written, , , ; liability of lessee, , ; agreements in , ; year to year tenancy, ; term, defined, ; for a future period, , ; description of premises, ; distinction between, and agreement, ; valid, ; made by married woman, ; private corporation may make, ; municipal corporation restricted, ; corporation may take, ; executor may dispose of, , ; trustees may make, ; partner cannot make, ; for what can be made, ; ratification, ; construction of, ; presumes care on part of tenant, , ; rights of a mill tenant, ; rights of a farm tenant, ; assignment of, ; sublease, ; lessor may part with his interests in, ; not a warranty of good condition, ; lessor not required to make repairs, ; agreement to make repairs, , ; agreement to rebuild, ; alterations by tenant, ; renewal, ; rent, ; eviction, , ; land rented on shares, ; of parts of building separately, ; liability of lessor, , ; removals by tenant at expiration of, , ; form for agreement for, ; form for a, ; ; form for a farm, ; form for assignment of, ; of furnished room, form for, legal remedies, - legatee, property given to, disposition of, ; and cash dividends, , ; and stock dividends, , ; definition of, ; who may be, ; see _will_ lessee, see _lease_ lessor, see _lease_ letter of credit, form for, libel, is a wrong, , , ; and slander, license, land, ; defined, , ; for what granted, ; granted informally, ; revocation, , ; duty of licensor to invitee, ; of vessels, license to operate automobile, lien, of agister, ; of livery stable man, ; of groom, ; of freight carrier, ; on bank stock, ; of factor, ; of garage keeper, ; of innkeeper, ; on real estate, , ; form for claim of, by workman, life insurance, see _insurance, life_ limitation, statutes of, , , livery stable, no lien on animals, lodging house, liability of keeper, lost property, - mcclain, justice, quoted on life insurance, , mail, united states common carrier for, ; united states is not liable for loss of, ; private express cannot be established for, ; liability of postmaster and assistant and clerk, ; liability of driver of, ; assent in contracts sent by, , ; delivery of insurance policy, ; see _negotiable paper_ malice, liability of corporation for, mandamus, issue of, ; action of, manufacture, contract for, not included in statute of frauds, manufacturer, liability of, margin, sale of stock on, marriage, , , , ; see _husband and wife_ massachusetts courts, decision in respect to adopted child, masters, of vessels, law governing employment, ; duties and successors of, ; authority of, meetings, - merchant, duty of, towards public, ; and traveling salesman, form for agreement between, merchandise broker, , messages, telegraph, should not be made public, ; may be produced by order of a court, ; criminal offense to divulge, ; to open or read a sealed, ; repeated and unrepeated, minor, limited power of, ; bid made by, ; as bailee, ; cannot become a voluntary bankrupt, ; as mortgagee, ; as chauffeur, ; citizenship of, ; ability of to sign contracts limited, ; period of infancy of, fixed by law, ; cannot subscribe to stock, ; cannot be held for note, ; cannot make legal deed, ; lease made by, void, ; contracts of a, ; necessaries and luxuries supplied to a, ; disaffirmation of contract of a, ; fraudulent contract of a, ; can avoid sales contracts, ; and statute of limitations, ; may be a devisee or legatee, ; as employee in compensation acts, morawetz, quoted, , , mortgage, creditor, can force contract to give, ; kinds of, ; may cover future advances, ; improvements covered, , ; not an absolute conveyance, ; not changed by contemporaneous agreement, ; with power of sale, , ; how the power must be executed, ; mortgagor cannot purchase property sold, ; lien of vendor for purchase money, ; how subsequent purchaser is affected, ; notice of vendor's lien, ; mortgagor real owner, ; both parties may insure premises, ; rights of several mortgagees to same property, ; right of deviser to money due on, ; mode of foreclosure on a, ; payment by joint contributors to discharge, ; who can redeem a, ; payment by executor, ; rights of mortgage of vessel, ; form for deed of, with power of sale, ; form for deed of, ; form for notice of sale under, ; form for assignment of, ; see _deed_, _chattel mortgage_, _shipping_ mortgage, chattel, ; definition of, , ; form of, ; who may make, ; creditors may join in giving, ; description of property, , ; may be given for future advance of money, ; to render secure from creditor ; statutes of, , ; what is included in, ; rights of mortgagee, , ; form for, with power of sale, ; form for deed of, ; see _mortgage_ mortgagee, , ; has insurable interest in goods, mortgagor, , ; favored by law in regard to fixtures, motorist, non-resident, naturalization, negotiable instruments law, negotiable paper, definition, - ; see _note_, _promissory_ newspapers, offers and rewards in, , note, promissory, definition, ; requirements for a, ; unqualified promise in a, ; payable on a contingency, ; payable at a fixed future time, ; dating of a, ; seal of a, ; payable on demand, ; overdue, ; payable to order; ; payable to bearer, ; ante or past-dated, ; title to, acquired from date of delivery, ; a wrongly dated, ; authority of holder to fill blanks, ; incomplete until delivery, ; mode of delivery, ; ambiguity of a, , ; signature to a, ; signature by agent, ; a forged, ; forged indorsement on a, ; consideration for a, ; accommodation party to a, ; negotiation of a, ; negotiation by delivery of a, ; by indorsement and delivery, ; kinds of indorsement of a, ; striking out indorsement of a, ; indorsing to bank or cashier, ; misspelled or incorrect indorsement, ; holder in due course, ; bad faith in negotiating, , ; agreement of maker, ; liability of indorser, not a party to, ; presentment of a, for payment, , , ; exclusion of days in reckoning due date of, ; payable at bank, ; notice of dishonor of a, , ; notice of, to joint parties, ; notice of, to address as directed, ; notice of waived, ; alterations in a, ; memorandum on a, ; similarity of indorsed, and bill of exchange, ; given in payment, ; and statute of limitations, non-resident alien, , notice, of sale under mortgage, form for, ; of meetings, see _corporation_; to quit, form for, nuisances, private, are wrongs, obligations, various, included in statute of limitations, officer, public, liability of, option, to purchase land, owners, in common, of vessels, , parent, natural and adopted, ; cannot lease land of minor child, ; of a minor, ; obligations of, toward child, ; cessation of, ; protection of child by, ; use of child's property by, ; and child, relations between, ; see _adopted child_, _husband and wife_ partner, a member of beneficial association not a, ; what surviving may do, ; may waive notice of corporate meeting, ; dower rights of widow of, ; cannot lease partnership land, ; non-investing, not liable for debts, ; a general agent, ; limitations of authority of a, ; silent or secret, liability of, , ; general or special, ; illegal contract made by a, ; death of a, ; succession to by executor, ; retiring, ; liquidating, authority of, partnership, rules for termination of agency, ; liability of members, , ; stock owned by, represented by partner, ; contract to form, cannot be enforced, ; member of, cannot make lease, ; between tenant and landlord, ; in a single transaction, ; act, ; liability of non-investing partners in, ; can hold any kind of property, ; partners in, are general agents, ; limitations of authority of partners in, ; reception of a new member in, ; formed by definite agreement in writing, ; silent or secret partners in, , ; limited liability, ; dissolution of a, ; death of a partner in, ; retiring partner in, ; failure of, disposition of assets, ; liquidating partner in, party wall, form for agreement concerning, passenger, duty of automobile owner or hirer, in carrying, ; compensation for carrying, ; see _carrier_ patent, ; design, ; invalidation of an american by a foreign, ; prior publication for a, ; defeat of on ground of lack of novelty, ; must be useful to get a, ; exercise of inventive power necessary for a, ; to whom can a be issued? ; a joint, ; must be issued in name of real inventors, ; rights of employee with a, ; may be issued to assignees, ; inventor must apply for a, ; specification of invention to get a, , ; duties of inventor to get a, ; duties of commissioner and examiner before granting a, ; right of appeal if not granted, ; infringement of, and injunction to prevent, ; form for assignment of right, pawn broker, , payment, when can double be required, , ; legal forms of, , ; note or check given in, ; applications of general on several debts, ; receipt not conclusive evidence of, ; effect of a seal in a receipt for, ; on receipt of documents, ; partial, of purchase money completes sale, ; partial, revives debt barred by statute of limitations, ; of money, form for bond for, peck, quoted, pedestrian, rights of, physician, admission of, to beneficial associations, ; form for agreement for sale of practise of a, pledgee, authority of, ; has insurable interest in goods, pledgor, of stock, , policy, insurance, - ; form of assignment of, ; see _insurance, fire_; _insurance, life_ poll deed, possession and control, transfer of constitutes delivery, postmaster, liability of, post office, is agency of offerer of contract, , pond, title to land under and around, power of attorney given to an agent, ; given by a homesteader, ; revoked by woman's marriage, ; form for, ; to transfer stock, form for, precedent, nature of, preference, defined, preferred stock, see _corporation_ premium, see _insurance, life_; _insurance, fire_ prescriptive rights, ; to land, how gained, ; how determine whether or not fully acquired, ; to light and air, ; to use of water, ; to lateral support of land, ; excavations, price, fixing of, in a sale, ; determination of reasonable, promise to pay a debt, renewal of, , property, lost, , ; fraudulent transfer of, , ; real and personal, in wells, prosecution, liability of corporation for, ; malicious, is a wrong, prosecutor, state as, ; injured person as, publication, prior, of an invention, public officers, and compensation acts, purchasers of vessels, liability of, quasi contract, ; definition, ; gift cannot be reclaimed, ; recovery for incidental advantage to another, , ; for service rendered as gratuity, ; for goods accepted without intended payment, ; for perished property, ; premium on insurance policy, ; recovery in case of indefinite promise, ; contract not executed as law requires, , ; especially statute of frauds, , ; recovery for use of unpaid for land, ; recovery impossible in case of no benefit, ; recovery impossible by taking advantage of one's own default, ; recovery for loss in course of alteration and repair, ; in case of illness or death of contractor, ; in wagering contract, ; in contracts made on sunday, ; on partnership note given for benefit of partner, ; of goods delivered by carrier to wrong person, ; of payment made by mistake, ; when consideration has totally failed, ; voluntary payment, ; recovery of check not covered by deposit, ; goods sold as own which are not, ; goods that are worthless, ; forced benefit cannot be recovered, quit, form for notice to, quit-claim, ; form for deed of, , quo warranto, action of, race track news by telegraph, railroad receivers, ratification, defective notice of meeting may be cured by, real estate, broker, , ; deeds, - ; monuments, ; boundaries of, in cities, ; non-navigable stream, ; tidal navigable stream, ; natural or artificial pond as boundary, , ; title to land in public highway, ; liability of examiner of title, , ; equity awards money for failure of contract, ; equity will enforce covenants, ; seller favored by law in regard to fixtures, , ; conveyance of, in statute of frauds, . see _lease_ receipt not conclusive evidence of payment, receiver, duties of, ; has insurable interest in goods, . see _corporation_ registration of vessels, release, ; by ward of his guardian, form for, rent, replevin, action of, representation, as distinguished from warranty, retraction, of slander and libel, revocation of wills, right of way, ; to light and air, ; to use of water, ; to lateral support of land, riparian owner, rights of, roads, public, safe deposit company, as bailee, sale, ; future contract to sell and present sale, ; based on mutual assent, ; executory, ; executed, ; based on mutual assent, ; may be conditional, ; regulation of capacity to buy and sell, ; contracts of a minor, ; sales act and statute of frauds, ; limit of enforcement of sale, ; an undivided share, ; specific goods, ; fixing of price in a, ; determination of reasonable price, ; and warranties, ; satisfaction of buyer necessary, ; implied warranty in a, , ; transfer of ownership in a, ; delivery and acceptance in a, ; delivery of goods or documents on payment, ; speculative stock, ; of goods, wares, and merchandise in statute of frauds, ; various modes of completing, ; of land, form for agreement for, ; bill of, form for, ; form for notice of, under mortgage, sales act, , ; and undivided share of goods, ; and statute of frauds, ; and specific goods, ; fixing of price in, ; determination of reasonable price, ; satisfaction of buyer necessary, ; warranty and implied warranty, , ; delivery and acceptance, ; delivery of goods or documents on payment, seal, use of, ; effect of, in a receipt for payment, seamen, of vessels, laws pertaining to, separation, between husband and wife, , servants, domestic and compensation acts, service, contract of, shareholder, rights of, . see _corporation_ shares, land rented on, ; of stock, form for agreement to sell, shipping, . see _vessels_ shipping broker, slander, liability of corporation, , , ; in case of drunkenness, ; and libel, action of, ; and libel, distinctions between, ; is a wrong, , ; definition of, sleeping car, snow, liability for, on pavement, spring of water, restrictions of owner, statute of frauds, and auctioneer, ; and lease, ; and recovery on contract, , ; and sale of goods, , , ; and delivery and acceptance, ; and sale of real estate, ; and manufacturer, statutes, , ; pertaining to lost property, , ; to beneficial associations, ; to pawn-brokers, ; limiting amount carrier must pay for lost life, ; regarding mail carrying by private express, ; pertaining to chattel mortgages, , ; imposing higher inheritance tax for non-resident aliens, ; allowing individual to form corporations with legislative aid, ; pertaining to married women's subscriptions to stock, ; provisions for corporations, , , , ; controlling bank directors, ; fixing liability of parties, ; requiring two witnesses to deed, ; modifying dower rights, ; giving insurer right to cancel fire insurance policy, ; providing for total loss, ; exempting innkeepers from loss by fire, ; changing responsibility of innkeeper, ; in new york relative to termination of leases, statutes of limitation, claim barred by, and bankruptcy, ; application of, to directors, ; operation of, to cancel debt, ; various provisions, , , stock, ; who can subscribe to, ; fictitious subscriptions, ; certificates, , ; capital increased, ; preferred, ; subscription to, a contract, ; corporation cannot purchase own, ; corporation has no lien on its, ; national banking law, ; assessments on, ; majority shall rule may be modified, ; purchaser of, should give notice to company, ; sale of, ; trustee legal owner, ; executor can vote, of testator, , ; administer can vote, ; owned by partnership represented by partner, ; seller and purchaser, ; pledgor and pledgee, , ; transferee, ; dividends, ; owners of, can examine books, ; equity compels delivery of stock, , ; owner of, in corporation has insurable interest in goods, ; speculative sales of, ; form for power of attorney to transfer, ; certificate, form for, ; form for agreement to sell, ; form for transfer of, . see _corporation_ stolen property, resale of, strike, excuses telegraph company for delay, sub-agent, , sublease, subscription to build a church, form for, subtenant, taxes, of beneficial associations, ; on homestead, telegraph, , ; not a common carrier, ; must serve all who apply and offer to pay, ; cannot discriminate against another telegraph company, ; strike sufficient excuse for delay, ; can be penalized for delay in interstate business, ; prohibited by statute from limiting their own liability, ; may be prohibited from transmitting racetrack news, ; must transmit all messages except those containing indecent language, ; may close at reasonable hours, ; may require sender to designate route of message, ; messages should not be made public, ; rules for within the state business differ from the rules for interstate business, ; repeated and unrepeated messages, telephone, - ; company cannot favor any telegraph company, ; cannot legally charge a telegraph company more than any other patron, ; cannot discriminate against another telephone company, tenant, favored by law in regard to fixtures, . see _lease_ term of lease, defined, terms, explanation of, testator, must possess sound mind, , , ; requirements of, title to bed of lakes, ; to real estate, , ; warranty of seller's when in possession of the goods, tort, action in, torts (or wrongs), - ; definition, and examples, ; false imprisonment, ; malicious prosecution, ; assault and battery, ; defamation of reputation and character, slander, , ; must be brought to the knowledge of a third person, ; libel, vituperation, and abuse, ; distinctions between libel and slander, ; a corporation may be slandered, ; defenses in actions for slander or libel, ; apologies or retractions, ; private nuisances, ; motives not material, ; acts of discomfort amounting to nuisances, ; temporary annoyances, ; distinction between acts that annoy, and acts that injure, ; liability of land owner, ; trespassing cattle, ; vicious animals, ; starter of a fire, ; keeper of explosives, ; liability of a manufacturer, ; users of other persons' property, ; liability for acts of children, trades-unions, transfer of shares of stock, form for, tree, divisional, law relating to, trenchard, justice, quoted, , trespass, action of, trespasser, trustee, appointment of, in bankruptcy, ; must give bond, ; removal of, ; death of, ; represents bankrupt debtor, ; duties, ; may make lease, ; powers of, undivided share of goods, and sales act, united states, common carrier for mails, ; liability of, for conduct of a private mail driver, ; citizen of, defined, ; act conferring citizenship on alien women, ; naturalization laws, , usage, affects agent's power, ; sales of auctioneer, ; may take into account in insurance policy, ; in presenting check for payment, ; creates implied warranty, ; delivery of goods affected by, vendor, when can sell goods, ; may have lien for purchase money, ; notice of lien, vessels, must be registered, ; can be registered only by citizens of united states, ; sale to a foreigner, ; enrollment of, ; license of, ; title to, how acquired, ; when owned by corporations, ; owners or tenants in common of, : limitations of authority of owners in common of, ; majority and minority of owners in common of, ; liability of purchaser of, ; mortgaging of, ; rights of mortgagor of, ; borrowing money on, ; appointment of masters of, ; duties, and successors of, ; authority of, ; seamen, laws pertaining to, , vituperation and abuse, a wrong, voluntary service, recovery for, voting, cumulating, described, , ward, death of, terminates lease, ; form for release from guardian, warranty, deed of, , ; and sales act, , , , ; distinction between and representation, ; statement made simply to awaken a buyer's interest not a, ; implied in all cases where vendor is an expert, ; in sale of food, ; of the seller's title, when in possession of the goods, ; when goods are sold by sample, ; form for deed of, , . see _deceit_, _sale_ water, use of stream of, . see _prescriptive rights_ widow, rights of, . see _dower_ wife, rights of in will, ; rights in marriage. see _husband and wife_ will, mortgagor dies without leaving, ; definition, ; requirements for testator, ; witnesses of, ; real and personal property in, definitions of, ; should be in writing, ; devisee and legatee in, ; must be in accordance with laws of states, ; grounds on which are attacked, ; made by the insane, ; requirements of, ; when several are made, ; authority of trustee of, ; devise of lands in, ; date on which take effect, ; rights of wife in, ; revocation of, ; forms for, , , williston, quoted, on stock sales, witnesses of wills, number required, woman married, limited power of, ; as mortgagee, ; and contracts, ; as subscriber to stock, ; husband of, entitled to curtesy, , ; execution of deed by, , ; and dower, ; lease made by, ; and statute of limitations, ; may be devisee or legatee, . see _husband and wife_ work and labor, form for agreement for, workmen's compensation acts, injury to chauffeurs, , ; who is compensated under, ; who is not, ; contract of service necessary, ; condition of health of no consequence, ; minors, apprentices, and farm laborers, ; domestic servants, ; casual employees, ; independent contractors, ; federal employees, ; public officers, ; dependents of workers, ; children of workmen, ; earnings the basis for computation of compensation, ; death of workman, ; total and partial incapacity, ; form for claim of lien by, wrongs. see _torts_, - * * * * * +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | typographical errors corrected in text: | | | | page : adplicable replaced with applicable | | page : posession replaced with possession | | page : fradulent replaced with fraudulent | | page : fnud replaced with fund | | page : morever replaced with moreover | | page : morgagee replaced with mortgagee | | page : solemized replaced with solemnized | | page : acquiesence replaced with acquiescence | | page : perpared replaced with prepared | | page : volutary replaced with voluntary | | page : mortage replaced with mortgage | | page : defences replaced with defenses | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * the romance of a great store [illustration: the new york to which macy came--in looking south from d street--the old reservoir and the crystal palace in the foreground] the romance of a great store by edward hungerford author of "the personality of american cities," "the modern railroad," etc. illustrated by vernon howe bailey new york robert m. mcbride & company copyright, , by robert m. mcbride & co. _printed in the united states of america_ published, to the men and women of the great macy family whose fidelity and interest, whose enthusiasm and ability have upbuilded a lasting institution of worth in the heart of a vast city this book is affectionately dedicated by its author. e. h. contents chapter page introduction ix _yesterday_ i. the ancestral beginnings of macy's ii. the new york that macy first saw iii. fourteenth street days iv. the coming of isidor and nathan straus v. the store treks uptown _today_ i. a day in a great store ii. organization in a modern store iii. buying to sell iv. displaying and selling the goods v. distributing the goods vi. the macy family vii. the family at play _tomorrow_ i. in which macy's prepares to build anew ii. l'envoi illustrations the new york to which macy came--in _frontispiece_ facing page the beginnings of macy's the fourteenth street store of other days the herald square of ante-macy days the macy's of today where milady of manhattan shops the science of modern salesmanship the summer home of the macy family introduction "caveat emptor," the romans said, in their day. "let the buyer beware," we would read that phrase, today. for nearly four thousand years, perhaps longer, _caveat emptor_ ruled the hard world of barter. yet for the past sixty years, or thereabouts, a new principle has come into merchandising. you may call it progress, call it idealism, call it ethics, call it what you will. i simply call it good business. _caveat emptor_ has become a phrase thrust out of good merchandising. it is a pariah. the decent merchant of today despises it. on the contrary he prides himself upon the honor of his calling, upon the high value of his good name, untarnished. the man or the woman who comes into his store may come with the faith or the simplicity of the child. he or she may even be bereft of sight, itself--yet deal in faith and fearlessly. _caveat emptor_ is indeed a dead phrase. how and whence came this murder of a commercial derelict? you may laugh and at first you may scoff, but the fact remains that the development of the department store as we know it in the united states today first began some sixty or sixty-five years ago. and almost coincidently began the development of a code of morals in merchandising such as was all but undreamed of in this land, at any rate up to a decade or two before the coming of the civil war. not that there were no honest merchants in those earlier days of the republic. oh no, there was a plenty of them--men whose integrity and whose sincerity were as little to be doubted as are those same qualities in our best merchants of today. only yesterday these honest men were in the minority. the moral code in merchandising was yet inchoate, unformed. it might remain unformed, intangible today if it had not been for the coming of the department store. the enormous consolidation and concentration that went to make these enterprises possible brought with them a competition--bitter and to the end unflinching--which hesitated at no legitimate means for the gaining of its end. but competition quickly found that the best means--the finest battle-sword--was honest commercial practice, and so girded that sword to its belt and bade _caveat emptor_ begone. the great department store around which these chapters are written assumes for itself, neither yesterday, today nor tomorrow, any monopoly of this virtue of commercial honesty. but it does assert, and will continue to assert that it was at least among the pioneers in the complete banishment of _caveat emptor_, that its founder--the man whose name it so proudly bears today--fought for these high principles when the fighting was at the hardest and the temptations to move in the other direction were most alluring. of these principles you shall read in the oncoming chapters of this book. there are many, they are varied--in some respects they vary greatly from those upon which other and equally successful and equally honest merchandising establishments are today operated. macy's has no quarrel with any of its competitors. it merely writes upon the record that, for itself, it is quite satisfied with the merchandising principles that its founder and the men who came after him saw fit to establish. upon those the store has prospered--and prospered greatly. and because of such prosperity--social as well as commercial--because it feels that its selling principles are quite as valuable to its patrons as to the store itself, it has no intention of giving change to them. macy's of today is like in soul and spirit to macy's of yesterday; macy's of tomorrow is planned to be like unto the macy's of today--only vastly larger in its scope and influence. for the convenience of the reader this book has been divided into three great parts, or books. time has formed the logical factor of division. time, as in the theater, forms these three books, or acts--yesterday, today, tomorrow. they move in sequence. the stage-hands are placing the setting for the new york of yesterday--the new york that already has begun to fade, far from the eyes of even the oldest of the humans who shall come to read these pages. it is a charming new york, this american city of the late 'fifties, the city whose ladies go shopping in hoopskirts and in crinoline. it has dignity, taste, bustle, enterprise. but anon of these. the stage is set. the director's foot comes stamping down upon the boards. the curtain rises. the first act begins. _yesterday_ i. the ancestral beginnings of macy's interwoven into the history of the ancient island of nantucket are the names and annals of some of the earliest of our american families--the coffins, the eldredges, the myricks, and the macys. their forbears came from england to america fully ten generations ago. they settled upon the remote and wind-swept isle and there to this day many of their descendants ply their vocations and have their homes. in the beginning the vocation of these settlers was found to lie almost invariably upon a single path; and that path led down to the sea. they were sea-faring folk, those early residents of nantucket: god-fearing, simple of speech and of action, yet mentally keen and alert. and from them sprang the segment of a race which was soon to grow far beyond the narrow barriers of the little island and to spread its splendid enthusiasm and energy far into a newborn land. among the very earliest of these nantucket settlers was one thomas macy, who, from the beginning, took his fair place in the development of its fishing and its whaling industries. from him came a long line of descendants--a clean and sturdy record--and in the eighth generation of these there was born--on august , --as the son of john and eliza myrick macy, the man whose name chiefly concerns this book--rowland hussey macy. the record of this young man's youth is not so consequential as to be worth the setting down in detail. it is enough perhaps to know that at the age of fifteen he followed the common nantucket custom of those days and went away to sea; upon a whaling voyage which was to consume four long years before again he saw the belfried white spire of the south church rising through the trees back of the harbor and which was to make him in fact as well as in name, captain macy. three years later he married. he chose for his wife, miss louisa houghton, of fairlees, vermont. their pleasant married life continued for thirty-three years, until the day of mr. macy's death. mrs. macy lived for several years afterwards, dying in new york city in . they had three children, one of whom, mrs. james f. sutton, the widow of the founder of the american art galleries in new york, still survives and is living at her suburban home in westchester county. such is the simple statistical record of the man who lived to be one of new york's great merchant princes, who, upon the simple foundations of good merchandising, of strength, integrity and initiative, upbuilded one of the great and most distinctive businesses of the greatest city of the two american continents. back of it is another record--not so simple or so quickly told. it is the story of successes and of sorrows, of triumphs and of failures--but in the end of the final triumph of new england conscience and energy and vision. it is with this last story that this book has its beginning. it was not many moons after his marriage that young macy started in business, in store-keeping in boston. he was convinced that the sea was no calling for a married man, and, with the yankee's native taste for trading, decided that the career of the merchant was the one that had the largest appeal to him. so he made immediate steps in that direction. the record of that early boston store is meagre. it is enough, perhaps, to say here and now that it failed, and that if its collapse had really dismayed the young merchant, this book would not have been written. as it was, the failure seemed but to stir him toward renewed efforts. he stood in the back of his little store and flipped a coin. it was a habit of his in all periods of indecision. "heads up, and i go north," said he. "tails and next week i start south." heads came. and rowland macy and his wife went north. they went to haverhill and there upon the bank of the merrimac he set up his second store. this venture was far more successful than the first. it prospered, if not in large degree, at least far enough to encourage its proprietor. but he did not cease regretting that the coin had not come tails-up. then he would have gone to new york. for new york, he was convinced, was about to become the undisputed metropolis of the land. already it was going ahead, by leaps and bounds. and men who slipped into it quickly and who possessed the right qualities of commercial ability would go ahead quickly. rowland macy was convinced of this. he was not a man who lost much time in vain repinings. to new york he would go. he suited action to thought, sold his haverhill business at a fair profit, again bundled his wife and small family together and set out for the metropolis of the new world. ii. the new york that macy first saw in new york was just beginning to come into its own. it was ceasing to be an overgrown town--half village, half city--and was attaining a real metropolitanism. it had already reached a population of , persons, and was adding to that number at the rate of from twelve thousand to fifteen thousand annually. its real and personal property was assessed at upward of $ , , . new building was going apace at a fearful rate. already the town was fairly closely builded up to forty-ninth street, and was paved to forty-second. above it up on manhattan island were many suburban villages: bloomingdale, where mayor fernando wood had his residence, upon a plot about the size of the present crossing of broadway and seventy-second street, yorkville, harlem and manhattanville. to reach the first two of these communities one could take certain of the horse railroads. john stephenson had perfected his horse-car and these modern equipages--how quaint and old-fashioned they would seem today--were already plying in second, third, sixth, eighth and ninth avenues. slowly but surely they were displacing the omnibuses, which dated back more than half a century. a goodly number of these still remained, however; twenty-six lines employing in all separate stages--new york certainly was a considerable town. to reach the more remote communities of manhattan island--harlem or manhattanville--one took the steam-cars: either the trains of the hudson river railroad in the little old station at chambers street and west broadway, from which they proceeded up to the west side of the island and, as to this day, through a goodly portion of tenth avenue, or else the trains of the new york & harlem, or the new york & new haven, from their separate terminals back of the city hall and canal street up through fourth avenue, the tunnel under yorkville hill and thence across the harlem plain to the river of the same name. a little later these railroads were to consolidate their terminals, in a huge block-square structure at madison and fourth avenues, twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh streets, the forerunner of the present madison square garden; but the first of the three successive grand central stations was not to come until . fifth avenue, too, was just beginning to come into its own. some of the handsome homes in the lower reaches of that thoroughfare and upon the northern edge of washington square which have been suffered to remain until this day had already been built and an exodus had begun to them from the older houses to the south. all of the churches were gone from down town with but a few exceptions, the most conspicuous of which were the two episcopalian churches in broadway--trinity and st. paul's--the roman catholic church of st. peter's in barclay street, st. george's in beekman, the north dutch in william, the middle dutch in nassau and the brick presbyterian, also in beekman street. this last, in fact, had already been sold for secular purposes and had been abandoned. the congregation was building a new house up in the fields at fifth avenue and thirty-eighth street, a step which was regarded by its older members as extremely radical and precarious, to put it mildly. the ancient home of the middle dutch reformed had also gone for secular purposes. in it was housed the new york post office, already a brisk place, which soon was to outgrow its overcrowded quarters and to expand into its ugly citadel at the apex of the city hall park. the two great fires--the one in and the other in --had removed from the lower portions of the city many of their more ancient and unsightly structures. the rebuilding which had followed them gave to the growing town much larger structures of a finer and more dignified architecture. six and seven story buildings were quite common. this represented the practical limitations of a generation which knew not elevators, although the new fifth avenue hotel which already was being planned upon the site of the old hippodrome, at broadway and twenty-third and twenty-fourth streets, was soon to have the first of these contraptions that the world had ever seen. gone, too, were other old landmarks of downtown--some of them in their day distinctly famous--the city hall, the union hotel, the tontine coffee house, the bridewell and the reservoir of the manhattan company in chambers street. the new croton works, with their wonderful aqueduct, the high bridge, upon which it crossed the ravine of the harlem, and the dual reservoirs at forty-second street and at eighty-sixth, had rendered this last structure obsolete. the state prison had disappeared from its former site at the foot of east twenty-third street. a new group of structures at sing sing had replaced the old upon the island of manhattan. even then the elegant new york was moving rapidly uptown. union square, still known, however, to older new yorkers as union place, was the heart of its life and fashion. it was lined by the fine houses of the elect and two of the most superb hotels of the metropolis, the brevoort and the union square, while the clarendon, which was destined soon to house the young prince of wales, stood but a block away. at irving place and fourteenth and fifteenth streets had just been completed the new academy of music. new york at last had a real opera-house, with a stage and fittings large enough and adequate to present music-drama upon a scale equal to that of the larger european capitals. she had plenty of theaters, too: the broadway, the bowery, laura keene's, niblo's garden, and wood & christy's negro minstrels, chief amongst them. while down at the point where chatham street (now park row) debouched into broadway, barnum's museum already stood, with its gay bannered front beckoning eagerly to the countrymen. and how the countrymen did flock into new york--in those serene and busy days before the coming of a tragic war. new york harbor was a busy place. for not all of them came by the well-filled trains of the three railroads that reached in upon manhattan island. there were sailing-ships and steamboats a plenty bumping their noses against the overcrowded piers of the growing city; ferries from brooklyn and williamsburgh and jersey city and hoboken and astoria and staten island; steamboat lines down the harbor to amboy and to newark and to elizabethtown; and up the sound to fall river, to providence and to the connecticut ports. but the finest steamers of all plied the hudson. there the rivalry was keenest, the opportunities for profit apparently the greatest. and despite the fact that new york was already the port of many important ocean lines--the cunard, the collins, the glasgow, the havre, the hamburg and the panama steamers, for the fast-growing fame of the metropolis of the new world was already attracting great numbers of travelers from overseas--the fact also remains that when the _daniel drew_, of the albany night line, was first built, in , she exceeded in size and in passenger-carrying capacity any ocean liner plying in and out of the port of new york. so came the countrymen and the residents of the other smaller towns and cities of the land, along with many, many foreigners, to this new vortex of humanity. they found their way, not alone to the hotels of the union square district, but to such equally distinguished houses as the astor, the brevoort, the st. nicholas, the metropolitan, the new york. they went to the theaters and almost invariably they climbed the brown-stone spire of old trinity, in order to drink in the view that it commanded: the wide sweep of busy city close at hand, the more distant ranges of the upper and lower harbors, the north and the east rivers, long island, staten island, new jersey and the western slopes of the orange mountains. and some, loving new york and realizing the fair opportunities that it offered, came to stay. in among this throng of folk who rushed into the town in there came--among those who came to stay--rowland h. macy. the partial success of his haverhill store, to an extent overbalancing the initial failure in boston, had brought him into the metropolis of america, the city of wider, if indeed not unlimited opportunity. in those days there were few large stores in new york; nothing to be in the least compared with its great department stores of today. one heard of its hotels, its churches, its theaters, its banks, but very little indeed of its mercantile establishments. they were, for the most part, very small and exceedingly individual. they were known as shops and well deserved that title. there were a few exceptions, of course: a. t. stewart's--still on broadway between worth and chambers streets--ridley's, lord & taylor's and john daniell's in grand street (this last at broadway), mcnamee & company's, arnold, constable & co., mccreery's, hearn's, and one or two others, perhaps, of particular distinction. it is hardly possible that macy, as he found his way into these larger establishments, believed that he might ever in his own enterprise match their elegance and distinction. it is difficult to believe that in those very earliest days he had the vision of a department store. at any rate the extremely modest establishment which he opened at sixth avenue, between thirteenth and fourteenth streets, in conjunction with his brother-in-law, samuel s. houghton, devoted itself at first, and for a long time afterward, exclusively to the sale of fancy goods. for specializing was the fashion of that day and generation; john daniell sold nothing but ribbons and trimmings then; aiken laces, and stewart's chiefly dress-goods. yet macy had vision. the department store idea must slowly have forced itself into his mind. for, five years later, we find his small business, originally on sixth avenue, just a door or two below fourteenth street, expanding so rapidly that he was forced to secure more room for it. and this despite the fact that not only was he two long blocks distant from broadway but the particular corner which he had chosen for his store was known locally as unlucky--two or three other stores had gone bankrupt on it. macy had no intention of going bankrupt. he added to his original shop the store at west fourteenth street, at right angles to and connecting in the rear with it, and in this he installed a department of hats and millinery. he was beginning to come and come quickly--this country merchant to whom at first new york refused to extend either recognition or credit. now was the complete department store idea fairly launched, for the first time in the history of america, if not in the entire world. yet, when one came to fair and final analysis, it represented nothing else than the country-store of the small town or cross-roads greatly expanded in volume. and so, after all, it is barely possible that the canny new englander may have had the germ of his surpassing idea implanted in his mind, a full decade or more before he had the opportunity to make use of it. incidentally, it may be set down here, that mr. macy in the rapidly recurring trips to paris which he found necessary to make in the interest of his business developed a great admiration for the bon marché of that city. he studied its methods carefully and adopted them whenever he found the opportunity. from hats to dress-goods--the addition of still another adjoining store was inevitable--came as a fairly natural sequence. and one finds the successful young merchant who had had the enterprise and the initiative to leave broadway--supposedly the supreme shopping street of the new york of that day--laying in his stocks of alpaca, of black bombazine, of silks and muslins, sheetings and pillow-cases and all that with these go. the idea once born was adhered to. as it broadened it gained prosperity. and as a natural sequence there came gradually and with a further steady enlargement of the premises, jewelry, toilet-goods and the so-called vienna goods. toys were added in , and gradually house-furnishing goods, confectionery, soda water, books and stationery, boys' clothing, ladies' underwear, crockery, glassware, silverware, boots and shoes, dress-goods, dressmaking, ready-to-wear clothing, and, in due time, a restaurant. for many years it was the only store in town to carry soaps and perfumes. this, of itself, brought to the store a clientele of its own--the most beautiful women of new york, among the most notable of them, rose eytinge, the actress, who was just then coming to the pinnacle of her fame. mr. macy, accompanied by his wife and daughter--the latter of whom is still alive at an advanced age--took up his residence at first over the store and then, a little later, in a small house in west twelfth street, within easy walking distance of his place of business. from this he afterward moved to a larger residence in west forty-ninth street. he was a man of sturdy build, of more than medium height and thick-set, extremely affable in manner. he wore a heavy beard, and an old employee of the store was wont to liken his appearance to that of the poet, longfellow. his tendency toward black cigars and to appearing in the store in his shirt-sleeves did not heighten the resemblance, however. he was a man of almost indomitable will. such a quality was quite as necessary for success in those days as in these. the modern ideas of beneficence and generosity to the employee were little dreamed of then. the successful merchant, like the successful manufacturer or the successful banker, drove his men and drove them hard. macy was no exception to this rule. if he had been, it is doubtful if he would have lasted long. for while ' was a year of seeming prosperity in new york it also followed directly one of the notable panic-years in the financial history of the united states and was soon to be followed by four years of internecine struggle in the nation--in which its credit and financial resources were to be strained to the utmost. it is entirely possible that the record of the macy store might not be set down as one of final and overwhelming success, if it had not been for the driving force of a woman, who was brought into the organization not long after the opening of the original store in lower sixth avenue. this woman, margaret getchell, was also born in nantucket. she had been a school-teacher upon the island, until the loss of one of her eyes forced her to seek less confining work. she drifted to new york and, taking advantage of a girlhood acquaintance with mr. macy, asked him for employment in his store. he knew her and was glad to take her in. she, in turn, engaged rooms in a flat just over a picture-frame store, in sixth avenue, across from her employment, so that she might devote every possible moment of her time, day and night, to its success. so was born a real executive--and in a day when the possibilities of women ever becoming business executives were as remote seemingly as that they might ever fly. for decades after she had gone, she left the impress of her remarkable personality upon the store. an attractive figure she was: a small, slight woman, with masses of glorious hair and a pert upturn to her nose, while the loss of her eye was overcome, from the point of view of appearance at least, by the wearing of an artificial one, which she handled so cleverly that many folk knew her for a long time without realizing her misfortune. at every turn, margaret getchell was a clever woman. once when mr. macy had imported a wonderful mechanical singing-bird--a thing quite as unusual in that early day as was the phonograph when it came upon the market--and its elaborate mechanism had slipped out of order, it was she, with the aid of a penknife, a screw-driver and a pair of pliers--i presume that she also used a hair-pin--who took it entirely apart and put it together again. and at another time she trained two cats to permit themselves to be arrayed in doll's clothing and to sleep for hours in twin-cribs, to the great amusement and delectation of the visitors to the store. later she caused a photograph to be made of the exhibit, which was retailed in great quantities to the younger customers. miss getchell was nothing if not businesslike. it was her keen, commercial acumen that made her alert in the heart center of the early store--the cashier's office. she tolerated neither discrepancies nor irregularities there. there it was that the new england school-ma'm showed itself most keenly. did a saleswoman overcharge a patron two dollars? and did the cashier accept and pass the check? then the cashier must pay the two dollars out of her meagre pay-envelope on saturday night. "overs" were treated the same as "unders." it made no difference that the store was already ahead two dollars on the transaction. discipline was the thing. discipline would keep that sort of offense from being repeated many times, and macy's from ever being given the unsavory reputation of making a practice of overcharging. "don't ever erase a figure or change it, no matter what seems to be the logical reason in your own mind," she kept telling her cashiers. "the very act implies dishonesty." so does the new england conscience ever lean backward. yet it is related of this same margaret getchell that when a little and comparatively friendless girl had been admitted to the cashier's cage--a decided innovation in those days--and had been found in an apparent peculation of three dollars and promptly discharged by mr. macy, miss getchell dropped everything else and went to work on behalf of the little cashier. intuitively she felt that another of her sex in the cage had made the theft--a young woman who had come into the store from a prominent up-state family to learn merchandising. the up-state young woman was fond of dress. her dress demands far exceeded her salary. of that miss getchell was sure. yet intuition is one thing and proof quite another. for a fortnight the store manager worked upon her surpassing problem. she induced macy to suspend for a time his order of discharge and she kept putting the women cashiers in relays in the cage, to suit her own fancy and her own plans. the petty thefts continued. but not for long. the plans worked. the altered checks were found to be all in the time of one of the cashiers--and that was not the one who had been discharged. miss getchell drove to the home of miss upper new york and there, in the presence of her family, got both confession and reparation. [illustration: the beginnings of macy's the original small store in sixth avenue just south of th street. here the business starts in ] she was forever seeking new lines of activities for the store--branching out here, branching out there, and turning most of these new ventures into lines of resounding profits. "if necessary, we shall handle everything except one," she is reputed to have said. and upon being asked what that one was, she replied brusquely, "coffins." once she embarked macy upon the grocery business--whole decades before the establishment of the present huge grocery department--and while eventually the store was forced to drop for a time this line of merchandise, she succeeded in taking so much business from new york's then leading firm of grocers that they came to macy, himself, and begged him to drop the competition. in the retailing world of that day, tradition and habit still governed and with an iron hand. stores opened early in the morning and kept open until late in the evening, and did this six days of the week. their workers rose and left their homes--before dawn in many months of the year--and did not return to them until well after dark. yet they did not complain, for that was the fashion of the times and was recognized as such. wages were as low as the hours were long. but food-costs also were low, and rentals but a tiny fraction of their present figure. the apartment house had not yet come to new york. it was a development set for a full two decades later. the store-workers lived in boarding-houses, in small furnished rooms or with their families. the greater part of them resided within walking distance of their employment. mr. macy had all of his fair share of traditional new england thrift. one of the favorite early anecdotes of "the old man," as his fellow-workers were prone to call him, and with no small show of affection, concerned his refusal to permit shades to be placed upon the gas-jets in the store, saying that he paid for the light and so wanted the full value for his money. he was skeptical, at the best, about innovations. moreover, necessity compelled him to keep close watch upon the pennies. at one time he reduced the weekly wages of his cash-girls from two dollars to one-dollar-and-a-half, saying that the war was over and he could no longer afford to pay war wages. yet when a courageous sales-clerk went to him and told him that she could not possibly live any longer upon her weekly wage of three dollars, he promptly raised it a dollar, without argument or hesitation. and the following week he automatically extended the same increase to every other clerk in the store. labor conditions in that day were hard, indeed. the working hours, as i have already said, were long. in regular times the store hours were from eight to six, instead of from nine to five-thirty, as today. on busy days the clerks worked an extra hour, putting the stock in place, while in the fortnight which preceded christmas the store was open evenings--supposedly until ten o'clock, as a matter of fact, often until long after ten, when the workers were well toward the point of exhaustion. other conditions of their labor were slightly better. there were no seats in the aisles and conversation between the clerks was punishable by discharge. they might make their personal purchases only on friday mornings, between eight and nine o'clock, and they received no discount whatsoever. in mr. macy's day the only discounts ever given were to the new york juvenile asylum in thirteenth street nearby, which was an institution peculiarly close to his heart. there were no lockers in the early days of the old store. in one of its upper floors several small rooms were set aside as a crude sort of cloak-room for the employees. a few nails around the walls sufficed for their outer wraps but there were never enough of these nails to go around. one of the clerks was chosen to come early and stay late in order to supervise these rooms. inasmuch as there was neither glory nor remuneration in this task, it was not eagerly sought after. nevertheless, here was the enlightened day at hand when women would and did work in stores--not alone in great numbers but in a great majority and in many cases to the exclusion of men. it was one of the sweeping economic changes that the civil war brought in its train. when the men must go to fight in the armies of the north, women must take their places--for only a little while it seemed up to that time. yet so well did they do much of men's work, that their retention in many of their positions came as a very natural course. so while the decade that preceded the civil war found few or no professions open to women--save those of teaching or of domestic employment--the one which followed it found them coming in increasing numbers, into a steadily increasing number and variety of endeavors. so it was then that the great war of the last century brought women behind the counters of the stores--macy's was no exception to the invasion. they came to stay. and stay they have, to this very day, even though most of the new york stores still retain men to a considerable extent in some of their departments--notably those devoted to the sale of furniture, dress-goods and boots and shoes. for some varieties of stock the male clerk still is the most suitable and successful sort of salesman. in his store in haverhill, mr. macy had adopted as his trade-mark a rooster bearing the motto in his beak, "while i live, i'll crow." for his nascent enterprise in new york, however, he adopted a different and, to him at least, a far more significant device, which to this day remains the symbol of the great enterprise which still bears his name. it was a star, a star of red, if you will. and back of that simple symbol rests a story: it seems that in the days of his youth when he sailed the northern seas in a whaling ship he had gradually acquired such proficiency that he was made first mate and then master. it was in the earlier capacity, however, and upon an occasion when he was given a trick at the wheel that macy found himself in a thick fog off a new england port--one version of the story says boston, the other new bedford. to catch the familiar lights of the harbor gateways was out of the question. the cloud banks lay low against the shore. overhead there was a rift or two, and in one of them, well ahead of the vessel's prow, there gleamed a brilliant star. for the young skipper this was literally a star of hope. his quick wit made it a guiding star. by it he steered his course and so successfully into the safety of the harbor that the star became for him thereafter the symbol of success. with the strange insistency that was inherent in the man, he was wont to say that the failure of his boston store was due to the fact that he had not there adopted the star as his trade-mark. he made no such mistake in his new york enterprise. the star became the forefront of his business. and to this day it is a prominent feature of the main façade of the great establishment which bears his name. mr. macy never lost his boyhood affection for the sea--the one thing inborn of his ancestral blood. it is related of him that one morning on his way to the store he found a small silver anchor lying on the sidewalk, picked it up, placed it in his pocket and thereafter carried it until the day of his death, regarding it as a talisman of real value. there was one souvenir of his early connection of which he was greatly ashamed, however. as a boy he had permitted his shipmates to tattoo the backs of his hands. in later years he regretted this exceedingly, and developed a habit of talking to strangers with the palms of his hands held uppermost, so that they might not see the tattoo marks. from the very beginning macy adopted certain fixed and definite policies for his business. these showed not alone the vision but the breadth and bigness of the man. for one of the most important of them he decided that in his business he would have cash transactions only. this applied both ways--to the purchase of his merchandise as well as to its retail sale. it is a bed-rock principle that has come down to today as a foundation of the business that he founded. it is perhaps the one rule of it, from which there is no deviation, at any time or under any circumstance. it is related that a full quarter of a century after macy had first adopted this principle, one of the then partners of the concern was approached by a warm personal friend, a man of high financial standing, who said that he wished to make a rather elaborate purchase that morning, but not having either cash or a check handy, asked for an exception to the no-credit rule. the partner shook his head, smiled, rather sadly, and said: "no, mr. blank, i cannot do that, even for you. but i can tell you what i can, and shall do." and so saying he reached for his own check-book, wrote out a personal voucher for two hundred dollars, stepped over to the cashier's office, had it cashed and presented the money, in crisp green bills to his friend. "you can repay me, at your convenience," was all that he said. convinced that trust--as he insisted upon calling credit--was a millstone upon the neck of the merchant--let alone a struggling man of thirty-five who previously had known failure--macy insisted upon matching his purchases for any ensuing week close to his sales for the preceding one. he did all his own buying at first; and for a number of years thereafter he employed no professional buyers whatsoever. in this way he kept his margin closely in hand and at all times well within the range of safety. there was little of the spirit of the gambler in him. it would not have sat well with his yankee blood. a second principle of the store in those early days which has come easily and naturally down to these--when it is accepted retailing principle everywhere--was the marking of the selling price upon each and every article. it seems odd to think today that the installing of such a fair and commonsense principle should once have been regarded as a stroke of daring initiative in merchandising. yet the fact remains that in the days when macy's was young, in the average store one bargained and bargained constantly. there was no single price set upon any article. even when one went into as fine and showy a store as new york might boast one bartered. _caveat emptor_, "let the buyer beware," was seemingly the dominating retail motto of those days. but not in mr. macy's. the selling price went on every article displayed in the store in those days and in such plain and readable figures that any fairly educated person might clearly understand. this principle alone was one of the huge factors that went toward the early and immediate success of the enterprise. there was still another merchandising idea born of that great and fertile new england brain that needs to be set down at this time. for many years a notable feature of the advertising of the macy store has been in the peculiar shading of its prices--at forty-nine cents or ninety-eight, or at $ . or $ . or $ . rather than in the even multiples of dollars. a good many worldly-wise folk have jumped to the quick conclusion that this was due to a desire on the part of the store to make the selling price of any given article seem a little less than it really was. as a matter of fact it was due to nothing of the sort. with all of his respect for the honesty of his sales-force, the yankee mind of r. h. macy took few chances--even in that regard. he felt that in almost every transaction the money handed over by the customer would be in even silver coin or bills. to give back the change from an odd-figured selling-price the salesman or the saleswoman would be compelled to do business with the cashier and so to make a full record of the transaction. with the commodities in even dollars and their larger fractions the temptation to pocket the entire amount might be present. it required a good deal of logic, or long-distance reasoning, to figure out such a possibility and an almost certain safeguard against it. but that was macy. his was not the day of cash-registers or other checking devices. the salesman and the saleswoman in a store was still apt to find himself or herself an object of suspicion on the part of his or her employer. business ethics were still in the making. a long road in them was still to be traversed. mr. macy's brother-in-law, mr. houghton, did not long remain in partnership with him, but retired to boston, where he became senior partner of the house of houghton & dutton, which is still in existence. for a long number of years thereafter macy conducted his business alone. its steadily increasing growth, however, the multiplication of its responsibilities and problems, and his own oncoming years finally caused him to admit to partnership on the first day of january, , two of his oldest and most valued employees, abiel t. laforge and robert m. valentine. it had long been rumored in the store that miss getchell's years of faithful service were finally to be rewarded by a real partnership in it. but even in , woman's place in modern business had not been firmly enough established to permit so radical a step by a business house of as large ramifications and responsibilities as macy's had come to be. yet the point was quickly overcome--and in a most unexpected way. early in miss getchell became mr. laforge's wife. and so, in a most active and interested way, she gained at the end a real financial interest in the profitable business, in the upbuilding of which she had been so large a factor. mr. laforge had been a major in the northern army during the civil war; in fact it was there that he had contracted the tuberculosis which was to cause his early demise. he had come into the store in the middle of the 'seventies as one of its first professional buyers--being a specialist in laces--and had developed real executive ability. he had great affection for things military. and when mr. macy told him of the uniformed attendants of his beloved bon marché, laforge promptly proceeded to place the entire salesforce of macy's in uniform. neat uniforms they were, too: of a bluish-grey cadet cloth, and with stiff upstanding collars of a much darker blue upon the points of which were interwoven the familiar device of the bright red star. the macy uniforms did not long remain, however. new york is not paris. and in that day, when uniforms in general were looked upon as something quite foreign to the idea of the republic, american labor was particularly averse to them. his important partnership step taken, mr. macy began to lay down his responsibilities. despite his great fame and vigorous constitution his health had begun to fail under the multiplicity of duties. again he turned toward the sea. he embarked upon a long voyage to europe; in which he was to combine both business and pleasure. from that voyage he never returned. his health sank rapidly and he died in paris, on the twenty-ninth day of march, . two days later in new york, mr. laforge and mr. valentine formed a partnership, mr. laforge, although the younger of the two men, becoming the senior member of the firm. it was provided in the co-partnership papers that the business should be continued under the name of r. h. macy & co., until january , ; and thereafter under the new firm name of laforge and valentine. however, mr. laforge's death in , followed a year later by that of his wife, prevented this scheme from being carried out. the question of changing the name of a well-established business--now come to be one of the great enterprises of the city of new york--was never again brought forward. the name of macy had attained far too fine a trade value to be easily dropped, even if sentiment had not come into the reckoning. and sentiment still ruled the big retail house in lower sixth avenue, sentiment demanded that the name of one of new york's greatest merchant princes should be henceforth perpetuated in the business which he had so solidly founded. and so that name continues--in growing strength and prosperity. iii. fourteenth street days by the macy store had rounded out its first quarter century of existence. the big, comfortable, homely group of red brick buildings on sixth avenue from thirteenth to fourteenth streets had come to be as much a real landmark of new york as the grand central depot, grace church, booth's theater, the metropolitan opera house or the equally new casino theater in upper broadway. its founder had been dead for six years. but the business marched steadily on--growing steadily both in its scope and in its volume. it already was among the first, if not the very first in new york, in the variety and the magnitude of its operations. it employed more than fifteen hundred men and women, a great growth since when an early payroll of the store had shown but one hundred on its employment list. other stores had followed closely upon the heels of macy's. stewart's had moved up broadway from chambers street to its wonderful square iron emporium between ninth and tenth streets, where, after the death of the man who had established it, it enjoyed varying success for a long time until its final resuscitation by that great philadelphia merchant, john wanamaker. benjamin altman had moved his store from its original location on third avenue to sixth avenue and eighteenth street, koch was at nineteenth street, but ehrich was still over on eighth avenue. none of these had been an important merchant in the beginning. but all of them, by , were beginning to come into their own. the sixth avenue shopping district of the 'eighties and the 'nineties was being born. mr. macy's vision of more than twenty-five years years before was being abundantly justified. the new elevated railroad, which formed the backbone of sixth avenue and which had been completed about a decade before, all the way from south ferry to one hundred and fifty-fifth street, had proved a mighty factor in bringing shoppers into it. mr. macy in might not have foreseen the coming of this remarkable system of rapid transit--the first of its kind in any large city of the world. but he foresaw the coming of both sixth avenue and fourteenth street. there is no doubt of that. he had a habit of reiterating his prophecy to all with whom he came in contact. the prophecy came to pass. union square no longer was surrounded by fine residences. trade had invaded it, successfully. tiffany's, brentano's, _the century's_ fine publishing house had come to replace the homes of the old time new yorkers. so, too, had fourteenth street been transformed. delmonico's was still at one of its fifth avenue corners and back of it stood, and still stands, the van buren residence, a sort of last of the mohicans in brick and stone and timber and plaster. all the rest was business; high-grade business, if you please, and macy's stood in the very heart of it. we saw, in a preceding chapter, how just before the passing of mr. macy he had taken into partnership mr. laforge and mr. valentine. mr. laforge, as we have just seen, lived hardly a year after mr. macy's death in paris, and mr. valentine died less than a twelvemonth later--on february , . yet the force and impress of both of these men remained with the organization for a long time after their going. miss prunty, one of the older members of it, still remembers as one of her earliest recollections, seeing mr. laforge taking groups of the cash-girls out to supper during the racking holiday season. the little girls were duly grateful. theirs was a drab existence, at the best; long hours and wearying ones. a type that has quite passed out of existence--in these days of automatic carriers--that old-time cash girl in the big store, with her red-checked gingham frock and her hair in pig-tails, which had a fashion of sticking straight out from her small head. lunch in a small tin pail and a vast ambition, which led many and many a one of them into positions of real trust and responsibility. the most of them continued in the business of merchandising. they rose rapidly to be saleswomen, buyers and department managers--not alone in macy's; but in the other great stores of the city. a macy training became recognized as a business schooling of the greatest value. while at least one of these macy graduates--carrie demar--came to be an actress of nation-wide reputation, a comedienne of real merit. there were times when the existence of these smart, pert little girls grew less drab. one of them told me not so long ago of the _entente cordiale_ which she had upbuilded between mr. s---- and herself; nearly fifty years ago. "mr. s---- was the only floorwalker that the store possessed in those days," said she. "mr. macy had been much impressed by his fine appearance and had created the post for him. on duty, he seemed a most solemn man. that was a part of his work. behind it all he was most human, however; and sometimes on a hot day in midsummer he would begin to think of the cooling lager that flowed at the grapevine, a few blocks down the avenue. that settled it. he would have to slip down there for five minutes. and slip down he did, while i stood guard at the thirteenth street door. i felt that miss getchell's far-seeing eye was forever upon us or that mr. macy might turn up quite unexpectedly. "in return for all this, mr. s---- would occasionally stand guard while i would slip over to john huyler's bakery at eighth avenue and fourteenth street--sometimes to get one of his wonderful pies, and other times to buy the lovely new candies upon which he was beginning to experiment. we were great pals--s---- and i." nowadays in the great department stores they order this entire business of collecting both cash and packages in a far better fashion. the merchant of today has a variety of wondrous mechanical contraptions--not only cash-carriers but cash-registers--which do the work they once did, much more rapidly and efficiently. even in those long ago days of the 'eighties the macy store was beginning to install pneumatic tubes for carrying the money from the saleswomen at the counters to the high-set booths of the head cashiers, who seemingly had come to regard it as a mere commodity, to be regarded in as fully impersonal a fashion as boots or shoes or sugar or broom-sticks. put that down as progress for the 'eighties. [illustration: the fourteenth street store of other days by the early 'seventies macy's had absorbed the entire southeastern corners of th street and th avenue, and had come to be a fixture of new york] the macy store prided itself during that second generation, as now, upon its willingness to take up innovations, particularly when they showed themselves as possessing at least a degree of real worth. mr. macy, with his old fashioned prejudices against innovations of any sort, was gone. his successors took a radically different position in regard to them. here was the electric-light--that brand-new thing which this young man tom edison over at menlo park was developing so rapidly. it was new. it had been well advertised; particularly well advertised for that day and generation. how it drew folk, to gaze admiringly upon its hissing brilliancy! ergo! the macy store must have an electric light. and so in the late autumn days of one of the very first arc lamps to be displayed in new york was hung outside the fourteenth street front of the store and attracted many crowds. it was hardly less than a sensation. in the following autumn arc lamps were placed throughout all the retail selling portions of the store. of course, they were not very dependable. most folk those days thought that they would never so become. the store's real reliance was upon its gas-lighting; nice, reliable old gas. you could depend upon it. the new system was still erratic. so figured the mind of the 'eighties. soon after the first electric lamps, the store's first telephone was installed. it, too, was a great novelty, and the customers of the establishment developed a habit of calling up their friends, just so that they could say they had used it. eventually the convenience of the device became so apparent that folk stood in queues awaiting their turn to use it, and the telephone company requested macy's to take it out or at least to discontinue the practice of using it so freely. in that day there were no elevators nor for a considerable time thereafter. all the store's selling was at first, and for a long time thereafter, confined to its basement and to its main-floor. gradually it began to encroach upon small portions of the second story. this afforded fairly generous selling space; for it must be remembered that the establishment not only filled the entire east side of sixth avenue from thirteenth street to fourteenth street but extended back upon each of them for more than one hundred and fifty feet. moreover it was beginning slowly to acquire disconnected buildings in the surrounding territory; generally for the purpose of manufacturing certain lines of merchandise--a practice which it has almost entirely discontinued in these later years. then it still made certain things that it wished fashioned along the lines which its clientele still demanded. and even some of the upper floors of the older buildings that formed the main store group were partly given over to the making of clothing; of underwear; and men's shirts and collars in particular. it was after , according to the memory of mr. james e. murphy, a salesman in the black silk department, who came to the store in that memorable year, that the first elevator was installed in the store. up to that time, as we have just seen, there had been no necessity whatsoever for such a machine. but the steadily growing business of the store--there really seemed to be no way of holding macy's back--made it necessary to use upper floors of the original building for retailing and more and more to crowd the manufacturing and other departments into outside structures. so macy's progressed. it kept its selling methods as well as its stock, not only abreast of the times, but a little ahead of them. miss fallon, who was in the shoe department of those days of the 'eighties, recalls that up to that time the shoes had been kept in large chiffoniers--the sizes " ½" to " ½" in one drawer, " " to " " in the next, and so on. this meant that if a clerk was looking for a certain specified width--say "d" or "double a"--she must rummage through the entire drawer until she came to a pair which had the required size neatly marked upon its lining. the mating of the shoes was accomplished by boring small awl holes in their backs and tying them neatly together. there was no repair shop in the shoe department of that day--merely an aged shoemaker who lived in a basement across thirteenth street and to whom shoes for repair were despatched almost as rapidly as they came into the store. these methods seem crude today. but, even in , they were in full keeping with the times. merchandising was still in its swaddling clothes; the real science of salesmanship, a thing unknown. yet men were groping through; and some of these men were in macy's. you might take as such a man c. b. webster, who came to the forefront of the business, soon after the deaths of macy, laforge and valentine at the end of its second decade. in fact, his actual admission to the partnership preceded mr. valentine's death by a few months. a while later he married mr. valentine's widow. and when the last of the old partners was gone his was the steering hand upon the brisk and busy ship. to help him in his work he brought to his right hand jerome b. wheeler, who was admitted as a full partner april , , and who so continued until his complete retirement from business, december , . mr. webster continued with the house for a considerably longer time, maintaining his active partnership until when he sold his interest in the business to his partners. he continued, however, to retain his private office in the macy store, coming north with it from fourteenth street to thirty-fourth in , and, until his death four or five years ago, staying close beside the enterprise in which he had been so large a creative factor. webster and wheeler are, then, the names most prominently connected with the second era of the store's growth and activity. they were bound to the founder of the house by blood-ties and by marriage. mr. webster's father--josiah locke webster, a merchant of providence, r. i.--and mr. macy were first cousins, their mothers having been sisters. the elder webster and rowland h. macy were, in fact, the warmest of friends and so the proffer by the original proprietor of the store of an opening to his friend's son, came almost as a matter of course. its educational value alone was enormous. young webster accepted. he joined the organization in and a year later was made one of its buyers. his worth quickly began to assert itself. and within another twelvemonth he had abandoned all idea of returning to his father's store in providence and entered upon a partnership in the macy business. many of the older employees of the store still remember him distinctly. he was a tall man, stately, conservative in speech and in manner--your typical successful man of business of that time and generation. yet these very macy people will tell you today that while his dignity awed, it did not repress. for with it went a kindliness of manner and of purpose. nor was he--as some of them were then inclined to believe--devoid of any sense of humor. mr. james woods, who is assistant superintendent of delivery in the store today and who has been with it for forty-eight years, recalls many and many a battle royal with "c. b. w." as he still calls his old associate and chief, which they had together as they worked in the delivery rooms of the old fourteenth street store, hurling packages at one another and then following up with smart fisticuffs. "in those early days," adds george l. hammond, who came to the store in and who is now in its woolen dress-goods department, "i found mr. webster a most kindly man, even though taciturn. for instance, one day mr. isidor straus came up to the counter with a man whom he had met upon the floor. they stood talking together. mr. straus told the other gentleman that he had recently met a mr. cebalos, known at that time as the cuban sugar king, and that mr. cebalos had spoken to him of having met such a fine gentleman, an american, in france; that this gentleman was evidently a man of education and large means and had said that he was in business in new york. mr. cebalos asked mr. straus if he had ever known his chance acquaintance in paris--he was a mr. webster, mr. c. b. webster. to which mr. straus instantly replied: 'of course i know him. he is the senior member of our firm.' mr. cebalos answered: 'what, the senior member of the firm of r. h. macy & co.? why, he never told me that!'" so much for old-fashioned modesty and conservatism. the habit of reticence enclosed many of these older executives of macy's. they were silent oft-times because they could not forget their vast responsibilities--even when they were away from the store. it is told of one of them that once in the middle of the performance in an uptown theater the thought flashed over him that he had neglected to close his safe--a duty which was never relegated to any subordinate. he arose at once from his seat and hurried down to the store, brought the night watchman to the doors and strode quickly to the private office: only to find the stout doors of its great strong-box firmly fastened. the idea that he had neglected his duty was a nervous obsession. his was not the training nor the mentality that ever neglected duty. upon another occasion another partner (mr. wheeler) worried himself almost into a nervous breakdown for fear that there would not be enough pennies for the cashier's cage during the forthcoming holiday season. mr. macy's odd-price plan was something of a drain upon the copper coin market of new york. and at this particular time, the local shortage being acute, mr. wheeler took a night train and hurried to washington, to see the secretary of the treasury. late the next evening he returned to new york and went to the house of miss abbie golden, his head cashier, at midnight, just to tell her that he had succeeded in getting an order upon the director of the philadelphia mint for $ , in brand-new copper pennies. after which he went home, to a well-earned rest. although mr. wheeler's connection with the store was for a much shorter period, he left upon it, at the end of its second era, much of the impress of his own personality. like both webster and valentine, he also was indirectly related to r. h. macy, having married mr. macy's niece, miss valentine. in appearance and in manner he was the direct antithesis of his partner, webster. in the language of today he was a "mixer." affable, direct, approachable, men liked him and came to him freely. the employees of the store poured their woes into his ears; and never in vain. he stood ready to help them, in every possible way. and they, knowing this, came frequently to him. mr. wheeler left the store and organization in , selling his interest in the enterprise to messrs. isidor and nathan straus--of whom much more in a very few moments. he became tremendously interested in the development of colorado and, upon going out there in , built up a chain of stores, banks and mines. he still lives in the land of his adoption. one of mr. wheeler's keenest interests in the store was in its toy department. in this he followed closely macy's own trend of thought and desire. for macy's had already become, beyond a doubt, _the_ toy-store of new york city. starting eleven years after the foundation of the original store, this one department had so grown and expanded as annually to demand and receive the entire selling-space of the main floor. each year, about the fifteenth of december, all other stocks would be cleared from shelves and counters, the willow-feathers, the fans and the fine laces would disappear from the little glass cases beside the main fourteenth street doors and in their places would come the toys--a goodly company in all, but strange--dolls, engines, blocks, mechanical devices, books. and then, to the doors of the great red-brick emporium in sixth avenue would come new york jr. he and she came afoot and in carriages, upon horse-cars of the surface railways and upon the steam-cars of the elevated, and before they entered stood for a moment at the great glass windows that completely surrounded the place. for there was spread to view a pantomime of the most enchanting sort. no theater might equal the annual christmas window display of macy's. no theater might even dream of creating such a vast and overwhelming spectacle. the hippodrome of today was still nearly thirty years into the future. the responsibilities of this vast undertaking alone were all but overwhelming. the twenty-fifth of december was barely passed, the store hardly cleaned of all the debris and confusion that it had brought, before plans for another christmas were actively under way; miss bowyer, who specialized in the window display, taking mr. wheeler up to the wax-figure experts of eden museé in twenty-third street to order the saints and sinners and famous folk generally who came to the window annually at the end of december. one of the present executives of macy's can remember being privileged, as a small boy, to go behind the scenes of the window pantomime. there he saw it, not in its beauty of form and color and light, but as a bewildering perplexity of mechanisms--belts and pulleys and levers and cams--an enterprise of no little magnitude. while miss bowyer and her assistants were busy laying the first of the plans for another window display, mr. macy was off for europe seeking a fresh supply of toys and novelties for new york jr.'s own annual festival. once in a while he touched a high level of novelty, such as the securing of the mechanical bird--which a moment ago we saw margaret getchell taking all to pieces and then placing the pieces together again, with all the celerity and precision of a yankee mechanic. the mechanical bird appealed particularly to mr. macy's friend, mr. phineas t. barnum. mr. barnum came often to the store in fourteenth street to gaze upon it and to listen to it. perhaps he regretted that he had let so valuable an advertising feature slip out of the hands of his museum. for mr. macy's chief reason in importing a toy so rare and so expensive as to bring it far beyond the hands of any ordinary child was to create sensation--and so to gain advertising thereby. the merchant from out of new england was nothing if not a born advertiser. while his competitors were quite content with small and stilted announcements in the public prints as to the extent and variety of their wares, macy splurged. he took "big space"--big at least for that day and generation. and he did not hesitate to let printer's ink carry the fame of his emporium far and wide--a sound business principle which has prevailed in it from that day to this. but the toy season was never passed without its doubts and worries. an older employee of the store can still remember a most memorable year when it rained for a solid week after the toy season had opened and the bombazines and the muslins had been put away for the building-blocks and the hobby-horse. no one came to the store for seven long days. mr. macy was greatly distressed. he walked up one aisle and down another, stroking his long silky beard and saying that he was utterly ruined, and would have to close his store forthwith. but on the eighth day the sun came out, a season of fine crisp december weather arrived and the store was thronged with holiday shoppers. a fortnight's buying was accomplished in the passing of a single week and the situation completely saved. iv. the coming of isidor and nathan straus during the era in which webster and wheeler controlled it, the macy store may be fairly said to have been in a state of hiatus. the driving force of its founders--rowland macy, laforge and his wife and valentine--was somewhat spent. and nothing had come to replace it. the store went ahead, of course--webster and wheeler were both hard workers and well-schooled--but keen observers noticed that it traveled quite largely upon the impetus and momentum which it had derived from its founders. new minds and hands to direct, new arms to strike and to strike strongly were needed and greatly needed. these new minds and hands and arms it was about to receive. but before we come to their consideration we shall turn back the calendar--for nearly forty years. it was in that the german revolution drove out from the fatherland and into other countries great numbers of men and women. the united states received its fair share of these; the most of them young men, impetuous, enterprising, idealistic. the late carl schurz was a fair representative of this type. about him were grouped in turn a small group of men, who might be regarded fairly as the most energetic and successful of the expatriates. in this group one of the most distinctive was one lazarus straus, who had been a sizable farmer in the rhine palatinate--at that time under the french flag--and who brought with him his three small sons, isidor, nathan and oscar. in their veins was an admixture of french and german blood. in when oscar s. straus attended the paris peace conference as the chairman of the league to enforce peace, a dinner was given to him in paris at which leon bourgeois, the former premier of france and the present chairman of the council of the league of nations, presided. in his address he referred to the fact that the father of the guest of honor, oscar s. straus, was born a french subject. to america, then, came lazarus straus and later his little family, as many and many an immigrant has come, before and since--seeking his fortune and asking no odds save a fair opportunity and a freedom from persecution. they landed in philadelphia, where a little inquiry, among old friends who had come to the united states a few years before, developed the fact that the best business opportunities of the moment seemed to center in the south. oglethorpe, ga., was regarded by them as a particularly good town. with this fact established, lazarus straus started south and did not end his travels until he had reached georgia, then popularly regarded as its "empire state." through georgia he found his way slowly, a small stock of goods with him and selling as he went in order to make his meagre living expenses, until he was come to talbot county, which proudly announced itself as "the empire county of the empire state." it was in court-week that lazarus straus first marched into talboton, its shire-town, and took a good long look at his surroundings. at first glance he liked it. it was brisk and busy; if you have been in an old-fashioned county-seat in court-week you will quickly recall what a lot of enterprise and bustle that annual or semi-annual event arouses. but that was not all. talboton did not have the slovenly look of so many of the small southern towns of that period. it was trim and neat; its houses and lawns and flower-pots alike were well-kept. it must have brought back to the lonely heart of the man from the palatinate the neat small towns of his fatherland. moreover it possessed an excellent school system. no longer would lazarus straus tramp across the land. he had accumulated enough to start his store on a moderate basis at least. for three or four days he skirmished about the town looking for a location, until he found a tailor who was willing to rent one-half of his store to him. even upon a yearly basis the rental of his part of the shop would cost less than the annual license which the state of georgia required itinerants to buy. the opportunity was opened. a resident of talboton he became. there in its friendliness and culture he brought his family and set up his little home. the business prospered so rapidly that within a few weeks he was obliged to seek larger quarters. a whole store he found this time, so roomy that he needs must go back again to philadelphia to find sufficient stock to fill its shelves. his original stock he had purchased at oglethorpe, which, although much larger than talboton, had apparently not appealed to him the half as much. "aren't you going to buy your new stock at oglethorpe?" his fellow merchants of the little county-seat asked him. he shook his head. and they shook theirs. "the merchants of oglethorpe will not like it if you pass them by and go on to philadelphia." but the founder of the house of straus in america kept his own counsel and followed his own good judgment. he went to philadelphia, found his friends again, who had known his family in the rhine, either personally or by reputation, obtained their credit assistance and with it bought and carried south such wares as talbot county had not before known, with the result that the business, now fairly launched, was carried to new reaches of success. if there had been no civil war it is entirely probable that this record would never have been written--that there would be in no macy store in new york to come into printed history. it was in fact that great conflict that brought disaster to so many hundreds and thousands of businesses--big and little--that ended the career of l. straus of talboton, georgia, u. s. a. but not at first. at first, you will recall, the south marched quite gaily into the conflict. she was rich, prosperous, well-populated. impending conflict looked like little else than a great adventure. lazarus straus' oldest son, isidor, who had been destined for military training--having already been entered at the southern military college, at collingsworth, to prepare for west point--could not restrain himself as he helped organize a company of half-grown boys in the village, of which he was immediately elected first-lieutenant. this company asked the governor of georgia for arms, but was refused. "there are not enough guns for the men, let alone the boys," came the words from the ancient capitol at macon. at that time lazarus straus' partner, the man who was his right hand and aid, did succeed in getting a gun and getting into the war. this made a natural opening for isidor in the store, in which he progressed rapidly, for a full eighteen months. then, the partner having been invalided home from the front, the boy was free to engage once again in the service of the newly created nation to which the family, as well as all their friends roundabout them, had already given their fealty. he went to enter himself in the georgia military academy, at marietta--a few miles north of the growing young railroad town of atlanta. then came one of those slight incidents, seemingly trifling at the moment of the occurrence but sometimes changing the entire trend of men and their affairs. a young man, already a student at the academy, volunteered to introduce isidor straus to his future fellow students. when they were come to one of the dormitories and at the door of a living-room, the kindly young man swung the door open and bade isidor enter. he entered, a pail of water, nicely balanced atop the door, tumbled and its contents were poured over the novitiate's head and shoulders. that single hazing trick disgusted isidor straus immeasurably. he was a serious-minded young man, who realized that georgia at that moment was passing through a particularly serious crisis in her affairs. for such tomfoolery and at such a time he had no use whatsoever. it settled his mind. he did not enter the school, but returned to his hotel, and on the following day, going to a nearby mill, bought a stock of grain and began merchandising it, on his own behalf. this was not to last long, however. the struggling confederacy needed his services and needed them badly. the fame of the straus family--its great ingenuity and ability--had long since passed outside of the boundaries of talbot county. tongues wagged and said that isidor had inherited all of his father's vision and acumen. that settled it. lloyd g. bowers, a prominent georgian, was being designated to head a mission to europe, to sell, if he could, both confederate bonds and cotton acceptances. he chose for his secretary and assistant isidor straus. and early in the two men embarked upon a small ship, the may, in charleston harbor, which, in the course of a single evening, successfully performed the difficult task of running the blockade that guarded that port. two days later they were at nassau in the bahamas, from which the voyage to england was a secondary and fairly easy matter. despite the seeming hopelessness of his task--for already the tide had turned and was flowing against the confederacy--isidor straus had a remarkable degree of success in england. in his later years he was fond of relating how, in , while sojourning abroad, in turning over a telephone book in london he came to a name which brought back memories and, acting upon impulse, called that name to the telephone. "can you tell me the price of confederate bonds this morning?" he asked quietly. "isidor straus!" came the astonished reply. a few hours later a real reunion was in progress. long before appomattox came the utter failure of the once brisk little store at talboton. in fact, the family had left that small village--very nearly in sherman's path--and had moved to columbus. there it sat in debt and desperation, as the confederacy sank to its inevitable death. the only ray of hope in its existence was the vague possibility of success in isidor's trip to england. and when the son came back to new york, soon after lee's surrender, lazarus straus went north to meet him. isidor had prospered. cotton acceptances were not the bonds of a defunct young nation. england needed cotton--the mills of manchester had stood idle for weeks and months at a time. isidor straus knew when and how to sell his cotton-bills--he was, in every sense of the word, a born merchant. he sold shrewdly, lived frugally, and returned to the united states with $ , in gold upon his person! this was the nugget upon which a new family beginning was made. there was to be no more south for the family of straus. business opportunity down there was dead--for a quarter of a century at the very least. but business opportunity in new york had never seemed as great as in the flush days of success and prosperity which followed the ending of the war. lazarus straus had brought north in his carpet-bag more cotton acceptances. but he had not been as fortunate as his son in having the time and the place to sell them at best advantage. cotton within a few months had fallen in the united states to but one-half of its price of the preceding autumn. it was fortunate, indeed, that isidor straus had his little bag of golden coin at that moment. it was that gold that enabled him to start with his father, under the name of l. straus & son, a rather humble crockery business in a top-floor loft at chambers street. the specie went toward the establishment of the new business. the debts of the old were already being paid. lazarus straus was, i believe, one of the few southern merchants who paid their debts in the north in full, and thereby secured a great personal credit. this last came without great difficulty--in after years it was to be said that isidor straus could raise more money upon his word alone than any other man in new york. it was mr. bliss--of bliss & co., long time wholesalers of the city and predecessors of the well-known tofft, weller & co.--who, upon being applied to by isidor straus for financial assistance, asked what he and his father proposed to do to regain their fortune. "start in the china business," was the simple reply. "you have your courage," was mr. bliss's reply, "your father at the age of fifty-seven--and yourself--to embark upon a brand new business, in which neither of you have had the slightest experience." but such was the old new yorker's faith in these men that he sold them the huge bill of merchandise, some $ , , under which they embarked their business, saying that they could pay him, one-third in cash, and that he could well afford to wait two or even three years for the balance. he did not have to wait that long. again the business--in the hands of hard-working born merchandisers--prospered, from the very instant of its beginning. it opened for selling and made its first sale, june , . and again within a few short weeks, l. straus & son was demanding more room for expansion, and getting it--this time in the form of a ground floor and basement of that same building in chambers street. it was still both new and young, however. its hired employees were but three: a packer, his helper and a selector, or stock-room man. isidor straus ran all the details of the store, opening it and closing it each day and acting as its book-keeper, until a year later when nathan straus came into the organization, becoming its first salesman. the business was getting ahead. despite the difficulties and the humbleness of its start it had sold more than $ , worth of goods, in the first twelve months of its existence. "that they were hard months, i could not deny," said isidor straus of them in after years. "we had bought our house in west forty-ninth street, so that we might have our family life together, just as we had had in those pleasant georgia days of before the war. more than once we contemplated selling the house so that we might put the proceeds in the business, but always at the last moment we were able to avoid that great catastrophe." and soon the necessity of ever selling the house was past. prosperity multiplied. the firm went beyond selling the ordinary grades of crockery, which america had only known up to that time--serviceable stuff, but thick and clumsy and heavy--and began the importation upon a huge and increasing scale, of the more delicate and beautiful porcelains of europe. it added manufacturing to its importations. it became an authority upon fine china. and nathan straus, its salesman, had to scurry to keep apace with its growth--already he was becoming known as a super-salesman. he extended his territory to the west and in --the year of the completion of the union pacific and central pacific railroads--was going to the west coast in search for customers. two years later--a few weeks after the great fire--he opened a selling-office for the firm in chicago. "yet i do not like this travel," he said a little later to his brother. "not only is it very hard, physically, but i find that as soon as i get away from it the orders fall off. we have to work too hard for the volume of profit in hand." with this idea firmly in his mind he began a more intensive cultivation of the fields closer at hand. some of the establishments of new york that later were to develop already were in their beginnings. there was that smart new englander up at fourteenth street and sixth avenue--that man macy, whose store already was beginning to be the talk of the town. nathan straus thought that he would go up and see rowland h. macy. and one of the oldest employees of the store still recalls seeing him come into the place, for the first time in his life, on a saint patrick's day--it probably was march , --with a paper package under his arm which contained a couple of fine porcelain plates. macy was a good prospect. for one thing, remember that he bought as well as sold for cash, and for cash alone. credit played little or no part in his fortunes. new york had refused him credit when first he came to her and he had learned to do without it. macy was not alone a good prospect from that point of view but he was, as we have already seen--a man constantly seeking novelty. straus and his porcelain plates interested him immensely. and the upshot of that first call was the assignment of a space in the basement of the store, about twenty-five by one hundred feet in all, which l. straus & sons rented and owned. that was not a common custom at that time, although a little later it became a very popular one, and, i think, prevails to a slight extent even in these days. the straus experiment in the basement of the macy store paved the way. it having succeeded remarkably well within a short time after its inception, other and similar departments were established elsewhere; at r. h. white's, in boston, at john wanamaker's, in philadelphia, at wechsler & abraham's, in brooklyn, and in a chicago store which long since passed from existence. here, after all, was perhaps the real incarnation of the department-store in america, as we know it today, and as it is distinguished from the dry-goods store of other days which, as natural auxiliaries and corollaries to its business, had long since added to the mere selling of dress-goods that of hosiery, boots and shoes, underclothing, ribbons, hats and other _finesse_, both of women's and of men's apparel. we have seen long since the versatile miss getchell adding groceries to macy's departments--and then for a time withdrawing them--afterwards toys, which were never withdrawn. even then the department-store idea was gradually being born; with the establishment of the straus crockery store in the basement of the downtown macy's it came into the fine flower of its youth. for fourteen years this arrangement prospered and progressed--grew greatly in public favor. the store, as we have seen, had passed out of the hands of its original proprietors. death had claimed four of them--within a short period of barely thirty months. and a new generation had come in. but within a decade of the time that he had entered the organization, one of the partners of this second generation, mr. wheeler, was considering leaving it. colorado had fascinated him. to colorado he must go. to colorado he did go. he sold his interest to his partner, mr. webster, who in turn sold it to isidor and nathan straus. the crockery counter had absorbed the great store which it had entered so humbly but fourteen years before, as a mere tenant of one of its tiny corners. now were there indeed real guiding hands upon the enterprise. force and energy and ability had come to direct the fortunes of what was already probably the largest merchandising establishment within the entire land. a family which had not known failure, save as a spur to repeated efforts, had come into control. it had everything to gain by the venture and it did not propose to lose. the actual consolidation and transfer of interests took place on january , . mr. webster, as has already been recorded, retained his actual interest in the store until , when he retired, disposing of it to his partners but maintaining an office in their building until his death, in . he gave way deferentially, however, to the straus energy and straus experience. the effects of these were visible from the beginning. the personality of the straus family had, of course, become well identified with the store long before the accomplishment of its reorganization. the crockery department had grown to one of its really huge features. in it nathan straus was perhaps more often seen than isidor, who always was of a quieter and more retiring nature. many of the employees remember how nathan straus came to the store on the morning of the first day of the blizzard of march, . by some strange fatality that morning had been appointed weeks in advance as the store's annual spring millinery opening--a vernal festival of more than passing interest to a considerable proportion of new york's population. the actual morning found the city far more interested in getting its milk and bread than its straw-hats for oncoming summer. a large number of the employees of the millinery department who had remained in the store late the preceding evening in order to complete the preparations of the great event were compelled to remain there the entire night, being both fed and housed by the firm. they were there when nathan straus arrived. even the elevated railroad which he and many others had looked upon as a reliance after the complete and early collapse of the surface lines, had finally broken under the unparalleled fierceness of the storm. and nathan straus, after arriving on a train within a comparatively few blocks of the store, was long delayed there, between the stations, and finally came to the street on a ladder and made his way to the store through the very teeth of the gale. that was dramatic. it was not so dramatic when, time and time again, both he and his brother, isidor, would insist upon bundling themselves in all sorts of disagreeable weather and going downtown or up, because an old employee of l. straus & son was to be buried or a new one of the retail store was ill. the fidelity and the inherent affection of these men was marked more than once by those who work with and for them. and what it gave to the store in _esprit-de-corps_--in the thing which we have very recently come to know as morale--cannot easily be estimated. in this, its fourth decade, many distinguished new yorkers still came to the store. one remembers a president of the united states who came often and who brought his secretary of the treasury with him more than once. the president was grover cleveland and his secretary of the treasury was john g. carlisle and they were both intimate friends of the brothers straus. and there came often among customers and friends the late russell sage. macy's sold an unlaundered shirt, linen bosom and cuffs with white cotton back and at a fixed price of sixty-eight cents, which seemed to have a vast appeal to mr. sage. yet he never purchased many at a time--never more than two or three. he was a financier and did not believe in tying up unnecessary capital. to the store from time to time came mrs. paran stevens. and one day while waiting for mr. hibbon of the housefurnishing department, she told miss julia neville, one of the women on the floor there, that while upon an extended trip abroad she had written instructions to her agents in this country to sell certain of her personal belongings and that upon her return she was astounded to find that a glass toilet set, which she had purchased at macy's for but ninety-nine cents and from which the price-mark had long since been removed had been sold by them at auction for one hundred dollars! v. the store treks uptown with the beginning of a new century new york was once again in turmoil. always a restless city, the year found her suffering severe growing pains. manhattan island seemingly was not large enough for the city that demanded elbow room upon it. moreover, a distinct factor in the growth of new york was not only planned but under construction. its final completion--in --was already being anticipated. i am referring to the subway. after a quarter of a century of talk and even one or two rather futile actual experiments, a real rapid-transit railroad up and down the backbone of manhattan finally was under way. as originally planned it extended from the city hall up lafayette street and fourth avenue to the grand central station, at which point it turned an abrupt right angle and proceeded through forty-second street to times square, where it again turned abruptly--north this time--into broadway, which it followed almost to the city line; first to the harlem river at kingsbridge and eventually to its present terminus at van cortlandt park. a branch line, thrusting itself toward the east from ninety-sixth street, emerged upon an elevated structure which it followed to the bronx park and zoological gardens. before this original section of the subway was completed it already was in process of extension toward the south; from the city hall to and under the south ferry to brooklyn which it reached in two successive leaps; the first to the borough hall (the old brooklyn city hall) and the second to the atlantic avenue station of the long island railroad, which has remained its terminus until within the past twelvemonth. more recently the original subway system of greater new york has been so changed and enlarged as to all but lose sight of the original plan. instead of a single main-stem up the backbone of new york, there are now two parallel trunks--the one on the east side of the town and the other upon the west--and the now isolated link of the original main line in forty-second street has become a shuttle service from the grand central station to times square and the crossbar of the letter "h" which forms the rough plan of the entire system. still other underground railroads have come to supplement the vast task of this original system. it is more than a decade since the energy of william g. mcadoo completed the hudson river tubes, which an earlier generation had had the vision but not the ability to build, and brought their upper stem through and under sixth avenue and to a terminal at herald square; while even more recently the huge and far-reaching brooklyn rapid transit system has appropriated broadway, manhattan, for a vastly elongated terminal; which takes the concrete form of a four-tracked underground railroad beneath that world-famed street all the way from the city hall to times square and above that point through seventh avenue to fifty-ninth street and central park; and thence across the queensborough bridge. it was the original subway, however, that brought the great real-estate upheaval to new york. many years before it was completed new york had been moving steadily uptown--shrewd observers used to say at the rate of ten of the short city blocks each ten years. but its progress had been slow and dignified--relatively at least. with the coming of the new subway, dignity in this movement was thrown to the four winds. a mad rush uptown. wholesale firms abandoned the structures that had housed them for years in the business districts south of fourteenth street and began to look for newer and larger quarters north of that important cross-town thoroughfare. the retail world of new york was far slower to be influenced by the change. for one thing, its investment in permanent structures was relatively much higher than that of the wholesale. folk who came from afar and who marveled at the elegance of sixth avenue as a shopping street, all the way from thirteenth to twenty-third, could hardly have conceived that within two decades it would become dusty, forlorn, practically deserted. no matter that the hotel life of new york had ascended well to the north of twenty-third, that the theaters were beginning to gather even north of thirty-fourth, that a few small, smart, exclusive shops were showing signs of joining the trek--there remained the realty investment in the department stores at sixth avenue. it seemed incredible that such a huge investment should be thrown to the winds. yet this was the very thing that actually was accomplished. macy's stood to lose less in an economic sense from a move uptown than any of its competitors. true it was that the firm had builded for its own account in fourteenth street, just east of the original store, a very handsome, steel-constructed, stone-fronted building which it had thrown into the older building in order to relieve the pressure upon it. across the way, on the north side of fourteenth street, it had put up at an even earlier date a substantial seven-story store for the use of its greatly expanded furniture department. the original store, however, stood upon leased land--the property of the rhinelander estate. one of the earliest of the stories about mr. macy concerns the coming of george rogers, the agent of the estate and his warm personal friend as well, each monday morning; not for his rent; but to cash a check for thirty dollars. it was not hard to guess at his compensation. the increase in land rentals in the neighborhood and the fact that the firm could hardly hope ever to acquire an actual title to the valuable site of its main store, coupled with the steadily increasing trek uptown, caused the macy management to consider seriously whether it would join in the northward movement. it soon would have to do one thing or the other. the old store was growing very old and very overcrowded. moreover, it was, at the best, a makeshift, a jumbling together of one separate store after another in order to accommodate a business which forever refused to stay put. under such conditions a scientific or efficient planning of the building had been quite out of the question. the real wonder was that the business had been conducted so well, against such a handicap. [illustration: the herald square of ante-macy days in , before the coming of the present store, broadway at th street gave but faint promise of its present importance] the move once considered was quickly determined upon. no other course seemingly would have been possible. to have erected a new store building upon a leasehold in a quarter of the town which presently might begin to slide backward--would have been a precarious experiment, to put it mildly. it must go uptown. the only question that really confronted the store was just where to go uptown. a site large enough for a huge department-store is not usually acquired overnight. moreover, the necessity for secrecy in so important a step was obvious--the dangers of the mere suggestion of its becoming known were multifold. with these things clearly understood, the search for a new site was begun. various ones were considered, but were finally rejected. for a time the firm considered buying the famous old gilsey house and the property immediately adjoining it. another site which appealed to it even more was the former site of the broadway tabernacle on the east side of broadway, just north of thirty-fourth street--the site of the present marbridge building. the commanding prescience of this corner forced itself upon them. sixth avenue, an artery street north and south, threaded by electric surface-cars and the elevated railroad--the mcadoo tubes had not then come into even a paper being--was crossed at acute angles by an even more important street--new york's incomparable broadway--and at right angles by thirty-fourth street, which even then was giving promise of its coming importance. the original planners of the uptown city of new york made many serious mistakes in their far-seeing scheme. but they made no mistake when they took each half mile or so and made one of their cross streets into a thoroughfare as bold and as wide as one of their north and south avenues. thirty-fourth was one of the streets picked out for such importance. and from the beginning it realized the judgment of its planners. the completion of the huge waldorf-astoria hotel in (the earlier or waldorf side in thirty-third street had been finished in ) had fixed the importance of the street. thirteen years later the opening of the pennsylvania station was to confirm it--for all time. in the vast plan of the pennsylvania railroad for the invasion of manhattan was as yet unknown. even in the main offices of that railroad, in broad street station, philadelphia, it still was most inchoate and fragmentary. in the language of the moment, macy's was "acting on its own." the store was using its own powers of foreseeing--and using them very well indeed. but the site on the east side of herald square was not to be. in free titles it was not nearly large enough. but the west side of the square! there was a possibility. if the new store could be builded there it not only could possess an actual broadway frontage but it would be set so far back from the elevated railroad as not to be bothered by its noise or smoke, even in the slightest degree. as a matter of fact the last already was disappearing. the electric third-rail system was being installed everywhere upon the manhattan system, and the pertinacious, puffy little locomotives, which so long had been a feature of new york town, were doomed to an early disappearance. the west side of herald square appealed to macy's. long and exacting searches into its land-titles were made. some three hundred feet back of broadway the magnificent new theater of koster & bial's, extending all the way from thirty-fourth street to thirty-fifth, backed up a tract which in the main was occupied by comparatively low buildings, the most of them brown-stone residences, which already were in the course of transformation into small business places. this tract seemingly was quite large enough for the new macy's--with the possible exception, perhaps, of its engine-room and mechanical departments. the firm decided to take it, and with a policy of magnificent secrecy began negotiations for its lease. in order to accommodate the engine and machinery rooms it purchased a tract upon the north side of thirty-fifth street just back of the former herald square theater. on this last land stood two of new york's most notorious resorts of twenty years ago--the pekin and the tivoli. the development of the macy plan drove them out of the street and, for the time being at least, out of business. the macy plan did not go through to a final culmination, however, quite as it had been laid out. so huge a scheme and one involving so many separate real-estate transactions is hard to keep a secret for any great length of time. gradually the news of macy's contemplated step became public property. it caused public astonishment and public acclaim. for, remember, if you will, that in , none of the department stores had moved uptown north of twenty-third street. bloomingdale's was at third avenue and fifty-ninth and sixtieth streets, but it was a gradual upgrowth, from a modest beginning upon that original important corner. the last move had been in , when a. t. stewart had moved his store from chambers street north to ninth. the cost of the lot and structure to mr. stewart was $ , , --a stupendous figure in that day. the publicity surrounding the proposed move of macy's found the straus family still without one of the plots necessary to the complete acquisition of all the land in the block east of koster & bial's. it was the small but important northwest corner of broadway and thirty-fourth street--a mere thirty by fifty feet, a remnant of an ancient farm whose zig-zag boundaries antedated the coming of the city plan and showed a seeming fine contempt for it. this tiny parcel was the property of an old-time new yorker, the rev. duane pell. dr. pell was on an extended trip in europe in , when macy's began the active acquisition of its new store-site. it was given to understand that his asking price for the small corner was $ , ; an astonishing figure for such a tiny bit of land, even today, but dr. pell felt that he held the key to the entire important herald square corner and that he was justified in asking any price for it that he saw fit to ask. while the plot was so small as to afford very little to it in the way of actual floor space the macy management felt that it was so essential to the appearance of the store that it agreed to come to dr. pell's price--and so cabled him; in spain. word came back that he was about to embark for new york and that he would take up the entire matter immediately upon his arrival. a few years before the macy organization planned to be the initial department-store to move uptown, henry siegel, a chicago merchant, who had achieved a somewhat spectacular and ephemeral success in that city, decided upon the invasion of new york. he came to manhattan and in sixth avenue, midway between fourteenth and twenty-third streets, erected a store which for a time duplicated the success of its chicago predecessor. the proposed move of the macy store apparently filled him with consternation. with a good deal of prophetic vision he foresaw that other sixth avenue stores would go uptown in its wake. his own investment in that street was too great and too recent to be jeopardized. siegel hit upon the idea of stepping into the old site and building at fourteenth street and sixth avenue as soon as the macy organization should vacate. but to desire that valuable location and to secure it were two vastly different things. the strauses were not asleep to the possibility of some one attempting such a move. it would not be the first time in merchandising history. they arranged carefully therefore that their old corner at fourteenth street and sixth avenue should remain entirely empty for two years after they had moved out from it. the moral and educational effect of such a hiatus was not to be underestimated. in the meantime the chicago man was busy on his own behalf. through his realty agents he had quickly discovered dr. duane pell's ownership of the corner point of the new macy plot. he also found that the dominie was already on his return to the united states. he entrusted to a faithful representative the task of meeting him at the steamer-pier. the agent was there, bright and early, to meet the boat, and within a half-hour of its docking siegel had acquired the north-west corner of broadway and thirty-fourth street. now was the chicagoan in a strategic position to do business with the macy concern. at least so he felt. the concern felt differently. as far as it was concerned the corner point had sentimental value; nothing else. we already have seen how slight was its floor-space. without hesitation it turned its back upon the tiny corner, and with the money that it had intended investing in it, purchased the leasehold of the huge theater of koster & bial--about twenty thousand square feet of ground space--which enabled it to place its mechanical departments (engine-rooms and the like) in its main building, and so to leave the former tivoli and pekin sites for the moment unimproved. this done, it turned its attention to the gentleman from chicago. it leased him the premises at fourteenth street at a much higher figure than it would have been glad to rent them to another concern, and under the provisions that they should not be occupied until at least two years after the removal of the parent concern from them and that the name "macy" should never again appear on the buildings of that site. with the site difficulties cleared up, the actual construction problems of the enterprise were entered upon. nineteen hundred and one was born before macy's was enabled to begin the wholesale destruction of the many buildings upon its new site. the job of clearing the site and erecting the new building was entrusted to the george a. fuller company, which had just completed the sensational flatiron building at the apex of fifth avenue and broadway at twenty-third street, and it was one of the first, if not the very first of the building contracts in new york where the estimates were based upon the cubic feet contents. delomas and cordes, who had had a considerable success in the planning of one or two of the more recent department stores in the lower sixth avenue district, were chosen as the architects of the new building. before they entered upon the actual drawing of the plans they made an extended study of such structures, both in the united states and abroad. the new building represented the last word in department store design and construction. nine stories in height and with , , square feet of floor-space, it was designed not only to handle great throngs of shoppers each day but the multifold working details of service to them, with the greatest expedition, and economy. to do this it was estimated that there would be required fourteen passenger elevators, ten freight elevators and seven sidewalk elevators of the most recent type. four escalators were installed running from the main floor to the fifth. it is to be noted, too, that these escalators were the very first to be installed in which the step upon which the passenger rides is held continuously horizontal. in the older types the ascending floor is held at an awkward angle of ascension and foothold is maintained only by the attaching of steel cleats at right angles to it. lighting, ventilation, plumbing, all these received in turn the most careful consideration and planning. for instance, it was determined quite early in the progress of the planning for the new macy store that it should be ventilated entirely by great fans, which, sucking the air in ducts down from the roof, would heat it or cool it, as the necessities of the season might demand, before distributing it through another duct to the working floors of the building. in this way the close and stuffy atmosphere somewhat common to old-time department stores when filled with patrons was entirely obviated in this new one. when we come to the consideration of the everyday workings of the macy store today we shall see how well these architects of twenty years ago planned its details. we shall not see, however, one of the most interesting of them. when it was originally builded, by far the greater part of its ninth floor was devoted to a huge exhibition hall. within a short time this room was in a fair way to become as famous as the larger auditorium of madison square garden. in it were held poultry-shows, flower shows, even one of the very first automobile shows. within a few years after its opening, however, the business of the store had grown to such proportions that it was found necessary to give its great space to the more mundane business of direct selling. the problem of the corner tip there at thirty-fourth and broadway was quickly overcome. if the new owner of that point had counted upon the new store which completely encircled him turning tens of thousands of folk past it each day he was doomed to disappointment. for macy's made its own corner by means of a broad arcade entirely within the cover of its own huge roof; an inside street, lined with show-windows upon either side and giving, in wet weather as well as fine, a dry and handsome passageway direct from broadway into thirty-fourth street. the original suggestion for such an arcade came in an anonymous letter to the original architects of the building. only within the past year or two has this passageway been abandoned. the demands of the business for more elbow-room are voracious and apparently unceasing. and the space that the arcade consumed became entirely too great to be used any longer for such a purpose. in that summer of , while the architects and contractors were busy at their plans and specifications, there was wholesale and systematic devastation upon such a scale as new york has rarely ever seen. such pullings down and tearings away! the scene was not without its drama at any time. the writer well remembers strolling into the koster & bial music hall on an evening during that season of destruction. there was no one to bar his passage into what, at the time of its opening, but eight short years before, had been new york's most elaborate playhouse. if his glance had not been turned downward there was nothing to indicate that the evening performance might not easily begin within the hour. upwards the great auditorium of red and gold was immaculate. the proscenium, the tier upon tier of balcony and of gallery, the dozens of upholstered boxes, the exquisitely decorated ceiling had not been touched. but if the eye glanced downward--what a difference! the main floor and its row upon row of heavy plush chairs was entirely gone. in their place was a mucky black sea of mud; a knee-high morass, if you please, in which a dozen contractor's wagons, hauled and tugged unevenly by squads of lunging mules and horses in their traces, circled in and circled out--inbound empty and outbound laden deep with their muddy burden. on the stage, back of what had once been the footlights and in the same place where the darling carmencita had once been wont to make her bow, stood a shirt-sleeved gang-boss. on either side of him, spotlights--things theatrical yanked from the memories of yesteryear--threw their radiance down into the auditorium and the motley audience it held. so went koster & bial's, the pet plaything of joyous new york in its golden age. in a short time the scaffolding was to rise in that mighty amphitheater and the decorations to come tumbling down. gang upon gang to the roof; more gangs still to the stout sidewalls, brick by brick; down they came until koster & bial's was no more. its site was marked by a huge and gaping hole in the subsoil of manhattan. there were other phases of that tearing-down that were less dramatic and more comic. a restaurant-keeper who had a small eating place on the broadway side of the site sought obdurately to hold out in his location--seeking an advantageous cash settlement from the store owners. his lease, perfectly good, still had from sixty to ninety days to run. he felt that the store could not wait that length of time upon him--that, in the language of the street, it would be forced to "come across." but it did not "come across." it was not built that way. it was built on either side of the restaurant. its steel girders were far above its tiny walls and spanning one another across its ceiling before its disappointed proprietor moved out--at the end of his perfectly good lease--and without one cent of bonus money in his pocket; after which it was almost a matter of mere hours to tear the flimsy structure away and remove a small segment of earth that held it up to street level. a barber around the corner in thirty-fourth street caught his cue from the restaurant. he, too, was going to stand pat. but he was not in the same strategic position as the _restaurateur_. he had no lease. he merely was going to stay and defy the wreckers. they would not dare to touch his neat, immaculate shop. they did dare. on the very night that his lease expired something happened to the business enterprise of the razor-wielder. a cyclone must have struck it. at least that was the way it looked. the barber, coming down to business on the morrow, found his movables upon the sidewalk, neatly piled together and covered by tarpaulins against the weather. but the shop was gone. where it had stood on the close of the preceding day was a deep hole in the ground; and three italian workmen were whistling the anvil chorus. about the tenth of october, , actual construction began on the new building. on the first day of november of the following year it was complete--or practically so. it was a record for building, even in new york, which is fairly used to records of that sort. a steel-framed nine-story building, approximately four hundred feet on thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth streets, by one hundred and eighty feet on broadway (widening to two hundred feet at the west end of the store), with , , square feet of floor-space, and , , cubic feet in all, had been erected in a trifle over six months. in the meanwhile the wisdom of the macy choice of location was already being made evident. a washington concern--saks and company--was on its way toward herald square. it took the west side of broadway for the block just south of thirty-fourth street, and by dint of great effort and because its building was considerably smaller in area, succeeded in getting into it ahead of macy's. herald square! there was, and still is, a site well worth rushing toward. we have seen already the strategic advantages of the new site, even as far back as , long before the coming of the great pennsylvania station just back of it at seventh avenue. ever since , when the remarkable vision of the late james gordon bennett had seen the crossing of broadway and sixth avenue as the finest possible location for his beloved _herald_ and had torn down the little old armory in the gorge between these two thoroughfares, thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth streets, to build a venetian palace for it there, the square had been a veritable hub for the vast activities of new york. hotels, shops and theaters sprang up roundabout it. and the coming of what is one of the finest, if not the very largest, of the great railroad terminals of the land but multiplied its real importance. the actual moving from the old store to the new was a herculean task. yet it was accomplished within three days--which means that large enterprise was reduced through the perfection of system to a rather ordinary one. this could not have been if all its details and its possibilities had not been anticipated long in advance and planned against. the job was undertaken by the store itself; through its delivery department, in charge of mr. james price, with mr. james woods as his very active assistant. both of these men are veteran employees of macy's. the service record of the one of them reaches to forty-one years and the other to forty-eight. they knew full well the size of the moving-day task that confronted them. to pick up a huge new york department-store and carry it twenty uptown blocks--almost an even mile--was a deal of a contract. yet neither of them flinched at it. but both put on their thinking-caps and evolved a definite plan for it--a plan which in all its details worked without a hitch. the old store closed its doors for the final time at six o'clock in the evening of monday, november , . the following day was election day. the movers voted early. they came to the fourteenth street store not long after daybreak and there began the great trek uptown--stock and fixtures. for three days they kept a steady procession; west through fourteenth street, then north through seventh avenue--to thirty-fourth--from the old store to the new--and the empty wagons returning down through sixth avenue to fourteenth street once again. the entire route was carefully patrolled by special guards and policemen, and the entire task finally accomplished late on thursday evening, the th, at which mr. isidor straus was called on the telephone and told quietly: "we shall be able to open tomorrow if you wish it." but the head of the house advised that the opening be set for saturday, as had been advertised; it would give a final valuable day for setting things to rights, which meant that at eight o'clock on the morning of saturday, november , the new store opened its doors to the public that was anxiously awaiting the much heralded event; with as much simplicity and seeming ease as if it had been situated at thirty-fourth street for the entire forty-four years of its life, instead of but a mere twenty-four hours. a great task had been accomplished, a long step forward safely taken--and macy's was ready to enter upon a new decade of its existence. in its wake there came uptown the other department-stores of new york; one by one until, with but three exceptions, every one of these establishments which had been situated south of twenty-third street and which are still in business today, had joined in the trek. lord & taylor's left its comfortable home at broadway and twentieth street, in which it had been housed for nearly half a century since coming north from its original location in grand street, and moved to fifth avenue and thirty-ninth; its ancient neighbor in broadway, arnold constable & company, stood again almost cheek by jowl in fifth avenue. mccreery's, first establishing an uptown branch in thirty-fourth street, eventually abandoned its older store in twenty-third street and consolidated its energies in the upper one. mr. altman moved his business to its new marble palace at fifth avenue and thirty-fourth, and stern's went as far north as forty-second. lower sixth avenue began to look like a deserted village. simpson-crawford's, greenhut's, adam's, o'neill's--one by one these closed their doors for the final time. once, and that was but two decades ago, they had been household words among the women of new york. now their buildings were emptied, stood empty and deserted for months and for years--in most cases until the coming of the great war and our participation in it, when the government was very glad to make use of their spacious floors for war manufacturing and for hospitalization. of macy's old-time competitors downtown who failed to join in the uptown movement, but three remained--wanamaker's, daniell's and hearn's, who stood and still stand pat and prosperous in the locations which they have occupied for almost half a century. the rest are all gone. twenty-third street, which of a saturday afternoon used to be filled from fifth avenue to sixth with smart folk of every sort, is as dull as the deserted lower sixth avenue. memories walk its spacious pavements. the eden museé, that paradise for youth of an earlier generation, is vanished. so is the fifth avenue hotel, which for forty years played so large a part in the political history of the town. that part of new york today is all but dead--inside of twenty years. some day hence it may be reborn. such things have come to pass in the big town ere now. in the meantime the newest new york has come into its being. the construction of the two modern railroad terminals--the one in thirty-third street and the other in forty-second--has created in the district that lies between them what today would seem to be the permanent retail shopping center of the city. the one station brings nearly , folk--transients and commuters--the other almost , , into new york each business day. they anchor and anchor firmly, its new business heart. its sidewalks are daily thronged. as was twenty-third street two decades ago, so has thirty-fourth become today. not only the railroad stations but four great subways running north and south, four elevated railways, too, a dozen surface-car lines, and innumerable taxis and private motor-cars pour their passengers into it. it is a thoroughfare of surpassing importance. [illustration: the macy's of today by the new macy's in herald square was finished and the business going forward in great strides] fifty years ago, as rowland h. macy walked home one evening with his daughter--as was his frequent wont--from the simple little old red-brick store in fourteenth street to their new house in forty-ninth, he paused for a moment with her in front of the old broadway tabernacle. "i want you to notice this corner, very carefully, florence," said he. "a half-century hence and the business of new york is to be centered between thirty-fourth street and forty-second. here is to be the future business heart of this wonderful city." it is upon the vision of men quite as much as upon their prudence that the success of their enterprises depends. _today_ i. a day in a great store the subtle hour which in summer comes just before the break of day is the only hour in which new york ever sleeps; if indeed the modern bagdad ever sleeps at all. there is an hour, however--from three of the morning until four--when the city is all but stilled; when its heart-beats are at the lowest ebb of the twenty-four. in that hour even broadway is nearly deserted and sixth avenue and thirty-fourth street equally emptied. the swinging lights of a white-fronted lunch-room or two; the echoing racket of an extremely occasional surface-car or elevated train; the rush of a "night-hawk" taxi; the clatter of the milk-wagon; the measured walk of a policeman and the hurried one of some much belated suburbanite hurrying toward the great railroad station over in seventh avenue; these sounds, occasional and unrelated seemingly, are not new york; not at least the new york that you and i are accustomed to knowing. yet, after all, they are new york; even, if you please, the new york of that throbbing heart, herald square. soon after four in the morning the city begins to rise. new york's heart-beat is quickening, distinctly, even though ever and ever so slightly at the beginning. yet the activity is distinguishable. the policemen and the cabbies in the square realize it, so do the waiter and the cook in the _firefly_ lunch wagon which has stood in the busy herald square these thirty years or more now. the morning papers are out. the newspaper wagons, as well as those that bring milk and other comestibles, begin to multiply. the earliest workers in the heart of manhattan now bestir themselves. by six there is real animation in the broad streets in and roundabout macy's. by seven the traffic there begins to be a matter of reckoning. a traffic policeman makes his appearance. the current of vehicles and humans in those thoroughfares come under regulation. at eight, the city is in full sway. all this while macy's has stood dark--save for the few yellow and red lights which police and fire protection demand. it fronts toward broadway and the side streets alike are cold, impassive, unanimated. inside the great dark building the watchmen are on ceaseless patrol. there are miles of corridors to be paced--the night walking of the macy watchmen would reach from dan to beersheba or possibly from new york to erie--millions of dollars worth of stock and fixtures to be guarded. a diamond ring would be missed; and so would a spool of thread. nothing must be disturbed. and in order that the owners of the store may sleep in the sound assurance that nothing is being disturbed, the night patrol is made a matter of system and of record. watchmen's clocks, here and there and everywhere, proclaim the regularity of the system. and an occasional surprise test now and then acclaims its thoroughness. hours before, the store was thoroughly cleaned; from cellar to roof. the last of yesterday's belated shoppers was hardly out of this market-place, before the men of the cleaning squads were in upon their heels. what a mess to be tidied up! eight and one-half hours of hard endeavor can make daily a mighty dirty store and a huge housekeeping job. there is at the best a vast litter--and yet a litter that cannot be carelessly thrust away. in all that debris there may be some one tiny article of great value--a ring or a purse, dropped by some hasty or careless shopper or salesgirl. it all must be carefully gone through and in the morning sent to the lost and found department where the chances are that it will not remain very long before having a claimant. such is the ordinary routine of the cleaning squads. on rainy or snowy days its job is increased, measurably. it is astonishing the amount of filth the sidewalks of new york can give up on a wet day. yet rain, or no rain, filth or no filth, the cleansing must be thorough. the store at eight o'clock of the next morning must be as clean as the proverbial pin. an earnest of which you can obtain for yourself any day by pressing your nose, among the first of the impatient early shoppers, against the panes of the public entrance doors. through the night these toilers work; silently, unseen, save by others of their own kind. far below them, in the cellars of the great structure at thirty-fourth street and broadway, there are other squads who stand to unending tricks at the boilers, the engines, the dynamos and the other mechanical appliances of the organism. the fires may never die; the lights never go out--not even from one year's end to the other. and so that the very heart and blood and nerve-force of macy's shall in truth be unending there are engines and boilers and dynamos in the mechanical plant under the thirty-fourth street sidewalks. as many as five hundred tons of coal can be housed in the bunkers hard at hand. the entire plant could easily light and supply the other necessary electric current for the needs of any brisk american town of five or six thousand people. eight o'clock, and the night superintendent of the store unlocks the first of its outer doors. but not to the public. mr. public's hours do not begin until a full sixty minutes later. first the store must be made ready for his coming. it is not enough that it shall be thoroughly cleaned in every fashion. the stock must be displayed anew; the long miles of dust coverings lifted off, folded and put away until the coming of another evening. which means, of course, that the store folk must come well in advance of its patrons. in the half-hour which elapses between eight and eight-thirty, many of the minor executives--particularly those of the selling floors--make their appearance at the designated doors upon the side streets. in the parlance of the organization these are known as "specials" and are divided into several classes, denoting chiefly their connection with its selling or non-selling forces. they "sign in" their arrival upon a sheet. for while macy's is known as the department-store without a time-clock, there is none which is more punctilious about keeping an exact record of the comings and goings of its workers, from the lowest to the highest. in the entire permanent organization of more than five thousand folk, there are not more than ten or a dozen who are exempted from this necessity. a man may draw a twenty-thousand-dollar-a-year salary at macy's and still be compelled to sign his time. it is part of the inherent democracy of the organization which holds as a high principle that what is fair for one man is fair for another. a better bed-rock principle can hardly be imagined. half after eight! a bell rings somewhere. the time-lists of the minor executives--perhaps it is better to remember them as the specials--are closed, and new ones substituted. these are duplicates of the earlier ones. when the section manager (a modern and much better name for the "floor-walker" of the earlier days) signs one of these, he does not merely put down an "x" as before eight-thirty, but specifically writes down his arriving time. but from eight-thirty to eight-forty-five is known to the rank and file of the organization as its hour for arrival. three doors--one in thirty-fourth street (for the women, as well as for men executives) and two others, in thirty-fifth street (for the other men workers and the junior girls respectively) open on the precise moment of the half-hour. even before they swing backward upon their hinges the earliest risers of the macy family are beginning to group themselves in front of them. they go tramping up the broad stairs together; dropping into the slender receptacles the individual brass checks (of which much more a little later) at the first barrier-gateway; after which they go scurrying off to the locker-rooms, before descending or ascending to their various posts in the store. for fifteen minutes this rank and file--a miniature army it is--comes trooping in. there is no time to be lost; and yet no unseemly haste or confusion. and no noise. noise, particularly surplus noise, is quite unnecessary in a machine which is functioning well. at eight-forty-five the barrier at the head of the main employees' stair at thirty-fourth street closes. and in order that there may not be even the slightest particle of unfairness--one gains an increasing admiration for the absolute impartiality of an organization such as this--the pressing of a button at that stairhead automatically orders closed the two auxiliary entrances in thirty-fifth. and yet, in order perhaps that perfectly automatic and impartial systems may, after all, be tinged by a bit of human sympathy and understanding, eight-forty-five is forever translated at the employees' doors as eighty-forty-seven. and in cases of bad weather, hard rain or snow or extreme cold, eight-forty-seven becomes the stroke of nine by the clock--in very extreme cases even later, with a special allowance being made from time to time for the occasional breakdown of new york's rather temperamental transportation system. from eight-forty-five (eight-forty-seven) to nine o'clock, the late-comers--out of breath as a rule and extremely embarrassed into the bargain--are herded into a special group and given special "late" passes, without which they may not even enter the locker rooms, to say nothing of their posts in the store. sometimes--when the tardiness percentages of the store have been running to unwonted heights--the group is admonished; always gently, always considerately. it is made to them a point of fairness, between the store and themselves. and almost invariably the admonition is received in the spirit in which it is given. in other days it was quite customary for the store manager or one of his several assistants to receive these late-comers personally and individually and talk to them, heart-to-heart. this method has now been entirely abolished. it led to controversy. it led to argument. and both of these led to ill-feeling. macy's will not tolerate ill-feeling between its executives and its rank and file. therefore, anything that might even tend to such an end was abolished--completely and permanently. in due time, and when we are studying in greater detail the macy family, we shall come again to the consideration of the methods of checking the force in in the morning and out again at night--as well as in and out at different intervals throughout the day. consider now that it is still lacking a few brief minutes of nine o'clock on a workday morning. the sales force are through the lockers and getting to their day's work upon the floor. the non-selling forces as well--elevator-men, cashiers, all the rest of them, are at their posts. a doorman is told off to each of the public street entrances to the main floor. it is the regular post for each of these. he goes to it a minute or two before the coming of nine. after a brief period of busy activity the store aisles are for the moment practically deserted once again. there is a group of buyers "signing in"--once again the inevitable time-list--at the superintendent's office just beneath the main stair, where five or ten minutes ago the "big chief" of the whole main floor was giving his section managers their special instructions for the day. the rest of the aisles are all but empty. the clerks are behind the desks, the cashiers at their posts, the section managers at attention, the elevators banked and waiting at the ground floor-- then-- nine o'clock! the echo of madison square mary telling the hour comes rolling up broadway. the street doors swing open; almost as if working upon a single mechanism. the first of the shoppers come tumbling in. the great main aisle of the store--one thinks of it almost as the broadway of this city within a city--is populated once again. the chief stream of the store's patrons pours down through it. other streams from the doors in the side streets join it; still others diverge down the side aisles, up the stair and escalators, into the elevators which presently go packing off, one by one, toward the mysterious and fascinating regions of the upper floors. in three or four brief minutes the picture that one has of that mighty first floor from the mezzanine balcony that runs roundabout it is of a great mass of hurrying, scurrying humanity; no longer any well-defined currents, but little eddies and pools of human beings constantly and forever changing. and this but hardly past nine o'clock in the morning. in another hour there will be still more folk within the great building. most of them have come to shop, a few of them to take a tardy breakfast in the comfortable restaurant upon its eighth floor. one might not think that it would pay to open a restaurant for breakfast at as late an hour as nine in the morning, but such a one would not know his new york. breakfast in our big town is rarely over until the setting of the sun. for an hour at the beginning of the day the macy family may shop in its own interest. the saleswomen--the men as well--may obtain permits from their division managers which in turn entitle them to large and conspicuous shopping cards which serve two pretty definite purposes--the identification of the saleswoman as an actual and authorized shopper (she is not supposed to go nosing around other departments merely in her own interest or curiosity) and the obtaining for her of the discount to which she is entitled. macy's is known pretty generally as a store of no special privileges or discounts. teachers, clergymen, professional shoppers, dressmakers are recognized and welcomed in the big store, but only upon the same terms as every other sort of customer. but the rule bends, ever and ever so gently, for the man or woman who is employed within it. after all, he or she _is_ a part of the family and so entitled to be recognized. this recognition takes the form of a sizable reduction upon the wearing apparel necessary for his or her personal use. this difference goes upon the books of the store as a business expense. by ten the store has finished shopping in its own behalf. its maximum force for the day is on the job and the wise shopper comes close to this hour. for by eleven the force is reduced. luncheon is a very simple human necessity; but a necessity, nevertheless. and new york has never countenanced the parisian habit of locking up practically all shops and stores and offices for an hour and a half or two hours in the middle of the day. but then new york has never taken its meal-times quite so seriously as paris. upon this one thing alone a considerable essay might be written. but new york must lunch, just as paris or london or any other community must lunch. and so for three valuable hours out of the middle of the day the macy force is reduced nearly one-third its size. forty-five minutes is the ordinary allotment for lunch and the house prefers that its folk shall take this mid-day meal underneath its roof. toward this end it has made, as we shall see, elaborate and expensive preparations in the form of elaborate lunch-rooms and the like. however, it recognizes that there are many workers who prefer to go out at the middle of the day. and proper arrangements are made for the accommodation of these folk. by two o'clock, however, practically the entire selling force at least is back again. the hardest portion of the day begins. for, no matter how hard the store may advertise, no matter how it may strive to educate its patrons in every other way to the use of its facilities in the less crowded and hence more comfortable morning hours, the hard and solemn fact remains that it suits the comfort and convenience of the average new york woman to shop in the afternoon. and shop in the afternoon she does. she comes into macy's right after luncheon--although a single glance at the big and crowded restaurant would easily convince you that she often lunches as well as shops in the big red-brick institution of herald square--and then gets right down to the serious business of shopping. and at macy's it _is_ business; always business. the big store at broadway and thirty-fourth street, in recent years at least, has not gone in for shows--for organ and orchestral concerts or recitals or anything of that sort. it has considered that its best shows are always upon its counters. it has had no quarrel with the successful stores that have added entertainment features to the other routine of their operations. it merely has contended that its own method was completely satisfactory to itself. which, after all, is a position of infinite strength. "macy's attractions are its prices!" is an advertising slogan of the house so long sounded now that it has become almost a household phrase to its hundreds of thousands of regular patrons. it is a phrase up to which it has lived, steadily and consistently. and not only has it steadfastly refused to give shows of any sort--save, of course, those wonderful window pageants of other years, which were horses of quite a different color indeed--but it has also refused up to the present time to install such non-merchandise enterprises as manicuring parlors, hair-dressing rooms, barber shops and the like. and this despite the fact that in selling such things as groceries and automobile sundries--to take two specific instances out of several--it has gone considerably beyond the merchandise scope of some of the very largest of its new york competitors. "hundreds of thousands of regular patrons?" you interrupt and repeat. "a hundred thousand people is a whole lot. until very recently, at least, the population of what would be considered a pretty good-sized american city." not long ago, i asked how many people came into macy's in the passing of an average business day. i was promptly told that several times the firm had endeavored to make an actual and systematic count of the folk who passed through each of its many entrances, but had never entirely succeeded. once, of a busy october day, the count up to two o'clock in the afternoon had reached and passed the one hundred and twenty thousand mark. at that time each of the great escalators which ascend from the main floor was handling its maximum capacity of , persons an hour; each of the fourteen public elevators was carrying the full number of passengers permitted it by law and the store management; while a host of other folk were doing business upon the ground floor without ever ascending to the fascinating mysteries of the land of up-above. and that was october. if a man who had seen the throng of that pleasant autumn day and thought it well-nigh impossible only had returned to the big store on a december day--say the saturday before christmas last--he would have thought that three hundred thousand would have been far nearer the mark of the eight and one-half hours. could more folk have been squeezed through those wide doors and into those broad aisles? it would have seemed not. even with the aid of a whole corps of special policemen and traffic rules as scientific and as ingenious as those which regulate the vehicular traffic of nearby fifth avenue, it was a task of a good half-hour to get within the huge mart; another half-hour to get out again. certain departments--notably toys--possessed navigation problems of their very own, and other departments, such as refrigerators and other household goods, were comparatively deserted. the christmas trade is nothing if not oddly balanced. through a store such as this one may wander, _ad libitum_, and find a new surprise at nearly every corner of it. certainly upon each of its floors. nor are these to be limited, in any way, to the floors to which the public is ordinarily admitted. once i remember coming through the eighth floor and suddenly emerging upon a clean, crisply lighted little workshop. at a long bench underneath an atelier-like window three men, fairly well-advanced in years, were working. one was engraving upon silver--the other two upon glass. the chief of the shop explained to me that in the beginning they were germans but they had been in macy's so many, many years that they were today to be classed as pretty thoroughly americanized. one of them had sat at that bench--and the one down in fourteenth street that had preceded it before the northward trek to thirty-fourth street--for over thirty-two years. the three men were artisans--of the old school and of a sort that seemingly is not bred these days. "when they are gone i do not know where we shall go to replace them," said the superintendent. "you will have to quit doing this sort of work?" i ventured. he answered quickly: "oh no," said he, "macy's never quits. we shall have to find others--even if we train them ourselves. it is only the material for training that worries me. american young men of today are not overfond of painstaking work of this sort." i knew instantly what he meant. as a nation we are made up of "shortcut" experts. perseverance, patience, a tedious attention to uninteresting detail, have seemingly but little appeal to the average young man who is looking forward to a real career for himself. to be an executive--no matter by what name or title--and in as short a time as is humanly possible is apparently the only object that he sees ahead of him. a laudable ambition to be sure. but one shudders at the mere thought of a land which should be composed entirely of executives and wishes that we might develop more definitely a class of artisan workers, such as came to us forty, thirty, even twenty-five years ago. the oldest of these men--the man with thirty macy years to his credit--was chasing a hunting scene upon a great glass bowl as i bent over his desk. it was more than artisanship, that task; it was artistry. a real work of real art even though at the moment these elaborate cut-glass designs have lost a little in public favor. in their own time and order they will come back again, however. and the workmanship that made them possible will be restored to its own former high favor. but even today there are large demands in macy's for precisely this sort of thing. and glass grinding and engraving--which runs all the way from the making of prescription lenses for spectacles or for milady's _lorgnons_ up to the cutting of an entire dinner service of the most exquisitely patterned glass or repairs to the bowl or pitcher that bridget or selma has so carelessly broken--is the chief factor of a shop that handles, as other parts of its day's job, jewelry and watch repairs, electro-plating of gold, copper, silver, nickel, the printing or engraving or stamping of stationery of every sort, to say nothing of leather goods of every kind and description and a thousand lesser and highly individual jobs, such as the regilding of a mirror or the transformation of an ancient whale-oil lamp into a modern incandescent one. it is small wonder that as a minimum seventy-five men are constantly employed in this shop; more, as the exigencies of this season or of that may demand them. yet this is but one of macy's shops under that giant roof of herald square. there are others in close proximity--like those for the making of mattresses and bedding of every sort and variety and the establishment which brings broken toys back into life again. to my own peter pannish soul this last forever has the greatest fascination. once, long years ago, i went into a great store in a distant city and found up under its roof a man whose sole task from one year's end to the other was the making of repairs upon toy locomotives. how i envied that man his job! and how the other day i envied the job of the macy man who was repainting dolls' houses, one fascinating suburban villa after another. the doctor in the far corner of the room, whose patients ran all the way from lovely dolls of the most delicate china and porcelain to teddy bears who apparently had been badly worsted in some terrific nursery struggle, was a man with a position in which he might have genuine pride; but for the painting and re-arranging of those small houses a man, with an imagination in his soul, might almost afford to pay for the privilege of doing the work! five-thirty! again the doormen to their posts, two or three minutes in advance of the exact hour set. the minute hand upon the face of the clock no sooner reaches the exact bottom of its course, before a bell rings within the store and the great doors shut--simultaneously, as in the morning they had opened. but not permanently, of course. dozens, hundreds, perhaps a thousand or more shoppers still are left within the store. each is to be accorded a full opportunity to finish his or her transactions. there is no hurry; no ostensible hurry, at any rate. it would not be good-breeding to hasten the customer upon his way. and a canon of good merchandising is good breeding. gradually, however, the late-stayers eliminate themselves. the big doors open to let them out, but never again this day to let newcomers in. no rule of the house is observed more inexorably. and so gradually the store empties itself. in the meantime certain departments have already ceased to function. the salesfolk are dismissed for the night and go scurrying off. a few bring out the dust-covers and these go out upon the stock. counters are emptied. the stock, wherever possible, is put away, and when not put away is carefully covered. nothing is left to chance nor to dust. system reigns. and the section manager, the last to leave his department for the night, makes sure that everything there is ship-shape against the coming of another day. before he is gone--and he, in macy's, is multiplied into ninety or a hundred human units--the cleaning squads are out upon the floor, rolling out their bin-like carts in orderly formation and proceeding upon the debris like a miniature army. four, five, six hours of hard work await them. it will be midnight, perhaps later, before the store is absolutely clean again and settled down to the monotonous presence of the watchman, to await the arrival of another dawn. in the meantime the macy family is pouring forth into the side streets through the doorways through which they entered before nine of the morning. there is little restriction, no red-tape about their leaving. their brass discs--each individual and bearing the employee's designating number--which they dropped in the morning have been returned to them in the course of the day for use again upon the morrow. the only formality about their leaving--if indeed it might be called a formality--is the quick-fire inspection made by two store detectives who stand either side of the descending file at the main employees' stair, to see if any packages which are being carried out are lacking the check-room stamp and visé. these last are the store's protection against possible theft through its inner walls. the workers who bring packages in, either in the morning or at any later time in the progress of the day, are asked to take them to a well-equipped check and storage room close by the lockers, where they may regain them at night, stamped and viséd, to go out into the open once again. any purchases that they may make during the day follow a similar course. it is a definite and an orderly procedure. any other would be indefinite and to an extent disorderly. this is the reason why an occasional package--lacking the official stamp and visé of the check-room--is picked up by the keen-eyed detectives while its transporter is asked to tarry for a moment in an ante-room. in the course of an average evening there may be a half dozen of such outlaw packages detected. their holders are not thieves. there is not even the implication that they are thieves. they are simply trying to ignore a fair and open-minded rule which the store has made, not alone for its own protection but for the protection of every man and woman in its employ. such is the explanation which the assistant store manager makes to them before he dismisses them, at just a few minutes before six. "we believe in explaining things," he will tell you afterwards. "for we believe that we gain the very best service from the macy people by not asking them to work in the dark. if we make a rule and its rulings sometimes puzzle them--sometimes even seem a little arbitrary, perhaps--we tell them why we have had to make the rule and almost invariably find them satisfied and quite content." the packages, themselves, are detained overnight. the store reserves the right to make an inspection of them. such inspection, even when it is made, rarely ever shows the package to be illicit. it merely is carelessness. and the thoughtless worker to whom it is returned in the morning is merely asked not to be careless again, but to make a full and co-operative use of the facilities which are provided for the comfort, and the protection, of him and his fellows; which generally is all that is necessary to be said. by six the store is practically emptied of its workers. after that hour any one leaving it must have a pass and be interviewed by the night superintendent at the single door left open for exit. night work in the macy store is little and far between these days--save possibly in the christmas season and even then it is held at a minimum; an astonishing minimum when one comes to compare it with the christmas seasons of, say, a mere twenty years ago. the state law says that aside from that fortnight of holiday turmoil, the women workers of the store, who are considerably in the majority, shall not work more than fifty-four hours or oftener than one night a week and then not later than nine o'clock. in turn, the store, following the workings of the statute, designates thursday as its late employment night. if, because of some emergency, it wishes to deviate from this, it must have a special permit. as a matter of fact, however, macy's anticipates the law; goes far ahead of it. it finds its women workers not only willing to work the occasional thursday night shifts, but, with the practical advantages of a full dinner furnished without cost and overpay to come into the reckoning, for the most part extremely anxious. and it reminds the solicitous legislators up at albany that it was not a statute that abolished the pernicious habit of keeping the stores open for business evenings and late in the evening, but the progressive thought of the store managers of new york, themselves. these last have yielded little to the sentimentalists in real looking forward. theirs have been the practical problems--not the least of these that of the education of a shopping public which seemingly had demanded that the big department-stores of new york should be kept open evenings--some evenings throughout the entire year--and all evenings in a certain small and terrible season; and without consideration of the task this custom imposed upon the patient folk who were serving them. out of such lack of consideration, out of such selfishness, if you please, was a great practical and moral reform in merchandising evolved. which was, in itself, no little triumph. ii. organization in a modern store i like to think of modern business as a huge, great single machine; or better still, a group of little machines gathered together and functioning as one. it is a simile that i have used time and time again. to feel that some single achievement of industry--of manufacturing or of merchandising--is as well organized and as well balanced as the many mechanisms that are laboring in its behalf, seems to bring the most single complete picture of modern business of the sort that our press has ofttimes been pleased to term "big business". and sometimes i like to think of these "big businesses"--with their hundreds and thousands of human units--as armies. at no time is this last comparison more apt than when one comes to apply it to the modern department-store, as we today know it in america. for, even if you wish to grant an entire dissimilarity of purpose, one of these huge institutions has more than one point of similarity with an army. not alone in numbers can this parallel be made, but quite as quickly in organization. while, to return to our first simile, it, too, is a big machine--humanized. its parts are carefully co-ordinated so that the whole will function with the least possible friction. like an army it is officered with its generalissimo, its under generals, its colonels, its captains, its lieutenants, its sergeants and its corporals. the difference is only in nomenclature. the structure is quite the same. for, when you come to analyze, you will find the divisions of labor and of authority quite corresponding to similar divisions in the army. officer, "non-com" and private--each contributes his more or less important part; each is a necessary factor in the success of the enterprise. like an army, the department-store of modern america is designed to move constantly forward. the "big-chief" scans his balance sheets, the rise and fall of the curves of his outgo and income averages, the tremendously meaningful jagged red lines of his graphic charts, quite as carefully as the army general keeps track of the movement of his forces upon the maps which his topographists send him. he gathers his officers roundabout him and plans the strategy of business with the same shrewd foresight that must be observed by the successful military leader. he must be a promoter of morale throughout his forces, even down to the newest and the lowest-paid clerk. there must be constant liaison between the general and the private in the ranks. in considerable detail this parallel can be carried out. soon, however, it must come to an end. that is, it ends in so far as macy's is concerned. for the army at broadway and thirty-fourth street is neither an army of offense nor of defense. its sole position always is upon the front line of service. at the head of the organization there are the three brother partners who inherited their original interest in the great business from their father, the late isidor straus, who, with their mother, lost his life in the supreme catastrophe of the sinking of the _titanic_. in they acquired nathan straus' interest by purchase. these men, jesse isidor, the president, percy s., the vice-president, and herbert n., the secretary and treasurer, are its triple head and front. while each has trained himself to be a merchandise specialist of the highest order, there is none that knows the details of macy's better than his brothers--they share equally in the supreme authority that directs the business. directly responsible to them, in turn, is its general manager, its merchandise council and its advertising and financial departments. as i write these paragraphs, the great chart of the macy organization lies upon my desk. it is a vast and fascinating thing. with the lines extending upon it here and there and everywhere from the box which holds the triple-head, branching and rebranching here and there and again, it looks not unlike a giant map; a chart, if you prefer to have it so. and so it is, a chart upon which the steersmen of so vast and so responsible an enterprise safely pick their course upon a seemingly unending journey. "government by draughting-board," sniffed an old-time business man to me once, when i was trying to explain to him in some detail how a great steel manufacturing plant of the middle west attempted to accomplish its huge job, economically and efficiently, by the use of graphic charts. and he added: "i'd like to see _myself_ held down by blue-print authority." to which, after all this while, i should like to reply: "i should like to see a concern, as big and as successful as macy's, operated without a careful charting of its always difficult path." yet, as a matter of hard fact, macy's, any more than any other big and well-planned business organism of today, never binds itself to go blindly and unthinkingly upon the lines of the charts--and nowhere else. the real trick of executive direction seems to be to know when to follow these lines and when more or less to completely disregard them. rule-of-thumb can never again overcome the rules of averages, of percentages or of economic laws. but the rule of wit and of human understanding can ofttimes be used to temper this first group and sometimes with astonishingly successful results. a glance or two at this imposing organization chart lying before me begins to show the many, many ramifications of the huge macy business tree. it shows, for instance, how, under the direction of the merchandise council, are four large branches of store activity more or less inter-related: the handling of macy's own merchandise (meaning particularly that which is either made in the store's own factories or at least made under its direct supervision); the work of the large force of buyers; the comparison department (an important phase of the business to which we shall come in our own good time); and the foreign offices. in the financial department, the controller is the quite logical chief. his general duties are fairly obvious. to help him in them, he has, under his direction, the chief cashier, the salary office, the auditing department, the depositors' account department--this last a most distinctive macy feature--and a statistical department. obvious, too, is the greater part of the work of the publicity department. it includes in addition to the advertising manager--always an important factor in the modern department-store and particularly so in the case of macy's--a display manager. it is the job of the first of these men to tell the public of the merchandise being offered for sale at the sign of the red star; the job of his compeer to see that it is properly displayed to them. and, finally, there is the general manager--last but not least. connected by an exceedingly direct and much-traveled line with the general offices upon the seventh floor of the store are mr. w. j. wells, the store's general manager, and his advisory council. for the g. m., big as he is always, has need of much advice. upon his broad and efficient shoulders are placed such a tremendous array of responsibilities that one cannot but marvel at the sheer efficiency of the man--to say nothing of his reserves of physical and mental strength--who can hold down such a job. yet, at macy's, the man himself disclaims any superhuman powers. "i am merely the automatic governor to this big machine," he will tell you, in his own simple, direct way. "in fact, if the machine always functioned one hundred per cent. efficient, there really would be no need either of me or of my job. it is because no machine that is built of human cogs and cams and levers and pulleys may ever work at one hundred per cent. efficiency that i, or some other man, must sit in this office. it is our job to meet the unusual and the unforeseen. we take up slack here and loosen there." the translation of this is unmistakable. if the three men upon the high seventh floor of the institution are its steersmen, this man, who has his office at the rear of its broad mezzanine balcony, is at least its chief engineer. and to assist him he has five assistant engineers--assistant general managers, in reality. the habit of simile leads one into odd designations of title. each of these five assistant general managers--we shall stand by the nomenclature of the store--in turn has a large number of departments reporting to him. while in addition to them and ranking as virtual assistant managers are the superintendent of the detective bureau and that of the building, itself. the general manager, himself, is charged with the general duty of engaging, training and educating employees. he regulates salaries. he controls the transfer and discharge of employees. he is charged with the enforcement of all rules and regulations. he is the final authority to decide whether or not merchandise is returnable, for refund, exchange or credit. he also is the authority who adjusts all claims or controversies with customers. and he is the one to whom employees may appeal if they feel they are being treated unfairly by their superiors. a man-sized job truly! and because no one man, short of a superhuman at any rate, could ever perform all of its various and perplexing functions, mr. wells has his five assistants. in the event of his absence as well as that of any one of them the man below rises temporarily into his immediate superior's job. [illustration: where milady of manhattan shops the vast ground floor of macy's is, in itself, a mark of much interest and variety] it is the major task of the first of these assistants to direct the work of the floor superintendents--eight of these--and through them that of the section managers and the actual sales forces; nearly two thousand people all told. in other words, his job is the selling. to this great force and to the countless problems that must arise in its day-by-day direction there is added the oversight of the personal shoppers' service. which means in turn the furnishing of guides throughout the departments to shoppers who ask for them; finding translators for folk to whom the intricacies of our tongue are unsolved mysteries and, in certain specific and necessary cases, the sending of merchandise with a member of the sales force into the homes of macy's patrons. the second and the third assistant managers are the heads of non-selling organizations within the store, the fourth and the fifth handle the training and the educational departments, respectively. the second assistant has, as his especial responsibility, the merchandise checkers, the collectors, the stock clerks, the cashiers and the interior mail and messenger service. the other non-selling assistant general manager supervises the receiving department, the department of money orders and adjustments, the supply department, the delivery, the receiving, the time office, the manufacturing, and sundry other smaller specialties of the store; small, however, only in a comparative sense. taken by themselves they quickly would be seen to be sizable indeed. the tasks of most of these departments are fairly obvious from their names. some of the others we shall see in a bit of detail as we go further into the store and its workings. in other chapters we shall describe what the great delivery department is supposed to accomplish, and actually does accomplish, the scope and plan and reach of the departments of training and of employment, and some others, too. it takes no great strain upon the imagination to conceive of the importance of the detective bureau's work, nor that of the superintendent of buildings. so much, then, for a preliminary bird's-eye view of a mammoth machine, not a machine for turning out shoes or typewriters or paper, but for buying and selling all these things and many, many more. and as you read in the earlier part of this book, the huge mechanism did not spring into its being in a year, or in a decade, or even in a generation. it represents slow, hard, steady growth; and slow, hard, steady growth it is still having. there are now one hundred and eighteen departments in macy's and yet, out of many thousands of separate and distinct items, there are some things that the store does not sell. some of these commodities are handled by other great department-stores. but while macy's may and does follow a charted path, it is its own chart and its own path. it never follows blindly the pathways of others. so, for instance, it does not sell pianos. in this particular case, at least, the reason is not hard to discover. remember, all the while, that macy's sells for cash and for cash alone--always and forever; and then consider that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, pianos are sold upon the installment plan. the installment plan is entirely outside of the macy scheme of salesmanship. it may or may not be a good plan. but to adopt it macy's would either have to change its selling policy or else dispose of so few pianos that it would not be profitable to maintain a department for them. this is the alpha and the omega of the piano, as far as macy's is concerned. it has no intention either of changing its deep-rooted and well-founded selling policy, nor, on the other hand, of establishing a little-used and possibly unprofitable department. upon this decision it stands quite content. yet assuredly macy's is organized to sell nearly all of the necessities of life--and an unusually large number of the luxuries in addition. from hosiery to ice cream, from women's suits to artists' materials, from eye-glasses to sausages, and from petticoats to ukeleles, the list of the store's wares is almost without limit. other furniture is not hedged about by the same merchandising traditions and restrictions as are pianos; there are in the upper floor of this great market-place pieces of household furnishings whose prices run well into the hundreds and even thousands of dollars, to say nothing of rare oriental rugs, fine paintings and other works of art. these one hundred and eighteen departments have been arranged after long study and experience and well thought out plans. in fact, so many conflicting and intricate features have entered into their planning that it is hardly possible within the space of these pages to give more than the broad general policy of the department organizations of the store. yet it is another of these fairly obvious principles that upon its main floor--where its space, square foot by square foot, is by far at its highest value, and where there is a maximum of accessibility--should be displayed the items that sell the most quickly and the most readily. this follows the very reasonable theory that goods for which there is the most popular demand should at all times be the most accessible. varying slightly in specific cases and conditions, as one ascends into the five upper selling floors of the store, the merchandise falls more and more into classifications that call for care and deliberation in the purchasing. thus, upon the main floor, one will find such articles as umbrellas, books, candy, notions, and the like--to make but a few instances out of many--while upon the second, there will be yardage goods, linens, shoes and so forth. parenthetically, it may be set down that in older days, yardage goods--meaning cloths and weaves of almost every sort--never used to be found above the ground floor of any department-store. retail merchandising tradition in new york suffered a body blow some years ago when macy's sent them upstairs. even the men who worked in the department protested against the change. a sizable proportion of their income was and is in their commissions upon their total volume of sales. they could not see the sales upstairs. "for two cents i'd resign," said one of the veterans, just as the change was announced. no one offered him the two cents, however, and he remained. and the following year saw the department reach a new high level for total sales in its yard goods. one large reason for this in macy's is the unusual accessibility of the upper floors from the street level. it required little or no effort for the customer to get to the second floor, or, for that matter, to the sixth. the store's unusual and fairly marvelous system of escalators, well-placed, smooth running, always available, and to be safely used by even a rheumatic or a cripple, bring these self-same upper floors at all times within easy reach of the street, and without the use of the firm's generous plant of elevators. with the exception of the abnormal stress and strain of the holiday season, the vertical system of macy's transportation is never very seriously taxed. to those upper floors, also, go the folk whose purchases necessitate the fitting of something or other to the human frame. as we have just seen, shoes are upon the second floor. on the third is the women's wearing apparel, with special dressing-room facilities for trying on and fitting. similar conveniences are to be found in the men's clothing department upon the fifth floor. rugs, upholstery and art objects generally require more time for selection than do shoes and socks, more room for display as well. they go, then, quite naturally to the broad spaces of the fourth floor. the same qualities, only somewhat emphasized, apply to furniture, which is shown and sold upon the sixth. that the restaurant is relegated to the eighth floor is due in large part to the necessity for having cooking odors where they can be carried away without reaching other parts of the store; as well as to considerations in regard to the economy of floor space for an enterprise that is active during only a part of the day. minor changes in the arrangement of all these departments are constantly and forever under way. a great market-place like macy's never stays entirely put. special considerations, special problems, unforeseen merchandising plans may at any moment make it not only advisable but necessary to change the location or the relative space of any or all the departments. at christmas-time the unusual pressure upon some of them, accompanied by a slacking in others--unfortunately (or fortunately?) shoppers cannot be everywhere and at the same moment--means many temporary changes--so one department must give some of its space for a time to its neighbor--a debt possibly to be repaid at some other season of the year, when thoughts are not on toys, or candies or jewelry, but upon such serious things as carpets or refrigerators. an interesting sidelight upon the intensive study that macy's gives the psychology of its interior arrangements is furnished in the fact that, on the theory that the less deadly of the species has an inherent aversion to department-stores, men's furnishing goods in these emporiums should generally be displayed upon the main floor, and just as close to a street entrance as is possible. macy's has been no exception to this rule. a man, even when he is in a mood for spending, wants it over with as soon as possible. he is impatient of the slightest delay. on the other hand, his wife or daughter will make of shopping a kind of ritual. and, perhaps, because of that, she is often the more intelligent and discriminating buyer. today, however, space on the main floor of the larger stores in new york is proving so valuable for goods that appeal to women shoppers, that some of them are trying to find a new method of appealing to the man-in-a-hurry. and so there has come to be a distinct trend toward putting men's goods upon a high upper floor, but with special express elevator service, so that their purchasers can get in and out with a minimum use of their valuable time. that part of the organization of macy's which always has, always has had, and always will have the chief visual appeal to the public, is the staff of sales people with whom it comes in constant contact. again and again, as we come to consider the minute workings of this great machine of modern business, we shall find its human factor looming larger before our very noses. we can not dodge it. we have no desire to dodge it. in fact, we find it at all times the most fascinating feature of our study. it is no part of this narrative to decide which part of the whole corps of workers in the store is the most important to it--it would be similar and quite as easy to try to give an opinion as to the relative importance of the mainspring and the balance-wheel of a watch--but it is enough to say here, as we shall say again and again, that the girl behind the counter--to say nothing of the man--is an absolutely indispensable feature. by her it rises; by her it might easily come tumbling down. let me illustrate by the testimony of a young woman who recently was a girl behind the counter at macy's: "it surely is true," she says, "that we salespeople can do a great deal to increase the business and the number of customers. some of these last are, of course, nearly hopeless--they would try the patience of job, himself--and then again there are the others who are most appreciative of your services. it was interesting to me, when first i went behind the counter, to see how many of my customers would say 'thank you.' i found that nearly all of them will, if only you make a real effort to please them. and the majority of the macy salesforce does try to help a customer in any way that she needs help. one day i observed this incident, which is almost typical: a customer approached our counter and put her bag down upon it. a saleswoman went to her at once, saying: "'may i help you, madam?' "the customer shook her head, a negative; she was merely trying to adjust her veil, she explained. but our saleswoman was resourceful in her tact. "'well, maybe, i can assist you with that,' she insisted, and straightway proceeded to do so. that was her notion of the service of our store." it is incidents just like this--seemingly small when you take them apart and place them out by themselves--but in the aggregate very real and very important, that make for a store its lifelong customers. let the young woman continue. like a good many other young women in the store she is a college graduate and also possessed of a power for shrewd observation. " ... one woman bought some gloves from me and while she waited for her change showed me her shopping-list. it was miles long, seemingly, and appeared to include everything from a safety-pin to a toy submarine. as she conned it, she said that she had shopped in macy's for years, and nowhere else. in fact, i remember that she said that she would be completely lost in any other store.... others came back, bringing a single glove that they had purchased a year or more before and wanting another pair just like them, they had been so satisfactory.... "not all of them are quite so cheery, however. occasionally some unreasonable and irate customer would appear, storming at having to wait a few precious moments for her change, or at not being able to find the same glove that her friend purchased the week before--the chances being quite good that her friend might have bought the glove in another store. these are the times that test the wit and diplomacy and resource of the girl behind the counter. "a day behind a counter is filled to the brim with experiences--you have your finger on the pulse of a part of the life of new york--you are a part of a huge and important organization, and you come into contact with the world in general. even customers coming to our glove counter furnished us with interesting moments. one in particular came to me to get some of our children's woolen gloves. he was a robust old man--about fifty-five, i'd have said--but he told me he was sixty-nine. he said he had just bought the same gloves elsewhere for over twice as much. (i said i didn't doubt that in the least.) and then he went on to say his wife and daughters shopped in stores where the name meant a great deal, but that he always came to macy's because he came for the merchandise he got. he ended by saying he was a happy man, with three romping grandchildren, that he daily handled over two thousand men, but couldn't handle one woman. i should like to see him try to run macy's and have to handle some six thousand men and women." the personnel of each of the selling floors of the store is under the direction of an organization captain, whose precise title is floor superintendent. he has an understudy--or, as he is known in the parlance of the place, a relief--so that the floor is never, even for a minute, without an executive head. this floor superintendent is a man of considerable discretionary powers. he must be. these powers are being constantly brought into play as he is called upon to decide the merits of this or that customer's claim. he is a man of tact and judgment, both of which qualities are kept in constant operation. upon his floor he is the direct representative of the management and so looks out for its interests. from his desk upon the floor headquarters he directs and supervises, yet he constantly circulates throughout his various departments and sees to it himself that the matters for which he is responsible are thoroughly carried out. the orderliness of the floor is his special concern, and when, from time to time, it becomes necessary to shift salesclerks from one department to another--as in the case of the numberless special sales requiring extra help--it is he who engineers the details of the transfer. acting as lieutenants to the floor superintendents are the section managers, who, as we have already seen, were in the store of yesterday known as "floorwalkers." but in the macy's of today something considerably different is meant from the superannuated and somewhat pompous gentleman who used to condescend, when we asked for the location of silverware, to wave us away with a cryptic "second-aisle-to-the-right-rear-of-the-store." it now means a live, up-to-date, agreeable gentleman, with a man's-size job to fill. not only must he ascertain the customers' needs and direct all of them, plainly and courteously, but he has direct supervision over all of the employees within his section. he is held responsible for their deportment and it is his duty to observe, as far as possible, their mental, moral and physical condition. he must be able to detect errors in the methods used by his salesclerks, and in order that he may be in a position to teach them correct methods, he must, himself, be master of the store system. parts of this constantly are being changed, so that in addition to all of these other qualities, the successful section manager must possess an alert mind. the importance of his work may be visualized to some slight extent at least by the manual which is prepared for his guidance. this is a loose-leaf book of some fifty closely printed pages; the number varying according to the changes in the store system which are made from time to time. just to give you a slight idea of what this captain of a merchandising army has upon his mind, consider that under the division entitled "section managers' daily duties" there are forty-six different items, and under "miscellaneous duties" thirteen. moreover, he must have at his instant command all the technical procedure regarding transactions and forms, refunds, complaints, transfers, employees' shopping, the internal revenue law, accidents, and then some more. i submit this as a job requiring all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy! salesmanship is the thing that really made r. h. macy & company and it therefore is patent that they should consider the actual sellers of their goods as the very backbone of their organization. in another place it is related how, in the department of training, employees are taught to sell, and in another something of the working out of the psychology of the customer and the salesclerk. education counts. it helps to make the salesclerk a vital factor of the store organization. macy policy sees to it that the clerk is, in so far as it is possible, kept interested in his or her work. there are, as we have already begun to understand, as few rules governing their conduct, dress and liberties as are consistent with the smooth, economical operation of the business. on the other hand, there is all possible encouragement for them to become familiar and even expert with the things that they sell. in many of the departments special booklets have been prepared as aids in selling the particular line of merchandise carried. that for the stationery department, for instance, covers: paper, with its history from the earliest times, its manufacture, sizes and characteristics; engraving, with a full description of the processes connected therewith; fountain-pens and their manufacture; desk accessories, commercial stationery and the like. ambition to excel in salesmanship is further stimulated by taking clerks through factories where their lines are made, and by exhibiting motion pictures of the manufacturing of these goods. here, then, is the store's most direct contact with its patrons. there are others, however, to be classed as at least fairly direct. take that big and comfortable restaurant up on the eighth floor. it is one of the real landmark's among eating-places of new york, a world city of good eating. its own magnitude may easily be guessed from the fact that in a single business day it feeds more people than almost if not any other in the town. translated into cold figures this means that there is an average of twenty-five hundred lunches bought by customers each day that the store is open; with a maximum on extremely busy days reaching as high as five thousand. figures are impressive. yet these do not include either afternoon teas or late breakfasts for both of which there is a considerable clientele. to serve these hungry folk who come to macy's there are two hundred waitresses, buss-boys and other employees upon the floor, besides fifty in the general kitchen, twenty in the bakery and eight in the ice cream factory. and if you still try to doubt that this restaurant is not of itself a real business and one to be reckoned with, consider that in the course of an average year its patrons consume--among other things--two thousand barrels of flour, fifty-two tons of sugar, seven hundred and fifty thousand eggs, ninety-three thousand six hundred pounds of butter, two thousand bags of potatoes, and nearly half a million quarts of ice cream. this latter item, however, covers the ice cream used at the soda fountain and in the employees' and men's club restaurants. the employees' lunchroom--conducted on the cafeteria plan--serves four thousand men and women each working day. it provides tasty and wholesome food at a cost that makes it entirely possible to eat to repletion for twenty cents or less. soups, for instance, are three cents a portion, and meat dishes six, while other items, such as sandwiches, vegetables, desserts and the like are correspondingly low. nor is this luncheon the sole restaurant resource of the employees within this institution. in the men's club nearly a thousand more of the macy family eat their midday meal each day; and eat very well indeed. here the meal is served at a flat rate: at the uniform and moderate cost of thirty cents. under the same general management direction (the third assistant general manager) as the restaurant is the store's supply department--not different very much from the supply department of a big railroad or manufacturing unit--which supplies everything for its consumption, from coal to string; the manufacturing departments in which are produced glass, mattresses, printing, engraving, custom-made shirts, millinery, picture frames and paper novelties; the candy factory over near tenth avenue and thirty-fifth street, which completely fills a big modern six-story building; the telephone service; and the so-called public service department. these last facilities command our attention for a passing moment. the telephone is, of course, the nerve-system of the macy organization; nothing else. its chief ganglion is a far-reaching switchboard on which little lights twinkle on and off and at which at a single relay sit nine competent operators in addition to a corps of inspectors and supervisors. the big board, from which run fifty-nine trunk-wires to the neighboring fitzroy exchange, is none too large. year in and year out it handles an average of nine thousand calls a day. and in the christmas season this number easily is doubled and trebled. the public service department means exactly what it is called. it is at the service of the public. in concrete form it is a free information bureau, where theater seats and railroad and pullman tickets may be purchased at face value--and not one cent beyond, not even the usual moderate fifty-cent advance of the hotel agencies--where astute and marvelously informed young men and women, with a miniature library of reference books at their immediate command, stand ready and willing to answer all the reasonable questions that may be thrust at them. to it is added a postal office, a telegraph office and public telephones for both local and long distance service. the third assistant general manager of the store also has within his bailiwick the important department of mail orders and adjustments. although in the technical sense of the word macy's today has no mail order department--having been forced to abandon its once promising beginning along this line because of a sheer lack of room in which to handle it--the store each year actually receives thousands of orders for its goods by mail, from folk who, for one reason or another, find it inconvenient to visit it. these are received and systematically handled in this very department. under its adjustment division comes the extremely interesting bureau of investigation, which concerns itself with all complaints, and the correspondence bureau, which handles more than ninety-five per cent. of the mail of the house. it requires no particular keenness of imagination to see that, even with complaints reduced to a minimum and letter-writing and handling to a fine science, there is an infinite amount of detail in these two departments alone--detail that reaches into every part of the store and that necessitates a clever combination of system and diplomacy. the exposition of the workings of the macy organization is yet to lead us into other chapters in which various separate subjects of interest will be treated at greater length than here; but now is the time and place to focus our attention upon one of the small, but extremely important, departments that works unseen--but not unfelt--behind the scenes. it is known as the comparison department and the work that it does is of vast importance in the operation of the store. its functions are unending--and continuous. macy's policy of underselling its competitors is an unhalting one. i have before me a macy advertisement from a new york newspaper of recent date. in a conspicuous place in it there is a card which says: "for sixty-two years we have sold dependable merchandise at lowest in the city prices. we are doing so now and shall continue to do so." this was published at a time when the recent reaction from the extremely high prices of the war period already had begun to set in; and yet this was the big store's sole acknowledgment of the deflation sentiment--to say nothing of hysteria--which was sweeping the town. its competitors had been offering their wares at reductions of from twenty to fifty per cent. from their topmost prices, but, serene and secure in the knowledge that its policy in selling had been consistently adhered to, macy's only reiterated that its prices would continue to be the lowest in the city--quality for quality. to hold fast to this policy, through thick and thin, has not always been easy. macy's has fought some royal battles in its behalf--yet not so much because it was a policy as because with the big store in herald square it has become a principle of the most fundamental sort. more than twenty years ago the principle became extremely difficult to maintain, because of the growing tendency of the proprietors of articles, so patented or copyrighted as to make their imitation practically impossible, to attempt to fix their final retail sales price. it no longer became the mere question of whether macy's or any other store would have the right to undersell its competitors; it became the fundamental question of whether the great centuries-old open market of the world could continue to remain an open market, in the interest of the consumer; and not a closed market, in the interest of the producer. to maintain the first of these positions, in behalf of its patrons, macy's entered upon and won, almost single-handed, one of the notable legal battles in the history of this country. as far back as --if you are a stickler for exact dates--this whole question of price maintenance became an acute issue with macy's. it came to pass that when the prominent publishers of america formed an association, one prime purpose of which was to fix the prices at which their books would sell at retail, the store quickly saw that if this trust agreement was permitted to stand unchallenged, its cardinal principle of underselling its competitors, would have to be sacrificed. macy's did not propose to make such a sacrifice--to permit its customers to be sacrificed--without a protest. and such a protest it prepared to make. isidor straus, then the head of the business, sat in the office of his friend and counsel, edmond e. wise, in a downtown office. mr. wise put the thing frankly and without equivocation before his client. he said that it would be a hard legal fight, no doubt of that, but that a great principle was at stake; the keen mind of the lawyer was convinced of the economic fallacy of the position of the publishers' association. quietly mr. straus told his attorney to go ahead. he said that he would fight the fight, to the last ditch. no expense was to be spared. the case would be carried, if necessary, in every instance to the highest court of appeal. accordingly, mr. wise prepared a suit against the american publishers' association which holds the record for appeal in the history of jurisprudence in this country. three times it went up to the court of appeals of the state of new york; finally, after nine years of legal battle, it was carried to the united states supreme court, which, after due deliberation, decided every point in favor of r. h. macy & company. that was in december, . early in the following may the firm had the satisfaction of having the publishers hand over a check on the park national bank for $ , . this sum represented a settlement for the difficulties that macy's had had to undergo for more than a dozen years past in getting stock for its book department. ofttimes it was necessary to follow devious paths indeed to gain this end--and still hold fast to the fundamental underselling policy of the store. sometimes the store had to go so far as to send to other retail stores to buy a certain volume, at the full retail price, and then resell it to its patrons, at its customary ten per cent. off the price of the store at which it had just purchased it. so much if you please for the expense of standing by a principle! a short time after this signal victory of macy's, certain large manufacturers of patented articles, who for a time had sustained in the lower courts their claim to a fixed retail price standard, sought definitely to control macy retail prices upon their products. macy's, however, defied them, and the victor talking machine company, one of the leading adherents of price maintenance, brought an action in the united states courts to compel macy's adherence to the rules for resale at a certain price. again there was a royal battle and again macy's triumphed signally, for on final appeal, the united states supreme court again decided in favor of the store in herald square, on every one of its contentions. macy's then retaliated and brought suit against the victor company, under the sherman law. in a bitterly contested action, which culminated in one of the longest trials before a jury on record--consuming more than ten weeks--macy's recovered a judgment of $ , , and a counsel fee of $ , ; after which no paths apparently were left open to the manufacturers who sought to maintain the retail prices that suited them best. court decisions seemingly blocked all possible pathways. one path did remain, however--legislation. effort was made to pass a measure down at washington to permit and sustain retail price maintenance, which in reality meant the emasculation of the supreme court's decisions. when that measure came to a hearing before the interstate commerce committee of the house one of the macy partners, accompanied by mr. wise, the store's counsel, and mr. e. a. filene, the well-known boston merchant, came before it in opposition. up almost to that hour, macy's had gone it alone. now the attention of the country was focussed upon its fight and the national retail dry goods association came in with both its sympathy and its active co-operation--hence the appearance of mr. filene, who made a most excellent argument in support of the macy contention. it was shown definitely to the members of this house committee that many, if not all, branded and patented articles took a retail profit of from fifty to seventy-five per cent. the member of the macy firm took a watch nationally advertised at $ . and duplicated it with a watch which his store sold at sixty-five cents, going so far as to take the two watches apart so as to show conclusively that the one was quite as good as the other. certain other commodities went under similarly critical analyses. when the hearing was completed, the committee laughed the bill out of court. since then the question of price maintenance by the original producer has been permitted to drop. macy's had won its hard-fought fight; won it cleanly and honestly. by performance it had made good its statements that it proposed wherever it was humanly possible to undersell its competitors. that was no idle phrase. it is indeed one thing to make a statement--whether in print or by word of mouth--and another and ofttimes a far more difficult thing to make good that statement by performance. no one knows this better than macy's. having set down such a definite and distinct statement it must be prepared to make good. it must be so covered and protected at every possible point that if challenged it can give a good account of itself. in fact, challenges come in every day--they have been coming in every day for a good many years now--and the house continues to make good its statement willingly--even joyfully. here it is, then, that the comparison department functions; here it is that the original fundamental policy of rowland h. macy--to buy and sell only for cash--strictly adhered to during the sixty-four years' life of the business--makes it possible for the house to make good. how, then, is it done? the answer is easy. suppose, if you will, that smith, brown & jones are having a special sale of mother hubbard wrappers. there are advertised as their regular $ . stock, marked down (at a heartbreaking sacrifice) to $ . . manifestly, it is up to r. h. macy & company to sell the same quality of mother hubbard for less than $ . , if they are to live up to their oft-stated policy. it is quite as patent that macy's must know just what kind of wrappers smith, brown & jones are selling, if it is to compete on an exact basis. nothing simpler. one of the macy staff of shoppers is hurried forthwith to the scene of the bargain and, purchasing one of the garments, brings it back post-haste to the macy comparison department. furthermore, it is in this department by ten o'clock of the morning of the sale. it is then matched as closely as possible with a mother hubbard from the macy stock, and the two garments compared, point by point. if, after careful examination, it is found that macy's is charging more, or even the same price, for equal quality, then its prices are immediately marked down to a figure at least six per cent. lower than that advertised by the other store. and this, mind you, is not an exceptional performance but a daily procedure in the carrying out of which an exceptionally alert woman manager and twenty expert shoppers are constantly kept busy. if you make inquiry regarding the ins and outs of this remarkable policy you will find that it is far broader than you may have imagined. here, again, is proof of the pudding. it is a typical letter, received from a customer and copied verbatim, with only the name left out: november , . r. h. macy & co., new york city. dear sirs: i purchased a banjo clock at $ . from you on tuesday. yesterday i saw the same clock, with same works, etc., identical in every way, at ----'s, for $ . . now, inasmuch as you claim that you sell goods at the very lowest figure, i think that is too much difference in price to overlook. i trust that i shall receive your check for the difference in the amount, otherwise please call for the clock at once. i purchased clock in the basement. yours very truly, ---------------- this letter was received by the store and acknowledged that very day. it then was turned over to the comparison department, from which a shopper was despatched to the store at which the customer claimed to have seen the clock for less money. the shopper reported that the claim was correct, and a check was immediately forwarded to the customer for the difference between the price which she paid for the clock and six per cent. less than the other store's price for it. nor did the matter end there. all this kind of clocks in the basement were at once repriced to conform to the adjustment made with the customer. there are, too, the occasional tests made by customers who, while they are not dissatisfied, cannot believe that the low-price policy can be consistently carried out. as an example, this half-jocular letter: november , . r. h. macy & company, broadway & th street, new york. gentlemen: lest you regard this as a complaint from an ordinary . calibre chronic kicker let me say in the first place that i merely want to see to what extent you will make good on your brazen claim to sell goods at a lower price than other stores. now then: on november th, i purchased a toy "cash register" bank in your toy department for $ . . (i want the kid to learn frugality better than i did.) on november th my wife saw the same toy at hahne's in newark, n. j., for exactly the same price. so far, so good. it was worth it. but, mr. macy, you said your prices were _less_. besides, i have an account at hahne's. by the time i would have needed to pay for that bank there would have been enough in it to settle the bill. here is your chance, but i'm from missouri. yours, ------------ the answer to this complaint was prompt and to the point. it reads: r. h. macy & co. herald square, new york december , . mr. ------ ------ ------ dear sir: we acknowledge your letter of november th, with regard to a toy-bank, which you purchased from us for $ . . we have investigated your complaint and find, as you state, hahne & co. in newark are selling this article at the same price at which you purchased it from us. our price on these banks is now $ . , in keeping with our claim that we sell dependable merchandise for "lowest-in-the-city" prices. we appreciate your courtesy in calling this matter to our attention and also for the opportunity to demonstrate the upholding of our policy. a refund of nine cents in stamps is enclosed. yours very truly, (signed) r. h. macy & co. ------ mgr. bureau of mail order and adjustment. of course this complaint was trivial, the sum involved small, and macy's must quickly have realized that the man who wrote the letter was not particularly serious. yet that made no difference. the matter was adjusted; even though the process of adjustment involved a shopper's trip to newark and considerable clerical work--in all several times the cost of the tiny bank. yet the matter _was_ adjusted and all the toy-banks of that kind were at once reduced in price, to say nothing of a satisfied patron made for the store. there is another sort of complaint that, at times, keeps the comparison department pretty busy. women frequently will stop at a counter in the store, examine an article and then exclaim: "hm-m--$ . for that! why, i saw the same thing today at jinx, bobb & company's for $ . ." a mere passing comment which, in the old days of merchandising, might easily have been ignored. in macy's it is not ignored. the clerk who hears this remark makes a note of it and sends through to the comparison department what is technically known as a customer's complaint. immediate investigation is made, the prices checked up, and, if the casual shopper is right, macy's prices are at once readjusted to the six per cent. below the competitor's charges. it has been found, however, that nearly ninety per cent. of this sort of complaints are incorrect. two articles, in separate stores, may look so nearly alike that a casual inspection will not reveal any difference, and, therefore, competing goods must often be subjected to expert examination and even to analysis. a magnifying glass is used to count the threads in a fabric; woolens are boiled in chemical solutions to determine whether there is any adulteration; and cotton goods, such as sheets and pillow cases, are weighed, washed and weighed again to ascertain to what extent they are loaded. for macy's is just to itself, as well as to the public. as has been indicated already, there are some things that the store as a matter of policy does not sell--pianos, chief of all. but that does not mean that there is, in the minds of its managers, the slightest excuse for its shelves not holding the things that it ought to sell. a large difference, this, and one which is constantly being checked by members of the shopping staff of the comparison department--going through its floors and inquiring in the various departments for goods for which there is little ordinary demand, and so a considerable likelihood of their not being found in stock. if an article requested is not found in stock, the shopper immediately buys something else--so as to get the number of the salesclerk. then a report is made to the department buyer in order that he may see whether or not the clerk has followed up the inquiry. incidentally, the shopper's report upon this entire transaction takes into account all the details regarding the manner in which the sales are handled and even notes the speed with which the parcel is wrapped and the change returned. it is not a spying system, but part of the store's honest effort to keep its efficiency at the highest notch. naturally the shoppers of its comparison department are not known as such to its salesforce--for this reason the personnel of the corps must be under constant change--and it is equally evident that their anonymity is carefully preserved in their dealings with other stores. they are all well-bred young women, ranging in type from the flapper to the matron, and each is so carefully trained to act her part that it is quite impossible to distinguish them from the store's bona fide shoppers. another of their duties is to report upon the speed of macy deliveries. once a month, at a certain prearranged time of day, a similar purchase is made at each of the largest stores in the city, including macy's. these are all ordered sent to the same address and a record is made of the length of time it takes each to arrive. in the report that is finally made of the test details are included showing the manner in which all the packages are wrapped in order that macy service may at all times be held up at least to the standard of its competitors. in the highly scientific machine of modern business, the test is as valuable as in other machines. i have stood in a great sugar refinery and watched the workmen from time to time draw off tiny phials of the sweetish fluid in order that they might show under laboratory examination that the machine was functioning at its highest point. and so are the tiny phials of macy service drawn from the machine. if they show that, even in the slightest degree, the great machine of retail merchandising is functioning below its highest efficiency, it becomes the immediate business of the management to correct the loss. "i tell my people not to come to me with reports that everything is going well," says its general manager, "i only want to know when things begin to slip. then it is my job to set them straight once again." one thing more, before we are quite done with this sketch of the organization of a great merchandising institution. it is, in this case, a most important thing: with the credit system in force in nearly, if not quite, every other large store in the new york metropolitan district, macy's for years has had to encounter a considerable sentiment against its policy of doing a cash business only. for there always has been a desirable class of trade represented by customers who, for one reason or another, find it most inconvenient to pay their bills monthly--people whose means and credit are unimpeachable. at one time it looked as if r. h. macy & company would either have to forego their custom or else make exceptions to their long established rule. the former they could do; the latter they would not. but-- out of this very need for furnishing customers with the convenience of some sort of a charge account grew a great macy specialty--the depositors' account department which, while making no concessions to the store's rock-ribbed principle of selling for cash, solved a very great problem in its touch with its public. it turned the costly credit privilege into an asset both for the customer and for the store. the very thought was revolutionary! what, ask a customer to pay in advance; to have money on deposit with r. h. macy & company, private bankers, to pay for normal purchases for a whole thirty days to come! it couldn't be done. new york would never, never stand for it. every one outside of the store was sure that it never could be done. and a good many inside, as well. yet the thing deemed impossible has come to pass. the idea was sound. the plan today is successful, even beyond the dreams of its promoters. with fifteen thousand depositors, its total deposits--money placed into the store to be drawn against solely for merchandise purchases--have reached as high as $ , , at a single time. interest at four per cent. annually is paid upon these deposits, so that the customer's money does not lie idle in the macy till. moreover, the money may be withdrawn at any time, and without previous notice being given. further than this, it has been a custom--not, however, to be considered invariable--to pay a bonus of two per cent. on net sales charged to the depositors' account department throughout the year. compare the thrill of receiving a bonus check from your department-store, instead of a bill for dead horses! it has been estimated that in some of new york's most representative and most elegant department-stores something like eighty-five per cent. of all retail transactions are upon the credit accounts. assuming even that all of these accounts are promptly collectible--or collectible at all--the expense of the machinery of their collection becomes no small item in store management cost. this item macy's saves--entirely and completely. and so, to no small extent, the store justifies itself in that other rigid rule--the pricing of its merchandise at a uniform rating of six per cent. less than that of its competitors. upon this thought, alone, a whole book might be written. iii. buying to sell up the broad valley of the euphrates a caravan comes toiling upon its way. it is fearfully hot; frightfully dusty. for it has come to mid-september; the rains are long weeks gone; and with the crops harvested, even the sails of the great mills that pump the irrigation canals full are stilled. the time of great heat and of little work. but still the caravan--the long, attenuated file of horses and camels must press on. ahead is bagdad, that self-same ancient bagdad which three thousand years ago was the commercial capital of the world. through the heat waves and the blinding dust, the trained eyes of the moslem can see the sun touching the gilded minarets and towers of her great mosques. bagdad ahead. and at bagdad the market-places which have stood unchanged for tens of centuries. save that in recent years there have come to them these americans--these shrewd agents of a little known folk, these rug-buyers of a far-away land of which they spin such fascinating tales. tales far too fascinating ever to be believable. yet allah keeps his own accounting. in the foyer of a lovely new home in newest new york a persian rug is being spread for the first time. its owner dilates with pride upon his purchase; shows those roundabout him the symbolism of its rarely delicate design; even to the tiny fault purposely woven into the creation by its maker to show in his humble fashion that only allah may be faultless. a great french city; this lyons, by the bank of the lovely rhone. for two centuries or even more its tireless looms have spun the rarest silk fabrics of the world. nearby there is a little french village. were i to put its name upon these pages, it would mean nothing to you. yet out from it there comes a lace, so rare, so delicate, that one well may marvel at the human patience and the human ingenuity that conceived it. the silk comes to america, straight to the chief city of the americas; so do the laces; and so in a short time will come once again the wondrous cotton weaves of lille and of cambrai--and will come as a tragic reminder of the five fearful years that were. in the hot depths of a south african mine, negroes, stripped to their very waists, are toiling to bring forth the rarest precious stones that the world has ever known. in the fearfully cold blasts of the far north, facing monotonous glaring miles of lonely ice and snow, trappers are after the seal and the mink. why? in order that milady, of new york, may sweep into her red-lined box at the opera, a queen in dress, as well as in looks and in poise. from the mine and from the ice-floes to her neck and back a mighty process has been undergone. the great multiplex machine of merchandising has accomplished the process. a thousand other ones as well. herald square sits not alone between the east river and the north, between the battery and the harlem, between five populous boroughs of the great new york, not alone between the four million other folk who dwell within fifty miles of her ancient city hall, but between the shoe factories of lynn, the cotton mills of lowell and of the carolinas, the woolen factories of the scots and the nearer ones of lawrence, the paper mills of the berkshires, the porcelain kilns of pennsylvania, between a thousand other manufacturing industries, both very great and very small, as well. into herald square--into the red-brick edifice upon the westerly side of herald square and reaching all the way on broadway from thirty-fourth to thirty-fifth streets--all of these pour a goodly portion of their products. in turn, these are poured by the big red-brick store into the pockets and the homes of its tens of thousands of patrons. a mighty business this; and, as we shall presently see, a business made up of many little businesses. merchandising, financing, transportation; each has played its own great part in the bringing of that silk sock upon your foot or the felt that you wear upon your head. each has co-operated; each has correlated its effort. there are few accidents in modern business. rule-o'-thumb has stepped out of its back-door. in its place have come cool calculation, steady planning, scientific investigation. if modern merchandising has tricks, these are they. and they are the tricks that win. in our last chapter we pictured r. h. macy & company as a machine of salesmanship. now i should like to change the film upon the screen. i should like to show you macy's as a machine of buying. obviously one cannot sell, without first buying. buying must at all times precede selling, while to meet competition and still sell goods at a profit, the keenest sort of shrewd merchandising must be used in purchasing. your buyer must be no less a salesman than he who stands behind the retail counters and, what is more to the point, he must constantly keep his finger upon the pulse of the market. which means, in turn, that he must not for a day or an hour lose his touch with manufacturing and financial conditions--to say nothing of the changeable public taste. for the one hundred and eighteen different departments of the macy's of today there are now sixty-nine buyers; the majority of them women. this last is not surprising when one comes to consider that by far the larger percentage of the department-store's customers are of the gentler sex. women know how to buy for women--or should know. how foolish indeed would be the merchant prince of the new york of this day who would not instantly say "yes" to the assertion that feminine taste in buying is the one thing with which his store absolutely could not dispense. so the woman buyer in our city stores is so much an accepted fact as to call today for little special comment, save possibly to add that in no store outside of macy's has she come more completely into her own. the buyer's job covets her. and she covets the buyer's job. well she may. for it is a job well worth coveting--in independence, in opportunity and in salary. in almost every case a buyer comes to the job from retail experience--although occasionally a knowledge of wholesale selling develops the required skill. in nine cases out of ten, however, he or she rises to the important little office on the seventh floor from the salesforce upon the retail floors beneath. from salesclerk he--or as we have just learned, usually she--is promoted to "head of stock," which is the title of the head clerk in a department having three or four or more clerks. this promotion comes from a superior knowledge of the stock, yet not from that alone: the clerk must have executive ability. an agreeable temperament is also a necessary ingredient to the potion of promotion. to the position of assistant buyer is the next and logical promotion for the ambitious and successful "head of stock." after this should come the step to the big job--which steadily grows bigger--of buyer, or as the macy store prefers to call it, department manager. department managers do no actual selling. they now have graduated from that. yet none the less are they salesmen--in more than a little truth, super-salesmen. for not only must they know what to buy--and how to buy it at the most favorable price--but they are equally responsible for knowing what to do with their purchases, once made. they are the merchants of the departments; accountable for the saleability of their stock. it is very much their concern whether those departments show a profit or a loss. little stores within a big store. a big store made up of more than a hundred little stores. as we have seen, it is not an uncommon custom for some department-stores to rent out or even to sell the privilege of many, if not all of its little stores. macy's--in recent years at least--has not followed this policy. it has found that its own best organization comes from keeping the department as a unit; a pretty distinct and important unit, right up close to the very top of the business, where its three partners are specialists in merchandising; and passing proud of that. the foundation of all successful buying is built of the bricks of sales knowledge laid in the mortar of good judgment. it is squared up by a sixth sense that has no name--yet a qualification which, by its presence or its absence, makes or unmakes a buyer's value. in its various branches, however, this unnamed sense is required, to a varying degree, perhaps, least of all in the purchasing of staple goods. for the sake of a more convenient understanding, let us begin by classifying the various needs of the insatiable macy's into three major divisions: we shall put down staples, as the first of these; luxuries, as the second; and novelties, as the third. under staples we shall include notions, cotton goods (such as sheets, pillow-cases and muslins) and, in general, the absolute necessities of life, including wearing apparel of the commoner varieties, household articles and the like. these are in constant purchase almost every day of the year. take, for instance, that heterogeneous collection of articles, grouped under the generic and whimsical head of notions. there is thread of all kinds, there are hooks-and-eyes, snap-fasteners, hair-nets, darners, button-hooks, tape-measures and what all not more--far be it from me even to attempt to mention the more than four thousand separate items that must be constantly carried in the notion departments. for all of these there is a huge daily demand, while a month's supply of any of them is all that can, as a rule, be conveniently handled in the store. it must be patent that, as there is never an equal demand for these small but essential articles, the buyers must be placing constant orders for them. so it is with everything else that people must have--irrespective of tastes, wealth or the season of the year--and the number of the list is legion. therefore, the buyer of staples does not depend so much upon the sixth sense as upon common sense. he must have plenty for the latter, however, and it is sure to be kept working on a fairly even basis throughout the entire year. in the category of the luxuries are included such articles as jewelry, musical instruments, oriental rugs, paintings, fine bric-a-brac and the like. clearly the buyer in this branch must possess real taste and discrimination in addition to commercial ability, in order to be able to purvey these properly to the public. he handles goods which have to be bought by people who have already purchased the necessities of life--the buying of luxuries involves the spending of the public's surplus and so this division of the work is at all times attended with great or less hazard. but the real hazards, the real necessity for that sixth sense, which i just mentioned, the hardest and most nerve-racking buyer's job, comes in the purchase of those goods grouped under the common title of novelties. as one of the members of the macy's merchandise council once observed, the departments devoted to staples sell what the people want, while those devoted to novelties make the people want what they have to sell. and this last is quite true of the luxuries, as well. here, incidentally, is a very curious fact about merchandise: a staple is not a constant thing. in one department it is what everybody wants and in another it becomes a novelty. for instance, a cotton pillow-case selling for, let us say, a dollar, is a staple; while another pillow-case, of linen this time, embroidered with an old english initial, hand hemstitched and edged with lace--we hesitate to guess at its cost--is a decided novelty, in the understanding of the store, at any rate. it also may be classed as a luxury. styles, fads, exclusive designs and seasons determine the work of the buyer of novelties. the job is one that requires quick decisions. the staple buyer can "play safe," but the buyer of novelties who pursued the policy soon would find himself in the rear of the procession. nor can he afford to make mistakes, for they may be costly indeed to the house that he represents. there is, in consequence, a greater demand on his nerve, his ingenuity and his imagination than you find in other classes of buyers. he must circulate where there are people--at the theaters, country clubs, restaurants, churches, in fifth avenue--and he must keep his ear to the ground and both eyes wide open. consequently, when it is reported in the sunday paper that the women of paris have taken up the fad of wearing jeweled nose-rings, he must see that new york's women of fashion may have the same opportunity of expressing their individuality, by visiting macy's jewelry department. this, of course, is rank exaggeration, but it indicates what the novelty buyer aims at. and surprisingly often he hits the mark. in such a huge establishment it is but natural that the reception hall outside the buying offices should be crowded most of the time. mahomet oftimes goes to the mountain--or sends a representative to it to buy some of its goods--yet more often the mountain comes to mahomet. and so, i am told, for five days a week--saturdays being generally recognized as a closed day for buying--an average of from four hundred to six hundred and fifty salesmen a day visit the buying headquarters on the seventh floor of the store. taking into consideration the fact that the goods purchased are paid for in cash within ten days of their delivery, these headquarters are most popular with the emissaries of manufacturers and wholesale houses. added to this is the uniform policy of courtesy to salesmen, which has been stated by the company in its precise fashion: "we have held, as far as within our power, the precept of which our late head, isidor straus, was a living personification--that business may be conducted between merchants who are gentlemen, in a manner profitable to both." it is one thing to write a thing of this sort. it is another to live strictly up to it, day in and day out. but that macy's does live up to this high-set principle of its behind-the-scenes conduct is evidenced by the unsought testimony of a manufacturer who sought for the first time to do business with it. this man had made one of the mistakes into which all manufacturers are apt to fall, sooner or later. he had overproduced. and while, heretofore, his product had been chiefly, if not solely, sold in high-priced novelty shops he now needed an establishment of great turnover to help him out in his dilemma. macy's came at once into his mind. the old house is indeed advertised by its loving friends. he went to it at once; by means of the special elevator, found his way, along with several hundred other salesmen, to the sample and buying rooms upon the seventh floor. a young woman at the door received his card and, without delay, told him that he could see the buyer of the department which would naturally handle his product, upon the morrow; at any time before eleven, but under no circumstances later than noon. better still, she would make a definite appointment for him for the next morning. mr. manufacturer chose this last course. and at the very moment of the appointed time was ushered into the buyer's little individual room. contact was established quickly. the buyer already knew of mr. manufacturer's line, regretted that they had not done business together a long time before. he inspected the proffered samples, quickly and with a shrewd and practiced eye; finally called into the little room two members of the salesforce from the department down upon the ground floor. they agreed with him as to the salability of the product. he turned toward the manufacturer. "please bring your stock to no. -- madison avenue next tuesday afternoon, at half-past two." why madison avenue? the manufacturer was perplexed as he descended to the street once again. the curiosity was relieved on tuesday, however, when he and his abundant goods were ushered into a big and sunlit room. "we shall not be subject to any interruption here," said macy's buyer. and so they were not. for two hours the buyer and two of his assistants went carefully over the stock, then withdrew for a short conference amongst themselves. when they returned they handed mr. manufacturer a card. it read after this fashion: cash the entire lot $____ "the figure on that card, with the word 'cash' heavily underscored was just one hundred dollars in excess of my minimum," said the manufacturer afterwards, in discussing the incident. "i paused a moment and then said: 'gentlemen, i mean to accept your offer. you have figured well, as your offer is just sufficient to buy the goods. r. h. macy & company have secured this merchandise of unusual quality and i congratulate you.'" at the beginning of this chapter we mentioned another form of the store's buying--where mahomet goes to the mountain. this, being translated into plain english, means that macy's must and does maintain elaborate permanent office organizations in paris, in london, in belfast and in berlin. these in turn are but centers for other shopping work--shopping that may lead, as we have already seen, as far as the distant bagdad. for instance, from his office in the cité paradis in paris, the head of the french-buying organization of the store controls the purchase of all goods for it, not only in france, but in belgium and switzerland as well. he virtually combs these busy and ingenious manufacturing nations for their latest specialties; from france, _les derniers cris_ in fashionable gowns, millinery, perfumes and novelties of every description; from belgium, fine laces and gloves; and from switzerland, watches. these items, however, are merely typical; there are hundreds of others. a young american woman, of remarkable taste and gifted with a genuine genius for buying, is upon the paris staff and is engaged practically the entire year round in visiting exhibitions of every sort and variety, in hunting the retail shops, great and small, of the french capital and at all times acting upon her own initiative as a free-lance buyer. a job surely to be coveted by any ambitious young woman who feels that she understands and can translate the constantly changing tastes of her countrywomen into the merchandise needs of a store whose chief task is always to serve them. for reasons that are not necessary to be set down here, the berlin office of macy's has been in _statu quo_ for some years past, although it is just now reopening. the london branch is steadily on the search for the clothing, haberdashery and leather specialties which are the pride of the british workman, while from right across the irish sea, at donegal square, north, belfast, come the fine irish linens that so long have been a distinguished merchandise feature of the store's stock. so it is, then, that forever and a day, macy's is engaged in bringing the cream of european merchandise to new york--goods of nearly every kind that can either be made better abroad or cannot be duplicated at all in this country. importing is indeed a large branch upon the macy tree. and in this branch romance oftimes dwelleth. the picture of the caravan toiling up the banks of the euphrates is no idle dream at all. upon the world maps of the merchandise executives of macy's it is an outpost of trading as unsentimental as lawrence, massachusetts, or norristown, pennsylvania. yet the buyer who goes to the old bagdad from the new has a real task set for him. obviously he must not only have a knowledge of his market and a keen sense of values, but he must also be a resourceful traveler; a merchant who can adapt himself to the ways of the people with whom he trades. his judgment, discretion and integrity must be above reproach, for often he is far away and out of touch with headquarters for long months at a time. take such a buying trip as the oriental rug-buyer of macy's recently made into the orient and back again. it lasted eight months. in that time he traveled more than thirty thousand miles--by steamship, motor-car, railroad, horseback and on foot. the rug region of persia is a long way, indeed, from broadway and thirty-fourth street and to reach it he went to london and paris, then to venice, where he took a steamer for bombay, upon the west coast of india. thence he proceeded by another steamer up the persian gulf to the city of basra, which is at the confluence of those two ancient rivers, the tigris and the euphrates--between which the earliest biblical history is supposed to have been made. basra today is one of the world's great rug-shipping centers. then he went to bagdad itself--the fabled city of haroun-el-raschid and the arabian nights--from whence he started into the very heart of persia. he was not content, however, to remain idly there and let the rugs be brought to him. he went much further. through kermanshah, the city whose name is given to the rugs which come from kerman, seven hundred miles to the southeast, to hamadan, one of the main marketing-centers of the rug-producing country--that, briefly, was the beginning of his itinerary. he went carefully through persia, picking up rugs here and there, having them baled and sent to bagdad by mules or camels and shipped thence to new york; and he established warehouses to which rug-dealers brought their wares. the light of the red star shone in the east. roads in persia leave much indeed to be desired, and as the chief means of travel, aside from beasts of burden, is by ford cars, a buyer who covers much of its territory has a rather unenviable job. gasoline in those parts costs four dollars a gallon, while if you hire a jitney you pay for it at the rate of a dollar a mile. on his return trip to new york this buyer went back once again to india and north as far as the border of afghanistan to investigate the condition of the rug market in that region. at ancient siringar, in the vale of cashmere, he bought marvelous felt rugs made in the mysterious land of thibet. and yet all the way throughout this long journey he was buying goods for only one department of the great store that he represented. it used to be impressive to me when the hardware dealer of the small town in which i was reared would boast of the number of items that he held upon the shelves of his own center of merchandising. there were more than two thousand of them! he told me that with such an evident pride, as a chicago man speaks of the population of his town, or one from los angeles, of his climate. and yet such a stock as that wonderful one that was told to my youthful imagination, is more than duplicated in macy's--and is but one of one hundred and seventeen others. and the responsibility of buying these millions of articles is scarcely less great than that of selling them. iv. displaying and selling the goods with macy's goods once purchased, the next problem becomes that of their transport to the store in herald square. obviously their reception must rank second only to their purchase. and when this is accomplished, as we have just seen, in every corner of a far-flung world--pennsylvania and massachusetts and thibet and korea and south africa, to say nothing of a thousand other places--their orderly receiving becomes, of itself, a mechanism of considerable size. almost equally obvious it is, too, that the store, no matter how carefully and fore-visionedly and scientifically its buyers may plan, cannot always dispose of its merchandise at precisely the same rate at which it comes underneath its roof. it cannot afford to gain a reputation for not carrying in stock the items either that it advertises for sale or that it has educated its patrons to expect upon its counters. which means that alongside of and intertwined with the orderly business of merchandise reception there must be warehousing--reservoir facilities, if you please. in concrete form, these last of macy's are not merely rooms upon the extreme upper floors on the main store in herald square--a space which in recent years, however, has shrunk to proportionately small dimensions because of the vast growth of the business and the increasing demands of the selling departments upon the building--but four structures entirely outside of the parent plant: the tivoli building on the north side of thirty-fifth street, just west of broadway (which, as we saw in the historical section of this book was originally the notorious music hall of the same name until macy's purchased it for its merchandising plans), the hussey building, in the same street, but just west of the store, a third also in thirty-fifth, but close to seventh avenue and a fourth in twenty-eighth street between seventh and eighth avenues. so can a great store spread itself, even in its actual physical structure, far beyond the bounds that even the most imaginative of its customers might ordinarily call to mind. it is in the rear of the selfsame red-brick building at the westerly edge of herald square--that same main structure that we have already begun to study in many of its fascinating details--that we find the core of the receiving department of the macy store. it is a hollow core. a tunnel-like roadway, two hundred feet in length bores its way through the building, from thirty-fifth street to thirty-fourth. through this cavernous place, lighted at all hours by numerous electric arcs, there passes, the entire working-day, a seemingly endless procession of motor-trucks, wagons and other carriers. they enter at the north end and before they emerge at the south they have discharged their cargoes. a corps of men is kept constantly busy, checking off the merchandise as it is unloaded. husky porters, with hand trucks, seize cases, barrels and miscellaneous packages of every sort and, presto! they are whirled into huge freight elevators which presently depart for upper and unknown floors. there are three of these, in practically continuous operation. in addition to them packages brought by hand--generally from local wholesalers and in response to emergency orders--are carried up into the offices of the receiving department upon an endless carrier. it is a source of wonder to the observer to see the way in which these men of macy's work. the poise. the confidence. the system. it is terrifying even to think of the mess that would be the result of a day, or even an hour, of inexperience or carelessness. in fact, it would hardly take ten minutes so to jam that long receiving platform that straightening it out again would be a matter of days. but upon it every man knows just what to do; and every man does it, and does it fast. and system wins once again. it generally does win. for these incoming goods receipts are made out in triplicate--one for the controller, one as a record for the receiving office and the third for the delivery agent; the second of these acts as a sort of herald of the actual arrival of the merchandise so that within sixty seconds or thereabouts of the actual appearance of the goods under the house's main roof the man who is responsible for them may be advised. every article purchased anywhere by r. h. macy & company, either for their own use or for resale, is received through this department, although there are a few other points than the tunnel-like interior street from thirty-fourth street to thirty-fifth where they are received. the four warehouses that we have just seen have their individual receiving facilities: the coal that goes to heat and light and drive the big main building is poured through chutes under the thirty-fourth street pavement, while direct to the company's stables and garages go the fodder for its vehicles--hay for the horses of flesh and blood, and gasoline and oil for those of steel and iron; all the other miniature mountains of their incidental materials into the bargain. but even these are checked in at the main receiving department; and triplicate receipts issued upon their arrival. so, then, come in these goods--by hand, express, by parcel post and freight. the most of them have had their transport charges prepaid; a certain small proportion of them comes marked "collect." an especial provision must be made for the cash payment of these charges. the big machine of modern industry must indeed have many odd cams and levers adjusted to it. it must be designed not alone for the usual, but for the unusual, and in a multitude of ways. these, then, are the reception chutes of the macy machine; the porters, who even while hastening their trucks toward the elevators are making a cursory examination of the arrival condition of the merchandise, are in themselves small automatic arms of inspection. for while some of these packages have come from nearby--perhaps not half a block distant--others will have come from halfway around the wide world. and the possibility of damage to the contents of the carrier is lurking always in the short-distance package, quite as much as in its brother, that has attained the distinction of being a globe-trotter. the crates from the middle west, those stout and honest looking yankee boxes from new england, this group of barrels from the heart of new czecho-slovakia, and that of zinc-lined cases from france--the _lorraine_ has touched at her north river pier but two or three days since--those great bales and bundles from the orient, with the seemingly meaningless (and extremely meaningful) symbols splashed upon their rough sides, all look sturdy enough, as if they had survived well the vicissitudes of modern travel. yet one can never tell. which means that the personnel of the order checking department up on the seventh floor must not only carefully verify the shipment as to quality and to price but as to the condition in which it actually is received. the hurried cursory examination of the platform porters becomes an unhurried and painstaking investigation in this last instance. the cases are not necessarily opened within the seventh floor headquarters of the order checking department. as in the case of the actual physical receipt, the unpacking is carried forward at the point of greatest convenience to the merchandise department to be served. but the results and records are kept at the one central headquarters. and the skilled and expert merchandise checkers from the selfsame headquarters are the men and women who oversee the unpacking--invariably. they pass the responsibility of their stamp and signature upon their receipts before the merchandise is turned over to the department manager, who himself, or through his responsibility, purchased it. nothing is left to guesswork, or to chance. now we see the full responsibility settled once again upon the broad shoulders--let us hope indeed that they are broad--of the buyer. with a full knowledge of the price that he paid for them, of market conditions, and of the prices of macy's competitors he determines the prices at which his merchandise is to be sold. clerks, known as markers, quickly attach these prices by small tags to the goods themselves. from the marking-rooms, where everything to be sold within this market-place is plainly and unequivocally priced, the merchandise goes without further delay either direct to the counters of the selling floors, or into the "reserves"--the warehouses that extend all the way from twenty-eighth street to north of thirty-fifth, and from broadway to eighth avenue. the stage is set. the show is ready. the performance may now begin. a trip through the hinterland of the macy store is like a visit behind the scenes of a modern theater. you see there just the way in which the drama of selling actually is staged, from the settings to the properties. you rub shoulders with the actors and actresses, just off stage; with the electrician, the stage-manager, the carpenter and the stage-hands. and always your ear is waiting to hear outside the orchestra and the applause of the audience. into that ear there comes the almost rhythmic thud of automatic machines; a sort of continuous drone. you turn quickly and find beside you a row of ticket-printers, the little electric presses in which are made the price-tags that you find pinned or pasted or tied on every piece of macy merchandise you buy. miles of thin cardboard are fed into one side of these machines and come out the other; in proper-sized units, with the selling price of the article to be tagged plainly printed on them. where the article is subject to federal tax, this is also included as a separate item and the total given. one of these machines combines the operation of printing the price and attaching the ticket to the garment. it is detail--necessary detail, detail upon a vast scale. here, then, is the receiving department of this great single retailing machine of modern business. it keeps over three hundred human units constantly upon the move--and, mind you, all that these people are doing is merely making the merchandise ready to sell. the next step is the final one before actual sale; the display of proffered goods--upon the counters and within the plate-glass windows along the street frontages. this, in the modern department-store, is considered a feature of the utmost importance, and nowhere more so than at macy's. sixty-four years of salesmanship experience, in the course of which it has been the originator of many daring and successful display experiments, has shown the house their full value. yet, even in macy's, there are certain reservations to the strong house policy of attractive display. certain fundamentals are stressed. the invitation to buy is forever put in the goods themselves rather than in the background against which they are shown. it requires no especial astuteness to see from this fact alone an enormous expense is saved; the benefit of which, according to the now well understood macy plan, is passed on to buyer. other stores spend many thousands of dollars in building and decorating special rooms and sections for merchandising which are far out of the ordinary. to give an air of extreme exclusiveness, _chic_, parisian atmosphere--call it what you may--elaborate partitions are put up and expensive decorators given carte-blanche. the result is beautiful, almost invariably. shopping in such surroundings becomes a peculiar delight--particularly to the woman patron. but milady pays. in the expressive, if not elegant, old phrase she "pays through the nose." that some new york shoppers may like to pay this way is not for a moment to be doubted, but that the majority do, macy's stoutly refuses to believe. while the house has not hesitated to install certain very lovely "special" rooms--_vide_ the _salon_ for the display of its imported frocks--the main thought in the construction of its present home in herald square was to build a retail market-place which would afford honest, efficient, comfortable marketing at the lowest possible prices. this meant that it would be inadvisable, to say the least, to give the store the atmosphere of either a palace or a _boudoir_. this is a policy that has continued until this day. none the less, macy goods are displayed with the taste that makes them most desirable to the customer; psychological forethought, in a word. novelties, of course, take precedence over staples--the articles that make the customer stop and investigate. except under unusual conditions, the demand for staples does not have to be stimulated, and ordinarily no especial attempt is made to give them more than ordinary display. one underlying factor in the successful display of goods is to preserve harmonious color relations between them and, so far as possible, this harmony pervades the entire floor. the buying public would not tolerate a store where they heard profanity among the employees; and at macy's they do not have to endure colors that swear at one another. held in high esteem by the public as well as by the store itself are the display windows which line the entire ground-floor frontage of the building on broadway and on thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth streets. here merchandise is arranged by master window dressers under the general direction of the advertising department, for if the front windows of a house such as this are not advertising, what, then, is? especially when the art of window dressing has come in recent years to be a finely developed art of its own. for many years before it left fourteenth street macy's had a fame not merely nation-wide but fairly world-wide for its window displays--we already have referred to the wondrous christmas pageants that it formerly held as a part of them. in this it was again a pioneer, blazing a new commercial path for its competitors to follow. because window display is recognized as advertising, the ceaseless work of the master window dressers upon the outer rim of the macy store comes under the direct supervision of the advertising department which in turn reports direct to no less an authority than the triple partnership itself. publicity is the great right-arm of the super-store of the america of today. publicity not in one channel, but in a thousand. macy's not only helps to dominate the advertising pages of the newspapers of new york and a good many miles round about it, its red star not only gleams in herald square, but in these very recent days upon the high-set electric hoardings of times square that blaze forth far into the night; it finds its way into the public thought here and there and everywhere. and yet, with due appreciation of every other medium of publicity, the street window of the store still remains one of the most important phases of its appeal to possible patrons. its displays are scheduled long in advance; are devised as carefully as the decoration of a home might be, or, better still, as urban or pogany would plan the stage-settings of a scene in the metropolitan or at any one of the various "follies" that one finds just north of the opera house. a large staff of men is kept constantly at work dressing the windows, and this staff includes the carpenters, paper-hangers, painters and electricians who are needed to help prepare the special exhibits. under the floor of the window next the principal entrance on thirty-fourth street there is a tank, which is used when a pool of water is required to carry out some scenic effect. it is capable of floating a canoe to suggest the joys of camping and the need of going to macy's for one's vacation requisites--as well as for use in other capacities. known in the store as the "parlor window" it has been made to represent pretty nearly everything from milady's bedroom to a glorified carpenter shop. window displays are regarded by macy's as an important auxiliary to newspaper announcements. very recently, during the few weeks before christmas, a sale of overcoats was advertised. all the windows were then dressed with christmas merchandise, but from one of them this was all removed and the sale overcoats substituted. for one day only. for upon the very next one the christmas window was returned to its holly and mistletoe flavor. here is a pretty direct indication of the store's attitude towards its immensely valuable windows--if you do not consider them valuable inquire the price of the advertising signs in the herald square neighborhood. i asked its advertising manager if, in his opinion, the window space would not bring better returns if it were devoted to direct selling, instead of mere indirect selling through display. i had in the back of my mind some of the great paris emporiums who think so little of window- and so much of selling-space that on bright warm days they spread some of their notions and novelty-counters right out upon the broad sidewalks of the boulevards. "no," said he, "decidedly no. to be able to show one's goods to the multitudes that pass these windows nearly every hour of the day is an asset that cannot be overestimated." this is neither the time nor the place to go into the ethics or the fine principles of the most recently developed of american professions--advertising; the salesmanship of goods and of ideas not so much by the merchandise itself as by the representation of it. neither is it the place to review the vast position that the modern department store has taken in the development of modern advertising of every sort: newspapers, magazines, bill-boards, electric signs, other forms of display as well. there are folk who say that if it were not for the department-store advertising we should not have had the fully developed metropolitan newspaper of today; while, on the other hand, some of the larger merchants are not reluctant in saying that our modern metropolitan newspapers are the chief causes that have made the department-store as we know it in new york and other large cities of the united states possible. be these things as they may, the fact does remain, however, solid and indisputable, that the co-operation between these two groups of interests has been more than profitable to their patrons, to say nothing of themselves. and not the least of the contributing causes to such profits is the fundamental honesty of the advertisements. not so very many years ago the measure of integrity in advertising was, to speak charitably, a variable one. when they talked about them in print merchants were very likely to become overenthusiastic about their goods. modesty was flung to the four winds. printers' ink seemed to be taken as an automatic absolution for exaggeration--and oftimes absolute mis-statement--and, strangely enough, the public appeared to fall in with the idea. more often than not the merchant "got away with it"--or, if not, made good with bad grace, in which case the customer was satisfied. he had to be. but not so with macy's. early in its history an advertising policy was formulated that has endured to the present and will continue to endure. it is the house's stoutly expressed belief that there is no possible excuse whatsoever for misrepresentation and, following this out, it is its invariable rule to stand back of its advertising, to the last ditch. to this end it has inculcated such a spirit of conservatism into its advertising department that the superlative is eliminated and forbidden in describing macy goods. "we may think that these articles are the best, or the most beautiful, or the greatest bargain, but we can't absolutely be sure of it." that is its attitude. the only possible criticism is the same that one applies to the man who stands so straight that he leans backward. is the system flawless? of course not--no system is. not many weeks ago an incident occurred that shows how macy's may slip up--and then make good; it put out a small newspaper advertisement featuring coats for small boys at $ . . these were advertised as "wool chinchilla" and so potent was the appeal of the notice that by ten o'clock the entire stock of nine hundred coats was gone. then one of the store executives discovered that the coats were not _all wool_ and things began to hum. "never said that they were all wool," the responsible sub-executive cornered. "people ought to know that they can't buy an all-wool coat for that money." that made no difference with the big boss. patiently and firmly he explained that in a macy advertisement "wool" means "all-wool" except where it is clearly specified that it contains cotton. another advertisement was inserted in the newspapers the following day. it explained and apologized for the mis-statement and said, "we would deem it a favor if our customers would bring in these coats and accept a return of their money." out of the nine hundred coats sold one was brought back for credit, while another was brought in by a customer who wanted to keep the coat but thought that she might get a rebate. she didn't. macy's may lean over backward but it doesn't drag on the ground--an instance of which is contained in the following: christmas candy for sunday schools was advertised in a number of new york newspapers at the very low price of $ . for one hundred pounds. in one newspaper three pieces of type fell out of the form with the result that the advertisement went to press quoting a hundred-weight of candy at forty-four cents! it was patent that it was a typographical error, for the decimal point, as well as the dollar mark and the figure was gone and there was a blank space where the types were missing. three would-be customers tried, however, to hold the store accountable for the very obvious error. and macy's balked! the lowest-in-the-city-prices policy keeps the advertising department on its toes continually. other stores' prices must be anticipated wherever it is humanly possible, which means constant revisions of the copy. occasionally a price duel develops that becomes spectacular in the extreme. in a recent memorable one "hard water soap" figured as the _casus belli_. macy patrons know their right now to expect lowest prices, so when another store began to cut macy's advertised prices on this commodity, macy's had to return in suite. whereupon the other store cut under macy's again; and macy's in turn went its competitor one better. it then became a merry game of parry and thrust until, one fine day, macy's was selling twelve dozen cakes of hard water soap for the inconsiderable sum of one copper cent. one came near godliness for a small amount that day. the public profited hugely, but macy's lived up to its policy. as a rule advertisements originate with the department managers. keeping in mind that they are the buyers, the merchants responsible for the moving of their stock, it can be seen that they know best the goods that ought to be featured. the value of the space used is charged against their departments, so that their requisitions are governed accordingly. the advertising manager is a large factor, however, in the allotment of space--not only the clearing-house, but practically the court of last resort--concerning the rival claims by the department manager for space upon a given day. after all, there is a limit to the size of a newspaper page. when a certain line of goods is about to be advertised, the comparison department is notified and the articles are "shopped." that is, one or more of the expert shopping staff is given the task of ascertaining what other stores are charging for the same things so that it may be made sure that the macy price will be lower. the information then is passed on to the copy writing staff and samples of the goods are studied for selling points. while the description is being written, one of the art staff makes a drawing, either in the nature of a design or illustration, and when these are completed the advertisement is set in type. this, bear in mind, is only for one item. macy advertisements, more often than not, cover an entire newspaper page and are made up of many separate items, each of which goes through practically the same process of creation. their final collection and arrangement on the page are made by an advertising expert of skill and taste and from this fact, combined with the distinctive type faces that are commonly used, one might be reasonably sure of identifying a macy advertisement even if the store name were to be entirely omitted. in addition to window display, newspaper and magazine announcements, it is the concern of the advertising department to provide the store with its sign cards and special-price tickets. these are all a part of the big problem of letting the public know about macy goods. yet above and beyond all of these things, the store's supreme advertisement, if you please, is the establishment itself, the service that it strives so sincerely to give. to use the current phrase of expert publicity men, the store, its salespeople and its prices must _sell_ macy's to the outside world. outside advertising is but supplementary to this; but a single horse in a team of four. with this fact firmly fixed in your mind, consider next the unbending problem of making the salesforce into a genuine salesforce; one that constantly and continually backs up the force of the printed advertisement by the skill of its real salesmanship. when we come in another chapter to consider the macy family as a whole we shall see in some detail its remarkable educational and training opportunities. these have been brought to bear directly upon the creation, not only of thoroughness and accuracy on the part of the clerk, but for courtesy and persuasiveness and enthusiasm as well--the things that make the structure of morale; that quality that we first began to know and to understand as such in the days of the great war. "if you are playing a game, such as tennis, or bridge, or baseball or what-not," said one of the department managers to his sales staff but a few mornings ago, "you are out to beat your best friend; if you can, do it fairly and squarely, otherwise never. the enjoyment you derive from a game depends on the spirit with which you play it. when you begin to regard business in a similar light, playing it as a game in a sportsmanlike manner, then you will begin to get fun out of it--you will begin to make progress." after the preliminary training which every salesclerk receives, he or she is assigned to a department. thenceforward a good deal depends on personal initiative; for in dealing with customers no small part of the store's reputation for efficiency and courtesy depends upon the individual clerk. a salesperson may become not only a distinct asset to the house, but may develop a personal clientele through especially intelligent and courteous attention to the customers' wishes. and this, owing to the system of allowing a bonus on sales above a certain fixed quota, and a commission on sales up to that quota, may make it financially very much worth while to him or her. salesmanship in a store as large as macy's must of necessity include the knowledge of considerable detail in the making out of sales slips, procedure with regard to c. o. d. deliveries, depositors' accounts, exchanges and the like. this knowledge is a fundamental part of each salesperson's equipment. his or her efficiency must come, however, from a far wider development of the possibilities of the salesmanship, from the "playing of the game," as the department manager put it but a moment ago--the understanding use of courtesy, merchandise knowledge, helpfulness. such efficiency pays. the macy folk who come to use it regularly soon find themselves advancing to responsible and highly-paid positions. it is interesting to follow the career of a sales slip from the time it is made out--when the sale is made--until the time that it ceases to function. here is one of the most important items in the mechanism of a large retail store. it is an essential unit of a carefully developed system to keep track of sales, from the minute that they are made until they are finally delivered and audited. the sales slip--the macy clerk has three different ones of them in all--is made in three distinct parts--original, duplicate and triplicate. each of these is divided into several parts; each of which in turn is destined for separate hands. the packer of the merchandise gets one part, which eventually goes to the customer, a second to the cashier, the third the clerk retains. eventually these last two come together once again in the auditing department and are checked, the one against the other; after which one goes into the archives of the bureau of investigation, in case that there is any further question about the details of the transaction. this one example of the infinite detail in the conduct of a great store is a slight indication of the responsibility upon the shoulders of not only its managers but the rank and file of its salesforce as well. a single error in the making out of a sales slip may easily result in expensive and harassing complications all the way along the line. a system of transfer books enables the store's customer to make purchases in its various departments with the least possible waiting. the goods and prices are entered in a small book which is given the customer at the time of the first purchase of the day. while the customer is making his or her other purchases they are being sent to the wrapping room where they are held in a growing group until the customer presents the book to the cashier at the transfer desk on the main floor, pays the total and, a few minutes later, receives a neat package in which all of the items are wrapped together; or else it is sent to any designated address. enough, for the moment, of detail. some of it is necessary to a proper understanding of the workings of this great machine of modern business, but too much of it may easily bore you. instead, quickly turn your attention to a macy feature dear to the heart of the average shopper--male or deadlier. here is the familiar, the time-honored "special sale." in holding these macy does not lay claim to originality, except perhaps in the amount of merchandising involved and the spectacularly low prices. sales are in a large measure opportunities for the store as well as for the customer. it takes a goodly amount of merchandise from a manufacturer who for some reason offers a large concession in price and passes on its advantage to its customers. this is not generosity. it is good business. it is sound business. it is progressive business. take a sale of laundry soap that went on within the great store about a year ago. the soap was made in this country and contracted for by the city of paris, upon a dollar basis. exchange slumped, and with francs worth only a fraction of their former value, paris couldn't afford to take it. macy's offer for it was accepted and so marked was the reduction at which it was offered to the public that inside of two weeks the big store had sold twenty-two carloads of it. figuring from the fact that a carload comprised six hundred cases, the turnover amounted to , cases; or, counting a hundred bars to a case, , pieces of soap! the most successful sale of winter underwear that macy's ever held took place during a very warm week in july, a twelvemonth before the laundry soap episode. a large manufacturer wanted to unload his stock and macy's bought it for cash. add to these facts the consideration that the goods were away out of season and you can readily see how it was possible to buy the goods at a very low price. relying upon the public's ability to judge values, in and out of season, the store launched the sale--and launched it successfully. it was like a scene out of _alice in wonderland_ to see the crowds of men and women with perspiration rolling down their foreheads buying woolen "undies" against the needs of winter. americans do like to be forehanded. macy's ability to buy and sell huge quantities of merchandise is demonstrated through these sales. very recently over seven thousand of a particular leather traveling bag were sold in less than four weeks, at an aggregate price of nearly $ , . in one day seven hundred vacuum cleaners were sold for $ . each. this list might be continued indefinitely; for not only has macy's proved that it pays to advertise but that it pays to follow the macy advertisements. down in the basement of this great mart of herald square there is a corner not often shown to the outer world, from which there constantly emerge noises which blend and combine to give the effect of a staccato rumble. thud, thud, t-h-u-u-d, thud, thudity, thud, thud. then a sound of air, as in a gargantuan sigh. thudity, thud, and so on, _ad infinitum_. these sounds seemingly are quite unending. if your curiosity draws you toward the door from which these sounds emerge and you finally are permitted to open it and go within, you will find a company of young women sitting along both sides of three sets of moving belts, quickly picking brass cylinders from the belts as they pass them. except for the fact that there is another tube room on the fourth floor (for the upper floor selling departments) this basement place might truly be called the heart of the store, for it is these brass cylinders that contain the life-blood of the business, the cash which the customers pay for their purchases. call the tube room the pulse of the store and the analogy is better--certainly their throbbing is a close index of its condition. alert cashiers pick up the carriers from the upper belt as they pass, deftly make the required change, and drop them to the lower belt, on which they are conveyed to other young women who despatch them to the departments whence they came. this continues for approximately eight hours each working day. the cash carriers do considerable traveling in the course of a year. one of them might easily go from the new bagdad to the old. yes, it might. if you still scoff let us look at the system together and do a little figuring upon our own account. throughout the store there are two hundred and fifty cash stations--the outer terminals of the line at one of whose common hearts we now stand. each of these stations is connected with one or the other of the common hearts by two separate lines of tubing, one for sending and the other for receiving the carriers. there is a total of , feet of this tubing, or nearly twenty-four miles. five thousand cash carriers are in use and the average number of round-trips made per day by all of them is , . each round-trip averages two hundred and fifty feet. the average distance traveled each day by this host of travelers then comes to the astonishing total of , , feet-- , miles. now to your atlases and find how far the new bagdad is from the old. and if that distance does not give you pause, consider that the peak-load of the system was carried on a day when its mileage ran to , --an equivalent of one-half the distance around the world--in a little over eight hours. truly it would seem that money goes far at macy's. v. distributing the goods when milady of manhattan finishes her purchases in macy's, snaps her purse together once again and goes out of the store, the transaction is ended, at least as far as she herself is concerned. but not so for macy's. particularly not so when she has given orders that the goods be "sent," either to her own home or to the home of some friend. in such cases the largest part of the store's responsibility still is ahead of it. it must see to it that the package--or packages--shall be carried to the proper destination, quickly, promptly, correctly. which means that the great business machine of herald square has another great function to perform. there is, in the sub-basement of the herald square store, where the greatest portion of its own great transportation system is situated, an ancient two-wheeled cart, somewhat faded and battered, yet still a red delivery wagon and showing clearly the name of the house it served, r. h. macy & company. it is a treasured relic of other days, which now and then again, at great intervals, is shown to the populace in the all-too-rare parades of the huge wagon equipment of the store today. the gentleman who gives the lecture which accompanies any public showing of this ancient equipage is mr. james woods, who, as we have already seen, has been with the store for nearly half a century and who has risen in its service to the important post of assistant superintendent of the delivery department. mr. woods regards the cart with tender affection, since it was he who once was the human horse who strode between its shafts. that was back in , long years before the store had moved north from the once tree-shaded fourteenth street. mr. macy, himself, was still very much in charge of the enterprise and was passing proud of his delivery "fleet"--consisting of three horse-drawn wagons, and young jimmie woods with the cart. a good many prosperous new yorkers then had their residences within a dozen blocks or less of the old store, and young jimmie's legs--and the cart--could and did serve them, easily and expeditiously. that was almost the beginning of the macy delivery department. in fact it had been but five years before that mr. macy had acquired the first horse-drawn rig for this purpose. from that beginning the growth was steady although slow. ten years after mr. woods first came to it--in --there were but fifteen wagons. in , when the great trek was made north to herald square, there were a hundred. today there are more than two hundred and fifty, of which by far the larger number are motor driven. these last range all the way from the big five-ton motor trucks which, as we shall presently see, are used primarily for carrying merchandise between the store and its outlying distributing stations, down to the small one-ton truck, which is used at its greatest advantage in city street distribution. and an astonishing number of horse-drawn vehicles remain. that is, astonishing to the uninitiated layman, who perhaps has been led to believe that the motor truck in this, its heyday of perfection, could hardly be surpassed for any form of carrying. as a matter of fact, however, the department-stores as well as the express companies, skilled in the multiple distribution of small packages, have, after a careful and intensive study of the motor trucks--which has resulted in their ordering many, many hundreds of them for certain of their necessities--discovered that for certain forms of delivery the horse and wagon still remains unsurpassed. the time that a delivery wagon remains standing becomes an economic factor in its use. if it moved all the time it undoubtedly would be as cheap and certainly more efficient to use a small automobile truck. but when there are fairly lengthy stops and close together, where perhaps the vehicle is idle for four minutes for every one that it is actually in operation, the factor of having an expensive machine idle as against an inexpensive one comes into play. business organizations reckon these things not alone from sentiment, but from hard-headed facts. yet they are not entirely free from sentiment, even in such seemingly purely commercial matters as delivery. the very condition and upkeep of the vehicles of a high-grade department-store show this. "spic-and-span" is hardly the phrase by which to describe them. fresh paint and gold striping--the smooth sides so cleaned and polished, that one might see his face reflected mirror-like upon them, the horses to the last state of perfection--this is the macy standard of delivery. a macy truck and wagon is designed to be one of the store's best advertisements. a skillful trucking contractor from the lower west side of new york went to a department-store owner a dozen years or more ago and said: "mr. a----, after a little study of your delivery service, i am convinced that if you would turn it over to me, i could save you more than fifty per cent. in its operation." mr. a---- was a pretty hard-headed business man, "hard-boiled" is the word that might well be used to describe him. he turned quickly to the contractor. "you interest me," said he. "how would you propose to do it?" "at the outset, by making the wagon equipment a little less elaborate. it could be just as efficient without so much varnish and brass and gold-stripe." mr. a---- shook his head negatively. "oh, no," he said, "we know that much ourselves. if we were to do that, we should lose fifty per cent. of our advertisement upon the streets of new york." we have left milady's package where she left it, in the hands of the salesclerk who sold it to her. the purchaser does not see it thereafter, not at least until it has come to her home. with an astonishing celerity and according to a carefully set-down program and practice it is wrapped right within the floor upon which the selling department is situated, and then dropped into a chute which leads with a straight, swift run into that nether world of macy's--the basement headquarters of the delivery department. in reality this chute is a carrier, so designed as to carry the small individual packages with safety and order, as well as with celerity. there are fourteen of these conveyors, coming down from all the selling floors save that of furniture which has its own special delivery organization on the ninth floor. together they pour their almost constant stream of merchandise upon the so-called "revolving-ring" in the very center of the basement floor. this "revolving-ring," in purpose very much like the great and slowly revolving disc-like wooden wheels used in the freight stations of the express companies for a similar service, is, in reality, much larger than they. it is a "square-ring"--if i may use that paradoxical phrase--built of four slowly moving conveyor belts upon which a package may travel an indefinite number of round-trips. at various points upon the outer edge of this moving square the conveyor chutes drop their merchandise. near the center are the wide-open mouths of other conveyors, which lead to distant corners of the basement. the nimble-fingered and nimble-witted young men who stand within the "revolving-ring" feed the packages from it into these last conveyors. to each individual package is affixed a duplicate portion of the leaf of the salesbook. on it the salesclerk has written, or printed, the address to which the merchandise is to go, the cost, whether or not it is collect on delivery (known hereafter in this telling as c. o. d.) and other essential information. it is the addresses, however, which attract the eyes of the genii of the "revolving-ring." in their minds these fall into four great categories: city, meaning those portions of manhattan island south of seventy-second street on the east side and ninety-ninth street on the west; harlem and the bronx, the incorporated city of new york north of those two streets; brooklyn and new jersey--self-explanatory; and suburban: all the rest of the territory within the far-flung limits of macy's own generously wide delivery service. while for those points that are unfortunate enough to lie just outside of it--boston or philadelphia or kamchatka or manila (there hardly is an address to stagger the macy delivery department)--the packages go direct to the shipping room, in its own corner of the basement. here these last are checked and wrapped for long-distance shipment. they are checked against the payment or the non-payment of transportation charges; the store has very definite rules of its own. a paid purchase of but $ . is entitled to free delivery within any of the eastern states, of $ and over to any of the middle states as well, of $ and over to any corner of the whole united states. freight and express prepayments are arranged upon a somewhat similar basis. the majority of the long-distance shipments go by parcel post, however. still, in the course of a twelvemonth, there are enough to go both by express and freight to make a pretty considerable transportation bill in themselves. again we have neglected that precious package of milady's. it may be only an extra pair of corset-laces--in which case the saleswoman must have suggested that madam herself transport it to her habitat--or it may be an eight or ten-yard piece of heavy silk for her new evening gown, or the evening gown itself. in any case it receives the same care and attention. we have already seen how it is packed, sent through the conveyor-chute down into the basement and then upon the "revolving-ring" before the nimble eyes of the men with nimble hands and wits as well. milady lives in west one hundred and fourth street. the sorter's eyes catch that much from the address slip, torn originally from the salesclerk's book and pasted upon the package's outer wrappings. "harlem" his mind reports back to his eyes. into the chute-entrance labeled "harlem and the bronx" goes the package. "harlem and the bronx" is a sizable room for itself. the further end of the second conveyor to receive milady's precious package rests upon a table in its very center. roundabout the table are small compartments or bins, each about the size of a small packing case; each numbered and corresponding to a definite wagon route or run. run no. (the number is purely fictitious) takes in west one hundred and fourth street. into compartment no. goes milady's packages. but not, of course, until the clerical young man technically known as the sheet-writer has made a record of it. into his records, also, go all the other packages destined that day for that particular room. if there should be, as sometimes happens, an overplus of packages for the single run, then it is the business of one of the assistant superintendents of delivery to meet the emergency either by stretching momentarily the runs of the adjoining routes or by sending a special wagon up from the main store. experience and judgment must cut the cloth to fit the case. under any ordinary procedure milady's package will go out early in the morning of the day following her purchase. that, at least, is the store's ordinary guarantee of delivery. as a matter of fact, it does far better than this. on ordinary days, when weather and street conditions in manhattan have not gone in conditions of near-impassability, there are at least two regular deliveries to every part of the island south of one hundred and fifty-fifth street, with a single one at least to every other part of manhattan, brooklyn and the bronx, to say nothing of the downtown portions of jersey city and hoboken. easily said, this thing. but when one comes to realize how tremendously widespread the metropolitan district of greater new york is these days, the performance of it becomes a transportation marvel, a masterpiece of organization. i shall not bore you with a description of the printed forms, the checks and counter checks that accompany the delivery of milady's package. it is enough to say that they are both complete and necessary. the complications of c. o. d. add greatly to their perplexities. for, discourage it as they may and do, the department-store owners of new york never have been able to wean milady from the joys of this method of shopping. when she says "c. o. d." in macy's the salesclerk immediately and courteously replies: "have you tried having a depositor's account, madam?" a good many of them have, and all who have have liked the method. yet the c. o. d. still has its great appeal. and out of all the deliveries from the big store in herald square more than half of them are collect-on-delivery. this means, in turn, a good deal of complication for the delivery department. its drivers have to be cashiers, in miniature. when they report at the main store at half-past seven in the morning, each is furnished with five dollars in change; a sum which is doubled in the case of the suburban drivers. moreover, for the correct handling of the forms, a double amount of care and understanding is required. one does not wonder that the department-store proprietors discourage the c. o. d. yet it all requires a high type of wagon representative. hardly less than the salesclerk does the wagon driver of the store have it in his power to make or lose friends for his house. his is no small opportunity for real salesmanship. the big stores realize this, and select these men with great care and discernment. they know that the man who shouts "macy's" up the areaway or elevator-shaft once or twice a week is apt to become the same sort of good family friend and ally as the iceman or the butcher's boy. the man knows that, too: particularly in the vicinity of christmas week. his own trials are many and varied. apartment house superintendents and janitors, with prejudices of their own, are rarely co-operative, generally obstructive, in fact. some people--even store patrons--are naturally mean. they take out all their meanness upon the department-store man who, because of his very position, is unable to strike back. yet the job has its compensations, aside from the warm remembrances of the holiday season. people, in the main, are decent after all. if mrs. jinks, who lives in albemarle road, flatbush, is out at the matinee or the movies for the afternoon, mrs. blinks, who lives next door, will take in her packages. the macy man has been long enough on the route to know that by this time. such knowledge is a part of his stock in trade. he must not only know the regular patrons of the store, but all of their neighbors. while by the correct and courteous handling of both he may not only retain trade for it but bring new customers to its doors. let us now suppose that milady does not live in either manhattan, brooklyn or the bronx, but in one of those smart suburbs: forest hills, new rochelle, englewood or the oranges, to pick four or five out of many. she still is well within the limits of macy's own delivery service. if she lives in the first of these--forest hills--she will be served, not direct from the herald square establishment, but from the little long island community of queens. fifteen wagon and motor truck routes run from the macy sub-station there, which in turn is fed by the merchandise coming out over the great queensborough bridge, each evening, on heavy five-ton trucks. and, to go back even further, these have been filled from the super-sized compartments at the end of the conveyor-chute marked "suburban." similarly, if she dwell in new rochelle, she will be served by one of the fifteen motor trucks running out from the sub-station at woodlawn, remembered by travelers upon the trains to boston chiefly as the place of the enormous cemetery. it serves the great suburban territory north of the direct delivery routes out from the main store--a line drawn through kingsbridge and pelham avenue--out as far as ossining, mt. kisco and stamford. englewood and the new jersey territory roundabout are served by macy's hackensack sub-station, with nine more routes; while the oranges, mighty newark, montclair and that immediate vicinage draws its merchandise through a fourth sub-station, right in the heart of newark, itself, and operating ten regular motor truck routes. the fifth and last all-the-year sub-station is at west new brighton, staten island. it serves that far-flung and least populated of new york's five boroughs, richmond. in the summer months another sub-station is added to the list, at seabright, down on the new jersey coast, and serving all those populous resorts from the atlantic highlands on the north to spring lake on the south. this is an expensive feature of macy service, and one for which the store receives no extra compensation. it is one of the many expensive things that must be charged to profit-and-loss or the somewhat indefinite "_overhead_"--indefinite enough when one comes to consider its ramifications, but always fairly definite in its drain upon the daily financial balances of the store. at each of these sub-stations there are, in addition to the fairly obvious necessary facilities for re-sorting the merchandise, complete garage facilities for the wagons and trucks running out from them; these, of course, are in addition to the store's main stables and garages in west nineteenth street and also in west thirty-eighth, manhattan. together all of these form a very considerable fleet upon wheels, with a personnel in keeping. for the delivery routes alone, and taking no account of the sizable force employed in the upkeep of vehicles and horses, there are employed, in the city service of the store, one hundred and ninety drivers and chauffeurs, with one hundred and eighty-six helpers, and in the suburban service, seventy-four drivers and eighty-six helpers. through the hands of these there pours a constant and a terrific stream of merchandise. the conveying system in the basement of the herald square store has a generous maximum carrying capacity of five thousand packages an hour--a capacity which sometimes is actually reached toward the close of an exceptionally busy day, say toward the end of the pre-christmas season. twenty-five thousand packages is an average day's work for that basement room; upon occasion it has gone well over forty-one thousand. it should be borne in mind, moreover, that a package does not always represent a single purchase; in fact, it rarely does. inside of one assembled package--generally assembled, as we saw in a previous chapter, at the store's transfer desk--there may be all the way from two to ten separate parcels. you may take your own guess as to the average number. here, then, is the great and complicated system in its simplest form. its ramifications are many and astonishing. for instance, milady is apt at times to change her mind. yes, she is. and send the package back. even though not as often in macy's as in the charge account stores. here is another decided benefit in the cash system--not alone to the store, but, because of its habit of passing on its economies, to its patrons as well. yet in the course of a year a considerable number of packages must come back. despite a thorough educational system and constant oversight and admonition there is bound to be a percentage of incorrect address slips. these and other causes produce a certain definite return flow of merchandise; which must have its own forms and safeguards, for the protection both of the store and its customer. they all make detail, but extremely necessary detail. in the basement there is a store room whose broad shelves hold a variety of merchandise, bought and paid for, but never delivered. the store makes at least two attempts to deliver every article given to its delivery department. that department is unusually clever with telephone books, club lists and other less used avenues of finding recalcitrant addresses. but there come times when even its resourcefulness is entirely baffled. then the undelivered goods must go to the store room until some properly accredited human being comes up somewhere, sometime to demand them. in an astonishing number of cases the some one does not come up sometime or somewhere. in such a case after a fair length of time the goods themselves go back to stock. but the record of the transaction stays accessible in the store's files, so that its bureau of investigation, at any future time, may order a duplicate of the lost shipment out of the stock--out of the open market if the stock then fails to hold it--in order that macy's may keep full faith with its patrons. such a holdover is, of course, to be entirely distinguished from those which are held in advance of delivery; in certain cases up to thirty days without advance payment, in others up to sixty upon partial payment and in still others up to six months after full payment. this last, however, is a merchandising procedure quite common to most retail establishments. one feature of the delivery department remains for our consideration; the branch of it which is situated upon the ninth floor and which, oddly enough, handles the heaviest merchandise shipped out of the store--furniture. there are, of course, heavy shipments that go out of the basements--hundreds of them on an average that are entirely too heavy for the conveyor-chutes and the "revolving-ring." a notable one of these is an electric washing-machine, which, crated, will weigh slightly in excess of two hundred pounds. shipments such as these go to the basement on hand trucks and by the freight elevators. there they are boxed and crated; often a considerable job. as a rule the expert packers of the delivery department can put even a fairly sizable or unwieldy purchase into boxing within twelve or fifteen minutes; an elaborate and fragile bit of statuary has been known to take a full hour and a half before it was safely prepared for wagon shipment. likewise the furniture craters upon the ninth floor oftimes find their job a sizable one indeed. the boxing of a divan or a dining-room table is no easy task whatsoever. and in cases where the delivery is to be made within the limits of macy service it is often avoided entirely. the freight elevators of the store are of the largest size ever designed; so big that a heavy motor truck is no particular strain upon their individual capacity. one of these trucks can be and is driven straight to and from the ninth floor. after it has reached the department the placing of fine furniture in its cavernous interior is merely a nicety of planning and arrangement, a skillful use of ropes and blankets and padding. the truck may run to any point within forty or fifty miles of the store at less cost than crating; even though crating be done at cost, itself. so spread the tentacles of macy's, those long arms of distribution that keep the store from ever being a merely abstract thing. the bright red and yellow wagons and trucks--each bearing its good-luck symbol of the red star--carry herald square to the far limits of a far-flung city. the men who ride them are upon the outposts of salesmanship. yet through system and through organization they are forever closely connected with it. the blood that courses through your finger-tips comes straight from your heart. the life-blood of understanding, of enthusiasm, of morale, that macy's outriders bring with them is the life-blood of the humanized machine that functions so steadily there in the heart of manhattan. vi. the macy family in the bazaars of ancient bagdad, the human factor was not only the great but the sole dominating influence. the ancient bagdadians, including those commuters and suburbanites, far and near, who came cameling into town at more or less frequent intervals, did business, not with a machine, not with a system, but with men. which, being freely translated, meant bargaining. they not merely bargained, but haggled, and haggled at great length. prices? there were none. the price was what you made it--you and the merchant with whom you finally came to agreement; if finally you did come to agreement. in the great bazaars of the modern bagdad one does not need to bargain or to haggle. one is doing business primarily with a system. prices are fixed, and firmly fixed. this is so generally understood and accepted a rule today that it would be a mere waste of time to discuss it at further length, save possibly to recall once again the large part which rowland hussey macy and the men who followed him played in giving a gibraltar-like firmness to this solid modern business principle. yet even in these same modern, scientifically organized bazaars of today, the system rarely ever can be better than the men who direct it. four thousand years of business progress between the two bagdads have not taken from man his god-given power to make or break the best of systems. and macy's, with its own business system organized, carefully developed and upbuilded through sixty-three long years, is still dependent to no little degree upon the faith and loyalty and interest of its men and women; that same thing which in the days of the war just past we first learned to know by that new name--morale. under the sign of the red star there are at all times these days not less than five thousand workers; in the christmas season this pay-roll list runs quickly to seven thousand or over. then it is that the macy family takes its most impressive dimensions. seven thousand souls! it is the population of a good sized town! it is four good regiments--it is the new york hippodrome with every one of its seats filled and eighteen hundred folk left standing up! yet even the all-the-year minimum of five thousand men and women--roughly speaking, one-third men and two-thirds women--is an impressive array. it is a human force which only gains impressiveness when one finds that all but three hundred of it are employed beneath a single roof. the small outside group chiefly comprises those in the delivery stations. to bring action, foresight, co-operation, correlation--and finally morale--into such a force is a thing not gained by merely talking or thinking about it, but by long study, experimentation and great continued effort. which means, in turn, that macy's, among several other things, is a responsibility. for, as we shall presently see, there are any number of problems in addition to those of buying and selling; problems in the solving of which unceasing demands are made upon the store's time, money and heart. it is, in the last analysis a matter of mere good business at that. yet at macy's it has been considerably more. and the store's satisfaction in realizing that it was a very early and a very advanced pioneer in developing personnel--and morale--as necessary factors in modern merchandising is a very large one indeed. a machine or a family--or a department-store--is only as good as its component parts, and by the fact that there is a strict interdependence between the whole and its parts, the success of macy's must mean that the rank and file of its employees maintain a high average of intelligence, initiative and loyalty. that these qualities are successfully co-ordinated in macy's is due to real leadership, and it is to this same leadership that we may look for the basis of the store's morale. little things indicate. and indicate clearly. here on the wall of the passageway at the head of the main employee's stair is a placard which reads: "once each month three prizes are given to the employees who make the best suggestions for the betterment of store service or conditions. don't hesitate to try for a prize, even if your suggestion does not appear important. we need your ideas and like to have as many as possible presented each month. write plainly and drop your suggestions in the boxes furnished for this purpose. the first prize is $ . , the second $ . , and the third $ . ." here is only a single one of the many evidences of macy co-operation with the employees. yet it illustrates clearly the house's policy of making its workers feel an interest in and beyond the mere amount of money that they draw at the end of the week. not a few of these prizes are awarded for suggestions as to procedure in technical matters relating to the details of the business. some of them result in the saving of time--and consequently money--and others in the improvement of working conditions. for example: ten dollars was awarded to the man who suggested that the doors of fitting-rooms be equipped with signals to show whether or not they are occupied; five dollars went to the one who made the suggestion that the fire-axe and hook standing in the corner of the customers' stairway be placed on the wall in a suitable case so that children could not play with them; two dollars to her who advanced the very reasonable idea that a scratch-pad in the 'phone booths would prevent memoranda and art manifestations being made upon the walls. here are a few suggestions that were proffered and acted upon. the entire list runs to a considerable length. there is another notice upon the big bulletin board at the head of the employees' stairs--a sort of town-crier affair with temporary and permanent notices of interest to the store's workers--which tells the working force that when vacancies occur within the big store they will be promptly posted on this and other bulletin boards. the workers are advised to apply for any position which they may feel they are competent to fill. ambition is not curbed in macy's. on the contrary, it is stimulated to every possible extent. the employee is restricted only by his own limitations, if he has them. it is a firmly-fixed house policy to promote, wherever it is at all possible, from its own ranks. among its high-salaried men and women are not a few who have worked their way up from the bottom. in fact, among these six or eight of the best paid men in the store, is one who boasts that he first came to new york fifteen years ago, with but a suitcase and eleven dollars in his pocket. the employment department must have been very much on the job when it hired this man. it generally is very much on its job. obviously, the hiring of workers for an enterprise as huge as macy's cannot be conducted on any hit-and-miss plan. we have gone far enough with the store in these pages to see that hit-and-miss does not figure at any time or place in its varied functionings--and nowhere less than in its employment department. the hiring of new workers for the store is indeed a branch of the business machine that receives constant and great care and systematic attention. a store must employ the right sort of people in order to be a good store. this is fairly axiomatic these days. these workers are gathered in a variety of ways--by volunteer applications, by newspaper advertisements (in new york and outside of it), by outside free employment agencies, by circular appeals generally to educational institutions, and, best of all, through the solicitation of its regular employees. there is no appeal for a worker that, in my opinion, can compare with the suggestion made by an employee that the place of his or her employment is a good place for his or her friends, as well. i am warmly concurred with in this opinion by the store's employment manager, a big, upstanding man, who in his harvard days was a famous football player. the rules of that fine game he has brought to the understanding of his present problem. "one of the most desirable class of applicants is that brought by our own employees," he says, frankly, "as in hiring these people we have a feeling of security; especially if they have been brought in by some of the old and most loyal employees. it has been our experience that such applicants enter more readily into the spirit of their work and develop more rapidly than those obtained from other sources. we advertise in the classified columns of the newspapers only when it is absolutely necessary. our regular daily advertisements keep the store constantly before the public eye--and generally that is enough. "during the recent war period, however, we had no scruples about advertising, as nearly every other line of endeavor was in the same boat as we. never before have the newspapers carried so much classified advertising. yet when all is said and done, besides the moral undesirability of this source of supply, we found it also very expensive indeed. "some people believe that the function of an employment department is merely to keep in touch with the labor market and engage employees," he continued. "this is erroneous. the duty of this employment department is to raise the standard of efficiency of the whole working force by the proper selection, placing, following up and promotion of employees and so bringing about a condition that will result in their rendering as nearly as possible one hundred per cent. service to the store. that is the real reason why employment departments such as this first came into existence. business some years ago awoke to the realization of the fact that its indiscriminate handling of the entire labor problem was causing a tremendous economic waste, not alone to the employee and to society, but to itself. it then began for the first time to deal with the problem of its personnel in a scientific and practical way." the market for workers--like pretty nearly every other sort of market--is, as we have just seen, subject to fluctuations; there are seasons when the employment manager--ranking as the store's fourth assistant general manager--must look sharply about him for the maintenance of its ranks, other seasons when long files of would-be workers present themselves each morning at his department doors. for the five or six years of the world war period the first set of conditions prevailed. it was difficult for any department-store, ranked by the washington authorities in war days as a non-essential industry, always to maintain its full working force, to say nothing of its morale. recently the pendulum has swung in the other direction. america is not exempt from the labor conditions which are prevailing in the other great nations of the world. and there are plenty of people who would work in macy's. yet the store has refused to use this situation as a club over its workers. throughout the darkest days of the business depression it told them that it had no intention either of reducing its force of workers (beyond the usual lay-off of extra christmas people) or of reducing their individual salaries. which was a considerable help to its _esprit de corps_. yet even in the hardest days of labor shortage macy's never ceased to be most particular as to the quality of its help. applicants for positions underneath its roof were scrutinized with great care to make sure as to their desirability as additions to the organization. and before they finally were accepted and turned over to the training school, they were examined, with as much thoroughness as if there were hundreds of others in the file behind them, from whom the store might pick and choose. all this is part and parcel of the definite management policy of the employment department, just as it is part of its policy to make sure that the prospective member of the macy family has more than one arrow to his or her quiver. alternate capabilities are assets not to be scorned. and there is an obvious store flexibility in being able to use its human units in a variety of endeavor that the management can hardly afford to ignore. and it does not. there is a function of the employment department of the modern business machine that macy's recognizes as second in importance only to that of engaging its workers. i am referring to that moment when they may leave its employ, either from choice or otherwise. if "otherwise"--in the colloquial phrasing of the store being "laid-off"--there is the greatest of care and discretion used. "remember the golden rule," says its general manager to his assistants, and says it again and again. "do unto others as you would have them do unto you. and remember that there is never a time when this golden rule is more necessary or applicable in business than in the moment of discharge." translated into the terms of hard fact this means that in macy's no buyer, no department head, no department manager has the power to dismiss one of his workers. he may recommend the "lay-off" but only the general manager himself may actually accomplish the act. in which case he first refers the case to one of his five assistants, for personal investigation and recommendation. when the saleswoman--or man, as the case may be--leaves of her own volition the matter becomes, in certain senses, more serious. why is she dissatisfied? are the conditions of labor more onerous at macy's than in the other stores of the city, the remuneration less satisfactory? macy's does not intend that either of these causes shall obtain beneath its roof. so the retiring employee, before she may leave its pay-roll, is carefully examined as to her reasons for going. the last impressions of the store must be quite as good as the earliest ones--even upon the minds of its workers. and a careful system of observation and of record has been upbuilded to make sure that this is being obtained; which may often lead to valuable opportunities for the correction of store system, particularly in the relationship between macy's and its employees. we come now face to face with the training department--another individual organization strong enough and important enough to demand as its head an officer of the rank and title of assistant general manager. but before we come to consider it in some of the many aspects of its workings--before we come to see how in these recent years education has come to be the hand-maiden of merchandising, let us consider the actual experience of a young woman who recently entered the employment of the store. she was a college woman--a good many of the store people are these days. the mass of young women who come trooping out of our colleges each june are apt to find their employment bents trending more or less to a common course and in great cycles. yesterday the cycle was teaching; the day before, literature or the sciences; today it is merchandising. the great department-stores of our metropolitan cities in america are, as we already know, today paying their executives and sub-executives salaries more than commensurate with the earnings of those in other lines of industry and well ahead of those in the learned professions. moreover, they have brought their hours of employment down to a point at least approaching those of other business organizations. their appeal thus has become measurably greater. and they are reaping the reward--in the attraction of a higher grade of executive young women. [illustration: the science of modern salesmanship education places the saleswoman of today at highest efficiency. a macy schoolroom] this young woman was of that type. and here is how she came to macy's--told in her own words: "not at all long, long ago, i went rather hesitatingly into the rooms labeled 'employment office' at macy's. 'hesitatingly' because, if you have ever gone around very much looking for a job, you know that 'welcome' is not always written on the door-mat that receives you. but it is at macy's--and a woman, who made me feel that she was my friend by the warmth of her smile, talked with me and after filling out the usual blanks i was told when to report for work. they were mighty decent, too, about trying to place me selling the kind of merchandise that _i_ wanted to sell--and that means a lot! "the monday morning that i came to work was, of course, rather hard--it's not easy to go into any strange and new place and be crazy about it right at first! there were a lot of us--all new girls--and it was fun to see what they did to us. we went from the employment office, where there is a good sign reading 'say "we" not "i" and "ours" not "my",' to our locker room (which, by the way, is the best of any of the places i have ever worked in) and then up to the training department for a little first time; after which they sent us to our respective departments. we felt rather like ping-pong balls, being knocked hither and thither, and though we didn't know why we were doing any of these things we trusted that those holding the ping-pong bat did. "while we were waiting up there in the training department, we had a chance to get to know each other a little--two or three of us were charmingly irish--and time to note the people busy about that department. nice efficient-looking people they were--and of course we labeled and cubby-holed them. one man, we all decided, could well be a matinee idol and another might have hailed from down greenwich village way. "at last we parted and went down through the store to our own departments--and on the way any importance which we may have felt was quickly submerged in seeing what a distressingly small part we were of the large macy organization. even so, we later found out how many, many other 'we's' like each of us could make a deal of trouble for it, should we fail to carry on our work correctly. a talk we had from the store manager, a little later on, made me feel directly responsible to the poor fellows who are the macy delivery men. if i were not careful to write the address clearly in my salesbook, the delivery man would get in trouble--and all because of my handwriting! funny, how we were all linked up together. "well, to go back, i got to my department feeling decidedly unimportant, and was put to work behind a counter which sold women's and children's woolen gloves and women's kid gloves. that was the first counter i had ever sold from. in other stores i have sold from what are known as 'open departments'; the counter trade was a revelation to me. did you ever notice the lack of space behind the counters in the stores? well, with the christmas rush and all the extra salesgirls, it is lucky indeed that some of us have a sense of humor. "i had not been behind the counter for two whole minutes before a customer came along and asked for something. i tried to look wise and answer. it was all terribly new. the customers are always so plentiful in macy's that a new girl hardly has time to have the old girls tell her about the stock. moreover, our counter was very near the store's main entrance--which meant that we were an informal but very busy little information bureau on our own account--not only about macy's but apparently anything else in the city of new york. "of course, i didn't have a salesbook that day; i didn't receive one until after i had had some training and was beginning to know something about the macy system. however, customers could not see the 'new-and-green' written on my face, so i waited on them thick and fast; even through that first morning. and a wild time i had of it--gym was never so exhausting as stooping down to look for a certain pair of gloves which must be a certain color combined with a certain size, plus a certain style and so on. some people must stay up nights figuring along the lines of permutations and combinations, so as to work out some unheard of ones for the things they ask for in macy's. the other girls were mighty nice to me, though, and as helpful as could be. and our having to almost walk upon one another and squeezing past and bumping so often--why, you all get clubby, mighty soon. at the end of that first day i was rather wrecked, though happy--for in my desire to find things for customers speedily i had, in bending down, burst through the knee of one stocking, broken a corset-stay and ripped loose a garter! henceforth i managed to dress in a manner prepared for doing gymnastic stunts, such as deep-knee-bending and leap-frog. "my first lesson on the store system came on my first day in the store--and then one every day for an hour, during the whole first week. i liked that--for then i knew how things were supposed to be done. they even took us out into departments that were not busy early in the morning and had us make out certain kinds of sales right behind the counter, and carry the whole thing through--all that was lacking being the _real_ customer. it gave us confidence and showed us things that we thought we knew, but that, when it came right down to it, we didn't know at all. the training department also gave us pamphlets and notices about how to use the telephones and telling us to do certain things, as well as how our salary and commission were to be figured. also one leaflet told us about macy's underselling policy, and what we should do in case a customer reported merchandise as being cheaper somewhere else--and, although i had heard before of this policy of macy's, i came to believe in it faithfully, after i had read the booklet. "when you're new in a department the 'higher up' man can do much to make you feel glad that you are there. my section manager and buyer were both fine. the buyer told us in a talk she gave us all about how she'd been with macy's for twenty-five years; that she had worked for several years, when she first began, at six dollars a week. she made us feel that there surely must be a chance for every one of us--that a firm that is worth staying with that long must be pretty fine indeed--and that it was just up to us individually, whether or not we would go ahead. as for our section manager, he was always so nice in the way he handled any transaction with us--giving us an extended lunch-hour or signing any sales checks that needed his 'o. k.' in many stores the section managers are so disagreeable about doing their work that the salesgirls hate to have them 'o. k.' things--but i have found it quite the opposite at macy's. and when he had the time and saw any of us looking glum or tired our man would talk to us and succeed in cheering us up. "there are many things, too, that i discovered macy's doing for its employees--all sorts of clubs and parties. one of the most useful of the first of these i found to be the umbrella club. all i had to do one day when it began unexpectedly to rain was to go up to the training department, deposit fifty cents and receive an umbrella. if i left macy's within the month, i would get my fifty cents back. of course, i was to return the umbrella the very first clear day but any time thereafter that i needed one i could go upstairs and get it. "then, too, there's the recreation room--you have two fifteen-minute relief periods a day in the store in addition to your lunch time. you can go to the dressing rooms and wash up a bit and then go to the recreation room, where there are plenty of large, comfy chairs, a piano, books and the like. the room is a veritable social center all the day long--i always found lots of friends there, no matter at what time i took my relief periods. and you go back to your work refreshed and 'full of pep' once again. another place where you have a chance to see your friends is the employees' lunchroom--and it certainly is a popular place. despite the clatter and rush, the macy folks have a good time in their cafeteria; the crowds that eat there every day prove the wholesomeness of its food. it is good home cooking and, as far as its cheapness is concerned--well, i've eaten veritable dinners there at the noon hour, day after day, and never had my check total more than twenty-five cents; with thirteen or fifteen nearer the average. "one morning we all came early to the store--to a courtesy rally. thousands of us--yes, literally thousands of us--gathered on the main floor, on the central stair and everywhere roundabout it, and we sang songs about smiling; and other optimistic things. then, after good addresses by mr. straus and mr. spillman, we all sang again and, in response to an inquiry from one of the store executives, all shouted that we would try to carry on with the new macy slogan of 'a smile with every package' and 'a thank you as goodbye.'" frank testimony, indeed. and honest. to bring this atmosphere about the worker in the store may no more be the result of hit-and-miss than the right sort of hiring. in the modern marts of the new bagdad the creation of morale, not merely the retention of a good industrial relationship between a store and its workers but a constant bettering of it, has come to be as important a problem as that of the buying or the delivering of its merchandise, or even its problems of making its public constantly acquainted with its offerings and advantages. the work of such a department--in macy's the department of training--divides itself quite logically and clearly into two great avenues; the one educational, the other recreational. each takes hold of the newcomer to the store almost from the very moment that he or she enters upon its lists of employment. the new salesgirl's name is hardly upon the rolls of the department to which she is assigned before a member of the store's reception committee is upon her heels and steering her straight through all the maze of fresh experiences that necessarily must await the novitiate. she is told all about her time disc of brass--the individual coin that bears her distinctive number (built up of her department number plus her own serial one) which she must drop into its allotted slot at the employees' entrance when she comes to it in the morning and which she must see is returned to her before the day is done in order that she may have it to use again upon the morrow; how, going from the locker room to her department at the day's beginning, she must sign its own time-roll, which then becomes accountable for her comings and goings through the rest of the day; how she can go and when she must return; how she is paid--her salary, her quota, her commissions, her bonuses. all of this might sound complicated, indeed, to the new girl, were it not for the kindness of her assigned "committeeman." complications in the hands of a woman who has been through the mill, herself, and who has come to see how they are really not complications at all, but cogs in the grinding wheels of a great and systematic machine, are easily explained. the new girl catches on. the simple but accurate psychological tests through which she was put before she was accepted for macy's assure this. she catches on and within a year--perhaps within a space of but a few months--she, herself, is on the reception committee and helping other new girls through the maze of first employment. the new girl catches on-- there lies before me, as i write these paragraphs, a neatly typewritten loose-leaf memorandum book. it is the work of a girl who has yet to round out her first year in macy's and it is a work that all must produce before they may hope for very definite advancement. this typewritten book is, in itself, a book of the macy store. its pages are a brief, succinct and thorough account of the store's organization, its selling policies--including, of course, the stressed under-selling policy--and its methods. yet it is much more, too. it is, if you please, a manual of salesmanship. under a heading, "steps in an ideal sale," these are not only enumerated but are given relative values in percentages. thus we see that "attracting attention" is twenty per cent.; "arousing interest," twenty; "creating desire," fifteen; "closing sale," twenty; "introducing new merchandise," ten; and "securing good will," fifteen. under each of these sub-heads, the salesclerk has collected a group of points necessary to their attainment. thus, under "attracting attention" one finds "facial expression" and under it, in turn, "pleasant and expectant." all of these things have been taught the salesgirl author of this book--the volume, itself, is the result of her notes at her lecture classes. when she is taught "attracting attention" she is told that alongside of "facial expression" there comes "tone of voice," and under this last there are five distinct classifications: "audible, distinct, sincere, rhythmical, suited to customer." truly the science of salesmanship goes to far lengths these days. from time to time the store has engaged a professional teacher of elocution to take up and carry forward this last function of its work. here is this saleswoman being taught that "swell" is a word forever to be avoided over the counter, "smart," "stylish," "fashionable," "original," and some others being substituted. similarly "elegant," "grand," "nifty," "classy," "cheap," "awfully" and "terribly" are under the ban, appropriate synonyms being suggested to replace them. "flat" is not to be used, when "apartment" is meant. the entire list of words to be avoided in a macy sales conversation runs to a considerable length. this particular saleswoman was trained to textile salesmanship. consequently, although the first half of her book, which treats of the store's methods and policies, is common to those that are being prepared by her fellows in all the other selling departments, the second half is the result of the special training that was given her in the department of training along the lines of her own merchandise. not only did she spend long hours of the firm's time in its classroom upon the third floor of the store and surrounded by cabinets in which were displayed textile materials of every sort and in every stage of development, but she was given a printed booklet which told her much about her merchandise, its history, its production fields and the details of its manufacture. from it she evolved her own history of textiles, setting down with accuracy the four fundamental cloths--cotton, linen, silk and wool--and not alone tracing their development and manufacture, but by means of carefully hand-made diagrams, pointing out the difference between the different textures and weavings. "warp" and "weft" and "twill" have come to be more than mere words to her. they are a part of her business capital, which she can--and does--turn to the good account of the store. so she is to her compeer of twenty-five years ago--selling dress-goods in the old macy store down on fourteenth street--as the electric light of today is to the old-fashioned lamps of that day and generation. back of this little black-bound notebook there is system--organization if you would read it that way. education, of a truth, has become the handmaiden of merchandising. and the store's school has become one of its ranking functions. as teachers in this school there is a specially trained corps of men and women who do nothing but instruct and then follow up their pupils to see that they put into practice the things that they have learned. the educational work consists of individual instruction, informal classes and practical demonstrations. and the result of it all is not merely to make the employee valuable to the house, but to lend interest to merchandising, itself, and to lift the salesperson out of the mere mechanical process of taking orders for goods. the moment that a new employee comes into the macy store his or her instruction in its system, organization and salesmanship begins. we have just seen how one typical new saleswoman began receiving her training from the first day of her employment. she was no exception to an inflexible rule. the training is given invariably. it does not matter whether the applicant has had experience in other large department-stores. even a former macy employee, accepting re-employment, must go through the department of training for, like everything that grows, the store system changes steadily from year to year and from month to month. a school such as this must have teachers. it is futile to add that they must be specially trained and thoroughly competent in every way to fulfill the unusual task set before them. and this, of itself, has been a problem, not alone with macy's, but with the other large department-stores of new york. they have co-operated to solve it, with the direct result that some two or three years ago retail store training became a practical factor in the city's educational system. under the enthusiastic aid of doctor lee galloway, its head, the successful and rapidly expanding business division of new york university created the school of retail selling, bearing the name of and affiliated with the parent institution. the merchants of new york raised a fund of $ , for the establishment and promotion of this enterprise and from it last june came its first graduating class--young men and women qualified to teach store training in the great bazaars of our modern bagdad. the purposes of this school are set forth succinctly in its first manual, which has come off the press. its object is "to dignify retail selling through education in the following ways: to train teachers in retail selling for public high schools and for retail stores, to train employees of retail stores for executive positions and to do special research work for the department managers of retail stores." in accordance with the first of these expressed avenues of its endeavors the board of estimate of the city of new york already has begun to move in full co-operation. a high school in the lower west side of manhattan--the haaren high school at hubert and collister streets--has been designated as training center for this work. girls are there being taught retail selling. nearly one hundred already are entered in the course and within a few short months the larger stores of the city will begin to benefit by this highly practical educational work. that this experiment will prove successful seems now to be well beyond the shadows of doubt. yet such success will be in no small measure due to the individual efforts of dr. michael h. lucey, principal of the julia richman high school--in west thirteenth street, just back of macy's original store--who has devoted great energies to its launching. convinced, from the outset, of the real necessity of a training course in retail selling in the city schools, dr. lucey makes no secret of his dubious fears at the beginning of the experiment: "i honestly didn't see how we were going to do it," he says, in frankly discussing the entire matter, "the tradition in favor of an office career rather than a selling one in a store has so long ruled in the high schools of the city. there are several reasons for this--the most important one, in my mind, the feeling in the average high school girl's head that less education having been required in past years for the girl behind the counter than for the girl behind the typewriter, she lost a certain definite sort of caste, if she followed the first of these callings. of course, that is utter rubbish. i have no hesitancy today in telling my girls that if they are looking for a genuine career retail selling is the thing for them. in office work, if they are very good, they may get up to forty or even fifty dollars a week but there they are pretty nearly sure to come to a standstill." the skilled educator shakes his head as he says this. "you see the difficulty is that so many girls coming out of schools such as these look upon business not as a boy would look at it, as a career with indefinite and permanent possibilities, but rather as a bridge between schooling and matrimony--a bridge of but four, or five, or six years. and when they are frank with me--and they often are--and tell me of this bridge that is in their minds, i am frank to advise office work. it offers better immediate returns--yet in the long run none that are even comparable with those of a high-grade department-store." following the successful plan of the university of cincinnati in its technical engineering courses, the students down at haaren are grouped into working pairs, which means that, in practice and working in alternation, each goes to school every other week. in the week that one is in the classroom, her partner is in one of the city stores studying retail selling at first hand. when, at the end of six days, she returns to her schoolroom she has many questions derived from her actual practice to put to her instructor. so the practice and the principles of this new hard-headed science are kept hand in hand with its actual workings. nor is this all: some six or seven hundred young women--and young men, too--are also making a special study of retail selling in the city's evening schools. a single course at the dewitt clinton high school is quite typical of these. four evenings a week, for two hours each evening, a huge class is being taught--in an even more detailed way than is possible under a department-store roof--the principles and manufacture of textiles. in these classes a goodly number of the macy family are enrolled. another goodly enrollment goes into the special lectures given by a museum instructor at the metropolitan museum of art on certain evenings and sunday afternoons. truly, indeed, education has become the handmaiden of merchandising. as teachers in macy's department of training there are enrolled today only those men and women who have received a thorough normal school education in this great new science of retailing. they do nothing but instruct the store's workers and then follow up to make sure that these are putting into practice the principles in which they have just been instructed. except for the training of the future executives the school time is taken entirely from regular business hours and so, at the expense of the house, itself. this schooling--under the macy roof, please remember--consists of individual instruction, informal classes and practical demonstration. specialized training under the roof includes instruction under the direct supervision of the board of education in fundamental school subjects to those classed as "juniors" and "delinquent seniors"; a junior salesmanship course given to all employees promoted from the non-selling divisions of the store to its selling divisions; a senior salesmanship class--including the study of textiles and non-textiles, and covering three busy months; the instruction of special groups of salesclerks to be transferred for special sales; "demonstration sales," in which teacher and pupil "play store," with the teacher impersonating various types of customers; the executive course to prepare employees for high executive positions of different rank and order; and the specialized instruction for dictaphone and comptometer operators, correspondence and file clerks and the like. in the limited space of this book, i shall have no opportunity to carry you further into the details of this fascinating department of the modern store. the saleswoman's little black book that we saw but a few minutes ago ought to show it more clearly to your eyes than any elaborate presentments of schedules and curriculums. the result's the thing. and macy's has the results. it has already achieved them. not only has it lifted retail selling from the hard and rutty road of cold commercialism but it has lifted the individual seller, himself--which, to my way of thinking, is to be accounted a good deal of a triumph. in such a triumph society at large shares--and shares not a little. it is house policy--sound policy--to encourage employees to look out not only for the store's interest, but for their own. an ambitious salesman is indeed an asset; and there are ways of keeping him ambitious. there is, for instance, the system of bonuses for punctuality, which takes the final form of extra holidays in the summertime. a week's holiday with pay is given without fail to each and every employee of eight months' standing. but a record of good attendance and punctuality for fifty long weeks brings another week of vacation, also with full pay. department-stores not so long ago used to penalize their workers for tardiness. the new macy plan works best, however. the list of those bonus possibilities is long. there is, of course, chief amongst them, the bonus which takes the concrete form of a sales commission. the salesclerk is set a moderate quota for his or her week's work. on sales that reach above this figure he or she is paid a percentage commission. and, lest you may be tempted to dismiss this statement with a mere shrug of the shoulders, as a perfunctory thing perhaps, permit me to tell you that but last year a retail salesman in the furniture department earned in excess of $ , in wages and commissions. one other thing before we are done with this main chapter on the macy family and starting up another which shall show the super-household at its play; it is a thing closely associated both with department-store employment and training: this "special squad" which has become so distinctive a feature of the big red-brick selling enterprise in herald square. concretely, it is a group of college graduates--the heads of the firm are themselves college men and have none of the contempt for education that has become so blatant a thing in the minds of so many "self-made business captains" of today--who desire to enter upon this fascinating and comparatively new field of department-store service. as one of the executives of the department of training himself says, "many of these young grads come in here with the rattle of their brand-new diplomas so loud in their ears that for quite a while they can't hear anything else." yet they are good material--as a rule, uncommonly good material. so dr. michael lucey says, and dr. lucey knows. as a supplement to his educational work in the commercial high schools he entered macy's last summer and spent the two months of his vacation in the special squad, studying the store from a variety of intimate and personal angles. on his first day in it, the distinguished educator sold clothing--men's clothing--and he sold to his first customer, an accomplishment which he notes with no little pride. his pride at the moment was large. but the next moment was destined to take a fall. a floor manager down the aisle espied the new clerk. "don't let those trousers sweep the floor," he admonished. and the educator had his first taste of store discipline. sooner or later all these young men out of college get that first taste. it does not harm them. and it is not very long before they begin to observe that, after all, there are still a few things about which they know practically nothing. after which their real education begins. a department-store is, among other things, a great melting pot. an englishman who came into macy's special squad last year inquired just what work might be expected of him. he was told. "manual labor," he protested, "i can't think of it. i wear the silver badge." which meant that he was one of the king's own--a pensioner of the late war. the store executive who first handled this bit of human raw material possessed a deal of real tact; most of them do. he smiled gently upon the britisher. "after all," he suggested, "you know you don't have to tell your king that you had to use your two good hands in hard work." the englishman saw the point. he laughed, shook hands and went to work. in six months he was an executive, himself. it's a way that they have at macy's. and here is part of the way. manual labor is demanded invariably of those who enlist in the special squad. it has a regular system through which each of its workers must pass. first he is given the history and development of the store and of its policies. this work is followed by a week on the receiving platform and then a good stiff session in the marking-room. the college boy follows the merchandise along a little further. he proceeds for a while to sell it--then does the work of a section manager. after which there come, in logical sequence, the delivery department, the bureau of investigation, the comptroller's office, the tube system, an intensive study of the departments of employment and of training. these are not only studied but written reports are made upon them. after which he should have a pretty fair idea of the store and the things for which it stands. the course is only varied in slight detail for the woman college graduate. macy's has naught but the highest regard for the gentler sex--not alone as its patrons but as members of its staff--yesterday, today and tomorrow. a woman may not be able to handle heavy cases upon the receiving platform. but there are other sorts of cases that she may handle--and frequently with a tact and diplomacy not often shown by the more oppressed sex. i might cite a hundred instances from within the store where she has shown both--and initiative as well. but i shall give only one--where initiative played the largest part. some few months ago a young woman who has climbed high in the store organization, to the important post of buyer of a most important line of muslin wearing apparel, found herself in france, but a few hours before the steamer upon which she was booked to sail to the united states was to depart from southampton. to take a steamer across the channel and then catch her boat was quite out of the question. she did the next best thing. she hopped on an aëroplane and flew from paris to london; seemingly in almost less time than it here takes to tell it. she caught her boat. her instructions were to catch the boat. and long since she had acquired the macy habit of obeying orders. upon this, again, a whole volume might be written--upon the thoroughness of an organization which really organizes, a training department that really trains, a system which really systematizes. and all under the title of a family group--in which affection and tact and understanding come into play quite as often as discipline and energy and initiative. vii. the family at play in the business machine of yesterday there were no adjustments for play. it prided itself upon its efficiency. and in the next breath it proclaimed that such efficiency left no room whatsoever for such foolishness as recreation. today we know much better. we know that play--healthy, uniform play in a decent amount--is one of the very finest of tonics for the human frame. and so count it as one of the very highest factors in our modern schemes of efficiency. macy's plays and makes no secret of the fact. on the contrary, it is intensely proud of its provisions for the welfare of its workers. industrial recreation is no mere idle phrase to it. in hard fact no small portion of the remarkable esprit de corps of the store is due to its well organized recreational and social service work. in a large measure this part of the operation of the store corresponds to what the war and navy departments did through their commissions on training camp activities during the great war. bearing in mind our likening macy's to an army in an earlier chapter, the parallel now becomes a close one indeed. organized recreation promoted better team work in the war; it now promotes better team work in business. ergo, it is for the welfare of macy's that it shall promote organized recreation beneath its own roof. and yet that very phrase, "welfare work," is not often used underneath that roof. it has the flavor of patronage which is so wholly lacking in this family of thousands, and so it is thrust forever into the discard. "the bunch" gets together--you see, you may call the family by almost any name that pleases you best--various groups are forever assembling at the men's club or the community club and making plans for their numerous activities. and these last cover a surprisingly large range. any male employee of the store may join the macy men's club. it is a wholly self-governing body and, aside from making up the inevitable deficits that accrue, the store has no paternalistic or direct attitude whatsoever toward it. the club itself is situated at west thirty-fifth street, just west of the store, but entirely separated from it. it occupies two floors of an extremely comfortable building. in its externals it differs very little from any other sort of men's club. there are a reading room and a smoking room where, toward the close of the day and well into the evening, its members may relax. and there is a restaurant serving extremely good meals. it is only as one pokes beneath the surface that he begins to find out how very real this small institution, that is an offshoot of the larger one, really is. its restaurant serves meals at considerably less than cost. and the fact that this club is regarded as something more than a mere combination of eating-place and rest-room is shown by its organization activities in other directions. for example, its members interest themselves in general athletics to the extent that, in the proper seasons, they have very creditable teams of baseball, basketball, football and the like, while occasional outings with suitable field events are arranged. each thursday evening there is organized athletic work in a large private gymnasium that is especially hired for the purpose. in fact it is at this last point that the men's club comes in contact with the community club, which is the nucleus organization covering other recreational activities among the women, the girls and the younger men of the store family. for, by careful planning, both of these clubs manage to use the big gymnasium of a single evening, while, after the athletic work is over, the floor is cleared and there is dancing until going-home time. these comforts are not given without some cost to the macy folk. that would be very bad business indeed. it has been so decided long since. and so, while it may be human nature to be ever on the lookout for "something for nothing," it is quite as human to derive very much additional enjoyment from the things for which one pays. even the suggestion of charity is not pleasant. and with this in view these clubs charge nominal sums for their privileges. in so doing they earn the respect of those who share in them. dues for the men's club are placed at three dollars a year--that surely is a nominal figure. these go toward the development of club activities outside of its actual running expenses (rent, the restaurant, etc.). the gymnasium fee is another three dollars, which is much less than one would pay for a similar facility elsewhere in new york. the scale of charges for the community club is quite different. the dues here are but twenty-five cents a year--its membership is made up mainly of lower-salaried folk--with small extra charges for special activities. for instance, the spanish class, which is taught by one of the spanish interpreters in the store and which has a constant attendance of about forty, costs its pupils the very inconsiderable sum of five cents a lesson. the gymnasium charge is kept in a like ratio. there are a few others in addition. the aggregate cost, however, of as many activities as an average employee can take up is of little moment or burden to him or to her--nothing as compared with the sense of independence that goes with the small act of payment. the choral club, under the direction of a competent leader, meets wednesday evenings in the big recreation room on the third floor of the store, with a usual attendance of about two hundred men and women who are trained in part singing and in chorus work of various sorts. this is not only enjoyable and popular for its own sake but it has an added value in leading toward the organizing of the store's talent for concerts and for musical plays. and it has such talent. do not forget that--not even for a passing moment. it would be odd, indeed, if a family of five thousand folk did not develop upon demand much real histrionic and artistic ability of every sort. and when such potentialities are fostered and encouraged, the results--well, they are such as to warn florenz ziegfeld and the rest of the forty-second street theatrical producers to keep a sharp eye, indeed, upon macy's. on monday evenings, the entire winter long and well into the spring, the dramatic club meets and here every budding maxine elliott or ina claire has her full opportunity. on tuesday there is a get-together evening--one begins to think with all these evenings so neatly filled of the calendar of a real social enterprise--and then one sees the store family at its fullest relaxation. here was a recent tuesday night. it was just before christmas and the store was approaching the annual peak load of its year's traffic. yet it had no intention whatsoever of relaxing a single one of its social endeavors. on this particular tuesday evening our salesgirl--the one whom we saw but a moment ago being inducted into the selling organism of the store--made her first personal acquaintance with the community club. let her tell her own story, and in her own way: "up in the recreation room a few hundred of us gathered for a regular party. some few of us had gone home after store hours for our dinner; the others had had it right in the store's own lunchroom. it surely is great the way that you _can_ get a meal there in macy's at any time you are staying late--either on duty or on pleasure. "at about six-thirty the evening's program got under way--so that the many friendly, chattering groups of girls in the big room finally had to simmer down to something approaching silence. then the choral club began singing for us--some good, old-time christmas carols first, and then some other songs. all of us joined finally in the chorus, leaving the club to carry the difficult parts. they could do that all right, too. mr. janpolski, their leader, finally gave us a solo and after that there was a grand march led by our own beloved marjorie sidney. everybody joined in--not only in body, but in spirit. it was like washington's birthday in the big gym up at northampton. messenger girls, college graduates, salesfolk, deliverymen, managers--everyone was just the same in that blessèd hour. distinctions of the store were gone. we were boys and girls--some of us a bit grown up and grayed to be sure, but all with peter pannish hearts--having a real party once again. "the grand march ended in dancing for every one--with a jolly negro at the piano doing his level best to uphold the reputation of his race for really spontaneous music. finally, after many encore dances, everybody withdrew from the floor and out came mr. salek, the director of the men's club, and miss knowles, doing an almost professional dance. the castles had very little on this couple--the way salek lifted his partner and then let her down--slowly, slowly, still more slowly--reminded me of maurice and walton. their performance brought down the house. of course they had to respond to encores; again and again and again. "following this--for macy's believes that variety is the spice of all life--a junior recited the unforgetable ''twas the night before christmas and all through the house.' she really was a darling. and how christmassy she looked, with her big butterfly sash and her hairbow of scarlet tulle.... next on the program came dancing--for everybody. first, however, there was another march, so that each couple received a number--while every little while certain numbers (the couples that held them) were eliminated from the floor. the nicest part about this elimination dance, as they called it, was that instead of only the last couple getting the prize, as is generally done--every couple, as soon as its number was called and it left the floor, went over to a big chimney-top, with a proverbially jolly 'santa' peering out of it. there santa gave to each one a little gift, such as a whistle, a stick of candy, or a jolly little rattle. then, after more dancing, refreshments were served by gaily garbed junior waitresses. after which the dancing continued until the merry community club christmas dance was entirely over." already i have touched upon the annual vacation of the macy worker--one week with pay after eight months continuous employment, two weeks after two years, three weeks after five years, and a month after twenty-five years of service. a charming retreat among the hills of sullivan county, eighty-seven miles from new york and, through the foresight of the management of the store, purchased long ago, provides an ideal vacation spot for the macy girls who wish to spend their holidays among truly rural surroundings. for this purpose a large farm house and a hundred acres of surrounding land were acquired by macy's and more than fifty thousand dollars spent in enlarging the house, beautifying the grounds and otherwise making them suitable for their summertime uses. in addition to the big and immaculately white farm house there are three cottages upon the property. as many as sixty-five girls can be accommodated at a single time upon it. three jumps or so from the main house and stretched out in front of it is a lake; a regular lake, if you please, big enough for boating and for bathing, although not so large that one of the keen-eyed chaperones may keep her weather eye on those of her charges whose tastes run toward water sports. in this adamless eden bloomers and middy blouses are _de rigueur_, and as the few restraints imposed are only those inspired by ordinary good sense, the girls experience the real joys of living. all of these activities and interests--and many, many more besides--are faithfully chronicled in the macy house organ, _sparks_. here is a monthly magazine--of some sixteen pages, each measuring seven by ten inches--that in appearance alone would grace any newsstand, while its contents almost invariably bear out the attractiveness of its cover designs. practically the entire publication is prepared by its staff, which, in turn, is composed of members of the macy family. house organs, such as this, are, of course, no novelty in the american business world of today. there probably are not less than fifty department-stores alone which are now printing brisk contemporaries of _sparks_. the internal publications of a house, such as macy's, have long since come to be recognized as one of its most valuable media for the promotion of morale. it costs money, but it is money well expended. so says modern business. and modern business ought to know. for it has tested the results. and the house organ long since became one of the really valuable aides. here, then, in _sparks_ is not only a medium in which the macy folks may come the better to know about one another, a bulletin board upon which the heads of the house may from time to time carry very direct and sincere messages to their big family, but a mouthpiece in which the embryo literary genius may become articulate. and, lest you be tempted to believe that i have permitted simile to carry me quite away from fact, let me show you a single instance--there are a number of others beside--in which a real literary genius has come to bloom underneath the great roof that looks down upon herald square: his pen name is francis carlin--but his real name, the one under which he entered macy's, is james francis carlin macdonnell. of him _current opinion_ but a year or two ago said: "the writer (carlin) ... was until a few weeks ago a floorwalker in one of the big department-stores of new york city (macy's) and was discovered by padraic colum. he had his book obscurely printed and it has been unobtainable at bookstores until recently.... it has the true celtic quality. the dedication alone is worth the price of admission: 'it is here that the book begins and it is here, that a prayer is asked for the soul of the scribe who wrote it for the glory of god, the honor of erin and the pleasure of the woman who came from both--his mother.'" mr. macdonnell has written two books: this first, _my ireland_, and more recently the _cairn of stones_. that he has great talent is again attested by _the boston transcript_ which said recently: "mr. carlin's celtic poems, ballads and lyrics are nearer the fine perfection of the native poets belonging to the celtic renaissance than those produced by any poet of irish blood born in america." after which, who may now dare say that genius may not blossom in a department-store? and even were it not for the gaining glory of carlin, the pages of any current issue of _sparks_ would show that there is more than a deal of artistic merit in the widespread ranks of the macy family. the desire for self-expression is never stunted. and the pages of its avenue of expression are read by none more closely than the members of the family who hold the ownership of macy's. and yet these men--the heads of the great merchandising house--are not only accessible to their business family through the printed word. they are not standoffish. on the contrary, they are most widely known throughout the store; most reachable, both within their offices and without. take the single matter of grievances, for a most important instance: a macy worker may feel that justice on some point or other is being denied him by a superior. in such a case he has immediate recourse to any one of three expedients: he may take his case to the department of training, to the general manager of the store, or to one of the officers of the corporation. as a rule, however, the difficulty can be straightened out in the first of these avenues of appeal, which is an automatic clearing-house for all matters of personnel. the heads of this department have been chosen as much as anything for the sympathy which enables them to review any employee's case intelligently and fairly and for the influence that makes it possible for them to see at all times that full justice is being done. while the fact that the worker, himself, may take the matter to the general manager or even to one of the three members of the firm, is a practical guarantee against persecution of any sort. [illustration: the summer home of the macy family recreation in the modern store stands side by side with education in perfecting the individual employee] just off the corner of the recreation room on the third floor is the private office of the assistant superintendent of training. her title sounds rather formidable and does justice neither to her job nor to her personality: for in reality she combines the qualities of a charming hostess, an efficient manager and a mother confessor. in the macy book of information for employees there is a paragraph under the heading, "department of training," which says: "it is the purpose of this department to interest itself in all the employees of this organization. do not hesitate to go with your troubles to the assistant superintendent of training, whose duty it is to interest herself in you: both in the store and at your home. she will be glad to give you advice, both in business and in personal matters." and so she has her hands full, and sometimes her heart as well; for, among five thousand folk of every sort and kind, there are bound to be many perplexing personal problems and troubles, to which the very best kind of help is the kindly and disinterested advice of a sympathetic and understanding person. and when that person is a woman--a woman of rare tact--the problem is generally apt to approach its solution. which makes for friendship, not merely between the worker and that woman, but between the worker and the store. and so still another rivet is clinched in the great morale bridge between the business machine and the human units that enable it to function so very well indeed. and the macy spirit becomes an even more tangible thing. as one goes through the store he finds many evidences of the things that go to upbuild that spirit. it may be only a printed sign cautioning courtesy and cheerfulness, not merely between the store workers and its patrons, but between the members of the macy family, themselves. "a smile with every package and a 'thank you' as good-bye," rings one. and remember that other, again more cautious: "in speaking say 'we' and 'our,' not 'i' and 'mine.'" it may be the warm hand of friendship from the member of the reception committee to the new girl that comes to work under the herald square roof, or it may be any of the long-planned, coolly devised methods of social justice to the store employee. these last are never to be overlooked. for instance, three months after the day that a new employee first arrives to work at macy's, membership in the macy mutual aid association becomes automatic. in no small way it becomes a real part of his job. it is the object of the m. m. a. a. to provide and maintain a fund for the assistance of its members during sickness and of their families or dependents in case of death. dues in this association are graded according to the worker's salary, consist of one per cent. of the salary up to thirty dollars; while the sick benefits are two-thirds of the salary, limited by a benefit of twenty dollars. the death benefits are five times the weekly salary, with a minimum of sixty dollars and a maximum of one hundred and fifty dollars. it is obvious that these dues do not of themselves pay the benefits. the house "chips in." yet not through sympathy, but through one of the tenets of good business as we moderns have now begun to know it. "it would be poor business for me, indeed," said a silk manufacturer of connecticut to me not long ago, "to let my people become sick. i want no germ diseases in my mills. neither do i want the mills to cease their continuous operation. that, too, is poor business. and so the sickness that may cost my worker ten dollars may easily cost me twenty-five--in the stoppage of my plant, alone." the control of the macy mutual aid association is, moreover, vested solely in the hands of the store employees. an itemized statement of its receipts and its disbursements as well as its proceedings is posted each month on the store bulletin boards and printed in _sparks_, so that every member of the organization may know its exact affairs. it decidedly does not work in the dark. i should be derelict, indeed, in regard to this whole question of health in modern industry--and of the particular modern industry of which this book treats--if i neglected in these pages that corner of the high-set eighth floor--flooded by sunshine during the greater part of each pleasant day--where sits the macy hospital, conducted by the macy mutual aid association. it is, of course, solely an emergency hospital, yet one where doctors, nurses, dentists and a chiropodist are constantly on duty. three doctors--two men and one woman--consult with and prescribe for the patients, two dentists look after their teeth, and a chiropodist takes care of that prime asset to all salespeople--the feet. those members of the hospital staff are professional men and women of the first rank and they work with the best and latest equipment. although the emergency hospital is primarily for the services of the store workers it stands also at the service of any one who may come into the building and need its services. for instance, in case a customer becomes ill, a wheelchair is sent, and he or she, as the case may be, is taken to the hospital for immediate restorative treatment. one or two final phases of this family life upon a huge scale in the very heart of new york and i am done with it. thrift, in the macy category of the making of a good worker, comes only next to good health. under that same widespread roof there is a savings bank for the sole use of macy folk. any amount from five cents upward is accepted as a deposit and the fact that good use is made of this constant incentive to thrift is evidenced by the continued and prosperous operation of the institution. it has not been necessary to organize it as a full-fledged savings bank. at the end of each day it transfers its funds, by means of a special messenger, to one of the largest of new york savings banks which handles the accounts directly. the law does not permit a savings bank in the state of new york to open branches--else that would have been done at macy's long ago. the messenger method was the only feasible substitute. believing that even the most provident may occasionally have good reasons, indeed, for wishing to borrow money, the heads of the house have set aside a permanent fund as a loan reserve for the macy folk. any one who has been in the store's employ for at least three months may, upon advancing even ordinarily satisfactory reasons, borrow from this fund. the limit is a sum which can be repaid in ten weekly installments. no security is required nor is any interest charged. the employee is bound by nothing but his honor. that sixty-four years of continuous operation have established the commercial success of macy's should be patent to you by this time. but now that you have known of the present-day family that dwells beneath its roof, you may ask: has this policy toward its personnel worked out in hard practice? the question is indeed a fair one. to carry it still further, is this machine of modern business humanized and inspired in fact as well as in theory? one cannot help but think of the machine. machines _are_ hard. generally they are fabricated in that hardest of all metals--steel. can steel be warmed and tempered? can the fact be recognized that the units of the macy store are human and warm; and not steel and cold? i think so. i imagine that you would have the answer to all these questions if you could talk for a little time with jimmie woods, whom we saw, but a short time hence, as a push-cart horse for the early macy's and who has come today to be the assistant superintendent of the store's delivery department. his new job requires much more push than that old-time one. as a caption-line in a recent issue of _sparks_ aptly said: "jimmie woods delivers the goods." metaphorically speaking, the house of macy does the same thing. and at no point more than in its treatment of its human factors. the day was not so very long ago when the life of a salesperson, even in a new york store of the better class, was not a particularly enviable thing. we saw, when we discussed the earlier macy's, the long hours and the low wages of the rank and file of the organization. these things have changed today--in all department-stores that are worthy of the name. public opinion was partly responsible for the change. but i think quite as large a factor was the realization that gradually was forced upon the minds of the merchants themselves that the old methods were poor business methods. macy's knows that today. we have seen the man who came to new york fifteen years ago with eleven dollars and a suitcase come to a high-salaried position with the house today; the retail furniture salesman earning over six thousand dollars a year, the twenty-five buyers at ten thousand a year and upward, as well as those at twenty-five thousand a year and upward. and we know that every one of these men and women have been the product of the macy organization--from the moment that they began at the very bottom of the ladder. and, lest you still think i befog the question, permit me to add that the minimum weekly wage of the woman employee in macy's today is $ . ; and the average pay--apart from that of the executives and sub-executives--the men and women who, in the store's own nomenclature, are classed as "specials" and exempted from the time-disc record of their comings and their goings--is $ . . have i now answered your question fairly? if still you wobble and are uncertain, permit me to call your attention to the service records of the store. they speak more eloquently than aught else can of the loyalty and the interest of its workers. qualities such as these are not generated under bad working practices of any sort. the records tell--and tell accurately, as well as eloquently. a macy man was recently retired on a pension--the store's list of pensioners runs to a considerable length--after a round half-century of service. others will soon follow in his footsteps. there are today upon the rolls ninety-two men and women who have been with it for more than twenty-five years. in the delivery department alone there are twenty-three men who have records of twenty years or more; and of these there are three who have been there more than forty years. three hundred members of the macy family have records of fifteen years or over, fifteen hundred have been with it upwards of five years and--despite the recent after-the-war difficulties of maintaining labor morale and organization--only about one-quarter of the force have come within the twelvemonth. the labor turnover in macy's is low indeed--and constantly is growing lower. these figures, it seems to me, are the surest indication that the store's workers are treated fairly. moreover, they alone show clearly the workings of its announced policy to give its own people every possible opportunity to grow within its ranks. in fact, no man or woman can stand still long at macy's and continue to hold his or her job. progress is a very necessary requisite there. and in order that progress may be recognized, steadily and fairly, system comes in once again to stabilize a very natural phase of human development. as the macy employee shows new capabilities or additional industry, recommendations for increases in his remuneration are made by his department manager to a salary committee, appointed for this sole purpose. periodically this committee receives a list of all the store folk who have not received an increase for a period of six months. the list is carefully reviewed and, whenever and wherever it can be justified, the pay envelope of the employee is fattened. macy's is, after all, a very human institution. the machine may be steel-like, but it is not steel. it is flesh and blood and human understanding. i sometimes think of it as a country town, rather than as a family--one of those nice, old-fashioned sorts of country towns, where most of the residents know one another, where there is an efficient governing body and where the community spirit is one of the strongest factors in its progress. being human it is fallible, being fallible it still has something for which to work; and in fulfilling this obligation of work it is carrying out its destiny. _tomorrow_ i. in which macy's prepares to build anew yesterday, when milady of manhattan went for her shopping along the tree-lined reaches of fourteenth street, and found her way into that perennially fascinating shop at the corner of sixth avenue which specialized in its ribbons and its gloves and its rare exotic imported perfumes, she dreamed but little, if indeed she dreamed at all, of a macy's that some day should stand intrenched at herald square and embrace a whole block-front of broadway. today milady, finding her way into that small triangular "square" in the very heart of manhattan--still on the sharp lookout for ribbons and gloves and rare exotic perfumes--and heaven only knows what else beside--may little dream of the changes that a tomorrow-- tomorrow--what business has a book such as this to be talking of tomorrow; a vague, fantastic thing that only fools may seek to interpret in advance? we have seen between these covers quite a number of things--some of them passing odd things--yet classified among the factors of good business, according to all of its modern definitions. and to them we shall now add another--the understanding and the correct interpretation of tomorrow. i think that when i depicted mr. macy standing with his daughter, florence, at the corner of thirty-fourth street and broadway half a century ago and explaining how there would be the business center of new york fifty years hence, i called attention to the sharp commercial fact that a great machine of modern business goes ahead quite as much upon the vision and the foresight of the men that guide it as upon their prudence. which means in still another way, the proper understanding of tomorrows. and that understanding today is quite as much an asset of macy's as its real estate, its cash balances in the banks, or the millions of dollars standing in the stock upon its shelves. more than a decade ago the big store in herald square first began to feel its own growing pains. the fact that ten years before that it had been planned as the largest single department-store building in the united states, if not in the entire world, availed nothing when business came in even greater measure than the most far-sighted of its planners had dared to dream. within three or four years after the time that the caravans of trucks and drays had moved macy's the mile uptown from the old store to the new, changes were under way in the new building, changes seeking to make an economy of space here, another economy there--everywhere that an odd corner could be utilized to the better advantage of the store and its patrons, it was at once so used. finally it became necessary to abandon the exhibition hall that was originally located on the ninth floor and thrust that great space into one of the larger non-selling departments of the enterprise; and two or three years later an entire extra floor was added atop of the big building--adding a goodly ten per cent. to its million square feet of floor space already existing. yet even these changes could not solve the final problem. macy's still refused to stay put. its growth was relentless, unending. each fresh provision made for its expansion was quickly swallowed up, with the result that the proprietors of the store finally faced the inevitable: the need of making a real addition to their plant, not a series of picayune little extensions, but one fine, sweeping move which should be as distinct a step forward in macy progress as the mighty hegira that occurred when the store moved north from fourteenth street to thirty-fourth--a little more than eighteen years ago. and, facing the inevitable, macy's quickly made up its mind. it never has been noted for any particular hesitancy. it decided to step ahead. forecasting tomorrow in new york is not, after all, so vast a task as it might seem to be at a careless first glance. that is, if you do not put your tomorrow too far ahead--say more than ten or a dozen years at the most. i am perfectly willing to sit in these beginning days of and to assert that to attempt to forecast or even is not a particularly alluring pastime--if one has any real desire for accuracy. but is not so difficult. it is the business of skilled experts to interpret in ; a business which incidentally is rendered vastly easier in new york today than it was ten years ago by two hard and settled facts--the one, the wonderfully efficient new zoning plan of the city, and the other, the construction of the pennsylvania railroad station on seventh and eighth avenues, from thirty-first to thirty-third streets. the first of these factors should hold the strictly commercial development of the city--save for local outlying hubs or centers--south of fifty-ninth street. the block-a-year uptown movement of manhattan for whole decades past has finally been halted; and halted effectually. central park has of course proved no little barrier in fixing fifty-ninth street as the arbitrary point of stoppage. but the zoning law, protecting the fine residence streets north of that point, and the pennsylvania station are also factors not to be overlooked. true it is that at the very moment that these paragraphs are being written whole groups of new business buildings are being opened, in fifty-seventh, fifty-eighth and fifty-ninth streets, in the center of manhattan. but other and bigger buildings are going up in the cross-streets far to the south of these. count that much for the pennsylvania station. for it, and it alone, has proved the salvation of thirty-fourth street. macy's, altman's, mccreery's, the waldorf-astoria, the hotel mcalpin--none of these alone nor all of them together--might have been able to save thirty-fourth street from becoming another fourteenth, or another twenty-third--a dull, wide thoroughfare given almost entirely in its later days to wholesale trade of one sort or another. the pennsylvania station could do, and did do, the trick. opened in --but eight years after macy's came first to thirty-fourth street and that brisk thoroughfare of today was in the very youth of its prosperity--the traffic which it handled day by day and month by month at that time was more than doubled in . not only has the business of the parent road that occupies it practically doubled in that decade, but the inclusion of the important through trains of the baltimore & ohio and the lehigh valley railroads, to say nothing of the traffic of the huge suburban long island system increasing by leaps and bounds each twelvemonth, has begun at last to tax the facilities of a structure seemingly far too big ever to be severely taxed. in recent months the cementing of a closer traffic alliance between the new haven and the pennsylvania systems renders it a foregone conclusion that more and more of the through trains from new england will be brought to the big white-pillared station in seventh avenue. you cannot down a street on which there stands a city gateway, particularly if the city gateway be one through which there sweeps all the way from fifty to sixty thousand folk a day. thirty-fourth street cannot be downed. remember that, if you will. it will not be compelled to share the rather bitter fate of its former wide-set compeers just to the south. this much is known today. and being known, it settles forever even the possibility of macy's moving uptown once again. it, too, is fixed. it has cast its die with the street called thirty-fourth and with thirty-fourth it is going to remain. so macy's buys the realty to the west of its present building and prepares thereon to erect, in connection with its present edifice, a great new store building--in ground space one hundred and twenty-five by two hundred feet--in height, nineteen full floors above the street (and two basements beneath)--in all, some , square feet of floor-space or close to fifty per cent. added to the , , square feet of the present store. offhand, it would seem to be a comparatively easy matter for the proprietors of a store, such as macy's, to go to their architect and say to him: "here is a fine plot, one hundred and twenty-five feet by two hundred. we want you to design and build for us upon it a modern retail building--high enough to provide all necessary facilities and scientific enough to bring it not merely abreast of other stores across the land, but a good long jump ahead of them." after which the architect would call for his young men and their draughting-boards and proceed, upon white paper, to erect his department-store. but his problem in this case is not white paper--at least white paper undefiled. the real problem is a perfectly good store building at the east end of the macy plot--a building far too good and far too modern to be "scrapped"--in any recognized sense of the word. it was built to last all the way from half a century to a full century and its owners have not the slightest intention of pulling it down. it must remain the chief front of the enlarged macy store. the caryatides upon either side of its main doors, the red star that surmounts them, must continue to look down into busy broadway, as they have been looking for nearly two decades past. it happens, too, that the store itself was never designed for extensions toward the west. in the conception of its original architect there was a distinct section set out at the west end of the present building for purely service and non-selling purposes. these included, upon the ground-floor, the great tunnel and merchandise unloading docks for incoming trucks, similar ones for the outgoing merchandise, freight elevators a-plenty; and in between them and through them a truly vast variety of working provision, shops, offices, school and comfort rooms, and the like. a good feature, this section--which occupies almost the exact site of the former koster & bial theater--but tremendously in the way when one comes to consider the extension of the store toward the west. a final factor of this particular reconstruction problem--and perhaps the greatest of all--lies in the fact that it must be carried forward while the store is doing its regular business. even when the peak load of its traffic is reached--those fearfully hard weeks that immediately precede the christmas holiday--the workaday routine of macy's must not be seriously disturbed. which complicates vastly the architect's problem. it is one thing to design and to erect a store building whose tenant does not approach the structure with his wares for sale until the merchant has given his final release, and another--infinitely harder--thing to build, and build efficiently, as business goes forward all the while. the machine as it grinds must be rebuilded. and all the while it must lose none of its efficiency. yet, when all is said and done, an architect's life is made up of a number of things of this sort. and the associated architects of the new macy store--messrs. robert d. kohn and william s. holden--have not permitted the overwhelming problem of its reconstruction to fill them with anything even remotely approaching a state of panic. for that is not an architect's way. they have, from the beginning, come toward the big problem quietly, sanely and efficiently. at the very beginning and in company with two of the officers of the corporation they went upon an extended trip through the more modern department-stores across the land. here, there, everywhere, they found features worth noting and collating. when they were done with their journeys they had, as a foundation for their studies upon the new macy store, a sort of standardized practice of most of its fellows across the land. this preliminary completed, the engineering member of the partnership, mr. holden, began an intensive study of the fundamental factors of the business machine that he was to enlarge. to begin with there was its traffic--divided, as we have seen in earlier chapters, into three great and fairly distinct avenues: the merchandise, the shoppers who come to purchase it, and the employees who wait upon their needs. it is fairly essential that these three streams of traffic be kept separate, save at such points where, for the conduct of the business, they must be brought together. here, then, was a real opportunity for study. mr. holden began with the traffic streams of the shoppers. obviously, and despite the growing importance and activity of the pennsylvania station, to say nothing of the west side subway, which runs down seventh avenue in front of it, the main traffic streams of shoppers must continue to come into macy's from broadway. the star of broadway is even more firmly set in the heavens of new york than that of thirty-fourth street. these main traffic streams within the store are, then, roughly speaking, three in number; one comes from the northeast corner--at thirty-fifth street--another from the southeast corner at thirty-fourth street--the third still shows a decided fondness for the impressive center doors upon broadway. within the store they unite and then separate into a variety of smaller currents. a goodly portion of these violate all the similes of streams and proceed upstairs at the rate of about , folk an hour at the busiest times of busy days. and there are an astonishingly large number of these times. of these , , about , will ascend upon the great escalator, which reaches up into the sixth, or last selling floor, of the present store. when this escalator was first built, eighteen years ago, it was looked upon as hardly less than a transportation marvel. every similar device that had preceded it was known as a single-file moving-stairway, with the capacity estimated at sixty persons a minute, or , an hour. by making its escalator double-file, macy's not only slightly more than doubled its capacity but rendered it the full equivalent of at least twenty-five passenger elevators of the largest size. the man whose business it is to have a sort of first-hand acquaintance with said that by that year macy's would need to take close to twenty thousand folk an hour to its upper floors. he was not only estimating upon the growth of new york, but upon the growth of the store itself. "you will have to add another of the double escalators," said he, "that will bring your lifting capacity upon the two moving stairways up to almost fifteen thousand persons an hour." an elevator of modern size and speed in a department-store with seven or eight selling floors ought to lift two hundred and forty persons an hour. this, as you can quickly find out for yourself, means that there will be needed for the new store but twenty passenger elevators to make good that deficit between increased escalator capacity and the total number of folk to be carried upstairs. and this, in itself, is a most moderate increase. the store already has fourteen modern passenger elevators. credit this much, if you will, to the escalator. so it goes, then, that the new macy's will have a second double-file escalator on the opposite side of the main aisle, which is the store's own broadway, and in the same relative relation to it. it will run as far as the fourth floor which in the new scheme of macy things is to be devoted to the important business of toy selling. what goes up must come down. shoppers are no exception to this old rule. if you still think that they are, stand late some busy afternoon at the main stair of macy's and watch them descend. they frequently come at the rate of one hundred to the minute. and yet this is but a single stair! it is neither practical nor modern greatly to increase stairway capacity in remodeling macy's and so the question of a descending escalator thrusts itself upon the architects' attention. despite a certain old-fashioned prejudice against it on the part of some old-fashioned new yorkers, a descending escalator is not only practicable but entirely safe. otherwise macy's would not even consider its installation. the store planning experts went out to chicago a few months ago, however, and into a great retail establishment there which boasts twelve selling floors. escalators were its one salvation--descending, as well as ascending. the macy party saw old ladies, women with children in their arms--everyone who walked, save only those walking upon crutches, using this quick and constant method of descent. they found the same devices in boston--in subway stations as well as department-stores--and being used with equal facility. straightway they decided that the new york shopper was neither more timid nor more reluctant to use a new idea than was her boston or her chicago sister. a descending escalator was placed in the plans for the new macy's--for the use of the store's patrons. still another ascending and descending escalator; this time for the store's own family. remember that here is a second stream, whose prompt and efficient handling is quite as important as that of the shoppers. the broad stair in thirty-fourth street at which the majority of the family arrives, between eight-thirty and eight-forty-five of the business morning, is frequently choked with the rush of incoming employees. it will never be choked once the new macy's is done. for then the workers will be handled in great volume upon a double escalator, not merely double-file, but double in the sense that ascent and descent are handled simultaneously and in compact space, very much as the double stairways that are installed in modern school-houses and industrial plants. in the enlarged building the locker rooms and the other facilities of the arrival of the store's employees will be placed upon the second floor and the first and second mezzanines; retained from the present plan, but very greatly enlarged. the macy worker comes to them by means of the escalator, quickly and easily, and in a similar fashion ascends or descends to his or her department. it sounds simple and easy but it is not quite so easy when one comes to plan for a maximum of , employees--in . a third traffic stream remains for our consideration--and the architect's. in many respects it is the most difficult. human beings, to a large extent at least, can move themselves. goods cannot. yet obviously the great stream of merchandise into the building and then out again must never be permitted to clog its arteries--not for a day, nor even for an hour. this means that there must be not only plenty of channels and conduits for it, but ample reservoir space as well. which, being translated, means of course generous warehousing rooms, of one sort or another. perhaps it would be well before we come to the ingenious plans for making this inanimate stream most animate indeed, to consider the general plan of macy's as it will be after its structural renaissance. the exterior of the present great building will remain practically unchanged. just back of it and to the west of it on the new plot, one hundred and twenty-five feet in depth in both thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth streets, and extending the full two hundred feet between them, will be erected a new steel and concrete building, harmonizing in its façade and of the most modern type of construction; as we have already seen, nineteen stories in height with two sub-basements in addition. the first ten stories of this structure, at the exact floor levels of the old, will be thrown into the existing building and the lower seven of them used for selling purposes. the uppermost three stories of the combined building--covering the entire macy site--will be used, as we shall see in a moment or two, for the reception and the warehousing of the merchandise, and other non-selling activities of the store. the nine stories of the new addition which will rise tower-like above the parent building are destined to be used entirely for non-selling functions. thus from the architects' plans we see the executive and financial offices, including that of advertising upon the thirteenth and the fifteenth floors of this super-cupola; and the store's own great laundry upon the high nineteenth. the department of training and the bureau of planning, with an assembly room, will share the sixteenth. the more purely recreational features, however, the men's club and the community club and the lounging rooms and library, are placed as low as the accessible eighth floor. the general manager's and employment offices will be as low as the second mezzanine--for obvious reasons of convenience. none of these departments will be hampered for a long time to come, as they have been hampered for a number of years past, by a fearful lack of elbow room. the new plans have provided for abundant facilities of this and every other sort. the employees' cafeterias also are to go into the new section--also upon the eighth, or public restaurant floor. they will be greatly enlarged over their present capacity. these non-selling facilities are given their own elevator service from the street; a separate and distinct entrance there. the purpose of this last quickly becomes evident. there are many occasions--nights and sundays even--when some or all of the recreation facilities are in use far beyond the regular store hours. access to them, entirely free and separate from the store itself, is an enormous working convenience, and the new macy's has been planned to be filled with working conveniences. the elevator as well as the escalator will play a vastly important part in the fabrication of the new macy's. the one has by no means been overshadowed by the growing importance of the other. there are to be in all fifty-six elevators, of one type or another, in the reconstructed building. of all these none is more interesting than the ingenious lifts by which whole motor trucks, laden as well as empty, are carried into the structure, up eleven floors to the merchandising reception rooms and down into the basement and sub-basement for filling for the city delivery. now are we back again to the handling of that merchandise stream which we first began to consider but a moment ago. at the beginning we can make assertion that in the entire history of retail selling no more ingenious scheme has been devised for the orderly and rapid movement of goods in and out of a department-store. this flow is kept normal and downward by the simple process of first taking the loaded incoming trucks up to the eleventh floor of the building for unloading. in the present store--as well as in a good many other stores--a great amount of immensely valuable ground floor space is given over to the various functions of receiving and distributing merchandise. we have seen long ago how a modern store values this ground floor space. for instance, in relation to the value of, let us say, the third floor, it is about as ten to one. neither does macy's propose to clutter the sidewalk frontage of even the least important of its frontage streets--thirty-fifth street--by long lines of motor trucks or drays, receiving or discharging goods. in fact this sort of thing has become practically impossible in the really important cities of the america of today. if municipal ordinance permits it, public sentiment rarely does. and the keen merchant of today--to say nothing of tomorrow--never ignores public sentiment. so, to the eleventh floor the motor trucks must go--on two huge high-speed freight elevators which open directly into thirty-fifth street. our horseless age makes this possible. the modern architect, planning for the congested heart of the island of manhattan, can indeed and reverently thank god for the coming of the gasoline engine and the electric storage battery--to say nothing of the engineers who helped to make them possible. upon that eleventh floor there will extend, for the full width of the building, a giant quay, or high-level platform, with its stout floor at the exact level of the floors of the standardized motor trucks of macy's (the comparatively small proportion of "foreign" or outside vehicles that bring merchandise to the store are to be unloaded at the thirty-fifth street doorways and not admitted within the building). the unloading under the present well-developed system is a short matter; the trucks may quickly be despatched back to the street once again; while the refuse and debris of the packers goes to appropriate bins behind them. through chutes and sliding-ways the merchandise descends a single floor to the great tenth story--extending through both the present building and the new one to come. here it will be quickly classified and placed upon a conveyor which moves at the level of and between the two sides of a double table some five or six hundred feet in length which will extend the greater part of the length of the enlarged store. from this center table--the backbone of the whole scheme of this particular distribution--will extend in parallel aisles at right angles to it, whole hundreds of bins and shelves and compartments. the entire arrangement will resemble nothing so much as a huge double gridiron, with many tiny interstices. now do you begin to see the operation of this scheme? if not, let me endeavor to make it more clear to you. this miniature and silent city, whose straight and regular streets are lined in turn with miniature apartment houses of merchandise, is zoned--into six great zones. every selling department of the store-- in the present one--is assigned to one or the other of these zones. there it keeps its reserve stock. it is, in truth, a reservoir. now, see the plan function! the men's shoe department is out of a certain small part of its highly diversified stock. it sends a requisition up to its representative upon the tenth floor. it is a matter of minutes--almost of seconds--to locate the necessary cartons in the simplified and scientifically arranged compartments and shelves; a matter certainly of mere seconds to despatch them down to the selling department. for this, the second thrust of the goods-stream through the new macy's, especial provisions have been made by the installation of six so-called utility units. three of these are placed at equal intervals along the thirty-fourth street wall of the enlarged building; the other three at equal intervals upon its thirty-fifth street edge. each unit consists of one elevator (large enough to hold two of the rolling-carts, standardized for the floor movement of merchandise through the aisles of the selling departments of the store), one small dummy elevator (for the handling of single packages of unusual size or type), and a spiral chute (this last for the despatch of sold goods). the selling-floor location of these utility units determines the zoning system of the warehouses on the tenth. there is a zone to each unit. while from that zone the requisitioned merchandise descends to the selling department which has asked for it by its own unit--which always is closest to it. haul is reduced to a minimum. and system becomes simplicity. with the actual selling of the goods in the store that is to come we have no concern at this moment. it is quite enough to say that the methods and the ideals that have brought macy selling up to its present point are to be continued there, in the main at least, although broadened and advanced as future necessity may dictate. but with the despatch of the goods once sold in the new store we have an intimate and personal interest. we have bought our pair of shoes. the financial end of the transaction is concluded. we have asked--as most of us ask--to have them delivered. now follow their movement: the clerk takes them to the packer. this, however, is but a mere detail. it is their future course that interests us. and if we had eyes properly x-rayed and farseeing we might observe that from the hands of the packer they will go presently to the spiral descending chute of the nearest utility unit. now we shall indeed need our new x-ray eyes. they follow the package for us--down the chute--with its gradients and curvatures so cleverly devised as to bring our purchase to the basement in just the right time and in just the right order--and into and upon the next stage of its progress. steadily moving conveyor-belts along each outer wall of the building receive the constant droppage of the packages from the six spirals of the utility units. together these two long belts converge upon a terminal, the revolving-table, in the terminology of the present store. and here our packages receive fresh personal attention. in the chapter upon macy's delivery department we paid a careful attention to this revolving-table--which really is not a table at all and does not revolve. we saw it, then, as the very heart of the complex clearing-house of macy distributions. it is, however, in itself a wonderfully simple thing, and yet when it was first installed it was regarded as nothing less than a triumph of efficiency. fortunately we do progress in this gray old world. today we see how the revolving-table can be improved. for one thing, today we see it cramped and inelastic--no more than eight men may work at it at a single shift. yet when it was built no one in macy's dreamed that more than eight men would ever be required to work at it at a single time. and even in times of great emergency, but eight! at the revolving-table in the new store, not eight but forty men may work simultaneously--when necessity dictates. the change has been effected by the simple process of elongating the "table." if a revolving-ring may be changed from round to square--and this was the very thing that macy's accomplished in its present basement--why not from square to oblong? there is no negative answer to this question. and oblong it will become. and a present handling capacity of forty thousand packages a day can be increased to all the way from seventy-five thousand to ninety thousand. yet the main principle changes not. it is only in detail that one sees one's shoes traveling outward on a different path in from that of . the great conveyors that lead from the revolving-table of today to the various delivery classifications as they are now made, will so lead in the new arrangement of things to such classifications as may then be made: only they will no longer be revolving-tables, but will in due time become the moving backbone of very long tables in the basement mezzanine, similar to the one which we saw extending the full length of the great tenth floor. and from those long tables, running the entire width of the building and up just under the basement ceiling, the sheet-writers will recognize their individual group of packages (by means of the clearly written numerals upon them), lift them off the slowly moving belt and make record of them, for the delivery department's own protection. after which, it is but the twist of the wrist to thrust them into the bins, separately assigned to each driver's run. so go our shoes, or come, if you prefer to have it that way. rapidly, orderly, systematically. system never departs from their handling. even in the driver's own little compartment-bin there are four levels, or shelves, and each is inclined gently and floored with rollers so that he can pick out the packages for his run with greater facility. and in placing the packages upon each of these levels, the sheet-writer, well trained to his job, begins a rough process of assortment by streets. now we are come to wagon delivery, itself. now we shall see why macy's will not have to clutter thirty-fourth street with a long row of its delivery trucks. the length of such a row may easily be estimated when one realizes that sixty electric trucks will stand simultaneously at sixty loading stations in the new basement, with a reserve or reservoir space there for twenty-two more. moreover, this basement will serve as a garage at night and on sundays for these trucks. there is no fire risk whatsoever in the storage of an electrically driven motor vehicle. so the new macy basement will not only be able to store this considerable fleet but to charge its batteries and make necessary light repairs upon it from time to time. access to and from this basement--and the sub-basement--is by means of elevators; not only the two which we have seen reaching aloft to the eleventh floor, but two more just beside them for sole service between the level and the two basements. as a matter of operating expediency it will be easy indeed to arrange in the early morning rush, or at any other time when emergency may so demand, to operate all four elevators in exclusive service between the street and basements. with such a battery macy's can perform a genuine rapid-fire of discharging merchandise. to the mind of the novice there immediately flashes the thought: why not use ramps--long, sloping driveways--from the street level to the basement? long ago the architects of the new building asked themselves that very question. it was, in this particular case at least, rather hard to answer. the main basement of macy's is very high. to install a ramp--double-tracked, of course, for vehicles both ascending and descending--of any easy practical grade would therefore have required a great deal of valuable floor-space. so, for the moment, they dismissed the ramp idea for motor trucks and held to that of elevators. the boston store in chicago solved the problem. it is the same store that has successfully installed descending escalators, floor upon floor. out of the sub-basement of that chicago store the macy investigators saw thirty-two cars come, all inside of eight minutes; and all upon elevators. that settled the question for the big shop in herald square. elevators it should have for this service, and elevators it will have, even for the big five-ton trucks that go into the deep sub-basement for the hampers for suburban delivery as well as large special packages. furniture, however, as in the present store, will be both sold and packed and shipped from an upper floor of its own, the large truck elevators to the eleventh floor being also used for this purpose. the sub-basement of the new plan is in so many respects a replica of the main basement delivery service that it requires no special description here. it, too, has been designed, not only amply large enough for the present needs of macy's, but for that mythical traffic of , which we now know is really not mythical at all, but a matter of rather exact scientific reckoning. architects' drawings are indeed fascinating things; doubly fascinating when one comes to consider all the infinite thought and labor and patience which have entered into their fabrication. i shall not, however, carry you further into the details of the plans for the new macy's. you now have seen enough to give you at least a fair idea of the main structure for the enlarged store. you have seen how carefully and how ingeniously the great main traffic streams through the huge edifice are to be carried--to be brought together, when they needs must be brought together, and kept apart when properly they should be kept apart. add, in your own mind, to this fundamental structure, all of the refinements which you expect to find in the modern retail establishment today and you may begin to depict for yourself the macy's that is to come--to construct for yourself at least a partial vision of the year in herald square. ii. l'envoi yesterday milady of manhattan in her hoopskirt and crinoline; today milady in thick furs above her knees and thin silk stockings and high-heeled pumps below them: tomorrow.... why will you persist in dragging in tomorrow? is it not enough to know that tomorrow milady of the great metropolis of the americas will still be shopping? you may set tomorrow a year hence, twenty years hence, fifty years in the misty future that is to come upon us and still make that statement in perfect safety. and twenty years, fifty years, a hundred years hence, even, macy's should still be in herald square ready to wait upon her needs and upon the needs of her men and children, too. to forecast far into the future is indeed dangerous. only rash men undertake it. we know that is one thing, but that or even is quite another one. a savant of uptown manhattan, who has a nice facility for handling census figures, not long ago predicted that by little old new york would hold within its boundaries sixteen million people. he may know. i don't. and you are privileged to take your guess--with one man's guess almost if not quite as good as another's. a new york of sixteen million souls is an alluring picture, if a bewildering one, withal. it is a fairly bewildering town with its six million of today. but i have not the slightest doubt that rowland hussey macy said the selfsame thing of the new york of six hundred and fifty thousand souls, to which he first came, away back there in . and the macy's of , serving its fair and goodly portion of those sixteen million souls, is indeed an alluring picture, which you may best construct for yourself. the store, itself, does well when it plans so definitely for . nevertheless, before you finally close the pages of this book, i should like to have it record a final picture upon your mind. it is the picture of a really great store. it runs from broadway to seventh avenue, perhaps all the way to eighth. it begins at thirty-fourth street and runs north--one, two, possibly even three or four blocks, or goodly portions of them. it employs ten, twelve, fifteen thousand workers. there are a thousand motor trucks in its delivery service--and a hundred aëroplanes as well. it has sixteen sub-stations, instead of six. its own delivery limits run north to peekskill and east to bridgeport and to huntington and west and south through at least half of new jersey. yet, above all this new enterprise there still towers the high addition which saw completed and added to the edifice, with the huge and flaming word "macy's" emblazoned by white electricity upon the blackened skies of night, visible all the way from seventh avenue to the thickly peopled range of the orange mountains. "macy's," whistles the small boy upon the north river ferryboat, who has traveled afar with his geography book. "macy's! that's a regular gibraltar of a store!" the end emily ratliff, juliet sutherland, charles franks and the online distributed proofreading team. business hints for men and women by a. r. calhoun contents chapter i common sense farming . wealth, land and labor. . money. . sources of wealth. . the farmer, a producer, and seller. . business methods essential. chapter ii documents you should understand . deeds. . abstracts of title. . parties to a deed. . different deeds. . making a deed. . recording deeds. chapter iii forms of deeds and mortgages . trust deeds. . as to mortgages. . mortgage forms. . payments. . assignments. . redemption of mortgages. . equity of redemption. chapter iv wills . two kinds. . limitations of wills. . how to make a will. . on executive duties. . administrators. . debts. . final settlement. chapter v letter writing . business letters. . the heading. . forms. . the greeting. . body of letter. . ending a letter. . materials. . letters of introduction, etc. chapter vi bills, receipts and accounts . bills for goods. . bills for labor. . discounting bills. . forms of receipts. . what is an order? chapter vii who should keep accounts? . an account with crops. . workingman's account. . other records. . copies. chapter viii as to banks . national banks. . banks as lenders. . interest on deposits. . check and deposit banks. . how to draw a check. . certificates of deposit. . use of checks. chapter ix savings banks . how business is conducted. . how to deposit. . how account grows. . limit of deposit. . how to draw money. . savings bank revenues. chapter x notes--drafts . definition and illustration. . days of grace. . indorsing notes. . negotiable notes. . joint notes. . discounting notes. . interest on notes. . protests. . notices. . accommodations. . lost notes. . notes about notes. chapter xi a draft . to make a draft. . forms. . for collection. . dishonor. . protests. . buying drafts. . a good plan. . good as cash. chapter xii just money . what is money? . united states money. . metal money. . paper money. . bank notes. . "greenbacks." . treasury certificates. . worn-out notes. chapter xiii our postal business . the department. . rural free delivery. . classified mail matter. . postal rules. . foreign rates. . stamps. . postal cards. . registering letters. . special delivery. . money orders. . cashing p.o. orders. . advice. chapter xiv telegrams--the telephone . description. . directions. . charges. . telegraphing money. . the method. . the telephone. chapter xv business by express . two kinds. . instructions. . the company's duty. . collections by express. . c. . d. by express. . money by express. . money orders. chapter xvi about railroads . bills of lading. . express bills. . a bill and a draft. . some forms. chapter xvii taxes . definition. . kinds of taxes. . customs duty. . internal revenue. . stamps. . state taxes. . exempt from taxes. . insufficient taxes. . personal property. . town taxes. . payments. . corporation taxes. . taxes in general. . the returns. chapter xviii contracts--leases--guarantees . requisites to a contract. . the consideration. . written and verbal contracts. . forms of contract. . kinds of contract. . a lease. . as to repairs. . sub-letting. . what is a guaranty? . a bill of sale . obligations. chapter xix life insurance . a definition. . how it is done. . as an investment. . forms of life insurance. . mutual insurance. . amount of policies. . policies as security. . lapses. . proprietary companies. chapter xx insurance--fire--accident . like a gambling risk. . what is fire insurance? . premiums. . collecting. . insurable property. . mutual companies. . stock companies. . accident insurance. chapter xxi partnerships . defined. . prepare and sign. . silent partners. . nominal partners. . liability. . how to dissolve. . notice necessary. . a form. chapter xxii investments . what is an investment? . savings. . capitalists. . stockholders. . kinds of stocks. chapter xxiii bonds as investments . as to bonds. . sorts of bonds. . railroad bonds. . buying bonds. . requisite in a bond. chapter xxiv things to remember . don't deceive yourself. . be sure you are not losing. . weeding out old stock. . dropping worthless accounts. . let your wife know. . children and business. . farmers' sons. chapter xxv worth knowing . how title is acquired. . over-generosity. . care of wills. . care of all papers. . checks and stubs. . sending away money. . lost in mails. . more about notes. chapter xxvi look before you leap . as to receipts. . notes in bank. . well to know. . discharging liens. . prompt but not too prompt. . be in no haste to invest. . meet dues promptly. . counting money. . ready money. . in traveling. chapter xxvii contractions and signs . an alphabetical arrangement. chapter xxviii words and phrases used . defined and alphabetically arranged. introduction what is a good business man? "the rich man," you may answer. no, the good business man is the man who knows business. are you a good business man? "up to the average," you say. well, what do you know of business laws and rules, outside your present circle of routine work? now, this handy little volume is a condensation of the rules and the laws which every man, from the day laborer to the banker, should be familiar with. we have not put in everything about business, for that would require a library, instead of a book that can be read in a short day, and be consulted for its special information at any time. it isn't a question of the price of the book to you, or of the profit to the publisher. is it good? many a man has failed because he did not know the rules and laws herein given. never a man has won honestly who did not carry out these rules and laws. chapter i common sense farming the three things essential to all wealth production are land, labor, and capital. "the dry land" was created before there appeared the man, the laborer, to work it. with his bare hands the worker could have done nothing with the land either as a grazer, a farmer or a miner. from the very first he needed capital, that is, the tools to work the land. the first tool may have been a pole, one end hardened in the fire, or a combined hoe and axe, made by fastening with wythes, a suitable stone to the end of a stick; but no matter the kind of tool, or the means of producing it, it represented capital, and the man who owned this tool was a capitalist as compared with the man without any such appliance. from the land, with the aid of labor and capital, comes wealth, which in a broad way may be defined as something having an exchangeable value. before the appearance of money all wealth changed hands through barter. the wealth in the world to-day is immeasurably greater than all the money in it. the business of the world, particularly between nations, is still carried on through exchange, the balances being settled by money. money is a medium of exchange, and should not be confounded with wealth or capital; the latter is that form of wealth which is used with labor in all production. broadly speaking, wealth is of two kinds, dormant and active. the former awaits the development of labor and capital, the latter is the product of both. labor is human effort, in any form, used for the production of wealth. it is of two kinds--skilled and unskilled. the former may be wholly mental, the latter may be wholly manual. the successful farmer must be a skilled laborer, no matter the amount of his manual work. the unskilled farmer can never succeed largely, no matter how hard he works. trained hands with trained brains are irresistible. too many farmers live in the ruts cut by their great-great- grandfathers. they still balance the corn in the sack with a stone. farming is the world's greatest industry. all the ships might be docked, all the factory wheels stopped, and all the railroads turned to streaks of rust, and still the race would survive, but let the plow lie idle for a year and man would perish as when the deluge swept the mountain tops. the next census will show considerably over , , farms in the united states. farming is the greatest of all industries, as it is the most essential. our government has wisely made the head of the department of agriculture a cabinet officer, and the effect on our farming interest is shown in improved methods and a larger output of better quality. the hap-hazard, unskilled methods of the past are disappearing. science is lending her aid to the tiller of the soil, and the wise ones are reaching out their hands in welcome. business methods needed as farming is our principal business, it follows that those who conduct this vast and varied enterprise should be business men. the farmer is a producer of goods, and so might be regarded as a manufacturer,--the original meaning of the word is one who makes things by hand. he is also a seller of his own products, and a purchaser of the products of others, so that, to some extent, he may also be regarded as a trader or merchant. enterprise and business skill are the requisites of the manufacturer and merchant. can the farmer succeed without them? no business can prosper without method, economy, and industry intelligently applied. no man works harder the year round than does the american farmer, yet too many are going back instead of advancing. in such cases it will be found that there is enough hard work for better results, and that the cause of failure is that the industry has not been properly applied, and that economy has had no consideration. economy does not mean niggardliness, or a determination to get along without tools that your neighbor has purchased. a neglect to secure the best tool needed might be classed as an extravagance, a waste, if the tool in question could have added to the quality and quantity of the output, without the expenditure of more labor. business common-sense is taking the place of old-fashioned conservatism and scientific methods are no longer sneered at as "book-farming." chapter ii documents every farmer should understand all property implies an owner. property is of two kinds, real and personal. the former is permanent and fixed, the latter can be moved. every occupant of realty holds it through a deed, which carries with it sole ownership, or through a lease which carries with it the right to occupation and use in accordance with the conditions as to time and the amount to be paid, set forth in the written instrument. a deed carries with it sole ownership, a lease covers the right of use for a fixed period. as to deeds the purchaser of real estate, say a farm, should receive, from the person selling the property, a written instrument, or conveyance known as a deed. the deed must show clearly that the title to or interest in the property has been transferred from the seller to the buyer. before the deed is signed and delivered, the buyer should know that he is getting a clear title to the property described in the conveyance. in order to insure the accuracy of the title and thus avoid subsequent complications and perhaps lawsuits, the paper should be submitted to some good lawyer, or other person acquainted with real estate law and the methods by which titles are traced from the first owner to the present possessor. title abstracts in all the great business centers of the united states there are title guarantee companies, who for a consideration--to be paid by the seller--furnish an abstract of title, and insure its validity. in smaller places the local lawyers know how to make up an abstract and one should be employed. never trust the search of the inexperienced. an abstract of title is a memorandum taken from the records of the office where deeds are recorded, and showing the history of the title from the government up to the present time. the seller should furnish the buyer with a certificate from the proper county officer, showing whether or not all taxes have been paid up to the last assessment. in addition to this, before the money is paid and the deed accepted, the purchaser should be satisfied that there are no mortgages, liens, attachments or other claims against the property. if such claims exist and are known to the buyer, he may assume them as a condition of the sale. parties to a deed the person selling the land and making the deed is known in law as the grantor. the person buying the property is known as the grantee. a deed is a form of contract, and in order to have its terms and statements binding on the maker, he must be twenty-one years of age, or over, and he must be of sound mind. the grantee need not be twenty-one, nor of sound mind in order to make the terms of the deed binding on the grantor. in some states, if the grantor be a married man, his wife must sign the deed with him. this should be seen to, for without the wife's signature the grantee will not have a clear title, for the woman could still claim an interest in the property equal to her dower right. also, if the grantor is a woman, her husband, for the reasons given, should join with her in the execution of the deed. the preparation of a deed should not be left to the unskilled. different deeds there are three kinds of deeds, viz.: general warranty deeds, special warranty deeds, and quit-claim deeds. the general warranty deed, if it can be had, is the one every purchaser should get. in the general warranty deed the grantor agrees for himself, "his heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns," that at the time of making the deed he is lawfully in possession, "seized" is the legal term, of the estate described in the deed, that it is free from all incumbrance, and that he will warrant and defend the grantee and his heirs and assigns against all claims whatsoever. in the quit-claim deed the grantor conveys to the purchaser his interest in or right to the property under consideration. the quit-claim grantor does not guarantee the title to the property, nor warrant the grantee against any other claims. he simply, by the deed, quits his claim to the property. the special warranty deed covenants and warrants only against the acts of the grantor and those claiming title under him. making a deed after a deed is properly drawn, it is ready to be signed, sealed, and delivered to the grantee. if the wife of the grantor is to sign, her name should follow that of her husband. if one or both cannot write, the signature can be made in this way: his george x jones. mark. witness.............. in some states one or more witnesses are required to the signature of the grantor; in others, witnesses are not necessary, except where a "mark" is made. an important part of a deed is the acknowledgment. this is the act of acknowledging before a notary public, justice or other official properly qualified to administer an oath, that the signatures are genuine and made voluntarily. the acknowledgment having been taken, the official stamps the paper with his seal and signs it. in some states the law requires that a wax or paper seal be attached to the paper, while in others a circular scroll, made with the pen, with the letters "l.s." in the center answer the purpose. when the foregoing essentials are complied with the deed must be delivered to the grantee. the delivery is essential, for without it the deed is of no value, even though every other requisite be complied with. a deed may be made for land on which full payment has already been acknowledged, but if the grantor dies before the deed is delivered, then the deed has no legal value. a deed obtained by fraud, deceit or compulsion is void. recording deeds as soon as possible after the grantee has received the deed, he should have it recorded. in every county in the different states there is an officer, known as register or recorder, whose duty it is to enter in regular folios, or books, a copy of every deed or mortgage presented to him. the document then becomes a part of the county records. the grantee must pay the recording fees. anyone, on paying the fee for copying and certifying, can obtain a copy of any document that has been recorded in a register's office. if an original deed is lost, the certified copy of the register has all the legality of the original. all deeds and other papers of value should be carefully kept, so that they may be available, if needed. a small safe deposit box with a company that keeps such spaces for rent, is often a wise investment. keep all related papers in one package or envelope. if there is one lawyer who attends to all your legal business, he will be a good custodian of all papers of record, for he usually has a fireproof safe. chapter iii other forms of deeds--mortgages there is one condition under which the grantor does not turn over or deliver the deed to the grantee after it is made. this is known as a deed in escrow. a deed "delivered in escrow" is when the document is placed with a third party to be by him delivered to the grantee when a certain time has elapsed or certain conditions have been fulfilled. when the conditions have been complied with, the deed is given by its custodian to the grantee, which is as legal as if it were given by the grantor in person. trust deeds a trust deed is the form used to convey property to some person who is entitled to its proceeds or profits. this form of deed is often used to secure the payment of a debt. in some states they take the place of mortgages. where the trust deed is meant to take the place of a mortgage to secure a debt payment, the property is deeded to a third party known as a "trustee." the trustee in this case is the agent for debtor and creditor, and he must act impartially. the trust deed specifies the character of the debt to be secured. in case of failure to pay the debt as agreed on, the trustee may, if so warranted, sell the property, and pay the obligation from the proceeds. the grantor in a trust deed, if not stipulated to the contrary, is entitled to all the rents and profits of the property; for it remains virtually his, until he has failed to fill his contract. when the indebtedness secured by the trust deed has been paid, the trustee must at once execute a paper known to law as a release deed. when recorded this instrument discharges the lien. as to mortgages mortgages are of two kinds, real and chattel. the first is a lien on real estate, the second on personal property. a mortgage may be defined as a conveyance of property, personal or real, as security for the payment of a debt, or it may be given as a guarantee for the performance of some particular duty. mortgage forms when a mortgage is given as security for the payment of a debt, the rule is to give a note for the payment of the amount involved. the mortgage becomes in this case the security for the note's payment. in the body of the note it must be stated that it is secured by mortgage. the date of the note and mortgage should be the same. the man who mortgages his property is the mortgagor. the man to whom the mortgage is given is the mortgagee. the form of the mortgage is the same as that of a deed, except that it contains a clause called the defeasance, which states that when the obligation has been met the document shall be void. mortgages must be recorded the forms for "signing, sealing and delivering" a mortgage, are the same as with a deed. a mortgage must be recorded the same as a deed, the mortgagee paying the fees. chattel mortgages are filed and recorded in the same way, except that it is not usual to make copies of the instrument. they are described in books prepared for the purpose. a wife need not join her husband in making the note secured by a mortgage, but if she agrees to the transaction it is necessary for her to sign the mortgage; however, some states do not require this. payments often a life insurance policy is used as security for the payment of a mortgage. the mortgagee, if there be buildings on the property, should see that the buildings are insured and that the policy or policies are made out in his name. if the insurance policy is in the mortgagor's name he may collect and keep the insurance money. the mortgagor must meet, as stipulated, every payment of the principal and interest. failure to meet one payment can result in a legal foreclosure. when a payment is made, the date and the amount must be entered on the back of the note. this should be done in the presence of the mortgagor. if possible always pay the obligation by check. if a payment is accepted on a mortgage and the amount is not sufficient to meet the sum required, the interest is first settled in full, the rest is credited to the principal. when the full amount, with interest, is paid in, it becomes the duty of the mortgagee to have the mortgage "discharged." a complete settlement is when, all payments being made, the mortgagee surrenders the note and its security, and causes to be written by the register, on the margin of the copy in his books, the words, "discharged," or "satisfied," affixing thereto his official signature and the date. assignments a mortgage is regarded in law as personal property. a mortgage need not remain in the hands of the mortgagee in order to be valid. it can be sold like bonds, stocks or other property, and there are men who deal only in that form of security. in order to sell a mortgage, the owner must make, to the purchaser, what is known as an "assignment of mortgage." the assignment should be recorded in the same way as the original mortgage, the assignee paying the fee. redemption of mortgages while the rule as to the redemption of mortgages remains the same in some localities that it formerly was, the law in most places is now more lenient. now the mortgagor who has failed is usually given by law an extension of time in which to make good the payment of principal and interest. lenders, when the interest is met, are content to let the mortgage run on as an investment, though it will often be found, in such cases, that it is better to make a new mortgage. equity of redemption where the payments on a mortgage have not been met and the instrument has not been foreclosed, the mortgagor has still what is known as an "equity of redemption." in some states after the foreclosure of the mortgage and the sale of the property there is still a period of redemption of from sixty days to six years. the mode of foreclosure differs in some states. the usual method is to foreclose on an order from the court, and to have the sale conducted by a court officer. the proceeds from the sale are used to pay the principal, interests and costs. if there is money left over it is paid to the mortgagor, whose interests in the property are then at an end. many people, not familiar with business methods, are inclined to regard a mortgage as something of a disgrace, when, as a matter of fact it is a most usual and honorable means of raising money for the securing of a home or the conducting of a business. nearly all of the great railroads of the country have been built by the sale of the mortgage bonds, which are usually renewed when due, and are sought out as a safe and sane form of investment. the fact that a mortgage payment has to be met on a farm is often in itself the strongest inducement to industry and economy. chapter iv wills whether farmer, manufacturer, merchant or professional man, and whether in youth, mid-age or declining years, every owner of personal or real property, or both, should make a will. if you have not made a will, get over the foolish notion that it is a premonition of death, and do so at once. a will is a written and signed declaration of the disposition one wishes to have made of his property in the event of his death. the maker of a valid will must be of sound mind and not less than twenty-one years of age. women, whether married or single, if of proper age, are competent to make a will. of two kinds a will may be written or unwritten. unwritten wills are known as "nun-cupative." nun-cupative wills are employed only when through accident, or sudden seizure by a fatal disease, the time necessary to write and sign a will cannot be had. the unwritten will must be authenticated by reliable and unprejudiced witnesses, and generally it can dispose of personal property only. in the written will no precise form is necessary, though when drawn by a lawyer it usually begins with some such form as: "i, george brown, being of sound mind and good understanding, do make and declare this to be my last will and testament", etc. a will is not necessarily permanent. it may be cancelled or changed in any way by the maker before his death, or a new will can be made. the last will cancels all preceding wills. an addition to an existing will is known as a "codicil." a man making a will is called a testator. a woman making a will is called a testatrix. limitations of wills a man has a right to dispose of his property by will or gift as he chooses, but if he is married the law compels him to consider the rights of another. the husband cannot, by will or otherwise, deprive his wife of her "right of dower" in his real estate and appurtenances. unless she chooses to accept, the wife need not accept other property that is bequeathed her in lieu of dower. the wife's dower interest in her husband's estate is a life interest only. on her death it goes to the husband's heirs, as if there had been no widow. in some states there is no right of dower. how to make a will the will not only shows the purpose of the testator, but it serves as a bar to litigation among the natural heirs. any man or woman can write out his or her will, but unless quite familiar with such work it is better to employ a lawyer for the purpose. the person named in the will to carry out the purpose of the testator is known as the "executor". no person, not twenty-one at the time the will is proved can act as an executor. neither a convict, an imbecile, nor one known to be a drug fiend or an habitual drunkard, is eligible for the post of an executor. if an executor be appointed against his will, the law does not compel him to serve. there must be at least two witnesses to a will, some states require three. the witnesses need not know the contents of the will, but they must understand before signing that it is a will, and they must see it signed by the testator. under the common law the will is void if the witnesses are beneficiaries. in some states a will so witnessed is valid, except that the witnesses cannot receive their legacies. all the witnesses should sign at the same time and add their addresses. if an heir at law, say a child, is not mentioned in the will, the law assumes that he was forgotten by the testator and generally gives the share the heir would be entitled to if there were no will. at the end of the will the testator, in the presence of the witnesses, should write his name in full. an executor's duties an executor is the legal representative of the testator. it is his duty to see that the provisions of the will are carried out. no man is qualified to act as executor who is not competent to make a will. executors, unless relieved by the provisions of the will, are required to file bonds, proportioned to the value of the estate, for the faithful performance of their duties. should there be no executor named in the will, or if the person so named refuses to act, or if he dies or resigns, the court will appoint a person to act in his place. the executor appointed by the court is known or called an "administrator with the will annexed." in some states the court having jurisdiction of wills and estates of deceased is known as "the probate," in others it is called the "surrogate's court," and in still others, "the orphan's." administrators and their duties if a man, owning property, dies without making a will, the judge of the proper court will appoint an administrator to settle the estate. this is the method of procedure: . a person, interested in getting the estate settled, goes before the proper judge and asks him to appoint an administrator. . the administrator must give the same bond as an executor. their duties are the same. . in settling the estate the administrator is governed by the law, and by the special directions of the officer having jurisdiction in such matters. . he must make a careful list of all the property belonging to the estate. the value of the personal property is estimated by men specially appointed by the court for the purpose and known as "appraisers". . the administrator must account for every item of property that comes into his possession. . all debts of deceased must be first paid, including funeral expenses. if the proceeds of the personal property are not sufficient for this purpose, the administrator may, if there be real estate, sell the whole or part of it, on an order from the court. debts debts must be paid in an order prescribed by law. the following is the usual order: . funeral expenses and expenses of last illness. . the widow's allowance or award. . debts due the state or municipality. . claims of other creditors. whatever property is left, after paying these obligatory sums, is divided among the rightful heirs under the direction of the court, and in the manner provided by law. the administrator must advertise, in one or more county papers the fact that he has been appointed to settle the estate of the deceased, whose name is given, and he must ask that all claims be presented within a given period, usually fixed at six months. when the estate is settled to the satisfaction of the court, the same authority releases the administrator and his bondsmen. all the fees connected with the settlement are regarded as debts and must be paid from the proceeds of the estate before closing. the final settlement when the debts are paid and the residue divided among the heirs, the administrator files his account. if it is allowed the case ends. the parties of interest in an estate may agree to settle it out of court. this saves expense, but it is not the safest way. chapter v letter writing what has been said about deeds and mortgages applies not only to the farmer, but also to every owner of a building lot. the same may be said of wills. they have a business interest for the town as well as for the country dweller. business letters the purpose of this book being "strictly business," no attempt will be made to instruct the reader in anything not connected with the subject under consideration. social, friendly, and such letters are matters for individual time and taste, and no rule can be laid down for their writing, but the business letter is a different matter, and one which deserves special consideration from every man or woman who receives an order by mail, or who sends one. to write a good business letter is no mean accomplishment, and although a gift with some, it can be acquired by all. a letter is, in a way, a testimonial of the character and ability of the writer. the purpose of a business letter is to express just what you want and no more. any man with a good common school education, and a little patient practice, can soon learn to write as good a business letter as the college graduate. correct spelling may not be general, but it is certainly desirable. letter writing, as in the preparation of other papers, has its own well-recognized forms, and these may be easily learned. every properly constructed business letter should consist of the following parts: . where written from. . when written. . to whom written. . address. . salutation. . introduction. . purpose of letter. . complimentary ending. . signature. the heading the letter should begin by giving the address of the writer, followed by the date on which it was written. this will enable the recipient to direct his reply. if from a city, the street and number should be given. if many letters are written it will be convenient to have the permanent address of the writer printed. the writing should be plain, and there should be no doubt in the mind of the reader as to the proper spelling of the address and signature. avoid the hieroglyphics which some vain men adopt in signing their names. it may be fanciful, but it does not imply consideration for the time and patience of strangers. the following forms will serve to illustrate the type of heading used in ordinary business letters: smith st., brownsville, mass. september , . mr. john smith, doylestown, penna. dear sir: leroy, mass., september , . messrs. brown and jones, denver, col. gentlemen: seminole st., fort smith, ark. september , . mrs. mary j. robinson, lansing, cal. dear madam: the "mr.," "mrs.," "madam," and "miss" are titles of courtesy and should not be omitted. the abbreviation "esq." for esquire is sometimes used; but the two titles mr. and esq. should never be used with one name, as "mr. john smith, esq." if a man is known by a military or other title, always use it, but never precede it with "mr." nor follow it with "esq." clergymen should always be addressed as "rev.," the abbreviation for reverend. if he is a doctor of divinity, add d.d. to the name, as "rev. john smith, d.d." medical doctors may be addressed as "dr. john smith," or "john smith, m.d." the greeting the greeting or salutation is a term of courtesy or esteem used in addressing the one to whom the letter is sent. "sir" is the formal greeting, and is used in addressing officials, or any strange male person. "sirs," or "gentlemen" may be used in the plural. "dear sir," or "my dear sir," is the usual form of greeting when a business letter is addressed to an individual. where the writer is acquainted with the person addressed, the usual form of greeting is "dear mr. smith." the letter itself if writing in response to a letter received, the writer should begin in some such way as this: mr. thomas brown, newburg, n. y. my dear sir: your favor of the second inst. is just to hand. in reply permit me to state, etc., etc. this should be followed by the necessary statement, set forth in clear, simple words. be sure of yourself. the secret of good writing is clear thinking. ending the letter there is much in the proper ending of a letter. in the ordinary business letter the usual ending may be, "yours truly," "yours very truly," or "yours respectfully." other endings used in writing to business acquaintances are, "yours sincerely," or "very sincerely yours," or you may substitute the words "cordially" or "heartily" for "sincerely." signing the letter the name of the writer should be so clear and distinct as to leave no doubt as to the spelling. the name should always be written in the same way. if your name is george w. brown, do not write it at one time as here given, and again as g. washington brown, or g. w. brown. adopt one form and stick to it. if you are writing for a firm or for another as clerk or secretary, always sign the firm name, and below it your own name preceded by the word "per," meaning "by" or "through." the materials never use scraps of paper or soiled paper to write on if better can be had. the materials of a letter affect the receiver, particularly if a stranger, just as one is affected by the garb of a stranger before he speaks. use a good pen and black ink. fold your paper so that it will fit the envelope. avoid blots and erasures; they indicate carelessness or unbecoming haste. address your letter distinctly. here is a good form: mr. george w. white, boston, sioux st. mass. letters of introduction at some time or another one has to write a letter of introduction, and sometimes he has had to pay for it. if you should give such a letter to a man to introduce him to another with whom you trade, the law has held that the introducer is responsible for any reasonable bills the introduced may contract with the receiver of the letter. never give a letter of introduction to a man you are not sure of. in addressing a letter of introduction which is to be handed in person, do it in this way: mr. george w. brown, washington, d. c. introducing mr. henry wilson. this shows on its face the nature of the communication. here is a good form: payne ave., montrose, ill. september , . mr. norman r. lloyd, chicago, ill. dear mr. lloyd: this will introduce my esteemed friend mr. thomas t. fletcher, of this town. mr. fletcher contemplates opening a drug store in chicago. should he do so he will prove an acquisition to your city. any favor you can render him will be much appreciated by, yours faithfully, george w. brown. recommendations every man of standing and every employer of labor is at times called on to certify to the character, or to give a testimonial to some esteemed employee who is about to seek his fortune in another place. if you are about to hire a stranger, it adds to your confidence and to his chances if he have a testimonial as to character and fitness from his last employer, or from some man whose word you value. the letter of recommendation is usually of a general character and not addressed to any particular. it should open in this way: "to whom it may concern." follow this with your testimonial and sign it. titles the president of the united states is addressed as: "his excellency," william h. taft, executive mansion, washington, d. c. cabinet officers, senators, congressmen, members of the legislature, and mayors of cities are usually addressed as "hon.," the abbreviation of honorable. the title "hon." like "esq." is often misused. after all titles of courtesy are not obligatory, unless we regard the unwritten law of custom in such matters as binding. the very best kind of a letter, and perhaps the hardest to write, is that in which the writer appears to be talking to us face to face. chapter vi bills, receipts and accounts try to understand clearly the meaning of all the business terms you have to use. the terms "bill" and "invoice" usually mean the same thing, that is, a "bill of sale." this applies to goods sold, or services rendered. the merchant sends you an itemized invoice of the goods you ordered and he has shipped. the carpenter sends you an itemized bill of the work done by your order. such a document should be regarded not as a "dun," but rather as a record of the contract or transaction. in the foregoing case the merchant and the carpenter are the creditors, the recipient of the goods or work is the debtor. bills for goods in writing out a bill the date is the first thing to be considered. this should be the same in form as a business letter. this form will serve as an illustration: glenwood, n. j. october , . robert brown to george l. white, dr. sept . for lbs. sugar, at . . . .$ . " . " lbs. ham, at . . . . . . " . " lbs. flour, at . - / . . ---- received payment, $ . signature on payment wholesale houses send such bills as soon as the goods are shipped or delivered, though the payment, as per agreement, is not to be made for thirty, sixty or ninety days. where there is a running account, that is, frequent orders, with total payments never completed, it is customary for the seller, at the beginning of a calendar month to send to the creditor a "statement." this statement does not repeat the items of the bills rendered, its purpose being to show the balance due to date. bills for labor where a mechanic or laborer is employed by the day at a fixed wage, the length of time and dates should be given. richmond, va. november , . charles m. pratt, to john smith, dr. to days, from oct. st to th inclusive, at $ . ..........$ . to / days, oct. th, th and th.................... . to days, oct. th, th and th ....................... . ------ received payment, $ . signature. this bill is just as transferable as a mortgage. if for any reason mr. smith should decide to sell it, say to robert brown, he should make the following endorsement across the back: "in consideration of ------ dollars, the receipt of which is hereby acknowledged, i do hereby sell and assign to robert brown, the written account, which is justly due from the within named charles w. pratt, and i hereby authorize the said robert brown to collect the same. "john smith." "newburg, n. y. november , ." regarded simply from a business viewpoint and without considering ethics, "honesty is the best policy." bills, where possible, should be promptly paid. prompt payment is a guarantee of credit and credit is the heart if not the soul of business. never, if it can be avoided, buy goods on the installment plan. be sure to get a receipt for all payments you make, and be equally sure to keep the receipt where you can find it. examine all bills and invoices; compare them with the goods received, and no matter what your faith in the seller's care and honesty, calculate for yourself the price of each item, and be sure that the total is correct. discount in trade it is a business custom, when a bill is paid before it is due, to allow a discount. this may be the legal rate of interest, or any percentage agreed on in advance. sometimes wholesale merchants or manufacturers grant esteemed customers, in consideration of prompt payments, a discount from the regular prices. this is known as "trade discount." we often read of two or more discounts. a store keeper buys a bill of goods for $ and is granted % and % from the selling price. this does not mean a discount of % as the uninitiated might think. the % is deducted from the $ , that is, $ , leaving $ . then the %, $ , is deducted from this, leaving $ . partial payments are not endorsed on the bill. the receipt is written on a separate piece of paper. it differs from the usual receipt in that the one is "in full payment" and the other "on account." receipt no bill before it is actually paid. some one has translated the letters "c. o. d." into "come omejitly down." the collect on delivery usually accompanies goods sent by express. forms of receipts a receipt for a partial payment: leavenworth, kansas. december , . $ . received from charles long seventy-five dollars on account. henry s. somers. a receipt in full: san diego, cal. july , . $ . received from n. o. taylor, two hundred and sixty - dollars, in full payment to date. samuel g. novris. another form: portland, me. october , . $ . received from thomas moore, ten cords of hardwood, at $ . a cord, the sum to be applied to his account. daniel forman. in payment of rent: $ . received from william forbes seventeen dollars in full payment of rent of premises no. west street, for the month ending october , . philip f. ross. where one person pays for another: wilmington, del. august , . $ . received from alfred thompson eighty dollars to apply to the account of hiram o. wells. baker jones & co., per, s. n. thorp. receipts and other documents signed with a mark x should be witnessed. payment on a note: bridgeport, conn. july , . $ . received from casper n. work one hundred and fifty dollars to apply on the payment of his note to me for six hundred dollars, dated march , . ruben hoyt. the maker of the note should, in addition to getting his receipt, have the amount of his payment endorsed on the back of the note by the holder. where a receipt is given to the administrator of an estate his position should be named as "robert fields, administrator of the estate of john jones, deceased." what is an order? an order is a command or instruction by one person to another to do a stated thing. an order may be given for the delivery of goods or the payment of cash. this is the usual form: dayton, ohio. august , . mr. g. w. mcbride: please deliver to edward lott goods from your store to the amount of ten dollars, and charge to my account. f. t. leroy. this would be an order for cash: holden, ind. june , . $ . mr. p. t. mayhew. please pay to thomas jackson thirty dollars and charge same to my account. f. r. wilson. a due bill the customary form of a due bill is: durham, n. c. may , . $ . due george smith ten dollars, payable in merchandise from my store. s. t. long. chapter vii who should keep accounts to have any value, business accounts, whether of a great or a small concern, must be accurately kept. every man and woman, having unsettled dealings with others, should keep some sort of book accounts. storekeepers must keep accounts, and every farmer and mechanic, who would know just what he owns and what he has spent during the past month and year, should keep an exact account of every cent received and paid out. lawyers and doctors know how to keep accounts, or if they do not they are neglecting their own side of their professional duties. workers, skilled and unskilled, and even the hired girl who is paid by the month, should keep a record of the compensation received, and how the whole or the part has been expended. no woman can be called a really good housekeeper who does not know to a penny what has become of the money she has received for the upkeep of her establishment, whether she have a score of servants or does all her own work. in order to keep such accounts, as have just been indicated, it is not necessary to be a trained bookkeeper, or to know anything more about the art than a good common school education gives. another word as to the farmer. i am not thinking in this connection of the old-time, deep-in-the-ruts farmer, who never learns and knows nothing to forget, but of that wide-awake producer who tries to keep up with the times. not only should the farmer keep cash accounts, the form may be quite simple, but all his business affairs should be kept in the best possible trim. personal agreements without some kind of writing to back them up, are dangerous. verbal contracts feed the lawyers. all transactions involving labor or money should be recorded in black and white. don't trust to your memory. don't rely on the memory of another. an account with crops every farmer should keep an account with each crop he raises and even with every field he cultivates. against the farm should be charged-- . its annual rental value. . what all the labor would cost if hired. . new machinery. . wear, tear and repair of old machinery. . taxes. . insurance. . doctor's bills. . interest on mortgage if any. . the cost of fodder, fuel, etc., consumed. the farm should be credited with-- . the rent. . the cost of everything produced and consumed on place. . the farm products sold. . the stock sold. . increased value of stock. . increased value of property, if any. such accounts you say will cause trouble; well, you cannot do anything of value without trouble. the question is will the effort pay? those who keep such accounts say it does, and they are usually the successful, progressive farmers. working-men's accounts the working man, skilled or unskilled, and the working man's wife as well, should keep some form of cash book that will show from week to week the receipts and expenditures. one can be thrifty without being miserly. where did the money go? look at your book, where every cent expended has been set down, and you will be surprised to find how the little sums total up. look over the list of little things bought and you will be surprised to see how many were not needed. here is a simple form for a home record: cash received . jan. . balance on hand.........$ . " . work for mr. jones....... . " . smith paid bill......... . " . work for mr. brown....... . cash paid . jan. . two shirts...............$ . " . to wife for house........ . " . doctor c's. bill......... . " . fare to troy............. . " . horse car................ . " . postage.................. . " . church contribution...... . " . shoes mended............. . " . newspaper bill........... . never "lump" what you receive or what you spend. set down each item separately, even to one cent. when you have filled out each page of "received" and "paid" foot it up and carry it to the next page set apart for the purpose. an account book will cost but a few cents. use the left-hand side for receipts and the right for expenditures. at any time the excess of the left hand over the right should show the amount on hand. strike a balance at least once a month. other records never mix up another's accounts with your own. john smith, treasurer of some church, society, or club, is a different person before the law from john smith, the trader or mechanic. funds not your own, and which may be added to or decreased from time to time, as in the case of a society, say like the odd fellows, should be kept in the bank not as john smith's but as the funds of "john smith, treasurer of washington lodge , independent order of odd fellows," or whatever the name of the society, club, or church may be. in the same way, "a treasurer's book" should be kept and all the receipts and expenditures carefully recorded. copies if a business proposition is made to another by mail, or if you hand another in writing your proposition as to a certain contract you are willing to undertake, for the consideration named, be sure to keep a copy of the letter or contract; such a precaution may save trouble. chapter viii as to banks no instrument of trade has done so much or is more essential to the safe and progressive business of the world today than the bank. every department of business, in our modern civilization, must keep in touch with the bank. money is the blood of trade and the banking system is its heart. the bank is as necessary to the thrifty farmer as it is to the greatest railroad or the most wide-spread trust. banks are depositories for money not in circulation. banks have facilities for the safe-guarding of money which the ordinary business man could not provide for himself. instead of running the risk of paying bills with money carried about on his person, the business man, and every man with ready money should follow his example, deposits his money in a convenient bank, for which he receives a proper voucher in the shape of a credit in a deposit book. when he pays a bill, he draws a check for the amount, payable to the order of his creditor. this check, when endorsed by the receiver and paid by the bank, is in itself a receipt for the money. national banks as i propose to say something about savings banks in another chapter, the present will be devoted to what are known as "banks of deposit." banks of deposit are either national, state, or private. a national bank is, as the name implies, chartered and incorporated by the government, with special privileges and restrictions. the government in the organizing of national banks had in mind the protection of the public without unduly limiting the profit of the stockholders. the sum the stockholders must contribute to the establishment of a national bank varies according to the population and the business importance of the place in which the bank is to be located. the capital must exist in a prescribed form. certain forms of investment are prohibited, as for instance the ownership of real estate, except under certain restrictions. this is done that the national bank may be able to convert its securities into cash in the shortest order. in consideration of a prescribed amount of united states bonds, deposited with the treasury in washington, the government issues to the national bank a prescribed sum in printed bank notes of varying denominations. if the bank should close for any reason, the bank notes or their equivalent must be returned, when the bonds deposited as security are released. every bank must have a board of directors, a president and a cashier. receiving and paying tellers, with bookkeepers, and many clerks are necessary to carry on the business of a large bank. in addition, the national banks are under the supervision of regularly appointed government inspectors. a national bank may fail, but its notes are still "as good as gold." banks as lenders the bank not only receives money on deposit, but it loans money under certain conditions. many merchants, builders, contractors and others often find it necessary to borrow money in order to carry on their business successfully. if a man's business reputation is good, and the banks keep well posted in such matters, he may secure a loan on his own note, though even in such cases the name of a good endorser is required. if in addition to his note the borrower can offer security in the way of bonds of good character, or other reliable collateral, he can usually be accommodated. of course, the banks charge interest for loans. they also make collections on notes and other commercial paper and they issue foreign and domestic bills of exchange. every man with a sum large or small in excess of his expenditures, should open a bank account. even if not in business this will encourage thrift and lead to good business habits. interest on deposits some banks, particularly those known as "state" or "private," and national banks in smaller communities, allow interest on deposits. this interest varies with the demand for money, but in the eastern states it seldom goes over four per cent. it is well to know when interest begins and ends. if the dates set by the bank for reckoning interest are the first day of january, april, july and october, money deposited march st will begin to draw interest next day, but if deposited april nd, it would not begin to draw interest till july st. but if you have the money and would insure its safety, deposit it at once regardless of time or interest. if a depositor withdraws his money before the day when interest is due, he forfeits the interest. but banks vary as to that. check and deposit books every depositor is given a book in which the teller or cashier credits him on the left-hand side with the amount deposited. other deposits are treated in the same way, and at proper times, if interest is allowed, it is added as a deposit. the depositor can provide his own check book, and have it printed in any color he pleases, with the name of himself and business on the margin. the bank, however, will supply loose bank checks of its own, or it may provide them in book form, with stubs, or a space on which the number, amount and purpose of the check may be noted for the drawer's information. "writing up" of the deposit book is leaving it with the proper officer at the bank--a receipt for the book is never taken. it is returned with all the checks received, and their amount footed up on the right hand or debit page, and the balance on hand shown. every depositor should know from the record on the check stubs exactly how his account stands with the bank. take care that you do not overdraw. keep your own record of your own money. commercial deposit banks in the commercial banks of our large cities no interest is allowed, nor could it be easily calculated where a score of deposits may be made in a week and a hundred checks drawn in a day. the depositor in such a bank is free to check out his funds as he pleases. before opening an account there is more than money needed from the depositor. if unknown, he must satisfy the bank of his character, which is best done through the introduction of one known to both. some banks make a charge for deposits, where a man makes a convenience of them by depositing money which he checks out in a short time. a depositor, when opening an account with a bank is required to place his signature in a book kept for the purpose. until the bank officer, the paying teller, becomes familiar with the signature on the check, he verifies it by comparing it with that in the book. how to prepare a check a check may be defined to be "a written order on a bank directing it to pay a certain sum of money to the person named in the check or to his order, and signed by a depositor." so long as the purpose is clearly conveyed in the writing no particular form of words is necessary, nor need the paper on which the check is written be the regular printed form properly filled in. the "drawer" is the one who makes the check. the "payee" is the one for whom the check is made. in making a check, the best plan is to fill out the stub first, and from the data on it make out the check. this tends to accuracy. be sure to number your check, beginning with i. be sure that the number on the stub is the same as on the check. a person having money in bank and wishing to draw for his own use, makes his check payable to "self" or to "cash." usual form of check: first national bank. no. kingston, vt., oct. , . pay to order of john smith seventy-five / ------ dollars. $ . george f. brown. it is proper form to specify on the face of the check the purpose for which it is given, but while this is permissible it is not usual. write the amount of the check first in words then in figures. this makes more certain the amount. always begin first word of amount close to left-hand side of check; when the whole sum is written down draw a heavy stroke along the line to the word "dollars." when a check is made payable to john smith or order, john smith must sign his name on the back of the check--left-hand end and about an inch from the top. never sign a check until you are ready to collect, or to bank it. the payee can endorse the check to another by writing on the back as follows: pay to the order of thomas brown. john smith. a check payable to "bearer" may be negotiated by any one. when such checks are presented by a stranger, at the bank of the maker, the paying teller always insists that the stranger be identified. never make a check payable to "bearer" if it can be avoided. sometimes checks are dated ahead, for reasons satisfactory to the maker and payee. a check drawn on august th, but dated august th cannot be collected till the latter date. never date a check ahead unless you are positive that you will have the money in bank to meet it on the day named. never, if you can avoid it in trade, receive a post-dated check. cash or deposit your checks as soon as possible after they are received. if the bank should fail, while you are holding the check, the maker cannot be held for the loss. certificates of deposit often when a depositor is travelling, he finds it convenient to carry with him a form of paper that is as good as cash, and much better in the event of loss. banks will issue "certified checks" to depositors. these checks are stamped by the bank "certified" with the date and officer's signature attached. on issuing such a check, the bank debits the receiver's account with the amount, and so can guarantee the payment whenever or wherever presented. such a check may be received with as much certainty of its value as if it were a bank bill. when a person places money in a bank with no intention of checking it out for some time to come, he may have issued to him a "certificate of deposit." while holding this certificate he cannot check against the money in the bank. the holder of a certificate of deposit may transfer it. the money may be paid in part by the bank, if the certificate is presented, and the amount is endorsed on the back. to withdraw all the money the certificate must be surrendered. use of checks there is no form of commercial paper in such general use as the check. the total of all the checks in use at some seasons is far more than the total of all the money in all the banks. checks are balanced in the money centers through what are known as clearing houses. in these a bank is charged with checks against it and credited with those in its favor. the differences are settled by cash. often a few thousand dollars will settle check accounts amounting to millions. if by any chance you should receive a check in which your name is misspelled, or not given as you write it, endorse the check exactly as the name is written on the face, then add your name in the regular way. chapter ix savings banks while of national importance, savings banks are chartered by the respective states in which they exist, and as such are distinctly local institutions. unlike the national, the savings bank is not established as a money-making corporation. the ostensible and actual purpose of the savings bank is to encourage people of small means to save. the savings bank provides a safe place for the care of such deposits, and it pays such rates of interest on such deposits as are warranted by the earnings of its investments after paying the expenses incident to the proper conduct of its officers. when a savings bank receives authorization to act, through a charter from the state, the organizers choose a board of directors and the proper officers. usually the officers occupying positions of trust and responsibility are required to give bonds for the proper discharge of their duties. how business is conducted with all the legal conditions complied with, and a suitable office provided, the savings bank is ready for business. some savings banks will receive on deposit any sum from five cents to five thousand dollars. other banks will not receive less than one dollar at a time, nor more than a thousand. we have heard of "penny savings banks," but they are rarely chartered, and are organized, only to encourage thrift among children. fractional parts of a dollar are not usually reckoned as drawing interest. some banks require as much as three, four or five dollars before allowing interest. savings banks in the eastern states pay from three to four per cent. in the west it is sometimes as high as six. each bank has certain dates at which calculation of interest begins. as a rule this is january st, april st, july st, and october st. money deposited at any time between these dates does not draw interest till the beginning of the next quarter. but never mind the interest. the best time to make a deposit is when you have the money. the bank is safer than your pocket. how to deposit count your money carefully and make a memorandum of the amount before giving to the savings bank to deposit. hand the money to the officer--usually "the receiving teller"-- authorized to receive it. the teller writes down the name, age, occupation and residence of the depositor. if money is deposited in the name of one under legal age, the names of the parents and the birthplace of the minor are also recorded. the adult depositor must write his name in a book provided by the bank for the signature of clients. when these conditions are complied with, the depositor receives a memorandum book, known as a "deposit book", in which, with his name and date, is written the amount of his first deposit. the deposit book must be carefully guarded, for without its presentation at the savings bank money cannot be drawn. you cannot check against your savings bank account, as with a commercial bank. how the account grows after the first account is opened the rest is easy. on the second, as on all subsequent visits, the deposit book, with the amount to be entered, is handed to the receiving teller. he counts the money, makes a record of it for his own use, enters it on your book as a deposit, and hands the book back. that is all. whenever interest is due it is written down in the book as if it were a cash deposit. the interest, if desired, will be paid in cash, but if allowed to remain, it begins at once to earn interest for itself. interest grows like a rolling snow ball. on such small beginnings great fortunes have been built. savings banks keep a reserve, made up of earnings in excess of interest and all expenses. this reserve earns money. the money so earned is reckoned as a net profit, and it may be distributed, and usually is, among its depositors as a "dividend." the limit of deposit different banks have different limits of deposit, that is fixed sums beyond which they will not receive. the limit is from one thousand to five thousand dollars. when the fortunate depositor has reached the limit with one savings bank, there is no law to prevent his opening another account with another, or with any number of similar banks. remember the savings banks are not meant for capitalists, but for small depositors. after deposits and interests have reached a total of $ , , the interest will not go on earning interest, but will be regarded simply as a deposit. this is in compliance with law. depositors, posted as to the law, open another account with another bank, and keep on till the interest limit is reached. how to draw money a savings bank depositor may either draw money himself or through some properly authorized person. this is the method: the deposit book is presented to the paying teller. the owner states the sum he wants to draw. having assured himself that the bearer of the book is the right person, the teller takes a receipt in a book kept for the purpose, for the amount, enters the same on the right hand or debit side of the book, and hands out the money. there is a form of authorization for another to draw, printed on the deposit book. this must be copied and its directions complied with. most banks will not allow depositors to draw out less than a fixed sum, say $ . . this saves trouble, and prevents thoughtless depositors from going to the bank every time they want a dollar. before a depositor can draw a large sum from a savings bank he may be compelled, under the law, to give from one week to six weeks' notice of his intention. this provision may not prevent a run on the bank, but it gives the managers time to provide for it. read the rules in the deposit book. how savings banks earn how can a bank that does not discount notes or deal in loans and commercial paper earn money? how can it pay interest? while they may be individually small, the aggregate of all the deposits in a savings bank may, and often do, amount to many millions. this money is not allowed to lie idle. under the skilled direction of the bank officers, the money, instead of lying idle in the vaults, is invested in many ways, but always in accordance with the laws of the state under which the bank is chartered. much of the money is invested in mortgages on real estate, never on personal property. national bank stocks, sound railroad bonds, and other forms of reliable interest security are fields for the investment of savings bank funds. savings banks are subject to the periodic inspection of state officers appointed for the purpose. the failure of a savings bank through bad investments or the dishonesty of officials is very rare. avoid all banks that promise more than the regular rate of interest. private banks may be, and usually are, honestly conducted, but to be safe, deposit only with a bank that is regularly chartered and is subject to the inspection of the law. the savings bank is the best for the wage earner. chapter x notes--drafts the promissory note is a most useful kind of commercial paper, and it is in general use in business. if a man has not sufficient ready cash to pay for the real estate he is about to purchase, he makes up the difference by a note, which note is secured by a mortgage on the property. remember the mortgage must always be regarded as security. the note represents the debt. often wholesalers take a note as part or even full payment for a bill of goods to a retailer. if the wholesaler needs money, he endorses these notes and putting them in his bank draws against them, less the discount he has to pay for the accommodation. as has been shown, an account may be transferred and sold, but a note is more convenient for that purpose. an illustration as with a check the maker of a note is known as a "drawer," the person in whose favor it is drawn is the "payee." notes may be written in pencil, but it is better and safer to write with ink on good paper. supposing you buy a team of horses, or it may be a bill of goods, from john brown, for $ . now you have only $ in cash. what are you to do? mr. brown, knowing you to be reliable, says: "that's all right, friend jones. you pay me the $ cash for which i will give you a receipt, then i will take your note for six months, payable at my bank." you agree to this; pay out the money, make and deliver the note and take the property in question, which is now yours as much as it had been his before the transfer. the following would be a legal form in which to make the note: $ . summit, n. j. october , . six months after date i promise to pay to the order of john brown.............. two hundred and fifty ...... dollars,.... at the lincoln national bank of summit .......... value received. george jones. no. . due april , . now, if before the expiration of this note, you want to make a payment on it of, say, $ , you take the money to mr. brown, who endorses on the back of the note, "received on the within note $ , january rd.," if that be the date, and signs, "john brown." it may be well to remember that while a running account may be collected at any time, the law cannot prevent the maker of a promissory note from selling all his belongings and leaving the country before the note is due. days of grace notes may be "time" notes, that is where there is a specified time for payment, or "demand" notes. the latter are collectable on presentation. with the time notes "three days grace" are allowed after the expiration of the date for payment. no such favor is allowed in the case of demand notes. these grace days do not seem businesslike. why not add them to the date in the note? well, it is a custom, quite as old as the greater part of our laws, and so it must be observed. under the law a note is payable at the home or business place of the drawer, unless otherwise specified. indorsing notes a note secured by a mortgage has its payment guaranteed. the usual way of securing the payment of a note given in business is to have it endorsed with a good name across the back, as in endorsing a check. by writing your name across the back of another man's note you announce to all the holders of that note that you know the maker and that if he does not pay it you will. in most states the indorser of a note cannot be held responsible for payment, unless the holder notifies him, within twenty-four hours after the note comes due, that the maker cannot or will not pay. if an indorsed note changes hands, each indorser is responsible to all endorsers who follow him and also to the last holder of the note. if an indorser, that is, one into whose hands the note has come after the first endorsement, should not wish to guarantee payment, he writes before his name, "without recourse to me." this is known as a "qualified endorsement." a negotiable note most notes are negotiable; that is because they may be sold, like any other personal property, or the ownership may be transferred from one person to another. no note is negotiable that does not bear on its face, the words, "pay to bearer," or "pay to the order of," followed by the payee's name. joint notes when two persons sign a note they become jointly and individually responsible for its payment. such persons are known as "joint makers." if one signs his name on the back of a note before it has been handed to the payee, he makes himself not only an endorser, but a joint maker. if the maker of such a note refuses to pay on the expiration of time stated, he is liable for the amount without any notification. discounting notes if a business man borrows from a bank on his note, he must pay for the privilege. interest is a sum paid for the use of money. interest is reckoned as a certain percentage yearly on the principal. interest on interest is called "compound interest" and is unused in ordinary business transactions. instead of collecting interest when the amount borrowed on a note is due, or deducting it from the principal in advance, it discounts the note at the rate agreed on and pays the rest. this is called bank discount and its rate is variable, depending on the abundance or scarcity of money. money is a marketable article, and the price, like that of wheat or cotton, is governed by supply and demand. interest on notes a note may be made payable "with interest," or not, as the parties concerned may agree. if nothing is said about interest in the note, no interest can be collected. again a note may go into details and specify that "the interest shall be ten per cent, payable semi-annually," provided always that the rate shall not be higher than the legal interest of the state. excessive interest is known as "usury." it invalidates all the interest, and in some places the principal is forfeited. when the holder of an interest note receives interest payment he must record the date and sum on the back of the note. protests if a note comes due on sunday or on a legal holiday, payment must be made on the following day. holidays are appointed by the separate states. the united states recognizes no day as a holiday, except sunday, and that is acknowledged through custom. it is customary for banks to notify makers of notes held by them a few days before time set for payment; but this is not required by law. if a note lies unpaid in bank the day set for payment, as soon as the office closes for regular business the note is protested. the protest is made before a notary public; he is usually an employee of the bank. in the protest formal objection is made against the breaking of the promise, and demanding that the matter be set right by the maker, or on his failure, by the indorser. the indorser, who has to pay, has a claim for the amount on the maker of the note, as he would have for money loaned or goods sold, and he can sue to collect. a note that is not paid within a fixed time is said to be "outlawed." remember the indorser of a note must be notified within twenty- four hours of the failure of the drawer to make good. notices the object in protesting a note is to fix the liability on the endorser. if there be more than one endorser notice of protest must be sent to all at the same time. it is better, where possible, to serve the notices on the indorsers in person. the payee must also be notified. accommodations there is a form of note sometimes used in business which is given without any consideration on the part of the maker. this is known as an "accommodation note." the maker of such a note does not expect to pay it, nor does the man in whose favor it is drawn expect to do so. an accommodation note is an instrument by the sale of which, or through a bank, money may be raised for immediate use. the maker in this case is a friend who loans his name. as there was no value received such a note could not be collected by the payee. but if it passes into the hands of a third party, who endorses it, then the maker of the note can be compelled to pay. a lost note a note may be lost or stolen. the losing of a note does not release the maker from payment of the full amount on the date and at the place named. the loser should at once notify the maker of his loss. a man who buys, before its maturity, a lost or stolen note, may collect the full amount from the maker, provided the note is payable to "bearer" and no notice of the loss has been published. when the maker of a lost note pays the amount to the original owner, he should receive from him what is known as a "bond of indemnity." this bond is to secure him against paying a second time. notes about notes there are some things worth remembering about promissory notes. . never give one if you can pay cash. . a note made on sunday is worthless in some states. . a note given under compulsion is worthless. . notes made by a drunken person, or obtained by any form of fraud cannot be collected under law. . notes bear interest only when so stated in body of note. . the holder of a note has a legal claim against every indorser. . each indorser is responsible to every indorser who follows him. . notes are valid without reference to the kind of paper, or whether they are written with pen or pencil. . losing a note does not release the maker from payment. . if no time is set in a note for payment, it becomes due as soon as it is made. . where a note is made in one state and is payable in another, it is governed by the laws of the state in which it is to be paid. . notes payable on demand draw no interest until after they have been presented for payment. . if a note reads "with interest" and no rate is specified then it draws the legal interest in the state in which it was made. . demand notes are not entitled to days of grace. . if no place of payment is named in a note, it should be presented to the maker personally in business hours. . the misspelling of a word or words in no way invalidates a note. . if a person who cannot write makes a note his mark should be properly witnessed. . the makers of a joint note must be sued jointly. . if the words and the figures in a note disagree, the words take precedence. . a note signed by a firm may be collected from either of the partners. . when a payment is made on a note secured by a mortgage, the amount is endorsed on the note, never on the mortgage. . a note given by a minor is void, unless given for actual necessities, like food and clothing. . if a note made by a minor is acknowledged when he comes of age it is binding and collectible. chapter xi a draft a draft is a written order from the first party to the second party to pay to the third party a certain sum of money at a certain time. the first party is called the "drawer." the second party is the "drawee." the third party is the "payee." there are two kinds of draft. the first is usually where the cashier of one bank, through his own check, draws on another bank for the cash difference in their accounts with each other. the second form of draft is the most usual and is the one we shall here consider. the cashier's draft is always for cash and the demand is always honored. the ordinary business draft may be for cash or for goods. the business draft is usually honored, but there are circumstances under which it may be ignored. to make a draft but let us suppose that the draft is all right and that a merchant, let us call him henry thomas, and suppose him a resident of philadelphia, has a bill against james taylor, of cleveland, and he wants to collect it, without recourse to law. how will he go about it? the bill is for $ . mr. thomas writes this draft: philadelphia, pa., sept. , . at sight pay to the order of johnson national bank of philadelphia one hundred................... dollars. with exchange and charge same to henry thomas. to james taylor, cleveland, ohio. having drawn his draft, mr. thomas takes it to the johnson national bank for collection. the collection is actually made by some bank in cleveland to which the johnson has endorsed it over. if mr. thomas wished he might have sent his draft direct to the cleveland bank, but he no doubt thought it better to transact such matters through his own bank. or if mr. thomas lived where he was not in touch with a bank, he might have drawn through any person whom he knew in cleveland. on receiving the draft for collection, the cleveland bank would at once give it to a clerk who would without delay present it to mr. taylor. mr. taylor, having written his acceptance of the draft, is given three days grace in which to make payment. in states where days of grace are not allowed, he would have to pay at once. mr. taylor writes the word "accepted," with the date and his name across the face of the draft, and if he does not pay cash, he states in the writing where payment will be made. of course, mr. taylor cannot be compelled to accept a draft. there may be good and honest reasons for his not doing so, but having accepted it, in business honor he is bound to pay it. the term "sight draft" explains itself, but the order to pay a draft may indicate, and often does, the number of days allowed for payment, after presentation. for collection what should be done by the man to whom a bill or a note is due, when the debtor lives in a place where there is no bank? in that case he must learn in some way the name of a promising person to make the collection for him. in this case he makes out the draft as before, and adds the words "for collection." this acts as a bar to any transfer of the paper. most banks refuse to handle a draft marked "for collection." dishonor drafts are not necessarily duns. some country merchants prefer to pay their bills to wholesalers in that way, so that collecting drafts is no small part of the business of the ordinary bank. while men are not compelled to meet drafts when presented, if the amount is due and he defaults or refuses to pay he injures his own credit. in refusing a just draft he is said to "dishonor" it. so sure are wholesalers that their drafts will be met by their distant debtors that they do not hesitate to draw against them when deposited for collection, regarding them as cash to their credit in bank. protests when a draft is not accepted or paid when due, if it be a time draft, it is protested in the same way as a note. the protest of a draft serves as a notice to the drawer of its non-acceptance. like notes and checks, drafts may be transferred by a similar endorsement. buying drafts if i wanted to pay a bill for $ to albert holt, living at wallace, kansas, and did not wish to trouble him with a check, how would i go about it? . i might express the cash, which would be expensive. . i might send it in postal order, not always certain. . i might send it by a trusted hand, but might have long to wait before i found a friend going out to wallace. i am living in new york city, and am familiar enough with banking to know that new york is a great financial center and is in constant communication with nearly all the outside banks. the outside banks keep money in deposit here, and the new york banks, particularly in the spring and autumn, keep deposits with their correspondents. with my $ and a small extra sum to pay my bank for drawing the draft, i go thither and buy a draft for the sum i owe mr. holt. i mail this draft to my creditor and he can cash it without loss in his home bank. here is the form: no. . madison national bank of new york. pay to the order of albert holt, one hundred and fifty dollars ($ .)... .......... l. n. jones, cashier. to prairie national bank, wallace, kansas. a good plan when you buy a draft which you mean to send off in payment of a debt, a good plan is to have it made payable to yourself. let us suppose it is the case of albert holt. you transfer the draft to him by writing across the back, "pay to the order of albert holt," and add your signature. now as all drafts are returned, as payment vouchers, to the banks from which they were issued, and as mr. holt must have signed the draft to get his money, it follows that there is a record of his having received it, and this has all the force of a receipt. do not endorse a draft with just your name, for in that case, anyone into whose hands it falls may collect. first write "pay to the order of" the person for whom it is intended. good as cash a draft made payable to yourself is as good as cash, and far safer to carry. if you are identified at any bank between the atlantic and pacific, you can have your draft cashed. all banks furnish blank drafts. never endorse a draft made payable to yourself, and this applies to a check, until you are about to use it. it is a good plan never to sign your name until it is actually necessary. some people have the foolish habit of signing their names on stray bits of paper. do not get into this habit, even if there is no space to fill out a note or order above the signature. chapter xii just money as has been before stated, money in its broadest meaning is a medium of exchange. anything that can pay a debt or purchase property, in any part of a country, is the money of that country. every civilized country has its own minted or printed money. the usual mediums of circulation are gold, silver, nickel and copper, the latter alloyed more or less in the united states with nickel. government and bank bills, while having all the purchasing power of gold, are simply promises to pay in gold, or other coin of "redemption", the amounts they represent. the money of one country cannot legally be made to pay a debt in another country, unless both parties to the payment agree to it. when gold is exchanged to settle the balances of trade between two countries, it is not reckoned, if coined, at its face value, but at its bullion value. the word "pecunia" meant in ancient greece and rome a flock or herd. in those days live stock were used as a medium of exchange, or money. we keep the word and often use it as in "pecuniary" affairs, and when we call a moneyless man, "impecunious." united states money the united states government reserves to itself the right under the constitution, to coin and issue the money to be used by its own people. formerly we had two standards of value, gold and silver, or bimetalism. if gold and silver were produced in relatively equal quantities, the world would go on trading with money of both kinds, but the proportions are not the same. among the aztecs and peruvians silver ranked with gold as two to one, that is, two pounds of silver would purchase as much as one pound of gold. but when great silver mines were discovered and new methods were discovered for extracting the metal, it became more and more abundant, till it depreciated far below the former value it had in its relation to gold. most of the commercial nations decided to have but one standard of value, and that gold, long before the united states fell into line. our money measure is known as the decimal, or metric. it would be convenient, if we could follow the example of nearly all the other commercial nations, and use the metric system for all our weights and measures. our metal money in the united states treasury at washington, there are many million dollars in silver coins and bullion. the gold standard has not driven silver out of circulation, for it is still found convenient to use it in settling immediately our smaller business transactions. when the silver dollar was first coined, and indeed up to the present date, the intention was that it should contain about a dollar's worth of silver, or / troy grains of the pure metal. this amount of silver was supposed to represent permanently / grains of pure gold, and it did so represent its value at one time, and would have continued to do so, had the relative output of both metals been the same. our chief mint is in philadelphia, where is coined all the copper, nickel, silver, and gold money in use. to imitate these metals, even where the full value is given, constitutes the criminal offence called "counterfeiting." in former times, some of our older readers will remember them, the government meant to have the metal in each coin of about its unstamped value in the market. in those days the cent was as large as our present silver half dollar, and the copper two-cent piece was a monster in the way of coinage. now our copper and nickel coins are small and can be carried without testing strength of pockets. they are regarded as money "tokens." silver coins that are punched can be refused in the settlement of a debt. punched gold coins should always be refused, for they are never of their face value. silver coins may be used in the settlement of bills up to $ . . gold coins are, of course, legal tender up to any amount. paper money we usually class all paper money as "bills." there are three classes of bills, all quite different in their inception and meaning. these are-- . national bank notes. . treasury notes or "greenbacks." . treasury certificates. bank notes a national bank note is the guaranteed promise of some national bank to pay coin or its equivalent to any one presenting the note at the bank and asking to have the exchange made. this exchange is called "redeeming." if you examine a bank bill you will notice that it is drawn much like an ordinary business "demand" note, made payable to "bearer," and signed by the bank president and cashier. for every dollar of its own sent out in the form of a bill by a national bank, the government holds a dollar of the bank's collateral to guarantee the redemption of the note if the bank should fail. national bank notes are received in all business transactions, because they are secured by the government, yet there are cases in which even the government will not receive them in payment of a claim, nor pay them out itself. . all import duties must be paid in gold. . the government pays the interest on its own bonds in gold. the bureau of engraving and printing--a department of the united states treasury--makes and prints all the national bank notes. on all these notes the names of the united states treasurer and the united states register appear. the names look like signatures, but they are facsimilies and are printed with the note. the notes are printed on specially prepared paper, to imitate which is regarded as a counterfeit. soiled and worn out bank notes may be exchanged for fresh ones at the treasury department. "greenbacks" greenbacks are treasury notes. the name comes from the color in which they first appeared in the years of our civil war. the treasury note is really an engraved promissory note of the united states government made payable to the bearer, and bearing the signatures of the treasurer and register of the treasury. these notes are issued in denominations of from five to ten thousand dollars. formerly there were one and two-dollar treasury notes issued, and we still find some of these "old-timers" in circulation. there are so many treasury notes in circulation that the government, vast though its bullion and coin reserves are, could not redeem them if presented at once. the treasury note is a legal tender for any amount of indebtedness. the government prints the following guarantee on every treasury note: "this note is, by law, to be considered as good as coin. any one to whom you pay it must reckon it as equivalent to a dollar (or face value in dollars) in value." treasury certificates the treasury certificate is, in form, very much like the treasury note, and it bears the signatures of the same officers. treasury certificates are of two kinds, gold and silver. the gold certificates are printed in yellow. the silver certificates are light black and white. these certificates are issued against the great reserves of gold and silver that are kept to redeem them. the use of the gold certificate saves the loss of the gold that comes through abrasion when handled. a five-dollar silver certificate is much more convenient to carry than five silver dollars. these certificates, as may be seen, are issued for the convenience of the public. certificates of either character will be redeemed to any amount, in the metals for which they call, if presented at the united states treasury at washington, or at any of the sub-treasuries to be found in our larger cities. worn-out notes only those familiar with the work can realize the great quantities of bank bills, treasury notes, and certificates continually being made and sent out from washington. while a stream of clean, fresh paper of enormous value is going out to be spread all over the country, another stream of soiled, torn and altogether disreputable-looking paper is flowing back to the treasury. the filthy paper is quite as valuable as the clean, so it is properly checked, recorded, and credited before new paper is sent out in its place. they are now trying to make old bills presentable by washing them at the department. meanwhile, most of them are ground again into pulp, made into new paper, and all the first processes gone through with to make the paper into money. chapter xiii our postal business up to a few years ago, it was the city, town and village dweller who reaped the greatest benefit from the post office. in dense communities carriers leave the mail at the place to which it is addressed. where this is not done the walk for the mail is not far. now the purpose of our government, which is of the people and by the people, is to treat all the people alike. however, up to a few years ago the farmer, our most essential producer, had not a fair deal. fortunately things have changed and are still changing for the better. rural free delivery was an idea as just as it was grand, and as welcome as it was necessary. the good work began october , . the purpose of rural free delivery is to accommodate dwellers in the country, whether farmers or not. through this branch of the service mails are carried daily, on fixed lines of travel, to people who otherwise would have to go long distances to reach a post office. the government requires that the states or counties shall keep in good condition the roads traversed by the mail carriers. gates must not obstruct, and it is required that every unfordable stream shall be bridged. it is further required, as a condition for establishing a line for rural free delivery, that each route of twenty-four or more miles in length shall have at least one hundred families resident on either side. classified mail matter mail matter is divided into four classes. for each class a different rate is charged. first class:--all letters, and all other written matter, with a few exceptions, pay two cents for each ounce, or fraction of an ounce. second class:--newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals, one cent for each four ounces or fraction of four ounces. publishers of periodicals, sending direct from place of publication, get a lower rate,--one cent a pound. third class:--books, circulars, and other printed matter, one cent for two ounces or fraction of two ounces. fourth class:--merchandise and miscellaneous articles, weighing not over four pounds, one cent for each ounce or fraction of an ounce. postal rules . on a tag, or the paper on which the address is written, the sender of third class matter may write "from" and add his own name and address. . on the blank leaf of a book, forwarded as third class matter, the sender may write a dedication or inscription, but it must not be in the form of a letter. . fourth class matter must be so wrapped that the postal authorities can examine the contents without much trouble. . such articles as glass, nails, needles or other matter that might work injury if it came loose, must be enclosed in two separate wrappings, or a double case. . poisons, explosives, inflammable substances, and live animals are excluded from the mails. . firearms may only be sent in detached parts. . all alcoholic liquors are regarded as explosive. foreign rates the rates to canada are the same for all classes of matter as in the united states, except that seeds, scions, bulbs, cuttings, and roots are one cent per ounce. to cuba all the rates are the same as for domestic matter. rates with mexico are the same as if mailed between our own states. packages are limited to pounds ounces, except that single books may weigh more. merchandise must be sent by parcel post. to all other countries, in what is known as the "postal union", the rates for letters are five cents for each half ounce or fraction thereof. postal cards two cents each, double four cents. registration fees or letters or other articles, four cents each. ordinary letters for foreign countries, except canada, cuba and mexico, must be forwarded, whether any postage is paid on them or not. all other mailable matter must be prepaid. alaska, hawaii, guam, tetuila, the philippines and porto rico are regarded as insular or territorial possessions of the united states, and are entitled to the same postal rates. stamps postage stamps may be purchased at any united states post office, or at any place authorized to sell them. anyone may sell postage stamps as he would any other personal asset. if stamps are bought to be enclosed in a letter, they should never be of a higher denomination than twos and ones, as they are easily disposed of. letters should always be stamped on the upper right-hand corner of the envelope. packages should be stamped in the same way and on the addressed side. the using of cancelled stamps is a felony. foreign stamps have no value on letters or parcels mailed in the united states. a domestic, unstamped letter will not be forwarded. if a stamped letter is found to require more postage, the amount lacking is stamped on the letter, and must be paid by the receiver. stamped envelopes and stamped wrappers are sold by the post office at the usual rates of postage, with the cost of the paper added. if a stamped envelope or wrapper is spoiled, the stamp must not be cut off and used by pasting on another envelope or wrapper, for it will be treated as if no postage were paid. such spoiled wrappers or envelopes will be exchanged, without charge, by the postmaster, for stamps of the same value. postal cards never use a postal card to dun a debtor. never send a confidential message on a postal card. foreign postal cards, that is those bearing a foreign stamp, cannot be used in the united states. an international postal card can be bought. postal cards and letters may be redirected and forwarded without extra charge, where the address of the receiver has been changed. packages require a renewal of payment in such cases. registering letters a letter or a parcel may be registered to further insure its safe delivery. when a letter or parcel is registered, it must have the sender's name and address written across the left-hand end of the envelope and on the reverse side. in addition to the stamps required ordinarily, eight cents in stamps or in a regularly prepared stamp, is the registration fee. the clerk, receiving a registered parcel, gives the sender a receipt for the same. after the letter has reached its destination, the sender gets a second receipt, through the post office, signed with the receiver's name. the receiver of a registered parcel signs two receipts, one for the post office and the other for the sender. special delivery the purpose of what is known, in connection with the post office, as the "special delivery system", is to insure the delivery of any letter or package to the person, to whom it is addressed, as soon as it reaches his post office. in addition to the regular post charge, a fee of cents is added for special delivery. this is in the form of a special stamp, though when this cannot be had, the same amount in ordinary stamps may be attached. in the case noted, the sender should write in line with the stamps, "special delivery." special delivery messages are delivered, not by ordinary carriers, but by special delivery messengers. the special delivery letter is used when immediate knowledge is necessary. it saves a long telegram. money orders money, in limited sums, may be sent through the post office. one advantage of sending money in this way is that it practically insures the sender against loss. all post offices are not money order offices. a post office money order may only be sent to those places where there are such offices. at all post offices, authorized to send money orders, proper blanks can be had on which the sender can write his order. any sum may be sent by postal order, from one cent to one hundred dollars. the fee is from three to thirty cents. read the blank carefully; it is simple, but be sure you understand it before filling out the order. if in doubt, ask the clerk. having filled out the order, hand it to the clerk with the sum required, and the additional fee. the clerk then prepares and hands out an order for the amount, on the postmaster of the town to which you are sending your letter, and this you enclose to your correspondent. cashing post office orders the money order never contains the name of the sender; this the postmaster of the office from which it is sent supplies in a separate communication to the postmaster who is to pay. no money passes from one office to the other. a post office order is like a draft drawn by one postmaster on another. the one credits the sum, the other debits it. the holder of an order will not get his money unless he is known to the paying postmaster or is identified. before paying an order the postmaster requires the holder to receipt it. a post office money order, like a check or draft, may be transferred to another for collection. banks receive transferred money orders as if they were cash deposits. the party to whom orders are transferred must go through the same forms at the office, where payment is made, as if he was the original payee. advice it is not necessary to register letters containing checks. never write "personal" on a business letter. always enclose a stamp for reply when writing to a stranger. see that the addresses on your letters are distinctly legible. chapter xiv telegrams--the telephone to send a telegram, you or your messenger must take what you have written to the nearest telegraph office. you may write a telegram on any kind of paper, provided always that the writing is plain. all telegraph offices are provided with regular blank forms, which may be had without cost, and it is better to use these when they are available. the blank is properly ruled, with lines for the date, for the address of the one to whom it is to be sent, and for the message. charges the telegraph company charges a fixed sum for a message of, say, ten words. these words do not include the name and address of the sender. the amount of the charge is always dependent on the distance between the office from which the message is sent and the one at which it is received. every word over ten, in the message, pays an extra fee, dependent again on the distance. getting just what you mean into ten words may seem difficult when you have a lot to say, but it is surprising how you can boil the message down when each additional word costs five or more cents. it may pay to practice this. if it is actually necessary to make your meaning clear by the addition of more words, do not hesitate at the cost. if you are known at the telegraph office, you can send a message to be collected from the receiver. never permit the receiver to pay for a message that is exclusively on your own business. always make and keep a copy of every important telegram you send away. do not neglect this. if you have neglected to keep a copy of a telegram, or having made one have lost it, you may get a copy from the telegraph office, provided the application be made within six months of the sending of the message. telegrams are delivered by the company's messengers. you must give receipt to the messenger on the delivery of a telegram. where the receiver lives a long distance from the telegraph office, it is customary to pay the messenger an additional fee, depending on the distance. the charges for telegrams to be sent at night and delivered in the morning, are much lower than for day messages. for an additional charge, less than the original, messages may be repeated back to insure their accuracy. read over to the official, or still better, have him read your message over in your presence, that you may be sure he understands it as written. you cannot hold others responsible for your own mistakes. telegraphing money you can telegraph money with as much safety as you can send it through a bank. in handling money in this way, the telegraph company does not act as a banker but as a carrier. telegraph money orders are a great convenience, when one wants to send cash to a distant point in a hurry. country telegraph offices do not, as a rule, transmit money; that function is left to the offices in the larger centers. the method one wishing to "wire money" will find at the telegraph office suitable blanks; they are furnished gratis. on lines provided for the purpose and properly indicated, as in a postal order form, write the name and address of the person to receive the money, with the amount. this paper, properly signed, is handed to the clerk with the money to be sent and the fee for transmission. the fee is double that charged for an ordinary message of the same length. if, for any reason, the person to whom the money is sent cannot be found within forty-eight hours, the money is returned to the sender, but the fees are retained, as the company is not to blame for failure. the receiver of a money order, if unknown, must identify himself as he would at a bank, and he must receipt for the money. if the person to receive the money is an entire stranger in the place to which the money is sent, the sender knows it, and he provides for the situation by signing, on the reverse of the application, an order to the distant operator to pay the money to the person named within, without further identification. when a telegraph operator receives a money order, he at once seeks out the person to whom it is sent, and pays the money in accordance with his instructions as to identification. the telephone the telephone, local and long distance, is fast superceding the telegraph as a medium for speedy business communications. its use is not confined to large cities as at first. nearly every village is now in communication with the outer world through the telephone. the world has just awakened to the needs of its food producer, the farmer. in norway, which is not a rich country, the telephone has been introduced on the farms. the rates are low and the benefits are inestimable. on our large farms, in the west, telephones have been in use for some time as an essential part of the machinery. now, there is a move on foot to make them available for every farmer in the more settled regions. while business can be conducted over the telephone, as if the speakers stood face to face, yet such transactions not being recorded, will not stand in law, if one of the parties should dispute the other's word. chapter xv business by express there are two kinds of expresses, viz.: local and general. the names describe the provinces of each, though a general express may do a local business. all express companies are common carriers. the carrying business done by our express companies is enormous. they have their own special cars attached to passenger and fast freight trains, and their goods are given special departments in water transportation. if living between two towns, it is always better to have your letters and express business done through one office. instructions when ordering material by express, make sure that you give the address, to which you wish it sent, in such a way that a mistake on the part of the forwarder will be out of the question. if you send away goods by express, make sure that they are securely packed, and be equally sure that the address is clearly written and in a large hand. it would be better if the address could be painted on with a brush. if you should send perishable stuff, like meat, flowers, glass, or fruit, be sure to label the package "perishable" or "handle with care, glass." on long distance transportation prepayment is required; on short distances it is optional. it is always better to get from the express agent a receipt for the matter taken in charge. take care to put your own address on the lower left-hand corner of the package to be sent. if the person to whom the parcel is sent cannot be found, the address will enable the express company to notify the sender at once of the fact. when sending any goods by express, it is always prudent to notify the person for whom they are intended of the fact by mail, and also to state the company by which the matter was sent and the date of shipment. the company's duty the express company must always require, on delivering goods, a receipt from the receiver. if the goods should be received by a second person, on behalf of the consignee, he must sign the consignee's name, and under that his own. if a package appears to be damaged in transmission, the express company must permit the receiver to examine it before signing. he may refuse to sign or to accept in any way, if the goods are injured, or not as he ordered. express companies are responsible for all damages sustained by goods while in their charge. collections by express all the large express companies have the machinery for collecting accounts and notes whenever they have branch offices. such companies are reliable collectors. their services are prompt and their charges reasonable. where an express company fails to collect, notice is promptly given with the reasons for failure. when you wish an express company to collect, it will be necessary for you to make out a statement of the account. this is placed in a special envelope, provided by the company. it is properly indorsed and handed to the company's representative. the company charges a small fee for collection, whether it succeeds or not. in any case the fee is not much above a fourth of one per cent, unless there should be unusual trouble. c. o. d. by express as you know, c.o.d. means "cash on delivery". cash on delivery orders constitute no small part of every express company's business. when goods are forwarded in this way, the sender furnishes with the goods an itemized bill duly receipted. the express company's charges should be included in the bill. the express agent is sure to collect the bill before he lets the goods leave his keeping. money by express should you desire to send money by express, it will be well to go to the company's office before you pack it up. express companies have special receptacles or envelopes in which to store coin or bills. there is no charge for these. the sender must himself seal the packages containing the money, and write on them the address of the consignee, also the amount enclosed. having received the packages, the express agent ties them up, affixes his official seal, which is so arranged that the package cannot be opened or tampered with, without breaking. this done, he gives the sender a receipt. this should be cared for as a vital part of the record. the charges for sending money by express may or may not be paid in advance. they vary with the amount to be carried and the distance. packages of money are receipted for in the usual way. they are delivered only to the legal consignee, unless a second person should appear with an order, amounting to a power of attorney, and which the company cannot reject. money orders the foregoing by no means limits the express company's usefulness or field of opportunities. express companies issue money orders much as does the post office department. as with the post office, the fees for orders vary, but no order is issued for more than fifty dollars. if you want to send such an order, the express company will furnish the proper blank for you to fill out. on this form must be written out very plainly the name and address of the person to whom the order is to be sent, with the amount, in words and in figures. on receiving the money the express agent gives to his customer two papers; one is the company's receipt for the money, the other is the order itself. the order instructs the agent at the point to which it is to be sent to pay the sum named to the person named. to complete the order the sender should sign his name in a place indicated for the purpose on the back of the paper. this done, the order can be sent to the person for whom it is intended, in an ordinary envelope. the receiver of an express money order can have it cashed at the express office in his town, or sign it and place it in his own bank as if it were cash. chapter xvi about railroads not everything about railroads, that would be a tremendous undertaking, but just enough to show what everyone should know about them as carriers of goods. the express companies have practically a monopoly of the transportation of the smaller packages of goods requiring quick transit and immediate delivery, but the longer, heavier, and slower freight are in the hands of the railroads, and where it can be done, and time is not a first factor, the steamboat takes the place of the train. bills of lading as most of the goods in changing hands are carried by steamboat or railroad, the method of shipment should be understood by everyone who may be called on to use one or the other means of transportation. the person shipping goods in this way is the "consignor." the person to whom the goods are shipped is the "consignee". the goods shipped are described in a paper called a "bill of lading." a bill of lading is a written contract, or statement of the goods shipped, their condition, and the time of shipment. bills of lading and receipt blanks are furnished at the offices of the transportation companies. two copies of the bill of lading should be made out. one of these is signed by the consignor and the other by the transportation agent. the copy signed by the consignor is kept by the agent, and the copy signed by the agent is retained by the consignor, as a voucher for the goods shipped. this receipt should be mailed to the consignee. when the consignee gets this bill of lading, it is a voucher to the freight agent, where the goods are to be delivered, as to the ownership. it is usual for the agent at the point of shipment to send a copy of the bill of lading to the agent where the goods are received. in this way he can compare the consignment with the consignee's bill. expense bills it is not usual to pay freight bills at the point of shipment, that being left till the goods reach their destination. the agent at the place of delivery makes out an "expense bill," which is an itemized statement of the freight charges, and must be paid by the consignee before delivery. this done, the consignee must sign a receipt for the goods delivered, and the affair is closed. a bill and a draft before wholesale houses or manufacturers ship goods, they are either paid for or they have a business understanding with the consignee as to when and how the payment is to be made. there are occasions, however, when no such arrangement has been made, and a man not well known to the merchant orders goods shipped by freight. in a case like this, the merchant may ascertain through a commercial agency--the agencies make it their business to keep posted in such matters--the standing of the man giving the order. trade has its risks and the merchant, even where the information is not quite assuring, may decide to fill the order and ship it. as with express companies, goods may be sent as freight, c. o. d. this is done by means of a bill of lading, to which is attached a draft. the shipper bills the goods to himself at the point to which they were ordered. to the bill of lading he attaches a draft for the sum involved, but this, instead of being forwarded to the consignee by mail, is sent to him through a bank for collection. now before the consignee can get the bill of lading, which authorizes him to receive the goods, he must pay the draft. the bill, which is in the shipper's name, is then endorsed over to the payer of the draft. country merchants and sometimes farmers send produce by freight to be sold on commission in the city. an invoice delhi, n. y., sept. , . invoice of merchandise shipped by harry t. jackson and consigned to brown, smith & co., newburg, n. y. to be sold on commission. bbls. potatoes " green apples crates tomatoes. mark plainly all goods shipped. chapter xvii taxes generally speaking, tax bills are paid with reluctance. this is no doubt due to the fact that with every other form of payment one has something tangible to show for the expenditure. if every good citizen could be brought to see that his private interests are closely linked with public affairs, he would take more interest in the local politics of his town and county, and so have a voice in the expenditure of taxes by selecting the best men to do the work for him. taxes are forced contributions levied on citizens to provide money for public expenses, such as law and order, schools, charities and public institutions. all tax laws are made by the men who pay the taxes. you say "no" to this. "the tax laws are made by the legislators up at the state capital." very true; but who nominates and elects the legislators? did you not put them into office? "no, the bosses did that," you reply. true again, but good men are in the majority and if they did their duty to their country and themselves, there would be no bosses and taxes would be honestly spent. kinds of taxes tax laws are enacted by congress, and by the legislatures of our many states. taxes cannot be collected without this authority. state taxes are collected for the state use only. united states taxes are expended for the benefit of all the people of all the states. taxes may be further divided into direct and indirect. direct taxes are, at present, only employed by the states. they are levied on realty and personal property, and are paid by the particular person named in the tax bill presented by the authorized collector. the amount of these taxes vary each year, depending on the public requirements. they are based on assessments made by officers appointed for the purpose and generally known as assessors. customs duty though there is no demand made on each individual to pay the indirect taxes required by the government, yet indirectly every person who spends little or much money is paying them. the government's chief means of raising the great sums of money needed yearly to carry on its machinery is by customs duties and internal revenue collections. the customs revenue is obtained from a tax levied on certain articles imported from foreign countries. this customs tax is called a tariff. the question as to the goods that shall be subject to a tariff and the amount to be levied on the same, is one that has long perplexed statesmen and been a leading party issue. the merchant, to whom the goods are assigned from a foreign port, must pay the duty levied on them by a government appraiser before he can take them away. private parties, landing from abroad at any of our ports of entry, are required, before getting their baggage, to write out a declaration of the things contained in their trunks. but this declaration does not prevent the customs inspectors from making a careful personal examination. all things found dutiable, whether declared or not, are set apart and held until the assessment or duty is paid. the evasion of a customs duty is called "smuggling" and is punished by the confiscation of the goods, and penalties in the way of fine and imprisonment. there are people who would consider it a sin to cheat their butcher, but see no wrong in cheating the government. to the merchant who pays tariff duties the amount involved is a direct tax. when the merchant sells his goods to the retailer or consumer, he adds the tariff to his freight, insurance, interest, etc., as direct purchase cost. this is strict business, but the consumer pays all the bills with the profit added. internal revenue the second great source of government revenue is derived from the internal revenue tax, or excise duties. manufacturers of alcohol, whether as wine, whiskey, or beer, and the producers of tobacco, in its manufactured forms, have to pay an excise tax in proportion to the amount and character of their products. as with the customs tax, the excise tax is added by the manufacturer to the cost of production, so that at last it is the consumer who pays it. stamps while the manufacturers of alcohol pay the excise tax in bulk, that is on the number of gallons produced, the manufacturers of cigars and tobacco have to attach to each separate package a distinct internal revenue stamp. these stamps are purchased from the internal revenue collectors, appointed by the government to certain districts. the stamps show at a glance that the proper tax has been paid, just as the postage stamp affixed to a letter proves that the price for carrying it and delivering it has been paid. as it is a penal offence to use a postage stamp a second time, so it is a punishable offence to attempt the use of a cancelled or torn internal revenue stamp. if demanded, the government will give a receipt for the sum received from any one for considerable sales of postal or revenue stamps. state taxes state taxes, as has been stated, are levied on real and personal property. some states have in addition a poll tax. this is levied on the individual without any regard to his property, and a receipt for it may be a requirement before a citizen is permitted to vote. of course the real estate and personal property taxes are not the same in all the states, for each state must raise every year the sum necessary to meet its own special requirements. the intention of all tax laws is to have every citizen's contribution bear the same proportion to the whole amount to be raised that his possessions bear to the aggregate property of all the owners in the commonwealth. exempt from taxes all our state laws exempt from taxation certain kinds of property. the state cannot tax the property held by itself for the common use. the buildings and related properties of religious bodies and societies are not taxable. such educational institutions as colleges, seminaries, and private charities are not taxed. cemeteries and other places where the dead are disposed of are not taxed. county buildings, city parks, public schools, penal institutions, fair grounds for public use and similar property is never taxed. insufficient taxes there have been times in the life of the government, and in the building up of the states, when the funds necessary for maintenance from taxes, heavy though these have been at times, have not been sufficient to meet the essential expenditures. this was particularly the case with our government during the trying days of our civil war. states entering on great public works, for the benefit of the commonwealth, frequently cannot raise the necessary money by the usual forms of taxation. in these cases loans have to be made, that is the government and the state go out and borrow from those who have it to spare, the necessary money. the government, the state, and it may be the city or county, gives to the party providing the money what is known as bond or bonds, each of a fixed amount and bearing a fixed rate of interest, payable as a rule semi-annually. personal property there is no form of property so easy to assess for the purpose of taxation as real estate, that is the land and the buildings, for the last selling value of this property is a matter of public record, and then the assessors, who should be men of honesty and good judgment, are generally posted as to the value of the property under consideration. when, however, it comes to the taxation of personal property, which means any kind of property that can be detached and carried about, it is a different matter. just as many people, otherwise regarded as honest, do not think it a great wrong to get the better of the custom house, so many reputable people are inclined to revolt against the tax on personal property and to conceal their actual possessions from the assessor, nor is this peculiarity confined to the poor. any man may be legally compelled to swear to the accuracy of his statement, and if it is found that he has knowingly sworn to a false statement, he may be brought to task for perjury. what is known as "personal property" varies in many of the states. personal property generally includes, merchandise in possession; all fixtures, all furniture in home, offices, and factories; all live stock, all money on hand and in banks; other men's notes, not transferred; all stocks and bonds and other forms of security. town taxes townships or counties, if properly authorized by charter or the votes of the people, may levy special taxes for special purposes within the limits of their own jurisdictions, or they may in the same way sell bonds to carry out some work that has been decided on for the common weal. two or more towns, or counties, may join in the same way to carry out a project of benefit to both, provided that the burden of the undertaking be equitably assessed. payments all tax bills are due and collectable on presentation, but this is never enforced. a time is, however, fixed beyond which payment cannot be deferred. a sufficient amount of any property may be sold at auction to satisfy a tax bill. of old, and still in some places, the road taxes were paid in cash, but more frequently by work on the roads, either by the individual man, or in connection with his team, each day's work of one or both being fixed at a regular rate. taxing corporations the state does not tax the individual members of a corporation for property held in common. the same result is secured better by taxing the corporation as a body. this applies to banks, railroads, and incorporated manufacturing establishments. savings banks are taxed lightly. every depositor is liable for a personal property tax proportioned to the amount of his credit. to make collection easy the savings bank always pays the amount of this tax in bulk, and then charges it to the expense account of the establishment, so that indirectly the depositors pay after all, as their dividends are reduced by just the amount of the tax. taxes in general when a man owns property in different towns, counties, or states, he is regarded as so many individuals, and must pay each as the local demands require. no matter where a man's personal property is placed, the rule is to tax him for the whole at the place of his usual residence. the landlord and the merchant each pays a direct tax to the collector, but it would be a business error to think that in so doing either or both is carrying more than his share of the total taxation. the landlord keeps in mind the added expense when he comes to adjust leases with his tenants. the merchant, who pays taxes on his stock and so adds to his expense account, should not be blamed if he keeps this in mind when he fixes the selling prices of his goods. the returns taxes duly paid, honestly collected, and properly expended should never be regarded as a burden. from no equal expenditure of money do the people get so much good. the public schools, the public highways, the protection of life and property, public hospitals, public libraries, residences for the old, the blind, the orphaned and the insane, as well as secure places for the lawless, are built and maintained by the taxpayer. as a rule all these things are done honestly and well, notwithstanding the outcry to the contrary. if there be dishonesty in places, it is the fault quite as much of the voter who selected him as of the official culprit himself. we must take all the responsibility of our agents, whether they be public or private. every good citizen should feel that his public duty is an important private business. chapter xviii contracts, leases, and guarantees the law books define a contract to be "an agreement between two or more persons to do or not to do a certain stated thing or things, for a consideration." the consideration is a vital part of every contract. there can be no binding contract without a consideration. the other requisites of a contract are-- . it must be possible of accomplishment. . it must be in accordance with law. . its performance must not injure the public. . the parties to a contract must be competent to do the things to which they pledge themselves. . a drunken or an insane man cannot make a contract. . all parties to a contract must be agreed. the consideration no contract can be held as binding where the consideration is not named. a promise, verbal or in writing, to do something for a certain party, cannot be enforced. a promise to do the same thing for a stipulation named is a contract and may be enforced. a gift is not a form of contract. once made it cannot be legally taken back. written and verbal contracts there are certain forms of contract which cannot be legally enforced, unless they are in writing. . all contracts for the sale of real estate. . contracts that are not to be performed for a year or more. . all contracts, to answer for the debt and obligations of another, must be in writing. if the contracting parties put but a part of their agreement in writing the law will recognize only the written part. the whole must be in writing, or the agreement will not hold. verbal contracts are not safe. although the law does not require even contract to be in writing, yet, as it never declares that a contract must be verbal, it is the part of prudence, wherever possible, to put every contract in writing. owing to defects of memory even honest men may, and frequently do, disagree as to the terms of a verbal contract. because the party with whom the contract is made is a close friend, one is apt to depend on a verbal agreement, but the closer the friend or relative, the more reason there is for an exact written contract, if we would keep the friend. forms of contract the law is never specific as to the form of contract that may be used. it is not necessary to draw up the contract with the formal accuracy of a real estate deed. any one with good sense and a fair common school education can draw up a contract that will hold. know what is required, then state the facts simply. contracts need not be sworn to or even witnessed. kinds of contract every note, mortgage and other form of obligation is a specific contract. a lease is a form of contract between two people, known as landlord and tenant, for the use of real estate for a period and at a rental specified in the document. a verbal lease may be made for a short period, but if for a year or more, it must be in writing. a lease should state when, where and to whom the rent is to be paid. each party to a lease, or other form contract should have a copy. if the premises rented should become unusable by fire or any action of the elements the tenant is still liable for rent, unless there is a special clause in the lease providing for such a contingency. a tenant cannot, without the written consent of the landlord, use the rented premises for any other purpose than that stated in the lease. as to repairs in some states the law compels the landlord to keep the premises in habitable repair, but this does not seem to be the rule. it should be decided, where there is doubt, before signing the lease. where it is agreed that the landlord shall keep the premises in repair, and, after due notice of the fact, he fails to do so, the tenant may himself make the repairs and deduct the amount from the rent. subletting if there is no contract to the contrary, the tenant may sublet the whole or any part of the premises, but this does not release him from liability for rent. if the tenant fails to leave the property when his lease has expired, the owner may make his demand through what is known as a "notice to quit," which must be served on the tenant in person. what is a guaranty? a guaranty is sometimes required to insure the payment of rent. plainly, a guaranty is an agreement to assume, under certain conditions, the liabilities of another. if a man makes a contract, a lease, or a note, and his personal resources are not deemed sufficient to secure his performance of the things agreed to, the other may require that some one, in whom he has more faith, shall give him a guaranty, or personal security in writing. the following might be used as the form for a guaranty for a lease, contract, note or other obligation of contract: "for value received, i hereby guarantee the payment of the within lease (bond or contract). george l. roberts." short hills, n. j. october , . a bill of sale this is a written agreement by which one person transfers to another his interest in certain personal property. the law lays down no rule as to the form. a bill of sale usually passes where the property paid for is not immediately removed from the possession of the seller. this form would answer in any state: "bridgeport, conn., aug. , . "i have this day sold to calvin e. platt, of new haven, in this state, my team of bay horses, with their harness, one family carriage, and a two-seated cutter. "thomas p. fletcher." be sure, where the bill of sale includes many articles, to name every one of them in the bill. if paid for, whether by cash or a note, be sure to get a receipt for the same. obligations a bond is a form of obligation. every enforcible bond must be in writing and under seal. the maker of a bond by the act acknowledges a liability in the form of a debt or a duty. the maker of a bond is the "obligor." the party to whom it is made is the "obligee." the bond names the liability or indebtedness; then follows the condition wherein it is stated the particular thing that the obligor is to do, or not to do. the penalty for the non-compliance with a bond is twice the amount of the money involved. it is often required that the bond shall be further guaranteed by one or more sureties. these sureties may be required to certify that they are worth a certain sum, free and clear of all indebtedness. persons holding positions of financial trust, whether public or private, may be, and most of them are, required to furnish bonds for the faithful performance of their duties. in the larger cities there are casualty and liability companies, which, for a fixed or annual consideration, act as sponsors on official and other forms of bond. where there are no such companies, as those just named, then private citizens of known responsibility must be secured to go on the bond. in every case the amount of the bond or security is measured by the responsibilities of the man from whom it is required. chapter xix life insurance life insurance may be defined to be "a contract for the future payment of a certain sum of money to a person specified in the body of the policy, on conditions dependent on the length of some particular person's life." there are two parties to this contract--the insured and the insurer. the purpose of the insurer, if he take out the policy in his own name, is to provide in a measure for the care of his family, or other dependents, in the event of his death. after a long experience with the death rates in all lands that keep mortuary statistics, the actuaries of insurance companies can now estimate with surprising accuracy the probable length of life before any man of any age. the methods of insurance companies mean to be scientific, but be that as it may, they are certainly interesting. how it is done let us take a young man of thirty, married, with one child, in good health, and in receipt of a fair salary, but with no property to leave his wife and little one in the event of his death. to secure his dear ones, he decides to insure his life for, let us say, $ , . he fills out the blank, in which his age and all the other required information is given; then the insurance company's doctor examines him and he is accepted as what is called "a good risk." now, from its actuary tables, the company knows, with reasonable accuracy, the number of years this young man should live, barring accidents. already they have their tables of calculations for such cases. they know what expense will be required in the way of rent, clerks, advertising, etc., to care for this case till the prospective, the inevitable end is reached. on these calculations the immediate and all subsequent premiums or payments are based. the insurance company invests and reinvests the premiums, and the total of these, it is estimated, will meet the expenses and the amount of the policy at the time of its calculated expiration. as an investment if the young man in question had the money, he would find it to his advantage to buy a paid up policy, that is one on which no further premiums would be required. but, having the money for a paid up policy, could not the young man, without any expense for clerk hire or rent, invest it, and reinvest it with the interest, as long as he lived, and thus make by insuring himself? there can be no question as to that, provided always that the young man lived out the calculated time, invested his insurance money at once, and kept on investing it in "safe things" as long as he lived. but how many young men are there who could or would take this course? it is much easier to save from our earnings than it is to invest those earnings wisely. forms of life insurance the straight life policy, payable to the heirs at death, is the form in general use, but there are others. there is yet another form, known as the "endowment," which in itself combines the usual life insurance with some of the privileges of a savings bank. the endowment policy, while payable if death should occur before a fixed time, specifies the date when it shall be payable to the insured himself, if he should live till that time. in this case the family is secured, in the event of death, and the insured has a guarantee for himself when he reaches life's unproductive years. the premiums on an endowment policy are necessarily greater than those on a regular life, and the premiums increase with the shortness of the time. mutual insurance societies seeing the vast sums accumulated by what are known as "the old line companies," despite their high salaries and great expenses, working men throughout the world, but more particularly in the united states, have banded together and formed mutual insurance companies. these companies, there are many of them, are known as societies, and their local branches are called "lodges," "councils" or a similar name. properly conducted, these mutual societies should be able to furnish insurance at about actual cost, for the expenses of management and collections are small. it can be said that some of them have been and are being well managed, but others, like their predecessors, the old line companies, have unfortunately been conducted for the enrichment of their promoters. the mutual insurance companies, like their more pretentious prototypes, are now placed under the supervision of inspectors in nearly all the states. amounts of policies in the society companies, there is a limit to the amount, usually $ , , for which one can be insured, but the regular companies have no such limitation. in the mutual insurance companies, the insured cannot leave his insurance to his creditors, or to any one not within a certain degree of kinship. in the regular companies a man may insure for any amount he thinks he can carry, and he can insure in the same way in any number of companies, and he can leave the money to any one he may select, or for any purpose he may choose. sometimes the policy is made payable to unnamed executors. these may be named in a will made after he has taken out his policy. policies as security sometimes a man, without real estate or other personal assets, desires to raise a loan on his life insurance, which, it should be said, is a form of personal property. in this case he may assign his life policy, or his endowment policy, as security for the loan. again, if he is not insured and has no shadow of an asset, he may have his life insured for the benefit of another, in consideration for a loan. lapses when there is a failure to meet premiums, the policy is said to "lapse" or default. even in this case the insured has an equity. every policy, depending on the amount paid, has what is known as a "surrender value," and by proper process this may be collected from the company. in some states, if the insured fails to meet his premiums, the company is compelled to pay on the policy at his death a sum equivalent to that which he paid before default. some insurance policies have a clause stating that the contract will be void in the event of the suicide of the holder. the highest courts have set this clause aside. the ruling is that a suicide is an insane man, and that his heirs should not be made to suffer for his misfortune. proprietary and mutual companies the larger insurance companies may be either proprietary or mutual, some are a combination of both. the proprietary companies are corporations organized by a number of men to conduct life insurance as a business enterprise. such a company must be regularly chartered, and is under the supervision of the state department of insurance. mutual companies, as the name implies, are organized and are meant to be managed for the benefit of the policy holders, who are also regarded as stock holders, with the right to vote in the election of officers and other company affairs. aiming to create a strong reserve fund to secure the policy holders, the mutual life insurance companies usually charge a little more in the way of premiums. many rich men have their lives insured for great amounts. this is done that their heirs may not be forced to break up the estate, at death, in order to settle the ordinary liabilities. if it can be afforded, it is always well to carry some life insurance. chapter xx fire and accident insurance we hear and know much about life insurance because, no doubt, it has to do directly with the individual, and so has a personal appeal; but there are other forms of insurance, forms that have to do with things material, that play an important part in the world's business. like gambling the gambling spirit, like the desire for stimulants and the tobacco habit, seems to be well nigh universal. men bet on the turn of dice, the cutting of cards, or the tossing of a coin, and we very properly denounce it as gambling. we take money without giving an equivalent, or we part with it and have nothing to show for the transfer. there are insurance companies in england and in other parts of europe where they insure risks from life to fire, from ships to crops, and from the turning of a card to the tossing of a coin. the english company, known the world over as "lloyd's," is ready to insure an ocean liner, or to guarantee that the next child born into your family will be a boy or a girl; it will even insure that there will or will not be twins, and that, if twins, they will be boys or girls, or one of each. now, this looks like gambling, and you would be quite right in so classing it, yet it is founded on the well considered law of chance, and the premiums--call them bets--are calculated with a mathematical precision surprising to one who has not studied the matter. what is fire insurance? fire insurance is a contract between the insured and the company taking the risk, in which for a consideration called a "premium," the company agrees to pay to the insured a stated sum, should the property, named in the policy, be destroyed by fire. if there should be a fire, during the life of the policy, and the damage is not total, the company pays only enough to cover the loss. should the property be totally destroyed the company pays up to the amount named in the policy. no company cares to insure for the full amount of the property; that might be an incentive to incendiarism. in taking a fire risk, the companies base their estimates on tables as carefully worked out and from experiences quite as well studied as those of the actuaries of life companies. fire companies are purely business corporations, and their conduct is subject to the inspection of the officials of the state from which they receive their charters. premiums as life companies have rates dependent on the age of the insured, so fire companies regulate their premiums by the location and other circumstances of the buildings; in other words, they calculate the probabilities, and charge accordingly. there are buildings particularly subject to combustion on which american companies will not take a risk. among these may be classed kerosene and turpentine stills, sulphur and powder mills, and the buildings in which these products are stored. buildings not used for the purposes named, but in close proximity to them, are often considered too dangerous to warrant the issuance of a policy. in all cases, the company makes a careful survey of the property to be insured, and on this report the amount of the premium is based. premiums on fire policies must be paid in bulk and in advance. policies should be renewed some days before the expiration of the old ones. fire premiums, taking into consideration the amount to be paid, are much lower than life premiums. we know that a man must die, but a building may never burn down, therefore the risk is less. collecting a man may insure in a dozen life insurance companies, and each must pay the amount of the policy on his death, but not so with fire companies. a man owning a house worth, say ten thousand dollars, can insure it in ten companies, each taking a risk of eight thousand dollars. if this house burns down the man does not receive eighty thousand dollars. the actual loss is calculated and the companies divide it up, each paying its part. fire companies, while anxious to issue policies on every insurable house, are more than willing that their business rivals should do the same, as in the event of fire the burden of loss will not be borne by one. after every fire the company's agent examines the damage and estimates what is saved. on this the payment is based. insurable property a building is classed as real estate, but personal property is just as liable to be destroyed by fire. fire policies can be secured on goods, furniture, machinery, live stock and other things, and the method is about the same as where buildings are insured, but as a rule the premiums are higher, for such things are apt to be ruined by smoke and water, when the building in which they are stored may not be much injured. mutual companies men can associate for any legal purpose, and mutual protection against loss by fire is one of these. in many neighborhoods throughout the country, but particularly in the eastern states, there are mutual insurance companies, usually composed of a number of men who know each other and who agree to share the losses of a member, in proportions agreed to in advance. this form of insurance is cheap and effective, but the field of its operations is necessarily limited. stock companies the stock companies start with a fixed capital, each member receiving stock in proportion to the amount contributed. the capital and the interest from it, after paying the necessary expenses, is invested, and reinvested, till it often reaches a large sum. at the end of every fiscal year, usually june th, the expenses and the losses paid are deducted from the earnings and the net gain may be divided as dividends. often there are not only no dividends, but a great conflagration, like that of san francisco, may wipe out all the earnings, all the reserve and even the capital itself, leaving the company bankrupt and heavily in debt. great calamities cannot be foreseen. no actuary has yet appeared to forecast the acts of providence, but on the whole our fire insurance companies are well managed and prosperous. accident insurance we have insurance against storms, against the breaking of plate glass and even against loss from burglars, but the best known of the minor insurance societies are those known as "accident companies." accident policies are of many kinds, and there is no reason why the companies, under their charters, should not extend their risks indefinitely. accidents against property are insured much as is destruction from fire, but the nature of the accident as "hail," "explosions," "tornadoes" and "insect destruction" must be specified in the policy. the most popular form of accident policy is that which is sold to travellers, and which can usually be had at the office where one buys his ticket. the method here is simple, and the purchase may be made in a minute. "i want a policy for $ , for ten days," you say to the clerk. he tells you the amount, you pay and get your ticket, and there you are. prudent men have a stamped and addressed envelope ready. into this they push the policy, and the wife gets it. no, it does not startle her. it is just harry's prudence and she is used to that. chapter xxi partnerships if properly conducted, there is much to commend the management of a business through partners. never go into a partnership with a man who puts in his experience against your capital, unless you know him like a brother. "it lasted about a year," said a man who had done this. "now the fellow, who has cleared out, has the capital and i have the experience." a partnership is an agreement between two or more persons to associate for the purpose of carrying on a certain form of business. each member of a copartnership must contribute a stated contribution to the establishment of the enterprise, but each need not give the same amount. neither is it necessary that the contributions of each to the firm shall be of the same character. one may contribute a building, another machinery, or material, and still another money. the shares in the profits are based on the cash values of the different contributions. the work of the different parties may be estimated as contributions, but in such cases it is better to pay the worker a fixed compensation, and charge this to the expense account. prepare and sign never go into a partnership based on a verbal agreement, unless it be for the distribution of fish, game or nuts, when out with a friend for a holiday. have the copartnership articles carefully drawn up and signed before you put a cent into the undertaking. a document like this can be appealed to should disputes arise; and should a partner die, his heirs may find it of the greatest value. the articles should contain: . the amount to be contributed by each. . the nature of the business. . the time which the partnership is to last. if the time is not specified, a partner may withdraw whenever he pleases. if the profits are to be equally divided, this should be stated and provided for. silent partners when a man invests money in a business in the management of which he takes no active part, he is said to be a "silent partner." such a partner has a share in the gains and he is responsible as the others for the firm's liabilities. again, a man may not give money or time to a firm, but is willing, for business reasons, that his name shall appear as if he were in the association. in this case the man is known as a "nominal partner." although this man is not entitled to a share in the profits and has no money invested, yet he can be held liable for the debts and other obligations. the reason for this is very plain. liability in all matters rightly belonging to the business of a firm, any member has the right to act, and his acts will be held binding in law. it is usual for partners active in a business to have each his separate duties, but even if these duties be designated in the articles of agreement, the outside business world is not supposed to know anything about the relative duties of the members of a firm as decided among themselves, so it is decided that each is empowered to act for his partners. under the usual articles, it is stipulated that while a dual partnership lasts, neither of the members shall make a note, sign a bond, or enter on any outside obligation as an individual without having secured the written consent of his business associates. each partner in a firm is liable with the others for all the business indebtedness. if a firm fails, and the assets are found not sufficient to satisfy the creditors, they can levy for satisfaction on the private property of one or all of the partners. if a member of a firm should become so far indebted, as an individual, that he cannot comply with his obligations, the interest he holds in the firm may be disposed of and applied to the payment of his debts. this does not mean that the creditors may take or seize on any particular thing which the firm holds jointly, but that the debtor's interest in the concern may be so disposed of. all this the law has provided for. a new partner admitted into a firm cannot be held responsible for the debts of the old concern. how to dissolve every partnership agreement must provide for and distinctly state the period for which it is to continue. at the end of the period named, the partnership is dissolved by limitation. if the partnership is to continue, a new agreement must be made and signed. on proper application, a partnership may be dissolved by an order of the court. if a member who has become objectionable to his partners should not agree to a dissolution of the firm, the partners may apply to a court of competent jurisdiction for a decree of dissolution. no member of a firm can withdraw at his own option. the consent of the other partners is necessary, and before he is released he must provide for his share of the obligations. notice of dissolution should be published, and notices sent to agents and others interested. the following is the customary form of notice: the copartnership heretofore existing between john smith, harry roberts and thomas allen, under the firm name of smith, roberts & co., is this day dissolved by mutual consent. john smith. harry roberts. thomas allen. june , . special partnerships limited or special partners are not recognized in some states. this is a method of association whereby a person joins a partnership, putting in a sum agreed on, and which he may stand to lose as an investment. he is entitled to a _pro rata_ in the profits, but he cannot be held for the debts. in some countries marriage is regarded as a civil contract or form of partnership, subject to dissolution by the courts. chapter xxii investments it is a remarkable fact that many men who have shown remarkable shrewdness in conducting a business in which a fortune may have been accumulated, exhibit the judgment of children when it comes to making investments. there are able lawyers who have made fortunes in the practice of the profession which they understood, only to lose them by investments in mines or other ventures, about which they knew absolutely nothing but what was told them by the scheming speculator and smooth-tongued promoter. as has been intimated before in these pages, there is a great difference between saving through and hoarding through a spirit of miserliness. savings every wage or salary earner, no matter how small his compensation, should try to lay by something of that little as a provision against the unproductive days. no matter how small the amount a man has set aside, after paying for life's necessities and meeting all just debts, he is to that extent a capitalist. the miser would hide his savings out of reach, but the man with the foresight to save will usually have the judgment to place these savings where they will fructify and grow, producing the fruitage known as interest. the young man or the young woman, or any one else who places his little accumulations in a savings bank, has begun a form of investment that may, if persisted in, place him or her above want, even if it does not entitle either to a place on the lists of great capitalists. capitalists the capitalist not only has money of his own to invest, but he may and very often does need more money properly to exploit the enterprises in which he is engaged. money loaned to such men, after being assured of their ability and integrity, is an advantage to the lender as it is to the user. the lender's profit is assured if the enterprise does not fail, and the added capital not only insures against failure, but it may enable the manager to succeed beyond any expectations he could have if forced to carry on the work with only his own resources. the capitalist may choose to buy land in the suburbs of a city and build thereon a house to be sold or rented. this should always be made to secure the money borrowed. a capitalist may establish a fund from which, on good security, the business men of the community may obtain loans, for which they get a higher interest than that which they undertake to pay to those whose money they are using. again a capitalist may undertake to loan to farmers, who have not the means to carry on the work, but who are anxious to make their lands more productive, through drainage and crop rotation. in this case the money loaned is secured by the usual bond and mortgage. or it may be that another body of men is anxious to start a great manufacturing enterprise in the neighborhood, but has not enough money to place the venture on a paying basis. in the latter case it appeals to the capitalist, and he, though not bearing enough available means of his own, undertakes the work with the knowledge that he can rely on the small investors, whose contributions he has before managed successfully. stockholders or it may be that the manufacturing company does not ask the capitalist to assist, but itself goes to the small investor with a prospectus of the enterprise, and offers to sell stock in the concern at $ or $ a share, as the case may be. this gives a chance to enjoy the profits, be they great or small; but with the chance for larger profits there comes the greater risk which must always be assumed in such cases. sometimes, when a company is starting, its stock may be put below par. this stock, in the event of success, may appreciate, as with some bank and other corporation stocks, many times above the par value. when stocks sell in the open market for their face value, they are said to be at par. kinds of stocks most companies, organized on a stock basis, issue stocks of two kinds. one is known as "common" the other as "preferred." as the name implies, preferred stock (its rate of interest is always fixed) is entitled to be paid out of the net dividends first. whatever is left after paying the preferred stock interest is divided up equally among the shares of common stock, each getting according to his holdings. sometimes the dividends on common stock are far greater than those on the preferred. the preferred stock dividends are regarded as a fixed charge, but there can be no limit as to the payments on the common stock, if the funds are available. the stocks of railroads, factories, banks and other enterprises may be good forms of investment, and for this they are often held for long periods by investors for revenue. most stocks, however, particularly of railroads, are continually changing hands. the buying and selling of such securities has grown to be an enormous business, managed largely by men known as "stock brokers," many of whom are strong factors in the financial world. as a rule, the buying and selling of stocks through brokers is a hazardous form of speculation, which has in it all the elements of gambling, and we cannot advise too strongly against it. there is another kind of stock, which some companies keep in their safes to meet an emergency. this is known as "treasury stock," and, like the preferred, its rate of interest is fixed. let us suppose that a company is capitalized and prints stock to the amount of $ , . this company sells $ , worth, and the officers believe that they can force the enterprise to success with the money on hand. now, it follows that, with the same amount of earnings, the profits on $ , will be greater than on $ , , so the $ , unsold stock is held in reserve. if to extend the business, or for any other reason, it is necessary to have more money, the treasury stock may be sold to secure the extra capital. if the business is placed on a basis where its success is beyond all question, then the treasury stock may be divided _pro rata_ between the holders of the other stock, for, till disposed of in some way, it was an asset common to the whole company. each stock certificate tells when dividends are declared; they may be paid quarterly, half yearly, or annually. chapter xxiii bonds as investments the best way in which savings can be invested is to use them in the extension of the business in which they were made. the wage earner and the man on a salary cannot, of course, do this, but the farmer, the small tradesman, and the mechanic, who is his own employer, may be able to do so. and so, before looking for a field for investment outside, such men should look about them and consider how best the money may be used right on the ground. as to bonds but after considering the points suggested, the man who has some money may not be able to find a secure and profitable place for it in or near his own home. one of the safest forms of investments is bonds, though, as with other forms of security, the rate of interest declines as the margin of safety increases. if a well-established stock company should wish for any reason to increase its available cash, it may issue bonds, or certificate of indebtedness, bearing from four to five per cent interest, payable semi-annually. these bonds may be transferred the same as stock. they are a good form of security when it is desired to borrow money from the bank, and for many purposes they are as available as so much cash. such bonds are issued for a specified number of years and have coupons attached, which are cut off when interest is due, and presented to the treasurer of the company for payment. these bonds are secured by a mortgage or deed of trust on all the property of the corporation they represent. to redeem these bonds, when due, the company annually sets apart a sum, known as a "sinking fund," for their redemption. such bonds are far safer than any form of the company's stock, for they bear interest that must be met, whether or not dividends are declared. as with a real estate mortgage, the property pledged in the bond should be defined. railroad bonds every railroad in the country has been built and equipped by the sale of its bonds. in such cases amounts of stock of the same, or approximately the face value of the bond, have been given to the purchaser as a bonus or inducement. of course, the controlling stock is always retained by the promoters; and it is through the representation of this stock that all the business of the corporation is carried on. the cases are few where any money was paid directly for the original issue of any railroad stock. bonds sold to build a road are usually known as "construction" bonds. there may be another bond issue for equipment--with a stock bonus--and still other bonds, each series stating the property pledged and the purpose for which the money from sales is to be used. the _christian herald_, in one of its recent financial articles, clearly defines this species of bonds, as follows: "railroad bonds are usually pledged by the president and treasurer of the railroad and by the trustees, to whom the bonds are made out, and who must defend the rights of bondholders, should the company fail to meet any of the obligations it undertook in the mortgage deed. "in other words, a bond is the corporation's promissory note for the money originally paid by the investor, with interest for the same, to be paid to the investor in stated amounts at stated intervals; and to guarantee its good faith in the matter, the company pledges the bondholder an interest in certain property in its possession. it follows that a bond has a first call upon the property rights of the corporation; that it represents something tangible; that it pays a definite amount of interest, and that it may be reduced at its full value at a certain time." buying bonds bonds, like wheat, have their selling prices quoted from day to day, and they are equally a thing of purchase and sale. there are banks and brokerage firms that make a specialty of bonds, and most of these houses are entirely reliable; still, the novice in such things would do well to investigate for himself before investing in any bond recommended by any seller. it is the purpose of the seller to sell; it should be equally the purpose of the buyer not to be "sold." our government, state and municipal bonds speak for themselves, and in the main require no examination as to the security, though there have been cities and even states that have defaulted in their payments. bond houses and banks of established reputation cannot afford to deceive; they receive their compensation in the way of commissions on sales, and their characterization of the bonds may be accepted without question, for they invariably investigate the bonds, before they lend their names to them by offering them for sale. if there is any doubt in the mind of the would be purchaser as to the character of the seller, that should be the first thing investigated. what the buyer must satisfy himself of is: . who is the seller? . what do the bonds represent? . are they negotiable? and . can they be sold again for about their face value? every one who has saved money, it is to be supposed, has a bank account and is acquainted with the president of his local bank. when in doubt, the advice of such a man may be of great help. chapter xxiv things to remember if a man is making a living he should not change his business after he has passed middle life, unless, indeed, he has a guarantee that the new venture will be greatly to his advantage. the best business for the average man is that which affords him the most pleasure in carrying it on, or at least with which he is most familiar. happiness in one's work means far more than the accumulation of a fortune in discomfort. don't deceive yourself having made your credit and business standing good, keep them good by an adherence to the same course. if you can avoid it, do not loan your name to every needy friend that comes along. your neighbors question your good judgment every time you have to meet a note which you were coaxed into endorsing. you would have saved yourself by loaning the money outright. do not deceive yourself into the belief that you are making money when, as a matter of fact, you may be losing. you buy an article for two dollars and sell it for two and a half, and you say to yourself: "there is fifty cents made." but is it? let us see. before crediting your business with that fifty cents, you should have considered these points. . the loss of interest on that two dollars. . your own time or other time paid for. . the capital invested in things not sold. . the rent. . the transportation, insurance, heat, light, bad accounts, unsalable goods, taxes, public donations, and the flood of items that go to swell the outlay of every merchant, whether in the great city or at the country crossroads. weeding out every man in trade should make an inventory of his stock at least once a year. having done this, he should give his stock a fresh appearance, whether new goods be added or not, by relegating to the scrap heap, cellar or the garret all the dingy, dirty, disreputable stuff that he could not sell or give away, and which has induced sore eyes whenever seen. keep a stock book. quite as important as keeping the stock in order is keeping the books in good shape. at least once a year the books should be weeded out. why carry as bills collectable accounts which you have been assured, for years, would never be paid? wipe them out and charge them to profit and loss. where machinery is used, it is a good plan to charge off every year ten per cent of the cost; this to make good the loss from wear and tear. it is only by annual house cleanings and account clearings that you can tell about how you stand. let your wife know it is usually wise for a woman, married or single, to keep her real estate and her money, if she have any, in her own name. so also with property bought with her money. in these cases the woman should deal with her husband, or the members of her family, the same as she would with strangers with whom she is transacting business. some may say that this suggests a want of confidence and a lack of that affection that should exist between husband and wife or near kinsfolk. such an objection is sheer sentimentality. be as open handed and generous as you will with your loved ones, but when it comes to business, let the work be done in a strictly business way or not at all. many a good business has gone to ruin after the death of the owner and manager because he had kept his wife in blank ignorance of his affairs and the way in which he conducted them. many a business, that just dragged along till the death of the manager, has sprung into new life when the widow took charge. this must in part be credited to natural ability and inborn pluck and energy, but even these gifts could not have availed if the woman had been left in ignorance of business methods. women, like men, are awkward in new positions, not so much from a want of ability as a lack of experience. put the average man suddenly in charge of a house, and he will soon demonstrate his helplessness. the woman's deftness comes from her experience. as far as it is possible, every husband should post his wife as to his methods of doing business. he should not keep her ignorant of his financial affairs. if he conceal from her the amount of his secure holdings, it may be that he hopes to surprise her at his death, or long before that event. but if he have any regard for his family, he should not hide from her the obligations which may spell ruin if the wife is not prepared in advance to meet them. whether the husband lives or dies, the wife must still care for the children and attend to her never-lessening household duties. think of her as taking on the added burdens of a business of which she is ignorant. there are many prosperous husbands to whom what has just been said will not apply, but if you should ask them the secret of their success they will not hesitate to tell you that when they married they took their wives into full partnership, business secrets and all. children and business when you send your children to school it is that the training there received may qualify them to fight the better the ceaseless life battle. of course, we should not regard all education from a business viewpoint. money apart, learning is its own greatest reward. it widens the horizon at every step, and lifts the soul into strength and a profounder worship. but it will not do to overlook the business side of the training which the child should receive in school and out of it. it is all very well to teach children the sources of the family revenue and the way to secure it. it is right that they should be impressed with the dignity of labor and trained in the ways of earning money, but it is far more important that they should be taught how to spend money, so as to get the most good from it, once it is earned. the boy or girl is in a safe way to learn self-control and build up character when he or she, with some nickels at command, can pass a candy or a fruit shop without being compelled to spend their cash assets. children, wherever it is possible, should be given opportunities for earning money, which they can feel is "really and truly" their own. they should not be made to feel that the money is not actually theirs, to do with as they please, but they should be taught self- denial, and that they must not get rid of their earnings by the purchase of things not needed. on the farm, children unconsciously learn much through occasional work and constant observation, but away from the farm, boys and girls are apt to know little or nothing of the work in which the father, the bread winner, is engaged. where it is possible, the children should be made familiar by actual contact with the father's work. this knowledge may never be used, still it will have value as a factor in the child's training, for in our modern life all business is inter-related. let the youngsters know something about banks by entrusting them there when old enough. teach them to keep accounts of their own little money affairs, their earnings, their expenditures, and their balances. if they should borrow, even a cent, see that they return it at the time agreed on. impress on them the fact that debt is a burden which it is well to get rid of as soon as possible, if one would stand erect and be entirely free. all this can be quietly inculcated into the mind of the child without making him old-fashioned or miserly. the more he knows of the world the more he can enjoy it in a wholesome way. chapter xxv worth knowing if things are said in this chapter that seem like a repetition of things already told, it is that their importance warrants a repetition in another form. over-generosity "there are no pockets in a shroud," it is said. true it is that we cannot take material things with us to the other side of the grave, and so before the end comes it is well to make preparations for their disposition. there are three ways of getting possession of property: . to have it given. . to earn it. . to steal it. we shall not consider the last method; that is the business of the law, but let us look at the first. property is given in two ways: . by direct gift from one to another. . by will, when the amount is payable on the death of the donor. of course, the widow and children, if there be any, are first to be considered in either of the cases named. many people, when the end is nearing, think that it is better to make sure that their wealth will reach the right hands by giving it direct and at once. now, no matter the nobility of the motive that prompts such an act, it is one which, on the whole, cannot be commended. it is all very well to spend available means in order to set a son or daughter up in business, but such sums, if there are other heirs, should be charged against the share of the probable donee, with interest, and a record made of the same. under no circumstances should old people, who, after raising a family and living honorable lives, have saved enough to own their home and secure an income for their declining years, deed or give this property to their children, or to any one else, in consideration of their having all their subsequent wants met. the better way for the farmer, the merchant, or the manufacturer, when he feels the years pressing heavily and that he can no longer attend properly to the old demands on him, is to shift by a properly drawn contract the business management of the enterprise to his children, or to those whom he wishes to place in charge. in this way the ownership is not changed, and if the new management should prove to be inefficient, it can be placed in more efficient hands. care of wills as has been said, every person having property of any kind to dispose of should make a will. already ways have been given as to how wills should be made and estates administered, but to these it may be well to add another point. do not imagine that the making of a will shortens life. too often, after the demise of a testator who it is known has made a will, the heirs cannot find the document, and the lawyer who drew it knows nothing more about it. many men leave their wills with their lawyers. if this should not be done, then it would be well to keep it in the safe of the bank in which the testator has his account. but whether in these places or another, there should be no doubt as to the existence of a will, or the place in which it may be found. only the last will should be kept; all preceding wills should be destroyed. care of papers while writing about the care of wills, we are struck with the recollection that wills are not the only papers of value that are apt to be mislaid or lost. never pay out money without taking a receipt, and never receive money without giving one. you are not responsible for the care of the receipts you give, but you certainly are for the receipts you receive. the trained business man has a place for everything, but there is no reason why the man not so well trained should have to turn his shop or his home upside down every time he wants a paper that proves he has paid a bill, which he must pay again if that receipt is lost. everything may be regarded as "lost" that cannot be found, even if you are sure "it is about somewhere." no valuable paper should be "about." the only place for it is just where you can lay your hand on it when wanted. in addition to keeping your papers where they can be found the instant they are wanted, see to it that every paper is self- explanatory and clear of meaning on the face of it. checks and stubs it has been advised that the stub be always filled out before the check, and that the check be then copied from the stub. this course will greatly lessen the chances of disagreement between the two. when the last check in the book has been filled and torn out, do not throw away the stubs. they contain important data and may be of use in proving payment should a question arise. in like manner, never destroy the cancelled checks handed you by the cashier when your bank account has been balanced. each of these checks, if drawn to order as it should be, is a receipt, a voucher, for some payment that may possibly be demanded again. be on the safe side. sending away money it may be well to repeat again, in more condensed form, just how money may be safely sent to a distance. . by bank draft, payable to your order and endorsed over to the person whom you wish to pay. the party receiving the draft must endorse it before he can collect, and this endorsement is a receipt for the money, as the cancelled draft must eventually come into your possession. . you can buy an express order up to fifty dollars, but you may send money in a package to any amount. only banks or large dealers in money do this. like the bank draft, the express order must be endorsed by the receiver, and the express company returns it to you, when it becomes a receipt. . by post office orders, up to one hundred dollars. . by postal notes, in small amounts. . by telegraph. . by transmitting a personal check. . by a trusted messenger authorized to get a receipt. the bank draft is the very best way of transmitting money. as has been said, drafts can be bought at any bank, and they should always be made payable to your order. you want to pay a bill of goods to lloyd, smith and company, new york, so you sign on the back of your draft for the amount: pay to the order of lloyd, smith and company, henry c. robbins. lloyd, smith and company must endorse the draft before it can be cashed. the draft, after payment, is returned to you, and it becomes the best form of receipt. lost in mails were you ever at the dead letter office in washington? if you have never paid such a visit, you can form no conception of the tons, the hundreds of thousands of letters and parcels that are lost every year in the mails. unaccounted for drafts, checks, postal orders, books, jewelry, medicine, everything, indeed, that the mails will agree to carry, may be found piled in that cemetery of lost communications, the dead letter office. have you added to the mortuary list? all these deaths, like many of living creatures, are due to carelessness. as a rule, the sender is to blame. he has misdirected. he has placed papers not properly folded in the envelope and then neglected to seal it. he has neglected to write any address at all, and dropped the letter into the box. again he has addressed the parcel, but neither men nor angels can decipher the writing. more about notes the note, as has been said, is one of the most usual forms of obligation, yet misunderstandings often arise as to its settlement. here are the points that must be attended to, nor shall we offer any excuse for repeating them collectively: . the date and amount must be so plainly written as to leave no doubt as to either. . the rate of interest, if any, must be clearly expressed. . the post office address of the signer or signees must be written opposite the name. . the note should be made payable at a definite place and on a definite date. . in taking a note or other obligation from a person who cannot write, be sure to have his "x" mark witnessed. should you receipt certificates of stock as security for the payment of a note, or the payment of any other debt, be sure to notify the company issuing them. in giving this notice, which should be done at once, state clearly the number of shares you hold, the number of the certificates and to whom issued. the enforcement of this rule will depend altogether on the character of the person with whom you are dealing. never, if you can help it, buy a past due note, especially if it is not secured by a mortgage. if a note, which a third party has endorsed, becomes due, never agree to an extension of time without getting the written consent of the endorser. many men have lost through their ignorance of this essential transaction. chapter xxvi look before you leap we are not quite through with the note. when making a payment of principal or interest on a note, be sure to take a receipt for the amount, stating specifically what the payment is to be credited to. in addition, if it be possible, see that the sum paid be endorsed on the back of the note itself. the endorsement of the sum paid on the back of the note bars its being negotiated for more than the amount actually due. sometimes the owner and the maker of a note live at points some distance apart. if you were the maker of the note, and wanted to make a payment, but wished to avoid the expense and annoyance of a trip, what should be done? in this case a good plan would be to write to the owner of the note, asking him to send it by a certain bank in your neighborhood where you can pay. the bank will receive the cash, make the endorsement in your presence, and then send its check for the amount with the note to the owner. you must pay the cost of this transaction. or you may send the amount to be credited on your note, through a bank draft, as already indicated. never destroy a cancelled note. notes in bank if you have money at a bank your note will form the chief evidence of indebtedness and be the paper for which the security is pledged. keep careful track of the date of payment and the amount. there must be no neglect or carelessness. never permit your note to go to protest. if for any reason payment cannot be made at the time fixed, then the better way is to go, as soon as this is learned, to the bank or other holder of the note, and frankly explain the situation. bankers are not shylocks. they realize that good and responsible men are often disappointed in their collections, or in the payment of a sum on which they depended for the settlement of their account with the bank, and in such a case they are usually willing to grant an extension. private individuals, as note holders, should be treated in just the same way. well to know when calling at a bank for your note, always give the exact date on which the note falls due. if the note belongs to another party, and is held by the bank for collection, then mention the name of the person to whom it was originally given. if the bank has sent you a written notice about the note, take the notice with you. it will be found to contain all the desired facts. banks keep their own notes in one place and those of their customers in another. banks keep each date by itself, and can so find required notes more readily if the owner's names and the dates are given. discharging liens remember a mortgage is a lien or security given for the payment of a note. if you get a mortgage, have it recorded at once. if you pay off a mortgage, take it at once to the office of record and have the discharge of the instrument properly entered on the folio in which the mortgage is recorded. many lawsuits have resulted from the temporary neglect of this important duty. be prompt, but not too prompt sometimes a man will give a number of notes and secure them by one mortgage. the notes may pass into the hands of a number of people. let us suppose that you hold one note and the mortgage, and that the mortgagee comes to you and tenders the amount of your note, should you then surrender the mortgage to him? by no means, until the last note is paid that mortgage remains as security, and the holder of it is responsible for its safety to the holders of the other notes. in such a case it is better to have the mortgage held by one party for the protection of all. be in no haste to invest when a person not accustomed to managing money comes into the possession of a sum that it is not safe to carry about in the pocket, what should he do with it? obviously the first answer to this question must be "he should put it in the bank." we have already given hints as to investments, and to these it is not necessary to refer again, we are now considering another and not an unusual phase of such a case. young men and women of all ages are very apt to be inexperienced in these matters. as soon as it becomes known that such people have come into the possession of a goodly amount of cash, which they are not considered competent to manage, it is surprising how past acquaintances suddenly pose as old and unselfish friends, each with a scheme for doubling the money while the owner is looking at it. now, there may be good, honest friends who are eager to advise and help in a case of this kind, but they are sure to be outnumbered by advisers who have their own little axes to grind. our advice is "don't be in a hurry to invest. your cash is quite safe while in bank." but no matter how promising, do not invest your money in a business you know nothing about, even if it does carry with it a position and a salary. find a good honest lawyer, despite sneers to the contrary, we believe most men in the profession are of this character, and ask his advice, and pay for his help if papers are to be drawn. buying rentable real estate is usually a good investment, provided always that the price is reasonable, the title clear, and the chances of its advancement pretty certain. meet your dues promptly it is estimated that every man and woman in the united states belongs to one or more societies of some character, and this is not an overstatement. every member of such an organization is such by reason of election and the payment of dues. if you are a member of, or a pledged contributor to, a church, lodge, grange, or other society, you should regard the prompt payment of your dues as sacred as any other form of obligation. the expenses of a properly conducted church are always considerable, even in small communities. it is a disgrace to the christian organization that, after forcing down the pastor's compensation to the barest cost of life's necessities, then force him to run into debt if he and his family would live, or to be forced continually to remind the trustees that his salary is far in arrears. if you belong to a lodge or other society, leave it if you honestly feel that you cannot afford the dues. neglect to do this and your name will be dropped from the rolls on which it never should have been placed. counting money never receive money from any one without counting it. count it at once and in the presence of the giver. let it make no difference, banker, merchant, kinsman or friend, do not fear to give offence, but right then and there, count the money he gave you. of course, these people are honest, but did it ever occur to you that honest people often make mistakes? whenever you pay another money, if he does not do so himself, you should insist that he count it in your presence. if you do this you won't lose a friend, but if you do not do it you may make an enemy, should the man come back to say you made a mistake and underpaid him, and you very properly refuse to honor his claim. ready money do not, if you can possibly avoid it, keep money around your house, in your place of business, or on your person. the professional thief is ever on the watch for chances to take unto himself all the money in sight. pickpockets reap their harvest from money carriers. the burglar may steal or fire may destroy money left in the house. a bank, if not near one then a safe, is the best place for money, though safes have been broken into and robbed. do not make a display of money at any time, but particularly in a public place. if you are drawing money from a bank, count it quickly and quietly, then secure it in an inside pocket that cannot be reached without unbuttoning. never cash a check for a man whom you do not know to be square. the same applies to the endorsement of checks. in travelling always be courteous in travelling, but never take the chance acquaintance of the steamboat or car into your confidence. keep an eye on the man who "fortunately is going just your way." watch out for the fellow who knows the leading men of your town and is a cousin of judge smith. do not respond if such men ask you to cash a small check or make a slight advance till his draft arrives. do not accept the invitation of strangers to visit any place. avoid the confidence of the over-dressed, but slightly intoxicated young fellow who "has been out with college chums." he is not a college man, nor has he been drinking. chapter xxvii contractions and signs used in business " italian ditto--the same as above. ° degrees. ' primes, minutes, test. " seconds, inches. thus, ° ' " in circular measure, or ' " ''' in duodecimal long measure. i one and one-fourth. i one and one-half. i one and three-fourths. + latin plus, more--addition. - latin minus, less--subtraction. x by, or into. multiplication. also area, as x , read by , means long and wide. ÷ divided by--division. the : above is also a sign of division as used in ratio, thus, : ; and the â�� alone is a sign of division as used in writing fractions, thus, / . = equals. the double ::, as used in proportion, is also a sign of equality, thus, : :: : . % per centum. by the hundred. rate of interest. p per, by or through. $ dollars; said to be a contraction of u. s. for united states money. # means number, if before a figure, as # , but pounds if written after, as #. @ latin ad., meaning to or at. a . first class, the best. a. or ans. answer. acc., acct. or a/c, account. adv. latin ad valorem, according to value. admr. administrator. admx. administratrix. adv. or ad., advertisement. agt. agent. amt. amount. a/o at sight or account sales. ass'd. assorted. asst. assistant. bal. balance. b.b. bill book. bbl. barrel or barrels. bdls. bundles. b/e bill of exchange. bgs. bags. bk. bank; book. bkts. baskets. b/l bill of lading. blk. black. bls. bales. bot. bought. b.p. bills payable. b.rec. bills receivable. bro't. brought. bu. bushel or bushels. bx. box or boxes. cash. cashier. c.b. cash book. chgs. changes. chts. chests. c.h. court house; custom house. c.f.s. carriage and insurance free. cks. casks or checks. clk. clerk. co. company; county. c.o.d. cash, or collect, on delivery. col. collection. com. commission. const. consignment. cor. sec. corresponding secretary. cr. credit; creditor. c.s.b. commission sales book. ct. or c. cent, latin centime, a hundred. cts. cents. cwt. a hundred weight. d. b. day book. d/d. days after date. dept. department; depment dft. draft; defendant. disct. discount. div. dividend, division; divide, divisor. do. the same. doz. dozen. dr. debtor; doctor. d/s or d.s. days after sight. ea. each. e.e. errors excepted; ells english. e.g. latin exempli gratia. for example. encl. enclosed. e.&o.e. errors and omissions excepted. et. al. latin et alii, and others. exch. exchequer; exchange. ex'x. executrix. exp. export; exporter; expense. fahr. fahrenheit. fav. favor. fir. firkin. fo. or fol., folio. f.o.b. free on board. fo'd. forward. fr. from. frt. freight. gal. gallon; gallons. gr. grain, grains. guar. guarantee. hdk'f. handkerchief. hf. chts. half chests. hhd. hogshead. hon. honorable. hund. hundred. i.b. invoice book. i.e. latin id est. that is. incor. incorporated. ins. insurance. inst. instant, the present month. int. interest. in trans. latin, in transito. in the passage. inv. invoice. inv. inventory. jr. junior. kg. keg. l or lb. latin libra, a pound in weight. l/c letter of credit. led. ledger. l.f. ledger folio. l.s. left side, or in latin, locus sigilli, place of the seal. m. one thousand. manuf. manufacture; manufacturer. mdse. merchandise. mem. memorandum. messrs. french messieurs, gentlemen, sirs. mf'd. manufactured. mfst. manifest. mme. madame, french. mmes. mesdames, plural. mo. month. mol. molasses. mr. master or mister. mrs. mistress, usually pronounced "missis." mtg. mortgage. n.a. north america. nav. navigation. n.b. latin nota bene. note well, or take notice. no. or # number. n.p. notary public. o.b. order book. o.k. all correct. oz. ounce or ounces. p. page; pint; pile; part. payt. payment. pcs. pieces. pd. paid. per an, or p. a., latin per annum. by the year. % per cent. by the hundred. pk. peck. pkg. package. p.& l. profit and loss. p.o.d. pay on delivery. p.o.o. post office order. pp. pages. pr. or per. by. prem. premium. prox. latin proximo menve. next month. p.s. post script. pub. publisher; public. pwt. pennyweight. qr. quire; quarter, lbs. qt. quart; quantity. rec'd. received. ret'd. returned. r. r. railroad. ry. railway. s.b. sales book. sch. schooner. shipt. shipment. s.o. seller's option, a stock phrase. sig. signature. s.s. steamship. st. saint; street; sight. st. dft. sight draft. stor. storage. str. steamer. sunds. sundries. supt. superintendent. t.b. time book. treas. treasurer. ult. latin, last month. u.s.a. united states of america. united states army. u.s.m. united states mail. u.s.n. united states navy. ves. vessel. via. by way of. latin. v.-pres. vice-president. viz. contraction from latin videlicet. namely, to wit. vol. volume. vs. latin versus. against. w.b. way bill. wt. weight. x extra. xx doubly extra. y. or yr. year. yd. yard. chapter xxviii words and phrases used in business account current. a running account between two persons or firms. account sales. a detailed statement of the sale of goods by a commission merchant, showing also the charges and net proceeds. administrator. a man appointed by the court to settle the estate of a deceased person. administratrix. a woman appointed by the court to settle the estate of a deceased person. ad valorem. according to value. a term used in the custom house in estimating the duties on imported goods. affidavit. a written declaration under oath. annuity. an annual allowance; a sum to be paid yearly, to continue for life or a fixed period. annul. to cancel; to make void. antedate. to date before time of writing. appraised. the act of placing a value on goods. appraiser. a person appointed to value real or personal property. arbitration. the settlement of a disputed question by a person chosen by the parties to the dispute. assets. the total resources of a person in business. assignee. a person to whom the property of a bankrupt, or an insolvent debtor, is transferred for adjustment for the benefit of auditors. assignment. the act of transferring property to the assignee. attachment. a warrant for the purpose of seizing a man's property. balance sheet. a statement in condensed form, showing the condition of a business. bankable. receivable at a bank at par or face value. bank balance. net amount on deposit in bank. bill of lading. a written account of goods shipped, and the condition of same, having the signature of the carrier, and given to shipper as a receipt. bill of sale. a bill given by the seller to the buyer, transferring the ownership of personal property. board of trade. an association of business men for the regulation of commercial interests. bona fide. latin, in good faith. bond. an instrument under seal, by which a person binds himself, his heirs or assigns, to do or not to do certain things. bonded goods. goods stored in a bonded warehouse or in bonded cars, the owner having given bonds securing payment of import duties, or of other sums due the government, upon their arrival at some specified place at a specified time. bonded warehouse. is a building in which goods are stored until the duties or revenues on them are paid. bondsman. one who goes security for the faithful performance of a contract. bonus. a premium for a loan or other privileges. broker. an agent or middleman between the buyer and the seller. bullion. uncoined gold or silver. charter. a written authority from the proper national or state authority defining the rights and privileges of corporations. charter party. a written contract for the hiring or chartering of a ship. chattel. any kind of property except real estate. collateral. pledges of stocks, notes, or chattels as security for the payment of a loan. commerce. the business of exchanging commodities between different places. commission agent. one who does business on commission. common law. the unwritten law, the law of custom. it receives its force from universal usage. consignee. the person to whom goods are sent to be sold on commission. consignor. the one who consigns his goods to an agent. contra. latin. on the opposite side. copartnership. the joining of two or more persons into one firm for the purpose of carrying on any business. coupon. an interest note or certificate, attached to a bond, which is cut off for collection when interest is due. credentials. testimonials of authority; proofs of good character, demurrage. money forfeited for detaining a vessel beyond the time named in her charter party. dishonor, a failure to pay a note or other obligation when due. a failure to accept a draft when presented for acceptance. dockage. charge for the use of a dock. dower. the right of a widow to a one-third interest in all the real estate owned by her husband at any time after their marriage. draft. a written order for the payment of money at a fixed time. drawee. the person on whom a draft is drawn. duress. personal restraint of any kind. earnest. part of purchase money paid to bind a bargain. effects. goods, or property, of every kind. embargo. an order of the government preventing ships from departing or landing. equity. the principles of right and justice. equity of redemption. the right allowed a mortgagor of a reasonable time to redeem mortgaged realty. execution. a writ authorizing an officer to carry into execution the judgment of the court. fee simple. a title to real estate held without conditions by a person in his own right. forced sale. sale made under compulsion. forwarder. one who attends to the shipping and reshipping of goods. gross weight. weight of goods, including case or wrapping. guarantee. a surety for the performance of a contract. honor. to pay or accept a draft when due. import. duty paid on goods by importer. indemnify. to recompense for loss or injury. indemnity. a guaranty against loss. indenture. a writing containing a contract. indorse. to write one's name on the back of a note, draft, or other document. injunction. a writ of court, by which a party is restrained from doing a certain act. inland bill. a draft between parties in the same country. insolvency. inability to pay debts, bankruptcy. intestate. dying without having made a will. in transitu. in a state of going from one place to another. latin. inventory. an itemized list of goods, or other property, with their value as estimated at the time. invoice book. a book in which invoices are kept. jettison. goods thrown overboard to lighten a ship in time of great danger. jobber. one who buys from the producer to sell to the retailer. job lot. an irregular collection. odds and ends unsold at the end of the season. judgment. the decision of a court. lease. a contract granting possession and use of property for a specified time. legacy. a bequest; a gift of property by will. lessee. one to whom a lease is made. letter of credit. an open letter authorizing the bearer to receive money on the credit of the writer. license. a legal permit to carry on a certain business. lien. a legal claim on property, which must be settled before property can be sold. lighter. a flat-bottom boat used in loading and unloading vessels at anchor. lighterage. charges for use of lighter. manifest. a list of articles comprising ship cargo. margin. difference between buying and selling price. marine. pertaining to the sea. maturity. the date when a commercial paper becomes due. mercantile agency. a company that collects for the use of its patrons information as to the standing of all business men in the country. mercantile law. law pertaining to business. mortgagee. the person in whose favor a mortgage is made. mortgagor. the person who gives a mortgage. negotiable. that which is transferable by delivery, assignment or indorsement. net. clear of all charges. net proceeds. the remainder after deducting charges from sales. net weight. weight after deducting all allowances. nominal. existing in name only. notary public. an officer authorized to administer oaths and take acknowledgments. open account. an account unsettled. outlawed. a debt which has run beyond the time when the law will enforce payment. par value. the expressed value of any commercial paper. parol. verbal, not written or sealed. pawn broker. one licensed to loan money on personal property. payee. the person to whom money is to be paid. payer. the person who promises to pay. plant. the entire establishment necessary to carry on a manufacturing business. post date. to date after real time of writing. power of attorney. a written authority from a principal to another, authorizing him to act in his stead. price current. a list of articles with market values. primage. a percentage allowed to the master of a vessel on the amount of cargo carried. prima facie. on the first look or view. pro rata. a proportional distribution. latin. protecting a draft. accepting a draft to prevent its being protested. protest. a formal declaration by a notary that a note was not paid at maturity, or that any other monetary obligation was not met when due. receiver. a person appointed by the court to take charge of a firm or corporation on its dissolution, and to distribute its property according to law. rescind. to revoke, countermand or annul. resources. every form of convertible asset. revocation. the recall authority conferred on another. salvage. the allowance made by law to persons who voluntarily assist in saving a ship or her cargo from destruction. shipping clerk. one who attends to shipping goods. silent partner. one who shares in the profits of a firm, though his name does not appear, nor does he take an active part in its affairs. sinking fund. a sum of money set apart for the liquidation of debts. stock. capital invested in trade. goods on hand. capital stock. the capital of a corporation as shown by its shares. common stock. that stock which entitles the owner to an equal proportionate dividend of the corporate profits and assets, with one shareholder or class of shareholders having no advantage or preference over another. preferred stock. that stock which entitles the owner to dividends out of the net profits before or in preference to the holder of common stock. watered stock. stock which purports to represent, but does not honestly represent, money paid into the treasury of a corporation. stock exchange. a place where brokers and others meet to buy and sell stocks and bonds. stockholder. one who owns shares in a joint stock company or corporation. stoppage in transit. the right which the seller has to stop the goods he has shipped any time before they reach the buyer. syndicate. a number of men who unite to conduct some commercial enterprise. tare. an allowance made for the weight of boxes, barrels, etc., in which goods are shipped. tenant. one who holds real estate under lease. tender. an offer; a proposal for acceptance. tickler. a book containing a memorandum of notes and other obligations in the order of their maturity. time draft. a draft maturing at a fixed future date. trade discount. a discount or series of discounts from the prices made to dealers, or because of a change in prices. trustee. one who holds any business or property in trust. underwriter. one who insures. usury. the taking of more than the legal interest. voucher. papers and documents that prove the truth of accounts. waybill. a paper containing a list of goods shipped. wharfage. money paid for use of a wharf. wharfinger. one in charge of a wharf; the owner. wholesale. to sell goods in large quantities, in whole or unbroken packages. writ. an order issued from a court to one of its officers; or to one or more litigants where an injunction is issued. the end gutenberg. (this file was produced from images generously made available by the internet archive.) [transcriber's note: every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other inconsistencies. text that has been changed to correct an obvious error is noted at the end of this ebook.] a caution to the directors of the east-india company, with regard to their making the midsummer dividend of five per cent. without due attention to a late act of parliament, and a by-law of their own. "upon the whole, i will beg leave to tell what is really my opinion: it is, that it be repealed absolutely, totally, and immediately." _a late celebrated speech._ london: printed for george kearsly, in ludgate-street. mdcclxvii. a caution to the directors, &c. gentlemen, perhaps there never was such a necessity, for an address to you upon the subject of _caution_, since the east-india company was established, as at present.--your great successes in india, have drawn upon you the envy of your own countrymen, as well as the other european powers; the great increase of your dividend, has alarmed the proprietors of other funds for their own property; the differences among yourselves, and your fellow-proprietors, have furnished this envy, and these fears, with the means perhaps of overturning your constitution. tho' i will not presume to determine, whence these differences arose, or who have been to blame, that not being part of the present design, you will agree with me they have drawn upon you the notice of the legislature, and have produced an act of parliament, that affords either party but little cause for rejoicing, however grateful it may be to the public. i must suppose you would wish to keep your _golden fleece_ to yourselves--union among yourselves would have secured it--but your differences have exasperated the watchful dragon, the _guardian_ of this _treasure_, and you now only hold it in _participation_--a strange _participation_ too, where the public is to receive four hundred thousand pounds, while you are to receive _nothing_--i say _nothing_--for i shall endeavour to prove you cannot make your dividend of l. _per cent._ due the th of last july, nor will you be able, as things now stand, to declare the dividend of l. _per cent._ at christmas next. i am satisfied that such a consequence as this, will not be admitted without some proof; but i should conceive very little proof necessary, to awaken your _caution_, at the time you are going to pay the l. _per cent._ dividend, if it is but hinted, that it cannot be done without incurring a danger of the censure of parliament. i presume only to recommend _caution_, but i will submit to your better judgments, the reasons which convince me, that while the late act of parliament, for regulating your dividends, remains in force, you cannot divide the l. _per cent._ which you have declared payable the th of july last, nor can you declare, or make the like dividend of l. _per cent._ at christmas next. i will set down the proper clauses in the several acts of parliament, with a letter of the alphabet before each, for the convenience of referring to them, as occasion may offer. cap. . a. "that no dividend shall be made by the said company, for, or in respect of any time, subsequent to the th day of june, , otherwise than in pursuance of a vote, or resolution, passed by way of ballotting, in a general court of the said company, which shall have been summoned for the purpose of declaring a dividend, and of the meeting of which general court, seven days notice at the least, shall have been given in writing, fixed upon the royal exchange in london." ibid.--b. "that it shall not be lawful, for any general court of the said company, at any time between the eighth day of may, , and the beginning of the next session of parliament, to declare, or resolve upon, any encrease of dividend, beyond the rate of l. _per cent. per ann._ being the rate at which the dividend for the half year ending the th day of june, , is made payable." cap. . c. "that, from and after the th day of july, , no declaration of a dividend shall be made, by any general court, of any of the said company's, other than one of the half yearly, or quarterly general courts, at the distance of five calendar months, at the least, from the last preceding declaration, of a dividend, and that no declaration of more than one half yearly dividend, shall be made by one general court." . by-law. d. "that no _alteration_ be made in the dividend, on the capital stock of this company, without first giving six months publick notice." by clause a, it appears that no dividend can be made, after the th of june, without the vote of a general court, (and by clause c, that must be a quarterly court) called for the purpose of declaring the intended dividend, with seven days previous notice thereof, in writing fixed upon the royal exchange--by the resolution, of your court of directors, of the d of may last, as well as by your uniform practice in making dividends, the half year's dividend of l. _per cent._ declared in september last, and now in course of payment, was due the th of july last, and that day, and not the th of june, is the day on which this dividend must be understood to be made, in consequence of the september declaration. now as this dividend declared to be made on the th of july, is made for and in respect of time subsequent to the th of june, and is made not in pursuance of a vote, carried by ballot, in a general quarterly court, summoned for the purpose of declaring a dividend, with seven days notice of such a meeting, given in writing and fixed upon the royal exchange, it is not warranted by the act, but is, according to the plain and obvious construction of the act, _illegal_. i have heard two objections, and two only, made to this construction; one, that the legislature was mistaken as to the time, in which the dividends are always made by this company, supposing them payable the th of june, instead of the th of july, and that they did not intend to prevent your dividing l. _per cent._ at midsummer. the other, that if they were not mistaken, and if they did intend to prevent your dividing the l. _per cent._ at midsummer, the act itself fails in this intention, since it only prevents your dividing for eleven days, being the interval between the th of june and the th of july, and you are, on this account, left at liberty to pay the l. _per cent._ after deducting the proportional part for those eleven days. as to the first, i think nothing can be more absurd, than to suppose that the wisdom of the legislature, should be capable of such a blunder. in order to this, we must suppose, that they who, in the same session, made a law with respect to the publick funds, in which the dividends are fixed for payment on the th of july, and the th of january, could take it for granted that the india dividends were fixed for the th of june and the th of december; and we must suppose too that they could take this for granted, which is so contrary to the general practice in other funds, without making any enquiry of the directors, who daily attended, and were examined while the bill was passing: for if they did make enquiry, they must have heard that this company observed the same days of payment with the government, and have done so invariably from the original institution; and in such a case, the blunder can hardly be called the effect of oversight, but a wilful blindness. this absurdity is too gross to pass current, but the clause (c) in cap. of the said act, will shew that the parliament were not ignorant, that the dividends would become due on the th of july, but have proceeded on the consideration of it's being due on that day. in this clause, they say, that no _declaration_, &c. shall be after the th of july. now when they had in contemplation the _making_ of a dividend, they mentioned the th of june, a time preceding the th of july, in order to prevent it; when they had in contemplation the _declaring_ of a dividend, they say the th of july subsequent to the th, to distinguish between the terms _making_ and _declaring_, which have been so often confounded. it must appear highly improbable to every impartial mind, that the legislature should enact a law, to regulate the making of dividends, without knowing the time, when they are made payable; or if they were ignorant, that they would not enquire, when the directors attended to answer all enquiries, and were actually examined from day to day, while the bill was framing; and very few will be hardy enough to affirm, that if the parliament were aware, that the dividends would be due the th of july, such a blunder could creep into the act of parliament. the most natural construction, upon reading the said act, is, that the th of june was not inserted by mistake, but by design, and that the legislature plainly intended, in the restraining clauses, that the india company should make no dividend at all from christmas last, which was before the encrease of the dividend, to the beginning of the next session of parliament; in which time, all your homeward-bound ships would arrive, the midsummer annual account would be made up, and the ministry would have an opportunity of learning from lord clive, what was the real situation of the affairs in india. i know it is commonly imagined to have been the intention of parliament, to rescind the resolution of the th of may about the l. and - th. _per cent._ but this imagination is contrary to fact, for that resolution is unrepealed, unrescinded, and unless the parliament, at the next meeting, shall make some law to prevent it, you may divide l. - th _per cent._ at christmas next--no single word, in either act of parliament, mentions the resolution of the th of may, and the act which restrains the dividing between the th of may, and the beginning of the next session, manifestly avoided mentioning the th of may, and made the interval of restraint commence on the th, to shew it did not mean to rescind the resolution of the th of may. had the parliament designed to restrain the dividing according to that resolution at christmas next, the interval of restraint would have gone beyond the th of january--as that clause, which restrains the present dividend, the manifest object of the parliament, stopt short of the th of july, and would not have stopt, as it has done, at the beginning of the next session of parliament. the preamble of the act professes nothing for its object, but "to secure as well the permanent interest of the company, as the state of credit both private and public, from the mischiefs which must ensue, from an improper, and improvident increase of the dividends of the said company." thus the parliament had in view only improper and improvident dividends, dividends made without a due regard to the circumstances of the company, whether the same should be l. -half _per cent._ l. _per cent._ or l. _per cent._ and i may appeal to yourselves, gentlemen, whether you had any objection to the dividend of l. -half taking place at christmas, that did not arise from a consideration of these circumstances, from your apprehension that your finances would not be such at christmas, as to enable you to pay off the company's debts, to pay the , l. the first half yearly payment to government, and to make a dividend of l. - th to the proprietors. and i would ask, whether any other consideration weighed with the legislature? you will confess, as the undoubted truth is, that this alone made you wish, that parliament would interpose to prevent the dividing l. - th at christmas. and i affirm this alone determined the wisdom of the legislature to interpose for that purpose. they have interposed, and what have they done? they have stopped your making any dividend till the meeting of parliament. but they have determined nothing with respect to the l. - th _per cent._ the resolution of the th of may stands unrepealed; and if it shall then appear, such an increase will not be improper, and improvident, at christmas next, if, i say, gentlemen, after the arrival of the homeward-bound ships, after the examination of the annual account, which has never yet been produced, if after hearing the opinion of lord clive, concerning the real situation of your affairs in india, the flourishing state of your trade, the regular payment of your revenue, and the stability of your possessions, you shall think that the l. - th _per cent._ may be paid without giving any cause of complaint to the creditors of the company, and join with the general court in a representation to the ministry, that such an encrease will not be improper, or improvident, at christmas, there can be no reason to suppose, that parliament will again interpose, by a new act, to restrain your making such a dividend; and if they do not interpose by a new act, you may divide l. - th _per cent._ by a due exercise of your present powers, as will be shewn in another place. but should there, on the contrary, be any room, at the meeting of the parliament, to believe such a dividend at christmas will be improper and improvident, it is no doubt the intention of parliament to make a new act, the next session, to restrain your dividing l. -half _per cent._ l. _per cent._ l. _per cent._ or any _per cent._ at all, if it shall be so necessary, in order to prevent the mischiefs recited in the preamble before mentioned. the remedy provided by the wisdom of the legislature, is, according to this construction, adequate to the mischiefs apprehended; as at the time of making the act, the dividend even of five _per cent._ was proved by you, and nothing can be clearer than that you did prove it, to be improper and improvident, they have restrained it till the meeting of parliament, and as it may then be represented by you, that such a dividend will not be improper, or improvident, they have made the time of restriction stop at that period, to give you a future power of dividing that sum, or l. - th agreeable to the resolution of the th of may, if they see no reason for interposing against it. but if the legislature had not restrained you from making any dividend, between the th of june, and the beginning of the next session of parliament, if they had left you to divide the l. _per cent._ dividend for the th of july, they would have provided no present remedy at all. it is well known, you opposed the encrease of dividend to l. _per cent._ in september last, and that you opposed it, upon the principle of it's being improper and improvident, from the state of the account, then produced by you to the general court. you have frequently declared since, you thought this measure of raising the dividend to l. _per cent. inexpedient_ and unwarrantable, as the company have not discharged their debts--you opposed the resolution of increasing it to l. -half on the th of may, in no other manner, but by producing in court the same state of the company's affairs, upon which you opposed the increasing it to l. _per cent._ in the month of september, and declaring the state of affairs was not altered since that time; from whence it was to be understood that there was, in your opinion, no better reason for dividing l. - th in may, than there had been, for dividing l. _per cent._ in september. on this principle, and on this principle alone, you called in the aid of the legislature, to assist you in preventing the mischief, that must be produced by such improper and improvident dividends, and on this principle alone the parliament interposed to support you--you proved to them you could not divide l. - th, you proved too, by the same arguments, that you could not divide l. nay, that you could not divide at all; for i may with confidence affirm, that not a single argument was advanced to prove the dividend of l. - th to be improper and improvident, that did not extend to prove the dividend of l. _per cent._ or any dividend at all, equally so. i am warranted to go farther. if the company would not, in your opinion, be in a condition at christmas to divide l. - th, when the homeward-bound ships should have arrived, there was much less reason for suffering you to divide l. _per cent._ at midsummer, while the ships were still upon the seas, the annual account unsettled, and the state of your affairs in india unknown. and yet, after this it seems, we are to suppose the legislature did not intend to prevent you making the l. _per cent._ dividend declared to be due the th of july. we are to suppose, that they did not intend to hinder your dividing after the rate of l. _per cent._ at midsummer, when any dividend at all was proved improper and improvident, but that they intended to hinder your making a dividend after the rate of l. -half _per cent._ at christmas, when future arrivals, and future accounts, might make such a dividend proper and expedient. we all saw with concern, that the members of both houses were detained in town, to lend the wished-for interposition; had the christmas dividend been the sole object of their attention, the business might have been postponed till the next session, as that is expected to take place before this dividend can be made; and the rather, as those lights may then be had, which could not be expected, though much wished for, at the end of the last session. but as preventing the dividend of l. _per cent._ declared for the th of july, was the principal object, it was necessary to settle that business before the session was closed; and i believe you are satisfied, gentlemen, there was sufficient evidence laid by you before both houses, to prove a dividend of l. _per cent._ improper and improvident at that time, whether you agree to determine a dividend with the deputy-chairman upon a cash account, or with the chairman upon a general account. the wisdom of the legislature has stopt your dividing at midsummer, while your ability is doubtful, and has left it in your power, after the beginning of the next session, to make a dividend of l. - th at christmas, if your ability is no longer doubtful at that time. i presume, the first objection is by this time sufficiently answered, that it is clear the legislature made no mistake when they inserted the th of june; and that they meant to prevent any dividing between that day and the meeting of parliament. i shall now proceed to the second objection, _viz._ that whether the legislature meant to prevent the dividend of l. _per cent._ taking place the th of july or not, the act will not have the effect contended for--it is insisted, that the clause (a) which restrains the company from making "any dividend, for, or in respect of, any time subsequent to the th of june, ," includes no more than the eleven days, between that day and the th of july, and will not affect the rest of the half year, but a proportionable dividend may be made up to the th of june. by a resolution of a general court, held in september last, the company declared, that they would make a dividend on the th of july, then next following, of l. for every hundred, for the half year between the th of january and the th of july following. the sum to be divided, is l. for every hundred pounds. the time for which it is declared, is half a year. the day of payment july. if the eleven days are deducted, you will divide only l. s. d. halfpenny, and not l. for every hundred. the dividend will not be for half a year. nor will it be due the th of july, but the th of june.--this, and the september resolution, will be as different as any two proportions can possibly be, in which no single term is common to both. and such a dividend as this, can no more be said to be made by virtue of the resolution of september, than it can be said to be made by virtue of the preceding resolution, for dividing only l. _per cent._ or that of the th of may for l. - th. the dividends on the india company's property, are different from those on the government stock. the latter are intended by parliament, to continue a certain, or uncertain number of years, and the rate of interest is fixed unalterably, during the continuance of such stock, to be paid half yearly, on the th of january and the th of july; the india dividends have been declared by the company, when, how, for what time, and for what sum, they please. they might, before the th by-law was made, divide monthly, weekly, or on a distant day that cannot be called either a weekly, monthly, or half yearly payment; and before the appointed day, they might vary the dividend, might increase, decrease, or annul it.--their usual practice has been, to declare a certain specific sum to be paid on a certain day, for the half year between such a day and such a day, and not as the government does, an annual sum payable half yearly.--they have not declared by the resolution of september an annual dividend of l. _per cent._ payable half yearly, in which case, perhaps, an apportionment might be admitted, but they have declared, the specific sum of l. for every hundred, to be paid on the th of july; in like manner as on the th of may, they did not declare an annual dividend of l. -half _per cent._ but the specific sum of l. s. to be paid for the half yearly dividend on the th of january next. the general court in september had only in contemplation the apportionment of the dividend to the quantity of stock possessed by each proprietor; the division of time was never under consideration; the time was given, _viz._ half a year between the th of january and the th of july; had the quantity of stock been given, _viz._ had every proprietor held l. and no more or less, the court would then have declared, that every proprietor should receive l. on the th day of july. if the time is altered, the original proportion is changed; the proprietor of l. stock, will not receive the l. _per cent._ that was declared. and what is offered in lieu of it, is not to be found in any part of the resolution, under which it is pre-to be made. again, if any case can be supposed to have happened, before the passing of these acts, that might have made it necessary, or prudent, for the india company to make a dividend for four months, instead of six, would you, gentlemen, have presumed to make a proportionable dividend for four months, under the resolution, that declared a dividend for six, or would not you rather have called together the proprietors to get this new resolution made by a general court? you undoubtedly would, you certainly must; such a change in the time of making dividends payable, must have been stiled an alteration in your dividend; and the th by-law would have made it necessary for you to give six months notice of such an alteration. i would ask, where the difference is, whether the alteration be from six months, to four months, or from days, to , which is the present alteration? the one is an alteration of months, the other of days, but they are equally alterations, the alterations equally demand a new declaration, and are equally objects of the th by-law. and you can no more divide for days, ending the th of june, under a declaration that orders you to divide for , ending the th of july, than you could make three payments of four months in a year, under a declaration of two half yearly one's. the legislature, in the act of parliament for the alteration of the stile, has said, that midsummer-day shall fall on the th of june; because this alteration would have carried it otherwise to the th of july; the stocks however have not been affected by that act, the th of july, and the th of jan. have been constantly the days of payment, for the midsummer, and christmas dividends, for most of the government as well as the east india stocks. would any administration alter the days of payment of the government stock, without the sanction of parliament? you will not say, gentlemen, they would. i will venture to affirm for you too, that you will not make this trifling alteration, of dividing for , instead of days, or, at least, that you will first take the opinion of a general court upon it, that your enemies may not have room to say, that you did not care to call a court for this purpose, from a consciousness, that the th by-law, and the acts of parliament, would stand in your way, if you submitted this difficulty to a serious discussion. they certainly do stand in your way, the legislature intended they should stand in your way, and so long as that by-law, and these acts of parliament, remain in force, it will be impossible for you to divide the l. _per cent._ now in course of payment. before i dismiss this part of the argument, i must submit to your consideration two necessary consequences, that must follow from your determining to make the dividend of l. s. d. halfpenny _per cent._ payable the th of june, instead of the l. _per cent._ that was declared payable the th of july. first, a great confusion must arise in the foreign contracts; a dutchman at amsterdam sells stock, on the th of june, to another of the same place; the dividend is understood by each party to be the property of the purchaser, as no proprietor, foreign or domestic, is ignorant, that the india midsummer dividend is payable, and has ever been payable, the th of july; and yet, according to this determination, the l. s. and d. halfpenny _per cent._ will be the property of the seller. secondly, it is well known much of the india stock is held in trust, that a. shall enjoy the dividends for his life, and after his death they shall go to b. i am told such a case has happened, in which, a. died the th of june last, it is certain the dividend would belong to b, if it is paid the th of july; but it will go to the executor of a, to the prejudice of b, if you pay the l. s. d. halfpenny for the dividend due the th of june. these are the reasons which induce me to think, gentlemen, that the legislature did not mistake the time the dividends become due, that they did not mean the th of july, when they inserted the th of june, that they intended to restrain the company from making any dividend, before the beginning of the next session of parliament, and that they have effectually restrained you by the clause a. yet i will suppose, for the present, you still think that the legislature had no such intention of retraining the present dividend of l. _per cent._ and inserted the th of june, instead of the th of july, imagining the dividend became payable on the former, instead of the latter of those days; would you, gentlemen, in such a case, take upon yourselves to divide contrary to the express words of an act of parliament? and would you justify this disobedience to the law, by imputing a blunder to the only body upon earth in which we can allow infallibility? it will not surely give offence, if i presume you may be mistaken in your construction of the act, while you fix the charge, of saying one thing, and meaning another, upon the king, lords, and commons of this realm; and should your judgment not be infallible, and in your construction of this law, the mistake should be on your side, ignorance will be but a poor plea for the breach of an act, which you arraigned upon the same principle. if the law maxim, _ignorantia legis neminem excusat_ is ever to be justified upon the principle of humanity, it will be in this case, where it interprets the law, contrary to the express and obvious meaning of it. if, for the sake of argument, we admit that the legislature may have committed this blunder, do you allow it to be consistent, with the rules of true policy, to let those who are the objects of a law, become the interpreters, much more the correctors of it? suppose a law should prove hurtful to society; let us suppose, if such a case can be supposed, it would break in upon the security of life, liberty, and property, which it is the sole object of law to support? no power in this kingdom, can alter such a law, but that which made it; and the judges, who are the interpreters of the law, are bound to determine all cases which come under that law, according to the plain and obvious construction of it. they cannot correct; their province is, to tell what the law is, not what it should be. will you assume a power to yourselves, not granted to the king's judges? will you, gentlemen, presume to interpret, that the legislature should have said the th of july, instead of the th of june; and determine, that the dividend shall be made which stands restrained by the express words of that law? if you will correct the law, why will you not do it with as little violence as possible? why will you not alter , and say it should be ? in that case, the law would not take place this twelve month, there would be no doubt about your dividends, in the mean time, and this will be but the alteration of a single figure, while what you contend for, changes words as well as figures. you will say, no doubt, that you do not desire the proprietors should divide l. - th at christmas, which they would, if this construction was allowed; they are not in cash, they have not paid their debts, is certainly a good argument, but not insuperable, against dividing; you opposed the dividend of l. _per cent._ in september, upon the same principles. that you should not be in cash, that you had not paid your debts, was your only objection at that time; and we now find you straining the law, makeing an act of parliament say it meant july, when it said june; and intended to insert the figure , when it made use of , in order that you may now make this dividend, which you opposed when it was declared in september last. you would now make the legislature say, it was not their meaning to rescind this dividend of l. _per cent._ when they have rescinded it in direct terms, because you proved you should not be in cash, and should not have paid your debts at the time it would be payable. i will venture to affirm too, that you would not be half so inconsistent, in using the same industry, and following the same method of interpretation, to divide after the rate of l. -half _per cent._ at christmas; for the legislature, as we have proved, have not shewn their intention of rescinding absolutely, this l. -half, while the l. _per cent._ is restrained as matters stand, beyond all dispute, and can never be made, but in defiance of the power of parliament, and without such a defiance, as, if it is to be justified, will justify the violation of all law, divine and human. a law of england says, you shall _not_ divide up to the th of july, being after the th of june; you substitute the th of july in the place of the th of june, and then say, you may divide up to the th of july. the law of moses says, thou shalt _not_ steal; you strike out the word _not_, by a less violent alteration, and then theft becomes as little a crime in england, as it was at sparta. but i would beg leave to ask, if the mistake contended for should be admitted on all hands, would you take upon yourselves to correct it, or wait till it was rectified by parliament? if when a deed is executed, a mistake is discovered, it cannot be corrected without the privity, and consent, of all parties; if blunders are made in law pleadings, that are upon record, they cannot be amended without the leave of the court, which has the custody of such records: a trustee in such deed would not pay a sum of money contrary to the express words of the deed, but would wait till the matter was set right; nor would a party in any cause presume upon a mistake in a record, to disobey the orders of a court of justice; and will you, gentlemen, give less authority to an act of the legislature, than to a private deed, or the record of any petty court of law? we must suppose the legislature will be as jealous of their resolutions, as the east-india company are of theirs. you cannot have forgot the proceedings of a late general court, upon the subject of dismissing the prosecutions brought against some of your servants abroad.--this business was brought on at that court, on account of the clamours raised without doors, and at the recommendation of a worthy member, to whom you owe the two acts of parliament, that you then so much desired to be made, and now so much wish to break through. it was proposed at that court, that the question for dismissing these prosecutions should be put to a ballot, to convince all the world, that the resolution of the th of may, for this dismission, which was confirmed on the th, was not a partial one, but agreeable to the sense of all the proprietors taken at large. i believe there was not a proprietor in the court who did not wish that such a ballot could be taken; but when it came to be considered, that the question then proposed to be submitted to a third decision, had been unanimously voted on the th of may, and as unanimously confirmed on the th, the great importance of giving weight, and stability, to their resolutions, determined the wisdom of that court, to put the propriety of such a measure to the test of a previous question, which was proposed, put, and carried, by a great and respectable majority, against a third consideration. you will after this, gentlemen, assume with an ill grace, that the parliament are not to support these resolutions; however you may wish to have them reconsidered, or repealed. they certainly will support their resolutions, and i need not remind you that the breach of an act of parliament will be a forfeiture of your charter.--and though a gentle administration might treat your dividing upon such a notion of a mistake with great lenity, what are you not to expect, if the minister should say, you have made the dividend we meant to restrain; we restrained it, because you convinced us it would be improper and improvident; you have since changed your mind, and you would alter the law? here even the lenity of the present ministry cannot avail you; your charter would be forfeited, and the world would not pity, but laugh at your presumption. but to suppose still, that the legislature are mistaken, may we not suppose too a change in the present administration, and that a future minister may embrace this, as a fair opportunity, to seize upon the charter, or at least to squeeze the company, and make them purchase a forgiveness at a very high price? if we plead that we injured nobody, it may be said, we have insulted the dignity of parliament, and a minister, who may be no friend to the company, will have a very plausible pretence to make you part with your millions for the public good. however heavy you should find the rod of power, the world will not then hearken to your complaints of severity; you have already drawn upon you the censure of your fellow subjects, by the resolution of the th of may, with regard to your dividends, which they say were made, in defiance of the king's ministers. the previous question upon the affair of dismissing the prosecutions has not retrieved your credit among them. what will they not think, what will they not say, if you divide thus in violation of a recent act of parliament? they see the legislature has determined you shall not divide, because you have proved you cannot divide; will they not say now, that you have determined, in your turn, you will divide, because the legislature has said you shall not divide? i conjure you therefore, gentlemen, use the utmost caution at the present crisis, call in the ablest assistance, whilst you are making a construction on these acts of parliament, nor presume too far to trust your own judgments. i am the more earnest in this recommendation, as i find you mistake the intention, and operation, of these acts, with respect to a christmas dividend, as you do with respect to this you are now going to pay. i understand, it is your opinion, that in order to make a dividend of l. _per cent._ at christmas next, a court may be called in september with the seven days notice, prescribed by the said act, cap. , and l. _per cent._ may be then declared, by a vote taken by ballot, to be payable at christmas. i must remind you, that the vote for l. -half, passed on the th of may, stands unrepealed by you, or by parliament, and by clause c. you cannot make any declaration of a dividend, but at the distance of five months from the last declaration; which five months, from the th of may, will not be expired, till october, when you cannot hold the michaelmas quarterly court, because your charter, in page , expressly says, it must be held in the month of september. you cannot therefore declare any dividend till the christmas court, as by the said clause c. every declaration must be made at a quarterly court; nor can you even then declare a dividend of l. _per cent._ as the th by-law will stand in your way, which enacts, "that no alteration shall be made in the dividend, on the capital stock of this company, without first giving six months public notice;" and such notice cannot be given of the intended alteration of dividend, from l. - th to l. _per cent._ you see, therefore, that no dividend can be declared at christmas next but the l. - th, and that may be confidently declared, without infringing any act of parliament, or any of your own by-laws. do you ask then, how i would construe the late acts? and what measures i would advise you to take? my design is only to awaken your _caution_. but as a well-wisher to you and the company, and interested in it's welfare, i will further offer my sentiments on the conduct necessary to be observed on this occasion. i consider the intention of the legislature, to be what is professed in the preamble of cap. , to prevent improper and improvident dividends: you only proved, when the affair was before parliament, the dividend at midsummer, to be improper and improvident, because the homeward-bound ships were not arrived, the advices from lord clive were not received, and the annual account itself was not yet made up. it was not, nor could it at that time be disclosed to parliament, what dividend at christmas would be improper, or improvident; the legislature has therefore restrained your midsummer dividend, and has prevented your declaring any dividend at all, till the next session, which is expected in november; and if they shall then see no cause to restrain you further, you will be at liberty to declare and divide your l. - th _per cent._ at christmas; but if they should then find you in no better situation then they left you in the last session, you may expect to be restrained by a fresh law, in that dividend, as you are in this. are we then, say you, to lose the present dividend for ever? as things stand at present, i answer, yes. if you divide, you divide in defiance of the legislature, at the risque of your charter, and your own persons; if you call a general court, and, with the sanction of such a court, apply to parliament, by an humble petition, to have your midsummer dividend restored; there will be no room to believe the legislature will not take off the refraction, if you prove yourselves in a condition to make the dividend you propose, as we may be confident they would be ready to rectify a mistake, in any act, whenever it should be pointed out to them. i must however add, if the annual account, which the gentlemen would not suffer you to produce, at the last general court, will not bear the light, submit with patience to the present loss; but if you think it will prove the dividend of l. _per cent._ at this midsummer, and l, - th _per cent._ at christmas, will be neither improper or improvident, you will see this restricting clause _repealed absolutely, totally, and immediately_. i am, &c. * * * * * [transcriber's notes: the transcriber made these changes to the text to correct obvious errors: . p. elven --> eleven . p. declaning --> declaring . p. under which it is pre- to be made. (left as published) end of transcriber's notes] images of public domain material from the google print project.) _how to collect a doctor bill_ by frank p. davis, m. d. secretary oklahoma state board of medical examiners, - . superintendent oklahoma state institution for feeble minded, - . member county, state and american medical association. member american school hygiene association. member state and national eclectic associations. member oklahoma association of charities and corrections. member oklahoma press association. member southwestern medical association. late editor davis' magazine of medicine, etc. publishers physicians drug news co. newark, n. j., u. s. a. copyright by frank p. davis, m. d. contents page chapter i the successful physician chapter ii attitude toward debtors chapter iii proper time to collect chapter iv books and bookkeeping chapter v letters and forms chapter vi statutes of limitations chapter vii exemption laws and their application chapter viii extracts from exemption laws of all states preface my excuse for presenting this little book to the profession is that i have often felt the want of just such information as is herein contained. in fourteen years of practice i have made it a point to study my patients and the business problems that confront the man in our profession. some of the things that i have learned are embodied in this book. taking my professional experience as a whole i have collected over =ninety per cent= of my accounts. if this book shall be the means of causing any physician to study the business side of professional life, and get what is due him, i will feel that i have not worked in vain. enid, okla., june , . frank p. davis, m. d. chapter i the successful physician. a man with a bulging forehead once said that "life is what you make it." this is very true in the profession of medicine. the successful physician must live in the manner of successful men. to do this, most men must live upon the income from their practice. if the physician properly cares for his wife and children, he must realize on his investment--his medical education. a man's first duty is to his own, and it is written that the man who fails to collect that which is due him, and "provides not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, is worse than an infidel." to successfully conduct any enterprise it is necessary to adopt business methods. system is the key-note of modern business, and the simplest system is the best. a cash system is by far the simplest. no man can succeed in practice, nor can he be considered a safe medical adviser so long as he is handicapped by poverty, a worried mind or poor health; or if he is compelled to dodge around corners to escape his creditors. there are men who tell us that they are not in practice so much for money as for the glory and honor of the profession. if these men are sincere, i pity them from the bottom of my heart, and feel sorry for their wives and children. nor can i understand where the profession can gain much honor from men who are financial failures. not that money is the only thing for which we should strive, but that the man who provides not for his own, cannot be representative of the noble profession of medicine. also, i have observed that the path of glory leads in the direction of the cemetery, and checks on the national bank of fame are generally protested when the rent comes around. the applause and compliments of the multitude are no doubt sweet, but it only lulls to rest the voice of duty, and fails to provide sustenance for those dependent upon us. man cannot live on air alone--even though it be flavored by the ambrosia of sweet compliments and the hypnosis of applause. again, i have observed that a larger crowd will turn out any time to see a man hung than to compliment him on a duty well performed. the man who answers calls at all hours of the day and night, for any and every one who may request his services; with no assurance of ever receiving pay; and who is afraid to demand settlement for fear of losing practice, is not competent to conduct his own affairs, much less to practice medicine. it is this class of men who make dead-beats of our patrons, and thus reduce the income of physicians to a point where a bare existence is all we can hope for. to be a safe medical advisor requires that the mind be free from the petty cares of life. he should live in a manner in keeping with the dignity of the profession to which he has given his life. he must have a neat office, wear good clothes, have a happy home and a contented mind. it is well to achieve the reputation of being an indefatigable and shrewd collector. it pays. it will influence your regular patrons to pay more promptly. it will also help to keep away those who trespass upon your time and never pay you. the only sure way to hold practice is to require your patrons to pay their bills promptly. if they do not owe you they are not so liable to avoid you and cease to employ you. let a family once get greatly in arrears, then it will happen that--not having the cheek to face you--they will call another physician, and give every reason but the true one for deserting you. thus, through your own neglect you lose patronage, friends and your good name and reputation. the public will never place any higher value on your services than you do yourself. the death-knell of any physician's success is tolled when he becomes known as a "cheap doctor." not only must you require others to pay you, but you must also pay your own bills. physicians, as a rule, are considered poor pay by business men. it is a very good rule in life to discount all bills that you owe, and never to discount a bill due you. make it a rule to never owe any man anything, and to have as few owe you as possible. many physicians will cut their bills to whatever the debtor cares to pay. in this way they lose a large part of their fees, and achieve the reputation of being poor business men. i heard an old arkansas doctor relate his experience in discounting a bill that well illustrates the weakness of many physicians. a client owed him $ , and after the account had run about six months, the man came in and said, "doc, i hain't got the money, but if you will cut that bill in two i'll borrow it from my father-in-law." the doctor thought $ would be better than waiting, so agreed. three months later the man returned and said, "doc, i couldn't get the money from my father-in-law, but i have a fat hog i can sell and get some money if you will cut that bill in two." the account was growing old and the doctor thought he had better take the $ , so he said all right. six months from that time the fellow hove in view again. this time he said, "doc, my wife thought we needed that hog for meat and i couldn't get her consent to sell it, but i have a job now, and if you will cut that bill in two, i'll pay you." this time the doctor thought he saw $ . in sight, so again he agreed. "all right, doc," said the debtor, "as soon as i get in a few weeks work, i'll be in and pay you." the doctor said the fellow did come around a few months later and began a similar story, but he told him to go to a country where rotary snow plows are not much in demand. one of the greatest mistakes is in allowing accounts for different cases to accumulate until the amount becomes so large that it is difficult to pay. it is always best to require settlement as soon after each case is dismissed as possible. in sending statements, be careful to itemize by cases only, as "john, fever, $ ," "wife, confinement, $ ," etc. i seldom give the disease unless it is some special case that required much attention. in some cases it refreshes their memory when reference is made to the disease. you must know your business. give every man a square deal, and require others to do the same by you. when you have completed your work, remember the advice of old prof. joslyn, "get money, still get money, boy, no matter by what means" so long as it is justly due you for services rendered. if you fail to require your patrons to pay you for your services, you have not done your full duty. chapter ii attitude toward debtors. a fundamental principle in being a good collector is to never lose the good will of your patrons. so long as you are on friendly terms with a man you can approach him and talk over the matter. it will be easy to keep advised as to what he is doing, and when he is expecting to receive money. the time will come sometime when he can pay at least a part or secure your claim. we must not lose sight of the fact that in this country poor men sometimes become rich, and rich men sometimes become poor, and we should deal with them accordingly. it is poor business policy to permit well-to-do clients to run up big bills, and at the same time hound your poor patrons. one of the easiest ways to collect a bill, when they have persistently failed to pay, is to loan them some money. this plan is fully covered in the following editorial from =davis' magazine of medicine=. "let us now consider the investment of the doctor's savings. his fees are received in small sums, generally ranging from a few dollars to a hundred dollars at a time. he seldom has over a few hundred dollars on hand at any one time. and failing to find a good place to invest such sums as he has, he becomes a prey for the stock companies and the land sharks, where he can make his investment on the installment plan. most physicians are earnestly seeking a safe investment for these small sums of money, but very few have found a plan that appeals to them. most of the advice one gets from the journals is 'don't' or to invest in farm mortgages. when he looks around for a farm mortgage he finds that the small amount of money he has to loan will not meet the requirements of the man who desires the loan. even should he find a small loan that he could handle, the interest would be so low, that it would produce a very small income after paying taxes. i believe the doctor's earnings should net him ten per cent, and be in such form that he can realize on them in case of emergency. to take chances on getting a greater rate of interest would be to accept too great risk, and a less rate would be poor business policy. "the problem simmers down to about this: how can we invest small sums, from twenty-five to one hundred dollars, so they will be safe, and earn at least ten per cent interest?" i solved this problem several years ago while engaged in general country practice. in fact, it can be applied better in the country than in the city. the plan is this, loan your money to your slow pay patrons. sounds risky, don't it? i have found it to prove a success. i learned that most of my poor pay or slow pay patrons were always ready to borrow money, and that they could generally secure me with chattel mortgages, or get good men to sign their notes. the note and mortgage always covered the amount loaned and the amount of my bill. there are few who cannot give you suitable security, and these few should be turned over to the other doctor who is practicing for the love and honor of the profession. "when it is known that you have a little money loaned out, and that you will only loan to those who have you for their physician, your practice will steadily grow." be on your guard and do not permit your old accounts to become "outlawed" by the statutes of limitations of your state. this may be prevented in a measure by getting a small payment from time to time on account, as the law of limitations does not apply until the lapse of the period of time named in the law, after the last payment on the account or note. the exemption laws of most states are so liberal that a very small per cent. of physician's bills could be collected by law, should the debtor elect to take advantage of the exemption law. the only safe method is to put it up to your client as a debt of honor, and depend upon their inherent honesty and pride. it does no good to sue a man for a doctor bill except in extreme cases. you will lose more than you will gain. not only will you in all probability lose the account and expenses, but you will make a lot of enemies, who will injure your practice more than the amount of the bill. treat your poor patrons with the same respect and courtesy that you do rich ones. mr. smith will do his best to pay you, while old bill smith will not exert himself very much to balance your ledger. then above all treat the woman in the flowered mother-hubbard as if she were the queen of sheba, and the off-color lady from the red-light district as you would the president of the purity society. the child that is ragged and dirty should receive the same cordial attention as the one in silks. when the time comes that you cannot treat all your patrons as you would like for them to treat you if your positions were reversed, it is time for you to "fold up your tent like the arab and silently steal away," your usefulness is at an end. the day when you can make money in that location has passed. be kind to little children. women and children furnish the greater part of our patrons. men do not count for much in the practice of medicine,--unless you are a g-u specialist. i have always found that where grandma and the children liked me, that i had no trouble in getting practice or in collecting my money. do not pad your accounts. charge what you consider your services worth, and then stick to it. deal a square hand to all. the golden rule is just as bright and as true today as it was thousands of years ago, and it is not recorded that any man was ever hung that lived up to it. after you have done your full duty =demand= that your patrons do their duty by you. keep after the money that is justly due you. get money; but get it honestly. you will be criticised by some, and cussed by others, but in the words of carrie nation, "why care for the criticism of men who change and die?" and finally remember, that in this world there is nothing that will pay dividends equal to smiles--unless it is gall, and do not forget the injunction of the prophet, "physician, 'heel' thyself," lest in old age the world will say, "well done, good and faithful servant; enter thou--into the poor house." chapter iii proper time to collect. "to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the sun."--eccle. : . the time to collect depends to a considerable extent upon the location and the class of patronage. in cities, as a rule, collections should be made weekly, as many patrons move frequently, and you lose track of them. it is proper and wise to present your bill as early after the service is rendered as possible. bills should be presented to working men at the time of their regular payday. in country practice i have found it best to send statements monthly and to require settlement quarterly by cash or note. i have adopted this rule in a cotton country where it was the rule to only pay the doctor once a year, if at all. farmers and planters can borrow money to pay the doctor as well as they can to pay farm hands and cotton-choppers, or at least can give notes bearing interest. when a man consults you and commences to run down some other doctor, require him to pay cash. he's in bad with the other fellow. dead-beats should never be temporized with. don't do a man's practice in the hope that he will pay you, when you know that he has beat the other fellow. while every case is to a certain extent a rule unto itself, yet, there are a few essentials that are necessary to make a success in collecting. the two principle rules are, to keep everlastingly after them, and never to lose their friendship. so long as you are on good terms there is hope. keep your accounts collected closely. the man who carries more than one-third of his business on his books is a business failure. old accounts breed knockers. go thou to the lawyer and consider his ways--then cinch the money. never employ a collector on commission. your office girl will prove the best collector if you have not time to attend to it yourself. in fact, for general collecting, she will prove the best collector you can get. give her an honorium in addition to her salary if she makes good. at many places the collector will be informed that the party she is seeking is not at home, or is not in the office. instruct her to stay until they return, even if she finds it necessary to take her sewing along, and spend the day. frequently the party desired is just hiding in another room, waiting until the collector leaves. rather than stand the siege of a determined collector they will sometimes pay the bill. the collector should carry a note-book and jot down just what the debtor has to say. this should be done in the presence of the debtor. collectors should always try to get something on account, even if only or cents. it keeps the account alive, and helps defray expenses. take notes if you find it impossible to get the cash. have them well secured if possible. where you cannot get security get at least two names on the note. two dead-beats are better on a note than one on the books, but, better still, get the "order note" shown on another page of this book. if you take unsecured notes have them to mature in not to exceed thirty days. don't overlook the fact that a married woman's note is valueless in many states. frequently a debtor will promise to pay at a certain day, and then usually fails to show up. when he makes the promise, make a note of the time in your note-book. if he fails to keep the appointment, write him a nice letter, something along this line: dear sir:-- i am sorry that i was not in the office on the th. when you called to settle your account. when we were talking about the matter the other day i neglected to tell you that if i was not in the office when you called you could pay the office girl, and that she would give you a receipt for the amount. i hope that you are well and prosperous, and that little =mary= has fully regained her strength. if i am not in when you come up again, just pay the amount to the girl and it will be all right. thanking you for your attention to this matter, and wishing you success, i remain, yours very truly, this will generally bring him in with many excuses and some money. chapter iv bookkeeping and statements. a simple system of keeping accounts is necessary. there are many systems on the market, ranging all the way from the simple blank ledger to the elaborate desk systems. i prefer the card system or the single book. as only records of original entry are accepted in courts as evidence of account, a complicated system would hardly be suited to the average physician. the entry must be so clear and simple that any ordinary person can readily understand the account, hence, any system that depends upon ciphers or marks is valueless. a physician that is a good bookkeeper can no doubt handle the complicated systems successfully, but as i was not trained as a bookkeeper, the simplest, clear, legal system meets my needs. always enter each day's work on the day it is done. don't wait until tomorrow, or next sunday to make up your books. by cultivating the habit you can get as much pleasure out of entering charges in your books as you could from some calls. i have seen the time when i got more real joy out of receipting one bill than i would in going seven miles in the country on a stormy night to see a dead-beat. life is but a joke, but it isn't wise to let the dead-beat have the joke on you all the time. don't scatter your accounts on the book. keep them close together and they will be seen more frequently. it is better to run over the pages when entering charges than to refer to the index, as you will be reminded of other entries that should be made, and accounts that need looking after. once an account goes on your books, never lose sight of it or give up until it is settled, or otherwise disposed of. it is a bad habit to skip an account when making out statements. treat them all alike. it may be advisable to classify your accounts, but you should never fail to push the collection of every account on your books. in charity practice, enter on your book at the regular rate, and credit to charity to balance. in this way you keep an account of the extent of your contributions to charities. keep a stub of each statement you send out so that your client can not bring in an old one and dispute your account. the following form will meet every requirement for a statement. by retaining the stub you have a complete record of your statements. no................| statement name..............| ....................... .. address...........| mr................................ date sent.........| to j. m. smith, m.d. dr. previous bill sent| to professional services ..................| to date - - - $........... am't paid.........| all accounts are due and payable collector.........| when services are rendered. the best way to hold practice is to collect your accounts. more people change doctors because they owe big bills than for any other reason. never tell a debtor that you are hard up and need the money. he won't believe you, and will not only neglect to pay you, but will change to some other doctor. tell them that you must have the money because it is yours and that you want the profit that may be made with it. put it up to them as a plain business proposition and loan them the amount if they pay you interest and give good security. they will respect you when you make them pay. a man is judged in this country by his business success. most men would rather pay a lawyer a thousand dollars to keep them out of the penitentiary for a year, than to pay a doctor fifty dollars to keep them out of hell for a life time. office and transient practice should be cash or an order note. the following form will prove valuable: .............. .. after date, for value received, i promise to pay ............. or order...........dollars, the same to be paid in...............payments of $.............each, until the sum of $............ has been paid. for value received, i, the undersigned, hereby sell, assign, transfer and set over unto.............. all my right, title and interest in and to all of my salary, wages or any moneys due, or to become due, to the amount of.................dollars, from any person, firm or corporation, and order the said amount to be paid to the bearer out of the first moneys due me after the presentation of a copy of this instrument. i hereby irrevocably waive all exemptions or other rights i may have by means of any law of any state in which i now, or may hereafter be employed or reside. i agree to pay all costs and attorney's fees that may be incurred in collecting the above amount. name................................. occupation.............. address.................. employed by............. address.................. i have this form printed on cards and file them in a card file. this contract note not only helps to get the money, but it solves the problem of holding chronics and venerals. it is seldom necessary to present the order for payment. when you write a letter advising your client that you will be compelled to present the order to his employer if he doesn't come in and see you, he will show up in a very short time. subscribe to the merchant's exchange. if a man will not pay his store bills you cannot expect him to pay his doctor. get the cash when you find his name on the list, or let the other doctor have the case. after entering an account on your books, make no rebates or discounts. buy a hog for four times its value, if necessary, but don't discount your bill. if account is paid by check, remember the following points: when a check is post-dated (dated ahead), if payed before the date mentioned, the money can be recovered. when post-dated checks fall due on sunday or a legal holiday they should be presented on the day following. changing the dates of checks without the consent of the drawers will make the checks void. checks that are not dated, or that do not contain any statement when they are to be paid, are never payable. bank checks are but orders on the bank for the payment of money, and are payable in the order in which they are presented at the bank. do not hold checks, but present them for payment as soon as possible. if a check is not paid on proper presentation, resort may be made to the original claim. have the banker endorse the reason for non-payment on the check. certified checks are checks that have been endorsed by the bank, and constitute payment as to the persons drawing them. if a check is turned down at the bank notify the drawer at once. if you receive a check and endorse it and place in your bank for collection, and it is turned down, do not return it to the drawer until you get a remittance to cover, without first erasing your endorsement. chapter v forms and collecting letters. nearly every form of letter that has been devised for collecting physicians accounts has been based upon those used by installment houses and those in general use by wholesale merchants who deal with retail dealers. they all carry the bluff idea. this is all right in dealing with installment customers with whom you have a contract that will take away the goods purchased, or with retail merchants who know they must meet their obligations if they continue in business. the credit men of mercantile institutions keep tab on their customers through the local merchants exchange and the commercial agencies, and are in a position to know to what extent it is safe to extend credit. the merchant cannot refuse to pay his bills and go to another wholesale house and buy goods, hence if he is a little tardy in meeting his obligations the bluff letter will awaken him to the necessity of paying the bill. with the doctor's customers it is altogether different. he knows that he cannot be compelled to pay the bill, and that some other physician will be only too ready to come at his call. it is then evident that the bluff idea will not work with the man who knows that he can get another doctor whenever he wants one, and that he is so protected by the exemption laws that the bill cannot be collected by resorting to law. so in reaching this class we must devise other plans if we hope to accomplish anything. here, my experience has shown that sentiment is the key note in an effective collecting letter for physicians. i have found that the more human interest, sentiment and friendly feeling that can be woven into the letter the better it is. every time that i write a letter to a client i try and refer in some manner to the patient or to some member of the family, and try to impress them with the fact that i have a personal interest in them. the following forms are suggestive of the idea, and have proven very successful in my practice. the classification is, of course used with every account--they are all no. until they fail to pay. the word "class" and the number are stamped with a rubber stamp. letters of this kind should be pen written--typewriter and form letters will not answer, they lose the personal sentiment. a duplicator that will easily reproduce copies of a pen written letter may be had for about $ , and the letters may be "formed" on this, leaving space in which the personal matter may be written. if properly done they will have the appearance of a hand written letter. don't have your letters too polished. remember you are a very busy man--just writing a note to a friend. omit the rhetorical embellishments from this class of correspondence in all cases. the first of my series of letters is along the following line. class . dear sir:-- in looking over my books with a view of raising a small amount of money, i note there is a balance due on your account of =$ . =, and as you have always been one of my best paying patrons, i have let this run, knowing i could get it whenever i called on you. i always divide my accounts into three classes: . those who i can depend upon to pay when i call on them. . those who are slow to pay, and that i must keep after. . very poor pay and unsatisfactory clients. whenever one of my patrons fails to respond to my statements it reduces him to the next lower class. as you are one of my first class patrons, i know you will be only too glad to assist me at this time. i saw little mary on the street the other day, and she is looking well and hearty. i am glad she is so well, as we had a hard fight to save her last spring. wishing you health, happiness and success, i am, yours very truly. now if this fails to bring the money, we will try class no. . class . dear sir:-- i was very much disappointed in not receiving the small amount of your account, =$ . =, as you were one of my class customers, and i felt sure you would not fail me when i called on you. i hope you will attend to this at once, as i would like to place you back on my class list. a good credit is the greatest asset that any man can have, and i find i can only maintain my credit by making prompt payment of my bills. to do this i must have a prompt settlement of the bills due me. i know that you value a good credit, and feel sure that you will not again disappoint me. how is baby getting along? i guess he can almost stand by this time. come in and see me any way, and we can no doubt make arrangements that will help us both out, and continue the best of friends. yours very truly. in case he is not interested in your friendship, and does not show up with the money, we will try our third and last shot. class . dear sir:-- i am very sorry that you did not see fit to reply to my letters of =july = and =august =. not so much on account of your failure to pay me the =$ . = which you owe, but because i dislike to lose faith in my fellow man, and you know it hurts a fellow when he finds his judgment was wrong. i have often wondered how i would feel if i knew my little child was up in heaven, looking down at me with her angelic eyes, wondering why i did not pay the doctor who worked so hard all night to give her ease and to keep her with me. i don't believe that i could be happy. still =john=, i believe in you, and feel sure you will come in and see me about this little matter. i just can't believe i was mistaken in you. wishing you success, i am, very truly yours. the personal matter must be fitting to the case. if your patients do not die, you might speak of the "innocent little babe who will grow up to womanhood unpaid for." lawyers in oklahoma hold a lien on the cause of action until their fees are paid. wonder how that would work with the medical profession? the point that i want to press home to you is that if you cannot get a settlement with sentiment, you cannot get it any other way. you cannot bluff them for they know they are execution proof. read the exemption laws of your state and you will find that there is not a third of your patrons but could beat you if you tried to enforce payment by law. here are some thoughts that have been worked into form letters that may give you an idea that you can use in some special cases: "your continued silence after receiving our previous letters, compels us to infer that you neither propose nor intend to remit us the small balance on your account." "the amount is justly due, and we now state positively that on account of our having been patient, lenient and courteous with you in the past we cannot let the matter drop at this time by merely writing you." "from information we have received from different sources we appreciate the fact that you are amply able to pay the amount due." "we are placing the utmost reliance upon receiving a remittance from you in the next few days." sometimes you can get settlement by means of a sight draft. some people seem to fear a bank and will pay an account when held by a bank when they would pay no attention to anyone else. always get an order from a corporation before rendering service. if they call you to attend any of their employees, have them sign an order before giving the case any attention, otherwise you may not be paid for your services. they will refuse to pay, and the patient will claim he did not call you. have some order cards with you all the time for the signature of corporations or others who will call you to attend a patient who is not related to them. the following form will answer: ...................... =dr. john smith:= you will please attend ...................................................... during his present illness. .................................. when some corporation or other responsible party calls you up and wants you to attend some one, have them sign the card, then they will be bound to pay if the patient fails to do so. the person representing a corporation should sign, as in many cases they have no authority to bind the company. chapter vi limitations. the following table gives the time an account or instrument of writing, (note, judgment, etc.) will survive before becoming "out-lawed" by the statutes of limitations in the several states. open account note judgment years years years alabama alaska arizona arkansas california colorado connecticut [ ] delaware florida georgia hawaii idaho illinois [ ] indiana iowa kansas [ ] kentucky louisiana massachusetts michigan minnesota mississippi missouri montana nebraska nevada new hampshire new jersey new mexico new york north carolina north dakota ohio oklahoma oregon pennsylvania [ ] rhode island south carolina south dakota [ ] tennessee [ ] texas utah vermont virginia washington west virginia wisconsin british columbia[ ] manitoba wyoming new brunswick nova scotia ontario quebec [ ] mexico footnotes: [ ] promissory note not negotiable. [ ] justice court. court of record, years. [ ] judgment may be kept alive by issuing execution every five years. [ ] may be revived by proof of non-payment. [ ] if judgment is from any other state, years. [ ] "where the statute of limitations of another state or government has created a bar to an action upon a cause accruing therein, while the party to be charged was a resident in such state or under such government, the bar is equally effectual in this state." (code (m. & v.) sec. .) [ ] "all actions for debt upon any recognizance, shall be commenced within twenty years after the cause of action arose." [ ] "surgeon's, physician's and dentist's accounts dating from the time the services or medicine is supplied." this table is as near complete as we are able to make it at this time. the laws are changed frequently. this is accurate enough to enable any physician to look over his books and find what per cent. of his accounts have outlawed by his failure to enforce payment. remember that a payment, however small it may be, will revive an account, even after it has become outlawed. hence the advisability of getting small payments at every opportunity. these payments should be less than one year apart, as some states do not consider payments made over one year apart. under the oklahoma law a foreign judgment is limited to one year. in west virginia a foreign judgment against a person who has been a resident of the state for ten years is barred. a similar clause to the following, taken from the laws of the state of washington, is incorporated in the acts of nearly all states, and may be considered as a general rule: "in an action brought to recover a balance due upon a mutual, open and current account, where there have been reciprocal demands, the cause of action shall be deemed to have accrued from the time of the last item of the account proved on either side, but when more than one year shall have intervened between any of a series of items, they are not to be deemed such an account." thus, if you do practice for a person, and a year elapses and you again attend him, you cannot combine the two as one account, and enforce collection by law. chapter vii exemption laws. before starting a suit to collect money due you, carefully read up on the exemption laws of your state. after carefully considering the matter you will find that a judgment, if obtained, will avail you nothing, should the debtor elect to take advantage of the exemption allowed him by law. some states are very liberal in the amount of property a man may hold which is exempt from execution on a judgment for indebtedness. take for instance, the state of north dakota, where the head of a family may hold a homestead and personal property to the value of $ , , and in case the head of the family should die, and was insured, the widow and children could hold an additional $ , of life insurance money, making a total exemption of $ , . delaware is the only state that has made a special provision for physicians in any manner. here the statutes provide that a physician's bill shall be a preferred claim for services in the last illness of the patient. in nearly all states the exemption runs to the widow and minor children. this is so general a rule that i have not included that part of the statutes covering this phase of the law. there is no exemption against money due on mortgages, for the purchase price of property, for manual labor or taxes. tennessee also provides that there shall be no exemption on fines for failure to work the roads, for voting out of the district the voter lives in, for carrying concealed weapons, or for giving away or selling intoxicating liquors on election day. rhode island exempts wages due or accruing to seamen. pennsylvania does not exempt the homestead, and personal property to the value of three hundred dollars only is exempt. the chances to collect a bill in pennsylvania are better than in any other state, so far as the exemption laws are concerned. oregon exempts one gun or revolver to each white citizen over sixteen years of age, in addition to the other exemptions. public buildings owned by the state or municipality are always exempt. other buildings are not exempt against liens for material or labor used in their construction. the exempt property may be selected by the debtor, or on his failure to make such selection, some states permit the wife to make the selection, but in case no selection is made, the proper officer will make the selection for them. the exemption of estates generally runs until the youngest child is of age. judgments usually expire in twenty years or less if not renewed. hence you will see that the attorney's fees that you will have to pay to secure judgment will generally be worth more to you than the judgment, if you have to wait so many years to satisfy it. chapter viii exemption laws. the following extracts from the statutes of the various states gives the exemption laws in so far as they apply to the collection of accounts. alabama. the personal property of any resident of the state, to the amount of one thousand dollars, to be selected by such resident, is exempt for any debt contracted since the th of july, . every homestead, not over eighty acres of land, if in the country, or any lot in a city, town or village, to be selected by the owner, together with the improvements thereon, not exceeding two thousand dollars in value, is exempt from execution for any debt contracted since july th, . the statutes provide that the homestead may consist of as much as one hundred and sixty acres not exceeding in value two thousand dollars. (code of ala. sec. et seq.) alaska. . earnings of judgment debtor, for personal services rendered within sixty days next preceding the levy of execution or attachment, when necessary for the use of his family, supported in whole or in part by his labor. . books, pictures and musical instruments owned by any person, to the value of seventy-five dollars. . necessary wearing apparel owned by any person for the use of himself or family, but watches or jewelry exceeding one hundred dollars in value are not exempt. . the tools, implements, apparatus, team, vehicle, harness, or library necessary to enable any person to carry on the trade, occupation or profession by which such person habitually earns his living, to the value of five hundred dollars; also sufficient quantity of food to support such team, if any, for six months; the word "team" being construed to include not more than one yoke of oxen, or a span of horses or mules, or two reindeer, or six dogs. ten sheep with one year's fleece or the yarn or cloth manufactured therefrom; two cows and five swine; household goods, furniture and utensils to the value of three hundred dollars; also food sufficient to support such animals, if any, for six months, and provisions actually provided for family use and necessary for the support of such person and family for six months. . the seat or pew occupied by the head of a family or his family in a place of public worship. homestead. the homestead of any family, or the proceeds thereof, is exempt. such homestead must be the actual abode of, and owned by such family or some member thereof, and not exceed two thousand five hundred dollars in value, nor exceed one hundred and sixty acres in extent, if not located in a town or city laid off into blocks or lots, or if located in any such town or city, one fourth of an acre. arizona. personal property to the amount of five hundred dollars to a family only. one half of earnings of debtor for thirty days next previous to levy necessary to family support are exempt. prospector's mining tools and camping outfit are exempt. homestead. twenty-five hundred dollars in one compact; not necessary to live on the same, but family must reside in territory. arkansas. the exemption law is contained in the present constitution, and is as follows: "section . the personal property of any resident of this state, who is not married or the head of a family, in specific articles to be selected by such resident, not exceeding in value the sum of two hundred dollars, in addition to his or her wearing apparel, shall be exempt from seizure on attachment, or sale on execution or other process from any court, issued for the collection of any debts by contract; provided that no property shall be exempt from execution for debts contracted for the purchase-money therefor, while in the hands of the vendee. sec. . the personal property of any resident of this state, who is married or the head of a family, in specific articles to be selected by such resident, not exceeding in value the sum of five hundred dollars, in addition to his or her wearing apparel, and that of his or her family, shall be exempt from seizure on attachment, or sale on execution, or other process from any court, on debt by contract. sec. . the homestead outside any city, town or village, owned and occupied as a residence, shall consist of not exceeding one hundred and sixty acres of land, with the improvements thereon, to be selected by the owner; provided the same shall not exceed in value the sum of twenty-five hundred dollars, and in no event shall the homestead be reduced to less than eighty acres, without regard to value. sec. . the homestead in any city, town or village, owned and occupied as a residence, shall consist of not exceeding one acre of land, with the improvements thereon, to be selected by the owner; provided the same shall not exceed in value the sum of two thousand five hundred dollars, and in no event shall such homestead be reduced to less than one quarter of an acre of land, without regard to value." california. the following property is exempt from execution for any debt, except it be for the purchase price of such property, or a debt secured by mortgage, lien or pledge thereon, to wit: st. chairs, tables, desks and books, to the value of two hundred dollars. d. necessary household, table and kitchen furniture of the debtor, including one sewing machine, stoves, stove pipes and stove furniture, wearing apparel, beds, bedding, bedsteads, hanging pictures, oil paintings and drawings drawn or painted by any member of the family, family portraits and their necessary frames, provisions and fuel actually provided for individual or family use sufficient for three months, and three cows and their sucking calves, four hogs with their sucking pigs, and food for such cows and hogs for one month; also one rifle, one shotgun, one piano. d. farming utensils, or implements of husbandry, not exceeding in value one thousand dollars, of the judgment debtor, also two oxen, or two horses, or two mules and their harness, one cart or buggy, and two wagons, and food for such animals for one month, also seed grain or vegetables reserved or on hand for planting within six months, not exceeding two hundred dollars in value; and seventy-five beehives, and one horse and vehicle belonging to any person who is maimed or crippled, the same being necessary to his business. th. tools or implements of a mechanic or artisan, notary's seal, office furniture and records; instruments and library and necessary office furniture of a surgeon, physician, surveyor or dentist, necessary to the exercise of their profession; books, professional libraries and office furniture of attorneys, judges, ministers of the gospel, editors, and school and music teachers, and all the indexes, abstracts, books, papers, maps and office furniture of searcher of records necessary to be used in his profession, and instruments actually used by music teachers in giving instructions; also typewriters used by owner in making his living, also one bicycle. th. a miner's cabin, not exceeding five hundred dollars in value, also his sluices, pipes, tools, etc., necessary for his business, not exceeding five hundred dollars in value, and two horses, mules, or oxen, and their harness, and food for the same for one month, when necessary to be used for any windlass, derrick, car, pump, or hoisting gear; and the miner's claim worked by him, and not exceeding one thousand dollars in value. th. two oxen, horses, or mules and their harness and food for one month, and one cart, wagon, dray, truck, coupe, hack, or carriage for one or two horses, by the use of which a cartman, drayman, truckman, huckster, peddler, hackman, teamster, or other laborer habitually earns his living, and one horse, vehicle, and harness used by physician, surgeon, constable, or minister of the gospel in the legitimate practice of his profession or business, with food for such animal for one month. th. one fishing boat and net not exceeding the value of five hundred dollars, the property of any fisherman, by the lawful use of which he earns a livelihood. th. poultry worth not more than seventy-five dollars. th. seamen and seagoing fishermen's wages and earnings not exceeding three hundred dollars. th. earnings for personal service rendered within thirty days of levy, if the defendant swears they are necessary for the use of his family residing in the state, and supported in whole or in part by his labor; but only one-half of such earnings are exempt where the debt is for necessaries of life. th. shares in homestead associations, not exceeding in value one thousand dollars, if the debtor has not a homestead selected. th. nautical instruments and wearing apparel of any master, officer, or seamen of any vessel. th. all moneys, benefits, etc., accruing or growing out of any life insurance, if the annual premiums paid do not exceed five hundred dollars; if they exceed that sum, a like exemption exists, which shall bear the same proportion to the money, immunities, etc., so accruing or growing out of such insurance that five hundred dollars bears to the whole annual premiums paid. th. all fire-engines, etc. th. all firearms, etc., required by law to be kept by any person, and one gun selected by the debtor. th. all material not exceeding one thousand dollars purchased in good faith for use in or about to be applied in good faith to the construction, alteration, or repair of any building, mining claim, or other improvement entered upon a judgment recovered, for its price or foreclosure of a mortgage thereon. th. all machinery, etc., necessary for constructing surface or artesian wells to the value of one thousand dollars. th. shares of stock in any building and loan association to one thousand dollars. th. moneys derived from united states pension. colorado. every householder, being the head of a family, is entitled to a homestead of the value of two thousand dollars exempt from execution and attachment while such homestead is occupied by the owner or his or her family. entry of homestead is made by writing the word "homestead" on the margin of the recorded title thereof, attested by the recorder with date of entry. there is also exempt from execution and attachment the necessary wearing apparel of every person, and the following property of a person being the head of a family: family pictures, school-books, and library, a seat or pew in any house of public worship, the sites of burial for the dead, all wearing apparel of the debtor and his family, all beds, bedsteads, and bedding, kept and used for the debtor and his family, all stoves and appendages kept for the use of the debtor or his family, all cooking utensils, and all the household furniture not above enumerated not exceeding one hundred dollars in value, the provisions for the debtor and his family necessary for six months, and fuel necessary for six months. the tools and implements or stock in trade of any mechanic, miner, or other person not exceeding two hundred dollars in value, the library and implements of any professional man not exceeding three hundred dollars in value, one bicycle, one sewing-machine, working animals of any person to the value of two hundred dollars, one cow and calf, ten sheep, and food for same for six months, one farm wagon, cart or dray, one plow, one harrow, and other farming implements, including harness and tackle for team not exceeding fifty dollars in value. if the head of the family dies the family is entitled to the exemption. there is also exemption from levy on execution, attachment, or garnishment sixty per cent. of the amount, due at the time of levy, of wages or earnings of the head of the family or his wife when such family resides in the state and is dependent in whole or in part, upon such earnings, and all wages are exempt when they do not exceed five dollars per week. pension money received from the united states is exempt from all legal process, whether in the actual possession of the pensioner, deposited or loaned, and whether the pensioner be the head of a family or not. this exemption runs to the pensioner's wife and children, or either of them, in case of his death or absconding. connecticut. the following property shall be exempted and not liable to be taken by warrant or execution, namely: of the property of any person, his necessary apparel and bedding, and household furniture necessary for supporting life, arms, militia equipments, uniforms, or musical instruments owned by any member of the militia for military purposes, any pension moneys received from the united states while in the hands of the pensioner, implements of the debtor's trade, his library not exceeding five hundred dollars in value, one cow not exceeding one hundred and fifty dollars in value, any number of sheep not exceeding ten nor exceeding in all one hundred and fifty dollars in value, two swine and two hundred pounds of pork, and poultry not exceeding twenty-five dollars in value; of the property of any one person having a wife or family, twenty-five bushels of charcoal, two tons of other coal, two hundred pounds of wheat flour, two cord of wood, two tons of hay, two hundred pounds each of beef and fish, five bushels each of potatoes and turnips, ten bushels each of indian corn and rye, and the meal or flour manufactured therefrom, twenty pounds each of wool and flax, or the yarn or cloth made therefrom; the horse of any practicing physician or surgeon of a value not exceeding two hundred dollars, and his saddle, bridle, harness, buggy, and bicycle; one boat owned by one person and used by him in the business of planting or taking oyster or clams, or taking shad, together with the sails, tackle, rigging and implements used in said business not exceeding in value two hundred dollars; one sewing-machine, being the property of any one person using it or having a family; one pew, being the property of any person having a family, who ordinarily occupy it; and lots in any burying ground appropriated by its proprietors for the burial of any person or family. so much of any debt which has accrued by reason of the personal services of the debtor as shall not exceed twenty-five dollars, including wages due for the personal services of any minor child under the age of twenty-one years, shall be exempted and not liable to be taken by foreign attachment or execution. any person owning and actually occupying any dwelling and real estate can file for record, in same manner as a deed, a declaration that he occupies and intends to occupy said dwelling and real estate as a homestead, and from the filing such declaration said property, to the value of one thousand dollars, shall be exempt from execution so long as actually occupied by the owner as a dwelling, and only the excess in value above one thousand dollars can be set off. (gen. stat. sec. , .) money due on insurance losses for exempt property, whether real or personal, are also exempt. delaware. family bible, school-books, and family pictures, seat or pew in church, lot in burial ground, all wearing apparel of debtor and family, and in addition to above tools, implements, and fixtures necessary to carry on a trade or business, not exceeding seventy-five dollars in new castle and sussex counties and fifty dollars in kent county. there is exempted to the head of a family, in addition to above, other personal property (goods and chattels of a merchantable character bought to be sold and trafficked in by the debtor in the transaction of his or her business or occupation, excepted) not exceeding two hundred dollars in new castle county, and not exceeding one hundred and fifty dollars in kent county, and in the latter county consisting of household goods only; but there is no such additional exemption in sussex county, and there is no such additional exemption when such exemption would prevent the collection of a debt due or growing due for labor or services (other than professional services) rendered by any clerk, mechanic, or other employee of the debtor. sewing-machines owned and used by seamstresses or private families are exempt from execution on attachment process, and also from distress for rent. in new castle county ninety per cent. of all wages are exempt from execution attachment, except for board, lodging, or both, not exceeding fifty dollars. widows in all cases shall have the benefit of the same exemption out of the husband's goods that the husband would have had if living. funeral expenses, reasonable bills for medicine and medical attendance, nursing, and necessaries of last sickness, are paid out of personality of a deceased person before there is any application to the execution. above exemptions extended to distress for rent. district of columbia. the following property is exempt from execution: wearing apparel belonging to all persons and to all heads of families being householders; beds, bedding, household furniture, stoves, cooking utensils, etc., not exceeding three hundred dollars in value; provisions for three months' support, whether provided or growing; fuel for three months; mechanics' tools and implements of professional man or artist to value of three hundred dollars; one horse, one mule, or yoke of oxen; one cart, one wagon or dray, and harness for such team; farming utensils, with food for such team for three months, and if the debtor be a farmer, any other farming tools of value of one hundred dollars; all family pictures and all family library not exceeding in value four hundred dollars; one cow, one swine, six sheep. (sec. , code.) the earnings, not to exceed one hundred dollars each month, of all actual residents of the district of columbia, and who are married persons or who have to provide for the support of a family in the district, for two months next proceeding the issuing of any writ or process from any court or justice of the peace, or other officer of and in the district against them, shall be exempt from attachment, levy, seizure, or sale upon such process; and the same shall not be seized, levied on, or taken, reached or sold by attachment, execution, or in any other process or proceedings of any court, judge, justice of the peace, or other officer of and in the district. (sec. , code.) florida. article x of the constitution of provides as follows: "sec. . a homestead to the extent of one hundred and sixty acres of land, or the half of one acre within the limits of any incorporated city or town, owned by the head of the family residing in this state, together with one thousand dollars' worth of personal property, and the improvements on the real estate, shall be exempt from forced sale under process of any court, and the real estate shall not be alienable without the joint consent of husband and wife, when that relation exists. but no property shall be exempt from sale for taxes or assessments or for payment of obligations contracted for the purchase of said property, or for the erection or repair of improvements on the real estate exempted, or for house, field or other labor performed on the same. the exemption herein provided for in a city or town shall not extend to more improvements or buildings than the residence and business house of the owner; and no judgment or decree or execution shall be a lien upon exempted property except as provided in this article. sec. . the exemptions provided for in section one shall insure to the widow and heirs of the party entitled to such exemption, and shall apply to all debts, except as specified in said section. sec. . the exemptions provided for in the constitution of this state adopted in shall apply as to all debts contracted and judgments rendered since the adoption thereof and prior to the adoption of this constitution. sec. . nothing in this article shall be construed to prevent the holder of a homestead from alienating his or her homestead so exempted by deed or mortgage duly executed by himself or herself, and by husband and wife, if such relation exists, nor, if the holder be without children, to prevent him or her from disposing of his or her homestead by will, in a manner prescribed by law. sec. . no homestead provided for in section shall be reduced in area on account of its being subsequently included within the limits of an incorporated city or town, without the consent of the owner." georgia. the constitution of provided: "there shall be exempt from levy and sale, by virtue of any process whatever, under the laws of this state, except as hereinafter excepted, of the property of every head of a family, or guardian, or trustee of a family of minor children or every aged or infirm person having the care and support of dependant female of any age, who is not the head of a family, realty or personalty or both, to the value in the aggregate of sixteen hundred dollars. no court or ministerial officer in this state shall ever have jurisdiction or authority to enforce any judgment, execution, or decree against the property set apart for such purpose, including such improvements as may be made thereon from time to time, except for taxes, for the purchase-money of the same, for labor done thereon, for material furnished therefor, or for the removal of incumbrances thereon. the debtor shall have the power to waive or renounce in writing his right to this benefit of exemption except as to wearing apparel and not exceeding three hundred dollars' worth of household and kitchen furniture and provision, to be selected by himself and his wife, if any, and he shall not, after it is set apart, alienate or incumber the property so exempted, but it may be sold by the debtor and his wife, if any, jointly, with the sanction of the judge of the superior court of the county where the debtor resides or the land is situated, the proceeds to be reinvested upon the same uses." the act of carries out these provisions. hawaii. the following property is exempt from execution, attachment, distress, and forced sale: st. all necessary household, table, and kitchen furniture, one sewing-machine, crockery, tin and plated ware, calabashes and mats, family portraits and photographs and their necessary frames, wearing apparel, bedding, household linen, and provision for household use for three months. nd. farming implements and utensils not exceeding five hundred dollars in value; two horses or mules, and their harness and their food for one month; one horse, one set of single harness, and one vehicle of any person who is maimed or crippled. d. the tools or implements of a mechanic or artisan necessary to carry on his trade; the instruments and chest of a physician, dentist, or surveyor necessary to the exercise of his profession, together with his necessary office furniture and fixture; the necessary office furniture, fixtures, blanks, stationery, and office equipment of attorneys and judges, ministers of the gospel and rabbis; the typewriter, one desk, and six chairs of a stenographer or typewriter; the musical instruments of every teacher of music, used in giving instruction; one bicycle used in carrying on of one's business or transporting him to and from his place of business; the fishing nets, dips and seines, and the boats with their tackle and equipment, of every fisherman. th. the horses or mules and their harness, one cart, wagon, or stage, one dray or truck, one coupe, hack or carriage for one or two horses, by use of which a cartman, drayman, truckster, huckster, peddler, hackman, teamster, or other laborer earns his living; and one horse and harness and one vehicle used by a physician, surgeon, or minister of the gospel in the practice or exercise of his profession. th. the nautical instruments and wearing apparel of every master, officer, and seaman of any steamship or other vessel. th. all books, papers, pamphlets, and manuscripts, together with book-cases, shelvings, cabinets, and other devices for holding the same except those kept for sale by any dealer therein. th. one-half of the wages due every laborer or person working for wages. th. the proceeds of insurance on, and the proceeds of sale of the property aforesaid for the period of three months after such proceeds are received. (sec. .) there is also exempt from execution the family bible, family pictures, school-books, two swine or six goats, and all necessary fish, meat, flour, and vegetables, and one piece of land where kalo or any other vegetable is growing, not to exceed one-half acre actually cultivated for family use, also a house lot not to exceed one-quarter acre, and the dwelling and other buildings thereon, provided the value thereof shall not exceed two hundred and fifty dollars. but this exemption does not apply as against mechanics and material-men having liens for labor or material. (sec. .) indiana. every resident householder, or resident married woman, may claim as exempt from execution against them respectively his or her property, real or personal, to the amount of six hundred dollars, on any debt founded on contract made since may , . this right exists while in transitu from one residence to another within the state, and may be claimed by the wife for the husband in his absence. the property of a resident householder, exempt from sale on execution, may be real or personal, or both. it must be properly appraised under direction of the officer, after receiving from the debtor a sworn schedule of all his property, credits, effects, etc. the statute makes ample provisions for the sale of real property where it is alone, or in part, claimed under the exemption law, in case its value exceeds six hundred dollars. the exemption does not effect liens for labor, purchase-money, or realty, or taxes in any event. iowa. to an unmarried person not the head of a family and to non-resident there is exempt from execution their own ordinary wearing apparel and trunks necessary to contain the same. if the debtor is a resident of this state, and is the head of a family, he may hold exempt from execution the following property: wearing apparel of himself and family kept for actual use and suitable for their condition, and the trunks to contain the same; one musket, or rifle, and shot-gun; all private libraries, family bibles, portraits, pictures, musical instruments, and paintings, not kept for sale; a pew in church; a lot in burying ground, not to exceed one acre; two cows and two calves; fifty sheep and the wool therefrom, and the materials manufactured from such wool; six stands of bees, five hogs, and all pigs under six months; poultry to the value of fifty dollars; the necessary food for all animals exempt from execution for six months: one bedstead and the necessary bedding for every two in the family; all cloth manufactured by the defendant not exceeding one hundred yards; household and kitchen furniture not exceeding two hundred dollars in value; all spinning-wheels and looms, one sewing-machine, and other instruments of domestic labor kept for actual use; the necessary provisions and fuel for the use of the family for six months; the proper tools, instruments, or books of the debtor, if a farmer, mechanic, surveyor, clergyman, lawyer, physician, teacher, or professor; the horse, or team consisting of not more than two horses or mules, or two yoke of cattle, and the wagon with the proper harness tackle, by the use of which the debtor, if a physician, public officer, farmer, teamster, or other laborer, habitually earns his living, otherwise one horse; and to the debtor, if a printer, there is also exempt a printing press and the type, furniture, and material necessary for the use of such printing press and a newspaper office connected therewith, not to exceed in value twelve hundred dollars. but if the debtor being the head of family, has started to leave the state, he will have exempt only the ordinary wearing apparel of himself and family, and seventy-five dollars' worth of property in addition, to be selected by himself. but no exemptions shall extend to property against an execution issued for the purchase-money thereof. the earnings of a debtor, if a resident, and head of a family, for his personal services at any time within ninety days next preceding the levy, are also exempt. if a debtor is a seamstress, one sewing-machine shall be exempt from execution and attachment. the homestead of every head of a family is exempt from judicial sale. it may be sold on execution for debts contracted prior to the purchase of such homestead; or for those created by written contract, expressly stipulating that it is liable therefor. if within a city or town plat it must not exceed one-half acre in extent, and if without, it must not embrace in the aggregate more than forty acres; and in each case embraces all the buildings and improvements thereon without limitation as to value. upon the death of either husband or wife, the survivor may continue to possess and occupy the whole homestead. if there is no survivor and no will, the homestead descends to the issue of either husband or wife, and is to be held exempt from any antecedent debts of their parents or their own. money received as a pension from the united states is exempt, whether pensioner is a head of a family or not, and a homestead purchased with such pension money is exempt from all debts whether contracted prior or subsequent to such purchase. the avails of all policies of insurance on the life of any individual payable to his surviving widow shall be exempt from liabilities for all debts of such beneficiary contracted prior to the death of the assured, the total exemption for any one person not exceeding five thousand dollars. kansas. the constitution provided that a "homestead to the extent of one hundred and sixty acres of farming land, or of one acre within the limits of an incorporated town or city, occupied as a residence by the family of the owner, together with all the improvements on the same, shall be exempted from forced sale under any process of law, and shall not be alienated without the joint consent of husband and wife, when that relation existed. by statute, each resident, being the head of a family, is entitled to have exempt from seizure and sale, upon any judicial process, the family books and musical instruments, a seat or pew in church and a lot in burial ground, all wearing apparel, bedding, bedstead, stoves and cooking utensils used by the family, one sewing-machine, all implements of industry, five hundred dollars' worth of other household furniture, two cows, ten hogs, one yoke of oxen, and one horse or mule (or, in lieu of one yoke of oxen and one horse or mule, a span of horses or mules;) twenty sheep and the wool from same; the necessary food for the stock above described for one year, either provided or growing; one wagon, cart or dray; two plows, one drag, and other farming utensils including harness and tackle for team, not exceeding in value three hundred dollars; provisions and fuel for the support and use of the family, for one year; the necessary tools and implements of any mechanic, minor, or other person, used and kept for the purpose of carrying on his trade or business, and in addition thereto stock in trade not exceeding four hundred dollars in value, and the library, implements, and office furniture of any professional man." a resident, not being the head of a family, has exempt his wearing apparel, church pew, burial lot, necessary tools and implements used in his trade or business, stock in trade not exceeding four hundred dollars; and, if a professional man, his library, implements, and office furniture. (sec. .) the earnings of a debtor resident of the state for three months are exempt when it shall be made to appear that the same are necessary for the maintenance of a family supported wholly or partly by his labor. (sec. .) so, also, the money received by any debtor as pensioner of the united states within three months preceeding the issuing of execution, attachment, or garnishment process must be released when it is shown in like manner that said money is necessary for the maintenance of a family supported wholly or in part by such pension. (sec. .) idaho. execution issue on judgment at any time within five years. homestead, after the same has been declared and recorded is exempt. where the selection is made by the husband, or, in case of his failure, by the wife or other head of the family, such homestead may be selected to the value of five thousand dollars, and to the value of one thousand dollars by any other person. the declaration, properly acknowledged and recorded, is prior to all claims against the property which were not existing liens at the time the declaration of homestead was recorded. in addition thereto are the following exemptions from execution: st. chairs, tables, desks, and books to the value of two hundred dollars. d. necessary household furniture to the value of three hundred dollars, wearing apparel, paintings, drawings, pictures, etc., and provisions provided for individual or family use, sufficient for six months, two cows and two hogs with their increase. d. farmer's utensils to the value of three hundred dollars, four horses, four oxen or four mules, with harnesses, cart or wagon, and food for the same for six months; waterright, not exceeding one hundred and sixty inches of water, for the irrigation of lands annually cultivated, and crop or crops growing or grown on fifty acres of land leased, owned, or possessed by claimant. th. necessary tools or implements of a mechanic or artisan of the value of five hundred dollars; notary's seal and records; necessary instrument for use of surgeon, physician, surveyor, and dentist, with their libraries; professional libraries and office furniture of attorneys, counsellors, and judges; and the libraries of clergymen. th. cabin or dwelling of a miner, of the value of five hundred dollars, also his sluices, pipes, hose, and other necessary tools and machinery of the value of two hundred dollars: one saddle horse, and one pack horse, together with their saddles and equipments, belonging to a miner actually engaged in prospecting, of the value of two hundred and fifty dollars. th. the team, wagon, or cart and harnesses of teamster or other laborer; a horse, harness and vehicle used by physician, surgeon, or clergyman, with food for all such animals for six months. th. earnings of judgment debtor, if necessary for his family, for services rendered within the thirty days next proceeding levy of execution where his family is residing in the state. th. shares held by a member of a homestead association, or building or loan association, duly incorporated under the laws of the state, where the person holding the shares is not the owner of the homestead, under the laws of the state. th. life insurance in an amount represented by an annual premium not exceeding two hundred and fifty dollars. th. engines, apparatus, and uniforms of a fire company or department organized under any law of the state, th. arms, uniforms, and accoutrements required by law to be kept. illinois. homestead. (=hurd, .=) the farm or lot of land and buildings thereon of every householder having a family, occupied as a residence, to the extent in value of one thousand dollars is exempt. the exemption continues after the death of the householder to the surviving husband or wife so long as he or she occupies the homestead, and to the children until the youngest becomes twenty-one years of age. but such property is subject to taxes and debts incurred for its purchase or improvement. in case the premises are worth more than one thousand dollars, and can be divided without injury, a portion thereof, including the dwelling house, of the value of one thousand dollars, is set off, and the remainder is subject to execution and sale. if the premises cannot be divided the property is valued by appraisers, and the debtor may pay the surplus over one thousand dollars; otherwise the property may be sold, and the officer having the execution pays one thousand dollars to the debtor and the remainder is applied in satisfaction of the creditor's claim. substantially the same thing can be done by a court of chancery in a proceeding to foreclose a lien. insurance money in case of fire, is exempt to the same extent as the property insured. upon a conveyance of the homestead the exemption continues to the grantee to the same extent. the proceeds from such sale, not over one thousand dollars, are exempt for one year, and may be invested in another homestead. the homestead right of exemption by abandonment, may be extinguished by a conveyance by both husband and wife, properly acknowledged by abandonment, or, in case of right in children, by order of court of competent jurisdiction. personal property.--the following personal property is exempt: st. the necessary wearing apparel, bibles, school-books, and family pictures. d. one hundred dollars' worth of other property to be selected by the debtor, and in addition, when the debtor is the head of a family and resides with the same, three hundred dollars' worth of other property to be selected by the debtor, provided the exemption shall not be allowed from any money, salary, or wages due the debtor. when the head of a family dies, deserts, or does not live with the same, the exemption continues to the family. no personal property is exempt from process under a judgment for a debt for the wages of a laborer or servant. exemptions cannot be claimed out of partnership property. (= ill. app. ; ill. app. .=) when a debtor desires to claim exemptions he must, within ten days after service of process and notice, schedule under oath all his personal property of every kind, including money in hand and debts due or owing him. property not so scheduled is subject to process. appraisers are then appointed by the officer having the writ, who place a fair value on each article. the debtor may select articles so appraised of a total value not exceeding the amount of the exemption allowed, the remainder being sold by the officer in satisfaction of the debt. money or benefits received from life or accident insurance companies, organized under the act of july , , are exempt. (=hurd, .=) the wages of a wage earner, being the head of a family, and residing with the same, are exempt from garnishment to the amount of fifteen dollars per week. (=hurd, .=) it is made a misdemeanor to send a claim to another state for collection out of the earnings of the debtor by garnishment or other proceedings when the debtor is a resident and the creditor, debtor, and garnishee are all within the jurisdiction of the courts of illinois, with intent to deprive the debtor of his rights under the exemption laws of this state; or to transfer for such purpose a claim against a citizen of illinois. the penalty is not less than ten dollars nor more than fifty dollars. a non-resident, as to wages earned and payable outside of this state, is allowed here the same exemption he would be entitled to in the state of his residence. (=hurd, .=) wages earned and payable outside of this state are exempt from attachment or garnishment, where the cause of action arose out of the state, unless the defendant in the attachment or garnishment suit is personally served with process. if the defendant be not served personally, the court or justice of the peace issuing the writ must dismiss the suit at the cost of the plaintiff. (=hurd, .=) the law of exemptions applies to cases of distress for rent, except as to crops growing on the premises. (=hurd, .=) kentucky. the following personal property shall be exempt from execution, attachment, distress, or fee bill against a person with a family residence in this state: two work beasts, or one work beast and one yoke of oxen, two plows and gear, one wagon and one set of gear, or cart or dray, three hoes, one spade, one shovel, two cows and calves; beds, bedding, and furniture sufficient for family use; one loom and spinning-wheel and pair of cards; all the spun yarn and manufactured cloth manufactured by the family, necessary for family use; carpeting for all family rooms in use; one cooking-stove and all cooking utensils, not to exceed twenty-five dollars in value; one table, all books, not to exceed fifty dollars in value, two saddles and their appendages; two bridles, six chairs, or so many as shall not exceed ten dollars in value, one cradle; all the poultry on hand; ten head of sheep, not to exceed two dollars and fifty cents in value for each sheep; all wearing apparel; sufficient provisions including bread-stuffs and animal food to sustain the family one year; provender suitable for live stock, if there is any live stock, not to exceed seventy dollars in value; if none, then other property not to exceed seventy dollars in value in lieu thereof; all washing apparatus not to exceed fifty dollars in value; one sewing-machine and all family portraits and pictures. and also on all debts and liabilities created after the first day of june, , so much land, including the dwelling-house and appurtenances owned by a debtor who is =a bona fide= housekeeper with a family resident in kentucky, and living on or claiming the land as a homestead, as shall not exceed in value one thousand dollars; and on all liabilities, the libraries of preachers, the professional libraries of lawyers, physicians, and surgeons, and their instruments, to the amount of five hundred dollars, and tools, not exceeding one hundred dollars in value, of a mechanic. ninety per cent. of wages or salaries of persons earning seventy-five dollars per month or less is exempt, the remaining ten per cent, being subject to debts. as to persons earning more than seventy-five dollars per month the law exempts sixty-seven dollars and fifty cents per month and holds the balance subject to debts. louisiana. homesteads are exempt from seizure. they consist of not exceeding one hundred and sixty acres of land, buildings, and appurtenances, whether rural or urban, bona fidely occupied by the head of a family, or persons dependent upon him or her for support, and exist without registration. the homestead also includes certain farm implements and animals, together with a certain quantity of fodder, corn, etc. homestead cannot exceed two thousand dollars in value. if so, the beneficiary shall be entitled to that amount only in case of a sale of the homestead under legal process. no husband shall have the benefit of a homestead whose wife owns or is in actual possession of property to the amount of two thousand dollars. the benefit of this exemption may be claimed by the surviving spouse or minor children of a deceased beneficiary. laborer's wages, the clothes belonging to the debtor or his wife, his bed, the beds of his family, his arms and military accoutrements, the tools and instruments necessary for the exercise of the trade or profession by which he gains a living, the rights of personal servitude, use, and habitation, the usufruct to the estate of a minor child, the income of dotal property, the books and sewing-machine necessary for the exercise of one's calling, trade, or profession by which the owner makes a living, the salary of an officer, cooking-stove and utensils, plates, forks, etc., dining-table, chairs, wash-tubs, smoothing-irons and ironing furnaces, family portraits and musical instruments played on by any member of the family, are exempt from seizure. whenever the widow or minor children of a deceased person are left in necessitous circumstances, they shall be entitled to demand and receive from the succession of their deceased husband or father a sum, which, added to the amount of property owned by them or either of them in their own right, will make up the sum of one thousand dollars, which shall be paid in preference to all other debts, except vendor's privilege and expenses incurred in selling the property. maine. the following =personal property= is exempt from attachment and levy: wearing apparel, household furniture necessary for himself, wife, and children not exceeding one hundred dollars in value, and one bedstead, bed and bedding for each two members, family portraits, bibles, school-books in actual use; copy of state statutes, library worth one hundred and fifty dollars, pew in use, one cooking and all iron-warming stoves, charcoal, twelve cords of wood at home for use; five tons of anthracite and fifty bushels of bituminous coal, ten dollars' worth of lumber, wood or bark, all produce till harvested, one barrel flour, thirty bushels of corn, grain, all potatoes raised or bought and necessary for debtor or his family, half an acre of flax and manufactures therefrom for use of himself or family, tools of trade, fifty dollars' worth of materials and stock procured and necessary for trade or business and intended to be used in same, sewing-machine worth one hundred dollars, one pair of working cattle, or one pair of horses or mules worth three hundred dollars, and hay to keep them through the winter, one harness worth twenty dollars for each horse or mule; a horse sled or ox sled, two swine, one cow, and a heifer under three years, or two cows if no oxen, horse, or mule, ten sheep with their wool and lambs until one year old, hay sufficient to keep them through the winter, fifty dollars' worth of domestic fowl, one plow, one cart or truck wagon or one express wagon, one harrow, one yoke with bows, ring, and staple, two chains, one ox sled, one mowing machine, one boat of two tons employed in fishing and owned exclusively by an inhabitant of the state, life and accident policies except excess of annual cash premiums for two years above one hundred and fifty dollars. also two shares in loan and building associations, also the receipts of certain agricultural societies until their expenses, purses, and premiums are paid, provided the same are paid within three months from close of fair. real estate.--lot of land and buildings worth five hundred dollars, if owner files required certificate in registry of deeds, is exempt as a homestead from all attachments except for liens of mechanics and material men; also one cemetery lot. maryland. in maryland the sheriff cannot take in execution wearing apparel, mechanical text-books, or books of professional men, or mechanical or professional men's tools (except books and tools kept for sale). and, except under executions issued upon judgments for seduction or breach of promise of marriage, he must also leave one hundred dollars' worth of other property, to be selected by the defendant, or, if one hundred dollars' worth cannot be conveniently set aside, pay him one hundred dollars out of the proceeds of sale. also money payable in the nature of insurance for accident, death, etc. massachusetts. the following exemptions of personal property are allowed: st. the necessary wearing apparel of the debtor and his wife and children, and household necessaries to a limited amount. d. other household furniture necessary for him and his family, not exceeding three hundred dollars in value. d. the bibles, school-books, and library used by him or his family, not exceeding fifty dollars in value. th. one cow, six sheep, one swine, and two tons of hay. th. the tools, implements, and fixtures necessary for carrying on his trade or business, not exceeding one hundred dollars in value. th. materials and stock for carrying on his trade or business, and intended to be used or wrought therein, not exceeding one hundred dollars in value. th. the provisions necessary for the use of the family, not exceeding fifty dollars in value. th. one pew occupied by him or his family in a house of public worship; but this does not prevent the sale of a pew for the non-payment of a tax legally laid thereon. th. the boat, fishing tackle, and nets of fishermen, actually used by them in the prosecution of their business, to the value of one hundred dollars. th. the uniform of an officer or soldier in the militia, and the arms and accoutrements required by law to be kept by him. th. rights of burial and tombs while in use as repositories for the dead. th. one sewing-machine, not exceeding one hundred dollars in value in actual use by the debtor or by his family. th. shares in co-operative associations formed under the revised laws, ch. , not exceeding in value twenty dollars in the aggregate. every householder having a family is entitled to an estate or homestead to the value of eight hundred dollars exempt from levy on execution, if proper steps have been taken, by deed recorded in the registry of deed of the county where it is situated, to declare it a homestead. michigan. the laws of this state exempt from sale on execution to every householder a homestead not exceeding forty acres of land and the house thereon, if in the country, or a house and lot in any city or village not exceeding in value fifteen hundred dollars. a married householder cannot sell or encumber such homestead without the consent of his wife. of personal property, the laws exempt from sale on execution various articles, such as seats in churches, cemeteries, tombs, and right of burial, all arms and accoutrements, and all wearing apparel of every person and his family, the library and school-books of every individual and family, not exceeding one hundred and fifty dollars, and all family pictures. to each householder, ten sheep and their fleeces, two cows, five swine, and provisions and fuel sufficient to keep such householder and family six months. to each householder all household goods, furniture, and utensils, not exceeding two hundred and fifty dollars in value. the tools, implements, material stock, apparatus, team (either one yoke of oxen, a horse or pair of horses, as the case may be), vehicle, horses harness, or other things to enable any person to carry on the profession, trade, occupation, or business in which he is wholly or principally engaged, not exceeding in value two hundred and fifty dollars, and also one sewing-machine; and a sufficient quantity of hay, grain, feed, etc., to keep the animals enumerated for six months. only household goods, library, pictures, rights in cemeteries, and one cow and provisions, and fuel for one month, not exceeding five hundred dollars in value, are exempt from execution issued on judgment for labor. no lien can be created by mortgage or otherwise on any of the above property, except on profession, etc., without the consent of the wife, if he have one, by signing such mortgage or lien. if a person entitled to the benefit of a homestead shall die, his widow or minor children shall have the same benefit during the time they continue to occupy the same. minnesota. family bible, family pictures, school-books or library, and musical instruments for use of family; seat or pew in any house or place of public worship; a lot in a burial ground; all wearing apparel of debtor and family, all beds, bedding, and bedsteads kept and used by debtor and used by debtor and his family; all stoves and appendages put up or kept for use of debtor and family; all cooking utensils, and all other household furniture not herein enumerated, not exceeding five hundred dollars in value. as to debtors residing in this state only: three cows; ten swine; one yoke of oxen and a horse, or in lieu thereof a span of horses or mules; twenty sheep and the wool from same; necessary food for such stock for one year, provided or growing, or both; one wagon, cart, or dray, one sleigh, two plows, one drag, and other farming utensils, including tackle for teams, not exceeding three hundred dollars in value; provisions for debtor and family for one year's support, provided or growing, or both, and one year's fuel; the tools and instruments of a mechanic, miner, or other person, used and kept for the purpose of carrying on his trade, and stock in trade not exceeding four hundred dollars; library and implements of a professional man; the presses, stones, type, cases, and other tools and implements used by any person or co-partnership, in printing or publishing a newspaper, not to exceed two thousand dollars in value, together with stock in trade not exceeding four hundred dollars in value; one watch, one sewing-machine, one bicycle, one typewriter; necessary seed for personal use of debtor for one season not exceeding one hundred bushels of wheat, one hundred bushels barley, one hundred bushels potatoes, one hundred bushels oats, one hundred bushels flax, and ten bushels corn, and binding material for use in harvesting crop raised from such seed; the library and apparatus of and used by any public college or school; moneys from insurance on exempt property; life insurance not exceeding ten thousand dollars payable to wife or child on life of deceased husband or father; moneys or benefits payable by a police or fire department, beneficiary, or fraternal benefit association, to any person entitled to assistance therefrom, or beneficiary under certificate thereof; wages not exceeding twenty-five dollars due from services rendered during thirty days preceding attachment, garnishment, or levy of execution; earnings of a minor child of debtor, by reason of liability of debtor not contracted for the special benefit of such minor; claim for damages, and judgment thereon by reason of levy on or sale under execution of exempt personal property or the wrongful taking or detention of such property. if within an incorporated place of less than five thousand inhabitants, one-half acre, of more than five thousand inhabitants, one-third acre. surviving or deserted spouse and minor children are entitled to the exemption. as to debts created prior to march , , exemption continues. mississippi. a homestead to every citizen of the state, male or female, being a householder and having a family, not to exceed two thousand dollars in value in country, or three thousand in town, nor one hundred and sixty acres in extent; this exemption is forfeitable, if the debtor cease to reside on the place, unless his removal be temporary. the following property of each head of a family is also exempt: st. two work-horses, or mules, and one yoke of oxen. d. two heads of cows and calves. d. ten hogs. th. twenty sheep and goats each. th. all poultry. th. all colts under three years, raised in this state by debtors. th. two hundred and fifty bushels of corn. th. ten bushels of wheat or rice. th. five hundred pounds of pork, bacon, or other meat. th. one hundred bushels of cottonseed. th. one wagon, and one buggy or cart, and one set of harness for each. th. five hundred bundles of fodder and one thousand pounds of hay. th. forty gallons of sorghum or molasses or cane syrup. th. one thousand stalks of sugar-cane. th. one molasses-mills and equipments, not exceeding one hundred and fifty dollars in value. th. two bridles and one saddle, and one side-saddle. th. one sewing-machine. th. household and kitchen furniture not exceeding in value two hundred dollars. th. all family portraits. th. one mower and rake. st. wages to amount of fifty dollars per month. the following property is also exempt to any person: st. the tools of a mechanic necessary for carrying on his trade. nd. agricultural implements of a farmer necessary for two male laborers. d. the implements of a laborer necessary in his usual employment. th. the books of a student necessary for the completion of his education. th. wearing apparel. th. libraries and pictures of all persons not exceeding five hundred dollars in value. th. instruments of surgeons and dentists, used in their professions, not exceeding two hundred and fifty dollars in value. th. the arms and accoutrements of each militiaman. th. all globes and maps used by teachers of schools, academies and colleges. th. the proceeds of insurance on, or the sale of, exempt property. missouri. certain animals, implements, and domestic furniture and wearing apparel, as specified by the statute, is exempt from execution and attachment when owned by the head of a family. wearing apparel and the necessary tools and implements of trade of any mechanic, while carrying on his trade, are exempt from execution when owned by a person not the head of a family. every householder or head of a family is entitled to have exempt from execution and attachment the homestead occupied by him, not exceeding in value three thousand dollars in cities of over forty thousand inhabitants, and not exceeding in quantity eighteen square rods of ground. in cities having less than forty thousand and not less than ten thousand inhabitants the homestead cannot exceed in value fifteen hundred dollars nor thirty square rods of ground; in cities having less than ten thousand inhabitants, five acres and not exceeding in value fifteen hundred dollars; and one hundred and sixty acres of land in the country, not exceeding in value fifteen hundred dollars. montana. exemptions are as follows: all clothing of the debtor and family, and chairs, tables, desks, and books to the value of two hundred dollars; also all necessary household, table and kitchen furniture, of the judgment debtor, including one sewing-machine, stove, stove-pipe, and stove furniture heating apparatus, beds, bedding and bedsteads and provisions and fuel for individual or family use, sufficient for three months; one horse, saddle and bridle, two cows with their calves, four hogs, and fifty domestic fowl, and feed for such animals for three months; one clock, and all family pictures. in addition to the above, there is exempt to a farmer his farming utensils not exceeding six hundred dollars in value, two oxen, or two horses or mules and their harness, one cart or wagon, and food for such stock for three months; two hundred dollars' worth of seed, grain, or vegetables actually provided for the purpose of sowing or planting. the proper tools, instruments, or books of any mechanic, physician, dentist, lawyer, or clergyman, and office furniture. to a miner his dwelling and all his tools and machinery necessary for carrying on his avocation, not to exceed in value the aggregate sum of one thousand dollars, and also one horse or mule, and its harness, with its food for three months, in case such stock is used in working his mining claim. one horse, mule, or two oxen, vehicle and harness, by which the debtor habitually earns his living, and one horse with vehicle and harness, of physician or clergyman, used in making professional visits, with food for such stock for three months. all arms, uniforms, etc., required by law to be kept by any person. the wages of the debtor earned at any time within thirty days next preceding the levy, provided they are necessary for the use of his family, residing in the state, supported wholly or in part by his labor. all moneys growing out of life insurance. these exemptions are restricted to married persons or to persons who are the heads of families, and only the wearing apparel of an unmarried person is exempt to him. none but =bona fide residents= can claim the benefit of this law. a homestead not to exceed in value the sum of twenty-five hundred dollars, if agriculture land it is not to exceed one hundred and sixty acres. if within the limits of a town, plat, city, or village, not to exceed one-fourth of an acre. the debtor has his option of the two and may select either, with all improvements thereon, which are included in the valuation. nebraska. there is exempt from judicial sale to every family, whether owned by the husband or wife, a homestead, not exceeding in value two thousand dollars, consisting of dwelling-house in which claimant resides, and its appurtenances, and land on which same is situated not exceeding one hundred and sixty acres, or if within an incorporated city or village a quantity of contiguous land not exceeding two lots. or in case debtor has no lands, there is exempt from execution five hundred dollars in personal property. if title to homestead is in wife it is exempt, and in such cases the head of the family is not entitled to exemption of five hundred dollars in personality. nor is he if his title is simply a contract for sale. the clothing of the family, family supplies for six months, supplies for domestic animals for three months, furniture, family bible and picture books, cooking utensils, certain domestic animals, tools, implements of trade, etc., are exempt; also sixty days wages to any laboring man, clerk, etc., who is the head of a family; provided that there is no exemption from attachment or execution for wages due to any clerk, laborer or mechanic. all pension money of united states soldiers and sailors, and property purchased and improved thereby, is exempt. the phrase "head of a family," as used in this chapter includes within its meaning: . the husband, when the claimant is a married person. d. every person who has resided on the premises with him or her, and under his care and maintenance, either: st. his or her minor child, or the minor child of his or her deceased wife or husband. d. a minor brother or sister, or the minor child of a deceased brother or sister. d. a father, mother, grandfather, or grandmother. th. the father or mother, grandfather or grandmother of a deceased husband or wife. th. an unmarried sister, or any other of the relatives mentioned in this section who have attained the age of majority and are unable to take care of or support themselves. nevada. the following property is exempt from execution except upon a judgment for the purchase-money or upon a mortgage thereon: chairs, tables, desks, and books to the value of one hundred dollars; necessary household and kitchen furniture, wearing apparel, etc., and provisions and fire-wood actually provided sufficient for one month, farming utensils, or implements of husbandry, and seed provided for planting within the ensuing six months, not exceeding in value two hundred dollars; two horses, two oxen, or two mules, and two cows and food for one month for such animals, and one cart or wagon; the tools of a mechanic necessary to his trade; the instruments and libraries of a surgeon, physician, surveyor, or dentist; the professional library of an attorney and counsellor, or minister of the gospel; the dwelling of a miner not exceeding in value five hundred dollars, also his tools and appliances necessary to carry on his mining operations, not exceeding in value five hundred dollars; and two horses, two oxen, or two mules, and their harness and one cart or wagon, by the use of which a teamster or laborer habitually earns his living; one horse harness, and vehicle, of a physician or surgeon, or minister of the gospel, and food for such animal for one month. for every livery stable keeper, two horses or mules, with vehicle and harness, provided the whole shall not exceed in value five hundred dollars; one sewing-machine in actual use in the debtor's family, not exceeding in value one hundred and fifty dollars; all fire engines and property of fire companies; all arms, etc., required by law to be kept by any person; a homestead to be selected by the husband or wife, or other head of a family, not exceeding in value five thousand dollars; the earnings of the debtor not exceeding fifty dollars for his personal services for the calendar month during, or immediately preceding, that in which process has been issued, where such earnings are necessary for the use of a family supported wholly or partly by the labor of the debtor. new hampshire. the following goods and property are exempt from attachment, and from liability to be taken upon execution: necessary wearing apparel of the debtor and his family; household furniture to the value of one hundred dollars; one cooking-stove and its furniture; one sewing-machine; bibles and school books in actual use; library to the value of two hundred dollars; one cow, six sheep and their fleeces, one hog, one pig, and the pork of same when slaughtered; domestic fowls, not exceeding in value fifty dollars; four tons of hay; provisions and fuel to the value of fifty dollars; tools of his occupation to the value of one hundred dollars; beasts of the plow, not exceeding a yoke of oxen or a horse; the uniform, arms, and equipments of every officer or private in the militia; the debtor's interest in one pew in any meeting house, and in one lot in any cemetery. damages recovered for conversion of property exempt are also exempt. the wife, widow, and children of any person who is the owner of a homestead, or any interest therein, are entitled to so much thereof as does not exceed in value five hundred dollars as against creditors, grantees, or heirs of such person during the life of the wife or widow and minority of the children. a homestead of the value of five hundred dollars is also exempt to an unmarried person owning the same. (p. s. ch. .) new jersey. all goods and chattels, not exceeding in value the sum of two hundred dollars exclusive of wearing apparel, and all wearing apparel the property of any debtor having a family residing in this state, are exempt from seizure by virtue of execution or other civil process except for the purchase money. (gen. statutes, p. .) in addition thereto, by conforming to the provisions of the homestead exemption act, the lot and buildings thereon occupied as a residence and owned by the debtor, being a householder and having a family, to the value of one thousand dollars, may be exempted from sale or execution for debt. (gen. statutes, pp. - .) new mexico. every person who has a family may hold the following property exempt from execution, attachment, or sale: the wearing apparel of such person or family; the beds, bedsteads, and bedding necessary for the use of the same; one cooking-stove and pipe; one stove and pipe used for warming the dwelling; fuel sufficient for sixty days; one cow, or if the debtor owns no cow, household furniture not exceeding forty dollars in value; two swine or the pork therefrom, or, if the debtor owns no swine, household furniture not exceeding fifteen dollars in value; six sheep, the wool shorn from them and the cloth or other articles manufactured therefrom, or, in lieu thereof, household furniture not exceeding twenty dollars in value; sufficient food for such animals for sixty days; bibles, hymn-books, psalm-books, testaments, school and miscellaneous books used in the family, and all family pictures; provisions provided and designed for the use of such person or family; not exceeding fifty dollars in value; and such other articles of household and kitchen furniture, or either, necessary for such person or family, not exceeding two hundred dollars in value; one sewing-machine, one knitting-machine, one gun or pistol, and the tools or implements of debtor necessary for carrying on his trade or business, not exceeding one hundred and fifty dollars in value; the personal earnings of debtor for sixty days next preceding his application for such exemption, when necessary for the support of such debtor or his family; all articles, specimens in cabinets of natural history or science, except such as may be intended for exhibition for pecuniary gain; if engaged in agriculture; two horses or one yoke of cattle, with the necessary gearing for the same, and one wagon; if a doctor, one horse, one saddle and bridle, professional books, medicines and instruments not exceeding one hundred dollars in value; if a lawyer professional books not exceeding five hundred dollars in value; every person engaged in the business of draying, or carrying property from place to place with one horse and wagon, shall hold one horse, harness, dray, or wagon also exempt from execution. every unmarried woman may hold exempt from execution, etc., wearing apparel not exceeding in value one hundred and fifty dollars; one sewing-machine, one knitting-machine; if engaged in teaching music, one piano or organ; a bible, hymn-book, psalm-book, album, and any other books not exceeding in value fifty dollar; any beneficiary fund, not exceeding five thousand dollars, set apart or paid by any benevolent association to a family of a deceased member, or to any member of such family, shall not be liable for the debts of such deceased member. husband and wife, widow or widower, living with an unmarried daughter, or unmarried minor son, may hold exempt from sale or judgment of a family homestead not exceeding one thousand dollars in value. any head of a family not the owner of a homestead may hold exempt from levy and sale real or personal property not exceeding five hundred dollars in value in addition to the chattel property otherwise by law exempted. new york. necessary household furniture, working tools and team, professional instruments, furniture and library (not exceeding in value two hundred and fifty dollars); groceries actually provided for family use, and ninety days necessary food for team, in addition to certain other specified articles, when owned by householder, are exempt from levy and sale under execution. a private burying-ground not exceeding one-quarter of an acre, is also exempt. insurance money, etc., paid or to be paid to a member, or the widow of a member of a life or casualty corporation doing business upon the co-operative or assessment plan, cannot be reached for any debt or liability incurred before such money, etc., was paid. the lot and buildings, not exceeding one thousand dollars in value, owned and occupied by a householder having a family are exempted, if designated and recorded as homestead property in the office of the clerk of the county where it is situated. such exemption continues after the owner's death for the benefit of the widow and family, so long as any of them continue to occupy such homestead, until the death of the widow and the majority of the youngest child. a married woman is entitled to the same homestead as a householder having a family. north carolina. personal property to the value of five hundred dollars, to be selected by any resident of the state, is exempt from execution; and also a homestead, and the dwelling and building, not exceeding one thousand dollars, to be selected by the owner thereof; or, in lieu thereof, any lot in a city, town, or village, with the dwelling and buildings used thereon, owned and occupied by any resident of the state, not exceeding the value of one thousand dollars. north dakota. the following property is absolutely exempt to the head of a family from attachment or mesne process, and from levy and sale on execution, and from any other final process issued from any court: all family pictures; a pew or other sitting in any house of worship; a lot or lots in any burial-ground; the family bible, and all school books used by the family, and other books used as a part of the family library, not exceeding in value one hundred dollars; all wearing apparel of the debtor and his family; the provisions for the debtor and his family necessary for one year's supply either provided or growing, or both, and fuel necessary for one year; the homestead, as defined, created, and limited by law. in addition to the above mentioned property, the head of a family may, by himself or his agent, select from all other of his personal property, not absolutely exempt, goods, chattels, merchandise, money, or other personal property, not to exceed in the aggregate one thousand dollars in value, which is also exempt. the library and instruments of any professional person, not exceeding six hundred dollars in value. ohio. every unmarried woman may hold the following property exempt from execution, attachment, or sale, to satisfy any judgment, decree, or debt, to wit: st. wearing apparel, not exceeding one hundred dollars in value. d. one sewing-machine. d. one knitting-machine. th. bible, etc., and other books not exceeding in value twenty-five dollars. every person who has a family, and every widow, can hold exempt from execution, attachment, or sale from any debt, damage, fine, or amercment: st. wearing apparel of such person or family necessary beds, etc., two stoves, and fuel for sixty days. d. certain domestic animals, and their feed for sixty days, or, in lieu of such as the debtor has not, household furniture of equal value, amounting, in the aggregate to sixty-five dollars. d. family books and pictures. th. provisions to the amount of fifty dollars, and other necessary household furniture to the amount of fifty dollars. th. one sewing-machine, one knitting-machine, the tools and implements of debtor necessary for carrying on his or her trade or business, whether mechanical or agricultural, to the amount of one hundred dollars th. the personal earnings of debtor or minor child for three months previous to the issuing of the attachment or rendition of judgment, when necessary for support of debtor or his or her family. th. all animal, vegetable, or mineral specimens of natural history or science not kept for pecuniary gain. in addition to the above, the debtor, if a drayman, can hold one horse, harness, and dray; if a farmer one horse or one yoke of cattle, with necessary gearing for same, and one wagon; if a physician, one horse, one saddle and bridle, and professional books, medicine and instruments, not exceeding one hundred dollars in value. husband and wife living together, a widower living with an unmarried daughter or minor son, every widow, and every unmarried female having in good faith the care, maintenance and custody, of any minor child or children of a deceased relation, residents of ohio, and not the owner of a homestead, may hold other real or personal property, to be selected by such person, his agent or attorney, not exceeding five hundred dollars in value, in addition to the amount of chattel property otherwise by law exempted, provided that such selection shall not be made as to wages due to the extent of more than ninety per cent, of such wages as against claims for necessaries. a homestead, not exceeding one thousand dollars in value, which shall remain exempt from sale on execution and exempt from sale under any order of the court so long as the widow, if she remain unmarried, or any unmarried minor child, resides thereon. husband and wife living together, a widow or widower living with an unmarried daughter or unmarried minor son, may hold exempt a family homestead not exceeding one thousand dollars in value. oklahoma. the exemptions of the head of a family residing in the state are: st. the homestead of the family. d. all household and kitchen furniture. d. any lot or lots in a cemetery held for the purpose of sepulture. th. all implements of husbandry used upon the farm. th. all tools, apparatus and books belonging to and used in any trade or profession. th. the family library and all family portraits and pictures and wearing apparel. th. five milk cows and their calves under six months old. th. one yoke of work oxen, with necessary yokes and chains. th. two horses or two mules, and one wagon, cart, or dray. th. one carriage or buggy, th. one gun. th. ten hogs. th. twenty head of sheep. th. all saddles, bridles, and harness necessary for the use of the family. th. all provisions and forage on hand and growing for home consumption, and for use of exempt stock for one year. th. all current wages and earnings for personal or professional services earned within the last ninety days. the homestead of any family in the state within any city, town, or village consists of not exceeding an acre of land to be selected by owner, owned and occupied as a residence only, but not exceeding in value five thousand dollars, but in no event shall the homestead be reduced to less than a quarter of an acre regardless of value. if the homestead is used for both residence and business purposes, the homestead interest shall not exceed in value five thousand dollars, and nothing in the laws of the united states or treaties with indian tribes deprives an indian or other allottee of the benefit of the homestead and exemption laws of the state. the exemptions reserved to a person not the head of a family are as follows: st. a lot or lots in a cemetery held for the purpose of sepulture. d. all wearing apparel. d. all tools, apparatus and books belonging to any trade or profession. th. one horse, bridle, and saddle, or one yoke of oxen. th. current wages for personal services. oregon. the following property shall be exempt from execution, if selected and reserved by the judgment debtor or his agent at the time of levy, or as soon thereafter before sale as the same shall be known to him, and not otherwise. books, pictures and musical instruments owned by any person, to the value of seventy-five dollars; necessary wearing apparel owned by any person, to the value of one hundred dollars, and, if such person be a householder, to each member of his family to the value of fifty dollars; the tools, implements, apparatus, team, vehicle, harness, or library necessary to enable any person to carry on the trade, occupation, or profession by which such person habitually earns his living, to the value of four hundred dollars; also sufficient quantity of food to support such team, if any, for sixty days. the word "team," in this subdivision, shall not be construed to mean more than one yoke of oxen, or pair of horses or mules, as the case may be. homesteads the actual abode of, and owned by, a family or some member thereof are exempt from execution. the following property (is exempt), if owned by a householder and in actual use, by and for his family, or when being removed from one habitation to another on a change of residence: ten sheep, with one year's fleece, or the yarn or cloth manufactured there from, two cows, and five swine, household goods, furniture, and utensils, to the value of three hundred dollars; also, food sufficient to support such animals if any, for three months, and provisions actually provided for family use, and necessary for the support of such householder and family for six months; the seat or pew occupied by a householder, or his family, in a place of public worship; burial lots. earnings or wages to the extent of seventy-five dollars in thirty days, are exempt if necessary to support family. one gun and one revolver exempt to every white male citizen over sixteen years of age. pennsylvania. the law exempts from execution property, either real or personal, to the amount of three hundred dollars, in addition to wearing apparel, bibles, and school books, if claimed by the debtor; the privilege is personal and may be waived at any time. the widow or children of any decedent are entitled to the same amount from his estate for her or their use. all sewing-machines belonging to private families are exempt. non-residents of the state are not entitled to the exemption laws. rhode island. the following are exempt from attachment and execution: the necessary wearing apparel of a debtor and his family, his necessary working tools, not exceeding two hundred dollars in value; and the professional library of any professional man in actual practice; his household furniture and family stores, if a housekeeper, not exceeding three hundred dollars in value; one cow and one and one-half tons of hay, of a housekeeper; one hog and one pig, and the pork of the same, of a housekeeper; arms, equipments, etc., of a militiaman, and of any person which are kept for use and not for sale; one pew in church; a burial lot; wages due or accruing to any seaman; debts secured by bills of exchange or negotiable promissory notes: and ten dollars due as the wages of labor except when action is for necessaries furnished to defendant; the salary and wages of the wife and minor children of any debtor; and such other property, real or personal, as is or shall be exempt from attachment and execution, either permanently or temporarily, by general or special acts, charters of incorporation, or by the policy of the law. south carolina. homesteads in lands, whether held in fee or any lesser estate, to the value of one thousand dollars, or so much thereof as the property is worth if its value is less than one thousand dollars, with the yearly products thereof, and to every head of a family residing in this state, whether entitled to a homestead exemption in lands or not, personal property to the value of five hundred dollars, or so much thereof as the property is worth if its value is less than five hundred dollars. south dakota. the following property is absolutely exempt from attachment or mesne process, and from levy and sale on execution, and from any other final process issued by any court: all family pictures; a pew or other sitting in any house of worship; a lot or lots in any burial ground; the family bible, and all school books used by the family, and all other books used as a part of the family library not exceeding in value two hundred dollars; all wearing apparel of the debtor and his family; the provisions for the debtor and his family necessary for one year's supply, either provided or growing, or both, and fuel necessary for one year; the homestead as defined, created, and limited by law. in addition to the above-mentioned property, the debtor, if the head of a family, may, by himself or his agent, select from all other of his personal property, not to exceed in the aggregate seven hundred and fifty dollars in value, and if a single person, not the head of a family, three hundred dollars in value, which is also exempt. instead of the seven hundred and fifty dollars exemption, the debtor, if the head of a family, may select and choose the following property, which shall be exempt, namely: all miscellaneous books and musical instruments for the use of the family, not exceeding two hundred dollars in value; all household and kitchen furniture, including beds, bedsteads and bedding, used by the debtor and his family, not exceeding two hundred dollars in value; and in case the debtor shall own more than two hundred dollars' worth of such property, he must select therefrom such articles to the value of two hundred dollars, leaving the remainder subject to legal process; two cows, five swine, two yokes of oxen or one span of horses or mules, twenty-five sheep and their lambs under six months old, and all wool of the same, and all cloth or yarn manufactured therefrom, the necessary food for the animals hereinbefore mentioned for one year, either provided or growing or both, as the debtor may choose; also one wagon, one sleigh, two plows, one harrow, and farming machinery and utensils, including tackle for team, not exceeding twelve hundred and fifty dollars in value; the tools and implements of any mechanic, whether a minor or of age, used and kept for the purpose of carrying on his trade or business, and, in addition thereto, stock in trade not exceeding two hundred dollars in value; the avails of life insurance policies issued payable to the order, assignees, or estate of the insured, and not assigned, are to the extent of five thousand dollars, absolutely exempt to the surviving husband, or wife or minor children of the insured, free from all claim of creditors of the insured. the homestead of the head of every family resident in this state, whether owned by the husband or wife, so long as it remains a homestead, is absolutely exempt, except for taxes and debts contracted for the purchase thereof. if within a town plat it must not exceed one acre in extent, and if not within a town plat it must not embrace in the aggregate more than one hundred and sixty acres, with the house and buildings appurtenant thereon; and is limited to five thousand dollars in value. (c. c. p. sec. .) if the homestead is claimed upon land, the title or right of possession to which was acquired or is claimed under the laws of the united states relating to mineral lands, the area of the homestead, if within a town plat, must not exceed one acre, and if without a town plat, must not exceed forty acres. if the title to the homestead has been acquired as a placer claim but has been acquired under the laws of congress as a lode mining claim, the area of the homestead must not exceed forty acres. (l. , ch. .) such exemption continues after the debtor's death, for the benefit of the surviving husband or wife and children; and if both husband and wife be dead, until the youngest child becomes of age. (prob. c. sec. .) it is very doubtful, however, in view of the provisions of the state constitution, if the title of the homestead can be in the wife, unless the husband is for some reason incapacitated. tennessee. thirty-six dollars of the wages, salary, or income of any person drawing forty dollars or less per month shall be exempt from legal process at date of service of process. household goods and provisions are exempt. the list includes practically every article to be found in the average home. the liberality of the law may be judged from the fact that one hundred gallons of sorghum molasses and twenty pounds of coffee are listed. the list ends with: twenty bushels of peanuts, three strings of red peppers, two gourds, two punger gourds, a carpet in actual use by the family, not exceeding in value twenty-five dollars, and two hundred bushels of cotton seed. if the head of the family is engaged in agriculture there is further exempt in his hands the following property: two plows, two hoes, one grubbing hoe, one cutting knife, one harvest cradle, one set of plow gears, one pitch-fork, one rake, three iron wedges, five head of sheep, and ten head of stock hogs. there is exempt in the hands of each mechanic in the state who is engaged in the pursuit of his trade or occupation one set of mechanic's tools, such as are usual and necessary to the pursuit of his trade; and, if he is the head of a family, two hundred dollars' worth of lumber or material, or products of his labor; also one gun in the hands of every male citizen of the age of eighteen years and upward, and every female who is the head of a family; to the heads of families fifty pounds of picked cotton and twenty-five pounds of wool, and a sufficient quantity of upper and sole leather to provide winter shoes for the family; also, three hundred pounds of tobacco in the hands of the actual producer; also thirty-five dollars' worth of roughness, to consist of oats, fodder, and hay, or either of them. a homestead or real estate in the possession of or belonging to each head of a family, and the improvements thereon, to the value in all of one thousand dollars, shall be exempt from sale under legal process during the life of such head of a family, and shall inure to the benefit of his widow and be exempt from sale in any way at the instance of any creditor or creditors during the minority of the children occupying the same and until the youngest child reaches the age of twenty-one years. texas. the constitution of provides that a homestead of a family not in a town or city consisting of not more than two hundred acres of land, which may be in one or more parcels, with the improvements thereon, or, if in a town or city, lot or lots, not exceeding in value five thousand dollars at the time of designation, without reference to the value of the improvements thereon is exempt, provided the same shall be used for the purpose of a home, or as place to exercise the calling or business of the head of the family. there is also exempted to every family, free from forced sale for debts; all household and kitchen furniture; any lot or lots for sepulture in a cemetery; all instruments of husbandry; all tools and apparatus belonging to any trade or profession, and all books belonging to private or public libraries, and family portraits and pictures, five milk cows and calves, two yoke of work oxen, two horses and one wagon, one carriage or buggy, one gun, twenty hogs, twenty head of sheep, all provisions and forage on hand for home consumption, all bridles, saddles, and harness necessary for the use of the family; and to every citizen not a head of a family, one horse, bridle, and saddle; all wearing apparel, any lot or lots for sepulture in a cemetery; all tools, apparatus, and books belonging to his trade, profession, or private library. current wages for personal services are not subject to garnishment. utah. the following property is exempt from execution, except on a judgment for the purchase price, or on a judgment of a foreclosure of a mortgage, or a mechanic's or laborer's lien thereon, or from sale for taxes, to wit: st. chairs, tables, and desks of the value of two hundred dollars, and the library belonging to the judgment debtor, also musical instruments in actual use in the family. d. necessary household, table, and kitchen furniture of the value of three hundred dollars, one sewing-machine, family hanging pictures, oil paintings and drawings, portraits and their necessary frames, provisions on hand for three months, two cows and their sucking calves, and two hogs and all sucking pigs, all wearing apparel, and beds and bedding, and all carpets in use. d. a farmer may hold farming implements to the value of three hundred dollars, two oxen, horses or mules, and their harness; a cart or wagon; seed, grain or vegetable, for planting or sowing within six months, not exceeding in value two hundred dollars and crops and the proceeds thereof not exceeding two hundred dollars. th. necessary tools, tool chest, and implements of a mechanic or artisan, not exceeding in value five hundred dollars; the seal and records of a notary public; the instruments and chests of a surgeon, physician, surveyor, and dentist, with their libraries, and the law libraries and office furniture of attorneys and judges, and libraries of ministers, and typewriters of reporters and copyist, the type, presses, and material of a printer or publisher, not exceeding five hundred dollars. th. the cabin of a miner not exceeding five hundred dollars in value, also his tools and appliances, not exceeding in value five hundred dollars. th. two oxen, or horses or mules and harness, and cart or wagon, or dray or truck, by which a cartman, drayman, huckster, teamster, or other laborer habitually earns his living; and one horse, harness, and vehicle of a physician, surgeon, or minister. th. one-half of the earnings of the judgment debtor for personal services rendered within thirty days preceding the levy if debtor is married or is head of a family residing in utah and dependent upon such earnings for support. if his earnings are two dollars per day or less, a married man or head of a family is entitled to an absolute exemption of thirty dollars per month. costs cannot be taxed in any proceeding to obtain levy upon moneys of judgments debtor earned within thirty days next preceding levy. th. all moneys, benefits, privileges, or immunities accruing in any manner from a life insurance on a debtor's life, when the annual premiums do not exceed five hundred dollars. th. all arms, ammunition, uniforms, and accoutrements required by law to be kept. th. to a head of a family homestead, to be selected by the debtor. a homestead consisting of lands and appurtenances (which lands may be in one or more localities), not exceeding fifteen hundred dollars in value for the head of the family and five hundred dollars additional for his wife, and two hundred and fifty dollars for each other member of his family, shall be exempt from judgment lien and from execution or forced sale, for mechanics' or laborers' lien thereon, lawful mortgage thereon, or lien for purchase. the statute provides that the homestead exemption may be claimed by either the husband or the wife, and defines the terms "head of the family" and "members of the family." in case of sale the money received by the judgment debtor for value of his exemption is also exempt, and so, too, is insurance money when fire occurs (to the extent of the exemption). vermont. the law exempts a homestead from attachment or levy of execution to the amount of five hundred dollars; also (unless turned out to the officer by the debtor, to be taken on the attachment in execution) such suitable apparel, bedding, tools, arms, and articles of household furniture as may be necessary for upholding life, one sewing-machine kept for use, one cow, the best swine, or the meat of one swine, sheep not exceeding in number ten, and one year's product of said sheep in wool yarn, or cloth, forage sufficient for keeping not exceeding ten sheep and one cow through one winter, ten cords of firewood or five tons of coal, twenty bushels of potatoes, all growing crops, ten bushels of grain, one barrel of flour, three swarms of bees and hives, together with their produce in honey, two hundred pounds of sugar, and all lettered gravestones, the bibles and other books used in a family, one pew or slip in a meeting-house or place of religious worship, live poultry not exceeding in value the sum of ten dollars, the professional books and instruments of physicians, and the professional books of clergymen and attorneys at law, to the value of two hundred dollars; and also one yoke of oxen or steers, as the debtor may select, two horses kept and used for team-work, and such as the debtor may select in lieu of oxen or steers, but not exceeding in value the sum of two hundred dollars, with sufficient forages for keeping the same through the winter; also the pistols, side arms, and equipments personally used by any soldier in the service of the united states and kept by him or his heirs as mementoes of his service, also one two-horse wagon with whiffle-trees and neck-yoke; or one ox-cart, as the debtor may choose; one sled or one set of traverse sleds, either for horses or oxen, as the debtor may select; two harnesses, two halters, two chains, one plow, and one ox-yoke, which with the oxen or steers or horses which the debtor may select for team work, shall not exceed in value two hundred and fifty dollars; also one tool chest kept for use by a mechanic. a housekeeper or head of a family has a homestead exemption from attachment or execution in a dwelling-house and lands appurtenant, used or kept as a homestead, to the value of five hundred dollars. virginia. the exemption laws are very liberal. a householder residing in this state may hold exempt from levy or distress the family bible, family pictures, school-books, and library for the use of the family, not exceeding in all one hundred dollars in value; a seat or pew in any house or place of public worship; a lot in a burial ground; all necessary wearing apparel of the debtor and his family; all beds, bedsteads and bedding necessary for the use of such family, and all stoves and appendages put up for the necessary use of the family, not exceeding three; one cow and her calf till one year old, one horse, six chairs, one table, six knives, six forks, six plates, one dozen spoons, two dishes, two basins, one pot, one oven, six pieces of wooden or earthen ware, one loom and its appurtenances, one safe or press, one spinning-wheel, one pair of cards, one axe, two hoes, ten barrels of corn, or in lieu thereof twenty-five bushels of rye or buckwheat, five bushels of wheat or one barrel of flour, two hundred pounds of bacon or pork, three hogs, ten dollars in value of forage or hay, one cooking-stove and utensils for cooking therewith, and one sewing-machine; and, in the case of a mechanic, the tools and utensils of his trade, not exceeding one hundred dollars in value; and in case of an oysterman or fisherman, his boat and tackle, not exceeding two hundred dollars in value, the same shall be sold, and out of the proceeds the oysterman or fisherman shall first receive two hundred dollars in lieu of such boat and tackle; and if the householder is at the time actually engaged in the business of agriculture, there shall also be exempt from such levy or distress, while he is so engaged, to be selected by him or his agent, the following articles, or so many there he may have, to wit: one yoke of oxen, or a pair of horses or mules in lieu thereof (unless he selects or has selected a horse or mule under the preceding section, in which case he shall be entitled to select under this section only one), with the necessary gearings, one wagon or cart, two plows, one drag, one harvest cradle, one pitchfork, one rake, and two iron wedges; wages, owing to a laboring man being a householder, not exceeding fifty dollars per month, shall also be exempt from distress, levy, or garnishment. these embrace what is known as the poor debtor's exemption. (=code, ch. .=) the homestead exemption is as follows: every householder residing in this state shall, in addition to the property or estate to hold exempt from levy, distress, or garnishment, under ch. , be entitled to exempt from levy, seizure, garnishment, or sale under any execution, order, or process issued on any demand for any debt or liability on contract, his real and personal estate, or either, to be selected by him, including money and debts due him, to the value of not exceeding two thousand dollars. west virginia. any husband or parent residing in this state, or the widow or infant children of deceased parents, may set apart his personal estate, not exceeding two hundred dollars in value, to be exempt from execution or other process. he or they may also hold a homestead of the value of one thousand dollars (provided the homestead is recorded among the public land records of the county wherein it is situate, before the debt against which it is claimed is contracted), as against debts created since. any resident mechanic, artisan, or laborer, whether a husband or parent or not, may hold the working tools of his trade or occupation to the value of fifty dollars exempt, provided that in no case shall the exemption allowed any one person exceed two hundred dollars. washington. all real and personal estate belonging to a married woman at the time of her marriage, and all she subsequently acquires or becomes entitled to in her own right, and all her personal earnings, and rents and profits of such real estate, shall not be liable for her husband's debts so long as she or any minor heir of her body is living, but her separate property is liable for debts owing by her at the time of her marriage. to a householder, being the head of a family, a homestead of the value of two thousand dollars while occupied by such family, wearing apparel, private libraries (not to exceed five hundred dollars in value), family pictures, and keepsakes. to each householder one bed and bedding and one additional bed and bedding for each additional member of the family, and other household goods of the coin value of five hundred dollars. provisions and fuel for family for six months. two cows with their calves, five swine, two stands of bees, thirty-six domestic fowls and feed for six months. to a farmer one span of horses and harness, or two yokes of oxen, and one wagon, with farming utensils not exceeding five hundred dollars in coin value, one hundred and fifty bushels of wheat, one hundred and fifty bushels of oats or barley, fifty bushels of potatoes, ten bushels of corn, and ten bushels of peas, and ten bushels of corn, ten bushels of peas and ten bushels of onions for seeding purposes. to a mechanic, the tools used to carry on his trade for the support of himself and family, also material of the value of five hundred dollars. to a physician, his library, not exceeding five hundred dollars in value, horse and carriage, instruments and medicines not exceeding two hundred dollars in coin. to attorneys and clergymen, their libraries, not exceeding in value of one thousand dollars, also office furniture, stationery and fuel not exceeding in value two hundred dollars. all firearms kept for use and a canoe, skiff, or small boat, not exceeding in value two hundred and fifty dollars. to a person engaged in lightering, one or more lighters or scows and a small boat, not exceeding the aggregate value of two hundred and fifty dollars. to a drayman, his team. to a person engaged in logging, three yokes of work oxen, and implements of the value of three hundred dollars. proceeds or avails of all life and accident insurance shall be exempt from all liability for any debt. to any person whose exempt property is insured, and destroyed by fire, the insurance money coming to or belonging to the person thus insured to an amount equal to the exempt property thus destroyed. burial lot exempt. pension money exempt, but exemption may be waived. wisconsin. the following personal property is exempt from seizure or sale on any execution and from attachment or garnishment: st. the family bible. d. family pictures and school-books. d. the library of the debtor. th. the seat or pew in any place of public worship. th. all wearing apparel of the debtor and his family; all stoves and appendages kept for the use of the debtor and his family; all cooking utensils and all other household furniture not exceeding two hundred dollars in value, and one gun, rifle, or other firearm not exceeding fifty dollars in value. th. two cows, ten swine, one yoke of oxen, and one horse or mule, or, in lieu of one yoke of oxen and horse or mule, two horses or two mules, ten sheep and the wool from the same, either in the raw material or manufactured into yarn or cloth; the necessary food for one year's support for all such stock, also one wagon, cart, or dray, one sleigh, one plow, one drag, and other farming utensils, including a tackle for teams, not exceeding two hundred dollars in value. th. the provisions for the debtor and his family necessary for one year's support, and fuel necessary for one year. th. the tools, implements, and stock in trade of any mechanic, miner, merchant, trader, or other person, used or kept for the purpose of carrying on his trade or business, not exceeding two hundred dollars in value. th. all sewing-machines owned by individuals and kept for the use of themselves or family. th. any sword, plate, books, or other article presented or given to any person by congress, legislature of any of the united states, or by either body of congress or of such legislature, whether presented by vote or raised by subscription of the members of either of the aforesaid bodies, th. printing material and press or presses used in the business of any printer or publisher, to an amount not exceeding fifteen hundred dollars in value, provided no sum exceeding four hundred dollars shall be exempt from payment of employees. th. horses, arms, equipment, and uniforms of all officers, non-commissioned officers, and privates used for military purposes in the organized militia of the state. th. all books, maps, plates, and other papers kept or used by any person for the purpose of making abstracts of title to land. th. the interests owned by any inventor in any invention secured to him by letters patent of the united states. th. the earnings of all married persons and other persons having a family dependant upon them for support, for three months next preceding the issue of an attachment, execution, or garnishment, to the amount of sixty dollars only for each month. such exemption shall not exceed one hundred and eighty dollars in all for the three months. th. all fire-engines, apparatus, and equipments, used or to be used for the protection of property from fire. th. all moneys arising from insurance of any exempt property when such property has been destroyed by fire. th. all money arising on any policy of insurance on the life of a minor, payable to his father or mother, or both, shall be exempt against the creditors of such father or mother, but not against the creditors of such minor. certain other life insurance moneys are also exempt. th. all cemetery lots owned by individuals and all monuments therein, the coffins and other articles for the burial of any dead person, and the tombstone or monuments for his grave, by whomsoever purchased. st. pensions paid policemen, firemen, their widows or minor children. d. shares of the value of one thousand dollars at time of withdrawal in a local building and loan association held by one not owning a homestead which is exempt. a homestead to be selected by the owner, consisting, when not included in any city or village, of any quantity of land not exceeding forty acres, used for agricultural purposes, and when included in any city or village, of any quantity of land not exceeding one-fourth of an acre and the dwelling-house thereon and its appurtenances owned and occupied by any resident of the state, not exceeding five thousand dollars in value, is exempt. proceeds of homestead not exceeding five thousand dollars are exempt for two years. husband cannot assign exempt wages except by a written instrument signed by wife with two witnesses, nor for a longer period than two months in advance. wyoming. every householder being the head of a family, and every resident who has attained the age of sixty years, is entitled to a homestead not exceeding in value fifteen hundred dollars, exempt from execution or attachment for any debt, contract, or civil obligation, while such homestead is actually occupied as such by the owner thereof, or his or her family. the homestead may consist of a house and lot or lots in any town or city, or a farm of not more than one hundred and sixty acres. besides the homestead above mentioned, the wearing apparel of every person is exempt from judicial or ministerial process; also the following property when owned by any person being the head of a family and residing with the same, to wit: the family bible, pictures, and school-books; a lot in any cemetery or burial ground; furniture, bedding, provisions, and such other articles as the debtor may select, not to exceed in all the value of five hundred dollars, to be ascertained by the appraisment of three disinterested householders; provided that no personal property of any person about to remove or abscond from the state shall be exempt. the tools, teams, and implements, or stock in trade of a mechanic, miner, or other person, and used and kept for the purpose of carrying on his trade or business, is exempt to a value not exceeding three hundred dollars; also the library, instruments or implements of any professional man, not to exceed in value three hundred dollars. british columbia. personal property to be selected by the debtor to the value of five hundred dollars is exempt from execution. under the homestead act lands to the value of twenty-five hundred dollars may be registered as a homestead, and are then exempt from seizure or sale. manitoba. st. bedding and furniture not exceeding five hundred dollars. (this exemption does not apply, where claim, for which distress warrant has issued, is for wages.) d. necessary clothing for judgment debtor and his family. d. twelve volumes of books and the books of a professional man, one axe, one saw, one gun, six traps. th. food for judgment debtor and family for eleven months if in possession. th. three horses, mules, or oxen, six cows, ten sheep, ten pigs, fifty fowl, and food for the same during eleven months, provided that the exemption as to horses over four years of age shall apply only in case they are used by the judgment debtor in earning his living. th. tools and implements up to five hundred dollars. th. farm lands up to one hundred and sixty acres actually resided upon, cultivated by the judgment debtor, or used for grazing or other purposes, and the houses, stables, barns on the farm lands resided upon by judgment debtor. th. the actual residence or house of any person other than a farmer, provided the same does not exceed in value fifteen hundred dollars. th. all the necessary seeds of various varieties or roots for proper seeding and cultivation of eighty acres. th. insurance on exemptions also exempt. there are no exemptions in cases of judgments for board and lodgings. no article is exempt when judgment was for purchase price of article seized. nova scotia. the necessary wearing apparel and bedding and bedsteads of the debtor and his family, and the tools and instruments of his trade or calling to the value of thirty dollars, one stove, and his last cow, cooking utensils, six each of knives, forks, plates, cups, saucers, spoons, chairs, one shovel, one table, teapot, jug, spinning-wheel, weaving loom, ten religious volumes, food and fuel for thirty days, two sheep, one hog, and food for same and cow for thirty days shall be exempt from execution. new brunswick. wearing apparel, bedding, kitchen utensils, and tools of trade or calling to the value of one hundred dollars. ontario. the following chattels are exempt from seizure under any writ of execution whatever, and after the death of the debtor are exempt from the claims of his creditors: furniture, bedding, and wearing apparel not exceeding in value one hundred and fifty dollars; fuel and provisions not exceeding in value forty dollars; animals not exceeding in value seventy-five dollars, and food therefor for thirty days; tools to the value of one hundred dollars; one dog and fifteen hives of bees. free grants and homesteads to actual settlers in the districts of algoma and nipissing, and of certain lands between the river ottawa and the georgian bay, are also free from creditor's claims. quebec. the debtor may select and withdraw from seizure: st. the bed, bedding and bedsteads in use by him and his family. d. the ordinary and necessary wearing apparel of himself and his family. d. two stoves and their pipes, one pot-hook and its accessories, one pair of andirons, one pair of tongs, and one shovel th. all the cooking utensils, knives, forks, spoons, and crockery in use by the family, two tables, two cupboards or dressers, one lamp one mirror, one washing stand with its toilet accessories, two trunks or valises, the carpets or matting covering the floors, one clock, one sofa, and twelve chairs, provided that the total value of such effects does not exceed the sum of fifty dollars. th. all spinning-wheels and weaving looms intended for domestic use, one axe, one saw, one gun, six traps, such fishing-nets, lines, and seines as are in common use, one tub, one washing machine one wringer, one sewing-machine, two pails, three flat-irons, one blacking-brush, one scrubbing-brush, one broom. th. fifty volumes of books, and all drawings and paintings executed by the debtor or the members of his family, for their use. th. fuel and food sufficient for the debtor and his family for three months. th. one span of plow-horses or a yoke of oxen; one horse, one summer vehicle and one winter vehicle, and harness used by a carter or driver for earning his livelihood; one cow, two pigs, four sheep, the wool from such sheep, the cloth manufactured from such wool, and the hay and other fodder intended for the feeding of said animals; and, moreover, the following agricultural tools and implements; one plow, one harrow, one working sleigh, one tumbril, one hay-cart with its wheels, and all harness necessary and intended for farming purposes. th. books relating to the profession, art, or trade of the debtor, to the value of two hundred dollars. th. tools and implements or other chattles ordinarily used in his profession, art, or trade to the value of two hundred dollars, th. bees to the extent of fifteen hives. the following are exempt from seizure: consecrated vessels and things used for religious worship; family portraits; immovables by a donor or testator, or by law, to be exempt from seizure, and sums of money or objects given or bequeathed upon the condition of their being exempt from seizure; old age annuities created by the act of parliament of canada, alimentary allowances granted by a court, and sums of money or pensions given as alimony, even though the donor or testator has not expressly declared them to be exempt from seizure (they may, however, be seized for alimentary debts); pensions granted by financial and other institutions to their employees; pay and pensions of persons belonging to the army or to the navy; the salaries of some public officers and professors, tutors, school teachers, and public officers; salaries of some public officers and employees of the province, and salaries of city and town clerks, and of other municipal officers and employees and of city and town assessors in incorporated cities or towns, are seizable for one-fifth of every monthly salary not exceeding one thousand dollars per annum; one-fourth of every monthly salary exceeding one thousand dollars, but not exceeding two thousand dollars per annum, and one-third of every monthly salary exceeding two thousand dollars per annum. four-fifths of the salary, remuneration, or earnings of members of the corporation of pilots for and below the harbor of quebec for the pilotage of vessels are exempt from seizure. all other salaries and wages are exempt from seizure for four-fifths when they do not exceed three dollars per day; three-quarters when they exceed three dollars but do not exceed six dollars per day; and two-thirds when they exceed six dollars per day. there are also special exemptions in favor of settlers and fishermen. _index._ accounts close collection, items over year apart, payment on, revives, attitude toward debtors, " the poor, " off-color women, " children, bookkeeping systems, original entry, marks and ciphers, charity practice, checks post-dated, due on sunday or holiday, changing date makes void, not dated, never payable, are orders, do not hold, if not paid, certified, erase endorsement, collectors on commission, office girl best, corporation orders, discounting bills, forms letter when debtor fails to keep appointment, collecting letters, bluff, sentiment, class, pen written, class , class , class , personal, items for, order-note, statement, exemptions, provisions for physicians, runs to widows and minors, not certain claims, not for fines, tennessee, wages of seamen, rhode island, homestead not, pennsylvania, gun and revolver, oregon, public buildings, property, selection, until youngest child of age, laws, liberal, - " north dakota, liberal, " alabama, " alaska, " arizona, " arkansas, " california, " colorado, " connecticut, " delaware, " dist. of columbia, " florida, " georgia, " hawaii, " indiana, " iowa, " illinois, " idaho, " kansas, " kentucky, " louisiana, " maine, " maryland, " massachusetts, " michigan, " minnesota, " mississippi, " missouri, " montana, " nebraska, " nevada, " new hampshire, " new jersey, " new mexico, " new york, " north carolina, " north dakota, " ohio, " oklahoma, " oregon, " pennsylvania, " rhode island, " south carolina, " south dakota, " tennessee, " texas, " utah, " vermont, " virginia, " west virginia, " washington, " wisconsin, " wyoming, " british columbia, " manitoba, " nova scotia, " new brunswick, " quebec, " ontario, judgments, foreign, oklahoma, west virginia, limitations, all states, padding accounts, proper time to collect, notes, sight draft, successful physician, the, loans, _the physician's improved account system_ the card ledger is the up-to-date book-keeping system and is being used for all kinds of accounts. it is the simplest and best method a doctor can use. with it there are no dead accounts to handle (when an account is paid the card is transferred to the closed accounts); no indexing to do, the cards being filed in alphabetical order; there is a great economy of time, the statement of an account is always ready when a client asks for it; because of this, collections are made prompter and easier. [illustration] =the physician's account system= consists of a handsome quarter-sawed, dust-proof oak box (like the illustration shown) Ã� Ã� inches, with a hinged lid, buff cards, Ã� inches, ruled on both sides, and two sets (a to z) of alphabet guide cards, one set for the open accounts, the other for the closed accounts, and a movable metal partition to separate the open from the closed accounts. additional cards for this outfit may be secured at low cost, and as dead accounts may after a time be filed away, it constitutes a perpetual and very inexpensive ledger or account system. hundreds of physicians are using this system, and have nothing but praise for it; not one has raised an objection to it. =don't= spend a lot of money for an elaborate accounting system. no matter what you pay you cannot find as simple, convenient and satisfactory system as this. =price, complete in oak cabinet, with pocket call book $ . = _physicians drug news, newark, n. j._ _in connection with our account system we supply a physicians practical call book for recording daily calls_ "the object of this book is to furnish physicians with a simple and convenient method of recording calls, in as small compass as possible." it is perpetual; may be begun at any time. it is elastic; if one double page is not sufficient, two may be employed. [illustration] it is free from the mass of printed matter which cumbers up the average call book and nearly all of which is unnecessary. size Ã� inches. handsomely bound, gilt edges, with flap. _price $ . _ with name on, stamped in gold $ . _physicians drug news, newark, n. j._ transcriber's notes: text in italics is surrounded with underscores: _italics_. text in bold is surrounded with equals signs: =bold=. punctuation has been corrected without note. inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original. obvious typographical errors have been corrected as follows: page : i changed to page : acounts changed to accounts page : individal changed to individual page : libary changed to library page : ilinois changed to illinois page : usefruct changed to usufruct page : minor changed to miner debtors changed to debtor's calender changed to calendar page : virture changed to virtue page : owners changed to owner's page : pusuit changed to pursuit page : dicounting changed to discounting page : newark, n. changed to newark, n. j. on page , note that th is missing in the original text. transcriber's note: minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed. words printed in italics are noted with underscores: _italics_. source books of english history for use in schools edited by k. h. vickers, m.a. extracts relating to mediaeval markets and fairs in england extracts relating to mediaeval markets and fairs in england by helen douglas-irvine m.a. st. andrews author of "the royal palaces of scotland," "the history of london" london macdonald & evans , adam street, adelphi, w.c. contents page introduction anglo-saxon markets effect of the conquest new creations market-places smithfield market under henry ii. special privileges pied poudre courts profits pre-emption and prisage market houses enforcement of regularity supervision of sales foreign merchants miscellaneous points of interest degeneration of fairs editor's general preface. this series of source-books aims at providing illustrations of various aspects of english history at a price that will enable the teacher to place them in the hands of the pupils themselves. all teachers of history are agreed as to the value of using the "original documents" in their work as a means of making their pupils realise that they are studying human life in past ages, but hitherto the consideration of price has confined the use of them almost entirely to the teachers themselves. in the series here prepared for the use of scholars and teachers alike the volumes are each devoted to one aspect of history, so that the teacher can select that one which will illustrate the particular line taken. thus, one will be on "markets and fairs," for use when the teaching has an economic basis, another will deal with political events, and another with the social side of history. great care has been taken to secure extracts from contemporary and reliable authorities. k. h. v. introduction fairs and markets are not different institutions--a fair is a market of a particular kind, an important market held not once or several times a week, but once or several times a year. the customs, the rights, and the law of markets are therefore relevant to fairs; and generalisations as to markets apply to fairs. there is no direct evidence as to the origin of markets and fairs in england. early oriental and classical literature indicate that they have served all peoples whose development has reached a certain stage. as communities cease to be entirely self-supporting trade arises naturally; and trade is obviously facilitated by a concentration in particular places at particular times of sellers and buyers. certain of these gatherings had in the ninth century already been regularised in england as markets. the king or other lord had become responsible for the validity of sales in them, and suffered them to take place within the territory over which he had power. in return he received from the market people tolls, fines for transgressions, and other dues, which were a considerable source of profit, sufficient to make the tenancy of a market an object of desire. it was frequently acquired by a religious house. it is noteworthy that the king was regarded as the original holder of all market right in england. the lord who had a market on his manor, whether in virtue of a royal charter or by force of a custom of which the beginning had been forgotten, was considered to exercise a right which initially had been derived from the king. in historic times the establishment of new markets has been, until recently, only possible by means of a royal grant. anglo-saxon markets. - . _grant to the church of st. peter, worcester, of half the rights of worcester market._ to almighty god, true unity and holy trinity in heaven, be praise and glory and rendering of thanks, for all his benefits bestowed upon us. firstly for whose love and for st. peter's and the church at worcester, and at the request of werfrith the bishop, their friend, aethelraed the ealdorman, and aethelflaed commanded the burh at worcester to be built, and eke god's praise to be there upraised. and now they make known by this charter that of all the rights which appertain to their lordship, both in market and in street, within the byrg and without, they grant half to god and st. peter and the lord of the church; that those who are in the place may be the better provided, that they may thereby in some sort easier aid the brotherhood, and that this remembrance may be the firmer kept in mind, in the place, as long as god's service is done within the minster. and werfrith, the bishop, and his flock have appointed this service before the daily one, both during their lives and after, to sing at matins, vespers, and undernsong the psalm _de profundis_, during their lives, and after their death _laudate dominum_; and a mass for them whether alive or dead. aethelraed and aethelflaed proclaim that they have thus granted with goodwill to god and st. peter, under witness of aelfred the king and all the witan in mercia; ... as for ... wohcéapung,[ ] and all the customs from which any fine may arise, let the lord of the church have half of it, for god's sake and st. peter's, as it was arranged about the markets and the streets; and without the market-place let the bishop enjoy his rights, as of old our predecessors decreed and privileged. aethelread and aethelflaed did this by witness of aelfred the king, and by witness of those witan of the mercians whose names stand written hereafter, and in the name of god almighty they abjure all their successors never to diminish these alms which they have granted to the church for god's love and st. peter's. kemble, _codex diplomaticus_, no. . _saxons in england_, i. . [ ] fine for buying or selling contrary to the rules of the market. . _grant by edward of wessex, son of king alfred, to the church of winchester of taunton market._ i edward, who by divine and indulgent clemency am king of the anglo-saxons, ... consent of my magnates whose names are written below, ... grant for ever the market of the town of taunton, which in english is called _thaes tunes cyping_, ... to the holy church of god in the city of winchester, ... without limitation or impediment and with all easements.[ ] kemble, _codex diplomaticus_, no. . [ ] services or conveniences, yielding no direct profit, which a holder of property rights had in respect of his neighbours, _e.g._, right of way, lights. . _confirmation of edward's grant by edgar._ here is made known in this writing how king edgar renewed the liberty of taunton, for the holy trinity and st. peter and st. paul, to the episcopal see of winchester, as king edward had before freed it, ...; and let the town's market and the produce of the town-dues go to the holy place, as they did before, in the days of my forefathers, and were levied for bishop aelfeah and every one of those who enjoyed the land. whoever will increase this liberty, may god increase his prosperity in a long life here and in eternity. but if any, through audacity and the instigation of the devil and his limbs, will violate this liberty or pervert it to another, unless ere his departure hence he make reparation, be he with malediction cut off from the communion of our lord and all his saints, and ever be tormented in hell torture, with judas who was christ's betrayer. thorpe, _diplomatarium anglicium aevi saxonici_, . _circa - . law of edward and guthrum._ if any man engage in sunday marketing, let him forfeit the chattel, and twelve ores among the danes, and thirty shillings among the english. thorpe, _ancient laws and institutes_, . _circa . charter of canute._ we admonish that men keep sunday's festival with all their might, and observe it from saturday's noon to monday's dawning; and no man be so bold that he either go to market or seek any court on that holy day. stubbs, _select charters_, . _n.b.--these latter enactments were chiefly distinguished by their breach, for throughout the middle ages english markets were frequently held on sunday. they were probably abortive attempts on the part of pious legislators to end a custom which seemed to them ungodly._ effect of the conquest. in domesday book there is evidence of a considerable number of markets which had existed in england under edward the confessor, and which usually yielded to their holders an annual profit of from s. to s., in those days large sums of money. new markets were in some cases established by the norman lords who acquired english lands, and they tended to disorganise the market economy. . _the ruin of the bishop's market at st. germans._ the bishop has a lordship called st. germans. in that lordship, on the day on which king edward lived and died, there was a market held on sunday. and now it is made nothing by the market set up close at hand by the count of mortain in his castle, on the same day. _exon. domesday_ (rec. com.), , . . _necessity to change the day of the market at hoxne in suffolk._ ailmarus, the bishop, held hoxne in the time of king edward.... in this manor there was a market in the time of king edward and afterwards. william the king came, and the market was held on sunday. and william malet made his castle at eye; and on the same day on which there was a market in the bishop's manor, william malet made another market in his castle, and that so much to the detriment of the bishop's market that this was of little worth. now therefore it is held on friday, but the market of eye still takes place on sunday. _domesday_ (rec. com.), ii. . . _abolition of launceston market._ the canons of st. stephen hold launceston. thence the count of mortain has now taken a market, which was situated there in the days of king edward, and which was worth s. _domesday_ (rec. com.), i. b. it appears always to have been the intention of the government that markets and fairs should be held only in the stronger places of the country, where the just and peaceful transaction of business could be secured. such a situation was in the later middle ages the rule, but that in an early period it was not universal appears from the existence of legislation on the subject. - . _law of william the conqueror._ we forbid that any market or fair be held or suffered except in the cities of our realm and in the walled boroughs and in castles and in the safest places, where the customs of our realm, and our common right, and the dues of our crown, which were constituted by our good predecessors, cannot suffer loss nor fraud nor violation; for we will that all things be done with right forms and openly, and in accordance with judgment and with justice. thorpe, _ancient laws and institutes_, . new creations. . _grant of a market and fair to william of lancaster._ the king to the sheriff of westmoreland greeting. know that we have granted to our beloved and faithful william of lancaster that we have every week a market at his manor of barton on thursday, and that he have a fair there every year to last two days, the vigil and the feastday of all saints. and therefore we command you to cause that the said william have the market and fair according to the tenor of our charter which he has. _cal. rot. lit. claus._ (rec. com.), i. . . _grant of a market to the men of beer hackett._ the king to the sheriff of dorset greeting. know that we have granted to our men of beer that they have a market at beer every week on wednesday, so that it be not to the injury of neighbouring markets. and therefore we command you to cause them thus to have that market. _cal. rot. lit. claus._ (rec. com.), i. . . _creation of a royal fair having for three years special privileges._ mandate to the sheriff of oxford that he cause a fair to be at wallingford every year to last for four days, for friday in pentecost week and the three following days, and that that fair be free and quit of toll and all customs which pertain to such fairs for three years. given by the lord king at oxford on the th day of march. _cal. rot. lit. claus._ (rec. com.), i. . a fair or market was sometimes bought from the crown. . _remission of the price of the right to hold a market and fair._ the king to the barons of the exchequer greeting. know that for god's sake we have pardoned the abbot of hale the palfrey by which he made fine to us for having a market every week on wednesday at hale, and a fair every year lasting for two days, the eve and the feastday of st. dennis, that thus he may make two chalices in his abbey. _cal. rot. lit. claus._ (rec. com.), . . _to the sheriff of hereford._ order to supersede entirely the levying of marks from miles pychard, for the fee of a charter of fair and market granted in the twenty-third year of the reign, as miles paid this sum into the wardrobe by the hands of john de drokenesforde, keeper thereof. _cal. of close_, - , . _a fair which was farmed._ . to the treasurer and barons of the exchequer. order to cause william de pynlande, clerk, to be discharged of s. yearly for the fair of lopen in somerset, ... the king having committed the fair to gilbert talebot for the term of twenty years. _cal. of close_, - , . some precautions were taken that new markets and fairs should not be established where they would damage those which already existed. a saving clause to this end was usually inserted in the grants. . _grant of a market at wilton._ the king to the sheriff of hereford greeting. know that we have granted to henry de longchamp that he have a market at wilton every tuesday, so that it be not to the injury of neighbouring markets. and therefore we command you to cause that he hold it, and to cause this to be proclaimed throughout your bailiwick. _cal. rot. lit. claus._ (rec. com.), i. . _provision against encroaching markets._ . the king to the sheriff of lincoln greeting. because we granted to our beloved thomas of muleton a market to be held at flete every week on sunday, before we granted to fulk of oyri his market at gedney on the same day: we will that the said thomas stand and hold as we granted to him, and that fulk's market be on another day. and therefore we command you that you cause this to be done. _cal. rot. lit. claus._ (rec. com.), i. . . the king to the sheriff of oxford greeting. we command you that the market of crowmarsh, which is held to the injury of our market at wallingford, and which by our precept was forbidden to be held for one turn, be prohibited and entirely abolished. _cal. rot. lit. claus._ (rec. com.), i. . . the king to the sheriff of somerset greeting. we have heard that a market has been newly established without warrant at wechat to the detriment of the market of dunster. and therefore we command you that if so it be, then without delay you cause such market to be forbidden, so that for the future no market be there held to the detriment of the market of dunster. _cal. rot. lit. claus._ (rec. com.), i. b. market-places. markets and fairs were held sometimes in open and outlying places, as at smithfield; but more frequently in central parts of their towns--in graveyards, in the market-places of which many survive, and in the streets. the last case has named streets in many english towns "cheap" or "cheapside," for "cheap" meant "market." . the king to the mayor and bailiffs of lincoln greeting. we command you that on our behalf you cause to be forbidden that any market be held in future at lincoln in the graveyards, but that the markets be held in the streets of that city, where best and most adequately you shall provide that they be. _cal. rot. lit. claus._ (rec. com.), i. . . the king has granted to hamo de crevecquer that the market, which has been used to be held every week on sunday at brenchley in the graveyard of the church, be held henceforth on the land of hamo of brenchley, and that he and his heirs have there every year a fair to last three days, the vigil, the day and the morrow of the feast of all saints. and the sheriff of kent is commanded to cause that market and the fair to be proclaimed, and to be held as aforesaid. _cal. of close_, - , . . the king has granted to the prior and the brethren of the bridge of lechlade that they have for ever at lechlade bridge every year a fair, to last for five days, the eve and the feastday of the decollation of st. john the baptist and the three following days. _cal. of close_, - , . . the king has conceded to henry, abbot of st. edmund, that he and his successors have yearly for ever two fairs in the suburb of the town of (bury) st. edmunds, namely one outside the north gate, outside the town, beside the hospital of st. saviour, to last for three days, the eve, the day, and the morrow of the feast of the transfiguration of the lord; and another outside the south gate of the town, likewise to last for three days, the eve, the day, and the morrow of the feast of the translation of st. edmund: unless such fairs be to the injury of neighbouring fairs. and the sheriff is commanded to cause this charter to be read in full county court, and these fairs to be proclaimed and held. _cal. of close_, - , . encroachments on market-places were not lawful without special licence. . _foundation of the priory of st. bartholomew on part of smithfield market-place by rahere, first prior._ since the place godly to him (rahere) shown was contained within the king's market, of the which it was not lawful to princes or other lords, of their proper authority, anything to diminish, neither yet to so solemn an obsequy to depute: therefore, using ... men's counsel, in opportune time he addressed him to the king, and before him, and the bishop richard (de belmeis, bishop of london) being present, the which he had made to him favourable before, effectually expressed his business, and that he might lawfully bring his purpose to effect meekly besought. and nigh him was he (st. bartholomew) in whose hand it was, to what he would the king's heart to incline, and ineffectual these prayers might not be, whose author is the apostle, whose gracious hearer was god: his word therefore was pleasant and acceptable in the king's eye. and when he had weighed the good will of the man prudently, as he was witty, he granted to the petitioner his kingly favour, benignly giving authority to execute his purpose. and he, having the title of the desired possession, of the king's majesty, was right glad. _book of the foundation of the church of st. bartholomew, london._ original latin version (cotton ms., vesp., b. ix., fols. - ), written - . old english version written about and edited by norman page. in the greater markets particular places were assigned to the sellers of particular wares. _ancient regulation of oxford market renewed in ._ the sellers of straw, with their horses and carts that bring it, shall stand between east gate and all saints' church, in the middle of the king's highway. the sellers of wood in carts shall stand between shydyerd street and the tenement sometime of john maidstone.... the sellers of timber shall stand between the tenement which is called st. george's hall and st. edward's lane.... the sellers of hogs and pigs shall stand between the churches of st. mary and all saints and on the north side of the street. the ale or beer shall stand between st. edward's lane and the tenement sometime of alice de lewbury on the south side of the king's highway. the sellers of earthen pots and coals shall stand between the said lane of st. edward and the tenement sometime of john hampton ... and from that place upward. the sellers of gloves and whittawyers shall stand between all saints' church and the tenement which was sometime john the goldsmith's.... the sellers of furs (? monianiorum) and linendrapers and langdrapers shall stand from the tenement which was john the goldsmith's to the tenement of the abbot of osney, in the corner, which john smith sometime inhabited. the bakers selling bread called tutesyn shall stand between the shop which nicholas the spicer now holdeth and the tenement which john coyntroyer holdeth. the foreign[ ] sellers of fish and those that are not free or of the gild shall stand on market days behind the said sellers of bread, towards the middle of the street. the foreign or country poulterers shall stand between mauger hall and the tenement called somenois inn.... the sellers of white bread shall stand on each side of quatervois, from the north head thereof toward the south. the tanners shall stand between somenois inn and quatervois. the sellers of cheese, eggs, milk, beans, new peas, and butter, shall stand on quatervois corner on each side of the way towards the bailly. the sellers of hay and grass at the pillory. the sellers of rushes and brooms opposite to the old drapery. the sellers of corn shall stand between north gate and mauger hall. the fruiterers ... shall stand from guildhall down towards knap hall. the sellers of herbs ... shall stand from knap hall towards quatervois. the sellers of dishes ... between baptys inn and stokenrow, near to the palace. the sellers of fresh fish which are of the gild shall stand as they were formerly wont to do, under the palace of nicholas the spicer. the sellers of wood from the great jewry to the tables where fish is sold. the carts with thorns and bushes shall stand between north gate and drapery hall on the west side of the street. oxford hist. soc., _collectanea_, ii. (reprint of ms. of anthony wood). [ ] foreign here denotes all persons not inhabitants of oxford. smithfield horse and cattle market under henry ii. outside one of the gates there (in london), immediately in the suburb, is a certain field, smooth (smith) field in fact and name. every friday, unless it be a higher day of appointed solemnity, there is in it a famous show of noble horses for sale. earls, barons, and many citizens who are in town, come to see or buy. it is pleasant to see the steppers in quick trot going gently up and down, their feet on each side alternately rising and falling. on this side are the horses most fit for esquires, moving with harder pace yet swiftly, that lift and set down together, as it were, the opposite fore and hind feet; on that side colts of fine breed who, not yet well used to the bit, "altius incedunt, et mollia crura reponunt."[ ] in that part are the sumpter horses, powerful and spirited; here costly chargers elegant of form, noble of stature, with ears quickly tremulous, necks lifted, haunches plump. in their stepping the buyers first try for the gentler, then for the quicker pace, which is by the fore and the hind feet moving in pairs together. when a race is ready for such thunderers, and perhaps for others of like kind, powerful to carry, quick to run, a shout is raised, orders are given that the common horses stand apart. the boys who mount the wing-footed, by twos or threes, according to the match, prepare themselves for contest; skilled to rule horses, they restrain the mouths of the untrained with bitted bridles. for this chiefly they care, that no one should get before another in the course. the horses rise too in their own way to the struggle of the race; their limbs tremble, impatient of delay they cannot keep still in their place; at the sign given their limbs are stretched, they hurry on their course, are borne with stubborn speed. the riders contend for the love of praise and hope of victory, plunge spurs into the loose-reined horses, and urge them none the less with whips and shouts. you would think with heraclitus everything to be in motion, and the opinion to be wholly false of zeno, who said that there was no motion and no goal to be reached. in another part of the field stand by themselves the goods proper to rustics, implements of husbandry, swine with long flanks, cows with full udders, oxen of bulk immense, and woolly flocks. there stand the mares fit for plough, dray and cart, some big with foal, and others with their young colts closely following. william fitzstephen, _description of the most noble city of london_, prefixed to his _life of thomas à becket_. (translation by h. morley, prefatory to his edition of stow's _survey of london_.) [ ] "prance high, and rear their supple necks." from virgil's _georgics_. special privileges. in some cases the king gave his special protection to markets and fairs. . _charter of henry i. to the priory of st. bartholomew, smithfield._ i give my firm peace to those who come to the fair which is wont to be held on the feast of st. bartholomew in that place (smithfield), and to those who go thence; and i command that no royal servant implead them, nor exact from those who come customs, without the consent of the canons, on these three days, on the eve of the feast, on the feastday, and on its morrow. printed in dugdale, _monasticon_, vi. . _charter of henry ii. to the burghers of nottingham._ ... moreover all who come to the market of nottingham shall not suffer distraint, from friday evening until sunday evening, except for the king's farm. stubbs, _select charters_, . pied poudre courts. the term "pied poudre" or "pie poudre" is generally held to be derived from the french _pieds poudrés_, that is, dusty feet, and perhaps arose from the fact that the courts so called were frequented by chapmen with dusty feet, or less probably from the celerity of the judgments which were pronounced while the dust was on the feet of the litigants. the existence of such courts, in connection with fairs, was common to england and the continent. it is possible that in some cases and in an early period the business of fairs was not transacted in a special court. on the other hand, the distinctive feature of pied poudre courts, the method of trial by the persons best qualified to judge, the merchants, was akin to the spirit of english law. therefore it is probable that they were very early introduced into england. _definition of pied poudre courts._ divers fairs be holden and kept in this realm, some by prescription allowed before justices in eyre, and some by the grant of our lord the king that now is, and some by the grant of his progenitors and predecessors; and to every of the same fairs is of right pertaining courts of pipowders, to minister in the same due justice in his behalf; in which court it hath been all times accustomed, that every person coming to the same fairs, should have lawful remedy of all manner of contracts, trespasses, covenants, debts, and other deeds made or done within any of the same fair, and within the jurisdiction of the same, and to be tried by merchants being of the same fair. _statute, edward iv._, cap. . the manner of holding a pied poudre court, sometimes called _riding the fair_. . _award between the barons of the (cinque) ports and the men of great yarmouth._ with regard to the claim of the said barons to have at yarmouth royal justice and the keeping of the king's peace in time of the fair lasting for forty days, they are to have the keeping of the king's peace and to do royal justice, namely during the fair they are to have four serjeants, of whom one shall carry the king's banner, and another sound a horn to assemble the people and to be better heard, and two shall carry wands for keeping the king's peace, and this office they shall do on horse-back if they so wish. the bailiffs of the ports together with the provost of yarmouth are to make attachments and plead pleas and determine plaints during the fair, according to law merchant, and the amercements and the profits of the people of the ports are to remain to the barons of the ports, at the time of the fair, and the profits and amercements of all others who are not of the ports to remain to the king by the bailiffs of yarmouth. the aforesaid bailiffs of the barons of the ports together with the provost of yarmouth are to have the keeping of the prison of yarmouth during the fair, and if any prisoner be taken for so grave a trespass that it cannot be determined by them in time of fair, by merchant law, nor the prisons delivered, such persons to remain in the prison of yarmouth until the coming of the justices. _cal. of pat._, - , . the court of pied poudre is specified in later grants of fairs. . _charter of edward iv. to the city of london._ we have ... granted to the ... mayor and commonalty and citizens, and their successors for ever, that they shall and may have yearly one fair in the town aforesaid (southwark) for three days, that is to say the seventh, eighth and ninth days of september; to be holden together with a court of pie-powder, and with all liberties and free customs to such fair appertaining; and that they may have and hold there at their said courts, before their said ministers or deputy, the said three days, from day to day and hour to hour, from time to time, all occasions, plaints and pleas of a court of pie-powder, together with all summons, attachments, arrests, issues, fines, redemptions and commodities, and other rights whatsoever, to the same court of pie-powder any way pertaining. birch, _charters of city of london_, . the londoners could hold their own pied poudre courts in all fairs of england. . _charter of edward iii. to the city of london._ and forasmuch as the citizens, in all good fairs of england, were wont to have among themselves keepers to hold the pleas touching the citizens of the said city assembling at the said fairs: we will and grant, as much as in us is, that the same citizens may have suchlike keepers, to hold such pleas of their covenants, as of ancient time they had, except the pleas of land and crown. birch, _charters of city of london_, . . to all stewards, bailiffs, and officers of the fair of st. botolph and other faithful of christ to whom the present letters shall come, henry le galeys, mayor of the city of london, as well as the whole commune send greeting. know ye that we have made and constituted our beloved in christ elyas russel, john de armenters, william de paris and william de mareys, our wardens and attorneys at the present fair of st. botolph, to demand and claim and exact all our citizens who are for any cause arrested or impleaded in any of your courts, and for executing full justice in all plaints against them according to the law merchant, ratifying and holding good anything they or any one of them may do in the premises, and in all other things which they or any one of them shall deem to affect in any way the liberties of the city and our citizens. in witness whereof we have set our common seal to these presents. london, sunday the feast of st. margaret the virgin, edward i. sharpe, _cal. letter books of corporation_, b. . profits. besides fines the _tolls_ were the most general source of profit. they were duties which the tenant of a market might exact on goods brought into the market and sold there. . _statute against exorbitant tolls._ touching them that take outrageous toll, contrary to the common custom of the realm, in market towns, it is provided that if any do so in the king's town, which is let in fee-farm, the king shall seize into his own hand the franchise of the market; and if it be another's town, and the same be done by the lord of the town, the king shall do in like manner; and if it be done by a bailiff or any mean officer, without the commandment of his lord, he shall restore to the plaintiff as much more for the outrageous taking as he had of him, if he had carried away his toll, and shall have forty days' imprisonment. _statute, edward i._, cap. . tolls were not necessarily levied. in later mediæval times it was held illegal for the holder of a market to exact them unless he could prove his prescriptive right to do so, or unless, in the case of a market erected by a charter, such right had been explicitly granted. . because it has been certified to the king, by an enquiry made in accordance with his precept, that in the fair of shalford, which is held there every year on the feast of the assumption of blessed mary, it has never been customary to take toll or custom, except at the time when john of gatesden was sheriff of surrey, who of his own will ruled that toll should there be taken: therefore the sheriff of surrey is commanded that he take no custom in that fair nor suffer it to be taken, and that he cause public proclamation and prohibition to be made, that in future none take toll on the occasion of that fair. _cal. of close_, - , . stallkeepers made payments called _stallage_ for the sites they occupied to the holder of the market or fair. . the profits of the bailey of lincoln, to wit of vacant plots..., and stallage in the said vacant plots in the times of fairs and markets. _cal. of close_, - , . the analogous payment of _piccage_ was for the breaking of the ground in order to erect stalls. . _grant of southwark fair to the city of london._ ... the mayor and commonalty and citizens, and their successors, shall and may, from henceforth for ever, have, hold, enjoy and use ... tolls, stallages, piccages. birch, _charters of city of london_, . a duty called _scavage_ or _shewage_ was exacted from strangers who sold in the fairs. i have heard also that our townsmen (of oxford) in their fair, which they keep at allhallowtide, do exact of strangers a custom for opening and shewing their wares, vendible, &c., which is called scavage or shewage. oxford historical society, _charter of henry ii. to the citizens of oxford._, ii. (from twyne's mss. in the bodleian). in it was rendered illegal, except in the case of london, to take scavage from denizens, otherwise from subjects of the king who were of alien birth, so long as they sold goods on which due customs had already been paid. . be it therefore ordained ... that if any mayor, sheriff, bailiff, or other officer in any city, borough or town within this realm, take or levy any custom called scavage, otherwise called shewage, of any merchant denizen, or of any other of the king's subjects denizens, of or for any manner of merchandise to our sovereign lord the king before truly customed, that is brought or conveyed by land or water, to be uttered and sold in any city, borough, or town in this land, ... that then every mayor, sheriff, bailiff, or other officer, distraining, levying, or taking any such scavage, shall forfeit for every time he so offendeth £ , the one moiety thereof to our sovereign lord the king, and the other moiety thereof to the party in that behalf aggrieved, or to any other that first sueth in that party by action of debt in any shire within this realm to be sued.... provided always that the mayor, sheriffs, and commonalty of the city of london, and every of them, shall have and take all such sums of money for the said scavage, and of every person denizen, as by our sovereign lord the king and his honourable council shall be determined to be the right and title of the said mayor, sheriffs, and commonalty of the said city of london, or any of them. _statute, henry vii._, cap. . certain citizens and burghers, who had the privilege of free trade in england or throughout the king's dominions, were exempt from paying tolls or other customs. _charter of henry i. to the citizens of london._ ... let all the men of london be quit and free, and their goods, both throughout england and in the seaports, of toll and passage[ ] and lastage[ ] and all other customs. stubbs, _select charters_, . [ ] passage was probably the due payable for the use of ferries. [ ] the most probable explanation of lastage is that it was the due payable for the right of freely carrying away goods bought in a market. . the mayor and aldermen of the city of london to the abbot and bailiffs and good folk of the town of colchester. desiring them to restore to william dykeman, roger streit, william fromond, and henry loughton, citizens of london, the distress they had taken from their merchandise for piccage at colchester fair; and to cease in future to take custom of citizens of london, inasmuch as they are and ought to be quit of piccage, and of all manner of custom throughout the king's dominion, by charter granted to them by the king's ancestors. the lord have them ever in his keeping. london. th june, edward iii. sharpe, _cal. letters of city of london_, . _charter of henry ii. to the citizens of oxford._ ... i have granted to them moreover that they be quit of toll and passage and every custom throughout england and normandy, on earth, on water and on the seashore, by land and by strand. stubbs, _select charters_, . . _charter of richard i. to the citizens of winchester._ ... this also we have granted that the citizens of winchester of the merchant gild be quit of toll and lastage and pontage[ ] in fairs and outside them, and in the seaports of all our lands, on this side the seas and beyond them. stubbs, _select charters_, . [ ] pontage was a due payable for crossing bridges. . _charter of richard i. to the citizens of lincoln._ ... this too we have granted that all citizens of lincoln be quit of toll and lastage throughout all england and in the seaports. stubbs, _select charters_, . . _charter of john to the citizens of york confirming a grant by richard i._ ... know moreover that we have granted and by this charter have confirmed to our citizens of york quittance of any toll, lastage, wrec,[ ] pontage, passage, or trespass, and of all customs, throughout england and normandy and aquitaine and anjou and poitou. wherefore we will and straitly command that they be thereof quit, and we forbid that any disturb them in the matter, on pain of the forfeiture of £ , as is reasonably testified in the charter of our brother richard. stubbs, _select charters_, . [ ] the liability of shipwrecked goods to be forfeit to the king, or the local holder, other than the king, of the right of wreck. _the great value of the market of retford._ . the king to the justices in eyre in county nottingham. order not to molest or aggrieve the men of the town of retford before them in eyre for holding a market on saturday in every week in that town, as the king has granted that they may hold a market there every week on the said day during the eyre aforesaid, notwithstanding the proclamation made by the justices according to custom that no market shall be held in the county during the eyre, the men having shewn to the king that they hold the town of him at fee-ferm, and he has assigned the ferm to queen isabella for her life, and the greatest aid they have towards levying the ferm comes from the profit of the said market, and they have prayed the king that they may hold the fair notwithstanding the said proclamation, and the king accedes to their supplication for the reason aforesaid, and because of the distance of the town of nottingham. _cal. of close_, - , . pre-emption and prisage. the king exercised certain rights of pre-emption, of buying articles before they were offered for sale in the open market, and of prisage, of taking from the sellers without payment certain articles for his own use. . the king to the sheriff of lincoln. we command you that you acquit in the fair of st. botolph all the great falcons which henry de hauvill and hugh de hauvill bought for our use in that fair, ... and moreover five hawks which they bought there for our use. _cal. rot. lit. claus._ (rec. com.), i. . . the king to the mayor of lynn greeting. we command you that you satisfy the merchants of the fair of lynn as to the merchandise, namely, wax and pepper and cumin, which our bailiffs took in that fair for our use, and we shall cause payment to be made to you in london after the close of the said fair. _cal. rot. lit. claus._ (rec. com.), i. . . it was provided at kennington before the king and his council, and granted by the king, that his bailiffs who are sent to fairs and elsewhere to buy wine and cloths and other merchandise for the king's use, shall take for his use no more than he have need of, and no more than shall be stated in the king's letters made for them as to the matter, nor anything for which they have not as warrant a royal brief. and when they come to fairs they shall take the wares and merchandise for which they have been sent at once and without long delay, lest any merchants be unjustly burdened by them, as formerly they have been burdened. and such bailiffs shall have letters so that four legal merchants of each fair, in the faith which binds them to god and the king, reasonably impose prices on the merchandise, in accordance with the diverse kinds of merchandise which the bailiffs have to buy. _cal. of close_, - , . . _petition of the barons in the parliament at oxford._ the earls and barons petition ... as to the prises of the lord king in fairs and markets and cities, that those who are assigned to take the said prises take them reasonably, as much, that is to say, as pertains to the uses of the lord king; in which matter they complain that the said takers seize twice or thrice the amount which they deliver to the king's uses, and keep the rest, forsooth, for their own needs and the needs of their friends, and sell thereof a portion. stubbs, _select charters_, . . a court of our lord the king, holden before henry bartone, mayor, and the aldermen, in the guild-hall of london, on tuesday, the th day of february.... william redhede of barnet was taken and attached, for that when one hugh morys, maltman, on monday the th day of february, ... brought here to the city of london four bushels of wheat, and exposed them for sale in common and open market, at the market of graschurch (gracechurch) in the parish of st. benedict graschurch in the city aforesaid, the said william there falsely and fraudulently pretended that he was a taker and purveyor of such victuals, as well for the household of our said lord the king as for the victualling of his town of harfleur; and so, under feigned colour of his alleged office, would have had the wheat aforesaid taken and carried away, had he not been warily prevented from so doing by the constables and reputable men of the parish aforesaid, and other persons then in the market; in contempt of our lord the king, and to the grievous loss and in deceit of the commonalty of the city aforesaid; and especially of the said market and of other markets in the city, seeing that poor persons, who bring wheat and other victuals to the city aforesaid, do not dare to come, by land or by water, through fear of the multitude of pretended purveyors and takers who resort thither from every side. ... and thereupon, by the said mayor and aldermen, to the end that others might in future have a dread of committing such crimes, it was adjudged that the same william redhede should, upon the three market days then next ensuing, be taken each day from the prison of newgate to the market called le cornmarket opposite to the friars minors (greyfriars, whose house was on the site of christ's hospital), and there the course of the judgement aforesaid was to be proclaimed; and after that he was to be taken through the middle of the high street of cheap to the pillory on cornhill, and upon that he was to be placed on each of those three days, there to stand for one hour each day, the reason for such sentence being then and there publicly proclaimed. and after that he was to be taken from thence through the middle of the high street of cornhill to the market of graschurch aforesaid, where like proclamation was to be made, and from thence back again to prison. riley, _memorials of london_, . market houses. already in the early thirteenth century the greater markets and fairs were held partly under cover. . the king to the sheriff of gloucester greeting. we command you that you do not suffer the market which hitherto has been held at maurice de gant's manor of randwick, and which is to the injury of our town and market of bristol, and of other neighbouring markets, as we have surely learnt. and that you cause the houses built there on account of the market to be removed without delay. so that neither ships come thither nor a market is there held otherwise than was done in the time of the lord john, king, our father. _cal. rot. lit. claus._ (rec. com.), i. . . to the bailiff of sandwich. order to cause a house of the king in that town constructed for the king's fair there ... to be repaired by the view and testimony of john de hoo and thomas de shelvyng. _cal. of close_, - , . . at a congregation of the mayor and aldermen, holden on the friday next before the feast of st. george the martyr in the th year of the reign of king edward iii., it was ordered for the common advantage of all the citizens dwelling in the city (of london), and of others resorting to the same ... that all foreign[ ] poulterers bringing poultry to the city should take it to the leaden hall, and sell it there, between matins and the hour of prime, to the reputable men of the city and their servants for their own eating; and after the hour of prime the rest of their poultry that should remain unsold they might sell to cooks, regratresses (retail saleswomen), and such other persons as they might please; it being understood that they were to take no portion of their poultry out of the market to their hostels (lodgings) on pain of losing the same. riley, _memorials of london_, . [ ] poulterers other than londoners. enforcement of regularity. . mandate to the sheriff of hampshire that he cause strict proclamation and prohibition to be made in the town of winchester, that no merchant of wool, cloths, and hides, do any business in wool, hides and cloths in the said town of winchester, after the established term beyond which the fair of st. giles is not wont to last. _cal. of close_, - , . . mandate to the bailiffs of worcester that they do not permit the fair and drapery of worcester to be held on the feast of the nativity of blessed mary elsewhere than in that place in which it was held in the time of the lord john, father of the lord henry, king. _cal. rot. lit. claus._ (rec. com.), i. . . on thursday next before the feast of pentecost, in the th year of the reign of king edward, it was ordered in the presence of sir john le bretun, warden of the city of london, and certain of the aldermen, that by reason of the murders and strifes arising therefrom between persons known and unknown, the gathering together of thieves in the market, and of cutpurses and other misdoers against the peace of our lord the king, in a certain market which had been lately held after dinner in soper lane (on the site of queen street, cheapside), and which was called _the neue faire_; the same should from thenceforth be abolished, and not again be held, on pain of losing the wares both bought and sold there; the same market having been established by strangers, foreigners and beggars, dwelling three or four leagues from london. riley, _memorials of london_, . . to the sheriff of lincoln. order to cause proclamation to be made that all persons having fairs by charters of the king or of his progenitors or otherwise, shall cause the fairs to be held in the manner and form and on the days and times according to the tenor of the charters, or as they ought to do according to the title, to wit from time out of mind, and upon no other days and times, and to summon all persons claiming to have fairs to be before the king's council at westminster. _cal. of close_, - , . . it is established that it shall be commanded to all the sheriffs of england and elsewhere, where need shall require, to cry and publish within liberties and without that all lords which have fairs, be it for yielding certain farm to the king for the same or otherwise, shall hold the same for the time that they ought to hold them and no longer: that is to say such as have them by the king's charter granted them, for the time limited by the said charters; and also they that have them without charter, for the time that they ought to hold them of right. and that every lord at the beginning of his fair shall there do, cry and publish how long the fair shall endure, to the intent that merchants shall not be at the same fairs over the time so published, upon pain to be grievously punished before the king. nor the said lords shall not hold them over the due time upon pain to seize the fairs into the king's hands, there to remain until they have made a fine to the king for the offence, after it be duly found that the lords held the same fairs longer than they ought, or that the merchants have sitten above the time so published. _statute, edward iii._, cap. . . the ordinance underwritten was publicly proclaimed in full market in westchepe (cheapside), and cornhulle (cornhill) in london, on thursday the th day of march in the th year. as from of old it has been the custom to hold in the city on every feastday two markets, called _evechepynges_, one in westchepe and the other on cornhulle; that is to say the one in westchepe between the corner of the lane called st. lawrence lane and a house called the cage. so always that the said lane be not obstructed by the people of the said market, who are not to stand near to the shops there for the sale of divers wares that in such shops are wont to be sold. and that too by daylight only, between the first bell rung and the second, for the said markets ordained. and now on the th day of march ... william staundone, the mayor, and the aldermen of the said city, have been given to understand that divers persons at night and by candlelight do sell in the common hostels there and in other places, in secret, divers wares that have been larcenously pilfered and some falsely wrought and some that are old as being new; and that other persons do there practise the sin of harlotry, under colour of the sale of their said wares, to the very great damage and scandal of good and honest folks of the said city. therefore the said mayor and aldermen by wise counsel and with good deliberation between them had, for the honour of the city and in order to put the said markets under good control and governance, have ordained that from henceforth on every such market night each of the said two bells shall be rung by the beadle of the ward where it is hung, one hour before sunset and then again half an hour after sunset. at which second ringing all the people shall depart from the market with their wares, on pain of forfeiture to the chamber of all such wares as shall, after the second bell rung, be found in the same; as to the which the beadle if he be acting, or officer by the chamber of the guildhall thereunto assigned, shall have twopence in every shilling for his trouble in taking them. and that no one shall sell in common hostels any wares that in the said market are wont to be sold, or anywhere else within the said city or in the suburbs thereof, but only in their own shops and in the places and at the days and hours aforesaid, on pain of forfeiture to the use of the said chamber of all the wares that shall otherwise be sold. riley, _memorials of london_, . . be it remembered that on the monday next before the feast of st. katherine the virgin in the th year, the pork and beef of john perer, john esmar, and reynald ate watre, alleged to be foreign[ ] butchers, were seized because that they against the custom of the city (of london), had exposed the said meat for sale at les stokkes (the stocks market on the site of the mansion house), after curfew rung at st. martin's-le-grand: whereas it is enacted that no foreign butcher standing with his meat at the stalls aforesaid shall cut any meat after none rung at st. paul's; and that as to all the meat which he has cut before none rung he is to expose the same for sale up to the hour of vespers, and to sell it without keeping any back or carrying any away. riley, _memorials of london_, . [ ] see previous footnote. supervision of sales. the quality of wares and the prices asked for them were supervised, and fair dealing was enforced, by officers. sometimes, as at oxford, these were specially appointed for the discharge of their duties. in london they were the masters or wardens of the crafts, otherwise the associations of members of one trade. when many of the crafts had developed into the livery companies the officials of the latter inherited the inspectorial functions of the wardens. . ordinance by the mayor and aldermen of london as to markets of west cheap and cornhill. ... that the masters or those assigned thereto of each trade of which the wares are brought to the said markets shall have power, together with the beadle of the ward or other officer thereto assigned, to survey, assay and stop all false and defective wares, in the markets aforesaid or elsewhere exposed for sale, and to present the same to the chamberlain to be there adjudged upon as to whether they are forfeitable or not; and further to arrest to the use of the said chamber all other things and wares in hostels or other places exposed for sale against the form.... of the which forfeitures so by the said masters, or others thereto assigned, taken and adjudged as forfeited, the said masters or persons thereto assigned shall have one third part for their trouble. riley, _memorials of london_, . . _of the clerks of the market of oxford and of the fixing of prices._ the clerks of the market should be chosen of such as have experience of the prices which, for necessity or convenience, pertain to food and clothing, and of such as have knowledge, power and will faithfully and diligently to fill the office enjoined on them. especially it behoves them to see that no fraud is committed as regards the measures and weights and quality of all foodstuffs and of all things which belong to clothing, and to observe the statutes and ordinances issued in this behoof; and since, for the most part, among these commodities, high prices greatly flourish, the clerk should summon to his aid the presidents of colleges and such others of the university as he knows to be fit for the business, and should consult with them as to what course can be taken to render the prices lower. oxford hist. soc., _collectanea_, ii. . . the assize[ ] of a tallowchandler is that he selleth salt, oatmeal, soap and other divers chaffer, that his weights and measures be assized[ ] and sealed and true beam. for when he buyeth a pound of tallow for an halfpenny, he shall sell a pound of candle for a penny, that is a farthing for the wick and the wax and another farthing for the workmanship. and right as tallow higheth and loweth, so he for to sell his candle. and if his stuff be not good, or any he lack of his weight, or any he sell not after the price of tallow, he to be amerced, the first time twelvepence, the second time twentypence, the third time fortypence, and to forfeit all that is forfeitable; and he to be judged according to the form of statutes. printed in strype's edition of stow's _cal. of close_, book v. . [ ] regulation. [ ] according to regulation. . john de causton, citizen of london, has shown the king, by petition before him and his council, that john dergayn, the late king's ulnager, in the eighth year of his reign, took five pieces of john's striped cloth of gaunt (ghent) outside his shop in boston fair, asserting that they were not of the assize, and that they were therefore forfeited to the late king, and delivered to ralph de stokes, then keeper of the king's wardrobe, and that it was afterward found, by enquiry made by the said king's order before the treasurer and barons of the exchequer, that the cloth was of the assize and ought not thus to be forfeited, and that the cloth was worth - / marks; ... and he has prayed the king to cause that sum to be allowed to him. _cal. of close_, - , . . on the th day of october ... john edmond of esthamme (east ham), cornmonger, of the county of essex, was brought before john lovekyn, mayor, and the aldermen at the guildhall, for that he had exposed for sale at grascherche (gracechurch) one quarter of oats in a sack, and had put a bushel of good oats at the mouth of the sack, all the rest therein being corn of worse quality and of no value, in deceit of the common people. being questioned as to which falsity, how he would acquit himself thereof, the same john did not gainsay the same. therefore it was adjudged that he should have the punishment of the pillory, to stand upon the same for one hour of the day. riley, _memorials of london_, . . on the th day of the month of november ... william cokke of hees (hayes) was taken because that on the same day he, the same william, carrying a sample of wheat in his hand, in the market within newgate in london followed one william, servant of robert de la launde, goldsmith, who wanted to buy wheat, from sack to sack, and said that such wheat as that he would not be able to buy at a lower price than pence; whereas on the same day and at that hour the same servant could have bought such wheat for pence. upon which the same william cokke being questioned, before the mayor, recorder, and certain of the aldermen, he acknowledged that he had done this to enhance the price of wheat, to the prejudice of all the people. it was therefore awarded by the said mayor and aldermen that the said william cokke should have the punishment of the pillory. riley, _memorials of london_, . - . to wye and to wychestre i went to the faire, with many menere marchandise as my maistre me hight,[ ] ne had the grace of guile ygo[ ] amonge my ware, it had be unsolde this sevene yeare, so me god helpe! _the vision of piers the plowman_, lines _et seq._ [ ] told. [ ] gone. foreign merchants. . mandate to the bailiffs of peter de dreux, count of brittany, in the fair of st. botolph, that every week, for so long as the fair lasts, they shall cause thrice to be proclaimed throughout that fair that no merchant bringing wine for sale to england, whether wine of gascony, of anjou, of oblenc (le blanc on the creuse), of auxerre, or of other place, shall after this fair of st. botolph bring to england any dolium of wine which contains less than it was wont to hold in the time of henry, richard and john, kings. _cal. of close_, - , . . the king to his bailiffs of yarmouth greeting. know that we have granted by our charter for us and our heirs to our beloved citizens of cologne that they may go freely to the fairs throughout our land, and buy and sell in the town of london and elsewhere, save for the liberty of our city of london. _cal. of close_, - , . . to william de brayboef, keeper of the priory of winchester. order to send to the king the marks which reyner de luk and his fellows, merchants of lucca, lent to william at the last fair of st. giles at winchester. _cal. of close_, - , . . the bailiffs of boston fair ... have arrested wool and other goods of taldus valoris and his fellows, merchants of the society of the bardi of florence, in the said fair. _cal. of close_, - , . . to john bek and philip de wylby. order to restore upon this present occasion to the merchants of douay in flanders their goods arrested by john and philip; for the king lately ordered john and philip to arrest the wool and goods of merchants of flanders in boston fair and at lynn and lincoln, yet it was not his intention that the goods of certain persons should be arrested, but that all goods and wares of flemings should be arrested at one and the same time everywhere in the realm, by reason of the debt which the countess of flanders owes to him and the merchants of the realm; and by reason of the neglect of the agreement between the king and countess; and the king did not then recollect his grant to the flemish merchants that they might safely come into the realm and stay until the feast of st. peter ad vincula last past. _cal. of close_, - , . . to the steward of the bishop of winchester, late keeper of the fair of winchester. order to cause to be delivered to robert de basing, citizen of london, two bales of cloth, which robert lately bought from the merchants of st. omer in the fair aforesaid, and which the steward caused to be arrested under pretext of the king's order to arrest the goods and wares of merchants of the power and lordship of the count d'artois; as robert de tybetot has become surety before the king for the said robert that he will answer to the king for the bales in the next parliament. _cal. of close_, - , . . to the sheriff of huntingdon. order not to arrest the goods of the men or merchants of mechlin in brabant, and not to molest them by virtue of any order to arrest goods of the men and merchants of the power of the duke of brabant, in the fair of st. ives or in his bailiwick, as the king learns that mechlin belongs to the count of hainault, holland and zeeland, and not to the duke of brabant. the like to the abbot of ramsey's bailiff of the fair of st. ives. _cal. of close_, - , . . to the bailiffs of great yarmouth and the collectors of customs there. order to suffer fishermen from flanders and elsewhere over sea, who shall come within the realm for taking herring of the present season and bringing them to yarmouth fair, to take with them to their own parts or elsewhere, without let, at their will, all the money they shall receive for the price of herrings brought thither and sold at the said fair, after paying the customs due thereupon, ... although lately the king caused proclamation to be made throughout the realm forbidding any man, under pain of forfeiture, to take or cause to be taken out of the realm gold or silver in money or otherwise: as, willing to shew favour to the said fishermen, the king has given them license under his protection to come within the realm, and take at sea what herring they may, receive money in gold for what they shall sell, and take the same with them whither they will, as they shall deem for their best advantage. _cal. of close_, - , . miscellaneous points of interest. _special organisation of citizens of york in boston fair._ . to the bailiffs of boston. order to permit the citizens of york to have, until otherwise ordered, their hanse[ ] and gild merchant in boston fair, as they ought to have them there and in times past have been wont to have them. _cal. of close_, - , . [ ] another word for gild. _cf._ the german hanseatic league. _dress of london women._ . it is provided and commanded that no woman of the city (of london) shall from henceforth go to market or in the king's highway, out of her house, with a hood furred with other than lambskin or rabbitskin, on pain of losing her hood to the use of the sheriffs; save only those ladies who wear furred capes, the hoods of which may have such linings as they may think proper. and this because that regratresses, nurses and other servants, and women of loose life, bedizen themselves and wear hoods furred with gros vair and minever, in guise of good ladies. riley, _memorials of london_, . _unlawfulness of bearing arms at fairs._ . it is shewn to the king on behalf of john wynter of norwich and thomas wynter of norwich, merchants, that they lately went with their goods and wares to the abbot's fair at reading, to trade there with the same and for no other purpose. and although they wore no armour save two single aketons, to wit one each, and that only by reason of the dangers of the road and not for the purpose of committing evil, the bailiffs nevertheless took and imprisoned them with their goods, and still detain them and their goods, by virtue of the ordinance of the late parliament at northampton that no one shall go armed in fairs or markets or elsewhere, under pain of imprisonment and loss of their arms, wherefore they have prayed the king to provide a remedy. the king therefore orders the bailiffs to release the said john and thomas and goods, upon their finding surety to have them before the king in three weeks from michaelmas. _cal. of close_, - , . _misadventure of some shrewsbury merchants travelling to a fair._ . to richard earl of arundel. whereas the king lately took into his protection the burgesses of shrewsbury so that they might be free to intend their affairs and to exercise their merchandise more safely, forbidding any to do them harm; and they have shewn to the king that whereas john de weston, richard biget, william son of roger de wythiford, and john son of yarvord le walssh, their fellow burgesses, lately wished to go to the town of la pole (welshpool) in wales to a fair there, to ply their merchandise, yevan ap griffith, the earl's yeoman, with other armed welshmen of the earl, took without cause the said john, richard, william and john, at cause in the welsh marches, without the earl's lordship, as they were going to la pole, and took them with their horses and other goods and chattels, to the value of £ , and brought them to the earl's castle of osewaldestre (oswestry), where they imprisoned them and where they are still detained. and although the burgesses have repeatedly requested the earl to deliver the aforesaid men and to restore their said goods and chattels, the earl has neglected to do anything in the matter; wherefore the burgesses have besought the king to provide a remedy. the king therefore orders the earl to deliver from prison the said john, richard, william and john without delay and to restore to them their horses, goods and chattels, or, if there be any reasonable cause why he should not do this, to be before the king and his council at the octaves of holy trinity to inform the king. _cal. of close_, - , . degeneration of fairs. in the seventeenth century and afterwards, certain fairs, notably those in and near london, had come to be little more than places of amusement, more or less disreputable. _bartholomew fair_ (in ). bartholomew fair begins on the twenty-fourth day of _august_, and is then of so vast an extent that it is contained in no less than four several parishes, namely christ church, great and little saint bartholomews, and saint sepulchres. hither resort people of all sorts, high and low, rich and poor, from cities, towns and countries; and of all sects, papists, atheists, anabaptists, and brownists, and of all conditions, good and bad, virtuous and vicious, knaves and fools, rogues and rascals. and now that we may the better take an exact survey of the whole fair, first let us enter into christ church cloisters, which are now hung so full of pictures that you would take that place, or rather mistake it, for saint _peters_ in _rome_; only this is the difference, those there are set up for worship, these here for sale.... let us now make a progress through smithfield which is the heart of the fair, where in my heart i think there are more motions in a day to be seen than are in a term in westminster to be heard. but whilst you take notice of the several motions there, take this caution along with you, let one eye watch narrowly that no one's hand makes a motion in your pocket, which is the next way to move you to impatience. the fair is full of gold and silver-drawers. just as lent is to the fishmonger so is bartholomew fair to the pickpocket; it is his high harvest which is never bad but when his cart goes up holborn.[ ] ... some of your cutpurses are in fee with cheating costermongers, who have a trick now and then to throw down a basket of refuse pears, which prove cloak-pears to those that shall lose their hats and cloaks in striving who shall gather fastest. they have many dainty baits to draw a bit, and if you be not vigilant you shall hardly escape their nets. fine fowlers they are, for every finger of theirs is a lime twig with which they catch dotterels.[ ] they are excellently well read in physiognomy; for they will know how strong you are in the purse by looking in your face, and for more certainty thereof they will follow you close, and never leave you till you draw your purse, or they for you, which they'll be sure to have if you look not to it though they kiss newgate for it. [ ] _i.e._, from newgate prison to tyburn gallows. [ ] literally a bird said to mimic gestures, idiomatically a foolish person. it is remarkable and worthy your observation to behold and hear the strange sights and confused noise in the fair. here a knave in a fool's coat with a trumpet sounding, or on a drum beating, invites you and would fain persuade you to see his puppets. there a rogue like a wild woodman, or in an antic-shape like an incubus, desires your company to view his motion; on the other side hocus pocus with three yards of tape or ribbon in's hand, shewing his art of legerdemain to the admiration and astonishment of a company of cockloaches.[ ] amongst these you shall see a gray goose-cap, as wise as the rest, with a "what do ye lack" in his mouth, stand in his booth shaking a rattle or scraping on a fiddle, with which children are so taken that they presently cry out for these fopperies. and all these together make such a distracted noise that you would think babel were not comparable to it. here there are also your gamesters in action: some turning of a whimsey, others throwing for pewter, who can quickly dissolve a round shilling into a three halfpenny saucer. long lane at this time looks very fair and puts out her best clothes with the wrong side outward, so turned for their better turning off. and cloth fair is now in great request; well fare the ale-houses there. yet better may a man fare, but at a dearer rate, in the pig-market, alias pasty-nook or pie-corner, where pigs are all hours of the day on the stalls piping hot, and would cry, if they could speak, "come eat me." ... unconscionable exactions, and excessive inflammations of reckonings, made that corner of the fair too hot for my company; therefore i resolved by myself to steer my course another way, and having once got out, not to come again in haste. [ ] simple fellows. now farewell to the fair, you who are wise, preserve your purses while you please your eyes. reprinted in hindley, _the old book collector's miscellany_, vol. iii. - . by her majesties permission. _this is to give notice to all gentlemen, ladies and others, that coming into_ may-fair,[ ] _the first_ booth _on the left hand, over against_ mr. pinckeman's booth; _during the usual time of the_ fair, _is to be seen a great collection of strange and wonderful rareties, all a-live from several parts of the world._ [ ] the london district of mayfair includes the site of this fair, and was named after it. _vivat regina._ _advertisement in a collection at the british museum._ . _at the great_ theatrical booth on the bowling-green behind the marshalsea, down mermaid-court next the queens arms tavern, during the time of southwark fair (which began the th instant and ends the st), will be presented that diverting droll, call'd _the true and ancient history of_ maudlin, _the merchants daughter of_ bristol, and _her constant lover_ antonio, who she followed into italy, disguising herself in man's habit; shewing the hardships she underwent by being shipwrecked on the coast of algier, where she met her lover, who was doom'd to be burnt at a stake by the king of that country, who fell in love with her and proffered her his crown, which she dispised, and chose rather to share the fate of her antonio than renounce the christian religion to embrace that of their imposter prophet mahomet. with the comical humours of roger, antonio's man. and variety of singing and dancing between the acts, by mr. sandham mrs. woodward and miss sandham. particularly, a new dialogue to be sung by mr. excell and mrs. fitzgerald. written by the author of _bacchus one day gaily striding_, etc., and a hornpipe by mr. taylor. to which will be added a new entertainment (never performed before) called the intriguing harlequin, or any wife better than none. with scenes, machines, and other decorations proper to the entertainment. _advertisement in a collection at the british museum._ greenwich fair (in - ). ... imagine yourself in an extremely dense crowd which swings you to and fro and in and out, and every way but the right one; add to this the screams of women, the shouts of boys, the clanging of gongs, the firing of pistols, the ringing of bells, the bellowing of speaking-trumpets, the squeaking of penny dittoes, the noise of a dozen bands with three drums in each, all playing different tunes at the same time, the hallooing of showmen, and an occasional roar from the wild beast shows; and you are in the very centre and heart of the fair. this immense booth, with the large stage in front, so brightly illuminated with variegated lamps and pots of burning fat, is "richardson's," where you have a melodrama (with three murders and a ghost), a pantomime, a comic song, an overture, and some incidental music, all done in five-and-twenty minutes. the company are now promenading outside in all the dignity of wigs, spangles, red ochre, and whitening.... the exhibitions next in popularity to these itinerant theatres are the travelling menageries, or, to speak more intelligibly, the "wild beast shows," where a military band in beef-eater's costume, with leopardskin caps, play incessantly, and where large highly coloured representations of tigers tearing men's heads open, and a lion being burnt with red hot irons to induce him to drop his victim, are hung up outside, by way of attracting visitors. ... the grandest and most numerously frequented booth in the whole fair however is "the crown and anchor," a temporary ballroom--we forget how many feet long--the price of admission to which is one shilling.... the dancing itself beggars description--every figure lasts about an hour, and the ladies bounce up and down the middle with a degree of spirit which is quite indescribable. as to the gentlemen they stamp their feet upon the ground every time "hands four round" begins, go down the middle and up again with cigars in their mouths and silk handkerchiefs in their hands, and whirl their partners round, nothing loth, scrambling and falling and knocking up against the other couples, until they are fairly tired out and can move no longer. dickens, _sketches by boz_. unwin brothers, limited, the gresham press, woking and london. note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) the knack of managing by lewis k. urquhart and herbert watson published by factory management and maintenance west nd street new york city, n. y. [illustration: a mcgraw-hill publication] west nd street new york city, n. y. i analysis someone once said--probably it was mr. schwab--that given the right organization it was no harder to manage the u. s. steel corporation than to operate a peanut stand. and mr. schwab ought to know, although no life-sized portrait of him all dressed up like a peanut vendor has ever been brought to our attention. however that may be, his statement is interesting--especially interesting because his appraisal of the job of managing very nearly approaches ours. in "the knack of managing," you see, much of the emphasis will be on the fact that the fundamental principles of management apply to every business alike. and if we may start out with the premise that managing mr. schwab's bethlehem steel company is not such a far cry from operating a pretzel plant or a furniture factory, our battle is already half won. the principles of management vary not at all, however different may be the mechanics of application. how often the editor, how often the equipment salesman, listens to that time-worn tale of woe: "my business is different. so-and-so can do that sort of thing. but i make gadgets--and your conveyors, your air conditioners or whatever it is you write about or sell, won't do me a bit of good." _of course_ his business is different--different in its individual characteristics, its financial, sales, production, labor problems. but they are only the clothes the business wears. they may differ from the clothes of another enterprise as widely as the frilly importation from the rue de la paix differs from the sleazy issue of the east side sweat shop. but underneath the clothes the artist knows there is the human body--and a study of anatomy is necessary before he can paint the picture. beneath the "clothes" of the business are the principles of management--the anatomy of management--the framework upon which the completed structure is built. doesn't it all boil down to something like the colonel's lady and judy o'grady? one, presumably, wore a brief peignoir with a paris label; the other, a substantial bungalow apron from a department store basement. but weren't they "sisters under the skin"? stripped of all the furbelows--the details of operation, of tools, of materials--the objectives of our steel master, our peanut vendor, our pretzel maker, our furniture manufacturer, are one and the same thing. their every-day job, in short, is to _get something well done with maximum dispatch and at minimum expense_. that's management's job. it goes for every type of enterprise; whether it involves the use of a million dollars' capital, or only ten cents' carfare--or a few minutes of a man's time. the "clothes" matter not at all. beneath them the fundamental steps in managing are identical. the basic knack of managing is the same. consider one of the simplest forms of business enterprise--the delivery of a message. the errand boy--if he's worth his salt and is really _managing_ his job--does in principle exactly what the general manager of the glass plant, the automobile factory, the textile mill, does when he comes face to face with _his_ problems. _in principle_, mind you. first--this is the errand boy managing his job--he settles in his mind exactly where he has to go. not just over to federal street--but to federal. in a word, he analyzes the business or the job to be done. analysis, then, is the first step. second--he figures out the shortest, most economical way to go there. in other words, he plans the doing of the job for the least expenditure. planning is the second step. third--shall he walk or shall he ride? shall he do the work himself? or shall he hire someone else to do it for him? his third step, you see, is organization. he organizes the handling of his work. the "right organization," said mr. schwab---- fourth--he must get service. there are other errand boys. there are elevator men, office boys to meet and get along with if he is to execute his errand with the greatest dispatch. now, you see, he's handling the help. the manager of the piano plant, the agent of the cotton mill, would call that phase of his job industrial relations. fifth--all the time he's planning, going and doing, he never loses sight of the final object of his errand. he never forgets he has a message, perhaps a bunch of securities, to deliver. he keeps his eye on the parcel he's carrying. he gets a receipt before he lets go of it. in other words, he supervises and cares for his business. the manager of the shoe shop, of the furniture factory, never forgets the final objective. after all, it's profit. +---------------------------+ | analyzing the job | +---------------------------+ /\ / \ / \ / \ +--------------+ +---------------+ | planning the | | organizing | | operations | | the work | +--------------+ +---------------+ \ / \ / \ / \/ +-------------------------+ | handling the help | +-------------------------+ | | +-----------------------------+ | supervising and conserving | | the business | +-----------------------------+ now look at the chart. it pictures the anatomy of management. the chinese say a picture is worth ten thousand words. and it would take a heap of writing to tell the story more completely, more simply than this picture. try hanging the "clothes" of your machine shop, your woodworking plant, your paper mill, on it. they fit, don't they? true, the chart is drawn from one of the most primitive tasks of management--the simple delivery of a message. but suppose the boy doesn't deliver the message himself, but has an assistant. won't it be necessary to go through exactly the same motions? suppose, instead of one message, there are _fifty_. fifty assistants will be necessary. will the job of managing vary a jot--or even a tittle? now substitute fifty _boxes_ for fifty _messages_. the boxes have to be shipped. the same processes of thought, the same principles of management, apply. if, instead of fifty boxes to be _shipped_, fifty machines are to be _manufactured_--or if instead of fifty machines it's fifty thousand, and a thousand men and a million dollars of capital are to be employed, every one of the five principles shown on the chart will be used. and every essential point in the management of the _business_ could be covered by those five fundamentals. now substitute ships or shoes or breakfast food for the machines we have been talking about, and it becomes clearer than ever that this business of managing recognizes no industrial fences. learn to manage a peanut stand and, in principle, you are well on the road to knowing how to handle the affairs of the u. s. steel corporation. five steps there are: ( ) analyze; ( ) plan; ( ) organize; ( ) handle; ( ) supervise. tackle any job on this basis and follow through. the chances that success will crown your efforts far outweigh the possibilities of failure. at least, approaching a job from these five successive angles should limit the causes of failure to circumstances quite beyond your control. * * * * * five principles of management, then. their skillful application to a business or to a job is the knack of managing. to do a real bang-up job of managing, whether carrying a message or directing a million-dollar business, the first step is: _don't make a single move until you've found out exactly what needs to be done._ but our first do turned out to be a don't. so let's restate it. _find out exactly what has to be done before you make a single move._ you've heard that before? and it doesn't mean a thing? neither did it mean a thing to a bright young man who was taken on as production manager in a shoe factory. the shoes were good. prices were right. business was booming. the factory was full of orders. but somehow or other shoes weren't getting shipped on time--or anything like on time. three to four weeks late came to be the customary thing. and customers were, needless to say, kicking like steers. so the bright young man was taken on to get things ironed out. he pitched in with vim and vigor. the first morning's mail brought a dozen complaints of slow deliveries. people were practically barefoot out in kansas and ohio. they were waiting for those shoes. "ha!" said the new production manager, "_nous verrons._" which means, even in english, "now, for what we are about to see, make us truly thankful." and he went away from there to see why those orders weren't out the door. he was out to prove something. and providence--rhode island--had supplied him with enough ammunition to shoot a manufacturing organization full of holes. each order was traced. one was in the shipping room. "what's holding this up?" he asked the shipping clerk. "haven't had time to ship it. and we got other shoes that have been waiting longer than those. it's a feast or a famine down here. some days we just can't get 'em out." "you're working short-handed. get a couple more packers. you've got to get those shoes out. the customers are hollering like hell. get 'em out!" he found another order up in the cutting room. but why report the conversation? it varied only in the number of cusswords used. it was always the old story. "can't be done." "put more people on then. will two be enough? or had we better make it three?" all down the line it went. more people. costs went up. and did orders get out? oh, yes, some did. but they got out at the expense of others. there was more congestion than ever. complaints increased. then the big boss called him in--and down--pointed out the increasing costs and asked how come. so the new production manager went back over his trail demanding retrenchment. "put 'em on" was changed to "take 'em off." the big boss tells the rest of the story. "he had simply jumped in without finding out what it was he had to do. maybe it was my fault for giving him too much rope. "anyway, he hanged himself--or rather we had to fire him. then we took on a quiet lad who had served his apprenticeship with a large electrical supply house. "he didn't know a twelve-iron sole from a three-quarter foxing. but he knew plenty about managing, as it turned out. "i watched him. things were in a bad way, you see, and getting no better fast. he did nothing much for several days but read his mail. sat around his office. didn't make a move to boss anyone. stuck his nose in here and there to find out what this clerk or that clerk was up to. "but no action. no tearing his shirt. no nothing. and the complaints were coming in with every mail. they never fazed him. one day i ran across him up in the fitting room. another time i bumped into him he was picking lasts out of the bins. again i saw him pushing empty racks into the heeling room elevator. "apparently i had picked another lemon. looked like the best thing he did was sit around and tap his teeth with a pencil. "he fooled me, though. one afternoon he dropped into my office with a map. he'd drawn it between taps. it was a good map with dotted lines to show just exactly what happened to an order--any order--every order. that map showed when it went into the works, where it went from there. and so on until it went out the shipping room door. that's what he'd been up to the day i saw him picking out lasts. and i tell you i never had any idea how many things could happen to an order. i never realized how shoes halted and stumbled and staggered around that factory of ours. "there were red lines, too. they showed the changes he proposed making. here he would stop backtracking. here was unnecessary travel. here was an old bottle neck and here was how he was going to crack it open. and look at those lasts lying idle with shoes upstairs waiting to be made on them! "that wasn't half. it was actually taking four days to get orders through the office routine. he showed me how certain necessary records that took time to make could be made after the shoes were in work. other short cuts would wipe whole days off our schedules. "there was nothing to it--when you saw it in red ink. in fact there's nothing half so convincing as red ink. there's been none on our books for the past five years--and during that time the shoe business has been no bed of roses. "what he proposed was simple as pie--if only someone had stopped to think. we'd simply got into bad habits. we were handling the work the same way we'd handled it back in the days when grandfather started the business. and this fellow had been smart enough to wait and wonder why. not wonder why either. _he went and found out how come._ "in thirty days we were back on earth. we were getting shoes out on time--many many days sooner than we'd even been able to before. and all because a smart young man, who didn't know a thing about shoes but a whole lot about managing, sat and tapped his teeth and drew a few pictures.--all because he had been in no hurry to act until he had found out just what had to be done." * * * * * it is so easy to jump to conclusions! if you look about a bit, you will see plenty of men who don't stop to find out what needs to be done before they start trying to do it. they're like the shortstop who hurries his play and tries to throw the runner out at first before he really gets his hands on the ball. an error is more often than not the result. managing, such men will tell you, is putting "pep" and "punch" into your work. pep and punch were once good words. but their good qualities have been so often extolled that most of us have lost sight of the fact that all the "drive" in the world is so much wasted energy when it isn't directed along the right lines. and when it isn't so directed, it comes pretty close to being the lowest form of human endeavor. witness the "go-getter" who really doesn't know what it's all about, but often succeeds in covering up a world of defects under a cloak of ill-directed energy. other men think they are finding out what needs to be done when actually they aren't even getting close to the root of the matter. with the best intentions in the world, they are grasping at the first straw the wind blows their way. eureka! they shout when they haven't found it at all, but are merely jumping all the way over the facts to conclusions! actually to know your business or your job demands analysis. you have a right to duck. it's another of those words that work overtime and have suffered as a result. a certain type of superficial business executive has done analysis no good. to him the impressiveness of the word suffices--to the complete exclusion of the simplicity of the act itself. and so analysis to you and _you_ and you has come to mean involved, complex research--running around a lot in circles and getting exactly nowhere. analysis has become for you an a example of the phrase-maker's art. real analysis of any problem in business can, however, be simple--in fact, _it can be nothing else but simple_. analysis, says noah webster, is "a resolution of anything, whether an object of the senses or the intellect, into constituent parts or elements; an examination of component parts, separately or in their relation to the whole." whooee! all that when he might have said "taking to pieces." for analysis is literally that--taking a thing to pieces to see what makes the wheels go round. not, however, with the destructive intent of the small boy who strews his watch all over the floor, but with the avowed purpose of getting right down to the sort of brass tacks which make it possible to see the composition of the whole clearly and plainly. analysis which befogs the issue is not analysis at all. it's--in the vernacular--a lot of "hooey." but the right kind of analysis "breaks down" the problem into its component parts--without losing sight of each part's relation to the whole. there may be only two parts to a job of managing. the messenger who analyzes his business correctly will find exactly two: where to go and what to do after he gets there--the simplest kind of problem and the simplest type of business analysis. but if the analysis consisted of twenty pieces instead of two, it would be no harder; it would only be longer. the production manager in the shoe factory analyzed his job correctly when he mapped out the route of an order. all he did was take the manufacturing process to pieces so that he could put the pieces together again to form a more efficient whole. so whether there are two or twenty or two hundred pieces, the act of analyzing--of taking to pieces--differs only in the amount of territory it covers. naturally it will be a somewhat more lengthy process to analyze the job of managing a steel mill than to separate a peanut stand and its operation into a few component parts. but the approach is always the same. and no matter how good you may be with the woods, how the approach does affect the final score! * * * * * consider for the moment that you have a house built of blocks and want to take it to pieces. a quick and easy way of separating it into its component parts would be a swift kick aimed down around the foundations. a quick method. but comes nothing. there are all your blocks lying on the floor, but so far as knowing what they're all about, you're worse off than ever you were before you kicked your house down. the other way of taking your house of blocks to pieces is to start with the roof and work backwards. the very thought, then, of "taking to pieces" suggests the correct way to undertake the analysis of a business or of a job. and a study of the methods of successful managers will convince the doubtingest thomas that starting at the top and working down to the cellar is the method they follow in the analysis of any business problem they have to tackle. once a busy ceramic manufacturer found himself in the restaurant business. he knew about all there was to know about dinnerware up to the point where it left his customers' counters. what went on after that was pretty much greek to him if you know what we mean. and then he became a restaurateur. all because his brother-in-law got into him for several thousand dollars and then couldn't quite seem to make the darned thing pay a profit. brother-in-law knew the game. oh, yes. he had worked for a number of years as assistant manager in a similar enterprise. with his "knowledge of the business," he should have made a success of this cafeteria of his. he knew how to handle the help, how to buy, how to run the kitchen, and so on. the operating details were as an open book to him. judged from every outward appearance, the cafeteria was up to standard. it should have climbed out of the red in short order. he had been taught to buy carefully and to manage economically. "well bought," he announced, "is half sold." he'd read it in a book and he thought he was being a good salesman. still the business stayed in the red. our ceramic friend was faced with kissing his investment goodbye--and probably with making a job in the pottery for a good restaurant man--with throwing good money after bad, or with getting into the cafeteria business. he figured this business ought to pay. somewhere, he knew, his brother-in-law had gone wrong. just where, he believed he could find out. so he took over the business. brother-in-law stayed on, leaving the new owner free to observe. and he did nothing but observe for a solid week. each night he made a list of the points in managing which had come up in the course of the day's work. in a week's time he had an accurate list of all the actual jobs of managing, as all bills except for gas and light and rent were paid and a profit and loss statement was taken each week. then he arranged the list in order of natural importance. it began with marketing and checking bills with deliveries, and ended with counting the money and depositing it in the bank. "hold on," he thought, "this isn't such a long way from running a pottery. what am i in this business for?" "because," he answered, "i want to leave as much of that money in the bank as possible, and mark it down as profit." so right away he started to draw pictures. the chart on this page is the result after he had worked it over and polished it up. +---------------------------------------+ | +-----------+ | | | making | +--------+ | | |the service| | keeping| | | | pleasing | /| down |\| | +-----------+ / |expenses| \ | / \ / +--------+ |\ +-----------+ | / +----------+ | \ |building up| | +---------+ | fixing | +--------+ | +-------+ | and | | | getting | | prices |__|guarding|_|_| net | |maintaining|_|_| more | | to be | |against | | | cash | | the | | |customers| | fair and | | waste | | |profits| | run-down | | | in | |attractive| +--------+ | +-------+ | cafeteria | | +---------+ +----------+ | / +-----------+ | \ / \ +---------+ |/ | \ / \| buying | / | +----------+ |supplies |/| | | making | |carefully| | | |the foods | +---------+ | | |attractive| | | +----------+ | +---------------------------------------+ note how it works backward from his final objective--"net profits." "now," questioned his _alter ego_, "how do i determine how much of that money stays in the bank as profit, and how much has to be checked out right away for expenses?" and from his handy list of managerial functions it was plain that it depended on three things--buying right, selling with as little waste as possible, and keeping expenses down. "now we're getting somewhere," he said to himself. "those things lead me right into my next job--which is to fix prices fairly. for what's the use of buying right, handling supplies carefully and keeping expenses right down to the bone unless my selling prices cover costs, yield a profit, and still look reasonable to the public?" yes, and the most attractive prices, backed up by careful buying and all the rest, wouldn't keep the dollars clinking merrily over the counter unless the food was so good and the service so excellent that customers bought liberally and came back for more. by this time, you'll note, on taking another peek at the chart, he had worked right back to his "number " job--getting more customers in. thus, by analysis, he found out definitely what had to be done--and what had to be done first. brother-in-law thought he knew, but he had begun at the wrong end. he had been looking after expenditures first and receipts last. he was trying to squeeze a little margin out of his receipts before he did anything about getting the receipts. how different the new owner's viewpoint! his brother-in-law, he found, was thoroughly competent. he'd simply got off on the wrong foot. in the kitchen and the storeroom, he was a good operator. but the new owner's place was "out front." his job was to "get more customers, get them to spend more--and to give them such good food and service that they would come back and bring their friends." he began by spending money. took out the gas pipe at the entrance. replaced it with a brass rail. provided a small lounging room where customers could wait for their friends. put in upholstered chairs so they could be comfortable while waiting. put attractive uniforms on attractive serving girls. there was an air of good taste about the place when he got through. then he changed the arrangement of the counters. but you know all about that--how the desserts came first so they would catch your eye before your tray was too heavily loaded with the heavier part of the meal. staples which offered a small margin of profit were relegated to places in the rear. dishes that made the best profit got the positions up front. each day he offered a low-priced "special." thus he planned to increase customers' purchases. and the business began to grow. that's all there is. there isn't any more. today he doesn't own a chain of cafeterias extending into many cities and feeding many thousands of people every day at a good profit. he's still a very successful ceramic manufacturer--and a cafeteria proprietor. "i flew in the face of tradition," he says. "'first watch your kitchen' is the cry of the restaurant man. but i started with what i wanted--net profits--and worked backward to make conditions that would provide net profits. "volume of business had to come first. i had to get it before i could get a margin of profit. "no doubt i could go out in the kitchen today and save some money. if i went to market myself, maybe i could save a cent a pound on my meats. but i can't give up my attention to the 'front' in order to watch the 'back.' as soon as i do that i'm going to be right back where i started." it would sound like heresy, wouldn't it, if we hadn't sat in and watched him begin with his final objective and work back through the means which make the objective possible. only by careful analysis would he have had courage enough to follow his plan through to its successful conclusion. and here's the amusing sequel. today, as he still dabbles at feeding people, he will admit that he's a better ceramic manufacturer as a result of his cafeteria experience. his pottery had always yielded a nice profit. when he sat down with his sheet of coordinate paper and analyzed it, he found his job of management differed not at all in its fundamentals. his first job he found was "out front" getting more customers in. a better knowledge of markets, a better job of selling, a better product--those were the ways to get the customers in and make them come back for more. and his need for a better product led him out into the plant where he found that tunnel kilns with exact temperature control would more than treble the production of the old periodic kilns--and would produce better ware. but that's another story. the important thing, anyway, is not what he found had to be done in the cafeteria and in the pottery, but how he found it. he took his business to pieces--backwards. he began with the objective he wanted to get--money. it was a simple matter to find that to get money from the business he had to get customers to come in and spend money; that to get customers to come in he must make his place look like a good place to come to; that to make his place look attractive he must spend money on equipment and thought on the arrangement and display of food. and there he had his big job cut out for him, with the other jobs following along in natural sequence. it altered the whole method of management. how this method of management is applied to your job is shown in the chart which follows. it's a skeleton of what the cafeteria man did. indeed, it's more than that. for it shows what every manager--whether he manages a steel mill, a punch-press department or a time-study job--must do if he is to get an honest-to-goodness perspective of his work. +----------------------+ +------------+ +----------------------+ +-----------+ | the work |__| the means |__| the final | | to be done | | for accomplishing it | | objective | +------------+ +----------------------+ +-----------+ +----------------------+ it can be done very simply. just a sheet of paper ruled in small squares--you can buy it at any stationer's--on which to fill in the steps you must take in between what you have to do and what you seek to accomplish by it--and some careful thought as to just what your job is and why it is to be done, will develop a true analysis of your problems which will beat reams and reams of typewritten words. remember the words of the chinese philosopher: "a picture is worth ten thousand words"--and reflect how clever these chinese are! the means for accomplishing the final objective may be many or few. you have seen the cafeteria-manager's problems on the chart on page . now turn to page and see what a file clerk does beside powder her nose from nine to five. a bright young lady fresh out of high school went to work in an editorial office. there wasn't enough filing to do to keep her happy from nine to five, so she filled in with a bit of typing here and a trifle of routine clerical work there. thursdays she hopped over to the neighboring bookstore and collected _saturday posts_ for the editors--now she'll have to do that on tuesday. and fridays she distributed _the new yorkers_ to avid readers. filing, though, was her main job. when she first came, the managing editor said "here it is" or words to that effect, and she went to work. those files had always been more or less of a sore point. an editor's mail is nothing if not voluminous. and every day flossie the fascinating file clerk got a mass of data which she had to stick away. her great trouble was finding it again after she'd stuck it away. often she couldn't find it. and pretty soon she discovered that she got the blame no matter what was missing--whether an important inquiry from peter b. stilb or the editor's pipe cleaners. she couldn't do a thing about the pipe cleaners, but she made up her mind that since she was held responsible when a letter got lost, she would also have the responsibility of changing the filing system. the system, she felt sure, was to blame. one day when she was "on her lunch" and the editors didn't need cigarettes from the corner drugstore, she sat down and made an analysis of her problem. curiously enough, she started at the end and worked backwards. she worked backwards, not because someone told her that was the right way to analyze her job, but probably because she was only a file clerk and no one ever told her anything. "why," she asked herself, "do i file these old papers anyway?" "so i can find them again, quickly and surely, when they're wanted," seemed to be the only answer to that. "what's the right way to file these letters and papers and data so i can find them quickly?" was her next question. "arrange them like words in the dictionary--one place, and only one place, where each can be," was only common sense. in the filing system which she had inherited, there were a dozen places for each set of data. there was a file on "industries" with sub-files for "automobiles" and all the rest; a file for data on "railroads," with two or three sub-files. the file clerk had to use judgment and discretion in selecting the heading under which each letter or piece of data was filed. and she wasn't hired for judgment and discretion. sometimes, too, the editors erred in their descriptions of the material they wanted. +-----------------+ | arrangement |\ | of file so that | \ | title of data | \ | wanted will show| \ +----------------+ | exact spot to | +------------+ +----------+ | only one place | /| look for it | | to produce | | filing |__| to file |/ | +----------------+ |any desired | | all data | | regardless | +-| cross-index of | |data without| +----------+ | of nature | | classes | | delay | | of thing filed | |showing for each| +------------+ +----------------+ |class the title | |of each piece in| | that class | +----------------+ one file, arranged alphabetically--one place to look, regardless of the thing looked for--was the logical conclusion, viewed from the standpoint of _finding_. the managing editor was horrified. mix "railroads" with "public service," and "manufacturing" with "agriculture"? "why," asked the file clerk, looking back at her analysis, "why care how things are _kept_ so long as they can be _found_ quickly? when you send me for camels, do you care, so long as you get them quickly, whether they're kept next to chesterfields, or right beside the chewing gum? when the chief asks for data on 'c.p.r.' does he care, if he gets it right away, whether it was filed next to data on 'coal' or beside facts about other railroads?" "all right," objected the managing editor, "suppose someone asks for all the data we have on railroads?" not a bad question. it was from a _finding_ standpoint. "have a separate cross-index by classes," was the answer. "that is, under 'railroads' have a card showing the name of every----" "but look at the extra work." back to her analysis went the file clerk. "why file at all, except to make it easy to find what we file? if we were to set up a system for _easiest filing_, we'd simply put everything in boxes just as it comes to us. our main objective is to make information easy to _find_, and anything that increases the work of filing but lessens the work of finding, is profitable." the result was a filing system that has made a great mass of data as accessible as the words in the dictionary. and it has taken the human equation out of the job. no longer does the file clerk have to stop and use her judgment as to where she shall file mr. stilb's letter. there is one place and just one place. and the basis of the plan was the simple process of analyzing--of starting with the final objective and working backward--not forward from the work to be done. in hundreds of business offices--in countless industrial plants--time, labor and money are being wasted today in outmoded methods which, like topsy, "just grew." the manager who started them didn't stop to reason out first exactly what had to be done--or if he did, he failed to work backward from the final objective. one way is as bad as the other. in fact, it may even be better not to reason at all than fail to get to the very bottom and reason out the absolute right of what has to be done. at least it takes less time. a sure way, incidentally, to avoid making mistakes in your analysis is to do it on paper. a professor of mathematics in one of the large universities always tells his students that no problem should be performed in the head that can be done on paper. "make pencil and paper do as much as you can, for your brain has enough to do to supervise the work." until your mind is trained to the habit of quick, accurate analysis, you'll find it helps to do the work on paper. keep on hand a small supply of blank charts like the one on page , on which to sketch an analysis of new work or of important decisions. the constant performance of this detail will of itself train your mind to look at problems more analytically, and automatically to sift and classify them more logically. perhaps you can improve on the chart shown on page . surely you can adapt it better to your own needs. but force yourself to some such method. it will help you to cultivate the instinct of shrewd, rapid analysis--and at the same time it cannot help giving you a keener, surer insight into the particular problem, no matter how complex or how simple it may be. sometimes it is the apparently simple problems that need analysis most. for example---- did you ever hear of a sales organization that didn't have a stenographic problem? the new york office of a western factory was no exception. the manager was broadminded--even liberal--with his salesmen. but when it came to stenographers, he was decidedly scotch. valuable men sat around the office mornings and evenings waiting for a chance to dictate to a staff of girls which was measured to fit the average load of the day, but not the rush load of the two hours a day when the salesmen were inside. dictating machines seemed to be the answer. the sales manager figured they would not only solve the dictation problem, but would further reduce stenographic costs. they were installed. at the same time the stenographic force was cut to insure keeping all the girls busy all the day. good. the salesmen were able to dictate when they felt like it. but often the letters dictated were a day or two late in being transcribed. complaints increased. and the manager lost his temper: "what's the matter with this cursed letter-writing business?" he demanded. "why the sam hill do we have typists and stenographers?" well, why? he calmed down a bit, seized a sheet of paper and mapped out his problem. this is what he wrote: . salesmen's letters are to save salesmen's time and to give prompt service to customers. . i don't begrudge half a day's time of a $ -a-day salesman to call on a customer. then it's still profitable to waste half of the time of a $ -a-day stenographer in order to save a long trip for a salesman, or to get a quick answer to a question. . what we need is enough typists to transcribe every letter of every salesman promptly, even if part of them have to be idle half the day. the increased use of sales letters, the greater freedom salesmen feel in their dictation, the number of selling details now promptly handled by mail without an expensive call--all are directly traceable to the manager's analysis which he made by using the final objective as a starting point. he's a convert to the pencil and paper method. sales problems are part of his daily exercise. he goes to the bottom of them instinctively. but any problems that arise concerning office work, he settles only after analyzing from front to back--on paper. his method of charting his analysis differs in appearance from the chart on page , but it is identical in principle and effect. it works from final objective backward. one more application of the same knack of analysis--and we are done. it is that of an ohio manufacturer who recently put up a new building. plans prepared by the architect called for four stories and a basement. when it came time to discuss arrangement of space, it was found that one department would have to go in the basement. there were objections from all sides. the manufacturer ended up by taking the problem home with him to take to pieces and put together again. he began--fortunately--with the final objective. "what's this new building for?" obviously, to provide more space for enlarged operations. "how much space is needed?" he went over the figures and plans and found the four main floors weren't enough. "then why not a fifth floor?" as long as a bigger building was to be built, why not make it big enough? why not another full story instead of a basement? why not, indeed! come to find out, no one knew just why a basement had been considered. the old building had one, and apparently that was the only reason for proposing one for the new building. a full story would give all the general storage space of a basement and also give regular working quarters for the department crowded out of the four upper floors. and when the architect was consulted, it was found that with the extras for excavation, waterproofing and the like, the cost of a basement was considerably more than the cost of another full story. yet, but for the manufacturer's analysis of the building problem from the point of final objective, the basement would have gone in--simply because no one had stopped to think, and think clearly and logically. logical thinking is a trait that can be cultivated. every problem thought through by means of some such simple help as we have suggested, makes the mind more ready to tackle the next problem. some men's minds grow so keen by practising that sort of thinking that they automatically take things to pieces as they listen. before you finish talking to them, they have already analyzed your statement and are planning on its execution--or are ready to reject it. sometimes it's intuition. but rarely. usually, it is nothing more than cultivated knack. cultivate accuracy first. speed of analysis will come of itself. _don't start until you know exactly where you're going._ there is no task so trifling, no business so large, that its management does not need to analyze exactly what there is to do. ii planning in the preceding chapter we have been busily engaged in taking things to pieces. now we've got to put them together again. our house of blocks has been resolved into its component parts, not by aiming a swift kick at its midriff, but by starting at the top and working backwards. now to rebuild. our first care, at this stage of the game, is to remember that analysis is never an end but simply the means to an end. the immediate end, this time, is to rearrange the pieces so that the job to be done can be done in the most effective way--the way that saves the most effort, the most time, the most money--the way which, in your business--and in _yours_ and yours--leads to net profits. again it should be emphasized that net profit, in any job of managing, is the ultimate goal. our danger, then, is that we may find ourselves down on the floor surrounded by our blocks--and with never a trace of a plan for rebuilding the house, and rebuilding it in the simplest, most economical way. in short, we must be sure we are taking things to pieces, not for the sake of taking them to pieces, but purely and simply _to find out what has to be done_. like the golfer who played golf so much in order to keep fit for golf, we have here a good old-fashioned beneficent circle. analysis without a plan isn't worth a whoop in hades. it's time kissed goodbye. wasted effort. and, in like manner, a plan without an analysis isn't worth the paper it's typed on. psmith in your office is a great "planner". he always has something on the fire. but somehow or other he never quite puts things over. his plans don't get across. why not? oh, just because he doesn't bother to analyze his problem--because he sets out to _do_ what has to be done even before he _knows_ what has to be done. he doesn't base his plan upon an actual need. pbrown, on the other hand, is a keen analytical thinker. a student. he's a shark at taking things to pieces and finding out what has to be done. but when he's done that, he's all done. he lacks the initiative that starts things moving. he hasn't that divine spark of something or other that gets things done. a stick of dynamite wouldn't do a bit of good. he simply hasn't the knack of building a plan. he knows what has to be done. he doesn't know how to do it. psmith and pbrown--or pbrown and psmith--would make a fast team. but psmith without pbrown's analytical ability, or pbrown without psmith's capacity for planning how to get things done, isn't worth his weight in gold to _any_ business enterprise. a manufacturer friend tells an amusing yarn about a pbrown he hired as sales manager. "he went around analyzing everything from soup to nuts--the gadgets in our line, our markets, our competition, our salesmen. "he was an analyzer _de luxe_. and all i ever got out of all his analyses was a distinct feeling that something was wrong with every gadget we made, that our markets were saturated, that our competitors had us backed off the map, and that our salesmen were a bunch of ribbon clerks. "so," he continues, "i did a little analyzing all my own. and analyzed him out of his job. today he's managing a filling station where they drive in for the most part and take it away from him. but in his place i got a man who found out what was wrong with gadgets, markets, salesmen--and right away he built a plan which sold goods." thus the futility of analysis without planning. there's the danger, too, of getting away from the simplicity of true analysis. a job undertaken by an advertising agency for a rubber manufacturer supplies a case in point. stripped of all the details, the task was to find out whether or not the manufacturer might profitably engage in the making of hard rubber tires for industrial trucks and trailers. if names are changed and products substituted, think nothing of it. the principle's the thing. the agency began by analyzing the business to a fare-you-well. everyone and everything got cross-examined. it took three months. and when the analysis was done it told the manufacturer everything from where the rubber grew to where the money went to and came from. the trouble was, he knew all that before--or as much of it as he wanted to know. the report, in the words of a chicago columnist, was just " dam pages." it didn't tell him one blessed thing he wanted to know. or rather it was so full of plunder that he couldn't make head nor tail of it. it wasn't simple. and because it wasn't simple, it was a far, far cry from true analysis. well, well, the rubber manufacturer went out in the byways and got him a young man who was told to find out, if he could, whether or not there was any market for hard rubber tires on gas and electric industrial trucks, tractors and trailers, and allied equipment. he found, for example, that there were , trucks and tractors in service; that annual sales were about , units. he discovered that, of trailers and hand lift trucks, , each were in service; annual sales were , and , units respectively. but when he came to floor and hand trucks, conservative estimates showed , , in use, while annual sales were in the neighborhood of , ! next he found out, as accurately as possible, how many hard rubber tires were sold as original equipment. the , trucks and tractors had , wheels. but per cent of them were equipped with rubber tires at the factory. on the other hand, only per cent of the floor and hand trucks were thus equipped! outside of the truck and tractor people, he found the equipment makers opposed to hard rubber tires. let's not go into the reasons. yet representative manufacturers in a dozen different lines stated, when he asked them: "all future equipment purchased by us will be equipped with rubber tires." the whole report wasn't twelve pages long. and three tables, carefully compiled from available facts and figures, told the manufacturer everything he wanted to know. in short, upon this simple analysis, he was able to build a plan for manufacturing and merchandising solid rubber tires. much good, though, it would have done him had he done his planning first and then found out there weren't enough wheels to wear the tires after he had made them! * * * * * so much for our "beneficent circle." let us look into this thing called planning and find out if there isn't some way of developing a knack of planning which will help us over the second major hurdle in our road to managing. there is, we shall find, a single problem with which the planner, the constructive manager, deals. again, it doesn't make a particle of difference whether it's mr. schwab and bethlehem steel or tonio and his peanut stand. no business is so "different" that the principles of management fail to apply. all right, then. the problem of every planner is first to determine what is the primary moving force--the "initiative"--behind his job, and then to find the easiest place to apply that force in order to set up the required motion or activity with the least amount of effort that will get the best results. a long sentence. go over it again and you will find it is divided into four distinct parts: . deciding on the primary moving force with which to set the wheels in motion. . applying this force at the proper place to get easiest action. . directing this action along lines which either offer least resistance or assure greatest accomplishment. . bringing the activities to a focus at the place or time that will best carry the work to a successful conclusion. the primary moving force may be the selection of media in an advertising plan; it may be the pushing of a button in the white house which opens a dam in arizona, a century of progress in chicago, or the annual convention of whammit manufacturers at atlantic city; or it may be the memo from the big boss which gives the research department _carte blanche_ on a development project. to apply this initiative to a place where it will get quick action may be to suggest an idea in the headline of an advertisement that will set the reader to thinking of salmon fishing at mooselookmeguntic, or of the time the ice cubes gave out just when they shouldn't. or it may be to classify the output of a factory before shipping so that freight cars can be packed to best advantage or so that lowest freight rates may be secured. or it may be a simple method of sorting mail so that subordinates get the jobs they can handle and only the important business is brought to the president's attention. directing this activity along the lines that assure greatest accomplishment may be--in the advertisement--the presentation of facts or advantages which will persuade the reader that the fishing tackle you manufacture is desirable. again, it may be the dovetailing of a thousand elements in a huge project like the russian five-year plan so that an adequate supply of ore will be available when the blast furnaces roar into operation; so that the steel will be on hand when production in the cheliabinsk tractor works is stepped up to meet the requirements of the new agricultural regime. or it may involve the simple sweeping of a floor in a manner which raises a minimum of dust. and bringing the activities to a successful conclusion may mean working up the arguments of the advertisement to the psychological closing of a sale--to the point where the ardent member of the isaak walton league figures he can live no longer without your fishing tackle and sets out gaily in the general direction of abercrombie and fitch's. or it may be coordinating the entire production of a factory so that the diesel generator set ordered by the santa fé can be delivered at the exact date specified in the original order. or it may be handling the day's correspondence on the credit man's desk so that letters which must "make the century" are ready to go at : --so that the rest of the day's work is ready to sign, stamp and mail before the o'clock whistle blows. four elements, then, in any job which is to be planned. every plan, if practicable, will follow them. there is, by way of further illustration, the story of the factory manager of a food manufacturing plant who laid out a plan for an operation no more intricate than the scrubbing of the floors at night. now it can be told. and for two good reasons. first, because it was a practical plan which, even on such a lowly operation, saved quite a bit of money. second, because in its construction the plan is, from the point of view of our four elements, what has sometimes been called a "natural." one night, it seems, the manager and his wife went to the movies. the town didn't have daylight time, so it was quite dark. they passed the plant, a large six-story building. "why, ed!" exclaimed the wife, "you didn't tell me the factory was working nights." ed, like most husbands, was in the habit of telling friend wife 'most everything. for once he was at a loss. sure enough, the lights were going full tilt on all floors. hitting on all six, you might say. then he laughed. it all came to him--"it's just the scrubwomen at work." one feature picture, one newsreel and one animated cartoon later, they walked past the plant again. "look, the factory's still lit up," remarked the wife who turned off the living room lights religiously when she went out to get supper ready. this time ed didn't laugh. in days like these one doesn't. not, at any rate, at the thought of mounting electricity bills. the very next evening he was on the job. time somebody found out what was what. in came the cleaners. they switched on the office lights--all of them--and two of the crew went to work. a couple of others went up to the second floor, switched on all the lights and pitched in with a vim. and so _ad infinitum_--or at least to the sixth story. and all the while the electric meter went round and round! twenty-four hours later the janitor had a new plan of work. first the manager thought he'd start the whole crew at the top and work down. on second thought, a better plan was born--like the goddess of wisdom who sprang full grown from her papa's forehead. if i must go at this cleaning job, he thought, i might just as well make a first-class job of it and save not only on light, but on cleaners, too. we shall pass lightly over that part of his plan which had to do with releasing scrubwomen for other productive work, for in days like these--or in any other day--we just can't figure out that sort of thing. but goodness gracious, sometimes it's necessary. the emphasis, then, shall be on the electric current saved. the plan called for the entire crew's working together on one floor at a time--on the well-founded theory, of course, that teamwork would accomplish more in less time. besides, since it was necessary to turn on all the lights on the floor, why not get the full benefit from them by having the entire gang at work? so far, so good. the surprise comes when you learn that he didn't have them start at the top and work down. he started them at the bottom and worked them up. "and i'll tell you why," explained the manager, "they have to climb six floors anyway, so they might as well work up as walk up. besides, by leaving the stairs till the last, they can work their way down as well as up." in other words, they went to work right where they came in. and when they had finished, they were right back where they started--back where they went out on their way home. simple, isn't it? an immediate reduction in lighting bills was noticeable. even the amateur mathematician among you can figure that with one floor out of six lighted at a time, five-sixths of the light was saved. besides, the work was done in less time--it wasn't long before two cleaners were reading the want ads. but why go into that? we aren't, for that matter, interested so much in the savings made, because it is exceedingly doubtful if many of us pass our factories or our offices on the way to the movies. we may never have an opportunity to put this particular plan to work. what we are interested in, though, is the fact that this cleaning plan utilizes the four basic elements which we've said must be present in every job of planning. look at the chart. it shows the movement of energy in the manager's plan for handling his crew. starting the scrubbers on the ground floor--they had to begin there anyway, no matter when they began to scrub--was nothing but applying the primary force at the best point to get the easiest action. working them up floor by floor was simply directing the activity along both the lines of least resistance and greatest accomplishment. and doing the stairs on the way down was just focusing the activity at the right point for making a successful conclusion--that is, winding up the job at the exit. +------------------------------------+ +---------+ | | | stairs | | th floor ------------- | | /|\ | | | | +--------------------------------|---+ | | | | | | | +--------------------------------|---+ | | | | | | | | | | th floor | | | | | | /|\ | | | | +--------------------------------|---+ | | | | | | | +--------------------------------|---+ | | | | | | | | | | th floor | | | | | | /|\ | | | | +--------------------------------|---+ | | | | | | | +--------------------------------|---+ | | | | | | | | | | rd floor | | | | | | /|\ | | | | +--------------------------------|---+ | | | | | | | +--------------------------------|---+ | | | | | | | | | | nd floor | | | | | | /|\ | | | | +--------------------------------|---+ | | | | | | | +--------------------------------|---+ | | | | | | | | | | ground floor | | | \|/ | | /|\ | | | +--------------------------------|---+ +---------+ | +------------------------------+ | | application of primary force |-- +------------------------------+ turn back now to the four elements of successful planning as we set them down on page . try them out on any successful plan and assure yourself that not a point has been stretched. by using them we shall learn the constructive, creative knack of planning. stripped of the "clothes" which every plan wears--it's only in the clothing that plans differ--this knack of planning may be quite simply visualized by some such chart as the one shown on the opposite page. there you see the primary force--the initiative that sets the plan in action. second, the point of application--where you must hit if you're going to win. third, the various activities which bring about the successful conclusion. and fourth, all these activities headed up at the focusing point. it's just like the sailor off the whaler who picks up the wooden mallet, hits the plunger a resounding crack, sends the weight hurtling up the pole, rings the bell--and gets a good -cent cigar. or like the golfer who, putter in hand, strokes the ball firmly "in the direction of least resistance and greatest accomplishment," sees it hit the back of the cup and drop in for a par four. |\ | \ | \ +--------------+ various activities | the \ | the "primary | point of necessary to bringing |"focusing | moving force"| application about a successful |point"/ +--------------+ conclusion | / | / |/ watch these four essentials. knowing them and using them continually will enable you to break down every job of planning into its component parts--will enable you to develop that important side of your managing faculties--whether your work is merely the carrying out of a job or shouldering the responsibilities of a huge business. * * * * * remember the production manager in the shoe factory? rather sketchy was the story of the analysis he made. let's go a bit more into the details of the plan which was based on the analysis. and, at the same time, examine it to see if it checks with our four elements. you remember he was hired to find out why the so-and-so shoes didn't move out the door on time. and you'll remember that instead of clanking up and down from one department to another, he was seen one day picking out lasts from a bin in the assembly room. he had crept up quietly on the point of application. the initiative, you see, or the primary moving force, was the boss's order to get shoes to moving. here (in the lasting room) was his point of application. the biggest factor in slowing up shoes, he found, was failure to have lasts ready the instant the uppers came down cut and stitched from the fitting room. the shoes were entered into work with almost entire disregard of this vital point. oh, yes, they knew they once bought so many pairs of lasts on this style or that in such and such sizes. and in a vague sort of way they tried to regulate the number of pairs sent to the cutting room with the number of lasts which they thought should be available the day the shoes reached the assembly department where uppers, insoles, bottoms and lasts met together--or should have. a single missing size could hold up a -pair lot which included a run of sizes all the way, say, from - / to . today it's all so different. a running inventory is kept of every active last. each day the lasts which are released as shoes leave the finishing room are added to the supply on hand; at the same time, the lasts which are to be used that day in lasting incoming lots are subtracted. a job? no, a good girl of moderate intelligence simply added it to a dozen other office chores which she finds time to do daily. the running inventory, you see, is one of the various activities which, aimed at the focusing point--the moving of shoes out the door--are necessary to bring about a successful conclusion--the successful conclusion, in this particular instance, probably being the saving of the young man's scalp--for the boss was certainly out to get it the day he saw the young production manager pawing over the chunks of maple in the lasting room. other activities might be mentioned. plenty of them. an automatic conveyor which brought back empty racks to the point where they were needed. semi-automatic elevators which made possible the rapid moving of shoes from floor to floor. twelve-pair lots which simplified the handling problem, made the job of picking out lasts an easier one--and all in all did much to take the weight off management's shoulders. all these and more are the activities which were needed to bring about a successful conclusion. they were all part of the plan. today, in that shoe factory, the production manager sits down for an hour in the forenoon and an hour in the afternoon and schedules the next half-day's work which will go to the cutting room. two girls have been moderately busy getting him the information he needs. sales have been brought up to date within half a day. he knows how many kid shoes he can cut, how many calf. he knows which patterns can be cut by machine, which must be cut by hand. he knows that certain patterns take longer to go through the fitting room. there's extra stitching or fancy perforations. he must lay off those. and last of all, he knows what he can count on in the way of lasts when the shoes hit the lasting room. with his two girls, the young production manager does all the work of scheduling. actually, there isn't much work. management, you see, has done an awfully nice job of planning. * * * * * picture now the manufacturer of small electrical appliances who sought to lay out new avenues of growth. his was pretty much a seasonal business. electric fans constituted most of his bread-and-butter production. early in the year and well on into the spring his plant ran full blast getting out merchandise for sale during the warm, muggy days when sirius is in the ascendant. and then along in the summer and fall his production curves went into a serious decline. to level them out would have meant carrying a load of finished inventory which he could ill afford. other appliances, such as hair curlers and driers which might conceivably find a ready sale during the holiday season, helped considerably--but not enough. the rough places were by no means made plane. why not, thought he, a line of toys which would enable him to utilize his present production set-up profitably during the slack summer and fall? why not, indeed? so he set out to chart a plan of action beginning, as you will see from the figure, with the furnishing of amusement as the primary force. his point of attack was through the , , american boys who love to build something. on he went to the various ways of getting parents interested as the activities which should lead to a successful conclusion--to the linking up of those activities with the retail store as the job of focusing them on the final achievement--sales. +---------------------------------+ |wholesome amusement and education| +---------------------------------+ | \|/ +---------------------------------+ | million boys who want to play| | and love to build | +---------------------------------+ | \|/ +---------------------------------+ | bought for by , , parents | +---------------------------------+ | \|/ +-------------------+ | can be reached by | +-------------------+ | \|/ +---------------+---------------+---------------+ | | | | +---------+ +-----------+ +----------+ +-----------+ |magazines| | attention | | window | | | |they read| | caught in | | displays | | the boy | +---------+ | stores | +----------+ | himself | | +-----------+ | | | +---------+ | | +-----------+ | list of | +--------------+ +--------------+ | |magazines| |description of| |description of| | |carrying | |demonstration | | window advg. | | |our advg.| | offer | | offer | | +---------+ +--------------+ +--------------+ | \ | | | \ | | +-------------------+ \ | | | | \ | | +-------------+ +--------------+ \ | | |list of boys'| |description of| \ | | |papers advsd.| |prize contest | \ | | | in | +--------------+ \ | | +-------------+ / \ | | | / \ | | | / +-------------------------------------------+ | all leading to | +-------------------------------------------+ | \|/ +-------------------------------------------+ | the store that sells our toys | +-------------------------------------------+ only the bare headings on the plan are shown in the chart. nevertheless it shows clearly the same knack of using the four elements which we have been at such pains to discuss. the chart proved helpful, not only in guiding the management in its efforts to enlarge the scope of manufacturing activities, but also in giving the office and the sales force a true picture of the business. so helpful, indeed, did it prove that it was blueprinted. and today every salesman has one pasted in his selling portfolio. it's the first thing the dealer sees. and it has gone far in arousing the latter's interest and confidence. if you were a dealer, would you buy from a factory that was run by guess and by gob when you could give your business to a concern which you knew was functioning in accordance with a sound, well-formulated plan? there, if you please, lies the answer. * * * * * it is not within the purpose of this chapter, incidentally, to play any favorites. time must be taken out at this point, therefore, to return to the messenger boy who, when we left him, had just finished analyzing his job. let's see now how his plan of action is based upon what the analysis taught him. let's examine this elementary job of managing, not because it may make better messengers of us, but because the examination will show how universal this thing called management is--because it will afford one more proof of our general axiom that the principles of management are ever the same, no matter what particular paraphernalia of business may be used to cover up its old bones. did, then, the messenger boy work out his plan in accordance with our four basic elements? he did, if he was really managing his job--and from the careful analysis he made, we may assume he was. if his trip meant riding a street car, then going to the cashier for carfare is his primary force. if he can walk, then the primary force is simply getting under way. hastening as directly as possible to the car line is applying the force at the easiest place to get results. perhaps he might have to choose between a slow street car which would carry him right to his destination for seven cents, and a fast elevated which, for a dime, would make better time but leave several blocks to walk at the other end. deciding between the two is directing the activities along lines of greatest accomplishment. and getting his transfer, leaving the car, and going straight to the address on the message, are nothing more nor less than focusing his activities at the point of achievement. you see? the colonel's lady in her parisian peignoir and judy o'grady in her sleazy slip were sisters under the skin. so, if we may stretch a physiological point, are our messenger boy and the man who made the toys. the plans of both were built on the same foundation. or take the plan by which the new general manager of a tap and die concern rehabilitated his company's business. "why," he said, reaching for a pad of paper and roughly sketching something that looked like a funnel and must have been because he said it was, "our manufacturing plan looked about like this. up here at the top we poured in a lot of orders and hoped to high heaven some of them would finally trickle through at the bottom. "some of them did drop through. others dropped because we poked sticks up the flue. that is to say, an army of stock chasers did their level best to keep everyone happy. "it was bedlam around the shop. it took three months on an average to complete an order. "i found much of the delay was due to certain victorian notions about set-up time. the prevailing idea was to give an operator a good big job to minimize that item of expense. "sometimes the job was so big it took days to run it through a single operation. "oh, me! oh, my! the inventories of finished goods that piled up. the tote boxes full of work in process that cluttered up the scenery. "and the complaints from customers who were waiting for orders! "funny thing about our business, you can't get a customer to accept a couple of / -in. taps in place of the / -in. one he's ordered. "so i had to revamp the whole shooting match. first on the program was to find out what was made and what was making. then we withdrew from the shop all work in process except what actually applied on orders in the house or what was needed to fill out our stock on an item on which we had no order, but on which past experience had taught us we'd get one in the course of the next days. "you should have seen the pile of tote boxes we stuck under the boilers. "well, the next job was to figure out the most economical lots to send through the works. that figure was arrived at simply by choosing such a size that no single operation could possibly take more than a day. in a word, i made sure that every single lot would move every single day. "do you get the picture? a steady flow of manufacturing. no funnel. no poking around with sticks. today there aren't any stock chasers. none is needed. work reaches the stockroom on time. orders are filled complete the same day they come in. inventories are lower. oh, heck, need i go on?" no, he needn't. for already he has shown us how the motive force was applied at the right point to get results. take this plan apart--or any other plan that really works--and you will see that it is built upon the four elements of planning. they make the planning wheels go round. * * * * * now it's time to take your own job of planning to pieces and see if it, too, does not meet the test. here, again, as when the analysis was made, it helps to set things down on paper. in charting, you will find that by painstaking application of our four principles along the lines diagrammed in the figure on page , you can lay out a working plan depending for its approach to perfection only upon the amount of thought put into it, and upon the degree of accuracy with which the analysis of the job was made. the chart you make may be only a guide to the complete plan. some plans require details which utterly preclude any form of expression so simple as a chart. other plans can be laid out on the actual chart shown. in any event, the very attempt to put your plan into diagrammatic form will develop practicability and accuracy of arrangement. the very necessity of having to indicate and to select the primary force back of your job or business; having to trace that force through the various activities necessary to completed work; and then having visibly and physically to concentrate all these activities at one point--those very acts which making a chart compels you to perform, enforce a mastery of the essential details of your business and a grasp of their relations which every manager should have. perhaps the plan you have isn't as hot as you think it is. an office manager friend of ours was pretty proud of his system until one day he charted it. his company was famous for the quality of work turned out. but the service it gave was wretched. special instructions were often ignored. delivery dates were overlooked. all that sort of thing. the system looked good enough. the office manager said the mistakes were due to carelessness. and it looked as if he were right. so when something went wrong, the nearest employee got a handsome bawling out. at last the sales force jumped on him with both feet. too many promises had been broken. so the office manager was forced to do something about it. and, quite by accident, made a chart of the actual plan of work. hello, what was this? half a dozen responsibilities were standing around absolutely unchaperoned, you might say. someone might come along and pick them up, or then again---- for example, if a customer on the west coast ordered a bill of goods, and then, while the order was in work, decided he wanted half the goods shipped by boat through the canal and the other half by fast freight, maybe he'd get his shipments that way and maybe he wouldn't. under the prevailing "plan" that particular sort of job didn't fall inside any one man's bailiwick. no one man was responsible for seeing that such orders were executed. no "machinery" had therefore been provided for taking care of them. that's only a sample of some of the duties which landed--in his diagrammatic representation of the actual plan of work--somewhere off the map. for all the action they got, they might as well have been painted ships upon a painted ocean. methods in general, you see, were pretty much all right. but there was no recognized initiative back of the plan. activities were set in motion more or less spontaneously. as a result, certain parts of the business were left without managerial supervision. nothing is surer to expose such a condition than actually to chart a plan. in this instance, it was simple to recognize "following customers' instructions"--no matter when, why, or how they came--as the logical primary force. then the whole trouble was taken care of by centering the responsibility upon the chief of the order department. from then on, all instructions regarding any order cleared through him. thus it will be seen that the idea back of charting a plan is not to get something you can work to as an ideal in carrying on a job, but rather to get a practical framework on which the work can actually be done. then it is at once evident whether the "clothes" of the business are hanging on the right limb or whether they have been hung up somewhere on the ground where, like as not, nobody will bother to pick them up. too often the plan turns out to be a "sketch." the builder waits until the architect's first sketch has become a plan. in business it's like that, too. when finally you know, from analysis, _what you want to accomplish_, it is not difficult to plan the procedure if you start right and forget nothing. you start right if you take time to figure out the primary initiative. you forget nothing if you take the trouble to set things down in black and white. and finding the motive force and figuring out where to hit with it, is nothing more nor less than charting the moves of the game until you find a succession of activities moving along without back-tracking, without duplication, without wasted effort or supervision. thus cultivating the knack of planning is a long step in the direction of becoming a good manager. if you were going to try to tell someone else how to cultivate the knack of planning, the story of the two men shaving in the pullman washroom serves to illustrate the point. both men seemed to be in a hurry. the first hustled over to one of the wash basins, scrubbed his face and hands, dried them on a towel. then he began to shave. that finished, he washed the lather from his face, dried himself again on another towel, and put away his razor. next came his teeth. he brushed them, washed away the traces of tooth paste, and dried himself on a third towel. all this time the other fellow was going through the same motions--but in a much different order. he began with his teeth. after he had brushed them, he lathered his face. after he had shaved, a single wash was enough and a single towel did the drying job. he had finished his canteloupe and was well along with his eggs before his companion reached the diner. number two didn't do a better job of brushing his teeth, of shaving, of washing. but he _did_ do a better job of planning. he started where each operation would lead directly and naturally into the next, performing each at the proper time. after all, isn't that precisely what you do in planning any part of your business? iii organizing the work remember psmith and pbrown? one could analyze, but didn't know what to do with his analysis after he got it. the other was an expert planner, but alas! his plans were never based upon the solid foundation of actual necessity. he planned to do something before he knew what had to be done. psmith and pbrown, together, looked like a grand pair when we introduced them in the chapter on planning. now, after taking particular pains to give that impression, we shall have to break right down and confess in open meeting that they are but two numbers of the management team. probinson is the third. probinson organizes the work. psmith may analyze to a fare-you-well; pbrown may plan till he's blue in the face--their best efforts are as of nothing worth unless probinson is on hand to organize the work of the business. for as surely as there is a knack of analyzing and a knack of planning, just so surely is there a knack of organizing the work. thus we approach the third phase of the job of managing. so far we have seen how the successful manager starts from the top, working backward, to chart his job--and then, having found out what has to be done, builds his plan for doing it. analysis and planning, however, will carry him just so far. unless he acquires the knack of organization, he will never make a howling success of his job--he will fall just short of being an outstanding manager. the office manager for an eastern concern affords the needed illustration. p. c.--those aren't his initials--knew office management from a to izzard. first to arrive in the morning, last to leave at night, he had a tremendous capacity for hard labor. but he never seemed to make a hole in the pile of work on his desk. it grew no smaller fast. why? because he never, in all his years of managing, learned to arrange the division of his work. he never learned to deputize it. when his mind should have been free for the more or less important decisions which crop out now and then even in an office manager's life, it was all bound around in the necessity of performing some silly little routine job which any girl of moderate intelligence could have done. his idea of organizing his job was to try to do everything himself. and within his physical limitations he was a valuable man to the company. but how much more he'd have been worth had he, at some time in his career, acquired the knack of organization! don't jump to the conclusion, now, that the successful organizer is one who merely divides up his work and parcels it out among a flock of assistants. don't think for a moment that it is nothing but deputization. effective organization is far more than that. it is the distribution of work, according to its character or urgency, among the facilities at hand for doing it according to their capacities or cost. and it makes no difference whether those facilities happen to be men, money, or machines--or simply your own available time. you deputize work when you use an adding machine instead of your head to total last month's sales--when you turn the job of packaging breakfast food over to an automatic machine--when you jot down in your notebook information which would otherwise tax your memory--when you telephone the purchasing agent instead of making your legs take you to his office--when, instead of using your own funds, you do something on borrowed capital. deputization may be any one of these just as easily as it may be asking your assistant to find out why so-and-so's order for boys' pants wasn't shipped on time, or making him responsible for working out a new prospect list. * * * * * the office manager of a shoe concern found, right after the war, that much of his day was spent telling dealers in kalamazoo and keokuk to be patient, please, and they'd get their shoes. those were the halcyon days, you'll remember, when salesmen went out twice a year and told their customers how many shoes or ships or sewing machines they could have--and when they could have them. as a result, this particular shoe factory was loaded to the guards with orders. orders were shipped when, as and if they struggled from cutting room to fitting room--and from then on down to the packing department. complaints were numerous. they weren't exactly complaints, either. queries, rather. where are my shoes? can't you ship march instead of april ? and so on--until, as we started to say, the sales manager was spending a great part of his time dictating replies to his stenographer. and she didn't have time for any of her other duties. analysis proved that the letters were, in the main, of three types. three letters were therefore prepared, and each day the sales manager went through the inquiries and indicated which letter should go to which customer. in that way the latter got a prompt and courteous reply, as well as certain vague information explaining why he'd have to wait another month for his shoes. and he was moderately happy. personal attention from the sales manager could have accomplished no more. thus a certain part of an executive's and his stenographer's time was deputized to a system. could the sales manager have gone a step further and had his letter mimeographed, he would have been deputizing to a machine the same amount of his own and a much larger part of the stenographer's time. but, while the customers accepted plausible excuses in place of shoes, it is doubtful whether the cleverest imitation would have taken the place of a real typewritten letter. with the manufacturer of a proprietary medicine, however, things are different. women from every part of the country write in describing their ailments. it is not difficult to classify these letters into a dozen groups. and form letters, done in skillful imitation of real typing, do the trick quite nicely. that is deputizing--just as it is deputizing when the "big boss" calls in his assistant and says: "you run this shebang from now on. i've got to see if i can't get the k. c. plant out of the red." and it's deputizing when a manufacturer, forced to increase the size of his plant, goes to a real estate operator and gets him to buy a piece of land, put up a building and rent it to him at a certain figure, while he uses his own capital to equip and operate the new plant, because he can make per cent, say, on his capital himself, whereas he has to pay out as rent only an amount equal to per cent of what land, building, insurance, and so on, would tie up. fundamentally, then, deputizing is taking something away from the "principal" of the job or business and assigning it to a "deputy." principal and deputy may be a manager and his stenographer, a department head and a filing system, or a corporation's capital and a bond issue. the first stumbling step toward organization, therefore, is to recognize and define the principal and the deputies in a given task. a good manager, though, can't simply go and deputize every detail of his job. that might be nothing more than the trick of a lazy man. yet a rising young executive (on our list of casual acquaintances) has done exactly that. he has carried it to such a fine point that he is able to spend three afternoons a week with col. bogie. he is still rising, although some of us have abiding faith in the old adage that what goes up must come down. in other words, he's rising to a fall. no, organizing is not deputizing in that sense of the word. in effective organizing, it will be noted from the examples cited, work is deputized _only when the "principal" is left free to do something else more important or more profitable_. the "big boss" didn't hand the plant over to his assistant until he knew his undivided attention was needed elsewhere--until he knew he could spend his time more profitably in another phase of the business. analyze the conditions under which the sales manager delegated part of his dictation to a system, and part of his stenographer's typing to a duplicating machine. you will see that the work deputized fulfilled two conditions: it was work the system and the machine could do to advantage-- and work which he and his stenographer could do only at the expense of more important work. wherever there is delegation of responsibility in any true job of managing, the same two fundamentals will be seen. too often a manager says: "never do anything your subordinate can do for you." but it is not good management when turning a job over to a subordinate leaves the manager idle and unproductive--with nothing on his mind except his hat. the good manager, whatever may be his particular job of managing, follows two rules when he deputizes or distributes work to man, money or machine. such work, he knows, should be: . work which that other person or other thing can do to good advantage. . work which the manager would do himself only at the expense of something more important. deputizing your work so that your days are free for golfing or yachting is far from the spirit of true organization. when a schwab deputizes, another job profits by the increased time he is able to give to it. every time he passes on a bit more responsibility, the whole enterprise profits through his greater freedom for the big sweep of the business. and when a manager fails because he has never learned to share responsibilities, we shudder at his folly--never stopping to think that the sole reason it was folly was because there was a bigger job for him to do. deputizing his work would have left him free to exercise big, broad judgment in a way that only leisure and calmness could afford. * * * * * a few years ago, two young men went into business in a small illinois town. they were honest, industrious, well liked. austin was a born salesman; black was a shrewd buyer. it looked like a good combination and the local banker gave them a line of credit. one year went by. two years. austin and black were just skinning by. a fair living was all they were getting out of the business. volume--which was what they needed--was increasing, oh, so slowly. a salesman came along about that time and told them some things they didn't know. a little more skill in watching the stock; cutting out lines which weren't paying; trimming purchases on slow-moving stocks; pushing specialties before they went bad on their hands--those were some of the methods which meant added profits. it certainly looked like good business to hire another clerk so that the partners' time would be free for these new phases of the business. the clerk was taken on--and things began to hum. soon austin and black saw other steps they ought to take. more attention must be given to advertising. that meant another clerk. next came a bookkeeper, an assistant bookkeeper. trade was increasing, you see, and net profits were increasing. extra clerks were needed all right, but the proprietors went the whole hog and put on so many that they themselves no longer had to stand behind a counter. they were both badly bitten by the bug of supervision. finally the tide turned. it usually does. and when austin and black went to the bank one day to get an extension of credit, the shrewd old retired farmer on the other side of the desk laid down the law. they got the extension--but only on certain conditions. the chief condition was that they do less managing and more merchandising. [illustration] and that's what they are doing today. there were two managers who organized their work, increased their profits. up to a certain point, every time they deputized their work, it was an advantage, because it left them more time for better merchandising. but they weren't organizing according to our two fundamentals. literally, they were _deputizing all the work that others could do_--and not confining the work deputized to _work they themselves could do only at the expense of something more important_. how well the chart tells the story! the great big white piece of pie marked "idle" shows exactly where austin and black went wrong. the worst thing that ever happened to them was the day they went home from chicago and tried to run their business the way they thought mr. james w. simpson runs his large retail emporium. somewhere along the line they tripped over the point of vanishing returns and kept right on going. and thus we come to the scylla and charybdis of our job of organizing. remember we are not interested in the mere knack of getting someone else to take over every last responsibility that can be borne by another. perhaps that may be good management for a schwab--in so far, at least, as it leaves his mind free for the exercise of the broad judgment we mentioned a while ago. nor are we interested in the sheer industry and application involved in doing without assistance everything that can possibly be so done, although doing it may be equally good management for, say, a file clerk. rather is our interest in the knack of sensing the dividing line between work to perform and work to deputize. it is that ability which is the mark of the successful manager. * * * * * where is this dividing line? how shall we know where to deputize and when to perform? what kind of work shall we turn over to subordinates? what shall we reserve for ourselves? again, whatever the job or business we are engaged in organizing, there are simple rules to follow. but first an illustration which will help to make the point. consider the credit man for a large concern which sold machines on a monthly payment plan. he was always in a jam with the sales department. it took too long, complained the sales manager, to get credit rulings. it was no fun to put a whole lot of work into selling the customer, only to have the order turned down by the house because of poor credit. why couldn't the credit man give them a ruling before they attempted to close a sale? sometimes it took so long to get an o.k. that the prospect got all cold and went somewhere else. the treasurer of the company was drawn into the picture when the sales manager openly declared he'd "get" the credit man. and it certainly looked as if the sales manager had a good case. "but," protested the credit man, "i've made mighty few mistakes. as for delays--well, i don't know how i could work any harder." "maybe you work too hard," the treasurer ventured. "hm, if i didn't do what i do, i don't know who would." "hold on, now, let's get this thing straight. you're valuable to the company because of your long experience and good judgment on credits. when you have all the dope on a man, i'll bet my last dollar on your decision. the only mistakes you ever make are when you hurry your decisions. "but--and here's the point--you aren't any better at digging out the facts than either of your two assistants. yet here's what you do. you divide salesmen's requests for credit rulings into two groups. you take those that run over $ ; your assistants get the others. each of you does his own investigating and digging--and except in puzzling cases, you practically let your two men make their own decisions. myself assistants $ up under $ mercantile reports bank references special investigations "briefing" data final ruling correspondence $ up under $ { mercantile reports assistants { bank references { special investigations { "briefing" data myself { final ruling { correspondence "why, listen. you, the best man we have on _decisions_, spend more than half your time _digging_, while your assistants spend much of their time making decisions. what's the result? delay, the department in a jam, some decisions made in a hurry, some by your assistants. "the trouble with you is, you haven't organized your department right." and the treasurer sketched the diagram reproduced in the upper chart on page . "why, man, your job is to keep _all_ bad credits off the books--not just the big ones. a bad risk--whether it's $ or $ --is a mistake. you're an expert credit man--but as a manager, you're a washout. "this," he added, "is the way you ought to set up your department. then you, the best man on decisions, will do all the deciding. your two assistants, who are just as good as you are at digging, will spend all their time getting you the facts." and as he spoke he sketched in the lower chart. the credit man had erred in the other direction from the two retail merchants. he wasn't doing _enough_ managing. he was keeping too much work for himself. and he was _deputizing the wrong kind of work_. the merchants were deputizing work they should have done themselves--the general supervision of stocks, advertising and sales did not require their undivided attention--and the volume and profits of the business wouldn't stand so much unproductive expense. our credit man, on the other hand, was doing work which others could very well do for him--the time he spent on such work should have been devoted to other and more important responsibilities. in the story of the credit man, however, another fundamental of good organization comes to light. remember how the treasurer classified the character of the work to be done? not only was the credit man trying to do too much work, but even when he _did_ assign work to his assistants, he assigned the wrong kind. he deputized, true enough--but he erred in regard to the kind of work he deputized. he thought he could deputize small credits. it didn't take the treasurer long to show him that the amount made no difference--it was the character of the work that required consideration. plenty of managers make that same mistake. they judge the importance of the task by its physical bigness--or by the amount of money involved--instead of deciding according to the character of the work. before work can be safely deputized, then, it must be more intelligently classified. and the key to better classification is found by dividing the job or business into two elements. one is enterprise. the other is routine. _enterprise_ is an arbitrary term which we shall choose to indicate those factors of work which involve the use of judgment, initiative, experiment or speculation. _routine_ we shall apply to those factors which follow settled precedents or rules or come within the range of known ability to perform. analyze your own job with these two terms in mind. the various duties you perform will fall readily into one or the other of the two classifications. the things which come under the head of routine you have a right to deputize if, when you chart both classifications--in as accurate a proportion as possible to the capacities of the "principal" and the "deputies"--you find you are not overloading the business with unproductive management. a simple rule of thumb works here about as well as anything: base the division of work on how much or how little of the routine the _principal_ can afford to carry. * * * * * you may safely deputize only so long as, by so doing, you leave yourself free for the more important, more profitable decisions. don't forget for a moment, then--if you would organize effectively--that there is a tremendous difference between enterprise and routine work. don't waste energy on the one. don't deputize the other--unless you can effectively organize a deputy's capacity for doing it, and then only if it pays. don't be like the manager who got a taste of the savings to be made through the application of mechanical handling equipment. he bought conveyors--and more conveyors. he was deputizing the handling job to machines. so far, so good. but the first thing you know he had a -ft. conveyor connecting two points in his shipping room. it took one man to load it, another to unload it. previously one man with a hand truck had moved the packages very nicely, and had a lot of time left over for other duties. and here he needed an extra man--and owned a costly piece of equipment to boot. under such circumstances the conveyor became very expensive scenery--not nearly so nice to look at as yellowstone park or the riviera--and the money invested in it would have bought a trip to either. thus all savings through deputization don't pay. many a machine will save time and labor, but the interest on the investment, and upkeep and the depreciation will more than eat up the saving--unless the time and labor saved can be profitably turned to something else. * * * * * no attempted exposition of the knack of organizing can be complete without something more than passing mention of a phase which may be all too easily slid over or completed. when work is deputized, the responsibility of the manager does not end with the act of deputization. it is the manager's responsibility to see that the work is done in the simplest and most effective manner. a sales executive had allowed a bunch of call reports to accumulate. there were several hundred of them. so he called in a stenographer whose time was hanging fairly heavily on her hands, and asked her to put them into alphabetical order preparatory to filing. fifteen minutes later he happened by and was startled to see that she had covered two desks with the call reports and seemed to be making haste very slowly indeed. she had made a pile for every last letter in the alphabet. and every time she picked up a report, she had to hunt for the proper pile to put it in. so he showed her how to sort first in five major piles--a, b, c, d in one pile and so on. and then to sort each pile again into five piles, one for each letter--and finally to sort each individual pile alphabetically. it sounded like more handling. and perhaps it was. but the job of classification was greatly simplified. there was no more hunting for the missing pile. the work proceeded quickly and accurately. a rough illustration. he might have gone a step further and deputized part of the girl's task to a machine instead of to the primitive system described. that is to say, he might have seen that she was provided with one of the preliminary filing baskets which file clerks often use. then the task of sorting alphabetically could have been done in a single handling of each report. but whatever the method he made available for the girl's use, the illustration still serves to indicate that the manager's responsibility does not end when he turns a job over to a subordinate. it remains his care to see that the job is done by the most effective method--not necessarily the speediest, but the one which gets the best results for the effort involved. to find this "one best" method, industry has evolved a complete technique of time and motion study. and merely to hint at what may be accomplished by breaking down an operation into its elementary operations and observing the time required to perform them, becomes part of our task in setting down the ways and means of organizing. first we shall find that any job, simple or complex, may be divided into three parts: make ready, do and put away. shaving, for example. first we get everything ready--razor, brush, shaving cream, hot water. then comes the actual operation of shaving. and last, cleaning up--rinsing the brush, wiping the razor, and putting things back where they belong. perhaps you're in the same boat as the old farmer who, approached by the subscription salesman of an agricultural magazine, allowed he wa'nt farmin' now half as good as he knew how. or perhaps you already hold speed records at giving your face the once-over. but, you see, the whole point in studying the job is not aimed at faster shaving, but at simplifying the "make ready" and "put away" phases of the operation. for example, the next time you shave, try picking up the tube of shaving cream with one hand and unscrewing the cap while you're wetting your brush with the other. it will be awkward as the dickens the first time you try it. but try it again and again and again. it won't be long before you'll be an expert at doing the job that way. finish up that part of the operation by screwing the cap back on while you are lathering your face with the right hand. does it require a stop watch to point out the saving in time that you've made? oh, it won't be easy the first few times, but before you know it, you'll have taught yourself good work habits. take a simple job like the assembly of a license bracket in an automobile factory. an analysis of this operation (see "micromotion technique," by f. j. van poppelen, _factory and industrial management_, nov., ) showed that the right hand was busy all the time, while the left did nothing most of the time except hold the piece. at the risk of getting too technical--for after all we are interested, not so much in the details, as in certain broad principles of organizing the work--let us see how the operation was performed. first the operator assembled a number of screws and leather washers by picking up a screw with the left hand, a washer with the right, putting them together and laying the assembly aside. then he picked up a bracket with the left hand and a screw and washer assembly with the right, placing the screw through a slot in the bracket--continuing to hold assembled pieces in his left hand while the right was picking up a flat washer and assembling it to the screw; picking up lock washer, assembling it to the screw; picking up acorn nut and starting it on the screw; and finally picking up an open-end wrench and tightening the nut. then he assembled screw, washers and nut to the other side of the bracket, whereupon wrench and bracket were laid aside, completing the cycle. an analysis of these motions, by right and left hands, is given in the table on page . it illustrates the important point that the right hand was busy all the time, but for a considerable part of the time the left was doing nothing but holding the piece. on pages and are shown drawings of the old and the new assembly methods. likewise, the lower table on page analyzes, by right and left hands, the motions required by the new method. note first that fewer elements-- as against --are required. and note that both hands are productively employed with shorter distances to travel for stock and with decreased effort. [illustration: analysis of this assembly job shows ... ... that the right hand was busy all the time....] [illustration: comparison with the old method ... shows both hands productively employed....] table left hand right hand . pick up screw pick up leather washer . assemble assemble . idle lay aside . pick up bracket pick up screw and washer assembled . hold bracket assemble . " " pick up flat washer . " " assemble . " " pick up lock washer . " " assemble . " " pick up nut . " " start on thread . " " pick up wrench . " " tighten nut . " " lay wrench aside . " " pick up screw and washer assembled . " " assemble to other side of bracket . " " pick up flat washer . " " assemble . " " pick up lock washer . " " assemble . " " pick up nut . " " start on thread . " " pick up wrench . " " tighten nut . " " lay wrench aside . idle lay bracket aside table left hand right hand . pick up screw and transport same . position on block same . pick up leather washer and transport same . position on screw same . pick up new bracket and transport pick up assembled bracket; lay aside . position bracket on block same . pick up flat washer and transport same . position on screw same . pick up lock washer and transport same . position on screw same . pick up nut and transport same . start nut on screw same . position driver same . tighten nut same . position driver to nd nut same . tighten nut same . release driver and move assembled bracket in. forward on block same the new set-up consists of a hardwood block, shaped to fit one side of the bracket when assembled, and nailed to the bench. the open-end wrench was replaced by a screw-driver with a socket wrench to fit the acorn nut, suspended on a spring in front of the operator. the miscellaneous containers for holding the small parts were replaced by a supply of sheet-metal duplicate trays, so that the various parts could be located in the most convenient position. (this arrangement was not used in the accompanying illustrations because it obscured the view.) in a word, then, the number of elements was decreased by one-third--and practically all of the elements in the new method require less time than the similar or corresponding element in the old method. the distance of travel for stock has been shortened, parts are grasped more easily, better and faster tools are provided, effort is decreased, and both hands are productively employed. need the imagination be stretched to the breaking point to see how a job involving the work not of one man, but of several, may be similarly organized and similarly improved? a second illustration will serve to show the application to group work (see "motion study applied to group work," by j. a. piacitelli, _factory and industrial management_, april, , page ). the operation studied here involved cycles of approximately eleven seconds' duration, performed by a group of seven men. the material handled consisted of rolls of roofing weighing about lbs. each. many of the elements in the cycle were obviously fatiguing. the rolls had to be lifted, during transfers from one worker to another, and rolled along a horizontal runway. the trucker lifted the completed roll and placed it on his truck. while the rate of production was limited by process and speed of equipment, the chance to cut cost and fatigue prompted the study. examine the equipment layout before the study was made (it is shown on page ), and follow the operation. a roll of roofing paper approximately in. in diameter and in. long was wound about the mandrel of a winding machine by one of the workers. the roll was taken off and passed to another worker who wrapped a sheet of paper about it and pasted it in place. when the roll was wrapped, he had to lift the roll, turn and deposit it on the runway. the next man inserted a bag of nails, a can of cement and an instruction sheet into the core of the roll. to do this, he was forced to turn and bend almost to floor level to get his supplies. next the roll was passed along to two men who, from opposite sides of the runway, placed protectors and muslin caps on the ends of the roll. it was then rolled along to another man who placed gummed paper bands about the ends and pushed the roll to the end of the runway where the trucker placed it on a truck and wheeled it into storage. [illustration: equipment layout before study] [illustration: equipment layout after study] the movie camera, which is gradually finding wider industrial use in the search for the "one best" method, was used to record the work of this group. it supplied not only a photographic record of the working place and surrounding conditions, but also a simultaneous record of time and method employed by each worker regardless of speed. it was then possible to study overlapping cycles and to analyze the methods to the desired degree of accuracy--and thus to transfer parts of the cycle of one operator to that of another, thus effecting a better distribution of work and shortening the cycle of the person on whom the production of the group depends--thereby increasing the productivity of the entire group. these analyses showed immediately an unequal distribution of work. again, from the equipment layout made after the study, let us follow through and see what changes were effected. first the wrapper was freed from turning and lifting the roll from his table by the introduction of an elevator which lifted the roll to an inclined runway. the roll then moved from place to place by gravity when released by foot-operated trips. the pasting problem was solved by using a trough the length of the paper, open on the bottom and equipped with squeegee lips like the mucilage bottle on your desk. a pile of wrapping paper with the far edges of the sheets inserted under the trough supplied a pasted sheet every time one was drawn toward the operator. the trough was covered with a hinged plate which permitted the roll to pass over it to the elevator. it was found, by eliminating the fatiguing elements in this man's work and simplifying his cycle of motions, that the time would be so reduced that he could easily take over the work of the man who placed the cement and nails in the core of the roll. the instruction sheet was placed in the roll by the winder, who had ample time for this additional task. the pile of sheets was placed at his right under a date stamp so that he could date each sheet and slip it into the roll just before it stopped. simplifying the cycle of the men who placed the caps on the ends of the roll enabled them to take over with ease the work of the man who had placed the gummed-paper bands around the ends. thus each man capped and banded his own end, whereas formerly the bander had had to assume an awkward and fatiguing position to reach the far end. and last, by placing a redesigned truck at the end of the incline, the completed rolls landed in the truck, and the trucker was able to care for two machines. the method finally established was recorded on instruction sheets, and the existing premium was modified to provide additional incentive. although, as stated at the outset, the rate of production was limited by the machine, substantial savings resulted from the study. production has been maintained with - / men instead of ; fatigue has been greatly lessened; cost has been reduced about per cent; average earnings of the group have increased about per cent. thus the search for the "one best" method becomes an important factor in organizing the work. we might go on and show how this group work was organized in accordance with our two fundamentals, but the purpose of introducing this illustration and the one preceding it was, after all, to show that the _principal's_ responsibility, after deputizing work, ends only when he has shown the _deputy_ the most effective method of doing it. besides, we must hasten on to the task of handling the "help." we have seen that the entire fabric of managing rests upon the knack of organizing; that organizing the work must be preceded by planning; and that planning must be based upon analysis. and now, having organized, we must learn how to handle the "help"--which is a task met in every job involving managing. and what job, big or small, does not involve managing? iv handling the "help" there used to be a good old golden rule of thumb that was plenty good enough for the good old rule-of-thumb days. it was: _if you would be fair, treat all your men alike_. as a matter of fact it wasn't a bad rule in those halcyon days for man wanted then but little here below. and he got it. those were the days when a certain plant of a certain electrical concern was known affectionately among the employees as "siberia." with good reason, too, for it was the dreariest, bleakest place in winter you can imagine. and a transfer to it was like nothing so much as a sentence to siberia. well, well, their plant today is as comfortable a place to work in as you'll find anywhere in the country; that concern today sets a high standard of employer-employee relationships; those same workers who, thirty years ago, shivered at the bare thought of pulling on their pants and trekking over the barren wastes to "siberia," are today comfortably retired on modest pensions which don't do a thing but help keep the wolf from the door. yet the management, in those days beyond recall, would have shown you that _all men were treated alike_. perhaps that was the trouble. anyway, if you asked the management today how to handle "help," dollars to doughnuts the answer would come closer to being: to be fair, treat every man differently. a suggestive statement--significant because it is indicative of tremendous change in the relationships of capital and labor, of employer and employee. fifteen years ago a lad graduated from an eastern university. his folks were poor but proud--as mr. alger used to say--but managed to see phil through. phil had made a good record in school--and some good friends. through one of them he got a letter to mr. h--, the head of an old established firm of stockbrokers--and the letter got him a job. the job paid $ a week. even in those days there wasn't much left over after carfare and lunches had been deducted. but phil was "learning the bond business." he wouldn't be worth even $ a week the first six months. after that, maybe. he stuck. graduated from "running the street" to a stool in the stock clerk's cage. came the new year and phil found an extra dollar in his pay envelope. he asked the cashier if there wasn't some mistake. there wasn't. two days later he got a job in a factory near his home at $ a week. told mr. h-- he was leaving. was offered $ to stay. wouldn't. mr. h-- confessed later that he had let the most promising prospect in years slip through his fingers. all--if you ask us--because it was a fixed policy of the house to treat all alike. for years it had been doing just exactly that. each june it took on a new crop of young men to "learn the business." each young man got $ a week. no favorites. but nine out of every ten came from prosperous, even wealthy families. that $ bill was nothing in their young lives. their families were glad to have them work for nothing, for they were getting an insight into the investment business--and some day, whether they became bond salesmen or just plain manufacturers and solid bankers, that knowledge would be worth its weight in gold. phil was the tenth man. mr. h-- knew well enough that he couldn't get by on $ a week. _but there was the rule._ it couldn't be broken. no, we can't wind up by telling how phil did well in the pants factory, married the boss's daughter and owns the business today. that would be wandering far from the truth. he couldn't "see" the boss' daughter for one thing--and besides the pants factory wasn't such a much. no, you'll find phil today doing a bang-up job in an ohio plant. it says "general manager" on his door. and as far as he is concerned, it was the best thing that ever happened when mr. h-- treated him like all the rest. mr. h--, though, is still taking them on, still paying them $ a week--or maybe it's $ --still treating them all alike. he gets a lot of bright young fellows into the business. but every so often he passes up a chance to get an exceptionally promising boy--because he is fair and treats them all alike. what's a rule for, anyway, except to break? mr. h-- will never know that it's the _exception_ that proves the rule--particularly when you are dealing with human values. * * * * * but more later of the newer viewpoint. for the moment we are talking about handling the "help"--and making it sound as though it were solely the problem of the big employer. not so. it is a problem with every one of you in business--unless you do nothing but sit in one spot and do one job from nine to five, five days--we hope--a week. the editor who wants a manuscript typed; the salesman who must get long distance; the man at the machine who has to get tools from the toolroom; the errand boy with his bundle to carry--all have the same problem. to all of them it is just as important in relation to their own scale of things as it is to the manager of a business with ten or a hundred or a thousand employees. it is the eternal problem of getting others to cooperate. some men are good at it; others are total failures. many a man on the bench or at the machine has the ability, knowledge and experience which qualify him for a job as foreman or even superintendent. but he can't hold down a foreman's job because he hasn't the knack of getting hearty, whole-souled cooperation from others. foremen, too, have changed, you see. today the successful foreman is less often the hard-boiled driver, more often the student of his job, of his men, of himself. he has learned that, _to be fair, he must treat every man differently_. often we hear of bill's losing his job as a mechanic, not because he didn't know his job, not because he couldn't run every lathe in the shop, but because he "couldn't get along" with the other men. and we think, poor bill! it's too bad he's so quick-tempered. generally we blame it on "temperament." yet some of the very best handlers of men are the crabbiest, crankiest gents in seven states. others are as cold as steel. and like as not the warm-hearted, generous man is a monumental failure at handling his "help." no, when you check specific methods of handling people--methods which are successful for the most part--something much more fundamental than temperament will be found. * * * * * mrs. thompson was in charge of the information desk and switchboard in a medium-sized new england factory. a well-bred englishwoman in her late thirties, the boss liked her for her pleasant voice over the phone, for her unfailingly courteous treatment of visitors. but if the boss liked her, almost no one else did. salesmen particularly complained of her crankiness and of the unsatisfactory service they got. young bacon was an exception, though. he always got what he wanted. one day the office manager asked him how on earth he did it. bacon thought he was being taken for a ride, but finally answered: "why, that's a cinch. i take mrs. thompson's job seriously." pressed for details, he supplied them. "i never try to kid her. i never bawl her out. when i want a number i treat her as though the switchboard were her own particular business and i a customer. just as if she had something to sell, and i something to buy. when i ask for some special service, she gives it to me. or she tells me why she can't." afterwards the office manager took the trouble to look into the situation. the switchboard job was a life saver to that woman of . she needed the money in the first place. and besides the job gave her a sense of responsibility. she was proud of her job, proud to know that the men in the business depended upon her for certain important services. she couldn't understand, then, when a salesman picked up his telephone and barked a command at her as though she were a piece of office furniture, or patronized her as if she were a child, or kidded her as if she were a -year-old flapper. it made her cranky to be treated like that. and when someone like bacon came along with his method of treating her work as a responsible piece of business, it put her on her mettle. the solution was obvious. the office manager talked mrs. thompson and mrs. thompson's job over with the salesmen. it wasn't long before they changed their tactics, with resultant improvement in the quality of the telephone service they got. sounds like a case of knowing the foibles of the person involved, doesn't it? it's more than that. edna is a switchboard operator, too. she is pretty and agreeable. and you couldn't blame the boys for liking to hang around. no one thought much about that until some of the more serious-minded men discovered they couldn't get a thing out of edna. she was too busy listening to joe's latest exploit with one hand, and plugging jack in with the other. she played favorites in putting through long distance calls, took advantage of the friendly feeling everyone had toward her. the telephone service in that office just folded up and died. there wasn't any. the obvious remedy was to fire edna. but the manager was a cagey old codger. beneath a rough exterior beat a heart of gold, and somehow he felt that maybe it wasn't all edna's fault. why, blast it, she'd been treated like a pretty, petulant girl. why shouldn't she act like one? a memo was the result. it announced the creation of a new department. "telephone service" was its name--and edna blank was its head. it was just as much a part of the business as the accounting department, or any other. he had sense enough to put definite responsibilities upon edna's shoulders. he did it not only to instill in her a sense of duty, but also to impress her with his confidence in her ability to perform those duties. then, under the rose, he instructed the men to treat her just as they treated the capable woman in charge of the accounting end of the business. they did. and edna rose to the occasion, took pride in her work, discouraged the hangers-on, played no favorites in putting through calls, and became as good an operator as ever you'd hope to see. now, then, scratch the surface and what do you find? not that it was simply a case of understanding mrs. thompson's and edna's foibles. not at all. mrs. thompson stopped being cranky and became accommodating, edna dropped her irresponsible ways and became an alert, attentive operator when they got the feeling out of their work that they were transacting business for themselves. and need we look for further proof of our postulate that to be fair, you must treat all your assistants differently? you must know them, know yourself, if you would get whole-hearted cooperation. that is fundamental in any attempt to acquire the knack of handling the "help." * * * * * for there _is_ a knack of handling the help. it _can_ be acquired. this we say despite the difficulty of analyzing the relations of one person to another, despite the seeming impossibility of setting down a rule which will work universally. take a man running a peanut stand, a hosiery mill, or a steel plant. there are three things he wants for himself: ( ) to build up and hold a good trade; ( ) to please his customers; ( ) to get a fair profit. remember these three wants when you're dealing with your help. get your "help"--it may be the switchboard operator or it may be a thousand automobile workmen--in the position of wanting those same three things. the help's job is his "trade," you are his customer; and his compensation is his profit. when you do that, you have an employee or helper who is going to give you the hearty cooperation you're looking for--just so long as you are a good customer, and his compensation for helping you is a fair profit. next time you go into a store, try to keep that thought fixed in your mind. everyone working in a business, you see, is selling his services--and when you use those services you are the buyer. perhaps you pay in money for the services rendered--perhaps you simply repay him by making his day's work easier. in either event, treat your requests for service as though you and he were transacting a business that is mutually, but individually, profitable, and the cooperation which is otherwise usually begrudged will be automatically forthcoming. but that, you say, is personality. then how do you account for this? a. is a big, breezy salesman. he busts into a hotel, calls the "greeter" behind the desk by name, asks for "same as last time"--and gets all kinds of real service from porters, bell-hops and waiters. it looks as though it might be personality. yet right behind him walks b. he's a horse-faced bird who never smiles--wiry, monosyllabic--asks brusquely for a $ room--gets it. and gets everything else he asks for--just as promptly as a. does. no, it can't be personality. for there's c. and there's d. c. is a's twin--and b. and d. were cast in the same mold. their tips are no smaller; their demands no more unreasonable. yet c. gets the poorest sample room in the house. and d's trunk is always the last one the porter brings up. these aren't exaggerated cases. hotel men will tell you they happen every day. why, then, did a. and b. rate such good service while their fellow knights of the road got none? because when a. and b. asked for something, there was about the transaction a well-defined air of "you've something you can do for me--i've something i want done--what say we trade?" whereas, when c. and d. came along, regardless of the personal manners involved, there was created the atmosphere of a one-sided business deal. c's breeziness had in it a touch of condescension, or d's brusqueness was the brusqueness of assumed superiority. thus is it seen, when we forget all about personality and study effects, that cooperation is gained by trading with the "help" according to the "help's" business. trade with an elevator man as though running an elevator were his own business--trade with the chief chemist as though the laboratory were his store--and they'll trade with you and be eager to make a satisfactory deal of it. under this fixed policy--or rule--the proper attitude to take towards this or that class of "help" becomes a matter of automatic selection. and that is how we begin to acquire the knack of handling the help. thus do we step high, wide and handsome on our road to the knack of managing. * * * * * now enters the business of compensation. there must be compensation in a trade if all hands are to be satisfied. everyone is in business because he wants something. everything that will help him to get what he wants, he will like to do; everything that hinders him, he will dislike to do. when you get ready to "trade" with someone, therefore, consider what the other man wants--that is, if you want to get the most help or cooperation out of the transaction. then consider what you can give in return--balancing his wants. +----------------------------------------------------------+ | +-------------+ +--------------+ | | |what you want| | what your | | | +-------------+ | "help" wants | | | \ /+--------------+ | | +---------------------+ | | |what you can give and| | | |he can take that will| | | | leave both parties | | | | satisfied | | | +---------------------+ | +----------------------------------------------------------+ there must be that balance in every satisfactory deal. examine the chart on this page. it will save a lot of paper and ink because it shows diagrammatically what must happen if there are to be satisfactory arrangements between you and your "help". a word or two by way of interpretation may serve to show how it works out. when the "help" is in your employ, the compensation--what you can give and he can take, leaving both parties satisfied--is his monthly pay check or his weekly envelope. or it is the rate of commission. and bearing upon it are such things as local living conditions, and so on. when the "help" is someone not in your direct employ, then the compensation is regulated by the effect which performing the service you require, has on the success of the "help's" regular day's work. for the moment, let's us return to the messenger boy whom we left in chapter iii just as he was about to deliver a message. or, at least, let's talk about another messenger boy whose task of managing his job differs in no wise from the first's--or, for that matter, from any other job of management. this boy worked in a large chicago building and his job was carting light but bulky packages back and forth between his company's quarters and its customers'. there were a dozen other boys, and most of them complained of having trouble getting up and down in the elevators. it seemed that the starter took delight in making the boys wait for the freight elevator--even when there was plenty of room in the others. but this particular boy--an impudent youngster with a "fresh" way about him--had no trouble at all. so the office manager was anxious to know "how come." he posted himself where he could observe without being seen. and sure enough, in came the fresh messenger boy with a bundle almost as big as himself. down he set it, favored the starter with an impudent military salute and leaned nonchalantly up against the wall--well out of the way. "hello, feller," said he breezily; "lemme know when there's room. and don't keep me waiting too long, or i'll be out on my ear." picture the manager's astonishment when the starter replied: "git in here, then, and git in quick," and let him in the first car going up. somewhere, somehow, that impudent youngster had struck a responsive chord. instinctively--or else because of past experience with elevator starters--he had put the problem of that particular starter's service on a business basis. he had put it in the starter's power to perform his own work without trouble, and to feel at the same time that he was "a man of affairs." he was able to show his authority without taking it out on the boy. analyze this "trade" with the "compensation" chart in mind. do you not see the "balance" of interests? do you not see the starter's feeling that the service he rendered was his own business, that the boy was one of his customers, that the avoidance of trouble was his compensation or profit? is there not in this very unimportant transaction the balance of interests suggested by our little chart? at this stage of our approach to the knack of management, a ready objection comes to mind. we are now dealing in human values and relationships--and you can't chart them. analysis, planning, organization--certain rules may be set down which will enable one to attain some degree of effectiveness in carrying them out. but human nature? you can't deal with it by rule. the objection is well founded. you can't chart human nature--but you _can_ study the approaches to it and chart the laws that appeal to it. our chart on page is based upon what successful managers have learned about finding the wants of the human element when it works, and is constructed to supply a method of supplying those wants with as much productiveness and as little friction as possible. when you buy a new car and "put it to work," your first care is to find out its wants--how much you must give to get what it has to "sell"--what parts need oil and grease and so on. so, if you want to get work out of a human being, your best bet is to find out what that human being needs and must get in return for the work he performs or the service he gives. some men seem to be born with an instinct for finding this out. but if you aren't built that way, there is no reason why you can't drill yourself to the same end by deliberately studying each case. * * * * * see, for example, how a study of this sort gets the most out of men in a large new england plant where modern management methods are making serious inroads into the old rule-of-thumb ways of doing things. this concern was confronted with the very serious problem of maintaining a steady flow of product from one manufacturing department to another. because of the nature of the product, skids and power trucks had been chosen as the equipment best suited for the job. skids and lift trucks are effective handling units. no argument about that. their introduction into any factory which has been using more primitive handling methods should automatically cut costs. but they save precious little time and money when they aren't working, or when they are being worked uneconomically. the problem, then, as this concern saw it, was how to be sure that big ed hadn't shipped off for a quiet smoke far from the maddening crowd--or that little joe wasn't arranging his work so that there'd be a handful of skids left over at closing time--moves that called for overtime pay. in other words, to get per cent efficiency out of very efficient handling equipment, the management realized that it must take out some sort of insurance which would guarantee little joe's and big ed's and all the other truckers' being engaged in gainful occupation eight hours--count 'em--each and every day. the best insurance seemed to be a central dispatching system. no need to go into the details of its operation. suffice it to say that it went a long way toward directing the efforts of the truckers along gainful lines. there came to be an orderliness which had never existed before. when a foreman put in a call for a trucker, he knew that the move would be made without unnecessary delay. in fact, orders were placed into the truckers' hands within three minutes of the time the foreman picked up his telephone to call the central dispatching department. but--no attempt had been made to sell this system to the truckers. it met with some little resistance, just as anything new does. and there are ways, as who does not know, of beating any "game" designed to get more work out of human beings. so the management--after many a huddle over this particular situation--decided upon a bonus plan. and they set about selling it to the truckers--somewhat in the fashion about to be narrated. "see here, men," said the manager in effect, "i'm going to put this plan right up to you and let you decide for yourselves. we've looked into it carefully. you men average moves a day. so we've chosen moves as the starting point. we're sure you can make moves a day without tearing your shirts--and from there on, you begin to collect. for the next five trips you get a bonus of a nickel over and above your day rate; for the next five trips your bonus is cents; and so on. "so, if a man makes trips, his day's pay is not $ . , but $ . because he has earned cents in bonus. do you get it?" "yeah, we get it all right, all right. we do twice as much work for or cents more a day. how come? why don't we get paid extra for _all_ the moves we make over ?" "because we're just like you. the company wants to make more money. we've shown you how it can be done and we'll split pretty much - . but we won't give you all the extra profit any more than we'd think of keeping it ourselves. now think it over tonight and if you want to make $ or $ . a day instead of $ . , come 'round in the morning and we'll talk some more about it." came only the dawn. the truckers were pretty sure that they were being had, although they couldn't figure out just how. 'tis ever thus when the old order yields place to new. there was nothing left to do but try a new tack. so the manager talked to his fifteen or eighteen truckers again. and this time he proposed taking two of them and putting them on the new plan. after a little conversation to assure themselves that there was no skullduggery afoot, the truckers consented. and little ed and big joe (sic!) were nominated. little ed made moves the very first day and was as fresh as a daisy when the o'clock whistle blew. big joe made trips and looked none the worse for it. ed's bonus was $ . ; joe's was $ . . if you check up, we're sure you'll find those figures are wrong. but cheer up, we aren't nearly so much interested in the exact amounts of ed's and joe's earning as we are in the ultimate results and in the principles involved. we may pass quickly over the former. of course the men were convinced. and big ed would have beaten any trucker to a gentle pulp who wouldn't have been convinced. in a week's time, those truckers were making nearly twice as many trips a day--and their earnings had increased by something like per cent. if you don't believe it, look at the figure on page . see what happened to production? yes, that pretty dotted line--the one with the big dip in it--marks labor costs per trip. the manager, you see--and now we come to the principle involved--had made his help see that the bonus plan amounted to giving them what they wanted. and of course, that was more pay. at the same time it got the company what it wanted--more production. [illustration: chart of records of dispatching electric trucks - ] fundamentally, the manager's system was precisely like the messenger boy's. and you can prove that in a trice by charting it on the same old basis. try it. it won't take you more than a couple of minutes. * * * * * this might go on for a long, long time. innumerable examples might be introduced into this text to illustrate this balancing of wants and its importance to the successful conduct of this business of managing--to illustrate that your own personal method of seeking cooperation or service is more a matter of reason than innate ability to "size up the other fellow." there is, in a word, method back of this "knack of handling the help." the method is this. ask yourself each time this simple question: what does your "helper" want? does your stenographer want to leave promptly at five so she can get ready for an evening of whoopee? or does she have to catch a particular train in order not to find a cold supper waiting for her at home? then why not fix things so she can work during the hours she is paid to work--and so she can leave at the hour when pay stops? can your truckers live in the style to which they are accustomed on $ . a day? or will $ . enable them to put away a bit for a rainy season? then why not arrange a wage payment method which will help them to do it? and above all, tell them why. to do such things is not philanthropy. successful managers will tell you it is nothing more nor less than good business. strip from their methods the individual characteristics required by the individual conditions involved. what do you find? every last one of them is based on our primary rule. that, you remember, is to find out what you want from your "help" and what your "help" wants from you; then a way to make the two meet on a ground of mutual satisfaction--the compensation you can give and the compensation they can take--and both of you get what you want. don't you see, to grasp the real knack of handling "help," the necessity for making what you want from them balance with what they want from you? if there isn't that balance, there won't be whole-souled cooperation. to paraphrase what henry ford once said--or what one of his collaborators made him say: "see that each man in doing the best he can for you is also doing the best he can for himself." thus, by digging in and finding out what everybody involved in the situation wants, it is possible to get the utmost in cooperation and loyalty. where one man does so instinctively, another gets equally good results by making a deliberate study along the lines we have pointed out. hundreds of jobs don't get done promptly and enthusiastically for no other reason than that they aren't interesting. they can be made interesting if you get the right line on what your work requires, what your "help" wants, and then make a common meeting ground. mark twain knew all about the knack of making work interesting and attractive. remember his description of tom sawyer's whitewashing the fence? even if you do, it won't hurt to read it again. poor tom. it was on a summer's morn just made for swimming or fishing--and he had to work. along comes ben, one of his cronies. tom begins to do some tall thinking. but let's not try to improve the original: "he took up his brush and went tranquilly to work.... "ben said: 'hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?' "tom wheeled suddenly and said: 'why, it's you, ben! i warn't noticing.' "'say--i'm going in a-swimming, i am. don't you wish you could? but of course you'd ruther _work_--wouldn't you? course you would!' "tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said: 'what do you call work?' "'why, ain't that work?' "tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly: 'well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain't. all i know is, it suits tom sawyer.' "'oh come, now, you don't mean to let on you like it?' "the brush continued to move. "'like it? well, i don't see why i oughtn't to like it. does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?' "that put the thing in a new light. ben stopped nibbling his apple. tom swept his brush daintily back and forth--stepped back to note the effect--added a touch here and there--criticized the effect again--ben watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. "presently he said: 'say, tom, let _me_ whitewash a little.' "tom considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind. 'no, no--i reckon it wouldn't hardly do, ben. you see, aunt polly's awful particular about this fence--right here on the street--you know--but if it was the back fence i wouldn't mind and she wouldn't. yes, she's awful particular about this fence; it's got to be done very careful; i reckon there ain't one boy in a thousand, mebbe two thousand, that can do it the way it's got to be done.' "'no--is that so? oh, come now--lemme just try. only just a little--i'd let you, if you was me, tom.' "'ben, i'd like to, honest injun; but aunt polly--well, jim wanted to do it, but she wouldn't let him; sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn't let sid. now don't you see how i'm fixed? if you was to tackle this fence and anything was to happen to it----' "'oh, shucks, i'll be just as careful. now lemme try. say--i'll give you the core of my apple.' "'well, here--no, ben, now don't. i'm afeard----' "'i'll give you all of it!' "tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart. and while the late steamer big missouri worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents. there was no lack of material; boys happened along every little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. by the time ben was fagged out, tom had traded the next chance to billy fisher for a kite, in good repair; and when he played out, johnny miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to swing it with--and so on, and so on, hour after hour. and when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, tom was literally rolling in wealth. he had, besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, part of a jew's-harp, a piece of blue bottle glass to look through, a spool cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six firecrackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass doorknob, a dog collar--but no dog--the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange peel and a dilapidated old window sash. "he had a nice, good, idle time all the while--plenty of company--and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! if he hadn't run out of whitewash, he would have bankrupted every boy in the village." mark twain didn't have the worker on the modern assembly line in mind--nor the stenographer tapping her typewriter--but he _did_ see that the work men can do best is the work that is made attractive to them--either through the money in it or the sheer success in doing it. find out what's wanted to make your work attractive, then find out what you can give that will meet those wants. then you get not only good work, but loyalty in it and enthusiasm for it. but you can't fool your "help"--at least not for long. if you play upon the desire for responsibility, you must give it up to capacity. if it is promotion you hold out as a reward, you must give it when it is deserved. if you play upon the desire for good pay, you must give it as far as the job will allow. and the nearer you come to giving all you can afford for the service received, in as nearly as possible the form that is wanted, whether in courtesy or in coin, in reasonable hours or in rapid advancement, in self-respect or in reciprocal service, the more cooperation you may expect. v safeguarding the business now for the last lap. our journey has run four-fifths of its course. we have passed through the successive stages of analysis, planning, organization and handling the "help." they have all been child's play compared with the most important part of the manager's work--the task of guarding the welfare of a business or a job. all other managerial cares fade into insignificance before the necessity of conserving the general good of the business. a business rises. a business falls. its life must be protected. and, as has been said so often, "the bigger they are, the harder they fall." a certain concern in new york state had been enjoying prosperity for lo! these many years. established 'way back in the "roaring forties," it had passed through three generations of the same family. each morning at nine the president was at his desk opening the mail into three piles--taking great care that no checks fell into the waste basket--as might easily have happened had the task been delegated to the office manager or to his assistant. it was unfortunate, of course, that no orders reached the stockroom until ten o'clock. but a president must earn his salt. besides, is there a better way to keep one's finger on the pulse of the business than to know what's in the mail? let's take a look at those three piles, though. here is the daily "take"--a fat pile of checks--with the big one from san francisco laid carefully aside so that it can be admired a couple of extra times before being placed on the top of the heap. reverently the president carries the receipts to his head bookkeeper. with slow and majestic tread, almost. and over here are the orders. it's a fat pile, too. the president casts one last lingering glance at the / doz. of something or other ordered by a famous name--and, secure in the knowledge that fifth avenue shoppers are still clamoring for his product, hands the sheaf to his office manager who has been pretty fidgety for the past hour and a half because he knows the stock department is going to have a heck of a time making the afternoon express. ho, hum! it's a busy life, this being the president of a successful concern doing over a million a year. why, when grandfather started in, he didn't have a---- but that's another story, and there's that third pile. a slim little pile scarcely demanding a president's attention--or a sales manager's. a few complaints. a retailer out in butte. that san antonio jobber winchester had such a hard time landing. what's this? didn't get the buttons he ordered? stuff and nonsense--well, henry will write nice, consoling letters and those will be those. now henry is a good kid. just out of school. learning the business. writes a bang-up letter. but the san antonio jobber doesn't want nice, consoling letters. he wants to know how come his pants came without the special buttons he ordered. and those special buttons are so important in his life that he has written to the head of the firm--whom he'd met at the atlantic city convention--and he expects the head of the firm to tell him what he wants to know. "come, come," the president would have said to him, had he walked into the inner sanctum, "you know i can't give my time to such petty details--i've got department heads who attend to such matters. when you want an extra thirty days--or want to talk over handling our goods exclusively in the southwest--why, those are the things for you and me to spend our time on." but the san antonio jobber, had he been there, and had he been asked, would have rejoined: "i, too, have my department heads. i, too, leave many of the trivial details to them. but if a customer came to me with a complaint, i wouldn't care a rap what it was about. it wouldn't be that particular complaint which would interest me. it would be the mere fact that he had a complaint at all. a dissatisfied customer is a dissatisfied customer, and there isn't anything in my business that would get quicker and more personal attention from me." well, well, businesses come and businesses go. our imaginary conversation will never take place between the president and the san antonio jobber. the san antonio jobber took his business elsewhere some five years ago. the president still comes in at nine and opens the mail. he never drops a check in the wastebasket. there are still three piles in front of him. three slim piles. even the pile of complaints is slim. there isn't enough business left to produce many complaints. henry? oh, he got to writing letters to an heiress who was wintering on the riviera. and when her daddy died, he wrote such a nice, consoling letter---- but we wander far afield. we're out in the rough somewhere, and it's going to take a real recovery to get us back on the fairway if we don't watch out. for one thing and for instance: _is_ the customer always right? a one-time shoe salesman reports the following incident in a chicago department store. he was talking with the head buyer in the middle of the sales floor when up marched a thoroughly angry woman with the shoe adjuster tagging on behind. "these shoes," she pointed to a pair of satin pumps in the adjuster's hands, "are too small." "and she wants a new pair after having worn them half a dozen times," added the adjuster. "who sold them?" asked the buyer. "jones." "go get him." came jones. "but, madam," he protested, "don't you remember i warned you that you needed a - / ? and don't you remember that i also suggested an a instead of a double a? and when you felt certain you wanted the aa, didn't i suggest that you try them again at home before having the cut-steel buckles sewn on?" well, yes, that was all quite true. but it didn't offset the fact that the shoes were too small and she couldn't wear them. two guesses as to what she got. and if each guess is a satin pump you may step quickly and quietly to the head of the class. she got a new pair of shoes. "well," sighed the buyer, when peace and quiet had been once more restored, "they tell me upstairs the customer is always right. certainly it's true that one dissatisfied woman has more effect on our business than four or five satisfied customers. oh, no, she won't go and tell her friends about the fair treatment she got here, but oh, man, if we'd let her get away! what a story that would have been--in spite of admitting she was wrong!" innumerable examples of that sort of thing might be introduced. there is the story of the north shore matron who had an expensive rug sent out, kept it three months and then decided she didn't like the color. in its place she wanted a certain oriental, but oh, dear, it was just a bit too big for her purpose. of course the rug was cut to fit. and when she decided a week later that it, too, wouldn't do and went and bought another rug somewhere else, the management thanked her kindly and credited her account with the full amount. it knew that the life of the business had to be protected, and every now and then found it distinctly worth while to take time out to look after the welfare of the enterprise. and here we face another question: "must the manager occupy his time with every minor complaint, just because it happens to be one which comes from a good customer?" to answer it, we must go back to our new york state manufacturer and strip the scenery from his particular enterprise. his is a business of few customers. except for a half-dozen famous retailers whose accounts cost more than they earn, but to whose stores he may point the finger of gesticulating pride as being among his outlets (it would be better for him if they were among his souvenirs), his business is handled through thirty or forty jobbers. naturally each of his customers is a very important unit in the business. the loss of one account is serious. so a customer to him is an outlet for business greater than the trade a big department store gets from a hundred good customers. one customer to him is as a score of customers to the manufacturer who sells to the retail trade. to him, then, a complaint from a san antonio jobber that the buttons on his pants aren't right has all the importance that the same complaint, echoed by a hundred different customers, would have to the retail merchant. looked at in this light, is it not logical that any complaint--no matter how trifling its nature--should have his prompt, personal attention? had he but known it, the letters he turned over to henry were danger signals. they warned of the need for guarding the welfare of the business--looking after its general good health. and that task, as we have said, overshadows in importance every other task which the successful manager, in his daily business of managing, may have to perform. the maintenance foreman in a new england mill walked into the agent's office one day--why the manager of a mill is called an agent is just one of those things--and said: "something's got to be done about that freight elevator over in building c, mr. dearle. i've monkeyed with it and monkeyed with it. it's just worn out, and one of these fine days, it's going to drop a couple of floors and pile up in the basement." and one fine day it did. you see, the manager was all tied up in a labor controversy. labor squabbles aren't any fun. and presumably their speedy settlement is far more important to the business than the matter of what to do about a tired freight elevator which has seen far better days. so frank the maintenance man had to run along and sell his papers. and the elevator kept on working. the day it quit, henry fitts was aboard. and when the elevator man picked himself up off the cellar floor, henry couldn't. but why go into that? henry's broken leg and henry's lost time cost the company more than a new elevator. and henry was one of the company's best technical men. lots of bum sheets and pillow cases got made and shipped and returned while henry was laid up. the damage done by that falling elevator could hardly be measured in dollars. now, then, settling the differences of capital and labor was a big job to the mill agent. saying "no" to frank was merely postponing a trifling detail. yet what a heap of difference a "yes" would have made. that defective elevator, because it endangered lives, overshadowed all else in importance, had the agent viewed his job from the standpoint of caring for the business. the knack of safeguarding its welfare lies not merely in doing tasks that preserve the safety of the business or job, but also in the ability to discern when such tasks are really mere trifles, and when, because of their potential effect, they are details vital to the life of the business. how is a manager to know when he shall devote his entire attention to settling wage rates, and when listen to the maintenance man's song? how can the president of a million-dollar concern tell when it is good business to drop a tremendously important managerial task and listen to a customer's tale of woe about pants buttons--and personally set the complaint right? how, on the other hand, are you to know when to lay off such tasks? some few men--seventh sons of seventh sons--may be born with that instinct or knowledge. the rest of us must cultivate a true knack of conserving the business--a knack which carries with it the finest sense of discrimination and the best of business judgment. and not until we have acquired this important knack and added to it all the other knacks we've been talking about, can we consider ourselves successful managers. not until then shall we have acquired the true knack of managing. * * * * * "i've learned how to pick out the tasks that are vital to the business and make them my own special responsibilities," a successful newspaper publisher once said, "by setting up a sort of yardstick to judge every job that comes along. "my paper was in the 'red' when i bought it. it was a weak sister. it carried the least advertising, had the least circulation and exercised the least influence. today its lineage is nearly one-third more than its nearest competitor's--and circulation has more than doubled in four years, so now it tops all the rest. "i analyzed my job something like this: i bought the paper because i thought i could make money with it. to make money, i must carry a large volume of advertising. to get advertising, i must show results to advertisers. to show results, i must make my paper a real "home" paper--a paper really read and appreciated--not merely a paper with which people are only satisfied. to get that kind of circulation, i must put into the paper what people who read a paper at home wouldn't 'miss for anything.' "what did this analysis show me? simply this: that while more advertising and more circulation meant more profits, the attitude of _my_ readers toward _their_ paper meant even more--it meant business life or death. "so my yardstick is never to let anything get by me that might change our standing with our readers. the toughest business problem is shoved aside when something comes up that means loss of respect among our public. "i made it my first business to get to know our type of reader. never was a good hand at guessing. so had to learn about human nature. "after a lot of hiring and firing, picking and sorting, coaching and drilling, i got me four women who could go out and get exactly the kind of information i had to have. "each of the four took a section of the city. each section represented a distinct type of home-dweller--and it takes all kinds of people to run a world, you know--or to buy a newspaper. "every week those four women canvassed close to a thousand homes between them. their method was to tell the housewife that we were going to deliver our paper free for a week--and hoped they'd take it in and read it. a week later they went back over the same ground, soliciting subscriptions, of course, but also gathering information for me. "more important than getting a subscription was finding out why a woman subscribed--or why she wouldn't subscribe. they asked what the women thought about certain special features. "i got a lot of good pointers. for instance, i'd been a bitter opponent of the 'funnies.' but i put them back when i learned that people really wanted them. you see, i was getting a good cross section of the likes and dislikes of all my customers and my prospects. "after the 'funnies' were in--and after various other changes had been made--i sent my four scouts back once more to tell of the improvements. then we checked the new reports with the old ones. there was plenty of deadwood. i knew there would be. but there was enough good live stuff to furnish food for thought. "some needed changes couldn't be made right away. many people preferred a competing paper because it carried more department store ads. well, i couldn't do anything about that for the moment. but i could and did improve the sports page, put in more home-stuff for the women, more society news, funnier 'funnies' and so on. those were things our readers wanted which i could gradually give them. "then it was time to tackle the advertising problem. i had my ammunition. carried a bunch of reports around with me. told the merchants frankly what i was up to. showed them the reports from women who said they'd subscribe if we had more advertising as well as the reports from those who did subscribe for certain good reasons. "and i quoted a rate on what we were worth at the time, not on what i knew we could do in the future. i didn't begrudge a full day spent in one small store, if that small store advertised the stuff i felt was wanted by the people i wanted for readers. "well, they came 'round one by one--the stores and the people. and i think the results prove that i was keeping busy on the right tasks--the tasks on which the welfare of my business depends--and not on the tasks that mean only increased _volume_. "how does it affect my readers? that is my yardstick for measuring everything about my business. that is my guide to whether or not i should worry. if a little error in last night's paper has the power to affect my readers' opinion of the paper, then it's my job to run it down to earth, find out how it happened--and see that it never happens again. but if there's a big advertising contract in the offing which won't affect the permanent standing of the paper in any way whatsoever--except to increase the number of dollars that come clinking into the coffers--i don't give thirty seconds of my time to it. i hire a sales manager to do that. that's his job. the other's mine. "i'll spend a week with my managing editor trying to figure out a way to get our afternoon editions on the street a few minutes earlier. it may involve some minor change in the pressroom running into only a few hundred dollars--but it does affect our permanent place in the sun. on the other hand, the managing editor can go ahead and spend $ of my good money on something that has nothing to do with our readers' interest, and all i'll do is okay the expenditure. he'll do the worrying this time." * * * * * you and i aren't interested in the way this publisher went about building up his newspaper. that is to say, we don't care anything about his female quartette who went around and sang the paper's praises. his methods were sound, of course, and merit attention. but our interest right now is in his division between the tasks he watched personally and the tasks he left his business manager or his managing editor to work out for themselves. strip off the publishing scenery--just as a moment ago we stripped off the individual characteristics of a totally different business--and you find that his division is applicable not only to any business, but to any single job. which means once more that that's the way the successful manager of a steel mill or of a peanut stand will divide the tasks which confront him from nine to five every day. who are your "readers"? every business, every job has its "readers"--some element which, once injured or neglected, affects the welfare, the health, the profits, or the ultimate success of the business or job. a file clerk may acquire tremendous speed in putting letters away in drawers, but if she can't get you the correspondence you need at a moment's notice, what good is all her speed? your stenographer may keep up with you in your best and fastest moments of dictation, but if her finished letters don't say what you said, her facility isn't worth the proverbial thin dime. an accountant may work out a cost system that reflects conditions like a mirror, but what of it if his reports come out so late that they're ancient history by the time the plant manager gets them? a miller may produce a flour that contains more vitamins than any other flour on the market, but if the dough won't rise properly, it isn't much use. a small-town banker may have splendid reserves and a strong cash position, but he's going to lose your business if he asks - / per cent interest and per cent commission to extend your mortgage when the big-city bank offers you the same loan at per cent interest and - / per cent commission. that messenger boy of ours--no chapter is complete without him--may run all the way from the tribune tower to state and madison, but what if in his haste he loses the message? there is, then, in every business or job a vital element. and no one can do a good job of managing unless he finds out definitely what that element is, and then proceeds to guard it through all the hustle and bustle of cost cutting, labor saving and so on. one manager put it pretty plainly to his billing clerk. the latter tried out some short cuts. they were splendid from the billers' point of view. saved time and money. but the customers weren't used to any of this new-fangled stuff and kicked like steers. they couldn't check the invoices. or wouldn't. "they just won't use their heads. it's all as simple as abc," protested the billing clerk when the manager called him in on the carpet. "all they've got to do is check the numbers on the cartons against the numbers on the invoices. there's no need of all the description we've been giving them." "right you are, johnson," replied the manager. "but sometimes you bump up against a stone wall when you try to educate the trade. oftentimes life's too short. your system saves us money. it's good up to a certain point. that point is where your labor saving and cost cutting begin to have an adverse effect on sales or sales satisfaction. "i've seen you playing bridge at noon," he went on. "you score honors above the line, don't you? below the line you keep your game score. if you hold or honors in your hand, it affects your play. but you can't give your entire attention to scoring above the line, for after all it's the score below which determines who wins games and rubbers. "you can score your job in pretty much the same way. all this work you're doing along cost-cutting lines is fine. those things determine the size of your department's profits. sketch them out on a card and check them over and add to them. but below the line put down the main object of your work--to have your invoices correct and to have them so plain that no customer can fail to understand them. keep plugging away above the line. don't let me discourage any effort that will reduce costs. they're all-important. but at the same time keep your eye below the line and make sure your game score is piling up. that sort of thinking and playing wins in business just as it does in bridge." * * * * * it's a long time since we've drawn any charts. let's study the newspaper publisher's policy and see if he wasn't doing mentally just what the manager recommended that his billing clerk do on paper. you remember he made it his business to find out all about the error in last night's paper and to prevent its occurring again. that was something which, to his way of thinking, affected the permanent standing of his paper. when the department store stood ready to start a big institutional campaign which meant nothing more to his business than a big increase in volume, he left the job of closing the contract to his hired help. but when, in another newspaper, the same department store advertised a new type of radio which he thought his readers ought to know about, once more he made it his own business to go out and get a few lines for his own paper and his own readers. then, if we keep tally--and consider whether they "score" above the line as increased profits, or below the line as permanent success, our card will look something like the chart on this page. [illustration] the handling of the error in last night's paper is something that will score down where the success of the business lies--and to lose on it means losing a vital point. in short, it affects the permanent standing of the business enterprise. so does the securing of the radio advertisement. it's business news and something his readers must know about. so after it he goes. on the other hand, the institutional advertising will add only to the revenue of the newspaper. don't mistake the point. he wants that contract, too. it will add materially to his profits. but getting it or not getting it will in no way affect the standing of the paper with its customers. school will keep just the same. so that particular job is on the other side of the line. that's why he has a sales manager. to illustrate once more, let's attempt to "score" the work of a credit man. what is the "vital element" in his work? what determines whether his work is worth doing, or whether it's worthless? offhand, you might say: "preventing losses on bad debts." but is it that? surely not, when we analyze the job. the final objective of the credit department is to enable the house to sell more goods by extending credit wherever it is justified. on that basis it is easy to see that the "vital element" in the credit man's job is "to not lose a good sale"--and we know we're splitting an infinitive to say it. if it weren't, why have a credit man at all? it would be far simpler not to extend credit to anyone who could not prove his worth. [illustration] now look at the credit man's score card. such a chart might not help an old, experienced hand, but would it not help a beginner to get a grip on what his job is all about? would it not enable him to see his job from the angle of conserving the business? hold on, though. lining up the various jobs according to whether they score "above or below the line"--that is, whether they affect the essential well-being of the business or simply swell its profit--does not mean that he shall neglect all tasks above the line any more than give his constant attention to those that score below the line. the chief value of such an outline of your job or business is to keep actively in mind a sense of the vital spots to guard--the spots to keep an eye on--the tasks for which you are always ready to plunge in and defend, once they are threatened. wherever you find a successful manager, whether running a big business or just handling a small job, you will see that he has a clear understanding of the elements that mean the life of his work. and further observation will show that he is always protecting them. * * * * * the head miller in a small flour mill was smart and aggressive--a bit on the "go-getter" order, to be sure, but very, very competent none the less. it seems he had worked out some method of increasing the nutritive value of the mill's best grade of flour by adding something or other--it doesn't matter what. naturally he was enthusiastic. why not? he had persuaded the manager to have this new product analyzed by experts--and the analyses had proved extremely favorable. he wanted to go ahead. but the manager moved slowly. "it may make a good flour and the bread made from it may be good for the digestion," said he, "but will the bread taste as good?" finally, after trying out the flour in his own home, he refused to go ahead with the project. the miller, knowing how good the bread would be for people, fired up his job, went into business for himself and put his trick flour on the market. [illustration] it never sold. the bread baked from it didn't taste good. the mill owner, you see, had kept his eye on what the miller had neglected--the big, vital element of the business--that people bought flour to make bread, and that anything affecting the quality and taste of the bread must therefore be handled very carefully. what the miller needed, to take the place of the boss's years of experience, was a chart like the one on the opposite page--a graphic outline in skeleton form of his work's vital element. what a different aspect could be put on many an employee's work if the employer, instead of depending on the man's own-farsightedness in seeing the main items of value in his work, would graphically put them before him by some such chart as this one! right here, however, we must guard against one important characteristic of this vital element. it changes--or at least it _may_ change as the business develops. ask the manager of the circularizing department of a certain mail-order house. he will tell you it's volume. all his other problems have been stabilized except the single job of getting out enough circulars every day to keep the required volume of orders flowing in. again, go to the circularizing room of an eastern financial house and the manager will tell you that the vital element in his work is quality--quality addressing, quality folding and so on. here the whole success of the department depends upon reflecting the dignity and prestige of the house. the danger point with this manager is therefore touched by anything that might affect the quality of the work. many a manufacturer starts with limited capital. for the first year or two the vital element in his business is finance. he may have to sacrifice attention to production and sales problems in order to guard the slender balance in the bank. sometimes he may have to pay higher prices for materials because he must buy in small quantities; he may even have to check sales because he hasn't the capital with which to finance them. later, though, as a reserve is built up, or when better credit is established, he will find the vital element has shifted to manufacturing, buying, or maybe sales. a certain shoe manufacturer--we seem to gravitate toward shoes every so often--found manufacturing the vital element of his business a scant dozen years ago. his big job was to see that shoes went out the door. he doubled the size of his plant. in the short space of three years his problem had shifted to one of sales--he was no longer getting enough volume to fill his plants. and today his greatest concern is his shrinking bank balance. the same tendency toward change will be found in individual jobs. the traffic manager of an electrical supply house deposes that the vital element in his department's work changed completely in less than two years. "when i first came here," he declares, "the business had grown faster than our manufacturing facilities. we were always working close up to the contract date for delivery. i was hired simply because i had a reputation for being able to speed up shipping, pick the shortest routes and rush things through at the last minute. "later on, we got in better shape in the factory. the goods began to come through to us further in advance of the promised delivery dates. i noticed this and changed my methods. where i had previously watched after speed alone, slapping things into any old case to get them packed, hustling them out by any route which would save a day, regardless of rates, i now began to pack more carefully, to sort mixed shipments in order to get the lowest classification in freight rates, to pick the cheapest routes, and so on. "one day the chief called me in and gave me a raise. "'warren,' said he, 'i thought i'd have to fire you when we got past the rush stage. i had you down as just a speed demon. but you have been wise enough to change your methods as conditions changed. and i want you to know we appreciate it.'" a similar shift is noted by the managing editor of a well-known business paper. "when i took hold five years ago, it was a constant fight against time. we never had quite enough material on hand. there was always a mad scramble at the last moment to put the book to bed. night after night i stuck around writing fillers--a column here, half a column there. "today it's quite a different story. we have a carefully selected inventory from which we make up our schedules at least days ahead of publication. we have figured out close production dates--and we stick to 'em. there's no longer the problem of digging up enough eleventh-hour material to get out an issue. the job is one of selection. my biggest care is to find room for all the things i know our readers are interested in." a constant check is the safest way to note in time the conditions that govern the conservation of the welfare of your job or business. check the points above the line and watch the points below the line. that constant effort to measure the importance of all the things that come up before him by their effects above and below the danger line will do much to keep a manager practical. for summed up, the "practical" man is the one who combines with his progressiveness and vision the knack of never letting his progressive ideas puncture the vital element of his business and bleed it to death. * * * * * make your score in any form that fits your needs or your tastes, but make it--watch it--act on it. some men can do the scoring in their heads. most of us, even in so simple a procedure as keeping our golf scores, find it's better to carry it on paper. on paper? can a man with real work to do, spend his time plotting curves and making pie charts? does the knack of managing depend upon a man's ability to draw pictures? not at all. if that's the impression you have gained from reading this little book, go back to the beginning and start all over again. if, from time to time, charts and diagrams have been suggested, it is only because the successful manager has somehow or other to go through precisely those same motions. his job--if he is to understand it and manage it successfully--must be analyzed somehow, sometime. we have merely suggested ways in which the analysis can be made more easily and intelligently by means of charts. his operations must be planned--in his head or on paper--if he is to perform them with the least lost motion, lost time and lost money. the knack of managing has simply gathered from other men's methods a form of chart by which planning can be done more accurately. again, his work must be organized--if it is to be done in the simplest and best way. an attempt, then, has been made to sift the organization methods of successful managers and firms to develop a chart which at least indicates how to go about organizing the work. "help" must be handled. so, from the experiences of shrewd managers, we have dug out the gist of their ideas and put it in the form of a chart that gives a basis on which to work. above all, a business or job must be conserved and cared for. the charting method suggested is but the method used by every successful manager--though he does not take the time to reduce his plans to paper. and last, in our search to acquire the knack of managing, have we not learned that the fundamental principles of management are universally applicable? more than anything else we have seen why the manager who has made a success in one business can step right into another and make the same brilliant record. his business, after all, is not ships or shoes or sewing machines. it's managing. and that job, in its fundamental principles, is the same, whether it's running the u. s. steel corporation or operating a peanut stand. that's our story--and we'll stick to it. an humble proposal to the people of england, for the increase of their trade, and encouragement of their manufactures; whether the present uncertainty of affairs issues in peace or war. by the author of the complete tradesman. _london_: printed for charles rivington, at the _bible_ and _crown_ in st. _paul's_ church-yard: . (_price one shilling._) preface to the people of england. it deserves some notice, that just at, or soon after writing these sheets, we have an old dispute warmly revived among us, upon the question of our trade being declined, or not declined. i have nothing to do with the parties, nor with the reason of their strife upon that subject; i think they are wrong on both sides, and yet it is hardly worth while to set them to rights, their quarrel being quite of another nature, and the good of our trade little or nothing concerned in it. nor do they seem to desire to be set right, but rather to want an occasion to keep up a strife which perhaps serves some other of their wicked purposes, better than peace would do; and indeed, those who seek to quarrel, who can reconcile? i meddle not with the question, i say, whether trade be declined or not; but i may easily show the people of england, that if they please to concern themselves a little for its prosperity, it will prosper; and on the contrary, if they will sink it and discourage it, it is evidently in their power, and it will sink and decline accordingly. you have here some popular mistakes with respect to our woollen manufacture fairly stated, our national indolence in that very particular reproved, and the consequence laid before you; if you will not make use of the hints here given, the fault is nobody's but your own. never had any nation the power of improving their trade, and of advancing their own manufactures, so entirely in their own hands as we have at this time, and have had for many years past, without troubling the legislature about it at all: and though it is of the last importance to the whole nation, and, i may say, to almost every individual in it; nay, and that it is evident you all know it to be so; yet how next to impossible is it to persuade any one person to set a foot forward towards so great and so good a work; and how much labour has been spent in vain to rouse us up to it? the following sheets are as one alarm more given to the lethargic age, if possible, to open their eyes to their own prosperity; the author sums up his introduction to it in this short positive assertion, which he is ready to make good, viz., that if the trade of england is not in a flourishing and thriving condition, the fault and only occasion of it is all our own, and is wholly in our own power to mend, whenever we please. seasonable proposal, &c. as by my title i profess to be addressing myself to englishmen, i think i need not tell them that they live by trade; that their commerce has raised them from what they were to what they are, and may, if cultivated and improved, raise them yet further to what they never were; and this in few words is an index of my present work. it is worth an englishman's remark, that we were esteemed as a growing thriving nation in trade as far back as in the reigns of the two last henries; manufactures were planted, navigation increased, the people began to apply, and trade bringing in wealth, they were greatly encouraged; yet in king henry viii.'s reign, and even towards the latter end of it, too, we find several acts of parliament passed for regulating the price of provisions, and particularly that beef and pork should not be sold in the market for more than a halfpenny per pound avoirdupoise, and mutton and veal at three farthings. as the trading men to whom i write may make some estimate of things by calculating one thing by another, so this leads them to other heads of trade to calculate from; as, first, the value of money, which bore some proportion, though i think not a full and just equality to the provisions, as follows:--silver was at s. d. per ounce, and gold at _l._ s. to _l._ s. per ounce; something less in the silver, and more in the gold than half of the present value. as for the rate of lands and houses, they bore a yet greater distance in value from what they produce now; so that indeed it bears no proportion, for we find the rent of lands so raised, and their value so improved, that there are many examples where the lands, valued even in queen elizabeth's days at _l._ to _l._ per annum, are now worth from _l._ to _l._ per annum, and in some places much more. it is true, this advance is to be accounted for by the improvement made of the soil, by manuring, cultivating, and enclosing; by stocks of cattle, by labour, and by the arts of husbandry, which are also improved; and so this part is not so immediately within my present design; it is a large subject, and merits to be spoken of at large by itself; because as the improvement of land has been extraordinary great, and the landed interest is prodigiously increased by it, so it is capable of much more and greater improvement than has been made for above a hundred years past. but this i say is not my present design; it is too great an article to be couched in a few words. yet it requires this notice here; viz., that trade has been a principal agent even in the improvement of our land; as it has furnished the money to the husbandman to stock his land, and to employ servants and labourers in the working part; and as it has found him a market for the consumption of the produce of his land, and at an advanced price too, by which he has received a good return to enable him to go on. the short inference from these premises is this: as by trade the whole kingdom is thus advanced in wealth, and the value of lands, and of the produce of lands, and of labour, is so remarkably increased, why should we not go on with vigour and spirit in trade, and by all proper and possible methods and endeavours, increase and cultivate our commerce; that we may still increase and improve in wealth, in value of lands, in stock, and in all the arts of trade, such as manufactures, navigation, fishery, husbandry, and, in short, study an improvement of trade in all its branches. no doubt it would be our wisdom to do thus; and nothing of the kind can be more surprising than that it should not be our practice; and thus i am brought down to the case before me. if it should be objected that the remark is needless, that we are an industrious and laborious people, that we are the best manufacturers in the world, thoroughly versed in all the methods and arts for that purpose; and that our trade is improved to the utmost in all places, and all cases possible; if it should, i say, be thus argued, for i know some have such a taint of our national vanity that they do talk at this rate,-- my answer is short, and direct in the negative; and i do affirm that we are not that industrious, applying, improving people that we pretend to be, and that we ought to be, and might be. that we are the best manufacturers i deny; and yet at the same time i grant that we make the best manufactures in the world; but the reason of that is greatly owing not to our own skill exceeding others, so much as to our being furnished from the bounty of heaven with the best materials and best conveniencies for the work, of any nation in the world, of which i shall take notice in its place. but not to dwell upon our capacities for improving in trade, i might clear all that part without giving up the least article of my complaint; for it is not our capacity to improve that i call in question, but our application to the right methods; nay, i must add, that while i call upon your diligence, and press you to application, i am supposed to grant your capacities; otherwise i was calling upon you to no purpose, and pressing you to do what at the same time i allowed you had no power to perform. without complimenting your national vanity, therefore, i am to grant you have not only the means of improvement in your hands, but the capacity of improving also; and on this account i must add, are the more inexcusable if the thing is not in practice. indeed it is something wonderful, and not easy to be accounted for, that a whole nation should, as if they were in a lethargic dream, shut their eyes to the apparent advantages of their commerce; and this just now, when their circumstances seem so evidently to stand in need of encouragement, and that they are more than ordinarily at a kind of stop in their usual progression of trade. it is debated much among men of business, whether trade is at this time in a prosperous and thriving condition, or in a languishing and declining state; or, in a word, whether we are going backwards or forward. i shall not meddle with that debate here, having no occasion to take up the little space allowed me in anything remote from my design. but i will propose it as i really believe it to be: namely, that we are rather in a state of balance between both, a middle between the extremes; i hope we are not much declined, and i fear we are not much advanced. but i must add, that if we do not immediately set about some new methods for altering this depending condition, we shall soon decline; and on the contrary, if we should exert ourselves, we have before us infinite advantages of improving and advancing our commerce, and that to a great degree. this is stating it to the meanest understanding; there is no mystery at all in the thing; if you will apply, you will rise; if you will remain indolent and inactive, you will sink and starve. trade in england, at this time, is like a ship at sea, that has sprung a leak in sight of the shore, or within a few days' sail of it; if the crew will ply their pump and work hard, they may not only keep her above water, but will bring her safe into port; whereas if they neglect the pump, or do not exert their strength, the water grows upon them and they are in apparent danger of sinking before they reach the shore. or, if you will have a coarser comparison, take the pump room in the rasp-house, or house of correction, at amsterdam; where the slothful person is put into a good, dry, and wholesome room, with a pump at one side and a spring or water-pipe at the other; if he pleases to work, he may live and keep the water down, but if he sleeps he drowns. the moral is exactly the same in both cases, and suits with the present circumstances of our trade in england most exactly, only with this difference to the advantage of the latter; namely, that the application which i call upon the people of england to exert themselves in, is not a mere labour of the hand; i do not tax the poor with mere sloth and negligence, idly lying still when they should work, that is not our grievance at present; for though there may be too much of that sort too, among a few of the drunken, loitering part of mankind, and they suffer for it sufficiently in their poverty, yet that, i say, is not the point, idleness is not here a national crime, the english are not naturally a slothful, indolent, or lazy people. but it is an application proper to the method of business which is wanting among us, and in this we shall find room for reproof on one hand, and direction on the other; and our reader, i dare say, will acknowledge there is reason for both. it must in the first place be acknowledged, that england has indeed the greatest encouragement for their industry of any nation in europe; and as therefore their want of improving those advantages and encouragements, lays them more open to our just reproof, than other nation's would be, or can be who want them, so it moves me with the more importunity to press home the argument, which reason and the nature of the thing furnishes, to persuade them. reason dictates that no occasion should be let slip by which england above all nations in the world should improve the advantages they have in their hands; not only because they have them, but because their people so universally depend upon them. the manufactures are their bread, the life, the comfort of their poor, and the soul of their trade; nature dictates, that as they are given them to improve, and that by industry and application they are capable of being improved; so they ought to starve if they do not improve them to the utmost. let us see in a few words what nature and providence has done for us; nay, what they have done for us exclusive of the rest of the world. the bounty of heaven has stored us with the principles of commerce, fruitful of a vast variety of things essential to trade, and which call upon us as it were in the voice of nature, bidding us work, and with annexed encouragement to do so from the visible apparent success of industry. here the voice of the world is plain, like the answer of an oracle; thus, dig and find, plough and reap, fish and take, spin and live; in a word, trade and thrive; and this with such extraordinary circumstances, that it is as if there was a bar upon the neighbouring nations, and it had been spoken from heaven thus: these are for you only, and not for any other nation; you, my favourites, of england; you, singled out to be great, opulent, powerful, above all your neighbours, and to be made so by your own industry and my bounty. to explain this, allow me a small digression, to run over the detail of heaven's bounty, and see what god and nature has done for us beyond what it has done for other nations; nature, as i have said, will dictate to us what heaven expects from us, for the improving the blessings bestowed, and for making ourselves that rich and powerful people which he has determined us to be. our country is furnished, i say, with the principles of commerce in a very extraordinary manner; that is to say, so as no other country in europe, or perhaps in the world, is supplied with. i. with the product of the earth. this is of two kinds: . that of the inside or bowels of the earth, the same of which, as above, the voice of heaven to us, is, dig and find, under which article is principally our lead, and tin-coal; i name these only, because of these this island seems to have an exclusive grant; there being none, or but very small quantities of them, found in any other nation; and it is upon exclusive benefits that i am chiefly speaking. . we have besides these, iron, copper, _lapis calaminaris_, vulgarly called callamy, with several other minerals, which may be said to be in common to us and the rest of the world, of which the particulars at large, and the places where they are found, may be fully seen in a late tract, of which i shall have frequently occasion to speak in this work, entitled, a plan of the commerce of great britain, to which i refer, as indeed to a general index of the trade and produce of this whole island. ii. the product of the surface, which i include in that part, plough and reap; and though this is not indeed an exclusive product, yet i may observe that the extraordinary increase which our lands, under an excellent cultivation, generally yield, as well in corn and cattle, is an uncommon argument for the industry of the husbandmen; and i might enter into a comparison with advantage, against almost any countries in europe, by comparing the quantity produced on both sides, with the quantity of land which produce those quantities. you may find some calculations of the produce of our own country in the book above mentioned, viz., the plan of the commerce of great britain, where the consumption of malt in england is calculated by the value of the duties of excise, and where it appears that there is annually consumed in england, besides what is exported to foreign countries, forty millions of bushels of malt, besides also all the barley, the meal of which is made into bread, which is a very great quantity; most of the northern counties in england feeding very much upon barley bread; and besides all the barley either exported or used at home in the corn unmalted; all which put together, i am assured, amounts to no less than ten millions of bushels more. the quantity of barley only is so exceeding great, that i am told it bears, in proportion to the land it grows on, an equality to as much land in france, as all the sowed land in the whole kingdom of england; or take it thus, that fifty millions of bushels of barley growing in france, would take up as much ground as all the lands which are at any time sowed in england with any corn, whether barley, oats, or wheat. n. b. i do not say all the arable lands of england, because we know there are a very great number of acres of land which every year lie fallow (though in tillage) and unsowed, according to the usage of our husbandry; so they cannot be reckoned to produce any corn at all, otherwise the quantity might be much greater. this is a testimony of the fertility of our soil; and on the other hand, the fertility is a testimony of the diligence and application of our people, and the success which attends that diligence. we are told that in some parts of england, especially in the counties of essex, hertford, cambridge, bedford, bucks, oxford, northampton, lincoln, and nottingham, it is very frequent to have the lands produce from seven to ten quarters of barley upon an acre, which is a produce not heard of in the most fruitful of all those we call corn countries abroad, much less in france. on the contrary, if they have a great produce of corn, it is because they have a vast extent of land for it to grow upon, and which land they either have no other use for, or it may be is fit for no other use; whereas our corn grounds are far from being the richest or the best of our lands, the prime of our land being laid up, as the ploughmen call it, to feed upon, that is, to keep dairies of cows, as in essex, suffolk, and the fens; or for grazing grounds, for fatting the large mutton and beef, for which england is so particularly famed. these grazing countries are chiefly in sussex, and in the marshes of romney, and other parts in kent; also in the rich vales of aylesbury, and others in bucks and berkshire, the isle of ely, the bank of trent, the counties of lincoln, leicester and stafford, warwick and chester, as also in the county of somerset, lancaster, north riding of yorkshire, and bank of tees, in the bishoprick of durham. when this product of england is considered, the diligence and success of our husbandry in england will be found to be beyond that of the most industrious people in europe. but i must not dwell here, my view lies another way; nor do the people of england want so much to be called upon to improve in husbandry, as they do in manufactures and other things; not but that even in this, the lands not yet cultivated do call aloud upon us too; but i say it is not the present case. i come in the next article to that yet louder call of the oracle, as above, namely, fish and take. indeed this is an improvement not fully preserved, or a produce not sufficiently improved; the advantages nature offers here cannot be said to be fully accepted of and embraced. this is a large field, and much remains to be said and done too in it, for the increase of wealth, and the employment of our people; and though i am not of the opinion which some have carried to an unaccountable length in this case, viz., that we should set up the fishery by companies and societies, which has been often attempted, and has proved abortive and ill-grounded; or that we ought by force, or are able by all our advantages to beat out the dutch from it; yet we might certainly very much enlarge and increase our own share in it; take greater quantities than we do; cure and pack them better than we do; come sooner to market with them than we do; and consume greater quantities at home than we do; the consequence of which would be that we should breed up and employ more seamen, build and fit out more fishing-vessels and ships for merchandise than we do now, and which we are unaccountably blameable that we do not. and here i must observe, that the increasing the fishery would even contribute to our vending as well as catching a greater quantity of fish, and to take off the disadvantage which we now lie under with the dutch, by the consequence of trade in the fishery itself. the case is this: the chief market for white herring, which is the fishery i am speaking of, is the port of dantzic and konigsberg, from which ports the whole kingdom of poland, and great duchy of lithuania, are supplied with fish by the navigation of the great river of the vistula, and the smaller rivers of the pragel and niemen, &c. the return brought from thence is in canvass, oak, and spruce, plank and timber, sturgeon, some hemp and flax, pot ashes, &c., but chiefly corn. here the dutch have an infinite advantage of us, which is never to be surmounted or overcome, and for which reason it is impossible for us ever to beat them out of this trade; viz., the dutch send yearly a very great number of ships to dantzic, &c., to fetch corn; some say they send a thousand sail every year; and i believe they do send so many ships, or those ships going so many times, or making so many voyages in the year as amounts to the same number of freights, and so is the same thing. all these ships going for corn for the dutch, have their chief supply of corn from that country; it follows, then, that their herrings are carried for nothing, seeing the ships which carry them must go light if they did not carry the fish; whereas, on the other hand, our fish must pay freight in whatever vessel it may go. when our ships, then, from scotland, for there the fishery chiefly lies, and from thence the trade must take its rise; i say, when they have carried their fish to the ports above-named, of dantzic and konigsberg, how must they come back, and with what shall they be loaded? the only answer that can be given is, that they must bring back the goods mentioned before, or, in shorter terms, naval stores, though indeed not much of naval stores neither, except timber and plank, for the hemp and tar, which are the main articles, are fetched further; viz., from riga, revel, narva, and petersburg. but suppose after delivering their fish, some of the ships should go to those ports to seek freight, and load naval stores there, which is the utmost help in the trade that can be expected. the next question is, whither shall they carry them, and for whose account shall they be loaden? to go for scotland, would not be an answer; for scotland, having but a few ships, could not take off any quantity proportioned to such a commerce; for if we were to push the dutch out of the trade, we must be supposed to employ two or three hundred sail of ships at least, to carry herrings to dantzic, &c. to say they might take freight at london, and load for england, would be no answer neither; for besides that even england itself would not take off a quantity of those goods equal to the number of ships which would want freight, so if england did, yet those ships would still have one dead freight, for they would be left to go light home at last, to scotland, otherwise how shall they be at hand to load next year? and even that one dead freight would abate the profit of the voyage; and so still the dutch would have the advantage. upon the whole, take it how and which way we will, it will for ever be true, that though our fish were every way equal to the dutch, which yet we cannot affirm, and though it came as soon to market, and carried as good a price there, all which i fear must a little fall short, yet it would still be true that the dutch would gain and we should lose. there is yet another addition to the advantage of holland, viz., in the return of money; that whereas when our fish shall be sold, we shall want to remit back the produce in money; that is to say, so much of it as cannot be brought back in goods. and the difference in the exchange must be against us; but it is in favour of the dutch; for if they did not send their herrings and other fish to dantzic, they must remit money to pay for their corn; and even as it is, they are obliged to send other goods, such as whale oil, the produce of their greenland fishery, english manufactures, and the like; whereas the scots' merchants, having no market for corn, and not a demand for a sufficient value in naval stores, &c., viz. the product of the country, must bring the overplus by exchange to their loss, the exchange running the other way. it is true, this is a digression; but it is needful to show how weak those notions are, which prompt us to believe we are able to beat the dutch out of the fishing trade by increasing our number of busses, and taking a larger quantity of fish. but this brings me back to the first argument; if you can find a way to enlarge your shipping in the fishery, and send greater quantities of fish to market, and yet sell them to advantage, you would by consequence enlarge your demand for naval stores, and so be able to bring more ships home loaden from thence; that is to say, to dispose of more of their freight at home; and indeed nothing else can do it. n. b. this very difference in the trade is the reason why a greater quantity of english manufactures are not sent from hence to dantzic, as was formerly done; viz., not that the consumption of those goods is lessened in poland, or that less woollen manufactures are demanded at dantzic or at konigsberg; but it is that the dutch carry our manufactures from their own country; this they can do to advantage; besides their costing nothing freight, as above, though they are sold to little or no profit, because they want the value there to pay for their corn, and must otherwise remit money to loss for the payment. as these things are not touched at before in any discourses on this subject, but we are daily filled with clamours and complaints at the indolence and negligence of our scots and northern britons, for not outworking the dutch in their fishing trade, i think it is not foreign to the purpose to have thus stated the case, and to have shown that it is not indeed a neglect in our management, that the dutch thrive in the fishing trade, and we sit still, as they call it, and look on, which really is not so in fact, but that the nature of the thing gives the advantage to the dutch, and throws the trade into their hands, in a manner that no industry or application of ours could or can prevent. having thus vindicated our people where they are really not deserving blame, let us look forward from hence and see with the same justice where they are in another case likewise less to blame than is generally imagined; namely, in the white fishing, or the taking of cod-fish in these northern seas, which is also represented as if it was so plentiful of fish that any quantity might be taken and cured, and so the french, the scots, and the portuguese, might be supplied from hence much cheaper and more to advantage than by going so long a voyage as to the banks of newfoundland. this also is a mistake, and the contrary is evident; that there is a good white fishing upon the coast, as well of the north part of the british coast as on the east side of scotland, is very true; the scots, to give them their due, do cure a tolerable quantity of fish, even in or near the frith of edinburgh; also there is a good fishery for cod on the west side, and among the islands of the leuze, and the other parts called the western islands of scotland; but the mistake lies in the quantity, which is not sufficient to supply the demand in those ports mentioned above, nor is it such as makes it by far so easy to load a ship as at newfoundland, where it is done in the one-fifth part of the time, and consequently so much cheaper; and the author of this has found this to be so by experience. yet it cannot be said with justice that the scots' fishermen are negligent, and do not improve this fishing to advantage, for that really they do kill and cure as many as can be easily done to make them come within a price, and more cannot be done; that is to say, it would be to no purpose to do it; for it will for ever be true in trade, that what cannot be done to advantage, may be said not to be possible to be done; because gain is the end of commerce, and the merchant cannot do what he cannot get by. it may be true that in the herring fishery the consumption might be increased at home, and in some places also abroad, and so far that fishery is not so fully pursued; but i do not see that the increase of it can be very considerable, there being already a prodigious quantity cured more than ever in ireland on every side of that kingdom, and also on the west of england; but if it may be increased, so much the more will be the advantage of the commerce; of which by itself. but from this i come to the main article of the british trade, i mean our wool, or, as it is generally expressed, the woollen manufacture, and this is what i mean, when i said as above, spin and live. in this likewise i must take the liberty to say, and insist upon it, that the english people cannot be said to be idle or slothful, or to neglect the advantages which are put into their hands of the greatest manufactures in europe, if not in the whole world. on the other hand, the people of england have run up their manufactures to such a prodigy of magnitude, that though it is extended into almost every part of the known world, i mean, the world as it is known in trade; yet even that whole world is scarce equal to its consumption, and is hardly able to take off the quantity; the negligence therefore of the english people is not so much liable to reproof in this part, as some pretend to tell us; the trade of our woollen manufacture being evidently increased within these few years past, far beyond what it ever was before. i know abundance of our people talk very dismal things of the decay of our woollen manufacture, and that it is declined much they insist upon it; being prohibited in many places and countries abroad, of their setting up other manufactures of their own in the room of it, of their pretending to mimick and imitate it, and supply themselves with the produce of their own land, and the labour of their own people, and indeed france has for many years gone some length in this method of erecting woollen manufactures in the room of ours, and making their own productions serve instead of our completely finished manufacture: but all these imitations are weak and unperforming, and show abundantly how little reason we have to apprehend their endeavours, or that they will be able to supplant our manufacture there or any where else; for that even in france itself, where the imitation of our manufactures is carried on to the utmost perfection; yet they are obliged to take off great quantities of our finest and best goods; and such is the necessity of their affairs, that they to this day run them in, that is, import them clandestinely at the greatest risk, in spite of the strictest prohibition, and of the severest penalties, death and the galleys excepted; a certain token that their imitation of our manufactures is so far from pleasing and supplying other parts of the world, that they are not sufficient to supply, or good enough to please themselves. i must confess the imitating our manufactures has been carried further in france than in any other part of the world, and yet we do not see they have been able so to affect the consumption as to have any visible influence upon our trade; or, that we abate the quantity which we usually made, but that if they have checked the export at all, we have still found other channels of trade which have fully carried off our quantity, and shall still do so, though other nations were able to imitate us to, and this is very particularly stated and explained by the author of the book above mentioned, called the plan of the english commerce, where the extending our manufactures is handled more at large than i have room for in the narrow compass of this tract, and therefore i again refer my reader thither, as to the fountain head. but i go on to touch the heads of things. the french do imitate our manufactures in a better manner, and in greater quantity than other nations; and why do we not prevent them? it is a terrible satire upon our vigilance, or upon the method of our custom-house men, that we do not prevent it; seeing the french themselves will not stick to acknowledge, that without a supply of our wool, which is evident they have now with very small difficulty from ireland, they could do little in it, and indeed nothing at all to the purpose. on the other hand, it is not so with france in regard to their silk manufactures, in which although we have not the principles of the work, i mean the silk growing within our dominions, but are obliged to bring it from italy, yet we have so effectually shut out the french silk manufactures from our market, that in a word we have no occasion at all for them; nay, if you will believe some of our manufacturers, the french buy some of our wrought silks and carry them into france; but whether the particular be so in fact or no, this i can take upon me from good evidence to affirm, that whereas we usually imported in the ordinary course of trade, at least a million to twelve hundred thousand pounds' value a year in wrought silks from france; now we import so little as is not worth naming; and yet it is allowed that we do not wear less silk, or silks of a meaner value, than we usually did before, so that all the difference is clear gain on the english side in the balance of trade. the contemplation of this very article furnishes a most eminent encouragement to our people, to increase and improve their trade; and especially to gain upon the rest of europe, in making all the most useful manufactures of other nations their own. nor would this increase of our trade be a small article in the balance of business, when we come to calculate the improvement we have made in that particular article, by encroaching upon our neighbours, more than they have been able to make upon us; and this also you will find laid down at large in the account of the improvement of our manufactures in general, calculated in the piece above mentioned, chap. v. p. . if then the encroachments of france upon our woollen manufactures are so small, as very little to influence our trade, or lessen the quantity made here, and would be less if due care was taken to keep our wool out of their hands; and that at the same time we have encroached upon their trade in the silk manufactures only, besides others, such as paper, glass, linen, hats, &c., to the value of twelve hundred thousand pounds a year, then france has got little by prohibiting the english manufactures, and perhaps had much better have let it alone. however, i must not omit here what is so natural a consequence from these premises, viz., that here lies the first branch of our humble proposal to the people of england for increase of their commerce, and improvement of their manufactures; namely, that they would keep their wool at home. i know it will be asked immediately how shall it be done? and the answer indeed requires more time and room to debate it, than can be allowed me here. but the general answer must be given; certainly it is practicable to be done, and i am sure it is absolutely necessary. i shall say more to it presently. but i go on with the discourse of the woollen manufactures in general; nothing is more certain, than that it is the greatest and most extensive branch of our whole trade, and, as the piece above mentioned says positively, is really the greatest manufacture in the world. vide plan, chap. v. p. . . nor can the stop of its vent, in this or that part of the world, greatly affect it; if foreign trade abates its demand in one place, it increases it in another; and it certainly goes on increasing prodigiously every year, in direct confutation of the phlegmatic assertions of those, who, with as much malice as ignorance, endeavour to run it down, and depreciate its worth as well as credit, by their ill-grounded calculations. we might call for evidence in this cause the vast increase of our exportation in the woollen manufactures only to portugal; which, for above twenty-five years past, has risen from a very moderate trade to such a magnitude, that we now export more woollen goods in particular yearly to portugal, than both spain and portugal took off before, notwithstanding spain has been represented as so extraordinary a branch of trade. the occasion of this increase is fully explained, by the said plan of the english commerce, to be owing to the increase of the portuguese colonies in the brazils, and in the kingdoms of congo and angola on the west side of africa; and of melinda and the coast of zanguebar on the east side; in all which the portuguese have so civilized the natives and black inhabitants of the country, as to bring them, where they went even stark naked before, to clothe decently and modestly now, and to delight to do so, in such a degree as they will hardly ever be brought to go unclothed again; and all these nations are clothed more or less with our english woollen manufactures, and the same in proportion in their east india factories. the like growth and increase of our own colonies, is another article to confirm this argument, viz., that the consumption of our manufactures is increased: it is evident that the number of our people, inhabitants of those colonies, visibly increases every day; so must by a natural consequence the consumption of the cloths they wear. and this increase is so great, and is so demonstrably growing every day greater, that it is more than equal to all the decrease occasioned by the check or prohibitions put upon our manufactures, whether by the imitation of the french or any other european nation. i might dwell upon this article, and extend the observation to the east indies, where a remarkable difference is evident between the present and the past times; for whereas a few years past the quantity of european goods, whether of english or other manufactures, was very small, and indeed not worth naming; on the contrary, now the number of european inhabitants in the several factories of the english, dutch, and portuguese, is so much increased, and the people who are subject to them also, and who they bring in daily to clothe after the european fashion, especially at batavia, at fort st. george, at surat, goa, and other principal factories, that the demand for our manufactures is grown very considerable, and daily increasing. this also the said plan of the commerce insists much on, and explains in a more particular manner. but to proceed: not only our english colonies and factories are increased, as also the portuguese in the brazils, and in the south part of africa; not only the factories of the english and dutch in the east indies are increased, and the number of europeans there being increased call for a greater quantity of european goods than ever; but even the spaniards, and their colonies in the west indies, i mean in new spain, and other dominions of the spaniards in america, are increased in people, and that not so much the spaniards themselves, though they too are more numerous than ever, but the civilized free indians, as they are called, are exceedingly multiplied. these are indians in blood, but being native subjects of spain, know no other nation, nor do they speak any other language than spanish, being born and educated among them. they are tradesmen, handicrafts, and bred to all kinds of business, and even merchants too, as the spaniards are, and some of them exceeding rich; of these they tell us there are thirty thousand families in the city of lima only, and doubtless the numbers of these increase daily. as all these go clothed like spaniards, as well themselves as their wives, children, and servants, of which they have likewise a great many, so it necessarily follows that they greatly increase the consumption of european goods, and that the demand of english manufactures in particular increases in proportion, these manufactures being more than two-thirds of the ordinary habit or dress of those people, as it is also of the furniture of their houses; all which they take from their first patrons, the spaniards. it will seem a very natural inquiry here, how i can pretend to charge the english nation with indolence or negligence in their labouring or working their woollen manufactures; when it is apparent they work up all the wool which their whole nation produces, that the whole growth and produce of their sheep is wrought up by them, and that they buy a prodigious quantity from ireland and scotland, and work up all that too, and that with this they make such an infinite quantity of goods, that they, as it were, glut and gorge the whole world with their manufactures. my answer is positive and direct, viz., that notwithstanding all this, they are chargeable with an unaccountable, unjustifiable, and, i had almost said, a most scandalous indolence and neglect, and that in respect to this woollen manufacture in particular; a neglect so gross, that by it they suffer a manifest injury in trade. this neglect consists of three heads: . they do not work up all the wool which they might come at, and which they ought to work up, and about which they have still spare hands enough to set to work. . they with difficulty sell off or consume the quantity of goods they make; whereas they might otherwise vend a much greater quantity, both abroad and at home. . they do not sufficiently apply themselves to the improving and enlarging their colonies abroad, which, as they are already increased, and have increased the consumption of the manufactures, so they are capable of being much further improved, and would thereby still further improve and increase the manufactures. by so much as they do not work up the wool, by so much they neglect the advantage put into their hands; for the wool of great britain and ireland is certainly a singular and exclusive gift from heaven, for the advantage of this great and opulent nation. if heaven has given the wool, and we do not improve the gift by manufacturing it all up, so far we are to be reproached with indolence and neglect; and no wonder if the wool goes from ireland to france by whole shiploads at a time; for what must the poor irish do with their wool? if they manufacture it we will not let them trade with those manufactures, or export them beyond sea. our reasons for that prohibition are indeed very good, though too long to debate in this place: but no reason can be alleged that can in any sense of the thing be justifiable, why we should not either give leave to export the manufactures, or take the wool. but to speak of the reason to ourselves, for the other is a reason to them (i mean the irish). the reason to ourselves is this: we ought to take the wool ourselves, that the french might not have it to erect and imitate our own manufactures in france, and so supplant our trade. certainly, if we could take the whole quantity of the irish wool off their hands, we might with ease prevent it being carried to france; for much of it goes that way, merely because they cannot get money for it at home. this i charge therefore as a neglect, and an evident proof of indolence; namely, that we do not take effectual care to secure all the wool in ireland; give the irish money for it at a reasonable market price, and then cause it to be brought to england as to the general market. i know it will be objected, that england does already take off as much as they can, and as much as they want; and to bring over more than they can use, will sink the market, and be an injury to ourselves; but i am prepared to answer this directly and effectually, and you shall have a full reply to it immediately. but, in the mean time, this is a proof of the first proposition; namely, that we do not work up all our own wool, for the irish wool is, and ought to be, esteemed as our own, in the present debate about trade; for that it is carried away from our own dominions, and is made use of by those that rival our manufactures to the ruin of our own trade. that the irish are prohibited exporting their wool, is true; but it seems a little severe to prohibit them exporting their wool, and their manufactures too, and then not to buy the wool of them neither. it is alleged by some, that we do take off all the wool they bring us, and that we could and would take it all, if they would bring it all. to this i answer; if the irish people do not bring it all to us, it is either that it is too far for the poor people who own the wool to bring it to the south and east coast of ireland, there being no markets in the west and north-west parts of that island, where they could sell it; and the farmers and sheep-breeders are no merchants, nor have they carriage for so long a journey; but either the public ought to appoint proper places whether it shall be carried, and where they would receive money for it at a certain rate; or erect markets where those who deal in wool might come to buy, and where those who have it to sell would find buyers. no doubt but the want of buyers is the reason why so much of the irish wool is carried over to france; besides, if markets were appointed where the poor farmers could always find buyers at one price or another, there would be then no pretence for them to carry it away in the dark, and by stealth, to the sea side, as is now the case; and the justice of prohibitions and seizures would be more easily to be defended; indeed there would be no excuse for the running it off, nor would there want any excuse for seizing it, if they attempted to run it off. but i am called upon to answer the objection mentioned above; namely, that the manufactures in england do indeed already take off a very great quantity of the irish wool, as much as they have occasion for; nay, they condescend so far to the irish, as to allow them to manufacture a great deal of that wool which they take off; that is to say, to spin it into yarn, of which yarn so great a quantity is brought into england yearly, as they assure us amounts to sixty thousand packs of wool; as may be seen by a fair calculation in the book above mentioned, called the plan; in a word, that the english are not in a condition to take off any more. now this is that which leads me directly to the question in hand; whether the english are able to take off any more of the irish wool and yarn, or no. i do not affirm, that, as the trade in england is now carried on, they are able, perhaps they are not; but i insist, that if we were thoroughly resolved in england to take such wise measures as we ought to take, and as we are well able to do, for the improvement and increase of our manufactures, we might and should be able to take off, and work up the whole growth of the wool of ireland; and this i shall presently demonstrate, as i think, past doubt. but before i come to the scheme for the performance of this, give me leave to lay down some particulars of the advantage this would be to our country, and to our commerce, supposing the thing could be brought to pass; and then i shall show how easily it might be brought to pass. . by taking off this great quantity of wool and yarn, supposing one half of the quantity to be spun, many thousands of the poor people of ireland who are now in a starving condition for want of employment, would be set immediately to work, and be put in a condition to get their bread; so that it would be a present advantage to the irish themselves, and that far greater than it can be now, their wool which goes away to france being all carried off unwrought. . due care being then taken to prevent any exportation of wool to france, as, i take it for granted, might be done with much more ease when the irish had encouragement to sell their wool at home, we should soon find a difference in the expense of wool, by the french being disabled from imitating our manufactures abroad, and the consumption of our own would naturally increase in proportion. first, they would not be able to thrust their manufactures into foreign markets as they now do, by which the sale of our manufactures must necessarily be abated; and, secondly, they would want supplies at home, and consequently our manufactures would be more called for, even in france itself, and that in spite of penalties and prohibitions. thus by our taking off the irish wool, we should in time prevent its exportation to france; and by preventing its going to france, we should disable the french, and increase the consumption of our own manufactures in all the ports whither they now send them, and even in france itself. i have met with some people who have made calculations of the quantity of wool which is sent annually from ireland to france, and they have done it by calculating, first how many packs of wool the whole kingdom of ireland may produce; and this they do again from the number of sheep which they say are fed in ireland in the whole. how right this calculation may be i will not determine. first, they tell us, there are fed in ireland thirty millions of sheep, and as all these sheep are supposed be sheared once every year, they must produce exactly thirty millions of fleeces, allowing the fell wool in proportion to the number of sheep killed. it is observable, by a very critical account of the wool produced annually in romney marsh, in the county of kent, and published in the said plan of the english commerce, that the fleeces of wool of those large sheep, generally weigh above four pounds and a half each. it is computed thus; first he tells us that romney marsh contains , acres of land, that they feed , sheep, whose wool being shorn, makes up , packs of wool, the sum of which is, that every acre feeds three sheep, every sheep yields one fleece, and fleeces make one pack of wool, all which comes out to , packs of wool, twenty-three fleeces over, every pack weighing two hundred and forty pounds of wool. vide plan, &c. p. . i need not observe here, that the sheep in ireland are not near so large as the sheep in romney marsh, these last being generally the largest breed of sheep in england, except a few on the bank of the river tees in the bishoprick of durham. now if these large sheep yield fleeces of four pounds and a half of wool, we may be supposed to allow the irish sheep, take them one with another, to yield three pounds of wool to a fleece, or to a sheep, out of which must be deducted the fell wool, most of which is of a shorter growth, and therefore cannot be reckoned so much by at least a pound to a sheep. begin then to account for the wool, and we may make some calculation from thence of the number of sheep. . if of the romney marsh fleeces, weighing four pounds and a half each, fifty-six fleeces make one pack of wool; then seventy fleeces irish wool, weighing three pounds each fleece, make a pack. . if we import from ireland one hundred thousand packs of wool, as well in the fleece as in the yarn, then we import the wool of seven millions of sheep fed in ireland every year. come we next to the gross quantity of wool; as the irish make all their own manufactures, that is to say, all the woollen manufactures, needful for their own use, such as for wearing apparel, house furniture, &c., we cannot suppose but that they use much more than the quantity exported to england, besides that, it is too well known, that notwithstanding the prohibition of exportation, they do daily ship off great quantities of woollen goods, not only to the west indies, but also to france, to spain, and italy; and we have had frequent complaints of our merchants from lisbon and oporto, of the great quantity of irish woollen manufactures that are brought thither, as well broadcloth as serges, druggets, duroys, frieze, long-ells, and all the other sorts of goods which are usually exported from england; add these clandestine exportations to the necessary clothing, furniture, and equipages, of that whole nation, in which are reckoned two millions and a half of people, and we cannot suppose they make use of less than two hundred thousand packs of wool yearly among themselves, which is the wool of fourteen millions of sheep more. we must, then, allow all the rest of the wool to be run or smuggled, call it what you please, to france, which must be at least a hundred to a hundred and twenty thousand packs more: for it seems the irish tell us that they feed thirty millions of sheep in the whole kingdom of ireland. if, then, they run over to france a hundred thousand packs of wool yearly, which i take to be the least, all this amounts to twenty-eight millions of fleeces together; the other two millions of fleeces may justly be deducted for the difference between the quantity of wool taken from the sheep that are killed, which we call fell wool, and the fleece wool shorn. upon the foot of this calculation, there are a hundred thousand packs of wool produced in ireland every year, which we ought to take off, and which, for want of our taking it off, is carried away to france, where it is wholly employed to mimick our manufactures and abuse our trade; lessening thereby the demand of our own goods abroad, and even in france itself. this, therefore, is a just reproach to our nation, and they are certainly guilty of a great neglect in not taking off that wool, and more effectually preventing it being carried away to france. it must be confessed, that unless we do find some way to take off this wool from the irish, we cannot so reasonably blame them for selling it to the french, or to anybody else that will buy, for what else can they do with it, seeing you shut up all their ports against the manufacturers; at least you shut them up as far as you are able; and if you will neither let them manufacture it, for not letting them transport the manufacture when made is in effect forbidding to make them; i say, if you will neither let them manufacture their wool nor take it off their hands, what must they do with it? but i come next to the grand objection; namely, that we cannot take it off, that we do take off as much as we can use, and a very great quantity it is too; that we are not able to take more, that is to say, we know not what to do with it if we take it; that we cannot manufacture it, or if we do, we cannot sell the goods; and so, according to the known rule in trade, that what cannot be done with profit or without loss, we may say of it that it cannot be done; so in the sense of trade, we cannot take their wool off, and if they must run it over to france, they must, we cannot help it. this, i say, is a very great mistake; and i do affirm, that as we ought to take off the whole quantity of the irish wool, so we may and are able to do it. that our manufacture is capable of being so increased, and the consumption of it increased also, as well at home as abroad; that it would in the ordinary course of trade call for all the wool of ireland, if it were much more than it is, and employ it profitably; besides employing many thousands of poor people more than are now employed, and who indeed want employment. upon this foundation, and to bring this to be true, as i shall presently make appear, i must add, that a just reproach lies upon us for indolence, and an unaccountable neglect of our national interests, in not sufficiently exerting ourselves to improve our trade and increase our manufactures; which is the title, as it is the true design, of this whole work. the affirming, as above, that we are able to increase our manufacture, and by that increase to take off more wool, may, perhaps, be thought an arrogance too great to be justified, and would be a begging the question in an egregious manner, if i were not in a condition to prove what i say; i shall therefore apply myself directly to evidence, and to put it out of doubt:-- by increasing our manufacture, i am content to be understood to mean the increasing the consumption, otherwise, to increase quantity only, would be to ruin the manufacturers, not improve the trade. this increasing the consumption is to be considered under two generals. . the consumption at home. . the exportation, or consumption abroad. i begin with the last; namely, the consumption abroad. this is too wide a field to enter upon in particular here, i refer it to be treated at large by itself; but as far as it serves to prove what i have affirmed above, namely, that the consumption of our manufactures may be improved abroad, so far it is needful to speak of it here; i shall confine it to the english colonies and factories abroad. it is evident, that by the increase of our colonies, the consumption of our manufactures has been exceedingly increased; not only experience proves it, but the nature of the thing makes it impossible to be otherwise; the island of st. christopher, is a demonstration beyond all argument; that island is increased in its product and people, by the french giving it up to us at the treaty of utrecht. its product of sugar is almost equal to that of barbadoes, and will in a very few years exceed it; the exports from hence to that island are increased in proportion; why then do we not increase our possessions, plant new colonies, and better people our old ones? both might be done to infinite advantage, as might be made out, had we room for it, past contradiction. we talk of, and expect a war with spain; were the advantages which new settlements in the abandoned countries of america, as well the island as the continent considered, we should all wish for such a war, that the english might by their superiority at sea, get and maintain a firm footing, as well on the continent as the islands of america: there the spainards, like the fable of the dog in the manger, neither improve it themselves, nor will admit others to improve; i mean in all the south continent of america, from buenos ayres to port st. julien, a country fruitful, a climate healthful, able to maintain plentifully any numbers, even to millions of people, with an uninterrupted communication within the land, as far as to the golden mountain of the andes or cordilleras, where the chilians, unsubdued by any european power, a docible, civilized people, but abhorring the spaniards, would not fail to establish a commerce infinitely profitable, exchanging gold for all your english manufactures, to an inexpressible advantage. among the islands, why should not we, as well as the french, plant upon the fruitful countries of cuba and hispaniola, as rich and capable of raising sugars, cocoa, ginger, pimento, indigo, cotton, and all the other productions usual in that latitude, as either the barbadoes or jamaica. our factories, for they cannot yet be called colonies, on the coast of africa, offer us the like advantages. why are they not turned into populous and powerful colonies, as they might be? why not encouraged from hence? and why is not their trade espoused and protected as our other colonies and factories? but left to be ravaged by the naked and contemptible negroes; plundered, and their trade ravished by the more unjust and more merciless interlopers, who, instead of thieves, for they are no better, would be called separate traders only, though they break in by violence and fraud upon the property of an established company, and rob them of their commerce, even under the protection of their own forts and castles, which these paid nothing towards the cost of. why does not england enlarge and encourage the commerce of the coast of guinea? plant and fortify, and establish such possessions there as other nations, the portuguese for example, in the opposite coast on the same latitude? is it not all owing to the most unaccountable indolence and neglect? what hinders but that we might ere now have had strong towns and an inhabited district round them, and a hundred thousand christians dwelling at large in that country, as the portuguese have now at melinda, in the same latitude, on the eastern coast? and what hinders, but that same indolence and neglect, that they have not there growing at this time, the coffee of mocha, as the dutch have at batavia; the tea of china, the cocoa of the caraccas, the spices of the moluccas, and all the other productions of the remotest indies, which grow now in the same latitude, and which cost us so much treasure yearly to purchase, and which, as has been tried, would prosper here as well as in the countries from which we fetch them? what a consumption of english manufacture would follow such a plantation? and what an increase of trade would necessarily attend an increase of people there? i have not room to enlarge here upon these heads; they are fully stated in the said plan of english commerce, and in several other tracts of trade lately published by the same author, and to that i refer. see the plan, chap. iii. page . and chap. v. page . i come next to the consumption at home, and here indeed the proof lies heavy upon ourselves; nothing but an unaccountable supreme negligence of our own apparent advantages can be the cause of the whole grievance; such a negligence, as i think, no nation but the english are, or can be guilty of; i mean no nation that has the like advantage of a manufacture, and that has a hundred thousand packs of wool every year unwrought up, and a million of people unemployed. n. b. all our manufactures, whether of wool, silk, or thread, and all other wares, hard or soft, though we have a very great variety, yet do not employ all our people, by a great many; nay, we have some whole counties into which the woollen, or silk, or linen manufacture, may be said never to have set their feet, i mean as to the working part; or so little as not to be worth naming; such in particular as cambridge, huntingdon, hertford, bedford; the first three are of late indeed come into the spinning part a little, but it is but very little; the like may be said of the counties of cheshire, stafford, derby, and lincoln, in all which very little, if any, manufactures are carried on; neither are the counties of kent, sussex, surry, or hampshire, employed in any of the woollen manufactures worth mentioning; the last indeed on the side about alton and alresford, may be said to do a little; and the first just at canterbury and cranbrook. but what is all they do compared to the extent of four counties so populous that it is thought there are near a million of people in them? seeing then, i say, there are yet so many people want employ, and so much wool unwrought up, and which for want of being thus wrought up, is carried away by a clandestine, smuggling, pernicious trade, to employ our enemies in trade, the french, and to endanger our manufactures at foreign markets, how great is our negligence, and how much to the reproach of our country is it, that we do not improve this trade, and increase the consumption of the manufactures as we ought to do? i mean the consumption at home, for of the foreign consumption i have spoken already. it seems to follow here as a natural inquiry, after what has been said, that we should ask, how is this to be done, and by what method can the people of england increase the home consumption of their woollen manufactures? i cannot give a more direct answer to this question, or introduce what follows in a better manner, than in the very words of the author of the book so often mentioned above, as follows, speaking of this very thing, thus:-- "the next branch of complaint," says this author, "is, that the consumption of our woollen manufacture is lessened at home. "this, indeed," continues he, "though least regarded, has the most truth and reason in it, and merits to be more particularly inquired into; but supposing the fact to be true, let me ask the complainer this question, viz., why do we not mend it? and that without laws, without teazing the parliament and our sovereign, for what they find difficult enough to effect even by law? the remedy is our own, and in our own power. i say, why do not the people of great britain, by general custom and by universal consent, increase the consumption of their own manufacture by rejecting the trifles and toys of foreigners? "why do we not appear dressed in the growth of our own country, and made fine by the labour of our own hands?" vide plan of the english commerce, p. . and again, p. ; "we must turn the complaints of the people upon themselves, and entreat them to encourage the manufactures of england by a more general use and wearing of them. this alone would increase the consumption, as that alone would increase the manufacture itself." i cannot put this into a plainer or better way of arguing, or in words more intelligible to every capacity. did ever any nation but ours complain of the declining of their trade and at the same time discourage it among themselves? complain that foreigners prohibit our manufactures, and at the same time prohibit it themselves? for refusing to wear it is the worst and severest way of prohibiting it. we do indeed put a prohibition upon our trade when we stop up the stream, and dam up the channel of its consumption, by putting a slight upon the wearing it, and, as it were, voting it out of fashion; for if you once vote your goods out of wear, you vote them out of the market, and you had as good vote them contraband. with what an impetuous gust of the fancy did we run into the product of the east indies for some years ago? how did we patiently look on and see the looms empty, the workmen fled, the wives and children starve and beg, the parishes loaded, and the poor's rates rise to a surprising height, while the ladies flourished in fine massulapatam, chints, indian damasks, china atlasses, and an innumerable number of rich silks, the product of the coast of malabar, coromandel, and the bay of bengal, and the poorer sort with calicoes? and with what infinite difficulty was a remedy obtained, and with what regret did the ladies part with that foreign pageantry, and stoop to wear the richest silks of their own manufacture, though these were the life of their country's prosperity, and those the ruin of it? when this was the case, how fared our trade? the state of it was thus, in a few words:-- the poor, as above, wanted bread; the wool lay on hand, sunk in price, and wanted a market; the manufacturers wanted orders, and when they made goods, knew not where to sell them; all was melancholy and dismal on that side; nothing but the east india trade could be said to thrive; their ships went out full of money and came home full of poison; for it was all poison to our trade. the immense sums of ready money that went abroad to india impoverished our trade, and indeed bid fair to starve it, and, in a word, to beggar the nation. at home we were so far from working up the whole quantity or growth of our wool, that three or four years' growth lay on hand in the poor tenants' houses, for want of which they could not pay their rent. the wool from scotland, which comes all to us now, went another way, viz., to france, for the union was not then made, and yet we had too much at home. nor was the quantity brought from ireland half so much as it is now. was all this difference from our own wearing, or not wearing the produce of our own manufacture? how unaccountably stupid then are we to run still retrograde to the public good of our country, and ruin our own commerce, by rejecting our own manufacture, setting our people to furnish other nations with cloths, and recommending the manufacture to other countries, and rejecting them ourselves? if the difference was small, and the clothing of our own people was a thing of small moment, that it made no impression on the commerce, or the manufacture in general, it might be said to be too little to take notice of. if our consumption at home is thus considerable, and the clothing of our own people does consume the wool of many millions of sheep; if the silk trade employs many thousands of families; if there is an absolute necessity of working up if possible all the growth of our wool, as well of ireland as of england, or that else it would be run over to france, to the encouragement of rival manufactures, and the ruin of our own; in a word, if our own people, falling into a general use of our own manufacture, would effectually do this, and their continuing to neglect it would effectually throw our manufacture into convulsions, and stagnate the whole trade of the kingdom; if our wearing foreign silk manufactures did annually carry out , , _l._ sterling per annum for silks, to france and italy, and above , _l._ per annum for the like to india, all in spices, to the impoverishing our trade, by emptying us of all our ready money, as well as starving our poor for want of employment. again, if these grievances were very much abated, and indeed almost remedied by the several acts of parliament, first to prohibit east india silks, then to lay high duties, equal to prohibition, upon french silks; and, in the last place, an act to prohibit the use and wearing of printed calicoes; i say, if these acts have gone so far in the retrieving the dying condition of our woollen manufacture, and encouraging the silk manufacture; that in the first, we have wrought up all the english growth of wool, and that of scotland too, which was never done before; and in the last have improved so remarkably in the silk manufacture, that all that vast sum of , , _l._ per annum, expended before in french and indian silks, is now turned into the pockets of our own poor, and kept all at home, and the silks become a mere english manufacture as was before a foreign. if all this is true, as it is most certainly, what witchcraft must it be that has seized upon the fancy of this nation? what spirit of blindness and infatuation must have possessed us? that we are in all haste running back into the old, stupid, and dull unthinking state, and growing fond of anything, nay of everything that is injurious to our own commerce, and be it as ruinous as it will to our own poor, and to our own manufactures; nay, though we see our trade sick and languishing, and our poor starving before our eyes; and know that we ourselves are the only cause of it, are yet so obstinately and unalterable averse to our own manufacture, and fond of novelties and trifles, that we will not wear our own goods, but will at any hazard make use of things foreign to us, the labour and advantage of strangers, pagans, negroes, or any kind of people, rather than our own. unhappy temper, unknown in any nation but ours! the wiser pagans and mahometans, natives of india, persia, china, japan, siam, pegu, act otherwise; wherever we find any people in these parts, we find them clothed with their own manufacture, whether of silk, cotton, herba, or of whatever other materials they were made; nor to this day have our nicest or finest manufactures, though perfectly new to them, (and novelties we see take with us to a frenzy and distraction) touched their fancies, or so much as tempted them to wear them; all our endeavours to persuade them have been in vain; but with us, any new fancy, any far-fetched novelty, however antick, however extravagant in price, nay the dearer the more prevailing, presently touches our wandering fancy, and makes us cast off our finest and most agreeable produce, the fruit of our own industry, and the labour of our own poor, making a mode of the foreign gewgaw, let it be as wild and barbarous as it will. but i meet with an objection in my way here, which is insisted upon with the utmost warmth; namely:-- objection: you seem to acknowledge that the prohibition of india silks and the duties upon french silks, have effectually answered the end as to silks; and that the late act against the use and wearing of printed or painted calicoes has likewise had its effect on the woollen manufacture. there is nothing now left to support your complaint but the printed linen; which, though it is become a general wear, yet is our own product and growth, and the labour of our own poor; for the scots and irish, by whom the linen is manufactured, are our own subjects, and ought as much to be in our concern as any of the rest, and that linen is as much our own manufacture as the silk and the wool. nothing could, in my opinion, be more surprising of its kind, than to hear with what warmth this very argument was urged to the parliament, and to the public, by not the scots and irish only, but even by some of our own people, possessed and persuaded by the other, at the time the act against the printed calicoes was depending before the parliament; as if an upstart, and in itself trifling manufacture, however increased by the corruption of our people's humour and fancy, could be an equivalent to the grand manufacture of wool in england, which is the fund of our whole commerce, and has been the spring and fountain of our wealth and prosperity for above three hundred years; a manufacture which employs millions of our people, which has raised the wealth of the whole nation from what it then was to what it now is; a manufacture that has made us the greatest trading nation in the world, and upon which all our wealth and commerce still depends. i insist upon it that no novelty is to be encouraged among us to the prejudice of this chief and main support of our country, let it be of what kind it will; nor is it at all to the purpose to say such or such a novelty is made at home, and is the work of our own people; it is to say nothing at all, for we ought no more to set up particular manufactures to the prejudice of the woollen trade in general, which is the grand product of the whole nation, and on which our whole prosperity depends, than we would spread an universal infection among us, on pretence that the vegetable or plant from whence the destructive effluvia proceeded, was the growth of our own land; or than we should publish the alcoran and the most heretical, blasphemous, or immodest books, to taint the morals and principles of the people, on pretence that the paper and print were our own manufactures. i am for encouraging all manufactures that can be invented and set up among us, and that may tend to the employment of the poor and improvement of our produce; such things having a national tendency to raising the rent of our lands, assisting the consumption of our growth, and, in a word, increasing trade in general; i say i am for encouraging new manufactures of all sorts, with this one exception only, namely, that they do not interfere with, and tend to the prejudice of the woollen manufacture, which is the main and essential manufacture of england. but the woollen manufacture is the life and blood of the whole nation, the soul of our trade, the top of all manufactures, and nothing can be erected that either rivals it or any way lessens it or interferes with it, without wounding us in the more noble and vital part, and, in effect, endangering the whole. to set up a manufacture of painted linen, which, touching the particular pride and gay humour of the ordinary sort of people, intercepts the woollen manufacture, which they would otherwise be clothed with, is so far wounding and supplanting the woollen manufacture for a paltry trifle, and though it is indeed in itself but a trifle, yet as the poorer sort of people, the servants, and the wives and children of the farmers and country people, and of the labouring poor, who wear this new fangle, are a vast multitude, the wound strikes deeper into the quantity than most people imagine, makes a large abatement of the consumption of wool, lessening the labour of the poor manufacturers very considerably; and on this account, i say, it ought not to be encouraged, though it be our own manufacture. do we not, from this very principle, prohibit the planting tobacco in england, though our own land would produce it? do we not know there are coals in blackheath, muzzle-hill, and other places, but that we must not work them that we may not hurt the navigation? the reason is exactly the same here. this consideration is so pungent in itself, and so naturally touches every englishman that has the good of his country at heart, that one would think there should be no occasion for an act of parliament to oblige them to it; but they should be moved by a mere concern of mind, and generous endeavour for the public prosperity, not to fall in with or encourage any new project, any new custom or fashion, without first inquiring particularly whether it would not be injurious to the prosperity of the main and grand article of the english commerce, the woollen manufacture. were this public spirit among us, we need fear no upstart manufacture breaking in upon us, whether printed linen or anything else; for no people of sense, having the good of their country at heart, would touch it, much less make it a general fashion. but, as the plan of english commerce observes, our people, the ladies especially, have such a passion for the fashion, that they have been the greatest enemies to our woollen manufacture; and i must add that this passion for the fashion of printed linens at this time is a greater blow to the woollen manufacture of england than all the prohibitions in germany and italy, of which we may have formed such frightful ideas in our minds; or even than all the imitation of our manufactures abroad, whether in france, or any other part of europe. and yet, to conclude all, how easy, how very easy is it for us to prevent it; which, by the way, deserves a whole book by itself. finis. transcriber's notes: passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_. the following misprints have been corrected: superfluous "i" removed (page ) "of of" corrected to "of" (page ) "at at" corrected to "at" (page ) note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) commercial law [illustration] american institute of banking section american bankers association east street new york city copyright, by american institute of banking preface the institute standard course of study in "commercial law" is not intended to make lawyers, but simply to impart to bankers sufficient knowledge of law to enable them to act in accordance with established legal principles, and refer doubtful questions to a lawyer. it is not usurping the functions of a lawyer for a banker to know his legal rights and responsibilities. the banker who does not appreciate the importance of this knowledge, eventually learns from experience, sad or otherwise, that he has neglected an important part of the training necessary to carry on his business with safety and confidence. this text-book is based on the splendid work, originally prepared for the institute, by samuel williston, weld professor of law in harvard law school. to this original matter, however, much new material has been added, cases have been cited, and new chapters on master and servant, estates and trusts, bills and notes, and torts and crimes added. the work of preparing "commercial law" has been done jointly by richard d. currier, president of the new jersey law school, and richard w. hill, member of the new york bar and secretary of the american institute of banking. the main purpose of this book is to teach bankers to recognize the danger signals in law, when they appear, and thus be able to distinguish between law and law suits. institute platform resolution adopted at the new orleans convention of the american institute of banking, october , : "ours is an educational association organized for the benefit of the banking fraternity of the country and within our membership may be found on an equal basis both employees and employers; and in full appreciation of the opportunities which our country and its established institutions afford, and especially in appreciation of the fact that the profession of banking affords to its diligent and loyal members especial opportunities for promotion to official and managerial positions, and that as a result of the establishment and maintenance of the merit system in most banks a large number of institute members have through individual application achieved marked professional success, we at all times and under all circumstances stand for the merit system and for the paying of salaries according to the value of the service rendered. "we believe in the equitable cooperation of employees and employers and are opposed to all attempts to limit individual initiative and curtail production, and, insofar as our profession is concerned, are unalterably opposed to any plan purporting to promote the material welfare of our members, individually or collectively, on any other basis than that of efficiency, loyalty and unadulterated americanism." contents chapter page introduction i. contracts--mutual assent ii. contracts--consideration and enforceability iii. contracts--performance and termination iv. principal and agent; master and servant v. partnerships vi. corporations vii. transfer of stock viii. personal property ix. real property x. estates and trusts xi. carriers and warehousemen xii. bills and notes xiii. torts and crimes xiv. miscellaneous who is a banker? a successful banker is composed of about one-fifth accountant, two-fifths lawyer, three-fifths political economist, and four-fifths gentleman and scholar--total ten-fifths--double size. any smaller person may be a pawnbroker or a promoter, but not a banker.--george e. allen. commercial law introduction definition of law.--the term "law" is used in many ways. we speak of moral law, law of gravity, divine law, and the like. in each case we are making proper use of the term, but in no instance are we using it as we shall use it in this book. to illustrate: you find a beggar on your front porch when entering your house late at night. suppose he should ask you for food and lodging for the night. although there is no other house within five miles of your home, you refuse to take him in, or do anything for him. as a result he contracts pneumonia from exposure, because he is not able to proceed further. you would, nevertheless, not be liable in the sense in which we are using the term "law." but, you say, in an extreme case of this kind, it is one's duty to act. we grant it, but to be accurate, you must preface your proposition with the statement, "under the moral law" or "under divine law it is one's duty to act in such a case." however much it is to be regretted that moral or divine law sometimes does not harmonize with "law" as we shall treat it, we must, nevertheless, recognize that fact. law, as viewed by the jurist, and this is the way we, as students, are to consider it, is defined by blackstone to be "a rule of civil conduct prescribed by the supreme power in the state, commanding what is right, and prohibiting what is wrong." referring again to our illustration, is it not easy to see that it would be impracticable in the present condition of society for the legislature of california, for example, to pass a law which should, in that state, constitute "a rule of civil conduct" commanding that every one "shall be his brother's keeper" and for a violation thereof "shall be imprisoned for one year, or fined one thousand dollars, or both." however much we recognize the obligation of moral law, jurists and legislators cannot ignore the fact that society is composed of ordinary human beings, still far from perfection. assuming, although perhaps it is doubtful, that it is within the power of the legislature of california to pass such an act as has been suggested, there are not courts enough in the whole united states to decide the cases which would arise in new york city alone in attempting to apply the provisions of such an act. on second thought, then, it is not such a startling proposition for us to learn that "law" is not synonymous with the same term when used in referring to natural law, moral law, and the like. much has been written on the essential nature of "law" as we shall use the term. the time-honored definition of blackstone, which we have quoted, is confessedly imperfect. the last clause, "commanding what is right, and prohibiting what is wrong" has been much criticized, and mr. chitty has modified it to "commanding what shall be done, and what shall not be done." to-day, to attempt to buy a bottle of light wine at a hotel does not seem to many of us intrinsically wrong, but legally, under existing laws, it is, and so perhaps mr. chitty's modification of blackstone's definition does bring out the correct idea more clearly. for our purpose, these two definitions are sufficient. the systems of law.--there are two chief systems of law in use among civilized peoples to-day, the roman or civil law, and, the english or common law. the roman, or civil law (roman law is spoken of as civil law, from the latin "civilis," belonging to a citizen) as its name implies, originated in rome. as the city of rome developed into the roman empire, its law became that of the ancient world. it was finally codified by the roman emperor justinian, in the year a.d., and was eventually absorbed, from the twelfth to the eighteenth century, into the law of modern europe. it is the basis of the systems of law used in the countries of continental europe, central and south america, and all french, spanish, portuguese, and dutch colonies or countries settled by those peoples. common law.--the common law had its roots in the customary law of the germanic peoples of western europe, and was developed by the english courts from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries. like the roman law, it has spread all over the world wherever english-speaking peoples have settled, and founded colonies. the common law now prevails in england, canada (except quebec), india, except over hindus and mohammedans in certain instances, and the principal british colonies, except those in south africa. the united states is largely an english settlement, hence the common law prevails with us, except in the state of louisiana, where the influence of the french and spanish settlements still remains and makes the basis of the louisiana law the roman law, and in the philippines and porto rico, where the law was roman when we took those possessions from spain in . the source of law.--where does this rule of civil conduct we are to study come from? at first blush, the superficial observer might suggest some legislative hall where it is created by a legislative body, a perfect product, to be imposed on men and women as the guide in their every act in civil life. the slightest reference to historical jurisprudence will convince us that this is not the true source of the law. mr. justice holmes of the united states supreme court, in his classic, "the common law," indicates the real source of law when he observes: "the life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience. the felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow-men, have had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed. the law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics. in order to know what it is, we must know what it has been, and what it tends to become. we must alternately consult history and existing theories of legislation. but the most difficult labor will be to understand the combination of the two into new products at every stage. the substance of the law at any given time pretty nearly corresponds, so far as it goes, with what is then understood to be convenient; but its form and machinery, and the degree to which it is able to work out desired results, depend very much upon its past." where to look for law.--knowing the source of law does not necessarily tell us where to look for the law. to-day, in the united states, we have three primary sources to which the lawyer goes to seek the law on any particular point. first, the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state in which he is to ascertain the law, including the statutes which have been enacted by congress and by the state legislature under those constitutions. second, the decisions of the courts, particularly those of the united states courts and of the state where he wishes to learn the law, and, if need be, the decisions of other states. third, text-books and treatises on the branch of law to be investigated. illustration.--let us suppose you wish to ascertain the law concerning a question that comes up in your own daily life. take two problems. first: we will assume you keep a clothing store, and an infant, twenty years old, purchases a suit of winter clothes. his income is $ per year. he already has two perfectly good winter suits. a week after purchasing this suit, he returns it and demands his money back. you wish to know whether you have to give it to him. if you should look in the constitution of the united states, or of the state of vermont (assuming this to be a vermont contract), you would find nothing that would give you any help in answering this question. if you should look through all of the acts of congress and the laws passed by the legislature of the state of vermont, you would find nothing to give you any help. if, however, you should look in the decisions of the courts, both of the united states and of the state of vermont, you would find cases, probably many of them, covering this particular situation, and you would find the rule to be laid down as law, that an infant (and by an infant we mean anyone under twenty-one years) is not liable on his contracts, except for necessities, and then only in a quasi-contractual action for their reasonable value. applying the law to the problem, you would be obliged to admit the legality of the infant's claim, and if you did not refund the money to him, he would be entitled to sue for it in a court. three winter suits are clearly not necessaries at one time for an infant with an income no greater than $ per year. this is a comparatively simple problem. now let us take another case somewhat more difficult. you live in new jersey near the plant of an airplane manufacturing company. machines are constantly being tried out, and they circle over your premises within four or five hundred feet from the ground. you have several children who are using your back yard as a playground and you are much alarmed, fearing that an airplane may fall in the yard and kill or injure a child. you wish to ascertain your rights. you look in the constitution of the united states, and of the state of new jersey. you will find nothing in either about airplanes. you look in the acts of congress and the laws of the legislature of the state of new jersey. you will find nothing there to help you. you look in the decisions of the courts, both of the united states and of the state of new jersey. you will find nothing there. you look in the text-books, and, except in the most recent, in all probability you will find nothing there in regard to airplanes. you may search the recent legal publications and you will find articles discussing in a purely theoretical way this interesting topic. you study recent legislation and you will find stray instances of attempts to deal with aerial matters. for example, connecticut has a statute on airplanes. in fact, your whole search will be most interesting. all you will find, however, is not law in new jersey, but is simply theory, based on common law principles or statutes having no force in new jersey. should you then conclude that you have no rights, that the law cannot help you? perhaps not. if you turn to treatises relating to the ownership of land as developed in the english common law and as applied by the courts in the united states, you will find that the word "land" is often used as practically synonymous with realty or ground or soil, and you will also find that it includes everything attached to the realty or growing on it. as is commonly said, land has an indefinite extent upward as well as downward, the old books using the latin maxim: "cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum usque ad orcum." (to whomsoever the soil belongs, he owns also to the sky and to the depths.) there are three houses in a row on smith street, nos. , and . mary jones lives in no. , and sarah green in no. . they are friends, and accordingly arrange to stretch their clotheslines from their rear second-story windows across the back yard of no. . under common law principles, this is a trespass upon no. . should mary jones and sarah green continue to do this for the required time, usually twenty years, they would acquire by prescription a permanent right to stretch clotheslines over lot no. . when the owner of lot no. wished to erect a ten-story building covering all of his lot, he would be seriously interfered with by the right acquired by his two adjoining neighbors. he could have protected himself by proper action in a court when the offense was first committed. could not, therefore, the court take this principle of the common law as to the ownership of land and apply it to the airplane case? if the owner of lot no. could prevent the owners of lots nos. and from stretching clotheslines across his land, could you not prevent the airplane from crossing your land, although it is five hundred feet above the surface of the soil? twenty years' continuation of that practice would interfere with your ability to build a woolworth building twenty-five years from now should you desire to do so. it is simply taking an old principle of law recognized for centuries, and applying it to new conditions. this is what we mean when we say that the principles of common law are capable of indefinite expansion; that the common law is always growing, or, as mr. justice holmes puts it, it is the product of "the felt necessities of the time." as soon, however, as you have secured an injunction from the court preventing the airplane factory from practicing its machines over your land, all of the other property owners in the neighborhood of the factory decide to protect their rights, with the result that no airplane can leave the factory through the air. does this mean that the airplane factory must move, and probably be subjected to the same annoyances in its new location in a short time? we are coming to realize that airplanes are necessities. when a necessity and a principle of law cannot exist side by side, something must be done to remedy an intolerable situation. the illustration here used presents what in the course of a few years, undoubtedly, will become an intolerable situation, unless remedied in some way. it has been suggested that we must modify our principles of the ownership of land, and give airplanes the right of free passage over the land of any person, when a certain distance in the air, far enough up to cause no great amount of danger or annoyance. such a change in the law would have to be accomplished by the state legislature or by an act of congress for such territory as congress has jurisdiction over. no doubt, legislation along such lines may be expected soon. it will be simply a repetition of a situation created by a leading case in new york in . in roberson v. the rochester folding box company, new york , the suit was brought on behalf of a living person, a young lady, to restrain a flour company from putting her likeness upon prints advertising its flour. mr. justice parker, writing the opinion of the court, held that there was no principle of law which would authorize the court to issue an injunction restraining this unauthorized use of a photograph. this created the unfortunate situation in the state of new york of allowing anyone to make use of another's photograph without that person's consent, for advertising or other purposes. the court, in its opinion, admitted the unfortunateness of the situation, observing that "the legislative body could very well interfere and arbitrarily provide that no one should be permitted for his own selfish purpose to use the picture or the name of another for advertising purposes without his consent. in such event no embarrassment would result to the general body of the law, for the rule would be applicable only to cases provided for by statute. the courts however, being without authority to legislate, are required to decide cases upon principle, and so are necessarily embarrassed by precedents created by an extreme, and therefore unjustifiable application of an old principle. the court below properly said that: 'while it may be true that the fact that no precedent can be found to sustain an action in any given case is cogent evidence that a principle does not exist upon which the right may be based, it is not the rule that the want of a precedent is a sufficient reason for turning the plaintiff out of court,' provided (i think should be added)," mr. justice parker continues, "there can be found a clear and unequivocal principle of the common law, which either directly or mediately governs it, or which, by analogy or parity of reasoning, ought to govern it." relief was denied the young lady. the following session of the legislature corrected the evil by passing a law making it a criminal offense to use another's photograph without that person's consent. this has been a long illustration. it has served its purpose best if it has left the very distinct impression that the law is a vital, living, growing thing. true, its roots are in the dim past, but it lives, and moves, and has its being in the problems of to-day. in no field of law is this more true than in our subject, commercial law. who knows the law.--the layman is frequently of the opinion that a lawyer ought to be able to give him a definite answer as to just what the law is in a given set of facts. why is it not possible to go to the sources which we have been discussing and from them ascertain definitely what the law is in a given case? frequently the lawyer can do this, but one should not lose respect for the lawyer because he is not, in many cases, willing to give a definite answer, but may frame his reply in an opinion beginning "it would seem that the law in this case would be, etc.--" we have already suggested some of the difficulties that in part answer the question we now ask. let us take one more illustration, a striking example from the united states supreme court. few would question the statement that that court is the highest type of judicial body in the world to-day. we are familiar with the rent profiteering legislation enacted in the district of columbia, new york and at least five other states, as a result of the house shortage created by the world war. the united states supreme court, in the cases of block v. hirsh, u.s. and marcus brown holding co. v. feldman et al., u.s. , held the new york and the district of columbia rent profiteering laws to be constitutional, but this decision is by a vote of five to four, and the arguments advanced in the two opinions, one by mr. justice holmes, representing the majority of the court, and the other by mr. justice mckenna, are striking examples of how strongly the ablest body of jurists in the united states can differ on a legal question. speaking for the majority in block v. hirsh, mr. justice holmes says: "the main point against the law is that tenants are allowed to remain in possession at the same rent that they have been paying, unless modified by the commission established by the act, and that thus the use of the land and the right of the owner to do what he will with his own and to make what contracts he pleases are cut down. but if the public interest be established, the regulation of rates is one of the first forms in which it is asserted, and the validity of such regulation has been settled since munn v. illinois, u.s. . it is said that a grain elevator may go out of business, whereas here the use is fastened upon the land. the power to go out of business, when it exists, is an illusory answer to gas companies and waterworks, but we need not stop at that. the regulation is put and justified only as a temporary measure. * * * a limit in time, to tide over a passing trouble, well may justify a law that could not be upheld as a permanent change." in the case of marcus brown holding co. v. feldman, involving a similar new york law, mr. justice holmes says: "the chief objections to these acts have been dealt with in block v. hirsh, supra. in the present case more emphasis is laid upon the impairment of the obligation of the contract of the lessees to surrender possession, and of the new lease, which was to have gone into effect upon october , last year. but contracts are made subject to this exercise of the power of the state when otherwise justified, as we have held this to be." mr. justice mckenna, in writing the dissenting opinion in block v. hirsh, supra, and with whom the late chief justice white, and justices van devanter and mcreynolds concurred, says: "if such exercise of government be legal, what exercise of government is illegal? houses are a necessary of life, but other things are as necessary. may they, too, be taken from the direction of their owners and disposed of by the government? * * * an affirmative answer seems to be the requirement of the decision. if the public interest may be concerned, as in the statute under review, with the control of any form of property, it can be concerned with the control of all forms of property. and, certainly, in the first instance, the necessity or expediency of control must be a matter of legislative judgment. * * * the facts are significant and suggest this inquiry: have conditions come not only to the district of columbia, embarrassing the federal government, but to the world as well, that are not amenable to passing palliatives, and that socialism, or some form of socialism, is the only permanent corrective or accommodation? it is indeed strange that this court, in effect, is called upon to make way for it, and through an instrument of a constitution based on personal rights and the purposeful encouragement of individual incentive and energy, to declare legal a power exerted for their destruction. the inquiry occurs, have we come to the realization of the observation that 'war, unless it be fought for liberty, is the most deadly enemy of liberty.'" in the marcus brown holding co. case, he again says for the same justices: "we are not disposed to further enlarge upon the case, or attempt to reconcile the explicit declaration of the constitution against the power of the state to impair the obligations of a contract, or, under any pretense, to disregard the declaration. it is safer, saner, and more consonant with constitutional pre-eminence and its purposes, to regard the declaration of the constitution as paramount, and not to weaken it by refined dialectics, or bend it to some impulse of emergency because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment." no more striking illustration of the most decided differences of opinion among nine of the ablest jurists in the world can be found. it is no wonder then that a lawyer at times hesitates in giving an opinion as to what the law may be. the function of the court.--an infant bought a motorcycle on an installment contract at the agreed price of $ . he made an initial payment of $ , used the machine a month, damaged it to the amount of $ . , and then returned it in this condition and demanded the return of his $ . these are the facts in the case of petit v. liston, oregon , a case decided in the supreme court of oregon. the case involves the right of an infant to disaffirm a contract made by him, when purchasing an article which is not a necessity. the oregon court had never before been called on to determine what the law in oregon was as applied to such a situation. according to the rule in new york, as laid down in rice v. butler, n. y. , the infant could not recover the $ , but according to the rule in pyne v. wood, mass. , the infant would be entitled to his money. it thus became the problem of the oregon court to refer to the theories back of these two decisions. after doing so, it approved of the new york view, rather than the massachusetts view. this case indicates the function of a court. if a court, from the various sources of law which we have enumerated, can find an exact precedent for the case before it, or can find a general principle of law which can be applied, it renders a decision as to the law, as the oregon court did. if no law can be found nor any principles which can be applied, the court is forced to deny the relief, as in the roberson case, n. y. , adding, perhaps, to its opinion, as it did in that case, the suggestion that it is a matter congress or a state legislature might properly remedy. the court system.--knowing the function of a court, the student should then have an outline of the court system of his own jurisdiction. we can only sketch, in a book to be used generally throughout the united states, the court systems. each state has two sets of courts: the federal and the state courts. we have a federal and a state government; it follows that there should be courts to interpret the laws of each of these two governments. matters pertaining to the united states constitution, or matters affecting citizens of different states, are tried in the federal courts. the same is true of admiralty and bankruptcy. there is at least one united states district court in each state in the country, and federal cases are begun in these courts. if either party is dissatisfied with the decision, he may appeal to the next higher court. the entire country is divided into nine circuit courts of appeal, to which appeals from united states district courts are taken. in case either party is dissatisfied with the decision in that court, he may, in certain cases, appeal to the court of last resort, the united states supreme court, presided over by a chief justice and eight associate justices at washington. each state has its own system of courts. usually that system is more elaborate than that in the federal government. there is in each state a court of last resort, which we would expect to find designated the supreme court of new york, or whatever state it might be. frequently there is a misuse of terms, as, for example, the court of last resort in new york is the court of appeals, and the supreme court is a lower court. this is true in a number of states. in addition to the court of last resort, there will be a court of general jurisdiction, frequently one of these courts for each county of the state, and then courts for the trial of smaller cases in the various cities and towns. the system of appeals is the same as in the federal courts, either party who is dissatisfied having a right to appeal his case to the higher court. the question as to whether a particular case must be brought in a federal court or a state court is too complicated to be taken up in detail. sometimes the suit must be brought in the federal court, as, for example, a bankruptcy matter, or a matter involving the united states constitution, while in other cases, perhaps the majority, the suit must be brought in a state court. in other cases a person may have his option of either jurisdiction, as where a citizen of texas wishes to sue a citizen of rhode island, and the amount involved is over $ , then either the federal or state courts of either state are open to the parties. chapter i contracts--mutual assent commercial law is a general term used to cover the legal rules which relate most directly to everyday commercial transactions. it is a term of no exact boundary, but most commercial law is based in one way or another on the law of contracts, which is one of the largest subjects in the law. bills and notes, for instance, are special forms of contracts. in order to understand business law at all, therefore, it is necessary at the outset to have some knowledge of the fundamental principles of the law of contracts. definition of contracts.--what is a contract? simply a promise or set of promises which the law enforces as binding. any promise, if it is binding, is a contract or part of a contract. so the law of contracts in their formation resolves itself into this: what promises are binding? a man may make all sorts of promises, but when has he a right legally to say "i have changed my mind, i am not going to do what i said i would," and when will he be liable in damages if he fails to do as he agreed? contract terms explained.--there are certain terms in contracts which the student will find repeatedly mentioned and with which he should be familiar at the outset. for example, contracts are spoken of as express contracts, and implied contracts. by an express contract we mean a contract the terms of which are fully set forth. implied contracts are contracts the terms of which are not fully stated by the parties. there is a mutual agreement and promise, but the agreement and promise have not been expressly put in words. if i say to a man, "i will buy your horse, dobbin, for $ " and he replies, "i will sell you the horse at that price," there is an express contract. i step into a taxi and simply say to the driver, "take me to the union station." the driver says nothing, but takes me there. here is an implied contract. by my conduct i impliedly agree to pay him the legal rate for the distance carried. formal and informal contracts.--contracts are sometimes also divided into formal contracts, and simple or parol contracts. there are three kinds of formal contracts recognized in our system of law: ( ) promises under seal. ( ) contracts of record, such as judgments and recognizances. ( ) negotiable instruments. of the three, it may be most difficult to understand why a judgment is included as a form of contract, because a judgment is simply a judicial termination of a fact entered in the office of the county clerk, and generally a lien on the real property owned by the judgment debtor. the sole reason, apparently, for calling a judgment a contract, is that an action of debt may be brought in a court of law upon such a judgment. sealed contracts and negotiable paper will be taken up in a later chapter. simple, or parol contracts, are those not embraced in the three previous classifications which constitute the formal contracts. the term parol is a little ambiguous, as it is sometimes used as opposed to a written contract, meaning simply an oral one, and at other times it is used as opposed to the three previous formal contracts. unilateral and bilateral contracts.--contracts are also divided into unilateral and bilateral contracts. in a unilateral contract, the contract imposes obligations on one party only. a promissory note is an example of a unilateral contract. in a bilateral contract, obligation is imposed on both parties. john and mary become engaged to each other. this is a bilateral contract, and either may sue the other for a breach. most important results flow from the distinction between unilateral and bilateral contracts. this we shall consider later. void, voidable and unenforceable contracts.--contracts are also divided into void, voidable and unenforceable contracts. strictly speaking, a void contract is no contract at all. some statutes provide that no action shall be brought on certain contracts, and declare them absolutely void. a voidable contract is one which is good until the option of avoiding it is availed of by the party who has the option. for example, an infant with an income of $ a year contracts for the delivery of a packard automobile on june . the car, being a luxury, makes the contract with the infant voidable on his part, and he may, before june , repudiate the contract and not be liable in a suit for breach of contract, or he may, if he choses, abide by the contract, take the car, and pay the purchase price when it is delivered. an unenforceable contract is one which in itself is perfectly good as a contract, but because of some rule of law cannot be enforced. for example, a agrees, orally, with the owner of broadway, to buy that property for $ , , . the terms of the contract are understood by both parties. this contract is not enforceable, because, as we shall see later, the statute of frauds requires every contract for the sale of real property to be in writing. contracts under seal.--there are two ways of making promises binding, and unless the promisor fulfils the requisites of one or the other of these two ways his promise will not be binding. the first of these ways relates to the form in which the promise is made; the second relates to the substance of the transaction, irrespective of the form. the way to make a promise binding by virtue of its form is to put it in writing and attach a seal to the writing. it is often thought that written promises are binding in any event, or that a promise that is not written is not binding in any event. neither of these propositions, however, is true. a promise is not binding merely because it is in writing; it is necessary that something more shall be done. not only must it be written, but a seal must be attached in order to make the promise binding by virtue of its form. everyone is familiar with the common ending in written contracts--"witness my hand and seal," that is, my signature and seal. what is a seal?--a seal may be--and was originally--made with sealing wax stamped with a crest, initial or what not. this is still a sufficient seal, but the common kind of seal is simply a wafer attached by mucilage to the writing. another kind of seal, in use by corporations and notaries especially, consists simply of an impression made on paper without attaching any foreign substance whatever. any of these methods of sealing a promise is good. in most states a written or printed scroll with the letters "l. s." written or printed within, or the word "seal" written or printed may also be a seal if so intended. it may seem a ridiculous formality for the law to attach importance to this lapping a wafer and attaching it to the end of a writing. in a way it is ridiculous, but it is desirable to have some method by which a promise may be made binding. one method, as an original question, may be as good as another so long as it is an easy method, and attaching a seal is an easy method, and one which makes it possible to make a promise binding whenever you wish. change by statute of the law as to sealed contracts.--there has been in this country a certain hostility to the law of sealed instruments. it has been thought, with reason, that some of the rules governing contracts under seal have by their technicality promoted injustice. this has certainly been true of an old rule that contracts under seal could not be altered or discharged by any agreement not itself under seal. the rule, however, that a seal avoids the necessity of consideration is a desirable rule, since it is important to have some means by which those who so intend may make gratuitous promises binding. it would be better then to abolish undesirable incidents of sealed contracts by statute rather than to destroy totally the legal effect of a seal. however, in many states the distinction between sealed and unsealed contracts is totally abolished. in a number of other states the common-law rule has been changed by the enactment of statutory provisions to the effect that sealed contracts shall be presumed to have been made for a sufficient consideration, but this presumption is only prima facie, and lack of consideration may be affirmatively proved, even in the case of a sealed instrument. and under such statutes unsealed contracts remain as at common law, i. e., the burden of proving consideration rests upon the plaintiff who seeks to enforce such a contract. requisites of simple contracts.--sealed contracts are comparatively easy to understand. simple contracts, which are promises made binding by virtue of their substance rather than their form, though called simple, are more difficult to understand, and more complex. they are also much more common than sealed contracts. a simple contract is a promise, or promises, to which the parties have assented, and for which a price called consideration has been paid. one may promise as much as he wishes, orally or in writing so long as he does not attach a seal to his signature, and then say he does not care to keep his promise, unless he has both been paid for the promise and there has been an assent by the promisor and promisee to the terms of the transaction. mutual assent and consideration are, then, the requisites of simple contracts. intent to contract.--in the law of contracts, intention, as we ordinarily understand that term, plays little part. in fact, the supreme court of connecticut, in the case of davidson vs. holden, conn. , said: "it is of no legal significance that the defendants did not intend to be individually liable, or that they did not know or believe that as a matter of law they would be." it is our overt acts that count in contracts. or shall we put it this way: in the eyes of the law overt acts manifest legal intention. a says to b: "i will sell you my watch for $ , and you may have until o'clock to-morrow morning to decide." a meets b the next noon and says to him: "i am sorry you did not take the watch. it was a bargain." b replies: "here is the price, i will take it. i intended to call you this morning but have been so busy i did not have an opportunity to do so. i told my wife last night i was going to accept your offer and i can produce five witnesses who were in the room and heard me say so." it is, nevertheless, no contract, for, as has been said, quoting from an old english case, "it is trite learning, that the thought of man is not tryable, for the devil himself knows not the thought of man." occasionally there may be the overt act and still no contract, although the mere formalities of contract may have taken place. the facts in the case of mcclurg v. terry, new jersey equity , were as follows: the plaintiff was an infant nineteen years of age, and had returned late in the evening to jersey city, from an excursion, with the defendant and a number of young friends, among whom was a justice of the peace, and all being in good spirits, excited by the excursion, the plaintiff in jest challenged the defendant to be married to her on the spot; he in the same spirit accepted the challenge, and the justice, at their request, performed the ceremony, they making the proper responses. the ceremony was in the usual and proper form, the justice doubting whether it was in earnest or not. the defendant escorted the plaintiff to her home, and left her there as usual on occasions of such excursions; both acted and treated the matter as if no ceremony had taken place. in deciding the case, the court said: "in this case the evidence is clear that no marriage was intended by either party; that it was a mere jest got up in the exuberance of spirits to amuse the company and themselves. if this is so, there was no marriage." the overt act of the parties manifested no legal intention to be married. should we change the facts in the following way, the court undoubtedly would have held a valid marriage: if, after the parties had gone through the marriage ceremony, as recited, they went on a two weeks' honeymoon, and on their return lived together as man and wife for a month and then suddenly decided to call the marriage off, on the ground that it was a joke and they did not intend the ceremony to be binding, regardless of what they said as to the transaction, their overt acts would be taken by the court as showing their real legal intention at the time the ceremony was entered into. one more illustration: when leaving the class tonight, there is a sudden downpour of rain, and the instructor remarks: "i will give ten dollars for an umbrella." a student offers an umbrella and claims the money. here is an overt act, but a reasonable person would not take the words used literally. generally speaking, agreements made jokingly and social agreements confer no contractual rights. offer and acceptance.--the usual way that mutual assent is manifested is by an offer and an acceptance of the offer. two persons are not likely to express at the identical minute the same proposition. it is as a practical matter, then, essential that one should make a proposition, and if a contract is to be made, that the other should assent to it. an offer may be made to one or more specified persons, or to anyone whomsoever who will do what the offer requests, as in case of an offer of a reward. an offer is itself a promise, but is a promise conditional on the payment of a consideration or return for it either by some act or some promise from the other party. according as the offer asks for an act or a promise it will fall into one or the other of the two great divisions of simple contracts; one kind is called unilateral (meaning one-sided), that is, a promise only on one side; the other is bilateral, a promise on each side. illustrations.--let us give illustrations of these contracts. we say to john: "we will promise to give you, john, $ if you will do a specified piece of work." that is a proposal to make an exchange of the work for the money in a sense, but more exactly it is an offer to exchange an agreement to give the money in return for the work. we are not saying to john: "if you will agree or promise to do that work we will promise to give you the money." we are saying that we will give him the money if he actually does the work. that offer requires the actual doing of the work before it is binding. until then the price requested for the promise has not been paid. it is an offer of a unilateral contract. again, when we say to a man: "if you will spade up our garden we will pay you $ a day," we are making an offer for a unilateral contract. we are asking him to spade up the garden; not to promise to spade it up, but to do it, and when he does it he can hold us liable on our promise to pay him $ a day. the promise will have become binding because we have been given the payment that we asked for in our promise. but if we say to a man: "if you will agree to work for us the next month we will pay you $ ," and the man says, "all right," then we have a bilateral contract. we are asking him, as the price of our promise, not to work but to agree to work, and he has promised to do so. to say "i accept" is always sufficient acceptance in the case of a bilateral contract where a promise is requested, but if i said to you, "i will give you $ if you will bring me a book here," it would not make a contract to say "i accept." i said i would give you $ if you brought the book here, and nothing but bringing it here will form a contract. the offeree must always do what the offerer asks him. if an offerer asks for a promise, any form of words indicating assent would be sufficient, because they would mean, in effect: "i consent to make the promise you specify in your offer." the form of wording in simple contracts is immaterial. any plain language is sufficient for an offer, and as for acceptance, it does not matter whether the acceptor says "all right," or "i accept your offer," or in what form he expresses his assent. the question is, does he express assent? now, the offerer is at liberty to name any consideration in his offer that he sees fit. he can name, in other words, whatever price for his promise he chooses to ask. if the person addressed does not choose to pay that price, all he has to do is to reject the offer, but he can bind the offerer only on the terms proposed. therefore, if the offerer asks for an act in return for his promise, that is, asks for an immediate payment, or work, or the giving of property for his promise, no contract can be made by the person addressed saying, "all right, i will do it;" that is not giving the price the offerer asked. on the other hand, should the offerer ask for a promise and not for an act, the acceptor must give the promise asked for. option without consideration.--a common business transaction that presents very well the principles governing the formation of simple contracts is what is called an option. suppose the owner of a mine says: "i will sell you this mine for $ , , and you may have thirty days to decide whether you choose to accept the offer or not." now, it does not matter whether that statement is oral or in writing; it is merely an offer, and not binding as the matter stands as far as we have stated. however, if it were in writing and a seal attached (in a state where seals still have the force which the common law gave them) it would be a binding promise to sell the mine at that price at any time within thirty days. if there is no seal attached, as long as the offer is unaccepted and unpaid for, it is not binding. the man who makes it may say: "i withdraw my offer. it is true that i promised to keep the offer open thirty days, but you did not pay me for that promise and i am going to break the promise. i withdraw my offer." any offer for the formation of a simple contract, while unaccepted, may be withdrawn. but, if before it was withdrawn and within the thirty days' limit, the person to whom the option was given says, "here is the $ , which you said you would take for your mine," the offerer would then be bound, and would have to perform his part of the contract. option with consideration.--let us change the character of the option a little. suppose in consideration of $ paid down the owner of a mine promises to sell the mine for $ , at any time within thirty days. here the offer, or the contract--for it is now more than an offer--has been paid for, and it is therefore binding. the person to whom the offer was made paid $ for the promise, therefore the promisor is bound to keep it. it was not an absolute promise to give the mine to the buyer, but it was a promise to sell it to him for $ , if he chose to take it within thirty days; that is a conditional promise. a conditional promise may be binding and paid for just as well as an absolute promise. insurance policy.--take the case of a fire insurance policy. that is a conditional promise, a promise to pay indemnity for the destruction of a house by fire. therefore, the performance of the insurance company's promise is conditional on the suffering by the insured of loss by fire. an insurance policy is ordinarily a unilateral contract; the premium is the consideration or price paid for the promise, and the promise is binding on the insurance company from the time when the premium is thus paid. of course, the promise is only binding according to its terms. the insured has bought a conditional promise, a promise to pay if the house burns down. he gets that promise, but he will not become entitled to any money or any damages unless the house burns down nor unless he complies with the other conditions of his policy. guarantee.--another kind of a promise worth referring to is a guarantee. a question arises whether a business house will sell something to a buyer on credit, and it decides it will not without a guarantee. accordingly, john agrees, in writing, that if the business house in question will sell james a bill of goods, john will guarantee the payment of the price. that means, if james does not pay for the goods, john will. that is a unilateral contract in which the promise is conditional, and the consideration for that promise is the selling of goods to james. preliminary negotiations--advertisements.--an offer is sometimes difficult to distinguish from other things. suppose the case of an advertisement. a business house advertises that it will sell goods for a certain price. take the case of a bond list issued by a banking house. the list states that the banking house will sell specified kinds of bonds at quoted prices. john receives one of those lists, looks it over, sees something that looks good to him, and goes into the banking house and says: "i will take five of those bonds at the price named here." the banking house says: "we have sold all the bonds of that kind that we had;" or it says, "the market has changed on those bonds and there has been some advance in the price." has john a cause of action against the banking house? he has if that bond list amounts to an offer--that is, if the list means that the banking house offers to enter into a contract with anyone receiving the list. but it has been held that that sort of advertisement does not prima facie amount to an offer, although it might be put in such clear words of agreement to sell on the part of the banking house that it would amount to an offer. generally an advertisement of this sort, or anything that can fairly be called an advertisement of goods for sale, is held to mean simply that the advertiser has these goods for sale and names a price he is putting upon them; he invites customers to come in and deal with him in regard to them. it is an invitation to come and make a trade rather than a direct offer of a trade. illustration.--again to illustrate: you are looking at a new model of an automobile in a show-room window. you like it, enter the salesroom, and say you will take the car, tendering the price. the manager tells you that it is simply their demonstration car, that he will be glad to book your order for a car of the same model, and can make delivery in a month. you are not satisfied, and wish to sue, claiming that your tender of the price constituted an acceptance of the dealer's offer. your position would be unsound and there would be no recovery in such a case. the placing of the demonstration car in the window is simply an invitation to the public to come in and deal with the seller. on the other hand, suppose you go into a second-hand automobile salesroom. there are fifty cars of various makes and models on the floor and each one is labeled with a different price. you pick out a packard which is marked $ . you tender the price to the salesman and say you will take the car. he refuses to sell. in this case your tender is an acceptance of his offer to sell. in the former instance, placing a price on the demonstration car was not a statement to the public generally that that particular car was for sale at that price, but in this case, where the cars are all second-hand cars, the reasonable interpretation of placing the price on the packard is that that particular car is for sale. quite likely, the dealer did not have any other packard car in stock and would have no way of securing any of that model at that price. oral agreement preliminary to written contract.--another case of the same nature that comes up not infrequently is this: parties talk over a business arrangement and then they say, "as this is an important matter let us put it down in writing; let us have a written contract containing what has been agreed upon." when it comes to drawing up the contract, however, they cannot agree. one party then says, "well, we made a definite oral agreement any way; let us carry that out." the other replies, "why, no, all that was dependent on our making a written agreement." the settlement of their dispute depends on how definite and absolute the oral agreement was. it is possible to make an oral agreement binding, although the parties do agree and do contemplate that it shall subsequently be reduced to writing, but generally the inference is that the oral agreement was merely a preliminary chaffering to fix the terms of the writing, and that everything is tentative until the writing is made and signed. auction sales.--another state of affairs involving preliminary invitations is presented by auction sales. the auctioneer puts goods up for sale, a bid is made, the auctioneer gets no other bid, and then says, "i will withdraw this from sale." is the auctioneer liable? has he made a contract to sell that article to the highest bidder? when the transaction is analyzed, is this what the auctioneer says in effect: "i offer to sell these goods to the highest bidder?" if this is the correct interpretation, then when the highest bidder says, in effect, "i agree to buy them," there would be a contract. on the other hand, if what the auctioneer says is in effect like what the advertiser says: "here are some goods for sale, what do you bid, gentlemen," then the auctioneer is not making an offer himself. he is inviting offers from the people before him, and until he accepts one of those offers from the bidders before him there would be no contract; and until then the auctioneer could withdraw the goods. and that is the construction put upon the auction sale--that the auctioneer is not making an offer, but is simply inviting offers. even if the auctioneer promises that he will accept the highest offer, that is, that he will sell to the highest bidder, his promise to accept the highest bid, not being paid for, would not be binding upon him were it not for a statute in some states which, in the sale of goods, would make an auctioneer bound to keep a promise to sell without reserve, that is, to the highest bidder, if he made such a promise. bids or tenders.--somewhat similar to the case of the auctioneer is the case of tenders or bids for the construction of buildings, or for the sale of goods to a city or to a corporation. there, too, the corporation or the city is simply inviting offers. they do not say, "we offer to enter into a contract with anyone who makes the lowest bid," but rather, "we are thinking of entering into a contract, and we want to receive offers in regard to it." when the offers are made by the bids or tenders, any or none of them may be accepted, according as the receiver thinks best. it is sometimes required by law that public corporations, like cities or counties, shall accept the bid of the lowest responsible bidder, but, aside from such statutes, any or none of the bids may be accepted. implied contracts.--an offer and acceptance are ordinarily made by words either spoken or written; but any method of communication which would convey to a reasonable man a clear meaning will serve as well as words. if a goes to his grocer and says "send me a barrel of flour," he has in terms made no promise to pay for the flour, but the natural meaning of his words is that he agrees to pay. in this case a used words, though not words of promise; but the same result might follow where no words at all were used. suppose a went into a shop where he was known, picked up an article from the counter, held it up so the proprietor could see what he was taking, and went out; this would be in legal effect a promise by a to pay for the article. a contract, where the promises of the parties are to be inferred not from express words of promise but from conduct or from language not in terms promissory, is called an implied promise or contract, as distinct from an express promise or contract, which is one where the undertaking is in express language. this difference between express and implied contracts relates merely to the mode of proving them. there is the same element of mutual assent in both cases, and the legal effect of the two kinds of obligations is identical. there is, however, another kind of obligation which is frequently called an implied contract, but sometimes called a quasi-contract, because it is not really a contract at all, though the obligation imposed is similar. if a husband fails to support his wife, for instance, she may bind him by purchases of goods necessary for her support. she may do this even though he directly forbids the sales to her. there is obviously no mutual assent in this case; the husband emphatically dissents and expresses his dissent, but he is bound just as if he had contracted. termination of offer by revocation or rejection.--since offers do not become binding until accepted according to their terms, up to that time they may be terminated without liability. this may happen in several ways. in the first place an offer may be revoked by the offerer. to effect a revocation he must actually notify the other party of his change of mind, before the latter has accepted. we have already stated that offers may be rejected by the person to whom they are made. for instance, we say, "we offer you one hundred shares of stock at a certain price, and you may have a week to think it over." you say, "i do not care for that offer, i reject it." you come around the next day and say, "on reflection i have concluded to accept that offer." the acceptance is within the seven days which we originally said might be used for reflection, but the offer has been terminated by the rejection. there is no longer any offer open, and consequently the acceptance amounts to nothing. a troublesome question in regard to the revocation of an offer for a unilateral contract is this: suppose a offers b $ for a book and b starts to get it but when he reaches the door, then a refuses to take the book. the general disposition is to try to hold that promise binding, and yet the difficulty is that the offeree has not fully done what he was asked to do, and if he chose to turn back and take the book away he could do so without liability. he could say, "i did not promise to bring the book. i brought it part way, the walk was long and i am going to take it back." if he is thus free to withdraw it seems impossible to deny that the other party is equally free. bilateral contracts are more desirable than unilateral because in bilateral contracts the mutual promises bind the parties before they begin to perform and both parties are therefore protected while they are performing. in unilateral contracts, the contract is not completed until the act requested is fully done. until then, therefore, either party may withdraw. a counter offer is a rejection.--another way in which offers may be terminated is by a counter offer on the part of the person to whom the offer was made. we say, "we will sell you stock for $ a share, and you may have a week to think it over." you say, "i will give you $ a share." we say, "no, we will not take it." you say, "well, i will give you $ ." you are too late; you rejected our offer of sale at $ by saying you would give us $ . the minute you say you will give us $ , our offer is rejected. of course, when you make the counter offer of $ , if we say we will accept your offer to buy, that would make a contract. offers are constantly rejected by counter offers by people who really intend to enter into a contract. suppose a says, "i will lease you my house a year for $ ." you say, "all right, i will take it if you paper the dining-room." that rejects the offer. a new offer has been made by the person addressed, who offers, if the dining-room is papered, to take the house at $ . termination of offer by death or insanity.--an offer is also terminated by the death or insanity of either party before acceptance. after a contract has once been formed neither subsequent death nor insanity terminates liability upon it unless the contract is of such a personal character that only performance by the contractor in person will fulfil it. illustration.--in beach v. first methodist episcopal church, ill. , a fund was being raised to build a new church, and a subscription paper, as follows, was signed by lorenzo beach: "fairbury, feb. , . "we, the undersigned, agree to pay the sum set opposite our respective names, for the purpose of erecting a new m. e. church in this place, said sums to be paid as follows: one-third to be paid when contract is let, one-third when building is enclosed, one-third when building is completed. probable cost of said church from ten thousand dollars ($ , ) to twelve thousand dollars ($ , )." mr. beach attached and subscribed to that paper the following: "fairbury, . "dr. beach gives this subscription on the condition that the remainder of eight thousand dollars is subscribed. "lorenzo beach, $ ." in april, , dr. beach was adjudged insane by the county court. the court held that the "subscription made by dr. beach was, in its nature, a mere offer to pay that amount of money to the church upon the condition therein expressed. there is nothing in the record tending to show that the church, in this case, took any action upon the faith of this subscription, until after dr. beach was adjudged insane, or that the church paid money or incurred any liability. his insanity, by operation of law, was a revocation of the offer." suppose a letter for a winter's supply of coal is sent to your coal dealer and is acknowledged by him, delivery to be made before october . on september , the coal dealer dies, and his estate refuses to fulfill the contract. in such a case, if you were compelled to buy coal at a higher price from another dealer, you would have a cause of action against the estate for the damage you suffer. the coal dealer's executor or administrator could very easily carry out a contract of this character. on the other hand, suppose you are running a series of lectures during the winter, and you have engaged a noted lecturer to deliver six lectures. after he has delivered three, he dies. in this case, death would terminate the contract, as this is clearly a contract for personal services and the executor or administrator of the deceased lecturer could not perform the contract for him, as could be done in the case of the coal dealer. termination of offer by lapse of time.--an offer may be terminated by delay on the part of the person addressed. an answer to an offer must be sent in time, whether mail or telegraph is used, or whether the parties are dealing face to face. an offer lapses if it is not accepted within the time the offer specifies if any time is specified. if no time is specified, then within a reasonable time. one may specify any length of time in his offer, and it will remain open for that time provided it is not rejected or revoked, and neither party dies or becomes insane, in the meantime. but frequently offers contain no express limit of time; then it is a question of what is a reasonable time, and reasonableness depends upon business customs, the character of the transaction, the way the offer is communicated, and similar circumstances. an offer on the floor of a stock exchange will not last very long. a reasonable time for acceptance of such an offer is immediately, and an offer sent by telegraph will not remain in force long. the use of the telegraph indicates that the offerer deems haste of importance. an offer sent by mail will last longer. an offer relating to things which change in value rapidly will not remain open for so long a time as an offer which relates to land, or something that does not change in value rapidly. illustration.--in the case of loring v. the city of boston, met. (mass.) , the facts were that on may , , this advertisement was published in the daily papers of boston: "$ reward. the above reward is offered for the apprehension and conviction of any person who shall set fire to any building within the limits of the city. may th, . samuel a. eliot, mayor." in january, , there was an extensive fire on washington street, and loring, after considerable effort, was able to secure the apprehension and conviction of the criminal. he then sued to recover the reward, which the city of boston refused to pay. the ground of defense was that the advertisement "offering the reward of $ for the apprehension and conviction of persons setting fire to buildings in the city, was issued almost four years before the time at which the plaintiff arrested marriott and prosecuted him to conviction." the opinion of the court reads: "three years and eight months is not a reasonable time within which, or rather to the extent of which, the offer in question can be considered as a continuing offer on the part of the city. in that length of time, the exigency under which it was made having passed, it must be presumed to have been forgotten by most of the officers and citizens of the community, and cannot be presumed to have been before the public as an actuating motive to vigilance and exertion on this subject; nor could it justly and reasonably have been so understood by the plaintiff. we are, therefore, of the opinion that the offer of the city had ceased before the plaintiff accepted and acted upon it as such, and that consequently no contract existed upon which this action, founded on an alleged express promise, can be maintained." both parties must be bound or neither.--both parties to a simple contract must in effect be bound, and until they are, there is no contract. in a unilateral contract, before the promise becomes binding, the promisee must have actually performed what he was requested to do, that is, he must bind himself by actual performance before the offerer's promise is binding on him. in a bilateral contract, where each party makes a promise, neither promise can be binding unless and until the other one is. so that in the case of the proposed agreement to lease, as the proposed tenant might refuse to take the house if the dining-room was not papered, the proposed landlord has a similar right; that is, since one is not bound, the other is not. contracts by correspondence.--contracts are often made by correspondence, simple contracts especially. that raises rather an important question as to how and when the contract is formed. suppose a letter containing an offer is addressed from boston to a man in new york. a reply is sent by him from new york accepting the offer. that reply goes astray. is there a contract? yes. it creates a contract by correspondence for a letter to be mailed by the acceptor provided the offerer imposes no conditions to the contrary, and impliedly authorizes the use of the mails, as he does by himself making an offer by mail. but suppose the offerer in his letter says, "if i hear from you by next wednesday i shall consider this a contract." then, unless the offerer receives an answer by the next wednesday, there will be no contract. it will make no difference that an answer has been mailed, it must have been received; that is a condition of the offer. suppose an offer is made by word of mouth, and it is accepted by sending a letter. does the contract then become binding, irrespective of receipt of the letter? no, unless in some way the offerer has authorized the use of the mails in sending such an answer, and if the circumstances were such that the use of the mails would be customary, that would amount to an implied authorization. the use of the telegraph depends upon similar principles. if an offer is sent by telegraph, an answer may be sent by telegraph, and an acceptance started on its way will become binding although it is never received. similarly, one may authorize a telegraphic answer to a letter containing an offer sent by mail, and if the use of the telegraph is authorized, a contract will arise at the moment that the telegram is sent. illustrations.--in the case of an option, if the acceptance was made by mail and lost in the mails, a binding contract would be formed if the use of the mail was expressly or impliedly authorized, and similarly if the option called for payment and a letter was mailed containing a draft or cash. there is a right to send a check or draft by mail if the parties had been dealing by mail. that authority would be implied. when parties are dealing by mail and there is a bargain that a check shall be sent, the check becomes the property of the person to whom it is sent as soon as it is mailed, and, therefore, when the letter with the check is put in the mail it operates as a payment on the option, and the loss of the draft is not the sender's loss, but the other man's. a lost draft, however, can be replaced and must be replaced. authority to send actual cash by mail would not be so easily implied, especially if the amount were large, because it is contrary to good business custom; but if authority were given, the result would be the same as in the case of a check. it would, however, be a proper business precaution to register the letter if it contained cash. if the offerer, not having received the letter of acceptance and thinking none had been sent, sells the property to another person, though not morally blamable, he would get into trouble. the second purchaser would get title to the property, supposing that the property was actually transferred to him. the lost letter created a contract, but it did not actually transfer title to the property, and, therefore, when the purchaser actually got possession of the property he would become the owner of it and could not be deprived of his title if he took it innocently. if, however, the person to whom the property was transferred had notice of the prior completion of a contract, he could not keep the property. in any event the seller would be liable in damages for breach of the contract completed by mailing the lost letter. suppose an option is given by telephone to one who, just before the option expires, tries to get a connection by phone to accept and is unable to do so, and ten minutes after the time has expired a connection is secured? there is no contract and he has no action. it is no fault of the offerer that the acceptor was unable to accept in time, and, generally speaking, one who wishes to accept an offer must at his peril keep the means of acceptance open. it may be asked why does not the same principle apply in regard to mail as to the telephone; that is, why does not starting the acceptance by telephone complete the contract? because there is no authority to send communication by telephone to the offerer when the acceptor has no telephone connection. when one sends an offer by mail the reason that he is bound by an acceptance sent by mail is because he, in effect, asks that an acceptance properly addressed to him be started on its course. he takes his chance as to the rest, but an offerer by telephone does not authorize a reply by talking into the telephone when there is no connection. mistakes in the use of language in offer and acceptance.--another question which has to do with the express mutual assent of parties relates to the meaning of language used. suppose an offerer says, "i will sell you a cargo of goods from the ship 'peerless,' due to arrive from india, at a certain price." the buyer assents. there are two ships named "peerless," and the buyer thinks one is meant, but the seller thinks the other is meant. is there a contract for the sale of the cargo of "peerless" no. , or a contract for the sale of the cargo of no. , or no contract at all? the answer is, that language bears the meaning which a reasonable person in the position of the person to whom the offer is made is justified in attaching to it. if a reasonable person in his position would think "peerless" no. was meant, then there is a contract for the cargo of no. . if he was not justified in thinking that, and ought to have thought no. was meant, although in fact he did not think so, there was a contract for the cargo of "peerless" no. . if either meaning were as reasonable as the other, then each party has a right to insist on his own meaning, and there would be no contract. this principle often comes up in contracts made by telegraph, where the words of the telegram are, by the mistake of the telegraph company, changed. for instance, a telegram purports to be an offer to sell a large quantity of laths at $ a bundle. the terms as actually despatched by the seller in making his offer fixed the price at $ . . the telegraph company dropped off the words "and twenty cents." a telegram is sent back by the buyer, "i accept your telegraphic offer." then trouble arises when buyer and seller compare notes. well, the offerer is bound. he selected the telegraph as the means of communication, and he must take the consequences of a misunderstanding, which arose from a mistake of the agency which the offerer himself selected. the question may be asked: would there be any right of action against the telegraph company by the offerer, the sender of the telegram? the answer is yes. the company has broken the contract it impliedly made with the sender to use reasonable diligence in despatching and delivering the message. but the trouble with that action is that on telegraph blanks there is always this in substance: that on unrepeated telegrams this company is liable for mistakes only to an amount not exceeding twice the cost of the telegram; and it has been held in many states that that limit on unrepeated telegrams is not unreasonable. the sender of the telegram has agreed to the contract on the reverse side of the telegraph blank, and he ought to have his message repeated if he desires to hold the company liable in full damages if his message does not reach the party addressed in absolutely correct form. in other states, however, this limitation of liability is held to be against public policy and the company is liable for the full damage suffered. condition in offer requiring receipt of acceptance.--an offerer, as has been said, may insert in his offer any condition he sees fit. he may therefore insert a condition that an acceptance shall reach him, not merely be despatched. the condition may specify the time within which the acceptance must arrive in order to be effectual. it is a wise precaution in all business offers of importance to insert such a condition in the offer. it will not be sufficient to add to the offer such words as "subject to prompt acceptance," for prompt acceptance would be given, within the meaning of the law, by despatching the acceptance, not by the receipt of it. the condition should be in such words as "subject to prompt receipt of your acceptance," or "subject to receipt of your acceptance," by a stated day or hour. when silence gives consent.--there is one way of manifesting mutual assent, namely, by silence, of which a word should be said. there is a proverb that "silence gives consent." is it so in law? suppose a man goes into an insurance broker's and tosses some policies down and says, "renew those policies, please." nobody says anything and he leaves the policies there and goes out. the next night his buildings burn down. are they insured? they are, in effect, if the insurance broker has contracted to renew the policies; otherwise the buildings are not insured. now on the bare facts, as we have stated them, they are not insured; some other facts must always exist to make silence amount to assent. if, for instance, on previous occasions, the broker kept silence when such statements were made to him, and nevertheless carried out the proposal, it is a fair inference that he means by his silence this time what he meant the preceding time. furthermore, silence, when the offer is unknown, can never amount to assent. in the case as we have put it, we did not say that the insurance broker even heard the offer; if he did, then the question would depend on whether he had ever done anything to justify the other person in believing that silence would mean assent in such a dealing, or whether business customs justified the assumption. the offerer cannot by his own act make the silence of the other person amount to an acceptance. suppose an offer of this sort: "we offer to sell you shares of stock at $ a share, and unless we hear from you to the contrary by next wednesday we shall conclude that you have accepted our offer." the offerer does not get any word before next wednesday. nevertheless, there is no contract. the person addressed has a right to say, "confound his impudence, i am not going to waste a postage stamp on him, but i don't accept his offer. he has no business to suppose that if he doesn't hear from me to the contrary i assent." this sort of case is not infrequently referred to: a magazine is sent through the mails on a subscription for a year, the subscription runs out, the magazine is, nevertheless, still sent. is the person who receives it bound to pay another year's subscription? here you have a little more than silence; you have the receiver of the magazine continuing to receive it. if he refused to receive it, undoubtedly there would be no contract, but where a man takes property which is offered to him, he is bound by the proposal which was made to him in regard to the property. he ought to let the magazine alone if he doesn't want to pay for it. you may say that the receiver does not know that the subscription has run out, and if he did he would not take the magazine. but then he ought to know. he made the subscription originally. the difficulty is merely in his own forgetfulness, and he cannot rely on that. illustration.--the leading case of hobbs v. massasoit whip co., mass. , is a good illustration. the plaintiff in this case had been in the habit of sending eel skins to the defendant and had received pay from him in due course. the skins in the shipment for payment of which suit was brought, were alleged by the defendant to be short of the required length, and in a condition unfit for use. they were kept by the defendant some months, and were then destroyed, without notification to the plaintiff. the latter sued for the price of the skins and the court held that the silence of the defendant and failure to notify the plaintiff that it did not wish to have this particular lot of skins, amounted to an acceptance. the court said: "in such a condition of things, the plaintiff was warranted in sending the defendant skins conforming to the requirements, and even if the offer was not such that the contract was made as soon as the skins corresponding to its terms were sent, sending them would impose on the defendant a duty to act at that time; and silence on its part, coupled with a retention of the skins for an unreasonable time, might be found by the jury to warrant the plaintiff in assuming that they were accepted, and thus to amount to an acceptance." chapter ii contracts--consideration and enforceability consideration may be another promise or an act.--the second great requisite in the formation of simple contracts is consideration. a price must be paid for a promise in order to make it binding. the price paid may be another promise, in which case the contract is bilateral, or the price paid may be some act actually done or performed, in which case the contract is unilateral. adequacy of consideration immaterial.--not any act, or the promise of any act, is sufficient consideration, as will be seen. nevertheless, in general the law does not attempt to gauge the adequacy of the consideration; that is, parties may make such bargains as they wish as far as the price is concerned. a may say that he will sell his horse, which is worth $ , for $ , or for a promise to pay $ . that will be a perfectly good contract, if accepted, in spite of the fact that the promised horse is worth more than the promised price. such difference in the value of the promise and the value of the price may go to a great extreme. the horse may be a thousand-dollar animal, and the price promised only $ , but when you wish to push the case to an extreme you are likely to get into this difficulty: did the parties really mean to make a bargain? if what they were doing was arranging for a gift of the horse and putting up some little alleged consideration as a blind, that will not do; but any exchange the parties really in good faith bargain for, with certain exceptions hereafter stated, is sufficient. a smaller sum of money is not sufficient consideration for the promise simultaneously to pay or discharge a larger liquidated sum.--this is the principal exception, that in contracts or promises relating to a fixed sum of money, the consideration cannot be the simultaneous payment or discharge of a smaller sum of money on the other side. if a promises b $ , it will not be good consideration for b to promise in exchange $ , or even $ . , payable at the same time and place. in other words, the law does require adequacy in exchanges or agreements to exchange money. a owes b $ and says to him, "i can't pay it all," or "i don't want to pay it all. will you let me off for $ ?" b replies, "yes, i will take $ ." that agreement is not binding, and even if the $ is actually paid, b may afterwards come and say, "you paid me only part of the debt you owed me. it is true i said i would call the whole thing square, but there was no consideration sufficient in law for my promise, since you paid me only part of what you were bound to." this rule of common law, though generally well established, does not exist or is much qualified in a few states, such as: georgia, maine, mississippi, new hampshire, north carolina, virginia. unliquidated claims may be discharged by any agreed sum.--the case cited in the preceding paragraph must be distinguished from another. suppose a owes b some money for services, the price of which was never exactly fixed, but which b says are of the value of $ . then if b agrees to take $ in satisfaction of his claim against a, b is bound; the transaction is effectual. the difference is between what is called a liquidated and an unliquidated claim. definition of liquidated claim.--a liquidated claim is one of an exact amount definitely fixed. such a claim, as has been said, cannot be satisfied by partial payment or promise of partial payment. but an unliquidated or a disputed claim--a claim subject to a real bona fide dispute, not merely a dispute trumped up for the purpose of disputing a good claim--may be discharged by any payment on which the parties agree. the law does not know how much the unliquidated claim is worth, and will allow parties to bargain for the sale of the unliquidated claim, just as it will let them bargain for the sale of a horse for which they may fix such a price as they choose, and that price will not be revised. effect of releases and receipts.--if, however, the original claim were liquidated and undisputed, is there any sort of paper the debtor could get from the creditor that would release him absolutely? a receipt in full would not do it; a receipt in full is something to which business men attach more virtue than it possesses. it is merely evidence of an agreement to accept what has been received in full payment and proof may be given as to just what consideration passed for the receipt in full. as we have seen, such an agreement is not valid without consideration, and payment of part of a debt admittedly due is not sufficient consideration. the really effective instrument at common law is the release under seal. that will do the work whether the debtor paid part of the debt or not, since a sealed instrument needs no consideration. in jurisdictions where seals have been deprived of their efficacy at common law an insuperable difficulty, however, exists. in a few states--alabama, arkansas, connecticut, michigan, mississippi, new hampshire, new york, north dakota, south dakota, tennessee--a receipt in full has been given the effect which the common law gave to a sealed instrument. other illustrations.--suppose the agreement to settle a liquidated claim were oral and suppose a witness heard the words. such circumstances would not make any difference. it is assumed in all that has been said that the facts are proved. suppose that neither party denied the facts. let the creditor admit that he did receive this $ as a full payment and did give the debtor a receipt in full. still, he can say, "i propose to break my agreement since it was not supported by sufficient consideration, and i shall collect the balance." another question is this: suppose a man had a $ bill and he wanted some change very badly, and another man had $ . could the former take that for the $ bill? he could. if a man wants a particular kind of money, as gold, or silver, or quarters, the principles stated do not apply; they apply only to dollars and cents as such. past consideration.--strictly speaking, the term past consideration is a misnomer; something which is given before a promise is made cannot constitute a legal consideration. the courts have held that a warranty made after a sale has been completed is invalid. it has also been held that a guaranty after the obligation guaranteed has been entered into also is invalid unless there be new consideration. although this is the general rule, there are several exceptions where a past consideration is recognized. williston gives these exceptions as follows, although the boundaries between the groups are sometimes indefinite: "( ) promises to pay a precedent debt; ( ) promises in consideration of some act previously done by the promisee at the request of the promisor; ( ) promises where past circumstances create a moral obligation on the part of the promisor to perform his promise. under this head may be included cases of ratification and adoption of promises previously made for sufficient consideration but invalid when made for lack of authority or capacity." payment of part of a debt by one who is not the debtor.--suppose a little different case: a owes b $ for a liquidated claim. a's father says to b, "if you will let my son off, discharge him from this claim, i will pay $ , not a cent more." b agrees, and the $ is paid. now b never can get any more; the bargain is binding, and the reason is, that although a was bound to pay the whole $ , and could not, by paying b a part of the claim, give good consideration to b for his promise to cancel the balance. a's father was not bound to pay a cent and he may bargain for any exchange in return for a payment which he was not bound to make at all. therefore, he may bargain that the debt shall be discharged. performance or promise of performance of a legal duty is not sufficient consideration.--in other words, the thing which will not be good consideration, whether done or promised, is the performance or partial performance of something which the man who performs or promises is under a legal duty to do anyway. if he ought to do it anyway, then it will not serve as a price for a new promise or agreement to discharge it. another illustration of that may be given: suppose a contractor agrees to build a house for $ , ; he gets sick of his job when he is about half through, says that it is not possible for him to make any money at that price and he is going to quit. "well," the employer says, "if you will keep on i will give you a couple of thousand dollars more." accordingly the builder keeps on. that won't do. the builder in keeping on building is doing no more than he was previously bound to do. if he wants to have a binding agreement for the extra $ , with his employer, he must secure a promise under seal, for his own promise of performance will not support the promise to pay. forbearance as consideration.--another kind of consideration that is worth calling attention to is forbearance. a has a valid claim against b. he says he is going to sue. b says if he won't sue, or won't sue for the present, b will pay him an agreed sum. that is a good contract so long as it is not open to the objection referred to a moment ago; that is, so long as a's claim is not for a liquidated sum of money and b's promise is not merely a promise to pay part of that liquidated sum. a may promise what b requests, either to forbear temporarily or to forbear perpetually. either will be good. but suppose a has no valid claim against b, but b is reputed to be rather an easy mark in the community and a is a person of little scruple; he accordingly trumps up a claim against b with the hope of getting a compromise. is forbearance of that claim by a good consideration for b's promise? it is not. a's claim must be a bona fide one in order to make surrender of it or the forbearance to press it, either temporarily or permanently, a good consideration for a promise of payment. statute of limitations.--another case of a promise relating to a subject of very frequent importance in commercial law, and law generally, is a promise to pay a debt barred by the statute of limitations, and this occasion requires a preliminary word in regard to that statute. this statute prohibits the bringing of an action or a claim after the expiration of a certain period. it is a different period for different sorts of claims. action on a judgment in most states may be begun within twenty years after such judgment is rendered; so in some states may an action on a contract under seal. on the other hand, ordinary contractual claims generally expire in six years. claims in tort, that is, for injury to person or property, last even a shorter time, but the ordinary contractual statute of limitations is six years. the statute begins to run against a promissory note, or other contract, not from the time when it is made, but from the time when it is by its terms to be performed. a note made now, payable the first of january next, will not be barred until six years from the first of january, not six years from now; and if it was made payable in ten years, as a mortgage note might well be, the statute would not bar it for sixteen years. promise to pay barred debt.--it has been held, though the reasons are not very easy to explain, that a new promise will revive a debt so far as the statute of limitations is concerned. there need be no consideration for such a promise other than the existence of the old indebtedness; that is said to be a sufficient consideration, although, of course, it can hardly be said to be given as a price for the new promise. take a promissory note payable january , . if nothing happens, that is barred on january , , but if in or the maker says, in effect, "i know i owe that old note. i have not paid is, but i will pay it," he will be liable on that new promise, and the statute will begin to run again and run for six years from the making of that new promise. it is not enough that the debtor should admit that there was a liability; he must promise to pay it in order to make himself liable. suppose, instead of a new promise made after the statute had run in or , the maker had said before the maturity of the note, we will say in the course of , "don't worry about that note, i shall pay it," that also will start the statute running afresh. in other words, the new promise may be made before the maturity of the note, or before the statute has completely run as well as after the statute has completely run. in either case the new promise will start a fresh liability and keep the note alive for six years from the time the new promise was made. of course, if the new promise is made the day after maturity of the old obligation, the total effect will be simply to extend the time of the statute one day, because only one day of the six years had run at the time the new promise was made, and counting six years from the date of the new promise gives only one day more. part payment of barred debts.--not only will a new promise in express terms keep the statute of limitations from barring a claim, but any part payment will have the same effect, unless at the time the part payment is made some qualification is expressly stated. a debtor may say, "i will pay you this part of my debt, but this is all," and incur no further liability; but a part payment without such a qualification starts the statute running afresh as to the balance of the debt. it is by these part payments that notes are frequently kept alive for a long series of years. interest payments are as effectual for the purpose as payments on account of part of the principal. a new six years begins to run from each payment of interest. the debtor may, however, say, "i will pay you half this debt," or "i will pay you the debt in installments of $ a month." such promises are binding according to their terms, and do away with the statute of limitations to that extent, but they do not enable the creditor to recover anything more than the debtor promises. a question may be asked here which is frequently of importance regarding an outlawed note with a payment of interest thereon by the maker. would an endorser who had waived demand and notice be liable for six years more? yes, if the payment was made before the statute had completely run in favor of the endorser. otherwise, no. and if the endorser had not waived demand and notice, the statute could in no case be prolonged against him by any act of the maker. revival of debts discharged by bankruptcy or voidable for infancy.--a somewhat similar sort of revival of an old obligation may occur where a debt is discharged in bankruptcy. if a discharged bankrupt promises to pay his indebtedness or makes a payment on account of it, it will revive his old obligation and he will be liable again. and, similarly, though one whom the law calls an infant (that is, a minor under the age of twenty-one) who incurs indebtedness prior to his majority, can avoid liability (unless the indebtedness was incurred for what are called necessaries, that is, food, clothing, shelter and things of that sort); yet if he promises after he has become of age that he will pay these debts, from which he might escape, thereafter he is liable. contracts which must be in writing.--there is, in some contracts, one other requisite, besides those already mentioned, necessary to make them enforceable, and that is a writing. it has already been said that writing is not, as such, essential to the validity of contracts, but there are exceptional kinds of contracts which the law has required to be in writing for many years. this is by virtue of what is known as the "statute of frauds." this was passed in england in the year , and is known as "chapter , of the statute of , charles ii." this statute was passed for the purpose of preventing frauds and perjuries which were particularly prevalent at the time it was enacted. it is doubtful as to how much good the statute has accomplished. there is no question that in many cases it has caused fraud and perjury rather than prevented it. the statute, however, as passed in england, has been reenacted in practically every state in this country with slight modifications, and it is, therefore, a part of contract law to which attention must be given. originally, the statute read as follows: "no action shall be brought ( ) whereby to charge any executor or administrator upon any special promise to answer damages out of his own estate; ( ) or whereby to charge the defendant upon any special promise to answer for the debt, default, or miscarriage of another person; ( ) or to charge any person upon any agreement made in consideration of marriage; ( ) or upon any contract or sale of lands, tenements, or hereditaments, or any interest in or concerning them; ( ) or upon any agreement that is not to be performed within the space of one year from the making thereof; unless the agreement upon which such action shall be brought, or some memorandum or note thereof shall be in writing, and signed by the party to be charged therewith or some person thereunto by him lawfully authorized." a word of comment is necessary to explain the general import of these various sections. section : an executor or administrator is appointed to settle a deceased person's estate. he is not obliged to personally pay the debts of the deceased person out of his own pocket, if the estate is not sufficient. his liability is limited by the assets of the deceased, but if, in order to save the credit of the deceased or for any other reason, he chooses to promise "to answer damages out of his own estate" that promise must be in writing. this is the situation referred to by this section. section : this is a very important class and leads us to call attention to the distinction between a guaranty and a contract somewhat similar. suppose a writes to jordan, marsh company: "please sell b six good shirts and charge the same to my account." that is not a guaranty. a is in that case a purchaser just as much as if he ordered the shirts sent to himself. nor is it any more a guaranty if it was further agreed between a and b that b should pay a for the shirts. on the other hand, if a should write to jordan, marsh company, "let b have six shirts and if he doesn't pay, i will," then you would have a guaranty. it is of the essence of a guaranty that there should be a principal debtor and that the guarantor's liability should be only secondary. a guaranty must be in writing. to put the matter in another way, when there are three parties to a transaction like the above, the writing is necessary. where there are two parties, no writing is necessary. where a says to jordan, marsh company, "let b have six shirts, and if he doesn't pay, i will," we have three parties: a, the guarantor; b, the principal debtor, and jordan, marsh company, the creditor. this must be in writing. where a says to jordan, marsh company orally, "give b six shirts and charge to my account," we have simply two parties, a, the principal debtor, and jordan, marsh company, the creditor. hence no writing is necessary. in connection with this section, it must be kept in mind that some oral contracts which would be good under this section may not be enforceable under another section which we shall refer to later, because the amount involved is over a specified sum. section : the agreement referred to by this section is not the contract or promise to marry, but is for a marriage settlement such as a promise to make a payment of money or a settlement of property in consideration of a marriage actually taking place. section : any contract for the sale of land, or any interest in or concerning land, requires a writing in order to make it binding. the commonest kind of contracts in regard to land are leases or contracts for leases. an oral lease creates what is called a "tenancy at will," that is, the agreement, in so far as it specifies a fixed term, is wholly invalid, but while the tenant occupies he must pay at the agreed rate; but he has no right to stay in; he may be turned out, even though he pays his rent promptly, on notice equal to the time between rent days; and, similarly, he has a right to go out on giving the same short notice. section : an agreement not to be performed within a year must be in writing, and this provision of the statute has been the subject of rather an odd construction by the courts. the words "not to be performed within a year" have been construed to mean "which cannot possibly be performed within a year." suppose a hires b for a year from to-morrow and contrast with that case a promise to hire b for b's life, or for the promisor's life. now the first of those bargains is within the statute and must be in writing, but the second, although it seems for a much longer period, being for the whole life of the promisor or promisee, is not within the statute. the man on whose death the promise depends may die within a year, so there is a possibility of performance within a year. a promise to employ b for all his life, since that may possibly be done within a year, need not be put in writing. but a promise to hire a man for a year from to-morrow cannot be performed in a year. true, he may die within a year, and then the contract cannot be enforced, but there will be no performance. what was agreed, by the parties, was service for a year from to-morrow and that cannot possibly be done earlier than a year from to-morrow. sale of goods.--a contract for the sale of goods exceeding in value a certain amount must also be in writing unless part or all of the goods have been delivered or part or all of the price paid. the value of the goods which brings a sale within this section of the statute of frauds varies in different states, and local statutes, therefore, should be consulted to ascertain the law in this connection. besides the kinds of contracts enumerated in the english statute and which have generally been adopted in this country there are two or three other classes of contracts which in a number of states are required by statute to be in writing. of this sort is a contract to make a will. that is not a very common sort of contract, but sometimes a man promises in consideration of certain services to make a will in another's favor. the possibility of fraud in such cases is considerable. the testator is always dead before the question comes up, and then if the alleged promisee were allowed to prove by oral statements a contract to bequeath the testator's property on terms which the promisee says were agreed upon between them, it would afford a chance to produce the same effect as if oral wills were allowed. so a contract of a real estate agent for commissions is in some states required to be in writing. a contract with an agent empowering him to sell real estate, though not regarded at common law as within the prohibition of the section of the statute for the sale of an interest in land to be in writing, is by special enactment in many states required to be in writing. a contract for a loan of money reserving a rate of interest higher than that ordinarily allowed by law is sometimes required to be in writing. what constitutes writing.--the writing being a matter of proof, it is not essential that it be made at the time the contract is entered into. if made at any time before an action upon the contract is begun, that is a sufficient compliance with the statute. the writing, in order to be sufficient, must show who the parties to the agreement are, if not by naming them, by such a description as points to a specific person. thus a letter addressed simply "sir," and signed by the party charged, but not containing the name of the person addressed, is not sufficient. it is also required that all the terms of the contract appear in the writing, such as the subject matter, price, terms of credit or any express warranty, but, as often happens, they need not all be expressed in one writing. contracts are frequently made as the result of an extended correspondence, and in such a case the various letters can be put together and construed as one writing if they obviously refer to one another, and thus all the terms appear in writing. the statutes in some states require "subscription" of the signature, and in that case the signing must be at the end; but where there is not such requirement a signing in the body of the instrument is sufficient. alteration of written contract by spoken words.--failure to understand and observe the rule restricting parol evidence to vary written contracts leads to a great deal of trouble. the parol evidence rule is this: where parties have executed a written contract purporting to state the terms of their agreement, the court will not receive evidence that they orally agreed to something less or more or different, at or before the time when the written agreement was executed. that written agreement is taken as conclusive evidence of the contract made at that time. in trying to ascertain what the writing means, however, the court will permit the surrounding circumstances to be shown, and the meaning of technical or trade terms or abbreviations may be proved. it may be shown also that the parties did not intend the written agreement to be effective until some particular event happened; but if the writing was executed as an expression of the intention of the parties at that time, the only endeavor of the court will be to ascertain the meaning of the written words and to enforce them as written. the question of oral agreements made subsequent to the writing is not so simple. we must here distinguish between ( ) contracts of which the law requires written evidence because they are within the statute of frauds, and ( ) contracts which the law does not require to be in writing, but which, nevertheless, are written. contracts of the latter sort may be rescinded, added to or subtracted from by any subsequent agreement which conforms to the requirements of the law governing mutual consent and consideration, though of course it is very desirable, to avoid dispute, that any variation or rescission of a written contract should itself be in writing. if, however, the statute of frauds required the original contract to be in writing, though it may orally be rescinded, it cannot be varied by oral agreement. to permit such an oral agreement would in effect violate the statute of frauds by permitting an agreement partly in writing but partly oral to be enforced. thus, if a written contract for the sale of goods (exceeding in value the amount permitted to be contracted for orally) was made, and the parties afterwards orally agreed to change the price, the time of delivery, or any other terms of the contract, the subsequent oral agreement would be invalid. the limits of contractual relations.--as a general rule a contract does not impose liabilities or confer rights on a person who is not a party to it. it follows from the very nature of a contract that a person who is not a party to it cannot be included in the rights or liabilities which it creates, so that he will be entitled to sue or render himself liable to be sued upon it. a contract is the result of a voluntary agreement entered into by the parties. therefore, any contractual rights or liabilities existing by virtue of such voluntary agreement between smith and jones are no concern of white and black. they cannot be bound by any of the provisions of the contract between smith and jones, nor can a breach of that contract give them any rights. there are apparent exceptions to the rule we have just mentioned. one is in the case of agency. here one person represents another in entering into a contract. a contract, however, made by an agent can bind a principal only by force of a previous authority or a subsequent ratification, so that really the contract which binds the principal is his own contract. the other exception is where the rights and liabilities created by a contract may pass to a person other than the original party to it, either by act of the parties themselves or by operation of law. such would be the case where smith and jones have performed the terms of their contract except that smith has not paid the agreed amount to jones. jones assigns his right to collect this amount to white. such an assignment is permissible, as we will learn when we consider that subject later on. such is an assignment by act of the parties themselves. even this exception is limited, as the obligations incurred in purely personal service contracts are not subject to assignment. thus, if i employ artist greene to paint my portrait, he could not assign this contract and compel me to accept a portrait painted by artist brown. the rule of lawrence v. fox.--we shall now take up a very generally recognized exception to the principle we have just discussed. the question in its simplest form is this: if smith and jones make a contract for the benefit of greene, may greene sue on that contract? from what we have said in the preceding paragraph a negative answer might seem to be correct. however, to-day, stated in general terms, and leaving out of the question the limitations recognized in various jurisdictions, the very general rule is that a third party (greene in our illustration) may enforce a promise made for his benefit, even though he is a stranger both to the contract and to the consideration. in other words, it is held not to be necessary that any consideration move from the third party. it is enough if there is a sufficient consideration between the parties who make the agreement for the benefit of the third party. so in the leading case of lawrence v. fox, new york , where a debtor of the plaintiff had loaned money to the defendant and the defendant had promised him to pay the plaintiff, although the plaintiff was not a party to the contract, it was held that where a promise is "made to one for the benefit of another, he for whose benefit it is made may bring an action for its breach." qualification of rule.--we must call attention to one qualification quite generally recognized. under this rule, that a beneficiary may enforce a contract, it is necessary that the contract must have been intended for the benefit of a third person. it is not sufficient that the performance may just happen to benefit a third person; it must have been intended for the benefit of a more or less definite person. thus, where a county board had entered into a contract with a construction company which was building a bridge for it and maintaining a temporary foot bridge during the operation, by the terms of which contract the construction company assumed responsibility for all injuries suffered by pedestrians using the temporary foot bridge, it was held that a person who was injured because of the failure to light the foot bridge properly, was not such a third person as might sue under the rule of lawrence v. fox, on the contract made between the county board and the construction company. application of rule.--the rule in lawrence v. fox has been applied to contracts under seal in many jurisdictions, although there are some decisions to the contrary. a common application of this doctrine is found in the sale of real property with a mortgage upon it. the new purchaser as a part of the purchase price makes an agreement whereby he assumes the payment of the mortgagee. the question of whether the mortgagee, who is really the third party for whose benefit the contract is made, may sue the new owner, is generally answered in the affirmative. capacity of parties.--all persons are ordinarily presumed to be capable of contracting, but the law imposes upon some--in varying amounts and for their own protection--disabilities to make contracts which may be enforced against them; and, upon some, for considerations of public policy, disabilities to make enforceable contracts. these persons are ( ) infants; ( ) insane persons; ( ) drunkards; ( ) married women--to a limited extent; ( ) aliens; ( ) artificial persons or corporations. who are infants.--all persons under the age of twenty-one are considered infants, except that in some states, by statute, women attain their majority at eighteen. the law endeavors to protect those who have no experience and judgment against the loss of their property because of their inability to deal safely with others who might take an advantage of that fact. it may well be that one who has nearly attained his majority is as able in fact to protect his interests as one of full age, but the essence of the law is that it is a rule of universal application, and the law cannot measure the ability in each particular case. to do the greatest good for the greatest number, therefore, it conclusively presumes that those under twenty-one have not yet gained the ability to cope with others in the preservation of their property. contracts of an infant.--an infant's contracts are voidable; that is, though they bind the other party to the bargain the infant himself may avoid them. if he avoids them the adult with whom he contracted is entitled to recover whatever he may have given the infant which still remains in the latter's possession; but if the infant has spent or used, or for any reason no longer has the consideration which the adult gave him, the infant may avoid his own obligation if he has not already performed it, and if he has already performed it he may reclaim what he has given. after he comes of age, but not before, the infant may ratify his contracts and they then become binding upon him. the retention after coming of age of property received by the infant during his minority amounts to a ratification. there are a few obligations of an infant which on grounds of public policy are binding upon him. this is true of a contract to perform military service. the marriage of an infant is binding though his engagement is not. it is frequently said that his contract for necessaries is binding; strictly this is not true. the infant is liable for necessaries, but his obligation does not depend upon his contract; it is an obligation imposed by law--what has been called a quasi-contract. the importance of this distinction is shown if the price agreed upon exceeded the real value of the necessaries. if the contract were binding, the infant would be bound to pay the agreed price, but in fact he is liable only for the fair value. what is necessary for an infant depends upon his station in life, upon whether he already has a sufficient supply of the necessary article in question, and upon whether he is receiving proper support from a parent or guardian. the privilege of an infant is generally held to exist even though the party dealing with him not only reasonably believed the infant of age, but had received actual representations from the infant to that effect. insane persons and drunkards--the law affords protection to insane persons and, to a less extent, to drunkards, for the same reason as in the case of infants, namely, that those who are incapable of understanding what they are doing and of comprehending the effect of their contracts upon their property should be safeguarded against the designs of the more capable. this protection is given them by declaring some of their contracts void, and allowing them, or those legally representing them, to avoid all others with the exception of a few. also, as in the case of infants, this privilege as to such contracts is for the insane person's protection only, and the other party to the contract may not avoid it by pleading that it was made with an incompetent person. whom does the law consider insane?--modern science has clearly established that a person may be insane on one subject, and yet possess a clear understanding and be perfectly sound on another. if the contract deals with a subject of which the person has a clear understanding, he is not in need of protection and is given none. those only are given the protection who do not possess the mind to understand in a reasonable manner the nature and effect of the act in which they engage. binding obligations for necessaries.--the insane must live as well as the sane; consequently they are bound to pay for necessaries furnished them but only the reasonable value, as has been explained in the case of infants. the rules for determining what these necessaries may be are the same as in the case of infants. other contracts.--it is often a difficult matter to know when a person is insane, much more difficult than it is to determine a person's age. one of the contracting parties may have acted in perfect good faith, being ignorant of the other's unsoundness of mind and having no judicial determination of insanity or other warning to put him on his guard. the contract even may be reasonable in its terms, and it may have been so acted upon that the parties to it cannot be restored to their original position. in such a case, while the law should protect the incompetent, it would be clear injustice to protect him to such an extent as to make the other party suffer through no fault of his own. it has been quite generally determined in this country, therefore, that where a person does not know of the other's insanity and there has been no judicial determination of such insanity to notify the world of it, and the contract is a fair one, and has been so acted upon that the parties cannot be restored to their original position, it is binding upon the lunatic as well as upon the other party. void contracts.--in some states it is held, however, that all contracts of an insane person are void. in such states the rule above stated would not hold. the law of each state must be consulted to determine the law in the particular state. in some states, notably new york and massachusetts, an insane person's deed of lands has been held to be void, without reference to whether or not the other party entered into the contract in good faith without notice, or that it has been so far acted upon that the parties cannot be restored to their original position. as in the case of infants, an insane person's power of attorney has been declared by high authority to be absolutely void. voidable contracts.--in most jurisdictions an insane person's contracts are voidable by him or by his guardian, provided ( ) that the other person knew of his insanity at the time of making the contract, or ( ) he had been declared insane by some court, or ( ) the parties can be restored to their original position. ratification and avoidance.--when the insane person's reason has been restored, if the contract is a voidable one, as explained in the foregoing rules, though he may by acts or words avoid the contract he made during his insanity, he may in like manner ratify it, or he may ratify it by not avoiding it within a reasonable time after recovering his reason while continuing to keep something capable of being returned, which he obtained under the contract. what constitutes drunkenness.--it is not ordinary drunkenness which excuses a man from his contracts, and enables him to claim the protection given generally to incapable persons. the person must have been utterly deprived of his reason and understanding, so that he could not comprehend the nature or effect of the act in which he was engaged. that he was so much under the influence of liquor that his judgment was not as good as in his normal state does not excuse him. married women.--it is practically impossible to state in brief form the law upon the subject of married women's contracts. the difficulty arises from the diverse changes made in the plain and clear rules of the common law by statutes in the different states. the old law is wholly incompatible with the enlightened view now held in regard to women, their family, social and business standing, and the changes have been made to give them the rights to which they are justly entitled. but, inasmuch as the statutes have not been uniform in the different states, the law to-day is not wholly uniform. the statutes and decisions in each state must be consulted to determine the law on the subject as it is to-day. through these changes the law has become very complicated, and business men should obtain legal advice before entering into important business dealings with married women. the old rule.--upon her marriage a woman's existence became merged in that of her husband, and the husband and wife were regarded for many purposes as one person. what tangible personal property she had became his immediately upon marriage, and he had the right to reduce her bills, notes, bonds and other debts to his possession. her real property she retained the title to, subject to the right of the husband to have the use of it during his life, if children were born of the marriage. he was bound to supply her with necessaries, and so long as he did this her contracts for things of even ordinary use were void; but if he failed to supply the necessaries her contract for them would be valid. all her other contracts were absolutely void--not voidable. her position, then, was worse than an infant's. she could have personal property of her own only if it was given to someone else to hold the title and pay over the income to her, and even this "separate estate," as it was called, could not be bound by her contracts. changes made by statute.--the law of married women's contracts has been greatly changed by legislative enactments, to give married women the rights which the more enlightened view of the present time accords to them. the first changes aimed quite generally to give her greater rights over her "separate estate," giving her power to make binding contracts with reference to it, or to make binding contracts if she were carrying on a trade or business of her own. but the earlier statutes frequently did not give her power to contract with her husband, or to make binding contracts if she had no separate estate, or was not carrying on a separate business. later enactments have largely corrected these defects, but the old rule still stands except as it has been changed by statute, and, therefore, the statutes of each state and the decisions interpreting them must be consulted to determine accurately the law in each state. it may, however, be said that generally a married woman may now contract except with her husband, and except as surety for him. in many states she can even make contracts of these excepted classes. aliens.--an alien is one born out of the jurisdiction of the united states, of a father not a citizen of this country, and who has not been naturalized. in times of peace, aliens may hold property and make contracts and seek the protection of our courts as freely as citizens. when war breaks out between this country and another the making of contracts between citizens of the two countries is prohibited. if such contracts are made during a state of war, they are illegal and void, and the courts of this country will not lend their aid to enforce them, either during the war or after its termination. contracts made before the war breaks out are good, but cannot be enforced, nor can remedies for their breach be obtained, while the war is in progress. when the war ceases, however, the courts will lend their aid to the enforcement of such contracts. corporations.--a corporation may contract as freely as an individual so long as its contracts are within the business powers and scope of the business which its charter authorizes it to conduct. and even if a corporation has made a contract outside of the scope of its business, and the contract has been acted upon so that either party has had the benefit of the contract, an action will lie in favor of the other for the benefits so conferred. but a contract outside of the business which its charter permits the corporation to engage in, and which is wholly executory, the courts will not enforce. such contracts are said to be ultra vires. contracts with a corporation may be in the same form as contracts between individuals, and the corporation need use its seal only where an ordinary person is required to use one. the officer or officers making the contract on behalf of a corporation must, however, be authorized so to do either by the directors or by the general powers attached to such officers. in law corporations are deemed to be artificial persons subject in a general way to provisions governing natural persons. chapter iii contracts--performance and termination primary rule.-after a contract has been formed, it does not make much difference whether it is under seal or whether it is a simple contract; the rules governing the contract, subsequent to its formation, are very much the same though there are a few distinctions. the primary rule running through the law, governing obligations to perform contracts, is that if a man has once formed a good contract he must do as he agreed, and if he fails substantially (not merely slightly) to do so the other party may refuse to perform on his part. if you remember that fundamental principle you cannot generally go far wrong. conditional contracts--insurance.-what one agrees to often depends on the conditions which he includes as part of his promise. take the insurance policy previously alluded to. an insurance company promises to pay $ , , but it does not promise to pay in any event; the condition "if the house burns down" is obviously a qualification of the promise. but there are other conditions in the insurance policy. the insurance company says that it will not be liable if gasoline is kept in the house beyond a small quantity necessary for cleaning. that, too, is a condition of its promise to pay $ , ; so that "if the house burns down," "if gasoline is not kept in the house," "if the house is not unoccupied more than three months," and "if mechanics are not allowed in possession of the property for more than a certain length of time," are all conditions, and the company's main promise need only be kept if the conditions are complied with. that is why an insurance policy is not always quite as good as it seems--because there is a large promise in large print; but there are a good many qualifications in smaller print which are really part of the promise and must be taken into account. conditions in building contracts.--another kind of conditional promise often occurs in building contracts. the employer agrees to pay the builder or contractor on the production of an architect's certificate. now it doesn't do the builder any good to build that house unless he gets the architect's certificate, for he has been promised pay only on condition that he produce it. that is the promise between the parties. that is the only promise. when performance of conditions is excused.--it is obvious that these conditions in promises may be sometimes used to defeat the ends of justice, and undoubtedly at times they are so used. a person who draws a contract cleverly will put in a great many conditions qualifying his own liability, and will try to make the promise on the other side as unconditional as possible. the law cannot wholly do away with these conditions, because in general, so long as parties do not make illegal bargains, they have a right to make such bargains as suit themselves. the court cannot make their agreement for them, but it is held that if a condition will lead to a real forfeiture by an innocent promisee, the law will relieve the promisee. thus, in the architect's certificate case, if the house was properly built and it was merely ill temper on the part of the architect that caused him to withhold giving the certificate, the court would allow the builder to recover, and even if the architect had some good reason for refusing the certificate, the court would not allow the builder to be permanently prevented from recovering anything on the contract, providing the builder had substantially though not entirely performed his contract and had acted in good faith. if, however, his default was wilful, if he had tried to beat the specifications, and the architect had found him out and therefore refused the certificate, the only thing the builder could do would be to go at it again, tear out his faulty construction and build as he had agreed. in contracts of employment, work must be performed before payment is due.--there are other matters which qualify the obligation of a promisor to perform besides express conditions such as those we have alluded to. take this case: john promises to work for the a. b. company; the a. b. company promises to employ him and to pay him a salary of $ , a year. john comes to work the first day and works a while, and then he says he would like his thousand dollars. the a. b. company says, "well, you have got to do your work first." john says, "why should i work first and trust you for pay, rather than you pay first and trust me for the work? i will keep on working, but i want the pay now." of course, the employer is right in refusing to pay until the work has been done, even though the promise of the employer is not expressly qualified by the statement that after the work has been done he will pay $ , . it has been dictated by custom, rather than by anything else, that where work is to be performed on one side and money to be paid on the other, in the absence of any statement in the contract to the contrary, the work must be done before the pay is given. the result is this: that john must work anyway, his promise to work being absolute; but the employer's promise to pay the money is, in effect, conditional. it is subject to an implied condition, as it is called, that john shall have done the work he agreed to do. the promise of the employer is, in effect, "i will pay if you previously have done the work." but john's promise is absolute: "i will work." he has to trust for the pay. performance first due under a contract must be given before performance subsequently due from the other party can be demanded.--and that case is an illustration of a broader principle which may be stated in this way: where the performance promised one party to a contract is to precede in time the performance by the other side, the party who is to perform first is bound absolutely to perform; whereas the party who is to perform subsequently may refuse to perform unless and until the other party performs. in the cases thus far alluded to, the promises of the two parties could not be performed at the same time. you cannot work for a year and pay $ , simultaneously. one performance takes a whole year and the other performance takes only a moment. performances concurrently due.--but frequently there arise cases where both promises can take place at the same time. the commonest illustration of that is a contract to buy and sell. you can pay the price and hand over the goods simultaneously, and when a contract is of this character, that is, where both performances can be rendered at the same time, the rule is that in the absence of agreement to the contrary, they must be performed simultaneously. john agrees to buy james' horse and pay $ for it, and james agrees to sell the horse for $ ; that is a bilateral contract of purchase and sale. now suppose neither party does anything, has each party broken his promise? it might seem so, for john has not bought the horse or paid for it as he agreed, nor has james sold the horse. but where each party is bound to perform simultaneously with the other, if either wants to acquire any rights under the contract he must do what is called putting the other party in default, that is, he must offer to perform himself. john, therefore, must go to james, offer $ and demand the horse if he wants to assert that james has broken his contract. and james, on the other hand, if he wishes to enforce the contract, must go with the horse to john and say, "here is the horse which i will hand over to you on receiving simultaneously the $ which you promised me for it." the obligation of the two promises when they can be performed simultaneously is called concurrently conditional, that is, each party has a concurrent right to performance by the other, and has a right to refuse performance until he receives, concurrently with his own performance, performance by the other party. installment contracts.--sometimes contracts are more complicated than those which we have stated, such as contracts of service and contracts to buy and sell. this, for instance, is a type of a very common sort of contract in business: a leather manufacturer uses large quantities of tanning extract in his tannery. he makes a contract for a regular supply, so many barrels each week for a year, for which he agrees to pay a specified price a barrel on delivery. for a time the extract promised him is sent just as agreed. we will suppose, then, that perhaps the extract manufacturer is slow in sending what he promised; there is a delay; perhaps the extract that is furnished is not as good as it was or as the contract called for. what can the leather manufacturer do about it? of course, he can keep on with the contract, taking what the extract manufacturer sends him, getting as much performance as he can, and then sue for such damages as he may suffer because of the failure to give what was promised completely. but he does not always want to do that. suppose it is necessary for his business that he should get tanning extract and get it regularly. he does not want to wait and take chances on the extract manufacturer's delays in delivery and inferiorities in quality. he wants to make a contract with somebody else and get out of his bargain with the first extract manufacturer altogether. may he do so? no question in contracts comes up in business more often than that. and the answer to the question is this: it depends on the materiality of the breach, taking into consideration the terms of the contract and the extent of the default. is the breach so serious as to make it fair and just in a business sense to call the contract wholly off; or will justice be better obtained by making the injured party keep on with the contract and seek redress in damages for any minor default? materiality of breach in contracts of employment.--the same thing comes up very often in contracts of employment. suppose an employer hires an employee for a year, and in the course of the year the employee at some time or other fails to fulfill his contractual duty as an employee. he is negligent and in some respect fails to comply with his contract to render good and efficient service. can the employer discharge him? we must ask how serious is the breach. a merely negligent breach of duty is not so serious as one which is wilful. or the breach might be on the other side of the contract. suppose the employer has promised to pay a certain sum each month as salary during the year, and does not pay promptly. has the employee a right to say, "you pay my salary on the first day of the month as you agreed, or i leave"? no, he does not have a right to speak so positively as that. a single day's delay in the payment of one month's installment of salary would not justify throwing up a year's contract. on the other hand, if the delay ran along for any considerable time, it would justify the employee in refusing to continue. you will see that this principle of materiality of the breach on one side, as justifying a refusal to perform on the other, is rather an indefinite one. it involves questions of degree. that is so in the nature of the case. the indefiniteness of the rule, therefore, cannot very well be helped. illustrations and distinctions.--a few concrete illustrations may help to bring out the points under discussion. suppose an agreement for the sale of real estate, and, for instance, the buyer is unable to be on hand the day the sale is to be completed, and the owner is present, and, finding the buyer absent, immediately sells the land to another. now is there any action against the owner, or might he justly refuse to go on with the contract because of the momentary breach of contract? no, he cannot refuse to go on in the case of a contract of that sort to sell real estate, unless the contract very expressly provided that the transaction must be carried through at the specified time and place or not at all. the case would be governed otherwise by the principle of materiality of the breach, to which we have alluded. a brief delay would not be a sufficiently material breach to justify the seller in refusing to go on, but a long delay, of course, would be sufficient. in sales of personal property time is regarded by the law as more important than in sales of land. in contracts to sell stocks varying rapidly in value, time is a very important element. suppose now that an option for a piece of land was given by the owner. may he dispose of the land to another a few minutes after the time specified in the option for the acceptance of the offer? that is different from the case previously put. the option is in effect an offer to make a sale, and the offer is by its terms to expire, we will say, at o'clock, noon, october . it will expire at that time, and an acceptance a minute later will be too late. the difference is in the terms of the promise made by the different parties. in the case put first, there is an unqualified contract to buy and sell. in the case now put there is a promise to sell only if the price is tendered or if acceptance is made prior to o'clock, noon, october . the terms of the option, assuming in its favor that it was given for consideration or was under seal and therefore not merely a revocable offer, were expressly conditional. the vital thing in contracts is to be sure of the terms of your promise. the term option indicates a right which exists up to a certain point; beyond that point there is no right. prospective inability of one party excuses the other.--there is one other thing besides actual breach by his co-contractor, which justifies one party to a contract in refusing to go on with the contract, and that may be called prospective inability to perform on the part of the other side. insolvency or bankruptcy.--let us give one or two illustrations of that. you have entered into a contract to sell a merchant barrels of flour on thirty days' credit. the time has come for the delivery of the flour, but the merchant is insolvent. he says to you, "i want you to deliver that flour; the agreed day has come." you say, "but you cannot pay for the flour." "well," he replies, "it is not time to pay for it. you agreed to give me thirty days' credit: perhaps i shall be able to pay all right then. i have not broken my promise yet, and as long as i am not in default in my promise you have no right to break yours." you have a right to refuse to deliver the flour because, though the buyer has not yet broken his contract, the prospect of his being able to keep it, in view of his insolvency, is so slight that his prospective inability to perform in the future, when the time comes, excuses you from going on now. insolvency or bankruptcy of one party to a contract will always excuse the other party from giving credit or going on with an executory contract, unless concurrent performance is made by the insolvent party or security given for future performance. repudiation.--repudiation of a contract by one party is also a good excuse. repudiation means a wrongful assertion by one party to a contract that he is not going to perform in the future what he agreed. after such repudiation the other party may say, "i am not going to perform now what i agreed to perform, since you have said you will not perform in the future what you agreed. i shall not go ahead and trust you, even though i did by the contract agree to give you credit, in view of the fact that you have now repudiated your agreement by saying that you are not going to do what you agreed." repudiation may be indicated by acts as well as by words, and often is indicated partly by words and partly by acts. transfer of property to which the contract relates.--still another illustration of prospective inability arises where a contract relates to specific property, as a certain piece of land, and before the time for performance comes, the owner of the land, who had agreed to sell it we will suppose, transfers it to somebody else or mortgages it. the man who had agreed to buy that piece of land may withdraw from the contract. he may say, "you might get the land back at the time you agreed to perform, but i am not going to take any chances on that. i am off the bargain altogether." importance of exact provisions in contracts.--so much for the rather difficult subject of the mutual duties of parties to a contract in the performance of it. the best way to avoid doubt or uncertainty in such matters is to provide very exactly in the contract what the rights of the parties shall be in certain contingencies. the law always respects the intention of the parties when it is manifested, and it is only when they have said nothing about their intention that the rules which we have considered become important. fraud.--the next question in regard to contracts arises out of certain grounds of defense that may come up and the most important of these is fraud. fraud is deception; it is inducing the other party to believe something which is not true, and, by inducing him to believe that, influencing his action. the ordinary way in which fraud is manifested is by misrepresentations. a purchase or sale of stock or of goods may be induced by fraud. a loan may be obtained from a bank by fraud, that is, by misrepresentation of material facts which influence the other side to act. misstatements of opinion are not fraudulent.--now what kind of misrepresentation amounts to fraud? there must be misrepresentation of a fact. merely misrepresentation of opinion is insufficient and what is opinion and what is fact has been the basis of a good many lawsuits. john offers his horse to james for sale at $ . he says that it is the best horse in town. well, it is not the best horse in town by a good deal, but that sort of statement cannot be the basis of an allegation of fraud. that a thing is "good," or "the best in the market," or similar general statements, all of which ought to be known to the hearer to be simply expressions of opinion, are not statements of positive fact. take these two statements in regard to the horse. "he can trot very fast." that is a mere statement of opinion. to some minds eight miles an hour is very fast; to more enterprising persons fifteen miles an hour is necessary in order to make travel seem fast. those are matters of opinion. but a statement that the horse can trot twelve miles an hour, or has trotted one mile in three minutes on the track, are statements of fact, and if untrue are fraudulent. a statement of value is a statement of opinion and cannot be the basis of fraud. a statement that the horse is worth $ , or is worth twice as much as the owner is asking for him, cannot be relied upon; but a statement that $ was paid for this horse, or was offered for him, is an assertion of fact, and if untrue would be the basis of an allegation of fraud. promises are not fraudulent because broken.--a promise is not a statement of fact. a man may promise to do something and fail to carry out the promise, and in consequence the person he was dealing with may regret the bargain he entered into, but his only remedy is to sue for damages for breach of the promise if it was part of a contract. he cannot assert that merely because the promise was not kept the transaction was fraudulent. but if a man makes a promise knowing when he makes it that he cannot keep it, he is committing a fraud. the commonest illustration of this is where a man buys goods on credit, having at the time an intention not to pay for them, or well knowing that he cannot pay for them. statements must have been calculated to induce action.--generally speaking, the statement relied on as fraudulent must have been made with the purpose of inducing action. for instance, suppose john likes to tell large stories. he tells james things about his neighbor's horse. john does not do this for any purpose except to brag about living near a man who has such a splendid horse, but james suddenly takes the notion he would like to have that horse and he goes and buys it. now it was not legal fraud on john's part to tell those lies about the horse, even though they did induce james to go and buy it, unless john, as a reasonable man, ought to have known that james was likely to buy the horse, as might have been the case if james had been talking about buying him. then it would be fraud, and it would not make any difference in regard to its being fraudulent that john had nothing to gain by telling these lies, that he was simply doing it for the fun of the thing. remedies for fraud.--what remedy has the defrauded person? the law gives him two remedies of which he may take his choice; he cannot have both, but he can have either. one is to sue the fraudulent person for such damages as have been suffered, and the other is to rescind the transaction, to get back what has been given, or to refuse to go on with the contract at all if it is still wholly executory. duress and undue influence.--there are certain defences similar to fraud; duress, or undue influence, is one of them. however, this is comparatively rare. it is compelling a person to do what he does not want to do, making him agree to a bargain that he would not agree to accept under compulsion, as by fear of personal violence or imprisonment; and a bargain made under these circumstances can be rescinded or set aside. merely threatening to enforce your legal rights by suit against another is not duress, though it may in fact induce him to agree to what he would not otherwise have agreed; but to threaten criminal prosecution as a means of extorting money or inducing an agreement is illegal and in many jurisdictions is itself a crime. mistake of fact.--in certain cases, also, a mutual mistake of a vital fact is ground for setting aside a contract, but these cases are not very common. mistakes generally do not prevent the enforcement of contracts. usually where there is a mistake, it is of a character for which one party or the other is to blame. if the mistake arises out of deception it is fraud. if the mistake arises simply because the mistaken party has failed to inform himself of the facts, as he might have done, then it is no defence at all. but if both parties were acting under the mutual assumption that some vital fact was true in making a bargain, either one of them may avoid or rescind the bargain when it appears they were both mistaken. impossibility.--impossibility is sometimes a defence to the performance of a contract. perhaps the simplest illustration of this arises in a contract for personal services of any kind. illness or death of the person who promises the services excuses performance. death does not usually terminate a contract or serve as a defence to it. if a man contracts to sell bushels of grain and dies the next day his estate is liable on the contract just as if he continued alive; but if he agreed to hire a man as an employee for a year, his death or the employee's death within the year would terminate the obligation of both. unexpected difficulty is not impossibility. for instance, take a building contract: the builder agrees to put up a building within a certain time; he is prevented by strikes. nevertheless, he is liable for not doing as he agreed. he should have put a condition in his promise, qualifying his agreement to build, that if strikes prevented, he would not be liable. so, if the foundation gave way and the building tumbled down before it was finished, the builder must put it up again. also, if lightning struck it, he must put it up again. illegal contracts.--one other matter to be considered in connection with contracts and defences to them is illegality. some kinds of illegal contracts are so obviously illegal that it is not necessary to say anything about them. anybody would know that they were illegal and that they could not be enforced for that reason. a contract to steal or murder or take part in any crime is a good example. but other kinds of illegal contracts are not so obviously wicked as to make it clear that they are unenforceable. it may be worth while to mention a few of these kinds of illegality. contracts in restraint of trade.--one class of contracts which has become very important in late years in business is the contract in restraint of trade, so called. the original contracts in restraint of trade were contracts by which one man agreed that he would not thereafter exercise his trade or profession, the object generally being that the promisee should be freed from the competition of the man who had promised to refrain from exercising his trade; and the law became settled a good many years ago that if the promise was general not to exercise the trade or profession anywhere, or at any time, it was illegal, but that if it was only for a reasonably limited space of time it would not be illegal. that old law still exists, but there has grown up further a much more important class of cases where contracts are made to further an attempted monopoly, and one may say pretty broadly that all such attempts are illegal. it does not matter how much business reason there is for it; any attempt to combine in order to get a monopoly, or in order to put up prices, is bad. moreover, if the attempted restraint of trade or monopoly concerns interstate commerce, the agreement is a federal crime under the sherman law. gambling contracts.--another kind of illegal contract is a gambling contract. this seems obvious in agreements for the more extreme kinds of gambling, but in certain business transactions where the matter becomes important, the dividing line is not so clear; especially in dealings on stock exchanges and exchanges for sales of staple products, such as grain, cotton and coffee. the stock exchanges and other exchanges are made the means of a great deal of speculation, which is virtually gambling. now, in what cases does the law regard these transactions as gambling and, therefore unenforceable, and in what cases are they legal? the answer is, if an actual delivery of the stock, or commodity bought, is contemplated, then the transaction is not gambling in the legal sense; but if a settlement merely of the differences in buying and selling prices is contemplated, as the only performance of the bargain, then the transaction is gambling. the difference is between a stock-exchange business and a bucket-shop business. if you give an order to a stock-exchange house to buy stock, even though you put up but a small margin and could put up but a small margin, and the stock-exchange house knows you could put up but a small margin, nevertheless, the stock-exchange house actually buys that stock, and it is delivered to it. the stock-exchange house would then have a right to demand of you that you pay for that stock in full and take delivery of it, and could sue you for the price if you failed to comply with the demand. however, as a matter of fact, it does not ordinarily do that. if it wants to get the price which you promised to pay, and you fail on demand to take up the stock, it sells the stock which it has been holding as security. the bucket-shop, on the other hand, though it takes your order to buy, does not actually buy the stock; it simply settles with you when you want to settle, or when it wants to settle, because the margin is not sufficiently kept good, by calculating the difference between the price at which the stock was supposedly bought and the price at which it is supposedly sold, those prices being fixed by the ruling market quotations at the time. it would be perfectly possible to make a gambling transaction out of the stock-exchange transaction by a very slight change. if a stock-exchange house should agree, for instance, that the customer should not be compelled to take delivery of the stock, then that added agreement would make the transaction between broker and customer a gambling transaction, even though the broker actually bought the stock on the exchange, and, as between himself and the other broker on the exchange with whom he dealt, there was a perfectly valid sale of the stock. in some jurisdictions, by statute, speculative contracts which are not gambling contracts at common law are made illegal. breach of fiduciary duties.--another very important class of illegal transactions arises from breach of fiduciary duties. a fiduciary is rather hard to define. he is somebody that owes a duty higher than a mere contractual obligation, a duty involving something of trust and confidence. a trustee is a fiduciary, so is an agent. a director or officer of a corporation is a fiduciary, and any dealing in which a fiduciary violates his duty to the person for whom he is fiduciary is illegal, and any agreement for such a violation is an illegal contract. it is illegal for a trustee to bargain for any advantage from his trust other than his regular compensation. it would be illegal for a trustee to bargain with a bank to give the bank a trust account in return for some personal advantage, as a loan to be made to the trustee personally. it would be a breach of fiduciary duty for a corporation officer and director to bargain for any personal advantage by virtue of his official action. knowledge of another's illegal purpose.--the knowledge of another's illegal purpose will not make the person who knows of it himself guilty of illegality; but if one not only knows but in any way promotes the illegal purpose of another, he will be considered a party to the illegality. a may sell goods to b, knowing that b is going to use them illegally, and a's sale will not be illegal; but if a does anything to help b in using them illegally, or if the goods are of such a character that they can be used only illegally, then a would be guilty of illegality himself. meaning of assignments.--much of the difficulty regarding assignment of contracts is due to different meanings which may be attached to the word assignment. when property is assigned the assignee becomes the owner in every sense, if the person from whom he took the assignment had a valid title. this is not true of the assignment of contracts. by the common law, contract rights or "choses in action," as they are termed in law, were not assignable, the reason being that one who contracted with a, cannot without his consent become bound to b. power of attorney to collect a claim.--though when a man had a contract right he could not by common law make b in a complete sense the owner of the claim, he could give b a power to collect the claim as his, a's, agent, and authorize him to keep the proceeds when the claim was collected. it long ago became established that when an owner of a claim purported to make an assignment of a claim he thereby gave the assignee the power to enforce the claim in his stead, and this power given the assignee is irrevocable. effect of assignment of rights.--it may be supposed that the effect of an assignment of a right, though the result may be worked out by treating the assignee as an agent or attorney of the assignor, is the same as if the assignee were fully substituted in the position of the assignor as owner of the claim, but this is not quite true. assuming that the claim is not represented by negotiable paper, the legal owner of the claim is still the assignor. this is shown by the fact that if the debtor pays the assignor in ignorance of the assignment, the debt is discharged and the assignee can only go against his assignor for the latter's fraudulent conduct in collecting the claim after having assigned it. so, too, if the assignor makes a subsequent assignment, this subsequent assignee also has a power of attorney to collect the claim and keep the proceeds; so that if the second assignee in good faith collects the claim in ignorance of the prior assignment, he can keep what he has collected; nor is the debtor liable to the first assignee who must as before seek redress from his assignor. it is, therefore, always important for the assignee of a non-negotiable chose in action to give immediate notice of his assignment to the debtor. if after such notice the debtor should pay the assignor or a subsequent assignee, such payment would not discharge the debtor, and the first assignee could collect the claim from him. non-assignable rights.--rights cannot be assigned which are personal in their nature. the one who has contracted to paint a picture cannot delegate the duty to another, no matter how skillful. one who has a right to the personal services of an employee cannot assign that right to another. a publisher who has a right to publish all books written by a certain author cannot assign his right to another publisher. assignment of duties.--the duties under a contract are not assignable under any circumstances. that is, one who owes money or is bound to any performance can not by any act of his own or by any act in agreement with any other person except his creditor, divest himself of liability and substitute the liability of another. this is sufficiently obvious when attention is called to it; for otherwise debtors would find an easy practical way of escaping from their debts by assigning the duty to pay to irresponsible persons. but the principle is not always recognized. a person who is subject to a duty, though he cannot escape liability, may delegate the performance of his obligation provided the duty is of such a character that performance by an agent will be substantially the same thing as performance by the obligor himself. thus if a contractor engages to build a house, he may delegate the actual building to another, but he cannot escape responsibility for the work. one who owes a mortgage may delegate the payment of the mortgage to a purchaser of the land who assumes and agrees to pay the debt. if the purchaser of the land actually pays, the debt is discharged; but if he fails to do so, the mortgagee may sue the original mortgagor and the latter will be obliged to bring another action against the purchaser who promised to pay the debt and failed to do so. so where a partnership is changed and a new firm formed, it is very common for the new firm to assume the obligations of the old firm. original debtor not discharged unless there is a novation.--though a creditor cannot be deprived of his right against his original debtor without his consent, he may consent. if he does thus consent to take in lieu of the obligation of his original debtor that of the person who assumed the debt, what is called a novation is created. that frequently happens where a new firm succeeds an old one. the new firm goes on dealing with the old creditors, and they impliedly, if not expressly, assent to taking the new firm instead of the old firm as a debtor. but in order to make out a novation you have got to find as a fact that the creditor agreed to give up his right against the old debtor. if the creditor does not assent to a novation then the situation is that the creditor retains his claim against the old debtor, but the person who has assumed the debt has contracted to pay that debt. if he keeps his contract he will pay it and the debt will be cancelled. if he does not keep his contract the creditor will sue the original debtor and the original debtor will sue the man who assumed the debt. assignment of bilateral contracts.--in bilateral contracts each party is under a duty to perform his promise, and also has a right to the performance of the other party. if an attempt is made to assign such a contract the effect is this: the assignor delegates to the assignee the duty of performing the assignor's promise, but the assignor himself still remains liable if his agent, the assignee, fails to carry out the duty. further, the assignor authorizes the assignee to receive the payment or performance due from the other party to the contract and to keep it for himself. what amounts to an assignment.--no particular words are necessary to constitute an assignment. any words which show an intention that another shall be the owner of a right are sufficient to constitute the latter an assignee. especially it should be observed that an order directed to a debtor of the drawer ordering him to pay the debt to a named payee, is an assignment of the debt when delivered to the payee. this case must be sharply distinguished from a bill of exchange or check. a bill of exchange or check is an order to pay a certain amount unconditionally, irrespective of the existence of any particular fund. it is only an order to pay from a particular fund, that is, an order which is conditional expressly or impliedly on the existence of that fund, which constitutes an assignment. partial assignment.--a creditor may not only assign his whole claim to an assignee, but he may assign part of it. such a partial assignment authorizes the assignee to collect the portion of the claim assigned and keep it for himself. but the debtor is not bound to pay the claim piecemeal; he may insist on making but a single payment unless his contract with his creditor provides otherwise. a bank in accepting a deposit contracts to pay that deposit in such amounts as the depositor may indicate on the checks drawn by him, but an ordinary debtor who owes $ cannot be required to pay in such amounts as his creditor may see fit to demand. for this reason a few courts hold that even if the debtor has notice of a partial assignment, he may pay the whole debt to the original creditor though that results in defrauding the partial assignee. most courts hold, however, that the debtor when notified of the facts cannot do this, and if he objects to paying fractional parts of his indebtedness he must pay the whole sum into court to be distributed by it among the parties entitled. so, on a question of this character, the local statute should be examined. assignment of future claims.--assignments of future claims, as well as of existing claims, may be made, but there are in many states some special provisions of statute law in regard to assigning future wages. such assignments must often be recorded, and there are certain other special statutory provisions in regard to them. the assignment of future debts is also subject to this qualification: the law does not allow the assignment of a future claim unless the contract or employment out of which the claim is expected to arise has already been made or is already in existence. discharge of contracts.--contracts are discharged in much the same way as they are made. the simplest way of discharging a contract is by performing it. when both parties do exactly what they agreed to do the contract is discharged by performance. where seals still retain their common law effect, it may be discharged without performance by agreement under seal that it shall be discharged, just as a contract may be made by an agreement under seal. the agreement under seal to discharge a contract is called a release. you may release any right that you have--a right for money, a right to have work done or any right. just as contracts may be made either under seal or by an agreement with consideration, so they may be discharged not only by a release under seal but by an agreement for rescission of the contract. but this agreement must have consideration. illustrations.--suppose a has promised to build a house and b has promised to pay $ , for it. before anything has been done, a and b agree to call that contract off. this is a valid agreement for rescission, because each party agrees to give up something--one party to give up his right to have the house built, the other party to give up the right to get $ , pay. so an agreement between employer and employee that a contract shall be terminated before the time originally agreed has sufficient consideration--the employer gives up his right to the employee's services, the employee gives up his right for future pay. but compare with these this case: a owes b a thousand dollars; it is simply a debt. a and b agree to call that square. that agreement is of no validity, for here only one party agrees to give up anything. the creditor agrees to give up his thousand dollars, and he does not get any promised amount in return for it. but that obligation, that debt, could be satisfied if valid consideration were given for the surrender of the claim; and anything agreed upon, as a horse, or ten shares of stock, or anything else the parties agreed to, would be good consideration for the agreement to surrender the claim, so long as one did not get into the difficulty alluded to under the heading of consideration, of trying to surrender a right to a larger liquidated sum in consideration of the payment of a smaller sum of money. sending a check as full payment.--it is very common for a debtor in making payment by check of his debt to seek to make the check operate as a receipt in full of all claims by the creditor against him. he may do this by writing on the check itself that it is "in full of all demands" or "in full payment" of a certain bill; or he may by a letter accompanying the check state that the check is sent as full satisfaction. the acceptance by the creditor of the check under either of these circumstances is an assent by him to the proposition stated on the check or in the accompanying letter, that the check is in full payment. such an assent, however, does not necessarily prove that the debtor is discharged; consideration as well as mutual assent is essential to the validity of any agreement which is not under seal. accordingly if the debt was a liquidated and undisputed one, and the check was for less than the amount due, the agreement of the creditor to take it in full satisfaction is not supported by sufficient consideration under principles previously considered. on the other hand, if the debt was an unliquidated one, or there was an honest dispute in regard to the amount due, the creditor's claim is fully satisfied. receipt in full.--it may be said generally that though a receipt in full is often thought by business men to be a discharge irrespective of consideration, like a release, this is not true in most states. a receipt in full is good evidence, if payment has been made in full, that it has been so made; but where payment has not been made in full a receipt will not be effectual without consideration, as a release under seal would be. renunciation of obligation on negotiable instrument.--there is one case where the law allows a party who has a right to surrender it without consideration. this is by virtue of the negotiable instruments law, which provides that the holder of a note may discharge any party to it by a written renunciation of his claim. no particular form of words is necessary, but the renunciation must be in writing. no consideration is necessary. alteration of written contracts.--the alteration of a written contract in a material particular with fraudulent intent by a promisee in effect discharges the contract so far as he is concerned. he cannot enforce it either in its original form or its altered form, though the other party to the contract may enforce it against him. if the alteration is not material, the contract may be enforced even by the party who altered it whatever the motive of the alteration may have been. if the alteration is material but not fraudulently intended, that party is generally allowed to enforce the contract in its original form. no alteration by a third person affects the rights of a party to a contract. by material alteration is meant one which if given effect would alter the legal obligations of the parties to the contract. the rule of the negotiable instruments law in regard to alteration of negotiable instruments, it should be observed, is somewhat more severe than that generally prevailing in regard to other contracts. suggestions for drafting contracts.--while it is unwise to attempt the drafting of any contract at all complicated, without the services of an attorney, there are certain times when it may be necessary to act suddenly, and a few fundamental facts should be kept in mind. if you are called upon to draft a contract for two other people, the first requisite is to obtain as full information as possible from both parties as to the plans they have in mind. after obtaining this, the details should be arranged in writing, gone over carefully by the draftsman, and submitted to the parties for their approval. a most common mistake made by laymen is to fail to cover contingencies which are more or less likely to happen. for example, what effect would the death of either party have on the contract? this should be provided for. the careful draftsman, whether he be a layman or a lawyer, should draw contracts with the idea of making them so plain that litigation will not result. contracts should always be drawn in duplicate, so that each party may have a copy, and it is well, if you are the draftsman, to keep a copy for yourself. it is not necessary to appear before a notary public unless you are dealing with a deed, or a similar formal document. if there is good consideration for the contract, no seal is necessary, but under some statutes, a sealed contract is good for a longer period of time, so that there is an added advantage in having the contract under seal. quasi contracts.--the term quasi contract is one which has appeared within the last thirty years. the law in this branch of contracts is still in the process of development and the field of quasi contracts is still not one of settled limits. for our purposes we confine ourselves to those obligations arising from "unjust enrichment," that is, the receipt by one person from another of a benefit, the retention of which is unjust. the term "enrichment" has recently been criticized by one of the ablest writers on this topic, as there are many cases where it is sufficient to show that the defendant has received something which he desired, although the question whether he is thereby enriched, is immaterial. in vickery v. ritchie, mass. , we find that where a renders services, and furnishes materials and supplies for the erection of a building for b under a supposed contract and the contract itself is invalid, b is under a supposed quasi contractual obligation to pay a for the services he has rendered and the material he has furnished, regardless of whether b's property is increased in value. we may state the point to be emphasized in quasi contract is the fact that the retention of the benefit received by the defendant would be unjust rather than "enrichment." distinguishing characteristics.--there are four characteristics which distinguish quasi-contracts: . the obligations of quasi contracts are imposed by law without reference to the assent of the obligor. . they are imposed because of a special state of facts and in favor of a particular person and do not rest upon one at all times and in favor of all persons. . although equitable in their origin they are enforced by a common law court. . they require that the obligee shall be compensated for the benefit which he has conferred upon the obligor and not for any loss suffered by the obligee. application of the principle.--the following are the more common illustrations of the application of the principles of quasi contracts. where there has been a mistake, and hence the minds of the parties never really met, yet benefit has really been conferred; or, where the attempted contract cannot be enforced as a contract, because it did not comply with the statute, or was illegal, and yet one of the parties has received a benefit; or, where a benefit has been conferred under compulsion or duress. mistake.--where parties have attempted to make a contract and a mistake of fact occurs, no contract results. the minds of the parties never really meet. yet if benefits have been conferred, justice requires that the benefit should be returned, or compensation given, and this, in fact, is just what the law seeks to do when there has been such a mistake that upon the attempted contract itself no suit can be brought. the essentials of mistake, and the way in which a mistake usually arises, are: ( ) it would not be a mistake if a party had paid money when he had any reason to suppose it was not due. a recovery of money under such circumstances cannot be allowed. ( ) the payment must have been induced by mistake in order to allow the recovery. this rule prevents the recovery of money paid in settlement of a disputed matter; but it must be assumed that it was to the party's interest to make the payment. however, suppose that a compromise settlement has been made in the belief that certain facts were different from what they really were. here the mistake would have induced the payment, and, hence, in such a situation a recovery will be allowed. ( ) the fact regarding which a mistake has been made must also be a material fact, and the fact must have been a part of the transaction itself, not collateral to it in any way. a mistake as to the value of an article purchased, for instance, is not a material fact. ( ) ordinarily, money paid under mistake of law cannot be recovered, although it is against conscience for the defendant to retain it. a mistake as to the law of another state, however, is a mistake of fact, and money paid under such a mistake can be recovered. ( ) where the party who mistakenly parted with the money did so because of his own negligence, and to allow a recovery would throw a loss on the other party, he cannot recover what he parted with. one party cannot make another suffer because of his own negligence. where a party paid money under mistake, and the payee was negligent, the party paying may recover. ( ) when parties suppose they have made a contract, and money has been paid, or services rendered, under that supposed contract, but in fact there was no valid contract at all, or there was a mutual mistake as to a term, this money, or the value of the services, may be recovered. ( ) when money has been paid for the transfer of something by defendant, whether recovery will be allowed in case it should turn out that the defendant had no title, depends on the nature of transaction. if the defendant made a warranty that he had title, a recovery may be had. if, however, the defendant simply sold what he had, whether that was something or nothing, a recovery cannot be allowed unless, as is the law in some states, a vendor impliedly warrants his title by the fact of having possession. ( ) in the case of parties mistaking the existence of a subject matter of sale, if the understanding was that a was purchasing an existing thing, then he can recover the money paid if it should turn out that the thing was not in existence. but if he bought simply a chance, he cannot recover. benefits conferred under color of contract.--aside from the cases of mistake, there are other grounds for allowing recovery under the principle of quasi contract. a group of these is made up of cases where there cannot be a recovery upon the contract itself, although the parties have come together and agreed without any mistake or misunderstanding, because of the absence of some essential necessary to create an enforceable contract obligation; yet a benefit has been conferred upon the one party who, but for the lack of that essential, would have been liable in an action upon the contract itself. such cases arise largely where there has been a partial performance of an illegal contract, or of a contract unenforceable because of non-compliance with the statute of frauds, or where full performance is excused by impossibility. some states also allow recovery on the theory of benefits conferred, where, after partial performance, a party defaults under circumstances not excusing default. benefits conferred without contract.--we next take up that class of relations where there has been an absence of distinct offer and acceptance, and yet a benefit has been conferred resulting in an unjust enrichment of the other party. if a confers benefit on b, though at b's request, it may be merely a gift. a cannot afterward change his mind and recover for that, as if there had been a contract. a may have paid b's debt in order to prevent a sale of his own property. he may then recover the amount so paid. for example, a left his property with b to have some repairs made. a third party recovered a judgment against b, and a's property was seized on an execution. a paid the judgment in order to release his own property. it was held that he might recover the money so paid from b, who should have paid the judgment. or a may have paid b's debt because he was surety for b. he then may recover from b the amount so paid; or, if b had two sureties, a and c, and a paid the whole or more than his share, he could recover the share of such payment which c should have paid, on the principle of contribution that equality is equity. but a must have actually made the payment of more than his proportionate share. chapter iv principal and agent; master and servant the importance of agency.--now that we have finished our discussion of the general principles of contract law, it remains for us to apply these principles to the specific topics of commercial law. of these, the law of agency is one of the most important. it is perfectly obvious that a man can be in only one locality at a given time. under modern business conditions he may wish to perform acts in different places at the same time. when business men were first confronted with problems of this kind, the principles of the law of agency began to develop. they resorted to the simple expedient of having others represent them. if these representatives were properly instructed in their duties and faithful in discharging them, there was, of course, no reason why the will of the person who had appointed them was not as fully accomplished as if he had performed the act himself. the latin maxim, "qui facit per alium facit per se," that is, "he who acts through another, acts himself," is the basis of the law of agency. the growing importance of the law of agency is strikingly apparent in one branch of modern business. fifty years ago, the great majority of business operations were conducted either by individuals or by partnerships. to-day, especially in conducting large business enterprises, corporations have replaced individuals and partnerships. although (as we shall see later in the chapter on corporations) in law a corporation is deemed a separate, legal entity, distinct from the stockholders, in actual practice we know that there is no such distinct physical being as a corporation. it follows, therefore, that every act performed by a corporation must be performed through an agent. with the enormous increase in the number of corporations in the last twenty-five years, and that increase still continuing, we can see that the law of agency is a most important branch of commercial law and very closely connected with corporation law. agency defined.--merely for purposes of convenience, it may be best to divide the whole subject of agency into three branches: principal and agent; master and servant; employer and independent contractor. the term "agency," when used in the broad sense, indicates a relation which exists where one person is employed to act for another. at the outset, we should keep in mind the distinctions between the agent, the servant, and the independent contractor. it is difficult to indicate these distinctions with absolute certainty by definition. an illustration, however, will show clearly what the difference is. i own an apartment house in new york, but as i am not in the city, except infrequently, i employ the real estate firm of smith & jones to manage the apartments and collect the rents. they are, of course, my agents, to act in the premises. i own an automobile and i employ a chauffeur to operate the car for me. he is my servant. i own a vacant lot in new york and on it plan to erect an office building. i employ the smith construction company to erect the building. it is an independent contractor. what is the rule, then, to determine the distinction between these three persons? all three persons represent the principal, or the master, or the employer, but the line of distinction lies here: an agent is employed to bring the principal into new contractual obligations; a servant represents his master in the performance of ministerial, or mechanical acts or services, with no thought of bringing his master into new contractual relations with third persons. a person who is employed to perform ministerial or mechanical acts for another, as we have said, is a servant, but there are cases where the master retains no control or right of control of the means or methods by which such work is to be accomplished. in this latter case, the person performing the work is not a servant, but is an independent contractor. how agency may arise.--although agency undoubtedly originated from the relationship of master and servant, and that relationship from the enforced service rendered by slaves to their master, to-day the law of agency in the broad sense is a contractual relationship. the agent or servant or independent contractor becomes such upon the express or implied request of the principal. although agency may exist, in so far as third persons are concerned, without any formal contract between the principal and the agent, yet, in the great majority of cases, there is an actual contract between the parties to the relation. compensation, although usually an element in the contract, is not necessarily a requisite. for instance, i may be liable for the negligent act of my son in running my automobile in connection with my business, although he is acting without any compensation. there are four methods by which the relationship of agency arises: ( ) by contract; ( ) by ratification; ( ) by estoppel; ( ) by necessity. who is or may be an agent.--the law of agency, as between principal and agent, is simply an application of the general law of contracts, but as between third parties and the principal, or agent, new questions arise. the first question is, who is an agent and who is a principal? any employer is a principal and any employee is an agent. the employer is a principal whether he employs the employee for a single act or whether he employs him for a period of time. besides the ordinary cases that you will think of under the head of employer and employee, an officer of a corporation is an agent, the corporation being the principal. the president of a corporation is as much an agent as a clerk in the employ of the corporation. a partner is an agent--of the firm. these different kinds of agents are distinguished chiefly in the different scope of the authority which they possess. disability.--in our discussion of contracts, we found that certain persons were under disability so far as making contracts was concerned. we mentioned the case of infants, married women, insane persons, and the like. the same disabilities do not exist in the law of agency, so far as the agent is concerned. any person may act as an agent or servant. so infants, married women, slaves, and even lunatics, may be agents or servants whose acts will bind their principals. it has been held that even a dog may be an agent. as to who may be a principal, the ordinary rules of contracts, as we have discussed them, may be relied upon as giving the correct rule. agency by contract.--concerning agency which arises by contract, little need be said. a contract of agency must possess all of the elements of the ordinary contract, such as mutual assent, consideration, competent parties, legality of object, and in some cases, a particular form. the general principles of contract law as we have discussed them are applicable to this method of forming the agency relationship. powers of attorney.--in connection with the formation of agency by contract, special attention must be given to powers of attorney. a power of attorney must oftentimes be given in order to convince third persons that the agent really is an agent, with the powers which he claims to possess. a power of attorney is nothing more than a written statement that a particular person is the agent of another person, with the powers stated in the document. a power of attorney may be very broad, giving the agent very wide powers, or may be narrow, giving the agent or attorney power to do only a specific thing. now, many powers, so far as the law itself is concerned, might just as well be oral as written, but you could not induce third parties to deal with the agent and believe that he had authority unless he showed as proof of it a power of attorney. that is why a power of attorney is generally given; not that the law requires it, but that the agent may have evidence of his agency which will satisfy third persons that he is really the agent. a corporation would not transfer stock without a written power presented to it; yet, if it chooses to run the risk, there would be nothing illegal in doing so. but it does not choose, and an attempt to compel it to transfer would be held unreasonable unless the authority of the person claiming to be empowered to transfer the stock were in writing and shown to it. witnessed and sealed powers of attorney.--a witness is not necessary on a power of attorney. a witness on a power of attorney has the same effect as on any other document where a witness is not absolutely required, and that is this: if the signature of a document is called in question and the signature is witnessed, the way which the law requires proof of the signature is by calling the witness to testify, and no other evidence is permissible until the witness is produced or his absence accounted for; that is, some adequate reason given and proved for not producing the particular man who witnessed the signature. for this very reason it is sometimes more difficult to prove a signature which is witnessed than one which is not. a signature which is not witnessed may be proved by anybody who has seen the person sign, or who is familiar with his signature, and who can testify that the signature in question is his. the object of a witness is to provide certain evidence that a signature is genuine. the testimony of a witness may be more convincing in case of a dispute than testimony of one who merely recognizes the signer's handwriting. a witnessed power of attorney might be, however, more difficult to prove if the power of attorney were contested than if it was not witnessed, that is, if the witness could not be found. on the other hand, if you had your witness within reach it would be easy to prove the signature by him. the whole matter of witnesses to deeds and other documents, where a witness is not absolutely required, may be thus summarized: it is a good thing to have a witness if the witness is a reliable, well-known person who can always or generally be reached. it is a bad thing to have a witness who is a servant or a person whom you may lose sight of after some time has elapsed. the question may also be asked: how does a power of attorney, when given under seal, compare with one without a seal? one is as good as the other, except that if it is desired that the attorney or agent shall execute any instrument under seal, such as a deed of real estate, the power must itself be under seal; but a power to do anything which does not require the execution of a sealed instrument is just as good without a seal as with one. this, however, is true; if the power contains an agreement by the principal not to revoke the power, this agreement will not be binding if there is neither seal nor consideration, but will be binding without consideration if under seal, in a state where seals still have their common-law effect. the principal will be able, it is true, even in such a case, to revoke the power, but he will commit a breach of contract if he does. agency by ratification.--where the assent of the principal to the act of the agent is given after the act is performed, it is in the nature of a ratification of the act, and is intended to clothe the act with the same qualities as if there had been a previous authority or appointment. suppose, for example, a and b are acquaintances. both are wealthy. a is a good judge of horses and knows b likes good horses. a discovers what he considers a good horse and buys it for b at a very low price. he tells b the next day what he has done and b goes to get the horse and tenders the price, but the dealer refuses to sell, as he has been offered a higher price. b has a cause of action for breach of contract, for by ratifying a's act, he has made a binding contract between himself and the dealer. suppose in the same illustration, a had selected two horses for b, but when b saw them he decided to take only one of them. in that case, there would be no contract, for it is fundamental that a ratification, to be effective, must be of the whole contract, and not of a part. a ratification, once it is given, dates back to the original transaction and is irrevocable. formation of agency by estoppel.--an estoppel may be said to arise where a person does some act which will preclude him from averring anything to the contrary. so, if one holds out another as his agent, he is estopped to repudiate the acts of such a person within the scope of his ostensible authority. in the case of bradish v. belknap, vt. , the facts were that for a long time prior to , b was the agent of the defendants in selling stoves. this fact was generally known and was well known to the plaintiff. in b ceased to be the agent of the defendant, but continued to sell stoves, which he purchased of the defendants. no public notice of the termination of the agency was given, nor was the fact known to the plaintiff. b continued to represent himself as agent of the defendants and was in the habit of taking notes for stoves sold, payable to the defendants, and this was known to the defendants. the plaintiff, believing b to be the agent of the defendant, offered to buy a stove of him and pay him in pine lumber. to this b assented and the lumber was accordingly furnished to b and the defendants, together with other lumber which the plaintiff charged up to the defendants. the defendants later attempted to escape liability for the lumber furnished in excess of the value of the stove. the court, holding them liable, said: "b during all this time was perfectly poor and irresponsible, and this fact was known by both parties. b represented himself as the agent of the defendants, and the conduct of the defendants was such as to justify the plaintiff in regarding them as the principals; and we can hardly conceive it possible under the circumstances that the defendants did not understand that the plaintiff so regarded them. and to allow them now to deny the agency and thus defeat the plaintiff's right to recover for the balance of the lumber would be permitting them to perpetrate a palpable fraud on the plaintiff." estoppel defined.--this term will occur several times in the different topics of commercial law. an estoppel may be said to arise when a party by conduct or language has caused another reasonably to believe in the existence of a certain state of things and the other party acts on that belief, the first party is precluded from denying the existence of that state of things to any one who has justifiably relied on his language or conduct. illustration.--there is a common saying in admiralty, that a seaman's claim for wages is nailed to the last plank of the vessel. so if boatswain john silver is left unpaid by his vessel in london and he later finds the vessel in new york, although its ownership has entirely changed meanwhile, he may still file a libel for his wages and have the united states marshal for the southern district of new york seize the vessel. suppose however you contemplate buying a vessel. you go on board with the present owner and while all the members of the crew are lined up on the main deck, you ask him in a voice loud enough to be heard by everybody whether there are any unpaid wage claims. he replies that everything is paid to date. the crew remain silent. you purchase the vessel and a few weeks later members of this same crew seek to collect from the vessel a wage claim of one year's standing. their claims against the vessel or against you as owner are unenforcable. in other words, they are estopped because of their conduct when you purchased the vessel. if a person does not speak when he ought, at times the law will not allow him to speak when he wishes. boatswain silver had never done anything to preclude him from asserting his wage claim. his, therefore, is not a case of estoppel. agency by necessity.--the authority of the agent may be enlarged by some particular necessity or sudden emergency in which case it is the duty of the agent to act, even though he cannot receive the advice or directions of his principal. this method of creating the agency relationship is one upon which the courts are not agreed, and there is great conflict in the decisions. the case of gwilliam v. twist, ( ) q. b. , and q. b. , is a good illustration of how close the line may be drawn. the facts were that the driver of an omnibus belonging to defendants became intoxicated while on duty and was taken from his seat by a policeman. a man who happened to be standing near volunteered to drive the omnibus to the defendant's yard, and the driver and conductor acquiesced, the former warning him to drive carefully. the volunteer in negligently turning a corner ran over and injured the plaintiff, who brought action for damages against the defendants, owners of the omnibus. the trial court held, with considerable hesitation, that the defendants were liable for the injury, placing its decision upon the ground of agency by necessity; but the court of appeal reversed the decision on the ground that the necessity did not sufficiently appear, since the defendants might have been communicated with, and left open the question whether, if there had been an actual necessity, the defendants would have been liable. right of principal to diligent and skillful service.--let us consider, first, the rights of the principal and agent as between one another. the rights which the principal has against the agent are, first, a right to have the employee render reasonably diligent and skillful service. the amount of skill which the employer can fairly demand from his agent depends on the character of the contract between the two and on the circumstances justifying the principal in expecting a greater or less degree of skill. when a man employs an expert accountant to act for him he has a right to expect greater skill than if he were employing an ordinary bookkeeper. it depends on the character of the work and of the man employed. the amount of compensation paid to the employee may also have a bearing on the amount of skill the employer has a right to expect. right of principal that agent shall not exceed his authority.--the second right that a principal has is to demand from his agent that the agent shall act in obedience to instructions and only within the limits of his authority. these limits may be fixed expressly in the contract between principal and agent, or they may be left wholly to implication from the nature of the employment. perhaps more commonly they are partly fixed by express agreement and partly fixed by natural implications which arise from the nature of the employment. right of principal to accounting.--thirdly, the principal has a right in financial dealings with his agent, or in regard to financial dealings of the agent with third persons, to demand an account from his agent. it is not enough that the agent actually expend money intrusted to him correctly; he must furnish a correct account of expenses and of collections. right of principal to fidelity.--finally, the agent is under a duty of fidelity or loyalty to his principal. the principal is entitled to demand that the agent, unless the contrary is agreed, shall make the employment or agency his sole interest in regard to that particular thing. of course, in many agencies the agent is undertaking a great deal of outside business besides the particular agency in question, and he has a right so to do so long as the principal has not engaged his whole time, and so long as one agency does not interfere with another. but that last is an important point. an agent who undertakes one task for one principal which occupies only one-tenth of his time cannot take another employment which is inconsistent with that. an agent to sell a particular kind of goods for one principal, even though his agency is not expected to take the agent's whole time, cannot undertake an agency for a competing principal. the two things are inconsistent, and the agent would be disloyal if he accepted. side compensation.--then, again, the agent must not get what may be called "side compensation" of any sort. his whole compensation as agent must be what is due him directly from the principal under the agreement. for instance, if a buyer for a department store gets paid a commission by a firm from which he buys goods, that is a side commission which the buyer as an agent has no right to take; and so strict is the law, that if an agent does take any such extra compensation the principal has a right to recover it from him. of course, if the principal agrees to side compensation, it is all right for the agent to take it; when the principal agrees to it, it ceases to be what we have called side compensation and becomes part of the agent's direct compensation to which he is entitled under his bargain with his principal. acting as agent for both parties.--one of the most common difficulties that agents get into in regard to this requirement of fidelity, and sometimes with entirely good faith, is undertaking to act as agent for both parties. that cannot be done unless each party especially agrees that the agent may act for the adverse party. an attorney-at-law cannot represent two sides of a case. a real estate broker cannot represent buyer and seller, and a stock broker cannot represent buyer and seller. stock brokers have one practice which perhaps may seem to infringe this rule. a customer comes into a broker's office and says he wants to buy shares of new york central. about the same time another customer comes in and says he wants to sell shares of new york central. now, must a broker go on the exchange and make a purchase for one customer and then a sale for the other, or may he, so to speak, negotiate through himself a sale for the customer who wants to buy from the one who wants to sell? what he frequently does, in fact, is this: he buys and sells from himself, but publicly, giving other brokers the chance to buy or sell if they wish. the broker, according to the rules of the new york stock exchange, cannot execute this transaction secretly in his office, but must offer the securities in question on the exchange, and the purchase and sale must be recorded on the ticker. if the bidding and asking prices are more than an eighth apart, he may offer the new york central at a price midway between the bidding and asking quotations and buy it himself and charge each customer a commission, but he must actually make the offer or bid aloud on the floor. the broker is technically acting for both parties, but he is not fixing the price. he makes an open bid on the exchange, and it may be that would save the transaction. agent's right to compensation.--what are the rights of the agent against the principal? they are two. first, a right to compensation; that is, a right to the pay that has been agreed upon, or, if no pay was agreed upon but it was understood that there should be some compensation, then a right to reasonable compensation. it is perfectly possible to have an agency without compensation. frequently one man agrees to act for another without pay, and an agent who is acting without compensation, so long as he acts as agent, is bound to the same obligations to his principal as if he were receiving compensation, only he can withdraw from his agency whenever he sees fit since he is not paid for it. but unless circumstances show that an agency was understood to be without compensation, it would be implied that reasonable compensation was to be paid to the agent for his services. agent's right to reimbursement.--the other right of the agent is the right to reimbursement and indemnity. as the agent is acting for the principal, the principal ought to pay all the bills of whatever kind incurred, so long as the agent is acting rightfully within his authority, and the principal is bound to pay all such bills. this obligation of the principal to pay all the bills of the agency means not simply that he must pay actual expenses, but that if liabilities of any kind arise by reason of third persons suing the agent or holding him liable, if the action of the agent was within his authority, the principal must indemnify against any loss. principal bound to third persons by authorized acts of agent.--now let us turn from the rights of principal and agent as between one another to the rights of third persons. when do third persons get rights against the principal? in the first place, whenever the agent, acting in accordance with his authority, enters into a transaction with a third person on behalf of the principal, the principal is bound to the third person to just the same extent as if he himself had entered into the transaction; but it is not only in cases where express authority is given to the agent that this principle applies. implied authority of agent.--in many cases the authority given an agent is not expressly stated. one has to rely on the general course of business and on the nature of the employment to determine the extent of the agent's authority. a third person deals with a cashier of a bank, or deals with the paying teller, or he deals with the president; now whether the bank is bound by that dealing depends on what is by general custom, or course of business, the authority of a cashier or a paying teller or a president. if cashiers or paying tellers or presidents generally have certain authority, then it is a fair assumption that this particular officer has such authority. authority to do particular acts.--an agent to sell has generally no authority to make a sale on credit or to receive anything but money; he cannot barter or exchange the property even in part, nor pledge or dispose of the property to be sold in payment of his own debts. for the sale of land an agent's authority ought always to be under seal, and the provisions contained in this power of attorney will be strictly construed. in a sale of personal property, an agent has implied authority to do whatever is usual and necessary in such transactions. he may receive payment if he has possession of the goods, but not otherwise, and warrant the quality, if such goods are customarily sold with a warranty by agents. he cannot sell on credit unless such is the custom, as in the case of commission merchants, nor pledge or mortgage the goods. the agent may not buy on credit unless so authorized, or it is the custom of the trade; but a principal's direction to purchase, without supplying the agent with funds, will imply authority to purchase on credit. the agent must purchase precisely as directed. an agent to manage has an authority co-extensive in scope with the business, and possesses the same power and authority as the principal, so far as management goes, but the agent may not sell or dispose of a business, nor mortgage the property used in carrying it on, nor engage in new and different enterprises. public agents, i. e., public officers, cannot involve their principals, the municipal corporations whose officers they are, in contract liabilities with third parties unless actually authorized to do the act in question; and all persons dealing with them must inform themselves of the scope of their legal powers. apparent authority of agent.--but it is not only in cases where the agent is expressly authorized, or authorized by such implication as we have just alluded to, that the principal is bound. there is the further case where the agent has apparent authority, although, as a matter of fact, he has no authority. take the case of a cashier certifying a check. we will suppose that cashiers, generally, have authority to certify checks. with most cashiers that would be what we have called an implied authority, as it arises from the general nature of their positions though nothing was ever said about it by the bank directors. but suppose in a particular bank it was a rule of the bank, expressly stated and voted by the directors, that the cashier should not have power to certify checks. now, no one can say that his power here is either express or implied; it is certainly not express, and any implication that might otherwise arise from his position is negatived by the express vote of the directors, and yet if that cashier should certify a check to any person ignorant of this limitation on his authority the bank would be bound by the certification because the cashier has apparent authority. he looks to the world as if he had authority, and seems to the public like any other cashier. most of the difficult cases in agency, so far as liability of the principal to third persons is concerned, relate to this matter of apparent authority. illustrations.--compare the following case with the case of the cashier above alluded to: a man who is giving some support financially to a book dealer writes a note in which he says, "i authorize a b to buy a stock of books not exceeding, at any one time, $ , ." the book dealer shows that written authority to persons from whom he wishes to buy books. they sell him books, and, unknown to the last person who thus sells him books, he has just before bought a quantity which makes the total largely exceed $ , . is the principal liable to the persons who last sold books to the dealer? the answer is no. and what is the difference between that case and the cashier case? in the book case the last seller saw the paper giving authority to the book dealer to purchase. he had no reason to know that the day before a large quantity of books had been purchased. he acted in entire good faith and the deception was natural. still, the employer, or the writer of the letter, has done nothing here to make the last seller suppose that $ , worth of books had not already been bought, nor does the course of business justify the last seller in supposing they might not already have been bought. it was a hard question for him to find out, but on the face of the letter it was evident that any one who dealt with the bookseller might have to determine this question or rely at his peril on the bookseller's word. here is another case: a town treasurer was authorized to borrow a certain sum of money. he gets a certified copy of the vote and goes to one bank and borrows the money, and goes to another bank with that same certified copy of the vote and borrows the money over again. is the town liable to the second bank? no; on the face of the paper there was but one loan to the town authorized, and any one who lends the money must at his peril find out whether a loan has already been made. when we say, therefore, that a principal is bound if his agent had apparent authority, we do not mean that whenever a third person is deceived into the belief that the agent has authority, the principal is bound. quite to the contrary, the principal must have in some way been the cause of that deception; he must have caused it either by some express representations, or he must have caused it by putting a man in a place where the general course of business would induce the public to believe the agent had greater powers than he had. general and special agents.--it is much easier to find a case of apparent authority, which will bind the principal, if the agent is a general agent than if he is a special agent. a special agent is an agent authorized to do one act, as this town treasurer was authorized to make one loan. the cashier is a general agent, authorized to do any of the great variety of acts which cashiers ordinarily do, and if the directors vote to take away one of the normal powers of the cashier, they must make the limitation public or the bank will be bound by the cashier's act. undisclosed principal.--not only may the third person hold the principal liable in cases where the agent purports to act for the principal, but also in cases where the agent does not disclose his principal at all and purports to act as a principal himself, so long as it is true that the agent really was acting in the principal's business. suppose a selling agent for a manufactory enters into a contract for the sale of goods produced in the manufactory. the selling agent, we will further suppose, contracts--as selling agents often do--in his own name; but he contracts in regard to the sale of the product of the principal, the manufacturer, and on his behalf. now, assume that this contract of the sales agent was authorized; the third person may sue the manufacturing company, though he did not know of the existence of the manufactory at the time he entered into the contract, and supposed he was contracting simply with the agent. as it is phrased in law, an undisclosed principal is liable, and conversely, the undisclosed principal may sue on this contract made by the sales agent. ratification.--if an agent acts beyond his authority, the principal, if he chooses, may ratify the acts of the agent. occasionally in an emergency it becomes necessary for an agent who has his principal's interest at heart to take a chance and act beyond the authority given him. in such a case, if the principal ratifies it, it is all right, both as far as the agent is concerned, and as far as the third person is concerned; but, of course, the principal is under no legal obligation to ratify. rights of principal against third persons.--now, the right of the principal against the third person is the converse of the right of the third person against the principal, of which we have been speaking. generally when a transaction is of such a sort that the third person would have a right of action against the principal, if the principal fails to do as he agreed, the principal will have a right of action against the third person if the latter breaks his agreement. principal is liable for torts of agent.--not only is the principal liable for the contracts of his agent, but he is also liable for any tort which an agent may commit, so long as he is acting in the course of his business. of course, accident cases present the commonest type of that sort of liability. a street railway is liable for the results of its motor-man's neglect, so long as the motorman was running the car. if the motorman got off the car on a frolic of his own, the street railway would not be liable for anything he might do then. the same principle may be found in other cases than accident cases. suppose officers of a corporation wrongfully overissue stock. if those officers were the officers authorized to issue stock, and, therefore, were acting in the general course of their business, the corporation would be liable for that tortious act in overissuing stock. authority may generally be oral as well as written.--the authority given by a principal to an agent may in general be oral as well as written; it is just as good. there are, however, a few exceptions to that. in the first place, an authority given to an agent to execute an instrument under seal must itself be not only written but under seal. an oral or a written authority, if not under seal, given to an agent to convey land, which must be conveyed by a sealed deed, would not enable the agent to make a valid deed. where the effect of seals is abolished this principle is of course no longer applicable. generally an agent orally authorized to make a contract to buy or sell land may bind his principal by entering into such a contract. the contract the agent enters into, must, because of the statute of frauds, be in writing, and signed, but the agent's authority generally need not be written. in some states, however, written authority is required by statutes. proxies.--a proxy is simply a written power of attorney to an agent, authorizing him to vote for a stockholder, and there, too, a corporation would be held justified in refusing to recognize any proxy that was not in writing, or any agent who did not have a written proxy even though proxies were not required to be in writing. liability of agent to third persons.--how about the rights and duties of the agent as against the outside world? the agent is liable to a third person if he commits a tort. it does not make any difference that the principal is also liable, the agent is liable too. the third person may sue either the principal or agent as he prefers; he cannot get compensation for his injury more than once, but he can get that either from the principal or agent, whichever is more convenient. the third person may hold the agent liable if the agent contracts for an undisclosed principal. in the case of the sales agent referred to a moment ago, where the agent was really acting as agent for a manufacturer but did not say so, the third person might sue the manufacturer on the contract; but he might sue the agent, and if the agent was held liable the agent would have to seek reimbursement from the principal. agent warrants his authority.--an agent is liable in one other case to the third person with whom he deals. if the agent did not have authority to do what he purported to do, the third person can sue him, though the third person could not sue the principal in this case, since the agent was exceeding his authority. an agent is said to warrant his authority to third persons with whom he does business. agent cannot delegate authority.--an important rule in agency is that an agent cannot delegate his authority. if a is appointed to do certain work, a must do it himself, and cannot empower b to do it if it proves inconvenient to do it himself. there are three exceptions to this rule. the first is that if he is given express permission to delegate his authority, he may do so, and, of course, if the principal should ratify an unpermitted delegation of authority, the ratification would here, as always, serve as well as original authority. the second case is where the usage of business is such that the principal must be presumed to have understood that there was to be a delegation, or partial delegation, of authority, and in such a case, though the principal has not expressly authorized delegation, he will be treated as if he had authorized it by virtue of business usage. the third case where delegation is authorized is in regard to what are called ministerial or mechanical acts, that is, acts which involve no exercise of judgment or skill. the principal is entitled to the agent's judgment and skill, but if there are parts of the work that do not require skill and that, from their nature, any ordinary clerical assistant can do, then such acts may be delegated. termination of agency by act of parties.--the parties may have agreed in their contract that it should terminate at a certain time or on the happening of a certain event. the arrival of that time or the happening of the event would of course end the relation as between them. it would not so operate as between principal and third parties, however, unless the third parties were informed. so, performance of the purpose for which the relation was created terminates the relation as between principal and agent. the parties may make a subsequent agreement to terminate the relation, and such an agreement would be good, the abandonment of the rights of each party created by the original contract being a sufficient consideration for the promise of each to surrender his own rights. revocation.--except in the case of irrevocable agency noted below, the principal may revoke at any time the agent's authority as to matters not already executed. any other rule would enslave the principal to his agent by forcing him, at the agent's will, and against his own consent, into contracts with third parties. but, while the principal has this right, the exercise of it may subject him to liability to his agent. if the contract of employment is for a definite time, and the principal, without cause, revokes the agent's authority before that time arrives, the principal is liable to the agent for breach of contract; if no time is fixed for the termination of the agency, it is an agency at will, and the principal, with or without cause, may revoke at any time without incurring liability to his agent. the acts which will amount to a revocation by the principal are various. for instance, if an agent has exclusive authority to represent the principal, the appointment of another agent would amount to a revocation. as to making the revocation effective, a revocation operates on the agent from the time he has notice of it. it is effective as to third parties only when notice is given to those who have dealt with the agent that the agent's authority is revoked. without such notice the principal does not escape liability to third persons by reason of further acts on his agent's part. where an agent is appointed in a particular business, parties dealing with him in that business have a right to rely upon the continuance of his authority until in some way informed of its revocation. this notice must be actual to those who have dealt with the agent, and general, as by publication in newspapers, where persons have not before dealt with the agent. renunciation.--the agent may renounce his employment at any time, but if he contracted to serve for a certain time, and renounce before that time arrives, he is liable to the principal for breach of contract, unless he has ground for renunciation, such as the principal's breach of faith with him. the sickness of the agent is a ground for renouncing the relation, even though the sickness be caused by his own negligence or wrong. the principal should inform third persons of the agent's renunciation if he would fully protect himself against further acts of the agent. termination of agency by operation of law.--as in the case of ordinary contracts, a contract of agency may be terminated by the rules of law upon the happening of certain events. thus, the destruction of the subject-matter of the agency terminates the relation, if the parties contemplated the continued existence of the subject-matter as the foundation for what was to be done. a change in the law, as the enactment of a statute declaring illegal agencies of a certain nature, that previously had been legal, terminates the relation. so also certain changes affecting the parties to the relation--i. e., the principal or the agent--effect a termination. the death of the principal brings the relation to an end, and this is so although the agent had no notice of it and subsequently dealt on behalf of his principal with third persons; such contracts do not bind the principal's estate. the death of the agent necessarily ends the relation. the occurrence of the principal's insanity terminates the relation, and a judicial finding of insanity is notice to all; but without notice of the insanity third persons who deal with the agent in good faith are protected. the bankruptcy of the principal terminates the relation as to all matters affected by the bankruptcy. impossibility to continue the relation brought about by restraint of law terminates the relation. irrevocable agencies.--an agency to do an act touching a thing in which the agent has an interest, or in which he is subject to an obligation, cannot be terminated by act of the principal alone. the principal cannot terminate the relation so as to leave the agent under obligations to third persons, thereby shifting his obligations upon the agent; nor can he do so when the agent has an interest in the subject-matter of the agency. it is difficult to state concisely what will constitute such an interest that the principal cannot terminate the relation, but it may be said to be some ownership or right in the matter dealt with, such that the agent may deal with it in his own name, and not a mere benefit to be obtained from the performance of the contract of agency, as a commission to be realized from sales. possession of personal property with the right to sell, with authority to apply the proceeds to a debt due from the principal to the agent, is sometimes held to constitute an agency coupled with an interest such that the principal may not revoke it; on the other hand, an interest arising from commissions or the proceeds of a transaction, is not an interest which will prevent revocation. the courts carefully examine agencies claimed to be irrevocable because coupled with an interest, and are inclined to rule against them. master and servant.--as we have said, the function of the servant is to perform ministerial or mechanical acts for the master. the chief subject-matter under the law of principal and agent is contracts, while the chief subject-matter of the law of master and servant is tort. the servant, in performing acts for his master, may, inadvertently or wilfully, cause injury to a third person or to the property of a third person. the question arises: what is the master's responsibility? we shall consider this from two standpoints; the relationship of the master and servant, inter se (between themselves), and the relationship of the master and servant as to the outside world. for example: the driver of a delivery truck, operated by lord & taylor, negligently runs over a pedestrian. the truck was going at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour, although the instructions issued by lord & taylor to all their servants is not to run cars more than fifteen miles per hour in the congested parts of new york city. is lord & taylor liable to the pedestrian? this question involves the relationship of master and servant as to outside parties. the same servant, while operating the delivery truck for lord & taylor is run into, negligently, by a delivery truck operated by r. h. macy & co. is the master, lord & taylor, responsible to its servant for the injury which he suffers as the result of the collision? this question involves the relationship of master and servant inter se. we shall consider this latter relationship first. the common law governing the relationship of master and servant inter se.--what is the liability of the master towards the servant if the servant is injured? we shall see in the chapter on torts that a tort is defined to be a breach of duty imposed by law for which a suit for damages may be maintained. hence it follows that the master's liability in tort flows from a breach of duty owed by him to his servant. if there is no legal duty, correspondingly there is no legal liability. these legal duties which the common law developed over a long period of years may be summed up as follows: ( ) to provide a reasonably safe place for the servant to work. ( ) to provide reasonably safe, suitable, and sufficient tools and appliances with which the servant is to perform his work. ( ) to provide reasonably careful and competent fellow workmen and in sufficient number for the work in hand. ( ) to warn the servant of any unusual dangers connected with the work. ( ) generally so to conduct the work as not to expose the servant to dangers which could be avoided by the exercise of reasonable diligence. from the servant's standpoint, it was said that he assumed the ordinary risks inherent to the kind of business in which he was employed. these rules of the common law were the outgrowth of conditions surrounding the small shop and involving the use of simple or no machinery. under modern industrial conditions they have proved wholly inadequate. we have been unduly conservative in recognizing this. strangely enough the workmen's compensation acts, with which we are now so familiar, had their origin in germany in . nearly all the countries of continental europe recognized the situation about thirty years ago, and england in , and the united states within the last few years. the objection of the common law theory.--under the old theory, if the master had observed the duties which we have mentioned, he had performed his whole obligation to his own servant; thus, if two fellow workmen were working on the twentieth story of a new steel skyscraper being erected by the institute construction co., and through the carelessness of servant a, servant b was precipitated to the street and killed, there would be no recovery on the part of the estate of the deceased servant, although he may have left a wife and several children dependent wholly upon him for support. even admitting that the institute construction co. had exercised due care in selecting competent fellow servants for the deceased to work with, and had, therefore, performed all of its obligations on this score, nevertheless, it is better, from the standpoint of society, that the wife and children of servant b should receive fair compensation rather than be thrown upon the mercy of the public. the great object of the workmen's compensation act is to shift the burden of such economic waste from the employer to the industry, in order that it may ultimately be borne by the consumer as a part of the necessary cost of construction and production. thus we are asking the master to assume a greater financial responsibility for injuries to his servant under this new theory than he has assumed heretofore. this can be taken care of by the increased price he charges for his work and this in turn will ultimately pass the added burden to the community at large. illustration.--again, even if the servant did have a cause of action against his master, because of the master's failure to observe the common law requirements we have mentioned, nevertheless, the expense of litigation and the interminable delays connected with it, amounting at times to two or three years before the case was finally disposed of by the court of last resort, all tended to make litigation for the servant all but impossible. he would ordinarily have no money with which to begin this long litigation, and would be obliged to retain the services of a lawyer, who would take the case on a contingent fee basis, and often take from the workman, should the decision finally be in his favor, a third, a half, or even a greater portion of the amount that he recovers. perhaps this was no greater compensation than the lawyer was entitled to because of the labor involved and the prospect of no pay if he lost the case, but regardless of this it was hard on the client. the supreme court of washington, in the case of stertz v. the industrial insurance commission, wash. , has summed up the objections against the whole system as follows: "both had suffered under the old system, the employers by heavy judgments of which half was opposing lawyers' booty, the workmen through the old defenses or exhaustion in wasteful litigation. both wanted peace. the master in exchange for limited liability was willing to pay on some claims in future where in the past there had been no liability at all. the servant was willing not only to give up trial by jury but to accept far less than he had often won in court, provided he was sure to get the small sum without having to fight for it.... to win only after litigation, to collect only after the employment of lawyers, to receive the sum only after months or years of delay, was to the comparatively indigent claimant little better than to get nothing. the workmen wanted a system entirely new. it is but fair to admit that they had become impatient with the courts of law. they knew, and both economists and progressive jurists were pointing out, what is now generally conceded, that two generations ought never to have suffered from the baleful judgments of abinger and shaw." workmen's compensation act.--to meet the objections we have just mentioned, the workmen's compensation act principle was developed on the continent of europe. practically all of continental europe had placed laws of this character on its statute books before the end of the nineteenth century; in england passed similar legislation, and within the last few years, we have adopted the same principles. with the exception of a few southern states, every state and territory of the united states has a workmen's compensation act. we cannot consider these acts in detail. the principle underlying them is the same throughout the country. they are designed to compensate servants for "accidents" "arising out of," and "during the course of" their employment, and this, regardless of whether the servant was at fault or not. the whole theory of the common law had been that the master must be at fault in order that the servant may recover. the new theory is that the community at large can better stand the loss suffered by a servant than the individual servant. for example: a steel girder falls upon a workman engaged in structural steel work, through no fault on his part and also through no fault on the part of his employer. under the common law, he would have to stand the loss himself. under the workmen's compensation act, such an event is an "accident"; it "arose out of" and "in the course of" his employment. therefore, he is entitled to a fixed compensation, and he secures it almost immediately through a workmen's compensation bureau, or whatever body the act of the particular state creates for the purpose of settling such matters. this is a burden on the employer, it is true; he was in no way to blame. neither was the workman. the employer may protect himself against the claims of his workmen by insurance under a plan provided by the state law, or if the state law does not provide for it, by arrangements with private companies the same as any other accident insurance is obtained, and by figuring his cost upon the particular job, he can charge as a part of his operating expense, the cost of his insurance and include that in his charge for work. the loss suffered by the individual workmen is then passed to the community at large. from an economical and sociological standpoint, this situation is undoubtedly better than that existing under the theory of the common law. the interpretation of workmen's compensation acts.--although these acts are comparatively new in this country, there has been a great amount of litigation, and it is not practical to enter into a discussion of all the close questions which are raised in interpreting such acts. a vast amount of the litigation has been concerned with the interpretation of the three expressions, common to almost all the acts, "accident" "arising out of" and "during the course of." while the courts have shown a broad-minded spirit in interpreting these expressions, it is undoubtedly true that some decisions will suggest further legislation in order to correct certain evils which exist at the present time. for example, in defining the term "accident," the leading english case said: "the expression 'accident' is used in the public and ordinary sense of the word, as denoting an unlooked-for event which is not expected or designed." and judge siebecker of wisconsin says "accidental" contemplates "an event not within one's foresight and expectation, resulting in a mishap causing injury to the employee," and mr. justice pound of new york says that the statute contemplates injuries "not expected or designed by the workman himself." to illustrate: a window-dresser is decorating the window in woolworth's. he swallows a pin. this is an "accident" within the contemplation of the act, and entitles him to recovery. again, a workman is employed in a white-lead factory. during his six months period of service in the factory, he contracts tuberculosis. this is not an "accident" because you must be able to put your finger upon a definite time when the unlooked-for event happened. this leads us to the general statement that workmen's compensation acts in this country, as at present drawn, do not generally cover occupational diseases. separate legislation is undoubtedly desirable to extend the principle in such cases, for if it is sound that the window-dresser in woolworth's should recover, it should be equally sound that the workman who contracted tuberculosis should recover. again, the other two expressions "arising out of," and "during the course of" have caused much litigation. perhaps the most satisfactory statement about these expressions is in the leading massachusetts case, in re mcnicol, mass. . here the court says: "the injury must both arise 'out of' and also be received 'in the course of' the employment. neither alone is enough. it is not easy * * * to give a comprehensive definition of these words. * * * an injury is received 'in the course of' the employment when it comes while the workman is doing the duty which he is employed to perform. it 'arises out of' the employment, when there is * * * a causal connection between the conditions under which the work is required to be performed and the resulting injury. * * * if the injury can be seen * * * to have been contemplated by a reasonable person familiar with the whole situation, * * * then it arises 'out of' the employment. * * * the causative danger must be peculiar to the work and not common to the neighborhood. * * * it need not have been foreseen or expected, but after the event it must appear to have had its origin in a risk connected with the employment, and to have flowed from that source as a rational consequence." an illustration will show how these phrases are applied. the janitor of a building is alone in the building. an old enemy who has not seen him for years, learns his whereabouts, comes into the building, shoots him in the leg, causing him to have it amputated. is the master liable? it is an "accident," and clearly it arose "during the course of" employment, but did it arise "out of" his employment? manifestly not. the guilty party would have shot the man had he met him in central park, or any other place. it was purely personal vengeance on his part which caused the act. the night watchman in a bank is shot by a robber at night in the bank, while on duty. may he recover from his master? clearly he can. it is an "accident." it arose "during the course of" his employment, it arose "out of" his employment also, because the robber would not have shot him were he not in the bank as a watchman, standing between the robber and the accomplishment of his purpose, the securing of money from the bank. the relationship of master and servant as relating to outside parties.--if the relationship of master and servant exists, the question arises, is the master responsible for the torts committed by his servant, resulting in injury to third parties? it is, of course, essential that the wrongdoer must be the defendant's servant. it does not follow that a wrongdoer is the defendant's servant simply because of a certain relationship, as that of parent and child, husband and wife, or employer and employee. within the last few years, a great number of automobile cases have been decided by the courts, and they are commonly spoken of as the "family automobile cases." to illustrate: i own a car which is used by the various members of my family. my son, while running the car, for his own pleasure, negligently runs over some one. am i responsible? granting the relationship of parent and child, that would not constitute, per se (of itself), the relationship of master and servant. the injured man would have to show more than i have indicated in order to entitle him to recover for my son's negligence. were members of my family in the car, being taken out for a ride by my son, i would be liable. again, my wife, in discharging a servant, assaults her. should the mere fact of the relationship of husband and wife make me liable on the theory of master and servant? clearly not. again, i employ john smith as my chauffeur. i never operate my car on sunday. john smith, who lives in the town adjoining mine, is moving, and asks if he may borrow my car over sunday to assist in the moving operations. while using the car for that purpose, he negligently runs over some one. am i liable? clearly not, for, although the relationship of master and servant exists between me and my servant at the time he did the injury, he was not acting for me as a servant. what is the rule to be applied to answer such questions? the servant must be engaged in his master's business.--it is clear from the foregoing that, in order to make the master liable, the servant must be engaged in his master's business, and he must be acting within the scope of his employment. the new york case of rounds v. the delaware, etc., railroad, n. y. , states the general rule: "for the acts of the servant, within the general scope of his employment, while engaged in his master's business, and done with a view to the furtherance of that business and the master's interest, the master will be responsible whether the act be done negligently, wantonly, or even wilfully." the court of errors and appeals of new jersey recently said in holler v. sanford ross, n. j. law, : "the supreme court of connecticut states the rule applicable to this class of cases about as clearly as it can be done, when it says: 'for all acts done by a servant in obedience to the express orders or direction of the master, or in the execution of the master's business, within the scope of his employment, and for acts in any sense warranted by the express or implied authority conferred upon him, considering the nature of the service required, the instructions given and the circumstances under which the act is done, the master is responsible; for acts which are not within these conditions, the servant alone is responsible.'" liability of a public agency for the negligent acts of its agents.--it is an old saying that "the king can do no wrong." this principle of the english common law we have applied in this country, and the federal government cannot be sued unless it gives its consent. while the court of claims has been established, congress has generally provided that suits may be brought against the federal government only in contract actions, and not in tort actions, so that ordinarily, if a person is injured through the negligence of an employee of the federal government, he may not recover against that government. thus, my only remedy in case of an injury, received through the negligent operation of an elevator in a post-office building owned by the government, would be the passing of special legislation by congress compensating me. i would have no right to sue the united states for such injury. the same general principles are applied to the state governments. in regard to cities, the rule may be generally stated to be that a municipality is not liable for the negligence of its servants in those departments operated by the municipality in its governmental activities, as distinguished from its administrative activities, in which case it is liable. thus, a city is not responsible for the negligence of its policemen or its firemen, although injury results from their negligence, these departments being examples of governmental activities of a municipality, while the city would be liable, generally, for the negligence of the employees of its water department, this being an illustration of its administrative activities. it is also generally held that public charities, such as hospitals, and the like, are not liable for torts committed by their servants, provided they have used reasonable care in the selection of their servants. independent contractors.--a distinction must be made between one whom we call an independent contractor and a master. when a desires a particular piece of work done, he has two options as to doing it. he may either hire a workman to do it, retaining control of the workman, and telling him how he shall do it, or he may let the work by contract, simply stipulating that it shall be done in accordance with plans and specifications which his architect has drawn up. he retains no control over the contractor or over his method of work. his sole interest here is to have the piece of work turned over to him in its completed state. in the first case, we call the workman a servant; in the second case, he is an independent contractor. one who employs an independent contractor is not liable for the negligent acts of the contractor or his servants, except in a few special cases. in berg v. parsons, n. y. , the majority of the court states: "there are certain exceptional cases where a person employing a contractor is liable, which, briefly stated, are: where the employer personally interferes with the work, and the acts performed by him occasion the injury; where the thing contracted to be done is unlawful; where the acts performed create a public nuisance; and where an employer is bound by a statute to do a thing efficiently and an injury results from its inefficiency." a few, but not many courts, add to this list one further fact, that the employer must use due care in the selection of a competent independent contractor, otherwise he is liable. this would seem eminently sound. chapter v partnership relations analogous to principal and agent.--there are a few relations, in the law, which are analogous to that of principal and agent. the one which we shall take up now is the relationship of a partner to a partnership, and also to the outside world. we shall consider in a subsequent chapter, the functions, duties and responsibilities of trustees, executors, and administrators. the importance of partnership law.--there is a very common impression that partnership law is not as important now as formerly. this undoubtedly is true, as more and more large business enterprises are being conducted in the corporation form; but there is still a large amount of business done in the partnership form. what is most important, however, is the very informality of the type of business conducted under the partnership arrangement. whether, in a given case, a partnership exists, becomes a vital question. two friends, a and b, in an informal way, go into a business venture. the enterprise fails and a and b owe many debts. a has some property of his own; b has nothing. you are a creditor, but all your dealings have been with b. one simple point will show you whether your claim is worthless. if a and b were partners, you may hold a. if they were not partners, your claim probably never will be worth anything to you. the question, then, whether or not a certain relationship constitutes a partnership is a most important one, in the field of commercial law. partnership defined.--we shall have occasion, in the chapters on bills and notes, and personal property, to refer to the movement to codify certain branches of the law. this movement was begun by the commissioners on uniform laws proposing the uniform negotiable instruments act, which has now been adopted in all of the states except georgia. one of the most recent codifications is the uniform partnership act which has been adopted in a number of the states, and which will undoubtedly follow the same course as the other acts drawn by the same commissioners. we shall make frequent reference to the uniform partnership act in this chapter. although some of the writers on the law of partnership state that no satisfactory definition of the term partnership can be given, the uniform act defines it as follows: "a partnership is an association of two or more persons to carry on as co-owners a business for profit." it is undoubtedly true that even with this definition, a considerable amount of further explanation will be necessary to determine with any degree of certainty, just what is meant by partnership. the difference between a partnership and a corporation.--while we may be anticipating our chapter on corporations, it is well, at the very outset, to understand the fundamental differences between a partnership and a corporation. we may mention six differences: ( ) when a partner dies, the partnership is automatically dissolved. if a partner sells or transfers his interest in the business, this works a dissolution of the firm. on the other hand, the situation is precisely the opposite in the case of a corporation. the death of a shareholder has no effect upon the corporation. in fact, if all of the shareholders of the united states steel corporation should die at once, the corporation would still exist. so also the transfer of stock from one owner to another has no effect upon the corporation's existence. many thousand shares are dealt with on the exchange each day without the slightest effect upon any corporation. ( ) the doctrine of individual liability for the debts of a firm is a fundamental characteristic of partnership law. each member of the firm is absolutely liable for all the debts of the firm. thus, if the firm consists of a, b, and c, and the firm goes into bankruptcy and owes $ , , and b and c are both individually worthless, and a has his own private fortune, a will be obliged to pay all of the debts, although, according to the arrangements that the partners made when forming the partnership, each was to share the profits and losses equally. theoretically, a has the right to contribution from his fellow partners, and should they later acquire property, he will be able to enforce this right in a court of equity. in a corporation, a shareholder is liable only for the value of his share. if he subscribes to a share of stock, par value $ , and has paid only $ on his subscription, and the corporation goes into bankruptcy, its receiver can compel him to pay the balance of his subscription, $ , but that would be the extent of his loss. if i buy a share of united states steel common, at $ , on the exchange, and the company goes into bankruptcy, my loss will be only $ . i would not be obliged to make up to the receiver the other twenty-one dollars. the only noteworthy exception to this rule as to the liability of a stockholder is in the case of a shareholder in a national bank, (this is true of some of the state banking laws also), where a shareholder is liable to an extra assessment equal to the par value of the stock he owns. ( ) in a partnership each member of the firm is a general agent for the partnership, and his acts bind the firm. in the case of a corporation, a shareholder, by virtue of the fact that he is a shareholder, has no power to bind the corporation. the position of a shareholder is very similar to that of a voter. the corporation is run by its board of directors. they are elected by the shareholders just as we elect a governor or president. if we are dissatisfied with the conduct of a governor or president, all we can do is to vote him out of office at the next election, except in unusual cases where a governor or president might be impeached. the same is true in the case of a board of directors. ( ) a partnership may be created by a formal contract, or a simple contract, in writing or by word of mouth; in fact it may be created in almost any way. a corporation, in order to do business, must comply with the corporation laws of the state in which it is incorporated. a regular formality must be observed. a certificate of incorporation must be filed, generally with the secretary of state, and with the county clerk of the county in which the corporation's principal place of business is located in the state. ( ) a partnership may do anything that is legal and which the members decide to do. a corporation exists by virtue of a charter, granted by the state. the sum total of the powers given in that charter gives the total of all of the activities the corporation may undertake. engagement in activities not authorized in the charter may result in the forfeiture of the charter by the state. ( ) in legal theory, a corporation is looked upon as a separate entity. most states require at least three persons to incorporate. a, b and c form a corporation under the laws of the state of new york. there are then four legal persons in existence: a, b, and c, and this separate person, or legal entity, the green corporation, if that is the name given the company. in the case of a partnership, the law does not, as a rule, consider the partnership as an entity distinct and separate from the members who make up the firm. of course, the business man does, in a way, look upon the partnership as a separate commercial entity. the very fact that the members of the firm are all general agents for the firm, and that the members are individually liable for all of the debts of the firm, shows that the law does not carry the entity theory into practice in partnerships as it does in corporations. different kinds of partnership.--what we have said applies to the ordinary partnership. there are certain forms of partnership which we can only mention. one of them is the limited partnership. limited partnerships are created under the law of the state in which the business is to be conducted and in a general way, these limited partnerships are a combination of the principles underlying ordinary partnerships and corporations. the members may limit their liability to a certain amount, and in that sense, the limited partnership is like a corporation. on the other hand, the general principles of partnership, as we shall discuss them, apply with almost equal force to the acts of a limited partnership. a person should not undertake to give an opinion as to a legal problem relating to a limited partnership until the law of the state in which the limited partnership is organized has been consulted. joint stock companies.--occasionally we meet with organizations--joint stock companies--which occupy a sort of "no-man's land" between partnerships and corporations. the joint stock company issues shares of stock the same as a corporation. these shares are listed on the stock exchange, as for example, the adams express company. the joint stock company, however, carries with it the individual liability of the shareholders for the debts of the company, which is technically a partnership attribute. the new york court of appeals in people ex rel. winchester v. coleman, n. y. , has put it this way: "more or less, they crowd upon and overlap each other, but without losing their identity, and so, while we cannot say that a joint stock company is a corporation, we can say * * * that the joint stock company is a partnership with some of the powers of a corporation." how to determine whether a partnership exists.--in a case, not tried in court, the facts were: a gloucester cod-fishing vessel made an unsuccessful fishing voyage. the sailors were to secure a certain portion of the profits of the voyage as their wages. when the ship returned to port, an attempt was made to collect bills incurred on the trip and to hold the seamen liable along with the owners of the vessel, as partners. it was contended that sharing in the profits made them partners. while this is true generally, this particular custom, whereby a laborer receives a certain portion of the profits of an undertaking as his wages, does not of itself constitute him a partner with the person operating the vessel. this point has been decided several times. such questions as these arise and cause great difficulty in determining whether a partnership exists. at times it is very important, as in the case of the seamen, to know whether or not they can be made to assume the obligations pertaining to the partnership relations. while we cannot go into these relations in detail, the framers of the uniform partnership act have laid down, with the utmost care, the rules which are to be used in determining whether a partnership exists or not. but, you say, why cannot the parties avoid all this difficulty by making a written agreement clearing up the entire matter? they could. it is the simplest matter in the world. but the trouble comes because a partnership arrangement is so easy to enter into, and requires so little formality, that it is taken for granted that it will come out satisfactorily, and the precautions which should be taken are sometimes forgotten. hence, we have to have rules of interpretation to help us when the parties themselves have not taken the necessary precautions to make matters clear. these rules of interpretation are very clearly and very definitely laid down in the uniform partnership act, in the following language: ( ) except as provided by section , persons who are not partners as to each other are not partners as to third persons. ( ) joint tenancy, tenancy in common, tenancy by the entireties, joint property, common property, or part ownership does not of itself establish a partnership, whether such co-owners do or do not share any profits made by the use of the property. ( ) the sharing of gross returns does not of itself establish a partnership, whether or not the persons sharing them have a joint or common right or interest in any property from which the returns are derived. ( ) the receipt by a person of a share of the profits of a business is prima facie evidence that he is a partner in the business, but no such inference shall be drawn if such profits were received in payment: (a) as a debt by installments or otherwise, (b) as wages of an employee or rent to a landlord, (c) as an annuity to a widow or representative of a deceased partner, (d) as interest on a loan, though the amount of payment vary with the profits of the business, (e) as the consideration for the sale of the good-will of a business or other property by installments or otherwise. section .--(partner by estoppel.)--( ) when a person by words spoken or written or by conduct, represents himself, or consents to another representing him to any one, as a partner in an existing partnership or with one or more persons not actual partners, he is liable to any such person to whom such representation has been made, who has, on the faith of such representation, given credit to the actual or apparent partnership, and if he has made such representation or consented to its being made in a public manner, he is liable to such person, whether the representation has or has not been made or communicated to such person * * *. for what purposes may a partnership be created.--a partnership may be created to carry on any lawful business, and whatever the individuals may do lawfully as such, two or more may do together in a group as a partnership. professional occupations may be carried on in the partnership form advantageously. this is one case where a partnership has an advantage over a corporation. a group of lawyers may form a partnership and do business under a partnership name. but a group of lawyers seldom or never form corporations to practice law. the reason for this is that the corporation is a separate entity, and the corporation as such cannot pass a bar examination and be admitted to the bar. in fact, in a few states, there are statutes prohibiting a corporation from practicing law. there is, therefore, very little advantage in creating a corporation which cannot itself do the thing for which it was created. illegal object.--a partnership which is formed to carry on any illegal purpose is, of course, not recognized by law. thus, if a, b, and c form a partnership to engage in the gambling business and they elect c as treasurer and have a successful business so that they have a large amount of money on hand, a and b may not be able to reap the profits of the venture. c has the money. the agreement was that all were to share equally, but c insists on keeping it all. the law will allow him to do so, because it is beneath the dignity of the court to order an accounting in a transaction where all parties are equally guilty. the maxim is "in pari delicto, condicio defendentis potior est", that is, where the parties are in equal fault, the position of the defendant is the stronger. c, the guilty party, has the money; he is the defendant, therefore, he keeps it. who may be partners.--at common law, a married woman was incapable of becoming a member of a partnership because of her general incapacity to enter a contract. statutes removing the disability of married women have been passed in practically all the states, and a married woman is generally free to become a partner, except, and this is true in many states still, husband and wife may not become partners. an infant may be a member of a firm on the same general principles as applied to ordinary infant's contracts. his entering the partnership agreement is not void, but voidable. when he becomes of age, if he affirms the contract of partnership, he will be liable the same as an adult. he has, however, the right to disaffirm his partnership agreement within a reasonable time after becoming of age, and if he does so, he will be absolved from all personal liability for the debts of the firm. it is very generally held that a corporation may not enter into a copartnership with another corporation or an individual. the reason for this is a general rule of public policy that in a partnership the corporation would be bound by the acts of persons who are not its duly appointed agents and officers. there may be any number of members in a firm, such matters being left to the choice and wisdom of those operating the business. delectus personarum.--while the foregoing is true, one must not reach the conclusion that an objectionable person may be forced into a firm. i am a member of a firm of three persons. i decide to withdraw, and tell my two fellow partners that i have transferred all my interest in the firm to john jones. he will take my place. my two fellow partners believe jones to be a crook, and do not wish to be in partnership with him. they would not be obliged to accept him. in other words, the doctrine of delectus personarum, or the choice of the person, is strictly applied in partnership, because a partnership relation is a very confidential relationship. ordinarily the business cannot be conducted satisfactorily unless all of the partners have the confidence of each other. it is for this reason, that we have the rule, heretofore referred to, that the sale by a partner of his interest in the business works a dissolution of the partnership. john jones, who purchased my rights in the firm, could not compel the other members to take him in, but the firm would have to be wound up and he would simply be able to recover what my share of the assets was. it is true that section of the act does read that a sale by a partner of his interest does not of itself work a dissolution, but the doctrine of delectus personarum is fully preserved. that section reads: ( ) a conveyance by a partner of his interest in the partnership does not of itself dissolve the partnership, nor, as against the other partners in the absence of agreement, entitle the assignee, during the continuance of the partnership, to interfere in the management or administration of the partnership business or affairs, or to require any information or account of partnership transactions, or to inspect the partnership books; but it merely entitles the assignee to receive in accordance with his contract the profits to which the assigning partner would otherwise be entitled. ( ) in case of a dissolution of the partnership, the assignee is entitled to receive his assignor's interest and may require an account from the date only of the last account agreed to by all the partners. articles of partnership.--we have learned that parties need not expressly declare themselves partners, or enter into an express contract, in order to become partners. so the framing of written partnership articles--a written contract of partnership--is not essential, though it is the ordinary and advisable course. we may note here a few rules governing the use and construction of such articles where they have been adopted. they should, of course, provide for as many contingencies as can be foreseen, such as the nature, name and place of business, when the relation is to commence and when to terminate, what capital shall be contributed by each, what the share of each in the profits and losses shall be, what the powers of the partners as between themselves shall be, whether the business shall be continued after the death of one or more of the partners and how it shall be wound up. but the important thing to note is, that if provision be not made, the general law, and particularly that part governing the powers and duties of partners to each other and to third persons, applies. in other words, the partners may, by their contract, determine what their rights as between themselves shall be; but if they do not, the rules of law will determine them. thus they may determine that of two partners one shall have two-thirds and the other one-third of the profits; in the absence of such a clause the law determines the profits shall be divided equally. when articles have been once adopted they can be changed only by the consent of all the partners; this consent need not be formally expressed in words, but it may be implied from a long-continued course of conduct. the law provides no means to force a partner to live up to his contract except in a very few cases; the most it gives is a right of action for the breach caused by his failure to do as agreed. firm name.--the adoption of a firm name is not an essential to a partnership, but is customary and advisable. the names of the partners may be combined, or a single name used, or a fictitious name, or any name, so long as the rights of other persons are not violated. in some states, notably new york, the use of the name of a person not a partner is forbidden, as is also the use of the expression "& co.," unless a partner is represented by it. ordinarily, contracts may be made in the firm name and by one partner, but contracts under seal should be made in the names of the partners "doing business as," etc., and cannot be made by one partner without authority from the others. conveyances of real property should be made to or by the individual partners "doing business as," etc., for the law does not generally recognize the firm as a separate person or entity sufficiently to enable it as such to take or give a conveyance. if the deed ran to "john doe & co.," the title would be in john doe only, though he would be said to hold it in trust for the firm, for if the partnership name is given as the grantee, the title goes only to those whose names appear, and if the partnership were doing business under a fictitious name, the deed would convey to no one. whether land, the title to which is in the name of one partner, is held in trust by him as partnership property, is a question of intention, and that question is determined by asking with what money was the land bought, what use has it been put to, has it been carried on the books of the firm, with what money have the taxes, insurance, and other charges been paid, etc. if found to have been treated as partnership property, the fact that the title is in one person counts for little, as he will be said to hold it in trust for the firm; but the careful business man will avoid trouble by having the property conveyed to the firm in the manner indicated, if it is actually partnership property. the powers of a partner.--as a general agent, a partner has almost unlimited authority to bind the firm. because of this, we have here one reason for not recommending the partnership form of doing business unless all the members of the firm have the utmost confidence in each other. these powers of the partners are so general that it is impossible for us to go into them in any detail. they are summarized in the most compact form in the uniform partnership act. sections to of that act are as follows: . ( ) every partner is an agent of the partnership for the purpose of its business, and the act of every partner, including the execution in the partnership name of any instrument, for apparently carrying on in the usual way the business of the partnership of which he is a member, binds the partnership, unless the partner so acting has in fact no authority to act for the partnership in the particular matter, and the person with whom he is dealing has knowledge of the fact that he has no such authority. ( ) an act of a partner, which is not apparently for the carrying on of the business of the partnership in the usual way, does not bind the partnership unless authorized by the other partners. ( ) unless authorized by the other partners or unless they have abandoned the business, one or more but less than all the partners have no authority to: (a) assign the partnership property in trust for creditors or on the assignee's promise to pay the debts of the partnership, (b) dispose of the good-will of the business, (c) do any other act which would make it impossible to carry on the ordinary business of the partnership, (d) confess a judgment, (e) submit a partnership claim or liability to arbitration or reference. ( ) no act of a partner in contravention of a restriction on his authority shall bind the partnership to persons having knowledge of the restriction. . ( ) where title to real property is in the partnership name, any partner may convey title to such property by a conveyance executed in the partnership name; but the partnership may recover such property unless the partner's act binds the partnership under the provisions of paragraph ( ) of section , or unless such property has been conveyed by the grantee, or a person claiming through such grantee to a holder for value without knowledge that the partner, in making the conveyance, has exceeded his authority. ( ) where title to real property is in the name of the partnership, a conveyance executed by a partner, in his own name, passes the equitable interest of the partnership, provided the act is one within the authority of the partner under the provisions of paragraph ( ) of section . ( ) where title to real property is in the name of one or more but not all the partners, and the record does not disclose the right of the partnership, the partners in whose name the title stands may convey title to such property, but the partnership may recover such property if the partners' act does not bind the partnership under the provisions of paragraph ( ) of section , unless the purchaser or his assignee, is a holder for value, without knowledge. ( ) where the title to real property is in the name of one or more or all the partners, or in a third person in trust for the partnership, a conveyance executed by a partner in the partnership name, or in his own name, passes the equitable interest of the partnership, provided the act is one within the authority of the partner under the provisions of paragraph ( ) of section . ( ) where the title to real property is in the names of all the partners, a conveyance executed by all the partners passes all their rights in such property. . an admission or representation made by any partner concerning partnership affairs within the scope of his authority as conferred by this act is evidence against the partnership. . notice to any partner of any matter relating to partnership affairs, and the knowledge of the partner acting in the particular matter, acquired while a partner or then present to his mind, and the knowledge of any other partner who reasonably could and should have communicated it to the acting partner, operate as notice to or knowledge of the partnership, except in the case of a fraud on the partnership committed by or with the consent of that partner. . where, by any wrongful act or omission of any partner acting in the ordinary course of the business of the partnership, or with the authority of his co-partners, loss or injury is caused to any person, not being a partner in the partnership, or any penalty is incurred, the partnership is liable therefor to the same extent as the partner so acting or omitting to act. . the partnership is bound to make good the loss: (a) where one partner acting within the scope of his apparent authority receives money or property of a third person and misapplies it; and (b) where the partnership in the course of its business receives money or property of a third person and the money or property so received is misapplied by any partner while it is in the custody of the partnership. . all partners are liable (a) jointly and severally for everything chargeable to the partnership under sections and . (b) jointly for all other debts and obligations of the partnership; but any partner may enter into a separate obligation to perform a partnership contract. . ( ) when a person, by words spoken or written or by conduct, represents himself, or consents to another representing him to any one, as a partner in an existing partnership or with one or more persons not actual partners, he is liable to any such person to whom such representation has been made, who has, on the faith of such representation, given credit to the actual or apparent partnership, and if he has made such representation or consented to its being made in a public manner, he is liable to such person, whether the representation has or has not been made or communicated to such person so giving credit by or with the knowledge of the apparent partner making the representation or consenting to its being made. (a) when a partnership liability results, he is liable as though he were an actual member of the partnership. (b) when no partnership liability results, he is liable jointly with the other persons, if any, so consenting to the contract or representation as to incur liability, otherwise separately. ( ) when a person has been thus represented to be a partner in an existing partnership, or with one or more persons not actual partners, he is an agent of the persons consenting to such representation to bind them to the same extent and in the same manner as though he were a partner in fact, with respect to persons who rely upon the representation. where all the members of the existing partnership consent to the representation, a partnership act or obligation results; but in all other cases it is the joint act or obligation of the person acting and the person consenting to the representation. . a person admitted as a partner into an existing partnership is liable for all the obligations of the partnership arising before his admission as though he had been a partner when such obligations were incurred, except that this liability shall be satisfied only out of partnership property. powers of a majority of partners.--if partners disagree, then a majority of them have power to decide what shall be done; but there are limits even to the power of a majority. they can only carry on the business of the firm, and any vote of the majority, or action of the majority, to change the character of the business for which the firm was organized, or to make any fundamental change in the original articles of the partnership, would be invalid. relation of partners to one another.--the rules determining the rights and duties of partners in relation to the partnership are concisely but fully set forth in the act as follows: . the rights and duties of the partners in relation to the partnership shall be determined, subject to any agreement between them, by the following rules: (a) each partner shall be repaid his contributions, whether by way of capital or advances to the partnership property and share equally in the profits and surplus remaining after all liabilities, including those to partners, are satisfied; and must contribute towards the losses, whether of capital or otherwise, sustained by the partnership according to his share in the profits. (b) the partnership must indemnify every partner in respect of payment made and personal liabilities reasonably incurred by him in the ordinary and proper conduct of its business, or for the preservation of its business or property. (c) a partner who, in aid of the partnership, makes any payment or advance beyond the amount of capital which he agreed to contribute, shall be paid interest from the date of the payment or advance. (d) a partner shall receive interest on the capital contributed by him only from the date when repayment should be made. (e) all partners have equal rights in the management and conduct of the partnership business. (f) no partner is entitled to remuneration for acting in the partnership business, except that a surviving partner is entitled to reasonable compensation for his services in winding up the partnership affairs. (g) no person can become a member of a partnership without the consent of all the partners. (h) any difference arising as to ordinary matters connected with the partnership business may be decided by a majority of the partners; but no act in contravention of any agreement between the partners may be done rightly without the consent of all the partners. . the partnership books shall be kept, subject to any agreement between the partners, at the principal place of business of the partnership, and every partner shall at all times have access to and may inspect and copy any of them. . partners shall render on demand true and full information of all things affecting the partnership to any partner or the legal representative of any deceased partner or partner under legal disability. . ( ) every partner must account to the partnership for any benefit, and hold as trustee for it any profits derived by him without the consent of the other partners from any transaction connected with the formation, conduct, or liquidation of the partnership or from any use by him of its property. ( ) this section applies also to the representatives of a deceased partner engaged in the liquidation of the affairs of the partnership as the personal representatives of the last surviving partner. . any partner shall have the right to a formal account as to partnership affairs: (a) if he is wrongfully excluded from the partnership business or possession of its property by his co-partners. (b) if the right exists under the terms of any agreement. (c) as provided by section . (d) whenever other circumstances renders it just and reasonable. termination of the partnership.--a partnership is terminated either by act of the partners, or by law. under the first heading, we may mention such things as the partnership being terminated by the accomplishment of the object for which the same was formed, or by the termination of the time during which the partnership was to exist, or by mutual consent of all parties concerned. under the head of termination by operation of law, we have such topics as the death of a partner, the insanity of a partner, or the bankruptcy of a partner, and a dissolution by a court, as for example, where it is absolutely certain, in the opinion of the court, that the business cannot be successfully continued longer. in such a case, although some of the partners may not wish to wind up the affairs of the business, the court may order it done in the interest of all parties concerned. ownership of firm property and creditors' rights.--the firm property is owned by all the partners jointly, but the interest of each individual partner is not an interest in each piece of firm property, but a right to have an accounting and to receive on the accounting such share of the assets as belong to him when all debts due from him to the firm and all liabilities to the outside world are settled. consequently, a creditor of an individual partner cannot seize or attach or levy on firm property, because that firm property does not belong, nor does any part of it belong, to his debtor. the creditor must file a bill in equity asking that the partner's share be determined, and that on an accounting so much as is found due to the debtor partner be applied to discharge that partner's indebtedness. the division of assets.--upon final dissolution, the question of division of assets comes up, and the uniform partnership act gives us the general rule as to how the firm's assets are divided. section of the act reads: in settling accounts between the parties after dissolution, the following rules shall be observed, subject to any agreement to the contrary: (a) the assets of the partnership are: i. the partnership property, ii. the contributions of the partners necessary for the payment of all the liabilities specified in clause (b) of this paragraph. (b) the liabilities of the partnership shall rank in order of payment, as follows: i. those owing to creditors other than partners, ii. those owing to partners other than for capital and profits, iii. those owing to partners in respect of capital, iv. those owing to partners in respect of profits. (c) the assets shall be applied in the order of their declaration in clause (a) of this paragraph to the satisfaction of the liabilities. (d) the partners shall contribute, as provided by section (a) the amount necessary to satisfy the liabilities; but if any, but not all, of the partners are insolvent, or, not being subject to process, refuse to contribute, the other partners shall contribute their share of the liabilities, and, in the relative proportions in which they share the profits, the additional amount necessary to pay the liabilities. (e) an assignee for the benefit of creditors or any person appointed by the court shall have the right to enforce the contributions specified in clause (d) of this paragraph. (f) any partner or his legal representative shall have the right to enforce the contributions specified in clause (d) of this paragraph, to the extent of the amount which he has paid in excess of his share of the liability. (g) the individual property of a deceased partner shall be liable for the contributions specified in clause (d) of this paragraph. (h) when partnership property and the individual properties of the partners are in the possession of a court for distribution, partnership creditors shall have priority on partnership property, and separate creditors on individual property, saving the rights of lien or secured creditors as heretofore. (i) where a partner has become bankrupt or his estate is insolvent, the claims against his separate property shall rank in the following order: i. those owing to separate creditors, ii. those owing to partnership creditors, iii. those owing to partners by way of contribution. liquidation of partnership.--when a partnership is dissolved, it is common for the business to require liquidation, and frequently one or more of the partners are what are called liquidating partners. if a partnership is dissolved by death, for instance, the surviving partners have a right to be liquidating partners and liquidate the business. that means they may carry on existing contracts; they may dispose of the stock on hand to the best advantage. if this requires incidental purchases of new goods, they may be made, but in general, new business cannot be undertaken. the function of a liquidating partner is to satisfy existing contracts, reduce the property of the firm to cash, and then distribute it to those who are entitled to receive it. limited partnership.--statutes, as we have learned, in many states permit the formation of limited partnerships, the object of which is to enable one or more partners to avoid unlimited liability for debts. partners in a general partnership are each liable, individually, for the full amount of the firm's indebtedness. if one partner is thus compelled to pay more than his share, he may seek redress by demanding contribution from his fellow partners, and if they are not solvent, he will not be able to secure reimbursement. if there is one solvent partner, for instance, and two other partners, both of whom become insolvent, the result will be that the first partner will have to pay the debts of the firm and will have no redress except such as he may be able to get from the insolvent estates of his two partners. now, in a limited partnership a limited partner does not stand to lose any more than the amount of money he actually puts in the firm. in order to create a limited partnership it is necessary to sign a certificate prepared for the purpose and stating the facts, file it in the office of the secretary of state or other official, and also publish it so that the public may be informed of the circumstances and credit may not be given by the world at large to the firm on the assumption that the limited partner is a general partner. he puts a specified amount of money in the firm and that money may be reached by creditors of the firm, but they cannot hold him further liable. a good definition of a limited partnership follows: a limited partnership is one which consists of one or more persons called general partners and also one or more persons called special partners. every general partner is an agent for the partnership in the transaction of its business and has authority to do whatever is necessary to carry on such business in the ordinary manner. every general partner is liable to third persons, jointly and severally, with his general co-partners for all of the obligations of the partnership. a special partner may only advise as to the management of the partnership and he is liable for the obligations of the partnership only to the amount of capital invested by him therein. silent partners.--a silent partner must not be confused with a member of a limited partnership. a silent partner is a general partner who takes no part in the active management of the business and frequently is a secret partner. a member of a limited partnership can never be a secret partner, since the terms of a limited partnership must be published. a member of a limited partnership should take no part in the management of the business, or he may render himself liable as a general partner. the limited partnership law requires, moreover, that he must have exactly complied with the law by making out, filing and publishing a certificate. the statutes of the state should be consulted on this point and closely adhered to. limited.--we often see also in print, so and so "ltd." this does not mean a limited partnership. the word "limited" is used in the name of an english or canadian company organized under the english or canadian statutes, but such companies are rather analogous to corporations than to limited partnerships. the liability in such companies is limited altogether to the assets in the company's hands. there are no general partners. the liability of all stockholders is limited. the english and canadian law requires that the word limited be added to the name, so that the public may not be deceived into believing that the company is a partnership. chapter vi corporations the nature of a corporation.--the nature of a corporation is perhaps best understood by an illustration. in the case of people's pleasure park co. v. rohleder, va. , the facts were as follows: there was a large tract of land divided up into a number of lots, and in each deed, when a lot was sold, there was a covenant providing that title to the real property should never vest in a person of african descent, or in a colored person. later, after the lots had been sold, several of them were conveyed to a corporation composed exclusively of negroes. the corporation knew, when it purchased the tract of land, of this restriction in the deed, and the land was bought by it for the purpose of establishing an amusement park for colored people. suit was brought in a court of equity to compel the cancellation of the deed to the corporation. stated boldly, the decision of the virginia court amounts to an assertion that a corporation has no color. in other words, the corporation is an entity separate and distinct from its members, and so, although all the stockholders in this corporation were colored, that did not make the corporation a colored person. thus, if a, b, and c, as incorporators, organize the x corporation, although they are the sole stockholders, there are four persons, a, b, c, and the x corporation. the entity theory.--it may be doubted if any court would carry the entity theory to the extent that it would allow an individual who was the owner of a piece of real estate, which he was not permitted by the deed to sell to negroes, to deliberately go to a prospective negro purchaser and say: "i cannot sell my property to you because of a restriction in the deed, but i will pay the necessary expenses, if you, with two of your friends, will form a corporation to take title to this property, in which corporation each of your friends will own one share and you the balance, thus retaining control yourself. i will then deed the property to the corporation and will thereby get around the covenant in my deed preventing a transfer to negroes." we must not allow the entity theory to work a manifest injustice, as was said in erickson v. revere elevator co., minn. : "where the corporate form is used by individuals for the purpose of evading the law, or for the perpetration of fraud, the courts will not permit the legal entity to be interposed so as to defeat justice." results of the entity theory.--flowing from the entity theory is the result that the property of a corporation is owned by the corporation and not by the individual members. therefore, all conveyances of such property, whether it is real property or personal property, must be made by the corporation, and cannot be made by the members or shareholders as individuals. it also follows that all suits against or by the corporation must be brought against the corporation or by the corporation as an entity and not against the individual members. again, a corporation may take property from one of its individual members, and it may make a contract with one of them, and it may sue them and be sued by them. kinds of corporations.--corporations are divided into public, quasi-public, and private corporations. the private corporation is such as is created for private enterprises, such as manufacturing, banking, and trading corporations. religious and eleemosynary corporations are also included in this classification. the public corporation is such as is created for the purposes of government, such as cities, towns, villages, and institutions founded by the state, and managed by it for governmental purposes. quasi-public corporations are such as are engaged in a private business which is affected with a public interest, such as railroads, both steam and electric, gas companies, water companies, lighting companies, and the like. the public, and generally the quasi-public, corporations possess the right of eminent domain, that is, the right to take private property for public purposes upon payment of just compensation to the owner. it is the private corporation with which we are usually concerned in commercial law, and this chapter will be devoted largely to a discussion of that class. the creation of a corporation.--a corporation must be created by legislative authority. formerly, a corporation was created by special act of the legislature, but in recent years the growth in the number of corporations, and also the political wire-pulling necessary to get an incorporation bill through a legislature, have resulted in the almost universal practice of having the legislature pass a general corporation act, and then without further reference to the legislature, any group of persons, of the requisite number, may become incorporated by complying with the provisions of such an act. the formation of corporations under the laws of most states is a simple process, requiring in general the preparation of an official document sometimes termed the "certificate of incorporation" or the "charter," which paper sets forth the facts which are required under the laws of the state wherein the corporation is to be formed. these laws, while not uniform, generally require a statement as to the name to be used by the corporation, the names of the proposed directors and incorporators, a statement of the general purposes or objects of the corporation, the location of its principal office and place of business, how long it is to last, the amount of its authorized capital, the par value of its stock, as well as a statement in regard to any preferred stock which may be contemplated. other details are sometimes required under the various state laws. this official document must generally be signed or executed by those persons who are the incorporators of the corporation. as a rule, three or more incorporators are required, although in some states five is the minimum. this official document, after it has been duly executed, is usually to be filed in the office of the secretary of state, and usually also in that of the county clerk of the county wherein its principal office is to be. this procedure, however, is subject to some variations and the statutes of the state involved must always be closely followed. as soon as the official document has been properly filed and the other necessary steps taken the incorporators hold the first meeting and effect an organization, after which time the corporation is generally in a position to transact business, although in some states it is provided in effect that corporations should not commence business until a certain share of the capital has been paid into the corporation in cash. citizenship of a corporation.--although a corporation is a separate entity, entirely distinct and apart from its members, such separate entity is not a citizen in the sense in which we use the term ordinarily. at a general election a corporation has no right to vote. again, article section , of the united states constitution, provides that "citizens of each state shall be entitled to all of the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states." a corporation is not a citizen in this sense. hence a state may keep all insurance companies, incorporated outside of its area, from doing business in that state by discriminating legislation against foreign insurance corporations. insurance is not looked upon as interstate commerce, about which the individual states may not legislate, and as a corporation is not a citizen within the meaning of article , section , such insurance companies have no redress. in one sense, however, a corporation is looked upon as a citizen. where a suit is between citizens of different states, and the amount involved is over the prescribed sum, either party may bring the action in the federal courts, if he so desires, instead of in the state courts. in this sense, a corporation is to be regarded as if it were a citizen of the state in which it is created. if i live in new york and the american tobacco co. is incorporated in new jersey, suit between us may be brought in the federal courts on the ground of diversity of citizenship on the part of plaintiff and defendant. powers of corporations.--a corporation is unable to do anything beyond such powers as are granted it by law. as to the extent of the powers possessed by a corporation, we may conveniently divide corporate powers into those which are express and those which are implied. express powers may be considered as including those which are mentioned in the official documents used or granted upon the beginning of the existence of the corporation. these official documents are spoken of as "charters" or "certificates of incorporation." whatever term may be applied to them there is generally in such documents a statement of the general purposes or objects for which the corporation is formed; in other words, of the general business in which it is to engage. there is also a statement of the general powers of the corporation which is to engage in the business mentioned. the powers so mentioned in such official documents may be termed, as we have stated, express powers of the corporation. needless to say, however, it is not usual or possible to attempt to indicate in any such official documents all the details of the operations of business. therefore, it is necessary to imply that in addition to such express powers the corporation has power to do such acts as may be reasonably necessary or incidental to the carrying on of the business mentioned. powers so implied, without words, are termed "implied powers." therefore, the total powers of a corporation consist of the express powers, namely, such as are named in the official documents containing a statement of its purposes and the business in which it is to engage, and the powers which would be reasonably implied under the rule just mentioned, as necessary and incidental to the carrying out of the express powers. such implied powers do not give the corporation any power to do acts which are not reasonably necessary and incidental in its regular business. to allow validity to acts not so reasonably necessary and incidental would be in reality allowing the corporation to engage in outside business, which, under its charter, it has no power to engage in. as an illustration of this let us assume that the x company was incorporated to build, run and operate a railroad between two towns named a and b. the official charter of the corporation may state further details of the corporation's powers or it may not. but, if such details are not stated, the corporation would, obviously, have as express powers, the power to build the road and to operate it between the towns mentioned. it would also have as implied powers the power to do any act reasonably necessary or incidental to the operation of a railroad, such for example as the purchase of rails, ties or other railroad supplies, the hiring of employees, erection of stations and the power also to give negotiable paper in payment for such supplies or the raising of money by mortgaging its property or otherwise where necessary to carry on its business. in other words, the corporation may be said to have as implied powers all the powers which an individual would reasonably and usually exercise if he were operating the railroad. however, the corporation would have no power, express or implied, to do any act not reasonably necessary to the railroad business, such, for example, as the purchase of a stock farm or the operation of a steamer line or a grocery store, or the leasing of its line. if the corporation, then, should make any contract with relation to engaging in these outside matters--the corporation having no power to engage in them--a valid contract could not arise and therefore the corporation could not be held liable thereon. ultra vires acts.--where a corporation attempts to do an act which is clearly beyond its express or implied powers, such act is generally termed an "ultra vires" act, and it may frequently consist in an attempted contract by a corporation. hence we must consider with some care contracts of corporations which may be termed ultra vires. as the corporation lacks power it is generally said that the contract does not arise and hence neither the corporation nor the person with whom it attempted to contract would theoretically be bound thereon. yet, in many states, a special rule has been adopted whereby a corporation may be held upon such contract in certain cases even though it had no power to make it. this may be termed the "doctrine of estoppel," and generally includes cases where the corporation has assumed to make a contract which was ultra vires or beyond its powers but which would appear to an outsider as incidental to the corporate business and therefore as within its corporate powers. in such circumstances, if the outsider with whom the corporation assumed to make the contract does in fact rely reasonably upon the corporate power to make it, having been deceived by appearances and having no warning that the corporation actually lacked power, and having paid over money or delivered goods or performed services or parted with other value under the contract, he may generally enforce the contract against the corporation. in other words, under such circumstances, the corporation is estopped or forbidden to evade its obligation by asserting the point that it had no power to make such contract. however, this is strictly limited to cases where the corporation appeared to have the power to make the contract and where the person dealing with it had no reason to suspect or doubt its power in that regard, and where the person dealing with the corporation had parted with some value of the kind mentioned, in his reliance that the contract was within the corporate powers of and therefore binding upon the corporation. thus, where such person has done nothing toward carrying out his duty under the contract he would have no claim or right to enforce the same as a binding obligation of the corporation. many courts also treat him somewhat differently and take the attitude that an outsider who has dealt with the corporation is entitled not to enforce the attempted contract, but is entitled only to recover from the corporation the reasonable value of such goods or service as it has voluntarily accepted from him. de facto and de jure corporations.--it sometimes happens that a group of persons may attempt to organize a corporation and fail to comply with all the provisions of the law in the state in which they attempt to organize. the question arises then: what have we? of course, we do not have a full completed organization, which we would call a corporation de jure (by right of law). we may have what is called a corporation de facto (in fact). in order to constitute a corporation de facto, it is generally held that the following requisites must exist: there must be a valid law which authorizes the formation of such a corporation; a colorable attempt to organize under the provision of such law; and an assumption of corporate power, or, as is sometimes called, a user. if these facts exist, we then have a corporation de facto, and persons dealing with such a corporation are usually held to the same responsibilities as though it was an actual de jure corporation. the state, ordinarily, is the only person which can question the existence of such a body, and this is usually done in a suit by the attorney-general. if the parties have not even complied with the requisites of a de facto corporation, the authorities are divided as to what kind of an organization it is, although, perhaps, the best decisions would hold the parties liable as partners. they must have contemplated some kind of liability and failing to create even a corporation de facto, a partnership liability is all that is left, except individual liability, and that is apparently just what they did not intend. promoters.--a promoter is a very common person in the modern industrial world. he is a person who brings about the organization of corporations, gets the people together who are interested in the enterprise, aids in procuring subscriptions, and takes general charge of all the matters incident to the formation of the corporation. in other ways, he is governed by the rules of agency and his position is that of a fiduciary. the majority of the courts hold that there is no liability on the part of the corporation to pay for his expenses and his services, in promoting the organization, unless the corporation as an organization expressly promises to pay or otherwise clearly recognizes the obligation. because of the fiduciary relationship, which a promoter occupies, he is not permitted to make any secret profits at the expense of the corporation. if he secures property for $ , , , he may not turn it over to the corporation for $ , , and pocket the profit himself. a corporation cannot be liable for the acts of a promoter before the corporation came into existence. it may, however, after coming into existence adopt the acts of the promoter and thereby render itself liable. if, knowing the terms of an agreement made by a promoter, the corporation takes advantage of the agreement or recognizes it, it thereby in effect itself becomes a party to the agreement. unless the terms of a promoter's agreement expressly state the contrary, the promoter is personally liable upon it as a contractor. power of the state over a corporation.--it must follow, that if a state creates a corporation, then it should have certain control over it. the united states supreme court has recognized the right of visitation as residing in the state. visitation is, in law, the act of a superior or superintendent officer who visits a corporation to examine into its manner of conducting business and its observance of the laws. the visitation of national banks by the comptroller of the currency is a common example of the exercise of this authority. one of the most famous cases in the united states supreme court is the dartmouth college case. in , the king of england granted a charter to twelve people under the name of "the trustees of dartmouth college." they were authorized to conduct a college and they founded dartmouth college in hanover, new hampshire. in , the legislature in the state of new hampshire undertook to amend the charter in many ways, among other things, increasing the number of trustees to twenty-one. a furious conflict ensued between the state and the trustees. the state finally brought suit to recover the corporate seal and records which were held by a mr. woodward, who held them under the amendatory act to which we have referred. the case is known as dartmouth college v. woodward, wheaton . the dartmouth college trustees were represented by daniel webster, and this is one of his famous cases before the supreme court. he took the position that the charter granted by the king of england and afterwards recognized by the state of new hampshire, was a contract between the state and the trustees. this being so, it was protected by the provision in the united states constitution which provides that no state shall pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts. the united states supreme court upheld this position. the act of the legislature of new hampshire was held invalid. we then found ourselves in the position of having states creating corporations and then not being able to control them. whatever may be said in regard to the law as laid down by the united states supreme court, this situation was unfortunate. shortly thereafter in the various state legislatures, a method to meet the situation was devised, and this is what was done: when a general corporation law is passed, the state inserts in it a clause to this effect: "the state hereby reserves the right to alter, amend, or repeal the charter of any corporation organized under this act." this, then, makes this clause a part of the contract when a new corporation is organized. it knows that it is subject to having its charter amended or repealed without its consent. the effects, therefore, of the dartmouth college decision have been practically nullified by such clauses inserted in the various incorporation laws. such incorporation acts do not relate to corporations organized before such act was passed. under this method of procedure, the legislature to-day surely has an efficacious method of controlling the corporations which it creates. liability for torts and crimes.--a corporation is ordinarily liable, the same as an individual, for all torts committed by its agents in the scope of their authority. a corporation may even be liable for acts which are beyond its authority. for example, in the case of hannon v. siegel-cooper co., n. y. , it was held that the department store of the siegel-cooper company, a corporation, was liable for mal-practice in dentistry. the charter of the company did not give the company the right to practice dentistry, but space in the store was rented to a dentist who conducted a dental parlor. because of his negligent treatment of a patient, the court held that the corporation was liable for the negligent acts of its agent. corporations may also be held liable for such torts as involve a mental element, like fraud and libel. a corporation may be criminally responsible for failure to perform a duty imposed upon it by law, and in many states there are statutes which make it a criminal offense for a corporation to do or fail to do certain acts. it is generally held, however, that a corporation cannot commit a crime which involves a mental operation, as for example, murder. murder involves a mental operation; it is "killing with malice aforethought." then again, it would be difficult to punish a corporation for the crime of murder, because under our state constitutions, the punishment for murder is either death or life imprisonment. although a corporation is a separate person, there is no way to kill it or imprison it for life. you surely would not do so by inflicting this penalty on all the stockholders. it is generally provided, then, by statute that such crimes that a corporation can commit are to be punished either by a fine or by imprisonment of the directors. sherman anti-trust act.--on july , , the sherman anti-trust act was passed by congress. the first section of this act reads: "every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several states, or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal. every person who shall make any such contract, or engage in any such combination or conspiracy, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding $ , , or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court." the second section of this act reads: "every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several states, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine not exceeding $ , , or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court." it would be impossible, in a small amount of space, to call attention, except in a general way, to the importance of this act and the difficulty of understanding it, without carefully reading the various conflicting decisions of the united states supreme court handed down since the passage of the act. the act, being a federal act, relates only to interstate commerce. that kind of business, conducted by corporations, which is intrastate, if controlled at all by similar legislation, would be by virtue of a state act. perhaps the most famous of the sherman anti-trust act cases decided by the united states supreme court is that of the united states v. standard oil co., u. s. , where the majority opinion was written by the late chief justice white, and in which he enunciated the so-called "rule of reason" which brings the interpretation of that act very much in harmony with the rules of the common law in regard to illegal contracts and monopolies. by-laws.--a by-law is a permanent rule for the government of a corporation and its officers. the purpose of a by-law is to regulate and define the duties of the members of the corporation toward the corporation and between themselves. the power to make the by-laws is vested in the stockholders. there are certain qualifications which all by-laws must possess. they must be reasonable and not inconsistent with law or any rule of public policy. it would not be possible for a majority of the stockholders at a regular stockholders' meeting to pass by-laws which would deliberately deprive the minority stockholders of rights which belong to them. the by-laws are, of course, always subject to the provisions of the charter of the corporation, and if a corporation is authorized to operate a railroad, it could not, by passing a by-law, to the effect that it was deemed wise to enter into the steel manufacturing business, change the nature of the corporation in that manner. stockholders' meeting.--in order that the acts of the majority of stockholders shall be valid, they must be authorized at a regular stockholders' meeting. this must be held in the principal office of the company, and the notice required by the by-laws must be given to all of the stockholders. after this is done, the majority of the stockholders may transact business and bind the corporation. of course, in a large corporation with a hundred thousand shareholders, as is the case with some of our bigger corporations like the united states steel corporation and the pennsylvania railroad, very few of the stockholders actually attend the meetings. the directors usually send out with the notice of the meeting, a proxy, and the stockholders who are not able to be present send in their proxy authorizing certain persons to vote for them. in this way, a majority of the stockholders are present at the meeting, either in person or by proxy. in certain cases stockholders may interfere with the action of directors in connection with the general management of a corporation, or may even oust the directors from their positions. these cases are extremely rare, since the power of directors is supreme as to all corporate matters as to which the statutes or by-laws do not provide for concurrence or other action by the stockholders. where proof is offered, however, of fraud, violation of law or gross negligence of the directors whereby loss has been caused or is threatened, stockholders may in some cases obtain the ousting of directors. this sometimes results in placing a receiver in temporary charge of the corporation or in the holding of a special election of new directors. no complaint, however, will generally be entertained against directors merely because their judgment does not agree with that of the stockholders even if some action of the directors may not have resulted favorably to the corporation, provided such action was taken honestly and with all due care and regard to law. as an illustration, the directors of the x company made a certain contract on behalf of the corporation whereby it was agreed with y that property of the corporation should be transferred to the latter for much less than its evident actual value. this operation would usually indicate fraud on the part of the directors, or at least such gross negligence as would in many cases justify stockholders in asking a legal inquiry into the action of the directors, which would result, if sufficient facts were proved, in their removal and an injunction against the performance of the contract. however, if the value of the property were doubtful and the directors had used all due care and effort to ascertain its true value and to obtain the best available price, no complaint could usually be made although it should later develop that a better price might have been obtained. foreign corporations.--a foreign corporation is one which is organized under the laws of some foreign country or some other state. foreign corporations are not necessarily confined to doing business in their own state; they may enter other states. as for example, a company organized in new jersey may enter the state of new york and do business. if, however, the new jersey corporation comes to new york and makes a regular practice of doing business, it must comply with the provisions of the corporation law of new york, and secure a license to do business in new york. it is not uncommon to enforce this provision in an indirect method by providing that if a foreign corporation does not take out this license, it shall not be allowed to sue in the courts of the state where it is doing business. management of corporations.--the management of any corporation rests directly with the board of directors and they may be considered as the agents of the corporation to direct its business affairs. the directors, however, are subject in their action to any limitation upon their power which may have been included in the charter or certificate of incorporation or which may have been adopted in the by-laws. the directors are also subject to any provisions in the statutes of the state, which frequently provide that they shall not take certain important actions, such as the mortgaging of corporate property, etc., without special procedure involving a meeting and vote of the stockholders. where, however, the directors' authority is not limited by the statutes or the charter or by-laws, they may be considered as having full power to manage the affairs of the corporation. in connection with that power they may elect a president and other corporate officers and may appoint any other agents or employees at their discretion. they may also define the powers to be exercised by the president and the other officers and employees. this would give them power to limit the authority of the president or any other officer. however, where a person deals with the president or any other officer of a corporation in behalf of the corporation, he may usually rely reasonably upon the president or other officer having similar power to that generally possessed by such an officer, and in many cases the corporation would be held bound by the acts of such officer even though he actually violated some limits placed upon him by the directors. this may be illustrated by assuming that the x company was in the business of manufacturing furniture, and a, the president thereof, had made a contract with b, an outsider, for the purchase from the latter of certain wood to be used in the corporate business. as a matter of fact, however, a, the president, had no power to make such contract, since the directors had passed a resolution forbidding him to purchase any raw materials without first having the proposed purchase approved by the board of directors. therefore, a, as a matter of fact, would have no power to make the contract with b, on behalf of the corporation. yet, b had not in any way been warned of this limitation upon a's power, and as the purchase of materials would be a usual one for the president or executive head of such a corporation to make, b might reasonably assume that a had power to make the contract. therefore, b would be able to hold the corporation to the contract under the principle of apparent authority, considered in connection with the law of agency. naturally, in turn, the directors would have a claim against the president for any loss sustained, as he had not only violated his duty but had also disobeyed and disregarded explicit instructions. the by-laws of a corporation are generally adopted by the stockholders and provide for all matters relating to the corporate management which are not provided for in the charter or certificate of incorporation. such by-laws are binding upon all persons who know of them, or reasonably should know of them, provided they are not in violation of law and are reasonable. it is the general rule that meetings called to adopt new by-laws or to alter previous by-laws should be announced in some special way so that all interested parties may receive due notice and thus have an opportunity to arrange to be present and vote on the matters to be taken up at such meeting. election of directors.--the directors of a corporation are elected by the stockholders and the election generally takes place at the regular annual meeting of stockholders of the corporation. either the entire board of directors is elected at that time for the ensuing year, or a portion of them. in this connection it is provided by the statutes of many states that at least a certain proportion of the total number of directors shall be elected annually. the method of electing such directors at the annual meeting is usually provided for by the statutes of the various states, but it is commonly the rule that each stockholder shall have one vote for each share of stock owned by him, although in some states they also allow what is termed "cumulative voting." this method of voting generally allows each stockholder to have as many votes as he owns shares of stock multiplied by the number of directors to be elected at the meeting and he may cast all of his votes for one or more of the candidates. in other words if five directors are to be elected he may concentrate all his votes upon one or more of the candidates and is not compelled to vote for each one. this cumulative voting is authorized for the purpose of allowing the minority stockholders to concentrate their votes upon one or two of the candidates and thus have some representation upon the board of directors. as an illustration of this, let us assume that the x company had an authorized capital stock of $ , , composed of , shares at the par value of $ per share, and that all these , shares are issued and fully paid up. let us further assume that six individuals each own shares of stock and act in unison, thereby constituting a majority, the other shares of stock being held by the minority stockholders. each stockholder would usually have one vote for each share of stock owned by him, and therefore, if five directors were to be elected under the usual method of voting, those individuals composing the majority of the stockholders would succeed in casting a majority of votes for each of the five directors. this would leave the minority without representation upon the board. if, however, cumulative voting were used, the minority having a total of , votes ( multiplied by , the number of directors to be elected) could concentrate , votes upon one or two of their candidates and this would probably insure the election of such candidates to the board, thus giving the minority representation. in the case of a non-stock or membership corporation, each member has simply one vote for directors or for other purposes. it may be noted that the directors themselves, in their meetings, have also one vote each and this is entirely independent of the amount of stock which they may own in the corporation. it should also be noted that the directors in their meetings may not vote by proxy, but sometimes the members of a membership corporation may vote in this way. voting by proxy is a usual practice in stock corporations. a proxy is merely a power of attorney or agency given in writing by one stockholder whereby he authorizes another person as his proxy to vote, at a corporate meeting, his shares of stock in his place. a proxy should be in writing and in a form in accordance with the statutes of the state involved, and is often, but not necessarily, under seal. a stockholder who has given a proxy may revoke it whenever he chooses and this would prevent the holder of the proxy from voting on it. this would be entirely independent of whether the person giving the proxy had by revoking it violated his contract with the person to whom it was given. that contract would be only a private matter between them. voting trusts.--the proxy principle is involved in what are termed "voting trusts." these arrangements involve the placing by a number of stockholders of their stock in the hands of certain persons, giving to the latter the right to vote on the stock; in other words, it is a concentration of the stock of a number of persons in the hands of one or a few persons. the latter are termed "voting trustees." it is necessary to consult the statutes of the various states with regard to the legality of such voting trusts, but they are generally permitted, with the restriction, however, that the agreement under which the stock is deposited with the voting trustee or trustees must be in writing and that any stockholder may have the right to deposit his stock with such trustee or trustees and become a party to the voting trust. the statutes also frequently limit the time during which such a voting trust may continue. issue of stock.--the stock of a corporation is in theory issued for an amount of money or property equal to the par value of the stock. in practice, however, in many states there is no limitation on the valuation which the promoters of a corporation may put upon the property or rights which are transferred to the corporation. the stock is regarded as fully paid in if property transferred to it is transferred as having the assumed value of the corporation's capital, however little the property may actually be worth. in other states, however, an official must approve the valuation put upon property transferred as payment for stock, and in such states it may be assumed that the assets of a corporation when it begins business represent at least approximately the amount of its capital stock; even in such states, however, there is no difficulty in promoting a corporation which shall have a large capital though its property is of slight value. all that is necessary is to incorporate under the laws of another state which allows greater freedom. corporations organized in one state are in general allowed to do business in other states; so that a corporation which is intended to carry on business in new york, may be incorporated in another state, where it is not expected to do business. procedure in issuing bonds.--it is sometimes difficult for the investor fully to appreciate the vast amount of detail work involved in the bringing out of a new bond issue. before the investment banker underwrites the issue, or makes his purchase from the corporation--before the bonds are offered to the public--there is always a painstaking and minute investigation of the new security from many different viewpoints, made by and in behalf of the banker. the investor can never know from the banker's printed circular, descriptive of the issue, the great amount of original work which underlies it and of which it is a meager reflection. the circular is a summary of the banker's investigation; it contains the salient features of the issue and of the issuing corporation, reduced to terms that are intelligible to the average layman. it is a statement of the principal facts which led the banker to make an investigation of the business and upon which investigation he bases his recommendation of the security offered by him to his clients. what is a bond?--this can be explained best by comparing it with a real estate bond and mortgage, the nature of which has already been discussed. when money is loaned on real estate, the mortgagor, or the one who borrows, executes two papers in favor of the mortgagee, or the lender. the first is either a promissory note or a bond. the bond is a sealed writing whereby the borrower binds himself, his heirs, administrators or executors, or assigns, to pay the lender a given sum of money at a specified time, together with interest. the second paper given as security for the note or bond, is a mortgage, which conveys the title to the property to the lender, with the provision, however, that if the borrower satisfies the conditions imposed in the bond--that is, the payment of a certain sum of money at a given time, together with interest as agreed--this conveyance (mortgage) is to be held null and void. what is a corporation indenture?--the indenture is a more lengthy instrument than the bond, and, as will be noted, it is called an "indenture" and not a "mortgage." the mortgage strictly is only that portion of the indenture whereby the property is conveyed or deeded to the mortgagee, with the provision that the deed so given is to be held null and void in the event that the conditions named in the bond are faithfully carried out. the indenture is broader than the mortgage; it contains provisions other than those bearing directly on the mortgage. an indenture is a sealed agreement between two or more parties and any number of provisions may be inserted in it, in addition to the mortgage clauses, as may be deemed necessary or desirable. it is always possible for the individual to obtain a loan secured by a lien on his property, provided the security is good and considered ample. if, however, his property was of so great value that he desired to obtain a loan of several millions of dollars, he would find it difficult, or even impossible, to find any one person willing to lend him so large an amount. if, however, the borrower could find a number of persons who could and would jointly contribute enough money to equal the amount of the loan, he could divide this total amount into equal parts and each lender could have such a proportionate interest as might be desired. this, then, is the case with large corporations, which are legalized persons. owing to the fact that the holders of the bonds have only a fractional interest in the loan and therefore in any property that may be pledged to secure it, it is impossible to create separate mortgages in favor of the individual bondholders on any particular part of the property. no portion of the property can be specifically designated--the interests of the bondholders are in common. for this reason and others, corporations are obliged to create what is known as a mortgage deed of trust--making the mortgage to secure the many bonds in favor of some responsible individual or trust company, who holds it on behalf of the various bondholders in accordance with the definite terms of the trust, and who is therefore known as the trustee. the indenture of the corporation must in addition to covering the mortgage, contain other related and necessary covenants, especially as to the trust that must be created. as there are so many covenants or provisions necessary in order to fully protect all interests concerned, the corporation indenture becomes bulky, but its form in substance is not very different from that of the bond and mortgage of the individual, which we have already analyzed, and which for this reason it is well for us to keep in mind as we follow the corporation indenture. analysis of indentures.--the indenture, or agreement, must of necessity be made between certain parties, the mortgagor or the corporation and the mortgagee, in this case the trustee who holds the security given in trust for the various bondholders. it is, therefore, proper that we recite at the very beginning of the indenture the parties in interest, giving their legal residence, or as in the case of corporations the names of the states wherein they are incorporated. it is quite essential that we know in what state a corporation was incorporated, as its rights and privileges are determined by the statutes of the state which created it and by the charter which has been granted to it. what are our reasons for creating the indenture? the very first premise is that the corporation is legally able to borrow money by law. if it did not have this right we could proceed no further. to borrow money and mortgage or pledge property as security therefor is a common law right of corporations, but the amount which may be borrowed is sometimes limited by state statutes. in the event that the corporation desired to borrow in excess of the limitation, additional capital stock is sometimes authorized thereby creating a larger basis for borrowing. if this premise is not incorporated, its omission does not affect the status of the indenture, but it is generally placed, as many other premises are, in the indenture, for the sake of logic, and to show that the matter has been considered, and that the fact is admitted by the parties to the indenture. the purpose for which the bonds are to be issued is sometimes duly set forth, as for instance, to refund certain maturing obligations, to construct a certain extension, to build new terminals, etc. while the purpose may not always be mentioned in the indenture, nevertheless it must accord with the charter of the corporation and the laws of the state. the company cannot exceed the powers that have been granted to it. we next want to know whether the authority to borrow money and issue bonds therefor has been obtained in lawful manner. provisions covering the manner of securing this authority will be found in the by-laws of the corporation, and the counsel must examine this matter carefully in order to see whether all legal formalities have been strictly observed and whether the resolutions are in proper order. there are certain essential facts that must be stated in the bonds themselves and which are elaborated in the covenants of the indenture. these facts are embodied in the resolutions of the board of directors and of the stockholders and are, therefore, incorporated in the premises of the indenture. these facts include the total amount of bonds authorized, title, denomination, form, date of issue and maturity, rate of interest and where payable. in order that there may be uniformity in the wording and form of the bonds, so that no one holder will perchance receive an undue advantage over any other bondholder, the form of the bond, its coupons and trustee's certificate must be duly set forth in the indenture. limitation of powers of directors.--there are various matters wherein directors of any corporation do not usually have power to act on behalf of the corporation without special authorization. such matters include the amendment of the corporate charter (thereby changing the purposes of the corporation), the change of the name of the corporation, the increase or decrease of authorized capital stock, the sale of the total corporate assets and franchise, the consolidation of the corporation where permitted by statute, and the giving of mortgages upon the corporate property. this last point is especially important since the validity of a corporate mortgage as security for a loan of money depends upon whether the mortgage was authorized and given in all respects pursuant to statute of the state involved. as these corporate mortgages not only are given as security for a single loan of money but also furnish security often for very large amounts of bonds, the matter of the authority of the directors and the validity of the mortgage becomes of great importance. therefore the statutes of the state involved must be followed closely as to the procedure in connection with the giving of a mortgage. it may be stated, however, with regard to this matter and the other special matters mentioned, the statutes generally provide that some form of authorization should be obtained from the stockholders, generally through their vote at a special meeting called for that purpose, of which proper notification and announcement have been given; that some form of certificate as to the proceedings at such meeting be made and filed by the secretary and treasurer or other designated officer of the corporation; that it should also be filed in the office of the county clerk of the county involved and in the office of the secretary of state; and that some notification of the act in question be also given to the directors as well as the stockholders. it is, of course, impossible to take up the details as to such matters, the only safe course to pursue being to follow with extreme care the statutes of the state wherein such action is to be taken. from the foregoing, however, the general purpose and effect of prevailing law may be seen. dividends on stock.--dividends on the stock of corporations are declared by the directors, who have power to use their discretion as to the amount to be disbursed in this way. the statutes are, however, very explicit in prohibiting the declaration of any dividends except out of the surplus profits of the business conducted by the corporation. with respect to dividends properly declared, the declaration of the directors generally provides that they shall be paid to all stockholders registered upon the books of the company at a specified date in the future. hence, if a stockholder should sell or otherwise transfer his stock, after that date to another person, the latter, while becoming the owner of the stock, would not be entitled to the dividend when paid. it would be payable to the former stockholder, although he might, pursuant to the agreement made with the person to whom he sold the stock, turn over to the latter the amount of the dividend. cumulative dividends.--it frequently happens that a corporation does not earn any dividends in a particular year. the question arises, is the holder of a % preferred stock in a position to demand that the dividend be paid the following year. suppose the corporation earns nothing in and earns % in . the holder of one share of a non-cumulative preferred stock would receive the usual % dividend only in . if the stock were cumulative he would receive %. in other words the unearned dividends accumulate and become a charge which the corporation must pay when sufficient is earned in prosperous years before the holders of common stock are entitled to receive any dividend. usually the stock certificate and the articles of incorporation specify whether stock is cumulative or non-cumulative. if they do not, then reference to the law of the state where the company is incorporated, is necessary to decide such a question. liability of officers and directors to the corporation.--whether a corporation becomes liable by virtue of action taken by its officers or directors depends upon principles of agency applied to the law of corporations. these principles have already been stated. whether the directors or officers are themselves personally liable is another matter. conceivably they may be liable either to their employer (the corporation) or to creditors of the corporation. they are not directly liable to the shareholders as such. any injury or wrong they may indirectly do to shareholders is directly done to the corporation, the shareholders being injured only because the corporation in which he is interested is injured. shareholders may, however, institute proceedings against directors or officers if, as not infrequently happens, the corporation itself, being controlled by the wrongdoers, fails to take proceedings. the shareholders in such a case, however, demand redress for the corporation, not for themselves; and whatever may be recovered, is recovered for the benefit of the corporation. the duty of the directors and officers of the corporation is analogous to the duty of any agent to his principal. that is, each officer or director must exercise reasonable diligence in the performance of his work and must observe fidelity to his principal. the application of these principles to particular fact is not always easy, but the principles themselves are plain. especially the degree of care which directors are bound to use presents a troublesome question of fact. in a small business it may be the duty of a director to take active control of the policy of the company and supervise with some minuteness each business operation. such direction is impossible where a great railroad or industrial corporation is concerned. in such a case directors necessarily derive their information from subordinate agents and cannot investigate facts for themselves. directors are not liable for mistakes of judgment if they use reasonable care; if, however, they wilfully do an act which they know is not authorized by the charter or by-laws of the corporation, they will be liable for the consequences. directors who are cognizant of wrongs committed by their co-directors and fail to take available measures to prevent the wrongs, become liable themselves. directors may terminate their liability for future acts by resigning, but resignation will not destroy liability for acts already done even though the resulting damage does not happen until after resignation. the corporation requires that a director or other officer shall not act on behalf of the corporation in a matter in which he has a personal interest at variance with that of the corporation. should matters of this sort arise, as they often do, the interested officer or director should not take part in the decision of the question, and may render himself liable if he does so. liability of officers to creditors.--so long as a corporation is solvent, creditors of the corporation have no reason or right to seek redress from any one but the corporation itself. creditors of an insolvent corporation, however, may enjoin action by the company's officers which is unauthorized or likely to prove detrimental to the assets of the corporation. if the officers knowingly misapply the assets of an insolvent corporation they are personally liable to the creditors for the injury caused thereby. they are liable sometimes by statute, but also even apart from statute, for false statements of the condition of the corporation in reliance upon which credit is given the corporation. like other agents, the officers of a corporation impliedly warrant to persons with whom they deal their authority to do the acts which they undertake; and if authority is lacking, they are liable personally. the only qualification of this principle is that if the facts from which authority, or lack of it, may be determined, are known to the person dealing with them, they are not liable; that is, they do not warrant the correctness of an inference of authority from known facts. liability of bank officers.--the principles governing the liability of bank directors and other officers of a bank are the same as those which govern similar questions regarding other corporations. the bank laws, however, impose certain duties and penalties which affect the application of general principles. it may be worth while to enumerate briefly some of the duties of different bank officers, a violation of which renders them personally liable. as to directors it has been said that "it is not necessary to show directly that the directors actually had their attention called to the mismanagement of the affairs of the bank, or to the misconduct of subordinate officers. it is sufficient to show that the evidence of the management or misconduct were such that it must have been brought to their knowledge unless they were grossly negligent or wilfully careless in the discharge of their duties." they are liable for the consequences not only of their own fraud but of their ultra vires acts. they are liable for approving the discount of notes known to be worthless or of so doubtful value as to be obviously unsafe. if guilty of negligence in failing to discover that such paper was worthless they may also be liable. they are guilty of negligence and may thereby render themselves liable if they wholly neglect to ascertain the condition of the bank from its books, though a thorough examination of the books of a bank, especially of one transacting a large business, cannot be expected of every director; and the law would require no more than would be demanded by the standard of reasonableness. the president.--the duties of the president, and consequently his liabilities, must be determined by general law, the charter of the particular institution, its by-laws, and by general business usage. thus, if the usage exists for the president to draw and sign checks in the absence of the cashier, the president will have authority so to act. he has authority to conduct the litigation of the bank; he may employ counsel. he may generally indorse negotiable paper of the bank. on the other hand, he will be personally liable if he permits improper loans or over-drafts; if he fails to give proper instructions to inferior officers; if it is his duty to require a bond from an inferior officer, and he fails to do so; and, generally, if he commits a breach of duty to the corporation which causes damage. he has no power to execute deeds of real estate without authority of the directors and, generally, an instrument which must be executed under the seal of the bank must be authorized by the board. the discount of negotiable paper also is a duty of the directors. the cashier.--the supreme court of maine has thus expressed the functions of the cashier of a bank: "a cashier, it is well known, is allowed to present himself to the public as habitually accustomed to make payment for its bills or notes payable to other persons; to make payment for bills and notes discounted by the directors; to receive payment for bills of exchange, notes, and other debts due to the bank; to receive money on deposit and to pay the same to the order of the depositors. he is presented as having the custody of its books, bills of exchange, notes, and other evidences of debt due to it, and, indeed, of all its movable property; as making entry in its books and as keeping its accounts and a record of its proceedings. in many banks these duties are performed in part by tellers, clerks, or assistants, but generally, it is believed, under his superintendence, and he might at any time assume the performance of them and perform them, if able to do so, without such assistance. his true position appears to be that of a general agent for the performance of his official and accustomed duties. while acting within the scope of this authority he would bind the bank, although he might violate his private instructions." he must exercise proper oversight over subordinate officers; he must use reasonable care and skill. he may become liable personally for failure to observe instructions as to a special deposit; for the improper sale of stock held as security for a loan; for improperly making loans, for failure to give essential information to the directors; for failing to exercise proper oversight over inferior officers or agents, as well as in the more obvious case where he has taken advantage of his position to commit intentional fraud upon the bank. blue sky laws.--the term "blue sky" has become very familiar to the corporation lawyer in the last few years. the so-called "blue sky" legislation is a well meaning, if partly futile, attempt to meet an existing evil in connection with the sale of corporate securities. we shall find later that five elements are necessary to constitute the action of fraud or deceit: ( ) a false representation of a material fact; ( ) made with knowledge of its falsity; ( ) with intent that it be acted upon; ( ) that it be acted upon; ( ) damage follows. the courts have almost universally held that a mere statement of opinion does not give rise to a cause of action for fraud, whereas a mistatement of fact does. hence if i state to you when selling you shares of the bonanza gold mining corporation that the company has never paid less than % in dividends during the last five years and you purchase the stock relying on this misrepresentation of fact (the situation actually being the company has never paid a dividend) you would have a cause of action in deceit against me. if, however, i had simply said in selling you the stock that the outlook for the company was the brightest in its history, that the president had told me that dividends of % a year were assured indefinitely and that this stock was by far the best bargain which had been on the market in over a year, although i know when i made such statements that there was little or nothing to substantiate them, nevertheless, i would not be liable in deceit. my statements were merely matters of opinion or what we call "seller's talk" or "puffing one's wares." the financial prospectus.--if you will examine the average financial prospectus of a new stock being offered for sale to the public, you will find that when most of the high sounding terms and flattering statements are analyzed carefully that they will fall in this second class of non-actionable statements. there are few statements of fact but many glowing statements in the nature of "seller's talk." we all know, however, that enormous quantities of worthless stock are sold each year by this method. when business conditions are good it sometimes seems as if the wilder the scheme the easier it is to find a gullible public ready to purchase such securities. to prevent the perpetration of such frauds on the public is the object of the so-called "blue sky" legislation. the law analyzed.--the first "blue sky" law was passed in kansas in . the evil sought to be remedied was so prevalent that the idea spread rapidly and now similar legislation, of one type or another, has been enacted in a majority of the states. some of the acts are crude, some have been held unconstitutional, and many are difficult of enforcement. recently, however, more care has been taken in drafting such legislation, and many of the earlier laws will undoubtedly be amended to conform with this later legislation. we may take the illinois statute of as a good sample of a drastic yet fairly workable act. the law may be briefly considered from three standpoints: ( ) the persons affected; ( ) the securities affected; ( ) the penalties provided for violation of its provisions. as to the persons affected.--generally any person offering any securities, and any seller's agent or broker, the issuer, or any agent or director of the issuer, or any owner or dealer, is covered by the act. illinois fiscal corporations such as banks, trust companies, insurance companies, building and loan associations and the like are practically exempt from the provisions of the illinois securities law. the illinois act.--the illinois act covers the following securities: section . for the purposes of this act securities are divided into four classes as follows: ( ) securities, the inherent qualities of which assure their sale and disposition without the perpetration of fraud, which shall be known as securities in class "a"; ( ) securities, the inherent qualities of which, or in the nature of one or both parties to the sale thereof, assure their sale and disposition without the perpetration of fraud, which shall be known as securities in class "b"; ( ) securities based on established income, which shall be known as securities in class "c"; ( ) securities based on prospective income, which shall be known as securities in class "d"; section . securities in class "a" shall comprise securities: ( ) issued by a government or governmental agency, or by anybody having power of taxation of assessment; ( ) issued by any national or state bank or trust company, building and loan association of this state, or insurance company organized or under the supervision of the department of trade and commerce of this state; ( ) issued by any corporation operating any public utility in any state wherein there is or was at the time of issuance thereof in effect any law regulating such utilities and the issue of securities by such corporation; ( ) appearing in any list of securities dealt in on the new york, chicago, boston, baltimore, philadelphia, pittsburgh, cleveland or detroit stock exchange, respectively, pursuant to official authorization by such exchanges, respectively, and securities senior to any securities so appearing; ( ) whereof current prices shall have been quoted from time to time for not less than one year next preceding the offering for sale thereof, in tabulated market reports published as news items, and not as advertising, in a daily newspaper of general circulation, published in this or in an adjoining state, including the state of michigan, not including any trade paper or any paper circulating chiefly among the members of any trade or profession; ( ) issued by any corporation organized not for pecuniary profit or organized exclusively for educational, benevolent, fraternal, charitable or reformatory purposes; ( ) being notes or bonds secured by mortgage lien upon real estate or leasehold in any state or territory of the united states or in the dominion of canada, when the mortgage is a first mortgage on real estate, and when in case it is not a first mortgage lien or is on a leasehold, the mortgage and notes or bonds secured thereby (not including interest notes or coupons) shall each bear a legend in red characters not less than one-half inch in height, indicating ( ) that the mortgage is on a leasehold, if that be the case, and ( ) that the mortgage is a junior mortgage, if that be the case; ( ) being a note secured by first mortgage upon tangible or physical property, when such mortgage is assigned with such securities to the purchaser; ( ) evidencing indebtedness due under any contract made in pursuance to the provisions of any statute of any state of the united states providing for the acquisition of personal property under conditional sale contract; ( ) being negotiable promissory notes given for full value and for the sole purpose of evidencing or extending the time of payment of the price of goods, wares or merchandise purchased by the issuer of such notes in the ordinary course of business, and commercial paper or other evidence of indebtedness running not more than twelve months from the date of issue; ( ) being subscriptions for the capital stock under any license issued to commissioners to incorporate a company under the laws of this state where no commission or other remuneration paid for the sale or disposition of such securities; securities in class "a" and the sales thereof shall not be subject to the provisions of this act. section . securities in class "b" shall comprise securities: ( ) sold by the owner for the owner's account exclusively when not made in the course of continued and repeated transactions of a similar nature; ( ) increased capital stock of a corporation sold or distributed by it among its stockholders without the payment of any commission or expense to solicitors, agents or brokers in connection with the distribution thereof; ( ) sold by or to any bank, trust company, or insurance company or association organized under any law of this state or of the united states, or doing business in this state under the supervision of the department of trade and commerce; or of the auditor of public accounts; or by or to any building and loan association organized and doing business under the laws of this state, or any public sinking fund trustees; or to any corporation or dealer or broker in securities; ( ) sold or offered for sale at any judicial, executor's or administrator's sale, or at any sale by a receiver or trustee in insolvency or bankruptcy, or at a public sale or auction held at an advertised time and place; securities in class "b," when disposed of by the persons and in the manner provided by this section, shall not be subject to the provisions of this act. section . securities in class "c" shall comprise the following: those issued by a person, corporation, firm, trust, partnership or association owning a property, business or industry, which has been in continuous operation not less than two years and which has shown net profits, exclusive of all prior charges, as follows: ( ) in the case of interest-bearing securities not less than one and one-half times the annual interest charge upon all outstanding interest-bearing obligations; ( ) in the case of preferred stock not less than one and one-half times the annual dividend on such preferred stock; ( ) in the case of common stock not less than % per annum upon such common stock. section . securities in class "c" may be disposed of, sold or offered for sale upon compliance with the following conditions, and not otherwise: a statement shall be filed in the office of the secretary of state: ( ) describing the evidence of indebtedness, preferred stock or common stock intended to be offered or sold; ( ) stating the law under which and the time when the issuer was organized; ( ) giving a detailed statement of the assets and liabilities of such issuer and income of profit and loss statement, and giving an analysis of surplus account; ( ) giving the names and addresses of its principal officers and of its directors or trustees; ( ) giving pertinent facts, data and information establishing that the securities to be offered are securities in class "c." such statement shall be verified by the oath of not less than two credible persons having knowledge of the facts. not less than twenty-five copies of such statement, wholly printed or wholly typewritten, shall at the time of filing the original statement be filed with the secretary of state. the printed or typewritten copies so filed shall bear at the top in bold faced type the expression: "securities in class 'c' under illinois securities law," followed by the expression, also in bold-faced type: "this statement is prepared by parties interested in the sale of securities herein mentioned. neither the state of illinois, nor any officer of the state, assumes any responsibility for any statement contained herein nor recommends any of the securities described below." section . all securities other than those falling within class "a," "b" and "c," respectively, shall be known as securities in class "d." section gives the requisites of the statement required to be filed with the secretary of state before securities of class "d" may be sold. such statement is even more complete than that required in section . sales and contracts void.--every sale or contract in violation of the act is void, and the fines vary from not less than $ to not more than $ , , and the imprisonment from six months to five years. although there is great need for a federal incorporation act there is even greater need for a federal blue sky law. with different acts in the different states, the illinois act being simply an example, even the most careful business man may unwittingly find himself in a position where he has violated one of these laws with their severe penalties. chapter vii transfer of stock uniform transfer of stock.--turn now to an entirely different matter, the transfer of stock. a stock certificate is one of the quasi-negotiable instruments of commerce, at common law not fully negotiable like bills and notes, but, nevertheless, having some of the attributes of negotiability, especially in states where what is called the uniform transfer of stock act has been enacted. this statute applies only to corporations of those states which have passed the statute. two methods of transferring stock.--stock may be transferred in two ways: first, by delivery of the certificate with the indorsement upon it of the owner of the stock, indicating that he assigns or authorizes the assignment of the stock, and second, by delivery of the certificate, with a separate document of assignment attached stating that the owner of the certificate assigns or authorizes the transfer of the stock. this second method is not so completely good as the first, where the assignment is on the certificate itself, because if for any reason the separate document should become detached from the certificate, the transferee's right would not be apparent, and therefore the transfer of stock act provides that if a purchaser should get possession of the stock certificate with an indorsement upon it, he would take precedence over even a prior assignee who had a separate paper assigning the certificate to him. of course, after the transfer is duly registered on the books of the company, then it makes no difference whether that transfer was secured by means of a separate power or assignment or by means of one written on the certificate itself. effect of transfer on the books of the company.--what is the effect of transfer on the books of the company? under the common law, stock was originally transferable just like any intangible right, merely by agreement of the parties, to which requirement was added, as a necessity when stock certificates became common, the delivery of the certificate itself. but it was convenient for the company to know who was owner of its stock. it was inconvenient to have stockholders buy and sell without any notice to the company, and therefore a common by-law was that stock should be transferred only on the books of the company. the uniform transfer of stock act goes back partially to the old rule, since the transfer of the certificate with the indorsement or separate assignment is what transfers the stock, not the transfer on the books of the company; but in order that the corporation may not be inconvenienced it is provided that the corporation shall have the right to pay dividends to any one registered on the books of the company, such persons being the apparent owners, and that only such persons have the right to vote. an analogous custom that shows the importance of registration of stock transfers on the books of the company is the registry of deeds in the transfer of real estate. it is the deed, not the record of it, which creates a title, but an unrecorded deed may be defeated by creditors or purchasers without notice, so that to protect himself fully the owner of land is obliged to record his deed. ownership of stock, individually, in common, jointly and by fiduciaries.--stock may be owned by a man individually, it may be owned by several persons in common, or it may be owned by several persons jointly, or it may be owned by a person in a fiduciary capacity, as trustee, executor or guardian. what is the difference, may be asked, between the case of ownership of stock by several persons in common and ownership by several persons jointly. the common law drew this distinction between joint right and rights merely held in common; that a joint right survived to the survivors when one of them died, whereas a right held in common passed, on the death of one of the owners, pro rata to the personal representatives of the deceased. therefore if a, b and c own stock jointly, when c dies a and b are the owners. if a, b and c own the stock in common, a, b and the executors of c would own it on the death of c. generally where several persons own a right now, they own it in common, but there are two notable exceptions--the case of partnerships and the case of trustees. stock held in the name of a, b and c, when a, b and c are either partners or trustees, will pass to a and b on the death of c. c's executor will not have to join in the transfer. difficulties in transfer affect purchaser and also corporation.--the difficulties in the transfer of stock may be looked at ( ) from the standpoint of a purchaser of the stock, including within the name of purchaser one who lends money on the stock as well as one who buys it, and ( ) from the standpoint of the corporation whose duty it is to transfer the stock on its books. generally the difficulties which confront the purchaser are the same which confront the corporation when it is asked to transfer. if the purchaser should get a defective right when he bought, then the corporation, if it should transfer, would generally get into trouble also. legal and equitable difficulties in transfers.--the main difficulties which arise may be divided into legal and equitable difficulties. by legal difficulties are meant cases in which the purchaser will not get a good legal title. by equitable difficulties, cases in which the purchaser will get a good legal title but which will be subject to an equitable right in favor of some other person. the person who has an equitable right cannot reclaim the stock from one who is, or succeeds to the rights of, a bona fide purchaser for value without notice. legal difficulties--forged certificate.--first, in regard to legal difficulties. the certificate of stock may be forged. the purchaser of a forged certificate of stock, of course, gets nothing in the way of stock. he does get the right, however, to sue the person who sold him the stock on an implied warranty of genuineness. analogous to the situation of the purchaser is the situation of the corporation if, on receiving a forged certificate with a request for a transfer, it should transfer ownership on the books, completing the transfer by issuing a new certificate; for any person who took the new certificate, even though he was a bona fide purchaser for value, would not get any stock in the corporation, if all authorized stock had previously been issued. the corporation has no power to overissue stock; it cannot emit any more even if it tries, and therefore the purchaser gets no stock. he does, however, get a right against the corporation. the corporation has issued what purports to be new stock to him, or if he is a remote purchaser he has paid for stock in reliance on a certificate which the corporation has issued. the corporation is estopped, as the legal phrase is, to deny the validity of that certificate as against one who has thus relied on its acts. the result is that the corporation is bound to pay to him value equivalent to that of real stock, because the corporation has put out something which seems to be good stock, and owing to the act of the corporation the purchaser has been deceived. forged assignments.--a second legal difficulty arises where the indorsement or assignment of the certificate is forged. only the owner of stock can sell it. consequently, if anybody else attempts by forgery or otherwise to make a transfer, the transfer will be ineffectual. the result will be the same as though the whole certificate were forged. the purchaser under the forged indorsement will get nothing. if the corporation relies on the forged indorsement and issues a new certificate, it will, in the same way as in the case of a new certificate issued for a wholly forged one, be liable to a purchaser for value. it is, of course, of vital importance, therefore, to make sure that indorsements are correct, and generally it is desirable to take indorsed certificates only from reliable persons. if you take such a certificate from a reliable person, even though there is no express guaranty of signatures by a brokerage house or other third person, as there often is, you will be practically safe because of the implied warranty of genuineness by the seller which applies to the indorsement on certificates as well as to cases of wholly forged certificates. assignments by unauthorized agent.--a third case is where the indorsement is made by an agent, and the agent has no authority to act. a corporation transferring stock should require, and a purchaser should require, the clearest evidence of an agent's authority if the signature of the transferor is made by an agent. it is not only necessary to be sure that the agent's authority originally existed, but it is necessary to be sure that his power has not been revoked, either by the death of the principal or by express revocation during his life. a question that sometimes is troublesome, in regard to the agent's authority to make such an indorsement, arises where the terms of the power given the agent are general; where he is authorized to do a very broad class of acts for the principal, but no specific mention is made of the particular certificate which he seeks to transfer. such a power, if it certainly includes the transfer of that certificate, is legally good, but a corporation would object to make a transfer under a power which did not specifically mention the particular certificate, unless it was absolutely certain from its terms that this certificate in question was included. lack of capacity to assign.--a fourth case is lack of capacity on the part of the owner of the stock to make a transfer. this lack of capacity may arise from a variety of causes, insanity or infancy, for instance. a totally insane person is as incapable of transferring stock as of transferring other property. an infant, that is, a minor, though not wholly without capacity, if not under guardianship, becomes, presumably, wholly without capacity to transfer stock if under guardianship. an elderly person under the charge of a conservator would be incapacitated to transfer his property. an infant who has had no guardian appointed, though he could make a transfer, could also, by virtue of his infant's privilege, revoke that transfer, which, therefore, would be too insecure either for a purchaser to take or for a corporation to allow. if stock is owned by an infant, a purchaser or a corporation should require that a guardian be appointed and that the transfer be made by the guardian. lack of delivery--theft of certificate.--a fifth case is where the signature on the back of the certificate of stock is genuine, but where there has been no valid delivery by the owner. this is rather a troublesome case to detect. in the case of full negotiable instruments, like bills and notes, if the signature of an indorser is genuine, a purchaser for value of the instrument will get title even though he purchases from a thief, or though for any reason there was no intention on the part of the owner who wrote his name on the back to make a transfer of the instrument. but by the common law stock certificates were not negotiable to this extent. this case occurred in a law office in boston: the head of the firm rather carelessly kept "street certificates" for stock (that is, certificates made out in the name of the brokerage firm which was the former owner and indorsed in blank), not having the certificates transferred to his own name. the stock was not at the time dividend-paying, so that a transfer on the books seemed unimportant. he put the certificates into the office safe to which the office boy had access. this boy took the certificates and sold them through a broker, and the loss was not discovered for several years. after it was discovered the loss was traced by the numbers of the certificates, and action was brought against the brokers who were unfortunate enough to have taken the stock from the office clerk. now, if the certificates had been negotiable paper, the brokers would not have been liable, but under the law then existing it seemed so probable that they were liable that they settled the case by paying more than half the value of the stock. the only thing that could have prevented their being liable was that, under the circumstances, the contention was possible that the owner of the stock had been so negligent in his dealing with the certificates as to preclude him from asserting any right. now the transfer of stock act changes the law in this respect so far as massachusetts stock certificates are concerned. the act makes them fully negotiable, but the common law would apparently still apply to certificates of stock of corporations incorporated in other states. and similar principles would be applicable in other states which have passed the same statute. death of owner of indorsed certificate.--a somewhat similar case is this: suppose that after the owner of stock has written his name on the back of it, he dies; that is a common enough case. many men have used their stock certificates to borrow money on, and therefore, after paying the loan they have them in their possession with their signatures on the back. they put those certificates back in their safe deposit boxes. then suppose the owner dies and an attempt is made to transfer the stock by virtue of that signature written on the certificate. that is not a valid transfer at common law. the certificate was owned only up to the time of his death by the man whose name is on the face; on his death his executor becomes the owner and the executor's signature is necessary to transfer the title, and the signature of the man himself written before his death is not effective for that purpose; and yet a purchaser may not be aware that that signature is invalid; he may not know that the man who signed it is dead, and similarly the corporation may allow the transfer to go through in ignorance that the signer is dead. if the money which is the proceeds of the stock actually reaches the executor of the estate, of course he could not object to the validity of the transfer, and he could not object if he were in any way a party to the transfer of the stock by means of the signature of the dead man; but if the proceeds did not get to the hands of the executor and he was in no way responsible for the transfer, he could assert that the transfer was invalid and that that stock belonged to him. this, again, is changed by the uniform law so far as applies to corporations in the states which have enacted that law. to avoid misapprehension it should be said that if an indorsed certificate has been delivered for value by the owner, during his lifetime, to a purchaser or lender, the death of the indorser does not impair the validity of the signature even at common law. the purchase of the stock or a loan made on the stock gives the purchaser or lender a power which cannot be revoked by death or otherwise. bankruptcy of the owner of stock.--one other important case, in which a genuine signature of one who was the owner cannot transfer a good title, is the case of bankruptcy. the federal bankruptcy law provides absolutely that title to property which a bankrupt has at the time of his bankruptcy shall be vested in his trustee. if, therefore, after a's bankruptcy, a seeks to transfer stock which he had owned, and which was in his own name, he cannot do so, for he is no longer the owner of the stock, and he has no power to transfer it. therefore, even a bona fide purchaser from a bankrupt will get nothing. attachment of stock.--a sixth difficulty in regard to transfer of stock--attachment of the stock by a creditor of the registered owner--is eliminated in states where the uniform transfer act has been enacted. such attachments created considerable difficulty before the passage of the act. suppose this case: a is the owner on the books of the company of shares of boston & albany stock. he knows a creditor is about to attach that stock, and in order to get ahead of the creditor he sells the stock on the exchange. if he makes the sale before the attachment, undoubtedly the sale everywhere would prevail over the subsequent attachment; but suppose the attachment preceded by a little while the sale of the stock. a still has the certificate, and brokers and purchasers are accustomed to rely on the certificate as evidence of ownership. they take the certificate and pay a money for it; then when the purchaser goes to transfer the stock he finds that an attachment has been put upon the books of the company. where the uniform law governs the case the only way to make an attachment of stock effective is to seize the certificate itself. but in other states this difficulty may still arise, of a purchaser being deceived by the certificate itself, and paying money on the faith of it when there has been an attachment levied by a creditor immediately before on the books of the company. transfers between husband and wife.--one other matter of transfer deserves attention, and that is a transfer between husband and wife, or wife and husband. a married woman can contract in most states as fully as a married man, but generally, though not universally, neither of them can contract with the other or make a conveyance directly to the other. a promissory note from wife to husband, or husband to wife, or any other conveyance or transfer or contract was at common law and still is in many states invalid. a husband can, however, appoint his wife his agent, and a wife can appoint her husband her agent, and when such an agent acts, his act will be legally that of the principal, just as in any other case of agency. accordingly, if a husband draws a check payable to his wife, though he does not become liable as drawer to his wife, and could not be sued by her if the check was not paid, the bank runs no risk in paying the check because the husband has authorized the bank to make a payment to the wife. similarly, if a husband authorizes a corporation to transfer stock to his wife it seems that the corporation is protected, having acted under the authority of the owner, and that the wife would get a good title to the stock. this question has, however, been somewhat disputed by lawyers. therefore it is very probable that a corporation would, as a matter of precaution, refuse to run any risk by transferring directly from husband to wife or vice versa, but would require that the transfer should be made through a third person in any state where husband and wife cannot contract with one another. so much for difficulties arising out of defects caused by the lack of legal title to the stock. stock held in trust.--now let us consider equitable defects. such defects chiefly arise where stock is held in trust. it would be the simplest and pleasantest thing for a corporation if it could refuse to register stock in trust at all, but it has been decided that it cannot do this, that it is bound, if requested, to register stock in favor of a trustee and issue stock to trustees. now trustees hold under an appointment by the court. a trustee may cease to be such at any time by removal of the court as well as by death. suppose stock in the name of d, trustee. if d has ceased to be trustee because he has been removed from office, a transfer by him will not be valid. accordingly, it is essential for a corporation and for a purchaser to be certain, not simply that d was trustee, but that d is trustee at the time he attempts to make the transfer. we may suppose the case of a certificate which does not state that there is a trust. not infrequently trustees, to avoid complications, do not specify in the certificate that they are trustees. if the corporation or if the purchaser of that stock has no notice that d is really holding that stock in trust, the corporation or the purchaser will have the same rights as if there were no trust. but if either the corporation or the purchaser learns, from extrinsic sources, that the stock is really held in trust, they will be bound to make certain that the seller is still empowered to act as trustee, in the same way as if the certificate specifically stated on its face that the stock was owned by d in the capacity of trustee. one having notice that stock is held in trust must ascertain the terms of the trust.--even if the supposed trustee is actually the trustee he may not have power to give a good title to the stock. he has the legal title, undoubtedly, but if the certificate contains notice that he holds the legal title as trustee, every one is bound at his peril when purchasing the stock, and also the corporation is bound at its peril before it allows the transfer of the stock, to make sure that the trustee is authorized by the terms of his trust to transfer the stock. a trustee has powers necessary to carry out terms of trust.--generally when a transfer of stock is attempted by a trustee it means that the trustee is selling the stock, though that is not necessarily the case. a trust may be terminated; that is, a trust may be created for twenty years, with directions to the trustee to transfer the trust property at the end of twenty years to certain beneficiaries. a transfer by the trustee at the close of the twenty years to the beneficiaries would not be a sale of the stock; it would be a transfer for the purpose of carrying out the trust, and a trustee always has implied power to make any transfer of stock that is necessary to carry out the purpose of the trust. a trustee has no implied power to sell.--a trustee has no implied power to sell. the general duty of a trustee is to keep the property which is left to him in trust or conveyed to him in trust in its existing form, and no power is implied to change the form to something else. accordingly, if no power to sell is in terms given in a trust created by deed or will, a corporation will require, and a purchaser should require, the trustee to obtain the authority of the probate court to make the sale. carefully drawn trusts generally contain a power for the trustee to sell if the purpose of the trust is to produce an income-bearing fund for a long period of years. for that purpose a change of investment is frequently desirable, and therefore trustees are expressly given that power. but the corporation which has issued a certificate to a trustee and a purchaser from the trustee must find out at their peril whether such a power is given. a trustee has no implied power to pledge.--another power, and one which is not commonly given, is the power to borrow on stock, to pledge it or use it for collateral security. such a power is not implied and is not commonly given in trust deeds or wills. therefore, a bank or other lender should not lend on certificates of stock which are made out to the borrower as trustee, or made out to any one as trustee. of course, it is improper, even though the trust did give power to borrow, to allow the trustee not only to borrow money on trust securities but to use the money borrowed as part of his own assets; that is, to put it in his own general account. it is his duty to keep trust money separate, and therefore if the trustee has power to borrow he should keep the funds which he borrows earmarked as trust property; but as has been said, he will rarely have power given him expressly to borrow even for trust purposes. a trustee cannot transfer to himself.--suppose a trustee is by a deed or will given power to sell and he asks the corporation to make a transfer of the stock to himself. the corporation should not do it. he has power to sell to any one else but himself. a fiduciary cannot make a bargain with himself in regard to his trust property, and therefore he should not be allowed to transfer the stock to himself. a trustee cannot delegate his power to sell.--a trustee cannot delegate his powers, and therefore he cannot give a general power of attorney to another, to sell trust stock or any trust property whenever it may seem wise to the agent to do so. even though the trustee has himself power to sell, he must exercise his own discretion as to the occasion when it is proper to sell. purchaser from a trustee is not bound to see to application of purchase money.--though the corporation and though the purchaser from a trustee are bound to see, if they have notice of the trust by the form of the certificate, that the trustee is not making an unauthorized sale, neither the purchaser nor the corporation is bound to see that the trustee does not make an improper application of the money received from sale of trust stock. in the current legal phrase, neither the purchaser nor the corporation is bound to see to the application of the trust money; but if either the purchaser or the corporation had notice of a proposed misapplication of the trust money to be received for the stock, it would be improper to allow the transfer knowing that the proceeds would be misapplied, and the corporation or the purchaser would be liable if the transfer was carried out. an executor has implied power to sell.--stock held by a guardian or by an executor is in many respects treated similarly to stock held by a trustee. there is this difference, however, in the executor's position, that as it is his duty to reduce the estate to cash he has in most, but not all states, an implied power to sell; it does not have to be given to him in the will. the will, however, may restrict an executor's right to sell certain stock, and therefore even in the case of an executor it would be proper for a corporation to make sure that the executor's power had not been restricted by the will before allowing the transfer. transfer by an executor to a legatee.--generally the executor will seek to reduce the property to cash and therefore seek to transfer the stock in the estate to a purchaser, but he may try to transfer it directly to a legatee. he may himself be a legatee and endeavor to transfer to himself. unless he is a residuary legatee or a legatee of the specific stock in question it is as improper for him to transfer to himself as for a trustee to transfer to himself. even though the executor is a pecuniary legatee or is entitled to payment for commissions, he would have no right to take stock in lieu of such pecuniary legacy or commission, for he cannot make such a bargain with himself though he might in regard to the legacy of another. if the executor is a specific or residuary legatee the question of a right to transfer to himself is the same as to transfer to any other legatee, and that right is only subject to one qualification. creditors of an estate have the first right; legatees do not get their legacies paid unless creditors are taken care of first. creditors have a fixed period from the time when executors or administrators give bonds within which to assert their claims. if they have not asserted their claims in that period the claims are barred. after that time has expired it is generally known whether the assets of the estate are sufficient to pay legacies, and it is usually then proper to allow a transfer to a legatee. prior to that you run the risk--which may be in a particular case a very small one or it may be a very large one--that the creditors of the estate may exhaust the assets and the legatees not be entitled to anything. lost certificates.--occasionally a question arises in regard to a lost certificate. the uniform law provides for this case in substantially the same way as the common law would deal with it if there were no statute, namely, the corporation may demand a bond to indemnify it before it issues a new certificate. this bond is essential because should the old certificate turn up and be transferred to a bona fide purchaser for value, the corporation would be liable on the old certificate, and as it would also be liable to a purchaser for value of the new certificate it is necessary that it should have a bond to protect it. interpleader of several claimants for stock.--if there are several claimants for stock, as sometimes happens, the corporation should file a bill of interpleader, as it is called, against the several claimants, asking the court to determine which one is rightfully entitled. an instance of that kind would be where a asks a corporation to transfer stock to him, presenting a certificate indorsed by b, but b notifies the corporation that he has been defrauded out of that stock by a, and that he elects to rescind the transfer to a and demands the certificate back. the corporation cannot undertake to determine which of these parties is in the right; it must ask the court to do so. not infrequently the same situation arises in a bank where money has been lent on stock, and notice is given to the bank not to return that security to the borrower because he obtained it fraudulently or otherwise has acted in violation of the rights of a third person in pledging it to the bank. the bank, if it is a bona fide lender, is, of course, entitled to hold the stock for its own security so far as it may be necessary to repay the loan; but perhaps the bank can get the loan repaid out of other securities unquestionably belonging to the borrower. in that event the bank should do so and then ask the court who is entitled to the disputed stock. effect of delivering unindorsed certificate.--in order to transfer stock, as previously said, it is necessary that the stock should be either indorsed or that on a separate paper an assignment or power to transfer should be written. what is the effect of giving a certificate without either of these formalities? it virtually protects the person who receives the certificate, for though he has not title to the stock and cannot get title without an indorsement, he has the certificate in his possession which prevents any other person from getting title; and, furthermore, he has the right to require an indorsement from the person whose indorsement is needed, provided, of course, that the holder of the certificate took it from the owner, who impliedly or expressly agreed that he should have title. if somebody not an owner of a certificate delivered it without indorsement to a bank, and borrowed money on it, the bank would not be protected. the true owner could say, "that is mine," and take it away. chapter viii personal property property defined.--property in the strict legal sense, is the aggregate of rights which one may lawfully exercise over particular things to the exclusion of others. "if a man were alone in the world," says kant, "he could properly hold or acquire nothing as his own; because between himself, as person, and all other outward objects, as things, there is no relation. the relation is between him and other people, whom he excludes from the thing." all things are not the subject of property, because, the sea, the air, light, and similar things, cannot be appropriated. illustration.--an illustration that gives us the idea of property will make our definition clear. a takes his shoes to a cobbler to be repaired. when he calls for them, he does not have the price for the work, and the cobbler refuses to give them up. both a and the cobbler have a property right in the shoes. the right to absolute ownership is in a, that is his property right. the temporary possession, however, is in the cobbler, and he may hold the shoes under the lien for repairs indefinitely and until he receives his compensation. the lien is his property right. when we use the term property in its lowest form we mean by it the right of possession. in our illustration, the cobbler's lien gives him the right of possession. when we use the term in its highest form, we mean the right of exclusive ownership; in our illustration, a's shoes after he has paid the repair bill and secured the shoes again. the rights of ownership.--exclusive ownership implies: . the right of exclusive possession for an indeterminate time. . the right of exclusive enjoyment for an indeterminate time. . the right of disposition. . the right of recovery if the thing be wrongfully taken or withheld. but, you say, this is not the idea one ordinarily has of the term "property." one speaks thus of his watch: "i own this watch. it is my property." the answer is, property is a term with a double meaning. in the ordinary sense "property" indicates the thing itself, rather than the rights attached to it. therefore it is that we have a law of personal property, and a law of real property. personal property and real property distinguished.--real property has been defined to be co-extensive with lands, tenements, and hereditaments; to put it more simply, we may say that it consists of land and anything that is permanently affixed to the land. personal property embraces all objects which are capable of ownership except land. one fundamental difference between the two is that real property is generally considered to be immovable, while such property as is movable is usually termed personal property. it is important that the distinction between the two forms of property be kept in mind because different results follow where the property is held to be one or the other. for example, on the death of the owner of real property, it passes to his heir or devisee, while in the case of personal property, it goes to the personal representative, the executor or the administrator, and through him to the legatee or distributee. again, in settling the estate of the deceased person, personal property is always to be used first to pay the decedent's debts. the modes of transferring personal property and real property differ. real property is transferred by deed. personal property may be transferred without any writing and even in the case of a transfer of personal property, by a bill of sale, the requirements for recording it are generally quite different from those relating to the recording of deeds. again, the transfer of real property is governed by the law of the place where the real property is situated, whereas the transfer of personal property is governed by the law of the domicile of the owner. taxation is another subject where the distinction is most important. sales of personal property.--the most important branch of the law of personal property, in the field of commercial law, is that relating to the sale of personal property. we shall confine the balance of this chapter to a consideration of that subject. as we have a uniform negotiable instruments law, so we also have a uniform sales act which has now been adopted in many of the states. the sales act defines a sale and a contract to sell as follows: ( ) a contract to sell goods is a contract whereby the seller agrees to transfer the property in goods to the buyer for a consideration called the price. ( ) a sale of goods is an agreement whereby the seller transfers the property in goods to the buyer for a consideration called the price. ( ) a contract to sell or a sale may be absolute or conditional. ( ) there may be a contract to sell or a sale between one part owner and another. sales and contracts to sell.--sales are to be distinguished from contracts to sell. a sale is an actual transfer of property, whereas a contract to sell is an agreement to make a sale in the future. sales at a shop, for instance, are made without any contract to sell, but orders for goods at a distance, and agreements to ship them, frequently precede the actual sale of the goods, which is made in pursuance of the prior contract to sell. the sale of personal property is subject to different rules from the sale of real estate. in the transfer of real estate, formalities of deed and seal are necessary, which are not required in personal property, and the subjects must be considered separately. a sale distinguished from similar transactions.--at the outset, a sale must be distinguished from several other similar transactions. the law of sales is a branch of contract law, hence consideration is necessary in a sale. a gift, on the other hand, which may result in the transfer of personal property in practically the same manner as a sale, does not require any consideration. hence, an agreement to sell goods is unenforceable if not supported by consideration. a promise to make a gift is always unenforceable because the very idea of a gift negatives any idea of consideration. a sale and a bailment must also be distinguished. a bailment is the rightful holding of an article of personal property by one, for the accomplishment of a certain purpose, with an obligation to return it after the completion of that purpose. where there is a sale, the entire property right passes to the new buyer, and if the article is destroyed, providing title has passed, the new buyer must pay the purchase price if he has not already done so, although he gets nothing for it. in a bailment, the title does not pass. the case of the cobbler repairing the shoes is an illustration of a bailment. if, while the shoes are in his possession, his shop is burned, through no fault of his, the owner of the shoes would stand the loss. if i borrow a person's automobile, and while using it the car is struck by lightning and totally destroyed, the loss falls on the owner because this also is a bailment. on the other hand, had i bought the car and temporarily kept it in the seller's garage, awaiting the completion of my own garage, and it is burned while in his garage, the loss is mine. by such a transaction, i become the owner when the sale is made, and the former owner becomes the bailee. formalities necessary for the completion of a sale.--the sales act provides in section , subject to a few provisions, that "a contract to sell or a sale may be made in writing (either with or without seal), or by word of mouth, or partly in writing and partly by word of mouth, or may be inferred from the conduct of the parties." the main qualification of the right to make an oral sale or contract to sell is found in the next section (section ) which is virtually a copy of a similar provision in the english statute of frauds in regard to the sale of personal property. section reads as follows: "( ) a contract to sell or a sale of any goods or choses in action of the value of five hundred dollars or upwards shall not be enforceable by action unless the buyer shall accept part of the goods or choses in action so contracted to be sold, and actually receive the same, or give something in earnest to bind the contract, or in part payment, or unless some note or memorandum in writing of the contract or sale be signed by the party to be charged or his agent in that behalf. "( ) the provisions of this section apply to every such contract or sale, notwithstanding that the goods may be intended to be delivered at some future time or may not at the time of such contract or sale be actually made, procured, or provided, or fit or ready for delivery, or some act may be requisite for the making or completing thereof, or rendering the same fit for delivery; but if the goods are to be manufactured by the seller especially for the buyer and are not suitable for sale to others in the ordinary course of the seller's business, the provisions of this section shall not apply. "( ) there is an acceptance of goods within the meaning of this section when the buyer, either before or after delivery of the goods, expresses by words or conduct his assent to becoming the owner of those specific goods." the capacity of parties.--the sales act provides in section that "capacity to buy and sell is regulated by the general law concerning capacity to contract, and transfer and acquire property. where necessaries are sold and delivered to an infant, or to a person who by reason of mental incapacity or drunkenness is incompetent to contract, he must pay a reasonable price therefor. necessaries in this section mean goods suitable to the condition in life of such infant or other person, and to his actual requirements at the time of delivery." importance of distinguishing sale and contract to sell.--why is it important to distinguish between a contract to sell and a sale; what difference does it make whether title has passed or not? the primary reason that it makes a difference is because as soon as the title has been transferred from the seller to the buyer the seller is entitled to the price. prior to the transfer of title, if the buyer refused to take the goods, the seller would be entitled only to damages, which would be the difference between the value of the goods which the seller still retained and the price which was promised. if the goods were worth as much or more than the amount of the price promised, the seller would not be entitled to any substantial damages. but after title has passed the buyer must pay the full price, and the seller may recover it if the buyer refuses to accept delivery. another consequence flowing from the transfer of title is that the goods are thereafter at the risk of the buyer. if they are destroyed by accident the buyer must nevertheless pay the price, for the right to the price accrued before the goods were destroyed, and when they were destroyed they were at the buyer's risk. bankruptcy is another circumstance which makes it important to determine who holds title to the goods. if the buyer becomes bankrupt, after title to the goods has passed to him, his trustee in bankruptcy takes the goods for his creditors, but if he becomes bankrupt before title has passed that would not be true. the bankruptcy of the seller would make a similar difference. when title is presumed to pass.--there are several presumptions in the law as to when title will be presumed to pass if there was no specific agreement between the parties as to when it should pass. if they simply bargain for the goods without saying anything about the time when the buyer is to become the owner, the first presumption is that title passes as soon as the goods are specified and the parties are agreed on the terms of the bargain, even though no part of the price has been paid and though the goods have not been delivered. it is often assumed that delivery is essential to transfer title to goods, but that is not so, though delivery is strong evidence of intent to transfer title. if the parties have made their bargain, and definitely agreed on the terms of the bargain, title passes even though possession of the goods still remains in the hands of the seller. the seller, however, has a lien for the price though he has parted with title. as long as the goods are in his possession he may refuse to surrender until he is paid the price, unless he agreed to sell on credit. title passes when parties agree.--it is only a presumption that, where the terms of a bargain are fixed and the goods are specified, title passes at once, for if the parties agree that title shall not pass at once it will pass when and as they agree. their intention in regard to the transfer of title may not be stated in express terms, and it may be gathered only from the acts or words of the parties. if something remains to be done to the goods by the seller, to put them in a deliverable condition, that indicates an intent that title shall not pass until they are in the condition agreed upon. if the parties provide that the goods shall be stored at the expense of the seller, for a time or at the risk of the seller, that indicates title is not intended to pass, for if they are at the seller's expense and risk, presumably they are still his goods. on the other hand, delivery of the goods indicates an intent to pass title, although it is possible, if the parties so agree, that title does not pass even though the goods are delivered. again, payment of the price is evidence tending to show an intent to pass title, for buyers do not ordinarily pay the price in advance. it is not uncommon for credit to be given by the seller, but it is uncommon for the buyer to pay first; but even that is not impossible, and therefore, though payment of the price is evidence of an intent to transfer title immediately, it is not conclusive evidence. transfer of title by subsequent appropriation.--suppose title does not pass immediately, which may be due to the fact that the parties so agreed, or to the fact that the goods were not specified at the time the bargain was made. that is a common case. a and b contract for the sale of cases of shoes to be made by a. at the time the parties make their bargain the shoes have not yet been made, but the parties expect that they will be made later, and appropriated to the bargain, as the legal phrase is. or title may not pass at the time the bargain is made, although the goods are specified. the parties may have expressly agreed that title should not pass; or though the goods are specified, something may remain to be done to them by the seller to put them in a deliverable condition. now, if title for any of these reasons does not pass when the bargain is made, it may pass by an express agreement of the parties, made later, that the buyer shall take title and that the seller shall give title; or frequently it may pass by what is called an appropriation of the goods by the seller to the buyer, without any express later assent of the buyer, by virtue of an implied assent of the buyer given in the original agreement that the seller should appropriate the goods. what is meant will be understood by one or two illustrations. appropriations by delivery to a carrier.--suppose a contracts to sell and ship to the buyer cases of shoes, and b contracts to receive and pay for them. that shipment to the buyer is an appropriation of the goods. the very cases with which the seller intends to fulfill the bargain are indicated by the delivery of them to the carrier, and the buyer, since he agreed in the first place that they should be shipped, has assented to the appropriation. therefore, in such a case, as soon as the goods are delivered to the carrier the presumption is that title passes to the buyer. this is by far the commonest case of appropriation by the seller in accordance with authority given by the buyer in his original agreement, and it is so common that it deserves a little further treatment. illustration.--this kind of appropriation can be very well illustrated by the case of a supposed sale of tobacco to a minor. a, a minor, lives in an outlying suburb of boston where the sale of tobacco to a minor is not permitted. he buys goods of s. s. pierce company in boston and wants to buy some cigars from them. he can buy cigars of them in boston and send them out to his home, but the title must pass to him in boston. if the title passes in the suburb it is an illegal sale by s. s. pierce company, and consequently they do not want to make it. of course the buyer can go and get the goods and pay for them in boston and send them himself to his residence. but suppose he sends an order by mail; if s. s. pierce company are willing to charge goods to him, giving him credit, they can send the goods by express, because on their shipment of the goods the title will pass and the buyer will become a debtor for the price of the goods in boston; but they must not send the goods by their own wagon, as their carrying the goods themselves out to the buyer's residence leaves them in their possession until delivery, and the delivery does not take place until the goods are delivered from their wagon at his house. that would not do. whereas if the goods are delivered to a public carrier in boston the carrier would be the buyer's agent and title would pass in boston. the seller must follow exactly authority given him.--suppose the buyer specified that the goods are to be shipped by a given route, and the seller shipped them by a different route. title would not pass then because the buyer had not authorized the seller to appropriate them to him, the buyer, in that way. it may be that the seller's way of sending them was better than that originally assented to by the buyer, but the seller, if he wishes to hold the buyer, as owner of the goods from the time of shipment, must get his approval of that better way. still more important than the method of shipment is the character of the goods themselves. the seller cannot, by putting any goods on the train, transfer title. he must put on the train the very kind of goods which the buyer agreed to receive, and that will mean not simply, in the case supposed, that the goods must be shoes, but they must be merchantable shoes of the character and sizes which the buyer agreed to take. the goods must be properly packed and all usual precautions in regard to them taken. in so far as the original agreement specified what was to be done, those things must be done. in so far as the original agreement does not specify how the goods are to be shipped, or what shall be done in regard to them, the seller has discretion to do anything which is customary and proper for a careful business man. shipment of goods c. o. d.--there has been considerable litigation in regard to the effect of shipping goods c. o. d. suppose goods were ordered and goods of the sort ordered were shipped in accordance with the directions in the order, but were marked c. o. d. those letters mean, as you know, collect on delivery, and two possible explanations may be given of their effect. one, that the seller retains not only control of, but also title to, the goods until they are delivered and the price paid. according to that view the carrier is made the seller's agent, to hold the title to the goods and transfer it to the buyer when he pays for the goods. but the better view is that the carrier merely retains a hold on the goods, a lien on behalf of the seller, while title to the goods passes on shipment. effect of the form of a bill of lading.--one cannot speak of title passing or being retained on shipment of goods without referring to bills of lading, for the general rules which have been given must be qualified by this statement, that by means of a bill of lading the title may be at will retained or transferred (if the buyer has authorized a transfer). the proper way to indicate a transfer of title when goods are shipped is to have the buyer named as consignee in the bill of lading. a bill of lading is very much like a promissory note; the carrier promises to deliver the goods to somebody who is called the consignee, and who corresponds to the payee of a note. there is this further feature in a bill of lading: the carrier acknowledges receipt of the goods from the consignor, that is, the shipper, and the carrier promises to deliver them. illustrations.--now, when s. s. pierce company decide to ship goods to a buyer, it may consign them to the buyer or it may consign them to itself; that is, the same person may be consignor and consignee. that is very common in business, in order that the shipper may retain title to the goods until he receives payment. he takes the bill of lading in his own name and then, generally, attaches a draft on the buyer of the goods, and sends the bill of lading and the draft together through a bank. the bank notifies the drawee of the draft, who is the man who has agreed to buy the goods, that the bill of lading with the draft are at the bank, and that the buyer may have the bill of lading when he pays the draft. the buyer pays the draft and gets the bill of lading, and then for the first time does he become the owner of the goods. on the other hand, if the shipper--s. s. pierce company--had consigned the goods directly to the buyer, the buyer would have become the owner of the goods on shipment, provided the buyer had authorized that shipment. the seller cannot, however, by naming a buyer consignee, make the buyer owner of any goods which he has not agreed to receive. so much for appropriation of the goods to the buyer by shipment. in another chapter fuller reference will be made to bills of lading as documents of title and as bank securities. in this connection they are referred to merely as indicating an intention to transfer or retain title as between buyer and seller. importance of delivery in sales of goods.--title to chattel property, it has been said, may pass without delivery. this is true as between the parties, but as against creditors and third persons delivery is necessary. suppose a sells a horse to b and does not deliver the horse, and a afterwards sells the horse to c and does deliver the horse to c. b comes around to c and says, "that is my horse. i paid a the full price." c may say, "i bought him in good faith. i thought it was a's horse. i have got him and i am going to keep him." c may keep him. place of delivery.--certain contractual rights between the buyer and seller are implied from the nature of the bargain of sale. a seller is under an implied obligation not only to transfer title to the buyer, but to deliver possession to him. where must the seller deliver possession? if the contract states the place, the terms of the contract decide that question. if the contract does not expressly state where the place is to be, the place of the seller's residence is the place where the seller is bound to deliver, unless the goods are too heavy for easy transportation, and in that case the place of delivery is the place where the goods are at the time of the bargain. that may be the seller's place of business, and it may not. delivery and payment are concurrent conditions.--concurrently with the seller's duty to deliver possession, the buyer is under a duty to pay the price, unless the contract provides for a period of credit. the delivery and the payment of the price are, in the absence of contrary agreement, concurrent conditions. the seller must offer to deliver if he wants to get a right of action for the price, and the buyer must tender payment if he wants a right of action for the goods. the tender of price and delivery must be at the place where payment and delivery is due. it may be asked, how is the seller to tender the goods at the place delivery is due if that is the seller's place of business and the buyer does not appear? the answer is, that it is in effect a tender for the seller to have the goods in the place where they are to be delivered, he being ready and willing to deliver them. if the buyer does not come there the buyer must, nevertheless, pay the seller. by the seller's readiness to perform, at the place where performance is due, and deliver, if the buyer with his money is at the place where payment is due, there is in effect a tender. right of inspection.--the buyer and seller have certain other implied rights and duties. a right which the buyer always has, in the absence of agreement to the contrary, is a right to inspect the goods, to see that he is getting what he bargained for, before he accepts title and pays the price. he may, however, waive this right of inspection; he may agree to pay the price without seeing what he is getting, and in modern business this is not uncommon. one sort of bargain frequently made contains this term: "cash against bill of lading." that means the buyer is to pay the price of the goods on receiving the bill of lading. the bill of lading will usually reach him before the goods, and, therefore, before he has a chance to inspect; and by the terms of his bargain he has agreed to pay cash against the bill of lading and he must do so. of course, if the goods when received turn out not to be what he bargained for, he has a right to sue for breach of contract or recovery of the price paid. but in the first place, when the bill of lading comes he has to assume that the goods are going to be right and pay for the bill of lading. another case where a right of inspection is waived is where goods are sent c. o. d. you order goods to be sent in that way and the expressman brings them. you say you want to open the package and see if the goods are right. you will find the expressman will not let you. he will say, "no, you must pay for the sealed package," and until you do so, you will have no right to the possession of the goods. if the goods are not all right you have redress by suing the seller, but you must pay your money first. warranties.--another and most important right which the buyer has is the enforcement of warranties. warranties of a chattel may be either express or implied. an express warranty is a promise or an obligation imposed by the law because of a representation which the seller has made in regard to the goods. the simplest form of warranty is where the seller says, "i warrant this horse is sound," or, "i warrant this piano will stay in tune for a year." these warranties are promises and are subject to the same rules as other promises. they are contracts for consideration, the consideration for the promise being in each case the purchase of the goods. but we have warranties which are not based on promises, strictly so called, and yet are express. a tries to sell a horse. he says the horse is perfectly sound, four years old, broken to harness, and has trotted a mile in three minutes. those are in form representations rather than promises; they are assertions of fact, and when a makes them it is possible he does not understand that he is binding himself for the truth of his statements; and yet if they are made as positive statements of fact, the seller is held to warrant the truth of those statements. representations of fact and of opinion.--the great distinction, between warranties by representation and statements in regard to property which do not amount to express warranties, is that between statements of opinion and statements of positive fact. if the buyer said, "i believe the horse can trot a mile in three minutes any day," it is not a warranty; even the statement, "the horse can trot a mile in three minutes" would probably not be a warranty; but the statement, "the horse has trotted a mile in three minutes," is a direct assertion of fact, and the element of opinion does not occur, and therefore that would be a warranty. statements of value do not amount to warranties. those are necessarily to some extent matters of opinion. general statements of good quality do not, ordinarily, amount to warranties. the courts, however, are getting stiffer and stiffer in regard to these matters. it used to be the law that a seller could represent nearly anything he chose in regard to his goods, and not be bound, so long as he did not expressly say, "i warrant," or make a promise in terms in regard to them. that was called the rule of "caveat emptor"--"let the buyer beware"--but this rule is almost wiped out so far as representations of fact are concerned. now, the seller had better beware of what he says, for he may find himself liable as a warrantor. no warranties implied in sales of real estate.--there are certain warranties implied, although the buyer does not bargain for them and although the seller makes no express representations regarding them. in this respect sales of personal property differ entirely from sales of real estate. in the case of real estate you get no warranty but what you bargain for. if you get a deed without words of warranty, and it turns out that the seller had no title, in the absence of fraud you have no redress; you cannot get your money back though you have no title to the land. warranty of title implied in sales of personal property.--in the case of personal property it is otherwise. the first implied warranty that exists in the case of a sale of personalty, unless the contrary is expressly agreed, is the implied warranty of title. the seller impliedly warrants that he has title to the property and will transfer title to the buyer. the only exception to this is where a sale is made by a person in a representative capacity, as by a sheriff or an agent. in that case the person making the sale does not impliedly warrant title. in the case of an agent, however, if the agent was authorized to make the sale, the principal would be liable as an implied warrantor of title; and if the agent was not authorized to make the sale, the agent would be liable as warranting his authority--not as warranting title to the goods, but warranting that he had a right to bind his principal. even in the case of a sale by an agent, therefore, the purchaser gets substantial redress if the title turns out to be defective. it is possible, of course, by express agreement, for a buyer to buy and a seller to sell merely such title as the seller may have; but there must be an express agreement, or very special circumstances, indicating that such was the intention of the parties, in order to induce a court to give this construction to a bargain. implied warranty of quality in sales by description.--not only are there implied warranties of title, but there are also implied warranties in regard to the quality of goods. the fundamental principle at the bottom of implied warranty of quality of goods is this: if the buyer justifiably relies on the seller's skill or judgment to select proper goods, then the seller is liable if he does not deliver proper goods. we may distinguish in regard to implied warranties of quality, sales of specific goods--that is, sales of a particular thing--and sales of goods by description. in the case of sales by description there is always an implied warranty that the buyer shall have not only goods which answer that description, but merchantable goods which answer that description. suppose a seller contracts to sell so many hogsheads of manila sugar. the law formerly was that the seller could tender to the buyer, in fulfillment of that contract, the worst article that he could find which bore the name of manila sugar. the law at present is that the seller must furnish to the buyer merchantable manila sugar; that is, manila sugar of average and salable quality. it does not have to be the best, but it must be ordinarily salable as merchantable manila sugar. implied warranty in sales of specified goods.--contrast with that case a contract to sell a specific identified lot of manila sugar before the buyer and seller. is the buyer bound to take without objection that specific lot, whether or not it turns out to be merchantable? or suppose you go to a shop where they sell bicycles and buy a bicycle; you pick out a specific bicycle, and it turns out that, owing to defects in manufacture, it is not good for anything. it breaks down the first time you ride it. may the seller say, "you looked at what we had in stock and this is the machine you agreed to buy"? it is in this class of cases that the question of justifiable reliance by the buyer on the seller's skill and judgment becomes important, and in determining whether the buyer justifiably relied on the seller's skill and judgment several things must be considered. inspection as affecting implied warranty.--was the defect open to inspection and was there opportunity to inspect the goods? if there was, there is less reason to suppose that the buyer was relying on the seller's skill and judgment than if the defect was latent and not open to inspection. implied warranty where the seller is a manufacturer.--what was the nature of the seller's business? was he a manufacturer of the goods in question? the strictest rules of implied warranty of quality are applied against manufacturers, and this is, you will see, reasonable, because the manufacturer ought to know about the goods and the buyer naturally relies on the manufacturer, as knowing about the character of the goods, to give goods of proper quality. therefore, unless the buyer pretty clearly assumes the risk himself of picking out what is satisfactory to himself, a seller who is a manufacturer will be held to warrant the merchantable quality of the goods which he makes and sells. implied warranty where the seller is a dealer.--the next grade below a manufacturer is a dealer in that sort of goods. he cannot have the same knowledge as a manufacturer, but still, a dealer in goods of a particular kind is much more competent to judge of their quality than an ordinary buyer and therefore a dealer also, unless there is special reason to suppose the buyer did not rely on his own judgment, will be held to warrant that the goods are merchantable. implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose.--sometimes there is a warranty of still greater scope than a warranty of merchantability; that is, a warranty of fitness for a particular purpose. a buyer agrees to buy glue of a manufacturer. the buyer is, as the glue manufacturer knows, a furniture manufacturer. the glue manufacturer sells the buyer glue which is merchantable glue, but it not good furniture glue, as furniture glue must be of unusual tenacity. the seller is liable here under an implied warranty. he knew that furniture glue was wanted. he was a glue manufacturer, and he ought to have understood that the buyer was looking to him to furnish glue of a sort that would not only be salable as glue but would fulfill the purpose which the buyer had in mind when he made the purchase. known, described and definite articles.--on the other hand, if the buyer orders what is called a known, described and definite article, he takes upon himself the burden of determining whether the thing which he buys will fulfill his purpose or not. for instance, a buyer in missouri ordered of a boiler manufacturer two boilers selected from the catalogue of the boiler manufacturer, describing them by number. the boilers were good boilers, under ordinary circumstances, but the amount of mud in the missouri river, on the banks of which the boilers were to be used, was so great that they could not be successfully used there. the buyer had no redress against the seller in that case. he had taken upon himself to specify the particular kind of boilers he wanted; he got them and they were merchantable boilers. the only trouble was that they were not fit for use in the place where the buyer was intending to use them. if the buyer had simply ordered boilers for a factory on the missouri river, the result might well have been the other way, for that would have put the duty on the seller to furnish something that was suitable for that purpose. reliance on the seller is the essential element.--the great thing to remember throughout the whole subject is that the implied warranty of quality depends on the justifiable reliance of the buyer on the seller's skill. if the goods are not merchantable under circumstances where the buyer does rely, he can recover from the seller, even though the seller was not guilty of negligence. a warranty is not dependent on negligence of the seller. remedies for breach of warranty.--one of the remedies, allowed in many but not all states, for breach of warranty, is to return the goods and demand the purchase money back; but that is only one remedy. another remedy, which is universally allowed, is to sue for whatever damage the breach of warranty may have caused, and one or two cases will show how serious these damages may be. a seller sells a pair of sheep to a buyer with a warranty, express or implied, of their soundness. they have an infectious disease, and when put with a large flock of the buyer's sheep they infect the whole flock, and the damage is the loss of the whole flock. another actual case was based on an implied warranty of the quality of rags sold to a paper manufacturer. the rags came from turkey and were infected with smallpox. they gave smallpox to the operatives in the buyer's mill, and the mill had to be closed down, which caused great loss to the manufacturer. all that loss can be recovered from the seller of the rags, even though he was not negligent in bringing the result about. only original buyer can recover on a warranty.--nobody, however, can recover on a warranty except the original buyer. for instance, the operatives who caught smallpox could not sue the seller unless the seller was negligent. if he had been careless or negligent in disregarding their safety, they could sue him in an action of tort, though they had no contractual relation with him. and if the buyer resells the goods the purchaser from him cannot sue on a warranty given to the original buyer. effect of accepting defective goods.--another matter that has caused considerable litigation in regard to warranty and the obligation of the seller in regard to the quality of goods, is the effect of acceptance by the buyer of goods which are offered to him. suppose a certain quantity of manila sugar is offered to one who has agreed to buy, and he takes from the seller that quantity of sugar, but finds it is not of as good quality as it ought to have been. the buyer subsequently objects, but the seller says, "you should have objected to that at the outset and refused to take it. your taking it is an assent or acceptance of it as a fulfillment of the contract, and any right you may have had is now gone." it is settled law that if the defect was not observable with reasonable care, the buyer does not lose any right by taking the goods, provided he gave prompt notice of the defect as soon as it was discovered. further, even though at the time of delivery the buyer observed the defect or might have observed it, it is the law of most but by no means all states, that taking the goods does not necessarily indicate assent to receive them as full satisfaction of the seller's obligation. the buyer may receive the defective goods as full satisfaction, but the mere fact of taking them does not prove it. it is advisable, however, for the buyer as soon as he sees the defect to protest against it. he may in most states safely take the goods if he says in taking them, "these goods are defective and i do not take them in full satisfaction;" or, if he does not discover the defect immediately on taking the goods, he ought to give notice as soon as he does discover that the goods are defective, and state that, though he proposes to keep them, he does so subject to a claim for their defective quality. seller's rights where buyer fails to accept goods.--now the seller has some rights, also, that should be referred to. in the first place, if the buyer refuses to take title to the goods when they are tendered to him, the seller has a right to recover damages. the amount of damages will be the difference between the value of the goods which the seller still retains, because the buyer will not take them, and the contract price which was promised. if the goods are worth as much as the price promised for them, the seller's damages will be only nominal, for he still has the goods and may sell them to somebody else for as good a price as was stipulated in the original bargain. seller may recover price where title has passed.--if the title to the goods has passed, the seller may sue for the price. this right to the price is secured by a lien on the goods as long as the seller retains possession of them. if the seller has parted with possession and with title, he cannot get the goods back except in one narrow class of cases. stoppage in transit.--if the goods are in the hands of a carrier, or other intermediary between the seller and buyer, even though title passed on delivery to the carrier, the seller may stop the goods in transit if the buyer becomes insolvent before they are actually delivered to the buyer. the right is exercised by notifying the carrier to hold the goods for the shipper since the buyer has become insolvent. the right of lien and of stoppage in transit is given the seller to enable him to secure the price, which is the thing of interest to him in the contract. legal and equitable titles.--a legal title is a full right of ownership against everybody. the legal owner can take his goods wherever he finds them. an equitable title is a right to have the benefit of the goods or property, and, also, it frequently involves a right to have the legal title transferred to the equitable owner, making him full legal owner. the peculiar feature of an equitable title, however, is that it is good only against the particular person who, as the phrase goes, is subject to the equity, and also against any person who has acquired the property, either without giving value or with knowledge of the equity. to put the matter conversely, an equitable title is not good against a purchaser for value without notice, or, in the language of the negotiable instruments law, against a holder in due course. fraudulent sales.--this principle is important in other branches of the law besides that governing negotiable instruments. the most common case of equitable rights in sales arises in fraudulent sales. where a sale is induced by fraud of the buyer, he gets the legal title to the goods, but the seller has an equitable title or right to get the goods back. let us see how this works out. the buyer procures goods by fraud and he sells them to a. now, the defrauded seller cannot get the goods back from a if a paid value for them in good faith. if a did not pay value in good faith, then the defrauded seller may get the goods from him or anybody who stands in the same position. if the defrauded seller can reach the goods before they have left the hands of the fraudulent person, he may replevy them or he may seize them if that is possible. it is not worth while to go into the various kinds of fraud that may be practiced in the sale of goods, but there is one specific kind that comes up very commonly which is worth mentioning; that is, buying goods with an intention not to pay for them. generally, in order to create a fraudulent sale, it is necessary that the fraudulent person shall have made some misrepresentation in words, but here is a case where, though it may be said there is a misrepresentation, it is not put in words. it may be said there is a misrepresentation, for it is fair to say that every buyer when he buys goods not only promises to pay but represents that his intention is to pay for the goods, and perhaps that his financial condition is not so hopeless as to make the expectation utterly impossible of fulfillment. if the situation actually was that the buyer either had a positive intention not to pay, or was so hopelessly insolvent that any reasonable person would know he could not pay for the goods, the transaction is fraudulent; the seller still retains an equity, and may reclaim the goods from the buyer who has acquired a legal title or from any other person except a bona fide purchaser. (a draft of a statute to punish the making or use of false statements to obtain property or credit, jointly prepared by the general counsel of the american bankers association and counsel for the national association of credit men, has been enacted in the form recommended, or with more or less modification, in a majority of the states. this statute provides, in substance, that "any person who shall knowingly make or cause to be made any false statement in writing, with intent that it shall be relied upon, respecting the financial condition, or means or ability to pay, of himself, or any other person, for the purpose of procuring in any form whatsoever, either the delivery of personal property, payment of cash, making of a loan, extension of credit, etc., for the benefit of either himself or of such other person, shall be guilty of a felony, and punishable, etc.") this question often arises in bankruptcy: suppose the buyer goes bankrupt and the goods come into the hands of the buyer's trustee in bankruptcy. the trustee in bankruptcy is in legal effect, in such a case, the same person as the bankrupt; he is not a bona fide purchaser from him, and thus the seller may reclaim the goods from the trustee in bankruptcy just as he might from the bankrupt. in the case supposed the seller has been fraudulently induced to part with his title and may reclaim it. a case may be supposed, however, where the seller fraudulently retains his title, and here the buyer's creditors may seize the goods as if the title were in the buyer. thus it is a fraud to make a conditional sale of goods to a person who intends, and who is understood to intend, to sell the goods again. the reason why it is a fraud is because it is inconsistent on the part of the wholesaler to say, "i retain title to the goods until paid for, yet i give them to you, knowing that you are going to put them in your stock of trade." destruction of goods sold.--the question sometimes arises as to the effect of the destruction of the goods sold or contracted to be sold. the sales act in sections and governs this: section . ( ) where the parties purport to sell specific goods, and the goods without the knowledge of the seller have wholly perished at the time when the agreement is made, the agreement is void. ( ) where the parties purport to sell specific goods, and the goods without the knowledge of the seller have perished in part or have wholly or in a material part so deteriorated in quality as to be substantially changed in character, the buyer may at his option treat the sale: (a) as avoided, or (b) as transferring the property in all of the existing goods or in so much thereof as have not deteriorated, and as binding the buyer to pay the full agreed price if the sale was indivisible, or to pay the agreed price for the goods in which the property passes if the sale was divisible. sec. ( ) where there is a contract to sell specific goods, and subsequently, but before the risk passes to the buyer, without any fault on the part of the seller or the buyer, the goods wholly perish, the contract is thereby avoided. ( ) where there is a contract to sell specific goods, and subsequently, but before the risk passes to the buyer, without any fault of the seller or the buyer, part of the goods perish or the whole or a material part of the goods so deteriorate in quality as to be substantially changed in character, the buyer may, at his option treat the contract: (a) as avoided, or (b) as binding the seller to transfer the property in all of the existing goods or in so much thereof as have not deteriorated, and as binding the buyer to pay the full agreed price if the contract was indivisible, or to pay the agreed price for so much of the goods as the seller, by the buyer's option, is bound to transfer if the contract is divisible. conditional sales.--certain transactions in which personal property is held as security, which are somewhat analogous to mortgages and which are very common, may now be referred to. they may be classed thus: conditional sales, consignments, leases and chattel mortgages. a conditional sale, as that term is commonly used, is a transfer of the possession of personal property under an agreement to sell, the seller expressly retaining the title. here we have possession and title divided. if it were not for the express agreement that title should remain in the seller, the delivery of the goods to the buyer, with his agreement to pay for them, would indicate a transfer of title to the buyer. the purpose of the seller in making a conditional sale is to retain security for the price which the buyer cannot pay all at once. conditional sales are most common in regard to furniture and machinery of various kinds. creditors of the buyer naturally suppose that the goods in his possession are his, and it is to avoid deception, or possible deception, that most states require that the conditional sale be recorded, so that creditors and everybody else may have notice that, although the buyer seems to be owner of this property, he is not so in reality. but, in massachusetts, record is not required, and conditional sales, other than those of household furniture, need not even be in writing. the seller is secured by this sort of bargain in several ways. if the buyer does not pay the price when it is due, the seller may take the goods back. they are his goods and therefore he may reclaim them. or the seller may conclude that it is better to sue for the price, and may decide to let the buyer keep the goods and himself collect a judgment for the price by levying on any property the buyer may have, including that which was conditionally bought. even though the buyer has paid a large part of the price of the goods, the seller may, nevertheless, reclaim the goods. the seller's course will be dictated largely by how much of the price has been paid. if a large part has been paid, the seller will very likely prefer to reclaim the goods unless they are household furniture. why, it may be asked, does a buyer enter into a conditional sale, which is rather a poor bargain as far as he is concerned? the reason, of course, is that he cannot pay cash and he wants the use of the goods at once, and the conditional sale enables him to get them. by statute, in some jurisdictions, the conditional buyer is protected after he has paid a considerable portion of the price; either by extending the time within which he may pay the balance due, or by requiring a sale of the goods and the return to the buyer of any surplus. consignment.--how does a consignment differ from a conditional sale? when goods are sent or consigned it means that the person to whom they are sent is agent for the person who sends them. the consignment is like the conditional sale in this respect, that the person who has possession of the goods has not the title. the consignment differs vitally from a conditional sale in this respect, however, that the consignee is not a debtor for the price. if the consignee sells the goods, then he, of course, must turn over the price to the consignor less such commission as he takes, or if the transaction was not on commission, then the consignee must pay to the consignor the price it was bargained the consignor should receive. but until the goods are resold they remain the consignor's and at his risk. if goods conditionally sold are destroyed, the conditional buyer must, nevertheless, pay for them. they are at his risk and he is an absolute debtor for the price; but the consignee merely holds the goods as agent until a purchase takes place. leases of chattels.--sometimes goods are leased. here, again, we have the same point of similarity, that the person who has possession of the goods is not the owner. the lessee, like a consignee, is not a debtor for the price; he is a debtor for rent, but he is not a debtor for the price of the goods. often leases contain an option to purchase, and a lease with an option to purchase is used by piano dealers and others as an alternative mode of dealing with customers unable to pay cash, instead of a conditional sale; but it is not the same thing, for if a piano were destroyed without fault of either party after it had been leased with an option to purchase, the loss would be on the seller. if the option to pay had been exercised, of course, the loss would be on the buyer. chattel mortgages.--the goods are here owned originally by the mortgagor, and they ordinarily remain in his possession after he has transferred them by the mortgage. the fundamental principles governing chattel mortgages are the same as those which govern mortgages of real estate. chattel mortgages must be in writing and recorded, or the mortgaged property must be delivered to the mortgagee; otherwise they are invalid against the creditors or trustee in bankruptcy of the mortgagor; that is, one may mortgage his chattels, either by delivering them to the mortgagee or by making a writing and having that recorded. even without record or delivery it is good between the parties, but it is not good in case of bankruptcy against the trustee in bankruptcy of the mortgagor, nor is it good against attaching creditors if there is no bankruptcy. mortgages of future goods.--an agreement is sometimes made to make a mortgage of goods which do not at the time exist, or are not at the time defined. this is especially common in regard to a stock of goods. a wants to borrow money on his stock of goods in his shop. his stock may be worth $ , and a has not capital enough to get along without mortgaging it. of course, he can mortgage the existing stock of goods without difficulty, but the trouble is he wants to keep on doing business, and sell in regular course of business the mortgaged stock of goods. that, too, would be easy enough if the mortgagee were willing to agree to it, but the mortgagee is not willing to agree unless equal security is substituted for any goods that are sold. what they would like to provide is that the mortgagor shall have power to sell the existing goods if he chooses in the ordinary course of business, provided he always keeps a stock of goods on hand equal to that on hand at the time the mortgage was made, the idea being that as one thing is released from the lien of the mortgage other things, of at least equal value, shall replace it. it is not an unreasonable transaction, from a business standpoint, but the law generally does not allow it validity except to this extent. it is valid as between the parties so far as to give the mortgagee a power at any time to take possession, and when he does take possession the mortgage is valid as to the goods of which he takes possession against creditors or anybody else. the mortgagee may thus take possession right up to the time of the mortgagor's bankruptcy, or at any time prior to actual seizure of the stock of goods on an attachment. this gives the mortgagee some security if the mortgagor will be good enough to give the mortgagee a hint when it is wise for the mortgagee to take possession, because, as the mortgagee can take possession just before bankruptcy or just before an attachment, the mortgagee will be protected. but, of course, there is a chance that the mortgagee may not get the goods, and therefore this form of security, in most states, is not now advised, although it has been much attempted in the past. in some states, however, such a mortgage gives a right against goods afterwards acquired, which is superior to that of attaching creditors or of a trustee in bankruptcy, even though the mortgagee does not take possession. gifts.--a gift is the immediate voluntary transfer of personal property. to make a valid gift, therefore, it must be voluntary, gratuitous, and absolute. as has been explained, a gift is distinguished from a sale or a contract to sell by the fact that it is gratuitous. gifts are usually divided into two classes: gifts "inter vivos" and gifts "causa mortis." there is no distinction between these two kinds of gifts, so far as the necessity of the intent to deliver title and delivery of the property are concerned, but the distinction lies in the fact that in gifts "causa mortis," the change in title is defeasible upon certain conditions. the ordinary gift "inter vivos," "between living people" is irrevocable when completed. the gift "causa mortis," that is, one made by a person in immediate apprehension of death, is always subject to the condition that if the person recovers, the title to the property, which he has given away, reverts to him. for a, who is in his last illness, to say to b, who is sitting near his bedside, "i wish you to have my gold watch when i am gone, but my brother is wearing it now in europe" would not be a gift "causa mortis." there is no delivery. it would not pass title, upon his death, to his friend because in order to dispose of property after one is dead, a will is necessary. even between the parties gifts are invalid unless accompanied by delivery, or made by deed under seal. the transaction without delivery or deed is, in effect, a promise to give, and there being no consideration the promisor may subsequently refuse to keep his promise. if a savings-bank book, a bond, a stock certificate, a life-insurance policy, a note or check of a third person (but not one made by the giver), or any chattel property is delivered to the donee, the gift is binding and irrevocable; but otherwise the donee gets absolutely nothing and the donor's executor is entitled to the property attempted to be disposed of by gift, and must treat it as part of the assets of the estate. illustration.--a recent case in new jersey shows clearly the effects of the application of the rules just described. in bailey v. orange memorial hospital, atl. , the facts were that the testatrix died about june , , leaving a will, which had been duly probated, and under which the complainants had qualified as executors. among the papers, which the executors found in the testatrix's safe deposit box after her death, was a certificate made in her name for fifty shares of the capital stock of the united n. j. railroad and canal co., bearing the following indorsement, "for value received i hereby assign and transfer unto the orange memorial hospital fifty shares of the capital stock represented by the within certificate and do hereby irrevocably constitute and appoint ................ attorney to transfer the said stock on the books of the within named corporation with full power of substitution in the premises. mary campfield. "dated oct. , . "witnessed by james c. macdonald." in the same envelope containing this certificate the executors also found the following letter in the handwriting of mrs. campfield: "to my executors: the accompanying certificate of fifty shares of the united, etc. co. is my gift to the orange memorial hospital for a bed to be called the 'mahlon campfield bed.' the stock has been retained since its date of transfer because i desire to be benefited by the dividends thereon as long as i live. mary campfield. "dated oct. , ." in this box mrs. campfield kept her bonds and mortgages, stock certificates, and other valuable papers relating to her own property and to the estate of her husband, of which she was executrix. there were two sets of keys to the box, one of which was in mrs. campfield's possession, and the other in the possession of one of her executors, who assisted her for some time in the management of her affairs. shortly before the indorsement on the certificate was made, and the letter written, mrs. campfield requested mr. everett, the executor, to take the stock certificate from her box and deliver it to her attorney, stating that she would let her attorney know in a few days what to do about it. a few days later the attorney handed mr. everett an envelope containing the stock certificate, and told him there was a letter with it. mr. everett saw the certificate but did not see the letter, and he placed the envelope containing the certificate in the safe deposit box. the attorney had sealed the envelope after showing him the certificate. after mr. everett had told mrs. campfield what had been done, she said, "well, that is for the hospital and that settles it," and she added: "it is in an envelope, as you probably saw, and addressed to my executors, and they will find a letter inside telling them what to do with it." after this, mrs. campfield continued to receive the dividends paid on these shares, and there is some evidence to indicate that she had access to the safe deposit box and examined its contents during the winter preceding her death. the court, in its opinion, said: "i do not think there can be any doubt of mrs. campfield's donative intention regarding these shares of stock, and it is equally clear that she never consummated that intention to make the gift, by the actual delivery of the stock to the hospital, or to any one as trustee for it; and it also appears that she intended the gift should be effective only after her death. she expressly retained the ownership and dominion over the stock for the purpose, at least, of collecting and enjoying the dividends paid thereon. * * * the gift of the stock not having been completed by delivery, or by the relinquishment of control over the certificate representing it, the stock must be declared to be an asset of the estate." chapter ix real property distinction between the law governing sales of real and personal property.--the main distinction between the law governing real and personal property is the increased formality necessary in transactions governing real estate. contracts for the sale of real estate must be in writing and actual conveyances of an interest in land must not only be in writing, but, except where seals have been abolished by statute, must be executed under seal. in order to make the transaction valid against third persons, record in the registry of deeds in the county where the land is situated is also requisite. unless a contract for the sale of real estate is recorded, a subsequent conveyance to a purchaser, for value and without notice, will destroy the right of the buyer under the first contract to get the land, though he will still have an action for damages against the seller. so, in many jurisdictions, creditors of the man contracting to sell may by attaching the land as the seller's property satisfy their claims from it to the detriment of the buyer's right. therefore, an actual conveyance of real estate must be recorded in order to protect the grantee. as a pre-requisite for record it is generally required that contracts and deeds of real estate shall be acknowledged before a notary public or other official authorized by law. duties of buyer and seller under contract to convey real estate.--the primary duty of the seller in a contract to convey real estate is to transfer a good title. it is important for the buyer to determine before the time for performance whether the seller's title is good in order to determine whether he himself will accept the deed and pay the price. accordingly, the buyer has the title examined by search in the registry of deeds. if the search discloses that the seller's title is defective the buyer does not on that account necessarily have a right to rescind the contract. the defect of title may be removed before the time of performance, and if the nature of the defect is such that this is possible, the buyer can only give notice of the defect and request its removal. if the title of the seller is so defective that it cannot be cured, or if the seller manifests by his conduct an intent to repudiate the contract, as by selling the land to another, the buyer need not wait for the time for performance, but may at once give notice that he rescinds the contract. unless the seller has expressly contracted to convey by warranty deed, his obligation is generally satisfied by a quit claim deed. it is well, therefore, for a purchaser, when he contracts to purchase a piece of real property, to insert in the contract a clause to the effect that the seller agrees to convey by a sufficient warranty deed. the seller is also bound not to commit waste on the premises between the time of the contract and the time of performance. the rule in regard to accidental injury is stated hereafter, but as to intentional or negligent injury of the premises, the law is clear that such an injury is a breach of duty by the seller. the buyer's duty is to pay the price according to the terms of the contract. the obligations of the seller to convey, and of the buyer to buy, are concurrent, unless the contract expressly provides the contrary; that is, the buyer in order to acquire a right against the seller must tender payment, as he demands a deed; and the seller in order to acquire a right against the buyer must tender a proper deed when demanding payment. the obligation of either party to tender may, however, be excused by circumstances showing that tender would be useless. thus, if the buyer is insolvent, the seller need not tender a deed, and if the buyer has repudiated the contract or committed waste to a material extent, or conveyed the premises to a third person, the buyer need not tender payment, in order to acquire a right of action. but if there is any doubt at all, the purchaser or the seller, as the case may be, should make a tender, so as to preserve his legal rights. dower and curtesy.--by the common law a wife on her marriage acquired a right in her husband's land, which, though not vesting until his death, encumbered the title immediately. on his death she became entitled to a life estate in a one-third interest of all the lands of which he had been possessed since the date of their marriage. accordingly, where the common law rule of dower still prevails, a husband cannot give an unencumbered title to real estate unless his wife joins in the conveyance. similarly a husband was entitled at common law to a life interest in the lands of his deceased wife if they had had a child born alive. this was called the estate by curtesy. its extent, it will be observed, is not the same as that of dower. the husband's life interest extended to all the lands of the wife, but on the other hand, it did not arise at all unless there was a child born alive; whereas the wife's dower right arose immediately on marriage. the rules of dower and curtesy have been changed by statute to a greater or less extent in most states, but it is still almost universally important that a wife should join in her husband's conveyance of real estate, and that a husband should join in a wife's conveyance of her real estate. default in performance.--the law regards more leniently a default in time in carrying out contracts for the sale of real estate than it does a similar default in the sale of personal property. in sales of personal property, especially if it is of a character which rapidly fluctuates in value, time is said to be "of the essence;" that is, the failure of either party to perform at or about the agreed day is fatal to his rights to enforce the contract; but in the case of real estate it is generally held that time is not of the essence of the contract unless it is either expressly so provided in the contract, or the circumstances of the case are such as to show that time was a matter of vital importance. destruction of premises.--where personal property, which the owner has contracted to sell, is destroyed, the loss is the seller's provided the title is still in him, and the buyer has committed no default; but in most jurisdictions, if real estate is similarly destroyed, the buyer must nevertheless pay the price. in the absence of special provisions in a contract of sale, if a house on the premises sold has burned between the time of the contract and the time for its performance, without fault of the seller, the seller can compel the buyer to accept a deed of the land without the house and pay the full price. this rule has been much criticized, and it is not universally in force; for example, it is not the law of massachusetts. in some other states the loss will not fall upon the buyer unless possession of the premises has been delivered to him under the contract, but in new york, and probably a majority of the states, even though the seller still has possession, as well as title, the risk of accidental loss rests upon the buyer. where risk of destruction of the premises is thrown on the buyer, immediately after he has made a contract to purchase, it is of obvious importance that he should immediately insure the premises. the insurance of the seller, unless transferred to the buyer at that time with the company's assent, will not protect the buyer. insurance is a contract of personal indemnity, and the seller's insurance only protects the seller's interest. the result is that if the premises are destroyed, the insurance company will not be obliged to pay the seller his insurance, since the seller, under the contract of sale, can recover from the buyer; and even if the insurance were paid to the seller, the buyer could not claim the benefit of it. specific performance.--in addition to the ordinary remedy for a breach of contract, namely an action at law for damages, another remedy, that of specific performance, is permitted in the case of contracts for the sale of land; that is, the court will actually compel one who has contracted to sell land to make a conveyance thereof on receiving the agreed price, and will similarly compel one who has contracted to buy to pay the agreed price on receiving a deed of the premises. specific performance of such contracts is granted on the theory that money damages are an inadequate remedy, and that the nature of the situation is such that it is possible to compel the actual performance of the contract. in contracts for the sale of personal property, damages are generally considered adequate, but contracts for the sale of a painting or a race-horse would be specifically enforced. sometimes the seller is unable fully to perform his agreed contract. he may not be able to give a title free from encumbrances, or he may have committed waste on the premises. in such a case, though the buyer need not carry out the contract unless he wishes, he can if he chooses get a conveyance decreed to him and an allowance deducted from the price commensurate to the injury caused by the encumbrance or waste. specific performance will be granted not only against the seller, but if the seller in violation of his contract has conveyed the land to a third person who had notice of the contract or who did not give value in exchange for the land, the court will compel the grantee of the premises to convey them to the person who had the original contract to buy. if, however, one who has agreed to sell the premises actually sells and conveys them to another who is a purchaser for value without notice of the prior contract, such a purchaser gets an indefeasible title, and the person having the prior contract to buy must resort, for his only relief, to an action for damages against the seller. for this reason it is important to record a contract to buy or sell. this record operates as notice to all the world, and no purchaser subsequent to the record will have the rights of a purchaser for value without notice. vendor's lien.--in some states a seller of land who has not been paid the price is entitled to what is called a vendor's lien on the land. this enables him to compel a sale of the property to satisfy his claim for the purchase money unless the land has been conveyed, before proceedings are brought to enforce the lien, to a purchaser for value without notice that the original vendor is still unpaid. in many states, however, the seller has no vendor's lien and must take a mortgage back for any unpaid portion of the purchase price if he desires security for its payment. definition of mortgage.--a mortgage is a transfer of property to a creditor to secure a debt. unless there is a debt there can be no mortgage, and the original idea of a mortgage, still preserved in the forms of conveyance in many states, is that the mortgagor or debtor transfers the title to the mortgagee or creditor. in popular understanding the mortgagor owns the mortgaged premises but the mortgagee will take or sell them if the debt is in default. the theory of the common law, however, was that the mortgagee became the owner of the premises as soon as the mortgage was made, but that the mortgagor was entitled to re-acquire the ownership by payment of the debt at maturity. indeed, early mortgages were often made by two separate instruments: ( ) an absolute deed of conveyance to the mortgagee, and ( ) an instrument called a defeasance which provided that on payment of the amount of the debt, on a given day, the property should revest in the mortgagor. modern american mortgages.--at the present day in many jurisdictions a mortgage still remains, both in the form of the instrument and in the legal conception of the rights of the parties fundamentally, the same as under the early doctrines just outlined. in other jurisdictions, of which new york may be taken as a typical state, the theory is no longer that the mortgagee has title to the property, but that he has only a lien on it, which he may enforce if the debt is not paid. the difference in actual results under the two theories, however, is less than might be supposed. where the mortgagee is still regarded as having the title, his power to make use of that title is limited so that he can only make use of it for the purpose of securing payment of what is due him. on the other hand where the mortgagee is regarded as having only a lien, the lien is a legal right against the real estate which enables the creditor to enforce his claim against it in practically the same way which he would do were he the owner of the real estate. covenants and stipulations.--a mortgage of real estate ordinarily contains the same covenants of warranty as a warranty deed of real estate. where a mortgage still has its common law effect of transferring title to the mortgagee, it is essential that the mortgage should contain a provision that until default the mortgagor shall be entitled to the possession of the premises. covenants in regard to the payment of taxes by the mortgagor and the keeping of the premises insured for a certain amount, are usual and important provisions. there is also commonly contained in a mortgage a power of sale; that is an authority or agency given to the mortgagee to sell the premises free of the mortgagor's right of redemption in case default of payment is made, or in case such default continues for a certain specified time. in all states printed forms of mortgages are ordinarily used. these forms are prepared with care to suit the requirements of local law; and if you are sure that the printed form is prepared and sold for use in the state where the mortgaged land is situated, you may feel satisfied that the terms of the instrument are suitable to protect the rights of both parties. execution and record of mortgage.--a mortgage of real estate must everywhere be executed with the same formality that is necessary for an ordinary deed of conveyance. different forms are in use in different states, and it is always desirable to use the form of mortgage customary in the state where the land lies. it is important to ascertain whether a seal is necessary in that state, and the instrument must ordinarily be acknowledged before a notary public having a seal, or before a commissioner of deeds for the state in which the land lies. there is in every state a recording act by virtue of which unrecorded mortgages are made invalid against subsequent purchasers and sometimes against attaching creditors. though an unrecorded mortgage is, as between the parties, as effective as if recorded, it is of vital importance promptly to record every mortgage in the registry of deeds in the county where the land lies. special cases.--where a mortgage is executed by an agent or by a corporation, it is essential that the agent or corporate officer have authority to act. in the case of a corporation it is necessary both that the corporation have power to make the mortgage in question and also that the particular officer or officers who attempt to exercise the power are authorized so to do. the principles here involved, however, are not different from those generally governing the acts of agents and corporations. the same may be said in regard to mortgages by husband or wife, by a partnership, or by trustees. in the case of mortgages executed by any such person it is necessary to take special precautions. a mortgage by husband or wife should generally be also executed by the other. a mortgage by a partnership should be executed in the same form in which the title is held by the partnership, and if the title is held by less than all the partners, it is desirable that the other partners should express their assent to the transaction either in the mortgage itself, or in a separate instrument executed with the same formality. interest in property.--any kind of interest in real estate may be mortgaged and mortgages of property, not yet acquired by the mortgagor, have generally been held to attach to the property when acquired by the mortgagor, and then to give the mortgagee as full a right as if the mortgagor had owned the premises at the time he purported to mortgage them. other particulars.--the description of land in a mortgage should have the same exactness as is necessary in a deed. unlike deeds, mortgages ordinarily state their consideration and must of course state the indebtedness which they are given to secure. a mortgage may be given to secure a past debt if the mortgagor, when he makes the mortgage, is solvent. if he is then insolvent, to give such a mortgage would be a preference, which is an act of bankruptcy, and subject the mortgagor to possible bankruptcy proceedings. if the mortgagee in such a case had reasonable cause to believe that the mortgagor was insolvent, the mortgage could also be set aside by a trustee in bankruptcy. equity of redemption.--by the terms of the mortgage the mortgagor's right is ordinarily made dependent on payment of the debt on a fixed day, or of installments on fixed days. a day thus fixed in the mortgage is sometimes called the "law day." according to the terms of the instrument the only way in which the mortgagor can be revested with title to the property is by complying with the express terms of the mortgage and paying the debt on the law day. the result of this provision, if enforced, would be that if the debt is not paid exactly when it is due, the mortgagee remains the absolute owner of the mortgaged premises. courts of equity, however, long ago limited the mortgagee's right, holding that the real object of the transaction is to secure a debt, and that if the mortgagee obtains his debt and interest he ought to be satisfied. accordingly if the mortgagor was in default in the payment of the debt, he was allowed to redeem the property by payment of the debt and interest until the time of tender. if the mortgagee refused to accept his debt and interest, the mortgagor could bring a suit in equity to redeem the property and the court would order the reconveyance to him of the property on payment of the debt. because of this right on the part of the mortgagor, his interest in the property came to be called an equity of redemption, and it is often so called at the present day. the position taken by courts of equity, permitting redemption, might work a hardship on the mortgagee because he could never feel sure of his title to the property, however long the debt might remain unpaid. this difficulty was met by allowing the mortgagee to bring a suit to foreclose the debtor's right of redemption. we speak of foreclosing a mortgage, but, strictly, it is the debtor's right to redeem which is foreclosed. when such a suit of foreclosure was brought equity would fix a time within which the debtor might redeem the premises by paying the debt and interest, and then the decree provided that if the debtor failed to pay within the named period, his right of redemption should be forever foreclosed. at the present time there are in practically all jurisdictions statutory rules, in regard to the foreclosure of mortgages, which we shall presently describe, but it is important to remember the fundamental nature of the mortgage transaction, and the original remedies of redemption and foreclosure. a reconveyance is not necessary on payment of the mortgage.--if a mortgage is regarded as a mere lien to secure a debt, it is obvious that a payment of the debt discharges the lien, and the title already vested in the mortgagor becomes free from any incumbrance. on the theory of the common law, though the title passed to the mortgagee, it was subject to a condition subsequent which would revest the title in the mortgagor if payment of the debt was made at maturity. by mere operation of law, therefore, payment of the mortgage when due revested title in the mortgagor without reconveyance. after a default, however, a subsequent payment is not strictly a performance of the condition upon which the mortgaged deed provided that title should revest. accordingly a reconveyance was necessary in such a case at common law, but at the present day it is generally not requisite even in case of payment after default. the mortgagor is liable as a debtor.--the mortgagor is bound as a debtor ordinarily by a bond or promissory note in which he expressly agrees to pay the amount of his debt. it is perfectly possible that the debt secured by the mortgage should not be represented by such an instrument, but should rest merely in oral agreement or should be contained in a covenant in the mortgage deed itself, but it is usual and desirable to have a separate obligation. the fact that the debtor has given the mortgage does not in any way limit the rights of the mortgagee as an ordinary creditor. he may sue on the mortgage debt when it is due, in the same manner as if there were no mortgage. it is his option whether he will foreclose the mortgage, as a means of collecting his claim, or whether he will get judgment on the debt, and seek to collect that judgment in the same way that an ordinary judgment creditor would. this rule is changed by statute in california, and one or two other states, where by statute the mortgagee is required to realize from the mortgaged property what he can before seeking a personal judgment against the mortgagor. in many jurisdictions the creditor may, in a single proceeding, obtain foreclosure of the mortgagor's rights by sale of the property, and a personal judgment against the mortgagor for any deficiency which the proceeds of the property may leave. this is called a deficiency judgment. rights of mortgagor and mortgagee in mortgaged land.--even though the mortgagor is regarded by the law as having no longer the legal title to the premises, but only an equity of redemption, his interest is regarded as real estate and descends on his death according to the laws governing real estate. the mortgagee's interest, on the other hand, is regarded as personal property since the debt which the mortgagee is intended to secure is personal property, and even a legal title to the real estate held by the mortgagee is held merely for security, and is an incident to the debt. so the mortgagor's interest in mortgaged property is subject to be seized on execution by his creditors while the mortgagee's interest can not be so seized. the mortgagee's creditors must reach his interest by means appropriate to realize upon the debt, not upon the land. the mortgagor's interest being regarded as real estate will give rise to the same estates of dower in favor of the wife of the deceased mortgagor or curtesy in favor of the husband of a deceased mortgagor, as are allowed by the law in the case of real estate generally. the mortgagor may, while in possession, deal with the property in any way in which an owner may, except that he will not be permitted to imperil the mortgagee's security by any kind of waste. the mortgagor may, subject to the mortgage, lease, sell or devise it. he may collect the rents and profits and use them as his so long as he is in possession. where, however, the mortgagee is regarded as having the legal title to the premises, he may eject the mortgagor at any time from possession, even though the mortgage is not due, unless prohibited by statute or by the express terms of the mortgage deed. in fact he usually is so prohibited. even when not so prohibited, it is not always well for a mortgagee to take possession because, if he does so, he is bound to account not only for all profits actually received from the premises, but also for all that might have been received. he becomes liable for any waste of the premises or any failure to deal with them in a reasonably prudent manner. sale by mortgagee or mortgagor of real estate.--either the mortgagee or the mortgagor may assign his interest. the mortgagee in assigning his interest is in legal contemplation doing two things: ( ) assigning the debt; ( ) assigning the title or lien which he holds on the mortgagor's real estate as security for the debt. as to the assignment of the debt, the matter is governed by the same principles as govern the assignment of choses in action generally. that is, if the mortgaged debt is represented by a negotiable instrument, the instrument may be negotiated to the purchaser in the ordinary way, and with the ordinary effects of such instruments. if the mortgaged debt is not represented by a negotiable instrument, the assignment of the debt is an assignment of a chose in action. where the common law view of mortgage still prevails, that the mortgagee has the legal title, he can only transfer it to an assignee by a deed executed with the same formalities necessary for the transfers of real estate. as, however, the law recognizes that it is the debt which is the essential feature of the relation between mortgagor and mortgagee, and that the mortgaged estate is held merely as security for a debt, a valid assignment of the debt is held to make the assignee equitably entitled to the mortgaged property as security. and, in effect, one who obtains the mortgage debt will secure the benefit of the mortgaged property even though the local law regards a mortgagee as having the legal title. where the mortgagee is regarded as having merely a lien, the assignment of the debt involves a transfer of the lien. incidents to mortgage.--if the mortgagor wishes to convey his interest, he transfers the estate by deed exactly as if it were unmortgaged, except that the conveyance is stated to be subject to a specified mortgage, and it is sometimes added "which the grantee assumes and agrees to pay." it is desirable for the seller that the grantee shall assume and agree to pay the mortgage while it is desirable for the buyer that he shall buy the premises merely subject to the mortgage without assuming it. the difference between the two transactions is this: in either event the grantee receives the premises burdened by a mortgage, the amount of which will be deducted from the consideration paid as the agreed value of the premises. in either event, if the debt is unpaid, the mortgagee will foreclose and the grantee will lose the premises. in order to save the premises, the grantee will have to pay the mortgage. assumption of mortgage.--the distinction is only seriously important when the mortgaged premises are worth less than the amount of the mortgage. in that event the mortgagee will be entitled to a deficiency judgment against the mortgagor. the mortgagor was the original debtor and cannot escape from his obligation to the mortgagee without the latter's assent. if the mortgagor is forced to pay, he cannot recover the amount from his grantee unless the latter assumed and agreed to pay the mortgage. if, however, the grantee did make such assumption, he will ultimately have to pay the deficiency. if the mortgagee, without foreclosing the property, should sue the mortgagor directly on the debt, the latter would be compelled to pay. even if the sale to the mortgagor's grantee had been made merely subject to the mortgage, the mortgagor on paying the debt would be subrogated to the mortgage and would himself be enabled to foreclose the property. but if the property failed to realize enough to reimburse him for the payment of the debt, he would lose this deficiency unless the grantee had assumed and agreed to pay the mortgage. whether the mortgagee may sue directly a grantee of mortgaged premises who has assumed and agreed to pay the mortgage, is a question which has been much litigated; but it is now held almost everywhere that the mortgagee may do so. sometimes a succession of grantees, each in turn on buying the premises, assumes and agrees to pay a certain mortgage. the mortgagee, in such a case, is generally allowed to recover from any one of these grantees so far as is necessary to satisfy his claim; but the ultimate liability will rest upon the last purchaser who has assumed the debt. as against a grantee who has not assumed the debt, the mortgagee has no rights. he can deprive such a purchaser of his land, so far as is necessary to collect the debt, but he cannot hold him personally liable. foreclosure of real estate mortgages.--according to the original theory of the law, the mortgagee became the absolute owner of the mortgaged premises by the failure of the mortgagor to pay the debt when due, and by the foreclosure or termination of the mortgagor's right of redemption. foreclosure of this character is still possible in a few states, but in most states it has been wholly abolished, and everywhere the ordinary method of foreclosure is by sale of the mortgaged property. frequently the sale is made by virtue of an authority or power of sale given in the mortgage itself, but sometimes it is made under authority of a decree of court in foreclosure proceedings. where a mortgage contains a power to the mortgagee to sell on default of the mortgagor, he is acting not simply on his own behalf but as agent for the mortgagor in transferring title to the property. the proceeds will be applied first to the payment of the debt with interest and the expenses of the sale. any surplus will be held by the mortgagee in trust for the mortgagor and must be paid over to the latter. the situation is entirely analogous to that created by a collateral note where stock or other personal property is transferred as collateral to secure a debt. the statutes of all states contain regulations in regard to the foreclosure of mortgages, which must be observed. they are aimed generally to protect the mortgagor from forfeiture of his property to any greater extent than is necessary to insure the payment of the mortgage debt. in any case of foreclosure the local statute and practice must be consulted. deeds of trust.--in some states what are called deeds of trust have been largely substituted for mortgages. the temptation to make such a substitution is greatest in jurisdictions which refuse to recognize the mortgagee as the legal owner of the premises. if the law denies the mortgagee this recognition, he can, by insisting, as a condition of his loan, that the premises shall be conveyed to a third person as trustee, achieve the result that the mortgagor at least is no longer the legal owner of the premises. essentially the situation is the same under a deed of trust as under a common law mortgage. in both cases the legal title is held merely to secure the debt, and the court will secure to the debtor all the value of the property which can be realized from its sale over and above the amount of the debt. if the debt is paid of course the debtor is entitled to the return of the security whether it is real estate or personalty, and whether held directly by the creditor or by a third person as trustee. the torrens law.--the torrens system of registration of land titles received its name from sir robert torrens who drew the first torrens law enacted in south australia in . the practice of searching titles has gone through this development. in country districts the person purchasing real estate frequently accepted the grantor's deed without any search of the title. of course, if there were judgments against the grantor, or other claims against the real property, the purchaser or the grantee takes the property subject to these claims. ordinarily, however, the careful purchaser employs a lawyer to make a search of the title before he accepts it and pays the purchase price. in new york city to-day, and in some of the other large cities of the country, most of the title searching has passed out of the hands of the lawyers into the hands of the title companies. the title company makes the search now, the same as the lawyer formerly did, with an added advantage. suppose i am to buy blackacre, and employ attorney blackstone to search the title. he reports it as being free and clear. i take possession and pay the purchase price. six months later the wife of the grantor appears on the scene. when the grantor conveyed, he stated in the deed that he was single. the wife establishes the validity of her marriage, and her husband's, my grantor's, death. she is, of course, entitled to dower. i am obliged to make some kind of settlement with her, and there is no way, probably, by which i can hold my lawyer for failing to find that the grantor was married, when he made the search for me. if the title to my property had been searched for me by a title company, it would have issued a title insurance policy in my name which would have protected me, in this instance, and i would have been reimbursed by the title company for the loss which i sustained in having to pay the dower claim of my grantor's wife. economy of title searches.--economically, the title company is a big step in advance of the former practice of having lawyers make a search. the title company can do it much cheaper. if blackacre was sold, when lawyers alone were making searches, probably a different lawyer would be employed at each sale, and he would make a search back to the earliest deed. after a title company has made its search, the result is in its records and the next time it is on the same piece of property, the search would simply be what is called a continuation, which would carry the search from the last time the company was on the title down to the present time. this enables the title company to make its fee more reasonable than the lawyer, and we can now secure a title company's search and insurance policy frequently for less than formerly was paid to the lawyer for the search alone. escheat.--however, the policies issued by the title companies are not absolutely satisfactory, and the next, and perhaps final, step is for the state to come in and guarantee the title. this is perfectly logical. the ownership of all land is in the state, theoretically, the same as under the english common law. the king, in those days, owned all the land. this is more than theory, even to-day. if a man dies, leaving no heirs and no will, his real property escheats to the state, this being based simply on the theory that the property goes back to its original owner, the state. if this is true, why should not the state insure the title? this is the theory of the torrens' system. effect of torrens law.--the first torrens law, enacted in this country, was in illinois, and similar acts have been passed in a number of the states, including new york. when such laws are on the statute books, generally the business of a title company will be legislated out of existence. for that reason, opposition to the passage of such laws has developed in some states. perhaps the next fifty years may see them generally adopted throughout the country. chapter x estates and trusts estates.--when a person who owns property dies, the first question which arises is as to what becomes of his estate; who pays the bills, who takes charge of his business affairs, and what are the rules as to the division of his property. the first question a lawyer always asks is, "did the deceased die testate or intestate?" that is, did he leave a will or not. if he left a will, probably he has named one or more executors in his will to settle his estate, in which case such person or persons will take charge. if he has not appointed an executor in his will, an oversight which rarely occurs, the probate court will appoint an administrator. if, on the other hand, the man died intestate, it will be absolutely necessary for the court to appoint an administrator. the executor will settle up the estate according to the directions contained in the will, but if no will was made, the administrator will settle up the estate according to the rules of the probate court, under which he is acting, and the property will be divided in accordance with the statutes of the state or states having jurisdiction over the estate. character of property.--it is very essential to distinguish carefully between the two kinds of property, real and personal, which the deceased leaves. real property, as we have explained, consists of land with the buildings permanently attached to it, and all other property is personal property, although it may relate to real property. thus, a mortgage on land is personal property, also the shares of stock in a corporation, although the corporation may be organized to engage exclusively in the ownership of real property, is personal property. where a person dies leaving a will, his real property goes directly to the persons to whom he leaves it in the will. in the case where he dies intestate, his real property passes directly to his heirs at law, who are designated by statute. in neither case is any formality necessary, beyond the probate of the will, to vest the devisee of the testator or the heirs at law of the intestate with the title to the real property. the situation in regard to personal property is quite different. where the deceased died leaving a will, his executor immediately has title to all the personal property. if he dies intestate, the administrator will take title as soon as appointed. the personal property is used by the executor or administrator to pay debts, and the real property, whether a man dies testate or intestate, is never used to pay debts unless the personal property is insufficient. wills defined.--the definition of jarman is commonly used in defining a will: "a will is the instrument by which a person makes a disposition of his property to take effect after his decease, and which is, in its own nature, ambulatory, and revocable during his life." this definition is open to one criticism. it does not include oral wills which, as we shall see, are sometimes legal. we shall also use other terms in this chapter which must be defined. a testator is the man who makes the will, while the testatrix is a woman making a will. a codicil is a supplement to a will, made and executed with the same formality as the original will, and it becomes a part of the original will, adding to it, or altering it, as the case may be. a devisee is a person who takes real property under a will, while a legatee takes personal property under a will, and the real property passing under the will is called a devise, and the personal property a bequest. a legacy refers to money passing under a will. this is why the ordinary will uses this phrase: "i give, devise, and bequeath." it is not fatal, however, to make a mistake of having the will read, "i hereby devise," referring to personal property. it is more a mistake in the use of english, than a mistake in law to make a wrong choice of these terms which we have just defined. a holographic or olographic will is a will which is wholly written in the testator's or testatrix's own hand. the statutes of a few states recognize these wills as valid without the formal execution or attestation if they are wholly written, signed, and sealed by the testator's own hand. a nuncupative will is an oral will. while most wills must be in writing, in many jurisdictions the oral wills made by sailors at sea, and soldiers in actual service are recognized as valid without being reduced to writing and without any specified number of witnesses. it is perfectly apparent why these exceptions are made, because of the difficulty of securing the materials with which to make a written will by these two classes of people. nuncupative wills are good only to dispose of personal property, unless a special statute has been enacted which provides otherwise, but this is not commonly done. a will and a gift causa mortis distinguished.--we have already referred to gifts causa mortis which are gifts of personal property made by the donor under apprehension of immediate death, coupled with the delivery of the property. the gift is defeated by the recovery of the donor. a gift causa mortis may be made orally, while, with the exception of nuncupative wills, all wills must be in writing. a gift causa mortis must be made under fear of pending death, whereas a will is ordinarily made with a view of the fact of death but not of its immediate happening. again, delivery is necessary to make a gift causa mortis, whereas under a will delivery never takes effect until after the person dies, and then the legatee's title comes through the executor or administrator, and not directly from the testator. real property is not the subject of a gift causa mortis, whereas a will may dispose of both real and personal property. who may make a will.--as a general rule, any person of sound mind and of the age of twenty-one years may make a will. in some states, a person eighteen years of age may make a will of personal property. formerly a married woman could not make a valid will excepting in a few instances, but to-day, by statute, this common law disability has been either wholly or largely removed. the statutes of the particular state in which the married woman resides, or in which her property is situated should always be consulted. testamentary capacity.--another qualification is that the testator must have sufficient intellectual powers to enable him to be said to have "a sound and disposing mind, memory, and understanding." the case of whitney v. twombly, mass. , gives us as good a general statement as there is concerning the nature of testamentary capacity: "a testator has a sound mind for testamentary purposes, only when he can understand and carry in mind, in a general way, the nature and situation of his property, and his relations to the persons around him, to those who naturally have some claim to his remembrance, and to those in whom, and the things in which, he has been chiefly interested. he must understand the act which he is doing, the disposition which he wishes to make of his property, and the relation in which he stands to the objects of his bounty and to those who ought to be in his mind on the occasion of making his will." the ability to make a will is not necessarily gone because the testator is old, weak or ill, even practically at the point of death. the physical condition is simply significant in determining the mental condition, but of course a very weak physical condition does not necessarily mean a weak intellectual condition. insane persons are not capable of making wills, but a person who is insane may still have a "lucid interval" during which time he is sufficiently restored to his normal condition to enable him to act with such reason as to make a valid will, although he may, very soon, relapse into his former insane condition. ordinarily most peculiarities and eccentricities on the part of the testator do not affect his ability to make a will; neither do peculiar religious beliefs have any effect unless, in any of these cases, the person's mind is so completely controlled as to prevent the exercise of rational judgment in disposing of his property. his eccentricities must amount almost, in such cases, to a form of insanity to have this effect. how a will must be executed.--there are four requirements for the execution of a valid will: ( ) it must be in writing. ( ) it must be signed by the testator. ( ) the testator's signature must be made by the testator or the marking acknowledged by him in the presence of the necessary number of witnesses. ( ) it must be declared by the testator to be his last will in the presence of the necessary number of witnesses, who are present at the same time and who subscribe their names as witnesses in the presence of the testator. other formalities.--no particular form of writing is necessary. probably typing is the most common form in use to-day. as a precaution, lawyers sometimes have the testator sign at the bottom of each typewritten page, where the will is of several pages, or the document is fastened together with silk, the two ends of which are carried to the last page and imbedded in a wax seal. the testator should sign the will himself unless he is unable to, from lack of education or feebleness, in which case, the statute generally makes provision for another form of signing. it is better practice for the testator to sign the will in the presence of his witnesses, acknowledge the signature, and then the testator should declare, in the presence of his witnesses, that this is his last will and testament. in many states, two witnesses are all that are necessary; a few states require three. careful practice generally calls for three. illustration.--a testator lives in new york. he has two witnesses to his will. his will is valid as far as his real property in that state is concerned, but should it happen that he also owns real property in a state where three witnesses are required, his will would not pass title to the real property in that state and, as far as that state is concerned, he would die intestate, and that real property would descend to his heirs in accordance with the laws of that state, which would quite likely not be what the testator intended to happen. by having three witnesses, his will is just as good in new york, where only two are necessary and the presence of the third witness makes the will good, and passes the real property situated in the state where three are required. it is always best to have the witnesses add their addresses to their signatures. this is not required by statute in many states, but after a person's decease, it may help in locating the witnesses by having addresses to which to refer. it is, of course, wise to use some care in the selection of witnesses, although almost any person is competent. adults, of course, are preferable as witnesses, but an infant is a perfectly good witness, but he should possess sufficient intelligence to be able to appreciate the importance of the act he is witnessing. in view of the formalities to be observed in the execution of a will, and the technical niceties in the use of the proper word or phrase, often required to insure the expression of the testator's exact intention, the drafting of a will should never be left to a layman, but should always be entrusted to a lawyer. the form of a will.--in our discussion it is well to keep in mind the form of a will. a simple will reads as follows: in the name of god, amen: i, john jones, of the borough of manhattan, city and state of new york, being of sound and disposing mind and understanding, do make, publish, and declare this my last will and testament, as follows: first. i direct that all of my just debts and my funeral expenses be paid as soon after my death as conveniently may be. second. i give, devise and bequeath all the rest, residue and remainder of my estate, whether real, personal, or mixed, of whatsoever kind, character or description, and wheresoever situated, unto my wife, emma jones, for and during the period of her natural life. third. upon the death of my said wife emma, i give, devise and bequeath the said residue and remainder of my estate to my children, alice jones, sarah jones, and george jones, to them, their heirs, executors, administrators and assigns forever, share and share alike, per stirpes and not per capita. fourth. this will shall remain in full force and effect notwithstanding children may hereafter be born to me. fifth. i nominate, constitute, and appoint my said wife emma, and the institute trust company, executors of this my last will, giving to them full power and authority to sell and convey any and all real estate, whereof i may die seized, at such times and for such prices as they may consider for the best interests of my estate. sixth. i hereby revoke any and all wills at any time by me heretofore made. in witness whereof, i have hereunto set my hand and seal this first day of july, . (signed) john jones (l. s.). signed, sealed, published and declared by john jones, the above-named testator, as and for his last will and testament, in the presence of us, and each of us, and at the same time declared by him to us, and each of us, to be his last will and testament, and thereupon we, at his request, and in his presence and in the presence of each other, have hereunto subscribed our names as witnesses, this first day of july, . ralph roe, broadway, new york, n. y. john doe, fifth avenue, new york, n. y. james smith, post avenue, new york, n. y. revocation.--a will may be revoked at any time at the pleasure of the testator. the ordinary ways of accomplishing a revocation of a will are: ( ) the testator executes a later will, and in express terms says, "i hereby revoke all former wills by me made." even if such an expression is not put in the second will, if its terms are wholly inconsistent with the former will, this in itself, will act as a revocation. again, a will may be revoked by mutilation, as by being burned, torn, or otherwise mutilated by the testator himself, or in his presence and by his direction. the mutilation of the will, however, if not accompanied by an intent thereby to revoke it, is of no effect. i think i am tearing up an old insurance policy, but because of poor eye-sight, discover later that i have torn my will. this would not amount to a revocation of the will. as has been said by a writer on the subject of wills, "no amount of cancellation or destruction without the intent to revoke, and no amount of intent without the actual destruction, will suffice to revoke a will. both the intent and the actual destruction or cancellation must coexist." sometimes changes in the circumstances and conditions of the testator's life will work a revocation. for example, at common law, the marriage of a woman worked an absolute revocation of her will. this has now been changed in most states by statute. in a great many states, however, to-day, if a testator, having no children, should make his will, and after the execution of the will, a child is born, the will is revoked in toto, when no provision for such child is made in the will. however, as above stated, this rule is not uniform in all states, and local statutes should therefore be consulted on this point. where a testator already has children, the birth of additional children will not affect his will except, that such after-born children will inherit the same as though he had left no will. these rules in regard to after-born children apply only where the will does not make any mention of possible issue, and for this reason it is well to insert the clause, in many jurisdictions, providing that the will shall remain in full force and effect notwithstanding the fact that children may thereafter be born to the testator. probate of wills.--every state has a probate court for the settlement of decedents' estates. such a court is variously named as the probate court, the surrogate's court, and the like, according to the nomenclature adopted in a particular state. before an executor named in a will has any authority to act, he must produce the will, and after the proper proceeding has been had, the will is admitted to probate, and he may then qualify under it by giving the necessary bond. if the deceased died intestate, the proper person will apply to the probate court for the appointment of an administrator, and after a hearing, the court will appoint the person entitled to receive letters of administration. the administrator will then qualify, give the necessary bond, and then proceed with the settling of the estate. a testator may name anyone in his will as an executor. in the large cities, in recent years, it is becoming quite common to name a trust company as executor, because its facilities for handling estates render it more efficient than the average individual. if, on the other hand, the testator is unwilling to place the sole care of his estate in the hands of a trust company, he may name two executors, a trust company and his wife, if he is a married man, or a very close friend in whose judgment he has great confidence, and, together, the two act as executors. the fees which the executors receive are generally fixed by statute. if the deceased dies intestate, the letters of administration are granted by the court in accordance with a definite statute. while the law in the various states is not uniform, generally, the priority of the right to administration is arranged by statute something like this: ( ) on the estate of a husband: (a) to the widow, if there is any. (b) if there is no widow, or if the widow renounces, then to the children. (c) if there are no children, then to the issue of deceased children. (d) if no issue of deceased children, then to the nearest of kin. ( ) on the estate of a wife: (a) to the husband, who has an absolute right. if the husband for any reason does not desire to act as such administrator, he may select any fit person to administer the estate. (b) if there is no husband, then to the children. (c) if no children, then to the issue of deceased children. (d) if no issue of deceased children, then to the nearest of kin. ( ) on the estate of an unmarried child: (a) to the father, who has an absolute right. if for any reason the father does not wish to act, the court may select any fit person to administer the estate. (b) if there is no father, then to the mother and brothers and sisters, whether of whole or half blood. (c) if no mother or brothers or sisters, then to the nearest of kin in equal degree. per stirpes and per capita.--where the subject of a testamentary disposition is directed to be "equally divided" or to be divided "share and share alike," or where similar words are used which indicate an equal division among a class of persons, the persons among whom the division is to be made take per capita, unless a contrary intention is discoverable from the will. where the individuals of a class are specifically named, or are designated by their relation to some ancestor living at the date of the will, whether the testator or another, they take per capita, unless the context of the will shows an intention that they should take per stirpes. but where the gift is to an individual, or several named individuals, and to others as a class, the latter take per stirpes; unless the testator uses language indicating an intention that the members of the class shall share equally with the named individuals. a gift to a class of persons or on their death to their heirs or children will be distributed among such heirs or children per stirpes; but a gift to one person and the children of other deceased persons will be divided per capita, unless it appears from the context or circumstances shown by extraneous evidence that the testator intended a distribution per stirpes. illustration.--a gift to children of testator, a. b. and c., or on their death to their heirs or children will be distributed, in the event of the death of c. before the testator, among heirs or children of c. per stirpes. (in other words, they will divide the share of their father between them.) but a gift to a. and to x. y. and z., the children of b. deceased, will be divided per capita. the construction of wills.--it sometimes happens that wills are not carefully drawn, and even if they are, their meaning is not always perfectly clear. ordinarily, any person who is interested in the meaning of a clause of a will may bring a suit in the proper court asking for a construction of the will. of course, each case is governed more or less, by its own facts, but there are certain general rules which the courts follow in trying to arrive at the testator's intent. for example, a will is ordinarily presumed to speak as of the time of the testator's death. thus, reference in a will, to the arrival of the testator's youngest child at the age of twenty-five years, will apply to the youngest child at the time of the testator's death, although such child is born after the execution of the will. ordinarily, a testator is presumed to have intended to dispose of all of his property, and if a will can be so construed, this will be done, rather than to adopt a construction which will make him testate as to part of his property and intestate as to another part. if there are two irreconcilable parts, the latter part is the one which prevails. words are to be understood in their ordinary meaning, unless there is something to clearly show contrary intent. if, between two possible constructions, one of which would disclose a legal purpose, and the other an illegal purpose, the court will adopt the former. dower.--under the rules of the common law, a wife was entitled, on the death of her husband, to an estate for life in one-third of the lands of which her husband was seized of an estate of inheritance at any time during the marriage. this dower right still exists in most states, although it may differ in some particulars. for example, in connecticut, a dower right exists only in the real property which the husband owns at the time of his death, and not, as at common law, in all the real property of which he was seized during the whole marriage. therefore, reference to the statutes must be made in each state, to know the exact rule in a particular jurisdiction. where the state adheres closely to the common law, this right, on the part of the wife, is a right of which her husband cannot deprive her; if the husband disposes of all his real property in his will to his friend, john jones, such disposition is not valid and the wife would still be allowed her dower right by the probate court. it must also be borne in mind that dower refers only to real property. generally, a husband may dispose of his personal property without any reference to his wife. ordinarily, two things are necessary to establish the right of dower: ( ) a legal marriage, and ( ) seizin by the husband of an estate of inheritance in lands, or, in a layman's terms, the absolute ownership of a piece of real estate. curtesy.--curtesy is the common law right which a husband has in the real property of his wife, and by it he is entitled to an estate for his life in all lands of which his wife was seized during marriage. needless to say, women did not take part in law making when this law arose. to establish this right, three things are necessary: the two already mentioned in dower, and third, the birth alive of issue of the marriage. the right of curtesy does not exist in this common law form in as many states as does the right of dower. where these two rights do exist, in their more or less modified form, you have the explanation of the fact that when a married man sells real property, his wife joins in the deed, or when a married woman sells real property, her husband joins in the deed. the act of either in joining, releases the dower or curtesy right and allows the purchaser to get a clear title. conflict of laws.--we have already referred to this topic. it frequently happens that a person dies owning real property located in a number of states. it is almost certain that the laws covering real property will vary in these different states. if he was a resident of philadelphia, his will will probably have been executed in accordance with the laws of pennsylvania. the question arises whether such a will is valid to convey real property which he owns in new york, california, and massachusetts. insofar as the will affects real property, the mode of execution and its validity will be controlled by the law of the jurisdiction in which the real property is situated. if, then, the will had two witnesses only, as required by the pennsylvania law, but three witnesses are required in one of the other states named, he would die intestate as far as the real property in the other state is concerned. difficult questions sometimes arise in regard to gifts to charities. some states limit the amount which a charitable corporation may receive as a gift under a will, and other states require that the gifts must be executed within a certain time before the decedent's death. where there is a question of this character involved only a careful examination of the decisions and statutes in the states concerned can furnish the basis for any satisfactory answer. if there is personal property, the requisites of validity and construction of a will are controlled by the law of the testator's domicile. the question as to his domicile is sometimes quite difficult to determine and may require a court action. we have had a number of illustrations of that in connection with the inheritance tax laws, where the officers of one state have sought to establish the domicile of a particularly wealthy person, who has just died, within that state in order that they may secure the inheritance tax for the state, which would of course, be much larger if the person were adjudged a resident of that state than it would be if he were held to be a non-resident. contracts to make a will.--it sometimes happens that one person may make a contract whereby he agrees to make a will in favor of another person. a, years old, and of the proper mental capacity to make a will, makes a contract with mary jones, that, if she will live in his house and act as housekeeper as long as he lives, he will make a will and in it give her his house and $ . he fails to make his will and dies suddenly at the end of the year after the making of this contract. it is generally recognized that contracts of this nature are valid. the general rules applicable to contracts apply here. there must be consideration, the contract must be certain in its terms, and as such contracts are not favored by the courts, because they are open to many forms of fraud, they must be proved by clear and convincing evidence, and the contract would have to be in writing under the provisions of the statute of frauds. in the illustration suggested, the further question arises, what is the remedy on the part of the housekeeper for a breach of contract. ordinarily there are two proceedings open in such a case. the personal representative of the deceased might be sued at law to recover damages for a breach of contract, or one might proceed in equity to compel the parties who take the legal title to the house, in consequence of the failure of the decedent to make his will as he contracted to do, to convey the property which would have been conveyed by the will, had the will been made in compliance with the contract. trusts defined.--in bouvier's law dictionary, trusts are defined as obligations imposed, either expressly or by implication of law, whereby the obligor is bound to deal with property, over which he has control, for the benefit of certain persons of whom he may himself be one, and any one of whom may enforce the obligation. a trust arises when property has been conveyed to one person and accepted by him for the benefit of another. the person who holds the property and the legal title is called the trustee, and the person for whom it is held is termed the beneficiary or "cestui que trust." trusts are created for a great variety of purposes. it is very common to create them by a will, the testator appointing a trustee to manage a trust fund which he sets aside for the maintenance and support of a certain person or a certain institution. a new device for creating a trust for the carrying on of a business, seems to be growing in popularity. the practice apparently began in massachusetts with the creation of a trust for the operation of an office building and similar undertakings. under this arrangement, a trust estate may have transferable shares, exemption of shareholder's liability, and frequently enjoys peculiar advantages in taxation matters. these organizations are sometimes spoken of as common law corporations. they are so comparatively new that the closest care should be exercised in operating a business under this form of organization. we shall now consider the powers and duties of trustees and include with them executors and administrators. trustees, executors, and administrators.--trustees, executors and administrators may be classed together because they are alike in that they hold legal title to property which is held by them for the benefit of other persons. they hold the legal title. a trustee is the owner of the property, and any one who seeks a transfer of the legal title of the property must get it from the trustee. executors have exactly the same powers as administrators, aside from powers that may be expressly given in the will. the difference in name is simply because an executor is appointed by the will of the testator, whereas an administrator is appointed by the court to take charge of an estate for which no executor has been named in a testator's will, or where the executor may have died or refused to act, or, the most frequent case, where the deceased died intestate. their appointment.--were it not for statutes, a trustee or an executor would become such simply because somebody had made him a trustee or an executor without any appointment or assistance from the court. but in the appointment of executors or trustees, under wills, the court is by statute generally required to make an appointment to give validity to a nomination or appointment in the testator's will. administrators, of course, from their very nature, have to be appointed by the court. a trust, however, may be created between living persons without any appointment by the court, and frequently is. a real estate trust may be created by simply conveying property to trustees on the trust that they manage it and pay the income to the beneficiaries, and a great variety of trusts are constantly created without an appointment from the court. wherever any question on a trust arises, or wherever the appointment of a new trustee is necessary, however, the court has jurisdiction, and any person interested in the trust can bring the matter before the court. when a testator dies the person named as executor in the will petitions for appointment, and unless there is some reason why he should not be appointed he doubtless will be appointed. if there is no executor, then the persons, or beneficiaries, interested in the estate, usually agree on someone to administer the estate, and a petition is filed for his appointment. the person who is next of kin, and competent to act, is generally appointed in the absence of agreement. these officers remain in office and retain their powers until their work is completed, unless they are sooner removed, which they may be at any time for cause. their powers.--what powers do these persons have? do they have power to sell? we must first always look at the terms of the trust. if we are dealing with a trustee under a will we look at the will to see what powers the testator gave him. if we are looking at a question of a trust under a deed, we look at the deed, and the right of an executor to sell real estate similarly depends on whether any such power has been given him in the will. aside from express power given in the instrument, a trustee has no power to sell either real or personal property unless the power is expressly given or unless the nature of the trust is such as necessarily implies the power, and courts are very slow in construing the existence of such power by implication. an executor, on the other hand, since his duty is to reduce the personal property of an estate to cash, and distribute it, has, in most states, implied power to sell personal property. he has, however, no power to sell real estate unless the will expressly gives such power. the court may authorize him to sell real estate, and will authorize him, if it is necessary to pay debts or legacies, but only in such cases unless a power is expressly given. trustees, executors and administrators have no power to pledge property unless expressly given in the instrument under which they act. they have power to make such contracts as are necessary to carry out their trust, but only these, and even when they make such contracts they are personally liable upon them, having, however, a right of reimbursement from the estate which they represent. if they entered into an unauthorized contract they would be liable upon it personally and have no right of reimbursement. their duties.--their first duty is the care and custody of the property in their charge. a trustee, whose duty is to hold property, is bound to keep it invested so as to bring in an income, whereas an executor has no right to invest funds of the estate, except under the direction of the court; if he does so he will take the chance of loss, and the beneficiary can not only hold him liable for loss but can also take the profit should the investment prove profitable. the executor's duty is to reduce the property to cash and distribute it to the proper parties. all these officers owe the same duty of fidelity to their beneficiary that an agent owes to his principal. there is the same duty to execute the trust personally and not delegate authority, except in regard to ministerial or mechanical acts. there is the same duty to account, and furthermore, the accounts of these officers, if they are appointed by the court, must be filed in court. the trustee to carry out his trust will ordinarily distribute the income to the persons entitled, but, of course, trusts are of great variety, and not infrequently the object of a trust is to accumulate the income. whatever the terms of the trust are they must be carried out. the duties of the executor and administrator are to distribute the estate by paying creditors first and the surplus to legatees or the next of kin legally entitled. they are allowed a fixed period, in many states two years, to settle an estate. one of the most essential duties of any fiduciary is to keep the property he holds as a fiduciary separate and distinct from his own. this means that a trustee or executor receiving current income must keep a separate bank account as trustee or executor, and of course he should not draw checks on that fund for personal debts. chapter xi carriers and warehousemen carriers who are public service companies.--common carriers--that is, railroads, express companies, and other persons or corporations who carry goods for hire and hold themselves out to the public as engaged in the business of carrying goods for anybody for hire--are engaged in a public service. a man who owns a tramp steamer and gets cargoes as he can, is not engaged in a public service--he is not a common carrier or public carrier; but a person who has a line of steamers, or even one steamer, regularly engaged in plying between different places and taking goods as offered for hire, is engaged in public service. duties of one engaged in public service.--now, being engaged in public service subjects a person or corporation who is so engaged to some special duties. such a person cannot make any bargain he pleases with anybody he pleases, and refuse to make bargains with others, as an ordinary person can. it is the duty of any one engaged in a public service to give reasonable service to all who apply, without discrimination, and for reasonable compensation. of course, carriers are not the only public-service corporations; electric light companies or gas companies or water companies are other illustrations; but common carriers, and especially railroads, are the most prominent public-service corporations. railroad commissions.--not only is there this common-law duty to serve all without discrimination and at reasonable prices, but both the states and the united states have established commissions to look after railroads and other carriers to see that they properly perform their duties. the railroad or public service commission in most states has a great variety of powers for compelling railroads to give proper service. the chief function of the federal interstate commerce commission originally, was in regard to rates, but its powers have since been enlarged by legislation. the interstate commerce commission has the power concerning interstate commerce to say whether rates and practices are reasonable. a carrier is obliged to file with the interstate commerce commission a schedule of its rates, and regulations concerning rates, and is also required to post these rates publicly in its stations. if anybody objects to the rates they must make complaint before the interstate commerce commission. that is the only form of redress, and sometimes not an easy one for a person who is merely interested in a single shipment, because the expense and delay of proceedings before the interstate commerce commission are such as to be prohibitive, unless the complainant's financial interest in the matter is considerable. it is common, therefore, for shippers' associations to take that sort of question up rather than to leave it for individual shippers. any contract made by a carrier for either more or less than the scheduled rate is illegal and void. carrier's common-law liability for goods.--a carrier, at common law, when he receives goods for transportation, is subject to a degree of liability beyond that imposed on any other person. an ordinary person who receives goods--a bailee, as he is called in law--is merely liable for the consequences of his negligence. a carrier, however, while goods are in course of transportation is liable, at common law, as an insurer against all kinds of accidents except those caused by act of god or public enemies. for instance, if goods were struck by lightning in transit that would be an act of god, and the carrier would not be liable; but if goods caught fire from any other cause, as from neglect of an outsider or the act of an incendiary, the carrier would be liable. carriers, of course, dislike that and try to contract away their liability. they are allowed by law to do so, except that they are not allowed to contract for exemption from the consequences of their own negligence. it is largely this desire of carriers to free themselves from the extreme liability which the common law imposes on them, that induces them to give bills of lading. bills of lading are often required by law, but carriers are pleased to issue them, as they can in that way contract to exempt themselves from this extreme liability, which lasts while the goods are in transit and until the consignee has had a reasonable time to remove them from the carrier's possession. if the consignee fails to remove them with reasonable promptness the carrier then becomes liable, merely as a warehouseman may, for its own neglect. the extreme liability of the carrier does not extend to damage caused by delay. the carrier is liable for delays in so far as they are caused by its own neglect, but otherwise is not liable. a carrier need not deliver the goods unless freight is paid, as it has a lien for freight charges. threefold nature of bill of lading.--a bill of lading issued by a carrier for goods has a threefold character. in the first place it is a receipt. the importance of a receipt is as evidence of just what was shipped. it is important to the shipper as proof that the carrier received goods, of such a quantity and of such a description, in good order. it is important to the carrier as proof of the same thing, to prevent the shipper from claiming that he has shipped different kinds or quantities of goods from those described in the bill of lading. the second aspect of a bill of lading is as a contract. it is not only a receipt but a contract between the parties, the shipper and the carrier. it is as a contract that the stipulations it contains for limitation, of liability are important. third, it is an order, when properly indorsed and surrendered, for the delivery of the goods. carriers can deliver goods only to holders of order bills of lading.--the thing that makes a bill of lading valuable, to buy or lend money on, is the fact that the carrier will hold the goods behind the bill of lading until the bill is itself presented and surrendered. if the carrier were to deliver the goods upon demand to anybody other than the holder of the bill of lading, it is obvious that there would not be much use in holding the bill of lading. the carriers have made a great contest on this question in the past. they have contended that they fulfill their duty if they deliver the goods to the consignee originally named in the bill of lading, whether that consignee continues to hold the documents or not. but that has been decided against them so far as order bills are concerned (that is, bills, which state that the goods are deliverable not simply to a consignee but to the order of a consignee) and these order bills have printed on them the provision that the bill itself must be surrendered before the goods will be delivered. carriers may deliver to consignee of straight bills of lading.--in a straight or flat bill, however (that is, one without the word "order") the carrier's contention has been upheld and the carrier is allowed to deliver the goods to the consignee, even though the consignee does not present the bill of lading and for all the carrier knows is not the owner of the bill of lading or of the goods. bills of lading used to enable seller to retain hold on goods.--the ways in which bills of lading may be used, and are used, in the mercantile world, must be understood before the legal questions which arise, concerning them, can be grasped. the primary and original purpose of using bills of lading as symbols of the goods, was doubtless to secure the seller in his hold on the goods until he received the price, and that is still a vital purpose in the use of bills of lading. we have learned, in the case of the sale of goods, that unless credit is given, the delivery of the goods and the payment of the price are concurrent conditions. now, when the parties reside at a distance there is difficulty in working out these concurrent conditions. if the seller ships the goods directly to the buyer, he loses his hold on the goods, and if the buyer does not keep his agreement to pay promptly, the seller will be unable to do anything about it. on the other hand, of course, the buyer does not want to pay in advance. now, by means of bills of lading, the seller is enabled to keep his hold on the goods until he receives the price, and the buyer is enabled to secure possession of the goods as soon as he pays the price. straight bills to buyer give the seller no hold on goods.--the bill of lading may be used in various ways. suppose, first, the seller when he ships the goods takes a straight bill to the buyer. that will not give the seller any hold, for the carrier will be discharged if without demanding the surrender of the bill of lading, he delivers to the consignee named. so we may cross off that as a possible means of protecting the seller. straight bills to the seller.--the second possibility is for the seller to take a straight bill, naming himself as consignee as well as consigner. if that is done the buyer cannot get the goods at once. suppose the bill of lading was sent forward, even that would not of itself enable the buyer to get the goods, if the carrier wished to be technical, since in a straight bill the goods are deliverable not to the holder of the bill, but to the consignee named therein. there would have to be attached to the bill of lading an order from the seller, who is named as consignee in the bill, directing the railroad to deliver the goods to the buyer instead of to himself, the consignee named in the bill. that would be a perfectly feasible matter, but this method is not much used, and one reason why it is not much used is because the seller frequently wants to do something else besides keep control of the goods until the buyer pays for them. he oftentimes wants to get money from a bank in the meantime. use of bills of lading by seller to obtain loans.--when the seller is desirous of borrowing money from a bank, he takes the bill of lading to the bank with a bill of exchange drawn on the buyer, and he asks the bank at his home town to discount the bill of exchange, taking as security the bill of lading. if his home bank does this, it then sends the draft, with bill of lading attached, to its correspondent bank in the buyer's city, where the draft is presented to the drawee, who is the buyer, and if the buyer honors the draft then he is given the bill of lading. now, banks would not do this, ought not to do it (occasionally they have), with a straight bill, even if the bill is drawn naming the seller as consignee, for the bank when it discounts the bill of exchange and gets the bill of lading as security gets no real hold on the goods. the railroad may deliver the goods to the consignee--the seller--without ever seeing the bill of lading, and without the bank, which holds the bill of lading, ever knowing anything about it; or the railroad may deliver to the buyer or some third person on a written order signed by the consignee. in other words, the railroad does not have to hold the goods until the bill of lading, properly indorsed, is presented to it. straight bills of lading give no security to bank.--the first and fundamental requirement, then, for any bank which may deal with bills of lading is never to have anything to do with straight bills. they give no security. a straight bill is readily distinguishable from an order bill on railroads in most parts of the country, at least, because uniform bills of lading are now in use, and the straight bill is always white and the order bill is always yellow. in foreign bills a greater variety of forms are used, and you may have to examine the terms of the bill before you can feel satisfied that it is of a sort that will give security. the vital words in bills of lading, as in negotiable paper, are the words, "order of" or "or order." if those are in a bill of lading it is all right as far as this matter is concerned. therefore the third and fourth possible ways in which the seller may take the bill of lading to secure himself are the only ones which will enable him to finance the shipment at once. bills of lading to buyer's order.--the third way which the seller may act in order to fulfill his purpose is to take an order bill of lading to the buyer's order. although the bill of lading runs to the buyer's order, and although, therefore, title to the goods will pass to the buyer on shipment, the buyer cannot get the goods without that bill of lading. therefore, so long as the seller retains the bill of lading nobody can get the goods from the carrier; and though the seller has parted with title to the goods, since he made the bill of lading run to the buyer's order, still he has retained control of them. though it gives a security to the seller, and would give security to the bank, if the bank discounted a bill of exchange drawn on the buyer and took this bill of lading as security, it is not a desirable method for this reason: though the buyer cannot get the goods without the bill of lading, nobody else can get the goods without a lot of trouble, unless he has not only the bill of lading but the buyer's indorsement upon it. the bill of lading is drawn to the buyer's order, and if the buyer fails to pay and repudiates his contract, the bank or the seller will have trouble in getting back the goods. they will have to prove to the railroad that the buyer really has made default and that he no longer has any real interest in the goods. bills of lading to the seller's order.--accordingly, it is the fourth method which is in general use and which should be exclusively used. the seller takes the bill of lading to his own order and indorses it in blank; then he delivers it to his bank as security for a bill of exchange. if the bill of exchange is paid by the drawee on presentment at his city, he is given the bill of lading at once and he gets what he wants. on the other hand, if the buyer does not pay the draft on presentment, then the bank can realize on the security at once, if it wants to, because it has a bill of lading in its hands indorsed by the consignee to whose order it was drawn. if the bank proceeds against the seller as the drawer of the draft, when the latter pays and takes up the bill of lading he can similarly realize on the security, or get the goods back, because he will have a bill of lading in his possession which runs to his own order. bills of lading to "order notify."--a slight modification of this form of bill of lading is made in order to let the buyer know when the goods arrive. when goods arrive at their destination it is a customary courtesy of railroads to notify the consignee; but if goods are consigned to the seller's order, the man who is really trying to buy the goods gets no notice, as his name does not appear on the bill of lading. to avoid that difficulty there is generally put on bills of lading, taken out to the seller's order when the goods are shipped in fulfillment of some contract or order, the words, "notify x y," x y being the prospective buyer of the goods. then when the goods arrive the railroad notifies x y; he learns the goods are there and makes his plans accordingly. these bills of lading are often called "bills to order notify." the person who is to be notified is sometimes incorrectly called the consignee of the bill. the consignee is the person to whom the goods are deliverable, not the person who is to be notified necessarily; and where a bill is to the seller's order the goods are, by the terms of the bill of lading, deliverable to the seller and he is the consignee. crops are moved by use of bills of lading.--the various uses of bills of lading by sellers in order to insure concurrent payment by the buyer, and in order, with the aid of banks, to put themselves in funds while the goods are in transit, is a very important function of bills of lading. it is by such means the great crops of the country are moved, especially the cotton crop, which is moved almost wholly in this manner. the southern banks discount bills of exchange, which are customarily secured by bills of lading. the new york banks rediscount these bills of exchange and draw for a great part of the price of the cotton on english bankers. this use by sellers of bills of lading, however, is not the only mercantile use of bills of lading. bills of lading to banker's order.--here is another method used, especially common in foreign commerce. a merchant in boston wants to buy a cargo of goods from europe, but he has not the money to do it. the seller in europe does not know him and will not give him credit, so the merchant goes to bankers who have available foreign correspondents and states his case, and if he is in good credit with the bankers they say, "order the goods from the man in germany of whom you were planning to order them, and tell him to make the bill of lading out to us, and draw on us or on our correspondents in berlin or london or paris. on receipt of those bills of lading naming us as consignee we will pay, or cause to be paid, the bills of exchange attached thereto for the price." in this way the goods are shipped directly to the banker. in the cases mentioned before, the banker took an indorsed bill of lading, but in this mode of dealing the banker is himself the consignee, and on the faith of the consignment he pays the price of the goods. then he delivers the bill of lading, indorsed, to the buyer, his customer, on the buyer's making a settlement or giving him security. surrender of bills of lading for trust receipts.--there is one method of doing business in this connection which causes some risk to the bankers who engage in it. they frequently allow their customer, the buyer, to take the bill of lading, indorsed, for the purpose of entering the goods at the custom house, or warehousing them, or even for the purpose of selling the goods, so that the buyer will be in funds to enable him to discharge his debt to the banker. the banker takes, when he does this, from the buyer to whom he delivers the indorsed bill of lading, what are called "trust receipts." these receipts state that the buyer has taken these bills of lading, that he holds them as a trustee, that they really belong to the banker, and that the buyer holds them simply for a special purpose, such as to enter them at the custom house or to resell them and turn the proceeds over to the banker. if the buyer is honest, well and good; but if he should be financially pressed and dispose of that bill of lading, many courts, at least, would not protect the banker, but would protect the bona fide purchaser. what the banker ought to do is to stamp upon the bill of lading, if he delivers it to the buyer, that a trust receipt has been issued for certain specified purposes. in that case any purchaser of the bill of lading would have notice of the terms of the trust. change of routing.--an analogous problem also may be supposed. a bank holds a draft for collection with bill of lading attached. it sometimes allows the drawee to take possession of the bill of lading and change the routing of the car. that is done because the buyer sometimes sells the goods before he receives them, and to save additional freight bills, he changes the routing on the original bills of lading. what risk does the bank run if it allows him to have possession of the bill of lading indorsed in blank? it runs the same risk as in case of trust receipts. the fact that the purpose was to change the routing of the goods is apparently immaterial. the change of destination does not do the bank any actual harm, except that the goods will be sent elsewhere, and perhaps to a point some distance from their original destination. the great risk involved is in allowing a man to have possession of a document which in effect is negotiable. if the bank does not get back its bill of lading it is in a bad position. if it did get back its bill of lading it would still have its security, only it would be subject to this difficulty, that the goods instead of coming to a place where the bank could conveniently get at them, have perhaps gone to a distant city, where it would be more trouble. if, however, changing the routing and the reselling involve a surrender of the old bill to the railroad and the issuing of a new bill of lading not only on a new route but with the purchaser from the consignee named as a new consignee, then the bank has thrown away everything, unless it actually obtains possession of the new bill, and even if it does it has only an inferior security. accommodation bills.--let us now enumerate the risks which a purchaser or a lender runs in dealing with bills of lading, even with order bills, and consider how these risks can be obviated and how far they are inherent in the nature of the business. the first risk is that the bill may have no goods behind it, because it was originally issued without any goods. it has been quite a common practice, at some points where there is competition for freight, to accommodate customers by issuing a bill of lading for goods before the goods were received. suppose a seller in chicago deals with a man in boston; what the seller normally ought to do is to buy goods, and ship them, getting a bill of lading, then take the bill of lading to a bank and get money on the faith of that bill of lading. you will see that that method requires the seller to have had money or credit in the first place, in order to buy those goods to ship. it would be very much more convenient for him if he could reverse the order and get the money from the bank first, then buy the goods and then ship them; and the kindness of the railroad agent frequently has enabled him to do that. the railroad agent, trusting to the seller's word that he will ship goods to-morrow, issues a bill of lading to him for the goods which the seller promises to ship. the seller dashes around to the bank, gets money and then buys the goods and ships them. he may carry on business in that way for a long time; no trouble occurs, nobody knows anything about it until the seller either goes bankrupt or becomes dishonest and fails to ship the goods after he has got the bill of lading, and then somebody finds himself with a bill of lading for which no goods have ever been received. such bills have been called "accommodation" bills of lading, issued by the railroad for the accommodation of the shipper. fictitious bills of lading.--in some cases the whole transaction is a fraud. in the case we have thus far been supposing, the railroad agent believed the seller was going to ship goods, and the seller intended to do so, only he wanted the bill of lading first; but money is so easily obtained, frequently, on bills of lading, that sometimes a shipper and a railroad agent put their heads together and say, "let's make a few bills of lading," and as a pure fraud the agent writes bills of lading. these may be called fictitious bills. they are not exactly forgeries, you will see, since they are drawn by the regular agent of the railroad on the regular railroad form. one who took such a bill as this, however, would be protected if the carrier were liable. railroads are generally, and other carriers are generally, financially responsible, and therefore the great question that interests the holder of such a bill is, are the railroads liable in damages because no goods are behind the bill of lading? it was held in an english case, seventy-five years ago, that in such a case the carrier was not liable on the ground that the agent who wrote the bill was acting beyond the scope of his authority in signing a bill of lading when no goods had been received. that decision has been much criticized, and justly criticized, because the carrier has put that agent in a position to determine when bills of lading shall be issued and when not. of course, the agent ought to exercise his choice properly, but if the carrier has given him the power it ought to be responsible for the results. nevertheless, in a majority of the states of this country, and in the supreme court of the united states, the english case has been followed; and the carrier would be liable neither on an accommodation bill nor a fictitious bill where no goods were shipped. there have been some attempts to change this rule by statutes, and in some states there is a statute, the uniform bill of lading act, so called, which provides among other things that the carrier shall be liable in the case supposed; but the trouble is that bills of lading dealt with in one state will not generally originate in that state. if a fictitious bill was issued in chicago, although the bill named as a consignee a person in boston, and was bought by a boston bank, the liability of the carrier on that bill of lading would be determined by the law of illinois. so, unless you have a satisfactory law where the bill originates, you will not be protected. fortunately, the same statute has been passed in several states, and it is hoped that it will be in more. this, then, is the first risk, and the only way of obviating it is to have the law in satisfactory shape, passing a statute wherever it is necessary, so as to make the carrier liable for the wrongful act of its agent in issuing a bill of lading when no goods have been received. goods behind bill of lading inferior in kind or quality.--the second difficulty is somewhat analogous to the first. suppose there are some goods behind the bill of lading but they are not of the quantity, quality or kind that the bill of lading specifies. this is a difficulty that cannot very well be wholly obviated. we may suppose that the goods originally were of defective quality and kind, or that they became so. suppose, first, that a number of barrels of sand are delivered to a railroad and they are marked barrels of sugar, and the carrier issues a bill of lading for so many barrels of sugar. now, the purchaser of the bill of lading finds, when he comes to realize on his security, that he has got barrels of sand with a freight bill against them for more than they are worth. what can he do? of course, he has a right of action against the fraudulent shipper, but perhaps the shipper has run away or is irresponsible. is the carrier liable here? the answer to this is, no. in the first place, the bill of lading says, "contents and condition of contents unknown," so that the carrier has expressly guarded against promising that the barrels really contained sugar. and even aside from this clause, it has been held that the carrier is not liable for such a concealed defect. if, however, it was apparent when the carrier received the goods that they were not of the kind or quality named, then the carrier would be liable if it issued a bill of lading without specifying the difficulty. thus, if the bill of lading called for barrels of sugar and there were , the carrier would be liable for the missing five. it has admitted it received , and has promised to deliver ; it must do so or be liable. shipper's load and count.--there is an exception to this last statement, however, in regard to one class of bills which are very common in some lines of trade; these are "shipper's load and count" bills. in many cases railroads build spur tracks to factories and run empty cars up to the factories, where the shipper loads the cars and himself writes out the bill of lading. an enormous fraction of the business of the country, consisting of the large shipments from factories, at any rate, is done in this way. the railroad agent simply signs a bill of lading as it is presented to him by the shipper who has made out the whole bill except the signature, and has loaded the car, the railroad agent seeing nothing of it. the railroad agent stamps across such a bill of lading, "shipper's load and count." that means, "the shipper loaded this car and counted the contents. we are not responsible, therefore, for the loading or the counting." the second great principle, in regard to lending money on bills of lading, is never to touch a shipper's load and count bill which obviously has not the responsibility of the carrier. you would have to rely wholly on the honesty of the shipper. the railroads, seeing that they are freed from liability on this form of bill, have sometimes, in some parts of the country, thought it would be a good thing to stamp every bill, "shipper's load and count." that is an injury to the shipper, because the banks do not like to take such bills of lading, and yet not infrequently he cannot do much about it. in fruit shipments from california that sort of thing has been very common. destruction of goods in transit.--so much for defects arising at the time of shipment; but one may also have difficulties which arise after the shipment. suppose the goods are absolutely destroyed in transit by any of a variety of causes. the owner of the bill of lading necessarily loses his security, unless under the bill the carrier is responsible for that particular kind of loss. but it may happen that the carrier is not responsible for that particular kind of loss. one may protect himself here, perhaps, by insurance of some kind. that would be the way to obviate this sort of risk, but if complete protection against this kind of risk is desired, the insurance ought to be not only against fire but against destruction, or really against deterioration in any form. of course, goods which are likely to depreciate in transit are not as good security as goods which are more durable. a cargo of bananas is not as good security as a cargo of grain. lack of title in shipper.--a third risk, which any one who takes a bill of lading runs, is lack of title to the goods in the shipper. suppose the shipper stole the goods and brought them to the carrier and demanded and received an order bill of lading. that looks like as good a bill of lading as any, and the goods may be all right, but the holder of the bill of lading cannot keep the goods. they still belong to the original owner from whom the shipper stole them. spent bills.--a fourth risk is that the bill of lading may be a "spent bill," as it is called. a spent bill is one where the goods have been delivered by the carrier at destination, but the bill of lading has not been taken up. a bill of lading is unlike a note in this respect--it has no date of maturity. when you buy a promissory note you can guess whether it has been dishonored or not, by whether the time for performance has come or not; but if a bill of lading for a cargo of goods is offered to you, you have no means of telling whether the cargo arrived the day before or whether the goods have been removed. of course, the carrier ought to take up an order bill of lading when the goods are delivered, and in the uniform bills of lading act that requirement is made, and the carrier is made liable on the bill if it is left outstanding and is purchased by a bona fide purchaser for value, who supposes that the goods are still in transit. this trouble with spent bills is not so likely to arise as a corresponding difficulty with what may be called "partially spent bills." it is not uncommon for partial delivery to be made and the bill of lading still left in the hands of the holder. commonly, when all the goods are delivered, the bill of lading is taken up, but when part is delivered the carrier does not feel justified, and indeed is not justified, in demanding the surrender of the bill. what ought to be done, of course, is to indorse on the bill of lading the fact that part of the goods has been delivered, with a specification of the part. this also is required by the bill of lading statute, and a carrier is made liable for failure to indorse on a bill of lading the fact that part of the goods described therein has been delivered. lack of title to bills of lading.--a fifth risk, which one who buys or lends money on bills of lading runs, is the chance that the person from whom he takes a bill of lading may not have title to it. this risk is the same that one runs in regard to negotiable paper. if an indorsement is forged, or if for any reason the holder of a bill of lading--or for that matter of a bill of exchange--cannot give a good title to it, one who purchases from him will not get a good title. meaning of negotiability.--the extent of this risk depends somewhat on the degree of negotiability which is given to bills of lading, and requires an understanding of what negotiability means. ordinarily, one who buys a contract right gets no better right than has the person from whom he buys it. on the other hand, though one who buys chattel property capable of delivery, like a horse or a book, does not get title if the person who sold it to him had no legal title, yet a purchaser does get a good title to such property if he buys, in good faith and for value, from a person who has legal title though not an equitable title. you will see this best by an illustration. if a fraudulent person has a contract right assigned to him by fraud, and then sells the contract right to a bona fide purchaser, the bona fide purchaser gets no greater right than the fraudulent person has; in other words, he cannot collect on the claim which he has obtained. on the other hand, if a fraudulent person has assigned to him, by fraud, a horse or a book, the legal title to which was in the assignor, he has acquired the legal title, and though he is subject to an equity, as the phrase is, and the horse or the book could be taken away from him by the defrauded person, if he could act quickly enough, yet a purchaser for value, without notice of fraud, will get an indefeasible legal and equitable title to the horse or the book. negotiable paper--like bills of exchange and promissory notes--is subject to the same rule as the horse or book, and is not subject to the same rule as ordinary contract rights; that is, a purchaser in good faith of an order bill of lading from a vendor having legal title thereto, will get title to it and to the goods behind it, in spite of the fact that the person from whom the bill of lading was bought had obtained title by fraud, and could have had the bill of lading, or the goods behind it, taken away from him by the person defrauded. another feature of negotiability is that the terms of the instrument, on the face and back, are regarded as definitely showing the title. if the instrument is made to a's order, a has power by indorsement to give a good title, whatever may have been the reason the instrument was made payable to a, and even though it was agreed by the original parties that a should be merely an agent and have no title or right to transfer. if the instrument is made out on its face to bearer, or is indorsed in blank by the person to whom it is made out on the face, anyone acting in good faith may treat the holder as the owner and acquire a good title from him, though in fact the holder may not have had a good title. under the uniform bills of lading act, and under some other local statutes, bills of lading running to order are given full negotiability, but in many states they are only partially negotiable. indorsement of bills of lading.--order bills of lading need, for their negotiation, indorsement by the consignee, just as a promissory note needs indorsement by the payee. but there is one difference between the indorsement of a bill of lading, it may be said in passing, and the indorsement of a promissory note. the indorser of a bill of lading incurs no liability by his indorsement. his indorsement is simply a transfer. if it turns out that the bill of lading is not honored by the carrier, the holder of an indorsed bill of lading cannot come back on the indorser in the way that the holder of a promissory note can come back on the indorser if the maker fails to pay. forged bills of lading.--one final risk in regard to bills of lading is that the bill of lading may be forged or altered, and this has in practice proved the most serious risk of all. there have been, in times past, several sets of frauds created by forged bills of lading. one of the largest is known as the knight-yancey frauds which originated in alabama. a cotton firm named knight, yancey & co. forged a quantity of bills of lading and obtained a very large amount of money from banks. a circumstance that renders forgery easier in the case of bills of lading than in the case of any other valuable document, such as a check or a stock certificate, is the carelessness with which bills of lading have been made out. it is really incredible, the carelessness with which this has been done. documents which represent a value of many thousands of dollars are scribbled hastily, in pencil sometimes, on forms that are accessible to anybody. the forgeries that have taken place have called attention to this evil, and at the present time there is more care exercised in making out order bills than was the case a few years ago; but even to-day an order bill of lading is made out with no special precautions against forgery. the forms can be obtained at any railroad station, and it is simply a question of copying writing, no devices of perforating or serial numbers or things of that sort being ordinarily used. devices to prevent forgery.--in order to meet this risk several devices have been suggested. one which has been urged upon congress is to pay the railroads a special small fee for issuing order bills with the precautions that a stock certificate is issued. the railroad would take the blank from a numbered book and would punch and stamp it in such ways and with such countersigning that it would be very difficult to forge. that method has not found much favor with shippers because they dislike the extra expense. they get their order bills of lading for nothing now, and they want to continue to do so. another project is to make some sort of central clearing house to which shall be reported all order bills of lading as they are issued, so that it will be known whether there is outstanding a document corresponding to one that is offered to a bank for security. this method is to some extent in use. alteration of bills of lading.--alteration of a genuine bill may be as damaging as the out and out forgery of a new one. this case occurred in maryland some years ago: a man who had always been in good repute had a line of credit at the bank, where he kept, as security, bills of lading. he was allowed to change these as he wanted to, putting in sufficient collateral always to cover what he took out. the railroad and steamboat lines with which he did business neglected in some instances to take up the bills of lading which he presented for shipments. they habitually did not take up the straight bills, and that is not required by law, and sometimes they did not take up the order bills. when this man got hard pressed he took some old order bills, which he still had in his possession, and changed the dates; then he took some straight bills which he had in his possession and changed the date of those, and also added the words "or order" to the name of himself as consignee. then, after indorsing those they looked good. he took those altered bills to his bank and substituted them for genuine bills, and when the fraud was found out the bank found itself with about $ , of altered bills of lading. the carrier was held liable on the order bills, even though they had been altered, because it should have taken them up, but on the straight bills, which were a great part of the whole, the bank lost. of course, they were still legally straight bills, although the holder had written "or order" on them. that fraud led to one protection being made in the uniform bill of lading recommended by the interstate commerce commission. the uniform form of order bill has the words "order of" printed in front of the blank for the consignee's name, so that a straight bill cannot be made into an order bill by adding "or order." moreover, the difference in color, between order and straight bills now gives a protection as to domestic bills; not as to foreign bills, however. if a bill is altered fraudulently the bill is worth just as much and just as little as it would have been worth if no alteration had been made; that is, the alteration, not the bill itself, is void. attachment of goods in transit.--there is one other risk in regard to bills of lading which no longer exists where the uniform bills of lading act is in force, and that is seizure by attachment for the benefit of some creditor. the bills of lading act provides that when there is an order bill outstanding, against goods shipped by a carrier, there can be neither attachment by a creditor nor stoppage in transit by the seller if unpaid. where the uniform statute has not been passed, the matter is not so clear. undoubtedly one who purchased for value or lent money on an order bill would be protected against later attachments by creditors of the former owner of the bill; but if creditors of the former owner had attached the goods prior to the transfer of the bill, the attachment would generally be held good, though the man purchasing or lending money on the bill knew nothing of the attachment. warehouse receipts are similar to bills of lading.--to what has been said in regard to bills of lading a few words in regard to warehouse receipts may be added. warehouse receipts are entirely similar in character to bills of lading, and what has been said in regard to them is, in general, applicable to warehouse receipts. there is a uniform warehouse receipts act which is similar in its provisions to the uniform bills of lading act, and the warehouse receipts act has been enacted in a majority of the states. warehouse receipts may be, in form, order or straight. they are simpler in form, ordinarily, than bills of lading, because they do not have so many special stipulations and conditions, but in other respects they are practically identical. the risks that one who deals in them runs are the same in their nature as in the case of bills of lading. there is one circumstance, however, in regard to warehouse receipts that gives one a better chance to protect himself than in bills of lading. warehouse receipts are generally used as collateral and for purchase and sale in the city where the goods are stored. it is therefore possible to telephone to the warehouseman or otherwise to assure oneself of the existence of the goods in a way that is not possible under the bill of lading, where the goods are in transit. the warehouse receipt, even less than a bill of lading, has a day of maturity. a bill of lading, as we have seen, has no particular day on which it is evident to a purchaser that it has finished its work, and that is even more true in a warehouse receipt. the fact that a warehouse receipt is pretty old does not necessarily show that the document is not a perfectly good document and that the goods are not there. open receipts.--there is one way of doing business with warehouse receipts which is different from anything that takes place with bills of lading, and which has been a subject of criticism, and which deserves criticism; this is the practice of issuing what are called open receipts. in an open receipt the warehouseman acknowledges he has received a certain quantity of things of a certain sort, and will redeliver that quantity of things of that sort; but not necessarily the identical things that were deposited. it is contemplated that the depositor shall have the right to substitute from time to time, for the goods originally deposited, other goods of like kind and quantity; that is, a receipt may be issued for bales of burlap. the depositor who deals in burlap wants to use some of the bales that are in storage. he has pledged his warehouse receipt, which he originally received for the bales of burlap, and he cannot surrender that, but he wants the warehouseman to let him take out bales of the old burlap and put in bales of new, and that is sometimes allowed. it seems a very unsafe practice. it is unsafe, for one who lends on warehouse receipts, to allow the depositor and the warehouseman to agree between themselves as to what shall be a sufficient substitution for goods which are the bank's collateral. moreover, it is unsafe for the warehouseman, because if the holder of the warehouse receipt has not really consented to the substitution, or unless the form of warehouse receipt clearly shows that substitution is contemplated, the warehouseman would be liable to the holder of the receipt if the substituted goods turn out to be inferior to those which were originally deposited. warehouseman is a bailee for hire.--a warehouseman is a bailee for hire, and a bailee for hire is liable for neglect if the goods are destroyed or injured by his negligence. he is not an insurer. the ordinary bailee for hire is not subject to the extraordinary liability to which a carrier is subjected while goods are in transit. safe deposit companies are bailees for hire.--there is one special kind of bailee, in regard to whom it may be worth while to say a few words particularly, and that is a safe deposit company. it has been questioned whether a safe deposit company is properly a bailee of the goods in the boxes to which the safe deposit company does not have access. it is simply in control of the general premises, and, furthermore, the holder of the boxes cannot have access to what is inside the boxes without the assistance of the safe deposit company. there is, therefore, a sort of joint possession. the safe deposit company and the depositor who hired the box have together the full control of the goods, but neither one of them alone has it. it has been suggested that the safe deposit company is merely a sort of watchman; that it is guarding property of which it is not in possession. but it is doing a little more than guarding, and it is generally held to be a bailee for hire; that means it must take reasonable care of the goods in its possession. liability of safe deposit companies for loss of goods.--there are a number of cases, not a great many, but still some, where safe deposit companies have been sued for goods which were missing, or which the depositor swore were missing, from his box. if the court or jury is convinced that the goods have been lost from the box, the burden of explanation as to how it happened would be upon the safe deposit company. the safe deposit company is liable for the acts of its servants and agents. of course, then, carelessness in regard to duplicate keys of any of the boxes might render a safe deposit company subject to suit if loss occurs thereby. liability of deposited goods to garnishment.--one of the most important questions in regard to safe deposit companies is this: are the goods in the safes subject to legal process? suppose a safe deposit company is garnisheed (that is served with a trustee writ) in a suit against some one who has a box; can the company answer that it has no funds or goods of the defendant in its possession? yes, it may; it cannot control the goods and it may answer, no funds. one case, however, must be distinguished, and that is where a bank or a safe deposit company has a separate trunk or box of a depositor in its possession. if it has that separate box, even though it is locked, and the bank has not the key, the bank cannot answer no funds; it must answer that it has a box the contents of which are unknown to it. a box, however, shut up in a safe deposit vault, that is, one of the regular tin safes, cannot be reached by the safe deposit company in the normal course of affairs, unless the depositor unlocks his lock. that is the reason for distinguishing between such a box and an ordinary box or trunk which is not itself enclosed in something, to which the bank or safe deposit company does not have access. liability of deposited goods to attachment.--whether property in a safe deposit company is liable on a writ of attachment in a suit against the owner, is not so clear. it has been held in one case that it is so liable, and that the officer has a right to go in and seize the goods. this will not often be attempted, however, because the officer will not know in what box the debtor might have goods, and the safe deposit company will not tell him. the company is certainly under no obligation to help the officer. the regular way for a creditor to get at the goods of his debtor, concealed in the safe deposit box, is by first making the debtor disclose on examination in court what property he has, and then getting an order from the court that the debtor shall turn over what he has disclosed. this he must do or be imprisoned until he does. there is only one difficulty with this remedy, and that is that the debtor may have an infirm memory--in other words, he may commit perjury; he may have something in the box and not disclose the fact. search for stolen property.--if stolen property were sought, a search warrant describing the property might be presented to the safe deposit company, and it would have to permit the officer of the law to make the search for the goods described, but only for goods described in the search warrant. there is a case in new york where, on a search warrant for certain articles, the officer of a safe deposit company allowed the officer of the law to make a general examination of goods in its possession, and to remove some bonds which were not specified in the search warrant. the safe deposit company was held liable. death of depositor.--the question often arises: what is the situation on the death of the owner or renter of a safe? it is the same as in the case of the death of any bailor or depositor. the bailee must recognize the title only of the person who is appointed by law as the successor in interest to the deceased person. the safe deposit company has the right, and should exercise it, to demand proofs and identifications of persons who claim rights as representing deceased persons. sometimes a dispute arises between joint owners of a box. in that case the only safe course for a safe deposit company would be to recognize the right of none until it had been passed on by the court. what is called a bill of interpleader, to determine which one has the right, should be filed in court, unless the conflicting interests can agree or one of them gives a bond to the company to insure its freedom from liability if it delivers the goods to him. safe deposit company has no lien.--a safe deposit company has no lien on the contents of a box for anything due to it. in that respect it is different from an ordinary warehouseman and a carrier, who have a lien on the goods in their possession for their charges. the reason is that a safe deposit company is not in such possession of the contents of a box as to give it a lien. if the renter of the box does not pay his bills, however, the company has the right to open the box and remove its contents, keeping them safe for the owner. gift of goods in a safe deposit box.--it was held in a case, decided in the state of illinois, that the gift of the keys of a safe deposit box amounted to a valid gift of property in the box when made with that intention. in order to make a good gift there must be a valid delivery, and it was held that the delivery of the keys amounted to a symbolic delivery of the contents of the box. right of safe deposit company to sue for goods wrongfully taken.--if goods are wrongfully removed from the box of a depositor, the safe deposit company has a right to reclaim them like any bailee, for it is the law that if goods are taken out of the hands of a carrier, warehouseman or other bailee wrongfully, the bailee may reclaim the goods from the wrongdoer, and bring an action at law for them, not as owner, but because the bailee has the right of possession to them while in his custody, and he may be liable if he lets them get into the hands of any one other than the true owner. liability of safe deposit companies under inheritance tax laws.--one case in regard to the illinois inheritance tax law indicates an imposition of some burden on the safe deposit company. the company is required to notify the attorney-general ten days before it allows access by the representative of a deceased person to his box, and under certain circumstances the safe deposit company is required to retain, from the contents of the box, a sufficient amount to pay the tax, and is made liable if it fails to do so. this provision was held constitutional by the supreme court of illinois. chapter xii bills and notes history.--by the term "negotiable paper," we ordinarily mean promissory notes, bills of exchange and checks. the law governing negotiable paper originated among the customs of merchants on the continent of europe. it was gradually introduced into england, and its principles grudgingly recognized by the common law judges. there is no branch of law where the desirability of uniformity is greater, as these documents pass from hand to hand like money, and travel from one state to another. naturally, our first serious attempt at uniform legislation was made in this branch of law, and in the year , the commissioners for uniform laws prepared and recommended for passage the uniform negotiable instruments law. to-day, every state, except georgia, has passed the act, as well as the district of columbia, alaska, porto rico and the philippines. for convenience in this chapter, we shall hereafter refer to this negotiable instruments act as the n. i. l. forms of negotiable instruments.--it is essential to carry in mind the customary form of the negotiable instruments we have just mentioned. a promissory note is defined by the n. i. l. as follows: "a negotiable promissory note within the meaning of this act is an unconditional promise in writing made by one person to another signed by the maker engaging to pay on demand, or at a fixed or determinable future time, a sum certain in money to order or to bearer." [illustration: specimen form of promissory note] a bill of exchange is defined by the n. i. l. as follows: "a bill of exchange is an unconditional order in writing addressed by one person to another, signed by the person giving it, requiring the person to whom it is addressed to pay on demand or at a fixed or determinable future time a sum certain in money to order or to bearer." a check is defined by n. i. l. as "a bill of exchange drawn on a bank payable on demand." other documents may be negotiable in form, such as the ordinary bearer corporation bonds, liberty bonds, certificates of stock, and bills of lading. the principles discussed in this chapter would apply, ordinarily, to these documents, and are discussed more in detail in the chapters devoted to them which we have already considered. what is negotiability?--negotiability has been defined as that quality whereby a bill, note, or check, passes freely from hand to hand like currency. in fact, all of these documents are substitutes for currency, and so far as is practicable, it is desirable that they should pass as freely as currency. negotiability applies only to this branch of the law, while assignability applies to ordinary cases of contract law. [illustration: specimen form of draft before the words "pay to" the time when the draft is due should be inserted--as "at sight" or " days after date"] [illustration: specimen form of check] illustrations.--to illustrate the difference between the two: jones worked for the baltimore & ohio railroad co. he presented his bill of $ to the proper official, and a check was issued by the railroad payable to the order of jones for that amount. jones took the check, indorsed it, and with it paid his grocery bill. the grocery man deposited the check in his bank, and was notified shortly thereafter that payment had been stopped on the check by the baltimore & ohio. they claimed a fraud had been committed, that jones was overpaid $ , and, therefore, they refused to honor the check. the grocery man, having taken this check in the usual course of business, is what we term a "holder in due course." the n.i.l. defines a holder in due course as: section . "a holder in due course is a holder who has taken the instrument under the following conditions: ( ) that it is complete and regular upon its face; ( ) that he became the holder of it before it was overdue, and without notice that it had been previously dishonored, if such was the fact; ( ) that he took it in good faith and for value; ( ) that at the time it was negotiated to him he had no notice of any infirmity in the instrument or defect in the title of the person negotiating it." a holder in due course, then, would be entitled to collect the full $ from the baltimore & ohio. this check is governed by the law of negotiability with the result which we have just indicated. now change the facts a trifle. jones presented his bill to the same officer of the baltimore & ohio as before. the officer says that checks are made out regularly on the first of the month. it was the fifteenth, and jones did not feel able to wait until the first of the next month. he went to a friend and told him of his claim against the baltimore & ohio, and said: "i will assign this claim to you for $ , and then you can present the assignment, which i will draw up and sign, to the baltimore & ohio on the first of the month, and get the $ ." his friend agrees and advances the money. when he presents the written assignment to the proper officer on the first of the month, he is told that the railroad has discovered that jones' claim was really good for only $ , and that is all they will pay. although his assignment reads for $ , he can collect only $ . this illustration is governed by the law of assignability, which applies to practically all contracts, apart from commercial paper. under the rules of assignability, a person can assign no better claim than he has, or, as is sometimes said, the assignee stands in the shoes of the assignor. jones really had a claim of only $ against the baltimore & ohio, although he claimed it was $ . he could assign no more than he really had. these two illustrations show the great difference in the result of the application of the two principles, negotiability and assignability. the formal requirements of negotiable paper.--there are certain formalities which all negotiable paper must have. it must be in writing, and signed by the proper person. no form of writing is specified in the act, and lead pencil, or even slate pencil, is as good as ink, except that in the two latter cases the ease with which these forms of writing may be altered makes them most undesirable for use. but there is no law requiring the use of ink. must contain a promise.--every negotiable instrument must contain words of negotiability. these words are, "to order," "to bearer," "to holder" or their equivalent. "i promise to pay john jones, $ ," and signed "john smith," is a promissory note, but not a negotiable promissory note, because it lacks the words to "order" or "bearer," and is a document which would, therefore, pass by the law of assignability rather than the law of negotiability. in taking negotiable paper, therefore, it is always important to see whether these words are present. if they are not, the holder will lose the peculiar advantage and rights which the holder in due course acquires by the law of negotiability. a promissory note must contain a promise and a bill of exchange must contain an unconditional order. an i.o.u. for $ signed "john jones" is not a promissory note, because there is no promise contained in such a document. unconditional promise.--all negotiable documents must be payable without reference to any contingency. a note reads: "i promise to pay to the order of john jones $ when i attain my twenty-second birthday" and is signed by john jones, now twenty-one. that is not a good note because the person may not live to be twenty-two. even if he lives to become twenty-two the note is still non-negotiable, for when it was made the contingency existed. a bill of exchange, regular in form, but adding the expression, "if the republicans win the next congressional election," is not negotiable. the one exception, as it might appear at first sight, is a negotiable document reading: "i promise to pay to the order of william white six months after death," etc. such a promise is not contingent. death will arrive at some time, although it may be uncertain just when. in the other illustrations the republicans might not win the congressional election, and the person might not become twenty-two. again, all commercial paper must be made payable in money. "i promise to pay to the order of john jones $ worth of tobacco," is not negotiable. "i promise to pay to the order of john jones $ and fifty pounds of tobacco" is not negotiable. in both cases, the medium of payment is something other than money. inception of the instrument as an obligation.--in our discussion of contracts, we made the statement that a legal intention to make a contract was necessary. the same is true in commercial paper. a man must intend legally to issue a negotiable instrument in order to be liable on one as maker or drawer. thus, in the case of walker v. ebert, wis. , the defendant, a german, unable to read and write english, was induced by the payee to sign an instrument, in the form of a promissory note, relying on the false statement that it was a contract appointing the defendant agent to sell a patent right. it was held that the defendant was not liable. the instrument, though complete in form, was not the defendant's note and the plaintiff acquired nothing by his purchase of the paper. illustration.--we must contrast this with another situation. suppose i hand you a paper with a promissory note printed on it, complete in every detail except your signature. i ask you to sign it. you sign the paper, without reading it over or knowing what it is, and give it back to me. i then transfer it to a person who takes it for value, in good faith, etc., or who is, in other words, a holder in due course. the question is, are you liable on such a document? the answer is, "of course, you are." you may say, "i did not intend to sign a promissory note." the law answers you by saying, "you were careless in signing something which you did not read over, and one is presumed to intend the consequences of his own careless acts." our german was in a different situation. he was not careless. he could not read english and was obliged to rely upon someone to tell him what the document was, and, granting that he used due care in selecting a responsible person to explain to him the nature of the document, he had done all the law required. had he been imposed upon, on several previous occasions, by the same person who told him what the document was, and in spite of that, had relied on him to explain this document, then, undoubtedly, the court would have held otherwise and he would have been liable on the ground that he must have intended the consequences of his negligent acts, he being deemed negligent when he trusts a person who had not only misrepresented things to him but had actually defrauded him several times. delivery.--a note found among the maker's papers, after his death, imposes no obligation either upon him or upon his estate. in other words, in addition to the intentional signing of the document, to complete its validity, there must also have been what we call delivery. this is a passing out of the possession of the maker or drawer, of the document, into the hands of some third party. delivery may be made in three ways: ( ) by intention; ( ) by fraud; ( ) by negligence. a valid delivery necessary.--i hand you my promissory note and you take it. that, of course, is an intentional delivery. you tell me that you have a fine watch which i decide to buy, and i give you my promissory note in payment. afterwards, upon examining the watch, i find that it is worthless and entirely different from your description. you have secured the note from me in that case by fraud, or there is, as we say, a delivery procured by fraud. i am sitting on a bench in central park, and i take out of my pocket a completed promissory note and look at it and place it upon the bench. when i leave i forget it and it stays there until someone comes along and picks it up. that is a delivery by negligence. all these forms of delivery are valid, making the documents good, some in the hands of all parties, others in the hands of the holder in due course only. the n. i. l. is so clear upon this matter that reference must be made to sections and . for this reason both of these sections are reproduced here in full: section . "where an incomplete instrument has not been delivered it will not, if completed and negotiated, without authority, be a valid contract in the hands of any holder, as against any person whose signature was placed thereon before delivery." section . "every contract on a negotiable instrument is incomplete and revocable until delivery of the instrument for the purpose of giving effect thereto. as between immediate parties, and as regards a remote party other than a holder in due course, the delivery, in order to be effectual, must be made either by or under the authority of the party making, drawing, accepting or indorsing, as the case may be; and in such case the delivery may be shown to have been conditional, or for a special purpose only, and not for the purpose of transferring the property in the instrument. but where the instrument is in the hands of a holder in due course, a valid delivery thereof by all parties prior to him so as to make them liable to him is conclusively presumed. and where the instrument is no longer in the possession of a party whose signature appears thereon, a valid and intentional delivery by him is presumed until the contrary is proved." distinguishing features.--it is very important to distinguish between these two sections. let us take for illustration the famous case of baxendale v. bennett, q.b.div. . here the defendant wrote his signature as acceptor on several printed blank forms of bills of exchange and left them in a drawer of his desk. the blanks were stolen, filled out, and negotiated to the plaintiff, an innocent purchaser. it was held that the plaintiff could not recover. the reason for this decision is that the document was incomplete and as the act says: "where an incomplete instrument has not been delivered it will not, if completed and negotiated, without authority, be a valid contract in the hands of any holder, as against any person whose signature was placed thereon before delivery." on the other hand, if i leave in my safe, checks which i have signed and made out in full and they are payable to bearer, although a thief breaks in and steals the checks from the safe, those documents will be valid in the hands of a holder in due course. the reason here is that although there has been no delivery, either by intention or by fraud or by negligence, nevertheless, the negotiable instruments act has extended this theory of delivery, even further than the law went before the act was passed, and says that when the document is in the hands of a holder in due course, a delivery is conclusively presumed. consideration.--another essential in the inception of the instrument is consideration. we have already discussed this topic in the chapter on contracts. we made the statement at the beginning of this chapter that the law of negotiable paper came from the continent of europe and was grudgingly received by the courts of england. the law of negotiable paper on the continent of europe did not have any idea of consideration, and this is one reason why the law was reluctantly admitted to the english common law and explains the reason now why we have the doctrine of consideration in negotiable paper. it would not be safe for the student to accept all we have said in regard to consideration in the chapter on contracts and apply it to negotiable paper. the difference is at once apparent when you read sections and of the negotiable instrument act which read: section . "every negotiable instrument is deemed prima facie to have been issued for a valuable consideration; and every person whose signature appears thereon to have become a party thereto for value." section . "absence or failure of consideration is a matter of defence as against a person not a holder in due course." so, we see, that in the general law of contracts, consideration is absolutely essential to a binding contract but in the law of negotiable paper, consideration is not absolutely essential except when you are dealing with the immediate parties. an illustration will explain this. i wish to make you a present on your next birthday which is january . to-day, september , i give you my promissory note due on your birthday for $ . this is to be my present to you. you take the note and then hold it until your birthday arrives and i do not pay it. then you sue me on the note. you cannot recover anything because there was no consideration for the note and the absence of consideration is a perfectly good defence between you and me, whom the law calls the immediate parties. but, suppose, instead of doing this, you had kept the note about six weeks and then had taken it to your bank and asked them if they would discount the note for you and they had done so, taking it in absolutely good faith. they know me to be a responsible party, so they are willing to accept my promissory note. they knew you and they presumed that you had taken the note for a valuable consideration although, as a matter of fact, it was a gift to you. under the circumstances, the bank is a holder in due course and when the note becomes due, if i do not pay, the bank will sue me and will collect from me because, as the act says, "the failure of consideration is a matter of defence as against any person not a holder in due course." but the bank is a holder in due course. acceptance of bills of exchange.--the holder of a bill of exchange will take it, soon after receiving it, to the drawee, the person upon whom it is drawn, for his acceptance. the drawee will accept it by writing across the face of it "accepted," signing his name and perhaps adding "payable at the first national bank." a form of bill of exchange, duly accepted, will be found elsewhere in this chapter. the act provides that the acceptance must be in writing and signed, either on the document itself or on a separate piece of paper attached to the document. as soon as the drawee accepts the bill, he then becomes known, not as the drawee but as the acceptor and he is the party primarily liable on the bill, that is, he assumes responsibility for its payment. the holder has a right to demand an acceptance for the full amount of the bill and may refuse to take an acceptance for a less amount. it is not always possible for the drawee to know whether he has sufficient funds to justify an acceptance, and so the act gives him twenty-four hours within which to make up his mind. during that time the holder is obliged to wait without taking any further action. just as a conditional promise to pay money is not a good promissory note, just so a conditional acceptance is not looked upon as an acceptance which a party is obliged to take. there are, however, occasionally times when a person is willing to take a conditional acceptance. for example, i hold a bill of exchange for $ , . there are three or four indorsers upon it and i take it to the drawee to have him accept. he will not accept for more than $ . now i feel that the drawer and all of the indorsers are financially irresponsible and i would rather have the acceptance of the drawee for $ than nothing. i am willing to take it. the question comes up as to the effect of this upon the other parties, the drawer and the indorsers. the act covers that fully and it is important that it be kept in mind: section . "the holder may refuse to take a qualified acceptance, and if he does not obtain an unqualified acceptance, he may treat the bill as dishonored by non-acceptance. where a qualified acceptance is taken, the drawer and indorsers are discharged from liability on the bill, unless they have expressly or impliedly authorized the holder to take a qualified acceptance, or subsequently assent thereto. when the drawer or indorser receives notice of a qualified acceptance, he must, within a reasonable time, express his dissent to the holder, or he will be deemed to have assented thereto." negotiation.--if negotiable paper is a substitute for money, it follows that its most distinguishing characteristic is the fact that it may be transferred from one owner to another. this transfer is made in one of two ways. it may be by operation of law, or by act of the parties. by operation of law, we refer to such a case as where a person dies and his commercial paper then becomes the property of his administrator or executor. in other words, the law transfers the paper to the deceased person's legal representative. the other case, the transfer by the act of the parties is, of course, the ordinary case and the one we shall consider here. the sections in the negotiable instruments act which discuss this matter are so clear that we can do no better than insert them in full at this time: section . "an instrument is negotiated when it is transferred from one person to another in such a manner as to constitute the transferee the holder thereof. if payable to bearer it is negotiated by delivery; if payable to order it is negotiated by the indorsement of the holder completed by delivery." section . "the indorsement must be written on the instrument itself or upon a paper attached thereto. the signature of the indorser, without additional words, is a sufficient indorsement." section . "the indorsement must be an indorsement of the entire instrument. an indorsement which purports to transfer to the indorsee a part only of the amount payable, or which purports to transfer the instrument to two or more indorsees severally, does not operate as a negotiation of the instrument. but where the instrument has been paid in part, it may be indorsed as to the residue." negotiation by indorsement.--reference should be made to the several kinds of negotiation by indorsement. we have first the blank indorsement. there the person to whom the document is payable simply writes his name on the back in the same way as it appears on the front. that is, if john jones is the payee, he writes his name across the back of the instrument "john jones." next, there is the special indorsement. john jones, in this case, is the payee and wishes to transfer the note to john wanamaker. he writes across the back, "pay to the order of john wanamaker" and signs his name, john jones. a restrictive indorsement is one where the further negotiation of the instrument is limited or restricted altogether. for example, the payee writes across the back "pay to the order of john jones only." that restricts the further negotiation of the instrument. another form that is commonly used is in depositing checks in the bank in your own account; usually you indorse "for collection" and sign your name, or you indorse "for deposit only" and sign your name. this form of indorsement simply constitutes the bank your agent to make collection, but not for any other purpose except that the act now authorizes a bank to begin suit to collect on a document indorsed in that way. another form of indorsement, known as the qualified indorsement, is frequently used in the case where you wish to indorse without incurring the usual liability of the indorser. this is done by adding under your name the expression "without recourse." this does not mean, as is commonly supposed, that you are free from all liability as an indorser. we shall refer to this later. the holder in due course.--as we have seen, the distinguishing feature of the law of commercial paper is negotiability as distinguished from assignability. the principles of negotiability are designed very largely for the protection of the person whom we call the holder in due course. it is essential then to bear in mind the condition under which a person becomes such. section of the act defines a holder in due course as follows: section . "a holder in due course is a holder who has taken the instrument under the following conditions: ( ) that the instrument is complete and regular upon its face; ( ) that he became the holder of it before it was overdue, and without notice that it had been previously dishonored, if such was the fact; ( ) that he took it in good faith and for value; ( ) that at the time it was negotiated to him he had no notice of any infirmity in the instrument or defect in the title of the person negotiating it." section defines what the rights of this holder in due course are: section . "a holder in due course holds the instrument free from any defect of title of prior parties, and free from defences available to prior parties among themselves, and may enforce payment of the instrument for the full amount thereof against all parties liable thereon." it is clear, then, that by this section, the act means that the holder in due course takes free of personal defences, although he does not take free of absolute defences. it simply remains for us to consider briefly what is meant by a personal defence and what is meant by an absolute defence. we have already illustrated this in one of our cases where the note was a present. in this case, there was no consideration for the note. the boy to whom it was given could not recover, whereas when he transferred it to an innocent third party, a holder for value, he could recover. thus we say, failure of consideration is a personal defence. again, some person steals my check book, fills out a check, and forges my name. the check is then taken and finally gets into the hands of a person who is strictly a holder in due course. he could not recover on it, however, because forgery is a real defence. that is, no one can hold me liable on my forged check. the ordinary illustration of real or absolute defences are infancy, lunacy, illegality and sometimes fraud. other defences are generally personal defences and do not affect the holder in due course. to put it another way, a real defence is good against the whole world; a personal defence is available only against such as are not holders in due course. liability of parties.--the parties primarily liable on negotiable documents are, on a note, the maker; on a bill of exchange, the acceptor; and on a check, the drawer. the liability of these three parties is most concisely stated in sections , , , as follows: section . "the maker of a negotiable instrument by making it engages that he will pay it according to its tenor, and admits the existence of the payee and his then capacity to indorse." section . "the drawer by drawing the instrument admits the existence of the payee, and his then capacity to indorse; and engages that on due presentment the instrument will be accepted or paid, or both, according to its tenor, and that if it be dishonored and the necessary proceedings on dishonor be duly taken, he will pay the amount thereof to the holder, or to any subsequent indorser who may be compelled to pay it. but the drawer may insert in the instrument an express stipulation negativing or limiting his own liability to the holder." section . "the acceptor by accepting the instrument engages that he will pay it according to the tenor of his acceptance; and admits: ( ) the existence of the drawer, the genuineness of his signature, and his capacity and authority to draw the instrument; and, ( ) the existence of the payee and his then capacity to indorse." indorsers' liability.--we have not yet considered the question of the liability of persons who transfer negotiable documents. indorsements may be made, as we have said, in two ways: either by indorsing the document, or if it is payable to bearer, by delivering it without indorsement. the liability of these two parties is stated in the negotiable instruments act in sections and in the following language: section . "every person negotiating an instrument by delivery or by a qualified indorsement, warrants: ( ) that the instrument is genuine and in all respects what it purports to be; ( ) that he has a good title to it; ( ) that all prior parties had capacity to contract; ( ) that he has no knowledge of any fact which would impair the validity of the instrument or render it valueless. but when the negotiation is by delivery only, the warranty extends in favor of no holder other than the immediate transferee. the provisions of subdivision three of this section do not apply to persons negotiating public or corporation securities other than bills and notes." section . "every indorser who indorses without qualification, warrants to all subsequent holders in due course: ( ) the matters and things mentioned in subdivision one, two and three of the next preceding section; and ( ) that the instrument is at the time of his indorsement valid and subsisting. and, in addition, he engages that on due presentment, it shall be accepted or paid, or both, as the case may be, according to its tenor, and that if it be dishonored, and the necessary proceedings on dishonor be duly taken, he will pay the amount thereof to the holder, or to any subsequent indorser who may be compelled to pay it." qualified indorsement.--section speaks of delivery by qualified instrument. you will remember that we have already mentioned the indorsement in the form "without recourse." this is a qualified indorsement. the kind of liability a person incurs who indorses in that way is set forth in section . this is important because the layman assumes that in indorsing "without recourse" one means to incur no liability as indorser. such is not the case. reread section , which covers the indorsement without recourse. there is liability for the things mentioned therein. then in section , the last paragraph, you will notice that every indorser, who indorses without qualification "engages that on due presentment, it shall be accepted or paid, or both, as the case may be, according to its tenor, and that if it be dishonored, and the necessary proceedings on dishonor be duly taken, he will pay the amount thereof to the holder." this does not mean that the indorser will always pay, but only if the necessary steps are taken. we shall consider what these necessary steps are when we take up the subject of "protest." checks.--a check is simply a bill of exchange drawn on a bank and payable on demand. therefore, the general principles which we have been laying down, in regard to bills of exchange and other negotiable paper, apply to checks, although, of course, the check is a more recent development in the law of commercial paper than the other two forms, namely, the promissory note and the bill of exchange. section of the act reads: "a check must be presented for payment within a reasonable time after its issue or the drawer will be discharged from liability thereon to the extent of the loss caused by the delay." holder of check.--it is important to remember that the holder of a check has no right against the bank. thus, if i hold john rockefeller's check, drawn on the institute national bank, and i present it to the bank and the bank refuses to pay it for no reason at all, or for a purely arbitrary reason, i cannot sue the bank. the only thing i can do is to seek to get the money on the check from mr. rockefeller personally. this is because the drawing of a check is not the assignment of so much money to the payee named in the check. of course, mr. rockefeller might sue his bank for failure to honor his check if it refuses to pay it to me for no valid reason. one further fact is important. when a holder of a check procures it to be certified by the bank, that releases all indorsers and also the drawer. and so, if i have a check drawn by mr. rockefeller and indorsed by six millionaires and i take that to the bank and have them certify it and then the bank fails, i have lost everything if the bank never pays anything to a depositor. by getting it certified i release mr. rockefeller and all of the indorsers. the meaning of protest.--protest is often used broadly to signify any dishonor of a negotiable instrument, but, of course, properly it means presentment by a notary, and his certification that an instrument has been presented for payment and has been dishonored. protest is only necessary in regard to foreign bills. a foreign bill is one which is drawn in one state and payable in another. for this purpose the different states of the union are foreign to each other. a bill drawn in new york payable in boston is as much a foreign bill for this purpose as one drawn in england payable here. what may be protested.--though protest is not necessary for any other negotiable instrument except foreign bills of exchange, including foreign checks, it is convenient frequently to protest other negotiable instruments. the law provides that protest may be made of other negotiable instruments, and the certificate of protest is evidence in such cases, as well as in the case of foreign bills of exchange, of the facts which it states, namely, that the instrument has been duly presented and notice given. statements in a certificate of protest, however, whether of foreign bills or of other instruments, are not conclusive evidence of the facts which they state. they are some evidence, but it may be shown by other evidence that the instrument was not presented, or was not presented at the time the certificate asserts, or that the notice was not given as therein asserted. suggestions for drawing negotiable paper.--very few suggestions are necessary in drawing checks. we almost always use the printed form. the only thing to be careful about is to draw lines through the blank spaces so that a check written for $ may not have something else written before the word seventy, thereby raising the amount to, say, one thousand seventy, and the figures, because they are not near the dollar sign, correspondingly raised. the promissory note is frequently drawn by the parties without any printed form. in order to be negotiable, the note must bear the words "or order," or "bearer"; otherwise, it would not be negotiable, and would pass by the law of assignability without any of the advantages accruing to negotiable paper. the draft, or bill of exchange, is the document which the average layman is the least familiar with, and before drawing one, a printed form should be secured or a book on negotiable paper be consulted. negotiability.--care should be taken in the indorsement of any negotiable paper. the indorsement in blank, that is, simply writing your name upon the paper on the back, is the one commonly used, but is a dangerous one to use, if there is any possibility of the paper being lost or stolen. for example, a has a promissory note payable to his order, and he simply writes his name across the back and mails it to a person who has agreed to accept it in payment of a bill a owes him. the letter is lost, gets into the hands of x, who opens it and takes the note. of course, the note is no good to x. x, however, takes the note to someone and persuades that person to discount the note for him. that person does it in good faith, believing x came by the note rightfully. the discounter is therefore a holder in due course, and he would be able to collect on the note. what a should have done, when he sent the note to his friend john brown, was to have indorsed it specially, "pay to the order of john brown, a." again, a person who is collecting some money for his friend receives a check payable to his order. he wants to turn the check over to his friend, and indorses it by a special indorsement. when the friend tries to collect on the check, it is returned "no funds." the friend now may hold the person responsible who indorsed the check, because an indorser guarantees the payment of the instrument if the proper steps be taken to fix his liability. ordinarily, of course, we wish an indorser to assume this liability, but in this particular case there was no reason why this man should have indorsed the check in that way. he could have indorsed it, and added to his signature the words "without recourse," which would have relieved him from paying the instrument if the drawer did not pay it. chapter xiii torts and crimes tort, contract, and crime distinguished.--we have already discussed contracts in detail. the fundamental idea of contracts is that the obligation of a contract is voluntarily assumed. although it might be difficult, at least theoretically, i may take the position that i will not enter into any contractual relationship with anyone for a month. i could do this legally, if i were willing to put up with the annoyance which i would probably suffer. but suppose i take the position that i will assault jones and i will not pay him any damages for the injuries occasioned by my assault. my position would be wholly untenable. the contract obligation is voluntarily assumed. the law imposes the obligations or duties which exist in torts, and i must observe those duties whether i wish to or not. similarly, one must observe all of the criminal law of the jurisdiction where he is, whether he will or not. in fact, ignorance of the law is no excuse. a man may even commit a crime, although he did not know there was a law prohibiting the act. again, in the definition of a tort, we shall find the expression, "breach of duty imposed by law." a man arrives home late at night. he finds a person suffering from exposure at his front door. the person asks to be taken in and lodged for the night, but the householder refuses to take him in, and the man contracts pneumonia from exposure. in this case the householder is not liable. there is no duty imposed by law to be your brother's keeper. there may be a moral obligation in the case just cited, but not a legal one. jurisdiction.--there is another way in which a criminal action is sometimes different from an action in contract or an action in tort. a suit on a contract may be brought in any court where jurisdiction over the parties may be secured. for example, a and b make a contract in new york. the contract is broken, and six months later, a and b are both in galveston, texas. either party could sue the other in the texas court on the broken contract. the same is true in regard to most tort actions. a slanders b in new york. a little later both are in san francisco, california. b could sue a in a california court for slander. a criminal prosecution, however, must always be brought in the state where the crime is committed, and generally in that very county of the state. hence, if a murders b in kings county, new york, the trial could not, under any circumstances, be held in essex county, new jersey, for no new jersey court would have jurisdiction over an offense committed in new york, because the wrong is done to the people of the state of new york, and not to the people of the state of new jersey. tort defined.--it has been stated by the court of appeals of new york that no satisfactory definition of a tort can be found. it is easier, perhaps, to explain to the layman the meaning of the term "tort" by simply enumerating such things as are torts. for example, assault and battery is a tort, and so are libel, slander, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, fraud, deceit, and negligence. bigelow's definition is perhaps least objectionable of all of the definitions. he defines a tort as a breach of duty imposed by municipal law, for which a suit of damages will lie. every tort involves the violation of a duty owed to the individual. for example, a owes to b the duty not to attempt with force to harm his person, or to hit him, or to touch him intentionally, or recklessly. the violation of this duty to b, by a, constitutes the tort of assault and battery. again, a owes to b the duty not to injure b's reputation, either by spoken word or by written word, so long as b has done nothing to forfeit this right to a good reputation. the violation of this duty, on the part of a, constitutes the tort of libel or slander. so, then, it is easy to see why libel, for example, is a tort. it is a breach of duty which the law imposes upon a for which b may sue and recover damages if he is injured. the same with assault and battery, and the various other torts. crime defined.--a tort, as we have indicated, is a breach of duty owed by a to b. a crime is also a breach of duty, but in this case, a is an individual citizen, and b is a sovereign state. c murders d. when c is prosecuted, the action will read, "the people of the state of new york against c." in other words, the crime is a wrong to the state, and so a crime has been defined as an act or omission which is forbidden by law, to which a punishment is annexed, and which a state prosecutes in its own name. murder, manslaughter, arson and forgery are all crimes. we may correctly also add assault and battery, thus suggesting the fact that the same act may be both a crime and a tort, because the assault is a wrong against the individual and against the state. the individual will sue in a civil court, to recover pecuniary damages, in an ordinary suit of tort, while the state, for the same offense, through the district attorney's or prosecutor's office, will criminally proceed against the guilty party. we shall now consider briefly some of the more important torts and crimes. assault and battery.--assault is an attempt, real or apparent, to do injury to the person of another. battery is a completed assault. it is not necessary that a person have the actual ability to carry out the threat to constitute an assault. for example, to point an unloaded revolver at a person is an assault. while the definition might convey the impression that force was necessary, this is not strictly true, because deception sometimes may be the equivalent of force. for example: assault and battery is committed where a person administers a drug to someone under the belief that he is taking an entirely different kind of drug. certain assaults, although technically such, are excusable or justifiable. formerly a school teacher had the right of corporal punishment without being liable for assault and battery. by statute this right is generally taken away now. a parent, however, may inflict corporal punishment on his child without any civil liability. courts generally assign as the reason for this, the fact that it would not be conducive to the welfare of the family to have children sue their parents, and the further fact that the child's rights are protected by giving him the right to have his parent arrested and punished criminally for an assault. while it was held formerly that a husband had the right to beat his wife, no modern court has upheld this view. self-defense.--another case where assault is justified is in the case of self-defense. it is common saying that a man's house is his castle, and the right of self-defense is founded on the right of self-preservation. so that it follows that a man may use force in protecting both himself and his property. a greater amount of force is ordinarily permitted in the protection of the person than of property. in using force, however, such force only as is reasonably necessary may be used. for example, a man attempts to take my watch from my pocket. i strike his arm to prevent it, and do so successfully. thereafter, as soon as the man's back is turned, i jump on him and assault him, injuring him severely. i would be liable in this case because more force than is necessary for the protection of my property was used. libel and slander.--these two terms are frequently combined under the one term of defamation which is defined as a false imputation upon one's character or reputation. slander is oral defamation, and libel is written defamation. the action of slander is very technical. perhaps there is no better summary than that given by the united states supreme court in the case of pollard v. lyon, u. s. , as to what statements are slanderous per se. "slander," the court says, "may be divided into five classes, as follows: ( ) words falsely spoken of a person which impute to the party the commission of some criminal offense involving moral turpitude, for which the party, if the charge is true, may be indicted and punished. ( ) words falsely spoken of a person which impute that the party is infected with some contagious disease, where, if the charge is true, it would exclude the party from society; or ( ) defamatory words falsely spoken of a person, which impute to the party unfitness to perform the duties of an office or employment of profit, or the want of integrity in the discharge of the duties of such an office or employment. ( ) defamatory words falsely spoken of a party which prejudice such party in his or her profession or trade. ( ) defamatory words falsely spoken of a person, which, though not in themselves actionable, occasion the party special damage." a libel is any writing, picture, print or effigy which tends to hold one up to the contempt, scorn, ridicule, or disgrace of his fellow men. we see then, that many statements which would not be slanderous would be libelous. principles common to both libel and slander.--certain principles are common to both libel and slander. there must be a publication in either case. to say to a school teacher, in a room where he and the speaker are the only persons present, that he is a fool, would not be slanderous. there is no publication. to write a letter to a minister calling him a thief and a crook would not be libelous because there would be no publication. after he had opened the letter and read it, should he show it to any of his friends, he would have made the publication, and impliedly have consented to its publication. whether to send statements like this on a postal card constitutes a publication or a libel is an open question, as also is the question whether the dictation of false statements to a person's stenographer constitutes publication to some third person. privilege.--certain clearly slanderous or libelous statements may, nevertheless, not be actionable, because they are absolutely or qualifiedly privileged. such is the case of any speech made by a member of congress, or a member of the state legislature on the floor of the legislative hall. such statement, however, made from the stump during a political campaign, would not be privileged. the first is what we call an absolute privilege. there is a certain class of privilege which we speak of as qualified privilege. newspapers, for example, are permitted to comment by way of criticism on any matters of current interest, provided a reasonable limit is not exceeded. it would not be permissible for a newspaper to pick out john jones, a wholly retiring and inconspicuous citizen of a town, and make statements about him which hold him up to ridicule, because the public welfare does not call for such action. however, were john jones running for public office, it would be proper for a newspaper to make comment upon his record, and such statements would have a qualified privilege, although subjecting him to ridicule. a member of the legislature on the floor of the legislature could make statements concerning the same john jones and never be liable because of his absolute privilege. we must assume, that, with each case mentioned, the statement made is false, in order to have it constitute libel or slander. in other words, truth is a defense to an action for defamation. a person has no right to a false character, and to speak the truth about him does not, therefore, constitute a tort. fraud or deceit.--in order to establish the tort of fraud, it is necessary to prove the following five allegations: ( ) that a makes a false statement of a material fact; ( ) with knowledge of its falsity; ( ) with the intent that it should be acted upon; ( ) that the other party believed it to be true; and, ( ) acted upon it to his damage. the absence of any one of these five elements will prevent the action of fraud from existing. the action of fraud is most important not only in torts, but also it plays a large part in the law of contracts, and the law of sales, as to both real property and personal property. a stock broker says to mr. jones: "my house is offering the best bargain in oil stocks which has been on the market for five years. aetna oil mining stock at $ a share is the best buy on the curb to-day. there is no doubt the company will pay % in dividends in the first year." green, relying on this representation, purchases shares of the stock. the stock, thereafter, steadily declines, and never pays a dividend. has he cause of action for fraud? clearly not, because there has been no false statement of material fact. these statements about the future earning capacity are seller's talk, or the salesman is merely puffing his wares. both these expressions are common in the reports and for a mere statement of opinion, no action of fraud lies. it must be a statement of fact. supposing the same broker had said to his customer, "aetna oil company has paid % dividends for the last ten years," and such statement afterwards was found by the purchaser to have been false. an action of fraud would lie, because the dividend record of a company is in the past, and it is not opinion, but fact. again, suppose the statements to have been the same as in the second illustration, and that they were altogether false, but within three months, through a sudden change in conditions, the affairs of the company were greatly improved, the stock went up in value, and began to pay large dividends. again, there would be no cause of action, because the fifth element, that of damage, would be lacking. again, suppose the purchaser, after learning from the broker about the past dividend record, should say, "i will give you my answer to-morrow." meanwhile, he looks up in a financial paper the dividend record and discovers the statements to be false. he then purchases the stock. here he would have no cause of action, although he might be damaged, for the reason that by making his own investigation, he has clearly shown that he has not relied on the statement made by the broker, and the fourth element of the action of fraud is missing. in all of these situations, the court assumes that it is dealing with a person of ordinary intelligence, and it does not require the very highest degree of caution on the part of the person claiming to be defrauded, nor will it aid the defrauded person if he does not exercise an ordinary degree of care in safeguarding his rights and forming his judgment in the particular transaction. in laying down this rule, the court does not require that a person must make his own private investigation ordinarily, but he may rely upon the statement made to him. for example, in a massachusetts case, a real estate broker, in selling a piece of property to a purchaser in a suburban town adjoining boston, told him that forty trains per day stopped there. the statement was false, the purchaser could have easily inquired at the railroad ticket office, which was only a short distance from the real estate agent's office, but he did not do so. it was held that he could recover in an action of fraud. were it not so, the courts would, in practice, be laying down the rule that one must assume everyone a liar. on the other hand, had this same purchaser been defrauded by the same real estate dealer a half-dozen times before, then he would not be acting as a reasonably careful man in relying on a statement of this kind. under these circumstances, the ordinary prudent man would make his own investigation. false imprisonment.--a person under ordinary conditions, enjoys the full right of freedom of locomotion. the invasion of that right we call false imprisonment. it is immaterial how trivial the imprisonment may be, for merely locking a person in a room for five minutes as a joke would be enough to give rise to cause for action. the amount of damages which the jury might allow under the circumstances would, of course, be another matter. many of the principles mentioned in assault and battery are applicable in this tort. certain persons have a right to imprison other people, and it is not false imprisonment. the sheriff of the county, with a warrant for my arrest, may imprison me, and, of course, i have no action for false imprisonment. he is acting under regular process from the court. a man commits a serious crime in my presence. i lock him in a room until i can call an officer. this is not false imprisonment. the right of a private citizen to make an arrest and not be liable for false imprisonment is stated as follows in section , of the new york code of criminal procedure: a private person may arrest another: ( ) for a crime, committed or attempted in his presence; ( ) when the person arrested has committed a felony, although not in his presence. this is typical of the rule as it exists, with slight modifications, in most of the states. while mere words alone will not constitute an assault, it has been held that mere words will constitute false imprisonment. while a person may be justified in arresting someone else, yet, for the abuse of that privilege, the same as using greater force in self-defense than is necessary, the action of false imprisonment will lie. the man whom i arrest for committing a very serious crime in my presence, i lock in my house and keep there a month, feeding him on bread and water. i am guilty of false imprisonment because while i had a right to arrest him, it was my duty to turn him over to the proper authorities just as soon as possible. in a case, such as this, a month is, of course, an unreasonable time. negligence.--to say that negligence is failure to use due care is a poor attempt at definition, but it is practically all that can be said. the common law maxim, "sic utere tuo ut alium non laedas" (so use your own as not to injure another), is at this basis of the law of negligence. at the outset, we must be careful to distinguish between "accident" and "negligence." i am walking on a street and slip on a banana skin, and in falling, knock down a passing pedestrian. this is an accident. with my office window overlooking the street, in a banana-eating contest, i eat fifteen bananas, and throw the skins out of the window on the sidewalk. the street is not well lighted. a passerby falls and is injured. this is negligence, and i would be liable. contributory negligence.--negligence must be proved in order to entitle the injured party to recover. the court will not presume negligence merely because an injury takes place. again, i repeatedly warn a motorman and conductor on a trolley car that i wish to get off at a certain station. both parties forget the request, and the car goes by the station at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. i think i can get off safely, and attempt to do so. in doing so, i slip and break a leg. although the two employees of the trolley company were negligent, for not attending to their business, i am guilty of contributory negligence in trying to get off a rapidly moving car, and cannot recover. contributory negligence is a bar to recovery. standard of care.--the standards of care to be applied in negligence vary from time to time. what would have been due care on the part of a railroad company fifty years ago, would probably, in few cases, be held to be due care to-day. this is so, because of the improvements which have been made in mechanical devices in the past fifty years. again, in order to make a cause of action for negligence, there must be some causal relation between the negligent act and the injury. granting that the man who slipped on the banana skin, which i threw from my office window, had sued me for damages because of his broken leg, it would not follow that i would be liable to the same man five years later, for the reason that an insurance company denied him a policy because of stiffness in the same broken leg, caused by the fall on the banana skin. the law looks not at the remote, but at the proximate, cause of the injury. illustration.--the owner of lands owes a duty to persons coming upon that land, and the failure to perform that duty is negligence. here, again, we have to consider who the person is. i enter wanamaker's store to make a purchase. in going from the second to the third floor, i trip on a defective nosing on the stairway. this has been out of order for some time, and the floor walker was aware of that fact. i have a cause of action against wanamaker's store for failure, on their part, to exercise due care in having the premises reasonably safe for the use of customers. suppose, in making a purchase in that same store, in the basement, i see an open door leading into the engine room where the heat generator is located. being interested in heating appliances, i go into the room, although there is a sign above the door "no admittance." i fall in an unguarded hole in the floor, which has been open for a long while, and the existence of this hole is known to the management. i cannot recover because i am a trespasser. i am in a place where i had no right to be, and, as to trespassers, the owner of property owes no duty, except to refrain from wilful attempts to injure such a person. i may not set a trap in my back yard to catch a trespasser, although i owe no duty to him to have the back yard safe for his use. a peculiar variation in this rule has been made by some states, in the so-called turn-tables cases. railroads maintain turn-tables in their yards for the purpose of reversing locomotives and other cars. while children, coming upon the premises, are trespassers, nevertheless, many courts have held that such things are what might be called "attractive nuisances," and in such cases the owner of property is under special duty to use care even as to trespassers, to see that they are not injured. these are merely a few of the general principles of the law of negligence as applied by the courts. capacity of parties in tort actions.--we discussed the question of the capacity of parties in making a contract. there is not as much qualification upon a party's liability for tort as for contract. to-day, generally, a married woman is liable for her torts, the same as any one else. a corporation is liable for its torts committed by its agents or servants in the scope of their employment. an infant is held responsible for his torts. it is sometimes said that a person is liable for his torts from the cradle to the grave. this is not strictly true. if a baby two years old puts his finger in my eye, injuring it, he would clearly not be liable. but a person of tender years is liable for his torts, whenever he has sufficient intelligence to know what he is doing. some courts place the age at seven years, while others consider each individual case and the degree of intelligence possessed by the infant. the criminal law.--a crime is a wrong which the state recognizes as injurious to the public welfare, and punishes in a criminal action in its own name. there are certain leading principles of the american system of criminal law which must be kept in mind. ( ) a man is presumed to be innocent until the contrary is shown, and a jury, to be justified in bringing in a verdict of guilty, must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt, of the guilt of the accused. the rule in civil cases is that the jury must find for the plaintiff or defendant by a preponderance of evidence. thus, it is possible for a person to secure a verdict in a civil action for damages for assault and battery, while with the same evidence, a jury would not be justified, in a criminal action in convicting the defendant. ( ) in general, no person may be tried for a criminal offense, of any magnitude, until he has been indicted by a grand jury. the grand jury is generally twenty-four men, and hears the case against the prisoner only as presented by the prosecutor or district attorney. if the grand jury believes the evidence to be sufficient to warrant a trial before the petit jury, they bring in a true bill, and then the trial takes place before the petit jury of twelve men, in open court. the prisoner is entitled to counsel, at the state's expense, if he is not able to furnish his own. ( ) the prisoner may not twice be put in jeopardy for the same offense. ( ) a person may not be tried under an "ex post facto" law. an "ex post facto" law is one which makes an act, which was innocent when committed, a crime. such laws are unconstitutional. this term is never used in civil law, but the term "retroactive statute" expresses the same idea. thus, a statute passed january , , providing that all contracts made since january , , must be witnessed by three witnesses, would be a "retroactive statute" and not valid. criminal responsibility.--as a general rule, if a person, when a crime is committed, has sufficient mental capacity to understand the nature of the particular act constituting the crime, and the mental capacity to know whether it is right or wrong, he is liable criminally, whatever may be his capacity in other respects. as in contracts, or torts, there is a special rule in regard to infants. the english common law, which is pretty generally followed in this country, is that a child under the age of seven is conclusively presumed incapable of committing a crime. this is because of the fact that at common law, a criminal intent was necessary in all crimes, and an infant under seven was presumed not sufficiently advanced to be able to form a criminal intent. between the ages of seven and fourteen, there is a presumption of incapacity to commit a crime, the presumption being very strong near seven, and rather weak near fourteen. between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one, the presumption is that the infant is capable of committing a crime. as a general rule, one person is not liable for the crimes of another, unless he participated in them, directly or indirectly. a partner, therefore, is not liable, criminally, for the acts of his partners, merely because they are his partners. neither is a principal or master liable for the criminal acts of his agent or servant, merely because the relationship is that of principal and agent or master and servant. we will consider briefly a few of the more important crimes. homicide.--homicide is the killing of a human being, and is divided into excusable, felonious, and justifiable homicide. the distinction between excusable and justifiable homicide is very slight and perhaps of little utility. where either exists, a homicide takes place under such circumstances that the party cannot strictly be said to have committed the act wilfully and intentionally, or if he does commit it with full intention, under such circumstances of duty as to render the act performed not a felonious homicide. a felonious homicide is committed wilfully and under such circumstances as to render it punishable. murder is the wilful killing of any person with malice aforethought. in some states, by legislative enactments, murder is divided into degrees, as murder in the first degree and murder in the second degree. the penalty for murder in the first degree is death, or in a state where capital punishment is abolished, life imprisonment. there are various other distinctions between these two forms of murder which must be ascertained from the statutes themselves. manslaughter.--manslaughter is the unlawful killing of another without malice, either express or implied. manslaughter is also frequently divided into different degrees, and the punishment varies accordingly. a reference to the state statutes is necessary, as in murder, to know what the local law is. burglary.--burglary, as a common law offense, is the breaking and entering of a dwelling house of another, in the night time, with the intent to commit a felony therein, whether the felony be actually committed or not. but in most jurisdictions the offense has been extended by statute so as to include breaking and entries which were not burglary at common law. unless changed by statute, it must be committed in the night time, and there must be both a breaking and an entering. breaking a window, taking a pane of glass out, or bending the nails, is a breaking. cutting a wire netting on a screen door is also a breaking. in such cases a screen door is not to be considered as a mere protection against flies and mosquitoes, but as a part of the building. as to whether opening a door or a window, already partly open, constitutes a breaking, the cases are in conflict. without the intent to commit a felony, breaking and entering is a bare trespass, which would not be a crime. the felonious intent must exist at the time of the breaking and entering. hence, if it can be proved satisfactorily to a jury, that a man broke into a house for a night's lodging only, he would not be guilty of burglary. as in homicide, reference must be made to the local statutes for the actual definition of burglary and its punishment in that jurisdiction. forgery.--forgery is the false making of an alteration of a writing to the prejudice of another man's right. forgery may be committed of any writing, which, if changed, would operate as the foundation of another man's liability. hence a check may be forged, an assignment of a legal claim, an indorsement on any negotiable document, an acceptance of a bill of exchange, a letter of recommendation, a railroad pass or railroad ticket. the penalty for forgery and various other acts of which it may consist, are so purely statutory as to make any further comment useless. larceny.--larceny is the felonious taking of the property of another, without his consent and against his will, with the intent to convert it to the use of the taker. the taking must be with criminal intent, but not necessarily for the sake of gain, although the property must be of some value, however slight. the taking must be against the consent of the owner, and if the consent is given, although obtained by fraud, the crime is not larceny. larceny relates only to personal property. hence the statement made falsely concerning a: "you are a thief. you stole my marle" (marle being a kind of earth), is not slander, because it is not a charge of a crime involving moral turpitude, as real property is not the subject of larceny. larceny is generally divided into petty larceny and grand larceny, the difference between the two being generally the amount involved, which varies with the local legislation. robbery.--robbery, at common law, is the taking, with intent to steal, of personal property in possession of another, from his person or in his presence, by violence or by putting him in fear. in a majority of jurisdictions, statutes have been enacted defining robbery substantially in accord with the common law. it is not necessary that the property taken should be the property of the person from whom it is taken. as in other crimes, there must be a criminal intent, and so where, in an indictment, the offense was charged as robbery, but as proved was, at most, an improper and rude act, and intended only as a joke, it was held that no robbery had been committed. chapter xiv miscellaneous insolvent debtors--"grab law."--when a debtor is insolvent there are several things that he may do. in the first place he may do nothing. he may let his creditors try to get any money out of him if they can, and in general let the creditors take the laboring oar. where there is no bankruptcy law prevailing, either state or federal--and that was the situation in many of the states of the union prior to the passage of the present national bankruptcy law--a debtor might get along that way for a long time. that is one thing he might do. composition with creditors.--the second thing the debtor may conceivably do is to try to make a composition with his creditors. though it is the law that receiving a smaller sum will not discharge a liquidated and undisputed debt for a larger amount, even if it is so agreed, an exception is made in the case of a composition where a number of creditors agree that each of them will take a smaller sum for his claim. the debtor may try to get his creditors to do that, and occasionally he succeeds. general assignments.--a third thing which he may do is to make a general assignment of all his property to trustees in trust to pay his creditors ratably. such an assignment is not valid in massachusetts, though in most states it would be, if free from fraudulent incidents. in massachusetts it would not prevent his creditors, or any one of them, from attaching his property just as if it had not been assigned, but if creditors assent to the assignment then, to the extent of their claims, the assignment becomes valid. in other states the assent of creditors is presumed if the assignment is not fraudulent, and therefore without any actual assent the situation is the same as in massachusetts after assent of all the creditors. fraudulent incidents in general assignments.--in every state a general assignment under certain circumstances will be regarded as fraudulent against creditors. such a conveyance may be treated as void by the creditors, and the property conveyed seized by them as if the debtor had made no conveyance. some of these incidents which may make a general assignment fraudulent may be noted. if the assignor was solvent when the conveyance was made, the transaction is fraudulent, for if he has sufficient assets to pay his debts, the only object the assignment can have is to prevent them from being paid at once, and compel the creditors to wait until the assignees under the deed realize upon the property, that the debtor holds, at better advantage than if a forced sale were made at once. if the assignees are given unlimited power to continue business it is also fraudulent, since the business would in effect be carried on at the risk of the debtor. the debtor being insolvent will lose nothing if the business proves unprofitable whereas if profitable there may be a surplus after the payment of the debts. a provision authorizing continuance of business so far as is necessary to dispose of property on hand, or to work up raw material on hand, is generally upheld. a provision authorizing sales upon credit is often, though not uniformly, held fraudulent, since it permits the assignees to defer the settlement of the estate. the most important provisions likely to be attacked as fraudulent, however, are provisions in regard to preferences. aside from bankruptcy statutes, it is lawful for a debtor who has insufficient means to pay all of his creditors, to pay some in full, though this results in the total exclusion of others. accordingly a general assignment of a debtor's property on a trust, that the assignees shall pay in full certain named creditors and pay the remaining creditors ratably out of the residue, has generally been upheld though statutes in some states have altered the law in this respect. a kind of preference which is generally deemed fraudulent, however, is one which is made conditional on the creditors giving the debtor a discharge. a general assignment, unlike a bankruptcy law, or a composition, does not free the debtor from liability for so much of his debt as remains unpaid. debtors have sometimes sought to avoid this result by making a general assignment of their property in trust for ratable distribution among such creditors as should give the debtor a full release and discharge of all claims. such a provision, attempting, as it does, to impose as a condition of a creditor's sharing, that he should take his share in full satisfaction of his claim, is almost universally held to make a general assignment fraudulent. under the bankruptcy law, a general assignment may within four months be set aside by bankruptcy proceedings; but a creditor who has once assented to a general assignment cannot thereafter join in a bankruptcy petition against that debtor. bankruptcy.--the fourth and most important way, however, now, of settling the estates of insolvent persons is provided by statute. the federal constitution gives congress power to pass uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcy throughout the united states, and the supreme court has held that when the federal government has not taken advantage of this privilege given by the constitution, states have power themselves to enact bankruptcy laws. in some states there were such laws, but in many there were not. the federal law now supersedes all state laws on the subject. it was passed in , and under that law the debtor may either become a bankrupt by his own voluntary petition, or his creditors may petition him into bankruptcy if he commits what is called an "act of bankruptcy." this is true, at least, if the debtor is an individual, or is a moneyed business or commercial corporation (except railroads, insurance companies, and banking corporations). when corporations of the excepted class become insolvent, their affairs are settled by still a fifth method--receivership. a special privilege, also, is given to wage earners and farmers. they may, if they choose, become voluntary bankrupts, but are not liable to involuntary proceedings. petitions in bankruptcy.--suppose a debtor wishes to become bankrupt himself. he files a petition in the united states district court, which is the court of bankruptcy jurisdiction, and is immediately adjudicated a bankrupt. if his creditors want to make him a bankrupt it is necessary that three of them, having claims amounting to not less than $ in the aggregate, should join, unless there are less than twelve creditors in all. in that event one creditor only may petition. this petition must set forth ( ) the creditors' claims, ( ) the fact that the debtor has committed an act of bankruptcy, and ( ) the fact that he owes debts aggregating $ , or more. however slight his indebtedness, if he cannot pay it, a man may be a voluntary bankrupt, but he must owe at least $ , to be liable to involuntary proceedings. acts of bankruptcy--fraudulent conveyances.--now what are the acts of bankruptcy which render a debtor liable to a petition by his creditors? in the first place a fraudulent conveyance is an act of bankruptcy. reference to a fraudulent conveyance by general assignment has been made; but there are many kinds of fraudulent conveyances. if a debtor who is insolvent, or who is made insolvent through a gift made by himself, should give away a portion of his property, that would be a fraudulent conveyance, irrespective of the debtor's intent, because the necessary effect of the gift would be to hinder, delay and defraud his creditors. it would be a fraudulent conveyance for a debtor to seek to conceal his property from his creditors by putting it in the hands of some kind friend to hold for him until his creditors should cease to be so troublesome as at the present time. it would be a fraudulent conveyance for a man who is pressed by creditors to turn himself into a corporation for business purposes, and assign all his property to that corporation. this transfer to a corporation, even though done openly, would necessarily hinder and delay his creditors. preferences.--as has already been said, paying one creditor to the exclusion of others is not a fraudulent conveyance, but it is a preference, and a preference is a second act of bankruptcy. either for the debtor to give a preference himself or to allow a creditor to get a preference, by legal proceedings, is an act of bankruptcy. any transfer made by an insolvent debtor, to pay or to secure in whole or in part a previously existing debt, is a preference. general assignments.--a general assignment, whether fraudulent or not, is an act of bankruptcy. the consequence is, therefore, that if a debtor makes a general assignment, his creditors have the choice of letting it stand and having the estate settled under the general assignment, or of setting it aside and having bankruptcy proceedings. receiverships.--still another act of bankruptcy is the appointment of a receiver on account of insolvency. there, also, the creditors virtually have an option of letting the receivership stand and having the receiver take charge of the distribution of the assets, or of petitioning the debtor into bankruptcy and having the bankruptcy court take charge. admission of inability to pay debts.--one further act of bankruptcy is an admission by the debtor of his inability to pay his debts and his willingness to be adjudicated a bankrupt. an act of bankruptcy can form the basis of a petition only within four months after its commission. insolvent debtors usually commit acts of bankruptcy.--now an insolvent debtor cannot very well avoid committing one of these acts of bankruptcy. he can avoid making a fraudulent conveyance, but he will find it pretty hard to avoid making a preference. he need not, it is true, pay any of his debts, and it is not a preference to pay money out for present consideration, or to transfer property for present consideration, as to make a mortgage for a new loan; but it will be hard for him to prevent creditors from getting a preference by legal proceedings, at least if the debtor has any assets at all; for if the debtor does not pay any of his creditors, some of his creditors will sue him, get execution, and endeavor to levy it on the debtor's property. procedure after adjudication.--if a debtor has once been adjudicated a bankrupt, it makes no difference whether it was on a voluntary petition or an involuntary petition; the matter goes on in both cases the same way. the first thing, after the adjudication, is, that the referee, a sort of subordinate judge, requires the bankrupt to submit schedules of his assets and of his creditors. the debtor is induced to make these schedules as complete as possible, for the following reasons: if the schedule of assets is knowingly incomplete, the debtor is committing a crime and is likely to be shut up in jail. if the schedule of his creditors is incomplete, any creditor who is left out or whose address is so incorrectly given that the creditor does not get notice of the proceedings in time to prove his claim, is not affected by the discharge; and as the debtor wants a discharge from as many debts as possible, he, of course, will make his schedule of creditors as complete as possible. from this schedule of creditors, the referee sends notices out to all the creditors to meet and choose the trustee. the creditors meet and choose a trustee, who then endeavors to collect the assets of the estate, and under the direction of the court, pays dividends from the assets to the creditors. property which the trustee gets.--the question may be asked: "what property does the trustee get?" he gets all tangible property that the debtor could transfer at the moment of his bankruptcy. he gets intangible property, patents, trademarks, copyrights, seats on the stock exchange, and good-will of a business, with the exception that the debtor still retains the right to carry on his old business himself, in the future, in his own name. the trustee gets rights of action of the bankrupt, except personal rights of action, as they are called. these consist of rights of action for personal injuries, as for assault, or for personal injury by negligence. a right of action for breach of promise of marriage also would not pass to the trustee in bankruptcy. not only does a trustee get this tangible and intangible property, but he gets also a right to recover any property fraudulently conveyed by the bankrupt, which is not in the hands of a bona fide purchaser, even if the fraudulent conveyance was made years before, provided the statute of limitations has not completely run against it. any preference, also made within four months before the filing of the petition in bankruptcy, may be recovered from the preferred creditor, if he had reasonable cause to believe, when he received it, that he was getting a preference, but not otherwise. the trustee in bankruptcy gets the debtor's life insurance policies, except in so far as they are made exempt by statute. life-insurance policies, in favor of a beneficiary other than the insured himself, are exempt, though if the premiums were paid by the debtor while insolvent, the premiums so paid within the past six years may be recovered, and the beneficiary would in effect have to pay those premiums back in order to hold the policy. even if the policy runs to the insured himself, in his own name, he has the privilege, under the bankruptcy act, to redeem it from the trustee in bankruptcy by paying its cash surrender value. property acquired by the bankrupt, after the beginning of bankruptcy proceedings, does not pass to the trustee. the bankrupt's property passes free of attachment or judgment liens, secured by creditors within four months prior to the beginning of bankruptcy proceedings. this has no bearing on a case, where, prior to bankruptcy, money has been actually collected by legal proceedings, but only to cases of seizure under legal proceedings which are still pending at the time the petition is filed. if a debtor becomes bankrupt, within four months after his property is attached, the attachment is dissolved. if the debtor does not become bankrupt until after four months, the attachment is a valid lien on the property attached, and so far as the property is sufficient to pay the creditor, he can collect his claim from it, even though the debtor becomes bankrupt before the creditor finally gets judgment and collects his claim. proof of claims.--the trustee collects all this property and tries to reduce it to cash, as fast as he can, and while this is going on, creditors will also be proving their claims. it is only claims which exist at the time of filing the petition which are provable, but the debts need not be due at the time of the bankruptcy; it is only essential that they shall be in existence. interest is added or rebated, as the case may be, to the date of filing the petition. that is, if you have a non-interest-bearing note falling due july , and the debtor becomes bankrupt may , the face of the note will be proved less a rebate of two months' interest to may , because the present value of the note on may is what is provable. on the other hand, if the note had been due on april , interest would be added up to the date of filing the petition, and if the note was an interest-bearing note, of course the interest would be provable up to may , even if the note did not fall due until july or later. debts, arising subsequently to the date of filing the petition, must be enforced against the bankrupt's assets acquired after his bankruptcy. claims for tort are not provable, that is, claims for injuries to person or property not arising out of contact. but a judgment for tort, obtained before the filing of the petition, is provable. there has been a good deal of trouble in regard to what are called contingent claims. the commonest instance is the indorser's liability on a note which is not yet due when the indorser becomes bankrupt. at the time of filing the petition, the indorser's liability is contingent on the possibility that the maker may not pay the note at maturity, and that notice of dishonor will be given to the indorser. creditors, who have received a preference, cannot prove claims unless they have surrendered, within four months of the bankruptcy, any preference which they have received with reasonable cause to believe that it was a preference. secured creditors can realize on their security and then prove for the balance of their claims. a few claims are given priority over others and paid in full before any dividend to other creditors. the most important claims of this sort are the wages of workmen, clerks or servants earned within three months of the bankruptcy and not exceeding the sum of $ . leases.--leases belonging to the bankrupt pass to the trustee in bankruptcy, if he wants them, but the trustee in bankruptcy need not take any kind of property which seems more burdensome than beneficial to him, and as a trustee would have to pay, the rent under a lease in full, if he took it, he frequently will prefer to abandon it. the landlord can prove for rent, which is already accrued, but he cannot prove for rent which has not already accrued, even though part of the period for which the rent is claimed has elapsed, unless there is a special covenant in the lease. if the trustee in bankruptcy assumed the lease, then, of course, the landlord would look to the trustee for the rest of the term. if the trustee did not assume the lease, the landlord would have his option of doing either of two things: he could leave the bankrupt in the premises and have a right of action against him for the rent, from time to time, as it accrued, or he could eject the tenant; but if he ejected the tenant he could not hold him for rent. generally he would eject a bankrupt tenant rather than let him stay. set-off.--set-off may be made by a debtor of the estate who also has a claim against the estate. he does not have to prove his claim, taking a dividend on it and then paying, in full, the debt which he owes to the estate. he may set one off against the other, but he is not allowed to acquire claims for the purpose of set-off within four months prior to bankruptcy. otherwise, one owing money to an insolvent debtor, could buy up at a discount claims against the debtor, equal in amount to his indebtedness to the bankrupt. examination and discharge of bankrupt.--the bankrupt may be examined by any creditor with a view to the disclosure of his assets. this is a most important right. finally, if in every respect, he obeys the bankruptcy law, the debtor gets a discharge. grounds for refusing him a discharge are, that he has made a fraudulent conveyance; that he has obtained credit by false representation; that he has failed to keep books of account for the purpose of concealing his financial condition; that he has committed an offence punishable by the bankruptcy law, as making a false oath or refusal to disclose his property or to submit to examination; and finally a debtor who has already been discharged in bankruptcy within the previous six years cannot, as a voluntary bankrupt, again obtain a discharge. these are reasons for refusing a discharge altogether, but even though a discharge is granted, certain liabilities are not discharged. claims for obtaining property by false pretences, or for false representations, are not discharged. claims for defalcation or embezzlement, as a public officer or as a fiduciary, and claims for wilful and malicious injury to the property of another, are not discharged. nor are taxes or claims for alimony or for the support of a wife or dependent children. composition in bankruptcy.--at common law it was necessary to have the consent of all a debtor's creditors in order to make the composition operative as against all of them. in bankruptcy there is a special provision for composition, and with the approval of the court, a composition may be declared binding, not only as against those who have assented to it, but as against all creditors having provable claims, if a majority in number and amount of the creditors, taking part in the bankruptcy proceedings, assent to the discharge. insurance.--insurance is a contract whereby, for an agreed premium, one party undertakes to compensate the other for loss on a specified subject from specified perils. policies of insurance are as various as the contracts which they cover. in , lloyd's adopted a standard form of marine policy, which, with some changes, is in practically universal use in the british world. a standard form of fire policy has been adopted by many of the fire insurance companies in the united states. policy provisions.--certain terms occur frequently in insurance law, with which one should be familiar. a valued policy is one upon which a definite valuation is put, by agreement of both parties, on the subject matter of the insurance written on the policy; for example, a policy "insuring the s.s. george washington, valued at $ , , ." an open policy, on the other hand, is one in which a definite sum is written on the face of the policy, but instead of agreeing as to the value of the property insured, indicates the limit of recovery in case of the destruction of the property. floating policies are such as cover articles which cannot be designated with certainty, as for example, a constantly changing stock of goods. in life insurance there are many kinds of policies. probably the most common is the regular life, under which the insured pays certain fixed premiums throughout life, and the beneficiary receives the amount of the policy only upon the death of the insured. life insurance policies in which the investment feature is prominent, are generally called endowment policies, and they require the insured to pay a certain premium, annually, for a certain number of years. if the insured dies before premium payments cease, under the terms of the policy, the beneficiary receives the full amount of the policy. if the insured lives beyond the stated period, he is entitled to receive the amount written on the face of the policy or he may be allowed to receive a paid-up policy for some specified sum. a policy of reinsurance is simply a contract made by one insurance company with another, whereby the first reinsures with the second some individual risk which it has itself accepted and insured. elements of contract.--in order that the contract of insurance shall be valid, it must possess all the essential elements of the ordinary contract. although there is a certain element of chance in an insurance contract, it is always held that it is not in the nature of a gambling contract. a peculiar feature of this contract is that it is one of the utmost good faith, and requires that each party shall disclose to the other all material facts in his knowledge that may affect the making of the contract. insurable interest.--an essential element in the law of insurance is that of insurable interest. by this term we mean that interest of the insured, which is exposed to injury by reason of the peril insured against. such interest does not necessarily need to be a legal right, but only such as to justify a reasonable expectation of financial benefit, which will be derived by the continued existence of the person or property insured. while it is difficult to define accurately an insurable interest in property, section of the california civil code defines it thus: "every interest in property, or any relation thereto, or liability in respect thereof, of such a nature that a contemplated peril might directly damnify the insurer, is an insurable interest." in life insurance, an insurable interest is requisite, but this interest, if existing at the time the policy is issued, is sufficient, although such interest subsequently terminates. every person has an insurable interest in his own life, or he may procure insurance on the life of another, when so related to that other, either by reason of blood, marriage, or commerce, that he has well-grounded expectation of deriving benefit from that other's life, or suffering detriment through its termination. it is well settled that a creditor has an insurable interest in the life of his debtor. the courts are not clear as to just how much this interest is, but it will not be allowed to greatly exceed the sum of the debt. the relationship between the insured and the insurer is governed, to a very large extent, by the law of agency. suretyship and guaranty.--suretyship has been defined as an accessory agreement by which one binds himself for another who is already bound. a surety is a person who is liable to perform any act, that his principal is bound to perform, in the event that his principal fails to perform as agreed. where there is more than one surety, the parties are known as co-sureties. the distinction between the contract of suretyship and that of guaranty is not altogether clear, and frequently not observed by the courts. so far as the distinction can be defined, we may say that if the parties undertake to pay money, or to do some other agreed act, in case the principal fails to perform his part, then they are sureties. on the other hand, if they assume performance, only in the event that the principal is unable to perform, then they are guarantors. the principles which apply to both, are, in many respects, similar. the terms used by the parties are not necessarily conclusive as to whether it is a suretyship or guaranty relationship. for example, in the case of saint v. wheeler, etc., mfg. co., ala. , where a contract was under seal by which the parties "guarantee," along with one of their number, to pay absolutely and irrespective of solvency or insolvency, all damages which might result, etc., it was held that the contract was one of suretyship, and not of guaranty, although they had used the express term "guarantee" in the language of the contract. qualification of a surety.--a surety may be distinguished from an indorser in that the undertaking of the surety is absolute, whereas that of the indorser is conditional. the negotiable instruments act provides that a general indorser "engages that on due presentment, it (the instrument) shall be accepted or paid, or both, as the case may be, according to its tenor, and that if it be dishonored, and the necessary proceedings on dishonor be duly taken, he will pay the amount thereof to the holder, or to any subsequent indorser who may be compelled to pay it." hence, if an indorser is not notified, or if the instrument is not protested, if that is necessary, he is discharged. principal and surety.--ordinarily, the relationship of principal and surety is entered into under the terms of a contract, the chief object of which is the creation of the relationship. as a general rule, any person who is capable of making a contract may be surety. formerly, it was sometimes said that an infant was absolutely unqualified to make a contract of this kind, but now his contracts of suretyship are held to be voidable, the same as his other contracts. in some states a married woman is still prevented by statute from becoming a surety for her husband. like ordinary contracts, a contract of suretyship must be supported by sufficient consideration. it is ordinarily a collateral engagement to pay a debt of another, and hence, comes under the section of the statute of frauds which requires a contract to answer for the "debt, default, or miscarriage of another," to be in writing. suretyship liability.--the general extent of the suretyship liability is measured by the contract of the principal, which he guarantees. if no cause of action can be maintained against the principal on the contract, it follows necessarily that the surety is not liable. the tendency of the courts is to favor the surety. his obligation is ordinarily assumed without any pecuniary compensation, and it is accordingly said that his liability is "strictissimi juris," (strictly construed by the law). a surety has the right, then, to insist upon the very letter of his contract, and if there is a reasonable doubt as to whether his contract requires the doing of certain acts or not, that doubt should be resolved by the court in favor of the surety. consequently, a surety will not ordinarily be held liable for any default of the principal, which occurred prior to the surety's contract to be such. the death of the surety does not necessarily terminate his liability, and his personal representatives will be responsible for the carrying out of his contract, especially where the contract reads that the surety "binds his heirs, executors and administrators." surety's obligation under new contract.--it frequently happens that the principal's contract is not completed, and a renewal is necessary. the question arises whether the surety's obligations are continued under the new contract, the same as under the old. the principle which the courts apply is that if the renewal amounts to an entirely new contract, then the surety's obligation is at an end. but if the renewal is simply a part of the original contract, and does not call for any new contract, his obligation continues under such renewal. as the contract between the principal and surety is of a more or less confidential character, the law requires, as we have mentioned in insurance, the exercise of the utmost good faith on the part of the principal. hence, if a surety, before entering into his contract, applies to the principal for information about any material matter pertaining to the contract, the principal is bound to give full information as to every fact within his knowledge, and if he does anything to deceive the surety, he vitiates the contract. another application of the same principle is found in the rule that the principal must not do any act injurious to the surety or inconsistent with his rights. consequently, if the principal makes any arrangement with his principal debtor, by which the risk of the surety is materially increased, or the terms of the contract are altered or varied or the time of payment is extended, the surety in any of these cases would be released from any liability unless he is consulted and gives his assent to such changes in his contract. it is necessary that the new contract, which the principal makes, be a valid contract in order to release the surety. hence, if the principal makes a contract extending the time of the payment on the obligation six months, and that is all there is to the contract, such extension agreement would be invalid because of lack of consideration, and the surety in such case would not be discharged from his liability under the old contract. if the obligation which the surety undertakes to pay is a promissory note, an agreement by the principal to extend the time of payment, would not, of itself, release the surety, there being no consideration. a part payment made by the maker, before the note was due, for which an extension of time to pay the remainder is granted, would be binding, because such part payment, before a note is due, constitutes good consideration for an agreement to extend the time to pay the balance, and consequently the surety is discharged. negligence of the creditor.--it is generally true that the creditor is under no obligation to be diligent in the pursuit of the debtor. consequently, a mere negligence of the creditor, to sue or otherwise attempt to collect a claim against his debtor, although there is a surety for the creditor, does not relieve the surety of his liability. mere delay, then, in proceeding against the principal debtor, does not release the surety, unless there is between the creditor and principal debtor a valid and binding agreement, under which a delay does prejudice the surety. discharge of surety.--a surety is discharged by the payment or performance, by the principal, of the condition in the agreement. it is even held that the surety is discharged if a tender of payment has been made to the principal, after the debt is due, and it is refused by him. in such a case, the tender amounts practically to a payment of the debt and a new loan creating a new contract. it sometimes occurs that the creditor has collateral security for the payment of the debt, or secures control of money or property of the debtor and which he may lawfully apply to the debtor's obligations under certain circumstances. the principal may voluntarily surrender or dispose of these securities. in such a case, the surety is discharged from liability to the extent of the value of the securities disposed of or surrendered. of course, the surety is not discharged where the principal takes additional securities, or if some securities are given up and sufficient are retained by the principal to pay the debt, the surety is not relieved and cannot complain, for the reason that he has not been injured. rights of surety.--it is a well established rule of law that where the surety is obliged to make good on his contract he is entitled to relief, the law implying a promise on the part of the principal to reimburse the surety for any damages which he suffers. of course, this assumes that the surety was legally bound to pay the debt. if he pays it because it is a moral obligation or for any other reason which the law does not recognize as legally binding, he is not able to compel the principal to reimburse him. right of contribution.--one of the peculiar remedies, which the courts of equity have developed, is that of contribution. this right is frequently used in the law of suretyship. when one of two or more sureties, for the same obligation, has paid more than his share of the debt, he is entitled to be reimbursed for the excess by his co-sureties. this right is known as the right of contribution. as has been said before, a surety, if he pays when he is not legally bound to do so, must stand the loss himself; and the same is true where he is one of several co-sureties. thus, if one co-surety pays a debt, which is barred by the statute of limitations, he would not, in that case, be entitled to contribution from his other co-sureties. surety companies.--surety companies conduct such a large business at the present time that a word should be said about them in connection with this topic. the surety company is a corporation, and its powers are, of course, defined by its charter, and the laws of the state in which it is incorporated. in general, surety companies are authorized to guarantee performance of contracts and to execute bonds and undertakings required by the courts. one tendency is noticeable in recent years. the kind of suretyship, we have been referring to, is generally that in which the surety is an individual, who undertakes his task for no consideration, and for that reason, as we have said, the courts construe the contract of suretyship strictly in favor of the surety. more and more, now, the practice of the individual becoming a surety is decreasing, and in his place the surety companies offer their services in a more satisfactory manner, under modern business conditions, but with the striking difference, that the surety company offers its services only for pay, which will net the company a profit. hence, the rule that the contract should be construed strictly in favor of the surety does not fit the case of the surety company which is paid for its services. in the case of the american surety co. v. paulu, u. s. , and in many other cases, the rule is laid down, that the contract will be construed against the surety company and in favor of the indemnity which the obligee has reasonable grounds to expect. so, it has been held that a surety company will not be relieved on its contract, by an extension of time to the principal, and that there is no presumption that the surety was injured by the extension unless the injury is actually proved. patents.--the policy of encouraging monopolies, while generally frowned upon, finds two exceptions in the law of patents and copyrights. consequently, the federal constitution gives the exclusive right to congress to "promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times, to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." the patent office is located in washington, and here the commissioner of patents has his official office, and applications for all patents are made through him, and he is authorized to establish regulations for the granting and issuance of patents. the duration of a patent right depends, of course, upon the statute. at the present time, the period is seventeen years, and at the end of that time, the person holding the patent must yield up his monopoly and all that pertains to it. a patent is in the nature of a contract, and the united states supreme court has said "the true rule of construction in respect to patents and specifications, and the doings generally of inventors, is to apply plain and ordinary principles to them, as we have endeavored to on this occasion, and not, in this most meta-physical branch of modern law, to yield up to subtleties and technicalities, unsuited to the subject, and not in keeping with the liberal spirit of the age, and likely to prove ruinous to a class of the community so inconsiderate and unskilled in business as men of genius and inventors usually are." a distinction is usually made between pioneer patents, and patents which are merely improvements on one already issued. the former are always given a liberal interpretation, while the latter should be strictly construed. element of novelty.--it is the element of novelty which gives rise to the right to a patent. it is not possible to discuss in this limited space, the countless decisions upon this point. a thing may be novel and entitled to a patent, although very old. some lost art of the egyptians is re-discovered by an american. although the idea is several thousand years old, to all practical purposes it is new, and the inventor would be entitled to a patent. like any other property, an inventor's right may be lost by abandonment. thus, where an inventor taught a large number of people, with no suggestion that the thing was an experiment, and received pay for his instruction, the court held that this constituted an abandonment of his claim, and he was not entitled to a patent. infringements.--a suit may be maintained by the owner of a patent against one who infringes, and as this is a matter under the united states laws, all patent suits are tried in the federal courts. a patent right is personal property, and upon the death of the owner, goes to his personal representative. patent rights, like other personal property, may be assigned and sold. sale of patented articles.--in recent years, many cases have arisen over the question whether the manufacturers of patented articles are entitled to impose conditions respecting the use of their manufactured articles by purchasers. early cases seem to support the view that, as the theory of a patent was that of a monopoly, these conditions would be upheld even after the patented articles came into the hands of a purchaser. decisions of the united states supreme court, however, have tended the other way. so, attaching a notice to a patented article, stating that the article is licensed for sale and use at a specified price, and that the purchase is an acceptance of these conditions, and that in the case of a violation of this restriction, all rights revert back to the patentee, cannot convert an otherwise apparently unqualified sale into a mere license to use the invention. in bauer v. o'donnell, u. s. , the supreme court said: "the right to vend conferred by the patent law has been exercised, and the added restriction is beyond the protection and purpose of the act. this being so, the case is brought within that line of cases in which this court, from the beginning, has held that a patentee, who has parted with a patented machine, by passing title to a purchaser, has placed the article beyond the limits of the monopoly secured by the patent act." copyrights.--a copyright is the exclusive privilege of printing, or otherwise multiplying, publishing and selling copies of literary or artistic productions. the nature of a copyright is thus defined by the united states supreme court, in the case of caliga v. newspaper co., u. s. : "statutory copyright is not to be confounded with the common law right. at common law, the exclusive right to copy existed in the author until he permitted a general publication. thus, when a book was published in print, the owner's common law right was lost. at common law, an author had a property in his manuscript, and might have an action against any one who undertook to publish it without authority. the statute created a new property right, giving to the author, after publication, the exclusive right to multiply copies for a limited period. this statutory right is obtained in a certain way, and by the performance of certain acts which the statute points out. that is, the author having complied with the statute, and given up his common law right of exclusive duplication, prior to general publication, obtained by the method pointed out in the statute an exclusive right to multiply copies and publish the same for the term of years named in the statute. congress did not sanction an existing right; it created a new one." property right in ideas.--the doctrine that a person has a property right in his ideas has never been recognized, either by common law or by statute. to illustrate: if a, in the course of a conversation with b, gives his idea of what would be a brilliant thought to work up into a detective story, and b, possessing some literary ability, takes the idea and writes a successful detective story, he is entitled to the profits secured from the sale of the book, and there is nothing that a can do about it. the idea which a handed to b has been put by b into such form that it is practicable to allow b to copyright it, and protect his property right in the story. there is no practical way to protect a mere idea. effect of copyright statutes.--one must bear in mind the effect of copyright statutes on common law rights. at common law, an author has a property in his manuscript, and may obtain redress for any attempt to deprive him of it, and the copyright act provides that nothing in the act shall limit the right of the author, at common law, or in equity, to prevent the copying, publication or use of an unpublished work, without his consent and it gives him the right to damages should this be done. at common law, the author of any literary composition had an absolute property right in his production, and he could not be deprived of it so long as it remained unpublished. interesting questions have arisen in regard to the nature of the property rights in letters. the question as to the rights of the sender and the recipient are frequently troublesome. the rights of the writer consist in the power to make or restrain a publication by the recipient, but he cannot prevent a transfer. the rights of the recipient are those of unqualified title in the material on which they are written. he has the right to keep them, to read them, and show them to a limited circle of friends, somewhat in the same way as a family picture album might be used. property right in information or news.--another interesting question is as to whether there can be any property right in information or news which has been collected at great expense by the associated press or some similar organization. the most important case on this question is that of the international news co. v. the associated press, u. s. . the associated press, organized in new york, is a corporation created for the purpose of collecting news and distributing it to about newspapers at an annual expense of about $ , , . the international news service was a corporation organized in new jersey to collect and sell news to a chain of newspapers. the complaint was made by the associated press that the international news service was engaged in pirating its news in three ways: ( ) by bribing employees of newspapers, published by complainant's members, to furnish associated press news to defendant, before publication, for transmission by telegraph and telephone to defendant's clients, for publication by them; second, by inducing associated press members to violate its by-laws and permit defendant to obtain news before publication; and, third, copying news from early editions of complainant's newspapers, and selling it, either bodily or after rewriting it, to defendant's customers. the court held that news should be regarded as quasi-property, and that it was unfair competition in business for the international news service to take from newspapers, which are members of the associated press, news furnished by it, and refused to modify the injunction issued by the district court restraining any taking or using of the associated press news, either bodily or in substance, from bulletins issued by the associated press, or any of its members, or from editions of its newspapers, until its commercial value to the complainant and all of its members had passed away. application for copyright.--the formality of securing a copyright is comparatively simple. the register of copyrights, in the library of congress at washington, furnishes a blank which the applicant fills out and returns, giving the required information, and on or before the first day of publication, the applicant must send two copies of the copyrighted book to the library of congress. the copyright is good for twenty-eight years, with a right to renewal. the works for which copyrights may be secured may be classified as: (a) books, including composite and cyclopedic books, directories, gazetteers, and other compilations; (b) periodicals, including newspapers; (c) lectures, sermons, and addresses, prepared for oral delivery; (d) dramatic or dramatic-musical compositions; (e) musical compositions; (f) maps; (g) works of art, models or designs for works of art; (h) reproductions of a work of art; (i) drawings or plastic works of scientific or technical character; (j) photographs; (k) prints and pictorial records. there are certain things, which, while technically they are under the classification we have given, are not subject of copyright. the opinions handed down by the judges of all of our courts, although they are in the form which would ordinarily permit copyright, are not subject of copyright because of the general principle of law that a judge receives a stated annual salary and cannot, therefore, have any pecuniary interests in the fruits of his judicial labors. this does not mean, however, that the opinions of the united states supreme court, for example, are not to be found in a copyrighted book. the supreme court reporter, which is one of the systems of reporters published by the west publishing co. as a purely commercial enterprise, is copyrighted by that company. this is because of the fact that the editorial staff of the west publishing co. prepares a syllabus for each opinion, an exhaustive index in each volume, and a table of cases, and all of this matter arranged by that company, is subject to copyright, and they have the right to use the opinions of the supreme court the same as any other publisher would have. again, a copyright might be refused on the grounds that the book on which the copyright was sought was an immoral or obscene writing, and therefore not entitled to protection of the copyright law. the word "copyrighted" accompanied by the name of the copyright proprietor should appear on the page opposite the title page, or if the article copyrighted is a picture, the act provides that the device, accompanied by the initials or the symbol of the copyright proprietor, shall appear on the article. subjects of copyright.--in the classification we have just given, mention is made of lectures, sermons, etc., as being the subject of copyright. it is held, however, that a lecture, delivered orally to a class of students, is not published to the extent that the instructor loses his right to it, although the students may be allowed to make notes for their own use. in the same way, the artist does not lose his common law copyright by an exhibition of his pictures in his studio or in a public gallery where they are placed for sale. similarly the public presentation of a dramatic production does not deprive the owner of his rights in it. the reason for this is that at common law the public performance of a play does not mean an abandonment to the public generally. trade marks and trade names.--a trade mark or trade name is a mark or symbol which the tradesman puts upon his goods, so that they may be identified and known by the public generally. a trade name differs from a trade mark in that it is descriptive of the manufacturer himself, and involves the individuality of the maker. statutes will be found covering the registration of trade marks and trade names, but the protection which the law affords the owner of these is not confined to a statute alone. it is generally held that a trade mark, subject to some qualifications, arises without the aid of any statute. subject matter of trade mark or trade name.--the question as to what is the subject-matter of a trade mark or a trade name, can only be determined by a careful reading of the cases. a trade mark may consist of a name, a symbol, a letter, some arbitrary form, or a newly-coined word. pictures of animals, coats of arms, and the like, are frequently used. no trade mark can be obtained by the mere use of a color or generally a geographical term, nor can a trade mark be obtained from the form of a package in which goods are packed, and generally, mere letters and numbers cannot form a trade mark, although the arbitrary combination of numbers, such as "babbitt's " may be a valid trade mark. names not valid trade marks.--generic names, and merely names of articles, are not valid trade marks, as "extract of wheat," and "new york cough remedy." a trade name of a firm, a corporate name, or the name of a publication, although they are not strictly trade marks, are, nevertheless, of the same nature as a trade mark, and will be protected in the same manner. unfair competition.--the most common way in which trade marks and trade names become the subject of litigation, is in connection with unfair competition. by this term we mean, ordinarily, the imitation by one person, for the purpose of deceiving another, of the name, device, or symbol used by a business rival. the courts act in such cases upon the theory that the public should be protected, and should not have other goods pawned off on it in place of something else which a person thinks he is getting. this matter of unfair competition is the subject of much litigation in the courts, and one or two illustrations will show how the question arises. for example: in an english case, decided in , the plaintiff had manufactured and sold a relish which was made under a secret recipe and was sold under the name "yorkshire relish." the defendant then put a sauce on the market resembling it, and sold it under the name of "yorkshire sauce." the court held that the plaintiff was entitled to an injunction. in the case of the international silver co. v. the rogers co., n. j. equity , the court enjoined the use of the word "rogers" in the corporate title of the william h. rogers corporation, on the ground that its use was a part of the proceedings by which the public were deceived. in this case a manufacturer of silverware, in plainfield, n. j., was attempting to trade upon the reputation of the " " brand of plated silver made by the rogers company of connecticut, which company was at the time of the action, a constituent part of the international silver co. the connecticut company had built up a large and good reputation by a long period of sales of its silverware to the public under its trade devices, and the use of its business name. the new jersey company was simply attempting to trade on that reputation, which is almost always the case in unfair competition. conflict of law.--although we have referred to the uniform legislation in the various topics of commercial law which we have been considering, there is still much in the subject of conflict of law which concerns the student of commercial law. international law is commonly divided into two branches, public and private. public is that which regulates the political intercourse of nations with each other; private, that which regulates the comity of states in giving effect in one to the municipal laws of another relating to private persons. conflict of law is one division of the broader subject of international law and is frequently called private international law. in the sense in which we are now using the term, the various states of the union are considered as foreign to each other. the problems embraced in this topic and their bearing on commercial law may be more fully appreciated if we take a simple illustration. a stock broker with offices in new york city seeks to sell the stock of a new oil mining company to a purchaser in indiana. the sale is one which is not allowed by the indiana "blue sky" law. new york has no such law. the sale is effected by means of circulars and correspondence between the new york broker and the indiana purchaser. is this transaction to be governed by the law of indiana or of new york? its validity will depend upon our answer to that question and this is the type of question one has to answer on the subject of conflict of law. with approximately forty different "blue sky" laws in the country at present, and the great number of stock transactions carried on between the states, the importance of this topic may be appreciated. again, even where we have a uniform act as, for example, the uniform negotiable instruments act, there are still differences in the law in some states. each statute must be interpreted by the courts, and although the judges are sincere in their efforts, it can not be expected that we will always have a uniform interpretation of the same act by the courts in each and every jurisdiction of the united states. fundamental principles.--there are several fundamental principles we should keep in mind before we turn to the specific branches of commercial law as affected by our topic. the term comity is one of common use in conflict of law and is defined as the recognition which one nation or state allows within its territory to the legislative, executive, or judicial acts of another nation or state. comity is not a matter of right, but a courtesy, and one country may exercise its right and prohibit citizens of other countries from suing in its courts. of course the various states of the united states are not as completely free in this matter as separate countries, because of the provision in the federal constitution guaranteeing to the citizens of each state all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states. there are still many questions which are not affected by the federal constitution. for example, a suit is brought in new jersey upon a contract of suretyship made in new york by a wife for her husband. there is a statute in new jersey prohibiting a married woman from doing this. new york has no such statute. shall the new jersey court enforce the contract which the parties made in new york but which they could not have made in new jersey? under the principle of comity a new jersey court has held valid such a contract. again, it is entirely conceivable that a person living in turkey might make a binding contract to marry three women at the same time. suppose the turk before the time for performing the contract arrives, comes to new york and then refuses to marry the three women. could they sue him for a breach of contract in the new york court? clearly not. here they would be asking the new york court to enforce a contract which while admittedly valid, when made in turkey, is decidedly against the public policy of any monogamous country. comity being a courtesy, not a right, would not require a new york court to recognize the turkish contract. in our illustration of the wife acting as surety, no question of public policy was involved and hence there was no impropriety in new jersey recognizing as valid her contract, although such a contract could not have been made within the state of new jersey. conflict of law as relating to the status of property.--as we have pointed out heretofore, property is divided into real property and personal property. reference should be made to the distinctions between these two kinds of property as described in a preceding chapter. suppose a dies intestate in texas owning real property in new york. the law relating to the descent of real property is different in texas from that in new york. a's heirs wish to know by which law this new york real estate will be governed. it is almost universally recognized that all matters concerning the title and disposition of real property are determined by what is known as the lex loci rei sitae, that is, the law of the place where the property is situated. accordingly the heirs in texas would be governed by the law of the state of new york and, similarly, if a had also owned property in illinois, that property would be governed by the illinois law. suppose, also, a had owned $ , worth of stock in various corporations and he kept one-half of this stock in his safe deposit box in galveston and the other half in new york city. while the dominion of a state over personal property within its borders is complete, nevertheless by virtue of the principles of comity, the rule has been recognized almost from time immemorial that personal property is governed by the law of the domicile of the decedent at the time of his death. hence a's stocks (and bonds for that matter) would be divided according to the law of texas whether they were in his safe deposit box in galveston, new york city, or chicago. it follows, when no rights of creditors intervene, that the law of the domicile of the testator will control in regard to his will of personal property, and the law of the place where the real property is situate will control in regard to it. conflict of law as relating to contracts.--it is a general principle of contract law that the construction and validity of a contract is governed by the lex loci contractus, the law of the place where the contract is made. when the contract is made in one jurisdiction and is to be performed in another, the question becomes more difficult. the supreme court of the united states, in scudder v. union nat. bank, u. s. , has laid down the following rules in reference to the law governing contracts in cases in which the place of making and the place of performance are not the same. " . matters bearing upon the execution, interpretation and validity are determined by the law of the place where the contract is made; . matters connected with the performance are regulated by the law of the place where the contract by its terms is to be performed; . matters relating to procedure depend upon the law of the forum (i. e., the court where the case is heard)." these three general rules have been adopted and applied by many jurisdictions in a long line of cases involving every conceivable kind of contract. but perhaps it is even more generally stated, when the contract is to be performed in a place other than the place where it is made, that the law of the place where the contract is to be performed will determine the validity, nature, obligation and effect of the contract, or, in other words, in case of conflict the lex loci solutionis (the law of the place of performance) will prevail over the lex loci contractus. although these statements at first seem somewhat contradictory, we may always apply another rule which is a sound test for the determination of the proper law to be applied. we may properly say that the intention of the parties should control and it is generally agreed that the law of the place where the contract is made is, prima facie, that which the parties intended to govern the contract, and in the absence of a contrary intention ought to control. it frequently happens that a contract made in one state is sued upon in the courts of another state. the law governing the procedure in the trial of this case will be the law of the forum, that is of the state where the case is tried, regardless of what the law may be on the same matter in the state where the contract was made. there may be, for example, a peculiar rule as to a wife's being able to testify on the contract in question. this rule will be enforced by the court although no such rule existed in the state where the contract was made. there is no great hardship in the application of such principles because the courts of the state where the contract was made are open to the parties, and if they wish to avail themselves of the services of a court in a different jurisdiction they must take it as they find it with its rules of procedure. illustration.--there is another type of contract which involves the question of conflict of law to which attention should be called. the facts in the case of fonesca v. cunard steamship company mass. , illustrate this point. a passenger on one of the steamships of the cunard steamship company bought a ticket in liverpool for boston and on the ticket was a clause providing that the steamship company should not be liable for any damage to a passenger's baggage during transit, regardless of whether the steamship company was negligent in handling the baggage. when the passenger arrived in boston, and her trunk was delivered, it was found that the contents had been damaged by sea water due to the steamboat company negligently leaving a porthole open. the passenger sued, and the massachusetts court held there could be no recovery for the damage, for, although such a clause exempting a carrier for his negligence was not valid under the massachusetts law (and in fact the law of practically all american jurisdictions), nevertheless, since the law of england permits such a clause, and this was an english contract, the ticket having been bought in liverpool, the passenger was bound by the terms of her contract. there are many kinds of contracts of transportation of baggage, of passengers and of telegraph messages, involving the carrying out of such contracts in many different states. not all of the decisions in the various states of this country are harmonious. we must expect to find many such problems in business and the answer is often one that requires most careful study on the part of a lawyer. conflict of law as relating to negotiable paper.--there is not so large a field for questions of conflict of law to come up in negotiable paper as in some of the other topics we have been considering. forty-seven states have now passed the uniform negotiable instrument law. but, as we have pointed out, the interpretation of this law in the various states is not invariably uniform. suppose a promissory note has six indorsers. every indorsement is governed by the law of the state where it was made, and should there be a different law in this matter, we would at once have a question in conflict of law. again, in determining the negotiability of a document made in one place and payable in another, we have a further question in conflict of law. the authorities do not agree here although perhaps we may say the majority hold that the law of place or payment controls. these problems will be considered in the text-book on negotiable instruments. conflict of law as relating to interest and usury.--we find a variety of usury laws throughout the united states. some few states allow the lender to charge any rate of interest. others allow a fixed rate, usually %, and provide that the lender forfeits both principal and interest if he charges more. still others allow a fixed rate and provide that interest only is forfeited if a higher rate is charged. it is easy to see that a contract made in one state may be sued upon in another state and the usury laws of the two states may be entirely different. we may say as a general rule that usury laws do not offend any principles of public policy. there is nothing wrong in asking a new york court, where the legal rate of interest is %, to enforce a contract made in a state where a higher rate is allowed. on the other hand, no new york court would allow citizens of new york simply to date a contract boston, massachusetts, and provide for a % interest rate, thereby hoping to evade the new york usury law, when, except for the date on the contract, it was in reality wholly a new york contract. index page acceptance accommodation bills accounting adequacy of consideration administrators , advertisements agency , agency, irrevocable airplanes alteration alteration of written contracts aliens , analysis of indenture anti-trust act architect's certificate articles of partnership assault and battery assets, division of assets of partnership assignment of duties assignment of future claims assignment of rights assignments assignments, forged assignments, general , assignments, meaning of assignments, partial assignments by unauthorized agent assumption of mortgage attachment , attachment of stock attorney, powers of , auction sales authority of agent avoidance bailment bank accounting bank officers, liability of bank president bankruptcy , , , bankruptcy, composition in barred debts , beneficiary bids bilateral contracts , bills and notes bills of exchange bills of lading , blue sky laws bonds , breach of contract breach of warranty building contracts burglary capacity, lack of capacity of parties , , carriers , certificate of architect certificates, forged certificates, unindorsed certificates, lost chattels chattels, leases of chattel mortgage checks , claim, liquidated , claim, proof of claim, unliquidated c. o. d. commercial law common carriers common law competition, unfair composition in bankruptcy composition with creditors conditional contracts conditional promise conditional sales conflict of laws , consideration , consignments construction of wills contract, agency by contract to sell contracts , , contracts: bilateral , breach of building by correspondence by mail definition of discharge of drafting enforceability formal gambling illegal implied informal in restraint of trade installment liquidated , of employment performance quasi sealed simple to sell termination unenforceable unilateral unliquidated void , voidable , , , written , , contractors contribution contributory negligence conveyances, fraudulent copyright corporations , , by-laws citizenship of creation of de facto de jure directors foreign indenture joint stock kinds of liability of liability of directors liability of officers management of powers of , stockholders correspondence, contracts by counter offer courts , creation of corporations creditors' rights criminal law , , cumulative dividends cumulative voting curtesy , death , debts , deceit deeds of trust de facto corporation default defective goods definition of agency definition of contracts definition of law definition of partnership de jure corporation delectus personarum delivery , delivery, lack of destruction of goods in transit directors , directors, election of directors, liability of directors, powers of , disability discharge of contracts dividends divine law division of assets dower , drafting contracts drafts drunkards , , due course, holders in , duress duties, assignment of easements employment contracts enforceability of contracts equitable title equity of redemption entity theory estates and trusts escheat estoppel , executors , , fact, mistakes of , false imprisonment fidelity fiduciary duties firm name firm property forbearance foreclosure foreign corporations forged assignments forged certificates forgery , formal contracts forms: check draft promissory note will fraud , , , , frauds, statute of fraudulent conveyances fraudulent sales full payment future claims gambling contracts garnishment general agents general assignments , gifts , , , goodwill guarantee , , guaranty (see guarantee). holder in due course , homicide husband and wife illegal contracts illegal object illegality implied authority implied contracts implied warranty impossibility imprisonment, false inability incapacity indentures independent contractors indorsement, qualified indorser infancy infants , , , , , , informal contracts inheritance tax laws insane insanity , , insolvency insolvent debtors inspection , installment contracts insurance , insurance policy intent interest interpleader interpretation irrevocable agencies issue of stock joint stock corporations knowledge of illegality lack of capacity lack of delivery lands larceny law, common law, definition of law of partnership law, source of law, systems of law, where to look for lawrence v. fox lawyers leases leases of chattels legal duty legal title liability of agent liability of bank officers liability of directors liability of officers liability of partnership libel limitations, statute of limited limited partnership liquidated claims , liquidated contracts , liquidation of partnership lost certificates magazine subscription mail contracts manslaughter marriage married women , master and servant , meeting of stockholders mistake , misstatements of opinion moral law mortgage, assumption of mortgage deed of trust mortgages , mortgages, chattel necessaries negligence , negligence, contributory negligence of agent negotiable instruments act negotiable paper , negotiability , , , newspaper subscriptions non-assignable rights novation offer and acceptance , open receipts operation of law opinion , options , , oral agreements ownership of stock ownership, rights of part payment partial assignments parties, capacity of , , partner by estoppel partner, powers of partner, secret partner, silent partnership , past consideration patents performance performance excused performance of contracts performance, specific personal property , photographs power of attorney , powers of corporations , powers of partners preferences principal and agent principal, liability of principal, rights of principal undisclosed privilege probate of wills promise, conditional promise to marry promissory note promoters property, personal , property, real , , proof of claims prospectus protest proxy , qualified indorsements quasi contracts railroad commissions ratification , , real estate , real property , , receipt in full receipt of acceptance receipts receipts, trust receipts, warehouse receiverships reimbursement rejection , releases renunciation , repudiation restraint of trade revival of debts revocation , , rewards rights, non-assignable rights of ownership robbery safe deposit companies sale of goods sales act sales, fraudulent sales of land sales of personal property sealed contracts sealed powers of attorney seals searches, title secret partner securities self-defense set-off servant, master and , service of agent sherman anti-trust act shipper's load and count side compensation silence gives consent silent partners simple contracts slander source of law special agents spent bills specific performance statute of frauds statute of limitations stock, attachment of stock certificate, theft of stock, dividends on stock held in trust stock, issue of stock, ownership of stock, power to sell stock, transfer of stockholders stoppage in transit surety companies suretyship systems of law tenders termination of agency , termination of contract termination of partnership termination of offer , testamentary capacity theft of stock certificate title , title searches torrens law torts , , torts of agent trade marks trade names trade, restraint of transit, goods in transit, stoppage in transfer of property transfer of stock trust, deeds of trust receipts trustee , , , , trustee in bankruptcy trusts trusts, voting ultra vires unauthorized assignment unconditional promise undue influence undisclosed principal unenforceable contracts unfair competition uniform partnership act uniform transfer of stock unilateral contracts unindorsed certificate unliquidated claim unliquidated contracts use of language usury vendor's lien void contracts , voidable contracts , , , voting trusts warehouse receipts warehousemen warehouses warranty , warranty, breach of warranty, implied warranty of agent wife, husband and wills witnessed power of attorney workmen's compensation act writing , written contracts , , written contracts, alteration of * * * * * * transcriber's note: minor inconsistencies in punctuation or hyphenation have been corrected. transcriber's note: -due to a large number of tables, it is strongly suggested to use a monospaced font. [illustration: the busy retail store of the l. e. waterman company at the "pen corner," broadway, new york city] cyclopedia _of_ commerce, accountancy, business administration volume _a general reference work on_ accounting, auditing, bookkeeping, commercial law, business management, administrative and industrial organization, banking, advertising, selling, office and factory records, cost keeping, systematizing, etc. _prepared by a corps of_ auditors, accountants, attorneys, and specialists in business methods and management _illustrated with over two thousand engravings_ ten volumes chicago american technical society copyright, by american school of correspondence copyright, by american technical society entered at stationers' hall, london all rights reserved authors and collaborators james bray griffith, _managing editor_ head, dept. of commerce, accountancy, and business administration, american school of correspondence. robert h. montgomery of the firm of lybrand, ross bros. & montgomery, certified public accountants. editor of the american edition of dicksee's _auditing_. formerly lecturer on auditing at the evening school of accounts and finance of the university of pennsylvania, and the school of commerce, accounts, and finance of the new york university. arthur lowes dickinson, f. c. a., c. p. a. of the firms of jones, caesar, dickinson, wilmot & company, certified public accountants, and price, waterhouse & company, chartered accountants. william m. lybrand, c. p. a. of the firm of lybrand, ross bros. & montgomery, certified public accountants. f. h. macpherson, c. a., c. p. a. of the firm of f. h. macpherson & co., certified public accountants. chas. a. sweetland consulting public accountant. author of "loose-leaf bookkeeping," and "anti-confusion business methods." e. c. landis of the system department, burroughs adding machine company. harris c. trow, s. b. _editor-in-chief_, textbook department, american school of correspondence. cecil b. smeeton, f. i. a. public accountant and auditor. president, incorporated accountants' society of illinois. fellow, institute of accounts, new york. john a. chamberlain, a. b., ll. b. of the cleveland bar. lecturer on suretyship, western reserve law school. author of "principles of business law." hugh wright auditor, westlake construction company. glenn m. hobbs, ph.d. secretary, american school of correspondence. jessie m. shepherd, a. b. associate editor, textbook department, american school of correspondence. george c. russell systematizer. formerly manager, system department, elliott-fisher company. oscar e. perrigo, m. e. specialist in industrial organization. author of "machine-shop economics and systems," etc. darwin s. hatch, b. s. assistant editor, textbook department, american school of correspondence. chas. e. hathaway cost expert. chief accountant, fore river shipbuilding co. chas. wilbur leigh, b. s. associate professor of mathematics, armour institute of technology. l. w. lewis advertising manager, the mccaskey register co. martin w. russell registrar and treasurer, american school of correspondence. halbert p. gillette, c. e. managing editor, _engineering-contracting_. author of "handbook of cost data for contractors and engineers." r. t. miller, jr., a. m., ll. b. president, american school of correspondence. william schutte manager of advertising, national cash register co. e. st. elmo lewis advertising manager, burroughs adding machine company. author of "the credit man and his work" and "financial advertising." richard t. dana consulting engineer. chief engineer, construction service co. p. h. bogardus publicity manager, american school of correspondence. william g. nichols general manufacturing agent for the china mfg. co., the webster mfg. co., and the pembroke mills. author of "cost finding" and "cotton mills." c. h. hunter advertising manager, elliott-fisher co. frank c. morse filing expert. secretary, browne-morse co. h. e. k'berg expert on loose-leaf systems. formerly manager, business systems department, burroughs adding machine co. edward b. waite head, instruction department, american school of correspondence. =authorities consulted= the editors have freely consulted the standard technical and business literature of america and europe in the preparation of these volumes. they desire to express their indebtedness, particularly, to the following eminent authorities, whose well-known treatises should be in the library of everyone interested in modern business methods. grateful acknowledgment is made also of the valuable service rendered by the many manufacturers and specialists in office and factory methods, whose coöperation has made it possible to include in these volumes suitable illustrations of the latest equipment for office use; as well as those financial, mercantile, and manufacturing concerns who have supplied illustrations of offices, factories, shops, and buildings, typical of the commercial and industrial life of america. joseph hardcastle, c.p.a. formerly professor of principles and practice of accounts, school of commerce, accounts, and finance, new york university. author of "accounts of executors and testamentary trustees." horace lucian arnold specialist in factory organization and accounting. author of "the complete cost keeper," and "factory manager and accountant." john f.j. mulhall, p.a. specialist in corporation accounts. author of "quasi public corporation accounting and management." sherwin cody advertising and sales specialist. author of "how to do business by letter," and "art of writing and speaking the english language." frederick tipson, c.p.a. author of "theory of accounts." charles buxton going managing editor of _the engineering magazine_. associate in mechanical engineering, columbia university. corresponding member, canadian mining institute. f.e. webner public accountant. specialist in factory accounting. contributor to the engineering press. amos k. fiske associate editor of the _new york journal of commerce_. author of "the modern bank." joseph french johnson dean of the new york university school of commerce, accounts, and finance. editor, _the journal of accountancy_. author of "money, exchange, and banking." m. u. overland of the new york bar. author of "classified corporation laws of all the states." thomas conyngton of the new york bar. author of "corporate management," "corporate organization," "the modern corporation," and "partnership relations." theophilus parsons, ll. d. author of "the laws of business." e. st. elmo lewis advertising manager, burroughs adding machine company. formerly manager of publicity, national cash register co. author of "the credit man and his work," and "financial advertising." t. e. young, b. a., f. r. a. s. ex-president of the institute of actuaries. member of the actuary society of america. author of "insurance." lawrence r. dicksee, f. c. a. professor of accounting at the university of birmingham. author of "advanced accounting," "auditing," "bookkeeping for company secretary," etc. francis w. pixley author of "auditors, their duties and responsibilities," and "accountancy." charles u. carpenter general manager, the herring-hall-marvin safe co. formerly general manager, national cash register co. author of "profit making management." c. e. knoeppel specialist in cost analysis and factory betterment. author of "systematic foundry operation and foundry costing," "maximum production through organization and supervision," and other papers. harrington emerson, m. a. consulting engineer. director of organization and betterment work on the santa fe system. originator of the emerson efficiency system. author of "efficiency as a basis for operation and wages." elmer h. beach specialist in accounting methods. editor, _beach's magazine of business_. founder of the bookkeeper. editor of _the american business and accounting encyclopedia_. j. j. rahill, c. p. a. member, california society of public accountants. author of "corporation accounting and corporation law." frank brooker, c. p. a. ex-new york state examiner of certified public accountants. ex-president, american association of public accountants. author of "american accountants' manual." clinton e. woods, m. e. specialist in industrial organization. formerly comptroller, sears, roebuck & co. author of "organizing a factory," and "woods' reports." charles e. sprague, c. p. a. president of the union dime savings bank, new york. author of "the accountancy of investment," "extended bond tables," and "problems and studies in the accountancy of investment." charles waldo haskins, c. p. a., l. h. m. author of "business education and accountancy." john j. crawford author of "bank directors, their powers, duties, and liabilities." dr. f. a. cleveland of the wharton school of finance, university of pennsylvania. author of "funds and their uses." [illustration: chicago sales and display rooms of the new haven clock company] foreword with the unprecedented increase in our commercial activities has come a demand for better business methods. methods which were adequate for the business of a less active commercial era, have given way to systems and labor-saving ideas in keeping with the financial and industrial progress of the world. out of this progress has risen a new literature--the literature of business. but with the rapid advancement in the science of business, its literature can scarcely be said to have kept pace, at least, not to the same extent as in other sciences and professions. much excellent material dealing with special phases of business activity has been prepared, but this is so scattered that the student desiring to acquire a comprehensive business library has found himself confronted by serious difficulties. he has been obliged, to a great extent, to make his selections blindly, resulting in many duplications of material without securing needed information on important phases of the subject. in the belief that a demand exists for a library which shall embrace the best practice in all branches of business--from buying to selling, from simple bookkeeping to the administration of the financial affairs of a great corporation--these volumes have been prepared. prepared primarily for use as instruction books for the american school of correspondence, the material from which the cyclopedia has been compiled embraces the latest ideas with explanations of the most approved methods of modern business. editors and writers have been selected because of their familiarity with, and experience in handling various subjects pertaining to commerce, accountancy, and business administration. writers with practical business experience have received preference over those with theoretical training; practicability has been considered of greater importance than literary excellence. in addition to covering the entire general field of business, this cyclopedia contains much specialized information not heretofore published in any form. this specialization is particularly apparent in those sections which treat of accounting and methods of management for department stores, contractors, publishers and printers, insurance, and real estate. the value of this information will be recognized by every student of business. the principal value which is claimed for this cyclopedia is as a reference work, but, comprising as it does the material used by the school in its correspondence courses, it is offered with the confident expectation that it will prove of great value to the trained man who desires to become conversant with phases of business practice with which he is unfamiliar, and to those holding advanced clerical and managerial positions. in conclusion, grateful acknowledgment is made to authors and collaborators, to whose hearty cooperation the excellence of this work is due. table of contents (for professional standing of authors, see list of authors and collaborators at front of volume.) volume iv theory of accounts _by james b. griffith_ page dictionary of commercial terms--commercial abbreviations--objects of bookkeeping--methods--single entry--double entry--advantages of double entry --classes of account books--recording transactions--promissory notes--bank deposits--sample transactions--classes of accounts--classes of assets--revenue accounts--rules for journalizing--rules for posting--trial balance--sample ledger accounts--treatment of cash discounts --profit and loss--merchandise inventory accounts--balance sheet --journalizing notes--journalizing drafts single proprietorship and partnership accounts _by james b. griffith_ page retail business--proprietors' accounts--inventory--retail coal books-- uncollectible accounts--sales tickets--departmental records--partnership agreements--kinds of partners--participation in profits--interest on investments--capital and personal accounts--opening and closing partnership books--model set of books corporation and manufacturing accounts _by james b. griffith_ page classification of corporations--joint stock company--creation of corporation --stockholders--stock certificates--capitalization--capital and capital stock --stock subscriptions--management of corporations--powers of directors and officers--dividends--closing transfer books--sale of stock below par--corporation bookkeeping--books required--opening entries--changing books from partnership to corporation--stock donated to employes--reserves--computing sinking funds--premium and interest on bonds--manufacturing and cost accounts--factory assets--factory expenses--balance ledger the voucher system of accounting _by james b. griffith_ page use of vouchers--voucher checks--journal vouchers--voucher register--operation of system--auditing invoices--executing vouchers--paying, filing, and indexing vouchers--voucher file--demonstration of system--voucher accounting--unit system --combined purchase ledger and invoice file--private ledger --private journal--general ledger--manufacturing accounts --charting accounts--chart of trading business--chart of manufacturing accounts--examples of charts--explanation of charts review questions page index page [illustration: the accounting department in the offices of the green fuel economizer company, matteawan, n. y.] theory of accounts part i like every other special branch of study, the theory and practice of accounts has its own special vocabulary of technical terms. in all literature of accounting and business methods in general, these terms are frequently employed; and the student will find it not only advantageous, but in fact absolutely necessary, to familiarize himself thoroughly with their use. the commercial terms and definitions in the following list are the ones most commonly used in business. great care has been exercised in preparing a list that is practical and in making the definitions clear. dictionary of commercial terms _acceptance_--when a draft or bill of exchange is presented to the payer, he writes across the face "accepted" or "accepted for payment at ..." and signs his name. it is then termed an acceptance. _accommodation note_--a note given without consideration of value received; usually done to enable the payee to raise money. _account_-- (_a_) a statement of debits and credits. (_b_) a record of transactions with a particular person or persons, or with respect to a particular object. _account books_--books in which records of business transactions or accounts are kept. _account current_--an account of transactions during the present month, week, or other current period. an open account. _account sales_--a statement in detail covering sales, expenses, and net proceeds made by a commission merchant to one who has consigned goods to him. _accrued; accrued interest_-- (_a_) accumulated interest not payable until a specified date. (_b_) accumulated rent. [illustration: specimen account] _acknowledgment_--a certificate to the genuineness of a document signed and sworn to before an authorized official, as a notary public. _administrator_--one appointed by the court to settle an estate. _ad valorem_--according to value. a term used to indicate that duties are payable on the value rather than on the weight or quantity of articles. _adventure_--as used in business, this term signifies a venture or speculation. [illustration: account sales] _advice_--information with reference to a business transaction; notice of shipment; notice of draft. transmitted by letter or telegram. _affidavit_--a statement or declaration made under oath, before an authorized official. _agent_--one authorized to act or transact business for another. _agreement_--a mutual contract entered into by two or more persons. [illustration: acknowledgment] _allowance_--an abatement; a credit for inferior goods, error in quantity, etc. _annual statement_--a yearly summary of the transactions of a business. _annuity_--an amount payable to or received from another each year for a term of years or for life. _antedate_--to date a document or paper ahead of the actual time of its execution. _appraise_--to place a value on goods or property. an estimate made for the purpose of assessing duties or taxes. _appreciation_--an increase in value. real estate may increase in value on account of the demand for property in the immediate vicinity. _approbation_ or _approval sales_. goods delivered to customers with the understanding that if not found satisfactory they are to be returned within a definite period and without payment. _articles_--a collection of merchandise; parts of a written agreement, as "articles of association." _arbitrate_--to determine or settle disputes between two or more parties, as settlement of differences between employer and employees. _assets_--all of the property, goods, possessions of value of a person or persons in business. _assign_--to transfer or convey to another for the benefit of creditors. _assignee_--the person to whom the property or business is transferred. usually acts as a trustee of the creditors. _assignment_--the debtor's transfer or conveyance of his property to a trustee. _assignor_--the debtor who makes an assignment, or transfers property for the benefit of creditors. _association_--a body organized for a common object. _attachment_--a legal seizure of goods to satisfy a debt or claim. _auxiliary_--books of record other than books of original entry or principal books of account. books used for purposes of distribution or the gathering of statistics are "auxiliary" books. _audit_--to verify the accuracy of accounts by examining or checking records pertaining thereto. _average_--as applied to accounts, the mean time which bills of different dates have to run, or an average due date for several accounts. determining the due date is sometimes referred to as averaging accounts. _balance_--the difference between the debit and credit sides of an account. to close an account by entering the amount on the lesser side necessary to make the two sides balance. _balance sheet_--a statement or summary in condensed form made for the purpose of showing the standing or condition of a business. _balance of trade_--the balance or difference in value between the imports and exports of a country. _bale_--the form in which certain commodities are marketed. a bale of cotton, bale of hay, etc. _bank balance_--the net amount to the credit of a depositor at the bank. _bank note_--a note issued by a bank, payable on demand, which passes for money. _bank draft_--an order drawn by one bank on another for the purpose of paying money. _bank pass-book_--a small book furnished to a depositor by his bank, in which are entered the amounts of deposits and sometimes the checks or withdrawals. _bankrupt_--a person, firm, or corporation whose liabilities exceed their assets; who are unable to meet their obligations. _bill_--a statement or record of goods bought or sold, or of services rendered. [illustration: bill] _bill of exchange_--an order on a given person or bank to pay a specified amount to the person and at the time named in the bill. the term is more commonly used to apply to orders on another country, being made in triplicate. _bill of lading_--a receipt issued by the representative of a common carrier, for goods accepted for transportation to a specified point and at a given rate. it is a contract, and, when transferred to a third party, becomes an absolute title to the goods. [illustration: bill of lading] _bill of sale_--a written document executed by the seller, transferring title to personal property. _bill head_--the blank or form on which a bill is made. for illustration, see bill. [illustration: bill of exchange] _bills payable_--promissory notes and acceptances which we are to pay. _bills receivable_--promissory notes and acceptances which are to be paid to us. _blanks_--papers or books ruled or printed in suitable form for business records. _blotter_--a book in which are entered memoranda of transactions which are later copied into other books. also known as a _day book_. _bond_--a written agreement binding a person to do or not to do certain things specified therein. a negotiable instrument secured by mortgage or other security, binding the maker to pay certain sums on specific dates. _bonded goods_--goods stored in a government warehouse, or in bonded cars, bonds having been given by the owner for the payment of import duties or internal revenue taxes when removed. _bonus_--an amount paid in excess of the sum originally agreed upon. a premium or gift--for example, a sum paid to a salesman as extra compensation for making a certain number of sales. _book account_--a charge or evidence of indebtedness on the books of account not secured by note or other written promise. _brand_--a class of goods. a symbol or name used to designate a specific article. a trade mark. _broker_--one who acts as agent or middleman between buyer and seller. _brokerage_--the commissions or fees paid the broker for his services. also a term used to designate his business. _bullion_--uncoined gold or silver. _call loans_--loans made payable on demand or when called for. _cancel_--to render null and void; to annul. _capital_--property or money invested in a business. _capital stock_--a term used to indicate the subscriptions of all stockholders to the capital of a corporation. _cartage_--the charges made for hauling goods by wagon, or otherwise than by freight or express. _cash sales_--sales for which immediate payment is received in contradistinction to sales of goods on credit. [illustration: bill of sale] _certificate of stock_--a written statement or declaration of the purchase of a specified number of shares of the capital stock of a corporation. an evidence of ownership. _certified check_--a check, the payment of which is guaranteed by the bank on which it is drawn. _charges_--the expense involved in handling goods or in performing a specific act--as, for example, charges for storage, freight charges, etc. also a synonym for _debits_. _chart_--a classified exhibit of the components of a business organization, showing the authority and responsibilities of the members. grouping of the accounts of a business with respect to their relation to one another. _charter_--to hire a car, ship, or other instrument of transportation. a document defining the rights and duties of a corporation. _check_--an order on a bank to pay to a certain person, or to the order of such person, a specified sum, which sum is to be charged to the account of the drawer of the check. _clearing house_--an exchange established by banks in cities, for their convenience in making daily settlements. the checks and drafts on the different banks are exchanged without the formality of presenting them personally at each bank. a balance is found, and this amount only is paid in cash. _closing an account_--making an entry that will balance the account. _collateral_--pledges of security--as stocks, bonds, etc.--to protect an obligation or insure the payment of a loan. _commission_--a percentage or share of the proceeds allowed for the sale of merchandise--as the pay of a commission merchant for selling a car of flour. _commission merchant_--one who sells goods on commission. similar to a broker. _commercial paper_--negotiable paper used in business. _common law_--law based upon the precedent of usage, though not contained in the statutes. _company_--a corporation; also used to designate partners whose names are not known. _compromise_--to settle an account for less than the amount claimed. to agree upon a settlement. [illustration: certificate of stock] _consideration_--the price or money paid or to be paid which induces the entering into a contract by two or more persons. _consignee_--the party to whom goods are shipped. a person to whom goods are sent to be sold on commission is a consignee. the goods so sent are known as a _consignment_, and the sender is the _consignor_. _consul_--an agent of the government, residing in a foreign part, who guards the interests of his own government. _contra_--on the opposite side--as a contra account. _contract_--a written agreement between two or more persons to perform or not to perform some specified act or acts. _contingent assets and liabilities_--resources or liabilities whose value depends upon certain conditions. _contingent fund_--a sum put aside to provide for an anticipated obligation; a reserve fund. _conveyance_--a term used to describe certain forms of legal documents transferring from one person to another, title to property or collateral. _copyright_--a right granted to an author or publisher to control the publication of any writing, or the reproduction of a photograph, painting, etc. _counterfeit_--a spurious coin, or bank or treasury note. _coupon_--a certificate detached from a bond, which entitles the holder to the payment of interest. _coupon bond_--bonds to which are attached coupons calling for the payment of interest. the coupons, when detached, become negotiable paper. _credentials_--letters or testimonials conveying authority. _creditor_--one whom we owe; one who gives credit. _currency_--the coin or paper money constituting the circulating medium of a country. _debenture_--a certified evidence of debt. see bond. _debit_--to charge; to record an amount due. _deed_--a written document or contract transferring title to real estate. _defalcation_--the appropriating to one's own use, of money intrusted to him by another; embezzlement. _deferred bonds_--bonds which are to be paid when some condition is fulfilled in the future. _delivery receipt_--an acknowledgment of the delivery of goods. largely used by merchants in the delivery of goods to customers. _demand note_--a promissory note or acceptance payable on presentation or on demand. [illustration] _deposit_--the money placed in custody of the bank, subject to order. _depreciation_--a reduction in the value of property. in a manufacturing plant, buildings and machinery depreciate in value through wear and tear; a residence property may depreciate owing to the nature of a nearby building. [illustration: delivery receipt] _discount_--an allowance or abatement made for the payment of a bill within a specified period. the interest paid in advance on money borrowed from a bank. _dishonor_--refusal to accept a draft, or failure to pay a written obligation when due. [illustration: demand note] _dividend_--the profits which are distributed among the stockholders of a corporation. _draft_--a written order for the payment of money--usually made through some bank. _drawer_--the person by whom the draft is made; the one who requested the payment of money by the drawee. _drayage_--synonymous with cartage. _due bill_--a written acknowledgment of an amount due; of the same effect as a demand note. _dunning_--soliciting or urgently pressing the payment of a debt. _duplicate_--a copy of a paper or document; the act of making a copy. _duty_--the tax paid on imported goods. _doubtful_--of questionable value. we refer to an account as "doubtful" when we question the likelihood of its payment. [illustration: draft] _earnest_--an advance payment, applying on the purchase price, made to bind an oral bargain. _embezzlement_--see defalcation. _exchange_--the charge made by a bank for the collection of drafts or checks. _exports_--commodities sent to another country. _extend_--to set a later date for payment; to add several items and carry the totals to the proper column. _face value_--the amount for which a commercial paper is drawn. _facsimile_--an exact duplicate or exact copy. _financial statement_--a term used in the same sense as _balance sheet_ or _annual statement_. _fiscal_--a financial or business year, in contradistinction to a calendar year. the fiscal year of a business may commence and end on any date--usually on the date on which it was started. _fixed assets_--permanent assets acquired by a firm or corporation to enable them to conduct a business. includes real estate, building, machinery, horses and wagons, etc. _fixed charges_--those charges in connection with the operation of a business which occur at regular intervals, such as rent, taxes, etc. _fixtures_--a fixed asset represented by that part of the furniture not readily removable, such as gas and electric light fixtures. _folio_--a column provided in account books, in which to enter the page numbers of other books from or to which records are transferred. _footing_--the sum or amount of a column of figures. _foreign exchange_--drafts on foreign cities. _freight_--the charges paid for the transportation of goods. _gain_--the increase in value of assets or profit resulting from a transaction or transactions. _gauging_--measuring the liquid contents of casks or barrels. _going business_--a term used to designate a business in actual operation. goodwill or the reputation of a business has a value so long as the business is in operation, or keeps going. when a business is discontinued, only the physical assets or actual properties owned by the business are of value. _good will_--the monetary value of the reputation of a business over and above its visible assets; the value of a business name. _gross_--the entire amount in contradistinction to the net amount--as gross weight or gross profit. _guarantee or guaranty_--surety for the maintenance of quality or the performance of contracts. _honor_--to pay a promissory note when due; to accept or pay a draft. _hypothecate_--to deposit as collateral security for a loan. _import_--to bring goods into the country. _income_--the receipts of a business. _income bonds_--bonds on which the payment of interest is contingent on profits earned. if the interest is passed on account of lack of funds, the holder of the bond has no claim. _indemnity_--security against a form of loss which has occurred or may occur--as fire insurance, against loss by fire. _indorse_--to guarantee the payment of commercial paper by writing one's name on the back. _indorsee_--the person to whom a paper is indorsed. [illustration: lease] _indorser_--the person who guarantees payment; the one who indorses. _infringe; infringement_--to trespass upon another's rights--as infringement of a patent or copyright. _installment_--an account or note the payment of which is to be made in several parts, at stated intervals. _insolvent_--unable to pay one's obligations. _instant_--principally used in correspondence to indicate the present month. _insurance policy_--a contract between an insurance company and the insured. _interest_--the sum or premium paid for the use of money; one's share in a business or a particular property. _inventory_--an itemized schedule of the property or goods belonging to a business. _investment_--money paid for goods or property to be held; not for speculation. _invoice_--a list of goods bought or sold. see bill. _jobber_--one who buys from manufacturers and sells to retailers; a middleman. _job lot_--an incomplete assortment of goods to be disposed of in a lump. usually indicates small portions or remnants of a stock, the bulk of which has been sold. _joint stock_--property owned in common by several individuals known as stockholders. _leakage_--an allowance for waste of liquids in transit; refers particularly to liquids shipped in casks. _lease_--a written agreement covering the use of property during a specified period, at a stated rental. _legal tender_--the lawful amount to be offered in payment of an obligation. bank notes or other currency which passes for money. _lessee_--one who receives a lease. the _lessor_ makes it. _letter of advice_--a letter giving notice of some act in which the one receiving the advice has an interest--as making a shipment, notice of draft, etc. _letter of credit_--a letter which authorizes the receiving, by the holder, of credit to a stated amount. principally used by travelers to secure credit from foreign bankers. _liabilities_--the obligations or debts of a firm, corporation, or individual. _license_--permission, usually granted by a municipality, to conduct a specified business. _liquidation_--the closing-out of a business or an estate. _loss and gain_--the amount of profits or losses of a business. _maker_--one who signs a note. _manifest_--a list or schedule of the articles in a ship's cargo, or of the goods comprising a shipment. [illustration: order] _maturity_--the time when an obligation or an account is due. _mercantile agency_--a company which obtains and keeps for the use of its customers information showing the standing of business firms. _merchandise_--the stock in trade, or goods bought to be sold again. _money order_--an order instructing a third party to pay money to the person named. a form in which money is transmitted. _monopoly_--the exclusive control of the manufacture or sale of an article. _mortgage_--a temporary transfer of title to land, goods, or chattels to secure payment of a debt. _mortgagor_--one who gives a mortgage. the one to whom the mortgage is given is the _mortgagee_. _negotiable_--an agreement or any commercial paper which can be transferred by delivery or endorsement--as a bank note or promissory note. _net_--less all charges or deductions. _gross_ assets less liabilities leaves _net_ capital; _gross_ income less all expenses leaves _net_ profit; etc. _nominal_--having no actual existence; exists in name only. _obligation_--indebtedness. _open account_--an account which has not been paid. _opening entries_--the entries made in the books when it is desired to open the accounts of a business. _option_--the right to be the first purchaser; a privilege. _orders_--requests for the shipment of goods. _original entry_--the first record made of a charge or credit which becomes the basis of proof of the account. _overdraw_--to draw a check for a greater amount than the drawer has on deposit in a bank. _par_--face value. _partnership_--a firm; a union of two or more persons for the transaction of business or the ownership of property. _payee_--the one to whom money is to be paid. the one who pays the money is the _payer_. _per annum_--by the year. _per cent_ or _per centum_--by the hundred. _per diem_--by the day. _personal account_--any account with an individual, firm, or corporation. _personal property_--all property other than real estate. _petty cash_--a term used to signify small expenditures in actual cash. _postdate_--to date ahead; after the real date. _post_--to transfer amounts from books of entry to the ledger, which is the book of final record. _power of attorney_--authority to act for and in the name of another in business transactions. _preferred stock_--stock which participates in the profits before any dividend can be paid on the common or ordinary stock. _premium_--the amount paid above par value; the amount paid to an insurance company for insurance against loss. _present worth_--the net capital of an individual. _proceeds_--the amount realized from a sale of property. _profit and loss_--synonymous with loss and gain. _promissory note_--a promise, signed by the maker or makers, to pay a stated sum at a specified time and place. [illustration: promissory note] _pro rata_--a distribution of money or goods in proportionate parts. _protest_--a formal notice acknowledged before a notary that a note or draft was not paid at maturity, and that the maker will be held responsible for the payment. _quotation_--a price named for a given article or for services. _ratify_--to approve; to sanction the acts of an agent. _raw material_--material to be manufactured into other products--as iron ore, pig iron, lumber, etc. _real estate_--primarily refers to land, although buildings are frequently included. _rebate_--an allowance or deduction. see allowance. _receipt_--an acknowledgment that money or something of value has been received. _receiver_--one appointed to take charge of the affairs of a corporation, either solvent or insolvent, and administer its affairs under orders of the court. _remittance_--money or funds of any character transmitted from one place to another. [illustration: power of attorney] _renewal note_--a new note given to take the place of a note that is due. _rent_--a payment for the use of property owned by another. _resources_--synonymous with assets. _revenue_--income of a business. _revoke_--to recall authority of another to act as agent. _royalty_--a stipulated amount paid to the owner of a mine, patent, copyright, etc., usually based on sales. the owner of a copyright receives a royalty based on the number of books sold. [illustration: receipt] _schedule_--inventory of goods or statement of prices. _sight draft_--a draft payable on presentation or at sight. _solvent_--able to pay one's debts. _statement_--commonly used to designate a list of bills to customers during a stated period. also used to designate a financial summary showing profits and losses of a business. _stockholder_--an owner of stock in a corporation or joint stock company. _storage_--the charge for keeping goods in a store or warehouse. _surety_--one who has guaranteed or made himself responsible for the acts of another. _syndicate_--a combination of capitalists, usually temporary, for the conduct of some financial enterprise. _tare_--the amount deducted from gross weights to cover weight of packages--as crates, boxes, barrels, etc. _tariff_--a schedule of prices, as freight tariff. the duties imposed on imports or exports. _terms_--the conditions governing a given sale. "terms cash" means that payment is to be made as soon as goods are delivered. _tickler_--memoranda of matters requiring attention in the future, arranged according to dates. _time draft_--a draft which matures at some future date. _trade discount_--the discount allowed by a manufacturer to a jobber or by a jobber to a retailer. [illustration: statement] _trade mark_--see brand. _ultimo_--principally used in correspondence to designate last month. _valid_--legal or binding; usually applied to a properly executed contract. _value received_--used in notes to indicate that value has been given. _void_--without legal force; not binding. _voucher_--a receipt; a document which proves the accuracy of an account or the authority for an expenditure. [illustration: voucher] _warehouse_--a building used for storage purposes. _warehouse receipt_--a document acknowledging the receipt of goods for storage in a warehouse. _warranty_--an agreement to assume responsibility if certain facts do not prove as represented. _way bill_--a document containing a list of goods shipped by a railroad. _wholesale_--a business which sells goods in large quantities, usually in original packages and to the trade only. _working capital_--the capital actually used in the active operations of a business. commercial abbreviations the commercial abbreviations in the following list are in constant use in the various lines of trade, and should be thoroughly understood by the student of accounting. a first-class acct. account ad advertisement agt. agent amt. amount ans. answer art. article asstd. assorted ass't. assistant atty. attorney bal. balance bbl. barrel b. b. bill book bds. boards bdls. bundles bgs. bags bk. book bkt. basket b. l. or b/l bill of lading bls. bales bot. bought b. p. or b/p bills payable bro't. brought b. r. or b/r bills receivable b. ren'd. bill rendered bu. bushel bx. box c. b. cash book ¢ or cts. cents chgd. charged c. i. f. cost, insurance, and freight ck. check cks. casks, checks co. company c. o. d. collect on delivery coll. collect or collector com. commission com'l. commercial cons'd. consigned const. consignment cr. credit or creditor ctg. cartage cwt. hundredweight d. b. day book dept. department dft. draft dis. or disc't. discount div. dividend do. or ditto the same doz. dozen dr. debit or debtor ds. days ea. each e. e. error excepted e. and o. e. errors and omissions excepted e. g. for example ent. entry or enter ent'd. entered etc. or &c. and others; and so forth exch. exchange ex. express exp. expense exr. executor f. o. b. free on board fol. folio; page of a book f'd, ford. forward frt. freight ft. foot, feet gal. gallon gr. grain gro. or gr. gross guar. guaranteed hdkf. handkerchief hhd. hogshead hund. hundred i. b. invoice book in. inches ins. insurance inst. instant (this month) int. interest inv. invoice invt. inventory i. o. u. i owe you; a due bill j. journal lb. pound lbr. lumber lab. labor manf. manufacture mdse. merchandise mem. memorandum mfd. manufactured mfst. manifest mfr. manufacturer mo. or mo. month mtg. mortgage ms. manuscript mut. mutual nat. or nat'l. national n. b. take notice no. number n. p. notary public, net proceeds o. b. order book o. k. all correct; approved oz. ounce p. page pp. pages pay't or pm't. payment pc. piece pcs. pieces p. b. pass book p. c. b. petty cash book pd. paid per. by; by the per an. by the year pk. peck pkg. package pop. population pref. preferred prem. premium pro. proceeds prop'r. proprietor prox. next month p. s. postscript pub. publisher qr. or qr. quarter, quire qt. or qt. quart rec'd. received ret'd. returned r. r. railroad ry. railway s. b. sales book s. e. single entry sec. secretary shipt. shipment shs. shares sig. signature s. s. steamship s. s. to wit; namely st. dft. sight draft sund. sundry supt. superintendent sq. square t. b. trial balance; time book ult. ultimo; last month via. by way of viz. namely vol. volume vs. against w. b. way bill wk. week wt. or wt. weight yr. year yd. or yds. yard or yards commercial signs and characters the signs and characters most commonly used in business are the following: @ to or at a/c account b/l bill of lading b/r bills receivable or bill rendered b/p bills payable b/s bill of sale ¢ cents c/o care of d/d days after date d/s days after sight f/b free on board j/a joint account l/c letter of credit l/m letters of marque £ pounds sterling o/c on account o/c out of courtesy % per cent p per $ dollars # number, if written before a figure, as # ; pounds, if written after, as # [check mark] check mark " ditto ° degrees ' prime; minute; feet " seconds; inches; also used as ditto marks ¹ one and one-fourth ² one and one-half ³ one and three-fourths + plus - minus × by or times ÷ divided by = equals definition and objects of bookkeeping . bookkeeping is the art of recording the transactions of a business in a manner that makes it possible to determine the accuracy of the records. the objects of bookkeeping are: (_a_) to exhibit a record of the separate transactions of a business. (_b_) to furnish statistical information in respect to any particular class of transactions. (_c_) to exhibit the financial standing or condition of a business. when properly assembled the bookkeeping records become _accounts_ (for definition, see dictionary of commercial terms). if correct methods are used, the bookkeeping records will be assembled or grouped in a manner to show their exact nature and their bearing on the status of the business, or the standing of the account. = . debit.= the term _debit_ designates those items in an account representing values with which we have parted, or transferred to another person or account. debits are always placed on the left side (or in the left-hand column) of an account. debits to persons are of the following classes: (_a_) the transfer of merchandise. (_b_) the rendering of services. (_c_) the use of something of value. _examples_-- (_a_) we sell to john doe two tons of coal at $ . per ton. we _debit_ his account with the amount. (_b_) we render services to thos. ryan for which he is to pay us a stated fee. we _debit_ his account with the amount of the fee. (_c_) we are to pay rent for the use of our offices. our landlord _debits_ us with the amount. = . credit.= the term _credit_ designates those items in an account representing value which we have received or which has been transferred to us. credits are always placed on the right side (or in the right-hand column) of an account. credits to persons are of the following classes: (_a_) the receipt of merchandise or money. (_b_) the rendering of services. (_c_) the use of something of value. _examples_-- (_a_) john doe pays us $ . on account. we _credit_ his account with the amount. (_b_) our attorney makes a charge for legal services. we _credit_ his account with the amount. (_c_) we rent or lease property to another; and when payment is made, we _credit_ his account. = . rules for debit and credit.= debit and credit are the fundamental principles of bookkeeping. the general rules to be followed in debits and credits are: debit cash when you receive it. debit a person when you trust him. debit a person when you pay him. credit cash when you pay it out. credit a person when he trusts you. credit a person when he pays you. = . balance.= when the two sides of an account differ in amount, it is said to show a balance. if the debit side of the account is the larger, the difference is a _debit balance_. if the credit side of the account is the larger, the difference is a _credit balance_. _example_--if we debit john doe's account for two tons of coal at $ . a ton, or $ . (see example (_a_), article ), and credit his account with $ . paid (see example (_a_), article ), the debit side of the account is $ . greater than the credit side. therefore it shows a debit balance. methods of bookkeeping . there are but two methods or systems of bookkeeping, and they are known as _single entry_ and _double entry_. no matter in what form bookkeeping records are kept, the method must be either single or double entry. single entry is used only in very small businesses or by those who do not understand the advantages of double entry. single entry . as the name indicates, single entry is a single record of the transaction--that is, a record of one phase of the transaction only. _example_--john doe's account would show that he received two tons of coal, but there would be no corresponding account to show that our supply of coal had been diminished. single entry fails to fulfil the object of bookkeeping, as it does not exhibit the true financial condition of the business, and is incapable of proof of accuracy. double entry . double entry is a system of making two entries (or a double record) of every transaction. in every business transaction, two distinct factors are involved--namely, that which is received, and that which is parted with. if we sell a given quantity of a commodity, we part with it, and the sale takes from or decreases the value of that particular commodity in our possession. if we sell for cash, the transaction adds to our cash possessions; while if the value of the commodity is debited or charged to the account of a customer, it adds to the amount we are to receive from that customer. = . principle of double entry.= double entry is a system of debits and credits. one writer expresses it as a system of opposing contra things. _the fundamental principle of double entry is that there must be a corresponding credit for every debit._ _example_--when we sell john doe two tons of coal, we debit his account; but we have decreased the value of our stock of coal, and to complete the double entry, we credit coal account (or _merchandise_, as the account representing our stock in trade is sometimes known). when he pays us money, we credit his account, and debit cash. = . advantages of double entry.= the principal advantages of double entry bookkeeping are that the system permits of making an accurate exhibit of the standing of the business; it exhibits the profits and losses; it shows the sources of profits and the causes of losses; it permits of proof of the accuracy of the records. [illustration] . _account books_ are ruled with special forms which adapt them to bookkeeping records. the forms of ruling are many and varied to suit the requirements of different classes of business. rulings for double entry bookkeeping do not differ materially from those used in single entry. for double entry, at least two amount columns must be provided--one for debits, and one for credits. the most common form of ruling is known as _journal ruling_. a book with this ruling is also known as a _journal ledger_. the words in parentheses explain the purpose of the different columns. the abbreviations _dr._ (debit) and _cr._ (credit) are sometimes written at the head of the amount column; but most bookkeepers omit them, as the position of the columns indicates their purpose. demonstration to illustrate the manner of entering transactions in accounts, we show in the accompanying diagrams how the transactions used in the foregoing examples would appear in the proper accounts. [illustration] examples for practice . on journal ruled paper, which can be procured at any stationer's, write up the account of john doe as per example given in articles and . . write up the account of john doe, showing also the accounts necessary to complete the double entry, as per example in article . . write up the accounts covering the following transactions, by the single entry method: nov. . sold to james stevenson cords of wood, at $ . per cord. sold to andrew white ½ tons of coal, at $ . a ton. nov. . sold to wm. johnson ton of coal, at $ . a ton. nov. . received from james stevenson $ . cash, to apply on account. nov. . received from wm. johnson $ . in payment of account. . write up the same accounts by the double entry method, using a merchandise account to represent all classes of merchandise sold. classes of account books . account books are of two classes: (_a_) those in which complete records of transactions, or complete accounts, are kept; (_b_) those which contain particulars of individual transactions which must afterward be transferred to books of the (_a_) class. books of the (_a_) class are known as _principal books_ or _books of record_; that is, they contain the final or permanent record of an account. books of the (_b_) class are of two kinds: (_ba_) books of _original entry_; (_bb_) _auxiliary books_. any book which contains the first (or original) record of a transaction is a book of original entry (_ba_). [illustration] [illustration: a corner in the offices of the platt iron works, dayton, ohio] any book in which records contained in books of original entry (_ba_) are assembled, to be transferred later to principal books (_a_), is an auxiliary book. any book used for the purpose of assembling statistical information is an auxiliary book. the books most commonly used in double entry bookkeeping are: _order book_, _day book_, _cash book_, _journal_, _sales book_, _purchase book_, _ledger_. = . order book.= an order book is a book of original entry in which is entered a record of each order or request for the shipment or delivery of merchandise. the record shows the name and address of the customer, the kinds and quantities of goods wanted, and the prices at which they are to be sold. the ruling of the order book varies according to the nature of the business. a simple form of ruling is shown. = . day book.= a day book is a book of original entry in which are entered full particulars of each completed transaction. these records are afterwards assembled in auxiliary books, from which they are transferred to the principal books. [illustration] the use of the day book was formerly universal, but it has been discarded by modern bookkeepers as its use involves unnecessary labor. the records formerly kept in the day book are now made directly in certain books then known as auxiliary, which makes of them books of original entry. the ruling of the day book is shown. = . cash book.= a cash book is a book of original entry containing records of all transactions which involve either the receipt or payment of cash. the records in the cash book are in fact a complete account with cash. we debit cash for all money received, and credit cash with all money paid out; therefore, the difference between the total footings of the debit and credit sides of the cash book shows the amount of cash which we should have on hand. since we cannot pay out more than we receive, the debit side should be the larger, unless both sides are equal, which shows that we have paid out all the cash received. the amounts entered on the debit side of the cash book are transferred (or _posted_) to the credit side of the account of the one from whom the cash is received. the amounts entered on the credit side of the cash book are posted to the debit side of the account of the one to whom the cash is paid. [illustration] there are many special forms of ruling for cash books, with separate columns for entering certain classes of receipts and payments of a special nature. the ruling of the cash book should be made to meet the requirements of the business in which it is to be used. a simple form of ruling is shown. it will be noted that the left-hand page is used for the debit side, while the right-hand page is used for credits. this is the only account kept with cash. = . journal.= a journal is a book in which separate transactions are entered in a manner to preserve the balance necessary in double entry--that is, showing the proper debit and credit for each transaction. the journal is used for making adjusting entries, and it was formerly the custom to copy into this book from the day book the particulars of every transaction. records are now made in the journal directly, which makes it a book of original entry. the records in the journal are transferred or posted to the debit and credit sides of the accounts which they represent. the journal is frequently combined with the cash book, and is then called a _cash journal_. an ordinary form of journal ruling is shown in article . = . sales book.= a sales book is an auxiliary book in which is kept a record of all goods sold, showing name of purchaser, quantity and kind of articles, prices, and amounts. a sales book is a journal of sales. the amounts of individual sales are posted (transferred) to the debit side of the accounts of the purchasers. the footings of the sales book are carried forward until the end of the month, when the total amount is posted as one item to the credit side of the _merchandise_ account, completing the double entry. the merchandise account has been universally used in the past, all purchases being debited and all sales credited to this account. certain other accounts (which will be explained later) are now recommended by leading accountants, to take the place of the merchandise account. sales books are usually ruled to meet the special needs of each business, separate columns being provided for a record of special classes of sales, or sales of special kinds of goods. = . purchase book.= a purchase or invoice book is the opposite of the sales book, being used for a record of all purchases made. like the sales book, the totals are carried forward to the end of the month, and posted as one item to the debit side of the _merchandise_ account. the amounts of the separate transactions are posted daily to the credit of the persons from whom the goods are purchased. [illustration] the purchase book is a purchase journal, and the ruling is the same as that of other journals. = . ledger.= the ledger is the principal book, in which particulars of every transaction of every nature are summarized. it is, in fact, a transcript of all other books of the business except those used solely for statistical purposes. the ledger is the book which contains the final or complete records of all dealings, either with an individual or with respect to a specific class of transactions--as expenditures for a certain purpose, or receipts of a given character, or sales of a given kind of goods. a transcript of the ledger accounts exhibits the progress and standing of the business. like other books, ledgers are now made with special forms of ruling, depending on the purpose for which they are to be used. the old style or common form of ledger ruling is shown (p. ). = . invoice or bill.= an invoice or bill is an itemized statement or record of goods sold by one person to another. the invoice or bill is used in every line of business. a conventional form of invoice is shown (p. ). recording transactions = .= the records of transactions in the journal which show what accounts are debited and what accounts are credited are called _journal entries_. the act of making these entries is known as _journalizing_. it was formerly the custom to journalize each individual transaction from the day book, but in modern bookkeeping the journal is used only for adjusting and special entries. = . posting.= when the record of a transaction is transferred to the ledger from a book of class (_b_), it is said to be _posted_. the act of making the transfer is called _posting_. the original method was to itemize all transactions in the ledger, but the present custom is to post the totals only. = .= when a record is transferred from one book of class (_b_) to another, or posted to the ledger, the page number of the book to or from which it is transferred or posted is entered in the column known as the _folio column_. this is done that the transaction may be traced from one book to another. the presence of the page number also serves as a check to show that the item has been posted. _example_--an item is to be posted from page of the sales book to page of the ledger. in the folio column of the ledger will be entered "s " indicating that the item will be found on page of the sales book. in the folio column of the sales book will be entered " " indicating that the item has been posted to page of the ledger. = . ledger index.= an index to the ledger is necessary to enable us to find the accounts. in small ledgers the index is placed in the front of the book itself, while for large ledgers a separate index book is used. there is a distinct advantage in this, as the index book can be kept open on the desk while posting is being done, and the names found much quicker than when it is necessary to turn the leaves of the ledger to find the index. when an account is opened in the ledger, the name should be written in the index, followed by the page number. the names in the index are arranged in alphabetical order, each name being written under the letter of the alphabet corresponding to the first letter in the name. for example: =a= =b= =c= adams, j. c. bacon, i. h. crandall, jas. andrews, henry brown, henry campbell, don. in a large index, one or more pages are used for a letter; while in a small index, several letters may be placed on the same page. sample transactions = .= the following sample transactions are carried through the books described in this section, showing the proper entries and postings (see pp. - ). the day book has been omitted, as it is practically obsolete, not being used by progressive bookkeepers. muskegon, mich., nov. , . i, robert b. robinson, have this day commenced business as a wholesale dealer in groceries and provisions. i have rented the store located at pine st., from geo. baker, at $ . a month. my resources and liabilities are as follows: resources cash on hand $ , . merchandise per inventory , . due me from roger bros. . liabilities c. b. whitney, grand rapids $ . my net investment , . --nov. -- bought from grand rapids gro. co., grand rapids, mich. on account cwt. sugar $ . $ . bbls. flour . . " salt . . " molasses , gals. . . $ . -- -- paid geo. baker for month's rent cash . -- -- sold to geo. wiggins, ottawa st. on account box b. b. soap . case x. x. corn . # soda biscuit . . -- -- sold to smith & nixon, western av. on account bbl. flour . . cwt. sugar . . bbl. molasses, gal. . . . -- -- bought from william bratton, jefferson av., detroit on account sacks java coffee, , # . . -- -- sent to c. b. whitney, grand rapids draft to balance account . -- -- sold to h. a. brainerd, lake av. on account bbls. salt . . # baking powder . . . -- -- charge grand rapids gro. co. bbl. flour received in bad order . -- -- sold to bryan bros., lakeside on account bbls. salt . . # raisins . . . -- -- bought from h. a. edwin, chicago on account bbls. pork . . -- -- sold for cash bbl. pork . . -- -- sold to r. c. ellison, jefferson av. on account bbl. pork . . bu. beans . . . -- -- received from geo. wiggins cash to balance . -- -- sent to grand rapids gro. co. draft to balance . -- -- sold for cash box soap . -- -- received from smith & nixon cash on account . [illustration] [illustration] [illustration] [illustration] promissory notes = .= a promissory note is a form of commercial paper much used in business. goods are sold on specific terms--that is, to be paid for in a certain time after date. profits are based on the supposition that the bills will be paid when due. when not so paid, the debtor is virtually borrowing money from the creditor, and should pay interest for the use of that money just as he would if he had borrowed it from a bank. to settle the account when it is not convenient to pay cash, it is customary to give a promissory note for the amount, plus interest, payable on a certain date. the promissory note is more convenient for the creditor; for when it bears his endorsement, his bankers will discount it, thus giving him the money for use in his business. even though he may not discount it, the promissory note is better for the creditor, as it gives him a definite promise to pay, which he does not have when the debt is represented by an open account. = . bills receivable and bills payable.= the commercial term for promissory notes accepted by us is _bills receivable_. the commercial term for promissory notes given by us is _bills payable_. the term "bill" is used in this connection for the reason that a promissory note is a negotiable instrument, and when indorsed it becomes practically a bill of exchange. the accounts in the ledger which represent notes receivable and notes payable are called _bills receivable account_ and _bills payable account_. the bills receivable account is debited when a note is received, and credited when a note is paid. the balance of bills receivable account shows the amount of unpaid notes payable to us. the bills payable account is credited when we give a note and debited when we pay a note. the balance of bills payable account shows the amount of the notes that we owe. = . bill book.= for the purpose of keeping a record of bills receivable and bills payable, a book known as a _bill book_ is used. any draft, note, due bill, or other written promise to pay a specified sum at a stated time, should be treated as a note or bill--receivable or payable, as the case may be. the bill book is an auxiliary book, and the record kept is usually treated as a memorandum only, records of each transaction being made in the journal. the form shown (p. ) is one in common use. [illustration] = . acceptances.= a draft when accepted--that is, when it becomes an _acceptance_--has the same value as a promissory note, for it is a definite promise to pay on a specified date. drafts are used for the collection of accounts in other cities than the one in which the creditor's place of business is located. a draft may call for payment a certain number of days after date, or it may call for payment at sight. the former is known as a _time draft_, while the latter is a _sight draft_. = . discount and exchange.= when a promissory note is taken to the bank for the purpose of raising money, it is customary for the banks to calculate the interest for the time the note is to run, and to deduct this from the principal, giving the borrower the net amount only. in other words, the interest is paid in advance, and such advance payment of interest is called _discount_. when a draft is collected through a bank, a small fee is charged, and this fee is called _exchange_. exchange is also charged for the collection of out-of-town checks, especially if they are drawn on banks in small towns and cities. bank deposits = .= when money is deposited in a bank, a list of the items in the deposit is made on a blank known as a _deposit ticket_ or _deposit slip_. these deposit tickets are furnished by the bank for the convenience of its customers. = . signature card.= money deposited in a bank can be withdrawn only by presenting a written order or _check_, signed by the one in whose name the money is deposited. that the bank may know that money is not paid on checks that do not bear the correct signature, each depositor is required to leave at the bank the signature or signatures which are to be honored. these signatures are written on a card, known as a _signature card_, which the bank keeps for reference. = . check books.= blank checks are usually bound in book form, the checks themselves being perforated so that they can be easily removed. these _check books_ are in most cases furnished by the bank. the number of checks on a page varies, but is seldom more than four. when a check is written, the number, date, name, and amount should be written on the face of the stub. to keep a convenient record of the balance in the bank, it is well to enter a list of all checks and deposits on the back of the check stubs. [illustration: signature card] = . pass book.= the bank _pass-book_ should be taken to the bank whenever a deposit is made, as it contains the bank's receipt for all money deposited. = . indorsement of checks.= before a check can be deposited in the bank, it must be indorsed by writing the name of the payee across the back. the indorsement should be on the back of the left end of the check--never on the right end. several forms of indorsement are shown (p. ). when the name only is written, it makes the check payable to the bearer, and is known as a _blank indorsement_. when the words "pay to" are used, the check becomes payable to the one whose, name appears immediately under the words. it can only be paid to him in person or credited to his account at any bank at which he may deposit the check. a check indorsed with the words "pay to the order of" permits of a further transfer, and provides a receipt from the one to whom it is so indorsed. when a check is to be deposited, the proper indorsement is "for deposit only." this is of special importance when deposits are sent by messenger. such indorsements usually include the name of the bank, and are made with a rubber stamp. = . depositing cash.= it is a good plan to deposit all cash received and to pay all bills by check, except such small items as are paid from petty cash. by doing this, all transactions pass through the bank, providing a receipt in every case in the form of a canceled check bearing the indorsement of the payee. [illustration: endorsement] = . treatment of petty cash.= it is customary in business establishments to keep on hand a certain sum of cash out of which to pay items of expense such as office supplies, etc., when the amount is too small or it is not convenient to write a check. the best way to handle this is to draw a check for a certain amount, and keep this money separate from the cash received from day to day. at the end of the month, or sooner if the fund is low, draw a check payable to cash for the amount paid out and charge it to expense. this will leave the fund intact. _example_--we shall suppose the amount of petty cash to be kept on hand to be $ . ; and the amount paid out, $ . , leaving $ . on hand. a check will be made for $ . , to be charged to expense through the regular cash book. the cash will be drawn from the bank, and the amount added to the $ . , making a total of $ . . a record of petty cash is usually kept in a small book called a _petty cash book_. this book has the regular two-column journal ruling. in handling petty cash, great care should be taken to secure a receipt in some form for every payment. [illustration: a bird's-eye view of the beloit, wis., factory of the fairbanks-morse co.] sample transactions = .= the following sample transactions taken from the books of w. b. clark, ames, ia., illustrate the use of the papers and accounts explained in this section, and show how the transactions would appear on the books. mr. clark is a shipper of produce, and a retail dealer in coal. his assets and liabilities are as follows: assets cash in bank $ , . inventory, produce . " coal . geo. white--open account . f. h. russel " " . henry brown " " . o. l. duncan--note due dec. . $ , . -------- liabilities iowa coal co., des moines, open acct. $ . lehigh coal co., chicago, ill., open acct. . george hardy, open account . . -------- as he wishes to know how much business he is doing in each department of his business, he keeps accounts in the ledger with both produce and coal instead of one merchandise account. in the sales book, one column is used for coal sales, and one for produce sales. no purchase book is kept, all purchases being posted from the journal or cash book. --oct. -- bought from david andrews, for cash bu. potatoes @ . c $ . paid by check no. . -- -- sold to albert long on account tons run of mine coal $ . . -- -- received from geo. white on account cash . -- -- sold to taft produce co., des moines, on account bu. beans . . -- -- drew from bank for petty cash . check no. . -- -- sold to geo. hardy on account ½ tons nut coal . . gave him check no. . . -- -- gave to lehigh coal co., chicago. -day note . check no. . . -- -- taft produce co. paid sight draft through iowa national bank . -- -- accepted -day draft made by iowa coal co. . payable at ames state bank -- -- deposited in ames state bank draft iowa national bank . cash . -- -- paid for repairs to stove, cash . -- -- sold for cash, ½ ton egg coal . [illustration] [illustration] [illustration] [illustration] [illustration] [illustration] [illustration: accounting department in the new york office of j. walter thompson company] theory of accounts part ii classes of accounts = .= in double entry bookkeeping, the accounts used may be divided into the two general classes of _personal_ and _impersonal_. for the purpose of more complete classification, the second class is further subdivided into _real_, _representative_, and _nominal_ accounts. = . personal accounts.= a personal account is a record of transactions with a particular person or persons. _examples_-- a record of transactions with persons who buy goods from us. a record of transactions with persons from whom we buy goods. [illustration] = . real account.= a real account is a record of transactions with respect to a particular property. properties which we possess are termed _resources_ or _assets_; therefore all real accounts are also _asset accounts_. [illustration] _examples_-- real estate (land and buildings), machinery, furniture, merchandise, etc. = . representative account.= a representative account is a summary of all debit or credit transactions of a particular class with respect to several personal accounts. the debit or credit to this account completes the double entry, and illustrates the rule that in double entry there must be a credit for every debit. _example_-- we sell goods to a number of customers, and the amounts of these sales are debited to their several accounts. to complete the double entry, we credit the total amount of these sales to an account called _sales account_. the total credits to this account during any given period _represent_ the sales to all customers for the same period, and the sales account is a _representative_ account. the total debits to all customers' accounts for goods purchased in one month amount to $ , . . this amount is credited to the sales account. likewise the purchases for the same period amount to $ . , and the several amounts are credited to the personal accounts of those from whom the purchases were made, while a like amount is debited to a representative account known as a purchase account. [illustration] = . nominal account.= a nominal account is a record of transactions having to do with profit and loss; a record of a particular class of expenditures from which no direct returns are expected; any impersonal account which does not come under the classification of real or representative accounts. _example_-- we buy coal to be used in heating our building. the coal is not to be resold, but its use is necessary; it is one of the expenses of conducting the business, and we charge the amount to an _expense_ account. expense is a _nominal_ account kept for the purpose of showing the total expenses of the business. [illustration] = . merchandise account.= the merchandise account is a real account formerly much used, but discarded by modern accountants. when used, this account is debited with all purchases of merchandise and credited with all sales. the account is also charged with all goods returned by our customers, and credited with all goods which we return to those from whom we have purchased them. goods returned by our customers are charged at the prices at which they were purchased by the customers; consequently the debit side of the merchandise account does not furnish a true exhibit of our purchases; neither is the credit side a true exhibit of our sales. since the merchandise account furnished no valuable information, other accounts which exhibit more vital statistics have been substituted. = .= _purchase account_ is one of the accounts substituted for the merchandise account. this account is charged with all purchases as represented by the footings of the purchase book or purchase journal. this completes the double entry, the separate purchases having been credited to the personal accounts of those from whom the goods were purchased. all returns or other similar deductions allowed on purchase invoices are charged to those from whom the purchases were made and credited to purchase account. the balance of the purchase account then shows the total net purchases. = .= _sales account_ takes the place of the credit side of the merchandise account. all sales as shown by the footings of the sales book are credited to the sales account, completing the double entry. all returns and allowances are likewise charged to the sales account. the balance of the sales account shows total net sales. sample transactions = .= the following transactions, properly recorded in journal sales book, purchase book, and ledger, demonstrate the uses of the merchandise, purchase, and sales accounts explained in the preceding paragraphs: --sept. -- bought from american furniture co., grand rapids #four-drawer v f cabinets $ . $ . # card sections . . # top . # base . $ . ------ -- -- bought from morgan printing co., chicago , # plain ruled # cards . . , # ledger " # " . . , # " " # " . . . ------ -- -- sold to ackers & co., randolph st. # sections . . # top . # base . . ------ -- -- sold to thompson & co., monroe st. , # plain ruled cards . . -- -- received from ackers & co. # section . (damaged) -- -- shipped to american furniture co. # section . (received in bad order) in the first demonstration, the footings of the sales and purchase books, as well as the returns entered in the journal, are posted to a merchandise account. it will be noted that the debit side of the merchandise account does not represent the actual purchases, and the credit side does not represent the sales. in the second demonstration, the purchase and sales accounts are used. total sales are credited to sales account from purchase book, and returns credited from the journal. the balances of these accounts show actual net purchases and sales. [illustration] [illustration] [illustration] classes of assets = .= asset accounts are accounts representing resources or assets of the business. assets are classified as _fixed_; _active_ or _floating_; _passive_ or _speculative_; _fictitious_. _fixed assets_ are those permanent forms of property which are a necessary part of the equipment used for conducting the business--such as real estate, buildings, machinery, etc. _active_ or _floating assets_ are those forms of property of which the quantity in our possession varies from day to day--as merchandise, accounts, cash, etc. _passive_ or _speculative assets_ are those (_a_) whose values are not readily determined, or (_b_) whose values are subject to market fluctuations--as, for example, (_a_) franchises, copyrights, patents; (_b_) stocks, bonds, or other speculative securities. _fictitious assets_ are those which are not represented by tangible property, or which are of value to a going business but would have no market value if the business were closed out or liquidated. these assets are frequently represented by an expense account on the books. the initial advertising expense necessary to launch the business successfully is frequently carried on the books as an asset. the amount of such advertising expense is spread over a stated period, a certain proportion being charged into the regular expense accounts each year until the entire amount is used. = . examples of fixed assets.= the assets of an ordinary mercantile business are of the first two classes only--fixed and floating. the most common forms of fixed assets of such a business are: _real estate_--generally understood to include land and buildings owned and used in the business. _furniture and fixtures_--represented by office and store furniture, shelving, counters, stoves, furnaces or other heating appliances, lighting fixtures. _horses and wagons_ or _trucks_--including all horses, wagons, trucks, harness, or motor-cars used for hauling goods. if the business is one in which these classes of property are dealt in, they become active assets. land, for example, would be one of the _active_ assets of a business organized to buy and sell real estate. = . examples of floating assets.= the active or floating assets of a mercantile business are: _merchandise_--meaning the stock in trade or goods dealt in. _accounts_--the open accounts of customers who owe for goods purchased. _notes_ or _bills receivable_--all outstanding notes payable to the firm. _cash_--the amount of cash on hand and in the bank. = . examples of passive assets.= passive or speculative assets are more frequently found on the books of a manufacturing business, a corporation, or a business a part or whole of which has been sold by the original owners. examples of these assets are: _patents_--a manufacturer owns a patent the value of which depends upon future profits resulting from the manufacture and sale of the article which it covers. it is customary to place a value on the patent, and to consider it an asset of the business. _good-will_--a man has established a business which has become extremely profitable, and in selling the business he places a certain value on the reputation or goodwill which he has built up. _speculative_--a firm having a surplus not required in the business sometimes invests it outside of the business with the expectation of realizing a profit by selling at an advanced price. they buy grain or provisions, mining or railway stocks, etc. or an investment may be made in the stock of some manufacturing business to be established in the town, because such an enterprise, if successful, will naturally result in an increase in their own business. = . examples of fictitious assets.= fictitious assets are seldom found on the books of other than corporations where a large initial promotion expense is involved. a good example of a fictitious asset is: _advertising_--a business house may decide on an average annual expenditure for advertising; but to be effective, the expenditures for the first two or three years may necessarily exceed this amount. the excess is considered as an investment since it is expected that as the business becomes firmly established the annual expenditure can be reduced to an amount even less than that estimated, gradually reducing the amount carried on the books as an asset. to illustrate: annual advertising appropriation for ten years is $ , . . expended first year $ , . deduct appropriation , . ---------- to advertising inventory , . expended second year , . deduct appropriation , . ---------- to advertising inventory , . expended third year , . deduct appropriation , . ---------- to advertising inventory . appropriation fourth year , . expended " " , . ---------- to credit advertising inventory , . appropriation fifth year , . expended " " , . ---------- to credit advertising inventory , . appropriation sixth year , . expended " " , . ---------- to advertising inventory . appropriation seventh year , . expended " " , . ---------- to credit advertising inventory , . appropriation eighth year , . expended " " , . ---------- to credit advertising inventory , . appropriation ninth year , . expended " " , . ---------- to credit advertising inventory , . appropriation tenth year , . expended " " , . ---------- to credit advertising inventory , . ---------- ---------- $ , . $ , . revenue accounts = .= the term _revenue_ (synonymous with _income_) is used to designate those items which, when brought together in an account, exhibit the profit or loss of the business. _revenue receipts_ are the receipts which originate exclusively from the sale or exchange of the commodities or things of value for the handling of which the business has been organized. _revenue expenditures_ are those expenditures connected with the expense of operation or administration of a business, including such items of expense as postage, printing, salaries, rent, etc. _revenue accounts_ is a term used to designate those accounts that represent revenue receipts or revenue expenditures. = . revenue receipts.= the account representing revenue receipts in all lines of business (though it may sometimes be known by another name) is the _sales account_--a representative account showing net sales. net sales, less cost of goods sold, represent gross profits. gross profits, less cost of conducting the business (revenue expenditures) represent net profits. = . expense.= the broad term _expense account_ represents all revenue expenditures; but in modern bookkeeping the amounts of the different classes of expense are kept separate as far as possible. some of the most commonly used divisions of expense are: rent; insurance; taxes, interest and discount; out freight and express; heat and lights; labor; salaries, etc. it is customary to open one account in the name of _general expense_, to care for expenditures not included in special accounts. = .= _insurance_--a nominal account to which is charged all sums paid to insurance companies (called _premiums_), in consideration of which our property is insured against loss by fire, cyclones, or other disaster. = .= _rent_--a nominal account to which is charged all sums paid for use of property which we rent or lease from others for the benefit of our business--usually the buildings in which our business is transacted or in which our goods are stored. = .= _taxes_--a nominal account to which are charged all taxes and license fees paid on account of property owned or business transacted. = .= _interest_--this is a nominal account which should include only interest charges paid or interest earned on account of capital. when we borrow money or discount a note, we do it because we need cash capital, and the interest paid is a capital expense or a direct source of loss. exchange charged for the collection of notes and drafts belongs in the same class. all interest paid for the use of money, and exchange paid for the collection of notes, drafts, and checks, should be debited to interest account. when we save the discount by prepayment of bills, the discount is earned by the use of capital. all such earnings are a direct source of profit and should be credited to interest account. discount paid on notes is interest paid in advance, and should not be confused with discounts allowed to customers for the prompt payment of bills; the latter is a reduction in the price received for our goods, and reduces trading profits. this question is discussed under the head of _cash discounts_. = .= _out freight and express_--a nominal account which is debited with all transportation charges paid on goods that we ship, whether sales are made at delivered prices or freight is paid as an accommodation to the customer. when goods are sold at f. o. b. prices, and the freight is paid by us as an accommodation to the customer, out freight should be credited and the customer debited. this should not be confused with _in freight_, or freight paid on goods received, as such charges add to the cost of the goods and should be charged to the account representing that particular class of goods. = .= _heat and light_--this account is debited with all sums paid for fuel, heating bills, lighting bills, and lighting supplies. = .= _labor_--a nominal account which is debited with all sums paid as wages to mechanics or laborers employed by the business. = .= _salaries_--a nominal account which is debited with all salaries paid to managers, salesmen, clerks, and others employed in the administration of the business. rules for journalizing = .= journalizing is one of the most important operations in bookkeeping, since journalizing a transaction involves the selection of the proper accounts to be debited and credited completing the double entry. with the use of separate sales and purchase records, the journal itself is used principally for those entries involving a transfer of values from one account to another. these are frequently referred to as _cross entries_. the number of possible entries of this class is practically unlimited, and they require careful study on the part of the bookkeeper. rules for journalizing are frequently referred to in bookkeeping textbooks; but, since the custom of journalizing every transaction is now obsolete, the term is no longer sufficiently descriptive. a better term to use would be _rules for debit and credit_, for it is the rules of debit and credit that must be followed when a journal entry is to be made. [illustration] = . three-column journal.= a three-column journal suitable for a small business is shown above. the third column is used for sales only, while the first two columns are used for regular journal entries. the use of the column for sales answers the same purpose as a sales book, and total sales are posted to the credit of sales account at the end of the month. sample transactions = .= for the purpose of demonstrating the principles of debit and credit as exemplified in the journal, the following transactions except those involving cash are _journalized_ in a three-column journal. the third column is used for sales, and it is to be understood that a cash account is kept in a separate cash book. --april -- sold to hiram watson on account # gran. sugar ½c. $. bars soap . # starch . cans corn . $ . ---- -- -- paid electric light bill--cash . -- -- sold for cash sundry merchandise . -- -- bought from eureka milling co. on account bbls. xxx flour . . -- -- sold to j. l. jarvis on account ¼ bbl. flour . # butter . . # coffee . # lard . . . ---- -- -- bought from j. l. jarvis on account fire insurance on stock and fixtures, $ , . for one year from date . -- -- paid eureka milling co. cash . -- -- sold to j. l. jarvis on account # cheese . doz. eggs . # baking powder . bu. potatoes . . . ---- -- -- bought from atlas safe co. on account office safe . paid cash for repairs to door lock . sold for cash sundry merchandise . [illustration] [illustration] examples for practice . after you become familiar with each entry and the nature of the accounts to be debited or credited, journalize the transactions given in article , then compare with the model journal, and see if your work is correct. . journalize the following transactions: --april -- bought from david cole & son on account bbls. flour at $ . $ . -- -- sold to l. h. stebbins on account bbls. flour at . . -- -- sold to henry waterbury on account bu. beans . . " oats . . -- -- paid to david cole & son cash on account . gave them my note for days . -- -- received note from l. h. stebbins for days to balance account . -- -- paid cash for harness oil . -- -- henry waterbury paid cash on account . rules for posting = .= the act of transferring all items from the journal, sales book, purchase book, cash book, or other books to the ledger is called _posting_. all items relating to one account are posted to that account in the ledger; thus all sales are posted to the sales account, and all transactions with a person are posted to the account of that person. every debit must be posted to the debit side of the corresponding account in the ledger. = . routine.= the first operation in posting is to open an account in the ledger by writing the name of the account on the line at the head of the ledger page. the month and day are then written in the date column; the page of the book from which the item is posted is written in the folio column, and the amount is placed in the money column. the final operation is to place the number of the ledger page in the folio column of the book from which the item was transferred, directly opposite the item posted. =posting from journal.= in posting from the journal, all items in the left or debit columns are posted to the debit side of the corresponding ledger accounts, while all items in the credit column are posted to the credit side of the ledger accounts. the first item in the journal in the preceding section is a debit to hiram watson, amount $ . . it is necessary to open an account in the ledger, which is done by writing hiram watson's name at the head of the page, above the date column on the left side of the page; in the date column we write the date, april ; in the folio column we write the journal page, : and in the money column we write the amount, $ . . the number of the ledger page is now written in the folio column in the journal, directly opposite the name of hiram watson. the second transaction recorded in the journal is a purchase which makes it necessary to open a purchase account in the ledger, to which is debited the amount of the purchase $ . . the first transaction recorded in the journal is a sale, therefore the credit is to the sales account. since we are placing all sales in a special column, the amount will not be posted until the end of the month, when the total sales will be posted to the credit of the sales account as one item. in the second transaction, the credit is to a personal account, and we open an account in the ledger with eureka milling co., following the same routine in posting as with debit items, except that the item is posted to the credit side of the account. =posting from cash book.= when posting from the cash book, it must be remembered that all items on the left-hand page (which debit cash) must be posted to the credit of some other account; and that all items on the right-hand page (which credit cash) must be posted to the debit of an account in the ledger. why cash received is entered on the left-hand page of the cash book, and cash paid out on the right-hand page, is a point not always clear to the bookkeeper. to obtain a clear view of this point, it should be remembered that the cash book is nothing more or less than a ledger account with cash, and cash received is entered on the left-hand page (or debit side) for the reason that any account is debited for what is received or is added to it. we sell merchandise, for example, and the person is debited because he receives it. we buy real estate; the real estate account is debited because our real estate possessions are added to. broadly speaking, we (the business) receive the real estate; but, instead of charging the amount to ourselves (the person), we charge it to _real estate_, that we may know the amount of our real estate investment. a customer pays us cash; cash is debited because our cash possessions are added to. we might charge the amount to our account; but we prefer to charge it to a cash account that we may know how much cash we have on hand. we pay out cash; cash is credited because cash has gone out of our possession. the main point of difference is that we post to other ledger accounts direct from the cash book, which is itself a ledger account, instead of journalizing cash transactions. if cash transactions were journalized-- cash to person person to cash the amounts would be posted to the debit or credits of the cash account in the ledger; but for convenience we keep the cash accounts in a separate book. journalizing a few of the transactions given will clearly demonstrate the point. trial balance = .= a _trial balance_ is a list of the balances of all accounts remaining open in the ledger, together with the balance shown by the cash account. on journal paper, all open accounts are listed by name; the debit balances are placed in the debit column, and credit balances are placed in the credit column; the pages of the ledger are placed in the folio column, opposite the names of the account. both debit and credit columns are footed, and the footings of the two columns should agree. a trial balance is taken for the purpose of testing the accuracy of the postings to the ledger; to find out if the ledger is in balance. the trial balance can be taken without considering the balances, by taking the total debit and credit items posted to all open accounts. while the trial balance shows that for every debit posted to the ledger a corresponding credit has also been posted (double entry principle), it does not absolutely prove the accuracy of the work. if a debit item of $ . were posted to the debit of the wrong account, it would not affect the balance of the ledger; but if the item were posted to the credit instead of to the debit of the account, the ledger would be out of balance and the amount that it was _out_would be shown by the trial balance. classification of accounts = .= the arrangement of the accounts in the ledger is of considerable importance. since one of the objects of bookkeeping is to exhibit the standing or condition of the business, the accounts should be classified in a manner that will make easiest the assembling of important statistics. the accounts in the ledger represent either _assets_ (resources), _liabilities_, _profits_ (gains), or _losses_. every account having a debit balance represents either (_a_) an asset or (_b_) a loss. (_a_) a personal account having a debit balance represents an asset; (_b_) any expense account having a debit balance represents a loss, as it reduces the chance for profit. every account having a credit balance represents either (_c_) a liability or (_d_) a profit. (_c_) a personal account having a credit balance represents a liability--that is, something we owe; (_d_) a sales account having a credit balance represents a profit because it increases our chance of gain. [illustration: office of the registrar, american school of correspondence] = . arrangement in ledger.= the foregoing classifications should be kept in mind in arranging the accounts in the ledger. first provide space for the asset and liability accounts; then follow with the profit and loss (or revenue) accounts. as far as possible, keep all asset accounts together, following the same plan with liability and profit and loss accounts. the accounts are arranged in the trial balance in exactly the same order as they appear in the ledger; and if correctly classified they will show at a glance the assets (except inventories of merchandise) and liabilities of the business. likewise the profit and loss accounts (also known as revenue accounts--see article ) will show total sales, purchases, and expense of conducting the business. sample ledger accounts = .= the ledger accounts shown on pages - , representing the transactions given in the preceding set of sample transactions, demonstrate the proper arrangement of accounts, manner of posting, and the trial balance. examples for practice . from the copy of the journal (article ) which you have made, post the transactions to the ledger. . post the transactions from the journal you have made (exercise , preceding section) to the ledger. . make a trial balance of the ledger accounts. [illustration] [illustration] treatment of cash discounts = .= _cash discounts_ are discounts allowed for prepayment of bills. they are frequently confused with bank discounts (or interest collected in advance when notes are discounted), but are of an entirely different character. when the price is made, the profits are calculated with the idea that the customer may take advantage of the cash discount; that is, the price after the discount is deducted includes a legitimate profit. we cannot debit the customer with the amount of the bill less the discount, for we do not know that he will take advantage of the discount; and so, the charge to the customer and credit to sales account is an amount which may never be received. if the bill is paid less the discount, the amount deducted reduces our profit on the sale. it is not an allowance for the use of capital, for we can probably borrow money at per cent, while the discount may be per cent or more for anticipating payment days or less. = . discounts allowed.= cash discounts allowed must eventually come out of the profits arising from the sale of the commodities in which we are trading. there are two methods of charging cash discounts, either of which is considered correct: ( ) open an account called _discounts on sales_, and charge to it all discounts allowed for the prepayment of bills. when the books are closed, the total will be charged against trading profits. this method is coming into general use, and may be considered standard. ( ) charge to _sales account_ directly all discounts allowed, treating them as allowances. the balance of the sales account will then represent net sales after returns, rebates, and cash discounts have been deducted. one feature to recommend this plan is that sales account does not show a fictitious volume of sales. = . entering cash discounts in cash book.= when we receive payment from a customer who has deducted the cash discount, the discount must be taken account of in entering the payment, as the customer is to receive credit for the full amount. we might enter the cash payment in the cash book, and make a journal entry of the cash discount, but this would necessitate two postings from separate books. a better method, and one which has become standard, is to provide a _cash discount column_ in the cash book. when a column has not been provided for this purpose, a narrow column can be ruled in on the cash received or debit side of the cash book. this is carried as a memorandum until the end of the month, when the total is posted to the debit of discount on sales. two ways of making the entry are shown (p. ). in example no. , the cash discount is entered in the discount column, and the net cash received is entered in the cash column. when the payment is posted, two entries are made in the ledger. one advantage in this is that reference to the account of r. l. brown & co. shows at a glance whether they are taking advantage of cash discounts. in example no. , the cash discount is entered in the proper column, but the gross amount is entered in the cash column. the payment is then posted in one item, and reference to the ledger account does not show whether the payment of $ . is all cash or part discount. it is necessary, also, to deduct the footing of the discount column from the footing of the cash column to ascertain the amount of cash received. for these reasons the method shown in example no. is recommended. = . cash discounts earned.= when we take advantage of the discount offered for the prepayment of bills, the discount earned can be considered a legitimate source of profit. our own selling prices for goods purchased to be resold are based on the prices at which they are billed to us, without considering a possible saving by discounting our bills. whether or not we discount our bills is largely a question of capital, and such earnings are legitimate profits entirely outside of regular trading profits. discounts earned should be treated as interest earned and credited to interest account, from which they will find their way into profit and loss account. [illustration] profit and loss = .= the _profit and loss account_ is a summary account made up of the balances of all income and expenditure (revenue) accounts in the ledger, the balance of this account representing the _net loss_ or _net gain_ of the business. it is advisable to show the net profits for each year; and to accomplish this, it is customary to transfer the balance of profit and loss account at the end of the year. in single proprietorships and partnerships, the net gain is transferred to proprietor's or partner's investment accounts, while in a corporation it is usually transferred to a surplus account. a loss is transferred to a deficiency account. = . trading account.= this is a subdivision of profit and loss account intended to exhibit the gross profit derived from the manufacture or purchase and sale of goods in which the business is organized to trade. these profits are known as _trading profits_. just what items of income and expenditure enter into trading profits or losses is an important question in the science of accounts. a safe rule to follow is to debit trading account with the cost of goods sold, including cost of preparing them for sale. in a manufacturing business the cost represents cost of raw materials and cost of manufacture. credit the account with net income from sales, arrived at by deducting from gross sales all returns, allowances, rebates, and cash discounts. all expenses incurred in selling the goods, and all expense of administration of the business, should be charged to profit and loss account proper. all profits arising from other transactions than trading should be credited to profit and loss. these include interest received on past due accounts, on notes, or for money loaned; discount earned by the prepayment of bills; profits from the sale of real estate or any property other than that in which the business is trading. =trading account, how constructed.= the trading account is made up by charging total inventory at the beginning of the year and purchases during the year; crediting net sales and inventory at the close of the year, the balance representing the gross profit. [illustration] =turnover.= it is desirable to know the cost of goods sold. this is known as the _turnover_, on which percentages of profit are based. the turnover may be found by deducting the present inventory from the debit side of the trading account. [illustration] = . manufacturing account.= in a manufacturing business it is very desirable to know the cost to produce the goods; and for this purpose a subdivision of profit and loss, called _manufacturing account_, is used. the manufacturing account is debited with inventory of materials at the beginning of the year; purchases of material; labor or wages in factory, and all other expenses of manufacture; and credited with inventory of materials at the close of the year. the balance represents cost of manufactured goods to the trading division. the principal value of these subdivisions of profit and loss lies in the fact that they reveal not only the _amount_ but the _sources_ of profits and losses, which is one of the important functions of accounting. [illustration] the profit and loss account of a professional or other non-trading concern need not be subdivided as explained for a trading concern. in a non-trading business, all accounts representing revenue receipts or revenue expenditures are transferred direct to profit and loss account. = . transfer of gross profit.= the gross profit from trading is now transferred to the credit of profit and loss account, and this account is debited with the balances of all revenue expenditure accounts. continuing the illustration from article , we have: [illustration] = . transfer of net profit.= the net gain is transferred to the credit of proprietor's account in a single proprietorship. [illustration] merchandise inventory account = .= the accounts now open in the ledger, other than proprietor's account, exhibit all assets and liabilities of the business with the exception of the present inventory, which is included in the trading account. the amount of the inventory is transferred to the debit of a merchandise inventory account. [illustration] the books are now said to be _closed_, there being no open accounts except those representing assets or liabilities of the business. balance sheet = .= a statement of the assets and liabilities of a business is called a _balance sheet_. if the assets exceed the liabilities, the difference is the _present worth_. if the liabilities exceed the assets, the business is _insolvent_, and the difference or balance shows the amount of insolvency. the balance sheet is prepared from the ledger balances after the books have been closed. in arranging the accounts on a balance sheet, the assets should be listed first, followed by the liabilities. the balance will agree with the balance shown in the proprietor's or investment account. for the business of a single proprietor, it is customary to list the accounts in the following general order: _first_--cash in bank and office. _second_--open accounts and bills receivable. _third_--merchandise per inventory, store fixtures, etc. _fourth_--real estate. the first two classes are termed _active_ or _quick_ assets, as they can be most readily converted into cash. the liabilities represented by credit balances, are listed in the order of their urgency: _first_--open accounts due others. _second_--bills payable. _third_--mortgages or bonds payable. the third class represents secured liabilities, while the first two represent unsecured liabilities. continuing the previous illustration, we find the balance sheet of our imaginary ledger to be as follows: [illustration] sample transactions = .= at the end of the first year, the trial balance of a single proprietorship was as follows: debit balances bank account $ . sundry open accounts receivable , . bills receivable . furniture and fixtures . cash in office . purchases , . expense . discount on sales . interest . -------- , . credit balances proprietor (investment) , . bills payable , . sundry accounts payable , . sales , . -------- $ , . the inventory at the end of the year was $ , . ; at the beginning of the year, there was no merchandise in stock. the books are to be closed into trading and profit and loss, and a balance sheet prepared. when closing the books, all entries necessary to adjust the balances of ledger accounts should be made through the journal. when an audit is made, it is difficult to trace the entries unless they are plainly stated in one group, which is provided when they are made in the journal. the making of entries in the ledger directly, also increases the opportunity for fraudulent entries. _never make original entries in the ledger._ example for practice from the following trial balance prepare trading account; profit and loss account; and balance sheet. trial balance proprietor (investment) $ , . bills payable , . accounts payable , . bank $ , . accounts receivable , . bills receivable , . merchandise inventory , . furniture and fixtures . purchases , . expense , . discount on sales . interest . sales , . cash . ---------- ---------- $ , . $ , . inventory at end of year $ , . . [illustration] [illustration] [illustration] [illustration] [illustration: cashier terminal, lamson motor-driven cable cash carrying system for dry goods, general, or department stores lamson consolidated store service co.] journalizing notes = .= when a note is received by us or we give our note to another, it is necessary to make a journal entry in order that there may be a proper record of the transaction on our books. careful study is sometimes necessary to determine just how the entry should be made, and the following illustrations will serve as a guide. = . when received.= when we receive a note, we debit bills receivable and credit the maker--that is, the person who gives us the note. we receive a note from samuel smart for $ . payable in days. the journal entry is: bills receivable $ . samuel smart $ . -day note dated sept. = . when paid.= when this note is paid, we debit cash and credit bills receivable. the entry is made in the cash book on the debit side which debits cash and credits bills receivable. bills receivable samuel smart's note $ . due oct. th = . when collected by bank.= perhaps the note was collected through our bank; in that case, the bank, instead of sending us the cash, will credit the amount to our account. the bank may, also, charge a small fee for collecting the money; consequently the amount placed to our credit will be the sum collected, less their fee. the entry in the journal would then be: bank $ . interest and discount . bills receivable $ . smart's note due oct. th collected by bank. = . when discounted.= at the time we received samuel smart's note, we may have needed the money for immediate use in our business. we would then take the note to the bank, endorse it payable to the bank, when they would discount it, giving us credit for the net proceeds. since the money is advanced to us, the bank would charge us interest for its use, which amount would be deducted from the whole amount, leaving the net proceeds. this amount would then be available for immediate use. the note is then the property of the bank; it has gone out of our possession and we have received the cash. the note is not paid, and in discounting it we have created a liability to the bank. remembering that one of the functions of bookkeeping is to exhibit the true nature of our assets and liabilities, we open a _bills discounted_ account in the ledger. the entry is: bank $ . interest . bills discounted $ . discounted smart's note due oct. th. = . when a note drawing interest is discounted.= the above transaction presupposes that the note is given _without_ interest; but if it were given _with_ interest, the bank would simply add the interest to the principal and deduct the discount from the total. in the case the sum of the principal and interest ($ . + . = $ . ) is $ . , and the discount $. , which would leave $ . as the net proceeds. if the amount of the note were larger or the interest was figured for a longer time, it would make a difference. suppose the amount of the note to be $ , . , time days, interest % per annum. principal $ , . interest days . total $ , . less interest on $ , . for days . ---------- $ , . since the net amount realized is less than the face of the note, we need not consider the interest earned, but the entry would be: bank $ , . interest and discount . bills discounted $ , . = . when a note drawing interest is paid.= but suppose samuel smart's note is $ . for days, with % interest, and that the note is kept by us and the money is paid directly to us when due. we shall then receive the interest, in addition to the face of the note, making a total of $ . . the entry would then be made in the cash book on the debit side, and would be: bills receivable $ . interest and discount . samuel smart's note due oct. , paid to-day. = . when a discounted note is not paid.= when we discounted samuel smart's note of $ . for days without interest at the bank, we were obliged to endorse it, which had the effect of a guarantee of payment. if not paid when due, the amount would be charged to our account at the bank. the note would again come into our possession, and the amount must be debited to some account, the credit being to the bank. we have previously credited the amount to bills discounted, and our entry is: bills discounted $ . bank $ . samuel smart's note not paid at maturity. but suppose the transaction to have been the one described in article . the note returned to us is $ , . , that being the amount of principal and interest. our bills receivable and bills discounted accounts show the item as $ , . only. therefore we must include the $ . in our adjusting entries which will be: bills receivable $ . interest added to smart's note not paid when due bills discounted $ , . bank $ , . smart's note not paid at maturity. = . when a note is past due.= the above entries leave this unpaid item in the bills receivable account. if the business is one in which a large number of bills are discounted, it will be advantageous to show past due bills receivable by themselves, leaving bills receivable account to represent only paper not due. the entry for a bill unpaid at maturity would be: bills receivable past due $ , . bills receivable $ , . smart's note past due. = . when a note is renewed.= we shall now suppose that samuel smart finds that he will be unable to pay his note when due. he comes to us and offers a new note for days, which we accept. he prefers to add the interest due on the original note to the principal, and makes his note for $ . . we then return the original note and the entry is: bills receivable $ . interest and discount . bills receivable $ . new note given by samuel smart to cover note due oct. , with interest. the effect of this transaction is that we have received a new note for $ . , and we debit bills receivable. this new note pays an older one which goes out of our possession, so we credit bills receivable. the amount of the new note includes the interest on the old, and we credit interest. we might have gone about this in a roundabout way by making these entries: _to cancel the old note:_ samuel smart $ . bills receivable $ . interest, and discount . note due oct. th. _to enter the new note:_ bills receivable $ . samuel smart $ . new note days to take up note due oct. th. these entries would leave the accounts in exactly the same condition as our first entry, and would serve no useful purpose. this is given as an illustration of how several entries may be made when the transaction could be as clearly explained in one. = . when renewed note has been discounted.= if the note which samuel smart has renewed has been discounted at the bank, we must reimburse the bank in some manner before we can obtain possession of the original note. the most simple way to handle this transaction will be to give the bank our check to pay the note. the entry is: bills discounted $ . interest and discount . to bank $ . gave check to take up samuel smart's note. we shall then treat the new note as previously explained. if, after getting it recorded on the books, we wish to discount this note, the entries will be exactly the same as when we discounted the original note. = . when we give or pay a note.= when we give our note, the effect of the transaction is just the opposite of the receipt of a note. instead of adding to one class of our resources we are increasing one class of our liabilities, in return for which we either receive something of value or reduce our liabilities of another class. when we give our note in payment of a loan, we receive cash; if we buy goods and give a note in payment, we receive merchandise; if we give a note in payment of an account, we simply reduce our liabilities of one class and add to those of another. the entries necessary to properly record transactions involving notes given or bills payable, are not so complex as is the case with transactions involving bills receivable. the following illustrations cover transactions likely to arise in the average business: we give our note for $ . payable in days, without interest, to western grocer co. in settlement of an account. the entry is: western grocer co. $ . bills payable $ . note days without interest when we pay the note the entry is: bills payable $ . bank $ . check to western grocer co. to pay note due oct. . = . when our note has been discounted.= the western grocer co. has either discounted the note or placed it in the bank for collection, and it is presented for payment by the merchants bank. we give them a check in payment, and the entry is: bills payable $ . bank $ . check to merchants bank to pay our note to western grocer co., due oct. . the entry in this case is the same as in the previous illustration, with the exception of the explanation. = . when we pay our note with interest.= we give our note to western grocer co. for $ . payable in days, with interest at %. we pay the note by check, and the entry is: bills payable $ . interest and discount . bank $ . paid western grocer co. note due oct. , by check no. . = . when we discount our note.= we wish to borrow $ . from the bank, and give our note for the amount, payable in days. the bank discounts the note, placing the proceeds to our credit. the rate of interest charged is %. our entry is: bank $ . interest and discount . bills payable $ . note for $ . , days discounted at bank. = . when we pay for goods with our note.= we buy goods from michigan milling co. to the amount of $ . , and tender our note at days with interest, in payment. this makes it unnecessary for us to open an account with michigan milling co. and the entry is: purchases $ . bills payable $ . invoice # from michigan milling co. gave note for days with interest at %. = . when we renew a note.= when this note is due, we find it inconvenient to pay, and give a new note for days, adding the interest now due to the face of the original note. the amount of the new note is $ . , and the entry is: interest and discount $ . bills payable . bills payable $ . new note given michigan grocer co. to renew note due oct. , $ . , interest $. , days, with interest. = . when we renew our discounted note.= when our note given to the bank is due, we find it inconvenient to pay the entire amount. we give the bank a check for $ . , and a new note at days for the balance. the bank always collects interest in advance, so we shall be obliged to give them our note for $ . plus the interest, or $ . . in effect, the bank discounts our note for $ . , the proceeds, $ . , paying the balance of our note now due. the entry is: bills payable $ . interest and discount . bank $ . bills payable . gave check for $ . to apply on note due at bank to day. discounted new note for $ . , payable in days. journalizing drafts = .= when a draft has been accepted, it should be treated the same as any other form of bill receivable or bill payable. if we make a draft on a customer, which he accepts, it becomes a bill receivable. if we accept a draft drawn on us, it becomes a bill payable. sight drafts are frequently made use of as a convenient means of collecting an account. such drafts are taken to our bank for collection, but they do not give us credit for the amount until the draft is paid. drafts of this kind, which are placed with the bank for collection only, are not treated as bills receivable, as we do not credit the account of the one on whom it is drawn until payment is received. = . when our sight draft is paid.= we draw on samuel smart at sight for $ . through our bank. when paid, we receive credit at the bank for the amount, less collection charges. the entry in our journal is: bank $ . interest and discount . samuel smart $ . paid sight draft = . when discounting time draft.= samuel smart owes us $ . , and while the amount is not due for days, we have reason to believe that he will accept a draft payable in days. we accordingly draw on him through our bank. our reason for doing this is that his acceptance will be a promise to pay, and our bank will then discount the draft. the draft is accepted, and our bank notifies us that the proceeds have been placed to our credit, the draft being discounted at %. the entries are: bills receivable $ . samuel smart $ . samuel smart accepted our -day draft bank . interest and discount . bills discounted $ . discounted samuel smart's -day acceptance. = . when we accept.= when we accept a draft payable at a future date, it immediately becomes a bill payable and should be so treated. we accept the -day draft of the western grocer co. for $ . . our journal entry is: western grocer co. $ . bills payable $ . accepted -day draft. = . when we pay an acceptance.= when this draft is due, we pay it, giving our check to the bank. the entry is: bills payable $ . bank $ . gave check to pay draft of western grocer co. = . when we pay a sight draft.= instead of accepting a time draft, we pay a sight draft of western grocer co. for $ . . in this case it has not become a bill payable, and our entry is: western grocer co. $ . bank $ . check to merchants bank to pay sight draft. =examples for practice= the following examples are to be journalized by the student after he has become thoroughly familiar with the transactions previously explained: --nov. -- received from jackson & co. their note for $ . without interest, payable in days, in full settlement of account. --nov. -- received from david newman his note for $ . with interest at %, payable in days, in settlement of account. we discounted this note at first national bank. --nov. -- paid our note given oct. , to national spice co., amount $ . with interest at %. this note was paid by check # to mechanics bank. --nov. -- bought from valley mills on our note for days with interest at %, bbls. flour at $ . per bbl. --nov. -- discounted our note for $ , . , days, at first national bank. --dec. -- jackson & co., paid their note due to-day, $ . . --dec. -- david newman paid $ . on his note due to-day. gave new note for balance due, payable in days with interest at %. --dec. -- paid our note to valley mills by check # . --dec. -- paid $ . on our note to first national bank by check # . gave new note for $ payable in days, interest at %. --dec. -- andrew white paid sight draft, $ . , through first national bank, exchange $. . --dec. -- j. d. jenks accepted our -day draft for $ . , which we discounted at first national bank at %. --dec. -- accepted a -day draft for $ . drawn by eastern woodenware co. --dec. -- gave first national bank our check for $ . to pay -day draft of farwell & graves accepted by us oct. . --dec. -- gave first national bank our check for $ . to pay sight draft of dun & co. [illustration: accounting department, swift & company, chicago] single proprietor's and partner's accounts retail business = .= in this section we demonstrate complete sets of books for a retail business, showing every necessary step in bookkeeping from the opening of the business. the first set represents a small business in which the simplest methods are adequate. the business is owned by a single proprietor who opens a retail grocery store. = . opening the books.= remembering that bookkeeping is the art of recording the transactions of a business, the first thing to be done is to make the proper opening entry of the books. being the opening entry, it should record the first fact of importance, which is that the business has been opened. since bookkeeping should exhibit the exact financial standing of the business, the next step will be a complete statement of assets and liabilities. it is customary to make this opening entry on the first page of the journal. the entry should be a plain statement of facts which can be readily understood by anyone. = . books used.= in this set, the books used are journal, cash book, and ledger. in addition a _counter book_ or _blotter_, corresponding to a day book, is used. this is a rough book in which are recorded sales on account, cash purchases, and sometimes payments on account. the entries are merely memoranda of transactions, made when they occur, to be later entered in the regular books. no bookkeeper being employed, it would be inconvenient for the proprietor or his clerk to go to the desk and make a detailed entry every time a sale is made, and so the transaction is entered in pencil in the blotter. bookkeeping records must be permanent, and should always be made in ink; and it is advisable, when possible, to have all entries made in one handwriting. a sample page of the blotter, which illustrates its use, is shown (p. ). the marks // indicate that the item has been transferred to journal or cash book. = .= the ledger used is one with journal ruling. in posting, each item is entered in the ledger. this is a very satisfactory plan for a small business, as the items of which each charge is composed can be seen at a glance. more space is required for an account, but the saving in time in making statements is a distinct advantage, especially when the proprietor is his own bookkeeper. with the ordinary style of ledger, it is necessary to refer to books of original entry to find the items. [illustration: ledger with journal ruling] = . statements.= customers frequently request detailed statements of account which will give full particulars of each transaction, including each item. at other times the proprietor sends statements to his customers, with a request for payment. when this is done, it is not necessary to enter each item, a statement of the balance due being sufficient unless an itemized statement is requested by the customer. = .= the business is opened by william webster on the st day of november, -. he is to conduct a retail grocery business, and has rented a store from wm. bristol at a monthly rental of $ . . his resources consist of cash $ . ; merchandise, consisting of a miscellaneous stock of groceries, $ . ; personal accounts due him as follows: henry norton, $ . ; l. b. jenkins, $ . . his liabilities consist of two accounts due for goods purchased, as follows: brewster & co., rochester, n. y., $ . ; warsaw milling co., $ . . the opening entry, which furnishes a permanent record of these facts, is shown (p. ). = . proprietor's account.= the proprietor's account is an account representing capital when the business is owned by a single proprietor. when the business is started, this account is opened in the name of the proprietor (wm. webster, proprietor), and to it is credited his net investment. from time to time the books are closed and the proprietor's account then receives credit for the net profits or is debited with the net losses of the business. [illustration: day book] [illustration: opening entry in journal] [illustration: air-line meat-carrying system for a large retail market lamson consolidated store service co.] when the proprietor withdraws money or goods from the business for his personal use, the amount may be charged to his investment or proprietorship account, or to a personal account (wm. webster, personal) opened in his name. the latter method is recommended by some writers for the reason that the proprietor's personal expenses, or those of his family, are then separated from the expenses or capital expenditures of the business. as a customer of the business, he is placed on the same basis as any other individual. but the personal account must be closed some time; he must pay it in cash, or close it into profit and loss so that it finally operates to reduce his net investment. it appears, therefore, that the question whether withdrawals are charged to the investment or a personal account is largely a matter of personal preference. = .= the opening entries having been made, the books are now ready for the recording of the regular transactions of the business. the following transactions are shown in the model set, but the blotter is omitted, all transactions being entered in the journal and cash book. the sample page of the blotter described in article is sufficient to illustrate its use. sample transactions = .= --nov. -- sold to henry norton on account, # sugar . ½ $. cans corn . can peas . # rice . ------ . --nov. -- sold to john smallwood on account, # butter . # lard . doz. eggs . ------ . --nov. -- cash sales . --nov. -- sold to harry webster on account, bars lenox soap . pkg. gold dust . matches . ¼ bbl. flour . ------ . --nov. -- bought for cash doz. eggs . . --nov. -- cash sales . --nov. -- bought from h. klink & co., buffalo, n.y., on account, # hams . . # lard . ½ . ------ . --nov. -- sold to f. w. bradley on account, bu. potatoes . --nov. -- sold to c. d. glover on account, bbl. apples . gal. vinegar . ------ . --nov. -- cash sales . --nov. -- bought from john smallwood on account, bu. potatoes . . paid him cash . --nov. -- sold john smallwood on account, # cheese . bottle vanilla ext. . # coffee . # tea . ------ . --nov. -- sold to a. c. maybury on account, # royal baking powder . # corn starch . # soda . pkgs. jello . ------ . --nov. -- cash sales . --nov. -- paid brewster & co. cash . --nov. -- sold to l. b. jenkins on account, ½# pepper . ½# cloves . ¼ bbl. flour . ------ . sold to d. e. johnson on account, # ham . . --nov. -- received from henry norton cash . --nov. -- cash sales . --nov. -- sold to wm. bristol on account, # ham . . qt. bottle olives . # coffee . # sugar . ½ . ------ . --nov. -- credit wm. bristol month's rent . --nov. -- sold to c. d. glover on account, ¼ bbl. flour . # baking powder . cakes borax soap . ------ . --nov. -- paid clerk hire . --nov. -- cash sales . --nov. -- sold to h. n. shaw on account, bu. potatoes . doz. cans corn . ------ . --nov. -- sold to watkins hotel co., on account, bu. potatoes . . # lard . . # ham . ½ . ------ . --nov. -- cash sales . --nov. -- bought from lowell & sons # sugar . ¾ . gal. molasses . . ------ . --nov. -- bought from star salt co. bbls. salt . . --nov. -- sold to r. h. sherman on account, # coffee . # chocolate . qt. olive oil . ¼# ginger . ¼# pepper . pkg. mince meat . # lard . ------ . --nov. -- cash sales . --nov. -- received from f. w. bradley cash . --nov. -- paid warsaw milling co. cash . --nov. -- sold to john smallwood on account, bbl. salt . --nov. -- sold to d. e. johnson on account, # lard . . # baking powder . pk. apples . ------ . --nov. -- bought for cash bu. apples . . --nov. -- cash sales . [illustration: journal entrees recording all transactions] [illustration: journal entries recording all transactions] [illustration: journal entries recording all transactions] [illustration: cash book] [illustration: journal ruled retail ledger] [illustration: journal ruled retail journal] [illustration: journal ruled retail ledger] [illustration: journal ruled retail ledger] [illustration: journal ruled retail ledger] [illustration: journal ruled retail ledger] at the close of business, nov. , a trial balance of the ledger accounts is taken. no attention is paid to the accounts which are closed, the open accounts being only included in the trial balance. the proprietor wishes to know whether the business has made or lost money, and what the gross and net profits (or the losses) have been. to obtain this information the books are to be closed. before this process can be completed, it is necessary to know the value of goods now in stock--that is, to _take an inventory_. inventory = .= an inventory is taken by counting, measuring, or weighing all goods in stock. the stock is listed on journal paper or in a day book, listing first the quantity; second, the name of the article; third, the price; fourth, the value of each item. [illustration: inventory sheet] [illustration: trial balance] = . pricing.= in taking an inventory, _all goods must be priced at cost--never at the selling price_. if selling prices are used, credit is being taken for profits which cannot be earned until the goods are sold. it may even be found advisable at times to list goods at less than cost. some classes of goods deteriorate; at other times the stock may contain merchandise that was purchased on a high market, on which prices have been materially lowered. to price such goods at actual cost prices is creating fictitious values. conservatism is necessary in pricing an inventory, for the taking of credit for unearned profits is wrong in principle. this inventory shows the cost of goods in stock to be $ , . . = . closing the books.= this is the process of balancing all revenue accounts, and transferring the balances to the profit and loss account, the balance of the account being finally transferred or closed into the capital, surplus, or deficiency account, as the case may be. we have learned that in a single proprietorship, profit and loss is finally closed into capital or investment account. [illustration: erecting shop in the works of the baldwin locomotive works, philadelphia, penna.] this being a trading business, the first step is to open a _trading account_ for the purpose of finding the gross profit. the accounts now in the ledger to be closed into trading account are _merchandise_, _inventory_, and _purchases_, which are entered on the debit side; and _sales account_, which is entered on the credit side. the present inventory is now entered on the credit side; the two sides of the account are footed; and the difference or balance represents the gross gain or loss. = .= the trading account shows a credit balance or gross profit of $ . . this balance is now closed into profit and loss, being entered on the credit side. the only revenue account now open is expense, which shows a debit balance of $ . . this is a revenue expenditure, representing a loss, and is therefore transferred to the debit or loss side of profit and loss account. profit and loss shows a credit balance or net profit of $ . . the balance closes into the account of the proprietor, where it is entered on the credit side increasing his net investment to $ , . . note--complete postings from page of the journal. = .= _a balance sheet_ should now be prepared; and if our work is correct in every particular, the present worth will correspond in amount with the net investment shown by the proprietor's account. balance sheet, nov. _assets_ cash $ . accounts receivable . -------- $ . merchandise inventory , . , . , . -------- _liabilities_ sundry accounts payable . . -------- present worth $ , . [illustration: closing entries, trading and profit and loss accounts] exercise = .= on a certain date the assets and liabilities of john noble are as follows: assets: cash, $ . ; inventory, $ . ; due from sundry debtors--john lane $ . , henry watson $ . , d. b olin $ . . liabilities: due sundry creditors--perkins & co. $ . , f. c. watkins $ . . the following transactions take place: april : sold to wm. aultman on account, bbl. apples $ . ; bu. corn @ c. bought from mills & sweet, # cheese at c. april . sold to henry watson on account, bu. potatoes @ c; d. b. olin paid his account in cash; sold for cash, miscellaneous merchandise $ . . april . sold to andrew nevin on account, # lard at c, - / # ham at c; sold to homer miller on account, / bbl. flour, $ . , doz. eggs @ c, # sugar @ - / c; sold for cash, miscellaneous merchandise $ . . april . paid perkins & co., cash . ; sold marvin stetson bbl. apples $ . , # coffee @ c, # tea @ c; wm. aultman paid his account in full; sold for cash, miscellaneous merchandise $ . . april . bought from geneva milling co. bbls. flour @ $ . ; sold to d. wiseman bbls. salt @ $ . , # sugar @ - / c; sold for cash, miscellaneous merchandise $ . . april . sold f. c. watkins bu. corn @ c, # butter @ c, vinegar cask $ . ; paid f. c. watkins cash $ . ; henry watson paid his account in full; paid month's rent $ . ; paid clerk hire $ . ; sold for cash, merchandise $ . . at the close of business, the merchandise inventory was $ . . using journal, cash book, and ledger, open the books, enter and post these transactions make a trial balance and a balance sheet, showing present worth. does the business show a profit or a loss, and how much? how is the amount determined from the balance sheet? close the books into the proper accounts, showing gross and net profit and loss. to what account is the profit or loss transferred? retail coal books = .= the proprietor wishes to retire from the grocery business, and, having an opportunity to sell the stock at inventory value, does so, receiving $ , . in cash. he immediately pays sundry accounts payable, $ . . he collects all accounts receivable except the amount due from l. b. jenkins, $ . . this leaves him with assets consisting of cash $ , . ; due from l. b. jenkins, $ . ; and no liabilities. he next engages in the retail coal business, investing his entire assets. he rents an office and yards at $ . per month, and engages a teamster who owns a team and wagon, paying him $ . per week. = .= in this business there are introduced a sales book, with which the student is familiar, and a form of ledger known as _center ruled_ (p. ). this form at first appears slightly confusing; but there is considerable advantage in having the debit and credit columns side by side, as balances can be calculated more readily. = .= the cash book used is one having three columns. on the debit side the third column is used for cash sales. the footing is carried forward until the end of the month, or any other time when a trial balance is desired, when the amount is posted in one item. all bills are paid by check, the money received being deposited in the bank. = .= an auxiliary book used in this business is a _scale book_, in which are recorded the weight of wagon, gross and net weights. weighing the delivery wagons used by the business each morning is sufficient; this weight can be used on each load hauled for the day. and on deliveries made by the regular wagons, it is not necessary to record the weight of each load in the scale book; knowing the tare, the net weight can be recorded in the sales book. the principal use of the scale book is to record the weights of coal sold at the yards and hauled by the purchaser. when a wagon comes to the yard for a load of coal, it is of course necessary to obtain first the weight of the empty wagon; and it is important that both this and the gross weight be permanently recorded to prevent later disputes. the scale or weight book is usually made with sheets of from four to six weight tickets, perforated, having stubs which are exact duplicates of the tickets. the perforated ticket is given to the customer and the stub remains in the book as a permanent record. since it is necessary to enter the weights in two places, and because this duplication of work is liable to result in errors, a better plan would be to omit the stub and make the book with carbon duplicate tickets. even with the old style of book a sheet of carbon paper can be placed between two sheets and two copies of the ticket made at one writing; the record sheet to remain in the book. see illustration, p. . [illustration: center ruled ledger] = . uncollectable accounts.= in the closing entries of the last model set, we have shown that the gross trading profits are represented by the balance of trading account. all profits from other sources are credited directly to profit and loss account; likewise all other losses are charged directly to profit and loss. one such source of loss is _uncollectable accounts_. to charge the loss resulting from an uncollectable account against trading profits would create a false showing in respect to the trading profits during the current period, for the reason that the account may represent sales made during a former period. [illustration: scale book] sample transaction = .= the transactions which follow represent the business for the period covered: --dec. -- commenced business with the following assets: cash $ , . due from l. b. jenkins . --dec. -- bought from lehigh coal co., on account, tons nut coal $ . . --dec. -- bought from reading coal co., on account, tons egg coal . . tons pea coal . . -------- . --dec. -- deposited cash , . --dec. -- sold to henry newton , # nut . . --dec. -- sold to d. h. kennedy , # egg . . , # nut . . -------- . --dec. -- sold for cash , # nut . . --dec. -- sold to andrew white , # egg . . , # pea . . -------- . --dec. -- sold to f. w. francis , # nut . . , # pea . . -------- . --dec. -- sold for cash , # nut . . --dec. -- bought from lackawanna coal co. tons run of mine . . --dec. -- sold to eastern foundry co. tons run of mine . . --dec. -- sold to geo. miller , # egg . . --dec. -- sold for cash , # nut . . , # nut . . , # pea . . -------- . --dec. -- deposited all cash on hand --dec. -- bought from lehigh coal co. tons nut . . --dec. -- sold to lotus club tons nut . . --dec. -- sold to david meyer , # pea . . --dec. -- sold to city wagon co. , # run of mine . . --dec. -- sold for cash , # egg . . --dec. -- paid lehigh coal co. check# . --dec. -- received from d. h. kennedy cash in full payment of his account. --dec. -- sold to samuel hartley , # pea . . , # nut . . -------- . --dec. -- sold for cash , # pea . . , # nut . . , # egg . . , # run of mine . . -------- . --dec. -- paid henry wiggins, teamster check # . --dec. -- paid d. h. tuttle month's rent, check # . --dec. -- deposited all cash on hand --dec. -- charged l. b. jenkins account to profit and loss exercise = .= open the books, using cash book, sales book, journal, and ledger. enter each transaction, and make all postings to ledger. take off a trial balance of the ledger accounts. at the close of business, dec. , the inventory is taken, and shows the following quantities on hand: tons nut @ . " egg @ . " pea @ . ½ " run of mine @ . close all accounts representing trading transactions into a trading account, and find the gross trading profit or loss. close trading and revenue expenditure accounts into profit and loss account. close net profits into proprietor's account. bring down the balances in the ledger and take a new trial balance. sales tickets = .= in a retail business it is necessary for the sales person to record purchases at the time the goods are selected by the customer. when but one or two clerks are employed, it is possible to record these sales in a counter book or blotter; but in a larger business employing several clerks, this method would be extremely inconvenient. the bookkeeper would be obliged to wait for the books; and even if two sets of counter books were provided for use on alternate days, the work would always be at least one day behind. the increase in the volume of business transacted, and the multiplicity of transactions in a retail store, have been responsible for the introduction of many labor-saving methods and devices. one of these now used in all large stores and in many small ones, is the _sales ticket_. the sales ticket is to all intents and purposes a small invoice blank. sales tickets are put up in pads or in book form, and are numbered in duplicate. the number is prefixed by a letter--as _h _--which is intended to indicate either the department or the sales person. when a sale is made, the ticket or bill is made in duplicate by means of carbon paper; one copy is given to the customer, and the other retained. if it is a cash sale, the copy retained goes to the cashier with the money; if a sale on account, to the bookkeeper to be charged. these sales tickets are also used for taking orders for future delivery, both copies being retained until the order is filled. when delivery is made, one copy goes to the customer as a bill. aside from the time saved, the sales ticket is a great convenience, as its use gives the customer a bill for every purchase. departmental records = .= when the goods sold are divided into departments, it is here customary to record carefully the purchases and sales for each department. these records are provided for by the use of purchase and sales books having as many columns as there are departments. let us suppose that the business under consideration is a single proprietorship, and that the goods sold are clothing, shoes, and furnishings. each class of goods is kept in a separate department, sales and purchases being recorded by departments. = .= purchase and sales books of a special design are used, each having three special columns. it will be noted that neither purchases nor sales are recorded in detail, but that both purchase invoices and sales tickets are recorded by number, and only the totals extended in the proper column. the charges and credits are posted to personal accounts from the purchase and sales books. all purchase invoices are filed in numerical order. the sales tickets are kept in bundles, each day's tickets by themselves. the tickets of each department and each sales person are also kept by themselves. if it becomes necessary at any time to know the items of an invoice or sales ticket, it is an easy matter to refer to the files under the proper date and number for the desired information. the combined totals of the three department columns must equal the footing of the total column. all footings are carried forward until the end of the month, when the totals are posted directly to purchase and sales accounts, completing the double entry. in the ledger, purchase and sales accounts are kept with each department; but when the books are closed, the results from all departments are combined in the trading account. instead of recording cash sales in a special column in the cash book, all receipts of this kind are entered in the regular _cash received_ column. these sales are not posted from the cash book, but are entered in the sales book daily. thus they are carried forward in the footings, and at the end of the month the totals of the sales book represent all sales, both on account and for cash. = .= the cash book in this set presents some new features. instead of using both pages of the book, one page is used for both debit and credit. the bank account is also kept in the cash book, debit and credit columns being provided for this purpose. deposits are entered in the bank debit column and in the cash credit column. checks are entered in the bank credit column and posted to individual accounts. the other books used are the journal and ledger. the journal is used only for adjusting entries which cannot be made through the other books. sample transactions = .= the business is opened by c. d. walker, who invests $ , . cash, which he deposits in the bank. the following transactions are recorded: --jan. -- bought from hart, schaffner & marx, chicago suits $ . $ . " . . -------- $ . net; % . invoice # . --jan. -- bought from hamilton brown shoe co., st. louis pr. shoes . . " " . . " " . . -------- . net ; % . invoice # . --jan. -- bought from farwell & co., chicago doz. shirts . . " " . . " " . . " sox . . " " . . " underwear . . " hdkfs. . . -------- . net ; % . invoice # . --jan. -- bought from barr dry goods co., st. louis doz. collars . . " " . . -------- . net . invoice # . --jan. -- sold to s. w. martin, d av., on account sales ticket a . . s.t. b . s.t. c . -------- . --jan. -- sold for cash clothing . furnishings . shoes . -------- . --jan. -- paid hart, schaffner & marx account check # . discount . -------- . --jan. -- sold to a. r. crane, baker st., on account s.t. b . --jan. -- sold to d. h. whipple, lake st., on account s.t. a . paid cash on account . --jan. -- received from s. w. martin shirt, for exchange . sold him on account shirt . s.t. b --jan. -- sold for cash department a . " b . " c . -------- . --jan. -- sold to c. d. lewis, ferry av., on account s.t. b . s.t. c . -------- . --jan. -- paid hamilton brown shoe co., on account check # . discount . -------- . --jan. -- paid clerk hire, cash . --jan. -- paid store rent to d. c. watson check # . --jan. -- sold for cash department b . " c . -------- . --jan. -- deposited in bank . --jan. -- sold to b. e johnson, king st., on account s.t. a . --jan. -- sold for cash department a . " b . -------- . --jan. -- deposited in bank . --jan. -- paid freight bills department a . " b . " c . -------- check # to c. d. jenks, agt. . the inventory on jan. is: clothing $ . furnishings . shoes . balance sheet, jan. _assets_ cash bank $ , . office . -------- $ , . accounts receivable martin . crane . whipple . lewis . johnson . -------- . merchandise (inventory) . -------- $ , . _liabilities_ accounts payable farwell . barr . . . -------- -------- -------- present worth $ , . [illustration: adjustment journal and department purchase book] [illustration: departmental sales book] [illustration: cash book including bank account] [illustration: center ruled ledger] [illustration: center ruled ledger] [illustration: center ruled ledger] [illustration: center ruled ledger] [illustration: center ruled ledger] [illustration: trial balance] exercise = .= take a trial balance of the ledger accounts as they appear after the books are closed jan. . at the close of business, feb. , we find that the following transactions have been recorded: purchased clothing from hart, schaffner & marx, $ , . ; from brokau bros., $ . . purchased furnishings from barr dry goods co., $ . , from rosenthal & co., $ . . purchased shoes from brown shoe co., $ . . sold on account, clothing, $ . ; furnishings, $ . ; shoes, $ . . sold for cash, clothing, $ . ; furnishings, $ . ; shoes, $ . . received cash on account, $ . . received returned goods: clothing, $ . ; shoes, $ . . deposited cash in bank, $ , . . paid cash for expenses, $ . . gave checks as follows: hart, schaffner & marx, $ , . ; brokau bros., $ . ; brown shoe co., $ . ; farwell & co., $ . ; barr dry goods co., $ . ; rosenthal & co., $ . ; rent, $ . ; expenses, $ . . cash discounts earned on accounts paid as follows: hart, schaffner & marx, $ . ; brokau bros., $ . ; brown shoe co., $ . ; rosenthal & co., $ . . take a new trial balance as the ledger accounts appear after posting these transactions. the inventory, feb. , is: clothing $ , . furnishings . shoes . -------- $ , . close the books, make statement of trading and profit and loss account. make a balance sheet. what were the gross profits for this period? what were the net profits? what is the proprietor's present worth? partnership = .= legal authorities define a partnership as a combination by two or more persons, of capital, labor, or skill, for the transaction of business for their common profit. partnerships may be formed for the purpose of conducting any legitimate business or undertaking, and are created by contract, expressed or implied, between the parties. partnership agreements need not be in writing, but may be made by oral assent of the parties. even though they are legal if made orally, partnership agreements should always be made in writing. = . partnership agreements.= these should state the date on which the agreement is entered into, the name of the contracting parties, the name by which the partnership is to be known, and the address of the place of business. following should be a statement of the nature of the business, the amount and form of investment of each partner, the duration of the partnership, the basis of division of profits, provisions for the dissolution of the partnership, definition of the duties of active partners, and a provision for the division of the assets in the event of dissolution or at the termination of the partnership. = . kinds of partners.= partners are of different kinds, depending on the nature of the partnership agreement and the extent of their liability, expressed or implied, as between themselves or in respect to third persons. the usual classification of partners is as follows: _ostensible_, _secret_, _nominal_, _silent_, and _dormant_. ostensible partners are those whose names are disclosed to the public as actual partners. secret partners are those whose names are not disclosed to the public, though participating in the profits. nominal partners are those who allow their names to be used as partners, though they may have no actual interest in the business. the fact of their being known as partners makes them liable to third parties. silent partners are those who, while sharing in the profits, take no active part in the management of the business. their names may or may not be known. silent partners may also be secret partners, dormant partners are those, who are both silent and secret partners. they are usually included in a general term like _company_, _sons_, or _brothers_. = . participation in profits.= the most simple partnership from an accounting standpoint is one in which the investments of the several partners are equal, and profits are to be divided equally. this condition does not exist in all partnerships. the members of the partnership may invest unequal amounts and share in the profits on the basis of their investment. the investment may be equal, but one partner may receive an extra share of the profits in return for work performed in lieu of a salary. the investment may be unequal, but the one with the smaller investment may share equally in the profits in return for work performed. it is not unusual for a silent partner to furnish all of the capital and share equally in the profits with an ostensible partner who assumes full responsibility for the management of the business. = . interest on investment.= when the investment of the partners is unequal, it is customary to allow interest on the capital invested and to charge interest on all withdrawals. the interest on capital must be credited, and the interest on withdrawals must be charged, before profits can be distributed. = . capital and personal accounts.= in a partnership a special account should be opened in the name of each partner to represent his investment (for example, john smith, capital). to this account is credited his net investment. when the books are closed, the account is credited with his share of the profits, and debited with his withdrawals. a personal account should be opened in the name of each partner, to which is debited all withdrawals, either of money or goods. even when the capital invested is equal, some partnership agreements provide that interest shall be charged on all withdrawals, particularly when the business is of such a nature that goods traded in are likely to be withdrawn by the partners, or when, for any reason, withdrawals are likely to be unequal. the balance of the partner's personal account is closed into his capital account when the books are closed. before closing this account, it should be credited with interest on capital account and charged with the interest provided on withdrawals. = . opening the books.= when the books of a partnership are opened, the essential features of the partnership agreement should be written at the top of the first page of the journal. next following the partnership agreement, are the entries showing the nature and amount of the investment of each partner, the amounts being posted to the credit of partners' capital accounts. = . closing the books.= when the books of a partnership are to be closed, the revenue accounts are closed into trading and profit and loss, the same as in any other form of business organization. the net profit is then apportioned according to agreement, the share of each partner being credited to his capital account. the balance of his personal account is then carried to his capital account; the balance of that account will then show his net investment. =illustration of closing entries.= a, b, and c form a partnership, each investing $ , . , profits to be shared equally. when the books are closed, the net profits are found to be $ . . a's personal account shows a debit balance of $ . ; b's personal account shows a credit balance of $ . ; c's personal account shows a credit balance of $ . . the entries are as follows: profit and loss $ . to a, capital _a/c_ $ . " b, " " . " c, " " . a, capital _a/c_ . a, personal _a/c_ . b, personal _a/c_ . b, capital _a/c_ . c, personal _a/c_ . c, capital _a/c_ . the capital accounts after closing are: a, capital _a/c_ dec. , bal. personal _a/c_ $ . $ , . jan. balance , . . ( / profits) dec. -------- -------- $ , . $ , . ========= ========= $ , . net invest. dec. b, capital _a/c_ dec. , balance $ , . $ , . jan. . ( / profits) dec. . pers. _a/c_ dec. -------- -------- $ , . $ , . ========= ========= $ , . net invest. dec. c, capital _a/c_ dec. , balance $ , . $ , . jan. . ( / profits) dec. . pers. _a/c_ dec. -------- -------- $ , . $ , . ========= ========= $ , . net invest. dec. sample transaction = .= the first business taken up for consideration under the head of partnerships is a retail shoe business. the stock is kept in three classes: men's, women's, and children's shoes. purchase and sales books, ruled to segregate transactions of each class, are used. the bank account is kept in the cash book, which is also provided with two columns for discount. all sales, whether for cash or on account, are recorded on sales tickets. james benton, horace douglas, and henry kemp form a partnership under the firm name of benton, douglas & kemp, for the purpose of conducting a retail shoe business in buffalo, n. y. the date of the agreement, which is to continue for ten years, is march , . james benton invests $ , . in cash and a stock of shoes inventorying $ , . as follows: men's, $ . ; women's, $ . ; children's, $ . . horace douglas and henry kemp each invest $ , . in cash. the three partners are to share equally in the profits and each is to receive a salary of $ . per month. the books are to be closed and net profits divided at the end of each three months' period counting from january , which brings the first distribution on march . the following transactions are recorded during the month of march: --march -- deposited in second national bank $ , . --march -- bought from national fixture co. store fixtures , . invoice # --march -- bought from john c. morrison, buffalo men's shoes . invoice # --march -- bought from hoyt & co., rochester, n. y. women's shoes . children's shoes . ------ . net ; % . invoice # --march -- sold to r. h. wallace, delaware av. pr. men's shoes . pr. men's slippers . ------ . --march -- sold to d. h. lyon, niagara st. pr. women's . pr. women's . pr. children's . ------ . --march -- sold to henry norris, madison av. pr. men's . pr. children's . pr. children's . ------ . --march -- sold to r. h. homans, lafayette av. pr. women's . --march -- sold for cash men's . women's . children's . ------ . --march -- sold to h. j. watson, locust st. pr. men's . pr. women's . ------ . --march -- sold to h. j. meyer, bennett st. pr. children's . pr. children's . pr. women's . ------ . --march -- paid hoyt & co. bill by check less cash discount. --march -- deposited in second national bank . --march -- paid freight on shoes in cash . --march -- sold for cash men's . women's . children's . ------ . --march -- bought from lee & co., rochester women's shoes . net . invoice # --march -- sold to d. andrews, peck st. pr. men's . pr. men's . pr. women's . ------ . --march -- sold to jas. hayes, washington st. pr. women's . pr. children's . pr. children's . ------ . --march -- sold for cash men's . women's . children's . ------ . --march -- sold to r. d. nelson, niagara st. pr. men's . pr. women's . ------ . --march -- sold to d. needham, ames st. pr. men's . pr. women's . pr. children's . ------ . --march -- sold for cash men's . women's . children's . ------ . --march -- deposited in second national bank . --march -- sold to d. b. wright, andrews st. pr. men's . --march -- sold to h. n. hoyt, delaware av. pr. women's . pr. children's . ------ . --march -- sold to amos wiggins, prospect st. pr. men's . pr. women's . ------ . --march -- sold for cash men's . women's . children's . ------ . --march -- paid clerk hire, cash . --march -- gave checks as follows: horace douglas . henry kemp . --march -- sold to d. altman, wright st. pr. men's . gave him check . credited his account for mo.'s rent . --march -- sold to r. h. homans, lafayette av. pr. men's . --march -- r. h. wallace paid his account in full. --march -- paid account of john c. morrison by check --march -- sold for cash men's . women's . children's . ------ . --march -- sold to walter jenks, south av. pr. men's . pr. women's . pr. children's . ------ . --march -- sold to d. w. mantel, delaware av. pr. women's . pr. children's . ------ . --march -- sold to d. c. white, main st. pr. men's . pr. men's . ------ . --march -- sold to a. r. crows, shaw st. pr. women's . --march -- sold for cash men's . women's . children's . ------ . --march -- deposited in second national bank . --march -- sold to henry brown, douglas st. pr. men's . pr. women's . ------ . --march -- sold to d. l. benedict, adams st. pr. women's . pr. children's . pr. children's . ------ . --march -- sold for cash men's . women's . children's . ------ . --march -- sold to d. h. lyon, niagara st. pr. men's . --march -- received from henry norris, cash . --march -- sold to d. b. wright, andrews st. pr. women's . pr. children's . ------ . --march -- sold to h. j. meyer, bennett st. pr. men's . --march -- sold for cash men's . women's . children's . ------ . --march -- deposited in second national bank . --march -- sold to d. l. benedict, adams st. pr. men's . --march -- sold to h. a. fisher, lyons st. pr. women's . pr. children's . ------ . --march -- sold to andrew winters, delaware av. pr. men's . pr. children's . ------ . --march -- sold for cash men's . women's . children's . ------ . --march -- bought from rochester shoe co., rochester men's shoes . women's " . children's " . ------ . net ; % . --march -- sold to d. altman, wright st. pr. women's . pr. children's . pr. children's . ------ . --march -- sold to d. alton, eastern av. pr. men's . pr. women's . ------ . --march -- sold for cash men's . women's . children's . ------ . --march -- paid clerk hire . henry kemp wishes to retire from the business. his partners, benton and douglas, agree to pay him cash for his interest. to close the books, each partner is credited with one-half a month's salary, and the amount is charged to expense. the inventory shows the stock to be: inventory men's shoes $ . women's . children's . -------- $ , . [illustration: journal showing opening entries for a partnership] [illustration: cash book with center column for particulars] [illustration: departmental sales book] [illustration: departmental sales and purchase books] [illustration: classified ledger accounts] [illustration: classified ledger accounts] [illustration: classified ledger accounts] [illustration: classified ledger accounts] [illustration: classified ledger accounts] [illustration: classified ledger accounts] [illustration: classified ledger accounts] [illustration: classified ledger accounts] [illustration: classified ledger accounts] exercise = .= . submit a trading and a profit and loss account as shown by the books at the close of business march . . what errors do you find in these books? . submit a balance sheet. . submit the journal entries to be used in apportioning the profits, and in closing partner's personal account. show partners' capital accounts after final closing. . submit proper entries when kemp's interest is purchased, assuming that he is paid by check from the funds in hand. . submit trial balance of ledger of benton & douglas as the accounts appear after the purchase of kemp's interest. remember that no additional capital is invested. = . sale of partnership.= when the business of a partnership is sold, the net assets must be divided among the partners according to agreement, unless the partnership is to continue for the transaction of the same or some other class of business. as a rule, the liabilities are paid (if possible), from the cash funds on hand, leaving the net assets for division. in the division of assets, one partner will frequently agree to accept a certain class of assets in lieu of cash, but at a discount. to illustrate, one partner might accept fixtures, which cost $ , . , at % discount. deducting % from the cost price of the fixtures reduces the assets just that amount, and it is necessary to debit profit and loss and to credit fixture account, with the loss. if any class of assets, other than the goods in which the firm is trading, bring a price above cost, it is necessary to debit the purchaser and credit profit and loss with the profit. if the stock regularly traded in is sold at a profit, no special entry is required; the sale is recorded in the regular way and credited to sales account, from which it finds its way into profit and loss in the final closing of the books. this class of transactions involves but one of the many kinds of adjusting entries, all of which necessitate careful study on the part of the bookkeeper. in making adjusting entries, full explanations should be given that their meaning or intent may not be misunderstood by one who later refers to them. it is better to err on the side of what may appear as too detailed explanation, than to leave anything to be taken for granted. following is an illustration of the entry involving the sale of fixtures at % discount: profit and loss $ . fixture account $ . % discount allowed on fixtures taken by a in part payment of his share of assets a's capital _a/c_ $ . fixture account $ . fixtures taken at % discount in part payment of his share of assets. = .= benton and douglas agree to continue the business and to share profits equally. at the close of business, dec. , their balance sheet showed the following: balance sheet, dec. _assets_ cash in office $ . in bank , . $ , . -------- accounts receivable . inventory, merchandise , . , . -------- inventory, fixtures , . , . -------- total assets $ , . _liabilities_ accounts payable . -------- present worth $ , . benton's present worth $ , . douglas's present worth , . they accept an opportunity to sell for cash the stock and fixtures, the buyer agreeing to pay % above cost price for the merchandise, and cost price for the fixtures. the money received from this transaction, and the money in the office at time of sale, are deposited in the bank. checks are drawn to settle all accounts payable, $ . discount being earned. in liquidating the business of the firm, benton agrees to accept the accounts receivable in part payment of his share, on condition that % be first charged off to cover uncollectable accounts. exercise . show all entries required to complete the liquidation of this business. . at the final settlement, how much cash does each partner receive? = . division of profits.= when the investment of the several partners is unequal, the partnership agreement usually provides for the crediting of interest on capital, and the charging of interest on withdrawals. a and b form a partnership, and commence business oct. . a invests $ , . , and b invests $ , . . the agreement provides that interest at % shall be credited on capital and charged on withdrawals at the time of closing the books, profits to be shared on the basis of their investments. the books were closed oct. , with the following results: [illustration] [illustration] the adjustment is made as follows: a's investment, $ , . interest for days ( month) $ . a's withdrawals . interest for days . -------- net interest to be credited to a $ . b's investment, $ , . interest for days $ . b's withdrawals, . interest for days . -------- net interest to be credited to b $ . the journal entry is: interest $ . a's personal _a/c_ $ . b's personal _a/c_ . net interest credited on capital accounts. after posting the entry, our interest account shows the following: interest on capital $ . this account is, of course, closed into profit and loss, leaving net profits to be divided, $ . , of which a receives %, and b %. for the final closing of the books, we would close the personal accounts of a and b into their capital accounts, and close profit and loss account into their capital accounts. in actual practice the interest on withdrawals and investment would be entered and charged to profit and loss through interest account, before the net profit is brought down. in our illustration we have first brought down what appears to be the net profit, for the purpose of emphasizing the fact that the interest must be considered before profits are divided. exercise = .= c, d, and e formed a partnership nov. . c invested $ , . cash; d invested $ , . cash; e invested $ , . cash. the partnership agreement provided that profits should be shared on the basis of the capital invested by each; interest at % to be credited on capital and charged on withdrawals. at the close of business the following statistics are gathered from the books: c's capital _a/c_ cr. $ , . d's capital _a/c_ cr. , . e's capital _a/c_ cr. , . purchases dr. , . sales cr. , . expense dr. . rent dr. . salaries dr. . bank dr. , . bills receivable dr. , . accounts receivable dr. , . bills payable cr. , . accounts payable cr. , . c's personal _a/c_ dr. nov. $ . d's personal _a/c_ dr. dec. . e's personal _a/c_ dr. nov. . inventory dec. , . make trading account, profit and loss account, and journal entries to adjust interest. make balance sheet, and show partners' capital accounts after final closing of the books. [illustration: a view of the new york general offices of the western electric company] corporation accounts corporations = .= a corporation is an artificial body created by statute law and vested with power to act in many respects as an individual--in particular to acquire, hold, and dispose of property, real or personal; to make contracts; to sue and be sued, and the like. it is a legal entity apart from its members. it may sue without joining its members, and may be sued by others without the necessity of joining its members. it may transfer property and transact all business, not inconsistent with the rights granted by its charter, in its own name. in the transaction of business it is regarded as an individual. classification of corporations = .= corporations may be divided into two general classes--public and private. a _public_ corporation is a political entity organized for the purposes of government--as a city, county, or village. a _private_ corporation is one organized to further the interests of its members. these may be divided into two classes--stock corporations and non-stock corporations. a _stock_ corporation is one organized for the pecuniary gain of its members. a _non-stock_ corporation is one organized to further a particular object--as clubs, charitable associations, societies for scientific research, etc. stock or business corporations are the ones with which we are chiefly concerned. such corporations are organized to enable several persons to unite their capital to conduct a legitimate business enterprise and such organization accomplishes two important results; the rights of the members to transfer their interest without affecting the standing of the business, and exemption from personal liability for contracts or acts of the corporation. in a partnership, each individual partner is liable for the debts of the partnership, and any partner can make contracts in the name of the partnership, such contracts becoming obligations of net only the partnership but of each individual partner. a member or stock holder in a corporation is, as a rule, liable only for the amount of his subscription to the capital stock of the corporation. the exception to this is the organization of certain classes of corporations in which it is provided that a stockholder shall be liable for twice the amount of his stock subscription. national banks are examples of this class. no stockholder, as such, has the right to make contracts in the name of the corporation, and any contracts he may make are not binding on the corporation. contracts made in the name of the corporation, to be binding, must be executed by an officer duly authorized to make such contracts. = . joint stock companies.= _how distinguished from corporations._ a joint stock company is a large partnership in which the capital is divided into shares which are distributed among the partners in proportion to their interests. joint stock companies differ from corporations and are like partnerships in the following respects: each member is liable for the debts of the company, and if he sells his shares he is still liable for the debts which were contracted while he was a shareholder. except when otherwise provided by statute, all members must join in any action at law by the company, and if another brings an action against the company he must join as many shareholders as he wishes to hold. in some states the law provides that an action against a joint stock company may be brought in the name of its president or other designated officer representing all the members. = . joint stock companies.= _how like corporations._ a joint stock company is like a corporation and differs from a partnership in the following respects: the shares may be transferred. if a member dies his shares pass to his estate; if bankrupt they pass to his assignee; if he sells his shares they pass to the purchaser. partners may withdraw and new partners may be admitted without the dissolution of the company. a partnership is dissolved by the withdrawal by death or otherwise of a single partner. the shareholders do not manage the affairs of the company but elect directors or other officers in whom the management of the business is vested. members, as such, have no authority to bind the company. creation of corporations = .= a corporation is created by legislative act. formerly each corporation received a special charter from the legislature of the state, but as the advantages of corporations began to receive universal recognition it was seen that the delays incident to the granting of special charters were bound to work a hardship on those desiring to incorporate. partly to overcome this, but more particularly to insure uniformity in the rights and privileges of corporations, and to prevent the conferring of special privileges through special charters, the legislature of most states has enacted uniform corporation laws. these statutes prescribe uniform regulations for the organization of corporations. state constitutions now very generally prohibit the granting of special charters to private corporations. = . requirements.= while every state has its own corporation laws, the requirements of corporations are in many respects uniform. the law usually provides that a certificate of incorporation shall be filed with the secretary of state, or some other designated officer. this certificate must as a rule state: the name of the corporation; the place of business, where its principal office is located; the objects of the corporation, including a statement of the business in which it is to engage; the amount of the capital stock, and the number and par value of the shares into which it is to be divided; the period for which the corporation is organized; the number of its directors and the names of those who are to serve at the outset; the names and addresses of the original incorporators with the number of shares of the capital stock subscribed for by each. the form of the certificate required in the state of illinois is shown in the illustration, p. . stockholders = .= the members of a business corporation are known as stockholders or shareholders. at the time of organization the members subscribe for the shares of the capital stock agreeing to take and pay for them when issued. when the stock has been delivered and paid for, the stockholder is under no further obligation, unless the stock is by statute or contract subject to assessment. [illustration] = . stock certificate.= when a stockholder has paid for his shares a certificate, known as a stock certificate, is issued to him. this certificate is the written evidence issued by the corporation that the person whose name appears therein is registered on the company's books as the owner of shares of the number and par value named. the owner of a stock certificate can transfer it, and the one to whom it is transferred becomes a stockholder. such transfers are not complete, however, until registered on the books of the company. a stock certificate is not, strictly speaking, a negotiable instrument, but it is the custom among business men to indorse stock certificates in blank and transfer them from hand to hand as negotiable instruments, until some one inserts his own name and has the transfer registered on the books of the company. such indorsement does not make a stock certificate a negotiable instrument, and the purchaser can acquire no better title than is possessed by the seller. courts have held that the fact that a certificate of stock is not payable to bearer makes it non-negotiable. capitalization = .= this is the term commonly used to designate the amount of stock which the company is authorized to issue. it may have little reference to the amount subscribed or paid in, for most states authorize corporations to begin business as soon as a certain number of shares have been subscribed for, or even when only a small part of the subscriptions have been paid. for instance, a company with an authorized capitalization of $ , may be permitted to commence business as soon as $ , has been subscribed and $ , is actually paid in. = . capital and capital stock.= the _capital_ of a corporation is usually understood to mean its assets, and is a general term covering all of its property of every nature. it has no connection with the capital stock authorized or the number of shares subscribed. _capital stock_ is a term used in many ways each of which implies a different meaning. it may mean the amount which must be paid in before it can transact business as a corporation; it may mean the capital which the corporation is authorized to issue; it may mean the amount subscribed regardless of the amount actually paid in; or it may mean the amount actually paid in regardless of the amount subscribed. = . kinds of stock.= as a rule the capital stock of a corporation is of two classes--common and preferred--though not all corporations issue both classes. _common stock_ is the stock of a corporation issued to all stockholders under the same conditions, and which is to share equally in the dividends. _preferred stock_ is stock which gives its owner certain preferences over the owners of common stock. this preference usually consists of a provision for the payment of certain dividends out of the net earnings of the business before any dividends can be paid on common stock. the officers of a corporation have no power to issue preferred stock unless it is provided for in the charter. preferred stock may, however, be issued with the consent of all common stockholders. preferred stock falls into subdivisions depending upon its provisions as follows: _cumulative_ preferred stock is stock on which the payment of dividends is not dependent upon the earnings of one year. if a dividend is passed in one year or if not paid in full, it must be paid from future earnings before common stock can draw dividends. _non-cumulative_ preferred stock is stock which carries a dividend preference only in respect to the earnings of the current year. while dividends are payable prior to dividends on common stock, no liability attaches to the corporation if earnings in any year are insufficient to pay dividends. _guaranteed stock_ is another name for cumulative or non-cumulative preferred stock--any stock on which the payment of dividends is guaranteed. a corporation may issue more than one series of preferred stock, as _first preferred_, _second preferred_, etc. these issues take preference in the payment of dividends in the order of their priority. dividends must be paid on _first preferred_ before any surplus is available for the payment of dividends on _second preferred_. = . treasury stock.= this is stock subscribed for and issued which has been acquired by the corporation either by purchase or donation. the term is often erroneously applied to that part of the authorized capital stock which has never been issued, and the error has even been made of referring to it as unsubscribed stock. treasury stock is an asset and should be so treated on the books of the corporation. unsubscribed or unissued stock is in no sense an asset; or as one writer puts it, no more an asset than the power of a person to issue notes is an asset. = . watered stock.= any stock which is not represented by actual assets is called watered stock. it is usually represented by fictitious assets--as patents, copyrights, franchises, promotion expense, goodwill, etc. stock subscriptions = .= it is customary for the first board of directors to state by resolution in what manner the stock is to be disposed of; if subscriptions are to be received; if subscriptions are to be paid immediately or in installments. when the certificate of incorporation has been filed the subscription list is opened. this may be in book form, or a written or printed list. the following is a common form of stock subscription:-- we, the undersigned, do hereby subscribe to the capital stock of the --------company, organized under the laws of the state of --------in the amount set forth below, and severally agree to pay the amount of such subscription as follows: when the board of directors shall, through its secretary or treasurer, certify that there has been subscribed----% of the authorized capital of $--------, then we severally agree to pay----% of said subscriptions, and to pay a further----% on the----day of each month thereafter, until the full amount of such subscriptions shall have been paid. [illustration] management of corporations = .= the affairs of a corporation are managed by its directors who are elected by the stockholders. a director has no authority individually to bind the company. he can only act in conjunction with other directors in regular meeting as provided by the by-laws. the acts of the board are effected by orders or resolutions passed at such meetings. the number of directors constituting the board and the number required to form a quorum is specified in the by-laws. directors must attend meetings in person to be entitled to vote. they cannot be represented by proxy. since it is not practicable for the directors to attend to all of the details, they usually delegate to their officers authority to transact all of the every day business of the company. in larger corporations the directors organize themselves into subcommittees as executive committee, finance committee, etc. in small corporations these committees are unnecessary, their acts being performed by the board of directors. = . powers of directors and officers.= the powers of the directors are extensive and are prescribed by the charter and by-laws. the directors have the power to bind the corporation in all its dealings with other persons or corporations. the powers of the stockholders are limited to the election of the directors; but as the directors are elected by a majority of the stockholders, the power to control the corporation through the election of a board of directors who will respect their wishes is thus conveyed to a majority of the stockholders. being representatives of the stockholders as a body, the directors must at all times be governed by what they honestly consider the wishes of the majority. directors have the power to make contracts with the corporation only when they are manifestly fair contracts. for example, when not otherwise provided for, they may fix a fair compensation for their services and for the services of their officers. except in cases of actual fraud, it is for the majority of stockholders to complain of such contracts, and they have the power to remove offending directors. officers of a corporation are its agents and have limited powers, usually prescribed by the by-laws. when not so specified, they are prescribed by the directors. it is not always necessary that all of the powers of an officer be specified in detail. if an officer has been accustomed to perform certain acts with the knowledge and consent of the directors, his acts become binding on the corporation. the title of an office does not necessarily convey any special powers. for example, while it is customary for the directors to confer special powers on the president, his title does not make him, in the corporation's dealings with the public, an agent of higher grade than the secretary, treasurer, or any other officer. [illustration: the superintendent's office, dobie foundry & machine co., niagara falls, n. y.] = . powers of corporations.= as such, a corporation possesses certain necessary powers, and such other special powers as may be conferred by its charter. to have a corporate name which can only be changed by law. to sue and be sued. to possess a corporate seal. to appoint the necessary officers for the conduct of its business. to enact by-laws necessary for the management of its business, for transferring of its stock, for calling of meetings, etc. to acquire and dispose of such property as may be necessary for the conduct of the business for which it is organized. to make contracts necessary for the carrying out of its purposes. in general a corporation can engage in no other business than that specified in its charter, but it is granted certain incidental powers necessary to carry out its original purpose. = . stockholder's rights.= each stockholder has the right to have a certificate of stock issued to him; to vote at meetings of stockholders; to inspect the books of the company; to participate in dividends; to invoke the aid of the courts in restraining the directors from committing a breach of trust. dividends = .= every business corporation is conducted with a view to earning profits. when such profits are distributed to its stockholders they are called dividends, but stockholders cannot participate in the profits until a dividend has been declared by the directors. the law specifies that dividends must be paid out of the net surplus of the company, and provides a penalty for their payment out of capital. therefore, before declaring a dividend, the directors must be provided with a balance sheet and use every care to determine that a surplus actually exists. for dividend purposes, surplus is usually considered that part of the profits remaining after paying expenses and providing the necessary reserve to cover depreciation of machinery and buildings and losses from uncollectable accounts. sometimes a further provision is made in the by-laws for the creation of a sinking fund for the payment of bonds. the times for the payment of dividends are fixed in the certificate of incorporation or the by-laws. provision is usually made for the payment of dividends either quarterly, semi-annually, or annually. directors have full discretion in the declaration of dividends and, so long as they are acting in good faith, may add profits to capital instead of declaring a dividend. when the directors have, by proper resolution, stated that the surplus, or a part of the surplus, shall be distributed to the stockholders, a dividend is said to have been declared. when declared, a dividend becomes a debt of the corporation to its stockholders. it is not necessary that the directors declare dividends of all the surplus or net profits. frequently the by-laws provide that a certain amount be reserved as working capital, and under any circumstances the questions of the advisability of declaring a dividend rests with the directors. they cannot be compelled to declare a dividend unless it can be shown that, in declining to do so, they are acting in bad faith. = . stock dividends.= at their discretion, the directors may, instead of paying a dividend in cash, declare what is known as a stock dividend. when there remains certain unsubscribed stock, or when the corporation is in possession of treasury stock, this stock may be issued to stockholders in payment of dividends. a stock dividend cannot, however, be declared when it would not be proper to declare a cash dividend. the assets must exceed all liabilities, and in determining the existence of a surplus available for dividends, all capital stock that has been issued must be considered as a liability. closing transfer books = .= in large companies it is customary for the board of directors to close the stock transfer books a certain number of days prior to the date of payment of a dividend, for the purpose of obtaining the names and addresses of all stockholders. notices are then sent to all stockholders that a dividend will be paid on a certain date and that the transfer books will be closed for a stated period. transfer books are also frequently closed for a certain period prior to the annual meeting of the stockholders. the laws of some states provide that only those stockholders whose names have appeared as stockholders on the books of the company for at least thirty days prior to the date of the annual meeting, shall be entitled to vote at said meeting. stockholders' meetings = .= meetings of stockholders are, as a rule, held annually, and the date of such meeting is usually specified in the charter. at the annual meeting the board of directors presents, through its president or other officer, a report of the business for the year, accompanied by a financial statement. at this meeting the stockholders elect directors to take the place of those whose terms of office have expired. a stockholder may vote at stockholders' meetings either in person or by proxy, and is entitled to one vote for each share of stock registered in his name at the time of the meeting. notice of a stockholders' meeting must in all cases be mailed to each stockholder at his last known address, a certain number of days prior to the date of the meeting. this notice is mailed by the secretary of the company. sale of stock below par = .= many corporations formed to carry on business of a speculative nature find it difficult to sell stock at par. this is especially true when the assets consist largely of patents, an undeveloped mine, or property of a similar nature. it has become the custom for corporations to take over such properties, issuing in payment for the same full paid stock greatly in excess of its value. the original owners of the property will in turn donate a certain portion of the stock to the corporation to be sold to provide working capital. this stock then becomes treasury stock and is offered for sale at a liberal discount. the selling of property to a corporation at an inflated value is called the process of watering the stock. it can only be justified when an uncertainty exists as to the actual value of the property acquired. in the purchase of a going business, the real value of the goodwill is largely a matter of opinion, and the judgment of the board of directors of a corporation making such a purchase must be considered as final. corporation bookkeeping = .= bookkeeping for a corporation as a record of its business transactions with the public is not different than bookkeeping for a single proprietorship or a partnership. there are, however, certain necessary records peculiar to a corporation, including accounts of a financial nature between the corporation and its stockholders. it is with these records and accounts that we are concerned in this discussion of corporation bookkeeping. = . books required.= the books required for corporation records are, _stock certificate book_, _stock transfer book_, _stock ledger_, _minute book_, (and in certain cases, _installment book_, _stock register_, and _dividend book_). these are auxiliary books and are known as _stock_ books. _stock certificate book._ this is a book of stock certificates, with stubs giving full particulars of each certificate issued. when a stock register is used, the record is posted to it from the stub, otherwise posting is made direct from the stub to the stock ledger. _stock transfer book._ this is a book in which is kept a record of all transfers of stock. each entry is practically a copy of the form of assignment found on the back of the stock certificate. it is supposed that each transfer will be signed by the one transferring the stock, but frequently when certificates are presented with the proper endorsement, the transfer is signed by the one making the transfer as _attorney in fact_. the transfer book is made with two, and sometimes three, transfers to a page. transfers are posted to the stock register, when used, or direct to the stock ledger. [illustration: transfer book] _stock ledger._ this is the book in which an account is kept with each stockholder showing the number of shares held by him. sometimes the amount is included. when a stockholder receives a certificate of stock it is posted to the credit side of his account in the stock ledger. when he transfers a certificate it is posted to the debit side of his account. a trial balance of the stock ledger should be taken at stated periods, for the stock standing to the credit of the stockholders should equal the total stock outstanding. the stock ledger is supposed to show only the stock issued and the names of its holders. for example, if the authorized stock of a corporation is , shares and there remains shares unsubscribed, the stock ledger will show shares--the total issued--to the credit of individual stockholders. an account should be opened in the stock ledger with _capital stock_, which account will be debited with all stock issued. this is in effect a representative account since it represents the total stock that should stand to the credit of other accounts in the stock ledger. [illustration: stock ledger] _minute book._ this is a record book in which the secretary keeps records or minutes of the proceedings of all stockholders' and directors' meetings. this is an official record of the acts of the corporation, and is frequently called for to be introduced in court as evidence. the secretary is custodian of the minute book and should see that it is carefully preserved. _installment book._ when stock subscriptions are payable in installments, a form of receipt called a scrip or installment certificate is issued. as payments are made they are endorsed on the back of this certificate, and when all payments have been made the scrip is exchanged for a regular stock certificate. these scrip certificates are bound in book form similar to stock certificates. sometimes the scrip certificate takes the form of an installment receipt for the amount paid, all receipts being surrendered to the company when payments have been completed. [illustration: installment certificate] _stock register._ some large corporations keep, in addition to the stock ledger and transfer books, a stock register which is a complete register of all stock issued. this book is kept by the _registrar_--usually a trust company or bank. all certificates are entered in the register in numerical order and full particulars of each are given. when a transfer is made both the old and new certificates must be taken to the registrar, who cancels the old and places his indorsement on the new, certifying that it has been registered. one purpose of having a registrar is to prevent an over-issue of stock. the number of shares shown on the register must not exceed the number of shares which the corporation is authorized to issue. [illustration: stock register] _dividend book._ when the directors declare a dividend it is necessary to make a list of stockholders entitled to receive a dividend. large corporations use a special form similar to the one illustrated. it is made either in a book or on loose sheets which are placed in a binder. [illustration: dividend book] some stockholders issue written orders to pay all dividends to some other person, which makes it necessary to record on this list the name of the person to whom this dividend is payable, as well as the name of the stockholder. opening entries = .= in opening the books of a corporation it is necessary to first get the capital entered. in a proprietorship, the capital is credited to the owner; in a partnership it is credited to the individual partners. on the books of a corporation an account called capital stock is opened, to which capital is credited. this account is opened in the general ledger and original entries are made in the journal. the manner of making the opening entries depends upon the method of disposing of the capital stock. _if stock is sold for cash only_ and the entire amount is subscribed and paid for, the entry is simply cash $ , to capital stock $ , stock subscribed and paid for by the following: john doe $ , richard roe , henry snow , as per subscription list dated-------- ----. _if only a part of the authorized stock is subscribed_, there are two methods of entering the transaction. first: debit cash and credit capital stock as above, only as fast as stock is subscribed and paid for. second: debit cash and credit capital stock for the amount actually subscribed and paid for. debit a new account called _unsubscribed stock_ and credit capital stock for the balance of the total authorized issue of stock. illustrating the above, we will suppose that the national manufacturing co. is organized with a capitalization of $ , , of which $ , is subscribed and paid for in cash. the entries would be:-- cash $ , to capital stock $ , stock subscribed and paid for by the following: john doe $ , richard roe , henry snow , -------- unsubscribed stock , to capital stock , _if stock is not paid for when subscribed_ or if it is payable in installments the entry is: john doe , richard roe , henry snow , to capital stock , for subscription to stock as per subscription list. or if it is not desired to enter the names of the subscribers an account is opened in the name of _subscriptions_, and the entry is: subscriptions , to capital stock , the above entries at once place the entire authorized capital stock on the books. when further subscriptions are made, subscription account is debited and unsubscribed stock is credited. when subscriptions are paid, cash is debited and subscriptions credited. when subscriptions are payable in regular installments, payments may be credited to subscriptions. the plan is sometimes followed, however, of opening an account for each installment, as installment no. , to which payments are credited. when the installment is fully paid this account would be closed into subscription account. or still another formula--when stock has been sold _subject to assessments to be made by the board of directors_, and an assessment has been called the entry is: assessment no. . $ , to subscriptions $ , an assessment of % as per resolution of the board of directors john doe , richard roe , henry snow , when paid, cash is debited and assessment no. is credited. when the next assessment is called an account is opened with assessment no. . = . when a part of the stock is paid for in property and the balance in money.= a corporation known as the national manufacturing company is formed to take over a manufacturing business owned by john doe. the capital stock is $ , of which mr. doe is to receive $ , for the assets and goodwill of his business, the company agreeing to assume his liabilities. his statement of affairs shows the following: _assets_ cash in bank $ , . accounts receivable , . machinery , . manufactured goods , . material and supplies , . furniture and fixtures . $ , . -------- _liabilities_ accounts payable . . -------- -------- , . since the net assets are $ , . , and the stock to be issued to john doe is $ , the difference, or $ , . , represents the amount paid for the goodwill of the business. the transaction is entered as follows:-- property and goodwill of the business of john doe, transferred to this company as per resolution of the board of directors, dec. st, . goodwill $ , . cash , . accounts receivable , . machinery , . manufactured goods , . material and supplies , . furniture and fixtures . accounts payable $ . capital stock , . one half of the capital stock is thus accounted for. the balance is to be subscribed, and when subscribed the entries will be as explained in art. , depending upon whether subscriptions are paid in full or in installments. = . when stock is issued in payment of property and a part of the stock is to be donated to the company.= john doe owns a valuable patent on an automobile attachment and desires to secure capital to carry on its manufacture. he interests richard roe and henry snow, who agree to assist him to form the national manufacturing company to take over his patent and manufacture the attachment. the company is incorporated with an authorized capitalization of $ , . roe and snow agree that doe shall receive $ , full paid stock for his patent, and to subscribe $ , each, payable in cash to be used for the purchase of the necessary machinery. john doe, in turn, agrees to donate $ , of his stock to provide working capital. the entries are: patents $ , capital stock $ , full paid stock issued to john doe to pay for patents transferred to the company by bill of sale dated dec. , . subscriptions $ , capital stock $ , subscriptions to capital stock as follows:-- richard roe $ , henry snow , -------- treasury stock , working capital , full paid stock donated by john doe to provide working capital. when subscriptions are paid:-- cash , subscriptions , it is decided to sell $ , of the treasury stock at % of its face value, and subscriptions are received for this amount. subscription to treasury stock , treasury stock , subscription account is debited and treasury stock credited for the full amount since this is the amount of full paid stock to be issued, regardless of the price at which it is sold. when this stock is paid for, the entry in the cash book on the debit side is: subscriptions to treasury stock , this leaves a debit balance of $ , in the account _subscriptions to treasury stock_, which represents a discount on the stock sold. the manner of disposing of this discount depends upon the provisions made by the directors in respect to the creating of working capital. if their resolution provides that the fund maintained for working capital shall be only such an amount as may be realized from the sale of treasury stock, the discount is disposed of by the following entry: working capital , subscriptions to treasury stock , discount on , treasury stock sold. suppose, however, that the directors have provided by resolution for the maintaining of a working capital of $ , . in that case the liability for the full $ , must remain on the books until such time as other provision is made. the entry would then be: bonus $ , subscriptions to treasury stock $ , the discount is, to all intents, a bonus given to the purchasers, and if, as frequently happens, purchasers are promised a bonus of a share of stock for every share purchased, it would be proper to make the following entry in the first place. subscriptions to treasury stock , bonus , treasury stock , sold , treasury stock at % of face value. in any dividend distribution the purchasers are entitled to draw dividends on the face value of their stock, since it was issued to them as full paid. it would be manifestly unfair to charge the discount or bonus against profits for the current year, and it is customary to spread it over a period of several years, charging off a certain per cent each year. the bonus account is, in the meantime, carried on the books as an asset, and belongs in the class known as _fictitious_ assets. treasury stock is an asset, its real value being the market value of the stock represented. in the event of liquidation of the company, treasury stock would off-set the liability on account of capital stock. when all of the treasury stock is sold the account closes itself; or if it is issued to stockholders in the form of stock dividends, it is closed into profit and loss. working capital is a liability, which may be termed an _assumed_ or _nominal_ liability. like capital stock it is a liability only as between the company and its stockholders. it off-sets whatever form of asset--cash or otherwise--that represents proceeds from the sale of treasury stock. the real position of working capital in the balance sheet is that of a capital liability which must be considered before any surplus available for dividends can be said to exist. power is usually given the directors to reserve a certain amount for working capital, and even though an actual surplus may exist they have the right to off-set this with a working capital liability instead of declaring a dividend. = . premium on stock.= the stocks of many well-managed enterprises sell at a premium. in all such cases the amount received above the par or face value is credited to an account called _premium on stock_. at the end of the year this account is closed into surplus account. if any such items are standing on the books it can be used to off-set bonus account or organization expenses. it is not proper to close premium account into the current profit and loss account, for while it represents a profit, it is not earned in the regular operations of the business. = . reduction of working capital.= as before stated, so long as working capital remains on the books it must be treated as a liability. having the right to create working capital, the directors also have the right to reduce it whenever, in their judgment, the necessities of the business no longer require its maintenance in the original amount. a reduction of working capital has the effect of increasing surplus, since surplus is increased by an increase of assets or a decrease of liabilities. to reduce working capital, the account is closed into surplus. it is perhaps necessary to say that the account should not be closed into profit and loss, since it does not represent current profits. suppose that in the case of the national manufacturing co., it is desired to reduce working capital from $ , to $ , ; the entry would be: working capital $ , surplus $ , working capital reduced by resolution of the board of directors, january th, . entries in stock books = .= the entries in the stock books are very simple and are just the opposite of stock entries in the general or financial books of the company. when certificates of stock are issued, an account is opened in the stock ledger with each stockholder, to which is credited the stock issued to him. at the same time an account is opened in this ledger with capital stock which is debited with all stock issued, thus preserving the balance of the stock ledger. taking the example in art. , when stock is issued-- we debit-- capital stock $ , we credit-- john doe $ , richard roe , henry snow , when the $ , stock is donated to the treasury to provide working capital-- we debit john doe , we credit treasury stock , and open an account with treasury stock in the stock ledger. when treasury stock is sold-- we debit treasury stock , we credit subscribers , when a stockholder sells a part or all of his shares to another it has no effect on capital stock or treasury stock accounts in the stock ledger. the only change takes place in the accounts of the individual stockholders involved. the stock transferred is debited to the account of the _transferor_, and credited to the account of the _transferee_. supposing that $ , treasury stock was purchased by henry benson, george dennis, and richard carpenter, each purchasing $ , , the stock ledger and stock register--if one is used--would appear as shown in the illustration. footing the two sides of the stock register we find a balance of , shares which is the actual amount outstanding, the balance of shares remaining in the treasury. a trial balance also shows that the stock ledger balances with a credit of $ , treasury stock. [illustration: stock ledger] [illustration: stock ledger] [illustration: air-line cash-carrying system for large retail drug store applicable to a moderate-sized general store. lamson consolidated store service co.] [illustration: stock register] exercises . a corporation is organized with a capital of $ , . , divided into shares of $ . each. the corporation begins business when shares have been subscribed for. of this amount _a_ subscribes for shares, _b_ for shares, and _c_ for shares. these shares are paid for in cash within days after the date of subscriptions. six months later the balance of the stock is subscribed for, subscriptions being received from _a_ for shares, _b_, shares, _d_, shares, and _e_, shares. _c_ sells shares to _b_. these new shares are paid for in cash. make all entries in general books. make all entries in stock books. . _a_, _b_, and _c_ organize a corporation with an authorized capitalization of $ , . , divided into , shares of $ . each. _a_ subscribes for shares, _b_, shares, and _c_, shares. the corporation buys from _d_ land and buildings for $ , . , paying him $ , . in cash and issuing to him shares of stock. subscriptions are paid as follows: _a_ pays $ , . cash and gives his note due in days for $ , . ; _b_ pays $ , . cash and gives his note for $ , . payable in days; _c_ pays $ , . cash and gives his note for $ , . payable in days. make all entries in journal and cash book and post to ledger. note.--land and buildings are grouped under the head of real estate. . john davis and daniel greene own the la belle mine, and to secure capital for its development they decide to organize a mining company and to sell shares. a corporation is organized with a capitalization of $ , , . in shares of $ . each. of this stock , shares are issued to davis and greene, each receiving an equal number, and they, in turn, deed the la belle mine to the company. the remaining , shares are subscribed and paid for by martin otis. davis and greene donate to the treasury , shares to be sold for the purpose of securing working capital. the directors, by proper resolution, decide to sell , shares: , shares to be sold at cents on the dollar, , shares at cents, and , shares at cents. the resolution also provides that the corporation's liability for working capital shall be no more than the amount realized from the sale of treasury stock. subscriptions are received for the , shares and payments are made at the prices specified. make all necessary entries to get these transactions properly recorded on both the general and stock books. stock issued for promotion = .= frequently when a corporation is organized, stock is issued to a promoter as payment for his services. an enterprise may have great latent possibilities provided sufficient capital can be secured for its development, but until the possibilities for making a profit can be clearly shown, it is difficult to interest the investing public. to interest investors in an enterprise yet to be developed requires a special talent not possessed by the average owner of a patent, mine, or process. there are men who possess this special talent and who make a business of promoting companies. in many cases--probably most cases--the owner of the thing to be promoted has no money with which to pay the promoter. consequently, the promoter first satisfies himself that the enterprise actually holds possibilities of profit and then agrees to accept all or a part of his fees in the stock of the company. the portion of his fee that he is willing to accept in stock, and the number of shares demanded, is governed largely by his own faith in the enterprise. his fee may be a certain per cent on the stock sold, or it may be an arbitrary sum represented by a certain number of shares. when he accepts his entire fee in stock, it may represent from per cent to per cent of the entire capitalization, and while the fee may appear exorbitant when represented by the par value of the stock, its actual value to him is represented by the _real_ value of the stock, or the price at which he could sell it. volumes might be written on the subject of promotion, but our special concern is the proper treatment of promotion fees on the books of the company. strictly speaking, promotion fees are as much an expense as the cost of printing the company's prospectus, but to immediately charge it to expense would, in many cases, cause the accounts to show an impairment of capital at the outset. suppose, for example, that a corporation is organized with a capital of $ , . all paid in cash. the promoter is paid a fee of $ , . . profits earned--trading profits--in the first year are $ , . , but we have a charge of $ , . for promotion in the expense account. the books show that the company is insolvent, the liabilities being $ , . in excess of the assets, while the business actually is in a healthy condition. expenses paid in the regular course of business are expected to be off-set by earnings. when we pay rent for a store or office we expect that, by reason of our occupancy of that store or office as a place of business, our earnings will be increased in an amount greater than that paid for rent. promotion expense cannot, in itself, produce earnings. the cash, or other form of asset, received from the sale of stock--the direct result of promotion expense--is off-set by the stock liability created. earnings to off-set promotion expense must come from future operations of the business. it has become quite the general custom, therefore, to allow the expense incident to the organization of the company to stand on the books as a fictitious asset, under some such caption as _promotion expense_, _promotion fund_, or _organization expense_. the amount is gradually reduced by charging a stated per cent to profit and loss each year. there is another special reason why it would be manifestly unfair to immediately charge promotion fees to expense. suppose a promoter receives % of the stock for his services, while the holders of the remaining % have paid cash for their shares. since the per cent paid in cash must earn dividends on the entire per cent of stock, it would be unjust to the holders of the per cent to withhold dividends until the par value of the per cent of stock shall have been added to the assets of the company from profits earned. =the entry.= a patent is owned by geo. davis, who secures the services of wm. lane to promote a company to undertake its manufacture. the corporation is capitalized at $ , . . davis sells the patent to the company receiving $ , . stock in payment, and lane receives $ , . stock for promotion, when he has secured subscriptions for the remaining $ , . at par. the entries to record the issue of stock to lane for promotion are: subscriptions $ , . capital stock $ , . subscription of wm. lane promotion expense , . wm. lane , . fee due wm. lane for promotion of company and sale of stock. -------- wm. lane , . subscriptions , . amount due to lane credited to subscriptions to pay for stock subscribed by him. the entries for the shares issued to davis and those sold are the same as previously explained and illustrated. surplus and dividends = .= the directors are under no obligation to distribute in dividends the profits earned in any one year. instead, the by-laws usually provide that the decision as to when a dividend shall be declared is to be left entirely to the directors. they have it in their power to retain of the profits such an amount as, in their judgment, is advisable or necessary to safeguard the interests of the company. at the close of the fiscal year it is customary to close profit and loss account, and in a corporation it is closed into surplus. = . surplus sub-divided.= sometimes the term surplus is used to designate a part of the profits set aside for a special purpose, as the creation of a fund to meet an obligation falling due at some future date. when surplus is treated as a special fund, or when it has been provided by resolution of the directors "_that a certain sum, or a certain per cent of the profits shall be set aside as a surplus fund_," and remaining profits not distributed as dividends may be placed to the credit of an account called _undivided profits_ or _undistributed profits_. in reality undivided profits is surplus, and the division of the account merely serves to show that the amount credited to surplus is for some reason reserved, while the amount credited to undivided profits is available for dividends whenever the directors may so elect. whether or not the surplus should be shown in the balance sheet under these various headings, or all under the general head of surplus, with explanatory notes, is a question which need not concern us at this point. = . declaring a cash dividend.= when a dividend is declared an account should be opened under the caption _dividends payable_ or _dividend no. ._, etc. we will suppose that a dividend has been declared out of the profits of the business for the current year. the entry is:-- profit and loss dividends payable dividend of----% declared by the board of directors -------- , payable-------- . when the dividend is paid the entry will be-- dividends payable cash to pay dividend payable -------- . = . declaring a stock dividend.= not all dividends are paid or payable in cash. sometimes the directors declare a dividend payable in stock and this is known as a stock dividend. there may be treasury stock in possession of the treasurer, and if the books show a surplus, which would make it proper to declare a cash dividend, a dividend may be declared payable in treasury stock. when such a dividend is declared the entry is-- profit and loss stock dividend a dividend of----% declared by the board of directors -------- payable-------- , payment to be made in treasury stock stock dividend treasury stock to pay stock dividend declared-------- . the shares are then transferred on the stock books debiting treasury stock and crediting stockholders. it is not absolutely necessary that a company possess treasury stock to declare a stock dividend. when current profits are large or a surplus, larger than the requirements of the business demand, has been accumulated, a stock dividend may be declared by issuing additional shares, provided the original stock has not all been subscribed for. if a large surplus has been accumulated and a part of the stock is unsubscribed, a stock dividend would require the following entries: surplus stock dividend a stock dividend of----% declared by the directors-------- payable in the unissued stock of this company. -------- subscriptions capital stock additional stock subscriptions received from the following. -------- stock dividends subscriptions stock dividend due stockholders used to off-set subscriptions. the stock dividend is a device frequently used to conceal actual profits, or to cover up the fact that dividends are being declared in excess of a fixed rate. this is especially true of such public service corporations as lighting companies or street railways. in many cases a company will go through the necessary formalities to increase its capital stock for the purpose of absorbing surplus by means of a stock dividend. = . treatment of a loss.= if, during any year, the business has sustained a loss, it will, of course, appear as a balance on the debit side of profit and loss account. this will then be transferred to the debit of undivided profits or surplus, if any, remaining from previous years. for illustration, suppose the books show a surplus of $ , . , undivided profits $ . , loss for the current year $ , . , the entry will be:-- undivided profits $ . surplus , . profit and loss $ , . loss for the year. if there is no surplus remaining from former years, the business is insolvent, in which case the capital is said to be impaired. this can be taken care of in either of two ways. first--by the stockholders subscribing to a fund to cover the deficiency. second--by a reduction of the capital stock. exercises . david francis and henry harmon own a large tract of timber land in mexico. in connection with f. b. walker--a promoter--they organize a corporation to build railways and mills for the purpose of developing the property and to market the timber. the company is capitalized for $ , , . . the land is sold to the corporation for $ , , . , stock for that amount being issued to francis, harmon, and walker. francis and harmon each received $ , . and walker, $ , . . this $ , . stock is issued to walker as his fee for promoting the company. francis and harmon each donate shares, of the par value of $ . each, to the treasury to be sold to produce working capital. make all necessary entries in general books. . the profits of a manufacturing company with a paid up capital of $ , . , are $ , . . the directors, by proper resolution, declare a cash dividend of per cent, set aside a surplus of $ , . , and transfer the balance to undivided profits. make all necessary entries in general books, showing ledger accounts after payment of dividends. . the following year's business of the above company showed a loss of $ , . . how is this loss disposed of? make entries. . a company capitalized at $ , . has sold $ , . of its stock, the balance being unsubscribed. its accumulated surplus is $ , . , and the directors declare a stock dividend of per cent to all stockholders. make all entries. . a manufacturing company has a capital stock of $ , . . one item in its assets is machinery $ , . . the profits for the year are $ , . . the directors provide for a reserve for depreciation of machinery of % and declare a dividend of %. make all entries. changing books from a partnership to a corporation = .= wilson, brackett, and nixon have been conducting a retail clothing business under a partnership agreement. appreciating the advantages of a corporate form of organization, they decide to incorporate under the name of the continental clothing company. the first step necessary to prepare for the incorporation of a partnership is to ascertain the net capital of the business as it stands. accordingly, an inventory is taken, the books are closed, and a balance sheet prepared with the following results: _balance sheet of wilson, brackett, and nixon_ _assets_ cash $ , . bills receivable $ , . accounts receivable , . , . -------- merchandise inventory , . furniture and fixtures , . , . $ , . -------- -------- _liabilities_ bills payable , . accounts payable , . , . -------- wilson, capital account , . brackett, capital account , . nixon, capital account , . , . , . -------- -------- from this balance sheet it is seen that the net capital is $ , . , of which wilson owns $ , . , brackett, $ , . , and nixon, $ , . . on this showing, it is decided to form the company with a capital stock of $ , . , all of which is to be issued as full paid stock to the partners in proportion to their interests in the partnership. new books are opened for the corporation and the next step is to transfer the accounts of the partnership to the corporation. an account is opened in the partnership ledger with the continental clothing company and the following entry is made: continental clothing co. $ , . cash $ , . bills receivable , . accounts receivable , . merchandise inventory , . furniture and fixtures , . the above entry closes all of the asset accounts and shows that they have been transferred to the new company. the next entry is: bills payable $ , . accounts payable , . wilson , . brackett , . nixon , . continental clothing co. $ , . the above entry closes the liability and partners' accounts showing that they have been transferred to the new company and also closes the account of the continental clothing co. = . entries on the corporation books.= we are now ready to open the books of the new company. subscription books are opened and the following subscriptions are received: wilson , . brackett , . nixon , . the net assets of the partnership are $ , . less than the capital stock of the new company. no money is to be invested to cover this discrepancy, so it will be necessary to account for it on the books by opening a fictitious asset account under some such name as _goodwill_. having made this provision, the books of the new company are opened by the following entries: subscriptions , . capital stock , . subscriptions received as per subscription books. -------- cash , . bills receivable , . accounts receivable , . merchandise inventory , , furniture and fixtures , . goodwill , . bills payable , . accounts payable , . subscriptions , . the business and goodwill of the firm of wilson, brackett, and nixon transferred to this company in payment of subscriptions to capital stock. these entries serve to get the capital stock, also the assets and liabilities of the partnership properly recorded on the books of the new company. stock donated to employes = .= a partnership composed of benson, black, and mabley is conducting a retail hardware business. they desire to give their bookkeeper (parker) an interest in the business. the firm has the following assets and liabilities: _assets_ cash $ , . accounts receivable , . merchandise , . total assets $ , . _liabilities_ accounts payable , . benson capital , . black capital , . mabley capital , . total liabilities , . they incorporate the benson company with a capitalization of $ , . divided into shares of $ . each. benson, black, and mabley each subscribe for shares, and shares are presented to parker. the balance of the stock is to remain unsubscribed until such time as it is decided to accept further subscriptions. the business of the partnership is to be accepted by the company in payment of subscriptions which have been made, and which are for shares or $ , . . the net assets of the partnership being $ , . , goodwill must represent the balance of $ , . . the entries on the books of the partnership follow-- the benson co. $ , . cash $ , . accounts receivable , . merchandise inv. , . -------- accounts payable , . benson , . black , . mabley , . the benson co. , . = . on books of the benson co.= the entries on the books of the new company are the same as in previous illustrations, the stock donated to parker having been a gift from the partnership and the amount included in the goodwill. subscriptions , . capital stock , . -------- cash , . accounts receivable , . merchandise inventory , . goodwill , . accounts payable , . subscriptions , . = . when the gift is made by an existing corporation.= we will suppose that the benson co. wishes to donate shares of stock to each of three employes, _a_, _b_, and _c_. having shares unsubscribed, the donation will be made from that stock. supposing that the company has accumulated a surplus, the transaction will be entered on the "books" as follows: subscriptions , . capital stock , . subscriptions of _a_, _b_, & _c_ per subscription book. -------- surplus , . subscription , . surplus appropriated to subscriptions per resolution of the board of directors jan. th, . the above would be a rather unusual proceeding as the stock is fully paid, though such gifts are sometimes made. the tendency of the present times is toward profit sharing for the employes of corporations. the plan of profit sharing takes many forms, and there are some notable examples among very large corporations which have given employes stock in the corporation, or afforded them an opportunity to acquire stock on very favorable terms. among smaller corporations it is quite common to enable employes to acquire its stock subject to certain special conditions. frequently employes are permitted to subscribe for stock with an agreement that they are to pay no money, but that dividends declared are to be applied to the payment of subscriptions. in this way the stock is made to pay for itself out of its own earnings. sometimes provision is made for the payment of small annual installments on the subscriptions in addition to applying the dividends. when stock is issued to employes under these conditions, the contract sometimes specifies that in the event of the subscriber leaving its employ before the subscription is paid in full, the ownership of the stock shall revert to the company, and in such cases the stock, until it becomes full paid, is usually placed in the hands of a trustee. the principal object in issuing stock to an employe and surrounding the transaction with these restrictions is, of course, to insure his continuous service by making it an object to him to remain in the employ of the company. when stock is so issued, the entry is-- subscriptions capital stock subscriptions to stock by employes, said stock to be issued subject to the conditions named in the resolution authorizing its issue, passed by the board of directors january th, . the subscription account is left open until such time as it is closed by the payments credited. when a dividend is declared the entries are-- surplus dividends payable being a dividend of----% declared by the board of directors on-------- payable-------- . -------- dividends payable subscriptions dividend applied to the payment of subscriptions. another provision sometimes met with in the issue of stock to an employe is that in lieu of an increase in salary he shall receive, at the end of the year, a certain amount in stock. he is then permitted to subscribe for a stated amount of stock and to apply the bonus, or added salary, as a payment. the bonus is usually a stated per cent of sales or of net profits. when such a contingency arises the entry is-- salaries john jones ----% of sales as per agreement. john jones subscriptions amt. due applied in payment of stock subscription. if he has no account, on the books the transaction may be recorded by one entry-- salaries $ , . subscriptions $ , . ------------ when stock subscriptions are never fully paid = .= corporations are sometimes organized with all capital stock subscribed but only paid for in part, and the balance of subscriptions never called for. t. c. harris, john alfred, and m. b. hatch organize a company to conduct the business of buying, selling, and renting automobiles with a capital stock of $ , . , each subscribing for $ , . . a cash payment of % is made on the stock and the balance is to be paid in when called for. the entries stand on the books as follows-- subscriptions $ , . capital stock $ , . cash , . subscriptions , . the business prospers to such an extent that the profits provide sufficient money and it is not likely that the stockholders will be called upon for further payments. it is decided to reduce the stock to $ , . and to declare a dividend to make this stock full paid. the entries for these transactions follow: capital stock , . subscriptions , . capital stock reduced in accordance with resolution of board of directors passed jan. , . -------- surplus , . dividends payable , . dividend declared by board of directors jan. , , payable immediately. -------- dividends payable , . subscriptions , . dividends applied to the payment of stock subscriptions. the original stock certificates are now surrendered and new ones issued in their place. in the stock ledger the stockholders are debited and capital stock credited for the shares surrendered. then, capital stock is debited and stockholders credited for the new shares issued. it might happen that a corporation wishes to reduce the capital stock held by stockholders without having it appear that capital stock has been reduced. this has been done by purchasing its stock and placing it in the treasury. payment for the stock may be made in cash or notes, or it may be taken from surplus. the entries would be-- treasury stock , . cash , . or treasury stock , . bills payable , . or treasury stock , . surplus , . if the capital stock is to be reduced on the books, capital stock will take the place of treasury stock in these entries as-- capital stock , . cash , . exercises . parsons, young, and searles are partners and decide to form a corporation with capital stock of $ , . , which is to be issued as full paid stock in exchange for their present business. each partner is to receive stock in proportion to his interest in the present business. the balance sheet of the partnership is as follows: _assets_ cash , . bills receivable , . accounts receivable , . merchandise , . -------- total , . _liabilities_ bills payable , . accounts payable , . parsons , . young , . searles , . -------- total , . make entries on books of the partnership. make entries on books of the corporation. [illustration: a corner in one of the shops of browne & sharpe manufacturing co., providence, r. i.] . hoadley and stockton are partners and desire to incorporate a company with a capital of $ , . to take over their business. it being necessary to have three incorporators they agree to give hopper, an employee, shares--$ , . --of the stock of the new company. the stock is to be divided equally between hoadley and stockton after giving hopper $ , . . the balance sheet of the partnership is as follows: _assets_ cash $ . accounts receivable , . merchandise . -------- total $ , . _liabilities_ accounts payable . bills payable . hoadley , . stockton , . -------- total , . make all necessary entries on the books of the partnership. make open entries on the books of the new company. . the national manufacturing co., has an authorized capital of $ , . of which $ , . is paid up and $ , . unsubscribed. it is decided to permit employes to subscribe for $ , . of the stock by paying per cent in cash, all dividends declared to be applied to the payment of subscriptions. what entries are made when this stock is subscribed for? a per cent dividend being declared at the end of the first year what entry is required? . the atlas novelty co. has a capital stock of $ , . . all of the stock has been subscribed for, but only per cent has been paid. a surplus of $ , , has been accumulated. it is desired to reduce the stock to $ , . full paid. what is the necessary proceeding, and what entries are required? . a company has a capital stock of $ , . full paid, and a surplus of $ , . . a stockholder who owns $ , . stock in the company wishes to dispose of his stock and, to secure cash, offers to sell it to the company at par. his offer is accepted and the stock purchased, but the company does not wish to reduce its capitalization. what is the entry? reserves and their treatment = .= a reserve is an amount retained from current earnings to meet a future contingency. according to a prominent authority whose recent discussions of this subject have attracted attention, _a reserve is an expression of the judgment of the accountant as to what amount will be necessary to meet a contingency_. reserves are created for many purposes, among which the following are good examples. _reserves for bad debts._ an amount--usually a stated per cent of accounts receivable--annually set aside to cover losses from uncollectable accounts. _reserves for depreciation._ the plant--buildings and machinery--will wear out, no matter how substantially built. a charge is made against current earnings to create a reserve which will provide for a renewal of the plant, or any part of it, when worn out. separate reserves are usually maintained for buildings and machinery. _reserves for patents, franchise, goodwill_ and similar fictitious assets. an annual charge of an amount sufficient to extinguish the value at which the fictitious asset has been placed on the books. _reserves for permanent improvements on leased property._ permanent buildings, title to which will revert to the lessor at the expiration of the lease, are sometimes erected on leased property. a reserve is created to absorb the cost of such improvements during the life of the lease. _reserves for buildings in hazardous undertakings._ in certain lines of business, manufacturing plants are erected with the expectation of having a permanent supply of raw material. if the supply gives out, the plant may be valueless for other purposes. examples are oil wells and mines. a reserve is created to absorb the cost. the reserve is coming into more general use every year, especially by corporations, whose managers see the necessity of providing for these contingencies. when a machine wears out it must be replaced. if no reserve has been created, the money for its replacement must come from current earnings, or be provided by borrowing money or increasing capital. the better plan is to make provision in advance by creating a reserve. the amount of the reserve should be the value of the asset, and the sum set aside annually should be sufficient to equal the value of the asset at the end of its estimated life. to illustrate, if a machine is estimated to last years, the annual reserve for depreciation should be % of its cost. the reserve is carried on the books as a liability and is an off-set to the asset which it is to replace. if we were to prepare a statement of the value of machinery as shown by the books we would state it in this form-- machinery $ , less reserve for depreciation , -------- $ , this shows the exact amount at which this asset is valued. taking the illustration referred to--at the end of years the liability _reserve for depreciation_ will equal the asset _machinery_, and the funds which have been reserved from profits during the past years will be available for the purchase of new machinery. = . reserve funds.= a term frequently used to designate a reserve created for a certain purpose is reserve fund. this term is somewhat confusing for when we speak of a _fund_ we are more likely to think of it as an asset than as a liability. when the principle underlying reserves is thoroughly understood, however, it is readily seen that the use of the term _reserve fund_ is merely a question of the use of english and does not affect the principle. a reserve or _reserve fund_ is a nominal liability artificially created to off-set a decrease in value of an asset. on the principle that an increase of liabilities represents a loss, the amount reserved each year represents a loss, but since the liability created is not a real but a nominal liability it does not affect the real assets of the business. = . sinking funds.= a sinking fund is an amount set aside out of profits to meet an anticipated liability, or an obligation which is to fall due at some future date. sinking funds are set aside for such purposes as the payment of bonds at maturity, mortgages, etc. the sinking fund is the amount which, invested at compound interest, will produce the desired amount at the end of the period. a sinking fund is an asset and may or may not be withdrawn from the business. frequently a sinking fund is invested in securities, such as government bonds, which are placed in the hands of a trustee, thus insuring against the withdrawal of the funds from actual use in the business. unlike a reserve, a sinking fund has no effect on the apparent profits of the period in which it is created. it does, however, tie up or render unavailable for dividends a certain part of those profits. whether or not it is carried on the books in a separate account, a sinking fund is a part of the surplus of a business. = . computing sinking funds.= the amount necessary to set aside at the end of the year to provide a given sum in a stipulated number of years at a stated rate of interest, compounded annually, may be found as follows: divide the interest for one year upon the sum to be accumulated by the compound interest upon $ . for the stipulated time. the result will be the amount necessary to invest at the end of each year. if the amount is to be invested at the beginning of the year, divide the result obtained as above by the amount of $ . for one year. _example._ to provide for payment of $ , . at the end of years, what amount must be put into a sinking fund at the end of each year, if the fund is invested to earn % compound interest? interest on $ , . for year at % is $ , . . compound interest on $ . for years at % is . . dividing $ , . by . gives $ , . , the amount necessary to put into the fund annually. if this amount is to be invested at the beginning of each year, divide the above result ($ , . ) by $ . (the amount of $ . for one year at %) and we obtain $ , . the amount needed. bonds = .= in the sense here used a _bond_ is the written obligation of a corporation to pay a certain amount at a specified future date. bonds are usually secured by a mortgage on all or a part of the property of the corporation. a bond issue is a favorite method of borrowing money with corporations. bonds can be issued in any denomination, and by reason of this a loan can be distributed among a large number of investors. being secured by mortgage on the company's property the bonds of a corporation are very frequently more desirable investments than its stocks. interest on bonds must be paid before dividends can be declared. bonds can only be issued with the consent of the holders of a certain per cent of the stock. = .= _classes of bonds._ the bonds of corporations are of several classes, as follows: a first mortgage bond is one secured by first mortgage on the company's property. a second mortgage bond is one secured by second mortgage. interest cannot be paid on second mortgage bonds until it has been paid on the first mortgage bonds. general mortgage bonds are those secured by a general mortgage on all of the company's property. collateral bonds are secured by the deposit of collateral security. a debenture is a bond with no other security than the good name of the company. refunding bonds are those issued in place of maturing bonds which the company does not wish to pay in cash. equipment bonds are those secured by the rolling stock of a railway, and are also known as car trust certificates. a gold bond is any form of bond, the terms of which specify that it shall be paid in gold. registered bonds are those, the names of the owners of which must be registered on the books of the company. ownership of a registered bond can be transferred only on the books of the company. = . bond liability.= when bonds are issued by a corporation, either public or private, an account is opened under some such caption as _bond issue_ or _bonds payable_. as fast as bonds are sold the proceeds are credited to this account, which represents a liability. a new account should be opened for each issue of bonds. the bonds of a given issue will all bear the same date, with interest payable from that date. we will suppose that a corporation issues its bonds for $ , . in denominations of $ , . each. these bonds are dated feb. st, and bear interest at per cent payable annually. they are payable at the end of years from date. the company agrees to maintain a sinking fund of an amount sufficient to pay the bonds at maturity if invested in securities drawing per cent interest, and to invest the fund in such securities which are to be placed in the hands of a trustee. during the first year bonds are sold in the amounts and under the conditions which follow: _first._ on the date of issue $ , . of these bonds are sold at par. _second._ at the end of three months $ , . of the bonds are sold at and accrued interest, yielding $ , . of which $ , . is principal, $ . premium, and $ . interest. _third._ the next sale is $ , . of the bonds at , interest accrued $ . , yielding $ , . made up of principal $ , . , less discount $ . , and interest $ . . [illustration: ledger accounts of a bond issue] = . premium on bonds.= when bonds are sold at a price above par, the premium should be credited to a _premium on bonds_ account. when sold below par, the discount may be charged to the same account. = . interest on bonds.= the interest paid on bonds may be charged to an _interest on bonds_ account, which keeps it separate from the regular interest account. when bonds are sold with accrued interest, which is paid by the purchaser, the accrued interest is credited to interest on bonds. = . expense of bond issue.= all expenses incurred in the issue and sale of bonds should be charged to _expense of bond issue_ account. the account can be closed into profit and loss immediately, or it is proper to spread it over the life of the bonds, charging off the proper amount each year. it is also considered proper to charge discount on bonds to this account. = .= continuing the example in art. , we find that the amount of bonds outstanding is $ , . , and a sinking fund must be established which will equal this amount when the bonds mature. following the rule in art. , we divide the interest on $ , . for one year at per cent ($ , . ) by the compound interest on $ . for years at = (. ) obtaining as a result $ , . , the amount necessary to be invested at the end of each year. this amount must be provided each year for permanent investment to meet the principal and an additional $ , . must be provided each year for interest. the entries which follow are the ones necessary to record the sales shown in art. . --feb. -- cash $ , . bond issue $ , . -------- --may -- cash , . bond issue , . premium on bonds . interest on bonds . -------- --aug. -- cash , . expense of bond issue (discount) . bond issue , . interest on bonds . at the end of the year when the interest is paid and the first installment of the sinking fund is set aside, these entries are made: --january -- interest on bonds , . cash , . -------- sinking fund , . cash , . the illustrations (page ) show the status of all of these ledger accounts at the end of the year. manufacturing and cost accounts = .= manufacturing began in this country many years ago and was for a long time confined to the eastern and new england states. encouraged and fostered by national, state, and local governments, and by discoveries of sources of supplies, it has extended to all parts of the country. manufacturing has grown to proportions which place it at the very head of our industries, if we except agriculture, the growth of which has been largely influenced by the progress in manufactures. one result is that the business of manufacturing has perhaps more than any other, attracted capital from great numbers of investors, large and small. owing to its very nature, manufacturing readily lends itself to the corporate form of organization, and it is for manufacturing that a very great number of corporations have been formed. manufacturing has, therefore, been selected for a more complete exposition of corporation accounting. the accounts of a manufacturing business are to a certain extent peculiar to itself. regardless of the nature of the product, there are certain underlying principles which should govern the devising of a system of accounts for a manufacturing business. perhaps the most important feature to be kept in mind is to so arrange the system that the cost of manufacturing the goods will be shown. correct cost accounting methods are of greater importance to the manufacturer than the method of keeping accounts with his customers. he cannot afford to wait until the end of the year for results; he must know what his goods cost him if he is to intelligently make selling prices. there are so many opportunities for fluctuations in manufacturing costs that the accounts must at least show approximate results at all times. cost accounting is a profession in itself, and it is not our purpose to discuss, in this paper, all of the details of collecting data in the factory and shop. the purpose of this paper is to show the accounts with which a bookkeeper for a manufacturing business should become familiar. even when a manufacturer does not maintain a complete cost accounting system the bookkeeper can produce some valuable statistics by a proper arrangement of the accounts. accounts used = .= for the purpose of illustration we have selected a representative schedule of the accounts of a manufacturing business. the following accounts are those which have a direct bearing on the manufacturing branch of a business and do not include the administrative and selling branches. factory assets . _real estate._ includes the cost of land and factory buildings. . _machinery._ charged with the cost of all machinery including total cost of installation. freight, cartage, and cost of erecting the machine ready for use should be included. . _patterns and tools._ charged through cash and purchase book for all patterns and tools purchased. charged through cash book and journal--with proper credit to material and labor accounts--if manufactured in the factory. . _material purchases._ charged through purchase and cash books for all purchases of material that enters into the product. cost includes charges for delivery. credited for all material used in the factory. this may be subdivided into several accounts to represent the different classes of material used--as iron, steel, lumber, leather, hardware, etc. . _supplies purchases._ charged through purchase and cash books for all purchases of factory supplies, like oil, waste, belt lacing, and similar items. credited for all supplies used in the factory. . _finished goods._ charged for all goods finished, usually at cost of manufacture. sometimes a small factory profit is added. this account represents a purchase account to the commercial department, as it represents the cost of goods to them, factory expenses . _salaries._ charged for salaries of superintendent, assistant superintendent, and factory clerks. . _labor._ charged through cash and pay roll books for the amount of all factory pay-rolls. . _experimental._ charged through cash and pay-roll books and journal for all labor and material used in experimental work carried on for the purpose of improving the product. . _general factory expense._ charged through cash and purchase books for cost of miscellaneous factory expense items not otherwise accounted for. . _power, heat, and light._ charged for fuel, oils, water, wages of engineer and firemen, electricity (when purchased), and all other items entering into their cost. . _building maintenance and repairs._ charged through cash and purchase books for materials purchased specially for repairs to buildings. charged through journal and pay-roll book for labor and materials or supplies consumed in maintenance and repairs to buildings. . _repairs to machinery._ treated the same as no. . . _repairs to patterns and tools._ treated the same as no. . . _insurance._ charged through cash book for all premiums paid for insurance on buildings and contents. . _taxes._ charged for all state, county, and city taxes. . _depreciation of buildings._ an amount charged off each year to cover depreciation. . _depreciation of machinery._ treated the same as no. . depreciation based on estimated life of machine. . _depreciation of patterns and tools._ treated the same as no. . summary accounts . _manufacturing account._ charged for cost of labor and material consumed in manufacture of goods; charged for proper proportion of all expense accounts; credited with cost of all finished goods. balance represents cost of all goods in process. collecting cost statistics = . routine followed.= the notes following the names of the accounts in the above schedule explain their purpose and show clearly how charges are made direct to the expense accounts. further explanations are necessary in regard to charges and credits to manufacturing account. labor is easily disposed of as the amount standing to the debit of labor account at the end of the month is transferred to the debit of manufacturing account, closing labor account. material charges are more difficult to handle. in all well-regulated factories all material is as carefully accounted for as cash. proper storage rooms are provided in which all material is stored. these rooms are placed in charge of a man known as stockkeeper or stores clerk, and no one is allowed to take material from the storerooms without first presenting a written order, signed by the foreman, showing for what purpose the material is to be used. this order is retained by the stockkeeper and after he has posted the material to his own records he sends it to the bookkeeper. from these orders, the bookkeeper compiles a record of material withdrawn and, at the end of the month, the amount is debited to manufacturing account and credited to material purchases. the stockkeeper keeps a record of all material received and delivered and the balance of his accounts shows the quantities of the different materials which he should have in stock. his record should agree with the balance of material purchases account. when a stockkeeper is not employed it is necessary to have reports from the factory. the bookkeeper should arrange to obtain daily reports from the foremen showing all materials taken into their departments which are to be used in the manufacture of the regular product. if any of this material is to be used for the manufacture of tools or patterns for use in the factory, or for repairs to tools, patterns, machinery, or buildings, it should be noted on the report with a statement of the exact purpose for which it is intended. from these reports, the bookkeeper will compile his material records which will be credited to material purchases, and charged to manufacturing account and the different repair accounts at the end of the month. supplies are handled the same as materials, except that where this is a small item it is sometimes treated as an expense account. where a considerable value is involved it is preferable to consider it as a subdivision of the material account. the expense accounts must be charged on a percentage basis for the reason that the amounts actually expended vary in different months, and an expense item paid in one month may cover that particular expense for an entire year. such items are insurance premiums and taxes, paid once a year to cover twelve months. other expense items like experimental, power, and repairs are difficult to determine for a single month. it is customary to base the charge for these items on the records for the previous year. the amount of such expenses for a year is divided by twelve and each month one twelfth of the amount is charged to the manufacturing account and credited to the expense account. if there is any discrepancy at the end of the year it is adjusted by a debit or credit to finished goods. reports should be made daily by all foremen showing exactly what partly finished goods are received in their department and the quantity delivered to the next department. a record of these reports should be kept, which will show at all times the quantity of goods in process in each department. reports of finished goods received in the stock room will show the quantity manufactured, or rather finished, during the month. see report form illustrated on page . if all goods on which work had been started were finished, the charges to manufacturing account would represent their exact cost, but there is always a certain quantity of goods in various stages of manufacture, and the amount already expended on them must be considered. therefore an inventory is taken of goods in process. great care must be exercised, in taking this inventory, that too high a value is not placed on partly finished goods, for if the valuation is too high the apparent cost of finished goods will be less than actual cost. it is of utmost importance that the cost of manufacture be not understated, for it is on this cost that selling prices will be based. this is one reason why some manufacturers add a small-factory profit. unless a complete system of cost accounting is maintained, this inventory of goods in process must be an estimate, but the record of goods in process in each department will be of considerable assistance in making the estimate. [illustration: daily report of work in process] when the inventory is complete the amount should be deducted from the total debits to manufacturing account, which will show the cost of goods manufactured. this cost should then be credited to manufacturing account and charged to finished goods account. manufacturing account will now show a debit balance representing cost of goods in process. this method will produce very satisfactory results for factories in which but one line of goods is manufactured, but does not supply the information required where several styles, sizes, or lines are made. for one line of goods it is only necessary to divide the total cost by the quantity produced, as pounds, feet, dozen, or gross to find the cost of a single unit. in the more complicated business a detailed cost system would be required. pay-roll records = .= in connection with the labor account, the manner of keeping the pay-roll record is of considerable importance. like most other forms of record, pay-roll books are made to suit the needs of the individual concern. for a manufacturing business a feature to be kept in mind is such an arrangement as will give the most complete record of the cost of labor in each separate department. where men are never transferred from one department to another during a weekly or monthly pay-roll period, this result would be obtained by a simple grouping of the names by departments. in many manufacturing lines, however, workmen are frequently transferred so that to obtain costs for departments it is necessary to provide special forms for distribution. but why go to the trouble of distributing the pay-roll by departments? that we may more closely watch expenses and costs. the reports which the bookkeeper receives from foremen show quantities of goods passing through each department. if the pay-roll is sectionalized it will enable the bookkeeper to determine the labor cost per unit of goods manufactured in each department. a comparison of these costs from month to month will be of value in showing changes in cost. the form illustrated provides for a business having four departments and paying employes both on piece work and day wage plans. [illustration: pay-roll register for time and piece work] expense inventory = .= when the books are closed, it usually happens that certain expense accounts show expenditures for items of expense that are not accrued. illustrations are insurance and taxes paid yearly in advance. suppose insurance premiums to the amount of $ . are paid on april st to cover insurance for one year. if the books are closed july st, / of this amount will have been paid for insurance that we have not received--the premium has not been earned. the inventory will also show unused material which has been charged to such expense accounts as repairs. it is proper to take an inventory of these amounts, treating them as assets in the balance sheet. to properly record all such unearned expenses and make the books agree with the balance sheet, an account should be opened under the title of _expense inventory_, to which these items will be charged, with corresponding credits to the proper expense accounts. after the books have been closed, these items will be changed to the expense accounts, and credited to expense inventory, closing the latter account. expense liability = .= certain expenses will have accrued which have not been paid. such an item is interest on bills payable, bonds, or mortgages, or taxes due and unpaid. these items should be treated as liabilities in the balance sheet. an account called _expense accrued_ should be opened and credited with these items, with corresponding debits to expense accounts. when the books have been closed, this account is closed by crediting the items to the expense accounts from which they were received. balance ledger . a form of ledger now in quite common use is known as the _balance ledger_. the form differs from the standard ledger form in being provided with an extra column in the center in which balances are extended. if the bookkeeper when posting, extends the balance after each item is posted, much time is saved in looking up accounts and in taking trial balances. the nature of the account will usually indicate whether there is a debit or credit balance. accounts in the sales ledger will usually show a debit balance, while one in the purchase ledger will have a credit balance. if the balance is the opposite from what is to be expected it may be indicated by placing the letter _d_ in front of the amount in the balance column for debits, or the letter _c_ after the amount for credits. [illustration: wheel lathe shop in the baldwin locomotive works, philadelphia, penna.] [illustration: center-ruled balance ledger] sample transactions . the following transactions exhibit the accounts which are special to a manufacturing business without including the commercial accounts which record sales. the manner of keeping those accounts is the same for a manufacturing business as for any other. being a business conducted by a corporation these accounts include the stock accounts usually kept in the general books. the auxiliary stock books are omitted, it being felt that the special illustrations of such books will have been sufficient to give the student a thorough understanding of their uses. the books required in the manufacturing business, omitting sales accounts, are _invoice register_ or _purchase book_, _cash book_, _journal_, _pay-roll distribution book_, _purchase ledger_, and _general ledger_. a corporation known as the atlas manufacturing co., is organized with an authorized capitalization of $ , . , with the provision that business is to begin when $ , . of the stock has been subscribed, and $ , . paid in. the incorporators are henry biddle, john noonan, david snow, henry farwell, and george dunn. each incorporator subscribes for $ , . stock payable one-half down and one-half in days. the detailed record follows: --march -- received subscriptions to the capital stock, payable one-half down, and one-half in days, from the following. stock is to be issued when paid in full. henry biddle $ , . john noonan , . david snow , . henry farwell , . george dunn , . received cash in payment of subscriptions from the following: henry biddle , . john noonan , . david snow , . george dunn , . received from henry farwell his note at days with % interest in payment of installment on his subscription , . -------- deposited cash in second national bank , . -- -- received from derby desk co. invoice # , terms n/ charge to office fixtures . -- -- leased for two years from jacob newman a factory building at an annual rental of $ , . , payable quarterly in advance. gave him check no. for months' rent. -- -- the following invoices are entered-- meyers engine co. invoice no. , terms n/ charge to machinery , . -- -- patton machine co. invoice no. , terms n/ charge to machinery , . -- -- danforth & co. invoice no. , terms n/ charge to material . -- -- the following invoices are entered-- franklin printing co. invoice no. , terms / , n/ charge to office supplies . -- -- slade oil co. invoice no. , terms / , n/ charge to supplies . -- -- norwich machine co. invoice no. , terms n/ charge to machinery , . -- -- paid freight by check no. to t. fogarty, agt. machinery . materials . . ------ -- -- francis & co. invoice no. , terms / , n/ charge to materials . -- -- stevens & co. invoice no. , terms / , n/ charge material . -- -- gave danforth & co. check no. to pay bill of march . less % . . ------ -- -- lackawana coal co. invoice no. , terms n/ charge power, heat, & light . -- -- gave franklin printing co. check no. . to pay bill of march . less % . . ------ -- -- danforth & co. invoice no. , terms / , n/ charge material . -- -- drew check no. . for weeks' pay-roll . charge machinery for cost of installing . building maintenance for repairs to building per pay-roll distribution . -- -- gave derby desk co. check no. to pay bill of march . -- -- gave slade oil co. check no. to pay bill of march . less % . . ------ -- -- gave francis & co. check no. to pay bill of march . less % . . ------ -- -- gave stevens & co. check no. to pay bill of march . less % . . ------ -- -- eureka tool co. invoice no. , terms n/ charge tools . -- -- check no. for week's pay-roll charge labor . charge tools . . ------ (making tools for shop per pay-roll distribution) -- -- received from danforth & co. credit memo for damaged goods in lot covered by invoice dated / . credit material gave them check no. for acct. . less % . . ------ -- -- check no. for week's pay-roll $ . charge labor per pay-roll distribution -- -- gave norwich machine co. note of henry farwell , . accrued interest . , . ------ gave them check no. to pay their account , . -- -- salaries check no. for salaries of supt. & clerks . = . manufacturing data.= the following data has been collected by the bookkeeper from the reports of superintendent and foremen, and from the inventories taken at the end of the month. material issued to factory , . material used for building repairs . _inventories_ supplies . rent (unexpired) . power, heat, and light (coal) . office supplies . goods in process--material . labor . , . ------ we will now close the ledger to ascertain manufacturing results for the month, by making the following adjusting entries in the journal-- debit manufacturing account for material issued to factory. debit building maintenance and repairs for material used in repairs. credit material purchases for both of the above. debit manufacturing account for labor account for supplies used--found by deducting inventory from supplies purchases. for salaries account for rent one month for power, heat, and light--found as above for building repairs for office supplies--found as above credit accounts representing above for amounts charged. the manufacturing account will now show, on the debit side the total manufacturing expense for the month. the next step is to find the cost of finished goods to be credited to manufacturing account and charged to finished goods account. our inventory of goods in process, which includes material and labor only, amounts to $ , . . the labor account and reports from foremen show that the amount of these items used in the factory is $ , . . in round numbers, the former is % of the latter, that is, sixty per cent of the work started is still in process. we will assume, therefore, that this is a fair percentage to be used in determining the expense items invested in goods in process. taking % of the total manufacturing expense gives $ , . , which, deducted from the total, leaves $ . as the cost of finished goods. in this case the per cent of goods in process is large for the reason that it is the first month of operation. the results in succeeding months will be more nearly equal. if the factory is running regularly, turning out practically the same quantities each month, the quantity of finished goods will just about equal the work started in any one month. should we wish to show a factory profit of %, it will be necessary to add % to the cost of finished goods which will then represent the cost to be used by the sales end of the business. since we have no account to which this amount can properly be credited, we will open a new account called _contingent profits_, which will be closed into profit and loss at the end of the year. since we are not closing the books for the purpose of making a balance sheet, we do not close the expense accounts into an expense inventory account as explained in article . instead, the balances are allowed to stand until such time as the books are finally closed. [illustration: invoice register with distribution columns.] [illustration: invoice register with distribution columns] [illustration: check and disbursement record] [illustration: manufacturing journal] [illustration: manufacturing journal] [illustration: manufacturing general ledger] [illustration: manufacturing general ledger] [illustration: manufacturing general ledger] [illustration: manufacturing general ledger] [illustration: purchase ledger] [illustration: purchase ledger] [illustration: general ledger trial balance] [illustration: purchase ledger statement] exercise the transactions given in this exercise are a continuation of the business referred in to the preceding articles. during the month of april the following transactions are recorded. material purchases $ , . supplies purchases . patterns and tools purchases . cash received on subscriptions , . deposited in bank , . checks drawn purchase accounts , . salaries . pay-rolls , . distributed as follows: labor $ , . machinery repairs . david snow , . (stock purchased at par by company) the following data is obtained from the reports of foremen and inventories taken at the end of the month: material issued to factory to be used in manufacturing goods. , . material used in machinery repairs . inventories, april supplies . rent (unexpired) . power, heat, and light (coal) . office supplies . goods in process--material . labor . , . ------ . find value of goods in process, using the same percentages in estimating expense items as shown for material and labor. . make journal entries closing accounts into manufacturing account to show cost of goods completed during the month. note:--to find total cost of material and labor, used and partly used, add to the amounts shown for one month the inventory of the same items at end of preceding month. . make trial balance of general ledger after books are closed as shown in model set. [illustration: general offices of the a. b. dick company, chicago, ill.] the voucher system and accounting charts voucher system of accounting . _voucher._ a document which vouches the truth of accounts. _receipt._ an acknowledgment of money paid. the voucher system is sometimes referred to as a modern system of accounting, but a study of the above standard definitions indicates that it is modern only in respect to forms of records and routine. in the nomenclature of accounting the term voucher is quite commonly used in the same sense as the term receipt. the only distinction appears to be that a voucher is usually understood to be an acknowledgment of the payment of a particular item on account, while a receipt may be an acknowledgment of the payment of money without reference to the item or items covered. since the transaction of business began receipts or vouchers in some form have undoubtedly been used. some form of acknowledgment of money paid has always occupied a place in business. but at first, receipts were not required--they were incidental; given as a matter of courtesy; a "thank you" in written form. when the first man, after paying his grocery bill, was forced to pay it a second time because the merchant had failed to mark his account "paid," he _demanded_ a receipt. he learned then and there that accounts, and those who keep them, are not infallible. he told his neighbors, and the custom of demanding receipts for money paid, came into being. the receipt was demanded as a matter of self-protection, to prevent the possibility of payment of an amount being successfully demanded a second time. but the receipt was not an integral part of the accounting records of a business; it might or might not be demanded without affecting the records. so long as business was conducted by single proprietors or small partnerships, this was satisfactory, since the receipt was not required as a record between partners. with the advent of joint-stock companies and corporations, came ownership by a large number of investors. having their capital invested, these owners had a right to know what was being done with their property, and there came a demand for a more strict accounting of money and property entrusted to the care of the managers of the business. as business expanded and corporations grew in size and power, with wider spheres of activity, it became necessary to divide the operations of business concerns into departments, with corresponding divisions of authority. this meant the creation of a central authority to whom an accounting must be made by the departments or branches. audits were introduced. not only did stockholders want to know that the business was honestly conducted, but the managers demanded proof that property entrusted to subordinates was accounted for and that the accounts were accurate--that is, truthful. not satisfied with the evidence offered by entries in account books, auditors asked for further proof of the payments recorded; they demanded receipts, _vouchers_. the voucher as used in modern accounting practice is then something more than a receipt for the payment of money; it is a proof that property has been administered as claimed by the accounting records. "a document which vouches the truth of accounts," = . use of vouchers.= the most general use of the voucher still is as an acknowledgment of the payment of money. in fact, when we speak of a voucher it is usually understood to mean a receipt or acknowledgment of the payment of money for a specific purpose. a voucher states the exact purpose for which the money is paid, the items either being listed or reference made to a specific invoice or account. then when receipted it becomes a voucher in fact and takes its place as an integral part of the accounting records. the voucher may be said to form a connecting link, furnishing proof that the money was expended as shown in the records and that it was received by the payee. in this respect it acts as a check against a misappropriation of funds. as the system of vouchers for payment of money came into more general use, many accountants argued that it should be carried still further. sales records were vouchered by original orders, shipping receipts, and invoice copies, and purchases by the regular vouchers, but there was no voucher for transactions involving transfers of values from one account to another. in making journal entries involving such transfers, many opportunities for fraud were opened. just such entries have been frequently used to cover up fraudulent transactions. the logical step to make the voucher system complete in every detail was the introduction of the journal voucher. if a voucher is provided for each journal entry, the bookkeeper can produce authority for every transaction recorded in his books. the journal voucher is a voucher of authority, that is, it authorizes the entry involved and must be signed by an officer having power to make such authorization. to the bookkeeper, it is in many cases a protection, for if a question arises as to the legality of a transaction, he can produce his authority for the entry, which will place the responsibility where it belongs. we have come in contact with cases in which the bookkeeper, following the explicit instructions of an officer of a company, has made entries clearly intended to defraud either creditors or stockholders, only to be later made the "scapegoat" and held jointly responsible with his superior officer. not all such entries show their clear intent, though their real purpose be fraudulent. some of them are so ingenuous and supported by such plausible explanations, that the bookkeeper has no suspicion of their real nature. a case in point: a corporation was organized in a small town to engage in a manufacturing enterprise. like many another corporation of similar character, the benefits which would accrue to the town, were dwelt upon at length by the promoters, and citizens were induced to invest their savings in small blocks of stock. also, like many another enterprise entered into and managed by men with no technical training, this little factory struggled along for a few years, always operated at a loss. but a change came; an experienced manager was secured and the business began to exhibit symptoms of a healthy growth. the second year showed a profit; almost enough to wipe out the deficit. the third year the business outgrew the capacity of the plant, and $ , . was invested in new machinery. not an old machine was discarded. the manager instructed the bookkeeper to charge $ , . of the amount to repairs, explaining that it would off-set the amount which should have been charged off as depreciation in former years. perhaps,--but it made the books show a small loss instead of a substantial profit for the year. and it is significant that several holders of stock, worth face value, and more, sold their holdings to the manager at an average price of . . if no profit could be made on such a volume of business as had been transacted that year, what hope for the future? [illustration: fig. . voucher to be receipted and returned] to what extent a bookkeeper is justified in presuming to conserve the morals of his employer, is not a subject for present discussion. just where the line should be drawn between moral and legal responsibility, is sometimes difficult to determine. but that bookkeeper innocently assisted in robbing unsuspecting stockholders. had he insisted on the signed authority of the manager--that is, demanded a voucher--the entry might never have been made; he, at least, would have been freed from any possible charge of complicity. = . forms of vouchers.= the essential feature of a voucher is that it must show clearly the purpose for which it is drawn, and provide a proper form of receipt. there are many forms of vouchers designed to meet the requirements of different businesses. [illustration: fig. . back of voucher showing distribution] the most simple form of voucher is a statement of items paid, with a receipt to be signed by the payee. a remittance in the form of cash or a check accompanies the voucher, the receipted voucher being returned by the payee. a form of voucher of this class is shown in fig. . the items paid can be listed on the voucher, or there may be a reference to certain invoices included in the payment. some accountants attach the original invoice to the voucher, but for certain reasons we do not advocate this practice. until the receipted voucher is returned there is no record of the items covered, unless the invoice has been copied. [illustration: fig. . combined voucher and check used by the pennsylvania railroad company] some houses are slow in returning receipted invoices, resulting in many annoying delays. if the invoice is kept on file we at least have a record of the transaction, and it may be very necessary to refer to the invoice for prices or other information. the back of the voucher is usually printed with a form for a distribution of the amount to the account or accounts to which it should be charged. a typical form is shown in fig. . for permanent filing a voucher of this style is folded so that the number appears at the top, followed by the name of the payee, and the distribution record. = . voucher checks.= a step in advance of the early form of voucher with separate check is the voucher check. this is a form which combines the voucher and check. of voucher checks there are many forms, each designed to meet some special condition, or to conform with the ideas of the accountant. while these forms exhibit many variations in detail they may be divided into two general classes: folded voucher checks and single voucher checks. the folded voucher check is usually twice the width of an ordinary check, making it regular check size when folded. this is intended to provide a receipt for the payment of items listed, by the endorsement of the check. several such forms are illustrated. fig. is a form of combined voucher and check used by the pennsylvania railroad company, the account is transcribed on _a_, this being a sheet twice the width of a check. this form is made in duplicate, _b_ being the carbon copy which is filed as a record of authority for the issuance of the voucher. the check itself, shown in _c_, is written on the back of the original voucher. _a_. when folded, this form is the size of a regular check and goes through the bank in the usual manner. the endorsement of the payee is a receipt in full for the items covered by the voucher. this is a representative form of the folded voucher check. naturally the details recorded will vary in different businesses, but the general plan is subject to slight changes. some objection is raised by banks to the folded form. the claim is made that considerable inconvenience is caused in handling in the bank, by checks slipping between the folds. many of the earlier forms of voucher checks were not checks until certain conditions had been complied with. on the face of the voucher was printed "when properly receipted this voucher will be paid through ... bank." this required a receipt in some special place, instead of the usual endorsement of a check, and it was not always easy to tell, at a glance, the amount to be paid. very naturally, objections were raised by the banks against the use of these complicated forms, but forms have been simplified in ways that have largely overcome these objections. [illustration: fig. . form of voucher check that requires no folding] an improvement is the ordinary check form arranged to provide a valid receipt for stated items. such a form is illustrated in fig. . this is an ordinary check form of regulation size, on which is noted the item or items paid. the checks are put up in pads and numbered as used. when endorsed, the check provides a valid receipt for the items covered. [illustration: fig. . duplicate voucher check in loose leaf form] [illustration: fig. . voucher distribution sheet] a voucher check with some advantageous features is shown in fig. . this is made in duplicate. _a_ is the original voucher check, while _b_ is the duplicate. when sent out, the stub shown in _b_, a duplicate of the statement on the original check, is attached to the check. this is detached by the payee for his records, and enables him to deposit the check without waiting to make the entry in his cash book. these voucher checks are made in sheets and punched for filing in a loose-leaf binder. the balance of the form shown in _b_, the part remaining after the check and duplicate statement have been removed, is a copy of the check, and remains in the binder. the checks are numbered consecutively, but the voucher number is entered when used and corresponds with the number of the voucher paid. the office record of the items paid is made on the voucher form shown in fig. . these are numbered consecutively, in the order in which they are approved, and when paid are filed in numerical sequence. another style of loose-sheet voucher check is illustrated in fig. . this form is made on the typewriter, in triplicate, and includes the original check, a receipt and a copy of the check. the forms are made two to a sheet, and when a check is to be written the triplicate sheet is placed in the machine, three copies being made at one writing. [illustration: fig. . triplicate form of voucher check that provides a receipt and a copy of the check] [illustration: plant of the w. l. gilbert clock co. at winsted, conn.] the triplicate form, or copy of the check, is the permanent record from which posting is done. both the check and receipt are mailed and the payee is expected to return the receipt. if not returned within a reasonable time, the payee is followed up by letter and asked to return the receipt, as this becomes a part of the permanent office records. [illustration: fig. . duplicate voucher with check attached] an excellent form of voucher with check attached is shown in fig. . the voucher is made in duplicate, the check being attached to the original. the duplicate is kept on file for the office record, while the original, with check attached, is mailed to the vendor. he detaches the check and deposits it, keeping the original statement in his files. in the event of discrepancies, the vendor is expected to return both voucher and check, endorsement being considered as a receipt in full for items included in the statement. = . journal vouchers.= as previously explained, a journal voucher is a properly signed authorization of a journal entry. journal vouchers are not intended to be used for the ordinary journal entries of a business, as closing entries and ordinary adjusting entries. they are more particularly intended for special credit items or allowances, and special transfer or adjusting entries. fig. illustrates a convenient form of journal voucher. this form is intended to be filed in a loose-leaf binder, and when so filed, becomes the journal itself, posting being made direct to ledger accounts. the usual method, however, is to make the entry in the journal and file this voucher as an evidence of authority. a journal voucher should require the final approval of some one man before it becomes valid. the head of a business can keep in touch with all special allowances by having the journal vouchers brought to him for his signature. [illustration: fig. . journal voucher for adjusting entries] one reason for the use of journal vouchers in large establishments having several departments is that special credits and allowances are constantly coming up, with which only one department manager is familiar. his o. k. is obtained, and the voucher must be approved by the manager, which makes these men responsible for the transaction. = . the voucher register.= though the form of voucher is of considerable importance, and should be designed to meet the requirements of the business, the keystone of the voucher system of accounting is the voucher register. wherever used, the voucher register possesses certain uniform characteristics, but in each business the form takes on special features; in fact, the voucher register is distinctively a special form. the voucher register is really a form of purchase book, with other features added, and takes the place of these records. in addition to the usual features of the purchase book or invoice register, the voucher register furnishes a complete record of payment of bills, and shows at all times the net amount of accounts payable. another most important feature is that it exhibits all expenditures, for whatever purpose. a voucher is provided and properly registered for every check issued, insuring a receipt in proper form for every dollar paid out. when properly handled, the voucher system does away with the purchase ledger, no ledger accounts with creditors being necessary. the register in connection with a file of unpaid vouchers, furnished a complete record of each individual creditor's account. at the same time, a controlling account is provided, which exhibits the total of outstanding accounts, and balances with the voucher register. to furnish representative illustrations, we show several forms of voucher registers, which exhibit the special features usually found in such records. these may be used as guides in designing registers for any business. figs. and show forms identical in general arrangement, except that one is designed for a mercantile business, while the other is intended for a manufacturing establishment. the columns beginning at the extreme left are as follows: _date entered_, _voucher number_, _name of payee_ and nature of account, _date of invoice_, _vouchers payable_ (the total), and _date due_. the columns following are for distribution of the total to the different accounts. columns are provided for those accounts in each group to which most frequent charges are made. the amounts of the vouchers are extended in these columns and footings carried forward to the end of the month. in every business there are certain expense accounts to which charges are infrequent, not more than one charge a month, and in some cases one or two in a year. examples of these accounts are insurance, taxes, rent, etc. to add columns to an already large voucher register for the accommodation of these few items is impractical, hence the sundries column is provided for charges to accounts for which special columns are not provided. space is allowed for entering the names of the accounts, and each item is posted direct to the ledger account. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] typical forms of voucher registers [illustration: designed for use in different businesses] the form of voucher register illustrated in fig. is designed for use where a complete voucher system, including the use of journal vouchers, is maintained. the special feature of this form is the addition of several columns for credit accounts. space is provided for entering the names of the accounts to be credited, the amounts being carried to the proper ledger columns. this makes it possible to enter any journal voucher, and since full particulars are shown in the voucher itself, no explanations are required in the register. at the right of these forms are columns for recording particulars of settlement. a column headed _unpaid vouchers_ will also be noted. on the last day of the month, when all items have been entered, the amounts of all unpaid vouchers are extended in this column, and the total is carried forward to the next month's sheet, where it is entered in the _vouchers payable_ column. when these vouchers are paid, particulars of payment are entered on the sheets containing the original record; as would have been done if they were paid in the month in which they were entered. the footings of all columns are carried forward to the end of the month, when the totals of all distribution columns, excepting sundries, are posted to the debit of the corresponding ledger accounts. the footing of the _vouchers payable_ column, less unpaid amount brought forward, must agree with the total footings of all distribution columns, since it represents the total of all vouchers registered. the net amount, that is, the footing of the _vouchers payable_ column, less the amount of unpaid vouchers brought forward, is posted to the credit of a vouchers payable account. on the credit side of the cash book, two columns headed _vouchers payable_ are provided for the entry of payments. one column is headed discount and the other _amount of check_, the discount column being a memorandum only. at the end of the month the total of these columns is posted to the debit of the vouchers payable account, the controlling account of the voucher register. when the footing of _unpaid vouchers_ is brought forward at the end of the month, it should agree with the balance of the vouchers payable account. another method of handling unpaid vouchers is to provide both _debit_ and _credit_ columns on the voucher register, headed _suspense accounts_, as shown in fig. . all unpaid vouchers are carried to the credit column at the end of the month, and when paid the entry is made in the debit column. footings of the suspense columns are carried forward in pencil, for, when all amounts on one sheet have been paid, those items need not be considered in obtaining the balance. one advantage claimed for this method is that it keeps the _vouchers payable_ column free of all but current items. another feature of this form, fig. , is the absence of a check number in the _payment_ column. in this case, a voucher check is used, which necessitates but one series of numbers. when bills are audited, the voucher checks are made out and numbered, but the dates are omitted until payment is made, when they are entered with other particulars under the head of _payments_. an objection is sometimes made that with the voucher system, allowing but one line to an invoice, no provision is made for partial payments. this can be easily overcome with this form of register. any unpaid balance of a current item will be carried to the _suspense_ column. if further partial payments are likely to be made, the amount should be entered in the _credit_ column and the name of the payee in the _remarks_ column. several lines should then be allowed for the account, permitting the entry of as many separate payments. when all bills are paid as soon as audited, taking advantage of cash discounts, there is no necessity for columns intended to care for suspense items. all vouchers will be paid not later than during the month next following the date of entry, and there will be no unpaid vouchers not found on the current or next preceding month's record. = . operation of voucher system.= while accountants have introduced many details into the operation of the voucher system, all intended to make the application of the system more nearly perfect in some particular business, the general routine of conducting the system is summed up in the following: . auditing of invoices. . executing and registering vouchers. . filing audited vouchers. . paying vouchers. . filing paid vouchers. . indexing paid vouchers. = . auditing of invoices.= when invoices are received they should immediately go to the purchasing agent. if there is no regularly appointed purchasing agent, or in a business like a department store where there are several buyers, the invoices should be kept by the auditor, comptroller, or chief accountant until the goods are received, when he will obtain the o. k. of the person who ordered the goods or incurred the obligation. pending the receipt of the goods, the invoices should be filed alphabetically, under the name of the vendor. the file may be one of the flat files which can be kept on the desk or if the number of invoices be large, a section of a vertical file drawer can be used. when the goods have been received, which will be attested by a report in some form by the receiving clerk, the invoice is o. k.'d for quantities and prices by the buyer, and extensions are checked by the auditor or chief accountant. = . executing and registering vouchers.= as soon as the invoices are audited, vouchers are executed and entered in the invoice register. extensions are made to the proper columns, placing the accounts on the books, just as would be done if invoices were credited to accounts of the vendors in the general or purchase ledgers. vouchers should never be made for invoices in dispute, as to prices or on account of claims for shortage, damaged goods or other cause. until such claims are adjusted, the invoices should be kept in a file reserved for items in suspense. when the books are closed, such items must be included under liabilities in the balance sheet. to avoid actually entering them on the books, they may be entered in the balance sheet under some such caption as "_suspense accounts_." = . filing audited vouchers.= the vouchers are now ready for filing until date of payment. this does not apply if invoices are always paid as soon as audited, but in the majority of business houses at least a part of the vouchers will not be paid until the last due date; or if discounts are taken, they will be paid on the last discount date. some provision must be made for bringing these vouchers to notice on the date at which they should be paid. for this purpose, a "tickler" or date file is used. this consists of a file with an index of numbered index sheets, intended to represent the days of the month, and sometimes a set of twelve index sheets printed with the names of the months. the audited vouchers are filed under the date when payment is to be made, either the discount date or the last due date, by placing them back of the index sheet bearing the corresponding number. to illustrate; if an invoice is dated the nd of the month, and terms are / , the last discount day will be the th, and the voucher will be filed back of the no. index sheet. if payment is due in a subsequent month, the voucher is filed back of the corresponding monthly index, then on the first of the month these vouchers are distributed under the proper dates. = . paying vouchers.= each day the vouchers filed back of that day's index are removed from the file for attention. if for any reason they are not to be paid that day, they should be filed under the next date when it is desired to bring them to notice. it may be well to note at this point that the vouchers and invoices are usually filed together in the date file. the check is now written and entered in the cash book or the check register, attached to the voucher, and mailed. or if a voucher check is used it is only necessary to date and enter. these payments are posted from the cash book to the voucher register. it is not a safe plan to enter the voucher check direct in the voucher register, as postings to the cash book are liable to be overlooked. payments in one day may be recorded on widely separated pages of the voucher register, while in the cash book or check register they would be entered consecutively, making posting much less difficult. when the voucher and check have been mailed the invoices are placed in a temporary file, indexed alphabetically, where they are kept until the return of the receipted voucher. it will be noted that we do not advocate mailing the original invoice with the voucher. this temporary file is examined from time to time, and if any vouchers have been out an unreasonable length of time, the vendors are asked to sign and return them, or sign duplicates sent for the purpose. when the voucher check is used, the temporary file for invoices is not required. the checks, if cashed, must be returned through the bank, and the invoices can be filed permanently. = . filing paid vouchers.= on the return of the voucher, properly receipted, the invoices which it pays are removed from the temporary file, when all are ready for permanent filing. the invoices are permanently filed in an alphabetically indexed file, under the names of the vendors, keeping all invoices from each firm together. at some time before filing, preferably when the voucher is executed, the voucher number should be entered on the invoice, and when several invoices are paid by one check, they should be fastened together with a staple or other suitable device. the paid vouchers should be filed in numerical sequence, with indexes numbered by 's and 's to separate them and to assist in locating any desired number. if we want to find voucher no. , we turn to the index , constituting the main division, then to index , back of which the desired voucher will be quickly located. a file should be procured of suitable size to accommodate the voucher to be filed. [illustration: fig. . card index of vouchers paid] = . indexing vouchers.= with the permanent filing of the paid voucher the transaction is closed, with one exception. there must be another index to the voucher file. knowing the number, we can quickly locate any voucher or find its record on the register, but if we want to locate the voucher paid to jackson & co.--without knowing the number--we have no guide. reference to the original invoices, filed alphabetically, on which the numbers are noted, will locate the voucher, but there are vouchers for which no invoices are on file. to locate these by name of payee, an alphabetical index is necessary, and it is advisable to include all vouchers even when invoices are on file. for this purpose, a card index is recommended, and a suitable form is shown in fig. . a card is used for each person or firm to whom vouchers are issued, and all vouchers are listed by date and number. the cards are filed alphabetically, making it easy to find any name. = . voucher file.= the manner of filing and indexing invoices and vouchers, from the receipt of the invoices to the permanent filing of the paid voucher, has been explained. for the file itself, the vertical file is recommended. [illustration: fig. . file showing method of indexing vouchers] fig. illustrates one drawer of a vertical file, subdivided with the different indexes required, showing how in a small business a single drawer can be made to answer all purposes. in a large business several drawers would be required. the first drawer would be for pending invoices, where would be filed invoices for which shipments have not been received. the second drawer would contain audited vouchers held for payment, and suspense items; the latter including invoices held for adjustment of claims. paid invoices and paid vouchers would each require a separate drawer. files should be selected with reference to the size of the papers to be filed. manufacturers of such equipment now supply cabinets in sections, in a great variety of sizes, making it possible to build up a filing cabinet with drawers to fit every paper of standard size. demonstration = .= the operation of the voucher system in respect to the records in the register is demonstrated in the illustration, fig. , the record showing how the following transactions are handled. invoices listed have been audited for payment. [illustration: fig. . voucher register showing entries] --jan. th-- national mercantile co. bbls. flour $ . $ . dated jan. th terms / , n/ --jan. th-- western grocer co. cases soap . . dated jan. th terms / , n/ --jan. th-- morton salt co. bbls. salt . . dated jan. th terms / , n/ --jan. th-- paid voucher no. to national mercantile co. --jan. th-- paid voucher no. to western grocer co. --jan. th-- watson & snow bbls. vinegar, gals. . . dated jan. th terms n/ --jan. th-- jennings coal co. tons coal . . dated jan. th terms n/ --jan. th-- paid pay roll wages of laborers . office salaries . --jan. th-- paid voucher no. to morton salt co. the illustration, fig. , shows the complete record of these transactions in the voucher register. the total footings of all distribution columns agree with the total of vouchers payable column, proving the extensions to be correct. the combined totals of checks and discounts equal the total payment column. unpaid vouchers are extended, and the total of this column added to the total payments equals the total of vouchers payable. [illustration: fig. . cash disbursement book] our voucher register being in balance, footings are now posted. the total of _vouchers payable_ column is posted to the credit of that account in the general or private ledger, and the footings of the distribution columns are posted to the debit of their respective accounts. fig. illustrates how the payments are recorded on the disbursement or credit side of the cash book. when the checks are written they are entered in the cash book, from which they are posted to the voucher register. voucher numbers are entered when the amounts are posted. at the end of the month the columns are footed, and the totals of the discount and check columns are posted to the debit of vouchers payable. footings of _discount_ and _total_ columns are posted to the credit of discount on purchases and bank accounts. the vouchers payable account in the ledger would now appear as follows: _vouchers payable_ dr. cr. balance $ . $ , . $ . we have already seen that the voucher register balances, and turning to that record, we find the footing of the unpaid vouchers column to be $ . , which agrees with the balance of vouchers payable account. exercise prepare a form of voucher register providing for distribution to the following accounts: merchandise, purchases, in-freight, expense, salaries, and sundries. one of the chief requisites of the accountant is the ability to prepare suitable forms for accounting records. care should be used in preparing this form to omit no detail that should be included in such a voucher register. when the register has been prepared, record the following transactions. --feb. th-- enter the following invoices # jones & laughlin for merchandise $ . date / , terms / , n/ . # francis & roberts for expense date / , terms cash . --feb. th-- # david nelson & sons for merchandise . date / , terms / , n/ paid henry meyer for salary . check # --feb. th-- paid jones & laughlin by check # , voucher # less cash discount --feb. th-- paid francis & roberts by check # , voucher # less cash discount --feb. th-- paid david newman for rent . check # --feb. th-- enter the following invoices # national furniture co. for office furniture . date / , terms / , n/ # watkins & hollister for merchandise . date / , terms / , n/ --feb. th-- paid david gillette, agt. for in-freight . check # foot all columns as for posting at end of the month. unit system of voucher accounting = .= in all classes of accounting records, the unit system is rapidly gaining in popularity. the unit system, so called, consists of individual records of each transaction or each item recorded, instead of a combination of several transactions in one record. the increase in the use of the unit system has been brought about very largely by the improvements in typewriters, which make it possible to produce several copies of a given document at one writing. an example of the application of the unit idea is seen in modern sales records, where duplicate invoices are made, one copy serving as a sales sheet and posting medium. [illustration: a view in the general offices of the s. obermayer co., cincinnati, ohio] the unit system has been very successfully applied to voucher accounting, saving much time and resulting in very complete records. compared with ordinary voucher systems, the most prominent feature of the unit system is a method of distribution by filing, rather than by means of a voucher register. all vouchers are made on the typewriter, in manifold, one or more copies being used for record purposes only. the original is used exactly as described in the preceding pages. an essential feature of the system is that a copy of the voucher is provided for each account to which it is to be distributed. when one account only is involved, the voucher is made in duplicate, but if the amount is to be distributed to two accounts an extra copy is required. the voucher should be so arranged that the distribution can be shown on the face of the duplicate and triplicate copies. the duplicate voucher is filed according to its distribution, instead of recording the amount in the voucher register. a vertical file is used for this purpose. the index cards are headed with the names of the accounts, and are arranged in the order of the accounts in the ledger; this being the order in which the same accounts would be arranged in a voucher register. back of each index is a folder in which the vouchers are filed. each voucher copy is filed in the folder representing its proper account, and is securely fastened to the folder with a staple or paper fastener. when this voucher is filed it is also recorded on the outside of the folder, which is printed as shown in fig. . this form is designed for a record of amounts, distributed under the proper monthly headings. the amount of each voucher is carried to the current month's column. at the end of the month, the footing of the column shows the amount to be charged to that particular account in the general ledger. to arrive at the total of vouchers payable account, a recapitulation sheet, ruled as shown in fig. , is used. this is an index card, and is placed in the front of the file. totals of all account folders are entered in the proper columns of this sheet, at the end of each month. payments are posted to this sheet at the end of the month, from the cash book, and the balance extended. this balance, of course, represents the unpaid vouchers and is checked against the unpaid voucher file. [illustration: fig. . front of folder for unit system of voucher accounting] [illustration: fig. . monthly recapitulation for unit system of voucher accounting] the totals of the different account columns are posted to their respective accounts in the general ledgers, either directly from the recapitulation sheet, or through the journal. the recapitulation sheet, as here shown, is a transcript of the vouchers payable account, and might be used as a ledger card, but it is generally considered better practice to carry the account in the general or private ledger, as usual. such a voucher system furnishes a complete record, with much less transcribing of items, than is involved in the use of the voucher register. the copy of the voucher is made at the same writing as the original, the amount of each individual voucher is entered but once, on the account folder, and monthly totals, only, are carried to the distribution columns on the recapitulation card. this system is equally well adapted to the loose-leaf method. a sheet is used for each account, behind which the vouchers are filed, and a monthly recapitulation sheet is provided for distribution. combined purchase ledger and invoice file = .= not every business readily adapts itself to a complete voucher system. special conditions sometimes arise which make it seem advisable to keep ledger accounts with all firms from whom the business is making purchases. a case in point is a business, lacking capital to pay all bills promptly, necessitating payments on account, or by note, instead of payments covering certain invoices in full. to obviate the difficulties, in maintaining a complete voucher record, under these and similar conditions, many substitutes have been devised. as an example of what may be accomplished in this direction, we illustrate a system which is in successful operation in a manufacturing business. in the ledger, the usual nominal accounts are kept but no purchase or voucher register is used. columns are provided on the credit side of the cash book for such expense accounts as are usually paid in cash, that is, for which no invoices are rendered, and for accounts payable. for the purchase accounts with firms and individuals, a vertical file is used. each creditor is assigned a folder, on the front of which a suitable record form is printed. this form is shown in fig. . the name and address are written at the top, and the ledger account is kept in the columns at the extreme left of the form. all of the columns for distribution are left blank, it being seldom that purchases from one firm are distributed to more than a half dozen different accounts. when an invoice has been o. k.'d it is immediately filed in the proper folder. the total is entered in the credit column and distributed to the proper accounts, the names of which are written at the head of the distribution columns. payments on account are posted to these ledger accounts from the cash book. if the distribution is properly made, the totals of all distribution columns will agree with the total of the credit column. at the end of the month the total of these distribution columns on the individual account folders are drawn off on the monthly recapitulation sheet illustrated by fig. . the totals shown by the recapitulation are posted to the debit of the corresponding ledger accounts, while the grand total is posted to the credit of accounts payable account;--which is the controlling account of the purchase ledger. totals of payments on account are posted to the controlling account from the cash book. the proof of accuracy of the controlling account is found in the usual way, by checking against the balances of the individual purchase accounts. with this system, invoices are filed, and the amounts posted, with practically one operation. the items which make up each ledger account are distributed as soon as posted, totals only being carried to the recapitulation sheet, from whence they reach the ledger. accounts are quickly located, as the folders are indexed alphabetically. when an account is balanced it must be left in its place until the end of the month, provided credits have been entered in the current month, so that totals of distribution will be carried to the recapitulation sheet. at the end of the month, all accounts which balance may be transferred to a section of the file reserved for closed accounts. should any of these accounts again become active, they are transferred to the regular file without the slightest confusion. for the purpose of saving time, the balances of all open accounts may be drawn off when the totals of the distribution columns are obtained. [illustration: fig. . combined purchase ledger and voucher system] [illustration: fig. . monthly recapitulation and distribution sheet] while not recommended for general adoption this system has its points of merit, and in certain contingencies would undoubtedly prove very satisfactory. the main reason for its publication in this work is to show the possibilities of modifying a system, in respect to details, without destroying its more important features. the voucher feature, the obtaining of a formal receipt for every payment, can be maintained just as effectively with this system as with a more formal voucher system. the private ledger = .= a ledger, devised to contain such accounts as the principals of a business desire to keep from the knowledge of the bookkeeper or other office employes, is known as a private ledger. the title is also frequently used to designate an ordinary general ledger. the accounts most frequently found in the private ledger are capital accounts, profit and loss, reserves, surplus, bills payable, bonds and mortgages payable, and controlling accounts with the general or personal ledgers. it may also contain such accounts as salaries of officers, or partners, investment and drawing accounts, and accounts with real or nominal assets. if it is desired to keep from the employes, knowledge of the exact nature of any transaction, or the standing of a particular account, it can be done by making use of the private ledger. when both ledgers are used, the private ledger contains only those accounts which it is desired to keep _private_, while the general ledger is kept for all other accounts, except those included in the personal ledgers. the private ledger is most commonly used in large businesses where, for various reasons, a number of employes have access to the books, and it is desired to keep them in ignorance of the private affairs of the concern. the private ledger is usually kept by one of the partners, an officer, the auditor, or the chief accountant. = . advantages of private ledger.= the primary advantage of the private ledger to the principals of a business, is that by its use, they can keep to themselves all details of transactions of a special nature. some other advantages that accrue to the principal may be enumerated as follows: he can, through the private ledger, keep an eye on the activities and condition of the business as a whole, or of any particular department or branch of that business. he can keep in touch with the liabilities, or with the total amount of personal accounts outstanding. he can absolutely control the distribution of expense in manufacturing operations. he can keep from his employes, knowledge of the profits or losses of the business. partners can keep private the amount of their investments, or the salaries drawn. salaries paid to individual officers or employes can be kept private. dividends declared, capital subscribed, investments of a special nature, or amount of assets of any kind, can all be kept from the knowledge of employes. = . how operated.= accounts in the private ledger must not conflict with accounts in general or personal ledgers, and the fact that private accounts are kept should not interfere with the balance of the general books. to insure against any such conflict, a private ledger controlling account is kept in the general ledger. in the general cash book, and sometimes in the journal, debit and credit columns headed _private ledger_ are provided. all entries affecting private ledger accounts are extended in these columns, but no particulars are recorded. at the end of the month, the totals of these columns are posted to a private ledger account in the general ledger. this controlling account then appears in the general ledger trial balance, and must agree with the balance of accounts in the private ledger. with the private ledger a private journal is used, in which entries affecting private ledger accounts are made, with explanations in detail. as an example of the use of the private ledger we will suppose that a payment of $ . is to be made to a certain party, and it is desired to keep that transaction private. the bookkeeper is instructed to draw a check for the amount, to be charged to private ledger account. he enters the check in the general cash book, debiting private ledger and crediting cash or bank. the entry is posted from the general cash book to the private journal, where full particulars are recorded, from which it is posted to the private ledger. in the case referred to, the amount of the check is debited to the proper nominal account, and credited to a general ledger account. the general ledger account in the private ledger is a controlling account which agrees with the private ledger account in the general ledger. only entries affecting general ledger accounts are posted to this account. entries involving changes in private ledger accounts only, are made in the private journal direct. some concerns keep the controlling accounts with the sales and purchase ledgers in the private ledger. at the end of the month, total debits and credits to accounts in these ledgers are entered in the private journal. these totals are obtained from the general cash book, sales book, purchase book, and any other books from which postings are regularly made. [illustration: fig. . cash book with columns for private ledger accounts] when a private ledger is kept, it precludes the possibility of forced balances in the general ledger trial balance, since the balances of the private ledger accounts must agree with the private ledger controlling account in the general ledger, and if sales and purchase ledger controlling accounts are kept in the private ledger, these must balance with the personal accounts in those ledgers. the use of a private ledger not only acts as a check on trial balance errors, but simplifies the trial balance by making possible a proof of ledgers in sections. fig. is an illustration of a cash book with columns for the private ledger account. = . manufacturing accounts in the private ledger.= not infrequently, manufacturers find it advisable to keep private certain details which affect costs, or even all knowledge of the exact cost of their manufactured product. this may be done by keeping certain manufacturing controlling accounts in the private ledger. in determining the cost of manufacture of any class of goods, three elements enter into the computation; material, labor, and expense. to determine the cost of the first two items is comparatively simple, requiring only an efficient system of records in the factory. but to determine the amount of expense of all classes, included in the cost of a given article, job, or operation, is more difficult. a system of records that will show the exact cost of such items as power, heat, or taxes properly chargeable to an individual job or operation is obviously impossible, and it has been found necessary to apportion these, and all similar items of expense, on a percentage basis. usually this percentage is based on some element of cost which can be determined with accuracy. cost accountants and engineers have worked out this percentage on the basis of various elements of cost, as direct labor, material, machine hour, man hour, or a combination of two or more of these elements. the exact method used, which must be adapted to the conditions existing in the individual factory, does not enter into this discussion. since there are numerous items of expense of the character referred to, it is customary to group them, for purposes of cost computation. sometimes all such expense items are grouped under the one head of general expense. it is by means of a controlling account in the private ledger, that the distribution of expense is made, thereby keeping private the exact cost of manufacture. the known cost of a certain job or article--the cost of material and labor--is frequently referred to as the prime cost. the duties of the cost clerk may end with determining the prime cost, his computations not including expense items. the total cost of material and labor for the month is charged to private ledger account, material and labor accounts receiving proper credit. the exact amounts of the various items of expense for the month are also charged to private ledger account, with credits to expense accounts. in the private journal, these items are charged to various controlling accounts, and credited to the general ledger controlling account. the usual entries are: manufacturing account $______ general ledger $______ for material $______ for labor $______ expense distribution $______ general ledger $______ for rent $______ for power $______ for repairs $______ etc. etc. the percentage of expense for the current month on whatever element based, has been determined from the actual results of the preceding month. to illustrate, we will suppose that expense is apportioned on the basis of direct labor; the cost of this item during the month was $ , . , and the amount of expense charged to operation of the plant during the same period was $ . ;--which gives us a ratio of %. we wish to determine the cost of jobs as they are completed during the current month. the records turned in by the cost department give us the actual cost of material and direct labor, but not knowing the exact ratio of expense to direct labor for this month, we use last month's ratio, and add an amount equal to % of the known cost of direct labor. when the actual results for the month are determined it is quite probable that the ratio will vary from last month's record, as either factor may change. it will be necessary to adjust this difference, which is the reason for an expense distribution or expense adjustment account in the private ledger. by keeping the expense controlling account in the private ledger, the principal can keep private, not only the actual cost of an article, but the percentage of expense and the basis of the expense apportionment. if thought desirable, he can add further amounts for the purpose of establishing a selling price. in actual operation, the amount of expense to be charged against completed work will be computed, and the following entry made: manufacturing account $______ expense distribution $______ the amount of expense charged to jobs completed. if the expense ratio used were exact, the expense distribution account would balance at the end of each month, but owing to the fluctuations, a balance will remain. this is adjusted by increasing or decreasing the percentage used during the following month, and in this way the accounts are kept in balance. manufacturing account has been charged with labor, material, and expense,--the total manufacturing cost. completed goods are charged to a finished goods account, the entry being: finished goods $______ manufacturing account $______ net cost of goods completed but manufacturing account will not balance, for there always will be work in process, and the balance of the account will be the cost to date of this work in process, a most important record. this discussion is not intended to cover every possible use of the private ledger, but, by means of examples, to suggest its possibilities. the explanations and examples should afford the student many hints of value. exercise on a certain date, the following transactions are recorded on the books of carter & adams: purchases on account $ . sales on account . paid for rent . sales for cash . henry carter (partner) withdrew cash . john adams (partner) advanced to the business . what items in the above list of transactions should, in your opinion, be posted to the private ledger? on journal paper, make the entries and show necessary private ledger accounts. charting the accounts = .= the proper arrangement of the accounts of a business is best shown by a chart, in which the accounts to be kept are grouped according to their relative importance. in laying out a chart of accounts, they should be first separated into their proper divisions. the natural divisions are capital, trading, and profit and loss. each division contains only those accounts that naturally belong in that particular class. these divisions are then subdivided into groups containing specific kinds of accounts, the groups being arranged in logical sequence. as an example, the trading division of a manufacturing business is divided into manufacturing and trading. there may be several subdivisions of the manufacturing account; several classes of goods may be manufactured and a manufacturing account kept for each class, or it may be necessary to manufacture completed parts, each requiring a complete manufacturing process. detailed costs being required for each of these completed parts, manufacturing accounts are kept for each, the main division representing the cost of the finished product, as a result of the assembling of the parts. the completed parts are treated as raw material, when drawn for use in the finished product, the total costs being finally absorbed by the main manufacturing account. one of the many examples that might be cited is a packing business, operating its own can factory and keeping a manufacturing account to show the cost of cans. other accounts show the cost of the product packed in those cans, and both costs are absorbed in the cost of the commodity as marketed. the trading account is similarly subdivided. in a department store, the manager of a department may receive a certain percentage of the profits of his department. this necessitates trading accounts for each department. a mercantile concern may operate branch stores and keep trading accounts with each, on the books of the main office; a factory may produce several lines of goods, with a corresponding subdivision of trading accounts. a chart of accounts not only furnishes a guide to the bookkeeper, but presents in the most logical form, the natural divisions of the business. it is both a working guide and a mirror of the accounting records. = . chart of small trading business.= the most simple chart of accounts is one for a small trading business conducted by a single proprietor. following is a chart of the accounts of such a business. [illustration: fig. . chart of profit and loss accounts] a study of this chart will disclose the reasons for the general grouping of the accounts. the first general group, capital accounts is subdivided into assets and liabilities. the assets are grouped in the order of their availability; the order in which they can most readily be converted into cash. the liabilities are grouped according to the security; unsecured, secured and capital. there being but one trading account, it is represented by a single group, purchases and in-freight representing the cost of goods, and sales the gross proceeds. the balance of this account exhibits the gross profits. [illustration: fig. . chart of profit and loss accounts] we now come to the profit and loss account by which the trading or gross profits are absorbed. this group contains, first, the revenue producing accounts not represented in the trading account; second, the revenue expenditures or expense accounts. the outer brackets of the chart group all of the accounts under _debit_ and _credit_. this shows that the balances of the accounts are debit or credit as the case may be. we have traced the profits to the profit and loss account, but in closing the books they will finally be absorbed by the proprietor's capital account. the chart, fig. , traces the profits from trading to proprietor's account. in the trading account, the gross profit completes the balance. this profit is now absorbed by the profit and loss account. net profit completes the balance of profit and loss account, and is, in turn, absorbed by the proprietor's account. here, the net profit added to previous investment, equals the present worth. the chart, fig. , also traces profits to the proprietor's account. = . chart of manufacturing accounts.= a chart of the accounts of a manufacturing business follows similar lines to that of a trading business, the only change being the addition of the accounts of the manufacturing group. the accounts of this group will depend both upon the nature of the business and the extent to which the details of operation are recorded. a chart of the accounts of a harness and saddlery manufacturing business is given herein. this business is divided into three departments; harness, collar, and saddlery. a record of the gross profits, resulting from the operation of each department, being desired, we have three manufacturing and three trading accounts. the chart shows the accounts classified to exhibit detailed operations of each department. the number of accounts in this chart is . this is rather more than is required in the average business of this character, but the chart furnishes a good illustration of the possibility of segregating accounts of various classes. even so large a number of accounts, with the minute subdivisions here shown, does not present the difficulties that might appear at first glance. the principal requirement is a thorough knowledge of the items entering into each account; the actual keeping of the accounts is a matter of close attention to these details. when an elaborate chart of accounts is laid out, it should be accompanied by detailed explanations and instructions. some large concerns issue printed instructions which are given to all officers and employes who may be called upon to determine, to what account an item should be charged. chart of accounts--harness manufacturing capital accounts _assets_ cash bills receivable accounts receivable inventories--harness department finished stock leather hardware supplies inventories--collar department finished stock leather hardware supplies inventories--saddlery department finished stock leather hardware supplies inventories--machinery machinery--harness machinery--collar machinery--saddlery inventories--tools tools--harness tools--collar tools--saddlery inventories--general office fixtures and supplies delivery equipment real estate--land and buildings _liabilities_ accounts payable bills payable mortgages reserves depreciation of buildings depreciation of machinery depreciation of tools and fixtures bad debts capital stock surplus manufacturing accounts _a_ harness department purchases--leather purchases--hardware purchases--supplies in-freight labor--cutting department labor--manufacturing department inventory adjustment _b_ collar department purchases--leather purchases--hardware purchases--supplies in-freight labor--cutting department labor--manufacturing department inventory adjustment _c_ saddlery department purchases--leather purchases--hardware purchases--supplies in-freight labor--cutting department labor--manufacturing department inventory adjustment _d_ manufacturing expense adjustment power, heat and light engine room supplies salaries--superintendent and factory clerks wages engineers and miscellaneous general factory expense repairs and maintenance--buildings repairs and maintenance--machinery repairs and maintenance--tools trading accounts _e_ harness department sales returns and allowances inventory adjustment _f_ collar department sales returns and allowances inventory adjustment _g_ saddlery department sales returns and allowances inventory adjustment _h_ profit and loss interest credits cash discount credits rent credits _i_ administration insurance and taxes salaries--officers salaries--bookkeepers and clerks printing and stationery legal expenses postage, telegraph and telephone office expenses traveling expense--officers misc. general expense _j_ sales expense advertising salaries--salesmen commission traveling expense--salesmen trade show expense out-freight and express _k_ collecting collection fees cash discounts allowed _l_ delivery expense wages maintenance horses and wagons maintenance motor trucks _m_ depreciation adjustment buildings machinery tools and fixtures bad debts = . chart explained.= the following explanations will give the student a working knowledge of the operation of these accounts. accounts, to , inclusive, comprising assets and liabilities, are omitted, as no instructions will be required for keeping these accounts. all accounts are referred to by number. . _purchases--leather._ charged with all purchases of leather for use in harness department. credited with all leather transferred to other departments. . _purchases--hardware._ charged with all purchases of hardware for use in harness department. credited with all hardware transferred to other departments, . _purchases--supplies._ charged with all purchases of supplies and materials, other than leather and hardware, for use in harness department. credited with all transfers to other departments. . _in-freight._ charged with the cost of freight and cartage on all purchases for the harness department. totals pro-rated to department purchase accounts at the end of each month. . _labor--cutting department._ charged with the wages of all men employed in cutting department, including foreman. . _labor--manufacturing department._ charged with the wages of all harness makers, and others employed in the harness manufacturing department. . _inventory adjustment._ an account used for the temporary adjustment of inventories for the purpose of obtaining monthly balances. at the end of the fiscal period, or whenever the books are closed, the balance of this account is transferred to inventory accounts. accounts to , inclusive, are finally closed into a harness manufacturing account. the same instructions apply to accounts to , inclusive, in respect to the collar department, and to accounts to , inclusive, in respect to the saddlery department. . _power, heat and light._ charged with all fuel and electric power, consumed for power, heat and light. . _engine room supplies._ charged with all oils, waste and other supplies, used in the engine room. . _salaries--superintendents and factory clerks._ charged with salaries of general superintendent, superintendent's clerk and all clerks employed exclusively in the factory, as time keepers and clerks. . _wages--engineers and miscellaneous._ charged with wages of engineer and assistants, wages of shipping clerk and assistants, wages of receiving and stock clerks, wages of all general laborers whose time is not chargeable to a specific department. . _general factory expense._ charged with all miscellaneous items of factory expense not provided for in other accounts. . _repairs and maintenance--buildings._ charged with all material and labor consumed in the repairs and maintenance of buildings. . _repairs and maintenance--machinery._ charged with same items as no. , as applied to machinery. . _repairs and maintenance--tools._ same as no. , applied to tools. accounts to , inclusive, are closed into a manufacturing expense adjustment account, monthly. this account is credited with expense charged to each departmental manufacturing account, the distribution being made on a percentage basis. . _sales--harness department._ credited with the amount of all sales in the harness department. . _returns and allowances._ charged with all returns and allowances on account of harness sales, except cash discount. . _inventory adjustment._ an account used for the temporary adjustment of inventories of finished stock, for the purpose of obtaining monthly statements of gross profits. at the end of the fiscal year, the balance of the account is transferred to inventory of finished goods account, through the trading account. accounts to , inclusive, are closed into a harness trading account, at the end of the fiscal year. for purposes of comparison, monthly trading statements are made, leaving these accounts undisturbed until the end of the year. accounts to , inclusive, and to , inclusive, are handled exactly the same manner, in relation to the collar and saddlery departments. . _interest credits._ credited with all interest collected on past due accounts, or received on outside investments. . _cash discount credits._ credited with all discounts earned by the prepayment of bills. . _rent credits._ credited with all amounts received from rentals of property owned by the company, or as a result of subletting leased property. . _insurance and taxes._ charged with all sums paid for fire, liability or other insurance, state and municipal taxes, and license fees. . _salaries--officers._ charged with the salaries of all administrative officers, and directors' fees. . _salaries--bookkeeper and clerks._ charged with amounts of salaries of all bookkeepers, stenographers, and other office clerks. . _printing and stationery._ charged with the cost of all stationery and printed matter used in the offices. . _legal expense._ charged with attorney's fees and all expense of litigation. . _postage, telegraph and telephone._ charged with all sums paid for postage, and telegraph and telephone service. . _office expenses._ charged with sundry items of office expense, not provided for in other accounts. . _traveling expense--officers._ charged with all legitimate traveling expenses incurred by officers in the interest of the company. . _misc. general expenses._ charged with all expense items not otherwise accounted for. accounts to , inclusive, are closed into an administration account. . _advertising._ charged with all sums paid for advertising, including periodical advertising, catalogs, circulars, and novelties. . _salaries--salesmen._ charged with the salaries of all traveling salesmen. . _commissions._ charged with all commissions paid to brokers or salesmen. . _traveling expenses--salesmen._ charged with all legitimate expenses of salesmen, incurred in the interest of the company. . _trade show expense._ charged with all expenses incurred on account of exhibitions at trade shows. sometimes treated as a part of advertising expense. . _out-freight and express._ charged with all freight and express paid on goods sold at delivered prices. accounts to , inclusive, are closed into a sales expense account. . _collection fees._ charged with all fees paid to banks, attorneys or others, for the collection of accounts. . _cash discounts allowed._ charged with all allowances to customers, for prompt payment of bills. accounts and are closed into a collecting account. . _wages._ charged with the wages of drivers and barn men. . _maintenance.--horses and wagons._ charged with cost of feed, stable supplies, repairs to harness and wagons, blacksmithing and horse-shoeing. . _maintenance--motor trucks._ charged with all expense of up-keep and repairs to delivery trucks. accounts to , inclusive, are closed into a delivery expense account. . _depreciation--buildings._ credited monthly with current charges for depreciation. , , and . handled the same as no. . accounts and are closed into a depreciation adjustment account. [illustration: manufacturing ledger with closing entries] [illustration: manufacturing ledger with closing entries] [illustration: manufacturing ledger with closing entries] the illustrations (pp. - ) show how all of these accounts are assembled into main groups, and finally closed into profit and loss, and capital accounts. an explanation of the accounts in the harness department will be sufficient to show how all of the accounts are treated. harness manufacturing, account _a_, is charged with accounts to , inclusive, and the proper portion of account _d_. it is credited with the cost of all finished goods, the amount being transferred to account _e_, harness trading. it is credited with the increase in inventories over the preceding month, this amount being transferred to account ; if inventories show a decrease, the amount is charged. harness trading, account _e_, is charged with cost of finished goods from account _a_; with account ; with gross profits, transferred to profit and loss, account _h_. it is credited with sales, account ; with increase in inventory, account . gross profits on account of trading are closed into profit and loss. inventory adjustment accounts nos. and , are still open and the balances show total inventories. the actual amounts of inventories are transferred to accounts to , inclusive. this will leave a balance in inventory adjustment account no. , representing work in process in the harness factory. these inventory adjustment accounts are closed only at the end of the fiscal year, or when the books are closed. at the beginning of a new fiscal period the inventories are again charged to inventory adjustment accounts, and adjusting entries made monthly in manufacturing and trading accounts. review questions. practical test questions. in the foregoing sections of this cyclopedia numerous illustrative examples are worked out in detail in order to show the application of the various methods and principles. accompanying these are examples for practice which will aid the reader in fixing the principles in mind. in the following pages are given a large number of test questions and problems which afford a valuable means of testing the reader's knowledge of the subjects treated. they will be found excellent practice for those preparing for civil service examinations. in some cases numerical answers are given as a further aid in this work. review questions on the subject of theory of accounts part i . name three objects of bookkeeping. . define and give examples of three classes of debits; of credits. . what are the general rules for debit and credit? . what is meant by the term _balance_? when is an account said to show a debit balance, and when a credit balance? . how many methods of bookkeeping are in use? name them. . how is double entry distinguished from single entry bookkeeping? . what is the fundamental principle of double entry bookkeeping? . name two or more advantages of double entry bookkeeping. . what name is given to books used for bookkeeping records? . into how many classes are account books divided? give examples. . name and give the principal uses of the most commonly used books. . what is meant by _journalizing_? by _posting_? . what is a promissory note? . what is your understanding of the term _bills receivable_ and _bills payable_? . what is the name of the book in which a record of bills receivable and bills payable is kept? . what is _an acceptance_? . what is _discount_? _exchange_? . what is a _deposit slip_ and how is it used? . what is a _signature card_ and what are its uses? . what is meant by _indorsement of checks_? . prepare three forms of indorsement and explain the meaning of each. . what is meant by _petty cash_? how is the account of petty cash kept? . mr. h. b. emerson is a dealer in coal and lumber. that he may know what profits are made in each branch of his business, he keeps accounts in his ledger with coal and lumber. in his sales book, one column is used for lumber sales and one for coal sales. no purchase book is kept. his assets and liabilities are as follows: assets cash in state bank $ , . inventory, coal . " lumber , . frank knowlton, note due aug. nd . $ , . -------- liabilities eastern coal co., open account . northern lumber co., " . . -------- the following transactions are recorded: may . bought from john weber, for cash, lumber $ . ; paid by check no. . may . sold to edward walsh, on account, tons coal @ . , $ . . may . drew from bank for petty cash, check no. , $ . ; sold to franklin & co., lumber, $ . . may . sold for cash, coal $ . ; received from edward walsh, on account, $ . . may . gave northern lumber co., check no. , $ . , -day note, $ . . may . accepted -day draft of eastern coal co., $ . ; paid for repairs to desk, cash, $ . . make all necessary entries in books of original entry to properly record the above. review questions on the subject of theory of accounts part ii . into what two _general_ and what three _special classes_ are accounts divided in double entry bookkeeping? . define and give examples of _personal_, _real_, _representative_, and _nominal accounts_. . what is a _merchandise account_? what accounts are substituted for the merchandise account in modern bookkeeping? in what particular is the use of these accounts an improvement over the older method of using a merchandise account? . name and define four classes of assets, giving examples of each. . give two examples of fixed assets in one business which become floating assets in another business. give two examples of floating assets in one business which become fixed assets in another business. . what are revenue receipts? revenue expenditures? what accounts are designated by the term _revenue accounts_? . what is the broad term by which all revenue expenditure accounts are designated? name and define five commonly used subdivisions of this account. . what is meant by _journalizing_? when purchase and sales books are used, what class of entries are made in the journal? give three examples of journal entries involving transfers of value from one account to another. . what is a _three column journal_, and how is it used? . journalize the following transactions: april . bought from reliance mills, on account bbls. flour @ $ . sold to d. h. pointer, on account bbls. flour @ . sold to h. s. fleming, on account bu. wheat @ . april . gave to reliance mills, my note payable in days, to balance account received from d. h. pointer note for days to balance account. . what is meant by _posting_? explain the operation of posting, using one of the above transactions as an example. . in what particular does posting from the cash book differ from posting from the journal? explain this difference, and illustrate with two examples. . what is a _trial balance_, and for what purpose is it taken? what does a trial balance prove? . what are _cash discounts_? are cash discounts a proper charge against capital, or against revenue? why? . name two ways of treating cash discounts in the ledger, based on your answer to the previous question. . illustrate two methods of entering cash discounts allowed in the cash book; illustrate the customer's ledger account as it would appear after posting the credit, from each of these entries. which method, in your opinion, most clearly shows how the account was settled? . should cash discounts earned be credited against the cost of goods purchased, or credited to profits? why? . what is a _profit and loss account_? what does the balance of this account represent? how frequently is the balance of profit and loss account transferred? to what accounts, in a proprietorship or partnership? in a corporation? . what is a _trading account_, and what is its purpose? with what classes of items should trading account be debited and credited? how is the trading account constructed? . what is meant by the _turnover_? how can the amount of the turnover be shown in the trading account? . what is a _manufacturing account_, and of what items is it made up? what does the balance of the manufacturing account represent? . what is a _merchandise inventory account_, and when and for what purpose is it used? when are the books said to be closed? . what is a _balance sheet_? in what order should the asset and liability accounts be listed on the balance sheet? . from the following trial balance prepare trading account, profit and loss account, and balance sheet. trial balance proprietor (investment) $ , . bill payable , . accounts payable , . bank $ , . accounts receivable , . bills receivable , . merchandise inventory , . furniture and fixtures . purchases , . expense , . discount on sales . interest . sales , . cash . ---------- ---------- $ , . $ , . inventory at end of period $ , . . . give examples of the proper journal entries when the following transactions occur in respect to notes receivable: when a note is received; when a note is paid; when a note is collected by the bank. . complete the explanations of the following entries, and state under what circumstances they would be made: bank $ . interest . bills discounted $ . bills discounted . bank . bills receivable . bills discounted , . bank , . . make the proper journal entries under the following circumstances: when a note is past due; when a note is renewed; when a renewed note has been discounted. . we buy from marshall field & company a bill of dry goods, amounting to $ . , and give them our note @ days in payment. what entry? . marshall field & company discount our note, and it is presented for payment by the continental national bank. we give our check in payment of the note, with interest @ %. how much do we pay, and what is the entry? . we borrow $ , . from our bank on our note @ days, interest @ %. what is the exact entry? . when a draft has been accepted how should it be treated on the books? . what is the proper entry when a customer pays our sight draft? . we draw on george johnson for $ . @ days sight. he accepts the draft, which we discount at our bank days later, the bank charging us % interest. what entries are necessary? . we accept a draft from john v. farwell & co. for $ . payable in days. what is the entry on our books? what is the entry on the books of farwell & co.? . we pay a sight draft drawn by cable piano co. what entry? review questions on the subject of single proprietors' and partners' accounts . what books are generally used in a small retail business? what is a blotter, and how is it used? . what is the special feature of the journal ruled ledger, and of what advantage is such a ledger in a retail business? . in a single proprietorship, what does the proprietor's account represent? . name one good reason why withdrawals of the proprietor should be charged to a personal account. . when the books are closed, what account absorbs the profit or loss? . what is meant by _taking an inventory_, and what processes are involved? . should an inventory be based on _cost_ or on _selling_ prices? why? . what is meant by _closing the books_? . in a retail business, such as is discussed in the text, what regular accounts are closed into trading account? . what does the balance of trading account represent? into what account is this balance closed? . what does the difference between assets and liabilities, as shown by the balance sheet, represent? in a single proprietorship, with what ledger account does this balance agree? . george thompson commences business to-day, with assets consisting of cash, $ , . ; an account due from henry watson, $ . . his transactions consist of purchases on account as follows: from henry karl & co. $ . " white & black . purchases for cash . sales for cash . " on account . paid on account to karl & co. . collected on account . paid for sundry expenses . inventory at close of business . open the books, enter the transactions in journal, cash book, and sales book, and make all postings to the ledger. prepare a trial balance, at the close of business, prepare a trading account, close into profit and loss, and close net profits into proprietor's account, prepare a balance sheet, . what is a sales ticket, and for what purpose is it used? . what benefit is derived from keeping departmental purchase and sales records. . prepare suitable forms for departmental purchase and sales records for a business divided into three departments. . what is a partnership? . what is the purpose of a partnership agreement? . by what names are the different classes of partners known? . on what basis are the profits of a partnership usually divided? . how are the _personal_ and _capital_ accounts of partners distinguished? what is the purpose of each of these accounts? . when the books of a partnership are closed, into what accounts are the _revenue_ accounts closed? into what accounts is the _profit_ and _loss_ account closed? . when the business of a partnership is sold, or liquidated, how are the net assets divided? . if any part of the assets, other than the goods in which the firm is trading, brings a price above cost, what journal entry is necessary? what entry if the price is below cost? . when partners invest unequal amounts in the business, what is the usual method of adjusting the inequality? . white, black, and brown who have been conducting business under a partnership agreement, decide to liquidate the business and dissolve the partnership. in the final settlement white agrees to accept the accounts receivable, which amount to $ , . , in part payment of the amount due him, provided % is first charged off to cover doubtful accounts. what journal entry is necessary? . h. w. hackett has been conducting a grocery business. his books have been kept by double entry, and were last closed december st, . at that time, his net worth was $ , . . april th, , he sold to john ransom a half interest in the business for $ , . . ransom made a cash payment of $ , . , and gave his note for $ . payable on demand, with interest at %. the profits for the four months ending april th, , (estimated from the books), were $ . . this amount was to be allowed to mr. hackett and placed to his credit on the books. make journal entries for the allowed profit and for the sale of the half interest. the books are not to be closed at the beginning of the new partnership. . prepare in proper form a solution of the problem given in art. , page . . prepare a complete solution of the problem given in art. , page . review questions on the subject of corporation accounts . into what two general classes are corporations divided? name and give examples of two classes of private corporations. . how are joint stock companies distinguished from corporations? in what ways are they like corporations? . how are corporations created? name common requirements of the certificate of incorporation or application for a corporate charter. . what is meant by a _stockholder_, and how may a person become a stockholder in a corporation? what is a _stock certificate_? . what is meant by the _capitalization of a corporation_? what is the difference in meaning of the terms _capital_ and _capital stock_, as these terms are usually understood? . define the two principal classes of stock issued by corporations. name and define two kinds of preferred stock. what is meant by the term _treasury stock_? _watered stock?_ . by whom are the affairs of a corporation managed? from whom do they receive their authority? has a director, as such, the power individually to bind the corporation? . what special powers have the directors? in what way do the powers of officers and directors differ? . name five of the necessary powers of a corporation, as such. name three of the rights of an individual stockholder. . what is meant by a _dividend_? by whose authority are dividends declared? what is your understanding of the term _stock dividend_? . what class of records is implied by the term _corporation bookkeeping_? name, and describe briefly, the books used in corporation bookkeeping. . give examples of the proper entries on the books, under the following conditions: (a) the entire capital stock ($ , . ) is subscribed and paid for in cash. (b) only $ , . of the stock is subscribed, but this is paid in cash. it is not desired to show on the books more capital than is paid in. (c) cash subscriptions are received for $ , . of an authorized issue of $ , . , but it is desired to show the total capitalization on the books. (d) the entire capital stock ($ , . ) is subscribed but not paid in. it is desired to show the capital stock, without opening accounts in the general books with individual subscribers. (e) a payment of % is called for on the above stock. . a corporation is organized with a capitalization of $ , . to take over the business of henry thompson. he is to pay his liabilities out of his assets, and transfer the balance of the property belonging to the business to the corporation, receiving $ , . full paid stock. the following discloses the condition of his affairs: assets cash in bank $ . accounts receivable . real estate . merchandise inventory . furniture and fixtures . $ . -------- liabilities bills payable . . -------- -------- balance $ . what is the proper entry on the books of the corporation, the balance of the stock being unsubscribed? . a corporation agrees to purchase a mine, issuing $ , , . full paid stock in payment. the owner of the mine, to whom the stock is issued, agrees to donate to the company $ , . of his stock to provide working capital. subsequently, $ , . of this stock is sold at % of its face value; $ , . at %; $ , . at %; and $ , . at par. working capital is maintained at the amount realized from the sale of the donated stock. make all entries to show these transactions, it being understood that all subscriptions are paid in cash. . if the stock of a corporation sells at a premium, how would you enter the amount received above par? to what account would you transfer the premium when closing the books? . what would be the entries in the stock books to record the transactions shown in questions and ? . a promoter organizes a corporation to develope a mine, receiving as his fee $ , . in stock. what are the entries on the books of the corporation? . the profits of a corporation with a paid up capital of $ , . , are $ , . . the directors declare a cash dividend of %, and create a special surplus fund of $ , . . make all necessary entries. . the losses of the above corporation during the following year were $ , . . make proper entries, with full explanations. . the accumulated surplus of a corporation capitalized at $ , , . , with a paid up capital of $ , . , is $ , . ; the current profits are $ , . . the directors declare a cash dividend of %, and a stock dividend of %. make all entries to record these transactions on the general books of the corporation. . the following statistics are taken from the books of a corporation: capital stock $ , . merchandise inventory , . machinery , . undivided profits . profit and loss (credit) , . it is desired to set aside a special surplus fund as a machinery depreciation reserve, the depreciation being figured at % a year, and to pay a dividend of %. what entries are necessary? . parsons, young, and searles are partners and decide to form a corporation with capital stock of $ , . , which is to be issued as full paid stock in exchange for their present business. each partner is to receive stock in proportion to his interest in the present business. the balance sheet of the partnership is as follows: assets cash $ , . bills receivable , . accounts receivable , . merchandise , . ---------- total $ , . liabilities bills payable , . accounts payable , . parsons , . young , . searles , . ---------- total , . make entries on books of the partnership. make entries on books of the corporation. . hoadley and stockton are partners and desire to incorporate a company. the stock is to be divided equally between hoadley and stockton after giving hopper $ , . . the balance sheet of the partnership is as follows: assets cash $ . accounts receivable , . merchandise . ---------- total $ , . liabilities accounts payable . bills payable . hoadley , . stockton , . ---------- total , . make all necessary entries on the books of the partnership. make open entries on the books of the new company. . the national manufacturing co. has an authorized capital of $ , . of which $ , . is paid up and $ , . , unsubscribed. it is decided to permit employes to subscribe for $ , . of the stock by paying per cent in cash, all dividends declared to be applied to the payment of subscriptions. what entries are made when this stock is subscribed for? a per cent dividend being declared at the end of the first year, what entry is required? . the atlas novelty co. has a capital stock of $ , . . all of the stock has been subscribed for, but only per cent has been paid. a surplus of $ , . has been accumulated. it is desired to reduce the stock to $ , . full paid. what is the necessary proceeding, and what entries are required? . a company has a capital stock of $ , . full paid, and a surplus of $ , . . a stockholder who owns $ , . stock in the company wishes to dispose of his stock and, to secure cash, offers to sell it to the company at par. his offer is accepted and the stock purchased, but the company does not wish to reduce its capitalization. what is the entry? . what is a reserve? give three examples showing purposes for which reserves are created. . what is a _reserve fund_? why is a reserve fund treated as a liability? . what is a _sinking fund_, and what is its purpose? . what is a _bond_? describe three classes of bonds. . when bonds are issued, by what account are they represented in the ledger? does this account represent an asset, or a liability? . if bonds are sold at a premium, to what account is the premium credited? would it be correct to credit this premium to profit and loss? why? . to what account is the interest paid on bonds charged? when bonds are sold with accrued interest, which is paid by the purchaser, what disposition is made of the interest received? what disposition should be made of expense incurred in the sale of bonds? . what is the most important point to be kept in mind when devising a system of accounts for a manufacturing business? . from what items is the manufacturing account made up? what does the balance of manufacturing account represent? . describe, briefly, a method of obtaining the necessary statistics to make up the manufacturing account for a business in which but one line of goods are manufactured? what is the object of sectionalizing the pay-roll by departments? . what is an _expense inventory account_; when is it used; and how is it made up? when is an expense liability considered; by what account is it represented; and how is the account made up? . what is meant by a _balance ledger_? illustrate a form of balance ledger. . for what purpose is an invoice register used? explain the general plan of such a book. . make up a manufacturing account from the data given on page . show the journal entries used in making up this account. review questions on the subject of the voucher system . state, in your own words, the generally accepted meaning of the term _voucher_, as used in business. . what is the nature of a journal voucher, and for what purpose is it used? . prepare a form of voucher to be accompanied by a separate check. . prepare a form of voucher check. . for what book is the voucher register substituted? what book is dispensed with? . explain the purpose of the _sundries_ and _unpaid voucher_ columns in the voucher register. . with what _controlling_ account must the total of unpaid vouchers as shown by the register, agree? explain the sources of debits and credits posted to this controlling account. . prepare a form of voucher register, suitable for a manufacturing business using three classes of raw material, operating five shops, and selling the product through traveling salesmen. . what are the necessary steps in _auditing_, _executing_, and _registering_ vouchers? how should audited vouchers be filed? . describe the routine in paying vouchers, and in filing invoices and paid vouchers. how should vouchers be indexed? . what is the distinguishing feature of the _unit system_ of voucher accounting? . if a voucher pays items to be charged to three accounts, how many copies are required and how is the distribution shown? . explain the method of filing and recording vouchers in the unit system. how are monthly totals recorded? . what routine should be followed to carry the totals to the ledger? . describe, and illustrate with the necessary forms, a system in which a purchase ledger and invoice file are combined. . what is a private ledger and for what purposes is it used? . name some of the special advantages of the private ledger. . describe, briefly, the operation of the private ledger, giving an example. . describe, and illustrate with journal entries, in what way a manufacturer can make use of the private ledger. . transactions of the following classes are recorded on the books of dane & whitney: purchases on account sales on account paid for rent paid dane's salary sales for cash whitney advanced cash to the business. what items, in the above, should be recorded in the private ledger? . in charting the accounts of a business, into what three main groups should they be divided? give an example of the subdivision of one of these groups. . prepare a chart of the accounts of a small trading business conducted by a partnership. explain this chart. . prepare a chart of the accounts of a manufacturing business making three classes of goods. . what are the principal characteristics of a chart of accounts of a manufacturing business? . using the above manufacturing chart, explain how profits are traced from group to group until they reach the surplus account. index a acceptances, definition of, accommodation note, definition of, account books classes of, definition of, account current, definition of, account sales, definition of, accounting charts, - explanation of chart, of manufacturing business, of small trading business, accounts classification of, definition of, merchandise, merchandise inventory, nominal, personal, profit and loss, purchase, real, representative, sales, accrued interest, definition of, acknowledgment, definition of, ad valorem, definition of, administrator, definition of, adventure, definition of, advice, definition of, affidavit, definition of, agent, definition of, agreement, definition of, allowance, definition of, annual statement, definition of, annuity, definition of, antedate, definition of, appraise, definition of, appreciation, definition of, approval sales, definition of, arbitrate, definition of, articles, definition of, assets definition of, fictitious, fixed, floating, passive, assign, definition of, assignee, definition of, assignment, definition of, assignor, definition of, association, definition of, attachment, definition of, audit, definition of, auxiliary, definition of, average, definition of, b balance, definition of, , balance sheet, , definition of, balance of trade, definition of, bale, definition of, bank balance, definition of, bank deposits, check books, depositing cash, indorsement of checks, pass book, signature card, bank draft, definition of, bank note, definition of, bank pass book, definition of, bankrupt, definition of, bill, definition of, bill of exchange, definition of, bill head, definition of, bill of lading, definition of, bill of sale, definition of, bills payable, definition of, bills receivable, definition of, bills receivable and bills payable, blanks, definition of, blotter, definition of, bond liability, bonded goods, definition of, bonds, classes of, definition of, expense of issue of, interest on, premium on, bonus, definition of, book account, definition of, bookkeeping for corporation, definition and objects of, methods of, brand, definition of, broker, definition of, brokerage, definition of, bullion, definition of, c call loans, definition of, cancel, definition of, capital, definition of, capital of corporation, capital stock, definition of, capitalization, capital, capital stock, treasury stock, watered stock, cartage, definition of, cash book, posting from, cash discounts, allowed, earned, entering in cash book, cash dividend, declaring, cash sales, definition of, center-ruled ledger, certificate of stock, definition of, certified check, definition of, charges, definition of, chart, definition of, charter, definition of, charting the accounts, check, definition of, check books, clearing house, definition of, closing an account, definition of, collateral, definition of, commercial abbreviations, commercial paper, definition of, commercial signs and characters, commercial terms, dictionary of, commission, definition of, commission merchant, definition of, common law, definition of, common stock, definition of, company, definition of, compromise, definition of, consideration, definition of, consignee, definition of, consul, definition of, contingent assets and liabilities, definition of, contingent fund, definition of, contra, definition of, contract, definition of, conveyance, definition of, copyright, definition of, corporation accounts, - bonds, bookkeeping, changing books from partnership to corporation, closing transfer books, entries on corporation books, entry of stock for promotion, reserves and their treatment, stock donated to employes, when stock subscriptions are never full paid, surplus and dividends, treatment of loss, corporation bookkeeping, books required, entries in stock books, opening entries, corporations capitalization, classification of, creation of, definition of, dividends, management of, corporations management of powers of corporations, powers of directors and officers, stockholders' rights, stock certificate, stockholders, stock issued for promotion, stock subscriptions, counterfeit, definition of, coupon, definition of, coupon bond, definition of, credentials, definition of, credit, rules for, creditor, definition of, cumulative preferred stock, definition of, currency, definition of, d day book, debenture, definition of, debit definition of, rules for, deed, definition of, defalcation, definition of, deferred bonds, definition of, delivery receipt definition of, demand note, definition of, departmental records, deposit, definition of, depositing cash, depreciation, definition of, discount, definition of, discount and exchange, discounts allowed, dishonor, definition of, dividend, definition of, dividend book, dormant partners, double entry, advantages of, books used in, principle of, doubtful, definition of, draft definition of, journalizing, drawer, definition of, drayage, definition of, due bill, definition of, dunning, definition of, duplicate, definition of, duty, definition of, e earnest, definition of, embezzlement, definition of, exchange, definition of, expense account, heat and light, insurance, interest, labor, out freight and express, rent, salaries, taxes, exports, definition of, extend, definition of, f face value, definition of, facsimile, definition of, fictitious assets, example of, advertising, financial statement, definition of, fiscal, definition of, fixed assets definition of, examples of, furniture and fixtures, horses and wagons, real estate, fixed charges, definition of, fixtures, definition of, floating assets, examples of, accounts, cash, merchandise, notes or bills receivable, folio, definition of, footing, definition of, foreign exchange, definition of, forms account sales, acknowledgment, adjustment journal and departmental purchase book, balance sheet, bill, bill of exchange, bill of lading, bill of sale, bills payable, bills receivable, cash book, , cash book including bank account, cash book with center column for particulars, cash book with column for private ledger accounts, cash disbursement book, center-ruled ledger, , - certificate of stock, chart of profit and loss accounts, , check register, classified ledger accounts, - closing entries, trading and profit and loss account, combined purchase ledger and voucher system, daily report, day book, day book or blotter, delivery receipt, demand note, departmental sales book, , departmental sales and purchase books, draft, endorsement, file showing method of indexing vouchers, installment certificate, inventory sheet, invoice register, journal, journal entries recording all transactions, - journal ruled retail ledger, - journal showing opening entries for partnership, journal voucher for adjusting entries, lease, ledger accounts, classified, - ledger with journal ruling, manufacturing account, manufacturing ledger with closing entries, - merchandise inventory, monthly recapitulation and distribution sheet, opening entry in journal, order, order book, pay-roll, power of attorney, profit and loss account, promissory note, proprietor's account, purchase book, purchase ledger, receipt, retail ledger, journal ruled, - sales book, scale book, signature card, special account, statement, statement of incorporation on stock plan, trading account, transfer book, trial balance, , , unit system of voucher accounting, monthly recapitulation for, voucher, voucher, back of, showing distribution, voucher with check attached, duplicate, voucher check in loose-leaf form, duplicate, voucher check that requires no folding, voucher check, triplicate form of, voucher and check combined, voucher distribution sheet, voucher register showing entries, voucher registers, typical forms of, voucher to be receipted and returned, vouchers paid, card index of, freight, definition of, g gain, definition of, gauging, definition of, going business, definition of, goodwill, definition of, gross, definition of, gross profit, transfer of, guarantee or guaranty, definition of, guaranteed stock, h honor, definition of, hypothecate, definition of, i import, definition of, income, definition of, income bonds, definition of, indemnity, definition of, indorse, definition of, indorsee, definition of, indorsement of checks, indorser, definition of, infringe, definition of, installment, definition of, installment book, insolvent, definition of, instant, definition of, insurance policy, definition of, interest, definition of, inventory, definition of, investment, definition of, invoice, definition of, invoice or bill, j job lot, definition of, jobber, definition of, joint stock, definition of, joint stock companies, journal, posting from, journal vouchers, journalizing drafts, when we accept draft, when discounting time draft, when we pay an acceptance, when we pay a sight draft, when our sight draft is paid, journalizing notes, when collected by bank, when discounted, when discounted note is not paid, when note drawing interest is discounted, when note drawing interest is paid, when note is past due, when note is renewed, when our note has been discounted, when paid, when received, when renewed note has been discounted, when we discount our note, when we give or pay note, when we pay for goods with our note, when we pay our note with interest, when we renew a note, when we renew our discounted note, journalizing, rules for, l leakage, definition of, lease, definition of, ledger, arrangement of accounts in, ledger accounts, sample, , ledger index, legal tender, definition of, lessee, definition of, letter of advice, definition of, letter of credit, definition of, liabilities, definition of, license, definition of, liquidation, definition of, loss and gain, definition of, m maker, definition of, manifest, definition of, manufacturing account, manufacturing and cost accounts, accounts used factory assets, factory expenses, summary accounts, balance ledger, expense inventory, expense liability, manufacturing data, pay-roll records, routine followed, sample transactions, maturity, definition of, mercantile agency, definition of, merchandise, definition of, merchandise account, merchandise inventory account, minute book, money order, definition of, monopoly, definition of, mortgage, definition of, mortgagor, definition of, n negotiable, definition of, net, definition of, net profit, transfer of, nominal, definition of, nominal account, nominal partners, non-cumulative preferred stock, notes, journalizing, o obligation, definition of, open account, definition of, opening entries, definition of, option, definition of, order book, orders, definition of, original 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print and punctuation errors were corrected. charter and supplemental charter of the hudson's bay company the royal charter for incorporating the hudson's bay company. a.d. . charles the second, by the grace of god, king of england, scotland, france, and ireland, defender of the faith, &c. to all to whom these presents shall come, greeting: whereas our dear and entirely beloved cousin, prince rupert, count palatine of the rhine, duke of bavaria and cumberland, &c. christopher, duke of albemarle, william, earl of craven, henry, lord arlington, anthony, lord ashley, sir john robinson, and sir robert vyner, knights and baronets, sir peter colleton, baronet, sir edward hungerford, knight of the bath, sir paul neele, knight, sir john griffith and sir philip carteret, knights, james hayes, john kirke, francis millington, william prettyman, john fenn, esquires, and john portman, citizen and goldsmith of london, have, at their own great cost and charges, undertaken an expedition for hudson's bay in the north-west part of america, for the discovery of a new passage into the south sea, and for the finding some trade for furs, minerals, and other considerable commodities, and by such their undertaking, have already made such discoveries as do encourage them to proceed further in pursuance of their said design, by means whereof there may probably arise very great advantage to us and our kingdom. and whereas the said undertakers, for their further encouragement in the said design, have humbly besought us to incorporate them, and grant unto them, and their successors, the sole trade and commerce of all those seas, streights, bays, rivers, lakes, creeks, and sounds, in whatsoever latitude they shall be, that lie within the entrance of the streights commonly called hudson's streights, together with all the lands, countries and territories, upon the coasts and confines of the seas, streights, bays, lakes, rivers, creeks and sounds, aforesaid, which are not now actually possessed by any of our subjects, or by the subjects of any other christian prince or state. now know ye, that we being desirous to promote all endeavours tending to the publick good of our people, and to encourage the said undertaking, have of our especial grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion, given, granted, ratified, and confirmed, and by these presents for us, our heirs and successors, do give, grant, ratify and confirm, unto our said cousin prince rupert, christopher, duke of albemarle, william, earl of craven, henry, lord arlington, anthony, lord ashley, sir john robinson, sir robert vyner, sir peter colleton, sir edward hungerford, sir paul neele, sir john griffith, and sir philip carteret, james hayes, john kirke, francis millington, william prettyman, john fenn, and john portman, that they, and such others as shall be admitted into the said society as is hereafter expressed, shall be one body corporate and politique, in deed and in name, by the name of the governor and company of adventurers of england, trading into hudson's bay, and them by the name of the governor and company of adventurers of england, trading into hudson's bay, one body corporate and politique, in deed and in name, really and fully for ever, for us, our heirs and successors, we do make ordain, constitute, establish, confirm, and declare, by these presents, and that by the same name of governor and company of adventurers of england, trading into hudson's bay, they shall have perpetual succession, and that they and their successors, by the name of the governor and company of adventurers of england, trading into hudson's bay, be, and at all times hereafter shall be, personable and capable in law to have, purchase, receive, possess, enjoy and retain, lands, rents, privileges, liberties, jurisdictions, franchises, and hereditaments, of what kind, nature or quality soever they be, to them and their successors; and also to give, grant, demise, alien, assign and dispose lands, tenements and hereditaments, and to do and execute all and singular other things by the same name that to them shall or may appertain to do. and that they, and their successors, by the name of the governor and company of adventurers of england, trading into hudson's bay, may plead, and be impleaded, answer, and be answered, defend, and be defended, in whatsoever courts and places, before whatsoever judges and justices, and other persons and officers, in all and singular actions, pleas, suits, quarrels, causes and demands, whatsoever, of whatsoever kind, nature or sort, in such manner and form as any other. our liege people of this our realm of england, being persons able and capable in law, may, or can have, purchase, receive, possess, enjoy, retain, give, grant, demise, alien, assign, dispose, plead, defend, and be defended, do, permit, and execute. and that the said governor and company of adventurers of england, trading into hudson's bay, and their successors, may have a common seal to serve for all the causes and businesses of them and their successors, and that it shall and may be lawful to the said governor and company, and their successors, the same seal, from time to time, at their will and pleasure, to break, change, and to make anew, or alter, as to them shall seem expedient. and further we will, and by these presents for us, our heirs and successors, we do ordain, that there shall be from henceforth one of the same company to be elected and appointed in such form as hereafter in these presents is expressed, which shall be called the governor of the said company. and that the said governor and company shall or may elect seven of their number in such form as hereafter in these presents is expressed, which shall be called the committee of the said company, which committee of seven, or any three of them, together with the governor or deputy-governor of the said company for the time being, shall have the direction of the voyages of and for the said company, and the provision of the shipping and merchandizes thereunto belonging, and also the sale of all merchandizes, goods, and other things returned, in all or any the voyages or ships of or for the said company, and the managing and handling of all other business, affairs and things, belonging to the said company. and we will, ordain, and grant by these presents for us, our heirs and successors, unto the said governor and company, and their successors, that they the said governor and company, and their successors, shall from henceforth for ever be ruled, ordered and governed, according to such manner and form as is hereafter in these presents expressed, and not otherwise: and that they shall have, hold, retain, and enjoy the grants, liberties, privileges, jurisdictions and immunities, only hereafter in these presents granted and expressed, and no other. and for the better execution of our will and grant in this behalf, we have assigned, nominated, constituted, and made, and by these presents for us, our heirs and successors, we do assign, nominate, constitute and make, our said cousin, prince rupert, to be the first and present governor of the said company, and to continue in the said office from the date of these presents until the th november then next following, if he, the said prince rupert, shall so long live, and so until a new governor be chosen by the said company in form hereafter expressed. and also we have assigned, nominated and appointed, and by these presents for us, our heirs and successors, we do assign, nominate and constitute, the said sir john robinson, sir robert vyner, sir peter colleton, james hayes, john kirke, francis millington, and john portman, to be the seven first and present committees of the said company, from the date of these presents until the said th day of november then also next following, and so until new committees shall be chosen in form hereafter expressed. and further we will and grant by these presents, for us, our heirs and successors, unto the said governor and company and their successors, that it shall and may be lawful to and for the said governor and company for the time being, or the greater part of them present at any publick assembly commonly called, the court general to be holden for the said company, the governor of the said company being always one, from time to time to elect, nominate and appoint one of the said company to be deputy to the said governor; which deputy shall take a corporal oath, before the governor and three or more of the committee of the said company for the time being, well, truly, and faithfully to execute his said office of deputy to the governor of the said company, and after his oath so taken, shall and may from time to time, in the absence of the said governor, exercise and execute the office of governor of the said company, in such sort as the said governor ought to do. and further we will and grant by these presents, for us, our heirs and successors, unto the said governor and company of adventurers of england, trading into hudson's bay, and their successors, that they, or the greater part of them, whereof the governor for the time being, or his deputy, to be one, from time to time, and at all times hereafter, shall and may have authority and power, yearly and every year, between the first and last day of november, to assemble and meet together in some convenient place, to be appointed from time to time by the governor, or in his absence by the deputy of the said governor for the time being, and that they being so assembled, it shall and may be lawful to and for the said governor or deputy of the said governor, and the said company for the time being, or the greater part of them which then shall happen to be present, whereof the governor of the said company, or his deputy for the time being to be one, to elect and nominate one of the said company, which shall be governor of the said company for one whole year, then next following, which person being so elected and nominated to be governor of the said company, as is aforesaid, before he be admitted to the execution of the said office, shall take a corporal oath before the last governor, being his predecessor or his deputy, and any three or more of the committee of the said company for the time being, that he shall from time to time, well and truly execute the office of governor of the said company, in all things concerning the same; and that immediately after the same oath so taken, he shall and may execute and use the said office of governor of the said company, for one whole year from thence next following. and in like sort we will and grant, that as well every one of the above named to be of the said company or fellowship, as all others hereafter to be admitted, or free of the said company, shall take a corporal oath before the governor of the said company, or his deputy for the time being, to such effect as by the said governor and company, or the greater part of them, in any publick court to be held for the said company, shall be in reasonable and legal manner set down and devised, before they shall be allowed or admitted to trade or traffick as a freeman of the said company. and further we will and grant by these presents, for us, our heirs and successors, unto the said governor and company, and their successors, that the said governor, or deputy governor, and the rest of the said company, and their successors for the time being, or the greater part of them, whereof the governor or deputy governor, from time to time, to be one, shall and may from time to time, and at all times hereafter, have power and authority yearly, and every year, between the first and last day of november, to assemble and meet together in some convenient place, from time to time to be appointed by the said governor of the said company, or in his absence by his deputy; and that they being so assembled, it shall and may be lawful to and for the said governor or his deputy, and the company for the time being, or the greater part of them, which then shall happen to be present, whereof the governor of the said company, or his deputy for the time being to be one, to elect and nominate seven of the said company, which shall be a committee of the said company, for one whole year from then next ensuing, which persons being so elected and nominated to be a committee of the said company as aforesaid, before they be admitted to the execution of their office, shall take a corporal oath, before the governor or his deputy, and any three or more of the said committee of the said company, being their last predecessors, that they, and every of them, shall well and faithfully perform their said office of committees in all things concerning the same, and that immediately after the said oath so taken, they shall and may execute and use their said office of committees of the said company, for one whole year from thence next following. and moreover, our "will and pleasure is, and by these presents, for us, our heirs and successors, we do grant unto the said governor and company, and their successors, that when, and as often as it shall happen, the governor or deputy governor of the said company for the time being, at any time within one year after that he shall be nominated, elected, and sworn to the office of the governor of the said company, as is aforesaid, to die or to be removed from the said office, which governor or deputy governor not demeaning himself well in his said office, we will to be removeable at the pleasure of the rest of the said company, or the greater part of them which shall be present at their publick assemblies, commonly called, their general courts holden for the said company, that then, and so often it shall and may be lawful to and for the residue of the said company for the time being, or the greater part of them, within a convenient time, after the death or removing of any such governor, or deputy governor to assemble themselves in such convenient place as they shall think fit, for the election of the governor or deputy governor of the said company; and that the said company, or the greater part of them, being then and there present, shall and may, then and there, before their departure from the said place, elect and nominate one other of the said company, to be governor or deputy governor for the said company, in the place and stead of him that so died or was removed; which person being so elected and nominated to the office of governor or deputy governor of the said company, shall have and exercise the said office, for and during the residue of the said year, taking first a corporal oath, as is aforesaid, for the due execution thereof; and this to be done from time to time, so often as the case shall so require. and also, our will and pleasure is, and by these presents, for us, our heirs and successors, we do grant unto the said governor and company, that when, and as often as it shall happen any person or persons of the committee of the said company for the time being, at any time within one year next after that they or any of them shall be nominated, elected and sworn to the office of committee of the said company as is aforesaid, to die or to be removed from the said office, which committees not demeaning themselves well in their said office, we will, to be removeable at the pleasure of the said governor and company, or the greater part of them, whereof the governor of the said company for the time being, or his deputy, to be one; that then, and so often, it shall and may be lawful to and for the said governor, and the rest of the company for the time being, or the greater part of them, whereof the governor for the time being, or his deputy, to be one, within convenient time after the death or removing of any of the said committee, to assemble themselves in such convenient place as is or shall be usual and accustomed for the election of the governor of the said company, or where else the governor of the said company for the time being, or his deputy, shall appoint. and that the said governor and company, or the greater part of them, whereof the governor for the time being, or his deputy, to be one, being then and there present, shall, and may, then and there, before their departure from the said place, elect and nominate one or more of the said company, to be of the committee of the said company in the place and stead of him or them that so died, or were or was so removed, which person or persons so nominated and elected to the office of committee of the said company, shall have and exercise the said office, for and during the residue of the said year, taking first a corporal oath as is aforesaid, for the due execution thereof, and this to be done from time to time, so often as the case shall require. and to the end the said governor and company of adventurers of england trading into hudson's bay, may be encouraged to undertake, and effectually to prosecute the said design, of our more especial grace, certain knowledge, the mere motion, we have given, granted and confirmed, and by these presents, for us, our heirs and successors, do give, grant, and confirm, unto the said governor and company, and their successors, the sole trade and commerce of all those seas, streights, bays, rivers, lakes, creeks, and sounds, in whatsoever latitude they shall be, that lie within the entrance of the streights commonly called hudson's streights, together with all the lands and territories upon the countries, coasts and confines of the seas, bays, lakes, rivers, creeks, and sounds aforesaid, that are not already actually possessed by or granted to any of our subjects or possessed by the subjects of any other christian prince or state, with the fishing of all sorts of fish, whales, sturgeons, and all other royal fishes, in the seas, bays, inlets, and rivers within the premisses, and the fish therein taken, together with the royalty of the sea upon the coasts within the limits aforesaid, and all mines royal, as well discovered as not discovered, of gold, silver, gems, and precious stones, to be found or discovered within the territories, limits, and places aforesaid, and that the said land be from henceforth reckoned and reputed as one of our plantations or colonies in america, called _ruperts land_. and further, we do by these presents, for us, our heirs and successors, make, create and constitute, the said governor and company for the time being, and their successors, the true and absolute lords and proprietors, of the same territory, limits and places aforesaid, and of all other the premisses, saving always, the faith, allegiance and sovereign dominion due to us, our heirs and successors, for the same to have, hold, possess and enjoy the said territory, limits, and places, and all and singular other the premisses, hereby granted as aforesaid, with their, and every of their rights, members, jurisdictions, prerogatives, royalties, and appurtenances whatsoever, to them the said governor and company, and their successors for ever, to be holden of us, our heirs and successors, as of our manor of east greenwich in our county of kent, in free and common soccage, and not in capite or by knight's service; yeilding and paying yearly to us, our heirs and successors, for the same, two elks and two black beavers, whensoever, and as often as we, our heirs and successors, shall happen to enter into the said countries, territories and regions hereby granted. and further, our will and pleasure is, and by these presents, for us, our heirs and successors, we do grant unto the said governor and company, _and to their successors, that it shall and may be_ lawful, to and for the said governor and company, and their successors, from time to time, to assemble themselves, for or about any the matters, causes, affairs, or businesses of the said trade, in any place or places for the same convenient, within our dominions or elsewhere, and there to hold court for the said company, and the affairs thereof; and that also, it shall and may be lawful to and for them, and the greater part of them, being so assembled, and that shall then and there be present, in any such place or places whereof the governor or his deputy for the time being to be one, to make, ordain, and constitute, such, and so many reasonable laws, constitutions, orders and ordinances, as to them, or the greater part of them being then and there present, shall seem necessary and convenient for the good government of the said company, and of all governors of colonies, forts and plantations, factors, masters, mariners, and other officers employed or to be employed, in any of the territories and lands aforesaid, and in any of their voyages; and for the better advancement and continuance of the said trade, or traffic and plantations, and the same laws, constitutions, orders and ordinances so made, to put in use and execute accordingly, and at their pleasure to revoke and alter the same, or any of them, as the occasion shall require: and that the said governor and company, so often as they shall make, ordain, or establish, any such laws, constitutions, orders, and ordinances, in such form as aforesaid, shall and may lawfully impose, ordain, limit and provide, such pains, penalties and punishments upon all offenders, contrary to such laws, constitutions, orders and ordinances, or any of them, as to the said governor and company for the time being, or the greater part of them, then and there being present, the said governor or his deputy being always one, shall seem necessary, requisite, or convenient for the observation of the same laws, constitutions, orders and ordinances; and the same fines and amerciaments shall and may by their officers and servants, from time to time to be appointed for that purpose levy, take and have, to the use of the said governor and company, and their successors, without the impediment of us, our heirs or successors, or of any the officers or ministers of us, our heirs or successors, and without any account therefore to us, our heirs or successors, to be made. all and singular which laws, constitutions, orders and ordinances, so as aforesaid, to be made, we will to be duly observed and kept under the pains and penalties therein to be contained; so always as the said laws, constitutions, orders and ordinances, pines and amerciaments, be reasonable, and not contrary or repugnant, but as near as may be agreeable to the laws, statutes or customs of this our realm. and furthermore, of our ample and abundant grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion, we have granted, and by these presents for us, our heirs and successors, do grant unto the said governor and company, and their successors, that they, and their successors, and their factors, servants and agents, for them, and on their behalf and not otherwise, shall for ever hereafter have, use and enjoy, not only the whole, entire, and only trade and traffick, and the whole, entire, and only liberty, use and privilege, of trading and trafficking to and from the territory, limits and places aforesaid; but also the whole and entire trade and traffick to and from all havens, bays, creeks, rivers, lakes and seas, into which they shall find entrance or passage by water or land out of the territories, limits or places, aforesaid; and to and with all the natives and people, inhabiting, or which shall inhabit within the territories, limits and places aforesaid; and to and with all other nations inhabiting any the coasts adjacent to the said territories, limits and places which are not already possessed as aforesaid, or whereof the sole liberty or privilege of trade and traffick is not granted to any other of our subjects. and we of our further royal favour, and of our more especial grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion, have granted, and by these presents for us, our heirs and successors, do grant to the said governor and company, and to their successors, that neither the said territories, limits and places, hereby granted as aforesaid, nor any part thereof, nor the islands, havens, ports, cities, towns or places, thereof, or therein contained, shall be visited, frequented or haunted, by any of the subjects of us, our heirs or successors, contrary to the true meaning of these presents, and by virtue of our prerogative royal, which we will not have in that behalf argued or brought into question; we streightly charge, command and prohibit, for us, our heirs and successors, all the subjects of us, our heirs and successors, of what degree or quality soever they be, that none of them directly or indirectly, do visit, haunt, frequent or trade, traffic or adventure, by way of merchandize, into, or from any the said territories, limits or places, hereby granted, or any, or either of them, other than the said governor and company, and such particular persons as now be, or hereafter shall be, of that company, their agents, factors, and assigns, unless it be by the licence and agreement of the said governor and company in writing first had and obtained, under their common seal, to be granted, upon pain that every such person or persons that shall trade or traffick into or from any of the countries, territories or limits aforesaid, other than the said governor and company, and their successors, shall incur our indignation, and the forfeiture, and the loss of the goods, merchandizes, and other things whatsoever, which so shall be brought into this realm of england, or any the dominions of the same, contrary to our said prohibition, or the purport or true meaning of these presents, for which the said governor and company shall find, take and seize, in other places out of our dominions, where the said company, their agents, factors or ministers, shall trade, traffick or inhabit, by virtue of these our letters patent, as also the ship and ships, with the furniture thereof, wherein such goods, merchandizes, and other things, shall be brought and found, the one half of all the said forfeitures to be to us, our heirs and successors, and the other half thereof we do by these presents clearly and wholly for us, our heirs and successors, give and grant unto the said governor and company, and their successors. and further, all and every the said offenders, for their said contempt, to suffer such other punishment as to us, our heirs and successors, for so high a contempt, shall seem meet and convenient, and not to be in anywise delivered until they, and every of them, shall become bound unto the said governor for the time being in the sum of one thousand pounds at the least, at no time then after to trade or traffick into any of the said places, seas, streights, bays, ports, havens or territories, aforesaid, contrary to our express commandment in that behalf set down and published. and further, of our more especial grace, we have condescended and granted, and by these presents for us, our heirs and successors, do grant unto the said governor and company, and their successors, that we, our heirs and successors, will not grant liberty, licence, or power, to any person or persons whatsoever, contrary to the tenor of these our letters patent, to trade, traffick or inhabit, unto or upon any the territories, limits or places, afore specified, contrary to the true meaning of these presents, without the consent of the said governor and company, or the most part of them. and, of our more abundant grace and favour to the said governor and company, we do hereby declare our will and pleasure to be, that if it shall so happen, that any of the persons free, or to be free of the said company of adventurers of england trading into hudson's bay, who shall, before the going forth of any ship or ships appointed for a voyage, or otherwise, promise or agree by writing under his or their hands, to adventure any sum or sums of money, towards the furnishing any provision, or maintenance of any voyage or voyages, set forth, or to be set forth, or intended or meant to be set forth, by the said governor and company, or the more part of them present at any publick assembly, commonly called their general court, shall not within the space of twenty days next after warning given to him or them, by the said governor or company, or their known officer or minister, bring in and deliver to the treasurer or treasurers appointed for the company, such sums of money as shall have been expressed and set down in writing, by the said person or persons, subscribed with the name of said adventurer or adventurers, that then, and at all times after, it shall and may be lawful to and for the said governor and company, or the more part of them present, whereof the said governor or his deputy to be one, at any of their general courts or general assemblies, to remove and disfranchise him or them, and every such person and persons at their wills and pleasures, and he or they so removed and disfranchised, not to be permitted to trade into the countries, territories, and limits aforesaid, or any part thereof, nor to have any adventure or stock going or remaining with or amongst the said company, without the special licence of the said governor and company, or the more part of them present at any general court, first had and obtained in that behalf, any thing before in these presents to the contrary thereof in anywise notwithstanding. and our will and pleasure is, and hereby we do also ordain, that it shall and may be lawful, to and for the said governor and company, or the greater part of them, whereof the governor for the time being, or his deputy to be one, to admit into, and to be of the said company, all such servants or factors, of or for the said company, and all such others, as to them, or the most part of them present, at any court held for the said company, the governor or his deputy being one, shall be thought fit and agreeable with the orders and ordinances made and to be made for the government of the said company. and further, our will and pleasure is, and by these presents, for us, our heirs and successors, we do grant unto the said governor and company, and to their successors, that it shall and may be lawful in all elections, and bye-laws to be made by the general court of the adventurers of the said company, that every person shall have a number of votes according to his stock, that is to say, for every hundred pounds by him subscribed or brought into the present stock, one vote, and that any of those that have subscribed less than one hundred pounds, may join their respective sums to make up one hundred pounds, and have one vote jointly for the same, and not otherwise. and further, of our especial grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion, we do for us, our heirs and successors, grant to and with the said governor and company of adventurers of england trading into hudson's bay, that all lands, islands, territories, plantations, forts, fortifications, factories, or colonies, where the said company's factories and trade are or shall be, within any the ports or places afore limited, shall be immediately and from henceforth, under the power and command of the said governor and company, their successors and assigns; saving the faith and allegiance due to be performed to us, our heirs and successors aforesaid; and that the said governor and company shall have liberty, full power and authority, to appoint and establish governors, and all other officers to govern them, and that the governor and his council of the several and respective places where the said company shall have plantations, forts, factories, colonies, or places of trade within any the countries, lands or territories hereby granted, may have power to judge all persons belonging to the said governor and company, or that shall live under them, in all causes, whether civil or criminal, according to the laws of this kingdom, and to execute justice accordingly. and, in case any crime or misdemeanor shall be committed in any of the said company's plantations, forts, factories, or places of trade within the limits aforesaid, where judicature cannot be executed for want of a governor and council there, then in such case it shall and may be lawful for the chief factor of that place and his council, to transmit the party, together with the offence, to such other plantation, factory, or fort, where there shall be a governor and council, where justice may be executed, or into this kingdom of england, as shall be thought most convenient, there to receive such punishment as the nature of his offence shall deserve. and moreover, our will and pleasure is, and by these presents, for us, our heirs and successors, we do give and grant unto the said governor and company, and their successors, free liberty and licence, in case they conceive it necessary, to send either ships of war, men or ammunition, unto any their plantations, forts, factories, or places of trade aforesaid, for the security and defence of the same, and to choose commanders and officers over them, and to give them power and authority, by commission under their common seal or otherwise, to continue or make peace or war with any prince or people whatsoever, that are not christians, in any places where the said company shall have any plantations, forts or factories, or adjacent thereunto, as shall be most for the advantage and benefit of the said governor and company, and of their trade; and also to right and recompense themselves upon the goods, estates or people of those parts, by whom the said governor and company shall sustain any injury, loss, or damage, or upon any other people whatsoever that shall any way, contrary to the intent of these presents, interrupt, wrong or injure them in their said trade, within the said places, territories, and limits, granted by this charter. and that it shall and may be lawful to and for the said governor and company, and their successors, from time to time, and at all times from henceforth, to erect and build such castles, fortifications, forts, garrisons, colonies or plantations, towns or villages, in any parts or places within the limits and bounds granted before in these presents, unto the said governor and company, as they in their discretion shall think fit and requisite, and for the supply of such as shall be needful and convenient, to keep and be in the same, to send out of this kingdom, to the said castles, forts, fortifications, garrisons, colonies, plantations, towns or villages, all kinds of cloathing, provision of victuals, ammunition, and implements, necessary for such purpose, paying the duties and customs for the same, as also to transport and carry over such number of men being willing thereunto, or not prohibited, as they shall think fit, and also to govern them in such legal and reasonable manner as the said governor and company shall think best, and to inflict punishment for misdemeanors, or impose such fines upon them for breach of their orders, as in these presents are formerly expressed. and further, our will and pleasure is, and by these presents, for us, our heirs and successors, we do grant unto the said governor and company, and to their successors, full power and lawful authority to seize upon the persons of all such english, or any other our subjects, which shall sail into hudson's bay, or inhabit in any of the countries, islands or territories hereby granted to the said governor and company, without their leave and license in that behalf first had and obtained, or that shall contemn or disobey their orders, and send them to england; and that all and every person or persons, being our subjects, any ways employed by the said governor and company, within any of the parts, places, and limits aforesaid, shall be liable unto and suffer such punishment for any offences by them committed in the parts aforesaid, as the president and council for the said governor and company there shall think fit, and the merit of the offence shall require, as aforesaid; and in case any person or persons being convicted and sentenced by the president and council of the said governor and company, in the countries, lands, or limits aforesaid, their factors or agents there, for any offence by them done, shall appeal from the same; that then and in such case, it shall and may be lawful to and for the said president and council, factors, or agents, to seize upon him or them, and to carry him or them home prisoners into england, to the said governor and company, there to receive such condign punishment as his cause shall require, and the law of this nation allow of: and for the better discovery of abuses and injuries to be done unto the said governor and company, or their successors, by any servant by them to be employed in the said voyages and plantations, it shall and may be lawful to and for the said governor and company, and their respective president, chief agent or governor in the parts aforesaid, to examine upon oath all factors, masters, pursers, supercargoes, commanders of castles, forts, fortifications, plantations or colonies, or other persons, touching or concerning any matter or thing, in which by law or usage an oath may be administered, so as the said oath, and the matter therein contained, be not repugnant, but agreeable to the laws of this realm. and, we do hereby streightly charge and command all and singular, our admirals, vice-admirals, justices, mayors, sheriffs, constables, bailiffs, and all and singular other our officers, ministers, liege men and subjects whatsoever, to be aiding, favouring, helping and assisting, to the said governor and company, and to their successors, and to their deputies, officers, factors, servants, assigns and ministers, and every of them, in executing and enjoying the premisses, as well on land as on sea, from time to time, when any of you shall thereunto be required; any statute, act, ordinance, proviso, proclamation, or restraint heretofore had, made, set forth, ordained, or provided, or any other matter, cause or thing whatsoever to the contrary in any wise notwithstanding, in witness whereof, we have caused these our letters to be made patent; witness ourself at westminster, the second day of may, in the two and twentieth year of our reign. by writ of privy seal, pigott. supplemental charter, th september, . victoria, by the grace of god of the united kingdom of great britain and ireland queen, defender of the faith, empress of india, to all to whom these presents shall come, greeting. _whereas by a royal charter granted on the nd day of may in the two-and-twentieth year of the reign of his late majesty king charles the second (in this our charter called "the original charter"), a company was incorporated by the name of "the governor and company of adventurers of england trading into hudson's bay" with a common seal, for the purpose of trading within the territories mentioned in said original charter: and whereas by the said original charter, after declaring that one of the company should be elected in manner thereafter mentioned, to be called the governor of the company, and that the said governor and company should or might elect seven of their members in such form as thereafter mentioned, to be called the committee of the company, which committee of seven or any three of them, together with the governor or the deputy-governor for the time being, should have the general management of the affairs of the company, it was declared that the governor and company and their successors should from thenceforth for ever be ruled, ordered, and governed according to such manner and form as was thereafter expressed, and not otherwise: and whereas by the said original charter, after appointing prince rupert to be the first governor of the company, and seven persons to be the seven first committees of the company, it was provided that it should and might be lawful to or for the said governor and company for the time being or the greater part of them at any public assembly, commonly called the court general, to be holden for the said company, the governor of the said company being always one from time to time, to elect, nominate, and appoint one of the said company to be deputy to the said governor, which deputy should take a corporal oath before the governor and three or more of the committee of the said company for the time being, well and truly and faithfully to execute his said office of deputy to the governor of the said company, and after his oath so taken should and might from time to time, in the absence of the said governor, exercise and execute the office of governor of the said company in such sort as the said governor ought to do: and whereas the said original charter similarly provided for the election in each and every year between the first and last day of november of one of the company to be governor for one whole year then next following, and required the governor or deputy-governor for the time being to be present at each such election, and required the person so elected to be governor of the company, before being admitted to execute his office, to take a corporal oath before the last governor being his predecessor, or his deputy, and any three or more of the committee of the said company for the time being, that he would well and truly execute the office of governor: and whereas the said original charter similarly provided for the election in each and every year between the first and last day of november of seven of the company to be a committee of the company for one whole year then next ensuing, and required the governor or the deputy-governor of the company for the time being to be present at each, such election, and required the persons so elected to be a committee of the company, before being admitted to execute their office to take a corporal oath that they and every of them should well and faithfully perform their office of committee. and whereas the said original charter similarly provided for the election of a governor or a deputy-governor of the company in the event of the governor or deputy-governor for the time being, at any time within one year after being elected and sworn to the office of governor or deputy-governor, dying or being removed from his office (which governor or deputy-governor not demeaning himself well in his office was to be removeable at the pleasure of the rest of the company or the greater part of them present at a general court), and provided that the governor or deputy-governor so elected should hold office for the residue of the said year, and before being admitted to execute his office should take a corporal oath as aforesaid: and whereas the said original charter similarly provided in the event of any person or persons of the committee of the company for the time being within one year after being elected and sworn to such office dying or being removed from his or their office (which committee not demeaning themselves well in their said office were to be removeable at the pleasure of the governor and company or the greater part of them, whereof the governor for the time being, or his deputy should be one), for the election of one or more of the company to be of the committee in the place of him or them dying or being removed as aforesaid, and the said original charter provided that the person or persons so elected should hold office for the residue of the said year, and before being admitted to execute the office of committee should take a corporal oath as aforesaid, and the governor or the deputy-governor for the time being was required to be present at each such election. and whereas by the said original charter the governor and company were empowered to assemble themselves and hold court for the company and the affairs thereof, and it was thereby declared that it should be lawful for them and the greater part of them present at such assembly, whereof the governor or his deputy for the time being should be one, to make, ordain, and constitute such and so many laws, constitutions, orders, and ordinances as to them or the greater part of them being there present should seem necessary and convenient for the good government of the company, and at their pleasure to revoke and alter the same or any of them as the occasion should require: and whereas by the said original charter the governor or deputy-governor for the time being was required to be present at the admission into the company of servants, factors, and other persons: and whereas by the said original charter it was declared that it should be lawful in all elections and bye-laws to be made by the general court of the adventurers of the said company, that every person should have a number of votes according to his stock, that was to say, for every hundred pounds by him subscribed or brought into the present stock one vote, and that any of those who had subscribed less than one hundred pounds might join their respective sums to make up one hundred pounds and have one vote jointly for the same, and not otherwise: and whereas by a deed under the seal of the company, dated the nineteenth november, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-nine, certain rights of government and other rights and privileges granted, by the said original charter, but not affecting the subject matter of this our charter, were duly surrendered to her majesty, and such surrender was duly accepted by her majesty by an instrument under her sign manual: and whereas for many years the capital of the company has comprised no stock, but has been and is now divided into shares of equal value, and it is desirable that the qualification for votes should be changed from the holding of stock in the company to the holding of shares therein: and whereas many of the provisions contained in the original charter have been found very inconvenient in practice, and are not in accordance with the usual provisions regulating the affairs of modern companies, and in particular the following provisions have been found very inconvenient, that is to say: the provisions requiring the governor, deputy-governor, and committee to be elected every year, and fixing the date of the election between the first and last day of november; the provisions requiring the presence of the governor or deputy-governor at the general courts for the elections of governors or members of the committee, and at the general courts assembled for the purpose of making bye-laws, and on other occasions specified in the said original charter; the provisions requiring a corporal oath to be taken by the governor, deputy-governor, and committee, and by certain other persons on certain occasions. and whereas, in addition to the above provisions complained of, the absence of any power in the said original charter enabling the governor, deputy-governor, or any member of the committee, to resign office, or enabling votes to be taken by proxy, and the absence of several other powers usually given to trading companies for the better regulation of their internal affairs, has been found in practice to be very inconvenient and detrimental to the interests of the company. and whereas the company is desirous that the provisions in the original charter above complained of should be cancelled or modified, and has applied to us for a supplemental charter embodying more suitable provisions._ now know ye that we by these presents do will and ordain that the several provisions contained in the said original charter relating to the election to the office of governor, deputy-governor, or committee, and to the filling up of any vacancy in any such office, and requiring corporal oaths to be taken, and the other provisions contained in the said original charter, shall, so far as they are inconsistent with the provisions contained in this our charter, on and after the day of the date of this our charter, cease to be in force and be annulled. and we do hereby further will and ordain that, notwithstanding anything contained in the original charter, the presence of the governor or deputy-governor at any general court or at any meeting of the governor, deputy-governor, and committee (who are hereinafter collectively referred to as the board) shall not be essential for the proper holding of such court or board meeting, and that nothing done at any general court or meeting of the board shall be questioned or disputed on the ground of the absence of the governor or deputy-governor from such general court or meeting of the board, and that in case neither the governor nor deputy-governor happen to be present at any such general court or meeting of the board, at the appointed time for holding such general court or meeting of the board, the members of the committee present or the major part of them shall nominate and appoint one of themselves chairman or president of such court or board, and that the general powers of management and other powers given by the said original charter to any three members of the committee, together with the governor or deputy-governor, shall be exerciseable by any four members of the board, whether the governor or deputy-governor shall form one of such four or not. and we do hereby further will and ordain that, notwithstanding anything contained in the original charter, a general court for the company shall be held every year at such place and on such day in november or december as may be appointed by the board. and we do hereby further will and ordain that every question submitted to a general court shall be decided by a show of hands, unless before or upon the declaration of the result of the show of hands, a poll is demanded by at least five members present at such general court, and holding in the aggregate not less than one hundred shares, and unless a poll is so demanded a declaration by the chairman that the motion has been carried or lost, or carried or lost by a particular majority, shall be deemed conclusive evidence of the fact without proof of the number or the proportion of the votes recorded in favour of or against the motion, and that if a poll is demanded as aforesaid, it shall be taken in such manner and at such time and place and either at once or after an interval or adjournment, as the chairman of the general court directs, and the result of such poll shall be deemed to be the resolution of the general court at which the poll was demanded. in case of an equality of votes, the chairman shall, whether on a show of hands or at the poll, have a casting vote in addition to the vote or votes to which he may be entitled as a member. in computing the majority when a poll is demanded, reference shall be had to the number of votes to which each member is entitled by this our charter. and we do hereby further will and ordain that, notwithstanding anything contained in the original charter, every member of the company shall have one vote for every five shares in the company held by him, and that any of those members who hold less than five shares may join their respective shares, so as to make up five or more shares, and have one vote jointly for the same; provided nevertheless that no member shall be entitled to vote, or to join with any other member or members in making up a joint vote at any general court in respect of any shares or share, unless he shall have been the holder of such shares or share for at least six months prior to such general court. and we do hereby further will and ordain that votes may be given at every general court either personally or by proxy, but such proxy must be a proprietor in the company, and himself entitled to vote, and the appointment of every such proxy must be in writing and must be in the form following or to the like effect, that is to say: i (or we) appoint ___ my (our) proxy to vote and act for me (us) and in my (our) name (names) on all questions at the general court of the hudson's bay company to be held on the ___ day of ___ and every adjournment thereof whereat i (we) shall not be present in person. dated this ___ of ___. and we do hereby further will and ordain that the chairman may, with the consent of the meeting, adjourn any general court from time to time and place to place, but that no business shall be transacted at any adjourned general court other than the business left unfinished at the general court from which the adjournment took place. and we do hereby further will and ordain that, notwithstanding anything contained in the original charter, the governor, deputy-governor, and committeemen shall, after the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty-four, hold their respective offices subject to retirement by rotation as hereinafter provided, that is to say, at the general court to be held in the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty-five, and at every succeeding general court, three members of the board shall retire from office, and that, until all the present board shall in turn have retired, the members of the board to retire shall from time to time be determined by ballot or otherwise amongst the members of the present board, or such of them as for the time being shall not have retired, but afterwards the members of the board to retire shall be those who shall have been longest in office since their last election, and as between members of the board of equal seniority the member or members to retire shall be determined by lot; provided always that the governor and deputy-governor shall not both retire at the same time, and that in the ballot for determining who shall retire in the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty-five, the governor and deputy-governor shall not both be included, but only one of them, such one to be determined by lot; and in the event of neither the governor nor the deputy-governor being selected by ballot to retire in the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty-five, one of them to be determined by lot shall retire in the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty-six. and provided always that a retiring member of the board shall be eligible for re-election, and that, if the retiring member be the governor or deputy-governor of the company, he shall be eligible for re-election, or any other member of the board shall be eligible for election as governor or deputy-governor respectively; and in the event of any member of the board being elected to the office of governor or deputy-governor, in the place of the retiring governor or deputy-governor such member shall be deemed to have retired from his former office. and we do hereby further will and ordain that, notwithstanding anything contained in the original charter, the company at any general court at which any members of the board retire in manner aforesaid shall if it be the turn for the governor or deputy-governor to retire first fill up that office, and then shall fill up the other vacated offices, including any office rendered vacant by the election of any member of the board to the office of governor or deputy-governor as aforesaid, by electing a like number of persons to be members of the board; and that every election or re-election to the office of governor, deputy-governor, or committee shall be conducted in the manner and according to the forms from time to time to be prescribed by the bye-laws of the company, and that such notice of the names of every candidate for election or re-election to any such office shall be given as may be required by the bye-laws for the time being in force. and we do hereby further will and ordain that notwithstanding anything contained in the original charter, any member of the board may at any time give notice to the board in writing of his wish to resign, and on the acceptance of his resignation by the board, but not before, his office shall be vacant. nothing in this our charter contained shall affect the power given by the original charter to the company to remove any governor, deputy-governor, or member of the committee who should not demean himself well in his respective office. and we do hereby further will and ordain that, notwithstanding anything in the original charter contained, any casual vacancy occurring among the members of the board through death, resignation, removal, or other cause, except the expiration of the period of office, may be filled up by the board or the remaining members of the board, whatever there number may be, and if the casual vacancy occur in the office of governor or deputy-governor, such vacancy may be filled by electing any one of the remaining members of the board; and if so filled up a casual vacancy shall be deemed to have occurred in the office of the member of the board so elected to the office of governor or deputy-governor; provided always that any person so chosen to fill up any casual vacancy shall retain his office until the next general court held for the election of members of the board, and at such general court the company shall either confirm such person in his office or shall elect some other person to hold such office in his place, and provided always that the person so chosen and confirmed as aforesaid or the person elected by the company in his stead (as the case may be) shall retain his office so long only as the vacating member of the board would have retained the same if no vacancy had occurred, and provided always that, notwithstanding any vacancy in the board, the continuing members of the board may act so long as there remains not less than four members of the board. and we do hereby further will and ordain that, notwithstanding anything contained in the original charter, the corporal oath thereby required to be taken on the occasions and by the persons therein mentioned shall no longer be required to be taken by any person on any occasion whatsoever. in witness whereof we have caused these our letters to be made patent. witness ourself at westminster, the ninth day of september, in the forty-eighth year of our reign. by warrant under the queen's sign manual. palmer. [seal.] london: printed by sir joseph causton & sons , eastcheap, e.c. and , southwark street, s.e. b. and esther n. keyser the art of money getting or golden rules for making money by p.t. barnum in the united states, where we have more land than people, it is not at all difficult for persons in good health to make money. in this comparatively new field there are so many avenues of success open, so many vocations which are not crowded, that any person of either sex who is willing, at least for the time being, to engage in any respectable occupation that offers, may find lucrative employment. those who really desire to attain an independence, have only to set their minds upon it, and adopt the proper means, as they do in regard to any other object which they wish to accomplish, and the thing is easily done. but however easy it may be found to make money, i have no doubt many of my hearers will agree it is the most difficult thing in the world to keep it. the road to wealth is, as dr. franklin truly says, "as plain as the road to the mill." it consists simply in expending less than we earn; that seems to be a very simple problem. mr. micawber, one of those happy creations of the genial dickens, puts the case in a strong light when he says that to have annual income of twenty pounds per annum, and spend twenty pounds and sixpence, is to be the most miserable of men; whereas, to have an income of only twenty pounds, and spend but nineteen pounds and sixpence is to be the happiest of mortals. many of my readers may say, "we understand this: this is economy, and we know economy is wealth; we know we can't eat our cake and keep it also." yet i beg to say that perhaps more cases of failure arise from mistakes on this point than almost any other. the fact is, many people think they understand economy when they really do not. true economy is misapprehended, and people go through life without properly comprehending what that principle is. one says, "i have an income of so much, and here is my neighbor who has the same; yet every year he gets something ahead and i fall short; why is it? i know all about economy." he thinks he does, but he does not. there are men who think that economy consists in saving cheese-parings and candle-ends, in cutting off two pence from the laundress' bill and doing all sorts of little, mean, dirty things. economy is not meanness. the misfortune is, also, that this class of persons let their economy apply in only one direction. they fancy they are so wonderfully economical in saving a half-penny where they ought to spend twopence, that they think they can afford to squander in other directions. a few years ago, before kerosene oil was discovered or thought of, one might stop overnight at almost any farmer's house in the agricultural districts and get a very good supper, but after supper he might attempt to read in the sitting-room, and would find it impossible with the inefficient light of one candle. the hostess, seeing his dilemma, would say: "it is rather difficult to read here evenings; the proverb says 'you must have a ship at sea in order to be able to burn two candles at once;' we never have an extra candle except on extra occasions." these extra occasions occur, perhaps, twice a year. in this way the good woman saves five, six, or ten dollars in that time: but the information which might be derived from having the extra light would, of course, far outweigh a ton of candles. but the trouble does not end here. feeling that she is so economical in tallow candies, she thinks she can afford to go frequently to the village and spend twenty or thirty dollars for ribbons and furbelows, many of which are not necessary. this false connote may frequently be seen in men of business, and in those instances it often runs to writing-paper. you find good businessmen who save all the old envelopes and scraps, and would not tear a new sheet of paper, if they could avoid it, for the world. this is all very well; they may in this way save five or ten dollars a year, but being so economical (only in note paper), they think they can afford to waste time; to have expensive parties, and to drive their carriages. this is an illustration of dr. franklin's "saving at the spigot and wasting at the bung-hole;" "penny wise and pound foolish." punch in speaking of this "one idea" class of people says "they are like the man who bought a penny herring for his family's dinner and then hired a coach and four to take it home." i never knew a man to succeed by practising this kind of economy. true economy consists in always making the income exceed the out-go. wear the old clothes a little longer if necessary; dispense with the new pair of gloves; mend the old dress: live on plainer food if need be; so that, under all circumstances, unless some unforeseen accident occurs, there will be a margin in favor of the income. a penny here, and a dollar there, placed at interest, goes on accumulating, and in this way the desired result is attained. it requires some training, perhaps, to accomplish this economy, but when once used to it, you will find there is more satisfaction in rational saving than in irrational spending. here is a recipe which i recommend: i have found it to work an excellent cure for extravagance, and especially for mistaken economy: when you find that you have no surplus at the end of the year, and yet have a good income, i advise you to take a few sheets of paper and form them into a book and mark down every item of expenditure. post it every day or week in two columns, one headed "necessaries" or even "comforts", and the other headed "luxuries," and you will find that the latter column will be double, treble, and frequently ten times greater than the former. the real comforts of life cost but a small portion of what most of us can earn. dr. franklin says "it is the eyes of others and not our own eyes which ruin us. if all the world were blind except myself i should not care for fine clothes or furniture." it is the fear of what mrs. grundy may say that keeps the noses of many worthy families to the grindstone. in america many persons like to repeat "we are all free and equal," but it is a great mistake in more senses than one. that we are born "free and equal" is a glorious truth in one sense, yet we are not all born equally rich, and we never shall be. one may say; "there is a man who has an income of fifty thousand dollars per annum, while i have but one thousand dollars; i knew that fellow when he was poor like myself; now he is rich and thinks he is better than i am; i will show him that i am as good as he is; i will go and buy a horse and buggy; no, i cannot do that, but i will go and hire one and ride this afternoon on the same road that he does, and thus prove to him that i am as good as he is." my friend, you need not take that trouble; you can easily prove that you are "as good as he is;" you have only to behave as well as he does; but you cannot make anybody believe that you are rich as he is. besides, if you put on these "airs," add waste your time and spend your money, your poor wife will be obliged to scrub her fingers off at home, and buy her tea two ounces at a time, and everything else in proportion, in order that you may keep up "appearances," and, after all, deceive nobody. on the other hand, mrs. smith may say that her next-door neighbor married johnson for his money, and "everybody says so." she has a nice one-thousand dollar camel's hair shawl, and she will make smith get her an imitation one, and she will sit in a pew right next to her neighbor in church, in order to prove that she is her equal. my good woman, you will not get ahead in the world, if your vanity and envy thus take the lead. in this country, where we believe the majority ought to rule, we ignore that principle in regard to fashion, and let a handful of people, calling themselves the aristocracy, run up a false standard of perfection, and in endeavoring to rise to that standard, we constantly keep ourselves poor; all the time digging away for the sake of outside appearances. how much wiser to be a "law unto ourselves" and say, "we will regulate our out-go by our income, and lay up something for a rainy day." people ought to be as sensible on the subject of money-getting as on any other subject. like causes produces like effects. you cannot accumulate a fortune by taking the road that leads to poverty. it needs no prophet to tell us that those who live fully up to their means, without any thought of a reverse in this life, can never attain a pecuniary independence. men and women accustomed to gratify every whim and caprice, will find it hard, at first, to cut down their various unnecessary expenses, and will feel it a great self-denial to live in a smaller house than they have been accustomed to, with less expensive furniture, less company, less costly clothing, fewer servants, a less number of balls, parties, theater-goings, carriage-ridings, pleasure excursions, cigar-smokings, liquor-drinkings, and other extravagances; but, after all, if they will try the plan of laying by a "nest-egg," or, in other words, a small sum of money, at interest or judiciously invested in land, they will be surprised at the pleasure to be derived from constantly adding to their little "pile," as well as from all the economical habits which are engendered by this course. the old suit of clothes, and the old bonnet and dress, will answer for another season; the croton or spring water taste better than champagne; a cold bath and a brisk walk will prove more exhilarating than a ride in the finest coach; a social chat, an evening's reading in the family circle, or an hour's play of "hunt the slipper" and "blind man's buff" will be far more pleasant than a fifty or five hundred dollar party, when the reflection on the difference in cost is indulged in by those who begin to know the pleasures of saving. thousands of men are kept poor, and tens of thousands are made so after they have acquired quite sufficient to support them well through life, in consequence of laying their plans of living on too broad a platform. some families expend twenty thousand dollars per annum, and some much more, and would scarcely know how to live on less, while others secure more solid enjoyment frequently on a twentieth part of that amount. prosperity is a more severe ordeal than adversity, especially sudden prosperity. "easy come, easy go," is an old and true proverb. a spirit of pride and vanity, when permitted to have full sway, is the undying canker-worm which gnaws the very vitals of a man's worldly possessions, let them be small or great, hundreds, or millions. many persons, as they begin to prosper, immediately expand their ideas and commence expending for luxuries, until in a short time their expenses swallow up their income, and they become ruined in their ridiculous attempts to keep up appearances, and make a "sensation." i know a gentleman of fortune who says, that when he first began to prosper, his wife would have a new and elegant sofa. "that sofa," he says, "cost me thirty thousand dollars!" when the sofa reached the house, it was found necessary to get chairs to match; then side-boards, carpets and tables "to correspond" with them, and so on through the entire stock of furniture; when at last it was found that the house itself was quite too small and old-fashioned for the furniture, and a new one was built to correspond with the new purchases; "thus," added my friend, "summing up an outlay of thirty thousand dollars, caused by that single sofa, and saddling on me, in the shape of servants, equipage, and the necessary expenses attendant upon keeping up a fine 'establishment,' a yearly outlay of eleven thousand dollars, and a tight pinch at that: whereas, ten years ago, we lived with much more real comfort, because with much less care, on as many hundreds. the truth is," he continued, "that sofa would have brought me to inevitable bankruptcy, had not a most unexampled title to prosperity kept me above it, and had i not checked the natural desire to 'cut a dash'." the foundation of success in life is good health: that is the substratum fortune; it is also the basis of happiness. a person cannot accumulate a fortune very well when he is sick. he has no ambition; no incentive; no force. of course, there are those who have bad health and cannot help it: you cannot expect that such persons can accumulate wealth, but there are a great many in poor health who need not be so. if, then, sound health is the foundation of success and happiness in life, how important it is that we should study the laws of health, which is but another expression for the laws of nature! the nearer we keep to the laws of nature, the nearer we are to good health, and yet how many persons there are who pay no attention to natural laws, but absolutely transgress them, even against their own natural inclination. we ought to know that the "sin of ignorance" is never winked at in regard to the violation of nature's laws; their infraction always brings the penalty. a child may thrust its finger into the flames without knowing it will burn, and so suffers, repentance, even, will not stop the smart. many of our ancestors knew very little about the principle of ventilation. they did not know much about oxygen, whatever other "gin" they might have been acquainted with; and consequently they built their houses with little seven-by-nine feet bedrooms, and these good old pious puritans would lock themselves up in one of these cells, say their prayers and go to bed. in the morning they would devoutly return thanks for the "preservation of their lives," during the night, and nobody had better reason to be thankful. probably some big crack in the window, or in the door, let in a little fresh air, and thus saved them. many persons knowingly violate the laws of nature against their better impulses, for the sake of fashion. for instance, there is one thing that nothing living except a vile worm ever naturally loved, and that is tobacco; yet how many persons there are who deliberately train an unnatural appetite, and overcome this implanted aversion for tobacco, to such a degree that they get to love it. they have got hold of a poisonous, filthy weed, or rather that takes a firm hold of them. here are married men who run about spitting tobacco juice on the carpet and floors, and sometimes even upon their wives besides. they do not kick their wives out of doors like drunken men, but their wives, i have no doubt, often wish they were outside of the house. another perilous feature is that this artificial appetite, like jealousy, "grows by what it feeds on;" when you love that which is unnatural, a stronger appetite is created for the hurtful thing than the natural desire for what is harmless. there is an old proverb which says that "habit is second nature," but an artificial habit is stronger than nature. take for instance, an old tobacco-chewer; his love for the "quid" is stronger than his love for any particular kind of food. he can give up roast beef easier than give up the weed. young lads regret that they are not men; they would like to go to bed boys and wake up men; and to accomplish this they copy the bad habits of their seniors. little tommy and johnny see their fathers or uncles smoke a pipe, and they say, "if i could only do that, i would be a man too; uncle john has gone out and left his pipe of tobacco, let us try it." they take a match and light it, and then puff away. "we will learn to smoke; do you like it johnny?" that lad dolefully replies: "not very much; it tastes bitter;" by and by he grows pale, but he persists and he soon offers up a sacrifice on the altar of fashion; but the boys stick to it and persevere until at last they conquer their natural appetites and become the victims of acquired tastes. i speak "by the book," for i have noticed its effects on myself, having gone so far as to smoke ten or fifteen cigars a day; although i have not used the weed during the last fourteen years, and never shall again. the more a man smokes, the more he craves smoking; the last cigar smoked simply excites the desire for another, and so on incessantly. take the tobacco-chewer. in the morning, when he gets up, he puts a quid in his mouth and keeps it there all day, never taking it out except to exchange it for a fresh one, or when he is going to eat; oh! yes, at intervals during the day and evening, many a chewer takes out the quid and holds it in his hand long enough to take a drink, and then pop it goes back again. this simply proves that the appetite for rum is even stronger than that for tobacco. when the tobacco-chewer goes to your country seat and you show him your grapery and fruit house, and the beauties of your garden, when you offer him some fresh, ripe fruit, and say, "my friend, i have got here the most delicious apples, and pears, and peaches, and apricots; i have imported them from spain, france and italy--just see those luscious grapes; there is nothing more delicious nor more healthy than ripe fruit, so help yourself; i want to see you delight yourself with these things;" he will roll the dear quid under his tongue and answer, "no, i thank you, i have got tobacco in my mouth." his palate has become narcotized by the noxious weed, and he has lost, in a great measure, the delicate and enviable taste for fruits. this shows what expensive, useless and injurious habits men will get into. i speak from experience. i have smoked until i trembled like an aspen leaf, the blood rushed to my head, and i had a palpitation of the heart which i thought was heart disease, till i was almost killed with fright. when i consulted my physician, he said "break off tobacco using." i was not only injuring my health and spending a great deal of money, but i was setting a bad example. i obeyed his counsel. no young man in the world ever looked so beautiful, as he thought he did, behind a fifteen cent cigar or a meerschaum! these remarks apply with tenfold force to the use of intoxicating drinks. to make money, requires a clear brain. a man has got to see that two and two make four; he must lay all his plans with reflection and forethought, and closely examine all the details and the ins and outs of business. as no man can succeed in business unless he has a brain to enable him to lay his plans, and reason to guide him in their execution, so, no matter how bountifully a man may be blessed with intelligence, if the brain is muddled, and his judgment warped by intoxicating drinks, it is impossible for him to carry on business successfully. how many good opportunities have passed, never to return, while a man was sipping a "social glass," with his friend! how many foolish bargains have been made under the influence of the "nervine," which temporarily makes its victim think he is rich. how many important chances have been put off until to-morrow, and then forever, because the wine cup has thrown the system into a state of lassitude, neutralizing the energies so essential to success in business. verily, "wine is a mocker." the use of intoxicating drinks as a beverage, is as much an infatuation, as is the smoking of opium by the chinese, and the former is quite as destructive to the success of the business man as the latter. it is an unmitigated evil, utterly indefensible in the light of philosophy; religion or good sense. it is the parent of nearly every other evil in our country. don't mistake your vocation the safest plan, and the one most sure of success for the young man starting in life, is to select the vocation which is most congenial to his tastes. parents and guardians are often quite too negligent in regard to this. it very common for a father to say, for example: "i have five boys. i will make billy a clergyman; john a lawyer; tom a doctor, and dick a farmer." he then goes into town and looks about to see what he will do with sammy. he returns home and says "sammy, i see watch-making is a nice genteel business; i think i will make you a goldsmith." he does this, regardless of sam's natural inclinations, or genius. we are all, no doubt, born for a wise purpose. there is as much diversity in our brains as in our countenances. some are born natural mechanics, while some have great aversion to machinery. let a dozen boys of ten years get together, and you will soon observe two or three are "whittling" out some ingenious device; working with locks or complicated machinery. when they were but five years old, their father could find no toy to please them like a puzzle. they are natural mechanics; but the other eight or nine boys have different aptitudes. i belong to the latter class; i never had the slightest love for mechanism; on the contrary, i have a sort of abhorrence for complicated machinery. i never had ingenuity enough to whittle a cider tap so it would not leak. i never could make a pen that i could write with, or understand the principle of a steam engine. if a man was to take such a boy as i was, and attempt to make a watchmaker of him, the boy might, after an apprenticeship of five or seven years, be able to take apart and put together a watch; but all through life he would be working up hill and seizing every excuse for leaving his work and idling away his time. watchmaking is repulsive to him. unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed. i am glad to believe that the majority of persons do find their right vocation. yet we see many who have mistaken their calling, from the blacksmith up (or down) to the clergyman. you will see, for instance, that extraordinary linguist the "learned blacksmith," who ought to have been a teacher of languages; and you may have seen lawyers, doctors and clergymen who were better fitted by nature for the anvil or the lapstone. select the right location after securing the right vocation, you must be careful to select the proper location. you may have been cut out for a hotel keeper, and they say it requires a genius to "know how to keep a hotel." you might conduct a hotel like clock-work, and provide satisfactorily for five hundred guests every day; yet, if you should locate your house in a small village where there is no railroad communication or public travel, the location would be your ruin. it is equally important that you do not commence business where there are already enough to meet all demands in the same occupation. i remember a case which illustrates this subject. when i was in london in , i was passing down holborn with an english friend and came to the "penny shows." they had immense cartoons outside, portraying the wonderful curiosities to be seen "all for a penny." being a little in the "show line" myself, i said "let us go in here." we soon found ourselves in the presence of the illustrious showman, and he proved to be the sharpest man in that line i had ever met. he told us some extraordinary stories in reference to his bearded ladies, his albinos, and his armadillos, which we could hardly believe, but thought it "better to believe it than look after the proof'." he finally begged to call our attention to some wax statuary, and showed us a lot of the dirtiest and filthiest wax figures imaginable. they looked as if they had not seen water since the deluge. "what is there so wonderful about your statuary?" i asked. "i beg you not to speak so satirically," he replied, "sir, these are not madam tussaud's wax figures, all covered with gilt and tinsel and imitation diamonds, and copied from engravings and photographs. mine, sir, were taken from life. whenever you look upon one of those figures, you may consider that you are looking upon the living individual." glancing casually at them, i saw one labeled "henry viii," and feeling a little curious upon seeing that it looked like calvin edson, the living skeleton, i said: "do you call that 'henry the eighth?'" he replied, "certainly; sir; it was taken from life at hampton court, by special order of his majesty; on such a day." he would have given the hour of the day if i had resisted; i said, "everybody knows that 'henry viii.' was a great stout old king, and that figure is lean and lank; what do you say to that?" "why," he replied, "you would be lean and lank yourself if you sat there as long as he has." there was no resisting such arguments. i said to my english friend, "let us go out; do not tell him who i am; i show the white feather; he beats me." he followed us to the door, and seeing the rabble in the street, he called out, "ladies and gentlemen, i beg to draw your attention to the respectable character of my visitors," pointing to us as we walked away. i called upon him a couple of days afterwards; told him who i was, and said: "my friend, you are an excellent showman, but you have selected a bad location." he replied, "this is true, sir; i feel that all my talents are thrown away; but what can i do?" "you can go to america," i replied. "you can give full play to your faculties over there; you will find plenty of elbowroom in america; i will engage you for two years; after that you will be able to go on your own account." he accepted my offer and remained two years in my new york museum. he then went to new orleans and carried on a traveling show business during the summer. to-day he is worth sixty thousand dollars, simply because he selected the right vocation and also secured the proper location. the old proverb says, "three removes are as bad as a fire," but when a man is in the fire, it matters but little how soon or how often he removes. avoid debt young men starting in life should avoid running into debt. there is scarcely anything that drags a person down like debt. it is a slavish position to get in, yet we find many a young man, hardly out of his "teens," running in debt. he meets a chum and says, "look at this: i have got trusted for a new suit of clothes." he seems to look upon the clothes as so much given to him; well, it frequently is so, but, if he succeeds in paying and then gets trusted again, he is adopting a habit which will keep him in poverty through life. debt robs a man of his self-respect, and makes him almost despise himself. grunting and groaning and working for what he has eaten up or worn out, and now when he is called upon to pay up, he has nothing to show for his money; this is properly termed "working for a dead horse." i do not speak of merchants buying and selling on credit, or of those who buy on credit in order to turn the purchase to a profit. the old quaker said to his farmer son, "john, never get trusted; but if thee gets trusted for anything, let it be for 'manure,' because that will help thee pay it back again." mr. beecher advised young men to get in debt if they could to a small amount in the purchase of land, in the country districts. "if a young man," he says, "will only get in debt for some land and then get married, these two things will keep him straight, or nothing will." this may be safe to a limited extent, but getting in debt for what you eat and drink and wear is to be avoided. some families have a foolish habit of getting credit at "the stores," and thus frequently purchase many things which might have been dispensed with. it is all very well to say; "i have got trusted for sixty days, and if i don't have the money the creditor will think nothing about it." there is no class of people in the world, who have such good memories as creditors. when the sixty days run out, you will have to pay. if you do not pay, you will break your promise, and probably resort to a falsehood. you may make some excuse or get in debt elsewhere to pay it, but that only involves you the deeper. a good-looking, lazy young fellow, was the apprentice boy, horatio. his employer said, "horatio, did you ever see a snail?" "i--think--i--have," he drawled out. "you must have met him then, for i am sure you never overtook one," said the "boss." your creditor will meet you or overtake you and say, "now, my young friend, you agreed to pay me; you have not done it, you must give me your note." you give the note on interest and it commences working against you; "it is a dead horse." the creditor goes to bed at night and wakes up in the morning better off than when he retired to bed, because his interest has increased during the night, but you grow poorer while you are sleeping, for the interest is accumulating against you. money is in some respects like fire; it is a very excellent servant but a terrible master. when you have it mastering you; when interest is constantly piling up against you, it will keep you down in the worst kind of slavery. but let money work for you, and you have the most devoted servant in the world. it is no "eye-servant." there is nothing animate or inanimate that will work so faithfully as money when placed at interest, well secured. it works night and day, and in wet or dry weather. i was born in the blue-law state of connecticut, where the old puritans had laws so rigid that it was said, "they fined a man for kissing his wife on sunday." yet these rich old puritans would have thousands of dollars at interest, and on saturday night would be worth a certain amount; on sunday they would go to church and perform all the duties of a christian. on waking up on monday morning, they would find themselves considerably richer than the saturday night previous, simply because their money placed at interest had worked faithfully for them all day sunday, according to law! do not let it work against you; if you do there is no chance for success in life so far as money is concerned. john randolph, the eccentric virginian, once exclaimed in congress, "mr. speaker, i have discovered the philosopher's stone: pay as you go." this is, indeed, nearer to the philosopher's stone than any alchemist has ever yet arrived. persevere when a man is in the right path, he must persevere. i speak of this because there are some persons who are "born tired;" naturally lazy and possessing no self-reliance and no perseverance. but they can cultivate these qualities, as davy crockett said: "this thing remember, when i am dead: be sure you are right, then go ahead." it is this go-aheaditiveness, this determination not to let the "horrors" or the "blues" take possession of you, so as to make you relax your energies in the struggle for independence, which you must cultivate. how many have almost reached the goal of their ambition, but, losing faith in themselves, have relaxed their energies, and the golden prize has been lost forever. it is, no doubt, often true, as shakespeare says: "there is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." if you hesitate, some bolder hand will stretch out before you and get the prize. remember the proverb of solomon: "he becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand; but the hand of the diligent maketh rich." perseverance is sometimes but another word for self-reliance. many persons naturally look on the dark side of life, and borrow trouble. they are born so. then they ask for advice, and they will be governed by one wind and blown by another, and cannot rely upon themselves. until you can get so that you can rely upon yourself, you need not expect to succeed. i have known men, personally, who have met with pecuniary reverses, and absolutely committed suicide, because they thought they could never overcome their misfortune. but i have known others who have met more serious financial difficulties, and have bridged them over by simple perseverance, aided by a firm belief that they were doing justly, and that providence would "overcome evil with good." you will see this illustrated in any sphere of life. take two generals; both understand military tactics, both educated at west point, if you please, both equally gifted; yet one, having this principle of perseverance, and the other lacking it, the former will succeed in his profession, while the latter will fail. one may hear the cry, "the enemy are coming, and they have got cannon." "got cannon?" says the hesitating general. "yes." "then halt every man." he wants time to reflect; his hesitation is his ruin; the enemy passes unmolested, or overwhelms him; while on the other hand, the general of pluck, perseverance and self-reliance, goes into battle with a will, and, amid the clash of arms, the booming of cannon, the shrieks of the wounded, and the moans of the dying, you will see this man persevering, going on, cutting and slashing his way through with unwavering determination, inspiring his soldiers to deeds of fortitude, valor, and triumph. whatever you do, do it with all your might work at it, if necessary, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well now. the old proverb is full of truth and meaning, "whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well." many a man acquires a fortune by doing his business thoroughly, while his neighbor remains poor for life, because he only half does it. ambition, energy, industry, perseverance, are indispensable requisites for success in business. fortune always favors the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself. it won't do to spend your time like mr. micawber, in waiting for something to "turn up." to such men one of two things usually "turns up:" the poorhouse or the jail; for idleness breeds bad habits, and clothes a man in rags. the poor spendthrift vagabond says to a rich man: "i have discovered there is enough money in the world for all of us, if it was equally divided; this must be done, and we shall all be happy together." "but," was the response, "if everybody was like you, it would be spent in two months, and what would you do then?" "oh! divide again; keep dividing, of course!" i was recently reading in a london paper an account of a like philosophic pauper who was kicked out of a cheap boarding-house because he could not pay his bill, but he had a roll of papers sticking out of his coat pocket, which, upon examination, proved to be his plan for paying off the national debt of england without the aid of a penny. people have got to do as cromwell said: "not only trust in providence, but keep the powder dry." do your part of the work, or you cannot succeed. mahomet, one night, while encamping in the desert, overheard one of his fatigued followers remark: "i will loose my camel, and trust it to god!" "no, no, not so," said the prophet, "tie thy camel, and trust it to god!" do all you can for yourselves, and then trust to providence, or luck, or whatever you please to call it, for the rest. depend upon your own personal exertions. the eye of the employer is often worth more than the hands of a dozen employees. in the nature of things, an agent cannot be so faithful to his employer as to himself. many who are employers will call to mind instances where the best employees have overlooked important points which could not have escaped their own observation as a proprietor. no man has a right to expect to succeed in life unless he understands his business, and nobody can understand his business thoroughly unless he learns it by personal application and experience. a man may be a manufacturer: he has got to learn the many details of his business personally; he will learn something every day, and he will find he will make mistakes nearly every day. and these very mistakes are helps to him in the way of experiences if he but heeds them. he will be like the yankee tin-peddler, who, having been cheated as to quality in the purchase of his merchandise, said: "all right, there's a little information to be gained every day; i will never be cheated in that way again." thus a man buys his experience, and it is the best kind if not purchased at too dear a rate. i hold that every man should, like cuvier, the french naturalist, thoroughly know his business. so proficient was he in the study of natural history, that you might bring to him the bone, or even a section of a bone of an animal which he had never seen described, and, reasoning from analogy, he would be able to draw a picture of the object from which the bone had been taken. on one occasion his students attempted to deceive him. they rolled one of their number in a cow skin and put him under the professor's table as a new specimen. when the philosopher came into the room, some of the students asked him what animal it was. suddenly the animal said "i am the devil and i am going to eat you." it was but natural that cuvier should desire to classify this creature, and examining it intently, he said: "divided hoof; graminivorous! it cannot be done." he knew that an animal with a split hoof must live upon grass and grain, or other kind of vegetation, and would not be inclined to eat flesh, dead or alive, so he considered himself perfectly safe. the possession of a perfect knowledge of your business is an absolute necessity in order to insure success. among the maxims of the elder rothschild was one, all apparent paradox: "be cautious and bold." this seems to be a contradiction in terms, but it is not, and there is great wisdom in the maxim. it is, in fact, a condensed statement of what i have already said. it is to say; "you must exercise your caution in laying your plans, but be bold in carrying them out." a man who is all caution, will never dare to take hold and be successful; and a man who is all boldness, is merely reckless, and must eventually fail. a man may go on "'change" and make fifty, or one hundred thousand dollars in speculating in stocks, at a single operation. but if he has simple boldness without caution, it is mere chance, and what he gains to-day he will lose to-morrow. you must have both the caution and the boldness, to insure success. the rothschilds have another maxim: "never have anything to do with an unlucky man or place." that is to say, never have anything to do with a man or place which never succeeds, because, although a man may appear to be honest and intelligent, yet if he tries this or that thing and always fails, it is on account of some fault or infirmity that you may not be able to discover but nevertheless which must exist. there is no such thing in the world as luck. there never was a man who could go out in the morning and find a purse full of gold in the street to-day, and another to-morrow, and so on, day after day: he may do so once in his life; but so far as mere luck is concerned, he is as liable to lose it as to find it. "like causes produce like effects." if a man adopts the proper methods to be successful, "luck" will not prevent him. if he does not succeed, there are reasons for it, although, perhaps, he may not be able to see them. use the best tools men in engaging employees should be careful to get the best. understand, you cannot have too good tools to work with, and there is no tool you should be so particular about as living tools. if you get a good one, it is better to keep him, than keep changing. he learns something every day; and you are benefited by the experience he acquires. he is worth more to you this year than last, and he is the last man to part with, provided his habits are good, and he continues faithful. if, as he gets more valuable, he demands an exorbitant increase of salary; on the supposition that you can't do without him, let him go. whenever i have such an employee, i always discharge him; first, to convince him that his place may be supplied, and second, because he is good for nothing if he thinks he is invaluable and cannot be spared. but i would keep him, if possible, in order to profit from the result of his experience. an important element in an employee is the brain. you can see bills up, "hands wanted," but "hands" are not worth a great deal without "heads." mr. beecher illustrates this, in this wise: an employee offers his services by saving, "i have a pair of hands and one of my fingers thinks." "that is very good," says the employer. another man comes along, and says "he has two fingers that think." "ah! that is better." but a third calls in and says that "all his fingers and thumbs think." that is better still. finally another steps in and says, "i have a brain that thinks; i think all over; i am a thinking as well as a working man!" "you are the man i want," says the delighted employer. those men who have brains and experience are therefore the most valuable and not to be readily parted with; it is better for them, as well as yourself, to keep them, at reasonable advances in their salaries from time to time. don't get above your business young men after they get through their business training, or apprenticeship, instead of pursuing their avocation and rising in their business, will often lie about doing nothing. they say; "i have learned my business, but i am not going to be a hireling; what is the object of learning my trade or profession, unless i establish myself?'" "have you capital to start with?" "no, but i am going to have it." "how are you going to get it?" "i will tell you confidentially; i have a wealthy old aunt, and she will die pretty soon; but if she does not, i expect to find some rich old man who will lend me a few thousands to give me a start. if i only get the money to start with i will do well." there is no greater mistake than when a young man believes he will succeed with borrowed money. why? because every man's experience coincides with that of mr. astor, who said, "it was more difficult for him to accumulate his first thousand dollars, than all the succeeding millions that made up his colossal fortune." money is good for nothing unless you know the value of it by experience. give a boy twenty thousand dollars and put him in business, and the chances are that he will lose every dollar of it before he is a year older. like buying a ticket in the lottery; and drawing a prize, it is "easy come, easy go." he does not know the value of it; nothing is worth anything, unless it costs effort. without self-denial and economy; patience and perseverance, and commencing with capital which you have not earned, you are not sure to succeed in accumulating. young men, instead of "waiting for dead men's shoes," should be up and doing, for there is no class of persons who are so unaccommodating in regard to dying as these rich old people, and it is fortunate for the expectant heirs that it is so. nine out of ten of the rich men of our country to-day, started out in life as poor boys, with determined wills, industry, perseverance, economy and good habits. they went on gradually, made their own money and saved it; and this is the best way to acquire a fortune. stephen girard started life as a poor cabin boy, and died worth nine million dollars. a.t. stewart was a poor irish boy; and he paid taxes on a million and a half dollars of income, per year. john jacob astor was a poor farmer boy, and died worth twenty millions. cornelius vanderbilt began life rowing a boat from staten island to new york; he presented our government with a steamship worth a million of dollars, and died worth fifty million. "there is no royal road to learning," says the proverb, and i may say it is equally true, "there is no royal road to wealth." but i think there is a royal road to both. the road to learning is a royal one; the road that enables the student to expand his intellect and add every day to his stock of knowledge, until, in the pleasant process of intellectual growth, he is able to solve the most profound problems, to count the stars, to analyze every atom of the globe, and to measure the firmament this is a regal highway, and it is the only road worth traveling. so in regard to wealth. go on in confidence, study the rules, and above all things, study human nature; for "the proper study of mankind is man," and you will find that while expanding the intellect and the muscles, your enlarged experience will enable you every day to accumulate more and more principal, which will increase itself by interest and otherwise, until you arrive at a state of independence. you will find, as a general thing, that the poor boys get rich and the rich boys get poor. for instance, a rich man at his decease, leaves a large estate to his family. his eldest sons, who have helped him earn his fortune, know by experience the value of money; and they take their inheritance and add to it. the separate portions of the young children are placed at interest, and the little fellows are patted on the head, and told a dozen times a day, "you are rich; you will never have to work, you can always have whatever you wish, for you were born with a golden spoon in your mouth." the young heir soon finds out what that means; he has the finest dresses and playthings; he is crammed with sugar candies and almost "killed with kindness," and he passes from school to school, petted and flattered. he becomes arrogant and self-conceited, abuses his teachers, and carries everything with a high hand. he knows nothing of the real value of money, having never earned any; but he knows all about the "golden spoon" business. at college, he invites his poor fellow-students to his room, where he "wines and dines" them. he is cajoled and caressed, and called a glorious good follow, because he is so lavish of his money. he gives his game suppers, drives his fast horses, invites his chums to fetes and parties, determined to have lots of "good times." he spends the night in frolics and debauchery, and leads off his companions with the familiar song, "we won't go home till morning." he gets them to join him in pulling down signs, taking gates from their hinges and throwing them into back yards and horse-ponds. if the police arrest them, he knocks them down, is taken to the lockup, and joyfully foots the bills. "ah! my boys," he cries, "what is the use of being rich, if you can't enjoy yourself?" he might more truly say, "if you can't make a fool of yourself;" but he is "fast," hates slow things, and doesn't "see it." young men loaded down with other people's money are almost sure to lose all they inherit, and they acquire all sorts of bad habits which, in the majority of cases, ruin them in health, purse and character. in this country, one generation follows another, and the poor of to-day are rich in the next generation, or the third. their experience leads them on, and they become rich, and they leave vast riches to their young children. these children, having been reared in luxury, are inexperienced and get poor; and after long experience another generation comes on and gathers up riches again in turn. and thus "history repeats itself," and happy is he who by listening to the experience of others avoids the rocks and shoals on which so many have been wrecked. "in england, the business makes the man." if a man in that country is a mechanic or working-man, he is not recognized as a gentleman. on the occasion of my first appearance before queen victoria, the duke of wellington asked me what sphere in life general tom thumb's parents were in. "his father is a carpenter," i replied. "oh! i had heard he was a gentleman," was the response of his grace. in this republican country, the man makes the business. no matter whether he is a blacksmith, a shoemaker, a farmer, banker or lawyer, so long as his business is legitimate, he may be a gentleman. so any "legitimate" business is a double blessing it helps the man engaged in it, and also helps others. the farmer supports his own family, but he also benefits the merchant or mechanic who needs the products of his farm. the tailor not only makes a living by his trade, but he also benefits the farmer, the clergyman and others who cannot make their own clothing. but all these classes often may be gentlemen. the great ambition should be to excel all others engaged in the same occupation. the college-student who was about graduating, said to an old lawyer: "i have not yet decided which profession i will follow. is your profession full?" "the basement is much crowded, but there is plenty of room up-stairs," was the witty and truthful reply. no profession, trade, or calling, is overcrowded in the upper story. wherever you find the most honest and intelligent merchant or banker, or the best lawyer, the best doctor, the best clergyman, the best shoemaker, carpenter, or anything else, that man is most sought for, and has always enough to do. as a nation, americans are too superficial--they are striving to get rich quickly, and do not generally do their business as substantially and thoroughly as they should, but whoever excels all others in his own line, if his habits are good and his integrity undoubted, cannot fail to secure abundant patronage, and the wealth that naturally follows. let your motto then always be "excelsior," for by living up to it there is no such word as fail. learn something useful every man should make his son or daughter learn some useful trade or profession, so that in these days of changing fortunes of being rich to-day and poor tomorrow they may have something tangible to fall back upon. this provision might save many persons from misery, who by some unexpected turn of fortune have lost all their means. let hope predominate, but be not too visionary many persons are always kept poor, because they are too visionary. every project looks to them like certain success, and therefore they keep changing from one business to another, always in hot water, always "under the harrow." the plan of "counting the chickens before they are hatched" is an error of ancient date, but it does not seem to improve by age. do not scatter your powers engage in one kind of business only, and stick to it faithfully until you succeed, or until your experience shows that you should abandon it. a constant hammering on one nail will generally drive it home at last, so that it can be clinched. when a man's undivided attention is centered on one object, his mind will constantly be suggesting improvements of value, which would escape him if his brain was occupied by a dozen different subjects at once. many a fortune has slipped through a man's fingers because he was engaged in too many occupations at a time. there is good sense in the old caution against having too many irons in the fire at once. be systematic men should be systematic in their business. a person who does business by rule, having a time and place for everything, doing his work promptly, will accomplish twice as much and with half the trouble of him who does it carelessly and slipshod. by introducing system into all your transactions, doing one thing at a time, always meeting appointments with punctuality, you find leisure for pastime and recreation; whereas the man who only half does one thing, and then turns to something else, and half does that, will have his business at loose ends, and will never know when his day's work is done, for it never will be done. of course, there is a limit to all these rules. we must try to preserve the happy medium, for there is such a thing as being too systematic. there are men and women, for instance, who put away things so carefully that they can never find them again. it is too much like the "red tape" formality at washington, and mr. dickens' "circumlocution office,"--all theory and no result. when the "astor house" was first started in new york city, it was undoubtedly the best hotel in the country. the proprietors had learned a good deal in europe regarding hotels, and the landlords were proud of the rigid system which pervaded every department of their great establishment. when twelve o'clock at night had arrived, and there were a number of guests around, one of the proprietors would say, "touch that bell, john;" and in two minutes sixty servants, with a water-bucket in each hand, would present themselves in the hall. "this," said the landlord, addressing his guests, "is our fire-bell; it will show you we are quite safe here; we do everything systematically." this was before the croton water was introduced into the city. but they sometimes carried their system too far. on one occasion, when the hotel was thronged with guests, one of the waiters was suddenly indisposed, and although there were fifty waiters in the hotel, the landlord thought he must have his full complement, or his "system" would be interfered with. just before dinner-time, he rushed down stairs and said, "there must be another waiter, i am one waiter short, what can i do?" he happened to see "boots," the irishman. "pat," said he, "wash your hands and face; take that white apron and come into the dining-room in five minutes." presently pat appeared as required, and the proprietor said: "now pat, you must stand behind these two chairs, and wait on the gentlemen who will occupy them; did you ever act as a waiter?" "i know all about it, sure, but i never did it." like the irish pilot, on one occasion when the captain, thinking he was considerably out of his course, asked, "are you certain you understand what you are doing?" pat replied, "sure and i knows every rock in the channel." that moment, "bang" thumped the vessel against a rock. "ah! be-jabers, and that is one of 'em," continued the pilot. but to return to the dining-room. "pat," said the landlord, "here we do everything systematically. you must first give the gentlemen each a plate of soup, and when they finish that, ask them what they will have next." pat replied, "ah! an' i understand parfectly the vartues of shystem." very soon in came the guests. the plates of soup were placed before them. one of pat's two gentlemen ate his soup; the other did not care for it. he said: "waiter, take this plate away and bring me some fish." pat looked at the untasted plate of soup, and remembering the instructions of the landlord in regard to "system," replied: "not till ye have ate yer supe!" of course that was carrying "system" entirely too far. read the newspapers always take a trustworthy newspaper, and thus keep thoroughly posted in regard to the transactions of the world. he who is without a newspaper is cut off from his species. in these days of telegraphs and steam, many important inventions and improvements in every branch of trade are being made, and he who don't consult the newspapers will soon find himself and his business left out in the cold. beware of "outside operations" we sometimes see men who have obtained fortunes, suddenly become poor. in many cases, this arises from intemperance, and often from gaming, and other bad habits. frequently it occurs because a man has been engaged in "outside operations," of some sort. when he gets rich in his legitimate business, he is told of a grand speculation where he can make a score of thousands. he is constantly flattered by his friends, who tell him that he is born lucky, that everything he touches turns into gold. now if he forgets that his economical habits, his rectitude of conduct and a personal attention to a business which he understood, caused his success in life, he will listen to the siren voices. he says: "i will put in twenty thousand dollars. i have been lucky, and my good luck will soon bring me back sixty thousand dollars." a few days elapse and it is discovered he must put in ten thousand dollars more: soon after he is told "it is all right," but certain matters not foreseen, require an advance of twenty thousand dollars more, which will bring him a rich harvest; but before the time comes around to realize, the bubble bursts, he loses all he is possessed of, and then he learns what he ought to have known at the first, that however successful a man may be in his own business, if he turns from that and engages ill a business which he don't understand, he is like samson when shorn of his locks his strength has departed, and he becomes like other men. if a man has plenty of money, he ought to invest something in everything that appears to promise success, and that will probably benefit mankind; but let the sums thus invested be moderate in amount, and never let a man foolishly jeopardize a fortune that he has earned in a legitimate way, by investing it in things in which he has had no experience. don't indorse without security i hold that no man ought ever to indorse a note or become security, for any man, be it his father or brother, to a greater extent than he can afford to lose and care nothing about, without taking good security. here is a man that is worth twenty thousand dollars; he is doing a thriving manufacturing or mercantile trade; you are retired and living on your money; he comes to you and says: "you are aware that i am worth twenty thousand dollars, and don't owe a dollar; if i had five thousand dollars in cash, i could purchase a particular lot of goods and double my money in a couple of months; will you indorse my note for that amount?" you reflect that he is worth twenty thousand dollars, and you incur no risk by endorsing his note; you like to accommodate him, and you lend your name without taking the precaution of getting security. shortly after, he shows you the note with your endorsement canceled, and tells you, probably truly, "that he made the profit that he expected by the operation," you reflect that you have done a good action, and the thought makes you feel happy. by and by, the same thing occurs again and you do it again; you have already fixed the impression in your mind that it is perfectly safe to indorse his notes without security. but the trouble is, this man is getting money too easily. he has only to take your note to the bank, get it discounted and take the cash. he gets money for the time being without effort; without inconvenience to himself. now mark the result. he sees a chance for speculation outside of his business. a temporary investment of only $ , is required. it is sure to come back before a note at the bank would be due. he places a note for that amount before you. you sign it almost mechanically. being firmly convinced that your friend is responsible and trustworthy; you indorse his notes as a "matter of course." unfortunately the speculation does not come to a head quite so soon as was expected, and another $ , note must be discounted to take up the last one when due. before this note matures the speculation has proved an utter failure and all the money is lost. does the loser tell his friend, the endorser, that he has lost half of his fortune? not at all. he don't even mention that he has speculated at all. but he has got excited; the spirit of speculation has seized him; he sees others making large sums in this way (we seldom hear of the losers), and, like other speculators, he "looks for his money where he loses it." he tries again. endorsing notes has become chronic with you, and at every loss he gets your signature for whatever amount he wants. finally you discover your friend has lost all of his property and all of yours. you are overwhelmed with astonishment and grief, and you say "it is a hard thing; my friend here has ruined me," but, you should add, "i have also ruined him." if you had said in the first place, "i will accommodate you, but i never indorse without taking ample security," he could not have gone beyond the length of his tether, and he would never have been tempted away from his legitimate business. it is a very dangerous thing, therefore, at any time, to let people get possession of money too easily; it tempts them to hazardous speculations, if nothing more. solomon truly said "he that hateth suretiship is sure." so with the young man starting in business; let him understand the value of money by earning it. when he does understand its value, then grease the wheels a little in helping him to start business, but remember, men who get money with too great facility cannot usually succeed. you must get the first dollars by hard knocks, and at some sacrifice, in order to appreciate the value of those dollars. advertise your business we all depend, more or less, upon the public for our support. we all trade with the public--lawyers, doctors, shoemakers, artists, blacksmiths, showmen, opera stagers, railroad presidents, and college professors. those who deal with the public must be careful that their goods are valuable; that they are genuine, and will give satisfaction. when you get an article which you know is going to please your customers, and that when they have tried it, they will feel they have got their money's worth, then let the fact be known that you have got it. be careful to advertise it in some shape or other because it is evident that if a man has ever so good an article for sale, and nobody knows it, it will bring him no return. in a country like this, where nearly everybody reads, and where newspapers are issued and circulated in editions of five thousand to two hundred thousand, it would be very unwise if this channel was not taken advantage of to reach the public in advertising. a newspaper goes into the family, and is read by wife and children, as well as the head of the home; hence hundreds and thousands of people may read your advertisement, while you are attending to your routine business. many, perhaps, read it while you are asleep. the whole philosophy of life is, first "sow," then "reap." that is the way the farmer does; he plants his potatoes and corn, and sows his grain, and then goes about something else, and the time comes when he reaps. but he never reaps first and sows afterwards. this principle applies to all kinds of business, and to nothing more eminently than to advertising. if a man has a genuine article, there is no way in which he can reap more advantageously than by "sowing" to the public in this way. he must, of course, have a really good article, and one which will please his customers; anything spurious will not succeed permanently because the public is wiser than many imagine. men and women are selfish, and we all prefer purchasing where we can get the most for our money and we try to find out where we can most surely do so. you may advertise a spurious article, and induce many people to call and buy it once, but they will denounce you as an impostor and swindler, and your business will gradually die out and leave you poor. this is right. few people can safely depend upon chance custom. you all need to have your customers return and purchase again. a man said to me, "i have tried advertising and did not succeed; yet i have a good article." i replied, "my friend, there may be exceptions to a general rule. but how do you advertise?" "i put it in a weekly newspaper three times, and paid a dollar and a half for it." i replied: "sir, advertising is like learning--'a little is a dangerous thing!'" a french writer says that "the reader of a newspaper does not see the first mention of an ordinary advertisement; the second insertion he sees, but does not read; the third insertion he reads; the fourth insertion, he looks at the price; the fifth insertion, he speaks of it to his wife; the sixth insertion, he is ready to purchase, and the seventh insertion, he purchases." your object in advertising is to make the public understand what you have got to sell, and if you have not the pluck to keep advertising, until you have imparted that information, all the money you have spent is lost. you are like the fellow who told the gentleman if he would give him ten cents it would save him a dollar. "how can i help you so much with so small a sum?" asked the gentleman in surprise. "i started out this morning (hiccuped the fellow) with the full determination to get drunk, and i have spent my only dollar to accomplish the object, and it has not quite done it. ten cents worth more of whiskey would just do it, and in this manner i should save the dollar already expended." so a man who advertises at all must keep it up until the public know who and what he is, and what his business is, or else the money invested in advertising is lost. some men have a peculiar genius for writing a striking advertisement, one that will arrest the attention of the reader at first sight. this fact, of course, gives the advertiser a great advantage. sometimes a man makes himself popular by an unique sign or a curious display in his window, recently i observed a swing sign extending over the sidewalk in front of a store, on which was the inscription in plain letters, "don't read the other side" of course i did, and so did everybody else, and i learned that the man had made all independence by first attracting the public to his business in that way and then using his customers well afterwards. genin, the hatter, bought the first jenny lind ticket at auction for two hundred and twenty-five dollars, because he knew it would be a good advertisement for him. "who is the bidder?" said the auctioneer, as he knocked down that ticket at castle garden. "genin, the hatter," was the response. here were thousands of people from the fifth avenue, and from distant cities in the highest stations in life. "who is 'genin,' the hatter?" they exclaimed. they had never heard of him before. the next morning the newspapers and telegraph had circulated the facts from maine to texas, and from five to ten millions off people had read that the tickets sold at auction for jenny lind's first concert amounted to about twenty thousand dollars, and that a single ticket was sold at two hundred and twenty-five dollars, to "genin, the hatter." men throughout the country involuntarily took off their hats to see if they had a "genin" hat on their heads. at a town in iowa it was found that in the crowd around the post office, there was one man who had a "genin" hat, and he showed it in triumph, although it was worn out and not worth two cents. "why," one man exclaimed, "you have a real 'genin' hat; what a lucky fellow you are." another man said, "hang on to that hat, it will be a valuable heir-loom in your family." still another man in the crowd who seemed to envy the possessor of this good fortune, said, "come, give us all a chance; put it up at auction!" he did so, and it was sold as a keepsake for nine dollars and fifty cents! what was the consequence to mr. genin? he sold ten thousand extra hats per annum, the first six years. nine-tenths of the purchasers bought of him, probably, out of curiosity, and many of them, finding that he gave them an equivalent for their money, became his regular customers. this novel advertisement first struck their attention, and then, as he made a good article, they came again. now i don't say that everybody should advertise as mr. genin did. but i say if a man has got goods for sale, and he don't advertise them in some way, the chances are that some day the sheriff will do it for him. nor do i say that everybody must advertise in a newspaper, or indeed use "printers' ink" at all. on the contrary, although that article is indispensable in the majority of cases, yet doctors and clergymen, and sometimes lawyers and some others, can more effectually reach the public in some other manner. but it is obvious, they must be known in some way, else how could they be supported? be polite and kind to your customers politeness and civility are the best capital ever invested in business. large stores, gilt signs, flaming advertisements, will all prove unavailing if you or your employees treat your patrons abruptly. the truth is, the more kind and liberal a man is, the more generous will be the patronage bestowed upon him. "like begets like." the man who gives the greatest amount of goods of a corresponding quality for the least sum (still reserving for himself a profit) will generally succeed best in the long run. this brings us to the golden rule, "as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them" and they will do better by you than if you always treated them as if you wanted to get the most you could out of them for the least return. men who drive sharp bargains with their customers, acting as if they never expected to see them again, will not be mistaken. they will never see them again as customers. people don't like to pay and get kicked also. one of the ushers in my museum once told me he intended to whip a man who was in the lecture-room as soon as he came out. "what for?" i inquired. "because he said i was no gentleman," replied the usher. "never mind," i replied, "he pays for that, and you will not convince him you are a gentleman by whipping him. i cannot afford to lose a customer. if you whip him, he will never visit the museum again, and he will induce friends to go with him to other places of amusement instead of this, and thus you see, i should be a serious loser." "but he insulted me," muttered the usher. "exactly," i replied, "and if he owned the museum, and you had paid him for the privilege of visiting it, and he had then insulted you, there might be some reason in your resenting it, but in this instance he is the man who pays, while we receive, and you must, therefore, put up with his bad manners." my usher laughingly remarked, that this was undoubtedly the true policy; but he added that he should not object to an increase of salary if he was expected to be abused in order to promote my interest. be charitable of course men should be charitable, because it is a duty and a pleasure. but even as a matter of policy, if you possess no higher incentive, you will find that the liberal man will command patronage, while the sordid, uncharitable miser will be avoided. solomon says: "there is that scattereth and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than meet, but it tendeth to poverty." of course the only true charity is that which is from the heart. the best kind of charity is to help those who are willing to help themselves. promiscuous almsgiving, without inquiring into the worthiness of the applicant, is bad in every sense. but to search out and quietly assist those who are struggling for themselves, is the kind that "scattereth and yet increaseth." but don't fall into the idea that some persons practice, of giving a prayer instead of a potato, and a benediction instead of bread, to the hungry. it is easier to make christians with full stomachs than empty. don't blab some men have a foolish habit of telling their business secrets. if they make money they like to tell their neighbors how it was done. nothing is gained by this, and ofttimes much is lost. say nothing about your profits, your hopes, your expectations, your intentions. and this should apply to letters as well as to conversation. goethe makes mephistophilles say: "never write a letter nor destroy one." business men must write letters, but they should be careful what they put in them. if you are losing money, be specially cautious and not tell of it, or you will lose your reputation. preserve your integrity it is more precious than diamonds or rubies. the old miser said to his sons: "get money; get it honestly if you can, but get money:" this advice was not only atrociously wicked, but it was the very essence of stupidity: it was as much as to say, "if you find it difficult to obtain money honestly, you can easily get it dishonestly. get it in that way." poor fool! not to know that the most difficult thing in life is to make money dishonestly! not to know that our prisons are full of men who attempted to follow this advice; not to understand that no man can be dishonest, without soon being found out, and that when his lack of principle is discovered, nearly every avenue to success is closed against him forever. the public very properly shun all whose integrity is doubted. no matter how polite and pleasant and accommodating a man may be, none of us dare to deal with him if we suspect "false weights and measures." strict honesty, not only lies at the foundation of all success in life (financially), but in every other respect. uncompromising integrity of character is invaluable. it secures to its possessor a peace and joy which cannot be attained without it--which no amount of money, or houses and lands can purchase. a man who is known to be strictly honest, may be ever so poor, but he has the purses of all the community at his disposal--for all know that if he promises to return what he borrows, he will never disappoint them. as a mere matter of selfishness, therefore, if a man had no higher motive for being honest, all will find that the maxim of dr. franklin can never fail to be true, that "honesty is the best policy." to get rich, is not always equivalent to being successful. "there are many rich poor men," while there are many others, honest and devout men and women, who have never possessed so much money as some rich persons squander in a week, but who are nevertheless really richer and happier than any man can ever be while he is a transgressor of the higher laws of his being. the inordinate love of money, no doubt, may be and is "the root of all evil," but money itself, when properly used, is not only a "handy thing to have in the house," but affords the gratification of blessing our race by enabling its possessor to enlarge the scope of human happiness and human influence. the desire for wealth is nearly universal, and none can say it is not laudable, provided the possessor of it accepts its responsibilities, and uses it as a friend to humanity. the history of money-getting, which is commerce, is a history of civilization, and wherever trade has flourished most, there, too, have art and science produced the noblest fruits. in fact, as a general thing, money-getters are the benefactors of our race. to them, in a great measure, are we indebted for our institutions of learning and of art, our academies, colleges and churches. it is no argument against the desire for, or the possession of wealth, to say that there are sometimes misers who hoard money only for the sake of hoarding and who have no higher aspiration than to grasp everything which comes within their reach. as we have sometimes hypocrites in religion, and demagogues in politics, so there are occasionally misers among money-getters. these, however, are only exceptions to the general rule. but when, in this country, we find such a nuisance and stumbling block as a miser, we remember with gratitude that in america we have no laws of primogeniture, and that in the due course of nature the time will come when the hoarded dust will be scattered for the benefit of mankind. to all men and women, therefore, do i conscientiously say, make money honestly, and not otherwise, for shakespeare has truly said, "he that wants money, means, and content, is without three good friends." the psychology of management the macmillan company new york * boston * chicago * dallas atlanta * san francisco macmillan & co., limited london * bombay * calcutta melbourne the macmillan co. of canada, ltd. toronto the psychology of management _the function of the mind in determining, teaching and installing methods of least waste_ by l.m. gilbreth, ph.d. new york the macmillan company , by the macmillan company ---------- set up and electrotyped. published march, to my father and mother ==================================================================== contents chapter i page description and general outline of the psychology of management ............................................. definition of psychology of management--importance of the subject--purpose of this book--definition of management--the three types of management--possible psychological studies of management--plan of psychological study here used--underlying ideas or divisions of scientific management--outline of method of investigation--conclusions to be reached. chapter ii individuality ............................................... definition of individuality--place of individuality in psychology--individuality under traditional management--individuality under transitory management--individuality under scientific management--selection of workers--separating output--recording output separately--individual tasks--individual instruction cards--individual teaching--individual incentives--individual welfare--summary: (a) effect of individuality upon work; (b) effect of individuality upon worker. chapter iii functionalization ........................................... definition of functionalization--psychological use of functionalization--functionalization in traditional management--functionalization under transitory management--functionalization under scientific management--separating the planning from the performing--functionalized foremanship--the function of order of work and route clerk--the function of instruction card clerk--the function of time and cost clerk--the function of disciplinarian--the function of gang boss--the function of speed boss--the function of repair boss--the function of inspector--functionalizing the worker--functionalizing the work itself--summary: (a) effect of functionalization upon the work; (b) effect of functionalization upon the worker. chapter iv measurement ................................................. definition of measurement--importance of measurement in psychology--relation of measurement in psychology to measurement in management--importance of measurement in management--measurement in traditional management--measurement in transitory management--measurement in scientific management--qualifications of the observer--methods of observation--definitions of motion study and time study--methods of motion study and time study--summary: (a) effect of measurement on the work; (b) effect of measurement on the worker; (c) future results to be expected; (d) first step toward obtaining these results. chapter v analysis and synthesis ...................................... definition of analysis--definition of synthesis--use of analysis and synthesis by psychology--importance of analysis and synthesis in management--place in traditional management--place in transitory management--place in scientific management--the work of the analyst--determining factor in amount of analysis--field of psychology in analysis--qualifications of an analyst--worker's interest in analysis--the work of the synthesist--results of synthesist's work--the task--discussion of the name "task"--definition of "task" in scientific management--field of application of the task idea--qualifications of the synthesist--summary: (a) effect of analysis and synthesis on the work; (b) effect of analysis and synthesis on the worker. chapter vi standardization ............................................. definition of standardization--relation of the standard to the task and the incentive--relation of the standard to psychology--purpose of standardization--standardization under traditional management--standardization under transitory management--value of systems--standardization under scientific management--relation of standard to measurement--scope of standardization under scientific management--permanence of results--needs of standardization likened to needs in field of spelling--standard nomenclature--advantages of mnemonic symbols--standard phraseology--the standard man--standard means of conveying information--definition of the instruction card--detailed description of the instruction card--value of standard surroundings--necessity for proper placing of the worker--standard equipment--standard tools and devices--standard clothing--standard methods--rest from fatigue--standardization of work with animals--standard quality--standard "method of attack"--summary: (a) effect of standardization on the work; (b) effect of standardization on the worker; (c) progress of standardization assured. chapter vii records and programmes ...................................... definition of record--records under traditional management--records under transitory management--records under scientific management--criterion of records--records of work and workers--records of initiative--records of good behavior--records of achievement--records of "exceptions"--posting of records--summary of results of records to work and worker--definition of programme--programmes under traditional management--programmes under transitory management--programmes under scientific management--programmes and routing--possibility of prophecy under scientific management--summary of results of programmes to work and worker--relation between records and programmes--types of records and programmes--interrelation of types--illustrations of complexity of relations--possibilities of eliminating waste--derivation of the programme--summary: (a) effect of relations between records and programmes on the work; (b) effect on the worker. chapter viii teaching .................................................... definition of teaching--teaching under traditional management--faults due to lack of standards--teaching under transitory management--teaching under scientific management--importance of teaching--conforming of teaching to psychological laws--conservation of valuable elements of traditional and transitory management--scope of teaching--source of teaching--methods of teaching--instruction cards as teachers--systems as teachers--drawings, charts, plans and photographs--functional foremen as teachers--object lessons as teachers--training the senses--forming good habits--importance of teaching right motions first--stimulating attention--forming associations--educating the memory--cultivating the imagination--developing the judgment--utilizing suggestion--utilizing native reactions--developing the will--adaptability of teaching--provision of places for teaching--measurement of teaching--relation of teaching to academic training and vocational guidance--summary: (a) result of teaching in the work; (b) result of teaching to the worker; (c) results to be expected in the future. chapter ix incentives .................................................. definition of incentive--importance of incentives--direct and indirect incentives--definition of reward--definition of punishment--nature of direct incentives--the reward under traditional management--the punishment under traditional management--the direct incentive under traditional management--incentives under transitory management--rewards under scientific management--promotion and pay--relation of wages and bonus--day work--piece work--task wage--gain sharing--premium plan--profit sharing--differential rate piece--task work with a bonus--differential bonus--three rate--three rate with increased rate--other rewards--negative and positive punishments--fines and their disposal--assignment to less pleasant work--discharge and its elimination--use of direct incentives--summary: (a) effect of incentives upon the work; (b) effect of incentives upon the worker. chapter x welfare ..................................................... definition of welfare--"welfare" and "welfare work"--welfare under traditional management--welfare work under traditional management--welfare under transitory management--welfare work under transitory management--welfare under scientific management--physical improvement--mental development--moral development--interrelation of physical, mental and moral development--welfare work under scientific management--summary: (a) result of welfare to the work; (b) result of welfare to the worker. index ....................................................... the psychology of management chapter i description and general outline of definition of psychology of management.--the psychology of management, as here used, means,--the effect of the mind that is directing work upon that work which is directed, and the effect of this undirected and directed work upon the mind of the worker. importance of the subject.--before defining the terms that will be used more in detail, and outlining the method of treatment to be followed, it is well to consider the importance of the subject matter of this book, for upon the reader's interest in the subject, and his desire, from the outset, to follow what is said, and to respond to it, rests a large part of the value of this book. value of psychology.--first of all, then, what is there in the subject of psychology to demand the attention of the manager? psychology, in the popular phrase, is "the study of the mind." it has for years been included in the training of all teachers, and has been one of the first steps for the student of philosophy; but it has not, usually, been included among the studies of the young scientific or engineering student, or of any students in other lines than philosophy and education. this, not because its value as a "culture subject" was not understood, but because the course of the average student is so crowded with technical preparation necessary to his life work, and because the practical value of psychology has not been recognized. it is well recognized that the teacher must understand the working of the mind in order best to impart his information in that way that will enable the student to grasp it most readily. it was not recognized that every man going out into the world needs all the knowledge that he can get as to the working of the human mind in order not only to give but to receive information with the least waste and expenditure of energy, nor was it recognized that in the industrial, as well as the academic world, almost every man is a teacher. value of management.--the second question demanding attention is;--of what value is the study of management? the study of management has been omitted from the student's training until comparatively recently, for a very different reason than was psychology. it was never doubted that a knowledge of management would be of great value to anyone and everyone, and many were the queer schemes for obtaining that knowledge after graduation. it was doubted that management could be studied otherwise than by observation and practice.[ ] few teachers, if any, believed in the existence, or possibility, of a teaching science of management. management was assumed by many to be an art, by even more it was thought to be a divinely bestowed gift or talent, rather than an acquired accomplishment. it was common belief that one could learn to manage only by going out on the work and watching other managers, or by trying to manage, and not by studying about management in a class room or in a text book; that watching a good manager might help one, but no one could hope really to succeed who had not "the knack born in him." with the advent of "scientific management," and its demonstration that the best management is founded on laws that have been determined, and can be taught, the study of management in the class room as well as on the work became possible and actual.[ ] value of psychology of management.--third, we must consider the value of the study of the psychology of management.[ ] this question, like the one that precedes it, is answered by scientific management. it has demonstrated that the emphasis in successful management lies on the _man_, not on the _work_; that efficiency is best secured by placing the emphasis on the man, and modifying the equipment, materials and methods to make the most of the man. it has, further, recognized that the man's mind is a controlling factor in his efficiency, and has, by teaching, enabled the man to make the most of his powers.[ ] in order to understand this teaching element that is such a large part of management, a knowledge of psychology is imperative; and this study of psychology, as it applies to the work of the manager or the managed, is exactly what the "psychology of management" is. five indications of this value.--in order to realize the importance of the psychology of management it is necessary to consider the following five points:-- . management is a life study of every man who works with other men. he must either manage, or be managed, or both; in any case, he can never work to best advantage until he understands both the psychological and managerial laws by which he governs or is governed. . a knowledge of the underlying laws of management is the most important asset that one can carry with him into his life work, even though he will never manage any but himself. it is useful, practical, commercially valuable. . this knowledge is to be had _now_. the men who have it are ready and glad to impart it to all who are interested and who will pass it on.[ ] the text books are at hand now. the opportunities for practical experience in scientific management will meet all demands as fast as they are made. . the psychology of, that is, the mind's place in management is only one part, element or variable of management; one of numerous, almost numberless, variables. . it is a division well fitted to occupy the attention of the beginner, as well as the more experienced, because it is a most excellent place to start the study of management. a careful study of the relations of psychology to management should develop in the student a method of attack in learning his selected life work that should help him to grasp quickly the orderly array of facts that the other variables, as treated by the great managers, bring to him. purpose of this book.--it is scarcely necessary to mention that this book can hope to do little more than arouse an interest in the subject and point the way to the detailed books where such an interest can be more deeply aroused and more fully satisfied. what this book will not do.--it is not the purpose of this book to give an exhaustive treatment of psychology. neither is it possible in this book to attempt to give a detailed account of management in general, or of the taylor plan of "scientific management" so-called, in particular. all of the literature on the subject has been carefully studied and reviewed for the purpose of writing this book,--not only what is in print, but considerable that is as yet in manuscript. no statement has been made that is not along the line of the accepted thought and standardized practice of the authorities. the foot notes have been prepared with great care. by reading the references there given one can verify statements in the text, and can also, if he desires, inform himself at length on any branch of the subject that especially interests him. what this book will do.--this book aims not so much to instruct as to arouse an interest in its subject, and to point the way whence instruction comes. if it can serve as an introduction to psychology and to management, can suggest the relation of these two fields of inquiries and can ultimately enroll its readers as investigators in a resultant great field of inquiry, it will have accomplished its aim. definition of management.--to discuss this subject more in detail-- first: what is "management"? "management," as defined by the century dictionary, is "the art of managing by direction or regulation." successful management of the old type was an art based on no measurement. scientific management is an art based upon a science,--upon laws deducted from measurement. management continues to be what it has always been,--the _art_ of directing activity. change in the accepted meaning.--"management," until recent years, and the emphasis placed on scientific management was undoubtedly associated, in the average mind, with the _managing_ part of the organization only, neglecting that vital part--the best interests of the managed, almost entirely. since we have come to realize that management signifies the relationship between the managing and the managed in doing work, a new realization of its importance has come about.[ ] inadequacy of the terms used.--it is unfortunate that the english language is so poor in synonyms in this field that the same word must have two such different and conflicting meanings, for, though the new definition of management be accepted, the "fringe" of associations that belong to the old are apt to remain.[ ] the thoughts of "knack, aptitude, tact, adroitness,"--not to speak of the less desirable "brute force," "shrewdness, subtlety, cunning, artifice, deceit, duplicity," of the older idea of management remain in the background of the mind and make it difficult, even when one is convinced that management is a science, to think and act as if it were. it must be noticed and constantly remembered that one of the greatest difficulties to overcome in studying management and its development is the meaning of the terms used. it is most unfortunate that the new ideas have been forced to content themselves with old forms as best they may. psychological interest of the terms.--psychology could ask no more interesting subject than a study of the mental processes that lie back of many of these terms. it is most unfortunate for the obtaining of clearness, that new terms were not invented for the new ideas. there is, however, an excellent reason for using the old terms. by their use it is emphasized that the new thought is a logical outgrowth of the old, and experience has proved that this close relationship to established ideas is a powerful argument for the new science; but such terms as "task," "foreman," "speed boss," "piece-rate" and "bonus," as used in the science of management, suffer from misunderstanding caused by old and now false associations. furthermore, in order to compare old and new interpretations of the ideas of management, the older terms of management should have their traditional meanings only. the two sets of meanings are a source of endless confusion, unwarranted prejudice, and worse. this is well recognized by the authorities on management. the three types of management.--we note this inadequacy of terms again when we discuss the various _types_ of management. we may divide all management into three types-- ( ) traditional ( ) transitory ( ) scientific, or measured functional.[ ] traditional management, the first, has been variously called "military," "driver," the "marquis of queensberry type," "initiative and incentive management," as well as "traditional" management. definition of the first type.--in the first type, the power of managing lies, theoretically at least, in the hands of one man, a capable "all-around" manager. the line of authority and of responsibility is clear, fixed and single. each man comes in direct contact with but one man above him. a man may or may not manage more than one man beneath him, but, however this may be, he is managed by but one man above him. preferable name for the first type.--the names "traditional," or "initiative and incentive," are the preferable titles for this form of management. it is true they lack in specificness, but the other names, while aiming to be descriptive, really emphasize one feature only, and in some cases with unfortunate results. the name "military" inadvisable.--the direct line of authority suggested the name "military,"[ ] and at the time of the adoption of that name it was probably appropriate as well as complimentary.[ ] appropriate in the respect referred to only, for the old type of management varied so widely in its manifestations that the comparison to the procedure of the army was most inaccurate. "military" has always been a synonym for "systematized", "orderly," "definite," while the old type of management was more often quite the opposite of the meaning of all these terms. the term "military management" though often used in an uncomplimentary sense would, today, if understood, be more complimentary than ever it was in the past. the introduction of various features of scientific management into the army and navy,--and such features are being incorporated steadily and constantly,--is raising the standard of management there to a high degree. this but renders the name "military" management for the old type more inaccurate and misleading. it is plain that the stirring associations of the word "military" make its use for the old type, by advocates of the old type, a weapon against scientific management that only the careful thinker can turn aside. the names "driver" and "marquis of queensberry" unfortunate.--the name "driver" suggests an opposition between the managers and the men, an opposition which the term "marquis of queensberry" emphasizes. this term "marquis of queensberry" has been given to that management which is thought of as a mental and physical contest, waged "according to the rules of the game." these two names are most valuable pictorially, or in furnishing oratorical material. they are constant reminders of the constant desire of the managers to get all the work that is possible out of the men, but they are scarcely descriptive in any satisfactory sense, and the visions they summon, while they are perhaps definite, are certainly, for the inexperienced in management, inaccurate. in other words, they usually lead to imagination rather than to perception. the name "initiative and incentive" authoritative.--the term "initiative and incentive" is used by dr. taylor, and is fully described by him.[ ] the words themselves suggest, truly, that he gives the old form of management its due. he does more than this. he points out in his definition of the terms the likenesses between the old and new forms. the name "traditional" brief and descriptive.--the only excuses for the term "traditional," since dr. taylor's term is available, are its brevity and its descriptiveness. the fact that it is indefinite is really no fault in it, as the subject it describes is equally indefinite. the "fringe"[ ] of this word is especially good. it calls up ideas of information handed down from generation to generation orally, the only way of teaching under the old type of management. it recalls the idea of the inaccurate perpetuation of unthinking custom, and the "myth" element always present in tradition,--again undeniable accusations against the old type of management. the fundamental idea of the tradition, that it is _oral_, is the essence of the difference of the old type of management from science, or even system, which must be written. it is not necessary to make more definite here the content of this oldest type of management, rather being satisfied with the extent, and accepting for working use the name "traditional" with the generally accepted definition of that name. definition of the second type of management.--the second type of management is called "interim" or "transitory" management. it includes all management that is consciously passing into scientific management and embraces all stages, from management that has incorporated one scientifically derived principle, to management that has adopted all but one such principle. preferable name for second type of management.--perhaps the name "transitory" is slightly preferable in that, though the element of temporariness is present in both words, it is more strongly emphasized in the latter. the usual habit of associating with it the ideas of "fleeting, evanescent, ephemeral, momentary, short-lived," may have an influence on hastening the completion of the installing of scientific management. definition of the third type of management.--the third form of management is called "ultimate," "measured functional," or "scientific," management, and might also be called,--but for the objection of dr. taylor, the "taylor plan of management." this differs from the first two types mentioned in that it is a definite plan of management synthesized from scientific analysis of the data of management. in other words, scientific management is that management which is a science, i.e., which operates according to known, formulated, and applied laws.[ ] preferable name of the third type of management.--the name "ultimate" has, especially to the person operating under the transitory stage, all the charm and inspiration of a goal. it has all the incentives to accomplishment of a clearly circumscribed task. its very definiteness makes it seem possible of attainment. it is a great satisfaction to one who, during a lifetime of managing effort, has tried one offered improvement after another to be convinced that he has found the right road at last. the name is, perhaps, of greatest value in attracting the attention of the uninformed and, as the possibilities of the subject can fulfill the most exacting demands, the attention once secured can be held. the name "measured functional" is the most descriptive, but demands the most explanation. the principle of functionalization is one of the underlying, fundamental principles of scientific management. it is not as necessary to stop to define it here, as it is necessary to discuss the definition, the principle, and the underlying psychology, at length later. the name "scientific" while in some respects not as appropriate as are any of the other names, has already received the stamp of popular approval. in derivation it is beyond criticism. it also describes exactly, as has been said, the difference between the older forms of management and the new. even its "fringe" of association is, or at least was when first used, all that could be desired; but the name is, unfortunately, occasionally used indiscriminately for any sort of system and for schemes of operation that are not based on time study. it has gradually become identified more or less closely with . the taylor plan of management . what we have defined as the "transitory" plan of management . management which not only is not striving to be scientific, but which confounds "science" with "system." both its advocates and opponents have been guilty of misuse of the word. still, in spite of this, the very fact that the word has had a wide use, that it has become habitual to think of the new type of management as "scientific," makes its choice advisable. we shall use it, but restrict its content. with us "scientific management" is used to mean the complete taylor plan of management, with no modifications and no deviations. we may summarize by saying that: . the popular name is scientific management, . the inspiring name is ultimate management, . the descriptive name is measured functional management, . the distinctive name is the taylor plan of management. for the purpose of this book, scientific management is, then, the most appropriate name. through its use, the reader is enabled to utilize all his associations, and through his study he is able to restrict and order the content of the term. relationship between the three types of management.--from the foregoing definitions and descriptions it will be clear that the three types of management are closely related. three of the names given bring out this relationship most clearly. these are traditional (i.e., primitive), interim, and ultimate. these show, also, that the relationship is genetic, i.e., that the second form grows out of the first, but passes through to the third. the growth is evolutional. under the first type, or in the first stage of management, the laws or principles underlying right management are usually unknown, hence disregarded. in the second stage, the laws are known and installed as fast as functional foremen can be taught their new duties and the resistances of human nature can be overcome.[ ] in the third stage the managing is operated in accordance with the recognized laws of management. psychological significance of this relationship.--the importance of the knowledge and of the desire for it can scarcely be overestimated. this again makes plain the value of the psychological study of management. possible psychological studies of management.--in making this psychological study of management, it would be possible to take up the three types as defined above, separately and in order, and to discuss the place of the mind in each, at length; but such a method would not only result in needless repetition, but also in most difficult comparisons when final results were to be deduced and formulated. it would, again, be possible to take up the various elements or divisions of psychological study as determined by a consensus of psychologists, and to illustrate each in turn from the three types of management; but the results from any such method would be apt to seem unrelated and impractical, i.e., it would be a lengthy process to get results that would be of immediate, practical use in managing. plan of psychological study used here.--it has, therefore, seemed best to base the discussion that is to follow upon arbitrary divisions of scientific management, that is-- . to enumerate the underlying principles on which scientific management rests. . to show in how far the other two types of management vary from scientific management. . to discuss the psychological aspect of each principle. advantages of this plan of study.--in this way the reader can gain an idea of . the relation of scientific management to the other types of management. . the structure of scientific management. . the relation between the various elements of scientific management. . the psychology of management in general, and of the three types of management in particular. underlying ideas and divisions of scientific management.--these underlying ideas are grouped under nine divisions, as follows:-- . individuality. . functionalization. . measurement. . analysis and synthesis. . standardization. . records and programmes. . teaching. . incentives. . welfare. it is here only necessary to enumerate these divisions. each will be made the subject of a chapter. derivation of these divisions.--these divisions lay no claim to being anything but underlying ideas of scientific management, that embrace varying numbers of established elements that can easily be subjected to the scrutiny of psychological investigation. the discussion will be as little technical as is possible, will take nothing for granted and will cite references at every step. this is a new field of investigation, and the utmost care is necessary to avoid generalizing from insufficient data. derivation of scientific management.--there has been much speculation as to the age and origin of scientific management. the results of this are interesting, but are not of enough practical value to be repeated here. many ideas of scientific management can be traced back, more or less clearly and directly, to thinkers of the past; but the science of management, as such, was discovered, and the deduction of its laws, or "principles," made possible when dr. frederick w. taylor discovered and applied time study. having discovered this, he constructed from it and the other fundamental principles a complete whole. mr. george iles in that most interesting and instructive of books, "inventors at work,"[ ] has pointed out the importance, to development in any line of progress or science, of measuring devices and methods. contemporaneous with, or previous to, the discovery of the device or method, must come the discovery or determination of the most profitable unit of measurement which will, of itself, best show the variations in efficiency from class. when dr. taylor discovered units of measurement for determining, _prior to performance_, the amount of any kind of work that a worker could do and the amount of rest he must have during the performance of that work, then, and not until then, did management become a science. on this hangs the science of management.[ ] outline of method of investigation.--in the discussion of each of the nine divisions of scientific management, the following topics must be treated: . definition of the division and its underlying idea. . appearance and importance of the idea in traditional and transitory management. . appearance and importance of the idea in scientific management. . elements of scientific management which show the effects of the idea. . results of the idea upon work and workers. these topics will be discussed in such order as the particular division investigated demands. the psychological significance of the appearance or non-appearance of the idea, and of the effect of the idea, will be noted. the results will be summarized at the close of each chapter, in order to furnish data for drawing conclusions at the close of the discussion. conclusions to be reached.--these conclusions will include the following:-- . "scientific management" is a science. . it alone, of the three types of management, is a science. . contrary to a widespread belief that scientific management kills individuality, it is built on the basic principle of recognition of the individual, not only as an economic unit but also as a personality, with all the idiosyncrasies that distinguish a person. . scientific management fosters individuality by functionalizing work. . measurement, in scientific management, is of ultimate units of subdivision. . these measured ultimate units are combined into methods of least waste. . standardization under scientific management applies to all elements. . the accurate records of scientific management make accurate programmes possible of fulfillment. . through the teaching of scientific management the management is unified and made self-perpetuating. . the method of teaching of scientific management is a distinct and valuable contribution to education. . incentives under scientific management not only stimulate but benefit the worker. . it is for the ultimate as well as immediate welfare of the worker to work under scientific management. . scientific management is applicable to all fields of activity, and to mental as well as physical work. . scientific management is applicable to self-management as well as to managing others. . it teaches men to coöperate with the management as well as to manage. . it is a device capable of use by all. . the psychological element of scientific management is the most important element. . because scientific management is psychologically right it is the ultimate form of management. . this psychological study of scientific management emphasizes especially the teaching features. . scientific management simultaneously a. increases output and wages and lowers costs. b. eliminates waste. c. turns unskilled labor into skilled. d. provides a system of self-perpetuating welfare. e. reduces the cost of living. f. bridges the gap between the college trained and the apprenticeship trained worker. g. forces capital and labor to coöperate and to promote industrial peace. chapter i footnotes: =============================================== . charles babbage, _economy of manufacturers._ preface, p. v. . halbert p. gillette, paper no. , american society of engineering contractors. . gillette and dana, _cost keeping and management_, p. . . f.b. gilbreth, _motion study_, p. . . f.w. taylor, _principles of scientific management_, p. . . f.w. taylor, _shop management_, para. , am. soc. m.e., paper no. . . william james, _psychology_, vol. i, p. . . f.b. gilbreth, _cost reducing system_, chap. . . morris llewellyn cooke, _bulletin no. of the carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching_, p. . . f.w. taylor, _shop management_, para. , am. soc. m.e., paper no. . . f.w. taylor, _principles of scientific management_, pp. - . . the idea called to mind by the use of a given word.--_ed._ . henry r. towne, introduction to _shop management_. (harper & bros.) . f.w. taylor, _principles of scientific management_, p. . (harper & bros.) . doubleday, page & co. . f.w. taylor, _principles of scientific management_, p. . (harper & bros.) ==================================================================== chapter ii individuality definition of individuality.--"an individual is a single thing, a being that is, or is regarded as, a unit. an individual is opposed to a crowd. individual action is opposed to associate action. individual interests are opposed to common or community interests." these definitions give us some idea of the extent of individuality. individuality is a particular or distinctive characteristic of an individual; "that quality or aggregate of qualities which distinguishes one person or thing from another, idiosyncrasy." this indicates the content. for our purpose, we may define the study of individuality as a consideration of the individual as a unit with special characteristics. that it is a _unit_ signifies that it is one of many and that it has likeness to the many. that it has _special characteristics_ shows that it is one of many, but different from the many. this consideration of individuality emphasizes both the common element and the diverging characteristics. individuality as treated in this chapter.--the recognition of individuality is the subject of this chapter. the utilization of this individuality in its deviation from class, is the subject of the chapter that follows, functionalization. individuality as considered by psychology.--psychology has not always emphasized the importance of the individual as a unit for study. prof. ladd's definition of psychology, quoted and endorsed by prof. james, is "the description and explanation of states of consciousness, as such."[ ] "by states of consciousness," says james, "are meant such things as sensation, desires, emotions, cognitions, reasonings, decisions, volitions, and the like." this puts the emphasis on such divisions of consciousness as, "attention," "interest," and "will." with the day of experimental psychology has come the importance of the individual self as a subject of study,[ ] and psychology has come to be defined, as calkins defines it, as a "science of the self as conscious."[ ] we hear much in the talk of today of the "psychology of the crowd," the "psychology of the mob," and the "psychology of the type," etc., but the mind that is being measured, and from whose measurements the laws are being deduced and formulated is, at the present the _individual_ mind.[ ] the psychology which interested itself particularly in studying such divisions of mental activity as attention, will, habit, etc., emphasizes more particularly the likenesses of minds. it is necessary to understand thoroughly all of these likenesses before one can be sure what the differences, or idiosyncrasies, are, and how important they are, because, while the likenesses furnish the background, it is the differences that are most often actually utilized by management. these must be determined in order to compute and set the proper individual task for the given man from standard data of the standard, or first-class man. in any study of the individual, the following facts must be noted:-- . the importance of the study of the individual, and the comparatively small amount of work that has as yet been done in that field. . the difficulty of the study, and the necessity for great care, not only in the study itself, but in deducing laws from it. . the necessity of considering any one individual trait as modified by all the other traits of the individual. . the importance of the individual as distinct from the type. many students are so interested in studying types and deducing laws which apply to types in general, that they lose sight of the fact that the individual is the basis of the study,--that individuality is that for which they must seek and for which they must constantly account. as sully says, we must not emphasize "_typical developments_ in a new individual," at the expense of "typical development _in a new individual_."[ ] it is the fact that the development occurs in an individual, and not that the development is typical, that we should emphasize. individuality seldom recognized under traditional management.--under traditional management there was little or no systematized method for the recognition of individuality or individual fitness.[ ] the worker usually was, in the mind of the manager, one of a crowd, his only distinguishing mark being the amount of work which he was capable of performing. selecting workers under traditional management.--in selecting men to do work, there was little or no attempt to study the individuals who applied for work. the matter of selection was more of a process of "guess work" than of exact measurement, and the highest form of test was considered to be that of having the man actually tried out by being given a chance at the work itself. there was not only a great waste of time on the work, because men unfitted to it could not turn it out so successfully, but there also was a waste of the worker, and many times a positive injury to the worker, by his being put at work which he was unfitted either to perform, to work at continuously, or both. in the most progressive type of traditional management there was usually a feeling, however, that if the labor market offered even temporarily a greater supply than the work in hand demanded, it was wise to choose those men to do the work who were best fitted for it, or who were willing to work for less wages. it is surprising to find in the traditional type, even up to the present day, how often men were selected for their strength and physique, rather than for any special capabilities fitting them for working in, or at, the particular line of work to be done. output seldom separated under traditional management.--under traditional management especially on day work the output of the men was not usually separated, nor was the output recorded separately, as can be done even with the work of gangs. few individual tasks under traditional management.--seldom, if ever, was an individual task set for a worker on day work, or piece work, and even if one were set, it was not scientifically determined. the men were simply set to work alone or in gangs, _as the work demanded_, and if the foreman was overworked or lazy, allowed to take practically their own time to do the work. if, on the other hand, the foreman was a "good driver," the men might be pushed to their utmost limit of their individual undirected speed, regardless of their welfare. little individual teaching under traditional management.--not having a clear idea either of the present fitness and the future possibilities of the worker, or the requirements of the work, no intelligent attempt could be made at efficient individual teaching. what teaching was done was in the form of directions for all, concerning the work in general, the directions being given by an overworked foreman, the holding of whose position often depended more upon whether his employer made money than upon the way his men were taught, or worked. seldom an individual reward under traditional management.--as a typical example of disregard of individuality, the worker in the household may be cited, and especially the "general housework girl." selected with no knowledge of her capabilities, and with little or no scientific or even systematized knowledge of the work that she is expected to do, there is little or no thought of a prescribed and definite task, no teaching specially adapted to the individual needs of the taught, and no reward in proportion to efficiency. cause of these lacks under traditional management.--the fault lies not in any desire of the managers to do poor or wasteful work, or to treat their workers unfairly,--but in a lack of knowledge and of accurate methods for obtaining, conserving and transmitting knowledge. under traditional management no one individual knows precisely what is to be done. such management seldom knows how work could best be done;--never knows how much work each individual can do.[ ] understanding neither work nor workers, it can not adjust the one to the other so as to obtain least waste. having no conception of the importance of accurate measurement, it has no thought of the individual as a unit. individuality recognized under transitory management.-- recognition of individuality is one of the principles first apparent under transitory management. this is apt to demonstrate itself first of all in causing the outputs of the workers to "show up" separately, rewarding these separated outputs, and rewarding each worker for his individual output. benefits of this recognition.--the benefits of introducing these features first are that the worker, ( ) seeing his individual output, is stimulated to measure it, and ( ) receiving compensation in accordance with his output, is satisfied; and ( ) observing that records are necessary to determine the amount of output and pay, is glad to have accurate measurement and the other features of scientific management introduced. individuality a fundamental principle of scientific management.--under scientific management the individual is the unit to be measured. functionalization is based upon utilizing the particular powers and special abilities of each man. measurement is of the individual man and his work. analysis and synthesis build up methods by which the individual can best do his work. standards are of the work of an individual, a standard man, and the task is always for an individual, being that percentage of the standard man's task that the particular individual can do. records are of individuals, and are made in order to show and reward individual effort. specific individuals are taught those things that they, individually, require. incentives are individual both in the cases of rewards and punishments, and, finally, it is the welfare of the individual worker that is considered, without the sacrifice of any for the good of the whole. individuality considered in selecting workers.--under scientific management individuality is considered in selecting workers as it could not be under either of the other two forms of management. this for several reasons: . the work is more specialized, hence requires more carefully selected men. . with standardized methods comes a knowledge to the managers of the qualifications of the "standard men" who can best do the work and continuously thrive. . motion study, in its investigation of the worker, supplies a list of variations in workers that can be utilized in selecting men.[ ] variables of the worker.--this list now includes at least or variables, and shows the possible elements which may demand consideration. when it is remembered that the individual selected may need a large or small proportion of most of the variables in order to do his particular work most successfully, and that every single one of these variables, as related to the others, may, in some way affect his output and his welfare in doing his assigned work, the importance of taking account of individuality in selection is apparent. scientific management needs support in studying workers.--the best of management is by no means at its ultimate stage in practice in this field. this, not because of a lack in the laws of management, but because, so far, scientific management has not received proper support from other lines of activity. present lack of knowledge of applicants.--at present, the men who apply to the industries for positions have no scientifically determined idea of their own capabilities, neither has there been any effort in the training or experience of most of those who apply for work for the first time to show them how fit they really are to do the work which they wish to do. supplements demanded by scientific management.--before the worker can be scientifically selected so that his individuality can be appreciated, scientific management must be supplemented in two ways:-- . by psychological and physiological study of workers under it. by such study of the effect of various kinds of standardized work upon the mind and body, standard requirements for men who desire to do the work can be made. . by scientific study of the worker made before he comes into the industries, the results of which shall show his capabilities and possibilities.[ ] whence this help must come.--this study must be made a. in the vocational guidance work. b. in the academic work, and in both fields psychological and physiological investigations are called for. work of vocational guidance bureaus.--vocational guidance bureaus are, at present, doing a wonderful work in their line. this work divides itself into two parts: . determining the capabilities of the boy, that is, seeing what he is, by nature and training, best fitted to do. . determining the possibilities of his securing work in the line where he is best fitted to work, that is, studying the industrial opportunities that offer, and the "welfare" of the worker under each, using the word welfare in the broadest sense, of general wellbeing, mental, physical, moral and financial. work of academic world.--the academic world is also, wherever it is progressive, attempting to study the student, and to develop him so that he can be the most efficient individual. progressive educators realize that schools and colleges must stand or fall, as efficient, as the men they train become successful or unsuccessful in their vocations, as well as in their personal culture. need for psychological study in all fields.--in both these complementary lines of activity, as in scientific management itself, the need for psychological study is evident.[ ] through it, only, can scientific progress come. here is emphasized again the importance of measurement. through accurate measurement of the mind and the body only can individuality be recognized, conserved and developed as it should be. preparedness of experimental psychology.--experimental psychology has instruments of precision with which to measure and test the minds and bodies brought to it, and its leading exponents are so broadening the scope of its activities that it is ready and glad to plan for investigations. method of selection under ultimate management.--under ultimate management, the minds of the workers,--and of the managers too,--will have been studied, and the results recorded from earliest childhood. this record, made by trained investigators, will enable vocational guidance directors to tell the child what he is fitted to be, and thus to help the schools and colleges to know how best to train him, that is to say, to provide what he will need to know to do his life work, and also those cultural studies that his vocational work may lack, and that may be required to build out his best development as an individual. it is not always recognized that even the student who can afford to postpone his technical training until he has completed a general culture course, requires that his culture course be carefully planned. not only must he choose those general courses that will serve as a foundation for his special study, and that will broaden and enrich his study, but also he must be provided with a counter-balance,--with interests that his special work might never arouse in him. thus the field of scientific management can be narrowed to determining and preparing standard plans for standard specialized men, and selecting men to fill these places from competent applicants. what part of the specialized training needed by the special work shall be given in schools and what in the industries themselves can be determined later. the "twin apprentice" plan offers one solution of the problem that has proved satisfactory in many places. the psychological study should determine through which agency knowledge can best come at any particular stage of mental growth. effect on workers of such selection.--as will be shown at greater length under "incentives," scientific management aims in every way to encourage initiative. the outline here given as to how men must, ultimately, under scientific management, be selected serves to show that, far from being "made machines of," men are selected to reach that special place where their individuality can be recognized and rewarded to the greatest extent. selection under scientific management to-day.--at the present day, the most that scientific management can do, in the average case, is to determine the type of men needed for any particular kind of work, and then to select that man who seems, from such observations as can be made, best to conform to the type. the accurate knowledge of the requirements of the work, and the knowledge of variables of the worker make even a cursory observation more rich in results than it would otherwise be. even such an apparently obvious observation, as that the very fact that a man claims that he can do the work implies desire and will on his part to do it that may overcome many natural lacks,--even this is an advance in recognizing individuality. effect of this selection.--the result of this scientific selection of the workman is not only better work, but also, and more important from the psychological side, the development of his individuality. it is not always recognized that the work itself is a great educator, and that acute cleverness in the line of work to which he is fitted comes to the worker. individuality developed by separating outputs.--under scientific management the work of each man is arranged either so that his output shows up separately and on the individual records, or, if the work is such that it seems best to do it in gangs, the output can often be so recorded that the individual's output can be computed from the records. purpose of separating outputs.--the primary purpose of separating the output is to see what the man can do, to record this, and to reward the man according to his work, but this separating of output has also an individual result, which is even more important than the result aimed at, and that is the development of individuality. under traditional management and the usual "day work," much of the work is done by gangs and is observed or recorded as of gangs. only now and then, when the work of some particular individual shows up decidedly better or worse than that of his fellows, and when the foreman or superintendent, or other onlooker, happens to observe this is the individual appreciated, and then only in the most inexact, unsystematic manner. under scientific management, making individual output show up separately allows of individual recording, tasks, teaching and rewards. effect on athletic contests.--also, with this separation of the work of the individual under scientific management comes the possibility of a real, scientific, "athletic contest." this athletic contest, which proves itself so successful in traditional management, even when the men are grouped as gangs and their work is not recorded or thought of separately, proves itself quite as efficient or more efficient under scientific management, when the work of the man shows up separately. it might be objected that the old gang spirit, or it might be called "team" spirit, would disappear with the separation of the work. this is not so, as will be noted by a comparison to a baseball team, where each man has his separate place and his separate work and where his work shows up separately with separate records, such as "batting average" and "fielding average." team spirit is the result of being grouped together against a common opponent, and it will be the same in any sort of work when the men are so grouped, or given to understand that they belong on the same side. the following twelve rules for an athletic contest under transitory system are quoted as exemplifying the benefits which accrue to individuality. . men must have square deal. . conditions must be similar. . men must be properly spaced and placed. . output must show up separately. . men must be properly started. . causes for delay must be eliminated. . pace maker must be provided. . time for rest must be provided. . individual scores must be kept and posted. . "audience" must be provided. . rewards must be prompt and provided for all good scores--not for winners only. . appreciation must be shown.[ ] this list shows the effects of many fundamental principles of scientific management,--but we note particularly here that over half the rules demand that outputs be separated as a prerequisite. none of the benefits of the athletic contest are lost under scientific management. the only restrictions placed are that the men shall not be grouped according to any distinction that would cause hatred or ill feeling, that the results shall be ultimately beneficial to the workers themselves, and that all high scores shall win high prizes. as will be brought out later under "incentives," no competition is approved under scientific management which speeds up the men uselessly, or which brings any ill feeling between the men or any feeling that the weaker ones have not a fair chance. all of these things are contrary to scientific management, as well as contrary to common sense, for it goes without saying that no man is capable of doing his best work permanently if he is worried by the idea that he will not receive the square deal, that someone stronger than he will be allowed to cheat or to domineer over him, or that he will be speeded up to such an extent that while his work will increase for one day, the next day his work will fall down because of the effect of the fatigue of the day before. the field of the contests is widened, as separating of the work of the individual not only allows for competition between individuals, but for the competition of the individual with his own records. this competition is not only a great, constant and helpful incentive to every worker, but it is also an excellent means of developing individuality. advantages to managers of separating output.--the advantages to the managers of separating the work are that there is a chance to know exactly who is making the high output, and that the spirit of competition which prevails when men compare their outputs to their own former records or others, leads to increased effort. advantages to workers of separating output.--as for advantages to the men: by separation of the individual work, not only is the man's work itself shown, but at the same time the work of all other people is separated, cut away and put aside, and he can locate the man who is delaying him by, for example, not keeping him supplied with materials. the man has not only an opportunity to concentrate, but every possible incentive to exercise his will and his desire to do things. his attention is concentrated on the fact that he as an individual is expected to do his very best. he has the moral stimulus of responsibility. he has the emotional stimulus of competition. he has the mental stimulus of definiteness. he has, most valuable of all, a chance to be an entity rather than one of an undiscriminated gang. this chance to be an individual, or personality, is in great contradistinction to the popular opinion of scientific management, which thinks it turns men into machines. a very simple example of the effect of the worker's seeing his output show up separately in response to and in proportion to his effort and skill is that of boys in the lumber producing districts chopping edgings for fire wood. here the chopping is so comparatively light that the output increased very rapidly, and the boy delights to "see his pile of fire wood grow." with the separation of the work comes not only the opportunity for the men to see their own work, but also to see that of others, and there comes with this the spirit of imitation, or the spirit of friendly opposition, either of which, while valuable in itself is even more valuable as the by-product of being a life-giving thought, and of putting life into the work such as there never could be when the men were working together, more or less objectless, because they could not see plainly either what they were doing themselves, or what others were doing. separation of the output of the men gives them the greatest opportunity to develop. it gives them a chance to concentrate their attention at the work on which they are, because it is not necessary for them to waste any time to find out what that work is. their work stands out by itself; they can put their whole minds to that work; they can become interested in that work and its outcome, and they can be positive that what they have done will be appreciated and recognized, and that it will have a good effect, with no possibility of evil effect, upon their chance for work and their chance for pay and promotion in the future. definiteness of the boundaries, then, is not only good management in that it shows up the work and that it allows each man to see, and each man over him, or observing him to see exactly what has been done,--it has also an excellent effect upon the worker's mind. individuality developed by recording output separately.--the spirit of individuality is brought out still more clearly by the fact that under scientific management, output is recorded separately. this recording of the outputs separately is, usually, and very successfully, one of the first features installed in transitory management, and a feature very seldom introduced, even unconscious of its worth, in day work under traditional management. it is one of the great disadvantages of many kinds of work, especially in this day, that the worker does only a small part of the finished article and that he has a feeling that what he does is not identified permanently with the success of the completed whole. we may note that one of the great unsatisfying features to such arts as acting and music, is that no matter how wonderful the performer's efforts, there was no permanent record of them; that the work of the day dies with the day. he can expect to live only in the minds and hearts of the hearers, in the accounts of spectators, or in histories of the stage. it is, therefore, not strange that the world's best actors and singers are now grasping the opportunity to make their best efforts permanent through the instrumentality of the motion picture films and the talking machine records. this same feeling, minus the glow of enthusiasm that at least attends the actor during the work, is present in more or less degree in the mind of the worker. records make work seem worth while.--with the feeling that his work is recorded comes the feeling that the work is really worth while, for even if the work itself does not last, the records of it are such as can go on. records give individuals a feeling of permanence.--with recorded individual output comes also the feeling of permanence, of credit for good performance. this desire for permanence shows itself all through the work of men in traditional management, for example--in the stone cutter's art where the man who had successfully dressed the stone from the rough block was delighted to put his own individual mark on it, even though he knew that that mark probably would seldom, if ever, be noticed again by anyone after the stone was set in the wall. it is an underlying trait of the human mind to desire this permanence of record of successful effort, and fulfilling and utilizing this desire is a great gain of scientific management. mental development of worker through records.--it is not only for his satisfaction that the worker should see his records and realize that his work has permanence, but also for comparison of his work not only with his own record, but with the work of others. the value of these comparisons, not only to the management but to the worker himself, must not be underestimated. the worker gains mental development and physical skill by studying these comparisons. advantages to worker of making his own records.--these possibilities of mental development are still further increased when the man makes his own records. this leads to closer attention, to more interest in the work, and to a realization of the man as to what the record really means, and what value it represents. though even a record that is made for him and is posted where he can see it will probably result in a difference in his pay envelope, no such progress is likely to occur as when the man makes his own record, and must be conscious every moment of the time exactly where he stands. possibilities of making individual records.--records of individual efficiency are comparatively easy to make when output is separated. but even when work must be done by gangs or teams of men, there is provision made in scientific management for recording this gang work in such a way that either the output or the efficiency, or both, of each man shows up separately. this may be done in several ways, such as, for example, by recording the total time of delays avoidable and unavoidable, caused by each man, and from this computing individual records. this method of recording is psychologically right, because the recording of the delay will serve as a warning to the man, and as a spur to him not to cause delay to others again. the forcefulness of the "don't" and the "never" have been investigated by education. undoubtedly the "do" is far stronger, but in this particular case the command deduced from the records of delay to others is, necessarily, in the negative form, and a study of the psychological results proves most instructive. benefits to managers of individual records.--the value of the training to the foremen, to the superintendents and to the managers higher up, who study these records, as well as to the timekeepers, recorders and clerks in the time and cost department who make the records, is obvious. there is not only the possibility of appreciating and rewarding the worker, and thus stimulating him to further activity, there is also, especially in the transitory stage, when men are to be chosen on whom to make time study observations, an excellent chance to compare various methods of doing work and their results. incentives with individual records.--the greatest value of recorded outputs is in the appreciation of the work of the individual that becomes possible. first of all, appreciation by the management, which to the worker must be the most important of all, as it means to him a greater chance for promotion and for more pay. this promotion and additional pay are amply provided for by scientific management, as will be shown later in discussing incentives and welfare. not only is the work appreciated by the management and by the man himself, but also the work becomes possible of appreciation by others. the form of the record as used in scientific management, and as introduced early in the transitory stage, makes it possible for many beside those working on the job, if they take the pains to consult the records, which are best posted in a conspicuous place on the work, to know and appreciate what the worker is doing. this can be best illustrated, perhaps, by various methods of recording output on contracting work,--out-of-door work. the flag flown by the successful contestants in the athletic contests, showing which gang or which individual has made the largest output during the day previous, allows everyone who passes to appreciate the attainment of that particular worker, or that group of workers. the photographs of the "high priced men," copies of which may be given to the workers themselves, allow the worker to carry home a record and thus impress his family with what he has done. too often the family is unable by themselves to understand the value of the worker's work, or to appreciate the effect of his home life, food, and rest conditions upon his life work, and this entire strong element of interest of the worker's family in his work is often lost. relation of individual records to scientific management in general.--any study of records of an individual's work again makes clear that no one topic of scientific management can be properly noted without a consideration of all other elements. the fact that under scientific management the record with which the man most surely and constantly competes is his own, as provided for by the individual instruction card and the individual task; the fact that under scientific management the man need be in no fear of losing his job if he does his best; the fact that scientific management is founded on the "square deal";--all of these facts must be kept constantly in mind when considering the advantages of recording individual output, for they all have a strong psychological effect on the man's mind. it is important to remember that not only does scientific management provide for certain directions and thoughts entering the man's mind, but that it also eliminates other thoughts which would surely have a tendency to retard his work. the result is output far exceeding what is usually possible under traditional management, because drawbacks are removed and impetuses added. the outcome of the records, and their related elements in other branches of scientific management, is to arouse interest. interest arouses abnormally concentrated attention, and this in turn is the cause of genius. this again answers the argument of those who claim that scientific management kills individuality and turns the worker into a machine. individual task under scientific management.--individuality is also taken into consideration when preparing the task. this task would always be for an individual, even in the case of the gang instruction card. it usually recognizes individuality, in that,-- . it is prepared for one individual only, when possible. . it is prepared for the particular individual who is to do it. the working time, as will be shown later, is based upon time study observations on a standard man, but when a task is assigned for a certain individual, that proportion of the work of the standard or first class man is assigned to that particular given man who is actually to do it, which he is able to do. it is fundamental that the task must be such that the man who is actually put at it, when he obeys orders and works steadily, can do it; that is, the task must be achievable, and achievable without such effort as would do mental or physical injury to the worker. this not only gives the individual the proper amount of work to do, recognizes his particular capabilities and is particularly adapted to him, but it also eliminates all dread on the score of his not being appreciated, in that the worker knows that if he achieves or exceeds his task he will not only receive the wage for it, but will continue to receive that wage, or more, for like achievement. the rate is not cut. under the "three-rate with increased rate system," which experience has shown to be a most advanced plan for compensating workmen, the worker receives one bonus for exactness as to methods, that is, he receives one bonus if he does the task exactly as he is instructed to do it as to methods; and a second bonus, or extra bonus, if he completes his task in the allotted time. this not only assures adequate pay to the man who is slow, but a good imitator, but also to the man who, perhaps, is not such a good imitator, and must put attention on the quality rather than the quantity of his performance. individuality emphasized by instruction card.--this individual task is embodied in an individual instruction card. in all work where it is possible to do so, the worker is given an individual instruction card, even though his operations and rest periods are also determined by a gang instruction card. this card not only tells the man what he is to do, how he can best do it, and the time that it is supposed to take him to do it,--but it bears also the signature of the man who made it. this in order that if the worker cannot fulfill the requirements of the card he may lose no time in determining who is to give him the necessary instructions or help that will result in his earning his large wages. more than this, he must call for help from his assigned teachers, as is stated in large type on a typical instruction card as follows: "when instructions cannot be carried out, foreman must at once report to man who signed this card." the signature of the man who made the card not only develops his sense of individuality and responsibility, but helps create a feeling of inter-responsibility between the workers in various parts of the organization. the gang instruction card.--a gang instruction card is used for such work only as must be done by a group of men all engaged at the work at once, or who are working at a dependent sequence of operations, or both. this card contains but those portions of the instructions for each man which refer to those elements which must be completed before a following element, to be done by the next man in the sequence, can be completed. because of the nature of the work, the gang instruction card must be put in the hands of a leader, or foreman, whether or not it is also in the hands of each of the individuals. the amount of work which can be required as a set task for each individual member of the gang, the allowance for rest for overcoming fatigue, the time that the rest periods must occur, and the proper pay, are fully stated on the individual instruction cards. methods of teaching foster individuality.--as will be shown at length in the chapter on teaching, under scientific management teaching is not only general, by "systems," "standing orders," or "standard practice," but also specific. specialized teachers, called, unfortunately for the emphasis desired to be put on teaching, "functional foremen," help the individual worker to overcome his peculiar difficulties. this teaching not only allows every worker to supplement his deficiencies of disposition or experience, but the teachers' places give opportunities for those who have a talent for imparting knowledge to utilize and develop it. individual incentive and welfare.--finally, individual incentive and individual welfare are not only both present, but interdependent. desire for individual success, which might lead a worker to respond to the incentive till he held back perhaps the work of others, is held in balance by interdependence of bonuses. this will be explained in full in the chapters on incentives and welfare. summary result of idea of individuality upon work.--to recapitulate;-- under traditional management, because of its frequent neglect of the idea of individuality, work is often unsystematized, and high output is usually the result of "speeding up" only, with constant danger of a falling off in quality overbalancing men and injury to men and machinery. under transitory management, as outputs are separated, separately recorded, and as the idea of individuality is embodied in selecting men, setting tasks, the instruction cards, periods of rest, teaching, incentives and welfare, output increases without undue pressure on the worker. under scientific management--with various elements which embody individuality fully developed, output increases, to the welfare of worker, manager, employer and consumer and with no falling off in quality. effect upon the worker.--the question of the effect upon the worker of emphasis laid upon individuality, can perhaps best be answered by asking and answering the following questions:-- . when, where, how, and how much is individuality considered? . what consideration is given to the relation of the mind to the body of the individual? . what is the relative emphasis on consideration of individual and class? . in how far is the individual the unit? . what consideration is given to idiosyncrasies? . what is the effect toward causing or bringing about development, that is, broadening, deepening and making the individual more progressive? extent of consideration of individuality.-- . under traditional management consideration of individuality is seldom present, but those best forms of traditional management that are successful are so because it is present. this is not usually recognized, but investigation shows that the successful manager, or foreman, or boss, or superintendent succeeds either because of his own individuality or because he brings out to good advantage the individual possibilities of his men. the most successful workers under traditional management are those who are allowed to be individuals and to follow out their individual bents of greatest efficiency, instead of being crowded down to become mere members of gangs, with no chance to think, to do, or to be anything but parts of the gang. under transitory management, and most fully under scientific management, the spirit of individuality, far from being crowded out, is a basic principle, and everything possible is done to encourage the desire to be a personality. relation of mind to body.--under traditional management, where men worked in the same employ for a long time, much consideration was given to the relation of the mind to the body. it was realized that men must not be speeded up beyond what they could do healthfully; they must have good sleeping quarters and good, savory and appetizing food to eat and not be fatigued unnecessarily, if they were to become successful workers. more than this, philanthropic employers often attempted to supply many kinds of comfort and amusement. under transitory management the physical and mental welfare are provided for more systematically. under scientific management consideration of the mind and body of the workman, and his health, and all that that includes, is a subject for scientific study and for scientific administration. as shown later, it eliminates all discussion and troubles of so-called "welfare work," because the interests of the employer and the worker become identical and everything that is done becomes the concern of both. scientific management realizes that the condition of the body effects every possible mental process. it is one of the great advantages of a study of the psychology of management that the subject absolutely demands from the start, and insists in every stage of the work, on this relationship of the body to the mind, and of the surroundings, equipment, etc., of the worker to his work. it is almost impossible, in management, to separate the subject of the worker from that of his work, or to think of the worker as not working except in such a sense as "ceasing-from-work," "about-to-work," "resting to overcome fatigue of work," or "resting during periods of unavoidable delays." the relation of the worker to his work is constantly in the mind of the manager. it is for this reason that not only does management owe much to psychology, but that psychology, as applied to any line of study, will, ultimately, be recognized as owing much to the science of management. relative emphasis on individual and class.--under traditional management the gang, or the class, usually receives the chief emphasis. if the individual developed, as he undoubtedly did, in many kinds of mechanical work, especially in small organizations, it was more or less because it was not possible for the managers to organize the various individuals into classes or gangs. in the transitory stage the emphasis is shifting. under scientific management the emphasis is most decidedly and emphatically upon the individual as the unit to be managed, as has been shown. individual as the unit.--under traditional management the individual was seldom the unit. under transitory management the individual is the unit, but there is not much emphasis in the early stages placed upon his peculiarities and personalities. under scientific management the unit is always the individual, and the utilizing and strengthening of his personal traits, special ability and skill is a dominating feature. emphasis on idiosyncrasies.--under traditional management there is either no consideration given to idiosyncrasies, or too wide a latitude is allowed. in cases where no consideration is given, there is often either a pride in the managers in "treating all men alike," though they might respond better to different handling, or else the individual is undirected and his personality manifests itself in all sorts of unguided directions, many of which must necessarily be wasteful, unproductive, or incomplete in development. under scientific management, functionalization, as will be shown, provides for the utilization of all idiosyncrasies and efficient deviations from class, and promotion is so planned that a man may develop along the line of his chief ability. thus initiative is encouraged and developed constantly. development of individuality.--the development of individuality is more sure under scientific management than it is under either of the other two forms of management, (a) because this development is recognized to be a benefit to the worker and to the employer and (b) because this development as a part of a definite plan is provided for and perfected scientifically. chapter ii footnotes: ============================================== . william james, _psychology, briefer course_, p. . . hugo münsterberg, _american problems_, p. . . mary whiton calkins, _a first book in psychology_, p. . . james sully, _teacher's handbook of psychology_, p. . . james sully, _teacher's handbook of psychology_, p. . . h.l. gantt, _work, wages and profits_, p. . . f.w. taylor, _shop management_, p. . (harper & bros.) . f.b. gilbreth, _motion study_, p. . . l.b. blan, _a special study of the incidence of retardation_, p. . . hugo münsterberg, _american problems_, pp. - . . f.b. gilbreth, _cost reducing system_, chap. iii. ==================================================================== chapter iii functionalization definition of functionalization.--a function, says the century dictionary, is--"the fulfilment or discharge of a set duty or requirement, exercise of a faculty or office, or power of acting, faculty,--that power of acting in a specific way which appertains to a thing by virtue of its special constitution; that mode of action or operation which is proper to any organ, faculty, office structure, etc. (this is the most usual signification of the term)." "functionalization" is not given in the century dictionary. the nearest to it to be found there is "functionality," which is defined as--"the state of having or being a function." functionalization as here used means--the state of being divided into functions, or being functionalized. "functionalize" is given in the century dictionary, defined as "to assign some office or function to"--the note being made that it is rare. "functionalize" may not be the best word that could be used in this connection, but there seems to be no other word in the english language which contains its full meaning, therefore we will use the word here in the sense of assigning work according to capacity or faculty. a faculty means--"a specific power, mental or physical; a special capacity for any particular kind of action or affection; natural capability." psychological use of functionalization.--the word "function" is in constant use by modern psychologists, especially by those who believe that--"psychology is the science of the self in relation to environment,"[ ] or that "psychology is a scientific account of our mental processes."[ ] sully defines a function as "a psychologically simple process,"[ ] and compares its elementariness to a muscular contraction as an element of a step in walking. in investigating the principle of functionalization as embodied in various forms of management, we must note that, while management can, and does under scientific management, attempt to functionalize _work_ as far as possible, it will be impossible to come to ultimate results until a psychological study of the requirement of the work _from_ the worker, and results of the work _on_ the worker is made.[ ] functionalization in management.--"functional management" consists, to quote dr. taylor, "in so directing the work of management that each man from the assistant superintendent down shall have as few functions as possible to perform. if practicable, the work of each man in the management should be confined to the performance of a single leading function."[ ] a study of functionalization as applied to management must answer the following questions: . how is the work divided? . how are the workers assigned to the work? . what are the results to the work? . what are the results to the worker? traditional management seldom functionalizes.--under traditional management the principle of functionalization was seldom applied or understood. even when the manager tried to separate planning from performing, or so to divide the work that each worker could utilize his special ability, there were no permanently beneficial results, because there was no standard method of division. the work of the foreman not properly divided.--the work of a foreman was not divided, but the well rounded man, as dr. taylor says,[ ] was supposed to have . brain . education . special or technical knowledge, manual dexterity or strength . tact . energy . grit . honesty . judgment, or common sense . good health. dr. taylor says--"plenty of men who possess only three of the above qualities can be hired at any time for laborer's wages. add four of these qualities together, and you get a higher priced man. the man combining five of these qualities begins to be hard to find, and those with , and are almost impossible to get." yet, under traditional management these general qualities and many points of specific training were demanded of the foreman. dr. taylor has enumerated the qualifications or the duties of a gang boss in charge of lathes or planers.[ ] careful reading of this enumeration will show most plainly that the demands made were almost impossible of fulfillment.[ ] another list which is interesting is found in "cost reducing system," a long list of the duties of the ideal superintendent or foreman in construction work.[ ] qualifications and duties of first class foreman a first class foreman must have: bodily strength brains common sense education energy good health good judgment grit manual dexterity special knowledge tact technical knowledge. he must be: able to concentrate his mind upon small things able to read drawings readily able to visualize the work at every stage of its progress, and even before it begins a master of detail honest master of at least one trade. his duties consist of: considering broad policies. considering new applicants for important positions. considering the character and fitness of the men. determining a proper day's work. determining costs. determining the method of compensation. determining the sequence of events for the best results. disciplining the men. dividing the men into gangs for speed contests. fixing piece and day rates. getting rid of inferior men. handling relations with the unions. hiring good men. installing such methods and devices as will detect dishonesty. instructing the workman. keeping the time and disciplining those who are late or absent. laying out work. looking ahead to see that there are men enough for future work. looking ahead to see that there is enough future work for the men. making profits. measuring each man's effort fairly. obtaining good results in quality. paying the men on days when they are discharged. paying the men on pay day. preventing soldiering. readjusting wages. retaining good men. seeing that all men are honest. seeing that men are shifted promptly when breakdowns occur. seeing that repairs are made promptly before breakdowns occur, seeing that repairs are made promptly after breakdowns occur. seeing that the most suitable man is allotted to each part of the work. seeing that the work is not slighted. setting piece work prices. setting rates. setting tasks. supervising timekeeping. teaching the apprentices. teaching the improvers. teaching the learners. in studying these lists we note-- . that the position will be best filled by a very high and rare type of man. . that the man is forced to use every atom of all of his powers and at the same time to waste his energies in doing much unimportant pay reducing routine work, some of which could be done by clerks. . that in many cases the work assigned for him to do calls for qualifications which are diametrically opposed to each other. . that psychology tells us that a man fitted to perform some of these duties would probably be mentally ill fitted for performing others in the best possible way that they could be performed. work not well done.--not only does the foreman under traditional management do a great deal of work which can be done by cheaper men, but he also wastes his time on clerical work in which he is not a specialist, and, therefore, which he does not do as well as the work can be done by a cheaper man, and this takes more of his time than he ought to devote to it. the result is that the work is not done as well as it can and should be done. a most perfect illustration of a common form of traditional management is the old story of the foreman, who, in making his rounds of the various parts of the work, comes to the deep hole being excavated for a foundation pier and says hurriedly--"how many of yez is there in the hole?" "seven." "the half of yez come up." the theoretical defects of the old type of management often seen before the advent of the trained engineer on the work include:-- . lack of planning ahead. . an overworked foreman. . no functionalizing of the work. . no standards of individual efficiency. . unmeasured individual outputs. . no standard methods. . no attempt at teaching. . inaccurate directions. . lack of athletic contests. . no high pay for extra efficiency. . poor investigation of workers' special capabilities. in spite of the fact that under unfunctionalized management the foreman has far more to do than he can expect to do well, the average foreman thinks that he belongs to a class above his position. this is partly because the position is so unstandardized that it arouses a sense of unrest, and partly because he has to spend much of his time at low priced functions. under the feeling of enmity, or at least, of opposition, which often exists, openly or secretly, between the average traditional management and men, the foreman must ally himself with one side or the other. if he joins with the men, he must countenance the soldiering, which they find necessary in order to maintain their rates of wages. thus the output of the shop will seldom increase and his chance for appreciation and promotion by the management will probably be slight and slow. his position as boss, combined with that of ally of the men, is awkward. if he allies himself to the management, he must usually become a driver of the men, if he wishes to increase output. this condition will never be agreeable to him unless he has an oversupply of brute instincts. the workers not best utilized.--under the best types of traditional management we do find more or less spasmodic attempts at the functionalization of the worker. when there was any particular kind of work to be done, the worker who seemed to the manager to be the best fitted, was set at that kind of work. for example--if there was a particularly heavy piece of work he might say--"let a do it because he is strong." if there was a particularly fine piece of work to be done he might say--"let b do it because he is specially skilled." if there was a piece of work to be done which required originality, he might say--"let c do it for the reason that he is inventive and resourceful;" but, in most cases, when the particular job on hand was finished, the worker selected to do it returned to other classes of work, and such special fitness or capability as he had, was seldom systematically utilized, or automatically assigned to his special function, neither was such experience as he had gained systematically conserved. moreover, no such study of the work to be done had been made as would prove that the assignment of that particular worker to the work was right. the psychology of this was entirely wrong,--not only had no such study of the general and particular characteristics, traits, faculties, and talents of the man been made as would prove that he was the right man to be assigned, but the mere fact that he possessed one quality necessary for the work, if he really did possess it, was no sign that the other qualities which he possessed might not make him the wrong man to be chosen. even if the man did happen to be assigned to work for which he was particularly suited, unless provision were made to keep him at such work only, to keep him well supplied with work, to allow time for rest, and to provide proper pay, he could not utilize his capabilities to the fullest extent. transitory management functionalizes.--under transitory management, management becomes gradually more and more functionalized. with separated outputs and separate records, the worker's capabilities become apparent, and he can be assigned to the standardized positions which gradually evolve. every recognition of individuality carries with it a corresponding functionalization of men and work. functionalization a fundamental of scientific management.--with scientific management comes the realization that with close study and with functionalization only, can that provision and assignment of the work which is best for both work and worker be obtained. the principle is applied to every part of management, and results in . separating the planning from the performing. . functionalizing foremen. . functionalizing workers. . assigning competent workers to fitting work. separating the planning from the performing.--the emphasis on separating the planning from the performing in scientific management cannot be over-estimated. it is a part of dr. taylor's fourth principle of scientific management, "almost equal division of the work and the responsibility between the management and the workmen."[ ] the greatest outputs can be achieved to the greatest benefit to managers and men when the work is divided, the management undertaking that part of the work that it is best fitted to do, the workmen performing that part which they are best fitted to do. the work of the planning department.--it has been determined by actual experience that the line of division most agreeable to the managers and the workmen and most productive of coöperation by both, as well as most efficient in producing low costs, is that which separates the planning from the performing. under scientific management the planning department relieves the man of determining-- . what work is to be done. . sequence in which it is to be done. . method by which it shall be done. . where it shall be done. . which men shall do it. . time that it shall take. . exact quality of product. . quantity of additional pay that shall be given for doing it. work of the workers.--the men are simply given standard tasks to do, with teachers to help them, and a standard wage according to performance as a reward. there are but three things expected of them:-- . coöperation with the management in obtaining the prescribed work, method and quality. . the exercise of their ingenuity in making improvements after they have learned the standard prescribed practice. . the fitting of themselves for higher pay and promotion. functionalized foremanship.--the work that, under scientific management, is usually done by one man, the foreman, is subdivided into eight or more functions. these functions are assigned to the following functional foremen:[ ] planning department . order of work and route man . instruction card man . cost and time clerk . disciplinarian performing department . gang boss . speed boss . repair boss . inspector each of the above functions may be in charge of a separate man, or one man may be in charge of several functions, or several men may do the work of one function; the work being divided between them in some cases by further functionalizing it,--and in others by separating it into similar parts. which of these conditions is most effective depends on the size of the job, or the nature of the job to be done. the important question is, not the number of men doing the planning, but the fact that every foreman, so far as is possible, is assigned to the special kind of work that he is best fitted to do with the greatest elimination of unnecessary waste. changes in the functions of the foreman.--a foreman, under scientific management, must have three qualifications. he must be . a specialist at the work that he is to do. . a good observer, able to note minute variations of method, work, and efficiency. . a good teacher. a comparison of these qualifications with those of the foreman under traditional management, will show as important changes,-- . the particular place in the field of knowledge in which the foreman must specialize. . the change in the type of criticism expected from the foreman. . the far greater emphasis placed on duties as a teacher. importance of the teaching feature in functional foremanship.-- the teaching feature of management,--the most important feature of scientific management,--will be discussed in the chapter on teaching. only so much is included here as shows its derivation from the principle of functionalization, and its underlying importance. functionalization means specialization. this results in coöperation between foremen, between foremen and workers, and between workers. by "co-operate" is here meant not only "to work together," but also "to work together to promote the object." this coöperation persists not only because it is demanded by the work, but also because it is insured by the inter-dependent bonuses. functionalization under scientific management separates planning from performing. this means that the specialists who plan must teach the specialist who performs, this being the way in which they co-operate to the greatest personal advantage to all. basis of division into functions.--under scientific management divisions are made on the basis of underlying ideas. functions are not classified as they are embodied in particular men, but men are classified as they embody particular functions. this allows of standardization, through which alone can progress and evolution come quickest. it is comparatively easy and simple to standardize a function. being a "set duty," it can be fixed, studied and simplified. it is extremely difficult and complex to standardize an individual. this standardizing of the function, however, in no wise stunts individuality. on the contrary, it gives each individual a chance to utilize his particular faculty for obtaining the greatest efficiency, pleasure and profit. this is well illustrated in the case of specialization in baseball, for excellence as a pitcher does not stunt the player as a catcher. functions may be subdivided as far as the nature of the work demands. note here, again, that it is the relative complexity or simplicity of the nature of the work that is to be done that determines the degree of its functionalization, not the number of men employed at the work. note, also, that with every subdivision of functions comes greater opportunity for specialization, hence for individual development. place of operation of the functions.--four functions of the eight find their place in the planning department. the other four are out on the work. that is to say,--the men who represent four functions work almost entirely in the planning room, while the men who represent the other four functions work mostly among the workers. this division is, however, largely a matter of convenience. three of the first four groups of men communicate with the workers mostly in writing and are seldom engaged as observers, except in obtaining data for the creation of standards, while the fourth is often in the planning room. the last four usually communicate with the men orally, and must observe and teach the worker constantly. in the descriptions that follow, each function is represented as embodied in one man, this aiding simplicity and clearness in description. the order of work and route clerk.--the order of work and route clerk lays out the exact path of each piece of work, and determines the sequence of events of moving and a general outline of performance.[ ] with the requirements of the work in mind, the most efficient day's work for each worker is determined. the paths and sequences of transportation are outlined by means of route charts and route sheets showing graphical and detailed directions, which are the means by which the foremen of the other functions are enabled to coöperate with other foremen and with the workers. the work of this function requires a practical man, of the successful foreman type, experienced in the class of work to be executed, who is also familiar with the theories of scientific management in general, and the work of the other foremen in particular, and who has the faculty of visualization and well developed constructive imagination. he must also have at his command in systematic form, and available for immediate use, records of previous experience. the instruction card clerk.--the instruction card clerk prepares written directions for the workers as to what methods should be used in doing the work, the sequence of performance of the elements of the method, the speeds and action of the accompanying machinery, the time that each element should take for its performance, the time allowed for rest for overcoming fatigue caused by its performance, and the total elapsed time allowed for performing all of the work on the instruction card in order to obtain the unusually high additional wages as a reward for his skill and coöperation. the work of this function requires the best available (but not necessarily the fastest), practical experienced man in the trade described, who also has had sufficient experience in motion study and time study to enable him to write down the best known method for doing the work described, and also prophesying the correct time that the work and rest from its resulting fatigue will take. he must supplement the instruction card with such sketches, drawings and photographs as will best assist the worker to visualize his work before and during its performance. function of time and cost clerk.--the work done by the time and cost clerk calls for accuracy and a love of statistical detail. it will help him if he knows the trades with which he is coöperating, but such knowledge is not absolutely essential. he will be promoted fastest who has a knowledge of the theory of management, coupled with the theory and practice of statistics and accountancy, for the true costs must include knowledge of costs of materials, and the distribution of the overhead burden of running expenses and selling. function of the disciplinarian.--the function of the disciplinarian must be discussed at length, both because of the psychological effect upon the men of the manner of the discipline and of the disciplinarian, and because of the fact that the disciplinarian is the functional foreman of the four in the planning department who comes in most personal contact with the workers, as well as all of the other foremen, and the superintendent. it is important to note, in the discussion that is to follow, not only how disciplining is transformed as management develops progressively, but also that the intimate acquaintance of discipliner with disciplined is not done away with, but rather supplemented by the standardizing which is the outcome of scientific management. the defects of methods of disciplining under traditional management are remedied, but here, as always, scientific management retains and develops that which is good. this because the good in the older forms conformed, unconsciously, to the underlying laws. defects of disciplining under traditional management.--under traditional management, the disciplining is done by the foreman; that is, the punishment is meted out by the man who has charge of all activities of the men under him. this is actually, in practice and in theory, psychologically wrong. if there is one man who should be in a state of mind that would enable him to judge dispassionately, it is the disciplinarian. the man to be disciplined is usually guilty of one of six offenses: . an offense against an employé of a grade above him. . an offense against an employé of the same grade. . an offense against an employé of a grade below him. . falling short in the quality of his work. . falling short in the quantity of his work. . an offense against the system (disobeying orders), falling down on schedule, or intentionally not coöperating. the employé over him, or the foreman, to whom he is supposed to have done some injustice, would be in no state of mind to judge as to the man's culpability. in the case of an offense against an employé of the same grade, the best that the injured employé could do would be to appeal to his foreman, who oftentimes is not an unprejudiced judge, and the multiplicity of whose duties give him little time to give attention to the subject of disciplining. if the offense is against quantity or quality of work, again the old fashioned foreman, for lack of time, and for lack of training and proper standards of measurement, will find it almost impossible to know how guilty the man is, and what form of punishment and what amount of punishment or loss of opportunity for progress will be appropriate. changes in disciplinarian's function under scientific management.--all this is changed under scientific management. the disciplinarian is a specially appointed functional foreman, and has few other duties except those that are directly or indirectly connected with disciplining. he is in touch with the requirements of the work, because he is in the planning department; he is in touch with the employment bureau, and knows which men should be employed; he has a determining voice in deciding elementary rate fixing and should always be consulted before wages are changed or a reassignment of duties is determined. all of these are great advantages to him in deciding justly and appropriately punishments and promotion, not for the workers alone but also for the foremen and the managers. duties of the disciplinarian.--the disciplinarian keeps a record of each man's virtues and defects; he is in position to know all about the man; where he comes from; what his natural and acquired qualifications are; what his good points, possibilities and special fitness are; what his wages are, and his need for them. all that it is possible for the managers to know of the men is to be concentrated in this disciplinarian. he is, in practice, more the counsel and advocate of the worker than an unsympathetic judge, as is indicated by the fact that his chief function is that of "diplomat" and "peacemaker." his greatest duty is to see that the "square deal" is meted out without fear or favor to employer or to employé. importance of psychology in disciplining.--not only does the position of disciplinarian under scientific management answer the psychological requirements for such a function, but also the holder of the position of disciplinarian must understand psychology and apply, at least unconsciously, and preferably consciously, the known laws of psychology, if he wishes to be successful. the disciplinarian must consider not only what the man has done and the relation of this act of his to his other acts; he must also investigate the cause and the motive of the act, for on the cause and motive, in reality, depends more than on the act itself. he must probe into the physical condition of the man, as related to his mental acts. he must note the effect of the same kind of discipline under different conditions; for example, he must note that, on certain types of people, disciplining in the presence of other people has a most derogatory effect, just as rewards before people may have a most advantageous effect. upon others, discipline that is meted out in the presence of other people is the only sort of discipline which has the desired effect. the sensitiveness of the person to be disciplined, the necessity for sharp discipline, and for that particular sort of discipline which may require the element of shame in it, must all be considered. he must be able to discover and note whether the discipline should be meted out to a ringleader, and whether the other employés, supposed to be blameworthy, are really only guilty in acquiescing, or in failing to report one who has really furnished the initiative. he must differentiate acts which are the result of following a ringleader blindly from the concerted acts of disobedience of a crowd, for the "mob spirit" is always an element to be estimated and separately handled. inadequacy of terms in disciplining.--the words "disciplinarian" and "punishment" are most unfortunate. the "disciplinarian" would be far better called the "peacemaker," and the "punishment" by some such word as the "adjustment." it is _not_ the duty of the disciplinarian to "take out anybody's grudge" against a man; it _is_ his duty to adjust disagreements. he must remember constantly that his discipline must be of such a nature that the result will be for the permanent best interests of the one disciplined, his co-workers, his associates and his family. the aim is, not to put the man down, but to keep him up to his standard, as will be shown later in a chapter on incentives. if the punishment is in the form of a fine, it must not in any way return to the coffers of the management. the fines collected--even those fines collected from the individuals composing the management, should go in some form to the benefit of the men themselves, such, for example, as contributions to a workman's sick benefit fund or to general entertainment at the annual outing of employés. in practice, the disciplinarian is rather the friend of the worker than of the employer, if the two interests can possibly be separated. again "penalty" is a bad word to use. any words used in this connection should preferably have had taken from them any feeling that personal prejudice affects the discipline. it is the nature of the offense itself which should prescribe what the outcome of it shall be. the position of disciplinarian requires a man who has a keen sense of justice, who has had such experience as to enable him to smooth out difficulties until all are in a frame of mind where they can look upon their own acts and the acts of others calmly. he must be able so to administer his duties that each decision inspires the realization that he acted to the best of his knowledge and belief. he must be one who is fearless, and has no tendency to have favorites. he must have a clear knowledge of the theories and principles of scientific management, in order that he can fill the position of enforcer of its laws. the gang boss.--the duties of the gang boss are to see that the worker has plenty of work ahead, to see that everything that he will need with which to do the work is at hand, and to see that the work is actually "set," or placed and performed correctly. this position calls for a practical demonstrator, who must himself be able and willing actually to prepare and help on the work. it calls particularly for a man with teaching ability, with special emphasis on ability to teach, with great exactness, the prescribed method and to follow the orders of the planning department implicitly. the speed boss.--the speed boss is responsible for the methods of doing work with machinery. he has charge of overseeing the work, and teaching the worker, during the entire time that the work is being done. he must be prepared constantly to demonstrate at any time not only _how_ the work is done, but also that it can be done in the specified time called for in order to earn the bonus. this position calls for a man who is able, personally, to carry out the detailed written orders of the instruction card in regard to speeds, feeds, cuts, methods of operation, quality and quantity. he must be proficient at the art of imparting his knowledge to other workmen, and at the same time be able to secure the prescribed outputs and quantities. he need not be the fastest worker in the shop, but he should be one of the most intelligent workers and best teachers, with a keen desire to coöperate, both with the workers and with the other foremen. the repair boss.--the repair boss has charge of the plant and its maintenance. he must have a natural love of order and of cleanliness, and a systematic type of mind. this position calls for a man with an experience that will enable him to detect liability of breakdowns before they actually occur. he must be resourceful in repairing unexpected breakdowns in an emergency, and be able at all times to carry out literally the directions given on the instruction cards of the planning department for cleaning, maintaining, and repairing the machines. the inspector.--the function of inspector under scientific or the taylor plan of management is most important, especially in connection with the "first inspection." during the manufacture of the first piece and after it is finished the inspector passes and reports upon it before the worker proceeds with the other pieces. here the worker gets a return in person for each successive act on the first piece he makes under a new instruction card, or, if he is a new worker, under an old instruction card. ambiguity of instructions, if present, is thus eliminated, and wrong actions or results are corrected before much damage to material has been done and before much time and effort are wasted. the first erroneous cycles of work are not repeated, and the worker is promptly shown exactly how efficiently he has succeeded in determining the requirements of his instructions. the inspector is responsible for the quality of the work. he fulfills the requirements of schloss, who says, in speaking of the danger, under some managements, that the foreman will sacrifice quality to speed, if he gets a bonus for quantity of output,--"the best safeguard against this serious danger would be found in the appointment of a distinct staff of inspectors whose duty it should be to ascertain, as the work proceeds, that the stipulated standards of excellence are at all times scrupulously maintained." this position of inspector requires an observant man who naturally is inclined to give constructive rather than destructive-criticism. he should be a man who can coöperate with the workman and foreman to rescue condemned or damaged material with the least expenditure of time, effort and expense. functionalizing the worker.--under scientific management, the worker as well as the foreman, is a specialist. this he becomes by being relieved of everything that he is not best fitted to do, and allowed to concentrate upon doing, according to exact and scientifically derived methods, that work at which he is an expert.[ ] relieving the worker of the planning.--the planning is taken away from the worker, not because it is something too choice, sacred or entertaining for him to do, or something which the managers desire to do themselves, but because it is best, for the workers themselves as well as the work, that the planning be done by specialists at planning. if he is expert enough to plan, the worker will be promoted to the planning department. in the meantime, he is working under the best plan that experts can devise. master planning a life study.--the best planner is he who,-- other things being equal,--is the most ingenious, the most experienced and the best observer. it is an art to observe; it requires persistent attention. the longer and the more the observer observes, the more details, and variables affecting details, he observes. the untrained observer could not expect to compete with one of special natural talent who has also been trained. it is not every man who is fitted by nature to observe closely, hence to plan. to observe is a condition precedent to visualizing. practice in visualizing makes for increasing the faculty of constructive imagination. he with the best constructive imagination is the master planner. the art of observing is founded on a study of fundamental elements. in order that planning may be done best, previous to starting work, the entire sequence of operations must be laid out, so that the ideas of value of every element of every subdivision of the process of working may be corrected to act most efficiently in relation with each and all of the subsequent parts and events that are to follow. this planning forwards and backwards demands an equipment of time study, motion study and micro-motion study records such as can be used economically only when all the planning is done in one place, with one set of records. the planner must be able to see and control the whole problem in all of its aspects. for example,--the use that is to be made of the work after it is completed may entirely change the methods best used in doing it. thus, the face of a brick wall that is to be plastered does not require and should not have the usual excellence of nicely ruled joints required on a face that is not to be plastered. in fact, the roughest, raggedest joints will be that quality of wall that will make the plaster adhere the best. as an example of professional observation and investigation with which no untrained observer could compete, we cite the epoch making work of dr. taylor in determining the most efficient speeds, feeds, cuts and shape of tools to use for the least wastefulness in cutting metals.[ ] dr. taylor, an unusually brilliant man, at the end of twenty-six years, working with the best scientists, engineers, experimenters, and workmen, after an expenditure of literally hundreds of thousands of dollars, was able to determine and write down a method for cutting metals many times less wasteful in time than was ever known before; but the data from the experiments was so complex and involved that a considerable knowledge of higher mathematics had to be used to apply the data. furthermore, the data was in such form that it took longer to use the knowledge contained therein than it did to do the work on any given piece of metal cutting. after gathering this knowledge, dr. taylor, with his assistants, first mr. gantt and finally mr. barth, reduced it to such a form that now it can be used in a matter of a few seconds or minutes. this was done by making slide rules.[ ] today workers have this knowledge in a form that any machinist can use with a little instruction. as a result, dr. taylor's observations have revolutionized the design of metal cutting machinery and the metal cutting industry, and the data he collected is used in every metal cutting planning department. furthermore, as a by-product to his observations and investigations, he discovered the taylor-white process of making high speed steel, which revolutionized the steel tool industry. no untrained workman could expect ever to compete with such work as this in obtaining results for most efficient planning and at the same time perform his ordinary work. wastefulness of individual planning.--even if it were possible so to arrange the work of every worker that he could be in close proximity to the equipment for planning and could be given the training needed, individual planning for "small lots" with no systematized standardization of planning-results would be an economic waste that would cause an unnecessary hardship on the worker, the employer and the ultimate consumer. individual planning could not fit the broad scheme of planning, and at best would cause delays and confusion, and make an incentive to plan for the individual self, instead of planning for the greatest good of the greatest number. again, even if it were possible to plan best by individual planning, there is a further waste in changing from one kind of work to another. this waste is so great and so obvious that it was noticed and recognized by the earliest manufacturers and economists. hardship to the worker of individual planning.--to obtain the most wages and profits there must be the most savings to divide. these cannot be obtained when each man plans for himself (except in the home trades), because all large modern operations have the quantity of output dependent upon the amount of blockades, stoppages and interferences caused by dependent sequences. it is not, therefore, possible to obtain the most profit or most wages by individual planning. planning is a general function, and the only way to obtain the best results is by organized planning, and by seeing that no planning is done for one worker without proper consideration of its bearing and effect upon any or all the other men's outputs. the man who desires to be a planner can be one.--if the worker is the sort of a man who can observe and plan, or who desires to plan, even though he is not at first employed in the planning department, he is sure to get there finally, as the system provides that each man shall go where he is best fitted. positions in planning departments are hard to fill, because of the scarcity of men equipped to do this work. the difficulty of teaching men to become highly efficient planners is one of the reasons for the slow advance of the general adoption of scientific management. the man who dislikes planning can be relieved.--it must not be forgotten that many people dislike the planning responsibility in connection with their work. for such, relief from planning makes the performance of the planned work more interesting and desirable. provision for planning by all under scientific management.--much has been said about the worker's "god-given rights to think," and about the necessity for providing every worker with an opportunity to think. scientific management provides the fullest opportunities for every man to think, to exercise his mental faculties, and to plan . in doing the work itself, as will be shown at length in chapters that follow. . outside of the regular working hours, but in connection with promotion in his regular work. scientific management provides always, and most emphatically, that the man shall have hours free from his work in such a state that he will not be too fatigued to do anything. furthermore, if he work as directed, his number of working hours per day will be so reduced that he will have more time each day for his chosen form of mental stimulus and improvement. our friend john brashear is a most excellent example of what one can do in after hours away from his work. he was a laborer in a steel mill. his duties were not such as resemble in any way planning or research work, yet he became one of the world's most prominent astronomical thinkers and an honorary member of the american society of mechanical engineers, because he had the desire to be a student. under scientific management such a desire receives added impetus from the method of attack provided for through its teaching. functionalizing the work itself.--the work of each part of the planning and performing departments may be functionalized, or subdivided, as the result of motion study and time study. the elementary timed units are combined or synthesized into tasks, made to fit the capabilities of specialized workers. it is then necessary to:-- . list the duties and requirements of the work. . decide whether the place can be best handled as one, or subdivided into several further subdivisions, or functions, or even sub-functions, for two or more function specialists. for the sake of analysis, all work may be considered as of one of two classes:-- . the short time job. . the long time job. these two divisions are handled differently, as follows: the short time job.--on the short time job that probably will never be repeated, there is little opportunity and no economic reason for specially training a man for its performance. the available man best suited to do the work with little or no help should be chosen to do it. the suitability of the man for the work should be determined only by applying simple tests, or, if even these will cause costly delay or more expense than the work warrants, the man who appears suitable and who most desires the opportunity to do the work can be assigned to it. if the job is connected with a new art, a man whose habits will help him can be chosen. for example:--in selecting a man to fly, it has been found advantageous to give a trick bicycle rider the preference. there is no other reason why the man for the short job should not be fitted as well to his work as the man for the long job, except the all-important reason of cost for special preparation. any expense for study of the workers must be borne ultimately both by worker and management, and it is undesirable to both that expense should be incurred which will not be ultimately repaid. the long time job.--the long time job allows of teaching, therefore applicants for it may be carefully studied. usually that man should be chosen who, with all the natural qualifications and capabilities for the job, except practical skill, requires the most teaching to raise him from the lower plane to that highest mental and manual plane which he is able to fill successfully continuously. in this way each man will be developed into a worker of great value to the management and to himself. the man who is capable and already skilled at some work is thus available for a still higher job, for which he can be taught. thus the long job affords the greatest opportunity for promotion. the long job justifies the expenditure of money, effort and time by management and men, and is the ideal field for the application of scientific selection and functionalization. summary effect of functionalization upon the work.--under traditional management, there was little or no definite functionalization. if the quantity of output did increase, as the result of putting a man at that work for which he seemed best fitted, there was seldom provision made for seeing that the quality of product was maintained by a method of constructive inspection that prevented downward deviations from standard quality, instead of condemning large quantities of the finished product. under transitory management, the department of inspection is one of the first functions installed. this assures maintained quality, and provides that all increase in output shall be actual gain. under scientific management, functionalization results in increased quantity of output,[ ] with maintained and usually increased quality.[ ] this results in decreased cost. the cost is sufficiently lower to allow of increased wages to the employés, a further profit to the employer, and a maintained, or lowered, selling price. this means a benefit to the consumer. it may be objected that costs cannot be lowered, because of the number of so-called "non-producers" provided for by scientific management. in answer to this it may be said that there are no non-producers under scientific management. corresponding work that, under scientific management, is done in the planning department must all be done somewhere, in a less systematic manner, even under traditional management.[ ] the planning department, simply does this work more efficiently,--with less waste. moreover, much work of the planning department, being founded on elementary units, is available for constant use. here results an enormous saving by the conservation and utilization of planning effort. also, standard methods are more apt to result in standard quality, and with less occasion for rejecting output that is below the requisite standards than is the case under traditional management. effect of functionalization upon the worker.--under traditional management, even if the worker often becomes functionalized, he seldom has assurance that he will be able to reap the harvest from remaining so, and even so, neither data nor teaching are provided to enable him to fulfill his function most successfully. under transitory management the worker becomes more and more functionalized, as the results of motion study and time study make clear the advantages of specializing the worker. effects upon the scientifically managed worker.--under scientific management the effects of functionalization are so universal and so far reaching that it is necessary to enumerate them in detail. worker relieved of everything but his special functions.-- functionalization, in providing that every man is assigned a special function, also provides that he be called upon to do work in that function only, relieving him of all other work and responsibility. realization of this elimination has a psychological effect on action and habits of thinking.[ ] places are provided for specialists.--functionalization utilizes men with decided bents, and allows each man to occupy that place for which he is fitted.[ ] assignment to functions is done according to the capabilities and desires of those who are to fill them. specializing is encouraged.--it is most important to remember that the man with any special talent or talents, individuality or special fitness is much more likely, under scientific management, to obtain and retain the place that he is fitted for than he ever could have been under traditional management, for, while many fairly efficient men can be found who can fill a general position, a man with the marked desirable trait necessary to fill a distinct position requiring that trait, will be one of few, and will have his place waiting for him. one-talent men utilized--.with functionalization, men who lack qualifications for the position which they may, at the start, endeavor to fill, may be transferred to other positions, where the qualities they lack are not required. if a man has one talent, scientific management provides a place where that can be utilized. for example:-- men who cannot produce the prescribed output constantly, are placed on other work. the slow, unskilled worker who has difficulty to learn, may be put upon work requiring less skill, or where speed is not required so much as watchfulness and faithfulness. the worker who is slow, but exceptionally skilled, has the opportunity to rise to the position of the functional foreman, especially in the planning department, where knowledge, experience and resourcefulness, and especially ability to teach, are much more desired than speed and endurance. thus there are places provided, below and above, that can utilize all kinds of abilities. "all round" men are utilized.--the exceptional man who possesses executive ability in all lines, and balance between them all, is the ideal man for a manager, and his special "all round" ability would be wasted in any position below that of a manager. stability provided for.--every man is maintained in his place by his interresponsibility with other men. if he is a worker, every man's work is held to standard quality by the inspector, while the requirements and rewards of his function are kept before him by the instruction card man, rate fixer and the disciplinarian. promotion and development provided for.--functionalization provides for promotion by showing every man not only the clearly circumscribed place where he is to work, but also by showing him the definite place above him to which he may be promoted and its path, and by teaching him how he can fill it. this allows him to develop the possibilities of his best self by using and specially training those talents which are most marked in him. functional foremanship allows many more people, to become foremen, and to develop the will and judgment which foremanship implies. men in the organization preferred to outsiders.--men in the organization are preferable to outsiders as functional foremen and for promotion. not only does a worker's knowledge of his work help him to become more efficient when he is promoted to the position of foreman,--but his efficiency as a teacher is also increased by the fact that he knows and understands the workers whom he is there to teach. all men are pushed up.--scientific management raises every man as high as he is capable of being raised. it does not speed him up, but pushes him up to the highest notch which he can fill. actual practice has shown that there is a greater demand for efficient men in the planning department than there is supply; also, that men in the planning department who fit themselves for higher work can be readily promoted to positions of greater responsibility, either inside or outside the organization. years of productivity prolonged.--under functionalization the number of years of productivity of all, workers and foremen alike, are increased. the specialty to which the man is assigned is his natural specialty, thus his possible and profitable working years are prolonged, because he is at that work for which he is naturally fitted. moreover, the work of teaching is one at which the teacher becomes more clever and more valuable as time goes on, the functional foreman has that much more chance to become valuable as years go by. change in the worker's mental attitude.--the work under functionalization is such as to arouse the worker's attention and to hold his interest.[ ] but the most important and valuable change in the worker's feelings is the change in his attitude towards the foremen and the employer. from "natural enemies" as sometimes considered under typical traditional management, these all now become friends, with the common aim, coöperation, for the purpose of increasing output and wages, and lowering costs. this change of feeling results in an appreciation of the value of teaching, and also in promoting industrial peace. chapter iii footnotes: ============================================= . mary whiton calkins, _a first book in psychology_, p. . . sully, _the teacher's handbook of psychology_, p. . . _ibid._, p. . . hugo münsterberg, _american problems_, p. . . gillette and dana, _cost keeping and management engineering_, p. . . f.w. taylor, _shop management_, para. . harper ed., p. . . f.w. taylor, _shop management_, para. - . harper ed., pp. - . . compare h.l. gantt, no. , a.s.m.e., para. . . compare h.p. gillette, _cost analysis engineering_, pp. - . . f.w. taylor, _principles of scientific management_, p. . . f.w. taylor, _shop management_, para. . harper ed., p. . . for excellent example of special routing see: charles day, _industrial plants_, chap. vii. . c. babbage, _economy of manufacturers_. p. . "the constant repetition of the same process necessarily produces in the workman a degree of excellence and rapidity in his particular department, which is never possessed by a person who is obliged to execute many different processes." . f.w. taylor, _on the art of cutting metals_, paper no. , a.s.m.e. . c.g. barth, _slide rules for machine shops and taylor system_. paper no. , a.s.m.e. . h.l. gantt, _work, wages and profits_, p. . . adam smith, _wealth of nations_, p. . "the greatest improvement in the productive powers of labor, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment, with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labor." also p. . . h.k. hathaway, _the value of "non-producers" in manufacturing plants. machinery_, nov., , p. . . gillette and dana, _cost keeping and management engineering_, p. . . morris llewellyn cooke, _bulletin no. , carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching_, p. . . h.l. gantt, _work, wages and profits_, p. . ==================================================================== chapter iv measurement definition of measurement.--"measurement," according to the century dictionary,--"is the act of measuring," and to measure is--"to ascertain the length, extent, dimensions, quantity or capacity of, by comparison with a standard; ascertain or determine a quantity by exact observation," or, again, "to estimate or determine the relative extent, greatness or value of, appraise by comparison with something else." measurement important in psychology.--measurement has always been of importance in psychology; but it is only with the development of experimental psychology and its special apparatus, that methods of accurate measurements are available which make possible the measurement of extremely short periods of time, or measurements "quick as thought," these enable us to measure the variations of different workers as to their abilities and their mental and physical fatigue;[ ] to study mental processes at different stages of mental and physical growth; to compare different people under the same conditions, and the same person under different conditions; to determine the personal coefficient of different workers, specialists and foremen, and to formulate resultant standards. as in all other branches of science, the progress comes with the development of measurement. methods of measurement in psychology.--no student of management, and of measurement in the field of management, can afford not to study, carefully and at length, methods of measurement under psychology. this, for at least two most important reasons, which will actually improve him as a measurer, i.e.-- . the student will discover, in the books on experimental psychology and in the "psychological review," a marvelous array of results of scientific laboratory experiments in psychology, which will be of immediate use to him in his work. . he will receive priceless instruction in methods of measuring. no where better than in the field of psychology, can one learn to realize the importance of measurements, the necessity for determination of elements for study, and the necessity for accurate apparatus and accuracy in observation. prof. george m. stratton, in his book "experimental psychology and culture,"--says "in mental measurements, therefore, there is no pretense of taking the mind's measure as a whole, nor is there usually any immediate intention of testing even some special faculty or capacity of the individual. what is aimed at is the measurement of a limited event in consciousness, such as a particular perception or feeling. the experiments are addressed, of course, not to the weight or size of such phenomena, but usually to their duration and intensity."[ ] the emphasis laid on a study of elements is further shown in the same book by the following,--"the actual laboratory work in time-measurement, however, has been narrowed down to determining, not the time in general that is occupied by some mental action, but rather the shortest possible time in which a particular operation, like discrimination or choice or association or recognition, can be performed under the simplest and most favorable circumstances.[ ] the experimental results here are something like speed or racing records, made under the best conditions of track and training. a delicate chronograph or chronoscope is used, which marks the time in thousandths of a second." measurement in psychology related to measurement in management.--measurement in psychology is of importance to measurement in management not only as a source of information and instruction, but also as a justification and support. scientific management has suffered from being called absurd, impractical, impossible, over-exact, because of the emphasis which it lays on measurement. yet, to the psychologist, all present measurement in scientific management must appear coarse, inaccurate and of immediate and passing value only. with the knowledge that psychologists endorse accurate measurement, and will coöperate in discovering elements for study, instruments of precision and methods of investigation, the investigator in industrial fields must persist in his work with a new interest and confidence.[ ] scientific management cannot hope to furnish psychology with either data or methods of measurement. it can and does, however, open a new field for study to experimental psychology, and shows itself willing to furnish the actual working difficulties or problems, to do the preliminary investigation, and to utilize results as fast as they can be obtained. psychologists appreciate scientific management.--the appreciation which psychologists have shown of work done by scientific management must be not only a matter of gratification, but of inspiration to all workers in scientific management. so, also, must the new divisions of the index to the psychological review relating to activity and fatigue, and the work being so extensively done in these lines by french, german, italian and other nations, as well as by english and american psychologists. measurement important in management.--the study of individuality and of functionalization have made plain the necessity of measurement for successful management. measurement furnishes the means for obtaining that accurate knowledge upon which the science of management rests, as do all sciences--exact and inexact.[ ] through measurement, methods of less waste are determined, standards are made possible, and management becomes a science, as it derives standards, and progressively makes and improves them, and the comparisons from them, accurate. problem of measurement in management--one of the important problems of measurement in management is determining how many hours should constitute the working day in each different kind of work and at what gait the men can work for greatest output and continuously thrive. the solution of this problem involves the study of the men, the work, and the methods, which study must become more and more specialized; but the underlying aim is to determine standards and individual capacity as exactly as is possible.[ ] capacity.--there are at least four views of a worker's capacity. . what he thinks his capacity is. . what his associates think his capacity is. . what those over him think his capacity is. . what accurate measurement determines his actual capacity to be. ignorance of real capacity.--dr. taylor has emphasized the fact that the average workman does not know either his true efficiency or his true capacity.[ ] the experience of others has also gone to show that even the skilled workman has little or inaccurate knowledge of the amount of output that a good worker can achieve at his chosen vocation in a given time.[ ] for example,--until a bricklayer has seen his output counted for several days, he has little idea of how many bricks he can lay, or has laid, in a day.[ ] the average manager is usually even more ignorant of the capacity of the workers than are the men themselves.[ ] this is because of the prevalence of, and the actual necessity for the worker's best interest, under some forms of management, of "soldiering." even when the manager realizes that soldiering is going on, he has no way, especially under ordinary management, of determining its extent. little measurement in traditional management.--under traditional management there was little measurement of a man's capacity. the emphasis was entirely on the results. there was, it is true, in everything beyond the most elementary of traditional management, a measurement of the result. the manager did know, at the end of certain periods of time, how much work had been done, and how much it had cost him. this was a very important thing for him to know. if his cost ran too high, and his output fell too low, he investigated. if he found a defect, he tried to remedy it; but much time had to be wasted in this investigation, because often he had no idea where to start in to look for the defects. the result of the defects was usually the cause for the inquiry as to their presence. he might investigate the men, he might investigate the methods, he might investigate the equipment, he might investigate the surroundings, and so on,--and very often in the mind of the traditional manager, there was not even this most elementary division. if things went wrong he simply knew,--"something is wrong somewhere," and it was the work of the foremen to find out where the place was, or so to speed up the men that the output should be increased and the cost lowered. whether the defects were really remedied, or simply concealed by temporarily speeding up, was not seriously questioned. moreover, until measuring devices are secured, the only standard is what someone thinks about things, and the pity of it is that even this condition does not remain staple. transitory management realizes value of measurement.--one of the first improvements introduced when traditional management gives place to the transitory stage is the measurement of the separated output of individual workers. these outputs are measured and recorded. the records for extra high outputs are presented to the worker promptly, so that he may have a keen idea constantly of the relation of effort to output, while the fatigue and the effort of doing the work is still fresh in his mind. the psychology of the prompt reward will be considered later at length, but it cannot be emphasized too often that the prompter the reward, the greater the stimulus. the reward will become associated with the fatigue in such a way that the worker will really get, at the time, more satisfaction out of his fatigue than he will discomfort; at the least, any dissatisfaction over his fatigue will be eliminated, by the constant and first thought of the reward which he has gotten through his efforts. this record of efficiency is often so presented to the workers that they get an excellent idea of the numerical measure of their efficiency and its trend. this is best done by a graphical chart. the records of the outputs of others on the same kind of work done concurrently, or a corresponding record on work done previously, will show the relative efficiency of any worker as compared with the rest. these standards of comparison are a strong incentive and, if they are shown at the time that such work is done, they also become so closely associated not only with the mental but the bodily feeling of the man that the next time the work is repeated, the thoughts that the same effort will probably bring greater results, and that it has done so in the past with others, will be immediately present in the mind. measurement is basic under scientific management.--under scientific management measurement is basic. measurement is of the work, of outputs, of the methods, the tools, and of the worker, with the individual as a unit, and motion study, time study and micro-motion study and the chrono-cyclegraph as the methods of measurement. measurement is a most necessary adjunct to selecting the workers and the managers and to assigning them to the proper functions and work. they cannot be selected to the greatest advantage and set to functionalized work until-- (a) the unit of measurement that will of itself tend to reduce costs has been determined. (b) methods of measurement have been determined. (c) measurement has been applied. (d) standards for measurement have been derived. (e) devices for cheapening the cost of measuring have been installed. under scientific management measurement determines the task.--an important aim of measurement under scientific management is to determine the task, or the standard amount of any kind of work that a first class man can do in a certain period of time. the "standard amount" is the largest amount that a first class man can do and continuously thrive. the "first-class" man is the man who can eventually become best fitted, by means of natural and acquired capabilities, to do the work. the "certain period of time" is that which best suits the work and the man's thriving under the work. the amount of time allowed for a task consists of three parts-- . time actually spent at work. . time for rest for overcoming fatigue. . time for overcoming delays. measurement must determine what percentage of the task time is to be spent at work and what at rest, and must also determine whether the rest period should all follow the completed work, or should be divided into parts, these parts to follow certain cycles through the entire work period. the method of constructing the task is discussed under two chapters that follow, analysis and synthesis, and standardization. here we note only that the task is built up of elementary units measured by motion study, time study, and micro-motion study. when this standard task has been determined the worker's efficiency can be measured by his performance of, or by the amount that he exceeds, the task. qualifications of the observer or measurer.--the position of observer, or as he has well been called, "trade revolutionizer," should be filled by a man specially selected for the position on account of his special natural fitness and previous experience. he also should be specially trained for his work. as in all other classes of work, the original selection of the man is of vital importance. the natural qualities of the successful hunter, fisherman, detective, reporter and woodsman for observation of minute details are extremely desirable. it is only by having intimate knowledge of such experiences as agassiz had with his pupils, or with untrained "observers" of the trade, that one can realize the lack of powers of observation of detail in the average human being. other natural qualifications required to an efficient observer are that of being (a) an "eye worker"; (b) able to concentrate attention for unusually long periods; (c) able to get every thought out of a simple written sentence; (d) keenly interested in his work; (e) accurate; (f) possessed of infinite patience; (g) an enthusiastic photographer. the measurer or observer should, preferably, have the intimate knowledge that comes from personal experience of the work to be observed, although such a man is often difficult if not impossible to obtain. the position of observer illustrates another of the many opportunities of the workmen for promotion from the ranks to higher positions when they are capable of holding the promotion. naturally, other things being equal, no man is so well acquainted with the work to be observed as he who has actually done it himself, and if he have also the qualifications of the worker at the work, which should, in the future, surely be determined by study of him and by vocational guidance, he will be able to go at once from his position in the ranks to that of observer, or time study man. the observer must also familiarize himself with the literature regarding motion study and time study, and must form the habit of recording systematically the minutest details observable. the effect upon the man making the observation of knowing that his data, even though at the time they may seem unimportant, can be used for the deduction of vital laws, is plain. he naturally feels that he is a part of a permanent scheme, and is ready and willing to put his best activity into the work. the benefits accruing from this fact have been so well recognized in making united states surveys and charts, that the practice has been to have the name of the man in charge of the work printed on them. anyone interested may become an observer.--a review of the mental equipment needed by a measurer, or observer, will show that much may be done toward training oneself for such a position by practice. much pleasure as well as profit can be obtained by acquiring the habit of observation, both in the regular working and in the non-working hours. vocational guidance bureaus should see that this habit of observation is cultivated, not only for the æsthetic pleasure which it gives, but also for its permanent usefulness. unbiased observation necessary.--in order to take observations properly, the investigator should be absolutely impartial, unprejudiced, and unbiased by any preconceived notions. otherwise, he will be likely to think that a certain thing ought to happen. or he may have a keen desire to obtain a certain result to conform to a pet theory. in other words, the observer must be of a very stable disposition. he must not be carried away by his observations. the elimination of any charting by the man who makes the observations, or at least its postponement until all observations are made, will tend to decrease the dangers of unconscious effect of what he considers the probable curve of the observations should be. as has been well said, watching the curve to be charted before all of the data have been obtained develops a distinct theory in the mind of the investigator and is apt to "bend the curve" or, at least, to develop a feeling that if any new, or special, data do not agree with the tendency of the curve--so much the worse for the reputation of the data for reliability. observed worker should realize the purpose of the measurement.--the observed worker should be made to realize the purpose and importance of the measurement. the observing should always be done with his full knowledge and hearty coöperation. he will attain much improvement by intelligent coöperation with the observer, and may, in turn, be able to be promoted to observing if he is interested enough to study and prepare himself after hours. worker should never be observed surreptitiously.--no worker should ever be observed, timed and studied surreptitiously. in the first place, if the worker does not know that he is being observed, he cannot coöperate with the observer to see that the methods observed are methods of least waste. therefore the motion study and time study records that result will not be fundamental standards in any case and will probably be worthless. in the second place, if the worker discovers that he is being observed secretly, he will feel that he is being spied upon and is not being treated fairly. the stop watch has too long been associated with the idea of "taking the last drop of blood from the worker." secret observations will tend strongly to lend credence to this idea. even should the worker thus observed not think that he was being watched in order to force him, at a later time, to make higher outputs, after he has once learned that he is being watched secretly, his attention will constantly be distracted by the thought that perhaps he is being studied and timed again. he will be constantly on the alert to see possible observers. this may result in "speeding him up," but the speed will not be a legitimate speed, that results to his good as well as to that of his employer. worst of all, he will lose confidence in the "squareness" of his employer. hence he will fail to co-operate, and one of the greatest advantages of scientific management will thus be lost. it is a great advantage of micro-motion study that it demands coöperation of the man studied, and that its results are open to study by all. an expert best worker to observe.--the best worker to observe for time study is he who is so skilled that he can perform a cycle of prescribed standard motions automatically, without mental concentration. this enables him to devote his entire mental activity to deviating the one desired variable from the accepted cycle of motions. the difficulty in motion study and time study is not so often to vary the variable being observed and studied, as it is to maintain the other variables constant. neither skill nor appreciation of what is wanted is enough alone. the worker who is to be measured successfully must . have the required skill. . understand the theory of what is being done. . be willing to coöperate. everyone should be trained in being measured.--accurate measurement of individuals, in actual practice, brings out the fact that lamentably few persons are accustomed to be, or can readily be, measured. it has been a great drawback to the advance of scientific management that the moment a measurer of any kind is put on the work, either a device to measure output or a man to measure or to time reactions, motions, or output, the majority of the workers become suspicious. being unaccustomed to being measured, they think, as is usually the case with things to which we are unaccustomed, that there is something harmful to them in it. this feeling makes necessary much explanation which in reality should not be needed. the remedy for this condition is a proper training in youth. a boy brought up with the fundamental idea of the importance of measurement to all modern science, for all progress, accustomed to being measured, understanding the "why" of the measuring, and the results from it, will not hesitate or object, when he comes to the work, to being measured in order that he may be put where it is best for himself, as well as for the work, that he be put. the importance of human measurement to vocational guidance and to the training of the young for life work has never been properly realized. few people understand the importance of psychological experiment as a factor in scientific vocational guidance. for this alone, it will probably in time be a general custom to record and keep as close track as possible of the psychological measurements of the child during the period of education, vocational guidance and apprenticeship. not only this, but he also should be accustomed to being measured, physically and psychologically, from his first years, just as he is now accustomed to being weighed. the child should be taught to measure himself, his faculties, his reactions, his capabilities as compared with his former self and as compared with the capabilities of others. it is most important that the child should form a habit not only of measuring, but of being measured. motion study and time study are the method of measurement under scientific management.--under scientific management, much measuring is done by motion study and time study, which measure the relative efficiency of various men, of various methods, or of various kinds of equipment, surroundings, tools, etc. their most important use is as measuring devices of the men. they have great psychological value in that they are founded on the "square deal" and the men know this from the start. being operated under laws, they are used the same way on all sorts of work and on all men. as soon as the men really understand this fact, and realize . that the results are applied to all men equally; . that all get an ample compensation for what they do; . that under them general welfare is considered; the objections to such study will vanish. motion study is determining methods of least waste.--motion study is the dividing of the elements of the work into the most fundamental subdivisions possible; studying these fundamental units separately and in relation to one another; and from these studied, chosen units, when timed, building up methods of least waste. time study is determining standard unit times.--time study consists of timing the elements of the best method known, and, from these elementary unit times, synthesizing a standard time in which a standard man can do a certain piece of work in accordance with the finally accepted method. micro-motion study is timing sub-divisions, or elements of motions by carrying out the principles of motion study to a greater degree of accuracy by means of a motion picture camera, a clock that will record different times of day in each picture of a moving picture film together with a cross sectioned background and other devices for assisting in measuring the relative efficiency and wastefulness of motions. it also is the cheapest, quickest and more accurate method of recording indisputable time study records. it has the further advantage of being most useful in assisting the instruction card man to devise methods of least waste.[ ] motion study and time study measure individual efficiency.-- motion study and time study measure individual capacity or efficiency by providing data from which standards can be made. these standards made, the degree to which the individual approaches or exceeds the standard can be determined. motion study and time study measure methods.--motion study and time study are devices for measuring methods. by their use, old methods are "tried out," once and for all, and their relative value in efficiency, determined. by their use, also, new methods are "tried out." this is most important under scientific management. any new method suggested can be tested in a short time. such elements of it as have already been tested, can be valued at the start, the new elements introduced can be motion studied and time studied, and waste eliminated to as great an extent as possible, with no loss of time or thought. under scientific management, the men who understand what motion study and time study mean, know that their suggested methods will be tested, not only fairly, but so effectively that they, and everyone else, can know at once exactly the worth of their suggestions. comparison of methods fosters invention.--the value of such comparative study can be seen at a glance. when one such method after another is tried out, not only can one tell quickly what a new method is worth, but can also determine what it is worth compared to all others which have been considered. this is because the study is a study of elements, primarily, and not of methods as a whole. not only can suggested methods be estimated, but also new methods which have never been suggested will become apparent themselves through this study. common elements, being at once classified and set aside, the new ones will make themselves prominent, and better methods for doing work will suggest themselves, especially to the inventive mind. books of preliminary data needed.--in order that this investigation may be best fostered, not only must books of standards be published, but also books of preliminary data, which other workers may attack if they desire, and where they can find common elements. such books of preliminary data are needed on all subjects.[ ] motion study and time study measure equipment and tools.--time and motion study are measuring devices for ascertaining relative merits of different kinds of equipment, surroundings and tools. through them, the exact capacities of equipment or of a tool or machine can be discovered at once, and also the relative value in efficiency. also motion study and time study determine exactly how a tool or a piece of equipment can best be used. in "on the art of cutting metals" dr. taylor explains the effect of such study on determining the amount of time that tools should be used, the speed at which they should be used, the feed, and so on.[ ] this paper exemplifies more thoroughly than does anything else ever written the value of time study, and the scientific manner in which it is applied. the scope of time and motion study is unlimited.--it is a great misfortune that the worker does not understand, as he should, that motion study and time study apply not only to his work, but also to the work of the managers. in order to get results from the start, and paying results, it often happens that the work of the worker is the first to be so studied, but when scientific management is in full operation, the work of the managers is studied exactly to the same extent, and set down exactly as accurately, as the work of the worker himself. the worker should understand this from the start, that he may become ready and willing to coöperate. detailed records necessary.--motion study and time study records must go into the greatest detail possible. if the observations are hasty, misdirected or incomplete they may be quite unusable and necessitate going through the expensive process of observation all over again. dr. taylor has stated that during his earlier experiences he was obliged to throw away a large quantity of time study data, because they were not in sufficient detail and not recorded completely enough to enable him to use them after a lapse of a long period from the time of their first use. no system of time study, and no individual piece of time study, can be considered a success unless by its use at any time, when new, or after a lapse of years, an accurate prediction of the amount of work a man can do can be made. all results attained should invariably be preserved, whether they appear at the moment to be useful or valuable or not. in time study in the past it has been found, as in the investigations of all other sciences, that apparently unimportant details of today are of vital importance years after, as a necessary step to attain, or further proof of a discovery. this was exemplified in the case of the shoveling experiment of dr. taylor. the laws came from what was considered the unimportant portion of the data. there is little so unimportant that time and motion study would not be valuable. just as it is a great help to the teacher to know the family history of the student, so it is to the one who has to use time and motion study data to know all possible of the hereditary traits, environment and habits of the worker who was observed. specialized study imperative.--as an illustration of the field for specialized investigation which motion study and time study present, we may take the subject of fatigue. motion study and time study aim to show, . the least fatiguing method of getting least waste. . the length of time required for a worker to do a certain thing. . the amount of rest and the time of rest required to overcome fatigue. dr. taylor spent years in determining the percentage of rest that should be allowed in several of the trades, beginning with those where the making of output demands weight hanging on the arms; but there is still a great amount of investigation that could be done to advantage to determine the most advisable percentage of rest in the working day of different lengths of hours. such investigation would probably show that many of our trades could do the same amount of work in fewer hours, if the quantity and time of rest periods were scientifically determined. again, there is a question of the length of each rest period. it has been proven that in many classes of work, and especially in those where the work is interrupted periodically by reason of its peculiar nature, or by reason of inefficient performance in one of the same sequence of dependent operations, alternate working and resting periods are best. there is to be considered in this connection, however, the recognized disadvantage of reconcentrating the attention after these rest periods. another thing to be considered is that the rate of output does not decline from the beginning of the day, but rather the high point of the curve representing rate of production is at a time somewhat later than at the starting point. the period before the point of maximum efficiency is known as "warming up" among ball players, and is well recognized in all athletic sports. as for the point of minimum efficiency, or of greatest fatigue, this varies for "morning workers," and "night workers." this exemplifies yet another variable. the minuteness of the sub-fields that demand observation, is shown by an entry in the psychological index: " . benedict, f.g. "studies in body--temperature." . influence of the inversion of the daily routine; the temperature of night workers."[ ] selection of best unit of measurement necessary and important.-- selecting the unit of measurement that will of itself reduce costs is a most important element in obtaining maximum efficiency.[ ] this is seldom realized.[ ] where possible, several units of measurements should be used to check each other.[ ] one alone may be misleading, or put an incentive on the workers to give an undesirable result. the rule is,--always select that unit of output that will, of itself, cause a reduction in costs. for example:--in measuring the output of a concrete gang, counting cement bags provides an incentive to use more cement than the instruction card calls for. counting the batches of concrete dumped out of the mixer, provides an incentive to use rather smaller quantities of broken stone and sand than the proportions call for,--and, furthermore, does not put the incentive on the men to spill no concrete in transportation, neither does it put an incentive to use more lumps for cyclopean concrete. measuring the quantity actually placed in the forms puts no incentive to watch bulging forms closely. while measuring outputs by all these different units of measurements would be valuable to check up accuracy of proportions, accuracy of stores account, and output records, the most important unit of measurement for selection would be, "cubic feet of forms filled," the general dimensions to be taken from the latest revised engineer's drawings. necessity for checking errors.--dr. stratton says,--"no measurements, whether they be psychic or physical, are exact beyond a certain point, and the art of using them consists largely in checks and counter checks, and in knowing how far the measurement is reliable and where the doubtful zone begins."[ ] capt. metcalfe says,--"errors of observation may be divided into two general classes; the instrumental and those due to the personal bias of the observer; the former referring to the standard itself, and the latter to the application of the standard and the record of the measurement."[ ] the concrete illustration given above is an example of careful checking up. under scientific management so many, and such careful records are kept that detecting errors becomes part of the daily routine. summary results of measurement to the work.--under traditional management, even the crudest measurement of output and cost usually resulted in an increase in output. but there was no accuracy of measurement of individual efficiency, nor was there provision made to conserve results and make them permanently useful. under transitory management and measurement of individual output, output increased and rewards for the higher output kept up the standard. under scientific management better methods and better work results.--under scientific measurement, measurement of the work itself determines . what kind of workers are needed. . how many workers are needed. . how best to use them. motion study and time study measurement,-- . divide the work into units. . measure each unit. . study the variables, or elements, one at a time. . furnish resulting timed elements to the synthesizer of methods of least waste. accurate measuring devices prevent breakdowns and accidents.--the accurate measuring devices which accomplish measurement under scientific management prevent breakdowns and accidents to life and limb. for example.-- . the maintained tension on a belt bears a close relation to its delay periods. . the speed of a buzz planer determines its liability to shoot out pieces of wood to the injury of its operator, or to injure bystanders. scientific management, by determining and standardizing methods and equipment both, provides for uninterrupted output. effect on the worker.--under traditional management there is not enough accurate measurement done to make its effect on the worker of much value. under transitory management, as soon as individual outputs are measured, the worker takes more interest in his work, and endeavors to increase his output. under scientific management measurement of the worker tells . what the workers are capable of doing. . what function it will be best to assign them to and to cultivate in them. waste eliminated by accurate measurement.--this accurate measurement increases the worker's efficiency in that it enables him to eliminate waste. "cut and try" methods are eliminated. there is no need to test a dozen methods, a dozen men, a dozen systems of routing, or various kinds of equipment more than once,--that one time when they are scientifically tried out and measured. this accurate measurement also eliminates disputes between manager and worker as to what the latter's efficiency is. efficiency measured by time and motion study.--time and motion study. (a) measure the man by his work; that is, by the results of his activities; (b) measure him by his methods; (c) measure him by his capacity to learn; (d) measure him by his capacity to teach. now measurement by result alone is very stimulating to increasing activities, especially when it shows, as it does under scientific management, the relative results of various people doing the same kind of work. but it does not, itself, show the worker _how_ to obtain greater results without putting on more speed or using up more activities. but when the worker's methods are measured, he begins to see, for himself, exactly why and where he has failed. scientific management provides for him to be taught, and the fact that he sees through the measurements exactly what he needs to be taught will make him glad to have the teacher come and show him how to do better. through this teaching, its results, and the speed with which the results come, the workers and the managers can see how fast the worker is capable of learning, and, at the same time, the worker, the teacher and the managers can see in how far the foreman is capable of instructing. final outcome beneficial to managers and men.--through measurement in scientific management, managers acquire-- . ability to select men, methods, equipment, etc.; . ability to assign men to the work which they should do, to prescribe the method which they shall use, and to reward them for their output suitably; . ability to predict. on this ability to predict rests the possibility of making calendars, chronological charts and schedules, and of planning determining sequence of events, etc., which will be discussed at length later. ability to predict allows the managers to state "premature truths," which the records show to be truths when the work has been done. it must not be forgotten that the managers are enabled not only to predict what the men, equipment, machinery, etc., will do, but what they can do themselves. the effect on the men is that the worker co-operates.-- . the worker's interest is held. the men know that the methods they are using are the best. the exact measurements of efficiency of the learner,--and under scientific management a man never ceases to be a learner,--give him a continued interest in his work. it is impossible to hold the attention of the intelligent worker to a method or process that he does not believe to> be the most efficient and least wasteful. motion study and time study are the most efficient measuring device of the relative qualities of differing methods. they furnish definite and exact proof to the worker as to the excellence of the method that he is told to use. when he is convinced, lack of interest due to his doubts and dissatisfaction is removed. . the worker's judgment is appealed to. the method that he uses is the outcome of coöperation between him and the management. his own judgment assures him that it is the best, up to that time, that they, working together, have been able to discover. . the worker's reasoning powers are developed. continuous judging of records of efficiency develops high class, well developed reasoning powers. . the worker fits his task, therefore there is no need of adjustment, and his attitude toward his work is right. . there is elimination of soldiering, both natural and systematic.[ ] all knowledge becomes the knowledge of all.--two outcomes may be confidently expected in the future, as they are already becoming apparent where-ever scientific management is being introduced: . the worker will become more and more willing to impart his knowledge to others. when the worker realizes that passing on his trade secrets will not cause him to lose his position or, by raising up a crowd of competitors, lower his wages, but will, on the contrary, increase his wages and chances of promotion, he is ready and willing to have his excellent methods standardized. desire to keep one's own secret, or one's own method a secret is a very natural one. it stimulates interest, it stimulates pride. it is only when, as in scientific management, the possessor of such a secret may receive just compensation, recognition and honor for his skill, and receive a position where he can become an appreciated teacher of others that he is, or should be, willing to give up this secret. scientific management, however, provides this opportunity for him to teach, provides that he receives credit for what he has done, and receive that publicity and fame which is his due, and which will give him the same stimulus to work which the knowledge that he had a secret skill gave him in the past. one method of securing this publicity is by naming the device or method after its inventor. this has been found to be successful not only in satisfying the inventor, but in stimulating others to invent. measurement of individual efficiency will be endorsed by all.-- . the worker will, ultimately, realize that it is for the good of all, as well as for himself, that individual efficiency be measured and rewarded. it has been advanced as an argument against measurement that it discriminates against the "weaker brother," who should have a right to obtain the same pay as the stronger, for the reason that he has equal needs for this pay to maintain life and for the support of his family. putting aside at the moment the emotional side of this argument, which is undoubtedly a strong side and a side worthy of consideration, with much truth in it, and looking solely at the logical side,--it cannot do the "weaker" brother any good in the long run, and it does the world much harm, to have his work overestimated. the day is coming, when the world will demand that the quantity of the day's work shall be measured as accurately where one sells labor, as where one sells sugar or flour. then, pretending that one's output is greater than it really is will be classed with "divers weights and divers measures," with their false standards. the day will come when the public will insist that the "weaker brother's" output be measured to determine just how weak he is, and whether it is weakness, unfitness for that particular job, or laziness that is the cause of his output being low. when he reaches a certain degree of weakness, he will be assisted with a definite measured quantity of assistance. thus the "weaker brother" may be readily distinguished from the lazy, strong brother, and the brother who is working at the wrong job. measurement should certainly be insisted on, in order to determine whether these strong brothers are doing their full share, or whether they are causing the weaker brothers to over-exert themselves. no one who has investigated the subject properly can doubt that it will be better for the world in general to have each man's output, weak and strong, properly measured and estimated regardless of whether the weak and strong are or are not paid the same wages. the reason why the unions have had to insist that the work shall not be measured and that the weaker brother's weakness shall not be realized is, that in the industrial world the only brotherhood that was recognized was the brotherhood between the workers, there being a distinct antagonism between the worker and the manager and little or no brotherhood of the public at large. when scientific management does away, as it surely will, with this antagonism, by reason of the coöperation which is its fundamental idea, then the workers will show themselves glad to be measured. as for the "weaker" brother idea, it is a natural result of such ill treatment. it has become such a far-reaching emotion that even scientific management, with its remedy for many ills, cannot expect in a moment, or in a few years, to alter the emotional bias of the multitudes of people who have held it for good and sufficient reasons for generations. the government should conserve measurement data.--the one thing which can permanently alter this feeling forms the natural conclusion to this chapter. that is, measurements in general and motion study and time study in particular must become a matter of government investigation. when the government has taken over the investigation and established a bureau where such data as scientific management discovers is collected and kept on file for all who will to use, then the possessor of the secret will feel that it can safely place the welfare of its "weaker brothers" in the hands of a body which is founded and operates on the idea of the "square deal." appreciation of time study by workers the first step.--the first step of the workers in this direction must be the appreciation of time study, for on time study hangs the entire subject of scientific management. it is this great discovery by dr. taylor that makes the elimination of waste possible. it has come to stay. many labor leaders are opposed to it, but the wise thing for them to do is to study, foster and cultivate it. they cannot stop its progress. there is no thing that can stop it. the modern managers will obtain it, and the only way to prevent it from being used by unscrupulous managers is for the workman also to learn the facts of time study. it is of the utmost importance to the workers of the country, for their own protection, that they be as familiar with time study data as the managers are. time study is the foundation and frame work of rate setting and fixing, and certainly the subject of rate fixing is the most important subject there is to the workmen, whether they are working on day work, piece work, premium, differential rate piece, task with bonus, or three-rate system. dr. taylor has proved by time study that many of the customary working days are too long, that the same amount of output can be achieved in fewer hours per day. time study affords the means for the only scientific proof that many trades fatigue the workers beyond their endurance and strength. time study is the one means by which the workers can prove the real facts of their unfortunate condition under the traditional plan of management. the workers of the country should be the very ones that should insist upon the government taking the matter in hand for scientific investigation. knowledge is power,--a rule with no exception, and the knowledge of scientific time study would prepare the workers of any trade, and would provide their intelligent leaders with data for accurate decisions for legislation and other steps for their best interests. the national bodies should hire experts to represent them and to coöperate with the government bureau in applying science to their life work. the day is fast approaching when makers of machinery will have the best method of operating their machines micro-motion studied and cyclegraphed and description of methods of operation in accordance with such records will be everywhere considered as a part of the "makers' directions for using." furthermore associations of manufacturers will establish laboratories for determining methods of least waste by means of motion study, time study and micro-motion study, and the findings of such laboratories will be put in standardized shape for use by all its members. the trend today shows that soon there will be hundreds of books of time study tables. the government must sooner or later save the waste resulting from this useless duplication of efforts. chapter iv footnotes: ============================================== . hugo münsterberg, _american problems,_ p. . . g.m. stratton, _experimental psychology and its bearing upon culture_, p. . . _ibid_., p. . . for apparatus for psychological experiment see stratton, p. , p. , p. . . h.l. gantt, _work, wages and profits,_ p. . . morris llewellyn cooke, bulletin no. , _the carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching,_ p. . . f.w. taylor, _shop management,_ para. . harper ed., p. . . h.l. gantt, paper no. , a.s.m.e., para. . . f.b. gilbreth, _cost reducing system_. . f.w. taylor, _shop management_, para. . harper ed., p. . . _industrial engineering_, jan., . . f.w. taylor, _shop management_, pp. - . harper ed., p. . compare, u.s. bulletin of agriculture no. . _the influence of muscular and mental work on metabolism_. . president's annual address, dec., . vol. , transactions a.s.m.e. . _american journal of physiology_, , xi, pp. - . . r.t. dana, for construction service co., _handbook of steam shovel work_, p. . h.p. gillette, vol. i, p. , a.s.e.c. . f.w. taylor, vol. , a.s.m.e., paper , para. . . hugo münsterberg, _american problems_, p. . . g.m. stratton, _experimental psychology and culture_, p. . . henry metcalfe, _cost of manufactures_. . f.w. taylor, _shop management_, para. . harper ed., p. . f.w. taylor, _a piece rate system_, paper , a.s.m.e., para. . ==================================================================== chapter v analysis and synthesis definition of analysis.--"analysis," says the century dictionary is "the resolution or separation of anything which is compound, as a conception, a sentence, a material substance or an event, into its constituent elements or into its causes;" that is to say, analysis is the division of the thing under consideration into its definite cause, and into its definite parts or elements, and the explanation of the principle upon which such division is made.[ ] definition of synthesis.--"synthesis" is, "a putting of two or more things together; composition; specifically, the combination of separate elements of objects of thought into a whole, as of simple into compound or complex conceptions, and individual propositions into a system." use of analysis and synthesis by psychology.--analysis is defined by sully as follows: "analysis" is "taking apart more complex processes in order to single out for special inspection their several constituent processes." he divides elements of thought activity into two "(a) analysis: abstraction (b) synthesis: comparison." speaking of the latter, he says, "the clear explicit detachment in thought of the common elements which comparison secures allows of a new reconstructive synthesis of things as made up of particular groupings of a number of general qualities." place of analysis and synthesis in management.--any study of management which aims to prove that management may be, and under scientific management is, a science, must investigate its use of analysis and of synthesis.[ ] upon the degree and perfection of the analysis depends the permanent value and usefulness of the knowledge gained. upon the synthesis, and what it includes and excludes, depends the efficiency of the results deduced. little analysis or synthesis under traditional management.-- under traditional management analysis and synthesis are so seldom present as to be negligible. success or failure are seldom if ever so studied and measured that the causes are well understood. therefore, no standards for future work that are of any value can be established. it need only be added that one reason why traditional management makes so little progress is because it makes no analyses that are of permanent value. what data it has are available for immediate use only. practically every man who does the work must "start at the beginning," for himself. if this is often true of entire methods, it is even more true of elements of methods. as elements are not studied and recorded separately, they are not recognized when they appear again, and the resultant waste is appalling. this waste is inevitable with the lack of coöperation under traditional management and the fact that each worker plans the greater part of his work for himself. analysis and synthesis appear late in transitory management.-- division of output appears early in transitory management, but it is usually not until a late stage that motion study and time study are conducted so successfully that scientifically determined and timed elements can be constructed into standards. as everything that is attempted in the line of analysis and synthesis under transitory management is done scientifically under scientific management, we may avoid repetition by considering scientific management at once. relation of analysis and synthesis in scientific management to measurement and standardization.--analysis considers the subject that is to be measured,--be it individual action or output of any kind,--and divides it into such a number of parts, and parts of such a nature, as will best suit the purpose for which the measurement is taken. when these subdivisions have been measured, synthesis combines them into a whole.[ ] under scientific management, through the measurements used, synthesis is a combination of those elements which are necessary only, and which have been proven to be most efficient. the result of the synthesis is standardized, and used until a more accurate standard displaces it. under scientific management analysis and synthesis are methods of determining standards from available knowledge. measurement furnishes the means. analyst's work is division.--it is the duty of the analyst to divide the work that he is set to study into the minutest divisions possible. what is possible is determined by the time and money that can be set aside for the investigation. the nature of the work must determine the amount of analysis practicable.--in determining the amount of time and money required, it is necessary to consider-- . the cost of the work if done with no special study. . how many times the work is likely to be repeated. . how many elements that it contains are likely to be similar to elements in work that has already been studied. . how many new elements that it contains are likely to be available in subsequent work. . the probable cost of the work after it has been studied-- (a) the cost of doing it. (b) the cost of the investigation. . the loss, if any, from delaying the work until after it has been studied. . the availability of trained observers and measurers, analysts and synthesists. . the available money for carrying on the investigations. these questions at least must be answered before it is possible to decide whether study shall be made or not, and to what degree it can be carried. cost the determining factor.--it is obvious that in all observation in the industrial world cost must be the principal determining feature. once the cost can be estimated, and the amount of money that can be allowed for the investigation determined, it is possible at least to approximate satisfactory answers to the other questions. how closely the answers approximate depends largely on the skill and experience of the analyst. the greater number of times the work is to be repeated, the less the ultimate cost. the more elements contained similar to elements already determined, the less the additional cost, and the less the time necessary. the more elements contained that can be used again, even in different work, the less the ultimate cost. the better trained the analyst, the less the immediate or additional cost and time. much depends on the amount of previous data at hand when the investigation is being made, and on the skill and speed of the analyst in using these data. process of division unending.--in practice, the process of division continues as long as it can show itself to be a method for cost reducing. work may be divided into processes: each process into subdivisions; each subdivision into cycles; each cycle into elements; each element into time units; each time unit into motions,--and so on, indefinitely, toward the "indivisible minimum."[ ] measuring may take place at any stage.--at any of these stages of division the results may be taken as final for the purpose of the study,--and the operations, or final divisions of the work at that stage, may be measured. to obtain results with the least expenditure of time, the operations must be subjected to motion study before they are timed as well as after. this motion study can be accurate and of permanent value only in so far as the divisions are final. the resulting improved operations are then ready to be timed. ultimate analysis the field of psychology.--when the analyst has proceeded as far as he can in dividing the work into prime factors the problem continues in the field of psychology. here the opportunities for securing further data become almost limitless. ultimate analysis justifiable.--it is the justification for analysis to approach the ultimate as nearly as possible, that the smaller and more difficult of measurement the division is, the more often it will appear in various combinations of elements. the permanence and exactness of the result vary with the effort for obtaining it. qualifications of an analyst.--to be most successful, an analyst should have ingenuity, patience, and that love of dividing a process into its component parts and studying each separate part that characterizes the analytic mind. the analyst must be capable of doing accurate work, and orderly work. to get the most pleasure and profit from his work he should realize that his great, underlying purpose is to relieve the worker of unnecessary fatigue, to shorten his work period per day, and to increase the number of his days and years of higher earning power. with this realization will come an added interest in his subject. worker should understand the process of analysis.--it is not enough that the worker should understand the methods of measurement. he can get most from the resultant standards and will most efficiently coöperate if he understands the division into elements to be studied. schools should provide training.--much of the training in analysis in the schools comes at such a late period of the course that the average industrial worker must miss a large part of it. this is a defect in school training that should be remedied. even very young children soon are capable of, and greatly enjoy, dividing a process into elements. if the worker be taught, in his preparations, and in the work itself, to divide what he does into its elements, he will not only enjoy analysis of his work, but will be able to follow the analysis in his own mind, and to coöperate better in the processes of measurement. the synthesist's work is selection and addition.--the synthesist studies the individual results of the analyst's work, and their inter-relation, and determines which of these should be combined, and in what manner, for the most economic result. his duty is to construct that combination of the elements which will be most efficient. importance of selection must be emphasized.--if synthesis in scientific management were nothing more than combining all the elements that result from analysis into a whole, it would be valuable. any process studied analytically will be performed more intelligently, even if there is no change in the method. but the most important part of the synthesist's work is the actual elimination of elements which are useless, and the combination of the remaining elements in such a way, or sequence, or schedule, that a far better method than the one analyzed will result. we may take an example from bricklaying.[ ] in "stringing mortar method, on the filling tiers before the days of the pack-on-the-wall-method"--the division, which was into operations only, showed eighteen operations and eighteen motions for every brick that was laid. study and synthesis of these elements resulted in a method that required only / motions to lay a brick. over half the original motions were found to be useless, hence entirely omitted. in several other cases it was found possible to make one motion do work for two or four brick, with the same, or less, fatigue to the worker. result is the basis for the task.--the result of synthesis is the basis for the task,--it becomes the standard that shows what has actually been done, and what can be expected to be repeated. it is important to note the relation between the task and synthesis. when it becomes generally understood that the "task," under scientific management is neither an ideal which exists simply in the imagination, nor an impossibly high estimate of what can be expected,--but is actually the sum of observed and timed operations, plus a definite and sufficient percentage of allowance for overcoming the fatigue,--then much objection to it will cease. general lack of knowledge the chief cause of objection to the task.--as is the case with most objections to scientific management, or its elements, ignorance is the chief obstacle to the introduction and success of the task idea. this ignorance seems to be more or less prevalent everywhere among managers as well as workers. scientific management can, and does, succeed even when the workers are ignorant of many of its fundamental principles, but it will never make the strides that it should until every man working under it, as well as all outside, understand _why_ it is doing as it does, as well as _what_ is done. this educational campaign could find no better starting point than the word "task," and the "task idea." the name task is unfortunate.[ ]--the century dictionary defines "task" as follows: . "a tax, an assessment, an impost . "labor imposed, especially a definite quantity or amount of labor; work to be done; one's stint; that which duty or necessity imposes; duty or duties collectively . "a lesson to be learned; a portion of study imposed by a teacher . "work undertaken,--an undertaking . "burdensome employment; toil." only the fourth meaning, as here given, covers in any way what is meant by the task in scientific management. the ideas included in the other four definitions are most unpleasant. the thought of labor; the thought that the labor is imposed; the thought that the imposition is definite; that duty makes it necessary that it be done; that it is burdensome; that it is toilsome: these are most unfortunate ideas and have been associated with the word so long in the human mind that it will be a matter of years before a new set of associations can be formed which will be pleasant, and which will render the word "task" attractive and agreeable to the worker and to the public in general. no other adequate word has been suggested.--however, there seems to be no better word forthcoming; therefore, one can but follow the example of the masters in management, who have accepted this word, and have done their best to make it attractive by the way they themselves have used it. to the writer, the word "stint" is far more attractive and more truly descriptive than is "task." perhaps because of the old-fashioned idea that a reward, usually immediate, followed the completion of the "stint." opinions as to a preferable word will doubtless vary, but it is self-evident that the word "task" has already become so firmly established in scientific management that any attempt to change it would result in a confusion. it is far better to concentrate on developing a new set of associations for it in as many minds as possible. decided advantage to the use of the word task.--perhaps in one way it is fortunate that the use of the word "task" does coincide more or less with the use of that word under traditional management. under traditional management the task is the work to be done. it may be just as well that the same word should be used under scientific management, in order that both the worker and investigator may realize, that, after all _the work that is to be done_ is, in its essentials, exactly the same. with this realization from the beginning, the mind of the worker or investigator may be the more predisposed to note the eliminations of waste and the cutting down of time, effort and fatigue under the scientifically derived methods. definition of task as used in scientific management.--the task, under scientific management, differs from the task under traditional management in that-- . the tools and surrounding conditions with which the work shall be done are standardized. . the method in which the work shall be done is prescribed. . the time that the work shall take is scientifically determined. . an allowance is made for rest from fatigue. . the quality of the output is prescribed. when to this is added the fact that the method is taught, and that the reward is ample, fixed, prompt and assured, the attractive features of the task under scientific management have been made plain. task idea applies to work of everyone.--under scientific management there is a task for every member of the organization, from the head of the management to the worker at the most rudimentary work. this is too often not known, or not appreciated by the worker, who feels that what is deemed best for him should be good for everyone. the mental attitude will never be right till all understand that the task idea will increase efficiency when applied to any possible kind of work. with the application of the task idea to all, will come added coöperation. task idea applies to the work of the organization.--the work which is to be done by the organization should be considered the task of the organization, and this organization task is studied before individual tasks are set. the methods used in determining this organization task are analysis and synthesis, just as in the case of the individual task. individual tasks are elements of organization task.--the individual tasks are considered as elements of the organization task. the problem is, to determine the best arrangement of these individual tasks, the best schedule, and routing. the individual task may be thought of as something moving, that must be gotten out of the way. management has been called largely a matter of transportation. it may be "transportation" or moving of materials, revolution of parts of fixed machinery, or merely transportation of parts of one's body in manual movements;[ ] in any case, the laws governing transportation apply to all. this view of management is most stimulating to the mind. a moving object attracts attention and holds interest. work that is interesting can be accomplished with greater speed and less fatigue. thinking in terms of the methods of scientific management as the most accurate and efficient in transporting the finished output and its "chips"[ ] will be a great aid towards attaining the best results possible by means of a new method of visualizing the problem. qualifications of the synthesist.--the synthesist must have a constructive mind, for he determines the sequence of events as well as the method of attack. he must have the ability to see the completed whole which he is trying to make, and to regard the elements with which he works not only as units, but in relation to each other. he must feel that any combination is influenced not only by the elements that go into it, but by the inter-relation between these elements. this differs for different combinations as in a kaleidoscope. the synthesist a conserver.--the synthesist must never be thought of as a destructive critic. he is, in reality, a conserver of all that is valuable in old methods. through his work and that of the analyst, the valuable elements of traditional methods are incorporated into standard methods. these standard methods will, doubtless, be improved as time goes on, but the valuable elements will be permanently conserved. synthesist an inventor.--the valuable inventions referred to as the result of measurement are the work of the synthetic mind. it discovers new, better methods of doing work, and this results in the invention of better means, such as tools or equipment. for example,--in the field of bricklaying, the non-stooping scaffold, the packet and the fountain trowel were not invented until the analysis of bricklaying was made, and the synthesis of the chosen elements into standard methods made plain the need and specifications for new equipment. relation of invention to scientific management important.--there has been much discussion as to the relation of invention to scientific management. it has been claimed by many otherwise able authorities that many results claimed as due to scientific management are really the results of new machinery, tools or equipment that have been invented.[ ] scientific management certainly can lay no claim to credit for efficiency which comes through inventions neither suggested nor determined by it. but the inventions from the results of which scientific management is said to have borrowed credit are usually, like the bricklaying inventions cited, not only direct results of scientific management, but probably would not have sprung from any other source for years to come. synthesist a discoverer of laws.--it is the synthetic type of mind that discovers the laws. for example--it was dr. taylor, with the aid of a few of his specially trained co-workers, who discovered the following governing laws: . law of no ratio between the foot-pounds of work done and the fatigue caused in different kinds of work. . law of percentage of rest for overcoming fatigue. . law of classification of work according to percentage of fatigue caused. . laws for making high-speed steel. . laws relating to cutting metals. . laws that will predict the right speed, feed and cut on metals for the greatest output. . laws for predicting maximum quantity of output that a man can achieve and thrive. . laws for determining the selection of the men best suited for the work. synthesist an adviser on introduction of new methods.--having constructed the standard tasks or standard methods which are new, the synthesist must remember to introduce his new task or method with as few new variables as possible. he should so present it that all the old knowledge will come out to meet the new, that all the brain paths that have already been made will be utilized, and that the new path will lead out from paths which are well known and well traveled. introduce with as few new variables as possible.--the greatest speed in learning a new method will be attained by introducing it with as few new variables as possible. for example,--learning to dictate to a dictaphone. the writer found it very difficult, at first, to dictate into the dictaphone,-- the whirling of the cylinder distracted the eye, the buzzing of the motor distracted the ear, the rubber tube leading to the mouth-piece was constantly reminding the touch that something new was being attempted. at the suggestion of one well versed in scientific management, the mouth-piece of the dictaphone was propped on the desk telephone on a level with the mouth-piece of the latter. the writer then found that as soon as one became interested in the dictating and one's attention was concentrated on the thought, one was able absolutely to forget the new variable, because it is one which is kept constant, and to dictate fluently. the emphasis laid on the likeness in thus dictating to the old accustomed act of talking through the telephone, seemed to put all other differences into the background, and to allow of forming the new and desired habit very quickly. summary effect of analysis and synthesis on the work.--as the outcome of analysis and synthesis is standardization, so the effect of them upon work is standard work. quantity of output can be predicted, quality of output is assured. effect on the worker.--the effect of analysis and synthesis upon the worker is to make him feel that the methods which he is using are right, and that, because of this, his work must be of value. the more the worker is induced to coöperate in the determining and the combination of elements, the more will he share with the investigators the satisfaction in getting permanent results. the outcome of this coöperation will, again, result in more perfect future results, and so on, progressively. chapter v footnotes: =============================================== . compare _mechanical analysis_. taylor and thompson, _concrete, plain and reinforced_, p. . . h. lechatelier, discussion of paper , a.s.m.e., p. . . h.l. gantt, _work, wages and profits_, p. . . f.b. gilbreth, _cost reducing system_. . f.b. gilbreth, _bricklaying system_, p. . . james m. dodge, discussion of paper , a.s.m.e., para. . . f.b. gilbreth, _motion study_. . james m. dodge. . london, _engineering_, sept. , . ==================================================================== chapter vi standardization definition of standardization.--standardization is "the act of standardizing, or the state of being standardized." "a standard," according to the century dictionary, "is that which is set up as a unit of reference; a form, type, example, incidence, or combination of conditions accepted as correct and perfect and hence as a basis of comparison. a criterion established by custom, public opinion or general consent; a model."[ ] we must note particularly that the standard is a "unit of reference," that it is a "basis of comparison," and that it is "a model." these three phrases describe the standard in management, and are particularly emphasized by the use of the standard in scientific management. standards derived from actual practice.--management derives its standards not from theories as to best methods, but from scientific study of actual practice.[ ] as already shown, the method of deriving a standard is-- . to analyze the best practice known into the smallest possible elements, . to measure these elements, . to adopt the least wasteful elements as standard elements, . to synthesize the necessary standard elements into the standard. the standard is progressive.--a standard remains fixed only until a more perfect standard displaces it. the data from which the standard was derived may be reviewed because of some error, because a further subdivision of the elements studied may prove possible, or because improvements in some factor of the work, i.e., the worker, material, tools, equipment, etc., may make a new standard desirable. the fact that a standard is recognized as not being an ultimate standard in no wise detracts from its working value. as captain metcalfe has said: "whatever be the standard of measurement, it suffices for comparison if it be generally accepted, if it be impartially applied, and if the results be fully recorded."[ ] change in the standard demands change in the task and in the incentive.--necessarily, with the change in the standard comes a change in the task and in the reward. all parts of scientific management are so closely related that it is impossible to make a successful progressive step in one branch without simultaneously making all the related progressions in other branches that go with it. for example,--if the material upon which a standard was based caused more care or effort, a smaller task must be set, and wages must be proportionately lowered. _proportionately_, note, for determining that change would necessitate a review and a redistribution of the cost involved. in the same way, if an improvement in equipment necessitated a new method, as does the packet in laying brick, a new task would become imperative, and a reconsideration of the wage. the wage might remain the same, it might go down, it might go up. in actual practice, in the case of bricklayers, it has gone up. but the point is, it _must_ be restudied. this provides effectually against cutting the rate or increasing the task in any unjust manner. similarity between the standard and the "judgment" of psychology.--there are many points of similarity between the "standard," of management, and the "judgment" of psychology. sully says, in speaking of the judgment,[ ]--"this process of judging illustrates the two fundamental elements in thought activity, viz., analysis and synthesis." "to judge is clearly to discern and to mark off as a special object of thought some connecting relation." "to begin with, before we can judge we must have the requisite materials for forming a judgment." "in the second place, to judge is to carry out a process of reflection on given material." "in addition to clearness and accuracy, our judgments may have other perfections. so far as our statements accord with known facts, they should be adhered to,--at least, till new evidence proves them untrue." psychology a final appeal as to permanent value of any standard.--the standard under management, even under scientific management, can lay no claim to being perfect. it can never nearly approach perfection until the elements are so small that it is practicable to test them psychologically and physiologically. the time when this can be done in many lines, when the benefit that will directly accrue will justify the necessary expenditure, may seem far distant, but every analysis of operations, no matter how rudimentary, is hastening the day when the underlying, permanently valuable elements can be determined and their variations studied. coÃ�peration will hasten the day of psychological and physiological study of standards.--coöperation in collecting and comparing the results of motion study and time study everywhere will do much to assist toward more ultimate determination of elements. at the present time the problems that management submits to psychology are too indefinite and cover too large a field to be attacked successfully. coöperation between management standardizers would mean-- . that all management data would be available to psychologists and physiologists. . that such data, being available also to all standardizers, would prevent reduplication of results. . that savings would result. . that, from a study and comparison of the collected data a trained synthetic mind could build up better standards than could be built from any set of individual data. . savings would result from this. . inventions would also result. . savings would again result from these. . all of these various savings could be invested in more intensive study of elements. . these more valuable results would again be available to psychologists and physiologists. this cycle would go on indefinitely. meantime, all would benefit with little added cost to any. for the results of the psychological and physiological study would be available to all, and investigators in those lines have shown themselves ready and glad to undertake investigations. purpose of standardization.--the purpose of standardizing is the same under all types of management; that is, it is the elimination of waste. standardization frequently attempted under traditional management.--in much progressive traditional management there is an appreciation of the necessity of standardizing tools and equipment, that is to say, of having these on the "duplicate part system," that assembling may be done quickly, and repairs made without delay. the manager notices some particularly successful man, or method, or arrangement of tools, equipment, or the surroundings, and decides to have a record made thereof that the success may be repeated. these records, if made in sufficient detail, are very valuable. the difficulty is that so often the man making the records does not observe all the variables. hence the very elements which caused the success may be overlooked entirely. value of standardization not appreciated under traditional management.--it is surprising, under traditional management, to note, in many cases, the years that elapse before any need for standardization is felt. it is also surprising that, even when some standardization has been done, its importance is seldom realized. the new standard becomes a matter of course, and the management fails to be impressed enough with its benefits to apply the principle of standardization to other fields. under transitory management standardization becomes constantly more important.--not until motion study and time study have been introduced can the full benefits of standardization be attained. but as soon as the transitory stage of management appears, the importance of standardization is realized. this is brought about largely through the records of individual outputs, which constantly call attention to the necessity of making available to all the methods, tools and equipment of the most successful workers. records of successes become more profitable.--the rules which embody successful practice become more profitable as the necessity for more detailed recording of all the variables becomes possible. an appreciation of what scientific motion study and time study will ultimately do affects the minds of the management until the workers are given directions as to methods to be used, and the incentive of extra pay for following directions. "systems" show an appreciation of psychology.--the "systems," standing orders or collections of written directions, that are evolved at this stage have a permanent value. this is especially true when the directions, often called "rules," contain the reason for the rule. there is a decided awakening to the importance of psychology in this appeal to the reason of the worker. he is not affronted by being forced to follow directions for which he is given no reason and which he has no reason to believe have been scientifically derived. these rules, in a certain typical case, are stated in simple language, some in the form of commands, some in the form of suggestions, and are obviously so prepared as to be understood and obeyed by the workers with the least possible amount of effort, opposition and time. as ample opportunity is given for suggestions, the worker's attention and interest are held, and any craving he may have for self-expression is gratified. systems permanently useful.--these systems, collections of rules, directions or standing orders are useful even when ultimate management is completely installed-- . for use as records of successful methods which may be scientifically studied for elements. . for use by the instruction card clerk in explaining to the men why the rules on the instruction card are given. relation of systems to standards should be emphasized.--the worker is too often not made to understand the relation of systems to standards. the average worker does not object to systems, because he realizes that the system is a collection of his best, least wasteful methods of doing work. when he can be convinced that standards are only efficient elements of his own methods scientifically studied and combined, any opposition to them will disappear. the personal note of the "system" should be preserved.--perhaps one thing that makes the typical "systems" so attractive is the personal note that they contain. illustrated with pictures of successful work that the workers themselves have done, often containing pictures of the men themselves that illustrate successful methods, with mention of the names of men who have offered valuable suggestions or inventions, they make the worker feel his part in successful results. they conserve the old spirit of coöperation between the master and his apprentices. the conditions of modern industry make it extremely difficult to conserve this feeling. scientific management is successful not only because it makes possible a more effective coöperation than has ever existed since the old "master-and-apprentice" relation died out, but also because it conserves in the systems the interim channel for personal communication between the various members of the organization. systems a valuable assistance in transition to scientific management.--one great problem which those introducing scientific management have to face is exactly how to make the worker understand the relation of the new type of management to the old. the usefulness of the written system in use in most places where it is planned to introduce scientific management as a means of making the worker understand the transition has, perhaps, not been appreciated. the development of the standard from the system is easy to explain. this being done, all parts of scientific management are so closely related that their interrelation can be readily made apparent. it is the worker's right as well as privilege to understand the management under which he works, and he only truly coöperates, with his will and judgment as well as with his hands, when he feels that his mind is a part of the directing mind. standardization under scientific management eliminates waste scientifically.--under scientific management the elimination of waste by the use of standards becomes a science. standards are no longer based on opinions, as under traditional management, but are based upon scientific investigation of the elements of experience. as james says, in the "psychology, briefer course," page , paragraph ,--"it is obvious and palpable that our state of mind is never precisely the same. every thought we have of a given fact is, strictly speaking, unique and only bears a resemblance of kind with our other thoughts of the same facts. when the identical fact recurs we must think of it in a fresh manner, see it under a somewhat different angle, apprehend it in different relations from those in which it last appeared." the standard the result of measurement.--it is obvious, therefore, that a scientifically derived standard can never be the outcome of an opinion. whenever the opinion returns, the different thoughts with which it would be accompanied would so color it as to change it, and the standard with it. it is obvious, therefore, that a standard must be the result of definite mathematical and other measured proof, and not of an opinion, and that the standard must be in such physical shape that the subject-matter will always be clearly defined, otherwise the ultimate losses resulting from dependent sequences of the standard schedule and time-tables would be enormous. successful standardization demands complete conformity to standards.--the laws for establishment of standards; the laws of achieving them; the laws for preventing deviations from those paths that will permit of their achievement; the dependent sequences absolutely necessary to perform the complete whole; these have been worked out and given to the world by dr. taylor, who recognized, as james has said, page , that, "a permanently existing 'idea' which makes its appearance before the footlights of consciousness at periodic intervals, is as mythological an entity as the jack of spades." the entire organization from the highest to the lowest must conform to these standards. it is out of the question to permit the deviations resulting from individual initiative. individual initiative is quite as objectionable in obtaining the best results,--that is, high wages and low production cost,--as service would be on a railroad if each locomotive engineer were his own train despatcher, determining at what time and to what place he would go. initiative provided for.--there is a distinct place for initiative in scientific management, but that place is not outside of the planning department, until the planning department's method has been proved to be fully understood by achieving it. the standards must be made by the men to whom this work is assigned, and they must be followed absolutely by the worker. he is willing to follow them, under scientific management, because he realizes that a place for his suggestions is supplied, and that, if his suggestions are accepted, they will be incorporated into the new standards which must then be followed by all thereafter. standardization applies to the work of all.--it is important to note that standardizing is applied to the work of all. this, if understood by all, will do away with all question of discrimination or the lack of a "square deal." it will make the worker feel ready to follow his standard exactly, just as he knows the manager is following his. so, also, the worker should be made to realize that the very fact that there is a standardization means, under scientific management, that that applies to every man, and that there is no discrimination against him in any possible way. standardization conserves and develops individuality.-- standardization conserves individual capacity by doing away with the wasteful process of trial and error of the individual workman. it develops individuality by allowing the worker to concentrate his initiative upon work that has not before been done, and by providing incentive and reward for inventions. waste eliminated is eliminated permanently.--scientific management not only eliminates waste, but provides that waste shall be eliminated for all time in the future. the standard once written down, there can be no slipping back into the old methods based upon opinions of the facts. standardization under scientific management resembles standardization of spelling.--the need for standardization has already been emphasized, but might further be illustrated by the discussions, pro and con, of the question of simplified spelling. before the days of dictionaries, our spelling was not standardized-- it was the privilege of any good writer to spell much as he desired; but the creation of written standards of spelling, that is to say the making of dictionaries, fixed the forms of spelling at that time, that is, created standards. the simplified spelling board is now endeavoring to make some new standards, their action being based upon sufficient reasons for making a change, and also for not changing the spelling of any word until it is determined that the suggested spelling is more advisable than the old spelling. just so, under scientific management, the best known standards are used continuously until better have been discovered. the planning department, consisting of the best men available, whose special duty it is to create new standards, acts as does the simplified spelling board, as a court of appeals for new standards, which must pass this court before they can hope to succeed the old, and which must, if they are to be accepted, possess many elements of the old and be changed only in such a way that the users can, without difficulty, shift to the new use. under scientific management nomenclature is standardized.--under standardization in scientific management the standardization of the nomenclature, of the names and of the terms used must be noted. the effect of this upon the mind is excellent, because the use of a word very soon becomes a habit--its associations become fixed. if different names are used for the same thing,--that is to say, if different names are used indiscriminately, the thing itself becomes hazy, in just such a degree as it possesses many names. the use of the fixed term, the fixed word, leads to definiteness always. just so, also, the mnemonic symbol system in use by scientific management, leads to swift identification of the subdivision of the classification to which it is applied, and to elimination of waste in finding and remembering where to find any particular thing or piece of information desired. by it may be identified "the various articles of manufacture and papers relating to it as well as the operations to be performed on each piece and the various charges of the establishment." mnemonic symbols save time and effort.--these mnemonic symbols save actual motions and time in speaking and writing, and save time in that they are so designed as to be readily remembered. they also save time and effort in that the mind accustomed to them works with them as collective groups of ideas, without stopping to elaborate them into their more detailed form. standard phraseology eliminates waste.--as typical of the savings effected by standardization, we may cite a lineman talking to the central telephone office:-- "john doe-- l. placing extension station," this signified-- "my name is john doe, i am telephoning from number , party l. i have finished installing an extension station. where shall i go next?" in the same way standard signals are remembered best by the man who signals and are understood quickest by the man who receives them, with a direct increase in speed to the work done. standard man is the man upon whom studies are made.--the standard man is the ideal man to observe and with whom to obtain the best motion study and time study data. he is the fastest worker, working under the direction of the man best informed in the particular trade as to the motions of best present practice, and being timed by a time study expert. relation between the standard man, the first-class man, the given man and the task.--the "first-class man" under scientific management means the man who is best fitted by nature and by training to do the task permanently or until promoted. the "given man" is the man who is actually put to work at the task, whether or not he is well fitted for its performance. the "task" is that percentage of the standard man's achievement that the given man to whom the task is to be assigned can do continuously and thrive, that he can do easily enough to win his bonus without injuring himself, temporarily or permanently, in any way. writing the standard means for conveying information.--under scientific management, and even in the early stages of transitory management, writing is the standard means of conveying information. all orders, without exception, should be in writing. this insures that the "eye workers" get their directions in the most impressive form; does away with the need of constant oral repetition; eliminates confusion; insures a clear impression in the mind of the giver as well as of the receiver of the order as to exactly what is wanted; and provides a record of all orders given. putting the instructions in writing in no way precludes utilizing the worker's natural aptitude to learn by imitation, for he also always has the opportunity to watch and imitate the workings of the functional teachers as well as his scientifically taught fellow-workers. the instruction card the standard method of conveying instructions as to the task.--the records of the work of the standard man are contained in data of the motion study and time study department. these records, in the form in which they are to be used by the man who is to perform the task, are, for the benefit of that man, incorporated in what is known as the instruction card. definition of the instruction card.--the instruction card is a set of directions for the man, telling him what he is to do, how he is to do it, how long it should take him to do it, and what he will receive for doing it, and giving him an opportunity to call for, and obtain, assistance the instant that he finds he cannot do it, and to report back to the managers as to how he has succeeded in the performance. the instruction card has been called "a self-producer of a predetermined product." comparative definition of instruction cards, under scientific management.--there are three types of instruction cards, which may be described as follows: type one:--largely geographical, telling . where to work. . from whom to take orders. . what to do. type two:--typical engineer's specification,--telling . results desired. . qualities of products. type three:--a list of elementary, step-by-step instructions, subdivided into their motions, with time allowed for each timable element, preferably for each motion, and a division between . getting ready. . making or constructing. . clearing up. this is the only type used by scientific management. directions, pay allowance and time allowance essential.-- the instruction card under scientific management must contain directions, and state the pay allowance and time allowance. directions as to how the work shall be done eliminate waste by cutting out all wrong methods and prescribing the right method exactly. the setting of a time in which the work is to be done is a great stimulus to the worker, and is also necessary, because upon the attainment of this set time depends the ability of the managers to pay the bonus to the worker, and also to maintain a schedule, or time-table, that will make possible the maintaining of necessary conditions for others, in turn, to earn their bonuses. it cannot be too often emphasized that the extra wages are paid to the men out of the savings, and are absolutely dependent upon the fact of there being savings. it is only when the worker does the work within the time prescribed, that the managers do save enough to warrant the payment of the extra wages that compensate the man for doing the stipulated quantity of work. the instruction card contains a statement of the wage or bonus that will be earned for the complete performance of the task set therein, thus furnishing an incentive at the time that the work is done. standard division of instruction card necessary.--there are many reasons for dividing an instruction card in the present standard way, namely,-- (a) to reduce the amount of time study observation necessary to be taken, (b) to reduce the difficulties of synthesizing the time studied element, (c) to locate quickly just where the worker needs help and instruction to enable him to achieve his task, (d) to keep up the interest of the worker by having short time elements with which to measure his relative ability, (e) to present the subject-matter of instruction in such natural subdivisions that resting places are automatically provided that allow the mind to recover from its absorption of each subdivision. this provides definite stopping places between co-related units of instruction holding the attention as a complete unit against distraction, and a complete resting place between subdivisions that permits the mind to relax and wander without losing complete grasp of each unit as a whole. detailed instruction educative.--the greater the perfection of the detail of the instruction card, the greater the educative value of this plan of management. the educative value of the instruction card will be discussed at length under teaching. those inexperienced in scientific management have complained that the detail of instruction cards and other parts of scientific management is tiresome. dr. taylor has answered such objectors in discussions, and also in his own directions for planning the instruction card, which are to be found in "shop management." the advantages of the detailed instruction card are more than might appear on the surface. not only does the man whose attention is easily distracted keep to his work better if he is told every possible detail, but also the cards when filed can be taken out again, and every detail and item of the method reviewed at length and revised if necessary. the experienced worker who gets to know the instruction by rote is not bothered by extreme detail. on the contrary, he grasps it at a glance, and focuses his mind upon any new feature and upon the speed and exactness of muscular action needed for compliance with the card. language of instruction card important.--the language in which instructions and commands are transmitted on the instruction card is of sufficient importance to warrant careful consideration. it would be helpful if the instruction card clerk and the man who is to use the instruction cards were both masters of english, but this is hardly to be expected. the best substitute for such special english training is a "system" for the use of the instruction card clerk that will give him some outline of english that will by degrees make his wording terse, simple and unambiguous. he should be impressed with the value of short sentences, and of sentences that will require no punctuation other than a period at the end. the short sentence is the most important step toward brevity, terseness, conciseness and clear thinking. the second most important feature is that the instruction card clerk always uses the same standard wording for the same instructions. repetition of phrasing is a virtue, and the use of the same word for the same thing and the same meaning repeatedly is very desirable. the wording, phrasing and sentencing should be standard wherever possible. standard phrasing desirable.--after a short time a phrase or sentence that is often repeated will be recognized as quickly as will a word or a letter. men who cannot read and write at all are comparatively few. men who can read and write but little are many. it is entirely possible to teach such men standard groupings, which they can recognize on the instruction card and use in a very short time. for example,--laborers who do not even know their alphabets will learn quickly to read setting marks on cut stone. just as mnemonic symbols save time and effort, so standard phrasing aids toward finding out what is to be done, and remembering how it is to be done.[ ] both of these can be accomplished if the standardization is so complete that directions can be read and remembered almost at a glance.[ ] specific terms helpful.--to be most effective, directions should be in the imperative form, and in specific terms. the history and growth of language shows that the language of the savage consisted of vague general terms as compared to the specific individual terms of the modern language of civilized man. there are examples to be seen on every hand to-day where the oral language of instructions and orders to proceed, that are given to the worker, are still more vague, comparatively, than the language between savages. similarity of form and shape advisable.--as for the form and shape, as dr. taylor says, "anything that will transmit ideas by sketch or wording will serve as an instruction card." he advises, however, taking advantage of the saving in time to be gained by having the instruction cards as nearly alike as possible. they may, for convenience' sake, vary as to length, but in width, ruling, spacing and wording they should be as nearly alike as possible. standard surroundings valuable.--standard environment, or surroundings, of the worker are valuable for two reasons: . because they directly increase output by eliminating everything which might distract attention or cause needless fatigue, and by assisting in the attainment of more output by having the best possible surroundings for greater output. . because all surroundings suggest an easy achievement. knowing that everything has been done to make his work possible and easy, the worker feels this atmosphere of possibility and ease around him, and the suggestive power of this is strong. unnecessary fatigue should be eliminated.--the walls, appliances and furniture, and the clothing of the worker should be of that color which will rest his eyes from the fatigue of the work. all unnecessary noise should be eliminated, and provision should be made, where possible, that the workers may enjoy their sleep or their rest hours in perfect quiet. records show the value of having quiet reign in and near the camp, that the workers may not be disturbed. even though they are not disturbed enough to be waked up, every noise that is registered in the brain affects the body, for it is now conceded that the body reflects every phase of mental activity. all mental states affect bodily states--dr. stratton says: "it is now generally accepted that the body reflects every shade of psychic operations; that in all manner of mental action there is some physical expression."[ ] all consciousness is motor "is the brief expression of this important truth; every mental state somehow runs over into a corresponding bodily state." elimination of worry assists in concentrating attention.--the more fireproof the building, and the more stable the other conditions, the greater the efficiency of the inmate. burglar-proof buildings not only actually induce better sleep, in that possible intrusions are eliminated, but give a state of mental peace by the removal of apprehension. so also, a "germ proof" house is not only really more healthful for an inmate, but eliminates worry over possible danger of ill health. the mental health of the worker not only controls, in a measure, his physical health, but also his desire to work. having no distractions, he can put his mind upon that which is given him to do. distracted attention causes fatigue.--the attention of the worker is apt to be distracted not only by recognized dangers, such as burglars, fires, and disease, but also by other transitory things that, involuntarily on his part, take his mind from the work in hand. a flickering light distracts the attention and causes fatigue, whether we have consciously noticed it or not. many things are recorded by the senses without one's being conscious of them. for example, the ceasing of a clock to tick, although we have not noticed that it was ticking. another example is the effect upon the pulse or the brain of being spoken to when asleep. the flickering lamp of the chronocyclegraph device is much more fatiguing than the steady lamp of plain cyclegraphs. proper placing of workers eliminates distracted attention.-- workers must be placed so that they do not see intermittently moving objects out of the corners of their eyes. in the early history of man it was continuously necessary to watch for first evidence of things behind one, or at a distance, in order to be safe from an enemy. from generations of survival of the most fit there have developed human eyes most sensitive to moving objects that are seen out of the corner of the eye. even civilized man has his attention distracted quickest, and most, by those moving objects that he sees the least distinctly, and furthest to one side from the direction in which he is looking. the leaf that moves or the grass that trembles may attract the attention where seen "out of the corner of the eye" to a point where it will even cause a start and a great fear. as an example of the distracting effect of moving objects seen "out of the corner of the eye," try reading a book facing a window in a car where the moving scenery can be seen on each side of the book. the flitting object will interrupt one, one cannot get the full meaning out of what one is reading--yet if one lays down the book and looks directly at the scenery, the mind can concentrate to a point where one does not see that moving scenery which is directly in front of the eyes. there is a great difference in this power of sensitiveness of the corners of some workers' eyes from that of others. the first move of scientific management is to place and arrange all workers, as far as is possible, in such a position that nothing to distract them will be behind them, and later to see that the eyes of workers are tested, that those whose eyes are most sensitive may be placed accordingly. this elimination may take place in all kinds of work.--the necessity of removing all things which will distract the attention is as great for the brain worker as for the shop or construction worker. all papers that attract the eye, and hence the attention, should be cleaned from the desk, everything except that on which the worker is working. the capability of being distracted by the presence of other things varies in all workers. in using the dictaphone, one can do much better work if one is in a room where there is little or nothing to distract attention. an outline of work ahead, may tempt to study and planning of what is ahead, rather than to carrying out the task scheduled for immediate performance. the presence of a paper with an outline merely of what is being done is found to be a great help, as the eye can rest on that, and after a few moments, will become so accustomed to it that the whole attention will be given to the dictating. benefits of eliminating "decision of choice."--there is always time lost by "decision of choice." the elimination of this is well illustrated by the bricks that are piled on the packet, which decides for the bricklayer which brick is next, making an obvious sequence, hence the saving of time of decision regarding motions, also the saving coming from the play for position. oftentimes a handicap of slow mental action can be compensated for, in a measure, by planning ahead in great detail. in this way, if the plan is made sufficiently in detail, there is absolutely no time possible left to be wasted in "decision of choice." the worker goes from one step to another, and as these steps are arranged logically, his mind does not tend to wander away, but to keep on in an uninterrupted sequence to the goal. standard equipment important.--as for equipment, the phenomena of habit are among the most important features of the psychology of management and the possibilities of the elimination of unnecessary waste resulting from taking advantage of this feature is possible only when the equipment, surroundings and methods of the worker are standardized. therefore the insistence upon standardization, even down to the smallest things, is vital for achieving the greatest output. for example,--suppose the keys of the monotype machine, piano or typewriter were not located permanently in the same relative position. consider the loss of time in not being able to use habits in finding each key. such an arrangement sounds ridiculous on the face of it, yet it is a common practice for many operators, especially of monotype machines, to make a complete mental decision as to the muscles and fingers with which they will strike the desired key. imagine the records of output of a typist who was using a different keyboard every day, if there were that many kinds of keyboards. it is easy for anyone to conceive the great advantages of standard keyboards for such machines, but only those who have made a study of output of all kinds of workers can fully realize that similar differences in sizes of output are being produced by the workers of the country for lack of similar standardization of working conditions and equipment. utmost standardization does not make "machines" of the workers operating under it.--the attention of those who believe that standardization makes machines out of the workers themselves, is called to the absence of such effect upon the typist as compared with the scribe, the monotype and linotype operator as compared with the compositor, and the mechanical computing machine operator as compared with the arithmetician. standard methods demand standard tools and devices.--habits cannot be standardized until the devices and tools used are of standard pattern. it is not nearly so essential to have the best tools as it is to have standard tools.[ ] experience in the hospitals points to the importance of this fact in surgery. tools once adopted as standard should not be changed until the improvement or greater efficiency from their use will compensate for the loss during the period of "breaking in" the user, that is, of forming new habits in order to handle strange tools. as will be brought out more fully under "teaching," good habits are as difficult to break as bad ones, the only difference being that one does not usually desire to break good ones. naturally, if a new device is introduced, what was an excellent habit for the old device becomes, perhaps, a very bad habit for the new device. there must come a time before the manipulation of the new device has become a habit when output will go down and costs will go up. it is necessary, before introducing this device, to investigate whether the ultimate reduction of costs will be sufficient to allow for this period of lower production. it is not fair, however, to the new device or method really to consider its record until the use of it has become such a habit with the workers as was the use of the old device. no one who has not made a study of cutting tools can realize the crying need for standardizing in that field. dr. taylor says, writing in the revised "shop management" of ,--"hardly a shop can be found in which tools made from a dozen different qualities of steel are not used side by side, in many cases with little or no means of telling one make from another."[ ] the effect of the slightest variation in the shape or the method of handling the tool upon the three dimensions of the work that the tool can do in a given time, is astounding.[ ] more important, from the psychological point of view, is the effect upon the mind of the worker of seeing such unstandardized equipment; of having to stop to select the particular tool that he desires, and thus having his attention distracted from his work; and of knowing that his act of judgment in so selecting is of no permanent value, as the next time he needs a similar tool he will probably have to reselect. standard clothing a crying need.--there is a great need today for standardization in the field of clothing. the idea prevalent that wearing apparel is attractive only when it is "different" is unfortunate in its influence upon the cost of living. how much more unfortunate is it, when it affects the mind of the worker, and leads him to look upon standard working clothes with distaste. to a careful observer, there is nothing more disheartening than a study of workers' clothes, especially the clothes of women workers. too warm clothes where work requiring high temperature is done, with no provision for adding needed wraps for the trip home; high-heeled shoes where the worker must stand at her task for hours at a time; tight waists and ill fitting skirts, where every muscle should have free play,--these are but examples of hundreds of places where reforms are needed. little or no blame attaches to the worker for this state of affairs. seldom, if ever, does the management attempt to standardize working clothes. moreover, the underlying idea is not made clear that such clothes bear no resemblance to the meaningless uniforms which are badge and symbol of service. they resemble rather the blouse or pinafore of the artist, the outfit of the submarine diver or the fireman. the sports present a fine example of this.--the greatest advance toward standardizing clothing has come in the sports, which, in many respects, present admirable object-lessons. in the tennis court, on the links, on the gridiron, the diamond, or track, the garment worn of itself does not increase fatigue. on the contrary, it is so designed as not to interfere with the efficiency of the wearer. management should provide clothing standards.--under ultimate management the most efficient clothing for any kind of work will be standardized. the expense of such articles of clothing as will add to the quantity or quality of output will, directly or indirectly, be borne by the management, just as it now bears the expense for equipment and tools. these essentials being supplied, and the underlying dignity and importance of standardization understood, the worker will gladly conform, and supply the minor accessories. such standards must apply to all.--it is of the utmost importance that such standardization, when adopted, should apply to the clothing of all, managers as well as employés. when the old pride in the "crafts" returns, or when efficiency is as universal in the industrial world as it is in the world of sport,--then one may look for results. effects of such standards enormous.--the effect which such standardized clothing would have on the physical and mental well-being of the wearers can scarcely be overestimated. fatigue would be eliminated, and the old "joy in working" might return. not being based upon looks alone,--though the æsthetic appeal should not be neglected,--the worker's ability to work more and better with greater content of mind would be the criterion. the success of the clothing would be scientifically measured, the standards improved, and progress itself become standardized. standard methods eliminate fatigue.--there is no doubt in the minds of those who have made it a study, that the constant receipt of the same kind of impressions, caused by the same kind of stimulation of the same terminal sense organs, causes semi-automatic response with less resulting fatigue, corresponding to the lessened effort. all methods should, therefore, as far as possible, be made up of standard elements under standard conditions, with standard devices and appliances, and they should be standardized from the standpoint of all of our senses as to color, shape, size, weight, location, position and surface texture, that the worker may grasp at a single thought by means of each or all his senses, that no special muscles or other fatiguing processes need be operated to achieve the standard result desired. muscles that tire easily should be saved.--it must be remembered that all work should be so arranged that the muscle that changes the position or shape of the eye or the size of its pupil should not be operated except when necessary. care in planning can oftentimes standardize conditions so as to relieve these and other muscles, which grow tired easily, or transfer this work to other muscles which are not so easily tired. not only do the reactions from such standards require less bodily effort, but it also requires less mental effort to work under methods that are standardized. therefore, both directly and indirectly, the worker benefits by the standardization. rest from fatigue is provided for scientifically.--scientific management provides and prescribes rest for overcoming fatigue of the worker more scientifically and economically than he could possibly provide it for himself. weber's law is that "our power of detecting differences between sensations does not depend on the absolute amount of difference in the stimuli, but on the relative amount."[ ] the additional fatigue from handling additional weights causes fatigue to increase with the weight, but not in direct proportion to the extra weight handled. when the correct weight of the unit to be handled has been determined, the additional weight will cause fatigue in quantities greater in proportion than the extra weight handled. rest periods arranged for best good of work and worker.--if possible, rest from fatigue is so arranged as to interfere with work the least. the necessary rest periods of the individuals of a gang should come at that period of the cycle that does not cause any allowance to be made for rest in between the performance of the dependent operations of different members of the gang. such an arrangement will enable the worker to keep a sustained interest in the work. work with animals should be standardized.--the necessity for standardizing work with animals has been greatly underestimated, although it has been done more or less successfully in systems for construction work. for work with horses and carts, the harnesses and the carts should be standardized and standards only should be used. the instruction card dealing with the action, motions and their sequence should be standard to save time in changing teams from the full to the empty cart and _vice versa_. while standardized action is necessary with men, it is even more necessary for men in connection with the work of animals, such as horses, mules and oxen. the instruction card for the act of changing of teams from an empty cart to a full cart should state the side that the driver gets down from his seat to the ground, the sequence in which he unhooks the harness and hooks it up again, and the side on which he gets up to his seat in the cart. even the wording of his orders to his horse should be standardized. while this book will deal with the human mind only, it is in order to state that a book could be written to advantage on training the horse by means of a standard man-horse language and a standard practice of their combined action. animals have not the capacity for forming new habits that they have for remembering the sequence of former acts. they have little ability to adapt themselves to a sequence of motions caused by unexpected conditions, unless those conditions suggest the opportunity of revenge, or the necessity of self-preservation, or immediate welfare. this is only touched upon here from the man side. naturally, the output earning power of a man working with animals depends largely upon the handling of the animal, and the man can never attain his full output, or the managers get what they might expect to get from the man-horse combination, until the psychology of the horse, or mule, or elephant, or whatever animal is used, is also studied and combined with the other studies on scientific management. an example of the benefits of standardized work with animals:--the standard fire signals in the fire house cause such perfect horse action that fire horses always have a reputation for superior intelligence. the worker who is best suited for his work in the performing department is incapable of discovering the best method.--an exaggerated case of the result of leaving the selection of the method to the worker is that of the west indian negro who carried the wheelbarrow on his head.[ ] this well-known example, though it seems impossible and absurd, is no more inefficient than are hundreds of methods in use in the industrial world to-day. under scientific management quality is standardized.--scientific management determines exactly what quality as well as what quantity of work is needed, and the method prescribed is that one not only of lower costs, but which fits the particular need of the particular occasion most accurately. workers are kept under pressure for quality, yet the pressure is not irksome, because the worker understands exactly what quality is desired, and what variations from exactness are permitted. variations in quality or exactness indicated by standard signs.--all dimensions on the drawings of work have either a letter or symbol or plus or minus signs. there is much to be said about the effect this has on the worker. . it gives the worker immediate knowledge of the prescribed quality demanded. . he does not have to worry as to the maximum variation that he can make without interfering with his bonus. . there is no fear of criticism or discharge for using his own faulty judgment. scientific management has a standard "method of attack."--we must note next the standard "method of attack" in scientific management. it is recognized that sensations are modified by those that come before, by those that come simultaneously, and by those that follow. the psychic effect of each and every kind of sensation depends upon what other sensations have been experienced, are being experienced at that time, or will presently be experienced. the scientific manager realizes this, and provides for the most desirable sequence of sensation; then, having seen, to the best of his ability, that the sensation occurs at the time which he desires it to occur, he provides for concentration upon that one sensation and elimination of all other thoughts or desires. professor faraday says: "that part of self-education which consists in teaching the mind to resist the desires and inclinations until they are proved to be right is the most important of all." how this is shown under scientific management will be shown in "teaching." it is sufficient to say here that the method of attack of scientific management is to eliminate all possible bodily as well as mental exertion,--to cut down motions, to cut down even sensations and such mental acts as visualizing. the object is, not so much to eliminate these motions and these sensations, and this visualizing from the life of the worker, as simply to use up less energy in producing the output. this allows the worker an extra supply of energy upon which to fall back to produce greater output and to get greater wages. if his energy is not all utilized in his working hours, then, as will be shown more clearly under "welfare," there is that much more left for him to enjoy in his own leisure time. summary result to the work.--under traditional management, where standards are not established, the worker is constantly delayed by the necessity for decision of choice, by the lack of knowing what should be chosen, and by a dearth of standard equipment, materials and tools from which to choose. under transitory management, with the introduction of standards, the elimination of delays and the provision for standard surroundings and supplies of all kinds, comes increased output of the desired quality. under scientific management, not only is output increased and quality assured, but results of work can be predicted.[ ] results to the worker.--results from standardization to the worker under traditional and transitory management are the same as, and are included in, results under scientific management. state of worker's feelings improved.--under scientific management the state of the employé's feelings is improved by the standardization. it is a recognized fact that mental disturbance from such causes as fear of losing his job will sometimes have the same ill effect upon a workman as does overwork, or insufficient rest for overcoming fatigue. it will occasionally wear upon the nervous system and the digestive organs. now scientific management by standardization removes from the workman this fear of losing his job, for the worker knows that if he conforms to the standard instructions he certainly will not lose his position unless the business as a whole is unsuccessful. on the other hand, feelings, such as happiness and contentment, and even hearing rhythmic sounds, music, etc., are an aid toward increasing output. for the best results, therefore, under scientific management the worker is furnished with standard conditions; his train of ideas is held upon the work in hand without interruption, and the working conditions are such that the managers furnish the worker with inducements to conform to the standard conditions happily. worker's retentive power increased.--we note in the second place, the increased retentive power of anyone who is working with standards. there is great difference between different people of the same degree of intelligence as to their ability to memorize certain things, especially such as sequences of the elements of a process. this lack of retentive power is illustrated particularly well in the cases often found where the student has difficulty in learning to spell. it is here that the standard instruction card comes into play to good effect. its great detail remedies the defect in memorizing of certain otherwise brilliant workers, and its standard form and repetition of standard phrases aid the retentive power of the man who has a good memory. standard elements serve as memory drills.--this use of standardized elements makes the time elapsing between repetitions shorter, for, while it may be a long time before the worker again encounters the identical work or method, still, the fact that elements are standard means that he will have occasion to repeat elements frequently, and that his memory will each time be further drilled by these repetitions. gang instruction card an aid to memory.--the gang instruction card has been used with good effect at the beginning of unfamiliar repetitive cycles of work to train the memory of whole gangs of men at once, and to cut down the elapsed time from the time when one man's operation is sufficiently completed to permit the next man to commence his. it has been found, in the case of setting timbers in mill construction for example, that to have one man call out the next act in the sequence as fast as the preceding one is finished, until all have committed the sequence to memory, will materially decrease the time necessary for the entire sequence of elements in a cycle of work. individual instruction card an inanimate memory.--the instruction card supplies a most accurate memory in inanimate form, that neither blurs nor distorts with age. the ranter against this standard memory is no more sensible than a man who would advocate the worker's forgetting the result of his best experience, that his mind might be periodically exercised by rediscovering the method of least waste anew with each problem. other things being equal, that worker has the longest number of years of earning power who remembers the largest number of right methods; or at least remembers where to find them described in detail; and, conversely, those who have no memory, and know not where to look for or to lay their hand on the method of least waste, remain at the beginning of their industrial education. "experience," from an earning standpoint, does not exist when the mind does not retain a memory of the method. the instruction card, then, acts as a form of transferable memory--it conserves memory. once it is made, it furnishes the earning power without the necessity of the former experience having been had more than once. plans, details, free-hand sketches, and two-dimension photographs surpass the highest form of mental imagery, and such cultivated imagery is undoubtedly a high achievement. there is no kind of memory, visualization, nor constructive imagination that can equal the stereoscopic or three-dimension photographs that may accompany the instruction card for enabling the worker to "see the completed work before it is begun." probably the greatest hindrance to development of lower forms of animal life is their inability to picture past experiences, and the reason for the intellectual strides made by the worker under scientific management is the development of this faculty. a conserver of individual memories.--many people believe that the memory of a person ceases at his death. whether this is so or not, the loss to the world, and particularly the industrial world, of not having the instruction card for the passing on of the worker's experience to the workers who follow is stupendous and incalculable, and this loss, like so many other losses, can be eliminated by the process of making written standards. motor memory improved by standardization.--not only are the retentive powers of the brain improved, but also the brain centers, and the muscles, etc., become trained through standardization. with standardization a long sequence of muscular motions or operations can be noted at a glance, and can be remembered without difficulty. standards prevent men from becoming machines.--those who object to the worker taking advantage of these scientifically derived standards which aid the memory, can only be compared to such people as desire the workers to turn into unthinking animals. psychologists believe that some of the lower animals have no memory. turning the workers into machines which do not in any way utilize thought-saving devices is simply putting them but little above the class of these lower, memory-less, animals. through standards the worker's attention is gained at the start.--the general act of attention plays an important part in scientific management. the insistence upon standardized performance requires the utmost attention at the beginning of learning a new method of performance. this extra output of mental activity, which is always required for accomplishing new methods of work, could not be continuously maintained, but after the new method has once been learned, its repetition requires less attention, consequently less fatigue. the attention of the worker is, therefore, strongly demanded at the beginning and when, later, it is not needed except for new and unfamiliar work, an opportunity arises for invention and mental advancement. attention allowed to lapse and then recalled.--standardization shifts the objects of attention and eliminates the need for constant concentration. the standardization of processes relieves the worker to a marked extent from the extremely fatiguing mental effort of unproductive fixed, valueless, and unnecessary attention on the stream of consciousness. the repeated elements which form a part of all standards reconcentrates the attention if it is allowed to lapse. standardization eliminates the shifting viewpoint.--under old-time traditional management the way that the man happened to feel at the particular time made a great difference, not only in his work, but in his relations with other men. the standardization not only of the relationship between the men, but of the relationships between the foreman, the manager, and the worker, the fact that the disciplining is put in the hands of a man who is not biased by his personal feelings in his dealings with the men;--all of these things mean that the viewpoint of the men as to their work and their relationship remains fixed. this standardizing of the viewpoint is an enormous help toward increasing output. the common viewpoint is an impetus.--there are those who believe that the concerted standard process of thought of the many minds assists the operation of any one mind. however this may be, there is no doubt that the fact that the standard thought is present in all minds at one time at least eliminates some cause for discussion and leads to unity and consequent success in the work. invention is stimulated.--chances for invention and construction are provided by standardization.[ ] by having a scientifically derived standard method as a starter, the worker can exert much of his mental power toward improvement from that point upward, instead of being occupied with methods below it and in wasting, perhaps, a lifetime in striving to get up to it,[ ] this in distinction to the old plan, where a worker knew only what he could personally remember of what had been handed down by tradition, tradition being the memory of society. under scientific management a worker has many repetitions of experience, some of which he does not always recognize as such. when he does recognize them, he has the power and daring for rapid construction that come to those only who "know that they know." standardization of ultimate subdivisions, as such, brings that power to the worker sooner. the conscious knowledge of familiarity of process is an essential for attaining the complete benefits of experience. far from making machines out of the men, standardization causes a mental state that leads to invention, for the reason that the worker's brain is in most intimate contact with the work, and yet has not been unnecessarily fatigued by the work itself. no more monotonous work could be cited than that of that boy whose sole duty was to operate by hand the valve to the engine, yet he invented the automatic control of the slide valve used throughout the world to-day. standardization prevents accidents.--the results of standardization so far given, concern changes in the worker's mental capacity, or attitude. such changes, and other changes, will be discussed from a different viewpoint under "teaching." as for results to the worker's body, one of the most important is the elimination of causes for accidents. the rigid inspection, testing, and repairing provided for by scientific management provides against accidents from defects in equipment, tools, or material. the fact that instructions are written, provides against wrong methods of handling work.[ ] the concentrated attention caused by standardization, is a safeguard against accidents that occur from the worker's carelessness.[ ] the proper allowance of rest for overcoming fatigue, insures that the worker's mind is fresh enough to enable him to comply with standards, and, finally, the spirit of coöperation that underlies scientific management is an added check against accidents, in that everyone is guarding his fellows as well as himself. progress of standardization assured.--as scientific management becomes older, progress will be faster, because up to this time there has been a hindrance standing in the way of rapid advancement of the best standards. this hindrance has been the tendency of habits of thought coinciding with former practice. for example, the design of concrete building for years followed the habit of thinking in terms of brick, or wood, or steel, and then attempting to design and construct in reinforced concrete. again, in the case of the motor car, habits of thinking in vehicles drawn by animals for years kept the design unnecessarily leaning toward that of horse vehicles. as soon as thought was in terms of power vehicles, the efficient motor truck of to-day was made, using the power also for power loading and power hoisting, as is now done in motor trucks specially designed for transporting and handling pianos and safes. so, also, while the thought was of traditional practice, standard practice was held back. now that the theories of standardization are well understood, standardization and standards in general can advance with great rapidity. chapter vi footnotes: ============================================== . compare r.t. dana and w.l. sanders, _rock drilling_, chap. xvi. . the idea of perfection is not involved in the standard of scientific management. morris llewellyn cooke, bulletin no. , of _the carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching_, p. . . _cost of manufactures_. . sully, _the teacher's handbook of psychology_, pp. - . . c.b. going, _methods of the sante fé_, p. . . for desirability of standard signals see r.t. dana, _handbook of steam shovel work_, p. . . stratton, _experimental psychology and culture_, pp. - . . f.w. taylor, _shop management,_ para. , harper ed., pp. - . . f.w. taylor, _shop management,_ revised , pp. - . . f.w. taylor, _on the art of cutting metals_, a.s.m.e., no. . . stratton, _experimental psychology and culture_, p. . . mary whiton calkins, _a first book in psychology_, p. . . c.g. barth, a.s.m.e., vol. , paper , p. . . charles babbage, _on the economy of machinery and manufactures_, secs. - . adam smith, _wealth of nations_, book , chap. , p. . . f.w. taylor, paper , a.s.m.e., para. ; para. - . . f.a. parkhurst, _applied methods of scientific management, industrial engineering_, oct. , p. . . h.l. gantt, paper , a.s.m.e., para. . ==================================================================== chapter vii records and programmes definition of record.--a record is, according to the century dictionary--"something set down in writing or delineated for the purpose of preserving memory; specifically a register; an authentic or official copy of any writing, or an account of any fact and proceedings, whether public or private, usually entered in a book for preservation; also the book containing such copy or account."[ ] the synonyms given are "note, chronicle, account, minute, memorandum." few written records under traditional management.--for the purposes of this preliminary study of records, emphasis will be laid on the fact that the record is written. under traditional management there are practically no such labor records. what records are kept are more in the nature of "bookkeeping records," as gillette and dana call them, records "showing debits and credits between different accounts." in many cases, under traditional management, not even such records of profit or loss from an individual piece of work were kept, the manager, in extreme cases, oftentimes "keeping his books in his head" and having only the vaguest idea of the state of his finances. importance of records realized under transitory management.--as has been amply demonstrated in discussing individuality and standardization, the recognition of the value of records is one of the first indications of transitory management. since this stage of management has scientific management in view as "a mark to come to," the records evolved and used are not discarded by scientific management, but are simply perfected. therefore, there is no need to discuss these transitory records, except to say that, from the start, _quality_ of records is insisted upon before quantity of records. no "bookkeeping" records under scientific management.--under scientific management there are no "bookkeeping records" kept of costs as such. instead, there are "time and cost records," so called, of the time and efficiency of performance. from these, costs can be deduced at any time. items of cost without relation to their causes, on work that is not to be repeated, have little value. cost records, as such, usually represent a needless, useless expenditure of time and money. it must be emphasized that scientific management can in no way be identified with "cost keeping," in the sense that is understood to mean aimlessly recording unrelated costs. under scientific management costs are an ever-present by-product of the system, not a direct product. records must lower costs and simplify work.--the quantity of records that should be made depends on the amount, diversity and state of development of the work done. no record should be made, which does not, directly or indirectly, actually reduce costs or in some way increase efficiency. the purpose of the records, as of scientific management in general, is to simplify work. only when this is recognized, can the records made be properly judged. numerous as they may at times seem to be, their number is determined absolutely by the satisfactory manner in which they-- . reduce costs. . simplify work. . increase efficiency. records of work and workers.--records may be of the work or of the worker[ ]--that is to say, of material used, tools used, output produced, etc., or of individual efficiency, in one form or another. records of efficiency may be of workers, of foremen, and of managers, and a record may be made of any man in several capacities; for example, a record is kept of a functional foreman in the form of the work of the men who are under him, while another record might be kept of him as a worker himself; for example, the time being taken that it took him to teach others their duties, the time to learn what was to be done on any new work, etc. records of initiative.--records of initiative are embodied in the suggestion card. even under advanced traditional management the cards are furnished to the men upon which to write any ideas as to improvements. these suggestions are received, and, if accepted, are rewarded. under scientific management such suggestions become more valuable, for, as has been shown, they are based upon standards; thus if accepted, they signify not only a real, but a permanent improvement. their greatest value, however, is in the stimulus that they furnish to the worker, in the information that they furnish the management as to which workers are interested, and in the spirit of coöperation that they foster. the worker receives not only a money-reward, but also publicity, for it is made known which worker has made a valuable suggestion. this indicates that the worker has shown good judgment. his interest is thus stimulated, his attention is held to his work, and the habit of initiative comes to him. that this habit of initiative can be fostered, is shown by the actual fact that in many sorts of work the same man constantly makes suggestions. it becomes a habit with him to look for the new way, and as he is constantly rewarded, the interest is not allowed to diminish. records of good behavior.--records of good behavior are incorporated in the white list file. the white list file contains the names of all men who have ever been employed who merit a recommendation, if they should go to work for others, and would deserve to be given work as soon as possible, if they came back. this white list file should be filled out with many details, but even if it contains nothing but a record of the names, and the addresses where the men can be reached when new work starts up, it has a stimulating effect upon the worker. he feels, again, the element of permanence; there is a place for individuality, and not only does the manager have the satisfaction of actually having this list, and of using it, but a feeling that his men know that he is in some way recognizing them, and endeavoring to make them and their good work permanent. records of achievement.--records of achievement vary with the amount and nature of the work done. such records are, as far as possible, marked upon programmes. records made by worker where possible.--wherever possible the worker makes his own records. even when this is not advisable he is informed of his record at as short intervals as are practicable.[ ] records made on the "exception principle."--much time is saved by separating records for the inspection of the man above, simply having him examine the exceptions to some desired condition,--the records which are exceptionally good, the records which are exceptionally bad. this not only serves as a reward to the man who has a good record, and a punishment for the man who has had a bad record, but it also enables the manager to discover at once what is wrong and where it is wrong, and to remedy it. the value of the exception principle can hardly be overestimated. it would be of some value to know of exceptionally good or poor work, even if the cause were not known. at least one would be made to observe the signpost of success or of danger. but, under scientific management, the cause appears simultaneously with the fact on the record,--thus not only indicating the proper method of repeating success, or avoiding failure, in the future, but also showing, and making clear, the direct relation of cause to effect, to the worker himself. this discussion necessarily incomplete.--the records mentioned above are only a few of the types of records under scientific management. discussion has been confined to these, because they have the most direct effect upon the mind of the worker and the manager. possible records are too numerous, and too diverse, to be described and discussed in detail. they constitute a part of the "how" of scientific management,--the manner in which it operates. this is covered completely in the literature of scientific management, written by men who have made scientific management and its installation a life study. we need only further discuss the posting of records, and their effect. posting of records beneficial.--as has been already noted under individuality, and must be again noted under incentives, much benefit is derived from posting records, especially when these are of such a character, or are so posted, that the worker may see at a glance the comparative excellence of his results. summary results of records to the work.[ ]--the results of recording are the same under all forms of management, if the records are correct. output increases where records are kept. under traditional management there is the danger that pressure for quantity will affect quality, especially if insufficient records of the resultant quality are kept. under transitory and scientific management, quality is maintained or improved, both because previous records set the standard, and because following records exhibit the quality. results to the worker.--james says, "a man's social use is the recognition which he gets from his mates. we are not only gregarious animals, liking to be liked in sight of our fellow, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind. no more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof. if no one turned around when we entered, answered when we spoke or minded what we did, but if every person we met 'cut us dead' and acted as if we were non-existing things, a kind of rage and impotent despair would ere long well up in us, from which the cruelest bodily tortures would be a relief; for these would make us feel that, however bad might be our plight, we had not sunk to such a depth as to be unworthy of attention at all."[ ] this recognition the worker gets partly through the records which are made of him. self-knowledge attained through records.--through records of output, and especially through charts of such records, and timed motion-picture films, or micro-motion study pictures the worker may, if he be naturally observant, or if he be taught to observe, gain a fine knowledge of himself. the constant exhibit of cause and effect of the relation of output to, for example,--drink of alcoholic beverages; to smoking; to food values; to nutrition; to family worries; and to other outside influences;--in fact, the effects of numerous different modes of living, are shown promptly to the worker in the form of records. two things should here be noted: . the necessity of having more accurate records of the worker and the work, that the relation o£ cause to effect may be more precise and authentic. . the necessity for so training the worker, before, as well as after, he enters the industrial world, that he can better understand and utilize the lesson taught by his own records and those of others. educative value of worker making his own record.--under scientific management in its most highly developed form, the worker makes his own records on his return cards and hands them in. the worker thus not only comes to realize, by seeing them and by writing them down, what his records are, but he also realizes his individual position to-day compared to what it was yesterday, and compared to that of his fellows in the same line of work. further, he gains accuracy, he gains judgment, he gains a method of attack. he realizes that, as the managers are more or less recorders, so also he, in recording himself, is vitally connected with the management. it is, after all, more or less an attitude of mind which he gains by making out these records himself. it is because of this attitude of mind, and of the value which it is to him, that he is made to make out his own record under the ultimate form of management, even though at times this may involve a sacrifice of the time in which he must do it, and although he may work slower than could a specialist at recording, who perhaps would, in spite of that, be paid less for doing the work. exact knowledge valuable.--we cannot emphasize too often in this connection the far-reaching psychological effect upon the worker of exact knowledge of the comparative efficiency of methods. the value of this is seldom fully appreciated; for example, we are familiar with the many examples where the worker has been flattered until he believes that he cannot make mistakes or do inefficient work. this is most often found where the glowing compliments to the manufacturing department, found in the advertising pages of the magazine and in the praises sung in print by the publicity department, oftentimes ends in an individual overconfidence. this unjustified self-esteem is soon shattered by accurate comparative records. on the other hand, hazing of the new worker and the sneers of the jealous, accompanied by such trite expressions as--"you can't teach an old dog new tricks," have often destroyed self-confidence in a worker, who, in the absence of accurate records of his efficiency, is trying to judge himself at new methods. the jibes and jokes at the new man at the new work, and especially at the experienced, efficient man at unfamiliar work cease, or at least are wholly impotent, so far as discouraging the man is concerned, provided the worker sees by the records of a true measuring device, or method, that his work compares favorably with others of the same experience, made under the same conditions. definition of programme.--the word "programme" is defined by the century dictionary as "a method of operation or line of procedure prepared or announced beforehand. an outline or abstract of something to be done or carried out." two meanings of "programme" in management.--the word "programme" has two meanings in management. . the work, as it comes to the management to be done . the work as it is planned out by the managers, and handed over to the worker to be done. programme as here used is a plan for doing work, the plan which the planning department lays out and hands over for the performers, or the workers, to do. under traditional management no accurate programme is possible.--under traditional management the plan is at best a repetition of records of unscientifically planned work. the most that the managers can hope to do is to lay out the time in which they expect, after consulting previous elapsed time records, the work to be done. methods are not prescribed, so there is no assurance that the calendar will be followed, for the times are set by guess, or at best by referring to old unscientifically made records. under transitory management calendars can be designed.--under transitory management, with the introduction of systems, that is, records of how the work has been done best at various times, come methods and a possibility of a more exact calendar. there is some likelihood under transitory system of the work being done on time, as the method has been considered and, in many cases, is specified. under scientific management accurate calendars possible.--under scientific management programmes are based on accurate records scientifically made and standardized, and a calendar may be made that can be conformed to with exactness. programmes a matter of routing.--the problems of a programme under scientific management are two, both problems of routing:-- . to route materials to the work place. . to route the worker to the placed materials. at first glance it might seem simpler to consider the worker as static and the materials as in motion. the "routing" of the worker is really often not a question of motion at all, as the worker, if he were operating a machine, for example, would not change his position between various pieces of work--except to rest from fatigue--enough to be considered. the word "routing" is used figuratively as regards the worker. he is considered as transported by the management through the day's work. but, whether the work move, or the worker, or both, programmes must so plan out the progress of each, in detail, for as many days ahead as possible, that the most efficient outcome will ensue. routing of work.--the work is routed through schedules of materials to buy, schedules of material to handle, and schedules of labor to be performed. the skilled worker finds all the materials for his work ready and waiting for him when he arrives at the task, this being provided for by programmes made out many tasks ahead. routing of workers.--the workers themselves are routed by means of the route sheet, route chart, pin plan and bulletin board. the devices for laying out the work of the workers appeal to the imagination as well as the reason. the route chart is a graphical representation of a large river, starting with the small stream,--the first operation, gathering to itself as the tributaries, the various other operations,--till it reaches its full growth, the completed work. the pin plan, with each pin or flag representing a worker, or work place, and following his progress on a plan of the work, presents a bird's-eye view in miniature of the entire working force; and the bulletin board, with its cards that represent work ahead, not only eliminates actual delay of shifting from one task to another, but permits studying out one task while doing another, and also destroys all fear of delay between jobs. impossibility of describing routing devices accurately.--these routing devices might all be described at length, but no description could do them justice. a visit to a shop, or factory, or other industrial organization operating under scientific management is necessary, in order to appreciate not only their utility, but the interest that they arouse. these programmes are no dead, static things. they are alive, pulsing, moving, progressing with the progress of the work. prophecy becomes possible under scientific management.--the calendar, or chronological chart, becomes a true prophecy of what will take place. this is based on the standardized elementary units, and the variations from it will be so slight as to allow of being disregarded. summary results of programme to the work.--under traditional management the tentative calendar might cause speed, but could not direct speed. under transitory management elimination of waste by prescribed methods and routing increases output. this increase becomes greater under scientific management. standardized routing designs the shortest paths, the least wasteful sequence of events, the most efficient speed, the most fitting method. the result is more and better work. results of programmes to the worker.--a programme clarifies the mind, is definite. the traditional worker was often not sure what he had better do next. the worker under scientific management knows exactly what he is to do, and where and how he is to do it. the attention is held, a field of allied interests are provided for possible lapses, as are also methods for recalling attention. the programme provides for a look ahead, and the relief that comes from seeing the path before one. this ability to foresee also leads to a feeling of stability. the knowledge that there is a large amount of work ahead, ready to be attacked with no delay, eliminates anxiety as to future employment. this allows of concentration on the work in hand, and a feeling that, this work being properly done, one is free to turn to the next piece of work with the absolute assurance that what has been done will be satisfactory. relation between records and programmes.--no discussion of records and programmes would be complete that did not consider the relation between them. importance of this relation.--the relation between records and programmes in the various types of management is most important, for the progress from one type to another may be studied as exemplified in the change in these relations. a broadening of the definitions.--in order to understand more plainly the complexity of this relation, we will not confine ourselves here to the narrower definition of a record as a written account, but will consider it to mean a registering of an experience in the mind, whether this expresses itself in a written record or not, a programme will, likewise, be a mental plan. many possible types of records and programmes.--in order to understand the number of different types of records and programmes that can be made for a worker, the table that follows may be examined (table i). it exemplifies twelve possible records and twelve possible programmes. table i / / | | . unconscious record | | . conscious record, / . man -----| | not written | working | | . written record | for | | . standardized record | himself \ \ i. | records----| / . unconscious record | | . conscious record, not written | /(a) one of a ---| . written record | | gang | . standardized record | | \ /(a) made by man \ . man -----| |(b) " " manager working | / . unconscious |(a) made by man for | | record |(b) " " manager another | | . conscious -|(a) made by man | | record, |(b) " " manager \(b) individual -| not written |(a) made by man output | . written |(b) " " manager | record |(a) made by man | . standardize \(b) " " manager \ record / | . unconscious programme / . man ------------------| . conscious programme | working | . written programme | for | . standardized programme | himself \ ii. | programmes-| | / . unconscious /(a) made by man | /(a) one of a ---| programme |(b) " " manager | | gang | . conscious |(a) made by man | | | programme, |(b) " " manager \ . man --| | not written -|(a) made by man working | | . written |(b) " " manager for | | programme |(a) made by man another \(b) individual -| . standardized |(b) " " manager output | programme |(a) made by man \ \(b) " " manager interrelation of these types.--the man is classified first, as working for himself, or working for another. there will usually be a fundamental difference, at the outset, in the minds of these two men, for the man working for himself will be of a more independent cast of thought. there will be no question as to the man's output showing up separately, unless he chooses to prevent this by having others work with him. neither will there be any question but that, if a record is made, he makes it himself, unless someone who is not vitally connected with the work, as some onlooker, interested or disinterested, should make the records for him. but the typical case of the man working for himself would be that he was working as an individual, and that the record was made by himself. there would then be four kinds of records--an unconscious record, a conscious record not written, a written record and a standardized record. the "unconscious record" would be, in reality, no record at all. it would simply be, that somewhere in the man's mind there would be a record of what he had done, which, except as a "fringe of consciousness" would not particularly influence his programme. what we mean by a "conscious record" would be more of a set habit, the man knowing that he had done the work in a certain way. this would begin to influence, more or less, his programme, and also his knowledge of his capacity for work. with a written record, would come a thorough knowledge on his part of what he had done and how he had done it, and we must note that with this written record comes the possibility for some sort of a set programme, the man knowing what it will be possible to do, and how he had best do it. with the standardized record comes the standardized method. relationships complex.--when we consider the man working for another, he may either be one of a gang, or one whose work is considered as that of an individual. in either case, any of the four sorts of records can be made of his work that have been already described for the man working for himself. each one of these records may be made by the man, or by the management; for with the man working for another, naturally the second mind, that of the other, or the manager, enters in, and a great many more combinations are possible. for example,--there might be an unconscious record made by the man and a conscious record, or a written record, made by the manager. there might be a conscious record made by the man, but an unconscious or a written record made by the manager, etc. there are too many combinations made to be here considered. each one of these combinations would have a definite and a different effect, both upon the mind of the man, and upon the mind of the manager; and also upon their relation to each other. the second half of this chart is similar, but treats of programmes, as many variables enter here. it may be thought that the details of the preceding chart and the three following charts are uninteresting, obvious, and show too many possible combinations. if this be so, then it is most necessary to include them to illustrate the conditions that are passed through and slipped back into too often in our schools, our apprenticeship and in all but the best of managements. the outline of advancement must be known and recognized if the quality of teaching, efficiency, and management is to be graded in its right class. when we consider that each type of record bears a relation to each type of programme, the complexity of the problems involved become apparent. this will be better shown in table ii. table ii . unconscious record, unconscious programme. . conscious record, unconscious programme. . unconscious record, conscious programme. . conscious record, conscious programme. i. man working . unconscious record, written programme. for himself. . written record, unconscious programme. . conscious record, written programme. . written record, conscious programme. . written record, written programme. . standardized record, standardized programme. illustration of this complexity.--table ii represents the man working for himself, with subdivisions under it showing the possible relationship between his record and his programme. we find that these are at least ten, reaching all the way from the unconscious record and unconscious programme of the migrating transitory laborer to the standardized record and the standardized programme of the manager who manages himself scientifically. each one of these represent a distinct psychological stage. the progression may not be regular and smooth as is here given,--it may be a jump, possibly even from one to nine. it may, however, be a slow progression from one stage to another, largely to be determined by the type of mind that is considered, and the opportunities for development along scientific lines which are afforded. it is the writer's intention to discuss these at length at some other time. here it is only possible to enumerate, in order to show the size and complexity of the problem which is here involved. the table does not indicate, as perhaps it should, the fact that the relationship between an unconscious record and an unconscious programme is slight, while the relation between a written programme and a written record is very close indeed. in table iv this will be indicated. table iii . one of a gang, unconscious record, unconscious programme, on part of both manager and man. ii. man working for another. . individual output,--standardized record and programme, known to, or made by, both manager and man. elimination of waste possible.--the third table--that of the man working for another man--attempts to do no more than indicate the first and last step of a long series, beginning with the man, one of a gang, an unconscious record, and an unconscious programme, on the part of both the manager and the man, down to the final stage of individual output, with the written record and programme known to both manager and man. it would be a most interesting problem to work out the various steps stretching between these two, and the various ways in which progression might be made through these steps, either taking one step after another slowly or making the various possible jumps long and short. a psychological discussion of each step would be of value, and certainly must in time be made, but this book has not the scope, nor can the time be devoted to such a discussion. if this third chart had no other purpose, it would be useful to suggest to the student the wide tracts which still remain for study and development. it must not be thought that any of the steps omitted on this chart are not in existence. every single possible combination of record and programme is in existence to-day, and must be studied by the manager of men. not until these are all discovered, described, and standardized, the progression noted, and standard progressions outlined, can methods of least waste be adopted. with a more thorough experimental study of the mind will come a possible prediction as to which stages the various types of mind must pass through. so, too, with the training of the young mind in the primary schools and in the methods of scientific management, will come the elimination of many stages now necessary, and the possibility, even, that the final stage may be introduced at the outset, and the enormous waste of time, energy and wearing of unnecessary brain paths be absolutely abolished. the programme derived from the record.--having considered the various records and programmes and their relation, we will now consider the four stages of the record,--( ) unconscious, ( ) conscious, ( ) written, ( ) standardized, and trace the derivation of the programme from each stage. table iv ============================================================ i. record unconscious. programme cannot be definite. method is indefinite. ============================================================ ii. record conscious. programme becomes more definite. method becomes more definite. ============================================================ iii. record written. programme yet more definite. method definite. ============================================================ iv. record standardized. programme standardized, i.e., results predictable. methods standard. ============================================================ unconscious records mean indefinite programmes.--first, then, suppose that the records are unconscious. what does this imply? it implies in the first place that the worker has no idea of his capacity; never having thought of what he has done, he has no idea what can be done, neither has he a comparative idea of methods, that is, of how to do it. it is impossible for a definite programme to be laid out by such a worker,--that is to say, no predictions by him as to the time of completing the work are possible. neither could a method be derived by him from his previous work. note here the alarming amount of waste. all good methods which the worker may possibly have acquired are practically lost to the world, and perhaps also to him. not only this, but all bad methods which he has fallen into will be fallen into again and again, as there are no warning signs to keep him out of them. as there is no possibility of an accurate chronological chart, the worker may undertake more than he can do, thus delaying work which should have been done by others. on the other hand, he may underestimate his capacity, and be left idle because work he should have done has been assigned to others. either of these leads to a sense of insecurity, to wavering attention, to "hit or miss" guess work, "rule-of-thumb methods," which are the signs of traditional management. with conscious and written records come definite programmes.--we turn now to the case where the record is conscious,--that is, where the worker keeps in mind exactly what he has done. with this conscious record the idea of capacity develops. the man realizes what he can do. so also, the idea of method develops, and the man realizes how he can do the work. third, there comes gradually an idea of a margin; that is, of a possible way by which capacity can be increased for a higher speed, or methods can be slightly varied to meet any particular deviation in the work to be done. from this ability to estimate capacity, and to plan the method ahead, comes the ability to lay out a more definite programme. when the record becomes written the exactness of the programme increases. methods also become written, and, though accurate prediction is not possible, such prediction is more and more nearly approached. this increasing accuracy is the work of transitory system in all its stages. standard records permit of standard programmes.--in the last case, the record is standardized, that is, the result of the method of processes of analysis and synthesis. through this process, as has been shown, the reason for success is discovered and rendered usable. the programme becomes standard, results can be predicted accurately, and methods by which these results can be best obtained are also standard. it may at first escape notice that these standardized records, of the ultimate or scientific management type, imply _not_ a greater rigidity, but a greater elasticity. this because of the nature of the elements of the records, which may, in time, be combined into a great number of different, predictable programmes. summary results of relations between records and programmes on the work.--the most noteworthy result of the closer relations between records and programmes which appear during the evolution of scientific management is the fact that they cause constant simplification. the more carefully records are standardized, the simpler becomes the drafting of the programme. as more and more records become standard, the drafting of programmes becomes constantly an easier and cheaper process. programmes become records.--under traditional management the record that follows a programme may appear very different from the programme. under scientific management the record that follows a programme most closely resembles the programme. improvements are not made between the programme and the following record,--they find their place between the record and the following programme. thus programmes and records may be grouped in pairs, by similarity, with a likelihood of difference between any one pair (one programme plus one record) and other pairs. result on the worker.--the greatest effect, on the worker, of these relations of record to programme under scientific management is the confidence that he gains in the judgment that is an outcome of scientific management. when the worker sees that scientific management makes possible accurate predictions of times, schedules, tasks, and performance; that the methods prescribed invariably enable him to achieve prescribed results, his confidence in scientific management grows. so also does the manager's confidence in scientific management grow,--and in this mutual confidence in the system of management is another bond of sympathy. the place left for suggestions and improvements, in the ever-present opportunities to better standards, fulfills that longing for a greater efficiency that is the cause of progress. chapter vii footnotes: ============================================= . gillette and dana, _cost keeping and management engineering_, p. . . h.l. gantt, paper no. , a.s.m.e., page . . gillette and dana, _cost keeping and management engineering_, p. vii. . h.l. gantt, paper no. , a.s.m.e., p. . . william james, _psychology, briefer course_, p. . ==================================================================== chapter viii teaching definition of teaching.--the century dictionary defines "teaching" as "the act or business of instructing," with synonyms: "training" and "education;" and "to teach" is defined:-- . "to point out, direct, show;" "to tell, inform, instruct, explain;" . "to show how (to do something); hence, to train;" . "to impart knowledge or practical skill to;" "to guide in learning, educate." "educate," we find meaning "to instruct, to teach methodically, to prescribe to; to indoctrinate;" and by "indoctrinate" is meant "to cause to hold as a doctrine or belief." "to educate," says the same authority, "is to develop mentally or morally by instruction; to qualify by instruction and training for the business and duty of life." under traditional management no definite plan of teaching.-- under traditional management there is either no definite scheme of teaching by the management itself, or practically none; at least, this is usually the condition under the most elementary types of traditional management. in the very highest examples of the traditional plan the learner may be shown how, but this showing is not usually done in a systematic way, and under so-called traditional management is seldom in the form of written instructions. no specified time for or source of the teaching.--under traditional management there is no particular time in which this teaching goes on, no particular time allowed for the worker to ask for the instruction, nor is there any particular source from which he obtains the instructions. there is, moreover, almost every hindrance against his getting any more instruction than he absolutely must have in order to get the work done. the persons to whom he can possibly appeal for further information might discharge him for not already knowing. these persons are, if he is an apprentice, an older worker; if he is a journeyman, the worker next to him, or the foreman, or someone over him. an important fact bearing on this subject is that it is not to the pecuniary advantage of any particular person to give this teaching. in the first place, if the man be a fellow-worker, he will want to do his own work without interruption, he will not want to take the time off; moreover, he regards his particular skill as more or less of a trade secret, and desires to educate no more people than necessary, to be as clever as he is. in the third place, there is no possible reward for giving this instruction. of course, the worker necessarily improves under any sort of teaching, and if he has a receptive mind, or an inventive mind, he must progress constantly, either by teaching himself or by the instruction, no matter how haphazard. great variation under traditional management.--only discussion of teaching under this type of management with many men who have learned under it, can sufficiently emphasize the variations to be found. but the consensus of opinion would seem to prove that an apprentice of only a generation ago was too often hazed, was discouraged from appealing for assistance or advice to the workers near him, or to his foreman; was unable to find valuable literature for home-study on the subject of his trade. the experience of many an apprentice was, doubtless, different from this, but surely the mental attitude of the journeymen who were the only teachers must have tended toward some such resulting attitude of doubt or hesitancy in the apprentice. mental attitude of the worker-teacher.--under the old plan of management, the apprentice must appear to the journeyman more or less of a supplanter. from the employee's standpoint it was most desirable that the number of apprentices be kept down, as an oversupply of labor almost invariably resulted in a lowering of wages. the quicker and better the apprentice was taught, the sooner he became an active competitor. there seldom existed under this type of management many staff positions to which the workers could hope to be promoted, certainly none where they could utilize to the fullest extent their teaching ability. there was thus every reason for a journeyman to regard the teaching of apprentices as unremunerative, irksome, and annoying. worker not to blame for this.--the worker is not to be blamed for this attitude. the conditions under which he worked made it almost inevitable. not only could he gain little or nothing by being a successful teacher, but also the bullying instinct was appealed to constantly, and the desire of the upper classmen in hazing days to make the next class "pay up" for the hazing that they were obliged to endure in their freshman year. attitude of the learner.--the attitude of the typical learner must frequently be one of hesitancy and self-distrust if not of fear, though conditions were so varied as almost to defy classification. one type of apprentice was expected to learn merely by observation and imitation. another was practically the chore boy of the worker who was assigned to teach him. a third was under no direct supervision at all, but was expected to "keep busy," finding his work by himself. a fourth was put through a severe and valuable training by a martinet teacher,--and so on. teaching often painstaking.--it is greatly to the credit of the worker under this type of management that he was, in spite of all drawbacks, occasionally a painstaking teacher, to the best of his lights. he insisted on application, and especially on quality of work. he unselfishly gave of his own time and skill to help the apprentice under him. methods of teaching usually wrong.--unfortunately, through no fault of the worker-teacher the teaching was usually done according to wrong methods. quality of resulting output was so emphasized that neither speed nor correct motions were given proper consideration. teacher not trained to teach.--the reason for this was that the worker had no training to be a teacher. in the first place, he had no adequate idea of his own capabilities, and of which parts of his own method were fit to be taught. in the second place, he did not know that right motions must be insisted on first, speed next, and quality of output third; or in other words that if the motions were precise enough, the quality would be first. in the fourth place he had no pedagogical training. lack of standards an underlying lack.--all shortcoming in the old time teaching may be traced to lack of standards. the worker had never been measured, hence had no idea of his efficiency, or of possible efficiency. no standard methods made plain the manner in which the work should be done. moreover, no standard division and assignment of work allowed of placing apprentices at such parts of the work that quality could be given third place. no standard requirements had determined his fitness as a teacher, nor the specialty that he should teach, and no incentive held his interest to the teaching. these standards the worker-teacher could not provide for himself, and the wonder is that the teaching was of such a high character as it was. very little teaching of adults.--under traditional management, teaching of adults was slight,--there being little incentive either to teacher or to learner, and it being always difficult for an adult to change his method.[ ] moreover, it would be difficult for a worker using one method to persuade one using another that his was the better, there being no standard. even if the user of the better did persuade the other to follow his method, the final result might be the loss of some valuable elements of the poorer method that did not appear in the better. failure to appreciate the importance of teaching.--an underestimation of the importance of teaching lay at the root of the lack of progress. this is so directly connected with all the other lacks of traditional management,--provision for adequate promotion and pay, standards, and the other underlying principles of scientific management, especially the appreciation of coöperation,--that it is almost impossible to disentangle the reasons for it. nor would it be profitable to attempt to do so here. in considering teaching under scientific management we shall show the influence of the appreciation of teaching,--and may deduce the lacks from its non-appreciation, from that discussion. under transitory system teaching becomes more important.--under transitory management the importance of teaching becomes at once more apparent. this, both by providing for the teaching of foremen and journeymen as well as apprentices, and by the providing of written systems of instructions as to best practice. the worker has access to all the sources of information of traditional management, and has, besides these, in effect, unsystematically derived standards to direct him. systems make instruction always available.--the use of written systems enables every worker to receive instruction at any time, to feel free to ask it, and to follow it without feeling in any way humiliated. the result of the teaching of these systems is a decided improvement in methods. if the written systems are used exclusively as a source of teaching, except for the indefinite teachers of the traditional management, the improvement becomes definitely proportioned to the time which the man spends upon the studying and to the amount of receptive power which he naturally has. incentives to conform to system.--the worker has incentives to follow the systems-- . in that he is required to render reasons in writing for permanent filing, for every disobedience of system. . that, as soon as work is placed on the bonus basis, the first bonus that is given is for doing work in accordance with the prescribed method. even before the bonus is paid, the worker will not vary for any slight reasons, if he positively knows at the time that he must account for so doing, and that he will be considered to have "stacked his judgment" against that of the manager. being called to account for deviations gives the man a feeling of responsibility for his act, and also makes him feel his close relationship with the managers. no set time for using systems.--there is, under this type of management, no set time for the study of the systems. systems inelastic.--being written, these systems have all the disadvantages of anything that is written. that is to say, they require considerable adaptability on the part of the man who is using them. he must consider his own mind, and the amount of time which he must put on studying; he must consider his own work, and adapting that method to his work while still obeying instructions. in the case of the system being in great detail, he can usually find a fairly detailed description of what he is going to do, and can use that. in the case of the system being not so complete, if his work varies, he must show intelligence in varying the system, and this intelligence often demands a knowledge which he has not, and knows not where to obtain. waste of time from unstandardized systems.--the time necessitated by the worker's laying out details of his method is taken from the total time of his working day, hence in so far cuts down his total product. moreover, if no record is kept of the details of his planning the next worker on the same kind of work must repeat the investigation. later transitional management emphasizes use of standards.--later transitional management eliminates this waste of time by standardizing methods composed of standardized timed units, thus both rendering standards elastic, and furnishing details. teaching most important under scientific management.--teaching is a most important element under scientific management not only because it increases industrial efficiency, but also because it fosters industrial peace.[ ] importance depends on other elements of scientific management.--as we have seen, scientific management has as a basic idea the necessity of divided responsibility, or functionalization. this, when accompanied by the interdependent bonus, creates an incentive to teach and an incentive to learn. scientific management divides the planning from the performing in order to centralize and standardize knowledge in the planning department, thus making all knowledge of each available to all. this puts at the disposal of all more than any could have alone. the importance of having this collected and standardized knowledge conveyed best to the worker cannot be overestimated. through this knowledge, the worker is able to increase his output, and thus insure the lowered costs, that provide the funds with which to pay his higher wages,--to increase his potential as well as actual efficiency, and best to coöperate with other workers and with the management. importance of teaching element best claim to permanence of scientific management.--upon the emphasis which it places on teaching rests/a large part of the claim of scientific management for permanence.[ ] we have already shown the derivation of the standards which are taught. we have shown that the relation between the planning and performing departments is based largely on means and methods for teaching. we have only to show here that the teaching is done in accordance with those laws of psychology that are the laws of pedagogy. teaching in scientific management not the result of theory only.--the methods of teaching under scientific management were not devised in response to theories of education. they are the result of actual experience in getting work done most successfully. the teachers, the methods, the devices for teaching,--all these grew up to meet needs, as did the other elements of scientific management. conformity of teaching to psychological laws proof of worth of scientific management.--the fact that teaching under scientific management does conform, as will be shown, to the laws of psychology, is an added proof of the value of scientific management. change from teaching under traditional management.--mr. gantt says, "the general policy of the past has been to drive; but the era of force must give way to that of knowledge, and the policy of the future will be to teach and to lead, to the advantage of all concerned."[ ] this "driving" element of traditional management is eliminated by scientific management. necessity for personally derived judgment eliminated.--so also is eliminated the old belief that the worker must go through all possible experiences in order to acquire "judgment" as to best methods. if the worker must pass through all the stages of the training of the old-fashioned mechanic, and this is seriously advocated by some, he may fail to reach the higher planes of knowledge afforded by training under scientific management, by reason of sheer lack of time. if, therefore, by artificial conditions caused by united agreement and collective bargaining, workmen insist upon forcing upon the new learners the old-school training, they will lose just so much of the benefits of training under those carefully arranged and carefully safe-guarded processes of industrial investigation in which modern science has been successful. to refuse to start in where others have left off, is really as wasteful as it would be to refuse to use mathematical formulas because they have been worked out by others. it might be advocated that the mind would grow by working out every possible mathematical formula before using it, but the result would be that the student would be held back from any further original investigation. duplicating primary investigations might be original work for him, but it would be worthless as far as the world is concerned. the same is absolutely true in management. if the worker is held back by acquiring every bit of knowledge for himself instead of taking the work of others as the starting point, the most valuable initiative will be lost to the world. bad habits the result of undirected learning.--even worse than the waste of time would be the danger of acquiring habits of bad methods, habits of unnecessary motions, habits of inaccurate work; habits of inattention. any or all of these might develop. these are all prevented under scientific management by the improved methods of teaching. valuable elements of traditional management conserved.--there are, however, many valuable elements of the old traditional system of teaching and of management which should be retained and not be lost in the new. for example,--the greatest single cause of making men capable under the old plan was the foreman's unconscious ability to make his men believe, before they started a task, that they could achieve it. it must not be thought that because of the aids to the teacher under scientific management the old thought of personality is lost. the old ability to convert a man to the belief that he could do a thing, to inspire him with confidence in his foreman, with confidence in himself, and a desire to do things, is by no means lost, on the contrary it is carefully preserved under scientific management. teaching of transitory management supplemented.--in the transforming of transitory into scientific management, we note that the process is one of supplementing, not of discarding. written system, which is the distinguishing characteristic of transitory management, is somewhat limited in its scope, but its usefulness is by no means impaired. scope of teaching under scientific management.--under scientific management teaching must cover . teaching of right methods of doing work, . teaching of right habits of doing the right methods. the teacher must so impart the knowledge that judgment can be acquired without the learner being obliged himself to experience all the elements of the judgment. needs for teaching under scientific management.--the needs for this teaching have been stated, but may be recapitulated here. . worker may not observe his own mistakes. . worker has no opportunity under the old industrial conditions to standardize his own methods. . worker must know standard practice. . waste can be eliminated by the teaching. . right habits can be instilled. sources of teaching under scientific management.--the sources of teaching under scientific management are . friends or relatives } . fellow workers } if the worker chooses . literature of the trade } to use them. . night schools and study } . the management. } methods of teaching under scientific management.--the methods of teaching under scientific management are . written, by means of (a) instruction cards telling _what_ is to be done and _how._ (b) systems, explaining the _why._ (c) drawings, charts, plans, photographs, illustrating methods. (d) records made by the worker himself. . oral, the teaching of the functional foremen. . object-lessons: (a) exhibits. (b) working models. (c) demonstrations by the teacher. (d) demonstrations by the worker under supervision. worker a source of these methods.--it should be often stated that, ultimately, the elements of all methods are derived from a study of workers, and that the worker should be enabled to realize this. only when he feels that he is a part of what is taught, and that the teachers are a _means_ of presenting to him the underlying principles of his own experience, will the worker be able to coöperate with all his energy. instruction cards are directions.--instruction cards are direct instructions for each piece of work, giving, in most concise form, closely defined description of standard practice and directions as to how each element of the standardized task is to be performed. the makers know that they must make their directions clear ultimately, therefore they strive constantly for clearness. instruction cards teach directly and indirectly.--these instruction cards not only teach the worker directly best to do his work, but also teach him indirectly how to become a leader, demonstrator, teacher and functional foreman. study of them may lead to an interest in, and a study of, elements, and to preparation for becoming one of the planning department. the excellent method of attack of the instruction card cannot fail to have some good effect, even upon such workers as do not consciously note it.[ ] systems are reasons and explanations.--"systems" or standing orders are collections of detailed reasons for, and explanations of, the decisions embodied in the directions of the instruction cards. there is a system showing the standard practice of each kind of work. they enlist the judgment of the worker.--under really successful management, it is realized that the worker is of an inquiring mind, and that, unless this inquiring tendency of his is recognized, and his curiosity is satisfied, he can never do his best work. unless the man knows why he is doing the thing, his judgment will never reënforce his work. he may conform to the method absolutely, but his work will not enlist his zeal unless he knows just exactly why he is made to work in the particular manner prescribed. this giving of the "why" to the worker through the system, and thus allowing his reason to follow through all the details, and his judgment to conform absolutely, should silence the objections of those who claim that the worker becomes a machine, and that he has no incentive to think at his work. on the contrary, it will be seen that this method furnishes him with more viewpoints from which he can consider his work. drawings, charts, plans and photographs means of making directions clearer.--the instruction cards are supplemented with drawings, charts, plans and stereoscopic and timed motion photographs,--any or all,--in order to make the directions of the instruction cards plainer. stereoscopic and micro-motion study photographs particularly useful.--stereoscopic photographs are especially useful in helping non-visualizers, and in presenting absolutely new work. the value as an educator of stereoscopic and synthesized micro-motion photographs of right methods is as yet but faintly appreciated. the "timed motion picture," or "micro-motion study photograph" as it is called, consists of rapidly photographing workers in action accompanied by a specially constructed chronometer that shows such minute divisions of time that motion pictures taken at a speed that will catch the most rapid of human motions without a blur, will show a different time of day in each photograph. the difference in the time in any two pictures gives the elapsed time of the desired motion operation or time unit. self-made records educative.--the educative value of the worker's making his own records has never been sufficiently appreciated. dr. taylor insists upon this procedure wherever possible.[ ] not only does the worker learn from the actual marking in of the spaces reserved for him, but also he learns to feel himself a part of the record making division of the management. this proof of the "square deal," in recording his output, and of the confidence in him, cannot fail to enlist his coöperation. oral instruction comes from the functional foremen.--the functional foremen are teachers whose business it is to explain, translate and supplement the various written instructions when the worker either does not understand them, does not know how to follow them, or makes a mistake in following them. oral instruction has its fitting place under scientific management.--oral instruction under scientific management has at least four advantages over such instruction under traditional management. . the instructor is capable of giving instruction. . the instructor's specialty is giving instruction. . the instruction is a supplement to written instructions. . the instruction comes at the exact time that the learner needs it. teacher, or functional foreman, should understand psychology and pedagogy.--the successful teacher must understand the minds of his men, and must be able to present his information in such a way that it will be grasped readily. such knowledge of psychology and pedagogy as he possesses he may acquire almost unconsciously . from the teaching of others, . from his study of instruction cards and systems, . from actual practice in teaching. the advantages of a study of psychology itself, as it applies to the field of teaching in general, and of teaching in the industries in particular, are apparent. such study must, in the future, become more and more prevalent. advantage of functional foreman-teacher over teacher in the schools.--the functional foreman-teacher has an advantage over the teacher in the school in that the gap between him and those he teaches is not so great. he knows, because he remembers, exactly how the worker must have his information presented to him. this gap is narrowed by functionalizing the oral teaching, by using it merely as a supplement to the written teaching, and by supplementing it with object-lessons. teacher must have practical knowledge of the trade he is to teach.--the teacher must have an intimate practical knowledge of the art or trade that he is to teach. the most profound knowledge of psychology will never be a substitute for the mastery of the trade, as a condition precedent to turning out the best craftsmen. this is provided for by securing teachers from the ranks of the workers.[ ] he must have a thorough knowledge of the standards.--he must have more than the traditional knowledge of the trade that he is to teach; he must have also the knowledge that comes only from scientific investigation of his trade. this knowledge is ready and at hand, in the standards of scientific management that are available to all for study. he must be convinced of the value of the methods he teaches.--the teacher must also have an intimate acquaintance with the records of output of the method he is to teach as compared with those of methods held in high esteem by the believer in the old methods; for it is a law that no teacher can be efficient in teaching any method in which he does not believe, any more than a salesman can do his best work when he does not implicitly believe in the goods that he is selling. he must be an enthusiast.--the best teacher is the one who is an enthusiast on the subject of the work itself, who can cause contagion or imitation of his state of mind, by love of the problems themselves. such enthusiasm contagious.--it is the contagion of this enthusiasm that will always create a demand for teachers, no matter how perfect instruction cards may become. there is no form or device of management that does away with good men, and in the teacher, as here described, is conserved the personal element of the successful, popular traditional foreman. valuable teacher interests men in the economic value of scientific management.--the most valuable teacher is one who can arouse his pupils to such a state of interest in the economic values of the methods of scientific management, that all other objects that would ordinarily distract or hold their attention will be banished from their minds. they will then remember each step as it is introduced, and they will be consumed with interest and curiosity to know what further steps can be introduced, that will still further eliminate waste. object-lesson may be "working models."--the object-lesson may be a "fixed exhibit" or a "working model," "a process in different stages," or "a micro-motion study film" of the work that is to be done. successful and economical teaching may be done with such models, which are especially valuable where the workers do not speak the same language as the teacher, where many workers are to perform exactly similar work, or where the memory, the visualizing and the constructive imagination, are so poor that the models must be referred to constantly. models naturally appeal best to those who take in information easiest through the eyes. object-lessons may be demonstrations by the teacher.--the teacher may demonstrate the method manually to the worker, or by means of films showing synthesized right methods on the motion-picture screen. this, also, is a successful method of teaching those who speak a different language, or of explaining new work,--though it calls for a better memory than does the "working model," the model, however, shows desired results; the demonstration, desired methods. demonstration method chief method of teaching by foremen.--the manual demonstration method is the chief method of teaching the workmen by the foremen under scientific management, and no method is rated as standard that cannot be successfully demonstrated by the teacher, at any time, on request. worker may demonstrate under supervision.--if the worker is of that type that can learn only by actually doing the work himself, he is allowed to demonstrate the method under supervision of the teacher.[ ] teaching always available under scientific management.--under scientific management all of these forms of teaching are available constantly. the instruction card and accompanying illustrations are given to the worker before he starts to work, and are so placed that he can consult them easily at any time during the work. as, also, if object-lessons are used, they are given before work commences, and repeated when necessary. the teacher is constantly available for oral instruction, and the systems are constantly available for consultation. methods of teaching under scientific management psychologically right.--in order to prove that teaching under scientific management is most valuable, it is necessary to show that it is psychologically right, that it leads to mental development and improvement. under scientific management, teaching,-- . uses and trains the senses. . induces good habits of thinking and acting. . stimulates attention, . provides for valuable associations. . assists and strengthens the memory. . develops the imagination. . develops judgment. . utilizes suggestion. . utilizes "native reactions." . develops the will. teaching under scientific management trains the senses.-- scientific management, in teaching the man, aims to train all of his senses possible. not only does each man show an aptitude for some special sense training,[ ] but at certain times one sense may be stronger than another; for example, the sense of hearing, as is illustrated by the saying, "the patient in the hospital knoweth when his doctor cometh by the fall of his footsteps, yet when he recovereth he knoweth not even his face." at the time that a certain thing becomes of interest, and becomes particularly interesting to one sense, that sense is particularly keen and developed. scientific management cannot expect, without more detailed psychological data than is as yet available, to utilize these periods of sense predominance adequately. it can, and does, aim to utilize such senses as are trained, and to supply defects of training of the other senses. such training partially determines the quality of the work.--the importance of sense training can scarcely be overestimated. through his senses, the worker takes in the directions as to what he is to do, and on the accuracy with which his senses record the impressions made upon them, depends the mental model which he ultimately follows, and the accuracy of his criticism of the resulting physical object of his work. through the senses, the worker sets his own task, and inspects his work. sense training influences increase of efficiency.--with the training of the senses the possibility of increased efficiency increases. as any sense becomes trained, the minimum visable is reduced, and more accurate impressions become possible.[ ] they lead to more rapid work, by eliminating time necessary for judgment. the bricklayer develops a fineness of touch that allows him to dispense with sight in some parts of his work. selective power of senses developed.--james defines the sense organs as "organs of selection."[ ] scientific management so trains them that they can select what is of most value to the worker. methods of sense training under scientific management.--the senses are trained under scientific management by means of the various sources of teaching. the instruction card, with its detailed descriptions of operations, and its accompanying illustrations, not only tends to increase powers of visualization, but also, by the close observation it demands, it reduces the minimum visible. the "visible instruction card," or working model, is an example of supplementing weak power of visualization. the most available simple, inexpensive and easily handled device to assist visualizing is the stereo or three-dimension photograph, which not only serves its purpose at the time of its use, but trains the eye to see the third dimension always. much training is given to the eye in scientific management by the constant insistence on inspection. this inspection is not confined to the inspector, but is the constant practice of worker and foremen, in order that work may be of such a quality as will merit a bonus. senses that are most utilized best trained.--the relative training given to the various senses depends on the nature of the work. when the ear is the tester of efficiency, as it often is with an engineer watching machinery in action, emphasis is laid on training the hearing. in work where touch is important, emphasis is on such training as will develop that sense.[ ] variations in sense power should be utilized.--investigations are constantly going to prove that each sense has a predominance at a different time in the age of the child or man. dottoressa montessori's experience with teaching very young children by touch shows that that sense is able to discriminate to an extraordinary extent for the first six years of life.[ ] so, also, acute keenness of any sense, by reason of age or experience should be conserved.[ ] such acuteness is often the result of some need, and, unless consciously preserved, will vanish with the need. progress in such training.--the elementary sense experiences are defined and described by calkins.[ ] only through a psychological study can one realize the numerous elements and the possibility of study. as yet, doubtless, scientific management misses many opportunities for training and utilizing the senses. but the standardizing of elements, and the realization of the importance of more and more intensive study of the elements lends assurance that ultimately all possibilities will be utilized. as many senses as possible appealed to.--scientific management has made great progress in appealing to as many senses as possible in its teaching. the importance of the relation between the senses is brought out by prof. stratton.[ ] in teaching, scientific management has, in its teachers, animate and inanimate, great possibilities of appealing to many senses simultaneously. the instruction card may be . read to oneself silently--eyes appealed to . read to oneself aloud--eyes and ears appealed to, also muscles used trained to repeat . read aloud to one--ears . read aloud to one and also read silently by one,-- eyes and ears . read aloud, and at the same time copied--eyes, ears, muscles of mouth, muscles of hand . read to one, while process described is demonstrated . read to one while process is performed by oneself there are only a few of the possible combinations, any of which are used, as best suits the worker and the work.[ ] untrained worker requires appeal to most senses.--the value of appeal to many senses is best realized in teaching an inexperienced worker. his senses help to remind him what to do, and to "check up" his results. at times appeal to but one sense preferable.--in the case of work that must be watched constantly, and that involves continuous processes, it may prove best to have directions read to the worker. so also, the gang instruction card may often be read to advantage to the gang, thus allowing the next member of a group of members to rest, or to observe, while directions are taken in through the ears only. in this way time is allowed to overcome fatigue, yet the work is not halted. at times one sense is best not utilized.--at times teaching may well omit one sense in its appeal, because that sense will tend to confuse the learning, and will, when the method is learned, be otherwise utilized than it could be during the learning process. in teaching the "touch system" of typewriting,[ ] the position of the keys is quickly remembered by having the key named aloud and at the same time struck with the assigned finger, the eyes being blindfolded. thus hearing is utilized, also mouth muscles and finger muscles, but _not_ sight. importance of fatigue recognized.--a large part of the success of sense appeal and sense training of scientific management is in the appreciation of the importance of fatigue. this was early recognized by dr. taylor, and is constantly receiving study from all those interested in scientific management. psychology already aiding the industries in such study.--study of the _psychological review_ will demonstrate the deep and increasing interest of psychologists in the subject of fatigue. the importance of such stimulating and helpful work as that done by doctor a. imbert of the university of montpellier, france, is great.[ ] not only are the results of his investigations commercially valuable, but also they are valuable as indicating the close connection between psychology and industrial efficiency. importance of habits.[ ]--prof. william james says "an acquired habit, from the psychological point of view, is nothing but a new pathway of discharge formed in the brain, by which certain incoming currents ever after tend to escape." and again,--"first, habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue,"[ ] and habit diminishes the conscious attention with which our acts are performed. again he says, page , "the great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of an enemy; as it is to fund and capitalize our acquisitions, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund. for this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague." these quotations demonstrate the importance of habit. how deep these paths of discharge are, is illustrated by the fact that often a german, having spent the early years of his school life in germany, will, even after learning to speak, read, write and think in english, find it difficult to figure in anything but german. habit easily becomes the master.--another illustration of the power of habit is exhibited by the bricklayer, who has been trained under old-time methods, and who attempts to follow the packet method. the standard motions for picking up the upper row of bricks from the packet are entirely different from those for picking up the lower row. the bricklayers were taught this, yet invariably used the old-time motions for picking up the bricks, in spite of the waste involved.[ ] wrong preconceived ideas hamper development.--wrong habits or ideas often retard development. for example, it took centuries for artists to see the colors of shadows correctly, because they were sure that such shadows were a darker tone of the color itself.[ ] teaching under scientific management results in good habits.--the aim of teaching under scientific management, as has been said, is to create good habits of thinking and good habits of doing. standards lead to right methods of thinking and acting.--the standards of scientific management, as presented to the worker in the instruction card, lead to good habits, in that they present the best known method of doing the work. they thus aid the beginner, in that he need waste no time searching for right methods, but can acquire right habits at once. they aid the worker trained under an older, supplanted method, in that they wage a winning war against old-time, worn-out methods and traditions. old motor images, which tend to cause motions, are overcome by standard images, which suggest, and pass into, standard motions. the spontaneous recurring of images under the old method is the familiar cause of inattention and being unable to get down to business, and the real cause of the expression, "you can't teach old dogs new tricks." on the other hand, the spontaneous recurrence of the images of the standard method is the cause of greater speed of movement of the experienced man, and these images of the standard methods do recur often enough to drive down the old images and to enable all men who desire, to settle down and concentrate upon what they are doing. through standards bad habits are quickest broken.--through the standards the bad habit is broken by the abrupt acquisition of a new habit. this is at once practiced, is practiced without exception, and is continually practiced until the new habit is in control.[ ] through standards new habits are quickest formed.--these same standards, as presented in teaching, allow of the speediest forming of habits, in that repetition is exact and frequent, and is kept so by the fact that the worker's judgment seconds that of the teacher. habits are instilled by teaching.--the chief function of the teacher during the stage that habits are being formed is the instilling of good habits. methods of instilling good habits.--this he does by insisting on . right motions first, that is to say,--the right number of right motions in the right sequence. . speed of motions second, that is to say, constantly increasing speed. . constantly improving quality.[ ] this method is contrary to most old-time practice.--under most old-time practice the quality of the work was the first consideration, the quantity of work the second, and the methods of achieving the results the third. results of old-time practice.--as a result, the mechanical reactions, which were expected constantly to follow the improved habits of work, were constantly hindered by an involuntary impulse of the muscles to follow the old methods. waste time and low output followed. some early recognition of "right motions first."--the necessity of teaching the right motions first was early recognized by a few progressive spirits, as is shown in military tactics; for example, see pages and , "cavalry tactics of u.s.a." , d. appleton, also page . note also motions for grooming the horse, page . these directions not only teach the man how, but accustoms the horse to the sequence and location of motions that he may expect. benefits of teaching right motions first.--through teaching right motions first reactions to stimuli gain in speed. the right habit is formed at the outset. with the constant insistence on these right habits that result from right motions, will come, naturally, an increase in speed, which should be fostered until the desired ultimate speed is reached. ultimately, standard quality will result.--the result of absolute insistence on right motions will be prescribed quality, because the standard motions prescribed were chosen because they best produced the desired result. under scientific management no loss from quality during learning.--as will be shown later, scientific management provides that there shall be little or no loss from the quality of the work during the learning period. the delay in time before the learner can be said to produce such work as could a learner taught where quality was insisted upon first of all, is more than compensated for by the ultimate combination of speed and quality gained. results of teaching the right motions first are far-reaching.--there is no more important subject in this book on the psychology of management than this of teaching right motions first. the most important results of scientific management can all, in the last analysis, be formulated in terms of habits, even to the underlying spirit of coöperation which, as we shall show in "welfare," is one of the most important ideas of scientific management. these right habits of scientific management are the cause, as well as the result, of progress, and the right habits, which have such a tremendous psychological importance, are the result of insisting that right motions be used from the very beginning of the first day. from right habits of motion comes speed of motions.-- concentrating the mind on the next motion causes speed of motion. under scientific management, the underlying thought of sequence of motions is so presented that the worker can remember them, and make them in the shortest time possible. response to standards becomes almost automatic.--the standard methods, being associated from the start with right habits of motions only, cause an almost automatic response. there are no discarded habits to delay response. steady nerves result.--oftentimes the power to refrain from action is quite as much a sign of education and training as the power to react quickly from a sensation. such conduct is called, in some cases, "steady nerves." the forming of right habits is a great aid toward these steady nerves. the man who knows that he is taught the right way, is able almost automatically to resist any suggestions which come to him to carry out wrong ways. so the man who is absolutely sure of his method, for example, in laying brick, will not be tempted to make those extra motions which, after all, are merely an exhibition in his hand of the vacillation that is going on in his brain, as to whether he really is handling that brick in exactly the most efficient manner, or not. reason and will are educated.--"the education of hand and muscle implies a corresponding training of reasoning and will; and the coördination of movements accompanies the coördination of thoughts."[ ] the standards of scientific management educate hand and muscle; the education of hand and muscle train the mind; the mind improves the standards. thus we have a continuous cycle. judgment results with no waste of time.--judgment is the outcome of learning the right way, and knowing that it is the right way. there is none of the lost time of "trying out" various methods that exists under traditional management. this power of judgment will not only enable the possessor to decide correctly as to the relative merits of different methods, but also somewhat as to the past history and possibilities of different workers. this, again, illustrates the wisdom of scientific management in promoting from the ranks, and thus providing that every member of the organization shall, ultimately, know from experience how to estimate and judge the work of others. habits of attention formed by scientific management.--the good habits which result from teaching standard methods result in habits of attention. the standards aid the mind in holding a "selective attitude,"[ ] by presenting events in an orderly sequence. the conditions under which the work is done, and the incentives for doing it, provide that the attention shall be "lively and prolonged." prescribed motions afford rhythm and Ã�sthetic pleasure.--the prescribed motions that result from motion study and time study, and that are arranged in cycles, afford a rhythm that allows the attention to "glide over some beats and linger on others," as prof. stratton describes it, in a different connection.[ ] so also the "perfectly controlled" movements, which fall under the direction of a guiding law, and which "obey the will absolutely,"[ ] give an æsthetic pleasure and afford less of a tax upon the attention. instruction card creates and holds attention.--as has been already said in describing the instruction card under standardization, it was designed as a result of investigations as to what would best secure output,--to attract and hold the attention.[ ] providing, as it does, all directions that an experienced worker is likely to need, he can confine his attention solely to his work and his card; usually, after the card is once studied, to his work alone. the close relation of the elements of the instruction card affords a field for attention to lapse, and be recalled in the new elements that are constantly made apparent. oral individual teaching fosters concentrated attention.--the fact that under scientific management oral teaching is individual, not only directly concentrates the attention of the learner upon what he is being taught, but also indirectly prevents distraction from fear of ridicule of others over the question, or embarrassment in talking before a crowd. the bulletin board furnishes the element of change.--in order that interest or attention may be held, there must be provision for allied subjects on which the mind is to wander. this, under scientific management, is constantly furnished by the collection of jobs ahead on the bulletin board. the tasks piled up ahead upon this bulletin board provide a needed and ready change for the subject of attention or interest, which conserves the economic value of concentrated attention of the worker upon his work. such future tasks furnish sufficient range of subject for wandering attention to rest the mind from the wearying effect of overconcentration or forced attention. the assigned task of the future systematizes the "stream of attention," and an orderly scheme of habits of thought is installed. when the scheme is an orderly shifting of attention, the mind is doing its best work, for, while the standardized extreme subdivision of taylor's plan, the comparison of the ultimate unit, and groupings of units of future tasks are often helps in achieving the present tasks, without such a definite orderly scheme for shifting the attention and interest, the attention will shift to useless subjects, and the result will be scattered. incentives maintain interest.--the knowledge that a prompt reward will follow success stimulates interest. the knowledge that this reward is sure concentrates attention and thus maintains interest. in the same way, the assurance of promotion, and the fact that the worker sees those of his own trade promoted, and knows it is to the advantage of the management, as well as to his advantage, that he also be promoted,--this also maintains interest in the work. this interest extends to the work of others.--the interest is extended to the work of others, not only by the interrelated bonuses, but also by the fact that every man is expected to train up a man to take his place, before he is promoted. close relationship of all parts of scientific management holds interest.--the attention of the entire organization, as well as of the individual worker, is held by scientific management and its teaching, because all parts of scientific management are related, and because scientific management provides for scientifically directed progression. every member of the organization knows that the standards which are taught by scientific management contain the permanent elements of past successes, and provide for such development as will assure progress and success in the future. every member of the organization realizes that upon his individual coöperation depends, in part, the stability of scientific management, because it is based on universal coöperation. this provides an intensity and a continuity of interest that would still hold, even though some particular element might lose its interest. this relationship also provides for associations.--the close relationship of all parts of scientific management provides that all ideas are associated, and are so closely connected that they can act as a single group, or any selected number of elements can act as a group. scientific management establishes brain groups that habitually act in unison.--professor read, in describing the general mental principle of association says, "when any number of brain cells have been in action together, they form a habit of acting in unison, so that when one of them is stimulated in a certain way, the others will also behave in the way established by the habit."[ ] this working of the brain is recognized in grouping of motions, such as "playing for position."[ ] scientific management provides the groups, the habit, and the stimulus, all according to standard methods, so that the result is largely predictable. method of establishing such groups in the worker's brain.--the standard elements of scientific management afford units for such groups. eventually, with the use of such elements in instruction cards, would be formed, in the minds of the worker, such groups of units as would aid in foreseeing results, just as the foreseeing of groups of moves aids the expert chess or checker player. the size and number of such groups would indicate the skill of the worker. that such skill may be gained quickest, scientific management synthesizes the units into definite groups, and teaches these to the workers as groups. teaching done by means of motion cycles.--the best group is that which completes the simplest cycle of performance. this enables the worker to associate certain definite motions, to make these into a habit, and to concentrate his attention upon the cycle as a whole, and not upon the elementary motions of which it is composed. for example--the cycle of the pick and dip process of bricklaying is to pick up a brick and a trowel full of mortar simultaneously and deposit them on the wall simultaneously.[ ] the string mortar method has two cycles, which are, first to pick a certain number of trowelfuls of mortar and deposit them on the wall, and then to pick up a corresponding number of bricks and deposit them on the wall.[ ] each cycle of these two methods consists of an association of units that can be remembered as a group. such cycles induce speed.--the worker who has been taught thus to associate the units of attention and action into definite rhythmic cycles, is the one who is most efficient, and least fatigued by a given output. the nerves acquire the habit, as does the brain, and the resulting swift response to stimulus characterizes the efficiency of the specialist.[ ] scientific management restricts associations.--by its teaching of standard methods, scientific management restricts association, and thus gains in the speed with which associated ideas arise.[ ] insistence on causal sequence is a great aid. this is rendered by the systems, which give the reasons, and make the standard method easy to remember. scientific management presents scientifically derived knowledge to the memory.--industrial memory is founded on experience, and that experience that is submitted by teaching under scientific management to the mind is in the form of scientifically derived standards. these furnish (a) data that is correct. (b) images that are an aid in acquiring new habits of forming efficient images. (c) standards of comparison, and constant demands for comparison. (d) such arrangement of elements that reasoning processes are stimulated. (e) conscious, efficient grouping. (f) logical association of ideas. provision for repetition of important ideas.--professor ebbinghaur says, "associations that have equal reproductive power lapse the more slowly, the older they are, and the oftener they have been reviewed by renewed memorizing." scientific management provides for utilizing this law by teaching right motions first, and by so minutely dividing the elements of such motions that the smallest units discovered are found frequently, in similar and different operations. best periods for memorizing utilized.--as for education of the memory, there is a wide difference of opinion among leading psychologists in regard to whether or not the memorizing faculty, as the whole, can be improved by training; but all agree that those things which are specially desired to be memorized can be learned more easily, and more quickly, under some conditions than under others: for example, there is a certain time of day, for each person, when the memory is more efficient than at other times. this is usually in the morning, but is not always so. the period when memorizing is easiest is taken advantage of, and, as far as possible, new methods and new instruction cards are passed out at that time when the worker is naturally best fitted to remember what is to be done. individual differences respected.--it is a question that varies with different conditions, whether the several instruction cards beyond the one he is working on shall be given to the worker ahead of time, that he may use his own judgment as to when is the best time to learn, or whether he shall have but one at a time, and concentrate on that. for certain dispositions, it is a great help to see a long line of work ahead. they enjoy getting the work done, and feeling that they are more or less ahead of record. others become confused if they see too much ahead, and would rather attack but one problem at a time. this fundamental difference in types of mind should be taken advantage of when laying out material to be memorized. aid of mnemonic symbols to the memory.--the mnemonic classifications furnish a place where the worker who remembers but little of a method or process can go, and recover the full knowledge of that which he has forgotten. better still, they furnish him the equivalent of memory of other experiences that he has never had, and that are in such form that he can connect this with his memory of his own personal experience. the ease with which a learner or skilled mechanic can associate new, scientifically derived data with his memory, because of the classifications of scientific management, is a most important cause of workers being taught quicker, and being more intelligent, under scientific management, than under any other type of management. proper learning insures proper remembering.--professor read says, "take care of the learning and the remembering will take care of itself."[ ] scientific management both provides proper knowledge, and provides that this shall be utilized in such a manner that proper remembering will ensue. better habits of remembering result.--the results of cultivating the memory under scientific management are cumulative. ultimately, right habits of remembering result that aid the worker automatically so to arrange his memory material as to utilize it better.[ ] "imagination" has two definitions.--professor read gives definitions for two distinct means of imagination. . "the general function of the having of images." . "the particular one of having images which are not consciously memories or the reproduction of the facts of experience as they were originally presented to consciousness."[ ] scientific management provides material for images.--as was shown under the discussion of the appeals of the various teaching devices of scientific management,--provision is made for the four classes of imagination of calkins[ ]-- . visual, . auditory, . tactual, and . mixed. it also realizes the importance of productive imagination.--scientific management realizes that one of the special functions of teaching the trades is systematic exercising and guiding of imaginations of apprentices and learners. as professor ennis says,--"any kind of planning ahead will result in some good," but to plan ahead most effectively it is necessary to have a well-developed power of constructive imagination. this consists of being able to construct new mental images from old memory images; of being able to modify and group images of past experiences, or thoughts, in combination with new images based on imagination, and not on experience. the excellence of the image arrived at in the complete work is dependent wholly upon the training in image forming in the past. if there has not been a complete economic system of forming standard habits of thought, the worker may have difficulty in controlling the trend of associations of thought images, and difficulty in adding entirely new images to the groups of experienced images, and the problem to be thought out will suffer from wandering of the mind. the result will be more like a dream than a well balanced mental planning. it is well known that those apprentices, and journeymen as well, are the quickest to learn, and are better learners, who have the most vivid imagination. the best method of teaching the trade, therefore, is the one that also develops the power of imagination. scientific management assists productive imagination.-- scientific management assists productive, or constructive, imagination, not only by providing standard units, or images, from which the results may, be synthesized, but also, through the unity of the instruction card, allows of imagination of the outcome, from the start. for example,--in performing a prescribed cycle of motions, the worker has his memory images grouped in such a figure, form, or sequence,--often geometrical,--that each motion is a part of a growing, clearly imagined whole. the elements of the cycle may be utilized in other entirely new cycles, and are, as provided for in the opportunities for invention that are a part of scientific management. judgment the result of faithful endeavor.--judgment, or the "mental process which ends in an affirmation or negation of something,"[ ] comes as the result of experience, as is admirably expressed by prof. james,--"let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education whatever the line of it may be. if he keeps faithfully busy each hour of the working day, he may safely leave the final result to itself. he can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning, to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he may have singled out. silently, between all the details of his business, the _power of judging_ in all that class of matter will have built itself up within him as a possession that will never pass away. young people should know this truth in advance.[ ] the ignorance of it has probably engendered more discouragement and faint-heartedness in youths embarking on arduous careers than all other causes put together."[ ] teaching supplies this judgment under scientific management.--under scientific management this judgment is the result of teaching of standards that are recognized as such by the learner. thus, much time is eliminated, and the apprentice under scientific management can work with all the assurance as to the value of his methods that characterized the seasoned veterans of older types of management. teaching also utilizes the judgment.--the judgment that is supplied by scientific management is also used as a spring toward action.[ ] scientific management appeals to the reason, and workers perform work as they do because, through the systems and otherwise, they are persuaded that the method they employ is the best. the power of suggestion is also utilized.[ ]--the dynamic power of ideas is recognized by scientific management, in that the instruction card is put in the form of direct commands, which, naturally, lead to immediate action. so, also, the teaching written, oral and object, as such, can be directly imitated by the learner.[ ] imitation, which dr. stratton says "may well be counted a special form of suggestion," will be discussed later in this chapter at length.[ ] worker always has opportunity to criticise the suggestion.--the worker is expected to follow the suggestion of scientific management without delay, because he believes in the standardization on which it is made, and in the management that makes it. but the systems afford him an opportunity of reviewing the reasonableness of the suggestion at any time, and his constructive criticism is invited and rewarded. suggestion must be followed at the time.--the suggestion must be followed at the time it is given, or its value as a suggestion is impaired. this is provided for by the underlying idea of coöperation on which scientific management rests, which molds the mental attitude of the worker into that form where suggestions are quickest grasped and followed.[ ] "native reactions" enumerated by prof. james.--prof. james enumerates the "native reactions" as ( ) fear, ( ) love, ( ) curiosity, ( ) imitation, ( ) emulation, ( ) ambition, ( ) pugnacity, ( ) pride, ( ) ownership, ( ) constructiveness.[ ] these are all considered by scientific management. such as might have a harmful effect are supplanted, others are utilized. fear utilized by ancient managers.--the native reaction most utilized by the first managers of armies and ancient works of construction was that of fear. this is shown by the ancient rock carvings, which portray what happened to those who disobeyed.[ ] fear still used by traditional management.--fear of personal bodily injury is not usual under modern traditional management, but fear of less progress, less promotion, less remuneration, or of discharge, or of other penalties for inferior effort or efficiency is still prevalent. fear transformed under scientific management.--under scientific management the worker may still fear that he will incur a penalty, or fail to deserve a reward, but the honest, industrious worker experiences no such horror as the old-time fear included. this is removed by his knowledge . that his task is achievable. . that his work will not injure his health. . that he may be sure of advancement with age and experience. . that he is sure of the "square deal." thus such fear as he has, has a good and not an evil effect upon him. it is an incentive to coöperate willingly. its immediate and ultimate effects are advantageous. love, or loyalty, fostered by scientific management.--the worker's knowledge that the management plans to maintain such conditions as will enable him to have the four assurances enumerated above leads to love, or loyalty, between workers and employers.[ ] far from scientific management abolishing the old personal and sympathetic relations between employers and workers, it gives opportunities for such relations as have not existed since the days of the guilds, and the old apprenticeship.[ ] the coöperation upon which scientific management rests does away with the traditional "warfare" between employer and workers that made permanent friendliness almost impossible. coöperation induces friendliness and loyalty of each member in the organization to all the others. mr. wilfred lewis says, in describing the installation of scientific management in his plant, "we had, in effect, been installing at great expense a new and wonderful means for increasing the efficiency of labor, in the benefits of which the workman himself shared, and we have today an organization second, i believe, to none in its loyalty, efficiency and steadfastness of purpose."[ ] this same loyalty of the workers is plain in an article in _industrial engineering_, on "scientific management as viewed from the workman's standpoint," where various men in a shop having scientific management were interviewed.[ ] after quoting various workers' opinions of scientific management and their own particular shop, the writer says: "conversations with other men brought out practically the same facts. they are all contented. they took pride in their work, and seemed to be especially proud of the fact that they were employed in the link-belt shops."[ ] teaching under scientific management develops such loyalty.--the manner of teaching under scientific management fosters such loyalty. only through friendly aid can both teacher and taught prosper. also, the perfection of the actual workings of this plan of management inspires regard as well as respect for the employer. value of personality not eliminated.--it is a great mistake to think that scientific management underestimates the value of personality.[ ] rather, scientific management enhances the value of an admirable personality. this is well exemplified in the link-belt co.,[ ] and in the tabor manufacturing co. of philadelphia, as well as on other work where scientific management has been installed a period of several years. curiosity aroused by scientific management.--scientific management arouses the curiosity of the worker, by showing, through its teaching, glimpses of the possibilities that exist for further scientific investigation. the insistence on standard methods of less waste arouses a curiosity as to whether still less wasteful methods cannot be found. curiosity utilized by scientific management.--this curiosity is very useful as a trait of the learner, the planner and the investigator. it can be well utilized by the teacher who recognizes it in the learner, by an adaptation of methods of interpreting the instruction card, that will allow of partially satisfying, and at the same time further exciting, the curiosity. in selecting men for higher positions, and for special work, curiosity as to the work, with the interest that is its result, may serve as an admirable indication of one sort of fitness. this curiosity, or general interest, is usually associated with a personal interest that makes it more intense, and more easy to utilize. scientific management places a high value on imitation.--it was a popular custom of the past to look down with scorn on the individual or organization that imitated others. scientific management believes that to imitate with great precision the best, is a work of high intelligence and industrial efficiency. scientific management uses both spontaneous and deliberate imitation.--teaching under scientific management induces both spontaneous and deliberate imitation. the standardization prevalent, and the conformity to standards exacted, provide that this imitation shall follow directed lines. spontaneous imitation under scientific management has valuable results.--under scientific management, the worker will spontaneously imitate the teacher, when the latter has been demonstrating. this leads to desired results. so, also, the worker imitates, more or less spontaneously, his own past methods of doing work. the right habits early formed by scientific management insure that the results of such imitation shall be profitable. deliberate imitation constantly encouraged.--deliberate imitation is caused more than anything else by the fact that the man knows, if he does the thing in the way directed, his pay will be increased. such imitation is also encouraged by the fact that the worker is made to believe that he is capable, and has the will to overcome obstacles. he knows that the management believes he can do the work, or the instruction card would not have been issued to him. moreover, he sees that the teacher and demonstrator is a man promoted from his rank, and he is convinced, therefore, that what the teacher can do he also can do.[ ] scientific management provides standards for imitation.--it is of immense value in obtaining valuable results from imitation, that scientific management provides standards. under traditional management, it was almost impossible for a worker to decide which man he should imitate. even though he might come to determine, by constant observation, after a time, which man he desired to imitate, he would not know in how far he would do well to copy any particular method. recording individually measured output under transitory management allows of determining the man of high score, and either using him as a model, or formulating his method into rules. under scientific management, the instruction card furnishes a method which the worker knows that he can imitate exactly, with predetermined results. imitation is expected of all.--as standardization applies to the work of all, so imitation of standards is expected of all. this fact the teacher under scientific management can use to advantage, as an added incentive to imitation. any dislike of imitation is further decreased, by making clear to every worker that those who are under him are expected to imitate him,--and that he must, himself, imitate his teachers, in order to set a worthy example. imitation leads to emulation.--imitation, as provided for by teaching under scientific management, and admiration for the skillful teacher, or the standard imitated, naturally stimulate emulation. this emulation takes three forms: . competition with the records of others. . competition with one's own record. . competition with the standard record. no hard feeling aroused.--in the first sort of competition only is there a possibility of hard feeling being aroused, but danger of this is practically eliminated by the fact that rewards are provided for all who are successful. in the second sort of competition, the worker, by matching himself against what he has done, measures his own increased efficiency. in the third sort of competition, there is the added stimulus of surprising the management by exceeding the task expected. the incentive in all three cases is not only more pay and a chance for promotion, but also the opportunity to win appreciation and publicity for successful performance. ambition is aroused.--the outcome of emulation is ambition. this ambition is stimulated by the fact that promotion is so rapid, and so outlined before the worker, that he sees the chance for advancement himself, and not only advancement that means more pay, but advancement also that means a chance to specialize on that work which he particularly likes. pugnacity utilized.--pugnacity can never be entirely absent where there is emulation. under scientific management it is used to overcome not persons, but things. pugnacity is a great driving force. it is a wonderful thing that under scientific management this force is aroused not against one's fellow-workers, but against one's work. the desire to win out, to fight it out, is aroused against a large task, which the man desires to put behind him. moreover, there is nothing under scientific management which forbids an athletic contest. while the workers would not, under the ultimate form, be allowed to injure themselves by overspeeding, a friendly race with a demonstration of pugnacity which harms no one is not frowned upon. pride is stimulated.--pride in one's work is aroused as soon as work is functionalized. the moment a man has something to do that he likes to do, and can do well, he takes pride in it. so, also, the fact that individuality, and personality, are recognized, and that his records are shown, makes pride serve as a stimulus. the outcome of the worker's pride in his work is pride in himself. he finds that he is part of a great whole, and he learns to take pride in the entire management,--in both himself and the managers, as well as in his own work. feeling of ownership provided for.--it may seem at first glance that the instinct of ownership is neglected, and becomes stunted, under scientific management, in that all tools become more or less standardized, and the man is discouraged from having tools peculiar in shape, or size, for whose use he has no warrant except long time of use. careful consideration shows that scientific management provides two opportunities for the worker to conserve his instinct for ownership,-- . during working hours, where the recognition of his personality allows the worker to identify himself with his work, and where his coöperation with the management makes him identified with its activities. . outside the work. he has, under scientific management, more hours away from work to enjoy ownership, and more money with which to acquire those things that he desires to own. the teacher must make clear to him both these opportunities, as he readily can, since the instinct of ownership is conserved in him in an identical manner. constructiveness a part of scientific management.--every act that the worker performs is constructive, because waste has been eliminated, and everything that is done is upbuilding. teaching makes this clear to the worker. constructiveness is also utilized in that exercise of initiative is provided for. thus the instinct, instead of being weakened, is strengthened and directed. progress in utilizing instincts demands psychological study.--teaching under scientific management can never hope fully to understand and utilize native reactions, until more assistance has been given by psychology. at the present time, scientific management labors under disadvantages that must, ultimately, be removed. psychologists must, by experiments, determine more accurately the reactions and their controlability. more thorough study must be made of children that scientific management may understand more of the nature of the reactions of the young workers who come for industrial training. psychology must give its help in this training. then only, can teaching under scientific management become truly efficient. scientific management realizes the importance of training the will.--the most necessary, and most complex and difficult part of scientific management, is the training of the will of all members of the organization. prof. read states in his "psychology" five means of training or influencing the will. these are[ ] " . the first important feature in training the will is the help furnished by supplying the mind with a useful body of ideas. " . the second great feature of the training of the will is the building up in the mind of the proper interests, and the habit of giving the attention to useful and worthy purposes. " . another important feature of the training of the will is the establishing of a firm association between ideas and actions, or, in other words, the forming of a good set of habits. " . another very important feature of the training of the will has reference to its strength of purpose or power of imitation. " . the matter of discipline." teaching under scientific management does supply these five functions, and thus provide for the strengthening and development of the will. variations in teaching of apprentices and journeymen.--scientific management must not only be prepared to teach apprentices, as must all types of management, it must also teach journeymen who have not acquired standard methods. apprentices are easily handled.--teaching apprentices is a comparatively simple proposition, far simpler than under any other type of management. standard methods enable the apprentice to become proficient long before his brother could, under the old type of teaching. the length of training required depends largely on how fingerwise the apprentice is. older workers must be handled with tact.--with adult workers, the problem is not so simple. old wrong habits, such as the use of ineffective motions, must be eliminated. physically, it is difficult for the adult worker to alter his methods. moreover, it may be most difficult to change his mental attitude, to convince him that the methods of scientific management are correct. a successful worker under traditional management, who is proud of his work, will often be extremely sensitive to what he is prone to regard as the "criticism" of scientific management with regard to him. appreciation of varying viewpoints necessary.--no management can consider itself adequate that does not try to enter into the mental attitude of its workers. actual practice shows that, with time and tact, almost any worker can be convinced that all criticism of him is constructive, and that for him to conform to the new standards is a mark of added proficiency, not an acknowledgment of ill-preparedness. the "systems" do much toward this work of reconciling the older workers to the new methods, but most of all can be done by such teachers as can demonstrate their own change from old to standard methods, and the consequent promotion and success. this is, again, an opportunity for the exercise of personality. scientific management provides places for such teaching.--under the methods of teaching employed by scientific management,--right motions first, next speed, with quality as a resultant product,--it is most necessary to provide a place where learners can work. the standard planning of quality provides such a place. the plus and minus signs automatically divide labor so that the worker can be taught by degrees, being set at first where great accuracy is not demanded by the work, and being shifted to work requiring more accuracy as he becomes more proficient. in this way even the most untrained worker becomes efficient, and is engaged in actual productive work. measurement of teaching and learning.--under scientific management the results of teaching and learning become apparent automatically in records of output. the learner's record of output of proper prescribed quality determines what pay he shall receive, and also has a proportionate effect on the teacher's pay. such a system of measurement may not be accurate as a report of the learner's gain,--for he doubtless gains mental results that cannot be seen in his output,--but it certainly does serve as an incentive to teaching and to learning. relation of teaching in scientific management to academic training and vocational guidance.[ ]--teaching under scientific management can never be most efficient until the field of such teaching is restricted to training learners who are properly prepared to receive industrial training.[ ] this preparedness implies fitting school and academic training, and vocational guidance. learner should be manually adept.--the learner should, before entering the industrial world, be taught to be manually adept, or fingerwise, to have such control over his trained muscles that they will respond quickly and accurately to orders. such training should be started in infancy,[ ] in the form of guided play, as, for example, whittling, sewing, knitting, handling mechanical toys and tools, and playing musical instruments, and continued up to, and into, the period of entering a trade. schools should provide mental preparedness.--the schools should render every student capable of filling some place worthily in the industries. the longer the student remains in school, the higher the position for which he should be prepared. the amount and nature of the training in the schools depends largely on the industrial work to be done, and will be possible of more accurate estimation constantly, as scientific management standardizes work and shows what the worker must be to be most efficient. vocational guidance must provide direction.--as made most clear in mr. meyer bloomfield's book, "vocational guidance,"[ ] bureaus of competent directors stand ready to help the youth find that line of activity which he can follow best and with greatest satisfaction to himself. at present, such bureaus are seriously handicapped by the fact that little data of the industries are at hand, but this lack the bureaus are rapidly supplying by gathering such data as are available. most valuable data will not be available until scientific management has been introduced into all lines. progress demands coÃ�peration.--progress here, as everywhere, demands coöperation.[ ] the three sets of educators,--the teachers in the school, in the vocational guidance bureaus, and in scientific management, must recognize their common work, and must coöperate to do it. there is absolutely no cause for conflict between the three; their fields are distinct, but supplementary. vocational guidance is the intermediary between the other two. summary results to the work.--under the teaching of traditional management, the learner may or may not improve the quantity and quality of his work. this depends almost entirely on the particular teacher whom the learner happens to have. there is no standard improvement to the work. under the teaching of transitory management, the work gains in quantity as the methods become standardized, and quality is maintained or improved. under the teaching of scientific management, work, the quantity of work, increases enormously through the use of standards of all kinds; quantity is oftentimes tripled. under the teaching of scientific management, when the schools and vocational guidance movement coöperate, high output of required quality will be obtained at a far earlier stage of the worker's industrial life than is now possible, even under scientific management. results to the worker.--under traditional management, the worker gains a knowledge of how his work can be done, but the method by which he is taught is seldom, of itself, helpful to him. not being sure that he has learned the best way to do his work, he gains no method of attack. the result of the teaching is a habit of doing work which is good, or bad, as chance may direct. under transitory management, with the use of systems as teachers, the worker gains a better method of attack, as he knows the reason why the prescribed method is prescribed. he begins to appreciate the possibilities and benefits of standardized teaching. the method laid down under scientific management is devised to further the forming of an accurate accumulation of concepts, which results in a proper method of attack. the method of instruction under scientific management is devised to furnish two things: . a collection of knowledge relating in its entirety to the future work of the learner. . a definite procedure, that will enable the learner to apply the same process to acquiring knowledge of other subjects in the most economical and efficient way. it teaches the learner to be observant of details, which is the surest method for further development of general truths and concepts. the method of attack of the methods provided for in scientific management results, naturally, in a comparison of true data. this is the most efficient method of causing the learner to think for himself. processes differing but little, apparently, give vastly different results, and the trained habits of observation quickly analyze and determine wherein the one process is more efficient than the other. this result is, of course, the one most desired for causing quick and intelligent learning. the most valuable education is that which enables the learner to make correct judgments. the teaching under scientific management leads to the acquisition of such judgment, plus an all-around sense training, a training in habits of work, and a progressive development. a partial topic list of the results may make more clear their importance. . worker better trained for all work. . habits of correct thinking instilled. . preparedness provided for. . productive and repetitive powers increased. . sense powers increased. . habits of proper reaction established. . "guided original work" established. . system of waste elimination provided. . method of attack taught. . brain fully developed. . "standard response" developed. . opportunities and demands for "thinking" provided. . self-reliance developed. . love of truth fostered. . moral sentiment developed. . resultant happiness of worker. results to be expected in the future.--when the schools, vocational guidance and teaching under scientific management coöperate, the worker will not only receive the benefits now obtained from scientific management, but many more. there will be nothing to unlearn, and each thing that is learned will be taught by those best fitted to teach it. the collection of vocational guidance data will begin with a child at birth, and a record of his inheritance will be kept. this will be added to as he is educated, and as various traits and tendencies appear. from this scientifically derived record will accrue such data as will assist in making clear exactly in what place the worker will be most efficient, and in what sphere he will be able to be most helpful to the world, as well as to himself. all early training will be planned to make the youth adept with his muscles, and alert, with a mind so trained that related knowledge is easily acquired. when the vocation for which he is naturally best fitted becomes apparent, as it must from the study of the development of the youth and his desires, the school will know, and can give exactly, that training that is necessary for the vocation. it can also supplement his limitations intelligently, in case he decides to follow a vocation for which he is naturally handicapped. this will bring to the industry learners prepared to be taught those things that characterize the industry, the "tricks of the trade," and the "secrets of the craft," now become standard, and free to all. such teaching scientific management is prepared to give. the results of such teaching of scientific management will be a worker prepared in a short time to fill efficiently a position which will allow of promotion to the limit of his possibilities. the result of such teaching will be truly educated workers, equipped to work, and to live,[ ] and to share the world's permanent satisfactions. the effect of such education on industrial peace must not be underestimated. with education, including in education learning and culture,--prejudice will disappear. the fact that all men, those going into industries and those not, will be taught alike to be finger wise as well as book wise, up to the time of entering the industries, will lead to a better understanding of each other all through life. the entire bearing of scientific management on industrial peace cannot be here fully discussed. we must note here the strong effect that teaching under scientific management will ultimately have on doing away with industrial warfare,--the great warfare of ignorance, where neither side understands the other, and where each side should realize that large immediate sacrifices should be made if necessary, that there may be obtained the great permanent benefit and savings that can be obtained only by means of the heartiest coöperation. chapter viii footnotes: ============================================ . f.b. gilbreth, _bricklaying system_, para. - . . h.k. hathaway, _prerequisites to the introduction of scientific management, engineering magazine,_ april, , p. . . h.l. gantt, paper , a.s.m.e., p. . . h.l. gantt, _work, wages and profits_, p. . . h.l. gantt, paper , a.s.m.e., p. . . f.w. taylor, _shop management_, para. , harper ed., pp. - . . h.k. hathaway, _engineering magazine_, april, , p. . . w.d. ennis, _an experiment in motion study, industrial engineering_, june, , p. . . c.s. myers, m.d., _an introduction to experimental psychology_, chap. v, p. . . g. m. stratton, _experimental psychology and culture_, p. . . william james, _psychology, briefer course_, p. . . f.b. gilbreth, _bricklaying system_, chap. i, _training of apprentices_. . _mcclure's magazine_, may, , dec, , jan., . . as a woodman's keenness of hearing. . m.w. calkins, _a first book in psychology_, chap. iii. . stratton, _experimental psychology and culture_, chap. vii. . compare with an actor's learning a part. . as proved by experimenting with a six-year-old child. . imbert, _etudes experimentales de travail professionnel ouvrier, sur la fatigue engendree par les mouvements rapides_. . william james, _psychology, briefer course_, p. . . _ibid._, p. . william james, psychology, advanced course. p. . . f.b. gilbreth, _bricklaying system_, p. . . stratton, _experimental psychology and culture_, p. . . prof. bain, quoted in william james' _psychology, briefer course_, pp. - . . f.b. gilbreth, _bricklaying system_, para. - . . m.w. calkins, _a first book in psychology_, p. . . james sully, _the teacher's handbook of psychology_, p. . . stratton, _experimental psychology and culture_, p. . . stratton, _experimental psychology and culture_ p. . . attracting the attention is largely a matter of appealing to what is known to interest, for example, to a known ambition. . m.s. read, _an introductory psychology_, p. . . f.b. gilbreth, _motion study_, p. . . _ibid._, _bricklaying system_, para. - . . f.b. gilbreth, _bricklaying system_, p. . . m.s. read, _an introductory psychology_, pp. - . . g.m. stratton, _experimental psychology and culture_, p. . . m.s. read, _an introductory psychology_, p. . . william james, _psychology, advanced course_, vol. i, p. . . m.s. read, _an introductory psychology_, pp. - . william james, _psychology, briefer course_, p. . . m.w. calkins, _a first book in psychology_, p. . . james sully, _the teacher's handbook of psychology_, p. . . william james, _psychology, briefer course_, p. . . w.d. scott, _influencing men in business_, chap. ii. . _ibid._, chap. iii. . w.d. scott, _the theory of advertising_, p. . . w.d. scott, _increasing human efficiency in business_, p. . . g.m. stratton, _experimental psychology and culture_, p. . . f.w. taylor, _the principles of scientific management_, p. . . william james, _talks to teachers_, chap. iii. . knight's _mechanical dictionary_, vol. iii, p. . . for example, see w.d. scott's _increasing efficiency in business_, chap. iv. . r.a. bray, _boy labor and apprenticeship_, chap. ii, especially p. . . wilfred lewis, _proceedings of the congress of technology_, , p. . . november, . . the link-belt co., philadelphia, pa. . for value of personality see j.w. jenks's, _governmental action for social welfare_, p. . . f.w. taylor, _shop management_, para. , harper ed., p. . . compare with the old darkey, who took her sons from a northern school, where the teacher was white, in order to send them to a southern school having a colored teacher that they might feel, as they looked at him, "what _that_ nigger can do, _this_ nigger can do." . m.s. read, _an introductory psychology,_ pp. - . . hugo münsterberg, _american problems_, p. . . morris llewellyn cooke, _bulletin no. _ of _the carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching_, p. . william kent, _discussion of paper _, a.s.m.e., p. . . a well known athlete started throwing a ball at his son in infancy, to prepare him to be an athlete, thus practically sure of a college education. . meyer bloomfield, _the vocational guidance of youth_, houghton mifflin & co. . a. pimloche, _pestalozzi and the foundation of the modern elementary school_, p. . . friedrich froebel, _education of man_, "to secure for this ability skill and directness, to lift it into full consciousness, to give it insight and clearness, and to exalt it into a life of creative freedom, is the business of the subsequent life of man in successive stages of development and cultivation." ==================================================================== chapter ix incentives definition of incentive.--an "incentive" is defined by the century dictionary as "that which moves the mind or stirs the passions; that which incites or tends to incite to action; motive, spur." synonyms--"impulse, stimulus, incitement, encouragement, goad." importance of the incentive.--the part that the incentive plays in the doing of all work is enormous. this is true in learning, and also in the performance of work which is the result of this learning: manual work and mental work as well. the business man finishing his work early that he may go to the baseball game; the boy at school rushing through his arithmetic that he may not be kept after school; the piece-worker, the amount of whose day's pay depends upon the quantity and quality he can produce; the student of a foreign language preparing for a trip abroad,--these all illustrate the importance of the incentive as an element in the amount which is to be accomplished. two kinds of incentives.--the incentive may be of two kinds: it may be first of all, a return, definite or indefinite, which is to be received when a certain portion of the work is done, or it may be an incentive due to the working conditions themselves. the latter case is exemplified where two people are engaged in the same sort of work and start in to race one another to see who can accomplish the most, who can finish the fixed amount in the shortest space of time, or who can produce the best quality. the incentive may be in the form of some definite aim or goal which is understood by the worker himself, or it may be in some natural instinct which is roused by the work, either consciously to the worker, or consciously to the man who is assigning the work, or consciously to both, or consciously to neither one. in any of these cases it is a natural instinct that is being appealed to and that induces the man to do more work, whether he sees any material reward for that work or not. definitions of two types.--we may call the incentive which utilizes the natural instinct, "direct incentive," and the incentive which utilizes these secondarily, through some set reward or punishment, "indirect incentive." this, at first sight, may seem a contradictory use of terms--it may seem that the reward would be the most direct of incentives; yet a moment's thought will cause one to realize that all the reward can possibly do is to arouse in the individual a natural instinct which will lead him to increase his work. indirect incentives include two classes.--we will discuss the indirect incentives first as, contrary to the usual use of the word "indirect," they are most easy to estimate and to describe. they divide themselves into two classes, reward and punishment. definition of reward.--reward is defined by the century dictionary as--"return, recompense, the fruit of one's labor or works; profit," with synonyms, "pay, compensation, remuneration, requital and retribution." note particularly the word "retribution," for it is this aspect of reward, that is, the just outcome of one's act, that makes the reward justly include punishment. the word "reward" exactly expresses what management would wish to be understood by the incentive that it gives its men to increase their work. definition of punishment.--the word "punishment" is defined as--"pain, suffering, loss, confinement, or other penalty inflicted on a person for a crime or offense by the authority to which the offender is subject," with synonyms, "chastisement, correction, discipline." the word punishment, as will be noted later, is most unfortunate when applied to what scientific management would mean by a penalty, though this word also is unfortunate; but, in the first place, there is no better word to cover the general meaning; and in the second place, the idea of pain and suffering, which scientific management aims to and does eliminate, is present in some of the older forms of management therefore the word punishment must stand. rewards and punishments result in action.--there can be no doubt that a reward is an incentive. there may well be doubt as to whether a punishment is an incentive to action or not. this, however, is only at first glance, and the whole thing rests on the meaning of the word "action." to be active is certainly the opposite of being at rest. this being true, punishment is just as surely an incentive to action as is reward. the man who is punished in every case will be led to some sort of action. whether this really results in an increase of output or not simply determines whether the punishment is a scientifically prescribed punishment or not. if the punishment is of such a nature that the output ceases because of it, or that it incites the man punished against the general good, then it does not in any wise cease to be an active thing, but it is simply a wrong, and unscientifically assigned punishment, that acts in a detrimental way. soldiering alone cuts down activity.--it is interesting to note that the greatest cause for cutting down output is related more closely to a reward than a punishment. under such managements as provide no adequate reward for all, and no adequate assurance that all can receive extra rewards permanently without a cut in the rate, it may be advisable, for the worker's best interests, to limit output in order to keep the wages, or reward, up, and soldiering results. the evils of soldiering will be discussed more at length under the "systems of pay." it is plain, however, here that soldiering is the result of a cutting down of action, and it is self-evident that anything which cuts down action is harmful, not only to the individual himself, but to society at large. nature of rewards and punishments.--under all types of management, the principal rewards consist of promotion and pay, pay being a broad word used here to include regular wages, a bonus, shorter hours, other forms of remuneration or recompense; anything which can be given to the man who does the work to benefit him and increase his desire to continue doing the work. punishments may be negative, that is, they may simply take the form of no reward; or they may be positive, that is, they may include fines, discharge, assignment to less remunerative or less desirable work, or any other thing which can be given to the man to show him that he has not done what is expected of him and, in theory at least, to lead him to do better. nature of direct incentives.--direct incentives will be such native reaction as ambition, pride and pugnacity; will be love of racing, love of play; love of personal recognition; will be the outcome of self-confidence and interest, and so on. the reward under traditional management unstandardized.--as with all other discussions of any part or form of traditional management, the discussion of the incentive under traditional management is vague from the very nature of the subject. "traditional" stands for vagueness and for variation, for the lack of standardization, for the lack of definiteness in knowledge, in process, in results. the rewards under traditional management, as under all types of management, are promotion and pay. it must be an almost unthinkably poor system of management, even under traditional management, which did not attempt to provide for some sort of promotion of the man who did the most and best work; but the lack of standardization of conditions, of instructions, of the work itself, and of reward, makes it almost impossible not only to give the reward, but even to determine who deserves the reward. under traditional management, the reward need not be positive, that is, it might simply consist in the negation of some previously existing disadvantage. it need not be predetermined. it might be nothing definite. it might not be so set ahead that the man might look forward to it. in other words it might simply be the outcome of the good, and in no wise the incentive for the good. it need not necessarily be personal. it could be shared with a group, or gang, and lose all feeling of personality. it need not be a fixed reward or a fixed performance; in fact, if the management were traditional it would be almost impossible that it would be a fixed reward. it might not be an assured reward, and in most cases it was not a prompt reward. these fixed adjectives describe the reward of scientific management--positive, predetermined, personal, fixed, assured and prompt. a few of these might apply, or none might apply to the reward under traditional management. reward a prize won by one only.--if this reward, whether promotion or pay, was given to someone under traditional management, this usually meant that others thereby lost it; it was in the nature of a prize which one only could attain, and which the others, therefore, would lose, and such a lost prize is, to the average man, for the time at least, a dampener on action. the rewarding of the winner, to the loss of all of the losers, has been met by the workmen getting together secretly, and selecting the winners for a week or more ahead, thus getting the same reward out of the employer without the extra effort. punishment under traditional management wrong in theory.--the punishment, under traditional management, was usually much more than negative punishment; that is to say, the man who was punished usually received much more than simply the negative return of getting no reward. the days of bodily punishment have long passed, yet the account of the beatings given to the galley slaves and to other workers in the past are too vividly described in authentic accounts to be lost from memory. to-day, under traditional management, punishment consists of . fines, which are usually simply a cutting down of wages, the part deducted remaining with the company, . discharge, or . assignment to less pleasant or less desirable work. this assignment is done on an unscientific basis, the man being simply put at something which he dislikes, with no regard as to whether his efficiency at that particular work will be high or not. results are unfortunate.--the punishment, under traditional management, is usually meted out by the foreman, simply as one of his many duties. he is apt to be so personally interested, and perhaps involved, in the case that his punishment will satisfy some wrong notions, impulse of anger, hate, or envy in him, and will arouse a feeling of shame or wounded pride, or unappreciation, in the man to whom punishment is awarded. direct incentives not scientifically utilized.--as for what we have called direct incentive, the love of racing was often used under traditional management through athletic contests, the faults in these being that the men were not properly studied, so that they could be properly assigned and grouped; care was not always exercised that hate should not be the result of the contest; the contest was not always conducted according to the rules of clean sport; the men slighted quality in hastening the work, and the results of the athletic contests were not so written down as to be thereafter utilized. love of play may have been developed unconsciously, but was certainly not often studied, love of personal recognition was probably often utilized, but in no scientific way. neither was there anything in traditional management to develop self-confidence, or to arouse and maintain interest in any set fashion. naturally, if the man were in a work which he particularly liked, which under traditional management was a matter of luck, he would be more or less interested in it, but there was no scientific way of arousing or holding his interest. under traditional management, a man might take pride in his work, as did many of the old bricklayers and masons, who would set themselves apart after hours if necessary, lock themselves in, and cut bricks for a complicated arch or fancy pattern, but such pride was in no way fostered through the efforts of the management. pugnacity was aroused, but it might have an evil effect as well as a good, so far as the management had any control. ambition, in the same way, might be stimulated, and might not. there is absolutely nothing under traditional management to prevent a man being ambitious, gratifying his pride, and gratifying his pugnacity in a right way, and at the same time being interested in his work, but there was nothing under traditional management which provided for definite and exact methods for encouraging these good qualities, seeing that they developed in a proper channel, and scientifically utilizing the outcome again and again. pay for performance provided for by transitory management.--under transitory management, as soon as practicable, one bonus is paid for doing work according to the method prescribed. as standardization takes place, the second bonus for completing the task in the time set can be paid. as each element of scientific management is introduced, incentives become more apparent, more powerful, and more assured. direct incentives more skillfully used.--with the separating of output, and recording of output separately, love of personal recognition grew, self-confidence grew, interest in one's work grew. the athletic contest is so conducted that love of speed, love of play, and love of competition are encouraged, the worker constantly feeling that he can indulge in these, as he is assured of "fair play." incentives under scientific management constructive.--it is most important, psychologically and ethically, that it be understood that scientific management is not in any sense a destructive power. that only is eliminated that is harmful, or wasteful, or futile; everything that is good is conserved, and is utilized as much as it has ever been before, often much more than it has ever been utilized. the constructive force, under scientific management, is one of its great life principles. this is brought out very plainly in considering incentives under scientific management. with the scientifically determined wage, and the more direct and more sure plan of promotion, comes no discard of the well-grounded incentives of older types of management. the value of a fine personality in all who are to be imitated is not forgotten; the importance of using all natural stimuli to healthful activity is appreciated. scientific management uses all these, in so far as they can be used to the best outcome for workers and work, and supplements them by such scientifically derived additions as could never have been derived under the older types. characteristics of the reward.--rewards, under scientific management are-- (a) positive; that is to say, the reward must be a definite, positive gain to the man, and not simply a taking away of some thing which may have been a drawback. (b) predetermined; that is to say, before the man begins to work it must be determined exactly what reward he is to get for doing the work. (c) personal; that is, individual, a reward for that particular man for that particular work. (d) fixed, unchanged. he must get exactly what it has been determined beforehand that he shall get. (e) assured; that is to say, there must be provision made for this reward before the man begins to work, so that he may be positive that he will get the reward if he does the work. the record of the organization must be that rewards have always been paid in the past, therefore probably will be in the future. (f) the reward must be prompt; that is to say, as soon as the work has been done, the man must get the reward. this promptness applies to the announcement of the reward; that is to say, the man must know at once that he has gotten the reward, and also to the receipt of the reward by the man. positive reward arouses interest and holds attention.--the benefit of the positive reward is that it arouses and holds attention. a fine example of a reward that is not positive is that type of "welfare work" which consists of simply providing the worker with such surroundings as will enable him to work decently and without actual discomfort. the worker, naturally, feels that such surroundings are his right, and in no sense a reward and incentive to added activity. the reward must actually offer to the worker something which he has a right to expect only if he earns it; something which will be a positive addition to his life. predetermined reward concentrates attention.--the predetermined reward allows both manager and man to concentrate their minds upon the work. there is no shifting of the attention, while the worker wonders what the reward that he is to receive will be. it is also a strong factor for industrial peace, and for all the extra activities which will come when industrial conditions are peaceful. personal reward conserves individuality.--the personal reward is a strong incentive toward initiative, towards the desire to make the most of one's individuality. it is an aid toward the feeling of personal recognition. from this personal reward come all the benefits which have been considered under individuality.[ ] fixed reward eliminates waste time.--the fact that the reward is fixed is a great eliminator of waste to the man and to the manager both. not only does the man concentrate better under the fixed reward, but the reward, being fixed, need not be determined anew, over and over again; that is to say, every time that that kind of work is done, simultaneous with the arising of the work comes the reward that is to be paid for it. all the time that would be given to determining the reward, satisfying the men and arguing the case, is saved and utilized. assured reward aids concentration.--the assured reward leads to concentration,--even perhaps more so than the fact that the reward is determined. in case the man was not sure that he would get the reward in the end, he would naturally spend a great deal of time wondering whether he would or not. moreover, no immediate good fortune counts for much as an incentive if there is a prospect of bad luck following in the immediate future. need for promptness varies.--the need for promptness of the reward varies. if the reward is to be given to a man of an elementary type of mind, the reward must be immediately announced and must be actually given very promptly, as it is impossible for anyone of such a type of intellect to look forward very far.[ ] a man of a high type of intellectual development is able to wait a longer time for his reward, and the element of promptness, while acting somewhat as an incentive, is not so necessary. under scientific management, with the ordinary type of worker on manual work, it has been found most satisfactory to pay the reward every day, or at the end of the week, and to announce the score of output as often as every hour. this not only satisfies the longing of the normal mind to know exactly where it stands, but also lends a fresh impetus to repeat the high record. there is also, through the prompt reward, the elimination of time wasted in wondering what the result will be, and in allaying suspense. suspense is not a stimulus to great activity, as anyone who has waited for the result of a doubtful examination can testify, it being almost impossible to concentrate the mind on any other work until one knows whether the work which has been done has been completed satisfactorily or not. promptness always an added incentive.--there are many kinds of life work and modes of living so terrible as to make one shudder at the thoughts of the certain sickness, death, or disaster that are almost absolutely sure to follow such a vocation. men continue to work for those wages that lead positively to certain death, because of the immediateness of the sufficient wages, or reward. this takes their attention from their ultimate end. much more money would be required if payment were postponed, say, five years after the act, to obtain the services of the air-man, or the worker subject to the poisoning of some branches of the lead and mercury industries. if the prompt reward is incentive enough to make men forget danger and threatened death, how much more efficient is it in increasing output where there is no such danger. immediate reward not always preferable.--there are cases where the prompt reward is not to be preferred, because the delayed reward will be greater, or will be available to more people such is the case with the reward that comes from unrestricted output. for example,--the immediacy of the temporarily increased reward caused by restricting output has often led the combinations of working men to such restriction, with an ultimate loss of reward to worker, to employer, and to the consumer. rewards possible of attainment by all.--every man working under scientific management has a chance to win a reward. this means not only that the man has a "square deal," for the man may have a square deal under traditional management in that he may have a fair chance to try for all existing rewards. there is more than this under scientific management. by the very nature of the plan itself, the rewards are possible of achievement by all; any one man, by winning, in no way diminishes the chances of the others. rewards of management resemble rewards of workers.--so far the emphasis, in the discussion of reward, has been on the reward as given to the worker, and his feeling toward it. the reward to the management is just as sure. it lies in the increased output and therefore the possibility of lower costs and of greater financial gain. it is as positive; it is as predetermined, because before the reward to the men is fixed the management realizes what proportion that reward will bear to the entire undertaking, and exactly what profits can be obtained. it is a fundamental of scientific management that the management shall be able to prophesy the outputs ahead. it will certainly be as personal, if the management side is as thoroughly systematized as is the managed; it will be as fixed and as assured, and it certainly is as prompt, as the cost records can be arranged to come to the management every day, if that is desired. results of such rewards.--there are three other advantages to management which might well be added here. first, that a reward such as this attracts the best men to the work; second, that the reward, and the stability of it, indicates the stability of the entire institution, and thus raises its standing in the eyes of the community as well as in its own eyes; and third, that it leads the entire organization, both managed and managing, to look favorably at all standardization. the standardized reward is sure to be attractive to all members. as soon as it is realized that the reason that it is attractive is because it is _standardized_, the entire subject of standardization rises in the estimation of every one, and the introduction of standards can be carried on more rapidly, and with greater success. rewards divided into promotion and pay.--rewards may be divided into two kinds; first, promotion and, second, pay. under scientific management promotion is assured for every man and, as has been said, this promotion does not thereby hold back others from having the same sort of promotion. there is an ample place, under scientific management, for every man to advance.[ ] not only is the promotion sure, thus giving the man absolute assurance that he will advance as his work is satisfactory, but it is also gradual.[ ] the promotion must be by degrees, otherwise the workers may get discouraged, from finding their promotion has come faster than has their ability to achieve, and the lack of attention, due to being discouraged, may be contagious. it is, therefore, of vital importance that the worker be properly selected, in order that, in his advancement and promotion, he shall be able to achieve his task after having been put at the new work. he must be advanced and promoted in a definite line of gradual development, in accordance with a fully conceived plan. this should be worked out and set down in writing as a definite plan, similar to the plan on the instruction card of one of his tasks. promotion may be to places within or without the business.--in many lines of business, the business itself offers ample opportunity for promoting all men who can "make good" as rapidly as they can prepare themselves for positions over others, and for advancement; but under scientific management provision is made even in case the business does not offer such opportunities.[ ] this is done by the management finding places outside their own organization for the men who are so trained that they can be advanced. such promotion attracts workers.--while at first glance it might seem a most unfortunate thing for the management to have to let its men go, and while, as dr. taylor says, it is unfortunate for a business to get the reputation of being nothing but a training school, on the other hand, it has a very salutary effect upon the men to know that their employers are so disinterestedly interested in them that they will provide for their future, even at the risk of the individual business at which they have started having to lose their services. this will not only, as dr. taylor makes clear, stimulate many men in the establishment whose men go on to take the places of those who are promoted, but will also be a great inducement to other men to come into a place that they feel is unselfish and generous. subdivisions of "pay."--under "pay" we have included eight headings: . wages . bonus . shorter hours . prizes other than money . extra knowledge . method of attack . good opinion of others . professional standing. relation between wages and bonus.--wages and bonus are closely related. by wages we mean a fixed sum, or minimum hourly rate, that the man gets in any case for his time, and by bonus we mean additional money that he receives for achievement of method, quantity or quality. both might very properly be included under wages, or under money received for the work, or opportunities for receiving money for work, as the case might be. in the discussion of the different ways of paying wages under scientific management, there will be no attempt to discuss the economic value of the various means; the different methods will simply be stated, and the psychological significance will be, as far as possible, given. before discussing the various kinds of wages advised by the experts in scientific management, it is well to pause a moment to name the various sorts of methods of compensation recognized by authorities. david f. schloss in his "method of industrial remuneration" divides all possible ways of gaining remuneration into three-- . the different kinds of wages . time wage . piece wage . task wage . progressive wage . collective piece wage . collective task wage . collective progressive wage . contract work . coöperative work with . profit sharing, and . industrial coöperation. these are defined and discussed at length in his book in a lucid and simple manner. it is only necessary to quote him here as to the relationship between these different forms, where he says, page ,--"the two leading forms of industrial remuneration under the wages system are time wages, and piece wages. intermediate between these principal forms, stands that known as task wage, while supplemental to these two named methods, we find those various systems which will here be designated by the name of progressive wages."[ ] day work never scientific.--the simplest of all systems, says dr. taylor in "a piece rate system," paragraph , in discussing the various forms of compensation "is the day work plan, in which the employés are divided into certain classes, and a standard rate of wages is paid to each class of men," he adds--"the men are paid according to the position which they fill, and not according to their individual character, energy, skill and reliability," the psychological objection to day work is that it does not arouse interest or effort or hold attention, nor does it inspire to memorizing or to learning. it will be apparent that there is no inducement whatever for the man to do more than just enough to retain his job, for he in no wise shares in the reward for an extra effort, which goes entirely to his employer. "reward," in this case, is usually simply a living wage,--enough to inspire the man, if he needs the money enough to work to hold his position, but not enough to incite him to any extra effort. it is true that, in actual practice, through the foreman or some man in authority, the workers on day work may be "speeded up" to a point where they will do a great deal of work; the foreman being inspired, of course, by a reward for the extra output, but, as dr. taylor says, paragraph --"a piece rate system," this sort of speeding up is absolutely lacking in self-sustaining power. the moment that this rewarded foreman is removed, the work will again fall down. therefore, day wage has almost no place in ultimate, scientifically managed work. piece work provides pay in proportion to work done.--piece work is the opposite of time work, in that under it the man is paid not for the time he spends at the work, but for the amount of work which he accomplishes. under this system, as long as the man is paid a proper piece rate, and a rate high enough to keep him interested, he will have great inducements to work. he will have a chance to develop individuality, a chance for competition, a chance for personal recognition. his love of reasonable racing will be cultivated. his love of play may be cultivated. all of these incentives arise because the man feels that his sense of justice is being considered; that if the task is properly laid out, and the price per piece is properly determined, he is given a "square deal" in being allowed to accomplish as great an amount of work as he can, with the assurance that his reward will be promptly coming to him. danger of rate being cut.--piece work becomes objectionable only when the rate is cut. the moment the rate is cut the first time, the man begins to wonder whether it is going to be cut again, and his attention is distracted from the work by his debating this question constantly. at best, his attention wanders from one subject to the other, and back again. it cannot be concentrated on his work. after the rate has been cut once or twice,--and it is sure to be cut unless it has been set from scientifically derived elementary time units,--the man loses his entire confidence in the stability of the rate, and, naturally, when he loses this confidence, his work is done more slowly, due to lack of further enthusiasm. on the contrary, as long as it is to his advantage to do the work and he is sure that his reward will be prompt, and that he will always get the price that has been determined as right by him and by the employers for his work, he can do this work easily in the time set. as soon as he feels that he will not get it, he will naturally begin to do less, as it will be not only to his personal advantage to do as little as possible, but also very much to the advantage of his fellows, for whom the rate will also be cut. task wage contains no incentive to additional work.--what schloss calls the task wage would, as he well says, be the intermediate between time or day wage and piece wage; that is, it would be the assigning of a definite amount of work to be done in definite time, and to be paid for by a definite sum. if the task were set scientifically, and the time scientifically determined, as it must naturally be for a scientific task, and the wage adequate for that work, there would seem to be nothing about this form of remuneration which could be a cause of dissatisfaction to the worker. naturally, however, there would be absolutely no chance for him to desire to go any faster than the time set, or to accomplish any more work in the time set than that which he was obliged to, in that he could not possibly get anything for the extra work done. worth of previous methods in the handling.--it will be noted in the discussion of the three types of compensation so far discussed, that there is nothing in them that renders them unscientific. any one of the three may be used, and doubtless all are used, on works which are attempting to operate under scientific management. whether they really are scientific methods of compensation or not, is determined by the way that they are handled. certainly, however, all that any of these three can expect to do is to convince the man that he is being treated justly; that is to say, if he knows what sort of a contract he is entering into, the contract is perfectly fair, provided that the management keeps its part of the contract, pays the agreed-upon wage. in proceeding, instead of following the order of schloss we will follow the order, at least for a time, of dr. taylor in "a piece rate system"; this for two reasons: first, for the reason that the "piece rate system" is later than schloss' book, schloss being , and the "piece rate" being ; in the second place that we are following the scientific management side in distinction to the general economic side, laid down by schloss. there is, however, nothing in our plan of discussion here to prevent one's following fairly closely in the schloss also. the gain-sharing plan.--we take up, then, the gain-sharing plan which was invented by mr. henry r. towne and used by him with success in the yale & towne works. this is described in a paper read before the american society of mechanical engineers, in professional paper no. , in and also in the premium plan, mr. halsey's modification of it, described by him in a paper entitled the "premium plan of paying for labor," american society of mechanical engineers, , paper . in this, in describing the profit-sharing plan, mr. halsey says--"under it, in addition to regular wages, the employés were offered a certain percentage of the final profits of the business. it thus divides the savings due to increased production between employer and employé." objections to this plan.--we note here the objection to this plan: first,--"the workmen are given a share in what they do not earn; second, the workmen share regardless of individual deserts; third, the promised rewards are remote; fourth, the plan makes no provision for bad years; fifth, the workmen have no means of knowing if the agreement is carried out." without discussing any farther whether these are worded exactly as all who have tried the plan might have found them, we may take these on mr. halsey's authority and discuss the psychology of them. if the workmen are given a share in what they do not earn, they have absolutely no feeling that they are being treated justly. this extra reward which is given to them, if in the nature of a present, might much better be a present out and out. if it has no scientific relation to what they have gotten, if the workmen share regardless of individual deserts, this, as dr. taylor says, paragraph in the "piece rate system," is the most serious defect of all, in that it does not allow for recognition of the personal merits of each workman. if the rewards are remote, the interest is diminished. if the plan makes no provision for bad years, it cannot be self-perpetuating. if the workmen have no means of knowing if the agreement will be carried out or not, they will be constantly wondering whether it is being carried out or not, and their attention will wander. the premium plan.--the premium plan is thus described by mr. halsey--"the time required to do a given piece of work is determined from previous experience, and the workman, in addition to his usual daily wages, is offered a premium for every hour by which he reduces that time on future work, the amount of the premium being less than his rate of wages. making the hourly premium less than the hourly wages is the foundation stone upon which rest all the merits of the system." dr. taylor's description of this plan.--dr. taylor comments upon this plan as follows: "the towne-halsey plan consists in recording the quickest time in which a job has been done, and fixing this as a standard. if the workman succeeds in doing the job in a shorter time, he is still paid his same wages per hour for the time he works on the job, and, in addition, is given a premium for having worked faster, consisting of from one-quarter to one-half the difference between the wages earned and the wages originally paid when the job was done in standard time," dr. taylor's discussion of this plan will be found in "shop management," paragraphs to . psychologically, the defect of this system undoubtedly is that it does not rest upon accurate scientific time study, therefore neither management nor men can predict accurately what is going to happen. not being able to predict, they are unable to devote their entire attention to the work in hand, and the result cannot be as satisfactory as under an assigned task, based upon time study. the discussion of this is so thorough in dr. taylor's work, and in mr. halsey's work, that it is unnecessary to introduce more here. profit-sharing.--before turning to the methods of compensation which are based upon the task, it might be well to introduce here mention of "coöperation," or "profit-sharing," which, in its extreme form, usually means the sharing of the profits from the business as a whole, among the men who do the work. this is further discussed by schloss, and also by dr. taylor in paragraphs to , in "a piece rate system"; also in "shop management," quoting from the "piece rate system," paragraphs to . objections to profit-sharing.--the objections, dr. taylor says, to coöperation are, first in the fact that no form of coöperation has been devised in which each individual is allowed free scope for his personal ambition; second, in the remoteness of the reward; third, in the unequitable division of the profits. if each individual is not allowed free scope, one sees at once that the entire advantage of individuality, and of personal recognition, is omitted. if the reward is remote, we recognize that its power diminishes very rapidly; and if there cannot be equitable division of the profits, not only will the men ultimately not be satisfied, but they will, after a short time, not even be satisfied while they are working, because their minds will constantly be distracted by the fact that the division will probably not be equitable, and also by the fact that they will be trying to plan ways in which they can get their proper share. thus, not only in the ultimate outcome, but also during the entire process, the work will slow up necessarily, because the men can have no assurance either that the work itself, or the output, have been scientifically determined. scientific management embodies valuable elements of profit-sharing.--scientific management embodies the valuable elements of profit-sharing, namely, the idea of coöperation, and the idea that the workers should share in the profit. that the latter of these two is properly emphasized by scientific management is not always understood by the workers. when a worker is enabled to make three or four times as much output in a day as he has been accustomed to, he may think that he is not getting his full share of the "spoils" of increased efficiency, unless he gets a proportionately increased rate of pay. it should, therefore, be early made clear to him that the saving has been caused by the actions of the management, quite as much as by the increased efforts for productivity of the men. furthermore, a part of the savings must go to pay for the extra cost of maintaining the standard conditions that make such output possible. the necessary planners and teachers usually are sufficient as object-lessons to convince the workers of the necessity of not giving all the extra savings to the workers. it is realized that approximately one third of the extra profits from the savings must go to the employer, about one third to the employés, and the remainder for maintaining the system and carrying out further investigations. this once understood, the satisfaction that results from a coöperative, profit-sharing type of management will be enjoyed. the five methods of compensation which are to follow are all based upon the task, as laid down by dr. taylor; that is to say, upon time study, and an exact knowledge by the man, and the employers, of how much work can be done. differential rate piece work the ultimate form of compensation.-- dr. taylor's method of compensation, which is acknowledged by all thoroughly grounded in scientific management to be the ultimate form of compensation where it can be used, is called differential rate piece work. it is described in "a piece rate system," paragraphs to , as follows:-- "this consists, briefly, in paying a higher price per piece, or per unit, or per job, if the work is done in the shortest possible time and without imperfection, than is paid if the work takes a longer time or is imperfectly done. to illustrate--suppose units, or pieces, to be the largest amount of work of a certain kind that can be done in a day. under the differential rate system, if a workman finishes pieces per day, and all of these pieces are perfect, he receives, say, cents per piece, making his pay for the day times = $ . . if, however, he works too slowly and turns out only, say pieces, then instead of receiving cents per piece he gets only cents per piece, making his pay for the day x = $ . , instead of $ . per day. if he succeeds in finishing pieces--some of which are imperfect--then he should receive a still lower rate of pay, say ¢ or ¢ per piece, according to circumstances, making his pay for the day $ . or only $ . , instead of $ . ." advantages of this system.--this system is founded upon knowledge that for a large reward men will do a large amount of work. the small compensation for a small amount of work--and under this system the minimum compensation is a little below the regular day's work--may lead men to exert themselves to accomplish more work. this system appeals to the justice of the men, in that it is more nearly an exact ratio of pay to endeavor. task work with a bonus.--the task work with bonus system of compensation, which is the invention of mr. h.l. gantt, is explained in "a bonus system of rewarding labor," paper , read before the american society of mechanical engineers, december, , by mr. gantt. this system is there described as follows:-- "if the man follows his instructions and accomplishes all the work laid out for him as constituting his proper task for the day, he is paid a definite bonus in addition to the day rate which he always gets. if, however, at the end of the day he has failed to accomplish all of the work laid out, he does not get his bonus, but simply his day rate." this system of compensation is explained more fully in chapter vi of mr. gantt's book, "work, wages and profits," where he explains the modification now used by him in the bonus. advantages of task work with a bonus.--the psychological advantage of the task with a bonus is the fact that the worker has the assurance of a living wage while learning, no matter whether he succeeds in winning his bonus or not. in the last analysis, it is "day rate" for the unskilled, and "piece rate" for the skilled, and it naturally leads to a feeling of security in the worker. mr. gantt has so admirably explained the advantages, psychological as well as industrial, of his system, that it is unnecessary to go farther, except to emphasize the fine feeling of brotherhood which underlies the idea, and its expression. the differential bonus system.--the differential bonus system of compensation is the invention of mr. frederick a. parkhurst, and is described by him in his book "applied methods of scientific management." "the time the job should be done in is first determined by analysis and time study. the bonus is then added above the day work line. no bonus is paid until a definitely determined time is realized. as the time is reduced, the bonus is increased." three rate with increased rate system.--the three rate system of compensation is the invention of mr. frank b. gilbreth and consists of day work, i.e., a day rate, or a flat minimum rate, which all who are willing to work receive until they can try themselves out; of a middle rate, which is given to the man when he accomplishes the work with exactness of compliance to prescribed motions, according to the requirements of his instruction card; and of a high rate, which is paid to the man when he not only accomplishes the task in accordance with the instruction card, but also within the set time and of the prescribed quality of finished work. advantage of this system.--the advantage of this is, first of all, that the man does not have to look forward so far for some of his reward, as it comes to him just as soon as he has shown himself able to do the prescribed methods required accurately. the first extra reward is naturally a stimulus toward winning the second extra reward. the middle rate is a stimulus to endeavor to perform that method which will enable him easiest to achieve the accomplishment of the task that pays the highest wage. the day rate assures the man of a living wage. the middle rate pays him a bonus for trying to learn. the high rate gives him a piece rate when he is skilled. lastly, as the man can increase his output, with continued experience, above that of the task, he receives a differential rate piece on the excess quantity, this simply making an increasing stimulus to exceed his previous best record. all task systems investigate loss of bonus.--under all these bonus forms of wages, if the bonus is not gained the fact is at once investigated, in order that the blame may rest where it belongs. the blame may rest upon the workers, or it may be due to the material, which may be defective, or different from standard; it may be upon the supervision, or some fault of the management in not supplying the material in the proper quality, or sequence, or a bad condition of tools or machinery; or upon the instruction card. the fact that the missing of the bonus is investigated is an added assurance to the workman that he is getting the "square deal," and enlists his sympathy with these forms of bonus system, and his desire to work under them. the fact that the management will investigate also allows him to concentrate upon output, with no worry as to the necessity of his investigating places where he has fallen short. necessity for workers bearing this loss.--in any case, whether the blame for losing the bonus is the worker's fault directly or not, he loses his bonus. this, for two reasons; in the first place, if he did not lose his bonus he would have no incentive to try to discover flaws before delays occurred; he would, otherwise, have an incentive to allow the material to pass through his hands, defective or imperfect as the case might be. this is very closely associated with the second reason, and that is, that the bonus comes from the savings caused by the plan of management, and that it is necessary that the workers as well as the management shall see that everything possible tends to increase the saving. it is only as the worker feels that his bonus is a part of the saving, that he recognizes the justice of his receiving it, that it is in no wise a gift to him, simply his proper share, accorded not by any system of philanthropy, or so-called welfare work, but simply because his own personal work has made it possible for the management to hand back his share to him. users of any task system appreciate other task systems.--it is of great importance to the workers that the users of any of these five methods of compensation of scientific management are all ready and glad to acknowledge the worth of all these systems. in many works more than one, in some all, of these systems of payment may be in use. far from this resulting in confusion, it simply leads to the understanding that whatever is best in the particular situation should be used. it also leads to a feeling of stability everywhere, as a man who has worked under any of these systems founded on time study can easily pass to another. there is also a great gain here in the doing away of industrial warfare. shorter hours and holidays effective rewards.--probably the greatest incentive, next to promotion and more pay, are shorter hours and holidays. in some cases, the shorter hours, or holidays, have proven even more attractive to the worker than the increase of pay. in shop management, paragraph , dr. taylor describes a case where children working were obliged to turn their entire pay envelopes over to their parents. to them, there was no particular incentive in getting more money, but, when the task was assigned, if they were allowed to go as soon as their task was completed, the output was accomplished in a great deal shorter time. another case where shorter hours were successfully tried, was in an office where the girls were allowed the entire saturday every two weeks, if the work was accomplished within a set amount of time. this extra time for shopping and matinees proved more attractive than any reasonable amount of extra pay that could be offered. desire for approbation an incentive.--under "individuality" were discussed various devices for developing the individuality of the man, such as his picture over a good output or record. these all act as rewards or incentives. how successful they would be, depends largely upon the temperament of the man and the sort of work that is to be done. in all classes of society, among all sorts of people, there is the type that loves approbation. this type will be appealed to more by a device which allows others to see what has been done than by almost anything else. as to what this device must be, depends on the intelligence of the man. necessity for coÃ�peration a strong incentive.--under scientific management, many workers are forced by their coworkers to try to earn their bonuses, as "falling down on" tasks, and therefore schedules, may force them to lose their bonuses also. the fact that, in many kinds of work, a man falling below his task will prevent his fellows from working, is often a strong incentive to that man to make better speed. for example, on a certain construction job in canada, the teamsters were shown that, by their work, they were cutting down working opportunities for cart loaders, who could only be hired as the teamsters hauled sufficient loads to keep them busy. value of knowledge gained an incentive to a few only.--extra knowledge, and the better method of attack learned under scientific management, are rewards that will be appreciated by those of superior intelligence only. they will, in a way, be appreciated by all, because it will be realized that, through what is learned, more pay or promotion is received, but the fact that this extra knowledge, and better method of attack, will enable one to do better in all lines, not simply in the line at which one is working, and will render one's life more full and rich, will be appreciated only by those of a wide experience. acquired professional standing a powerful incentive.--just as the success of the worker under scientific management assures such admiration by his fellow-workers as will serve as an incentive toward further success, so the professional standing attained by success in scientific management acts as an incentive to those in more responsible positions. as soon as it is recognized that scientific management furnishes the only real measure of efficiency, its close relationship to professional standing will be recognized, and the reward which it can offer in this line will be more fully appreciated. punishments negative and positive.--punishments may be first negative, that is, simply a loss of promised rewards. such punishments, especially in cases of men who have once had the reward, usually will act as the necessary stimulus to further activity. punishments may also be positive, such things as fines, assignment to less pleasant work, or as a last resort, discharge. fines never accrue to the management.--fines have been a most successful mode of punishment under scientific management. under many of the old forms of management, the fines were turned back to the management itself, thus raising a spirit of animosity in the men, who felt that everything that they suffered was a gain to those over them. under scientific management all fines are used in some way for the benefit of the men themselves. all fines should be used for some benefit fund, or turned into the insurance fund. the fines, as has been said, are determined solely by the disciplinarian, who is disinterested in the disposition of the funds thus collected. as the fines do not in any way benefit the management, and in fact rather hurt the management in that the men who pay them, no matter where they are applied, must feel more or less discouraged, it is, naturally, for the benefit of the management that there shall be as few fines as possible. both management and men realize this, which leads to industrial peace, and also leads the managers, the functional foremen, and in fact every one, to eliminate the necessity and cause for fines to as great an extent as is possible. assignment to less pleasant work effective punishment.-- assignment to less pleasant work is a very effective form of discipline. it has many advantages which do not show on the surface, the man may not really get a cut in pay, though his work be changed, and thus the damage he receives is in no wise to his purse, but simply to his feeling of pride. in the meantime, he is gaining a wider experience of the business, so that even the worst disadvantage has its bright side. discharge to be avoided wherever possible.--discharge is, of course, available under scientific management, as under all other forms, but it is really less used under scientific management than under any other sort, because if a man is possibly available, and in any way trained, it is better to do almost anything to teach him, to assign him to different work, to try and find his possibilities, than to let him go, and have all that teaching wasted as far as the organization which has taught it is concerned. discharge a grave injury to a worker.--moreover, scientific management realizes that discharge may be a grave injury to a worker. as mr. james m. dodge, who has been most successful in scientific management and is noted for his good work for his fellow-men, eloquently pleads, in a paper on "the spirit in which scientific management should be approached," given before the conference on scientific management at dartmouth college, october, : "it is a serious thing for a worker who has located his home within reasonable proximity to his place of employment and with proper regard for the schooling of his children, to have to seek other employment and readjust his home affairs, with a loss of time and wages. proper management takes account not only of this fact, but also of the fact that there is a distinct loss to the employer when an old and experienced employé is replaced by a new man, who must be educated in the methods of the establishment. an old employé has, in his experience, a potential value that should not be lightly disregarded, and there should be in case of dismissal the soundest of reasons, in which personal prejudice or temporary mental condition of the foreman should play no part. "constant changing of employés is not wholesome for any establishment, and the sudden discovery by a foreman that a man who has been employed for a year or more is 'no good' is often a reflection on the foreman, and more often still, is wholly untrue. all working men, unless they develop intemperate or dishonest habits, have desirable value in them, and the conserving and increasing of their value is a duty which should be assumed by their superiors." punishment can never be entirely abolished.--it might be asked why punishments are needed at all under this system; that is, why positive punishments are needed. why not merely a lack of reward for the slight offenses, and a discharge if it gets too bad? it must be remembered, however, that the punishments are needed to insure a proper appreciation of the reward. if there is no negative side, the beauty of the reward will never be realized; the man who has once suffered by having his pay cut for something which he has done wrong, will be more than ready to keep up to the standard. in the second place, unless individuals are punished, the rights of other individuals will, necessarily, be encroached upon. when it is considered that under scientific management the man who gives the punishment is the disinterested disciplinarian, that the punishment is made exactly appropriate to the offense, and that no advantage from it comes to any one except the men themselves, it can be understood that the psychological basis is such as to make a punishment rather an incentive than a detriment. direct incentives numerous and powerful.--as for the direct incentives, these are so many that it is possible to enumerate only a few. for example-- this may be simply a result of love of speed, love of play, or love of activity, or it may be, in the case of a man running a machine, not so much for the love of the activity as for a love of seeing things progress rapidly. there is a love of contest which has been thoroughly discussed under "athletic contests," which results in racing, and in all the pleasures of competition. racing directed under scientific management.--the psychology of the race under scientific management is most interesting. the race is not a device of scientific management to speed up the worker, any speed that would be demanded by scientific management beyond the task-speed would be an unscientific thing. on the other hand, it is not the scope of scientific management to bar out any contests which would not be for the ultimate harm of the workers. such interference would hamper individuality; would make the workers feel that they were restricted and held down. while the workers are, under scientific management, supposed to be under the supervision of some one who can see that the work is only such as they can do and continuously thrive, any such interference as, for example, stopping a harmless race, would at once make them feel that their individual initiative was absolutely destroyed. it is not the desire of scientific management to do anything of that sort, but rather to use every possible means to make the worker feel that his initiative is being conserved. all "native reactions" act as incentives.--pride, self-confidence, pugnacity,--all the "native reactions" utilized by teaching serve as direct incentives. results of incentives to the work.--all incentives in every form of management, tend, from their very nature, to increase output. when scientific management is introduced, there is selection of such incentives as will produce greatest amount of specified output, and the results can be predicted. results of incentives to the worker.--under traditional management the incentives are usually such that the worker is likely to overwork himself if he allows himself to be driven by the incentive. this results in bodily exhaustion. so, also, the anxiety that accompanies an unstandardized incentive leads to mental exhaustion. with the introduction of transitory management, danger from both these types of exhaustion is removed. the incentive is so modified that it is instantly subject to judgment as to its ultimate value. scientific management makes the incentives stronger than they are under any other type, partly by removing sources of worry, waste and hesitation, partly by determining the ratio of incentive to output. the worker under such incentives gains in bodily and mental poise and security. chapter ix footnotes: ============================================== . w.p. gillette, _cost analysis engineering_, p. . . f.w. taylor, paper , a.s.m.e., para. , para. . . hugo diemer, _factory organization and administration_, p. . . james m. dodge, paper , a.s.m.e., p. . . f.w. taylor, _shop management_, para. - , harper ed., pp. - . . see also c.u. carpenter, _profit making in shop and factory management_, pp. - . for an extended and excellent account of the theory of well-known methods of compensating workmen, see c.b. going, _principles of industrial engineering_, chap. viii. ==================================================================== chapter x welfare definition of welfare.--"welfare" means "a state or condition of doing well; prosperous or satisfactory course or relation; exemption from evil;" in other words, well-being. this is the primary meaning of the word. but, to-day, it is used so often as an adjective, to describe work which is being attempted for the good of industrial workers, that any use of the word welfare has that fringe of meaning to it. "welfare" here includes two meanings.--in the discussion of welfare in this chapter, both meanings of the word will be included. "welfare" under each form of management will be discussed, first, as meaning the outcome to the men of the type of management itself; and second, as discussing the sort of welfare work which is used under that form of management. discussion of first answers. three questions.--a discussion of welfare as the result of work divides itself naturally into three parts, or three questions: what is the effect upon the physical life? what is the effect upon the mental life? what is the effect upon the moral life? under traditional management no physical improvement.--the indefiniteness of traditional management manifests itself again in this discussion, it being almost impossible to make any general statement which could not be controverted by particular examples; but it is safe to say that in general, under traditional management, there is not a definite physical improvement in the average worker. in the first place, there is no provision for regularity in the work. the planning not being done ahead, the man has absolutely no way of knowing exactly what he will be called upon to do. there being no measure of fatigue, he has no means of knowing whether he can go to work the second part of the day, say, with anything like the efficiency with which he could go to work in the first part of the day. there being no standard, the amount of work which he can turn out must vary according as the tools, machinery and equipment are in proper condition, and the material supplies his needs. no good habits necessarily formed.--in the second place, under traditional management there are no excellent habits necessarily formed. the man is left to do fairly as he pleases, if only the general outcome be considered sufficient by those over him. there may be a physical development on his part, if the work be of a kind which can develop him, or which he likes to such an extent that he is willing to do enough of it to develop him physically; this liking may come through the play element, or through the love of work, or through the love of contest, or through some other desire for activity, but it is not provided for scientifically, and the outcome cannot be exactly predicted. therefore, under traditional management there is no way of knowing that good health and increased strength will result from the work, and we know that in many cases poor health and depleted strength have been the outcome of the work. we may say then fairly, as far as physical improvement is concerned that, though it might be the outcome of traditional management, it was rather in spite of traditional management, in the sense at least that the management had nothing to do with it, and had absolutely no way of providing for it. the moment that it was provided for in any systematic way, the traditional management vanished. no directed mental development.--second, mental development. here, again, there being no fixed habits, no specially trained habit of attention, no standard, there was no way of knowing that the man's mind was improving. naturally, all minds improve merely with experience. experience must be gathered in, and must be embodied into judgment. there is absolutely no way of estimating what the average need in this line would be, it varies so much with the temperament of the man. again, it would usually be a thing that the man himself was responsible for, and not the management, certainly not the management in any impersonal sense. some one man over an individual worker might be largely responsible for improving him intellectually. if this were so, it would be because of the temperament of the over-man, or because of his friendly desire to impart a mental stimulus; seldom, if ever, because the management provided for its being imparted. thus, there was absolutely no way of predicting that wider or deeper interest, or that increased mental capacity, would take place. moral development doubtful.--as for moral development, in the average traditional management it was not only not provided for, but rather doubtful. a man had very little chance to develop real, personal responsibilities, in that there was always some one over him who was watching him, who disciplined him and corrected him, who handed in the reports for him, with the result that he was in a very slight sense a free agent. only men higher up, the foremen and the superintendents could obtain real development from personal responsibilities. neither was there much development of responsibility for others, in the sense of being responsible for personal development of others. having no accurate standards to judge by, there was little or no possibility of appreciation of the relative standing of the men, either by the individual of himself, or by others of his ability. the man could be admired for his strength, or his skill, but not for his real efficiency, as measured in any satisfactory way. the management taught self-control in the most rudimentary way, or not at all. there was no distinct goal for the average man, neither was there any distinct way to arrive at such a goal; it was simply a case, with the man lower down, of making good for any one day and getting that day's pay. in the more enlightened forms of traditional management, a chance for promotion was always fairly sure, but the moment that the line of promotion became assured, we may say that traditional management had really ceased, and some form of transitory management was in operation. "square deal" lacking.--perhaps the worst lack under traditional management is the lack of the "square deal." in the first place, even the most efficient worker under this form of management was not sure of his place. this not only meant worry on his part, which distracted his attention from what he did, but meant a wrong attitude all along the line. he had absolutely no way of knowing that, even though he did his best, the man over him, in anger, or because of some entirely ulterior thing, might not discharge him, put him in a lower position. so also the custom of spying, the only sort of inspection recognized under traditional management of the most elementary form, led to a feeling on the men's part that they were being constantly watched on the sly, and to an inability to concentrate. this brought about an inability to feel really honest, for being constantly under suspicion is enough to poison even one's own opinion of one's integrity. again, being at the beck and call of a prejudiced foreman who was all-powerful, and having no assured protection from the whims of such a man, the worker was obliged, practically for self-protection, to try to conciliate the foremen by methods of assuming merits that are obvious, on the surface. he ingratiates himself in the favor of the foreman in that way best adapted to the peculiarities of the character of the foreman, sometimes joining societies, or the church of the foreman, sometimes helping him elect some political candidate or relative; at other times, by the more direct method of buying drinks, or taking up a subscription for presenting the foreman with a gold watch, "in appreciation of his fairness to all;" sometimes by consistently losing at cards or other games of chance. when it is considered that this same foreman was probably, at the time, enjoying a brutal feeling of power, it is no wonder that no sense of confidence of the "square deal" could develop. there are countless ways that the brutal enjoyment of power could be exercised by the man in a foreman's position. as has already been said, some men prefer promotion to a position of power more than anything else. nearly all desire promotion to power for the extra money that it brings, and occasionally, a man will be found who loves the power, although unconsciously, for the pleasure he obtains in lording over other human beings. this quality is present more or less in all human beings. it is particularly strong in the savage, who likes to torture captured human beings and animals, and perhaps the greatest test for high qualifications of character and gentleness is that of having power over other human beings without unnecessarily accenting the difference in the situation. under military management, there is practically no limit to this power, the management being satisfied if the foreman gets the work out of the men, and the men having practically no one to appeal to, and being obliged to receive their punishment always from the hands of a prejudiced party. little possibility of development of will.--being under such influence as this, there is little or no possibility of the development of an intelligent will. the "will to do" becomes stunted, unless the pay is large enough to lead the man to be willing to undergo abuses in order to get the money. there is nothing, moreover, in the aspect of the management itself to lead the man to have a feeling of confidence either in himself, or in the management, and to have that moral poise which will make him wish to advance. real capacity not increased.--with the likelihood of suspicion, hate and jealousy arising, and with constant preparations for conflict, of which the average union and employers' association is the embodiment, naturally, real capacity is not increased, but is rather decreased, under this form of management, and we may ascribe this to three faults: first, to lack of recognition of individuality,--men are handled mostly as gangs, and personality is sunk. second, to lack of standardization, and to lack of time study, that fundamental of all standardization, which leads to absolute inability to make a measured, and therefore scientific judgment, and third, to the lack of teaching; to the lack of all constructiveness. these three lacks, then, constitute a strong reason why traditional management does not add to the welfare of the men. little systematized welfare work under traditional management.--as for welfare work,--that is, work which the employers themselves plan to benefit the men, if under such work be included timely impulses of the management for the men, and the carrying of these out in a more or less systematic way, it will be true to say that such welfare work has existed in all times, and under all forms of management. the kind-hearted man will show his kind heart wherever he is, but it is likewise true to say that little systematic beneficial work is done under what we have defined as traditional management. definite statements as to welfare under transitory management difficult to make.--it is almost impossible to give any statement as to the general welfare of workers under transitory management, because, from the very nature of the case, transitory management is constantly changing. in the discussion of the various chapters, and in showing how individuality, functionalization, measurement, and so on, were introduced, and the psychological effect upon the men of their being introduced, welfare was more or less unsystematically considered. in turning to the discussion under scientific management and showing how welfare is the result of scientific management and is incorporated in it, much as to its growth will be included. welfare work under transitory management is usually commendable.--as to the welfare work under transitory management, much could be said, and much has been said and written. typical welfare work under transitory management deserves nothing but praise. it is the result of the dedication of many beautiful lives to a beautiful cause. it consists of such work as building rest rooms for the employés, in providing for amusements, in providing for better working conditions, in helping to better living conditions, in providing for some sort of a welfare worker who can talk with the employés and benefit them in every way, including being their representative in speaking with the management. an underlying flaw is apparent.--there can be no doubt that an enormous quantity of good has been done by this welfare work, both positively, to the employés themselves, and indirectly, to the management, through fostering a kinder feeling. there is, however, a flaw to be found in the underlying principles of this welfare work as introduced in transitory management, and that is that it takes on more or less the aspect of a charity, and is so regarded both by the employés and by the employer. the employer, naturally, prides himself more or less upon doing something which is good, and the employé naturally resents more or less having something given to him as a sort of charity which he feels his by right. its effect is detrimental.--the psychological significance of this is very great. the employer, feeling that he has bestowed a gift, is, naturally, rather chagrined to find it is received either as a right, or with a feeling of resentment. therefore, he is often led to decrease what he might otherwise do, for it is only an unusual and a very high type of mind that can be satisfied simply with the doing of the good act, without the return of gratitude. on the other hand, the employé, if he be a man of pride, may resent charity even in such a general form as this, and may, with an element of rightness, prefer that the money to be expended be put into his pay envelope, instead. if it is simply a case of better working conditions, something that improves him as an efficient worker for the management, he will feel that this welfare work is in no sense something which he receives as a gift, but rather something which is his right, and which benefits the employer exactly as much, if not more than it benefits him. welfare work not self-perpetuating.--another fault which can be found with the actual administration of the welfare work, is the fact that it often disregards one of the fundamental principles of scientific management, in that the welfare workers themselves do not train enough people to follow in their footsteps, and thus make welfare self-perpetuating. in one case which the writer has in mind, a noble woman is devoting her life to the welfare of a body of employés in an industry which greatly requires such work. the work which she is doing is undoubtedly benefiting these people in every aspect, not only of their business but of their home lives, but it is also true that should she be obliged to give up the work, or be suddenly called away, the work would practically fall to pieces. it is built up upon her personality, and, wonderful as it is, its basis must be recognized as unscientific and temporary. scientific provision for welfare under scientific management.-- under scientific management general welfare is provided for by:-- the effect that the work has on physical improvement. this we shall discuss under three headings-- . the regularity of the work. . habits. . physical development. as for the regularity of the work--we have (a) the apportionment of the work and the rest. under scientific management, work time and rest time are scientifically apportioned. this means that the man is able to come to each task with the same amount of strength, and that from his work he gains habits of regularity. (b) the laying out of the work. the standards upon which the instruction cards are based, and the method of preparing them, assure regularity. (c) the manner of performing the work. every time that identical work is done, it is done in an identical manner. the resulting regularity has an excellent effect upon the physical welfare of the worker. . habits, under scientific management, (a) are prescribed by standards. the various physical habits of the man, the motions that are used, having all been timed and then standardized, the worker acquires physical habits that are fixed. (b) are taught;[ ] therefore they are not remote but come actually and promptly into the consciousness and into the action of the worker. (c) are retained, because they are standard habits and because the rewards which are given for using them make it an object to the worker to retain them. (d) are reënforced by individuality and functionalization; that is to say, the worker is considered as an individual, and his possibilities are studied, before he is put into the work; therefore, his own individuality and his own particular function naturally reënforce those habits which he is taught to form. these habits, being scientifically derived, add to physical improvement. . physical development (a) is fostered through the play element, has been scientifically studied, and is utilized as far as possible; the same is true of the love of work, which is reënforced by the fact that the man has been placed where he will have the most love for his work. (b) is insured by the love of contest, which is provided for not only by contest with others, but by the constant contest of the worker with his own previous records. when he does exceed these records he utilizes powers which it is for his good physically, as well as otherwise, to utilize. results of physical improvement.--this regularity, good habits, and physical development, result in good health, increased strength and a better appearance. to these three results all scientific managers testify. an excellent example of this is found in mr. gantt's "work, wages and profits," where the increased health, the better color and the better general appearance of the workers under scientific management is commented on as well as the fact that they are inspired by their habits to dress themselves better and in every way to become of a higher type.[ ] mental development.--welfare under scientific management is provided for by mental development. this we may discuss under habits, and under general mental development. . as for habits we must consider (a) habits of attention. under scientific management, as we have shown, attention must become a habit. only when it does become a habit, can the work required be properly performed, and the reward received. as only those who show themselves capable of really receiving the reward are considered to be properly placed, ultimately all who remain at work under scientific management must attain this habit of attention. (b) habit of method of attack. this not only enables the worker to do the things that he is assigned satisfactorily, but also has the broadening effect of teaching him how to do other things, i.e., showing him the "how" of doing things, and giving him standards which are the outcome of mental habits, and by which he learns to measure. . general mental development is provided for by the experience which the worker gets not only in the general way in which all who work must give experience, but in the set way provided for by scientific management. this is so presented to the worker that it becomes actually usable at once. this not only allows him to judge others, but provides for self-knowledge, which is one of the most valuable of all of the outcomes of scientific management. he becomes mentally capable of estimating his own powers and predicting what he himself is capable of doing. the outcome of this mental development is (a) wider interest. (b) deeper interest. (c) increased mental capabilities. the better method of attack would necessarily provide for wider interest. the fact that any subject taken up is in its ultimate final unit form, would certainly lead to deeper interest; and the exercise of these two faculties leads to increased mental capabilities. moral development.--moral development under scientific management results from the provisions made for cultivating-- . personal responsibility. . responsibility for others. . appreciation of standing. . self-control. . "squareness." . personal responsibility is developed by (a) individual recognition. when the worker was considered merely as one of a gang, it was very easy for him to shift responsibilities upon others. when he knows that he is regarded by the management, and by his mates, as an individual, that what he does will show up in an individual record, and will receive individual reward or punishment, necessarily personal responsibility is developed. moreover, this individual recognition is brought to his mind by his being expected to fill out his own instruction card. in this way, his personal responsibility is specifically brought home to him. (b) the appreciation which comes under scientific management. this appreciation takes the form of reward and promotion, and of the regard of his fellow-workers; therefore, being a growing thing, as it is under scientific management, it insures that his personal responsibility, shall also be a growing thing, and become greater the longer he works under scientific management. . responsibility for others is provided for by the inter-relation of all functions. it is not necessary that all workers under scientific management should understand all about it. however, many do understand, and the more that they do understand, the more they realize that everybody working under scientific management is more or less dependent upon everybody else. every worker must feel this, more or less, when he realizes that there are eight functional bosses over him, who are closely related to him, on whom he is dependent, and who are more or less dependent upon him. the very fact that the planning is separated from the performing, means that more men are directly interested in any one piece of work; in fact, that every individual piece of work that is done is in some way a bond between a great number of men, some of whom are planning and some of whom are performing it. this responsibility for others is made even more close in the dependent bonuses which are a part of scientific management, a man's pay being dependent upon the work of those who are working under him. certainly, nothing could bring the fact more closely to the attention of each and every worker under this system, than associating it with the pay envelope. . appreciation of standing is fostered by (a) individual records. through these the individual himself knows what he has done, his fellows know, and the management knows. (b) comparative records, which show even those who might not make the comparison, exactly how each worker stands, with relation to his mates, or with relation to his past records. this appreciation of standing is well exemplified in the happy phrasing of mr. gantt--"there is in every workroom a fashion, or habit of work, and the new worker follows that fashion, for it isn't respectable not to. the man or woman who ignores fashion does not get much pleasure from associating with those that follow it, and the new member consequently tries to fall in with the sentiment of the community.[ ] our chart shows that the stronger the sentiment in favor of industry is, the harder the new member tries and the sooner he succeeds." . self-control is developed by (a) the habits of inhibition fostered by scientific management,--that is to say, when the right habits are formed, necessarily many wrong habits are eliminated. it becomes a part of scientific management to inhibit all inattention and wrong habits, and to concentrate upon the things desired. this is further aided by (b) the distinct goal and the distinct task which scientific management gives, which allow the man to hold himself well in control, to keep his poise and to advance steadily. . "squareness." this squareness is exemplified first of all by the attitude of the management. it provides, in every way, that the men are given a "square deal," in that the tasks assigned are of the proper size, and that the reward that is given is of the proper dimensions, and is assured. this has already been shown to be exemplified in many characteristics of scientific management, and more especially in the inspection and in the disciplining. moral development results in contentment, brotherhood and the "will to do".--the three results of this moral development are . contentment . brotherhood . a "will to do." . contentment is the outgrowth of the personal responsibility, the appreciation of standing, and the general "squareness" of the entire plan of scientific management. . the idea of brotherhood is fostered particularly through the responsibility for others, through the feeling that grows up that each man is dependent upon all others, and that it is necessary for every man to train up another man to take his place before he can be advanced. thus it comes about that the old caste life, which so often grew up under traditional management, becomes abolished, and there ensues a feeling that it is possible for any man to grow up into any other man's place. the tug-of-war attitude of the management and men is transformed into the attitude of a band of soldiers scaling a wall. not only is the worker pulled up, but he is also forced up from the bottom.[ ] . the "will to do" is so fostered by scientific management that not only is the worker given every incentive, but he, personally, becomes inspired with this great desire for activity, which is after all the best and finest thing that any system of work can give to him. interrelation of physical, mental and moral development.--as to the interrelation of physical, mental and moral development, it must never be forgotten that the mind and the body must be studied together,[ ] and that this is particularly true in considering the mind in management.[ ] for the best results of the mind, the body must be cared for, and provided for, fully as much as must the mind, or the best results from the mind will not, and cannot, be obtained. successful management must consider the results of all mental states upon the health, happiness and prosperity of the worker, and the quality, quantity and cost of the output. that is to say, unless the mind is kept in the right state, with the elimination of worry, the body cannot do its best work, and, in the same way, unless the body is kept up to the proper standard, the mind cannot develop. therefore, a really good system of management must consider not only these things separately, but in their interrelation,--and this scientific management does. result of physical, mental and moral development is increased capacity.--the ultimate result of all this physical improvement, mental development and moral development is increased capacity, increased capacity not only for work, but for health, and for life in general. welfare work an integral part of scientific management.-- strictly speaking, under scientific management, there should be no necessity for a special department of welfare work. it should be so incorporated in scientific management that it is not to be distinguished. here the men are looked out for in such a way under the operation of scientific management itself that there is no necessity for a special welfare worker. this is not to say that the value of personality will disappear under scientific management, and that it may not be necessary in some cases to provide for nurses, for physical directors, and for advisers. it will, however, be understood that the entire footing of these people is changed under scientific management. it is realized under scientific management that these people, and their work, benefit the employers as much as the employés. they must go on the regular payroll as a part of the efficiency equipment. the workers must understand that there is absolutely no feeling of charity, or of gift, in having them; that they add to the perfectness of the entire establishment. summary results of welfare to the work.--because of welfare work, of whatever type, more and better work is accomplished, with only such expenditure of effort as is beneficial to the worker. not only does the amount of work done increase, but it also tends to become constant, after it has reached its standard expected volume. result of welfare work to the worker.--this description of welfare of the men under scientific management, in every sense of the word welfare, has been very poor and incomplete if from it the reader has not deduced the fact that scientific management enables the worker not only to lead a fuller life in his work, but also outside his work; that it furnishes him hours enough free from the work to develop such things as the work cannot develop; that it furnishes him with health and interest enough to go into his leisure hours with a power to develop himself there; that it furnishes him with a broader outlook, and, best of all, with a capacity of judging for himself what he needs most to get. in other words, if scientific management is what it claims to be, it leads to the development of a fuller life in every sense of the word, enabling the man to become a better individual in himself, and a better member of his community. if it does not do this it is not truly scientific management. miss edith wyatt has said, very beautifully, at the close of her book, "making both ends meet"[ ]: "no finer dream was ever dreamed than that the industry by which the nation lives, should be so managed as to secure for the men and women engaged in it their real prosperity, their best use of their highest powers. how far scientific management will go toward realizing the magnificent dream in the future, will be determined by the greatness of spirit and the executive genius with which its principles are sustained by all the people interested in its inauguration, the employers, the workers and the engineers." we wish to modify the word "dream" to the word "plan." the plan of scientific management is right, and, as miss wyatt says, is but waiting for us to fulfill the details that are laid out before us. conclusion.--the results thus far attained by scientific management justify a prediction as to its future. it will accomplish two great works. . it will educate the worker to the point where workers will be fitted to work, and to live. . it will aid the cause of industrial peace. it will put the great power of knowledge into every man's hands. this it must do, as it is founded on coöperation, and this coöperation demands that all shall know and shall be taught. with this knowledge will come ability to understand the rights of others as well as one's own. "to know all is to pardon all." necessity for coöperation, and trained minds:--these two can but lead to elimination of that most wasteful of all warfare--industrial warfare. such will be the future of scientific management,--whether it win universal approval, universal disapproval, or half-hearted advocacy to-day. when the day shall come that the ultimate benefits of scientific management are realized and enjoyed, depends on both the managers and the workers of the country; but, in the last analysis, the greatest power towards hastening the day lies in the hands of the workers. to them scientific management would desire to appeal as a road up and out from industrial monotony and industrial turmoil. there are many roads that lead to progress. this road leads straightest and surest,--and we can but hope that the workers of all lands, and of our land in particular, will not wait till necessity drives, but will lead the way to that true "brotherhood" which may some day come to be. chapter x footnotes: =============================================== . h.l. gantt, _work, wages and profits_, p. , p. . . pp. - . . h.l. gantt, _work, wages and profits_, pp. - . . f.w. taylor, _shop management_, para. , harper ed., p. . . william james, _psychology, advanced course_. vol. ii, p. . . see remarkable work of dr. a. imbert, _evaluation de la capacite de travail d'un ouvrier avant et apres un accident; les methodes du laboratoire appliquees a l'etude directe et pratique des questions ouvrieres._ . clark and wyatt, macmillan, pp. - . ==================================================================== index accidents, prevention by measuring devices, . prevention by standardization, . "all round" men utilized by scientific management, . ambition, use of, . american journal of physiology-- , . analysis, amount governed by nature of work, . definition of, . field of psychology in, . training should be provided in schools, . worker should understand process, . analysis and synthesis, cost the determining factor, . effect on work of, . effect on worker of, . place in traditional management, . place in transitory management, . under scientific management, . use by psychology, . analysist, duties of, . qualifications of, . animals, standardization of work with, . appreciation, under scientific management, . apprentices, teaching of, . approbation, as an incentive, . athletic contests, description of, . attention, forming habit of, . gaining of, . held by bulletin board, . relation to fatigue, . relation to instruction card, . relation to placing of workers, . babbage, charles--"economy of manufacturers," , , . barth, c.g.--"a.s.m.e. paper ," , . blan, l.b.--"special study of incidence of retardation," . body, relation of mind to, , . bonus, definition of, . investigation of loss of, . brashear, john, . breakdowns, prevented by measuring devices, . brotherhood, coming of, . under scientific management, . bulletin board, aids attention, . benefit of, . calkins, m.w.--"a first book in psychology," , , . card, instruction, . capacity, increasing of, , . class, relation to individual, . clothing, in sports, . standards, . constructiveness, benefits of, . contentment, under scientific management, . cooke, m.l.--"bulletin no. carnegie foundation," , , , . coöperation, necessity for, , , . relation to incentives, . cost, determining factor in analysis and synthesis, . curiosity, under scientific management, . dana, r.t.--"handbook of steam shovel work," . dana and saunders--"rock drilling," . day, charles--"industrial plants," . day work, description of, . decision of choice, elimination of, . demonstration, value of, . development, mental, , . moral, . devices, standard, need for, . differential bonus, description of, . differential rate piece, description of, . discharge, avoidance of, . disciplinarian, duties of, , . disciplining, psychology of, . under scientific management, , . under traditional management, . dodge, james m., . "discussion to paper a.s.m.e.," . driver management, . efficiency, controlling factor in, . measured by time and motion study, . securing of, . emulation, use of, . "engineering," london, sept , , . equipment, measured by motion study and time study, . standardization of, . errors, checking of, . exception principle, records made on, . value of, . fatigue, eliminating of, . importance of, . influence of distracted attention on, . relation to standards, . fear, treatment of, . fines, use of, . first class man, definition of, , . foreman, duties of, . duties under scientific management, . qualifications of, , . foremanship, functionalized, , functional foreman, as teacher, . functional foremanship, teaching feature of, , . functionalization, definition of, . effect upon work of, . effect upon worker of, . under scientific management, , . under traditional management, . under transitory management, . use by psychology, . functions, basis of division into, s. place of operation of, . gain-sharing, definition of, . objections to, . gang boss, duties of, . gang instruction card, description of, , . gantt, h.l.--"a.s.m.e. paper ," , . "a.s.m.e. paper no. ," . "work, wages and profits," , , , , . gilbreth, f.b.--"bricklaying system," . "cost reducing system," , , , . "motion study," , , . gillette, h.p.--"a.s.e.c. paper no. ," , . "cost analysis engineering," . gillette and dana--"cost keeping and management engineering," , , . given man, definition of, . going, c.b.--"methods of the sante fe," . government, duty in measurement of, . habit, importance of, . methods of instilling, . relation to standards, . relation to teaching, . habits, necessity of forming, . of attention, . of motions, right, . standardizing of, . under scientific management, . hathaway, h.k.--"machinery," nov., , . holidays, effectiveness as reward, . idiosyncrasies, emphasis on, . iles, george--"inventors at work," . imagination, under scientific management, . imitation, use of, . improvement, physical, . incentives, classes of, . definition of, . direct, . importance of, . indirect, . individual, . relation to coöperation, . relation to interest, . relation to knowledge, . relation to standards, . result on work of, . result on worker of, . under scientific management, . individual, as unit, . differences respected, . importance of study of, . relation to class, . individuality, definition of, . development of, . psychological emphasis on, . recognition under scientific management, . recognition under transitory management, . relation to instruction card, . relation to standardization, . relation to teaching, . result upon work, . result upon worker, . status under traditional management, . industrial engineering, . industrial peace, relation of scientific management to, . initiative, records of, . initiative and incentive management, . inspector, duties of, . instruction card, as teacher, . clerk, duties of, . contents of, . definition of, . educative value of, . gang, . help to memory of, . individuality under, . language of, . relation to attention, . types of, . interest, relation to incentives, . interim management, . invention, fostered by comparing methods, . invention, relation scientific management, . under standardization, . james, william--"psychology," . "psychology, briefer course," . job, long time, provision for, . short time, provision for, . journeymen, teaching of, . judgment, derivation of, . result of teaching, . securing of, . knowledge, as an incentive, , transferred under scientific management, . ladd, g.t.--definition of psychology, . le chatelier, h.--"discussion to paper , a.s.m.e," . long time job, provision for, . loyalty, under scientific management, . man, first class definition of, , . given, definition of, . standard, definition of, . management, change in meaning of, . definition of, . driver, . good foundation of, . initiative and incentive, , interim, . marquis of queensbury, . military, . place of analysis and synthesis in, . place to start study of, . scientific, . successful, definition of, , teaching of, . three stages of, . traditional, definition of, . traditional, preferable name for, , . transitory, . types of, . ultimate, . value of study of, , . manufacturers, duty toward measurement, . manual training, necessity for, . marquis of queensbury management, . measurement, coöperation of worker under, . definition of, . duty of government toward, . effect upon worker of, . elimination of waste by, . importance in management, importance in psychology, . methods in psychology, . methods under scientific management, . necessity for training in, . of teaching and learning, . problems in management, . relation to task of, . results to work of, . selection of units, . under scientific management, . under traditional management, . under transitory management, . measured functional management, . measurer, qualifications of, . measuring devices, prevent accidents and breakdowns, . memory, relation to scientific management, . metcalfe, henry--"cost of manufactures," , . method of attack, standardization of, . methods, benefits of comparison of, . introduction of new, . measurement by motion study and time study, . micro-motion study, definition of, . demands coöperation, . military management, . mind, relation of body to, , . mnemonic symbols, advantages of, . use of, . motion cycles, use in teaching, . motions, habits of right, . teaching of right, . motion study, aims of, . definition of, . measurement by, . scope of, . münsterburg, hugo--"american problems," , , , , . native reactions, use of, , . object lessons, value of, . observation, dangers of surreptitious, . necessity for unbiased, . observed worker, qualifications of, . observer, qualifications of, . relation of vocational guidance bureau, . one-talent men, utilized by scientific management, . oral teaching, advantages of, . order of work clerk, duties of, . outputs, advantages of recording, . advantages of separating, . handling under traditional management, . relation to individuality, . ownership, use of feeling of, . parkhurst, f.a.--"applied methods of scientific management," . pay, subdivisions of, . use of, . performing, separated from planning, . personality, value of, . piece work, description of, . planning, a life study, . an epoch-making example of, . detailed done by all under scientific management, . hardship to worker of individual, . open to all who like it, . separated from performing, . taken from all who dislike it, . wastefulness of individual, . planning department, work of, . pin plan, description of, . premium plan, description of, . pride, stimulation of, . professional standing as an incentive, . profit-sharing, description of, . objections to, . relation to scientific management, . programme, as routing, . definition of, . derived from record under scientific management, . relation to records, . result to work and worker of, . types of, . under traditional management, . under transitory management, . promotion, provision for under scientific management, , . use of, . psychology, aid to industries by, . appreciation of scientific management by, . psychology, definition of, , . experimental field of, . relation to progress, . value of study of, , . psychology of management, conclusions of, . definition of, . description and outline of, . importance of, , , . outline of method of, . plan of study in, . pugnacity, usefulness of, . punishment, avoidance of, . classes of, . definition of, . nature of, . under traditional management, . quality, maintenance of, . standardization of, . rate, necessity of maintaining, . reason, education of, . recognition, individual, . records, advantages of, . definition of, . educative value of, , . individual, . making by workers of, , . necessity for detailed, . of achievement, . of good behavior, . of initiative, . posting of, . relation to incentives, . relation to programmes, . result to work of, . result on worker of, . test of worth of, . types of, , . under scientific management, . under traditional management, . under transitory management, . records and programmes, result on work of, . records and programmes, result on worker of, . repair boss, duties of, . responsibility, under scientific management, . rest, provision for, . reward, assured, . attainability of, . benefits of positive, . definition of, . fixed, . nature of, . personal, . predetermined, . results of, . under scientific management, . under traditional management, , . under transitory management, . rhythm, securing of, . route chart, description of, . route clerk, duties of, . schloss, david f.--"methods of industrial remuneration," , . scientific management, appreciation by psychologists of, . athletic contests under, . brotherhood under, . change in mental attitude under, . contentment under, . definition of, , . derivation of, . development of men under, . disciplining under, . divisions of, . duties of foremen under, . emulation under, . final results of, . functionalization under, , . importance of teaching under, . incentives under, . individual task under, , measurement under, . methods of measurement under, . opportunities in, . place of workers under, . provision for specialists under, . provides for same detailed planning by all, . place of analysis and synthesis in, . possibility of prophecy under, . promotion of men under, . relation of all parts of, . relation to imagination, . relation to individuality, . relation to individual records, . relation to industrial peace, . relation to invention, . relation to memory, . relation to profit snaring, . relation to traditional management, . relation to welfare, . rewards under, , . results in loyalty, . selection of workers under, . standardization under, . stimulation of pride by, . supplements demanded by, . teaching of apprentices under, . teaching of journeymen under, . training of will under, . transference of knowledge under, . underlying ideas of, . use of ambition by, . use of curiosity, . use of imitation, . utilization of "all round" men under, . utilization of one-talent men by, . vocabulary, interest of, . vocabulary, poverty, . "will to do" under, . self control, development of, . sense training, importance of, . methods of, . scope of, . short time job, provision for, . smith, adam--"wealth of nations," , . soldiering, disadvantages of, . specialists, provision under scientific management for, . specializing, encouraged under scientific management, . speed boss, duties of, . square deal, need for, . squareness, under scientific management, . standards, derivation of, . effect of, . relation to automatic response, . relation to habit, . relation to incentive, , . relation to "judgment," . relation to phrasing, . relation to psychology, . relations to systems, . relation to task, . result of measurement, . "standard amount," definition of, . standard clothing, . standard man, definition of, . standardization, definition of, . develops individuality, . invention under, . of clothing, . of devices, . of equipment, . of method of attack, . of nomenclature, . of quality, . of tools, . prevention of accidents by, . progress of, . purpose of, . standardization, relation to initiative, . result to work of, . result to worker of, . under scientific management, . under traditional management, . under transitory management, . universality of application, . waste eliminated by, . stratton--"experimental psychology and culture," , , , , . suggestion, use of, . suggestion card, description of, . sully, james--"the teacher's handbook of psychology," , , , . synthesis, definition of, . importance of selection in, . relation to task, . synthesist, duties of, . qualifications of, . systems, definition of, . importance of, . incentives to follow, . inelasticity of, . relations to standards of, . teaching power of, . value in transitory management, . task, advantage to name for, . applied to work of all, . definition under scientific management, . individual under scientific management, . measured by motion study and time study, . organization, . relation to measurement of, . relation to standard, . result of synthesis, . under traditional management, . unfortunate name of, . task wage, definition of, . task work with a bonus, . taylor, f.w.--"a.s.m.e. transactions, vol. ," . "a.s.m.e. paper ," , . "on the art of cutting metals," , . "piece rate system, a," . "principles of scientific management," , , , , . "shop management," , , , , , , , , , , , . taylor and thompson--"concrete plain and reinforced," . teaching, availability of, equipment of, . functional foreman as, . training of, . teaching, availability of, . by motion cycles, . definition of, . devices of, . future of, . involved in functional foremanship, . measurement of, . methods of, . need of, . of right motions, . of untrained worked, . oral, , . psychological basis of, . relation to habit, . relation to individuality, . results in judgment, . results to work of, . results to worker of, . scope of, . sources of, . under scientific management, . under traditional management, , . under transitory management, . three rate with increased rate, description of, . time and cost clerk, duties of, . time study, aims of, . definition of, importance to worker of, . measurement by, . scope of, . "tolerance," provision for, . tools, standard, need for, . towne, h.r.--"introduction to scientific management," . traditional management, definition of, , . disciplining under, . functionalization under, . handling of output under, . measurement under, . place of analysis and synthesis in, . position of workers under, . preferable name for, . programme under, . punishment under, . records under, . reward under, , . selecting workers under, . standardization under, . tasks under, . teaching under, , . treatment of individuality, . welfare under, , . transitory management, functionalization under, . measurement under, . place of analysis and synthesis in, . programmes under, . recognition of individuality, . records under, , . reward under, . standardization under, . teaching under, . value of systems in, . welfare under, . ultimate management, . u.s. bulletin of agriculture, no. , . units of measurement, selection of, . vocabulary, importance of scientific management, . vocational guidance, duties of, . relation to teaching, . vocational guidance bureau, training of observers by, . work of, . wages, definition of, . waste, eliminated by measurement, . eliminated by standardization, . welfare, definition of, . individual, . relation to traditional management, . relation to transitory management, . result to work of, . result on worker of, . under scientific management, . welfare work, relation to scientific management, . under traditional management, . white list file, description of, . will, development of, . education of, . training of, . will to do, under scientific management, . work, effect of analysis and synthesis on, . effect of functionalization upon, . necessity for regularity in, . result of incentives to, . result of individuality upon, . results of measurement on, . result of programme on, . result of records on, , . work, result of standardization on, . results of teaching on, . result of welfare on, . worker, advantages of functionalization to, . appreciation of time study by, . capacity of, . change in mental attitude under scientific management, . coöperation under measurement of, . development through records, . effect of analysis and synthesis on, . effect of functionalization upon, . effect of measurement upon, . given planning if he likes it, . hardship of individual planning to, . making of records by, . observed, qualifications of, . observed, securing coöperation of, . place under scientific management, . position under traditional management, . records made by, . relation to process of analysis, . relation to standardization, . relieved of planning if he dislikes it, , rest periods for, . result of incentives on, . result of individuality upon, . result of programme on, , . result of records to, , . results of standardization to, . results of teaching on, . result of welfare on, . rewards of, . selection under scientific management, . selection under traditional management, . untrained, teaching of, . variables of, . working models, value of, . transcriber's note: the author's use of three asterisks (* * *) to serve as ellipses has been preserved as printed in the original publication. the psychology of salesmanship by william walker atkinson l.n. fowler & company , imperial arcade, ludgate circus london, e.c., england the elizabeth towne co. holyoke, mass. copyright by elizabeth towne the psychology of salesmanship contents chapter page i. psychology in business ii. the mind of the salesman iii. the mind of the salesman (continued) iv. the mind of the buyer v. the mind of the buyer (continued) vi. the pre-approach vii. the psychology of purchase viii. the approach ix. the demonstration x. the closing chapter i psychology in business until the last few years the mere mention of the word "psychology" in connection with business was apt to be greeted with a shrug of the shoulders, a significant raising of the eyebrows--and a change of the subject. psychology was a subject that savored of the class room, or else was thought to be somehow concerned with the soul, or possibly related to the abnormal phenomena generally classified as "psychic." the average business man was apt to impatiently resent the introduction into business of class room topics, or speculation regarding the soul, or of theories and tales regarding clairvoyance, telepathy, or general "spookiness"--for these were the things included in his concept of "psychology." but a change has come to the man in business. he has heard much of late years regarding psychology in business affairs, and has read something on the subject. he understands now that psychology means "the science of the mind" and is not necessarily the same as metaphysics or "psychism." he has had brought home to him the fact that psychology plays a most important part in business, and that it is quite worth his while to acquaint himself with its fundamental principles. in fact, if he has thought sufficiently on the subject, he will have seen that the entire process of selling goods, personally, or by means of advertising or display, is essentially a mental process depending upon the state of mind induced in the purchaser, and that these states of mind are induced solely by reason of certain established principles of psychology. whether the salesman, or advertiser, realizes this or not, he is employing psychological principles in attracting the attention, arousing the interest, creating the desire, and moving the will of the purchaser of his goods. the best authorities on salesmanship and advertising now recognize this fact and emphasize it in their writings. george french, in his "_art and science of advertising_" says regarding psychology in advertising: "so we can dismiss the weird word, and simply acknowledge that we can sell things to a man more readily if we know the man. we can't personally know every man to whom we wish to sell goods. we must therefore consider if there are not certain ways of thinking and of acting which are common to all men, or to a large proportion of men. if we can discover the laws governing the action of men's minds we will know how to appeal to those men. we know how to appeal to smith, because we know smith. we know what will please brown, because we know brown. we know how to get our way with jones, because we know jones. what the advertiser must know is how to get at smith, brown, and jones without knowing any of them. while every man has his personal peculiarities, and while every mind has its peculiar method of dealing with the facts of life, every man and every mind is controlled, in a large sense and to a great extent, by predilections and mind-workings which were established before he lived, and are operated in a manner separate from his personality. our minds are more automatic, more mechanical, than we are willing to admit. that which we loosely call mind is largely the automatic expression of tendencies controlled by physical conditions wholly apart from conscious intellectual or moral motives or qualities. what those physical conditions are, and how the knowledge of what they are may be utilized by advertisers, forms the body of that new knowledge some like to call psychology, so far as it concerns advertising." mr. french has well expressed the idea of the important part played in business by psychology. what he says is, of course, as applicable to personal salesmanship as to salesmanship through advertisements--the same principles are present and operative in both cases. in order to bring to the mind of the reader the full idea of the operation of psychological principles in the sale of goods, we shall mention a few particular instances in which these principles have played a part. each reader will be able to recollect many similar instances, once his attention is called to the matter. prof. halleck, a well known authority on psychology says: "business men say that the ability to gain the attention is often the secret of success in life. enormous salaries are paid to persons who can write advertisements certain to catch the eye. a publisher said that he had sold only five thousand copies of an excellent work, merely because it had failed to catch the attention of many, and that twenty-five thousand copies could have been disposed of in the same time, if agents had forced them upon the notice of people. druggists say that any kind of patent medicine can be sold, if it is so advertised as to strike the attention in a forcible manner. business life has largely resolved itself into a battle to secure the attention of people." the same excellent authority says, regarding the effect of associated ideas: "an eminent philosopher has said that man is completely at the mercy of the association of his ideas. every new object is seen in the light of its associated ideas. * * * the principle of the association of ideas is sufficient to account for the change in fashions. a woman in a southern city had a bonnet that she particularly admired, until she one day saw three negresses wearing precisely the same pattern. she never appeared again in that bonnet. when a style of dress becomes 'common,' and is worn by the lower classes, it is discarded by the fashionable people. fashions that are absolutely repulsive will often be adopted if they are introduced by popular or noted people. * * * a knowledge of the power of the association of ideas is of the utmost importance in business. one man has his store so planned that all its associations are pleasing, from the manner of the clerks to the fixtures and drapery. another store brings up unpleasant associations. * * * when negligee hats first made their appearance, a shrewd hatter sent for a well-dressed and popular collegian and offered him his choice of the best hats in the store, if he would wear a negligee hat for three days. he objected to making such an exhibition of himself, until he was flattered by the hatter's wager that the hats could, in this way, be made the fashion for the entire town. when the collegian first put in his appearance on the campus with the hat, he was guyed for his oddity. late in the afternoon, some of his friends concluded that the hat looked so well that they would invest. on the following day large numbers reached the same conclusion. for some time after this the hatter found difficulty in keeping a sufficient supply in stock. had an unpopular or poorly dressed man appeared first on the campus with that hat, the result would have been the reverse. the hat would have been the same, but the association of ideas would have differed. some of the ladies of fashion in a large european city selected on their own responsibility, without consulting the milliners, a cheap spring manilla hat, which was very handsome. the milliners found themselves with a high-priced stock for which there was no demand. they held a council, bought a large number of the cheap hats, and put them on the heads of all the female street sweepers and scavengers in the town. when the ladies of fashion went out the next day, they were amazed to see the very dregs of the city arrayed in headgear like their own. it was not very long before the result was what might have been expected." in a previous work of the present writer, the following illustrations of the effect of psychological suggestion in advertising were used: the use of the "direct command" as the "ad. men" call it, is very common. people are positively told to do certain things in these advertisements. they are told to "take home a cake of hinky-dink's soap tonight; your wife needs it!" and they do it. or they see a mammoth hand pointing down at them from a sign, and almost hear the corresponding mammoth voice as it says (in painted words): "say you! smoke honey-dope cigars; they're the best ever!!!" and, if you manage to reject the command the first time, you will probably yield at the repeated suggestion of the same thing being hurled at you at every corner and high fence, and "honey-dope" will be your favorite brand until some other suggestion catches you. suggestion by authority and repetition, remember; that's what does the business for you! they call this the "direct command" in the advertising schools. then there are some other subtle forms of suggestion in advertising. you see staring from every bit of space, on billboard and in newspapers and magazines: "uwanta cracker," or something of that sort--and you usually wind up by acquiescing. and then you are constantly told that "babies howl for grandma hankin's infantile soother," and then when you hear some baby howling you think of what you have been told they are howling for, and then you run and buy a bottle of "grandma hankin's." then you are told that some cigar is "generously liberal" in size and quality; or that some kind of cocoa is "grateful and refreshing"; or that some brand of soap is " . % pure"; etc., etc. only last night i saw a new one--"somebody's whisky is smooth," and every imbiber in the car was smacking his lips and thinking about the "smooth" feeling in his mouth and throat. it _was_ smooth--the idea, not the stuff, i mean. and some other whiskey man shows a picture of a glass, a bottle, some ice and a syphon of seltzer, with simply these words: "oldboy's highball--that's all!" all of these things are suggestions, and some of them are very powerful ones, too, when constantly impressed upon the mind by repetition. * * * i have known dealers in spring goods to force the season by filling their windows with their advance stock. i have seen hat dealers start up the straw hat season by putting on a straw themselves, their clerks ditto, and then a few friends. the sprinkling of "straws" gave a suggestion to the street, and the straw hat season was opened. dr. herbert a. parkyn, an authority on suggestion, draws the following picture from life of a retail merchant who is suffering from the effect of adverse psychological influences resulting from his pessimistic mental attitude. the present writer can vouch for the accuracy of dr. parkyn's picture, for he knows the original of the sketch. dr. parkyn says of the storekeeper: "he is the proprietor of a store in a neighboring city; but such a store--it almost gives me the blues to go into it! his windows are dressed year in and year out with the same old signs, and there is nothing to give the store the cheerful appearance so essential to an up-to-date business establishment. but the atmosphere of the place is only in keeping with the proprietor. when he started in business thirty years ago he employed eight clerks, but his business has fallen off till he does all the work himself and is scarcely able now to pay rent, although competitors around him are increasing their business steadily every year. in the course of a fifteen minute's conversation, the first time i met him, he told me all his troubles, which were many. according to his story, everyone had been trying to get the better of him ever since he started in business; his competitors resorted to unfair business methods; his landlord was endeavoring to drive him out by raising his rent; he could not get an honest clerk in his store; an old man had not an equal chance with a young man; he could not understand why people he had catered to so faithfully should be so ungrateful or so fickle as to give their patronage to every upstart who went into business in the same line as his; he supposed that he could work along, as he was doing, from morning till night without a holiday till he was driven to the poorhouse or died, and although he had been in the same stand for fifteen years there was not a single person he could call on if in need of a friend, etc. although i have had occasion to visit him many times during business hours, i have never heard him address a cheerful or encouraging remark to a customer. on the other hand he waited on them, not only with an air of indifference, but apparently as if he were doing them a favor by allowing them to trade at his store, while others who dropped in to ask permission to use his telephone or to enquire about residents in the neighborhood were soon given to understand by his manner and answers that he considered them a nuisance and hoped they had not mistaken his store for an information bureau. i have purposely led him into other channels of conversation, with the same result; everything was going to the dogs--the city, the country, etc. no matter what was talked about, his remarks were saturated with pessimism. he was ready to blame everything and everyone for his condition, and when i ventured to suggest that much of his trouble was due to his attitude he was ready to show me to the door. * * * if he would but cast his bread upon the waters for a few weeks by bestowing a smile here and a smile there, or a cheerful encouraging word to this customer and that customer, he would certainly feel better for the giving, and they would return to him a thousand fold. if he would only assume that he is prosperous and proceed to give his store an air of prosperity, how much more attractive he could make his place look and how much more inviting it would be for customers! if he would assume that every person that entered his store was his guest, whether he made a purchase or not, people would feel like returning to his store when they wanted anything in his line. i could suggest a hundred ways in which this man could employ suggestion and auto-suggestion to increase his business, to draw friends to him, instead of driving them away, and to make the world and himself better and happier while he lives in it." but, you may ask, what has all this to do with psychology in salesmanship--what has the matter of advertising, store display, personal manner, etc., to do with salesmanship? just this much, that all these things are based on the same fundamental principles as is salesmanship, and that these fundamental principles are those of psychology. all that has been said refers to psychology--all is the effect of psychology pure and simple. all depends upon the mental attitude, the suggestions offered, the mental states induced, the motive to the will--all these outward things are merely the effects of inner mental states. j.w. kennedy, in "judicious advertising" says: "advertising is just salesmanship on paper; a mere money-making means of selling goods rapidly. that 'mysterious something' is just printed persuasion and its other name is 'selling conviction.' conviction can be imparted at will by those few writers who have closely studied the thought processes by which conviction is induced. the mission of every ad. is to convert readers into buyers." geo. dyers, in the same journal says: "advertising takes into account the sub-conscious impressions, the varying phases of suggestion and association as received through the eye, the psychology of the direct command,--all worth earnest consideration, and seriously to be reckoned with, however we may balk at the terms." seth brown in "salesmanship" says: "to make advertising which will sell goods requires development of the human part of the writer. he must realize the different forces which command attention, interest, desire and conviction. the buyer wants your goods because they will produce for him some definite effect or result. it is this result that the ad. man must keep in mind." "but," you may also say, "after all this 'psychology' seems to be nothing else than what we have always known as 'human nature'--there is nothing new about this." exactly so! psychology is the inner science of human nature. human nature depends entirely upon psychological processes--it is bound up with the activities of the mind. the study of human nature is the study of the minds of people. but whereas the study of human nature, as usually conducted, is a haphazard, hit-or-miss sort of undertaking, the study of the mind, according to the established principles of psychology, is of the nature of the study of science, and is pursued according to scientific methods. particularly in its phase of salesmanship does the study of human nature along the lines of psychology become a science. from the first to the last salesmanship is a psychological subject. every step in the process of a sale is a mental process. the mental attitude and mental expression of the salesman; the mental attitude and mental impression of the customer; the process of arousing the attention, awakening curiosity or interest, creating desire, satisfying the reason, and moving the will--all these are purely mental processes, and the study of them becomes a branch of the study of psychology. the display of goods on the counters, shelves, or windows of a store, or in the hands of the salesman on the road, must be based upon psychological principles. the argument of the salesman must not only be logical but must be so arranged and worded as to arouse certain feelings or faculties within the mind of the prospective buyer--this is psychology. and finally, the closing of the sale, in which the object is to arouse the will of the buyer into final favorable action--this also is psychology. from the entrance of the salesman to the final closing of the sale, each and every step is a psychological process. a sale is the action and reaction of mind upon mind, according to well established psychological principles and rules. salesmanship is essentially a psychological science as all must admit who will give to the subject a logical consideration. to those who object to the term "psychology" because of its newness and unfamiliar sound, we do not care to urge the term. let such cling to their old term of "human nature," remembering however that "human nature" is essentially mental. a dead man, a man asleep or in a trance, or an idiot, manifests no "human nature" in the sense the word is generally used. a man must be alive, wide awake, and in possession of his senses, before he is able to manifest "human nature," and before his "human nature" may be appealed to according to the well known principles. "human nature" cannot be divorced from psychology, try as we may. we do not for a moment wish to imply that salesmanship is entirely dependent upon a knowledge of psychology. there are other factors concerned. for instance, the salesman must possess a practical knowledge of his goods; of the seasons; of the trend of fashion in relation to his line; of the adaptability of certain goods for certain sections. but, waiving for the moment the point that even these are concerned with the mind of people at the last, and admitting that they may be considered as independent of psychology, all of these points will avail nothing if the salesman violates the psychological principles of the sale. give such a man the best goods, of the best house, with a thorough knowledge of the requirements of the trade and the goods themselves, and send him forth to sell those goods. the result will be that his sales will fall below the mark of a man far less well equipped in other respects but who understands the psychology of salesmanship, either intuitively or else by conscious acquirement. inasmuch as the essence of salesmanship is the employment of the proper psychological principles, does it not seem imperative that the salesman should know something of the mind of man--the instrument upon which he must play in plying his vocation? should not the salesman possess the same kind of knowledge of his instrument as does the musician, the mechanic, the artisan, the artist? what would be thought of one who would expect to become an expert swordsman without a knowledge of the principles of fencing, or of one who would expect to become a boxer without mastering the established principle of boxing? the instruments of the salesman are his own mind and the mind of his customers. he should acquaint himself thoroughly with both. chapter ii the mind of the salesman in the psychology of salesmanship there are two important elements, viz: ( ) the mind of the salesman; and ( ) the mind of the buyer. the proposition, or the goods to be sold, constitute the connecting link between the two minds, or the common point upon which the two minds must unite, blend, and come to agreement. the sale itself is the result of the fusion and agreement of the two minds--the product of the action and reaction between them. let us now proceed to a consideration of the two important elements, the two minds involved in the process of salesmanship. beginning our consideration of the mind of the salesman, let us realize that upon his mind depends his character and personality. his character is composed of his individual mental qualities or attributes. his personality is his customary outward expression of his character. both character and personality may be altered, changed and improved. and there is in each person a central _something_ which he calls "i," which is able to order and manifest these changes in his character and personality. while it may be argued plausibly that a man is merely a composite of his characteristics and nothing more, nevertheless there is always in each the consciousness that in his real "i" there is a something which is above and behind characteristics, and which may regulate the latter. without attempting to lead the reader into the maze of metaphysics, or the pitfalls of philosophy, we wish to impress upon him the fact that his mental being has for its innermost centre of consciousness this mysterious "i," the nature of which no one has ever been able to determine, but which when fully realized imparts to one a strength and force undreamed of before. and it is well worth while for everyone seeking self-development and self-improvement to awaken to a clear realization of this "i" within him, to which every faculty, every quality, every characteristic is an instrument of expression and manifestation. the real "you" is not the characteristics or features of personality, which change from time to time, but a permanent, changeless, centre and background of the changes of personality--a something that endures through all changes, and which you simply know as "i." in the volume of this series, entitled "_the new psychology_," in the chapter entitled "the ego, or self" we have spoken of this in detail. further mention would be out of place in the present volume, but we may be pardoned for quoting the following from the said chapter, for we feel that a realization of this "i" is most important to each person who wishes to master his own mind, and to create his own personality. here follows the quotation: "the consciousness of the 'i' is above personality--it is something inseparable from individuality. * * * the consciousness of the 'i' is an actual experience, just as much as is the consciousness of the page before you. * * * the whole subject of the new psychology is bound up with this recognition of the 'i'--it revolves around this 'i' as a wheel around its centre. we regard the mental faculties, powers, organs, qualities, and modes of expression, as merely instruments, tools, or channels of expression of this wonderful something--the self, the pure ego--the 'i.' and this is the message of the new psychology--that you, the 'i,' have at your command a wonderful array of mental instruments, tools, machinery, which if properly used will create for you any kind of personality you may desire. you are the master workman who may make of yourself what you will. but before you can appreciate this truth--before you can make it your own--before you can apply it--you must enter into a recognition and realization of this wonderful 'i' that you are, to which body and senses, yea, even the mind itself, are but channels of expression. you are something more than body, or senses, or mind--you are that wonderful something, master of all these things, but of which you can say but one thing: 'i am.'" but remember, always, that this realization of the ego does not mean egotism, or self-conceit, or comparison of your character or personality with that of others. it is egoism not egotism--and egoism means simply the realization of this "master-consciousness" to which all other mental faculties are subordinate. if you want some other name for it, you may consider this "i" as the "will of the will," for it is the very essence of _will-power_--it is, so to speak, the will conscious of itself. by means of the realization, you will find it far easier to cultivate the mental qualities in which you are deficient, and to restrain undesirable characteristics. the spirit of the idea may be gained by a careful understanding of the following from the pen of charles f. lummis: "i'm all right. i am bigger than anything that can happen to me. all these things are outside my door, _and i've got the key_!" the mental qualities most requisite to the salesman may be stated as follows: . _self respect._ it is important to the salesman that he cultivate the faculty of self respect. by this we do not mean egotism, conceit, superciliousness, imperiousness, hauteur, snobbishness, etc., all of which are detrimental qualities. self respect, on the contrary imparts the sense of true manhood or womanhood, self-reliance, dignity, courage and independence. it is the spirit of black hawk, the indian chieftain, who, lifting his head said to jackson: "i am a man!" it is entirely opposed to the crawling, cringing "worm of the dust," mental attitude of uriah heep, who was continually asserting how humble--how very humble--he was. learn to look the world in the eyes without flinching. throw off the fear of the crowd, and the impression that you are unworthy. learn to believe in yourself, and to respect yourself. let your motto be "i can; i will; i dare; i do!" self respect is a sure antidote for the feeling of fear, shrinking, sense of inferiority, and other negative feelings which sometimes oppress the salesman when he is about to enter into the presence of some "big man." remember that the man's personality is merely a mask, and that behind it is merely an "i" like your own--no more, no less. remember that behind the "john smith" part of you there exists the same kind of "i" that exists behind the "high mucky-muck" part of him. remember that you are man approaching man--not a worm approaching a god. remember that just as kipling says: "the colonel's lady and judy o'grady _are sisters under their skin_," so are you and the big man twin "i's" beneath the covering of personality, position, and outward appearance. by cultivating the realization of the "i," of which we have told you, you will acquire a new sense of self respect which will render you immune from the feeling of bashfulness, inferiority and fear in the presence of others. unless a man respects himself, he cannot expect others to respect him. he should build up his true individuality and respect it, being careful, always, not to get "side-tracked" by egotism, vanity and similar follies of personality. it is not your personality which is entitled to respect, but your _individuality_, which is something far different. the personality belongs to the outer man, the individuality to the inner. one's physical carriage and attitude tends to react upon his own mental attitude as well as also impressing those in whose presence he is. there is always an action and reaction between mind and body. just as mental states take form in physical actions, so do physical actions react upon the mind and influence mental states. frown continually and you will feel cross; smile and you will feel cheerful. carry yourself like a man, and you will feel like a man. carl h. pierce says regarding the proper carriage of a salesman: "remember that you are asking no favors; that you have nothing to apologize for, and that you have every reason in the world to hold your head up high. and it is wonderful what this holding of the head will do in the way of increasing sales. we have seen salesmen get entrance to the offices of broadway buyers simply through the holding of the head straight up from the shoulders. the rule to follow is: have your ear lobes directly over your shoulders, so that a plumb line hung from the ears describes the line of your body. be sure not to carry the head either to the right or left but vertical. many men make the mistake, especially when waiting for a prospect to finish some important piece of business, of leaning the head either to the right or left. this indicates weakness. a study of men discloses the fact that the strong men never tilt the head. their heads sit perfectly straight on strong necks. their shoulders, held easily yet firmly in correct position, are inspiring in their strength indicating poise. every line of the body, in other words, denotes the thought of the bearer." so cultivate not only the inner sense of self respect, but also the outward indications of that mental state. thus do you secure the benefit of the action and reaction between body and mind. ii. _poise._ the salesman should cultivate poise, which manifests in balance, tranquility and ease. poise is that mental quality which maintains a natural balance between the various faculties, feelings, emotions and tendencies. it is the assertion of the "i" as the master and controller of the mental states, feelings, and action. poise enables one to correctly _balance_ himself, mentally, instead of allowing his feelings or emotions to run away with him. poise enables one to remain the master of himself, instead of "slopping over" on the one hand, or of "losing his nerve" on the other. poise enables one to "keep himself well in hand." the man who has poise indeed has power, for he is never thrown off his balance, and consequently always remains master of the situation. did you ever hear of, or see, the gyroscope? well, it is a peculiar little mechanical contrivance consisting of a whirling wheel within a frame work, the peculiarity consisting of the arrangement and action of the wheel which by its motion always maintains its balance and equilibrium. no matter how the little apparatus is turned, it always maintains its equilibrium. it is likely to play an important part in aerial navigation and mono-rail systems of transportation, in the future. well, here is the point--_be a mental gyroscope_. cultivate the mental quality which acts automatically in the direction of keeping your balance and centre of mental gravity. this does not mean that you should be a prig, or a solemn-faced smug bore, with an assumption of supernatural dignity. on the contrary, always be natural in manner and action. the point is to always maintain your balance, and mental control, instead of allowing your feelings or emotions to run away with you. poise means mastery--lack of it means slavery. as edward carpenter says: "how rare indeed to meet a _man_! how common rather to discover a creature hounded on by tyrant thoughts (or cares, or desires), cowering, wincing under the lash--or perchance priding himself to run merrily in obedience to a driver that rattles the reins and persuades himself that he is free." poise is the mental gyroscope--keep it in good working order. iii. _cheerfulness._ the "bright, cheerful and happy" mental attitude, and the outward manifestation of the same, is a magnet of success to the salesman. the "grouch" is the negative pole of personality, and does more to repel people than almost any other quality. so much in demand is the cheerful demeanor and mental state, that people often give undue preference to those possessing it, and pass over a "grouchy" individual of merit in favor of the man of less merit but who possesses the "sunshine" in his personality. the "man with the southern exposure" is in demand. there is enough in the world to depress people without having gloom thrust upon them by persons calling to sell goods. well has the poet said: "laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone. for this sad old earth is in need of mirth; it has troubles enough of its own." the world prefers "happy jim" to "gloomy gus," and will bestow its favors upon the first while turning a cold shoulder to the second. the human wet blanket is not a welcome guest, while the individual who manages to "let a little sunshine in" upon all occasions is always welcome. the optimistic and cheerful spirit creates for itself an atmosphere which, perhaps unconsciously, diffuses itself in all places visited by the individual. cheerfulness is contagious, and is a most valuable asset. we have known individuals whose sunny exteriors caused a relief in the tension on the part of those whom they visited. we have heard it said of such people: "i am always glad to see that fellow--he brightens me up." this does not mean that one should endeavor to become a professional wit, a clown, or a comedian--that is not the point. the idea underlying this mental state and attribute of personality is _cheerfulness_, and a disposition to look on the bright side of things, and to manifest that mental state as the sun does its rays. learn to radiate cheerfulness. it is not so much a matter of saying things, as it is a matter of thinking them. a man's inner thoughts are reflected in his outward personality. so cultivate the inner _cheerfulness_ before you can hope to manifest its outer characteristics. there is nothing so pitiful, or which falls so flat, as a counterfeit cheerfulness--it is worse than the minstrel jokes of the last decade. to be cheerful one does not have to be a "funny man." the atmosphere of true cheerfulness can proceed only from within. the higher-class japanese instruct their children to maintain a cheerful demeanor and a smiling face no matter what happens, even though the heart is breaking. they consider this the obligation of their caste, and regard it as most unworthy of the person, as well as insulting to others, to manifest any other demeanor or expression. their theory, which forms a part of their wonderful code called "bushido," is that it is an impertinence to obtrude one's grief, sorrow, misfortunes, or "grouch," upon others. they reserve for their own inner circle their sorrows and pains, and always present a cheerful and bright appearance to others. the salesman would do well to remember the "bushido,"--he needs it in his business. avoid the "grouch" mental state as you would a pestilence. don't be a "knocker"--for "knocks," like chickens, come home to roost, bringing their chicks with them. iv. _politeness._ courtesy is a valuable asset to a salesman. not only this, but it is a trait characteristic of _gentlemen_ in all walks of life, and is a duty toward oneself as well as toward others. by politeness and courtesy we do not mean the formal, artificial outward acts and remarks which are but the counterfeit of the real thing, but, instead, that respectful demeanor toward others which is the mark of innate refinement and good-breeding. courtesy and politeness do not necessarily consist of formal rules of etiquette, but of an inner sympathy and understanding of others which manifests in a courteous demeanor toward them. everyone likes to be treated with appreciation and understanding and is willing to repay the same in like form. one does not need to be a raw "jollier" in order to be polite. politeness--true politeness--comes from within, and it is almost impossible to imitate it successfully. its spirit may be expressed by the idea of trying to see the good in everyone and then acting toward the person as if his good were in plain evidence. give to those with whom you come in contact the manner, attention and respect to which they would be entitled if they were actually manifesting the highest good within them. one of the best retail salesmen we ever knew attributed his success to his ability to "get on the customer's side of the counter," that is, to try to see the matter from the customer's viewpoint. this led to a sympathetic understanding which was most valuable. if the salesman can manage to put himself in the place of the customer, he may see things with a new light, and thus gain an understanding of the customer which will enable him, the salesman, to manifest a true politeness toward his customers. but politeness and courtesy does not mean a groveling, cringing attitude of mind or demeanor. true politeness and courtesy must have as its background and support, self respect. allied to politeness is the quality called tact, which is defined as the "peculiar skill or adroitness in doing or saying exactly that which is required by, or is suited to, the circumstances; nice perception or discernment." a little consideration will show that tact must depend upon an understanding of the viewpoint and mental attitude of the other person, so that if one has the key to the one he may open the door of the other. an understanding of the other person's position, and an application of the true spirit of politeness, will go a long way toward establishing the quality of tactfulness. tact is a queer combination of worldly wisdom and the golden rule--a mixture of the ability to seek into the other person's mind, and the ability to speak unto others as you would that others speak unto you, under the same circumstances. the trait called adaptability, or the faculty of adjusting oneself to conditions, and to the personality of others, also belongs to this category. adaptability depends upon the ability to see the other person's position. as a writer says: "those individuals who are out of harmony with their surroundings disappear to make room for those who are in harmony with them." when the keynote of the understanding of the minds of others is found, the whole subject of true politeness, tact and adaptability is understood and may be applied in practice. v. _human nature._ closely allied to the subject of the preceding paragraphs, is that of human nature. a knowledge of human nature is very important to the salesman. in order to understand the workings of the minds of others, one must not only understand the general psychological principles involved, but also the special manifestations of those principles. nature tends to form classes and species, and the majority of people may be grouped into special classes depending upon their temperaments. an intelligent study of the new psychology and the general subject of human nature in works on physiognomy, etc., will do much to start one well upon the road to an understanding of human nature. but, after all, the best knowledge comes only when the general principles are tested and applied under observation in general experience. in this particular work we have much to say upon certain features of human nature--in fact, as we have said, human nature is but psychology. the following advice, from the pen of prof. fowler, the well known authority on phrenology, is recommended to all salesmen desirous of acquiring the faculty of understanding human nature: "scan closely all the actions of men, with a view to ascertain their motives and mainsprings of action; look with a sharp eye at man, woman, child, all you meet, as if you would read them through; note particularly the expression of the eye, as if you would imbibe what it signifies; say to yourself: what faculty prompted this expression or that action; drink in the general looks, attitude, natural language, and manifestation of the man, and yield yourself to the impressions naturally made on you--that is, study human nature both as a philosophy and as a sentiment, or as if being impressed thereby." a forthcoming volume of this series, to be entitled "human nature," will go into this subject in detail. chapter iii the mind of the salesman (continued) vi. _hope._ the salesman should cultivate the optimistic outlook upon life. he should encourage the earnest expectation of the good things to come, and move forward to the realization thereof. much of life success depends upon the mental attitude of, and the confident expectation of, a successful outcome. earnest desire, confident expectation, and resolute action--this is the threefold key of attainment. thought manifests itself in action, and we grow in accordance with the mental pattern or mould we create for ourselves. if you will look around you you will find that the men who have succeeded, and who are succeeding, are those who have maintained the hopeful mental attitude--who have always looked forward to the star of hope even in the moments of the greatest trouble and temporary reverses. if a man loses his hope permanently he is defeated. hope is the incentive which is always drawing man onward and upward. hope backed by will and determination is almost invincible. learn to look on the bright side of things, to believe in your ultimate success. learn to look upward and forward--heed the motto, "look aloft!" cultivate the "rubber-ball spirit," by which you will be able to bounce higher up the harder you are thrown down. there is a subtle psychological law by the operation of which we tend to materialize our ideals. the "confident expectation" backed by actions will win out in the end. hitch your wagon to the star of hope. vii. _enthusiasm._ very few people understand the true meaning of the word "enthusiasm," although they may use it quite frequently in ordinary conversation. enthusiasm means far more than energy, activity, interest and hope--it means the expression of the "soul" in mental and physical actions. the greeks used the word as meaning "inspiration; moved by the gods," from which arose the later meaning of "inspired by a superhuman or divine power." the modern usage is defined as: "enkindled and kindling fervor of the soul; ardent and imaginative zeal or interest; lively manifestation of joy or zeal;" etc. a person filled with enthusiasm seems to move and act from the very centre of his being--that part which we mean when we say "soul." there is a wonderful power in rightly directed enthusiasm, which serves not only to arouse within one his full powers, but also tends to impress others in the direction of mental contagion. mental states are contagious, and enthusiasm is one of the most active of mental states. enthusiasm comes nearer to being "soul-power" than any other outward expression of mental states. it is allied to the soul-stirring impulse of music, poetry, and the drama. we can _feel_ it in the words of a writer, speaker, orator, preacher, singer or poet. enthusiasm may be analyzed as inspired interest. as walter d. moody says: "it will be found that all men possessed of personal magnetism are very much in earnest. their intense earnestness is magnetic." the best authorities agree that enthusiasm is the active principle of what has been called personal magnetism. an old writer has well said: "all of us emit a sphere, aura, or halo, impregnated with the very essence of ourselves, sensitives know it, so do our dogs and other pets; so does a hungry lion or tiger; aye, even flies, snakes and insects, as we know to our cost. some of us are magnetic--others not. some of us are warm, attractive, love-inspiring and friendship-making, while others are cold, intellectual, thoughtful, reasoning, but not magnetic. let a learned man of the latter type address an audience and it will soon tire of his intellectual discourse, and will manifest symptoms of drowsiness. he talks at them, but not into them--he makes them think, not feel, which is most tiresome to the majority of persons, and few speakers succeed who attempt to merely make people think--they want to be made to feel. people will pay liberally to be made to feel or laugh, while they will begrudge a dime for instruction or talk that will make them think. pitted against a learned man of the type mentioned above, let there be a half-educated, but very loving, ripe and mellow man, with but nine-tenths of the logic and erudition of the first man, yet such a man carries along his crowd with perfect ease, and everybody is wide-awake, treasuring up every good thing that falls from his lips. the reasons are palpable and plain. it is heart against head; soul against logic; and soul is bound to win every time." and as newman says: "deductions have no power of persuasion. the heart is commonly reached, not through the reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history, by description. persons influence us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us." enthusiasm imparts that peculiar quality that we call "_life_," which constitutes such an important part in the personality of a salesman. remember we have analyzed enthusiasm as _inspired earnestness_--think over this analysis, and grasp its inner meaning. the very word "enthusiasm" is inspiring--visualize it and let it incite you to its expression when you feel "dead." the very thought of it is a stimulant! viii. _determination._ the salesman needs the quality of dogged determination, persistence, and "stick-to-itiveness." this bulldog quality must be developed. the "i can and i will" spirit must be cultivated. determination is composed of several constituent faculties. first comes combativeness or the quality of "tackling" obstacles. this is a marked quality in all strong characters. it manifests as courage, boldness, resistance, opposition, and disposition to combat opposition rather than to yield to it. allied to this faculty is another which bears the very inadequate name of destructiveness, which expresses itself in the direction of breaking down barriers, pushing aside obstacles, making headway; pushing to the front; holding one's own; etc. it is the quality of the man who makes his own paths and builds up his own trade. it is the "pioneer" faculty of the mind which clears away the ground, lays foundations and builds the first log-cabin. then comes continuity, the faculty which is well-defined as "stick-to-itiveness," which enables one to stick to his task until it is finished. this faculty gives stability and staying qualities, and enables a man to _finish_ well. the lack of this quality often neutralizes the work of other good faculties, causing the person to "let go" too soon, and to thus lose the fruits of his labors. finally, comes the faculty of firmness, which gives to one the quality of tenacity, perseverance, fixity, decision and stability, accompanied by a certain "stubborn tendency" which holds the other faculties together. a certain amount of this quality of "jackass courage" is needed in the mental make up of a salesman. if a person is 'set' to a certain extent it enables him to maintain his position without the constant wear and tear upon his will that is met with by those lacking it. this faculty prevents one from being "sidetracked," and enables him to "put his hand to the plow and look not backward." it holds the chisel of the will up against the metal of circumstances until the work is accomplished. it enables one to be like the rock against which harmlessly beat the waves of opposition and competition. it enables one to see his object, and then to march straight to it. ix. _secretiveness._ we mention this quality, not because it is one which plays such an important part in the world of salesmanship, but because the tendency of the average salesman is to talk too freely regarding matters which should be kept to himself. this failing on the part of the salesman is due to the free expression which his work necessitates. he should remember, however, that many a good plan has miscarried by reason of the tendency of the salesman to "blab," or to "give away" his hopes, plans and expectations. the salesman should think thrice before speaking regarding any matter of office or personal policy, plans, methods, or other things which he would not like his competitors to know. it is a safe rule, laid down by a very successful business man, that one should "never speak of anything that he is not desirous of his principal competitor hearing--for hear it he will if one speaks of it." the world is full of the "little birds" who delight in carrying tales--the "walls have ears" with microphone, wireless telegraphic attachments. be a diplomat in matters of the kind to which we have referred. a little thought should convince that if you _yourself_ do not respect your own secrets, you can not expect others to do so. x. _acquisitiveness._ this faculty manifests as the desire for acquiring things; gaining; possessing; reaching out for; etc. it is often condemned by people, because of the unpleasant traits manifested by those in whom it is abnormally developed, as the miser, the "hog," and the "stingy" person. but it is not well to hastily condemn this faculty, for without it we would become desireless, spendthrift, wasteful, without resources, and poor. the man who would succeed in any line of business must cultivate acquisitiveness, if he is deficient in it. he must learn to want and earnestly desire the good things of life, and to reach out for them. he must desire to accumulate something for himself, for by so doing he will work so that he will make a valuable accumulating channel for his employers. acquisitiveness is one of the animating principles of the business world, evade it though we may try to. it is hypocritical to deny this. the facts are too plain to be brushed aside or denied. as the writer has said in another work: "people are all after money--every blessed mother's son and daughter of them--in one way or another." what is the use of denying it. some day we may have better economic conditions--i pray to god that we may--but until that time all of us must chase the nimble dollar to the best of our ability. for unless a man does this thing, then shall he not eat; nor be clothed; nor have shelter; nor books; nor music; nor anything else that makes life worth living for one who thinks and feels. it seems to me the proper balance is preserved in the following statement: "while you're getting, get all you can--_but give the other fellow a chance_." xi. _approbativeness._ this is the quality which manifests in a desire for praise, flatter, approval, fame, etc. the average salesman does not need to develop this faculty--his temperament is very apt to make him have it too highly developed. it is all very well to feel a certain pleasure from the approval of others of work well done. but it is a decided weakness for one to be so sensitive to the opinions of others that they suffer from their disapproval, or from the lack of praise. he who is dependent upon the praise of the crowd, or the approval of the mob is a fool, deserving of pity. the crowd is fickle and tomorrow may turn on those whom they are praising to-day. moreover there is always much secret envy and jealousy mixed with the praise of others. did you ever notice how eagerly people relate the slip-up or stumble of those whom they have been praising? be not deceived by the plaudits of the crowd. nor should you allow yourself to be deterred from a right course because of fear of blame. learn to rely on what you, yourself, know to be right. "be sure you're right, then go ahead." learn to stand upon your own feet, and do not lean upon others. shake the crowd off your heels--mind your own business and let others do likewise. and look the world squarely in the eye while you are talking to it, too. it will understand you, if you do not truckle to it. but never cringe to it--else it will rend you to pieces. "they say; what do they say; let them say!" "do not worry about it--your friends will not care, and your enemies will criticise anyway; so what's the use?" say to yourself: "i am the captain of my soul." and remember burton's glorious words of freedom and courage: "do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause; he noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws. all other life is living death, a world where none but phantoms dwell. a breath, a wind, a sound, a voice, a tinkling of the camel's bell." the difference between egoism and egotism consists largely of the difference between self-respect and approbativeness. develop the first, and restrain the second--if you wish to become an individual. and the successful salesman is always an individual--standing out from and above the crowd of the "mere persons" or "order-takers." be a man, and not a human looking glass reflecting the ideas, opinions, and wishes of all those around you. be creative, not imitative. flattery is the food for apes, not for men. _personal expression._ while one's personal expression in the direction of clothing, walk, voice, etc., can scarcely be called mental qualities, yet they must be considered as _expressions_ of mental qualities--outward manifestations of inward states. so true is this that people naturally judge one's character by these outward expressions. and, moreover, there is a subtle reaction of one's outward manifestations upon one's mental states. one's walk, carriage and demeanor influence one's mental attitude, as we may prove by changing these outward manifestations and noting our changed feelings. as someone has said: "the consciousness of being well dressed imparts a certain serenity and peace which even religion sometimes fails to give us." and, as for physical attitudes, etc., hear what several eminent psychologists tell us. prof. halleck says: "by inducing an expression we can often cause its allied emotion." prof. james says: "whistling to keep up courage is no mere figure of speech. on the other hand, sit all day in a moping posture, sigh, and reply to everything with a dismal voice, and your melancholy lingers. there is no more valuable precept in moral education than this: if we wish to conquer undesirable emotional tendencies in ourselves we must assiduously, and in the first instance cold-bloodedly, go through the _outward movements_, of those contrary dispositions which we wish to cultivate. smooth the brow, brighten the eye, contract the dorsal rather than the ventral aspect of the frame, and speak in a major key, pass the genial compliment and your heart must indeed be frigid if it does not gradually thaw." dr. woods hutchinson says: "to what extent muscular contractions condition emotions, as prof. james has suggested, may be easily tested by a quaint and simple little experiment upon a group of the smallest voluntary muscles of the body, those that move the eyeball. choose some time when you are sitting quietly in your room, free from all disturbing thoughts and influences. then stand up, and assuming an easy position, cast the eyes upward, and hold them in that position for thirty seconds. instantly and involuntarily you will be conscious of a tendency toward reverential, devotional, contemplative ideas and thoughts. then turn the eyes sideways, glancing directly to the right or to the left, through half-closed lids. within thirty seconds images of suspicion, of uneasiness, or of dislike will rise unbidden to the mind. turn the eyes on one side and slightly downward, and suggestions of jealousy or coquetry will be apt to spring unbidden. direct your gaze downward toward the floor, and you are likely to go off into a fit of reverie or abstraction." maudsley says: "the specific muscular action is not merely an exponent of passion, but truly an essential part of it. if we try while the features are fixed in the expression of one passion to call up in the mind a different one, we shall find it impossible to do so." in view of the above statements, we may readily see the importance of cultivating those outward expressions which are co-related to desirable mental states or feelings. by so doing we arouse in our minds those particular states or feelings. and, moreover, we tend to impress others with the possession on our part of the co-related mental qualities. one's outward expression is a powerful instrument of suggestion to others, and people are unconsciously and instinctively affected by it, to our benefit or detriment. let us therefore consider, briefly, the general principles underlying personal expression along the lines indicated. _carriage and walk._ in the first part of the previous chapter, under the sub-head of "self-respect" we have given you the advice of a good authority concerning the proper carriage. the key is: carry yourself in a manner showing your self-respect, poise, and consideration of others. another authority gives the following directions for the correct position in standing: "( ) heels together; ( ) head up, with chin slightly drawn in rather than protruding; ( ) eyes front; ( ) shoulders thrown back but not elevated; ( ) chest expanded; ( ) abdomen slightly drawn in, and not allowed to protrude; ( ) arms dropped naturally to the sides, with the little fingers lightly touching the sides of the thigh. this may make you feel a little stiff and awkward at first, but, if you persevere, will soon establish itself as second nature with you." another authority says: "the easiest way in which to acquire a correct carriage is to imagine that you are suspended from on high with a line, the lowest end of the line being fastened to the lower end of your breast-bone. if you will stand and walk as if you are so suspended, the result will be that you will acquire an easy, graceful, gliding walk, and a correct carriage and natural position." another authority gives the following advice: "the following method if observed in walking and standing, will impart a desirable physical poise and will keep you erect and in a graceful attitude while walking: stand with your back toward the wall, with the heels, legs, hips, shoulders and back of head touching the wall, and with the chin slightly drawn in. press up against the wall firmly. you will find yourself in an uncomfortable position, and one that is unnatural and incorrect. then, keeping your heels to the wall, allow your body to swing forward into a natural position, being careful to keep the body firm in the same 'form,' avoiding relaxation, swinging yourself forward from the ankle joints alone. when you find that the correct poised, natural position has been attained, hold it, and march forward in what will be the natural, normal, well-balanced walking position. practice this repeatedly, several times every day, until you have fully acquired the habit." _shaking hands._ when you grasp another's hand in the act of "shaking hands," do not do so in a listless, cold-blooded manner--do not extend to the other man a flabby, clammy, fish-like hand. but take hold of his hand as if you liked to do it--throw interest into the proceeding. more than this--throw feeling into it. throw into the hand-clasp the feeling: "_i like you, and you like me_." then, when you draw your hand away, if possible let your fingers slide over the palm of his hand in a caressing manner, allowing his first finger to pass between your thumb and forefinger, close up in the crotch of the thumb. practice this well, until you can perform it without thinking of it. you will find merit in the method. grasp the other person's hand "as if he were your best girl's millionaire father-in-law." _voice._ the salesman should cultivate a voice with expression in it. his voice should convey his belief in what he is saying, and his interest in the story. you will find it an aid in this direction if you will learn to visualize your thoughts--that is, to make a mental picture of the thing you are saying. one can always describe better that which they see before them. in the degree that you can see your mental picture, so will be your degree of power in expressing it to another in words, and so will be the degree of feeling in your tone. the voice should express the meaning of your thought rather than being merely the symbol of it. try to say "good morning" as if you meant it--then say it in the usual way. do you see the difference? throw your thought and feeling into your voice. forget all about yourself and the other man and concentrate your thought and feeling into your voice. many people make the mistake of "speaking with their muscles instead of with their nerves." they throw muscular energy into their words, when they should use nervous energy, or thought-force. the former has but little effect on the mind of the other, while the second vibrates subtly and reaches the feelings of those addressed. _feel_, when you wish to speak impressively, and your tones will reflect the same, and induce a similar feeling in others. it is a point worth remembering that one may "bring down" the voice of an excited person to one's own pitch, if the latter is firmly held at the customary pitch, in a firm manner. not only does this "bring down" the other man's voice, but his feelings will also follow suit, and besides, you also manage to keep your own temper and poise. never raise your voice because another raises his--resist the tendency, and maintain your poise and power by so doing. this is worth remembering. _the eyes._ learn to look people in the eyes when you are speaking to them. not in a staring manner, but firmly, politely and easily. this may be acquired with a little practice. practice on yourself in the mirror if you prefer. a shifting, restless gaze produces a bad impression, while a firm, honest gaze will incline people in your favor. you will find that strong men--men who influence others--almost always have a firm, strong gaze. it is worth practice, work and time, to acquire this personal trait. _clothes._ a man is very often known by his clothes, or at least judged by them. the salesman should pay attention to this point of personal expression, since it will count much for or against him. the first point to remember is that _cleanliness_ is the first requisite in clothing. keep your clothes clean and well pressed. particularly keep your linen clean, for nothing in the way of dress acts so much against a man as soiled linen. another important point is to keep the extremities well clad--that is, the head, feet and hands. a soiled or worn hat; a soiled or frayed collar; an old, or unpolished pair of shoes; ragged sleeves or frayed cuffs--these things are more easily noticed and count more against a man than a shabby suit. better an old suit well brushed, with a good hat, shoes and clean cuffs--than the reverse. one should always wear as good clothes as his means will permit, and such as will be in keeping with his occupation and position. the rule is to get as good material as possible, and cut reasonably within the prevailing style--but avoiding all extremes, or fanciful designs. _a well-dressed business man should give neither the appearance of shabbiness nor of being "dressed-up."_ he should present the appearance of general neatness without attracting any special attention to his clothing. when a man's clothes specially attract one, that man is not well dressed, but either poorly dressed or over-dressed. the "happy mean" between the two extremes is to be sought after. polonius' advice to his son is well worth memorizing: "costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, but not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy; for the apparel oft proclaims the man." _details of appearance._ personal cleanliness and neatness are pre-requisites of the salesman who wishes to produce a favorable impression. there is nothing that will so tend to prejudice the average business man against a new caller as the appearance of neglect of personal care. the body should be well-bathed; the hair trimmed and neatly brushed; the face cleanly shaven; the teeth well brushed; the nails clean; the shoes polished; the necktie and collar clean; the clothes brushed. avoid the smell of liquor or tobacco on the breath, and eschew as fatal the odor of strong perfumery on the clothes or handkerchief. the yellow stains of the cigarette showing on the fingers, and the disgusting odor attaching to the cigarette habit, have lost many a man a favorable bearing. the cigarette is "taboo" to many men who smoke other forms of tobacco. these things are instinctively recognized by the buyer as manifestations of the mind of the salesman--a part of his personality--and very rightly so, for if the mind be kept above them they do not manifest. all these things go toward forming the impression which one person always makes upon another at the first meeting, and which have so much to do with securing a favorable notice during the approach of the salesman. chapter iv the mind of the buyer the second important element in a sale is the mind of the buyer. in the mind of the buyer is fought the battle of the sale. within its boundaries are manifested the movements which win or lose the day. as a writer on the subject has said: "the buyer's brain is the board upon which the game is played. the faculties of the brain are the men. the salesman moves or guides these faculties as he would chess men or checkers on a board." in order to understand the ground upon which your battle must be fought, and the mental elements which you must combat, persuade, move, push or attract, you must understand the various faculties of the mind, as well as the mind as a whole. let us, therefore, consider the various mental faculties which are employed actively by a buyer in the mental process of a purchase. i. _quality._ in the first place, let us consider that which the phrenologists call "quality," by which they express the various degrees of fineness or coarseness in a man's mental make-up which is usually indicated by his appearance and physical characteristics. this "quality" in a man is akin to what we call "class," "breeding," or "blood" in the higher animals. it is difficult to explain, but is universally recognized. at one extreme of "quality" we find those individuals who are fine-grained, refined, high-strung, intense, and inclined to be susceptible to emotional or sentimental influence, poetry, music, etc., and are apt to be more or less impractical and out of harmony with the material world of men and affairs. at the other extreme we find those individuals who are coarse-grained, of coarse and unrefined tastes, animal, gross, unrefined, and generally "swinish." between these two extremes we find many degrees in the scale. the outward physical signs of the person, such as the coarseness or fineness of his skin, hair, nails, ears and facial features, as well as his general form and characteristics, will usually give the careful observer the key to the degree of a man's "quality." it will be well for the salesman to acquaint himself with these characteristics, for they throw much light on the general character of people. next in order come what are called the temperaments, by which term phrenologists designate the general classes into which individuals fit. as a rule, however, an individual manifests the elements of several of the temperaments--that is, they blend in him. the best phrenological authorities classify the temperaments as follows: ( ) the vital; ( ) the motive; ( ) the mental; the characteristics of which are described as follows: _the vital temperament._ this temperament is indicated by a predominance of the purely physical or "animal" propensities. those in whom it predominates are distinguished by a round head, wide space between the corners of the eyes and the ears, side-head full, broad forehead (not necessarily high). they are generally fleshy with a "well-fed" appearance, inclined to be broad shouldered and deep chested and with a "bull neck"--splendid animals, in fact. their mental characteristics are love of eating and drinking, and animal comforts; impulsiveness, impetuosity, heartiness, quick temper, zeal and ardor, often shrewd and cunning but without great depth, susceptible to flattery and appeal to selfish emotions and prejudices, and loving pleasure. they are generally selfish and grasping toward that which caters to their pleasure and physical welfare. try to "get all that is coming to them," and yet at the same time tend toward conviviality and are desirous of being thought "good fellows." are usually excitable, and are easily thrown off their balance. those in whom this temperament is deficient manifest physical characteristics opposite to those above mentioned, and are more or less anaemic, or bloodless, and show a lack of vitality and physical well-being. those in whom this temperament predominates make good butchers, hotel-keepers, captains, locomotive engineers, traders, politicians, contractors, etc. they are reached through their feelings rather than through their intellect. _the motive temperament._ this temperament is indicated by a predominance of muscular strength, endurance, toughness, and powers of action. those in whom it predominates are distinguished by a general leanness and spareness; strongly marked and prominent features, usually with a large nose and high cheek bones; large and strong teeth; large joints and knuckles--the abraham lincoln physical characteristics, in fact. their mental characteristics are determination, persistence, combativeness, destructiveness, endurance, thoroughness, management, executive ability, creative power, stubbornness, powers of resistance, and often an indomitable spirit. their emotions are not on the surface, but when once aroused are strong and persistent. they are slow to wrath, but are good fighters and will stay to the finish. they are generally canny and shrewd, instinctively. they are the active and persistent workers of the world. it is this temperament in one which supplies his motive power--his ability and taste for work. those in whom this temperament is deficient manifest physical characteristics opposite to those above mentioned, and accordingly are averse to work or exertion of any kind. _the mental temperament._ this temperament is indicated by a predominance of nervous force, mental activity, reasoning power, imagination, and a brain development rather than bodily strength or physical activity. those in whom it predominates are distinguished by a slight build, small bones and muscles, general fineness of structure, quick motions, signs of nervous energy, sharp features, thin lips, thin, finely shaped, and often pointed nose, high forehead, and expressive eyes. their mental characteristics are activity in reasoning processes, active imagination, susceptibility to disturbance from uncongenial environment and distasteful company, love of mental activity and often a distaste for physical activity, sensitiveness, extremes of feeling and emotion, eager and enthusiastic, and the general traits popularly designated as "temperamental." those in whom this temperament is deficient manifest characteristics opposite to those above mentioned, and are averse to mental activity. _blended temperaments._ nearly every individual possesses the three temperaments blended in various proportions and combinations. in some, one temperament predominates largely and gives us the distinctive characteristics of that class. but in others, often two temperaments will predominate, leaving the third scarcely manifest. in others, the three are so well blended and balanced that the individual is known as "well balanced" temperamentally--this being considered the ideal condition. prof. fowler, one of the old authorities in phrenology, says of the blended temperaments: "excessive motive with deficient mental gives power and sluggishness, so that the talents lie dormant. excessive vital gives physical power and enjoyment, but too little of the mental and moral, along with coarseness and animality. excessive mental confers too much mind for body, too much sentimentalism and exquisiteness, along with greenhouse precocity. whereas their equal balance gives an abundant supply of vital energy, physical stamina, and mental power and susceptibility. they may be compared to the several parts of a steamboat and its appurtenances. the vital is the steampower; the motive, the hulk or frame-work; the mental, the freight and passengers. the vital predominating, generates more animal energy than can well be worked off, and causes restlessness, excessive passion, and a pressure which endangers outbursts and overt actions; predominant motive gives too much frame or hulk; moves slowly, and with weak mental is too light freighted to secure the great ends of life; predominant mental overloads, and endangers sinking; but all equally balanced and powerful, carry great loads rapidly and well, and accomplish wonders. such persons unite cool judgment with intense and well governed feelings; great force of character and intellect with perfect consistency; scholarship with sound common sense; far seeing sagacity with brilliancy; and have the highest order of both physiology and mentality." the salesman should thoroughly acquaint himself with the characteristics of each of the three temperaments, and should also learn to analyze them when found blended and in combination. an understanding of a man's temperament will often give one the key to his general character and disposition, which will be of the greatest advantage to the salesman. many students of human nature devote their entire attention to a study of the several faculties of the mind, ignoring the force and effect of the temperaments. we consider this to be a mistake, for a thorough knowledge of the temperaments gives one a general key to character, and, as a fact, it is generally found that given a certain temperament or combination of the same, a good phrenologist will be able to indicate just what faculties are apt to be found in the ascendency in such a character. and as the average salesman cannot spare the time to become an expert phrenologist, it will be seen that a correct knowledge of the temperaments gives him his best working knowledge of the subject of character reading. let us now consider the various groups of mental faculties which are manifested by the buyer in his business, and which should be understood by the salesman in order that he may successfully meet the impulses arising therefrom in the mind of the buyer. our consideration of these groups of faculties must necessarily be brief, but we shall include the essential features. _the social faculties._ this group of faculties includes _amativeness_ or sexuality; _conjugality_ or marital inclination; _parental love_ or love of offspring; _friendship_ or love of companionship; _inhabitiveness_ or love of home. phrenology teaches that this group of organs occupies the lower back portion of the head, giving the appearance of bulging behind the ears. _amativeness_ or sexuality when highly developed causes one to be at the mercy of the attraction of the opposite sex. while normally developed it plays a worthy part in life, its excessive development manifests in licentiousness, and when deficient manifests in an aversion to the opposite sex or a coldness and reserve. persons in whom this faculty is in excess will neglect business for sex attraction, and will allow themselves to be "sidetracked" by reason thereof. in selling a man of this kind, keep him away from this particular subject, or he will not give you his attention. _conjugality_ or marital inclination when highly developed causes one to be largely influenced by one's companion in marriage. a man of this kind will be largely governed by his wife's wishes, tastes and desires, consequently if his wife "says so" the battle is won. some men, however, while having amativeness largely developed, have but small conjugality, and if one love is not found satisfactory, another is substituted--an "affinity" takes the wife's place. _parental love_ or love of offspring when highly developed causes one to idolize his children and to be capable of influence through them. such men are prone to relate anecdotes regarding their children and to bore listeners with recitals of infantile brightness and precocity. they generally have photographs of their children about their desks. an appeal to the interests of the children always reaches the attention and interest of these people. _friendship_, or love of companionship, when highly developed causes one to seek society, form attachments of friendship, enjoy social pleasures, do favors for those whom they like, enjoy entertaining and being entertained. such a man will be more apt to base his business dealings upon likes and acquaintance rather than upon reason or judgment, and are comparatively easily persuaded by those whom they like. an appearance of sociability generally attracts them to those manifesting it. the quality of "good fellowship" appeals to this class. _inhabitiveness_ or love of home when highly developed causes one to become _attached to places_, localities and associations. such a man will be full of patriotism, local pride and prejudice and provincialism. he will resent any apparent "slur" upon his locality, and will appreciate any favorable comment on his home place and locality. these people are like cats who are attached to places rather than to people. their township is usually their idea of "my country." _the selfish faculties._ this group of faculties includes _vitativeness_, or love of life; _combativeness_, or love of opposing; _destructiveness_, or love of breaking through; _alimentiveness_, or love of appetite; _bibativeness_, or love of drink; _acquisitiveness_, or love of gain; _secretiveness_, or cunning; _cautiousness_, or prudence; _approbativeness_, or love of praise; _self esteem_, or self reliance. phrenology teaches that this group of organs occupy the sides of the back part of the head. _vitativeness_, or love of life, when highly developed causes one to manifest a determination to live, and a great fear of death. anything promising increased health or long life will greatly attract these people, and anything arousing a fear of ill health or death will influence them greatly. these people are excellent customers for health appliances, books on health, etc. _combativeness_, or love of opposing, when highly developed causes one to desire a "scrap" or an argument or debate. these people can best be handled by seemingly allowing them to win in argument, and then leading them to suggest the thing that the salesman has had in his mind all the time. these people may be led, or coaxed, but never driven. with them it is always a case of "sugar catches more flies than vinegar," or of the hot sun causing the man to drop the cloak which the fierce north wind was unable to blow away from him. a man of this kind will be so pleased at beating another in an argument on a minor point, that he will forget the main point and will be in a humor to be persuaded. always avoid a direct argument or dispute with these people on important points--they will let their pride of combat obscure their judgment. but they will be ready to bestow favors on those whom they believe they have worsted in argument. _destructiveness_, or love of breaking through, when highly developed causes one to take great pleasure in doing things in new ways; in breaking precedents and defying authority, and in breaking down obstacles. if you can arouse this spirit in such a man, by showing him how he may do these things with your goods, he will fall in line. a man of this kind may be interested at once in any proposition whereby he may be enabled to do something in a novel way here--to defy opposition or established custom--or to break down opposing obstacles. the keynote of this faculty is: "make way." _alimentiveness_, or love of appetite, when highly developed causes one to incline toward gluttony and gormandizing, and to place undue importance upon the pleasures of the table. a man of this kind "lives to eat" instead of "eating to live," and may be reached through his weakest point--his stomach. to such a man a good dinner is more convincing than a logical argument. _bibativeness_, or love of drink, when highly developed causes one to manifest an inordinate taste for liquids of all kinds. in some cases, where alcoholic drinks are avoided by such people, they will run to excess in the direction of "soft drinks" such as ginger ale, soda water, etc. it does not follow that these people are fond of the effects of alcohol, the craving seemingly being for liquids in some form. such people, if their appetites are not controlled, will let their taste for drinks run away with their judgment and reason. _acquisitiveness_, or love of gain, when highly developed causes one to be very grasping, avaricious, and often miserly. but, when not so highly developed, it causes one to manifest a keen trading instinct, and is a necessary factor in the mental make-up of the successful merchant. those in whom it is highly developed will be interested in any proposition which seems to them to promise gain or saving. in selling such a man, the effort should be to keep the one point of _profit or saving_ always in evidence. in some cases this faculty, too highly developed and not counterbalanced by other faculties, will make a man "penny wise and pound-foolish," and will focus his mental gaze so closely on the nickel held close to his eye that he will not see the dollar a little further off. the "money talk" is the only one that will appeal to these people. _secretiveness_, or cunning, when highly developed causes one to incline toward double-dealing, duplicity, trickery and deception. it is the "foxy" faculty, which, while useful to a certain degree, becomes undesirable when carried to excess. in dealing with a man of this kind, be on guard so far as accepting his statements at full value is concerned. accept his statements "with a grain of salt." those who wish to "fight the devil with his own fire" can reach these people by allowing them to think that they are overreaching or getting the best of the salesman. the salesman who is apparently defeated by these people, is very apt to have discounted their methods in advance, and has mapped out his line of retreat in advance so that the defeat is really a victory. these people often will sacrifice a real advantage concerning a big thing for the sake of tricking one out of a small advantage. to trick another causes them to feel a glow of righteous well-being and self-satisfaction, and makes them forget the main point in the deal. a small victory thus won acts on them like the good dinner to the alimentive man, or flattery to the approbative person. a faculty developed to excess is always a weak point which can be used by others who understand it. _cautiousness_, or prudence, while an admirable quality when normally developed, becomes, when highly developed, an undesirable quality. when highly developed it causes one to be over-anxious, fearful, afraid to act, liable to panic, etc. these people must be cultivated carefully, and led to acquire confidence and trust. one should be very careful in dealing with these people not to cause suspicion or alarm. they should be treated with the utmost fairness, and given full explanations of matters of which they are in doubt. as a rule they are very slow in giving confidence, but when they once place confidence in a person they are very apt to stick to him. their very fearfulness acts to prevent their making changes when confidence is once secured. these people cannot be "rushed," as a rule--they require time in order to gain confidence. they are, however, subject to an occasional "rush" by reason of their panicky disposition, if they can be made to fear that if they do not act some competitor will be given the chance, or that prices will advance if they do not order at once. these people must be handled carefully, and the salesman who masters their nature will be well repaid for his trouble and pains. _approbativeness_, or love of praise, when highly developed causes one to be susceptible to flattery, desirous of praise, fond of "showing off" and displaying himself, vain, sensitive to criticism, and generally egotistical and often pompous. this quality when highly developed is a weakness and gives to an adversary a powerful lever to work. the salesman, while secretly detesting this quality in a buyer, nevertheless finds it a very easy channel of approach and weapon of success, when he once understands its characteristics. these people can be reached by an apparent "falling in" with their opinion of themselves, and a manifestation of the proper respect in manner and words. these are the people to whom the "soft soap" is applied liberally, and who are carried away by an apparent appreciation of their own excellence. they will be willing to bestow all sorts of favors upon those who are sufficiently able to "understand" them, and to perceive the existence of those superlative qualities which the cruel, cold, unfeeling world has ignored. these are the people for whom the word "jolly" was invented, and who are ready to absorb the available world-supply of that article. _self esteem_, or self reliance, is a very different quality from that just described, although many people seem unable to make the distinction. self esteem when highly developed causes one to appreciate one's powers and qualities, while not blinding oneself to one's faults. it gives a sense of self-help, self-respect, self-reliance, dignity, complacency, and independence. carried to an extreme it manifests as hauteur, superciliousness, imperiousness and tyranny. it is a characteristic of the majority of successful men who have made their own way by their own efforts. these people insist upon having their own way, and using their own minds--they resent apparent influence or suggestions, and often deliberately turn down a proposition simply because they think that an effort is being made to force them into it. the best way to deal with these people is to frankly acknowledge their right to think for themselves, both in your manner, tone and actions--and to present the proposition to them in an impersonal way, apparently leaving the whole matter to their own good judgment. a logical appeal appeals to them providing you do not make the mistake of pitting yourself against them as an opponent in argument. you may play the part of the lawyer to them, but remember always they want to play the part of judge, and not that of the opposing counsel. if a matter be subtly suggested to them in such a way as to make them think that they have thought it themselves, they will favor it. always give them a chance to think out the point themselves--they like it. one need not cringe to or flatter these people. all that is necessary is to maintain your own self-respect, but at the same time let them walk a little ahead of you, or stand just a little bit higher--that is all they need to make them feel comfortable. they much prefer being a little higher or ahead of a strong man than a weakling--it is more complimentary to them. they appreciate the one who forces them to use their heaviest guns--but who finally allows them to claim the victory. chapter v the mind of the buyer (continued) _the faculties of application._ this group consists of two qualities: that of _firmness_, or decision; and that of _continuity_, or patience. these faculties, together with self-esteem, are located at the upper-back, or back-upper, part of the head. _firmness_, or decision, when highly developed causes one to manifest stability, tenacity, fixedness of purpose, often reaching the point of obstinacy, mulishness and stubbornness. these people cannot be driven, or forced into anything. they are "mighty set" in their ways, and when they once take a position are very apt to stick to it "right or wrong." they are apt to fight to the last ditch for what they consider principle, and will hold on to the end in what they believe to be right. to attempt to drive them by force is to dash one's head against a stone wall. the only way to handle these people is to endeavor to get them interested in your side of the case before they have "set" their minds and made up their opinion. if they have already been prejudiced against your case, the only way is to give up the fight from the front, and endeavor to present the matter from a different viewpoint, or angle, so that new points will be presented which take the matter out of the old category. these people will never give in unless they can say: "oh, that of course alters the matter entirely;" or "oh, well, that places it in a new light;" or "that is an entirely different proposition," etc. leave them victors of the positions upon which they are "set," and endeavor to enlist their interest upon some new aspects, points, or principles--you have at least an even chance of winning on the new point, whereas you have none whatever on the old one. if, however, you can fit your case to some of their established prejudices, for or against, you have won your battle, for their quality of stability will then be employed in your favor instead of against it. you will have to fit your case to their moulds--cut your garment according to their pattern. a stubborn and balky horse or mule can often be started in motion by turning its attention to a new thing--such as putting a piece of twisted paper in its ear, adjusting its harness in a new way, etc. the same principle will work on stubborn men, "set" in their ways. get their mind off the point in question, and they will be rational. let them have their own way about their own points--and then plan a flank or rear attack on them. you cannot batter down their stone-wall--you must either soar over it, tunnel under it, or else go around it. _continuity_, or patience, when highly developed causes one to "stick to" a thing once undertaken; to manifest patience and perseverance, and to give up the mind to one thing to the exclusion of others. it is difficult to interest these people in new things--they instinctively distrust the _new_ idea or thing, and cling to the old. these people are very conservative and dislike change. they can be dealt with best by avoiding shocking them with entirely _new_ things, and by carefully attaching the newer idea or thing to the old so that it seems a part of the latter. new things under old names do not disturb these people as much as old things under new names--it is the form and name, rather than the substance with them. old wine in new bottles they abhor--but new wine in old bottles they will stand. arguments based on "old established" things, or "good old-time" things, appeal to them. things must be "respectable," "well-established," "standing the test of years," "no new-fangled notion," etc., to appeal to them. beware of trying new and startling changes on them--they will be prejudiced against you at once. fall in with their ideals, and they will be excellent friends and steady customers. the words "conservative" and "established" sound well to their ears. on the contrary, people in whom this faculty is deficient will incline toward new things because they are new. this faculty, either in excess or when deficient, strongly affects the judgment, and must be taken into consideration by the salesman. _the religio-moral faculties._ this group of faculties includes _conscientiousness_, or moral principle; _hope_, or optimism; _spirituality_, or other-worldliness; _veneration_, or reverence; and _benevolence_, or human kindness. the organs manifesting these qualities are located in the front-top of the head. _conscientiousness_, or moral principle, when highly developed gives one a high sense of right, justice, truth, virtue, and duty. in dealing with these people be particularly careful to make no misstatements, misrepresentations, and exaggerations, but to adhere closely to the facts of the case. avoid also any appearance of trickiness or sharp practice, stories of shrewd bargains, etc. these people become staunch, firm friends if dealt with as they deserve, but become prejudiced against people and houses whom they suspect of unfair dealings, or in whom they lose confidence. their keynote is "right's right"--and you should adhere to it in all dealings with them. they are "the salt of the earth," and it is a pity that there are not more of them. it is true that sometimes this faculty seems to become perverted into phariseeism and hypocrisy--but, then, every good thing has its counterfeit, and the thing to do is to distinguish between the true and the false, here as elsewhere. _hope_, or optimism, when highly developed causes one to look on the bright side of things, expect favorable outcomes, look confidently forward, and expect much from the future. its perversion manifests in visionary dreams and castle-building. these people are amenable to appeals to future success, bright prospects, cheerful outlook, and new undertakings which seem promising. they become enthusiastic when propositions are properly presented to them, and prefer to deal with salesmen of similar mental characteristics. these people are natural "bulls" in business--beware of posing as a "bear" when dealing with them. they relish a good cheering, cheerful talk more than anything else. they are good people to deal with, particularly if the quality in question is balanced by caution and trained by experience. _spirituality_, or other-worldliness, when highly developed tends to cause one to live on mental heights above the things of ordinary material existence; to trust to the "inner light;" to incline toward mysticism; and to experience a religious consciousness above the ordinary. when manifested in a lesser degree it is evidenced by the ordinary "religious" feeling. perverted, it manifests as superstition, credulity and "psychism." the people in whom this faculty is active seem to feel that business is a degrading necessity, and they are never thoroughly at home in it, unless the goods handled happen to be along the lines of their general inclination, as for instance, religious books, etc. consequently, their business traits and tastes arise from the other faculties, rather than from this particular one. however, they are easily prejudiced against one whom they imagine does not agree with them in their beliefs and convictions, and are apt to be swayed rather more by feeling, emotion and sentiment than by cool judgment and pure reason. they are usually strong in their likes and dislikes, and are susceptible to appeals to their imagination. _veneration_, or reverence, when highly developed causes one to manifest reverence and extreme respect to authority of all kinds. these people are usually good church members and law abiding citizens. in business, the faculty is apt to cause them to place great stress upon authority and example. if some large merchant has ordered certain goods, they will be impressed by his example. they regard testimonials and recommendations highly. in dealing with them one must avoid speaking lightly of any thing or person esteemed by them, for they will be quick to resent it. they are usually decidedly conventional, and aim to meet the full requirements of "respectability" and social customs. _benevolence_, or human kindness, when highly developed causes one to manifest sympathy, kindness, generosity, and philanthropy. these people are altruistic and always ready to do another a good turn. they are moved by their feelings rather than by their reason and judgment, and will often base their business transactions rather more upon friendliness and personal feeling than upon cold business judgment and policy. they are generous where their sympathies and feelings are interested, and are too often taken advantage of by selfish people who play on their unselfish natures. too often are they considered "easy," and are imposed on accordingly. the personal equation of the salesman plays an important part in dealing with these people. from these several groups of faculties arise many combinations of character in people. while it is true that there is almost infinite variety among people, nevertheless, it is true that there are a few general classes into which the majority of buyers may be fitted or grouped for convenience. let us now consider some of the more common classes, and see how the faculties, in combination, manifest themselves. _the argumentive buyer._ this man finds his greatest pleasure in arguing, combating and disputing with the salesman--argument for the sake of argument, not for the sake of truth or advantage. this trait arises from developed combativeness and destructiveness. do not take these people too seriously. let them enjoy a victory over you on minor points, and then after yielding gracefully coax them along the main lines of the selling talk. at the best, they are arguing over terms, definitions, forms, etc. and not over _facts_. let them make their own definitions, terms and forms--and then take their order for the goods which you have fitted into their side of the argument. if, however, the argument is based upon true reasoning and with a legitimate intent, then reason with him calmly and respectfully. _the conceited buyer._ this fellow is full of approbativeness. we have told you about him elsewhere. meet him on his own plane, and give him the particular bait indicated for his species--he will rise to it. appearing to defer to him, you may work in your arguments and selling talk without opposition. prefacing your explanation with "as you know by your own experience;" or "as your own good judgment has decided;" etc., you may tell your story without much opposition. you must always let him feel that you realize that you are in the presence of a great man. _the "stone wall" buyer._ this man has self esteem and firmness largely developed. we have told you about him under those two headings. you must fly over, tunnel under, or walk around his stone wall of reserve and stubbornness. let him keep his wall intact--he likes it, and it would be a shame to deprive him of it. a little careful search will generally show that he has left his flanks, or his rear unguarded. he will not let you in the front door--so go around to the kitchen door, or the side-door of the sitting room--they are not so well guarded. _the irritable buyer._ this is an unpleasant combination of approbativeness and combativeness, in connection with poor digestion and disordered nerves. do not quarrel with him, and let his manner slide over you like water off a duck's back. stick to your selling talk, and above everything keep cool, confident, and speak in even tones. this course will tend to bring him down. if you show that you are not afraid of him, and cannot be made angry--if your tones are firm yet under control and not loud--he will gradually come down to meet you. if you lose your own temper, you may as well walk out. simply ignore his "grouch"--deny it out of existence, as our new thought friends would say. _the "rough shod" buyer._ this man has large destructiveness, and self esteem, and wants to run things himself. he will try to ride rough shod over you. keep cool, even-tempered, self-possessed, and firm yet respectful. do not let him "rattle" you. it is often more of a "bluff" than anything else. keep on "sawing wood;" and do not be scared off. these people are often but "lath-and-plaster" instead of the iron and steel they appear to be at first sight. keep firm and calm, is the keynote in dealing with them. _the cautious buyer._ this man generally has cautiousness and continuity well developed, and hope deficient. he is conservative and fearful. avoid frightening him with ideas of "new" things or "experiments." if you are selling new things or ideas, manage to blend them in with things with which he is familiar--associate the new and unfamiliar with the old and familiar. and be conservative and careful in your talk, do not give him the idea that you are a radical or a "new fangled idea" man. to him, be an "old fashioned person." _the cunning buyer._ this fellow has large secretiveness or cunning--he belongs to the fox tribe. he likes to scheme out things for himself, so if you will content yourself with giving him broad hints, accompanied by expressive glances, regarding what can be done with your goods, he will be apt to scheme out something in that direction, and thinking he has done it all himself, he will be pleased and interested. let him know that you appreciate his shrewdness, particularly if he shows that his approbativeness is well developed. but, if not, better let him think that he is deceiving you regarding his true nature. the majority of cunning people, however, take pride in it, and relish a little grim appreciation of their quality. _the dignified buyer._ this man has large self esteem, and probably also large approbativeness. in either case, let him play the part for which nature has cast him, and you play yours. your part is in recognizing and respecting his dignity, by your manner and tone. whether the dignity be real or assumed, a recognition of and falling in with it is appreciated and relished. imagine that you are in the presence of your revered great-grandfather, or the bishop, and the rest will be easy. we once knew of a jovial, but indiscreet, salesman who lost a large sale to a buyer of this kind, by poking him in the ribs and calling him "old chap." the buyer barely escaped an attack of apoplexy--the salesman entirely escaped a sale. _the "mean" buyer._ this man is moved by acquisitiveness. he is suspicious of you from the start, for he feels that you intend to get some money from him. don't blame him--he's built that way. instead, get his mind off the subject and on to another, by plunging in at once with the statement that you have something upon which _he can make money_, or something that _will save him money_. emphasize these points, and you will have aroused his curiosity. then proceed along the same lines--something to make money for him, or something to save money for him--these are the only two arguments he can assimilate. _the intelligent buyer._ these people depend almost entirely upon reason and judgment. they are scarce. when you meet one of them, drop all attempts to play upon weak points, prejudices or feelings, and confine yourself strictly to logical and rational statements, presentation of your proposition, and argument thereon. do not attempt sophistry, argument from false premises, or other fallacies. he will detect them at once, and will feel indignant. talk straight from the shoulder, and confine yourself to facts, figures, principles, and logic. so far we have dealt with the voluntary or outer mind of the buyer. let us now consider his involuntary or inner mind. there are many other terms used by psychologists to designate these two phases of mind--the important fact is that there are _two_ phases or planes of mind which are operative in a sale. let us see how they work, rather than what they are, or what they are called. discarding, for the time being, the current psychological theories and terminology, let us take a plain look at the facts of the case. a little consideration will show us that there are two parts to a man's mind--or two phases of activity. in the first place, there is a part of one's mind which acts as does the mind of the higher animal, the savage, the child. that is, it acts upon impulse and without restraint of the will. its attention is easily attracted, but held with difficulty unless the interest and curiosity is awakened. it is curious, fond of novelty, inquisitive, impulsive, easily persuaded in certain directions, susceptible to impressions, amenable to suggestion, imitative, subject to panic, apt to "follow my leader," emotional, depending upon feeling rather than upon reason, subject to persuasion and coaxing, and acting almost automatically in response to awakened desire. let us think of this part of the mind as the inheritance of the race from the past--the instinctive mind--the elemental mind of the race before intellect mounted its throne. this part of the mind is possessed by every individual of the race. no matter how highly developed the individual may be, he has this part of the mind. no matter how much he may be in control of it, it is always there as a background and basis of his other kind of mind. the difference in the self-control of individuals depends almost altogether upon the other part of the mind, which we shall now consider--the voluntary mind, in which the intellect and will are the predominant elements. the phase which we have just considered may be called the involuntary mind, in which desire and feeling are the predominant elements. the voluntary mind has come to man in the course of evolution. it is not nearly so highly developed in the majority of people, as one might at first suppose. the majority of the race have the involuntary mind predominant, and are swayed more by feeling and desire than by intellect and will. those in whom the voluntary mind is highly developed place the intellect over the feelings--the will over the desires. they submit their feelings to the inspection and approval of their intellect, and hold their desires in check by their will. we are in the habit of thinking of will as a something which acts--but in the majority of instances it is found to be employed in checking action of the desires--in holding back rather than in pushing forward. one of the chief duties of the developed will is that of inhibition, or restraint. and inhibition depends upon the decision of the judgment or intellect. the animal, savage, or child has but little power of this kind--the average individual has more than the child or savage but less than the developed individual--the developed individual has better self-control, and subordinates his emotional desires and feelings to his judgment and will, by inhibition or restraint. every individual has both of these phases of mind--the involuntary and voluntary--the latter, however, being manifested in an infinite variety of degrees of development and power. back of every involuntary mind is to be found the protecting voluntary mind--and likewise, back of every voluntary mind, no matter how strong it may be, there is ever the involuntary mind chafing under restraint and striving to escape its master's eye and express itself in its own way. and the master often relaxes its attention, or gets tired of its strenuous task, and then the hidden nature "plays while the cat's away." perhaps the salesman may be able to remember this classification of the two phases of the mind, by picturing them as _two partners_ engaged in business. the salesman is trying to secure the trade of the firm. the one brother is an easy-going fellow, possessing curiosity and childish interest, capable of being "jollied," persuaded and coaxed, and apparently acting always from his momentary desires and feelings, desirous of appearing well in the eyes of others, and anxious to make a good impression, finding it easier to say "yes," than "no"--easier to fall in with the wishes of others than to oppose them, being vain and complaisant. this partner's name is "easyboy." the other partner is an entirely different sort of fellow. he is cold and calculating, manifesting very little feeling or emotion, submitting everything to his reason and judgment, not moved by prejudices for or against, driving a close bargain and resenting attempts to coax or drive him. his name is "hardfellow." in the firm of "easyboy and hardfellow," the work is divided. "easyboy" has much to do about the place, attending to many things for which his temperament specially fits him. "hardfellow," however, does the buying, for experience has taught him that "easyboy" is not fitted for the task, being too much under the sway of his feelings and being too easily influenced. "easyboy" never could say "no," anyway--but "hardfellow" finds it almost as hard to say "yes." so "hardfellow" does the buying, but "easyboy" always "hangs 'round" when a salesman is talking, for he is naturally inquisitive, and, being jealous, rather resents "hardfellow's" authority in the matter. sometimes he breaks in, and "hardfellow" lets him have his say, and at times indulges him in minor purchases, for being a partner he must accord him some consideration in spite of the arrangement regarding duties. a strange thing is that "easyboy" is possessed of the notion that he would make an ideal buyer, far better than "hardfellow" in fact, and he loses no opportunity of manifesting his supposed quality, notwithstanding the fact that he usually makes a bungle of it. for "hardfellow" is often so busy that he cannot give his full attention to the business of buying; then again he becomes tired and at such times his judgment is not so good, and he is apt to be influenced by "easyboy" at such times; and, again, he becomes interested in one feature of the purchase and overlooks the others--at such times "easyboy" "gets in his fine work," and takes a hand in the buying. the salesmen who visit the firm are fully aware of this condition of affairs, and plan things so as to have "easyboy" on hand and able to play his part. they can do anything with him, and the more he is in evidence the better are their chances. if he had his way he would buy corner lots in the moon, or gold-bricks minus the plating. he likes to say "yes" when coaxed, jollied or led. but the salesmen having a straight business proposition of merit get along well with "hardfellow," for he is reachable on such lines when logically presented and explained in a business way. even such salesmen, however, find "easyboy" a valuable ally, for he often gets them a hearing when "hardfellow" is busy or otherwise not disposed to listen. and so, they all find it an important question to get "easyboy" on the scene at "hardfellow's" elbow. some claim to have discovered a method whereby they can "sidetrack" "hardfellow" and get "easyboy" to do the buying. and rumor even has it that there have been unscrupulous individuals who have happened around when "hardfellow" was taking his _siesta_ after a full dinner, and who then played upon "easyboy's" weakness in a shameful manner. the firm deny these rumors, but there is an old gold brick holding back a door at the back part of the store; and a big bundle of worthless shares in a nicely printed gold-mine and a deed for a quarter-section of the blue sky, in the safe--so there may have been something in the tale, after all. every mind is an "easyboy and hardfellow" firm. both partners are in evidence. in some cases "easyboy" has far more sway and influence than his more capable partner; in others they have equal authority; in a third, "hardfellow" asserts his right and ability, and "easyboy" has to take a back seat under protest. but the same principle is true of them all. and this fact is taken into consideration by men of the world who understand the true state of affairs. if anyone doubts this statement of psychological facts, let him analyze himself, and look back over his own experience. he will find that "easyboy" has played him many a sad trick in the past, and the "hardfellow" has been "off his job" more than once. then let him begin to analyze others with whom he comes in contact--he will see the same state of affairs existing there. and yet there is no mystery about the matter--it is all in accordance with known psychological laws. some writers on the subject of salesmanship rather solemnly assure us that the "easyboy" part of the mind is a "higher mind"--but it is not. it belongs to the _instinctive_ stage of mental development, rather than to the _rational_. it is an inheritance from the past--that past in which men were moved entirely by feeling and emotion, before reason came to its present stage of development. if it is "higher" why is it a fact that the lower races and individuals manifest it to a greater extent than the higher ones? this part of the mind gives vitality and energy to one, but unless it be controlled by intellect and will it is apt to prove a curse. chapter vi the pre-approach nearly all teachers of or writers upon salesmanship lay much stress upon what is called "the pre-approach," by which term is indicated the preliminaries leading up to the approach or interview with the buyer. what we have said under the head of "the mind of the salesman" is really a part of the pre-approach, for it is in the nature of the preparation of the mind of the salesman for the interview with the buyer. but there is more than this to the pre-approach. the pre-approach is the mapping out of the campaign--"organizing victory" it has been called. it is the accumulation of ammunition for the fight, and the laying out of the strategy. macbain says: "the pre-approach is the groundwork upon which the salesman builds. it comprises all the information obtainable by him that will be of importance in making his approach in selling the customer. * * * a sale, in fact, resembles chimney-building, in which it takes more time for preliminary scaffold-making than it does to build the permanent structure once the scaffold is made." in the first place, an important part of the pre-approach is a correct and complete knowledge of your goods. too many men rush to the approach without knowing what they have to sell. it is not enough to know brands and prices--one should _know_ his goods from top to bottom, inside and outside, from the raw material to the finished article. he should feel perfectly at home with his goods, so that he may have full information regarding them on tap, and thus have his mind free for the strategy of the sale. a little close, earnest intelligent study of one's line of goods will not only supply one with an efficient weapon, but will also impart to him a sense of certainty and confidence that he cannot have otherwise. what would be thought of a teacher of natural history who did not understand animals? and yet many salesmen are equally as ignorant about their subject. the salesman should understand his goods so thoroughly that he could write a treatise on them, or demonstrate them before an audience of experts or of persons entirely in ignorance of them--the latter being probably the hardest task. he should be able to explain their particular virtues and characteristics to a man old in the same line, or to explain them simply and plainly to one who had never seen them or who was ignorant of their uses. we know of one salesman who was asked by his little boy to explain a cash register to him, and who complied with the request. he told us that he learned more about his cash register in the process of that explanation than he had acquired in even the process of the technical demonstration in the "salesman's school" at the factory. it is not always policy for the salesman to air his knowledge of his goods to his customer--such a course would generally bore the latter--but he should know all about his goods, nevertheless. the man who knows his goods in this way plants his feet on the solid rock and cannot be swept away, while the man who builds on the shifting sand of "half-knowledge" is always in danger. but the more popular branch of the pre-approach is the knowledge of the customer. get as many points regarding the characteristics, habits, likes and dislikes of the customer as possible. find out as much as you can about his trade, and manner of conducting his business, as well as his business history. macbain says: "there is really no information about a prospective customer that can be said to be valueless. on the other hand, a knowledge of one or two of the characteristics of the man to be approached may be considered sufficient, the ready intuition of the salesman being relied upon for the rest. it is assumed, of course, that a salesman will be able to call his man by name, pronouncing the name correctly upon the very first interview. this is the prime requisite, and the remaining knowledge should be grouped about this in the order of its importance." the data regarding your prospective customer is obtainable in many ways. much of it you may obtain from your house if they have had previous dealings with him. other salesmen will also add to the data, but one must be on the lookout here and not allow himself to be prejudiced against the customer, or frightened by adverse reports regarding his manner and characteristics coming from other salesmen. pierce says: "it would seem that the good characteristics of the prospect are desirable to learn. but it is a conviction that by denying to one's self the unfavorable things said about your prospect, you will not accentuate the very qualities you hope to obviate. one attempt at a sale is recalled where the prospect was said to be 'the meanest man on earth.' almost terrified by the description, the salesman went at the prospect the wrong way; displeased him; lost the sale." hotel clerks--or better still, hotel proprietors--are often very well informed regarding merchants in their town, and often valuable information may be obtained in this way, although the judgment and experience of the hotel people must be appraised before basing one's own opinion regarding the customer. other customers may also be diplomatically pressed into service in obtaining information regarding their competitors, although allowance must always be made for the personal bias in such cases. it is a good idea for the salesman to make a record of these advance reports, so as to have them on file where he may refer to them when needed. some salesmen have a card index devoted to this purpose, which they have found very useful. another, and a very important point about the pre-approach is that of developing the proper mental attitude in yourself. you must get _yourself_ right first, before you can get anything else right. pierce says regarding this: "someone has said that the greatest bane to selling goods is fear. as a matter of fact, the only thing you are afraid of is that you won't make the sale,--get the check. but, if you waive this point, and say, 'now, i don't care whether i get this sale or not. i do know this: i am honest, my goods are honest, and if this man does not want them there are plenty of men who do,' you will find the fear melting like the mist before sunshine. fear cannot live in the presence of your smile, your confidence, your knowledge of the business and your industry." in this connection, re-read what we have said to you regarding the "i" and "self-respect" in the chapter entitled "the mind of the salesman." this chapter was written to cover just such cases as the one in question. if you can realize the "i" within you, your fear will disappear quickly. remember, "there's nothing to fear but fear." many successful salesmen state that they overcame their early fear and timidity by filling themselves with auto-suggestions that they were calling on the customer for the purpose of doing him a good turn--that it was a good thing for the customer that the salesman was calling on him, although he did not know it--and that he, the salesman must let nothing stand in the way of doing that good turn to the customer, etc. as ridiculous as this may appear to some, it will be found to work well in many cases. and it is based upon truth, too, for if the goods are right, and the prices are likewise, the salesman is doing the customer a good turn. and right here, let us impress upon you the necessity of working yourself up to the point of _believing thoroughly in your own proposition_. you must get yourself into the state of mind in which, if you were in the customer's place, you would surely want to take advantage of it. you must convert yourself before you can expect to convert the customer. we know an ad. man who tells us that he never feels satisfied with an ad. that he is writing until he can make himself believe that he wants to buy the article himself. and he is right. and the salesman will do well to take a leaf from his book. enthusiasm and belief are contagious. if you believe thoroughly in a thing, you run a much better chance of making others believe in it also, than if you feel otherwise. you must learn to _sell to yourself_ first, then you may sell to the customer. w.c. holman, in "salesmanship," says: "one cannot make others believe what he himself believes, unless he himself is an earnest believer. dwight l. moody swayed enormous audiences by the simple power of his own wonderful earnestness. no one could listen to moody without saying: 'this man believes absolutely every word he is speaking. if he feels what he says so tremendously, there must be something in it.' if every salesman realized how largely the attitude of the 'prospect' depended upon the salesman's own mental attitude, he would be as careful to get into the right frame of mind when he started out to approach a prospect as he would be to carry a sample case. it is a simple matter for him to do this. all that is necessary is for him to 'take account of stock' just before he starts out--to enumerate to himself all the strong, convincing points in his proposition--to consider the good high qualities of the goods he is selling--run over in his mind the splendid characteristics of his house--think of the great number of customers who have bought his product--and of the supremely satisfying reasons why other customers should buy his goods. in other words, before a salesman starts to sell other men, he should sell himself. he should make this sale to himself at the beginning of every day's work." the student should acquaint himself thoroughly with the creative force of suggestion and auto-suggestion in character building, and in producing and maintaining the proper mental attitude. the volume of this series entitled "_suggestion and auto-suggestion_" gives both the theory, principles and methods of applying auto-suggestion in the directions named. one need no longer be a slave of his mental attitude. on the contrary he may create and preserve the mental attitude he deems advisable and necessary at any time. mr. w.c. holman, one of the best of the inspirational writers on salesmanship, gives the following interesting instance of the use of auto-suggestion by a salesman. he says: "one of the best salesmen the writer ever knew got up what he called his catechism. he used to put himself through it every morning before starting out. oftentimes he repeated it aloud if he had the opportunity. the questions he would repeat in a quiet tone, but the answers he would pronounce with all the earnestness of which he was capable. his catechism ran somewhat as follows: "am i working for a good house? yes! "has my house the reputation and prestige of being one of the best in its line? yes! "have we made hundreds of thousands of sales like the sales i am going to make to-day? yes! "have we an enormous body of satisfied users? yes! "am i selling the best goods of the kind made anywhere in the world? yes! "is the price i am asking a fair one? yes! "do the men i am going to call on need the article i am selling? yes! "do they realize that now? no! "is that the very reason i am going to call on them--because at present they don't want my goods, and haven't yet bought them? yes! "am i justified in asking a prospect's time and attention to present my proposition? by all the powers, yes! "am i going to get into the office of every man that i call on, if there is any earthly way to do it? yes! "am i going to sell every man i call on to-day? you bet i am!" referring to the above "catechism" of mr. holman, we would say that if a man would work himself up to the point of asking and answering these questions in earnest, and would carry the spirit thereof through the day, he would render himself almost invincible. a spirit like that is the spirit of the light brigade, of napoleon, of the berserker norseman who made a way for himself. such a man would make opportunities, instead of begging for them. such a man would be inspired. this is auto-suggestion raised to the nth power. try it--you need it in your business! the second phase of the pre-approach is that of obtaining an interview with the prospective customer, generally known as "the prospect." in many instances the salesman is able to secure the interview by simply walking into the presence of the prospect, the latter being in full view in his store or office and no intermediary being present to intercept the approach. in such cases the second phase of the pre-approach is passed over, and the actual approach is entered into at once. but in other cases, particularly in the large office buildings of the principal cities, the prospect is found to be in his private office, and the salesman's advance is halted by a clerk, or even an office boy, and there are certain preliminaries to be gone through with before an interview may be obtained. in many cases, "big" men (or those who wish to be considered "big") surround themselves with so much formality and red-tape that it is quite a feat to run the gauntlet of the guardians of the inner temple, and much tact, diplomacy, presence of mind, and often strategy is required of the salesman in order that he may "get at his man." macbain, in his work entitled "selling," says of this stage: "between the pre-approach and the actual approach sometimes lies a trying time for the salesman. it is no uncommon thing for a prospective customer to keep a salesman waiting, either outside the office door and out of sight, or inside and in the presence of the prospective buyer. this is known as 'breaking the salesman's nerve.' it is often done with the idea of deliberately making the salesman nervous and consequently unable to make such an approach as otherwise would be possible. perhaps one of the most common forms of this is seen when the prospective customer appears to be very busily interested in something at his desk and allows the salesman to stand an indefinite length of time and then turns suddenly upon him. this is especially disconcerting to the young man, but the experienced salesman recognizes it as an indication that either the man is very busy and actually hates to take his mind off his work, or that he is afraid of being talked into something that he will later regret. the salesman consequently shapes his introduction accordingly and will in no wise be disconcerted by this attempt as it will enable him to study carefully the outward characteristics of the man whom he is about to approach." in many cases this waiting is forced on the salesman by a prospect who also knows something of the laws of psychology--for such knowledge is not confined to the salesman by any means, the buyer having posted himself in many cases. in the game of checkers or draughts quite an important advantage accrues to the player securing what is technically known as "the move," which, however, is a very different thing from the "first play." there is in the psychology of the sale, or of the interview between two people of equal strength, a something which corresponds very closely with "the move" in checkers. this something gives a decided advantage to the person securing it, and it is worth striving for. this something is subtle and almost indescribable, although apparent to every one who has dealings with his fellow men. it seems to be a matter of mental balance and poise. the salesman, if he be well balanced and poised, is "positive" to the buyer, the latter being in a listening, and therefore passive, attitude. so far the salesman has "the move," which however he may later lose if the prospect plays scientifically. well, to get back to the "waiting" stage, the prospect by disturbing the salesman's poise, and "breaking his nerve" by keeping him waiting on the anxious bench in a state of suspense, often manages to get "the move" on him, unless he understands the psychology of the process and accordingly avoids it. suspense is the most nerve-breaking mental state on the psychological list, as all realize who have experienced it. beware of losing "the move." an important factor in getting past the stockade of the outer office is the consciousness of self respect and the realization of the "i" of which we have spoken. this mental attitude impresses itself upon those who guard the outer works, and serves to clear the way. as pierce says: "remember, you are asking no favors; that you have nothing to apologize for, and that you have every reason in the world for holding your head high. and it is wonderful what this holding up of the head will do in the way of increasing sales. we have seen salesmen get entrance to the offices of broadway buyers simply through the holding of the head straight up from the shoulders." but it is the mental attitude back of the physical expression that is the spirit of the thing--don't forget this. the mental attitude and the physical expression thereof instinctively influence the conduct of other people toward one. we may see the same thing illustrated in the attitude and action of the street boy toward dogs. let some poor cur trot along with drooping ears, timid expression, meek eyes, and tail between his legs, and the urchin will be apt to kick him or throw a rock at his retreating form. note the difference when the self-respecting dog, with spirit in him, trots past, looking the boy fearlessly in the eye and showing his sense of self-respect and power to back it up in every movement. that dog is treated accordingly. there are certain people whose manner is such that they do not need to ask respect and consideration--it is given them as a matter of right and privilege. people stand aside to give them room, and move up in street cars that they may have a seat. and it does not necessarily follow that the person to whom this respect is shown is a worthy individual or a person of fine qualities--he may be a confidence man or a swindler. but whatever he is, or may be, he has certain outward mannerisms and characteristics which enable him to "put up a good front" and which carry him through. at the back of it all will be found certain mental states which produce the genuine outward characteristics and manner in the case of genuine instances of persons possessing authority and high position, the confidence man merely presenting a passable counterfeit, being a good actor. it is often necessary for the salesman to send in a card to the inner office. it is well for him to have some cards, well engraved in the most approved manner, bearing simply his name: "mr. john jay jones," with his business appearing thereon. if he is travelling from a large city, and is selling in smaller towns, he may have "new york," "chicago," "philadelphia," "boston," etc., as the case may be in the corner of his card. if the name of his business appears on the card the prospect often goes over the matter of a possible sale, mentally, without the salesman being present to present his case, and then may decline to grant an interview. the name, without the business, often arouses interest or curiosity and thus, instead of hindering, really aids in securing the interview. regarding the discussion of the business with anyone other than the prospect himself, the authorities differ. as a matter of fact it would seem to depend largely upon the particular circumstances of each case, the nature of the articles to be sold, and the character and position of the subordinate in question. one set of authorities hold that it is very poor policy to tell your business to a subordinate, and that it is far better to tell him courteously but firmly that your business is of such a nature that you can discuss it only with the prospect in person. otherwise, it is held that the subordinate will tell you that the matter in question has already been considered by his principal, and that he is fully informed regarding the proposition, and has given orders that he is not to be disturbed further regarding it. the other set of authorities hold that in many cases the subordinate may be pressed into service, by treating him with great respect, and an apparent belief in his judgment and authority, winning his good-will and getting him interested in your proposition, and endeavoring to have him "speak about it" to his superior during the day. it is claimed that a subsequent call, the day following, will often prove successful, as the subordinate will have paved the way for an interview and have actually done some work for you in the way of influence and selling talk. it is held that some salesmen have made permanent "friends in camp" of these subordinates who have been approached in this way. it would seem, however, as we have said, to depend much upon the particular circumstances of the case. in some cases the subordinate is merely a "hold-off," or "breakwater;" while in others he is a confidential employee whose opinion has weight with the prospect, and whose good-will and aid are well worth securing. in any event, however, it is well to gain the respect and good-will of those in the "outer court," for they can often do much in the way of helping or injuring your chances. we have known cases in which subordinates "queered" a salesman who had offended them; and we have known other cases in which the subordinate being pleased by the salesman "put him next." it is always better to make a friend rather than an enemy--from the office-boy upward--on general principles. many a fine warrior has been tripped up by a small pebble. strong men have died from the bite of a mosquito. the following advice from j.f. gillen, the chicago manager of the burroughs adding machine company, is very much to the point. mr. gillen, in the magazine "salesmanship," says: "a salesman who has not proved his mettle--and who, unfortunately, is not sure of himself--is likely to be overcome by a sense of his own insignificance on entering the private domain of the great man, rich man, or influential man, from whom he hopes to get an order. the very hum and rush of business in this boss's office are very awe-inspiring. the fact that there exists an iron-clad rule, designed to protect the boss against intrusion, forbidding the admittance of an uninvited salesman--and the fact that the army of employees are bound by this rule to oppose the entrance of any such visitor--combine to make an untried salesman morally certain of his powerlessness; to make him feel that he has no justifiable reason for presenting himself at all. indeed he has none, if the awe which he feels for red-tape, rules, dignitaries, has made him lose sight of the attractions of his own proposition; has swallowed up his confidence in what he has to offer and his ability to enthuse the prospect in regard to it. * * * if you believe that your proposition will prove interesting to the prospect and that he will profit by doing business with you, you have a right to feel that the rule barring salesmen from his presence was not intended to bar _you_. convince yourself of this and the stern negative of the information clerk will not abash you. you will find yourself endowed with a courage and resourcefulness to cope with a slick secretary who gives glibly evasive replies when you try to find out whether mr. prospect is now in his office, whether he cannot see you at once, and what reason exists for supposing you could possibly tell your business to any subordinate in place of him. once you are thus morally sure of your ground, the hardest part of the battle is won. * * * _you can see the prospect and get speech with him, no matter what obstacles intervene, if your nerve holds out and you use your brains._" remember this, always: the psychology of salesmanship applies not only to work with the prospect, but also to work with those who bar the way to him. subordinates have minds, faculties, feelings and strong and weak points of mentality--they have their psychology just as their employer has his. it will pay you to make a careful study of their psychology--it has its rules, laws and principles. this is a point often overlooked by little salesmen, but fully recognized by the "big" ones. the short cut to the mind of many a prospect is directly through the mind of the man in the outer office. chapter vii the psychology of purchase there are several stages or phases manifested by the buyer in the mental process which results in a purchase. while it is difficult to state a hard and fast rule regarding the same, because of the variety of temperament, tendencies and mental habits possessed in several degrees by different individuals, still there are certain principles of feeling and thought manifested alike by each and every individual buyer, and a certain logical sequence is followed by all men in each and every original purchase. it follows, of course, that these principles, and this sequence, will be found to be operative in each and every original purchase, whether that purchase be the result of an advertisement, display of goods, recommendation, or the efforts of a salesman. the principle is the same in each and every case, and the sequence of the mental states is the same in each and every instance. let us now consider these several mental states in their usual sequence. the several mental states manifested by every buyer in an original purchase are given below in the order of sequence in which they are usually manifested:-- i. involuntary attention. ii. first impression. iii. curiosity. iv. associated interest. v. consideration. vi. imagination. vii. inclination. viii. deliberation. ix. decision. x. action. we use the term "_original_ purchase" in this connection in order to distinguish the original purchase from a repeated order or subsequent purchase of the same article, in which latter instance the mental process is far more simple and which consists merely in recognizing the inclination, or habit, and ordering the goods, without repeating the original complex mental operation. let us now proceed to a consideration of the several mental stages of the original purchase, in logical sequence:-- i. _involuntary attention._ this mental state is the elementary phase of attention. attention is not a faculty of the mind, but is instead the focusing of the consciousness upon one object to the temporary exclusion of all other objects. it is a turning of the mind on an object. the object of attention may be either external, such as a person or thing; or internal, such as a feeling, thought, memory, or idea. attention may be either voluntary, that is, directed consciously by the will; or involuntary, that is, directed unconsciously and instinctively and apparently independently of the will. voluntary attention is an acquired and developed power and is the attribute of the thinker, student and intellectual individual in all walks of life. involuntary attention, on the contrary, is but little more than a reflex action, or a nervous response to some stimulus. as halleck says: "many persons scarcely get beyond the reflex stage. any chance stimulus will take their attention away from their studies or their business." sir william hamilton made a still finer distinction, which is, however, generally overlooked by writers on the subject, but which is scientifically correct and which we shall follow in this book. he holds that there are three degrees or kinds of attention: ( ) the reflex or involuntary, which is instinctive in nature; ( ) that determined by desire or feeling, which partakes of both the involuntary and voluntary nature, and which although partly instinctive may be resisted by the will under the influence of the judgment; and ( ) that determined by deliberate volition in response to reason, as in study, scientific games, rational deliberation, etc. the first mental step of the purchase undoubtedly consists of involuntary or reflex attention, such as is aroused by a sudden sound, sight, or other sensation. the degree of this involuntary attention depends upon the intensity, suddenness, novelty, or movement of the object to which it responds. all persons respond to the stimuli arousing this form of attention, but in different degrees depending upon the preoccupation or concentration of the individual at the time. the striking or novel appearance of an advertisement; the window-display of goods; the appearance of the salesman--all these things instinctively arouse the involuntary attention, and the buyer "turns his mind on" them. but this turning the mind on belongs to hamilton's first class--that of the instinctive response to the sight or sound, and not that aroused by desire or deliberate thought. it is the most elemental form of attention or mental effort, and to the salesman means simply: "well, i _see_ you!" sometimes the prospect is so preoccupied or concentrated on other things that he barely "sees" the salesman until an added stimulus is given by a direct remark. ii. _first impression._ this mental state is the hasty generalization resulting from the first impression of the object of attention--the advertisement, suggestion, display of goods, or the salesman--depending in the last case upon the general appearance, action, manner, etc., as interpreted in the light of experience or association. in other words, the prospect forms a hasty general idea of the thing or person, either favorable or unfavorable, almost instinctively and unconsciously. the thing or person is associated or classed with others resembling it in the experience and memory of the prospect, and the result is either a good, bad or indifferent impression resulting from the suggestion of association. for this reason the ad. man and the window dresser endeavor to awaken favorable and pleasing associated memories and suggestions, and "puts his best foot foremost." the salesman endeavors to do the same, and seeks to "put up a good front" in his approach, in order to secure this valuable favorable first impression. people are influenced more than they will admit by these "first impressions," or suggestions, of appearance, manner, etc., and the man who understands psychology places great importance upon them. a favorable first impression smooths the way for the successful awakening of the later mental states. an unfavorable first impression, while it may be removed and remedied later, nevertheless is a handicap which the salesman should avoid. (_note_: the mental process of the purchase now passes from the stage of _involuntary attention_, to that of attention inspired by desire and feeling which partakes of _both the voluntary and involuntary elements_. the first two stages of this form of attention are known as curiosity and associated interest, respectively. in some cases curiosity precedes, in others associated interest takes the lead, as we shall see. in other cases the manifestation of the two is almost simultaneous.) iii. _curiosity._ this mental state is really a form of interest, but is more elemental than associated interest, being merely the interest of novelty. it is the strongest item of interest in the primitive races, in children, and in many adults of elemental development and habits of thought. curiosity is the form of interest which is almost instinctive, and which impels one to turn the attention to strange and novel things. all animals possess it to a marked degree, as trappers have found out to their profit. monkeys possess it to an inordinate degree, and the less developed individuals of the human race also manifest it to a high degree. it is connected in some way with the primitive conditions of living things, and is probably a heritage from earlier and less secure conditions of living, where inquisitiveness regarding new, novel and strange sights and sounds was a virtue and the only means of acquiring experience and education. at any rate, there is certainly in human nature a decided instinctive tendency to explore the unknown and strange--the attraction of the mysterious; the lure of the secret things; the tantalizing call of the puzzle; the fascination of the riddle. the salesman who can introduce something in his opening talk that will arouse curiosity in the prospect has done much to arouse his attention and interest. the street-corner fakir, and the "barker" for the amusement-park show, understand this principle in human nature, and appeal largely to it. they will blindfold a boy or girl, or will make strange motions or sounds, in order to arouse the curiosity of the crowd and to cause them to gather around--all this before the actual appeal to interest is made. in some buyers curiosity precedes associated interest--the interest in the unknown and novel precedes the practical interest. in others the associated interest--the practical interest inspired by experience and association--precedes curiosity, the latter manifesting simply as inquisitiveness regarding the details of the object which has aroused associated interest. in other cases, curiosity and associated interest are so blended and shaded into each other that they act almost as one and simultaneously. on the whole, though, curiosity is more elemental and crude than associated interest, and may readily be distinguished in the majority of cases. iv. _associated interest._ this mental state is a higher form of interest than curiosity. it is a practical interest in things relating to one's interests in life, his weal or woe, loves or hates, instead of being the mere interest in novelty of curiosity. it is an acquired trait, while curiosity is practically an instinctive trait. acquired interest develops with character, occupation, and education, while curiosity manifests strongly in the very beginnings of character, and before education. acquired interest is manifested more strongly in the man of affairs, education and experience, while curiosity has its fullest flower in the monkey, savage, young child and uncultured adult. recognizing the relation between the two, it may be said that curiosity is the root, and associated interest the flower. associated interest depends largely upon the principle of association or apperception, the latter being defined as "that mental process by which the perceptions or ideas are brought into relation to our previous ideas and feelings, and thus are given a new clearness, meaning and application." apperception is the mental process by which objects and ideas presented to us are perceived and thought of by us in the light of our past experience, temperament, tastes, likes and dislikes, occupation, interest, prejudices, etc., instead of as they actually are. we see everything through the colored glasses of our own personality and character. halleck says of apperception: "a woman may apperceive a passing bird as an ornament to her bonnet; a fruit grower, as an insect killer; a poet, as a songster; an artist, as a fine bit of coloring and form. the housewife may apperceive old rags as something to be thrown away; a ragpicker, as something to be gathered up. a carpenter, a botanist, an ornithologist, a hunter, and a geologist walking through a forest would not see the same things." the familiar tale of the text-books illustrates this principle. it relates that a boy climbed up a tree in a forest and watched the passers-by, and listened to their conversation. the first man said: "what a fine stick of timber that tree would make." the boy answered: "good morning, mr. carpenter." the second man said: "that is fine bark." the boy answered: "good morning, mr. tanner." the third man said: "i'll bet there's squirrels in that tree." the boy answered: "good morning, mr. hunter." each and every one of the men saw the tree in the light of his personal apperception or associated interest. psychologists designate by the term "the apperceptive mass" the accumulated previous experiences, prejudices, temperament, inclination and desires which serve to modify the new perception or idea. the "apperceptive mass" is really the "character" or "human nature" of the individual. it necessarily differs in each individual, by reason of the great variety of experiences, temperament, education, etc., among individuals. upon a man's "apperceptive mass," or character, depends the nature and degree of his interest, and the objects which serve to inspire and excite it. it follows then that in order to arouse, induce and hold this associated interest of the prospect, the salesman must present things, ideas or suggestions which will appeal directly to the imagination and feelings of the man before him, and which are associated with his desires, thoughts and habits. if we may be pardoned for the circular definition we would say that one's associated interest is aroused only by interesting things; and that the interesting things are those things which concern his interests. a man's interests always interest him--and his interests are usually those things which concern his advantage, success, personal well-being--in short his pocketbook, social position, hobbies, tastes, and satisfaction of his desires. therefore the salesman who can throw the mental spot-light on these interesting things, may secure and hold one's associated interest. hence the psychology of the repeated statement: "i can save you money;" "i can increase your sales;" "i can reduce your expenses;" "i have something very choice;" or "i can give you a special advantage," etc. it may as well be conceded that business interest is selfish interest, and not altruistic. in order to interest a man in a business proposition he must be shown how it will benefit him in some way. he is not running a philanthropic institution, or a salesman's relief fund, nor is he in business for his health--he is there to make money, and in order to interest him you must show him something to his advantage. and the first appeal of associated interest is to his feeling of self interest. it must be in the nature of the mention of "rats!" to a terrier, or "candy!" to a child. it must awaken pleasant associations in his mind, and pleasing images in his memory. if this effect is produced, he can be speedily moved to the succeeding phases of imagination and inclination. as halleck says: "all feeling tends to excite desire. * * * a representative image of the thing desired is the necessary antecedent to desire. if the child had never seen or heard of _peaches_ he would have no desire for them." and, following this same figure, we may say that if the child has a taste for peaches he will be _interested_ in the idea of peaches. and so when you say "peaches!" to him you have his associated interest, which will result in a mental image of the fruit followed by a _desire_ to possess it, and he will listen to your talk regarding the subject of "peaches." the following are the general psychological rules regarding associated interests: i. associated interest attaches only to interesting things--that is to things associated with one's general desires and ideas. ii. associated interest will decline in force and effect unless some new attributes or features are presented--it requires variety in presentation of its object. macbain says: "one of the old time salesmen who used to sell the trade in the middle west, beginning some thirty years ago, and following that vocation for several decades, used as his motto, 'i am here to do you good.' he did not make his statement general, either, in telling his customers how he could do it. he got right down to the vital affairs which touched his customers. he demonstrated it to them, and this personal demonstration is the kind that makes the sales." remember, always, that the phase of associated interest in a purchase is not the same as the phase of demonstration and proof. it is the "warming up" process, preceding the actual selling talk. it is the stage of "thawing out" the prospect and melting the icy covering of prejudice, caution and reluctance which encases him. warm up your prospect by _general statements_ of associated interest, and blow the coals by positive, brief, pointed confident statements of the good things you have in store for him. and, finally, remember that the sole purpose of your efforts at this state is to arouse in him the mental state of interested expectant attention! keep blowing away at this spark until you obtain the blaze of imagination and the heat of desire. v. _consideration._ this mental state is defined as: "an examination, inquiry, or investigation into anything." it is the stage following curiosity and associated interest, and tends toward an inquiry into the thing which has excited these feelings. consideration, of course, must be preceded and accompanied by interest. it calls for the phase of attention excited by feeling, but a degree of voluntary attention is also manifested therewith. it is the "i think i will look into this matter" stage of the mental process of purchase. it is usually evidenced by a disposition to ask questions regarding the proposition, and to "see what there is to it, anyway." in salesmanship, this stage of consideration marks the passing from the stage of approach on the salesman's part, to that of the demonstration. it marks the passage from passive interest to active interest--from the stage of being "merely interested" in a thing, to that of "interested investigation." here is where the real selling work of the salesman begins. here is where he begins to describe his proposition in detail, laying stress upon its desirable points. in the case of an advertisement, or a window display, the mental operation goes on in the buyer's mind in the same way, but without the assistance of the salesman. the "selling talk" of the advertisement must be stated or suggested by its text. if the consideration is favorable and reveals sufficiently strong attractive qualities in the proposition or article, the mind of the buyer passes on to the next stage of the process which is known as: vi. _imagination._ this mental state is defined as: "the exercise of that power or faculty of the mind by which it conceives and forms ideal pictures of things communicated to it by the organs of sense." in the mental process of a purchase, the faculty of imagination takes up the idea of the object in which the associated interest has been aroused, and which has been made the subject of consideration, and endeavors to picture the object in use and being employed in different ways, or as in possession of the buyer. one must use his imagination in order to realize what good a thing will be to him; how he may use it; how it will look; how it will sell; how it will serve its purpose; how it will "work out" or "make good" when purchased. a woman gazing at a hat will use her imagination to picture how she will look in it. the man looking at the book will use his imagination in picturing its uses and the pleasure to be derived therefrom. the business man will use his imagination to picture the probable sale of the goods, their display, their adaptability to his trade, etc. another will picture himself enjoying the gains from his purchase. imagination plays an important part in the psychology of the sale. it is the direct inciter of desire and inclination. the successful salesman realizes this, and feeds the flame of the imagination with the oil of suggestion. in fact, suggestion receives its power through the imagination. the imagination is the channel through which suggestion reaches the mind. salesmen and ad. writers strive to arouse the imagination of their prospective customers by clever word-painting. the imagination is the "direct wire" to desire. from imagination it is a short step to the next mental stage which is called: vii. _inclination._ this mental state is defined as: "a leaning or bent of the mind or will; desire; propensity." it is the "want to" feeling. it is the mental state of which desire is an advanced stage. inclination has many degrees. from a faint inclination or bent in a certain direction, it rises in the scale until it becomes an imperious demand, brooking no obstacle or hindrance. many terms are employed to designate the various stages of inclination, as for instance: desire, wish, want, need, inclination, leaning, bent, predilection, propensity, penchant, liking, love, fondness, relish, longing, hankering, aspiration, ambition, appetite, hunger, passion, craving, lust, etc. desire is a strange mental quality, and one very difficult to define strictly. it is linked with feeling on one side, and with will on the other. feeling rises to desire, and desire rises to the phase of will and endeavors to express itself in action. halleck says of desire: "_it has for its object something which will bring pleasure or get rid of pain, immediate or remote, for the individual or for some one in whom he is interested. aversion, or a striving to get away from something, is merely the negative aspect of desire._" inclination in its various stages is aroused through the appeals to the feelings through the imagination. the feelings related to the several faculties are excited into action by a direct appeal to them through the imagination, and inclination or desired results. appeal to acquisitiveness will result in a feeling which will rise to inclination and desire for gain. appeal to approbativeness will act likewise in its own field. and so on through the list, each well-developed faculty being excited to feeling by the appropriate appeal through the imagination, and thus giving rise to inclination which in turn strives to express itself in action through the will. in short, every man is a bundle of general desires, the nature and extent of which are indicated by his several faculties, and which result from heredity, environment, training, experience, etc. these desires may be excited toward a definite object by the proper emotional appeal through the imagination, and by suggestion. desire _must_ be created or aroused before action can be had, or the will manifest in action. for, at the last, we do things only because we "want to," directly or indirectly. therefore, the important aim of the salesman is to make his prospect "want to." and in order to make him "want to" he must make him see that his proposition is calculated to "bring pleasure, or get rid of pain, immediate or remote, for the individual or for someone else in whom he is interested." in business, the words "profit and loss" may be substituted for "pleasure and pain," although really, they are but forms of the latter. but even when the prospect is brought to the stage of strong inclination or desire, he does not always move to gratify the same. why is this? what other mental process interferes? let us see as we pass on to the next stage of the purchase, known as: viii. _deliberation._ this mental state is defined as: "the act of deliberating and weighing facts and arguments in the mind, calmly and carefully." here is manifested the action of thought and reason--the mental process of weighing and balancing facts, feelings, and inclinations. for it is not only _facts_ and _proofs_ which are weighed in the mental balance, but also feelings, desires, and fears. pure logical reasoning inclines to strict logical processes based upon irrefragible facts, it is true--but there is but little pure logical reasoning. the majority of people are governed more by their feelings and inclinations--their loves and their fears--than by logic. it has been said: "people seek not _reasons_, but _excuses for following their feelings_." the real deliberation, in the majority of cases, is the weighing of probable advantages and disadvantages--of various likes and dislikes--of hopes and fears. it is said that our minds are controlled by _motives_--and the strongest motive wins. we often find that when we think we desire a thing ardently, we then find that we also like something else better, or perhaps fear something else more than we desire the first thing. in such case, the strongest or most pressing feeling wins the day. the faculties here exert their different influences. caution opposes acquisitiveness. acquisitiveness opposes conscientiousness. fear opposes firmness. and so on. the deliberation is not only the weighing of facts, but also the weighing of feelings. the process of deliberation--the weighing of desires--the play and counterplay of motives--is well illustrated by a scene in a classical french comedy. "jeppe," one of the characters, has been given money by his wife to buy her a cake of soap. he prefers to buy a drink with the coin, for his inclinations tend in that direction. but he knows that his wife will beat him if he so squanders the money. he deliberates over the pleasure to be derived from the drink, and the pain which would arise from the beating. "my stomach says drink--my back says soap," says jeppe. he deliberates further. then: "my stomach says yes! my back says no!" cries the poor wight. the conflict between back and stomach rages still more fiercely. then comes the deciding point: "is not my stomach more to me than my back? sure, it is! i say _yes_!" cries jeppe. and away to the tavern he marches. it has been remarked that if the active suggestion of the distant sight of his wife armed with the cudgel, had been added to the situation, jeppe would have bought the soap. or, if the tavern had not been so handy, the result might have been different. sometimes a mental straw tips the scale. the above illustration contains the entire philosophy of the action of the mind in the process of deliberation. the salesman will do well to remember it. halleck thus well states the immediate and remote factors in choice: "the immediate factors are * * * ( ) a preceding process of desire; ( ) the presence in consciousness of more than one represented object or end, to offer an alternative course of action; ( ) deliberation concerning the respective merits of these objects; ( ) the voluntary fiat of decision, which seems to embody most the very essence of will. the remote factors are extremely difficult to select. the sum total of the man is felt more in choice than anywhere else. * * * before a second person could approximate the outcome, he would have to know certain remote factors, the principal being: ( ) heredity; ( ) environment; ( ) education; ( ) individual peculiarities." this eminent authority might well have added an additional element--a most important one--as follows: ( ) suggestion. the salesman watching carefully the shifting scale of deliberation, injects a telling argument or suggestion into the scale, which gives weight to his side at a critical stage. he does this in many ways. he may neutralize an objection by a counter-fact. he adds another proof or fact here--a little more desire and feeling there, until he brings down the scale to a decision. it must be remembered that this deliberation is _not regarding_ the desirability of the proposition--the prospect has admitted his desire, either directly or indirectly, and is now engaged in trying to justify his desire by reason and expediency. he is seeking for reasons or "excuses" to back up his desire, or perhaps, is endeavoring to strike a balance of his conflicting desires and feelings. his mental debate is not over the question of desiring the goods, but over the expediency and probable result of buying them. it is the "to buy or not to buy" stage. this is a delicate part of the process of the purchase, and many prospects act like "see-saws" during the process. the clever salesman must be ready with the right argument at the right place. to him this is the argumentive stage. finally, if the salesman's efforts are successful, the balance drops, and the process passes to the next stage, known as-- ix. _decision._ this mental stage is defined as: "the mental act of deciding, determining, or settling any point, question, difference, or contest." it is the act of the _will_, settling the dispute between the warring faculties, feelings, ideas, desires and fears. it is will acting upon reason, or (alas! too often, upon mere feeling). without entering into a metaphysical discussion, let us remind you that the practical psychology of the day holds that "the strongest motive _at the moment_ wins the choice." this strongest motive may be of reason or of feeling; conscious or unconscious; but _strongest_ at that moment it must be, or it would not win. and this strongest motive is strongest merely because of our character or "nature" as manifested at that particular moment, in that particular environment, under the particular circumstances, and subject to the particular suggestions. the choice depends more upon association than we generally realize, and association is awakened by suggestion. as halleck says: "it is not the business of the psychologist to state what power the association of ideas ought to have. it is for him to ascertain what power it does have." and as ziehen says: "we cannot think as we will, but we must think just as those associations which happen to be present prescribe." this being the case, the salesman must realize that the decision is based always upon ( ) the mental states of the man at that moment; plus ( ) the added motives supplied by the salesman. it is "up to" the salesman to supply those motives, whether they be facts, proofs, appeals to reason, or excitement of feeling. hope, fear, like, dislike--these are the potent motives in most cases. in business, these things are known as "profit or loss." all the faculties of the mind supply motives which aroused may be thrown into the balance affecting decision. this is what argument, demonstration and appeal seek to do--supply motives. (_note_:--it might naturally be supposed that when the final stage of decision has been reached, the mental process of purchase is at an end. but, not so. will has three phases: desire, decision, and action. we have passed through the first two, but action still is unperformed. a familiar example is that of the man in bed in the morning. he ponders over the question of rising, and finally decides to get up. but action does not necessarily result. the trigger of action has not been pulled, and the spring released. so thus we have another mental state, known as:--) x. _action._ this mental state is defined as: "volition carried into effect." mill says: "now what is an action? not one, but a series of two things: the state of mind called a volition, followed by an effect. the volition or intention to produce the effect is one thing; the effect produced in consequence of the intention is another thing; the two together constitute the action." halleck says: "for a completed act of will, there must be action along the line of the decision. many a decision has not aroused the motor centers to action, nor quickened the attention, for any length of time. there are persons who can frame a dozen decisions in the course of a morning, and never carry out one of them. sitting in a comfortable chair, it may take one but a very short time to form a decision that will require months of hard work. * * * some persons can never seem to understand that resolving to do a thing is not the same as doing it. * * * there may be desire, deliberation, and decision; but if these do not result in action along the indicated line, the process of will is practically incomplete." many a person decides to do a thing but lacks the something necessary to release the motive impulses. they tend to procrastinate, and delay the final act. these people are sources of great care and work to the salesman. some men can get their prospects to the deciding point, but fail to get them to act. others seem specially adapted to "closing" these cases. it requires a peculiar knack to "close"--the effort is entirely psychological. we shall consider it in a subsequent chapter under the head of "closing." to be a good "closer" is the ambition of every salesman, for it is the best paid branch of his profession. it depends largely upon the scientific application of suggestion. to lead a prospect to action, is to pull the trigger of his will. to this end all the previous work has been directed. its psychology is subtle. what makes you finally get out of bed in the morning, after having "decided to" several times without resulting action? to understand this, is to understand the process of the final action in the mind of the buyer. is it not worth learning? in the succeeding chapters we shall consider the several stages of the "salesman's progress" toward a sale--the approach, the demonstration, and the closing. in these stages of the salesman, we shall see the action and reaction upon the mind of the buyer, along the lines of the psychology of the purchase. in the sale-purchase the minds of the salesman and the buyer meet. the result is the signed order. the psychological process of the sale is akin to the progress of a game of chess or checkers. and neither is the result of chance--well defined principles underlie each, and established methods are laid down for the student. chapter viii the approach old salesmen hold that in the psychology of the sale there is no more important stage or phase than the introductory stage--the stage of the approach. pierce says: "experienced salesmen will tell you that the first five minutes in front of a prospect is worth more than all the remainder in the matter of getting the check. why? because it is then that the prospect is forming his impressions of you. usually he is obliged to form this quick size-up of the man he meets, in order to conserve his time for important duties. therefore it is your duty to have this first impression the best within your power. and the best way to develop this is to be genuine." but it must never be lost sight of that the first impression is solely for the purpose of obtaining an entrance for the fine edge of your wedge of salesmanship, which you must then proceed to drive home to its logical conclusion,--the order. an impression for impression's sake is a fallacy. remember the old story of the salesman who wrote in that he was not making sales, but that he was "making a good impression on my customers." the firm wired back to him: "go out and make some more impressions--on a snow bank." do not lose sight of the real object of your work, in obtaining the preliminary results. the national cash register company instructs its salesmen regarding the first impression, as follows: "remember, the first five minutes of speaking to a man is likely to make or break you as far as that sale is concerned. if you are in any way antagonistic or offensive to him, you have hurt your chances badly from the start. if you have failed to definitely please or attract him, you have not done enough. it isn't sufficient to be merely a negative quantity. you should make a positive favorable impression, and not by cajolery nor attempted wit nor cleverness. the only right way to gain a man's liking is to deserve it. the majority of men do not often know just what the characteristics of a man are which makes him pleasing or displeasing to them; but they _feel_ pleased or displeased, attracted or repulsed, or indifferent, and the feeling is definite and pronounced, even though they cannot understand just what makes it. a storekeeper in the smallest way of business in a little country village is just as susceptible of being pleased or offended as any merchant prince. it should never be forgotten that whatever his position may be, 'a man's a man for a' that.'" it is not so much what a man _says_ when he approaches the prospect, as the way he acts. it is his manner, rather than his speech. and back of his manner is his mental attitude. without going into subtle psychological theorizing, we may say that it may be accepted as a working hypotheses that a man radiates his mental state, and that those he approaches feel these radiations. it may be the suggestion of manner, or it may be something more subtle--no use discussing theories here, we haven't the time--the fact is that it acts as radiations would act. this being recognized it will be seen that the man's mental attitude in the approach must be right. in the previous chapters we have had much to say to you regarding the factors which go to create the mental attitude. now is the time to manifest what you have learned and practice--for you are making the approach. carry in mind holman's catechism, of which we have told you. maintain your self-respect, and remember that you are a man. pierce says of this: "one reason for this is that self-respect is necessary in your work. and self-respect cannot obtain where there is lack of confidence either in your own ability or in your line of goods. assuming that you take only such a line as you yourself can enthusiastically endorse, it must be remembered that your goods place you absolutely on a par with the merchant. hence, you talk to him shoulder to shoulder, as it were. you are not as a slave to a master! as a hireling to a lord; as a worm to a mountain; although this is the usual attitude untrained salesmen consciously or unconsciously assume. they are timid. they feel they might know their goods better. they feel, perhaps, that the prospect knows their goods or their competitors' goods better than they do themselves. fear is written all over their faces as the approach is made. nine-tenths of the fear is due to ignorance of the goods. the other tenth is lack of experience." regarding this matter of fear, we would say that the experience of the majority of men who have lived active and strenuous lives, meeting with all sorts of people under all sorts of circumstances, is that the cause of fear of people and things exists chiefly in the imagination. it is the fear of anticipation rather than the fear of actual conditions. it is like the fear felt upon approaching a dentist's office--worse than the actual experience of the chair. suspense and fearful expectation are two of the great sources of human weakness. experience shows us that the majority of things we fear never happen; that those which do happen are never so bad as we had feared. moreover, experience teaches us that when a real difficulty confronts us, we usually are given the strength and courage to meet and bear it, or to overcome it--while in our moments of fearful anticipation these helpful factors are not apparent. sufficient for the moment are the evils thereof--it is not the troubles of the moment which bear us down, but the burdens of future moments which we have added to our load. the rule is to meet each question or obstacle as it arises, and not to add fear of trouble beyond to the work of the moment. do not cross your bridge till you come to it. the majority of feared things melt away when you come up to them--they partake of the nature of the mirage. it is the ghosts of things which never materialize which cause us the greatest fear. banish fearthought from your mental attitude when you make the approach. but, a word of warning here: do not become "fresh" or impudent because you feel self reliant and fearless. while realizing that _you_ are a man, do not forget that the prospect is also one. impudence is a mark of weakness rather than of strength--strong men are above this petty thing. be polite and courteous. the true gentleman is both self-respecting and polite. and, after all is said and done, the best approach that a salesman can make is that of a gentleman. this will win in the long run, and the consciousness of having so acted will tend to strengthen the salesman and preserve his self-respect. remember not only to manifest the self-respect of a gentleman--but also to observe the obligations of politeness and courtesy which are incumbent upon a gentleman. _noblesse oblige_--"nobility imposes obligations." if you want a maxim of action and manner, take this one: "act as a gentleman should." if you want a touchstone upon which to test manner and action, take this: "is this the act of a gentleman?" if you will follow this advice you will acquire a manner which will be far superior to one based upon artificial rules or principles--a natural manner--because the manner of a gentleman is the expression of true and pure courtesy, and will be respected as such by all, whether they, themselves, observe it or not. we have seen many instances in which the maintenance of the true gentlemanly spirit under strong provocation has completely disarmed boorishness, and won friendship and regard from those apparently opposing it at the time. the first psychological element of a sale is that of the first impression upon the buyer. and the impression must be of a favorable kind. there must be nothing to create a bad impression for this will distract the attention from the purpose of the approach to the particular object awakening the unpleasant impression. the first point preliminary to gaining attention, is to know the name of the man you are approaching; and if possible just where he is. nothing is more demoralizing to the salesman, and more likely to break up the psychological influence of the approach, than a lack of knowledge of the name and identity of the man you wish to see. the miscarriage of an approach occasioned by mistaking the person should be avoided. if you do not know your man, or where he is in the office, it will be well to inquire of the others present, politely of course, where "mr. x's" desk is. if you happen to ask this question of "mr. x" himself, you can easily adjust yourself to the occasion. the _fiasco_ of approaching "mr. a" and greeting him as "mr. x" is apt to be confusing and weakening, and tends to bring the element of ridicule into the interview, unless the salesman has the tact and wit to pass it off. if possible, avoid asking for "the proprietor," or inquiring of a man, "are you the proprietor?" if you do not know the proprietor's name, ask it of some one. the national cash register people say to their salesmen: "it is manifestly improper to describe a definite form of words and require salesmen to use them in all cases when they approach business men at the first interview. what would be proper to say to one man under given circumstances might be unsuitable to say to another under different circumstances. much must be left to the discretion of the salesman. at the same time there are certain leading statements to be made, and certain ways of making them which experience has shown to be well adapted to the end in view. * * * it is not necessary that this introductory talk should be long. often a short talk is more convincing. we do not advise salesmen to introduce themselves by sending in a card, but prefer that they should depend wholly on what they are able to say to secure a hearing. we strongly disapprove of obscure introductions and all tricks, and believe that a man who has something worth saying, and is not ashamed of his business, can make known his errand in a bold, straightforward manner. a salesman should adapt himself to his man, but at the same time he should have a fixed idea of what he has to say. he should be dignified and earnest. * * * as soon as you do succeed in reaching the proprietor, and have said to him, 'good morning! is this mr. johnson?' then say directly and plainly, 'i represent the national cash register company.' this immediately puts you on a square footing, and if he has anything to say against your business it will draw his fire immediately. if he has nothing to say, proceed to business at once, but don't under any circumstances say, 'i called to sell you a register,' or 'i called to tell you about our registers,' but put it rather in this way, '_i want to interest you in our methods for taking care of transactions with customers in your store_.' the difference between the two ways of saying it is that one begins with _your end_ of the business--the thing that interests _you_; while the other begins at _his_ end of it--the thing presumably interesting to him." we specially direct the student's attention to the above paragraph. it contains in a nutshell the whole philosophy of the introductory talk of the approach. it is the essence of the experience and knowledge of the thousands of salesmen of the great selling organization of the large concern named, and is right to the point, and what is still more important, it is scientifically correct, and based upon true psychological principles. the salesman in making the approach should not act as if he were in a hurry, nor should he dawdle. he should go about it in a business-like manner showing his realization of the value of time, and yet acting as if he had the time necessary for the transaction of that particular piece of business, just as he would if the buyer had called on him instead of vice versa. don't swagger or strut, or act as if you were the proprietor. act the part of the real business man who is at ease and yet is attending to business. do not try to "rush" the customer in the approach--you are calling on him and must appear to defer to him in the matter of opening the conversation, in a respectful and yet self-respecting manner. the better poised and balanced you are in manner, the more he will respect you, no matter how he may act. it is much easier for a buyer to turn down an ill-bred boorish caller than one who shows the signs of being a gentleman. in fact the boorish caller invites the turn-down--he suggests it by his manner; while the gentleman suggests respectful treatment. the line of least resistance in suggestion is the one most natural for people to follow. some salesmen try to grasp the hand of the customer at the beginning. this is all right if the customer be a jovial "hale fellow, well met" kind of a man, but if he be reserved and dignified he will be apt to resent your pushing this attention upon him. the thing to do is to make him feel like shaking hands--this is an important point, which counts if gained. you can generally tell from his manner and expression whether to extend your hand. you must trust to your intuitions in "sizing up" your man. what has been said regarding the mind of the buyer will help you, and what data you have collected will also be of use, but at the last you must depend upon your own intuition to a considerable extent. experience develops this intuitive faculty. some salesmen thrust their cards into the hands of a prospect when they introduce themselves. this is poor psychology, for it serves to attract the prospect's attention to the card and away from the salesman. introduce yourself verbally, simply and distinctly, and then get down to business. if you see a man is busy with someone else, or with something in particular--wait for him. don't break into his occupation, until he looks up and gives you the psychological signal to proceed. never interrupt another salesman who may be talking to the prospect. this is not only a point in fair play and business courtesy, but is very good business policy in addition. when you begin your introductory talk, get right to the point, and don't beat around the bush as so many do. get down to business--get over the agony of suspense--take the plunge. remember always, that to the prospect your little story is not as stale or stereotyped as it may be to you--so put earnestness into it, and tell it just as if you were relating it for the first time to someone who had requested it from you. maintain _your_ interest, if you would arouse that of the prospect. never commit the folly of asking a prospect: "are you busy?" or, "i fear you are busy, sir?" this is a very bad suggestion for the prospect, and makes it easy for him to say "yes!" you mould bullets for him to fire at you. if he really _is_ too busy to give you the proper attention, you may do well to tell him so, and then get out--but never suggest anything of this kind to him if you expect to proceed. it is akin to the doleful "you don't want to buy any matches, sir, do you?" of the forlorn vendors of small articles who float into offices at times. never make it easy for a prospect to turn you down--or out. if he is going to do these things, make him work hard to do it. this might seem like needless advice, but many young salesmen commit this particular fault. avoid the apologetic attitude and manner--you have nothing to apologize for. you are using up _your_ time as much as the prospect's time--let it go at that. never apologize for anything but a fault or mistake. your call is not a fault or a mistake--unless you make it so by assuming it to be such. some men would like to apologize for being alive, but they never make salesmen. be careful what adverse suggestions you may put into the prospect's mind by this apologizing and "explaining" business. what's the use of this nonsense anyway--it never sold any goods, and never will. it is merely a sign of weakness and lack of nerve. better stop it. the trouble with these apologetic and explanatory fellows is that they do not thoroughly believe in the merit of their propositions. if they really believed as they should--if they had "sold themselves"--they would realize that the prospect needs their goods, and, that although he might not know it now, he is being done a favor by having his attention called to them. a salesman has no need to apologize to a customer, unless he has need to apologize to himself--and if he is not right on the latter score he had better change his line and get something to sell that he is not ashamed of, or get out of the business altogether. no man ever feels ashamed of anything in which he thoroughly believes and appreciates. the following advice from the national cash register people, is like everything else they say, very good: "do not attempt to talk to a man who is not listening, who is writing a letter or occupying himself in any other way while you are talking. that's useless, and is a loss of self-respect and of his respect. if he cannot give you his attention, say to him: 'i see that you are busy. if you can give me your attention for a few minutes i shall be pleased; but i don't want to interrupt you, if you cannot spare the time, and i will call again.' try to understand and feel thoroughly the distinction between confidence and familiarity. never fail in respect either to yourself or to the man with whom you are talking. never be familiar with him. never put your hand on his shoulder or on his arm, nor take hold of his coat. such things are repugnant to a gentleman--and you should assume that he is one. never pound the desk or shake your finger at a prospect. don't shout at him as if sound would take the place of sense. don't advance at him and talk so excitedly under his nose that he will back away from you for fear of being run over, as if you were a trolley-car. i have seen a sales agent back a prospect half way across a room in this way. don't compel a man to listen to you by loud or fast talking. don't make him feel that he can't get a word in edgewise and has to listen until you are out of breath. this is not the sort of compulsion to make customers. but make him believe that you have something to say and will say it quickly. put yourself in his place from the very start. make him feel, not that you are trying to force _your_ business upon him, but that you want to discuss how _his_ business may be benefited by you." one of the best salesmen this particular company ever had has passed down to the selling corps of that concern the following axiom: "if you do but one thing, in approaching a prospect, say, '_it will save you money_,' seven times, and you have made a good approach." and so say we. concrete facts, stated in terse terms, are the essence of the opening talk and the life of the approach. what we have said so far has reference to the stage of first impression, which followed the preliminary stage of involuntary attention which was caused by your presence. the purpose of the favorable first impression is to make the way easy for the real process of selling which is to follow. the principle of first impression rests upon the associated experience of the buyer, and its effect arises from suggestion. the hasty, general idea or impression of the salesman's personality, which we call the first impression, is almost unconscious on the part of the prospect, and is due largely to the suggestion of association. that is, the prospect has met other people manifesting certain characteristics, and has fallen into the habit of hasty generalization, or classification of people in accordance with certain traits of appearance, manner, etc. this is the operation of the psychological principle of the association of ideas, and may be influenced by what is known as the suggestion of association. the following quotation from the volume of this series entitled "suggestion and auto-suggestion," will make clearer this principle: "this form of suggestion is one of the most common phases. it is found on all sides, and at all times. the mental law of association makes it very easy for us to associate certain things with certain other things, and we will find that when one of the things is recalled it will bring with it its associated impression. * * * we are apt to associate a well-dressed man, of commanding carriage, travelling in an expensive automobile, with the idea of wealth and influence. and, accordingly, when some adventurer of the 'j. rufus wallingford' type travels our way, clad in sumptuous apparel, with the air of an astorbilt, and a $ , (hired) automobile, we hasten to place our money and valuables in his keeping, and esteem ourselves honored by having been accorded the privilege." the suggestion of authority also plays its part in the first impression, and in all the stages of sale in fact. this form of suggestion is described in the book just mentioned, as follows: "let some person posing as an authority, or occupying a position of command, calmly state a fallacy with an air of wisdom and conviction, without any 'ifs' or 'buts,' and many otherwise careful people will accept the suggestion without question; and, unless they are afterward forced to analyze it by the light of reason they will let this seed find lodgement in their minds, to blossom and bear fruit thereafter. the explanation is that in such cases the person suspends the critical attention which is usually interposed by the attentive will, and allows the idea to enter his mental castle unchallenged, and to influence other ideas in the future. it is like a man assuming a lordly air and marching past the watchman at the gate of the mental fortress, where the ordinary visitor is challenged and severely scrutinized; his credentials examined; and the mark of approval placed upon him before he may enter. * * * the acceptance of such suggestions is akin to a person bolting a particle of food, instead of masticating it. as a rule we bolt many a bit of mental provender, owing to its stamp of real or pretended authority. and many persons understanding this phase of suggestion take advantage of it, and 'use it in their business' accordingly. the confidence-man, as well as the shrewd politician and the seller of neatly printed gold-mines, imposes himself upon the public by means of an air of authority, or by what is known in the parlance of the busy streets as 'putting up a good front.' some men are all 'front,' and have nothing behind their authoritative air--but that authoritative air provides them with a living." the suggestion of associated manner, appearance and air--the "good front," in fact--is the principal element in the favorable first impression. the balance is a mixture of tact, diplomacy, common sense, and intuition. but remember this always: the _best_ "front" is the _real_ one--the one which is the reflection of the right mental attitude and character--the "front" of the gentleman. if you lack this, the nearer you can act it out, the better for yourself. but no imitation is as good as the genuine article. the true gentleman is the scientific mixture of strength and courtesy--the manifestation of "the iron hand in the velvet glove." so much for the first impression. the mental stages of curiosity and associated interest on the part of the buyer are also to be induced by the salesman in the approach. we have described these phases in the chapter entitled "the psychology of the purchase," this particular part of which should be re-read at this point. a few additional words on these points, however, will not be out of place here. regarding the phase of curiosity, we would say that it will be well if you can manage the opening talk to the prospect so as to "keep him guessing a little," while still holding his associated interest. curiosity whets a man's interest just as worcestershire sauce whets his appetite. the key to the arousing of curiosity is the idea of "something new;" a new idea; a new pattern, a new device, etc. the mind of the average man likes "something new"--even the old fogy likes something new in his old favorites, new bottles for his good old wine. the idea of newness and novelty tends to arouse a man's inquisitiveness and imagination. and if you can start these faculties working you have done well, for associated interest is closely allied thereto. when you get a prospect to the stage of asking questions, either verbally or mentally, you have the game well started. never make the mistake of asking the man if he "wants to _buy_ so-and-so." of course he doesn't at that stage, particularly if you ask him in that way. it is too easy for him to say no! it is almost as bad as that stock illustration of adverse suggestion: "you don't want to buy any so-and-so, do you mister?" which brings a ready "no!" from the average person. nor do you want to say: "i have called to see if i cannot sell you so-and-so, to-day, mr. x." or, "can i sell you some so-and-so, this morning, mr. z?" this form of arousing interest is based on erroneous psychological principles. of course, the prospect doesn't want to buy or be sold at this stage of the game--the sale is the finishing stage. this plan is like cutting a log of wood with the butt-end of the axe--you are presenting the wrong end of the proposition. you can never arouse curiosity or associated interest in this way. forget the words "you buy" and "i sell" for the moment--in fact the less you use them at any stage the better it will be, for they are too unpleasantly suggestive of the opening of pocket-books to be agreeable to the prospect. there are excellent substitutes for these terms--terms which suggest profit, advantage, saving and pleasure to the mind of the buyer, rather than ideas of expenditure and "giving up." try to suggest the incoming stream of money to your buyer--not the outgoing one. the reason is obvious, if you understand the laws of suggestion and psychology. in short, let your appeal at this stage be entirely to the self interest, pleasure, and curiosity of the prospect. try to get him warmed up, and his imagination working. if you can do this he will forget his other objects of attention, and will lay aside his armor of suggestive defence and his shield of instinctive resistance to one whom he thinks "wants to _sell_ something" and open his pocket-book. this is the stage in which you must get in the sharp end of your psychological wedge. here is where you need the keen edge of your axe--the butt-end may be reserved for the decision and closing. as far as possible, do not ask questions to which the prospect can answer "no!" at this stage. fence him off on this point, and dodge every sign of a forthcoming negative. but if he does get out a "no!" or two--do not hear him. let his "no!" slip off like water from a duck's back--refuse to admit it to your consciousness--deny it mentally--refuse the evidence of your ears. this is no time for "noes"--go right ahead, unconscious of the words. keep on appealing to his interest, in the phases of curiosity and associated interest. your aim here is to get the prospect to the stage of consideration. this stage is indicated by his asking a question showing a desire to know the particulars of your proposition. the question may show but a shade of interest, but it marks a move in the game. it is the prospect's answering move to your opening. it is an important psychological moment in the game. the next move is yours! and that move is on the plane of the demonstration--for the stage of the approach has now been passed. * * * * * before passing on to the consideration of the stage of demonstration, we desire to call your attention to the following excellent advice regarding the matter of rebuffs which are so often met with in the stage of approach. it is from the pen of w.c. holman, and appeared in his magazine "salesmanship." mr. holman says: "a crack-a-jack salesman will receive a rebuff as gracefully and easily and with as little damage to himself as a professional baseball player will take in a red-hot liner that a batter drives at him, and go right on playing the game as if nothing had happened. an amateur salesman will want to quit playing, or call the attention of the umpire to the malicious intent of the batter. a blow that would knock the ordinary man off his pins will do nothing more than to give a professional boxer a chance to show his agility and win applause. if you drop a plank on a cork in the water with a tremendous splash the cork will bob up as serenely as if nothing had happened, and lie quietly once more on the unruffled surface of the water. and so a clever salesman, when a smashing blow is aimed at him by a surly prospect, will merely sidestep gracefully and continue calmly with the prosecution of his purpose. * * * self-control disarms all ill natured attacks." chapter ix the demonstration in the last chapter we left the salesman at that stage of the approach where the prospect manifests enough interest to ask a question or make an interrogative objection. this is an important psychological point or stage in the game, and here the approach merges into the demonstration on the part of the salesman; and the stage of passive attention on the part of the prospect merges into that of active attention, discussion and consideration. the moment that the prospect ceases to be a passive listener, and displays enough active interest to ask a question or make an interrogative objection, the great game of the sale is on in earnest. the demonstration has begun. this stage of the sale closely resembles a game of chess or checkers. the approach and preliminary talk of the salesman is the first move in the game; the answer, question or objection of the prospect is the second move--then the real game or discussion is on. it is now "up to" the salesman to make his second move, which is a reply move to that of the prospect. and this particular move is a highly important one in the great game of the sale. like an important early move in checkers or chess the success or failure of the whole game may depend on it, so it is well to have this move mapped out as a part of your preliminary study. macbain truthfully says of the first remark of the prospect: "the customer is not going to commit himself in response to the first remark. he always holds considerable in reserve. an objection--either expressed or implied--can always be counted on. it may vary from a general 'busy' statement, or 'no interest in what is about to be submitted,' or it may be a specific statement--even heated, in fact--that the one approached has 'no time for the salesman or his house.'" but, just as in chess or checkers there are certain "replies" indicated for every one of the first few opening moves, all of which are fully stated and explained in text books on these games, so in the great game of salesmanship there are certain replies indicated for these preliminary moves on the part of the prospect. the large selling concerns have schools of instruction, personal or correspondence, in which the salesman is furnished with the appropriate and logical answers to the objections and questions usually advanced by the prospect. it will be found that there are really but few moves of this kind in the game of the average prospects--they tend to say the same things under the same circumstances, and there is always an appropriate answer. the salesman will acquire many of these answers by experience, conversation with older salesmen, or by instruction from his sales-manager or the house. each line has its own stock of objections, and its own stock of replies thereto. there are two general classes of replies to objections, which apply to nearly every kind of proposition. the first is that of deftly catching the objection on your mental fencing-foil, allowing it to glance off, and at the same time getting a thrust on your opponent. president patterson of the national cash register company is credited with special cleverness in this kind of reply, and his salesmen are said to be instructed to listen carefully to the prospect's objection and then to turn it back on him by a remark based on the principle of: "why, that's the very reason why you should," etc. in other words the objection should be twisted into an argument in favor of the proposition. in the hands of a master this form of reply is very effective, and often brings results by reason of its daring and unexpectedness. but it is not every one who has the skill to use it to advantage. the second class of reply is based upon what is called indirect resistance, which, by the way, is often the strongest form of _resistance_, and accomplishes its intended effect while avoiding the opposition and antagonism of direct resistance. some writers on the subject have called this "non-resistance," obviously a misnomer for it is a form of resistance although subtly disguised. it is analogous to the tree that bends in order to avoid breaking under the blasts of the storm; of the flexible steel which bends to the pressure, instead of breaking as would iron; but both of which spring back into place immediately. it is generally very poor policy to directly oppose the prospect upon minor points--the main point is what you are after. and the main point is the order--the rest is immaterial and unimportant. let us contrast direct-resistance and indirect-resistance, and see the points of each. in direct resistance the minor objections of the prospect are met with the answer: "you are wrong there, mr. x;" or, "you are entirely mistaken;" or, "you take the wrong view;" or, as we heard in one instance: "your objection is ridiculous." the direct resistance is necessary in a few contingencies, or upon rare occasions, but it should be sparingly and cautiously used. it is a desperate remedy indicated only for desperate diseases. the indirect resistance expresses itself in answers of: "that is possibly _true_ in some cases, _but_," etc.; or, "there is _much_ truth in what you say, mr. x, _but_," etc.; or, "as a general proposition that is probably correct, _but_," etc.; or, "i quite agree with you, mr. x. that (etc.) but in this particular case i think an exception should be made," etc. the value of this form of resistance lies in the fact that it costs you nothing to allow the prospect to retain his own ideas and entertain his own prejudices, provided they do not interfere with the logic of your general argument, nor affect your main point, the order. you are not a missionary or a pedagogue--you are just a salesman and your business is to _take orders_. let the old fellow keep his foolish ideas and intolerant prejudices, providing you can steer him straight to the ordering point. the active principle in indirect resistance is to get rid of his general objections in the easiest and shortest way, by allowing him to retain them, and concentrating your and his attention and interest upon the particular points of your proposition--the positive and material points of your particular case. avoid disputes on non-essentials, generalities, and immaterial points. you are not striving for first prize in debate--_you're after orders_. remember the legal principles of the "pertinent, relevant, and material" points, and side-track the "immaterial, irrelevant and impertinent" side-issues, even if you have to tacitly admit them in indirect resistance. here it is in a nutshell: _sidetrack and sidestep the non-essentials_. the salesman has now reached the point in which the prospect is manifesting the psychological stage of consideration--the stage in which he is willing to "look into" the matter, or rather into the subject or object of the proposition. this stage must not be confused with that of deliberation, in which the prospect weighs the pros and cons of whether he should purchase. the two stages are quite different. the present stage--that of consideration--is merely the phase of examination, investigation or inquiry into the matter, to see if there is really anything of real practical interest in it for himself. it is more than mere associated interest, for it has passed into the manifestation of interested investigation. in many cases the process never gets beyond this stage, particularly if the salesman does not understand the psychology of the process. many salesmen make the mistake of trying to make their closing talk at this point--but this is a mistake. the prospect must understand something about the details of the proposition, or the qualities and characteristics of the goods, before he uses his imagination or feels inclination to possess the thing. so here is where the work of explanation comes in. the term "demonstration" has two general means, each of which is exemplified by stages in the salesman's work of demonstration. the first meaning, and stage, is: "a showing or pointing out; an indication, manifestation or exhibition." the second meaning, and stage, is: "the act of proving clearly, by incontrovertible proof and indubitable evidence, beyond the possibility of doubt or contradiction." the first stage is that of "showing and pointing out"--the second, that of of "proof." the first is that of presenting the features of a thing--the second, that of logical argument and proof. and, therefore, remember that you are now at the stage of "showing and pointing out," and not that of "argument and proof." regarding the matter of "showing and pointing out" the features and characteristics of your goods or proposition, you should always remember that the prospect does not know the details of your proposition or article of sale as you do--or as you _should_ know. the subject is not "stale" to him, as it may have become to you if you have not kept up your enthusiasm. therefore, while avoiding needless waste of time, do not make the mistake of rushing this point of the demonstration and thus neglecting the important features. better one feature well explained and emphasized, than a score hurried over in a sloppy manner. it is better to concentrate upon a few leading and striking points of demonstration, of material interest to the prospect, and to assume that he does not know anything about them except as he may show his knowledge by questions or objections--all this in a courteous manner, of course, avoiding the "know it all" air. the prospect must have time to allow the points to sink into his mind--some men are slower than others in this respect. watch the prospect's face to see by his expression whether or not he really understands what you are saying. better present one point in a dozen ways, to obtain understanding, than to present a dozen points in one way and fail to be understood. in order to demonstrate your goods or proposition at this stage, you must have fully acquainted yourself with them, and also have arranged the telling points in a natural and logical order of presentation, working from the simple up to the complex. be careful not to suggest _buying_ at this point, lest your prospect take fright and lose interest in the demonstration. he is naturally in a defensive mood, for he scents the appeal to his pocket book in the distance--you must try to take his mind off this point by arousing his interested attention in the details of your goods or proposition. explain the details just as you would if the prospect had called upon you for the purpose of investigation. in fact, if you can work yourself up to the proper mental attitude you may effect the psychological change by which the positions may be reversed, and so that it will instinctively seem to the prospect that he is calling on you and not you on him. there is an important psychological point here which you would do well to remember. the man who is called upon always has "the move" on the caller--if you can reverse this psychological condition, you have gained a great advantage. an awakened personal interest in the details of a proposition, on the part of the prospect, tends to reverse the conditions. if you would understand what a scientific demonstration of an article or proposition is like, it would pay you to listen to the demonstration by a well-trained salesman of the national cash register company. this company drills its salesmen thoroughly in this part of their work, until they have every detail fastened in their minds in its proper logical order. an old salesman of this company should be able to repeat his formula backwards as well as in the regular order--beginning at the middle and working either backward or forward, at will. he understands the "why" and "what for" of every detail of his article and proposition, and is taught to present them in their logical order. listening to a talk of one of their best salesmen is a liberal education in demonstration. the essence of this stage of the demonstration is that it should be given in the spirit of a conversational recital of an interesting story, or description of an event. speak in an impersonal way; that is, avoid suggesting to the prospect that you are trying to sell him the thing. let this part of your talk be given from the sheer enthusiasm inspired in your mind by the merits of your proposition. let it be a labor of love--forget all about your hope of sale or profit. your one aim and object of life, at that moment, should be that of inspiring the prospect with the wonderful merits of your proposition, which you yourself entertain. yours should be the spirit of the propogandist seeking converts--imparting information for the good of others, and "for the cause." forget the forthcoming collection plate, in the earnestness of your sermon. the national cash register company instructs its salesmen as follows regarding this stage of the demonstration: "when you have gotten a prospect to a demonstration you have accomplished a most important step. you can take it for granted that he is to some extent interested in the subject. now, by all means make the most of that opportunity. say what you have to say to him thoroughly and carefully. don't rattle off your demonstration in a hurry, as if you were wound up and had to say so many words to the minute. give him a chance to speak, to ask questions or make objections. he probably has certain ideas in his mind which may be a decided help or a decided hindrance to your argument. you ought to learn what they are. don't imagine because he listens in silence that he agrees with you, or even understands all you say. speak deliberately. if you see from a puzzled or doubtful look on his face that anything is not quite plain to him, stop and make it plain. take time enough to explain each point thoroughly. whenever you make a statement that is open to question, be sure to get his assent to it before you proceed. if he will not assent to it exactly as you make it, modify it until he does. get him to assent in some degree to every proposition you make, so that when you get to the general result he cannot go back and disagree with you. don't do this however as if you were trying to corner him, but with a simple desire to reach a reasonable basis of argument. cast aside all attempts at being a clever talker, all idea that there is any trick of words or manner, any secret artfulness about selling registers, and put yourself in the plain, unaffected spirit of a man who has simply a truth to tell, and is bent upon telling it in the plainest, homliest way. avoid above all things the fatal mistake of demonstrating to your prospect with a sense of fear, haste, and uncertainty. realize fully the power of the facts behind you, and have the full confidence of your convictions; coolly and deliberately make each point clear and conclusive, and lead the prospect by simple steps up to absolute conviction." if you have held your prospect's interested attention during this stage of the demonstration, you will find that his imagination is beginning to work in the direction of making mental pictures of how the thing or proposition would work for him--how the article would look in his possession. it is a psychological law that interested investigation, or consideration, tends to awaken the interest of imagination and desire if the object of the investigation blends with the general trend of the person's thought and feelings. the very process of investigation inevitably brings to light new points of interest. and, then, the act of investigation and discovery, instinctively creates a feeling of proprietorship in the thing investigated or discovered. it establishes an association between the object and its investigator. halleck says: "* * * we must not forget that any one not shallow and fickle can soon discover something interesting in most objects * * * the attention which they are able to give generally ends in finding a pearl in the most uninteresting looking oyster. * * * the essence of genius is to present an old thing in new ways." and again: "when we think about a thing, or keep the mind full of a subject, the activity in certain brain tracts is probably much increased. as a result of this unconscious preparation, a full fledged image may suddenly arise in consciousness." hoffding says: "the inter-weaving of the elements of the picture in the imagination takes place in great measure below the threshold of consciousness, so that the image suddenly emerges in consciousness complete in its broad outlines, the conscious result of an unconscious process." halleck also says: "a representative image of the thing desired is the necessary antecedent to desire. not until a representative idea comes to the mind does desire arise. it has often been said that where there is no knowledge there can be no desire. a child sees a new toy and wants it. a man notices some improvements about his neighbor's house and wishes them. one nation finds out that another has a war ship of a superior model, and straightway desires something as good or better. a scholar sees a new cyclopedia or work of reference, and desire for it arises. a person returns and tells his friends how delightful a foreign trip is. their desires for travel increase. knowledge gives birth to desire, and desire points out the point to will." in this paragraph we have quoted eminent authorities, showing the direct line of psychological progress from interested investigation, through imagination, to desire and will. one investigates and gains favorable knowledge regarding a subject; then his imagination operates to show him the possibility of its successful application to his personal case; then his desire for the thing is awakened. the stage of imagination is reached when the prospect begins to think of the thing or proposition in connection with himself. he then begins to picture it in its application to his needs or requirements, or in relation to his general desires, tastes and feelings. the salesman, in order to awaken the imagination of the prospect, should endeavor to paint "word pictures" of the thing in its workings, application, value, and utility. he should endeavor to make the prospect _see_, mentally, the desirability of the thing to any man--how it will work for good; how it will benefit one; how great an advantage it will be for one; how much good it will be in every way for its possessor. avoid the personal application, even at this late stage--make the application general, so as to avoid scaring off the prospect's pocket book. the whole idea and aim of this stage of the process of sale is to awaken inclination in the prospect--to make his mouth water for the thing--to make him begin to feel that he would like to have it, himself. he must be put into the mental condition of the woman gazing longingly at the hat in the milliner's window; or of the boy who is peeking through the knot-hole in the fence of the base-ball park. he must be led into the feeling that he is on the outside of the fence or window--and the good thing is inside. he will then begin to feel the inclination or desire to "get on the inside." we once heard a tale of two southern darkies, which illustrates this point. the two were riding on the same mule's back coming home from work. the foremost darkey began relating the story of some roast possum he had feasted upon the preceding night. he pictured the possum as fat and tender; how they first "briled" him, and then roasted him in the oven; how juicy and brown he looked; how nice he smelt; how he was served up "wid coon-gravy poured all over him;" and finally how nice he tasted when the narrator dug his teeth into him. the darkey in the rear displayed increasing signs of uneasiness as the tale proceeded and as he imagined first the sight, then the smell, and then the _taste_ of the possum. finally he groaned, and shouted out: "shet up, yer fool nigger! does yer wanter make me fall clean offen dis yer mewel?" this is the point--you must make your prospect see, smell and taste the good possum you have, until he is ready to "fall offen de mewel." words describing action, taste, feelings, or in fact anything which relates to sense perceptions, tend to arouse the imagination. if the salesman cultivates the art of actually seeing, tasting or feeling the thing in his own imagination, as he talks, he will tend to re-produce his mental pictures in the mind of his prospect. imagination is contagious--along the lines of suggestion. descriptions of sensations, or feelings, tend to awaken a sympathetic response and representation in the minds of others, along the lines of suggestion. did you never have your imagination and desire fired by the description of a thing--didn't you want to see, feel, or taste it yourself? did you never _feel_ the effect of words like: "delicious; fragrant; luscious; sweet; mild; invigorating; bracing," etc., in an advertisement? how many young people have been hurried into matrimony by an illustration or word-picture of a "happy home;" "a little wife to meet you at the door;" "little children clustering around you," and all the rest of it? a well known instalment furniture dealer of chicago is said to be psychologically responsible for thousands of weddings, by his suggestive pictures of the "happy home" and his kind statement that "we will feather your nest;" and "you find the bride, and we will do the rest." the salesman who can "paint bright pictures in the mind" of his prospect, will succeed in awakening the imagination, and arousing the inclination and desire. newman well said: "deductions have no power of persuasion. the heart is commonly reached, not through the reason, but through the imagination. * * * persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us." and so we pass to the stage of inclination or desire, by the road of the imagination. the mental state of inclination, or desire, following upon the arousing of the appropriate faculties through the imagination which arises in the stage of consideration, may be briefly described as the _feeling of_: "this seems to be a good thing--_i would like to have it_." this inclination has been aroused by demonstration and suggestion, and the prospect begins to experience the feeling that the possession of the thing will add to his pleasure, comfort, well-being, satisfaction or profit. you will remember the statement regarding desire given in a previous chapter: "_desire has for its object something which will bring pleasure or get rid of pain, immediate or remote, for the individual or for some one in whom he is interested. aversion, or a striving to get away from something, is merely the negative aspect of desire._" it is this feeling that you have aroused in some degree in the mind of the prospect. you have brought him to the first stages of inclination, which naturally brings him to a deliberation as to whether he is justified in purchasing it, and to the point where he will begin to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of the purchase--the question of whether he is willing to "pay the price" for it, which is, after all, the vital question in nearly all forms of deliberation following inclination and desire. but as the prospect's mind passes to the stage of deliberation, you must not lose sight of the question of desire, for it may be necessary to re-kindle it in him, or to blow upon its sparks, when he debates the "to buy or not to buy." the deliberation is largely a question of a conflict of motives, and desire is a powerful motive--so you must be ready to arouse a new phase of "want to" in the prospect to counterbalance some other motive which may be turning the scales in the other direction. in entering into the stage of deliberation, or argument, the discussion passes from the impersonal plane to the personal. the question no longer is: "is not this a good thing?" to that of "should you not have it for your own?" this is a distinct change of base, and a different set of faculties are now employed by the salesman. he leaves the descriptive phase and enters into that of argument. he enters into that second meaning or phase of demonstration which has been defined as: "proving clearly." and the question of proof and argument is that of whether the prospect is not justified in acquiring the thing. the prospect's mind is already considering the two sides of the question, his caution combating his inclination. he is like "jeppe" of whom we told you in a previous chapter. it is now a question of "my back or my stomach," with him. the salesman's business now is to demonstrate to him that he can and should acquire the thing. this is a proceeding in which the salesman's tact, resources, knowledge of human nature, persuasive power, and his logic are needed. the salesman has an advantage here which he often overlooks. we refer to the fact that the very objections of the prospect, and his questions give a key to his mental operations, which may be followed up by the salesman. he knows now what is on the prospect's mind, and what are his general feelings, views, and inclinations regarding the matter. when he begins to talk he gives you a glimpse at his motives, prejudices, hopes and fears. it is quite an art to lead the prospect to ask the questions or to make the objections to which you have a strong answering argument. you then are able to turn back upon him his own argument. _it is a psychological fact that the force of a statement made in answer to an interrogative objection, is much stronger than would be the same statement made without the question or objection._ macbain says: "lincoln, it is related, early learned in beginning the study of law, that he did not know what it was to prove a thing. by means of careful, conscientious study, in which he took up the problems of euclid, one by one, he satisfied himself that he then realized absolutely what it meant to prove a proposition. one of the most eminent judges of the iowa judiciary regards every legal problem as a proposition to be proved by a chain of reasoning. the salesman who determines with absolute accuracy what it means, first, to prove a proposition, and second to apply the general principles of demonstration to an immediate matter in hand, knows just how far to go in making his demonstration, what to include and what to exclude. he can see in his mind's eye the chain of evidence that he is fashioning and will make that fabric of his mind exact, logical and convincing." (note:--in order to train the student in logical thinking, development of the logical faculties, and the art of expressing one's thoughts in a logical and effective manner, we would suggest that he make inquiry regarding the volumes of the present series known as "the art of logical thinking, or the laws of reasoning;" "thought-culture, or practical mental training;" and "the art of expression." these books are published by the house issuing the present volume.) it will be seen that the field of discussion in this stage of deliberation covers not only the subject of the value and utility of the goods or proposition, but also the question of the price, the advisibility of the purchase at this time, the special advantages possessed, the over-balancing of assumed disadvantages, and in fact the whole question of purchase from beginning to end. the one thing to be held in the mind of the salesman, however, is "_this will do you good; this will do you good; this will do you good!_" keep hammering away at this one nail, in a hundred ways--hold it up to view from a hundred viewpoints and angles. it is the gist of the whole argument, at the last. don't allow yourself to be sidetracked from this essential proposition, even if the argument spreads itself over a wide field. the point is that ( ) _the thing is good_; ( ) _the prospect needs it_; and ( ) _that you do him a good turn by making him see that he needs it_. we once knew of a very successful life-insurance salesman who had but two points to his selling talk. these were: ( ) "life insurance is a necessity;" and ( ) "my company is sound." he brushed aside all other points as immaterial, and insisted with all his heart and soul upon his two points. he was not an educated man, nor was he versed in the technicalities of life-insurance, but he knew his two points from cellar to garret. he outsold many men with actuarial minds, and extended knowledge. he followed the "rifle-ball" policy, instead of the "shot gun" plan. when he struck the target, he made a mark! it is the mental attitude of the salesman which is the power behind his argumentive rifle-balls. it is his enthusiasm which warms up the prospect's imagination and desire. and, back of these, must always be his belief in his own proposition. the salesman must "sell himself" over and over again, as friend holman has suggested. he must answer every objection which occurs to himself, as well as those which are thrust upon him in his work. if the goods are right, there must be an answer to every objection, just as there is a return-move to every move in chess--just as there always is "the other side" to everything. he must find this move, and this "other side" to every objection to which his proposition is open. and he must "sell himself" over and over again, as we have said. the national cash register people say to their salesmen: "selling registers is a straight-forward serious work. you have a plain statement to make of the facts which you are convinced are true, and which you are certain it is for the prospect's benefit to know. you should be as sincere about it as if you were a clergyman preaching the gospel. if you go at it in this sincere spirit the prospect will feel the importance of what you say, and it will carry its due weight. it is a fact which you must fully believe, that the register is a great benefit to any man who buys it; that it will save any merchant many times its cost while he is paying for it." pierce says: "so in selling--it is absolutely essential to be genuine. first, last and foremost--be genuine. practice absolutely what you preach. be honest. never undertake a line of goods that you cannot enthusiastically endorse. otherwise you cannot 'sell yourself.' and selling one's self is by all means necessary. students have asked us: 'how about being honest when the customer asks you a question that you know in your heart you cannot answer straight-forwardly?' the answer is: drop that line; _the sooner the better_." it is true that there are men who "wear the livery of heaven in which to serve the devil," and who practice self-hypnotization upon themselves until they get to actually believe that they are advocating an honest proposition in place of the "fake" they are proposing. and many of these "confidence-men" and "green-goods men" throw themselves so earnestly into their acting that they persuade their victims by reason of their earnestness. we remember bulwer's tale of the french beggar whose tears wrought havoc upon the hearts of his susceptible victims. "how are you able to weep at will?" he was asked. "i think of my poor father who is dead," he answered. bulwer adds: "the union of sentiment with the ability of swindling made that frenchman a most fascinating creature!" but every genuine thing must have its counterfeit--the existence of the latter only serves to prove the former. the success of the "j. rufus wallingford's" of real life, are more than equaled by their final downfall. no man can continue to prostitute his talents and be happy, or even ultimately successful. the law of compensation is in full operation. no, we're not preaching--just indulging in a little philosophy, that's all! let us now proceed to the stage of the salesman's closing, and the prospect's decision and action. chapter x the closing the "closing" is a stage of the sale that is an object of dread to the majority of salesmen. in fact some salesmen content themselves with leading the prospect to the point bordering on decision and action, and then lose heart, leave the prospect, and later bring around the sales manager or special "closer" for the concern. they can lead the horse to the trough, but they cannot make him drink. while it is true that the stage of closing is a delicate one, and involving as it does some practical psychological strategy, nevertheless we are of the opinion that many salesmen are victims of their own adverse auto-suggestions in this matter--they make a boogaboo of the thing which is often found to be but lath and plaster instead of solid iron and granite. many a salesman is defeated in his closing by his own fears rather than by the prospect. this stage of the sale is one in which the salesman should draw on his reserve store of enthusiasm and energy--for he needs it in order to carry the day. as holman once wrote: "general grant said that in almost every battle, after hours of fighting, there came a critical moment in which both parties were tired out, and the side that braced up at that moment and pounded hard would win. this is probably so in selling. a good salesman knows that critical moment, and pounds." the main cause of the failure to bring the prospect to a favorable decision--the first of the two final stages of the closing--is that the salesman has not done his best work in the preliminary stages of the demonstration. he has not demonstrated the proposition properly, or has not awakened the imagination and inclination of the prospect to a sufficient extent. many salesmen slight the preliminary process of the demonstration in their anxiety to reach the closing--but this is a great mistake, for no structure is stronger than its foundation. the closing should follow as a logical and legitimate conclusion of the preceding stages. it should be like the result of a mathematical problem which has been carefully worked out. of course it is impossible for any one salesman to "sell them all," from the very nature of things--but the average man could sell a larger percentage of prospects if he would strengthen himself along the preliminary stages leading up to the closing, and to the final steps of the latter. the gist of the whole matter of the failure of a prospect to make a favorable decision is this: he hasn't been convinced! why? if you can answer this question, you have the key to the problem. you haven't reached the man's desire. why? if you can get him to "want" the thing, the decision is a mere matter of final settling down to choice. you may have said to the man, "this is a good thing--you ought to have it," over and over again--but have you actually made him see that it was a good thing and that he ought to have it? it is one thing to tell a man these things, and another to reproduce your own beliefs in his mind. the changing of the talk from that affecting deliberation on the part of the prospect, to that influencing his decision, is a delicate matter. there is a "psychological moment" for the change which some men seem to perceive intuitively, while others have to learn it by hard experience. it is the critical balancing point between "enough" and "too much" talk. on the one hand, the salesman must beware of a premature closing, and on the other he must avoid "unselling" a man after he has made the psychological sale. some men are inclined toward one of these faults--and some to the other. the ideal salesman has found the nice point of balance between the two. if the salesman attempts to make a premature closing, he will probably have failed to bring about the full desire and careful deliberation in the prospect's mind. as a practical writer on the subject has pointed out, this course is as faulty as that of a lawyer who would attempt to begin his closing address to the jury before he had gotten in his evidence. the trained finger on the pulse should detect the "high-tide of interest," and close the demonstration at this point, moving surely and swiftly to the closing. on the other hand, if the salesman persists in talking on, rambling and wandering, after he has made a particular point, or all of his points, he runs the risk of losing his prospect's attention and interest, and with it the newly awakened inclination and desire. james h. collins, in a recent article in "the saturday evening post," relates the following amusing anecdote illustrating this tendency on the part of the salesman: "how easily a customer may be talked out of buying is shown by the experience of a real-estate promoter who sells new york property to investors in other cities through a staff of salesmen. one of his men reported that he was unable to close an elderly german in pittsburg. 'i've explained the whole property,' said the salesman. 'he understands the possibilities, yet doesn't invest.' next time the promoter was in pittsburg he called on this investor, accompanied by his salesman. the latter explained the proposition again most exhaustively, and made every effort to be clear and convincing. * * * from time to time the investor tried to interrupt, but the salesman swept on, saying: 'just a moment, and i'll take that point up with you.' when the story was finished he recapitulated. when that was finished he began a resume of the recapitulation preparatory to rushing the man. here the boss felt that the investor really wanted to be heard, so he interrupted the salesman: 'charlie, i guess if mr. conrad here doesn't realize the magnificent opportunities in new york realty after all you've told him, there's no use telling him any more.' 'mein gracious!' protested conrad. 'i do realize them. what i wanted to say is that i will take these lots.'" there is a sixth sense, or intuitive faculty developed in many good salesmen which tends to inform them when they have said enough along any particular line, or on the whole subject. in the midst of a sentence, or after the close of a statement, one will notice a subtle and indefinable change in the manner or expression of the prospect which informs one that it is time to stop, and "sum up," or briefly recapitulate. and this "summing up" must be made briefly, and to the point, in an earnest manner. it should be made in a logical order and sequence, each point being driven in as with a sledge hammer of conviction. one should lay especial stress upon any points in which the prospect seemed interested during the demonstration. in short he should fall in with the spirit of the attorney in his closing address, in which he sums up his strong points, always with an eye on the jury which he has carefully watched for signs of interest during the progress of the trial. each juryman's character is represented by a faculty in the mind of the prospect--each should be appealed to along its own particular lines. the perception of the "psychological moment" of closing the selling talk, is akin to that of the lawyer who leads his jury up to a dramatic and logical climax--and then stops. avoid creating an anti-climax. mr. collins in the magazine article mentioned a moment ago says: "the chief shortcoming of the salesman who has difficulty in closing is, usually, that he doesn't know when the psychological moment has come to rush his man. this is a very definite moment in every deal. veteran salesmen gauge it in various ways, some by the attention their argument is receiving, others by some sign in the customer's eyes, and others still by a sort of sixth sense which seldom leads them wrong. * * * if the mechanism of a representative sale could be laid bare for study it would probably approximate the mechanism of the universe in that material theory by which the philosophers explain the whole thing up to the point where a slight push was necessary to set it going eternally. the sale of the man who doesn't close is technically complete except for the push that lands the order. sales may be made by patient exposition of facts, building up the case for the goods. but to close them, very often, a real push or kick is needed. logic avails up to the moment when the customer must be rushed." the trouble with some prospects is that they have practically made the decision--but do not know they have. that is, they have accepted the premises of the argument; admitted the logic of the succeeding argument and demonstration; can see no escape from the conclusion--but still they have not released the spring of formal decision which settles the matter with a mental "click." it is the salesman's business to produce this mental "click." it is a process akin to "calling the hand" of the opponent in a certain game other than that of salesmanship. it is the stage in which the matter is fairly and squarely "put up" to the prospect. it is a situation demanding nerve on the part of the salesman--that is apparent nerve, for it is after all somewhat of a bluff on his part, for although he wins if the prospect says "yes," he does not necessarily lose if the answer be "no!" for the salesman, like the lover, should never let one "no" discourage him. "never take 'no!' for an answer," says the old song--and it is worth remembering by the salesman. the "click" of decision is often produced by the salesman "putting up" some strong question or statement to the prospect, which, in the popular term, "brings him to his feet." as for instance the closing illustration of some of the national cash register salesmen, who after having demonstrated the merits of the cash register by placing in it the "$ . of real money," in two-dollar bills, one-dollar bills, silver dollars, half-dollars, quarters, dimes, nickles and pennies, during the various points of the demonstration, turns suddenly to the prospect and says to him: "mr. blank, you have been watching every coin and bill i have put into this cash drawer. now how much money do you think is in this drawer?" mr. blank naturally doesn't know. then the salesman proceeds: "well, then, if you have no conception of the amount of money in this drawer, after watching me put every coin and bill into it, far more closely than you could possibly watch such transactions in your own store, you must admit you are guessing every night as to the amount that should be in your cash drawer in your store." pausing a moment to let this strong point sink into the prospect's mind, the salesman then says, earnestly and impressively: "_mr. blank, don't you think you ought to have a register of this kind?_" every proposition contains features similar to the one noted above, which can be used effectively in bringing about the "click" of decision. in some cases the suggestion of imitation may be employed at this stage by showing orders from others, provided they are of importance. some men do not like this, but the majority are influenced by the example of others and the imitative suggestion prevails and brings down the scale of decision. in some other cases the salesman has found it advantageous to drop into a serious, earnest tone, manifesting a spirit akin to that of the earnest worker at a revival meeting, and laying his hand on the prospect's arm, impress upon him the urgent need of his doing this thing for his own good. with some prospects this plan of placing the hand upon him in a brotherly spirit, and looking him earnestly in the eye, results in the final warming up of conviction and decision--probably from the associated suggestion of previous solemn exhortations and friendly counsel. but other men resent any such familiarity--one must know human nature in using this method. never attempt to close your sale in the presence of outsiders. always defer it until the prospect is alone, and you have his undivided attention. it is impossible to get into the "heart to heart" rapport in the presence of other people. you may sometimes bring about the decision by asking pointed and appropriate questions, the answer of which must act to clinch the matter. but in asking these questions always be careful not to ask a question which may easily be answered by a "no." never say: "won't you buy?" or "can't i sell you?" these questions, and others like them give the suggestion of a negative answer--they make it too easy for the prospect to say "no." remember what we have said elsewhere regarding the suggestions of questions. remember the horrible example of "you don't want to buy anything to-day, do you?" and also remember that a question preceded by an affirmative statement, tends to draw forth an affirmative answer. as, for instance: "that is a nice day, isn't it;" or, "this is a beautiful shade of pink, isn't it?;" or, "this is quite an improvement, isn't it?" in asking the important question, do not show any doubt in your tone, manner or form of expression. beware, always, of making a negative mental track for your prospect to travel over. the mind works along the lines of least resistance--be sure you make that "line" in the right direction. in cases where you have been recommended to call upon a person by a friend with whom he has discussed the proposition, you may often find that but little preliminary talk is needed, and you may proceed to the closing very shortly after opening the conversation. in these cases, the prospect often has "closed himself" without your aid--he wants the thing without urging. when you meet this condition, take things for granted, and make the sale just as you would if the prospect had called upon you to make the purchase. and in any and every case, if you see that the prospect has "closed himself," clinch the matter at once. and you can readily see when this stage has arrived. after all, the process of discovering the "psychological moment" of closing is like the intuitive discovery of the psychological moment for "popping the question" in courting. at certain times in courting these psychological moments arise--then is the time to "close." and the same rule holds good in salesmanship. it is largely a matter of feeling, after all. and, in salesmanship, as in courting, remember also that "faint heart never won fair lady." fortune favors the brave. when you feel the psychological urge of the moment--step in! don't be afraid. remember the old couplet: "tender-handed grasp a nettle, and it stings you for your pains. grasp it like a man of mettle, and it soft as down remains." when it comes to the psychological moment, banish fear from your mind. show spirit and be "game." you have got to make the plunge, and take the risk of "the proposal" some time--why not now? you have done your best, then go ahead. stand up and take your chance like a man. but never act as if there is any chance about it--preserve your mental attitude of confident expectation, for these mental states are contagious. if, in spite of everything, the decision be against you, do not be discouraged. if you think you can reverse the decision by a little further persuasion, do so by all means. many a battle is won, after it has apparently been lost. few maidens expect their gallant laddies to accept the first "no" as conclusive--and the minds of many buyers work in the same way. there is a certain coyness about maids, _and prospects_, which seems to call for a little further coaxing. many prospects yield only at the final appeal--they are like byron's heroine who "saying she would ne'er consent, consented." but if the "no" is final, take it good-naturedly, and without show of resentment, and assuming an "i will call again another day" spirit, bid the prospect good-bye, courteously, and take your departure. many subsequent sales have been made in this way--and many have been lost by a show of ill-nature. the average man likes a game fighter, and respects a "good loser." don't give up at anything short of a "knock-out," but, that given, shake hands with the victor good-naturedly, and then proceed to lay plans for another interview. good nature and cheerfulness under defeat never fail to make friends, and to disarm enemies. as we have said in a previous chapter, there is sometimes a hitch between decision and action. the spirit of procrastination creeps in, and the prospect tries to put off the actual order. try to overcome this by "taking down" the order at once. do not allow any wait at this stage. if no signed order is necessary get the order down in your order book as quickly as possible. have your order book handy so that no awkward wait arises. avoid these intervals of waiting as far as possible. get through with the thing, and get out. if a signed order is required, approach the request as a matter of course. do not assume the air of asking any further favor, or of needing any argument regarding the signing. treat it as a matter of course, and as if the matter had been agreed upon. do not say "i will have to ask you to sign," etc., but say simply "sign here, please," placing your fountain pen at the "suggestive slant," and in his direction, indicating the line at the same time. some salesmen even touch the pen to the line, starting the ink flowing and the suggestion operating with the one movement. others proceed, calmly, like this: "let's see, mr. blank, what is your shipping address (or street number)?" adding, "we can have these goods here by about such-and-such a date." and while he is saying this they are filling up the order blank. then, in the most matter of fact, business-like manner they lay the order before the prospect, indicating the line for signature, and saying: "now, if you will kindly sign here, please, mr. blank." and it is all over. always have the order blank, or book, and the fountain pen handy. avoid fiddling around after the pen or the book, or both--this is suggestive in the wrong direction. some salesmen lay the pen on top of the order book, and place them easily before the prospect while talking. others lay the pen by the side of the book, in the same way. collins says: "one of the leading newspapers in the middle west has a school for the canvassers who solicit subscriptions. a set of books is sold in connection with a year's subscription to this paper, and the solicitors are drilled in old fashioned bookselling tactics, learning their argument by rote. at the precise point where the signature of the prospect is to be secured the salesman is taught to take his pencil from his pocket, drop it on the floor apparently by accident, stoop over and pick it up as he finishes his argument, and put it into the prospect's fingers as a matter of course. six times in ten the signature is written without more argument." the psychological point employed here is evidently that of distracting the prospect's mind from his ordinary objection, and attracting his attention to the recovered pencil. a similar proceeding is that followed by certain salesmen who carry a large fountain pen with a rubber band wrapped around the handle. talking cheerfully, they drop the pen on the prospect's desk, close to his hand. the rubber band makes it fall noiselessly, and prevents it from rolling. the prospect is said usually to involuntarily pick up the pen, and move it toward the order book which has been deftly placed before him, and, then, still absorbed in the talk of the salesman, he signs the order blank. these methods are given for what they are worth, and in the way of illustrating a psychological principle. personally, we do not favor these methods, and prefer the orthodox fountain pen, courteously handed the prospect, at the "suggestive slant," with possibly the point touching the line as an illustration of the "on this line, please," which accompanies it. the principle to be observed in all cases where orders have to be signed, receipts made out, etc., is to make the process as easy as possible for the prospect. let him work along the line of the least resistance. avoid giving him the adverse suggestion of "red tape," formality, "iron-clad contracts," etc. act upon the principle of the young man who when he asked his father for money would say it very smoothly and _rapidly_ "twenty dollars please," as if it were twenty cents. smooth away every item of delay and friction, and adopt the "rubber tire and ball bearings" mental attitude and mode of procedure. regarding the much disputed and vexing question of the interval between decision and action, and the frequent failure of decision to take form in action--which question, by the way, is very important in the closing of the salesman--we ask you to read the following from the pen of prof. william james, the eminent psychologist: "we know what it is to get out of bed on a freezing morning in a room without a fire, and how the very vital principle within us protests against the ordeal. probably most persons have lain on certain mornings for an hour at a time unable to brace themselves to the resolve. we think how late we shall be, how the duties of the day will suffer; we say, 'i _must_ get up, this is ignominious,' etc.; but still the warm couch feels too delicious, the cold outside too cruel, and resolution faints away and postpones itself again and again just as it seemed on the verge of bursting the resistance and passing over into the decisive act. now how do we _ever_ get up under such circumstances? if i may generalize from my own experience, we more often than not get up without any struggle or decision at all. we suddenly find that we _have_ to get up. a fortunate lapse of consciousness occurs; we forget both the warmth and the cold; we fall into some reverie connected with the day's life, in the course of which the idea flashes across us, 'hello! i must lie here no longer'--an idea which at that lucky instant awakens no contradictory or paralyzing suggestions, and consequently produces immediately its appropriate motor effects. it was our acute consciousness of both the warmth and cold during the period of struggle, which paralyzed our activity then and kept our idea of rising in the condition of _wish_ and not of _will_. the moment these inhibitory ideas ceased, the original idea exerted its effects. this case seems to me to contain in miniature form the data for an entire psychology of volition." prof. james, in another place, gives the following additional hint of the process of transmuting the decision into action: "let us call the last idea which in the mind precedes the motor discharge, 'the motor-cue' * * * there can be no doubt whatever that the cue may be an image either of the resident or the remote kind." it will be seen then that the "motor cue" which releases the spring of action--the mental trigger which fires the gun of will--may easily be some remote idea _suggested_ to the mind, as for instance the sight of the slanted fountain pen and order book. the man wants to, but does not feel like getting out of bed, and his mind becomes inactive on the question. if some friend had said to him, "come, get out old fellow;" or if he had had his mind suddenly attracted by some outside sound or sight, he would have sprung out at once. as we have said, elsewhere, the placing of a piece of twisted paper in the ear of a horse will cause him to forget his balkiness--it changes his current of thought. any new impulse will tend to get a man over his period of "i want to but i don't" mental hesitancy. we may have given you the psychology of the thing here--you must work it out in the details of application to suit your own requirements. learn to show your prospect something that will cause him to spring out of bed. learn to stick the piece of twisted paper in his ear, to overcome his balkiness. give him the "motor cue" by supplying him with a mental image "either of the resident or remote kind." like the boy shivering on the brink of the stream, he needs but a "little shove" to make him take the plunge. then he will call to others: "come on in, the water's fine." and, now in conclusion: you have the signed order, but you must continue your mental attitude until you fade from the prospect's sight. do not gush or become maudlin, as we have seen salesmen do. maintain your balance, and thank your customer courteously, but not as the recipient of alms. keep up his good impression of and respect for you to the last. leave the prospect with this thought radiating from your mind: "i have done this man a good turn." the prospect will catch these subtle vibrations, in some way not worth discussing, and he too will feel that he has done well. avoid the "well, i landed this chap, all right, all right!" mental attitude, which shows so plainly in the manner of some salesmen after they have booked an order. the prospect will catch those vibrations also, and will not like it--he will resent it, naturally. in short, you would do well to follow the homely but scientific advice of the old salesman who said: "keep your sugar-coating on to the last--leave 'em with a pleasant taste in their mouths." make a good last impression as well as a good first impression. but--and remember this also--get away when your work is over. do not hang around the office or store of the prospect after the sale is made. do not place yourself in a position where some newly discovered objection will cause you to do your work all over again. you have got what you came for--now get out! as macbain says: "when the close is made the customer should be left in the shortest possible time that may not be characterized as abrupt. having 'talked a man into a sale,' the salesman should be careful not to talk him out. the old adage, 'stop praising the goods after the sale is made,' is as true as it is trite." collins very aptly says on this point: "the explainer type of salesman may actually sell goods to a customer and then, by staying and talking, unsell him without knowing it. * * * one afternoon not long ago, for instance, a salesman sold eleven thousand dollars' worth of fabrics to a prominent merchant and, by staying for a friendly chat after the order had been secured, gave the merchant time to think twice and cancel it. an excellent rule is that of a salesman who built up a business to a quarter million in competition with wealthy competitors, doing this by sheer selling ability. 'take the first train out of town after you sell your man,' was his rule. if there was no train for several hours he excused himself the moment a deal was closed, and disappeared. 'just as sure as i stayed around after that order was in my pocket,' he says, 'part of it would be cancelled or modified by the buyer, or some of my work in selling undone. if it were nothing else the buyer would play on the fact that i felt good about getting that order, and squeeze something extra out of me.' when you land your man get out of sight." and, taking our own advice, kind reader, we, having said our say and "closed," will now take our departure. we thank you for your kind attention, and feel that we "have done you a good turn." * * * * * transcriber's note: obvious typographical and printer errors have been corrected without comment. in addition to obvious errors, the following corrections have been made: . page : a missing quote mark was added to the end of the sentence beginning, "geo. dyers, in the same journal says: "advertising...." . page : extra "the" removed from the phrase, "as kipling says: "the...." . page : a missing quote mark was added to the end of the sentence beginning, "people are all after money...." . page : "voluntary" changed to "involuntary" in the phrase, "involuntary attention, on the contrary...." . page : "salesman" changed to "salesmen" in the phrase, "veteran salesmen gauge...." . page : "hereby" changed to "here by" in the phrase, "we can have these goods here by about such-and-such a date." other than the above errors, no attempt has been made to correct common spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc. the author's usage is preserved as printed in the original publication. unconventional spelling which has been preserved includes, but is not limited to the following: advisibility argumentive irrefragible propogandist inconsistencies in hyphenation include: baseball/ base-ball pocketbook/ pocket-book sidetrack/ side-track straightforward/ straight-forward [illustration] cyclopedia _of_ commerce, accountancy, business administration volume _a general reference work on_ accounting, auditing, bookkeeping, commercial law, business management, administrative and industrial organization, banking, advertising, selling, office and factory records, cost keeping, systematizing, etc. _prepared by a corps of_ auditors, accountants, attorneys, and specialists in business methods and management _illustrated with over two thousand engravings_ ten volumes chicago american technical society copyright, by american school of correspondence copyright, by american technical society entered at stationers' hall, london all rights reserved authors and collaborators james bray griffith, _managing editor_ head, dept. of commerce, accountancy, and business administration, american school of correspondence. robert h. montgomery of the firm of lybrand, ross bros. & montgomery, certified public accountants. editor of the american edition of dicksee's _auditing_. formerly lecturer on auditing at the evening school of accounts and finance of the university of pennsylvania, and the school of commerce, accounts, and finance of the new york university. arthur lowes dickinson, f.c.a., c.p.a. of the firms of jones, caesar, dickinson, wilmot & company, certified public accountants, and price, waterhouse & company, chartered accountants. william m. lybrand, c.p.a. of the firm of lybrand, ross bros. & montgomery, certified public accountants. f. h. macpherson, c.a., c.p.a. of the firm of f. h. macpherson & co., certified public accountants. chas. a. sweetland consulting public accountant. author of "loose-leaf bookkeeping," and "anti-confusion business methods." e. c. landis of the system department, burroughs adding machine company. harris c. trow, s.b. _editor-in-chief_, textbook department, american school of correspondence. cecil b. smeeton, f.i.a. public accountant and auditor. president, incorporated accountants' society of illinois. fellow, institute of accounts, new york. john a. chamberlain, a.b., ll.b. of the cleveland bar. lecturer on suretyship, western reserve law school. author of "principles of business law." hugh wright auditor, westlake construction company. glenn m. hobbs, ph.d. secretary, american school of correspondence. jessie m. shepherd, a.b. associate editor, textbook department, american school of correspondence. george c. russell systematizer. formerly manager, system department, elliott-fisher company. oscar e. perrigo, m.e. specialist in industrial organization. author of "machine-shop economics and systems," etc. darwin s. hatch, b.s. assistant editor, textbook department, american school of correspondence. chas. e. hathaway cost expert. chief accountant, fore river shipbuilding co. chas. wilbur leigh, b.s. associate professor of mathematics, armour institute of technology. l. w. lewis advertising manager, the mccaskey register co. martin w. russell registrar and treasurer, american school of correspondence. halbert p. gillette, c.e. managing editor, _engineering-contracting_. author of "handbook of cost data for contractors and engineers." r. t. miller, jr., a.m., ll.b. president, american school of correspondence. william schutte manager of advertising, national cash register co. e. st. elmo lewis advertising manager, burroughs adding machine company. author of "the credit man and his work" and "financial advertising." richard t. dana consulting engineer. chief engineer, construction service co. p. h. bogardus publicity manager, american school of correspondence. william g. nichols general manufacturing agent for the china mfg. co., the webster mfg. co., and the pembroke mills. author of "cost finding" and "cotton mills." c. h. hunter advertising manager, elliott-fisher co. frank c. morse filing expert. secretary, browne-morse co. h. e. k'berg expert on loose-leaf systems. formerly manager, business systems department, burroughs adding machine co. edward b. waite head, instruction department, american school of correspondence. authorities consulted the editors have freely consulted the standard technical and business literature of america and europe in the preparation of these volumes. they desire to express their indebtedness, particularly, to the following eminent authorities, whose well-known treatises should be in the library of everyone interested in modern business methods. grateful acknowledgment is made also of the valuable service rendered by the many manufacturers and specialists in office and factory methods, whose coöperation has made it possible to include in these volumes suitable illustrations of the latest equipment for office use; as well as those financial, mercantile, and manufacturing concerns who have supplied illustrations of offices, factories, shops, and buildings, typical of the commercial and industrial life of america. joseph hardcastle, c.p.a. formerly professor of principles and practice of accounts, school of commerce, accounts, and finance, new york university. author of "accounts of executors and testamentary trustees." horace lucian arnold specialist in factory organization and accounting. author of "the complete cost keeper," and "factory manager and accountant." john f. j. mulhall, p.a. specialist in corporation accounts. author of "quasi public corporation accounting and management." sherwin cody advertising and sales specialist. author of "how to do business by letter," and "art of writing and speaking the english language." frederick tipson, c.p.a. author of "theory of accounts." charles buxton going managing editor of _the engineering magazine_. associate in mechanical engineering, columbia university. corresponding member, canadian mining institute. f. e. webner public accountant. specialist in factory accounting. contributor to the engineering press. amos k. fiske associate editor of the _new york journal of commerce_. author of "the modern bank." joseph french johnson dean of the new york university school of commerce, accounts, and finance. editor, _the journal of accountancy_. author of "money, exchange, and banking." m. u. overland of the new york bar. author of "classified corporation laws of all the states." thomas conyngton of the new york bar. author of "corporate management," "corporate organization," "the modern corporation," and "partnership relations." theophilus parsons, ll.d. author of "the laws of business." e. st. elmo lewis advertising manager, burroughs adding machine company. formerly manager of publicity, national cash register co. author of "the credit man and his work," and "financial advertising." t. e. young, b.a., f.r.a.s. ex-president of the institute of actuaries. member of the actuary society of america. author of "insurance." lawrence r. dicksee, f.c.a. professor of accounting at the university of birmingham. author of "advanced accounting," "auditing," "bookkeeping for company secretary," etc. francis w. pixley author of "auditors, their duties and responsibilities," and "accountancy." charles u. carpenter general manager, the herring-hall-marvin safe co. formerly general manager, national cash register co. author of "profit making management." c. e. knoeppel specialist in cost analysis and factory betterment. author of "systematic foundry operation and foundry costing," "maximum production through organization and supervision," and other papers. harrington emerson, m.a. consulting engineer. director of organization and betterment work on the santa fe system. originator of the emerson efficiency system. author of "efficiency as a basis for operation and wages." elmer h. beach specialist in accounting methods. editor, _beach's magazine of business_. founder of the bookkeeper. editor of _the american business and accounting encyclopedia_. j. j. rahill, c.p.a. member, california society of public accountants. author of "corporation accounting and corporation law." frank brooker, c.p.a. ex-new york state examiner of certified public accountants. ex-president, american association of public accountants. author of "american accountants' manual." clinton e. woods, m.e. specialist in industrial organization. formerly comptroller, sears, roebuck & co. author of "organizing a factory," and "woods' reports." charles e. sprague, c.p.a. president of the union dime savings bank, new york. author of "the accountancy of investment," "extended bond tables," and "problems and studies in the accountancy of investment." charles waldo haskins, c.p.a., l.h.m. author of "business education and accountancy." john j. crawford author of "bank directors, their powers, duties, and liabilities." dr. f. a. cleveland of the wharton school of finance, university of pennsylvania. author of "funds and their uses." [illustration: the supreme court building at springfield, ill.] foreword with the unprecedented increase in our commercial activities has come a demand for better business methods. methods which were adequate for the business of a less active commercial era, have given way to systems and labor-saving ideas in keeping with the financial and industrial progress of the world. out of this progress has risen a new literature--the literature of business. but with the rapid advancement in the science of business, its literature can scarcely be said to have kept pace, at least, not to the same extent as in other sciences and professions. much excellent material dealing with special phases of business activity has been prepared, but this is so scattered that the student desiring to acquire a comprehensive business library has found himself confronted by serious difficulties. he has been obliged, to a great extent, to make his selections blindly, resulting in many duplications of material without securing needed information on important phases of the subject. in the belief that a demand exists for a library which shall embrace the best practice in all branches of business--from buying to selling, from simple bookkeeping to the administration of the financial affairs of a great corporation--these volumes have been prepared. prepared primarily for use as instruction books for the american school of correspondence, the material from which the cyclopedia has been compiled embraces the latest ideas with explanations of the most approved methods of modern business. editors and writers have been selected because of their familiarity with, and experience in handling various subjects pertaining to commerce, accountancy, and business administration. writers with practical business experience have received preference over those with theoretical training; practicability has been considered of greater importance than literary excellence. in addition to covering the entire general field of business, this cyclopedia contains much specialized information not heretofore published in any form. this specialization is particularly apparent in those sections which treat of accounting and methods of management for department stores, contractors, publishers and printers, insurance, and real estate. the value of this information will be recognized by every student of business. the principal value which is claimed for this cyclopedia is as a reference work, but, comprising as it does the material used by the school in its correspondence courses, it is offered with the confident expectation that it will prove of great value to the trained man who desires to become conversant with phases of business practice with which he is unfamiliar, and to those holding advanced clerical and managerial positions. in conclusion, grateful acknowledgment is made to authors and collaborators, to whose hearty coöperation the excellence of this work is due. table of contents (for professional standing of authors, see list of authors and collaborators in front of volume.) volume iii law of contracts and agency _by john a. chamberlain_ page law in general--contracts--consideration--revocation--illegal contracts--mistake--assignments--discharge of contract--warranty-- recision--remedies for breach--forms of contracts--appointment of agents--sub-agents--factors--brokers--auctioneers--real estate brokers law of partnership and corporations _by john a. chamberlain_ page creation of partnership--agreements--rights and liabilities-- change of membership--survivorship--dissolution--powers of corporations--capital stock--calls and assessments--watered stock--common and preferred stock--dividends--officers and agents law of negotiable instruments, banking, and insurance _by john a. chamberlain_ page negotiability and assignability--law merchant--notes, drafts, bills of exchange, and checks--bonds--indorsement--forgery-- fraud and duress--consideration--defences--dishonor and protest-- functions and powers of banks--deposits--loans and credits-- discount--exchange--interest--insurance contracts--policies-- suretyship--subrogation--indemnity law of sales, mortgages, and carriers _by john a. chamberlain_ page sale, barter, and bailment--when title passes--effect of fraud-- warranties--seller's lien--title to property bailed--degree of care required--pledges--collateral securities--redemption-- mortgages--form of mortgages--foreclosure--title to goods after delivery--stoppage _in transitu_--interstate commerce act-- passengers--baggage law of real property _by john a. chamberlain_ page crops and emblements--party walls--fixtures--fences--private ways and highways--varieties of estates--waste--deeds-- possession--deeds and mortgages--transfer of mortgages and mortgaged premises--satisfaction--redemption--foreclosure-- parties to trusts--varieties of trusts--rights of tenant-- rent--distress--leases--actions for possession--trade marks law of wills and legal actions _by john a. chamberlain_ page parties and terms in wills--publication--revocation and alteration--advancement, abatement, and ademption--form of wills--varieties of courts--legal actions and their enforcement index page [illustration: the building of the law school of the university of chicago] commercial law part i law in general = . rights.= men are endowed with certain individual rights. these rights are principally of two classes, personal and property. men have the right to live in peace and quietude. in so far as it does not interfere with the same privilege on the part of others they have the right to be unmolested in the pursuit of happiness. they have the right to defend themselves against the attacks of others, to satisfy bodily hunger and thirst, and to preserve their bodies in health and strength. besides these personal rights, men have the right to acquire and keep property. this right is also subject to the limitation of not interfering with the same privilege on the part of others. men have the right to acquire property, both chattel and real. for the purpose of rendering their existence and enjoyment secure, they have the right to keep the title and possession of this property in themselves. in primitive times, property rights were few. personal rights were recognized and enforced by might. as the requirements of civilized life became more complex, property rights were needed and recognized. rules of conduct and rules for the holding and transfer of property were recognized and enforced. might ceased to be the principal method of enforcing rights. rules began to be recognized and enforced with regard to persons and property. these rules are known as laws. = . law.= law may be defined to be a rule of human conduct. it may be said to embrace all rules of human conduct recognized by courts of law. laws are necessary to enable men to enforce and enjoy their rights, both personal and property. customs of men become rules by which human affairs are regulated. men may disagree as to what their rights are, or as to their exact scope or limitations. in this event, rules of conduct or laws must determine their scope and limitations. disputes among men arise about their personal or property rights. the rules recognized by the courts in settling these disputes are laws. these rules or laws relate both to persons and property. a law which prohibits murder is a rule by which the state protects the lives of its citizens; a law which prohibits theft is a rule for the protection of property. = . sources of law.= law is derived from the customs of the people and from the written declarations or agreements of the people or their representatives. the customs of the people, constituting a large part of our law, are found principally in the decisions of courts. each state of this country prints and keeps a permanent record of at least the most important decisions of its court of last resort. many decisions of lower courts are printed and preserved. every law library of importance has the printed reports of the supreme court of each state of this country; as well as the reports of the higher courts of most of the countries where the english language is spoken or officially recognized. the reports of the higher courts of england, ireland, canada, australia, and of many of the island possessions of this country and of england, are found in most law libraries. the second source of law is the written declaration of the people or their representatives. these declarations consist of legislative acts, treaties and constitutions. in this country, legislative acts may be either national or state. many statutes are nothing more than recognized customs enacted into written laws. other statutes are variations or restrictions of recognized customs. national legislative acts are numbered consecutively, printed and bound into volumes known as the _federal statutes_. each state numbers its statutes consecutively and prints and binds them into volumes known as the _state statutes_. = . divisions of the law.= there are two great divisions of the law, _written_ and _unwritten_. the greater portion of the law consists of the customs of the people, as evidenced and preserved by the written decisions of the courts. these customs, to be recognized as law, need not be found in written decisions, but the most important ones have become embodied therein. new customs are necessary and are recognized to meet new and changing conditions. these new customs are continually adding to our unwritten law. while this great portion of the law is called unwritten law, the greater portion of it actually is in writing, and is preserved in permanent form by our court reports, both national and state. the second division of law is known as written law. it consists of treaties, constitutions, and legislative acts. _treaties_ are international compacts. _legislative acts_ are the laws passed by the people or their representatives. in this country they consist of the laws passed by the united states congress, and by the representative bodies of each state. _constitutions_, in this country, consist of the state constitutions and the united states constitution. in england the constitution is not written, but is a part of the unwritten law of the land. = . classification of law.= a number of useful classifications of the law are recognized. any classification is more or less arbitrary, and no classification has been recognized universally. law may be classified as _public_, _administrative_, and _private_. public law embraces the law of nations, called _international law_; the laws regulating the enforcement and recognition of constitutional provisions, called _constitutional law_; and the laws protecting citizens against the actions of dangerous characters, called _criminal laws_. the public as a unit is said to be interested in public law. public laws are recognized and enforced in theory, at least, for the benefit of the public and not for any particular individual. for example, if a murder is committed, the state through its officers prosecutes and punishes the criminal on the theory that a wrong has been done the state. the heirs or representatives of the person murdered can sue and recover money compensation, called _damages_, from the murderer, but the state punishes the criminal. this work does not treat of public law. _administrative law_, sometimes called _law of procedure_, embraces the rules and regulations relating to the enforcement of personal and property rights. the laws relating to courts, the method and manner of starting legal actions, the trial of cases, and the rendering and enforcement of judgments are common examples of administrative law. _private law_ embraces the _law of contracts_ and of _torts_. contracts consist of agreements of every nature. the great majority of dealings of men are carried out by means of contracts. this is the most important, as well as the most extensive subject known to the law. torts embrace all private wrongs not arising out of contracts. any injury inflicted by one person upon the person or property of another, which is not a breach of contract, is a tort. tort is the french word for private wrong. if _a_ carelessly drives his automobile into _b_'s wagon, he commits a tort. if _a_ carelessly drives his horse over _b_'s field, he commits a tort. if _a_ wrongfully strikes _b_, he commits a tort. torts and crimes frequently over-lap. the same act may constitute a tort and a crime. if _a_ drives his automobile faster than the laws of the state or city permit, and while so doing runs over and injures _b_, he commits both a tort and a crime. he is liable to the state for imprisonment or fine for the crime, and he is liable to _b_ in money for damages for the tort. the same act may constitute a crime, a breach of contract, and a tort. if _a_, engaged as a chauffeur to operate an automobile carefully and skillfully, violates the speed law, and in so doing runs over and injures _b_, he commits a crime and is liable to the state for punishment or fine. he is also liable in damages to _b_ for the tort committed, and is liable in damages to his employer for breach of contract. this work has largely to do with the law of contracts and torts. the term _commercial law_, applied to this work, is a term used arbitrarily to embrace the laws relating to commercial affairs. it has no distinct place in the general classification of law. contracts = . contract, defined and discussed.= a contract has been defined to be an agreement between two or more competent parties, enforceable in a court of law, and based upon a sufficient consideration, to do or not to do a particular thing. the law relating to contracts is the most important, as well as the most extensive, branch of commercial law. it touches, directly or indirectly, most of the dealings of men. it is the legal basis of all business transactions. in the daily routine of their life, most families make many contracts. by reading the morning paper left at his door, a person impliedly agrees to pay the publisher the customary price. by ordering the daily supply of groceries by telephone, the housewife impliedly contracts to pay for their value, upon delivery, or at the customary time of payment. by purchasing a number of car tickets from the street car conductor, a person makes a contract. by ordering a lunch, a person impliedly agrees to pay the customary price. in the more important business transactions, formal contracts are written out and signed. in these transactions the parties endeavor to define their duties and obligations clearly and expressly, in order that they may understand each other and in order that neither can dishonestly claim that the contract contains a certain provision or condition. contracts are legal or illegal, void or voidable, depending upon their form and nature. an understanding of the necessary elements of valid contract is the foundation, to the understanding of commercial law. = . offer, acceptance and agreement.= to constitute a transaction a valid contract, there must be an offer on the one hand, and an acceptance on the other. this necessitates at least two parties to every contract. one must make a proposition, the other must accept it. the acceptance must be of the exact terms of the offer, to constitute a legal acceptance. if the attempted acceptance is not made in the precise terms of the offer, it constitutes a counter offer, which, to constitute a contract must, in turn, be accepted by the original offeror. if _a_ offers _b_ one hundred dollars for _b's_ horse, and _b_ in turn agrees to take one hundred dollars, the transaction constitutes a valid contract. if _a_ offers _b_ one hundred dollars for _b's_ horse, and _b_ in turn offers to sell the horse for one hundred and twenty dollars, the transaction does not constitute a contract, for the reason that _a's_ offer has not been accepted. _b_, however, makes a counter offer, which if not assented to by _a_, constitutes no contract. if, however, _a_ agrees to accept _b's_ offer to sell the horse for one hundred and twenty dollars, this constitutes a valid contract, in which _b_ is the offeror and _a_ the acceptor. these counter offers in response to offers may go on indefinitely without constituting contracts. so long as the response to the offer varies the terms of the offer, it constitutes a counter offer, and not an acceptance. to constitute an acceptance, the exact terms of the offer must be agreed to. courts lay down the principle that there must be a meeting of the minds of the contracting parties, to constitute the transaction a valid contract. this means that the offer must be accepted in its precise terms. the minds of the contracting parties cannot meet, unless the acceptance is of the exact terms of the offer. this principle is sometimes called _mutuality_. an acceptance must be communicated to the offeror. a mere mental operation, or an attempted acceptance, not communicated to the offeror, does not constitute a legal acceptance. the offer, or acceptance, may be in the form of an act as well as by verbal or written communication. if a person orders a barrel of flour of his grocer, the order constitutes the offer, and the delivery of the flour and the receipt of same by the purchaser, constitutes the acceptance. the purchaser is bound to pay the market price for the flour, regardless of the fact that the price has not been mentioned. an offer can be recalled at any time before acceptance. to recall an offer, the offeror must communicate his intention so to do, to the acceptor before acceptance. agreements to hold offers open for a stipulated time are recognized. these options are, in themselves contracts, and to be binding must contain all the essential elements of a contract. an offer which has been accepted constitutes an _agreement_. an agreement, as the word suggests, means a meeting of the minds of two or more parties. the word is frequently used as synonymous with contract, but it is merely an element of a contract. while there must be an agreement in every contract, an agreement of itself does not constitute a contract. there may be an agreement between persons under legal age, but this agreement does not constitute a contract. besides an agreement, or meeting of the minds, a contract must have competent parties, a legal valuable consideration, and a lawful object. these are often called the elements of a contract. = . parties to a contract.= a contract must have at least two competent parties. each party to a contract may consist of one or more persons. to be competent to make a contract, a party must be of legal age. legal age is twenty-one years for males, and ordinarily, eighteen for females. legal age is fixed by statutes of the different states. these statutes differ somewhat as to the legal age of females. some fix it at twenty-one, others at eighteen, and some even younger than eighteen, in case of marriage. intoxicated persons, insane persons and idiots are not competent to make contracts. artificial persons or corporations can make contracts within the scope of the powers given them by the state. a person who does not voluntarily consent to the terms of a contract is not a party to it. where fraud or duress is used in obtaining a party's consent to a contract, the contract is at least voidable. it is not enforceable if the defrauded party objects on that ground. = . consideration.= consideration may be _good_ or _valuable_. good consideration consists of love and affection existing between near relations. good consideration is a sufficient consideration to support a deed given by one relative to another. but this is the only kind of contract supported by a good consideration. valuable consideration has been defined to consist of some right, interest, profit or benefit, accruing to the promisor, or some forbearance, detriment, loss or responsibility, given, suffered or undertaken by the party, to whom the promise is given. in short it is a benefit to the promisor, or a detriment to the promisee. all contracts, with the exception of sealed instruments, must be supported by a valuable consideration. sealed instruments, except where abrogated by statute, import a consideration. _a_ promises to sell his watch to _b_ for ten dollars. _b_ accepts the offer by offering to pay _a_ ten dollars. there is a valuable consideration, consisting of _b's_ promise to pay _a_ ten dollars. _a_ promises _b_ two dollars if _b_ will guard _a's_ house for two hours. there may be no actual benefit resulting to _a_, since it may have been unnecessary to have the house guarded. but if _b_ guards the house for two hours, _a_ is legally bound to pay him the contract price of two dollars. the valuable consideration is the detriment or responsibility of _b_ in guarding the house for two hours. mutual promises constitute a valuable consideration. if _a_ promises _b_ two dollars if _b_ will work for him next thursday, and _b_ promises _a_ to work for him next thursday, the contract is mutual, and is supported by a valuable consideration. the consideration consists of the promise on the part of each of the contracting parties. a past consideration will not support a contract. by a past consideration, is meant a benefit received in the past, for which no legal liability was incurred or exists. _a_ gives _b_, his son, five hundred dollars. one year later, in consideration of the past gift, _b_ promises to construct a dam for _a_. the consideration is past and does not support the attempted contract. a consideration, to be valuable and sufficient to support a contract, need not be adequate. a mutual promise, no matter how slight or trivial, or the payment of anything valuable to the promisor, is sufficient. sometimes the inadequacy of the consideration tends to prove fraud in the making of the contract. when it is sought to avoid a contract on the ground of fraud, the inadequacy of the consideration may be considered in connection with the question of fraud. when fraud does not enter into the question, adequacy of the consideration is not questioned. _a_ sells _b_ one hundred acres of land. the deed recites a consideration of one dollar. the deed of transfer is good and the smallness of the sum named does not affect the contract. a promise to do something which one is already legally bound to do does not constitute a valuable consideration to a contract. _a_ owes _b_ one hundred dollars upon a promissory note. the note is past due and _a_ fails to pay it. _a_ promises to pay the note within ten days, on condition that _b_ promise to give _a_ a barrel of apples. _b_ agrees. _a_ cannot compel _b_ to deliver the barrel of apples, nor has _a_ any defense to the payment of the promissory note, since his promise to pay the note was a promise to do something he was already bound to do. an illegal consideration does not support a contract. any consideration contrary to established law is illegal. _a_ promising to pay _b_ one thousand dollars if _b_ will burn _c's_ barn is an example of illegal consideration. = . express and implied contracts.= some contracts expressly set forth the exact terms and conditions to be performed by both the contracting parties. for example, _a_ makes a contract with _b_, by the terms of which, _b_ is to construct a house for _a_. the contract is carefully prepared in writing, _b_ is to receive five thousand dollars ($ , . ) when the house is completed, and the contract contains provisions as to the details of the work and materials. such a contract is called an _express contract_ by reason of the terms having been expressly agreed upon by the parties. a contract need not be in writing to be express. the parties may enter into an express contract orally as well. few contracts are made, however, in which some things are not implied. for example, in the contract for the building of a house it is practically impossible, or at least, is impracticable, to set forth in exact detail all the duties of the builder. for example, it would be unnecessary to give the size of the nails and number or quantity of same to be used. the contract impliedly requires the builders to use the proper size and quantity. a contract, however, in which the parties endeavor to set forth the principal things to be done, is known as an express contract. an _implied contract_ is one in which the parties do not expressly agree upon some of the important terms. _a_, a contractor, orders of _b_ one thousand feet ( , ft.) of no. white pine ship lap siding. the price is not mentioned. _b_ delivers the lumber and _a_ by implication is obliged to pay _b_ the reasonable value thereof. the greater portion of business contracts are implied. an implied contract should not be confused with uncertain contracts. uncertain contracts are void by reason of their uncertainty. _a_ offers _b_ one thousand dollars for five acres of land. _b_ accepts the offer. in case the parties had no particular five acres of land in mind, the contract is void by reason of this uncertainty. the parties' minds did not meet on the question of what particular piece of land was to be transferred. in most implied contracts the article to be delivered is a part of a large quantity, and the particular part does not matter. articles ordered from stock, such as groceries, shingles, slate, cement and lumber are common examples of this principal. = . unilateral and bilateral, executory and executed contracts.= the mutuality or meeting of the minds, constituting one of the essential elements of the contract, may result from an express promise for a promise, or from an act performed in response to a promise. _a_ promises to sell his automobile to _b_ on the following day for five thousand dollars ($ , . ). _b_ promises to pay _a_ five thousand dollars ($ , . ) the following day. the mutuality consists of the mutual promises of _a_ and _b_. such contracts are known in law as _bilateral_ contracts. _a_ promises to pay _b_ one thousand dollars ($ , . ) if _b_ will move his house to the rear of _a's_ lot. _b_, without promising to do so, moves the house. this act on the part of _b_ constitutes the acceptance of the contract and completes the mutuality. such contracts are known in law as _unilateral_ contracts. a contract to be performed in the future is known as an _executory_ contract. _a_ promises to pay _b_ seventy-five dollars, if he will work on _a's_ farm during the month of august of the following year. _b_ accepts _a's_ offer and promises to work for _a_ as proposed. the contract is to be performed at a subsequent date, and constitutes an executory contract. an _executed_ contract is one which is performed. _a_ promises to sell his bicycle to _b_ for fifty dollars ($ . ); _b_ pays the fifty dollars ($ . ) to _a_ and receives the bicycle. this contract is executed. a contract may be executed as to one party and executory as to the other. if _a_ agrees to sell and deliver his team of horses to _b_ for five hundred dollars ($ . ) and _b_ pays _a_ five hundred dollars ($ . ) but _a_ does not deliver the team to _b_, the contract is executed as to _b_ and executory as to _a_. = . contracts of infants.= a person under legal age is known in law as an infant. the legal age is fixed by statute in the different states. in most states this age is twenty-one for males and eighteen for females. in some states the legal age for females is under eighteen in case of marriage. an infant's contracts are voidable. voidable does not mean that the contract is illegal. it is not contrary to law for an infant to make contracts. he may lawfully make them. the law will not compel him to carry them out. he may carry them out voluntarily if he chooses. a competent party, contracting with an infant cannot avoid the contract on the general ground of the infancy of the other party to the contract. the infant, however, may avoid the contract by reason thereof. an infant may ratify his contract after becoming of legal age. this ratification is effected by the infant's accepting benefits under the contract after attaining his majority. ratification may also be effected by an infant after he has reached his majority by promising to carry out the contract. to have such a promise amount to a ratification the infant must make the promise with knowledge that he may avoid the contract if he chooses. an infant is liable on his contracts for necessaries. _necessaries_ is a variable term, depending upon the social position of the infant. those articles essential to the health and sometimes to the comfort of the infant are considered necessaries. food and clothing are the most common examples. a person selling an infant necessaries, cannot recover in excess of their reasonable value regardless of the contract price, and cannot recover at all, if the infant is already supplied. most courts hold that a party selling necessaries to an infant must determine at his peril that the infant is not supplied. articles which would be luxuries for one infant, might be necessaries for an infant accustomed to wealth. an infant is not entitled to his wages unless he has been emancipated. the father or guardian is entitled to the wages. emancipation may be by written declaration to that effect, on the part of the father. it may also be implied from the refusal or failure on the part of the father to treat the infant as his child. = . novation and contracts for the benefit of third persons.= if _a_ owes _b_ one hundred dollars ($ . ) and _b_ owes _c_ one hundred dollars ($ . ), the three parties may agree that _a_ may pay _c_ one hundred dollars ($ . ), discharging the indebtedness of both _a_ and _b_. this contract is valid in law, and is called _novation_. much of our common or unwritten law was taken from the common law of england. the common law of england did not permit a third party, for whose benefit a contract was made, to enforce the contract. for example, if _a_ and _b_ enter into a contract by which _a_ is to pay _c_ some money, _c_ cannot enforce the contract. this kind of a contract is commonly known as a contract for the benefit of a third person. with a few exceptions, the states of this country refuse to follow the english doctrine. the general american doctrine is that a third party may enforce a contract made for his benefit. for example, _a_, a furniture dealer was indebted to _b_ for a bill of goods; _c_ purchased _a's_ business, and in a formal written contract, as part of the consideration, agreed to pay _b_ the amount of _a's_ bill. after the transfer of the business, _a_ became insolvent and _b_, learning of the contract between _a_ and _c_, sued _c_ thereon and was permitted to recover. the general american doctrine will not permit two parties, making a contract for the benefit of a third, to rescind or avoid the contract after the third party has been notified of it, and has assented thereto. of course, two parties cannot bind a third party to perform any condition of a contract without his consent. this would violate some of the fundamental principles of contracts. there would be no consent, no meeting of the minds, and sometimes no consideration. = . contracts of insane persons, idiots, and drunkards.= an insane person, or one that does not understand the nature of the contract in question, is not bound by his contracts. he may avoid them. like an infant, he may ratify them when he becomes sane, if he chooses. statutes of all the states provide for the determination of insanity by judicial decree. such a judicial determination is presumed to give notice to all. an idiot's contracts are the same as an insane person's. a drunkard can avoid a contract made while he was intoxicated, and if the drunkenness amounts to insanity, it is regarded in law as such. contracts made by a drunkard when not drunk, or by a lunatic during a lucid interval are valid and binding. = . contracts of married women.= at common law, upon marriage, the wife lost her legal identity in her husband. her estate became his, her personal property became his, and she could not thereafter enter into any legal obligation. the statutes of the states generally at the present time permit a married woman to contract as independently as a man, relative to her separate estate. in some states there are a few limitations, such as contracting directly with her husband or as surety for her husband. = . custom and usage as part of a contract.= parties may enter into any contracts they choose, so long as the terms are legal. if parties expressly agree, either orally or verbally, on the precise terms of a contract, these terms cannot be varied by usage or custom. usage and custom may be used, however, to explain the intent of the parties. merchants and traders recognize various trade customs, without which it would be impossible to interpret their contracts. for example, _a_ ordered five thousand barrels of cement of _b_, at eighty-five cents a barrel, to be delivered in sacks f. o. b. mill. in a suit for the purchase price, the court permitted _b_ to show that there was a well-known custom in the cement trade to add to the invoices forty cents per barrel for sacks, making the invoice selling price of the cement and sacks one dollar and twenty-five cents ($ . ) per barrel. to constitute a part of the contract, usage and custom must be of such a general nature as to be considered within the contemplation of the parties. = . contracts in writing.= parties may make contracts verbally, as well as in writing. a contract is not illegal because it is verbal. it is good business policy to make important contracts in writing. their terms are easily proven. there is not the temptation to attempt to vary the terms. parties cannot claim they did not understand each other. it may be laid down as a general rule that oral contracts are as legal as written ones. by the term, _legal_ is meant that the law does not prohibit them. parties may lawfully make oral contracts, and carry them out if they choose. some contracts, however, are not enforceable at law unless in writing. these contracts are legal. parties may lawfully make them and voluntarily carry them out, but they cannot invoke the aid of the law in enforcing their terms. = . statute of frauds.= the class of contracts, required by law to be in writing in order that they be enforceable, is said to be within the statute of frauds. the statute of frauds originated in england in . it was passed for the purpose of preventing frauds and perjuries. it required that certain important contracts must be made in writing, in order to be enforceable at law. the purpose of the statute was to remove the temptation of fraud and perjury in connection with the making and enforcing of certain contracts. two sections of the english statute apply especially to contracts; the fourth and the seventeenth. the fourth section is as follows: "no action shall be brought whereby to charge any executor or administrator, upon any special promise to answer damages out of his own estate; or whereby to charge the defendant upon any special promise, to answer for the debt, default, or miscarriage of another person; or to charge any person upon any agreement made upon consideration of marriage; or any contract or sale of lands, tenements or hereditaments, or any interest in or concerning them; or upon any agreement that is not to be performed within the space of one year from the making thereof; unless the agreement upon which such action shall be brought, or some memorandum or note thereof shall be in writing and signed by the party to be charged therewith, or some other person thereunto by him lawfully authorized." the seventeenth section of the english statute of frauds is as follows: "no contract for the sale of any goods, wares, or merchandise for the price of ten pounds sterling or upwards, shall be allowed to be good except the buyer shall accept part of the goods so sold, and actually receive the same, or give something in earnest to bind the bargain, or in part payment, or some note or memorandum in writing of the said bargain, be made and signed by the parties to be charged by such contract or their agents thereunto lawfully authorized." the english statute of frauds has been enacted in substance in all the states. reduced to single propositions the statute provides: . that an executor or administrator shall not be bound by contract to pay damages out of his own estate, unless the contract be in writing. for example, _a_ is executor of _b's_ estate. _c_ is a creditor of _b_. _a_ orally promises _c_ to pay _b's_ debt. this contract is not enforceable because not in writing. . a party promising to answer for the debt, default or miscarriage of another, shall not be bound unless the contract is in writing. for example, if _a_ owes _b_ $ and _c_ promises _b_ to pay _a's_ debt, the contract is not enforceable if not in writing. this clause of the statute is discussed more at length in the chapter on suretyship. . a contract made in consideration of marriage is not enforceable unless made in writing. for example, _a_ orally promised _b_ that if he would marry her, she would convey to him her farm. _b_ married _a_, but could not enforce the contract. a promise to marry is not within this section of the statute. . any contract or sale of lands must be in writing to be enforceable. for example, _a_ orally promises _b_ to sell his house and lot for ten thousand dollars ($ , . ). the contract is not enforceable. most of the states do not require that leases of less than a year's duration be in writing, to be enforceable. . an agreement, not to be performed within the space of one year, must be in writing to be enforceable. for example, _a_ orally promises to work for _b_ as sales agent for three years. this contract is not enforceable. . no contract for the sale of goods the price of which exceeds fifty dollars ($ . ) shall be enforceable unless made in writing. this provision of the english statute has not been reënacted by all the states. about half the states do not require that contracts for the sale of personal property shall be in writing, regardless of the price involved. some of the states fix the price as high as two hundred dollars ($ . ) and others, as low as thirty dollars ($ . ). the details of the entire contract need not be in writing to satisfy the provisions of the statute. a memorandum embodying the substance of the agreement, showing the consideration, and signed by the party to be bound, or by his authorized agent, is sufficient. contracts called _specialties_, have to be in writing, regardless of the statute of frauds. the most common examples are bills and notes, drafts and checks. these special contracts are made to circulate as money, and must be reduced to writing to be enforceable. there can be no such thing as an oral check, or draft, or promissory note. the oral contract for which they are given may be enforced, if not within the provisions of the statute of frauds. = . contracts by correspondence and telegraph.= parties need not meet personally to enter into contracts. they may legally make them by telegraph or by letter. it is well settled by the courts that a party may make an offer by letter, and that in so doing he impliedly gives the party addressed, the right to accept by letter. in law, the contract is complete the moment the letter of acceptance is mailed, regardless of its ever being received. the offeror may stipulate in his offer by letter, that the contract shall not be made until he is in receipt of a reply. in this event, the acceptor's letter must actually be received by the offerer, before the contract is complete. but if no such stipulation is made, the contract is complete when the letter of acceptance is mailed. if no time for acceptance is stipulated in the offerer's letter, the acceptor has a reasonable time in which to accept. what is a reasonable time, depends upon the nature of the transaction, and the circumstances surrounding it. if the offeror stipulates in his letter that the offer must be accepted by any stipulated time, the offer, of itself, lapses at the expiration of that time. if _a_ mails a letter to _b_, offering to sell one hundred bushels of wheat for one hundred dollars ($ . ), and the following day _b_ mails a letter, properly addressed, postage prepaid, to _a_, accepting the offer, and the letter is lost, the contract is complete and _b_ may recover from _a_ thereon. if _a_, by letter offers to sell _b_ one hundred bushels of wheat for one hundred dollars ($ . ), the offer to remain open until thursday, and _b_ mails his letter of acceptance wednesday, and the letter is lost, the contract is binding and _a_ is liable thereon. if _a_ by letter offers to sell _b_ one hundred bushels of wheat for one hundred dollars ($ . ), the offer to be accepted upon receipt of _b's_ reply, and _b's_ reply is lost in the mails, there is no contract. = . revocation.= it is a well recognized principle of contracts that an offer may be revoked, or withdrawn, at any time before acceptance. in case of revocation by mail, however, the letter of revocation must be received by the acceptor, before he has mailed his letter of acceptance. for example, _a_ mails _b_ a letter offering to sell _b_ one hundred bushels of wheat for one hundred dollars ($ . ). _b_ mails his letter of acceptance. by the next mail _b_ receives a letter of revocation. the contract is valid since the letter of revocation was not received, until after the letter of acceptance was mailed. the only offers that cannot be withdrawn at any time before acceptance, are what are known in law as _options_. options are contracts to keep an offer open for a stipulated length of time. they require a consideration, an agreement and all the elements of an ordinary contract. they are contracts. _a_ agrees by letter to sell _b_ one hundred bushels of wheat, and to keep the offer open three days. on the second day, and before _b_ has mailed his acceptance, _b_ receives a letter from _a_, by which _a_ withdraws his offer. _b_ cannot now accept _a's_ offer, since there was no consideration for _a's_ promise to keep the offer open three days. _a_ writes _b_, offering to sell him one hundred bushels of wheat for one hundred dollars ($ . ), and to keep the offer open for ten days. _b_ writes _a_ that he will give him $ . if he will keep the offer open ten days. _a_ accepts the offer. on the sixth day _b_ receives a letter from _a_ revoking the offer to sell, and on the following day _b_ mails his letter of acceptance. there is a valid contract in this case, since _b_ had a contract with _a_ based on a valuable consideration to keep the offer open ten days. contracts by telegraph are analogous in principle to contracts by letter. an offer by telegraph impliedly authorizes the receiver to accept by telegraph and the offer is accepted when the reply message is deposited with the operator. if lost, or not sent, the contract is not affected in the least. = . contracts under seal.= formerly, at common law, contracts under seal were frequent. at the present time few contracts are made under seal. originally a seal was an impression made in wax placed on a written document. sealed instruments differ from other written instruments in that they import a consideration. at common law, no consideration need be proven to a sealed instrument. formerly, private seals were in common use. later, a scroll made with the pen or a line or any mark designated as a seal was sufficient. private seals have been abolished by statute in many of the states, so that their use is now limited. the modern tendency is not to use sealed instruments, or when used, to regard them as different in no respect from other contracts. = . sunday contracts.= all the states of this country have statutes prohibiting the transaction of business on sunday. these statutes are based on "the lord's day act" of england. the english statute provides that persons shall not do or exercise any worldly labor, business or work of their ordinary callings, upon the lord's day, or any part thereof, works of necessity and charity only excepted. while the statutes of the different states differ in details, they are based upon the english statutes. under the english statute, it is difficult to determine in many cases what constitute "works of necessity and charity." the duties of clergymen, physicians and of nurses clearly are covered. it is sometimes stated that a person cannot make contracts, within the ordinary scope of his customary business, on sunday. this is true, if it does not relate to charity or necessity. deeds, notes and ordinary contracts, made and delivered on sunday are void. subscriptions for church funds may legally be made on sunday. = . illegal contracts.= a contract prohibited by law, or made for the purpose of doing something prohibited by law, is illegal, and void. if _a_ promises _b_ one hundred dollars ($ . ) if _b_ will poison _c's_ horse, the contract is contrary to law and illegal. if _b_ poisons _c's_ horse, he cannot recover the one hundred dollars ($ . ) from _a_. contracts which are against public policy are illegal and void. public policy means the public welfare. marriage brokerage contracts and contracts in restraint of trade come within this provision. lobbying contracts, contracts to influence votes, and for railroad rebates are against public policy and void. = . wagering or gambling contracts.= in england, at common law, wagering or gambling contracts were valid. gambling contracts were recognized as legal by some of the states at one time. at the present time, by statute the states declare gambling contracts illegal and void. a contract for the sale of goods, to be delivered in the future, even though the seller does not have possession of the goods at the time the contract of sale is made, but expects to purchase them from a third person, is not regarded as a gambling contract, and is valid. contracts for the purchase of stocks or goods in which there is no expectation to deliver, but simply an agreement to pay the difference in price at a certain date according to the state of the market, are gambling contracts, and void. = . fraud and duress.= fraud may be said to be misrepresentation of a material fact, known by the party making the misrepresentation to be false, and made for the purpose of influencing the other party to the contract, and acted upon by the other party to his detriment. for example, _a_ offers to sell _b_ a horse for two hundred and fifty dollars ($ . ). he tells _b_ the horse is sound, knowing that the horse has a disease which renders him worthless. he makes the representation of soundness for the purpose of inducing _b_ to buy. _b_ relies upon the representation, purchases the horse, and afterwards discovers the worthless condition of the horse. _b_ can return the horse and recover the purchase price. this is known as rescinding a contract on the ground of fraud. a fraudulent contract is not void, but voidable. the defrauded party may avoid the contract if he chooses, but the contract itself, is not without effect, simply by reason of the fraud. a mere failure to disclose facts or conditions, if not accompanied by active measures to distract the defrauded party's attention from the thing to be concealed, ordinarily does not amount to fraud. if one party by means of threatened or actual violence compels another to enter into a contract, or to part with something of value, the contract is said to have been obtained by duress. such contracts may be avoided by the injured party, who may recover what he has lost. _a_, a police officer, wrongfully arrests and imprisons _b_ and releases him only after _b_ has signed a promissory note for one hundred dollars ($ . ). _a_ cannot recover on the note. _a_, who is superior in physical strength to _b_, by threats of personal violence, compels _b_ to admit that he is indebted to _a_ for one hundred dollars ($ . ), which _b_ pays _a_. _b_ may recover the money from _a_. the contract is voidable on account of duress. = . mistake.= one of the essential elements of a contract is that there must be a meeting of the minds of the contracting parties. if there is a mutual mistake on the part of the contracting parties, their minds do not meet and no contract results. _a_ offers to sell _b_ his farm for five thousand dollars ($ , . ). _a_ has two farms. _a_ has one in mind, and _b_ the other. their minds do not meet and there is no contract. a mistake as to the legal effect of a contract does not avoid it. this is known as a mistake of law. a mistake on the part of one of the parties only, ordinarily does not avoid the contract. = . impossible contracts.= parties may enter into any kind of a contract they choose, so long as the provisions and conditions are legal. as a general rule, a party is liable in damages to the other party, for failure to observe and carry out the terms of his contract. there is, however, a class of contracts, known in law as impossible contracts. many contracts are made upon the assumption that the persons making the contract, or the particular thing under consideration will continue to exist until the contract is performed. _a_ agrees to paint a picture for _b_, for one thousand dollars ($ , ). _a_ fails in health or dies. _a_ or his estate, is not responsible in damages to _b_, since the contract contemplated _a's_ remaining in health and life. _a_ agrees to make _b_ a chair out of a particular piece of walnut lumber. the lumber is destroyed by fire through no fault of _a_. _a_ is not liable in damages, since the parties contemplated the continued existence of the lumber. if, however, _a_ contracts to build _b_ a walnut chair within ten days for fifty dollars ($ . ) and his factory and walnut lumber are destroyed by fire, _a_ is answerable to _b_ in damages, for failure to deliver the chair. he has entered into a lawful contract, and has not excepted liability on account of fire. a contract for personal services is rendered of no effect by the failure of health, or by death of the party, who is to perform the services. where, however, the contract provides for the doing of a certain specific thing, not to be performed by a certain person, and not depending upon the continued existence of a certain thing, the parties are bound to perform, regardless of accident. floods, earthquakes or lightning do not excuse performance. these accidents are known in law as _acts of god_. (see _acts of god_ chapter on carriers.) acts of god do not excuse performance unless expressly provided against in the contract. a law changed after the contract is made, making it unlawful to perform the contract, excuses performance. strikes do not render it impossible to perform contracts, within contemplation of the law. if a party desires to become exempt from performance by reason of strikes, he must put such a provision in his contract. if the party to the contract, to whom the performance is due, renders performance impossible for the other party, the latter is excused on the ground of impossibility. for example, _a_ contracts to do the wood finishing on _b's_ house within six months, _b_ to construct the masonry work. _b_ fails to construct the masonry work; this exempts _a_ from liability. = . conflict of laws.= the laws of different states differ in some particulars. where this difference affects the interpretation or enforcement of a contract, the doctrine of conflict of law applies. if a contract is valid in the state where made, it is usually valid everywhere. this rule is subject to the limitation that a state will not enforce a contract clearly against the policy of its own laws. if a contract is made in one state, to be performed in another, the laws of the latter apply. otherwise, the laws of the state where the contract is made apply. the laws relating merely to the court procedure or the method of enforcing a contract, belong to the state called upon to enforce the contract, and, even though the laws of the state where the contract was made differ, the former will apply. the laws of new york permit an express company to limit its liability for loss of goods to fifty dollars ($ . ), if so stipulated in the bill of lading, in case no valuation is fixed by the shipper. the laws of ohio do not permit an express company to limit its liability in this way. _a_, in new york, shipped goods valued at four hundred dollars ($ . ) to _b_, in cleveland. _a_ placed no valuation on the goods and accepted a receipt limiting the liability of the express company for loss of the goods, to fifty dollars ($ . ). the goods were lost. _b_ sued the express company in ohio for the value of the goods. the court held that the law of ohio held, since, by the terms of the contract, the goods were to be delivered in ohio. = . assignments of contracts.= by assignment of a contract, is meant the transfer of one's property rights in the contract. one cannot assign his duties under a contract. for example, _a_ contracts with _b_ to have the latter build him a house, for five thousand dollars ($ , . ). _b_ cannot transfer to another, the obligation on his part to construct the house. _b_, may, however, transfer to another, his right to recover the money for the house. _a_ may also transfer to another, his right to have the house constructed. contracts for personal service such as the painting of a picture, or the writing of a book, cannot be assigned. in such cases the personal work of a particular person is contracted for and cannot be transferred. an assignment of a contract is a contract for the sale of a property benefit of a contract. the assignment must contain all the elements of a simple contract. the assignor of a contract can transfer only such property rights as he possesses. the other party to the contract retains any defense against the assignee, which he had against the assignor. _a_ agrees to build a house for _b_, for five thousand dollars ($ , . ), according to certain plans. _a_ constructs the house with variations, subjecting him to a reduction in price of five hundred dollars ($ . ). _a_ assigns his rights in the contract to _c_ and _c_ can compel _a_ to pay him only four thousand five hundred dollars ($ , . ). the defense of _b_ against _a_ is good against _a's_ assignee, _c_. upon assigning a contract, the assignor or assignee must notify the other party to the contract, of the assignment, else payment to the assignor will discharge the other party. for example, _a_ owes _b_ one hundred dollars ($ . ). _b_ assigns the claim to _c_. _c_ does not notify _a_ of the assignment and _a_ pays _b_. _b_ is insolvent and _c_ cannot recover from him. _c_ cannot recover from _a_, since _a_ has received no notice of the assignment. the following is a recognized legal form of assignment. for valuable consideration, i hereby assign all my right, title and interest in the annexed (account, contract, or whatever the instrument may be) to______ _____________________ signature of assignor. date_____________ = . joint and several liability in contracts.= if _a_ makes a contract with _b_, only two parties are bound by the contract and are liable for its breach. if _a_ and _b_ contract with _c_ and _d_, four parties are bound and are liable. _a_ and _b_ may be liable as one party to _c_ and _d_, or they may be liable as two parties to _c_ and _d_. if the contract shows by its terms that _a_ and _b_ contract as a unit, and not as separate individuals, their contract is said to be _joint_. if the terms of the contract show that _a_ and _b_ intend to contract as individuals, as well as a unit, their contract is said to be _joint_ and _several_. if the terms of the contract show that _a_ and _b_ intend to contract as individuals only, and not as a unit, their liability is said to be _several_. the importance of this distinction is that in case of a joint obligation, all the joint obligors must be joined when sued, else the case may be dismissed if objection is made; while in case of a joint and several obligation, or of a several obligation, individual obligors may be sued separately. a promissory note reads, "we promise to pay" and is signed by _a_ and _b_. this is a joint obligation, and in a suit thereon _a_ and _b_ must be joined, or the one sued may have the case dismissed, by reason thereof. if, however, judgment is rendered against both, and they hold no joint property, the creditor may enforce his judgment against either. this is known in law as, _liability in solido_. a promissory note reads, "we or either of us jointly and severally promise to pay," and is signed by _a_ and _b_. _a_ and _b_ are severally, as well as jointly liable, and may be sued separately. where two or more parties sign a contract, binding themselves to do one thing of a series of things, the law presumes the obligation to be joint. if the language used shows, that the parties singly, or individually bind themselves to do the thing, or series of things in common, the contract is several, as well as joint. _a_ owes _b_ three hundred dollars ($ . ) upon a promissory note. _c_, _d_ and _e_ sign the following guaranty: if _a_ fails to pay the note when due, _c_ individually promises to pay _b_ one hundred dollars ($ . ), _d_ individually promises to pay _b_ one hundred dollars ($ . ), _e_ individually promises to pay _b_ one hundred dollars ($ . ). as to each other _c_, _d_ and _e_, are severally liable. as to _b_,--_c_, _d_ and _e_ respectively are jointly and severally liable, with _a_ for one hundred dollars ($ . ) each. = . discharge of contract by performance and tender.= a contract is terminated, when the parties thereto perform its provisions. the liability of parties ceases by performance of the provisions of the contract. _a_ promises to construct a house for _b_, according to certain specifications, within a year. _b_ promises to pay _a_ five thousand dollars ($ , . ), upon completion of the house according to contract. _a_, within a year, constructs the house according to the plans and specifications. _a's_ obligation is at an end. _b's_ obligation still requires him to pay _a_ five thousand dollars ($ , . ), and he is liable to a suit for this amount until it is paid. when _b_ pays _a_ five thousand dollars ($ , . ), his obligation and the contract are terminated, as to both parties. tender of payment is equivalent in law to payment. by _tender_ is meant an offer to pay in recognized legal money. _a_ has an option for the purchase of a house of _b_, for five thousand dollars ($ , . ). _b_ desires to have the option lapse, having obtained a better offer. if _a_ offers _b_ legal tender before the option expires, the contract is complete in law. united states statutes stipulate what constitute legal tender. these statutes provide that the following shall constitute legal tender: . gold coin. . silver dollars. . subsidary silver coin up to ten dollars. . nickels and pennies not exceeding twenty-five cents. . united states notes, except for duties on imports, and interest on public debts. silver certificates, bank notes and private checks are not legal tender. = . discharge of contract by subsequent agreement.= contracts may be terminated by another contract, made after the contract in question has been entered into. for example, _a_ promises to construct, within one year, a house according to certain plans, for _b_. _b_ promises to pay _a_ five thousand dollars ($ , . ), upon completion of the house. _a_ completes the excavation of the cellar and _b_ fails in business, and desires not to have the house constructed. he offers _a_ five hundred dollars ($ . ), for the work already done, and to release him from his obligation. _a_ accepts _b's_ proposition. the original contract has been terminated by the subsequent one. = . warranty and remedies for breach of warranty.= a _warranty_ is a contract collateral to the principal contract, by which a party to a contract specifically covenants certain things. warranties apply especially to sales of personal property. (see _warranty_ under sales of personal property.) _a_ promises to build a house for _b_ and warrants the paint to stand untarnished and uncracked for one year. the covenant on _a's_ part relating to the paint is a warranty. breach of warranty ordinarily does not entitle the other party to rescind the contract. that is, it does not permit him to refuse to carry out his part of the contract, but entitles him to bring an action for damages, for its breach. = . recission and discharge of contracts by breach.= if a party fails or refuses to carry out a provision of a contract, he is said to have committed a _breach of contract_. when one party to a contract commits a breach, the other party may accept the breach and sue for damages, or he may refuse to accept the breach and wait until the time for complete performance arrives, and then, if the other party has not performed, sue for damages. when a party to a contract commits a breach, and notifies the other party of his refusal further to carry out the contract, the other party cannot increase the defaulting party's damages by continuing performance thereafter. for example, _a_ contracts with _b_ to have a fence finished and erected around _a's_ house. after _b_ has half of the fence manufactured and erected, _a_ refuses to go on with the contract. _b_ cannot increase the damages by manufacturing and erecting the balance of the fence. the reason for this is that it would not benefit _b_ at all, but would merely injure _a_. _b_ is entitled to recover his profit for the entire job, when _a_ breaks the contract. he could recover no more by manufacturing and erecting the balance of the fence. the law does not recognize trivial things. a party cannot claim breach of contract for failure of the opposite party to a contract, to perform an unimportant thing. the law recognizes substantial performance as actual performance. this does not mean that a party cannot put such terms in a contract as he chooses, but means that, in the absence of any provisions of the contract to the contrary, a party is not presumed by law to contract for trivial things. time of performance is an illustration of this principle. _a_ contracts with _b_ for the building of a house. _b_ promises to complete it in one year. if completed in one year and a day, there is a substantial performance, unless the contract expressly shows that the precise day of performance was regarded as important. where contracts provide for separate performances, a failure or refusal to fulfil one performance will not always amount to a refusal or failure to perform the balance. _a_ agrees to ship _b_ five thousand barrels of cement, in car load lots of one hundred and fifty barrels each to be shipped each week. _b_ receives and refuses to pay for the first car. this may not amount to a breach of the entire contract, so as to justify _a_ in refusing to ship the balance. the tendency of american courts, however, is to treat this as as one contract; that is to treat the promises as dependent, and not independent. the acceptance by one party, of a breach of contract made by the other, and the refusal on the part of the former further to carry out the contract, is known in law as _recission_. to rescind a contract, a party must return what he has received thereunder, called putting the other party _in statu quo_. he must also accept the breach promptly. for example, _a_ promises to sell _b_ three horses to be delivered one each day, upon the three following days. _a_ delivers one and fails to deliver the second. to rescind the contract, _b_ must return promptly to _a_ the horse already delivered. he may then sue _a_ for damages suffered. if _b_ does not promptly return the horse to _a_, he must permit _a_ to go on with the contract, waiving the delay, or pay for the horse already delivered, less damages for _a's_ breach of contract. = . discharge by bankruptcy.= by a united states' statute, certain persons may become bankrupts and thereby be discharged from their obligations. by the terms of this act, the bankrupt's property is turned over to an officer, called a trustee in bankruptcy who disposes of it, and distributes it _pro rata_ among the bankrupt's creditors. any person except a corporation, who owes debts, may become a voluntary bankrupt. the united states statute further provides that certain persons may be declared bankrupts at the instance of their creditors. the united states statute provides that: "any natural person, except a wage earner, or a person engaged chiefly in farming or the tillage of the soil, any unincorporated company and any corporation engaged principally in manufacturing, trading, printing, publishing, mining or mercantile pursuits, owing debts to the amount of one thousand dollars ($ , . ) or over, may be adjudged an involuntary bankrupt, upon default, or on impartial trial and shall be subject to the provisions and entitled to the benefits of this act. private bankers, but not national banks or banks incorporated under state or territorial laws may be adjudged involuntary bankrupts." any of the above enumerated parties may be made an involuntary bankrupt at the instance of creditors if he has committed an act of bankruptcy. the bankruptcy statute defines an act of bankruptcy as follows: "acts of bankruptcy by a person shall consist of his having ( ) conveyed, transferred concealed or removed, or permitted to be concealed or removed, any part of his property with intent to hinder, delay or defraud his creditors or any of them; ( ) transferred, while insolvent any portion of his property to one or more of his creditors with intent to prefer such creditors over his other creditors; or ( ) suffered or permitted, while insolvent, any creditor to obtain a preference through legal proceedings and not having at least five days before a sale or final disposition of any property affected by such preference vacated or discharged such preference; or ( ) made a general assignment for the benefit of his creditors, or being insolvent, applied for a receiver or trustee for his property, or because of insolvency a receiver or trustee has been put in charge of his property under the laws of a state, of a territory, or of the united states; or ( ) admitted in writing his inability to pay his debts, and his willingness to be adjudged a bankrupt on that ground." bankruptcy discharges a bankrupt from his contracts. = . remedies for breach of contract.= originally, at common law, there was no power given a party to a contract, to compel the other party specifically to perform the provisions of the contract. for example, _a_ promises to pay _b_ one thousand dollars ($ , . ) for one thousand bushels of wheat, to be delivered within ten days. _b_ fails and refuses to deliver the wheat. _a_ could not at common law, and cannot under the present rules of law, compel _b_ to deliver the wheat. _a's_ remedy is an action for damages. _a_ may go into the market at the time and place of delivery, provided for in the contract, and purchase one thousand bushels of wheat of the quality provided for in the contract, and collect as damages from _b_ the advance in price, if any, together with expenses connected therewith. if _a_ is obliged to pay one thousand five hundred dollars ($ , . ) for the wheat, which by the terms of the contract, he had purchased for one thousand dollars ($ , . ) from _b_, he may recover five hundred dollars ($ . ) damages from _b_. if _a_ succeeds in obtaining the wheat for nine hundred dollars ($ . ), he can only recover nominal damages from _b_, commonly five cents, for breach of contract. in case _a_ obtains the wheat for nine hundred dollars ($ . ), _b_ cannot recover one hundred dollars ($ . ) from _a_, since he has violated the contract, and cannot take advantage of his own wrong. parties frequently fix the amount of damages for a possible breach at the time the contract is made. this is known in law as _liquidated_ damages. if reasonably compensatory, the courts will recognize and enforce liquidated damages; if clearly unreasonable they are regarded as penal, and the courts will not enforce them. for example, _a_ agrees to construct a rolling mill for _b_, for fifty thousand dollars ($ , . ), and to complete the structure within one year, and to pay damages of two hundred dollars ($ . ) per day, for each and every day consumed, in excess of a year in finishing the structure. if this is a reasonable loss to _b_, for the failure to have the use of the mill, the courts will enforce the provisions; otherwise they will remit the excess over the fair value of _b's_ loss. = . equity and specific performance.= originally, at common law in england, the king and his subordinates heard suits. certain specified actions or remedies, only, were allowed. it was soon observed that many complaints were made, and disputes arose, which did not come within the scope of these common law actions. the king appointed a chancellor to assist him. it was the duty of the chancellor to hear disputes, not within the scope of the recognized common law action, and to determine and decide these upon equitable principles. this court became known as the court of _chancery_, or court of _equity_. a regular system of courts of chancery grew up in england, with fixed rules of procedure and of recovery. this country has courts of equity. in many states, the same judge sits as a court of law, and of equity. equity does not hear cases where there is a complete and adequate remedy at law. equity courts have a judge only, and no jury. courts of equity sometimes specifically enforce contracts in case there is no adequate remedy at law. for example, _a_ purchases a lot of _b_ in a particularly desirable locality. there is no other vacant lot near it. in case _b_, refuses to carry out his contract, by conveying this lot to _a_, equity will compel _b_ to convey the lot to _a_. here _a_ has no adequate remedy at law. money damages will not enable him to procure what he contracted for. specific performance is rarely granted in case of sales of personal or chattel property. there are a few exceptions. if _a_ purchases "maud s." from _b_ for ten thousand dollars ($ , . ), "maud s." being a two minute race horse, purchased for breeding purposes, and _b_ refuses to deliver her, a court of equity might grant specific performance. money damages might not enable _a_ to purchase a similar horse. the same principle applies in case of purchases of rare works of art. while a contract for personal services cannot be specifically enforced by a court of equity, some relief may be granted by injunction. for example, _a_, an actress, agrees to perform for one year for _b_ and later refuses. while a court manifestly cannot compel _a_ to perform for _b_, it will by injunction prevent her performing for others. = . forms of contracts.= the following is a form of simple contract. chicago, ill., june , . contract entered into this.... day of........ , by and between _a_, the first party, and _b_, the second party. in consideration of the promises hereinafter made by the second party, the first party agrees........ (here state first party agreement). in consideration of the promises of the first party, the second party agrees........ (here state agreement of second party). signed............. first party. signed............. second party. the following is a form of a formal contract. articles of agreement entered into in new york city this.......day of.... -by and between _a_, hereinafter designated as the first party, and _b_, hereinafter designated as the second party. whereas, the first party is a wholesale dry goods merchant having a place of business in new york city, and is desirous of employing a traveling salesman, and whereas, the second party is a traveling salesman having had ten years' experience in the dry goods business, now, therefore in consideration of the promises hereinafter made by the second party the first party agrees, first. to pay the second party the sum of $ in installments of $ payable each month for a period of months. second. to pay the second party's traveling expenses not to exceed $ . per week, to be mailed weekly as ordered by second party. third. to furnish second party a full line of samples. in consideration of the promises of the first party the second party agrees, first. to devote his entire time and attention to the business of selling goods of the first party. second. to furnish lists of customers called upon each day, said lists to be mailed to said first party, new york address, each evening. third. to waive his right to any salary in excess of his traveling expenses if his sales do not average $ per week. in witness whereof the parties have affixed their names and seals in duplicate the day and year above written. .............first party. .............second party. principal and agent = . in general.= _agency_ is the term applied to the legal relation existing between persons who transact business or perform duties through representatives. few duties are performed, and few business transactions are completed solely through the personal efforts of the interested parties. most business dealings are completed in part, at least, by representatives or agents. much important business is transacted by corporations. corporations must act through agents. they have no identity apart from officers and agents. individuals, as well as the smaller business concerns, perform many of their duties and make many of their contracts through representatives or agents. the law relating to agency, next to the law of contracts is probably the broadest as well as the most important branch of commercial law. its application is almost universal. a distinction is sometimes drawn between representatives appointed to make contracts with third persons, and representatives appointed to perform menial or mechanical work, by calling the one class, agents, and the other servants. there is little reason for any such distinction. the same rules of law apply to both agents and servants. the principal distinction is in the nature of the service, which need not be considered in discussing the general legal principles. the party appointing another to represent him in his relation to third persons is called the _principal_. the person appointed to act as a representative is called the _agent_. the legal relationship existing between the principal and the agent, and the principal, agent and third person, constitutes the _law of agency_. if a dry goods merchant, _a_, employs _b_, a traveling salesman, to sell his goods, and _b_ sells goods to _c_, _a_ is the principal, _b_ the agent, and _c_, the third person contracting with _a_, through _a's_ agent _b_. = . who may be a principal.= a principal is one who appoints an agent. _a_, employs _b_ to deliver goods; _a_ is principal and _b_ agent. any person, natural or otherwise, competent to enter into a contract, may enter into a contract through an agent. there is one possible exception to this rule. it is a well recognized rule of law that an infant cannot appoint an agent. an infant may enter into a contract which is not void at law, but which is merely voidable. (see subject, "infant" in chapter on contracts.) that is, an infant may lawfully make and carry out a contract. the law does not prohibit it. but the law will not compel an infant to carry out his contracts, except for necessaries. when it comes to the appointment of an agent, however, the law refuses to give an infant this power. by an infant is meant a person under legal age. any person of legal capacity may appoint an agent. in other words, a person may do through an agent the things he, himself, may do. an insane person, an idiot or a drunken person cannot appoint an agent. a corporation may do business through agents, limited only by its corporate capacity. a partnership may do business through agents, limited only by the purposes for which the partnership is formed. = . who may be an agent.= any one, except a very young child and persons whose interests are opposed to those of the principal, may act as agent. a child may be employed to deliver goods, and thus make and complete contracts for his principal. persons of unsound mind may serve as agents. persons who cannot act as principal, through lack of capacity to contract, may act as agent for others. for example, _a_, fourteen years old, cannot be bound by a contract with _b_ for the purchase of one hundred bushels of wheat, but _a_ may be employed as agent by _c_, a competent person, to purchase of _b_ one hundred bushels of wheat. a person whose interests are opposed to those of his principal is disqualified from acting as agent. that is, a person cannot be agent for both parties to the same transaction. for example, if _a_ is employed as traveling salesman by _b_ to sell goods, he cannot serve as agent for _c_ in the purchase of goods from _b_ without the knowledge and consent of both _b_ and _c_. artificial persons, such as partnerships and corporations, may act as agents. it is usually held that children under seven years of age cannot act as agents, by reason of tender age. = . how agents may be appointed.= agents may be appointed by any act of the principal which shows that it is the principal's will that the agent shall act as the principal's representative. agents may be appointed by oral statement, by written document, by conduct on the part of the principal, or by ratification of an unauthorized act. most agencies are created by oral authority. any word by which the will of the principal is manifested is sufficient. _a_ tells _b_ to order a barrel of flour from _c_. this constitutes _b_ an agent for _a_. _b's_ asking _a_ if he shall order a barrel of flour from _c_, to which _a_ nods, constitutes _b_, _a's_ agent. _a_ writes to _b_ and requests him to order a carload of flour from _c_. this constitutes _b_, _a's_ agent. _b_, without any authority from _a_, orders a car load of flour from _c_, which _a_ accepts, and for which he promises to pay. this constitutes _b_, _a's_ agent by ratification. some few contracts of agency must be in writing. _a_ employs _b_ to act as his salesman for a period of two years. as between _a_ and _b_, the contract is not enforceable, by reason of the _statute of frauds_ (see statute of frauds, chapter on contracts). but as between _a_ and third parties dealt with by _b_ as agent, _a_ cannot refute the agency. some contracts which must be made in writing, such as land contracts require the agent's authority to be in writing. if a person knowingly permits another to act as his agent, he cannot afterwards repudiate the agency. for example, _a_ stands by and watches _b_ sell _a's_ horse to _c_. although _b_ had no authority to make the sale, _a_, by his conduct, cannot claim there was no agency. an agent's assertion of agency does not of itself constitute an agency. if _a_, without _b's_ knowledge, claims to _c_ to have authority to sell _b's_ horse and does attempt the sale, title to the horse does not pass to _c_, because _a_ had no authority to make the sale. a mere declaration of authority on the part of the agent without the knowledge or consent of the principal does not create an agency. = . purposes for which an agency may be created.= with the exception of fulfilling contracts for personal services, a person may do, through an agent, anything he may lawfully do by himself. for example, _a_ employs _b_, an artist of fame, to paint a picture. manifestly _b_ cannot employ a student or another artist to paint the picture. _a_ contracted for _b's_ personal skill and work, and cannot be made to accept the work of another. in the majority of business transactions, however, the personal element does not enter. the thing to be done, or the article to be furnished, is the feature of most contracts. by whom the thing is done, or by whom the article is furnished, does not matter. for example, _a_ purchases one hundred bushels of wheat from _b_. _b_ delivers the wheat through his agent. ordinarily _a_ cannot, nor does he wish to complain. _a_ contracts with _b_ to have _b_ furnish him an oak chair of given dimensions. _b_ employs _c_ to make and deliver the chair. _a_ cannot complain so long as the chair corresponds to the terms of the contract. a party cannot do through another what he himself cannot lawfully do. for example, a party cannot employ an agent to purchase votes for him. neither can a person lawfully corrupt legislators by means of an agent, nor lawfully commit a crime by means of an agent. = . ratification of agency.= where a person assumes to act as an agent for another without authority, or in performing an agency, exceeds his authority, he does not bind the person for whom he assumes to act, unless such person subsequently, with knowledge of the fact, consents to be bound thereby. such assent is known in law as _ratification_. a person cannot ratify an act which he, himself, has no power to perform. for example, _a_, pretending to act for _b_, offers _c_, a legislator, one hundred dollars ($ . ) to vote against a certain measure. _b_ cannot ratify this act, since he himself cannot lawfully perform it. if however, _a_, knowing that _b_ desires a certain rare picture, finds it and orders it in _b's_ name, _b_ may ratify the act by accepting and paying for the picture. [illustration: main reading room, u.s. congressional library, washington, d. c. in center of central circular desk, is the housing for the book-handling machinery. card catalogue in foreground. view facing entrance. the corinthian order has been used.] much discussion has arisen as to the ability of a person to ratify a forgery of a negotiable instrument. the courts differ on this question. it is, however settled that in case of a forgery, if the alleged principal fails to deny the signature when the paper is presented to him, or by remaining silent, induces another to purchase it, or to injure his position by reason thereof, the alleged principal is estopped from further denying the authenticity of the signature, and may be compelled to pay the instrument. for example, _a_ forges _b's_ name to a promissory note payable to _c_. _c_ presents the note to _b_ for payment. _b_ may refuse to pay the note by reason of forgery. if, however, _a_ forges _b's_ name to a note, payable to _c_, and _d_ shows _b_ the note, saying that he is about to purchase it if it is genuine, and _b_ remains silent and permits _d_ to buy the note, _b's_ silence amounts to a ratification of the forgery and he must pay the note to _d_. when an alleged principal's attention is called to the fact that an alleged agent has assumed to act as his agent, he must choose between repudiating the act and accepting it. this choice is known in law as the principal's _right of election_. = . classification of agents.= agents are usually classified as _universal_, _general_ or _special_. by universal agent is meant an agent empowered to represent his principal in every capacity. a principal could have only one universal agent. in business affairs, a universal agency is seldom, if ever, found. it is useful, however, as a classification to show the different kinds of agents, depending upon the degree of their authority. a general agent is one authorized to perform all the duties of his principal of a certain kind. _a_, an insurance company, appoints _b_ its sole agent to solicit insurance in the city of boston. _b_ is a general agent for the purpose of soliciting insurance in the city of boston. general agencies are common in business practice. a special agent is one authorized to act for his principal in a particular matter or transaction. for example, _a_ employs _b_, an attorney, to try a certain law suit. _b_ is a special agent. in practice it is not always easy to determine whether an agent is a general or a special one. a principal does not always limit his agent's powers by actual authority conferred upon the agent. his intention and his instructions to the agent may limit the latter's authority, but third persons may rely upon the apparent authority of the agent, rather than the actual. for example, _a_ employs _b_ as a traveling salesman to sell dry goods. he instructs _b_ not to sell any bills less than five hundred dollars ($ . ) in amount. _b_ sells _c_ a bill amounting to four hundred dollars ($ . ), _c_ does not know of the limitation of _b's_ authority. _a_ is bound by _b's_ sales to _c_. _c_ has the right to rely upon _b's_ apparent authority. _a_ has given _b_ actual authority to sell goods, and this authority carries with it the implied or apparent authority to sell in any reasonable amounts. actual authority to do certain things carries with it the right to do those things which impliedly, or from custom or usage apparently accompany the authority conferred. third persons dealing with an agent must, on the other hand, ascertain at their peril that an agent has the authority claimed. for example, if _a_, without authority, claims to be agent for _b_, and sells an order of goods to _c_, and collects from _c_ a certain amount, when in fact he is not the agent of _b_, _c_ has no contract with _b_. a third person dealing with an agent must ascertain at his peril, that the alleged agent has authority from his principal to act as agent in a certain capacity. when this is ascertained, the third person has a right to treat the agent as having the authority to do all the things necessarily or customarily belonging to his agency. = . duties of principal to agent.= the relation of a principal to his agent arises out of a contract, express or implied. the contract may expressly provide that the agent is to receive a specified sum for his services. in this event, the principal is legally liable to pay this amount to his agent. the principal may have a defense to his contract, the same as to any contract. but if the agent has performed his contract of agency, he can enforce payment therefor. for example, _a_ employs _b_ to sell furniture for a compensation of one hundred dollars ($ . ) per month and expenses, the contract to cover a period of twelve months. when _b_ performs this service, he may, by legal action, compel _b_ to pay him one thousand two hundred dollars ($ , . ). if _b_ fails to work for _a_ as provided for by the terms of the contract, and at the expiration of six months enters _c's_ employ, in most jurisdictions, he can recover nothing from _a_, since he has not fulfilled his contract. in some jurisdictions, he may recover from _a_ the value of his services, less the damages _a_ has suffered by reason of breach of contract. many agencies are created without any express provision as to compensation. in this event, a contract relation exists, as much as in the former case. there is an implied contract that the agent shall receive a reasonable compensation for his services. for example, _a_, a contractor, requests _b_, a teamster, to haul stone for the construction of a bridge. _b_ works for _a_ a week, nothing having been said as to compensation. _b_ can recover from _a_ the reasonable and customary value of his services. there is also a duty on the part of the principal to protect his agent against unnecessary risks of injury. there is a duty on the part of a master to protect his servant. an agent or servant assumes the risks which naturally belong to the kind of work in which he is engaged. for example, _a_ employs _b_ to work in a saw mill. _b_ assumes the risks incident to the employment. if a log accidentally rolls on him, _a_ is not liable in damages, or if _b_ carelessly cuts his hand on the saw, _a_ is not responsible. but if the boiler explodes through carelessness of _a_, or if the saw flies to pieces on account of wear, and injures _b_, _a_ is liable. it is said that a principal or master is obliged to furnish his agent or servant with a reasonably safe place in which to work, and with reasonably safe tools and instruments with which to work. if the principal negligently fails to these things, and the servant is injured without negligence and carelessness on his part, the principal is liable to him in damages for any injuries. = . duties and liabilities of principal to third persons.= when a person employs another to act for him, he is liable to third persons for the acts performed by the agent, so long as the agent acts within his authority. if _a_ appoints _b_ his agent to purchase live stock, _a_ must pay third persons for the live stock purchased in his name by _b_. a person employing another to act as his agent is responsible to third persons for acts performed by the agent, which are within the apparent authority of the agent, as well as for the acts which are within the actual authority. if _a_ appoints _b_ his agent to purchase live stock and instructs him to purchase only hogs, but limits his authority to pay over five cents per pound, and _b_ purchases at five and a half cents from _c_, who does not know of this limitation, _a_ is bound by the contract. in giving an agent authority to do certain things, the agency carries with it the customary or implied authority to perform those acts incident to the general character of the agency. thus, authority to purchase usually carries with it authority to fix the price. this is especially true of authority to sell. notice to an agent is notice to a principal. if an agent is authorized to sell goods, and in making a sale, is notified by the purchaser that the goods are purchased conditionally, in the absence of any special instruction limiting the power of the agent to sell conditionally, brought to the attention of the purchaser, the principal will be bound by the condition. a principal is liable to third persons for his agent's torts or wrongful acts. if _a_ directs his agent _b_ to destroy _c's_ property, _a_ is liable to _c_ for the damage done. a principal is not only liable to third persons for the damages done under his express direction by his agent, but he is also liable for the acts carelessly done by the agent in the course of his employment. a street car company employs _b_ as motorman. _b_, carelessly and negligently, while operating a car runs over _c_. _a_ is liable for _b's_ negligent act. a principal, however, is not liable for the wrongful acts of his agent, performed outside of his employment. _a_, a street car company, employs _b_ as conductor; _c_, standing on the street insults _b_. _b_ stops his car, gets off and assaults and injures _c_. _a_ is not liable, since _b_ did not commit the act complained of while in the course of his employment, but went outside the course of his employment and acted on his own behalf. = . duties and liabilities of agent to principal.= an agent must obey the instructions of his principal. if he disobeys his instructions, he is liable to his principal for losses sustained. for example, if _a_ employs _b_ to sell flour at four dollars ($ . ) per barrel and _b_ sells one hundred barrels at three dollars and seventy-five cents ($ . ), he must respond in damages to _a_ for twenty-five cents a barrel. if, however, a discretion is given the agent, and he makes a reasonable mistake in using his discretion, he is not liable. if his instructions are not clear, and he carries out what he thinks are his instructions, which prove not to be the desire or intention of his principal, he is not liable. an agent must account to his principal for money collected, and for moneys or property coming into his possession by reason of his agency. if he deposits money in his own name and it is lost through a bank failure, he is responsible to his principal. if he carefully deposits it in the name of his principal and the bank fails, he is not responsible. an agent must act carefully in the performance of his principal's work, or as it is usually said, he must not act carelessly or negligently. he must act as a reasonably prudent man would act, under similar circumstances, or be liable to his principal in damages. an agent must be loyal to his principal's interests. he cannot act secretly for another. he cannot act secretly as agent for both parties to a transaction. if he makes profits in his agency dealings, he must account for them to his principal. _a_ employs _b_ to sell christmas novelties. _b_, shortly before christmas receives a large order from _c_, who offers _b_ one hundred dollars ($ . ) in excess of the regular price, if the goods arrive the following day. _b_ succeeds in having the goods reach _c_ the following day. _b_ must account for the extra one hundred dollars ($ . ) to _a_, his principal. an agent must faithfully carry out his agency. he is responsible for failure to act loyally. _a_ employs _b_ to sell butter. _b_ obtains an offer from _c_, a rival butter manufacturer, to commence work for him on commission two weeks hence. _b_ tells his customers not to purchase for two weeks, at which time he can make them a better price. _b_ is liable to _a_ in damages for this act of disloyalty. he has broken his contract. an agent, who is employed to perform personal services, cannot transfer his responsibility or agency to another. one who agrees to act as agent for another without compensation, cannot be forced to fulfil his agency. he is not liable in damages to his principal for failure to act, but if he chooses to act without compensation, he is liable if he acts with great negligence. if _a_ requests _b_ to drive his horse home and _b_ drives the horse and leaves him without tying him, and the horse runs away and destroys the carriage and ruins himself, _b_ is liable for gross negligence. = . rights and liabilities of agent to third persons.= an agent acting within the scope of his authority, in making contracts with third persons, binds his principal by the contract, but does not bind himself. _a_ is authorized by _b_ to purchase a horse. a purchases a horse from _c_, notifying _c_ that he is purchasing as agent for _b_. _c_ must look to _b_ for the purchase price, since _a_ acted solely as agent and is not personally liable under the contract. if an agent, intending to act as agent, makes a contract in his own name, without informing the third party with whom he is dealing, of the agency, he binds himself. under these circumstances, he usually binds his principal also. this question is discussed more at length under the title "undisclosed principal." if _a_ is employed by _b_ to purchase a horse, and _a_ purchases a horse from _c_ for two hundred dollars ($ . ), without telling _c_ of the agency, the purchase price to be paid the following day, _a_ binds himself personally to pay _c_ the two hundred dollars ($ . ) and _c_ is not obliged to look to _b_ for payment. if an agent, honestly believing he has authority to act as agent when he has not, makes a contract as agent for his supposed principal, he binds himself personally and not his principal. _a_ writes to _b_, "purchase for me _c's_ bay team, if same can be secured for two hundred and fifty dollars ($ . ), half payable in six months." _b_ reads the letter and purchases the team in the name of _a_ for two hundred and fifty dollars cash ($ . ), overlooking the condition in _a's_ letter that half was to be paid in six months. _b_ binds himself to _c_ and does not bind _a_. when an agent falsely or fraudulently represents himself as agent, he binds himself and not his alleged principal. if an agent, honestly believing he has authority to act, does not have such authority, but discloses all the facts connected with his authority, to the third person with whom he is dealing, he is not personally bound. _a_, having previously acted as agent for _b_, in purchasing onions by the crate, receives the following wire from _b_, "purchase one hundred crates, ship at once." _a_, supposing this refers to the purchase of onions, shows the telegram to _c_, and tells him that in the only other transaction in which he acted for _b_ he purchased onions, and that he supposes this wire refers to onions. he purchases one hundred crates of onions from _c_, and later discovers that _b_ intended turnips, instead of onions. _a_ is not bound personally. he has acted honestly and revealed all the facts in his possession to _c_, who must act at his risk as to _a's_ actual authority. = . undisclosed principal.= a principal, whose agent deals with a third person for his benefit, without disclosing the name of his principal, or perhaps without disclosing the fact of agency, is said to be an _undisclosed principal_. for example, _a_ employs _b_ to purchase one hundred crates of oranges. _b_ purchases the oranges from _c_ for _a_ in his own name, not telling _c_ that the purchase is made for _a_. in this case, _a_ is an undisclosed principal. as a general rule an undisclosed principal, when discovered, is liable upon the contract of his agent. in case of an undisclosed principal, the agent is liable personally as well as the undisclosed principal. if _a_ instructs _b_ to purchase for him five cars of coal, and _b_ purchases the coal of _c_ in his own name, without disclosing the fact of his agency, _b_ is personally liable to _c_ for the purchase price. the undisclosed principal is not liable to a third party if the third party with full knowledge of the agency, elects to hold the agent. if _a_ employs _b_ to purchase goods for him, and _b_ purchases the goods in his own name from _c_, and _c_, before payment, learning that the goods were purchased for _a_, elects to hold the agent _b_, by suing him for the purchase price, or by doing or saying anything that shows his determination to hold the agent, rather than the principal, he cannot thereafter hold _a_. the undisclosed principal may enforce against third persons the contract of his agent. if _a_ employs _b_ to purchase goods from _c_ and _b_ makes the purchase in his own name for future delivery, _a_ may compel _c_ to deliver the goods to him. this rule applies in all cases where the third party is not injured by its application. the liability of an undisclosed principal to third persons, upon contracts made by an agent in the agent's name, is subject to the further exception, that when the third party has led the undisclosed principal to believe that he is looking to the agent alone for fulfillment of the contract, and relying upon such conduct the undisclosed principal settles with the agent, he is no longer liable to the third party. in this event the third person is said to be estopped from the right to sue the undisclosed principal. this rule is based upon equitable reasons. there can be no such thing as undisclosed principal in case of a negotiable instrument. no one is liable on a negotiable instrument, such as a note, draft, or check, except the maker, indorser, drawer or acceptor. = . apparent authority of agent.= while it is true that an agent must have authority from his principal, before he can bind his principal in the capacity of agent, and while it is equally true that third persons, in dealing with agents, must determine at their peril that the agent has actually received authority to act for his principal, a third party has the right to rely upon the implied and customary powers accompanying an actual authority conferred upon an agent. few contracts are made express in all their terms. language is not susceptible of such nicety. in the express or implied contracts used in creating agencies, many things are implied. a third person dealing with an agent, is not limited by the actual authority conferred upon the agent by his principal, if the character of the authority apparently confers other customary or implied powers. third persons are said to have the right to rely upon the apparent rather than upon the actual authority of the agent. this does not mean that an agent can create an agency and bind his principal without having received any authority from his principal to act as agent, but means that where an authority of a certain character has been conferred upon an agent, third parties dealing with the agent, have a right to rely upon the apparent or customary powers conferred, rather than upon any secret or unexpected limitations upon such authority. for example, an agent has authority to sell silk goods and to make exchanges in silk. this authority is printed on the order sheets furnished the agent. the agent exhibits these order sheets to the customer and exchanges are made. the principal cannot claim that the agent had authority to exchange only goods of the principal's manufacture. the authority conferred upon the agent to make exchanges, apparently was to make exchanges of any silks. the principal cannot complain if third parties rely upon the apparent authority. = . secret instructions.= so long as the agency is legal, a principal may create an agency of as limited an extent, or of as broad a nature as he desires. so long as the limitations which the principal places upon his agent's authority are not of a nature to mislead third persons, the agent cannot bind his principal by exceeding these limitations. but if a principal confers an authority upon an agent which impliedly embraces a number of powers, the principal cannot limit these powers by secret instructions. the limitations upon an agent's apparent authority must be brought to the attention of the third party. for example, _a_, a wholesale dry goods dealer, may employ _b_, a salesman, to take written orders only. if _b_ attempts to take oral orders, the principal, _a_, will not be bound thereby. but if _a_ gives _b_ authority to take written orders only, and secretly instructs _b_ to take no order less than fifty dollars ($ . ) in amount, or in excess of two thousand dollars ($ , . ), and _b_ takes _c's_ order for forty-five dollars ($ . ), _c_ not knowing of this limitation, _a_ is bound. if, however, _a_ instructs _b_ to take only written orders, and in amounts ranging only from fifty dollars ($ . ) to two thousand dollars ($ , . ), and prints these conditions plainly upon the order blank, _c_, in signing one of these order blanks for forty-five dollars ($ . ), does not bind _a_. in this case, _a_ has placed the limitation of _b's_ authority in _c's_ possession. = . wrongful acts of agent.= an agent is personally responsible for wrongful acts committed. the fact that he acts in a representative capacity, does not excuse him from committing wrongs, nor does it relieve him from personal liability therefor. the principal, as well as the agent, is liable for the wrong committed, if authorized. if _a_ instructs his agent, _b_, to sell goods by fraudulent representations and _b_, by means of said fraud, sells goods to _c_, _b_ personally, as well as _a_ is liable to _c_, for the wrongful act. in the language of the courts, an agent is liable to third parties for _malfeasance_, but not for _misfeasance_. that is, an agent is liable to a third party for wrongful acts done, but is not liable to third parties for mere failure to observe the terms of his agency. in the latter case, he is liable to his principal only. = . delegation of authority and subagents.= where personal judgment and discretion are required of an agent, he cannot transfer his duties to another, without the consent of his principal. _a_, a wholesale dry goods merchant, employs _b_, an experienced traveling salesman, to sell goods. _b_, by his contract, is bound to give his personal skill to _a_ and cannot employ _c_ to act as salesman for him. _a_ presumptively employs _b_ to use his own skill and judgment. _b_ is not permitted to delegate his authority to another. where, however, mere mechanical or ministerial work is to be performed the agent is permitted to employ others to assist him, or to perform the work. for example, _a_ employs _b_, an expressman, to carry his trunk to the depot. _b_ may employ a boy to assist him in performing the work, or may employ another to perform the work. usage and custom have much to do in determining whether or not an agent is permitted to delegate his authority. the performance of a mere ministerial duty may be delegated. _a_ employs _b_ to act as stenographer in reporting the trial of a case. when it comes to writing out the testimony, _b_ may perform the task himself, or delegate it to another. when an agent employs a subordinate, or delegates his authority to another on his own responsibility, the agent stands as principal for the sub-agent, and the original principal is not responsible to third persons for the acts of the sub-agent. if, however, the agent is authorized by the principal to appoint a sub-agent, the agent is bound only to exercise care in the selection of such sub-agent, and the original principal is liable to third persons for his acts. the sub-agent is answerable to the principal, and not to the agent for his acts. for example, _a_, a florist, employs _b_ to deliver a box of flowers. _b_ employs _c_. the nature of the duty is such that _b_ may delegate it. but if _c_ is negligent in the performance of the work, _b_ is liable to _a_ for the negligence, for the reason that _a_ did not expressly or impliedly direct _b_ to employ another. _a_, in chicago, deposits for collection, a check drawn on a new york bank. _a_ knows that it is the custom of bankers to employ other banks for the purpose of making collections. if the chicago bank uses due care in selecting another bank to assist in making the collection, and this bank makes the collection and fails before the chicago bank receives the money, _a_ must stand the loss, and not the chicago bank. _a_ authorized the employment of a sub-agent. there is some conflict of authority on the legal question involved in the above example. = . agent's authority to collect.= an agent authorized to solicit orders is not thereby authorized to make collections on such orders. if, however, the agent is entrusted with the goods, and delivers them at the time the sale is made, he is authorized to receive payment therefor. an agent authorized to sell, is not authorized to exchange or trade goods. he is authorized to make sales for cash only. if he accepts checks, or sells on credit, he is personally liable for losses. there is a tendency at present to permit the agent to accept checks in payment. the custom of making payment by check is so well recognized in many lines of business, that in some transactions it impliedly gives an agent this authority. this was not formerly the rule, and is still disputed by many courts. = . agent's signature to written instruments.= the proper method for an agent to employ in signing a written instrument, as agent, is to describe himself as agent for his principal in the body of the instrument, and then sign his principal's name at the end thereof, by himself as agent. for example, if _a_, is agent for _b_ in making a contract of sale, the body of the instrument should state that "_b_ by _a_, his agent, agrees," and the signature should be (_b_..............) (by _a_, his agent) if the contract is merely signed "_a_, agent," the agent probably binds himself only. this is especially true in case of sealed instruments, such as deeds. in case of promissory notes, an agent who has authority to make such instruments, may make them in the name of his principal without using his own name at all. the more common form, however, is to sign the principal's name, per the agent as agent, or to sign the agent's name as agent for the principal, giving the principal's name. the mere signing of the agent's name as agent is a mere description, and probably binds the agent and not the principal. for example, if _a_ is agent and _b_ the principal, a promissory note executed by the agent should be signed (_b_..............) (by _a_, his agent) a simple contract should state in the the body of the instrument that _a_, as agent for _b_, is making the contract, and the contract should be signed (_b_..............) (by _a_, his agent) or _a_, agent for _b_. a promissory note or simple contract made and signed in the name of the principal, the agent's name not appearing, is probably binding, but it is not good business practice. the exact condition of affairs should be shown, and the name of the agent, as well as that of the principal, should appear in the document. = . authority of agent to warrant.= as to whether or not an agent authorized to sell personal property has implied authority to warrant its quality, is not uniformly settled. if there is any rule on the question, it probably is controlled by usage and custom. if there is a general well known custom to warrant a particular article, the agent has implied authority to warrant the quality of the article sold. if no such usage or custom exists, or if the usage or custom is purely local and not general in its application, the agent has no authority to warrant the quality of the goods sold. it must be remembered that a principal is bound by the general character of authority he confers upon his agent, by the agent's apparent authority rather than by the actual authority, unless the latter is actually brought to the notice of third parties. it has been held that an agent authorized to sell a horse is authorized to warrant the soundness of the horse, and that an agent authorized to sell reapers is authorized to warrant their durability and fitness. it was held that a principal, who authorized an agent to sell goods at a certain price, did not authorize the agent to warrant to third persons that his principal would not sell to others at a less price. = . factors.= a factor, usually called a commission man or consignee, is an agent entrusted with possession of his principal's goods, and ordinarily empowered to sell in his own name. like any agent who has possession of his principal's goods with power to sell, a factor has power to collect. he differs from a broker in that he has possession of the goods of his principal, and is authorized to sell in his own name, rather than in the name of his principal. in the absence of contrary custom or express direction, a factor may sell on credit. a factor, until instructed otherwise, may use his discretion as to the time and price of sales, and is entitled to deduct his commission based upon custom in the absence of special contract. a factor may sue the purchaser in his own name, for the purchase price. the principal may sue in his own name also. persons dealing with factors may hold the principal responsible for the contracts and representations of the factor, the same as any undisclosed principal. factors are also personally liable to third persons for their contracts. a factor must account to his principal for money collected, less his commission and expenses. he is not obliged to keep such money separate from his own, but he must keep accurate account of same, and remit promptly when it is due, according to custom or special contact. = . brokers.= a broker differs primarily from a factor in that ordinarily he does not have possession of the article dealt in, and acts in the name of his principal rather than in his own name. there are many kinds of brokers engaged in common business life. some of these are insurance brokers, pawnbrokers, bill and note brokers, and merchandise brokers. in the absence or special authority, a broker does not have authority to collect. = . auctioneers.= an auctioneer is a special kind of agent employed to dispose of goods to the highest bidder at a public sale. some states provide by statute that auctioneers must be licensed, and that they may charge only certain fees. most licensed auctioneers are required to give bond. in the absence of statutory regulations, any person competent to perform the duties of an auctioneer may so act. an auctioneer differs from an ordinary agent in that, in some respects, he is agent for both seller and purchaser. he is agent for the seller in offering the goods for sale, and in obtaining bids. when the highest bid is received, however, and the hammer falls, he is deemed to be agent for the purchaser, with authority to complete the sale in the purchaser's name. if the contract of sale is within the statute of frauds and required to be in writing, the auctioneer has the authority of the purchaser to sign his name to a memorandum of sale, either by himself or through his clerk. the bidder is bound by this contract, made in his presence at the time and place of the sale. the owner may fix such reasonable terms as he chooses, and the auctioneer must follow out the terms made by the owner. if an owner advertises the terms of the sale, bidders are deemed to have notice of these terms. these terms cannot be varied by the auctioneer. if, however, the owner publishes no special terms of sale, the auctioneer has implied authority to fix customary and reasonable terms. bidders have the right to rely on such terms and the principal is bound by them. in the absence of special instructions to the contrary, an auctioneer must sell for cash. he has possession of the goods, consequently has implied authority to receive payment of the price. he has no implied authority to warrant the goods. he cannot bid in his own interest. if bidders fraudulently combine not to bid against each other, for the purpose of obtaining the goods at a cheap price, no title passes to the highest bidder, by reason of the fraud. so long as the auctioneer acts within his authority and reveals the name of his principal, he incurs no personal liability. but if he exceeds his authority in making a sale he is liable in damages to his principal. if he does not reveal the name of his principal to bidders, he is liable personally to them. an auctioneer is entitled to recover from his principal the amount of his compensation, including disbursements and expenses incurred in the sale, care and preservation of the property. he is said to have a _lien_ on the goods or proceeds of the sale, for his compensation. by this is meant that he has a right to retain possession of the goods until his compensation is paid, or in the case of sale, to deduct his charges from the proceeds of the sale. when authorized to sell goods on credit, in case payments are not made when due, the auctioneer may sue in his own name. he may also sue in his own name for wrongful acts of third parties, whereby the goods are injured. the principal also may bring this action in his own name. the principal is liable for the acts of his auctioneer, committed within the actual or apparent scope of the latter's authority. = . del credere agency.= an agent authorized to sell is not permitted to sell on credit, unless expressly so authorized or unless the custom or usage of the particular kind of agency impliedly carries with it this power. some agents are, by their contracts of agency, authorized to sell on credit, on condition that they guarantee to save their principals from losses resulting therefrom. such an agency is called a _del credere_ commission, and the agent is called a _del credere_ agent. this term means that in consideration of the agreed commission or salary paid the agent, the latter agrees to pay to the principal, when due, the sums which third parties, who buy the principal's goods from the agent, fail to pay. this agreement to indemnify the principal against losses on credits made by the agent, is regarded as an original promise on the part of the agent, and not a promise to pay the debt of another. by reason of this attitude on the part of the courts in interpreting this contract as an original promise on the part of the _del credere_ agent to pay his own debt, and not the debt of another, the contract does not have to be in writing. (see statute of frauds.) for example, _a_, a manufacturer of farm machinery, employs _b_ as agent to sell farm machinery on credit, on condition that _b_ personally guarantees the sales. _b_ sells a mowing machine to _c_, to be paid for within ninety days. _c_ fails to make payment. _a_ may sue and recover the amount of the purchase price from _b_. = . real estate brokers.= a real estate broker is one employed to make contracts involving the sale or leasing of real property. the sale of lots, of houses and lots, and farms are common examples. a real estate broker is seldom authorized to do more than find a purchaser or tenant, not being authorized to make the lease or contract of sale. by reason of this limitation generally placed on a real estate broker's authority, many disputes arise over real estate brokers' rights to compensation. a principal may enter into any kind of contract he desires with a real estate broker, and is liable when the broker has performed his contract, and not before. the difficulty is in determining when the broker has substantially performed his contract. if _a_ hires _b_ to procure a purchaser for his house and lot, and agrees to pay him % of the selling price when he obtains the signature of a financially responsible purchaser to a contract of sale, _b_ is not entitled to his commission until he obtains such a party's signature to a contract. the fact that _a_ has entered into this contract with _b_, does not, in the absence of an express stipulation to the contrary, prevent _a_ from selling the property himself, or from employing as many other brokers as he pleases to attempt to make the sale. most brokers, however, are employed on certain terms to obtain a purchaser or tenant. if the agent succeeds in obtaining such a purchaser or tenant, the principal must pay the broker the agreed compensation. the owner cannot act unfairly by the broker. if the broker obtains a tenant or purchaser by seeking him out, and by interesting him in the property, the owner cannot avoid the payment of commission by discharging the broker and completing the deal himself. in the absence of an express agreement to give the broker a certain fixed time in which to make the sale or find a tenant, the owner may discharge the agent at any time he sees fit, just as the agent may cease his efforts at any time he chooses. the owner cannot discharge the agent just as the latter is completing the sale, in order to take advantage of the agent's efforts, without paying him the agreed compensation. the agent, in this event is held substantially to have performed his contract. contracts with real estate brokers should be carefully drawn, and should contain express stipulations as to the powers and limitation of the broker's authority. the temptation is great on the part of both parties to claim that the sale was, or was not made, through the efforts of the broker. the contract of a real estate broker differs not at all from any other contract. the conditions are such, however, that the agreement is frequently indefinite, and it is difficult to determine when a substantial performance has been made. in the absence of any agreed compensation, the real estate broker is entitled to receive the customary fees. in the absence of any custom regulating the commission, he is entitled to receive a reasonable compensation. a real estate broker is not permitted to represent both parties, or to receive compensation from both parties. if a broker is promised compensation from the purchaser which he agrees to accept, without the consent of the owner, he cannot receive compensation from either party. = . termination of agency.= if an agent performs the terms of his agency, the agency is said to be terminated by performance. he ceases to be agent, by reason of having performed his contract. if an agent is employed to act as agent for a specified time, the lapse of the stipulated time, of itself, terminates the agency. an agency is a contract, express or implied, and it may be terminated at any time by any act of the parties thereto showing such to be their intention. there is one exception to this rule, and that is, that an agency coupled with an interest cannot be terminated by an act of one of the parties. this exception is discussed in a separate section. where an agency is terminated by failure or refusal of the principal, or agent to carry out his terms of the contract, the defaulting party is liable in damages to the other party. this does not prevent the termination of the agency however. [illustration: a corner in the new york office of the h. w. johns-manville co.] where an agency is terminated by the failure or refusal of either party to observe the conditions of the contract of agency, the agency still subsists on the part of third persons, who have dealt with the agent, and who have not received notice of the termination. upon revoking the agent's authority, the principal must notify third persons, who have dealt with the agent, or who have knowledge of the agency contract, and who would be likely to continue to deal with him as agent. if the principal does not give third parties such notice, he is still liable to them on contracts subsequently made by the agent in the principal's name. for example, if _a_, a wholesale druggist, employs _b_ to sell goods for one year and _c_ knows of the contract, and at the expiration of six months, _a_ discharges _b_ for failure to give him his exclusive time, _a_ must notify _c_ of _b's_ discharge, else _b_ can still bind _a_ by making contracts with _c_. = . revocation of agency by operation of law.= when one of the parties to an agency contract dies, becomes insane or bankrupt, the agency is said to terminate _by operation of law_. when the principal dies, the agency terminates. death of itself, constitutes notice to third persons of the termination of the agency. this is true of all agencies except those coupled with an interest, discussed in another section. if any agent and a third person innocently make a contract in the name of the principal after the death of the principal, and without notice of the principal's death, the contract is not enforceable against the principal's estate. death of the principal revokes the agency. death of the agent also revokes the agency. insanity of the agent, or of the principal terminates an agency not coupled with an interest. it is regarded the same as death of one of the parties. an agency is terminated by the bankruptcy of either principal or agent. mere insolvency on the part of the principal or agent does not, of itself, terminate the agency, but bankruptcy, voluntary or involuntary, terminates it, and is of itself, notice to third persons. an innocent third person who has parted with his money on a contract made with the agent after the agency has been terminated by reason of insanity, or bankruptcy of the principal, may not enforce his contract, but may recover his money. injury or disability of an agent, rendering it impossible for him to carry out the terms of the agency, terminates the agency. = . agency coupled with an interest.= an agency coupled with an interest cannot be terminated by attempted revocation of the principal, nor is it terminated by death, insanity or bankruptcy of the principal or agent. if the agent has an interest in the subject of the agency outside his interest in his compensation, he is said to have an agency coupled with an interest. such an agency is irrevocable. _a_ pays _b_ one thousand dollars ($ , . ) for one eighth interest in a patent, and in consideration of this purchase is given the agency to sell the patented article for a fixed commission. this constitutes an agency coupled with an interest, and is not revoked by an attempted revocation of the principal or by the principal's death. _a_ is indebted to _b_, his attorney, for one hundred dollars ($ . ). _a_ gives _b_ a note for one hundred and fifty dollars ($ . ) to collect, agreeing to pay him % of the amount collected, and to permit him to deduct the one hundred dollars ($ . ) indebtedness. this constitutes an agency coupled with an interest, and cannot be revoked by _a_. to constitute an agency coupled with an interest, the interest must be coupled with the subject matter of the agency, and not merely with the compensation the agent is to receive. for example, if _a_ sends his attorney, _b_, a note to collect, agreeing to give _b_ % of the amount collected, this does not constitute an agency coupled with an interest, and may be revoked at any time by _a_. quiz questions law in general . how many classes of rights are there? . name them. . how did men derive these rights? . what limitations, if any, are there to rights? . have property rights always been recognized? . _a_ finds a watch in the street and, without making any attempt to find the owner, keeps it. is the right of possession in _a_? . in primitive times were personal or property rights more generally recognized? . how were rights originally enforced? . how are rights enforced at present? . how did laws originate? . define _law_. . what does law embrace? . what connection have laws with courts of justice? . what connection, if any, have customs to laws? . what is the purpose of law? . what class of laws is enforced for the benefit of the state? . _a_ steals _b's_ horse. _b_, by proper legal action, recovers possession of the horse. is the law enabling _b_ to recover the horse a law for protection of citizens, or for the protection of property? . what are the sources of law? . do decisions of courts form any part of law? if so, what? . what are the new york state reports? . what are the philippine island reports? . is the treaty existing between the united states and japan, law? if so what kind of law? . define statutes. how are statutes enacted? . to what classification of law do statutes belong? . is the english constitution written or unwritten law? . do customs and statutes bear any relation to each other? . how is the record of the state statutes kept? . what are the general divisions of law? . is any part of the unwritten law written? . is all unwritten law written? . is any written law unwritten? . is unwritten law stable? . how, if at all, can the written law of a state or country be changed? . are treaties unwritten law? how, if at all, are the records of congress kept? . give a general classification of law. . is there a universally recognized classification of law? . define _administrative law_ and give an example. . define _public law_ and give an example. . define _private law_. classify private law. . define _constitutional law_. . define _criminal law_ and give an example. . can the heir or personal representative of a murdered man ever recover money compensation for the murder? . if so, is it by means of private or public law? . is a criminal tried and punished by private or by public law? . define _law of procedure_ and give an example. . what do contracts embrace? . what does the word _tort_ mean? . give an example of a tort. . does the same act ever constitute a breach of contract, a tort, and a crime? . define _commercial law_. contracts . define _contract_. . give an example of a business transaction which constitutes a contract. . what is the purpose of putting important contracts in writing? . what is meant by _offer_? . give an example of offer. . a coat marked $ is placed by a merchant in a window. does this constitute an offer? . an advertisement is put in a paper advertising chairs for $ . each. does this constitute an offer? . what is an _agreement_? . is an agreement a contract? . give an example of an agreement. . what is meant by _acceptance_? . give an example of a contract having no acceptance. . _a_ offers to sell _b_ his watch for $ . . _b_ offers _a_ $ . . is there an acceptance? is there a contract in the above case? . what is a _counter offer_? give an example of a counter offer. . what is meant by the term _meeting of the minds_? . give an example of an acceptance not of the exact terms of the offer. . what is meant by _mutuality_? . distinguish _meeting of the minds_ and _mutuality_. . may there be an acceptance of a contract by an act? if the above question is answered in the affirmative, give an example. . must an acceptance be communicated to the offer? . _a_ writes _b_, "i will sell you my horse for $ . if i do not hear from you to the contrary by thursday noon i will consider the horse yours." _b_ does not reply. after thursday noon, to whom does the horse belong? . define _option_. give an example of an option. . does an option require a consideration to render it valid? . what is an _element_ of a contract? . give the elements of a contract. . how many parties to every contract? . what is meant by _legal age_? . _a_, a male, sixteen years old, contracts with _b_, a female, eighteen years old. can _b_ avoid the contract on the ground of the infancy of _a_? . is fraud or duress a defense to a contract? . how many kinds of consideration are there? . is a good consideration sufficient to support a contract? . define _valuable consideration_. . give an example of a contract which may be supported by a good consideration. . what is meant by a _sealed instrument_? . is something beneficial to the promisee a sufficient consideration to a contract? . _a_ promises _b_ to pay him $ if _b_ will promise to work for him for one month. _b_ promises. is there a consideration to this contract? if so, what is it? . define _mutual promise_. . is a mutual promise a valuable consideration? give an example of mutual promise. . define _past consideration_. give an example of past consideration. . does a past consideration support a contract? . what is meant by _adequate consideration_? . does a consideration have to be adequate to support a contract? . may adequacy of consideration be considered in determining whether or not fraud was used in procuring a contract? . give an example of a promise to do something one is already bound to do. . is a promise to do something one is already bound to do a sufficient consideration to support a contract? . give an example of illegal consideration. . does an illegal consideration support a contract? . do all the terms of a contract have to be express? . define _express contract_. . a housewife orders a sack of flour from her grocer by telephone. the flour is delivered and accepted by her. is this an implied contract? . give an example of an express contract. . do any contracts have every term expressly set forth? . define _implied contract_. . are uncertain contracts void or voidable? give an example of an uncertain contract. . give the distinction between _unilateral_ and _bilateral_ contracts. . _a_ promises to sell his dog to _b_ if _b_ will promise to pay him $ . the following day. _b_ promises to pay _a_ $ . the following day. is this contract unilateral or bilateral? . _a_ promises to pay _b_ $ if _b_ will dig a well for _a_. _b_ digs the well. is the contract unilateral or bilateral? . distinguish _executory_ and _executed_ contracts. . _a_ promises to pay _b_ $ , if _b_ will deliver to him a deed of his farm. _b_ delivers the deed. is the contract executed or executory? . is the above contract executed as to _a_? is it executory as to _b_? . are infants bound by their contracts? define _infant_. . are infants' contracts void? . distinguish _void_ and _voidable_. . can a competent party contracting with an infant avoid the contract on the ground of infancy of the other party? . can an infant ratify a contract after becoming of legal age? . explain how, if at all, an infant may ratify his contracts. . define the term _necessaries_. . _a_, an infant, has not sufficient clothing. _b_, a merchant, sells him a coat worth $ . , for $ . . can _b_ recover anything from _a_? if so, how much? . is an infant entitled to receive his wages? . what is meant by _emancipation of an infant_? is emancipation of an infant ever implied? . what is meant by _novation_? give an example of novation. . are contracts made for the benefit of a third person enforceable by such third person? . are contracts of an insane person enforceable? . are contracts of insane persons, intoxicated persons, and idiots void or voidable? . _a_, while intoxicated, purchased a coat from _b_ for $ . . the following day, when sober, _a_ promises to pay for the coat. can _b_ enforce the contract? . can an insane person make a valid contract during a lucid interval? . can married women enter into contracts? . do custom and usage ever enter into a contract? . _a_ purchases forty barrels of yellow grease from _b_, like sample furnished. the grease arrives, ranging in color from white to black. _b_ offers to show a custom among grease dealers, known to _a_, that a composite sample is used in selling grease. can he show this custom as part of the contract? . are oral contracts ever valid? why, if at all, do some contracts have to be in writing? . what is meant by the _statute of frauds_? . when and where did this statute originate? what was the purpose of this statute? . does the statute serve any useful purpose at the present time? . do the states of this country have a _statute of frauds_, or is it a part of their unwritten law? . by the terms of the _statute of frauds_ what contracts must be in writing? . are contracts covered by the statute of frauds illegal if not in writing? . _a_ orally promises _b_ to work for him for two years for the consideration of $ , . can either party enforce the contract? . what is meant by the term _specialty_? are specialties included in the statute of frauds? . can you make an oral promissory note? . can contracts be made by letter and telegraph? . _a_, by letter, offers _b_ $ , for _b's_ team of horses. _b_ mails a letter of acceptance which is lost in the mails. is there a valid contract? . _a_, by letter, offers _b_ $ for a harness. by the following mail, _a_ writes revoking the offer. _b_ receives the letter of revocation five minutes after mailing his acceptance. is the contract revoked? . _a_, by letter, offers _b_ $ , for his racing horse and says, "i will consider my offer accepted upon receipt of your reply." _b's_ letter of acceptance is lost in the mail. is there a valid contract? . _a_ wires _b_ that he will pay him $ per share for his pennsylvania railroad stock. _b_ hands his telegram of acceptance to the telegraph operator who fails to send it. the following day _a_ wires a revocation of his offer. is there a valid contract? . does a revocation by wire or letter have to be received to be effected? . does an acceptance by wire or letter have to be received by the offerer to constitute a valid acceptance? . in what respect do sealed instruments differ from ordinary contracts? . at present what constitutes a seal? . at present is it the tendency of the law to favor sealed instruments? . are sunday contracts void or voidable? . what makes sunday contracts unenforceable? . what was _the lord's day act_ of england? . what is meant by works of charity and necessity? . _a_ makes and delivers a promissory note to _b_ for $ on sunday. is the note enforceable? . what makes a contract illegal? . are illegal contracts void or voidable? give an example of an illegal contract? . what is a gambling contract? . are gambling contracts void? . why are gambling contracts illegal? . define _fraud_. . is a false representation made during the formation of a contract known by both parties to be false, a defense to the contract? . give an example of a false misrepresentation which will serve to avoid a contract? . can there be duress without personal violence? define _duress_. . give an example of duress. . do duress and fraud render a contract void or voidable? . define _mistake_ in connection with making a contract. define _mistake of fact_. . define _mistake of law_. . does mistake of one party to a contract avoid the contract? . does mistake of law avoid a contract? . does mutual mistake render a contract void or voidable? . what is meant by a _contract impossible of performance_? give an example of a contract impossible of performance. . _a_, on april , enters into a contract dated april , by which he promises to deliver to _b_ within twenty-four hours, five tons of coal. is _a_ liable on this contract? . do floods, earthquakes, or lightning preventing performance excuse performance? . is a party to a contract excused from performance by reason of a strike? . may a party to a contract stipulate against strikes and acts of god in such a manner as to avoid liability therefor? . if a party to a contract renders performance impossible can he force performance? . what is meant by _conflict of law_? . does the law of the place where a contract is made, or the law of the place where the contract is enforced, prevail? . if a contract is made in one place, to be performed in another, the law of which place prevails in the interpretation of the contract? . what is meant by _assignment_ of a contract? . _a_, a singer, contracts to sing at _b's_ opera house for one week. can _a_ assign her contract to _c_, another singer? can _b_ assign his contract to _d_? . what is meant by _giving notice of assignment_? . is an assignment a contract? . what are the elements of a valid assignment? . does an assignment require a consideration? . write an assignment of a simple contract. . define _several liability_. . can a party be jointly and severally liable on the same contract? . if two parties are jointly liable on a contract can one of them be sued thereon without the other? . if two parties are severally liable on the same contract, can both be sued together thereon? . define liability _in solido_. give an example of liability _in solido_. . how may a contract be discharged by performance? give an example of a contract discharged by performance. . what is meant by _tender_? what constitutes legal tender? . does united states statute or a state statute make certain money legal tender? . what kinds of money constitute legal tender? . _a_ owes _b_ $ . . he tenders him the amount in nickels. is the tender good? . _a_ owes _b_ $ . . he tenders him a certified check for the amount. is the tender good? . can a contract be discharged by a subsequent agreement? . _a_ agrees to dig a well for _b_ for $ . . before _a_ starts work, _b_ changes his mind, and offers _a_ $ . in settlement. is the contract discharged if _a_ accepts the $ . ? . define _warranty_. . give an example of warranty to a contract. . does breach of warranty discharge the contract? . does breach of warranty give rise to an action for damages? . define _rescission_. . give an example of rescission. . define _statu quo_. . define _breach of contract_. . give an example of breach of contract. . in case of breach of contract must the other party wait until the time for performing the entire contract elapses, or may he sue at once? . define _bankruptcy_. . by what kind of law is bankruptcy regulated? . does bankruptcy discharge a contract? . define _voluntary bankruptcy_. . who may become a voluntary bankrupt? . define involuntary bankruptcy. who may become an involuntary bankrupt? . define _act of bankruptcy_. . enumerate acts of bankruptcy. . at common law could one party to a contract compel another to perform it specifically? under present law can a contract for sale of personal property be enforced specifically? . what is the measure of damages for failure to deliver merchandise under a contract of sale? . how did the court of equity originate? . are juries used in courts of equity? . what classes of cases are tried in equity? . does a court of equity have jurisdiction of a case where there is a plain and adequate remedy at law? . with what kind of contracts is equity especially concerned? . give an example of a contract which may be enforced specifically by a court of equity. . write a form for a simple contract between _a_ and _b_ for the sale of a horse. principal and agent . what is meant by the term _agency_? . give an example of a transaction completed by an agent. . is there a limitation upon the kinds of business which may be transacted by an agent? . distinguish principal and agent from master and servant. . define and give an example of _principal_. . define and give an example of _agent_. . define and give an example of _agency_. . define _infant_. . is a married woman seventeen years of age an infant? . may an infant be a principal? . define and distinguish _void_ and _voidable contracts_. . may an idiot, insane, or drunken person act as principal? . may a corporation or partnership transact business through agents? . may a child eight years of age act as agent? . in general, what persons may act as agents? . may a person act as agent who is not capable of acting for himself? . may a person whose interests are opposed to those of his principal act as agent? . may corporations or partnerships serve as agents? . must an agent's authority to act as agent be in writing? . may an agent be appointed or authorized to act by implied contract? . define and give an example of _implied contract_. . what is meant by _ratifying an act of an agent_. . give an example of a principal's ratification of an unauthorized act of an agent. . give an example of a contract of agency which must be in writing. . why must some contracts be in writing? . what are the principal provisions of the statute of frauds? . must contracts of agency authorizing an agent to complete a land transfer be in writing? . must a contract authorizing an agent to procure a purchaser for a house and lot be in writing? . can a third party rely upon the statements of an agent that he has authority to act as agent? . may a person do through an agent anything which he may lawfully do by himself? . _a_ employs _b_ to purchase votes for an act pending in a state legislature. is _a_ or _b_, or both, guilty of a crime? . _a_ employs _b_ to paint a picture, and _b_ employs _c_ to paint the picture. must _a_ accept the work of _c_? . what things are necessary to enable a person to ratify the acts of an alleged agent? . may a forgery be ratified? . give a classification of agents. . _a_ is employed to deliver a package for _b_. what kind of an agent is _b_? . give an example of a universal agent. . enumerate the duties a principal owes his agent. . _a_ employs _b_ to work in his garden. _b_ works for ten days, no compensation having been agreed upon. how much, if anything, can _b_ recover from _a_? . if an agent abandons his agency before the time of his agency expires, can he recover anything for work performed? if so, how much? . what duty, if any, does a principal owe to his servant as to furnishing a safe place in which to work? . what rules, if any, does a servant assume? . in general, what are the liabilities of a principal to third persons who deal with an agent? . is a principal liable to a third person who has dealt with an agent, who acted within the apparent but not the actual scope of his authority? . is a principal liable to third persons for lots committed by an agent within the scope of the agent's authority? . give an example of a lot or private wrong committed by an agent while acting for his principal, for which the principal is not liable. . enumerate, in general, the duties an agent owes his principal. . is an agent liable to his principal for mistakes of judgment or discretion? . is an agent who acts without compensation ever liable to his principal for negligence? if so, give an example. . enumerate, in general, the liabilities of an agent to third persons with whom he deals. . _a_, an agent for _b_, sells goods to _c_, in his own name. _c_ afterwards discovers that _a_ is agent for _b_. can _c_ hold _a_? . if an agent procures a contract for his principal by means of fraud is the agent liable personally on this contract? . if an agent, believing he has authority to act as an agent, where in fact he does not, reveals all the facts of his agency to a third party with whom he is dealing, is he liable personally to such third party if it turns out that he acted without authority? . define and give an example of _undisclosed principal_. . is an undisclosed principal when discovered, liable for the acts of his agent? . is an agent of an undisclosed principal personally liable to third persons for acts of agency after the undisclosed principal is discovered? . may there be an undisclosed principal to a negotiable instrument? . what is meant by _apparent authority_ of an agent as distinguished from _actual authority_? . give an example of an agency where the apparent authority of the agent conflicts with the actual authority. . if an agent appears to have authority to act for another, but in fact never received any authority, can third persons rely upon his apparent authority? . do customary powers belonging to an agent come within the meaning of apparent authority? . may a principal limit an agent's apparent authority by printing limitations in the agent's order sheet and in making contracts with third persons? if so, give an example. . define and give an example of _secret instructions_. . can a principal evade responsibility to third persons by secret instructions given to an agent? . if a third party dealing with an agent knows of the secret instructions, is he bound by them? . define and give an example of _sub-agent_. . is a sub-agent responsible to the agent? . is an agent ever responsible for the acts of a sub-agent? . what matters, if any, may an agent delegate? . define and give examples of _mechanical_ and _ministerial duties_. . distinguish an agency requiring personal skill, discretion, and judgment, from one requiring the performance of ministerial or mechanical duties. . when, if at all, is an agent authorized to collect? . is an agent authorized to sell goods, always authorized to collect for them? . is an agent authorized to collect, authorized to take checks? . how should an agent authorized to sign a written instrument for his principal, sign? . may an agent authorized to sign a promissory note for his principal, sign his principal's name without his own? . an agent authorized to sign a written contract for his principal signs his own name followed by the word, _agent_; _e.g._, "_a, agent._" is the principal bound? . when, if at all, is an agent authorized to warrant the quality of personal property sold? . define _warranty_. . give an example of an agent who is impliedly authorized to warrant. . do usage and custom have anything to do with the agent's implied authority to warrant? . define _factor_, and give an example. . do factors have possession of the goods? . do factors have implied authority to collect? . do factors have the right to sell goods in their own name? . is a commission merchant a factor? . define _broker_. . distinguish _broker_ and _factor_. . give an example of broker. . is a real estate agent a broker, or a factor? . in what respect, if any, does an auctioneer differ from an ordinary agent? . what is meant by _licensed auctioneers_? . are auctioneers' fees ever regulated by statute? . what is meant by _auctioneer's lien_? . when, if at all, may an auctioneer sell on credit? . may an auctioneer make his own terms of sale? are all third persons bound by the terms advertised? . define and give an example of _del credere_ agent. . must a _del credere_ agent receive a separate consideration for his guaranty? . when is a real estate agent entitled to receive his commission? . does the contract of a real estate broker differ from the contract of any other agent? . how may an agency be terminated? . give an example of an agency terminated by lapse of time, and of one terminated by act of parties. . may all agencies be terminated at the will of the parties? . what is meant by _notice to third persons of termination of an agency_, and when, if at all, is this notice necessary? . explain _termination of agency by operation of law_. . in case of termination of agency by death of principal must third parties be notified? . does injury or liability of an agent ever terminate an agency? if so, under what circumstances? . define _agency coupled with an interest_. . is an agency coupled with an interest revocable at the will of either party? . _a_ employs an agent at a salary of one hundred dollars per month, promising him % commission in addition, on all orders taken in excess of $ , per week. is this an agency coupled with an interest? . give an example of an agency coupled with an interest. [illustration: chamber of commerce, chicago, ill.] commercial law part ii partnership = . in general.= a party may trade and enter into contracts by himself, or he may associate with himself others. a person is not obliged by law to transact business solely by himself. he is permitted, for the purpose of having labor, capital and skill joined in one enterprise, to combine with others. where a person joins with himself one or more persons for the purpose of transacting business as a unit, the firm composed of the two or more persons thus joined is called a _partnership_. a partnership may be defined to be a contract between two or more persons, by which their labor, skill or property is joined in an enterprise for common profit, and in which each partner may act as principal. the principal features of a partnership are, the right of each partner to act as principal for the other partner, and the individual liability of each partner for the acts of the partnership. _a_ and _b_ agree to combine their efforts in operating a tea and coffee store. each may bind the other by contract, made within the scope of the business, and each is liable individually to pay the debts incurred by the partnership. = . how a partnership is created.= a partnership is created by a contract. this contract may be oral, express or implied. many partnerships are created by carefully drawn, written instruments, in which the rights and duties of each party are set forth in detail; while others are made by oral agreement. any contract of importance should, for the purpose of having a record of the exact understanding of the parties, be made in writing. as between themselves, parties cannot be partners except such was their intention. sometimes, parties are considered partners as to third persons, with whom they deal, and are liable as partners, where there is no intent to form a partnership, and when none exists as between themselves. this relationship, called _partnership by estoppel_, is based on equitable reasons and is discussed more at length under a separate section. as between the partners themselves, to constitute a partnership, there must be a contract to that effect. this requires an assent on the part of all the parties, based upon a valid consideration. parties may enter into an agreement to enter into a partnership at a future time. in this event, the partnership does not exist as such until the time provided for in the contract arrives, and until the conditions of the executory agreement have been complied with. a partnership may be created for any lawful purpose. if the partnership contract is procured through fraud or misrepresentation, it may be avoided by reason thereof. = .= _who may be partners._ any person competent to contract on his own behalf may enter into a contract. (see "competency of parties," chapter on contracts.) an infant, or person under legal age, may enter into a partnership contract the same as he may enter into any other contract. the law does not prohibit it. but contracts by infants are voidable. they may be renounced by the infant at his pleasure. for example, if _a_, of legal age, enters into a partnership contract with _b_, seventeen years of age, _b_ may renounce his obligation to _a_ at any time he pleases, before he has reached legal age. _a_, however, cannot renounce his partnership contract on account of the infancy of _b_. _b_ may ratify his contract after becoming of legal age. if _b_, after becoming of legal age, refuses to continue the partnership, and refuses to carry out his partnership agreement, he is deemed in law to have renounced his partnership, and is not liable for the obligation of the partnership. if, however, after reaching legal age, _b_ continues the partnership relationship for an appreciable length of time, he is deemed in law to have ratified the agreement, and is thereafter liable thereon. _b_ may not only renounce the partnership agreement as to his partner, _a_ but also as to third persons dealing with the partnership. _a_, however, is responsible individually upon the partnership contracts with third persons, and cannot take advantage of _b's_ infancy. it is no defense for him. drunken persons, insane persons, and idiots cannot enter into partnership agreements. a married woman could not enter into contracts at common law, but by statute is now permitted to make contracts, with a few minor limitations, such as acting as surety for her husband, or making contracts with her husband. = . partnership name.= the members of a partnership may use any name they desire, so long as the name does not interfere with the fixed rights of others. the members of a partnership may use the name of one of the partners, or the combined names of all, or of a part of the partners, or a name separate and distinct from the names of any of the partners. for example, if _a_, _b_, and _c_ form a partnership, they may use as a partnership name, "the _a_ co.," "the _a_, _b_, co.," "the _a_, _b_, _c_ co.," "the _x_ co.," or any fictitious name they may determine upon. some states provide by statute, that a partnership using a name not revealing the individual members of a partnership, must, in order to sue in the partnership name, file with a county official the names of the members composing the firm. other states by statute prohibit the use of fictitious names. a partnership cannot be bound by any other name than its own. where a partnership has adopted a firm name, contracts made in the name of one of the individual members do not bind the partnership. a partnership may change its firm name. this may be done by agreement, express or implied. if the members of a partnership do not expressly agree to change the name, but a new name is used by one or more of the members, and the change is acquiesced in by the other members, they are deemed in law to have agreed to the new name. a partnership may use two firm names. this sometimes occurs when a firm has branches. one name is used for one branch and another for the second branch. in this event the partners are liable for contracts made in either name. = . names applied to different kinds of partners.= depending upon the nature of their relationship to the partnership, partners are said to be _secret_, _silent_, _ostensible_, _nominal_, or _dormant_. a _secret partner_ is one who keeps the fact of his membership in the partnership from the public. this does not enable him to escape liability as a partner. he is in the position of an undisclosed principal. (see "undisclosed principal," chapter on agency.) so long as a secret partner keeps the fact of his membership from the public, of course he will not be sued as a member. but his liability exists in spite of this secret, and when discovered his liability may be enforced. a _silent partner_ is one who takes no active part in the operation of the partnership business. his name may be known as a partner, or not. he is not necessarily a secret partner. he may be well known as a member of the partnership, but if he takes no active part in the management, he is said to be a silent partner. a silent partner is individually liable for the obligations of the partnership, the same as any partner. an _ostensible partner_ is one who permits himself to be held out or represented as a partner, when in fact he is not a partner. he is responsible as a partner to third persons who deal with the firm, and to whom he has been held out as a partner. for example, _a_ and _b_ trade as the rodway co., _a_ in company with _c_, tries to buy goods of _d_. _d_ knows _c_ but does not know _a_ and _b_. _a_ with _c's_ consent, tells _d_ that _c_ is a member of the rodway co. _c_ is liable as an ostensible partner. more commonly the ostensible partner permits his name to be used as a part of the partnership name when in fact he is not a member of the partnership. if _a_ and _b_ form a partnership and with _c's_ consent use the name, "_a_ _b_ and _c_ co.," _c_ is liable on the partnership obligations, in spite of the fact that as between himself and _a_ and _b_, he is not a partner. if a partner is advertised to third parties as such, without his knowledge or consent, he is an ostensible partner, but is not liable as a partner. a _nominal partner_ is one who permits his name to be used as a member of the partnership without being a member of the partnership. ordinarily he is paid something for the use of his name, but does not have a share in the profits. a nominal partner is liable to third persons as a partner, but as to the other partners, he does not have the rights or liabilities of a partner. the term, _dormant partner_, is sometimes used synonymously with secret partner. technically, it means that the partner is both unknown and silent. it combines the elements of a secret and a silent partner. the terms, _general_ and _special_ partner, are commonly used. by general partner, is meant the one who shares equally in the profits and losses of the partnership transactions. the term, special partner, means that the partner, as between the other partners, does not share equally in the profits, nor is he responsible to the other partners for an equal share of the losses. as to third persons, the terms general and special partners have no significance; for example, if _a_, _b_ and _c_ enter into a partnership, _a_ and _b_ each to furnish two fifths of the capital, and each to have two fifths of the profits, and _c_ is to furnish one fifth of the capital, and receive one fifth of the profits, _a_ and _b_ are general partners and _c_ is a special partner. as to third persons dealing with the partnership _a_, _b_ and _c_, each are individually liable. = . partnership agreements as between partners.= in considering the question as to whether a partnership exists, it must be regarded from two points. first, is there a partnership as between partners; second, is there a partnership as to third persons? a partnership may exist as between the partners themselves. when a partnership exists between the partners themselves, there can be no question about its existing as to third persons. as between the partners themselves, a partnership cannot exist unless there is a contract express or implied, by which they mutually agree or consent to the partnership. if _a_ and _b_ agree, either orally or in writing, to engage in a partnership enterprise, and do so engage in a joint business, a partnership exists between them. if _a_ trades alone as the "_a_ co." and, desiring to obtain credit from _b_, tells _b_ that _c_ is a member of the _a_ co., even though _c_ ratifies the unauthorized act of _a_, by stating to _b_ that he is a member of the _a_ co., this does not constitute him as a partner to _a_. as to _b_, however, he is a partner and is liable as such. as to _a_, he is not a partner, and is not entitled to a share in the profits. if the intent of the parties to form a partnership, is clear, from their express agreement, or from an agreement implied from their acts or conduct, a partnership, without question, exists between them. many business arrangements are made by which property, skill, or labor is combined under peculiar arrangements, as to the division of profits and losses, making it difficult to tell whether a partnership exists. it is not essential that the word, "partnership," be used to have an agreement constitute a partnership. if it is the intent of the parties thereto to create a partnership, one exists regardless of the term used. an agreement to share losses, or to share profits in an enterprise, is some evidence of a partnership, but is not sufficient of itself to constitute a partnership. _a_ and _b_ may agree each to furnish his own tools in drilling an oil well, and if a profit is made, to divide the profits, and if a loss is sustained to bear the loss out of their individual funds. these facts, do not show an intent to form a partnership, and do not make _a_ and _b_ partners as to themselves. if, however, _a_ and _b_ contribute one hundred dollars ($ . ) each to a partnership fund, and combine the tools possessed by each toward a partnership fund, and agree to share equally the profits and losses, the intention is clear that a partnership is intended, and these facts constitute _a_ and _b_ partners. = . partnership as to third parties.= where a partnership exists as between the partners themselves there is no question about its existing as to third persons dealing with the partnership as such. a party cannot hold himself out to the world as a partner, and by means of a private arrangement with his apparent partners, evade liability as a partner. it is generally conceded that a secret arrangement made between partners that one shall not be liable as a partner, if made known to a third person dealing with the partnership, will relieve the apparent partner from liability to such third person. for example, if _a_ and _b_ are doing business as the "_a b_ co.," and _a_ lends his name to the company for a fixed consideration, _b_ receives all the profits and is liable for all the debts. if _c_ deals with the "_a b_ co.," not knowing of the private contract between _a_ and _b_, _a_ is liable individually upon the contract. if, however, _c_ at the time he deals with the "_a b_ co.," is informed of the actual connection of _a_ with the company, he cannot hold _a_ liable as a partner. if a third person extends credit to one of the partners, knowing that the purchase is for the benefit of the partnership, he can hold liable, only the party to whom he extended credit. if, however, he sells to one of the partners, not knowing that he is a partner of a firm, and the firm gets the benefit of the purchase, the firm is liable for the debt. a partnership, like a principal in agency, is liable for the torts or private wrongs of the individual partners, committed in the course of the partnership business. if _a_, a member of the _a b_ co. partnership, uses fraud in purchasing goods, the _a b_ co., is liable for the fraud. if _a_, a member of the _a b_ co., gas fitters, carelessly connect a gas burner, thereby causing an explosion, and injury to _c_, the _a b_ co., is liable for the injury. = . powers and property of a partnership.= a partnership has the power to transact business in its firm name. unless prohibited by statute, it may sue and be sued in its firm name, regardless of the names of the individual partners. each member of a partnership is regarded as an agent of all the other members of the partnership, with authority to bind the partnership by any contract made within the scope of the partnership business. a partner may deal individually in matters outside the scope of the partnership business. for example, _a_, _b_ and _c_ form a partnership for the purpose of buying, selling and leasing real estate. _a_, _b_ and _c_ are authorized to act for each other, in doing all the things reasonably connected with the transaction of real estate business. if _a_ orders groceries in the firm name, his partners may deny and avoid the obligation, on the ground that is is not within the scope of the partnership affairs. the grocer selling _a_ groceries in the firm name cannot claim that _b_ and _c_ authorized _a_ to buy groceries. the purchase is clearly outside the real estate business. if, however, _a_ purchases a house and lot in the firm name and uses it personally, the seller can hold the partnership for the purchase price. a partnership is empowered to sign notes, only when necessary to the transaction of the partnership business. partnerships may hold the title to personal property in the name of the firm. this does not prevent the individual members from holding property individually at the same time. as between the partners themselves, only that personal property mutually agreed to belong to the partnership is partnership funds. even as to third persons dealing with the partnership, the actual agreement of the individual members as to what is, and what is not partnership funds governs, except in the case of fraud. a partnership cannot represent that it owns certain property, or that certain purchases are made for the partnership for the purpose of obtaining credit, and then claim that it is owned by an individual member. property purchased by partnership funds, or improved with partnership funds, belongs to the partnership. real estate purchased with partnership funds is regarded as belonging to the firm, even though title is held in the name of one of the partners. the partner in whose name the property is held is said to be the legal owner, but the partnership is the equitable owner. firm creditors may subject it to pay firm obligations. = . liability of persons held out as partners.= if a person permits himself to be held out as a partner, he will be bound as a partner, as to third persons dealing with the partnership with this in view. it matters not that the party held out as a partner is not a partner in fact. the real relation will protect the apparent partner, as against the other partners, but not as against third parties who deal with the firm, relying upon his being a partner. what amounts to being held out as a partner is a question of fact, which must be determined by the circumstances surrounding each particular case. if _a_, without authority of _b_, tells _c_ that _b_ is his partner in the shoe business and that they are trading as the "_a b_ co.," and _c_ sells them an order of shoes, without investigating whether _b_ actually is a partner, _b_ is not liable as a partner for the obligation. the authority to hold a person out as a partner must come from the partner so held out. it may come from his assent or his neglect in denying the relationship when he learns that he is being advertised as a partner. for example, suppose _a_ borrows five hundred dollars ($ . ) of _b_ and promises to give _b_ a one-half interest in his grocery business, if _b_ so desires, on condition that _b_ spend his afternoons working in the store, and _b_, not considering himself a partner, permits _c_ to tell third persons that he is a partner. as a result, _b_ cannot deny partnership liability as against third persons who consider him a partner in dealing with the partnership. = . duties and liabilities of partners as to each other.= the relation of partners to each other is a contract relation. each partner must carry out the terms of the contract. ordinarily, partnerships require the devotion of the entire time and attention of each partner to the partnership business. partners are not permitted to engage in any business for themselves which will interfere with the partnership business, or take their time and attention away from the partnership business. each partner owes that duty of fidelity to the other members of the partnership. a partner as an individual may deal with the firm, and may act as agent for others in dealing with the firm, if it is with the consent and knowledge of the other partners. a partner cannot sell his interest in the firm to another, and have the new partner take his place as a member of the partnership, without the consent of the other partners. in any event, the withdrawal of one partner and the substitution of another dissolves the old partnership and establishes a new partnership. one partner may assign or transfer his interest in a partnership but this dissolves the partnership, and gives the purchaser the right to his seller's interest in the funds of the partnership. it gives the purchaser no right to participate in the management of the business. if by the terms of a partnership agreement, the partnership is to subsist for a specified length of time, and one partner withdraws or refuses to continue, he is liable in damages to the other partners, for breach of contract. if the partnership is organized without regard to any specified duration, a partner may withdraw at will, and thus dissolve the partnership. partners must devote their entire time and attention to the business, unless the partnership agreement provides otherwise. each partner is entitled to an equal share of the profits. if one partner deals unfairly with another, the latter cannot bring an ordinary suit at law for recovery of the amount due him, or for his damages, but he must bring a suit in equity, setting up the facts, and must demand an accounting. the court will then determine the rights of the partners. if a partnership is dissolved, and the partners expressly agree that a certain sum is owing by one partner to another, the latter may sue the former for this amount, in an ordinary action at law. = . liability of partnership to third persons.= a partnership is liable as such, upon its contracts to third persons. this means that the obligation is in the nature of a joint one against all the partners, and not a several one against the individual partners. there is an individual liability of each partner, called a liability of each partner in solido. this liability is discussed in this section under the title, "liability of individual members of a partnership." a third person, in commencing a suit against a partnership, must sue all the partners, or be subject to the risk of having the case dismissed at the objection of the one sued. all the property of a partnership may be subjected to the payment of partnership obligations. = . liability of individual members of a partnership for partnership obligations.= while a suit brought against one partner for a partnership debt may be dismissed if objected to by the partner sued, if not objected to, and judgment is taken, it may be enforced against the individual assets of the partner sued. in this event, in most jurisdictions, the other partners are discharged from liability. if the partnership is sued either in the partnership name, or in the name of all the individual partners, the individual members are still liable in solido for the debt. by _in solido_ is meant, _liable for the whole_. if one partner is compelled to pay all or more than his proportion of a partnership debt, he may recover the excess of his share, ratably from the other partners. a member of a partnership may have partnership assets and individual assets. a creditor of the partnership may satisfy his claim out of the firm assets, or out of a partner's individual assets, except where there are individual creditors. in the latter event, the partnership creditors cannot subject individual partners assets to the disadvantage of the individual creditors. on the other hand, individual creditors cannot subject a partner's share in the partnership assets to the disadvantage of partnership creditors. this means that in case of insolvency of either a partner or of the partnership, firm creditors must first exhaust firm assets, and take the balance of individual assets after individual creditors have been satisfied. it means, further, that individual creditors must satisfy their debts out of individual partner's assets, and can only subject the balance of firm assets after firm creditors have been satisfied. if there are no partnership assets at all, and no solvent partners, firm creditors are treated on the same basis as individual creditors, and the individual assets of the partners are divided _pro rata_ among partnership and individual creditors alike. = . change of membership.= a partnership depends for its existence upon the continuation of the same membership. if one partner withdraws, the partnership is, by that act, dissolved. if a new member is admitted, the partnership is dissolved and a new one created. a partner cannot escape his liability as a partner by withdrawing from the partnership. by this act, he terminates the partnership, and no further liabilities can be created against him except as to those persons having no notice of his withdrawal; but he is still liable for the old partnership debts. a substituted partner is not liable for the debts incurred before he enters the firm, unless he expressly assumes such debts. if he expressly assumes them, this does not relieve the outgoing partner from liability, unless this is assented to by partnership creditors. if it is borne in mind that a change in membership dissolves a partnership, and any partnership that exists thereafter is separate and distinct from the old one, and dates from the withdrawal of the retiring partner, or admission of the new partner, the individual liability of the partners is easily determined. for example, if _a_, _b_ and _c_ are partners in a dry goods business, and _b_ withdraws, _b_ is still personally liable for the debts of the _a b c_ co. the partnership ceases at the time of his withdrawal. if _a_ sells his interest to _d_, who becomes a member with the consent of _b_ and _c_, _a_ is still liable to creditors who became creditors before _a's_ withdrawal. _d_ is not liable for the debts incurred before his admission as a partner, unless he expressly so agrees. = . death of a partner.= the death of a partner terminates the partnership. the remaining partners may agree to continue the partnership, which amounts to the formation of a new partnership. in case of death of one partner, title to the partnership property is in the surviving partners. they must collect the assets and may sue on firm obligations. they cannot, as survivors, continue the business further than is necessary to wind up the affairs of the partnership. they must first pay all firm obligations, and distribute the proceeds among themselves and the representatives of the deceased partner. = . survivorship.= survivorship is the term applied to the relation to the partnership of the remaining partners, after a dissolution. the partners remaining after a dissolution are known as _survivors_. the title to the partnership property vests in the survivors, and they must collect the assets, pay the liabilities and distribute the proceeds among themselves and the representatives of the other partners. by statute, in some states, surviving partners are permitted to purchase firm assets at a fair appraised valuation. surviving partners have the right to retain possession of the partnership property, and to do those things necessary to wind up the affairs of the partnership. they are not permitted to divide any firm assets among themselves, until all firm debts are paid. if _a_, _b_ and _c_ are partners in the grocery business, and _c_ dies, the title to the property rests in _a_ and _b_, who have the authority to sue for the debts owing, and may be sued for the debts owed by the firm. they have the right to draw checks on the firm checking account, but no right to incur further obligations. in the absence of special statute, they have no right to purchase the business for themselves, and if they choose to continue it, they do so at their own individual risk, and must account for all profits made. = . dissolution of partnerships.= a partnership may be dissolved by lapse of time. if a partnership is entered into under an express agreement that it is to subsist for a certain length of time, lapse of the stipulated period works a dissolution. a partnership may be dissolved by mutual agreement of the partners. a partnership may also be dissolved by any change of membership, whether it be the withdrawal of a member, admission of a new member, or death of a member. bankruptcy of a member, or bankruptcy of the partnership itself, works a dissolution. if one party violates his duties as a partner, or if for any reason, the partnership ceases as a result of a decree of court, there is a dissolution. = . notice of dissolution.= persons who deal with a partnership through one of the partners, or through an authorized agent, have the right to assume that the partnership will continue to exist. if a partnership is dissolved by lapse of time, by mutual agreement, or by withdrawal or entrance of another partner, notice must be given of such change, to protect the members of the former partnership against contracts of third persons, made subsequently to the dissolution. business people, who have had former dealings with the partnership, must receive actual notice. these notices may be sent by mail, or delivered orally, or in writing. a public announcement in a newspaper is sufficient to protect former partners against contracts subsequently made by persons who have not previously dealt with the firm. in case of dissolution of a partnership by operation of law, such as by death of a member, bankruptcy, or decree of court, no notice is necessary. the act which causes the dissolution is deemed to be notice to everyone. = . distribution of firm and individual assets after dissolution.= as a general rule, firm creditors are entitled to firm assets. the balance goes to individual partners. individual creditors are entitled to individual assets. the balance goes to firm creditors. if, however, the partnership is insolvent as a firm, and there is no living solvent partner, in the distribution of firm assets, firm creditors are treated the same as individual creditors. firm real estate may be subjected by firm creditors to the payment of their claims. after firm creditors are satisfied, firm real estate is treated as the real estate of the individual members, and descends to the heirs of the partners, and does not pass as personal property to their personal representatives. = . limited partnership.= most states by statute permit limited partnerships to be formed. in general, a limited partnership differs from an ordinary partnership in that some of the members, called special partners, are not individually liable for the obligations of the partnership. the statutes of the different states differ somewhat as to the purposes for which a limited partnership may be formed. in general, however, a limited partnership may be formed to carry on any business except banking and insurance. a limited partnership must have at least one general partner who is individually liable for the obligations of the partnership. the special partners contribute certain fixed sums, which must be paid before the partnership starts business, and beyond which the special partners are not liable. generally, special partners are not permitted to manage the business. a limited partnership is generally required to file with a public officer a certificate showing its membership, the purpose for which it is organized, the number of shares held by special partners, the assets, the total capital, and the names of the general partners. the purpose of a limited partnership is to enable persons to invest a certain amount of capital in an enterprise without being individually responsible beyond the amount actually invested. limited partnerships are now largely supplanted by corporations. = . form of partnership agreement.= articles of agreement entered into at chicago, ill., this ... day of ... , by and between _a_, hereinafter designated as the first party, and _b_, hereinafter designated as the second party, both of chicago, ill. witnesseth that: . said parties agree to enter into a partnership for the purpose of engaging in and carrying on a general hardware business in the city of _chicago_ under the name of _cook county hardware co._ . the first party agrees to furnish his stock of goods, now located at his present hardware store in _chicago_, and said second party agrees to contribute _$ , . _ in cash immediately upon the signing of the agreement, said stock of goods, and said _$ , . _, to constitute the joint capital of the partnership. . said parties agree to devote their entire time and attention to the interests of the partnership business. . said parties agree to share equally the losses and expenses of said partnership, and at the expiration of each month, to divide equally the net profits reserving a fund sufficient to keep the original capital intact. . said parties agree that the partnership shall continue as long as the partners shall mutually so desire. in the event of either party's desiring to withdraw, said parties agree that each shall choose one arbitrator, the two thus chosen to select a third, who shall appraise the assets of the firm, and divide them into parts, which division shall be accepted as final by the parties hereto. and each party agrees to accept the portion allotted to him by said arbitrators. in witness whereof, the parties hereto have set their hands the day and year above written. signed a....................... b....................... signed in the presence of c....................... d....................... corporations = .nature of a corporation.= a corporation has been defined to be "a collection of many individuals into one body, under a specific denomination having perpetual succession, under an artificial form and vested by the policy of the law, with the capacity of acting in several respects as an individual." in other words _corporation_ is the name applied to an association of persons authorized by law to create, by mutual contribution, a common fund for the purpose of transacting business without rendering the individual members personally liable for the debts of the association, beyond a certain amount. the object is to permit persons to obtain the advantage of large combinations of capital without involving, beyond certain limits, the private property of the individuals composing it. a corporation is an artificial person having an existence in many respects separate and apart from the members composing it. while it can only transact business by means of agents, the obligations created are the obligations of the artificial person, the corporation. the common fund or capital of the corporation, is the only property that can be subjected in payment of the debts. the individual property of the members is not the property of the corporation. [illustration: united states patent office, washington. d. c.] = .corporations distinguished from partnerships.= a partnership may be created by mutual consent of the parties desiring to engage in that joint enterprise. the only limitation is that the enterprise must be for a lawful purpose. a person may form a partnership for the transaction of any kind of business which he may transact as an individual. a corporation, on the other hand, must have permission from the government to transact business. this permission is called its _franchise_. corporations cannot be formed for every purpose. that is, individuals are permitted to engage in lines of business denied to corporations. a corporation is an artificial person, regarded in law as distinct from the individuals composing it. a partnership is not distinct from the individuals composing it, and the individual members are personally liable for the debts of the partnership. a corporation has a continuous existence; it continues to live regardless of death of some of its members, or regardless of a change of membership. a partnership ceases to exist upon the death of a member, or by a change of membership. a corporation's members do not have the right, as such, to act as agents of the corporation for the purpose of transacting business. the agents of the corporation are appointed in a manner prescribed by law, and by the rules of the corporation. in a partnership, each member is the recognized and authorized agent of the partnership. each member may bind the partnership by any contract made within the scope of the partnership business. for example, if _a_ and _b_ form a partnership for the purpose of selling real estate, either _a_ or _b_ by reason of the partnership agreement, is authorized to sell real estate in the name of the firm. if _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, and _e_ are stockholders in the _x_ co. neither _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_ or _e_ is entitled, by reason of his being a stockholder, to make contracts for the corporation. a board of directors must be elected by the stockholders, who in turn elect officers, and appoint agents authorized to transact the business of the corporation. = . powers of a corporation.= corporations are not permitted, as such, to transact business of every kind. a corporation is an artificial being created by law. it can exist only for those purposes enumerated by law. corporations, as such, have well recognized, or distinguished, powers or characteristics. the ordinary powers of a corporation are as follows: _first_--the power of perpetual succession. _second_--the right to sue and be sued, and to receive and grant in their corporate name. _third_--the right to purchase and hold real estate and personal property. _fourth_--the right to have a common seal. _fifth_--the right to make by-laws. it was long ago decided that a franchise given by the government to a corporation, cannot be revoked or changed by the government, unless such a reservation is made by the government at the time the franchise is granted. at present, such reservations are made in granting most franchises, either by express reservation in the franchise itself, by general statutory provision, or by constitutional limitations. = . creation of corporations.= a corporation cannot be organized merely by agreement of the members. it must obtain permission of the government, state or national, to operate as a corporation, before it can lawfully exercise any corporate rights. originally, the right to become a corporation was granted by express permission of the king. the franchise, or right granted, was called the corporate charter. in this country, charters originally were granted by special legislative grants. while the united states constitution does not expressly provide for the formation of national corporations, congress is deemed to have the right to create them for the purpose of carrying out the express functions of the government, expressly granted by the united states constitution. for example, the constitution expressly grants the united states congress the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof, and to levy and collect taxes. it is given no express power to organize national banks, but under the provisions giving it power to make laws to carry into execution all of the powers expressly granted, it is held to have the power to provide for the organization of national banks. most corporations are organized under state laws. originally, charters were granted by special acts of the state legislatures. these charters were decided to be contracts between the state and the corporation, which could not be changed or revoked at the desire of the legislature. at the present time, most states have general permissive statutes, under which corporations may be organized. these statutes generally reserve the right to the state, to revoke or change the charter at the will of the legislature. many states have constitutional provisions limiting the power of the legislature to grant irrevocable charters. the statutes of the different states vary somewhat as to the things required of persons desiring to organize a corporation, but the primary requirements are similar. in general, the following are the statutory requirements of the states for the organization of a corporation. the persons desiring to organize a corporation, not less than three (some states require more), a majority of whom are citizens of the state, must sign a paper, called the _articles of corporation_, which contains the name of the proposed corporation, the place where it is to be located, the purpose for which it is to be formed, and the place where its principal business is to be transacted, the amount of its capital stock, and the number of shares into which it is to be divided. the articles of incorporation are sent to a designated state officer, usually the secretary of state. upon the filing of the articles of incorporation with the proper state officers, the incorporators may open the books of the company, for stock subscriptions. the time and place of opening the books is announced, usually by thirty days advertising in a newspaper. a portion of the stock, usually ten percent, must be paid at the time the subscription is made. when the required portion of the authorized capital stock is subscribed, by advertising notice, the stockholders may meet and elect a board of directors. the board usually consists of from five to fifteen directors. the directors are required to take an oath of office. some of the governing rules of the corporation, usually called by-laws or regulations, are enacted by the stockholders. some regulations may be enacted by the board of directors. the board of directors may elect the officers provided for by the regulations, and then proceed to transact the business of the corporation. corporations not for profit may be organized. such corporations are organized in the same manner as corporations for profit, except that there is no capital stock, and the directors are usually called trustees. church and fraternal organizations are common examples of corporations not for profit. = . names of corporations.= a corporation must of necessity have a name by which it may be designated, and under which it can transact business. the statutes of the different states generally provide that the incorporators must designate the name which the corporation is to use. one corporation is not permitted to use a name already appropriated by another corporation. a corporation has no right to use a name other than the one given it by its charter. a corporation may prevent by injunction another organization from using a name which interferes with its corporate name. this is subject to the limitations that a corporation is not permitted to appropriate a name descriptive of an article or place. for example, a storage company was incorporated under the name of the "fireproof storage co." an individual with a fireproof building adopted the trade name "the allen fireproof storage co." the former company was not permitted to enjoin the latter from using the word _fireproof_, in the name of his company, since the word, _fireproof_, is descriptive of the kind of building used in the business, and cannot be appropriated by any one company or person. the states generally, by statute, provide a means by which a corporation may change its name. = . kinds of corporations.= corporations are usually classified as public and private. public corporations include those corporations organized for the purpose of exercising public functions, and for carrying out government purposes. an incorporated city or village is a common example. a private corporation is one organized for the private benefit of its members. private corporations are either corporations for profit or corporations not for profit. corporations for profit have a capital stock, and are organized for the financial benefit of the members. ordinary trading or manufacturing corporations are examples. corporations not for profit have no capital stock, and are organized for charitable or social purposes. clubs, educational institutions, and churches are common examples. corporations organized for private gain, and which serve some public purpose, are sometimes classified as quasi-public corporations. express companies and telegraph and railway companies are common examples of the class. these companies are strictly private corporations. = . when corporate existence commences.= the states generally provide by statute, for the organization of corporations. at present, corporations seldom are created by special grant of the legislatures. most states, by constitutional provisions, limit the power of the legislatures to create corporations by special act. persons desiring to organize a corporation, must comply with the general laws regulating their formation. as was pointed out in the section on creation of corporations, several steps must be taken to complete the organization of a corporation. the question often arises as to when the legal existence of a corporation commences. it is quite generally held that a corporation's legal existence dates from the filing of the articles of incorporation with the designated state office. after that time the corporation cannot deny its legal existence. neither can third persons dealing with the corporation deny the legal existence of the corporation. if the corporation fails to fulfil the remaining statutory provisions relating to the completion of the corporation, the state, through its officers, may revoke the corporation's right to continue as a corporation. a corporation does not have the right to transact business, until its organization is completed. it may have a legal existence before that time. = . estoppel from denying corporate existence.= an association of persons pretending, innocently or otherwise, to be a corporation, not having complied with the legal requirements for creating a corporation, is not permitted to deny its corporate existence, for the purpose of avoiding its obligations. such an association is liable as a corporation for its obligations, and if there is no corporate property, the members of the association are liable personally. on the other hand, persons who deal with an association of persons which claims either by name, or by express statement, to be a corporation, cannot evade their liability to the association on the ground that the corporation has not been legally organized. as between the corporation and the state, which alone can give it power to exist as a corporation, no valid corporation exists until all the legal requirements are complied with. the state, through its proper officers, may deny corporate right to any association of persons who have not fully complied with the statutes regulating the creation of corporations. to create a corporation by estoppel, there must be an organization assuming to act as a corporation. if _a_ trades in his own name, a person dealing with him cannot claim that _a_ is a corporation by estoppel. but if _a_ trades as "the cook county lumber co.," and enters into a contract with _b_ in the name of the cook county lumber co., and signs his name as president of the company, he cannot deny its corporate existence. if _b_ purchases material of the cook county lumber co., he cannot refuse to pay for it on the ground that the cook county lumber co., is not a legally incorporated company. = . corporate charter a contract.= originally in this country, the right to exist as a corporation was granted by special act of the legislature. it was early decided that this grant by a legislature could not be revoked or changed by subsequent act of the legislature. it was regarded as a contract. by reason of the fact that corporate charters are contracts, giving corporations the right to a continuous existence under the terms of the original grant, many states now have constitutional provisions, limiting the right of legislatures to grant irrevocable charters. those states having no such constitutional limitations, have a provision in their statutes authorizing the creation of corporations, and providing that all corporate charters or franchises be revocable or changeable at the will of the legislature. at the present time in most, if not all of the states, a corporation cannot obtain an irrevocable charter. their charters are granted with the reservation, or upon the condition, that the terms may be changed or revoked at any time. = . de facto corporations.= in connection with corporations, the terms _de facto_ and _de jure_ are often used. by _de jure_ corporation is meant a corporation that has a perfectly legal existence; one that has complied with all the laws relating to its creation; one that cannot have its right to exist as a corporation denied by the state under whose laws it was created, on the ground that it has not complied with all the laws relating to its creation. by _de facto_ corporation is meant a corporation that has performed some of the functions of a corporation without having complied with all the legal requirements relating to its incorporation. to constitute a corporation _de facto_, it is usually conceded that there must have been laws under which the pretended corporation might lawfully have been organized, followed by some kind of an attempt to organize under these laws, and by a use of corporate functions. as between the corporation and the state, the state may stop the corporation from exercising corporate functions. as between the corporation and third persons dealing with it as such, in the absence of fraud, corporate existence of a _de facto_ corporation cannot be denied. = . promoters.= persons who undertake the organization of corporations are called _promoters_. the promoter of a corporation need not be one of the incorporators, but he is the active man who engineers the enterprise. he is the one who interests capital, who induces persons to take the required amount of stock, who assembles the parties desiring or induced to organize the corporation. in short, he is the one who manages the organizing and starting of the corporation. oftimes much work must be done, many contracts made, and liabilities incurred before a corporation has any legal existence. just what connection the promoter has with the corporation, whether he may bind the future corporation, or make it liable for his acts of necessity, or by adoption, is often a close question. it must be borne in mind that before a corporation has a legal existence, it can incur no obligations as a corporation. before a corporation's legal existence commences it can have no authorized agents. if _a_, knowing where valuable undeveloped stone quarries are located, obtains options on the lands, interests men of means to promise to take stock in a future organization, performs all the preliminary work to the creation of a corporation, organized for the purpose of purchasing and operating said lands, and incurs debts in connection therewith in the name of the proposed company, the corporation, when completed, cannot be compelled to pay such obligations. it did not incur them. it had no power to incur them since its legal existence did not commence until a subsequent time. the obligation belongs to the promoter, or to those persons, if any, who authorized him to incur the debts. if, however, recurring to the former example, "the cuyahoga stone co.," is organized by _a_ to develop and operate such stone lands, and after the organization is completed with full knowledge of the obligations of _a_, it, as a corporation, agrees to pay said obligations, and to purchase _a's_ options on the lands for a specified amount, the obligations now become the obligations of the corporation. the corporation may be sued thereon, and its property subjected. this is called the adoption of a promoter's obligation by a corporation. a corporation is liable on its express, as well as on its implied contracts, and if it accepts valuable services of a promoter after it becomes a corporation, it is liable on an implied contract to pay for the same. services rendered by a promoter for a future corporation do not render a corporation liable therefor, unless adopted by the corporation after its legal existence commences. the states generally provide by statute, the time when a corporation's existence commences. these statutes vary somewhat, but in general provide that the corporation's existence commences when the proper articles of incorporation are filed with the secretary of state. = . reorganization of corporations.= the right to exist as a corporation is a special privilege which cannot be sold or transferred to another. any property acquired by a corporation may be mortgaged, sold or transferred at the will of the corporation. the right to exist as a corporation, however, is a special privilege granted by the state, and cannot be transferred. any association of persons desiring to exercise the rights and privileges of a corporation must obtain such rights from the state. they cannot purchase such a right from an existing corporation. many of the states provide by statute for the organization of a corporation by those persons purchasing the property of public service corporations at a foreclosure sale. a common example is in case of a foreclosure of a mortgage on a railway. statutes of some states provide that the purchasers of such property at foreclosure sale may, and shall organize a corporation which shall carry out the purposes of the original corporation. where a corporation is organized and purchases the assets of the former corporation, the new corporation is not liable for the obligations of the old. sometimes the new corporation takes over the assets of the old corporation, and expressly assumes the obligations of the old. in this event, the new corporation is liable for its predecessor's debts. if the new corporation, in purchasing the assets of the old, uses unfair or fraudulent methods, the transfer will be set aside at the instance of creditors of the old corporation, or the new corporation will be deemed liable for the debts of the old corporation. in carrying out reorganization schemes, a transfer of assets must be fair and _bonâ fide_, or the sale will either be set aside as fraudulent, or the new organization will be deemed a continuation of the old, and liable for its debts. = . consolidation of corporations.= the right to exist as a corporation does not carry with it the right to combine or consolidate with other corporations. where two or more corporations combine or consolidate, the resulting corporation is distinct from the combining corporations. the right to consolidate, like the right to exist as a corporation, is a special privilege granted by the state. consent must be obtained from the state before a valid consolidation can be made. most states provide by statute for the consolidation of certain corporations under certain prescribed conditions. before a valid consolidation can be effected, the provisions of these statutes must be complied with. some states require the payment of a consolidation tax. others require that parallel and competing railroads cannot consolidate. unless the charter of the corporation permits of consolidation without the consent of all the shareholders, and unless the shareholders have by valid resolution given the directors the right to consolidate, a consolidation cannot be made over the objection of any shareholder. an attempted consolidation under these circumstances may be enjoined by a dissenting stockholder, or if the consolidation is made over his objection the resulting consolidated company is liable in damages to him. when a consolidation has been legally made, the consolidated company is liable for the debts, and is entitled to the assets of the component corporations. = . meetings and elections of corporations.= a corporation transacts its business through a board of managers. the shareholders or members of the corporation do not transact the business of the corporation directly, but through the governing board. in case of a corporation having a capital stock, this governing board is called the board of directors. in case the corporation has no capital stock, such as a church or charitable organization, the governing board is called the board of trustees. the charter, or statute under which corporations are formed, usually provides for annual meetings for the election of officers. if the corporation has no fixed place of meeting, notice must be given each stockholder of the place of such meeting. a corporation has no power to hold its meetings outside the state of its organization. it may employ agents to represent the corporation outside the state of its creation, but it should hold its corporate meetings within the state. if the time of holding the election of officers is fixed by statute, or by a regulation or by-laws of the corporation, the meeting should be held at that time. if for any reason a corporate election cannot, or is not held at the time designated, the old directors hold over until the new board is regularly elected. = . voting at corporate meetings, quorum and proxy.= each shareholder or stockholder of a corporation is entitled to vote at the corporate meeting for the election of officers. usually the vote is by shares. each shareholder is entitled to one vote for each share he holds. some states, by statute, limit the right of a single shareholder to a certain number of votes. when this limitation is fixed, it usually limits the shareholders to one vote regardless of the number of shares held. such a limitation, where found, is for the protection of small shareholders. corporations keep books in which are kept the names of the shareholders. only the persons whose names appear upon the corporation's book as shareholders are entitled to vote. some states provide by statute for what is known as _cumulative voting_. instead of voting the number of shares he owns for each director, by cumulative voting a stockholder is entitled to vote for one director the number of shares he owns, multiplied by the number of directors to be elected. this is sometimes called _ticket voting_. for example, three directors are to be elected, and a shareholder holds ten shares. he may have ten votes for each director, or thirty votes for one director. this is for the protection of the small shareholder. by _quorum_ is meant the number of votes required to constitute an election. sometimes a quorum is based upon a majority of the number of shareholders present. in the absence of statute or corporate regulations to the contrary, this rule applies. statutes of some states provide that a two thirds majority of the shares of the corporation shall constitute a quorum. most states provide by statute for voting by _proxy_. this entitles one shareholder to give another written authority to vote his shares at a corporate meeting. this right does not exist in the absence of statute. a proxy may be revoked at the will of the shareholder giving it. = . stockholders of a corporation.= the membership of a corporation is made up of the stockholders or shareholders. a corporation for profit is authorized by its charter to have a certain capitalization, or the capitalization is the total amount of the shares authorized to be issued. the charter usually requires that a certain percentage of shares subscribed be paid in before the corporation is authorized to elect directors. the charter usually provides that at least ten per cent of the capitalization be subscribed, and at least ten per cent of the amount subscribed be paid in, before directors can be elected. a stockholder is liable to the corporation on his subscription and, in the absence of any additional liability fixed by the charter, is not liable for the debts of the corporation for any amount in addition. formerly some of the states provided by statute for double liability of stockholders. in case of insolvency of the corporation, stockholders could be required to contribute an amount equal to their subscription in addition to paying their subscription in full. stockholders' double liability has been abolished by most states. at present a stockholder can be compelled to pay the full amount of his stock subscription, and no more. stockholders of national banks, corporations organized under united states laws, are liable for double the amount of their stock. those persons are regarded as stockholders who appear as such on the books of the company. a person may become a stockholder by purchasing stock from the corporation, or by purchasing it from another stockholder. any person legally competent to contract may become a stockholder. = . certificate of stock.= written certificates are usually furnished shareholders, by corporations, as evidence of membership. these certificates are made transferable, in order that they may be indorsed by a shareholder, and made payable to a purchaser. when so indorsed, the purchaser is entitled to have the shares transferred on the books of the company, showing that he is a shareholder in the company. a certificate of stock does not of itself constitute ownership. it is merely evidence of ownership. a person may be a stockholder in a corporation by making a valid subscription, and by paying for the same, regardless of having received a certificate of stock. the following is a common form of stock certificate: the consolidated tack co. cleveland, ohio. incorporated under the laws of the state of ohio. no. no. of shares - - capital stock $ , , . this certifies that john smith is the owner of fifteen shares of $ each of the capital stock of the consolidated tack co., transferable only on the books of the company, in person or by attorney, upon surrender of this certificate properly indorsed. in witness whereof said corporation has caused this certificate to be signed by its duly authorized officers, and to be sealed with the seal of the corporation. at cleveland, ohio, this st day of october, a. d. . jack brown, tom jenkins, treasurer. president. corporate seal. blank for transfer, on back of certificate. for value received................ hereby sell, assign and transfer unto____________________ shares of the capital stock represented by the within certificate, and do hereby irrevocably constitute and appoint.............. to transfer the said stock on the books of the within named corporation. dated................ .. ___________________ in the presence of ______________________ = . directors of a corporation.= the managing officers of a corporation are called directors. they are the representatives elected by the stockholders, or members of the corporation, to transact the business of the corporation. while in the absence of statutory regulations a director need not be a stockholder, practically all states require directors to be stockholders. directors are authorized to act as agents for the corporation in the management of the corporation's business. their authority is limited not only by the charter of the corporation, but by the regulations, and by-laws of the corporation as well. the directors of a corporation are not authorized by virtue of their office to dispose of the entire assets of the corporation, neither can they transfer their right to act as directors to others. they have the right to purchase property, to sell and mortgage assets of the corporation within the limits prescribed by the charter, regulations and by-laws of the corporation. the directors of a corporation must act as a board. they are not permitted to act by proxy. the majority of the entire number of directors constitutes a quorum for the purpose of doing business. they may employ agents to make and carry out contracts, and perform ministerial acts of the corporation, but cannot delegate their discretionary powers as directors. unless provided otherwise by statute, directors must hold their meetings within the state under whose laws the corporation is created. notice of the meeting giving the place, time and purpose must be given to all the directors before a valid meeting can be held. directors, like agents, cannot act for their own private interests if opposed to those of their corporation. directors who privately profit to the disadvantage of the corporation are liable in damages for such acts to the corporation. it is generally conceded that a director may contract with his corporation, if no fraud is used, and if a quorum of directors without him consents. directors are liable to the corporation for their dishonesty or negligence. = . by-laws, rules and regulations of a corporation.= the by-laws of a corporation are the rules and regulations by which the corporation is governed. sometimes a distinction is drawn between the term _by-law_, and the term _regulation_. for example, the statutes of some states provide that the stockholders may pass regulations for the government of the corporation relating to the time, place and manner of holding corporate meetings, the number of stockholders that shall constitute a quorum, the time and manner of electing directors, the duties and compensation of officers, and the qualification of officers; while the directors have the power to pass by-laws relating to the government of the corporation, not inconsistent with the charter of the corporation and the regulations. this distinction between regulations and by-laws does not seem to be generally recognized. the entire government of the corporation is generally included in the term by-laws. if the charter does not provide otherwise, the by-laws shall be passed by the stockholders rather than by the board of directors. a resolution is not a by-law. by resolution is meant the recorded and legally passed determination of a corporation to perform some particular thing or item of business. a vote of a board of directors to make certain bids on certain contracts is an example of a resolution. by-laws must not be contrary to the corporation's charter, or to general law. they are not presumed to be known by third persons, but if third persons dealing with a corporation have actual knowledge of them, they are bound by notice of their provisions. = . capital stock of corporations.= the capitalization of a corporation is the aggregate amount of stock it is authorized by its charter to issue. if a corporation is authorized to issue one hundred thousand dollars ($ , . ) of stock, it is said to be capitalized at one hundred thousand dollars ($ , . ). this does not mean that the corporation has property worth one hundred thousand dollars ($ , . ). a corporation is usually authorized to elect directors after one tenth of its stock has been subscribed, and after one tenth of the amount subscribed is paid in. thus, a corporation capitalized at one hundred thousand dollars ($ , . ), may elect directors and start business with only one thousand dollars ($ , . ) actually paid in. the term, capital stock of a corporation, is used in many different ways. it is commonly used to designate the capitalization. sometimes it is used to designate the amount actually subscribed. strictly, it probably means the money actually paid in on subscriptions. a corporation's assets may be far in excess of its capitalization, or far below its capitalization. it may have property worth five hundred thousand dollars ($ , . ) and be capitalized at one hundred thousand dollars ($ , . ) more or less, or it may be capitalized at one hundred thousand dollars ($ , . ) and have no assets. = . payment of shares of stock.= it may be stated as a general rule that a corporation has no authority to dispose of its stock for less than par value. if a corporation is solvent, ordinarily no objection is raised, but if the corporation becomes insolvent, creditors may complain, and force, by proper legal action, the shareholders to pay the difference between the face value of their stock and the amount actually paid. in the absence of a statute requiring stock subscriptions to be paid in cash, there is nothing to prevent a corporation from accepting property at a fair valuation in payment of stock. the rule is usually stated to be, that shares of stock must be paid for in money or in _money's worth_. shares of stock may be paid for in _bonâ fide_ services. the rule by which purchasers of stock are compelled to pay the full par value either in money or money's worth applies only to those who purchase direct from the company, or who purchase from stockholders with notice that the shares have not been fully paid for. if the certificates of stock state that they are fully paid for and the purchaser has no notice otherwise, or if the purchaser does not know that the stock has not been paid for in full, he cannot be made to suffer for the act of the corporation in unlawfully issuing the stock. = . calls and assessments.= an _assessment_ may be defined to be a levy by a corporation upon a shareholder for an unpaid portion of his stock subscription; a _call_ is a notice to a shareholder of an assessment. ordinarily, assessments may be made by call, at the direction of the directors, until the entire par value of subscriptions are paid in full. stock cannot be assessed beyond its par value, unless so provided for by the corporate charter, or unless the subscriber so contracts. = . watered stock.= in case property or services are accepted in payment for stock at an inflated valuation, or if stock is issued as fully paid up when it is not, the stock is said to be _watered_. for example, if _a_, a promoter of a corporation, turns over options to the company, actually worth one thousand dollars ($ , . ), and receives stock in payment, the par value of which is five thousand dollars ($ , . ), the stock is said to be watered, and the four thousand dollars ($ , . ) excess valuation is said to represent the amount of water in the stock. = . increasing or decreasing capitalization.= a corporation has no power, by reason of being a corporation, to increase or decrease its capitalization. the states generally provide by statute for the increasing or decreasing of the capitalization. the corporation must comply with these statutes, before its capitalization can be changed. in case the capitalization is increased, the purchasers of such stock are subjected to pay the full face value at the instance of creditors, the same as purchasers of an original issue. that is, if a corporation is unable to pay its debts, one who has purchased direct from the company, shares of stock upon an increased capitalization, at a price below par, may be compelled by creditors to pay the difference between what he has actually paid and the par value. in case of an increase of capitalization, the present stockholders, in the absence of express statutory regulations to the contrary, are entitled to receive the increased shares in proportion to their holdings. this is usually called a _stock dividend_. = . common and preferred stock.= stock of a corporation may be of two kinds, common and preferred. when stock is issued by a corporation without any agreement to pay certain dividends out of the profits, or to repay the original stock investments if the corporation ceases doing business, in preference to other stock, it is called _common_ stock. corporations are sometimes authorized by their charters to issue what is called _preferred_ stock. that is, the corporation pledges to pay a certain percent of its profits, as dividends to the preferred stockholders, before paying anything to common stockholders. if the corporation ceases doing business, preferred stockholders are first paid the amount of their subscriptions, and if any balance remains, it is paid to common stockholders. in the absence of statutory authority, probably an existing corporation has the right to issue preferred stock by the unanimous consent of all the common stockholders. this is commonly done for the purpose of raising additional funds. = . dividends.= _dividends_ is the term applied to the money distributed to shareholders, out of the profits of a corporation. the directors are usually empowered to declare dividends. a stockholder cannot compel the corporation to pay him a percentage of the profits until a dividend has been declared. after a dividend has been declared, it is regarded as a debt of the corporation in favor of the shareholder. when a dividend has been declared at the discretion of the board of directors, the preferred stockholders must first be paid the amount of their preference, and the balance must be distributed equally between the common stockholders. no partiality can be shown stockholders. they must be treated alike. dividends can be declared only out of the profits, except when a corporation ceases doing business, in which event the property of the corporation, after paying liabilities, is distributed as dividends. = . certificates of stock not negotiable instruments.= a certificate of stock is merely evidence that the holder is a member of the corporation. a person may be a member of a corporation, and be entitled to the rights of a stockholder, without having a certificate of stock. certificates are convenient as evidence of membership. transfers of stock are usually made by filling in a blank on the back of the certificate for that purpose, by which the owner declares the transfer to the purchaser, and designates the purchaser, or someone, his attorney to present the certificate to the corporation, to have the transfer registered on the books of the company. it is the usual custom to surrender certificates to the purchaser. a corporation has a right to rely upon its books, and if a person wrongfully or fraudulently attempts to transfer a certificate of stock which he does not own, or has no right to transfer, the purchaser takes no better title than the seller had. in this particular, certificates of stock are not negotiable instruments. negotiable instruments are good for value in the hands of innocent purchasers, who purchase before the instrument is due. as between the parties themselves, a transfer of a certificate of stock is good, but as to the corporation or creditors of the seller, the transfer is not effectual until recorded on the books of the corporation. [illustration: a corner in the sales department of the michigan stove company, detroit, mich.] = . individual liability of stockholders for debts of a corporation.= a corporation is an artificial person having an existence in law, separate and apart from that of its members. its profits cannot be divided until the managing agents of the corporation so decree. its property does not belong to the members, but to the corporation itself. at one time some states provided by statute for double liability of stockholders. in case a corporation was unable to pay its debts, creditors could compel stockholders to pay to the corporation an amount equal to the par value of their stock, after paying the full face or par value of their stock. statutes providing for double liability have quite generally been abrogated. at the present time, except in the case of national banks, corporations organized under united states law, few states provide for double liability of stockholders. if _a_ has subscribed for ten shares of stock, the par value of each share being one hundred dollars ($ . ), and pays one-half the amount of his subscription to the company, in case of insolvency of the corporation, creditors can force _a_ to pay the balance of his stock subscription, or five hundred dollars ($ . ). even though not insolvent, the corporation can collect the balance of five hundred dollars ($ . ) from _a_ by call and assessment, and can enforce collection by suit. _a's_ subscription is a contract between himself, and the corporation. unlike partners, stockholders are not personally responsible for the debts of the corporation of which they are members. in dealing with partnerships, a person may rely upon the personal financial worth of the individual members of the partnership. the property of the individual members may be subjected to pay the debts of the partnership. but in case of a party dealing with a corporation, he cannot rely upon the personal worth or responsibility of the members of the corporation, since the members individually are not liable for the corporation's debts. the corporation is separate and distinct from its members, and when the assets of the corporation are exhausted, the property of the individual members is not liable. = . officers and agents of a corporation.= a corporation is an artificial person which must necessarily conduct its affairs through agents. the managing board of a corporation having a capital stock is usually called the board of directors. the managing board of a corporation having no capital stock is usually called the board of trustees. these managing boards are elected by the members of the corporation. in case the corporation is one organized for profit, the members are called stockholders or shareholders. the directors or managing board, of a corporation may delegate the performance of what are called ministerial duties. they may appoint officers and agents to assist them in the performance of their duties of a certain character. the officers of a corporation elected by the directors usually consist of a _president_, _vice-president_, _secretary_ and _treasurer_. if a corporation's business transactions are limited, practically the only duty of the president is to preside at the meeting of the board of directors. if the affairs of the corporation are many and complicated, the president is usually intrusted with many duties. the board of directors meets at stated times, authorizes and passes on certain important matters, but the duty of carrying them into execution, and of performing the routine work, falls on the president. in a corporation of large affairs, the president may pay current bills, make purchases, give notes, if necessary, make sales and give and take mortgages on property. he is often given authority to act as general manager for the corporation. in this event, he may perform all the duties connected with the general operation of the business. the vice-president has authority to perform the duties of the president during his absence or disability. it is the duty of the secretary to keep the records of the corporation. it is the duty of the treasurer to take care of the funds of the corporation. the officers of a corporation are liable to the corporation for breach of trust. they are personally liable to third persons when they exceed their authority. a corporation, through its properly appointed officers, as well as through its board of directors, may appoint subordinate agents to perform work for the corporation. the corporation is responsible for the acts of its agent, performed within the real or apparent scope of the agent's authority. = . execution of contracts and negotiable instruments by a corporation.= a corporation can act only through its agents. the agents authorized to act for a corporation are the board of directors, the officers appointed by the board, or the officers. a corporation, as one of its powers, has _the right to use_ a common seal. while a corporation _commonly uses_ its seal in signing written instruments of importance, for the purpose of showing authority of its agents to enter into such contracts, a corporation need not use its seal except in those cases when it is necessary that a natural person use a seal. a corporation usually authorizes its officers to make contracts. a president and secretary, acting together, have the right to make contracts for their corporation, by reason of the general authority conferred upon them by the board of directors. the proper signature of a corporation to a written document is the name of the corporation, followed by the signature of the president as its president, and by the signature of the secretary as its secretary. for example, if the india rubber company is to sign a contract, the proper signature is: the india rubber co., by john smith, its president. by john jones, its secretary. when the signature must be acknowledged before an officer authorized to administer oaths, before it will be received for record, as in the case of a deed, the officer authorized to sign the name of the corporation to the deed may make the acknowledgment. negotiable instruments, such as promissory notes, drafts and checks, should be signed with the corporate name by the proper officer, as its officer. it is held, however, that by custom, a cashier of a bank may make and indorse negotiable paper in his own name, merely adding the designation _cashier_ to his signature, and by this means make the paper that of the corporation, and not incur any personal liability therefor. this is an exception to the general rule. where a person signs as agent, he should sign the name of his principal, by himself, as agent. if he signs his own name, followed by the word, _agent_, or _president_, or whatever his office may be, he binds himself personally, and not his principal. = . ultra vires acts.= a corporation by its charter is granted certain privileges. it has a right to act within the terms of its charter, but no right to go beyond the terms of its charter. if it performs acts beyond the terms of its charter these acts are said to be _ultra vires_. this does not mean that all the acts which may be performed by a corporation must expressly be enumerated in its charter. corporations are created for certain purposes. they are permitted to perform all the acts necessary, and incidental to the purpose of their organization. the general laws under which a corporation is created are a part of its charter. a corporation organized to do a general banking business has no authority to sign bonds as surety for persons or corporations. attempts to perform such acts of suretyship are beyond their power, and are _ultra vires_. _ultra vires_ acts are unlawful, and a single stockholder may prevent, by legal action, the officers of a corporation from completing an _ultra vires_ contract. third persons are deemed to have notice of the limitation of the powers of a corporation. they are not permitted to act in such a manner as to benefit by _ultra vires_ acts, and then escape liability on the ground that the obligation is _ultra vires_. if an _ultra vires_ contract is wholly executory on both sides, neither party can enforce it, if the other party complains by reason thereof. but one cannot accept benefits thereunder, and refuse to carry out the contract on his part. he is said to be estopped from so doing. the doctrine laid down by the last statement is disputed in some jurisdictions. = . rights and liabilities of a foreign corporation.= corporations have no rights, as such, outside of the jurisdiction of the power creating them. a corporation organized under the laws of one state may be excluded from performing any of its corporate functions in another state. states may permit foreign corporations to exercise their function within their borders, if they so desire. but states cannot be compelled to recognize the corporate rights of foreign corporations. while the united states constitution provides that citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several states, a corporation is not a citizen within the meaning of this provision. the united states government may employ or organize corporations to carry out its purposes. such corporations cannot be denied the right to exercise their functions by any state. for example, the united states constitution gives congress the right to regulate commerce with foreign nations, among the several states, and with the indian tribes. a corporation engaged in interstate commerce cannot be excluded by any state, in the exercise of this function. outside these governmental agencies, each state has the right to exclude a foreign corporation from exercising any of its corporate functions within their jurisdictions. the states generally provide by statute that foreign corporations may transact business within their territory by filing with the secretary of state a statement of their capitalization, the amount actually paid in, the nature of their business, and the names of their officers. then, by paying a certain tax, they are permitted to maintain an office and transact business within the state thus granting them the privilege. the statutes of the various states regulating foreign corporations commonly use the term, "doing business." they prohibit foreign corporations from doing business within their borders unless they comply with their statutes. the term, "doing business," has been held to mean the maintaining an office or place of business, or manufacturing plant within a state, and does not prohibit a foreign corporation from selling goods by traveling salesmen, or from making or suing on contracts. = . liability of a corporation for its torts and crimes.= a corporation, as well as an individual, may commit torts and crimes. if an agent, acting within the scope of his employment, defrauds another, the corporation is liable in damages for his act. if, however, an officer or agent goes outside his employment, and commits a wrong, it is his own act, and he, personally, and not the corporation, is liable. a corporation, as well as an individual, may commit a crime for which it may be punished. it must, of course, commit the crime through its officers and agents. if a corporation is guilty of criminal negligence in failing to keep its works in repair, and persons are injured thereby, it is subject to indictment and punishment. if a corporation obstructs navigation or breaks the sabbath, it is subject to criminal action. the usual punishment for the crime of a corporation is the payment of a fine, but the officers of a corporation may be imprisoned as well. = . dissolution of corporations.= a corporation continues to exist indefinitely, unless the period of its existence is limited by its charter, unless its charter is revoked by the power that granted it, or unless it voluntarily or by a decree of court ceases business. a corporation may forfeit its right to continue as a corporation, if it abuses its privileges, if it assumes to have powers and rights which it does not have, or if it fails to exercise its corporate functions. the latter is called _nonruser_. most states provide by statute that corporations shall not commence business until a certain portion of its capital has been raised. if the corporation violates this provision or any provision of the statutes regulating the completion of its organization, its franchise may be revoked by the state. most states provide by statute, a means by which a corporation may wind up its affairs. after paying its liabilities the balance of its assets may be divided ratably among its stockholders. negotiable instruments = . in general.= by negotiable instruments are meant those written instruments intended to circulate as money, which by their form and nature are transferred by delivery or by indorsement and delivery. the most common negotiable instruments are promissory notes, drafts and checks. negotiable instruments are much more commonly and extensively used than money in the transaction of business. their function is to take the place of money. their use arose out of the scarcity of currency and facilitates the transaction of business. their form and nature make them more desirable and practical in many respects than money itself. negotiable instruments may readily be traced. they may be drawn in any denomination to meet any emergency. they may be indorsed in such a manner that only the person intended by the maker to receive payment can receive payment thereon. money, on the other hand, has no particular identity. after payment it cannot be traced, nor can mistakes in amount be corrected. if lost, payment thereon cannot be stopped. if found or stolen, its possessor may receive the benefit of it without question. negotiable instruments were devised to meet a broad and pressing demand. usage and custom have given them characteristics to meet this demand. = . negotiability.= negotiability is the power of a written instrument to circulate as money. to be negotiable, an instrument must contain language of negotiability. the common phrases of negotiability are _pay to the order of_, or _pay to bearer_. any draft, promissory note, check, or bill of exchange containing the words, _pay to the order of_, or _pay to bearer_ are known as negotiable instruments. if a negotiable instrument is made payable to bearer, it is transferable by delivery. the holder of it may pass it like money and the taker is entitled to receive payment of it when it is due. a negotiable instrument payable to the order of a designated person is payable upon the indorsement and delivery of the person to whose order it is made payable. for example, if a check is made payable to the order of john smith, and john smith desires to transfer it to john jones, he writes his name, john smith, on the back of the check, and delivers the check to john jones. by this act, john jones becomes the owner of the check, and may in turn transfer it, or cash it by presenting it to the bank on which it is drawn. if a check is made payable to john smith or bearer, and if john smith desires to transfer it to john jones, he merely hands john jones the check. no indorsement is necessary. = . negotiability distinguished from assignability.= an ordinary contract or obligation not requiring personal services or discretion may be transferred by oral or written contract of assignment. for example, if _b_ purchases a barrel of flour from _a_, his grocer, to be paid for in thirty days, _a_ may assign his claim against _b_ to _c_. this may be accomplished by a verbal agreement to that effect between _a_ and _c_, or _a_ may give _c_ a written statement to the effect that he has transferred his claim against _b_ to _c_. when _b_ is notified of this assignment, he is obliged to pay _c_ the money. if for any reason the flour was not accepted by _b_, or if _b_ has a claim against _a_, _c_ can recover from _b_ only the amount _b_ owes _a_. if _b_ owes _a_ nothing, on account of the flour being of poor quality, and not accepted for that reason, or if _b_ has a claim for an equal amount against _a_, _b_ can set up this defense against _c's_ claim, and _c_ can recover from _b_ only the amount that _a_ could have recovered against _b_. in other words, in case of an assignment, all defenses that were good against the assignor are good against the assignee. in case of negotiable instruments, however, the transferee who takes the instrument before maturity for value, and without notice of any defenses, has the right to recover the full face value from the maker, regardless of defenses the maker may have against the original payee. in case of assignment, notice must be given the debtor to make the title good in the purchaser. in case of negotiability, no notice to the debtor is necessary. a negotiable instrument may be assigned. a common example is the delivery for value, of an instrument payable to order without indorsement. the purchaser takes only the rights of a seller. = . law merchant.= the law relating to negotiable instruments is said to be based upon the _law merchant_. by the law merchant, is meant the rules and customs of merchants relating to bills and notes. at an early time, various rules were recognized by the merchants trading between different countries. drafts or bills of exchange were given and passed current as money, without notice to the debtor of the transfer. as early as the year , these customs of merchants were recognized in england. at first, they were recognized only in connection with foreign bills of exchange. by foreign bills of exchange are meant bills made or drawn by persons of one country to be paid or accepted by persons of another state or country. originally, the rules were recognized by merchants only. the courts of england recognized and enforced these rules in actions brought on foreign bills of exchange. gradually, these rules were recognized and enforced by all the merchants of england. they were applied to inland bills as well as to foreign. some statutes were passed, notably one making the rules of the law merchant apply to promissory notes. this statute compelled the general recognition of the law merchant. gradually these rules were applied to all negotiable instruments by whomever used. the customs which started between merchants of foreign countries were held applicable to all persons, and became the recognized law relating to negotiable instruments. this country adopted these rules, together with the greater part of the common law of england. at the present time, most of the states have negotiable instrument codes. these codes, for the most part, are statutory enactments of the well recognized rules of common law. the advantage of the codes, however, is to settle disputed points by express statutory enactment. the code must be interpreted by the well settled and recognized principles of the common law. the difference between the contract formed by negotiable instruments and ordinary contracts is based upon the law merchant. these customs are as well recognized, and are as much a part of the law as they were when originally used by the merchants of the old world six or seven hundred years ago. = . promissory notes.= one of the most common forms of negotiable instruments is that of the promissory note. a common form of promissory note is shown in fig. . a promissory note is not necessarily a negotiable instrument. it depends upon whether it contains words of negotiability. if the note contains the words, _or order_, or, _or bearer_, or words of similar import, it is a negotiable instrument otherwise it is not. to constitute an instrument a promissory note, it must contain certain elements. it must be signed by the party making or giving it, but it is not necessary that the signature be in any particular place. any mark or designation intended as a signature, or by which the maker can be identified, regardless of its position on the paper, is a sufficient signature. the proper and usual method of signing negotiable instruments is at the end thereof. [illustration: fig. . promissory note.] a promissory note must contain an unconditional promise to pay a definite sum of money, at a certain time. if the promise to pay is conditional, the instrument does not constitute a negotiable instrument. the following instrument was sued upon: stratham, march, , . due to order of sophia gordon, widow, ten thousand dollars to be paid as wanted for her support. if no part is wanted it is not to be paid. stephen scanmore. since this was not an unconditional promise to pay, the court held it not to be a promissory note. the time of payment of a promissory note must be certain, the amount to be paid must be specified, and the instrument must be payable in money. if the instrument is to be paid in anything other than money, it is not a negotiable instrument. an instrument must be delivered, before it has a legal existence as a promissory note. the essentials of a promissory note are also essentials of any negotiable instrument. a promissory note need not be dated, nor need it state that it is given for a consideration. by its nature it imports a consideration. the party signing the note is called the _maker_, the party to whom it is made payable is called the _payee_. if the payee transfers it by indorsement, he is called the _indorser_, and the person to whom he transfers it is called the _indorsee_. [illustration: fig. . sight draft.] = . drafts and bills of exchange.= the term, draft, is commonly used to designate an order from one bank or banks on another, as well as orders on third persons. orders drawn by one person on another, payable to a third person, are known technically as bills of exchange. at present, the terms, _draft_, and _bills of exchange_ are generally used interchangeably. a draft or a bill of exchange is a written order drawn by one person on another, payable to a third person, to the order of a third person, to the drawer himself or his order, or to bearer. [illustration: fig. . sixty-day draft, accepted.] a common form of draft is shown in fig. . bills of exchange or drafts are frequently made payable at a time considerably in the future. fig. is a form of sixty-day draft. this draft is presented to the drawee, j. h. gotrochs, and if he accepts, he writes, _accepted_, followed by his name, across the draft. his name written on a draft is sufficient acceptance. the party drawing a bill of exchange is called the _drawer_, the party to whom it is made payable is called, the _drawee_ before acceptance, and the _acceptor_ after acceptance. the drawee may accept by signing the instrument, by stating his acceptance on a separate piece of paper, by oral acceptance, or even by conduct making apparent his intention to accept. after acceptance of a draft or bill of exchange, the acceptor is liable to pay the bill according to its terms. he is in the position of a maker of a promissory note. [illustration: fig. . certified check.] = . checks.= a check is an order drawn on a bank or banker. it differs in some respects from an ordinary bill of exchange. it does not have to be presented for acceptance. it is presented for payment. it presupposes funds of the drawer in the hands of the bank or banker on which it is drawn. it is payable at any time after the date fixed for maturity. it need not be presented at maturity. the maker may recover damages for failure to present promptly if he is damaged thereby. for example, if _a_ gives _b_ his check on the _x_ bank, and between the date for payment of the check and the time of presentment for payment by _b_, the bank fails, _a_ may recover as damages from _b_, the amount of his loss by reason of _b's_ failure to present the check promptly. no days of grace are allowed in the payment of checks. in this particular, they differ from ordinary bills of exchange. = . certification of checks.= by certification of a check is meant a written acknowledgment on checks by an officer or authorized agent of the bank that the check will be paid when presented. in fig. is shown a common form of certification. the words _accepted_ or _certified_, written on a check by an authorized officer or agent of a bank constitute a certification. if the _holder_ of a check has it certified he elects to hold the bank, and thereby releases the maker and prior indorsers. if the _maker_ procures the certification he is still liable thereon. when a check is certified, the bank charges it to the account of the maker, and it then becomes a debt of the bank, regardless of whether or not the maker has funds in the bank with which to meet it. this is the reason that a maker and prior indorsers of a check are released from liability thereon when a holder has it certified. by this act, the holder elects to rely upon the bank, rather than upon maker or indorsers. = . bonds.= bonds may be defined to be the promissory notes of corporations, private or governmental. they are made under the seal of the corporation issuing them. at common law, a seal destroyed the negotiability of an instrument. at the present time this is not true of bonds. private corporations often secure their bonds by a mortgage on their entire property. this is accomplished by means of a mortgage called a _trust deed_. the mortgage is given to a trust company, or an individual, to be held for the common benefit of all the bond holders. it is not practicable to give each bond holder a mortgage. this would be inconvenient, and some bond holders could obtain preference over others. but one trust deed, covering all the assets held by a trustee for the benefit of all the bond holders, accomplishes the purpose. registered bonds are registered on the books of the corporation issuing them, and in case of transfer the transfer is noted on the books of the company. other bonds contain coupons, or small promissory notes for certain amounts representing the installments of interest payable at certain times. these coupons may be cut from the bond and sold as promissory notes, or they may be cut at maturity and returned for payment. +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | no. . $ . | | | | united states of america, | | state of ohio. | | | | village of x, ohio, improvement bonds. | | | | know all men by these presents that the village of x, in the | | county of cuyahoga and state of ohio, acknowledges itself to owe, | | and for value received hereby promises to pay to bearer, the sum | | of $ . in lawful money of the united states of america, on | | the second day of january, , together with interest thereon | | at the rate of % per annum payable semi-annually on the second | | day of july, and second day of january of each year, as evidenced | | by the coupons hereto attached, until the principal sum is paid. | | both principal and interest are payable at the city trust co., | | cleveland, ohio, on the presentation and surrender of this bond, | | and the coupons hereto attached as they respectively mature. | | | | this bond is issued for the purpose of improving a street of the | | village of x, from the c. b. railway to rocky river by constructing | | and laying water mains with all necessary connections thereon, | | under and by authority of sections - , and sec. of | | the revised statutes of ohio, and under and in accordance with | | resolutions of the council of the village of x, ohio, adopted nov. | | , , and dec. , . | | | | it is hereby certified that all proceedings relating to this | | bond have been in strict compliance with said laws, statutes and | | resolutions, and all other statutes and laws relating thereto, and | | that the faith, credit, and revenues, and all real and personal | | property in the village of x, ohio are hereby pledged for the | | payment of principal and interest hereof at maturity. | | | | this bond is one of a series of bonds of like date and effect, but | | of different amounts and maturities amounting in the aggregate to | | $ . . | | | | in witness whereof, the village of x has caused this bond to be | | signed by the mayor and clerk of said village, and the corporate | | seal of said village to be hereunto affixed, and the facsimile | | signature of the mayor and clerk of said village to be affixed to | | the attached coupon this second day of january, . | | | | d. b. x._______________________ | | mayor. | | | | [seal.] | | | | x. y. z._______________________ | | clerk. | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ form of municipal coupon bond. +------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | on the second day of july, on the second day of january, | | ,the village of x promises , the village of x promises | | to paythe bearer at the city to pay the bearer at the city | | trust co.,cleveland, ohio, trust co., cleveland, ohio, | | twenty-fivedollars, being twenty-five dollars, being | | months' intereston its bond. months' interest on its bond. | | | | no. dated jan. , . no. dated jan. , . | | d. b. x.___________________ d. b. x.___________________ | | mayor. mayor. | | | | x. y. z.___________________ x. y. z.___________________ | | clerk. clerk. | | | | on the second day of july, on the second day of january, | | ,the village of x promises , the village of x promises | | to paythe bearer at the city to pay the bearer at the city | | trust co.,cleveland, ohio, trust co., cleveland, ohio, | | twenty-fivedollars, being twenty-five dollars, being | | months' intereston its bond. months' interest on its bond. | | | | no. dated jan. , . no. dated jan. , . | | d. b. x.___________________ d. b. x.___________________ | | mayor. mayor. | | | | x. y. z.___________________ x. y. z.___________________ | | clerk. clerk. | | | +------------------------------------------------------------------+ interest coupons attached to municipal bond. similar coupons follow for payment at intervals of months until maturity of bond in . = . collateral and judgment notes.= banks frequently require borrowers to sign collateral notes. these instruments are promissory notes, with an added agreement to the effect that certain collateral security is given the payee by the maker as security for the note. such security is usually certificates of stock, bonds, other promissory notes, or chattel property. the collateral note contains a stipulation that upon default, the payee may sell the collateral. the following is a common form of collateral note used by banks: $ , . cleveland, ohio, dec. , . six months after date, i promise to pay to the order of the fictitious bank at its banking rooms in cleveland, ohio, the sum of five thousand dollars for value received, with interest at the rate of % per annum. i have deposited with said bank as collateral security for the payment of this note the following property; shares of stock of the columbia sewing machine co., par value $ . each, diamond rings, warehouse receipt of the city storage co., covering household furniture valued at $ , . . the value of this property is now $ , . . it is agreed that the payee, or his assigns, may have the right to call for additional security at any time it considers this collateral security insufficient, and on failure of the maker of this note to furnish additional security to satisfy the holder of this note, the note may be deemed payable at once at the holder's option. the holder shall also have power to accept substitutes for this collateral. should the maker violate any of the conditions of this note, or fail to pay it when due, the holder shall have the power to sell the collateral or any substitute given therefore, at private or public sale, at any time without notice to anyone, and after deducting all legal expenses connected with the sale, and after paying the note, shall return the balance to the maker. (signed) john smith. a judgment note contains a provision that upon default of payment, any attorney at law may appear in court and take judgment thereon by presenting the note, without observing the formalities of an ordinary suit at law. this kind of a note is also called a _cognovit_ note. the following is a common form of judgment note: $ . boston, dec. , . one year after date, i promise to pay to the order of john jones the sum of one hundred dollars with interest at %, and i hereby authorize any attorney at law in the united states to appear before any justice of the peace, or in any court of record, after this note is due, and waive the service of summons, and confess judgment against me in favor of the holder of this note for the amount which shall then be due and unpaid thereon, together with interest and costs. (signed) thos. thomas. = . certificates of deposit.= it is customary for banks to issue customer's receipts showing that a deposit of a certain amount has been made by the customer, which will be held for payment of the receipt upon presentation. these receipts ordinarily are made payable to the customer's order, and circulate like money. they are, in effect, the promissory notes of the bank issuing them. they differ from promissory notes in that banks require a special deposit of its customers before issuing them. banks issuing such receipts are supposed to hold these deposits as a special fund with which to pay the certificate when presented. the following is a common form of certificate of deposit: --the peoples bank of chicago-- we hereby certify that john jones has deposited $ , . in this bank, for which this certificate is issued, and which will be paid to the order of john jones in current funds of this bank when presented. the peoples bank of chicago, june , . by a. z. marshall, cashier. the payee of this certificate of deposit may indorse and transfer it. the holder may collect the amount by presenting the certificate to the bank. = . requisites of negotiable instruments.= certain elements are recognized, by long usage, as being necessary to constitute an instrument a valid negotiable instrument. the instrument must contain words of negotiability, such as _or bearer_, _or order_, or words of similar meaning. the instrument must contain a specific promise to pay a certain sum of money at a definite time. the instrument must designate an ascertainable person to whom, or to whose order the money is payable. the instrument must be signed and delivered. it is not necessary that a consideration be stated in the instrument, although in a suit between the original parties, failure of consideration is a defense. for example, if _a_ gives _b_ his promissory note for one hundred dollars ($ . ) payable to _b's_ order, and _a_ received no benefit for giving the note, if _b_ sues _a_ thereon, _a_ may plead that he received no consideration for the note. this would be a complete defense to _a_. if, however, _c_ purchased the note from _b_ before it was due, paying value for same, and having no notice of its being given without consideration, _a_ could be compelled to pay it to _c_ or his successors. it is not necessary that a negotiable instrument be dated. it is proper, however, and good business policy to date all negotiable instruments. the signature need not be at the bottom of the instrument. this, however, is the proper place for the signature. _i. o. u._ $ . (_signed_) _john jones_, is not a promissory note. it is not a promise to pay at a definite time or to a definite person. it is a mere acknowledgment of indebtedness. = . parties to negotiable instruments.= by usage and custom, parties to negotiable instruments are given certain well recognized names. the name of the party to whom a promissory note is made payable is always called the _payee_. when the payee transfers a negotiable instrument by indorsement, he is called the _indorser_, and the party to whom he indorses the note is called the _indorsee_. indorsers and indorsees are designated as _first_, _second_, _third_, etc., indorsers or indorsees according to their position on the instrument. the maker of a draft is called the _drawer_. the one to whom it is given is called the _payee_. the one on whom it is drawn is called the _drawee_. after acceptance, the drawee is called the _acceptor_. the rights and liabilities of these parties are discussed under separate sections. = . rights and liabilities of a drawee.= the term, _draft_, is sometimes used to designate orders made by one bank on another. for example, _a_ in cleveland, purchased of his cleveland bank a new york draft, or an order by the cleveland bank on a new york bank, payable to the order of _a_. technically, orders on persons are _bills of exchange_, but the term draft, has come to be applied both to orders of one bank on another and to orders of one person on another. in this work the term, _draft_ is applied to both kinds of orders. a drawer is a person who makes a draft on another. it is usually payable to the order of a third person. it may be made payable to the bearer or to the order of the drawer, himself. a drawer enters into a conditional contract. by becoming a drawer, he agrees to pay the bill of exchange or draft, if the payee presents it without delay, and in case of non-payment, or non-acceptance, if notice is promptly given him of this fact. in case the draft is a foreign one, that is, made payable or to be accepted, in a different state or country from which it is drawn, it must be protested by the payee to enable him to hold the drawer. a draft is protested by being presented by a notary public, who, by formal written instrument, declares the refusal of the drawee to accept. protest is discussed more at length under a separate section. in case these conditions are complied with, and the drawee does not accept the bill or pay the bill after acceptance, the payee may hold the drawer. after the formalities above enumerated are observed by the payee or holders of a draft, if the draft is dishonored, that is, not accepted, or paid by the drawee, the payee may sue the drawer, whose liability is similar to that of the maker of a promissory note. = . rights and liabilities of acceptor.= the person to whom a draft is directed is called the drawee or acceptor. when a draft is presented to the drawee, he may accept it by writing _accepted_ thereon, or he may accept by writing his consent in a separate instrument, such as a letter, or by sending a telegram, or he may accept orally or by his conduct. after a drawee has accepted a draft, he is bound by its terms. he must pay the amount mentioned in the draft. after acceptance, his liability is similar to that of the maker of a promissory note. sometimes an acceptor does not accept in the exact terms of the draft. he may change the time or place of payment, or attach conditions to the bill or draft. this amounts to a refusal on his part to accept the bill, which will entitle the payee to refuse the qualified acceptance and by giving proper notice to the drawer hold the drawer by reason of non-acceptance by the drawee. if, however, the payee chooses to accept the qualified acceptance of the drawee, he may do so, but by this act he releases the drawer and all prior indorsers from liability thereon. = . rights and liabilities of maker.= _maker_ is the term applied to the person who originally makes and signs a promissory note. by this act, he agrees to pay at maturity, to the original payee, or to whomever the note has been indorsed or properly transferred, the amount named in the note. the maker of a note is liable absolutely and unconditionally. while it is customary for the holder of a note to present it to the maker at maturity for payment, this is not necessary unless a place of payment is stipulated in the note. the holder may commence suit against the maker at maturity without presenting the note for payment. if the note contains indorsements, the note must be presented to the maker, and if payment is refused, to enable the holder to hold the indorsers liable, notice of the fact must be given the indorsers. if the note is payable at a particular place, as for example, a bank, the holder must present the note at the bank at maturity, or not be able to collect interest thereafter, if the maker proves that he had funds there sufficient to pay the note at maturity. if the maker has been damaged other than by loss of interest, by failure to present a note at a bank when made payable, he may collect damages therefor from the holder. = . blank indorsement.= a negotiable instrument, if payable to bearer, may be transferred by delivery. if payable to the order of the payee, it may be transferred by indorsement and delivery. by indorsement is meant the writing the name of the payee upon the back of the negotiable instrument. indorsement may be made in various forms, depending upon the purpose for which made, and the kind of liability the indorser is willing to undertake, or the kind or degree of liability which he wishes to avoid. the most common kind of indorsement consists of the payee's writing his name only on the back of the instrument. a negotiable instrument with blank indorsement is shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. . promissory note with blank indorsement.] if x. x. crumby desires to transfer the note to anyone, he signs his name on the back thereof, as indicated in the illustration. this is called a blank indorsement, and makes the note payable to bearer. the note now passes as currency without further indorsement. subsequent holders may indorse the note if they so desire, or are so required. if the back of a negotiable instrument becomes filled with indorsements, a paper may be attached to carry further indorsements. such a paper is called an _allonge_. = . indorsement in full.= a holder of a negotiable instrument, not desiring to make it payable to bearer, may indorse it by making it payable to some particular person or to the order of some particular person, followed by his signature. this does not destroy the negotiability of the instrument, but prevents anyone but the person to whom it is indorsed, or such person's indorsees, from securing payment of the instrument. this is not true if the instrument is payable to bearer, or if it has been indorsed in blank. such instruments are payable to bearer, and circulate as money without requiring further indorsement. if subsequently indorsed in full, only those subsequent holders can hold the indorser in full, who can trace their title through him. [illustration: fig. . one form of indorsement in full.] [illustration: fig. . another form of indorsement in full.] fig. is an indorsement in full of x. x. crumby. by this indorsement, only john jones, the person to whom he indorses, may obtain payment of the note. if john jones indorses the note in blank, that is, signs his name to it, the note becomes payable to bearer, and passes like money, without further indorsements. [illustration: fig. . indorsement without recourse.] by the indorsement, fig. which is also an indorsement in full, x. x. crumby becomes liable as indorser to john jones only, and not to anyone to whom john jones may indorse the paper. x. x. crumby's indorsement does not contain the words "or order." the face of the note, however, contains the words "or order," which makes the note negotiable. x. x. crumby's indorsement to john jones, although not containing words of negotiability, does not destroy the negotiability of the note. john jones may indorse the note in blank, or in full. the only effect of x. x. crumby's omitting words of negotiability from his indorsement is to limit his primary liability as an indorser to john jones. = . indorsement without recourse.= frequently, the holder of a negotiable instrument is unwilling to assume any primary liability by transferring a negotiable instrument which he possesses. he may desire to transfer the right he has in the instrument, without becoming liable thereon. he may do this by indorsing it without recourse. [illustration: fig. . indorsement for collection and for deposit.] by either of the indorsements, (fig. ) the one in blank, or the one in full, jos. rundy, transfers his interest in the note to john jones, and does not become liable thereon as an indorser. it is not quite accurate to say that an indorser without recourse has _no liability_ as an indorser. he _impliedly warrants_ the signatures preceding his own to be _genuine_, and that the parties making them had legal capacity to sign. the implied liabilities of an indorser are discussed under a separate section. [illustration: fig. . promissory note with anomalous indorser.] = . indorsement for collection or deposit.= a holder of a negotiable instrument may transfer it for the purpose of collection, thereby making the transferee his agent, for the purpose of carrying out his will, and thereby destroying the negotiability of the instrument. this prevents another from taking the note free from the claim of the original indorser. either of the indorsements in fig. destroys the further negotiability of the note. the indorsers are authorized to collect the note for arthur hinde. they are not authorized to transfer the note, except for the purpose of collecting it for arthur hinde. = . anomalous indorser.= sometimes, a party writes his name upon the back of a negotiable instrument outside the chain of title. that is, he writes his name thereon, before the payee indorses it. this is for the purpose of adding security to the note. in this case, fig. , john arthur signs the note outside the chain of title. he places his name thereon for the purpose of adding security thereto. he is liable on his indorsement to the _payee_, a. aldrich, and to the _indorsees_ of a. aldrich. in some jurisdictions he is liable as a guarantor, in some as a surety, but in most as an ordinary indorser. the liability of a surety and guarantor is discussed in the section on suretyship. = . liability of an indorser.= by placing his name on the back of a negotiable instrument for the purpose of passing title, a person becomes liable on an implied contract. if his indorsement is in blank, or payable to the order of the indorsee, he is liable to any innocent purchaser for the value, without notice. if made payable to a particular person, he is liable only to that person. the implied liability of an indorser has been said to be as follows: "i hereby agree by the acceptance by you of title to this paper, and the value you confer upon me in exchange, to pay you, or any of your successors in title, the amount of this instrument, providing you, or any of your successors in title, present this note to the maker on the date of maturity, and notify me without delay of his refusal to pay. and i warrant that all the parties had proper capacity and authority to sign, and that the obligation is binding upon each of them. and i will respond to the obligations created by these warranties, even though you do not demand payment of the maker at maturity or notify me of default." = . forgery and alteration of negotiable instruments.= an act by which a negotiable instrument is materially and fraudulently changed and passed or attempted to be passed, is a forgery. the act may consist of fraudulently writing another's name on a negotiable instrument, or changing a name already on a negotiable instrument, or changing the figures, date, rate of interest, or in fact any act of counterfeiting or materially altering a negotiable instrument. forgery makes the instrument void. the forger, or those who purchase from him, obtain no rights against the party wronged. as to the party whose name or whose instrument is forged, the instrument is void. for example, _a_ has _b's_ valid note for one hundred dollars ($ . ) and changes the note by erasing one hundred dollars ($ . ) and substituting five hundred dollars ($ . ) and sells the note to _c_. _c_ can recover nothing from _b_. _a_, by indorsing the note to _c_, warrants the genuineness of the note and is liable on his indorsement to _c_. neither _a_ nor _c_ can recover even one hundred dollars ($ . ) from _b_. the instrument has been rendered void by the forgery, and courts will recognize no liability of _b_ thereon. a negotiable instrument altered in any material respect is void. if _fraudulently_ made, it is regarded as a forgery. if _innocently_ made, the instrument is still void, but the wronged person is liable for the original consideration. if _a_ gives _b_ his promissory note for one hundred dollars ($ . ) with interest at %, and _b_ carelessly, but not fraudulently, writes % thereon instead of %, _b_ cannot recover on the note at all. but he can recover from _a_ one hundred dollars ($ . ) with interest at % on the debt for which the note was given. any alteration of a negotiable instrument which changes the liability of the parties thereto, amounts to a material alteration. changes in the rate of interest, the name of an indorser, the date, the place, time or manner of payment is a material alteration and renders the instrument void. if the alteration is made by a stranger, a person not a party to the instrument, it does not constitute a material alteration. the instrument may be restored to its proper form and recovery be had thereon. = . fraud and duress.= fraud has been defined to be "a false representation of a material fact, made with knowledge of its falsity or in reckless disregard whether it be true or false, with the intention that it should be relied upon by the complaining party, and actually inducing him to rely and act upon it." fraud is a defense to a party to a negotiable instrument as against the person inducing it, but not as against subsequent innocent purchasers. _a_ offers to sell _b_ a diamond ring for five hundred dollars ($ . ) assuring him that the diamond is genuine. relying upon this false statement of _a_, _b_ takes the ring and gives _a_ his promissory note for five hundred dollars ($ . ) payable to _a's_ order. the ring proves to be paste. _a_ cannot recover on the note from _b_. if, however, before it is due, _a_ sells the note to _c_, who pays value for it without notice of the fraud, _c_ can force _b_ to pay the note. duress is actual or threatened violence sufficient under the circumstances to compel a person to act against his wishes. in connection with negotiable instruments, duress is treated as the same kind of a defense as fraud. it is a complete defense as against the guilty party, but is not available as against an innocent purchaser. = . lost or stolen negotiable instruments.= the primary function of negotiable instruments is to circulate like money. if a negotiable instrument is indorsed in blank, or made payable to bearer, it may circulate without further indorsement. if such a negotiable instrument is lost or stolen, and purchased before maturity by an innocent party, the maker is liable thereon. for example, if _a_ makes a promissory note payable to bearer, and it is stolen by _b_ from _a's_ possession, and sold for value to _c_, an innocent party, _c_ may collect the note from _a_. if _a_ makes a promissory note payable to the order of _b_, and _b_ indorses it in blank, that is, writes his name only, on the back thereof, and it is stolen from _b's_ possession by _c_ and sold by _c_ to _d_, who purchases it innocently and for value, _d_ may collect the note from _a_. this is the principal distinction between negotiable instruments and ordinary contracts. if the thief changes the instrument in any material way, or is obliged to forge someone's name to pass it, this constitutes a forgery and no recovery can be had thereon. = . real and personal defenses to negotiable instruments.= defenses to negotiable instruments are usually classified as _real_ and _personal_. if they are good only against a particular person, they are said to be personal. if they are good as against everyone, they are said to be real. if the instrument is forged, given by an infant, a person under legal age, is illegal--for example given for a gambling contract made illegal by statute--or has been materially altered, it is void, regardless of who holds it. these defenses are called real defenses. if the instrument is lost or stolen, and purchased by an innocent party, if given by reason of duress or fraud, or if there is no consideration, the defense is good only as against the guilty party. these defenses are called personal defenses. = . consideration.= a consideration is usually defined to be something beneficial to the party making a promise, or something detrimental to the party to whom a promise is made. every ordinary contract must be supported by a consideration. negotiable instruments differ from ordinary contracts in that they are made to circulate like money. in order that they may circulate like money the maker is not permitted in some instances, to assert that the instrument lacks consideration. as between the immediate parties to a negotiable instrument, there must be a consideration. the maker may successfully defend against an action based thereon for this reason. if, however, the instrument has passed before due, to an innocent purchaser for value, the maker cannot refuse payment on the ground of no consideration. in case of a negotiable instrument, consideration is presumed. consideration need not be stated in the instrument. it amounts to a defense, only as between immediate parties. if _a_ gives _b_ his promissory note payable to _b's_ order, with the understanding that _b_ is not to use the note, but is to show it to _c_, his grocer, for the purpose of obtaining credit, and _b_ endeavors to collect the note from _a_, _a_ may successfully defend on the ground of no consideration. if, however, _b_ sells the note to _d_ before it is due, and for value, _d_, not knowing there is no consideration, can collect the note from _a_. = . presentment and acceptance of drafts.= drafts payable at sight, or after sight, must be presented to the drawee for acceptance. this is for the reason that the time of payment of such drafts is uncertain. if a draft of which presentment is necessary, is not presented for acceptance, the drawer and indorsers are discharged. presentment for acceptance must be made to the acceptor within a reasonable time after receipt by the payee or indorsee. what consitutes reasonable time for presentment depends upon the circumstances connected with each particular case. presentment for acceptance is made by exhibiting the bill for acceptance to the person upon whom is it drawn. presentment for acceptance may be made by the payee, or his indorsee, and may be made to the drawee, his authorized agent or legal representative. presentment may be made either at the person's place of business, or at his residence. if made at his place of business, it must be made during business hours. it cannot lawfully be made after noon on saturdays, nor can it be made on sundays or legal holidays. acceptance may be indicated by writing _accepted_ or words to that effect on the bill, by a separate writing to that effect, or by oral agreement of the drawee. if the bill contains a stipulation not requiring acceptance, this is called _waiver of acceptance_, and the bill need not be presented for acceptance. if acceptance is refused, or not made for any reason, anyone may accept the bill. this is called acceptance for honor, or acceptance _supra protest_. the liability of an acceptor for honor is that if the bill is presented to the drawee at maturity for payment and refused, and notice thereof given the acceptor for honor, the latter will pay it. a bill or draft payable at a definite time or date need not be presented for acceptance. for example, if a bill is drawn payable december , , it need not be presented for acceptance. the time of payment is certain, and if presented for payment on december , and dishonored, notice of non-payment to the drawer and prior indorsers is sufficient to enable the payee to hold them liable. if, however, the bill is payable at sight, or three days after sight, or any time after sight, it must be presented for acceptance to fix the date of maturity, if a bill is not paid by the acceptor after acceptance, notice must be given the drawer and prior indorsers by the holder, to enable him to hold the drawer and prior indorsers liable. this is sufficient in case of an inland bill. in case of a foreign bill, one drawn on a person, or made payable to a person in another state or country from the drawee, formal protest must be made in case of non-payment or non-acceptance. protest is a formal act of a notary public. this is explained under a separate section. = . time of payment and days of grace.= a negotiable instrument is payable at the time mentioned in the instrument. if a negotiable instrument is payable a stipulated time after date, and the instrument bears no date, its date is the time it was delivered. the term month, is held to mean calendar month, and not a certain number of days. if a note is dated february th, and is payable thirty days after date, it matures march th. when a negotiable instrument is payable a specified number of days after date, the time is counted by excluding the day on which the instrument is given, and including the final day stipulated. negotiable instruments may be made payable on demand of the payee or holder. such paper is payable at the option of the holder. it is sometimes called paper payable _on call_. negotiable instruments may be made payable on or before a certain day. these instruments are valid negotiable instruments. they really mature at the day fixed in the instrument, but may be paid at any time after delivery at the option of the payee or holder. according to the law merchant, three days were allowed the party liable on a bill or note to make payment, in addition to the time fixed for payment. these were called _days of grace_. in the majority of the states, days of grace have been abolished by statute. when not abolished by statute, days of grace are still allowed. = . innocent purchaser for value without notice.= the feature that distinguishes negotiable instruments from ordinary contracts is that negotiable instruments may be transferred in such a manner that the transferee receives the instrument free from certain defenses which are good against the transferror. for example, one who purchases another's rights under an ordinary contract takes the exact position of the transferror. any defenses good against the seller are good against the purchaser. however, a purchaser for value before maturity of negotiable instrument, who has no notice of any defenses to the instrument, takes it free from all but real defenses. real defenses are _infancy of the maker_, _forgery_, _material alteration_, and _illegality_. but such a defense as fraud, want of consideration, duress, or any except a real defense is not available against an innocent purchaser for value without notice. an innocent purchaser for value without notice, of a negotiable instrument, is also called a _bonâ fide_ holder, or a holder in due course. a person who purchases a negotiable instrument showing defects or defenses on its face, cannot claim to be a _bonâ fide_ holder. a person who purchases negotiable instruments after maturity, takes them subject to all defenses good against the seller. such a purchaser is not a _bonâ fide_ holder. = . presentment for payment of negotiable instruments.= so far as the maker or acceptor of negotiable instruments is concerned, in the absence of a place for payment stipulated in the instrument, a negotiable instrument does not have to be presented for payment. as a matter of practice, however, negotiable instruments are presented to the maker and acceptor at their places of business or at their residences for payment at maturity. in order to hold indorsers, however, a negotiable instrument must be presented to the maker or acceptor at maturity, and, in case of failure to pay, notice must be given indorsers, else they are relieved from liability. when a place for payment is specified in a negotiable instrument, presentment at that place is sufficient. when no place of payment is designated in the instrument, presentment to the maker or acceptor personally, wherever he may be found, or at his residence or place of business is sufficient. = . notice of dishonor and protest.= when a negotiable instrument has been presented to a maker or acceptor for payment, and payment has been refused, the holder should notify the drawer, if the instrument is a bill of exchange or draft, and the indorsers, no matter what the form of the negotiable instrument, of the fact of dishonor. if such notice is not given, the acceptor or indorsers are discharged from liability. this notice should be given by the holder of the paper, or his agent, within a reasonable length of time after dishonor. the notice may be given by a verbal notification, by the delivery of written message, or by mailing notice to the residence or place of business of the indorsers or drawer. everyone whom a holder desires to hold liable, must be notified in case of dishonor. if a drawer of a bill or an indorser of a note waives notice of dishonor by so stipulating in the instrument, notice as to them is unnecessary. in case of an inland bill, mere notice in writing mailed to their usual address, or actual notice is sufficient. by inland bill is meant one made payable, or to be accepted in the same state or country where drawn. in case of a foreign bill of exchange, or one made payable, or to be accepted, in a state or country other than where made or drawn, notice of dishonor must be by protest. this is true of notice to the drawer for failure of a drawee to accept, as well as for failure of an acceptor to pay. protest is a formal declaration of a notary public, an officer recognized by all countries as authorized to administer oaths. technically, only bills of exchange need be protested. by practice, however, promissory notes and checks are protested as well. = . certificate of protest.= the following is a common form of protest: state of ohio } cuyahoga co. } ss i, john arthur, a notary public, having been duly appointed and sworn, and residing at cleveland, cuyahoga co., ohio, do certify that on the th day of december , i presented the annexed promissory note for payment at the city trust co., where same is made payable, and that i did this at the request of the state trust co., and that payment was refused. i further certify that i did protest, and i do now publicly protest against the maker, indorsers, and all others concerned, for all costs and damages connected with the failure to pay this instrument. i certify that i am not interested in any way in this instrument. i further certify that i have this day deposited in the post office at cleveland, ohio, notices of this protest, signed by me as notary public, and addressed to the following persons. (names and addresses of persons connected with the instrument.) in testimony whereof i have hereto affixed my signature and seal of my office, this th day of dec., . john arthur, notary public. notary seal. quiz questions partnerships . may a party do business under a name other than his own? . if a party uses a trade name does this constitute a partnership? . define partnership, and give an example of an agreement constituting a partnership. . how many persons may engage in a single partnership enterprise? . give the principal features of the partnership relation. . how is a partnership created? . may partnerships be created by oral agreement? if so, give an example of an oral partnership agreement. . must any kind of partnership agreement be in writing? if so, give an example. . what is meant by partnership by estoppel? . give an example of an executory partnership agreement. . what classes of persons may legally become partners? . may an infant become a partner? . _a_, aged twenty-two years, enters into a partnership with _b_, aged seventeen. may _a_ avoid a contract of the partnership made with _c_, a third person, on account of the infancy of _b_? . give an example of an infant ratifying a partnership agreement. . can drunken or insane persons enter into partnerships? . what names are partners entitled to take as partnership names? . can a partnership take the name of another partnership? if not, why not? . can a partnership take a name which does not suggest the name of any of the partners interested? . can a partnership ever have more than one name? if so, under what circumstances? . give, and define the names applied to different kinds of partners. . distinguish _silent partners_ and _secret partners_. . may a partnership exist as between the partners, and not exist as to third persons trading with the partnership? . may a partnership exist as to third persons dealing with an apparent partnership, while none exists between the apparent partners themselves? if so, give an example. . state what constitutes a partnership as to third persons dealing with a partnership. . what are the powers of a partnership? . of what may the property of a partnership consist? . may a partnership make and own promissory notes? . what constitutes holding a person out as a partner? . what is the liability of a person held out as a partner? . can a person be liable as a partner who is held out as a partner without his knowledge or consent? . what are the duties of partners to each other? . can one partner sue his partner at law? . if one partner dishonestly takes possession of partnership assets, how may his partner get legal relief? . what is meant by _joint liability_ of partners? . what is meant by _liability in solido_? . what is partnership liability to third persons? . is the individual property of members of the partnership liable to be subjected to the payment of partnership claims? . when, if at all, can the property of individual partners be subjected to the payment of judgments against the partnership before the property of the partnership has been exhausted? . what is the individual liability of the members of a partnership for the partnership debts? . what effect, if any, does change of membership have upon a partnership? . does the addition of a new member dissolve a partnership? . does withdrawal of a member discharge a partnership? . what effect, if any, does death of a partner have upon a partnership? . define _survivorship_. . what are the rights and duties of survivors of a partnership? . in what ways may a partnership be dissolved? . in what cases must notice of dissolution of partnership be given? . how, and to whom must notice of dissolution of partnership be given? . upon dissolution of a partnership what part of the firm assets belongs to firm creditors, and what part of individual assets belongs to individual creditors? . in case a partnership is insolvent, and there is no living solvent partner, what rights have firm creditors in the assets of the individual partners as compared with individual creditors? . define and describe _limited partnership_. . what is the principal distinction between limited and general partnership? . define _special partner_ as used in connection with limited partnerships. [illustration: office building of the chicago edison company, chicago. ill. shepley, rutan & coolidge, architects, chicago. two lower stories of pink milford granite, polished; upper stories of the same granite, with ten-cut surface. built in , note the decorative feature of the lighting in lower and upper portion of building.] corporations . define _corporation_. . may an association of persons create a corporation by agreement? . is a corporation a natural person? . how were corporations originally created? . how are corporations created at the present time? . distinguish the creation of a corporation and the creation of a partnership. . for what purpose may a corporation be created? . what is the franchise of a corporation? . is a partnership distinct from the members composing it? . is a corporation dissolved by a change of membership? . when does a partnership cease to exist? . are the members of a corporation agents of the corporation? . who are the authorized agents of a partnership? . what are the powers of a corporation? . enumerate the ordinary powers of a corporation. . is the charter of a corporation a contract? . may a charter of a corporation be revoked at the will of the legislature that granted it? . how are corporations created? . what is meant by a _corporation's charter_? . what kinds of corporations, if any, may be organized under united states laws? . by what authority are national banks organized? . under what provisions are most corporations organized? . under what conditions may corporate charters be revoked? . state briefly the necessary steps in organizing a corporation. . must a corporation have a corporate name? . may a corporation change its name? . may two corporations use the same name? . may a corporation appropriate a name descriptive of an article manufactured? . give an example of a name a corporation is not permitted to appropriate. . classify corporations. . define and distinguish _private corporations_ and _public corporations_. . give an example of a public corporation; a private corporation. . is a street railway company a private or public corporation? . when does a corporation's existence commence? . what determines when a corporation's existence commences? . define _estoppel_. . give an example of a corporation estoppel from denying its corporate existence. . are third persons ever estopped from denying a corporation's legal existence? if so, give an example. . is a corporation's charter a contract? . if a corporation's charter is a contract, who are the contracting parties? . at the present time can a corporation obtain an irrevocable charter? . define _de facto corporation_. . define _de jure corporation_. . can a _de facto_ corporation avoid its liabilities on the ground of incomplete organization? . who can object to a _de facto_ corporation being incompletely organized? . what is necessary to create a _de facto_ corporation? . define _promoter_. . is a promoter personally liable for the obligations made by himself in connection with organizing a corporation? . is a corporation responsible for the obligations created by its promoter? . how, if at all, may a corporation adopt the obligations of its promoters? . may a corporation be reorganized by consent of its members? . is a reorganized corporation a new corporation, or a continuation of the old corporation? . is a reorganized corporation ever liable for the obligations of the old corporation? . may a reorganized corporation ever escape the obligations of the old corporation? . how, if at all, may corporations consolidate? . is a consolidated corporation distinct from the corporation from which it is formed? . may corporations consolidate by consent of the members of each? . is a consolidated corporation liable for the debts of its component corporations? . what is the _governing board_ of a corporation for profit called? . how are directors elected? . how, and under what circumstances and conditions may corporate meetings be held? . who are entitled to vote at corporate meetings? . may a member of a corporation ever have more than one vote? . what is meant by _cumulative voting_? . what is meant by _ticket voting_? . define _quorum_. . what constitutes a quorum? . must a member of a corporation be present to have his shares of stock voted? . how, if at all, may a shareholder vote by proxy? . who are members of a corporation? . is a stockholder personally liable for the debts of the corporation? . what is the liability of a shareholder in a national bank? . what is meant by stockholder's double liability? . how may a person become a stockholder in a corporation? . what is a certificate of stock? . may a person become a stockholder without having a certificate of stock? . may a person hold a certificate of stock and not be a stockholder? . must directors of a corporation be stockholders? . how, if at all, is the authority of the board of directors limited? . what are the principal duties of directors? . may a board of directors dispose of the entire assets of the corporation? . may directors act for their own private interests in dealing with the corporation? . may a director ever contract with the corporation? . define _by-laws_, _rules_, and _regulations_. . distinguish by-laws and resolutions. . define _capitalization_. . distinguish capitalization from assets of a corporation. . define _capital stock_. . may a corporation sell its shares for less than par? . distinguish par value and face value of stock. . if a corporation sells a shareholder stock at % of its par value, and the corporation is solvent, who, if any one, may object? . must shares be paid for in money? . if a person purchases shares from a stockholder at less than par, not knowing that the shares have not been paid for in full, is he liable to the corporation for the balance of their par value? . define _call_ and _assessment_. . may an assessment be made before a call? . may an assessment be made on stock paid for at par? . define and give an example of _watered stock_. . upon what authority may the capital stock of a corporation be increased or decreased? . what is a _stock dividend_? . how many kinds of stock are there? . define preferred stock, and distinguish it from common stock. . do preferred stockholders have any advantage over common stockholders when the affairs of the corporation are wound up, and its assets distributed? . how may dividends be paid? . may a stockholder force the corporation to pay a dividend? . when, if at all, are dividends debts of the corporation? . are certificates of stock negotiable instruments? . distinguish certificates of stock from regular negotiable instruments. . how are transfers of stock made by the corporation? . what, if any, is the individual liability of a stockholder for the debts of the company? . what ownership, if any, does a stockholder have in the property of the corporation? . can a corporation transact business without the aid of officers and agents? . how are the officers of a corporation appointed? . what are the usual officers of a corporation? . what are the duties of the president of a corporation? . may the officers of a corporation ever act without the express authority of the board of directors? . what is the proper corporate signature to a contract? . what is the proper corporate signature to a negotiable instrument? . can a corporation legally sign a contract without using its seal? . define _ultra vires_. . give an example of an _ultra vires act_. . are third persons deemed to have notice of the powers and limitations of a corporation. . does a corporation have any rights outside the state of its creator? . what kind of corporations, if any, are authorized by the united states constitution to transact business in any state? . what are the general provisions of the states regulating foreign corporations? . explain the meaning of the term _doing business_ as applied to foreign corporations. . is a corporation liable for its torts and crimes. . how, if at all, can a corporation be punished? . what is meant by _dissolution of a corporation_? . how can a corporation be dissolved? . can a corporation be dissolved by consent of its members? negotiable instruments . name some of the most common forms of negotiable instruments. . what is a _negotiable instrument_? . what advantages do negotiable instruments have over money for commercial uses? . define _negotiability_. . are all promissory notes negotiable instruments? . what words are necessary to make an instrument negotiable? . may an instrument be negotiable without containing the words _or order_, or _or bearer_? . what kind of negotiable instrument, if any, can be transferred without indorsement? . define _assignment_. . can negotiable instruments be assigned? . distinguish assignability from negotiability. . what is meant by the _law merchant_? . how do we happen to recognize the rules of the law merchant? . when was the law merchant first recognized in england? . to what classes of negotiable instruments were the rules of the law merchant originally applied? . to what classes of negotiable instruments are the rules of the law merchant now applied? . define _promissory note_. . name the parties to a promissory note. . give the essential features of a promissory note. . must a promissory note be dated? . distinguish drafts and bills of exchange. . give the names of the parties to a bill of exchange. . how is a bill of exchange accepted? . what is a _check_? . how does a check differ from a bill of exchange? . are days of grace allowed in the payment of checks? . what is certification of a check? . what effect does certification of a check by the payee have upon the maker? . are bonds negotiable instruments? . what are _registered bonds_? . what are _coupon bonds_? . what are _trust deeds_? . what are _collateral notes_? . are collateral notes negotiable? . by whom are collateral notes commonly used? . what is a _cognovit note_? . how does a cognovit note differ from an ordinary note? . define _certificate of deposit_. . how does a certificate of deposit differ from a check? . is a bank liable upon its certificates of deposit? . give the requisites of a negotiable instrument. . does every negotiable instrument require a payee? . may a negotiable instrument be signed by mark? . is an "i. o. u." a negotiable instrument? . name the necessary parties to a negotiable instrument. . how does a second indorser differ from a first indorser? . what is the liability of a drawer of a bill of exchange? . distinguish _foreign bills of exchange_ and _inland bills of exchange_. . what kinds of bills of exchange must be protested? . distinguish between _drawee_ and _acceptor_. . what is the liability of an acceptor? . how may a bill of exchange be accepted? . what is a qualified acceptance? . in case of a qualified acceptance, if the acceptor fails to pay the draft at maturity is the drawer liable? . what is the liability of a maker of a promissory note? . if a note is made payable at a bank, and is not presented at the bank at maturity, is the maker discharged? . define _indorsement_. . define _blank indorsement_. . what is the difference as to transferability between a note payable to bearer and one indorsed in blank? . define _allonge_. . define _indorsement_ in full. . distinguish between the liability of one who indorses in blank and one who indorses in full. . if a note indorsed in blank, is subsequently indorsed in full, can it be transferred by delivery without the indorsement of the indorsee in full? . define and explain indorsement without recourse. . what is the liability, if any, of an indorser in full? . does an indorsement for collection destroy the negotiability of a note? . what is the purpose of an indorsement for collection? . give an example of an anomalous indorser. . what is the difference between an anomalous indorser and an indorser outside the chain of title. . in most jurisdictions what is the liability of an anomalous indorser? . in general, what is the liability of an indorser? . define _indorser_. . what are the warranties of an indorser? . are the warranties of an indorser express or implied? . define _forgery_. . does forgery render a negotiable instrument void or voidable? . distinguish between forgery and material alteration. . if a note is materially altered by a stranger is it void? . define _fraud_. . distinguish fraud and duress. . are fraud and duress good defenses as against a _bonâ fide_ holder. . if a forged note is lost or stolen can it be collected? . if a note procured through fraud is lost or stolen can it be collected by an innocent holder? . define _real defense_ to a negotiable instrument. . what is meant by _personal defense_? . enumerate the real defenses to a negotiable instrument. . enumerate the personal defenses to a negotiable instrument. . define _consideration_. . must consideration be stated in a negotiable instrument? . what kind of drafts must be presented for acceptance? . how are drafts presented for acceptance? . what must a holder do if a draft is dishonored? . define _protest_. . when must negotiable instruments be paid? . what are days of grace? . do most jurisdictions recognize days of grace at the present time? . define _innocent purchaser for value without notice_. . define _bonâ fide holder_. . define _holder in due course_. . distinguish _bonâ fide_ holder and assignee of a negotiable instrument. . can a person be a _bonâ fide_ holder of a note who purchases it after it is due? . for what purpose must a negotiable instrument be presented for payment? . can indorsers of a negotiable instrument be held if the note is not presented for payment? . how is a negotiable instrument presented for payment? . explain notice of dishonor. . what is the necessity of giving notice of dishonor? . how is notice of dishonor given? . what is a certificate of protest? [illustration: office of president, american school of correspondence, chicago, ill.] commercial law part iii banking, loans, money and credits = .banks defined and classified.= a bank may be defined to be an institution authorized to receive money for deposit, to make loans, and to issue its promissory notes payable to bearer. a bank may have any one, or all of the above enumerated powers. some banks have powers in addition to those above enumerated. in the absence of prohibiting statute, any person may operate a private bank. the states generally have statutes authorizing the creation and regulation of banks. at the present time, most banks are incorporated companies. as to the source of their existence, banks may be said to be _national_ and _state_. national banks are organized under united states statutes regulating their creation and existence. national banks are discussed more at length under a separate section. all banks other than national are created under state laws, and are called state banks. as to their nature, banks are generally divided into three kinds, _banks of deposit_, _banks of circulation_ and _banks of discount_. banks authorized to receive money for safe keeping are banks of deposit. banks authorized to purchase commercial paper by charging interest in advance are banks of discount. banks authorized to issue their own promissory notes payable to bearer, and actually issuing such notes, are banks of circulation. a single bank may be a bank of discount, of circulation, and of deposit, or it may be a bank of discount, of circulation or of deposit. the ordinary savings bank is a common example of a bank of deposit. a national bank issuing its notes is a common example of a bank of circulation. a national bank usually purchases notes for less than their face value, or makes loans upon notes deducting its interest in advance, making it also a bank of discount. = . functions and powers of banks.= at the present time most banks are incorporated companies. their authority to exist is given them by the state. their powers are limited by the provisions of their charter. this question is discussed at length in the section on _corporations_. a bank cannot engage in business outside the provisions of its charter. incorporated banks are permitted to pass by-laws by which their functions may the more readily be carried out, and by which the duties of their agents are restricted or defined. reasonable by-laws, if brought to the notice of third persons, also well recognized customs and usages, bind third persons in their dealing with banks. ordinarily, banks have the power to borrow money, but do not have the power to deal in real estate. national banks have no power to loan money on real estate, but they are permitted to take real estate mortgages to prevent losses on loans already made. a bank may also purchase real estate sufficient for the construction of a banking building. banks have the power to collect their own paper, and to act as agents for persons and banks in collecting their paper. the ordinary functions and powers of banks are discussed under separate sections. = . deposits.= the primary function of a bank is to receive money from third persons and to loan money to third persons. money received from third persons is money received on deposit. banks cannot be compelled to receive money for deposit from anyone. they are permitted to exercise their discretion and reject such deposits as they choose. the ordinary method of making deposits is by delivery of currency consisting of gold, silver, copper, and nickel coin, bank notes and checks to an agent of the bank. the agent authorized to receive deposits is usually called the _receiving teller_. deposits are usually entered by the receiving teller in the customer's pass book. in commercial banks, deposits are ordinarily withdrawn by check, without presenting the pass book. savings banks ordinarily do not permit their customers to use checks, but require them to present their pass books when drawing money. the amount withdrawn is entered in the pass book, and the balance brought down. when money is deposited generally, the bank has the right to mingle it with its own funds. it then becomes the debtor of the depositor in the amount of the deposit. if a fund is deposited with a bank for a special purpose, and the bank is so notified, or if papers, such as securities, bonds and certificates of stock are deposited for safe keeping only, they are known as _special deposits_ and are not mingled with the general funds. subject to the reasonable rules of the bank, a general deposit is subject to withdrawal at the will of the depositor. = . checks.= a check is a written order upon a bank for the payment of a specified sum of money payable upon demand. commercial banks generally do a checking business. some banks, such as savings banks, do not permit depositors to draw checks against their deposits. savings banks not doing a checking business, usually require their depositors to present their pass books when drawing money. even though written orders are given to third persons, the pass book must be presented by the third person to enable him to obtain the money on the order. in case of banks which do a checking business, the depositor is permitted to draw checks in any amount, payable to any person. the bank must honor these checks so long as the maker's deposit is sufficient to pay them, and the person presenting them is properly identified. upon payment of a check, the bank keeps it and deducts the amount from the maker's deposit. these paid checks, or vouchers, are usually returned by the bank to the customer, every thirty days, with a statement of his account. the customer then examines these checks and compares them with his books, and the bank's balance with his balance, for the purpose of discovering errors. a check is payable on demand and should be presented for payment within a reasonable time after receipt. if the receiver lives in the same place as the maker, the check should be presented during the business hours of that day. if the receiver resides in a distant place, the check should be presented as soon as possible under the circumstances. as long as the bank has funds of the maker, it must honor his checks. if the bank has some funds of the maker, but not sufficient to pay the check presented, it should refuse to pay anything thereon. if the bank refuses to honor a check when the maker has sufficient funds to meet it, the bank is liable at the suit of the depositor, for any damages suffered. receiving a check does not of itself extinguish the debt. the taker of the check may present it for payment, and if payment is refused by the bank, and the maker is notified promptly, the taker may sue the maker on the check, or on the debt for which the check was given. certified checks are discussed under the section on _negotiable instruments_. = . loans and credits.= one of the primary functions of banks is to make loans. different kinds of banks are authorized to make different kinds of loans. savings banks generally are authorized to make loans on real estate. national banks are not permitted to loan on real estate. banks ordinarily are permitted to discount notes. by discounting promissory notes is meant purchasing them at a sum less than their face value, partially, at least, on the credit of the seller. banks are not permitted to discount notes at usurious rates of interest. banks are restricted by their corporate charters as to the nature of the loans they can make. _credit_ is the term applied to a present benefit obtained for an agreement to do something in the future. a person's credit depends largely upon his business reputation and assets. companies called mercantile agencies are organized for the sole purpose of furnishing credit information. these companies publish books giving the trade records and estimated assets of business men in the various cities and towns of the different states. these books are sold to wholesalers, or to anyone desiring credit information. companies also employ men to obtain and furnish special reports on people's assets and business reputation. the bulk of business is done on credit. compared with the total amount of business transacted, a small amount is done for cash. credit is an important part of a business man's capital. = . rights and obligations of banks in case of forged, lost, or stolen checks.= forgery or material alteration of a negotiable instrument renders it void. banks are authorized by depositors drawing checks to pay valid checks, but not forged ones. ordinarily, a bank must stand the loss if it pays a forged check. the only exception is in case the depositor has so carelessly drawn the check that it can be forged without the bank being able to discover the forgery by the exercise of due care. most jurisdictions also hold that a depositor must examine his returned checks within a reasonable time after their return by the bank. if a forgery is not reported within a reasonable time after the return of the check by the bank, the check is presumed to be genuine, and the depositor cannot thereafter complain. where a check is payable to bearer, or payable to order, and indorsed in blank by the payee, making it payable to bearer, and is lost or stolen, an innocent party purchasing it from the finder or thief gets good title to it. such paper circulates like money without further indorsement. a bank in paying such a check to a _bona fide_ holder who takes it from a thief or finder without notice of its having been lost or stolen, is not liable to the maker for the loss. [illustration: department of records, american school of correspondence] = . national banks.= the constitution of the united states does not expressly give congress the power to create national banks but it gives congress the power to collect taxes, duties and imports, to borrow and coin money and to make all loans necessary to carry into execution the powers expressly given. to carry into effect the powers given relating to money, congress is deemed to have the power to create national banks. congress has passed laws under which national banks may be organized by associations consisting of not less than five natural persons who are required to sign and file articles with the comptroller of currency at washington, d. c., which articles shall specify the name of the proposed bank, its place of operation, its capital, the names and residences of its shareholders, and the number of shares held by each. national banks may be organized with a capital of not less than twenty-five thousand dollars ($ , . ) in cities whose population does not exceed three thousand, and with a capital of not less than fifty thousand dollars ($ , . ) in places whose population does not exceed six thousand inhabitants, and with a capital of one hundred thousand dollars ($ , . ) in places whose population does not exceed fifty thousand inhabitants, and with a capital of not less than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars ($ , . ) in places exceeding fifty thousand inhabitants. before commencing business, national banks are required to transfer and deliver to the treasurer of the united states, united states registered bonds, in amount not less than thirty thousand dollars ($ , . ), and not less than one third the paid-in capital stock. upon making such a deposit of bonds, the comptroller of currency is authorized to issue to the bank, notes of the bank in different denominations, equal to % of the market value of the bonds deposited. these are the only circulating notes national banks are authorized to use. the comptroller of currency is authorized to replace worn notes or returned notes, proof of the destruction of which is furnished. national banks in the seventeen largest cities of the united states are required to keep on hand, money equal to % of their circulating notes and deposits. national banks of all other places are required to keep on hand, money equal to % of their circulating notes and deposits. national banks are not permitted to make loans on real estate or on their own stock, except to protect loans already made. in case of insolvency of a national bank, the stockholders are liable in an amount equal to the par value of their stock, in addition to their liability to pay the par value of their stock subscriptions. the shareholders having legal title to the stock at the time of insolvency of the bank are the ones liable for the additional liability. national banks may charge the rate of interest authorized by statute of the state where the bank is located. if unlawful interest, called _usury_, is charged, the bank forfeits the entire interest. if the usurious interest has been paid by the borrower, double the amount of the usury may be recovered from the bank by the borrower. national banks are authorized to buy drafts and notes, to discount commercial paper, to borrow and loan money, to deal in government bonds, to loan money on collateral, but not to guarantee or indorse commercial paper, except in the transaction of their legitimate business. they are permitted to discount or purchase bills and notes, but not to charge more than the legal rate of interest, even though the paper is purchased. they may charge reasonable rates for exchange in addition to interest. = . savings bank and trust companies.= all banks other than national are organized under state laws, and are known as _state banks_. the most common kinds of state banks are savings banks and trust companies. savings banks ordinarily receive money for safe keeping, acknowledging receipt by entering deposits in a pass book which the depositor presents upon making deposits, and upon withdrawal of funds. upon drawing funds, the amount is deducted from the balance shown in the pass book and the balance brought down. savings banks ordinarily do not permit depositors to draw checks against their accounts. they are required to present their pass books in person, or to give them to an agent or payee designated in a written order to be presented in withdrawing deposits. if pass books are lost, savings banks are not obliged to pay deposits unless indemnified against loss by the depositor. savings banks are permitted to make loans on real estate. trust companies usually have all the power of savings banks with the added power to act in trust capacities as trustees of estates and for bond holders, as executors, etc. they usually do a checking business for the accommodation of their depositors. = . clearing houses.= a clearing house is an association of banks of a certain locality, usually of a city, organized for the convenience of its members in making settlements with each other. as a matter of practice, holders of checks do not personally present them for payment at the banks on which they are drawn, but deposit them with the bank with which they do business. these banks collect them from the banks on which they are drawn. each day, a city bank has deposited with it a large number of checks drawn on other banks of the same city. it would involve much labor to present these checks for payment on the banks on which they are drawn, and secure currency or checks therefor. for convenience, banks organize clearing houses for the purpose of making daily exchanges, with each other, of checks. if _bank a_ has deposited with it $ , . of checks on _bank b_, and _bank b_ has deposited with it $ , . of checks on _bank a_, the agents of the two banks meet at the clearing house, and exchange checks and _bank a_ pays _bank b_ the difference between the total amount of checks exchanged, or $ . . if the membership of the association consists of twenty-five banks, the principle is the same, the members exchange checks and pay each other the difference in amount. clearing houses have rules by which members are required to return checks not properly drawn, over-drafts, forged paper, etc. within a certain time to the paying bank, or be precluded from raising objections to the clearing house balance. = . money.= ordinarily the term, _money_, is used to designate any medium accepted by a seller from a purchaser in the sale of property. it is the thing that passes current among business men in their dealings with each other. bank notes, checks, gold and silver, nickel and copper coin, as well as united states certificates, are money. money is sometimes used to designate legal tender. _legal tender_ is the medium of exchange which creditors are obliged by law to accept in payment of debts. united states notes, except for duties and interest on public debts, and gold certificates are legal tender. gold coin and silver dollars are legal tender. subsidiary silver coin, or half dollars, quarters and dimes, in amount not exceeding ten dollars are legal tender. nickels and pennies are legal tender in amount not exceeding twenty-five cents. silver certificates and national bank notes are not legal tender. = . discount.= _discount_ is money paid in advance for the use of money. it is interest paid in advance. one of the primary functions of banks is to discount negotiable paper. the states generally have laws fixing the legal and maximum rates of interest. if banks or individuals charge interest in excess of these rules, they subject themselves to the fixed penalties. in connection with usury laws, some confusion has arisen as to what constitutes a purchase and what constitutes a discount. a person is permitted to make contracts and make as large a profit as possible, if no fraud is used. if the contract involves the purchase of a negotiable instrument, as distinguished from a loan of money, he may make as large a profit as he is able. if _x_ desires to borrow $ . of _y_ and _y_ gives him the money and takes _x_'s promissory note, _y_ can deduct only the lawful rate of interest. if, however, _x_ holds _z's_ promissory note indorsed in blank, or payable to bearer, _y_ may purchase the note from _x_ for any price he is able, and if he makes half the face value of it by the transaction, it is regarded as a sale, and not as a loan. this transaction does not come within the usury laws. a bank, however, by the weight of authority is not permitted to make purchases of notes in this sense. the purchase above described, if made by a bank, would be regarded as usurious. banks may purchase notes if so authorized by their charter, but may not charge more than the lawful rate of interest as profit. = . exchange.= _exchange_ is the term applied to methods of cancelling debts and credits between persons of different places. if _x_, in cleveland, owes _y_, in new york, $ . , and _z_, in new york, owes _x_, in cleveland, $ . , it is cheaper and safer for _x_ to send _y_ an order on _z_ for $ . than to send legal tender from cleveland to new york. this transaction is called _exchange_. if made between persons of the same country, it is called _domestic_ exchange; if between persons of different countries, it is called _foreign_ exchange. banks of one city keep deposits in other cities for the purpose of selling drafts thereon to customers. = . interest.= _interest_ is the money paid for the use of money. most states have statutes fixing the rate of interest in transactions where no rate is specified, and fixing the highest rate that may be agreed upon. the following are the rates of interest in the different states: states. where no rate is highest rate that may agreed upon. be agreed upon. alabama % % alaska % % arizona % any rate arkansas % % california % any rate colorado % any rate connecticut % % delaware % % district of columbia % % florida % % georgia % % idaho % % illinois % % indiana % % iowa % % kansas % % kentucky % % louisiana % % maine % any rate maryland % % massachusetts % any rate michigan % % minnesota % % mississippi % % missouri % % montana % any rate nebraska % % nevada % any rate new hampshire % % new jersey % % new mexico % % new york % % north carolina % % north dakota % % ohio % % oklahoma % % oregon % % pennsylvania % any rate rhode island % any rate south carolina % % south dakota % % tennessee % % texas % % utah % % vermont % % virginia % % washington % % west virginia % % wisconsin % % wyoming % % = . usury.= _usury_ is the term applied to interest charged in excess of the rate allowed by law. the states differ in the rate fixed by statute as the legal rate. the most common penalty fixed by statute of the different states, is forfeiture of all interest. insurance _ . insurance defined._ _insurance_ is the name applied to a contract, by the terms of which one party, in consideration of a certain sum of money, agrees to protect another to a certain specified degree against injuries or losses arising from certain perils. the kinds of insurance are almost as numerous as the kinds of perils to which persons or property may be subjected. the nature of insurance contracts are such that legislatures of the states have the power to define what classes of persons may engage in the insurance business. some states provide by statute that only incorporated companies shall transact the business of writing insurance policies, and that these companies shall be subject to stringent state supervision and inspection. states have the right to stipulate upon what terms foreign insurance companies shall have the right to transact business within their borders, and may exclude them from transacting business if they refuse to comply with such provisions. the united states constitution provides that interstate commerce shall be under the control of united states congress. the supreme court of the united states has decided that insurance business is not interstate commerce. therefore the states may determine upon what terms insurance companies may transact business within their territory. unincorporated companies as well as individuals may engage in the business of writing insurance, if it is not provided otherwise by statute. = . nature of insurance contract.= an insurance policy is a contract requiring competent parties, mutuality, consideration and all the elements necessary to make any kind of a contract. an insurance contract is peculiar in that it binds the insurer to pay damages for losses or injuries arising out of uncertain perils or hazards. it is in the nature of a gambling transaction. a large number of persons pool a portion of their assets, in order to pay losses of a certain character likely to befall only a small portion of the persons entering into the pool. for example, if ten thousand persons pay one dollar each to establish a common fund to protect the members against losses from fire, they do so under the belief and expectation that but few of the number ever will sustain loss from the peril of fire. an insurance contract is so closely akin to a gambling contract that persons are not permitted to take insurance on property, or upon the lives of persons, unless they have an individual interest, which they should have a purpose or interest in protecting outside of a mere disposition to wager. this interest is called _insurable interest_ and is discussed under a separate section. it is true that many kinds of life insurance policies protect against death, and that death is an event certain to occur to the insured, but the real purpose of the policy is to give protection against the uncertainty of the time of death. the uncertainty of the thing sought to be protected against is as great in life insurance as in any kind of insurance. = . parties to insurance contracts.= primarily there are only two parties to an insurance contract, the party to be paid for the loss, in case the event insured against occurs, who is called the _insured_, and the party, who for a consideration agrees to pay an amount certain, or to be determined upon the happening of the uncertain event. this party is called the _insurer_ or _underwriter_. in many insurance contracts, a third party is interested. for example, _a_ may insure his life in _b co._, for the benefit of his wife, _c_. _c_ may have nothing to do with the contract except being named as beneficiary thereunder. she pays nothing for this benefit. it is a contract made for her benefit. after she has been made beneficiary, _a_ cannot change beneficiaries without the consent of _c_. in case of _c's_ death, _a_ may voluntarily name another beneficiary. if _a_ is indebted to _b_, and _b_, considering _a_ insolvent, desires to secure the debt by taking out a policy of insurance on _a's_ life in the _c_ company, he cannot take out such a policy without the consent of _a_. while a third person may be interested in an insurance contract, or his consent may be necessary before the contract can be made, there are primarily only two parties to the contract, the _insured_ and the _insurer_. = . kinds of insurance.= probably the first kind of insurance written was marine. the next kind was fire; this was followed by life insurance, and this in turn, by the many varieties of modern insurance covering almost all kinds of hazards imaginable. the following kinds of insurance are in common use: marine, fire, life, accident, tornado, graveyard, fraternal, fidelity, boiler, credit, guaranty title, plate glass, mutual benefit, employer's liability, hail, hurricane and health. no attempt is here made to discuss all the different kinds of insurance. an endeavor is made to discuss some of the fundamental legal principles connected with the most common kinds of insurance. these principles apply to all kinds of insurance. = . insurable interest.= courts refuse to recognize the validity of insurance contracts, unless the party taking the insurance has a pecuniary interest, present or reasonably expected, in the life or property insured. such an interest is known in law as an _insurable interest_. insurable interest cannot be exactly defined. it depends upon the circumstances surrounding each particular case. some things have been decided by the courts to constitute an insurable interest. cases are continually arising, however, which present new features which must be decided upon their merits. insurable interest can only be described, it cannot exactly be defined. it is sometimes said to be a money or pecuniary interest possessed, or reasonably expected, by the party entering into the insurance contract. a father may insure the life of his child, of his wife, or his servant under contract for a period of service. a party cannot, however, insure the life of a person with whom he is in no way connected by close blood relationship, or upon whom he does not depend for present or future support. such a contract is regarded as a mere wager, which a sound public policy refuses to enforce, or even to recognize as valid. a person may insure a growing crop, and the life of animals owned by him. a mortgagee, mortgager or pledgee of property may insure the property. a creditor may insure the life of his debtor; a person may insure his property against robbery. in fact a person may insure the life of a person or any property belonging to him or to another, the loss of which will cause him a pecuniary loss. in case of life insurance policies, if there is an insurable interest at the time the insurance contract is made, the policy is valid, even though the insurable interest afterwards ceases. any relationship, either by blood or marriage, close enough to make it of pecuniary advantage to the party taking the insurance to have the insured continue to live, is regarded sufficient to constitute an insurable interest. it has been held that a brother has no insurable interest in the life of his brother, nor a granddaughter in the life of her grandfather, nor a son-in-law in the life of his mother-in-law. a parent, however, has an insurable interest in the life of his child or wife; or a granddaughter in the life of her grandfather if she depends upon him for her support. a person may insure his own life or property in favor of any one else. the question of insurable interest arises only in case one endeavors to insure the life of another, or the property of another in which one has only a slight interest. = . forms of insurance contract.= the states generally provide by statute, that to be enforceable, contracts to answer for the debt, default or obligation of another, shall be in writing (see _statute of frauds_, chapter on contracts.) the courts have decided that an insurance contract is not a contract to answer for the debt, default or obligation of another, but a direct contract by which the insurance company for a consideration agrees to pay its own debt in case of loss on the part of the insured. insurance contracts need not be in writing. oral contracts of insurance like other simple contracts are binding upon the parties thereto. for example, _a_, representing an insurance company, meets _b_, and agrees orally to insure _b's_ house from twelve o'clock of a certain day, and accepts the premium for one year's insurance. the house burns the evening of the day after the insurance is to become effective. _a's_ insurance company is bound by the oral contract of insurance. if _a_ is not permitted by his company to make oral contracts of insurance, and _a_ so tells _b_, or if _b_ knows of this fact, the contract is not binding, since _a_ acts without authority. if _a_ meets _b_ on monday, and orally agrees to procure for him a written policy of insurance on _b's_ house to take effect from monday noon, and _b's_ house burns tuesday morning, _a_ having failed to procure the written policy of insurance for _b_, the insurance company is not liable to _b_ for the loss. _b_ had a contract with _a_ by the terms of which _a_ promised to procure a policy of insurance for _b_. _a_ did not orally promise to insure the house for _b_. _b_ has an action for damages against _a_, but not an action on a contract of insurance against the company. insurance agents are often authorized to issue receipts, called _binders_, to the effect that insurance has been contracted by a party from a certain time. these binders constitute sufficient evidence to enable the insured to enforce his contract of insurance. agents are sometimes authorized to enter a memorandum in their books of insurance, called _entries_ in their binding books. these constitute sufficient evidence of the formation of a contract between insurer and insured, to enable the latter to enforce his contract in case of loss. = . warranties and representations in insurance contracts.= the term, _warranty_ is commonly used in connection with contracts of sales of personal property, where it is used to designate a collateral contract connected with the principal contract in question. in connection with insurance contracts, it means a statement or stipulation which, by reference or express term, is itself made a part of the contract of insurance. the principal distinction between a warranty in connection with sale of personal property, and in connection with contracts of insurance, is that in the former case, breach of warranty usually does not discharge the contract, but simply gives rise to an action for damages, while in case of contracts of insurance, breach of warranty discharges the contract itself. life insurance companies generally require formal written application by which the applicant for insurance is required to answer questions. these questions and answers are made a part of the policy or contract of insurance, either by reference, or by incorporation, and become warranties. if they are not true, the policy may be avoided by reason thereof. to constitute a warranty, a stipulation must be made a part of the insurance contract either by direct reference, or by express incorporation therein. to constitute a warranty, the contract of insurance must contain a stipulation that the statement or assertion in question is a warranty. if a warranty proves false, no matter if innocently made, the contract is discharged thereby. warranties are strictly construed. much injustice has been done by reason of warranties in insurance contracts. some states provide by statute, that neither the application for insurance, nor the rules and regulations of the company shall be considered as warranties unless expressly incorporated in the policy as warranties. a distinction is made between representations and warranties. a representation is a statement made as an inducement to enter into a contract of insurance. it is regarded as one of the preliminaries to the contract of insurance and not as a vital part of the contract itself. if a representation proves not to be true in some particular, the contract of insurance is not discharged by reason thereof. to constitute a ground for avoiding a contract, a representation must be false, fraudulent, and material to the contract. it is sometimes said that a warranty is a stipulation in the contract of insurance itself, and must be complied with whether true or not, while a representation is usually given verbally, or in a separate document, and need only be substantially complied with. in case of doubt as to whether statements are representations or warranties, courts incline toward treating them as representations. answers to questions were made in an application for insurance followed by the statement, "the above are true and fair answers to the foregoing questions in which there are no misrepresentations or suppression of facts, and i acknowledge and agree that the above statement shall form the basis of the agreement with the insurance company." the policy of insurance did not state that these questions were incorporated as warranties. in a suit on the policy, the court held the answers to be representations and not warranties. = . life, term, and tontine policies.= _life policy_ is the term applied to a contract of insurance payable only at the death of the insured. _term_ or _endowment policy_ is the term applied to insurance payable at the death of the insured, or at the expiration of a certain term or period of years, if the insured survives such period. the term, _tontine_ insurance, is the name applied to insurance paid out of the proceeds of unpaid policies during a certain period or term. if the insured survives the term, and pays the premium he benefits by receiving a share of the proceeds received from the policies of those members who do not survive the period, or who let their policies lapse for other reasons. the term is taken from the name of the person who devised the plan. it is sometimes called _cumulative dividend_ insurance. it is written in many different forms. = . marine insurance.= contracts of insurance against injuries to a ship or cargo at sea are called _marine_ insurance contracts. this is the oldest form of insurance. in securing insurance of this character, the insured impliedly warrants that the vessel is seaworthy. this is the only kind of insurance in which there is an implied warranty. the term _general average_ is used in connection with marine insurance. if it becomes necessary to sacrifice a part of a cargo to save the balance, the owners of part of the cargo saved, together with the owners of the boat, must contribute _pro rata_ toward the loss of the party whose goods are sacrificed. that is, all owners of cargo and boat must stand the loss in proportion to their holdings. the one whose goods are sacrificed is placed in no better or worse situation than the others. = . standard policies.= some states require by statute, that insurance companies issue policies, the terms of which are fixed by statute. this gives the insured the benefit of a uniform policy, the terms of which are easily comprehended, and which are the same in all cases. these statutory policies are known as standard policies. = . suicide clauses.= contracts of insurance frequently contain the stipulation that the contract shall be void if the insured suicides. this stipulation is enforceable if it can be proven that the insured suicided while sane. it is generally held to be unenforceable if the insured suicided while insane. an insurance company may stipulate that the contract shall be void if the insured suicides when either sane or insane. such a stipulation is enforceable. the ordinary insurance contract, however, which contains any suicide clause provides against suicide only, and does not contain any stipulation as to the sanity of the insured at the time he commits the act. it is usually held that the burden is upon the insurance company to prove that the insured was sane at the time he committed suicide. if a policy contains no suicide clause whatever, suicide will not avoid the policy unless it is proven that the purpose of the suicide was to defraud the insurance company. if it is proven that one takes out a policy of insurance with the intent to commit suicide, the policy is not enforceable in case of suicide. = . fidelity and casuality insurance.= contracts of insurance by which the honesty and faithfulness of agents and employees are insured are termed fidelity insurance contracts. _a_, a bank, employs _b_ as clerk. _a_ requires _b_ to furnish a bond, by the terms of which the signers of the bond agree to pay _a_ for any losses arising from _b's_ dishonesty or carelessness. this bond or contract is known as a _fidelity insurance_ contract. insurance contracts providing against losses arising out of accidents to property are termed _casualty insurance_. losses by theft or burglary, or from steam boiler explosions are common examples. = . reinsurance.= one insurance company may insure its own liability upon policies issued, by entering into separate contracts covering the same risks with other insurance companies. for example, _a_, an insurance company, insures _b's_ factory for $ , . . _a_ may in turn insure its liability to _b_, by entering into a contract with _c_, another insurance company, by the terms of which _c_ agrees to insure _a_ against loss upon _a's_ contract with _b_. _a_ is not permitted to bind _c_ by a greater responsibility than _a_ is bound to _b_. in case _b's_ factory is burned, in the absence of express stipulation to the contrary, _a_ may recover from _c_ regardless of whether he has first paid _b_. even though _a_ is insolvent and unable to pay _b_, this is no defense to _c_ on his contract with _a_. _c_ must pay _a_ regardless of the insolvency of _a_. in case _b_ has a fire and _a_ settles with him for $ . , _c_ is liable to _a_ for only $ . . that is _c's_ liability to _a_ is the same as _a's_ liability to _b_, unless by the terms of the re-insurance, _c_ assumes only a portion of _a's_ liability to _b_. in this event _c_ must pay _a_ the pro rata share of _a's_ liability to _b_. _b_ in no event has any rights against _c_. _b's_ contract is with _a_, and the fact that _a_ has entered into a contract with _c_ involving the same subject matter, gives _b_ no rights against _c_. = . assignment of insurance policies.= by _assignment_, is meant a sale or transfer of some intangible interest by one person to another for a valuable consideration. in case of insurance contracts other than life, no real assignment can be made. the person whose property is insured is the one who really benefits by the contracts of insurance. before loss, an attempted assignment of the insurance policy amounts merely to a designation of the person to whom the insurance is to be paid. in case of loss, the original party insured still holds the property insured or the insurable interest, and any breach of the insurance contract on his part avoids the contract. a policy of insurance cannot be assigned without the consent of the insurance company. if an attempt is made to transfer an insurance policy other than life, before loss, without the transfer of the property itself, the transaction does not amount to an assignment, but amounts to a contract between the seller and buyer, by which the latter is entitled to receive the proceeds of the policy if any ever arises. so far as the insurance company is concerned, acts of the seller after the attempted assignment are as complete a defense as before. if the property insured as well as the insurance policy is transferred to another, with consent of the insurance company, this is not an assignment, but amounts to a new contract between the insurance company and the purchaser. after a loss has occurred, the right of the insured against the insurance company amounts to a debt, which may be assigned the same as an ordinary debt. in case of life insurance, if a third party has been named as beneficiary, he is supposed to have such an interest in the policy that a change of beneficiary cannot be made nor can an assignment of the policy be made without his consent. in case the proceeds of a life insurance policy are payable to the insured himself, or to his estate, the policy may be assigned at the will of the insured. if the policy provides against assignment, it cannot be assigned. otherwise, it may be transferred as collateral security, or sold outright at the will of the insured. = . open and valued policies, and other insurance.= policies or contracts of insurance are said to be _valued_ or _open_, depending upon whether the amount to be paid in case of loss is agreed upon in advance. life insurance policies are examples of valued policies. the insurance company agrees to pay a certain fixed amount in case of death of the insured, or at a certain time. fire insurance policies usually are open policies. the insurance company agrees to pay the amount the insured loses by fire which destroys or injures certain specified property. the fact that a limit is placed upon the liability of the insurance company does not make the policy valued. if, however, the insurance company agrees to pay a certain fixed amount in case of loss by fire the policy is valued. a person may take as much insurance upon his life as he pleases, so long as he reveals the facts to the companies with whom he contracts. in case of insuring property, the insurer is not permitted to recover in excess of the value of the property, regardless of the amount of insurance he carries. if an insurer takes out a policy of insurance upon property already insured, he must not conceal this fact from the subsequent insurer. the second policy will provide for payment, in case of loss in excess of the first insurer's liability, but not in excess of the value of the property. or it will provide that in case of loss each policy shall share the loss in the proportion that the amounts of the policies bear to the loss. suretyship = . nature of contracts to answer for the debt of another.= in the transaction of business, many contracts are made to answer for the debt or obligation of another, as distinguished from the direct debt or obligation of the person entering into the contract. these contracts are made for the purpose of adding security to the original contract, or for the purpose of enabling the original obligor to obtain credit. the general term applied to contracts to answer for the debts of another is _suretyship_. the arrangement by which one party agrees to answer for the debt or obligation of another is a contract. this kind of a contract requires all the elements of any contract. there must be a meeting of the minds of the contracting parties, consideration, etc. if _a_ purchases goods from _b_, agreeing to pay $ . for them, _a's_ obligation to pay _b_ $ . is a primary one arising out of a simple contract. if _a_ purchases goods from _b_ agreeing to pay $ . therefor, and _c_, as a part of the same transaction, makes a promise in writing to _b_, to pay the $ . if _a_ does not pay, _c's_ obligation is one of suretyship. he is known in law as a _guarantor_. his contract is to pay the debt of another. he has agreed to pay _a's_ debt if _a_ fails to pay it. any contract by which a person agrees to answer for the debt or default of another, no matter what its form may be, or by what technical name it may be known, is a contract of suretyship. = . kinds of suretyship contracts and names of parties thereto.= the term, _suretyship_, is the general or descriptive term applied to all contracts by which one person agrees to answer for the debt or obligation of another. it may be in the form of a contract of a surety, a contract of a guarantor, or a contract of an indorser. there are at least three parties to all suretyship contracts; the party whose debt is secured, called the _principal_; the one to whom the debt is owed, called the _creditor_; and the one promising to pay the debt of another, called the _promisor_. for example, if _a_, orders one thousand dollars' worth of merchandise from _b_, and, as a part of the transaction, _c_ promises to pay the amount for _a_, when due, if _a_ fails to pay it, the transaction is one of suretyship in which _a_ is _principal_, _b_, _creditor_, and _c_, _promisor_. a promisor may be a surety, a guarantor, or an indorser of a negotiable instrument. whether a promisor is a surety, a guarantor, or an indorser depends upon the particular kind of a contract made. in any event it is a promise to pay the debt of another. but the conditions and terms of the agreement may make it that of a _surety_, a _guarantor_ or an _indorser_. the distinguishing features of the different kinds of promisors are discussed under separate sections. = . contract of a surety.= a surety is one who unconditionally promises to answer for the debt or obligation of another. for example, _a_ gives the following promissory note to _b_: chicago, ill., jan. , . thirty days after date i promise to pay to the order of _b_--five hundred dollars. signed--_a_. signed--_c_, surety. this note constitutes an obligation of suretyship in which _b_ is creditor, _a_ is principal, and _c_ is surety. _c's_ obligation is the same as that of _a_, his principal. by signing this note as surety, _c_ binds himself to pay the note when due. he does not bind himself to pay on condition that _a_ does not, or cannot pay the note when due, but binds himself to pay the note when due. his obligation is the same as the obligation of _a_. his obligation is not conditioned upon _a's_ failure or inability to pay. when the note is due, _b_, the creditor, may bring suit against _c_, the surety, disregarding the principal, _a_. _b_ may bring suit against _c_, the surety, without making any demand of payment of _a_, or without receiving _a's_ refusal to pay. if the note is signed by _c_ as above, without using the word, _surety_ after his name, it may be shown by oral testimony that _c_ signed as surety, if such is the fact. a surety may sign any kind of a contract as surety for another. in this event, his obligation is to do the same thing that his principal contracts to do. if the obligation of the one signing as security is conditioned upon anything, it is not the obligation of a surety, but that of a guarantor, no matter by what term designated in the contract. it has been said by some writers that a surety promises to pay the debt of another if the other does not, and a guarantor promises to pay the debt of another if the other cannot. this definition is not correct and is not supported by the cases. this definition applies only to guarantors, since it is a conditional promise to pay the debt or obligation of another. a surety's obligation is absolute, and not conditional in any way upon the failure or inability of the principal debtor to pay. in commercial practice, the contract of a surety is infrequently used as compared with the obligation of a guarantor. [illustration: a -foot wide machine tool bay in the claremont, n. h., factories of the sullivan machinery company] = . contract of a guarantor.= anyone who agrees to answer for the debt, default, or obligation of another upon condition that the other does not or cannot pay the debt, or upon any condition whatever, is a guarantor. for example, _a_ gives _b_ the following promissory note: cleveland, ohio, nov. , . sixty days after date, i promise to pay _b_, or order, one hundred dollars. signed--_a_. the back of the note contains the following statement: i guarantee the payment of this note when due. signed--_c_. the contract of _c_ is that of a guarantor. if _a_ fails to pay the note when due, and _b_ demands payment of _a_, and promptly notifies _c_ of _a's_ failure to pay, _c_ is liable. technically, _c_ need not be notified, but it is good business practice to give him notice. _c's_ liability depends upon _a's_ failure to pay the note when due. _c's_ liability is a conditional one as distinguished from the liability of a surety, which is absolute. contracts of guaranty are commonly used in commercial affairs. in obtaining credit, contracts of guaranty are common. they may be used apart from promissory notes or negotiable instruments. any kind of an obligation or contract of another may be guaranteed. a retail dry goods merchant desires to purchase $ , . worth of goods from _b_, a wholesaler. _b_ does not know _a_, but knows _c_, a friend of _a_. _b_ offers to sell _a_ the goods on credit, on condition that _a_ furnish him a letter of guaranty signed by _c_. _a_ furnishes _b_ the following guaranty, signed by _c_: mr. b., new york city. on condition that you sell _a_ an order of goods which he may select, i hereby guarantee the payment of the amount thereof, not to exceed $ , . in amount. signed _c_. by this contract, _c_ binds himself to pay _b_ the purchase price of the goods, not exceeding $ , . , if _a_ fails to pay same. contracts of guaranty are of many kinds. they are frequently given to secure contracts of personal service, for the construction of buildings, for mercantile transactions, or in fact for any kind of business transaction. they are contracts, and must contain all the elements of a simple contract, such as consideration, mutuality, competent parties, etc. if a contract of guaranty is given at the time the original contract is made, and is a part of the same transaction, the consideration which supports the original contract supports the contract of guaranty. otherwise, the contract of guaranty must be supported by a separate consideration. = . contract of an indorser.= one form of suretyship obligation, or obligations, to answer for the debt or default of another, is that of an indorser to a negotiable instrument. the contract of an indorser differs from that of a guarantor, and from that of a surety. for example, _a_ gives the following promissory note to _b_: chicago, ill., jan. , . ninety days after date i promise to pay to the order of _b_, one thousand dollars. signed _a_. _b_ indorses the note by writing his name across the back thereof, and delivers it to _c_ for $ . . the contract now existing between _a_, _b_, and _c_, is one of suretyship, in which _a_ is principal, _b_ creditor, and _c_ promisor. a promisor in suretyship may be either a surety, a guarantor or an indorser. in this particular case the obligation of _c_, the promisor, is that of an indorser. the principal obligation of _c_ to _b_ is that if the note is presented for payment to _a_ at maturity, and upon _a's_ failure to pay, due notice is promptly given to _c_, _c_ will be responsible to _b_ for the amount due on the note. an indorser is also liable upon certain implied warranties in addition to his primary liability as above set forth. in the language of the courts, the technical liability of an indorser is as follows: "i hereby agree by the acceptance by you of title of this paper, and the value you confer upon me in exchange, to pay you, or any of your successors in title, the amount of this instrument, providing you or any of your successors in title present this note to the maker on the date of maturity, and notify me without delay of his failure or refusal to pay. and i warrant that all the parties had capacity and authority to sign, and that the obligation is binding upon each of them. and i will respond to the obligation created by these warranties even though you do not demand payment of the maker at maturity, or notify me of default." an indorser is usually defined to be one who writes his name on a negotiable instrument for the purpose of passing title. by so doing, he agrees to answer for the debt of another. that is, he agrees conditionally to pay the obligation of the maker of the instrument if the maker does not, and if the indorser is promptly notified of the failure of the maker to pay. _irregular indorser_ is the term applied to persons who sign negotiable instruments outside the chain of title. for example, if _a_ is the maker of a promissory note and _b_ is the payee, and _c_ places his signature on the back of the note, _c_ is an irregular indorser. he signs outside the chain of title. _b_ is the one who must first place his signature on the back of the note to transfer title. the courts of the different states have not been in harmony in fixing the liability of an irregular indorser. some make his liability that of a surety, some that of a guarantor, and others that of an indorser. many of the states at the present time have statutes regulating the making and transfer of negotiable instrument. the codes generally fix the liability of an irregular indorser to be that of an indorser. = . consideration to contracts of suretyship.= an agreement to answer for the debt, default, or obligation of another, to be binding, must constitute a contract. it must contain all the elements of a simple contract, including a valuable consideration. a valuable consideration may be defined to be anything of benefit to the one making the promise, or anything of detriment to the one to whom the promise is made. a promise made in return for a promise, usually termed "a promise for a promise," is considered a valuable consideration as well as something of value actually given to the one making the promise. a consideration need not be adequate. it need not be commensurate with the obligation entered into. in the absence of fraud, a consideration of one dollar will support a contract for $ , . as well as an actual consideration of $ , . . in a suretyship contract, three persons are concerned; the party owing the original debt, the one to whom the debt is payable, and the one promising to answer for another's debt. by reason of the third party to a suretyship contract, the question of consideration is sometimes confusing. if the obligation of the promisor, or the party agreeing to answer for the debt of another, is made at the same time, and is a part of the same transaction as the contract between the original debtor and his creditor, the consideration supporting the contract between the original debtor and the creditor supports the contract of the promisor. for example, if _a_ endeavors to purchase $ . worth of goods of _b_, and _b_ refuses to make the sale unless _c_ signs a contract of guaranty for the value of the goods, and _c_ signs such a contract of guaranty which is delivered to _b_ before the goods are delivered, the consideration, namely the receipt of $ . worth of goods delivered to _a_ which supports _a's_ promise to _b_, will support _c's_ promise to _b_ to pay the $ . , if _a_ fails to pay it. if the suretyship contract is entered into after the original obligation is incurred, and independently of it, there must be a separate and independent consideration to support it. for example, if _a_ purchases $ . worth of goods from _b_, agreeing to pay for them in thirty days, and after fifteen days have elapsed after delivery of the goods, _b_, fearing _a_ is insolvent, asks him to furnish a guaranty of _c_, _c_ must receive a valuable consideration to support his contract of guaranty, separate and distinct from the consideration which supports _a's_ obligation to _b_. = . contract of suretyship must be in writing.= about , the english parliament passed a statute known as the statute of frauds. among other things this statute required contracts of suretyship to be in writing to be enforceable. the statute was in part as follows, "no action shall be brought whereby to charge the defendant upon any special promise to answer for the debt, default or miscarriage of another person unless the agreement upon which action shall be brought or some memorandum or note thereof shall be in writing, signed by the party to be charged therewith or some person thereunto by him lawfully authorized." the states of this country generally have re-enacted this statute. an oral contract of suretyship is not void. the parties may voluntarily carry it out if they choose. the law does not make it illegal. the law simply says that it is not enforceable. if an action is brought by a party on an oral contract of suretyship and the other party objects for that reason, the court will not enforce the contract. to satisfy the statute of frauds it is not necessary that the entire contract be in writing, but the substance must be stated, and the writing must be signed by the one promising to answer for the other's obligation. a promise to pay one's own debt is not within the statute of frauds, and need not be in writing to be enforceable. if a promise is made for the primary purpose of benefiting the promisor, even though it takes care of the debt of another, it is regarded as an original promise of the promisor, and need not be in writing. = . general, special, limited and continuing guaranties.= guaranties may be directed to some particular person or firm, or may be addressed to anyone who desires to accept them. an open guaranty, or one addressed to anyone is called a _general_ guaranty. a guaranty addressed to a particular person or firm is called _special_ guaranty. in case of a special guaranty, only the person to whom it is addressed can accept it. anyone can accept a general guaranty. a letter of guaranty addressed, "to whom it may concern," is a general guaranty, while one addressed to "the _a. b._ co.," is a special guaranty. a guaranty limited as to time, either by specifying the date on which it is to expire, or by specifying the number of transactions or the transactions it is to embrace, is a _limited_ guaranty. if no limit of time or of number of transactions is placed therein, it continues until withdrawn by the guarantor. this is called a _continuing_ guaranty. = . notice to guarantors.= a guarantor may be entitled to two kinds of notice. he may be entitled to notice of acceptance of the guaranty, and he may be entitled to notice of default of his principal. the first is called notice of acceptance of a guaranty, the second, notice of default of a guaranty. if a person stipulates in his letter of guaranty that he requires notice of acceptance of his guaranty, the creditor must give him such notice to hold him. without such stipulation he is not, in most jurisdictions, entitled to notice. _a_ addresses the following letter of credit to _b_: cleveland, o., jan. , . mr. b. give a credit at your store to the amount of $ . . i will pay you if he does not. signed--c. the letter of guaranty does not require _b_ to notify _c_ of its acceptance. in the federal courts, the rule requires notice of acceptance of guaranties. it is sound business practice always to notify a creditor of acceptance of a guaranty. if a letter of guaranty contains a stipulation that the guarantor is to receive notice of default of his principal, such notice must be given, or the guarantor will be discharged to the amount of his damage resulting from failure to receive this notice. in case of guaranties involving the payment of a definite amount at a definite time, for example, in case of guaranty of payment of a promissory note, no notice is necessary on the part of the creditor to the guarantor of the failure of the principal to pay. in other cases it may be stated as a general rule that notice should be given the guarantor of default of his principal. it is safe business policy for a creditor to give notice to a guarantor of default of payment on the part of his principal. = . defense of payment.= suretyship obligations are obligations to answer for the debts or default of another. they may be in the form of a contract of a surety, of a guarantor, or of an indorser. certain things constitute suretyship defenses. they apply equally to a surety, a guarantor and an indorser. if a principal debtor pays or settles the debt which another promises to pay, the promisor is thereby discharged. payment by a principal is a complete suretyship defense. for example, _a_ owes _b_ $ . . _c_ in writing promises to pay _a's_ debt when it is due. _a_ pays _b_. _c_ is thereby discharged. = . defense of granting extension of time to principal.= if a creditor enters into a contract by which the principal is given an extension of time, the promisor is released. this does not mean mere delay in enforcing the collection of the principal debt, nor does it mean leniency of a creditor with his debtor. if, however, a creditor makes a contract based upon a valuable consideration, by which the principal debtor is granted an extension of time within which to pay his debt, the promisor is discharged. for example, if _a_ owes _b_ $ , . on march st, and _c_ in writing promises _b_ to pay if _a_ does not, if _b_ does not collect from _a_ on march st, but lets the debt run until march th or indefinitely, _c_ is not thereby discharged. if, however, _b_ in consideration of _a's_ promise to pay him interest at a certain rate after march st, extends the time until april st, _c_ is discharged. to discharge the promisor, the agreement with the principal to extend the time of payment must be based upon a valuable consideration, and must be for a definite time. = . defense of fraud and duress.= fraud practiced by the creditor upon the principal or upon the promisor is a defense to the promisor. for example, if _a_ is indebted to _b_ and _c_ guarantees _a's_ debt, and if _b_ procured the contract with _a_ by fraud, or procured the guaranty from _c_, by fraud, _c_ can avoid the contract of guaranty by reason of the fraud. if the fraud is practiced by the principal upon the promisor, it is no defense to the promisor as against the creditor. for example, if _c_ guarantees _a's_ debt to _b_ and the guaranty is procured through the fraud of _a_ without _b's_ knowledge or consent, the fraud will not avail _c_ as a defense to an action brought by _b_ upon the guaranty. the same is true of duress. for a fuller explanation of fraud and duress see sections on _fraud_ and _duress_ under _contracts_. = . surety cannot compel creditor to sue principal.= unless so provided for by statute, a promisor to a suretyship contract cannot compel a creditor to sue a principal when the debt secured is due, or claim his discharge for failure on the part of the creditor to comply with this request. a few states provide by statute that a promisor may by notice compel a creditor to sue a principal upon a suretyship obligation when due, or be discharged for his failure so to do. = . surety companies.= at the present time, corporations are organized for the purpose of entering into suretyship obligations for profit. bonds of public officials as well as of private individuals, judicial bonds given in appeal of cases at law from one court to a higher court are commonly signed by surety companies. these companies, for an agreed annual consideration called a _premium_, sign as surety these bonds for responsible individuals. sureties were once said to be favorites of the law. this was for the reason that individual sureties signed private, official or judicial bonds as a favor to the principal, ordinarily without receiving any compensation therefore. when a liability arose the surety escaped if possible, since it was not his obligation, but another's which he was called upon to pay. the courts favored him and technical defenses were recognized which were not recognized as a defense by persons primarily liable. in the case of surety companies, however, there is no reason for this favoritism, since the surety engages in the contract for a consideration, and not as a favor to anyone. the tendency of the courts is to hold surety companies strictly to the terms of their contracts. = . subrogation.= by _subrogation_ is meant the substitution of the promisor for the creditor in case the promisor to a suretyship obligation pays his principal's debt. for example, if _a_ signs a guaranty by the terms of which he agrees to pay _b's_ debt to _c_, when the debt is due if _b_ fails to pay it, and _a_ pays it, _a_ is placed in _c's_ position and may collect the debt from _b_. any securities of _b_ that _c_ held for the debt now belong to _a_. if _c_ has a judgment against _b_ for the debt, _a_ is subrogated to the judgment and may himself enforce it. = . indemnity.= the law implies a contract on the part of the principal to a suretyship contract to pay the promisor when the latter pays the suretyship obligation. for example, if _a_ guarantees _b's_ debt to _c_, as soon as _a_ is obliged to pay _c_, and does pay _c_, _a_ may sue _b_ on an implied contract of indemnity for the amount he has paid _c_. = . contribution.= _contribution_ is the term applied to the right of one of two or more co-promisors to a suretyship obligation to secure a _pro rata_ share from his co-promisors of the amount he is obliged to pay the creditor on a suretyship contract. for example, if _a_, _b_ and _c_ guarantee _d's_ debt of $ . to _e_, and when the debt is due, _e_ sues _a_ and collects $ . from him, _a_ can sue _b_ and _c_ for $ . each. if _a_ pays _c_ only $ . he can collect nothing from _b_ and _c_, since this is only his share of the debt. but if _a_ settles the debt with _c_ for $ . , he can recover one third the amount from both _b_ and _c_. _a_ can pay the debt when it is due, without waiting for suit if he so desires, and proceed to collect one third the amount from both _b_ and _c_. personal property = . personal property in general.= personal property is the term applied to property other than real estate. it may be either tangible or intangible. personal property is sometimes divided into _chattels real_ and _chattels personal_. chattels real are interests in real estate not amounting to ownership. real estate mortgages and leases are common examples of chattels real. chattels personal embrace all personal property other than chattels real. every thing subject to ownership not connected with the land is included in the classification of chattels personal. promissory notes, personal apparel, furniture, tools and animals are common examples. chattels personal are of a tangible, or of an intangible nature. they are mere rights, or they are things which may be handled and used. a promissory note, a contract, or a mortgage is a right as distinguished from a thing in possession. these rights are sometimes called _choses in action_, while tangible articles of personal property, such as watches, chairs and horses are called _choses in possession_. the law relating to personal property is discussed at length under the sections on _sales of personal property_, _pledges_, _chattel mortgages_, _carriers_ and _wills_. = . acquisition of title and transfer of personal property.= title to personal property may be acquired in several ways, chief among them being by contract, by possession, by gift, and by operation of law. if _a_ purchases a carriage from _b_, the transaction is a sale of personal property and _a_ is entitled to possession of the carriage by reason of the contract. title to the carriage is given to _a_ by contract. title to some kinds of property is acquired by possession. title to wild animals is acquired by possession. the same is true of fish. title to lost property, except as against the owner, is acquired by possession. title to property is also acquired by voluntary gift on the part of the owner. if _a_ dies possessed of articles of personal property, the property passes to his personal representative to be turned into money to pay _a's_ debt, or to be distributed in the form of money, or without being sold, to _a's_ descendant designated by law. this is known as acquiring personal property by succession, or by operation of law. personal property may also be transferred in specie by will. sales = . sale defined.= a transfer of title of personal property is termed a _sale_. by title is meant ownership. mere possession of personal property does not constitute ownership, neither does right to possession constitute ownership. one may lease personal property, and by means of the lease have the right to possession, while the title or ownership is in another. one may find or borrow personal property, obtaining possession while the title or ownership remains in another. the transfer of the title or ownership of personal property as distinguished from the transfer of mere possession or the right of possession, constitutes the subject of _sales_. a sale may be defined to be a contract by which the title to personal property is transferred for a consideration in money, or money's worth. this transfer of title to personal property may be entirely independent of the transfer of possession. one may make a sale of personal property by which the purchaser takes the title while the possession remains in the seller, or in some third person. when, and under what circumstances the title passes is an important question. a sale of personal property ordinarily gives the purchaser the right to immediate possession of the property. the time the title actually passes to the purchaser does not depend upon the time the property is delivered to the purchaser, but upon the intention of the parties to the contract of sale. a sale is a contract requiring all the elements of a simple contract. there must be a meeting of the minds of the contracting parties, a valuable consideration, competency of parties, etc. (see _elements of a contract_, chapter on contracts.) _ ._ _sale distinguished from a contract to sell._ a sale is a contract by which the title passes to the purchaser at the time the sale is made. a contract to sell is a contract by which the title passes to the purchaser at a future time. a sale is a present transfer of title or ownership to personal property. a contract to sell is an agreement to pass the title or ownership to personal property to another at a future time. the practical distinction is in determining upon whom the loss falls in case the goods are destroyed or injured by fire, or other accident. in case of a sale, title or ownership passes to the purchaser, even though possession remains in the seller. if the goods are lost by fire, without fault of the seller, the purchaser bears the loss. in case of a contract to sell, the title or ownership does not pass to the purchaser until the time for fulfilling the contract has arrived, and until the conditions of the contract are fulfilled. if the goods are lost before the contract is carried out, the loss falls on the seller. for example, _a_, a farmer, sells ten barrels of apples to _b_. _b_ examines the apples, selects the ten barrels, pays _a_ the stipulated price, and says he will call for them the following day. before _b_ calls, the apples are destroyed by fire, without fault of _a_. _b_ must stand the loss. the title or ownership passed to him when the sale was made. if _b_ calls on _a_ and enters into a contract by the terms of which _a_ agrees to deliver at _b's_ residence ten barrels of apples the following day, at an agreed price, and the apples are destroyed by fire before _a_ delivers them, the loss falls on _a_. this is a contract to make a sale, not a sale. title to the apples does not pass to _b_ until they are delivered by _a_, according to the terms of the agreement. parties may agree that title may pass at a certain time, or upon the performance of a certain condition. in this event, title does not pass until the time mentioned arrives, or the condition is fulfilled. in the majority of sales of personal property, the parties do not set forth the terms and conditions fully. in the absence of an express agreement or custom to the contrary, parties are presumed to intend the title or ownership to pass to the purchaser at the time the sale is made. = . sale distinguished from barter.= a sale is an agreement to transfer the title of personal property for a consideration in money, or for something measured by a money standard. an agreement to exchange goods, or an exchange of goods, is a _barter_, and not a sale. the distinction is technical, but serves some useful purposes. if _a_, for a consideration of $ . , purchases a car of cabbage from _b_ in nashville, to be delivered in cleveland, june th, and the car does not arrive, _a_ may go into the nearest market, and purchase a car of cabbage of the same quality, and collect the difference between the market price and contract price from _b_. if _a_ is obliged to pay $ . for the cabbages, he can collect $ . from _b_. if, on the other hand, _a_ agrees to give _b_ a horse for a car of cabbages, no price having been fixed on the horse or on the cabbages, and _b_ fails, and refuses to carry out the contract, _a_ must sue _b_ on the contract, and collect as damages such amounts as he is able to show he lost by reason of _b's_ failure to carry out the contract. salesmen are commonly employed to sell goods. this means to sell for money, and unless they are expressly authorized to barter or exchange goods, attempted exchanges are without authority, and do not bind their principal. = . conditional sales.= the term, _conditional sale_, has come to have a technical meaning. articles of merchandise, such as sewing machines, cream separators and cash registers are commonly sold under a special contract, by which possession is given the purchaser, and the title by express agreement remains in the seller until the entire purchase price is paid. the purpose of this form of contract is to obtain security for the purchase price of the article sold. in the absence of statutory regulations, if the purchaser does not pay the purchase price at the agreed time, the seller may take possession of the property. it is the custom of sellers using this form of contract to require the purchaser to sign a contract stipulating that the purchase price be represented by promissory notes of the purchaser, payable in installments, and that the title is to remain in the seller until the entire purchase price is paid. if the purchaser defaults in any one of his installments, by the terms of the contract all the remaining installments at once become due. this form of contract worked many hardships. purchasers were required to make a substantial payment in advance. if they succeeded in paying practically all the installments, but defaulted in one, the seller could take possession of the property, causing the purchaser to lose all he had paid. this form of contract proved so unconscionable in some of its workings that the legislatures of most states have passed statutes requiring conditional sale contracts to be filed with a public official to be enforceable, and do not permit the seller to take possession of property without repaying the purchaser the amount already paid less the actual damage the property has sustained. this damage usually cannot exceed % of the original selling price of the property. = . sale distinguished from a bailment.= possession of personal property is frequently given another, for the purpose of having work performed on it, to be used by another, to secure a debt, or to be protected or preserved without transfer of title. such a transaction is called a _bailment_. it is discussed more at length under a separate chapter. a bailment does not constitute a sale, in that there is no transfer of title, or ownership of the personal property, possession of which is given to another. for example, _a_ hires the use of a horse and carriage from _b_, a liveryman, for two days. _a_ secures possession of the horse and carriage. he has the right to retain possession of them for two days, and has the right to use them for the purpose hired. he cannot sell them, however, nor can he do anything inconsistent with _b's_ ownership. this transaction is a bailment. = . what may be the subject of a sale.= any article of personal property having a present existence may be sold. it matters not, whether it is a chose in possession, or chose in action. by _chose in possession_ is meant a tangible piece of personal property as distinguished from a mere right. a horse, plow, chair or desk is an example of a chose in possession. a promissory note, a contract or mortgage is an example of _chose in action_. either may be the subject of a sale. the distinction between a sale or present transfer of title to personal property, and a contract to make a sale, must be borne in mind. if _a_ sells his horse to _b_ for $ . , in the absence of any agreement as to delivery the title to the horse passes to _b_ as soon as the contract is made. this transaction is a sale. if _a_ promises to sell his horse to _b_ the second of next month, if _b_ will agree to pay him $ . when the horse is delivered the second of next month, and _b_ so agrees, the contract is not a sale, but a contract to make a sale. articles of personal property, to be made or manufactured, are not the subject of a sale. business men commonly make contracts to sell goods in the future which they do not have in stock, but expect to manufacture, or purchase elsewhere. such contracts are not sales. the title to the goods does not, and cannot pass to the purchaser when the contract is made. they are mere agreements to make sales in the future. they are treated the same as ordinary contracts, not as present sales. if the goods are destroyed before they are completely manufactured, the seller stands the loss, since the title has not passed from him. if a person agrees to sell in the future goods to be manufactured, and fails to deliver the goods specified in the contract, the buyer has the usual remedy. he may purchase the goods in the market nearest the place of delivery at the time of delivery, and sue the seller for the difference between the contract price and the market price. the buyer is not obliged actually to purchase the goods to enable him to bring suit against the seller. he may bring a suit against the seller for the difference between the price he contracted to pay for the goods and the market price at the time and place of delivery. crops to be grown are not the subject of present sale. crops planted, but not matured, may be sold. title to the crops at the present stage of their existence passes to the buyer. = . statute of frauds, or contracts of sale which must be in writing.= one section of the english statute of frauds applied to sales. this statute was passed in england about . the seventeenth section, which applies to sales of personal property, is as follows: and be it further enacted by aforesaid authority, that from and after the four and twentieth day of june, no contract for the sale of any goods, wares or merchandise for the price of ten pounds sterling, or upwards, shall be allowed to be good except the buyer shall accept part of the goods so sold, and actually receive the same, or give something in earnest to bind the bargain, or in part payment, or that some note or memorandum in writing of said bargain be made, and signed by the parties to be charged by such contract, or their agent thereunto lawfully authorized. the states, generally, have a statute modelled after this section of the english statute, and providing that contracts for the sale of personal property, the price of which exceeds fifty dollars, shall not be enforceable unless a memorandum of the contract be made and signed, except there be a delivery of at least a part of the property, or except something be paid by the purchaser to bind the bargain. some of the states have no statute of frauds containing a provision relating to the price of the goods. in many of the states, the valuation fixed by statute exceeds fifty dollars. where the statute exists, contracts which are not in writing are not void. they are merely voidable. the parties may voluntarily carry them out if they so choose. the law does not prohibit them, but if one party refuses to recognize the contract, the other party cannot enforce it by an action at law. a portion of the fourth section of the english statute of frauds provides that contracts, by their terms not to be performed within one year from the time of the making thereof, must be in writing to be enforceable. the states, generally, have a similar statutory provision. this statute applies to sale of personalty as well as to real estate. if the contract can be performed within one year, it is not within the provisions of the statute. = . delivery of personal property sold.= in the absence of any express agreement to the contrary, there is an implied agreement, on the part of the seller, to deliver personal property sold, when the purchaser pays the price. by delivery is meant placing the personal property at the disposal of the purchaser. it must be borne in mind that in a contract of sale of personal property, title or ownership passes to the purchaser at the time the sale is made, even though possession remains in the seller. this gives the seller the right to obtain possession of the goods upon paying the price. if the goods are destroyed without fault of the seller after the sale, and before delivery, the loss falls on the buyer. if _a_ offers to sell _b_ his wagon for $ . , and _b_ accepts, nothing being said about delivery, the title to the wagon passes at once to _b_. if it is destroyed without fault of _a_, the loss falls on _b_, even though _b_ has not paid the price or received possession of the wagon. _b_ is entitled to possession of the wagon when he pays _a_ $ . . _a_ is not obliged to give _b_ possession of the wagon, even though _b_ is the owner of it, until he receives the price, $ . . in the above example there is no stipulation about delivery. the parties make a sale, agreeing upon the price and thing to be sold, nothing being said about the delivery. the law in such cases impliedly requires the seller to deliver when the price is paid, and not until then. in many contracts, however, the time, place, and manner of delivery are stipulated in the contract. sometimes usage and custom supply these things when the parties do not expressly so stipulate. when a time, place, or manner of delivery by the seller is stipulated in a contract, either by express agreement, or by usage and custom, title to the property usually does not pass to the buyer until the time has elapsed, and until the seller has delivered according to the manner stipulated, or has tendered delivery. a stipulation in a contract of sale that the seller shall deliver at a particular time or place, or in a particular manner is deemed to show an intention on the part of the parties that title shall not pass until the seller has so delivered. if the seller refuses to accept the goods or pay the price, an offer to deliver by the seller is equivalent to a delivery. the seller, on the other hand, is not obliged to give up possession of the goods until he receives the agreed price. if the seller agrees to give the buyer credit, this rule is not applicable. if no time of delivery is mentioned, delivery must be made within a reasonable time, depending upon the circumstances connected with the particular contract. when delivery is to be made in installments, failure to pay for one installment ordinarily entitles the seller to refuse to deliver the balance, or if the seller refuses, or fails to deliver the first installment, the buyer may refuse to accept subsequent installments. the buyer is not obliged to accept anything except the article ordered. if more or less is tendered him, he is not bound to accept. if he accepts more or less, he is bound to pay the reasonable value of the same. if no place of delivery is mentioned, the presumption is that delivery is to be made at the place where the property is located at the time the sale is made. the mere fact that delivery is to be made in the future does not prevent title from passing at the time the sale is made. there must be something in addition to the fact of future delivery to delay the passing of the title until the time of delivery. if _a_ purchases an automobile from _b_, making the selection, delivery to be made the following thursday, title passes at once to _a_. if the automobile is destroyed by fire, or injured without _b's_ fault, the loss falls on _a_. if, however, _b_ is to do anything with the property, or is himself to make delivery, this shows an intention on the part of the parties that title is not to pass until delivery is made. = . when title passes.= the question of when title to personal property, the subject of a sale, passes to the purchaser is important in determining upon whom the loss falls, if the property is destroyed, stolen, lost or levied upon by judgment of attaching creditors. title or ownership to property sold does not depend upon possession. personal property may be sold, and title or ownership may pass to the purchaser, while the seller still has possession, as well as the right to possession. the general rule is that title or ownership of personal property sold passes to the purchaser at the time the parties to the sale intend it to pass. if their intention is expressed, it governs, and the question is settled. in the great majority of sales, however, the parties do not expressly determine when title shall pass and this must be presumed from the circumstances. for example, if _a_ offers _b_ $ . for a certain harness which is selected, and _a_ accepts the offer, nothing being said about the delivery or payment, or when title or ownership shall pass to _a_, the law presumes it to be the intention of the parties that title shall pass when _b_ accepts _a's_ offer--and from that time, the harness belongs to _a_. _b_, however, has the right to retain possession of the harness until _a_ pays him the purchase price of $ . . when _a_ offers _b_ the $ . at the place where the harness was located when the sale was made, _b_ must give _a_ possession. _b_ is not obliged to deliver at any other place. if, however, _a_ offers _b_ $ . for _b's_ harness, which is determined upon and selected, _b_ to deliver same at _a's_ place of business the following evening, this shows an intention on the part of the parties that the title is not to pass to _a_ until _b_ delivers the property to _a_ the following evening. a tender or offer by _b_ to deliver the property to _a_ the following evening, passes title and places the property at _a's_ risk. if, however, delivery is to be made merely in the future, not requiring the seller to take the property to any particular place, the fact that delivery is to be made in the future does not prevent title passing to the purchaser at once. if _a_ purchases _b's_ harness for $ . , the harness having been selected, delivery to be made in five days, title passes at once to _a_. [illustration: cook county building, chicago, ill. holabird & roche, architects, chicago, ill. building completed in . cost, $ , , . length, ft.; width, ft.; height, ft. eleven stories, with sub-basement connecting with tunnel system and electric railroad service underlying business portions of city. walls, gray vermont granite; spandrel sections, green terra-cotta. the corinthian columns on the exterior are ft. long and ft. in diameter. general interior plan is that of letter e. building contains its own electric-light and steam-heating plants. city hall, shown at left, is practically a duplicate of the old county building replaced by this new structure, and will itself be replaced by a similar building. photographed june, , months after excavation was started.] _a_ is obliged to offer _b_ $ . at the expiration of five days, and _b_ must give possession to _a_. if the article sold is to be prepared for delivery, or any work is to be performed on it by the seller before delivery, title does not pass until this work has been completed. if the goods are to be weighed or measured to determine the quantity or price, title does not pass to the purchaser until this has been done. probably, if the goods are determined upon, and the entire mass is sold and delivered to the seller who is to weigh or measure it to determine the quantity only, the title passes upon delivery. if the contract, sale provides that goods are to be delivered to a carrier, delivery to the carrier passes title to the purchaser. delivery to the carrier must be made so as to protect the interests and rights of the purchaser. the goods must be properly packed, and the proper kind of a bill of lading taken. if goods are sold upon approval, or upon trial, they must be approved or tried before title passes. if a portion of goods in mass or bulk is sold and the mass or bulk contains different qualities, the portion purchased must be separated and selected before the title passes. if a portion of goods in bulk is purchased, the bulk being of the same quality, separation of the portion sold is sufficient to pass title. some courts even hold that separation is not necessary to pass title, if the bulk is of the same quality. title to goods to be manufactured does not pass until the goods are manufactured and tendered. = . when payment of price must be made.= parties to a contract of sale may expressly agree upon a time of payment of the article sold. in this event, the time agreed upon prevails. in the absence of an agreed time of payment, the law presumes that payment is to be made at the time and place of delivery. the seller may retain possession of goods sold, until he receives payment of the agreed price, even though title has passed to the purchaser. if the sale is made on credit, the purchaser cannot be required to pay until the time for which he was to be given credit has expired. in the absence of an agreed time for payment, payment must be made at the time of delivery of the goods. if the seller reserves any control over the goods, title remains in him. for example, if he is to ship the goods to another, and if he takes the bill of lading in his own name instead of the name of the purchaser, title remains in the seller. = . effect of fraud upon a contract of sale.= fraud has been defined by a prominent author to be "a false representation of facts, made with a knowledge of its falsehood, or recklessly, without belief in its truth, with the intention that it should be acted upon by the complaining party, and actually inducing him to act upon it." if a party innocently makes a representation, even though it proves to be false, the representation is not fraudulent unless the party making the representation should have known, or could easily have discovered, its falsity. if _a_ endeavors to buy goods from _b_, and tells _b_ that he is worth $ , . , when in fact he is worth nothing, and _b_ relying upon _a's_ statement, sells the goods to _a_, _b_ is entitled to rescind the contract by reason of the fraud. he may sue and recover the price of the goods, or he may retake the goods from the buyer. (see _rescission_ under chapter on contracts.) if the goods have been sold to a third party who purchases for value and without notice of the fraud, the original seller cannot take the goods from him. a sale procured through fraud is voidable, and not void. the seller may avoid the sale if he chooses. that is, title vests in the purchaser subject to being retaken by the seller, if he chooses, when he discovers the fraud. if a third person innocently purchases the goods before the original seller rescinds the contract, the last purchaser's title cannot be disturbed. the seller may permit the purchaser to keep the goods, and bring an action for damages based upon deceit. one kind of a sale frequently induced by fraud is void, absolutely, and not voidable. if a person fraudulently induces another to believe that the purchaser is someone else, and purchases goods under this representation, no title passes from the seller, and he may recover the goods from an innocent purchaser. = . rule of caveat emptor, or let the purchaser beware.= one who purchases chattel property from anyone except the grower or manufacturer of the article in question, which is inspected by the purchaser, or may be inspected by the purchaser, purchases at his own risk. if the article turns out to be of poor quality or worthless, in the absence of fraud or warranty, the purchaser has no redress. this rule is called the _rule of caveat emptor_, (let the purchaser beware). its purpose is to decrease litigation, and make men rely upon their own judgment. if a purchaser is unwilling to rely upon his own judgment, he must exact a warranty from the seller. in the absence of warranty or fraud, the purchaser must abide by the result of his purchase. if the article purchased has defects apparent to anyone upon inspection, the purchaser cannot complain. he should have seen the defects. if the defects are not apparent upon inspection, he must bear the loss. he should have required the seller to warrant the goods against latent defects, if he was unwilling to purchase on his own judgment. in all sales by an owner, however, title to the goods is impliedly warranted, and in case of sale of goods grown or manufactured by the seller, there is an implied warranty against latent defects. in all other sales, the purchaser buys at his own risk, and has no redress against the seller unless the latter warrants the goods. warranties are discussed in the following section. = . express warranty.= contracts of sale often contain collateral agreements called _warranties_. warranties are either express or implied. an _express_ warranty is an agreement in addition to the ordinary agreement to transfer a certain chattel for a consideration in money or money's worth, by which the seller agrees that the thing sold is of a certain quality, or is in a certain condition. an express warranty is not an essential part of a contract of sale. that is, a sale containing no collateral promise to the effect that certain conditions or terms of the contract are warranted, may be made. if the contract of sale does not expressly state that the seller warrants certain terms or conditions, or does not contain words of similar meaning, the contract of sale is without express warranty. an express warranty, by express agreement, adds something to the contract of sale. this additional agreement, called an express warranty, enables the purchaser to recover damages from the seller for failure of the warranty, when he might not be able to have any redress if the sale were made without warranty. express warranties may be made orally, or in writing. if the seller, in making the sale expressly states that he warrants certain terms of the contract, or uses language which means that he intends to warrant certain terms of the contract, there is an express warranty. _a_ sells a wagon to _b_ and warrants that it will carry , lbs. of stone. if it fails to carry this amount, _b_ can recover from _a_ on this warranty. if _a_ had sold the wagon to _b_ without this stipulation, and it had failed to carry , lbs. of stone, _b_ would have no redress. a seller is permitted to express his opinion relative to the quality of the article which is the subject of the sale without making a warranty. this is called "trade talk," or "puffing." a seller is permitted to express his own opinion relative to the quality of goods he is endeavoring to sell, without having his words amount to a warranty, but if he makes positive assertions, his words will be construed as a warranty. such expressions as, _this is first class_, and _this is equal to any on the market_, are usually regarded as "trade talk" and not as warranties. = . implied warranties.= some contracts of sale carry with them _implied warranties_. these warranties are common to all sales of the particular class in question. implied warranties cannot be said to be in addition to the contract of sale, but are impliedly a part of the contract. the most common implied warranties are warranties of title, warranties of wholesomeness in sale of food, warranties in sales by sample, warranties of merchantability, and warranties of fitness of goods to be used for a particular purpose. = . implied warranty of title.= in every sale, in the absence of an express stipulation to the contrary, there is an implied warranty of title. this means that the ownership is in the seller, and that he has the right to sell the property, and that it is free from incumbrances. this, of course, does not prevent the seller from disposing of just what interest he has in the property if he expressly so contracts. for example, if _a_ negotiates the sale of a horse to _b_, and tells _b_ that he has purchased the horse a few days previously from _c_, and does not know whether there are any incumbrances on the horse, but will sell what interest he has, and if _b_ purchases on these representations, he cannot sue _a_ on an implied warranty of title if it subsequently develops that _d_ has a mortgage on the horse. if, however, _a_ offers to sell _b_ a horse, saying nothing about the matter of title, and _b_ purchases the horse, and later is obliged to yield possession to _c_, who holds a mortgage, _b_ may recover the purchase price of the horse from _a_ upon an implied warranty. formerly, a distinction was drawn between sales of property in the possession of the seller, and of property in the possession of some third person, making the seller not liable upon an implied warranty in the latter case. at present, however, the tendency of the courts is to make the seller liable upon an implied warranty, regardless of whether the property is in his possession, or in the possession of a third person at the time the sale is made. when a person sells chattel property, not as owner, but in an official capacity, or as an agent, there is no implied warranty of title. common examples of this principle are sales by a pledgee, mortgagee, sheriff, guardian, administrator, assignee, or trustee in bankruptcy. = . implied warranty of wholesomeness in sales of food.= in the sale of articles to be used for food, there is an implied warranty that the article sold is wholesome and fit for the purpose which it is sold. this rule is based upon the principle of public policy, that it is the duty of the state to protect life and health. _a_, a grocer, sold canned tomatoes to _b_, for use in _b's_ family. the tomatoes contained poisonous adulteration. _a_ was held liable in damages to _b_, for breach of implied warranty of wholesomeness of the article sold for food. some jurisdictions hold that this rule does not apply in sales of food, where the article is not sold to a consumer. that is, if the article is sold by a wholesaler to a jobber, or to a retailer, the warranty does not apply, but where it is sold by anyone to a consumer, it does apply. = . implied warranty in sales by sample.= when goods are not inspected by the buyer, but a sample is furnished him, from which he purchases, there is an implied warranty that the goods sold correspond with the sample. the fact that a sample of goods is exhibited by the seller and examined by a purchaser does not necessarily mean that a resulting sale is one by sample. the sample exhibited may not be claimed by the seller to represent in every respect the article to be furnished, or the purchaser may not desire to purchase according to the sample. to constitute a sale by sample, a sample must be exhibited by the seller upon a representation that it is a sample of the goods to be sold. if exhibited for any other purpose, the resulting sale will not be a sale by sample. the purchaser must make the purchase relying upon the sample, and with the understanding that the goods are to correspond with the sample. if the goods are present at the time the sale is made, and the purchaser inspects them, or has the opportunity to inspect them, in the absence of fraud, he cannot claim that the sale is by sample. = . implied warranty of merchantability.= where goods which have not been inspected or selected by the purchaser are ordered to be delivered in the future, there is an implied warranty that they are of average quality. this is called an _implied warranty of merchantability_. _a_ ordered a "buckeye" mowing machine of _b_, to be delivered the following week. _b_ delivered a machine which would not cut grass. _b_ was held liable to _a_ upon an implied warranty of merchantability. if _a_ had inspected the machine, and made the purchase upon his own selection, in the absence of fraud on the part of _b_, _a_ would have no redress. but, in case the article is purchased without opportunity for inspection, to be manufactured or delivered in the future, there is an implied warranty that the article is an average one of its kind. = . implied warranty of fitness of goods for the purpose for which they are to be used.= when a purchaser makes known to a seller the purpose for which the article is to be used, and the seller is himself the manufacturer or grower of the article, there is an implied warranty that the article is fit for the purpose for which it is to be used. this applies only to articles to be manufactured or delivered in the future, and not to articles inspected and selected by the purchaser. if _a_ goes to _b_, a manufacturer, and tells him he desires to have manufactured an instrument to hold liquid soap suitable for the use of workingmen in shops, and _b_ agrees to manufacture and sell such an article, there is an implied warranty on _b's_ part that the soap-holders will be suitable for the purpose for which they are to be used. if, however, _a_ furnishes _b_ plans for the manufacture of a liquid soap-holder, and orders a quantity, there is no implied warranty on _b's_ part that the articles will be fit for the purpose intended. _a_ in this case relied upon his own judgment. _b's_ contract is fulfilled when he furnishes the article according to _a's_ plans. the work must, of course, be done in a workmanlike manner, free from defects of material and workmanship. this implied warranty of fitness of an article for the purpose for which it is to be used, applies only where the purchaser reveals the purpose of the article to the grower or manufacturer who agrees to furnish such an article. it does not apply to articles furnished according to furnished plans, or to articles selected by the purchaser. = . remedies for breach of warranty.= in case of breach of warranty, the purchaser may bring a suit for damages against the seller, or he may promptly return the goods, and recover the purchase price. the latter remedy is called _rescission_. in case of breach of an express warranty, in most jurisdictions the remedy is the same as for breach of implied warranty. in some states, however, the seller is not permitted to return the goods and sue for the purchase price, but is restricted to an action for damages. = . seller's lien, delivery to carriers, and stoppage in transitu.= in case of sales for cash, the seller has the right to retain possession of the goods until he receives payment of the purchase price. if the goods are sold on credit, or if the seller agrees to deliver at a certain place, the seller must comply with his contract. but if the purchaser becomes insolvent before the goods are delivered, the seller may retain possession until paid. he is not obliged to deliver goods on credit, even though such is his contract, if the purchaser subsequently becomes insolvent. the right of a seller to retain possession of goods until the purchase price is paid is called _the seller's lien_. this lien is lost by the seller's delivery of the goods to the purchaser. if the possession is obtained by fraud on the part of the purchaser, it is regarded as no possession, and the seller may still enforce his lien by retaking possession of the property. where goods are ordered by a person in one town from a person in another town, necessitating delivery by a carrier, in the absence of express stipulation to the contrary, title to the goods passes to the vendee upon delivery of same by the vendor to the carrier. if _a_, in cleveland, orders a car of pine lumber from _b_, in milwaukee, for $ , . , title to the lumber passes to _a_ when _b_ delivers the lumber to the transportation company in milwaukee. if _a_ orders the lumber delivered f. o. b. cleveland, title does not pass to _a_ until the lumber reaches cleveland. if _a_ orders the lumber, agreeing to pay $ , . for the same, "freight allowed" to cleveland, title passes to _a_ when _b_ delivers the lumber to the transportation company in milwaukee, even though _b_ must allow _a_ to deduct the freight from the purchase price of $ , . . this question is important in determining upon whom the loss falls in case of damage of the goods while in the hands of the transportation company. the one who has the title at the time the loss occurs must stand the loss. such party may recover from the transportation company. this question is discussed in the chapter on carriers. while a seller loses his lien by delivery of possession of the goods to the purchaser, if the goods are delivered to a carrier and the purchaser becomes insolvent before the carrier delivers the goods to him the seller may stop delivery of the goods, and retake possession even though title has passed to the purchaser. the seller's lien in this event revives. by _insolvency_ is meant inability to pay one's debts. the right of a seller to stop a carrier from delivering goods to a vendee, in case of insolvency of the latter, is called _stoppage in transitu_. this question is also discussed in the chapter on carriers. a seller may enforce his lien by keeping the goods, and suing the purchaser for damages, or by selling the goods at private or public sale, with notice to the purchaser of the time and place of sale, and then by suing the original purchaser for the difference between the amount he receives for the goods on resale, and the amount the original purchaser agreed to pay. the seller may, of course, hold the goods and demand the original purchase price of the purchaser, and not yield possession until he receives the purchase price. = . remedies of seller.= the seller's lien described in the previous section is one of the remedies of a seller. if the purchaser refuses to accept the goods, the seller may keep or resell the goods, and if he receives less than the original purchaser agreed to pay, he may recover the difference as damages from the original purchaser. for example, _a_ agreed to manufacture and deliver a specially constructed cash register for _b_ for $ . . when it was completed, _b_ refused to accept same. _a_ sold it for $ . , the fair market price, and recovered from _b_, $ . as damages for _b's_ breach of contract. if the purchaser accepts the goods and fails to pay for them when due, the seller may sue and recover the entire purchase price, together with damages and expenses which are necessarily connected therewith. = . remedies of purchaser.= where title has not passed to the purchaser, if the seller refuses or fails to deliver goods according to the contract of sale, the purchaser may go into the market at the time and place of delivery and purchase goods, and if obliged to pay more than the original contract price, he may recover the excess from the seller. for example, suppose _a_ purchases five hundred pounds of lard of _b_ for $ . , _b_ agreeing to deliver the lard october th, at chicago. if _b_ fails to deliver the lard in chicago, october th, _a_ may purchase lard of the same quality in chicago, and if he is obliged to pay $ . for the same, he may recover $ . damages from _b_. if there is no market at the place of delivery mentioned in the contract, the purchaser may purchase at the nearest market. if the purchaser makes the purchase for a particular purpose, which he makes known to the seller at the time the sale is made, and he is specially damaged by reason of the failure of the seller to keep his contract, special damages may be recovered for losses arising by reason of the special circumstances. if title to the goods has passed to the purchaser, in case the seller refuses to deliver them, the purchaser may bring an action of _replevin_ to recover their possession. replevin is a possessory action. (see chapter on courts and legal remedies.) quiz questions banking, loans, money, and credits . define a _bank_. . classify banks. . how are national banks created? . what are state banks? . define and distinguish _banks of discount_, _banks of cirrculation_, and _banks of deposit_. . are most banks incorporated companies? . what are the powers of an incorporated bank? . do banks have the power to deal in real estate? . do banks have the power to collect commercial paper? . what are _bank deposits_? . is a bank required to receive deposits from any one who tenders them? . what name is applied to the person authorized to receive bank deposits? . do savings banks permit their customers to draw their deposits by check? . distinguish _general_ and _special deposits_. . define _check_. . what kinds of banks do a checking business? . by what process may a depositor withdraw money from a savings bank? . define a _paid voucher_. . when do banks return checks to their customers? . when are checks payable? . what should a customer do with paid checks when they are received from his bank? . when must checks be presented for payment? . is a bank required to pay the checks of its depositors? . if a bank refuses to pay a check what, if anything, must the holder do to hold the maker liable? . are national banks permitted to make loans on real estate? . are savings banks permitted to make loans on real estate? . define _credit_. . by what means is credit information furnished? . distinguish _credit_ and _capital_. . are forged negotiable instruments void or voidable? . is a bank liable for paying forged checks, or must the depositor whose signature is forged stand the loss? . if a forgery is not reported by a depositor until six months after it was committed, who must stand the loss? . is a bank liable if it pays a _bona fide_ holder a check payable to bearer? . under what laws are national banks created? . does the united states constitution expressly provide for the creation of national banks? . what united states officer has supervision over national banks? . are national banks furnished with circulating notes? if so, in what amounts? . in case of the bank's insolvency, what is the liability of national bank stockholders? . what rate of interest can national banks charge? . can national banks buy and sell bonds? . what penalty is imposed upon national banks for usury? . define and distinguish _savings banks_ and _trust companies_. . are clearing houses banks? what are the functions of clearing houses? . in what two ways is the term _money_ used? . what is _legal tender_? . are silver certificates legal tender? . define _discount_. . distinguish _discount_ and _purchase of negotiable paper_. . are banks permitted to purchase negotiable paper at a profit in excess of legal rates of interest? . are individuals and business concerns permitted to purchase negotiable paper at a profit in excess of legal rates of interest. . define _exchange_. . distinguish _foreign_ and _domestic exchange_. . define _interest_. . define and give an example of _usury_. . what is the usual penalty for usury? insurance . define _insurance_. . are insurance companies controlled by the legislatures of the states? . may an individual or a partnership enter into insurance contracts? . is insurance business interstate commerce if transacted between citizens of different states? . may one state exclude insurance companies of another state from transacting business within its territory? . does an insurance contract require all the elements of an ordinary contract? . in what way does an insurance contract differ from an ordinary contract? . how many parties are there to an insurance contract? . define _underwriters_. . define _beneficiary_. . name the principal kinds of insurance written at the present time. . define and give an example of _insurable interest_. . must an insurance contract be in writing to be binding? . are insurance contracts within the statute of frauds? . define _binder_. . define _warranty_ as used in an insurance contract. . distinguish warranty as used in insurance contracts from warranty as used in contracts of sale. . define _representation_ as used in connection with insurance contracts. . distinguish _warranty_ and _representations_. . does breach of warranty avoid a contract of insurance? . does breach of representation discharge an insurance contract? . define _life policy_. . define _term policy_. . define _tontine policy_. . define _marine insurance_. . what implied warranty enters into a policy for marine insurance? . define _general average_. . define _standard policy_. . if a policy of insurance contains no stipulation relative to suicide, and the insured takes the policy intending to commit suicide, and does commit suicide, is the policy enforceable? . if an insurance policy contains a suicide clause, and the insured commits suicide while insane, is the policy enforceable? . may an insurance company stipulate against suicide in such a manner as to avoid the policy if the insured suicides when insane? . define and distinguish _fidelity_ and _casualty insurance_. . what is _re-insurance_? . is a company writing a policy of re-insurance liable to the party originally insured? . may a company re-insure at greater risk than it itself has insured? . can a fire insurance policy be assigned before a loss has occurred? . can a fire insurance policy be assigned after a loss has occurred? . can a life insurance policy be assigned at any time? . define and distinguish _open_ and _valued policies_. . define _other insurance_. . what limit, if any, is placed upon the amount of life insurance a person may take? . may a person insure personal property for more than its actual value? . if a person insures his house in three different companies for two-thirds of its value in each company, in case of loss how much an he recover, if anything, on each policy? suretyship . define _suretyship_. . is a suretyship obligation a contract? . what contracts is the term _suretyship_ used to designate? . how many parties are there to a suretyship contract? . define _principal_. . give an example of a suretyship contract. . define _promisor_. . define _creditor_ to a suretyship contract. . give the different technical names that may be applied to a promisor of a suretyship contract depending upon the nature of the liability. . define _surety_. . give an example of a contract of a surety. . is the liability of a surety conditional upon that of his principal. . define _guarantor_. . _a_ promises a creditor of _b_ to pay _b's_ debt if _b_ does not. is _a's_ contract that of a surety or of a guarantor? . in commercial practice what form of suretyship contract is most frequently used, that of a surety or of a guarantor? . define _indorser_. . is an indorser's contract found outside of negotiable instruments? . is an indorser bound by any implied contract? . what are the warranties of an indorser? . is consideration a necessary element of a contract of suretyship? . if a suretyship contract is part of the transaction which it secures must it be supported by a separate consideration? . must any contracts of suretyship be in writing? . is an oral contract of suretyship illegal? . what is meant by the statute of frauds as applied to suretyship contracts? . define _general guaranty_. . define _limited guaranty_. . define _special guaranty_. . define _continuing guaranty_. . what kinds of notice may a guarantor be entitled to? . when, if at all, is a guarantor entitled to notice of default of his principal? . when, if at all, is a guarantor entitled to notice of acceptance of his guaranty by a creditor? . if _a_ is surety for _b_ upon _b's_ debt to _c_ of $ . and _b_ settles his debt with _c_ for $ . , can _c_ hold _a_ for the balance? . if _a_ guarantees _b's_ debt to _c_ of $ . due one year and with interest at %, and _b_ without _a's_ consent reduces the interest to %, is _a_ thereby discharged? . if _a_ guarantees _b's_ debt to _c_ of $ . payable in one year, and _c_ without _a's_ consent extends the time of payment six months upon _b's_ agreement to pay % interest, is _a_ thereby discharged? . is fraud practiced by the principal upon the promisor to a suretyship contract, a defense to the promisor in an action brought by the creditor? . in the absence of special statute can a promisor to a suretyship contract compel by notice a creditor to sue a principal? . are surety companies favorites of the law? . define _subrogation_. . give an example of _subrogation_. . define _indemnity_ as applied to a suretyship contract. . _a_ guarantees _b's_ debt to _c_ of $ . upon a promissory note. _b_ defaults and _a_ pays the debt. _a_ then sues _b_ for $ . upon the promissory note. is this an example of indemnity or subrogation? may _a_ sue _b_ for $ . independently of the promissory note? . define _contribution_. . _a_, _b_, and _c_ guarantee _b's_ debt to _e_ of $ . . _d_ sues _a_ and collects $ . . can _a_ sue _b_ and _c_ for $ . each? personal property . define _personal property_. . classify personal property. . distinguish _chattels real_ from _chattels personal_. . define and give an example of _chose in action_. . define and give an example of _chose in possession_. . how may title to personal property be acquired? . may a person obtain title to personal property by finding it? . how can personal property be transferred? . upon death of the owner, to whom does title to personal property pass? sales . distinguish ownership and possession of personal property. . may title and possession of personal property be in different places? . define _sale_. . how does a sale differ from a contract to sell? . _a_ promises to deliver a car of coal to _b_ the following month in consideration of _b's_ promise to pay _a_ $ . upon delivery of the coal. is the transaction a sale or a contract to sell? . in a contract to sell, if the property is destroyed by fire before the property is delivered, who stands the loss? . distinguish _barter_ from _sale_. . _a_ agrees to deliver to _b_ one hundred bushels of apples for twenty tons of coal at $ . per ton. is the transaction a _sale_ or a _barter_? . define _conditional sale_. . at the present time is a vendor of a conditional sale contract permitted to take possession of the property after % of the purchase price has been paid. . _a_ leaves his automobile at _b's_ shop for repairs. is this transaction a sale? . distinguish _sale_ from _bailment_. . what kinds of personal property may be the subject of a sale? . may personal property to be manufactured be the subject of a present sale? . what is meant by the statute of frauds as applied to sales? . what contracts of sales must be in writing? . when must personal property sold be delivered? . in the absence of any express agreement as to delivery, when and by whom must personal property be delivered? . if a sale is made in which delivery is to be made in the future may title pass to the purchaser at once? . when does title pass to the purchaser in a sale of personal property? . does the fact that delivery is to be made in the future, of itself, prevent title passing to the purchaser at the time the sale is made? . _a_ sells a desk to _b_ for $ . , agreeing to revarnish the desk and deliver same to _b_ the following saturday. when does title to the desk pass to _b_? . what, if anything, does intention of the parties have to do with the passing of title to the purchaser? . in the absence of an express agreement when must the purchase price be paid? . is the seller permitted to retain possession of the property sold until he receives the purchase price? . _b_, by means of fraud, purchases a bicycle from _a_. _b_ sells it to _c_, who does not know of the fraud. can _a_ recover the bicycle from _c_? . _a_ purchases a bicycle from _b_ telling _b_ that he is _c_. _b_ knows _c_ by reputation and thinks that he is selling to _c_. _a_ sells the bicycle to _d_. can _b_ obtain possession of the bicycle from _d_? . define _caveat emptor_. . does the rule of _caveat emptor_ apply if the seller expressly warrants the goods sold? . define _express warranty_. . _a_ sells a horse to _b_ assuring _b_ that the horse is perfectly sound. the horse has blemishes. does _a_ warrant the horse? . define _implied warranty_. . enumerate the most common implied warranties. . does an implied warranty of title accompany every sale? . _a_ purchases an automobile at a sheriff's sale. the automobile is mortgaged. may the mortgagee take the auto from _a_? if so, can _a_ recover on an implied warranty from the sheriff? . what is meant by _implied warranty of wholesomeness of food_? . does this warranty extend to any purchaser? . give an example of an implied warranty in a sale by sample. . does the implied warranty of merchantability apply when the goods are selected and inspected by the purchaser? . give an example of a sale in which there is an implied warranty of fitness for the purpose for which the goods are to be used. . does this implied warranty exist if the goods are constructed and furnished according to a model furnished by the buyer? . define _rescission of a contract_. . may a contract of sale be rescinded for breach of warranty? . generally, what is a purchaser's remedy for breach of warranty? . define _lien_. . give an example of seller's lien. . define _stoppage in transitu_. . _a_, in cleveland, orders goods of _b_ in chicago. _b_ delivers the goods to the adams express company, addressed to _a_. the goods are lost in a railway wreck. who must bear the loss, _a_ or _b_? . _a_ sells a carriage to _b_. _b_ refuses to pay for the same. if _a_ has not delivered the carriage to _b_ may he sue _b_ for damages? . _a_ purchases a carriage from _b_. _a_ tenders the price, but _b_ refuses to deliver the carriage. may _a_ obtain possession of the carriage by legal action? . may _a_ sue _b_ for damages for refusing to deliver the carriage? [illustration: a corner in the new york executive office of the western electric company occupying a part of one floor of the marshall field building] commercial law part iv bailments = . bailment defined.= a _bailment_ has been defined to be "a delivery of goods for the execution of a special object, beneficial to the bailor, the bailee or both, upon a contract express or implied, to carry out this object, and dispose of the property in conformity with the purpose of the trust." it is the giving possession of personal property to another for the purpose of having the property cared for, improved or used, with the understanding that when the purpose of the delivery is fulfilled, the property shall be returned to the bailor or disposed of according to his directions. a bailment differs from a sale in that the title to the property remains in the bailor, and possession is given the bailee, while in a sale, the title or ownership of the property is transferred to the purchaser, while possession may remain in the seller. bailment is a broad subject covering many transactions. loans, pledges, and deliveries of property of every nature, in which mere possession is given another without transfer of title are included. if _a_ leaves his watch with _b_, a jeweler, for repairs, the transaction is a bailment. if _a_ delivers property to _b_, a transportation company, to be conveyed to _c_, the transaction is a bailment. if _a_ loans his knife to _b_, the transaction is a bailment. = . parties to a bailment contract.= there are two parties to a bailment contract. the one who gives possession of chattel property to another, reserving title to himself, is called the _bailor_, and the one who receives possession of the property under these conditions is called the _bailee_. a bailment is a contract. parties to a bailment must be competent to contract. (see _competency of parties_, chapter on contracts.) parties under legal age may avoid contracts of bailment. if _a_, fifteen years of age, hires a horse from _b_, a liveryman, for one hour for $ . , _b_ cannot compel _a_ to carry out his contract if _a_ objects on the ground of infancy. but if _a_ injures the horse he is liable in damages to _b_. an infant is liable for his torts, but not for his contracts. = . classification of bailments.= bailments are usually divided into three classes; bailments for the sole benefit of the bailor, bailments for the sole benefit of the bailee, and bailments for the benefit of both the bailor and bailee. a common example of a bailment for the sole benefit of the bailor is a delivery of property to the bailee, to be kept by the bailee gratuitously for the accommodation of the bailor, or delivery of property to the bailee to have work performed on it, without compensation to the bailee. examples of bailments for the sole benefit of the bailee are loans to the bailee without compensation to the bailor. bailments for the mutual benefit of bailor and bailee include deliveries of property to carriers, pledges, renting property, or hiring the bailee to perform work on the property bailed, or hiring the bailee to care for the property. = . elements of a contract of bailment.= it is sometimes said that a bailment for the sole benefit of the bailor is not a contract by reason of there being no consideration. a consideration may consist of any benefit to the party making a promise, or any detriment to the one to whom the promise is made. the giving up of the property bailed to the bailee is considered a detriment to the bailor, even though the bailee receives no benefit. for a transaction to constitute a bailment, there must be a delivery of the property bailed to the bailee, and an acceptance by him of the property. this delivery may be actual or constructive, as by delivery of a warehouse receipt, or a bill of lading. the delivery must be sufficient to enable the bailee to secure the possession of the goods, and to control the possession during the period to be covered by the bailment, to the exclusion of the bailor. the property must be in existence to be bailed. a contract of bailment need not be express; it may be implied as well--a thief or a finder of property is a bailee for the true owner. = . title to property bailed.= the title to property bailed does not pass to the bailee. mere possession passes to the bailee. it is not necessary that the bailor have title to the property to bail it. if he has right of possession he may, under certain circumstances, bail it. _a_ may rent a livery stable, including horses and carriages, of _b_, for three years, with the understanding that he will operate the business in the usual way. _a_ does not have title to the horses and carriages, but he may hire them to _c_, or to anyone he chooses. this transaction with _c_ constitutes a bailment, in which the bailor does not have title to the property bailed. he has, however, sufficient right of possession to enter into a bailment contract. the principal distinction between a bailment and a sale of personal property is that, in the latter case, title passes to the purchaser regardless of change of possession of the property, while in the case of a bailment, possession of the property must pass to the bailee, while title is not disturbed. = . bailments for the sole benefit of the bailor.= where personal property is deposited with another for safe keeping, or for the purpose of having work performed on it, without compensation to the bailee, the transaction is called a bailment for the sole benefit of the bailor. the liability of a bailor for the loss or injury of property intrusted to his care, depends upon the nature of the property itself, and upon whether the bailee receives compensation for his services. three degrees of care and negligence, respectively, are recognized in bailments; slight, ordinary and great care, and gross, ordinary and slight negligence. what constitutes ordinary care or negligence is determined by considering what a man of ordinary prudence would do under the circumstances in question. any case of negligence above or below this standard constitutes great care or gross negligence. if _a_, in going to lunch, leaves his umbrella in _b's_ office, and the umbrella is stolen, _b_ is not liable to _a_, if he exercised slight care. if _a_, a lawyer, is obliged to go to police court to try a criminal case, and leaves his diamond pin with _b_, a brother attorney, _b_ is obliged to exercise only slight care, as in the case of the umbrella, and is liable only for gross negligence. but slight care means a much greater degree of care in case of the diamond pin than in the case of the umbrella. in case of a bailment for the sole benefit of the bailor, the bailee is obliged to exercise only slight care, and is liable only for gross negligence. he receives no compensation for the service, and for this reason is not obliged to exercise a great degree of care. property cared for gratuitously for the accommodation of the bailor, or to be carried to some place, or to have something done to it gratuitously, constitutes this class of bailments. = . bailments for sole benefit of bailee.= property loaned to a bailee for the latter's accommodation constitutes a bailment for the sole benefit of the bailee. _a_ borrows _b's_ horse to drive to _y_. _a_ pays _b_ nothing for the use of the horse. _a_ must exercise great care in the use of the horse, and is liable to _b_ for slight negligence. it is no defense, in case the horse is injured while in _a's_ possession, that _a_ acted as an ordinarily prudent man would act under the circumstances. he must act as an ordinarily prudent man would act when exercising great care. if, from the circumstances connected with the injury to the horse, it is determined that an ordinarily prudent man would have been guilty of slight negligence in the method of handling the horse or causing the injury, _a_ is liable to _b_ for the injury to the horse. a court said on this point, "a bailee who is a borrower must use extraordinary care to protect the property loaned to him, and is responsible for the slightest neglect. he must exercise all the care and diligence that most careful persons exercise in the transaction of their own affairs." if the bailee uses the property for any purpose other than that for which it was bailed, or if he exceeds the authority of the bailor in the use of the property, he is liable for injuries resulting. for example, _a_ borrowed _b's_ oxen to plow up a hedge. _a_ used the oxen to draw a load of stone. a stone rolled off the cart and injured one of the oxen. _a_ was held liable for the injury. = . bailments for benefit of both bailor and bailee.= the majority of bailments are for the benefit of both bailor and bailee. this class of bailments includes the hiring of personal property. _a_ rents _b's_ automobile for three hours, at three dollars an hour. this is an example of this class of bailments. this class also includes pledges or pawns of goods. if _a_ pledges ten shares of stock in a corporation to his bank for a loan, this transaction constitutes this form of bailment. this also includes the hiring of a bailee to carry goods from one place to another. the most common example of this class of bailments is that of common carriers. for example, _a_ employs _b_, an express company, to carry a package of jewelry from cleveland to chicago. the bailment is for the mutual benefit of both _a_ and _b_. any case in which one party employs another to carry goods from one place to another for compensation is included in this class of bailments, and is discussed more at length in the chapter on common carriers. hiring a person to care for personal property for compensation is included in the class of mutual benefit bailments. a traveling salesman leaving his trunk and satchel with a hotel-keeper is a common example. where one person hires another to perform work or services on the thing bailed, the transaction constitutes a mutual benefit bailment. for example, if _a_ leaves his overcoat with _b_, his tailor, to be cleaned and pressed, the transaction constitutes this form of bailment. in mutual benefit bailments the bailee has the right to use the property bailed only for the purposes of the bailment. if _a_ rents _b's_ automobile, he is entitled to use it during the period covered by the contract. if he rents it for a particular designated trip, he cannot use it for any other trip. in a mutual benefit bailment, when the bailee hires out the use of a chattel, there is an implied contract on his part that the chattel is fit for the purpose for which it is to be used, and that it may safely be used for such purposes. _a_ rents _b's_ naphtha launch for the purpose of taking a lake ride. _b_ has carelessly supplied the wrong fuel. an explosion results, injuring _a_. _b_ is liable for the injury. in mutual benefit bailments, the bailee is obliged to exercise ordinary care, and is liable for ordinary negligence. the bailee must act as an ordinarily prudent man would act under the same conditions in protecting and caring for the property. _a_ rents a typewriter of _b_. if the typewriter breaks or gets out of order during ordinary usage, _b_ must stand the loss. if the parties to a bailment of this class specifically contract as to who shall bear the loss in case of accident, or as to the degree of care which shall be exercised, these express stipulations prevail. = . warehousemen and storage companies.= a person who keeps a place for the storage of goods for a compensation is a warehouseman or storage-keeper. in a few states, public warehouses are provided for by statute. in these states, the statutes define the duties and liabilities of warehousemen. these public warehousemen are generally required to take all goods offered for storage, no matter who the owner may be, if the goods are in condition to be stored and if the storage charges are tendered. most warehouses operate their business as private enterprises. a few states provide by statute for public warehouses. private warehousemen may select their customers. they are not required to accept goods for storage if they do not so desire. the government provides warehouses for the storage of goods upon which customs or duties are to be paid. these warehouses are private enterprises authorized by the government to act as government warehouses. the government requires a bond of these warehousemen for the protection of itself, but the government is in no way responsible for the warehouseman's treatment of the goods, or for breaches of contracts between the warehousemen and their customers. warehousemen commonly issue receipts for goods stored with them. these warehouse receipts ordinarily are made payable to the customer's order, and may be negotiated. they are not generally recognized as negotiable instruments. a few states have statutes making them negotiable instruments, but outside these jurisdictions, warehouse receipts are merely evidences of ownership of the property. the purchaser takes the same right to the property which the original bailor had, with the additional right to sue the transferor if the title proves defective. a warehouseman has a lien on the property for his charges. the warehouseman or storage-keeper must exercise ordinary care in the protection of the property. the bailor must reveal to the bailee the character of the goods stored. if the goods are of a dangerous character and injury results, the bailor is responsible to the bailee for damages, if he has failed to reveal the dangerous character of the goods. = . degree of care required of bailee.= a bailee of property is required to exercise a certain degree of care in the use, preservation and protection of the property placed in his possession, and is liable for a certain degree of negligence. the amount of care a bailee is obliged to exercise, and the amount of negligence for which he is liable, depends upon the kind of property bailed, and whether the bailment is for the sole benefit of the bailor, the bailee, or for the mutual benefit of both the bailor and the bailee. if the property bailed is of great value, or so delicate that it is easily lost, destroyed or injured, a greater degree of care is required on the part of the bailee than if the property is of little value, or is of such a nature that it is not easily damaged, lost or destroyed. if _a_, with _b's_ permission, stores his wagon in _b's_ barn, and the wagon is stolen, _b_ is not liable unless he was grossly negligent. he was not paid for the bailment, and was obliged to exercise only slight care in the protection of the wagon. if, however, _a_ leaves his watch with _b_ while he attends a ball game, and the watch is stolen, _b_ must have exercised greater care than in the case of the wagon by reason of the value and nature of the property bailed. otherwise, he will be liable. in this case as well as in the case of the wagon, _b_ received no compensation for the bailment, and is obliged to exercise only slight care in the protection of the property bailed, and is liable only for gross negligence. what constitutes slight care and gross negligence differs materially in the case of the wagon and in the case of the watch. in connection with bailments, care is said to have three degrees, _great_, _ordinary_ and _slight_. negligence is also said to have three degrees, _gross_, _ordinary_ and _slight_. ordinary care or negligence is the standard for testing each case. after ordinary care or negligence is determined, slight or great care, and slight or gross negligence is determined by ascertaining whether the care or negligence is above or below ordinary. any care greater than ordinary is great care; any care less than ordinary is slight care. any negligence greater than ordinary is gross negligence. any negligence less than ordinary is slight negligence. if a person takes such precautions in the use, preservation, and protection of the property as an ordinarily prudent person would take of his own property under similar circumstances, he is said to exercise ordinary care. the degree of care required of a bailee depends upon the kind of a bailment in question, as well as upon the kinds of property bailed. if the bailment is for the sole benefit of the bailor, the bailee receiving no compensation for his inconvenience and work, he is required to exercise only slight care, and is liable only for gross negligence. if the bailment is for the sole benefit of the bailee, the bailor receiving no compensation for his inconvenience and the loss of the use of his property, the bailee is required to exercise great care in the use and preservation of the property, and is liable for slight negligence. in case of mutual benefit bailments, the bailee is obliged to exercise ordinary care in the use and protection of the property, and is liable for ordinary negligence. two classes of mutual benefit bailees, innkeepers and common carriers, do not come within the above rule. these are known as _exceptional mutual benefit bailments_, and are discussed under separate chapters. = . rights of bailee as against bailor.= a bailee has the right to keep the property, to use it according to the terms of the contract of bailment, and to defend this right even against the bailor himself. while the title to the property in question remains in the bailor, the right of possession during the period covered by the contract of bailment is in the bailee. he may retain possession of the property for the purpose of the bailment. a bailee is entitled to use the property bailed, and is restricted only by the limitations of the contract. if the bailee uses this property in a way not authorized by the contract of bailment, he is liable in damages to the bailee. where a mutual benefit bailment requires the bailee to use skill in connection with the property bailed, the bailor must exercise a degree of skill ordinarily used by persons who perform similar work. if the bailee fails to use this degree of skill, he is liable in damages to the bailor. for example, if _a_ leaves his horse with _b_, a blacksmith, to be shod, and _b_ attempts the work, but performs it so unskillfully, or carelessly that the horse is injured or lamed thereby, _b_ is liable to _a_ for the damage caused. = . rights of bailee as against third persons.= a bailee has the right to keep the property bailed as against third persons who endeavor to interfere with his possession. the bailee is not permitted to dispute the title of the bailor for his own benefit. if, however, the property is taken away from the bailee by action at law, by one whose title is superior to that of the bailor, the bailee is relieved from liability to the bailor. in this event, the one who has the paramount title coupled with the right of immediate possession, may take the property from the bailee. if the bailee yields possession to one whose right of possession and title are inferior to the bailor's, the bailee is answerable to the bailor for any losses sustained. the bailee cannot confer good title upon anyone to whom he attempts to sell the property bailed, even though the purchaser buys without notice of the bailment. anyone who injures the property while it is in the possession of the bailee is responsible either to the bailor or bailee for the damages. = . lien of bailee.= a bailee who has performed work on the article bailed, for which he is to be paid a consideration, is said to have a _lien_ for the value of the work performed, or materials furnished. by a lien is meant the right of the bailee to retain possession until the value of his labor or material has been received. at common law, a livery stable keeper had no lien upon horses fed and cared for. by statute in most states, livery stable keepers now have a lien upon horses left with them. if a bailee is employed to perform work or labor upon personal property, and the property is destroyed without fault of the bailee after part of the work has been performed, the bailee may recover for the amount of work performed and materials furnished, unless the contract of bailment is to the effect that the entire job is to be completed before any payment is made. a bailee loses his lien by parting with possession of the property. at common law, a bailee could not sell the property to enforce his lien. by statute in most states, the bailee is permitted to sell the property, by giving notice of the time and place of sale to the bailor, or by foreclosing his lien by a legal action. pledges = . pledge defined.= a _pledge_ is one form of a mutual benefit bailment. it is a deposit of personal property by a debtor with a creditor as security for a debt, the title to the property remaining in the debtor until the property is disposed of by the creditor in accordance with the express or implied agreement of pledge. a pledge differs from a chattel mortgage in that possession of personal property is given a creditor for the purpose of securing a debt, the title remaining in the debtor. in case of a chattel mortgage, the title to the personal property passes to the mortgagee, who is the creditor, subject to revesting in the mortgagor, who is the debtor, in case of payment of the mortgage debt. in a chattel mortgage, possession of the property generally remains in the debtor. _a_ owes _b_ $ . . he gives _b_ possession of a diamond ring as security for the debt. if _a_ does not pay the $ . when due, _b_ may retain possession of the ring until he receives $ . from _a_, or he may sell the ring at public sale, advising _a_ of the time and place of sale. if the ring sells for more than $ . , _b_ must pay _a_ the excess of $ . . pledges form an important part of present day business. pledges of bonds, stocks and negotiable paper are common in transactions with banks. banks commonly make loans, taking a promissory note secured by a pledge of stocks, bonds, negotiable instruments, or other personal property. their loans are commonly called loans on _collateral_ or loans on _collateral security_. = . parties to a pledge.= a pledge of chattel property is a contract express or implied. the party giving the property as security to his creditors is called the _pledgor_, the party receiving the property is called the _pledgee_. like any contract, it requires competent parties. (see _competency of parties_, chapter on contracts.) a person mentally insufficient, intoxicated, or an infant, is not competent to make a contract. an infant's contracts of pledge, like any of its contracts are voidable, but not void. the infant may carry out the contract if he chooses. an infant's contracts are not illegal. they cannot be enforced against an infant, however, if he objects by reason of infancy. a competent party, contracting with an infant, cannot void his contract on the ground of infancy of the other contracting party. most contracts of pledge are implied. if _a_ owes _b_ $ . and gives _b_ his watch as security, _b_ impliedly has the right to retain possession of the watch until _a_ pays him $ . . _b_ also has the right after _a_ fails to pay him the $ . when due, to sell the watch at public auction, and apply as much of the proceeds as is necessary to the payment of his debt. in most pledges of importance where securities are pledged, the contract of pledge is reduced to writing, and a stipulation is made giving the pledgee the right to sell the property at public or private sale without notice to the pledger, and permitting the pledgee himself to be a purchaser at the sale. no matter what the contract of pledge provides, the sale should be public, notice of which should be advertised, and notice of the time and place should be given the pledgor. = . personal property which may be pledged.= any kind of personal property which is the subject of transfer may be pledged. this includes personal property having a tangible existence, as well as that which is intangible. that is, choses in action as well as choses in possession may be pledged. a promissory note, a certificate of stock, or a bond which is an evidence of something tangible or the right to obtain something tangible, is the subject of a pledge, as well as furniture, jewelry and other tangible personal property. property which has no active or potential existence is not the subject of a pledge. a person cannot pledge a horse which he expects to purchase, or a crop which he expects to grow on the land of another. a person may, however, pledge a growing crop. = . the debt secured.= a pledge or delivery of personal property is for the purpose of securing a debt owing the pledgee. the existence of a debt is one of the essential elements to a valid pledge. a delivery of personal property to another in the absence of a debt may constitute a bailment for the sole benefit of the bailor, the bailee, or for the mutual benefit of both parties. to constitute a pledge, however, there must be a debt owing the pledgee, and the property must be delivered to him, and accepted by him as security for the debt. the debt must be legal, and must be supported by a sufficient consideration to support the contract of pledge. _a_ won $ . at cards from _b_. _b_ gave _a_ his watch as security for the debt. _b_ was permitted to recover possession of his watch from _a_ by legal action, since the gambling transaction was illegal. _b_ did not legally owe _a_ $ . . an illegal debt cannot support a contract of pledge. if, for any reason, the debt is not owing or is not valid, it will not support a contract of pledge. = . title to property pledged.= the legal title or ownership of personal property pledged remains in the debtor or pledgor. a right of possession is given the pledgee. this is sometimes called a _special property_. a pledge differs from a sale in that, in a sale, the title or ownership of the personal property passes to the purchaser, while the possession may remain in the seller. in a pledge, however, the possession passes to the pledgee or creditor, while the title remains in the pledgor or debtor. a pledge differs from a chattel mortgage in that, in the latter, the title passes to the creditor or mortgagee, subject to revesting in the mortgagee or debtor, upon the latter's paying the mortgage debt. there is probably one exception to the rule that title to property pledged does not pass to the pledgee, and that is in case of negotiable instruments. a negotiable instrument endorsed in blank, or made payable to bearer passes like currency by delivery. a pledge of such paper passes title to the pledgee. a pledge of negotiable paper not endorsed in blank, or not payable to bearer should be made by proper endorsement. in this event title passes to the pledgee. the title is revested in the pledgor by proper indorsement, or by delivery, if the instrument is transferable by delivery, when the debt secured is paid. a pledgee of negotiable paper, who takes it before it is due without notice of defenses, is an innocent purchaser for value without notice, and as such, is entitled to the rights of an innocent purchaser for value without notice. (see _innocent purchaser for value without notice_, chapter on negotiable instruments.) = . collateral securities.= loans by banks are frequently made on collateral securities. this means that the borrower gives a bank a promissory note for the amount, and pledges personal property to secure the note. the contract of pledge may be by separate written instrument, or it may be made a part of the note itself. where made a part of the note, the note is called a _collateral note_. (see _collateral note_, chapter on negotiable instruments.) any kind of property which is the subject of a pledge may be used as collateral security. stocks, bonds, and even commercial paper are commonly used. jewelry, bills of lading, and warehouse receipts are not infrequently used in this kind of a pledge. collateral security given as security for a promissory note or other negotiable instrument is a pledge. the rules governing ordinary pledges govern this kind of pledge as well. the only practical distinction between a collateral loan and an ordinary loan is that, in a collateral loan, the debt is evidenced by a negotiable instrument which is secured by a pledge of personal property. = . rights and duties of pledgor and pledgee.= a pledgor has the right to have his pledged property returned to him upon payment of the debt secured by the pledge. he also has the right to have the property carefully preserved and cared for while in the possession of the pledgee. the pledgee is entitled to retain possession of the property pledged until the debt owing him is paid. he may re-pledge the property if he so desires. if the pledged property is negotiable paper, the pledgee must collect the paper as it falls due, and observe all the requirements necessary to preserve the rights of the pledgor. if the property pledged is tangible personal property, the pledgee must use the care of an ordinarily prudent man in the preservation and protection of it. he is not permitted to use property which may be injured by use, and should not use the property except to the extent that it is necessary for its preservation. if the pledgee sells or transfers the debt secured, the purchaser is entitled to the benefit of the pledge. that is, if _a_ owes _b_ $ . and pledges five shares of stock to _b_ as security for the debt, and _b_ sells the debt to _c_, _c_ is entitled to the benefits of the pledged certificates of stock. if _b_ gives _c_ possession of the stock, _c_ may retain the same until he receives the $ . from _a_. if _b_ does not turn over the shares of stock to _c_, _c_ may bring an action to compel the transfer of possession to him. = . disposal of property by pledgee after default.= if the pledgor fails to pay the debt secured when due, the pledgee has the right to enforce his pledge. in the absence of any special agreement, the law impliedly gives the pledgee the right to sell the property at public sale, and apply as much of the proceeds of the pledged property as is necessary to the payment of his debt. this sale must be public. the pledgee must first notify the pledgor that he is in default of payment, and of his intention to sell the property, giving the time and place of the proposed sale. the pledgee cannot be a purchaser at the sale, unless so permitted by express stipulation in the contract of pledge. many contracts of pledge are in writing, by the terms of which the pledgor waives notice of default and of time and place of sale, and permits the pledgee to sell at private sale, and to become a purchaser at the sale. when a pledgee is given the right to purchase by the contract of pledge, he cannot make a valid purchase without advertising the property, and without exerting himself reasonably to obtain the greatest amount possible for the pledged property at the sale. in selling pledged property, notice of default should be given the debtor. he should also be notified of the time and place of sale. the sale should be advertised publicly, and should be public. the pledgee cannot himself purchase the property unless the contract of pledge expressly so provides. even in this event, the sale will not be held valid unless it is public and fair in every way to the interests of the pledgor. a pledgee is permitted in some states to sell according to certain statutory methods provided. a pledgee may sell by foreclosing his lien in equity. this means by filing a written request in a court of equity to sell the property. in this event, the sale is conducted by order of court. = . redemption.= a pledgor has the right to obtain possession of the property pledged, by paying the debt secured at any time before actual sale of the property. a pledgor sometimes agrees by the contract of pledge, to waive the right to redeem the property after default of payment of the debt secured. courts will not enforce such a provision of the agreement against him. the pledgor is permitted to redeem the property by paying or tendering the amount of the debt at any time before sale of the pledged property. if the pledgor is in default of payment, however, and agrees by separate agreement, made subsequently to the contract of pledge, that the pledgee may keep the property pledged in satisfaction of the debt, he is bound by this agreement. mortgages of personal property = . mortgages of personal property defined.= by _mortgage_ of personal property, is meant the transfer of title to personal property by a debtor to a creditor; the possession of the property usually remaining in the debtor, and the transfer being made for the purpose of giving the creditor security for the debt, the debtor having the right to secure a return of title to the property by paying the debt within a stipulated time. it is a conditional sale. it is not absolutely necessary that possession of property which is the subject of a chattel mortgage, remain in the debtor. possession may be given the creditor with the understanding that possession and title are to revest in the debtor when the latter pays the debt secured. as a matter of business practice, however, possession of personal property which is the subject of a chattel mortgage, remains in the debtor, the creditor taking the title as security for the debt, with the right to secure possession or sell the property in case the debtor fails to pay the debt secured when due. when possession of personal property is given a creditor as security for a debt, the transaction is usually in the form of a pledge. in a pledge, title remains in the debtor, but possession is given the creditor. the distinguishing features of a sale, bailment or pledge, and a mortgage of personal property are important. in a sale of personal property title passes to the purchaser, while possession usually remains in the seller until the purchase price is paid. in a pledge, which is a form of a bailment, title remains in the bailor, and possession only is given the bailee or creditor. in case of a chattel mortgage, possession remains in the debtor, while title passes to the creditor subject to revesting in the debtor upon payment of the debt secured. the debtor, or person giving the mortgage, is called the _mortgagor_, the creditor, or person receiving the mortgage, is called _mortgagee_. [illustration: in the private office of the general manager of the s. obermayer co., cincinnati, ohio] = . what kinds of personal property may be mortgaged.= the rule is usually stated as follows: any interest in personal property which may be the subject of a present sale may be mortgaged. any tangible personal property such as furniture, horses, cattle and clothing, as well as intangible personal property, such as promissory notes, contracts, and shares of stock may be mortgaged. it is not necessary that the mortgagor have absolute, unencumbered title to the property to give a mortgage. an owner may give several mortgages on the same property. he may mortgage his interest as long as any remains. if _a_ owns a stock of goods worth $ , , he may give successive mortgages to different creditors to whom he is indebted. he must practice no fraud, however. he must make each mortgage subject to the prior ones, and must reveal the facts to the creditor taking the mortgage. but he is permitted to mortgage his remaining interest. = . a mortgage of personal property as security for a debt.= a mortgage of personal property is a contract, and must be supported by a consideration. mortgages are usually given to secure loans of money. they may, however, be given to secure any kind of obligation. a mortgage of personal property may be given to secure advances of money to be made in the future, as well as present or past advances or obligations. it is usually held that a past indebtedness is sufficient consideration to support a mortgage, as to all persons, except one who may have been defrauded out of the property mortgaged. = . form of mortgages of personal property.= to constitute a transaction a chattel mortgage, there must be an agreement by which title to personal property is transferred to a creditor upon condition that it is to revest in the debtor upon the latter paying a certain sum of money, or fulfilling an obligation, within a certain time. as between the mortgagor and mortgagee themselves, an oral chattel mortgage is binding, unless within the provisions of the statute of frauds. (see _statute of frauds_, chapter on sales.) most states provide that contracts for the sale of personal property involving more than $ . must be in writing to be enforceable. this provision applies to chattel mortgages. if possession of the mortgaged personal property is given the mortgagee under an oral mortgage, the transaction is binding, not only between the parties thereto, but as to third persons as well. most states provide by statute that as against third persons who purchase the property, or as against creditors of the mortgagor, the chattel mortgage must be in writing, and be recorded or filed with a public official, in case possession of the mortgaged property is left with the mortgagor. this question is discussed more at length in the following section. = . filing and recording mortgages of personal property.= most states have statutes providing that chattel mortgages must be filed or recorded with a designated public official to be effective as against creditors, subsequent purchasers or mortgagees. this requires that the mortgage be in writing, and be deposited or recorded according to the provisions of the statute with the designated public official. for example, if _a_ orally mortgages his horse to _b_ to secure a loan of $ . , the mortgage may be binding between _a_ and _b_, but if _c_, a creditor of _a_, secures a judgment against _a_ and levies on the horse, his levy is superior to _b's_ mortgage. if _a_ sells the horse to _d_, who has no notice of the mortgage to _b_, _d's_ rights to the horse are superior to _b's_. if _a_ gives a mortgage in writing to _e_, who records his mortgage according to statute, his rights to the horse are superior to _b's_. the statutes of the different states require these mortgages to be refiled at stated intervals. most states require them to be refiled each year. some require them to be refiled only every three years. = . rights of mortgagor in property mortgaged.= a mortgage of personal property ordinarily contains a stipulation that the mortgagor shall retain possession until after default of payment of the mortgage debt. some states have statutory provisions giving the mortgagor the right of possession of the mortgaged property before default of payment of the mortgage debt. it is the custom at the present time to give the mortgagor possession of the property before default. if a mortgagor having possession of the property has it stored on his own behalf, and the warehouseman acquires a lien on the goods for his charges, his lien is inferior to the mortgage. the same is true if a mechanic acquires a lien for repairs upon the property. a mortgagor may mortgage his interest in the personal property by giving a second mortgage. the second mortgagee takes the mortgagor's right to have the property revest in him upon payment of the debt secured by the first mortgage. a mortgagor may sell his interest in the property, subject to the interest of the mortgagee. if the mortgage stipulates that a mortgagor cannot sell his interest, this stipulation is binding. a mortgagor has the right to pay the debt secured, and by this means to have the title to the property revest in him. = . rights and liabilities of mortgagee.= a mortgagee of personal property has a conditional title to the property. if the mortgagor does not pay the debt secured, according to the terms of the mortgage the mortgagee has the right to seize the property or at least to subject it to the satisfaction of his debt. the mortgagee has the right to sell the debt secured by the mortgage. in the absence of an express stipulation to the contrary, a transfer by a mortgagee of the debt secured by the mortgage, transfers the mortgage. an assignment of a chattel mortgage apart from the debt secured, passes no interest to the transferee. a mortgagee has the right to seize the property upon default of payment of the debt secured, if the mortgage contains a stipulation to that effect. the mortgagee has the right to foreclose his lien. by this is meant that he has the right to file a petition in a court of equity asking that the property be sold, and that his claim be paid from the proceeds first, and that the mortgagor's right to pay the debt and secure a return of the property be cut off. this is discussed under the section on _foreclosure_. = . mortgagor's right of redemption.= in law, a mortgage is regarded as a security for a debt, rather than as a transfer of property. by a chattel mortgage, a transfer of title to personal property is made by a debtor to a creditor as security for a debt. the debtor has the right, however, to secure a return of the title to the property by paying the mortgage indebtedness according to the terms of the mortgage. when the debtor fails to pay the debt when it is due, absolute title to the property vests in the mortgagee or creditor. the law, however, permits the debtor or mortgagor to pay the debt at any time before actual sale of the property by the mortgagee, together with interest and expenses, and thus secure the title to the mortgaged property. this is known as the _mortgagor's equity of redemption_. legal title is vested absolutely in the mortgagee upon failure of the mortgagor to pay the mortgage debt when due. the mortgagor, however, is permitted to pay the debt with expenses at any time before sale of the property, and by this means to secure a return of the title to the property. this makes a mortgage of personal property in effect a security for a debt, rather than a transfer of title. the purpose of the law is to give the creditor or mortgagee the right to secure the payment of his debt out of the mortgaged property, and nothing more. most states have statutes providing a method by which a mortgagor may obtain his equity of redemption. where there are no statutes, this right must be enforced by a petition in a court of equity. = . mortgagee's right of foreclosure.= equity permits the mortgagor to recover the mortgaged property by filing a petition in a court of equity, even after he has defaulted in paying the mortgage debt, by tendering the amount due, together with interest and expenses. this right of the mortgagor may be cut off by an equitable right enforced on the part of the creditor or mortgagee. this right is called the _mortgagee's right of foreclosure_. when the debtor or mortgagor is in default, the creditor or mortgagee is permitted to file a petition in a court of equity, setting forth the fact, and asking the court to order the property to be sold, the expenses to be paid, the mortgage debt to be satisfied, and the balance of the proceeds of the sale to be paid to the debtor or mortgagor. after this proceeding has been resorted to and completed, the debtor cannot enforce his equity of redemption. the common method afforded a mortgagee of foreclosing a mortgagor's equity of redemption is by the petition in equity above described. many of the states have provided statutory methods which may be followed. some mortgages by express stipulation give the creditor or mortgagee the right to seize the property and sell same upon default of the debtor to pay. this takes the place of an equitable foreclosure. when a mortgage contains a power of sale stipulation, the mortgagee may seize the property when the mortgagor defaults, and sell the same at public sale. the excess recovered over the mortgage debt and expenses, must be paid the mortgagor. if possession of the property cannot be obtained peaceably, the mortgagee must bring an action in replevin, by which possession is obtained by an officer of the court. in some jurisdictions, a mortgagee is permitted to seize and sell mortgaged property upon default of the debtor, even though the mortgage contains no power of sale stipulation. the sale must be _bona fide_ and public, or it can be set aside at the instance of the defrauded mortgagor. carriers = . carriers defined.= _carrier_ is the term applied to individuals or companies engaged generally or specially in carrying goods or passengers from place to place. the business of carriers has grown rapidly with the development of this country. the business of steamboat, railway, express, and electric package companies forms an important part of present day affairs. carriers are usually classified as _common_ or _private_. both common and private carriers may carry either passengers or goods. carriers of passengers are discussed in a separate chapter. = . common carriers of goods.= a common carrier of goods is one who represents himself as engaged in the business of carrying goods from place to place for anyone who desires to employ him. a common carrier of goods is liable as an insurer of the goods. by reason of this exceptional liability attaching to a common carrier, it is important to know who are common carriers. everyone who carries goods from place to place is not a common carrier. to constitute a person a common carrier, there must be a representation on his part of a willingness to carry goods belonging to anyone who desires to employ him for that purpose. a common carrier need not necessarily hold himself out as willing to carry all classes of goods. he may limit his business to carrying a peculiar class of goods, and still be a common carrier. it may be stated as a rule that anyone who holds himself out as willing to carry goods of any person is a common carrier. common examples of common carriers are railroad companies, express companies, public transfer companies, and electric package companies. an express company, in holding itself out as willing to carry goods of any person, is a common carrier. if persons carry goods only on special contract, and choose their customers, they are private carriers, and are not liable as insurers of the goods entrusted to their care. anyone may engage in the business of a private carrier, and so long as he does not hold himself out as a common carrier, he cannot be compelled to accept for carriage goods against his will, neither is he liable as an insurer of the goods. a private carrier is an ordinary bailee. if he agrees to carry for compensation, he must exercise ordinary care, and is liable for ordinary negligence. the business of a common carrier is said to be one of the exceptional mutual benefit bailments. the exceptional liability of a common carrier is discussed under a separate section. = . implied liability of a common carrier.= in early days when pirates infested the seas and stagecoach robberies were common, it was an easy matter for a common carrier to conspire with robbers and thieves, in unjustly depriving the owner of the goods entrusted to the carrier's care. by reason of the opportunity given a common carrier fraudulently to deprive a shipper of his goods, the law at an early time placed the exceptional liability of an insurer upon a common carrier. the relation between a shipper and a carrier, after goods are placed in the hands of the carrier, is one of mutual benefit bailment. the liability of a common carrier, however, is not limited to the liability of an ordinary mutual benefit bailee. common carriers and innkeepers are said to be _exceptional mutual benefit bailees_. this exceptional liability is placed on them by reason of the opportunity given them fraudulently to deprive the owners of their goods, and to compel the carriers to protect the goods against robbery and theft. a common carrier is liable as an insurer of the goods entrusted to his care. he cannot avoid liability by acting as an ordinarily prudent man would act under the circumstances in protecting and caring for the goods, but he must actually protect them or be liable to the owner for their loss or damage. there are a few exceptions discussed under a separate section. if _a_ employs _b_ to keep, feed, and care for his horse for six months, for fifty dollars, and _b_ puts the horse in his stable, where it is stolen, together with _b's_ own horse, _b_ is not liable to _a_ for the loss of the horse, if he acted as an ordinarily prudent man would act under the same conditions. if, however, _a_ delivers his horse to _b_, a railroad company, to be shipped from buffalo to chicago, and the horse is stolen from _b's_ possession, _b_ must pay _a_ the value of the horse. he is not permitted to say that he exercised ordinary care in the protection of the horse. this is what is meant by the exceptional liability of a common carrier. while the reason for this exceptional liability of a common carrier has largely passed away by the practical extermination of highway robbers and pirates, the exceptional liability of common carriers remains as a part of the law. this exceptional liability is not a matter of express contract between the shipper and the carrier, but is impliedly a part of the contract. = . exceptions to the liability of a common carrier as an insurer.= a common carrier of goods is not absolutely liable as an insurer of the goods entrusted to his care. if the goods are lost, injured, or destroyed by an act of god, by a public enemy, by negligence of the shipper, by the inherent nature of the goods, or by the exercise of public authority, the carrier is not liable as an insurer. by _act of god_ is meant an inevitable act arising without the intervention or aid of a human agency. a loss of goods by a storm, by lightning, or by earthquake is an example. if the goods are lost or injured as a result of any act of the shipper, the carrier is not liable as an insurer. a carrier is permitted to adopt and enforce reasonable regulations relating to the packing and shipment of goods. if the shipper negligently packs goods so that they are injured by reason thereof, the carrier is not liable as an insurer. if the shipper improperly addresses packages, and they are lost by reason thereof, the carrier is not liable as an insurer. if the shipper accompanies live stock, and injury occurs by reason of the carelessness of the shipper, the carrier is not liable as an insurer. by _public enemy_ is meant a power at war with a nation. this includes pirates. mere insurrections, robberies, thefts, mobs, and strikes are not included in this class of public enemies. if a loss of goods occurs by means of public enemy, a carrier is not liable as an insurer of the goods. if the loss occurs through the _inherent nature of the goods_, without the negligence of the carrier, the latter is not liable as an insurer. for example, if fruit spoils as a result of warm or cold weather, if the carrier is not in any way at fault, he is not liable as an insurer, since the loss occurs on account of inherent defects of the goods. if animals injure themselves while in the carrier's possession by reason of their viciousness, or fright, which injury could not have been prevented by reasonable care on the part of the carrier, the latter is not responsible. if the goods are lost or injured by reason of the _exercise of public authority_, the carrier is not liable as an insurer. if the goods, while in the possession of the carrier are seized upon attachment, or by levy on execution by the creditors of the shipper, the carrier is not liable if he promptly notifies the shipper. = . limiting common law liability by special contract.= the common law liability of a common carrier of goods is that of an insurer. it matters not how the loss or injury occurs, whether without, or through the carelessness of the carrier, the latter is liable for the loss, if it does not come within the recognized exceptions. carriers commonly endeavor to limit their exceptional liability by making a special contract with a shipper, by the terms of which the carrier limits his exceptional liability in case of loss. there is considerable conflict of authorities between the different states as to whether a carrier may limit his exceptional liability at all by special contract. where permitted to limit this liability, there is considerable controversy as to the extent to which a carrier may limit his liability by special contract. the courts of most jurisdictions agree that a common carrier cannot limit his exceptional liability by special contract as to his own negligence or the negligence of his servants. this special contract by which a common carrier limits his exceptional liability as an insurer is usually in the form of a written contract signed by the shipper or in the form of stipulations in the bill of lading given to the shipper and called to his attention. if a carrier accepts a carload of hay for shipment, without limiting his common law liability by special contract, and the hay is destroyed by fire, the carrier must respond in damages for the loss, regardless of his negligence. if, however, the carrier enters into a special contract with the shipper to the effect that the carrier shall not be liable for loss by fire, and the hay is destroyed by fire without negligence of the carrier or his agents or servants, the carrier is not liable in damages. = . limiting common law liability by an agreed valuation.= common carriers frequently attempt to limit their liability for loss or injury to goods by stipulations in a bill of lading, that in case of loss, the valuation shall not exceed $ . , or some specified amount. if the shipper does not notify the carrier that the valuation is a greater amount, the amount mentioned in the bill of lading is the valuation fixed by special contract. in case of loss there is a great variety of holdings as to whether a carrier may limit his liabilities to the amount mentioned in the contract. probably the courts in the majority of cases hold that such a stipulation is valid in case of losses arising not by reason of the negligence of the carrier or his agents. the courts of a few jurisdictions hold that the stipulation as to valuation is good even as against the negligence of the carrier or his agent. so far as interstate shipments are concerned, the question is settled by the federal interstate commerce act of . this act provides that as to shipments from one state to another, such a stipulation is not valid. the language of the interstate commerce act relative to this question is as follows: a common carrier receiving property for interstate transportation shall issue a receipt or bill of lading therefor, and be liable to the holder for any loss, damage or injury to the property, and no contract, receipt, etc., shall exempt the carrier from the liability thereby imposed. at present, so far as interstate shipments are concerned, a common carrier cannot limit his common law liability by a special contract. = . bills of lading and shipping receipts.= _bill of lading_, or _shipping receipt_ is the term applied to the receipt given a shipper by a carrier, when goods are delivered into the latter's possession. a bill of lading serves two purposes. it is a receipt of the shipper from the carrier for the goods delivered to the latter, and it is a contract representing the agreement between the shipper and the carrier. it is usually held that the terms printed on the bill of lading are binding on the shipper, even though the bill is not signed by him. a bill of lading represents the title to the goods. it may be transferred like a negotiable instrument. a purchaser takes the position of the shipper. a bill of lading is negotiable in the sense that it represents title or ownership of the goods, and in the sense that a purchaser takes the right of the shipper in the goods. but it is not negotiable in the sense that a purchaser takes a better position than the original holder had. = . title to goods after delivery to common carrier.= in the absence of special agreement to the contrary, where a party in one town purchases goods from a party in another, the goods to be delivered by common carrier, title to the goods passes to the purchaser when the goods are delivered to the carrier properly packed and addressed. this kind of a sale is commonly called a sale _f. o. b._ place of purchase, "f. o. b." means "free on board." careful business people, in making sales or purchases, specify whether the goods are to be f. o. b. place of shipment, or f. o. b. place of delivery. if the sale is f. o. b. place of delivery, title does not pass to the purchaser until the goods are delivered at the place specified. if the goods are lost by the carrier, the loss falls on the shipper or carrier, and not on the purchaser. if goods are shipped f. o. b. place of shipment, or if no agreement is made about shipment or payment of freight, title passes to the purchaser when the goods are properly delivered to the carrier. if the goods are lost, the loss falls on the carrier or purchaser, and not on the seller. where no stipulation is made relative to payment of freight or carrier's charges, the law presumes that the purchaser is to pay the carrier's charges. sales are sometimes made in which it is specified that the freight charges are _to be allowed_. this means that the shipper is to pay the carrier the freight charges. if the goods are lost, the loss falls on the purchaser. if there is an express stipulation that the goods are to be delivered at the place of delivery by the seller, this means that title does not pass to the buyer until the delivery is made at that place, and the shipper or seller stands the risk of loss in transit. = . duty of common carrier to accept goods for carriage.= a common carrier of goods holds himself out to the public as ready to carry the goods of anyone who desires to employ him. the carrier may demand payment of reasonable charges in advance. he may also enforce reasonable regulations relating to the packing, delivery, and addressing of goods. carriers are not obliged to carry goods other than the kinds they purport to carry. for example, an express company representing itself to the public as a carrier of light packages cannot be forced to accept heavy machinery for carriage. a carrier cannot be compelled to accept goods not belonging to the class it represents itself as being in the business of carrying. but a carrier must accept for carriage goods of the class it purports to carry, no matter by whom tendered. if the bill of lading offered by the carrier contains stipulations not agreeable to the shipper, the latter may demand the carrier to carry the goods under the terms of the implied common law liability of a carrier. the carrier is excused from accepting goods in the event of a great and unexpected bulk of business. he must, however, furnish sufficient equipment to meet the general requirements of business. = . stoppage in transitu.= where goods sold on credit have been delivered to a carrier, if the vendor learns that the purchaser is insolvent, he may order the carrier to withhold delivery of the goods. this is called _stoppage in transitu_. this question is also discussed in the chapter on sales. the vendor may compel the carrier to withhold delivery of goods by giving him written or oral notice to that effect. to be effective, this notice must be given before the carrier has surrendered possession of the goods to the purchaser. if the carrier delivers the goods to the purchaser after receiving notice from the seller to withhold shipment, he is liable in damages to the seller. if the purchaser has received possession of the bill of lading, and has sold it to a _bona fide_ purchaser, as to the latter, the seller cannot exercise the right of stoppage _in transitu_. if the carrier is in doubt about who is entitled to possession of the goods, he may file a petition with a court, called an _interpleader_, asking the court to determine who is entitled to possession of the goods. = . delivery of goods by a carrier.= the manner of delivery of goods required of a common carrier, depends largely upon usage and custom. in large cities, express companies and carriers of small packages usually make deliveries to residences and places of business. in small towns, and in the country they usually deliver at their depots or store rooms only. persons dealing with common carriers are bound by their customs, and by reasonable regulations of the carriers. carriers by water and rail ordinarily deliver at their depots and warehouses only. the purchaser is obliged to call for his goods. the carrier is obliged to give the purchaser notice that the goods have arrived. if the purchaser fails to call within a reasonable time thereafter, the exceptional liability of a common carrier ceases, and the liability of a warehouseman attaches. a warehouseman is obliged to exercise only ordinary care in the protection of the goods, while a carrier is an insurer of the goods. if a carrier delivers goods to the wrong person, he is liable in damages to the owner. if the consignee refuses to accept the goods, the carrier should notify the shipper of this fact. the carrier's liability then becomes that of a warehouseman. goods are frequently delivered to a carrier _c. o. d._ (collect on delivery). a carrier, in this event, is required to collect a specified amount from the purchaser before delivery. the purchaser is entitled to inspect the goods. title to goods sent c. o. d., is in the purchaser, the possession only being reserved by the owner for the purpose of collecting certain charges, ordinarily the purchase price. = . charges and lien of common carrier.= a common carrier usually stipulates by special contract with a shipper the amount of charges for carriage. in the absence of special contract, the carrier is entitled to a reasonable amount for this service. the united states congress has the right to regulate charges for interstate carriage. the states may, through their legislatures, regulate the rates within their respective jurisdictions. a carrier has a lien on the goods carried for his charges, and may retain possession of the goods until these charges are paid. = . discrimination by common carrier.= a common carrier represents himself as willing to carry the goods of anyone who desires to employ him. business depends to a large degree upon the facilities offered by carriers, notably by railroads. if certain business men or interests are favored by carriers, competition in the same line is eventually destroyed. for this reason, the law prohibited discrimination on the part of a common carrier. all persons shipping under the same conditions must be treated alike. the policy of the law is to promote competition. there are cases which hold that a carrier is permitted to charge one person a less rate than another, if the latter is not charged an unreasonable rate. but this rule does not apply where the parties are competitors and where the difference in rate charged is for the purpose of destroying competition. the matter of discrimination is now regulated largely by interstate commerce legislation discussed under a separate section. = . carriers of mail.= the constitution of the united states gives congress the power to establish postoffices and post roads. under this provision, the postoffice department has been created. it is a department of the government. while the postoffice department carries mail for compensation, it is a department of the government and not a common carrier. the government cannot be sued without giving its consent. it is an elementary principle that a government or sovereign power cannot be sued by its citizens. if the mail is lost, the government cannot be sued for damages. the government employs postal clerks, postmasters and mail-carriers to operate the postal system. these agents or servants of the government are required to give bond to the government. if they violate their contract, or neglect their duties, the government may collect its losses on these bonds. a person whose mail is lost cannot sue a postoffice agent on his bond. if, however, a person whose mail is lost can trace the loss to the carelessness of a particular postmaster or mail-carrier, he may sue such postmaster or carrier for damages sustained. = . interstate commerce act.= the united states constitution gives congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. the united states congress enacted interstate commerce regulations in , , , and in . the present united states interstate commerce regulation is commonly known as the _interstate commerce act of _. this act provides for an interstate commerce commission, consisting of seven members. each member receives a salary of $ , a year. the act compels carriers engaged in interstate or foreign commerce to publish a schedule of charges for carrying property. carriers who give rebates or offset, or discriminate between shippers in any way, are subject to heavy fines, and the officers and agents are subject to imprisonment. the commission is authorized to investigate the profits and charges of carriers, and to fix the maximum and minimum rates for carriage as well as the proportion of through rates to which each of several carriers is entitled. persons discriminated against may make complaints to the commission. the commission may investigate these complaints as a court by summoning witnesses, and by taking testimony. the commission may award damages to the party injured. if the carrier refuses to comply with the orders of the commission, the latter may invoke the machinery of the united states courts to enforce its order. when matters are removed to a united states court, the finding of the commission makes out a _prima facie_ case. section of the act prevents carriers doing interstate or foreign commerce business from relieving themselves from liability by special provision in the bills of lading. this is a very salutary act, since it was the common custom of carriers to place many provisions in their bills of lading by which they endeavored to evade their liability as common carriers. it was practically impossible for a shipper to comprehend all the printed stipulations contained in a bill of lading. this provision of the act compelling a common carrier doing an interstate or foreign commerce business to issue a bill of lading by which he is liable, in case of loss, for the real value of the goods lost, is as follows: "any common carrier, railroad or transportation company receiving goods for transportation from a point in one state to a point in another shall issue a receipt or bill of lading therefor, and shall be liable to the lawful holder thereof for any loss, damage or injury to such property caused by it, or by any common carrier, railroad or transportation company to which such property may be delivered, or over whose lines such property may pass, and no contract, receipt, rule or regulation shall exempt such common carrier, railroad or transportation company from the liability hereby imposed; provided, that nothing in this section shall deprive any holder of such receipt or bill of lading of any remedy or right of action which he has under existing law." the act also provides that every person or corporation, whether carrier or shipper, who shall knowingly grant, give, solicit, accept or receive any such rebates, concession or discrimination shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine of not less than one thousand dollars ($ , . ), nor more than twenty thousand dollars ($ , . ). the act also provides that the willful failure, upon the part of any carrier, to file and publish the tariff or rate and charges required by said act, or the failure strictly to observe such tariffs until changed according to law, shall be a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof, the corporation offending shall be subject to a fine of not less than $ , . for each offense, nor more than $ , . for each offense. the act also provides that agents or officers of a corporation convicted of violating the act may be imprisoned not more than two years in addition to the fine. a person delivering property to a carrier for transportation to another state or to a foreign country who shall accept a rebate or offset from the regular scheduled charge shall, in addition to the above described penalties, forfeit to the united states a sum of money three times the amount received from the carrier. carriers of passengers = . carriers of passengers defined.= one who holds himself out as ready and willing to carry from place to place for compensation, all who desire to employ him for this purpose is a public carrier of passengers. the liability of a public carrier of passengers is not the same as that of a common carrier of goods. a common carrier of goods is liable as an insurer of the goods, while a common carrier of passengers is obliged to exercise a high or extraordinary degree of care, only in the protection of passengers. railroad, steamboat, ferry and omnibus companies are common examples of public carriers of passengers. owners of buildings operating elevators are in the position of public carriers of passengers. while, strictly, they are not obliged to carry all persons, they operate the elevator publicly for the convenience of their tenants, and their tenants' clients. the liability for injury to passengers of owners of buildings in which elevators are operated is the same as that of public carriers of passengers. = . who are passengers?= a person does not have to be on board a public conveyance to be a passenger. steamboat companies provide depots, waiting rooms, and wharves for the convenience of passengers. railroad companies provide depots, rest rooms, and waiting rooms for persons desiring to make use of the railroad. it is said to be the rule, that when a person enters the premises of a public carrier for the purpose of becoming a passenger, he is a passenger from the time he enters upon the property of the public carrier. if a person enters the premises of a public carrier not for the purpose of purchasing a ticket, nor to become a passenger, he is a mere trespasser, and is not entitled to the rights and privileges of a passenger. a person traveling on a pass is a passenger. a carrier of passengers is permitted to enforce reasonable regulations for acceptance of passengers. until these reasonable rules are observed a person is not a passenger. a person is a passenger until he has a reasonable time to leave the public conveyance and premises of the carrier after reaching his journey's end. = . rights and liabilities of carriers of passengers.= a public carrier of passengers is obliged to carry all suitable persons who desire to become passengers, so far as the carrier has facilities for their accommodation. the carrier is also obliged to furnish reasonable facilities to accommodate all who may reasonably be expected to present themselves as passengers. a carrier may refuse to carry drunken or disorderly persons, as well as those who, by reason of contagious diseases or for other reasons, are not proper passengers. a carrier may require passengers to purchase tickets before admitting them to the vehicle of conveyance. the carrier is permitted to pass reasonable rules and regulations for conducting his business. unlike a carrier of goods, a carrier of passengers is not liable as an insurer. a carrier of passengers is bound to exercise extraordinary care in the protection of the passengers, and is liable for any negligence resulting in a passenger's injury, and which is not contributed to by the passenger. if a passenger refuses to pay his fare, or becomes disorderly, he may be removed by the carrier. the carrier is entitled to use only the force necessary to effect the removal of the passenger. if the passenger is injured by reason of excessive force used by the carrier in, his removal, the carrier is liable in damages. some states require by statute that carriers remove obnoxious passengers only at regular stations. in the absence of such statutes, a carrier may remove a passenger at any place where he may be removed without injury. if a passenger is injured by reason of his own negligence, or if his own negligence in any way contributed directly to the injury, he cannot recover damages from the carrier. = . baggage.= a public carrier of passengers may pass reasonable rules and regulations governing the control and amount of personal baggage a passenger is permitted to carry with him. the contract between a passenger and an ordinary public carrier impliedly gives the passenger the right to carry with him on his journey, baggage consisting of articles to be used on his journey. the business of the passenger, his social position, and the purpose of the journey largely determine the question of what articles properly constitute personal baggage. a workingman would not be permitted to claim that jewels and fancy dresses were a part of his personal baggage such articles would properly constitute the personal baggage of an actress or a society woman. if the personal baggage is placed in trunks and packages, and placed in the absolute control of the carrier, the latter is liable for their protection as an insurer. if the articles are retained by the passenger, the carrier is liable only as a bailee for hire. that is, the carrier is liable only for ordinary negligence, and is obliged to exercise only ordinary care. [illustration: the shipping department at the plant of the samuel c. tatum co., cincinnati, ohio] a carrier is permitted to charge for excess baggage, and becomes liable as an insurer of such baggage. a carrier is not obliged to carry any baggage not necessary for the convenience or comfort of a passenger, and if attempt is made to carry it as personal baggage, the carrier does not become liable for loss or injury thereto. sample goods carried by traveling salesmen do not constitute personal baggage. a carrier is not permitted to carry these samples free of charge. if the freight is paid by the salesman, the carrier becomes liable as an insurer. innkeepers = . innkeeper defined.= an innkeeper is a person who keeps a public house for the entertainment, for compensation, of all fit persons who desire to become guests and who are willing to pay the regular price. an innkeeper furnishes both food and lodging to guests. persons who furnish one or the other, only, are not innkeepers. innkeepers are classed as exceptional bailees. they are liable as insurers of their guests' baggage entrusted to their care. a boarding-house keeper is not an innkeeper. a restaurant keeper is not an innkeeper. = . duties and liabilities of innkeeper.= innkeepers are obliged to receive all fit persons who present themselves as guests and who offer the regular price for entertainment. an innkeeper is obliged by reason of his public profession, to keep food and lodging facilities sufficient to meet all reasonably expected demands. like a carrier of passengers, an innkeeper is not obliged to receive obnoxious persons. after a traveler has been received by an innkeeper for the purpose of obtaining food and lodging, he is a guest. the innkeeper is then obliged to use reasonable care for the protection of the guest. a person who boards at an inn is not a guest, neither is one who rooms at an inn, but does not board there. an innkeeper is liable as an insurer, for the loss of, or damage to, the goods entrusted to his care by his guest. if the goods are lost or injured without any negligence on the part of the guest himself, and not by an act of god (see _act of god_, chapter on carriers), or by a public enemy, the innkeeper is liable to the guest. if the goods are retained by the guest, and remain in his possession and control, the innkeeper is not liable as an insurer for their protection, but is obliged to exercise only ordinary care. = . lien of innkeeper.= an innkeeper has a right to retain possession of the goods of his guests until he receives his compensation. this is called an _innkeepers' lien_. at common law, a boarding-house keeper has no lien on the goods of the boarder. some states provide by statute for a boarding-house keeper's lien upon the goods of a boarder. even though the goods brought to an inn are the goods of a third person, the innkeeper has a lien thereon for the charges of the guest, unless the innkeeper knows at the time of receiving the guest, that the goods belonged to another. unless otherwise provided by statute, an innkeeper cannot sell the goods of a guest upon which he has a lien, but must file a bill in equity, a petition in a court of equity requiring the goods to be sold under order of court for the payment of his charges. real property = . real property defined.= the great english legal writer, blackstone, divides all property into two kinds, _real_ and _personal_. the latter embraces everything of a movable nature, while the former embraces everything of a permanent nature. blackstone defines real property as consisting of _lands_, _tenements_ and _hereditaments_. by land is meant the soil, and everything above and beneath the soil, the trees and vegetation above as well as the deposits beneath the soil. by tenement is meant anything that may be held, such as a franchise or right of way. by hereditament is meant everything that can be inherited. it includes lands and tenements. under the english law, heirlooms were considered hereditaments. they are not so considered under our law. = . trees, growing crops, and emblements.= growing trees are part of the land and are considered real property. nursery trees may be planted by a tenant for the purpose of the tenancy. in this event, they are considered personal property. trees cut down and cut into logs are personal property. trees blown down or cut down, but not cut into logs are real property. trees sold, but not cut, are regarded as personal property. a practical distinction between real and personal property is that real property passes to the heirs at the death of the owner, while personal property passes to the executors or administrators of the owner's estate. personal property is first subjected in the satisfaction of judgments at law against the owner. _emblement_ is the term applied to crops which must be planted annually. such crops as corn, potatoes, wheat, and melons are emblements. they are personal property even though not severed from the soil. they belong to the tenant who plants them. apples, peaches, clover, and similar things which are harvested annually, but are grown from roots or trees which are not planted annually, are real property. they are a part of the real estate, and pass with it when the latter is transferred. = . party walls.= a wall between two estates standing partly on the land of each estate is a _party wall_. if injured or destroyed by one of the adjoining owners, the other has an action for damages against him by reason thereof. if a wall stands wholly upon the land of one owner, and another constructs his house using a part of the wall as a foundation, he is a trespasser and is liable in damages, or may be compelled to remove his house therefrom. if, however, he is permitted to use the wall in such a manner for twenty years, the wall is regarded as a party wall. the party so using the wall for twenty years is said to acquire an _easement by prescription_. party walls are owned in common by adjoining owners. each party does not own half the wall. both parties own the entire wall together. = . fixtures.= by attaching a piece of personal property permanently to the land, or to something permanently connected with the land, the personal property, in law, becomes a part of the realty. a tenant may so attach personal property to the land of his landlord as to lose title thereto. no distinct line can be drawn between articles which may constitute fixtures and those which may not. it is something of a matter of intention of the one so attaching the articles to the land. it is now usually conceded by the courts that a tenant may attach such articles to the real property as are necessary and desirable for the purpose of his tenancy, and may remove them at or before the expiration of his lease, if the same can be done without injury to the real estate or to the fixtures to which they are attached. a different rule is applied in case of an owner as against a purchaser or mortgagee. for example, if _a_ leases a building for the purpose of operating a dry goods store, he is permitted to put in shelves and to remove them at the expiration of the tenancy. if _a_ were the owner, and permanently attached the shelves, he could not remove them as against a purchaser of the building or a mortgagee. = . fences.= most of the states have statutes regulating the building and maintenance of fences. parties may enter into a contract relating to partition fences if they choose. the duty to maintain certain portions of a partition fence may result from usage. if _a_ and _b_ are adjacent owners of a farm, and _a_ has for a period of twenty years maintained a certain portion of the partition fence, he may be compelled to continue to maintain that portion of the fence. a partition fence constructed jointly by the adjacent owners is their common property. it is their joint duty to keep it up. either one has a right to go upon the premises of the other for that purpose. one person may construct a fence on his own premises, which he may rebuild or take away at pleasure. a person constructing a fence must use reasonable care in seeing that it is so constructed and kept up that stock coming in contact with it is not injured. = . private ways.= the right to go over the land of another is known in law as a _way_. originally, ways were of three kinds, a mere foot way, a foot and horse way, by which a horse might be ridden over the way, and a cart way. the last two classes are now treated as one. ways are classified as _ways of necessity_ and _ways of convenience_ or _easements_. if _a_ sells land to _b_ and the only access _b_ has to a highway is over _a's_ land, _b_ has a way of necessity over _a's_ land. if _a_ sells land to _b_ and the only access to a highway left to _a_ is over the land of _b_, _a_ has a way of necessity over _b's_ land. a way of convenience may arise by continuous usage under a claim of right for a period of twenty years. if _a_ for an uninterrupted period of twenty years, under claim of right uses a path over _b's_ premises, he acquires a way of convenience or easement which gives him the right to continue the use of the path. = . highways.= ordinarily, highways are established by public officials acting under statutory authority. land is taken from the owners by order of court granted upon a petition properly filed and heard. it is said that the public has an _easement in a highway_, a right to use the highway as a roadway. the absolute title remains in the original owner. if the highway is abandoned, the property reverts to the original owner or to his grantees or assignees. a highway may be created by declaration or admission of the owner that a certain piece of property is to be used as a highway. it must also be accepted as such by public officials. the public may also obtain the right to use certain property as a highway by adverse user for a period of twenty years. this is called _obtaining the right by prescription_. _ . estates in land._ the extent of the interest of a person in a certain piece of land or real estate is said to be his _estate_. estates are designated by different names, depending upon the amount of the interest held. in general, estates in land are divided into _freehold estates_ and _estates less than freehold_. freehold estates are in turn divided into _estates of inheritance_, and _estates less than inheritance_. estates of inheritance are divided into _estates in fee simple_, and _estates in fee tail_. estates less than inheritance consist of _dower estates_, _estates curtesy_, _estates for the life of another_, and _estates for one's own life_, and _homestead estates_. estates less than freehold or leasehold estates consist of _estates for years_, _from year to year_, _at sufferance_ and _at will_. = . freehold estates.= freehold estates embrace estates of inheritance and estates less than inheritance. they are estates of uncertain periods of duration. the estate may be one of inheritance, that is, forever, or for a lifetime. the term, _freehold_, is taken from the name, _freeman_. a freehold estate originally applied to the estate of a freeman. a freeman, that is, a person permitted to go anywhere he chose, belonged to the only class of persons permitted to hold estates of this character. the meaning of the term has lost its significance. under our law, all persons are freemen. = . estates in fee simple.= absolute ownership in land is termed an _estate in fee simple_. it means that the owner has absolute and unconditional ownership of the land in question. it is an estate of general inheritance. at the owner's death, the estate passes to the general heirs of the owner, unless particular persons are designated by will of the owner to take the title. = . estates tail.= it was formerly the custom in england for wealthy land owners to give land to the oldest son to be given by him to his oldest son, a particular person or his direct heirs. that is, instead of giving the entire interest in the land to a person in such a manner that the latter could sell or dispose of it as he chose, it was given by deed or will to a particular line of heirs or persons. if _a_ gave his property by will to =b= and _b's_ direct heirs, the estate created did not permit _b_ or his direct heirs to dispose of the estate in such a manner that the direct heirs designated could be deprived of the estate at _b's_ death. granting estates to a particular person or heir rather than to heirs generally, is called _entailing estates_. the estate granted is called an _estate tail_. the result of entailing estates is to continue them in the hands of a few. england no longer permits the entailing of estates for long periods. in this country, the matter is controlled by statutes of the different states. a person is permitted to give real estate, by will, to a person for the latter's life, and then to a person not yet born. the latter takes the estate in _fee_. a person is not permitted to give property to _a_, and to the unborn child of the unborn child of _a_. if this is attempted, when _a_ has a child, the latter takes an _estate in fee simple_. the above doctrine is called the rule against perpetuities. = . life estates.= an estate created to exist during the life of the holder, during the life of a third person, or until an uncertain event happens or fails to happen, is called a _life estate_. life estates embrace homestead estates, dower estates, and estates by the curtesy. if _a_ gives _b_ a farm for life, remainder in fee to _c_, _b_ takes a life estate. he may sell or transfer his life estate, but no more. if _a_ dies leaving a will, by the terms of which _b_, his wife, is given a farm for life, or during widowhood, _b_ takes a life estate in the farm. if she marries, she loses her estate. this estate may be created by deed as well as by will. = . estates by the curtesy.= at common law, the husband, at the wife's death, has a life estate in the real property owned by the wife, if issue has been born alive during the life of the wife. the husband may waive his right to the estate if he signs a deed with the wife, whereby he expressly waives his right to his estate by the curtesy. the interest of the husband in the estate of his wife, is at the present time in most states regulated by statute. = . dower estates.= at common law, at the death of her husband, a wife takes a life interest in one-third the real property owned by her husband during the marriage. if _a_ owns one hundred acres of land, and dies, leaving a wife, _b_, _b_ takes one-third interest for life in the one hundred acres of land. this interest of _b_ is called her _dower estate_. some states by statute provide that the wife shall have a definite share of the husband's estate at the latter's death. in the states having these statutes, the wife is not entitled to dower, but takes the prescribed share in place thereof. the husband cannot deprive the wife of right of dower, by transferring his real estate. if she does not expressly release dower in the deed of conveyance, it may be enforced against the estate, if she survives her husband. = . exempt estates.= the states generally provide by statute that certain property shall be exempt from execution on judgment obtained by creditors of the owner. exemption statutes usually provide that a certain amount of real estate used as a home by the owner shall not be subjected to the satisfaction of judgments of creditors. if the debtor has no real property used as a home, he is sometimes permitted to retain a certain amount of personal property in place thereof. this statutory right to keep a certain amount of real property exempt from creditors is sometimes called a _debtor's homestead estate_. it exists during the life of the owner. = . estates for years.= the right to the possession, or the contract for possession of land for a definite period of time is called an estate for years. originally in england, only freemen could hold freehold estates. freehold estates are those of inheritance and those less than inheritance. persons occupying a position inferior to that of freemen under the early english law, sometimes called _villeins_, were permitted to hold estates for years, but not freehold estates. if _a_ leases his farm to _b_ for five years, _b_ has an estate for years. if _a_ leases his house and lot to _b_ for one month, _b_ has an estate for years. if _a_ leases his house and lot to _b_ for two years, and to _c_ for three years, _c's_ estate to follow _b's_, _b_ and _c_ have estates for years. estates for years are also discussed under _landlord and tenant_. estates for years are commonly called leases or leaseholds. a holder of an estate for years may assign or sublet his estate, unless it is provided otherwise in his lease. = . waste.= if persons have estates for years or life in real property, certain rules for the use of such property are recognized in order that they may not destroy or injure the remaining estate. that is, if _a_ has an estate for life in a farm, and _b_ has the remainder, _a_ is not permitted to destroy _b's_ interest. if a tenant for life or years so treats the estate as permanently to injure it, he is said to commit _waste_. a tenant for life is not permitted to cut off the timber. he may cut out underbrush. if such is the custom in the vicinity, he may cut timber for fuel and to repair buildings and fences. the general rule is, that a tenant for life or years may so use the estate as not permanently to injure or destroy it. he is entitled to the fruits and crops, to cultivate the estate to advantage, but not to destroy the buildings or fences, or to so treat the land as ultimately to destroy its productiveness. = . estates at will and at sufferance.= estates at will and at sufferance are discussed under the title of _landlord and tenant_. they are estates in land, and are classified as estates less than freehold. an estate which may be ended at the desire or will of either party is known as _an estate at will_. if _a_ and _b_ agree that _a_ may occupy _b's_ house, _a_ to pay thirty dollars per month, the tenancy to cease at the desire of either party, _a_ is said to be a tenant at will, and the estate he possesses is called _an estate at will_. it is not transferable. if _a_ attempts to assign his lease, it ceases. an estate at will is terminated by either party notifying the other of his intention to terminate the lease or by either party doing anything inconsistent with the estate. if the owner dies, the estate is terminated. if a person has a lawful estate in land, and retains possession without right after his interest ceases, he is said to be a _tenant at sufferance_. if _a_ rents _b's_ house for one year, and, at the expiration of the year he still occupies the house without _b's_ consent, he is a tenant at sufferance. he, in fact, has no estate in the premises except that which the owner suffers him to enjoy. this interest is called an _estate at sufferance_. a tenant at sufferance is a wrongdoer. he may be ejected at the will of the owner. the owner is not permitted to use excessive force in ejecting a tenant at sufferance. he may use the force necessary to eject him. at the present time, most of the states have statutory provisions by which unlawful tenants may be ejected by legal process. = . estates in remainder.= there may be many estates in the same piece of real property. if an owner of an estate in fee simple by one instrument grants an estate less than fee simple to one person and the balance of the fee simple estate to another, the latter estate is called a _remainder_. if _a_, an owner in fee, by the same instrument grants _b_ an estate for life, remainder in fee to _c_, _c_ has an estate in remainder. if _c_ is living at the time the estate is granted, the estate in remainder vests in him at the time of the grant, and is called a _vested remainder_. if the estate in remainder depends upon any contingency, or is conditional in any way it is said to be a _contingent remainder_. if _a_ grants a life estate in his farm to _b_, and the remainder to the heirs of _c_, the heirs of _c_ cannot be determined until _c's_ death. the estate in remainder is said to be _contingent_. = . estates in reversion.= an owner of an estate in real property in fee simple is permitted to grant his interest in the form of as many estates as he pleases. as long as the total of his grants do not equal his interest, he is said to retain an _estate in reversion_. if _a_ owns a farm in fee simple, and grants _b_ an estate for ten years, _a's_ remaining interest is called an estate in reversion. = . title to real property.= title to real property or the right of the owner eventually to obtain possession of it may be acquired in several ways. mere occupancy under claim of title will, under certain circumstances, if for a certain uninterrupted period of time, give the occupant title. an uninterrupted possession of real property, under a claim of right for a period in excess of twenty years will in most states give the occupant title by _adverse possession_. civilized nations provide by law that the heirs of the owner of real property shall take the title to the property at the owner's death. estates less than freehold pass as personal property to the executors of the estate of the deceased owner. the statutes of the different states designate who are heirs. title to land owned by the government is transferred by public grant. title by an owner may be conveyed to another by voluntary gift, by devise or will, or by deed. title by devise or will is discussed in the chapter on wills. = . deeds.= the customary method of transfer of real property is by deed. a deed is a written instrument sealed and delivered for the conveyance of land. deeds were originally divided into _deeds-poll_, and _indentures_. deeds-poll were mere written obligations of the grantor delivered to the grantee, the grantee making no covenants. an indenture, on the other hand, consists of mutual obligation on the part of grantor and grantee. the obligation of each was reduced to writing, signed, sealed, and delivered, the one in exchange for the other. a lease is an example of an indenture. the term, _indenture_, originated from the custom of writing the obligation of both parties on the same piece of paper, and by writing some letters of the alphabet between the two agreements, and by cutting the paper through these letters at sharp angles. the separate obligations could be identified by fitting together the saw-tooth edges of the different instruments. at present, duplicate copies are made designating them as indentures. leases are discussed more at length in the chapter on landlord and tenant. at present, the form of deeds in common use are _quit claim deeds_ and _warranty deeds_. some states provide forms of deeds by statute. even in the absence of statute, a written instrument, properly signed and delivered by the grantor, containing a description of the property, and an expression of intention to convey the real estate described, is probably sufficient to constitute a deed. a formal deed is customarily used. transfers of real property are important transactions. a formal deed contains several formal parts known by different names. these formal parts have resulted from well recognized customs and practices, some of them dating back a great many years. the formal parts of a warranty deed are the _premises_, the _habendum_, the _redendum_, the _conditions_, the _warranties_ or _covenants_, the _conclusions_ and the _acknowledgment_. = . premises of a deed.= the premises of a deed contain the name and description of the parties. if a deed is given by an unmarried person, he should be designated in the premises of the deed as _a b_, unmarried. this enables abstractors of titles to determine that a complete transfer of title has been made. otherwise there is nothing to show that _a b_ did not have a wife at the time the transfer was made. in this event, the wife would retain her right of dower. the premises usually contain the date of instrument. sometimes, the date is placed at the end of the instrument. the consideration is also contained in the premises. the consideration of a deed may be either good or valuable. if the grantor receives something of value, as money or an article of value, the consideration is said to be _valuable_. if a parent grants real property to a child or relative and states the consideration to be love and affection, the consideration is adequate, and is known as _good consideration_. the receipt of the consideration is also acknowledged in the premises of a deed. the language by which the grantor conveys the estate, such as "give," "grant," "set over," and "release" is contained in the premises as well as the description of the estate granted. = . habendum and redendum clauses.= the premises of a deed are followed by the _habendum_ and _redendum_ clauses. the _habendum_ clause describes the estate granted, whether an estate in fee, an estate for life, or an estate for years. it is not necessary to repeat the description of the estate in the _habendum_ clause. the _habendum_ clause usually commences with the words, "to have and to hold." the _redendum_ clause contains any interests or rights retained by the grantor. if the grantor reserves to himself the right to use a certain driveway, he places this reservation in the _redendum_ clause. = . the conditions, warranties and covenants of a deed.= a warranty deed may not be an absolute transfer of real property, but may be conditional. for example, if the deed is absolute in form, but contains a condition that the transfer is to be of no effect if the grantor pays the grantee a certain sum of money by a certain time, the deed is a conditional one. the conditions above described constitute the deed a mortgage. this class of conditional transfer is discussed in the following chapter. most deeds are without conditions. the next formal part of a warranty deed is the covenant of warranty. the grantor covenants that he is lawfully seized of the estate. this means that the grantor has the legal title and right to possession, which right he conveys to the grantee. the grantor also covenants that the grantee shall have quiet enjoyment of the estate, that the estate is free from incumbrance, and that the grantor and his heirs warrant the title to the estate. = . the conclusion of a deed.= the conclusion of a deed contains the signature of the grantor and the statement that he has signed and sealed the deed. most states require by statute that a deed must be signed in the presence of two witnesses. the signature and statement of the witnesses to the effect that the deed was signed in their presence is a part of the conclusion. the mere statement that the grantor signs and seals the deed makes it a sealed instrument. seals were originally impressions made in wax affixed to the instrument. a scroll or flourish of the pen was regarded as a seal, but at present a deed is in itself regarded as a sealed instrument, and requires no seal nor substitute therefor. = . acknowledgment of a deed.= the states of this country require by statute, deeds to be recorded by the public recorder, if parties to the deed desire to give notice of the transfer to third persons. third persons are deemed to have notice of deeds so recorded even though they have no actual notice. for the purpose of having a deed recorded, the grantor must acknowledge his signature before a notary public who adds his statement to that effect to the deed, and signs and seals the same. a quit claim deed contains no warranties nor covenants. it is merely a release of the grantor's interest to the grantee. quiz questions bailment . define _bailment_. . for whose benefit may bailment be made? . distinguish a _bailment_ from a _sale_. . give an example of a bailment. . name and define the parties to a bailment contract. . may an infant enter into a bailment contract? . is an infant liable for his torts? . classify bailments. . give an example of a bailment for the mutual benefit of both bailor and bailee. . is a bailment a contract? . what is the consideration in a bailment for the sole benefit of the bailor? . what party to a bailment contract has possession of the property? . is a finder of lost property a bailee? . in whom is the title to bailed property? . are the title and possession in the same person? . may a person not the owner of property bail it? . give an example of a bailment for the sole benefit of the bailor. . what degree of care is required of a bailee in case the bailment is for the sole benefit of the bailor? . give an example of a bailment for the sole benefit of the bailee. . what degree of care is required of a bailee in a bailment for his sole benefit? . _a_ hires of _b_ an automobile for $ . per hour. is the bailment for the sole benefit of the bailor, the bailee, or for the mutual benefit of both parties? . in the above example what degree of care is required of _a_? . what implied warranties accompany mutual benefit bailments? . define and distinguish public and private warehousemen. . what are government warehouses? . are warehouse receipts negotiable? . what degree of care is required of warehousemen? . what degrees of care are recognized in bailments? . how is the standard for determining degrees of care arrived at? . is ordinary care the same in the bailment of different kinds of property? . if a third person takes property away from a bailee may the latter recover possession? . what are the rights of a person purchasing from a bailee? . what is meant by _liens_ on personal property? . _a_ leaves his watch with _b_ for repairs. _b_ repairs the watch. can _b_ retain possession until he receives his pay? . may a bailee sell property to satisfy his lien? pledges . is a pledge a bailment? . define a _pledge_. . does title to property pledged remain in the pledgor? . distinguish _pledge_ from _chattel mortgage_. . name and define the parties to a contract of pledge. . may an infant pledge property? . what kinds of personal property may be pledged? . can a person pledge personal property which he expects to purchase? . can a person pledge a growing crop? . what is the purpose of a contract of pledge? . can there be a pledge which is not security for an existing debt? . if _a_ delivers possession of personal property to _b_ but does not owe _b_ anything, is the transaction a pledge? if not a pledge, what is the transaction? . who has possession of pledged property? . does the pledgee have title to property pledged? . in case of a chattel mortgage who has title to the mortgaged property? . in case of pledge of negotiable instruments, who has title to the instruments? . what is meant by _loans on collateral securities_? . what is a _collateral note_? . by whom are collateral notes commonly used? . after payment of the debt for which property is pledged, who is entitled to possession of the pledged property? . who is entitled to possession of property pledged before payment of the debt secured? . in case of pledge of negotiable instrument who must collect the interest and instrument when due? . what degree of care is required of a pledgee in the protection of pledged property? . if the pledgor fails to pay the debt when due, what may the pledgee do with the property? . in selling pledged property what notice, if any, should the pledgee give the pledgor? . what is meant by _foreclosing a lien in equity_? . define and explain _redemption_. . when may the right of redemption be exercised? mortgages on personal property . define _chattel mortgage_. . in case of a mortgage of personal property, who has possession of the property? who has title? . define _mortgagor_ and _mortgagee_. . distinguish _chattel mortgage_ and _sale_. . distinguish _chattel mortgage_ and _pledge_. . distinguish _pledge_ and _sale_. . may _choses in action_ be mortgaged? . define and distinguish _choses in action_ and _choses in possession_. may both be mortgaged? . what is the purpose of a chattel mortgage? . does a chattel mortgage require a consideration? . can there be a chattel mortgage without a debt to be secured? . must a chattel mortgage be in writing? . _a_ mortgages his horse to _b_ to secure a debt of $ . . _a_ delivers the horse to _b_. the mortgage is oral. is it binding? . what is the reason for filing or recording a chattel mortgage? . does a chattel mortgage of property, possession of which is given the mortgagee, have to be recorded to be binding? . who is entitled to possession of mortgaged personal property? . _a_ mortgages his household furniture to _b_, later he stores the furniture with _c_. _c_ acquires a storage keeper's lien. is the latter's lien superior to _b's_? . does a mortgagor retain an interest which he may dispose of? . does a mortgagee have absolute title to the property mortgaged? . if _a_, the mortgagee of personal property, sells the debt secured by the mortgage to _b_, what becomes of the mortgage? . when the mortgagor defaults in payment of the secured debt, how may the mortgagee obtain possession of the property? . define _equity of redemption_. . can a mortgagor enforce his equity of redemption after the mortgagee has obtained possession of the property? . can a mortgagee enforce his equity of redemption without paying the mortgage debt? . define _foreclosure_. . what is the purpose of foreclosure? . how is foreclosure enforced? carriers . define and give an example of _common carrier_. . define and give an example of _private carrier_. . what constitutes a person or company a common carrier of goods? . is a common carrier of goods obliged to carry goods of all kinds? . distinguish _common carrier_ and _private carrier_. . what is the exceptional liability of a common carrier, and what is the reason for this liability? . if goods intrusted to a common carrier are lost without negligence of the carrier is the latter liable to the owner? . is the exceptional liability of an insurer a matter of express or implied contract? . what are the exceptions to the liability of a common carrier as an insurer of the goods intrusted to his care? . define and give an example of _public enemy_. . define and give an example of _act of god_. . is a common carrier permitted to limit his common law liability as an insurer of the goods by special contract? . is a common carrier permitted to stipulate against the carelessness of his agents or servants? . is a common carrier permitted to limit his liability as an insurer of goods by stipulating in the bill of lading issued that the valuation is limited to a certain amount, unless informed otherwise by the shippee? . what does the interstate commerce act provide relative to the above question? . what is a _bill of lading_?. . distinguish bill of lading and shipping receipt. . what are the two essential features of a bill of lading? . in what sense, if any, is a bill of lading a negotiable instrument? . _a_, in cleveland, orders a car of hogs from _b_, in buffalo. _b_ delivers the hogs to the railway company in buffalo, to be shipped to _a_ in cleveland. in whom is the title to the hogs? . if _a_ stipulates that the hogs are to be delivered f. o. b. cleveland, in whom is the title to the hogs after they are delivered to the railway company, and before they reach cleveland? . what goods, and under what circumstances, is a carrier obliged to accept for shipment? . explain the meaning of _stoppage in transitu_. under what circumstances is a shipper permitted to exercise the right? . what carriers are obliged to make delivery at the residence or place of business of the consignee, and what carriers are obliged only to deliver at their depots or warehouses? . define and explain _carrier's lien_. . how may a carrier enforce his lien? . why is a common carrier not permitted to discriminate between shippers? . when, if at all, is a carrier of mail liable for negligence? . is the government liable to an owner of mail for its loss? . what are the principal features of the interstate commerce act of ? [illustration: entrance to the administration building of the werner company, akron, ohio] carriers of passengers . is every person or company carrying passengers for compensation a common carrier? . are owners of buildings operating elevators common carriers of passengers? . when does a person become a passenger? . is a person traveling on a pass a passenger within the legal meaning of the term, passenger? . is a public carrier of passengers obliged to accept all who present themselves as passengers? . when, and how, may a public carrier eject a passenger? . what degree of care is a public carrier of passengers obliged to exercise? . what constitutes baggage? . what is the liability of a carrier of passengers for loss or injury to baggage? innkeepers . must a person represent himself as being ready and willing to furnish both food and lodging to all who desire to become guests, in order to be an innkeeper? . are boarding-housekeepers innkeepers? . are innkeepers obliged to receive all persons who present themselves as guests if the regular price is tendered? . what degree of care in the protection of guests is required of innkeepers? . what degree of care is required of innkeepers in the protection of the baggage of guests? . what is an _innkeeper's lien_? . how may an innkeeper enforce his lien? real property . define _real property_. . what is included in the term, real property? . define and give an example of _hereditament_. . define and give an example of _tenement_. . are standing trees real or personal property? . are trees blown down real or personal property? . what is the practical distinction between real and personal property? . define _emblements_. . do emblements belong to the tenant or to the landlord? . are apples emblements? if not, why not? . how may a wall become a party wall by prescription? . define _fixtures_. . are fixtures real or personal property? . does the rule as to fixtures differ in case of a tenant, and in case of an owner? . do owners of adjoining property own a partition fence jointly or does each one own a particular part of the fence? . define and give an example of a _way of necessity_. . define and give an example of a _way of convenience_. . how are highways ordinarily established? . how may a highway be established by prescription? . into what classes are estates divided as to the quantity of interest held? . what is a _freehold estate_? . from what is the term, freehold, derived? . define and give an example of an _estate in fee simple_. . what is meant by _entailing an estate?_ . what was the reason for the practice of entailing estates? . to what extent may an estate be entailed in this country? . what is the rule against perpetuities? . define and give an example of a _life estate_. . what claims do life estates embrace? . define _estate by the curtesy_. . define and give an example of _dower estate_. . define and give an example of _homestead estate_. . define and give an example of an _estate for years_. . is a lease for two months an estate for years? . may a holder of an estate for years transfer it? . what is meant by _waste_? . what is the general rule relating to waste? . give an example of an _estate at will_. . distinguish an _estate at will_ from an _estate at sufferance_. . how may an estate at will be terminated? . define and give an example of an _estate in remainder_. . distinguish _vested_ and _contingent remainder_. . distinguish _estates in reversion_ from _estates in remainder_. . how may title to real property be acquired? . define _deed_. . define _deed poll_. . define _indenture_. . what are the formal parts of a deed? . what things are included in the premises of a deed? . what is meant by the _habendum_ and _redendum clause_ of a deed? . what is a _warranty of a deed?_ . what are the general warranties of a deed? . what things are included in the conclusion of a deed? . what is meant by the _acknowledgment of a deed?_ [illustration: a corner in the john crerar library, chicago, ill.] commercial law part v mortgages of real estate = . mortgage defined.= by the common law, a mortgage was an absolute deed of conveyance, by the terms of which the debtor was entitled to receive a reconveyance of the property upon payment of the debt described in the mortgage, or upon performing the conditions for which the mortgage was given. for example, _a_ owes _b_ one thousand dollars, _a_, to secure the debt, gives _b_ an instrument of conveyance of his house and lot, the instrument containing a provision that if _a_ pays _b_ one thousand dollars ($ , . ) on or before january st, , _b_ is to reconvey the house and lot to _a_. the above represents a mortgage at common law. as explained later, a present day mortgage is somewhat different. at common law, the creditor had possession of the property from the time the mortgage was given, unless it was expressly agreed that the debtor was to remain in possession. the real purpose of a mortgage is to give security for a debt or obligation. to permit a creditor to keep the mortgaged property upon default of the debtor to pay the debt when due, is unjust in many cases. for example, if _a_ gives a mortgage to _b_ upon property worth one thousand dollars, to secure a debt of three hundred dollars, and _a_ defaults in payment, it is unjust to permit _b_ to keep the property. courts of equity have for a long time regarded this transaction as a mere security for a debt, and not an absolute transfer of title to property. courts of equity long ago permitted the debtor to file a petition in a court of equity asking that the property be reconveyed to him upon payment of the debt, and damages due the creditor. courts of equity recognize this right of the debtor, which is called _equity of redemption_. at the present time mortgages are, in form, an absolute conveyance of real estate, with a condition that the title is to revest in the debtor, or that the conveyance is to be void and of no effect, if the debtor pays the debt or performs the condition. if the debtor fails to perform this condition at the time stipulated, he is still able to enforce his equity of redemption. this, in effect, makes a mortgage of real estate a mere security for a debt. the creditor is permitted to cut off the debtor's right of redemption by foreclosure, which is discussed under a separate section. = . parties to a mortgage contract.= a mortgage of real estate is a contract. like any contract, it requires competent parties, a consideration, mutuality, etc. (see _essentials of a contract_, chapter on contracts.) the party conveying the real estate to another as security for the debt is called the _mortgagor_, the party to whom the mortgage is given is called the _mortgagee_. = . possession of mortgaged property.= originally at common law, the mortgagee was entitled to the possession of the mortgaged premises as soon as the mortgage was given, and before default of the mortgagor to pay the debt described in the mortgage. at the present time, the mortgagor is entitled to possession of the mortgaged premises until after default of payment of the mortgage debt. after default, the mortgagee may take possession of the premises. some states now provide by statute, that the mortgagor shall have possession of the mortgaged premises until he defaults in payment of the mortgage debt. independently of such a statute, the mortgagor has the right to possession of the mortgaged premises before default of payment of the mortgage debt. this is by reason of the fact that the law regards the transaction as a security for a debt rather than an absolute transfer of title. parties are permitted to enter into any contract they choose so long as the provisions are legal. parties to a mortgage may stipulate who is to have possession before default or payment on the part of the mortgagor. if it is stipulated that the mortgagee is to have possession, he is entitled to it under the terms of the mortgage contract. if no stipulation is made, the mortgagor impliedly is given the right of possession before default. = . deeds as mortgages.= if a deed, absolute on its face, is given by a debtor to a creditor to secure a debt, it will be treated by a court of equity as a mortgage. equity regards the substance of things rather than the form. (see _courts of equity_ under chapter on courts, remedies, and procedure.) courts of equity were originally created for the purpose of granting justice where the rules of the common law failed. in england, they were called _courts of chancery_. a judge sits alone as a court of equity, without the aid of a jury. when there is no remedy at law, and a wrong exists, equity affords a remedy. in this country, the same court frequently sits as a court of equity as well as a court of law. in the case of deeds absolute on their face, if it was the intention of the parties that the conveyance was to constitute a security for a debt, rather than a sale, a court of equity will permit the grantor to secure a return of the property upon payment of his debt. equity looks at the substance of the transaction disregarding the form. if mortgages are not in proper legal form, and either party is not permitted at law to enforce his right, equity will enforce the transaction according to the intention of the parties. informal or incomplete mortgages are called _equitable mortgages_. = . the debt secured.= a mortgage is a contract, and like any contract, must be supported by a consideration. (see _consideration_, chapter on contracts.) the consideration of a mortgage may be anything of benefit to the one giving the mortgage, or any detriment to the one receiving the mortgage. the consideration of a mortgage ordinarily is an advancement or loan, past or present, made by a mortgagee to the mortgagor. that is, a mortgage is given as security for some debt or obligation in favor of the mortgagee. this debt is usually described in the mortgage as a promissory note. even though no note has been given, if the amount described in the mortgage as a promissory note is the amount of the debt, or if any debt exists, the mortgage is valid. a mortgage may be given to cover future advances, or for a pre-existing indebtedness. if a mortgage is given as security for a promissory note, it will secure all renewals of the note as well. = . essentials of a mortgage.= a mortgage is an instrument for the conveyance of land. by the provisions of the statute of frauds, such instruments must be in writing to be enforceable. (see _statute of frauds_, chapter on contracts.) the states provide by statute that mortgages must be recorded to be effective as against subsequent innocent purchasers, mortgagees or creditors. mortgages must be in writing for the purpose of recording, as well as to comply with the statute of frauds. when a mortgagee takes possession of the mortgaged premises, this is sufficient notice to creditors and subsequent purchasers of his interests. in this event the mortgage need not be reduced to writing nor recorded. mortgages are usually written in the form of formal deeds. (see _form of deeds_, chapter on real property.) although it is good business practice to follow these well recognized forms in drawing mortgages, an informal instrument describing the parties and the property mortgaged, and showing an intent to make a mortgage is sufficient. some states by statute provide a short statutory form. this form may be used, but does not prevent the common law form from being used. a mortgage is given to secure a debt or obligation. this debt or obligation should be set forth in the mortgage, and the time when it is to be paid or performed should be set forth. the mortgage should also contain a description of the property mortgaged. a complete and accurate description, such as is used by surveyors, is the best form. by this means, a person can locate the property directly from the description given in the mortgage. it is sufficient if the description given enables a person to locate the property either by reference to another record containing a description, or by its own terms. a surveyor's description is better, however. a mortgage should contain the names of the grantor and the grantee. the mortgagor is entitled to his equity of redemption. that is, he is entitled to the right to file a petition in a court of equity, offering to pay the mortgage debt, interest, and damages to the mortgagee, and asking for a return of the property. this may be done at any time before foreclosure by the mortgagee. foreclosure is discussed under a separate section. = . power of sale and delivery in escrow.= if a mortgagor stipulates in the mortgage that he waives, or will not enforce his equity of redemption, the law does not permit the mortgagee to enforce such a stipulation. it is regarded as against public policy, and illegal. whenever there is a mortgage, there is an equity of redemption in favor of the mortgagor. some mortgages contain a stipulation that in case the mortgagor fails to pay the mortgage debt when due, the mortgagee may sell the property, deduct his claim costs and expenses, and return the balance to the mortgagor. such mortgages are called _power of sale mortgages_. they are valid and enforceable. the mortgagor's equity of redemption is protected, in that he receives the balance of the proceeds of the sale of the mortgaged premises, after the mortgage debt and expenses are paid. the sale, under a power of sale mortgage, must be public and _bona fide_. a mortgage must be signed by the mortgagor. this is called in law, _execution of the mortgage_. the mortgage must also be attested. this means that the signing must be in the presence of a witness or witnesses. this requirement is a statutory one. some states require only one witness, others two. if a mortgage is to be recorded, the signature of the mortgagor must be acknowledged before a notary public or officer authorized to administer oaths. this is called _acknowledgment_. it means that the mortgagor acknowledges the making of the signature in the presence of an officer authorized to administer oaths. the officer writes a certificate of this acknowledgment on the mortgage. acknowledgment is a statutory requirement. a mortgage will not be received for record by the public recorder, unless it has been acknowledged. a mortgage given by a married man must contain a waiver of dower by the mortgagor's wife, or the wife will have a dower estate therein if her husband dies before she dies. the mortgage of a married man should contain a statement that the wife waives her dower interest, and the wife should sign the mortgage before witnesses, and acknowledge her signature. a mortgage, like any written contract, does not become effective until delivered. by _delivery_ is meant giving possession of the instrument to the mortgagee or his agent, with intent that it is to become effective from that date. if a mortgage or written instrument is delivered to a third person to be held for a certain purpose or until a certain time, this is called _delivery in escrow_. = . what interest in real estate may be mortgaged.= any interest in real estate which is the subject of transfer or sale may be mortgaged. one who has the absolute title, called _fee simple interest_, in real estate may mortgage it. a mortgage is not regarded as a transfer but merely as a security for a debt or obligation. the mortgagor retains an interest called his equity of redemption. for all practical purposes, a mortgage of real estate means that the mortgagee may sell the property mortgaged upon failure of the mortgagor to pay the mortgage debt when due. the mortgagee may keep enough of the proceeds of the sale to satisfy the mortgage debt. the equity of redemption of a mortgagor and the remainder must be returned to the mortgagor, or his right to the proceeds of the sale of mortgaged premises, after the mortgage debt is paid, is an interest which in turn may be mortgaged. a mortgagor may give successive mortgages so long as he finds persons willing to accept them as security. in practice, second and third mortgages on real estate are common. not only may real estate be mortgaged, but anything permanently connected with real estate, such as crops, trees, horses, and buildings. articles of personal property which have become permanently annexed to real estate are called _fixtures_. (see _fixtures_, chapter on real estate.) if title to real estate has been obtained by fraud, a valid mortgage may be given to one who has no notice of the fraud. the principle involved is that a title obtained by fraud or duress is voidable. the party defrauded may obtain a reconveyance of the property as against the party practicing the fraud, but not as against innocent purchasers who have had no notice of the fraud. if, however, a conveyance is attempted by means of a forgery, no title to the property passes to the purchaser, who in turn can convey nothing by mortgage or otherwise. similarly, a party who has conveyed his interest in real estate absolutely, by deed or contract, has nothing left to convey, and cannot give a mortgage. an interest in real estate less than absolute ownership, as a life interest, or a mere lease, or term for years, is an interest which may be mortgaged. = . recording mortgages.= to be effectual against creditors, subsequent purchasers, and mortgagees, most of the states require by statute, that mortgages be recorded with the public recorder of the county where the property is located. these statutory provisions do not render mortgages ineffectual as between original parties. _a_ gives a mortgage on his house and lot to _b_. _b_ does not have the mortgage recorded. if _a_ fails to pay the mortgage debt when due, _b_ may foreclose. as against _a_, _b's_ mortgage is enforceable without being recorded. if, however, _a_ gives a subsequent mortgage to _c_, and _c_ records his mortgage, _c's_ mortgage is superior to _b's_. if _a_ sells the property to _d_ after mortgaging it to _b_, _b_ not recording the mortgage, _d_, upon having his deed recorded, takes the title free of _b's_ mortgage. if _a_ gives _b_ a mortgage, _b_ not having the mortgage recorded, and _e_ obtains a judgment against _a_ and levies upon the real estate mortgaged to _b_, _e_ obtains a lien superior to _b's_. the statutes of a few states provide that mortgages become effective from the time they are left with the recorder for record. the recorder stamps on the mortgage the time it is left for record, and the mortgage becomes effective from that time. suppose _a_ on the second of february gives a mortgage on his house and lot to _b_, for $ . , and then on the fifth of february gives a mortgage on his house and lot to _c_ for $ . . if _c_ has his mortgage recorded february sixth, and _b_ has his mortgage recorded february seventh, _c's_ mortgage is superior to _b's_. in the few states where a mortgage does not become effective until received for record, the one first received for record is superior to others, even though the mortgagee first leaving his mortgage for record takes his mortgage with actual notice of the prior mortgage. the general rule is that one who takes a mortgage with actual notice of other mortgages, takes subject to such mortgages. to be received for record, a mortgage must be acknowledged. this means that the mortgagor must acknowledge the signature to the mortgage before a notary public or officer authorized to administer oaths. the officer makes a certificate of the acknowledgment on the mortgage. = . transfer of mortgages and mortgaged premises.= while, in form, a mortgage is a transfer of real estate, it is regarded merely as security for a debt. the mortgagee is not permitted to transfer title to the real estate. he is, however, permitted to transfer the interest which he possesses in the mortgaged premises. such a transfer is called an _assignment_. it is a contract of sale by which the mortgagee sells his interest in the mortgage. (see _assignment of contract_, chapter on contracts.) for example, if _a_ mortgages his farm to _b_ as security for a one-thousand-dollar promissory note, _b_ cannot convey title to the property mortgaged, to _c_, but he may sell his interest in the mortgage to _c_. the mortgage cannot be sold separately from the debt secured. the mortgage, separated from the debt, represents nothing of value. if, in the example above given, _b_ endeavors to sell the note to one person, and the mortgage to another, the purchaser of the mortgage takes nothing. a sale of the debt secured by the mortgage, carries with it the mortgage security, unless it is expressly agreed that the debt is transferred without the security of the mortgage. if _a_ mortgages his farm to _b_ to secure a promissory note for one thousand dollars, and _b_ sells the note to _c_, _c_ takes the security of the mortgage as well as the note, unless it is expressly agreed between him and _b_ that the security of the mortgage is not transferred with the note. after _b_ sells _c_ the note, _b_ cannot cancel the mortgage. the mortgage now belongs to _c_. if _a_ mortgages his farm to _b_ to secure two promissory notes of $ . each, and _b_ sells one of the notes to _c_, in the absence of an agreement to the contrary, _c_ has one-half interest in the mortgage as security for his note. _b_ may, however, expressly stipulate in the sale of his note to _c_, that _b_ is to retain the entire mortgage security for his own note. when a debt secured by a mortgage is assigned, the assignee should immediately notify the mortgagor of the assignment, in order that the mortgagee shall pay him, and not the assignor. this is the safe policy to follow, although technically, the mortgagor before paying the mortgage debt should be sure that the mortgagee is still the owner of the note, debt, or other obligation, secured by the mortgage. a mortgagor is permitted to sell his interest in the mortgaged premises before satisfying the mortgage. he may sell his equity of redemption, or he may sell in such a manner that the purchaser assumes the mortgage. if the mortgagor sells the mortgaged premises, the purchaser agreeing to assume the mortgage as between the mortgagor and the purchaser, the purchaser must pay the mortgage. the mortgagee, however, is not bound by this agreement. he may disregard it. he may accept the benefit of it if he chooses and sue the purchaser on this contract. (see _contract for the benefit of third persons_, chapter on contracts.) if, however, the mortgagee agrees to accept the purchaser of the mortgagor's interest as the debtor, the original mortgagor is relieved thereby. = . satisfaction of mortgages.= a mortgage is given as security for a debt or obligation. it is satisfied by payment of the debt, or fulfillment of the obligation. the mortgage debt may be paid by the mortgagor himself, by a purchaser of the mortgagor's interest, by a subsequent mortgagee, or by any one having an interest in the real estate mortgaged. if anyone, other than the mortgagor, pays the mortgage debt to protect his own interest, he is thereby entitled to the benefit of the mortgage. this is called _subrogation_. if _a_ owes _b_ $ , . , and gives _b_ a note for that amount, secured by a real estate mortgage on a farm, _c_ signing the note as surety or guarantor, in case _c_ pays the note upon default of _a_, _c_ is entitled to _b's_ benefit in the mortgage. payment of a mortgage debt may be made to a mortgagee, himself, his assignee of the mortgage debt, or any agent or authorized representative of the mortgagee. a party not having an interest in the land cannot voluntarily pay a mortgage debt, and claim the benefit of a mortgage by subrogation. a party interested in the land, even the mortgagor, himself, cannot compel the mortgagee to accept payment before the mortgage debt is due. upon payment of a mortgage debt, the title to the mortgaged premises by this act becomes absolute in the mortgagor. at common law, if the mortgagor paid the mortgage debt when due, the mortgagee had to reconvey by deed the mortgaged premises to the mortgagor to give the latter title. but at the present time, a mortgage is not regarded as a conveyance of title, but merely as a security for a debt, the title vesting absolutely in the mortgagor any time he pays the debt before the actual foreclosure of this right by the mortgagee. when the mortgagor pays the mortgage debt, he is entitled to a written satisfaction of the debt. this is a mere written statement that the mortgage is satisfied, signed by the mortgagee. the mortgagor is thus enabled to have the mortgage cancelled of record, which gives the public notice that the mortgage is no longer effective. the mortgagor presents his written statement of satisfaction to the public recorder, who enters it in his record of the mortgage. = . equity of redemption.= a mortgagor does not lose his interest in the mortgaged property by failure to pay the mortgage debt when due. courts of equity regard a mortgage as a security for a debt, and not a transfer of real property. even though the mortgagor fails to pay the mortgage debt when due, and in spite of the fact that the mortgage purports to be a transfer of real estate, conditioned only on the payment of the debt described, equity refuses to regard the transaction as a sale, and permits the mortgagor to recover the property by paying the debt, interest, and expenses connected with the mortgage, at any time before the statute of limitations cuts him off. the states have statutes requiring suits of different kinds to be brought within certain periods. these statutes vary somewhat in the different states. most states require an action by which a mortgagor enforces his equity of redemption, to be brought in about twenty or twenty-one years after the debt becomes due. the mortgagor himself or anyone to whom he transfers, or who acquires his interest, is entitled to the equity of redemption. if _a_ mortgages his farm to _b_, to secure a promissory note of one thousand dollars due in one year, _a_ does not lose his right to the property by failure to pay the note when due. he may bring a suit in equity at any time, usually within twenty-one years, after the note becomes due, offering to pay the mortgage debt, interest, and costs, and asking for a return of the property. equity now gives the mortgagee a right to cut off the mortgagor's right of redemption by foreclosure. this is discussed in the following section. = . foreclosure of mortgages.= a mortgagor has the right to redeem the property at any time within the statute of limitations, after the mortgage debt becomes due. the mortgagee does not have to wait the pleasure of the mortgagor to redeem or abandon the right. equity gives the mortgagee the right to cut off the mortgagor's equity of redemption by foreclosure. by foreclosure is meant the mortgagee's right to file a petition in a court of equity asking that the property be sold, and that from the proceeds, the amount of the mortgage debt and costs first be paid, and that the balance be paid the mortgagor. the court orders the property advertised and sold, and the proceeds distributed as above described. some mortgages contain a stipulation concerning foreclosure. these mortgages are called _power of sale mortgages_. it is stipulated that when the mortgagor is in default of payment, the mortgagee may advertise and sell the property, deducting from the proceeds the mortgage debt, interest, and expenses, and paying the balance to the mortgagor. these power of sale mortgages are enforceable. the sale must be free from fraud, public, and the mortgagee cannot become a purchaser unless so stipulated in the mortgage, or so provided by statute. the states usually provide by statute a method of foreclosure. these statutes frequently provide that a mortgagee may enforce his mortgage, and obtain a judgment against the mortgagee on the mortgage debt in the same action. if the mortgaged premises do not bring enough to satisfy the judgment, the balance may be enforced against the mortgagor by seizing any property subject to execution that he possesses. trusts = . defined and classified.= in a popular sense, the term, _trust_, is often used to designate combinations of capital or combinations among business men for the purpose of destroying competition, or for the purpose of regulating prices. this is not the meaning of the term as used in this chapter. it is here used to mean an estate of some kind held for the benefit of another. a trust has been defined to be "an obligation upon a person, arising out of a confidence reposed in him, to apply property faithfully according to such confidence." _a_, by will, appoints _b_ trustee of his farm, for the benefit of _c_. upon _a's_ death, if _b_ accepts the duty imposed upon him by the will, a trust is thereby created in which _b_ holds the legal title to the farm, for the benefit of _c_. trusts are sometimes classified as _general_ and _special_. if the property is conveyed by deed or will to another to be held in trust for a third person, without specifying any of the duties of the second person, it is said to be a general or simple trust. if, however, the duties of the second person or trustee are defined, the trust is called a special trust. a trust for the benefit of an individual or individuals is called a _private_ trust, while one for the benefit of a public institution, or for the public, is a _public_ trust. if _a_ gives his property to _b_ to care for the poor of the city of chicago, the trust is public. as to their method of creation, trusts are usually divided into _express_, _implied_, _resulting_ and _constructive_ trusts. = . parties to trusts.= the party creating a trust is called the _grantor_ or _settlor_. the party to whom the title to the property is given to hold for the benefit of another is called the _trustee_. the party for whose benefit the trust is created is called the _cestui que trust_. if the beneficiaries are more than one in number, they are termed _cestui que trust_. if _a_ deeds his land to _b_ for the benefit of _c_, _a_ is the settlor, _b_ is the trustee, and _c_ is the _cestui que trust_. = . who may be parties to a trust.= persons of lawful age, and competent to make contracts, including corporations, may create trusts. any person competent to make contracts, including corporations, may act as trustee. even infants (persons under legal age) may act as trustees if the duties require the exercise of no discretion. an infant may hold the legal title as trustee, and if the duties require the exercise of discretion, the court will remove him or appoint a guardian to perform his duties. anyone capable of holding the legal title to property may be a _cestui que trust_. this includes corporations, aliens, and, in case of charitable trusts, infants. any kind of property, whether real or personal, may be given in trust. this includes lands, chattel property, promissory notes, accounts, and kindred property rights, regardless of where the property is located. = . express trusts.= an _express trust_ is one created by the express written or oral declaration of the grantor. if _a_ gives a deed of his farm to _b_, by the terms of which _b_ is to hold the farm in trust for _c_, _a_, the grantor, has created an express trust in favor of _c_, _b_ as trustee holds the legal title to the farm, and _c_, as _cestui que trust_ or beneficiary, holds the beneficial or equitable interest. _a_, before giving the deed of trust, was the absolute owner of the farm. that is, _a_ held the legal title and the equitable interest in the farm. by creating the trust, he placed the legal title in one person and the equitable or beneficial interest in another. originally, in england, at common law, trusts could be created by oral declaration as well as by written instruments. at that time, land could be transferred without written instruments. the seller took the buyer on to the land to be conveyed, and in the presence of witnesses delivered to him a symbol of the land, such as a piece of turf or a twig. about , the statute of frauds was passed by the english parliament, requiring among other things, that conveyances of lands, including the creation of trusts therein, must be by written instruments. this provision of the statute of frauds has been re-enacted by most of the states of this country. at the present time, trusts in real estate must generally be created by written instrument. trusts may be created by will to take effect at the grantor's death. trusts may be created in personal property. except when created by will, trusts in personal property may be created by oral declaration of the grantor. a grantor may create a trust voluntarily. if actually carried out, or if the grantor's intention to create the trust is expressed as final, it requires no consideration to support it. if the declaration of trust amounts to a mere agreement to create a trust, and is not carried out, it requires a consideration to enable the beneficiary to compel its execution. after an express trust is completed, it cannot be revoked by mutual agreement between the grantor and trustee without the consent of the _cestui que trust_. [illustration: the assembling department in the comptometer factory, chicago felt & tarrant mfg. co.] the most common forms of express trusts are created by deed, by will, or by contract. any declaration of the grantor, no matter how informal, if expressing his intention to create a trust, is sufficient to create a trust. a trust cannot be created for an immoral or illegal purpose. = . implied trusts.= when a person by deed or will does not use language expressly creating a trust, but uses language showing his intention to create a trust, one will be implied. such a trust is known in law as an _implied trust_, as distinguished from an _express trust_. if _a_ devises all his property to his son, _b_, the will containing the following language: "i request my son, _b_, to pay his cousin, _c_, $ . per month during his life," this language is held to create a trust in favor of _c_, wherein _b_ is trustee. = . resulting trusts.= one party may so conduct himself, or so deal with another, that a court will declare the transaction to be a trust, even in the absence of any express declaration, or of an intention on the part of the parties to create a trust. such a trust is known in law as a _resulting trust_. _j_, to avoid paying his creditors, purchases property in the name of his wife, _k_. _k_ is a trustee for her husband, _j_, and creditors can by suit in equity subject _j's_ interest in the property. if _a_ purchases property, and takes the deed in the name of _b_, _b_ is trustee for _a_. _b_ is the legal owner, and _a_ is the beneficial or equitable owner. if a third person purchases the property from _b_, without notice of _a's_ rights, and for value, the third person takes good title to the property free from _a's_ claim. in this country, the states generally require by statute, that deeds and mortgages of real estate must be recorded. if an equitable owner does not have a properly recorded written instrument showing his interest in the real estate in question, thereby giving future purchasers notice of his interest, he cannot complain unless the third person has actual notice of his rights or purchases without giving a valuable consideration. a resulting trust is not created by agreement or contract to that effect, but is created by the trustee using money or funds of the _cestui que trust_ in the purchase of property in his own name. = . constructive trusts.= if one person is in a confidential relation to another, and misappropriates the money of the other, this act is said to create a _constructive trust_, in which the defrauding party is trustee, and the defrauded party is beneficiary, or _cestui que trust_. a constructive trust differs from a resulting trust in that the former involves fraud on the part of the trustee, exercised on the _cestui que trust_, while a resulting trust never involves fraud between the trustee and _cestui que trust_, although created for the purpose of defrauding third persons. if _a_, an attorney, is employed by _b_ to collect a note of $ . , and fraudulently reports a collection of $ . , keeping $ . , a constructive trust results, in which _a_ is trustee for _b_, for $ . . if _a_, for the purpose of defrauding his creditors, deposits his money in bank in _b's_ name, a resulting trust arises in which _b_ is trustee for _a_, and _a's_ creditors can subject the property. anyone defrauding another by duress, by taking advantage of old age or of mental weakness, or by fraud, becomes the trustee for the wronged party in the amount the latter has lost. = . rights and liabilities of trustee.= a trustee of an express trust need not accept the trust against his will. if _a_ by deed, will, or written declaration, names _b_ as trustee of certain property for _c_, _b_ need not accept unless he so desires. if _b_ refuses to act as trustee, the trust does not fail by reason thereof. a court may appoint another trustee or may itself administer the trust. after accepting a trust, a trustee cannot resign without the consent of the _cestui_. he may be removed by the court for misconduct, or he may transfer his duties, if so stipulated in the instrument creating the trust. in england during the reign of henry viii, a statute was passed called the _statute of uses_, declaring that real property given to one person and his heirs in trust for another and his heirs, should vest the legal title in the trustee. thus, if _a_ gives real estate to _b_ and his heirs in trust for _c_ and his heirs, _c_ takes the legal title. the statute of uses is in force in most of the states of this country. it does not apply to personal property, and if the trustee is given some duties, such as to collect rents, or to do anything except to hold the legal title as trustee, the case is not within the statute of uses, and the trust will be carried out. a trustee holds the legal title to the trust estate. suits against the estate must be brought against him as trustee, and suits for the protection of the estate must be brought by him as trustee. a trustee has the right to possession of all personal property covered by the trust, and to possession of the real property, if necessary to execute the terms of his trust. a trustee must protect the estate and perform his duties with care, or be liable to the beneficiary for any damages resulting. he is not permitted to make any profit out of his office. any profit made by him through his connection with the trust estate belongs to the beneficiary. = . rights and liabilities of beneficiary.= a _cestui que trust_ has the right to receive the benefits of the trust estate as outlined in the instrument creating the trust. if the trustee fails properly to perform his duties, the _cestui que trust_ may bring legal action to have him removed. a trustee has legal title to the trust property, and may convey good title to one who purchases for value, and without notice of the trust. the _cestui que trust_ can follow and regain trust funds or property, if the latter are conveyed to persons not _bona fide_ purchasers. landlord and tenant = . in general.= the term, _landlord and tenant_, is applied to the relation existing between one who obtains the right to the possession of the real property of another, under a contract by the terms of which the title or ultimate right to possession, or at least some interest in the property, remains in the grantor. the relation existing between landlord and tenant is contractual. like all contracts, there must be a consideration, competent parties, and legality of purpose. the contract by which one party becomes a tenant is called a _lease_. the party granting a lease is called the _landlord_. the owner to whom the lease is given is called the _tenant_ or _lessee_. a lease of property is not a sale. by a lease of real property, the lessor grants but a portion of what he possesses. by making a sale of real property, the grantor transfers his entire interest. if a tenant transfers his entire interest in the lease, it is a sale, and is usually called an _assignment_. if a tenant sublets a portion of his interest in the lease, he, himself, becomes a landlord, and the sublessee becomes a tenant. = . rights of a tenant.= the form and contents of a lease are discussed under a separate section. parties to a lease may agree to any terms they choose, if the terms are legal. in the absence of express stipulations in a lease, many things are implied. a tenant is entitled to the possession and use of the premises leased, from the time mentioned in the lease for it to take effect. by possession is meant the right to take actual possession of the premises without being prevented by one having a right superior to that of the tenant. a tenant is permitted to rent any premises he chooses. a landlord, on the other hand, may lease to a tenant any premises he possesses. there is no implied warranty on the part of the landlord that premises leased are in good condition, or that they are fit for any particular purpose. the tenant makes his own bargain, and, as in the case of making a purchase of goods, or in making any contract, he must take care of his own interests. the tenant may stipulate in the lease that the premises are to be in a certain condition, that they are adapted to a certain purpose. in this event, the tenant is not obliged to accept the premises if they do not comply with the terms of the lease, or he may bring an action for damages against the landlord for not complying with the terms of the lease. in the absence of any express stipulation as to the condition of the premises, or their suitableness for the purpose for which they are to be used, the law implies nothing. a landlord is not permitted to defraud a tenant. he cannot conceal or misrepresent material facts relating to the lease. if there is a misrepresentation of a material fact by the landlord, which is relied upon by the tenant to the latter's injury, the tenant has been defrauded. he may refuse to accept the property, or he may repudiate the lease as soon as he discovers the fraud. a tenant impliedly has the right to quiet enjoyment of the premises leased. the landlord must not disturb the tenant's right to quiet possession. if the landlord, himself, or one who legally claims a right to possession of the premises disturbs the tenant's possession, the latter may sue the landlord for damages. if a mere trespasser or one who wrongfully claims the right, disturbs the possession or quiet enjoyment of the tenant, the landlord is not liable. the acts of strangers are beyond his control. the tenant may use the premises for the purposes stipulated in the lease. in the absence of express stipulation, he may use the premises for the purpose and in the manner in which the property leased is customarily used. = . taxes, repairs, and insurance.= the general rule is, that in the absence of express stipulation in the lease to the contrary, all taxes are to be paid by the landlord. even though the lease provides that the tenant is to pay all taxes, this does not include special assessments, such as assessments for city paving and sewers. water rent is not included in the general term, _taxes_. the landlord is obliged to pay all taxes on the property unless the tenant expressly assumes them. in the absence of any express stipulation, the tenant must pay water-rent. there is no implied duty on the part of the tenant to insure the property leased. a tenant is, in the absence of any express stipulation, required to keep the property in repair. he is not liable for ordinary wear and tear of the property, but must make ordinary repairs at his own expense. if the property is destroyed by fire without the fault of the tenant, the tenant is not liable for the loss. he is not obliged to rebuild the property destroyed. the lease is ended by the destruction of the property by fire, and the tenant is not obliged to pay further rent. the above is the rule fixed by statute in most states. the common law rule was that a tenant was not relieved from paying rent by the destruction of the building by fire. = . liability for injuries arising from condition of leased premises.= in the absence of any stipulation in the lease relative to the condition of the premises leased, the tenant is presumed to make the lease on his own judgment. there is no implied duty on the part of the landlord to deliver the premises in any particular condition. this rule is subject to the limitation that a landlord is not permitted to deliver possession of premises containing latent defects of such a character as would be liable to cause injury to a tenant. if injury results from such latent defects, the landlord is liable in damages to the tenant. as a rule, however, the tenant takes the premises as they are, and if injury results to himself by reason of apparent defects in the premises, he has no right of action against the landlord. the tenant has control of the premises. if persons are injured by reason of accummulations of snow or ice on the walks, the tenant, and not the landlord, is liable therefor. = . rent.= the compensation given by a tenant to a landlord for the use of leased premises is called _rent_. a tenant may become liable for rent without any express agreement to that effect. if one person, with the consent of another, occupies the premises of the latter as a tenant, he is liable to pay the reasonable value of such occupancy, as rent. this obligation is implied from the relation of landlord and tenant existing between the parties. ordinarily, the matter of rent is expressly agreed upon and, until the tenant is evicted, his lease surrendered, or he is released, he is obliged to pay the landlord rent. the tenant's liability to pay rent does not necessarily depend upon actual occupancy of the leased premises. he may rent the premises for the use of another, or he may, without excuse, refuse to accept possession of the premises. in either event, he is liable for rent. if the lease expressly stipulates that the premises are in a certain condition as to plumbing, etc., the tenant may refuse to accept the possession if the conditions are not fulfilled. if, on the other hand, the tenant leases premises, nothing being said about their condition, the tenant is presumed to rely upon his own judgment, and the fact that the premises are uninhabitable by reason of defective plumbing, by reason of unhealthful conditions, or for any reason, does not release him from his contract. he is liable to pay the rent agreed upon. the landlord is not permitted to defraud the tenant. he cannot mislead the tenant by false or fraudulent representations. fraud enables a tenant to avoid a lease. if a tenant refuses to accept possession of premises leased, or abandons the premises without excuse, he is still liable for the rent for the balance of the term. if he surrenders the lease, and the landlord consents to the surrender, the tenant is relieved from further liability. but a voluntary abandonment by the tenant, not consented to by the landlord, does not relieve the tenant from liability to pay rent. if a tenant abandons the premises leased, the landlord may permit the premises to remain vacant and compel the tenant to pay the balance of the rent when it is due under the lease. the landlord may, on the other hand, accept the premises, and cancel the remainder of the lease. again, the landlord may take possession of the premises and relet them for the benefit of the tenant, notifying the tenant of his intention. he may collect any deficiency in the rent from the original tenant. for example, if _a_ rents _b's_ house for one year for $ . and at the expiration of six months _a_ abandons the premises, _b_ may relet the premises to _c_ for _a's_ benefit. if _b_ relets for _a's_ benefit, he must obtain the best terms possible. if he obtains only $ . rent from _c_ for the balance of the term, he can collect $ . from _a_. = . distress.= at common law, a landlord had the right to take possession of the personal property of a tenant who was in arrears for rent, and hold the personal property until the rent was paid. this remedy is known as _distress_. when a landlord makes use of this remedy he is said to _distrain for rent_. a landlord cannot deprive the tenant of possession, and then distrain for rent. it is not an action against the tenant personally, as an action for debt. it is a mere right of a landlord to take possession of the tenant's personal property after rent is due, and while the tenant is still in possession of the leased property as tenant. the landlord may retain possession of his property as security for the rent. at common law, a landlord could not sell the property, but could hold it as security for the rent. at the present time, the right to distrain for rent is not recognized by many states. where recognized, it is regulated largely by statute. the landlord is usually required to give bond, and file an affidavit with a court to the effect that the rent of a certain amount is justly due. the property is then seized by an officer of the court, and upon final termination of the case, may be sold, and the proceeds applied to the payment of the rent. this action is now treated in the nature of an attachment. (see _attachment_, chapter on courts and legal remedies.) the remedies of a landlord commonly recognized at the present time are actions for rent, and actions to recover possession of the premises. these remedies are discussed under a separate section. = . leases.= _lease_ is the term applied to the agreement by which one person becomes a tenant, and another a landlord. leases are usually in the form of formal written instruments in which the rights and duties of the parties are quite fully set forth. no particular form of language is required to make a valid lease. if the agreement shows an intention on the part of the parties to create the relation of landlord and tenant, it is sufficient to constitute a lease. parties may make oral leases covering short periods of time. most of the states provide by statute that leases beyond certain periods must be in writing to be enforceable. this period varies in the different states. some require leases in excess of three years to be in writing; others fix the limit at one year. some of the statutes which do not specially require leases to be in writing, make them void as against purchasers or incumbrances if not recorded. such statutes in effect require the lease to be in writing. a lease does not require a seal. by statute, most states require leases to be witnessed, usually by two witnesses, and acknowledged before a notary public. witnessing is called _attesting_, or _attestation_. by _acknowledgment_ is meant an admission of the signature by the parties to a lease before a notary public. the notary writes his certificate upon the lease, stating that the parties acknowledged the signature in his presence. the notary signs and seals the certificate of acknowledgment. the states generally require by statute that leases beyond a certain time, usually one or more years, be recorded with the public recorder of the county where the property leased is located, to be effectual as against subsequent purchasers or incumbrances. certain requisites are recognized in formal lease. the names and description of the parties, the terms of the lease, the description of the property, the signing, delivery, and acceptance of the lease, and the witnessing and acknowledging are regarded as essential features. _covenants_ are express or implied terms of a lease. if parties expressly agree to do certain things enumerated and set forth in the lease, the covenant is said to be _express_. the law implies certain obligations on the part of the parties to a lease. there is an _implied_ covenant on the part of the tenant to pay rent, and to make all ordinary repairs subject to the reasonable wear and tear of the premises. the landlord impliedly consents to give the tenant quiet enjoyment, and to pay taxes and assessments. = . transfer of leases.= a landlord may transfer his interest in a lease. a tenant may, unless the lease stipulates otherwise, transfer his interest in a lease. a transfer of an interest or right in which a third person, not a party to the transfer, has an interest is usually called an _assignment_. for example, _a_ owes _b_ $ . , _b_ may assign his claim to _c_. by notifying _a_ of the assignment, _a_ is obliged to pay _c_, instead of _b_. any defense that _a_ has against _b_ is available against _c_. as a rule, partial interests cannot be assigned so as to be binding upon the obligor, without the latter's consent. if _a_ owes _b_ $ . _b_ cannot assign $ . of this claim to ten different parties. this would compel _a_ to pay ten different persons, while the original obligation bound him to pay but one. _a_ may have a counter claim amounting to $ . . to obtain the benefit of this counter claim, he would have to set it up in five different suits, whereas if the claim were sued by the original owner, or by one owner he would have to make a defense in but one suit. an assignment may be made orally, if not in conflict with the provisions of the statute of frauds. it may be made by written contract. no particular language is required to make a valid assignment. any words expressing the intention of one party to make an assignment, accepted by the one to whom the assignment is to be made, is sufficient. a landlord may assign a lease. upon receipt of notice of the assignment from the landlord or the assignee, the tenant must pay to the assignee the rent subsequently coming due. if an assignment is made by a landlord, and no notice is given the tenant, the latter discharges his liability under the lease by paying the original landlord. originally at common law, a landlord could not assign his rights without the consent of the tenant. the tenant could not be compelled to recognize a new landlord. recognition of a new landlord was called _attornment_. a tenant may assign his interest in a lease if the lease does not expressly provide otherwise. this does not relieve the tenant from liability under the lease, even though the landlord consents to the assignment, and accepts rent from the assignee. the original tenant is a surety for the rent. after an assignment of a lease by the tenant, the landlord, if he does not expressly release the original tenant, may collect the rent from either party. = . leases for years.= a _lease for years_ is a lease for a definite and ascertained period of time. if _a_ rents _b's_ farm for five years commencing june , , the lease is for years. if _a_ leases _b's_ house for a year, a month, or a week, to commence on a certain date, the time of the lease is definite and ascertained and constitutes a lease for years. if _a_ rents _b's_ house for a year commencing june , , at $ . per month, the rent to be monthly in advance, the lease is one for years. the fact that the rent is to be paid in installments does not render the lease one from month to month. a lease is regarded as personal property and, while it is an interest in real property, it is usually called a chattel real, and is treated as personal property. when the owner of a lease dies, the lease is personal property in the hands of the executor or administrator of the owner, and does not descend to the heirs of the owner as real property. in some states, long time leases, such as leases for ninety-nine years, are by statute made real property. the practical distinction between leases for years and leases from month to month, is that in the former, the lease ends when the time covered by it expires. in a lease from month to month, a new lease is created by implication, if a tenant is permitted to hold over. this question is discussed more at length under the section, _tenancies from year to year_. = . subletting.= some states by statute refuse to permit a tenant to sublet any portion of his lease, without the consent of the landlord. a landlord may stipulate in his lease that a tenant shall not sublet any portion of the premises. in the absence of statutory provisions, or stipulations in the lease, a tenant may sublet the leased premises. a transfer by a tenant of an interest in the leased premises may be an assignment, or it may be a sublease. an assignment is a transfer by a tenant of his entire interest in the premises. if _a_ rents _b's_ farm for five years, and sells his lease for five years to _c_, the transfer is an assignment. a transfer of only a portion of a tenant's interest is a sublease. if _a_ rents _b's_ farm for five years, and leases the farm for three years to _c_, the transfer is an assignment. if _a_ leases the farm to _c_ for five years, the transaction is a sublease. an assignment is a transfer of the tenant's entire interest in the leased premises. a sublease is a transfer of a part of a tenant's interest in the leased premises. a tenant may mortgage his interest in the leased premises. a creditor of a tenant may levy upon the lease in satisfaction of a judgment, the same as upon any article of personal property. the purpose of the statute and stipulations in a lease, forbidding a tenant to sublet the leased premises, is for the protection of the original lessor. a subtenant is not permitted to avoid a lease on the ground of such a statutory provision, or by reason of such a stipulation in a lease. for example, if _a_ rents _b's_ farm for five years, and the lease contains a stipulation that _a_ cannot sublet, if _a_ sublets the farm for three years to _c_, _c_ cannot avoid the obligation to _a_ by reason of the stipulation in the lease. the stipulation is a privilege in favor of _b_. it may be exercised by _b_ if he chooses to avail himself of the privilege. he may waive the privilege, or refuse or neglect to exercise his right. neither _c_ nor anyone else can avail himself of this privilege. it is sometimes quite difficult to tell just what constitutes a subletting in violation of a statutory provision or a provision in the lease. mere privileges granted to others do not constitute sublettings. permission granted a neighbor to use a barn for a short period, or taking roomers by the week, has been held not to constitute a subletting. if a tenant in violation of his lease sublets a part of the premises, the original lessor may eject the sublessee, and sue the tenant for damage for breach of contract. if a tenant exercise his right of subletting a part of the premises, he is not thereby relieved from his responsibility to pay rent under the lease. even though the tenant agrees to accept rent from the sublessee, and apply the same on the obligation of the original lessee, this does not relieve the original tenant from his obligation to pay rent. for example, if _a_ rents _b's_ house and lot for three years for $ . per month, payable monthly in advance, and _b_ agrees to accept the rent from _c_, and does accept payments from _c_, this does not relieve _a_ from liability to pay _b_ the rent. _a_ is a surety, and his obligation to pay the rent to _b_ is the same as the obligation of _c_. if _b_ expressly agrees to relieve _a_ and to accept _c_ in place of _a_, he can no longer hold _a_. = . tenancies at will and at sufferance.= a lease may be entered into, the terms of which may be terminated at the will of either party. it is for an indefinite period. such a lease creates a _tenancy at will_. (see _estates at will_, chapter on real property.) tenancies at will are uncommon. the usual tenancies are tenancies for years and tenancies from year to year. if _a_ permits _b_ to take possession of, and to occupy his house under an agreement that either he or _b_ may terminate the lease at the desire of either party, the tenancy is one at will. _b_ may agree to pay rent at the rate of $ . per week, $ . per month or $ . a year, or at any rate, without affecting the estate at will. if the estate is for an indefinite period, but is terminable at the wish of either party, no matter what the arrangement for paying the rent, it is an estate at will, as distinguished from an estate for years, and an estate from year to year. it is sometimes held that a person who holds over with the consent of the landlord after the termination of a lease for a definite period, called _an estate for years_, is a tenant at will. for example, if _a_ rents _b's_ house for one year, and at the expiration of the year, _a_ with _b's_ consent retains possession, _a_ is a tenant at will. the tenancy may be terminated at the desire of either party, and upon notice by either party. in most jurisdictions, however, this constitutes _a_ a tenant from year to year. (see following section.) a _tenancy at sufferance_ is created by a tenant unlawfully retaining possession of the premises after the termination of his lease, without the consent of the landlord. if _a_ rents _b's_ house for one year, and at the expiration of the year _a_, without _b's_ consent retains possession of the house, he is a tenant at sufferance. he is a trespasser, and may be ejected by _b_. tenancies at will and at sufferance are estates in land. they are also discussed under the chapter on real property. = . tenancies from year to year.= a tenancy may be created for a definite period of time to continue for similar periods unless terminated by notice of either party. such a tenancy is called a _tenancy for years_. the tenancy may involve any definite period with the understanding that it is to continue for similar periods if not terminated by notice of the landlord or tenant. while the estate is called an estate from year to year, or a tenancy from year to year, it may be for a week, a month, a year, or a series of years, or for any definite period. if _a_ rents _b's_ house for one year, the rent to be paid at the rate of $ . per month, payable monthly in advance, the lease to continue for yearly periods unless either _a_ or _b_ notifies the other to the contrary, the tenancy is from year to year. if, at the expiration of the year, _a_ retains possession of the premises, having received no notice from _b_ to leave, _a_ has a lease for another year under the same terms, and so on, for succeeding years. the period may be a week, or a month, as well as a year. sometimes leases are spoken of as leases from month to month, or from week to week, in case the lease is to continue for a month, or a week. the same principle is involved as in leases from year to year. if the tenant holds over after the expiration of the week or month, he has a lease for a similar period at the same terms. a tenancy for years may be created by express or by implied contract. it is sometimes difficult to tell whether a tenancy is for years, from year to year, or at will. if a lease specifies that it is to cover a definite period only, it is a lease for years, and terminates at the expiration of that period. if the lease stipulates that it is to cover a definite period, and continue for similar periods unless either party terminates it by notice to the other, it is a lease from year to year. if the lease stipulates that it can be terminated at the will of either party, it is a lease at will. when the lease is oral, or created by implication, the intention of the parties must determine the nature of the lease. some difficulty arises in determining whether a lease is one at will, or from year to year when a tenant for years is permitted to hold over with the consent of his landlord. for example, if _a_ rents _b's_ farm for one year, and is permitted by _b_ to remain in possession after the expiration of the year, in theory, _a_ is a mere tenant at will, and can be ejected at the will of _b_. this is the law in a few jurisdictions. most jurisdictions, however, hold that _a_, when permitted to hold over by _b's_ consent, becomes a tenant from year to year. = . termination of leases.= a lease for years is terminated by expiration of the period covered by the lease. the lease may contain covenants, breach of which may by stipulation constitute a ground of forfeiture. for example, a lease may contain a stipulation that the landlord may declare a forfeiture in case the tenant fails to pay the rent when it is due. if the tenant commits a breach of this or any other covenant made by special stipulation, a ground of forfeiture, the landlord may by notice declare the lease forfeited. this renders the balance of the lease void. leases for years, definite periods of time, require no notice to terminate. leases at will, and from year to year require notice on the part of the party seeking their termination to be given to the other party. for example, suppose _a_ rents _b's_ house for one year, to continue for similar periods if agreeable to both parties. to terminate the lease at the end of the year, _b_ must notify _a_ to quit the premises at the expiration of the year. if _a_, on the other hand, desires to terminate the lease at the expiration of a year, he must notify _b_ previous to the expiration of the year, of his intention to terminate the lease at the expiration of the year. if _a_ holds over without notice to _b_, or without _b's_ consent, _a_ has a lease for another year at the same terms as before. to terminate a lease from year to year or at will, the party seeking the termination of the lease must notify the other party of his intention to terminate the lease. the states generally provide by statute the time and manner of giving such notice. in general, the notice must be in writing and must be served on the interested parties or their agents a reasonable time before the expiration of the period of the lease. a lease may be terminated by a subsequent agreement between the parties. this is commonly known as a _surrender_. a surrender is a release of possession of the premises by the tenant, and an acceptance by the landlord. a mere abandonment of possession by a tenant without the express or implied acceptance or assent of the landlord is not a surrender. such an abandonment might constitute a breach of contract on the part of the tenant, but it requires the assent of the landlord to terminate the lease. if _a_ rents a farm for three years at $ . a year, and at the expiration of two years agrees to pay _b_ $ . to cancel the lease, and _b_ accepts, the transaction constitutes a surrender, and terminates the lease. if _a_ merely abandons the premises without the consent of _b_, the lease still exists. _b_ can collect the rent for the remaining period covered by the lease. if _a_ abandons the premises, and notifies _b_ that he will not carry out the lease, _b_ may refuse to accept the breach, permit the premises to remain vacant, and collect the rent from _b_. _b_ may accept _a's_ breach of the contract, and terminate the lease, or he may take possession of the premises, and relet them for _a's_ benefit, notifying _a_ that he takes possession for _a's_ benefit, and not for his own. in this event, _b_ must use reasonable diligence in obtaining the highest rent possible, and if he is obliged to rent for a less amount than _a_ was to pay, _b_ can collect the difference from _a_. = . liability of parties to a lease for breach.= if the landlord fails to fulfill the conditions of the lease, he is liable in damages to the tenant. the damages are the difference between the rent paid under the lease, and the market value of the premises furnished. for example, if _a_ rents his house and lot to _b_ for one year at $ . per month, and agrees to redecorate the house, but fails to do so, _a_ may recover from _b_ the difference between $ . , the rent paid under the lease, and the market rental of the house undecorated. if a tenant abandons the lease, the landlord may recover from the the deficiency between the rental named in the lease, and the rental he is able to obtain for the balance of the time covered by the lease. for example, if _a_ rents _b's_ farm for three years at $ . a year, and at the expiration of two years, _a_ abandons the lease, if _b_ is able to obtain but $ . for the remaining year covered by the lease, he can recover $ . and expenses from _a_. a suit for damages is not the only remedy the landlord has against a tenant for the latter's abandonment of the premises. the landlord may refuse to accept the breach on the part of the tenant, let the premises remain vacant, and collect the rent under the lease. the landlord may enter the premises for the purpose of preventing loss or destruction of the premises without accepting the breach. the landlord may accept and cancel the remaining portion of the lease, or he may again lease the premises for the benefit of the tenant, and collect the deficiency in the rent from the tenant. this question is also discussed in the previous section. = . actions for recovery of rent and possession of leased premises.= a landlord may sue and recover judgment by bringing an ordinary action for debt when rent or any installment is due. if _a_ rents _b's_ house for one year at the rate of $ . per month, payable at the end of each month, and fails to pay any installment, _b_ may sue him. the judgment may be satisfied out of any property _a_ may have. if married, _a_, by statute in most jurisdictions, is entitled to a certain amount of exempt property. if the landlord has failed to perform all of the terms and conditions of the lease, _a_ may bring a counteraction against _b_ when sued by _b_ for rent. for example, if _b_ has failed to repair the house according to the terms of the lease, _a_ may counterclaim for damages when sued by _b_ for the rent. when the period of the lease expires, the landlord is entitled to possession of the premises. at common law, he was entitled to use the force necessary to recover possession. he is not permitted to commit a breach of the public peace in obtaining possession. most of the states provide statutory methods for obtaining possession. a complaint is filed with a court and an officer of the court ejects the tenant by order of court. non-payment of rent does not entitle the landlord to terminate the lease, unless the lease expressly so provides. when the lease is forfeited according to its provisions, the landlord is entitled to take possession. trade=marks and names = . trade=marks in general.= persons are permitted to place marks on goods manufactured or sold by them, which indicate their origin or ownership. by this means, they are able to obtain the benefit of any superiority which their goods have over goods of other manufacturers or sellers. these marks placed on goods by owners or manufacturers are called _trade-marks_. a court has defined a trade-mark to be "a word, symbol, figure, form or device, or a combination thereof adopted or devised and used by a manufacturer or seller of goods to designate the origin or ownership of the goods, and used by him to distinguish the goods from those sold or manufactured by others." a manufacturer or seller of an article is not permitted to appropriate as a trade-mark a name commonly used to describe the article. flour is manufactured and sold by many persons. anyone has the right to manufacture and sell flour by that name. no one is permitted to appropriate to himself as a trade-mark the name _flour_. a person may, however, apply an arbitrary term, not describing the thing produced, for the purpose of designating his brand of flour as distinguished from other brands of flour. while a manufacturer of flour is not permitted to appropriate as a trade-mark to be used on flour the name _flour_, he may be permitted to use the term _ideal_. the person first adopting the name _ideal_ as a trade-mark in the sale of flour, acquires a property right in the name. the law will protect him in the use of this name in connection with the sale and manufacture of flour. any arbitrary name, sign, mark, symbol, letter or number used for the purpose of designating the origin or ownership of goods may be appropriated as a trade-mark by the person first adopting and continuing its use. a person is not permitted to adopt as a trade-mark anything which indicates the grade or ingredients, or which is descriptive of the article sold or manufactured. the reason for this rule is that otherwise a person adopting the name would have a monopoly on the production of such articles. _crack-proof rubber goods_, as applied to rubber goods; _a honey_, as applied to honey, are terms descriptive of quality of goods and cannot be appropriated. a proper name of a person is not the subject of a valid trade-mark. persons of the same name are permitted ordinarily to use their name in the manufacture of goods of the same nature. a party is not permitted, however, to manufacture or sell his goods as the goods of another. he may not be permitted to use his own name in the sale of certain goods if another has long made and sold goods under the same name, and if purchasers are defrauded thereby, or if confusion results. this is not by reason of a person having a trade-mark in his own name, but by reason of unfair trade. this is discussed under the section on _unfair trade_. = . trade=marks= (continued). a name of a place or locality cannot be appropriated as a trade-mark. any person is permitted to use the name of a place or locality to designate the origin of the goods and it is the common property of all as much as any descriptive name. a geographical name cannot be appropriated as a trade-mark. a common example of this principle is the use of the term, _lackawanna_. this is the name of a district in pennsylvania. a coal company endeavored to appropriate the name, but was not permitted to use it as a trade-mark. others, mining coal in the lackawanna district have an equal right to designate their coal by the same name. any fanciful or arbitrary name not describing the article, may, however, be adopted as a trade-mark. a person first using such an arbitrary mark in the manufacture or sale of a particular class of goods acquires a trade-mark. he may use the mark without any intention of acquiring a trade-mark therein. if another person attempts to use the mark, no matter if without intent to defraud, he may be enjoined from its use. the owner of a trade-mark has no greater right than any other person to use the trade-mark on classes of goods different from the class on which it has been acquired. a trade-mark used on flour may also be used on stoves by another person. this principle is subject to the limitations that one person is not permitted to deceive purchasers in leading them to believe that they are purchasing the goods of another. this question is discussed under the section on _unfair trade_. a trade-mark is acquired by the person first using it in connection with the sale or manufacture of goods. it is not necessary that it be adopted with the intention of being used as a trade-mark. a trade-mark may be lost by discontinuance. a trade-mark will not be allowed on an article which it is against public policy to manufacture. an example of this principle is adulterated food or medicine. a trade-mark which does not indicate that the goods manufactured or sold are the result of the personal skill of a particular person, may be sold with the business in connection with which the trade-mark is used. = . trade names.= a person is permitted to use a name other than his own for the purpose of trade. for example, john smith may use the name _the john smith co._, _the eureka co._, _the l. x. co._, or any arbitrary or fanciful name he may choose, so long as it does not conflict with the rights of others. such names are called _trade names_. their adoption and use are governed by the same legal principles as trade-marks. trade names, however, are applied to a business, while trade-marks are brands applied to articles of manufacture or sale. as in the use of trade-marks, a person is not protected in the use of trade names which describe the article manufactured or sold. the use of the name, _cleveland fertilizer co._ by john smith, does not prevent others from using the same name. the law does not permit one party to monopolize the use of the term _fertilizer_; neither does it permit him to monopolize the geographical term, _cleveland_. the party first adopting a trade name other than a descriptive geographical, individual, or proper name, acquires the right to use it as a trade name. while a person cannot acquire such a right in a geographical or descriptive name, he may, by long use of it, acquire the right to prevent others from using it in such a manner as to deceive purchasers. a person is not permitted to sell his goods as the goods of another. this right to prevent others from using a name which deceives the public is not by reason of any trade name acquired, but by reason of a person unfairly making others believe they were purchasing the goods of one person, when, in reality, they are purchasing the goods of others. = . unfair trade.= a trade-mark, or a trade name cannot be descriptive of the articles sold or manufactured. neither can a proper name or a geographical name be appropriated to a trade-mark or name. to enable a person to acquire a trade-mark or trade name, a mark or name must be adopted which in no way describes the article manufactured or sold. it must be one that is not taken from the place where the goods are manufactured or sold, or from the name of the inventor or manufacturer. it must be an arbitrary or fanciful name or mark. a manufacturer of flour may use as a trade-mark the name _beauty flour_, but not _minnesota flour_, or _pure flour_. a party may use as a trade-mark for men's collars the picture of a lion, but not the word _linen_. when a trade-mark or a trade name has once been used as such, the owner, unless he loses or transfers the right, acquires the sole right to its use, and may compel others to cease using it, regardless of actual damages or confusion. at the present time, the courts recognize a principle known as _unfair trade_. even though a person has adopted a geographical name, or a name descriptive of the articles manufactured or sold as a trade name, he is permitted to enjoin others from the use of this name, if the use of the same enables the latter to sell his goods as the goods of the former. a person cannot use the name _cleveland fertilizer co._, so as to acquire a trade name therein. but if the name _cleveland fertilizer co._, is used by a person so long and so extensively as to acquire for its owner a broad reputation as a manufacturer of an excellent quality of fertilizer, another who adopts the name may be enjoined from its use, if purchasers are deceived thereby. this is on the ground of unfair trade. = . unfair trade= (continued). the same principle applies in the use of individual names. a person may not acquire a trade-mark in his own or in any individual or proper name, since others have the right to the use of their own name. but a person may acquire such a reputation as a manufacturer of a particular article, that if others of the same name are permitted to use their name in the same connection without distinguishing features, the public will be deceived in making purchases. for the purpose of protecting the public from being deceived, the courts sometimes enjoin persons from the use of their own name in connection with the manufacture and sale of certain articles. for example, thomas edison has acquired fame as an inventor and manufacturer of _edison batteries_. a person by the name of edison would not be permitted to manufacture and sell electric batteries under the name of _edison electric batteries_, for the reason that the public would be deceived thereby. this would be what is known as unfair trade. the same principle applies to geographical names. a geographical, individual, proper, or descriptive name cannot be used as a trade name, or a trade-mark, but they can be so used as to prevent others from using them, by reason of violating the law of unfair trade. = . registration of trade=marks.= in the united states congress passed the present statute relating to the registration of trade-marks. the act provides that the owner of a trade-mark used in commerce with foreign nations, the several states, or the indian tribes may register said trade-marks by filing the same with the commissioner of patents. a trade-mark is acquired in the same manner as at common law. the united states act does not change the method of acquiring trade-marks, nor does it designate what constitutes trade-marks. it simply permits a person to register a trade-mark already acquired. in case of dispute, the owner has the advantage of a public record of his claim, and until he has lost his right in the trade-mark to some one who proves to have a better right, the registration is _prima facie_ evidence of ownership. before registering a trade-mark, the owner is required to file with the commissioner of patents at washington, an application showing the nature of the trade-mark, on what goods used, and when acquired. a fee of $ . is required. the owner must file a verified statement that he is the owner of the trade-mark sought to be filed. trade-marks which consist of the name of an individual, firm, or corporation, or words descriptive of the articles manufactured or sold, a geographical term, or a photograph of any living person, except with such person's consent, shall not be registered as trade-marks. when such application is filed, if the commissioner of patents finds that it is proper to register the same as a trade-mark, he publishes the mark in the official gazette. anyone may oppose the registration by filing objections within twenty days after said publication. if no objection is filed, the trade-mark is registered, and a certificate of registration is furnished the applicant. if objection to the registration of a trade-mark is made, the applicant is notified by the commissioner of patents. if the trade-mark interferes with another, or is descriptive of the article to which it is to be applied, the commissioner will refuse to register it. a person whose application for registration of a trade-mark has been refused by the commissioner of patents may appeal from the decision of the commissioner of patents by filing applications of appeal with the court of appeals of the district of columbia. registered trade-marks may be assigned in connection with the good will of the business in which the trade-mark is used. notice of such assignment must be filed with the commissioner of patents within three months from the time the assignment is made, to render it valid as against other innocent purchasers. certificates of registration shall be effective for twenty years, and may be renewed for like periods upon payment of the registration fee. after a trade-mark has been registered, anyone who considers himself injured by said trade-mark may file complaint with the commissioner of patents, and if the latter determines that there is an infringement, or that someone has a prior right to the trade-mark, the registration may be cancelled. notice of registration of a trade-mark is given the public by publishing the words, _registered u. s. patent office_, with the trade-mark. most of the states have statutes making it a crime falsely to use the trade-mark or brand of another company. the use of labels by trade unions is protected in this manner in several states. wills = . will defined.= a will has been defined to be a "disposition of real property to take effect after the death of the testator." originally, the term _will_ applied only to dispositions of real property, and the term _testament_ applied to dispositions of personal property. at present, the terms _will_ and _testament_ are not uncommonly used. but the original limitation of the term, _will_, is no longer commonly recognized. the term, _will_, is now used to describe a disposition of personal as well as real property to take effect at the maker's death. = . names of parties and terms commonly used in a will.= the person who makes a will is called the _testator_ or _devisor_. the term _testator_ is more commonly used than the term _devisor_ to designate the maker of a will. the term _devise_ is used to designate the giving of real property. if _a_ desires to give a farm to _b_ by will, the language used in the will is, "i, _a_, devise to _b_ my farm." technically, the term _devise_ means the giving by will of real estate, but it is commonly used to designate the giving by will of personal property as well. the term _bequeath_ is used to designate the giving of personal property by will. if _a_ desires to give by will a watch to _b_, he uses the language, "i, _a_ bequeath to _b_ my watch." the beneficiary, or person designated in the will to receive real property, is called the _legatee_. = . origin and nature of wills.= at common law, a person was permitted to give by will a portion of his personal property. he was not permitted to give real property by will. in england, the right to give real property by will was given by statute. the law of this country has always recognized the right to give real as well as personal property by will. it is not regarded as a right but rather as a privilege extended to an owner of property. this privilege is controlled by the legislatures of the states. the states differ in their statutory requirements as to the manner of making wills, and the amount of property that may be willed to the exclusion of the wife and family. a will must be signed, acknowledged, and witnessed as required by statute, and may be rendered void if the statutory requirements are changed between the time the will is made and the death of the testator. a will is not a contract. the right to make contracts cannot be abridged by legislation. this right is a constitutional right. the constitution gives an owner of property no right to make a will. it is a privilege which may be abridged or taken away by the legislature. most of the states give a wife a dower interest in the real estate of her husband. (see _dower estate_, chapter on real property.) a husband cannot will away his estate, depriving his wife of dower. = . law governing wills when testator owns property in one state and resides in another at time of death.= real property is fixed and immovable. no matter where a testator resides at the time of his death, the law of the state where the real property is located governs the will relative to its disposition. if the will does not comply with the law of the state where the real property is located, the general rule is that the will cannot be enforced, even though the will is valid under the law of the state where the testator resides at the time of his death. for example, if _a_ owns real property in cleveland, ohio, but resides in omaha, nebraska, _a_ may make a valid will under the law of nebraska which may not comply with the ohio law. if _a_ dies, the provisions of the will cannot be enforced as to the real property in cleveland. personal property, on the other hand, is movable and is supposed to follow the residence of its owner. if a will is valid where the testator resides at the time of his death it is valid to pass personal property, regardless of where the personal property is located. some states at present provide by statute that if a will is valid where the testator resided at the time of his death, it is valid to pass real property, no matter where located. = . essentials of a will.= primarily, a will is an instrument in which a person expresses his intention to give his property to certain designated persons, to take effect upon his death. any instrument, no matter whether it be termed a will, containing an expression of intention to have property pass to another at the death of the maker, satisfies the requirement. to constitute a will, there must be no present interest in the property passing absolutely to the beneficiaries named in the instrument at the time the written instrument is made. a person may make a gift, a bill of sale, or a deed of property if he chooses. the title to the property passes to the purchaser or donee at once or at some future stipulated time. such transactions are not wills. a will does not take effect until the death of the testator. it may be revoked, changed, or supplanted at the will of the testator. any instrument that conveys a present interest is not a will. the two most essential things in determining whether an instrument constitutes a will are, first, the power to revoke the instrument, or a stipulation or language used showing that the instrument is not to take effect until the testator's death; and second, the expression of an intention of the testator to make a will. certain formal requisites as to signature and witnessing are required by statute in different states. these requirements are discussed under separate sections. = . who may make a will.= by statute in most states, anyone of legal age, of sound and disposing mind and memory may make a will. at common law, when a woman married, her property became her husband's. a married woman could not make a will. at present, by statute, most states provide that married women may contract concerning their separate estates. they are also permitted to make wills. a person must be of legal age to make a will. what constitutes legal age is fixed by statute in the different states. all provide that twenty-one years is the legal age for males. some fix the legal age for females at eighteen, others at twenty-one. what constitutes sound and disposing mind and memory is a matter of some dispute. it is conceded that idiots, imbeciles, and insane persons, while insane, cannot make wills. the mental capacity required of a person to enable him to make a will is usually stated to be that mental capacity which enables a person to describe his property, to name the natural objects of his bounty, and to understand the nature of a will. a person does not have to be in good health to make a will. he does not have to be mentally sound within the ordinary meaning of the term. he may be very ill, and weak both in mind and body. he may be eccentric, may have been insane, may be subject to illusions, or even may be under guardianship for insanity and still be able to make a will. if he is able without assistance from others to describe his property, to understand in general the nature and effect of making a will, and to name the persons who are the natural objects of his bounty, he is capable of making a will. if his mind is not sufficient to perform all of these functions he is not capable of making a will. to constitute an instrument a valid will, it is not necessary that the instrument show in itself that the testator had all these powers. he may not name all, or any of the natural objects of his bounty in the will. he may not describe all of his property. if he was capable of doing these things at the time he made the will, regardless of whether or not he exercised this capacity, the will is valid. if a testator makes a will under such mental pressure or threat of violence that he does not act according to his wishes, the will may be avoided by reason of undue influence or duress. undue influence may be exerted by anyone, but not necessarily by a beneficiary under the will. all solicitations or remarks or supplications to the testator to make a particular provision in a will do not constitute undue influence. the influence must be of a sort to compel the testator to act against his wishes, and to destroy his ability to act through his own mental agency. = . what may be disposed of by will.= any property owned by the testator, whether real or personal, may be disposed of by will. property cannot be freed from liens or incumbrances by will. if _a_ owns a farm, but _b_ has a mortgage on it, _a_ can dispose of his interest by will, _b_ retaining his interest in the mortgage as against the devisee. a husband cannot cut off his wife's dower estate by will. a person may dispose of all his real and personal property by will. a will covering all the real and personal property of the testator will pass the real and personal property acquired by the testator after he made the will. = . requisites of a will as to form.= ordinarily, a will must be in writing. in some jurisdictions, and under certain circumstances, oral wills are recognized as sufficient to pass certain property. these oral wills are called _nuncupative_ wills. they are discussed under a separate section. a will may be written on any kind of material, and in any language. it may be printed, written on a typewriter, written in the testator's own handwriting or by another. it may be written on one or several pieces of paper. the pieces need not be fastened together if their contents show their connection. another instrument not set forth in the will may be incorporated into the will by reference, if the instrument can readily be identified, and was in existence at the time the will was made. a will must be signed. the statutes of most states require that a will be signed by the testator, or by some one authorized to sign for him. a person not able to write may sign by mark. a person usually signs by mark as follows: his john _x_ smith. mark any mark made by the testator is sufficient. most states require by statute that wills must be signed in the presence of two or three witnesses. these witnesses must be competent to understand the nature of the transaction. they need not necessarily be of legal age. they must affix their signatures as witnesses to the will. a beneficiary under the will should not be a witness. the witnesses of a will are required to observe the competency of the testator and his signature, in order that they may testify to these facts when the will is proven. the statutes of most states make it sufficient for the testator to acknowledge his signature in the presence of the witnesses. in this event, they need not see him sign his name to the will. the witnesses are usually required to sign the will in the presence of the testator, and in the presence of each other. = . publication of a will.= some states provide by statute that to constitute a written instrument a valid will, the testator must acknowledge it to be a will at the time it is signed and witnessed. this act is known as _publication_. some states do not have such a statutory provision. in the absence of statutory provisions, publication is not necessary. it is not necessary that the testator read or cause the will to be read to the witnesses to comply with the statutory requirements of publication. the witnesses must know that they are witnessing a will. any word, expression or act on the part of the testator which notifies the witnesses that they are witnessing a will is a sufficient publication. _a_ requested _b_ and _c_ to visit his house in the evening and witness his will. they went to _a's_ house, where _a_ presented a document to them, which he signed in their presence, and which they signed as witnesses. _a_ did not acknowledge that the instrument was a will. the court held this to be a sufficient publication. _b_ and _c_ had been informed that the instrument was _a's_ will. = . contract to make a will.= a person may enter into a contract to make a will which will bind his estate. the party with whom such a contract is made cannot force the other party to make a will, or prevent him from revoking a will if made, but he can bring an action for damages against such party's estate if the latter dies without leaving a will according to his agreement. a will can be revoked at the desire of the testator. revocability is one of the essential features of a will. a party may bind himself by contract to make a will in favor of a certain person. this contract does not prevent such person from revoking the will if made, but it renders the person's estate liable for breach of contract. _a_, a boy of twenty-one years of age, was told by his father, _b_, that if he would continue to work for him until he was thirty-five years of age, he would will him a certain farm, _a_ agreed to this proposition, and worked for his father until he was thirty-five years of age. _b_ subsequently died, leaving a will by which the farm was given to another son. _a_ was permitted to recover the value of the farm by suit. these contracts require clear and convincing evidence to support recovery. _a_ agreed to board, clothe, care for, and bury _b_, his father, in consideration of _b's_ agreement to give _a_ all his property. _a_ fulfilled the terms of his contract. _b_ died leaving a will by which his property was given to _c_. _a_ was permitted to recover the value of the property by suit. = . holographic wills.= a _holographic_ will is one written entirely in the handwriting of the testator. such wills are sometimes called _olographic_ wills. a minority of the states of this country recognize the validity of holographic wills. these wills need not be witnessed to be valid. an ordinary will may be printed, typewritten, or written by a person other than the testator. the testator must sign and publish the will, that is, he must acknowledge the instrument to be a will, in the presence of the attesting witnesses. in case of a holographic will, there need be no witnesses, acknowledgment, or publication, but the will must be entirely in the handwriting of the testator, and must be signed and dated by the testator himself. in some jurisdictions, it is necessary that a holographic will be found among the testator's valuable papers, to constitute a valid will. _a_ died and the following document was found among his valuable papers: $ , . four years after my death, i hereby authorize my executors to pay francis penn one hundred thousand dollars. signed _a_. this was held to be a valid holographic will. a holographic will is frequently in the form of a letter addressed to the beneficiary. = . nuncupative wills.= many of the states of this country recognize the validity of oral wills made under certain circumstances for the purpose of disposing of personal property. such wills are called _nuncupative_ wills. soldiers and sailors while in actual service may dispose of their personal property by this form of will. persons other than soldiers and sailors may make nuncupative wills when in their last sickness or in danger of impending death. the will is made by calling upon disinterested persons to bear witness to the will which the testator describes orally. these words, in substance at least, must be reduced to writing, usually within ten days from the death of the testator, by one of the witnesses, and signed by the witnesses. nuncupative wills are not favored in law. they are not sufficient to dispose of real property. some states do not recognize the validity of these wills unless they are made at the testator's dwelling. an exception to this rule is where the testator, surprised by sickness when upon a journey, dies while away from home. nuncupative wills must be proven within six months after they are reduced to writing. _a_ was suddenly taken seriously ill at his home. he called upon _b_ and _c_, disinterested witnesses, to bear witness to his will, and directed that his personal property be given to his wife _d_. _a_ died, _b_ reduced the words of _a_ to writing within ten days after _a's_ death, and _c_ and _b_ signed as witnesses. the will was proven within six months. it was held to be a valid nuncupative will. = . revocation and alteration of wills.= a will may be revoked at any time before the testator's death. the testator may himself revoke his will, or he may cause someone to perform some act under his direction and in his presence, which will revoke the will. the statutes of most states provide that a person may revoke a will by tearing, cancelling, obliterating, or destroying the will with the intention of revoking it. any of these acts performed by a stranger, not in the presence nor under the direction of the testator, are void acts, and do not destroy the validity of the will. if the testator himself, tears, cancels, destroys, or obliterates the will with the intention of revoking the will, the instrument no longer has any validity or force as a will. a will is cancelled by drawing lines with a pen or pencil across the written portion of the will. a will may be revoked by a later will which expressly revokes the former, or which disposes of all the property of the testator. a later will which does not expressly revoke a former will, and which does not dispose of all the testator's property does not revoke the former will, but both are construed together. a _codicil_ is an instrument altering, revoking, changing, or adding to certain portions of a will. it must, itself, be signed, witnessed and acknowledged the same as a will, and is construed as part of the will. = . lost wills.= a will which is lost or destroyed with no intention to revoke may be proven as a will after the testator's death. if a will is partially or totally destroyed by accident, or by someone who is to profit by the total or partial destruction, the will is said to be _spoliated_, and its contents, as it existed before spoliation, may be proven after the testator's death. it must be remembered that a will may be revoked by a testator at any time. if a testator makes a will, and has it in his possession, and after his death the will cannot be found, the presumption is that he revoked the will. this presumption may be rebutted, however. if the testator tells of having a will shortly before his death, or if the will is seen, or any evidence is produced that the will was not revoked by the testator, it may be proven as a lost will. if a will is made and left for safe-keeping with a third person, inability to find it after the testator's death raises no presumption that is was revoked by the testator. to prove a lost will as a will, witnesses must be produced who know in substance the contents of the will, that it was made and that it was not revoked by the testator. if a will is partially destroyed by someone who is to benefit thereby, or by accident, the contents of the portion so destroyed may be proven as a lost will. = . abatement, advancement, and ademption.= if a person does not have sufficient property at his death to pay the bequests and devises made in his will after payment of his debts, his devises and bequests are paid _pro rata_ out of the estate remaining after the payment of debts and expenses, unless the testator expressed a wish or intention that certain bequests or devises were to be satisfied in preference to others. in this event, the wishes of the testator must be observed. the rule requiring all devisees and legatees to receive but a portion of the property mentioned in the will, in case there is not sufficient property to satisfy all, is called _abatement_. if a person makes a will bequeathing a certain article of personal property, or a certain amount of money to another, and if, before the will becomes operative by the death of the devisor, the latter delivers the article or pays the money to the legatee, or sells or disposes of the particular article mentioned in the bequest, the will is said to be _adeemed_, and the act by which it is adeemed is called _ademption_. in case of ademption of a particular article, the bequest is satisfied. in case a certain sum of money is bequeathed to a person by will, and the amount of money is given the legatee by the devisor, whether it satisfies the bequest, or whether it is a gift in addition to the bequest mentioned in the will, is a matter of intention on the part of the devisor. if the devisor expressly says it is a gift in addition to the bequest mentioned in the will, it will not satisfy the bequest mentioned in the will. if nothing is said which expressly shows the wish or intent of the devisor, the presumption is, that it is to apply on the bequest, or if sufficient in amount, that it satisfies the bequest. the intent of the testator may be determined by the circumstances connected with the payment. if a sum of money is paid by a testator during his lifetime to a legatee mentioned in his will, to apply on the bequest, the payment is sometimes called an _advancement_. = . form of will.= i, john brown, of the city of chicago, county of cook, and state of illinois, being about years of age, and of sound and disposing mind and memory, do make and publish this my last will and testament. _first_, i desire that all my debts and the expenses connected with my funeral be paid. _second_, i give, devise and bequeath to my wife, jane brown, the sum of $ , . , all the household furniture and chattel property of every kind and nature used in and in connection with our residence, and a life estate in my two farms. _third_, i give and devise to my two sons, john brown, jr., and clark brown, jointly, my farm known as the "home place." this devise is subject to the life estate of my wife mentioned in division two of my will. _fourth_, i give and devise to my daughter, anna brown, my farm known as the "north place," during her life, and at her death to her lawful issue. this devise is subject to the life estate of my wife, provided for in division two of this will. _fifth_, the balance of my personal property i give and bequeath to smith home for aged men, of chicago. i appoint my son, john brown, jr., executor of this will, and revoke all former wills. in witness whereof, i have subscribed my name this th day of september, . john brown. the foregoing instrument was signed by the said john brown in our presence, and by him published, and declared to be his last will and testament, and at his request, and in our presence and in the presence of each other, we subscribed our names as attesting witnesses at chicago, illinois, this th day of september, . thomas jones, residing at state st., james johnson, residing at drexel ave., chicago, ill. courts and legal remedies = . courts.= courts may be defined to be the institutions established by the government to settle disputes and to administer justice. they may consist of a judge sitting alone, of several judges sitting together, or of a judge and a jury. courts are assisted in their work by bailiffs and clerks. attorneys who conduct the trials for the opposing parties are officers of the court. they can be fined and imprisoned for refusing to obey the lawful order of the court. in general, courts may be divided into state courts and federal or united states courts. = . federal courts.= the constitution of the united states provides that: "the judicial powers of the united states shall be vested in one supreme court, and in such inferior courts as the congress may from time to time ordain and establish. the judges both of the supreme and inferior courts shall hold their offices during good behavior, and shall at stated times receive for their services a compensation, which shall not be diminished during their term of office." the united states constitution further provides that: "the judicial power shall extend to all cases in law and equity arising under the constitution, the laws of the united states, the treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority; to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls; to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction; to controversies to which the united states shall be a party; to controversies between two or more states, between a state and citizens of another state, between citizens of different states, between citizens of the same state claiming land under grants of different states, and between a state and the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects." congress has provided for district courts, circuit courts, and circuit courts of appeal, which, in addition to the supreme court, constitute the federal or united states courts. = . united states district courts.= the united states as a whole is divided into districts. each district is presided over by one united states judge, called a district judge. each state constitutes at least one district and some states are divided into several districts. for example, ohio has two districts, called the northern and southern districts of ohio. new york has four districts, called the northern, southern, eastern, and western districts. the judges are appointed for life, or during good behavior. the appointments are made by the president of the united states, by, and with the advice and consent of the senate. each district judge is required to reside in the district for which he is appointed. = . united states circuit courts.= the entire territory of the united states is divided into nine sections, and each section comprises the jurisdiction of a separate united states court. that is, there are nine circuit courts in the united states. each circuit is composed of several districts. for example, the sixth circuit is composed of the states of ohio, kentucky, michigan, and tennessee. each circuit has at least two circuit judges, and is presided over by one of the judges of the supreme court of the united states. the circuit court holds court in each district of the circuit, and the circuit court of each district is composed of the united states supreme court judge presiding over the circuit, the two circuit judges, and the district judge of the district. the circuit court holds court at different times in each district of the circuit. any one judge may hold court alone. usually, trials in circuit courts are presided over by one judge. the united states circuit court and the united states district courts have original and exclusive jurisdiction of practically all the cases which may be brought in the united states courts. the united states supreme court has original jurisdiction of a few important classes of cases. by _original jurisdiction_ is meant the right to commence cases in the particular court. by _appellate jurisdiction_ is meant the right to take a case from one court to a higher court upon appeal or writ of error, for the purpose of having the case retried or examined for errors of law. = . united states circuit court of appeals.= each of the circuits in the united states has a circuit court of appeals. this court consists of one member of the united states supreme court, who acts as presiding judge, and the two circuit judges of the circuit. at least two judges must be present to hold court. if two of the regular circuit judges are not present, a district judge of any district of the circuit may act. a district judge cannot sit as judge of the court of appeals in determining cases in the trial of which he acted as district judge. the circuit court of appeals has no original jurisdiction. it is solely an appellate court. cases from the district and circuit courts may be appealed to it, and brought before it on writs of error. some cases may be appealed direct to the supreme court of the united states from the district and circuit courts. the circuit court of appeals has final jurisdiction in many matters appealed to it. = . the supreme court of the united states.= the supreme court of the united states holds court at washington, and consists of nine judges. it has original jurisdiction in some important matters, and cases may be appealed to it, or tried on writs of error from the district court, circuit court, and circuit court of appeals. the constitution of the united states provides that, "in all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be a party, the supreme court shall have original jurisdiction." = . united states courts with admiralty jurisdiction.= the constitution of the united states provides that the united states courts shall have jurisdiction over admiralty and maritime cases. admiralty cases comprise those cases arising out of breach of contract, or out of injuries occurring upon the seas or navigable waters within the jurisdiction of the united states. the district courts of the united states are given original jurisdiction in admiralty cases. in the trial of admiralty cases, the judge acts alone and is not assisted by a jury. = . state courts.= the united states constitution provides that, "the powers not delegated to the united states by the constitution nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people." thus, the provision of the united states constitution, authorizing the creation of federal courts does not prevent the states from establishing and maintaining courts. each state has its own courts. in fact the bulk of litigation is tried by state courts. the courts of the different states differ somewhat in name and jurisdiction. most of the states have a court of inferior jurisdiction where small cases involving $ . or less, are tried, and a county court where cases involving more than $ . are tried, and to which cases may be appealed from the inferior courts. the inferior court is usually called a magistrate court, or a court of a justice of the peace. all states have a court of last resort, usually called a supreme court. the primary function of state supreme courts is to hear appealed cases and cases brought to it upon writs of error. they have very little original jurisdiction. supreme courts consist of judges only. they have no juries. some states have an appellate court inferior to the supreme court, which has jurisdiction to hear cases on appeal and error. the states also have courts for the administration of estates, called probate, surrogate, or orphans' courts. = . courts of equity.= originally in england, the king was regarded as having original right to administer justice. it became the custom to appeal to the king in cases where the common law rules afforded no remedy. later, appeals were made to the chancellor, the king's secretary. cases were also referred by the king to the chancellor. in time, a distinct court, governed by well established precedents and rules, was established. these courts were called the courts of chancery or courts of equity. their jurisdiction covered only those cases not covered by courts of law. chancery courts consisted of a judge only, or a number of judges who heard and determined cases without the assistance of a jury. courts of equity are recognized in this country, but few states have separate courts of equity or chancery. the same judge is authorized to act as a court of law and a court of equity. equity has jurisdiction of those cases only, in which there is no adequate remedy at law. if _a_ makes a contract with _b_ by which he purchases a certain desirable house and lot and _b_ refuses to make the transfer, and if the house and lot are of such a character that _a_ cannot obtain another which suits his purpose and fancy, _b_ may be compelled by a court of equity to transfer the lot to _a_. a court of law would give _a_ money damages for breach of contract, but would not compel _b_ specifically to perform the contract. the united states, as well as the states, has courts of equity. = . legal actions and their enforcement.= legal actions may be said to be of three kinds, those arising out of contract, those arising out of torts, and those arising out of crimes. crimes are punishable by fine, imprisonment, or death. the state, through its officers, punishes criminals. in theory, a crime is a wrong committed against the community. the community, that is, the state, through its officers, convicts and punishes persons who have committed crimes. the person who is injured personally, or whose property is injured, has an action for damages against the party committing the wrong. this action is independent of the crime. the same act may render a person liable to punishment for committing a crime, and liable to an action for damages to the injured party. if a person wrongfully strikes another and injures him, the state may punish the guilty party for committing a crime, and the injured person may sue him for damages. legal actions arising out of injuries to persons and property as distinguished from crimes are called _civil_ actions. civil actions arise out of breach of contract, or out of torts. if a person fails to pay a promissory note, or to perform any contract, a legal action arises out of contract. if a person slanders another, or wrongfully strikes him, a legal action arises out of tort. legal actions are enforced by the injured or complaining party filing a complaint in court. the party against whom the complaint is filed is notified of the suit by an officer of the court. this notice is called the _summons_. the written complaint is usually called the _petition_. the complaining party is usually called the _plaintiff_. the party against whom the petition or complaint is filed is called the _defendant_. the defendant is allowed a certain time in which to file a statement of his defense. this written statement of the defendant in which he sets forth his side of the case is called an _answer_. these written statements are called the _pleadings in the case_. the parties then appear in court with their witnesses and the case is heard. the judge determines questions of law, and the jury determines questions of fact. the decision of the jury is called the _verdict_. the twelve jurymen must agree to enable them to render a verdict. if they disagree, a new trial with another jury is held. the judge may set aside a verdict, and grant a new trial if the verdict is irregular, or contrary to law. when a judgment has been rendered, execution may be levied upon the property of the defeated party for the amount of the judgment and costs. execution is levied by the sheriff, who seizes and sells the property of the defeated party, sufficient to satisfy the judgment. quiz questions mortgages . what was the nature of a mortgage at _common law_? . at common law who had the possession of real property mortgaged? . is a mortgage a contract? . what names are applied to the parties to a mortgage? . at present who is entitled to possession of mortgaged real estate? . under what circumstances, if any, may a deed be construed to be a mortgage? . what is the ordinary consideration to a mortgage contract? . may a mortgage be given to secure a future indebtedness? . what is meant by the _debt secured by a mortgage_? . is an oral mortgage of real estate enforceable? . distinguish a _mortgage_ and a _deed_. . if a mortgagor stipulates in the mortgage that he waives his equity of redemption can this stipulation be enforced against him? . what is meant by _power of sale mortgage_? . explain attestation of a mortgage. . explain acknowledgment of a mortgage. . when does a mortgage become effective? . define _delivery in escrow_. . what interest in real estate may be mortgaged? . is a mortgage of real estate regarded as a transfer of the real estate? . explain _recording mortgages_. . what is the necessity of recording mortgages? . may a mortgagee transfer title to the real estate? . what interest in the real estate mortgaged can a mortgagee transfer? . if a mortgagee sells the debt what becomes of the mortgage? . how may mortgages be satisfied? . define and explain _equity of redemption_. . define and explain _foreclosure of mortgages_. trusts . define _trusts of property_. . classify trusts. . define _grantor of a trust_. . define and give an example of _settlor of a trust_. . define and give an example of a _trustee of a trust_. . define and distinguish _beneficiary of a trust_, and _cestui que trust_. . what classes of persons may be parties to a trust? . what kinds of property may be the subject of a trust? . define and give an example of an _express trust_. . define and give an example of an _implied trust_. . define and give an example of a _resulting trust_. . define and give an example of a _constructive trust_. . who has the legal title to trust property? . is a person named in a declaration of trust as trustee, obliged to accept the trust? . what are the duties and liabilities of a trustee? . may a beneficiary of a trust convey title to the trust property? . if a trustee wrongfully disposes of trust property what remedies, if any, has the beneficiary? landlord and tenant . define _lessor_ and _lessee_. . distinguish _lease_ and _sale_. . distinguish _lease_ and _assignment_. . is a lease a contract? . does a lease carry with it an implied warranty that the premises described are in good condition? . _a_ rents _b's_ house for one year. _c_, a stranger, without right attempts by legal action to evict _a_. does _a_ have a right of action against _b_ for breach of implied warranty of quiet enjoyment? . for what purposes may a tenant use leased premises? . in the absence of express agreement what party to a lease is obliged to pay taxes and insurance on the leased premises? . a lease provides that the tenant is to pay the taxes. a special assessment for paving is levied. is the tenant obliged to pay this assessment? . who is obliged to pay water rent in the absence of any special agreement in a lease? . who is obliged to pay for ordinary repairs? . at common law was a tenant relieved from paying rent by the destruction by fire of the leased premises? . what is the rule at the present time as to release of a tenant's obligation to pay rent in case the buildings leased are destroyed by fire? . is there an implied obligation on the part of the landlord to deliver leased premises in any particular condition? . if a tenant is injured by reason of secret defects in the premises is the landlord liable to him for the injury? . if snow and ice are permitted to accumulate on the walk of the leased premises, causing injury to third persons, is the landlord or tenant liable for the injury? . may a tenant become liable for rent without any express agreement to that effect? . may a tenant be liable for rent without being in possession of the leased premises? . _a_ rents _b's_ house, nothing being said about the condition of the plumbing. the plumbing leaks. is _a_ obliged to take the house? . if a tenant abandons the rented premises before expiration of the term of the lease and so notifies the landlord, is he liable for the balance of the rent? . in case a tenant abandons the rented premises, what three remedies has the landlord? . define _distress_. . at common law could a landlord sell personal property distrained? . what is the present-day method of distraining for rent? . define _lease_. . must a lease be in any particular form to be legal? . what leases, if any, must be in writing? . what is meant by attestation of a lease? . define _acknowledgement_. . what is the necessity of acknowledgment of a lease? . what is the necessity of recording leases? . define, and give an example of an _express covenant_. . define, and give an example of _implied warranty_. . is there any limitation upon a landlord's right to transfer his interest in a lease? . is there any limitation upon a tenant's right to transfer his interest in a lease? . if _a_, a landlord, assigns his lease to _c_ without notifying _b_, the tenant, and later the tenant pays _a_, who is insolvent, can _c_ collect the rent from _b_? . define _attornment_. . if a tenant assigns his lease is he relieved from his obligation to pay rent? . define, and give an example of a _lease for years_. . _a_ rents _b's_ house for one year, agreeing to pay rent in monthly installments. is the lease one for years, or from month to month? . is a lease real or personal property? . what is the practical distinction between a lease for years and a lease from month to month? . when, if at all, may a tenant sublet? . distinguish _assignment_ and _sublease_. . if a tenant sublets the premises is he relieved of his obligation to pay rent? . define and give an example of an _estate at will_. . distinguish an estate at will from an estate for years, and an estate from year to year. . if a tenant for years is permitted to hold over his term with consent of the landlord, in most jurisdictions is the new tenancy one at will, or one from year to year? . define, and give an example of a _tenancy at sufferance_. . define and give an example of an _estate from year to year_. . _a_ leases a house for a month with the understanding that it is to continue for similar periods if agreeable to both parties. is the lease from year to year? . _a_ rents _b's_ house for one year. at the expiration of the year _a_ is permitted by _b_ to hold over for a month. _b_ then endeavors to eject _a_. _a_ claims he has a lease for eleven more months. is _a_ correct in his assertion? . is a lease from year to year terminated by mere lapse of time? . does breach of a condition or covenant, in the absence of an express stipulation in the lease making it a forfeiture, constitute a ground of forfeiture? . do leases for years require any notice to terminate? . do leases from year to year require any notice to terminate? . in general, in what manner must notice to terminate a lease be given? . define and give an example of a _surrender_. . does abandonment of the premises by a tenant without consent of the landlord, constitute a surrender? . if a tenant abandons the rented premises, may the landlord relet for the account of the tenant? . distinguish _breach of lease_ from _surrender of lease_. . if a landlord commits a breach of lease by failing to repair according to agreement, what is the measure of the tenant's damages? . if a tenant abandons the rented premises what are the landlord's remedies? . if a tenant abandons rented premises, may a landlord permit the premises to remain vacant, and collect rent from the tenant for the balance of the term? . if a tenant abandons a lease and the landlord desires to relet for the account of the tenant, must he notify the tenant that he takes possession, and relets for that purpose? . how may a landlord recover rent? . how may a landlord recover possession of leased premises when the lease has expired, or is broken? trade marks and trade names . what is the purpose of trade marks? . may anything other than words, letters, or figures be used as a trade mark? . may a word which describes the article on which it is used be used as a trade mark? . may a name of an individual be used as a trade mark? . may a name of a place or locality be used as a trade mark? . if a person uses a mark without any intention of its becoming a trade mark, does he acquire a valid trade mark therein? . _a_ has acquired a trade mark on flour; has he also acquired the same trade mark on stoves manufactured by him? . if _a_ has acquired a trade mark on flour, can _a_ prevent _b_ from using the same trade mark on stoves? . what length of time is required to obtain a valid trade mark? . _a_ used a trade mark on flour for two years, and ceased using it for two years. in the meantime _b_ used the trade mark. to whom does the trade mark belong? . what trade marks, if any, may be sold? . define _trade name_. . what is the distinction between _trade marks_ and _trade names_? . may a person acquire a trade name in a name describing the article manufactured? . how is a trade name acquired and how long must it be used to be acquired? . may a person acquire a trade name in a geographical name? . what is meant by _unfair trade_? . is it unlawful for a person to adopt as a trade name or trade mark, a name or mark descriptive of the article manufactured, or a geographical or a proper name? . _a_ used the name "chicago varnish co.," for ten years, and advertised the name extensively, spending large amounts of money in this connection. _b_ adopts the name, "chicago varnish co.," and the public purchases his product thinking they are buying _a's_ product. can _a_ prevent _b_ from using the name "chicago varnish co."? . is everyone entitled to use his own name in the manufacture or sale of any article he pleases? . who may register trade marks, and when may they be registered? . does registration of a mark constitute it a trade mark? . what is the advantage of registering a trade mark? . how may registered trade marks be transferred? wills . define _will_. . when does a will take effect? . can both real and personal property be disposed of by wills? . distinguish the terms _will_ and _testament_. . define and distinguish the terms _testator_ and _devisor_. . define the term _devise_. . define the term _bequeath_. . define and distinguish the terms _devisee_ and _legatee_. . what are the most common statutory requirements of a will? . is a will a contract? . by the laws of what state is a will disposing of real property governed? . by the laws of what state is a will disposing of personal property governed? . may a will be in the form of a letter addressed to a beneficiary named in the will? . in a will does any present interest in the property pass to the beneficiaries at the time the will is made? . when, if at all, may a will be revoked? . may a person under legal age make a will? . can a married woman make a will? . what test is applied in determining whether a person is mentally capable of making a will? . what kinds of property may be disposed of by will? . must a will be in writing? . may a will be printed? . define and describe _signing_, _attesting_, and _acknowledging a will_. . define and describe _publication of a will_. . give an example of a contract to make a will. . may a contract to make a will be revoked? . define and give an example of _holographic will_. . what is the distinguishing feature between a holographic will and an ordinary will? . define and describe _nuncupative wills_. . may real property be disposed of by a nuncupative will? . when, and by whom must a nuncupative will be reduced to writing? . must a nuncupative will be attested? . what is meant by _revocation of a will_, and by whom, when, and how may a will be revoked? . define and describe _alteration of a will_. . define _codicil_. . when, and how, may a lost will be proven? . define and give an example of _abatement_. . what is meant by _ademption of a legacy_? courts and legal procedure . define _courts_. . in general how may courts be classified? . by what authority are federal courts established? . what is the term of office of federal judges? . classify federal courts. . how many united states district courts are there? . how many united states circuit courts are there? . how many circuit court judges are there in each circuit? . do the supreme court judges and district judges have anything to do with the circuit courts? if so, what? . what is meant by _original jurisdiction_, as applied to a court? . does the united states circuit court of appeals have any original jurisdiction? . how many united states supreme court judges are there? . what, in general, is the jurisdiction of the united states supreme court? . where are admiralty cases tried? . what cases are included in term admiralty cases? . are juries used in the trial of _admiralty cases_? . by what authority are state courts established? . classify, in general, state courts. . what are courts of equity, and over what classes of cases do they have jurisdiction? . classify legal actions. . give an example of an act which is both a tort and a crime. . define _plaintiff_ and _defendant_. . define _pleadings_. . what is the function of a jury in the trial of a case? . define _verdict_, and distinguish it from judgment? . how are judgments enforced? index a abandonment, remedies of landlord for, abatement, definition of, acceptance definition of, of draft, acceptor of negotiable instruments, rights and liabilities of, acquisition of personal property, act of bankruptcy, act of god as affecting carriers, ademption, definition of, administrative law, definition of, advancement, definition of, adverse interest, age, legal, , agencies, irrevocable, agency contracts within statute of frauds, contracts which must be in writing, definition of, general, purposes for which created, ratification of, special, universal, agents apparent authority of, how appointed, authority of, to collect, to warrant, of corporations, definition of, delegation of authority by, distinguished from master and servant, duties of, to principal, general, principal to pay, risks assumed by, secret instructions of, universal, value of services, who may be, anomalous indorser, appeal from one court to another, assessments of corporations, not included in taxes, assignment of contract, of insurance, of lease, notice of, oral, assignability distinguished from negotiability, attestation of deeds, of will, attornment, definition of, auctioneer, b baggage what constitutes, duty of innkeeper to receive, sample cases, bailee definition of, liability of, lien of, right of possession of, right of, against third persons, right of, to use property, right of, against bailor, bailment classification of, definition of, distinguished from sale, parties to, for sole benefit of bailee, for sole benefit of bailor, what constitutes a, bailor bailments for sole benefit of, definition of, banks checks on, of circulation, classified, clearing houses, definition of, of deposit, deposits in, discount, of discount, exchange, functions of, interest, loans of, money, national, , pass books of, powers of, private, rights of, in case of forged, altered, lost, or stolen checks, savings, state, trust companies, usury, bankruptcy acts of, definition of, involuntary, revokes agency, voluntary, barter, distinguished from sale, bearer, negotiable instrument payable to, beneficiary of trust, , bequeath, definition of, bilateral contract, definition of, bill of exchange, definition of, bill of lading definition of, negotiability of, valuation, blank indorsement, boarding housekeeper not an innkeeper, _bona fide_ holder of negotiable instrument, bonds coupon, definition of, form of, registered, breach of contract, brokers definition of, insurance, stock, real estate, by-laws of corporations, c capital of national banks, capital stock of corporations, decreasing, increasing, capitalization of corporations, carrier act of god, charges of, common, defined, delivery of goods by, delivery of goods to, discrimination by, of goods, implied liability of, interstate commerce act, liability as insurer, lien of, limiting liability, of mail, negligence of shipper, private, public enemy, stoppage _in transitu_, title to goods in possession of, carrier of passengers baggage, definition of, degree of care required of, right to eject passengers, rights and liabilities of, casualty insurance, definition of, _caveat emptor_, rule of, in sales, certificate of protest, certificates of deposit, certificates of stock, certification of checks, _cestui que trust_ definition of, rights and liabilities of, charter of corporations, chattel mortgage, definition of, distinguished from pledge, distinguished from sale, filing and recording, form of, mortgagee, mortgagor, parties to, defined, possession of property, redemption, rights of mortgagee, rights of mortgagor, as security for a debt, title in mortgagee, chattel real, definition of, chattels definition of, personal, real, checks on banks, certification of, definition of, when returned, child may be agent, choses in action, , , in possession, , , circulation, banks of, clearing houses, codicil, definition of, cognovit promissory notes, collateral promissory note, collateral securities, definition of, combination of capital distinguished from trusts, commercial law, definition of, compensation of agent, conditional sale, definition of, conflict of laws in contracts, consideration adequate, in contracts of suretyship, definition of, good, illegal, in negotiable instruments, past, to trust agreement, valuable, consolidation of corporations, constitution definition of, english, limitation of, constructive trusts, definition of, continuing guaranty, definition of, contract acceptance to, as affected by duress, as affected by frauds, as affected by mistake, agreement in, assignment of, bilateral, breach of, competent parties, consideration to, by correspondence, , definition of, dependent covenants in, discharge of, of drunkards, elements of, executed, executory, express, definition of, forms of, of idiots, illegal, implied, independent covenants in, of infants, of insane persons, of married women, mutuality in, offer to, parties to, of partnership, remedies for breach of, rescission of, signing of, by corporation, specific performance of, _statu quo_ in, sunday, by telegraph, , trust created by, under seal, unilateral, voidable, warranty in, will not a contract, corporation act through agents, by-laws of, calls and assessments of, capitalization of, certificates of stock of, charter of, , common stock of, consolidation of, creation of, _de facto_, definition of, directors of, dissolution of, distinguished from partnership, dividends of, estoppel of, foreign, franchise of, kinds of, meetings and elections of, names of, nature of, object of, officers and agents of, organization of, powers of, preferred stock of, promoters of, regulation of, reorganization of, resolution of, revocation of franchise of, seal of, , stockholders of, _ultra vires_ acts of, voting at meetings of, watered stock, counterclaim good against assignee, coupon bonds, courts appeal from one court to another, classification of, definition of, reports, covenants in deeds, dependent, express, implied, independent, of leases, creditor to suretyship contract, credits, definition of, crime, agency to commit, crimes of corporations, criminal, cumulative voting at corporate meetings, custom as part of contract, customs make law, , d damages, definition of, death of partner, revokes agency, debts of another, secured by chattel mortgage, secured by mortgage, transfer of, deeds acknowledgment of, conclusion of, covenants in, definition of, description of property in, formal parts of, habendum clause, indentures, as mortgages, premises of, quit claim, redendum clause, signature of, trust created by, warranties in, witnesses to, _de facto_ corporation, defenses, _del credere_ agency, delivery in escrow, of goods, , of mortgages, of personal property sold, deposit indorsement for, banks of, devise, definition of, devisor, definition of, discharge of contract by bankruptcy, by breach, by performance, by subsequent agreement, by tender, discount, definition of, dishonor, notice of, in negotiable instruments, dissolution of partnership, distress, definition of, distribution of assets of partnership, dividends of corporations, divisions of law, domestic exchange, dower estates definition of, cannot be taken away by will, draft definition of, presentment and acceptance of, drawee of negotiable instrument, drunkard contracts of, cannot enter into partnership, duration of estates, duress as affecting wills, as defense to payment of negotiable instrument, as defense to suretyship contract, definition of, duties of agent to principal, of partners to each other, of partners to third persons, of principal to agent, e election of corporations, elements of a contract, emblements, definition of, enemy, public, as affecting carrier, equity courts of, , definition of, of redemption in chattel mortgages, of redemption in real estate, estate, trust, estates in land, estoppel, of corporation from denying existence, partnerships by, exchange barter, definition of, of goods not a sale, executed contract, definition of, execution of contracts of corporations, definition of, of leases, of negotiable instruments, executory contract, definition of, exempt property, express contract, definition of, express trusts, definition of, f f. o. b., definition of, factors, definition of, federal court, fee simple estates, definition of, females, legal age of, fictitious name of partnership, fidelity insurance, definition of, foreclosure of chattel mortgages, foreclosure of mortgages, foreign corporation, foreign exchange, forfeiture of leases, forgery of negotiable instruments, ratification of, forms of bond, of certificates of deposit, of certificates of protest, of certificates of stock, of cognovit note, of collateral note, of contract, of judgment note, of partnership agreement, of will, franchise of corporation, fraud defense, of in suretyship, definition of, effect of, upon lease, effect of, on sale, renders contract voidable, freehold estates, definition of, g gambling contracts void, gift of personal property, government warehouses, grace, days of, guarantor contract of, notices to, guaranty continuing, general, letter of, limited, special, guests, duty of innkeeper to receive, h habendum clause in deed, hereditaments, highways, how established, holder in due course of negotiable instrument, holographic wills, homestead estates, hotelkeeper (see innkeeper), i idiot contracts of, cannot enter into partnership, cannot be a principal, relation to contract, illegal acts cannot be ratified, illegal agencies void, illegal consideration, illegal contracts, implied contract, definition of, implied contract of bailment, implied trusts, definition of, implied warranty, definition of, indemnity in suretyship, indorser anomalous, blank, for collection, contract of, in suretyship, for deposit, in full, irregular, liability of, without recourse, infant may be agent, contracts of, definition of, may be partner, cannot be principal, may be trustee, infringement of trade mark, innkeeper definition of, duties and liabilities of, lien of, innocent purchaser for value without notice, insane person may be agent, insane person to contract, insane person cannot be partner, insolvency of purchaser, insurable interest, definition of, insurance assignment of, broker, contract, definition of, fidelity and casualty, kinds of, life policies, marine policies, open policy, representations in contracts of, standard policies, suicide clauses in policy of, term policies, tontine policies, underwriter's, valued policy, warranties in contracts of, who must pay on leased premises, interstate commerce act, involuntary bankruptcy, irrevocable agencies, j joint liability of parties, judgment definition of, promissory note, justice of peace court, definition of, l landlord and tenant attornment, definition of, implied warranty, lease, notice, rent, taxes, repairs, and insurance, law administrative, commercial, constitutional, criminal, definition of, division of, private, public, sources of, statute, unwritten, written, law merchant, leases acknowledgment of, assignment of, covenants of, definition of, forfeiture of, form of, recording, signing, termination of, transfer of, witnessing, legal tender, , legatee, definition of, lessee, definition of, lessor, definition of, liabilities of agent and principal, of agent to third person, of partners to each other, of principal to agent, of undisclosed principal, lien of bailee, of carrier, at common law, how enforced, of innkeeper, seller's, life estates, life policies of insurance, limited partnership, loans, definition of, lost wills, how proven, m magistrate, court of, definition of, males, legal age of, marine insurance, definition of, married women, contracts of, membership, changes of, in partnership, mercantile agencies, definition of, minds, meeting of, mistake of fact, mistake of law, money, definition of, mortgagee, definition of, , mortgages debt secured by, deeds as, definition of, delivery of, elements of, equity of redemption, foreclosure of, parties to, of personal property, recording, satisfaction of, transfer of, mortgagor definition of, rights of, mutuality in contracts, n national banks capital of, how created, u. s. corporation, necessaries, definition of, negligence gross, liability of agent for, ordinary, of shipper, slight, negotiable instruments _bona fide_ holder of, definition of, forgery of, origin of, parties to, presentment and acceptance, presentment for payment of, promissory notes, purpose of, requisites of, signing, by corporations, negotiability of bill of lading, definition of, distinguished from assignability, note cognovit, collateral, definition of, judgment, nuncupative wills, o open insurance, oral assignment of leases, oral contract, organization of corporation, ostensible partner, definition of, p partners agreement of, definition of, distribution of assets of, duties of, to each other, kinds of, powers of, property of, survivorship of, withdrawal of, partnership, - pass book of banks, pawnbrokers, payee of negotiable instrument, partial assignments, perpetual succession of corporation, perpetuities, rule against, personal property definition of, mortgages of, possession of, sale of, title to, transfer of, pledgee, definition of, pledges, definition of, pledgor, definition of, preferred stock, principal, definition of, q quit claim deed, definition of, quorum at corporate meetings, r real property, definition of, redemption equity of, in real estate mortgage, mortgagor's right of, in chattel mortgage, of pledged property, redendum clause in deed, registration of corporation, registration of trade marks, reinsurance, definition of, remainder, estates in, rent action by landlord to recover, definition of, when payable, reorganization of corporation, rescission of contract, definition of, of sale by reason of fraud, revocation of agency, revocation of offer, revocation of wills, rights, definition of, s sale caveat emptor, definition of, distinguished from bailment, implied warranty, of pledged property, of trade mark, savings banks definition of, deposits in, pass books of, seal contract under, definition of, private, use of, by corporation, signature of agent to written instruments, to deeds, to a will, silent partner, definition of, spoliated wills, how proven, _statu quo_, definition of, statute of frauds as affecting contracts, agency contracts within, as applied to leases, contracts of suretyship within, partnership contracts within, in sales, statutes, definition of, stock common, increasing and decreasing, preferred, watered, stockholders of a corporation, stoppage _in transitu_, , storage companies, subagents, subletting, subrogation in suretyship, sufferance estates at, leases at, sunday contracts illegal, surety contract of, surety companies, suretyship, - survivorship in partnership, t taxes, tearing wills, telegraph, contracts by, tenancies at sufferance, from year to year, for years, at will, tenant, definition of, tender, definition of, tenements, definition of, testament, definition of, testator, definition of, third persons contracts for benefit of, property held for benefits of, title to negotiable instruments, title to personal property, pledged property, real property, trust property, tontine policies of insurance, torts, , trade marks, trade name, _transitu_, stoppage in, , treaties, definition of, trust companies, definition of, trustees, trusts, beneficiary of, classified, consideration to, how created, u _ultra vires_ acts of corporation, underwriter, definition of, undisclosed principal, unfair trade, unilateral contract, definition of, universal agents, unwritten law, usury, v valued insurance, verdict, definition of, voluntary bankruptcy, voting by proxy, w wagering contracts void, warehousemen, warranties in deeds, in insurance contract, warranty in contracts, deeds, express, implied, watered stock of corporations, wife, dower of, will ademption, codicil, creation of trusts by, definition of, duress, estates at, form of, holographic, leases at, nature of, nuncupative, publication of, revocation of, signature to, statutes regulating making of, who may make, witnessing, witnesses to deeds, to a will, written law, transcriber's note: -obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected. third edition. _free trade with india._ an enquiry into the true state of the question at issue between his majesty's ministers, the honorable _the east india company_, and the public at large, on _the justice and policy_ of a free trade to india. _by common sense._ london: sold by messrs. sherwood, neely & jones, paternoster-row. . [_price one shilling._] _printed by w. glendinning, , hatton garden._ preface to the _second edition_. the first edition of the following view of the question of _a free trade_ to india having been sold off in the space of two days, is a proof of the interest the public take in the question of a free trade; my aim has been to clear the subject of all extraneous matter, and present it in a plain and perspicuous manner to my readers, i have neither addressed myself to their prejudices nor their passions, but have endeavoured by a simple chain of reasoning to come at the truth, which is my single object, for being totally unconnected with government, the east india company, or mercantile concerns, i can have no motive for disguising it. soon after the publication of the first edition on the d instant, i received the following letter, which will perhaps be more acceptable than any thing further from me by way of preface. _tavistock place, jan. , ._ dear sir, i have read your common sense, which is good sense, and so intelligible that he who runs may read, and he who reads can scarcely fail to understand. i wish you had treated the subject of monopolies more copiously, and informed your readers that in the early ages of commerce monopolies were so extended, and the principle so abused, that they could not fail to become obnoxious to all, and tradition has made the name hateful ever since. the kings of france, particularly louis xiv. to raise money sold _maitrices_, as they were called, or a sort of privilege for exercising certain trades, and he at the same time limited the number, this practice, together with the former monopolies not abolished, created a general wish for _freedom of trade_ in france.[a] the sect of economists were composed of republican philosophers, who proclaimed the grand advantages to be derived from the entire freedom of trade, nor was it then foreseen that under that pretext they were seeking _liberty and equality_, which but a few years after deluged france with the blood of her best sons, and had nearly ruined the world. you mention adam smith, he was the disciple and admirer of the economists; in a word he was what we denominate a democrat. as to entire freedom of trade, who that ever thought on the subject could dream of it. the corn laws, all bounties and drawbacks, the regulation even of weights and measures, the assay of silver and gold, the interest of money, &c. &c. &c. are directly in opposition to it, and prove the economists were wrong. when the french revolution broke out, excepting in weights and measures, every restraint was done away, but instead of things improving thereby they grew visibly worse. a short history of monopolies would be a very useful work, as it would clear up many mistakes concerning them. if adam smith were now alive he would probably have changed many of his opinions, for he was a good, and honest, as well as an able man, but he was deceived, not being initiated in the ulterior mysteries of m. turgot and his associates. i am your's, &c. free trade with india. _&c. &c._ the questions that have arisen of late respecting the east india company, or rather _the commerce with india_, for that is the stake and nothing less, are undoubtedly of great and serious importance. to enter into all the ramifications of the subject would require volumes, the mere bulk of which would startle most readers, and prevent their going into the question, and induce them to take up with the opinions of one, who appearing to have bestowed labour and attention on the subject, shapes his results in the manner best suited to his purpose. this mode of proceeding almost as old as the creation, and which will continue as long as any man pays a deference to the judgment of another, is the grand engine of designing men to bias the minds of the million who "hate the labour of a serious thought," a specious appellation is enough for the million to form a decision upon. i could instance many of these senseless war-whoops from "_liberty_ and _equality_" to "_a free trade_,"[b] were it necessary, or at all to the point. this mode, however, is only objectionable in the hands of sinister persons, for where the question at issue like the present, is very intricate, some such mode must be had recourse to, in order to simplify the question; i have therefore always considered that to take a popular view of a subject, some great leading points must be seized, and from these our judgment should be formed. this, if not the most accurate, is at least the best mode, where what is called public feeling is to be consulted. to study the interests of great britain and of british merchants with regard to the trade with india; to combine those with the territorial possessions and the interests of the country at large; to investigate also not only what would be the immediate consequences of a sudden change, but what might be the ultimate effects, are all necessary, to form that sort of judgment proper for the basis of action. that those immediately concerned with the affairs of india have examined the subject with great care and to good purpose, is abundantly evident from the correspondence, speeches, and pamphlets, already before the public; fraught as they are with many important facts, much acute observation, and for the most part dictated by a desire to come, if possible, to the best conclusion, all this is evident, yet it strikes me that something useful remains behind. were the question simply between _government_ and _the company_, i should not descant upon it; aware as i am that it has been canvassed by the parties on every ground and in every shape; but there is a _third_ party who has interfered. the _merchants at large_ all over the kingdom, the _shippers_ at _the out-ports_, and the manufacturers in the interior, all urged on by what is termed the _public voice_, crying out _a free trade_ and _no monopoly_. the trading towns, cities, and manufacturers do not pretend to have considered the subject minutely; therefore, for aught they know to the contrary, they are acting honestly and right; i will therefore address them with that open frankness which such conduct deserves, and which may lead to a conclusion very different from what was aimed at in the last session of parliament. for the sake of perspicuity i shall consider the subject under different heads. i. all monopolies are not wrong or injurious, as in some cases, we are the best and cheapest served by a monopoly; this proved, it follows that the india company being possessed of a monopoly, does not of itself argue that it should be withdrawn. ii. that the trade with india is far from being carried on, on the principle of monopoly. iii. that any great change must be attended with great danger, consequently we must not follow theory too readily, but pay great respect to practice and experience. iv. that the public at large have no reason to complain of the india company, as the articles brought by it have not increased in price in proportion either to rums or sugars from the west indies, where there is no monopoly. v. that the merchants of liverpool, hull, &c. and the manufacturers in their endeavours to share the trade with london, are seeking what would be injurious to them. vi. that some errors were fallen into in the present charter, which may be advantageously corrected in the next, and a few slight amendments may be attempted with safety, but no great change or innovation. * * * * * i. _all monopolies are not wrong or injurious, as in some cases, we are the best and cheapest served by a monopoly, this once proved, it follows that the india company being possessed of a monopoly, does not of itself argue that it should be withdrawn._ the manner in which the public can be the best and cheapest supplied with an article, is in itself the _best_, whether it be by a monopoly or not. this is conceded even by adam smith, that great enemy to monopolies; and he adduces in proof _the post office_, which is _one of the strictest and most complete monopolies in existence_, yet the business is done remarkably cheap and well, and with a degree of security not otherwise attainable. it is infinitely more correct than the carriage of small parcels, which is by open competition, and all circumstances considered much cheaper. the bank of england is partly a monopoly, but by no means a complete one, and it is better regulated and does business better than private banks that issue notes, and which are so far its rivals. most of the concerns which have been brought to maturity in this country have first flourished as _monopolies_ under the name of patents, and indeed there are many reasons for highly praising those temporary monopolies.[c] the insurance companies are not exactly monopolies, neither are they free traders in the true acceptation of the term, jointly or separately taking insurances without legislative interference; and, without such companies, it would be impracticable to carry on insurance so well as it is done. navigations and water-works companies are monopolies in _principle_, but they are necessary and advantageous. from all these examples it follows, that _monopoly_ is not bad _merely_ as _monopoly_, and that its being _injurious_ depends on particular circumstances, and therefore the india company being a company of monopolists, would not be a sufficient reason for its abolition, even were it proved to be so, but this has not yet been done. ii. _that the trade with india is far from being carried on, upon the principle of monopoly._ from the first discovery of india, and the most ancient and authentic records in existence, we learn that the trade to the east, which produces whatever is most brilliant to the eye, most delicious to the taste, or agreeable to the smell, has been the envy of nations. to share in them, solomon built tadmor in the desert, (the hebrew name, in greek, palmyra); for this alexander the great destroyed tyre, built alexandria and invaded india; for this trade venice, genoa, and constantinople contended above eight hundred years, when the discovery of a passage by the cape of good hope, wrested that commerce from the ancient competitors, and the dutch and portuguese became the successors of those inland merchants, who partly by caravans and partly by navigation, had supplied europe with the silks, the pearls, the perfumes, and the precious stones of asia from the earliest ages. at so great a distance every power that traded found it necessary to have an establishment. the inhabitants have not laws sufficient to protect the merchant, such as are necessary to a flourishing state of commerce; hence arose settlements and conquests, of the moral justice of which, i have nothing to say in this place; but being established, in order to maintain them, it was necessary to have revenues, and to continue certain privileges to the first traders, in order that they might act as a body, and supply from the general stock what was for the general advantage. the great body of the public are perhaps not aware that so far from ever intending to make a monopoly of the trade to india, there were in fact _two_ companies _at one time_, and that experience proved it was necessary to unite them into one, since which period, the public, as well as the servants of the company have always been permitted to participate on certain conditions.[d] the above is a very brief, but true history of the trade to india; now we will consider its present state as a _supposed monopoly_. as to the trade to china in tea, and to certain other articles, and also to ships there is monopoly, but if the trade to china were open to all the irregularities of common trading vessels, we should be excluded from it entirely in six months. the utmost circumspection and delicacy being necessary in trading with that country, besides which, the commerce demands such a large extent of capital and produces so little profit, that it would not answer the purpose of individual merchants. it is however sufficient for this article to say, that the company carry out and bring home a great variety of articles, at a fixed, and indeed at a very low rate of freight, such as no individual would do, or ever attempted to do. that if any manufacturer or merchant can find out an article that will sell in india, the company so far from preventing his doing so, afford him facilities not otherwise attainable. no mistake can in fact be greater than to say, with the uninformed and misled public, that the east india company is a monopoly, and injures trade by preventing our merchants and manufacturers from having a scope for their capital and industry. thus then the clamour raised last year, in favour of what is called a free trade, is entirely founded in error, but even were it not so, we may fairly enquire. iii. _whether any great change would not be attended with great danger? if so we must not follow theory too readily, but pay great respect to practice and experience._ the trade to india, in its present state, produces a great influx of wealth to the country, though but a very moderate average profit to the proprietors as a trading company. we must, therefore, risk this, if we consider that the french had an east india company in , and that by way of being liberal and free, they did what an inconsiderate public want us to do. they abolished the company, and let every one do as he pleased, when the trade vanished like a dream. l'orient, the seat of french east india trade, fell, and no one rose in its place, neither towns nor individuals, and the trade with india became extinct in france. i will admit that such would not be precisely the case here, still we ought to keep such an example in our minds to warn us against the dangers of innovation; besides it is sufficient that our _present state_ is good, for that is a sufficient reason to prevent our risking it by too sudden a change. if we follow experience slowly, we may perhaps make things better, and perhaps not; but at all events the error will be small and may be repaired, we can come back to the point we left. whereas if we throw open the trade, or extend it even to a limited number of out-ports, we may find it impossible to retrieve the error, supposing it should turn out to be one. softly and sure is a maxim which could never be better applied than in the present instance; and if a thousand sheets were to be written upon the expediency of the measure, after what has happened in france, it is quite evident that to the same conclusion we must come. iv. _that the public at large have no reason to complain of the india company, as the articles brought by it have not increased in price in proportion to either rums or sugars from the west indies, where there is no monopoly._ a single instance must convince the most sceptical. the east india company carry british manufactures out to india at about _s._ per ton--a distance of seven thousand miles--a rate cheaper than the carriage for five hundred miles in any other direction; therefore our manufacturers have a good chance of selling their goods, owing to their not being greatly enhanced by freight, and the servants of the company are allowed to traffic, so that every article adapted for the india market can find its way there without difficulty, though the company itself may not enter into such details. those who wish to send goods to india are therefore highly indebted to the company; and as to the imports i will ask the public only one simple question: have east india commodities risen in price, notwithstanding the heavy duties and increased expences of ship-building, and every article relating thereto, so much as west india produce? it is not necessary to dwell on this point; it is an evident fact that the east india goods are far cheaper than they would be if brought over by individual merchants, and the supply is more regular. if sales are slow the company keeps its goods at its own loss, with admirable good nature, or at least with admirable _sang froid_, and it never creates an artificial scarcity to enhance the price. the sales are by fair competition and without favour; what would the public wish or desire more? we come now to the next point. v. _that the merchants of liverpool, hull, &c. and the manufacturers, in their endeavour to share the trade with london, are asking what would be injurious to themselves._ having already shewn the danger of any great change, let us consider the probability of advantage. when goods are shipped for such a remote market, it is essentially necessary, previously to ascertain, that they are wanted. now when the exports are confined to one company, from its accurate knowledge of trade, it can proportion the quantities of the articles to the general demand for each; but if there are merchants, entirely ignorant of what each other are doing; or what is worse, deceiving each other, in order to insure a better market for their own shipment, they will necessarily send too much of some articles and not enough of others; hence many will be ruined, for they cannot carry their cargoes from port to port as in europe or america: if the market is over-stocked at the port they are bound to, there is no alternative, but sacrificing the cargo for what it will fetch, or leaving it on hand to await the chance of a future sale. on the return of the vessel, here the merchant awakes from his golden dream, and finds himself on the verge of bankruptcy, for the utmost limit of credit has expired--he is ruined! as to our manufactures it is not probable that more would be consumed than at present, for as we have already observed, the officers in the company's service carry out goods of all descriptions, and enter into competition with each other, and that whatever can be sold they can and do take out[e]; however if this reasoning be not satisfactory, there is a very easy way of extending that species of traffic without any danger. at present none of our manufacturers lose by bad debts with india; were the trade laid open, it would undoubtedly be worse than at beunos ayres, when one call from sir home popham took out from three to four millions of british capital, (as a boatswain whistles his crew on deck,) to the great loss and disappointment of some, and the absolute ruin of many more. now should the consumption of our goods not be increased; opening the trade would manifestly injure all embarking in it; for the freight and insurance could not be lower, but would be considerably higher than at present. as to a few individual towns asserting a claim to participate in the commerce of india, it is a very singular and novel kind of claim: if i apprehend aright, the nature of things attaches particular advantages to particular places; i mean privileges which are _naturally_ local. the court, for example, is held at london, which brings a great influx of wealth to the metropolis. on this principle edinburgh might put in a claim to have the court some part of the year, and such claim might be followed up by similar ones from the _keel-men_ of newcastle, the locksmiths of walsal, and the tinmen of cornwall. the thing is really too ridiculous to think seriously upon. some advantages are not only local, but indivisible, and there is no injustice arising therefrom, though with a little sophistry in certain cases it may be made to appear injustice when it is really not so, which is the case in the present instance, for it is in the revenue that the nation is a gainer by the east india company, and that must suffer considerably in the collection; besides, all the docks, warehouses, and other establishments made here, on the faith of the trade remaining as it is, must come into the question. if trade must be dispersed equally over a country, like spreading manure on a field, it would be different; but there is an absurdity in the very idea of spreading it equally, and justice has absolutely nothing to do with the question; it is entirely a matter of policy and expediency. vi. _that some errors were fallen into in the present charter, which may be advantageously corrected in the next; and a few slight amendments may be attempted with safety, but no great change or innovation._ making the dividends fixed, and independent of loss or gain, is wrong and absurd. no effort can increase the dividend, no extravagance or negligence can lessen it, and it cannot be concealed, that from such a state of things it necessarily arises that patronage is the only bonus on india stock. there is some connection either with ship-builders, sail-makers, or the furnishers of stores, officers, secretaries, clerks, or appointments abroad. it is true the connection is circuitous, and the patronage difficult to trace, but the fact resolves itself to this, that however it may be divided amongst them, the whole of the patronage of places and profits, at home and abroad, civil and military, is vested in the directors and proprietors, and that patronage is of an amazing amount and extent. in this enquiry i have endeavoured at impartiality, i write not to serve the east india company, but the country itself--ministers want the east india patronage, it was for this, charles fox made his celebrated struggle; it is this golden prize that makes the present ministers hazard every thing to obtain; it is not the flimsy net-work mask of freedom of trade, the very worst pretext they could have found, it is the patronage of india they fight for, and to obtain which, would break down every barrier, destroy every establishment, and trample on every right.--_let those then who already think the influence of the crown too great beware how they throw into the scale_ the patronage of india. freedom of trade is like the trojan horse, from it will issue what will destroy the freedom of the country.--there are many other errors in the arrangements of the company, but they are minor ones and not worth detailing here. the grand question to be decided is, the opening of the trade, which i have already treated. in conclusion then, monopoly is not always injurious.--the east india company does not possess a monopoly.--great changes will be attended with great danger. _the public has no reason to complain, nor the merchants any right to arrogate to themselves claims which do not exist._ there would be great risk and no advantage in sharing the trade with the out-ports; and lastly, that the faults in the present system are entirely of a different nature, and may be easily and safely amended. finis. glendinning, printer, hatton garden, london. footnotes: [a] my friend does not seem to be aware that buonaparte has generalized the principle; nearly all the tradesmen in paris being compelled to purchase those maitrices. the principle is in some degree known and acted upon in england, as in the case of bankers, wine-merchants, &c. &c. &c. and the _limited_ principle in the case of licences of public houses, &c. [b] it would be a curious piece of history to enumerate the instances in which such watch-words have been used, by whom, for what purposes, and what were the results arising therefrom in each case. [c] lloyd's coffee-house is in fact a monopoly, self created, and of a new species, a sort of _republican company_, resembling in some things, what are termed regulated companies, in contradiction to the joint stock companies, with this difference however, that the present members may exclude whom they please which is a monopoly principle. [d] the public does not, perhaps, know also, that oliver cromwell in levelling times, abolished the charter, but that like the _house of peers_, which was also abolished, it was obliged to be restored. the present attempt, is in fact, a small attack of liberty and equality, that epidemical disease that raged in england at the time of the great rebellion, and in france at the beginning of the revolution. destruction or a strait waistcoat must be the consequence of such a disease. [e] besides, the portuguese, spaniards, dutch, french, and english settlers in the interior have explored the country, and tried what extension they could give to the trade, so that the british merchants, who proceed on the idea that they will make discoveries, and form new connections, labour under a total mistake. transcriber's notes: text in italics is indicated by underscores: _italics_. inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original. obvious typographical errors have been corrected as follows: page : "copously" changed to "copiously" page : "desart" changed to "desert" page : "advantageouly" changed to "advantageously" none generously made available by the internet archive/canadian libraries) the business career barbara weinstock lectures on the morals of trade. this series will contain essays by representative scholars and men of affairs dealing with the various phases of the moral law in its bearing on business life under the new economic order, first delivered at the university of california on the weinstock foundation. the first volume to appear in this series is: the business career. by albert shaw, ph.d. paul elder and company san francisco the business career in its public relations by albert shaw, ph.d. editor of the american review of reviews it is the positive and aggressive attitude toward life, the ethics of action, rather than the ethics of negation, that must control the modern business world, and that may make our modern business man the most potent factor for good in this, his own, industrial period. paul elder and company publishers, san francisco copyright, by paul elder and company san francisco the tomoyé press the cultivation of public spirit, in the broad sense, and the determination to be an all-round good and efficient citizen and member of the community, will often help a man amazingly to discern the opportunities for usefulness that lie in the direct line of his business life. the founder's preface despite all that can still be said against trade practices, against the business lies that are told, the false weights and measures that are used, the trade frauds to which the public is subjected, we are nearer a high commercial standard than ever before in the world's history. man's confidence in man is greater than ever before, the commercial loss through fraud and dishonesty is constantly diminishing and standards are slowly but surely moving upward. the honest man's chances for success in business are better than ever before, and the dishonest man's chances for lasting commercial success are less than ever before. to grow rich by failing in business is no longer regarded as an act of cleverness. the professional bankrupt finds it more and more difficult to get credit. he soon discovers that even his cash will not win for him the attention that his poorer neighbor commands simply by his character. education has done splendid service in raising commercial standards. as a rule, the high-toned business man is enlightened, and, as a rule, the dishonest, unscrupulous man in business is ignorant. great aid in the direction of raising commercial standards may be rendered by the further spreading of knowledge and enlightenment. there are still many misguided men in business who imagine that there can be no success without false weights and measures, without lies and deceit. it is the duty of every man in business, who loves the work in which he is engaged, to do whatever he can to correct this mistaken notion, and to arouse the same sense of honor in the circles of commerce that, as a rule, is found in professional life. in the decades to come men will take as much pride in being engaged in trade as men always have taken in being members of a liberal profession. it seemed to me that a step toward hastening such a day might be taken by inviting the best thoughts of some of the country's best minds on the subject of "the morals of trade." what better platform for the expression of such ideas than that furnished by the college of commerce of the university of california? what better way to spread such thoughts than by means of their distribution in printed form? what better way to train to higher commercial standards the minds, not only of the youths who are seeking a university education and who have in view a business career, but also of the many already engaged in business who have not had the benefit of a college training? it seemed to me that such a step might set in motion a commercially educational force which would prove far-reaching in its influence and most helpful in raising business character. thoughts such as these prompted the recent establishing of the lectureship on "the morals of trade" in connection with the college of commerce of the university of california. let the hope be expressed that this is but the beginning of a movement which may be taken up by abler and wealthier men in business and broadened in many ways. a growing literature on "the morals of trade," representing the best thoughts of our best minds, is likely to live and to do splendid service in elevating commerce and in raising its standards. h. weinstock. the purpose of this discourse is to set forth some of the social and public aspects of trade and commerce in our modern life. we have heard much in these recent times concerning the state in its relation to trade, industry, and the economic concerns of individuals and groups. rapidly changing conditions, however, make it fitting that more should be said from the opposite standpoint;--that is to say, regarding the responsibilities of the business community as such toward the state in particular and toward the whole social organism in general. some of the thoughts to which i should like to give expression might perhaps too readily fall into abstract or philosophical terms. they might, on the other hand, only too readily clothe themselves in cant phrases and assume the hortatory tone. i shall try to avoid dialectic or theory on the one hand, and preaching on the other. i take it that what i am to say is addressed chiefly to young men, and that it ought to serve a practical object. in the universities the spirit of idealism dominates. the academic point of view is not merely an intellectual one, but it is also ethical and altruistic. in the business world, on the other hand, we are told that no success is possible except that which is based upon the motive of money-getting by any means, however ruthless. we are told that the standards of business life are in conflict irreconcilable with true idealistic aims. it is this situation that i wish to analyze and discuss; for it concerns the student in a very direct way. our moralists point out the dangerous prevalence of those low standards of personal life and conduct summed up in the term "commercialism." we are warned by some of our foremost teachers and ethical leaders against commercialism in politics and commercialism in society. so bitterly reprobated indeed is the influence of commercialism that it might be inferred that commerce itself is at best a necessary evil and a thing to be apologized for. but if we are to accept this point of view without careful discrimination, we may well be alarmed; for we live in a world given over as never before to the whirl of industry and the rush and excitement of the market-place. this, of all ages, is the age of the business man. the heroic times when warfare was the chief concern of nations, have long since passed by. so too the ages of faith,--when theology was the mainspring of action, when whole peoples went on long crusades, and when building cathedrals and burning heretics were typical of men's efforts and convictions--have fallen far into the historic background. further, we would seem in the main to have left behind us that period of which the french revolution is the most conspicuous landmark, when the gaining of political liberty for the individual seemed the one supreme good, and the object for which nations and communities were ready to sacrifice all else. through these and other periods characterized by their own especial aims and ideals, we have come to an age when commercialism is the all-absorbing thing; and we are told by pessimists that these dominant conditions are hopelessly incompatible with academic idealism or with the maintenance of high ethical standards, whether for the guidance of the individual himself or for the acceptance and control of the community. it is precisely this state of affairs, then, that i desire briefly to consider. and i shall keep in mind those bearings of it that might seem to have some relation to the views and aims of students who are soon to go out from the sheltered life of the university,--under the necessity, whether they shrink from it or not, of becoming part and parcel of this organism of business and trade that has invaded almost every sphere of modern activity. i have only recently heard a great and eloquent teacher of morals, himself an exponent of the highest and finest culture to which we have attained, speak in terms of the utmost doubt and anxiety regarding the drift of the times. to his mind, the evils and dangers accompanying the stupendous developments of our day are such as to set what he called commercialism in direct antagonism to all that in his mind represented the higher good, which he termed idealism. the impression that he left upon his audience was that the forces of our present-day business life are inherently opposed to the achievement of the best results in statecraft and in the general life of the community. he could propose no remedy for the evils he deplored except education, and the saving of the old ideals through the remnant of the faithful who had not bowed the knee in the temple of mammon. but he pointed out no way by which to protect the tender blossoms of academic idealism, when they meet their inevitable exposure in due time to the blighting and withering blasts of the commercialism that to him seemed so little reconcilable with the good, the true, and the beautiful. to all this the practical man can only reply, that if, indeed, commercialism itself cannot be made to furnish a soil and an atmosphere in which idealism can grow, bud, blossom, and bear glorious fruit,--then idealism is hopelessly a lost cause. if it be not possible to promote things ideally good through these very forces of commercial and industrial life, then the outlook is a gloomy one for the social moralist and the political purist. it is not a defensive position that i propose to take. i should not think it needful at this time even so much as briefly to reflect any of those timorous and painful arguments _pro_ and _con_ that one finds at times running through the columns of the press, particularly of the religious weeklies, on such a question as, for example, whether nowadays a man can at the same time be a true christian and a successful business man; or whether the observance of the principles of common honesty is at all compatible with a winning effort to make a decent living. i am well aware that the thoughtful and intellectual founder of this lectureship, under which i have been invited to speak, takes no such narrow view either of morality on the one hand or of the function of business life on the other. his definition of morality in business would demand something very different from the mere avoidance of certain obvious transgressions of the accepted rules of conduct, particularly of that commandment which says: "thou shalt not steal." nor, on the other hand, would his definition of the functions of business life be in any manner bounded by the notion that business is a pursuit having for its sole object the getting of the largest possible amount of money. those people who are content to apply negative moral standards to the carrying on of business life remind one of the little boy's familiar definition of salt: "salt," said he, "is what makes potatoes taste bad when you don't put any on." according to that sort of definition, morality in business would be defined as that quality which makes the grocer good and respectable when he resists temptation and does not put sand in the sugar. the smug maxim that honesty is the best policy, while doubtless true enough as a verdict of human experience under normal conditions, is not fitted to arouse much enthusiasm as a statement of ultimate ethical aims and ideals. if it were admitted that the sole or guiding motive in a business career must needs be the accumulation of money, i should certainly not think it worth while, in the name of trade morals, to urge young men who are to enter business life that they play the game according to safe and well-recognized rules. i would not take the trouble to advise them to study the penal code and to familiarize themselves with the legal definitions of grand and petit larceny, of embezzlement, or fraud, or arson, in order that they might escape certain hazards that beset a too narrow kind of devotion to business success. it is true, doubtless, that a business career affords peculiar opportunities, and is therefore subject to its own characteristic temptations, as respects the purely private and personal standards of conduct. the magnitude of our economic movement, the very splendor of the opportunities that the swift development of a vast young country like ours affords, must inevitably in some cases upset at once the sober business judgment of men, and in some cases the standard of personal honor and good faith, in the temptation to get rich quickly; so that wrong is done thereby to a man's associates or to those whose interests are in his hands, while still greater wrong is done to his own character. but, even against this dangerous greed for wealth and the unscrupulousness and ruthlessness which it engenders, it is no part of my present object to warn any young man. i take it that the negative standards of private conduct are usually not much affected by a man's choice of a pursuit in life. if any man's honor could be filched from him by a merely pecuniary reward, whether greater or less, i should not think it likely that he would be much safer in the long run if he chose the clerical profession, for example, than if he went into business. sooner or later his character would disclose itself. it is not, then, of the private and negative standards of conduct that i wish to speak,--except by way of such allusions as these. and even these allusions are only for the sake of making more distinct the positive and active phases of business ethics that i should like to present in such a way as to fasten them upon the attention. many young men, to whom these views are addressed, will doubtless choose, or have already chosen, what is commonly known as a professional career. the ministry, law, and medicine are the oldest and best recognized of the so-called liberal or learned professions. now what are the distinctive marks of professional life? are the men who practice these professions not also business men? and if so, how are they different from those business men who are considered laymen, or non-professional? obviously the distinctions that are to be drawn, if any, are in the nature of marked tendencies. we shall not expect to find any hard and fast lines. many lawyers, some doctors, and a few clergymen are clearly enough business men, in the sense that they attach more importance to the economic bearings of the part they play in the social organism than to the higher ethical or intellectual aspects of their work. i have read and heard many definitions of what really constitutes a professional man. whatever else, however, may characterize the nature of his calling, it seems to me plain that no man can be thought a true or worthy member of a profession who does not admit, both in theory and in the rules and practices of his life, that he has a public function to serve, and that he must frequently be at some discomfort or disadvantage because of the calls of professional duty. the laborer is worthy of his hire; and the professional man is entitled to obtain, if he can, a competence for himself and his family from the useful and productive service he is rendering to his fellow men. he may even, through genius or through the great confidence his character and skill inspire, gain considerable wealth in the practice of his profession. but if he is a true professional man he does not derive his incentive to effort solely or chiefly from the pecuniary gains that his profession brings him. nor is the amount of his income regarded among the fellow members of his profession as the true test or measure of his success. thus the lawyer, in the theory of his profession, bears an important public relation to the dispensing of justice and to the protection of the innocent and the feeble. he is not a private person, but a part of the system for supporting the reign of law and of right in the community. historically, in this country, the lawyer has also borne a great part in the making and administering of our institutions of government. if, as some of us think, the ethical code of that profession needs to be somewhat revised in view of present-day conditions, and needs also to be more sternly applied to some of the members of the profession, it is true, none the less, that there clearly belongs to this great calling a series of duties of a public nature, some of them imposed by the laws of the land, and others inherent in the very nature of the occupation itself. it is true in an even more marked and undeniable fashion that the profession of medicine, by virtue of its public and social aspects, is distinguished in a marked way from a calling in life in which a man might feel that what he did was strictly his own business, subject to nobody's scrutiny, or inquiry, or interference. the physician's public obligation is in part prescribed by the laws of the state which regulate medical practice, and in very large part by the professional codes which have been evolved by the profession itself for its own guidance. it is not the amount of his fee that the overworked doctor is thinking about when he risks his own health in response to night calls, or when he devotes himself to some especially painful or difficult case. nor is it a mere consideration of his possible earnings that would deter him from seeking comfort and safety by taking his family to europe at a time when an epidemic had broken out in his own neighborhood. i need not allude to the unselfish devotion to the good of the community that in so high a degree marks the lives of most of the members of the clerical profession, for this is evident to all observant persons. on the other hand, it cannot be too clearly perceived that there is nothing in the disinterestedness, and in the obligation to render public service characterizing professional life that amounts to unnatural self-denial or painful renunciation,--unless in some extreme and individual cases. on the contrary, professional life at its best offers a great advantage in so far as it permits a man to think first of the work he is doing and the social service he is rendering, rather than of pecuniary reward. i have myself on more than one occasion pointed out to young men the greater prospect for happiness in life that comes with the choice of a calling in which the work itself primarily focuses the attention, and in which the pecuniary reward comes as an incident rather than as the conscious and direct result of a given effort. the greatest pleasure in work is that which comes from the trained and regulated exercise of the faculty of imagination. in the conduct of every law case this faculty has abundant opportunity, as it also has in the efforts of the physician to aid nature in the restoration of health and vigor in the individual, or in the sanitary protection of the community. i hope i have made clear this point: that pecuniary success, even in large measure, in the work of a professional man, may be entirely compatible with disinterested devotion to a kind of work that makes for the public weal, while it is also worthy of pursuit for its own sake, and brings content and even happiness in the doing. and it is clear enough, in the case of a professional man, that he is false to his profession and to his plain obligations if he shows himself to be ruled by the anti-social spirit; that is to say, if he considers himself absolved from any duties towards the community about him; thinks that the practice of his profession is a private affair for his own profit and advantage, and holds that he has done his whole duty when he has escaped liability for malpractice or disbarment. but the three oldest and best recognized professions no longer stand alone, in the estimation of our higher educational authorities and of the intelligent public. in a democracy like ours, with a constantly advancing conception of what is involved in education for citizenship and for participation in every individual function of the social and economic life, the work of the teacher comes to be recognized as professional in the highest sense. teaching, indeed, seems destined in the near future to become the very foremost of all the professions. this recognition will come when the idea takes full possession of the public mind that the chief task of each generation is to train the next one, and to transmit such stores of knowledge and useful experience as it has received from its predecessors or has evolved for itself. it is obvious enough that the work of the teacher gives room for the play of the loftiest ideals, and that its functions are essentially public and disinterested. but there are other callings, such as those of the architect and engineer, which have also come to be spoken of as professional in their nature. their kinship to the older professions has been more readily recognized by the men of conservative university traditions, because much of the preparation for these callings can advantageously be of an academic sort. architecture in its historical aspects is closely associated with the study of classical periods; while the profession of the engineer relates itself to the immemorial university devotion to mathematics. and in like manner the man who for practical purposes becomes a chemist or an electrician would be easily admitted by president eliot, for example, to the favored fellowship of the professional classes for the reason, first, of the disciplinary and liberalizing nature of the studies that underlie his calling, and, in the second place, of the public and social aspects of the functions he fulfils in the pursuit of his vocation. the architect, the civil or mechanical or electrical engineer, and the chemist, as well as the professional teacher, the trained librarian, or the journalist who carries on his work with due sense of its almost unequaled public duties and responsibilities,--all these are now admitted by dicta of our foremost authorities to a place equal with the law, medicine, and the ministry in the list of the professions; that is to say, in the group of callings which, under my definition, are distinguished especially by their public character. and in this group, of course, should be included politicians, legislators, and public administrators in so far as they serve the public interests reputably and in a professional spirit. nor should we forget such special classes of public servants as the officers of the army and navy; while nobody will deny public character and professional rank to men of letters, artists, musicians and actors. in all these callings it is demanded not merely that men shall be subject to the private rules of conduct,--that they must not cheat, or lie, or steal, or bear false witness, or be bad neighbors or undesirable citizens,--but in addition and in the most important sense that they shall be subject to positive ethical standards that relate to the welfare of the whole community, and that require of them the exercise of a true public spirit. the man of public spirit is he who is able at a given moment, under certain conditions, to set the public welfare before his own. furthermore, he is a man who is trained and habituated to that point of view, so that he is not aware of any pangs of martyrdom or even of any exercise of self-denial when he is concerning himself about the public good even to his own momentary inconvenience or disadvantage. public spirit is that state or habit of mind which leads a man to care greatly for the general welfare. it is this ethical quality that to my mind should be the great aim and object of training. on its best side, what we term the professional spirit is, then, very closely related to this commendable quality in men of a right intellectual and moral development that we call public spirit. the chief difference lies in this: that whereas all professional men may be public-spirited in a general sense, each professional man should, in addition, manifest a special and technical sort of public spirit that pertains to the nature of his calling. the lawyer should have a particularly keen regard for the equitable administration of justice. the doctor should truly care for the physical wholesomeness and well-being of the community. the clergyman should be alive to those things that concern the rectitude and purity of life. the journalist should be willing to make sacrifices for the sake of the enlightenment of public opinion; and so on. without either the general or the technical manifestations of public spirit, in short, the so-called professional man is a reproach to his guild and a failure in his neighborhood. now, what has all this to do with the moral standards that belong to the business career as distinguished from the professional life? my answer must be very clear and very direct if i am to justify so long an analysis of the ethical characteristics of the professions themselves. i have merely used the time-honored method of trying to lead you by way of familiar, admitted points of view to certain points of view that, if not wholly new, are at least less familiar and less widely recognized. the whole thesis that i wish to develop is simply this: that however it may have been in business life in times past and gone, there has been such a tremendous change in the organization and methods of the business world and also in the relative importance of the functions of the business man in the community, that the distinctions which have hitherto set apart the professional classes have become obsolete for all practical purposes in many branches and departments of the business world. at least, the work of the responsible leaders is no longer to be regarded as essentially a thing of private concern and free from public responsibility. if the business world is not characterized, first, by public spirit and a sense of public duty in general, and, second, by the special and technical sense of public obligation that pertains to particular kinds or departments of business activity, then it is falling short of its best opportunities and evading its providential tasks. it is for the modern business world to recognize the conditions that have in the fulness of time given it so great a power and so dominant a position; and it must not shirk the responsibilities that belong to it as fully and truly as they belong to any of the professions. i hold, then, that the young man of education and opportunity who proposes to go into a business career enters it not merely with a low and unworthy standard if his sole motive and object be to acquire wealth, but he also enters it in disregard of the ideas that fill the minds of the best modern business leaders. he shows a pitiable lack of appreciation of the elements that are to constitute real business success in the period within which his own career must fall. let us consider, briefly, the evolution of our present-day economic or business life, and then take note of the necessary place that particular classes of business men must hold in the structure of our society. i, for my part, look upon this last century of economic progress,--under the sway of what is often called "capitalism" as a term of reproach,--as an immeasurable boon to mankind. it began with the practical utilization of several great inventions, notably that of steam power, which broke up the old household and village industries, gave us the modern factory system, and along with the development of railroads gave us the modern industrial city. this new and revolutionizing system of industry and business forced its way into a world of poverty, of disease, of depraved public life, of low morals in the main pervading the community,--a world for the most part of class distinctions in which the lot even of the privileged few was not a very noble or enviable one, while the state of the vast majority was little better than that of serfs. many writers have sought to throw a charm and a glamour over that old condition of economic life and society that followed the break-up of feudalism and that preceded the creation of our new political and industrial institutions. but with some mitigations it was for most people a period, as i have said, of squalor, disease, and degradation. the fundamental trouble could be summed up in the one word, _poverty_. the mission of the new industrial system, for the most part unconscious and unrecognized, was to transform the world by abolishing the reign of poverty. doubtless it would be desirable if the improvement of conditions, material and spiritual, could make progress with exactly even pace on some perfectly symmetrical plan. but history shows us that the forward social movement has proceeded first in one aspect, then in another, on lines so tangential, often so zigzag, that it is difficult until one gets distance enough for perspective, to see that any true progress has been made at all. thus, the modern industrial system, which found the conditions of poverty, disease, and hardship prevalent, seemed for quite a long time, in its rude breaking up of old relations and its ruthless adherence to certain newly proclaimed principles, to have brought matters from bad to worse. the squalor and poverty of the village of hand-loom weavers seemed only intensified in the new industrial towns to which the weavers flocked from their deserted hamlets. manufacturers were doing business under the fiercest and most unregulated competition. economists were demonstrating their "law of supply and demand" and their "iron law of wages" as capable in themselves of regulating all the conditions and relations of business life. epidemics raged and depravity prevailed in the new factory centers. but things were not, in reality, going from bad to worse. the beginnings of a better order had to be based upon two things: first and foremost, the sheer creation of capital; second, the discipline and training of workers. in the first phases, the new modern business period had to be a period of production. there had got to be developed the instrumentalities for the creation of wealth. until the industrial system had raised up its class of efficient workers and had created its great mass of capital for productive purposes, there could be no supply of cheap goods; and without an abundant and cheap output there could be no possible diffusion of economic benefits; in other words, no marked amelioration of the prevailing poverty. it required some development of wealth to lift our modern peoples out of a poverty too grinding and too debasing for intellectual or moral progress. it is true that the factory towns, created as they have all been by modern industrial conditions during the past century, brought their distinctive evils. there was overcrowding in ill-built tenement houses; and long hours for women and children in the factories. yet with these and many other disadvantages, the new industrial system made for discipline and for intelligence, and above all for a new kind of solidarity and for a sense of brotherhood among workers. in due time the worst evils began to be mitigated, largely through the application of those very methods of organization which had characterized the new kind of industry itself. thus for men who had applied steam power to manufacturing and had begun to build railroads, it was soon perceived to be a matter not only of sanitary and social service, but of pecuniary profit, to provide water supplies, public illumination, and other conveniences to the crowded city dwellers. moreover, with the progress of industry and the development of railroads and steam navigation, production and trade took on an ever-increasing volume. then the world began to be less poor. there had been no rich men in the modern sense, and of course no such thing as capitalized corporations for production. the richest man in the united states at the time of his death, a little more than a hundred years ago, was george washington, with his land and his slaves; and so in england and france there were no rich men in the modern sense--that is to say, no men who controlled great masses of productive capital. the men of wealth were those who held landed estates. the chief business of all countries was agriculture. the capitalistic system in industry and trade existed in its rudiments and in limited measure; but all its great achievements were yet to be wrought. all modern business life, then, is the result of this growth of productive capital, and its application and constant reapplication to the production of wealth. it made its way by virtue of an intense individual initiative and a fierce competitive struggle. but unlovely as were these things, many of their phases were necessary at a certain stage. it was this fierce competition that compelled capital to pay the lowest possible wages in order to market cheap goods. but the same situation stimulated the use, one after another, of new labor-saving inventions in order to increase the per capita productivity. this process was attended by the higher efficiency of the worker and an increase in his earning capacity. as his position began to improve, the worker gained some hope and cheer; and he and his fellows began to organize, with the result that both wages and conditions of labor were steadily improved, and the workman began to attain approximately his share of benefits. all this is a familiar story, although the depth of its significance is beyond the compass of any living human intelligence. it is easy to say in a glib sentence that the amount of wealth produced every few years nowadays is equal to all the accumulated wealth of all the centuries down to the early part of the nineteenth; but the social meaning of so great a change baffles all attempt at full comprehension. the competitive system, which had been essential to the launching of this modern period of production, and which had given to it so much of its irresistible momentum, at length brought the economic organization to a point of development where, in some fields of production, it was no longer a benefit. the accumulation of capital had become so large,--and with new inventions the possible output had become so abundant, that it was well nigh impossible to trust to the blind working of demand and supply to regulate things in a beneficial way. it began to dawn on men's minds that a successful period of competitive economic life might lead to a period largely dominated by non-competitive and coöperative principles. the superior possibilities of this newest régime, along with its many difficulties and perplexities, began to captivate the minds, not merely of theoretical students and onlookers, but, even more, of great masters of industry and productive capital. it began to be seen that in place of blind and fierce competition as a regulator of prices and as an equalizer of supply and demand, there might come to be gradually substituted some more consciously scientific methods of business administration and of the adjustment of production to the needs of the market. furthermore, with the development of business on the great scale, capital had become relatively abundant and cheap, while, on the other hand, labor was becoming relatively expensive and exacting. it was evident that the modern system of industry had passed through its earlier period to one of comparative maturity; and that the problem of wealth production was no longer so exclusively the pressing one, but that the problems of distribution were demanding more attention. how to organize business life on a basis at once stable and efficient; how to see that capital was assured of a normal even though a declining percentage of dividends; while labor should be rewarded according to its capacity and desert,--were problems which took on public rather than private aspects. and when the business world began to face these problems with the consciousness that they were to be met, it had virtually passed over from the lower plane of moral and social responsibility to the higher plane where what the directing minds do or decide is not measured solely by immediate results in money-getting, but also by the test of larger social and public utilities. although these conditions are not novel ones, and are therefore not difficult to grasp even when stated in general terms, it is still true that the concrete often helps to make the point appear more pertinent. take then the railroad business as it is now shaping itself, in comparison with its conditions and methods twenty or thirty years ago. the railroads have always existed by virtue of charters which gave them a quasi-public character, and have always been theoretically subject to certain old principles of english common law under which the public or common carrier, like the innkeeper, performs a function not wholly private in its nature. nevertheless, in its earlier stages the railroad system of this country was in large part constructed and operated by its projectors with no sense whatever of responsibility for their performance of public functions, but with the idea that they were carrying on their own private business in which interference on the part of the public was to be avoided and resented. they fought the railroad codes of state legislatures in the federal courts; they made oppressive rates to give value to new issues of watered stock; they discriminated in favor of one city and against another; by a system of secret rebates they made different terms with every shipper, thus enabling one merchant or manufacturer to destroy his competitor; and they pursued in general a career at least anti-social in its spirit and false and short-sighted in its principles. a profound change--would that it were already complete!--is coming about in this great field of transportation business. it is perceived that many of the evils to which i have alluded were incident to the speculative periods of construction and development in a new country. the better leaders in the business of railway administration now see clearly that it is the duty of the railroads to work with and for the public and not against it. the railroads are gradually passing out of the hands of the stockjobbers and speculators, into the control of trained administrators. it is to be remembered that in a country like ours, the largest single branch of organized administration is that of the railroads. we have reached a point where their relations to all the elaborate interests of the community are such that their public character becomes more and more pronounced and evident. it was only the other day that a brilliant railway administrator, mr. charles s. mellen, recently president of the northern pacific, and now president of the new york, new haven & hartford system, made some statements in an address to the business men of hartford at a board of trade meeting. with much else of the same import, he made the following significant remarks: "if corporations are to continue to do their work as they are best fitted to, those qualities in their representatives that have resulted in the present prejudice against them must be relegated to the background. "they must come out into the open and see and be seen. they must take the public into their confidence and ask for what they want and no more, and then be prepared to explain satisfactorily what advantage will accrue to the public if they are given their desires, for they are permitted to exist not that they may make money solely, but that they may effectively serve those from whom they derive their power. publicity should rule now. publicity, and not secrecy, will win hereafter, and laws will be construed by their intent and not killed by their letter; otherwise public utilities will be owned and operated by the public which created them, even though the service be less efficient and the result less satisfactory from a financial standpoint." mr. mellen's state of mind is that which ought to prevail among all the managers of corporations which enjoy public franchises and perform functions fundamental to the welfare of the community. there will at times be prejudice and passion on the part of the public, and unfair demands will be made. we shall not see the attainment of ideal conditions in the management or the public relations of any great business corporations in our day. but the time has come when any intelligent and capable young man who chooses to enter the service of a railroad or of some other great corporation may rightly feel that he becomes part of a system whose operation is vital to the public welfare. he may further feel that there is room in such a calling for all his intelligence and for the exercise and growth of all the best sentiments of his moral nature. in the vast mechanism of modern business the constructive imagination may find its full play; and the desire to be of service to one's fellow men in a spirit reasonably disinterested may find opportunity to satisfy itself every day. under these circumstances there is no reason why railway administration should not take on the same ethical standards as belong rightly to governmental administration, to educational administration, or to the best professional life. the same thing is clearly true when one considers nowadays the delicate and important functions of the world of banking and finance. the old-fashioned money-changer and the usurer of earlier periods were regarded as the very antithesis of men engaged in honorable mercantile life, and especially of those who possess a social spirit and the desire to be useful members of the community. but in these days the banks are not merely private money-making institutions, but have public functions that admittedly affect the whole social organism, from the government itself down to the humblest laborer. they must concern themselves about the soundness and the sufficiency of the monetary circulation; they must protect the credit and foster the welfare of honest merchants and manufacturers; they must coöperate in critical times to help one another, and thus to sustain the public and private credit and avert commercial disaster; they must at all hazards protect the savings of the poor. thus the banks, like the railroads and many other corporate enterprises, are quasi-public affairs, in the conduct of which the public obligation grows ever clearer and stronger. we are not at heart--in this splendid country of ours--engaged in a mad struggle and race for wealth. we are engaged rather in the greatest effort ever made in the world for the upbuilding of a higher civilization. to avow that this civilization must rest upon a physical and material basis,--that is to say, upon a high development of our productive capacity and upon a constant improvement in our processes of distribution and exchange,--is not, on the other hand, to confess that our civilization is materialistic in its nature or in its aims. i was very glad, the other day, to read the wholesome and understanding words of a distinguished boston clergyman who is just now coming to new york to take charge of an important parish. he declared that this nation was founded on an ideal, and that the most powerful influences in its life today are working toward noble ideals. the moral and spiritual tone of the country, he asserted, is higher than ever, in spite of the accidents of wealth and poverty. he declared that the great host of men and women who cherish our ideals will continue to stamp idealism upon the minds and hearts of our youth, and that they in turn "will convert wealth to the service of ideals." such views are not merely the expressions of a comfortable optimist. they are true to the facts of our current progress. there are vast portions of this country today in which the enterprising business man who can succeed in selling to the farmers an honest and effective commercial fertilizer is the best possible missionary of idealism,--is, in fact, a veritable angel for the spread of sweetness and light. there are regions where the capitalist or the company that will build a cotton mill or some other kind of factory is rescuing whole communities from degradation. it is poverty that has kept the south so backward, and it is poverty alone that explains the illiteracy and the lawlessness not merely of the kentucky mountains, but of great areas in other states as well. good schools cannot be supported in regions like those, for the palpable reason that the taxable wealth of an entire school district cannot yield enough to pay the salary of a teacher. but when modern business invades those uplands, utilizes the water-power now wasted, opens the mines, builds cotton factories or foundries, the situation changes almost as if by magic. there will, indeed, ensue a brief period of disturbance due to changed social conditions,--to women and children in factories, and other things of incidental or serious disadvantage. but, as against a survival of the sort of life that was widely prevalent a century or two ago, all the phenomena of our modern industrial life make their appearance, in full development. the one-room cabin gives place to the little house of several rooms. there is rapid diffusion of those minor comforts and agencies which make for self-respect and personal and family advancement. the advent of capital, that is to say, of taxable property, is speedily followed by the good schoolhouse and the good teacher. it is instructive to note the transformation that is thus taking place in one county after another of the carolinas, or georgia, or others of the southern states, because the conditions make it possible to witness within a single decade the triumph of those business forces which, while they have even more truly and completely transformed the prosperous parts of america and europe, have operated more gradually through longer periods, and therefore in a less easily perceived and dramatic fashion. our modern ideals have required, not the refinement and the culture of the select few, but the uplifting and progress of the multitude. this could only be possible through a general development of wealth, so vast in comparison with what had previously existed as to constitute the most highly revolutionary fact in the history of human civilization and progress. the man, therefore, who has a clear perception of those laws of mind and of society under which modern economic forces have been set at work, cannot for a moment think that the end and outcome of this modern business system is a new kind of human bondage, "the rich growing richer and the poor growing poorer"; or that it can mean any such thing as the elevation of property at the expense of manhood. even if it were a part of my subject to discuss the growth of vast individual fortunes as an incident of this modern development of wealth, which it is not, there would be no time for more than a passing allusion. and in making such an allusion, i might be content to call attention to my earlier dictum, that progress is not upon direct lines, but tangential or zigzag. when the factory appears on the piedmont slopes of the appalachian country, it may indeed make a fortune for the missionary of civilization who planted it there. but meanwhile it has given the whole neighborhood its first chance to relate itself to the civilized world. i am content for the present to leave that neighborhood in possession of its opportunities, serenely confident that it will in due time work out its own completer destiny. when the capitalist has retired from the scene of his exploitation, will the day arrive when the regenerated neighborhood will own that factory, and others, too, for itself? very likely. in any case, the neighborhood has been emancipated from its worst disadvantages. in short, i have little doubt but that the further progress of our civilization will give effect to certain economic laws and tendencies, and to certain social rules and principles, that will make for a higher measure of equality in the distribution of realized wealth. meanwhile wherever a practical step can be taken to remedy an evil, let us do what we can to promote that step. let us recognize the already great possibilities for useful participation in the social and public life that belong to an honorable business career. from the standpoint of the intellectual interest of the young man going into business, let it be borne in mind that there are scientific principles underlying every branch of trade or commerce or industry, and that there is almost, if not quite, as much room for the delightful play of the faculty of imagination in the successful conduct of a soap business as in writing poetry or in making statuary groups for world's fairs. the cultivation of public spirit in the broad sense, and the determination to be an all-round good and efficient citizen and member of the community, will often help a man amazingly to discern the opportunities for usefulness that lie in the direct line of his business work. the more thoroughly he studies underlying principles--whether of a technical sort as related to his own trade, or of a general sort having to do with the organization and general methods of commerce--the less likely he will be to take narrow and anti-social views of business life. the high development of his intelligence in relation to his own work will show him the value in his business--as in all else in life--of the standard thing, the genuine thing, the thing that will bear the test as contrasted with the shoddy, or the inferior, or the spurious. our technological schools, our colleges of mechanic arts, our institutes of agriculture and their related experiment stations,--these are all teaching us many valuable object-lessons regarding the way in which the wealth of the individual and that of the community can both, at the same time, be advanced by scientific methods. thus it is coming about that business life is ever more ready to welcome the most highly trained kinds of intelligence, inasmuch as it is perceived that specialized knowledge is henceforth to be the most valuable commodity that a man can possess. i have already said that the delicate problems of distribution must be faced ever more frankly and liberally by the modern business world. thus, those who control capital, or administer capitalized enterprises, cannot afford any longer to be without a knowledge of the history and significance of the labor movement. we should not have had the desperate struggle between anthracite coal corporations and the miners in pennsylvania, a year or so ago, if there had been a full understanding on the part of the capitalists of the honorable and valuable nature of trade agreements, and particularly of the history of the relations of capital and labor in the bituminous coal districts of the united states. i am speaking now from the standpoint of the business man. there is much to be said, doubtless, in respect to the shortcomings and the sometimes fatuous and even suicidal methods of the labor organizations. but for the modern business man who cares to take his place influentially in commerce, in social life, and as a man among men in his city or his commonwealth, it is no longer justifiable to be unfamiliar with the labor question in its economics and its history. herein lies one great service that the university can perform (and our best colleges and universities are today performing it with marked intelligence and ability), the service, namely, of providing very liberal courses for young men who expect to go into business, in the general science of economics, in the history of modern economic progress, in the development of the wage system, in the history and methods of organized labor, and in very much else that helps to place the life of a practical man of business affairs upon a broad and liberal basis. in the early days of our history it was the especial function of the college to train young men for the ministry. in a somewhat later period it was notably true of institutions like yale and princeton that their training seemed to fit many men for the law and for statecraft. we had, you see, passed from that theocratic phase of colonial new england life to the political constructive period of our young republic. but we have been passing on until we have emerged in a great and transcendent period of commercial expansion and scientific discovery and application. it is a hopeful sign, therefore, that our universities are finding out and admitting the demand that present-day conditions impose, and are training many men in the pursuit of modern science, while they are training many others in the understanding of the application of social and economic principles to modern life. all this they are doing and can well do without ignoring the value of the older forms of scholarship and culture. but i have a few remarks to make also upon the ethical relations of the business world of today toward the political world; that is to say, toward organized government, whether in its sovereign or in its subordinate forms. we cannot take too high a ground in proclaiming the value, for the present, at least, of the political organization of society. i should like to dwell upon this point, but i must merely state it. if the state: _i.e._, the political form of social organization, is valuable,--it stands to reason that it must be respected and maintained at its best. it is also obvious that it will have a higher or a lower character and efficiency, according to the attitude toward it taken by one or another of the dominant factors that make up the complex body politic. thus, for example, it is the feeling of men in control of the political organization in france today that the church, as a great factor in the social structure of the nation, is essentially hostile to the spirit and purposes of a liberal republic. hence a great disturbance of various relationships. i do not cite that instance to express even the shade of an opinion. my point is that if the political organization of society is desirable and to be maintained, it is a fortunate thing when one finds the dominant forces of society rendering loyal and faithful support to the laws and institutions of government and recognizing without reserve the sovereignty of the state. yet in our own country there is a widespread feeling that many of the most potent forces and agencies in our business life are not wholly patriotic, in that they are not willing in practice to recognize the necessity of the domination of government and of law. i do not believe that this is permanently and generally true. it would constitute a great danger if it were a fixed or a growing tendency. as matters stand, however, every one must admit that there is an element of danger that lies in the very fact that as a nation we are in a condition of peace, content, and prosperity, and do not find our political institutions irksome. the danger consists in this: that under such circumstances the rewards of business and professional life are for the most part so much more certain and satisfactory than those which come from the precarious pursuit of politics, that public interests have a tendency to suffer from being in weak hands, while private interests have a tendency to assert themselves unduly, from being in the hands of men of superior force. thus it happens that it is often difficult for the state to maintain that dignity, that mastery, that high position, as the impartial arbiter and dispenser of justice, which it is now even more necessary than ever that it should maintain, in order that the whole social organization should keep a true harmony and a safe balance. at present, the state is largely concerned with the maintenance of conditions under which the economic and business life may operate equally and prosperously. the state in one sense is the master of the people. in another sense it is merely their creature and their agent for such purposes as they choose to assign it. is the state, then, to absorb the industrial functions, and are we to develop into a socialistic commonwealth? or, shall the political democracy and the coöperative organization of business life go on side by side, related at many points but in the main distinct from each other? whatever the relation of the state to industry may be destined to become in the distant future, we may be sure that there will be no rash upheavals, no harmful socialistic experiments, if the potent business world clearly sees how necessary to its own salvation it is that the state shall be maintained upon a high plane of dignity and honor, and that the official dispensation of justice, as well as the official administration of the laws, shall be prompt, just and impartial. there is no higher duty, therefore, incumbent upon the business man of today than to bear his part in promoting and maintaining the purity of political life. the modern business man should regard good government as one of the vital conditions of the best economic progress. yet scores of instances are at hand that show to what a painful extent certain business interests again and again, for purposes of immediate advantage,--to secure a franchise, to escape a tax, or to procure some improper favor or advantage at the hands of those in political authority,--have employed corrupt methods and thus stained the fair escutcheon of american business honor, while breaking down the one most indispensable condition of general business progress,--namely, honest and efficient free government. i will not dwell upon these things. it is enough to say that they are things the modern business man must have upon his conscience. for, if such offenses come by way of the business world, their remedies must also come, and indeed can only come, by that same path. in our municipal life, for example, it is the aroused interest and zeal of the best business community for better government and better conditions that can alone produce important results. happily, all over the country we find chambers of commerce, boards of trade, merchants' associations, and other bodies of men of practical business affairs, taking their stand for the transaction of public business upon high standards of character and efficiency. i have no doubt or fears as to what the result will be. all of our large cities are themselves purely the creations of modern industrial, commercial, and transportation conditions. and i hold that these very forces of industrial and commercial life that have created the problems by bringing together great masses of people in crowded communities, must and can in turn solve the problems by the application to municipal government of the scientific and intelligent principles which belong to the best phases of business life. all of this relates to my subject; but i must pass it by with a mere statement or two. it belongs to the developed constructive imagination and to the trained ethical sense of the modern business man to perfect the transit systems, to improve the housing conditions, to assure cheap sanitary water supplies, cheap illumination, and, above all, due provision for universal education, parks, museums, and opportunities for recreation,--in short, all possible improvements of environment that can make life in our cities not merely endurable but beneficial for the people. here, then, is furnished a great field for the definite and conscious aspirations of the successful man of business. here lies a great many-sided work for social and moral as well as physical and material progress which the business man, in the quality of good citizen and man of public spirit, is fitted better than any one else to accomplish. the intelligent young man who holds before himself ideals of usefulness that extend to such projects as these, may be sure that the modern conditions of life will bring him great opportunities, and he may feel that he is thus lifting his business career up to the plane of idealism that has, in the past, been reserved for a few exclusive professions. partly through his own endeavors,--largely through association in commercial or other organizations with his neighbors,--he may help to accomplish for the benefit of all his fellow men of a great community one step after another in the direction of public works that will meet the needs of a high civilization. some of the most useful men, as well as the most unselfish and devoted, with whom i come in contact are successful business men of large affairs. they are modest and unassuming; simple and direct in their methods; wide as the world in their sympathies; lofty as the stars in their aspirations for human progress; sagacious beyond other classes of men, and respected to the point of veneration by those who know them well, because they are men of deeds rather than of words, who make good their professions from day to day. business has not so narrowed them, nor has devotion to philanthropic ends or public reforms so distorted their mental visions, that they are not able to enjoy what is good in life, whether books, music, pictures, the companionship of friends, or the restful contact with nature in field or forest. the lives of such men are dominated by certain fixed ethical standards. given such moral landmarks, the remarkable conditions and unequaled opportunities of modern business life will promote the frequent development of men of this kind, with their breadth of view and strength of mind and character. it is the positive and aggressive attitude toward life, the ethics of action, rather than the ethics of negation, that must control the modern business world, and that may make our modern business man the most potent factor for good in this, his own, industrial period. generously made available by the internet archive/american libraries.) susan and edward: or a visit to fulton market [illustration] new-york: s. m. crane, pearl street. egbert, hovey & king, printers. . susan and edward; or, a visit to fulton market. [illustration] with what high joy do children young behold the varied sight-- as each new object strikes their view, 'tis seen with fresh delight. o then, may wisdom's blessed way, be their choice from day to day. new-york: s. m. crane, pearl-st. . egbert, hovey & king, printers. preface. in new-york, there are a number of market houses. those called fulton and washington markets are the largest. fulton market is at the east end of fulton-street, near the east river, and the washington market is on the west end, near the north river. the first was formerly situated in maiden-lane, on the east river side, and was called fly market. the latter was also in maiden-lane, near broadway, and went by the name of bear market. these are the two principal markets. the next in size is catherine market, in catherine-street, east river. there is also, franklin market, in old slip; centre market, in grand, near orange-street; clinton market, north river, foot of canal-street; essex market, essex-street; grand-street market, at the williamsburgh ferry; and the tomkins market, at the junction of the third avenue and the bowery. _new-york_, susan and edward. susan and edward were two engaging little children. their parents lived in pearl-street, in the great city of new-york, where the houses stand close together like the rows of young peach or apple trees in a farmer's nursery. some of the houses are two, some three, and others even four and five stories high, so that a skilful boy, with a good crossbow, could scarcely shoot an arrow over them. pearl-street, in which they lived, is almost as crooked as the letter _s_, for it begins at the battery, near broadway, and ends in broadway, opposite the hospital. susan was the eldest; a modest child, not forward or bold in her manners; very fond of play, and sometimes idle; but (to her praise be it said) she was obedient to her parents. edward was younger; a pert, active little boy; full of talk, and very lively and engaging in his actions; sometimes very observing, and would ask quite sensible questions for a lad of five years old. one pleasant morning in autumn, susan and edward asked liberty to go with their mother to fulton market. having been put in neat trim, with joyful hearts they set off, each with a small basket, to carry home some light articles, which their mother might buy. away they went through franklin square, down pearl-street to peck-slip, then turning into water-street, they came to fulton-street, at the foot of which stands the market. see here they are all going towards the market. [illustration] fulton market is a large building, filling up a whole square, and is erected near the east river, opposite the town of brooklyn, and close to the ferry that crosses over to that thriving village. now the first object that caught the sight of the children, were the butchers' stalls, hung full of beef, pork, veal, mutton, all for sale for ready pay to whoever will step up to buy. the little visitors saw the men and boys busy whetting their long knives, and cutting and sawing up the meat in suitable pieces for the buyers. the noise was something like a company of mowers whetting their scythes, and their voices and motion might be compared to a hive of bees. their mother having got of the butcher, her supply of meat, they next visited the fish stalls.--"o mother! mother!" said the lively little boy, "see the fish all jumping alive. o look there! there!" sure enough, here were fish, just out of the river, where the fishermen keep them in wooden cars or boxes, under water, till wanted to be put on the stall. see here is a picture of a salmon. [illustration] the children took a walk around, to see the different kinds of fish, displayed on the stalls. here were to be seen the sea-bass, black-fish, the sheep's-head, the pike, the flounder, and a number of others, so many that it would fill a good part of this little book, just to print the pictures of them all. but we will give them one; this is the flounder. [illustration] then passing along they came to the oyster and clam stands. "mother, i do want _one_ oyster," said little modest susan. "only look what a big pile. mother, may i have a clam?" said the boy. the men would quickly wait on them, by giving each what they asked for as a taste, and then add fifty or a hundred more to fill the tin kettle, for the family's supply. we will now print a picture of an oyster opened. [illustration] a large curious animal laid under one of the stalls. the children's attention was drawn to it. "do see, mother, what is that!" "it is a turtle," replied their mother. so they went and looked at it near by. it laid on its back to prevent its crawling away. the fisherman was kind enough to let the young visiters look at it till they were tired--and then away they went to another part of the market. but we will first show them a picture of a turtle: see there he is on the next page, almost big enough to frighten any body. these turtles are esteemed a great delicacy. people bring them all the way from the west indies, and sell them for a high price to the keepers of the hotels, who make soup of them; the signs may be seen hanging at the doors, in large capital letters; "turtle soup at eleven o'clock, this day--families supplied." [illustration] after this they went to another part of the building called the country market. here they were delighted with what they saw; and a great many sights there were for such little prattlers. "o see, here is a rabbit with a white tail! see, see, susan--do come this way." but susan had her fine blue eyes also engaged in viewing a cage of pigeons, some of which had their tails spread like a fan. they saw also a great many baskets of peaches, apples, potatoes, and pumpkins, watermelons, cantaleupes, pile upon pile, enough to make one ask, 'where are all these to go? who will buy them?' but we must remember, that there are more than , mouths to eat three or four times a day in new-york, enough to make way with the loads of vegetables that are brought here every day for sale. [illustration] there was a peacock in one of the coops, with a long handsome tail. this was a great sight for these young visiters. the feathers were beautiful and of many colors; but he did not spread his tail before so many people; besides he had not a suitable place; for they, being a proud bird, like to be where the sun shines, and where they can strut about, with their tail spread, when they make a most striking show. in short, here were sights enough to keep them looking half the day, if their mother could have spared the time. there were coops of chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, guinea hens, bantas, and even quails alive! we have not room to add pictures of all these: but we will one. see here is a gobble turkey, who looks as if he was ready to fly at any body dressed in red. [illustration] so they spent some time very pleasantly at the market, and did not seem hardly willing to come home, when their mother had finished supplying all her wants. but at her call, like good obedient children, they turned their faces homeward, and, hand in hand, went up fulton-street to pearl-street, then up through franklin square, having their little baskets filled with apples and peaches. when they arrived at their home, with what delight and animation did they tell about what they had seen! and long will they remember the morning walk with their mother to fulton market. end established in . stephen m. crane, successor to mahlon day, pearl street, new-york, offers for sale at wholesale and retail, an extensive variety of _toy and juvenile_ books. games, puzzles, &c. &c. * * * * * transcriber's notes: archaic spelling was retained. this includes "visiters" and "cantaluepes." page , "sta ds" changed to "stands" (oyster and clam stands) page , "futon-street" changed to "fulton-street" (went up fulton-street) was produced from images generously made available by the bibliothèque nationale de france (bnf/gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr. the slave trade, domestic and foreign: why it exists, and how it may be extinguished. by h. c. carey, author of "principles of political economy," "the past, the present, and the future," etc. etc. preface. the subject discussed in the following pages is one of great importance, and especially so to the people of this country. the views presented for consideration differ widely from those generally entertained, both as regards the cause of evil and the mode of cure; but it does not follow necessarily that they are not correct,--as the reader may readily satisfy himself by reflecting upon the fact, that there is scarcely an opinion he now holds, that has not, and at no very distant period, been deemed quite as heretical as any here advanced. in reflecting upon them, and upon the facts by which they are supported, he is requested to bear in mind that the latter are, with very few exceptions, drawn from writers holding views directly opposed to those of the author of this volume; and not therefore to be suspected of any exaggeration of the injurious effects of the system here treated as leading to slavery, or the beneficial ones resulting from that here described as tending to establish perfect and universal freedom of thought, speech, action, and trade. philadelphia, march, . contents. chapter i. the wide extent of slavery chapter ii. of slavery in the british colonies chapter iii. of slavery in the united states chapter iv. of emancipation in the british colonies chapter v. how man passes from poverty and slavery toward wealth and freedom chapter vi. how wealth tends to increase chapter vii. how labour acquires value and man becomes free chapter viii. how man passes from wealth and freedom toward poverty and slavery chapter ix. how slavery grew, and how it is now maintained, in the west indies chapter x. how slavery grew and is maintained in the united states chapter xi. how slavery grows in portugal and turkey chapter xii. how slavery grows in india chapter xiii. how slavery grows in ireland and scotland chapter xiv. how slavery grows in england chapter xv. how can slavery be extinguished? chapter xvi. how freedom grows in northern germany chapter xvii. how freedom grows in russia chapter xviii. how freedom grows in denmark chapter xix. how freedom grows in spain and belgium chapter xx. of the duty of the people of the united states chapter xxi. of the duty of the people of england the slave trade, domestic and foreign. chapter i. the wide extent of slavery. slavery still exists throughout a large portion of what we are accustomed to regard as the civilized world. in some countries, men are forced to take the chance of a lottery for the determination of the question whether they shall or shall not be transported to distant and unhealthy countries, there most probably to perish, leaving behind them impoverished mothers and sisters to lament their fate. in others, they are seized on the highway and sent to sea for long terms of years, while parents, wives, and sisters, who had been dependent on their exertions, are left to perish of starvation, or driven to vice or crime to procure the means of support. in a third class, men, their wives, and children, are driven from their homes to perish in the road, or to endure the slavery of dependence on public charity until pestilence shall send them to their graves, and thus clear the way for a fresh supply of others like themselves. in a fourth, we see men driven to selling themselves for long periods at hard labour in distant countries, deprived of the society of parents, relatives, or friends. in a fifth, men, women, and children are exposed to sale, and wives are separated from husbands, while children are separated from parents. in some, white men, and, in others, black men, are subjected to the lash, and to other of the severest and most degrading punishments. in some places men are deemed valuable, and they are well fed and clothed. in others, man is regarded as "a drug" and population as "a nuisance;" and christian men are warned that their duty to god and to society requires that they should permit their fellow-creatures to suffer every privation and distress, short of "absolute death," with a view to prevent the increase of numbers. among these various classes of slaves, none have recently attracted so much attention as those of the negro race; and it is in reference to that race in this country that the following paper has recently been circulated throughout england:-- _"the affectionate and christian address of many thousands of the women of england to their sisters, the women of the united states of america:_ "a common origin, a common faith, and, we sincerely believe, a common cause, urge us at the present moment to address you on the subject of that system of negro slavery which still prevails so extensively, and, even under kindly-disposed masters, with such frightful results, in many of the vast regions of the western world. "we will not dwell on the ordinary topics--on the progress of civilization; on the advance of freedom everywhere; on the rights and requirements of the nineteenth century;--but we appeal to you very seriously to reflect, and to ask counsel of god, how far such a state of things is in accordance with his holy word, the inalienable rights of immortal souls, and the pure and merciful spirit of the christian religion. "we do not shut our eyes to the difficulties, nay, the dangers, that might beset the immediate abolition of that long-established system: we see and admit the necessity of preparation for so great an event. but, in speaking of indispensable preliminaries, we cannot be silent on those laws of your country which (in direct contravention of god's own law, instituted in the time of man's innocency) deny, in effect, to the slave, the sanctity of marriage, with all its joys, rights, and obligations; which separates, at the will of the master, the wife from the husband and the children from the parents. nor can we be silent on that awful system which, either by statute or by custom, interdicts to any race of man, or any portion of the human family, education in the truths of the gospel and the ordinances of christianity. "a remedy applied to these two evils alone would commence the amelioration of their sad condition. we appeal, then, to you as sisters, as wives, and as mothers, to raise your voices to your fellow-citizens and your prayers to god, for the removal of this affliction from the christian world. we do not say these things in a spirit of self-complacency, as though our nation were free from the guilt it perceives in others. we acknowledge with grief and shame our heavy share in this great sin. we acknowledge that our forefathers introduced, nay, compelled the adoption of slavery in those mighty colonies. we humbly confess it before almighty god. and it is because we so deeply feel, and so unfeignedly avow our own complicity, that we now venture to implore your aid to wipe away our common crime and our common dishonour." we have here a movement that cannot fail to be productive of much good. it was time that the various nations of the world should have their attention called to the existence of slavery within their borders, and to the manifold evils of which it was the parent; and it was in the highest degree proper that woman should take the lead in doing it, as it is her sex that always suffers most in that condition of things wherein might triumphs over right, and which we are accustomed to define as a state of slavery. how shall slavery be abolished? this is the great question of our day. but a few years since it was answered in england by an order for the immediate emancipation of the black people held to slavery in her colonies; and it is often urged that we should follow her example. before doing this, however, it would appear to be proper to examine into the past history and present situation of the negro race in the two countries, with a view to determine how far experience would warrant the belief that the course thus urged upon us would be likely to produce improvement in the condition of the objects of our sympathy. should the result of such an examination be to prove that the cause of freedom has been advanced by the measures there pursued, our duty to our fellow-men would require that we should follow in the same direction, at whatever loss or inconvenience to ourselves. should it, however, prove that the condition of the poor negro has been impaired and not improved, it will then become proper to enquire what have been in past times the circumstances under which men have become more free, with a view to ascertain wherein lies the deficiency, and why it is that freedom now so obviously declines in various and important portions of the earth. these things ascertained, it may be that there will be little difficulty in determining what are the measures now needed for enabling all men, black, white, and brown, to obtain for themselves, and profitably to all, the exercise of the rights of freemen. to adopt this course will be to follow in that of the skilful physician, who always determines within himself the cause of fever before he prescribes the remedy. chapter ii. of slavery in the british colonies. at the date of the surrender of jamaica to the british arms, in , the slaves, who were few in number, generally escaped to the mountains, whence they kept up a war of depredation, until at length an accommodation was effected in , the terms of which were not, however, complied with by the whites--the consequences of which will be shown hereafter. throughout the whole period their numbers were kept up by the desertion of other slaves, and to this cause must, no doubt, be attributed much of the bitterness with which the subsequent war was waged. in , the slave population of the island was . by it had reached , and in , .[ ] from that date we have no account until , when it was , , giving an increase in sixty-one years of , . it was in that the sugar-culture was commenced; and as profitable employment was thus found for labour, there can be little doubt that the number had increased regularly and steadily, and that the following estimate must approach tolerably near the truth:-- say , , ; increase in years, , , , ; " " " , in , the total number of slaves and other coloured persons on the island, was................. , and if we now deduct from this the number in , say........................................ , ------- we obtain, as the increase of years............ , ======= in that period the importations amounted to......... , and the exportations to............................. , ------- leaving, as retained in the island................ , [ ] or about two and two-fifths persons for one that then remained alive. from to , the number imported was , , and the number exported , ;[ ] showing an increase in five years of nearly , , or , per annum; and by a report of the inspector-general, it was shown that the number retained from to , averaged per annum. taking the thirteen years, - , at that rate, we obtain nearly ........... , from to , the excess of import was , , or , per annum; and if we take the four years, - , at the same rate, we obtain, as the total number retained in that period................. , ------- , ======= in , a committee of the house of assembly made a report on the number of the slaves, by which it was made to be , ; and if to this be added the free negroes, amounting to , , we obtain, as the total number, , ,--showing an increase, in fifteen years, of , --or nearly , less than the number that had been imported. we have now ascertained an import, in years, of , , with an increase of numbers amounting to only , ; thus establishing the fact that more than half of the whole import had perished under the treatment to which they had been subjected. why it had been so may be gathered from the following extract, by which it is shown that the system there and then pursued corresponds nearly with that of cuba at the present time. "the advocates of the slave trade insisted that it was impossible to keep up the stock of negroes, without continual importations from africa. it is, indeed, very evident, that as long as importation is continued, and two-thirds of the slaves imported are men, the succeeding generation, in the most favourable circumstances, cannot be more numerous than if there had been only half as many men; or, in other words, at least half the men may be said, with respect to population, to die without posterity."--_macpherson_, vol. iv. . in , a committee of the jamaica house of assembly reported that "the abolition of the slave trade" must be followed by the "total ruin and depopulation of the island." "suppose," said they, "a planter settling with a gang of african slaves, all bought in the prime of life. out of this gang he will be able at first to put to work, on an average, from to labourers. the committee will further suppose that they increase in number; yet, in the course of twenty years, this gang will be so far reduced, in point of strength, that he will not be able to work more than to . it will therefore require a supply of new negroes to keep up his estate, and that not owing to cruelty, or want of good management on his part; on the contrary, the more humane he is, the greater the number of old people and young he will have on his estate."--_macpherson_, iv. . in reference to this extraordinary reasoning, macpherson says, very correctly-- "with submission, it may be asked if people become superannuated in twenty years after being in _the prime of life_; and if the children of all these superannuated people are in a state of infancy? if one-half of these slaves are women, (as they ought to be, if the planter looks to futurity,) will not those fifty women, in twenty years, have, besides younger children, at least one hundred grown up to young men and women, capable of partaking the labour of their parents, and replacing the loss by superannuation or death,-- as has been the case with the working people in all other parts of the world, from the creation to this day?" to this question there can be but one reply: man has always increased in numbers where he has been well fed, well clothed, and reasonably worked; and wherever his numbers have decreased, it has been because of a deficiency of food and clothing and an excess of work. it was at this period that the maroon war was again in full activity, and so continued until , when it was terminated by the employment of bloodhounds to track the fugitives, who finally surrendered, and were transported to lower canada, whence they were soon after sent to sierra leone. from to , the _net_ import was , ; and if it continued at the same rate to , the date of the abolition of the trade, the number imported in eighteen years would be nearly , ; and yet the number of slaves increased, in that period, from , to only , --being an annual average increase of about , and exhibiting a loss of fifty per cent. in the thirty-four years, - , the number of negroes added to the population of the island, by importation, would seem to have been more than , , and within about , of the number that, a quarter of a century later, was emancipated. in , nine years after importation had been declared illegal, the number is stated [ ] at , ; from which it would appear that the trade must have been in some measure continued up to that date, as there is no instance on record of any natural increase in any of the islands, under any circumstances. it is, indeed, quite clear that no such increase has taken place; for had it once commenced, it would have continued, which was not the case, as will be seen by the following figures:-- in , the number was, as we see , . in , it was only , ; and if to this we add the manumissions for the same period, ( ,) we have a net loss of . in , they had declined in numbers to , , to which must be added manumissions--showing a loss, in six years, of , or nearly three per cent. the number shown by the last registration, , was only , ; and if to this we add that had been manumitted, we shall have a loss, in seven years, of , , or more than five per cent. in sixteen years, there had been a diminution of ten per cent., one-fifth of which may be attributed to manumission; and thus is it clearly established that in , as in , a large annual importation would have been required, merely to maintain the number of the population. that the condition of the negroes was in a course of deterioration in this period, is clearly shown by the fact that the proportion of births to deaths was in a steady course of diminution, as is here shown:-- registered: ----------- to ............. , deaths, , births. to ............. , " , , " to ............. , " , , " the destruction of life was thus proceeding with constantly accelerating rapidity; and a continuance of the system, as it then existed, must have witnessed the total annihilation of the negro race within half a century. viewing these facts, not a doubt can, i think, be entertained that the number of negroes imported into the island and retained for its _consumption_ was more than double the number that existed there in , and could scarcely have been less than , , and certainly, at the most moderate estimate, not less than , . if to these we were to add the children that must have been born on the island in the long period of years, and then to reflect that all who remained for emancipation amounted to only , , we should find ourselves forced to the conclusion that slavery was here attended with a destruction of life almost without a parallel in the history of any civilized nation. with a view to show that jamaica cannot be regarded as an unfavourable specimen of the system, the movement of population in other colonies will now be given. in , the slave population of st. vincent's was . in , twenty-three years after, it was , , having increased ; whereas, _in four only_ of those years, - , the _net_ import of negroes had been no less than .[ ] in , the number was , , the increase having been ; whereas the _net_ import in _three only_, out of _eighteen_ years, had been . what was the cause of this, may be seen by the comparative view of deaths, and their compensation by births, at a later period:-- year .................... deaths, births. " .................... " " " .................... " " " .................... " " the births, it will be observed, steadily diminished in number. at the peace of , dominica contained slaves. the net amount of importation, _in four years_, to , was , ;[ ] and yet the total population in was but , ! here we have a waste of life so far exceeding that of jamaica that we might almost feel ourselves called upon to allow five imported for every one remaining on the island. forty-four years afterwards, in , the slave emancipation returns gave , as remaining out of the vast number that had been imported. the losses by death and the gains by births, for a part of the period preceding emancipation, are thus given:-- to ................. deaths, births. to ................. " " to ................. " " if we look to british guiana, we find the same results.[ ] in , demerara and essequebo had a slave population of............................... , by , it had fallen to......................... , and by , it had still further fallen to....... , the deaths and births of this colony exhibit a waste of life that would be deemed almost incredible, had not the facts been carefully registered at the moment:-- to ................. deaths, births. to ................. " " to ................. " " to ................. " " to ................. " " we have here a decrease, in fifteen years, of fifteen per cent., or , out of , . each successive period, with a single exception, presents a diminished number of births, while the average of deaths in the last three periods is almost the same as in the first one. barbadoes had, in , a slave population of , . in , sixty-four years after, although importation appears to have been regularly continued on a small scale, it amounted to only , . in this case, the slaves appear to have been better treated than elsewhere, as here we find, in the later years, the births to have exceeded the deaths--the former having been, from to , , while the latter were . there were here, also, in the same period, manumissions. in trinidad, out of a total slave population of , , the deaths, in twelve years, were no less than , while the births were only . grenada surrendered to the british forces in . seven years after, in , there were , negroes on the island. in , notwithstanding the importation, they appear to have been reduced to , . in the four years from to , and the three from to , (the only ones for which i can find an account,) the number imported and retained for consumption on the island amounted to no less than , ;[ ] and yet the total number finally emancipated was but , . the destruction of life appears here to have been enormous; and that it continued long after the abolition of the slave trade, is shown by the following comparison of births and deaths:-- .......................... births, deaths. .......................... " " the total births from to , were , in number, while the deaths were , --showing a loss of about ten per cent. the number of slaves emancipated in , in all the british possessions, was , ; and the net loss in the previous five years had been , , or _almost one per cent. per annum_. the number emancipated in the west indies was , ; and viewing the facts that have been placed before the reader, we can scarcely err much in assuming that the number imported and retained for consumption in those colonies had amounted to , , . this would give about two and a half imported for one that was emancipated; and there is some reason to think that it might be placed as high as three for one, which would give a total import of almost two millions. while thus exhibiting the terrific waste of life in the british colonies, it is not intended either, to assert or to deny any voluntary severity on the part of the landholders. they were, themselves, as will hereafter be shown, to a great extent, the slaves of circumstances over which they had no control; and it cannot be doubted that much, very much, of the responsibility, must rest on other shoulders. chapter iii. of slavery in the united states. in the north american provinces, now the united states, negro slavery existed from a very early period, but on a very limited scale, as the demand for slaves was mainly supplied from england. the exports of the colonies were bulky, and the whites could be imported as return cargo; whereas the blacks would have required a voyage to the coast of africa, with which little trade was maintained. the export from england ceased after the revolution of , and thenceforward negro slaves were somewhat more freely imported; yet the trade appears to have been so small as scarcely to have attracted notice. the only information on the subject furnished by macpherson in his annals of commerce is that, in the eight months ending july , , the negroes imported into charleston, s. c., were in number; and that in the year - , the value of negroes imported from africa into georgia was £ , --and this, if they be valued at only £ each, would give only . from to , the number exported from all the west india islands to this country was [ ] --being an average of less than per annum; and there is little reason for believing that this number was increased by any import direct from africa. the british west indies were then the entrepôt of the trade,[ ] and thence they were supplied to the other islands and the settlements on the main; and had the demand for this country been considerable, it cannot be doubted that a larger portion of the thousands then annually exported would have been sent in this direction. under these circumstances, the only mode of arriving at the history of slavery prior to the first census, in , appears to be to commence at that date and go forward, and afterwards employ the information so obtained in endeavouring to elucidate the operations of the previous period. the number of negroes, free and enslaved, at that date, was.................................... , and at the second census, in , it was......... , , showing an increase of almost thirty-three per cent. how much of this, however, was due to importation, we have now to inquire. the only two states that then tolerated the import of slaves were south carolina and georgia, the joint black population of which, in , was............................. , whereas, in , it had risen to.................. , ------- increase.......... , ======= in the same period the white population increased , , requiring an immigration from the northern slave states to the extent of not less than , , even allowing more than thirty per cent. for the natural increase by births. admitting, now, that for every family of five free persons there came one slave, this, would account for....................... , and if we take the natural increase of the slave population at only twenty-five per cent., we have further.............................................. , ------ making a total from domestic sources of............ , and leaving, for the import from abroad............ , deducting these from the total number added, we obtain, for the natural increase, about - / per cent. macpherson, treating of this period, says-- "that importation is not necessary for keeping up the stock is proved by the example of north america--a country less congenial to the constitution of the negro than the west indies--where, notwithstanding the destruction and desertion of the slaves occasioned by the war, the number of negroes, though perhaps not of slaves, has greatly increased--because, _since the war they have imported very few_, and of late years none at all, except in the southern states."--_annals_, vol. iv. . the number of vessels employed in the slave trade, in , is stated to have been twenty, all of them small; and the number of slaves to be carried was limited to one for each ton of their capacity. from to , the increase was , , of which nearly , were found in louisiana at her incorporation into the union, leaving about , to come from other sources; being an increase of per cent. in this period the increase of georgia and south carolina, the two importing states, was only , , while that, of the white population was , , carrying with them perhaps , . if to this be added the natural increase at the rate of per cent., we obtain about , , leaving only , for importation. it is probable, however, that it was somewhat larger, and that it might be safe to estimate it at the same amount as in the previous period, making a total of about , in the twenty years. deducting , from the , , we obtain , as the addition from domestic sources, which would be about per cent. on the population of . this may be too high; and yet the growth of the following decennial period--one of war and great commercial and agricultural distress--was almost thirty per cent. in , the number had been , , . in it was , , ; increase per cent. " " , , ; " . " " " " , , ; " " " " " , , ; " " " [ ] having thus ascertained, as far as possible, the ratio of increase subsequent to the first census, we may now proceed to an examination of the course of affairs in the period which had preceded it. in , the number of blacks was , , and they were dispersed throughout the provinces from new hampshire to carolina, engaged, to a large extent, in labours similar to those in which were engaged the whites by whom they were owned. one-half of them may have been imported. starting from this point, and taking the natural increase of each decennial period at per cent., as shown to have since been the case, we should obtain, for , about , . the actual quantity was , ; and the difference, , , may be set down to importation. adding, now, percent, to , , we obtain, for , , ; whereas the actual number was , , which would give , for importation. pursuing the same course with the following periods, we obtain the following results:-- actual natural actual years number. increase. increase. importation. ----- ------- --------- --------- ------------ ..... , ..... , ..... , ..... , ..... , ..... , ..... , ..... } ..... , ..... , ..... , ..... } , ..... , , number given by first census. for a large portion of the period from to , there must have been a very small importation; for during nearly half the time the trade with foreign countries was almost altogether suspended by the war of the revolution. if we add together the quantities thus obtained, we shall obtain a tolerable approximation to the number of slaves imported into the territory now constituting the union, as follows:-- prior to ..................................... , to ...................................... , to ...................................... , to ...................................... , to ...................................... , and if we now estimate the import subsequent to at even........................ , ------- we obtain as the total number................... , ======= the number now in the union exceeds , , ; and even if we estimate the import as high as , , we then have more than ten for one; whereas in the british islands we can find not more than two for five, and perhaps even not more than one for three. had the slaves of the latter been as well fed, clothed, lodged, and otherwise cared for, as were those of these provinces and states, their numbers would have reached seventeen or twenty millions. had the blacks among the people of these states experienced the same treatment as did their fellows of the islands, we should now have among us less than one hundred and fifty thousand slaves. the prices paid by the british government averaged £ per head. had the number in the colonies been allowed to increase as they increased here, it would have required, even at that price, the enormous sum of................................ £ , , had the numbers in this country been reduced by the same process there practised, emancipation could now be carried out at cost of less than.. £ , , to emancipate them now, paying for them at the same rate, would require nearly................ £ , , or almost five hundred millions of dollars. the same course, however, that has increased their numbers, has largely increased their value to the owners and to themselves. men, when well fed, well clothed, well lodged, and otherwise well cared for, always increase rapidly in numbers, and in such cases labour always increases rapidly in value; and hence it is that the average price of the negro slave of this country is probably four times greater than that which the planters of the west indies were compelled to receive. such being the case, it would follow that to pay for their full value would require probably four hundred millions of pounds sterling, or nearly two thousand millions of dollars. it will now be seen that the course of things in the two countries has been entirely different. in the islands the slave trade had been cherished as a source of profit. here, it had been made the subject of repeated protests on the part of several of the provinces, and had been by all but two prohibited at the earliest moment at which they possessed the power so to do. in the islands it was held to be cheaper to buy slaves than to raise them, and the sexes were out of all proportion to each other. here, importation was small, and almost the whole increase, large as it has been, has resulted from the excess of births over deaths. in the islands, the slave was generally a barbarian, speaking an unknown tongue, and working with men like himself, in gangs, with scarcely a chance for improvement. here, he was generally a being born on the soil, speaking the same language with his owner; and often working in the field with him, with many advantages for the development of his faculties. in the islands, the land-owners clung to slavery as the sheet-anchor of their hopes. here, on the contrary, slavery had gradually been abolished in all the states north of mason & dixon's line, and delaware, maryland, virginia, and kentucky were all, at the date of emancipation in the islands, preparing for the early adoption of measures looking to its entire abolition. in the islands, the connection with africa had been cherished as a means of obtaining cheap labour, to be obtained by fomenting discord among the natives. here, on the contrary, had originated a grand scheme for carrying civilization into the heart of africa by means of the gradual transplantation of some of the already civilized blacks. in the islands, it has been deemed desirable to carry out "the european policy," of preventing the africans "from arriving at perfection" in the art of preparing their cotton, sugar, indigo, or other articles, "from a fear of interfering with established branches of commerce elsewhere."[ ] here, on the contrary, efforts had been made for disseminating among them the knowledge required for perfecting themselves in the modes of preparation and manufacture. in the islands, every thing looked toward the permanency of slavery. here, every thing looked toward the gradual and gentle civilization and emancipation of the negro throughout the world. in the islands, however, by a prompt measure forced on the people by a distant government, slavery was abolished, and the planters, or their representatives in england, received twenty millions of pounds sterling as compensation in full for the services of the few who remained in existence out of the large number that had been imported. here, the planters are now urged to adopt for themselves measures of a similar kind. the whole course of proceeding in the two countries in reference to the negro having been so widely different, there are, however, difficulties in the way that seem to be almost insuperable. the power to purchase the slaves of the british colonies was a consequence of the fact that their numbers had not been permitted to increase. the difficulty of purchasing them here is great, because of their having been well fed, well clothed, and otherwise well provided for, and having therefore increased so rapidly. if, nevertheless, it can be shown that by abandoning the system under which the negro race has steadily increased in numbers and advanced towards civilization, and adopting that of a nation under whose rule there has been a steady decline of numbers, and but little, if any, tendency toward civilization, we shall benefit the race, it will become our duty to make the effort, however great may be the cost. with a view to ascertain how far duty may be regarded as calling upon us now to follow in the footsteps of that nation, it is proposed to examine into the working of the act by which the whole negro population of the british colonies was, almost at once and without preparation, invested with the right to determine for whom they would work and what should be their wages--or were, in other words, declared to be free. chapter iv. of emancipation in the british colonies. the harmony of the universe is the result of a contest between equal and opposing powers. the earth is attracted to the sun and from the sun; and were either of these forces to be diminished or destroyed, chaos would be the inevitable result. so is it everywhere on the earth. the apple falls toward the centre of the earth, but in its passage it encounters resistance; and the harmony of every thing we see around us is dependent on the equal balance of these opposing forces. so is it among men. the man who has food to sell wishes to have a high price for it, whereas, he who needs to buy desires to have it cheaply; and the selling price depends on the relation between the necessity to buy on one hand, or to sell on the other. diminish suddenly and largely the competition for the purchase of food, and the farmer becomes the prey of the mechanic. increase it suddenly and largely, and the mechanic becomes the prey of the farmer; whereas a gradual and gentle increase in the demand for food is accompanied by a similar increase in the demand for the products of the loom and the anvil, and both farmer and mechanic prosper together, because the competition for purchase and the competition for sale grow together and balance each other. so, too, with labour. wages are dependent upon the relation between the number of those who desire to buy and to sell labour. diminish suddenly the number of those who desire to sell it, and the farmer may be ruined. diminish suddenly the number of those who desire to buy it, and the labourer may become the slave of the farmer. for almost two centuries, men possessed of capital and desirous to purchase labour had been induced to transfer it to the colonies, and the government secured to them the right to obtain labourers on certain specified terms--such terms as made the labourer a mere instrument in the hands of the capitalist, and prevented him from obtaining any of those habits or feelings calculated to inspire him with a love for labour. at once, all control over him was withdrawn, and the seller of labour was converted into the master of him who was thus, by the action of the government, placed in such a situation that he _must_ buy it or be ruined. here was a disturbance of the order of things that had existed, almost as great as that which occurs when the powerful steam, bursting the boiler in which it is enclosed, ceases to be the servant and becomes the master of man; and it would have required but little foresight to enable those who had the government of this machine to see that it must prove almost as ruinous. how it operated in southern africa, where the slave was most at home, is shown by the following extracts from the work of a recent traveller and settler in that colony:--[ ] "the chain was broken, and the people of england hurraed to their heart's content. and the slave! what, in the meanwhile, became of him? if he was young and vicious, away he went--he was his own master. he was at liberty to walk to and fro upon the earth, 'seeking whom he might devour.' he was free: he had the world before him where to choose, though, squatted beside the kaffir's fire, probably thinking his meal of parched corn but poor stuff after the palatable dishes he had been permitted to cook for himself in the boer's or tradesman's kitchen. but he was fain to like it--he could get nothing else--and this was earned at the expense of his own soul; for it was given him as an inducement to teach the kaffir the easiest mode of plundering his ancient master. if inclined to work, he had no certain prospect of employment; and the dutch, losing so much by the sudden emancipation act, resolved on working for themselves. so the virtuous, redeemed slave, had too many temptations to remain virtuous: he was hungry--so was his wife--so were his children; and he must feed them. how? no matter." these people will work at times, but they must have wages that will enable them to play much of their time. "when we read of the distress of our own country, and of the wretched earnings of our mechanics, we are disgusted at the idea of these same fingoes striking work (as coolies) at waterloo bay, being dissatisfied with the pay of s. a day. as their services are necessary in landing cargo, their demand of s. a day has been acceded to, and they have consented to work when it suits them!--for they take occasional holidays, for dancing and eating. at algoa bay, the fingoes are often paid s. a day for working as coolies." these men have all the habits of the savage. they leave to the women the tilling of the ground, the hoeing of the corn, the carrying of water, and all the heavy work; and to the boys and old men the tending of the cattle, while they themselves spend the year in hunting, dancing, eating, and robbing their neighbours--except when occasionally they deem it expedient to do a few days' work at such wages as they may think proper to dictate. how it has operated in the west indies we may next inquire, and with that view will take jamaica, one of the oldest, and, until lately, one of the most prosperous of the colonies. that island embraces about four millions of acres of land, "of which," says mr. bigelow,-- "there are not, probably, any ten lying adjacent to each other which are not susceptible of the highest cultivation, while not more than , acres have ever been reclaimed, or even appropriated."[ ] "it is traversed by over two hundred streams, forty of which are from twenty-five to one hundred feet in breadth; and, it deserves to be mentioned, furnish water-power sufficient to manufacture every thing produced by the soil, or consumed by the inhabitants. far less expense than is usually incurred on the same surface in the united states for manure, would irrigate all the dry lands of the island, and enable them to defy the most protracted droughts by which it is ever visited."[ ] the productiveness of the soil is immense. fruits of every variety abound; vegetables of every kind for the table, and indian corn, grow abundantly. the island is rich in dyestuffs, drugs, and spices of the greatest value; and the forests furnish the most celebrated woods in the greatest variety. in addition to this, it possesses copper-mines inferior to none in the world, and coal will probably be mined extensively before many years. "such," says mr. bigelow,-- "are some of the natural resources of this dilapidated and poverty-stricken country. capable as it is of producing almost every thing, and actually producing nothing which might not become a staple with a proper application of capital and skill, its inhabitants are miserably poor, and daily sinking deeper and deeper into the utter helplessness of abject want. "'magnas inter opes inops.' "shipping has deserted her ports; her magnificent plantations of sugar and coffee are running to weeds; her private dwellings are falling to decay; the comforts and luxuries which belong to industrial prosperity have been cut off, one by one, from her inhabitants; and the day, i think, is at hand when there will be none left to represent the wealth, intelligence, and hospitality for which the jamaica planter was once so distinguished." the cause of all this, say the planters, is that wages are too high for the price of sugar. this mr. bigelow denies--not conceding that a shilling a day is high wages; but all the facts he adduces tend to show that the labourer gives very little labour for the money he receives; and that, as compared with the work done, wages are really far higher than in any part of the union. like the fingo of southern africa, he can obtain from a little patch of land all that is indispensably necessary for his subsistence, and he will do little more work than is needed for accomplishing that object. the consequence of this is that potatoes sell for six cents a pound, eggs from three to five cents each, milk at eighteen cents a quart, and corn-meal at twelve or fourteen dollars a barrel; and yet there are now more than a hundred thousand of these small proprietors, being almost one for every three people on the island. all cultivators, they yet produce little to sell, and the consequence of this is seen in the fact that the mass of the flour, rice, corn, peas, butter, lard, herrings, &c. needed for consumption requires to be imported, as well as all the lumber, although millions of acres of timber are to be found among the unappropriated lands of the island. it is impossible to read mr. bigelow's volume, without arriving at the conclusion that the freedom granted to the negro has had little effect except that of enabling him to live at the expense of the planter so long as any thing remained. sixteen years of freedom did not appear to its author to have "advanced the dignity of labour or of the labouring classes one particle," while it had ruined the proprietors of the land; and thus great damage had been done to the one class without benefit of any kind to the other. from a statistical table published in august last, it appears, says the _new york herald_, that since -- "the number of sugar-estates on the island that have been totally abandoned amounts to one hundred and sixty-eight, and the number partially abandoned to sixty-three; the value of which two hundred and thirty-one estates was assessed, in , at £ , , , or nearly eight millions and a half of dollars. within the same period, two hundred and twenty-three coffee-plantations have been totally, and twenty partially abandoned, the assessed value of which was, in , £ , , or two millions and a half of dollars; and of cattle-pens, (grazing-farms,) one hundred and twenty-two have been totally, and ten partially abandoned, the value of which was a million and a half of dollars. the aggregate value of these six hundred and six estates, which have been thus ruined and abandoned in the island of jamaica, within the last seven or eight years, amounted by the regular assessments, ten years since, to the sum of nearly two and a half millions of pounds sterling, or twelve and a half million of dollars." as a necessary consequence of this, "there is little heard of," says dr. king, "but ruin."[ ] "in many districts," he adds-- "the marks of decay abound. neglected fields, crumbling houses, fragmentary fences, noiseless machinery--these are common sights, and soon become familiar to observation. i sometimes rode for miles in succession over fertile ground which used to be cultivated, and which is now lying waste. so rapidly has cultivation retrograded, and the wild luxuriance of nature replaced the conveniences of art, that parties still inhabiting these desolated districts, have sometimes, in the strong language of a speaker at kingston, 'to seek about the bush to find the entrance into their houses.' "the towns present a spectacle not less gloomy. a great part of kingston was destroyed, some years ago, by an extensive conflagration: yet multitudes of the houses which escaped that visitation are standing empty, though the population is little, if at all diminished. the explanation is obvious. persons who have nothing, and can no longer keep up their domestic establishments, take refuge in the abodes of others, where some means of subsistence are still left: and in the absence of any discernible trade or occupation, the lives of crowded thousands appear to be preserved from day to day by a species of miracle. the most busy thoroughfares of former times have now almost the quietude of a sabbath." "the finest land in the world," says mr. bigelow, "may be had at any price, and almost for the asking." labour, he adds, "receives no compensation, and the product of labour does not seem to know how to find the way to market." properties which were formerly valued at £ , would not now command £ , and others, after having been sold at six, eight, or ten per cent. of their former value, have been finally abandoned. the following is from a report made in and signed by various missionaries:-- "missionary efforts in jamaica are beset at the present time with many and great discouragements. societies at home have withdrawn or diminished the amount of assistance afforded by them to chapels and schools throughout this island. the prostrate condition of its agriculture and commerce disables its own population from doing as much as formerly for maintaining the worship of god and the tuition of the young, and induces numbers of negro labourers to retire from estates which have been thrown up, to seek the means of subsistence in the mountains, where they are removed in general from moral training and superintendence. the consequences of this state of matters are very disastrous. not a few missionaries and teachers, often struggling with difficulties which they could not overcome, have returned to europe, and others are preparing to follow them. chapels and schools are abandoned, or they have passed into the charge of very incompetent instructors."--_quoted in king's jamaica_, p. . population gradually diminishes, furnishing another evidence that the tendency of every thing is adverse to the progress of civilization. in , the island contained a little short of , persons. in , the census returns gave about , ; and a recent journal states that of those no less than forty thousand have in the last two years been carried off by cholera, and that small-pox, which has succeeded that disease, is now sweeping away thousands whom that disease had spared. increase of crime, it adds, keeps pace with the spread of misery throughout the island. the following extracts from a report of a commission appointed in to inquire into the state and prosperity of guiana, are furnished by lord stanley in his second letter to mr. gladstone, [london, .] of guiana generally they say-- "'it would be but a melancholy task to dwell upon the misery and ruin which so alarming a change must have occasioned to the proprietary body; but your commissioners feel themselves called upon to notice the effects which this wholesale abandonment of property has produced upon the colony at large. where whole districts are fast relapsing into bush, and occasional patches of provisions around the huts of village settlers are all that remain to tell of once flourishing estates, it is not to be wondered at that the most ordinary marks of civilization are rapidly disappearing, and that in many districts of the colony all travelling communication by land will soon become utterly impracticable.' "of the abary district-- "'your commissioners find that the line of road is nearly impassable, and that a long succession of formerly cultivated estates presents now a series of pestilent swamps, overrun with bush, and productive of malignant fevers.' "nor are matters," says lord stanley, "much better farther south-- "'proceeding still lower down, your commissioners find that the public roads and bridges are in such a condition, that the few estates still remaining on the upper west bank of mahaica creek are completely cut off, save in the very dry season; and that with regard to the whole district, unless something be done very shortly, travelling by land will entirely cease. in such a state of things it cannot be wondered at that the herdsman has a formidable enemy to encounter in the jaguar and other beasts of prey, and that the keeping of cattle is attended with considerable loss, from the depredations committed by these animals. "it may be worth noticing," continues lord stanley, "that this district, now overrun with wild beasts of the forest; was formerly the very garden of the colony. the estates touched one another along the whole line of the road, leaving no interval of uncleared land. "the east coast, which is next mentioned by the commissioners, is better off. properties once of immense value had there been bought at nominal prices, and the one railroad of guiana passing through that tract, a comparatively industrious population, composed of former labourers on the line, enabled the planters still to work these to some profit. even of this favoured spot, however, they report that it 'feels most severely the want of continuous labour.' the commissioners next visit the east bank of the demerara river, thus described:-- "'proceeding up the east bank of the river demerary, the generally prevailing features of ruin and distress are everywhere perceptible. roads and bridges almost impassable are fearfully significant exponents of the condition of the plantations which they traverse; and canal no. , once covered with plantains and coffee, presents now a scene of almost total desolation.' "crossing to the west side, they find prospects somewhat brighter: 'a few estates' are still 'keeping up a cultivation worthy of better times.' but this prosperous neighbourhood is not extensive, and the next picture presented to our notice is less agreeable:-- "'ascending the river still higher, your commissioners learn that the district between hobaboe creek and 'stricken heuvel' contained, in , eight sugar and five coffee and plantain estates, and now there remain but three in sugar and four partially cultivated with plantains by petty settlers: while the roads, with one or two exceptions, are in a state of utter abandonment. here, as on the opposite bank of the river, hordes of squatters have located themselves, who avoid all communication with europeans, and have seemingly given themselves up altogether to the rude pleasures of a completely savage life.' "the west coast of demerara--the only part of that country which still remains unvisited--is described as showing _only_ a diminution of fifty per cent. upon its produce of sugar: and with this fact the evidence concludes as to one of the three sections into which the colony is divided. does demerara stand alone in its misfortune? again hear the report:-- "'if the present state of the county of demerara affords cause for deep apprehension, your commissioners find that essequebo has retrograded to a still more alarming extent. in fact, unless a large and speedy supply of labour be obtained to cultivate the deserted fields of this once-flourishing district, there is great reason to fear that it will relapse into total abandonment.'" describing another portion of the colony-- "they say of one district, 'unless a fresh supply of labour be very soon obtained, there is every reason to fear that it will become completely abandoned.' of a second, 'speedy immigration alone can save this island from total ruin.' 'the prostrate condition of this once beautiful part of the coast,' are the words which begin another paragraph, describing another tract of country. of a fourth, 'the proprietors on this coast seem to be keeping up a hopeless struggle against approaching ruin. again, 'the once famous arabian coast, so long the boast of the colony, presents now but a mournful picture of departed prosperity. here were formerly situated some of the finest estates in the country, and a large resident body of proprietors lived in the district, and freely expended their incomes on the spot whence they derived them.' once more, the lower part of the coast, after passing devonshire castle to the river pomeroon, presents a scene of almost total desolation.' such is essequebo!" "berbice," says lord stanley, "has fared no better: its rural population amounts to , . of these, , have withdrawn from the estates, and mostly from the neighbourhood of the white man, to enjoy a savage freedom of ignorance and idleness, beyond the reach of example and sometimes of control. but, on the condition of the negro i shall dwell more at length hereafter; at present it is the state of property with which i have to do. what are the districts which together form the county of berbice? the corentyne coast--the canje creek--east and west banks of the berbice river--and the west coast, where, however, cotton was formerly the chief article produced. to each of these respectively the following passages, quoted in order, apply:-- "'the abandoned plantations on this coast,[ ] which if capital and labour could be procured, might easily be made very productive, are either wholly deserted or else appropriated by hordes of squatters, who of course are unable to keep up at their own expense the public roads and bridges, and consequently all communication by land between the corentyne and new amsterdam is nearly at an end. the roads are impassable for horses or carriages, while for foot-passengers they are extremely dangerous. the number of villagers in this deserted region must be upward of , and as the country abounds with fish and game, they have no difficulty in making a subsistence; in fact, the corentyne coast is fast relapsing into a state of nature.' "'canje creek was formerly considered a flourishing district of the county, and numbered on its east bank seven sugar and three coffee estates, and on its west bank eight estates, of which two were in sugar and six in coffee, making a total of eighteen plantations. the coffee cultivation has long since been entirely abandoned, and of the sugar estates but eight still now remain. they are suffering severely for want of labour, and being supported principally by african and coolie immigrants, it is much to be feared that if the latter leave and claim their return passages to india, a great part of the district will become abandoned.' "'under present circumstances, so gloomy is the condition of affairs here,[ ] that the two gentlemen whom your commissioners have examined with respect to this district, both concur in predicting "its slow but sure approximation to the condition in which civilized man first found it.'" "'a district [ ] that in , gave employment to registered slaves, but at the present moment there are not more than labourers at work on the few estates still in cultivation, although it is estimated there are upwards of people idling in villages of their own. the roads are in many parts several feet under water, and perfect swamps; while in some places the bridges are wanting altogether. in fact, the whole district is fast becoming a total wilderness, with the exception of the one or two estates which yet continue to struggle on, and which are hardly accessible now but by water.' "'except in some of the best villages,[ ] they care not for back or front dams to keep off the water; their side-lines are disregarded, and consequently the drainage is gone; while in many instances the public road is so completely flooded that canoes have to be used as a means of transit. the africans are unhappily following the example of the creoles in this district, and buying land, on which they settle in contented idleness; and your commissioners cannot view instances like these without the deepest alarm, for if this pernicious habit of squatting is allowed to extend to the immigrants also, there is no hope for the colony.'" under these circumstances it is that the london _times_ furnishes its readers with the following paragraph,--and as that journal cannot be regarded as the opponent of the classes which have lately controlled the legislation of england, we may feel assured that its information is to be relied upon:-- "our legislation has been dictated by the presumed necessities of the african slave. after the emancipation act, a large charge was assessed upon the colony in aid of civil and religious institutions for the benefit of the enfranchised negro, and it was hoped that those coloured subjects of the british crown would soon be assimilated to their fellow-citizens. from all the information which has reached us, no less than from the visible probabilities of the case, _we are constrained to believe that these hopes have been falsified. the negro has not obtained with his freedom any habits of industry or morality. his independence is little better than that of an uncaptured brute_. having accepted none of the restraints of civilization, he is amenable to few of its necessities, and the wants of his nature are so easily satisfied, that at the present rate of wages he is called upon for nothing but fitful or desultory exertion. _the blacks_, therefore, _instead of becoming intelligent husbandmen, have become vagrants and squatters, and it is now apprehended that with the failure of cultivation in the island will come the failure of its resources for instructing or controlling its population_. so imminent does this consummation appear, that memorials have been signed by classes of colonial society, hitherto standing aloof from politics, _and not only the bench and the bar, but the bishop, clergy, and the ministers of all denominations in the island, without exception, have recorded their conviction that in the absence of timely relief, the religious and educational institutions of the island must be abandoned, and the masses of the population retrograde to barbarism_." the _prospective review_, (nov. ,) seeing what has happened in the british colonies, and speaking of the possibility of a similar course of action on this side of the atlantic, says-- "we have had experience enough in our own colonies, not to wish to see the experiment tried elsewhere on a larger scale. it is true that from some of the smaller islands, where there is a superabundance of negro population and no room for squatters, the export of sugar has not been diminished: it is true that in jamaica and demerara, the commercial distress is largely attributable to the folly of the planters--who doggedly refuse to accommodate themselves to the new state of things, and to entice the negroes from the back settlements by a promise of fair wages. but we have no reason to suppose that the whole tragi-comedy would not be re-enacted in the slave states of america, if slavery were summarily abolished by act of congress to-morrow. property among the plantations consists only of land and negroes: emancipate the negroes--and the planters have no longer any capital for the cultivation of the land. put the case of compensation: though it be difficult to see whence it could come: there is every probability that the planters of alabama, accustomed all their lives to get black labour for nothing, would be as unwilling to pay for it as their compeers in jamaica: and there is plenty of unowned land on which the disbanded gangs might settle and no one question their right. it is allowed on all hands that the negroes as a race will not work longer than is necessary to supply the simplest comforts of life. it would be wonderful were it otherwise. a people have been degraded and ground down for a century and a half: systematically kept in ignorance for five generations of any needs and enjoyments beyond those of the savage: and then it is made matter of complaint that they will not apply themselves to labour for their higher comforts and more refined luxuries, of which they cannot know the value!" the systematic degradation here referred to is probably quite true as regards the british islands, where , were all that remained of almost two millions that had been imported; but it is quite a mistake to suppose it so in regard to this country, in which there are now found ten persons for every one ever imported, and all advancing by gradual steps toward civilization and freedom; and yet were the reviewer discoursing of the conduct of the spanish settlers of hispaniola, he could scarcely speak more disparagingly of them than he does in regard to a people that alone has so treated the negro race as to enable it to increase in numbers, and improve in its physical, moral, and intellectual condition. had he been more fully informed in relation to the proceedings in the british colonies, and in these colonies and states, he could scarcely have ventured to assert that "the responsibility of having degraded the african race rests upon the american people,"--the only people among whom they have been improved. nevertheless, it is right and proper to give due weight to all opinions in regard to the existence of an evil, and to all recommendations in regard to the mode of removal, let them come from what source they may; and the writer of the article from which this passage is taken is certainly animated by a somewhat more liberal and catholic spirit than is found animating many of his countrymen. that the english system in regard to the emancipation of the negro has proved a failure is now admitted even by those who most warmly advocated the measures that have been pursued. "there are many," says the london _times_, "who think that, with proper regulations, and particularly with a system for the self-enfranchisement of slaves, we might have brought about the entire emancipation of the british west indies, with much less injury to the property of the planter and to the character of the negro than have resulted from the abolition act. perhaps," it continues, "the warning will not be lost on the americans, who may see the necessity of putting things in train for the ultimate abolition of slavery, and thereby save the sudden shock which the abolitionists may one day bring on all the institutions of the union and the whole fabric of american society." the falmouth [jamaica] _post_, of december , , informs us that, even now, "in every parish of the island preparations are being made for the abandonment of properties that were once valuable, but on which cultivation can no longer be continued." "in trelawny," it continues, "many estates have been thrown up during the last two years, and the exportation to the united states of america, within a few months, of upward of , tons of copper, which was used for the manufacture of sugar and rum, is one of the 'signs of the times,' to which the attention of the legislature should be seriously directed, in providing for the future maintenance of our various institutions, both public and parochial. unless the salaries of all official characters are reduced, it will be utterly impossible to carry on the government of the colony." eighty thousand tons of machinery heretofore used in aid of labour, or nearly one ton for every four persons on the island, exported within a few months! the _bande noire_ of france pulled down dwelling-houses and sold the materials, but as they left the machinery used by the labourers, their operations were less injurious than have been those of the negroes of jamaica, the demand for whose labour must diminish with every step in the progress of the abandonment of land and the destruction of machinery. under such circumstances we can feel little surprise at learning that every thing tends towards barbarism; nor is it extraordinary that a writer already quoted, and who is not to be suspected of any pro-slavery tendencies, puts the question, "is it enough that they [the americans] simply loose their chain and turn them adrift lower," as he is pleased to say, "than they found them?"[ ] it is not enough. they need to be prepared for freedom. "immediate emancipation," as he says, "solves only the simplest forms of the problem." the land-owner has been ruined and the labourer is fast relapsing into barbarism, and yet in face of this fact the land-owners of the southern states are branded throughout the world as "tyrants" and "slave-breeders," because they will not follow in the same direction. it is in face of this great fact that the people of the north are invited to join in a crusade against their brethren of the south because they still continue to hold slaves, and that the men of the south are themselves so frequently urged to assent to immediate and unconditional emancipation. in all this there may be much philanthropy, but there is certainly much error,--and with a view to determine where it lies, as well as to show what is the true road to emancipation, it is proposed to inquire what has been, in the various countries of the world, the course by which men have passed from poverty to wealth, from ignorance and barbarism to civilization, and from slavery to freedom. that done, we may next inquire for the causes now operating to prevent the emancipation of the negro of america and the occupant of "the sweater's den" in london; and if they can once be ascertained, it will be then easy to determine what are the measures needful to be adopted with a view to the establishment of freedom throughout the world. chapter v. how man passes from poverty and slavery toward wealth and freedom. the first poor cultivator is surrounded by land unoccupied. _the more of it at his command the poorer he is._ compelled to work alone, he is a slave to his necessities, and he can neither roll nor raise a log with which to build himself a house. he makes himself a hole in the ground, which serves in place of one. he cultivates the poor soil of the hills to obtain a little corn, with which to eke out the supply of food derived from snaring the game in his neighbourhood. his winter's supply is deposited in another hole, liable to injury from the water which filters through the light soil into which alone he can penetrate. he is in hourly danger of starvation. at length, however, his sons grow up. they combine their exertions with his, and now obtain something like an axe and a spade. they can sink deeper into the soil; and can cut logs, and build something like a house. they obtain more corn and more game, and they can preserve it better. the danger of starvation is diminished. being no longer forced to depend for fuel upon the decayed wood which was all their father could command, they are in less danger of perishing from cold in the elevated ground which, from necessity, they occupy. with the growth of the family new soils are cultivated, each in succession yielding a larger return to labour, and they obtain a constantly increasing supply of the necessaries of life from a surface diminishing in its ratio to the number to be fed; and thus with every increase in the return to labour the power of combining their exertions is increased. if we look now to the solitary settler of the west, even where provided with both axe and spade, we shall see him obtaining, with extreme difficulty, the commonest log hut. a neighbour arrives, and their combined efforts produce a new house with less than half the labour required for the first. that neighbour brings a horse, and he makes something like a cart. the product of their labour is now ten times greater than was that of the first man working by himself. more neighbours come, and new houses are needed. a "bee" is made, and by the combined effort of the neighbourhood the third house is completed in a day; whereas the first cost months, and the second weeks, of far more severe exertion. these new neighbours have brought ploughs and horses, and now better soils are cultivated, and the product of labour is again increased, as is the power to preserve the surplus for winter's use. the path becomes a road. exchanges increase. the store makes its appearance. labour is rewarded by larger returns, because aided by better machinery applied to better soils. the town grows up. each successive addition to the population brings a consumer and a producer. the shoemaker desires leather and corn in exchange for his shoes. the blacksmith requires fuel and food, and the farmer wants shoes for his horses; and with the increasing facility of exchange more labour is applied to production, and the reward of labour rises, producing new desires, and requiring more and larger exchanges. the road becomes a turnpike, and the wagon and horses are seen upon it. the town becomes a city, and better soils are cultivated for the supply of its markets, while the railroad facilitates exchanges with towns and cities yet more distant. the tendency to union and to combination of exertion thus grows with the growth of wealth. in a state of extreme poverty it cannot be developed. the insignificant tribe of savages that starves on the product of the superficial soil of hundreds of thousands of acres of land, looks with jealous eye on every intruder, knowing that each new mouth requiring to be fed tends to increase the difficulty of obtaining subsistence; whereas the farmer rejoices in the arrival of the blacksmith and the shoemaker, because they come to eat on the spot the corn which heretofore he has carried ten, twenty, or thirty miles to market, to exchange for shoes for himself and his horses. with each new consumer of his products that arrives he is enabled more and more to concentrate his action and his thoughts upon his home, while each new arrival tends to increase his _power_ of consuming commodities brought from a distance, because it tends to diminish his _necessity_ for seeking at a distance a market for the produce of his farm. give to the poor tribe spades, and the knowledge how to use them, and the power of association will begin. the supply of food becoming more abundant, they hail the arrival of the stranger who brings them knives and clothing to be exchanged for skins and corn; wealth grows, and the habit of association--the first step toward civilization--arises. the little tribe is, however, compelled to occupy the higher lands. the lower ones are a mass of dense forests and dreary swamps, while at the foot of the hill runs a river, fordable but for a certain period of the year. on the hillside, distant a few miles, is another tribe; but communication between them is difficult, because, the river bottom being yet uncleared, roads cannot be made, and bridges are as yet unthought of. population and wealth, however, continue to increase, and the lower lands come gradually into cultivation, yielding larger returns to labour, and enabling the tribe to obtain larger supplies of food with less exertion, and to spare labour to be employed for other purposes. roads are made in the direction of the river bank. population increases more rapidly because of the increased supplies of food and the increased power of preserving it, and wealth grows still more rapidly. the river bank at length is reached, and some of the best lands are now cleared. population grows again, and a new element of wealth is seen in the form of a bridge; and now the two little communities are enabled to communicate more freely with each other. one rejoices in the possession of a wheelwright, while the other has a windmill. one wants carts, and the other has corn to grind. one has cloth to spare, while the other has more leather than is needed for its purpose. exchanges increase, and the little town grows because of the increased amount of trade. wealth grows still more rapidly, because of new modes of combining labour, by which that of all is rendered more productive. roads are now made in the direction of other communities, and the work is performed rapidly, because the exertions of the two are now combined, and because the machinery used is more efficient. one after another disappear forests and swamps that have occupied the fertile lands, separating ten, twenty, fifty, or five hundred communities, which now are brought into connection with each other; and with each step labour becomes more and more productive, and is rewarded with better food, clothing, and shelter. famine and disease disappear, life is prolonged, population is increased, and therewith the tendency to that combination of exertion among the individuals composing these communities, which is the distinguishing characteristic of civilization in all nations and in all periods of the world. with further increase of population and wealth, the desires of man, and his ability to gratify them, both increase. the nation, thus formed, has more corn than it needs; but it has no cotton, and its supply of wool is insufficient. the neighbouring nation has cotton and wool, and needs corn. they are still divided, however, by broad forests, deep swamps, and rapid rivers. population increases, and the great forests and swamps disappear, giving place to rich farms, through which broad roads are made, with immense bridges, enabling the merchant to transport his wool and his cotton to exchange with his now-rich neighbours for their surplus corn or sugar. nations now combine their exertions, and wealth grows with still increased rapidity, facilitating the drainage of marshes, and thus bringing into activity the richest soils; while coal-mines cheaply furnish the fuel for converting limestone into lime, and iron ore into axes and spades, and into rails for the new roads needed for transporting to market the vast products of the fertile soils now in use, and to bring back the large supplies of sugar, tea, coffee, and the thousand other products of distant lands with which intercourse now exists. at each step population and wealth and happiness and prosperity take a new bound; and men realize with difficulty the fact that the country, which now affords to tens of millions all the necessaries, comforts, conveniences, and luxuries of life, is the same that, when the superabundant land was occupied by tens of thousands only, gave to that limited number scanty supplies of the worst food; so scanty that famines were frequent and sometimes so severe that starvation was followed in its wake by pestilence, which, at brief intervals, swept from the earth the population of the little and scattered settlements, among which the people were forced to divide themselves when they cultivated only the poor soils of the hills. the course of events here described is in strict accordance with the facts observed in every country as it has grown in wealth and population. the early settlers of all the countries of the world are seen to have been slaves to their necessities--and often slaves to their neighbours; whereas, with the increase of numbers and the increased power of cultivation, they are seen passing from the poorer soils of the hills to the fertile soils of the river bottoms and the marshes, with constant increase in the return to labour, and constantly increasing power to determine for themselves for whom they will work, and what shall be their reward. this view is, however, in direct opposition to the theory of the occupation of land taught in the politico-economical school of which malthus and ricardo were the founders. by them we are assured that the settler commences always on the low and rich lands, and that, as population increases, men are required to pass toward the higher and poorer lands--and of course up the hill--with constantly diminishing return to labour, and thus that, as population grows, man becomes more and more a slave to his necessities, and to those who have power to administer to his wants, involving a necessity for dispersion throughout the world in quest of the rich lands upon which the early settler is supposed to commence his operations. it is in reference to this theory that mr. j. s. mill says-- "this general law of agricultural industry is the most important proposition in political economy. if the law were different, almost all the phenomena of the production and distribution of wealth would be other than they are." in the view thus presented by mr. mill there is no exaggeration. the law of the occupation of the land by man lies at the foundation of all political economy; and if we desire to know what it is that tends to the emancipation of the people of the earth from slavery, we must first satisfy ourselves that the theory of messrs. malthus and ricardo has not only no foundation in fact, but that the law is directly the reverse, and tends, therefore, toward the adoption of measures directly opposed to those that would be needed were that theory true. the great importance of the question will excuse the occupation of a few minutes of the reader's attention in placing before him some facts tending to enable him to satisfy himself in regard to the universality of the law now offered for his consideration. let him inquire where he may, he will find that the early occupant _did not_ commence in the flats, or on the heavily timbered-land, but that he _did_ commence on the higher land, where the timber was lighter, and the place for his house was dry. with increasing ability, he is found draining the swamps, clearing the heavy timber, turning up the marl, or burning the lime, and thus acquiring control over more fertile soils, yielding a constant increase in the return to labour. let him then trace the course of early settlement, and he will find that while it has often followed the course of the streams, it has always avoided the swamps and river bottoms. the earliest settlements of this country were on the poorest lands of the union--those of new england. so was it in new york, where we find the railroads running through the lower and richer, and yet uncultivated, lands, while the higher lands right and left have long been cultivated. so is it now in pennsylvania, virginia, and ohio. in south carolina it has been made the subject of remark, in a recent discourse, that their predecessors did not select the rich lands, and that millions of acres of the finest meadow-land in that state still remain untouched. the settler in the prairies commences on the higher and drier land, leaving the wet prairie and the _slough_--the richest soil--for his successors. the lands below the mouth of the ohio are among the richest in the world; yet they are unoccupied, and will continue so to be until wealth and population shall have greatly increased. so is it now with the low and rich lands of mexico. so was it in south america, the early cultivation of which was upon the poor lands of the western slope, peru and chili, while the rich lands of the amazon and the la plata remained, as most of them still remain, a wilderness. in the west indies, the small dry islands were early occupied, while porto rico and trinidad, abounding in rich soils, remained untouched. the early occupants of england were found on the poorer lands of the centre and south of the kingdom, as were those of scotland in the highlands, or on the little rocky islands of the channel. mona's isle was celebrated while the rich soil of the lothians remained an almost unbroken mass of forest, and the morasses of lancashire were the terror of travellers long after hampshire had been cleared and cultivated. if the reader desire to find the birthplace of king arthur and the earliest seat of english power, he must look to the vicinity of the royal castle of tintagel, in the high and dry cornwall. should he desire other evidence of the character of the soil cultivated at the period when land abounded and men were few in number, he may find it in the fact that in some parts of england there is scarcely a hill top that does not bear evidence of early occupation,[ ] and in the further fact that the mounds, or barrows, are almost uniformly composed of stone, because those memorials "are found most frequently where stone was more readily obtained than earth."[ ] caesar found the gauls occupying the high lands surrounding the alps, while the rich venetia remained a marsh. the occupation of the campagna followed long after that of the samnite hills, and the earliest settlers of the peloponnesus cultivated the high and dry arcadia, while the cities of the argive kings of the days of homer, mycenae and tiryns, are found in eastern argolis, a country so poor as to have been abandoned prior to the days of the earliest authentic history. the occupation of the country around meroë, and of the thebaid, long preceded that of the lower lands surrounding memphis, or the still lower and richer ones near alexandria. the negro is found in the higher portions of africa, while the rich lands along the river courses are uninhabited. the little islands of australia, poor and dry, are occupied by a race far surpassing in civilization those of the neighbouring continent, who have rich soils at command. the poor persia is cultivated, while the rich soils of the ancient babylonia are only ridden over by straggling hordes of robbers.[ ] layard had to seek the hills when he desired to find a people at home. affghanistan and cashmere were early occupied, and thence were supplied the people who moved toward the deltas of the ganges and the indus, much of both of which still remains, after so many thousands of years, in a state of wilderness. look where we may, it is the same. the land obeys the same great and universal law that governs light, power, and heat. the man who works alone and has poor machinery must cultivate poor land, and content himself with little light, little power, and little heat, and those, like his food, obtained in exchange for much labour; while he who works in combination with his fellow-men may have good machinery, enabling him to clear and cultivate rich land, giving him much food, and enabling him to obtain much light, much heat, and much power, in exchange for little labour. the first is _a creature of necessity_--a slave--and as such is man universally regarded by mr. ricardo and his followers. the second is _a being of power_--a freeman--and as such was man regarded by adam smith, who taught that the more men worked in combination with each other, the greater would be the facility of obtaining food and all other of the necessaries and comforts of life--and the more widely they were separated, the less would be the return to labour and capital, and the smaller the power of production, as common sense teaches every man must necessarily be the case. it will now readily be seen how perfectly accurate was mr. mill in his assertion that, "if the law were different, almost all the phenomena of the production and distribution of wealth would be other than they are." the doctrine of malthus and ricardo tends to make the labourer a slave to the owner of landed or other capital; but happily it has no foundation in fact, and therefore the natural laws of the production and distribution of wealth tend not to slavery, but to freedom. chapter vi. how wealth tends to increase. the first poor cultivator commences, as we have seen, his operations on the hillside. below him are lands upon which have been carried by force of water the richer portions of those above, as well as the leaves of trees, and the fallen trees themselves, all of which have from time immemorial rotted and become incorporated with the earth, and thus have been produced soils fitted to yield the largest returns to labour; yet for this reason are they inaccessible. their character exhibits itself in the enormous trees with which they are covered, and in their power of retaining the water necessary to aid the process of decomposition, but the poor settler wants the power either to clear them of their timber, or to drain them of the superfluous moisture. he begins on the hillside, but by degrees he obtains better machinery of cultivation, and with each step in this direction we find him descending the hill and obtaining larger return to labour. he has more food for himself, and he has now the means of feeding a horse or an ox. aided by the manure that is thus yielded to him by the better lands, we see him next retracing his steps, improving the hillside, and compelling it to yield a return double that which he at first obtained. with each step down the hill, he obtains still larger reward for his labour, and at each he returns, with increased power, to the cultivation of the original poor soil. he has now horses and oxen, and while by their aid he extracts from the new soils the manure that had accumulated for ages, he has also carts and wagons to carry it up the hill; and at each step his reward is increased, while his labours are lessened. he goes back to the sand and raises the marl, with which he covers the surface; or he returns to the clay and sinks into the limestone, by aid of which he doubles its product. he is all the time making a machine which feeds him while he makes it, and which increases in its powers the more he takes from it. at first it was worthless. having now fed and clothed him for years, it has acquired a large value, and those who might desire to use it would pay him a large rent for permission so to do. the earth is a great machine given to man to be fashioned to his purpose. the more he works it, the better it feeds him, because each step is but preparatory to a new one more productive than the last--requiring less labour and yielding larger return. the labour of clearing is great, yet the return is small. the earth is covered with stumps, and filled with roots. with each year the roots decay, and the ground becomes enriched, while the labour of ploughing is diminished. at length, the stumps disappear, and the return is doubled, while the labour is less by one-half than at first. to forward this process the owner has done nothing but crop the ground, nature having done the rest. the aid he thus obtains from her yields him as much food as in the outset was obtained by the labour of felling the trees. this, however, is not all. the surplus thus yielded has given him means of improving the poorer lands, by furnishing manure with which to enrich them, and thus has he trebled his original return without further labour; for that which he saves in working the new soils suffices to carry the manure to the older ones. he is obtaining a daily increased power over the various treasures of the earth. with every operation connected with the fashioning of the earth, the result is the same. the first step is, invariably, the most costly one, and the least productive. the first drain commences near the stream, where the labour is heaviest. it frees from water but a few acres. a little higher, the same quantity of labour, profiting by what has been already done, frees twice the number. again the number is doubled; and now the most perfect system of thorough drainage may be established with less labour than was at first required for one of the most imperfect kind. to bring the lime into connection with the clay, upon fifty acres, is lighter labour than was the clearing of a single one, yet the process doubles the return for each acre of fifty. the man who needs a little fuel for his own use, expends much labour in opening the neighbouring vein of coal; but to enlarge this, so as to double the product, is a work of comparatively small labour. to sink a shaft to the first vein below the surface, and erect a steam-engine, are expensive operations; but these once accomplished, every future step becomes more productive, while less costly. to sink to the next vein below, and to tunnel to another, are trifles in comparison with the first, yet each furnishes a return equally large. the first line of railroad runs by houses and towns occupied by two or three hundred thousand persons. half a dozen little branches, costing together far less labour than the first, bring into connection with it half a million, or perhaps a million. the trade increases, and a second track, a third, or a fourth, may be required. the original one facilitates the passage of the materials and the removal of the obstructions, and three new ones may now be made with less labour than was at first required for a single one. all labour thus expended in fashioning the great machine is but the prelude to the application of further labour, with still increased returns. with each such application, wages rise, and hence it is that portions of the machine, as it exists, invariably exchange, when brought to market, for far less labour than they have cost. there is thus a steady decline of the value of capital in labour, and a daily increase in the power of labour over capital, and with each step in this direction man becomes more free. the man who cultivated the thin soils was happy to obtain a hundred bushels for his year's work. with the progress of himself and his neighbour down the hill into the more fertile soils, wages have risen, and two hundred bushels are now required. his farm will yield a thousand bushels; but it requires the labour of four men, who must have two hundred bushels each, and the surplus is but two hundred bushels. at twenty years' purchase this gives a capital of four thousand bushels, or the equivalent of twenty years' wages; whereas it has cost, in the labour of himself, his sons, and his assistants, the equivalent of a hundred years of labour, or perhaps far more. during all this time, however, it has fed and clothed them all, and the farm has been produced by the insensible contributions made from year to year, unthought of and unfelt. it has become worth twenty years' wages, because its owner has for years taken from it a thousand bushels annually; but when it had lain for centuries accumulating wealth it was worth nothing. such is the case with the earth everywhere. the more that is taken from it the more there is to be returned, and the greater our power to draw upon it. when the coal-mines of england were untouched, they were valueless. now their value is almost countless; yet the land contains abundant supplies for thousands of years. iron ore, a century since, was a drug, and leases were granted at almost nominal rents. now, such leases are deemed equivalent to the possession of large fortunes, notwithstanding the great quantities that have been removed, although the amount of ore now known to exist is probably fifty times greater than it was then. _the earth is the sole producer._ from her man receives the corn and the cotton-wool, and all that he can do is to change them in their form, or in their place. the first he may convert into bread, and the last into cloth, and both maybe transported to distant places, but there his power ends. he can make no addition to their quantity. a part of his labour is applied to the preparation and improvement of the great machine of production, and this produces changes that are permanent. the drain, once cut, remains a drain; and the limestone, once reduced to lime, never again becomes limestone. it passes into the food of man and animals, and ever after takes its part in the same round with the clay with which it has been incorporated. the iron rusts and gradually passes into soil, to take its part with the clay and the lime. that portion of his labour gives him wages while preparing the machine for greater future production. that other portion which he expends on fashioning and exchanging _the products_ of the machine, produces temporary results and gives him wages alone. whatever tends to diminish the quantity of labour required for the production of food tends to enable him to give more to the preparation of machinery required for the fashioning and exchanging of the products; and that machinery in its turn tends to augment the quantity that may be given to increasing the amount of products, and to preparing the great machine; and thus, while increasing the present return to labour, preparing for a future further increase. the first poor cultivator obtains a hundred bushels for his year's wages. to pound this between two stones requires many days of labour, and the work is not half done. had he a mill in the neighbourhood he would have better flour, and he would have almost the whole of those days to bestow upon his land. he pulls up his grain. had he a scythe, he would have more time for the preparation of the machine of production. he loses his axe, and it requires days of himself and his horse on the road, to obtain another. his machine loses the time and the manure, both of which would have been saved had the axe-maker been at hand. the real advantage derived from the mill and the scythe, and from the proximity of the axe-maker, consists simply in the power which they afford him to devote his labour more and more to the preparation of the great machine of production, and such is the case with all the machinery of conversion and exchange. the plough enables him to do as much in one day as with a spade he could do in five. he saves four days for drainage. the steam-engine drains as much as, without it, could be drained by thousands of days of labour. he has more leisure to marl or lime his land. the more he can extract from his property the greater is its value, because every thing he takes is, by the very act of taking it, fashioned to aid further production. the machine, therefore, improves by use, whereas spades, and ploughs, and steam-engines, and all other of the instruments used by man, are but the various forms into which he fashions parts of the great original machine, to disappear in the act of being used; as much so as food, though not so rapidly. the earth is the great labour-savings' bank, and the value to man of all other machines is in the direct ratio of their tendency to aid him in increasing his deposites in that only bank whose dividends are perpetually increasing, while its capital is perpetually doubling. that it may continue for ever so to do, all that it asks is that it shall receive back the refuse of its produce, the manure; and that it may do so, the consumer and the producer must take their places by each other. that done, every change that is effected becomes permanent, and tends to facilitate other and greater changes. the whole business of the farmer consists in making and improving soils, and the earth rewards him for his kindness by giving him more and more food the more attention he bestows upon her. all that he receives from her must be regarded as a loan, and when he fails to pay his debts, she starves him out. the absolute necessity for returning to the land the manure yielded by its products is so generally admitted that it would appear scarcely necessary to do more than state the fact; for every land-owner knows that when he grants the lease of a farm, one of the conditions he desires to insert is, that all the hay that is made shall be fed upon the land, and that manure shall be purchased to supply the waste resulting from the sale of corn or flax from off the land. in order, however, that it may be so supplied, it is indispensable that the place of consumption shall not be far distant from the place of production, as otherwise the cost of transportation will be greater than the value of the manure. in a recent work on the agriculture of mecklenburgh, it is stated that a quantity of grain that would be worth close to market fifteen hundred dollars would be worth nothing at a distance of fifty german, or about two hundred english miles, from it, as the whole value would be absorbed in the cost of transporting the grain to market and the manure from market--and that the manure which close to the town would be worth five dollars to the farmer, would be worth nothing at a distance of - / german, or english miles from it--and that thus the whole question of the value of land and the wealth of its owner was dependent upon its distance from the place at which its products could be exchanged. at a greater distance than german, or english miles, in mecklenburgh, the land ceases to yield rent, because it cannot be cultivated without loss. as we approach the place of exchange the value of land increases, from the simultaneous action of two causes: first, a greater variety of commodities can be cultivated, and the advantage resulting from a rotation of crops is well known. at a distance, the farmer can raise only those of which the earth yields but little, and which are valuable in proportion to their little bulk--as, for instance, wheat or cotton; but near the place of exchange he may raise potatoes, turnips, cabbages, and hay, of which the bulk is great in proportion to the value. second, the cost of returning the manure to the land increases as the value of the products of land diminishes with the increase of distance; and from the combination of these two causes, land in mecklenburgh that would be worth, if close to the town or city, an annual rent of , dollars, would be worth at a distance of but german, or english, miles, only , dollars. we see thus, how great is the tendency to the growth of wealth as men are enabled more and more to combine their exertions with those of their fellow-men, consuming on or near the land the products of the land, and enabling the farmer, not only to repair readily the exhaustion caused by each successive crop, but also to call to his aid the services of the chemist in the preparation of artificial manures, as well as to call into activity the mineral ones by which he is almost everywhere surrounded. we see, too, how much it must be opposed to the interests of every community to have its products exported in their rude state, and thus to have its land exhausted. the same author from whom the above quotations have been made informs us that when the manure is not returned to the land the yield must diminish from year to year, until at length it will not be more than one-fourth of what it had originally been: and this is in accordance with all observation. the natural tendency of the loom and the anvil to seek to take their place by the side of the plough and harrow, is thus exhibited by adam smith:-- "an inland country, naturally fertile and easily cultivated, produces a great surplus of provisions beyond what is necessary for maintaining the cultivators; and on account of the expense of land carriage, and inconveniency of river navigation, it may frequently be difficult to send this surplus abroad. abundance, therefore, renders provisions cheap, and encourages a great number of workmen to settle in the neighbourhood, who find that their industry can there procure them more of the necessaries and conveniences of life than in other places. they work up the materials of manufacture which the land produces, and exchange their finished work, or, what is the same thing, the price of it, for more materials and provisions. _they give a new value to the surplus part of the rude produce, by saving the expense of carrying it to the waterside, or to some distant market_; and they furnish the cultivators with something in exchange for it, that is either useful or agreeable to them, upon easier terms than they could have obtained it before. _the cultivators get a better price for their surplus produce, and can purchase cheaper other conveniences which they have occasion for._ they are thus both encouraged and enabled to increase this surplus produce by a further improvement and better cultivation of the land; and _as the fertility of the land has given birth to the manufacture, so the progress of the manufacture reacts upon the land, and increases still further its fertility_. the manufacturers first supply the neighbourhood, and afterward, as their work improves and refines, more distant markets. _for though neither the rude produce, nor even the coarse manufacture, could, without the greatest difficulty, support the expense of a considerable land carriage, the refined and improved manufacture easily may._ in a small bulk it frequently contains the price of a great quantity of the raw produce. a piece of fine cloth, for example, which weighs, only eighty pounds, contains in it the price, not only of eighty pounds of wool, but sometimes of several thousand weight of corn, the maintenance of the different working people, and of their immediate employers. _the corn which could with difficulty have been carried abroad in its own shape, is in this manner virtually exported in that of the complete manufacture, and may easily be sent to the remotest corners of the world._" again: "the greater the number and revenue of the inhabitants of the town, the more extensive is the market which it affords to those of the country; and the more extensive that market, it is always the more advantageous to a great number. the corn which grows within a mile of the town, sells there for the same price with that which comes from twenty miles distance. but the price of the latter must, generally, not only pay the expense of raising it and bringing it to market, but afford, too, the ordinary profits, of agriculture to the farmer. the proprietors and cultivators of the country, therefore, which lies in the neighbourhood of the town, over and above the ordinary profits of agriculture, gain, in the price of what they sell, the whole value of the carriage of the like produce that is brought from more distant parts; and they save, besides, the whole value of this carriage in the price of what they buy. compare the cultivation of the lands in the neighbourhood of any considerable town, with that of those which lie at some distance from it, and you will easily satisfy yourself how much the country is benefited by the commerce of the town." these views are in perfect accordance with the facts. the labourer rejoices when the market for his labour is brought to his door by the erection of a mill or a furnace, or the construction of a road. the farmer rejoices in the opening of a market for labour at his door giving him a market for his food. his land rejoices in the home consumption of the products it has yielded, for its owner is thereby enabled to return to it the refuse of its product in the form of manure. the planter rejoices in the erection of a mill in his neighbourhood, giving him a market for his cotton and his food. the parent rejoices when a market for their labour enables his sons and his daughters to supply themselves with food and clothing. every one rejoices in the growth of a home market for labour and its products, for trade is then increasing daily and rapidly; and every one mourns the diminution of the home market, for it is one the deficiency of which cannot be supplied. with each step in this direction man becomes more and more free as land becomes more valuable and labour becomes more productive, and as the land becomes more divided. the effect of this upon both the man and the land is thus exhibited by dr. smith:-- "a small proprietor, who knows every part of his little territory, views it with all the affection which property, especially small property, naturally inspires, and who upon that account takes pleasure not only in cultivating, but in adorning it, is generally of all improvers the most industrious, the most intelligent, and the most successful." the tendency of the land to become divided as wealth and population increase will be obvious to the reader on an examination of the facts of daily occurrence in and near a growing town or city; and the contrary tendency to the consolidation of land in few hands may be seen in the neighbourhood of all declining towns or cities, and throughout all declining states.[ ] chapter vii. how labour acquires value and man becomes free. the proximity of the market enables the farmer not only to enrich his land and to obtain from it far more than he could otherwise do, but it also produces a demand for many things that would otherwise be wasted. in the west, men set no value upon straw, and in almost every part of this country the waste arising out of the absence of a market for any commodities but those which can be carried to a distance, must strike every traveller. close to the town or city, almost every thing has some value. so too with labour, the value of which, like that of land, tends to increase with every increase in the facility of exchanging its products. the solitary settler has to occupy the spots that, with his rude machinery, he _can_ cultivate. having neither horse nor cart, he carries home his crop upon his shoulders, as is now done in many parts of india. he carries a hide to the place of exchange, distant, perhaps, fifty miles, to obtain for it leather, or shoes. population increases, and roads are made. the fertile soils are cultivated. the store and the mill come nearer to him, and he obtains shoes and flour with the use of less machinery of exchange. he has more leisure for the improvement of his land, and the returns to labour increase. more people now obtain food from the same surface, and new places of exchange appear. the wool is, on the spot, converted into cloth, and he exchanges directly with the clothier. the saw-mill is at hand, and he exchanges with the sawyer. the tanner gives him leather for his hides, and the papermaker gives him paper for his rags. with each of these changes he has more and more of both time and manure to devote to the preparation of the great food-making machine, and with each year the returns are larger. his _power to command_ the use of the machinery of exchange increases, but his _necessity_ therefor diminishes, for with each there is an increasing tendency toward having the consumer placed side by side with the producer, and with each he can devote more and more of his time and mind to the business of fashioning the great machine to which he is indebted for food and clothing; and thus the increase of a consuming population is essential to the progress of production. diversification of employments, resulting from combination of action, thus enables men to economize labour and to increase production. increased production, on the other hand, makes a demand for labour. the more wheat raised and the more cloth made, the more there will be to give in exchange for labour, the greater will be the number of persons seeking for labourers, and the greater will be the power of men to determine for themselves the mode in which they will employ their time or their talents. if, therefore, we desire to see men advance in freedom, we must endeavour to increase the productive power; and that, as we see, grows with the growth of the power to improve the land, while it diminishes with every diminution in the power to return to the land the manure yielded by its products. in purely agricultural countries there is little demand for labour, and it always tends to diminish, as may be proved by any reader of this volume who may chance to occupy a purely agricultural neighbourhood. let him look around him, and he will, without difficulty, find hundreds of men, and hundreds of women and children, wasting more time than would, if properly employed, purchase twice the clothing and twice the machinery of production they are now enabled to obtain. why, however, he will probably ask, is it that they do so waste it? because there is no demand for it, except in agriculture; and when that is the case, there must necessarily be great waste of time. at one season of the year the farm requires much labour, while at another it needs but little; and if its neighbours are all farmers, they are all in the same situation. if the weather is fit for ploughing, they and their horses and men are all employed. if it is not, they are all idle. in winter they have all of them little to do; in harvest-time they are all overrun with work; and crops frequently perish on the ground for want of the aid required for making them. now, it would seem to be quite clear that if there existed some other mode of employment that would find a demand for the surplus labour of the neighbourhood, all would be benefited. the man who had a day's labour to sell could sell it, and, with the proceeds of the labour of a very few days, now wasted, could purchase clothing for his children, if, indeed, the labour of those children, now also wasted, did not more than pay for all the clothing, not only of themselves, but of his wife and himself. in order that the reader may see clearly how this state of things affects all labourers, even those who are employed, we must now ask him to examine with us the manner in which the prices of all commodities are affected by excess of supply over demand, or of demand over supply. it is well known to every farmer, that when the crop of peaches, or of potatoes, is, _in even a very small degree_, in excess of the regular demand, the existence of that small surplus so far diminishes the price that the larger crop will not yield as much as a much smaller one would have done. it is also known to them that when the crop is a little less than is required to supply the demand, the advance in price is large, and the farmer then grows rich. in this latter case the purchasers are looking for the sellers, whereas in the former one the sellers have to seek the buyers. now, labour is a commodity that some desire to sell, and that others desire to buy, precisely as is the case with potatoes; but it has this disadvantage when compared with any other commodity, that it is less easily transferred from the place where it exists to that at which it is needed, and that the loss resulting from _the absence of demand on the spot_ is greater than in reference to _any other commodity whatsoever_. the man who raises a hundred bushels of peaches, of which only seventy are needed at home, can send the remainder to a distance of a hundred or a thousand miles, and the loss he sustains is only that which results from the fact that the price of the whole is determined by what he can obtain for the surplus bushels, burdened as they are with heavy cost of transportation, that he must lose; for the man that _must_ go to a distant market must always pay the expense of getting there. this is a heavy loss certainly, but it is trivial when compared with that sustained by him who has labour to sell, because _that_, like other very perishable commodities, cannot be carried to another market, and _must be wasted_. if he has two spare hours a day to sell, he finds that they waste themselves in the very act of seeking a distant market, and his children may go in rags, or even suffer from hunger, because of his inability to find a purchaser for the only commodity he has to sell. so, too, with the man who has days, weeks, or months of labour for which he desires to find a purchaser. unwilling to leave his wife and his children, to go to a distance, he remains to be a constant weight upon the labour market, and must continue so to remain until there shall arise increased competition for the purchase of labour. it is within the knowledge of every one who reads this, whether he be shoemaker, hatter, tailor, printer, brickmaker, stonemason, or labourer, that a very few unemployed men in his own pursuit keep down the wages of all shoemakers, all hatters, all tailors, or printers; whereas, wages rise when there is a demand for a few more than are at hand. the reason for this is to be found in the difficulty of transferring labour from the place at which it exists to that at which it is needed; and it is to that we have to attribute the fact that the tendency to depression in the wages of all labour is so very great when there is even a very small excess of supply, and the tendency to elevation so great when there is even a very small excess of demand. men starve in ireland for want of employment, and yet the distance between them and the people who here earn a dollar a day, is one that could be overcome at the expense of fifteen or twenty dollars. wages may be high in one part of the union and low in another, and yet thousands must remain to work at low ones, because of the difficulty of transporting themselves, their wives, and their families, to the places at which their services are needed. every such man tends to keep down the wages, of _all other men who have labour to sell_, and therefore every man is interested in having all other men fully employed, and to have the demand grow faster than the supply. this is the best state of things for all, capitalists and labourers; whereas, to have the supply in excess of the demand is injurious to all, employers and employed. all profit by increase in the competition for the purchase of labour, and all suffer from increased competition for the sale of it. we had occasion, but a little while since, to visit a factory in which were employed two hundred females of various ages, from fourteen to twenty, who were earning, on an average, three dollars per week, making a total of six hundred dollars per week, or thirty thousand dollars a year; or as much as would, buy five hundred thousand yards of cotton cloth. now supposing these two hundred females to represent one hundred families, it would follow that their labour produced five thousand yards of cloth per family, being probably three times as much in value as the total consumption of clothing by all its members, from, the parent down to the infant child. let us now suppose this factory closed; what then would be the value of the labour of these girls, few of whom have strength for field-work even if our habits of thought permitted that it should be so employed? it would be almost nothing, for they could do little except house-work, and the only effect of sending them home would be that, whereas one person, fully employed, performs now the labour of the house, it would henceforth be divided between two or three, all of whom would gradually lose the habit of industry they have been acquiring. the direct effect of this would be a diminution in the demand for female labour, and a diminution of its reward. while the factory continues in operation there is competition for the purchase of such labour. the parent desires to retain at least one child. a neighbour desires to hire another, and the factory also desires one. to supply these demands requires all the females of the neighbourhood capable of working and not provided with families of their own, and thus those who are willing to work have the choice of employers and employment; while the competition for the purchase of their services tends to raise the rate of wages. if, now, in the existing state of things, another factory were established in, the same neighbourhood, requiring a hundred or a hundred and fifty more females, the effect would be to establish increased competition for the purchase of labour, attended by increased power of choice on the part of the labourer, and increased reward of labour--and it is in this increased power of choice that freedom consists. if, on the contrary, the factories were closed, the reverse effect would be produced, the competition for the purchase of labour being diminished, with corresponding diminution of the power of choice on the part of the labourer, diminution in his compensation, and diminution of freedom. what is true with regard to the females of this neighbourhood is equally true with regard to the men, women, and children of the world. wherever there exists competition for the purchase of labour, there the labourer has his choice among employers, and the latter are not only required to pay higher wages, but they are also required to treat their workmen and workwomen with the consideration that is due to fellow-beings equal in rights with themselves: but wherever there is not competition for the purchase of labour, the labourer is compelled to work for any who are willing to employ him, and to receive at the hands of his employer low wages and the treatment of a slave, for slave he is. here is a plain and simple proposition, the proof of which every reader can test for himself. if he lives in a neighbourhood in which there exists competition for the purchase of labour, he knows that he can act as becomes a freeman in determining for whom he will work, and the price he is willing to receive for his services; but if he lives in one in which there is competition for the sale of labour, he knows well that it does not rest with him to determine either where he will work or what shall be his wages. where all are farmers, there can be no competition for the purchase of labour, except for a few days in harvest; but there must be competition for the sale of labour during all the rest of the year. of course, where all are farmers or planters, the man who has labour to sell is at the mercy of the few who desire to buy it, as is seen in our southern states, where the labourer is a slave; and in ireland, where his condition is far worse than that of the slaves of the south; and in india, where men sell themselves for long terms of years to labour in the west indies; and in portugal, where competition for the purchase of labour has no existence. where, on the contrary, there is a diversification of employments, there is a steady improvement in the condition of men, as they more and more acquire the power to determine for themselves for whom they will work and what shall be their reward, as is seen in the rapid improvement in the condition of the people of france, belgium, and germany, and especially of those of russia, where competition for the purchase of labour is increasing with wonderful rapidity. diversification of employment is absolutely necessary to produce competition for the purchase of labour. the shoemaker does not need to purchase shoes, nor does the miner need to buy coal, any more than the farmer needs to buy wheat or potatoes. bring them together, and combine with them the hatter, the tanner, the cotton-spinner, the maker of woollen cloth, and the smelter and roller of iron, and each of them becomes a competitor for the purchase of the labour, or the products of the labour, of all the others, and the wages of all rise with the increase of competition. in order that labour may be productive, it must be aided by machinery. the farmer could do little with his hands, but when aided by the plough and the harrow he may raise much wheat and corn. he could carry little on his shoulders, but he may transport much when aided by a horse and wagon, and still more when aided by a locomotive engine or a ship. he could convert little grain into flour when provided only with a pestle and mortar, but he may do much when provided with a mill. his wife could convert little cotton into cloth when provided only with a spinning-wheel and hand-loom, but her labour becomes highly productive when aided by the spinning-jenny and the power-loom. the more her labours and those of her husband are thus aided the larger will be the quantity of grain produced, the more speedily will it be converted into flour, the more readily will it be carried to market, the larger will be the quantity of cloth for which it will exchange, the greater will be the quantity of food and clothing to be divided among the labourers, and the greater will be the facility on the part of the labourer to acquire machinery of his own, and to become his own employer, and thus to increase that diversification in the employment of labour which tends to increase the competition for its purchase. it will next, we think, be quite clear to the reader that _the nearer_ the grist-mill is to the farm, the less will be the labour required for converting the wheat into flour, the more will be the labour that may be given to the improvement of the farm, and the greater will be the power of the farmer to purchase shoes, hats, coats, ploughs, or harrows, and thus to create a demand for labour. equally clear will it be that _the nearer_ he can bring the hatter, the shoemaker, and the tailor, the maker of ploughs and harrows, the less will be the loss of labour in exchanging his wheat for their commodities, and the greater will be his power to purchase books and newspapers, to educate his children, and thus to introduce new varieties in the demand for labour; and each such new variety in the demand for that commodity tends to raise the wages of those engaged in all other pursuits. if there be none but farmers, all are seeking employment on a farm. open a carpenter's or a blacksmith's shop, and the men employed therein will cease to be competitors for farm labour, and wages will tend to rise. open a mine, or quarry stone and build a mill, and here will be a new competition for labour that will tend to produce a rise in the wages of all labourers. build a dozen mills, and men will be required to get out timber and stone, and to make spindles, looms, and steam-engines; and when the mills are completed, the demand for labour will withdraw hundreds of men that would be otherwise competitors for employment in the ploughing of fields, the making of shoes or coats, and hundreds of women that would otherwise be seeking to employ themselves in binding shoes or making shirts. competition for the purchase of labour grows, therefore, with every increase in the diversification of employment, with constant tendency to increase in the reward of labour. it declines with every diminution in the modes of employing labour, with steady tendency to decline in wages. if the reader will now trace the course of man toward freedom, in the various nations of the world, he will see that his progress has been in the ratio of the growth of towns at which he and his neighbours could exchange the products of their labour, and that it has declined as the near towns have given way to the distant cities. the people of attica did not need to go abroad to effect their exchanges, and therefore they became rich and free; whereas the spartans, who tolerated nothing but agriculture, remained poor and surrounded by hosts of slaves. the towns and cities of italy gave value to the land by which they were surrounded, and freedom to the people by whom that land was cultivated. so was it in holland, and in belgium, and so again in england. in each and all of these land increased in value with every increase in the facility of exchanging its products for clothing and machinery, and with each step in this direction men were enabled more readily to maintain and to increase the power of the land, and to permit larger numbers to obtain increased supplies from the same surfaces. association thus increased the power of accumulating wealth, and wealth thus diminished in its power over labour, while with augmented numbers the people everywhere found an increase in their power to assert and to defend their rights. having reflected on the facts presented to him in the pages of history, and having satisfied himself that they are in perfect accordance with the views here presented, the reader will perhaps find himself disposed to admit, the correctness of the following propositions:-- i. that the nearer the market the less must be the cost to the farmer for transporting his products to market and for bringing back the manure to maintain and improve his land. ii. that the nearer the market the less must be the loss of labour in going to market, and the greater the quantity that can be given to the improvement of the land. iii. that the more the labour and manure that can be given to land, the larger will be the product and the greater its value. iv. that the larger the quantity of commodities produced the greater will be the demand for labour to be employed in converting them into forms that fit them for consumption, and the larger the quantity to be divided among the labourers. v. that the greater the competition for the purchase of labour the greater must be the tendency toward the freedom of the labourer. vi. that the freedom of man in thought, speech, action, and trade, tends thus to keep pace with increase in the habit of association among men, and increase in the value of land;--and vii. that the interests of the labourer and land-owner are thus in perfect harmony with each other, the one becoming free as the other becomes rich. equally correct will be found the following propositions:-- i. that the more distant the market the greater must be the cost to the farmer for transporting his products to market, the greater must be the difficulty of obtaining manure, and the more must his land be impoverished. ii. that the more distant the market the greater must be the loss of labour on the road, and the less the quantity that can be given to the improvement of the land. iii. that the less the labour and manure applied to the land the less must be the product, and the less its value. iv. that the longer this process is continued the poorer must become the land, until at length it ceases to have value, and must be abandoned. v. that the smaller the quantity of commodities produced the less must be the demand for labour to be employed in their conversion, and the less the quantity to be divided among the labourers. vi. that the less the competition for the purchase of labour the less must be the power of the labourer to determine for whom he will work, or what must be his reward, and the greater the tendency toward his becoming enslaved. vii. that the tendency toward slavery tends thus to keep pace with the decline in the habit of association among men, and the loss of value in land;--and viii. that thus the labourer and land-owner suffer together, the one becoming enslaved as the other becomes impoverished. if evidence be desired of the correctness of these propositions, it may found in the history of egypt, greece, rome, mexico, and of every other country that has declined in wealth and population. chapter viii. how man passes from wealth and freedom toward poverty and slavery. the views that have thus been presented are entirely in harmony those of the illustrious author of "the wealth of nations." "in seeking for employment to a capital," says dr. smith, "manufactures are, upon equal or nearly equal profits, naturally preferred to foreign commerce, for the same reason that agriculture is naturally preferred to manufactures. as the capital of the landlord or farmer is more secure than that of the manufacturer, so the capital of the manufacturer, being at all times more within his view and command, is more secure than that of the foreign merchant. in every period, indeed, of every society, the surplus part both of the rude and manufactured produce, or that for which there is no demand at home, must be sent abroad, in order to be exchanged for something for which there is some demand at home. but whether the capital which carries this surplus produce abroad be a foreign or domestic one, is of little importance." it is thus, in his estimation, of small importance whether the capital engaged in the work of transportation be foreign or domestic--the operations most essential to the comfort and improvement of man being, first, the production, and next, the conversion of the products of the land, by men occupying towns and cities placed among the producers. the nearer the market the less must be, as he clearly saw, the loss of transportation, and the greater the value of the land. if the number or the capital of those markets were insufficient for the conversion of all the rude produce of the earth, there would then be "considerable advantage" to be derived from the export of the surplus by the aid of foreign capital, thus leaving "the whole stock of the society" to be employed at home "to more useful purpose." these views are certainly widely different from those of modern economists, who see in tables of imports and exports the only criterion of the condition of society. commerce, by which is meant exchanges with distant people, is regarded as the sole measure of the prosperity of a nation; and yet every man is rejoiced when the market for his products is brought home to him, and he is thereby enabled to economize transportation and enrich his land by returning to it the elements of which-those products had been composed. "according to the natural course of things," says dr. smith, "the greater part of the capital of every growing society is, first, directed to agriculture, afterward to manufactures, and, last of all, to foreign commerce." this, says he, is in accordance with natural laws. as subsistence precedes luxuries, so must the production, of commodities precede their conversion or their exchange. "necessity imposes," he continues, "that order of things" which "is in every country promoted by the natural inclinations of man. if human institutions had never thwarted those natural inclinations, the towns could nowhere have increased beyond what the improvement and cultivation of the territory in which they were situated could support; till such time, at least, as the whole of that territory was completely cultivated and improved. upon equal, or nearly equal profits, most men will choose to employ their capitals rather in the improvement and cultivation of land, than either in manufactures or in foreign trade. the man who employs his capital in land, has it more under his view and command; and his fortune is much less liable to accidents than that of the trader, who is obliged frequently to commit it, not only to the winds and the waves, but to the more uncertain elements of human folly and injustice, by giving great credits, in distant countries, to men with whose character and situation he can seldom be thoroughly acquainted. the capital of the landlord, on the contrary, which is fixed in the improvement of his land, seems to be as well secured as the nature of human affairs can admit of. the beauty of the country, besides the pleasures of a country life, the tranquillity of mind which it promises, and, wherever the injustice of human laws does not disturb it, the independency which it really affords, have charms that, more or less, attract everybody; and as to cultivate the ground was the original destination of man, so, in every stage of his existence, he seems to retain a predilection for this primitive employment. "without the assistance of some artificers, indeed, the cultivation of land cannot be carried on, but with great inconveniency and continual interruption. smiths, carpenters, wheelwrights and ploughwrights, masons and bricklayers, tanners, shoemakers, and tailors, are people whose service the farmer has frequent occasion for. such artificers, too, stand occasionally in need of the assistance of one another; and as their residence is not, like that of the farmer, necessarily tied down to a precise spot, they naturally settle in the neighbourhood of one another, and thus form a small town or village. the butcher, the brewer, and the baker soon join them, together with many other artificers and retailers, necessary or useful for supplying their occasional wants, and who contribute still further to augment the town. the inhabitants of the town and those of the country are mutually the servants of one another. the town is a continual fair or market, to which the inhabitants of the country resort, in order to exchange their rude for manufactured produce. it is this commerce which supplies the inhabitants of the town, both with the materials of their work and the means of their subsistence. the quantity of the finished work which they sell to the inhabitants of the country, necessarily regulates the quantity of the materials and provisions which they buy. neither their employment nor subsistence, therefore, can augment, but in proportion to the augmentation of the demand from the country for finished work; and this demand can augment only in proportion to the extension of improvement and cultivation. had human institutions, therefore, never disturbed the natural course of things, the progressive wealth and increase of the towns would, in every political society, be consequential, and in proportion to the improvement and cultivation of the territory or country." the demand on the artisan "can augment only in proportion to the extension of improvement and cultivation." nothing can be more true. the interests of the farmer and the mechanic are in perfect harmony with each other. the one needs a market for his products, and the nearer the market the greater must be the produce of his land, because of his increased power to carry back to it the manure. the other needs a market for his labour, and the richer the land around him the greater will be the quantity of products to be offered in exchange for labour, and the greater his freedom to determine for himself for whom he will work and what shall be his wages. the combination of effort between the labourer in the workshop and the labourer on the farm thus gives value to land, and the more rapid the growth of the value of land the greater has everywhere been the tendency to the freedom of man. these views were opposed to those then universally prevalent. "england's treasure in foreign trade" had become "a fundamental maxim in the political economy, not of england only, but of all other commercial countries. the inland or home trade, the most important of all, the trade in which an equal capital affords the greatest revenue, and creates the greatest employment to the people of the country, was considered as subsidiary only to foreign trade. it neither brought money into the country, it was said, nor carried any out of it. the country, therefore, could never become richer or poorer by means of it, except as far as its prosperity or decay might indirectly influence the state of foreign trade." it was against this error chiefly that dr. smith cautioned his countrymen. he showed that it had led, and was leading, to measures tending to disturb the natural course of things in all the countries connected with england, and to produce among them a necessity, for trade while diminishing the power to maintain trade. "whatever tends," says he, "to diminish in any country the number of artificers and manufacturers, tends to diminish the home market, the most important of all markets, for the rude produce of the land, and thereby still further to discourage agriculture," and consequently to diminish the power of producing things with which to trade. he nowhere refers to the fact that any system which looks to compelling a nation to export raw produce, tends necessarily to the impoverishment of the land and its owner, and to the diminution, of the freedom of the labourer, and yet that such was the case could scarcely have escaped his observation. the tendency of the then existing english policy was, as he showed, to produce in various countries a necessity for exporting every thing in its rudest form, thus increasing the cost of transportation, while impoverishing the land and exhausting the people. the legislature had been, he said, "prevailed upon" to prevent the establishment of manufactures in the colonies, "sometimes by high duties, and sometimes by absolute prohibitions." in grenada, while a colony of france, every plantation had its own refinery of sugar, but on its cession to england they were all abandoned, and thus was the number of artisans diminished, to "the discouragement of agriculture." the course of proceeding relative to these colonies is thus described:-- "while great britain encourages in america the manufacturing of pig and bar iron, by exempting them from duties to which the like commodities are subject when imported from any other country, she imposes an absolute prohibition upon the erection of steel furnaces and slit-mills in any of her american plantations: she will not suffer her colonies to work in those more refined manufactures, even for their own consumption; but insists upon their purchasing of her merchants and manufactures all goods of this kind which they have occasion for. "she prohibits the exportation from one province to another by water, and even the carriage by land upon horseback, or in a cart, of hats, of wools, and woollen goods, of the produce of america; a regulation which effectually prevents the establishment of any manufacture of such commodities for distant sale, and confines the industry of her colonists in this way to such coarse and household manufactures as a private family commonly makes for its own use, or for that of some of its neighbours in the same province." his views, in regard to such measures, are thus given:-- "to prohibit a great people from making all they can of every part of their own produce, or from employing their stock and industry in a way that they judge most advantageous to themselves, is a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind." further to carry out this view of compelling the people of the colonies to abstain from manufacturing for themselves, and to carry their products to distant markets, to the exhaustion of the land and to the diminution of the value of labour, bounties were paid on the importation into england of various articles of raw produce, while the export of various raw materials, of artisans, and of machinery, was prohibited. the whole object of the system was, he said, to "raise up colonies of customers, a project," he added, "fit only for a nation of shopkeepers." indeed, he thought it "unfit even for a nation of shopkeepers," although "extremely fit for a nation whose government was influenced by shopkeepers." he was therefore entirely opposed to all such arrangements as the methuen treaty, by which, in consideration of obtaining the control of the market of portugal for the sale of her manufactures, great britain agreed to give to the wines of that country great advantage over those of france. against all the errors of the system, dr. smith, however, raised in vain his warning voice. "england's treasure" was, it was thought, to be found "in foreign trade," and every measure adopted by the government had in view the extension of that trade. with each new improvement of machinery there was a new law prohibiting its export. the laws against the export of artisans were enforced, and a further one prohibited the emigration of colliers. the reader will readily see that a law prohibiting the export of cotton or woollen machinery was precisely equivalent to a law to compel all the producers of wool or cotton to seek the distant market of england if they desired to convert their products into cloth. the inventors of machinery, and the artisans who desired to work it, were thus deprived of freedom of action, in order that foreigners might be made the slaves of those who controlled the spinning-jenny, the loom, and the steam-engine, in whose hands it was desired to centralize the control of the farmers and planters of the world. england was to be made "the workshop of the world," although her people had been warned that the system was not only unnatural, but in the highest degree unjust, and even more impolitic than unjust, because while tending to expel capital and labour from the great and profitable home market, it tended greatly to the "discouragement of agriculture" in the colonies and nations subjected to the system, and to prevent the natural increase of the smaller and less profitable distant market upon which she was becoming more and more dependent. by degrees the tendency of the system became obvious. bounties on the import of wood, and wool, and flax, and other raw materials, tended to "the discouragement of agriculture" at home, and bounties on the export of manufactures tended to drive into the work of converting, and exchanging the products of other lands the labour and capital that would otherwise have been applied to the work of production at home. the necessary consequence of this was, that the difficulty of obtaining these raw materials, instead of diminishing with the progress of population, tended to increase, and then it was, at the distance of a quarter of a century from the date of the publication of "_the wealth of nations_," that the foundation of the new school was laid by mr. malthus, who taught that all the distress existing in the world was the inevitable consequence of a great law of nature, which provided that food should increase only in arithmetical progression, while population might increase in geometrical progression. next came mr. ricardo, who furnished a law of the occupation of the earth, showing, and conclusively, as he supposed, that the work of cultivation was always commenced on the rich soils, yielding a large return to labour, and that as population increased, men were compelled to resort to others, each in succession less fertile than its predecessor--the consequence of which was that labour became daily less productive, the power to obtain food diminished, and the power to demand rent increased, the poor becoming daily poorer, weaker, and more enslaved, as the rich became richer and more powerful. next came the elder mill, who showed that, in obedience to the law thus propounded by mr. ricardo, the return to capital and labour applied to the work of cultivation must be "continually decreasing," and the annual fund from which sayings are made, continually diminishing. "the difficulty of making savings is thus," he adds, "continually augmented, and at last they must totally cease." he regarded it therefore as certain that "wages would be reduced so low that a portion of the population would regularly die from the consequences of want." in such a state of things, men sell themselves, their wives, or their children, for mere food. we see, thus, that the modern british theory looks directly to the enslavement of man. in this manner, step by step, did the british political economists pass from the school of adam smith, in which it was taught that agriculture preceded manufactures and commerce, the latter of which were useful to the extent that they aided the former,--to that new one in which was, and is, taught, that manufactures and commerce were the great and profitable pursuits of man, and that agriculture, because of the "constantly increasing sterility of the soil," was the least profitable of all. hence it is that we see england to have been steadily passing on in the same direction, and devoting all her energies to the prevention of the establishment, in any country of the world, of markets in which the raw produce of the land could be exchanged directly with the artisan for the products of his labour. for a time this prospered, but at length the eyes of the world were opened to the fact that they and their land were being impoverished as she was being enriched; and that the effect of the system was that of constituting herself _sole buyer_ of the raw products of their labour and their land, and _sole seller_ of the manufactured commodities to be given in exchange for them, with power to fix the prices of both; and thus that she was really acting in the capacity of mistress of the world, with power to impose taxes at discretion. by degrees, machinery and artisans were smuggled abroad, and new machinery was made, and other nations turned their attention more and more to manufacturing; and now it became necessary to make new exertions for the purpose of securing to england the monopoly she had so long enjoyed. to enable her to do this we find her at length throwing open her ports for the free admission of corn and numerous other of the raw products of the earth, free from the payment of any duty whatever, and thus offering to the various nations of the world a bounty on the further exhaustion of their land. the adoption of this measure would, it was supposed, induce prussia, austria, russia, and denmark, and all america, to devote themselves exclusively to the cultivation of the earth, abandoning all attempts at the creation of nearer places of exchange; and thus that all the world outside of england would become producers of raw materials to be carried to that single and distant market, there to be consumed or converted, and the refuse thereof to be deposited on the land of england. that such was the object of this measure was admitted by all. it was announced as a boon to the agriculturists of the world. how far it was calculated to be so, the reader may judge, after satisfying himself of the truth of the following propositions:-- i. that if there is to be but one place of exchange or manufacture for the world, all the rest of the people of the world must limit themselves to agriculture. ii. that this necessarily implies the absence of towns, or local places of exchange, and a necessity for resorting to a place of exchange far distant. iii. that the distance of the place of consumption from the place of production forbids the possibility of returning to the land any of the manure yielded by its products. iv. that this in turn implies the exhaustion of the land and the impoverishment of its owner. v. that the impoverishment of the land renders necessary a removal to new and more distant lands. vi. that this renders necessary a larger amount of transportation, while the impoverishment of the farmer increases the difficulty of making roads. vii. that the increased distance of the market produces a steadily increased necessity for limiting the work of cultivation to the production of those commodities which can be obtained from high and dry lands, and that the quantity of products tends therefore to diminish with the increased distance from market. viii. that with each step in the progress of exhausting the land, men are compelled to separate more widely from each other, and that there is therefore a steady diminution in the power of association for the making of roads, or the establishment of schools, and that the small towns, or near places of exchange, tend gradually toward depopulation and ruin. ix. that the more men separate from each other the less is the power to procure machinery, and the greater the necessity for cultivating the poorest soils, even though surrounded by lead, iron, and copper ore, coal, lime, and all other of the elements of which machinery is composed. x. that with the diminished power of association, children grow up uneducated, and men and women become rude and barbarous. xi. that the power to apply labour productively tends steadily to diminish, and that women, in default of other employment, are forced to resort to the field, and to become slaves to their fathers, husbands, and brothers. xii. that the power to accumulate capital tends likewise to diminish--that land becomes from day to day more consolidated--and that man sinks gradually into the condition of a slave to the landed or other capitalist. xiii. that with this steady passage of man from the state of a freeman to that of a slave, he has steadily less to sell, and can therefore purchase less; and that thus the only effect of a policy which compels the impoverishment of the land and its owner is to destroy the customer, who, under a different system of policy, might have become a larger purchaser from year to year. that the object of the present english policy is that of converting all the nations of the world into purely agricultural communities will not be denied; but as it may be doubted if the effects would be such as are here described, it is proposed now to inquire into the movement of some of the non-manufacturing communities of the world, with a view to determine if the facts observed are in correspondence with those that, reasoning _a priori_, we should be led to expect. before entering upon this examination, the reader is, however, requested to peruse the following extracts from "gee on trade," in which is described the former colonial system, and afterward the extract from a recent despatch of lord grey, late colonial secretary, with a view to satisfy himself how perfectly identical are the objects now sought to be attained with those desired by the statesmen of the last century, and denounced by adam smith. joshua gee-- . first--"manufactures in american colonies should be discouraged, prohibited." "great britain with its dependencies is doubtless as well able to subsist within itself as any nation in europe. we have an enterprising people, fit for all the arts of peace or war. we have provisions in abundance, and those of the best sort, and we are able to raise sufficient for double the number of inhabitants. we have the very best materials for clothing, and want nothing either for use or for luxury, but what we have at home, or might have from our colonies; so that we might make such an intercourse of trade among ourselves, or between us and them, as would maintain a vast navigation. but, we ought always to keep a watchful eye over our colonies, _to restrain them from setting up any of the manufactures which are carried on in great britain_; and any such attempts should be crushed in the beginning, for if they are suffered to grow up to maturity it will be difficult to suppress them." "our colonies are much in the same state as ireland was in when they began the woollen manufactory, _and as their numbers increase, will fall upon manufactures for clothing themselves, if due care be not taken to find employment_ for them in raising such productions as may enable them to furnish themselves with all the necessaries from us." "i should, therefore, think it worthy the care of the government to endeavour by all possible means to encourage them in the raising of silk, hemp, flax, iron, (_only pig, to be hammered in england_,) potash, &c., by giving them competent bounties in the beginning, and sending over skilful and judicious persons, at the public charge, to assist and instruct them in the most proper methods of management, which in my apprehension would lay a foundation for establishing the most profitable trade of any we have. and considering the commanding situation of our colonies along the seacoast, the great convenience of navigable rivers in all of them, the cheapness of land, and the easiness of raising provisions, great numbers of people would transport themselves thither to settle upon such improvements. now, as people have been filled with fears that the colonies, if encouraged to raise rough materials, would set up for themselves, a little regulation would be necessary; and as they will have the providing rough materials for themselves, a _little regulation_ would remove all those jealousies out of the way. they have never thrown or wove any silk, as yet, that we have heard of,--therefore, if a law was made prohibiting the use of any throwing mill, of doubling or throstling silk, with any machine whatever, they would then send it _to us raw_. and as they will have the providing rough materials to themselves, so shall we have the manufacturing of them. if encouragement be given for raising hemp, flax, &c., doubtless they will soon begin to manufacture, if not prevented. therefore, to stop the progress of any such manufacture, it is proposed that no _weaver_ have _liberty_ to set up any looms, without first registering at an office kept for that purpose, and the name and place of abode of any journeyman that shall work for him. but if any _particular inhabitant_ shall be inclined to have any linen or woollen made of their own spinning, they should not be abridged of the same liberty that they now make use of, namely to have a weaver who shall be _licensed_ by the governor, and have it wrought up for the use of the family, but not to be sold to any person in a private manner, nor exposed to any market or fair, upon pain of forfeiture." "that all slitting mills and engines for drawing wire, or weaving stockings, _be put down_." "that all negroes shall be prohibited from weaving either linen or woollen, or spinning or combing of wool, or working at any manufacture of iron, further than making it into pig or bar-iron. that they also be prohibited from manufacturing _hats, stockings, or leather of any kind_. this limitation will not abridge the planters of any liberty they now enjoy--on the contrary, it will then turn their industry to promoting and raising those rough materials." second--"the advantages to great britain from keeping the colonies dependent on her for their essential supplies." "if we examine into the circumstances of the inhabitants of our plantations, and our own, it will appear that _not one-fourth part of their product redounds to their own profit, for out of all that comes here, they only carry back clothing and other accommodations for their families_, all of which is of the merchandise and manufacture of this kingdom." "all these advantages we receive by the plantations, _besides the mortgages on the planters' estates and the high interest they pay us, which is very considerable_, and, therefore, very great care ought to be taken, in regulating all the affairs of the colonists, that the planters are not put under too many difficulties, but encouraged to go on cheerfully." "new england and the northern colonies have not commodities and products enough to send us in return for purchasing their necessary clothing, but are under very great difficulties; and, therefore, any ordinary sort sell with them,--and when they have _grown out of fashion with us, they are new-fashioned enough for them_." lord grey-- . "if, as has been alleged by the complainants, and as in some instances would appear to be the case, any of the duties comprised in the tariff have been imposed, not for the purpose of revenue, but with a view of protecting the interest of the canadian manufacturer, her majesty's government are clearly of opinion that such a course is injurious alike to the interests of the mother country and to those of the colony. canada possesses natural advantages for the production of articles which will always exchange in the markets of this country for those manufactured goods of which she stands in need. by such exchange she will obtain these goods much more cheaply than she could manufacture, them for herself, and she will secure an advantageous market for the _raw produce_ which she is best able to raise. on the other hand, by closing her markets against british manufactures, or _rendering their introduction more costly_, she enhances their price to the consumer, and by the imposition of protective duties, for the purpose of fostering an unnatural trade, she gives a wrong direction to capital, by withdrawing it from more profitable employment, and causing it to be invested in the manufacture of articles which might be imported at a cost below that of production in the colony, while at the same time she inflicts a blow on her export trade by rendering her markets less eligible to the british customer." "if the merchant finds that by exporting his goods to canada, they produce him in return a _large quantity of corn_, and thus yield a greater profit than they would if exported to any other country, he will of course give the preference to canada. but if by reason of increased import duties, those goods produce a diminished return the result will be either that the canadian farmer must submit to a proportionate reduction in the price of his produce, or the british manufacturer must resort to another market. it is, therefore, obvious, that it is not less the interest of canada herself than of great britain, that this tariff of import duties should undergo a careful revision." the phraseology of the two is different, but the object is the same--that of rendering it necessary to send all the raw products of the land to a market far distant, and thus depriving the farmer or planter of the power to return any portion of the loan made to him by the earth, and which she is always willing to renew, on the simple condition that when the borrower has used it, he shall return to the lender the elements of which it had been composed. chapter ix. how slavery grew, and how it is now maintained, in the west indies. the system described in the last chapter was fully carried out in the west india colonies. manufactures were so entirely interdicted from the date of their coming under the crown of great britain, that the colonists were not permitted even to refine their own sugar, and still less to convert their cotton into cloth. the necessary consequence was that women and children could have no employment but that of the field. this, of course, tended to sink both mother and child far lower in the scale of civilization than would have been the case had the lighter labour of conversion been associated with the more severe one of production. the next effect was, that as all were bound to remain producers of raw commodities, there could be no markets at hand, and no exchanges could be made except at a distance of thousands of miles. difficulties, too, arose in regard to the diversification of labour, even in agriculture itself. indigo was tried, but of the price for which it sold in england so large a portion was absorbed by ship-owners, commission merchants, and the government, that its culture was abandoned. coffee, was extensively introduced, and as it grows on higher and more salubrious lands its cultivation would have been of great advantage to the community; but here, as in the case of indigo, so small a portion of the price for which it sold was received by the producer that its production was about being abandoned, and was saved only by the government agreeing to reduce its claim to a shilling, or twenty-four cents, a pound. this amounted to about a hundred and eighty dollars per acre, the estimated produce being about pounds of merchantable coffee;[ ] and very much of it came out of the producer--the poor negro. how enormously burdensome such a tax must have been may be judged by the farmers who feel now so heavily the pressure of the malt duties; and it must always be borne in mind that the west india labourers were aided by the most indifferent machinery of production. by degrees these various taxes rendered necessary the abandonment of all cultivation but that of the sugar-cane, being of all others the most destructive of health, and as the whole population, men, women, and children, were limited to that single pursuit, we shall scarcely err in attributing to this fact the great waste of life recorded in a former chapter. commerce, too, was interdicted, except with great britain and her colonies; and this led to efforts at a smuggling trade with the spanish possessions on the continent; but this was brought to a close by the watchfulness of the ships of war.[ ] slaves, however, might be imported and exported, and this traffic was carried on a most extensive scale, most of the demand for the spanish colonies being supplied from the british islands. in , however, the colonial legislature, desirous to prevent the excessive importation of negroes, imposed a duty of £ per head, but this was petitioned against by the merchants of england, and the home government directed the discontinuance of the tax.[ ] at this period the annual export of sugar is stated,[ ] to have been , cwt., the gross sales of which, duty free, averaged £ s. d. per cwt., making a total of £ , , ,--so large a portion of which, however, was absorbed by freight, commissions, insurance, &e., that the net proceeds, of sugar estates are stated to have been only £ , , or less than £ each. if to the £ , thus deducted be added the share of the government, ( s. d. per cwt.,) and the further charges before the sugar reached the consumer, it will be seen that its grower could not have received more than one-fourth of the price at which it sold. the planter thus appears to have been little more than a superintendent of slaves, who were worked for the benefit of the merchants and the government of great britain, by whom was absorbed the lion's share of the produce of their labour. he was placed between the slave, whom he was obliged to support, on the one hand, and the mortgagee, the merchants, and the government, whom he was also obliged to support, on the other, and he could take for himself only what was left--and if the crop proved large, and prices fell, he was ruined. the consequences of this are seen in the fact that in twenty years following this period, there were sold for debt no less than estates, while remained unsold in the hands of creditors, and were wholly abandoned. seeing these things, it will not be difficult to understand the cause of the extraordinary waste of life exhibited in the british islands. the planter could exist, himself, only by overworking his people; and notwithstanding all his efforts, no less than out of estates changed hands by reason of failure in the short space of twenty years. whatever might be his disposition to improve the condition of the labourer, to do so was quite impossible while receiving for himself and them so small a portion of the price of his commodity. in the early years of the present century, land had become more valuable. the price of sugar had risen about per cent., and the planters were gradually extricating themselves from their difficulties; and a consequence of this was seen in a considerable amelioration of the condition of the slave, who was now much better fed, clothed, and otherwise provided for.[ ] slaves that had been as low as £ , average price, had risen to £ , at which the , in the island amounted to £ , , , and the real and personal property, exclusive of the slaves, was estimated at £ , , .[ ] how great, however, were the difficulties under which the planters still laboured, may be seen from the following extract, which, long as it is, is given because it illustrates so forcibly the destructive effects of the policy that looks to the prevention of that association which results from bringing the loom and the anvil to the side of plough and the harrow. "i have now to enter upon a painful part of my task, a part in which i am under the necessity of stating such circumstances as cannot but reflect disgrace on those who give rise to them, and from which the weakness, i will not use a harsher term, of the legislature, is but too apparent. these circumstances arise from the various modes of agency, such as that of the attorney of estates, mortgagee in possession, receiver in chancery, &c. the first of these characters requires a definition. by the word attorney, in this sense, is meant agent; and the duties annexed to his office are so similar to those of a steward in england, that were it not for the dissimilarity of executing them, and the dignity attendant upon the former, i should pronounce them one and the same, but _as this colonial stewardship is the surest road to imperial fortune_, men of property and distinguished situation push eagerly for it. attorneys are of two sorts; six per cent. attorneys, and salaried attorneys; the profits of the former arise from commissions of six per cent. on all the produce of an estate, and various interior resources; the latter are paid a certain stipend by some unincumbered proprietors, who have lately discovered that a steward in jamaica may be hired like a steward in england, by which several thousand pounds a year are saved, and instead of enriching their agents, are poured into their own coffers. the office of both is to attend to the estates of their employers, and to all their interests in the island, deputed to them that the proprietors themselves may live at home, that is to say, in europe. "of all the evils in the island of jamaica, which call for a remedy, and by means of which the most unjustifiable practices are continued, the first and most crying is that of the business of a certain description of attorneys of orphans, mortgagees in possession, trustees, executors, guardians, and receivers under the court of chancery; and these evils arise in a great measure from the unjust and impolitic law which allows six per cent. commission on the gross produce of the estates under their charge and direction. the iniquitous practices, screened, if not authorized by that law have long been too glaring to be unnoticed; and attempts have been made to reduce the commission, and to fix it on some more equitable principle; but unfortunately there have always been in the house of assembly too many of its members interested in benefits resulting from the present law to admit the adoption of the measure. that the interest of attorneys is not always the interest of those whose estates they hold is an undeniable fact, of which i think you will be convinced by the time you arrive at the conclusion of this letter. in many instances, too, this superior collateral interest militates against the happiness and amelioration of the state and condition of the slaves, which is now professed by the colonists to be an object of their most serious attention; and it proves not unfrequently the total ruin of the unfortunate planter, whose involved situation compels him to submit to the condition of consigning his estate to the management of an attorney appointed by his creditor, who is generally his merchant, and who throws the full legal advantages of his debtor's estate into the hands of his own agent in the island, to compensate for the economical bargain he makes for the management of his own concerns; a practice common also to trustees, guardians, &c. the law allowing such enormous commissions for services so inadequate, is also very defective in an important point; for it establishes no data for fixing the charge of this commission, which is never made according to the sales of sugar, for that is not soon, if ever known to the attorney. hence, in the different accounts, the charges are estimated on sugar at several prices, from s. per cwt. to s., and even s.; and in the same books of one and the same attorney, these charges are found to differ according to his connection with his employer, generally increasing in proportion to the distress of the property and of the proprietor. to form some notion of the advantages attending these appointments, and of their injurious tendency to involved proprietors, and even to their creditors, let us see what a receiver under the court of chancery can do. in the first place, it has not always been the practice to select him from among the inhabitants in the vicinity of the unfortunate estates, or from among the friends of the proprietor; he is frequently a resident in one of the towns, _with perhaps as little knowledge of the management of an estate as is possessed by the sweeper of the chancery office_; and indeed it would not be inapplicable to distinguish such receivers by the appellation of chancery-sweepers. these gentlemen seldom if ever see the estates which they are to direct, and have no other directions to give than, in a lumping way, to make as much sugar as possible, and to ship it, most likely to their own correspondents. _whatever the estates clear is so much in their hands, and of course the more money the better for them_; money takes root in every soil, and propagates itself a thousand ways; not a dollar of it therefore finds its way into the chancery chest, for the receiver having given security, the treasure is, by a common fiction in use, held to be fully as safe in his hands. while the different creditors of the estate are fighting the battle of priority, the receiver continues to direct the management of it, to ship the crop, and to take care of the money. at length a prior debt is established, and the creditor having gained the point, remains for a time satisfied; but finding, though his principal accumulates, that he receives nothing, he becomes clamorous for a sale. this may take place in five or six years time, when all pretexts for delay are worn out, and in the mean time the receiver takes care to have money, adequate to the simple sums received, turned over by his consignee or merchant to another hand, his banker's, to be ready to answer bills to be drawn _on his own account_, for which he must have a premium of from twelve to seventeen and a half per cent. the estate at last is advertised for sale by a master in chancery, in consequence of an order from the chancellor. the sale, however, is spun out, a year or two longer, till the creditor or his attorney begins to remonstrate with the master: stipulations for an amicable settlement ensue, that is, for an admission of the receiver's accounts such as they may be, and for time allowed him for payment of the mesne profits or balance in his hands; which agreed to, the sale is positively to take place _when the next crop is over_. the sale then is actually concluded, the accumulations of these annual funds go unperceived to the further propagation of wealth for the receiver; and the purchaser, who is no other than the prior creditor, is put in possession of _an estate in ruin, with a gang of negroes dispirited and miserable, who had been long sensible of their situation, conceiving themselves belonging to nobody_, and almost despairing of ever falling into the hands of a kind master, interested in their welfare and happiness. let us now turn to the attorney of a mortgagee in possession, and see what better he offers. the debt of the involved estate is due to a man of large property, or to a merchant; if to the former, he has a merchant to whom the consignment is of considerable value. it is immaterial what the debt is, an estate in possession of a mortgagee is generally made to pay full commissions to the attorney employed for it. in justice to all parties the most is to be made of the property, and it is soon found that the negroes upon it are not equal to the returns it is capable of making, consequently hired negroes are added to the plantation-gangs, to plant, weed, and take off the crop; the works are extended, to be adequate to the proposed increase; more stock, more carts are bought, more white people employed. to keep pace with these grand designs, _the poor plantation negroes are of course overworked_. what is the result? a great deal of sugar and rum is made, to the credit as well as profit of the attorney, and by which the merchant is benefited, as the consignments are augmented; but six per cent. interest on the principal, six per cent. on that interest by compound arithmetic become principal, six per cent. commissions, with the contingent charges for labour, improvements, stores, etc., absorb the whole produce, and the planter daily sinks under an accumulating debt, till he is completely ruined. _the greater the distress, the more the attorney fattens_; in a war, for instance, a considerable additional benefit occurs; he becomes lumber-merchant, and having the rum of the estate at his command, and perhaps a little sugar, though in the latter article he is usually restricted, as the disposal of it in the island would interfere with the loading of ships and consignments, he purchases wholesale cargoes, and retails them out to the estate at a large profit. staves bought by the attorney at £ per thousand, have been known to be sold to the estate for £ per thousand; and the cart belonging to the property has carried the rum to pay for them. _it is well known that the rum made upon an estate will seldom pay its contingent expenses, and that frequently bills are drawn on great britain to the amount of one thousand pounds, and sometimes two thousand pounds, for the excess of the contingencies over and above the amount of the sale of the rum_: here the attorney finds another avenue of amassing for himself. settling the excess from his own means, he appropriates the bills which it enabled him to draw to the purchase of the remainder of a cargo of negroes, after the best have been culled at the rate of from ninety to ninety-five pounds per head: these inferior negroes he disposes of to his dependent overseers, jobbers, doctors, tradesmen, distillers, and book-keepers, at forty or fifty pounds a head profit; nor is it without example, that the very estates on the credit of which some of the bills are drawn, have been supplied with negroes in the same manner, and at the same rate. this manoeuvre indeed is ventured only on estates of minors, whose trustees are merchants in great britain, ignorant of such practices; or may be, when they have committed the estates to the attorney, liable to the full advantages to be made of them, to compensate for the moderate allowance they give for the management of their own concerns. an island merchant, or according to the west india appellation, storekeeper, in great business, told a friend of mine, that he had sold a cargo of mules at eighteen pounds per head to an attorney, which were dispersed in separate spells of eight each to several estates, but that at the special instance of the purchaser, he had made out the bills of parcels at thirty pounds per head. this does not speak much in favour of the virtue of the storekeeper, but it must be observed that he would have lost his customer had he demurred, and would probably have been considered as righteous overmuch. there is a variety of smaller advantages enjoyed by the attorney, such as forming connections with butchers who may purchase the fatted cattle, with jobbers of negroes for the purpose of intermingling negroes at a proportionable profit, fattening horses, and a long _et cetera_. to the attorney the commanders of the ships in the trade look up with due respect, and as they are proper persons to speak of him to the merchant, their good-will is not neglected. to the involved planter their language often is, 'sir, i must have your sugars down at the wharf directly;' that is, your sugars are to make the lowest tier, to stand the chance of being washed out should the ship leak or make much water in a bad passage. when they address an attorney, they do not ask for sugars, but his favours, as to quantity and time; and his hogsheads form the upper tier."[ ] an examination made about this period proved that these persons, in number, held in charge sugar-works, producing about , hhds. of sugar, and , puncheons of rum, which at the selling prices of that day in england yielded about £ , , , upon which they were entitled to six per cent., or £ , . we have here a most extensive system of absenteeism, and absentees _must_ be represented by middlemen, having no interest in the slave or in the plantation, except to take from both all that can be taken, giving as little as possible back to either. why, however, did this absenteeism exist? why did not the owners of property reside on their estates? because the policy which looked to limiting the whole population, male and female, old and young, to the culture of sugar, and forbade even that the sugar itself should be refined on the island, effectually prevented the growth of any middle class that should form the population of towns at which the planter might find society that could induce him to regard the island as his home. such was not the case in the french islands, because the french government had not desired to prevent the weaker class of the population from engaging in the work of manufacture, as has been seen in the case of grenada, in which sugar was refined until the period of its surrender to the british arms.[ ] towns therefore grew up, and men of all descriptions came from france to make the islands _their home_; whereas the english colonists looked only to realizing a fortune and returning home to spend it. all this is fully shown in the following extract, in which is given a comparative view of the british and french islands immediately before the emancipation act of . "the houses have more of a european air than in our english colonies, and i must notice with praise the existence of four booksellers' shops, as large and well furnished as any second-rate ones in paris. the sight of books to sell in the west indies is like water in the desert, for books are not yet included in plantation stores for our islands. the cause is this. the french colonists, whether creoles or europeans, consider the west indies as their country; they cast no wistful looks toward france; they have not even a packet of their own; they marry, educate, and build in and for the west indies and the west indies alone. in our colonies it is quite different; except a few regular creoles to whom gratis rum and gratis coloured mothers for their children have become quite indispensable, every one regards the colony as a temporary lodging-place, where they must sojourn in sugar and molasses till their mortgage's will let them live elsewhere. they call england their home, though many of them have never been there; they talk of writing home and going home, and pique themselves more on knowing the probable result of a contested election in england than on mending their roads, establishing a police, or purifying a prison. the french colonist deliberately expatriates himself; the englishman never. if our colonies were to throw themselves into the hands of the north americans, as their enemies say that some of them wish to do, the planters would make their little triennial trips to new york as they now do to london. the consequence of this feeling is that every one, who can do so, maintains some correspondence with england, and when any article is wanted, he sends to england for it. hence, except in the case of chemical drugs, there is an inconsiderable market for an imported store of miscellaneous goods, much less for an assortment of articles of the same kind. a different feeling in martinique produces an opposite effect; in that island very little individual correspondence exists with france, and consequently there is that effectual demand for books, wines, jewelry, haberdashery, &c., in the colony itself, which enables labour to be divided almost as far as in the mother country. in st. pierre there are many shops which contain nothing but bonnets, ribbons, and silks, others nothing but trinkets and toys, others hats only, and so on, and there are rich tradesmen in st. pierre on this account. bridge town would rapidly become a wealthy place, if another system were adopted; for not only would the public convenience be much promoted by a steady, safe, and abundant importation, and separate preservation of each article in common request, but the demand for those articles would be one hundred-fold greater in bridge town itself than it now is on the same account in london, liverpool, or bristol, when impeded or divided and frittered away by a system of parcel-sending across the atlantic. supply will, under particular circumstances, create demand. if a post were established at barbadoes, or a steamboat started between the islands, a thousand letters would be written where there are one hundred now, and a hundred persons would interchange visits where ten hardly do at present. i want a book and cannot borrow it; i would purchase it instantly from my bookseller in my neighbourhood, but i may not think it worth my while to send for it over the ocean, when, with every risk, i must wait at the least three months for it. the moral consequences of this system are even more to be lamented than the economical, but i will say more about that at some other time."[ ] in another part of the same work, the writer says-- "schools for the children of the slaves are the first and chief step toward amelioration of condition and morals in every class of people in the west indies." here, however, the same difficulty had existed. for the same reason that no towns could arise there could be no schools, and the planter found himself forced to send his children to england to be educated; the consequence of which was that at his death his property passed into the hands of agents, and his successors having contracted a fondness for european and a dislike for colonial life, remained abroad, leaving their estates to go to ruin, while their people perished under the lash of men who had no other interest than to ship the largest quantity of sugar, molasses, and rum. all this was a natural result of the system that denied to the women and children the privilege of converting cotton into cloth, or of giving themselves to other in-door pursuits. the mechanic was not needed where machinery could not be used, and without him there could grow up neither towns nor schools. the reader will have remarked, in the first extract above given, that the export of rum generally brought the planter in debt, and yet the price paid for it by the consumers appears to have been nearly a million of pounds sterling--that is, the people of england gave of labour and its products that large sum in exchange for a certain product of the labouring people of jamaica, not a shilling of which ever reached the planter to be applied to the amelioration of the condition of his estate, or of the people upon it. the crop sold on its arrival at s. or s. d. a gallon, but the consumer paid for it probably s., which were thus divided:-- government, representing the british people at large... . ship-owners, wholesale and retail dealers, &c.......... . land-owner and labourer................................ . ---- . if we look to sugar, we find a result somewhat better, but of similar character. the english consumer gave for it s. worth of labour, and those shillings were nearly thus divided:-- government............................................. ship-owner, merchant, mortgagee, &c.................... land-owner and labourer................................ ---- the reader will now see that mr. _joshua gee_ was not exaggerating when he gave it as one of the recommendations of the colonial system that the colonists left in england three-fourths of all their products,[ ] the difference being swallowed up by those who made or superintended the exchanges. such was the result desired by those who compelled the planter to depend on a distant market in which to sell all he raised, and to buy all he and his people needed to consume. the more he took out of his land the more he exhausted it and the less he obtained for its products, for large crops made large freights, large charges for storage, and enormous collections by the government, while prices fell because of the size of the crop, and thus was he ruined while all others were being enriched. under such circumstances he could not purchase machinery for the improvement of his cultivation, and thus was he deprived of the power to render available the services of the people whom he was bound to support. master of slaves, he was himself a slave to those by whom the labours of himself and his workmen were directed, and it would be unfair to attribute to him the extraordinary waste of life resulting necessarily from the fact that the whole people were limited to the labours of the field. with inexhaustible supplies of timber, the island contained, even in , not a single sawmill, although it afforded an extensive market for lumber from abroad. yielding in the greatest abundance the finest fruits, there were yet no town's-people with their little vessels to carry them to the larger markets of this country, and for want of market they rotted under the trees. "the manufacturing resources of this island," says mr. bigelow, "are inexhaustible;" and so have they always been, but the people have been deprived of all power to profit by them, and for want of that power there was lost annually a greater amount of labour than would have paid, five times over, for the commodities for which they were compelled to look to the distant market. of those who did not perish, because of the necessity for an universal dependence on field employments, a large portion of the labour was then, as it now must be, utterly wasted. "for six or eight months of the year, nothing," says mr. bigelow, (notes, p. ,) "is done on the sugar or coffee plantations." "agriculture," he continues, "as at present conducted, does not occupy more than half their time." so was it fifty years ago, and it was because of the compulsory waste of labour and consequent small amount of productive power that there existed little opportunity for accumulating capital. population diminished because there could be no improvement of the condition of the labourer who, while thus limited in the employment of his time, was compelled to support not only himself and his master, but the agent, the commission-merchant, the ship-owner, the mortgagee, the retail trader, and the government, and this under a system that looked to taking every thing from the land and returning nothing to it. of the amount paid in by the british people for the products of the , black labourers of this island, the home government took no less than £ , , s. d.,[ ] or about eighteen millions of dollars, being almost sixty dollars per head, and this for merely superintending the exchanges. had no such claim been made on the product of the labour of those poor people, the consumer would have had his sugar cheaper, and this would have made a large consumption, and these eighteen millions would have been divided between the black labourer on the one hand and the white one on the other. it would be quite safe to assert that in that year each negro, old and young, male and female, contributed five pounds--$ --to the maintenance of the british government, and this was a heavy amount of taxation to be borne by a people limited entirely to agriculture and destitute of the machinery necessary for making even that productive. if now to this heavy burden be added the commissions, freights, insurance, interest, and other charges, it will readily be seen that a system of taxation so grinding could end no otherwise than in ruin; and that such was the tendency of things, was seen in the steady diminution of production. sugar, rum, coffee, hhds. puncheons. lbs. ------ ---------- ------- in the three years ending with , the average exports were, of , , , , whereas those of the three years ending with were only , , , , the system which looked to depriving the cultivator of the advantage of a market near at hand, to which he could carry his products, and from which he could carry home the manure and thus maintain the powers of his land, was thus producing its natural results. it was causing the slave to became from day to day more enslaved; and that such was the case is shown by the excess of deaths over births, as given in a former chapter. evidence of exhaustion was seen in every thing connected with the island. labour and land were declining in value, and the security for the payment of the large debt due to mortgagees in england was becoming less from year to year, as more and more the people of other countries were being driven to the work of cultivation because of the impossibility of competing with england in manufactures. sugar had declined to little more than a guinea a hundred-weight, and rum had fallen to little more than two shillings a gallon;[ ] and nearly the whole of this must have been swallowed up in commissions and interest. under such circumstances a great waste of life was inevitable; and therefore it is that we have seen importations of hundreds of thousands of black men, who have perished, leaving behind them no trace of their having ever existed. but on whom must rest the responsibility for a state of things so hideous as that here exhibited? not, surely, upon the planter, for he exercised no volition whatsoever. he was not permitted to employ his surplus power in refining his own sugar. he could not legally introduce a spindle or a loom into the island. he could neither mine coal nor smelt iron ore. he could not in any manner repay his borrowings from the land, and, as a matter of course, the loans he could obtain diminished in quantity; and then, small as they were, the chief part of what his commodities exchanged for was swallowed up by the exchangers and those who superintend the exchanges, exercising the duties of government. he was a mere instrument in their hands for the destruction of negro morals, intellect, and life; and upon them, and not upon him, must rest the responsibility for the fact that, of all the slaves imported into the island, not more than two-fifths were represented on the day of emancipation. nevertheless, he it was that was branded as the tyrant and the destroyer of morals and of life; and public opinion--the public opinion of the same people who had absorbed so large a portion of the product of negro labour--drove the government to the measure of releasing the slave from compulsory service, and appropriating a certain amount to the payment, first, of the mortgage debts due in england, and, second, of the owner, who, even if he found his land delivered to him free of incumbrance, was in most cases left without a shilling to enable him to carry on the work of his plantation. the slaves were set free, but there existed no capital to find them employment, and from the moment of emancipation it became almost impossible to borrow money on mortgage security. the consequences are seen in the extensive abandonment of land and the decline of its value. any quantity of it may be purchased, prepared for cultivation, and as fine as any in the island, for five dollars an acre, while other land, far more productive than any in new england, may be had at from fifty cents to one dollar. with the decline in the value of land the labourer tends toward barbarism, and the reason of this may be found on a perusal of the following paragraph:-- "they have no new manufactories to resort to when they are in want of work; no unaccustomed departments of mechanical or agricultural labour are open to receive them, to stimulate their ingenuity and reward their industry. when they know how to ply the hoe, pick the coffee-berry, and tend the sugar-mills, they have learned almost all the industry of the island can teach them. if, in the sixteen years during which the negroes have enjoyed their freedom, they have made less progress in civilization than their philanthropic champions have promised or anticipated, let the want i have suggested receive some consideration. it may be that even a white peasantry would degenerate under such influences. reverse this, and when the negro has cropped his sugar or his coffee, create a demand for his labour in the mills and manufactories of which nature has invited the establishment on this island, and before another sixteen years would elapse the world would probably have some new facts to assist them in estimating the natural capabilities of the negro race, of more efficiency in the hands of the philanthropist than all the appeals which he has ever been able to address to the hearts or the consciences of men." _bigelow's jamaica_, p. . the artisan has always been the ally of the agriculturist in his contest with the trader and the government, as is shown in the whole history of the world. the first desires to tax him by buying cheaply and selling dearly. the second desires to tax him for permitting him to make his exchanges, and the more distant the place of exchange, the greater the power of taxation. the artisan comes near to him, and enables him to have the raw materials combined on the spot, the producer of them exchanging directly with the consumer, paying no tax for the maintenance of ship-owners, commission merchants, or shopkeepers. in a piece of cloth, says adam smith, weighing eighty pounds, there are not only more than eighty pounds of wool, but also "several thousand weight of corn, the maintenance of the working people," and it is the wool and the corn that travel cheaply in the form of cloth. what, however, finally becomes of the corn? although eaten, it is not destroyed. it goes back again on the land, which becomes enriched; and the more that is taken from it; the more there is to be returned, the more it is enriched, the larger are the crops, and the greater is the ability of the farmer to make demands on the artisan. the reward of the latter increases with the growth in the value of the land and with the increase in the wealth of the land-owners by whom he is surrounded; and thus it is that all grow rich and free together, and that the community acquires from year to year power to resist attempts at taxation beyond that really needed for the maintenance of the rights of person and property. the greater the power to make exchanges at home, the greater will always be found the freedom of man in relation to thought, speech, action, and trade, and the greater the value of land. the object of the policy pursued toward the colonies was directly the reverse of all this, tending to prevent any diversification whatsoever of employments, and thus not only to prevent increase in the value of land, but to diminish its value, because it forbade the return to the earth of any portion of its products. it forbade association, because it limited the whole people to a single pursuit. it forbade the immigration of artisans, the growth of towns, the establishment of schools, and consequently forbade the growth of intellect among the labourers or their owners. it forbade the growth of population, because it drove the women and the children to the culture of sugar among the richest and most unhealthy soils of the islands. it thus impoverished the land and its owners, exterminated the slave, and weakened the community, thus making it a mere instrument in the hands of the people who effected and superintended the exchanges--the merchants and the government--the class of persons that, in all ages, has thriven at the cost of the cultivator of the earth. by separating the consumer from the producer, they were enabled, as has been shown, to take to themselves three-fourths of the whole sales of the commodities consumed, leaving but one-fourth to be divided between the land and labour that had produced it. they, of course, grew strong, while the sugar-producing land and labour grew weak, and the weaker they became, the less was the need for regarding the rights of either. in this state of things it was that the landholder was required to accept a fixed sum of money as compensation for relinquishing his claim to demand of the labourer the performance of the work to which he had been accustomed. unfortunately, however, the system pursued has effectually prevented that improvement of feeling and taste needed to produce in the latter desires for any thing beyond a sufficiency of food and a shirt. towns and shops not having grown, he had not been accustomed even to see the commodities that tempted his fellow-labourers in the french islands. schools not having existed, even for the whites, he had acquired no desire for books for himself, or for instruction for his children. his wife had acquired no taste for dress, because she had been limited to field labour. suddenly emancipated from control, they gratified the only desire that had been permitted to grow up in them--the love of perfect idleness, to be indulged to such extent as was consistent with obtaining the little food and clothing needed for the maintenance of existence. widely different would have been the state of affairs had they been permitted to make their exchanges at home, giving the cotton and the sugar for the cloth and the iron produced by the labour and from the soil of the island. the producer of the sugar would then have had all the cloth given for it by the consumer, instead of obtaining one-fourth of it, and then the land would have increased in value, the planter would have grown rich, and the labourer would have become free, by virtue of a great natural law which provides that the more rapid the augmentation of wealth, the greater must be the demand for labour, the greater must be the _quantity_ of commodities produced by the labourer, the larger must be his _proportion_ of the product, and the greater must be the tendency toward his becoming a free man and himself a capitalist.[ ] as a consideration for abstaining from converting their own sugar and cotton into cloth, it had been provided that their products should enjoy certain advantages in the ports of the mother country; and the understanding at the date of emancipation was that the free negro should continue in the enjoyment of the same privileges that had been allowed to the slave and his master. it was soon, however, discovered that the negro, having scarcely any desire beyond the food that could be obtained from a little patch of land, would not work, and that, consequently, the supply of sugar was reduced, with a large increase of price, and that thus the ship-owner suffered because of diminished freights, the merchant because of reduced consumption, and the government because of reduced revenue. instead of obtaining, as before, one-fourth of the product, the cultivator had now perhaps one-half, because the taxes did not rise with the rise of price. nevertheless, the land-owners and labourers of the island were weaker than before, for all power of association had disappeared; and now it was that the trader and the government discovered that if they would continue to draw from the sugar producers of the world their usual supplies of public and private revenue, they must resort again to slave labour, putting the poor free negro of jamaica, with his exhausted soil, on the same footing with the slave of brazil and cuba, on a virgin soil; and this, too, at a moment when the science of europe had triumphed over the difficulty of making sugar cheaply from the beet-root, and germany, france, and belgium were threatening to furnish supplies so abundant as almost to exclude the produce of the cane. they, too, had the sugar-refinery close at hand, whereas the poor free negro was not permitted to refine his product, _nor is he so even now_, although it is claimed that sugar might still be grown with advantage, were he permitted to exercise even that small amount of control over his labour and its products. what was the character of the machinery with which they were to enter on this competition will be seen by the following extract:-- "i could not learn that there were any estates on the island decently stocked with implements of husbandry. even the modern axe is not in general use; for felling the larger class of trees the negroes commonly use what they call an axe, which is shaped much like a wedge, except that it is a little wider at the edge than at the opposite end, at the very extremity of which a perfectly straight handle is inserted. a more awkward thing for chopping could not be well conceived--at least, so i thought until i saw the instrument in yet more general use about the houses in the country, for cutting firewood. it was, in shape, size, and appearance, more like the outer half of the blade of a scythe, stuck into a small wooden handle, than any thing else i can compare it to: with this long knife, for it is nothing else, i have seen negroes hacking at branches of palm for several minutes, to accomplish what a good wood-chopper, with an american axe, would finish at a single stroke. i am not now speaking of the poorer class of negro proprietors, whose poverty or ignorance might excuse this, but of the proprietors of large estates, which have cost their thousands of pounds."[ ] cuba, too, had its cities and its shops, and these it had because the spanish government had not desired to compel the people of the island to limit themselves to cultivation alone. manufactures were small in extent, but they existed; and the power to make exchanges on the spot had tended to prevent the growth of absenteeism. the land-owners were present to look after their estates, and every thing therefore tended toward improvement and civilization, with constantly increasing attraction of both capital and labour. jamaica, on the contrary, had but a seaport so poor as not to have a single foot of sidewalk paved, and of which three-fourths of the inhabitants were of the black race; and among them all, blacks and whites, there were no mechanics. in the capital of the island, spanishtown, with a population of , there was not to be found, in , a single shop, nor a respectable hotel, nor even a dray-cart;[ ] and in the whole island there was not a stage, nor any other mode of regular conveyance, by land or water, except on the little railroad of fifteen miles from kingston to the capital.[ ] such was the machinery of production, transportation, and exchange, by aid of which the free people of jamaica were to maintain "unlimited competition" with cuba, and its cities, railroads, and virgin soil, and with europe and its science. what is to be the ultimate result may be inferred from the following comparative view of the first four years of the century, and the last four for which we have returns:-- sugar, rum, coffee, hhds. puncheons. lbs. ------ ---------- ------- to , average export, , , , , to , average export , , , , the consequence of this is seen in the fact that it requires the wages of two men, for a day, to pay for a pound of butter, and of two women to pay for a pound of ham, while it would need the labour of eighty or a hundred men, for a day, to pay for a barrel of flour.[ ] the london _times_ has recently stated that the free labourer now obtains less food than he did in the days of slavery, and there appears no reason to doubt the accuracy of its information. this view would, indeed, seem to be fully confirmed by the admission, in the house of commons, that the cost of sugar "in labour and food" is less now than it was six years since.[ ] how indeed can it be otherwise? the object sought for is cheap sugar, and with a view to its attainment the production of sugar is stimulated in every quarter; and we all know that the more that is produced the larger will be the quantity poured into the market of england, and the greater will be the power of the people of that country to dictate the terms upon which they will consent to consume it. extensive cultivation and good crops produce low prices, high freights, large commissions, and large revenue; and when such crops are made the people of england enjoy "cheap sugar" and are "prosperous," but the slave is rendered thereby more a slave, obtaining less and less food in return for his labour. nevertheless, it is in that direction that the whole of the present policy of england points. the "prosperity" of her people is to be secured by aid of cheap sugar and high-priced cloth and iron; and the more exclusively the people of india and of brazil can be forced to devote themselves to the labours of the field, the cheaper will be sugar and the greater will be the tendency of cloth and iron to be dear. what, however, becomes of the poor free negro? the more sugar he sends the more the stocks accumulate, and the lower are the prices, and the smaller is his power to purchase clothing or machinery, as will now be shown. the london _economist_, of november , furnishes the following statement of stocks and prices of sugar in the principal markets of europe:-- . . . . ----- ----- ----- ----- stocks.... cwt.. , , , , , , , , prices--duty free. havana brown... to s. to s. to s. to s. brazil brown... to s. to s. to s. to s. the stocks of and were, as we see, nearly alike, and the prices did not greatly differ. taking them, therefore, as the standard, we see that a _diminution_ of supply so small as to cause a diminution of stock to the extent of about , cwts., or only _about three per cent. of the import_, added about _fifteen per cent._ to the prices of the whole crop in ; whereas a similar _excess_ of supply in caused a reduction of prices almost as great. the actual quantity received in europe in the first ten months of the last year had been , cwts. less than in the corresponding months of the previous one. the average monthly receipts are about a million of cwts. per month, and if we take the prices of those two years as a standard, the following will be the result:-- ...... , , cwts. average s. d.... £ , , ...... , , " " s. d.... , , ---------- gain on short crop ............................. , , if now we compare with , the following is the result:-- as above .................................. , , ...... , , cwts. average s. d.... , , ---------- , , now if this reduction of export had been a consequence of increased domestic consumption, we should have to add the value of that million to the product, and this would give............................. , , ---------- £ , , ========== we have here a difference of thirty per cent., resulting from a diminution of export to the amount of one-twelfth of the export to europe, and not more than a twenty-fourth of the whole crop. admitting the crop to have been , , of cwts., and it must have been more, the total difference produced by this abstraction of four per cent. from the markets of europe would be more than six millions of pounds, or thirty millions of dollars. such being the result of a difference of four per cent., if the people of cuba, brazil, india, and other countries were to turn some of their labour to the production of cloth, iron, and other commodities for which they are now wholly dependent on europe, and thus diminish their necessity for export to the further extent of two per cent., is it not quite certain that the effect would be almost to double the value of the sugar crop of the world, to the great advantage of the free cultivator of jamaica, who would realize more for his sugar, while obtaining his cloth and his iron cheaper? if he could do this would he not become a freer man? is not this, however, directly the reverse of what is sought by those who believe the prosperity of england to be connected with cheap sugar, and who therefore desire that competition for the sale of sugar should be _unlimited_, while competition, for the sale of cloth is to be _limited_? "unlimited competition" looks to competition for the sale of raw produce in the markets of england, and to the destruction of any competition with england for the sale of manufactured goods; and it is under this system that the poor labourer of jamaica is being destroyed. he is now more a slave than ever, because his labour yields him less of the necessaries and comforts of life than when a master was bound to provide for him. such is a brief history of west india slavery, from its commencement to the present day, and from it the reader will be enabled to form an estimate of the judgment which dictated immediate and unconditional emancipation, and of the humanity that subsequently dictated unlimited freedom of competition for the sale of sugar. that of those who advocated emancipation vast numbers were actuated by the most praise worthy motives, there can be no doubt; but unenlightened enthusiasm has often before led almost to crime, and it remains to be seen if the impartial historian, will not, at a future day, say that such has been here the case. as regards the course which has been since pursued toward these impoverished, ignorant, and, defenceless people, he will perhaps have less difficulty; and it is possible that in recording it, the motives which led to it, and the results, he may find himself forced to place it among crimes of the deepest dye. chapter x. how slavery grew and is maintained in the united states. the first attempt at manufacturing any species of cloth in the north american provinces produced a resolution on the part of the house of commons, [ ,] that "the erecting of manufactories in the colonies had a tendency to lessen their dependence on great britain." soon afterward complaints were made to parliament that the colonists were establishing manufactories for themselves, and the house of commons ordered the board of trade to report on the subject, which was done at great length. in , the exportation of hats from province to province was prohibited, and the number of apprentices to be taken by hatters was limited. in the erection of any mill or other engine for splitting or rolling iron was prohibited; but pig iron was allowed to be imported into england duty free, that it might there be manufactured and sent back again. at a later period, lord chatham declared that he would not permit the colonists to make even a hobnail for themselves--and his views were then and subsequently carried into effect by the absolute prohibition in of the export of artisans, in of woollen machinery, in of cotton machinery and artificers in cotton, in of iron and steel-making machinery and workmen in those departments of trade, and in by the prohibition of the export of colliers, lest other countries should acquire the art of mining coal. the tendency of the system has thus uniformly been-- i. to prevent the application of labour elsewhere than in england to any pursuit but that of agriculture, and thus to deprive the weaker portion of society--the women and children--of any employment but in the field. ii. to compel whole populations to produce the same commodities, and thus to deprive them of the power to make exchanges among themselves. iii. to compel them, therefore, to export to england all their produce in its rudest forms, at great cost of transportation. iv. to deprive them of all power of returning to the land the manure yielded by its products, and thus to compel them to exhaust their land. v. to deprive them of the power of associating together for the building of towns, the establishment of schools, the making of roads, or the defence of their rights. vi. to compel them, with every step in the process of exhausting the land, to increase their distances from each other and from market. vii. to compel the waste of all labour that could not be employed in the field. viii. to compel the waste of all the vast variety of things almost valueless in themselves, but which acquire value as men are enabled to work in combination with each other.[ ] ix. to prevent increase in the value of land and in the demand for the labour of man; and, x. to prevent advance toward civilization and freedom. that such were the tendencies of the system was seen by the people of the colonies. "it is well known and understood," said franklin, in , "that whenever a manufacture is established which employs a number of hands, it raises the value of lands in the neighbouring country all around it, partly by the greater demand near at hand for the produce of the land, and partly from the plenty of money drawn by the manufactures to that part of the country. it seems, therefore," he continued, "the interest of all our farmers and owners of lands, to encourage our young manufactures in preference to foreign ones imported among us from distant countries." such was the almost universal feeling of the country, and to the restriction on the power to apply labour was due, in a great degree, the revolution. the power to compel the colonists to make all their exchanges abroad gave to the merchants of england, and to the government, the same power of taxation that we see to have been so freely exercised in regard to sugar. in a paper published in , in the london general advertiser, it was stated that virginia then exported , hhds. of tobacco, producing £ , , of which the ship-owner, the underwriter, the commission merchant, and the government took £ , , leaving to be divided between the land-owner and labourer only £ , , or about eighteen per cent., which is less even than the proportion stated by _gee_, in his work of that date. under such circumstances the planter could accumulate little capital to aid him in the improvement of his cultivation. the revolution came, and thenceforward there existed no legal impediments to the establishment of home markets by aid of which the farmer might be enabled to lessen the cost of transporting his produce to market, and his manure from market, thus giving to his land some of those advantages of situation which elsewhere add so largely to its value. the prohibitory laws had, however, had the effect of preventing the gradual growth of the mechanic arts, and virginia had no towns of any note, while to the same circumstances was due the fact that england was prepared to put down all attempts at competition with her in the manufacture of cloth, or of iron. the territory of the former embraced forty millions of acres, and her widely scattered population amounted to little more than , . at the north, some descriptions of manufacture had grown slowly up, and the mechanics were much more numerous, and towns had gradually grown to be very small cities; the consequence of which was that the farmer there, backed by the artisan, always his ally, was more able to protect himself against the trader, who represented the foreign manufacturer. everywhere, however, the growth of manufactures was slow, and everywhere, consequently, the farmer was seen exhausting his land in growing wheat, tobacco, and other commodities, to be sent to distant markets, from which no manure could be returned. with the exhaustion of the land its owners became, of course, impoverished, and there arose a necessity for the removal of the people who cultivated it, to new lands, to be in turn exhausted. in the north, the labourer thus circumstanced, _removed himself_. in the south, he had _to be removed_. sometimes the planter abandoned his land and travelled forth with all his people, but more frequently he found himself compelled to part with some of his slaves to others; and thus has the domestic slave trade grown by aid of the exhaustive process to which the land and its owner have been subjected. the reader may obtain some idea of the extent of the exhaustion that has taken place, by a perusal of the following extracts from an address to the agricultural society of albemarle county, virginia, by one of the best authorities of the state, the hon. andrew stevenson, late speaker of the house of representatives, and minister to england. looking to what is the "real situation" of things, the speaker asks-- "is there an intelligent and impartial man who can cast his eyes over the state and not be impressed with the truth, deplorable as it is afflicting, that the produce of most of our lands is not only small in proportion to the extent in cultivation, but that the lands themselves have been gradually sinking and becoming worse, under a most defective and ruinous system of cultivation?" "the truth is," he continues, "we must all feel and know that the spirit of agricultural improvement has been suffered to languish too long in virginia, and that it is now reaching a point, in the descending scale, from which, if it is not revived, and that very speedily, our state must continue not only third or fourth in population, as she now is, but consent to take her station among her smaller sisters of the union." the cause of this unhappy state of things he regards as being to be found in "a disregard of scientific knowledge" and "a deep-rooted attachment to old habits of cultivation," together with the "practice of hard cropping and injudicious rotation of crops, leading them to cultivate more land than they can manure, or than they have means of improving;" and the consequences are found in the fact that in all the country east of the blue ridge, the average product of wheat "does not come up to seven bushels to the acre," four of which are required to restore the seed and defray the cost of cultivation, leaving to the land-owner for his own services and those of a hundred acres of land, three hundred bushels, worth, at present prices, probably two hundred and seventy dollars! even this, however, is not as bad an exhibit as is produced in reference to another populous district of more than a hundred miles in length--that between lynchburg and richmond--in which the product is estimated at _not exceeding six bushels to the acre_! under such circumstances, we can scarcely be surprised to learn from the speaker that the people of his great state, where meadows abound and marl exists in unlimited quantity, import potatoes from the poor states of the north, and are compelled to be dependent upon them for hay and butter, the importers of which realize fortunes, while the farmers around them are everywhere exhausting their land and obtaining smaller crops in each successive year. why is this so? why should virginia import potatoes and hay, cheese and butter? an acre of potatoes may be made to yield four hundred bushels, and meadows yield hay by tons, and yet her people raise wheat, of which they obtain six or seven bushels to the acre, and corn, of which they obtain fifteen or twenty, and with the produce of these they buy butter and cheese, pork and potatoes, which yield to the producer five dollars where they get one--and import many of these things too, from states in which manufacturing populations abound, and in which all these commodities should, in the natural course of things, be higher in price than in virginia, where all, even when employed, are engaged in the cultivation of the soil. the answer to these questions is to be found in the fact that the farmers and planters of the state can make no manure. they raise wheat and corn, which they send elsewhere to be consumed; and the people among whom it is consumed put the refuse on their own lands, and thus are enabled to raise crops that count by tons, which they then exchange with the producers of the wheat produced on land that yields six bushels to the acre. "how many of our people," continues the speaker, "do we see disposing of their lands at ruinous prices, and relinquishing their birthplaces and friends, to settle themselves in the west; and many not so much from choice as from actual inability to support their families and rear and educate their children out of the produce of their exhausted lands--once fertile, but rendered barren and unproductive by a ruinous system of cultivation. "and how greatly is this distress heightened, in witnessing, as we often do, the successions and reverses of this struggle between going and staying, on the part of many emigrants. and how many are there, who after removing, remain only a few years and then return to seize again upon a portion of their native land, and die where they were born. how strangely does it remind us of the poor shipwrecked mariner, who, touching in the midst of the storm the shore, lays hold of it, but is borne seaward by the receding wave; but struggling back, torn and lacerate, he grasps again the rock, with bleeding hands, and still clings to it, as a last and forlorn hope. nor is this to be wondered at. perhaps it was the home of his childhood--the habitation of his fathers for past generations--the soil upon which had been expended the savings and nourishment, the energies and virtues of a long life--'the sweat of the living, and the ashes of the dead.' "oh! how hard to break such ties as these. "this is no gloomy picture of the imagination; but a faithful representation of what most of us know and feel to be true. who is it that has not had some acquaintance or neighbour--some friend, perhaps some relative, forced into this current of emigration, and obliged from necessity, in the evening, probably, of a long life, to abandon his state and friends, and the home of his fathers and childhood, to seek a precarious subsistence in the supposed el dorados of the west?" this is a terrible picture, and yet it is but the index to one still worse that must follow in its train. well does the hon. speaker say that-- "there is another evil attending this continual drain of our population to the west, next in importance to the actual loss of the population itself, and that is, its tendency to continue and enlarge our wretched system of cultivation. "the moment some persons feel assured that for present gain they can exhaust the fertility of their lands in the old states, and then abandon them for those in the west, which, being rich, require neither the aid of science nor art, the natural tendency is at once to give over all efforts at improvement themselves, and kill their land as quickly as possible--then sell it for what it will bring or abandon it as a waste. and such will be found to be the case with too many of the emigrants from the lowlands of virginia." another distinguished virginian, mr. ruffin, in urging an effort to restore the lands that have been exhausted, and to bring into activity the rich ones that have never been drained, estimates the advantages to be derived by lower virginia alone at $ , , . "the strength, physical, intellectual, and moral, as well as the revenue of the commonwealth, will," he says, "soon derive new and great increase from the growing improvements of that one and the smallest of the great divisions of her territory, which was the poorest by natural constitution--still more, the poorest by long exhausting tillage--its best population gone or going away, and the remaining portion sinking into apathy and degradation, and having no hope left except that which was almost universally entertained of fleeing from the ruined country and renewing the like work of destruction on the fertile lands of the far west." if we look farther south, we find the same state of affairs. north carolina abounds in rich lands, undrained and uncultivated, and coal and iron ore abound. her area is greater than that of ireland, and yet her population is but , ; and it has increased only , in twenty years, and, from to ; the increase was only , . in south carolina, men have been everywhere doing precisely what has been described in reference to virginia; and yet the state has, says governor seabrook, in his address to the state agricultural society, "millions of uncleared acres of unsurpassed fertility, which seem to solicit a trial of their powers from the people of the plantation states." * * "in her borders," he continues, "there is scarcely a vegetable product essential to the human race that cannot be furnished." marl and lime abound, millions of acres of rich meadow-land remain in a state of nature, and "the seashore parishes," he adds, "possess unfailing supplies of salt mud, salt grass, and shell-lime." so great, nevertheless, was the tendency to the abandonment of the land, that in the ten years from to the white population increased but and the black but , , whereas the natural increase would have given , ! allowing virginia, at the close of the revolution, , people, she should now have, at the usual rate of increase, and excluding all allowance for immigration, , , , or one to every ten acres; and no one at all familiar with the vast advantages of the state can doubt her capability of supporting more than thrice that number.[ ] nevertheless, the total number in was but , , , and the increase in twenty years had been but , , when it should have been , , . if the reader desire to know what has become of all these people, he may find most of them among the millions now inhabiting alabama and mississippi, louisiana, texas, and arkansas; and if he would know why they are now there to be found, the answer to the question may be given in the words--"they borrowed from the earth, and they did not repay, and therefore she expelled them." it has been said, and truly said, that "the nation which commences by exporting food will end by exporting men." when men come together and combine their efforts, they are enabled to bring into activity all the vast and various powers of the earth; and the more they come together, the greater is the value of land, the greater the demand, for labour, the higher its price, and the greater the freedom of man. when, on the contrary, they separate from each other, the greater is the tendency to a decline in the value of land, the less is the value of labour, and the less the freedom of man. such being the case, if we desire to ascertain the ultimate cause of the existence of the domestic slave trade, it would seem to be necessary only to ascertain the cause of the exhaustion of the land. the reason usually assigned for this will be found in the following passage, extracted from one of the english journals of the day;-- "the mode of agriculture usually coincident with the employment of slave labour is essentially exhaustive, and adapted therefore only to the virgin-richness of a newly-colonized soil. the slave can plant, and dig, and hoe: he works rudely and lazily with rude tools: and his unwilling feet tread the same path of enforced labour day after day. but slave labour is not adapted to the operations of scientific agriculture, which restores its richness to a wornout soil; and it is found to be a fact that the planters of the northern slave states, as, _e.g._, virginia, gradually desert the old seats of civilization, and advance further and further into the yet untilled country. tobacco was the great staple of virginian produce for many years after that beautiful province was colonized by englishmen. it has exhausted the soil; grain crops have succeeded, and been found hardly less exhaustive; and emigration of both white and coloured population to the west and south has taken place to a very large extent, the result may be told in the words of an american witness:--'that part of virginia which lies upon tide waters presents an aspect of universal decay. its population diminishes, and it sinks day by day into a lower depth of exhaustion and poverty. the country between tide waters and the blue ridge is fast passing into the same condition. mount vernon is a desert waste; monticello is little better, and the same circumstances which have desolated the lands of washington and jefferson have impoverished every planter in the state. hardly any have escaped, save the owners of the rich bottom lands along james river, the fertility of which it seems difficult utterly to destroy.'[ ] now a virginia planter stands in much the same relation to his plantation as an absentee irish landlord to his estate; the care of the land is in each case handed over to a middleman, who is anxious to screw out of it as large a return of produce or rent as possible; and pecuniary embarrassment is in both cases the result. but as long as every pound of cotton grown on the mississippi and the red river finds eager customers in liverpool, the price of slaves in those districts cannot fail to keep up. in many cases the planter of the northern slave states emigrates to a region where he can employ his capital of thews and sinews more profitably than at home. in many others, he turns his plantation into an establishment for slave breeding, and sells his rising stock for labour in the cottonfield."--_prospective review_ nov. . unhappily, however, for this reasoning precisely the same exhaustion is visible in the northern states, as the reader may see by a perusal of the statements on this subject given by professor johnson, in his "notes on north america," of which the following is a specimen:-- "exhaustion has diminished the produce of the land, formerly the great staple of the country. when the wheat fell off, barley, which at first yielded fifty or sixty bushels, was raised year after year, till the land fell away from this, and became full of weeds."--vol. i. . rotation of crops cannot take place at a distance from market the exhaustive character of the system is well shown in the following extract:-- "in the state of new york there are some twelve million acres of improved land, which includes all meadows and enclosed pastures. this area employs about five hundred thousand labourers, being an average of twenty-four acres to the hand. at this ratio, the number of acres of improved land in the united states is one hundred, and twenty millions. but new york is an old and more densely populated state than an average in the union; and probably twenty-five acres per head is a juster estimate for the whole country. at this rate, the aggregate is one hundred and twenty-five millions. of these improved lands, it is confidently believed that at least four-fifths are now suffering deterioration in a greater or less degree. "the fertility of some, particularly in the planting states, is passing rapidly away; in others, the progress of exhaustion is so slow as hardly to be observed by the cultivators themselves. to keep within the truth, the annual income from the soil may be said to be diminished ten cents an acre on one hundred million acres, or four-fifths of the whole. "this loss of income is ten millions of dollars, and equal to sinking a capital of one hundred and sixty-six million six hundred and sixty-six thousand dollars a year, paying six per cent. annual interest. that improved farming lands may justly be regarded as capital, and a fair investment when paying six per cent. interest, and perfectly safe, no one will deny. this deterioration is not unavoidable, for thousands of skilful farmers have taken fields, poor in point of natural productiveness, and, instead of diminishing their fertility, have added ten cents an acre to their annual income, over and above all expenses. if this wise and improving system of rotation tillage and husbandry were universally adopted, or applied to the one hundred million acres now being exhausted, it would be equivalent to creating each year an additional capital of one hundred and sixty-six millions six hundred and sixty-six thousand dollars, and placing it in permanent real estate, where it would pay six per cent. annual interest. for all practical purposes, the difference between the two systems is three hundred, and thirty-three millions three hundred and thirty-three thousand dollars a year to the country. "eight million acres [in the state of new york] are in the hands of three hundred thousand persons, who still adhere to the colonial practice of extracting from the virgin soil all it will yield, so long as it will pay expenses to crop it, and then leave it in a thin, poor pasture for a term of years. some of these impoverished farms, which seventy-five years ago produced from twenty to thirty bushels of wheat, on an average, per acre, now yield only from five to eight bushels. in an exceedingly interesting work entitled 'american husbandry,' published in london in , and written by an american, the following remarks may be found on page , vol. i.:--'wheat, in many parts of the province, (new york,) yields a larger produce than is common in england. upon good lands about albany, where the climate is the coldest in the country, they sow two bushels and better upon an acre, and reap from _twenty_ to _forty_; the latter quantity, however, is not often had, but from twenty to _thirty_ are common; and with such bad husbandry as would not yield the like in england, and much less in scotland. this is owing to the _richness_ and _freshness_ of the land.' "according to the state census of , albany county now produces only seven and a half bushels of wheat per acre, although its farmers are on tide water and near the capital of the state, with a good home market, and possess every facility for procuring the most valuable fertilizers. dutchess county, also on the hudson river, produces an average of only five bushels per acre; columbia, six bushels; rensselaer, eight; westchester, seven; which is higher than the average of soils that once gave a return larger than the wheat lands of england even with 'bad husbandry.' "fully to renovate the eight million acres of partially exhausted lands in the state of new york, will cost at least an average of twelve dollars and a half per acre, or an aggregate of one hundred millions of dollars. it is not an easy task to replace all the bone-earth, potash, sulphur, magnesia, and organized nitrogen in mould consumed in a field which has been unwisely cultivated fifty or seventy-five years. phosphorus is not an abundant mineral anywhere, and his _sub-soil_ is about the only resource of the husbandman after his surface-soil has lost most of its phosphates. the three hundred thousand persons that cultivate these eight million acres of impoverished soils annually produce less by twenty-five dollars each than they would if the land had not been injured. "the aggregate of this loss to the state and the world is seven million five hundred thousand dollars per annum, or more than seven per cent. interest on what it would cost to renovate the deteriorated soils. there is no possible escape from this oppressive tax on labour of seven million five hundred thousand dollars, but to improve the land, or run off and leave it."--_patent office report_, it is not slavery that produces exhaustion of the soil, but exhaustion of the soil that causes slavery to continue. the people of england rose from slavery to freedom as the land was improved and rendered productive, and as larger numbers of men were enabled to obtain subsistence from the same surface; and it was precisely as the land thus acquired value that they became free. such, too, has been the case with every people that has been enabled to return to the land the manure yielded by its products, because of their having a market at home. on the contrary, there is no country in the world, in which men have been deprived, of the power to improve their land, in which slavery has not been maintained, to be aggravated in intensity as the land became more and more exhausted, as we see to have been the case in the west indies. it is to this perpetual separation from each other that is due the poverty and weakness of the south. at the close of the revolution, the now slave states contained probably , , people, and those states contained about , , of acres, giving an average of about eighty acres to each. in , the population had grown to , , , scattered over more than , , of acres, giving about forty acres to each. the consequence of this dispersion is that the productive power is very small, as is here seen in an estimate for , taken from a southern journal of high reputation:--[ ] cotton............................. , , tobacco............................ , , rice............................... , , naval stores....................... , , sugar.............................. , , hemp............................... , , , ----------- if we now add for food an equal amount, and this is certainly much in excess of the truth...... , , and for all other products..................... , , ------------ we obtain................................... $ , , as the total production of eight millions and a half of people, or about $ per head. the total production of the union in cannot have been short of millions; and if we deduct from that sum the above quantity, we shall have remaining millions as the product of fourteen millions and a half of northern people, or more than four times as much per head. the difference is caused by the fact that at the north artisans have placed themselves near to the farmer, and towns and cities have grown up, and exchanges are made more readily, and the farmer is not to the same extent obliged to exhaust his land, and dispersion therefore goes on more slowly; and there is, in many of the states, an extensive demand for those commodities of which the earth yields largely, such as potatoes, cabbages, turnips, &c. &c. with each step in the process of coming together at the north, men tend to become more free; whereas the dispersion of the south produces everywhere the trade in slaves of which the world complains, and which would soon cease to exist if the artisan could be brought to take his place by the side of the producer of food and cotton. why he cannot do so may be found in the words of a recent speech of mr. cardwell, member of parliament from liverpool, congratulating the people of england on the fact that free trade had so greatly damaged the cotton manufacture of this country, that the domestic consumption was declining from year to year. in this is to be found the secret of the domestic slave trade of the south, and its weakness, now so manifest. the artisan has been everywhere the ally of the farmer, and the south has been unable to form that alliance, the consequences of which are seen in the fact that it is always exporting men and raw materials, and exhausting its soil and itself: and the greater the tendency to exhaustion, the greater is the pro-slavery feeling. that such should be the case is most natural. the man who exhausts his land attaches to it but little value, and he abandons it, but he attaches much value to the slave whom he can carry away with him. the pro-slavery feeling made its appearance first in the period between and . up to , there had existed a great tendency in maryland, virginia, and kentucky toward freedom, but that disappeared; and the reason why it did so may be seen in the greatly increased tendency to the abandonment of the older tobacco and cotton growing states, as here shown:-- . . . . ----- ----- ----- ----- total population: virginia......... , , , , , , , , south carolina..... , , , , ratio of increase: virginia..................... . . . south carolina............... . . . with the increase in the export of slaves to the south, the negro population declined in its ratio of increase, whereas it has grown with the growth of the power of the slave to remain at home, as is here shown:-- . . . . ----- ----- ----- ----- total black population: , , , , , , , , ratio of increase........... . we see thus that the more the black population can remain at home, the more rapidly they increase; and the reason why such is the case is, that at home they are among their own people, by whom they have been known from infancy, and are of course better fed and clothed, more tenderly treated, and more lightly worked, with far greater tendency toward freedom. it would thence appear that if we desire to bring about the freedom of the negro, we must endeavour to arrest the domestic slave trade, and enable the slave and his master to remain at home; and to do this we must look to the causes of the difference in the extent of the trade in the periods above referred to. doing this, we shall find that from to there was a decided tendency toward bringing the artisan to the side of the ploughman; whereas from to the tendency was very strong in the opposite direction, and so continued until , at which time a change took place, and continued until near the close of the decennial period, when our present revenue system came fully into operation. the artisan has now ceased to come to the side of the planter. throughout the country cotton and woollen mills and furnaces and foundries have been closed, and women and children who were engaged in performing the lighter labour of converting cotton into cloth are now being sold for the heavier labour of the cotton-field, as is shown by the following advertisement, now but a few weeks old:-- sale of negroes.--the negroes belonging to the saluda manufacturing company were sold yesterday for one-fourth cash, the balance in one and two years, with interest, and averaged $ . boys from to brought $ to $ .--_columbia, (s. c.) banner_, dec. , . as a necessary consequence of this, the domestic slave trade is now largely increasing, as is shown by the following extract from a recent journal:-- "the emigration to the southern portion of arkansas, louisiana, and texas, during the past fall, has been unusually large, and the tide which flows daily through our streets indicates that the volume abates but little, if any. on the opposite bank of the river are encamped nearly fifty wagons, with probably not less than two hundred and fifty souls. each night, for a fortnight, there have been, on an average, not less than twenty-five wagons encamped there; and notwithstanding two hand ferry-boats have been constantly plying between the shores, the hourly accession to the number makes the diminution scarcely perceptible."--_little rock. (ark.) gazette_, dec. , . had the member for liverpool been aware that a decline in the tendency toward bringing the cotton-mill to the cotton-field was accompanied by increased exhaustion of the land, increased impoverishment, and increased inability to bring into action the rich soils of the older states, and that with each such step there arose an increased _necessity_ for the expulsion of the people of those states, accompanied by an increased sacrifice of life resulting from the domestic slave trade, he would certainly have hesitated before congratulating parliament on an occurrence so hostile to the progress of freedom. that the export of negroes, with its accompanying violation of the rights of parents and children, and with its natural tendency toward a total forgetfulness of the sanctity of the marriage tie, has its origin in the exhaustion of the land, there can be no doubt--and that that, in its turn, has its origin in the necessity for a dependence on distant markets, is quite as free from doubt. the man who must go to a distance with his products cannot raise potatoes, turnips, or hay. he must raise the less bulky articles, wheat or cotton and he must take from his land all the elements of which wheat or cotton is composed, and then abandon it. in addition to this, he must stake all his chances of success in his year's cultivation on a single crop; and what are the effects of this is seen in the following paragraph in relation to the wheat cultivation of virginia in the last season:-- "never did i know in this state such a destruction of the wheat crop; i have just returned from albemarle, one of the best counties. the joint-worm, a new enemy of three year's known existence there, has injured every crop, and destroyed many in that and other counties both sides and along the blue ridge. i saw many fields that would not yield more than seed, and not a few from which not one peck per acre could be calculated upon. i saw more than one field without a head. the most fortunate calculate upon a half crop only. corn is backward on the lower james river, embracing my own farm. i have heard to-day from my manager that the caterpillar has made its appearance, and must in the late wheat do serious damage." that state is not permitted to do any thing but grow wheat and tobacco, both of which she must export, and the larger the export the smaller are the returns, under the system of "unlimited competition" for the sale of raw products, and limited competition for the purchase of manufactured ones, which it is the object of british policy to establish. not only is virginia limited in the application of her labour, but she is also greatly limited in the extent of her market, because of the unequal distribution of the proceeds of the sales of her products. the pound of tobacco for which the consumer pays s. ($ . ,) yields him less than six cents, the whole difference being absorbed by the people who stand between him and the consumer, and who contribute nothing toward the production of his commodity.[ ] now, it is quite clear that if the consumer and he stood face to face with each other, he would receive all that was paid, and that while the one bought at lower prices, the other would sell at higher ones, and both would grow rich. the difficulty with him is that not only is his land exhausted, but he receives but a very small portion of the price paid for its products, and thus is he, like the labourer of jamaica, exhausted by reason of the heavy taxation to which he is subjected for the support of foreign merchants and foreign governments. as a consequence of all this his land has little value, and he finds himself becoming poorer from year to year, and each year he has to sell a negro for the payment of the tax on his tobacco and his wheat to which he is thus subjected, until he has at length to go himself. if the reader desire to study the working of this system of taxation, he cannot do better than read the first chapter of "uncle tom's cabin," containing the negotiation between haley and mr. shelby for the transfer of uncle tom, resulting in the loss of his life in the wilds of arkansas. the more the necessity for exhausting land and for selling negroes, the cheaper, however, will be wheat and cotton. uncle tom might have remained at home had the powers of the land been maintained and had virginia been enabled to avail herself of her vast resources in coal, iron ore, water-power, &c.; but as she could not do this, he had to go to arkansas to raise cotton: and the larger the domestic slave trade, the greater must be the decline in the price of that great staple of the south. at no period was that trade so large as in that from to , and the effects are seen in the following comparative prices of cotton:-- crops, and , average - / . and , average . the export of negroes declined between and , and the consequence is that cotton has since maintained its price. with the closing of southern mills the slave trade, is now again growing rapidly, and the consequences will be seen in a large decline in the price of that important product of southern labour and land. the reader will now observe that it was in the period from to that the tendency to emancipation disappeared--that it was in that period were passed various laws adverse to the education of negroes--that it was in that period there was the greatest enlargement of the domestic slave trade--and the greatest decline in the price of cotton. having remarked these things, and having satisfied himself that they, each and all, have their origin in the fact that the planter is compelled to depend on foreign markets and therefore to exhaust his land, he will be enabled to judge of the accuracy of the view contained in the following sentence :-- "the price of a negro on red river varies with the price of cotton in liverpool, and whatever tends to lower the value of the staple here, not only confers an inestimable advantage on our own manufacturing population, but renders slave labour less profitable, and therefore less permanent in alabama."--_prospective review_, no. xxxii. . it would be fortunate if philanthropy and pecuniary profit could thus be made to work together, but such unhappily is not the case. when men are enabled to come nearer to each other and combine their efforts, and towns arise, land acquires great value and gradually becomes divided, and with each step in this direction the negro loses his importance in the eye of his owner. when, however, men are forced to abandon the land they have exhausted, it becomes consolidated, and the moveable chattel acquires importance in the eyes of his emigrant owner. at death, the land cannot, under these circumstances, be divided, and therefore the negroes must; and hence it is that such advertisements as the following are a necessary consequence of the system that looks to cheap wheat, cheap sugar, and cheap cotton. high price of negroes.--we extract the following from the lancaster (s. c.) _ledger_ of the th january last:-- we attended the sale of negroes belonging to the estate of the late s. beekman, on the d of last month, and were somewhat astonished at the high price paid for negroes. negro men brought from $ to $ , the greater number at or near the latter price. one (a blacksmith) brought $ . we learn from the winsboro _register_, that on monday, the d inst., a large sale of negroes was made by the commissioner in equity for fairfleld district, principally the property of james gibson, deceased. the negroes were only tolerably likely, and averaged about $ each. the sales were made on a credit of twelve months.--_charleston (s. c.) courier_. the more the planter is forced to depend upon tobacco the lower will be its price abroad, and the more he must exhaust his land. the more rapid the exhaustion the more must be the tendency to emigrate. the more the necessity for depending exclusively on wheat, the greater the necessity for making a market for it by raising slaves for sale: and in several of the older southern states the planter now makes nothing but what results from the increase of "stock." of all the exporters of food england is the largest, said a distinguished english merchant, in a speech delivered some years since. in some parts of that country it is manufactured into iron, and in others into cloth, in order that it may travel cheaply, and this is quite in accordance with the advice of adam smith. with a view, however, to prevent other nations from following in the course so strongly urged upon them by that great man, labour has been cheapened, and men and women, boys and girls, have been accustomed to work together in the same mine, and often in a state of _entire nudity_; while other, women and children have been compelled to work for fourteen or sixteen hours a day for six days in the week, and for small wages, in the mill or workshop--and this has been done in accordance with the advice of mr. huskisson, who, from his place in parliament, told his countrymen that in order "to give capital a fair remuneration, _labour must be kept down_"--that is, the labourer must be deprived of the power to determine for himself for whom he would work, or what should be his reward. it was needed, as was then declared by another of the most eminent statesmen of britain, "that the manufactures of all other nations should be strangled in their infancy," and such has from that day to the present been the object of british policy. hence it is that england is now so great an exporter of food manufactured into cloth and iron. the people of massachusetts manufacture their grain into fish, cloth, and various other commodities, with a view to enable it cheaply to travel to market. those of illinois, unable to convert their corn into coal or iron, find themselves obliged to manufacture it into pork. the virginian would manufacture his corn and his wheat into cloth, or into coal and iron, if he could; but this he cannot do, although close to the producer of cotton, and occupying a land abounding in all the raw materials of which machinery is composed; and having, too, abundant labour power that runs to waste. why he cannot do it is that england follows the advice of mr. huskisson, and cheapens labour with a view to prevent other nations from following the advice of adam smith. the whole energies of the state are therefore given to the raising of tobacco and corn, both of which must go abroad, and as the latter cannot travel profitably in its rude state, it requires to be manufactured, and the only branch of manufacture permitted to the virginian is that of negroes, and hence it is that their export is so large, and that cotton is so cheap. widely different would be the course of things could he be permitted to employ a reasonable portion of his people in the development of the vast resources of the state--opening mines, erecting furnaces, smelting iron, making machinery, and building mills. fewer persons would then raise corn and more would be employed in consuming it, and the price at home would then rise to a level with that in the distant market, and thus would the land acquire value, while the cost of raising negroes would be increased. towns would then grow up, and exchanges would be made on the spot, and thus would the planter be enabled to manure his land. labour would become more productive, and there would be more commodities to be given in exchange for labour; and the more rapid the increase in the amount of production the greater would be the tendency toward enabling the labourer to determine for whom he would work and what should be his reward. population would then rapidly increase, and land would become divided, and the little black cultivator of cabbages and potatoes would be seen taking the place of the poor white owner of large bodies of exhausted land, and thus would the negro tend toward freedom as his master became enriched. nothing of this kind is, however, likely to take place so long as the virginian shall continue of the opinion that the way to wealth lies in the direction of taking every thing from the land and returning nothing to it--nor, perhaps, so long as the people of england shall continue in the determination that there shall be but one workshop in the world, and carry that determination into effect by "keeping labour down," in accordance with the advice of mr. huskisson. the tendency to the abandonment of the older states is now probably greater than it has ever been, because their people have ceased to build mills or furnaces, and every thing looks to a yet more perfect exhaustion of the soil. the more they abandon the land the greater is the anxiety to make loans in england for the purpose of building roads; and the more numerous the loans the more rapid is the flight, and the greater the number of negroes brought to market. a north carolina paper informs its readers that-- "the trading spirit is fully up. a few days since mr. d. w. bullock sold to messrs. wm. norfleet, robert norfleet, and john s. dancy, plantation and negroes for $ , . mr. r. r. bridges to wm. f. dancy, acres near town for $ . at a sale in wilson, we also understand, negro men with no extra qualifications sold as high as $ ."--_tarborough southerner_. a south carolina editor informs his readers that "at public auction on thursday, thomas ryan & son sold fifteen likely negroes for $ , , or an average of $ . three boys, aged about seventeen, brought the following sums, viz. $ , $ , $ , and two at $ --making an average of $ . capers heyward sold a gang of negroes in families. two or three families averaged from $ to $ for each individual; and the entire sale averaged $ . c. g. whitney sold two likely female house servants--one at $ , the other at $ ."--_charleston courier_. limited, as the people of the old states are more and more becoming, to the raising of "stock" as the sole source of profit, need we be surprised to see the pro-slavery feeling gaining ground from day to day, as is here shown to be the case? removal of free persons of colour from virginia.--a bill has been reported in the virginia house of delegates which provides for the appointment of overseers, who are to be required to hire out, at public auction, all free persons of colour, to the highest bidder, and to pay into the state treasury the sums accruing from such hire. the sums are to be devoted in future to sending free persons of colour beyond the limits of the state. at the expiration of five years, all free persons of colour remaining in the state are to be sold into slavery to the highest bidder, at public auction, the proceeds of such sales to be paid into the public treasury, provided that said free persons of colour shall be allowed the privilege of becoming the slaves of any free white person whom they may select, on the payment by such person of a fair price. twenty years since, virginia was preparing for the emancipation of the slave. now, she is preparing for the enslavement of the free. if the reader would know the cause of this great change, he may find it in the fact that man has everywhere become less free as land has become less valuable. upon whom, now, must rest the responsibility for such a state of things as is here exhibited? upon the planter? he exercises no volition. he is surrounded by coal and iron ore, but the attempt to convert them into iron has almost invariably been followed by ruin. he has vast powers of nature ready to obey his will, yet dare he not purchase a spindle or a loom to enable him to bring into use his now waste labour power, for such attempts at bringing the consumer to the side of the producer have almost invariably ended in the impoverishment of the projector, and the sale and dispersion of his labourers. he is compelled to conform his operations to the policy which looks to having but one workshop for the world; and instead of civilizing his negroes by bringing them to work in combination, he must barbarize them by dispersion. a creature of necessity, he cannot be held responsible; but the responsibility must, and will, rest on those who produce that necessity. the less the power of association in the northern slave states, the more rapid must be the growth of the domestic slave trade, the greater must be the decline in the price of wheat, cotton, and sugar, the greater must be the tendency to the passage of men like uncle tom, and of women and children too, from the light labour of the north to the severe labour of the south and south-west--but, the greater, as we are told, must be the prosperity of the people of england. it is unfortunate for the world that a country exercising so much influence should have adopted a policy so adverse to the civilization and the freedom not only of the negro race, but of mankind at large. there seems, however, little probability of a change. seeking to make of herself a great workshop, she necessarily desires that all the rest of the world should be one great farm, to be cultivated by men, women, and children, denied all other means of employment. this, of course, forbids association, which diminishes as land becomes exhausted. the absence of association forbids the existence of schools or workshops, books or instruction, and men become barbarized, when, under a different system, they might and would become civilized. the tendency to freedom passes away, as we see to have been the case in the last twenty years--but in place of freedom, and as a compensation for the horrors of jamaica and of the domestic slave trade, the great workshop of the world is supplied with cheap grain, cheap tobacco, cheap sugar, and cheap cotton. were adam smith alive, he might, and probably would, take some trouble to inform his countrymen that a system which looked to the exhaustion of the land of other countries, and the enslavement of their population, was "a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind;" but since his day the doctrines of the "wealth of nations" have been discarded, and its author would find himself now addressing hearers more unwilling than were even the men for whom he wrote eighty years since. at that time the imaginary discovery had not been made that men always commenced on the rich soils, and passed, as population and wealth increased, to poorer ones; and the malthusian law of population was yet unthought of. now, however, whatever tends to limit the growth of population is, we are told, to be regarded as a great good; and as the domestic slave trade accomplishes that object at the same time that it furnishes cheap cotton, it can scarcely be expected that there will be any change; and yet, unless a change be somewhere made, abroad or at home, we must perforce submit to the continuance of the existing system, which precludes education, almost eschews matrimony, separates husbands and wives, parents and children, and sends the women to the labours of the field. chapter xi. how slavery grows in portugal and turkey. in point of natural advantages, portugal is equal with any country in western europe. her soil is capable of yielding largely of every description of grain, and her climate enables her to cultivate the vine and the olive. mineral riches abound, and her rivers give to a large portion, of the country every facility for cheap intercourse; and yet her people are among the most enslaved, while her government is the weakest and most contemptible of europe. it is now a century and a half since england granted her what were deemed highly important advantages in regard to wine, on condition that she should discard the artisans who had been brought to the side of her farmers, and permit the people of england to supply her people with certain descriptions of manufactures. what were the duties then agreed on are not given in any of the books now at hand, but by the provisions of a treaty made in , cloths of all descriptions were to be admitted at a merely revenue duty, varying from ten to fifteen per cent. a natural consequence of this system has been that the manufactures which up to the date of the methuen treaty had risen in that country, perished under foreign competition, and the people found themselves by degrees limited exclusively to agricultural employments. mechanics found there no place for the exercise of their talents, towns could not grow, schools could not arise, and the result is seen in the following paragraph:-- "it is surprising how ignorant, or at least superficially acquainted, the portuguese are with every kind of handicraft; a carpenter is awkward and clumsy, spoiling every work he attempts, and the way in which the doors and woodwork even of good houses are finished would have suited the rudest ages. their carriages of all kinds, from the fidalgo's family coach to the peasant's market cart, their agricultural implements, locks and keys, &c. are ludicrously bad. they seem to disdain improvement, and are so infinitely below par, so strikingly inferior to the rest of europe, as to form a sort of disgraceful wonder in the middle of the nineteenth century."--_baillie_. the population, which, half a century since was , , , is now reduced to little more than , , ; and we need no better evidence of the enslaving and exhausting tendency of a policy that limits a whole people, men, women, and children, to the labours of the field. at the close almost of a century and a half of this system, the following is given in a work of high reputation, as a correct picture of the state of the country and the strength of the government:-- "the finances of portugal are in the most deplorable condition, the treasury is dry, and all branches of the public service suffer. a carelessness and a mutual apathy reign not only throughout the government, but also throughout the nation. while improvement is sought everywhere else throughout europe, portugal remains stationary. the postal service of the country offers a curious example of this, nineteen to twenty-one days being still required for a letter to go and come between lisbon and braganza, a distance of - / kilometres, (or little over miles.) all the resources of the state are exhausted, and it is probable that the receipts will not give one-third of the amount for which they figure in the budget."--_annuaire de l'economie politique_, , . some years since an effort was made to bring the artisan to the side of the farmer and vine-grower, but a century and a half of exclusive devotion to agriculture had placed the people so far in the rear of those of other nations, that the attempt was hopeless, the country having long since become a mere colony of great britain. if we turn to madeira, we find there further evidence of the exhausting consequences of the separation of the farmer and the artisan. from to , the only period for which returns are before me, there was a steady decline in the amount of agricultural production, until the diminution had reached about thirty per cent., as follows:-- wine. wheat. barley. ----- ------ ------- ............. , pipes qrs. ............. , " " at this moment the public papers furnish an "appeal to america," commencing as follows:-- "a calamity has fallen on madeira unparalleled in its history. the vintage, the revenue of which furnished the chief means for providing subsistence for its inhabitants, has been a total failure, and the potato crop, formerly another important article of their food, is still extensively diseased. all classes, therefore, are suffering, and as there are few sources in the island to which they can look for food, clothing, and other necessaries of life, their distress must increase during the winter, and the future is contemplated with painful anxiety and apprehension. under such appalling prospects, the zealous and excellent civil governor, snr. josé silvestre ribeiro, addressed a circular letter to the merchants of madeira on the th of august last, for the purpose of bringing the unfortunate and critical position of the population under his government to the notice of the benevolent and charitable classes in foreign countries, and in the hope of exciting their sympathy with, and assistance to, so many of their fellow creatures threatened with famine." such are the necessary consequences of a system which looks to compelling the whole population of a country to employ themselves in a single pursuit--all cultivating the land and all producing the same commodity; and which thus effectually prevents the growth of that natural association so much admired by adam smith. it is one that can end only in the exhaustion of the land and its owner. when population increases and men come together, even the poor land is made rich, and thus it is, says m. de jonnes, that "the powers of manure causes the poor lands of the department of the seine to yield thrice as much as those of the loire."[ ] when population diminishes, and men are thus forced to live at greater distances from each other, even the rich lands become impoverished; and of this no better evidence need be sought than that furnished by portugal. in the one case, each day brings men nearer to perfect freedom of thought, speech, action, and trade. in the other they become from day to day more barbarized and enslaved, and the women are more and more driven to the field, there to become the slaves of fathers, husbands, brothers, and even of sons. of all the countries of europe there is none possessed of natural advantages to enable it to compare with those constituting the turkish empire in europe and asia. wool and silk, corn, oil, and tobacco, might, with proper cultivation, be produced in almost unlimited quantity, while thessaly and macedonia, long celebrated for the production of cotton, abound in lands uncultivated, from which it might be obtained in sufficient extent to clothe a large portion of europe. iron ore abounds, and in quality equal to any in the world, while in another part of the empire "the hills seem a mass of carbonate of copper."[ ] nature has done every thing for the people of that country, and yet of all those of europe, the turkish rayah approaches in condition nearest to a slave; and of all the governments of europe, that of portugal even not excepted, that of turkey is the most a slave to the dictation, not only of nations, but even of bankers and traders. why it is so, we may now inquire. by the terms of the treaty with england in , the turkish government bound itself to charge no more than three per cent. duty on imports,[ ] and as this could contribute little to the revenue, that required to be sought elsewhere. a poll-tax, house-tax, land-tax, and many other direct taxes, furnished a part of it, and the balance was obtained by an indirect tax in the form of export duties; and as the corn, tobacco, and cotton of its people were obliged to compete in the general markets of the world with the produce of other lands, it is clear that these duties constituted a further contribution from the cultivators of the empire in aid of the various direct taxes that have been mentioned. so far as foreigners were interested, the system was one of perfect free trade and direct taxation. for many years, turkey manufactured much of her cotton, and she exported cotton-yarn. such was the case so recently as , as will be seen by the following very interesting account of one of the seats of the manufacture:-- "'ambelakia, by its activity, appears rather a borough of holland than a village of turkey. this village spreads, by its industry, movement, and life, over the surrounding country, and gives birth to an immense commerce which unites germany to greece by a thousand threads. its population has trebled in fifteen years, and amounts at present ( ) to four thousand, who live in their manufactories like swarms of bees in their hives. in this village are unknown both the vices and cares engendered by idleness; the hearts of the ambelakiots are pure and their faces serene; the slavery which blasts the plains watered by the peneus, and stretching at their feet, has never ascended the sides of pelion (ossa;) and they govern themselves, like their ancestors, by their protoyeros, (primates, elders,) and their own magistrates. twice the mussulmen of larissa attempted to scale their rocks, and twice were they repulsed by hands which dropped the shuttle to seize the musket. "'every arm, even those of the children, is employed in the factories; while the men dye the cotton, the women prepare and spin it. there are twenty-four factories, in which yearly two thousand five hundred bales of cotton yarn, of one hundred cotton okes each, were dyed ( cwts.) this yarn found its way into germany, and was disposed of at buda, vienna, leipsic, dresden, anspach, and bareuth. the ambelakiot merchants had houses of their own in all these places. these houses belonged to distinct associations at ambelakia. the competition thus established reduced very considerably the common profits; they proposed therefore to unite themselves under one central commercial administration. twenty years ago this plan was suggested, and in a year afterward it was carried into execution. the lowest shares in this joint-stock company were five thousand piastres, (between £ and £ ,) and the highest were restricted to twenty thousand, that the capitalists might not swallow up all the profits. the workmen subscribed their little profits, and uniting in societies, purchased single shares; and besides their capital, their labour was reckoned in the general amount; they received their share of the profits accordingly, and abundance was soon spread through the whole community. the dividends were at first restricted to ten per cent., and the surplus profit was applied to the augmenting of the capital; which in two years was raised from , to , , piastres, (£ , .)' "it supplied industrious germany, not by the perfection of its jennies, but by the industry of its spindle and distaff. it taught montpellier the art of dyeing, not from experimental chairs, but because dyeing was with it a domestic and culinary operation, subject to daily observation in every kitchen; and by the simplicity and honesty, not the science of its system, it reads a lesson to commercial associations, and holds up an example unparalleled in the commercial history of europe, of a joint-stock and labour company; ably and economically and successfully administered, in which the interests of industry and capital were, long equally represented. yet the system of administration with which all this is connected, is common to the thousand hamlets of thessaly that have not emerged from their insignificance; but ambelakia for twenty years was left alone."[ ] at that time, however, england had invented new machinery for spinning cotton, and, by prohibiting its export, had provided that all the cotton of the world should be brought to manchester before it could be cheaply converted into cloth. the cotton manufacturers at ambelakia had their difficulties to encounter, but all those might have been overcome had they not, says mr. urquhart, "been outstripped by manchester." they _were_ outstripped, and twenty years afterward, not only had that place been deserted, but others in its neighbourhood were reduced to complete desolation. native manufactories for the production of cotton goods had, indeed, almost ceased to work. of looms at sentari in , but remained in ; and of the weaving establishments at tournovo in , but remained in .[ ] for a time, cotton went abroad to be returned in the form of twist, thus making a voyage of thousands of miles in search of a spindle; but even this trade has in a great degree passed away. as a consequence of these things there had been a ruinous fall of wages, affecting all classes of labourers. "the profits," says mr. urquhart-- "have been reduced to one-half, and sometimes to one-third, by the introduction of english cottons, which, though they have reduced the home price, and arrested the export of cotton-yarn from turkey, have not yet supplanted the home manufacture in any visible degree; for, until tranquillity has allowed agriculture to revive, the people must go on working merely for bread, and reducing their price, in a struggle of hopeless competition. the industry, however, of the women and children is most remarkable; in every interval of labour, tending the cattle, carrying water, the spindle and distaff, as in the days of xerxes, is never out of their hands. the children are as assiduously at work, from the moment their little fingers, can turn the spindle. about ambelakia, the former focus of the cotton-yarn trade, the peasantry has suffered dreadfully from this, though formerly the women could earn as much in-doors, as their husbands in the field; at present, their daily profit ( ) does not exceed twenty paras, if realized, for often they cannot dispose of the yarn when spun. piastres. paras. --------- ------ five okes of uncleaned cotton, at seventeen paras.......................... labour of a woman for two days, (seven farthings per day)................... carding, by vibrations of a cat-gut........... spinning, a woman's unremitting labour for a week.................................. loss of cotton, exceeding an oke of uncleaned cotton......................... -------- ------ value of one oke of uncleaned cotton.... prs. "here a woman's labour makes but d. per day, while field-labour, according to the season of the year, ranges from d. to d. and at this rate, the pound of coarse cotton-yarn cost in spinning d."--p. . the labour of a woman is estimated at less than four cents per day, and "the unremitting labour of a week" will command but twenty-five cents. the wages of men employed in gathering leaves and attending silkworms are stated at one piastre (five cents) per day. at salonica, the shipping port of thessaly, they were ten cents. (urquhart, .) as a necessary consequence of this, population diminishes, and everywhere are seen the ruins of once prosperous villages. agriculture declines from day to day. the once productive cotton-fields of thessaly lie untilled, and even around constantinople itself-- "there are no cultivated lands to speak of within twenty miles, in some directions within fifty miles. the commonest necessaries of life come from distant parts: the corn for daily bread from odessa; the cattle and sheep from beyond adrianople, or from asia minor; the rice, of which such a vast consumption is made, from the neighbourhood of phillippopolis; the poultry chiefly from bulgaria; the fruit and vegetables from nicomedia and mondania. thus a constant drain of money is occasioned, without any visible return except to the treasury or from the property of the ulema."--_slade's travels in turkey_, vol. ii. . the silk that is made is badly prepared, because the distance of the artisan prevents the poor people from obtaining good machinery; and as a consequence of this, the former direct trade with persia has been superseded by an indirect one through england, to which the raw silk has now to be sent. in every department of industry we see the same result. birmingham has superseded damascus, whose blades are now no longer made. not only is the foreigner free to introduce his wares, but he may, on payment of a trifling duty of two per cent., carry them throughout the empire until finally disposed of. he travels by caravans, and is lodged without expense. he brings his goods to be exchanged for money, or what else he needs, and the exchange effected, he disappears as suddenly as he came. "it is impossible," says mr. urquhart, "to witness the arrival of the many-tongued caravan at its resting-place for the night, and see, unladen and piled up together, the bales from such distant places--to glance over their very wrappers, and the strange marks and characters which they bear--without being amazed at so eloquent a contradiction of our preconceived notions of indiscriminate despotism and universal insecurity of the east. but while we observe the avidity with which our goods are sought, the preference now transferred from indian to birmingham muslins, from golconda to glasgow chintzes, from damascus to sheffield steel, from cashmere shawls to english broadcloth; and while, at the same time, the energies of their commercial spirit are brought thus substantially before us; it is indeed impossible not to regret that a gulf of separation should have so long divided the east and the west, and equally impossible not to indulge in the hope and anticipation of a vastly extended traffic with the east, and of all the blessings which follow fast and welling in the wake of commerce."--p. . among the "blessings" of the system is the fact that local places of exchange no longer exist. the storekeeper who pays rent and taxes has found himself unable to compete with the pedler who pays neither; and the consequence is that the poor cultivator finds it impossible to exchange his products, small as they are, for the commodities he needs, except, on the occasional arrival of a caravan, and that has generally proved far more likely to absorb the little money in circulation, than any of the more bulky and less valuable products of the earth. as usual in purely agricultural countries, the whole body of cultivators is hopelessly in debt, and the money-lender fleeces all. if he aids the peasant before harvest, he must have an enormous interest, and be paid in produce at a large discount from the market price; the village communities are almost universally in debt, but to them, as the security is good, the banker charges _only_ twenty per cent. per annum. turkey is the very paradise of middlemen--a consequence of the absence of any mode of employment except in cultivation or in trade; and the moral effect of this may be seen in the following passage:-- "if you see," says urquhart, "a turk meditating in a corner, it is on some speculation--the purchase of a revenue farm, or the propriety of a loan at sixty per cent.; if you see pen or paper in his hand, it is making or checking an account; if there is a disturbance in the street, it is a disputed barter; whether in the streets or in-doors, whether in a coffeehouse, a serai, or a bazaar, whatever the rank, nation, language of the persons around you, traffic, barter, gain are the prevailing impulses; grusch, para, florin, lira, asper, amid the babel of tongues, are the universally intelligible sounds."--p. . we have thus a whole people divided into two classes--the plunderers and the plundered; and the cause of this may be found in the fact that the owners and occupants of land have never been permitted to strengthen themselves by the formation of that natural alliance between the plough and the loom, the hammer and the harrow, so much admired by adam smith. the government is as weak as the people, for it is so entirely dependent on the bankers, that they may be regarded as the real owners of the land and the people, taxing them at discretion; and to them certainly enure all the profits of cultivation. as a consequence of this, the land is almost valueless. a recent traveller states that good land maybe purchased in the immediate vicinity of smyrna at six cents an acre, and at a little distance vast quantities may be had for nothing. throughout the world, the freedom of man has grown in the ratio of the increase in the value of land, and that has always grown in the ratio of the tendency to have the artisan take his place by the side of the cultivator of the earth. whatever tends to prevent this natural association tends, therefore, to the debasement and enslavement of man. the weakness of turkey, as regards foreign nations, is great, and it increases every day.[ ] not only ambassadors, but consuls, beard it in its own cities; and it is now even denied that she has _any right_ to adopt a system of trade different from that under which she has become thus weakened. perfect freedom of commerce is declared to be "one of those immunities which we can resign on no account or pretext whatever; it is a golden privilege, which we can never abandon."[ ] internal trade scarcely exists; and, as a natural consequence, the foreign one is insignificant, the whole value of the exports being but about thirty-three millions of dollars, or less than two dollars per head. the total exports from great britain in the last year amounted to but £ , , , ($ , , ,) much of which was simply _en route_ for persia; and this constitutes the great trade that has been built up at so much cost to the people of turkey, and that is to be maintained as "a golden privilege" not to be abandoned! not discouraged by the result of past efforts, the same author looks forward anxiously for the time when there shall be in turkey no employment in manufactures of any kind, and when the people shall be exclusively employed in agriculture; and that time cannot, he thinks, be far distant, as "a few pence more or less in the price of a commodity will make the difference of purchasing or manufacturing at home."[ ] throughout his book he shows that the rudeness of the machinery of cultivation is in the direct ratio of the distance of the cultivator from market; and yet he would desire that all the produce of the country should go to a distant market to be exchanged, although the whole import of iron at the present moment for the supply of a population of almost twenty millions of people, possessing iron ore, fuel, and unemployed labour in unlimited quantity, is but £ per annum, or about a penny's worth for every thirty persons! need we wonder at the character of the machinery, the poverty and slavery of the people, the trivial amount of commerce, or at the weakness of a government whose whole system looks to the exhaustion of the land, and to the exclusion of that great middle class of working-men, to whom the agriculturist has everywhere been indebted for his freedom? the facts thus far given have been taken, as the reader will have observed, from mr. urquhart's work; and as that gentleman is a warm admirer of the system denounced by adam smith, he cannot be suspected of any exaggeration when presenting any of its unfavourable results. later travellers exhibit the nation as passing steadily onward toward ruin, and the people toward a state of slavery the most, complete--the necessary consequence of a policy that excludes the mechanic and prevents the formation of a town population. among the latest of those travellers is mr. mac farlane,[ ] at the date of whose visit the silk manufacture had entirely disappeared, and even the filatures for preparing the raw silk were closed, weavers having become ploughmen, and women and children having been totally deprived of employment. the cultivators of silk had become entirely dependent on foreign markets in which there existed no demand for the products of their land and labour. england was then passing through one of her periodical crises, and it had been deemed necessary to put down the prices of all agricultural products, with a view to stop importation. on one occasion, during mr. mac farlane's travels, there came a report that silk had risen in england, and it produced a momentary stir and animation, that, as he says, "flattered his national vanity to think that an electric touch parting from london, the mighty heart of commerce, should thus be felt in a few days at a place like biljek." such is commercial centralization! it renders the agriculturists of the world mere slaves, dependent for food and clothing upon the will of a few people, proprietors of a small amount of machinery, at "the mighty heart of commerce." at one moment speculation is rife, and silk goes up in price, and then every effort is made to induce large shipments of the raw produce of the world. at the next, money is said to be scarce, and the shippers are ruined, as was, to so great an extent, experienced by those who exported corn from this country in . at the date of the traveller's first visit to broussa, the villages were numerous, and the silk manufacture was prosperous. at the second, the silk works were stopped and their owners bankrupt, the villages were gradually disappearing, and in the town itself scarcely a chimney was left, while the country around presented to view nothing but poverty and wretchedness. everywhere, throughout the empire, the roads are bad, and becoming worse, and the condition of the cultivator deteriorates; for if he has a surplus to sell, most of its value at market is absorbed by the cost of transportation, and if his crop is short, prices rise so high that he cannot purchase. famines are therefore frequent, and child-murder prevails throughout all classes of society. population therefore diminishes, and the best lands are abandoned, "nine-tenths" of them remaining untilled;[ ] the natural consequence of which is, that malaria prevails in many of those parts of the country that once were most productive, and pestilence comes in aid of famine for the extermination of this unfortunate people. native mechanics are nowhere to be found, there being no demand for them, and the plough, the wine-press, and the oil-mill are equally rude and barbarous. the product of labour is, consequently, most diminutive, and its wages twopence a day, with a little food. the interest of money varies from to per cent. per annum, and this rate is frequently paid for the loan of bad seed that yields but little to either land or labour. with the decline of population and the disappearance of all the local places of exchange, the pressure of the conscription becomes from year to year more severe, and droves of men may be seen "chained like wild beasts--free osmanlees driven along the road like slaves to a market"--free men, separated from wives and children, who are left to perish of starvation amid the richest lands, that remain untilled because of the separation of the artisan from the producer of food, silk, and cotton. internal commerce is trifling in amount, and the power to pay for foreign merchandise has almost passed away. land is nearly valueless; and in this we find the most convincing proof of the daily increasing tendency toward slavery, man having always become enslaved as land has lost its value. in the great valley of buyuk-derè, once known as _the fair land_, a property of twenty miles in circumference had shortly before his visit been purchased for less than £ , or $ .[ ] in another part of the country, one of twelve miles in circumference had been purchased for a considerably smaller sum.[ ] the slave trade, black and white, had never been more active;[ ] and this was a necessary consequence of the decline in the value of labour and land. in this country, negro men are well fed, clothed, and lodged, and are gradually advancing toward freedom. population therefore increases, although more slowly than would be the case were they enabled more to combine their efforts for the improvement of their condition. in the west indies, portugal, and turkey, being neither well fed, clothed, nor lodged, their condition declines; and as they can neither be bought nor sold, they are allowed to die off, and population diminishes as the tendency toward the subjugation of the labourer becomes more and more complete. which of these conditions tends most to favour advance in civilization the reader may decide. chapter xii. how slavery grows in india. in no part of the world has there existed the same tendency to voluntary association, the distinguishing mark of freedom, as in india. in none have the smaller communities been to the same extent permitted the exercise of self-government. each hindoo village had its distinct organization, and under its simple and "almost patriarchal arrangements," says mr. greig,[ ]-- "the natives of hindoostan seem to have lived from the earliest, down, comparatively speaking, to late times--if not free from the troubles and annoyances to which men in all conditions of society are more or less subject, still in the full enjoyment, each individual, of his property, and of a very considerable share of personal liberty. * * * leave him in possession of the farm which his forefathers owned, and preserve entire the institutions to which he had from infancy been accustomed, and the simple hindoo would give himself no concern whatever as to the intrigues and cabals which took place at the capital. dynasties might displace one another; revolutions might recur; and the persons of his sovereigns might change every day; but so long as his own little society remained undisturbed, all other contingencies were to him subjects scarcely of speculation. to this, indeed, more than to any other cause, is to be ascribed the facility with which one conqueror after another has overrun different parts of india; which submitted, not so much because its inhabitants were wanting in courage, as because to the great majority among them it signified nothing by whom the reins of the supreme government were held. a third consequence of the village system has been one which men will naturally regard as advantageous or the reverse, according to the opinions which they hold, touching certain abstract points into which it is not necessary to enter here. perhaps there are not to be found on the face of the earth, a race of human beings whose attachment to their native place will bear a comparison with that of the hindoos. there are no privations which the hindoo will hesitate to bear, rather than voluntarily abandon the spot where he was born; and if continued oppression drive him forth, he will return to it again after long years of exile with fresh fondness." the mohammedan conquest left these simple and beautiful institutions untouched. "each hindoo village," says col. briggs, in his work on the land tax-- "had its distinct municipality, and over a certain number of villages, or district, was an hereditary chief and accountant, both possessing great local influence and authority, and certain territorial domains or estates. the mohammedans early saw the policy of not disturbing an institution so complete, and they availed themselves of the local influence of these officers to reconcile their subjects to their rule. * * * from the existence of these local hindoo chiefs at the end of six centuries in all countries conquered by the mohammedans, it is fair to conclude that they were cherished and maintained with great attention as the key-stone of their civil government. while the administration of the police, and the collection of the revenues, were left in the hands of these local chiefs, every part of the new territory was retained under military occupation by an officer of rank; and a considerable body of mohammedan soldiers.* * * in examining the details of mohammedan history, which has been minute in recording the rise and progress of all these kingdoms, we nowhere discover any attempt to alter the system originally adopted. the ministers, the nobles, and the military chiefs, all bear mohammedan names and titles, but no account is given of the hindoo institutions, being subverted, or mohammedan officers, being employed in the minor, details, of the civil administration. "it would appear from this that the moslems, so far from imposing their own laws upon their subjects, treated the customs of the latter with the utmost respect; and that they did so because experience taught them that their own interests were advanced by a line of policy so prudent." local action and local combination are everywhere conspicuous in the history of this country. with numerous rulers, some of whom to a greater or less extent acknowledged the superiority of the sovereign of delhi, the taxes required for their support were heavy, but they were locally expended, and if the cultivator contributed too large a portion of his grain, it was at least consumed in a neighbouring market, and nothing went from off the land. manufactures, too, were widely spread, and thus was made a demand for the labour not required in agriculture. "on the coast of coromandel," says orme,[ ] "and in the province of bengal, when at some distance from a high road or principal town, it is difficult to find a village in which every man, woman, and child is not employed in making a piece of cloth. at present," he continues, "much the greatest part of whole provinces are employed in this single manufacture." its progress, as he says, "includes no less than a description of the lives of half the inhabitants of indostan." while employment was thus locally subdivided, tending to enable neighbour to exchange with neighbour, the exchanges between the producers of food, or of salt, in one part of the country and the producers of cotton and manufacturers of cloth in another, tended to the production of commerce with more distant men, and this tendency was much increased by the subdivision of the cotton manufacture itself. bengal was celebrated for the finest muslins, the consumption of which at delhi, and in northern india generally, was large, while the coromandel coast was equally celebrated for the best chintzes and calicoes, leaving to western india the manufacture of strong and inferior goods of every kind. under these circumstances it is no matter of surprise that the country was rich, and that its people, although often overtaxed, and sometimes plundered by invading armies, were prosperous in a high degree. nearly a century has now elapsed since, by the battle of plassey, british power was established in india, and from that day local action has tended to disappear, and centralization to take its place. from its date to the close of the century there was a rapidly increasing tendency toward having all the affairs of the princes and the people settled by the representatives of the company established in calcutta, and as usual in such cases, the country was filled with adventurers, very many of whom were wholly without principle, men whose sole object was that of the accumulation of fortune by any means, however foul, as is well known by all who are familiar with the indignant denunciations of burke.[ ] england was thus enriched as india was impoverished, and as centralization was more and more established. step by step the power of the company was extended, and everywhere was adopted the hindoo principle that the sovereign was proprietor of the soil, and sole landlord, and as such the government claimed to be entitled to one-half of the gross produce of the land. "wherever," says mr. rickards, long an eminent servant of the company, "the british power supplanted that of the mohammedans in bengal, we did not, it is true, adopt the sanguinary part of their creed; but from the impure fountain of their financial system, did we, to our shame, claim the inheritance to a right to seize upon half the gross produce of the land as a tax; and wherever our arms have triumphed, we have invariably proclaimed this savage right: coupling it at the same time with the senseless doctrine of the proprietary right to these lands being also vested in the sovereign, in virtue of the right of conquest."--_rickards's india_, vol. i, . under the earlier mohammedan sovereigns, this land-tax, now designated as rent, had been limited to a thirteenth, and from that to a sixth of the produce of the land; but in the reign of akber ( th century) it was fixed at one-third, numerous other taxes being at the same time abolished. with the decline and gradual dissolution of the empire, the local sovereigns not only increased it, but revived the taxes that had been discontinued, and instituted others of a most oppressive kind; all of which were continued by the company, while the land-tax was maintained at its largest amount. while thus imposing taxes at discretion, the company had also a monopoly of trade, and it could dictate the prices of all it had to sell, as well as of all that it needed to buy; and here was a further and most oppressive tax, all of which was for the benefit of absentee landlords. with the further extension of power, the demands on the company's treasury increased without an increase of the power to meet them; for exhaustion is a natural consequence of absenteeism, or centralization, as has so well been proved in ireland. the people became less able to pay the taxes, and as the government could not be carried on without revenue, a permanent settlement was made by lord cornwallis, by means of which all the rights of village proprietors, over a large portion of bengal, were sacrificed in favour of the zemindars, who were thus at once constituted great landed proprietors and absolute masters of a host of poor tenants, with power to punish at discretion those who were so unfortunate as not to be able to pay a rent the amount of which had no limit but that of the power to extort it. it was the middleman system of ireland transplanted to india; but the results were at first unfavourable to the zemindars, as the rents, for which they themselves were responsible to the government, were so enormous that all the rack-renting and all the flogging inflicted upon the poor cultivators could not enable them to pay; and but few years elapsed before the zemindars themselves were sold out to make way for another set as keen and as hard-hearted as themselves. that system having failed to answer the purpose, it was next determined to arrest the extension of the permanent settlement, and to settle with each little ryot, or cultivator, to the entire exclusion of the village authorities, by whom, under the native governments, the taxes had uniformly been so equitably and satisfactorily distributed. the ryotwar system was thus established, and how it has operated may be judged from the following sketch, presented by mr. fullerton, a member of the council at madras:-- "imagine the revenue leviable through the agency of one hundred thousand revenue officers, collected or remitted at their discretion, according to the occupant's means of paying, whether from the produce of his land or his separate property; and in order to encourage every man to act as a spy on his neighbour, and report his means of paying, that he may eventually save himself from extra demand, imagine all the cultivators of a village liable at all times to a separate demand in order to make up for the failure of one or more individuals of the parish. imagine collectors to every county, acting under the orders of a board, on the avowed principle of destroying all competition for labour by a general equalization of assessment, seizing and sending back runaways to each other. and, lastly, imagine the collector the sole magistrate or justice of the peace of the county, through the medium and instrumentality of whom alone any criminal complaint of personal grievance suffered by the subject can reach the superior courts. imagine, at the same time, every subordinate officer employed in the collection of the land revenue to be a police officer, vested with the power to fine, confine, put in the stocks, and flog any inhabitant within his range, on any charge, without oath of the accuser, or sworn recorded evidence of the case."[ ] any improvement in cultivation produced an immediate increase of taxation, so that any exertion on the part of the cultivator would benefit the company, and not himself. one-half of the gross produce [ ] may be assumed to have been the average annual rent, although, in many cases it greatly exceeded that proportion. the madras revenue board, may th, , stated that the "conversion of the government share of the produce (of lands) is in some districts, as high as or per cent. of the whole."[ ] it might be supposed that, having taken so large a share of the gross produce, the cultivator would be permitted to exist on the remainder, but such is not the case. mr. rickards gives [ ] a list of sixty other taxes, invented by the sovereigns, or their agents, many of which he states to exist at the present day. those who have any other mode of employing either capital or labour, in addition to the cultivation of their patches of land, as is very frequently the case, are subject to the following taxes, the principle of which is described as _excellent_ by one of the collectors, december st, :-- "the veesabuddy, or tax on merchants, traders, and shopkeepers; mohturfa, or tax on weavers, cotton cleaners, shepherds, goldsmiths, braziers, ironsmiths, carpenters, stone-cutters, &c.; and bazeebab, consisting of smaller taxes annually rented out to the highest-bidder. the renter was thus constituted a petty chieftain, with power to exact fees at marriages, religious ceremonies; to inquire into and fine the misconduct of females in families, and other misdemeanours; and in the exercise of their privileges would often urge the plea of engagements to the cirkar (government) to justify extortion. the details of these taxes are too long to be given in this place. the reader, however, may judge of the operation and character of all by the following selection of one, as described in the collector's report:--'the mode of settling the mohturfa on looms hitherto has been very minute; every circumstance of the weaver's family is considered, the number of days which he devotes to his loom, the number of his children, the assistance which he receives from them, and the number and quality of the pieces which he can turn out in a month or year; so that, let him exert himself as he will, his industry will always be taxed to the highest degree.' this mode always leads to such details that the government servants cannot enter into it, and the assessment of the tax is, in consequence, left a great deal too much to the curnums of the villages. no weaver can possibly know what he is to pay to the cirkar, till the demand come to be made for his having exerted himself through the year; and having turned out one or two pieces of cloth more than he did the year before, though his family and looms have been the same, is made the ground for his being charged a higher mohturfa, and at last, instead of a professional, it becomes a real income tax."[ ] the following will show that no mode of employing capital is allowed to escape the notice of the tax-gatherer:-- "the reader will, perhaps, better judge of the inquisitorial nature of one of these surveys, or pymashees, as they are termed in malabar, by knowing that upward of seventy different kinds of buildings--the houses, shops, or warehouses of different castes and professions--were ordered to be entered in the survey accounts; besides the following 'implements of professions' which were usually assessed to the public revenue, viz.: "oil-mills, iron manufactory, toddy-drawer's stills, potter's kiln, washerman's stone, goldsmith's tools, sawyer's saw, toddy-drawer's knives, fishing-nets, barber's hones, blacksmith's anvils, pack bullocks, cocoa-nut safe, small fishing-boats, cotton-beater's bow, carpenter's tools, large fishing-boats, looms, salt storehouse."[ ] "if the landlord objected to the assessment on trees as old and past bearing, they were, one and all, ordered to be cut down, nothing being allowed to stand that did not pay revenue to the state. to judge of this order, it should be mentioned that the trees are valuable, and commonly used for building, in malabar. to fell all the timber on a man's estate when no demand existed for it in the market, and merely because its stream of revenue had been drained, is an odd way of conferring benefits and protecting property."[ ] "having myself," says mr. rickards, "been principal collector of malabar, and made, during my residence in the province, minute inquiries into the produce and assessments of lands, i was enabled to ascertain beyond all doubt, and to satisfy the revenue board at madras, that in the former survey of the province, which led to the rebellion, lands and produce were inserted in the pretended survey account which absolutely did not exist, while other lands were assessed to the revenue at more than their actual produce."[ ] "fifty per cent. on the assessment is allowed," says mr. campbell,[ ] "as a reward to any informer of concealed cultivation, &c.; and it is stated that there are, 'in almost every village, dismissed accountants desirous of being re-employed, and unemployed servants who wish to bring themselves to notice,' whose services as informers can be relied on." a system like this, involving the most prying supervision of the affairs of each individual, and in which, in settling the tax to be paid, "the collector takes into consideration the number of children [ ] to be supported, makes the poor ryot a mere slave to the collector, and with the disadvantage that the latter has no pecuniary interest in the preservation of his life, whereas the death of a slave, who constitutes a part of the capital of his owner, is a severe loss." the tendency thus far has been, as we see, to sweep away the rights not only of kings and princes, but of all the native authorities, and to centralize in the hands of foreigners in calcutta the power to determine for the cultivator, the artisan, or the labourer, what work he should do, and how much of its products he might retain, thus placing the latter in precisely the position of a mere slave to people who could feel no interest in him but simply as a tax-payer, and, who were represented by strangers in the country, whose authority was everywhere used by the native officers in their employ, to enable them to accumulate fortunes for themselves. the poor manufacturer, as heavily taxed as the cultivator of the earth, found himself compelled to obtain advances from his employers, who, in their turn, claimed, as interest, a large proportion of the little profit that was made. the company's agents, like the native merchants, advanced the funds necessary to produce the goods required for europe, and the poor workmen are described as having been "in a state of dependence almost amounting to servitude, enabling the resident to obtain his labour at his own price."[ ] in addition to the taxes already described, a further one was collected at local custom-houses, on all exchanges between the several parts of the country; and to these were again added others imposed by means of monopolies of tobacco and opium, and of salt, one of the most important necessaries of life. the manufacture of coarse salt from the earth was strictly prohibited.[ ] the salt lakes of the upper country furnish a supply so great that it is of little value on the spot;[ ] but these lakes being even yet in the possession of native princes, the monopoly could then, and can now, be maintained only by aid of strong bands of revenue officers, whose presence renders that which is almost worthless on one side of an imaginary line so valuable on the other side of it that it requires the produce of the sixth part of the labour of the year to enable the poor hindoo to purchase salt for his family. along the seashore salt is abundantly furnished by nature, the solar heat causing a constant deposition of it; but the mere fact of collecting it was constituted an offence punishable by fine and imprisonment, and the quantity collected by the company's officers was limited to that required for meeting the demand at a monopoly price, all the remainder being regularly destroyed, lest the poor ryot should succeed in obtaining for himself, at cost, such a supply as was needed to render palatable the rice which constituted almost his only food. the system has since been rendered less oppressive, but even now the duty is ten times greater than it was under enlightened mohammedan sovereigns.[ ] such being the mode of collecting the revenue, we may now look to its distribution. under the native princes it was, to a great extent, locally-expended, whereas, under the new system, all the collections by government or by individuals tended to calcutta, to be there disposed of. thence no inconsiderable portion of it passed to england, and thus was established a perpetual drain that certainly could not be estimated at less than four millions of pounds sterling per annum, and cannot be placed, in the last century, at less than four hundred millions of pounds, or two thousand millions of dollars. the difference between an absentee landlord expending at a distance all his rents, and a resident one distributing it again among his tenants in exchange for services, and the difference in the value of the products of the land resulting from proximity to market, are so well exhibited in the following passage from a recent work on india, that the reader cannot fail to profit by its perusal:-- "the great part of the wheat, grain, and other exportable land produce which the people consume, as far as we have yet come, is drawn from our nerbudda districts, and those of malwa which border upon them; and _par consequent_, the price has been rapidly increasing as we recede from them in our advance northward. were the soil of those nerbudda districts, situated as they are at such a distance from any great market for their agricultural products, as bad as it is in the parts of bundelcund that i came over, no net surplus revenue could possibly be drawn from them in the present state of arts and industry. the high prices paid here for land produce, arising from the necessity of drawing a great part of what is consumed from such distant lands, enables the rajahs of these bundelcund states to draw the large revenue they do. these chiefs expend the whole of their revenue in the maintenance of public establishments of one kind or other; and as the essential articles of subsistence, _wheat_ and _grain, &c._, which are produced in their own districts, or those immediately around them, are not sufficient for the supply of these establishments, they must draw them from distant territories. all this produce is brought on the backs of bullocks, because there is no road from the districts whence they obtain it, over which a wheeled carriage can be drawn with safety; and as this mode of transit is very expensive, the price of the produce, when it reaches the capitals, around which these local establishments are concentrated, becomes very high. they must pay a price equal to the collective cost of purchasing and bringing this substance from the most distant districts, to which they are at any time obliged to have recourse for a supply, or they will not be supplied; and as there cannot be two prices for the same thing in the same market, the wheat and grain produced in the neighbourhood of one of these bundelcund capitals, fetch as high a price there as that brought from the most remote districts on the banks of the nerbudda river; while it costs comparatively nothing to bring it from the former lands to the markets. such lands, in consequence, yield a rate of rent much greater compared with their natural powers of fertility than those of the remotest districts whence produce is drawn for these markets or capitals; and as all the lands are the property of the rajahs, they draw all these rents as revenue. "were we to take this revenue, which the rajahs now enjoy, in tribute for the maintenance of public establishments concentrated at distant seats, all these local establishments would of course be at once disbanded; and all the effectual demand which they afford for the raw agricultural produce of distant districts would cease. the price of the produce would diminish in proportion; and with it the value of the lands of the districts around such capitals. hence the folly of conquerors and paramount powers, from the days of the greeks and romans down to those of lord hastings and sir john malcolm, who were all bad political economists, supposing that conquered and ceded territories could always be made to yield to a foreign state the same amount of gross revenue they had paid to their domestic government, whatever their situation with reference to the markets for their produce--whatever the state of their arts and their industry--and whatever the character and extent of the local establishments maintained out of it. the settlements of the land revenue in all the territories acquired in central india during the mahratta war, which ended, in , were made upon the supposition, that the lands would continue to pay the same rate of rent under the new, as they had paid under the old government, uninfluenced by the diminution of all local establishments, civil and military, to one-tenth of what they had been; that, under the new order of things, all the waste lands must be brought into tillage; and be able to pay as high a rate of rent as before tillage; and, consequently, that the aggregate available net revenue must greatly and rapidly increase! those who had the making of the settlements, and the governing of these new territories, did not consider that the diminution of every _establishment_ was the removal of a _market_--of an effectual demand for land produce; and that when all the waste lands should be brought into tillage, the whole would deteriorate in fertility, from the want of fallows, under the prevailing system of agriculture, which afforded the lands no other means of renovation from over cropping. the settlements of the land revenue which were made throughout our new acquisitions upon these fallacious assumptions, of course failed. during a series of quinquennial settlements, the assessment has been everywhere gradually reduced to about two-thirds of what it was when our rule began; and to less than one-half of what sir john malcolm, and all the other local authorities, and even the worthy marquis of hastings himself, under the influence of their opinions, expected it would be. the land revenues of the native princes of central india, who reduced their public establishments, which the new order of things seemed to render useless, and thereby diminished their only markets for the raw produce of their lands, have been everywhere falling off in the same proportion; and scarcely one of them now draws two-thirds of the income he drew from the same lands in . "there are in the valley of the nerbudda, districts that yield a great deal more produce every year than either orcha, jansee, or duteea; and yet, from the want of the same domestic markets, they do not yield one-fourth of the amount of land revenue. the lands are, however, rated equally high to the assessment, in proportion to their value to the farmers and cultivators. to enable them to yield a larger revenue to government, they require to have larger establishments as markets for land produce. these establishments may be either public, and paid by government, or they may be private, as manufactories, by which the land produce of these districts would be consumed by people employed in investing the value of their labour in commodities suited to the demand of distant markets, and more valuable than land produce in proportion to their weight and bulk. these are the establishments which government should exert itself to introduce and foster, since the valley of the nerbudda, in addition to a soil exceedingly fertile, has in its whole line, from its source to its embouchure, rich beds of coal reposing for the use of future generations, under the sandstone of the sathpore and vindhya ranges; and beds no less rich of very fine iron. these advantages have not yet been justly appreciated; but they will be so by and by."[ ] from the concluding lines of this extract the reader will see that india is abundantly supplied with fuel and iron ore, and that if she has not good machinery, the deficiency is not chargeable to nature. at the close of the last century cotton abounded, and to so great an extent was the labour of men, women, and children applied to its conversion into cloth, that, even with their imperfect machinery, they not only supplied the home demand for the beautiful tissues of dacca and the coarse products of western india, but they exported to other parts of the world no less than , , of pieces per annum.[ ] exchanges with every part of the world were so greatly in their favour that a rupee which would now sell for but s. d. or cents, was then worth s. d. or cents. the company had a monopoly of collecting taxes in india, but in return it preserved to the people the control of their domestic market, by aid of which they were enabled to convert their rice, their salt, and their cotton, into cloth that could be cheaply carried to the most remote parts of the world. such protection was needed, because while england prohibited the export of even a single collier who might instruct the people of india in the mode of mining coal--of a steam engine to pump water or raise coal, or a mechanic who could make one--of a worker in iron who might smelt the ore--of a spinning-jenny or power-loom, or of an artisan who could give instruction in the use of such machines--and thus systematically prevented them from keeping pace with improvement in the rest of the world,--she at the same time imposed very heavy duties on the produce of indian looms received in england. the day was at hand, however, when that protection was to disappear. the company did not, it was said, export sufficiently largely of the produce of british industry, and in the trade to india was thrown open--_but the restriction on the export of machinery and artisans was maintained in full force_; and thus were the poor and ignorant people of that country exposed to "unlimited competition," with a people possessed of machinery ten times more effective than their own, while not only by law deprived of the power to purchase machinery, but also of the power of competing in the british market with the produce of british looms. further than this, every loom in india, and every machine calculated to aid the labourer, was subject to a tax that increased with every increase in the industry of its owner, and in many cases absorbed the whole profit derived from its use.[ ] such were the circumstances under which the poor hindoo was called upon to encounter, unprotected, the "unlimited competition" of foreigners in his own market. it was freedom of trade all on one side. four years after, the export of cottons from bengal still amounted to £ , , ,[ ] but ten years later it had declined to £ , ; and at the end of twenty years we find a whole year pass by without the export of a single piece of cotton cloth from calcutta, the whole of the immense trade that existed but half a century since having disappeared. what were the measures used for the accomplishment of the work of destroying a manufacture that gave employment and food to so many millions of the poor people of the country, will be seen on a perusal of the following memorial, which shows that while india was denied machinery, and also denied access to the british market, she was forced to receive british cottons free of all duty:-- _"petition of natives of bengal, relative to duties on cotton and silk._ "calcutta, st sept. . "to the right honourable the lords of his majesty's privy council for trade, &c. "the humble petition of the undersigned manufacturers and dealers in cotton and silk piece goods, the fabrics of bengal; "showeth--that of late years your petitioners have found their business nearly superseded by the introduction of the fabrics of great britain into bengal, the importation of which augments every year, to the great prejudice of the native manufacturers. "that the fabrics of great britain are consumed in bengal, without any duties being levied thereon to protect the native fabrics. "that the fabrics of bengal are charged with the following duties when they are used in great britain-- "on manufactured cottons, per cent. on manufactured silks, per cent. "your petitioners most humbly implore your lordships' consideration of these circumstances, and they feel confident that no disposition exists in england to shut the door against the industry of any part of the inhabitants of this great empire. "they therefore pray to be admitted to the privilege of british subjects, and humbly entreat your lordships to allow the cotton and silk fabrics of bengal to be used in great britain 'free of duty,' or at the same rate which may be charged on british fabrics consumed in bengal. "your lordships must be aware of the immense advantages the british manufacturers derive from their skill in constructing and using machinery, which enables them to undersell the unscientific manufacturers of bengal in their own country: and, although your petitioners are not sanguine in expecting to derive any great advantage from having their prayer granted, their minds would feel gratified by such a manifestation of your lordships' good-will toward them; and such an instance of justice to the natives of india would not fail to endear the british government to them. "they therefore confidently trust that your lordships' righteous consideration will be extended to them as british subjects, without exception of sect, country, or colour. "and your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray." [signed by natives of high respectability.] the object sought to be accomplished would not have, however, been attained by granting the prayer of this most reasonable and humble petition. when the export of cotton, woollen, and steam machinery was prohibited, it was done with a view of compelling all the wool of the world to come to england to be spun and woven, thence to be returned to be worn by those who raised it--thus depriving the people of the world of all power to apply their labour otherwise than in taking from the earth cotton, sugar, indigo, and other commodities for the supply of the great "workshop of the world." how effectually that object has been accomplished in india, will be seen from the following facts. from the date of the opening of the trade in , the domestic manufacture and the export of cloth have gradually declined until the latter has finally ceased, and the export of raw cotton to england has gradually risen until it has attained a height of about sixty millions of pounds,[ ] while the import of twist from england has risen to twenty-five millions of pounds, and of cloth, to two hundred and sixty millions of yards; weighing probably fifty millions of pounds, which, added to the twist, make seventy-five millions, requiring for their production somewhat more than eighty millions of raw cotton. we see thus that every pound of the raw material sent to england is returned. the cultivator receives for it one penny, and when it returns to him in the form of cloth, he pays for it from one to two shillings, the whole difference being absorbed in the payment of the numerous brokers, transporters, manufacturers, and operatives, men, women, and children, that have thus been interposed between the producer and the consumer. the necessary consequence of this has been that everywhere manufactures have disappeared. dacca, one of the principal seats of the cotton manufacture, contained , houses, but its trade had already greatly fallen off even at the date of the memorial above given, and its splendid buildings, factories, and churches are now a mass of ruins and overgrown with jungle. the cotton of the district found itself compelled to go to england that it might there be twisted and sent back again, thus performing a voyage of , miles in search of the little spindle, because it was a part of the british policy not to permit the spindle anywhere to take its place by the side of the cultivator of cotton. the change thus effected has been stated in a recent official report to have been attended with ruin and distress, to which "no parallel can be found in the annals of commerce." what were the means by which it was effected is shown in the fact that at this period sir robert peel stated that in lancashire, _children_ were employed fifteen and seventeen hours per day during the week, and on sunday morning, from six until twelve, cleaning the machinery. in coventry, ninety-six hours in the week was the time usually required; and of those employed, many obtained but s. d.-- cents--for a week's wages. the object to be accomplished was that of underworking the poor hindoo, and driving him from the market of the world, after which he was to be driven from his own. the mode of accomplishment was that of cheapening labour and enslaving the labourer at home and abroad. with the decline of manufactures there has ceased to be a demand for the services of women or children in the work of conversion, and they are forced either to remain idle, or to seek employment in the field; and here we have one of the distinguishing marks of a state of slavery. the men, too, who were accustomed to fill up the intervals of other employments in pursuits connected with the cotton manufacture, were also driven to the field--and all demand for labour, physical or intellectual, was at an end, except so far as was needed for raising rice, indigo, sugar, or cotton. the rice itself they were not permitted to clean, being debarred therefrom by a duty double that which was paid on paddy, or rough rice, on its import into england. the poor grower of cotton, after paying to the government seventy-eight per cent.[ ] of the product of his labour, found himself deprived of the power to trade directly with the man of the loom, and forced into "unlimited competition" with the better machinery and almost untaxed labour of our southern states; and thereby subjected to "the mysterious variations of foreign markets" in which the fever of speculation was followed by the chill of revulsion with a rapidity and frequency that set at naught all calculation. if our crops were small, his english customers would take his cotton; but when he sent over more next year, there had, perhaps, been a good season here, and the indian article became an absolute drug in the market. it was stated some time since, in the house of commons, that one gentleman, mr. turner, had thrown £ worth of indian cotton upon a dunghill, because he could find no market for it. it will now readily be seen that the direct effect of thus _compelling_ the export of cotton from india was to increase the quantity pressing on the market of england, and thus to lower the price of all the cotton of the world, including that required for domestic consumption. the price of the whole indian crop being thus rendered dependent on that which could be realized for a small surplus that would have no existence but for the fact that the domestic manufacture had been destroyed, it will readily be seen how enormous has been the extent of injury inflicted upon the poor cultivator by the forcible separation of the plough and the loom, and the destruction of the power of association. again, while the price of cotton is fixed in england, there, too, is fixed the price of cloth, and such is the case with the sugar and the indigo to the production of which these poor people are forced to devote themselves; and thus are they rendered the mere slaves of distant men, who determine what they shall receive for all they have to sell, and what they shall pay for all they require to purchase. centralization and slavery go thus always hand in hand with each other. the ryots are, as we see, obliged to pay sixteen or eighteen pence for the pound of cotton that has yielded them but one penny; and all this difference is paid for the labour of other people while idle themselves. "a great part of the time of the labouring population in india is," says mr. chapman,[ ] "spent in idleness. i don't say this to blame them in the smallest degree. without the means of exporting heavy and crude surplus agricultural produce, and with scanty means, whether of capital, science, or manual skill, for elaborating on the spot articles fitted to induce a higher state of enjoyment and of industry in the mass of the people, they have really no inducement to exertion beyond that which is necessary to gratify their present and very limited wishes; those wishes are unnaturally low, inasmuch as they do not afford the needful stimulus to the exercise requisite to intellectual and moral improvement; and it is obvious that there is no remedy for this but extended intercourse. meanwhile, probably the half of the human time and energy of india runs to mere waste. surely we need not wonder at the poverty of the country." assuredly we need not. they are idle perforce. with indifferent means of communication, their cotton and their food _could readily travel in the form of cloth_, and they could consume liberally of food and clothing; but they find themselves now forced to export every thing in its rudest form, and this they are to do in a country that is almost without roads. the manner in which these raw products now travel may be seen on a perusal of the following passage from the london _economist_:-- "the cotton is brought on oxen, carrying pounds each, at the extreme rate, in fair weather, of seven miles a day for a continuance, and at a price of about s. for each hundred miles. if we take the average distance to mirzapore at miles, each pound of cotton costs in transit alone above - / d. it has thence to be borne by water-carriage nearly miles farther on to calcutta. * * * the great cotton-growing districts are in the northern portion of the peninsula, embracing guzerat, and a vast tract called the deccan, lying between the satpoora range of hills and the course of the kishna river. general briggs says--'the cotton from the interior of the country to the coast at bombay occupies a continuous journey of from one to two months, according to the season of the year; while in the rains the route is wholly impassable, and the traffic of the country is at a stand.' "in the absence of a defined road, even the carriers, with their pack-cattle, are compelled to travel by daylight, to prevent the loss of their bullocks in the jungles they have to pass through, and this under a burning sun of from to degrees fahrenheit. the droves of oxen are never so few as one hundred, and sometimes exceed a thousand. every morning after daylight each animal has to be saddled, and the load lifted on him by two men, one on each side; and before they are all ready to move the sun has attained a height which renders the heat to an european oppressive. the whole now proceeds at the rate of about two miles an hour, and seldom performs a journey of more than eight miles; but, as the horde rests every fourth day, the average distance is but six miles a day. if the horde is overtaken by rain, the cotton, saturated by moisture, becomes heavy, and the black clayey soil, through which the whole line of road lies, sinks under the feet of a man above the ankle, and under that of a laden ox to the knees. "in this predicament the cargo of cotton lies sometimes for weeks on the ground, and the merchant is ruined." "so miserably bad," says another writer, "are the existing means of communication with the interior, that many of the most valuable articles of produce are, _for want of carriage and a market, often allowed to perish on the farm_, while the cost of that which found its way to the port was enormously enhanced; but the quantity did not amount to above per cent. of the whole of the produce, the remainder of the articles always being greatly deteriorated." it will scarcely be difficult now to understand why it is that cotton yields the cultivator but a penny per pound. neither will it be difficult, seeing that the local manufacturers have every where been ruined, to understand why the producer of the more bulky food is in a condition that is even worse, now that the consumer has disappeared from his side. if the crop is large, grain is a drug for which scarcely any price can be obtained;[ ] and if it is small, the people perish, by thousands and ten of thousands, of famine, because, in the existing state of the roads, there can be little or no exchange of raw products. in the first case the cultivator is ruined, because it requires almost the whole crop to pay the taxes. in the other he is starved; and all this is a necessary consequence of a system that excludes the great middle class of mechanics and other working-men, and resolves a great nation into a mass of wretched cultivators, slaves to a few grasping money lenders. under such circumstances, the accumulation of any thing like capital is impossible. "none," says colonel sleeman,[ ] "have stock equal to half their rent." they are dependent everywhere, on the produce of the year, and however small may be its amount, the taxes must be paid, and of all that thus goes abroad nothing is returned. the soil gets nothing.[ ] it is not manured, nor can it be under a system of absenteeism like this, and its fertility everywhere declines, as is shown by the following extracts:-- "formerly, the governments kept no faith with their land-holders and cultivators, exacting ten rupees where they had bargained for five, whenever they found the crops good; but, in spite of all this _zolm_, (oppression,) there was then more _burkut_ (blessings from above) than now. the lands yielded more returns to the cultivator, and he could maintain his little family better upon five acres than he can now upon ten.[ ] "the land requires rest from labour, as well as men and bullocks; and if you go on sowing wheat and other exhausting crops, it will go on yielding less and less returns, and at last will not be worth the tilling."[ ] "there has been a manifest falling off in the returns."[ ] the soil is being exhausted, and every thing necessarily goes backward. trees are cut down, but none are planted; and the former sites of vast groves are becoming arid wastes, a consequence of which is, that droughts become from year to year more frequent. "the clouds," says colonel sleeman,[ ] "brought up from the southern ocean by the south-east trade-wind are attracted, as they pass over the island, by the forests in the interior, and made to drop their stores in daily refreshing showers. in many other parts of the world, governments have now become aware of this mysterious provision of nature, and have adopted measures to take advantage of it for the benefit of the people; and the dreadful sufferings to which the people of those of our districts, which have been the most denuded of their trees, have been of late years exposed from the want of rain in due season, may, perhaps, induce our indian government, to turn its thoughts to the subject." in former times extensive works were constructed for irrigating the land, but they are everywhere going to ruin--thus proving that agriculture cannot flourish in the absence of the mechanic arts: "in candeish, very many bunds [river-banks formed for purposes of irrigation] which were kept in repair under former governments, have, under ours, fallen to decay; nevertheless, not only has the population increased considerably under our rule, but in or , the collector was obliged to grant remission of land tax, 'because the abundance of former years lay stagnating in the province, and the low prices of grain from that cause prevented the ryots from being able to pay their fixed land assessment.'"[ ] we have here land abandoned and the cultivator ruined for want of a market for food, and wages falling for want of a market for labour; and yet these poor people are paying for english food and english labour employed in converting into cloth the cotton produced alongside of the food--and they are ruined because they have so many middlemen to pay that the producer of cotton can obtain little food, and the producer of food can scarcely pay his taxes, and has nothing to give for cloth. every thing tends, therefore, toward barbarism, and, as in the olden time of england and of europe generally, famines become steadily more numerous and more severe, as is here shown:-- "some of the finest tracts of land have been forsaken, and given up to the untamed beasts of the jungle. the motives to industry have been destroyed. the soil seems to lie under a curse. instead of yielding abundance for the wants of its own population, and the inhabitants of other regions, it does not keep in existence its own children. it becomes the burying-place of millions, who die upon its bosom crying for bread. in proof of this, turn your eyes backward upon the scenes of the past year. go with me into the north-western provinces of the bengal presidency, and i will show you the bleaching skeletons of five hundred thousand human beings, who perished of hunger in the space of a few short months. yes, died of hunger in what has been justly called the granary of the world. bear with me, if i speak of the scenes which were exhibited during the prevalence of this famine. the air for miles was poisoned by the effluvia emitted from the putrefying bodies of the dead. the rivers were choked with the corpses thrown into their channels. mothers cast their little ones beneath the rolling waves, because they would not see them draw their last gasp and feel them stiffen in their arms. the english in the city were prevented from taking their customary evening drives. jackalls and vultures approached, and fastened upon the bodies of men, women, and children, before life was extinct. madness, disease, despair stalked abroad, and no human power present to arrest their progress. _it was the carnival of death!_ and this occurred in british india--in the reign of victoria the first! nor was the event extraordinary and unforeseen. far from it: - witnessed a famine in the northern provinces: beheld one to the eastward: - saw one in the deccan. they have continued to increase in frequency and extent under our sway for more than half a century."[ ] the famine of is thus described by mr. george thompson, late m. p., on the testimony of a gentleman of high respectability: "the poorer houses were entirely unroofed, the thatches having been given to feed the cattle, which had nevertheless died; so that cattle had disappeared altogether from the land. he says that a few attenuated beings, more like skeletons than human creatures, were seen hovering about among the graves of those who had been snatched away by the famine; that desertion was everywhere visible, and that the silence of death reigned. in one of the villages, he says, an old man from whom they had bought a goat during their former visit, in , was the only survivor of the whole community except his brother's son, whom he was cherishing and endeavouring to keep alive, and these two had subsisted altogether upon the eleemosynary bounty of travellers. the courier of lord auckland had informed this gentleman that when the governor-general passed through that part of the country the roads were lined on either side with heaps of dead bodies, and that they had not unfrequently to remove those masses of unburied human beings, ere the governor-general could proceed onward with his suite; and that every day from to famishing wretches surrounded and followed the carriages, to whom he dealt out a scanty meal; and on one occasion the horse of the courier took fright, and on the cause being ascertained--what was it? it was found to be the lifeless body of a man who had died with his hand in his mouth, from which he had already devoured the fingers."[ ] the more severe the pressure on the poor ryot, the greater is the power of the few who are always ready to profit by the losses of their neighbours. these poor people are obliged to borrow money on their growing crops, the prices of which are regulated by the will of the lender rather than by the standard of the market, and the rate of interest which the cultivators pay for these loans is often not less than or per cent. a recent traveller says of the unfortunate cultivator-- "always oppressed, ever in poverty, the ryot is compelled to seek the aid of the mahajun, or native money-lender. this will frequently be the talukdhar, or sub-renter, who exacts from the needy borrower whatever interest he thinks the unfortunate may be able to pay him, often at the rate of one per cent. per week. the accounts of these loans are kept by the mahajuns, who, aware of the deep ignorance of their clients, falsify their books, without fear of detection. in this way, no matter how favourable the season, how large the crop, the grasping mahajun is sure to make it appear that the _whole_ is due to him; for he takes it at his own value. so far from mr. burke having overstated the case of the oppression of the ryots, on the trial of warren hastings, when he said that the tax-gatherer took from them eighteen shillings in every pound, he was really within the mark. at the conclusion of each crop-time, the grower of rice or cotton is made to appear a debtor to his superior, who thereupon provided the ryot appears able to toil on for another season--advances more seed for sowing, and a little more rice to keep the labourer and his family from absolute starvation. but should there be any doubt as to the health and strength of the tenant-labourer, he is mercilessly turned from his land and his mud hut, and left to die on the highway." this is slavery, and under such a system how could the wretched people be other than slaves? the men have no market for their labour, and the women and children must remain idle or work in the field, as did, and do, the women of jamaica; and all because they are compelled everywhere to exhaust the soil in raising crops to be sent to a distance to be consumed, and finally to abandon the land, even where they do not perish of famine. mr. chapman informs us that-- "even in the valley of the ganges, where the population is in some districts from to to the square mile, one-third of the cultivable lands are not cultivated; and in the deecan, from which we must chiefly look for increased supplies of cotton, the population, amounting to about to the square mile, is maintained by light crops, grown on little more than half the cultivable land."[ ] elsewhere he tells us that of _the cultivable surface of all india one-half is waste_.[ ] bishop heber informs us of the "impenetrable jungle" that now surrounds the once great manufacturing city of dacca; and the bombay times reminds its english readers of the hundreds of thousands of acres of rich land that are lying waste, and that might be made to produce cotton. when population and wealth diminish it is always the rich soils that are first abandoned, as is shown in the campagna of rome, in the valley of mexico, and in the deltas of the ganges and the nile. without association they could never have been brought into cultivation, and with the disappearance of the power to associate they are of necessity allowed to relapse into their original condition. driven back to the poor soils and forced to send abroad the product, their wretched cultivator becomes poorer from day to day, and the less he obtains the more he becomes a slave to the caprices of his landlord, and the more is he thrown upon the mercy of the money-lender, who lends _on good security_ at three per cent. per month, but _from him_ must have fifty or a hundred per cent. for a loan until harvest. that under such circumstances the wages of labour should be very low, even where the wretched people are employed, must be a matter of course. in some places the labourer has two and in others three rupees, or less than a dollar and a half, per month. the officers employed on the great zemindary estates have from three to four rupees, and that this is a high salary, is proved by the fact that the police receive but rupees ($ ) per annum, out of which they feed and clothe themselves! such are the rewards of labour in a country possessing every conceivable means of amassing wealth, and they become less from year to year. "it could not be too universally known," said mr. bright in the house of commons, two years since, "that the cultivators of the soil were in a very unsatisfactory condition; that they were, in truth, in a condition of extreme and almost universal poverty. all testimony concurred upon that point. he would call the attention of the house to the statement of a celebrated native of india, the rajah rammohun roy, who about twenty years ago published a pamphlet in london, in which he pointed out the ruinous effects of the zemindary system, and the oppression experienced by the ryots in the presidencies both of bombay and madras. after describing the state of matters generally, he added, 'such was the melancholy condition of the agricultural labourers, that it always gave him the greatest pain to allude to it.' three years afterward, mr. shore, who was a judge in india, published a work which was considered as a standard work till now, and he stated that 'the british government was not regarded in a favourable light by the native population of india,'--that a system of taxation and extortion was carried on 'unparalleled in the annals of any country. then they had the authority of an american planter, mr. finnie, who was in india in , and who spoke of the deplorable condition of the cultivators of the soil, and stated that if the americans were similarly treated, they would become as little progressive as the native indians. he might next quote the accounts given by mr. marriott in , a gentleman who was for thirty years engaged in the collection of the revenue in india, and who stated that 'the condition of the cultivators was greatly depressed, and that he believed it was still declining.' there was the evidence of a native of india to which he might refer on this subject. it was that of a gentleman, a native of delhi, who was in england in the year , and he could appeal to the right hon. baronet the member for tamworth in favour of the credibility of that gentleman. he never met with a man of a more dignified character, or one apparently of greater intelligence, and there were few who spoke the english language with greater purity and perfection. that gentleman had written a pamphlet, in which he stated that throughout his whole line of march from bombay he found the nizam's territories better cultivated, and the ryots in a better state of circumstances, than were the company's territories, of the people residing within them, who were plunged in a state of the greatest poverty; and he concluded his short, but comparatively full, notice of the present deplorable state of india, by observing that he feared this was but the prelude of many more such descriptions of the different portions of the company's dominions which would be put forth before the subject would attract the notice of those whose duty it was to remove the evils that existed." we have here confirmation of the correctness of the views of colonel sleeman, that the condition of the people under the local governments is better than under the great central government. heavily as they are taxed, a small part only of the proceeds of taxes goes, in these cases, to calcutta on its way to england, whereas, of the enormous salaries paid to english governors and judges, nearly the whole must go abroad, as no one consents to serve for a few years in india, except on such terms as will enable him to accumulate a fortune and return home to spend it. in further confirmation of this we have the facts so fully given in mr. campbell's recent work, (modern india, chap, xi.,) and proving that security of person and property increases as we pass _from_ the old possessions of the company, and toward the newly acquired ones. crime of every kind, gang robbery, perjury, and forgery, abound in bengal and madras, and the poverty of the cultivator is so great that the revenue is there the least, and is collected with the greatest difficulty--and there, too, it is that the power of association has been most effectually destroyed. passing thence to the northwestern provinces more recently acquired, person and property become more secure and the revenue increases; but when we reach the punjab, which until now has been subject to the rule of runjeet singh and his successors, we find that, tyrants as he and they have been represented, the people have there been left in the exercise of self-government. the village communities and the beautiful system of association, destroyed in bengal, there remain untouched. officers of all kinds are there more responsible for the performance of their duties than are their fellows in the older provinces, and property and person are more secure than elsewhere in india. gang robbery is rare, perjury is unfrequent, and mr. campbell informs us that a solemn oath is "astonishingly binding." "the longer we possess a province," he continues, "the more common and general does perjury become;" and we need no better evidence than is thus furnished of the slavish tendency of the system. the hill tribes, on the contrary, are remarkable for their "strict veracity," and colonel sleeman expresses the belief that "there is as little falsehood spoken in the village communities," as in any part of the world with an equal area and population.[ ] in the new provinces the people read and write with facility, and they are men of physical and moral energy, good cultivators, and understand well both their rights and their duties; whereas from the older ones education has disappeared, and with it all power to associate together for any good purpose. in the new provinces, commerce is large, as is shown by the following facts representing the population and post-office revenue of bengal, the n. w. provinces, and the punjab, placed in the order of their acquisition by the company:-- population. post-office revenue. ----------- -------------------- bengal................ , , , rupees. n. w. provinces....... , , , " punjab................ , , , " we have here exhibited the remarkable fact that in the country of the sikhs, so long represented as a scene of grasping tyranny, eight millions of people pay as much postage as is paid by fifteen millions in bengal, although in the latter is calcutta, the seat of all the operations of a great centralized government. that such should be the case is not extraordinary, for the power advantageously to employ labour diminishes with the approach to the centre of british power, and increases as we recede from it. idleness and drunkenness go hand in hand with each other, and therefore it is that mr. campbell finds himself obliged to state that "intemperance increases where our rule and system have been long established."[ ] we see thus that the observations of both mr. campbell and colonel sleeman, authors of the most recent works on india, confirm to the letter the earlier statements of captain westmacott, an extract from which is here given:-- "it is greatly to be deplored, that in places the longest under our rule, there is the largest amount of depravity and crime. my travels in india have fallen little short of miles, and extended to nearly all the cities of importance in northern, western, and central india. i have no hesitation in affirming, that in the hindoo and mussulman cities, removed from european intercourse, there is much less depravity than either in calcutta, madras, or bombay, where europeans chiefly congregate." calcutta grows, the city of palaces, but poverty and wretchedness grow as the people of india find themselves more and more compelled to resort to that city to make their exchanges. under the native rule, the people of each little district could exchange with each other food for cotton or cotton cloth, paying nobody for the privilege. now, every man must send his cotton to calcutta, thence to go to england with the rice and the indigo of his neighbours, before he and they can exchange food for cloth or cotton--and the larger the quantity they send the greater is the tendency to decline in price. with every extension of the system there is increasing inability to pay the taxes, and increasing necessity for seeking new markets in which to sell cloth and collect what are called rents--and the more wide the extension of the system the greater is the difficulty of collecting revenue sufficient for keeping the machine of government in motion. this difficulty it was that drove the representatives of british power and civilization into becoming traders in that pernicious drug, opium. "the very best parts of india," as we are told,[ ] were selected for the cultivation of the poppy. the people were told that they must either cultivate this plant, mate opium, or give up their land. if they refused, they were peremptorily told they must yield or quit. the same company that forced them to grow opium said, you must sell the opium to us; and to them it was sold, and they gave the price they pleased to put upon the opium thus manufactured; and they then sold it to trading speculators at calcutta, who caused it to be smuggled up the canton river to an island called lintin, and tea was received in exchange. at last, however, the emperor of china, after repeated threats, proceeded to execute summary justice; he seized every particle of opium; put under bond every european engaged in the merchandise of it; and the papers of to-day ( ) inform us that he has cut off the china trade, "root and branch." unhappily, however, the british nation deemed it expedient to make war upon the poor chinese, and compel them to pay for the opium that had been destroyed; and now the profits of the indian government from poisoning a whole people have risen from £ , , , at the date of the above extract, to the enormous sum of £ , , , or $ , , , and the market is, as we are informed, still extending itself.[ ] that the reader may see, and understand how directly the government is concerned in this effort at demoralizing and enslaving the chinese, the following extract is given:-- "for the supply and manufacture of government opium there is a separate establishment. there are two great opium agencies at ghazeepore and patna, for the benares and bahar provinces. each opium agent has several deputies in different districts, and a native establishment. they enter into contracts with the cultivators for the supply of opium at a rate fixed to meet the market. the land revenue authorities do not interfere, except to prevent cultivation without permission. government merely bargains with the cultivators as cultivators, in the same way as a private merchant would, _and makes advances to them for the cultivation_. the only difficulty found is to prevent, their cultivating too much, as the rates are favourable, government a sure purchaser, and the cultivation liked. the land cultivated is measured, and precaution is taken that the produce is all sold to government. the raw opium thus received is sent to the head agency, where it is manufactured, packed in chests, and sealed with the company's seal."[ ] it would seem to the author of this paragraph almost a matter of rejoicing that the chinese are bound to continue large consumers of the drug. "the failure of one attempt to exclude it has shown," as he thinks-- "that they are not likely to effect that object; and if we do not supply them, some one else will; but the worst of it is, according to some people, that if the chinese only legalized the cultivation in their own country, they could produce it much cheaper, and our market would be ruined. both for their sakes and ours we must hope that it is not so, or that they will not find it out."[ ] need we wonder, when gentlemen find pleasure in the idea of an increasing revenue from _forcing this trade in despite of all the efforts of the more civilized chinese government_, that "intemperance increases" where the british "rule and system has been long established?" assuredly not. poor governments are, as we everywhere see, driven to encourage gambling, drunkenness, and other immoralities, as a means of extracting revenue from their unfortunate taxpayers; and the greater the revenue thus obtained, the poorer become the people and the weaker the government. need we be surprised that that of india should be reduced to become manufacturer and smuggler of opium, when the people are forced to exhaust the land by sending away its raw products, and when the restraints upon the _mere collection_ of domestic salt are so great that english salt now finds a market in india? the following passage on this subject is worthy of the perusal of those who desire fully to understand how it is that the people of that country are restrained in the application of their labour, and why it is that labour is so badly paid:-- "but those who cry out in england against the monopoly, and their unjust exclusion from the salt trade, are egregiously mistaken. as concerns them there is positively no monopoly, but the most absolute free trade. and, more than this, the only effect of the present mode of manufacture in bengal is to give them a market which they would never otherwise have. a government manufacture of salt is doubtless more expensive than a private manufacture; but the result of this, and of the equality of duty on bad and good salt, is, that fine english salt now more or less finds a market in india; whereas, were the salt duty and all government interference discontinued to-morrow, the cheap bengal salt would be sold at such a rate that not a pound of english or any other foreign salt could be brought into the market."[ ] nevertheless, the system is regarded as one of perfect free trade! notwithstanding all these efforts at maintaining the revenue, the debt has increased the last twelve years no less than £ , , , or seventy-two millions of dollars; and yet the government is absolute proprietor of all the land of india, and enjoys so large a portion of the beneficial interest in it, that private property therein is reduced to a sum absolutely insignificant, as will now be shown. the gross land revenue obtained from a country with an area of , square miles, or above three hundred millions of acres, is , , rupees, equal to fifteen millions of pounds sterling, or seventy-two millions of dollars.[ ] what is the value of private rights of property, subject to the payment of this tax, or rent, may be judged from the following facts:--in - there were sold for taxes, in that portion of the country subject to the permanent settlement, estates, at something less than four years' purchase of the tax. further south, in the madras government, where the ryotwar settlement is in full operation, the land "would be sold" for balances of rent, but "generally it is not," as we are told, "and for a very good reason, viz. that nobody will buy it." private rights in land being there of no value whatsoever, "the collector of salem," as mr. campbell informs us-- "naïvely mentions 'various unauthorized modes of stimulating the tardy,' rarely resorted to by heads of villages; such as 'placing him in the sun, obliging him to stand on one leg, or to sit with his head confined between his knees.'"[ ] in the north-west provinces, "the settlement," as our author states, "has certainly been successful in giving a good market value to landed property;" that is, it sells at about "four years' purchase on the revenue."[ ] still further north, in the newly acquired provinces, we find great industry, "every thing turned to account," the assessment, to which the company succeeded on the deposition of the successors of runjeet singh, more easy, and land more valuable.[ ] the value of land, like that of labour, therefore increases as we pass _from_ the old to the new settlements, being precisely the reverse of what would be the case if the system tended to the enfranchisement and elevation of the people, and precisely what should be looked for in a country whose inhabitants were passing from freedom toward slavery. with the data thus obtained we may now ascertain, with perhaps some approach to accuracy, the value of all the private rights in the land of india. in no case does that subject to tax appear to be worth more than four years' purchase, while in a very large portion of the country it would seem to be worth absolutely nothing. there are, however, some tax-free lands that may be set off against those held under the ryotwar settlement; and it is therefore possible that the whole are worth four years' purchase, which would give millions of dollars, or millions of pounds sterling, as the value of all the rights in land acquired by the people of india by all the labour of their predecessors and themselves in the many thousands of years it has been cultivated. the few people that have occupied the little and sandy state of new jersey, with its area of square miles, have acquired rights in and on the land that are valued, subject to the claims of government, at millions of dollars; and the few that have occupied the little island on which stands the city of new york have acquired rights that would sell in the market for at least one-half more than could be obtained for all the proprietary rights to land in india, with millions of acres and millions of inhabitants! "under the native princes," says mr. campbell, "india was a paying country." under british rule, it has ceased to be so, because under that rule all power of combined action has been annihilated, or is in train to be, and will be so, by aid of the system that looks to compelling the whole people, men, women, and children, to work in the field, producing commodities to be exported in their raw state. every act of association is an act of trade, and whatever tends to destroy association must destroy trade. the internal commerce of india declines steadily, and the external amounts to but about half a dollar per head, and no effort can make it grow to any extent. the returns of last year, of english trade, show a diminution as compared with those of the previous one, whereas with almost all other countries there is a large increase. cuba exports to the large amount of twenty-five dollars per head, or almost fifty times as much as india; and she takes of cotton goods from england four times as much per head; and this she does because it is a part of the policy of spain to bring about combination of action, and to enable the planter and the artisan to work together, whereas the policy of england is to destroy everywhere the power of association, and thus to destroy the domestic trade, upon which the foreign one must be built. centralization is adverse to trade, and to the freedom of man. spain does not seek to establish centralization. provided she receives a given amount of revenue, she is content to permit her subjects to employ themselves at raising sugar or making cloth, as they please, and thus to advance in civilization; and by this very course it is that she is enabled to obtain revenue. how centralization operates on the people and the revenue, and how far it tends to promote the civilization or the freedom of man, may be seen, on a perusal of the following extract from a recent speech of mr. anstey, in the british house of commons:-- "such was the financial condition of india, which the right honourable gentleman believed to be so excellent. the intelligent natives of india, however, who visited this country, were not of that opinion. they told us that the complaints sent from india to this country were disregarded here, and that they always would be disregarded as long as inquiry into them was imperial, not local. they stated that their condition was one of hopeless misery, and that it had been so ever since they came under our rule. the result was, that cholera had become the normal order of things in that country, and in india it never died out. it appeared from the reports of medical officers in the army that it did not attack the rich and well-fed so frequently as it attacked the poor, and that among them it had made the most fearful ravages. the first authentic account they had of the appearance of the cholera in india was coincident with the imposition of the salt monopoly by warren hastings; and by a just retribution it had visited their own shores, showing them with what a scourge they had so long afflicted the natives of india. it might be said of the other taxes that, in one form or another, they affected every branch of industry and every necessary of life. they affected even the tools of trade, and were sometimes equal in amount to the sum for which the tool itself could be purchased in the market. "when on a former occasion he had mentioned those facts before a member of the court of directors, he was told that if he had seen the papers in the archives, he would perceive that an alteration had taken place; but he found, on an inspection of the papers, that the result to the purchaser of salt is almost equal to what it had been. it was a well known fact that the natives dare not complain. when they asked for protection from the laws, they were treated as juttee persaud had been treated last year--cases were fabricated against them, and they were prosecuted for their lives. with the examples before them of nuncomar and juttee persaud, it was not surprising that the natives were so backward in bringing to justice the persons whose oppressions had been so great." it was in the face of facts like those here presented, and other similar ones presented to us in the history of jamaica, that in a recent despatch lord palmerston thus instructed his minister at madrid:-- "i have to instruct your lordship to observe to m. de miraflores that the slaves of cuba form a large portion, and by no means an unimportant one, of the population of cuba; and that any steps taken to provide for their emancipation would, therefore, as far as the black population is concerned, be quite in unison with the recommendation made by her majesty's government, that measures should be adopted for contenting the people of cuba, with a view to secure the connection between that island and the spanish crown; and it must be evident that if the negro population of cuba were rendered free, that fact would create a most powerful element of resistance to any scheme for annexing cuba to the united states, where slavery still exists. "with regard to the bearing which negro emancipation would have on the interests of the white proprietors, it may safely be affirmed that free labour costs less than slave labour, and it is indisputable that a free and contented peasantry are safer neighbours for the wealthy classes above them than ill-treated and resentful slaves; and that slaves must, from the nature of things, be more or less ill-treated, is a truth which belongs to the inherent principles of human nature, and is quite as inevitable as the resentment, however suppressed it may be, which is the consequence of ill-treatment." the negroes of jamaica have never been permitted to apply their spare labour even to the refining of their own sugar, _nor are they so at this day_. they must export it raw, and the more they send the lower is the price and the larger the proportion taken by the government--but the poor negro is ruined. spain, on the contrary, permits the cubans to engage in any pursuits they may deem most likely to afford them a return to labour and capital; and, as a necessary consequence of this, towns and cities grow up, capital is attracted to the land, which becomes from day to day more valuable, labour is in demand, and there is a gradual, though slow, improvement of condition. the power to resort to other modes of employment diminishes the necessity for exporting sugar, and when exported to spain, the producer is enabled to take for himself nearly the whole price paid by the consumer, the government claiming only a duty of fifteen per cent. the hindoo, like the negro, is shut out from the workshop. if he attempts to convert his cotton into yarn, his spindle is taxed in nearly all of the profit it can yield him. if he attempts to make cloth, his loom is subjected to a heavy tax, from which that of his wealthy english competitor is exempt. his iron ore and his coal must remain in the ground, and if he dares to apply his labour even to the collection of the salt which crystallizes before his door, he is punished by fine and imprisonment. he must raise sugar to be transported to england, there to be exchanged, perhaps, for english salt. for the sugar, arrived in that country, the workman pays at the rate perhaps of forty shillings a hundred, of which the government claims one-third, the ship owner, the merchant, and others, another third, and the remaining third is to be fought for by the agents of the company, anxious for revenue, and the poor ryot, anxious to obtain a little salt to eat with his rice, and as much of his neighbour's cotton, in the form of english cloth, as will suffice to cover his loins. under the spanish system capital increases, and labour is so valuable that slaves still continue to be imported. under the english one, labour is valueless, and men sell themselves for long years of slavery at the sugar culture in the mauritius, in jamaica, and in guiana. in all countries _to which_ men are attracted, civilization tends upward; but in all those _from which_ men fly, it tends downward. at the moment this despatch was being written by lord palmerston, mr. campbell was writing his book, in which it is everywhere shown that the tendency of india toward centralization and absenteeism, and therefore toward exhaustion and slavery, is rapidly on the increase. "the communication with india," as he says-- "is every day so much increased and facilitated that we become more and more entirely free from native influence, and the disposition to hindooize, which at first certainly showed itself, has altogether disappeared. the english in india have now become as english as in england. "while this state of things has great advantages, it has also some disadvantage in the want of local knowledge, and of permanency in the tenure of appointments which results. as there has been a constant succession of total strangers in every appointment, it follows that the government must be entirely carried on upon general principles, with little aid from local knowledge and experience."--p. . the tendency toward the transfer of english capital to india, as he informs us, retrogrades instead of advancing, and this is precisely what we might expect to find to be the case. _capital never seeks a country from which men are flying as they now fly from india._ the english houses bring none, but being in general mere speculators, they borrow largely and enter into large operations, and when the bubble bursts, the poor hindoo suffers in the prostration of trade and decline in the prices of cotton and sugar. "the consequence is," as mr. campbell says-- "that european speculation has retrograded. far up the country, where the agents of the old houses were formerly numerous and well supplied with money, the planters are now few and needy, and generally earn but a precarious subsistence as in fact the servants of native capitalists."--p. . iron, by aid of which the people might improve their processes of cultivation and manufacture, has little tendency toward india. the average export of it to that country in and ' was but , tons, value £ , , or about two-pence worth for every five of the population. efforts are now being made for the construction of railroads, but their object is that of carrying out the system of centralization, and thus still further destroying the power of association, because they look to the annihilation of what still remains of domestic manufacture, and thus _cheapening cotton_. with all the improvements in the transportation of that commodity, its poor cultivator obtains less for it than he did thirty years since, and the effect of further improvement can be none other than that of producing a still further reduction, and still further deterioration of the condition of the men who raise food and cotton. as yet the power of association continues in the punjab, but it is proposed now to hold there great fairs for the sale of english manufactures, and the day cannot be far distant when the condition of the people of the new provinces will be similar to that of those of the old ones, as no effort will be spared to carry out the system which looks to driving the whole people to agriculture, and thus compelling them to exhaust their land. it is needed, says mr. chapman, the great advocate of railways in india, that the connection between "the indian grower and english spinner" become more intimate, and "_the more the english is made to outweigh the native home demand, the more strongly will the native agriculturist feel that his personal success depends on securing and improving his british connection_"[ ] --that is, the more the natives can be prevented from combining, their labours, the greater, as mr. chapman thinks, will be the prosperity of india. centralization has impoverished, and to a considerable extent depopulated, that country, but its work is not yet done. it remains yet to reduce the people of the punjab, of affghanistan and burmah, to the condition of the bengalese. the burmese war is, as we are informed, "connected with at least certain hopes of getting across to china through the burmese territories,"[ ] and, of course of extending the trade in opium throughout the whole of interior china; and the revenue from that source will pay the cost of annexation. it is by aid of this powerful narcotic, probably, that "civilization" is about, as we are told, to "plant her standard on the ruins of kingdoms which for thousands of years have been smouldering into dust."[ ] we are often told of "the dim moral perceptions" of the people of india, and as many of those who will read this volume may be disposed to think that the cause of poverty lies in some deficiencies in the character of the hindoo, it may not be improper, with a view to the correction of that opinion, to offer a few passages from the very interesting work of colonel sleeman, who furnishes more information on that head than any other recent traveller or resident; and his remarks are the more valuable because of being the fruit of many years of observation:-- "sir thomas munro has justly observed, 'i do not exactly know what is meant by civilizing the people of india. in the theory and practice of good government they may be deficient; but if a good system of agriculture--if unrivalled manufactures--if a capacity to produce what convenience or luxury demands--if the establishment of schools for reading and writing--if the general practice of kindness and hospitality--and above all, if a scrupulous respect and delicacy toward the female sex are amongst the points that denote a civilized people; then the hindoos are not inferior in civilization to the people of europe.--_rambles_, vol. i. . "our tents were pitched upon a green sward on one bank of a small stream running into the nerbudda close by, while the multitude occupied the other bank. at night all the tents and booths are illuminated, and the scene is hardly less animating by night than by day; but what strikes an european most is the entire absence of all tumult and disorder at such places. he not only sees no disturbance, but feels assured that there will be none; and leaves his wife and children in the midst of a crowd of a hundred thousand persons all strangers to them, and all speaking a language and following a religion different from theirs, while he goes off the whole day, hunting and shooting in the distant jungles, without the slightest feeling of apprehension for their safety or comfort."--_ibid_. . "i am much attached to the agricultural classes of india generally, and i have found among them some of the best men i have ever known. the peasantry in india have generally very good manners, and are exceedingly intelligent, from having so much more leisure, and unreserved and easy intercourse with those above them."--_ibid_. . "i must say, that i have never either seen or read of a nobler spirit than seems to animate all classes of these communities in india on such distressing occasions."--_ibid_. . "there is no part of the world, i believe, where parents are so much reverenced by their sons as they are in india in all classes of society."--_ibid_. . "an instance of deliberate fraud or falsehood among native merchants of respectable stations in society, is extremely rare. among the many hundreds of bills i have had to take from them for private remittances, i have never had one dishonoured, or the payment upon one delayed beyond the day specified; nor do i recollect ever hearing of one who had. they are so careful not to speculate beyond their means, that an instance of failure is extremely rare among them. no one ever in india hears of families reduced to ruin or distress by the failure of merchants and bankers; though here, as in all other countries advanced in the arts, a vast number of families subsist upon the interest of money employed by them. "there is no class of men more interested in the stability of our rule in india than this of the respectable merchants; nor is there any upon whom the welfare of our government, and that of the people, more depend. frugal, first, upon principle, that they may not in their expenditure encroach upon their capitals, they become so by habit; and when they advance in life they lay out their accumulated wealth in the formation of those works which shall secure for them, from generation to generation, the blessings of the people of the towns in which they have resided, and those of the country around. it would not be too much to say, that one-half the great works which embellish and enrich the face of india, in tanks, groves, wells, temples, &c., have been formed by this class of the people solely with the view of securing the blessings of mankind by contributing to their happiness in solid and permanent works."--_ibid_. vol. ii. . "in the year , while i held the civil charge of the district of jubbulpore, in this valley of the nerbudda, i caused an estimate to be made of the public works of ornament and utility it contained. the population of the district at that time amounted to five hundred thousand souls, distributed among four thousand and fifty-three occupied towns, villages, and hamlets. there were one thousand villages more which had formerly been occupied, but were then deserted. there were two thousand two hundred and eighty-eight tanks, two hundred and nine bowlies, or large wells, with flights of steps extending from the top down to the water when in its lowest stage; fifteen hundred and sixty wells lined with brick and stone, cemented with lime, but without stairs; three hundred and sixty hindoo temples, and twenty-two mohammedan mosques. the estimated cost of these works in grain at the present price, that is the quantity that would have been consumed, had the labour been paid in kind at the present ordinary rate, was eighty-six lacks, sixty-six thousand and forty-three rupees ( , , ,) £ , sterling. "the labourer was estimated to be paid at the rate of about two-thirds the quantity of corn he would get in england if paid in kind, and corn sells here at about one-third the price it fetches in average seasons in england. in europe, therefore, these works, supposing the labour equally efficient, would have cost at least four times the sum here estimated; and such works formed by private individuals for the public good, without any view whatever to return in profits, indicates a very high degree of _public spirit_. "the whole annual rent of the lands of this district amounts to about six hundred and fifty thousand rupees a year, (£ , sterling,) that is, five hundred thousand demandable by the government, and one hundred and fifty thousand by those who hold the lands at lease immediately under government, over and above what may be considered as the profits of their stock as farmers. these works must, therefore, have cost about thirteen times the amount of the annual rent of the whole of the lands of the districts--or the whole annual rent for above thirteen years!"--_ibid_, vol. ii. . we have here private rights in land amounting to , rupees, in a country abounding in coal and iron ore,[ ] and with a population of half a million of people. estimating the private interest at ten years' purchase, it is exactly three years' purchase of the land-tax; and it follows of course, that _the government takes every year one-fourth of the whole value of the property_,--at which rate the little state of new jersey, with its half-million of inhabitants, would pay annually above thirty millions of dollars for the support of those who were charged with the administration of its affairs! need we wonder at the poverty of india when thus taxed, while deprived of all power even to manure its land? "three-fourths of the recruits for our bengal native infantry are drawn from the rajpoot peasantry of the kingdom of oude, on the left bank of the ganges, where their affections have been linked to the soil for a long series of generations. the good feelings of the families from which they are drawn, continue, through the whole period of their service, to exercise a salutary influence over their conduct as men and as soldiers. though they never take their families with them, they visit them on furlough every two or three years, and always return to them when the surgeon considers a change of air necessary to their recovery from sickness. their family circles are always present to their imaginations; and the recollections of their last visit, the hopes of the next, and the assurance that their conduct as men and as soldiers in the interval will be reported to those circles by their many comrades, who are annually returning on furlough to the same parts of the country, tend to produce a general and uniform propriety of conduct, that is hardly to be found among the soldiers of any other army in the world, and which seems incomprehensible to those who are unacquainted with its source,--veneration for parents cherished through life and a never impaired love of home, and of all the dear objects by which it is constituted."--ibid. vol. ii. . such are the people that we see now forced to abandon a land of which not more than half the cultivable part is in cultivation--a land that abounds in every description of mineral wealth--and to sell themselves for long years of service, apart from wives, children, and friends, to be employed in the most unhealthful of all pursuits, the cultivation of sugar in the mauritius, and the sandwich islands, and among the swamps of british guiana, and jamaica, and for a reward of four or five rupees ($ to $ . ) per month. what was their condition in the mauritius is thus shown by an intelligent and honest visitor of the island in :-- "after the passage of the act abolishing slavery, an arrangement was sanctioned by the colonial government, for the introduction of a great number of indian labourers into the colony. they were engaged at five rupees, equal to ten shillings, a month, for five years, with also one pound of rice, a quarter of a pound of dhall, or grain, a kind of pulse, and one ounce of butter, of ghee, daily. but for every day they were absent from their work they were to return two days to their masters, who retained one rupee per month, to pay an advance made of six months' wages, and to defray the expense of their passage. if these men came into port louis to complain of their masters, they were lodged in the bagne prison, till their masters were summoned. the masters had a great advantage before the magistrates over their servants: the latter being foreigners, but few of them could speak french, and they had no one to assist them in pleading their cause. they universally represented themselves as having been deceived with respect to the kind of labour to be exacted from them. but perhaps the greatest evil attendant on their introduction into the mauritius was the small proportion of females imported with them, only about two hundred being brought with upward of ten thousand men. it was evident that unless the system of employing them were closely watched, there was a danger that it might ultimately grow into another species of slavery."[ ] we see thus that while the females of india are deprived of all power to employ themselves in the lighter labour of manufacture, the men are forced to emigrate, leaving behind their wives and daughters, to support themselves as best they may. the same author furnishes an account of the indian convicts that had been transported to the island, as follows:-- "among the indian convicts working on the road, we noticed one wearing chains; several had a slight single ring round the ankle. they are lodged in huts with flat roofs, or in other inferior dwellings, near the road. there are about seven hundred of them in the island. what renders them peculiarly objects of sympathy is, that they were sent here for life, and no hope of any remission of sentence is held out to them for good conduct. their's is a hopeless bondage; and though it is said by some that they are not hard worked, yet they are generally, perhaps constantly, breaking stones and mending the road, and in a tropical sun. there are among them persons who were so young when transported that, in their offences, they could only be looked on as the dupes of those that were older; and many of them bear good characters."[ ] at the date to which these passages refer there was a dreadful famine in india; but, "during the prevalence of this famine," as we are told,-- "rice was going every hour out of the country. , bags of pounds each--making , , lbs.--were exported from calcutta. where? to the mauritius, to feed the kidnapped coolies. yes: to feed the men who had been stolen from the banks of the ganges and the hills adjacent, and dragged from their native shore, under pretence of going to one of the company's villages, to grow in the island of mauritius what they might have grown in abundance upon their own fertile, but over-taxed land. the total amount of rice exported from calcutta, during the famine in , was , , lbs., besides , , lbs. of other edible grains, which would have fed and kept alive all those who perished that year. wives might have been saved to their husbands, babes to their mothers, friends to their friends; villages might still have been peopled; a sterile land might have been restored to verdure. freshness and joy and the voices of gladness, might have been there. now, all is stillness, and desolation, and death. yet we are told we have nothing to do with india."[ ] the nation that exports raw produce _must_ exhaust its land, and then it _must_ export its men, who fly from famine, leaving the women and children to perish behind them. by aid of continued coolie immigration the export of sugar from the mauritius has been doubled in the last sixteen years, having risen from to millions of pounds. sugar is therefore very cheap, and the foreign competition is thereby driven from the british market. "such conquests," however, says, very truly, the london _spectator_-- "don't always bring profit to the conqueror; nor does production itself prove prosperity. competition for the possession of a field may be carried so far as to reduce prices below prime cost; and it is clear from the notorious facts of the west indies--from the change of property, from the total unproductiveness of much property still--that the west india production of sugar has been carried on, not only without replacing capital, but with a constant sinking of capital." the "free" coolie and the "free negro" of jamaica, have been urged to competition for the sale of sugar, and they seem likely to perish together; but compensation for this is found in the fact that-- "free-trade has, in reducing the prices of commodities for home consumption, enabled the labourer to devote a greater share of his income toward purchasing clothing and luxuries, and has increased the home trade to an enormous extent."[ ] what effect this reduction of "the prices of commodities for home consumption" has had upon the poor coolie, may be judged from the following passage:-- "i here beheld, for the first time, a class of beings of whom we have heard much, and for whom i have felt considerable interest. i refer to the coolies imported by the british government to take the place of the _faineant_ negroes, when the apprenticeship system was abolished. those that i saw were wandering about the streets, dressed rather tastefully, but always meanly, and usually carrying over their shoulder a sort of _chiffonier's_ sack, in which they threw whatever refuse stuff they found in the streets or received as charity. their figures are generally superb; and their eastern costume, to which they adhere as far as their poverty will permit of any clothing, sets off their lithe and graceful forms to great advantage. their faces are almost uniformly of the finest classic mould, and illuminated by pairs of those dark swimming and propitiatory eyes, which exhaust the language of tenderness and passion at a glance. "but they are the most inveterate mendicants on the island. it is said that those brought from the interior of india are faithful and efficient workmen, while those from calcutta and its vicinity are good for nothing. those that were prowling about the streets of spanish-town and kingston, i presume, were of the latter class, for there is not a planter on the island, it is said, from whom it would be more difficult to get any work than from one of these. they subsist by begging altogether: they are not vicious, nor intemperate, nor troublesome particularly, except as beggars. in that calling they have a pertinacity before which a northern mendicant would grow pale. they will not be denied. they will stand perfectly still and look through a window from the street for a quarter of an hour, if not driven away, with their imploring eyes fixed upon you, like a stricken deer, without saying a word or moving a muscle. they act as if it were no disgrace for them to beg, as if the least indemnification which they are entitled to expect, for the outrage perpetrated upon them in bringing them from their distant homes to this strange island, is a daily supply of their few and cheap necessities, as they call for them. "i confess that their begging did not leave upon my mind the impression produced by ordinary mendicancy. they do not look as if they ought to work. i never saw one smile, and though they showed no positive suffering, i never saw one look happy. each face seemed to be constantly telling the unhappy story of their woes, and like fragments of a broken mirror, each reflecting in all its hateful proportions the national outrage of which they are the victims."[ ] the slave trade has taken a new form, the mild and gentle hindoo having taken the place of the barbarous and fierce african; and this trade is likely to continue so long as it shall be held to be the chief object of the government of a christian people to secure to its people cheap cotton and sugar, without regard to the destruction of life of which that cheapness is the cause. the people of england send to india missionary priests and bishops, but they obtain few converts; nor can it ever be otherwise under a system which tends to destroy the power of association, and thus prevents that diversification of employments that is indispensable to the improvement of physical, moral, intellectual, or political condition. may we not hope that at no very distant day they will arrive at the conclusion that such association is as necessary to the hindoo as they know it to be to themselves, and that if they desire success in their attempts to bring the followers of mohammed, or of brahma, to an appreciation of the doctrines of christ, they must show that their practice and their teachings are in some degree in harmony with each other? when that day shall come they will be seen endeavouring to remedy the evil they have caused, and permitting the poor hindoo to obtain establishments in which labour may be combined for the production of iron and of machinery, by aid of which the native cotton may be twisted in the neighbourhood in which it is produced, thus enabling the now unhappy cultivator to exchange directly with his food-producing neighbour, relieved from the necessity for sending his products to a distance, to be brought back again in the form of yarn or cloth, at fifteen or twenty times the price at which he sold it in the form of cotton. that time arrived, they will appreciate the sound good sense contained in the following remarks of colonel sleeman:-- "if we had any great establishment of this sort in which christians could find employment, and the means of religious and secular instruction, thousands of converts would soon flock to them; and they would become vast sources of future improvement in industry, social comfort, municipal institutions, and religion. what chiefly prevents the spread of christianity in india is the dread of exclusion from caste and all its privileges; and the utter hopelessness of their ever finding any respectable circle of society of the adopted religion, which converts, or would be converts to christianity, now everywhere feel. form such circles for them--make the members of these circles happy in the exertion of honest and independent industry--let those who rise to eminence in them feel that they are considered as respectable and as important in the social system as the servants of government, and converts will flock around you from all parts, and from all classes of the hindoo community. * * * i am persuaded that a dozen such establishments as that of mr. thomas ashton, of hyde, as described by a physician of manchester, and noticed in mr. baines's admirable work on the cotton manufactures of great britain, (page ,) would do more in the way of conversion among the people of india than has ever yet been done by all the religious establishments, or ever will be done by them without some such aid."--vol. ii. . that there is a steady increase in the tendency toward personal servitude, or slavery, in india, no one can doubt who will study carefully the books on that country; and it may not be amiss to inquire on whom rests the responsibility for this state of things. by several of the persons that have been quoted, messrs. thompson, bright, and others, it is charged upon the company; but none that read the works of messrs. campbell and sleeman can hesitate to believe that the direction is now animated by a serious desire to improve the condition of its poor subjects. unfortunately, however, the company is nearly in the condition of the land-holders of jamaica, and is itself tending toward ruin, because its subjects are limited to agriculture, and because they receive so small a portion of the value of their very small quantity of products. now, as in the days of _joshua gee_, the largest portion of that value remains in england, whose people eat cheap sugar while its producer starves in india. cheap sugar and cheap cotton are obtained by the sacrifice of the interests of a great nation; and while the policy of england shall continue to look to driving the women and children of india to the labours of the field, and the men to the raising of sugar in the mauritius, the soil must continue to grow poorer, the people must become more and more enslaved, and the government must find itself more and more dependent for revenue on the power to poison the people of china; and therefore will it be seen that however good may be the intentions of the gentlemen charged with the duties of government, they must find themselves more and more compelled to grind the poor ryot in the hope of obtaining revenue. chapter xiii. how slavery grows in ireland and scotland. the government which followed the completion of the revolution of , pledged itself to discountenance the woollen manufacture of ireland, with a view to compel the export of raw wool to england, whence its exportation to foreign countries was prohibited; the effect of which was, of course, to enable the english manufacturer to purchase it at his own price. from that period forward we find numerous regulations as to the ports from which alone woollen yarn or cloth might go to england, and the ports of the latter through which it might come; while no effort was spared to induce the people of ireland to abandon woollens and take to flax. laws were passed prohibiting the export of irish cloth and glass to the colonies. by other laws irish ships were deprived of the benefit of the navigation laws. the fisheries were closed against them. no sugar could be imported from any place but great britain, and no drawback was allowed on its exportation to ireland; and thus was the latter compelled to pay a tax for the support of the british government, while maintaining its own. all other colonial produce was required to be carried first to england, after which it might be shipped to ireland; and as irish shipping was excluded from the advantages of the navigation laws, it followed that the voyage of importation was to be made in british ships, manned by british seamen, and owned by british merchants, who were thus authorized to tax the people of ireland for doing their work, while a large portion of the irish people were themselves unemployed. while thus prohibiting them from applying themselves to manufactures or trade, every inducement was held out to them to confine themselves to the production of commodities required by the english manufacturers, and wool, hemp, and flax were admitted into england free of duty. we see thus that the system of that day in reference to ireland looked to limiting the people of that country, as it limited the slaves of jamaica, and now limits the people of hindostan, to agriculture alone, and thus depriving the men, the women, and the children of all employment except the labour of the field, and of all opportunity for intellectual improvement, such as elsewhere results from that association which necessarily accompanies improvement in the mechanic arts. during our war of the revolution, freedom of trade was claimed for ireland; and as the demand was made at a time when a large portion of her people were under arms as volunteers, the merchants and manufacturers of england, who had so long acted as middlemen for the people of the sister kingdom, found themselves obliged to submit to the removal of some of the restrictions under which the latter had so long remained. step by step changes were made, until at length, in , ireland was declared independent, shortly after which duties were imposed on various articles of foreign manufacture, avowedly with the intention of enabling her people to employ some of their surplus labour in converting her own food and wool, and the cotton wool of other countries, into cloth. thenceforward manufactures and trade made considerable progress, and there was certainly a very considerable tendency toward improvement. some idea of the condition of the country at that time, and of the vast and lamentable change that has since taken place, may be obtained from the consideration of a few facts connected with the manufacture of books in the closing years of the last century. the copyright laws not extending to ireland, all books published in england might there be reprinted, and accordingly we find that all the principal english law reports of the day, very many of the earlier ones, and many of the best treatises, as well as the principal novels, travels, and miscellaneous works, were republished in dublin, as may be seen by an examination of any of our old libraries. the publication of such books implies, of course, a considerable demand for them, and for ireland herself, as the sale of books in this country was very small indeed, and there was then no other part of the world to which they could go. more books were probably published in ireland in that day by a single house than are now required for the supply of the whole kingdom. with , however, there came a change. by the act of union the copyright laws of england were extended to ireland, and at once the large and growing manufacture of books was prostrated. the patent laws were also extended to ireland; and as england had so long monopolized the manufacturing machinery then in use, it was clear that it was there improvements would be made, and that thenceforth the manufactures of ireland must retrograde. manchester had the home market, the foreign market, and, to no small extent, that of ireland open to her; while the manufacturers of the latter were forced to contend for existence, and under the most disadvantageous circumstances, on their own soil. the one could afford to purchase expensive machinery, and to adopt whatever improvements might be made, while the other could not. the natural consequence was, that irish manufactures gradually disappeared as the act of union came into effect. by virtue of its provisions, the duties established by the irish parliament for the purpose of protecting the farmers of ireland in their efforts to bring the loom and the anvil into close proximity with the plough and the harrow, were gradually to diminish, and free trade was to be fully established; or, in other words, manchester and birmingham were to have a monopoly of supplying ireland with cloth and iron. the duty on english woollens was to continue twenty years. the almost prohibitory duties on english calicoes and muslins were to continue until ; after which they were to be gradually diminished, until in they were to cease. those on cotton yarn were to cease in . the effect of this in diminishing the demand for irish labour, is seen in the following comparative view of manufactures at the date of the union, and at different periods in the ensuing forty years, here given:-- dublin, , master woollen manufacturers. ... , " hands employee............. ... " , " master wool-combers........ ... , " hands employed............. ... " , " carpet manufacturers....... ... , " hands employed............. ... " none kilkenny, , blanket manufacturers...... ... , " hands employed............. ... , dublin, , silk-loom wearers at work.. ... , balbriggan, , calico looms at work..... ... , wicklow, , hand-looms at work......... ... , none cork, , braid weavers.............. ... , " worsted weavers............ ... " " hoosiers................... ... " " wool-combers............... ... " " cotton weavers............. ... " " linen cheek weavers........ ... " none " cotton spinners, bleachers, calico printers....... thousands... " none "for nearly half a century ireland has had perfectly free trade with the richest country in the world; and what," says the author of a recent work of great ability,-- "has that free trade done for her? she has even now," he continues, "no employment for her teeming population except upon the land. she ought to have had, and might easily have had, other and various employments, and plenty of it. are we to believe," says he, "the calumny that the irish are lazy and won't work? is irish human nature different from other human nature? are not the most laborious of all labourers in london and new york, irishmen? are irishmen inferior in understanding? we englishmen who have personally known irishmen, in the army, at the bar, and in the church, know that there is no better head than a disciplined irish one. but in all these cases that master of industry, the stomach, has been well satisfied. let an englishman exchange his bread and beer, and beef, and mutton, for no breakfast, for a lukewarm lumper at dinner, and no supper. with such a diet, how much better is he than an irishman--a celt, as he calls him? no, the truth is, that the misery of ireland is not from the human nature that grows there--it is from england's perverse legislation, past and present."[ ] deprived of all employment, except in the labour of agriculture, land became, of course, the great object of pursuit. "land is life," had said, most truly and emphatically, chief justice blackburn; and the people had now before them the choice between the occupation of land, _at any rent_, or _starvation_. the lord of the land was thus enabled to dictate his own terms, and therefore it has been that we have heard of the payment of five, six, eight, and even as much as ten pounds per acre. "enormous rents, low wages, farms of an enormous extent, let by rapacious and indolent proprietors to monopolizing land-jobbers, to be relet by intermediate oppressors, for five times their value, among the wretched starvers on potatoes and water," led to a constant succession of outrages, followed by insurrection acts, arms acts, and coercion acts, when the real remedy was to be found in the adoption of a system that would emancipate the country from the tyranny of the spindle and the loom, and permit the labour of ireland to find employment at home. that employment could not be had. with the suppression of irish manufactures the demand for labour had disappeared. an english traveller, describing the state of ireland in , thirteen years after the free-trade provisions of the act of union had come fully into operation, furnishes numerous facts, some of which will now be given, showing that the people were compelled to remain idle, although willing to work at the lowest wages--such wages as could not by any possibility enable them to do more than merely sustain life, and perhaps not even that. cashel.--"wages here only _eightpence a day_, and numbers altogether without employment." cahir.--"i noticed, on sunday, on coming from church, the streets crowded with labourers, with spades and other implements in their hands, standing to be hired; and i ascertained that any number of these men might have been engaged, on constant employment, at _sixpence per day_ without diet." wicklow.--"the husband of this woman was a labourer, at _sixpence_ a day, _eighty_ of which sixpences--that is, eighty days' labour--were absorbed in the rent of the cabin." "in another cabin was a decently dressed woman with five children, and her husband was also a labourer at _sixpence a day_. the pig had been taken for rent a few days before." "i found some labourers receiving only _fourpence per day_." kilkenny.--"upward of persons totally without employment." "i visited the factories that used to support men with their families, and how many men did i find at work? one man! in place of finding men occupied, i saw them in scores, like spectres, walking about, and lying about the mill. i saw immense piles of goods completed, but for which there was no sale. i saw heaps of blankets, and i saw every loom idle. as for the carpets which had excited the jealousy and the fears of kidderminster, not one had been made for seven months. to convey an idea of the destitution of these people, i mention, that when an order recently arrived for the manufacture of as many blankets for the police as would have kept the men at work for a few days, bonfires were lighted about the country--not bonfires to communicate insurrection, but to evince joy that a few starving men were about to earn bread to support their families. nevertheless, we are told that irishmen will not work at home." callen.--"in this town, containing between four and five thousand inhabitants, at least one thousand are without regular employment, six or seven hundred entirely destitute, and there are upward of two hundred mendicants in the town--persons incapable of work."--_inglis's ireland_ in . such was the picture everywhere presented to the eye of this intelligent traveller. go where he might, he found hundreds anxious for employment, yet no employment could be had, unless they could travel to england, there to spend _weeks_ in travelling round the country in quest of _days_ of employment, the wages for which might enable them to pay their rent at home. "the celt," says the _times_, "is the hewer of wood and the drawer of water to the saxon; the great works of this country," it continues "depend on _cheap labour_." the labour of the slave is always low in price. the people of ireland were interdicted all employment but in the cultivation of the land, and men, women, and children were forced to waste more labour than would have paid twenty times over for all the british manufactures they could purchase. they were passing rapidly toward barbarism, and for the sole reason that they were denied all power of association for any useful purpose. what was the impression produced by their appearance on the mind of foreigners may be seen by the following extract from the work of a well-known and highly intelligent german traveller:-- "a russian peasant, no doubt, is the slave of a harder master, but still he is fed and housed to his content, and no trace of mendicancy is to be seen in him. the hungarians are certainly not among the best-used people in the world; still, what fine wheaten bread and what wine has even the humblest among them for his daily fare! the hungarian would scarcely believe it, if he were to be told there was a country in which the inhabitants must content themselves with potatoes every alternate day in the year. "servia and bosnia are reckoned among the most wretched countries of europe, and certainly the appearance of one of their villages has little that is attractive about it; but at least the people, if badly housed, are well clad. we look not for much luxury or comfort among the tartars of the crimea; we call them poor and barbarous, but, good heavens! they look at least like human creatures. they have a national costume, their houses are habitable, their orchards are carefully tended, and their gayly harnessed ponies are mostly in good condition. an irishman has nothing national about him but his rags,--his habitation is without a plan, his domestic economy without rule or law. we have beggars and paupers among us, but they form at least an exception; whereas, in ireland, beggary or abject poverty is the prevailing rule. the nation is one of beggars, and they who are above beggary seem to form the exception. "the african negroes go naked, but then they have a tropical sun to warm them. the irish are little removed from a state of nakedness; and their climate, though not cold, is cool, and extremely humid. * * * "there are nations of slaves, but they have, by long custom, been made unconscious of the yoke of slavery. this is not the case with the irish, who have a strong feeling of liberty within them, and are fully sensible of the weight of the yoke they have to bear. they are intelligent enough to know the injustice done them by the distorted laws of their country; and while they are themselves enduring the extreme of poverty, they have frequently before them, in the manner of life of their english landlords, a spectacle of the most refined luxury that human ingenuity ever invented."--_kohl's travels in ireland_. it might be thought, however, that ireland was deficient in the capital required for obtaining the machinery of manufacture to enable her people to maintain competition with her powerful neighbour. we know, however, that previous to the union she had that machinery; and from the date of that arrangement, so fraudulently brought about, by which was settled conclusively the destruction of irish manufactures, the _annual_ waste of labour was greater than the whole amount of capital then employed in the cotton and woollen manufactures of england. from that date the people of ireland were thrown, from year to year, more into the hands of middlemen, who accumulated fortunes that they _would_ not invest in the improvement of land, and _could_ not, under the system which prostrated manufactures, invest in machinery of any kind calculated to render labour productive; and all their accumulations were sent therefore to england for investment. an official document published by the british government shows that the transfers of british securities from england to ireland, that is to say, the investment of irish capital in england, in the thirteen years following the final adoption of free trade in , amounted to as many millions of pounds sterling; and thus was ireland forced to contribute cheap labour and cheap capital to building up "the great works of britain." further, it was provided by law that whenever the poor people of a neighbourhood contributed to a saving fund, the amount should not be applied in any manner calculated to furnish local employment, but should be transferred for investment in the british funds. the landlords fled to england, and their rent followed them. the middlemen sent their capital to england. the trader or the labourer that could accumulate a little capital saw it sent to england; and he was then compelled to follow it. such is the history of the origin of the present abandonment of ireland by its inhabitants. the form in which rents, profits, and savings, as well as taxes, went to england, was that of raw products of the soil, to be consumed abroad, yielding nothing to be returned to the land, which was of course impoverished. the average export of grain in the first three years following the passage of the act of union was about , quarters, but as the domestic market gradually disappeared, the export of raw produce increased, until, at the close of twenty years it exceeded a million of quarters; and at the date of mr. inglis's visit it had reached an average of two and a half millions, or , , of our bushels. the poor people were, in fact, selling their soil to pay for cotton and woollen goods that they should have manufactured themselves, for coal which abounded among themselves, for iron, all the materials of which existed at home in great profusion, and for a small quantity of tea, sugar, and other foreign commodities, while the amount required to pay rent to absentees, and interest to mortgagees, was estimated at more than thirty millions of dollars. here was a drain that no nation could bear, however great its productive power; and the whole of it was due to the system which forbade the application of labour, talent, or capital to any thing but agriculture, and thus forbade advance in civilization. the inducements to remain at home steadily diminished. those who could live without labour found that society had changed; and they fled to england, france, or italy. those who desired to work, and felt that they were qualified for something beyond mere manual labour, fled to england or america; and thus by degrees was the unfortunate country depleted of every thing that could render it a home in which to remain, while those who could not fly remained to be, as the _times_ so well describes it, mere "hewers of wood and drawers of water to the saxon," happy when a full-grown man could find employment at _sixpence a day_, and that, too, without food. "throughout the west and south of ireland," said an english traveller in , four years before the exhaustion of the soil had produced disease among the potatoes-- "the traveller is haunted by the face of the _popular starvation_. it is not the exception--it is _the condition_ of the people. in this fairest and richest of countries, men are suffering and _starving by millions_. there are thousands of them, at this minute, stretched in the sunshine at their cabin doors with _no work_, scarcely any food, no hope seemingly. strong countrymen are lying in bed, '_for the hunger_'--because a man lying on his back does not need so much food as a person afoot. many of them have torn up the unripe potatoes from their little gardens, and to exist now must look to winter, when they shall have to suffer starvation and cold too."--_thackeray_. "everywhere," said the _quarterly review_, "throughout all parts, even in the best towns, and in dublin itself, you will meet men and boys--not dressed, not covered--but hung round with a collection of rags of unrivalled variety, squalidity, and filth--walking dunghills. * * * no one ever saw an english scarecrow with such rags." the difference in the condition of these poor people and that of the slave--even the slave of jamaica at that day--consisted in this, that the negro slave was worth buying, whereas the others were not; and we know well that the man who pays a good price for a commodity, attaches to it a value that induces him to give some care to its preservation; whereas he cares nothing for another that he finds himself forced to accept. "starving by millions," as they are here described, death was perpetually separating husbands and wives, parents and children, while to the survivors remained no hope but that of being enabled at some time or other to fly to another land in which they might be permitted to sell their labour for food sufficient to support life. the existence of such a state of things was, said the advocates of the system which looks to converting all the world outside of england into one great farm, to be accounted for by the fact that the population was too numerous for the land, and yet a third of the surface, including the richest lands in the kingdom, was lying unoccupied and waste. "of single counties," said an english writer, "mayo, with a population of , , and a rental of only £ , , has an area of , , acres, of which , are waste! no less than , acres, being very nearly equal to the whole extent of surface now under cultivation, are declared to be reclaimable. galway, with a population of , , and a valued rental of £ , , has upward of , acres of waste, , of which are reclaimable! kerry, with a population of , , has an area of , , acres-- , being waste, and , of them reclaimable! even the union of glenties, lord monteagle's _ne plus ultra_ of redundant population, has an area of , acres, of which , are waste, and for the most part reclaimable, to its population of , . while the barony of ennis, that abomination of desolation, has , acres of land to its paupers--a proportion which, as mr. carter, one of the principal proprietors, remarks in his circular advertisement for tenants, 'is at the rate of only one family to acres; so that if but one head of a family were employed to every acres, there need not be a single pauper in the entire district; a proof,' he adds, 'that nothing but employment is wanting to set this country to rights!' in which opinion we fully coincide." nothing but employment _was_ needed, but that could not be found under the system which has caused the annihilation of the cotton manufacture of india, notwithstanding the advantage of having the cotton on the spot, free from all cost for carriage. as in jamaica, and as in india, the land had been gradually exhausted by the exportation of its products in their rudest state, and the country had thus been drained of capital, a necessary consequence of which was that the labour even of men found no demand, while women and children starved, that the women and children of england might spin cotton and weave cloth that ireland was too poor to purchase. bad, however, as was all this, a worse state of things was at hand. poverty and wretchedness compelled the wretched people to fly in thousands and tens of thousands across the channel, thus following the capital and the soil that had been transferred to birmingham and manchester; and the streets and cellars of those towns, and those of london, liverpool, and glasgow, were filled with men, women, and children in a state almost of starvation; while throughout the country, men were offering to perform the farm labour for food alone, and a cry had arisen among the people of england that the labourers were likely to be swamped by these starving irishmen: to provide against which it was needed that the landlords of ireland should be compelled to support their own poor, and forthwith an act of parliament was passed for that purpose. thence arose, of course, an increased desire to rid the country of the men, women, and children whose labour could not be sold, and who could therefore pay no rent. the "crowbar brigade" was therefore called into more active service, as will be seen by the following account of their labours in a single one of the "unions" established under the new poor-law system, which in many cases took the whole rent of the land for the maintenance of those who had been reduced to pauperism by the determination of the people of manchester and birmingham to continue the colonial system under which ireland had been ruined. "in galway union, recent accounts declared the number of poor evicted, and their homes levelled within the last two years, to equal the numbers in kilrush-- families and , human beings are said to have been here also thrown upon the road, houseless and homeless. i can readily believe the statement, for to me some parts of the country appeared like an enormous graveyard--the numerous gables of the unroofed dwellings seemed to be gigantic tombstones. they were, indeed, records of decay and death far more melancholy than the grave can show. looking on them, the doubt rose in my mind, am i in a civilized country? have we really a free constitution? can such scenes be paralleled in siberia or caffraria?" a single case described in a paper recently published by mr. dickens in his "_household words_," will convey to the reader some idea of an eviction, that may be taken as a specimen, and perhaps a fair one, of the _fifty thousand_ evictions that took place in the single year , and of the hundreds of thousands that have taken place in the last six years. "black piles of peat stood on the solitary ground, ready after a summer's cutting and drying. presently, patches of cultivation presented themselves; plots of ground raised on beds, each a few feet wide, with intervening trenches to carry off the boggy water, where potatoes had grown, and small fields where grew more ragwort than grass, enclosed by banks cast up and tipped here and there with a brier or a stone. it was the husbandry of misery and indigence. the ground had already been freshly manured by sea-weeds, but the village, where was it? blotches of burnt-ground, scorched heaps of rubbish, and fragments of blackened walls, alone were visible. garden plots were trodden down and their few bushes rent up, or hung with tatters of rags. the two horsemen, as they hurried by, with gloomy visages, uttered no more than the single word--eviction!" the scenes that had taken place at the destruction of that village, are thus described to the author of the sad work, by a poor servant:-- "oh, bless your honour! if you had seen that poor frantic woman when the back of the cabin fell and buried her infant, where she thought she had laid it safe for a moment while she flew to part her husband and a soldier who had struck the other children with the flat of his sword and bade them troop off. oh, but your honour it was a killing sight! * * * i could not help thinking of the poor people at rathbeg when the soldiers and police cried, 'down with them! down with them even to the ground!'--and then the poor little cabins came down all in fire and smoke, amid the howls and cries of the poor creatures. oh, it was a fearful sight, your honour--it was indeed--to see the poor women hugging their babies, and the houses where they were born burning in the wind. it was dreadful to see the old bed-ridden man lie on the ground among the few bits of furniture, and groan to his gracious god above! oh, your honour, you never saw such a sight, or--you--sure a--it would never have been done." this is certainly an awful picture of the slavery resulting from compelling a whole nation to devote itself to agriculture, and thus annihilating the power of association--from compelling a whole people to forego all the advantages resulting from proximity to market for the sale of their products or the purchase of manure--and from compelling men, women, and children to be idle, when they would desire to be employed. in reading it, we are forcibly reminded of the _razzias_ of the little african kings, who, anxious for a fresh supply of slaves, collect their troops together and invade the neighbouring territories, where they enact scenes corresponding exactly with the one here described. in africa, however, the slave is fed by those who have burned and destroyed his house and his farm; but in ireland, as labour is valueless, he is turned into the roads or the grave-yards to die of famine, or of pestilence. and yet, even now, the _times_ asks the question-- "how are the people to be fed and employed? that is the question which still baffles an age that can transmit a message round the world in a moment of time, and point out the locality of a planet never yet seen. there is the question which founders both the bold and the wise." up to this time there had been repeated cases of partial famine, but now the nation was startled by the news of the almost total failure of the crop of potatoes, the single description of food upon which the people of ireland had been reduced to depend. constant cropping of the soil, returning to it none of the manure, because of the necessity for exporting almost the whole of its products, had produced disease in the vegetable world--precisely as the want of proper nourishment produces it in the animal world--and now a cry of famine rang throughout the land. the poor-houses were everywhere filled, while the roads, and the streets, and the grave-yards were occupied by the starving and the naked, the dying and the dead; and the presses of england were filled with denunciations of english and irish landholders, who desired to make food dear, while men, women, and children were perishing by hundreds of thousands for want of food. thus far, ireland had been protected in the market of england, as some small compensation for the sacrifice she had made of her manufacturing interests; but now, small as has been the boon, it was to be withdrawn, precisely as we see to have been the case with the poor people of jamaica. like them, the irish had become poor, and their trade had ceased to be of value, although but seventy years before they had been england's _best_ customers. the system had exhausted all the foreign countries with which england had been permitted to maintain what is denominated free trade--india, portugal, turkey, the west indies, and ireland herself--and it had become necessary to make an effort to obtain markets in the only prosperous countries of the world, those which had to a greater or less extent placed the consumer by the side of the producer, to wit--this country, france, belgium, germany, and russia--and the mode of accomplishing this was that of offering them the same freedom of trade in food by which ireland had been ruined. the farmers were everywhere invited to exhaust their soil by sending its products to england to be consumed; and the corn-laws were repealed for the purpose of enabling them to impoverish themselves by entering into competition with the starving irishman, who was thus at once deprived of the market of england, as by the act of union he had been deprived of his own. the cup of wretchedness was before well nigh full, but it was now filled. the price of food fell, and the labourer was ruined, for the whole product of his land would scarcely pay his rent. the landlord was ruined, for he could collect no rents, and he was at the same time liable for the payment of enormous taxes for the maintenance of his poor neighbours. his land was encumbered with mortgages and settlements, created when food was high, and he could pay no interest; and now a law was passed, by aid of which property could be summarily disposed of at public sale, and the proceeds distributed among those who had legal claims upon it. the landholder of jamaica, exhausted by the system, had had his property taken from him at a price fixed by parliament, and the proceeds applied to the discharge of debts incurred to his english agents, and now the same parliament provided for the transfer of irish property with a view to the payment of the same class of debts. the impoverished landholder now experienced the same fate that had befallen his poor tenant, and from that date to this, famine and pestilence, levellings and evictions, have been the order of the day. their effect has everywhere been to drive the poor people from the land, and its consequences are seen in the fact that the population numbered, in , _one million six hundred and fifty-nine thousand less than it did in_ ; while the starving population of the towns had largely increased. the county of cork had diminished , , while dublin had grown in numbers , . galway had lost , , while the city had gained . connaught had lost , , while limerick and belfast had gained , . the number of inhabited houses had fallen from , , to , , , or more than twenty per cent. announcing these startling facts, the london _times_ stated that "_for a whole generation man had been a drug in ireland, and population a nuisance_." the "inexhaustible irish supply had," as it continued, "kept down the price of english labour," but this cheapness of labour had "contributed vastly to the improvement and power" of england, and largely to "the enjoyment of those who had money to spend." now, however, a change appeared to be at hand, and it was to be feared that the prosperity of england, based as it had been on cheap irish labour, might be interfered with, as famine and pestilence, evictions and emigration, were thinning out the celts who had so long, as it is said, been "hewers of wood and drawers of water for the saxon." another of the advocates of the system which has exhausted and ruined ireland, and is now transferring its land to the men who have enriched themselves by acting as middlemen between the producers and consumers of the world, rejoicing in the great number of those who had fled from their native soil to escape the horrors of starvation and pestilence, declares that this is to be regarded as the joyful side of the case. "what," it asks, "will follow? this great good, among others--that _the stagnant weight of unemployed population_ in these insulated realms is never likely again to accumulate to the dangerous amount which there was sometimes cause to apprehend that, from unforeseen revulsions in industry or foreign trade, it might have done. a natural vent is now so thoroughly opened, and so certain to grow wider and clearer everyday, that the overflow will pass off whenever a moderate degree of pressure recurs. population, skill, and capital, also, will no longer wait in consternation till they are half spent with watching and fear. the way is ready. they will silently shift their quarters when the competition or depression here becomes uncomfortable. every family has already friends or acquaintances who have gone before them over sea. socially, our insulation as a people is proved, by the census of , to be at an end."--_daily news_. the _times_, too, rejoices in the prospect that the resources of ireland will now probably be developed, as the saxon takes the place of the celt, who has so long hewn the wood and drawn the water for his saxon masters. "prosperity and happiness may," as it thinks, "some day reign over that beautiful island. its fertile soil, its rivers and lakes, its water-power, its minerals, and other materials for the wants and luxuries of man, may one day be developed; but all appearances are against the belief that this will ever happen in the days of the celt. that tribe will soon fulfil the great law of providence which seems to enjoin and reward the union of races. it will mix with the anglo-american, and be known no more as a jealous and separate people. its present place will be occupied by the more mixed, more docile, and more serviceable race, which has long borne the yoke of sturdy industry in this island, which can submit to a master and obey the law. this is no longer a dream, for it is a fact now in progress, and every day more apparent." commenting upon the view thus presented, an american journalist most truly says-- "there is a cold-blooded atrocity in the spirit of these remarks for which examples will be sought in vain, except among the doctors of the free-trade school. naturalists have learned to look with philosophical indifference upon the agonies of a rabbit or a mouse expiring in an exhausted receiver, but it requires long teaching from the economists before men's hearts can be so steeled, that after pumping out all the sustenance of vitality from one of the fairest islands under the sun, they can discourse calmly upon its depopulation as proof of the success of the experiment, can talk with bitter irony of 'that _strange_ region of the earth where such a people, affectionate and hopeful, genial and witty, industrious and independent, was produced and _could not stay_,' and can gloat in the anticipation that prosperity and happiness may some day reign over that beautiful island, and its boundless resources for the wants and luxuries of man be developed, not for the celt, but 'for a more mixed, more docile, and more serviceable race, which can submit to a master and obey the law.'"--_albany journal_. the _times_ rejoices that the place of the celt is in future to be occupied by cattle, as sheep already occupy the place of the highlander expelled from the land in which, before britain undertook to underwork all other nations and thus secure a monopoly for "the workshop of the world," his fathers were as secure in their rights as was the landowner himself. irish journals take a different view of the prospect. they deprecate the idea of the total expulsion of the native race, and yet they fear that "there is no doubt that in a few years more, if some stop is not put to the present outpouring of the people to america, and latterly to australia, there will not be a million of the present race of inhabitants to be found within the compass of the four provinces." "no thoughts of the land of their birth," it continues, "seems to enter their minds, although the irish people have been proverbial for their attachment to their country."--_connaught western star_. a recent journal informs us that "the galway papers are full of the most deplorable accounts of wholesale evictions, or rather exterminations, in that miserable country. the tenantry are turned out of the cottages by scores at a time. as many as men, women, and children have been driven upon the roads and ditches by way of one day's work, and have now no resource but to beg their bread in desolate places, or to bury their griefs, in many instances for ever, within the walls of the union workhouse. land agents direct the operation. the work is done by a large force of police and soldiery. under the protection of the latter, 'the crowbar brigade' advances to the devoted township, takes possession of the houses, such as they are, and, with a few turns of the crowbar and a few pulls at a rope, bring down the roof, and leave nothing but a tottering chimney, if even that. the sun that rose on a village sets on a desert; the police return to their barracks, and the people are nowhere to be found, or are vainly watching from some friendly covert for the chance of crouching once more under their ruined homes. "what to the irish heart is more painful than even the large amount and stern method of the destruction, is that the authors this time are saxon strangers. it is a wealthy london company that is invading the quiet retreats of connemara, and robbing a primitive peasantry of its last hold on the earth; the law life assurance company having advanced, we believe, £ , on the martin estates, has now become the purchaser under the encumbered estates acts, and is adopting these summary but usual measures to secure the forfeited pledge. that gentlemen, many of whom have never set foot in ireland, and who are wealthy enough to lend a quarter of a million of money, should exact the last penny from a wretched peasantry who had no hand, or voice in the transaction which gave them new masters, seems utterly intolerable to the native irish reason." with the growth of the value of land, man has always become free. with the decline in its value, man has always become enslaved. if we desire to find the cause of the enormous destruction of life in ireland, even in this day of boasted civilization--if we desire to find the cause of the eviction of tenant and landlord, and the decline in the value of land, we need scarcely look beyond the following paragraph:-- "the cotton manufacture of dublin, which employed , operatives, has been destroyed; the silk-looms of the liberty have been destroyed; the stuff and serge manufacture, which employed operatives, have been destroyed; the calico-looms of balbriggan have been destroyed; the flannel manufacture of rathdrum has been destroyed; the blanket manufacture of kilkenny has been destroyed; the camlet trade of bandon, which produced £ , a year, has been destroyed; the worsted and stuff manufactures of waterford have been destroyed; the rateen and frieze manufactures of carrick-on-suir have been destroyed. one business alone survives! one business alone thrives and flourishes, and dreads no bankruptcy! that fortunate business--which the union act has not struck down, but which the union act has stood by--which the absentee drain has not slackened, but has stimulated--which the drainage acts and navigation laws of the imperial senate have not deadened but invigorated--that favoured, and privileged, and patronized business is the irish coffin-maker's."[ ] to the separation of the consumer from the producer resulting from the adoption of the system which has for its object the establishment of a monopoly of the machinery of manufacture for the world, are due the exhaustion of ireland, the ruin of its landholders, the starvation of its people, and the degradation in the eyes of the world of the country which has furnished to the continent its best soldiers, and to the empire not only its most industrious and intelligent labourers, but also its burke, its grattan, its sheridan, and its wellington. and yet we find the _times_ rejoicing at the gradual disappearance of the native population, and finding in "the abstraction of the celtic race at the rate of a quarter of a million a year, a surer remedy for _the inveterate irish disease_, than any human wit could have imagined." the "inveterate irish disease" here spoken of is a total absence of demand for labour, resulting from the unhappy determination of the people of england to maintain the monopoly of the power to manufacture for the world. the sure remedy for this is found in famines, pestilences, and expatriation, the necessary results of the exhaustion of the land which follows the exportation of its raw products. a stronger confirmation of the destructive character of such a course of policy than is contained in the following paragraph could scarcely be imagined:-- "when the celt has crossed the atlantic, he begins for the first time in his life to consume the manufactures of this country, and indirectly to contribute to its customs. we may possibly live to see the day when the chief product of ireland will be cattle, and english and scotch the majority of her population. the nine or ten millions of irish, who by that time will have settled in the united states, cannot be less friendly to england, and will certainly be much better customers to her than they now are."--london _times_. when the celt leaves ireland he leaves an almost purely agricultural country, and in such countries man generally approaches nearly to the condition of a slave. when he comes here he comes to a country in which to some little extent the plough and the loom have been enabled to come together; and here he becomes a freeman and a customer of england. the nation that commences by exporting raw products must end by exporting men; and if we desire evidence of this, we need only look to the following figures, furnished by the last four censuses of ireland:-- ........ , , ........ , , ----increase, , ........ , , ----increase, , ........ , , ----decrease, , , to what causes may this extraordinary course of events be attributed? certainly not to any deficiency of land, for nearly one-third of the whole surface, including millions of acres of the richest soils of the kingdom, remains in a state of nature. not to original inferiority of the soil in cultivation, for it has been confessedly among the richest in the empire. not to a deficiency of mineral ores or fuel, for coal abounds, and iron ores of the richest kind, as well as those of other metals, exist in vast profusion. not to any deficiency in the physical qualities of the irishman, for it is an established fact that he is capable of performing far more labour than the englishman, the frenchman, or the belgian. not to a deficiency of intellectual ability, for ireland has given to england her most distinguished soldiers and statesmen; and we have in this country everywhere evidence that the irishman is capable of the highest degree of intellectual improvement. nevertheless, while possessed of every advantage that nature could give him, we find the irishman at home a slave to the severest taskmasters, and reduced to a condition of poverty and distress, such as is exhibited in no other portion of the civilized world. no choice is now left him but between expatriation and starvation, and therefore it is that we see him everywhere abandoning the home of his fathers, to seek elsewhere that subsistence which ireland, rich as she is in soil and in her minerals, in her navigable rivers, and in her facilities of communication with the world, can no longer afford him. that the process of eviction is still continued on an extensive scale is shown by the following extracts from sir francis head's work on ireland, just issued from the press:-- "here almost immediately i first met with that afflicting spectacle, or rather spectre, that almost without intermission haunted me through the whole remainder of my tour, namely, stout stone-built cabins; unroofed for the purpose of evicting therefrom their insolvent tenants."--p. "on conversing with the master, i ascertained from him that lord lucan's evictions have ceased, but that lord erne evicted on saturday last."[ ]--p. "'is this system of eviction,' said i to the driver, pointing to a small cluster of unroofed cabins we were passing at the moment, 'good or bad?' 'well! yere arn'r!' he replied, 'ut's good and ut's bad. ut's good for them that hould large lands, bad for the small. ut laves nothing for tham but the workhouse.'"--p. . the tendency of the system which looks to the exportation of raw produce and the exhaustion of the soil is always toward the consolidation of the land, because the exportation of population, whether from ireland, india, or virginia, always follows in the wake of the exportation of food and other raw commodities. "among the men were only four that could fairly be called 'able-bodied;' each of them told me he had been evicted by lord lucan. i asked the master what had become of the rest. his answer was very instructive. 'most of them,' said he, 'if they can scrape up half-a-crown, go to england, from whence, after some little time, they send from s. d. to s. and, as soon as their families get _that_, they are off to them.' "'does the father go first?' i thoughtlessly asked. "'oh, no! we keep _him_ to the last. one daughter went off to england from here a short time ago, and sent s. d. _that_ took out the mother and another sister. in a few weeks the mother and sister sent enough to get over the remaining two sons and the father. total of the family, .'"--p. . in the above passage we have the equivalent of the exportation of the negro from the northern slave states. husbands and wives, parents and children, are forced to fly from each other, never to meet again unless those who emigrate can save means to send for those who are left behind. "we were now joined by the head-steward--a sedate, highly intelligent, respectable-looking scotchman, who has been in ireland thirteen years. he told me that the number of persons that had been ejected was about , , of whom one-tenth were employed by lord lucan, who had given most of them cottages." "we passed a cabin, and, closing my umbrella and leaving it on the car, i walked in. "'will yere arn'r take a sate?' said a woman about thirty-eight, with a fine, open countenance, her eyes being listlessly fixed on the daylight. "i sat down. on her lap was an infant. three bare-footed children, as if hatching eggs, sat motionless on the edge of a peat fire, which appeared to be almost touching their naked toes; above the embers was demurely hanging a black pot. opposite sat, like a bit of gnarled oak, the withered grandmother. the furniture was composed of a dingy-coloured wooden wardrobe, with a few plates on the top, and one bed close to the fire. there was no chimney but the door, on the threshold of which stood, looking exceedingly unhappy, four dripping wet fowls; at the far end of the chamber was a regular dungheap, on which stood an ass. "'where is your husband, my good woman?' i said to the youngest of the women. "'in england, yere arn'r,' she replied, 'saking work.'"--p. . "seeking work!" and yet ireland abounds, in the richest land uncultivated, and mineral wealth untouched, because the system forbids that men should combine their efforts together for the improvement of their common condition. "after trotting on for about a mile, and after i had left lord lucan's property, i came as usual to a small village of unroofed cabins, from the stark walls of which, to my astonishment, i saw here and there proceeding a little smoke; and, on approaching it, i beheld a picture i shall not readily forget. the tenants had been all evicted, and yet, dreadful to say, they were there still! the children nestling, and the poor women huddling together, under a temporary lean-to of straw, which they had managed to stick into the interstices of the walls of their ancient homes. "'this is a quare place, yere arn'r!' said a fine, honest-looking woman, kindly smiling to me, adding, 'sit down, yere arn'r!' "one of her four children got up and offered me his stool. "under another temporary shed i found a tall woman heavy with child, a daughter ahout sixteen, and four younger children--_her_ husband was also in england, 'sakin work.' i entered two or three more of these wretched habitations, around which were the innumerable tiny fields; surrounded by those low tottering stone walls i have already described.* * *--p. . "they were really good people, and from what i read in their countenances, i feel confident, that if, instead of distributing among them a few shillings, i had asked them to feed _me_, with the kindest hospitality they would readily have done so, and that with my gold in my pocket i might have slept among them in the most perfect security. "the devotional expressions of the lower class of irish, and the meekness and resignation with which they bear misfortune or affliction, struck, me very forcibly. 'i haven't aten a bit this blessed day, glory be to god!' said one woman, 'troth, i've been suffering lhong time from poverty and sickness, glory be to god!' said another. on entering a strange cabin, the common salutation is, 'god save all here!' on passing a gang of comrades at labour, a man often says, 'god bless the work, boys!'"--p. . the extirpation of the people results necessarily in the decay of the towns, as is here shown:-- "when my bill came,--for one's bill at an inn, like death, is sure to come,--i asked the waiter what effect the evictions in the neighbourhood had had on the town. "'they have ruined it,' he replied; 'the poor used to support the rich; now that the poor are gone the rich shopkeepers are all failing. our town is full of empty shops, and, after all, the landlord himself is now being ruined!'"--p. . cheap labour and cheap land are always companions. in jamaica and india, land, as we have seen, is almost valueless. how it is in ireland may be seen by the following passage:-- "adjoining is a similar property of about , acres, purchased, i was informed, by captain houston, a short time ago, at the rate of - / d. an acre."--p. . in a paper recently read before the statistical section of the british association, it is shown that the estates recently purchased in ireland by english capital embraced , acres, and that the purchase money had been £ , , , or about £ s. ($ . ) per acre, being little more than is paid for farms with very moderate improvements in the new states of the mississippi valley. why land is cheap and labour badly rewarded may easily be seen on a perusal of the following passages:-- "'chickuns are about d. a couple, dooks d. a couple of young gaise d; when auld, not less than s. or d.' "'and turkeys?' i asked. "'i can't say; we haven't many of thim in the counthry, and i don't want to tell yere arn'r a lie. fish, little or nothing. a large turbot, of lbs. weight, for s. lobsters, a dozen for d. soles, d. or d. a piece. t'other day i bought a turbot, of lbs. weight, for a gentleman, and i paid d. for ut.'"--p. . "'what do you pay for your tea and sugar here?' i inquired. "'very dare, sir,' he replied. 'we pay s. for tea, d. for brown sugar, and d. for white; that is, if we buy a single pound.'"--p. . the sugar of the labourer of jamaica exchanges in manchester for three shillings, of which he receives perhaps one, and he perishes because of the difficulty of obtaining machinery, or clothing. the hindoo sells his cotton for a penny a pound, and buys it back in the form of cloth at eighteen or twenty pence. the virginia negro raises tobacco which exchanges for six shillings' worth of commodities, of which he and his owner obtain three pence. the poor irishman raises chickens which sell in london for shillings, of which he receives pence, and thus a pound of sugar which had yielded the free negro of jamaica two pence, exchanges in the west of ireland for a pair of chickens or a dozen lobsters. the reader who may study these facts will readily understand the destructive effects on the value of land and labour resulting from the absence of markets, such as arise naturally where the plough and the loom are permitted, in accordance with the doctrines of adam smith, to take their places by the side of each other. more than seventy years since he denounced the system which looked to compelling the exports of raw produce as one productive of infinite injustice, and certainly the histories of jamaica and virginia, ireland and india, since his time, would afford him, were he now present, little reason for a change of opinion. it is common to ascribe the state of things now existing in ireland to the rapid growth of population; and that in its turn is charged to the account of the potato, the excessive use of which, as mr. mcculloch informs his readers, has lowered the standard of living and tended to the multiplication of men, women, and children. "the peasantry of ireland live," as he says, "in miserable mud cabins, without either a window or a chimney, or any thing that can be called furniture," and are distinguished from their fellow labourers across the channel by their "filth and misery," and hence it is, in his opinion, that they work for low wages. we have here effect substituted for cause. the absence of demand for labour causes wages to be low, and those wages will procure nothing but mud cabins and potatoes. it is admitted everywhere throughout the continent of europe that the introduction of the potato has tended greatly to the improvement of the condition of the people; but then, there is no portion of the continent in which it is used, where it constitutes an essential part of the governmental policy to deprive millions of people of all mode of employment except agriculture, and thus placing those millions at such a distance from market that the chief part of their labour and its products is lost in the effort to reach that market, and their land is exhausted because of the impossibility of returning to the soil any portion of the crop yielded by it. commercial centralization produces all these effects. it looks to the destruction of the value of labour and land, and to the enslavement of man. it tends to the division of the whole population into two classes, separated by an impassable gulf--the mere labourer and the land-owner. it tends to the destruction of the power of association for any purpose of improvement, whether by the making of roads or by the founding of schools, and of course to the prevention of the growth of towns, as we see to have been the case with jamaica, so barbarous in this respect when compared with martinique or cuba, islands whose governments have not looked to the perpetual divorce of the hammer and the harrow. the decay of towns in ireland, subsequent to the union, led to absenteeism, and thus added to the exhaustion of the land, because irish wheat was now needed to pay not only for english cloth but for english services; and the more the centralization resulting from absenteeism, the greater necessarily was the difficulty of maintaining the productive powers of the soil. mr. mcculloch, however, assures his readers that "it is not easy to imagine any grounds for pronouncing the expenditure of the rent at home "more beneficial" to the country than if it had been expended abroad. (_principles_, .) another distinguished political economist says-- "many persons, also, perplexed by the consideration that all the commodities which are exported as remittances of the absentee's income are exports for which no return is obtained; that they are as much lost to this country as if they were a tribute paid to a foreign state, or even as if they were periodically thrown into the sea. this is unquestionably true; but it must be recollected that whatever is unproductively consumed, is, by the very terms of the proposition, destroyed, without producing any return"--_senior's political economy_, . this view is, as the reader will see, based upon the idea of the total destruction of the commodities consumed. were it even correct, it would still follow that there had been transferred from ireland to england a demand for services of a thousand kinds, tending to cause a rise in the price of labour in the one and a fall in the other;--but if it were altogether incorrect, it would then follow, necessarily, that the loss to the country _would_ be as great as if the remittances were "a tribute paid to a foreign state, or even as if they were periodically thrown into the sea." that it is altogether incorrect the reader may readily satisfy himself. man consumes much, but he destroys nothing. in eating food he is merely acting as a machine for preparing the elements of which it is composed for future production; and the more he can take out of the land the more he can return to it, and the more rapid will be the improvement in the productive power of the soil. if the market be at hand, he can take hundreds of bushels of turnips, carrots, or potatoes, or tons of hay, from an acre of land, and he can vary the character of his culture from year to year, and the more he borrows from the great bank the more he can repay to it, the more he can improve his mind and his cultivation, and the more readily he can exchange for improved machinery by aid of which to obtain still increased returns. if, however, the market be distant, he must raise only those things that will bear carriage, and which from their small yield command a high price, and thus is he limited in his cultivation, and the more he is limited the more rapidly he exhausts his land, the less is his power to obtain roads, to have association with his fellow-men, to obtain books, to improve his mode of thought, to make roads, or to purchase machinery. such is the case even when he is compelled to sell and buy in distant markets, but still worse is it when, as in the case of the rent of the absentee, nothing is returned to the land, for then production diminishes without a corresponding diminution of the rent, and the poor cultivator is more and more thrown upon the mercy of the land-owner or his agent, and becomes, as we see to have been the case in jamaica and india, practically a slave. this state of things has in all countries been followed by a diminution of population resulting from starvation or from exportation; and hence it is that we see the destruction of life in ireland, india, and the west indies, while from the two former vast numbers are annually exported, many of them to perish in the new countries to which they are driven. out of , that left ireland for canada in a single year, no less than , perished on shipboard, and thousands died afterward of disease, starvation, and neglect; and thus it is that we have the horrors of "the middle passage" repeated in our day. it is the slave trade of the last century reproduced on a grander scale and on a new theatre of action. we are told of the principle of population that men increase faster than food, and, for evidence that such must always be the case, are pointed to the fact that when men are few in number they always cultivate the rich soils, and then food is abundant, but as population increases they are forced to resort to the poor soils, and then food becomes scarce. that the contrary of all this is the fact is shown by the history of england, france, italy, greece, india, and every other nation of the world, and is proved in our own day by all that is at this moment being done in this country. it is proved by the fact that ireland possesses millions of acres of the most fertile soil remaining in a state of nature, and so likely to remain until she shall have markets for their produce that will enable their owners readily to exchange turnips, potatoes, cabbages, and hay, for cloth, machinery, and manure. it is singular that all the political economists of england should so entirely have overlooked the fact that man is a mere borrower from the earth, and that when he does not pay his debts, she does as do all other creditors, that is, she expels him from his holding. england makes of her soil a grand reservoir for the waste yielded by all the sugar, coffee, wool, indigo, cotton and other raw commodities of almost half the world, and thus does she raise a crop that has been valued at five hundred millions of dollars, or five times more than the average value of the cotton crop produced by so many millions of people in this country; and yet so important is manure that she imports in a single year more than two hundred thousand tons of guano, at a cost of almost two millions of pounds, and thus does she make labour productive and land valuable. nevertheless, her writers teach other nations that the true mode of becoming rich is to exhaust the land by sending from it all its products in their rudest state, and then, when the people of ireland attempt to follow the soil which they have sent to england, the people of the latter are told by mr. mcculloch that "the unexampled misery of the irish people is directly owing to the excessive augmentation of their numbers; and, nothing can be more perfectly futile than to expect any real or lasting amendment of their situation until an effectual check has been given to the progress of population. it is obvious too," he continues, "that the low and degraded condition into which the people of ireland are now sunk is the condition to which every people must be reduced whose numbers continue, for any considerable period, to increase faster than the means of providing for their comfortable and decent subsistence."--_principles_, . the population of ireland did increase with some rapidity, and the reason for this was to be found in the fact that poverty had not yet produced that demoralization which restricts the growth of numbers. the extraordinary morality of the women of ireland is admitted everywhere. in england it is remarked upon by poor-law commissioners, and here it is a fact that cannot fail to command the attention of the most superficial observer. how it is at home we are told by sir francis head, whose statements on this subject cannot be read without interest:-- "as regards the women of ireland, their native modesty cannot fail to attract the observation of any stranger. their dress was invariably decent, generally pleasing, and often strikingly picturesque. almost all wore woollen petticoats, dyed by themselves, of a rich madder colour, between crimson and scarlet. upon their shoulders, and occasionally from their heads, hung, in a variety of beautiful folds, sometimes a plaid of red and green, sometimes a cloak, usually dark blue or dingy white. their garments, however, like those of the men, were occasionally to be seen in tatters."--p. . anxious to be fully informed on the subject, the traveller took occasion to interrogate various police-officers and gentlemen, and the result of his inquiries will be seen on a perusal of the following questions and answers:-- q. "how long have you been on duty in galway?" a. "above nine years." q. "have you much crime here?" a. "very little; it principally consists of petty larcenies." q. "have there been here many illegitimate children?" a. "scarcely any. during the whole of the eight years i have been on duty here i have not known of an illegitimate child being reared up in any family in the town." q. "what do you mean by being reared up?" a. "i mean that, being acquainted with every family in galway, i have never known of a child of that description being born."--p. . q. "how long have you been on duty here?" a. "only six months." q. "during that time have you known of any instance of an illegitimate child being born in the village of the claddagh?" a. "not only have i never known of such a case, but i have never heard any person attribute such a case to the fisherwomen of claddagh. i was on duty in the three islands of arran, inhabited almost exclusively by fishermen, who also farm potatoes, and i never heard of one of their women--who are remarkable for their beauty--having had an illegitimate child, nor did i ever hear it attributed to them; indeed, i have been informed by mr. -----, a magistrate who has lived in galway for eight years, and has been on temporary duty in the island of arran, that he also had never heard there of a case of that nature."--p. . a. "i have been here better than two years, and during that time i have never known of any woman of claddagh having had an illegitimate child--indeed, i have never even heard of it." q. "have you ever known of any such case in galway?" a. "oh, i think there have been some cases in _town_. of my own knowledge i cannot say so, but i have _heard_ of it."--_ibid_. q. "how long have you been in charge of the claddagh village?" a. "i have been nine years here, for five years of which last march i have been in charge of claddagh." q. "during that time has there been an illegitimate child born there?" a. "no, i have never heard of it, and if it had happened i should have been sure to have heard of it, as they wouldn't have allowed her to stop in the village."--p. . the reader will now be pleased to recollect that the production of food, flax, cotton, and other raw commodities requires hard labour and exposure, and it is for such labour men are fitted--that the conversion of food, flax, and cotton into cloth requires little exertion and is unattended with exposure, and is therefore especially fitted for the weaker sex--and that when the work of conversion is monopolized by people who live at a distance from the place of production, the woman and the child must be driven to the labour of the field; and therefore it is that we see the women and the children of jamaica and carolina, of portugal and turkey, of india and of ireland, compelled to remain idle or to cultivate the land, because of the existence of a system which denies to all places in the world but one the power to bring the consumer to the side of the producer. it was time for woman to take up the cause of her sex, and it may be hoped that she will prosecute the inquiry into the causes of the demoralization and degradation of the women of so large a portion of the world, until she shall succeed in extirpating the system so long since denounced by the greatest of all economists, as "a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of man [and woman] kind." * * * * * scotland. centralization tends everywhere to the exhaustion of the land, and to its consolidation in fewer hands, and with every step in this direction man becomes less and less free to determine for whom he will work and what shall be his reward. that such has been the tendency in jamaica, india, and ireland, has been shown, and it is now proposed to show that the same tendency exists in scotland, the northern part of which has become exclusively agricultural as even its home manufactures have passed away, and must look to a distance for a market for all its products, involving, of course, a necessity for exhausting the land. the highland tacksman, originally co-proprietor of the land of the clan, became at first vassal, then hereditary tenant, then tenant at will, and thus the property in land passed from the many into the hands of the few, who have not hesitated to avail themselves of the power so obtained. the payment of money rents was claimed by them eighty years since, but the amount was very small, as is shown by the following passage from a work of that date:-- "the rent of these lands is very trifling compared to their extent, but compared to the number of mouths which a farm maintains, it will perhaps be found that a plot of land in the highlands of scotland feeds ten times more people than a farm of the same extent in the richest provinces."--_stewart's political economy_, vol. i. chap. xvi. of some of the proceedings of the present century the following sketch is furnished by a recent english writer:-- "even in the beginning of the th century the rental imposts were very small, as is shown by the work of mr. lock, ( ,) the steward of the countess of sutherland, who directed the improvements on her estates. he gives for instance the rental of the kintradawell estate for , from which it appears that up to then, every family was obliged to pay a yearly impost of a few shillings in money, a few fowls, and some days' work, at the highest. "it was only after that the ultimate and real usurpation was enacted, the forcible, transformation of _clan-property_ into the _private property_, in the modern sense, _of the chief_. the person who stood at the head of this economical revolution, was the countess of sutherland and marchioness of stafford. "let us first state that the ancestors of the marchioness were the 'great men' of the most northern part of scotland, of very near three-quarters of sutherlandshire. this county is more extensive than many french departments or small german principalities. when the countess of sutherland inherited these estates, which she afterward brought to her husband, the marquis of stafford, afterward duke of sutherland, the population of them was already reduced to , . the countess resolved upon a radical economical reform, and determined upon transforming the whole tract of country into sheep-walks. from to , these , inhabitants, about families, were systematically expelled and exterminated. all their villages were demolished and burned down, and all their fields converted into pasturage. british soldiers were commanded for this execution, and came to blows with the natives. an old woman refusing to quit her hut, was burned in the flames of it. thus the countess appropriated to herself _seven hundred and ninety-four thousand acres of land_, which from time immemorial had belonged to the clan. she allotted to the expelled natives about six thousand acres--two acres per family. these six thousand acres had been lying waste until then, and brought no revenue to the proprietors. the countess was generous enough to sell the acre at s. d. on an average, to the clan-men who for centuries past had shed their blood for her family. the whole of the unrightfully appropriated clan-land she divided into twenty-nine large sheep-farms, each of them inhabited by one single family, mostly english farm-labourers; and in the , gaels had already been superseded by , sheep. "a portion of the aborigines had been thrown upon the sea-shore, and attempted to live by fishing. they became amphibious, and, as an english author says, lived half on land and half on water, and after all did not half live upon both." throughout the north of scotland the tenants of the small grazing farms into which the highland counties had been divided, have been ousted for the purpose of creating sheep-walks, and to such an extent has this been carried, that where once, and at no distant period, were numerous black-cattle farms, not an inhabitant is now to be seen for many miles.[ ] the work, too, is still going on. "the example of sutherland," says mr. thornton,[ ] "is imitated in the neighbouring counties." the misery of these poor people is thus described:-- "hinds engaged by the year are seldom paid more than two-thirds of what they would receive in the south, and few of them are fortunate enough to obtain regular employment. farm-servants, however, form only a small proportion of the peasantry, a much greater number being crofters, or tenants of small pieces of ground, from which they derive almost their whole subsistence. most of them live very miserably. the soil is so poor, and rents in some instances so exorbitant, that occupiers of four or five acres can do little more than maintain themselves, yet it is their aid alone that saves their still poorer brethren from starvation. this is true even of sutherland, which is commonly represented as a highly improved county, and in which a signal change for the better is said to have taken place in the character and habits of the people.[ ] recent inquiry has discovered that even there, in districts once famous for fine men and gallant soldiers, the inhabitants have degenerated into a meagre and stunted race. in the healthiest situations, on hillsides fronting the sea, the faces of their famished children are as thin and pale as they could be in the foul atmosphere of a london alley.[ ] still more deplorable are the scenes exhibited in the western highlands, especially on the coasts and in the adjoining islands. a large population has there been assembled, so ill provided with any means of support, that during part of almost every year from , to , [ ] of them are in a state of destitution, and entirely dependent upon charity. many of the heads of families hold crofts from four to seven acres in extent, but these, notwithstanding their small size, and the extreme barrenness of the soil, have often two, three, and sometimes even four families upon them. one estate in the hebrides, the nominal rent of which is only £ a year, is divided into crofts, and is supposed to have more than persons living upon it. in another instance a rental of £ is payable (for little is really paid) by crofters, and the whole population of the estate is estimated at more than . in cromarty, persons are settled upon an estate let nominally for £ , but "paying not more than half that sum."--_thornton_, . "of course, they live most wretchedly. potatoes are the usual food, for oatmeal is considered a luxury, to be reserved for high days and holidays, but even potatoes are not raised in sufficient abundance. the year's stock is generally exhausted before the succeeding crop is ripe, and the poor are then often in a most desperate condition, for the poor-law is a dead letter in the north of scotland, and the want of a legal provision for the necessitous is but ill supplied by the spontaneous contributions of the land-owners."--_ibid_. . at the moment of writing this, the journals of the day furnish information that famine prevails in the hebrides, and that "in the isle of skye alone there are , able-bodied persons at this time without work, without food, and without credit." the condition of these poor people would certainly be much improved could they find some indulgent master who would purchase them at such prices as would make it to his interest to feed, clothe, and lodge them well in return for their labour. in the days of adam smith about one-fifth of the surface of scotland was supposed to be entailed, and he saw the disadvantages of the system to be so great that he denounced the system as being "founded upon the most absurd of all suppositions--the supposition that every successive generation of men have not an equal right to the earth and all that it possesses; but that the property of the present generation should be retained and regulated according to the fancy of those who died perhaps five hundred years ago." instead of changing the system, and doing that which might tend to the establishment of greater freedom of trade in land, the movement has been in a contrary direction, and to such an extent that one-half of scotland is now supposed to be entailed; and yet, singularly enough, this is the system advocated by mr. mcculloch, a follower in the foot-steps of adam smith, as being the one calculated "to render all classes more industrious, and to augment at the same time the mass of wealth and the scale of enjoyment." the effects of the system are seen in the enormous rents contracted to be paid for the use of small pieces of land at a distance from market, the failure in the payment of which makes the poor cultivator a mere slave to the proprietor. how the latter use their power, may be seen by the following extract from a canadian journal of :-- "a colonel -----, the owner of estates in south uist and barra, in the highlands of scotland, has sent off over destitute tenants and cotters under the most cruel and delusive temptations; assuring them that they would be taken care of immediately on their arrival at quebec by the emigrant agent, receive a free passage to upper canada, where they would be provided with work by the government agents, and receive grants of land on certain imaginary conditions. seventy-one of the last cargo of four hundred and fifty have signed a statement that some of them fled to the mountains when an attempt was made to force them to emigrate. 'whereupon,' they add, 'mr. fleming gave orders to a policeman, who was accompanied by the ground officer of the estate in barra, and some constables, to pursue the people who had run away among the mountains, which they did, and succeeded in capturing about twenty from the mountains and from other islands in the neighbourhood; but only came with the officers on an attempt being made to handcuff them, and that some who ran away were not brought back; in consequence of which four families, at least, have been divided, some having come in the ships to quebec, while other members of the same families are left in the highlands.'" "on board the conrad and the birman were persons from mull and tyree, sent out by his grace the duke of -----, who provided them with a free passage to montreal, where on arrival they presented the same appearance of destitution as those from south uist, sent out by colonel -----, that is, 'entirely destitute of money and provisions.'" numbers of these people perished, as we are told, of disease and want of food in the winter which followed their arrival in canada; and that such would have been the case might naturally have been anticipated by those who exported them. the wretched cotters who are being everywhere expelled from the land are forced to take refuge in cities and towns, precisely as we see now to be the case in ireland. "in glasgow," says mr. thornton-- "there are nearly , poor highlanders, most of them living in a state of misery, which shows how dreadful must have been the privations to which such misery is preferred. such of them as are able-bodied obtain employment without much difficulty, and may not perhaps have much reason to complain of deficiency of the first requisites of life; but the quarter they inhabit is described as enclosing a larger amount of filth, crime, misery, and disease, than could have been supposed to exist in one spot in any civilized country. it consists of long lanes called 'wynds,' so narrow that a cart could scarcely pass through them, opening upon 'closes,' or courts, about or feet square, round which the houses, mostly three stories high, are built, and in the centre of which is a dunghill. the houses are occupied indiscriminately by labourers of the lowest class, thieves, and prostitutes, and every apartment is filled with a promiscuous crowd of men and women, all in the most revolting state of filth. amid such scenes and such companions as these, thousands of the most intelligent of the highlanders are content to take refuge, for it is precisely those who are best educated and best informed that are most impatient of the penury they have to endure at home. "the inhabitants of the glasgow wynds and closes may be likened to those of the liverpool cellars, or to those of the worst parts of leeds, st. giles's, and bethnal green, in london; and every other class of the scottish urban labouring population may likewise be delineated with the same touches (more darkened, however,) which have been used in describing the corresponding class in english towns. manufacturing operatives are in pretty much the same position in both countries. those of scotland shared even more largely than their southern brethren in the distress of - , when paisley in particular exhibited scenes of wo far surpassing any thing that has been related of bolton or stockport."--p. . the extent to which these poor people have been driven from the land may be judged by the following statement of population and house-accommodation:-- persons to population. inhabited houses. a house. ----------- ----------------- ---------- ...... , , ...... , ...... . ...... , , ...... , ...... . intemperance and immorality keep pace with the decline in the power of men over their own actions, as is shown in the following statement of the consumption of british spirits, under circumstances almost precisely similar as regards the amount of duty:-- duty. gallons. ----- -------- .............. . - / ..... , , .............. . ........ , , .............. . ........ , , .............. . ........ , , in the population was , , , and since that time it has increased eighty per cent., whereas the consumption of spirits has grown almost six hundred per cent.! the poor people who are expelled from the land cannot be sold. the hammer of the auctioneer cannot be allowed to separate parents from children, or husbands from wives, but poverty, drunkenness, and prostitution produce a similar effect, and in a form even more deplorable. in the five years preceding , every fifth person in glasgow had been attacked by fever, and the deaths therefrom amounted to almost five thousand. it is impossible to study the condition of this portion of the united kingdom without arriving at the conclusion that society is rapidly being divided into the very rich and the very poor, and that the latter are steadily declining in their power of self-government, and becoming more and more slaves to the former. centralization tends here, as everywhere, to absenteeism, and "absenteeism," says dr. forbes of glasgow [ ] -- "is in its results everywhere the same. all the transactions and communications between the richer and the poorer classes, have thus substituted for them the sternness of official agency, in the room of that kind and generous treatment which, let them meet unrestrained, the more prosperous children of the same parent would in almost every case pay to their less fortunate brothers. * * * where the power of sympathy has been altogether or nearly abolished among the different ranks of society, one of the first effects appears in a yawning and ever-widening gulf of poverty which gathers round its foundations. as the lofty shore indicates the depth of the surrounding ocean, the proud pinnacles of wealth in society are the indices of a corresponding depression among the humbler ranks. the greatest misery of man is ever the adjunct of his proudest splendour." such are the results everywhere of that system which looks to converting england into a great workshop and confining the people of all other nations to the labours of the field. in jamaica, it annihilated three-fifths of all the negroes imported, and it is now rapidly driving the remainder into barbarism and ultimately to annihilation. in the southern states, it causes the export of men, women, and children, and the breaking up of families. in india, it has caused famines and pestilences, and is now establishing the slave trade in a new form. in ireland, it has in half a century carried the people back to a condition worthy only of the darkest part of the middle ages, and is now extirpating them from the land of their fathers. in scotland, it is rapidly dividing the population into two parts--the master on one hand, and the slave on the other. how it has operated, and is now operating, in england itself, we may how examine. chapter xiv. how slavery grows in england. the roman people sought to centralize within their walls the power of governing and taxing all the nations of the earth, and to a great extent they succeeded; but in the effort to acquire power over others they lost all power over themselves. as the city grew in size and as its great men became greater, the proportions of the people everywhere became less. the freemen of the campagna had almost disappeared even in the days of the elder scipio, and their humble habitations had given way to palaces, the centre of great estates, cultivated by slaves. step by step with the increase of power abroad came increased consolidation of the land at home, and, as the people were more and more driven from the soil the city grew in numbers and magnificence, and in the poverty and rapacity of its inhabitants. the populace needed to be fed, and that they might be so there was established a great system of poor-laws, carried into effect by aid of the taxation of distant provinces, at whose expense they were both fed and entertained. they demanded cheap food, and they obtained their desires at the cost of the cultivators, abroad and at home, who became more and more enslaved as rome itself was more cheaply supplied. desires grew with their indulgence, and the greater the facility for living without labour, the greater became the necessity for seeking "new markets" in which to exercise their powers of appropriation, and the more extensive became the domain of slavery. bankers and middlemen grew more and more in power, and while the wealth of crassus enabled him to obtain the control of the east, enormous loans gave to cæsar the command of the west, leaving to pompey and his moneyed friends the power to tax the centre and the south. next, augustus finds the city of brick and leaves it of marble; and herodes atticus appears upon the stage sole improver, and almost sole owner, in attica, once so free, while bankers and nobles accumulate enormous possessions in africa, gaul, and britain, and the greater the extent of absentee ownership the greater becomes the wretchedness and the crime of the pauper mob of rome. still onward the city grows, absorbing the wealth of the world, and with it grow the poverty, slavery, and rapacity of the people, the exhaustion of provinces, and the avarice and tyranny of rulers and magistrates, until at length the empire, rotten at the heart, becomes the prey of barbarians, and all become slaves alike,--thus furnishing proof conclusive that the community which desires to command respect for its own rights _must_ practise respect for those of others; or in other words, must adopt as its motto the great lesson which lies at the base of all christianity--"do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you." a survey of the british empire at the present moment presents to view some features so strongly resembling those observed in ancient rome as to warrant calling the attention of the reader to their careful observation. like rome, england has desired to establish political centralization by aid of fleets and armies, but to this she has added commercial centralization, far more destructive in its effects, and far more rapid in its operation. rome was content that her subjects should occupy themselves as they pleased, either in the fields or in the factories, provided only that they paid their taxes. england, on the contrary, has sought to restrict her subjects and the people of the world in their modes of employment; and this she has done with a view to compel them to make all their exchanges in her single market, leaving to her to fix the prices of all she bought and all she sold, thus taxing them at her discretion in both time and money. she has sought to compel all other nations to follow the plough, leaving to her the loom and the anvil, and thus to render it necessary that they should bring to her all their products in the rudest form, at great cost of transportation, and total loss of the manure yielded by them, thus exhausting their soil and themselves; and the consequences of this are seen in the ruin, depopulation, and slavery of the west indies, ireland, india, portugal, turkey, and other countries that have been partially or wholly subjected to her dominion. hence it is that she is seen to be everywhere seeking "new markets." bengal having been in a great degree exhausted, it became necessary to annex the north-west provinces, and thence we find her stretching out her hand at one moment to seize on affghanistan, at another to force the chinese into permitting her to smuggle opium, and at a third to expel the sikhs and occupy the punjab, as preliminary to this invasion and subjection of the burman empire. she needs, and must have new markets, as rome needed new provinces, and for the same reason, the exhaustion of the old ones. she rejoices with great joy at the creation of a new market in australia, and looks with a longing eye on the empire of japan, whose prosperous people, under a peaceful government, prefer to avoid entering on the same course of action that has resulted in the reduction of the wealthy and powerful hindostan to its present distressed condition. it was against this system that adam smith cautioned his countrymen, as not only a violation of "the most sacred rights" of man, but as leading inevitably to consequences in the highest degree injurious to themselves, in depreciating the value of both labour and capital. up to his time, however, it had been carried out in a very small degree. the colonies were then few in number, but, those were heavily taxed, as has been shown in the candid admission of _joshua gee_, that the colonists carried home but one-fourth of the value of the commodities they brought to the great market.[ ] the system was then only in its infancy. in india, the company had but then first obtained the concession of a right to act in the capacity of tax-gatherer for bengal. on this continent, the right thus to tax the colonists was seriously contested, and _the wealth of nations_ had not been long before the world before it came to be explicitly and successfully denied. the tendency of the system was, however, so obvious to its author, that he desired to warn his countrymen against the effort to build up "colonies of customers," as unworthy of a great people, and worthy only of "a nation of shopkeepers,"--and happy for them would it have been had his advice been taken. it was not. from that day to the present, every step has been in the direction against which he cautioned them, as was shown in a former chapter, and from year to year the people of england have become more and more the mere traders in the products of the labours of other men, and more and more compelled to seek "new markets," as did the roman people,--the only difference being that in every case the exhaustion has been accomplished with a rapidity unparalleled in the annals of rome, or of the world. a century since, india was rich, and now her government, collecting annually one-fifth of the whole value of the land, is sustained only by means of a monopoly of the power to poison and enslave the chinese by means of a vile drug, and the poor hindoo is forced to seek for food in the swamps of jamaica and guiana. half a century since, ireland had a highly cultivated society, with a press that sent forth large editions of the most valuable and expensive books produced in england, and now her people are decimated by famine and pestilence. twenty years since, there existed some little prospect that the poor negroes of jamaica and guiana might at some future time become civilized, but that hope has passed away, as has the value of the land upon which they have been employed. what has been the effect of this course of policy upon the condition of the people of england we may now inquire. in the days of adam smith it was estimated that there were in that country , owners of land, and as a necessary consequence of this extensive ownership of property, there was a very decided tendency toward an increase in the freedom of man, as shown in the efforts made but a few years later for obtaining a reform in various matters of government. the french revolution came, however, and now the doctrine of "ships, colonies, and commerce" had much to do in bringing about a state of war, during the whole of which england enjoyed almost a monopoly of the trade of the world. having all the woollen and cotton machinery, and almost all the machinery for the production of iron, she was enabled to buy produce and sell manufactures at her own prices; and thus were the already wealthy greatly enriched. the poor-houses were, however, everywhere filled with starving labourers, and so rapidly did their number increase that it became at length necessary to give to the statute of elizabeth a new and enlarged construction; and here do we find another coincidence in the working of roman and british centralization. a still further one will be found in the fact that precisely as the labourer was losing all power of self-government, the little proprietors of land disappeared, to be replaced by day-labourers. the peace, however came, and with it a desire on the part of other nations to supply themselves with cloth, iron, and other manufactured commodities; and to enable them to carry into effect their wishes, many of them imposed duties having for their object the bringing together of the plough and the loom, the hammer and the harrow. this produced, of course, a necessity for new exertions to underwork those nations, leading to constant improvements of machinery, each tending to enable the capitalist more and more to accumulate fortune and purchase land, the consolidation of which has been continued until at length it has resulted in the fact, that in place of the , english land-owners of the days of adam smith, there now exist but , , while all the land of scotland has, as is stated, accumulated in the hands of persons. as the , proprietors came by degrees to be represented by day-labourers, pauperism increased, and the labourer became from year to year more enslaved, and more dependent for existence upon the favours of farmers, parish beadles, and constables, until at length a reform of the system having become absolutely necessary, it was undertaken. instead, however, of inquiring into the causes of this increased dependence with a view to their abolition, it was determined to abolish the relief that they had rendered necessary, and hence the existence of the new poor-law. by virtue of its provisions, inability to obtain food became a crime punishable by the separation of husbands from wives and parents from children; and thus we see that in the last twenty years english legislation has tended greatly in the same direction with the domestic slave trade of this country. consolidation of the land drove the labourers from the cultivation of the soil, while improved machinery tended constantly to drive them out from the factory, and thus were the poor made poorer and weaker, as the rich grew richer and stronger. ireland, too, contributed largely to the same result. as the act of union gradually closed her factories and drove her people to cultivation as the sole means of supporting life, they found themselves, like the italians of olden time, forced to emigrate to the place where taxes were distributed, in the hope of obtaining wages, and their competition threw the english labourer still more in the hands of the capitalist. from year to year the small proprietor was seen to pass into the condition of a day-labourer, and the small employing mechanic or tradesman to pass into a receiver of wages, and thus did the whole people tend more and more to become divided into two great classes, separated from each other by an impassable gulf, the very rich and the very poor, the master and the slave. as england became more and more flooded with the wretched people of the sister island, driven from home in search of employment, the wealthy found it more and more easy to accomplish "the great works" for which, as the london _times_ inform us, the country is indebted to the "cheap labour of ireland," and the greater the influx of this labour the more rapid was the decline in the power of both ireland and britain to furnish a market for the products of the manufacturing, labour of england. hence arose, of course, a necessity for looking abroad for new markets to take the place of those before obtained at home, and thus cheap labour, a _consequence_ of the system, became in its turn a _cause_ of new efforts at dispensing with and further cheapening labour. as the irishman could no longer buy, it became necessary that the hindoo should be driven from his own market. as the highlander was expelled, it became more and more necessary to underwork the spinners and weavers of china. as the bengalese now become impoverished, there arises a necessity for filling the punjab, and affghanistan, burmah and borneo, with british goods. pauperism lies necessarily at the root of such a system. "it is," said a speaker at the late bradford election for representative in parliament-- "its root. that system is based on foreign competition. now i assert, that _under the buy cheap and sell dear principle, brought to bear on foreign competition, the ruin of the working and small trading classes must go on. why?_ labour is the creator of all wealth. a man must work before a grain is grown, or a yard is woven. but there is no self-employment for the working-man in this country. labour is a hired commodity--labour is a thing in the market that is bought and sold; consequently, as labour creates all wealth, labour is the first thing bought. 'buy cheap! buy cheap!' labour is bought in the cheapest market. but now comes the next. 'sell dear! sell dear!' sell what? _labors produce_. to whom? to the foreigner--ay! and to _the labourer himself_--for labour not being self-employed, the labourer is _not_ the partaker of the first-fruits of his toil. 'buy cheap, sell dear.' how do you like it? 'buy cheap, sell dear.' buy the working-man's labour cheaply, and sell back to that very working-man the produce of his own labour dear! the principle of inherent loss is in the bargain. the employer buys the labour cheap--he sells, and on the sale he must, make a profit: he sells to the working-man himself--and thus every bargain between employer and employed is a deliberate cheat on the part of the employer. thus labour has to sink through eternal loss, that capital may rise through lasting fraud. but the system stops not here. this is brought to bear on foreign competition--which means, we must ruin the trade of other countries, as we have ruined the labour of our own. how does it work? the high-taxed country has to undersell the low-taxed. _competition abroad is constantly increasing, consequently cheapness must increase also._ therefore, wages in england must keep constantly falling. and how do they effect the fall? by _surplus labour_. by monopoly of the land, which drives more hands than are wanted into the factory. by monopoly of machinery, which drives those hands into the street; by woman labour, which drives the man from the shuttle; by child labour, which drives the woman from the loom. then planting their foot upon that living base of surplus, they press its aching heart beneath their heel, and cry 'starvation! who'll work? a half loaf is better than no bread at all;' and the writhing mass grasps greedily at their terms. such is the system for the working-man. but, electors, how does it operate on you? how does it affect home trade, the shopkeeper, poor's rate, and taxation? _for every increase of competition abroad there must be an increase of cheapness at home._ every increase of cheapness in labour is based on increase of labour surplus, and this surplus is obtained by an increase of machinery. i repeat, how does this operate on you? the manchester liberal on my left establishes a new patent, and throws three hundred men as a surplus in the streets. shopkeepers! three hundred customers less. rate-payers! three hundred paupers more. but, mark me! the evil stops not there. _these three hundred men operate first to bring down the wages of those who remain at work in their own trade._ the employer says, 'now i reduce your wages.' the men demur. then he adds, 'do you see those three hundred men who have just walked out? _you may change places if you like_, they're sighing to come in on any terms, for they're starving.' the men feel it, and are crushed. ah! you manchester liberal! pharisee of politics! those men are listening--have i got you now? but the evil stops not yet. _those men, driven from their own trade, seek employment in others, when they swell the surplus and bring wages down._" strong as is all this, it is nevertheless true, england is engaged in a war of extermination waged against the labour of all other countries employed in any pursuit except that of raising raw produce to be sent to her own market, there to be exchanged for the cloth and the iron produced at the mills and furnaces of her _millionaires_, who have accumulated their vast fortunes at the expense of ireland, india, portugal, turkey, and the other countries that have been ruined by the system which looks to the exhaustion of the soil of all other lands, to the impoverishment and enslavement of their people, and which was so indignantly denounced by adam smith. in the effort to crush them she has been crushing her own people, and the more rapid the spread of pauperism at home the greater have been her efforts to produce the surplus labour which causes a fall of wages at home and abroad. with the consolidation of land in the hands of a few proprietors there is a steady decline in the number of people employed upon it, and an equally steady one in that hope of rising in the world which is elsewhere seen to be the best incentive to exertion. "the peasant knows," says a recent english writer,[ ] "that he must die in the same position in which he was born." again, he says, "the want of small farms deprives the peasant of all hope of improving his condition in life." the london _times_ assures its readers that "once a peasant in england, the man must remain a peasant for ever;" and mr. kay, after careful examination of the condition of the people of continental europe, assures his readers that, as one of the consequences of this state of things, the peasantry of england "are more ignorant, more demoralized, less capable of helping themselves, and more pauperized, than those of any other country in europe, if we except russia, turkey, south italy, and some parts of the austrian empire."[ ] under such circumstances, the middle class tends gradually to pass away, and its condition is well expressed by the term now so frequently, used, "the uneasy class." the small capitalist, who would elsewhere purchase a piece of land, a horse and cart, or a machine of some kind calculated to enable him to double the productiveness of his labour and increase its reward, is in england forced to make his investments in savings banks or life-insurance offices, and thus to place his little capital in the hands of others, at three per cent., whereas he could have fifty or a hundred per cent., could he be permitted to use it himself. there is, therefore, a perpetual strife for life, and each man is, as has been said, "endeavouring to snatch the piece of bread from his neighbour's mouth." the atmosphere of england is one of intense gloom. every one is anxious for the future, for himself or his children. there is a universal feeling of doubt as to how to dispose of the labour or the talents of themselves or their sons, and the largest fees are paid to men already wealthy, in the hope of obtaining aid toward securing steady employment. "this _gloom_ of england," says a late english writer-- "is in truth one of the most formidable evils of modern times. with all the advance, in morality and decency of the present century, we have receded rather than gone forward in the attainment of that true christian cheerfulness, which--notwithstanding the popular proverb--i believe to be the blessing next in value to godliness. "i truly believe," he continues, "that one of the chief obstacles to the progress of pure living christianity in this country is to be found in that worldly carefulness which causes our intense gravity, and makes us the most silent nation in europe. the respectability of england is its bane; we worship respectability, and thus contrive to lose both the enjoyments of earth and the enjoyments of heaven. if great britain could once learn to laugh like a child, she would be in the way once more to pray like a saint. "but this is not all: the sensuality and gross vice, and the hateful moroseness and harshness of temper, which result from our indisposition for gayety and enjoyment, are literally awful to think of. pride and licentiousness triumph in our land, because we are too careworn or too stupid to enter heartily into innocent recreations. those two demons, one of which first cast man out of paradise, while the other has degraded him to the level of the brutes, are served by myriads of helpless slaves, who are handed over to a bondage of passion, through the gloominess that broods over our national character. the young and the old alike, the poor and the wealthy, are literally driven to excess, because there is nothing in our state of society to refresh them after their toils, or to make life as much a season of enjoyment as the inevitable lot of mortality will allow. "men fly to vice for the want of pure and innocent pleasures. the gin-shops receive those who might be entertaining themselves with the works of art in a public gallery. the whole animal portion of our being is fostered at the expense of the spiritual. we become brutalized, because we are morbidly afraid of being frivolous and of wasting our time. the devil keeps possession of an englishman's heart, through the instrumentality of his carnal passions, because he is too proud and too stupid to laugh and enjoy himself. "secret sin destroys its myriads, immolated on the altar of outward respectability and of a regard for the opinion of a money-getting world." the existence of such a state of things is indeed a "formidable evil," but how could it fail to exist in a country in which all individuality is being lost as the little land-owner gradually disappears to be replaced by the day-labourer, and as the little shop-keeper gradually sinks into a clerk? how could it be otherwise in a country in which weak women, and children of the most tender age, spend their nights in cellars, and the long day of twelve or fifteen hours in factories, whose owners know of them nothing but, as in a penitentiary, their number--a country in which males and females work naked in coal-mines--and find themselves compelled to do all these things because of the necessity for preventing the poor hindoo from calling to his aid the powerful steam, and for compelling him, his wife, and his children, to limit themselves to the labour of the field? how could it be otherwise in a country in which "labourers, whether well off or not, never attempt to be better?"[ ] how otherwise in a country distinguished among all others for the enormous wealth of a few, for the intensity of toil and labour of all below them, and for the anxiety with which the future is regarded by all but those who, bereft of hope, know that all they can expect on this side of the grave is an indifferent supply of food and raiment? "in no country of the world," says mr. kay-- "is so much time spent in the mere acquisition of wealth, and so little time in the enjoyment of life and of all the means of happiness which god has given to man, as in england. "in no country in the world do the middle classes labour so intensely as here. one would think, to view the present state of english society, that man was created for no other purpose than to collect wealth, and that he was forbidden to gratify the beautiful tastes with which he has been gifted for the sake of his own happiness. to be rich, with us, is the great virtue, the pass into all society, the excuse for many frailties, and the mask for numerous deformities." an eastern proverb says that "curses, like young chickens, always come home to roost." few cases could be presented of a more perfect realization of this than is found in the present condition of england. half a century since it was decreed that the poor people of ireland should confine themselves to the cultivation and exhaustion of their soil, abstaining from the mining of coal, the smelting of ore, or the making of cloth; and during nearly all that time they have so flooded england with "cheap labour" as to have produced from the _times_ the declaration, before referred to, that "for a whole generation man has been a drug and population a nuisance"--precisely the state of things in which men tend most to become enslaved. cheap corn, cheap cotton, cheap tobacco, and cheap sugar, mean low-priced agricultural labour; and the low-priced labourer is always a slave, and aiding to produce elsewhere the slavery of his fellow-labourers, whether in the field or in the workshop. this, however, is in perfect accordance with the doctrines of some of england's most distinguished statesmen, as the reader has already seen in the declaration of mr. huskisson, that "to give capital a fair remuneration, the price of labour must be kept down,"--by which he proved the perfect accuracy of the predictions of the author of _the wealth of nations_. the harmony of true interests among nations is perfect, and an enlightened self-interest would lead every nation to carry into full effect the golden rule of christianity; and yet even now, the most distinguished men in england regard smuggling almost as a virtuous act, and the smuggler as a great reformer, because his labours tend to enable their countrymen to do everywhere what has been done in the west indies, in ireland, portugal, turkey, and india--separate the consumer from the producer. they regard it as the appointed work of england to convert the whole earth into one vast farm dependent upon one vast workshop, and that shop in the island of great britain. such being the views of peers of the realm, lord chancellors, ministers of state, political economists, and statisticians, can we wonder at a decline of morality among the middle class, under the combined influence of the struggle for life, and the assurance that "the end sanctifies the means," and that false invoices are but a means of working out a great reformation in the commercial system of the world? good ends rarely require such means for their accomplishment, and the very fact that it was needed to have gibraltar as a means of smuggling into spain, canada as a means of smuggling into this country,[ ] and hong kong for the purpose of poisoning the chinese with smuggled opium, should have led to a careful consideration of the question whether or not the system which looked to exhausting the soil of virginia and driving the poor negro to the sugar culture in texas, was one of the modes of "doing god service." unsound moral feeling is a necessary consequence of an exclusive devotion to trade such as is now seen to exist in england. it is the business of the trader to buy cheaply and sell dearly, be the consequences what they may to those from whom he buys, or to whom he sells; and unhappily the prosperity of england now depends so entirely on buying cheaply and selling dearly that she is forced to overlook the effects upon those to whom she sells, or from whom she buys, and she therefore rejoices when others are being ruined, and grieves when they are being enriched. her interests are always, and necessarily so, opposed to those of the rest of the world. she _must_ look at every thing with the eyes of the mere trader who wishes to buy cheaply and sell dearly, living at the cost of the producer and the consumer. the former desires good prices for his sugar, and yet so anxious was she to obtain cheap sugar that she forgot her engagements with the poor emancipated negroes of jamaica. the former desire's good prices for his corn, but so anxious was she to have cheap corn, that she forgot having deprived the people of ireland of all employment but in agriculture, and at once adopted measures whose action is now expelling the whole nation from the scenes of their youth, and separating husbands and wives, mothers and children. she has placed herself in a false position, and cannot now _afford_ to reflect upon the operation of cheap sugar and cheap corn, cheap cotton and cheap tobacco, upon the people who produce them; and therefore it is that the situation of ireland and india, and of the poor people of jamaica, is so much shut out from discussion. such being the case with those who should give tone to public opinion, how can we look for sound or correct feeling among the poor occupants of "the sweater's den,"[ ] or among the , tailors of london, seeking for work and unable to find it? or, how look for it among the poor shopkeepers, compelled in self-defence to adulterate almost every thing they sell, when they see the great cotton manufacturer using annually hundreds of barrels of flour to enable him to impose worthless cloth upon the poor hindoo, and thus annihilate his foreign competitor? or, how expect to find it among the poor operatives of lancashire, at one moment working full time, at another but three days in a week, and at a third totally deprived of employment, because goods can no longer be smuggled into foreign countries to leave a profit? with them, the question of food or no food is dependent altogether upon the size of the cotton crop. if the slave trade is brisk, much cotton is made, and they have wages with which to support their wives and children. if the crop is large, the planter may be ruined, but they themselves are fed. "the weekly mail from america," we are told-- "is not of more moment to the great cotton lord of manchester, than it is to john shuttle the weaver. * * * if he ever thinks how entirely his own existence and that of his own little household depend upon the american crop * * * he would tremble at the least rumour of war with the yankees. war with america--a hurricane in georgia--a flood in alabama--are one and all death-cries to the mill-spinner and power-loom weaver. * * * when the cotton fields of the southern states yield less than the usual quantity of cotton, the manchester operative eats less than his average quantity of food. when his blood boils at the indignities and cruelties heaped upon the coloured, race in the 'land of the free,' he does not always remember that _to the slave states_ of america _he owes his all_--that _it is for his advantage_ that the _negro should wear his chains in peace_."--_household words_. "if his "blood boils" at the sufferings of the negro in brazil, or of the hindoo in the mauritius, he must recollect that it is at the cost of those sufferings that he is supplied with cheap sugar. if he be shocked at the continuance of the african slave trade, he must recollect that if negroes ceased to be imported into cuba, he might have to pay a higher price for his coffee. if he is excited at the idea of the domestic slave trade of this country, he must calm himself by reflecting that it is "for his advantage" it is continued, and that without it he could not have cheap cotton. the labourers of the various parts of the world are thus taught that there is among themselves an universal antagonism of interests, and this tends, of course, to the production of a bad state of moral feeling, and an universal tendency to decline in the feeling of self-dependence. men, women, and children are becoming from day to day more dependent on the will of others, and as it is that dependence which constitutes slavery, we might with reason expect to find some of the vices of the slave--and were we to find them we should not greatly err in attributing their existence to the system thus described by adam smith:-- "the industry of great britain, instead of being accommodated to a great number of small markets, has been principally suited to one great market. her commerce, instead of running in a great number of small channels, has been taught to run principally in one great channel. but the whole system of her industry and commerce has thereby been rendered less secure, the whole state of her body politic less healthful than it otherwise would have been. in her present condition, great britain resembles one of those unwholesome bodies in which some of the vital parts are overgrown, and which, upon that account, are liable to many dangerous disorders, scarce incident to those in which all the parts are more properly proportioned. a small stop in that great blood-vessel which has been artificially swelled beyond its natural dimensions, and through which an unnatural proportion of the industry and commerce of the country has been forced to circulate, is very likely to bring on the most dangerous disorders upon the whole body politic." this is an accurate picture of that country under a system that seeks to direct the whole energies of its people into one direction, that of "buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest one,"--the pursuit that is, of all others, the least favourable to the development of the moral and intellectual faculties of man. how it is operating may be judged by the following description from an english writer already quoted:-- "of the children of the poor, who are yearly born in england, vast numbers never receive any education at all, while many others never enter any thing better than a dame or a sunday-school. in the towns they are left in crowds until about eight or nine years of age, to amuse themselves in the dirt of the streets, while their parents pursue their daily toil. in these public thoroughfares, during the part of their lives which is most susceptible of impressions and most retentive of them, they acquire dirty, immoral, and disorderly habits; they become accustomed to wear filthy and ragged clothes; they learn to pilfer and to steal; they associate with boys who have been in prison, and who have there been hardened in crime by evil associates; they learn how to curse one another, how to fight, how to gamble, and how to fill up idle hours by vicious pastimes; they acquire no knowledge except the knowledge of vice; they never come in contact with their betters; and they are not taught either the truths of religion or the way by which to improve their condition in life. their amusements are as low as their habits. the excitements of low debauchery too horrible to be named, of spirituous liquors, which they begin to drink as early as they can collect pence wherewith to buy them, of the commission and concealments of thefts, and of rude and disgusting sports, are the pleasures of their life. the idea of going to musical meetings such as those of the german poor, would be scoffed at, even if there were any such meetings for them to attend. innocent dancing is unknown to them. country sports they cannot have. read they cannot. so they hurry for amusement and excitement to the gratification of sensual desires and appetites. in this manner, filthy, lewd, sensual, boisterous, and skilful in the commission of crime, a great part of the populations of our towns grow up to manhood. of the truth or falsehood of this description any one can convince himself, who will examine our criminal records, or who will visit the back streets of any english town, when the schools are full, and count the children upon the door-steps and pavements, and note their condition, manners, and appearance, and their degraded and disgusting practices."--kay, vol. i. .[ ] this is, however, little different from what might be looked, for in a country whose provision for the education of its people is thus described:-- "about one-half of our poor can neither read nor write. the test of signing the name at marriage is a very imperfect absolute test of education, but it is a very good relative one: taking that test, how stands leeds itself in the registrar-general's returns? in leeds, which is the centre of the movement for letting education remain as it is, left entirely to chance and charity to supply its deficiencies, how do we find the fact? this, that in , the last year to which these returns are brought down, of marriages celebrated in leeds and hunslet, of the men and of the women, or considerably more than one-half of the latter, signed their names with marks. 'i have also a personal knowledge of this fact--that of men employed upon a railway in this immediate neighbourhood, only men can sign their names in the receipt of their wages; and this not because of any diffidence on their part, but positively because they cannot write.' and only lately, the _leeds mercury_ itself gave a most striking instance of ignorance among persons from boeotian pudsey: of witnesses, 'all of respectable appearance, examined before the mayor of bradford at the court-house there, only one man could sign his name, and that indifferently.' mr. nelson has clearly shown in statistics of crime in england and wales from to , that crime is invariably the most prevalent in those districts where the fewest numbers in proportion to the population can read and write. is it not indeed beginning at the wrong end to try and reform men, after they have become criminals? yet you cannot begin, with children, from want of schools. poverty is the result of ignorance, and then ignorance is again the unhappy result of poverty. 'ignorance makes men improvident and thoughtless--women as well as men; it makes them blind to the future--to the future of this life as well as the life beyond. it makes them dead to higher pleasures than those of the mere senses, and keeps them down to the level of the mere animal. hence the enormous extent of drunkenness throughout this country, and the frightful waste of means which it involves.' at bilston, amidst , people, there are but two struggling schools--one has lately ceased; at millenhall, darlaston, and pelsall, amid a teeming population, no school whatever. in oldham, among , , but one public day-school for the labouring classes; the others are an infant school, and some dame and factory schools. at birmingham, there are , children at school, and , , at no school; at liverpool, , out of , at no school; at leicester, out of , ; and at leeds itself, in , (the date of the latest returns,) some out of , , were at no school whatever. it is the same in the counties. 'i have seen it stated, that a woman for some time had to officiate as clerk in a church in norfolk, there being no adult male in the parish able to read and write. for a population of , , we have but twelve normal schools; while in massachusetts they have three such schools for only , of population." such being the education of the young, we may now look to see how mr. kay describes that provided for people of a more advanced period of life:-- "the crowd of low pot-houses in our manufacturing districts is a sad and singular spectacle. they are to be found in every street and alley of the towns, and in almost every lane and turning of the more rural villages of those districts, if any of those villages can be called rural. "the habit of drunkenness pervades the masses of the operatives to an extent never before known in our country. "in a great number of these taverns and pot-houses of the manufacturing districts, prostitutes are kept for the express purpose of enticing the operatives to frequent them, thus rendering them doubly immoral and pernicious. i have been assured in lancashire, on the best authority, that in one of the manufacturing towns, and that, too, about third rate in point of size and population, there are _sixty_ taverns, where prostitutes are kept by the tavern landlords, in order to entice customers into them. their demoralizing influence upon the population _cannot be exaggerated_; and yet these are almost the only resorts which the operatives have, when seeking amusement or relaxation. "in those taverns where prostitutes are not actually kept for the purpose of enticing customers, they are always to be found in the evenings, at the time the workmen go there to drink. in london and in lancashire the gin-palaces are the regular rendezvous for the abandoned of both sexes, and the places where the lowest grade of women-of-the-town resort to find customers. it is quite clear that young men, who once begin to meet their, friends at these places, cannot long escape the moral degradation of these hot-houses of vice. "the singular and remarkable difference between the respective condition of the peasants and operatives of germany and switzerland, and those of england and ireland, in this respect, is alone sufficient to prove the singular difference between their respective social condition. "the village inn in germany is quite a different kind of place to the village inn in england. it is intended and used less for mere drinking, than, as a place for meeting and conversation; it is, so to speak, the villagers' club."--vol. i. . under such circumstances, we cannot be surprised when told by mr. alison that over the whole kingdom crime increases four times as fast as the population, and that "in lancashire population doubles in thirty years, crime in five years and a half." how, indeed, could it be otherwise under a system based upon the idea of "keeping labour down"--one that tends to the consolidation of the land and the exclusion of men from the work of cultivation, and then excludes them from the factory, while forcing hundreds of thousands of indigent and almost starving irish into england in search of employment? the process of "eviction" in ireland has been already described. how the same work has been, and is being, performed in england is thus stated by the _times_:-- "our village peasantry are jostled about from cottage to cottage, or from cottage to no cottage at all, as freely and with as little regard to their personal tastes, and conveniences as if we were removing our pigs, cows, and horses from one sty or shed to another. if they cannot get a house over their heads they go to the union, and are distributed--the man in one part, the wife in another, and the children again somewhere else. that is a settled thing. our peasantry bear it, or, if they can't bear it, they die, and there is an end of it on this side of the grave; though how it will stand at the great audit, we leave an 'english catholic' to imagine. we only mean to say that in england the work has been done; cotters have been exterminated; small holdings abolished; the process of eviction rendered superfluous; the landlord's word made law; the refuge of the discontented reduced to a workhouse, and all without a shot, or a bludgeon, or a missile being heard of." thus driven from the land, they are forced to take refuge in london and liverpool, manchester, birmingham, and leeds, and accordingly there it is that we find nearly the whole increase of population in the last ten years. out of less than two millions, more than , were added to the number of london alone, and those who are familiar with mr. mayhew's work, _london labour and london poor_, do not need to be told of the extraordinary wretchedness, nor of the immorality that there abound. inquiries get on foot by lord ashley have shown that "in the midst of that city there are," says mr. kay-- "persons, forming a separate class, having pursuits, interests, manners; and customs of their own, and that the filthy, deserted, roaming, and lawless children, who may be called the source of - ths of the crime which desolates the metropolis, are not fewer in number than thirty thousand! "these , are quite independent of the number of mere pauper children, who crowd the streets of londen, and who never enter a school: but of these latter nothing will be said here. "now, what are the pursuits, the dwelling-houses, and the habits of these poor wretches? of , who were examined, confessed that they had been in prison, not merely once, or even twice, but some of them several times; had run away from their homes; slept in the "lodging-houses;" had lived altogether by beggary; had neither shoes nor stockings; had no hat or cap, or covering for the head; had no linen; had never slept in a bed; many had no recollection of ever having been in a bed; were the children of convicts,"--vol. i. . in the towns of the manufacturing districts there are, says the same author-- "a great number of cellars beneath the houses of the small shopkeepers and operatives, which are inhabited by crowds of poor inhabitants. each of these cellar-houses contains at the most two, and often, and in some towns generally, only one room. these rooms measure in liverpool, from to feet square. in some other towns, they are rather larger. they are generally flagged. the flags lie "directly" upon the earth, and are generally wretchedly damp. in wet weather they are very often not dry for weeks together. within a few feet of the windows of these cellars, rises the wall which keeps the street from falling in upon them, darkening the gloomy rooms, and preventing the sun's rays penetrating into them. "dr. duncan, in describing the cellar-houses of the manufacturing districts, says[ ]--'the cellars are ten or twelve feet square; generally flagged, but frequently having only the bare earth for a floor, and sometimes less than six feet in height. there is frequently no window, so that light and air can gain access to the cellar only by the door, the top of which is often not higher than the level of the street. in such cellars ventilation is out of the question. they, are of course dark; and from the defective drainage, they are also very generally damp. there is sometimes a back cellar, used as a sleeping apartment, having no direct communication with the external atmosphere, and deriving its scanty supply of light and air solely from the front apartment.'"--vol. i. . "one of the city missionaries, describing the state of the mint district in the city of london, says, 'it is utterly impossible to describe the scenes, which are to be witnessed here, or to set forth in its naked deformity the awful characters sin here assumes. * * * _in mint street, alone, there are nineteen lodging-houses._ the majority of these latter are awful sinks of iniquity, and are used as houses of accommodation. in some of them, both sexes sleep together indiscriminately, and such acts are practised and witnessed, that married persons, who are in other respects awfully depraved, have been so shocked, as to be compelled to get up in the night and leave the house. many of the half-naked impostors, who perambulate the streets of london in the daytime, and obtain a livelihood by their deceptions, after having thrown off their bandages, crutches, &c., may be found here in their true character; some regaling themselves in the most extravagant manner; others gambling or playing cards, while the worst of language proceeds from their lips. quarrels and fights are very common, and the cry of murder is frequently heard. the public-houses in this street are crowded to excess, especially, on the sabbath evening.[ ] "in the police reports published in the _sun_ newspaper of the th of october, , the following account is given of '_a penny lodging-house_' in blue anchor yard, rosemary lane. one of the policemen examined, thus describes a room in this lodging-house:--'it was a very small one, extremely filthy, and there was no furniture of any description in it. _there were sixteen men, women, and children lying on the floor, without covering. some of them were half naked._ for this miserable shelter, each lodger paid a penny. the stench was intolerable, and the place had not been cleaned out for some time.' "if the nightly inmates of these dens are added to the tramps who seek lodging in the vagrant-wards of the workhouses, we shall find that there are at least between , and , tramps who are daily infesting our roads and streets!"--vol. i. . in the agricultural districts, whole families, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law, sleep together, and here we find a source of extraordinary immorality. "the accounts we receive," says mr. kay-- "from all parts of the country show that these miserable cottages are crowded to an extreme, and that the crowding is progressively increasing. people of both sexes, and of all ages, both married and unmarried--parents, brothers, sisters, and strangers--sleep in the same rooms and often in the same beds. one gentleman tells us of six people of different sexes and ages, two of whom were man and wife, sleeping in the same bed, three with their heads at the top and three with their heads at the foot of the bed. another tells us of adult uncles and nieces sleeping in the same room close to each other; another of the uncles and nieces sleeping in the same bed together; another of adult brothers, and sisters sleeping in the same room with a brother and his wife just married; many tell us of adult brothers and sisters sleeping in the same beds; another tells us of rooms so filled with beds that there is no space between them, but that brothers, sisters, and parents crawl over each other half naked in order to get to their respective resting-places; another of its being common for men and women, not being relations, to undress together in the same room, without any feeling of its being indelicate; another of cases where women have been delivered in bed-rooms crowded with men, young women, and children; and others mention facts of these crowded bed-rooms much too horrible to be alluded to. nor are these solitary instances, but similar reports are given by gentlemen writing in all parts of the country. "the miserable character of the houses of our peasantry, is, of itself, and independently of the causes which have made the houses so wretched, degrading and demoralising the poor of our rural districts in a fearful manner. it stimulates the unhealthy and unnatural increase of population. the young peasants from their earliest years are accustomed to sleep in the same bed-rooms with people of both sexes, and with both married and unmarried persons. they therefore lose all sense of the indelicacy of such a life. they know, too, that they can gain nothing by deferring their marriages and by saving; that it is impossible for them to obtain better houses by so doing; and that in many cases they must wait many years before they could obtain a separate house of any sort. they feel that if they defer their marriage for ten or fifteen years, they will be at the end of that period in just the same position as before, and no better off for their waiting. having then lost all hope of any improvement of their social situation, and all sense of the indelicacy of taking a wife home to the bedroom already occupied by parents, brothers, and sisters, they marry early in life,--often, if not generally, before the age of twenty,--and very often occupy, for the first part of their married life, another bed in the already crowded sleeping-room of their parents! in this way the morality of the peasants is destroyed; the numbers of this degraded population are unnaturally increased, and their means of subsistence are diminished by the increasing competition of their increasing numbers."--vol. i. . a necessary consequence of this demoralization is that infanticide prevails to a degree unknown in any other part of the civilized world. the london _leader_ informs its readers that upon a recent occasion-- "it was declared by the coroner of leeds, and assented to as probable by the surgeon, that there were, as near as could be calculated, about three hundred children put to death yearly in leeds alone that were not registered by the law. in other words, three hundred infants were murdered to avoid the consequences of their living, and these murders, as the coroner said, are never detected." the reader may now advantageously turn to the account of the state of education in leeds, already given,[ ] with a view to ascertain the intellectual condition of the women guilty of the foul and unnatural crime of child-murder. doing so, he will find that out of eighteen hundred and fifty that were married there were _one thousand and twenty who could not sign their names_--and this in the centre of civilization in the middle of the nineteenth century! but a short time since, the _morning chronicle_ gave its readers a list of twenty-two trials, for child-murder alone, that had been _reported_ in its columns, and these were stated to be but one-half of those that had taken place in the short period of twenty-seven days! on the same occasion it stated that although english ruffianism had "not taken to the knife," it had "advanced in the devilish accomplishment of biting off noses and scooping out eyes. kicking a man to death while he is down," it continued, "or treating, a wife in the same way--stamping on an enemy or a paramour with hobnailed boots--smashing a woman's head with a hand-iron--these atrocities, which are of almost daily occurrence in our cities, are not so much imputed crimes as they are the extravagant exaggerations of the coarse, brutal, sullen temper of an englishman, brutified by ignorance and stupefied by drink." on the same occasion the _chronicle_ stated that in villages few young people of the present day marry until, as the phrase is, it has "become necessary." it is, it continued, the rural practice to "keep company in a very loose sense, till a cradle is as necessary as a ring." on another, and quite recent occasion, the same journal furnished its readers with the following striking illustration of the state of morals:-- "in one of the recent dorsetshire cases, [of child murder,] common cause was made by the girls of the county. they attended the trial in large numbers; and we are informed that on the acquittal of the prisoner a general expression of delight was perceptible in the court; and they left the assizes town boasting 'that they might now do as they liked.' we are then, it seems, with all our boasted civilization, relapsing into a barbarous and savage state of society." lest it might be supposed that this condition of things had been inherited, the editor stated that-- "this deplorable state of morals was of comparatively recent growth. old people," he continued, "can often tell the year when the first of such cases occurred in their families; and what a sensation of shame it then excited; while they will also tell us that the difficulty now is to find a lowly couple in village life with whom the rule of decency and christianity is not the exception. it is a disgraceful fact--and one which education, and especially religious education, has to account for--that a state of morals has grown up in which it can no longer be said that our maidens are given in marriage." infanticide is not, however, confined to the unmarried. burial clubs abound. "in our large provincial towns," says mr. kay-- "the poor are in the habit of entering their children in what are called 'burial clubs.' a small sum is paid every year by the parent, and this entitles him to receive from £. to £. from the club, on the death of the child. many parents enter their children in several clubs. one man in manchester has been known to enter his child in _nineteen_ different clubs. on the death of such a child, the parent becomes entitled to receive a large sum of money; and as the burial of the child does not necessarily cost more than £., or, at the most, £. s., the parent realizes a considerable sum after all the expenses are paid! "it has been clearly ascertained, that it is a common practice among the more degraded classes of poor in many of our towns, to enter their infants in these clubs, and then to cause their death either by starvation, ill-usage, or poison! what more horrible symptom of moral degradation can be conceived? one's mind revolts against it, and would fain reject it as a monstrous fiction. but, alas! it seems to be but too true. "mr. chadwick says, 'officers of these burial societies, relieving officers, and others, whose administrative duties put them in communication with the lowest classes in these districts,' (the manufacturing districts,) 'express their moral conviction of the operation of such bounties to produce instances of the visible neglect of children of which they are witnesses. they often say, 'you are not treating that child properly; it will not live: _is it in the club_?' and the answer corresponds with the impression produced by the sight."--vol. i. . commenting on these and numerous other facts of similar kind, the same author says-- "these accounts are really almost too horrible to be believed at all; and were they not given us on the authority of such great experience and benevolence, we should totally discredit them. "but, alas, they are only too true! there can be no doubt, that a great part of the poorer classes of this country are sunk into such a frightful depth of hoplessness, misery, and utter moral degradation, that even mothers forget their affection for their helpless little offspring, and kill them, as a butcher does his lambs, in order to make money by the murder, and therewith to lessen their pauperism and misery?"--p. . how rapid is the progress of demoralization may be seen from the fact that in the thirty years from to , the consumption of british spirits increased from , , to , , gallons, or in a ratio more than double that of the population. the use of opium is also increasing with rapidity.[ ] intemperance and improvidence go hand in hand with each other, and hence arises a necessity for burial clubs for the disposal of the children and the maintenance of the parents. a recent english journal states that-- "it is estimated that in manchester there are 'unfortunate females;' that they lead to an annual expenditure of £ , ; and that some of them die, in horror and despair, yearly. in england it is calculated that there are , houses of ill-fame, and , prostitutes; and, further, that not less than £ , , are spent annually in these places." this may, or may not, be exaggerated, but the condition to which are reduced so many of the weaker sex would warrant us in expecting a great decay of morality. when severe labour cannot command a sufficiency of food, can we be surprised that women find themselves forced to resort to prostitution as a means of support? a committee of gentlemen who had investigated the condition of the sewing-women of london made a report stating that no less than , of them were "permanently at the starvation point," and were compelled to resort to prostitution as a means of eking out a subsistence. but a few weeks since, the _times_ informed its readers that shirts were made for a _penny a piece_ by women who found the needles and thread, and the _daily news_ furnished evidence that hundreds of young women had no choice but between prostitution and making artificial flowers at _twopence a day_! young ladies seeking to be governesses, and capable of giving varied instruction, are expected to be satisfied with the wages and treatment of scullions, and find it difficult to obtain situations even on such terms. it is in such facts as these that we must find the causes of those given in the above paragraph. if we desire to find the character of the young we must look to that of the aged, and especially to that of the mothers. we see here something of the hundreds of thousands of young women who are to supply the future population of england; and if the character of the latter be in accordance with that of the former, with what hope can we look to the future? nothing indicates more fully the deterioration resulting from this unceasing struggle for life, than the harsh treatment to which are subjected persons who need aid in their distress. a case of this kind, furnished by the _times_, as occurring at the lambeth workhouse, so strongly indicates the decay of kind and generous feeling, that, long as it is, it is here given:-- "a poor creature, a young english girl--to be sure, she is not a black--a parcel of drenched rags clinging to her trembling form, every mark of agony and despair in her countenance, lifts her hand to the bell. she rings once and again, and at length the door porter appears, accompanied by a person holding a situation under the guardians--his name is brooke--and he is a policeman. she is starving, she is pregnant, and almost in the pains of labour, but the stern officials will not take her in. why? because she had been in the workhouse until tuesday morning last, and had then been discharged by 'order of the guardians.' nor is this all. the tale of parochial bounty is not yet half told out. during that long wet tuesday she wandered about. she had not a friend in this great town to whom she could apply for the smallest assistance, and on tuesday night she came back to implore once more the kindly shelter of the parish workhouse. for yet that night she was taken in, but the next morning cast forth into the world again with a piece of dry bread in her hand. on wednesday the same scene was renewed--the same fruitless casting about for food and shelter, the same disappointment, and the same despair. but parochial bounty can only go thus far, and no farther. charity herself was worn out with the importunity of this persevering pauper, and on thursday night the doors of the parish workhouse were finally and sternly shut in her face. "but she was not alone in her sufferings. you might have supposed that the misery of london--enormous as the amount of london misery undoubtedly is--could have shown no counterpart to the frightful position of this unfortunate creature--without a home, without a friend, without a character, without a shelter, without a bite of food--betrayed by her seducer, and the mark for the last twelve hours of the floodgates of heaven. * * * can it be there are two of them? yes! another young woman, precisely in the same situation, knocks at the same workhouse door, and is refused admittance by the same stern guardians of the ratepayers' pockets. the two unfortunates club their anguish and their despair together, and set forth in quest of some archway or place of shelter, beneath which they may crouch until the gas-lamps are put out, and the day breaks once more upon their sufferings. well, on they roamed, until one of the two, sarah sherford, was actually seized with the pangs of labour, when they resolved to stagger back to the workhouse; but again the door was shut in their faces. what was to be done? they were driven away from the house, and moved slowly along, with many a pause of agony, no doubt, until they met with a policeman, one daniel donovan, who directed them to a coffee-house where they might hope to get shelter. the coffee-house did not open till o'clock, when they had two hours' shelter. but at that hour they were again cast out, as the keeper was obliged to come into the street with his stall and attend to it. 'at this time (we will here copy the language of our report) sherford's labour pains had considerably increased, and they again spoke to the same policeman, donovan, and told him that, unless she was taken into the workhouse or some other place, she must give birth to her infant in the street.' daniel donovan accordingly conveyed the two unfortunate creatures to the workhouse once more, at o'clock in the morning. 'the policeman on duty there,' said this witness, 'told him that they had been there before, and seemed to have some _hesitation_ about admitting them, but on being told that one was in the pains of labour, he let them in.'" what slavery can be worse than this? here are young women, women in distress, starving and almost in the pains of labour, driven about from post to pillar, and from pillar to post, by day and by night, totally unable to obtain the smallest aid. assuredly it would be difficult to find any thing to equal this in any other country claiming to rank among the civilized nations of the world. at the moment of writing this page, an english journal furnishes a case of death from starvation, and closes its account with the following paragraph, strikingly illustrative of the state of things which naturally arises where every man is "trying to live by snatching the bread from his neighbour's mouth." "it is hardly possible to conceive a more horrible case. a stalwart, strong-framed man, in the prime of life--his long pilgrimage of martyrdom from london to stoney-stratford--his wretched appeals for help to the "_civilization_" around him--his seven days fast--his brutal abandonment by his fellow-men--his seeking shelter and being driven from resting-place to resting-place--the crowning inhumanity of the person named slade and the patient, miserable death of the worn-out man--are a picture perfectly astonishing to contemplate. "no doubt he invaded the rights of property, when he sought shelter in the shed and in the lone barn!!!" the recent developments in regard to bethlem hospital are thus described:-- "some of the cases of cruelty brought to light by the examiners are almost too revolting to describe. it appears that the incurables are lodged in cells partially under ground, where their only conches are troughs filled with straw and covered with a blanket. on these miserable beds, worse than many a man gives to his horse or dog, the victims lie in the coldest weather, without night-clothes, frequently creeping into the straw in order to keep warm. these poor unfortunates also are often fed in a way as disgusting as it is cruel, being laid on their backs, and held down by one of the nurses, while another forces into the mouth the bread and milk which is their allotted food. this revolting practice is adopted to save time, for it was proved on oath that patients, thus treated, ate their meals by themselves, if allowed sufficient leisure. the imbecile patients, instead of being bathed with decency, as humanity and health demands, are thrown on the stone-floor, in a state of nudity, and there mopped by the nurses. such things would seem incredible, if they had not been proved on oath. some who were not incurable, having been treated in this manner, exposed these atrocities, after their recovery; and the result was an investigation, which led to the discovery of the abominable manner in which this vast charity has been administered." these things are a necessary consequence of an universal trading spirit. for the first time in the annals of the world it has been proclaimed in england that the paramount object of desire with the people of a great and christian nation is to buy cheaply and sell dearly; and when men find themselves, in self-defence, compelled to beat down the poor sewing-woman to a penny for making a shirt, or the poor flower-girl to a scale of wages so low that she must resort to prostitution for the purpose of supporting life, they can neither be expected to be charitable themselves, nor to tolerate much charity in the public officers charged with the expenditure of their contributions. there is consequently everywhere to be seen a degree of harshness in the treatment of those who have the misfortune to be poor, and a degree of contempt in the mode of speech adopted in relation to them, totally incompatible with the idea of advance in _real_ civilization. * * * * * the facts thus far given rest, as the reader will have seen, on the highest english authority. it is scarcely possible to study them without arriving at the conclusion that the labouring people of england are gradually losing all control over the disposition of their own labour--or in other words, that they are becoming enslaved--and that with the decay of freedom there has been a decay of morality, such as has been observed in every other country similarly circumstanced. to ascertain the cause of this we must refer again to adam smith, who tells us that-- "no equal quantity of productive labour or capital employed in manufacture can ever occasion so great a reproduction as if it were employed in agriculture. in these, nature does nothing, man does all, and the reproduction must always be proportioned to the strength of the agents that occasion it. the capital employed in agriculture, therefore, not only puts into motion a greater quantity of productive labour than any equal capital employed in manufacture; but, in proportion, too, to the quantity of productive labour which it employs, it adds a much greater value to the annual value of the land and labour of the country, to the real wealth and revenue of its inhabitants. of all the ways which a capital can be employed, it is by far the most advantageous to society." this is the starting point of his whole system, and is directly the opposite of that from which starts the modern english politico-economical school that professes to follow in his footsteps, as will now be shown. the passage here given, which really constitutes the base upon which rests the whole structure of dr. smith's work, is regarded by mr. mcculloch as "the most objectionable" one in it, and he expresses great surprise that "so acute and sagacious a reasoner should have maintained a doctrine so manifestly erroneous." "so far indeed," says that gentleman-- "is it from being true that nature does much for man in agriculture, and nothing for manufactures, that the fact is more nearly the reverse. there are no limits to the bounty of nature in manufactures; but there are limits, and those not very remote, to her bounty in agriculture. the greatest possible amount of capital might be expended in the construction of steam-engines, or of any other sort of machinery, and, after they had been multiplied indefinitely, the last would be as prompt and efficient in producing commodities and saving labour as the first. such, however, is not the case with the soil. lands of the first quality are speedily exhausted; and it is impossible to apply capital indefinitely even to the best soils, without obtaining from it a constantly diminishing rate of profit."--_principles of political economy_. the error here results from the general error of mr. ricardo's system, which places the poor cultivator among the rich soils of the swamps and river-bottoms, and sends his rich successors to the poor soils of the hills,--being directly the reverse of what has happened in every country of the world, in every county in england, and on every farm in each and all of those counties.[ ] had he not been misled by the idea of "the constantly increasing sterility of the soil," mr. mcculloch could not have failed to see that the only advantage resulting from the use of the steam-engine, or the loom, or any other machine in use for the conversion of the products of the earth, was, that it diminished the quantity of labour required to be so applied, and increased the quantity that might be given to the work of production. it is quite true that wheelbarrows and carts, wagons and ships, may be increased indefinitely; but of what use can they possibly be, unless the things to be carried be first produced, and whence can those things be obtained except from the earth? the grist-mill is useful, provided there is grain to be ground, but not otherwise. the cotton-mill would be useless unless the cotton was first produced. agriculture _must_ precede manufactures, and last of all, says dr. smith, comes foreign commerce.[ ] the reader has had before him a passage from mr. j.s. mill, in which that gentleman says that "if the law [of the occupation of the land] were different, almost all the phenomena of the production and distribution of wealth would be different from what they now are." in the days of adam smith it had not yet been suggested that men began by the cultivation of rich soils, and then passed to poor ones, with constantly diminishing power to obtain food. population, therefore, had not come to be regarded as "a nuisance" to be abated by any measures, however revolting, and imposing upon christian men the necessity of hardening their hearts, and permitting their fellow-men to suffer every extremity of poverty and distress "short of absolute death," with a view to bring about a necessity for refraining to gratify that natural inclination which leads men and women to associate in the manner tending to promote the growth of numbers and the development of the best feelings of the human heart. it was then considered right that men and women should marry, and increase of population was regarded as evidence of increased wealth and strength. dr. smith, therefore, looked at the affairs of the world as they were, and he saw that the production of commodities not only preceded their conversion and exchange, but that in the work of production the earth aided man by increasing the _quantity_ of things to, be consumed; whereas labour applied in other ways could change them only in their _form_ or in their _place_, making no addition to their quantity. he, therefore, saw clearly that the nearer the spinner and the weaver came to the producer of food and wool, the more would be the quantity of food and cloth to be divided between them; and thus was he led to see how great an act of injustice it was on the part of his countrymen to endeavour to compel the people of the world to send their raw materials to them to be converted, at such vast loss of transportation. he had no faith in the productive power of ships or wagons. he knew that the barrel of flour or the bale of cotton, put into the ship, came out a barrel of flour or a bale of cotton, the weight of neither having been increased by the labour employed in transporting it from this place of production to that of consumption. he saw clearly that to place the consumer by the side of the producer was to economize labour and aid production, and therefore to increase the power to trade. he was, therefore, in favour of the local application of labour and capital, by aid of which towns should grow up in the midst of producers of food; and he believed that if "human institutions" had not been at war with the best interests of man, those towns would "nowhere have increased beyond what, the improvement and cultivation of the territory in which they were situated could support." widely different is all this from the system which builds up london, liverpool, manchester, and birmingham, to be the manufacturing centres of the world, and urges upon all nations the adoption of a system looking directly to their maintenance and increase! directly opposed in this respect to dr. smith, mr. mcculloch has unbounded faith in the productive power of ships and wagons. to him-- "it is plain that the capital and labour employed in carrying commodities from where they are to be produced to where they are to be consumed, and in dividing them into minute portions so as to fit the wants of consumers, are really as productive as if they were employed in agriculture or in manufactures."--_principles_, . the man who carries the food adds, as he seems to think, as much to the quantity to be consumed as did the one who ploughed the ground and sowed the seed; and he who stands at the counter measuring cloth adds as much to the quantity of cloth as did he who produced it. no benefit, in his view, results from any saving of the labour of transportation or exchange. he has, therefore, no faith in the advantage to be derived from the local application of labour or capital. he believes that it matters nothing to the farmer of ireland whether his food be consumed on the farm or at a distance from it--whether his grass be fed on the land or carried to market--whether the manure be returned to the land or wasted on the road--whether, of course, the land be impoverished or enriched. he is even disposed to believe that it is frequently more to the advantage of the people of that country that the food there produced should be divided among the labourers of france or italy than among themselves.[ ] he believes in the advantage of large manufacturing towns at a distance from those who produce the food and raw materials of manufacture; and that perfect freedom of trade consists in the quiet submission of the farmers and planters of the world to the working of a system which dr. smith, regarded as tending so greatly to "the discouragement of agriculture," that it was the main object of his work to teach the people of britain that it was not more unjust to others than injurious to themselves. in a work just issued from the press, mr. mcculloch tells his readers that-- "for the reasons now stated, a village built in the immediate vicinity of a gentleman's seat generally declines on his becoming an absentee. that, however, is in most cases any thing but an injury. the inhabitants of such villages are generally poor, needy dependants, destitute of any invention, and without any wish to distinguish themselves. but when the proprietors are elsewhere, they are forced to trust to their own resources, and either establish some sort of manufacture, or resort to those manufacturing and commercial cities where there is _always_ a ready demand for labourers, and where every latent spark of genius is sure to be elicited. although, therefore, it be certainly true that absenteeism has a tendency to reduce the villages which are found in the neighbourhood of the residences of extensive proprietors, it is not on that account prejudicial to the country at large, but the reverse."[ ] it is here seen that the people who own large estates are supposed to be surrounded by "poor and needy dependants," who are to be stimulated to exertion by the pressure of want, and that this pressure is to be produced by the absenteeism of the proprietor. we have here the master administering the lash to his poor slave, and the only difference between the english master and the jamaica one appears to be, that absenteeism in the one case forces the poor labourer to seek the lanes and alleys of a great city, and in the other causes him to be worked to death. the slavery of ireland, jamaica, and india is a natural consequence of the absenteeism of the great land-owners; and the larger the properties, the greater must be the tendency to absenteeism, centralization, and slavery; and yet mr. mcculloch assures his readers that "the advantage of preserving large estates from being frittered down by a scheme of equal division is not limited to its effects on the younger children of their owners. it raises universally the standard of competence, and gives new force to the springs which set industry in motion. the manner of living in great landlords is that in which every one is ambitious of being able to indulge; and their habits of expense, though somewhat injurious to themselves, act as powerful incentives to the ingenuity and enterprise of other classes, who never think their fortunes sufficiently ample unless they will enable them to emulate the splendour of the richest landlords; so that the custom of primogeniture seems to render all classes more industrious, and to augment at the same time the mass of wealth and the scale of enjoyment."--_ principles_. the modern system tends necessarily to the consolidation of land, and the more completely that object can be attained, the greater must, be "the splendour of the richest landlords," the greater the habits of expense among the few, the greater their power to absent themselves, the greater the power of the rapacious middleman or agent, the greater the poverty and squalor of "the poor and needy dependants," and the greater the necessity for seeking shelter in the cellars of manchester, the wynds of glasgow, or the brothels of london and liverpool; but the larger must be the supply of the commodity called "cheap labour." in other words, slaves will be more numerous, and masters will be more able to decide on what shall be the employment of the labourer, and what shall be its reward. adam smith knew nothing of all this. he saw that capital was always best managed by its owner, and therefore had no faith in a universal system of agencies. he saw that the little proprietor was by far the greatest improver, and he had no belief in the advantage of great farmers surrounded by day-labourers. he believed in the advantage of making twelve exchanges in a year in place of one, and he saw clearly that the nearer the consumer could come to the producer the larger and more profitable would be commerce. he therefore taught that the workman should go to the place where, food being abundant, moderate labour would command much food. his successors teach that the food should come to the place where, men being abundant and food scarce, much labour will command little food, and that when population has thus been rendered superabundant, the surplus should go abroad to raise more food for the supply of those they left behind. the one teaches the concentration of man, and the _local_ division of labour. the other, the dispersion of man, and the _territorial_ division of labour. they differ thus in every thing, except that they both use the _word_ free trade--but with reference to totally distinct ideas. with the one, commerce has that enlarged signification which embraces every description of intercourse resulting from the exercise of "man's natural inclination" for association, while with the other trade has reference to no idea, beyond that of the mere pedler who buys in the cheapest market and sells in the dearest one. the system of the one is perfectly harmonious, and tends toward peace among men. the other is a mass of discords, tending toward war among the men and the nations of the earth. as ordinarily used, the word commerce has scarcely any signification except that of trade with distant men, and yet that is the least profitable commerce that can be maintained,--as the reader may satisfy himself if he will reflect that when the miller and the farmer are near neighbours they divide between them all the flour that is made, whereas, when they are widely separated, a third man, the carrier, intervenes between them and takes a large portion of it, leaving less to be divided between those who raise the wheat and those who convert it into flour. the more perfect the power of association the greater must be the power to maintain commerce, for _every act of association is an act of commerce_, as it is proposed now to show, beginning at the beginning, in the family, which long precedes the nation. doing so, we find the husband exchanging his services in the raising of food and the materials of clothing, for those of his wife, employed in the preparation of food for the table, and the conversion of raw materials into clothing,--and here it is we find the greatest of all trades. of all the labour employed on the farms and in the farm-houses of the union, we should, could we have an accurate statement, find that the proportion of its products exchanged beyond their own limits, scarcely exceeded one-third, and was certainly far less than one-half, the remainder being given to the raising of food and raw materials for their own consumption, and the conversion of that food and those materials into the forms fitting them for their own uses. at the next step we find ourselves in the little community, of which the owner of this farm constitutes a portion; and here we find the farmer exchanging his wheat with one neighbour for a day's labour--the use of his wagon and his horse for other days of labour--his potatoes with a third for the shoeing of his horse, and with a fourth for the shoeing of himself and his children, or the making of his coat. on one day he or his family have labour to spare, and they pass it off to a neighbour to be repaid by him in labour on another day. one requires aid in the spring, the other in the autumn; one gives a day's labour in hauling lumber, in exchange for that of another, employed in mining coal or iron ore. another trades the labour that has been employed in the purchase of a plough for that of his neighbour which had been applied to the purchase of a cradle. exchanges being thus made on the spot, from hour to hour and from day to day, with little or no intervention of persons whose business is trade, their amount is large, and, combined with those of the family, equals probably four-fifths of the total product of the labour of the community, leaving not more than one-fifth to be traded off with distant men; and this proportion is often greatly diminished as with increasing population and wealth a market is made on the land for the products of the land. this little community forms part of a larger one, styled a nation, the members of which are distant hundreds or thousands of miles from each other, and here we find difficulties tending greatly to limit the power to trade. the man in latitude ° may have labour to sell for which he can find no purchaser, while he who lives in latitude ° is at the moment grieving to see his crop perish on the ground for want of aid in harvest. the first may have potatoes rotting, and his wagon and horses idle, while the second may need potatoes, and have his lumber on his hands for want of means of transportation--yet distance forbids exchange between them. again, this nation forms part of a world, the inhabitants of which are distant tens of thousands of miles from each other, and totally unable to effect exchanges of labour, or even of commodities, except of certain kinds that will bear transportation to distant markets. commerce tends, therefore, to diminish in its amount with every circumstance tending to increase the necessity for going to a distance, and to increase in amount with every one tending to diminish the distance within which it must be maintained. as it now stands with the great farming interest of the union, the proportions are probably as follows:-- exchanges in the family................... per cent. " in the neighbourhood............ " " in the nation................... " " with other nations.............. " --- total.................................... it will now be obvious that any law, domestic or foreign, tending to interfere with the exchanges of the family or the neighbourhood, would be of more serious importance than one that should, to the same extent, affect those with the rest of the nation, and that one which should affect the trade of one part of the nation with another, would be more injurious than one which should tend to limit the trade with distant nations. japan refuses to have intercourse with either europe or america, yet this total interdiction of trade with a great empire is less important to the farmers of the union than would be the imposition of a duty of one farthing a bushel upon the vegetable food raised on their farms to be consumed in their families. the great trade is the home trade, and the greater the tendency to the performance of trade at home the more rapid will be the increase of prosperity, and the greater the power to effect exchanges abroad. the reason of this is to be found in the fact that the power of production increases with the power of combined exertion, and all combination is an exchange of labour for labour, the exchange being made at home. the more exchanges are thus effected the smaller is the number of the men, wagons, ships, or sailors employed in making them, and the greater the number of persons employed in the work of production, with increase in the quantity of commodities produced, and the _power_ to exchange grows with the power to produce, while the power to produce diminishes with every increase in the _necessity_ for exchange. again, when the work of exchange is performed at home, the power of combination facilitates the disposal of a vast amount of labour that would otherwise be wasted, and an infinite number of things that would otherwise have no value whatever, but which, combined with the labour that is saved, are quite sufficient to make one community rich by comparison with another in which such savings cannot be effected. virginia wastes more labour and more commodities that would have value in new england, than would pay five times over for all the cloth and iron she consumes. again, the quantity of capital required for effecting exchanges tends to diminish as commerce comes nearer home. the ship that goes to china performs no more exchanges in a year than the canal-boat that trades from city to city performs in a month; and the little and inexpensive railroad car passing from village to village may perform almost twice as many as the fine packet-ship that has cost ninety or a hundred thousand dollars. with the extension of the home trade, labour and capital become, therefore, more productive of commodities required for the support and comfort of man, and the wages of the labourer and the profits of the capitalist tend to increase, and commerce tends still further to increase. on the other hand, with the diminution of the power to effect exchanges at home, labour and capital become less productive of commodities; the wages of the labourer and the profits of the capitalist tend to decrease, and trade tends still further to diminish. all this will be found fully exemplified among ourselves on a comparison of the years - with - , while the contrary and upward tendency is exemplified by the years - and , as compared with - . the fashionable doctrine of our day is, however, that the prosperity of a nation is to be measured by the amount of its trade with people, who are distant, as manifested by custom-house returns, and not by the quantity of exchanges among persons who live near each other, and who trade without the intervention of ships, and with little need of steamboats or wagons. if the trade of a neighbourhood be closed by the failure of a furnace or a mill, and the workman be thus deprived of the power to trade off the labour of himself or his children, or the farmer deprived of the power to trade off his food, consolation is found in the increased quantity of exports--_itself, perhaps, the direct consequence of a diminished ability to consume at home_. if canal-boats cease to be built, the nation is deemed to be enriched by the substitution of ocean steamers requiring fifty times the capital for the performance of the same quantity of exchanges. if the failure of mills and furnaces causes men to be thrown out of employment, the remedy is to be found, not in the revisal of the measures that have produced these effects, but in the exportation of the men themselves to distant climes, thus producing a necessity for the permanent use of ships instead of canal-boats, with diminished power to maintain trade, and every increase of this _necessity_ is regarded as an evidence of growing wealth and power. the whole tendency of modern commercial policy is to the substitution of the distant market for the near one. england exports her people to australia that they may there grow the wool that might be grown at home more cheaply; and we export to california, by hundreds of thousands, men who enjoy themselves in hunting gold, leaving behind them untouched the real gold-mines--those of coal and iron--in which their labour would be thrice more productive. the reports of a late secretary of the treasury abound in suggestions as to the value of the distant trade. steam-ships were, he thought, needed to enable us to obtain the control of the commerce of china and japan. "with our front on both oceans and the gulf," it was thought, "we might secure this commerce, and with it, in time, command the trade of the world." england, not to be outdone in this race for "the commerce of the world," adds steadily to her fleet of ocean steamers, and the government contributes its aid for their maintenance, by the payment of enormous sums withdrawn from the people at home, and diminishing the home market to thrice the extent that it increases the foreign one. the latest accounts inform us of new arrangements about to be made with a view to competition with this country for the passenger traffic to and within the tropics, while the greatest of all trades now left to british ships is represented to be the transport of british men, women, and children, so heavily taxed at home for the maintenance of this very system that they are compelled to seek an asylum abroad. in all this there is nothing like freedom of trade, or freedom of man; as the only real difference between the freeman and the slave is, that the former exchanges himself, his labour and his products, while the latter must permit another to do it for him. mr. mcculloch regards himself as a disciple of adam smith, and so does lord john russell. we, too, are his disciple, but in _the wealth of nations_, can find no warrant for the system advocated by either. the system of dr. smith tended to the production of that natural freedom of trade, each step toward which would have been attended with improvement in the condition of the people, and increase in the _power to trade_, thus affording proof conclusive of the soundness of the doctrine; whereas every step in the direction now known as free trade is attended with deterioration of condition, and _increased necessity_ for trade, with _diminished power_ to trade. those who profess to be his followers and suppose that they are carrying out his principles, find results directly the reverse of their anticipations; and the reason for this may readily be found in the fact that the english school of political economists long since repudiated the whole of the system of dr. smith, retaining of it little more than _the mere words_ "free trade." the basis of all commerce is to be found in production, and therefore it was that dr. smith looked upon agriculture, the science of production, as the first pursuit of man, and manufactures and commerce as beneficial only to the extent that they tended to aid agriculture and increase the quantity of commodities to be converted or exchanged, preparatory to their being consumed. he held, therefore, that the return to labour would be greater in a trade in which exchanges could be made once a month than in another in which they could only be made once in a year, and he was opposed to the system then in vogue, because it had, "in all cases," turned trade, "from a foreign trade of consumption with a neighbouring, into one with a more distant country; in many cases, from a direct foreign trade of consumption, into a round-about one; and in some cases, from all foreign trade of consumption, into a carrying trade. it has in all cases, therefore," he continues, "turned it from a direction in which it would have maintained a greater quantity of productive labour, into one in which it can maintain a much smaller quantity." all this is directly the reverse of what is taught by the modern british economists; and we have thus two distinct schools, that of adam smith and that of his successors. the one taught that labour directly applied to production was most advantageous, and that by bringing the consumer to take his place by the side of the producer, production and the consequent power to trade would be increased. the other teaches, that every increase of capital or labour applied to production must be attended with diminished return, whereas ships and steam-engines may be increased _ad infinitum_ without such diminution: the necessary inference from which is, that the more widely the consumer and the producer are separated, with increased necessity for the use of ships and engines, the more advantageously labour will be applied, and the greater will be the power to trade. the two systems start from a different base, and tend in an opposite direction, and yet the modern school claims dr. smith as founder. while teaching a theory of production totally different, mr. mcculloch informs us that "the fundamental principles on which the _production_ of wealth depends" were established by dr. smith, "beyond the reach of cavil or dispute." the difference between the two schools may be thus illustrated: dr. smith regarded commerce as forming a true pyramid, thus-- exchanges abroad. exchanges at home. conversion into cloth and iron. production of food and other raw materials. this is in exact accordance with what we know to be true; but according to the modern school, commerce forms an inverted pyramid, thus-- exchanges with distant men. exchanges at home. conversion. production. the difference between these figures is great, but not greater than that between two systems, the one of which regards the earth as the great and perpetually improving machine to which the labour of man may be profitably applied, while the other gives precedence to those very minute and perpetually deteriorating portions of it which go to the construction of ships, wagons, and steam-engines. an examination of these figures will perhaps enable the reader to understand the cause of the unsteadiness observed wherever the modern system is adopted. * * * * * it will be easy now to see why it is that the commercial policy of england has always been so diametrically opposed to that advocated by the author of _the wealth of nations_. he saw clearly that the man and the easily transported spindle should go to the food and the cotton, and that, when once there, 'they were there for ever; whereas the bulky food and cotton might be transported to the man and the spindle for a thousand years, and that the necessity for transportation in the thousand and first would be as great as it had been in the first; and that the more transportation was needed, the less food and cloth would fall to the share of both producer and consumer. his countrymen denied the truth of this, and from that day to the present they have endeavoured to prevent the other nations of the world from obtaining machinery of any kind that would enable them to obtain the aid of those natural agents which they themselves regard as more useful than the earth itself. "the power of water," says mr. mcculloch-- "and of wind, which move our machinery, support our ships, and impel them over the deep--the pressure of the atmosphere, and the elasticity of steam, which enables us to work the most powerful engines, are they not the spontaneous gifts of nature? machinery is advantageous only because it gives us the means of pressing some of the powers of nature into our service, and of making them perform the principal part of what, we must otherwise have wholly performed ourselves. in navigation is it possible to doubt that the powers of nature--the buoyancy of the water, the impulse of the wind, and the polarity of the magnet--contribute fully as much as the labours of the sailor to waft our ships from one hemisphere to another? in bleaching and fermentation the whole processes are carried on by natural agents. and it is to the effects of heat in softening and melting metals, in preparing our food, and in warming our houses, that we owe many of our most powerful and convenient instruments, and that those northern climates have been made to afford a comfortable habitation."--_principles_, . this is all most true, but what does it prove in regard to british policy? has not its object been that of preventing the people of the world from availing themselves of the vast deposites, of iron ore and of fuel throughout the earth, and thus to deprive them of the power to call to their aid the pressure of the atmosphere and the elasticity of steam? has it not looked to depriving them of all power to avail themselves of the natural agents required in the processes of bleaching and fermentation, in softening woods, and melting metals, and was not that the object had in view by a distinguished statesman, since chancellor of england, when he said, that "the country could well afford the losses then resulting from the exportation of manufactured goods, as its effect would be to smother in the cradle the manufactures of other nations?" has not this been the object of every movement of great britain since the days of adam smith, and does not the following diagram represent exactly what would be the state of affairs if she could carry into full effect her desire to become "the workshop of the world?" \british ships/ producers of raw materials\ / consumers of cloth and iron europe, asia, africa > < in europe, asia, africa america / \ north and south america / and rails \ mr. mcculloch insists that agriculture is less profitable than manufactures and trade, and his countrymen insist that all the world outside of england shall be one great farm, leaving to england herself the use of all the various natural agents required in manufactures and commerce, that they may remain poor while she becomes rich. there is in all this a degree of selfishness not to be paralleled, and particularly when we reflect that it involves a necessity on the part of all other nations for abstaining from those scientific pursuits required for the development of the intellect, and which so naturally accompany the habit of association in towns, for the purpose of converting the food, the wool, the hides, and the timber of the farmer into clothing and furniture for his use. it is the policy of barbarism, and directly opposed to any advance in civilization, as will be fully seen when we examine into its working in reference to any particular trade or country. the annual average production of cotton is probably seventeen hundred millions of pounds, or less than two pounds per head for the population of the world; and certainly not one-tenth of what would be consumed could they find means to pay for it; and not one-tenth of what would be good for them; and yet it is a drug, selling in india at two and three cents per pound, and commanding here at this moment, notwithstanding the abundance of gold, but eight or nine cents, with a certainty that, should we again be favoured, as we were a few years since, with a succession of large crops, it will fall to a lower point than it ever yet has seen: a state of things that could not exist were the people of the world to consume even one-third as much as would be good for them. why do they not? why is it that india, with her hundred millions of population, and with her domestic manufacture in a state of ruin, consumes of british cottons to the extent of only sixteen cents per head--or little more, probably, than a couple of yards of cloth? to these questions an answer may perhaps be found upon an examination of the circumstances which govern the consumption of other commodities; for we may be quite certain that cotton obeys precisely the same laws as sugar and coffee, wine and wheat. such an examination would result in showing that when a commodity is at once produced at or near the place of growth in the form fitting it for use, the consumption is invariably large; and that when it has to go through many and distant hands before being consumed, it is as invariably small. the consumption of sugar on a plantation is large; but if it were needed that before being consumed it should be sent to holland to be refined, and then brought back again, we may feel well assured that there would not be one pound consumed on any given plantation where now there are twenty, or possibly fifty. the consumption of cotton on the plantation is very small indeed, because, before being consumed, 'it has to be dragged through long and muddy roads to the landing, thence carried to new orleans, thence to liverpool, and thence to manchester, after which the cloth has to be returned, the planter receiving one bale for every five he sent away, and giving the labour of cultivating an acre in exchange for fifty, sixty, or eighty pounds of its product. if, now, the people who raised the cotton were free to call to their aid the various natural agents of whose service it is the object of the british system to deprive them, and if, therefore, the work of converting it into cloth were performed on the ground where it was raised, or in its neighbourhood, is it not clear that the consumption would be largely increased? the people who made the cloth would be the consumers of numerous things raised on the plantation that are now wasted, while the facility of converting such things into cloth would be a bounty on raising them; and thus, while five times the quantity of cotton would be consumed, the real cost--that is, the labour cost--would be less than it is for the smaller quantity now used. so, too, in india. it may be regarded as doubtful if the quantity of cotton to day consumed in that country is one-half what it was half a century since--and for the reason that the number of people now interposed between the consumer and the producer is so great. the consumption of wine in france is enormous, whereas here there is scarcely any consumed; and yet the apparent excess of price is not so great as would warrant us in expecting to find so great a difference. the real cause is not so much to be found in the excess of price, though that is considerable, as in the mode of payment. a peasant in france obtains wine in exchange for much that would be wasted but for the proximity of the wine-vat, and the demand it makes for the labour of himself and others. he raises milk, eggs, and chickens, and he has fruit, cabbages, potatoes, or turnips, commodities that from their bulky or perishable nature cannot be sent to a distance, but can be exchanged at home. the farmer of ohio cannot exchange his spare labour, or that of his horses, for wine, nor can he pay for it in peaches or strawberries, of which the yield of an acre might produce him hundreds of dollars--nor in potatoes or turnips, of which he can obtain hundreds of bushels; but he must pay in wheat, of which an acre yields him a dozen bushels, one-half of which are eaten up in the process of exchange between him and the wine-grower. whenever the culture of the grape shall come to be established in that state, and wine shall be made at home, it will be found that the _gallons_ consumed will be almost as numerous as are now the _drops_. look where we may, we shall find the same result. wherever the consumer and the producer are brought into close connection with each other, the increase of consumption is wonderful, even where there is no reduction in the nominal price; and wherever they are separated, the diminution of consumption is equally wonderful, even where there is a reduction of the nominal price--and it is so because the facility of exchange diminishes as the distance increases. a man who has even a single hour's labour to spare may exchange it with his neighbour for as much cotton cloth as would make a shirt; but if the labour market is distant, he may, and will, waste daily as much time as would buy him a whole piece of cotton cloth, and may have to go shirtless while cotton is a drug. when the labour market is near, land acquires value and men become rich and free. when it is distant, land is of little value and men continue poor and enslaved. before proceeding further, it would be well for the reader to look around his own neighbourhood, and see how many exchanges are even now made that could not be made by people that were separated even ten or twenty miles from each other, and how many conveniences and comforts are enjoyed in exchange for both labour and commodities that would be wasted but for the existence of direct intercourse between the parties--and, then to satisfy himself if the same law which may be deduced from the small facts of a village neighbourhood, will not be found equally applicable to the great ones of larger communities. having reflected upon these things, let him next look at the present condition of the cotton trade, and remark the fact that scarcely any of the wool produced is consumed without first travelling thousands of miles, and passing through almost hundreds of hands. the places of production are india, egypt, brazil, the west indies, and our southern states. in the first, the manufacture is in a state of ruin. in the second, third, and fourth, it has never been permitted to have an existence; and in the last it has but recently made an effort to struggle into life, but from month to month we hear of the stoppage or destruction of southern mills, and the day is apparently now not far distant when we shall have again to say that no portion of the cotton crop can be consumed in the cotton-growing region until after it shall have travelled thousands of miles in quest of hands to convert it into cloth. why is this? why is it that the light and easily transported spindle and loom are not placed in and about the cotton fields? the planters have labour, _that is now wasted_, that would be abundant for the conversion of half their crops, if they could but bring the machinery to the land, instead of taking the produce of the land to the machinery. once brought there, it would be there for ever; whereas, let them carry the cotton to the spindle as long as they may, the work must still be repeated. again, why is it that the people of india, to whom the world was so long indebted for all its cotton goods, have not only ceased to supply distant countries, but have actually ceased to spin yarn or make cloth for themselves? why should they carry raw cotton on the backs of bullocks for hundreds of miles, and then send it by sea for thousands of miles, paying freights, commissions, and charges of all kinds to an amount so greatly exceeding the original price, to part with sixty millions of pounds of raw material, to receive in exchange eight or ten millions of pounds of cloth and yarn? is it not clear that the labour of converting the cotton into yarn is not one-quarter as great as was the labour of raising, the cotton itself? nevertheless, we here see them giving six or eight pounds of cotton for probably a single one of yarn, while labour unemployed abounds throughout india. further, brazil raises cotton, and she has spare labour, and yet she sends her cotton to look for the spindle, instead of bringing the spindle to look for the cotton, as she might so readily do. why does she so? the answer to these questions is to be found in british legislation, founded on the idea that the mode of securing to the people of england the highest prosperity is to deprive all mankind, outside of her own limits, of the power to mine coal, make iron, construct machinery, or use steam, in aid of their efforts to obtain food, clothing, or any other of the necessaries of life. this system is directly opposed to that advocated by adam smith. not only, said he, is it injurious to other nations, but it must be injurious to yourselves, for it will diminish the productiveness of both labour and capital, and will, at the same time, render you daily more and more dependent upon the operations of other countries, when you should be becoming more independent of them. his warnings were then, as they are now, unheeded; and from his day to the present, england has been engaged in an incessant effort utterly to destroy the manufactures of india, and to _crush every attempt elsewhere to establish any competition with her for the purchase of cotton_. the reader will determine for himself if this is not a true picture of the operations of the last seventy years. if it is, let him next determine if the tendency of the system is not that of enslaving the producers of cotton, white, brown, and black, and compelling them to carry all their wool to a single market, in which one set of masters dictates the price at which they _must_ sell the raw material and _must_ buy the manufactured one. could there be a greater tyranny than this? to fully understand the working of the system in diminishing the power to consume, let us apply elsewhere the same principle, placing in rochester, on the falls of the genesee, a set of corn-millers who had contrived so effectually to crush all attempts to establish mills in other parts of the middle states, that no man could eat bread that had not travelled up to that place in its most bulky form, coming back in its most compact one, leaving at the mill all the refuse that might have been applied to the fattening of hogs and cattle--and let us suppose that the diagram on the following page represented the corn trade of that portion of the union. \ wagons and / producers of food \ / consumers of food in those states > < in those states / \ /rochester mills\ now, suppose all the grain of half a dozen states had to make its way through such a narrow passage as is above indicated, is it not clear that the owners of roads, wagons, and mills would be masters of the owners of land? is it not clear that the larger the crops the higher would be freights, and the larger the charge for the use of mills, the smaller would be the price of a bushel of wheat as compared with that of a bag of meal? would not the farmers find themselves to be mere slaves to the owners of a small quantity of mill machinery? that such would be the case, no one can even for a moment doubt--nor is it at all susceptible of doubt that the establishment of such a system would diminish by one-half the consumption of food, throughout those states, and also the power to produce it, for all the refuse would be fed at and near rochester, and the manure yielded by it would be totally lost to the farmer who raised the food. the value of both labour and land would thus be greatly diminished. admitting, for a moment, that such a system existed, what would be the remedy? would it not be found in an effort to break down the monopoly, and thus to establish among the people the power to trade among themselves without paying, toll to the millers of rochester? assuredly it would; and to that end they would be seen uniting among themselves to induce millers to come and settle among them, precisely as we see men every where uniting to bring schools and colleges to their neighbourhood, well assured that a small present outlay is soon made up, even in a pecuniary point of view, in being enabled to keep their children at home while being educated, instead of sending them abroad, there to be boarded and lodged, while food is wasted at home that they might eat, and chambers are empty that they might occupy. education thus obtained costs a parent almost literally nothing, while that for which a child must go to a distance is so costly that few can obtain it. precisely so is it with food and with cloth. the mere labour of converting grain into flour is as nothing when compared with that required for its transportation hundreds of miles; and the mere labour required for the conversion of cotton into cloth is as nothing compared with the charges attendant upon its transportation from the plantation to manchester and back again. commercial centralization looks, however, to compelling the planter to pay treble the cost of conversion, in the wages and profits of the people employed in transporting and exchanging the cotton. admitting that the grain and flour trade were thus centralized, what would be the effect of a succession of large crops, or even of a single one? would not the roads be covered with wagons whenever they were passable, and even at times when, they were almost impassable? would not every one be anxious to anticipate the apprehended fall of prices by being early in the market? would not freights be high? would not the farmer, on his arrival in rochester, find that every store-house was filled to overflowing? would not storage be high? would he not approach the miller, cap in hand, and would not the latter receive him with his hat on his head? assuredly such would be the case, and he would hear everywhere of the astonishing extent of "the surplus"--of how rapidly production was exceeding consumption--of the length of time his grain must remain on hand before it could be ground--of the low price of flour, &c. &c.;--and the result would be that the more grain carried to market the less would be carried back, and _the less he would be able to consume_; and at last he would arrive at the conclusion that the only effect of large crops granted him by the bounty of heaven was that of enriching the miller at his expense, by compelling him to allow more toll for the privilege of creeping through the hole provided for him by the miller. he would pray for droughts and freshets--for storms and frosts--as the only means of escape from ruin. the reader may determine for himself if this is not a fair picture of the cotton trade? do the planters profit by good crops? assuredly not. the more they send to market the less they receive for it. do they profit by improvements in the transportation of their commodity? certainly not. with the growth of railroads, cotton has fallen in price, and will not this day command on the plantation near as much, per pound, as it did before the railroad was invented. in india, the cost of transportation from the place of production to england has fallen in the last forty years sevenpence,[ ] and yet the grower of cotton obtains for it one-third less than he did before--receiving now little more than two cents, when before he had from three to four. who profits by the reduction of cost of transportation and conversion? _the man who keeps the toll-gate through which it passes to the world_, and who opens it only gradually, so as to permit the increased quantity to pass through slowly, paying largely for the privilege. that all this is perfectly in accordance with the facts of the ease must be obvious to every reader. the planter becomes rich when crops are short, but then the mill-owner makes but little profit. he is almost ruined when crops are large, but then it is that the mill-owner is enriched--and thus it is that the system produces universal discord, whereas under a natural system there would be as perfect harmony of national, as there is of individual interests. we may now inquire how this would affect the farmers around rochester. the consumption of the middle states would be largely diminished because of the heavy expense of transporting the wheat to mill and the flour back again, and this would cause a great increase of the surplus for which a market must be elsewhere found. this, of course, would reduce prices, and prevent increase, if it did not produce large diminution in the value of land. the millers would become _millionaires_--great men among their poorer neighbours--and they would purchase large farms to be managed by great farmers, and fine houses surrounded by large pleasure-grounds. land would become everywhere more and more consolidated, because people who could do so would fly from a country in which such a tyranny existed. the demand for labour would diminish as the smaller properties became absorbed. rochester itself would grow, because it would be filled with cheap labour from the country, seeking employment, and because there would be great numbers of wagoners and their horses to be cared for, while porters innumerable would be engaged in carrying wheat in one direction and flour in another. hotels would grow large, thieves and prostitutes would abound, and morals would decline. from year to year the millers would become greater men, and the farmers and labourers smaller men, and step by step all would find themselves becoming slaves to the caprices of the owners of a little machinery, the whole cost of which would scarcely exceed _the daily loss_ resulting from the existence of the system. by degrees, the vices of the slave would become more and more apparent. intemperance would grow, and education would diminish, as the people of the surrounding country became more dependent on the millers for food and clothing in exchange for cheap grain and cheaper labour. the smaller towns would everywhere decline, and from day to day the millers would find it more easy so to direct the affairs of the community as to secure a continuance of their monopoly. local newspapers would pass away, and in their stead the people throughout the country would be supplied with the rochester _times_, which would assure the farmers that cheap food tended to produce cheaper labour, and the land-owners that if they did not obtain high rents it was their own fault, the defect being in their own bad cultivation--and the more rapid the augmentation of the millers' fortunes, and of the extent of their pleasure-grounds, the greater, they would be assured, must be the prosperity of the whole people; even although the same paper might find itself obliged to inform its readers that the overgrown capital presented it as "a strange result of the terrible statistics of society, that there was upon an average one person out of twenty of the inhabitants of the luxurious metropolis every day destitute of food and employment, and every night without a place for shelter or repose?"--london _times_. we have here slavery at home as a consequence of the determination, to subject to slavery people abroad. with each step in the growth of the millers' fortunes, and of the splendour of their residences, land would have become consolidated and production would have diminished, and the whole population would have tended more and more to become a mass of mere traders, producing nothing themselves, but buying cheaply and selling dearly, and thus deriving their support from the exercise of the power to tax the unfortunate people forced to trade with them; a state of things in the highest degree adverse to moral, intellectual, or political improvement. the reader may now turn to the extracts from mr. mcculloch's works already given, (page _ante_,) and compare with them this view of the effects of supposed commercial centralization on this side of the atlantic. doing so, he will find it there stated that it is to the consolidation of the land, and to the luxury of the style of living of the great landlords, surrounded, as they, "in most cases" are, by "poor and needy dependants," whose necessities finally compel them to seek in large cities a market for their own labour, and that of their wives and children, that we are to look for an augmentation of "the mass of wealth and the scale of enjoyment!" modern british political economy holds no single idea that is in harmony with the real doctrines of adam smith, and yet it claims him as its head! * * * * * the reader is requested now to remark-- i. that the system of commercial centralization sought to be established by great britain is precisely similar to the one here ascribed to the millers of rochester, with the difference only, that it has for its object to compel all descriptions of raw produce to pass through england on its way from the consumer and the producer, even when the latter are near neighbours to each other, and england distant many thousand of miles from both. ii. that to carry out that system it was required that all other nations should be prevented from obtaining either the knowledge or the machinery required for enabling them cheaply to mine coal, smelt iron ore, or manufacture machines by aid of which they could command the services of the great natural agents whose value to man is so well described by mr. mcculloch. (see page _ante_.) iii. that this was at first accomplished by means of prohibitions, and that it is now maintained by the most strenuous efforts for cheapening labour, and thus depriving the labourer at home of the power to determine for whom he will work or what shall be his wages. iv. that the more perfectly this system can be carried out, the more entirely must all other nations limit themselves, men, women and children, to the labour of the field, and the lower must be the standard of intellect. v. that while the number of agriculturists in other countries must thus be increased, the power to consume their own products must be diminished, because of the great increase of the charges between the producer and the consumer. vi. that this, in turn, must be attended with an increase in the quantity of food and other raw materials thrown on the market of britain, with great increase in the competition between the foreign and domestic producers for the possession of that market, and great diminution of prices. vii. that this tends necessarily to "discourage agriculture" in britain, and to prevent the application of labour to the improvement of the land. viii. that it likewise tends to the deterioration of the condition of the foreign agriculturist, who is thus deprived of the power to improve his land, or to increase the quantity of his products. ix. that the smaller the quantity of commodities produced, the less must be the power to pay for labour, and the less the competition for the purchase of the labourer's services. x. that with the decline in the demand for labour, the less must be the power of consumption on the part of the labourer, the greater must be the tendency to a glut of foreign and domestic produce, in the general market of the world, and the greater the tendency to a further diminution of the labourer's reward. xi. that, the greater the quantity of raw produce seeking to pass through the market of england, the greater must be the tendency to a decline in the value of english land, and the larger the charges of the owners of the mills, ships, and shops, through which the produce must pass, and the greater their power of accumulation, at the cost of both labour and land. xii. that the less the labour applied to the improvement of the soil, the more must the population of the country be driven from off the land, the greater must be the tendency of the latter toward consolidation, and the greater the tendency toward absenteeism and the substitution of great farmers and day-labourers for small proprietors, with further decline in production and in the demand for labour. xiii. that with the reduction of the country population, local places of exchange must pass away; and that labour and land must decline in power as ships, mills, and their owners become more united and more powerful. xiv. that the tendency of the whole system is, therefore, toward diminishing the value and the power of land, and toward rendering the labourer a mere slave to the trading community, which obtains from day to day more and more the power to impose taxes at its pleasure, and to centralize in its own hands the direction of the affairs of the nation; to the destruction of local self-government, and to the deterioration of the physical, moral, intellectual, and political condition of the people. in accordance with these views, an examination of the productive power of the united kingdom should result in showing that production has not kept pace with population; and that such had been the ease we should be disposed to infer from the increasing demand for cheap labour, and from the decline that has unquestionably taken place in the control of the labourer over his own operations. that the facts are in accordance with this inference the reader may perhaps be disposed to admit after having examined carefully the following figures. in , now thirty-eight years since, the declared value of the exports of the united kingdom, of british produce and manufacture, was as follows:-- of woollen manufactures............... £ , , " cotton " ............... , , " silk " ............... , " linen " ............... , , and of other commodities.............. , , ---------- total................................. , , in the same year there were imported of wool.................................. , , lbs. cotton................................ , , " silk.................................. , , " flax.................................. , , " grain................................. , qrs. flour................................. , cwts. butter................................ , " cheese................................ , " if to the raw cotton, wool, silk, and flax that were re-exported in a manufactured state, and to the dyeing materials and other articles required for their manufacture, we now add the whole foreign food, as above shown, we can scarcely make, of foreign commodities re-exported, an amount exceeding twelve, or at most thirteen millions, leaving thirty-eight millions as the value of the british produce exported in that year; and this divided among the people of the united kingdom would give nearly £ per head. in the exports, were as follows:-- manufactures of wool.................... £ , , " cotton.................. , , " silk.................... , , " flax.................... , , all other commodities................... , , ----------- total................................... £ , , we see thus that nearly the whole increase that had taken place in the long period of thirty-six years was to be found in four branches of manufacture, the materials of which were wholly drawn from abroad, as is shown in the following statement of imports for that year:-- wool.................................... , , lbs. cotton.................................. , , " silk.................................... , , " flax.................................... , , " eggs.................................... , , " oxen, cows, calves, sheep, hogs, &c..... , " corn.................................... , , qrs. flour................................... , , cwts. potatoes................................ , " provisions.............................. , " butter.................................. , " cheese.................................. , " hams and lard........................... , " the wool imported was more than was required to produce the cloth exported, and from this it follows that the whole export represented foreign wool. the cotton, silk, flax, dyeing-materials, &c. exported were all foreign, and the food imported was adequate, or nearly so, to feed the people who produced the goods exported. such being the case, it would follow that the total exports of british and irish produce could scarcely have amounted to even £ , , , and it certainly could not have exceeded that sum--and that would give about s. per head, or one-fourth as much as in . the difference between the two periods is precisely the same as that between the farmer and the shoemaker. the man who, by the labour of himself and sons, is enabled to send to market the equivalent of a thousand bushels of wheat, has first _fed himself and them_, and therefore he has _the whole proceeds_ of his sales to apply to the purchase of clothing, furniture, or books, or to add to his capital. his neighbour buys food and leather, and sells shoes. he _has been fed_, and the first appropriation to be made of the proceeds of his sales is to buy more food and leather; and all he has to apply to other purposes is _the difference_ between the price at which he buys and that at which he sells. admitting that difference to be one-sixth, it would follow that his sales must be six times as large to enable him to have the same value to be applied to the purchase of other commodities than food, or to the increase of his capital. another neighbour buys and sells wheat, or shoes, at a commission of five per cent., out of which he has _to be fed_. to enable him to have an amount of gross commissions equal to the farmer's sales, he must do twenty times as much business; and if, we allow one-half of it for the purchase of food, he must do forty times as much to enable him to have the same amount with which to purchase other commodities, or to increase his capital. precisely so is it with a nation. when it sells its own food and leather, _it has fed itself_, and may dispose as it will of the whole amount of sales. when it buys food and leather, and sells shoes, _it has been fed_, and must first pay the producers of those commodities; and all that it can appropriate to the purchase of clothing or furniture, or to the increase, of its capital, is the _difference_; and, to enable it to have the same amount to be so applied, it must sell six times as much in value. when it acts as a mere buyer and seller of sugar, cotton, cloth, or shoes, it has _to be fed_ out of the differences, and then it may require forty times the amount of sales to yield the same result. these things being understood, we may now compare the two years above referred to. in the first, , the sales of domestic produce amounted to.................... £ , , and if to this we add the difference on £ , , ..................................... , , ----------- we obtain the amount, applicable to the purchase of other commodities than food................. £ , , in the second, , the sales of domestic produce were ........................................... £ , , to which add differences on £ , , , say.... , , ---------- we have, as applicable to other purposes than the purchase of food............................... £ , , divided among the population, of those years, it gives £ per head in the first, and s. in the other; but even this, great as it is, does not represent in its full extent the decline that has taken place. the smaller the change of form made in the commodity imported before exporting it, the more nearly does the business resemble that of the mere trader, and the larger must be the quantity of merchandise passing, to leave behind the same result. in , the export of yarn of any kind was trivial, because other countries were then unprovided with looms. in the export of mere yarn, upon which the expenditure of british labour had been only that of twisting it, was as follows:-- cotton.................................. , , lbs. linen................................... , , " silk.................................... , " woollen................................. , , " the reader will readily perceive that in all these cases the foreign raw material bears a much larger proportion to the value than would have been the case had the exports taken place in the form of cloth. an examination of these facts can scarcely fail to satisfy him how deceptive are any calculations based upon statements of the amount of exports and imports; and yet it is to them we are always referred for evidence of the growing prosperity of england. with every year there must be an increasing tendency in the same direction, as the manufacturers of india are more and more compelled to depend on england for yarn, and as the nations of europe become more and more enabled to shut out cloth and limit their imports to yarn. from producer, england has become, or is rapidly becoming, a mere trader, and trade has not grown to such an extent as was required to make amends for the change. she is therefore in the position of the man who has substituted _a trade_ of a thousand dollars a year for _a production_ of five hundred. in , the people of the united kingdom had to divide among themselves, then twenty millions in number, almost forty millions, the value of their surplus products exported to all parts of the earth. in , being nearly thirty millions in number, they had to divide only fifteen millions, whereas had production been maintained, it should have reached sixty millions, or almost the total amount of exports. in place of this vast amount of _products_ for sale, they had only the _differences_ upon an excess trade of £ , , , and this can scarcely be estimated at more than eight or ten, toward making up a deficit of forty-five millions. such being the facts, it will not now be difficult for the reader to understand why it is that there is a decline in the material and moral condition of the people. how this state of things has been brought about is shown by the steady diminution in the proportion of the population engaged in the work of production. adam smith cautioned his countrymen that "if the whole surplus produce of america in grain of all sorts, salt provisions, and fish," were "forced into the market of great britain," it would "interfere too much with the prosperity of our own people." he thought it would be a "great discouragement to agriculture." and yet, from that hour to the present, no effort has been spared to increase in all the nations of the world the surplus of raw produce, to be poured into the british market, and thus to produce competition between the producers abroad and the producers at home, to the manifest injury of both. the more the linen manufacture, or those of wool, hemp, or iron, could be discouraged abroad, the greater was the quantity of raw products to be sent to london and liverpool, and the less the inducement for applying labour to the improvement of english land. for a time, this operation, so far as regarded food, was restrained by the corn-laws; but now the whole system is precisely that which was reprobated by the most profound political economist that britain has ever produced. its consequences are seen in the following figures:--in , the proportion of the population of england engaged in agriculture was per cent. in it had fallen to per cent., and now it can scarcely exceed per cent., and even in the actual number was less than it had been thirty years before.[ ] thus driven out from the land, englishmen had to seek other employment, while the same system was annually driving to england tens of thousands of the poor people of scotland and ireland; and thus forced competition for the sale in england of the raw products of the earth produced competition there for the sale of labour; the result of which is seen in the fact that agricultural wages have been from s. to s. a week, and the labourer has become from year to year more a slave to the caprices of his employer, whether the great farmer or the wealthy owner of mills or furnaces. the total population of the _united kingdom_ dependent upon agriculture cannot be taken at more than ten millions; and as agricultural wages cannot be estimated at a higher average than s. per week, there cannot be, including the earnings of women, more than s. per family; and if that be divided among four, it gives s. d. per head, or £ s. per annum, and a total amount, to be divided among ten millions of people, of millions of pounds, or millions of dollars. in reflecting upon this, the reader is requested to bear in mind that it provides wages for every week in the year, whereas throughout a considerable portion of the united kingdom very much of the time is unoccupied. cheap labour has, in every country, gone hand in hand with cheap land. such having been the case, it may not now be difficult to account for the small value of land when compared with the vast advantages it possesses in being everywhere close to a market in which to exchange its raw products for manufactured ones, and also for manure. the reader has seen the estimate of _m. thunen_, one of the best agriculturists of germany, of the vast difference in the value of land in mecklenburgh close to market, as compared with that distant from it; but he can everywhere see for himself that that which is close to a city will command thrice as much rent as that distant twenty miles, and ten times as much as that which is five hundred miles distant. now, almost the whole land of the united kingdom is in the condition of the best of that here described. the distances are everywhere small, and the roads are, or ought to be, good; and yet the total rental of land, mines, and minerals, is but £ , , , and this for an area of millions of acres, giving an average of only about $ . per acre, or $ --less than £ ,--per head of the population. this is very small indeed, and it tends to show to how great an extent the system must have discouraged agriculture. in , with a population of only twenty millions, the rental amounted, exclusive of houses, mines, minerals, fisheries, &c., to fifty-two and a half millions, and the exports of the produce of british and irish land were then almost three times as great as they are now, with a population almost one-half greater than it was then. the very small value of the land of the united kingdom, when compared with its advantages, can be properly appreciated by the reader only after an examination of the course of things elsewhere. the price of food raised in this country is dependent, almost entirely, on what can be obtained for the very small quantity sent to england. "mark lane," as it is said, "governs the world's prices." it does govern them in new york and philadelphia, where prices must be as much below those of london or liverpool as the cost of transportation, insurance, and commissions, or there could be no export. their prices, in turn, govern those of ohio and pennsylvania, indiana and illinois, which must always be as much below those of new york as the cost of getting the produce there. if, now, we examine into the mere cost of transporting the average produce of an acre of land from the farm to the market of england, we shall find that it would be far more than the average rental of english land; and yet that rental includes coal, copper, iron, and tin mines that supply a large portion of the world. under such circumstances, land in this country should be of very small value, if even of any; and yet the following facts tend to show that the people of massachusetts, with a population of only , , scattered over a surface of five millions of acres, with a soil so poor that but , , are improved, and possessed of no mines of coal, iron, tin, lead, or copper, have, in the short period they have occupied it, acquired rights in land equal, per acre, to those acquired by the people of england in their fertile soils, with their rich mines, in two thousand years. the cash value of the farms of that state in was $ , , , which, _divided over the whole surface_, would give $ per acre, and this, at six per cent., would yield $ . . add to this the difference between wages of four, six, and eight shillings per week in the united kingdom, and twenty or twenty-five dollars per month in massachusetts, and it will be found that the return in the latter is quite equal to that in the former; and yet the price of agricultural produce generally, is as much below that of england as the cost of freight and commission, which alone are greater than the whole rent of english land. new york has thirty millions of acres, of which only twelve millions have been in any manner improved; and those she has been steadily exhausting, because of the absence of a market on or near the land, such as is possessed by england. she has neither coal nor other mines of any importance, and her factories are few in number; and yet the cash value of farms, as returned by the marshal, was millions of dollars, and that was certainly less than the real value. if we take the latter at millions, it will gives $ per acre for the improved land, or an average of $ for all. taking the rent at six per cent. on $ , we obtain $ per acre, or nearly the average of the united kingdom; and it would be quite reasonable to make the mines and minerals of the latter a set-off against the land that is unimproved. if the reader desire to understand the cause of the small value, of english land when compared with its vast advantages, he may find it in the following passage:-- "land-owners possess extensive territories which owe little or nothing to the hand of the improver; where undeveloped sources of production lie wasting and useless in the midst of the most certain and tempting markets of the vast consuming population of this country."--_economist_, london. unfortunately, however, those markets are small, while the tendency of the whole british system is toward converting the entire earth into one vast farm for their supply, and thus preventing the application of labour to the improvement of land at home. the tendency of prices, whether of land, labour, or their products, is toward a level, and whatever tends to lessen the price of any of those commodities in ireland, india, virginia, or carolina, tends to produce the same effect in england; and we have seen that such is the direct tendency of english policy with regard to the land of all those countries. with decline in value, there must ever be a tendency to consolidation, and thus the policy advocated by the _economist_ produces the evil of which it so much and so frequently complains. the profits of farmers are generally estimated at half the rental, which would give for a total of rents and profits about millions; and if to this be added the wages of agricultural labour, we obtain but about millions, of which less than one-third goes to the labourer.[ ] we have here the necessary result of consolidation of land--itself the result of an attempt to compel the whole people of the world to compete with each other in a single and limited market for the sale of raw produce. with every increase of this competition, the small proprietor has found himself less and less able to pay the taxes to which he was subjected, and has finally been obliged to pass into the condition of a day-labourer, to compete with the almost starving irishman, or the poor native of scotland, driven into england in search of employment; and hence have resulted the extraordinary facts that in many parts of that country, enjoying, as it does, every advantage except a sound system of trade, men gladly labour for six shillings ($ . ) a week; that women labour in the fields; and that thousands of the latter, destitute of a change of under-clothing, are compelled to go to bed while their chemises are being washed.[ ] driven from the land by the cheap food and cheap labour of ireland, the english labourer has to seek the town, and there he finds himself at the mercy of the great manufacturer; and thus, between the tenant-farmer on the one hand, and the large capitalist on the other, he is ground as between the upper and the nether millstone. the result is seen in the facts heretofore given. he loses gradually all self-respect, and he, his wife, and his children become vagrants, and fall on the public for support. of the wandering life of great numbers of these poor people some idea may be formed from the following statement of mr. mayhew[ ] :-- "i happened to be in the country a little time back, and it astonished me to find, in a town with a population of , , that no less than , vagabonds passed through the town in thirteen weeks. we have large classes known in the metropolis as the people of the streets." it will, however, be said that if cheap corn tend to drive him from employment, he has a compensation in cheaper sugar, cotton, coffee, rum, and other foreign commodities--and such is undoubtedly the case; but he enjoys these things at the cost of his fellow labourers, black, white, and brown, in this country, the west indies, india, and elsewhere. the destruction of manufactures in this country in and drove the whole population to the raising of food, tobacco, and cotton; and a similar operation in india drove the people of that country to the raising of rice, indigo, sugar, and cotton, that _must_ go to the market of england, because of the diminution in the domestic markets for labour or its products. the diminished domestic consumption of india forces her cotton into the one great market, there to compete with that of other countries, and to reduce their prices. it forces the hindoo to the mauritius, to aid in destroying the poor negroes of jamaica, cuba, and brazil; but the more the sugar and cotton that _must_ go to the distant market, the higher will be the freights, the lower will be the prices, the larger will be the british revenue, the greater will be the consumption, and the greater will be the "prosperity" of england, but the more enslaved will be the producers of those commodities. competition for their sale tends to produce low prices, and the more the people of the world, men, women, and children, can be limited to agriculture, the greater must be the necessity for dependence on england for cloth and iron, the higher will be their prices, and the more wretched will be the poor labourer everywhere. the reader may perhaps understand the working of the system after an examination of the following comparative prices of commodities:-- . . ----- ----- england sells-- bar iron, per ton.... £ s. d. ..... £ s. d. tin, per cwt......... ..... copper " ......... ..... lead " ......... ..... england buys-- cotton, per lb....... ..... sugar, per cwt....... ..... while these principal articles of raw produce have fallen to one-third of the prices of , iron, copper, tin, and lead, the commodities that she supplies to the world, have not fallen more than twenty-five per cent. it is more difficult to exhibit the changes of woven goods, but that the planters are constantly giving more cotton for less cloth will be seen on an examination of the following facts in relation to a recent large-crop year, as compared with the course of things but a dozen years before. from to , the price of cotton here was about eleven cents, which we may suppose to be about what it would yield in england, free of freight and charges. in those years our average export was about , , , yielding about $ , , , and the average price of cotton cloth, per piece of yards, weighing lbs. oz., was s. d., ($ . ,) and that of iron £ s. ($ . .) our exports would therefore have produced, delivered in liverpool, , , pieces of cloth, or about , , tons of iron. in and , the _home consumption_ of cotton by the people of england was almost the same quantity, say , , pounds, and the average price here was - / cents, making the product $ , , . the price of cloth then was s. - / d., ($ . / ,) and that of iron about £ , ($ ;) and the result was, that the planters could have, for nearly the same quantity of cotton, about , , pieces of cloth, or about , tons of iron, also delivered in liverpool. dividing the return between the two commodities, it stands thus:-- average from: to . - . loss. ------------- ------------- ------- ----- cloth, pieces.... , , ... , , ... , , and iron, tons... , ... , ... , the labour required for converting cotton into cloth had been greatly diminished, and yet the proportion, retained by the manufacturers had greatly increased, as will now be shown:-- weight of cotton retained weight of given to the by the cotton used. planters. manufacturers. ------------ ---------------- -------------- to ... , , ... , , ... , , and .. , , ... , , .... , , in the first period, the planter would have had per cent. of his cotton returned to him in the form of cloth, but in the second only per cent. the grist miller gives the farmer from year to year a larger proportion of the product of his grain, and thus the latter has all the profit of every improvement. the cotton miller gives the planter from year to year a smaller proportion of the cloth produced. the one miller comes daily nearer to the producer. the other goes daily farther from him, for with the increased product the surface over which it is raised is increased. how this operates on a large scale will now be seen on an examination of the following facts:-- the declared or actual _value_ of exports of british produce in manufactures in was.. £ , , and the _quantity_ of foreign merchandise retained for consumption in that year was....... £ , , [ ] this shows, of course, that the prices of the raw products of the earth were then high by comparison with those of the articles that great britain had to sell. in , the _value_ of british exports was..... £ , , and the _quantity_ of foreign merchandise retained for consumption was no less than....... £ , , we see thus that while the value of exports had increased only _one-fourth_, the produce received in exchange was _almost five times greater_; and here it is that we find the effect of that _unlimited_ competition for the sale in england of the raw products of the world, and _limited_ competition for the purchase of the manufactured ones, which it is the object of the system to establish. the nation is rapidly passing from the strong and independent position of one that produces commodities for sale, into the weak and dependent one of the mere trader who depends for his living upon the differences between the prices at which he sells and those at which he buys--that is, upon his power to tax the producers and consumers of the earth. it is the most extraordinary and most universal system of taxation ever devised, and it is carried out at the cost of weakening and enfeebling the people of all the purely agricultural countries. the more completely all the world, outside of england, can be rendered one great farm, in which men, women, and children, the strong and the weak, the young and the aged, can be reduced to field labour as the only means of support, the larger will be the sum of those _differences_ upon which the english people are now to so great an extent maintained, but the more rapid will be the tendency everywhere toward barbarism and slavery. the more, on the other hand, that the artisan can be brought to the side of the farmer, the smaller must be the sum of these _differences_, or taxes, and the greater will everywhere be the tendency toward civilization and freedom; but the greater will be that english distress which is seen always to exist when the producers of the world obtain much cloth and iron in exchange for their sugar and their cotton. the english system is therefore a war for the perpetuation and extension of slavery. on a recent occasion the chancellor of the exchequer congratulated the house of commons on the flourishing state of the revenue, notwithstanding, that, they had "in ten years repealed or reduced the duties on coffee, timber, currants, wool, sugar, molasses, cotton wool, butter, cheese, silk manufactures, tallow, spirits, copper ore, oil and sperm, and an amazing number of other articles, which produced a small amount of revenue, with respect to which it is not material, and would be almost preposterous, that i should trouble the house in detail. it is sufficient for me to observe this remarkable fact, that the reduction of your customs duties from has been systematically continuous; that in you struck off nearly £ , , of revenue calculated from the customs duties; that in you struck off £ , ; in , £ , ; in , upwards of £ , , ; in , upwards of £ , , ; in , upwards of £ , ; in , upwards of £ , ; in , upwards of £ , ; in , upwards of £ , ; and in , upwards of £ , --making an aggregate, in those ten years, of nearly £ , , sterling." the reason of all this is, that the cultivator abroad is steadily giving more raw produce for less cloth and iron. the more exclusively the people of india can be forced to devote themselves to the raising of cotton and sugar, the cheaper they will be, and the larger will be the british revenue. the more the price of corn can be diminished, the greater will be the flight to texas, and the cheaper will be cotton, but the larger will be the slave trade of america, india, and ireland; and thus it is that the prosperity of the owners of mills and furnaces in england is always greatest when the people of the world are becoming most enslaved. it may be asked, however, if this diminution of the prices of foreign produce is not beneficial to the people of england. it is not, because it tends to reduce the general price of labour, the commodity they have to sell. cheap irish labour greatly diminishes the value of that of england, and cheap irish grain greatly diminishes the demand for labour in england, while increasing the supply by forcing the irish people to cross the channel. the land and labour of the world have one common interest, and that is to give as little as possible to those who perform the exchanges, and to those who superintend them--the traders and the government. the latter have everywhere one common interest, and that is to take as much as possible from the producers and give as little as possible to the consumers, buying cheaply and selling dearly. like fire and water, they are excellent servants, but very bad masters. the nearer the artisan comes to the producer of the food and the wool, the less is the power of the middleman to impose taxes, and the greater the power of the farmer to protect himself. the tendency of the british system, wherever found, is to impoverish the land-owner and the labourer, and to render both from year to year more tributary to the owners of an amount of machinery so small that its whole value would be paid by the weekly--if not even by the daily--loss inflicted upon the working population of the world by the system.[ ] the more the owners of that machinery become enriched, the more must the labourer everywhere become enslaved. that such must necessarily be the case will be obvious to any reader who will reflect how adverse is the system to the development of intellect. where all are farmers, there can be little association for the purpose of maintaining schools, or for the exchange of ideas of any kind. employment being limited to the labours of the field, the women cannot attend to the care of their children, who grow up, necessarily, rude and barbarous; and such we see now to be the case in the west indies, whence schools are rapidly disappearing. in portugal and turkey there is scarcely any provision for instruction, and in india there has been a decline in that respect, the extent of which is almost exactly measured by the age of the foreign occupation.[ ] in the punjab, the country last acquired, men read and write, but in bengal and madras they are entirely uneducated. ireland had, seventy years since, a public press of great efficiency, but it has almost entirely disappeared, as has the demand for books, which before the union was so great as to warrant the republication of a large portion of those that appeared in england. scotland, too, seventy years since, gave to the empire many of its best writers, but she, like ireland, has greatly declined. how bad is the provision for education throughout england, and how low is the standard of intellect among a large portion of her manufacturing population, the reader has seen, and he can estimate for himself how much there can be of the reading of books, or newspapers among an agricultural population hired _by the day_ at the rate of six, eight, or even nine shillings a week--and it will, therefore not surprise him to learn that there is no daily newspaper published out of london. it _is_, however, somewhat extraordinary that in that city, there should be, as has recently been stated, but a single one that is not "published at a loss." that one circulates , copies, or more than twice the number of all the other daily papers united. this is a most unfavourable sign, for centralization and progress have never gone hand in hand with each other. the system, too, is repulsive in its character. it tends to the production of discord among individuals and nations, and hence it is that we see the numerous strikes and combinations of workmen, elsewhere so little known. abroad it is productive of war, as is now seen in india, and as was so recently the case in china. in ireland it is expelling the whole population, and in scotland it has depopulated provinces. the vast emigration now going on, and which has reached the enormous extent of , in a single year, bears testimony to the fact that the repulsive power has entirely overcome the attractive one, and that the love of home, kindred, and friends is rapidly diminishing. how, indeed, could it be otherwise, in a country in which labour has been so far cheapened that the leading journal assures its readers that during a whole generation "man has been a drug, and population a nuisance?" the fact that such a declaration should be made, and that that and other influential journals should rejoice in the expulsion of a whole nation, is evidence how far an unsound system can go toward steeling the heart against the miseries of our fellow-creatures. these poor people do not emigrate voluntarily. they are forced to leave their homes, precisely as is the case with the negro slave of virginia; but they have not, as has the slave, any certainty of being fed and clothed at the end of the journey. nevertheless, throughout england there is an almost universal expression of satisfaction at the idea that the land is being rid of what is held to be its superabundant population; and one highly respectable journal,[ ] after showing that at the same rate ireland would be entirely emptied in twenty-four years, actually assures its readers that it views the process "without either alarm or regret," and that it has no fear of the process being "carried too far or continued too long." we see thus, on one hand, the people of england engaged in _shutting_ in the poor people of africa, lest they should be forced to cuba; and, on the other, rejoicing at evictions, as the best means of _driving out_ the poor people of ireland. in all this there is a total absence of consistency; but so far as the irish people are concerned, it is but a natural consequence of that "unsound social philosophy," based upon the ricardo-malthusian doctrine, which after having annihilated the small land-owner and the small trader, denies that the creator meant that every man should find a place at his table, and sees no more reason why a poor labourer should have any more right to be fed, if willing to work, than the manchester cotton-spinner should have to find a purchaser for his cloth. "labour," we are told, is "a commodity," and if men _will_ marry and bring up children "to an overstocked and expiring trade," it is for them to take the consequences--and "_if we stand between the error and its consequences, we stand between the evil and its cure_--if we intercept the penalty (where it does not amount to positive death) we perpetuate the sin."[ ] such being the state of opinion in regard to the claims of labour, we need scarcely be surprised to find a similar state of things in regard to the rights of property. the act of emancipation was a great interference with those rights. however proper it might have been deemed to free the negroes, it was not right to cause the heaviest portion of the loss to be borne by the few and weak planters. if justice required the act, all should have borne their equal share of the burden. so again in regard to ireland, where special laws have been passed to enable the mortgagees to sell a large portion of the land, rendered valueless by a system that had for long years prevented the irishman from employing himself except in the work of cultivation. india appears likely now to come in for its share of similar legislation. centralization has not there, we are told, been carried far enough. private rights in land, trivial even as they now are,[ ] must be annihilated. none, we are told, can be permitted "to stand between the cultivator and the government," even if the collection of the taxes "should render necessary so large an army of _employé_ as to threaten the absorption of the lion's share" of them.[ ] in regard to the rights to land in england itself, one of her most distinguished writers says that "when the 'sacredness of property' is talked of, it should always be remembered that this sacredness does not belong in the same degree to landed property. no man made the land. * * * the claim of the land-owners to the land is altogether subordinate to the general policy of the state. * * * subject to this proviso (that of compensation) the state is at liberty to deal with landed property as the general interests of the community may require, even to the extent, if it so happen, of doing with the whole what is done with a part whenever a bill is passed for a railroad or a street."--_j. s. mill, principles_, book ii. chap. ii. in regard to the disposal of property at the death of its owner, the same author is of opinion that "a certain moderate provision, such as is admitted to be reasonable in the case of illegitimate children, and of younger children" is all "that parents owe to their children, and all, therefore, which the state owes to the children of those who die intestate." the surplus, if any, he holds "it may rightfully appropriate to the general purposes of the community."--_ibid_. extremes generally meet. from the days of adam smith to the present time the policy of england has looked in the direction that led necessarily to the impoverishment of the small land-owner, and to the consolidation of land, and during the whole of that period we have been told of the superior advantages of large farms and great tenant-farmers; but now, when the injurious effects of the system are becoming from day to day more obvious, the question of the existence of _any right_ to land is being discussed, and we are told that "public reasons" existed "for its being appropriated," and if those reasons have "lost their force, the thing would be unjust." from this to confiscation the step would not be a very great one. no such idea certainly could exist in the mind of so enlightened a man as mr. mill, who insists upon compensation; but when a whole people, among whom the productive power is steadily diminishing as individual fortunes become more and more colossal, are told that the proprietors of land, great and small, receive compensation for its use, for no other reason than that they have been enabled to possess themselves of a monopoly of its powers, and that rent is to be regarded as "the recompense of no sacrifice whatever," but as being "received by those who neither labour nor put by, but merely hold out their hands to receive the offerings of the rest of the community,"[ ] can we doubt that the day is approaching when the right to property in land will be tested in england, as it has elsewhere been? assuredly not. ricardo-malthusianism tends directly to what is commonly called communism, and at that point will england arrive, under the system which looks to the consolidation of the land, the aggrandizement of the few, and the destruction of the physical, moral, intellectual, and political powers of the whole body of labourers, abroad and at home, where population and wealth increase together, there is always found a growing respect for the rights of persons and property. where they decline, that respect diminishes; and the tendency of the whole british politico-economical system being toward the destruction of population and wealth at home and abroad, it tends necessarily toward agrarianism in its worst form. that such is the tendency of things in england we have the assurance of the london _times_, by which, it has recently been shown, says mr. kay, "that during the last half century, every thing has been done to deprive the peasant of any interest in the preservation of public order; of any wish to maintain the existing constitution of society; of all hope of raising himself in the world, or of improving his condition in life; of all attachment to his country; of all feelings of there really existing any community of interest between himself and the higher ranks of society; and of all consciousness that he has any thing to lose by political changes; and that every thing has been done to render him dissatisfied with his condition, envious of the richer classes, and discontented with the existing order of things. "the labourer," he continues "has no longer any connection with the land which he cultivates; he has no stake in the country; he has nothing to lose, nothing to defend, and nothing to hope for. the word "cottage" has ceased to mean what it once meant--a small house surrounded by its little plot of land, which the inmate might cultivate as he pleased, for the support and gratification of his family and himself. the small freeholds have long since been bought up and merged in the great estates. copyholds have become almost extinct, or have been purchased by the great land-owners. the commons, upon which the villagers once had the right of pasturing cattle for their own use, and on which, too, the games and pastimes of the villages were held, have followed the same course: they are enclosed, and now form part of the possessions of the great landowners. small holdings of every kind have, in like manner, almost entirely disappeared. farms have gradually become larger and larger, and are now, in most parts of the country, far out of the peasant's reach, on account of their size, and of the amount of capital requisite to cultivate them. the gulf between the peasant and the next step in the social scale--the farmer--is widening and increasing day by day. the labourer is thus left without any chance of improving his condition. his position is one of hopeless and irremediable dependence. the workhouse stands near him, pointing out his dismal fate if he falls one step lower, and, like a grim scarecrow, warning him to betake himself to some more hospitable region, where he will find no middle-age institutions opposing his industrious efforts."--vol. i. . this is slavery, and it is an indication of poverty, and yet we hear much of the wealth of england. where, however, is it? the whole rental of the land, houses, mills, furnaces, and mines of the united kingdom but little exceeds one hundred millions of pounds sterling, of which about one-half is derived from buildings--and if we take the whole, perishable and imperishable, at twenty years' purchase, it is but two-thousand millions.[ ] if next we add for machinery of all kinds, ships, farming stock and implements, millions,[ ] we obtain a total of only millions, or , millions of dollars, as the whole accumulation of more than two thousand years' given to the improvement of the land, the building of houses, towns, and cities--and this gives but little over dollars per head. sixty years since, new york had a population of only , , and it was a poor state, and to this hour it has no mines of any importance that are worked. throughout the whole period, her people have been exhausting her soil, and the product of wheat, on lands that formerly gave twenty-five and thirty bushels to the acre, has fallen to six or eight,[ ] and yet her houses and lands are valued at almost twelve hundred millions of dollars, and the total value of the real and personal estate is not less than fifteen hundred millions, or about $ per head--and these are the accumulations almost of the present century. the _apparent_ wealth of england is, however, great, and it is so for the same reason that rome appeared so rich in the days of crassus and lucullus, surrounded by people owning nothing, when compared with the days when cincinnatus was surrounded by a vast body of small proprietors. consolidation of the land and enormous manufacturing establishments have almost annihilated the power profitably to use small capitals, and the consequence is that their owners are forced to place them in saving funds, life-insurance companies, and in banks at small interest, and by all of these they are lent out to the large holders of land and large operators in mills, furnaces, railroads, &c. as the land has become consolidated, it has been covered with mortgages, and the effect of this is to double the apparent quantity of property. while the small proprietors held it, it was assessed to the revenue as land only. now, it is assessed, first, as land, upon which its owner pays a tax, and next as mortgage, upon which the mortgagee pays the income-tax. the land-owner is thus holding his property with other people's means, and the extent to which this is the case throughout england is wonderfully great. banks trade little on their own capital, but almost entirely on that of others.[ ] the capital of the bank of england haying been expended by the government, it has always traded exclusively on its deposites and circulation. the east india company has no capital, but a very large debt, and nothing to represent it; and the example of these great institutions is copied by the smaller ones. life-insurance companies abound, and the capitals are said to be large, but "nine-tenths" of them are declared to be "in a state of ruinous insolvency;"[ ] and it is now discovered the true mode of conducting that business is to have no capital whatsoever. the trade of england is to a great extent based on the property of foreigners, in the form of wool, silk, cotton, tobacco, sugar, and other commodities, sent there for sale, and these furnish much of the capital of her merchants. while holding this vast amount of foreign capital, they supply iron and cloth, for which they take the bonds of the people of other nations; and whenever the amount of these bonds becomes too large, there comes a pressure in the money market, and the prices of all foreign commodities are forced down, to the ruin of their distant owners. to the absence of real capital [ ] it is due that revulsions are so frequent, and so destructive to all countries intimately connected with her; and it is a necessary consequence of the vast extent of trading on borrowed capital that the losses by bankruptcy are so astonishingly great. from to , a period of profound peace, eighty-two private bankers became bankrupt; of whom forty-six paid _no dividends_, twelve paid under twenty-five per cent., twelve under fifty per cent., three under seventy-five per cent., and two under one hundred per cent.; leaving seven unascertained at the date of the report from which this statement is derived. the last revulsion brought to light the fact that many of the oldest and most respectable houses in london had been for years trading entirely on credit, and without even a shilling of capital; and in liverpool the destruction was so universal that it was difficult to discover more than half a dozen houses to whom a cargo could be confided. revulsions are a necessary consequence of such a state of things, and at each and every one of them the small manufacturer and the small trader or land-owner are more and more swept away, while centralization steadily increases--and centralization is adverse to the growth of wealth and civilization. the whole fabric tends steadily more and more to take the form of an inverted pyramid, that may be thus represented:-- ships and mills, l a n d, labour. in confirmation of this view we have the following facts given in a speech of mr. george wilson, at a _réunion_ in manchester, a few weeks since:-- "in the five counties of buckingham, dorset, wilts, northampton, and salop, members were returned by , voters, while only the same number were returned by lancashire and yorkshire, with , county and , borough voters, making a total of , . so that, if they returned members in proportion to voters alone, those five counties could only claim ; while, if lancashire took their proportion, it would be entitled to . there were twelve large cities or boroughs (taking london as a double borough) returning members, with , voters, and a population of , , , and , inhabited houses. on the other side, members were returned by andover, buckingham, chippenham, cockermouth, totnes, harwich, bedford, lymington, marlborough, great marlborough, and richmond; but they had only , voters, , inhabitants, and , inhabited houses. * * the most timid reformer and most moderate man would hardly object to the disfranchisement of those boroughs which had a population less than , and to handing over the members to those large constituencies." as the people of ireland are driven from the land to london, liverpool, or america, the claims of that country to representation necessarily diminish; and so with scotland, as the highlands and the isles undergo the process of wholesale clearance. the same system that depopulates them tends to depopulate the agricultural counties of england, and to drive their people to seek employment in the great cities and manufacturing towns; and this, according to mr. mccullogh,[ ] is one of the principal advantages resulting from absenteeism. the wealthy few congregate in london, and the vast mass of poor labourers in the lanes and alleys, the streets and the cellars, of london and liverpool, birmingham and sheffield, manchester and leeds; and thus is there a daily increasing tendency toward having the whole power over england and the world placed in the hands of the owners of a small quantity of machinery--the same men that but a few years since were described by sir robert peel as compelling children to work sixteen hours a day during the week, and to appropriate a part of sunday to cleaning the machinery--and the same that recently resisted every attempt at regulating the hours of labour, on the ground that all the profit resulted from the power to require "the last hour." many of these gentlemen are liberal, and are actuated by the best intentions; but they have allowed themselves to be led away by a false and pernicious theory that looks directly to the enslavement of the human race, and are thus blinded to the consequences of the system they advocate; but even were they right, it could not but be dangerous to centralize nearly the whole legislative power in a small portion of the united kingdom, occupied by people whose existence is almost entirely dependent on the question whether cotton is cheap or dear, and who are liable to be thrown so entirely under the control of their employers. with each step in this direction, consolidation of the land tends to increase, and there is increased necessity for "cheap labour." "the whole question" of england's manufacturing superiority, we are told, "has become one of a cheap and abundant supply of labour."[ ] that is, if labour can be kept down, and the labourer can be prevented from having a choice of employers, then the system may be maintained, but not otherwise. where, however, the labourer has not the power of determining for whom he will work, he is a slave; and to that condition it is that the system tends to reduce the english people, as it has already done with the once free men of india. alarmed at the idea that the present flight from england may tend to give the labourer power to select his employer, and to have some control over the amount of his reward, the london _times_ suggests the expediency of importing cheap labourers from germany and other parts of the continent, to aid in underworking their fellow-labourers in america and in india. it has been well said that, according to some political economists, "man was made for the land, and not the land for man." in england, it would almost seem as if he had been made for cotton mills. such would appear now to be the views of the _times_, as, a quarter of a century since, they certainly were of mr. huskisson. the object of all sound political economy is that of raising the labourer, and increasing the dignity of labour. that of the english system is to "keep labour down," and to degrade the labourer to the condition of a mere slave; and such is its effect everywhere--and nowhere is its tendency in that direction more obvious than in england itself.[ ] consolidation of land on one side and a determination to underwork the world on the other, are producing a rapid deterioration of material and moral condition, and, as a natural consequence, there is a steady diminution in the power of local self-government. the diminution of the agricultural population and the centralization of exchanges have been attended by decay of the agricultural towns, and their remaining people become less and less capable of performing for themselves those duties to which their predecessors were accustomed--and hence it is that political centralization grows so rapidly. scarcely a session of parliament now passes without witnessing the creation of a new commission for the management of the poor, the drainage of towns, the regulation of lodging-houses, or other matters that could be better attended to by the local authorities, were it not that the population, is being so rapidly divided into two classes widely remote from each other--the poor labourer and the rich absentee landlord or other capitalist. with the decay of the power of the people over their own actions, the nation is gradually losing its independent position among the nations of the earth. it is seen that the whole "prosperity" of the country depends on the power to purchase cheap cotton, cheap sugar, and other cheap products of the soil, and it is feared that something may interfere to prevent the continuance of the system which maintains the domestic slave trade of this country. we are, therefore, told by all the english journals, that "england is far too dependent on america for her supply of cotton. there is," says the _daily news_, "too much risk in relying on any one country, if we consider the climate and seasons alone; but the risk is seriously aggravated when the country is not our own, but is inhabited by a nation which, however friendly on the whole, and however closely allied with us by blood and language, has been at war with us more than once, and might possibly some day be so again." from month to month, and from year to year, we have the same note, always deepening in its intensity,--and yet the dependence increases instead of diminishing. on one day, the great prosperity of the country is proved by the publication of a long list of new cotton mills, and, on the next, we are told of-- "the frightful predicament of multitudes of people whom a natural disaster [a short crop of cotton] denies leave to toil--who must work or starve, but who cannot work because the prime material of their work is not to be obtained in the world."--_lawson's merchants' magazine_, dec. . what worse slavery can we have than this? it is feared that this country will not continue to supply cheap cotton, and it is known that india cannot enlarge its export, and, therefore, the whole mind of england is on the stretch to discover some new source from which it may be derived, that may tend to increase the competition for its sale, and reduce it lower than it even now is. at one time, it is hoped that it may be grown in australia--but cheap labour cannot there be had. at another, it is recommended as expedient to encourage its culture in natal, (south africa,) as there it can be grown, as we are assured, by aid of cheap--or slave--labour, from india.[ ] it is to this feeling of growing dependence, and growing weakness, that must be attributed the publication of passages like the following, from the london _times_:-- "it used to be said that if athens, and lacedæmon could but make up their minds to be good friends and make a common cause, they would be masters of the world. the wealth, the science, the maritime enterprise, and daring ambition of the one, assisted by the population, the territory, the warlike spirit, and stern institutions of the other, could not fail to carry the whole world before them. that was a project hostile to the peace and prosperity of mankind, and ministering only to national vanity. a far grander object, of more easy and more honourable acquisition, lies before england and the united states, and all other countries owning our origin and speaking our language. let them agree not in an alliance offensive and defensive, but simply to never go to war with one another. let them permit one another to develop as providence seems to suggest, and the british race will gradually and quietly attain to a pre-eminence beyond the reach of mere policy and arms. the vast and ever-increasing interchange of commodities between the several members of this great family, the almost daily communications now opened across, not one, but several oceans, the perpetual discovery of new means of locomotion, in which steam itself now bids fair to be supplanted by an equally powerful but cheaper and more convenient agency--all promise to unite the whole british race throughout the world in one social and commercial unity, more mutually beneficial than any contrivance of politics. already, what does austria gain from hungary, france from algiers, russia from siberia, or any absolute monarchy from its abject population, or what town from its rural suburbs, that england does not derive in a much greater degree from the united states, and the united states from england? what commercial partnership, what industrious household exhibits so direct an exchange of services? all that is wanted is that we should recognise this fact, and give it all the assistance in our power. we cannot be independent of one another. the attempt is more than unsocial; it is suicidal. could either dispense with the labour of the other, it would immediately lose the reward of its own industry. whether national jealousy, or the thirst for warlike enterprise, or the grosser appetite of commercial monopoly, attempt the separation, the result and the crime are the same. we are made helps meet for one another. heaven has joined all who speak the british language, and what heaven has joined let no man think to put asunder." the allies of england have been portugal and ireland, india and the west indies, and what is their condition has been shown. with turkey she has had a most intimate connection, and that great empire is now prostrate. what inducement can she, then, offer in consideration of an alliance with her? the more intimate our connection, the smaller must be the domestic market for food and cotton, the lower must be their prices, and the larger must be the domestic slave trade, now so rapidly increasing. her system tends toward the enslavement of the labourer throughout the earth, and toward the destruction everywhere of the value of the land; and therefore it is that she needs allies. therefore; it is that the _times_, a journal that but ten years since could find no term of vituperation sufficiently strong to be applied to the people of this country, now tells its readers that-- "it is the prospect of these expanding and strengthening affinities that imparts so much interest to the mutual hospitalities shown by british and american citizens to the diplomatic representatives of the sister states." "to give capital a fair remuneration," it was needed that "_the price of english labour should be kept down_;" and it has been kept down to so low a point as to have enabled the cotton mills of manchester to supersede the poor hindoo in his own market, and to drive him to the raising of cheap sugar to supply the cheap labour of england--and to supersede the manufacturers of this country, and drive our countrymen to the raising of cheap corn to feed the cheap labour of england, driven out of ireland. cheap food next forces the exportation of negroes from maryland and virginia to alabama and mississippi, there to raise cheap cotton to supersede the wretched cultivator of india; and thus, in succession, each and every part of the agricultural world is forced into competition with every other part, and the labourers of the world become from day to day more enslaved; and all because the people of england are determined that the whole earth shall become one great farm, with but a single workshop, in which shall be fixed the prices of all its occupants have to sell or need to buy. for the first time in the history of the world, there exists a nation whose whole system of policy is found in the shopkeeper's maxim, buy cheap and sell dear; and the results are seen in the fact that that nation is becoming from day to day less powerful and less capable of the exercise of self-government among the community of nations. from day to day england is more and more seen to be losing the independent position of the farmer who sells the produce of his own labour, and occupying more and more that of the shopkeeper, anxious to conciliate the favour of those who have goods to sell or goods to buy; and with each day there is increased anxiety lest there should be a change in the feelings of the customers who bring cotton and take in exchange cloth and iron. the records of history might be searched in vain for a case like hers--for a nation voluntarily subjecting itself to a process of the most exhaustive kind. they present no previous case of a great community, abounding in men of high intelligence, rejoicing in the diminution of the proportion of its people _capable of feeding themselves and others_, and in the increasing proportion _requiring to be fed_. england now exports in a year nearly , men and women that have been raised at enormous cost,[ ] and she rejoices at receiving in exchange , infants yet to be raised. she exports the young, and retains the aged. she sends abroad the sound, and keeps at home the unsound. she expels the industrious, and retains the idle. she parts with the small capitalist, but she keeps the pauper. she sends men from her own land, and with them the commodities they must consume while preparing for cultivation distant lands;--and all these things are regarded as evidences of growing wealth and power. she sends men from where they could make twelve or twenty exchanges in a year to a distance from, which they can make but one; and this is taken as evidence of the growth of commerce. she sends her people from the land to become trampers in her roads, or to seek refuge in filthy lanes and cellars; and this is hailed as tending to promote the freedom of man. in all this, however, she is but realizing the prophecies of adam smith, in relation to the determination of his countrymen to see in foreign trade alone "england's treasure." in all nations, ancient and modern, freedom has come with the growth of association, and every act of association is an act of commerce. commerce, and freedom grow, therefore, together, and whatever tends to lessen the one must tend equally to lessen the other. the object of the whole british system is to destroy the power of association, for it seeks to prevent everywhere the growth of the mechanic arts, and without them there can be no local places of exchange, and none of that combination so needful to material, moral, intellectual, and political improvement. that such has been its effect in portugal and turkey, the west indies, and india, and in our southern states, we know--and in all of these freedom declines as the power of association diminishes. that such has been its effect in ireland and scotland, the reader has seen. in england we may see everywhere the same tendency to prevent the existence of association, or of freedom of trade. land, the great instrument of production, is becoming from day to day more consolidated. capital, the next great instrument, is subjected to the control of the bank of england--an institution that has probably caused more ruin than any other that has ever existed.[ ] associations for banking or manufacturing purposes are restrained by a system of responsibility that tends to prevent prudent men from taking part in their formation. the whole tendency of the system is to fetter and restrain the productive power; and hence it is that it has proved necessary to establish the fact that the great creator had made a serious mistake in the laws regulating the increase of food and of men, and that the _cheapened_ labourer was bound to correct the error by repressing that natural desire for association which leads to an increase of population. the consequences of all this are seen in the fact that there is in that country no real freedom of commerce. there is no competition for the purchase of labour, and the labourer is therefore a slave to the capitalist. there is no competition for the use of capital, and its owner is a slave to his banker, who requires him to content himself with the smallest profits. there is scarcely any power to sell land, for it is everywhere hedged round with entails, jointures, and marriage settlements, that fetter and enslave its owner. there is no competition for obtaining "maidens in marriage," for the _chronicle_ assures us that marriage now rarely takes place until the cradle has become as necessary as the ring;[ ] and when that is the case, the man will always be found a tyrant and the woman a slave. in the effort to destroy the power of association, and the freedom of trade and of man abroad, england has in a great degree annihilated freedom at home; and all this she has done because, from the day of the publication of _the wealth of nations_, her every movement has looked to the perpetuation of the system denounced by its author as a "manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind." chapter xv. how can slavery be extinguished? how can slavery be extinguished, and man be made free? this question, as regarded england, was answered some years since by a distinguished anti-corn-law orator, when he said that for a long time past, in that country, two men had been seeking one master, whereas the time was then at hand when two masters would be seeking one man. now, we all know that when two men desire to purchase a commodity, it rises in value, and its owner finds himself more free to determine for himself what to do with it than he could do if there were only one person desiring to have it, and infinitely more free than he could be if there were two sellers to one buyer. to make men free there must be competition for the purchase of their services, and the more the competition the greater must be their value, and that of the men who have them to sell. it has already been shown [ ] that in purely agricultural communities there can be very little competition for the purchase of labour; and that such is the fact the reader can readily satisfy himself by reflecting on the history of the past, or examining the condition of man as he at present exists among the various nations of the earth. history shows that labour has become valuable, and that man has become free, precisely as the artisan has been enabled to take his place by the side of the ploughman--precisely as labour has become diversified--precisely as small towns have arisen in which the producer of food and wool could readily exchange for cloth and iron--precisely as manure could more readily be obtained to aid in maintaining the productiveness of the soil--and precisely, therefore, as men have acquired the power of associating with their fellow-men. with the growth of that power they have everywhere been seen to obtain increased returns from land, increased reward of labour, and increased power to accumulate the means of making roads, establishing schools, and doing all other things tending to the improvement of their modes of action and their habits of thought; and thus it is that freedom of thought, speech, action, and trade have always grown with the growth of the value of labour and land. it is desired to abolish the _trade_ in slaves. no such trade could exist were men everywhere free; but as they are not so, it has in many countries been deemed necessary to prohibit the sale of men from off the land, as preliminary to the establishment of freedom. nothing of this kind, however, can now be looked for, because there exists no power to coerce the owners of slaves to adopt any such measures; nor, if it did exist, would it be desirable that it should be exercised, as it would make the condition of both the slave and his master worse than it is even now. neither is it necessary, because there exists "a higher law"--a great law of the creator--that will effectually extinguish the trade whenever it shall be permitted to come into activity. why is it that men in africa sell their fellow-men to be transported to cuba or brazil? for the same reason, obviously, that other men sell flour in boston or baltimore to go to liverpool or rio janeiro--because it is cheaper in the former than in the latter cities. if, then, we desired to put a stop to the export, would not our object be effectually accomplished by the adoption of measures that would cause prices to be higher in boston than in liverpool, and higher in baltimore than in rio? that such would be the case must be admitted by all. if, then, we desired to stop the export of negroes from africa, would not our object be effectually and permanently attained could we so raise the value of man in africa that he would be worth as much, or more, there than in cuba? would not the export of coolies cease if man could be rendered more, valuable in india than in jamaica or guiana? would not the destruction of cottages, the eviction of their inhabitants, and the waste of life throughout ireland, at once be terminated, could man be made as valuable there as he is here? would not the export of the men, women, and children of great britain cease, if labour there could be brought to a level with that of massachusetts, new york, and pennsylvania? assuredly it would; for men do not voluntarily leave home, kindred, and friends. on the contrary, so great is the attachment to home, that it requires, in most cases, greatly superior attractions to induce them to emigrate. adam smith said that, of all commodities, man was the hardest to be removed--and daily observation shows that he was right. to terminate the african slave trade, we need, then, only to raise the value of man _in africa_. to terminate the forced export of men, women, and children from ireland, we need only to raise the value of men _in ireland_; and to put an end to our own domestic slave trade, nothing is needed except that we raise the value of man _in virginia_. to bring the trade in slaves, of all colours and in all countries, at once and permanently to a close, we need to raise the value of man _at home_, let that home be where it may. how can this be done? by precisely the same course of action that terminated the export of slaves from england to ireland. in the days of the plantagenets, men were so much more valuable in the latter country than in the former one, that the market of ireland was "glutted with english slaves;" but as, by degrees, the artisan took his place by the side of the english ploughman, the trade passed away, because towns arose and men became strong to defend their rights as they were more and more enabled to associate with each other. since then, the artisan has disappeared from ireland, and the towns have decayed, and men have become weak because they have lost the power to associate, and, therefore, it is that the market of england has been so glutted with irish slaves that man has been declared to be "a drug, and population a nuisance." such precisely has been the course of things in africa. for two centuries it had been deemed desirable to have from that country the same "inexhaustible supply of cheap labour" that ireland has supplied to england; and, therefore, no effort was spared to prevent the negroes from making any improvement in their modes of cultivation. "it was," says macpherson, "the european policy" to prevent the africans from arriving at perfection in any of their pursuits, "from a fear of interfering with established branches of trade elsewhere." more properly, it was the english policy. "the truth is," said mr. pitt, in -- "there is no nation in europe which has plunged so deeply into this guilt as britain. _we_ stopped the natural progress of civilization in africa. _we_ cut her off from the opportunity of improvement. _we_ kept her down in a state of darkness, bondage, ignorance, and bloodshed. we have there subverted the whole order of nature; we have aggravated every natural barbarity, and furnished to every man motives for committing, under the name of trade, acts of perpetual hostility and perfidy against his neighbour. thus had the perversion of british commerce carried misery instead of happiness to one whole quarter of the globe. false to the very principles of trade, unmindful of our duty, what almost irreparable mischief had we done to that continent! we had obtained as yet only so much knowledge of its productions as to show that there was a capacity for trade which we checked." how was all this done? by preventing the poor africans from obtaining machinery to enable them to prepare their sugar for market, or for producing cotton and indigo and combining them into cloth--precisely the same course of operation that was pursued in jamaica with such extraordinary loss of life. guns and gunpowder aided in providing cheap labour, and how they were supplied, even so recently as in , will be seen on a perusal of the following passage, from an eminent english authority, almost of our own day:-- "a regular branch of trade here, at birmingham, is the manufacture of guns for the african market. they are made for about a dollar and a half: the barrel is filled with water, and if the water does not come through, it is thought proof sufficient. of course, they burst when fired, and mangle the wretched negro, who has purchased them upon the credit of english faith, and received them, most probably, as the price of human flesh! no secret is made of this abominable trade, yet the government never interferes, and the persons concerned in it are not marked and shunned as infamous."--_southey's "espriella's letters"_. it is deemed now desirable to have cheap labour applied to the collection of gold-dust and hides, palm-leaves and ivory, and the description of commodities at present exported to that country will be seen by the following cargo-list of the brig lily, which sailed from liverpool a few weeks since for the african coast, but blew up and was destroyed in the neighbourhood of the isle of man, to wit:-- tons gunpowder, puncheons rum, a quantity of firearms, and some bale-goods. such are not the commodities required for raising the value of man in africa, and until it can be raised to a level with his value in cuba, the export of men will be continued from the african coast as certainly as the export from ireland will be continued so long as men are cheaper there than elsewhere; and as certainly as the trade described in the following letter will be continued, so long as the people india shall be allowed to do nothing but raise sugar and cotton for a distant market, and shall thus be compelled to forego all the advantages so long enjoyed by them under the native governments, when the history of the cotton manufacture was the history of almost every family in india:-- "_havana_, feb. , . "on the morning of the th, arrived from amoa, singapore, and jamaica, the british ship panama, fisher, tons, days' passage, with asiatics (coolies) on board, to be introduced to the labour of the island, _purchased_ for a service of four years. the loss on the passage was a considerable percentage, being thrown overboard. the speculators in this material are messrs. viloldo, wardrop & co., who have permission of the government to cover five thousand subjects. the cargo is yet held in quarantine. "on the th inst., arrived from amoa and st. helena, the ship blenheim, molison, tons, days' passage, bringing to the same consignees coolies. died on the voyage, . money will be realized by those who have the privilege of making the introduction, and english capital will find some play; but i doubt very much whether the purposes of english _philanthropy_ will be realized, for, reasoning from the past, at the expiration of the four years, nearly all have been sacrificed, while the condition of african labour will be unmitigated. a short term an cupidity strain the lash over the poor coolie, and he dies; is secreted if he lives, and advantage taken of his ignorance for extended time when once merged in plantation-service, where investigation can be avoided."--_correspondence of the new york journal of _commerce_. this trade is sanctioned by the british government because it provides an outlet for hindoo labour, _rendered surplus_ by the destruction of the power of association throughout india, and yet the same government expends large sums annually in closing an outlet for african labour, rendered surplus by the rum and the gunpowder that are supplied to africa! to stop the export of men from that important portion of the earth, it is required that we should raise the value of man in africa, and to do this, the african must be enabled to have machinery, to bring the artisan to his door, to build towns, to have schools, and to make roads. to give to the african these things, and to excite in his breast a desire for something better than rum, gunpowder, and murder, and thus to raise the standard of morals and the value of labour, has been the object of the founders of the republic of liberia, one of the most important and excellent undertakings of our day. thus far, however, it has been looked upon very coldly by all the nations of europe, and it is but recently that it has received from any of them the slightest recognition and even now it is regarded solely as being likely to aid in providing cheap labour, to be employed in increasing the supplies of sugar and cotton, and thus cheapening those commodities in the market of the world, at the cost of the slaves of america and of india. nevertheless it has made considerable progress. its numbers now amount to , ,[ ] a large proportion of whom are natives, upon whom the example of the colonists from this country has operated to produce a love of industry and a desire for many of the comforts of civilized life. by aid, generally, of persuasion, but occasionally by that of force, it has put an end to the export of men throughout a country having several hundred miles of coast. the difficulty, however, is that wages are very low, and thus there is but little inducement for the immigration of men from the interior, or from this country.[ ] much progress has thus been made, yet it is small compared with what, might be made could the republic offer greater inducements to settlers from the interior, or from this country; that is, could it raise the value of man, ridding itself of _cheap labour_. where there is nothing but agriculture, the men must be idle for very much of their time, and the women and children _must_ be idle or work in the field; and where people are forced to remain idle they remain poor and weak, and they can have neither towns, nor roads, nor schools. were it in the power of the republic to say to the people for hundreds of miles around, that there was a demand for labour every day in the year, and at good wages--that at one time cotton was to be picked, and at another it was to be converted into cloth--that in the summer the cane was to be cultivated, in the autumn the sugar was to be gathered, and in the winter it was to be refined--that at one time houses and mills were to be built, and at another roads to be made--that in one quarter stone was to be quarried, and in another timber to be felled--there would be hundreds of thousands of africans who would come to seek employment, and each man that came would give strength to the republic while diminishing the strength of the little tyrants of the interior, who would soon find men becoming less abundant and more valuable, and it would then become necessary to try to retain their subjects. every man that came would desire to have his wife and children follow him, and it would soon come to be seen that population and wealth were synonymous, as was once supposed to be the case in europe. by degrees, roads would be made into the interior, and civilized black men would return to their old homes, carrying with them habits of industry and intelligence, a knowledge of agriculture and of the processes of the coarser manufactures, and with every step in this direction labour would acquire new value, and men would everywhere become more free. to accomplish these things alone and unassisted might, however, require almost centuries, and to render assistance would be to repudiate altogether the doctrine of cheap labour, cheap sugar, and cheap cotton. let us suppose that on his last visit to england, president roberts should have invoked the aid of the english premier in an address to the following effect, and then see what must have been the reply:-- "my lord: "we have in our young republic a population of , , scattered over a surface capable of supporting the whole population of england, and all engaged in producing the same commodities,--as a consequence of which we have, and can have, but little trade among ourselves. during a large portion of the year our men have little to do, and they waste much time, and our women and children are limited altogether to the labours of the field, to the great neglect of education. widely scattered, we have much need of roads, but are too poor to make them, and therefore much produce perishes on the ground. we cannot cultivate bulky articles, because the cost of transportation would be greater than their product at market; and of those that we do cultivate nearly the whole must be sent to a distance, with steady diminution in the fertility of the soil. we need machinery and mechanics. with them we could convert our cotton and our indigo into cloth, and thus find employment for women and children. mechanics would need houses, and carpenters and blacksmiths would find employment, and gradually towns would arise and our people would be from day to day more enabled to make their exchanges at home, while acquiring increased power to make roads, and land would become valuable, while men would become from day to day more free. immigration from the interior would be large, and from year to year we should be enabled to extend our relations with the distant tribes, giving value to their labour and disseminating knowledge, and thus should we, at no distant period, be enabled not only to put an end to the slave trade, but also to place millions of barbarians on the road to wealth and civilization. to accomplish these things, however, we need the aid and countenance of great britain." the reply to this would necessarily have been-- "mr. president: "we are aware of the advantage of diversification of employments, for to that were our own people indebted for their freedom. with the immigration of artisans came the growth of our towns, the value of our land, and the strength of the nation. we are aware, too, of the advantages of those natural agents which so much assist the powers of man; but it is contrary to british policy to aid in the establishment of manufactures of any description in any part of the world. on the contrary, we have spared no pains to annihilate those existing in india, and we are now maintaining numerous colonies, at vast expense, for the single purpose of 'stifling in their infancy the manufactures of other nations.' we need large supplies of cotton, and the more you send us, the cheaper it will be; whereas, if you make cloth, you will have no cotton to sell, no cloth to buy. we need cheap sugar, and if you have artisans to eat your sugar, you will have none to send us to pay for axes or hammers. we need cheap hides, palm-leaves and ivory, and if your people settle themselves in towns, they will have less time to employ themselves in the collection of those commodities. we need cheap labour, and the cheaper your cotton and your sugar the lower will be the price of labour. be content. cultivate the earth, and send its products to our markets, and we will send you cloth and iron. you will, it is true, find it difficult to make roads, or to build schools, and your women will have to work in the sugar-plantations; but this will prevent the growth of population, and there will be less danger of your being compelled to resort to 'the inferior soils' that yield so much less in return to labour. the great danger now existing is that population may outrun food, and all our measures in ireland, india, turkey, and other countries are directed toward preventing the occurrence of so unhappy a state of things." let us next suppose that the people of virginia should address the british nation, and in the following terms:-- "we are surrounded by men who raise cotton wool, and we have in our own state land unoccupied that could furnish more sheep's wool than would be required for clothing half our nation. within our limits there are water-powers now running to waste that could, if properly used, convert into cloth half the cotton raised in the union. we have coal and iron ore in unlimited quantity, and are _daily_ wasting almost as much labour as would be required for making all the cloth and iron we consume in a month. nevertheless, we can make neither cloth nor iron. many of our people have attempted it, but they have, almost without exception, been ruined. when you charge high prices for cloth, we build mills; but no sooner are they built than there comes a crisis at 'the mighty heart of commerce,' and cloths are poured into our markets so abundantly and sold so cheaply, that our people become bankrupt. when you charge high prices for iron, as you _now_ do, we build furnaces; but no sooner are they ready than your periodical crisis comes, and then you sell iron so cheaply that the furnace-master is ruined. as a consequence of this, we are compelled to devote ourselves to raising tobacco and corn to go abroad, and our women and children are barbarized, while our lands are exhausted. you receive our tobacco, and you pay us but three pence for that which sells for six shillings, and we are thus kept poor. our corn is too bulky to go abroad in its rude state, and to enable it to go to market we are obliged to manufacture it into negroes for texas. we detest the domestic slave trade, and it is abhorrent to our feelings to sell a negro, but we have no remedy, nor can we have while, because of inability to have machinery, labour is so cheap. if we could make iron, or cloth, we should need houses, and towns, and carpenters, and blacksmiths, and then people from other states would flock to us, and our towns and cities would grow rapidly, and there would be a great demand for potatoes and turnips, cabbages and carrots, peas and beans, and then we could take from the land tons of green crops, where now we obtain only bushels of wheat. land would then become valuable, and great plantations would become divided into small farms, and with each step in this direction labour would become more productive, and the labourer would from day to day acquire the power to determine for whom he would work and how he should be paid--and thus, as has been the case in all other countries, our slaves would become free as we became rich." to this what would be the reply? must it not be to the following effect:-- "we need cheap food, and the more you can be limited to agriculture, the greater will be the quantity of wheat pressing upon our market, and the more cheaply will our cheap labourers be fed. we need large revenue, and the more you can be forced to raise tobacco, the larger our consumption, and the larger our revenue. we need cheap cotton and cheap sugar, and the less the value of men, women, and children in virginia, the larger will be the export of slaves to texas, the greater will be the competition of the producers of cotton and sugar to sell their commodities in our markets, and the lower will be prices, while the greater will be the competition for the purchase of our cloth, iron, lead, and copper, and the higher will be prices. our rule is to buy cheaply and sell dearly, and it is only the slave that submits dearly to buy and cheaply to sell. our interest requires that we should be the great work-shop of the world, and that we may be so it is needful that we should use all the means in our power to prevent other nations from availing themselves of their vast deposites of ore and fuel; for if they made iron they would obtain machinery, and be enabled to call to their aid the vast powers that nature has everywhere provided for the service of man. we desire that there shall be no steam-engines, no bleaching apparatus, no furnaces, no rolling-mills, except our own; and our reason for this is, that we are quite satisfied that agriculture is the worst and least profitable pursuit of man, while manufactures are the best and most profitable. it is our wish, therefore, that you should continue to raise tobacco and corn, and manufacture the corn into negroes for texas and arkansas; and the more extensive the slave trade the better we shall be pleased, because we know that the more negroes you export the lower will be the price of cotton. our people are becoming from day to day more satisfied that it is 'for their advantage' that the negro shall 'wear his chains in peace,' even although it may cause the separation of husbands and wives, parents and children, and although they know that, in default of other employment, women and children are obliged to employ their labour in the culture of rice among the swamps of carolina, or in that of sugar among the richest and most unhealthy lands of texas. this will have one advantage. it will lessen the danger of over-population." again, let us suppose the people of ireland to come to their brethren across the channel and say--"half a century since we were rapidly improving. we had large manufactures of various kinds, and our towns were thriving, and schools were increasing in number, making a large, demand for books, with constantly increasing improvement in the demand for labour, and in its quality. since then, however, a lamentable change has taken place. our mills and furnaces have everywhere been closed, and our people have been compelled to depend entirely upon the land; the consequence of which is seen in the fact that they have been required to pay such enormous rents that they themselves have been unable to consume any thing but potatoes, and have starved by hundreds of thousands, because they could find no market for labour that would enable them to purchase even of them enough to support life. labour has been so valueless that our houses have been pulled down by hundreds of thousands, and we find ourselves now compelled to separate from each other, husbands abandoning wives, sons abandoning parents, and brothers abandoning sisters. we fear that our whole nation will disappear from the earth; and the only mode of preventing so sad an event is to be found in raising the value of labour. we need to make a market at home for it and for the products of our land; but that we cannot have unless we have machinery. aid us in this. let us supply ourselves. let us make cloth and iron, and let us exchange those commodities among ourselves for the labour that is now everywhere being wasted. we shall then see old towns flourish and new ones arise, and we shall have schools, and our land will become valuable, while we shall become free." the answer to this would necessarily be as follows:-- "it is to the cheap labour that ireland has supplied that we are indebted for 'our great works,' and cheap labour is now more than ever needed, because we have not only to underwork the hindoo but also to underwork several of the principal nations of europe and america. that we may have cheap labour we must have cheap food. were we to permit you to become manufacturers you would make a market at home for your labour and wages would rise, and you would then be able to eat meat and wheaten bread, instead of potatoes, and the effect of this would be to raise the price of food; and thus should we be disabled from competing with the people of germany, of belgium, and of america, in the various markets of the world. further than this, were you to become manufacturers you would consume a dozen pounds of cotton where now you consume but one, and this would raise the price of cotton, as the demand for germany and russia has now raised it, while your competition with us might lower the price of cloth. we need to have cheap cotton while selling dear cloth. we need to have cheap food while selling dear iron. our paramount rule of action is, 'buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest one'--and the less civilized those with whom we have to deal the cheaper we can always buy and the dearer we can sell. it is, therefore, to our interest that your women should labour in the field, and that your children should grow up uneducated and barbarous. even, however, were we so disposed, you could not compete with us. your labour is cheap, it is true, but after having, for half a century, been deprived of manufactures, you have little skill, and it would require many years for you to acquire it. your foreign trade has disappeared with your manufactures, and the products of your looms would have no market but your own. when we invent a pattern we have the whole world for a market, and after having supplied the domestic demand, we can furnish of it for foreign markets so cheaply as to set at defiance all competition. further than all this, we have, at very short intervals, periods of monetary crisis that are so severe as to sweep away many of our own manufacturers, and at those times goods are forced into all the markets of the world, to be sold at any price that can be obtained for them. look only at the facts of the last few years. six years since, railroad iron was worth £ per ton. three years since, it could be had for £ . , or even less. now it is at £ , and a year hence it may be either £ or £ ; and whether it shall be the one or the other is dependent altogether upon the movements of the great bank which regulates all our affairs. under such circumstances, how could your infant establishments hope to exist? be content. the celt has long been 'the hewer of wood and drawer of water for the saxon,' and so he must continue. we should regret to see you all driven from your native soil, because it would deprive us of our supply of cheap labour; but we shall have in exchange the great fact that ireland will become one vast grazing-farm, and will supply us with cheap provisions, and thus aid in keeping down the prices of all descriptions of food sent to our markets." the hindoo, in like manner, would be told that his aid was needed for keeping down the price of american and egyptian cotton, and brazilian and cuban sugar, and that the price of both would rise were he permitted to obtain machinery that would enable him to mine coal and iron ore, by aid of which to obtain spindles and looms for the conversion of his cotton into cloth, and thus raise the value of his labour. the brazilian would be told that it was the policy of england to have cheap sugar, and that the more he confined himself and his people--men, women, and children--to the culture of the cane, the lower would be the prices of the product of the slaves of cuba and the mauritius. seeing that the policy of england was thus directly opposed to every thing like association, or the growth of towns and other local places of exchange, and that it looked only to cheapening labour and enslaving the labourer, the questions would naturally arise: can we not help ourselves? is there no mode of escaping from this thraldom? must our women always labour in the field? must our children always be deprived of schools? must we continue for ever to raise negroes for sale? must the slave trade last for ever? must the agricultural communities of the world be compelled for all time to compete against each other in one very limited market for the sale of all they have to sell, and the purchase of all they have to buy? are there not some nations in which men are becoming more free, and might we not aid the cause of freedom by studying the course they have pursued and are pursuing? let us; then, inquire into the policy of some of the various peoples of continental europe, and see if we cannot obtain an answer to these questions. chapter xvi. how freedom grows in northern germany. local action has always, to a considerable extent, existed in germany. for a time, there was a tendency to the centralization of power in the hands of austria, but the growth of prussia at the north has produced counter attraction, and there is from day to day an increasing tendency toward decentralization, local activity, and freedom. it is now but little more than seventy years since the elector of hesse sold large numbers of his poor subjects to the government of england to aid it in establishing unlimited control over the people of this country. about the same period, frederick of prussia had his emissaries everywhere employed in seizing men of proper size for his grenadier regiments--and so hot was the pursuit, that it was dangerous for a man of any nation, or however free, if of six feet high, to place himself within their reach. the people were slaves, badly fed, badly clothed, and badly lodged, and their rulers were tyrants. the language of the higher classes was french, german being then regarded as coarse and vulgar, fit only for the serf. german literature was then only struggling into existence. of the mechanic arts, little was known, and the people were almost exclusively agricultural, while the machinery used in agriculture was of the rudest kind. commerce at home was very small, and abroad it was limited to the export of the rude products of the field, to be exchanged for the luxuries of london or paris required for the use of the higher orders of society. thirty years later, the slave trade furnished cargoes to many, if not most, of the vessels that traded between this country and germany. men, women, and children were brought out and sold for terms of years, at the close of which they became free, and many of the, most respectable people in the middle states are descended from "indented" german servants. the last half century has, however, been marked by the adoption of measures tending to the complete establishment of the mechanic arts throughout germany, and to the growth of places for the performance of local exchanges. the change commenced during the period of the continental system; but, at the close of the war, the manufacturing establishments of the country were, to a great extent, swept away, and the raw material of cloth was again compelled to travel to a distance in search of the spindle and the loom, the export of which from england, as well as of colliers and artisans, was, as the reader has seen, prohibited. but very few years, however, elapsed before it became evident that the people were becoming poorer, and the land becoming exhausted, and then it was that were commenced the smaller unions for the purpose of bringing the loom to take its natural place by the side of the plough and the harrow. step by step they grew in size and strength, until, in , only twenty years after the battle of waterloo, was formed the _zoll-verein_, or great german union, under which the internal commerce was rendered almost entirely free, while the external one was subjected to certain restraints, having for their object to cause the artisan to come and place himself where food and wool were cheap, in accordance with the doctrines of adam smith. in , germany exported almost thirty millions of pounds of raw wool to england, where it was subjected to a duty of twelve cents per pound for the privilege of passing through the machinery there provided for its manufacture into cloth. since that time, the product has doubled, and yet not only has the export almost ceased, but much foreign wool is now imported for the purpose of mixing with that produced at home. the effect of this has, of course, been to make a large market for both food and wool that would otherwise have been pressed on the market of england, with great reduction in the price of both; and woollen cloths are now so cheaply produced in germany, that they are exported to almost all parts of the world. wool is higher and cloth is lower, and, therefore, it is, as we shall see, that the people are now so much better clothed. at the date of the formation of the union, the total import of raw cotton and cotton yarn was about , cwts., but so rapid was the extension of the manufacture, that in less than six years it had doubled, and so cheaply were cotton goods supplied, that a large export trade had already arisen. in , when the union, was but ten years old, the import of cotton and yarn had reached a million of hundredweights, and since that time there has been a large increase. the iron manufacture, also, grew so rapidly that whereas, in , the consumption had been only _eleven_ pounds per head, in it had risen to _twenty-five pounds_, having thus more than doubled; and with each step in this direction, the people were obtaining better machinery for cultivating the land and for converting its raw products into manufactured ones. in no country has there been a more rapid increase in this diversification of employments, and increase in the demand for labour, than in germany since the formation of the union. everywhere throughout the country men are now becoming enabled to combine the labours of the workshop with those of the field and the garden, and "the social and economical results" of this cannot, says mr. kay [ ] -- "be rated too highly. the interchange of garden-labour with manufacturing employments, which is advantageous to the operative, who works in his own house, is a real luxury and necessity for the factory operative, whose occupations are almost always necessarily prejudicial to health. after his day's labour in the factories, he experiences a physical reinvigoration from moderate labour in the open air, and, moreover, he derives from it some economical advantages. he is enabled by this means to cultivate at least part of the vegetables which his family require for their consumption, instead of having to purchase them in the market at a considerable outlay. he can sometimes, also, keep a cow, which supplies his family with milk, and provides a healthy occupation for his wife and children when they leave the factory." as a necessary consequence of this creation of a domestic market, the farmer has ceased to be compelled to devote himself exclusively to the production of wheat, or other articles of small bulk and large price, and can now "have a succession of crops," says mr. howitt-- "like a market-gardener. they have their carrots, poppies, hemp, flax, saintfoin, lucerne, rape, colewort, cabbage, rutabaga, black turnips, swedish and white turnips, teazles, jerusalem artichokes, mangelwurzel, parsnips, kidney-beans, field beans, and peas, vetches, indian corn, buckwheat, madder for the manufacturer, potatoes, their great crop of tobacco, millet--all or the greater part under the family management, in their own family allotments. they have had these things first to sow, many of them to transplant, to hoe, to weed, to clear off insects, to top; many of them to mow and gather in successive crops. they have their water-meadows--of which kind almost all their meadows are to flood, to mow, and reflood; watercourses to reopen and to make anew; their early fruits to gather, to bring to market, with their green crops of vegetables; their cattle, sheep, calves, fowls; (most of them prisoners,) and poultry to look after; their vines, as they shoot rampantly in the summer heat, to prune, and thin out the leaves when they are too thick; and any one may imagine what a scene of incessant labour it is."--_rural and domestic life in germany_, p. . the existence of a domestic market enables them, of course, to manure their land. "no means," says mr. kay-- "are spared to make the ground produce as much as possible. not a square yard of land is uncultivated or unused. no stories are left mingled with the soil. the ground is cleared of weeds and rubbish, and the lumps of earth are broken up with as much care as in an english garden. if it is meadow land, it is cleaned of obnoxious herbs and weeds. only the sweet grasses which are good for the cattle are allowed to grow. all the manure from the house, farm, and yard is carefully collected and scientifically prepared. the liquid manure is then carried, in hand-carts like our road-watering carts into the fields, and is watered over the meadows in equal proportions. the solid manures are broken up, cleared of stones and rubbish, and are then properly mixed and spread over the lands which require them. no room is lost in hedges or ditches, and no breeding-places are left for the vermin which in many parts of england do so much injury to the farmers' crops. the character of the soil of each district is carefully examined, and a suitable rotation of crops is chosen, so as to obtain the greatest possible return without injuring the land; and the cattle are well housed, are kept beautifully clean, and are groomed and tended like the horses of our huntsmen."--vol. i. . the labours of the field have become productive, and there has been excited, says dr. shubert-- "a singular and increasing interest in agriculture and in the breeding of cattle; and if in some localities, on account of peculiar circumstances or of a less degree of intelligence, certain branches of the science of agriculture are less developed than in other localities, it is, nevertheless, undeniable that an almost universal progress has been made in the cultivation of the soil and in the breeding of cattle. no one can any longer, as was the custom thirty years ago, describe the prussian system of agriculture by the single appellation of the three-year-course system; no man can, as formerly, confine his enumeration of richly-cultivated districts to a few localities. in the present day, there is no district of prussia in which intelligence, persevering energy, and an ungrudged expenditure of capital, has not immensely improved a considerable part of the country for the purposes of agriculture and of the breeding of cattle."[ ] speaking of that portion of germany which lies on the rhine and the neckar, professor rau, of heidelberg, says that-- "whoever travels hastily through this part of the country must have been agreeably surprised with the luxuriant vegetation of the fields, with the orchards and vineyards which cover the hillside's, with the size of the villages, with the breadth of their streets, with the beauty of their official buildings, with the cleanliness and stateliness of their houses, with the good clothing in which the people appear at their festivities, and with the universal proofs of a prosperity which has been caused by industry and skill, and which has survived all the political changes of the times. * * * the unwearied assiduity of the peasants--who are to be seen actively employed the whole of every year and of every day, and who are never idle, because they understand how to arrange their work, and how to set apart for every time and season its appropriate duties--is as remarkable as their eagerness to avail themselves of every circumstance and of every new invention which can aid them, and their ingenuity in improving their resources, are praiseworthy. it is easy to perceive that the peasant of this district really understands his business. he can give reasons for the occasional failures of his operations; he knows and remembers clearly his pecuniary resources; he arranges his choice of fruits according to their prices; and he makes his calculations by the general signs and tidings of the weather."--_landwirthshaft der rheinpfalz_. the people of this country "stand untutored," says mr. kay, "except by experience; but," he continues-- "could the tourist hear these men in their blouses and thick gaiters converse on the subject, he would be surprised at the mass of practical knowledge they possess, and at the caution and yet the keenness with which they study these advantages. of this all may rest assured, that from the commencement of the offsets of the eifel, where the village cultivation assumes an individual and strictly local character, good reason can be given for the manner in which every inch of ground is laid out, as for every balm, root, or tree that covers it."--vol. i. . the system of agriculture is making rapid progress, as is always the case when the artisan is brought to the side of the husbandman. constant intercourse with each other sharpens the intellect, and men learn to know the extent of their powers. each step upward is but the preparation for a new and greater one, and therefore it is that everywhere among those small farmers, says mr. kay, "science is welcomed." "each," he continues-- "is so anxious to emulate and surpass his neighbours, that any new invention, which benefits one, is eagerly sought out and adopted by the others."--vol. i. . the quantity of stock that is fed is constantly and rapidly increasing, and, as a necessary consequence, the increase in the quantity of grain is more rapid than in the population, although that of prussia and saxony now increases faster than that of any other nation of europe.[ ] the land of germany is much divided. a part of this division was the work of governments which interfered between the owners and the peasants, and gave to the latter absolute rights over a part of the land they cultivated, instead of previous claims to rights of so uncertain a kind as rendered the peasant a mere slave to the land-owner. those rights, however, could not have been maintained had not the policy of the government tended to promote the growth of population and wealth. centralization would have tended to the reconsolidation of the land, as it has done in india, ireland, scotland, and england; but decentralization here gives value to land, and aids in carrying out the system commenced by government. professor reichensperger [ ] says-- "that the price of land which is divided into small properties, in the prussian rhine provinces, is much higher, and has been rising much more rapidly, than the price of land on the great estates. he and professor rau both say that this rise in the price of the small estates would have ruined the more recent, purchasers, unless the productiveness of the small estates had increased in at least an equal proportion; and as the small proprietors have been gradually becoming more and more prosperous, notwithstanding the increasing prices they have paid for their land, he argues, with apparent justness, that this would seem to show that not only the _gross_ profits of the small estates, but the _net_ profits also, have been gradually increasing, and that the _net_ profits per acre of land, when farmed by small proprietors, are greater than the net profits per acre of land farmed by great proprietors."--_kay_, vol. i. . the admirable effect of the division of land, which follows necessarily in the wake of the growth of population and wealth, is thus described by sismondi:--[ ] "wherever are found peasant proprietors, are also found that ease, that security, that independence, and that confidence in the future, which insure at the same time happiness and virtue. the peasant who, with his family, does all the work on his little inheritance, who neither pays rent to any one above him, nor wages to any one below him, who regulates his production by his consumption, who eats his own corn, drinks his own wine, and is clothed with his own flax and wool, cares little about knowing the price of the market; for he has little to sell and little to buy, and is never ruined by the revolutions of commerce. far from fearing for the future, it is embellished by his hopes; for he puts out to profit, for his children or for ages to come, every instant which is not required by the labour of the year. only a few moments, stolen from otherwise lost time, are required to put into the ground the nut which in a hundred years will become a large tree; to hollow out the aqueduct which will drain his field for ever; to form the conduit which will bring him a spring of water; to improve, by many little labours and attentions bestowed in spare moments, all the kinds of animals and vegetables by which he is surrounded. this little patrimony is a true savings-bank, always ready to receive his little profits, and usefully to employ his leisure moments. the ever-acting powers of nature make his labours fruitful, and return to him a hundredfold. the peasant has a strong sense of the happiness attached to the condition of proprietor. thus he is always eager to purchase land at any price. he pays for it more than it is worth; but what reason he has to esteem at a high price the advantage of thenceforward always employing his labour advantageously, without being obliged to offer it cheap, and of always finding his bread when he wants it, without being obliged to buy it dear!"--_kay_; vol. i. . the german people borrow from the earth, and they pay their debts; and this they are enabled to do because the market is everywhere near, and becoming nearer every day, as, with the increase of population and wealth, men are enabled to obtain better machinery of conversion and transportation. they are, therefore, says mr. kay-- "gradually acquiring capital, and their great ambition is to have land of their own. they eagerly seize every opportunity of purchasing a small farm; and the price is so raised by the competition, that land pays little more than two per cent. interest for the purchase-money. large properties gradually disappear, and are divided into small portions, which sell at a high rate. but the wealth and industry of the population is continually increasing, being rather through the masses, than accumulated in individuals."--vol. i. . the disappearance of large properties in germany proceeds, _pari passu_, with the disappearance of small ones in england. if the reader desire to know the views of adam smith as to the relative advantages of the two systems, he may turn to the description, from his pen, of the feelings of the small proprietor, given in a former chapter;[ ] after which he may profit by reading the following remarks of mr. kay, prompted by his observation of the course of things in germany:-- "but there can be no doubt that five acres, the property of an intelligent peasant, who farms it himself, in a country where the peasants have learned to farm, will always produce much more per acre than an equal number of acres will do when farmed by a mere _leasehold_ tenant. in the case of the peasant proprietor, the increased activity and energy of the farmer, and the deep interest he feels in the improvement of his land, which are always caused by the fact of _ownership_, more than compensate the advantage arising from the fact that the capital required to work the large farms is less in proportion to the quantity of land cultivated than the capital required to work the small farm. in the cases of a large farm and of a small farm, the occupiers of which are both tenants of another person, and not owners themselves, it may be true that the produce of the large farm will be greater in proportion to the capital employed in cultivation than that of the small farm; and that, therefore, the farming of the larger farm will be the most economical, and will render the largest rent to the landlord."--vol. i. . land is constantly changing hands, and "people of all classes," says mr. kay-- "are able to become proprietors. shopkeepers and labourers of the towns purchase gardens outside the towns, where they and their families work in the fine evenings, in raising vegetables and fruit for the use of their households; shopkeepers, who have laid by a little competence, purchase farms, to which they and their families retire from the toil and disquiet of a town life; farmers purchase the farms they used formerly to rent of great land-owners; while most of the peasants of these countries have purchased and live upon farms of their own, or are now economizing and laying by all that they can possibly spare from their earnings, in order therewith as soon as possible to purchase a farm or a garden."--vol. i. . we have here the strongest inducements to exertion and economy. every man seeks to have a little farm, or a garden, of his own, and all have, says mr. kay-- "the consciousness that they have their fate in their own hands; that their station in life depends upon their own exertions; that they can rise in the world, if they will, only be patient and laborious enough; that they can gain an independent position by industry and economy; that they are not cut off by an insurmountable barrier from the next step in the social scale; that it is possible to purchase a house and farm of their own; and that the more industrious and prudent they are, the better will be the position of their families: [and this consciousness] gives the labourers of those countries, where the land is not tied up in the hands of a few, an elasticity of feeling, a hopefulness, an energy, a pleasure in economy and labour, a distaste for expenditure upon gross sensual enjoyments,--which would only diminish the gradually increasing store,--and an independence of character, which the dependent and helpless labourers of the other country can never experience. in short, the life of a peasant in those countries where the land is not kept from subdividing by the laws is one of the highest moral education. his unfettered position stimulates him to better his condition, to economize, to be industrious, to husband his powers, to acquire moral habits, to use foresight, to gain knowledge about agriculture, and to give his children a good education, so that they may improve the patrimony and social position he will bequeath to them."--vol. i. . we have here the stimulus of hope of improvement--a state of things widely different from that described in a former chapter in relation to england, where, says the _times_, "once a peasant, a man must remain a peasant for ever." such is the difference between the one system, that looks to centralizing in the hands of a few proprietors of machinery power over the lives and fortunes of all the cultivators of the world, and the other, that looks to giving to all those cultivators power over themselves. the first is the system of slavery, and the last that of freedom. hope is the mother of industry, and industry in her turn begets temperance. "in the german and swiss towns," says mr. kay-- "there are no places to be compared to those sources of the demoralization of our town poor--the gin-palaces. there is very little drunkenness in either towns or villages, while the absence of the gin-palaces removes from the young the strong causes of degradation and corruption which exist at the doors of the english homes, affording scenes and temptations which cannot but inflict upon our labouring classes moral injury which they would not otherwise suffer." * * * "the total absence of intemperance and drunkenness at these, and indeed at all other fêtes in germany, is very singular. i never saw a drunken man either in prussia or saxony, and i was assured by every one that such a sight was rare. i believe the temperance of the poor to be owing to the civilizing effects of their education in the schools and in the army, to the saving and careful habits which the possibility of purchasing land; and the longing to purchase it, nourish in their minds, and to their having higher and more pleasurable amusements than the alehouse and hard drinking."-- vol. i. , . as a natural consequence of this, pauperism is rare, as will be seen by the following extract from a report of the prussian minister of statistics, given by mr. kay:-- "as our prussian agriculture raises so much more meat and bread on the same extent of territory than it used to do, it follows that agriculture must have been greatly increased both in science and industry. there are other facts which confirm the truth of this conclusion. the division of estates has, since , proceeded more and more throughout the country. there are now many more small independent proprietors than formerly. yet, however many complaints of pauperism are heard among the dependent labourers, we never heard it complained that pauperism is increasing among the peasant proprietors. nor do we hear that the estates of the peasants in the eastern provinces are becoming too small, _or that the system of freedom of disposition leads to too great a division of the father's land among the children_." * * * "_it is an almost universally acknowledged fact that the gross produce of the land, in grain, potatoes, and cattle, is increased when the land is cultivated by those who own small portions of it_; and if this had not been the case, it would have been impossible to raise as much of the necessary articles of food as has been wanted for the increasing population. even on the larger estates, the improvement in the system of agriculture is too manifest to admit of any doubt.... industry, and capital, and labour are expended upon the soil. it is rendered productive by means of manuring and careful tillage. the amount of the produce is increased.... the prices of the estates, on account of their increased productiveness, have increased. the great commons, many acres of which used to lie wholly uncultivated, are disappearing, and are being turned into meadows and fields. the cultivation of potatoes has increased very considerably. greater plots of lands are now devoted to the cultivation of potatoes than ever used to be.... the old system of the three-field system of agriculture, according to which one-third of the field used to be left always fallow, in order to recruit the land, is now scarcely ever to be met with.... with respect to the cattle, the farmers now labour to improve the breed. sheep-breeding is rationally and scientifically pursued on the great estates.... a remarkable activity in agricultural pursuits has been raised; and, as all attempts to improve agriculture are encouraged and assisted by the present government, agricultural colleges are founded, agricultural associations of scientific farmers meet in all provinces to suggest improvements to aid in carrying out experiments, and even the peasant proprietors form such associations among themselves, and establish model farms and institutions for themselves."--vol. i. . the english system, which looks to the consolidation of land and the aggrandizement of the large capitalist, tends, on the contrary, to deprive the labourer "of every worldly inducement to practise self-denial, prudence, and economy; it deprives him of every hope of rising in the world; it makes him totally careless about self-improvement, about the institutions of his country, and about the security of property; it undermines all his independence of character; it makes him dependent on the workhouse, or on the charity he can obtain by begging at the hall; and it renders him the fawning follower of the all-powerful land-owner."--vol. i. . the change that has taken place in the consumption of clothing is thus shown:-- per head in . in . ----------------- -------- ells of cloth............. / ............ - / " linen............. ............ " woollen stuffs.... / ............ " silks............. / ............ / "the sunday suit of the peasants," says mr. kay-- "in germany, switzerland, and holland rivals that of the middle classes. a stranger taken into the rooms where the village dances are held, and where the young men and young women are dressed in their best clothes, would often be unable to tell what class of people were around him." * * * "it is very curious and interesting, at the provincial fairs, to see not only what a total absence there is of any thing like the rags and filth of pauperism, but also what evidence of comfort and prosperity there is in the clean and comfortable attire of the women."--vol. i. , . in further evidence of the improvement of the condition of the female sex, he tells us that "an englishman, taken to the markets, fairs, and village festivals of these countries, would scarcely credit his eyes were he to see the peasant-girls who meet there to join in the festivities; they are so much more lady-like in their appearance, in their manners, and in their dress than those of our country parishes."--vol. i. . the contrast between the education of the children of the poor in germany and england is thus shown:-- "i advise my readers to spend a few hours in any of our back streets and alleys, those nurseries of vice and feeders of the jails, and to assure himself that children of the same class as those he will see in [these] haunts--dirty, rude, boisterous, playing in the mud with uncombed hair, filthy and torn garments, and skin that looks as if it had not been washed for months--are always, throughout germany, switzerland, denmark, holland, and a great part of france, either in school or in the school play-ground, clean, well-dressed, polite and civil in their manners, and healthy, intelligent, and happy in their appearance. it is this difference in the early life of the poor of the towns of these countries which explains the astonishing improvement which has taken place in the state of the back streets and alleys of many of their towns. the majority of their town poor are growing up with tastes which render them unfit to endure such degradation as the filth and misery of our town pauperism."--vol. i. . as a natural consequence, there is that tendency toward equality which everywhere else is attendant on _real_ freedom. "the difference," says mr. kay-- "between the condition of the juvenile population of these countries and of our own may be imagined, when i inform my readers that many of the boys and girls of the higher classes of society in these countries are educated at the same desks with the boys and girls of the poorest of the people, and that children comparable with the class which attends our 'ragged schools' are scarcely ever to be found. how impossible it would be to induce our gentry to let their children be educated with such children as frequent the 'ragged schools,' i need not remind my readers."--p. . this tendency to equality is further shown in the following passage:-- "the manners of the peasants in germany and switzerland form, as i have already said, a very singular contrast to the manners of our peasants. they are polite, but independent. the manner of salutation encourages this feeling. if a german gentleman addresses a peasant, he raises his hat before the poor man, as we do before ladies. the peasant replies by a polite 'pray be covered, sir,' and then, in good german, answers the questions put to him."--p. . with growing tendency to equality of fortune, as the people pass from slavery toward freedom, there is less of ostentatious display, and less necessity for that slavish devotion to labour remarked in england. "all classes," says mr. kay-- "in germany, switzerland, france, and holland are therefore satisfied with less income than the corresponding classes in england. they, therefore, devote less time to labour, and more time to healthy and improving recreation. the style of living among the mercantile classes of these countries is much simpler than in england, but their enjoyment of life is much greater."--vol. i. . as a consequence of this, the amusements of their leisure hours are of a more improving character, as is here seen:-- "the amusements of the peasants and operatives in the greater part of germany, switzerland, and holland, where they are well educated, and where they are generally proprietors of farms or gardens, are of a much higher and of a much more healthy character than those of the most prosperous of similar classes in england. indeed, it may be safely affirmed that the amusements of the poor in germany are of a higher character than the amusements of the lower part of the middle classes in england. this may at first seem a rather bold assertion; but it will not be thought so, when i have shown what their amusements are. "the gardens, which belong to the town labourers and small shopkeepers, afford their proprietors the healthiest possible kind of recreation after the labours of the day. but, independently of this, the mere amusements of the poor of these countries prove the civilization, the comfort, and the prosperity of their social state." * * * "there are, perhaps, no peasantry in the world who have so much healthy recreation and amusement as the peasants of germany, and especially as those of prussia and saxony. in the suburbs of all the towns of prussia and saxony regular garden, concerts and promenades are given. an admittance fee of from one penny to sixpence admits any one to these amusements." * * * "i went constantly to these garden-concerts. i rejoiced to see that it was possible for the richest and the poorest of the people to find a common meeting ground; that the poor did not live for labour only; and that the schools had taught the poor to find pleasure in such improving and civilizing pleasures. i saw daily proofs at these meetings of the excellent effects of the social system of germany. i learned there how high a civilization the poorer classes of a nation are capable of attaining under a well-arranged system of those laws which affect the social condition of a people. i found proofs at these meetings of the truth of that which i am anxious to teach my countrymen, that the poorer classes of germany are much less pauperized, much more civilized, and much happier than our own peasantry." * * * "the dancing itself, even in those tents frequented by the poorest peasants, is quite as good, and is conducted with quite as much decorum, as that of the first ballrooms of london. the polka, the waltz, and several dances not known in england, are danced by the german peasants with great elegance. they dance quicker than we do; and, from the training in music which they receive from their childhood, and for many years of their lives, the poorest peasants dance in much better time than english people generally do."--vol. i. , , , . how strikingly does the following view of the state of education contrast with that given in a former chapter in relation to the education of the poor of england!-- "four years ago the prussian government made a general inquiry throughout the kingdom, to discover how far the school education of the people had been extended; and it was then ascertained that, out of all the young men in the kingdom who had attained the age of twenty-one years, _only two in every hundred were unable to read_. this fact was communicated to me by the inspector-general of the kingdom. "the poor of these countries read a great deal more than even those of our own country who are able to read. it is a general custom in germany and switzerland for four or five families of labourers to club together, and to subscribe among themselves for one or two of the newspapers which come out once or twice a week. these papers are passed from family to family, or are interchanged." * * * "i remember one day, when walking near berlin in the company of herr hintz, a professor in dr. diesterweg's normal college, and of another teacher, we saw a poor woman cutting up in the road logs of wood for winter use. my companions pointed her out to me, and said, 'perhaps you will scarcely believe it, but in the neighbourhood of berlin poor women, like that one, read translations of sir walter scott's novels, and of many of the interesting works of your language, besides those of the principal writers of germany.' this account was afterward confirmed by the testimony of several other persons. "often and often have i seen the poor cab-drivers of berlin, while waiting for a fare, amusing themselves by reading german books, which they had brought with them in the morning expressly for the purpose of supplying amusement and occupation for their leisure hours. "in many parts of these countries, the peasants and the workmen of the towns attend regular weekly lectures or weekly classes, where they practise singing or chanting, or learn mechanical drawing, history, or science. "as will be seen afterward, women as well, as men, girls as well as boys, enjoy in these countries the same advantages, and go through the same, school education. the women of the poorer classes of these countries, in point of intelligence and knowledge, are almost equal to the men."--p. , . these facts would seem fully to warrant the author in his expression of the belief that "the moral, intellectual, and social condition of the peasants and operatives of those parts of germany, holland, switzerland, and france where the poor have been educated, where the land has been released from the feudal laws, and where the peasants have been enabled to acquire, is very much higher, happier, and more satisfactory than that of the peasants and operatives of england; and that while these latter are struggling in the deepest ignorance, pauperism, and moral degradation, the former are steadily and progressively attaining a condition, both socially and politically considered, of a higher, happier, and more hopeful character."--vol. i. . the extensive possession of property produces here, as everywhere, respect for the rights of property. "in the neighbourhood of towns," says mr. kay-- "the land is scarcely any more enclosed, except in the case of the small gardens which surround the houses, than in the more rural districts. yet this right is seldom abused. the condition of the lands near a german, or swiss, or dutch town is as orderly, as neat, and as undisturbed by trespassers as in the most secluded and most strictly preserved of our rural districts. all the poor have friends or relations who are themselves proprietors. every man, however poor, feels that he himself may, some day or other, become a proprietor. all are, consequently, immediately interested in the preservation of property, and in watching over the rights and interests of their neighbours."--p. . how strongly the same cause tends to the maintenance of public order, may be seen on a perusal of the following passages:-- "every peasant who possesses one of these estates becomes interested in the maintenance of public order, in the tranquillity of the country, in the suppression of crimes, in the fostering of industry among his own children, and in the promotion of their intelligence. a class of peasant proprietors forms the strongest of all conservative classes." * * * "throughout all the excitement of the revolutions of , the peasant proprietors of france, germany, holland, and switzerland were almost universally found upon the side of order, and opposed to revolutionary excesses. it was only in the provinces where the land was divided among the nobles, and where the peasants were only serfs, as in the polish provinces, bohemia, austria, and some parts of south germany, that they showed themselves rebellious. in prussia they sent deputation after deputation to frederic william, to assure him of their support; in one province the peasant proprietors elected his brother as their representative; and in others they declared, by petition after petition forwarded to the chamber, and by the results of the elections, how strongly they were opposed to the anarchical party in berlin."--vol. i. , . it is where land acquires value that men become free, and the more rapid the growth of value in land, the more rapid has ever been the growth of freedom. to enable it to acquire value, the artisan and the ploughman _must_ take their places by the side of each other; and the greater the tendency to this, the more rapid will be the progress of man toward moral, intellectual, and political elevation. it is in this direction that all the policy of germany now tends, whereas that of england tends toward destroying everywhere the value of labour and land, and everywhere impairing the condition of man. the one system tends to the establishment everywhere of mills, furnaces, and towns, places of exchange, in accordance with the view of dr. smith, who tells us that "had human institutions never disturbed the natural course of things, the progressive wealth and increase of the towns would, in every political society, be consequential and in proportion to the improvement and cultivation of the territory and country." the other tends toward building up london and liverpool, manchester and birmingham, at the cost of enormous taxation imposed upon all the farmers and planters of the world; and its effects in remote parts of the united kingdom itself, compared with those observed in germany, are thus described: "if any one has travelled in the mountainous parts of scotland and wales, where the farmers are only under-lessees of great landlords, without security of tenure, and liable to be turned out of possession with half a year's notice, and where the peasants are only labourers, without any land of their own, and generally without even the use of a garden; if he has travelled in the mountainous parts of switzerland, saxony, and the hilly parts of the prussian rhine provinces, where most of the farmers and peasants possess, or can by economy and industry obtain, land of their own; and if he has paid any serious attention to the condition of the farms, peasants, and children of these several countries, he cannot fail to have observed the astonishing superiority of the condition of the peasants, children, and farms in the last-mentioned countries. "the miserable cultivation, the undrained and rush-covered valleys, the great number of sides of hills, terraces on the rocks, sides of streams, and other places capable of the richest cultivation, but wholly disused, even for game preserves; the vast tracts of the richest lands lying in moors, and bogs, and swamps, and used only for the breeding-places of game, and deer, and vermin, while the poor peasants are starving beside them; the miserable huts of cottages, with their one story, their two low rooms, their wretched and undrained floors, and their dilapidated roofs; and the crowds of miserable, half-clad, ragged, dirty, uncombed, and unwashed children, never blessed with any education, never trained in cleanliness or morality, and never taught any pure religion, are as astounding on the one hand as the happy condition of the peasants in the protestant cantons of switzerland, in the tyrol, in saxony, and in the mountainous parts of the prussian rhine provinces, is pleasing upon the other--where every plot of land that can bear any thing is brought into the most beautiful state of cultivation; where the valleys are richly and scientifically farmed; where the manures are collected with the greatest care; where the houses are generally large, roomy, well-built, and in excellent repair, and are improving every day; where the children are beautifully clean, comfortably dressed, and attending excellent schools; and where the condition of the people is one of hope, industry, and progress."--vol. i. . the artisan has ever been the ally of the farmer in his contests with those who sought to tax him, let the form of taxation be what it might. the tendency of the british system is everywhere toward separating the two, and _using each to crush the other_. hence it is that in all the countries subject to the system there is an abjectness of spirit not to be found in other parts of the world. the vices charged by the english journals on the people of ireland are those of slavery--falsehood and dissimulation. the hindoo of bengal is a mean and crouching animal, compared with the free people of the upper country who have remained under their native princes. throughout england there is a deference to rank, a servility, a toadyism, entirely inconsistent with progress in civilization.[ ] the english labourer is, says mr. howitt [ ]-- "so cut off from the idea of property, that he comes habitually to look upon it as a thing from which he is warned by the laws of the great proprietors, and becomes in consequence spiritless, purposeless." compare with this the following description of a german bauer, from the same authority:-- "the german bauer, on the contrary, looks on the country as made for him and his fellow-men. he feels himself a man; he has a stake in the country as good as that of the bulk of his neighbours; no man can threaten him with ejection or the workhouse so long as he is active and economical. he walks, therefore, with a bold step; he looks you in the face with the air of a free man, but of a respectful one."--_ibid_. the reader may now advantageously compare the progress of the last half century in ireland and in germany. doing so, he will see that in the former there has been a steady tendency to the expulsion of the mechanic, the exhaustion of the soil, the consolidation of the land, and the resolution of the whole nation into a mass of wretched tenants at will, holding under the middleman agent of the great absentee landlord, with constant decline in the material, moral, and intellectual condition of all classes of society, and constantly increasing inability on the part of the nation to assert its rights. seventy years since the irish people extorted the admission of their right to legislate for themselves, whereas now the total disappearance of the nation from among the communities of the world is regarded as a thing to be prayed for, and a calculation is made that but twenty-four more years will be required, at the present rate, for its total extinction. in germany, on the contrary, the mechanic is everywhere invited, and towns are everywhere growing. the soil is being everywhere enriched, and agricultural knowledge is being diffused throughout the nation; and land so rapidly acquires value that it is becoming more divided from day to day. the proprietor is everywhere taking the place of the serf, and the demand for labour becomes steady and man becomes valuable. the people are everywhere improving in their material and moral condition; and so rapid is the improvement of intellectual condition, that german literature now commands the attention of the whole civilized world. with each step in this direction, there is an increasing tendency toward union and peace, whereas as ireland declines there is an increasing tendency toward discord, violence, and crime. having studied these things, the reader may then call to mind that ireland has thus declined, although, in the whole half century, her soil has never been pressed by the foot of an enemy in arms, whereas germany has thus improved, although repeatedly overrun and plundered by hostile armies. chapter xvii. how freedom grows in russia. among the nations of the world whose policy looks to carrying out the views of adam smith, in bringing the artisan as near as possible to the food and the wool, russia stands distinguished. the information we have in reference to the movements of that country is limited; but all of it tends to prove that with the growth of population and wealth, and with the increased diversification of labour, land is acquiring value, and man is advancing rapidly toward freedom. "the industry of russia," says a recent american journal-- "has been built up, as alone the industry of a nation can be, under a system of protection, from time to time modified as experience has dictated; but never destroyed by specious abstractions or the dogmas of mere doctrinaires. fifty years ago manufactures were unknown there, and the caravans trading to the interior and supplying the wants of distant tribes in asia went laden with the products of british and other foreign workshops. when the present emperor mounted the throne, in , the country could not produce the cloth required to uniform its own soldiers; further back, in , the exportation of coloured cloth was prohibited under severe penalties; but through the influence of adequate protection, as early as , russian cloth was taken by the caravans to kiachta; and at this day the markets of all central asia are supplied by the fabrics of russian looms, which in affghanistan and china are crowding british cloths entirely out of sale--notwithstanding the latter have the advantage in transportation--while in tartary and russia itself british woollens are now scarcely heard of. in there were in russia cloth factories; in , ; in there were cotton factories; in , . from to the whole number of manufacturing establishments in the empire more than trebled, and since then they have increased in a much greater ratio, though from the absence of official statistics we are not able to give the figures. of the total amount of manufactured articles consumed in , but one-sixth were imported. and along with this vast aggrandizement of manufacturing industry and commerce, there has been a steady increase of both imports and exports, as well as of revenue from customs. the increase in imports has consisted of articles of luxury and raw materials for manufacture. and, as if to leave nothing wanting in the demonstration, the increase of exports has constantly included more and more of the products of agriculture. thus in this empire we see what we must always see under an adequate and judicious system of protection, that a proper tariff not only improves, refines, and diversifies the labour of a country, but enlarges its commerce, increases the prosperity of its agricultural population, renders the people better and better able to contribute to the support of the government, and raises the nation to a position of independence and real equality among the powers of the globe. all this is indubitably proved by the example of russia, for there protection has been steady and adequate, and the consequences are what we have described."--_n. york tribune_. the reader may advantageously compare the following sketch, from the same source, of the present position of russia, so recently a scene of barbarism, with that already laid before him, of her neighbour turkey, whose policy commands to so great an extent the admiration of those economists who advocate the system which looks to converting the whole world outside of england into one vast farm, and all its people, men, women, and children, into field labourers, dependent on one great workshop in which to make all their exchanges:-- "russia, we are told, is triumphant in the great exhibition. her natural products excite interest and admiration for their variety and excellence; her works of art provoke astonishment for their richness and beauty. her jewellers and gold-workers carry off the palm from even those of paris. her satins and brocades compete with the richest contributions of lyons. she exhibits tables of malachite and caskets of ebony, whose curious richness indicates at once the lavish expenditure of a barbaric court, and the refinement and taste of civilization. nor do we deem it of much account that her part of the exhibition is not exclusively the work of native artisans. her satins are none the less genuine product of the country because the loveliest were woven by emigrants from the _croix rousse_ or the _guillotiére_, seduced by high wages from their sunnier home in order to build up the industry of the great empire and train the grandsons of mongol savages in the exquisite mysteries of french taste and dexterity. it matters not that the exhibition offers infinitely more than a fair illustration of the average capacity of russian labour. it is none the less true that a people who half a century ago were without manufactures of any but the rudest kind, are now able by some means to furnish forth an unsurpassed display, though all the world is there to compete with them. "we are no lover of russian power, and have no wish to exaggerate the degree of perfection to which russian industry has attained. we do not doubt that any cotton factory in the environs of moscow might be found imperfect when contrasted with one of manchester or lowell. we are confident that the artisans of a new-england village very far surpass those of a russian one in most qualities of intelligence and manhood. indeed, it is absurd to make the comparison; it is absurd to do what travellers insist on doing--that is, to judge every nation by the highest standard, and pronounce each a failure which does not exhibit the intellect of france, the solidity and power of england, or the enterprise, liberty, and order of the united states. all that should be asked is, whether a people has surpassed its own previous condition and is in the way of improvement and progress. and that, in respect of industry, at least, russia is in that way, her show at the exhibition may safely be taken as a brilliant and conclusive proof." russia is powerful, and is becoming more so daily. why is it so? it is because her people are daily more and more learning the advantages of diversification of labour and combination of exertion, and more and more improving in their physical and intellectual condition--the necessary preliminaries to an improvement of their political condition. turkey is weak; and why is it so? because among her people the habit of association is daily passing away as the few remaining manufactures disappear, and as the travelling pedler supersedes the resident shopkeeper. it is said, however, that russian policy is unfavorable to commerce; but is not its real tendency that of producing a great internal commerce upon which alone a great foreign one can be built? that it does produce the effect of enabling her people to combine their exertions for their common benefit is most certain; and equally so that it tends to give her that direct intercourse with the world which is essential to the existence of freedom. the slave trades with the world through his master, who fixes the price of the labour he has to sell and the food and clothing he has to buy, and this is exactly the system that great britain desires to establish for the farmers of the world--she being the only buyer of raw products, and the only seller of manufactured ones. so long as russia exports only food and hemp, she can trade with brazil for sugar, and with carolina for cotton, only through the medium of british ships, british ports, british merchants, and british looms, for she can need no raw cotton; but with the extension of manufactures she needs cotton, which she can draw directly from the planter, paying him in iron, by aid of which he may have machinery. in illustration of this, we have the fact that so recently as in , out of a total consumption of cotton amounting to , cwts., no less than , cwts. had passed through british spindles; whereas in , out of a total consumption more than one-half greater, and amounting to , cwts., only , cwts. had passed through the hands of the spinners of manchester. the export of raw cotton to russia has since largely increased, but the precise extent of increase cannot be ascertained, although some estimate may be formed from the growth of the consumption of one of the principal dyeing materials, indigo; the export of which from england to russia is thus given in the london _economist_:-- . . . . ----- ----- ----- ----- chests, ....... ....... ....... we have here an increase in three years of almost sixty per cent., proving a steady increase in the power to obtain clothing and to maintain commerce internal and external, directly the reverse of what has been observed in turkey, ireland, india, and other countries in which the british system prevails; and the reason of this is that that system looks to destroying the power of association. it would have all the people of india engage themselves in raising cotton, and all those of brazil and cuba in raising sugar, while those of germany and russia should raise food and wool; and we know well that when all are farmers, or all planters, the power of association scarcely exists; the consequence of which is seen in the exceeding weakness of all the communities of the world in which the plough and the loom, the hammer and the harrow, are prevented from coming together. it is an unnatural one. men everywhere seek to combine their exertions with those of their fellow-men; an object sought to be attained by the introduction of that diversification of employment advocated throughout his work by the author of _the wealth of nations_. how naturally the habit of association arises, and how beneficial are its effects, may be seen from a few extracts now offered to the reader, from an interesting article in a recent english journal. in russia, says its author-- "there does not prevail that marked distinction between the modes of life of the dwellers in town and country which is found in other countries; and the general freedom of trade, which in other nations is still an object of exertion, has existed in russia since a long by-gone period. a strong manufacturing and industrial tendency prevails in a large portion of russia, which, based upon the communal system, has led to the formation of what we may term 'national association factories.'" in corroboration of this view of the general freedom of internal trade, we are told that, widely different from the system of western europe, "there exists no such thing as a trade guild, or company, nor any restraint of a similar nature. any member of a commune can at pleasure abandon the occupation he may be engaged in, and take up another; all that he has to do in effecting the change is to quit the commune in which his old trade is carried on, and repair to another, where his new one is followed." the tendency of manufacturing industry is "for the most part entirely communal; the inhabitants of one village, for example, are all shoemakers, in another smiths, in a third tanners only, and so on. a natural division of labor thus prevails exactly as in a factory. the members of the commune mutually assist one another with capital or labor; purchases are usually made in common, and sales also invariably, but they always send their manufactures in a general mass to the towns and market-places, where they have a common warehouse for their disposal." in common with all countries that are as yet unable fully to carry out the idea of adam smith, of compressing a large quantity of food and wool into a piece of cloth, and thus fitting it for cheap transportation to distant markets, and which are, therefore, largely dependent on those distant markets for the sale of raw produce, the cultivation of the soil in russia is not-- "in general, very remunerative, and also can only be engaged in for a few months in the year, which is, perhaps, the reason why the peasant in russia evinces so great an inclination for manufactures and other branches of industry, the character of which generally depends on the nature of raw products found in the districts where they are followed." without diversification of employment much labour would be wasted, and the people would find themselves unable to purchase clothing or machinery of cultivation. throughout the empire the labourer appears to follow in the direction indicated by nature, working up the materials on the land on which they are produced, and thus economizing transportation. thus-- "in the government of yaroslaf the whole inhabitants of one place are potters. upward of two thousand inhabitants in another place are rope-makers and harness-makers. the population of the district of uglitich in sent three millions of yards of linen cloth to the markets of rybeeck and moscow. the peasants on one estate are all candle-makers, on a second they are all manufacturers of felt hats, and on a third they are solely occupied in smiths' work, chiefly the making of axes. in the district of pashechoe there are about seventy tanneries, which give occupation to a large number of families; they have no paid workmen, but perform all the operations among themselves, preparing leather to the value of about twenty-five thousand roubles a year, and which is disposed of on their account in rybeeck. in the districts where the forest-trees mostly consist of lindens, the inhabitants are principally engaged in the manufacture of matting, which, according to its greater or less degree of fineness, is employed either for sacking or sail cloth, or merely as packing mats. the linden-tree grows only on moist soils, rich in black _humus_, or vegetable mould; but will not grow at all in sandy soils, which renders it comparatively scarce in some parts of russia, while in others it grows abundantly. the mats are prepared from the inner bark, and as the linden is ready for stripping at only fifteen years of age, and indeed is best at that age, these trees form a rich source of profit for those who dwell in the districts where they grow." we have here a system of combined exertion that tends greatly to account for the rapid progress of russia in population, wealth, and power. the men who thus associate for local purposes acquire information, and with it the desire for more; and thus we find them passing freely, as interest may direct them, from one part of the empire to another--a state of things very different from that produced in england by the law of settlement, under which men have everywhere been forbidden to change their locality, and everywhere been liable to be seized and sent back to their original parishes, lest they might at some time or other become chargeable upon the new one in which they had desired to find employment, for which they had sought in vain at home. "the russian" says our author-- "has a great disposition for wandering about beyond his native place, but not for travelling abroad. the love of home seems to be merged, to a great extent, in love of country. a russian feels himself at home everywhere within russia; and, in a political sense, this rambling disposition of the people, and the close intercourse between the inhabitants of the various provinces to which it leads, contributes to knit a closer bond of union between the people, and to arouse and maintain a national policy and a patriotic love of country. although he may quit his native place, the russian never wholly severs the connection with it; and, as we have before mentioned, being fitted by natural talent to turn his hand to any species of work, he in general never limits himself in his wanderings to any particular occupation, but tries at several; but chooses whatever may seem to him the most advantageous. when they pursue any definite extensive trade, such as that of a carpenter, mason, or the like, in large towns, they associate together, and form a sort of trades' association, and the cleverest assume the position of a sort of contractor for the labour required. thus, if a nobleman should want to build a house, or even a palace, in st. petersburgh, he applies to such a contractor, (_prodratshnik_,) lays before him the elevation and plans, and makes a contract with him to do the work required for a specified sum. the contractor then makes an agreement with his comrades respecting the assistance they are to give, and the share they are to receive of the profit; after which he usually sets off to his native place, either alone or with some of his comrades, to obtain the requisite capital to carry on the work with. the inhabitants, who also have their share of the gains, readily make up the necessary sum, _and every thing is done in trust and confidence_; it is, indeed, very rare to hear of frauds in these matters. the carpenters (_plotniki_) form a peculiar class of the workmen we have described. as most of the houses in russia, and especially in the country parts, are built of wood, the number and importance of the carpenters, as a class, are very great in comparison with other countries. almost every peasant, whatever other trade he may follow, is also something of a carpenter, and knows how to shape and put together the timbers for a dwelling. the _plotniki_ in the villages are never any thing more than these general carpenters, and never acquire any regular knowledge of their business. the real russian _plotniki_ seldom carries any other tools with him than an axe and a chisel, and with these he wanders through all parts of the empire, seeking, and everywhere finding, work." the picture here presented is certainly widely different from that presented by great britain and ireland. a russian appears to be at home everywhere in russia. he wanders where he will, everywhere seeking and finding work; whereas an irishman appears hardly to be at home anywhere within the limits of the united kingdom. in england, and still more in scotland, he is not acknowledged as a fellow-citizen. he is _only an irishman_--one of those half-savage celts intended by nature to supply the demand of england for cheap labour; that is, for that labour which is to be rewarded by the scantiest supplies of food and clothing. the difference in the moral effect of the two systems is thus very great. the one tends to bring about that combination of exertion which everywhere produces a kindly habit of feeling, whereas the other tends everywhere to the production of dissatisfaction and gloom; and it is so because that under it there is necessarily a constant increase of the feeling that every man is to live by the taxation of his neighbour, buying cheaply what that neighbour has to sell, and selling dearly what that neighbour has to buy. the existence of this state of things is obvious to all familiar with the current literature of england, which abounds in exhibitions of the tendency of the system to render man a tyrant to his wife, his daughter, his horse, and even his dog. a recent english traveller in russia presents a different state of feeling as there existing. "the russian coachman," he says-- "seldom uses his whip, and generally only knocks with it upon the footboard of the sledge, by way of a gentle admonition to his steed, with whom, meanwhile, he keeps up a running colloquy, seldom giving him harder words than _'my brother--my friend--my little pigeon--my sweetheart_.' 'come, my pretty pigeon, make use of your legs,' he will say. 'what, now! art blind? come, be brisk! take care of that stone, there. don't see it?--there, that's right! bravo! hop, hop, hop! steady boy, steady! what art turning thy head for? look out boldly before thee!--hurra! yukh! yukh!' "i could not," he continues, "help contrasting this with the offensive language we constantly hear in england from carters and boys employed in driving horses. you are continually shocked by the oaths used. they seem to think the horses will not go unless they swear at them; and boys consider it manly to imitate this example, and learn to swear too, and break god's commandments by taking his holy name in vain. and this while making use of a fine, noble animal he has given for our service and not for abuse. there is much unnecessary cruelty in the treatment of these dumb creatures, for they are often beaten when doing their best, or from not understanding what their masters want them to do." of the truth of this, as regards england, the journals of that country often furnish most revolting evidence; but the mere fact that there exists there a society for preventing cruelty to animals, would seem to show that its services had been much needed. the manner in which the system of diversified labour is gradually extending personal freedom among the people of russia, and preparing them eventually for the enjoyment of the highest degree of political freedom, is shown in the following passage. "the landholders," says the author before referred to-- "having serfs, gave them permission to engage in manufactures, and to seek for work for themselves where they liked, on the mere condition of paying their lord a personal tax, (_obrok_). each person is rated according to his personal capabilities, talents, and capacities, at a certain capital; and according to what he estimates himself capable of gaining, he is taxed at a fixed sum as interest of that capital. actors and singers are generally serfs, and they are obliged to pay _obrok_, for the exercise of their art, as much as the lowest handicraftsman. in recent times, the manufacturing system of western europe has been introduced into russia, and the natives have been encouraged to establish all sorts of manufactures on these models; and it remains to be seen whether the new system will have the anticipated effect of contributing to the formation of a middle class, which hitherto has been the chief want in russia as a political state." that such must be the effect cannot be doubted. the middle class has everywhere grown with the growth of towns and other places of local exchange, and men have become free precisely as they have been able to unite together for the increase of the productiveness of their labour. in every part of the movement which thus tends to the emancipation of the serf, the government is seen to be actively co-operating, and it is scarcely possible to read an account of what is there being done without a feeling of great respect for the emperor, "so often," says a recent writer, "denounced as a deadly foe to freedom--the true father of his country, earnestly striving to develop and mature the rights of his subjects."[ ] for male serfs, says the same author, at all times until recently, military service was the only avenue to freedom. it required, however, twenty years' service, and by the close of that time the soldier became so accustomed to that mode of life that he rarely left it. a few years since, however, the term was shortened to eight years, and thousands of men are now annually restored to civil life, free men, who but a few years previously had been slaves, liable to be bought and sold with the land. formerly the lord had the same unlimited power of disposing of his serfs that is now possessed by the people of our southern states. the serf was a mere chattel, an article of traffic and merchandise; and husbands and wives, parents and children, were constantly liable to be separated from each other. by an ukase of , however, they were declared an integral and inseparable portion of the soil. "the immediate consequence of this decree," says mr. jerrmann,[ ] "was the cessation, at least in its most repulsive form, of the degrading traffic in human flesh, by sale, barter, or gift. thenceforward no serf could be transferred to another owner, except by the sale of the land to which he belonged. to secure to itself the refusal of the land and the human beings appertaining to it, and at the same time to avert from the landholder the ruin consequent on dealings with usurers, the government established an imperial loan-bank, which made advances on mortgage of lands to the extent of two-thirds of their value. the borrowers had to pay back each year three per cent of the loan, besides three per cent. interest. if they failed to do this, the crown returned them the instalments already paid, gave them the remaining third of the value of the property, and took possession of the land and its population. this was the first stage of freedom for the serfs. they became crown peasants, held their dwellings and bit of land as an hereditary fief from the crown, and paid annually for the same a sum total of five rubles, (about four shillings for each male person;) a rent for which, assuredly, in the whole of germany, the very poorest farm is not to be had; to say nothing of the consideration that in case of bad harvests, destruction by hail, disease, &c., the crown is bound to supply the strict necessities of its peasant, and to find them in daily bread, in the indispensable stock of cattle and seed-corn, to repair their habitations, and so forth. "by this arrangement, and in a short time, a considerable portion of the lands of the russian nobility became the property of the state, and with it a large number of serfs became crown peasants. this was the first and most important step toward opening the road to freedom to that majority of the russian population which consists of slaves." we have here the stage of preparation for that division of the land which has, in all countries of the world, attended the growth of wealth and population, and which is essential to further growth not only in wealth but in freedom. consolidation of the land has everywhere been the accompaniment of slavery, and so must it always be. at the next step, we find the emperor bestowing upon the serf, as preparatory to entire freedom, certain civil rights. an ukase "permitted them to enter into contracts. thereby was accorded to them not only the right of possessing property, but the infinitely higher blessing of a legal recognition of their moral worth as men. hitherto the serf was recognised by the state only as a sort of beast in human form. he could hold no property, give no legal evidence, take no oath. no matter how eloquent his speech, he was dumb before the law. he might have treasures in his dwelling, the law knew him only as a pauper. his word and honor were valueless compared to those of the vilest freeman. in short, morally he could not be said to exist. the emperor nicholas gave to the serfs, that vast majority of his subjects, the first sensation of moral worth, the first throb of self-respect, the first perception of the rights and dignity and duty of man! what professed friend of the people can boast to have done more, or yet so much, for so many millions of men?"--_ibid_, p. . "having given the serfs power to hold property, the emperor now," says our author, "taught them to prize the said property above all in the interest of their freedom." the serf "could, not buy his own freedom, but he became free by the purchase of the patch of soil to which he was linked. to such purchase the right of contract cleared his road. the lazy russian, who worked with an ill-will toward his master, doing as little as he could for the latter's profit, toiled day and night for his own advantage. idleness was replaced by the diligent improvement of his farm, brutal drunkenness by frugality and sobriety; the earth, previously neglected, requited the unwonted care with its richest treasures. by the magic of industry, wretched hovels were transformed into comfortable dwellings, wildernesses into blooming fields, desolate steppes and deep morasses into productive land; whole communities, lately sunk in poverty, exhibited unmistakable signs of competency and well-doing. the serfs, now allowed to enter into contracts, lent the lord of the soil the money of which he often stood in need, on the same conditions as the crown, receiving in security the land they occupied, their own bodies, and the bodies of their wives and children. the nobleman preferred the serfs' loan to the government's loan, because, when pay-day came for the annual interest and instalment, the crown, if he was not prepared to pay, took possession of his estate, having funds wherewith to pay him the residue of its value. the parish of serfs, which had lent money to its owner, lacked these funds. pay-day came, the debtor did not pay, but neither could the serfs produce the one-third of the value of the land which they must disburse to him in order to be free. thus they lost their capital and did not gain their liberty. but nicholas lived! the father of his subjects. "between the anxious debtor and the still more anxious creditor now interposed an imperial ukase, which in such cases opened to the parishes of serfs the imperial treasury. mark this; for it is worthy, to be noted; the russian imperial treasury was opened to the serfs, that they might purchase their freedom! "the government might simply have released the creditors from their embarrassment by paying the debtor the one-third still due to him, and then land and tenants belonged to the state;--one parish the more of _crown peasants_. nicholas did not adopt that course. he lent the serfs the money they needed to buy themselves from their master, and for this loan (a third only of the value) they mortgaged themselves and their lands to the crown, paid annually three per cent. interest and three per cent. of the capital, and would thus in about thirty years be free, and proprietors of their land! that they would be able to pay off this third was evident, since, to obtain its amount they had still the same resources which enabled them to save up the two-thirds already paid. supposing, however, the very worst,--that through inevitable misfortunes, such as pestilence, disease of cattle, &c., they were prevented satisfying the rightful claims of the crown, in that case the crown paid them back the two-thirds value which they had previously disbursed to their former owner, and they became a parish of crown peasants, whose lot, compared to their earlier one, was still enviable. but not once in a hundred times do such cases occur, while, by the above plan, whole parishes gradually acquire their freedom, not by a sudden and violent change, which could not fail to have some evil consequences, but in course of time, after a probation of labour and frugality, and after thus attaining to the knowledge that without these two great factors of true freedom, no real liberty can possibly be durable."--_ibid_. the free peasants as yet constitute small class, but they live "as free and happy men, upon their own land; are active, frugal, and, without exception, well off. this they must be, for considerable means are necessary for the purchase of their freedom; and, once free, and in possession of a farm of their own, their energy and industry, manifested even in a state of slavery, are redoubled by the enjoyment of personal liberty, and their earnings naturally increase in a like measure. "the second class, the crown peasants, are far better off (setting aside, of course, the consciousness of freedom) than the peasants of germany. they must furnish their quota of recruits, but that is their only material burden. besides that, they annually pay to the crown a sum of five rubles (about four shillings) for each male person of the household. supposing the family to include eight working men, which is no small number for a farm, the yearly tribute paid amounts to thirty-two shillings. and what a farm that must be which employs eight men all the year round! in what country of civilized europe has the peasant so light a burden to bear? how much heavier those which press upon the english farmer, the french, the german, and above all the austrian, who often gives up three-fourths of his harvest in taxes. if the crown peasant be so fortunate as to be settled in the neighbourhood of a large town, his prosperity soon exceeds that even of the altenburg husbandmen, said to be the richest in all germany. on the other hand, he can never purchase his freedom; hitherto, at least, no law of the crown has granted him this privilege."--_ibid_, . that this, however, is the tendency of every movement, must be admitted by all who have studied the facts already given, and who read the following account of the commencement of local self-government:-- "but what would our ardent anti-russians say, if i took them into the interior of the empire, gave them an insight into the organization of parishes, and showed them, to their infinite astonishment, what they never yet dreamed of, that the whole of that organization is based upon republican principles, that there every thing has its origin in election by the people, and that that was already the case at a period when the great mass of german democrats did not so much as know the meaning of popular franchise. certainly the russian serfs do not know at the present day what it means; but without knowing the name of the thing, without having ever heard a word of lafayette's ill-omened '_trône monarchique, environné d'institutions républicaines_,' they choose their own elders, their administrators, their dispensers of justice and finance, and never dream that they, _slaves_, enjoy and benefit by privileges by which some of the most civilized nations have proved themselves incapable of profiting. "space does not here permit a more extensive sketch of what the emperor nicholas has done, and still is daily doing, for the true freedom of his subjects; but what i have here brought forward must surely suffice to place him, in the eyes of every unprejudiced person, in the light of a real lover of his people. that his care has created a paradise that no highly criminal abuse of power, no shameful neglect prevails in the departments of justice and police--it is hoped no reflecting reader will infer from this exposition of facts. but the still-existing abuses alter nothing in my view of the emperor's character, of his assiduous efforts to raise his nation out of the deep slough in which it still is partly sunk, of his efficacious endeavours to elevate his people to a knowledge and use of their rights as men--alter nothing in my profound persuasion that czar nicholas i. is the true father of his country."--_ibid_, . we are told that the policy, of russia is adverse to the progress of civilization, while that of england is favourable to it, and that we should aid the latter in opposing the former. how is this to be proved? shall we look to ireland for the proof? if we do, we shall meet there nothing but famine, pestilence, and depopulation. or to scotland, where men, whose ancestors had occupied the same spot for centuries are being hunted down that they may be transported to the shores of the st. lawrence, there to perish, as they so recently have done, of cold and of hunger? or to india, whose whole class of small proprietors and manufacturers has disappeared under the blighting influence of her system, and whose commerce diminishes, now from year to year? or to portugal, the weakest and most wretched of the communities of europe? or to china, poisoned with _smuggled_ opium, that costs the nation annually little less than forty millions of dollars, without which the indian government could not be maintained? look where we may, we see a growing tendency toward slavery wherever the british system is permitted to obtain; whereas freedom grows in the ratio in which that system is repudiated. that such must necessarily be the case will be seen by every reader who will for a moment reflect on the difference between the effect of the russian system on the condition of russian women, and that of the british system on the condition of those of india. in the former there is everywhere arising a demand for women to be employed in the lighter labour of conversion, and thus do they tend from day to day to become more self-supporting, and less dependent on the will of husbands, brothers, or sons. in the other the demand for their labour has passed away, and their condition declines, and so it must continue to do while manchester shall be determined upon closing the domestic demand for cotton and driving the whole population to the production of sugar, rice, and cotton, for export to england. the system of russia is attractive of population, and french, german, and american mechanics of every description find demand for their services. that of england is repulsive, as is seen by the _forced_ export of men from england, scotland, ireland, and india, now followed by whole cargoes of women [ ] sent out by aid of public contributions, presenting a spectacle almost as humiliating to the pride of the sex as can be found in the slave bazaar of constantinople. chapter xviii. how freedom grows in denmark. compared with ireland, india, or turkey, denmark is a very poor country. she has, says one of the most enlightened of modern british travellers-- "no metals or minerals, no fire power, no water power, no products or capabilities for becoming a manufacturing country supplying foreign consumers. she has no harbours on the north sea. her navigation is naturally confined to the baltic. her commerce is naturally confined to the home consumption of the necessaries and luxuries of civilized life, which the export of her corn and other agricultural products enables her to import and consume. she stands alone in her corner of the world, exchanging her loaf of bread, which she can spare, for articles she cannot provide for herself, but still providing for herself every thing she can by her own industry."[ ] that industry is protected by heavy import duties, and those duties are avowedly imposed with the view of enabling the farmer everywhere to have the artisan at his side; thus bringing together the producers and the consumers of the earth. "the greater part of their clothing materials," says mr. laing-- "linen, mixed linen and cotton, and woollen cloth, is home-made; and the materials to be worked up, the cotton yarns, dye stuffs, and utensils, are what they require from the shops. the flax and wool are grown and manufactured on the peasant's farm; the spinning and weaving done in the house; the bleaching, dyeing, fulling done at home or in the village." * * * "bunches of ribbons, silver clasps, gold ear-rings, and other ornaments of some value, are profusely used in many of the female dresses, although the main material is home-made woollen and linen. some of these female peasant costumes are very becoming when exhibited in silk, fine cloth, and lace, as they are worn by handsome country girls, daughters of rich peasant proprietors in the islands, who sometimes visit copenhagen. they have often the air and appearance of ladies, and in fact are so in education, in their easy or even wealthy circumstances, and an inherited superiority over others of the same class." * * * "in a large country-church at gettorf, my own coat and the minister's were, as far as i could observe, the only two in the congregation not of home-made cloth; and in copenhagen the working and every-day clothes of respectable tradesmen and people of the middle class, and of all the artisans and the lower labouring classes, are, if not home-made and sent to them by their friends, at least country made; that is, not factory made, but spun, woven, and sold in the web, by peasants, who have more than they want for their family use, to small shopkeepers. this is particularly the case with linen. flax is a crop on every farm; and the skutching, hackling, spinning, weaving, and bleaching are carried on in every country family."--pp. , , . the manufacture of this clothing finds employment for almost the whole female population of the country and for a large proportion of the male population during the winter months. under a different system, the money price of this clothing would be less than it now is--as low, perhaps, as it has been in ireland--but what would be its labour price? cloth is cheap in that country, but man is so much cheaper that he not only goes in rags, but perishes of starvation, because compelled to exhaust his land and waste his labour. "where," asks very justly mr. laing-- "would be the gain to the danish nation, if the small proportion of its numbers who do not live by husbandry got their shirts and jackets and all other clothing one-half cheaper, and the great majority, who now find winter employment in manufacturing their own clothing materials, for the time and labour which are of no value to them at that season, and can be turned to no account, were thrown idle by the competition of the superior and cheaper products of machinery and the factory?"--p. . none! the only benefit derived by man from improvement in the machinery of conversion is, that he is thereby enabled to give more time, labour, and thought to the improvement of the earth, the great machine of production; and in that there _can_ be no improvement under a system that looks to the exportation of raw products, the sending away of the soil, and the return of no manure to the land. the whole danish system tends to the local employment of both labour and capital, and therefore to the growth of wealth and the division of the land, and the improvement of the modes of cultivation. "with a large and increasing proportion-- "of the small farms belonging to peasant proprietors, working themselves with hired labourers, and of a size to keep from five to thirty or forty cows summer and winter, there are many large farms of a size to keep from two hundred to three hundred, and even four hundred cows, summer and winter, and let to verpachters, or large tenant farmers, paying money rents. this class of verpachters are farmers of great capital and skill, very intelligent and enterprising, well acquainted with all modern improvements in husbandry, using guano, tile-draining, pipe-draining, and likely to be very formidable rivals in the english markets to the old-fashioned, use-and-want english farmers, and even to most of our improving large farmers in scotland."--_laing_, . the system of this country has attracted instead of repelling population, and with its growth there has been a constant and rapid advance toward freedom. the class of verpachters above described "were originally strangers from mecklenburg, brunswick, and hanover, bred to the complicated arrangements and business of a great dairy farm, and they are the best educated, most skilful, and most successful farmers in the north of europe. many of them have purchased large estates. the extensive farms they occupy, generally on leases of nine years, are the domains and estates of the nobles, which, before , were cultivated by the serfs, who were, before that period, _adscripti glebæ_, and who were bound to work every day, without wages, on the main farm of the feudal lord, and had cottages and land, on the outskirts of the estate, to work upon for their own living when they were not wanted on the farm of the baron. their feudal lord could imprison them, flog them, reclaim them if they had deserted from his land, and had complete feudal jurisdiction over them in his baronial court."--p. . it is, however, not only in land, but in various other modes, that the little owner of capital is enabled to employ it with advantage. "the first thing a dane does with his savings," says mr. brown,[ ] british consul at copenhagen-- "is to purchase a clock; then a horse and cow, which he hires out, and which pay good interest. then his ambition is to become a petty proprietor; and _this class of persons is better off than any in denmark_. indeed, i know no people in any country who have more easily within their reach all that is really necessary for life than this class, which is very large in comparison with that of labourers." to the power advantageously to employ the small accumulations of the labourer, it is due that the proportion of small proprietors has become so wonderfully large. "the largest proportion of the country, and of the best land of it," says mr. laing,[ ] is in their hands-- "with farms of a size to keep ten or fifteen cows, and which they cultivate by hired labour, along with the labour of the family. these small proprietors, called huffner, probably from _hoff_, a farm-steading and court-yard, correspond to the yeomen, small freeholders, and statesmen, of the north of england, and many of them are wealthy. of this class of estates, it is reckoned there are about , in the two duchies: some of the huffners appear to be copyholders, not freeholders; that is, they hold their land by hereditary right, and may sell or dispose of it; but their land is subject to certain fixed payments of money, labour, cartages, ploughing yearly to the lord of the manor of which they hold it, or to fixed fines for non-payment. a class of smaller land-holders are called innsters, and are properly cottars with a house, a yard, and land for a cow or two, and pay a rent in money and in labour, and receive wages, at a reduced rate, for their work all the year round. they are equivalent to our class of married farm-servants, but with the difference that they cannot be turned off at the will or convenience of the verpachter, or large farmer, but hold of the proprietor; and all the conditions under which they hold--sometimes for life, sometimes for a term of years--are as fixed and supported by law, as those between the proprietor and the verpachter. of this class there are about , , and of house-cottars without land; , , and , day-labourers in husbandry. the land is well divided among a total population of only , souls."--p. . even the poorest of these labouring householders has a garden, some land, and a cow;[ ] and everywhere the eye and hand of the little proprietor may be seen busily employed, while the larger farmers, says our author-- "attend our english cattle-shows and agricultural meetings, are educated men, acquainted with every agricultural improvement, have agricultural meetings and cattle-shows of their own, and publish the transactions and essays of the members. they use guano, and all the animal or chemical manures, have introduced tile-draining, machinery for making pipes and tiles, and are no strangers to irrigation on their old grass meadows."--p. . as a natural consequence, the people are well clothed. "the proportion," says mr. laing-- "of well-dressed people in the streets is quite as great as in our large towns; few are so shabby in clothes as the unemployed or half-employed workmen and labourers in edinburgh; and a proletarian class, half-naked and in rags, is not to be seen. the supply of clothing material for the middle and lower classes seems as great, whether we look at the people themselves or at the second or third rate class of shops with goods for their use."--p. . in regard to house accommodation, he says:-- "the country people of denmark and the duchies are well lodged. the material is brick. the roofing is of thatch in the country, and of tiles in the towns. slate is unknown. the dwelling apartments are always floored with wood. i have described in a former note the great hall in which all the cattle and crops and wagons are housed, and into which the dwelling apartments open. the accommodations outside of the meanest cottage, the yard, garden, and offices, approach more to the dwellings of the english than of the scotch people of the same class."--p. . every parish has its established schoolmaster, as well as "its established minister; but it appears to me that the class of parochial schoolmasters here stands in a much higher position than, in scotland. they are better paid, their houses, glebes, and stipends are better, relatively to the ordinary houses and incomes of the middle class in country places, and they are men of much higher education than their scotch brethren." * * * "it is quite free to any one who pleases to open a school; and to parents to send their children to school or not, as they please. if the young people are sufficiently instructed to receive confirmation from the clergyman, or to stand an examination for admission as students at the university, where or how they acquired their instruction is not asked. government has provided schools, and highly qualified and well-paid teachers, but invests them with no monopoly of teaching, no powers as a corporate body, and keeps them distinct from and unconnected with the professional body in the university."--pp. , . "the most striking feature in the character of these small town populations," says our author-- "and that which the traveller least expects to find in countries so secluded, so removed from intercourse with other countries, by situation and want of exchangeable products, as sleswick, jutland, and the danish islands, is the great diffusion of education, literature, and literary tastes. in towns, for instance, of inhabitants, in england, we seldom find such establishments as the inhabitants of aalborg, the most northerly town in jutland, possess. they enjoy, on the banks of the lymfiord, a classical school for the branches of learning required from students entering the university; an educational institution, and six burger schools for the ordinary branches of education, and in which the lancastrian method of mutual instruction is in use; a library of , volumes, belonging to the province of aalborg, is open to the public; a circulating library of volumes; several private collections and museums, to which access is readily given; a dramatic association, acting every other sunday; and two club-houses for balls and concerts. a printing office and a newspaper, published weekly or oftener, are, in such towns, establishments of course. wyborg, the most ancient town in jutland, the capital in the time of the pagan kings, and once a great city, with twelve parish churches and six monasteries, but now containing no remains of its former grandeur, and only about inhabitants, has its newspaper three times a week, its classical school, its burger school, its public library, circulating library, and its dramatic association acting six or eight plays in the course of the winter. these, being county towns, the seats of district courts and business, have, no doubt, more of such establishments than the populations of the towns themselves could support; but this indicates a wide diffusion of education and intellectual tastes in the surrounding country. randers, on the guden river, the only river of any length of course which runs into the baltic or cattegat from the peninsular land, and the only one in which salmon are caught, is not a provincial capital, and is only about twenty-five english miles from the capital wyborg; but it has, for its inhabitants, a classical school, several burger schools; one of which has above children taught by the mutual-instruction method, a book society, a musical society, a circulating library, a printing press, a newspaper published three times a week, a club-house, and a dramatic society. aarhuus, with, about the same population as randers, and about the same distance from it as randers from wyborg, has a high school, two burger schools, and a ragged or poor school, a provincial library of or volumes, a school library of about the same extent, a library belonging to a club, a collection of minerals and shells belonging to the high schools, a printing press, (from which a newspaper and a literary periodical are issued,) book and music shops, a club-house, concert and ball-room, and a dramatic society. holstebro, a little inland town of about inhabitants, about thirty-five english miles west from wyborg, has its burger school on the mutual-instruction system, its reading society, and its agricultural society. in every little town in this country, the traveller finds educational institutions and indications of intellectual taste for reading, music, theatrical representations, which, he cannot but admit, surpass what he finds at home in england, in similar towns and among the same classes."--p. . we have here abundant evidence of the beneficial effect of local action, as compared with centralisation. instead of having great establishments in copenhagen, and no local schools, or newspapers, there is everywhere provision for education, and evidence that the people avail themselves of it. their tastes are cultivated, and becoming more so from day to day; and thus do they present a striking contrast with the picture furnished by the opposite shore of the german ocean, and for the reason that there the system is based on the idea of cheapening labour at home and underworking the labourer abroad. the windows of the poorest houses, says mr. laing-- "rarely want a bit of ornamental drapery, and are always decked with flowers and plants in flower-pots. the people have a passion for flowers. the peasant girl and village beau are adorned with bouquets of the finest of ordinary flowers; and in the town you see people buying, flowers who with us, in the same station, would think it extravagance. the soil and climate favour this taste. in no part of europe are the ordinary garden-flowers produced in such abundance and luxuriance as in holstein and sleswick."--p. . the people have everywhere "leisure to be happy, amused, and educated,"[ ] and, as a consequence, the sale of books is large. the number of circulating libraries is no less than six hundred,[ ] and their demands give "more impulse to literary activity than appears in edinburgh, where literature is rather passive than active, and what is produced worth publishing is generally sent to the london market. this is the reason why a greater number of publications appear in the course of the year in copenhagen than in edinburgh." * * * "the transmission of books and other small parcels by post, which we think a great improvement, as it unquestionably is, and peculiar to our english post-office arrangement, is of old standing in denmark, and is of great advantage for the diffusion of knowledge, and of great convenience to the people."--pp. , . the material and intellectual condition of this people is declared by mr. laing--and he is an experienced and most observant traveller--to be higher than that of any other in europe;[ ] while mr. kay, also very high authority, places the people of england among the most ignorant and helpless of those of europe. the danes consume more food for the mind "than the scotch; have more daily and weekly newspapers, and other periodical works, in their metropolis and in their country towns, and publish more translated and original works; have more public libraries, larger libraries, and libraries more easily accessible to persons of all classes, not only in copenhagen, but in all provincial and country towns; have more small circulating libraries, book-clubs, musical associations, theatres and theatrical associations, and original dramatic compositions; more museums, galleries, collections of statues, paintings, antiquities, and objects gratifying to the tastes of a refined and intellectual people, and open equally to all classes, than the people of scotland can produce in the length and breadth of the land."--p. . high moral condition is a necessary consequence of an elevated material and intellectual one; and therefore it is that we find the dane distinguished for kindness, urbanity, and regard for others,[ ] and this is found in all portions of society. in visiting the museum of northern antiquities, which is open to the public, free of charge, on certain days-- "the visitors are not left to gape in ignorance at what they see. professors of the highest attainments in antiquarian science--professor thomsen, m. worsaae, and others--men who, in fact, have created a science out of an undigested mass of relics, curiosities, and specimens, of the arts in the early ages--go round with groups of the visitors, and explain equally to all, high and low, with the greatest zeal, intelligence, and affability, the uses of the articles exhibited, the state of the arts in the ages in which they were used, the gradual progress of mankind from shells, stones, and bones to bronze and iron, as the materials for tools, ornaments, and weapons, and the conclusions made, and the grounds and reasons for making them, in their antiquarian researches. they deliver, in fact, an extempore lecture, intelligible to the peasant and instructive to the philosopher."--p. . in place of the wide gulf that divides the two great portions of english society, we find here great equality of social intercourse, and "it seems not to be condescension merely on one side, and grateful respect for being noticed at all on the other, but a feeling of independence and mutual respect between individuals of the most different stations and classes. this may be accounted for from wealth not being so all-important as in our social state; its influence in society is less where the majority are merely occupied in living agreeably on what they have, without motive or desire to have more."--p. . how strikingly does the following contrast with the description of london, and its hundred thousand people without a place to lay their heads!-- "the streets are but poorly lighted, gas is not yet introduced, and the police is an invisible force; yet one may walk at all hours through this town without seeing a disorderly person, a man in liquor unable to take care of himself, or a female street-walker. every one appears to have a home and bed of some kind, and the houseless are unknown as a class."--p. . why this is so is, that, because of the growing improvement in the condition of the people, the land is daily increasing in value, and is becoming divided, and men are attracted from the city to the land and the smaller towns--directly the reverse of what is observed in england. "there is," says mr. laing-- "no such influx, as in our large towns, of operatives in every trade, who, coming from the country to better their condition, are by far too numerous for the demand, must take work at lower and lower wages to keep themselves from starving, and who reduce their fellow-craftsmen and themselves to equal misery. employment is more fixed and stationary for the employed and the employers. there is no foreign trade or home consumption to occasion great and sudden activity and expansion in manufactures, and equally great and sudden stagnation and collapse."--p. . "drunkenness has almost," we are told, "disappeared from the danish character," and it is "the education of the tastes for more refined amusements than the counter of the gin-palace or the back parlour of the whisky-shop afford, that has superseded the craving for the excitement of spirituous liquor. the tea-gardens, concert-rooms, ball-rooms, theatres, skittle-grounds, all frequented indiscriminately by the highest and the lowest classes, have been the schools of useful knowledge that have imparted to the lowest class something of the manners and habits of the highest, and have eradicated drunkenness and brutality, in ordinary intercourse, from the character of the labouring people."--p. . denmark is, says this high authority, "a living evidence of the falsity of the theory that population increases more rapidly than subsistence where the land of the country is held by small working proprietors;"[ ] and she is a living evidence, too, of the falsity of the theory that men commence with the cultivation of the most productive soils, and find themselves, as wealth and population increase, forced to resort to poorer ones, with diminished return to labour. why she is enabled to afford such conclusive evidence of this is, that she pursues a policy tending to permit her people to have that real free trade which consists in having the power to choose between the foreign and domestic markets--a power, the exercise of which is denied to india and ireland, portugal and turkey. she desires to exercise control over her own movements, and not over those of others; and therefore it is that her people become from day to day more free and her land from day to day more valuable. turkey is the paradise of the system commonly known by the name of free trade--that system under which the artisan _is not permitted_ to take his place by the side of the producer of silk and cotton--and the consequence is, seen in the growing depopulation of the country, the increasing poverty and slavery of its people, the worthlessness of its land, and in the weakness of its government. denmark, on the contrary, is the paradise of the system supposed to be opposed to free trade--that system under which the artisan and the farmer _are_ permitted to combine their efforts--and the consequence is seen in the increase of population, in the growth of wealth and freedom, in the growing value of land, in the increasing tendency to equality, and in the strength of its government, as exhibited in its resistance of the whole power of northern germany during the late schleswig-holstein war, and as afterward exhibited toward those of its own subjects who had aided in bringing on the war. "it is to the honour," says mr. laing [ ] -- "of the danish king and government, and it is a striking example of the different progress of civilization in the north and in the south of europe, that during the three years this insurrection lasted, and now that it is quelled, not one individual has been tried and put to death, or in any way punished for a civil or political offence by sentence of a court-martial, or of any other than the ordinary courts of justice; not one life has been taken but in the field of battle, and by the chance of war. banishment for life has been the highest punishment inflicted upon traitors who, as military officers deserting their colours, breaking their oaths of fidelity, and giving up important trusts to the enemy, would have been tried by court-martial and shot in any other country. civil functionaries who had abused their official power, and turned it against the government, were simply dismissed." these facts contrast strikingly with those recently presented to view by irish history. ireland had no friends in her recent attempt at change of government. her leaders had not even attempted to call in the aid of other nations. they stood alone, and yet the english government deemed it necessary to place them in an island at a distance of many thousand miles, and to keep them there confined. denmark, on the contrary, was surrounded by enemies close at hand--enemies that needed no ships for the invasion of her territory--and yet she contented herself with simple banishment. the policy of the former looks abroad, and therefore is it weak at home. that of the latter looks homeward, and therefore is it that at home she is strong; small as she is, compared with other powers, in her territory and in the number of her population. chapter xix. how freedom grows in spain and in belgium. spain expelled the industrious portion of her population, and almost at the same time acquired colonies of vast extent, to which she looked for revenue. centralization here was almost perfect--and here, as everywhere, it has been accompanied by poverty and weakness. with difficulty she has been enabled to defend her rights on her own soil, and she has found it quite impossible to maintain her power abroad, and for the reason that her system tended to the impoverishment of her people and the destruction of the value of labour and land. her history tends throughout to show that nations which desire respect for their own rights, _must_ learn to respect those of others. the policy of spain has been unfavourable to commerce, internal and external. exchanges at home were burdened with heavy taxes, and the raw materials of manufacture, even those produced at home, were so heavily taxed on their passage from the place of production to that of consumption, that manufactures could not prosper. the great middle class of artisans could therefore scarcely be found, and the scattered agriculturists were thus deprived of their aid in the effort to establish or maintain their freedom. towns and cities decayed, and land, became more and more consolidated in the hands of great noblemen on one side and the church on the other, and talent found no field for its exercise, except in the service of the church or the state. while thus destroying internal trade by taxation, efforts were made to build it up by aid of restrictions on external trade; but the very fact that the former was destroyed made it necessary for thousands and tens of thousands of persons to endeavour to earn wages in the smuggling of foreign merchandise, and the country was filled with men ever ready to violate the law, because of the cheapness of labour. the laws restraining the import of foreign merchandise were easily violated, because its bulk was small and its value great; whereas those interfering with the transit of raw materials were easily enforced, because the bulk was great and their value small; and therefore the whole system tended effectually to prevent the artisan from taking his place by the side of the grower of food and wool; and hence the depopulation, poverty, and weakness of this once rich and powerful country. fortunately for her, however, the day arrived when she was to lose her colonies, and find herself compelled to follow the advice of adam smith, and look to home for revenue; and almost from that date to the present, notwithstanding foreign invasions, civil wars, and revolutions, her course has been onward, and with each succeeding year there has been a greater tendency toward diversification of employment, the growth of towns and other places of local exchange, the improvement of agriculture, the strengthening of the people in their relations with the government, and the strengthening of the nation as regards the other nations of the earth. among the earliest measures tending toward the emancipation of the people of germany, russia, and denmark, was, as has been seen, the removal of restrictions upon the trade in land, the great machine of production. so, too, was it in spain. according to a return made to the cortes of cadiz, out of sixty millions of acres then in cultivation, only twenty millions were held by the men who cultivated them, while thirty were in the hands of great nobles, and ten were held by the church. under a decree of secularization, a large portion of the latter has been sold, and the result is seen in the fact that the number of owners cultivating their own properties has risen from , to , ; and the number of farms from , to , , .[ ] a further step toward freedom and the establishment of equal rights, is found in the abolition of a great variety of small and vexatious taxes, substituting therefor a land-tax, payable alike by the small and the great proprietor; and in the abolition of internal duties on the exchange of the raw materials of manufacture. with each of these we find increasing tendency toward the establishment of that division of employment which gives value to labour and land. from to , the number of spindles in catalonia has grown from , to , , and that of looms from , to , , while cotton factories had been put in operation in various other parts of the kingdom.[ ] still later, numerous others have been started, and a traveller of the past year informs us that the province of granada now bids fair to rival catalonia in her manufactures.[ ] in , the total value of the products of the cotton manufacture was estimated at about four millions of dollars, but in it had risen to more than six and a half millions. the woollen manufacture had also rapidly increased, and this furnishes employment at numerous places throughout the kingdom, one of which, alcoy, is specially referred to by m. block,[ ] as situated among the mountains which separate the ancient kingdom of valencia and murcia, and as having no less than , spindles, and , men, in addition to a great number of women and children, engaged in this branch of manufacture. in regard to the progress of manufactures generally, the following statement, furnished by a recent american traveller to whom we are indebted for an excellent work on spain, furnishes much information, and cannot be read without interest by all those who derive pleasure from witnessing advance in civilization.[ ] "of late years there has been a considerable effort to extend and improve the production and manufacture of silk, and the result has been very favourable. the silkworm, formerly confined, in a great degree, to valencia and murcia, is now an article of material importance in the wealth of the two castiles, rioja, and aragon. the silk fabrics of talavera, valencia, and barcelona are many of them admirably wrought, and are sold at rates which appear very moderate. i had particular occasion to note the cheapness of the damasks which are sold in madrid from the native looms. it is not easy to imagine any thing more magnificent, of their kind. the woollen cloths, too, of home manufacture, are, some of them, very admirable, and the coarser kinds supply, i believe, a considerable part of the national demand. in cheapness i have never seen them surpassed. the finer qualities do not bear so favourable a comparison with the foreign article; but those who were familiar with the subject informed me that their recent improvement had been very decided. many laudable efforts have been made to render the supply of wool more abundant, and to improve its quality, and there has been a considerable importation of foreign sheep, with a view to crossing on the native breeds. the sheep-rearing interest is so very large in spain, that any material improvement in the quality of the wool must add greatly to the national wealth, as well as to the importance of the woollen manufacture and its ability to encounter foreign competition. "in the general movement toward an increased and more valuable production of the raw material for manufacture, the flax of leon and galicia and the hemp of granada have not been forgotten. but the article in which the most decided and important progress has been made, is the great staple, iron. in ; the iron-manufacture of spain was at so low an ebb, that it was necessary to import from england the large lamp-posts of cast metal, which adorn the plaza de armas of the palace. they bear the london mark, and tell their own story. a luxury for the indoors enjoyment or personal ostentation of the monarch, would of course have been imported from any quarter, without regard to appearances. but a monument of national dependence upon foreign industry would hardly have been erected upon such a spot, had there been a possibility of avoiding it by any domestic recourse. in the state of things had so far changed, that there were in the kingdom twenty-five founderies, eight furnaces of the first class, with founderies attached, and twenty-five iron-factories, all prosperously and constantly occupied. the specimens of work from these establishments, which are to be seen in the capital and the chief cities of the provinces, are such as to render the independence and prospective success of the nation in this particular no longer matters of question. in the beginning of , the marquis of molins, then minister of marine affairs, upon the petition of the iron-manufacturers, directed inquiries to be made, by a competent board, into the quality of the native iron, and the extent to which the home manufacture might be relied on for the purposes of naval construction. the result was so satisfactory, that in march of the same year a royal order was issued from the department, directing all future contracts to be made with the domestic establishments. this, indeed, has been the case since , at the arsenal of ferrol, which has been supplied altogether from the iron-works of biscay. the government, however, had determined for the future to be chiefly its own purveyor, and national founderies at ferrol and trubia, constructed without regard to expense, were about to go into operation when the royal order was published." a necessary consequence of all these steps toward freedom and association has been great agricultural improvement. "the impoverished industry and neglected agriculture of the land," says mr. wallis-- "have received an accession of vigorous labour, no longer tempted into sloth by the seductions of a privileged and sensual life. in the cities and larger towns the convent buildings have been displaced, to make room for private dwellings of more or less convenience and elegance, or have been appropriated as public offices or repositories of works of art. the extensive grounds which were monopolized by some of the orders, in the crowded midst of populous quarters, have been converted into walks or squares, dedicated to the public health and recreation. in a word, what was intended in the beginning as the object of monastic endowments, has been to some extent realized. what was meant for the good of all, though intrusted to a few, has been taken from the few who used it as their own, and distributed, rudely it may be, but yet effectually, among the many who were entitled to and needed it."--p. . at the close of the last century, the value of agricultural products was officially returned at millions of reals, or about millions of dollars. in , a similar return made it somewhat less, or about millions, but since that time the increase has been so rapid, that it is now returned at nearly millions of dollars.[ ] twenty years since, the means of transporting produce throughout the country were so bad that famine might prevail in andalusia, and men might perish there in thousands, while grain wasted on the fields of castile, because the _silos_ of the latter no longer afforded room to store it. even now, "in some districts, it is a familiar fact, "that the wine of one vintage has to be emptied, in waste, in order to furnish skins for the wine of the next--the difficulty and cost of transportation to market being such as utterly to preclude the producer from attempting a more profitable disposition of it. staples of the most absolute and uniform necessity--wheat, for instance--are at prices absurdly different in different parts of the kingdom; the proximity to market being such as to give them their current value in one quarter, while in another they are perhaps rotting in their places of deposite, without the hope of a demand. until such a state of things shall have been cured, it will be useless to improve the soil, or stimulate production in the secluded districts; and of course every circumstance which wears the promise of such cure must enter into the calculations of the future, and avail in them according to its probabilities."--_wallis_, p. . we see thus that here, as everywhere, the power to make roads is least where the necessity for them is greatest. had the farmers of castile a near market in which their wheat could be combined with the wool that is shorn in their immediate neighbourhood, they could export cloth, and _that_ could travel even on bad roads. as it is, they have to export both wheat and wool, and on such roads, whereas if the artisan could, in accordance, with the doctrines of adam smith, everywhere take his place by the side of the ploughman and the shepherd; and if women and children could thus everywhere be enabled to find other employment than in field labour, towns would grow up, and men would become rich and strong, and roads could be made without difficulty. even now, however, there is a rapidly increasing tendency toward the construction of railroads, and the completion and enlargement of canals, and not a doubt can be entertained that in a few years the modes of intercourse will be so improved as to put an end to the enormous differences in prices here observed.[ ] those differences are, however, precisely similar to those now regarded as desirable by english writers who find compensation for the loss of men, "in the great stimulus that our extensive emigration will give to every branch of the shipping interest."[ ] the nearer the place of exchange the fewer ships and seamen are needed, and the richer _must_ grow the producer and the consumer, because the number of persons among whom the total product is to be divided is then the least. with increased power of association there is a steady improvement in the provision for education. half a century since, the whole number of students at all the educational establishments in the kingdom was but , ,[ ] and it had not materially varied in ; whereas the number now in the public schools alone, for the support of which there is an annual appropriation of $ , , is above , , or one to of the population. the primary and other schools reach the number of , ; and besides these and the universities, there are numerous other institutions devoted to particular branches of education, some of which are provided for by government, and others by public bodies or private subscription. "no impediment," says mr. wallis-- "is thrown by law in the way of private teachers--except that they are required to produce certain certificates of good character and conduct, and of having gone through a prescribed course, which is more or less extensive, in proportion to the rank of the institution they may desire to open." as a necessary consequence of these changes there has been a great increase in the value of land, and of real estate generally. mr. wallis states that the church property has "commanded an average of nearly double the price at which it was officially assessed according to the standard of value at the time of its seizure," and we need desire no better evidence that man is tending gradually toward freedom than is to be found in this single fact. it might be supposed, that with the increased tendency to convert at home the raw products of the earth, there would be a diminution of foreign commerce; but directly the reverse is the case. in the three years, from to , the import of raw cotton rose from , , to , , of pounds; that of yarn from , , to , , pounds; and that of bar-iron from , , to more than , , ; and the general movements of exports and imports for the last twenty-four years, as given by m. block, (p. ,) has been, as follows:-- imports, in francs. exports, in francs. ------------------- ------------------- ......... , , ......... , , ......... , , ......... , , ......... , , ......... , , and to this may be added, as since published by the government, the account for ......... , , ......... , , with each step in the direction of bringing the consumer and the producer to take their places by the side of each other, the people acquire power to protect themselves, as is seen in the freedom of debate in the chamber of deputies, and in the extent to which those debates, with their comments thereon, are made known throughout the kingdom by the writers of a newspaper press that, although restricted, has been well characterized as, "fearless and plain speaking." in , madrid had but two daily newspapers, both of them most contemptible in character. in february, , there were thirteen, with an aggregate circulation of , copies; and yet madrid has no commerce, and can furnish little advertising for their support. [ ] with the increase of production and of wealth, and with the growth of the power of association, and of intelligence among the people, the government gradually acquires strength in the community of nations, and power to enforce its laws, as is here shown in the large decline that has taken place in the english exports to portugal and gibraltar, heretofore the great smuggling depots for english manufactures,[ ] as compared with those to spain direct: portugal. gibraltar. spain. --------- ---------- ------ in ..... £ , , ..... £ , , ...... £ , ..... , , ..... , ...... , , the system that looks to consolidation of the land tends toward inequality, and that such has been, and is, the tendency of that of england, wherever fully carried out, has been shown. those of germany, russia, and denmark tend in the opposite direction, and under them men are becoming daily more independent in their action, and consequently more and more kindly and respectful in their treatment of each other. such, likewise, is the case in spain. "the spaniard," says mr. wallis-- "has a sense of equality, which blesses him who gives as well as him who takes. if he requires the concession from others, he demands it chiefly and emphatically through the concessions which he makes to them. there is so much self-respect involved in his respect to others, and in his manifestation of it, that reciprocity is unavoidable. to this, and this mainly, is attributable the high, courteous bearing, which is conspicuous in all the people, and which renders the personal intercourse of the respective classes and conditions less marked by strong and invidious distinctions, than in any other nation with whose manners and customs i am familiar. it is this, perhaps, more than any other circumstance, which has tempered and made sufferable the oppression of unequal and despotic institutions, illustrating 'the advantage to which,' in the words of a philosophic writer, 'the manners of a people may turn the most unfavourable position and the worst laws.'"--p. . again, he says-- "if in the midst of the very kindness which made him at home upon the briefest acquaintance, he should perceive an attentive politeness, approaching so near to formality as now and then to embarrass him, he would soon be brought to understand and admire it as the expression of habitual consideration for the feelings of others. he would value it the more when he learned from its universality, that what was elsewhere chiefly a thing of manners and education, was there a genial instinct developed into a social charity."--p. . the "popular element is fully at work," and it requires, says the same author, but a comparison of the present with the past, "to remove all doubts of the present, and to justify the happiest augury." "the lotos of freedom has," he continues-- "been tasted, and it cannot readily be stricken from their lips. so long as the more important guaranties are not altogether violated--so long as the government substantially, dedicates itself to the public good, by originating and fostering schemes of public usefulness, it may take almost any liberties with forms and non-essentials. much further it will not be permitted to go, and every day diminishes the facility with which it may go even thus far. every work of internal improvement, which brings men closer together, enabling them to compare opinions with readiness and concentrate strength for their maintenance; every new interest that is built up; every heavy and permanent investment of capital or industry; every movement that develops and diffuses the public intelligence and energy, is a bulwark more or less formidable against reaction. nay, every circumstance that makes the public wiser, richer, or better, must shorten the career of arbitrary rule. the compulsion, which was and still is a necessary evil for the preservation of peace, must be withdrawn when peace becomes an instinct as well as a necessity. the existence of a stringent system will no longer be acquiesced in when the people shall have grown less in need of government, and better able to direct it for themselves. thus, in their season, the very interests which shall be consolidated and made vigorous by forced tranquillity will rise, themselves, into the mastery. the stream of power as it rolls peacefully along, is daily strengthening the banks, which every day, though imperceptibly, encroach on it." --p. . * * * * * belgium. belgium is a country with four and a half millions of inhabitants, or about one-half more than the state of new york. it is burdened with a heavy debt assumed at the period of its separation from holland, and it finds itself compelled to maintain an army that is large in proportion to its population, because in the vicinity of neighbours who have at all times shown themselves ready to make it the battle-ground of europe. in no country of europe has there been so great a destruction, of property and life, and yet in none has there been so great a tendency toward freedom; and for the reason that in none has there been manifested so little disposition to interfere with the affairs of other nations. it is burdened now with a taxation amounting to about twenty-three millions of dollars, or five dollars and a half per head; and yet, amid all the revolutions and attempts at revolution by which the peace of europe is disturbed, we hear nothing of the belgians, whose course is as tranquil as it was before the days of --and this is a consequence of following in the path indicated by adam smith. the policy of belgium looks more homeward than that of any nation of europe. she has no colonies, and she seeks none. to a greater extent than almost any other nation, she has sought to enable her farmers to have local places of exchange, giving value to her labour and her land. where these exist, men are certain to become free; and equally certain is it that where they do not exist, freedom must be a plant of exceedingly slow growth, even where it does not absolutely perish for want of nourishment. if evidence be desired of the freedom of the belgians, it is to be found in the fact that there is nowhere to be seen, as we are on all hands assured, a more contented, virtuous, and generally comfortable population than that engaged in the cultivation of her fields. the following sketch is from a report published by order of parliament, and cannot fail to be read with interest by those who desire to understand how it is that the dense population of this little country is enabled to draw from a soil naturally indifferent such large returns, while the hindoo, with all his advantages of early civilization, wealth, and population, perishes of famine or flies from pestilence, leaving behind him, uncultivated, the richest soils, and sells himself to slavery in cuba:-- "the farms in belgium rarely exceed one hundred acres. the number containing fifty acres is not great; those of thirty or twenty are more numerous, but the number of holdings of from five to ten and twenty acres is very considerable. "the small farms of from five to ten acres, which abound in many parts of belgium, closely resemble the small holdings in ireland; but the small irish cultivator exists in a state of miserable privation of the common comforts and conveniences of civilized life, while the belgian peasant farmer enjoys a large share of those comforts. the houses of the small cultivators of belgium are generally substantially built, and in good repair; they have commonly a sleeping room in the attic, and closets for beds connected with the lower apartment, which is convenient in size; a small cellarage for the dairy, and store for the grain, as well as an oven, and an outhouse for the potatoes, with a roomy cattle-stall, piggery, and poultry loft. the house generally contains decent furniture, the bedding sufficient in quantity, and an air of comfort, pervades the establishment. in the cow-house the cattle are supplied with straw for bedding; the dung and moisture are carefully collected in the tank; the ditches had been secured to collect materials for manure; the dry leaves, potato-tops, &c. had been collected in a moist ditch to undergo the process of fermentation, and heaps of compost were in course of preparation. the premises were kept in neat and compact order, and a scrupulous attention to a most rigid economy was everywhere apparent. the family were decently clad; none of them were ragged or slovenly, even when their dress consisted of the coarsest material. "in the greater part of the flat country of belgium the soil is light and sandy, and easily worked; but its productive powers are certainly inferior to the general soil of ireland, and the climate does not appear to be superior. to the soil and climate therefore, the belgian does not owe his superiority. the difference is to be found in the system, of cultivation, and the forethought of the people. the cultivation of small farms in belgium differs from the irish: . in the quantity of stall-fed stock which is kept, and by which a supply of manure is regularly secured; . in the strict attention paid to the collection of manure, which is skilfully husbanded; . by the adoption of rotations of crop. we found no plough, horse, or cart--only a spade, fork, wheelbarrow, and handbarrow. the farmer had no assistance besides that of his family. the whole land is trenched very deep with the spade. the stock consisted of a couple of cows, a calf or two, one or two pigs; sometimes a goat or two, and some poultry. the cows are altogether stall-fed, on straw, turnips, clover, rye, vetches, carrots, potatoes, and a kind of soup made by boiling up the potatoes, peas, beans, bran, cut-hay, &e., which, given warm, is said to be very wholesome, and promotive of the secretion of milk. near distilleries and breweries grains are given. "some small farmers agree to find stall-room and straw for sheep, and furnish fodder at the market price, for the dung. the dung and moisture are collected in a fosse in the stable. lime is mingled with the scouring of the ditches, vegetable garbage, leaves, &c. on six-acre farms, plots are appropriated to potatoes, wheat, barley, clover, flax, rye, carrots, turnips, or parsnips, vetches, and rye, as green food for cattle. the flax is heckled and spun by the wife in winter; and three weeks at the loom in spring weaves up all the thread. in some districts every size, from a quarter acre to six acres, is found. the former holders devoted their time to weaving. as far as i could learn, there was no tendency to subdivision of the small holdings. i heard of none under five acres held by the class of peasant farmers; and six, seven, or eight acres is the more common size. the average rent is s. an acre. wages, d. a day. "a small occupier, whose farm we examined near ghent, paid £ s. d. for six acres, with a comfortable house, stabling, and other offices attached, all very good of their kind--being s. an acre for the land, and £ s. d. for house and offices. this farmer had a wife and five children, and appeared to live in much comfort. he owed little or nothing."--_nicholls's report_. these people have employment for every hour in the year, and they find a market close at hand for every thing they can raise. they are not forced to confine themselves to cotton or sugar, tobacco or wheat; nor are they forced to waste their labour in carrying their products to a distance so great that no manure can be returned. from this country there is no export of men, women, and children, such as we see from ireland. the "crowbar brigade" is here unknown, and it may be doubted if any term conveying the meaning of the word "eviction" is to be found in their vocabulary. with a surface only one-third as great as that of ireland, and with a soil naturally far inferior, belgium supports a population almost half as great as ireland has ever possessed; and yet we never hear of the cheap belgian labour inundating the neighbouring countries, to the great advantage of those who desire to build up "great works" like those of britain. the policy of belgium looks to increasing the value of both labour and land, whereas that of england looks to diminishing the value of both. with every advantage of soil and climate, the population of portugal declines, and her people become more enslaved from day to day, while her government, is driven to repudiation of her debts. belgium, on the contrary, grows in wealth and population, and her people become more free; and the cause of difference is, that the policy of the former has always looked to repelling the artisan, and thus preventing the growth of towns and of the habit of association; while that of the latter has always looked to bringing the artisan to the raw material, and thus enabling her people to combine their efforts for their improvement in material, moral, and intellectual condition, without which there can be no increase of freedom. russia and spain seek to raise the value of labour and land, and they are now attracting population. the english system, based on cheap labour, destroys the value of both labour and land, and therefore it is that there is so large an export of men from the countries subject to it--africa, india, ireland, scotland, england, virginia, and carolina. chapter xx. of the duty of the people of the united states. the slave _must_ apply himself to such labour as his master may see fit to direct him to perform, and he must give to that master the produce of his exertions, receiving in return whatever the master may see fit to give him. he is limited to a single place of exchange. precisely similar to this is the system which looks to limiting all the people of the earth, outside of england, to agriculture as the sole means of employment; and carried out by smothering in their infancy the manufactures of other nations, while crushing the older ones of india by compelling her to receive british manufactures free of duty, and refusing to permit her to have good machinery, while taxing her spindles and looms at home, and their products when sent to britain. it is one which looks to allowing the nations of the world to have but one market, in which all are to compete for the sale of their raw products, and one market, in which all are to compete for the purchase of manufactured ones; leaving to the few persons who control that market the power to fix the prices of all they require to buy and all they desire to sell. cotton and corn, indigo and wool, sugar and coffee, are merely the various forms in which labour is sold; and the cheaper they are sold, the cheaper must be the labour employed in producing them, the poorer and more enslaved must be the labourer, the less must be the value of land, the more rapid must be its exhaustion and abandonment, and the greater must be the tendency toward the transport of the enslaved labourer to some new field of action, there to repeat the work of exhaustion and abandonment. hence it is that we see the slave trade prevail to so great an extent in all the countries subject to the british system, except those in which famine and pestilence are permitted silently to keep down the population to the level of a constantly diminishing supply of food, as in portugal, turkey, and jamaica. the system to which the world is indebted for these results is called "free-trade;" but there can be no freedom of trade where there is no freedom of man, for the first of all commodities to be exchanged is labour, and the freedom of man consists only in the exercise of the right to determine for himself in what manner his labour shall be employed, and how he will dispose of its products. if the british system tends toward freedom, proof of the fact will be found in the free employment of labour where it exists, and in the exercise by the labourer of a large control over the application of its produce. are these things to be found in india? certainly not. the labourer there is driven from the loom and forced to raise sugar or cotton, and his whole control over what is paid by the consumer for the products of his labour cannot exceed fifteen per cent. can they be found in ireland, in turkey, or in portugal? certainly not. the labourers of those countries now stand before the world distinguished for their poverty, and for their inability to determine for themselves for whom they will labour or what shall be their reward. were it otherwise, the "free trade" system would fail to produce the effect intended. its object is, and has always been, that of preventing other communities from mining the coal or smelting the ore provided for their use by the great creator of all things, and in such vast abundance; from making or obtaining machinery to enable them to avail themselves of the expansive power of steam; from calling to their aid any of the natural agents required in the various processes of manufacture; from obtaining knowledge that might lead to improvement in manufactures of any kind; and, in short, from doing any thing but raise sugar, coffee, cotton, wool, indigo, silk, and other raw commodities, to be carried, as does the slave of virginia or texas with the product of his labour, to one great purchaser, who determines upon their value and upon the value of all the things they are to receive in exchange for them. it is the most gigantic system of slavery the world has yet seen, and therefore it is that freedom gradually disappears from every country over which england is enabled to obtain control, as witness the countries to which reference has just been made. there are, however, as has been shown, several nations of europe in which men are daily becoming more free; and the reason for this is to be found in the fact that they have resisted this oppressive system. germany and russia, spain, denmark, belgium, and other states, have been determined to protect their farmers in their efforts to bring the loom and the anvil to their side, and to have towns and other places of exchange in their neighbourhood, at which they could exchange raw products for manufactured ones and for manure; and in every one in which that protection has been efficient, labour and land have become, and are becoming, more valuable and man more free. in this country protection has always, to some extent, existed; but at some times it has been efficient, and at others not; and our tendency toward freedom or slavery has always been in the direct ratio of its efficiency or inefficiency. in the period from to , the tendency was steadily in the former direction, but it was only in the latter part of it that it was made really efficient. then mills and furnaces increased in number, and there was a steady increase in the tendency toward the establishment of local places of exchange; and then it was that virginia held her convention at which was last discussed in that state the question of emancipation. in , however, protection was abandoned, and a tariff was established by which it was provided that we should, in a few years, have a system of merely revenue duties; and from that date the abandonment of the older states proceeded with a rapidity never before known, and with it grew the domestic slave trade and the pro-slavery feeling. then it was that were passed the laws restricting emancipation and prohibiting education; and then it was that the export of slaves from virginia and the carolinas was so great that the population of those states remained almost, if not quite stationary, and that the growth of black population fell from thirty per cent., in the ten previous years, to twenty-four percent.[ ] that large export of slaves resulted in a reduction of the price of southern products to a point never before known; and thus it was that the system called free trade provided cheap cotton. slavery grew at the south, and at the north; for with cheap cotton and cheap food came so great a decline in the demand for labour, that thousands of men found themselves unable to purchase this cheap food to a sufficient extent to feed their wives and their children. a paper by "a farm labourer" thus describes that calamitous portion of our history, when the rapid approach of the system called free trade, under the strictly revenue provisions of the compromise tariff, had annihilated competition for the purchase of labour:-- "the years , , and were striking elucidations of such cases; when the cry of sober, industrious, orderly men--'give me _work_! only give me work; make your own terms--myself and family have nothing to eat'--was heard in our land. in those years thousands of cases of the kind occurred in our populous districts."--_pittsburgh dispatch_. that such was the fact must be admitted by all who recollect the great distress that existed in - . throughout the whole length and breadth of the land, there was an universal cry of "give me work; make your own terms--myself and family have nothing to eat;" and the consequence of this approach toward slavery was so great a diminution in the consumption of food, that the prices at which it was then exported to foreign countries were lower than they had been for many years; and thus it was that the farmer paid for the system which had diminished the freedom of the labourer and the artisan. it was this state of things that re-established protection for the american labourer, whether in the field or in the workshop. the tariff of was passed, and at once there arose competition for the purchase of labour. mills were to be built, and men were needed to quarry the stone and get out the lumber, and other men were required to lay the stone and fashion the lumber into floors and roofs, doors and windows; and the employment thus afforded enabled vast numbers of men again to occupy houses of their own, and thus was produced a new demand for masons and carpenters, quarrymen and lumbermen. furnaces were built, and mines were opened, and steam-engines were required; and the men employed at these works were enabled to consume more largely of food, while ceasing to contend with the agricultural labourer for employment on the farm. mills were filled with females, and the demand for cloths increased, with corresponding diminution in the competition for employment in the making of shirts and coats. wages rose, and they rose in every department of labour; the evidence of which is to be found in the fact that the consumption of food and fuel greatly increased, while that of cloth almost doubled, and that of iron trebled in the short period of five years. how, indeed, could it be otherwise than that the reward of labour should rise? the cotton manufacturer needed labourers, male and female, and so did his neighbour of the woollens mill; and the labourers they now employed could buy shoes and hats. the iron-masters and the coal-miners needed workmen, and the men they employed needed cotton and woollen cloths; and they could consume more largely of food. the farmer's markets tended to improve, and he could buy more largely of hats and shoes, ploughs and harrows, and the hatmakers and shoemakers, and the makers of ploughs and harrows, needed more hands; and therefore capital was everywhere looking for labour, where before labour had been looking for capital. the value of cottons, and woollens, and iron produced in , as compared with that of , was greater by a hundred millions of dollars; and all this went to the payment of labour, for all the profits of the iron-master and of the cotton and woollen manufacturer went to the building of new mills and furnaces, or to the enlargement of the old ones. unhappily, however, for us, our legislators were smitten with a love of the system called free trade. they were of opinion that we were, by right, an agricultural nation, and that so we must continue; and that the true way to produce competition for the purchase of labour was to resolve the whole nation into a body of farmers--and the tariff of was repealed. if the reader will now turn to page , he will see how large must have been the domestic slave trade from to , compared with that of the period from to . the effect of this in increasing the crop and reducing the price of cotton was felt with great severity in the latter period,[ ] and it required time to bring about a change. we are now moving in the same direction in which we moved from to . for four years past, we have not only abandoned the building of mills and furnaces, but have closed hundreds of old ones, and centralization, therefore, grows from day to day. the farmer of ohio can no longer exchange his food directly with the maker of iron. he must carry it to new york, as must the producer of cotton in carolina; who sees the neighbouring factory closed. [ ] local places of exchange decline, and great cities take their place; and with the growth of centralization grows the slave trade, north and south. palaces rise in new york and philadelphia, while droves of black slaves are sent to texas to raise cotton, and white ones at the north perish of disease, and sometimes almost of famine. "we could tell," says a recent writer in one of the new york journals-- "of one room, twelve feet by twelve, in which were five resident families, comprising twenty persons of both sexes and all ages, with only two beds, without partition or screen, or chair or table, and all dependent for their miserable support upon the sale of chips, gleaned from the streets, at four cents a basket--of another, still smaller and still more destitute, inhabited by a man, a woman, two little girls, and a boy, who were supported by permitting the room to be used as a rendezvous by the abandoned women of the street--of another, an attic room seven feet by five, containing scarcely an article of furniture but a bed, on which lay a fine-looking man in a raging fever, without medicine or drink or suitable food, his toil-worn wife engaged in cleaning dirt from the floor, and his little child asleep on a bundle of rags in the corner--of another of the same dimensions, in which we found, seated on low boxes around a candle placed on a keg, a woman and her oldest daughter, (the latter a girl of fifteen, and, as we were told, a prostitute,) sewing on shirts, _for the making of which they were paid four cents apiece, and even at that price, out of which they had to support two small children, they could not get a supply of work_--of another of about the same size occupied by a street rag-picker and his family, the income of whose industry was eight dollars a month--of another, scarcely larger, into which we were drawn by the terrific screams of a drunken man beating his wife, containing no article of furniture whatever--another warmed only by a tin pail of lighted charcoal placed in the centre of the room, over which bent a blind man endeavouring to warm himself; around him three or four men and women swearing and quarrelling; in one corner on the floor a woman, who had died the day previous of disease, and in another two or three children sleeping on a pile of rags; (in regard to this room, we may say that its occupants were coloured people, and from them but a few days previous had been taken and adopted by one of our benevolent citizens a beautiful little white girl, four or five years of age, whose father was dead and whose mother was at blackwell's island;) another from which not long; since twenty persons, sick with fever were taken to the hospital, and every individual of them died. but why extend the catalogue? or why attempt to convey to the imagination by words the hideous squalor and the deadly effluvia; the dim, undrained courts, oozing with pollution; the dark narrow stairways decayed with age, reeking with filth, and overrun with vermin; the rotten floors, ceilings begrimed, crumbling, ofttimes too low to permit you to stand upright, and windows stuffed with rags; or why try to portray the gaunt shivering forms and wild ghastly faces in these black and beetling abodes, wherein from cellar to garret ----'all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, abominable, unutterable!'" _n. york courier and inquirer_. our shops are now everywhere filled with the products of the cheap labour of england--of the labour of those foreign women who make shirts at a penny apiece, finding the needles and the thread, and of those poor girl's who spend a long day at making artificial flowers for which they receive two pence, and then eke out the earnings of labour by the wages of prostitution; and our women are everywhere driven from employment--the further consequences of which may be seen in the following extract from another journal of the day:-- "a gentleman who had been deputed to inquire into the condition of this class of operatives, found one of the most expert of them working from five o'clock in the morning until eleven at night, yet earning only about three dollars a week. out of this, she had to pay a dollar and a half for board, leaving a similar amount for fuel, clothing, and all other expenses. her condition, however, as compared with that of her class generally, was one of opulence. the usual earnings were but two dollars a week, which, as respectable board, could be had nowhere for less; than a dollar and a half, _left only fifty cents for everything else_. the boarding-houses, even at this price, are of the poorest character, always noisome and unhealthy, and not unfrequently in vile neighbourhoods. with such positive and immediate evils to contend with, what wonder that so many needlewomen take 'the wages of sin?'" "among the cases brought to light in new york, was that of an intelligent and skilful dressmaker, who was found in the garret of a cheap boarding-house, out of work, and nor are such instances unfrequent. the small remuneration which these workwomen receive keeps them living from hand to mouth, so that, in case of sickness, or scarcity of work, _they are sometimes left literally without a crust_."--_philada. evening-bulletin_. if females cannot tend looms, make flowers, or do any other of those things in which mind takes in a great degree the place of physical power, they must make shirts at four cents apiece, or resort to prostitution--or, they may work in the fields; and this is nearly the latitude of choice allowed to them under the system called free trade. every furnace that is closed in pennsylvania by the operation of this system, lessens the value of labour in the neighbourhood, and drives out some portion of the people to endeavour to sell elsewhere their only commodity, labour. some seek the cities and some go west to try their fortunes. so, too, with the closing of woollens mills in new york, and cotton mills in new england. every such ease _compels_ people to leave their old homes and try to find new ones--and in this form the slave trade now exists at the north to a great extent. the more people thus _driven_ to the cities, the cheaper is labour, and the more rapid is the growth of drunkenness and crime; and these effects are clearly visible in the police reports of all our cities.[ ] centralization, poverty, and crime go always hand in hand with each other. the closing of mills and furnaces in maryland lessens the demand for labour there, and the smaller that demand the greater _must_ be the necessity on the part of those who own slaves to sell them to go south; and here we find the counterpart of the state of things already described as existing in. new york. the virginian, limited to negroes as the only commodity into which he can manufacture his corn and thus enable it to travel cheaply to market, sends his crop to richmond, and the following extract of a letter from that place shows how the system works:-- "_richmond, march_ , . "i saw several children sold; the girls brought the highest price. girls from to years old brought from $ to $ . "i must say that the slaves did not display as much feeling as i had expected, as a general thing--but there was _one_ noble exception--god bless her! and save her, too!! as i hope he will in some way, for if he does not interpose, there were no men there that would. "she was a fine-looking woman about years old, with three _beautiful_ children. her children as well as herself were neatly dressed. she attracted my attention at once on entering the room, and i took my stand near her to learn her answers to the various questions put to her by the traders. _one_ of these traders asked her what was the matter with her eyes? wiping away the tears, she replied, 'i s'pose i have been crying.' 'why do you cry?' 'because i have left my man behind, and his master won't let him come along.' 'oh, if i buy you, i will furnish you with a better husband, or man, as you call him, than your old one.' 'i don't want any _better_ and won't have any _other_ as long as he lives.' 'oh, but you will though, if i buy you,' '_no, massa, god helping me, i never will_.'"--_new york tribune_. at the north, the poor girl driven out from the cotton or the woollens mill is forced to make shirts at four cents each, or sell herself to the horrible slavery of prostitution. at the south, this poor woman, driven put from virginia, may perhaps at some time be found making one of the _dramatis personæ_ in scenes similar to those here described by dr. howe:-- "if howard or mrs. fry ever discovered so ill-administered a den of thieves as the new orleans prison, they never described it. in the negro's apartment i saw much which made me blush that i was a white man; and which for a moment stirred up an evil spirit in my animal nature. entering a large paved court-yard, around which ran galleries filled with slaves of all ages, sexes, and colours, i heard the snap of a whip, every stroke of which sounded like the sharp crack of a pistol. i turned my head, and beheld a sight which absolutely chilled me to the marrow of my bones, and gave me, for the first time in my life, the sensation of my hair stiffening at the roots. there lay a black girl flat upon her face on a board, her two thumbs tied, and fastened to one end, her feet tied and drawn tightly to the other end, while a strap passed over the small of her back, and fastened around the board, compressed her closely to it. below the strap she was entirely naked. by her side, and six feet off, stood a huge negro, with a long whip, which he applied with dreadful power and wonderful precision. every stroke brought away a strip of skin, which clung to the lash, or fell quivering on the pavement, while the blood followed after it. the poor creature writhed and shrieked, and in a voice which showed alike her fear of death and her dreadful agony, screamed to her master who stood at her head, 'oh, spare my life; don't cut my soul out!' but still fell the horrid lash; still strip after strip peeled off from the skin; gash after gash was cut in her living flesh, until it became a livid and bloody mass of raw and quivering muscle. "it was with the greatest difficulty i refrained from springing upon the torturer, and arresting his lash; but alas, what could i do, but turn aside to hide my tears for the sufferer, and my blushes for humanity! "this was in a public and regularly organized prison; the punishment was one recognised and authorized by the law. but think you the poor wretch had committed a heinous offence, and had been convicted thereof, and sentenced to the lash? not at all! she was brought by her master to be whipped by the common executioner, without trial, judge, or jury, just at his beck or nod, for some real or supposed offence, or to gratify his own whim or malice. and he may bring her day after day, without cause assigned, and inflict any number of lashes he pleases, short of twenty-five, provided only he pays the fee. or if he choose, he may have a private whipping-board on his own premises, and brutalize himself there. "a shocking part of |his horrid punishment was its publicity, as i have said; it was in a court-yard, surrounded by galleries, which were filled with coloured persons of all sexes--runaway slaves committed for some crime, or slaves up for sale. you would naturally suppose they crowded forward and gazed horror-stricken at the brutal spectacle below; but they did not; many of them hardly noticed it, and many were entirely indifferent to it. they went on in their childish pursuits, and some were laughing outright in the distant parts of the galleries;--so low can man created in god's image be sunk in brutality." where, however, lies the fault of all this? cheap cotton cannot be supplied to the world unless the domestic slave trade be maintained, and all the measures of england are directed toward obtaining a cheap and abundant supply of that commodity, to give employment to that "cheap and abundant supply of labour" so much desired by the writers in the very journal that furnished to its readers this letter of dr. howe.[ ] to produce this cheap cotton the american labourer must be expelled from his home in virginia to the wilds of arkansas, there to be placed, perhaps, under the control of a _simon legree_.[ ] that he may be expelled, the price of corn must be cheapened in virginia; and that it may be cheapened, the cheap labourer of ireland must be brought to england there, to compete with the englishman for the reduction of labour to such a price as will enable england to "smother in their infancy" all attempts at manufacturing corn into any thing but negroes for arkansas. that done, should the englishman's "blood boil" on reading uncle tom's cabin, he is told to recollect that it is "to his advantage that the slave should be permitted to wear his chains in peace." and yet this system, which looks everywhere to the enslavement of man, is dignified by the name of "free trade." the cheap-labour system of england produces the slave trade of america, india, and ireland; and the manner in which it is enabled to produce that effect, and the extent of its "advantage" to the people of england itself, is seen in the following extract from a speech delivered at a public meeting in that country but a few weeks since:-- "the factory-law was so unblushingly violated that the chief inspector of that part of the factory district, mr. leonard horner, had found himself necessitated to write to the home secretary, to say that he dared not, and would not send any of his sub-inspectors into certain districts until he had police protection. * * * and protection against whom? against the factory-masters! against the richest men in the district, against the most influential men in the district, against the magistrates of the district, against the men who hold her majesty's commission, against the men who sat in the petty sessions as the representatives of royalty. * * * _and did the masters suffer for their violation of the law?_ in his own district it was a settled custom of the male, and to a great extent of the female workers in factories, to be in bed from , or o'clock on sunday, because they were tired out by the labour of the week. sunday was the only day on which they could rest their wearied frames. * * it would generally be found that, the longer the time of work, the smaller the wages. * * _he would rather be a slave in south carolina, than a factory operative in england."_--_speech of rev, dr. bramwell, at crampton_. the whole profit, we are told, results from "the last hour," and were that hour taken from the master, then the people of virginia might be enabled to make their own cloth and iron, and labour might there become so valuable that slaves would cease to be exported to texas, and cotton _must_ then rise in price; and in order to prevent the occurrence of such unhappy events, the great cotton manufacturers set at defiance the law of the land! the longer the working hours the more "cheap and abundant" will be the "supply of labour,"--and it is only by aid of this cheap, or slave, labour that, as we are told, "the supremacy of england in manufactures can be maintained." the cheaper the labour, the more rapid must be the growth of individual fortunes, and the more perfect the consolidation of the land. extremes thus always meet. the more splendid the palace of the trader, whether in cloth, cotton, negroes, or hindoos, the more squalid will be the poverty of the labourer, his wife and children,--and the more numerous the diamonds on the coat of prince esterhazy, the more ragged will be his serfs. the more that local places of exchange are closed, the greater will be the tendency to the exhaustion and abandonment of the land, and the more flourishing will be the slave trade, north and south,--and the greater will be the growth of pro-slavery at the south, and anti-slavery at the north. the larger the export of negroes to the south, the greater will be their tendency to run from their masters to the north, and the greater will be the desire at the north to shut them out, as is proved by the following law of illinois, now but a few weeks old, by which negro slavery is, as is here seen, re-established in the territory for the government of which was passed the celebrated ordinance of :-- "_be it enacted by the people of the state of illinois, represented in the general assembly._ . if any negro, or mulatto, bond or free, shall come into this state, and remain ten days, with the evident intention of residing in the same, every such negro or mulatto shall be deemed guilty of a high misdemeanour, and for the first offence shall be fined the sum of fifty dollars, to be recovered before any justice of the peace, in the county where said negro or mulatto may be found; said proceeding shall he in the name of the people of the state of illinois, and shall be tried by a jury of twelve men. . if said negro or mulatto shall be found guilty, and the fine assessed be not paid forthwith to the justice of the peace before whom said proceedings were had, said justice shall forthwith advertise said negro or mulatto, by posting up notices thereof in at least three of the most public places in his district; which said notices shall be posted up for ten days; and on the day, and at the time and place mentioned in said advertisement, the said justice shall at public auction proceed to sell said negro or mulatto to any person who will pay said fine and costs." slavery now travels north, whereas only twenty years ago freedom was travelling south. that such is the case is the natural consequence of our submission, even in part, to the system that looks to _compelling_ the export of raw products, the exhaustion of the land, the cheapening of labour, and the export of the labourer. wherever it is submitted to, slavery grows. wherever it is resisted, slavery dies away, and freedom grows, as is shown in the following list of-- countries whose policy looks countries whose policy looks to cheapening labour. to raising the value of labour. ---------------------------- ------------------------------- the west indies, northern-germany, portugal, russia, turkey, denmark, india, spain, ireland, belgium, united states under the united states under the compromise, and the tariffs of and . tariff of . population declines in all the foreign countries in the first column, and it became almost stationary in the northern slave states, as it is now likely again to do, because of the large extent of the domestic slave trade. population grows in the foreign countries of the second column, and it grew rapidly in the northern slave states, because of the limited export of negroes at the periods referred to. the first column gives the--so-called--free-trade countries, and the other those which have protected themselves against the system; and yet slavery grows in all those of the first column, and freedom in all those of the second. the first column gives us the countries in which education diminishes and intellect declines, and the period in our own history in which were passed the laws prohibiting the education of negroes. the second, those countries in which education advances, with great increase of intellectual activity; and in our own history it gives the period at which the northern slave states held conventions having in view the adoption of measures looking to the abolition of slavery. the first gives those foreign countries in which women and children must labour in the field or remain unemployed. the second those in which there is a daily increasing demand for the labour of women, to be employed in the lighter labour of manufactures. the first gives those in which civilization advances; and the second those in which there is a daily increasing tendency toward utter barbarism. we are now frequently invited to an alliance with great britain, and for what? for maintaining and extending the system whose effects are found in all the nations enumerated in the first column. for increasing the supply of cheap cotton, cheap corn, and cheap sugar, all of which require cheap, or slave, labour, and in return for these things we are to have cheap cloth, the produce of the cheap, or slave, labour of england, scotland, and ireland. it is as the advocate of freedom that britain calls upon us to enter into more intimate relations with her. her opponents are, as we are told, the despots of europe, the men who are trampling on the rights of their subjects, and who are jealous of her because her every movement looks, as we are assured, to the establishment of freedom throughout the world. were this so, it might furnish some reason for forgetting the advice of washington in regard to "entangling alliances;" but, before adopting such a course, it would be proper to have evidence that the policy of britain, at any time since the days of adam smith, has tended to the enfranchisement of man in any part of the world, abroad or at home. of all the despots now complained of, the king of naples stands most conspicuous, and it is in relation to him that a pamphlet has recently been published by the present chancellor of the exchequer, in which are found the following passages:-- "the general belief is, that the prisoners for political offences in the kingdom of the two sicilies are between fifteen or twenty and thirty thousand. the government withholds all means of accurate information, and accordingly there can be no certainty on the point. i have, however, found that this belief is shared by persons the most intelligent, considerate, and well informed. it is also, supported by what is known of the astonishing crowds confined in particular prisons, and especially by what is accurately known in particular provincial localities, as to the numbers of individuals missing from among the community. i have heard these numbers, for example, at reggio and at salerno; and from an effort to estimate them in reference to population, i do believe that twenty thousand is no unreasonable estimate. in naples alone some hundreds are at this moment under indictment _capitally_; and when i quitted it a trial was expected to come on immediately, (called that of the fifteenth of may,) in which the number charged was between four and five hundred; including (though this is a digression) at least one or more persons of high station whoso opinions would in this country be considered more conservative than your own." * * * "in utter defiance of this law, the government, of which the prefect of police is an important member, through the agents of that department, watches and dogs the people, pays domiciliary visits, very commonly at night, ransacks houses, seizing papers and effects, and tearing up floors at pleasure under pretence of searching for arms, and imprisons men by the score, by the hundred, by the thousand, without any warrant whatever, sometimes without even any written authority at all, or any thing beyond the word of a policeman; constantly without any statement whatever of the nature of the offence. "nor is this last fact wonderful. men are arrested, not because they have committed, or are believed to have committed, any offence; but because they are persons whom it is thought convenient to confine and to get rid of, and against whom, therefore, some charge must be found or fabricated."[ ] why is it that the king is enabled to do these things? obviously, because his people are poor and weak. if they were strong, he could not do them. men, however, never have anywhere become strong to resist power, except where the artisan has come to the side of the farmer; and it is because he has not done so in naples and sicily that the people are so poor, ignorant, and weak as we see them to be. has england ever endeavoured to strengthen the neapolitan people by teaching them how to combine their efforts for the working of their rich ores, or for the conversion of their wool into cloth? assuredly not. she desires that wool and sulphur, and all other raw materials, may be cheap, and that iron may be dear; and, that they may be so, she does all that is in her power to prevent the existence in that country of any of that diversification of interests that would find employment for men, women, and children, and would thus give value to labour and land. that she may do this, she retains malta and the ionian islands, as convenient places of resort for the great reformer of the age--the smuggler--whose business it is to see that no effort at manufactures shall succeed, and to carry into practical effect the decree that all such attempts must be "smothered in their infancy." if, under these circumstances, king ferdinand is enabled to play the tyrant, upon whom rests the blame? assuredly, on the people who refuse to permit the farmers of the two sicilies to strengthen themselves by forming that natural alliance between the loom and the plough to which the people of england were themselves indebted for their liberties. were the towns of that country growing in size, and were the artisan everywhere taking his place by the side of the farmer, the people would be daily becoming stronger and more free, whereas they are now becoming weaker and more enslaved. so, too, we are told of the tyranny and bad faith prevailing in spain. if, however, the people of that country are poor and weak, and compelled to submit to measures that are tyrannical and injurious, may it not be traced to the fact that the mechanic has never been permitted to place himself among them? and may not the cause of this be found in the fact that portugal and gibraltar have for a century past been the seats of a vast contraband trade, having for _its express object_ to deprive the spanish people of all power to do any thing but cultivate the soil? who, then, are responsible for the subjection of the spanish people? those, assuredly, whose policy looks to depriving the women and children of spain of all employment except in the field, in order that wool may be cheap and that cloth may be dear. turkey is poor and weak, and we hear much of the designs of russia, to be counteracted by england; but does england desire that turkey shall grow strong and her people become free? does she desire that manufactures shall rise, that towns shall grow, and that the land shall acquire value? assuredly not. the right to inundate that country with merchandise is "a golden privilege" never to be abandoned, because it would raise the price of silk and lower the price of silk goods. the people of austria and hungary are weak, but has england ever tried to render them strong to obtain their freedom? would she not now oppose any measures calculated to enable the hungarians to obtain the means of converting their food and their wool into cloth--to obtain mechanics and machinery, by aid of which towns could grow, and their occupants become strong and free? to render any aid of that kind would be in opposition to the doctrine of cheap food and cheap labour. northern germany is becoming strong and united, and the day is now at hand when all germany will have the same system under which the north has so much improved; but these things are done in opposition to england, who disapproves of them because they tend to raise the price of the raw products of the earth and lower that of manufactured ones, and to enable the agricultural population to grow rich and strong; and the more exclusively she depends on trade, the greater is her indisposition to permit the adoption of any measures tending to limit her power over the people of the world. the people of china are weak, but does the consumption of opium to the extent of forty millions of dollars a year tend to strengthen them? the government, too, is weak, and therefore is hong kong kept for the purpose of enabling "the great reformer" to evade the laws against the importation of a commodity that yields the east india company a profit of sixteen millions of dollars a year, and the consumption of which is so rapidly increasing. burmah, too, is weak, and therefore is her territory to be used for the purpose of extending the trade in opium throughout the interior provinces of china. will this tend to strengthen, or to free, the chinese people? can the people of this country become parties to a system like this--one that looks to cheapening labour every where? can they be parties to any system that can be maintained only on the condition of "an abundant and cheap supply of labour?" or, can they be parties to an alliance that, wherever it is found, so far cheapens man as to render him a profitable article for the export trade? who, then, are our natural allies? russia, prussia, and denmark are despotisms, we are told. they are so; but yet so beautiful and so perfect is the harmony of interests under a natural system, that that which despots do in their own defence strengthens the people, and carries them on toward freedom. denmark is a despotism, and yet her people are the freeest and most happy of any in europe. it is time that we emancipated ourselves from "the tyranny of words"[ ] under which we live, and looked to things. england has what is called a free government, and yet ireland, the west indies, and india have been prostrated under the despotism of the spindle and loom, while despotic denmark protects her people against that tyranny, and thus enables her women and her children to find other employments than those of the field. the king of prussia desires to strengthen himself against france, austria, and russia; and, to do this, he strengthens his people by enabling them to find employment for all their time, to find manure for their farms, and to find employment for their minds; and he strengthens germany by the formation of a great union, that gives to thirty millions of people the same advantage of freedom of internal trade that subsists among ourselves. the emperor of russia desires to strengthen himself, and he, in like manner, adopts measures leading to the building of towns, the diversification of labour, and the habit of association among men; and thus does he give value to land and labour. he is a despot, it is true, but he is doing what is required to give freedom to sixty millions of people; while all the measures of england in india tend to the enslavement of a hundred millions. we are told of his designs upon turkey--but what have the _people_ of that country to lose by incorporation within the russian empire? now, they are poor and enslaved, but were they once russian the spindle would be brought to the wool, towns would cease to decline, labour and land would acquire value, and the people would begin to become free. it may be doubted if any thing would so much tend to advance the cause of freedom in europe as the absorption of turkey by russia, for it would probably be followed by the adoption of measures that would secure perfect freedom of trade throughout all middle and eastern europe, with large increase in the value of man. the real despotism is that which looks to cheapening labour, and the real road to freedom is that which looks toward raising the value of labour and land. the natural allies of this country are the agricultural nations of the world, for their interests and ours look in the same direction, while those of england look in one directly opposite. they and we need that the prices of all agricultural products should be high, and those of manufactured articles low, while england desires that the latter may be high and the former low. that they and we may be gratified, it is required that machinery shall take its place by the food and the wool; that towns shall arise, and that man shall everywhere become strong and free. that she may be gratified, it is required that the food and the wool shall go to the spindle and the loom; that men, women, and children shall be confined to the labours of the field, and that men shall remain poor, ignorant, and enslaved. the more russia makes a market for her wheat, the higher will be its price, to the great advantage of the farmers of the world; and the more cotton and sugar she will require, and the higher will be their prices, to the great advantage of the planters of the world. the more germany makes a market for her wool, the higher will be its price, and the cheaper will be cloth, and the more cotton and sugar she will need. the more we make a market for cotton, the better will it be for the people of india; and the more we consume our own grain, the better will it be for the farmers of germany. our interests and theirs are one and the same; but it is to the interest of the british manufacturer to have all the world competing with each other to sell in his one limited market, and the more competition he can create, the cheaper will be products of the plough, and the larger will be the profits of the loom. he wishes to buy cheaply the things we have to sell, and to sell dearly those we have to buy. we wish to sell dearly and buy cheaply, and as our objects are directly the reverse of his, it would be as imprudent for us to be advised by him, as it would be for the farmer to enter into a combination with the railroad for the purpose of keeping up the price of transportation. russia and germany, denmark, spain, and belgium are engaged in resisting a great system of taxation, and they grow rich and strong, and therefore their people become from year to year more free. portugal and india, turkey and ireland yield to the system, and they become from year to year poorer and weaker, and their people more enslaved. it is on the part of the former a war for peace, and fortunately it is a war that involves no expense for fleets and armies, and one under which both wealth and population grow with great rapidity--and one, therefore, in which we may, and must, unite, if we desire to see the termination of the slave trade at home or abroad. russia and germany, denmark, spain, and belgium are engaged in an effort to raise the value of man _at home_, wherever that home may be, and thus to stop the forced export of men, whether black, brown, or white: england is engaged in an effort to destroy everywhere the value of man _at home_, and therefore it is that the slave trade flourishes in the countries that submit to her system. we desire to increase the value of man in virginia, and thus to terminate the domestic slave trade. we desire that corn and cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco may be high, and cloth and iron low; that labour may be largely paid, and that man may become free; and the less our dependence on the market of england, the sooner will our desires be gratified. * * * * * are we then to adopt a system of measures tending to the injury of the people of england? by no means. her _real_ interests and ours are the same, and by protecting ourselves against her system, we are benefiting her. the harmony of interests is so perfect, that nations _cannot_ be benefited by measures tending to the injury of other nations; and when they allow themselves to be led away by the belief that they can be so, they are always themselves the heaviest sufferers. the sooner that all the agricultural communities of the earth shall come to an understanding, that it is to their interest to withdraw from the present insane contest for the privilege of supplying a single and limited market, and determine to create markets for themselves, the sooner will the english labourer, land-owner, and capitalist find themselves restored to freedom. that the reader may understand this, we must look once more to ireland. the closing of the demand for labour in that country drove the poor people to england in search of employment. "for half a century back"--that is, since the union--"the western shores of our island," says a british journalist-- "especially lancashire and glasgow have been flooded with crowds of half clad, half fed, half civilized celts, many thousands of whom have settled permanently in our manufacturing towns, reducing wages by their competition, and what is worse, reducing the standard of living and comfort among our people by their example--spreading squalor and disease by their filthy habits--inciting to turbulence and discontent by their incorrigible hostility to law, incalculably increasing the burden of our poor rates--and swelling the registry of crime, both in police courts and assizes; to the great damage of the national character and reputation. the abundant supply of cheap labour which they furnished had no doubt the effect of enabling our manufacturing industry to increase at a rate and, to a height which, without them, would have been unattainable; and so far they have been of service."--_north british review_, no. . the essential error of this passage is found in the supposition that any set of people or any species of industry, is to profit by the cheapening of labour and the enslavement of man. nothing of this kind can take place. the true interests of all men are promoted by the elevation, and they all suffer by whatever tends to the depression, of their fellow-men. the master of slaves, whether wearing a crown or carrying a whip, is himself a slave; and that such is the case with nations as well as individuals, the reader may perhaps be satisfied if he will follow out the working of the british system as here described by the reviewer. for half a century irish labour has been, as we are here told, poured into england, producing a glut in the market, and lowering not only the wages, but also the standard of comfort among english labourers. this is quite true; but why did these men come? because labour was cheaper in ireland than in england. why was it so? because, just half a century since, it was provided by the act of union that the women and children of ireland should either remain idle or work in the field. prior to the centralization by that act of all power in the british parliament, the people of that country had been vigorously engaged in the effort to produce competition for the purchase of labour _at home_; and had they been permitted to continue on in that direction, it would have risen to a level with english labour, and then it could not have been profitably exported. this, however, they were not permitted to do. their furnaces and factories were closed, and the people who worked in them were driven to england to seek their bread, and wages fell, because the price of all commodities, labour included, tends to a level, and whatever reduces them anywhere tends to reduce them everywhere. the price of english labour fell because the act of union had diminished the value of that of ireland. if we desire to know to what extent it had this effect, we must look to the consequences of an over-supply of _perishable_ articles. of all commodities, labour is _the most perishable_, because it must be sold on the instant or it is wasted, and if wasted, the man who has it to sell may perish himself. now we know that an over-supply of even iron, equal to ten per cent., will reduce prices thirty, forty, or fifty per cent., and that an excess of a single hundred thousand bales in the crop of cotton makes a difference of ten per cent. upon three millions of bales, whereas a diminution to the same extent will make a difference of ten per cent. in the opposite direction. still more is this the case with oranges and peaches, which must be sold at once or wasted. with an excess in the supply of either, they are often abandoned as not worth the cost of gathering and carrying to market. a small excess in the supply of men, women, and children so far reduces their value in the eyes of the purchaser of labour, that he finds himself, as now in england, induced to regard it as a mercy of heaven when famine, pestilence, and emigration clear them out of his way; and he is then disposed to think that the process "cannot be carried too far nor continued too long." irish labour, having been cheapened by the provisions of the act of union, was carried to the market of england for sale, and thus was produced _a glut of the most perishable of all commodities_; and the effect of that glut must have been a diminution in the general price of labour in england that far more than compensated for the increased number of labourers. admitting, however, that the diminution was no more than would be so compensated, it would follow, of course, that the quantity of wages paid after a year's immigration was the same that it had previously been. that it was not, and could not have been so great, is quite certain; but it is not needed to claim more than that there was no increase. it follows, necessarily, that while the quantity of wages to be expended in england against food and clothing remained the same, the number of persons among whom it was to be divided had increased, and each had less to expend. this of course diminished the power to purchase food, and to a much greater degree diminished the demand for clothing, for the claims of the stomach are, of all others, the most imperious. the reader will now see that the chief effect thus produced by cheap labour is a reduction in the domestic demand for manufactured goods. as yet, however, we are only at the commencement of the operation. the men who had been driven from ireland by the closing of irish factories, had been consumers of food,[ ] but as they could no longer consume at home, it became now necessary that that food should follow them to england, and the necessity for this transportation tended largely to diminish the prices of all food in ireland, and of course the value of labour and land. each new depression in the price of labour tended to swell the export of men, and the larger that export the greater became, of course, the necessity for seeking abroad a market for food. irish food came to swell the supply, but the english market for it did not grow, because the greater the glut of men, the smaller became the sum of wages to be laid out against food; and thus irish and english food were now contending against each other, to the injury, of english and irish labour and land. the lower the price of food in england, the less was the inducement to improve the land, and the less the demand for labour the less the power to buy even food, while the power to pay for clothing diminished with tenfold rapidity. with each step in this direction the labourer lost more and more the control over his own actions, and became more and more enslaved. the decline in the home demand for manufactures then produced a necessity for seeking new markets, for underworking the hindoo, and for further cheapening labour; and the more labour was cheapened the less became the demand for, and the return to capital. land, labour, and capital thus suffered alike from the adoption of a policy having for its object to prevent the people of ireland from mining coal, making iron, or availing themselves of the gratuitous services of those powerful agents so abundantly provided by nature for their use. the reader may, perhaps, appreciate more fully the evil effects of this course upon an examination of the reverse side of the picture. let us suppose that the irishman could at once be raised from being the slave of the landholder to becoming a freeman, exercising control over the application of his labour, and freely discussing with his employer what should be his reward,--and see what would be the effect. it would at once establish counter-attraction, and instead of a constant influx of people _from_ ireland into england, there would be a constant afflux _to_ that country, and in a little time the whole mass of irish labour that now weighs on the english market would be withdrawn, and wages would rise rapidly. at the cost of the landholder, it will be said. on the contrary, to his profit. the irishman at home, fully employed, would consume thrice the food he can now obtain, and irish food would at once cease to press on the english market, and the price of english food would rise. this, of course, would offer new inducements to improve the land, and, this would make a demand for labour and capital, the price of both of which would rise. these things, however, it will be said, would be done at the cost of the manufacturer. on the contrary, to his advantage ireland now consumes but little of english manufactures. "no one," says the quarterly review, "ever saw an english scarecrow with such rags" as are worn by hundreds of thousands of the people of ireland. raise the value of irishmen at home, make them free, and the irish market will soon require more manufactured goods than now go to all india. raise the value of man in great britain, and the domestic market will absorb an amount of commodities that would now be deemed perfectly incredible. how can this be done for ireland? by the same process under which the man of germany, russia, denmark, and spain is now passing gradually toward freedom. by providing that she shall be _protected_ in her efforts to bring the consumer to the side of the producer, and thus be enabled to provide at home demand for all her labour and all her food, and for all the capital now deemed surplus that weighs on the market of england. it will, however, be said that this would deprive the english manufacturer of the market he now has in that country. it would not. he would sell more in value, although it would certainly be less in bulk. if ireland spun her own yarn and made her own coarse cloths, she would need to buy fine ones. if she made her woollen cloth she could afford to buy silks. if she made her own pig-iron she would have occasion to purchase steam-engines. if she mined her own coal she would require books; and the more her own labourer was elevated in the scale of material comfort, and moral and intellectual improvement, the larger would be her demands on her neighbours for those commodities requiring for their production the exercise of mind, to their advantage as well as her own. the error in the whole british system is, that it looks to preventing everywhere local association and local commerce; and this it does because it seeks to locate in england the workshop of the world. the natural effect of this is a desire to compel all nations to transport their products to market in their rudest form, at greatest cost to themselves, and greatest exhaustion of their land; and the poorer they become, the greater are her efforts at competing with them in the rudest manufactures, to the great injury of her own people. the man who is constantly competing with men below himself, will be sure eventually to fall to their level; whereas, he who looks upward and determines upon competition with those who are above him, will be very likely to rise to their level. if all the world were engaged in perfecting their products, the standard of man would be everywhere rising, and the power to purchase would grow everywhere, with rapid increase in the amount of both internal and external commerce, but the commodities, exchanged would be of a higher character--such as would require for their preparation a higher degree of intellect. at present, all the nations outside of england are to be stimulated to the adoption of a system that affords to their men, women, and children no employment but that of the rude operations of the field, while those in england are to be kept at work mining coal, making pig metal; and converting cotton into yarn; and thus the tendency of the system is toward driving the whole people of the world into pursuits requiring little more than mere brute labour, and the lowest grade of intellect, to the destruction of commerce, both internal and external. the more this is carried into effect the more must the people of england and the world become brutalized and enslaved, and the greater must be the spread of intemperance and immorality. to this, ireland, india, and all other countries that find themselves forced to press their products on the english market, are largely contributing, and the only people that are doing any thing for its correction are those who are labouring to make a market at home for their products, and thus diminish the competition for their sale in the english market. were germany and russia now to abolish protection, the direct effect would be to throw upon england an immense amount of food they now consume at home, and thus diminish the price to such an extent as to render it impracticable to apply labour to the improvement of english land. this would of course diminish the wages of english labour, and diminish the power of the labourers to purchase manufactured goods, and the diminution thus produced in the domestic demand would be twice as great as the increase obtained abroad. it is time that the people of england should learn that the laws which govern the community of nations are precisely the same as those which govern communities of individuals, and that neither nations nor individuals can benefit permanently by any measures tending to the injury of their neighbours. the case of ireland is one of oppression more grievous than is to be found elsewhere in the records of history; and oppression has brought its punishment in the enslavement of the english labourer, land-owner, and capitalist. the first has small wages, the second small rents, and the third small profits, while the intermediate people, bankers, lawyers, and agents, grow rich. the remedy for much of this would be found in the adoption of measures that would raise the value of labour, capital, and land, in ireland, and thus permit the two former to remain at home, to give value to the last. the evil under which the people of england labour is that they are borne down under the weight of raw produce forced into their market, and the competition for its sale. this, in turn, reacts upon the world--as prices in that market fix the prices of all other markets. what is now needed is to raise _there_ the price of labour and its products, as would at once be done were it possible for all the agricultural nations to become so much masters of their own actions as to be able to say that from this time forward they would have such a demand at home as would free them from the slavery incident to a _necessity_ for going to that market. could that now be said, the instant effect would be so to raise the price of food as to make a demand for labour and capital in england that would double the price of both, as will be seen on an examination of the following facts. the united kingdom contains seventy millions of acres, and an average expenditure of only three days labour per acre, at s. per week, would amount to twenty-one millions of pounds, or half as much as the whole capital engaged in the cotton trade. no one who studies the reports on the agriculture of the british islands can doubt that even a larger quantity might annually, and most profitably, be employed on the land; and when we reflect that this would be repeated year after year, it will be seen how large a market would thus be made for both labour and capital. the rise of wages would put an end to the export of men from either england or ireland, and the increase in the home demand for manufactures would be great. it may be said that the rise in the price of food would give large rents, without improvement in the land, and that the profit of this change would go to the land-owner. in all other trades, however, high wages _compel_ improvements of machinery, and it is only when they are low that men can profitably work old machines. were the wages of england this day doubled, it would be found that they would eat up the whole proceeds of all badly farmed land, leaving no rent, and then the owners of such land would find themselves as much obliged to improve their machinery of production as are the mill-owners of manchester. if they could not improve the whole, they would find themselves compelled to sell a part; and thus dear labour would produce division of the land and emancipation of the labourer, as cheap labour has produced the consolidation of the one and the slavery of the other. to enable russia and germany to refrain from pressing their products on the market that now regulates and depresses prices, it would be required that they should have great numbers of mills and furnaces, at which their now surplus food could be consumed, and their effect would be to create among them a new demand for labour with rise of wages, a better market for food to the benefit of the farmer, a better market for capital, and a greatly increased power to improve the land and to make roads and build schools. this would, of course, make demand for cotton, to the benefit of the cotton-grower, while improved prices for food would benefit the farmer everywhere. maryland, virginia, and the carolinas, too, would then have their factories, at which food and cotton would be converted into cloth, and the value of man in those states would rise to a level with that of mississippi and alabama--and our domestic slave trade would be brought to an end by precisely the same measures that would relieve england, ireland, and scotland from any _necessity_ for exporting men to distant regions of the earth. nothing of this kind could at once be done; but russia, germany, and other countries of europe are now, under protection, doing much toward it; and it is in the power of the people of this country to contribute largely toward bringing about such a state of things. much was being done under the tariff of , but it is being undone under the act of . the former tended to _raise_ the value of man at home, and hence it was that under it the domestic slave trade so much diminished. the latter tends to _diminish_ the value of man at home, and hence it is that under it that trade so rapidly increases. the former tended to diminish the quantity of food to be forced on the market of england, to the deterioration of the value of english labour and land. the latter tends to increase the quantity for which a market must be sought abroad; and whatever tends to force food into that country tends to lessen the value of its people, and to produce their _forced export_ to other countries. as yet, however, we have arrived only at the commencement of the working of the "free trade" system. we are now where we were in , when the making of railroads by aid of large purchases, _on credit_, of cloth and iron, stimulated the consumption of food and diminished the labour applied to its production. after the next revulsion, now perhaps not far distant, the supply of food will be large, and then it will be that the low prices of - , for both food and labour, will be repeated. in considering what is the duty of this country, every man should reflect that whatever tends to increase the quantity of raw produce forced on the market of england, tends to the cheapening of labour and land everywhere, to the perpetuation of slavery, and to the extension of its domain--and that whatever tends to the withdrawal of such produce from that market tends to raising the value of land and labour everywhere, to the extinction of slavery, and to the elevation of man. the system commonly called free trade tends to produce the former results; and where man is enslaved there can be no real freedom of trade. that one which looks to protection against this extraordinary system of taxation, tends to enable men to determine for themselves whether they will make their exchanges abroad or at home; and it is in this power of choice that consists the freedom of trade and of man. by adopting the "free trade," or british, system we place ourselves side by side with the men who have ruined ireland and india, and are now poisoning and enslaving the chinese people. by adopting the other, we place ourselves by the side of those whose measures tend not only to the improvement of their own subjects, but to the emancipation of the slave everywhere, whether in the british islands, india, italy, or america. it will be said, however, that protection tends to destroy commerce, the civilizer of mankind. directly the reverse, however, is the fact. it is the system now called free trade that tends to the destruction of commerce, as is shown wherever it obtains. protection looks only to resisting a great scheme of foreign taxation that everywhere limits the power of man to combine his efforts with those of his neighbour man for the increase of his production, the improvement of his mind, and the enlargement of his desires for, and his power to procure, the commodities produced among the different nations of the world. the commerce of india does not grow, nor does that of portugal, or of turkey; but that of the protected, countries does increase, as has been shown in the case of spain, and can now be shown in that of germany. in , before the formation of the _zoll-verein_, germany took from great britain, of her own produce and manufactures, only........ £ , , whereas in she took......................... £ , , and as regards this country, in which protection has always to some extent existed, it is the best customer that england ever had, and our demands upon her grow most steadily and regularly under protection, because the greater our power to make coarse goods, the greater are those desires which lead to the purchase of fine ones, and the greater our ability to gratify them. whatever tends to increase the power of man to associate with his neighbour man, tends to promote the growth of commerce, and to produce that material, moral, and intellectual improvement which leads to freedom. to enable men to exercise that power is the object of protection. the men of this country, therefore, who desire that all men, black, white, and brown, shall at the earliest period enjoy perfect freedom of thought, speech, action, and trade, will find, on full consideration, that duty to themselves and to their fellow-men requires that they should advocate efficient protection, as the true and only mode of abolishing the domestic trade in slaves, whether black or white. * * * * * it will, perhaps, be said that even although the slave trade were abolished, slavery would still continue to exist, and that the great object of the anti-slavery movement would remain unaccomplished. one step, at all events, and a great one, would have been made. to render men _adscripti glebæ_, thus attaching them to the soil, has been in many countries, as has so recently been the case in russia, one of the movements toward emancipation; and if this could be here effected by simple force of attraction, and without the aid of law, it would be profitable to all, both masters and slaves; because whatever tends to attract population tends inevitably to increase the value of land, and thus to enrich its owner. there, however, it could not stop, as the reader will readily see. cheap food enables the farmer of virginia to raise cheap labour for the slave market. raise the price of food, and the profit of that species of manufacture would diminish. raise it still higher, and the profit would disappear; and then would the master of slaves find it necessary to devolve upon the parent the making of the _sacrifice_ required for the raising of children, and thus to enable him to bring into activity all the best feelings of the heart. cheap food and slavery go together; and if we desire to free ourselves from the last, we must commence by ridding ourselves of the first. food is cheap in virginia, because the market for it is distant, and most of its value there is swallowed up in the cost of transportation. bring the consumer close to the door of the farmer, and it will be worth as much there as it now commands in the distant market. make a demand everywhere around him for all the food that is raised, and its value will everywhere rise, for then we shall cease to press upon the limited market of england, which fixes the price of our crop, and is now borne down by the surplus products of germany and russia, canada and ourselves; and the price will then be higher in the remote parts of virginia than can now be obtained for it in the distant market of england. it will then become quite impossible for the farmer profitably to feed his corn to slaves. with the rise in the price of food the land would quadruple in value, and that value would continue to increase as the artisan more and more took his place by the side of the producer of food and wool, and as towns increased in number and in size; and with each step in this direction the master would attach less importance to the ownership of slaves; while the slave would attach more importance to freedom. with both, the state of feeling would, improve; and the more the negro was improved the more his master would be disposed to think of slavery, as was thought of old by jefferson and madison, that it was an evil that required to be abated; and the more rapid the growth of wealth, the greater the improvement in the value of land, the more rapid would be the approach of freedom to all, the master and the slave. it will be said, however, that if food should so much increase in value as to render it desirable for virginia to retain the whole growth of her population, black and white, the necessary effect would, be a great rise in the price of cotton, and a great increase in the wealth of the planters further south, who would be desirous to have negroes, even at greatly increased prices. that the price of cotton would rise is quite certain. nothing keeps it down but the low price of food, which forces out the negroes of the northern states, and thus, maintains the domestic slave trade; and there is no reason to doubt that not only would there be a large increase in its price, but that the power to pay for it would increase with equal rapidity. more negro labour would then certainly be needed, and then would exist precisely the state of things that leads inevitably to freedom. when two masters seek one labourer, the latter becomes free; but when two labourers seek one master, the former become enslaved. the increased value of negro labour would render it necessary for the owners of negroes to endeavour to stimulate the labourer to exertion, and this could be done only by the payment of wages for over-work, as is even now done to a great extent. at present, the labour of the slave is in a high degree unproductive, as will be seen by the following passage from a letter to the new york _daily times_, giving the result of information derived from a gentleman of petersburgh, virginia, said to be "remarkable for accuracy and preciseness of his information:"-- "he tells me," says the writer, "he once very carefully observed how mush labour was expended in securing a crop of very thin wheat, and found that it took four negroes one day to cradle, rake, and bind one acre. (that is, this was the rate at which the field was harvested.) in the wheat-growing districts of western new york, four men would be expected to do five acres of a similar crop. "mr. griscom further states, as his opinion, that four negroes do not, in the ordinary agricultural operations of this state, accomplish as much as one labourer in new jersey. upon my expressing my astonishment, he repeated it as his deliberately formed opinion. "i have since again called on mr. griscom, and obtained permission to give his name with the above statement. he also wishes me to add, that the ordinary waste in harvesting, by the carelessness of the negroes, above that which occurs in the hands of northern labourers, is large enough to equal what a northern farmer would consider a satisfactory profit on the crop." to bring into activity all this vast amount of labour now wasted, it is needed to raise the _cost of man_, by raising the price of food; and that is to be done by bringing the farmer's market to his door, and thus giving value to labour and land. let the people of maryland and virginia, carolina, kentucky, and tennessee be enabled to bring into activity their vast treasures of coal and iron ore, and to render useful their immense water-powers--free the masters from their present dependence on distant markets, in which they _must_ sell all they produce, and _must_ buy all they consume--and the negro slave becomes free, by virtue of the same great law that in past times has freed the serf of england, and is now freeing the serf of russia. in all countries of the world man has become free as land has acquired value, and as its owners have been enriched; and in all man has become enslaved as land has lost its value, and its owners have been impoverished.[ ] chapter xxi. of the duty of the people of england. the english politico-economical system denounced by adam smith had not failed before the close of the last century to be productive of results in the highest degree unfavourable to man; and to account for them it became necessary to discover that they were the inevitable result of certain great natural laws; and to this necessity it was that the world was indebted for the ricardo-malthusian system, which may be briefly stated in the following propositions:-- first: that in the commencement of cultivation, when population is small and land consequently abundant, the best soils--those capable of yielding the largest return, say one hundred quarters to a given quantity of labour--alone are cultivated. second: that with the progress of population, the fertile lands are all occupied, and there arises a necessity for cultivating those yielding a smaller return; and that resort is then had to a second, and afterward to a third and a fourth class of soils, yielding respectively ninety, eighty, and seventy quarters to the same quantity of labour. third: that with the necessity for applying labour less productively, which thus accompanies the growth of population, rent arises: the owner of land no. being enabled to demand and to obtain, in return for its use, ten quarters when resort is had to that of second quality; twenty when no. is brought into use, and thirty when it becomes necessary to cultivate no. . fourth: that the _proportion_ of the landlord tends thus steadily to increase as the productiveness of labour decreases, the division being as follows, to wit:-- total at the: product labour rent ------- ------- ------ ---- first period, when no. alone is cultivated.. second period " no. and are cultivated. third period " no. , , and ".. fourth period " no. , , and ".. fifth period " no. , , , , and ".. sixth period " no. , , , , , and ".. seventh period " no. , , , , , , ".. and that there is thus a tendency to the ultimate absorption of the whole produce by the owner of the land, and to a steadily increasing inequality of condition; the power of the labourer to consume the commodities which he produces steadily diminishing, while that of the land-owner to claim them, as rent, is steadily increasing. fifth: that this tendency toward a diminution in the return of labour, and toward an increase of the landlord's proportion, always exists where population increases, and most exists where population increases most rapidly; but is in a certain degree counteracted by increase of wealth, producing improvement of cultivation. sixth: that every such improvement tends to retard the growth of rents, while every obstacle to improvement tends to increase that growth: and that, therefore, the interests of the land-owner and labourer are always opposed to each other, rents rising as labour falls, and _vice-versa_. a brief examination of these propositions will satisfy the reader that they tend inevitably to the centralization of all power in the hands of the few at the cost of the many, who are thus reduced to the condition of slaves, mere hewers of wood and drawers of water for their masters, as will now be shown. i. in the commencement of cultivation labour is largely productive, and the labourer takes for himself the whole of his product, paying no rent. ii. with the increase of population, and the increased power to associate, labour becomes less productive, and the labourer is required to give a part of the diminished product to the land-owner, who thus grows rich at his expense. iii. with further growth of population land acquires further value, and that value increases with every increase of the _necessity_ for applying labour less productively; and the less the product, the larger becomes the proportion of the proprietor, whose wealth and power increase precisely as the labourer becomes poorer and less able to defend his rights, or, in other words, as he becomes enslaved. this state of things leads of course to the expulsion of poor men, to seek at a distance those rich soils which, according to the theory, are the first cultivated. the more they are expelled, the greater must of course be the consolidation of the land, the larger the income of the few great farmers and land-owners, and the poorer the labourers. hence universal discord, such as is seen in england, and has recently been so well described by the _times_.[ ] the poorer the people, the greater must be the necessity for emigration; and the greater the anxiety of the landed or other capitalist for their expulsion, because they are thus relieved from the necessity for supporting them; and the greater the rejoicing of the trader, because he supposes they go from the cultivation of poor to that of rich soils. here we have dispersion, the opposite of that association to which man has everywhere been indebted for his wealth; for the development of his moral and intellectual faculties, and for his freedom. the soils left behind being supposed to be the poor ones, and those first appropriated abroad being supposed to be the rich ones, it is next held that all the people who go abroad, should do nothing but cultivate the land, sending their corn and their wool to a distance of thousands of miles in search of the little spindle and the loom; and thus does the ricardo system lead to the adoption of a policy directly the reverse of that taught by adam smith. the necessary effect of this is the discouragement of english agriculture, and the closing of the market for english capital; and the smaller the market for it at home the less must be the demand for labour, and the greater must be the tendency of the labourer to become the mere slave of those who do employ capital. this of course produces further expulsion of both labour and capital; and the more they go abroad, the less, as a matter of course, is the power of the community that is left behind: and thus the ricardo-malthusian system tends necessarily to the diminution of the importance of the nation in the eyes of the world. that system teaches that god in his infinite wisdom has given to matter in the form of man a reproductive power greater than he has given to the source from which that matter is derived, the earth itself; and that, with a view to the correction of that error, man must close his ear and his heart to the tale of suffering--must forget that great law of christ, "do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you,"--must persuade himself that it is "to his advantage" that the negro slave "shall wear his chains in peace,"--and must always recollect that if men _will_ marry; and have children, and he "stands between the error and its consequence," granting relief to the poor or the sick in their distress, except so far as to prevent "positive death," he "perpetuates the sin." this is the science of repulsion, despair, and death; and it has been well denominated "the dismal science." it is taught in many of the schools of europe, but england alone has made it the basis of a system of policy; and the result is seen in the fact that throughout all that portion of the world subject to her influence, we see nothing but repulsion, slavery, despair, and death, with steadily increasing weakness of the communities in the general system of the world, as witness ireland and india, from, which men are flying as from pestilence--the west indies, portugal, and turkey, in all of which population declines, and the communities themselves seem likely soon to perish of inanition.[ ] from every country that is strong enough to protect itself, she is being gradually shut out; and in every one that is strong enough to carry into effect the exclusion, we see a steady increase of the power and the habit of association, and of the strength of the nation. the little german union of led to the great one of ; and at this moment we have advices of the completion of the still greater one that is to give freedom of internal trade to sixty millions of people, and that is to do for all germany what the _zoll-verein_ has done for its northern portion. the habit of peace and of combined action thus grows in all the countries of the world which protect themselves, while repulsion and discord increase in every one that is unprotected. in one we see a daily tendency toward freedom, while in the other slavery grows from day to day. it is the complaint of england that, much as she has done for other countries, she receives no kindness in return. she stands at this day without a friend; and this is not so much the fault of any error of intention as of error of doctrine. many of those who have directed her affairs have been men of generous impulses--men who would scorn to do what they thought to be wrong--but they have, been led away by a system that teaches the rankest selfishness. the creator of man provided for his use great natural agents, the command of which was to be obtained as the reward of the cultivation of his intellectual powers; and that he might obtain leisure for their improvement, great stores of fuel were accumulated, and iron ore was furnished in unlimited quantity, to enable him, by combining the two, to obtain machinery to aid him in the cultivation of the soil and the conversion of its products. england, however, desires to restrict the use of those great natural agents; and whenever or wherever other nations undertake to call them to their aid, she is seen using every effort in her power to annihilate competition, and thus maintain her monopoly. of this, the recent proceedings in relation to steam intercourse between this country and europe present a striking instance; but the maintenance of numerous colonies, avowedly for the purpose of "stifling in its infancy" every effort on the part of other nations to obtain power to convert their coal and their ore into iron, or to convert their iron into machinery that would enable them to command the aid of steam, and thus lighten the labours of their people, while increasing the efficiency of their exertions, is a thing not only not disavowed, but gloried in by her most eminent and enlightened men. the exceeding selfishness of this effort to retain a monopoly of those great natural agents should, of itself, afford proof conclusive to every englishman that the system that is to be so maintained could not be right; and it would do so, were it not that their system of political economy teaches that every man must live by "snatching the bread from his neighbour's mouth" that the land-owner grows rich at the expense of the labourer; that profits rise only at the cost of wages, and wages only at the cost of profits; and, therefore, that the only way to ensure a fair rate for the use of capital is to keep the price of labour down. this system is to be carried out by producing "unlimited competition" and in what is it to exist? in the sale of labour; and the greater that competition, the greater will be the profits of the capitalist, and the lower will be the wages of the labourer. the more the competition for the sale of cotton, the cheaper will be the labourer who produces it; and the more perfect the monopoly of machinery, the cheaper must be the labourer who performs the work of spinning the wool and weaving the cloth, but the larger will be the share of the man who owns the spindles and the looms. the fewer the spindles and looms of the world, the cheaper will be cotton and the dearer will be cloth, and the greater the profits of what is called capital; but the less will be the value of the stock in that great bank from which all capital is derived--the earth; and the poorer and more enslaved must be all those who have shares in it, and all who desire to obtain loans from it--the land-owners and the labourers. such being the tendencies of the system, need we wonder, that it produces repulsion abroad, or that england is now so entirely without friends that in this age of the world--one that should be so enlightened--she talks of increased armaments with a view to defending herself from invasion, and calls on other nations for help? certainly not. were it otherwise, it would be wonderful. she is expelling her whole people from the land, and the more they go, the more she is rejoiced. "extensive as has been the emigration from ireland which has already taken place, there is," we are told-- "a remarkable proof that it has not been carried too far. there is still no regular demand for labour in the west of ireland, and wages are still at the low starvation rate which prevailed before the famine."--_economist_, (london,) feb. , . again, we are told that "the departure of the redundant population of the highlands of scotland is an indispensable preliminary to every kind of improvement."--_ibid_. further, we are informed that the emigration from england, wales, and the lowlands of scotland has "almost entirely consisted of able-bodied agricultural labourers," and that few or none of the manufacturing population have emigrated, except "a few spitalfields and paisley hand-loom weavers."[ ] the loss of all these agriculturists, and the rapid conversion of the whole people of the kingdom into mere buyers and sellers of the products of other nations, is regarded as not only not to be regretted, but as a thing to be rejoiced at; and another influential journal assures its readers that the "mere anticipation" of any deficiency in the export of man from the kingdom "would lead to the most disastrous suspension of industry and enterprise," and that "the emigration must not only continue, but it must be maintained with all possible steadiness and activity."[ ] little effort would seem to be required to bring about the abandonment of england, as well as of ireland. of the latter the latest journals furnish accounts of which the following is a fair specimen:-- "the people are fast passing away from the land in the west of ireland. the landlords of connaught are tacitly combined to weed out all the smaller occupiers, against whom a regular systematic war of extermination is being waged. * * * the most heart-rending cruelties are daily practised in this province, of which the public are not at all aware."--_galway mercury_. in the former, we are told that "the wheel of 'improvement' is now seizing another class, the most stationary class in england. a startling emigration movement has sprung up among the smaller english farmers, especially those holding heavy clay soils, who, with bad prospects for the coming harvest, and in want of sufficient capital to make the great improvements on their farms which would enable them to pay their old rents, have no other alternative but to cross the sea in search of a new country and of new lands. i am not speaking now of the emigration caused by the gold mania, but only of the compulsory emigration produced by landlordism, concentration of farms, application of machinery to the soil, and introduction of the modern system of agriculture on a great scale."--_correspondence of the new york tribune_. nevertheless, wages do not rise. hundreds of thousands, and even millions, of the poor people of the kingdom have now been expelled, and yet there is "no regular demand for labour," and wages continue as low as ever. that such should be the case is not extraordinary, but it will be so if this diminution of the power of association do not result in lowering the reward of labour, and accelerating the dispersion of the labourers. every man that goes was a producer of something, to be given in exchange for another thing that he required, that was produced by others; and from the moment of his departure he ceases to be a producer, with correspondent diminution in the demand for the cloth, the iron, or the salt produced by his neighbours. the less the competition for purchase the more becomes the competition for sale, and the lower must be the compensation of the labourer. a recent journal informs us that the condition of one class of operatives, the salt-boilers, has "gradually become most deplorable." "their wages at present do not average s. a week, because they are not employed full time; s. d. a day is the highest price given, and one of these days consists of fourteen or sixteen hours. in addition to this, some of the employers have latterly introduced a new mode of diminishing the actual payment in wages. as has already been stated, the salt-pans in the course of a few days require cleansing from the impurities and dross thrown down with the process of boiling. the accumulation may vary from one-eighth of an inch to one foot, according to the quality of the brine. therefore, every fortnight the fires are let out and the pans picked and cleaned, a process which occupies a full day; and this unavoidable and necessary work it is becoming the fashion to require the men to perform without any remuneration whatever; or, in other words, to demand one month's work out of the twelve from them without giving any wages in return!"--_dawson's merchants' magazine_, february, , . the more steady and active the emigration of the agricultural labourers, and the larger the remainder of factory operatives, the greater must be the necessity for depending on other countries for supplies, and the less must be the power of the nation in the community of nations, the richer must grow the great manufacturer, and the poorer must become the labourer; and, as this system is now being so vigorously carried out, the cause of weakness may readily be understood. it is a natural consequence of the purely selfish policy to which the ricardo-malthusian doctrines inevitably lead. can such a system be a natural one? is it possible that an all-wise, all-powerful, and all-merciful being, having constructed this world for the occupation of man, should have inflicted upon it such a curse as is found in a system of laws the study of which leads to the conclusion that men can live only "by snatching the bread out of the mouths" of their fellow-men? assuredly not. what, then, _are_ the laws under which man "lives and moves and has his being?" to obtain an answer to this question, we must go back to the proposition which lies at the base of the british system--that which teaches that men begin the work of cultivation with the rich soils of the earth, and are afterward compelled to resort to inferior ones the most important one in political economy; so important, says mr. j. s. mill, that were it otherwise, "almost all the phenomena of the production and distribution of wealth would be other than they are." admitting, now, that the law _were_ different, and that instead of commencing on the rich soils and then passing toward the poor ones, they commenced on the poor soils of the hills and gradually made their way down to the rich ones of the swamps and river-bottoms, would not one of the differences referred to by mr. mill consist in this, that whereas the old theory tended to establish a constant increase in the _necessities_ of man, with constant deterioration, of his condition and growing inequality among men, the new one would tend to establish a constant increase of his _powers_, with constant improvement of condition and growing equality among men, wherever the laws of god were permitted to control their operations? again, might not another of those differences consist in the establishment of the facts that instead of there having been a mistake on the part of the creator, there had been a serious one on that of the economists, in attributing to those little scraps of the earth that man forms into wagons, ships, and steam-engines, and which he calls capital, an importance greater than is assigned to the earth of which they are so trivial a portion; and that the latter was the real bank, the source of all capital, from which he can have loans to an extent almost unlimited, provided he recollects that they _are_ loans, and not gifts, and that his credit with this banker, as well as with all others, cannot be maintained without a punctual repayment of the matter borrowed when he has ceased to need it? further, as the old theory furnishes propositions to, which the exceptions are seen to be so numerous that every new writer finds himself compelled to modify it in some manner with a view to cover those exceptions, might not another, of the differences consist in its furnishing laws as universally true as are those of copernicus, kepler, or newton--laws that gave proof of their truth by being everywhere in harmony with each other, and productive everywhere of harmony; and would not the following form a part of them?-- i. that the poor and solitary man commences everywhere with poor machinery, and that everywhere, as population and wealth increase, he obtains better machinery, and production is increased. the first poor settler has no cup, and he takes up water in his hand. he has no hogs or cattle to yield him oil, and he is compelled to depend on pine-knots for artificial light. he has no axe, and he cannot fell a tree, either to supply himself with fuel or to clear his land. he has no saw, and he is compelled to seek shelter under a rock, because he is unable to build himself a house. he has no spade, and he is compelled to cultivate land that is too poor to need clearing, and too dry to require drainage. he has no horse, and is obliged to carry his little crop of grain on his shoulders. he has no mill, and is compelled to pound his grain between stones, or to eat it unground, as did the romans for so many centuries. with the growth of wealth and population he obtains machinery that enables him to _command_ the services of the various natural agents by which he is surrounded; and he now obtains more water, more light, more heat, and more power at less cost of labour; and he cultivates rich lands that yield food more largely, while he transports its products, by means of a wagon or a railroad car, converts it into flour by aid of steam, and exchanges it readily with, the man who converts his food and his wool into cloth, or food and ore into iron,--and thus passes from poor to better machinery of production, transportation, and exchange, with increasing reward of labour, and diminishing value of all the products of labour. ii. that the poor settler gives a large _proportion_ of the produce of his labour for the use of poor machinery of production, transportation, and exchange; but the produce being small, the _quantity_ of rent then paid is very small. he is a slave to the owner of landed or other capital. iii. that with the increased productiveness of labour there is increased facility for the reproduction of machinery required for the production of water, light, fuel, and food; and that this diminution in the cost _of reproduction_ is attended with a constant diminution in the value of all such machinery previously accumulated, and diminution in the proportion of the product of labour that can be demanded as rent for their use; and thus, while labour steadily increases in its power to yield commodities of every kind required by man, capital as steadily diminishes in its power over the labourer. present labour obtains a constantly increasing proportion of a constantly increasing quantity, while the claims of the accumulations of past labour (capital) are rewarded with an increasing quantity, but rapidly diminishing proportion; and that there is thus, with the growth of population and wealth, a daily tendency toward improvement and equality of condition. iv. that increase in the _quantity_ of the landlord or other capitalist is evidence of increase in the labourer's _proportion_, and of large increase of his quantity, with constantly increasing tendency toward freedom of thought, speech, action, and trade, and that it is precisely as land acquires value that man becomes free. here is a system, all the parts of which are in perfect harmony with each other, and all tending to the production of harmony among the various portions of society, and the different nations of the earth. under them, we see men beginning on the higher and poorer lands and gradually coming together in the valleys, with steady tendency to increase in the power of association, and in the power to assert the right of perfect self-government. it is thus the system of freedom. population enables men to cultivate the richer soils, and food tends to increase more rapidly than population, giving men leisure for the cultivation of their minds and those of their children. increased intelligence enables man from year to year to obtain larger loans from the great bank--the earth--while with the increased diversification of labour he is enabled more and more to repay them by the restoration of the manure to the place from which the food had been derived. here are laws tending to the promotion of kindly feelings, and to the enabling of man to carry fully into effect the great law which lies at the base of christianity--doing to his neighbours as he would that they should do unto him. they are laws whose constant and uniform truth may be seen in reference to every description of capital and of labour, and in all the communities of the world, large and small, in present and in past times. being _laws_, they admit of no exceptions any more than do the great astronomical ones. they recognise the whole product of labour as being the property of the labourer of the past and the present; the former represented by the proprietor of the machine, and the latter by the man who uses it, and who finds himself every day more and more able to accumulate the means of becoming himself a proprietor. the english system does not recognise the existence of universal laws. according to it, land, labour, and capital, are the three instruments of production, and they are governed by different laws. labour, when it seeks aid from land, is supposed to begin with good machinery and to pass toward the worst, with constantly increasing power in the owner of the land; whereas, when it seeks aid from the steam-engine, it passes from poor to good, with diminishing power in the owner of capital. there is thus one set of laws for the government of the great machine itself--the earth--and another for that of all its parts. under the first, value is supposed to increase because of the diminished productiveness of labour, whereas under the last it is supposed to diminish because of the increased productiveness of labour. the two point to opposite poles of the compass, and the only mode of reconciling them is found in the supposition that as the power of production diminishes with the increasing necessity for resorting to inferior soils, the power of accumulating capital tends to increase, and thus counterbalances the disadvantages resulting from the necessity for applying labour less and less advantageously. who is it, however, that is to furnish this capital? is it the labourer? he cannot do it, for he cultivates "the inferior soils," and retains for himself a constantly diminishing proportion of a constantly diminishing product. is it the landlord? his proportion increases, it is true, but his _quantity_ diminishes in its proportion to population, as his tenants are forced to resort to less productive soils. the power to accumulate is dependent on the quantity of time and labour required for obtaining present subsistence; and as that increases with the necessity for resorting to poorer machinery, the power to obtain machines to be used in aid of labour dies away. such being the case, it is clear that if men are obliged, in obedience to a great natural law, to pass steadily from rich soils to poor ones yielding less returns to labour, no compensation can anywhere be found, and that the elder mill was right when he said that the power of accumulation must cease, and wages must fall so low that men "would perish of want;" in preference to doing which they would, of course, sell themselves, their wives, and children, into, slavery. of all the english writers on this subject, he is the only one that has had the courage to follow out the ricardo-malthusian system to its necessary conclusions, and proclaim to the world the existence of a great law of nature leading _inevitably_ to the division of society into two great portions, the very rich and the very poor--the master and the slave. there are thus two systems--one of which proclaims that men can thrive only at the expense of their neighbours, and the other that they "prosper with the prosperity of those neighbours--one that teaches utter selfishness, and another teaching that enlightened selfishness which prompts men to rejoice in the advances of their fellow-men toward wealth and civilization--one that leads to internal discord and foreign war, and another teaching peace, union, and brotherly kindness throughout--the world--one that teaches the doctrine of despair and death, and another teaching joy and hope--one that is anti-christian in all its tendencies, teaching that we must _not_ do to our neighbour in distress as we would that he should do to us, but that, on the contrary our duty requires that we should see him suffer, unrelieved, every calamity short of "positive death," and another teaching in its every page that if individuals or nations would thrive, they can do so _only_ on the condition of carrying into full effect the great law of christ--"that which ye would that others should do unto you, do ye unto them." both of these systems cannot be true. which of them is so is to be settled by the determination of the great fact whether the creator made a mistake in providing that the poor settler should commence on the low and rich lands, leaving the poor soils of the hills to his successors, who obtain from them a constantly diminishing supply of food--or whether, in his infinite wisdom, he provided that the poor man, destitute, of axe and spade, should go to the poor and dry land of the hills, requiring neither clearing nor drainage, leaving the heavily timbered and swamp lands for his wealthy successors. if the first, then the laws of god tend to the perpetuation of slavery, and the english political economy is right in all its parts, and should be maintained. if the last, then is it wrong in all its parts, and duty to themselves, to their fellow-men throughout the world, and to the great giver of all good things, requires that it be at once and for ever abandoned. it is time that enlightened englishmen should examine into this question. when they shall do so, it will require little time to satisfy themselves that every portion of their own island furnishes proof that cultivation commenced on the poor soils, and that from the day when king arthur held his court in a remote part of cornwall to that on which chatfield moss was drained, men have been steadily obtaining _more productive_ soils at _less cost_ of labour, and that not only are they now doing so, but that it is difficult to estimate how far it may be carried. every discovery in science tends to facilitate the making of those combinations of matter requisite for the production of food, giving better soils at diminished cost. every new one tends to give to man increased power to command the use of those great natural agents provided for his service, and to enable him to obtain more and better food, more and better clothing, more and better house-room, in exchange for less labour, leaving him more time for the improvement of his mind, for the education of his children, and for the enjoyment of those recreations which tend to render life pleasurable. the reverse of all this is seen under the english system. the more numerous the discoveries in science, and the greater the command of man over the powerful natural agents given for diminishing labour, the more severe and unintermitting becomes his toil, the less becomes his supply of food, the poorer becomes his clothing, the more wretched becomes his lodging, the less time can be given to the improvement of his mind, the more barbarous grow up his children, the more is his wife compelled to work in the field, and the less is his time for enjoyment;--as witness all those countries over which england now exercises dominion, and as witness to so great an extent the present condition of her own people, as exhibited by those of her own writers quoted in a former chapter. selfishness and christianity cannot go together, nor can selfishness and national prosperity. it is purely selfish in the people of england to desire to prevent the people of the various nations of the world from profiting by their natural advantages, whether of coal, iron ore, copper, tin, or lead. it is injurious to themselves, because it keeps their neighbours poor, while they are subjected to vast expense in the effort to keep them from rebelling against taxation. they maintain great fleets and armies, at enormous expense, for the purpose of keeping up a system that destroys their customers and themselves; and this they must continue to do so long as they shall hold to the doctrine which teaches that the only way to secure a fair remuneration to capital is to keep the price of labour down, because it is one that produces discord and slavery, abroad and at home; whereas, under that of peace, hope, and freedom, they would need neither fleets nor armies. it is to the country of hampden and sidney that the world _should_ be enabled to look for advice in all matters affecting the cause of freedom; and it is to her that all _would_ look, could her statesmen bring themselves to understand how destructive to herself and them is the system of centralization she now seeks to establish. as it is, slavery grows in all the countries under her control, and freedom grows in no single country of the world but those which protect themselves against her system. it is time that the enlightened and liberal men of england should study the cause of this fact; and whenever they shall do so they will find a ready explanation of the growing pauperism, immorality, gloom, and slavery of their own country; and they will then have little difficulty in understanding that the protective tariffs of all the advancing nations of europe are but measures of resistance to a system of enormous oppression, and that it is in that direction that the people of this country are to look for _the true and only road to freedom of trade and the freedom of man_. it is time that such men should ask themselves whether or not their commercial policy can, by any possibility, aid the cause of freedom, abroad or at home. the nations of the world are told of the "free and happy people" of england; but when they look to that country to ascertain the benefits of freedom, they meet with frightful pauperism, gross immorality, infanticide to an extent unknown in any other part of the civilized world, and a steadily increasing division of the people into two great classes--the very rich and the very poor--with an universal tendency to "fly from ills they know," in the hope of obtaining abroad the comfort and happiness denied them at home. can this benefit the cause of freedom?--the nations are told of the enlightened character of the british government, and yet, when they look to ireland, they can see nothing but poverty, famine, and pestilence, to end in the utter annihilation of a nation that has given to england herself many of her most distinguished men. if they look to india, they see nothing but poverty, pestilence, famine, and slavery; and if they cast their eyes toward china, they see the whole power of the nation put forth to compel a great people to submit to the fraudulent introduction of a commodity, the domestic production of which is forbidden because of its destructive effects upon the morals, the happiness, and the lives of the community.[ ] --the nations are told that england "is the asylum of nations, and that it _will defend the asylum to the last ounce of its treasure and the last drop of its blood_. there is," continues _the times_, "no point whatever on which we are prouder or more resolute." nevertheless, when they look to the countries of europe that furnish the refugees who claim a place in this asylum, they see that england is everywhere at work to prevent the people from obtaining the means of raising themselves in the social scale. so long as they shall continue purely agricultural, they must remain poor, weak, and enslaved, and their only hope for improvement is from that association of the loom and the plough which gave to england her freedom; and yet england is everywhere their opponent, seeking to annihilate the power of association.--the nations are told of the vast improvement of machinery, by aid of which man is enabled to call to his service the great powers of nature, and thus improve not only his material but his intellectual condition; but, when they look to the colonies and to the allies of england, they see everywhere a decay of intellect; and when they look to the independent countries, they see her whole power put forth to prevent them from doing any thing but cultivate the earth and exhaust the soil. it is time that enlightened englishmen should look carefully at these things, and answer to themselves whether or not they are thus promoting the cause of freedom. that they are not, must be the answer of each and every such man. that question answered, it will be for them to look to see in which direction lies the path of duty; and fortunate will it be if they can see that interest and duty can be made to travel in company with each other. to the women of england much credit is due for having brought this question before the world. it is one that should have for them the deepest interest. wherever man is unable to obtain machinery, he is forced to depend on mere brute labour; and he is then so poor that his wife must aid him in the labours of the field, to her own degradation, and to the neglect of her home, her husband, her children, and herself. she is then the most oppressed of slaves. as men obtain machinery, they obtain command of great natural agents, and mind gradually takes the place of physical force; and then labour in the field becomes more productive, and the woman passes from out-of-door to in-door employments, and with each step in this direction she is enabled to give more care to her children, her husband, and herself. from being a slave, and the mother of slaves, she passes to becoming a free woman, the mother of daughters that are free, and the instructor of those to whom the next generation is to look for instruction. the english system looks to confining the women of the world to the labours of the field, and such is its effect everywhere. it looks, therefore, to debasing and enslaving them and their children. the other looks to their emancipation from slavery, and their elevation in the social scale; and it can scarcely fail to be regarded by the women as well as by the men of england as a matter of duty to inquire into the grounds upon which their policy is based, and to satisfy themselves if it can be possible that there is any truth in a system which tends everywhere to the production of slavery, and therefore to the maintenance of the slave trade throughout the world. footnotes: [ ] edwards' west indies, vol. i. p. . [ ] macpherson's annals of commerce, vol. iii. . [ ] macpherson's annals of commerce, vol. iv. . [ ] martin's colonial library, west indies, vol. i. . [ ] macpherson, vol. iv. . [ ] ibid. [ ] montgomery's west indies, vol. ii. [ ] macpherson, vol. iv. , . [ ] macpherson, vol. iv. . [ ] the export to the foreign west indies, from to , is given by macpherson at nearly , . [ ] the causes of these diminutions will be exhibited in a future chapter. [ ] macpherson, vol. iv. . [ ] the cape and the kaffirs, by harriet ward, london, . [ ] notes on jamaica in , p. . [ ] ibid. . [ ] state and prospects of jamaica. [ ] the corentyne. [ ] east bank of berbice river. [ ] west ditto. [ ] west coast of berbice. [ ] prospective review, nov. , . [ ] the celt, the roman, and the saxon, by thomas wright, p. . [ ] ibid. p. . [ ] where population and wealth diminish, the rich soils are abandoned and men retire to the poorer ones, as is seen in the abandonment of the delta of egypt, of the campagna, of the valley of mexico, and of the valleys of the tigris and the euphrates. [ ] the land of england itself has become and is becoming more consolidated, the cause of which will be shown in a future chapter. [ ] dallas's history of the maroons, vol. i. page c. [ ] macpherson, vol. iii. . [ ] ibid. . [ ] ibid. vol. iv. . [ ] dallas's history of the maroons, vol. i. cvii. [ ] ibid. cv. [ ] dallas's history of the maroons, vol. ii. . [ ] see page , _ante_. [ ] coleridge's "six months in the west indies," . [ ] see pages - , _ante_. [ ] martin's west indies. [ ] tooke's history of prices, vol. ii. . [ ] the reader who may desire to see this law fully demonstrated, may do so on referring to the author's principles of political economy, vol. i. chap. v. [ ] bigelow, notes, . [ ] ibid, . [ ] ibid, . [ ] bigelow, . [ ] speech of mr. james wilson, december , . on the same occasion it was stated that "the lower orders" are daily "putting aside all decency," while "the better class appear to have lost all hope," and that the governor, sir charles grey, "described things as going on from bad to worse." the cholera had carried off, as was stated, , persons. [ ] the following case illustrates in a very striking manner the value that is given to things that must be wasted among an exclusively agricultural population,--and it is but one of thousands that might be adduced: what old bones and bits of skin may be good for.--how to get a penny-worth of beauty out of old bones and bits of skin, is a problem which the french gelatine makers have solved very prettily. does the reader remember some gorgeous sheets of colored gelatine in the french department of the great exhibition? we owed them to the slaughter-houses of paris. these establishments are so well organized and conducted, that all the refuse is carefully preserved, to be applied to any purposes for which it may be deemed fitting. very pure gelatine is made from the waste fragments of skin, bone, tendon, ligature, and gelatinous tissue of the animals slaughtered in the parisian _abbatoirs_, and thin sheets of this gelatine are made to receive very rich and beautiful colors. as a gelatinous liquid, when melted, it is used in the dressing of woven stuffs, and in the clarification of wine; and as a solid, it is cut into threads for the ornamental uses of the confectioner, or made into very thin white sheets of _papier glace_, for copying, drawing, or applied to the making of artificial flowers, or used as a substitute for paper, on which gold printing may be executed. in good sooth, when an ox has given us our beef, and our leather, and our tallow, his career of usefulness is by no means ended; we can get a penny out of him as long as there is a scrap of his substance above ground--_household words_. [ ] the superficial area of the state is , square miles, being greater than that of england, and double that of ireland. [ ] despotism in america, . [ ] de bow's commercial review, new series, vol. ii. . [ ] the tobacco grower "has the mortification of seeing his tobacco, bought from him at sixpence in bond, charged three shillings duty, and therefore costing the broker but s. d. and selling in the shops of london at ten, twelve, and sixteen shillings." (urquhart's turkey, .) the same writer informs his readers that the tobacco dealers were greatly alarmed when it was proposed that the duty should be reduced, because then everybody with £ capital could set up a shop. the slave who works in the tobacco-field is among the largest taxpayers for the maintenance of foreign traders and foreign governments. [ ] statistique de l'agriculture de la france, . [ ] urquhart's resources of turkey, . [ ] equivalent to light port-charges, the anchorage being only sixteen cents per ship. [ ] beaujour's tableau du commerce de la greece, quoted by urquhart, . [ ] urquhart, . [ ] the recent proceedings in regard to the turkish loan are strikingly illustrative of the exhausting effects of a system that looks wholly to the export of the raw produce of the earth, and thus tends to the ruin of the soil and of its owner. [ ] urquhart, . [ ] ibid. . [ ] turkey, and its destiny, by c. mac farlane, esq., . [ ] mac farlane, vol. i, . [ ] mac farlane, vol. ii, . [ ] ibid. . [ ] ibid. vol. i. . [ ] history of british india, vol. i. . [ ] historical fragments, . [ ] "the country was laid waste with fire and sword, and that land distinguished above most others by the cheerful face of fraternal government and protected labour, the chosen seat of cultivation and plenty, is now almost throughout a dreary desert covered with rushes and briers, and jungles full of wild beasts. * * * that universal, systematic breach of treaties, which had made the british faith proverbial in the east! these intended rebellions are one of the company's standing resources. when money has been thought to be hoarded up anywhere, its owners are universally accused of rebellion, until they are acquitted of their money and their treasons at once! the money once taken, all accusation, trial, and punishment ends."--_speech on fox's east india bill_. [ ] quoted in thompson's lectures on india, . [ ] colonel sykes states the proportion collected in the deccan as much less than is above given [ ] rickards, vol. i. . [ ] vol. ii. . [ ] rickards, vol i. . [ ] ibid. . [ ] ibid. . [ ] ibid. . [ ] campbell's modern india, london, , . [ ] campbell's modern india, . [ ] baines's history of the cotton manufacture. [ ] campbell's modern india, . [ ] ibid. . [ ] campbell's modern india, . [ ] rambles in india, by col. sleeman, vol. i. p. . [ ] speech of mr. g. thompson in the house of commons. [ ] see page _ante_. [ ] chapman's commerce and cotton of india, . [ ] chapman, cotton and commerce of india, . [ ] taking the last six of the thirteen years, the price of cotton was d. a pound, and if the produce of a beegah was s. d., of this the government took sixty-eight per cent. of the gross produce; and taking the two years and , cotton was - / d. a pound, and the produce of a beegah was s. d. on this the assessment was actually equal to seventy-eight per cent. on the gross produce of the land.--_speech of mr. bright in the house of commons_. [ ] chapman's commerce and cotton of india, . [ ] chapman, . [ ] rambles, vol. i. . [ ] ibid. . [ ] ibid. vol. ii. . [ ] ibid. . [ ] ibid. . [ ] ibid. . [ ] chapman, . [ ] thompson's lectures on india, . [ ] ibid. . [ ] chapman, . [ ] ibid, . [ ] rambles in india, vol. ii. . [ ] modern india, [ ] thompson, lectures on india, . [ ] the destruction of life in china from this extension of the market for the produce of india is stated at no less than , per annum. how this trade is regarded in india itself, by christian men, may be seen from the following extract from a review, recently published in the bombay _telegraph_, of papers in regard to it published in hunt's merchants' magazine, in which the review is now republished:-- "that a professedly christian government should, by its sole authority and on its sole responsibility, produce a drug which is not only contraband, but essentially detrimental to the best interests of humanity; that it should annually receive into its treasury crores of rupees, which, if they cannot, save by a too licentious figure, be termed 'the price of blood,' yet are demonstrably the price of the physical waste, the social wretchedness, and moral destruction of the chinese; and yet that no sustained remonstrances from the press, secular or spiritual, nor from society, should issue forth against the unrighteous system, is surely an astonishing fact in the history of our christian ethics. "_an american, accustomed to receive from us impassioned arguments against his own nation on account of slavery, might well be pardoned were he to say to us, with somewhat of intemperate feeling, 'physician, heal thyself_,' and to expose with bitterness the awful inconsistency of britain's vehement denunciation of american slavery, while, by most deadly measures, furthering chinese demoralization." the review, in referring to the waste of human life, closes as follows:-. "what unparalleled destruction! the immolations of an indian juggernauth dwindle into insignificance before it! we again repeat, nothing but slavery is worthy to be compared for its horrors with this monstrous system of iniquity. as we write, we are amazed at the enormity of its unprincipledness, and the large extent of its destructiveness. its very enormity seems in some measure to protect it. were it a minor evil, it seems as though one might grapple with it. as it is, it is beyond the compass of our grasp. no words are adequate to expose its evil, no fires of indignant feeling are fierce enough to blast it. "the enormous wealth it brings into our coffers is its only justification, the cheers of vice-enslaved wretches its only welcome; the curses of all that is moral and virtuous in an empire of three hundred and sixty millions attend its introduction; the prayers of enlightened christians deprecate its course; the indignation of all righteous minds is its only 'god-speed.' "it takes with it fire and sword, slaughter and death; it leaves behind it bankrupt fortunes, idiotized minds, broken hearts, and ruined souls. foe to all the interests of humanity, hostile to the scanty virtues of earth; and warring against the overflowing benevolence of heaven, may we soon have to rejoice over its abolition!" [ ] campbell, . [ ] ibid. . [ ] campbell, . [ ] ibid. . [ ] campbell, . [ ] ibid. . [ ] ibid. [ ] chapman on the commerce of india, . [ ] lawson's merchants' magazine, january, , . [ ] ibid. . [ ] see page , _ante_. [ ] backhouse's visit to the mauritius, . [ ] the danger of interference, even with the best intentions, when unaccompanied by knowledge, is thus shown by the same author, in speaking of madagascar:-- "dreadful wars are waged by the queen against other parts of the island, in which all the male prisoners above a certain stature are put to death, and the rest made slaves. this she is enabled to effect, by means of the standing army which her predecessor radama was recommended to keep by the british. * * how lamentable is the reflection that the british nation, with the good intention of abolishing the slave trade, should have strengthened despotic authority and made way for all its oppressive and depopulating results, by encouraging the arts of war instead of those of peace!"--p. . [ ] thompson's lectures on british india, . [ ] lawson's merchants' magazine, january, , . [ ] bigelow's "jamaica in ," . [ ] sophisms of free trade, by j. barnard byles, esq. [ ] speech of mr. t. f. meagher, . [ ] the following paragraph from an irish journal exhibits strikingly the amount of political freedom exercised at the scene of these evictions:-- "lord erne held his annual show in ballindreat, on monday, the th ult, and after having delivered himself much as usual in regard to agricultural matters, he proceeded to lecture the assembled tenants on the necessity of implicit obedience to those who were placed over them, in reference not only to practical agriculture, but the elective franchise. to such of the tenants as his lordship considered to be of the right stamp, and who proved themselves so by voting for sir edmund hayes and thomas connolly, esq., the per cent. in full would be allowed--to those who split their votes between one or other of these gentlemen and campbell johnston, esq., - / per cent.; but to the men who had the manliness to 'plump' for johnston, no reduction of rents would be allowed this year, or any other until such parties might redeem their character at another election."--_cork examiner_, nov. , . [ ] thornton on over-population, . [ ] ibid. . [ ] mcculloch, stat. acct. of british empire, vol. i. . [ ] times newspaper, june th, . [ ] report of highland emigration committee, . [ ] lectures on the social and moral condition of the people, by various ministers of the gospel. glasgow. [ ] see page , _ante_. [ ] kay's social condition of england and of europe, vol. i. [ ] ibid. . [ ] kay's social condition of england and of europe, vol. , . [ ] on a recent occasion in the house of lords, it was declared to be important to retain canada, on the express ground that it greatly facilitated smuggling. [ ] alton locke. [ ] lord ashley informs us that there are , poor children such as these in london alone. [ ] reports of the health of towns commission, vol. i. . [ ] city mission magazine, oct. . [ ] see page , _ante_. [ ] the import of was , lbs., and that of , , lbs. [ ] the reader who may desire to see this more fully exhibited is referred to the author's work, "the past, the present, and the future." [ ] see page , _ante_. [ ] "it may be doubted, considering the circumstances under which most irish landlords acquired their estates, the difference between their religious tenets and those of their tenants, the peculiar tenures under which the latter hold their lands, and the political condition of the country, whether their residence would have been of any considerable advantage. * * * the question really at issue refers merely to the _spending_ of revenue, and has nothing to do with the improvement of estates; and notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary, i am not yet convinced that absenteeism is, in this respect, at all injurious."--_principles_, . [ ] treatises and essays on subjects connected with economical policy. [ ] chapman, commerce of india. [ ] during all this time there was a large increase in the import of food from ireland; and this, of course, constituted a portion of domestic produce exported in the shape of manufactures, the whole proceeds of which were to be retained at home. since , the change in that country has been so great that she is now a large importer of foreign grain. the official return for shows a diminution in the quantity raised, as compared with , of no less than , , quarters; and instead of sending to england, as she had been accustomed to do, more than three millions of quarters, she was an importer in that year and the following one of more than a million. this deficiency had to be made up from abroad, and thus was the united kingdom transformed from the position of seller of four or five millions of quarters--say about millions of our bushels--of which it retained the _whole proceeds_, to that of the mere shopkeeper, who retains only the _profit_ on the same quantity. a similar state of things might be shown in regard to many of the other articles of produce above enumerated. [ ] in , mr. mcculloch estimated the produce of the land of great britain at millions, but at that time wheat was calculated at s. a quarter, or almost one-half more than the average of the last two or three years. other and larger calculations may readily be found; but it would be difficult to determine what becomes of the product if it be not found in rent, farmers' profits, or labourers' wages. [ ] by reference to the report of the assistant commissioner, charged with the inquiry into the condition of women and children employed in agriculture, it will be seen that a change of clothes seems to be out of the question. the upper parts of the under-clothes of women at work, even their stays, quickly become wet with perspiration, while the lower parts cannot escape getting equally wet in nearly every kind of work in which they are employed, except in the driest weather. it not unfrequently happens that a woman, on returning from work, is obliged to go to bed for an hour or two to allow her clothes to be dried. it is also by no means uncommon for her, if she does not do this, to put them on again the next morning nearly as wet as when she took them off. [ ] _london labour and london poor_. [ ] the returns of imports into great britain are given according to an official value, established more than a century since, and thus the sum of the values is an exact measure of the quantities imported. [ ] the reader will remark that of all the machinery of england but a small portion is required for the _forced_ foreign trade that is thus produced. [ ] the whole appropriation for the education of ten millions of people in western india is stated, in recent memorial from bombay, to be only £ , , or $ , , being six cents for every ten persons. [ ] north british review, nov. . [ ] edinburgh review, oct. . the italics are those of the reviewer. [ ] see page , _ante_. [ ] lawson's merchants' mag., dec. . [ ] senior, outlines of political economy, . [ ] at a recent discussion in the london statistical society, land in england was valued at thirty years' purchase, houses at fifteen, and land in ireland at eighteen. [ ] this will appear a very small estimate when compared with those usually made, but it is equal to the total production of the land and labour of the country for a year and a half, if not for a longer period; and it would be difficult to prove that if the whole labour and capital of the country were applied to that purpose--food and clothing being supplied from abroad--it could not produce a quantity of commodities equal in value to those now accumulated in england. even, however, were the amount placed at a thousand millions, the amount of wealth would still be small, under the circumstances of the case. [ ] see page _ante_. [ ] the latest number of the bankers' magazine contains statements of two banks whose joint capitals and reserved funds are about £ , , while their investments are about a million!--and this, would seem to be about the usual state of affairs with most of the english banks. [ ] bankers' magazine, sept. [ ] the amount of expenditure for english railroads is put down at from two to three hundreds of millions of pounds; and yet the real investment was only that of the labour employed in grading the roads, building the bridges, driving the tunnels, and making the iron; and if we take that at £ per mile, we obtain only millions. all the balance was merely a transfer of property already existing from one owner to another, as in the case of the land, which in some cases cost ten or twelve thousands of pounds per mile. [ ] see page , _ante_. [ ] north british review, nov. . [ ] this tendency is exhibited in most of the books that treat of the system. thus, mr. mcculloch insists on the beneficial effect of _the fear_ of taxation, as will be seen in the following passage:-- "to the desire of rising in the world, implanted in the breast of every individual, an increase of taxation superadds the fear of being cast down to a lower station, of being deprived of conveniences and gratifications which habit has rendered all but indispensable--and the combined influence of the two principles produces results that could not be produced by the unassisted agency of either." this is only the lash of the slave-driver in another form. [ ] barter, the dorp and the veld. [ ] estimating the average cost of raising men and women at only $ each, the present forced export is equal to sending abroad a capital of four hundred millions of dollars, no return from which is to be looked for. [ ] the recent movement of this institution in raising the rate of interest affords a striking example of its power, and of the absence of the judgment required for its exercise. for two years past the bank has aided in raising prices, but now it desires to reduce them, and at the cost, necessarily, of the weaker portions of the community, for the rich can always take care of themselves. the whole tendency of its operations is toward making the rich richer and the poor poorer. sir robert peel undertook to regulate the great machine, but his scheme for that purpose failed, because he totally misconceived the cause of the evil, and of course applied the wrong remedy. it was one that could only aggravate the mischief, as he could scarcely have failed to see, had he studied the subject with the care its importance merited. [ ] page , _ante_. [ ] chap. vii. _ante_. [ ] message of president roberts, dec. [ ] lecture on the relations of free and slave labour, by david christy, p. . [ ] the social condition and education of the people of england and europe, i. . [ ] handbuch der allgemeinen staatskunde, vol. ii. , quoted by kay, vol. i., . [ ] until recently, the increase of great britain has been slightly greater than that of prussia, the former having grown at the rate of . per cent. per annum, and the latter at that of . ; but the rate of growth of the former has recently much diminished, and all growth has now probably ceased. [ ] die agrarfrage. [ ] etudes sur l'economie politique. [ ] page , _ante_. [ ] in no other country than england would the editor of a daily journal inflict upon his readers throughout the kingdom whole columns occupied with the names of persons present at a private entertainment, and with the dresses of the ladies. where centralization has reached a height like this, we need scarcely be surprised to learn that there is but one _paying_ daily newspaper for a population of more than seventeen millions. [ ] rural and domestic life in germany, . [ ] pictures from st. petersburg, by e. jerrmann, . [ ] pictures from st. petersburg, . [ ] the cargo of a ship that has recently sailed is stated to have consisted of more than a thousand females. [ ] laing's denmark and the duchies, london, , . [ ] quoted by kay, social and political condition of england and the continent, vol. i. . [ ] denmark and the duchies, . [ ] ibid. . [ ] denmark and the duchies, . [ ] ibid. . [ ] ibid. . [ ] denmark and the duchies, . [ ] denmark and the duchies, . [ ] denmark and the duchies, . [ ] _l'espàgne en_ , par m. maurice block, . [ ] ibid. pp. - . [ ] bayard taylor, in the _n. y. tribune_. [ ] _l'espàgne en_ , . [ ] spain, her institutions, her politics, and her public men, by s. t. wallis, . [ ] the exact amount given by m. block is , , , francs, but he does not state in what year the return was made. [ ] by an official document published in , it appears that while wheat sold in barcelona and tarragona (places of consumption) at an average of more than francs, the price at segovia, in old castile, (a place of production,) not miles distant, was less than francs for the same quantity.--_l'espàgne en_ , . [ ] north british review, nov. , art. _the modern exodus_. [ ] m. de jonnes, quoted by mr. wallis, p. . [ ] wallis's spain, chap: ix. [ ] it is a striking evidence of the injurious moral effect produced by the system which looks to the conversion of all the other nations of the world into mere farmers and planters, that mr. macgregor, in his work of commercial statistics, says, in speaking of the methuen treaty, "we do not deny that there were advantages in having a market for our woollens in portugal, especially one, of which, if not the principal, was the means afforded of sending them afterward by contraband into spain."--vol. ii. . [ ] in the first half of this period the export was small, whereas in the last one, to , it must have been in excess of the growth of population. [ ] from to the average crop was , , bales, or half a million more than the average of the four previous years. from to the average was only , , bales, and the price rose, which could not have been the case had the slave trade been as brisk between and as it had been between and . [ ] see page , _ante_, for the sale of the negroes of the saluda manufacturing company. [ ] the following passage from one of the journals of the day is worthy of careful perusal by those who desire to understand the working of the present system of revenue duties, under which the mills and furnaces of the country have to so great an extent been closed, and the farmers and planters of the country to so great an extent been driven to new york to make all their exchanges:-- "mr. matsell [chief of police, new york] tells us that during the six months ending st december, , there have been , persons arrested for various offences, giving a yearly figure of nearly , arrests. * * * the number of arrests being , , or thereabouts, in a population of say , , gives a percentage of . on the whole number of inhabitants. we have no data to estimate the state of crime in paris under the imperial _régime_; but in london the returns of the metropolitan police for , show , arrests, out of a population of some two millions and a half, giving a percentage of less than three on the whole number of inhabitants. thus crimes are in new york rather more than twice as frequent as in london. indeed, if we make proper allowance for the superior vigilance, and organization of the metropolitan police of london, and for the notorious inefficiency of our own police force, we shall probably find that, in proportion to the population, there is in new york twice as much crime as in london. this is an appalling fact--a disgraceful disclosure."--_new york herald_, march , . [ ] north british review, nov. . [ ] see uncle tom's cabin, chap. xxxi. [ ] letters to lord aberdeen, by the right hon. w. e. gladstone, , , . [ ] rev. sidney smith. [ ] see page , _ante_. [ ] it is commonly supposed that the road toward freedom lies through cheapening the products of slave labour; but the reader may readily satisfy himself that it is in that direction lies slavery. freedom grows with growing wealth, not growing poverty. to increase the cost of raising slaves, and thus to _increase the value of man at home_, produces exactly the effect anticipated from the other course of operation, because the value of the land and its produce grows more rapidly than the value of that portion of the negro's powers that can be obtained from him as a slave--that is, without the payment of wages. [ ] see page , _ante_. [ ] the following statement of the operations of the past year completes the picture presented in chapter iv.:-- "a tabular return, prepared by order of the house of assembly of jamaica, exhibiting the properties in that island 'upon which cultivation has been wholly or partially abandoned since the st day of january, ,' presents in a striking light one of the many injurious consequences that have followed the measure of negro emancipation in the british west indies. the return, which is dated january , , shows that sugar estates have been totally abandoned during the year, and partially abandoned; of coffee plantations, have been totally, and partially, abandoned; of country seats--residences of planters or their agents-- have been totally, and partially, abandoned. the properties thus nearly or wholly ruined by the ill-considered legislation of the british parliament cover an area of , acres." [ ] _economist_, (london,) feb. , . [ ] spectator, feb. , . [ ] the net revenue from the opium trade, for the current year, is stated to be no less than four millions of pounds sterling, or nearly twenty millions of dollars; and it is to that revenue, says _the friend of india_, nov. , , that the indian government has been indebted for its power to carry on the wars since , those of affghanistan, seinde, gwalior, the punjab, and that now existing with burmah. well is it asked by dr. allen, in his pamphlet on "the opium trade," (lowell, ,) "can such an unrighteous course in a nation always prosper?" "how," says the same author, "can the chinese "regard the english in any other light than wholesale smugglers and wholesale dealers in poison? the latter can expend annually over two millions of dollars on the coast of great britain to protect its own revenue laws, but at the same time set at bold defiance similar laws of protection enacted by the former. the english are constantly supplying the chinese a deadly poison, with which thousands yearly put an end to their existence. in england, even the druggists are expressly forbidden to sell arsenic, laudanum, or other poison, if they have the least suspicion that their customer intends to commit suicide. but in china every facility is afforded and material supplied under the british flag, and sanctioned by parliament itself, for wholesale slaughter. how long will an enlightened and christian nation continue to farm and grow a means of vice, with the proceeds of which, even when in her possession, a benighted and pagan nation disdains to replenish her treasury, being drawn from the ruin and misery of her people? where is the consistency or humanity of a nation supporting armed vessels on the coast of africa to intercept and rescue a few hundreds of her sons from a foreign bondage, when, at the same time, she is forging chains to hold millions on the coast of china in a far more hopeless bondage? and what must the world think of the religion of a nation that consecrates churches, ordains ministers of the gospel, and sends abroad missionaries of the cross, while, in the mean time, it encourages and upholds a vice which is daily inflicting misery and death upon more than four millions of heathen? and what must be the verdict of future generations, as they peruse the history of these wrongs and outrages? will not the page of history, which now records £ , , as consecrated on the altar of humanity to emancipate , slaves, lose all its splendour and become positively odious, when it shall be known that this very money was obtained from the proceeds of a contraband traffic on the shores of a weak and defenceless heathen empire, at the sacrifice, too, of millions upon millions of lives?" proofreading team. psychology and industrial efficiency by hugo mÜnsterberg boston and new york houghton mifflin company the riverside press cambridge to harold f. mccormick prefatory note this book corresponds to a german book, which i published a few months ago, under the title _psychologie und wirlschaftsleben: ein beitrag zur angewandten experimental-psychologie_ (leipzig: j.a. barth). it is not a translation, as some parts of the german volume have been abbreviated or entirely omitted and other parts have been enlarged and supplemented. yet the essential substance of the two books is identical. contents introduction i. applied psychology ii. the demands of practical life iii. means and ends i. the best possible man iv. vocation and fitness v. scientific vocational guidance vi. scientific management vii. the methods of experimental psychology viii. experiments in the interest of electric railway service ix. experiments in the interest of ship service x. experiments in the interest of telephone service xi. contributions from men of affairs xii. individuals and groups ii. the best possible work xiii. learning and training xiv. the adjustment of technical to psychical conditions xv. the economy of movement xvi. experiments on the problem of monotony xvii. attention and fatigue xviii. physical and social influences on the working power iii. the best possible effect xix. the satisfaction of economic demands xx. experiments on the effects of advertisements xxi. the effect of display xxii. experiments with reference to illegal imitation xxiii. buying and selling xxiv. the future development of economic psychology notes index psychology and industrial efficiency introduction i applied psychology our aim is to sketch the outlines of a new science which is to intermediate between the modern laboratory psychology and the problems of economics: the psychological experiment is systematically to be placed at the service of commerce and industry. so far we have only scattered beginnings of the new doctrine, only tentative efforts and disconnected attempts which have started, sometimes in economic, and sometimes in psychological, quarters. the time when an exact psychology of business life will be presented as a closed and perfected system lies very far distant. but the earlier the attention of wider circles is directed to its beginnings and to the importance and bearings of its tasks, the quicker and the more sound will be the development of this young science. what is most needed to-day at the beginning of the new movement are clear, concrete illustrations which demonstrate the possibilities of the new method. in the following pages, accordingly, it will be my aim to analyze the results of experiments which have actually been carried out, experiments belonging to many different spheres of economic life. but these detached experiments ought always at least to point to a connected whole; the single experiments will, therefore, always need a general discussion of the principles as a background. in the interest of such a wider perspective we may at first enter into some preparatory questions of theory. they may serve as an introduction which is to lead us to the actual economic life and the present achievements of experimental psychology. it is well known that the modern psychologists only slowly and very reluctantly approached the apparently natural task of rendering useful service to practical life. as long as the study of the mind was entirely dependent upon philosophical or theological speculation, no help could be expected from such endeavors to assist in the daily walks of life. but half a century has passed since the study of consciousness was switched into the tracks of exact scientific investigation. five decades ago the psychologists began to devote themselves to the most minute description of the mental experiences and to explain the mental life in a way which was modeled after the pattern of exact natural sciences. their aim was no longer to speculate about the soul, but to find the psychical elements and the constant laws which control their connections. psychology became experimental and physiological. for more than thirty years the psychologists have also had their workshops. laboratories for experimental psychology have grown up in all civilized countries, and the new method has been applied to one group of mental traits after another. and yet we stand before the surprising fact that all the manifold results of the new science have remained book knowledge, detached from any practical interests. only in the last ten years do we find systematic efforts to apply the experimental results of psychology to the needs of society. it is clear that the reason for this late beginning is not an unwillingness of the last century to make theoretical knowledge serviceable to the demands of life. every one knows, on the contrary, that the glorious advance of the natural sciences became at the same time a triumphal march of technique. whatever was brought to light in the laboratories of the physicists and chemists, of the physiologists and pathologists, was quickly transformed into achievements of physical and chemical industry, of medicine and hygiene, of agriculture and mining and transportation. no realm of the external social life remained untouched. the scientists, on the other hand, felt that the far-reaching practical effect which came from their discoveries exerted a stimulating influence on the theoretical researches themselves. the pure search for truth and knowledge was not lowered when the electrical waves were harnessed for wireless telegraphy, or the roentgen rays were forced into the service of surgery. the knowledge of nature and the mastery of nature have always belonged together. the persistent hesitation of the psychologists to make similar practical use of their experimental results has therefore come from different causes. the students of mental life evidently had the feeling that quiet, undisturbed research was needed for the new science of psychology in order that a certain maturity might be reached before a contact with the turmoil of practical life would be advisable. the sciences themselves cannot escape injury if their results are forced into the rush of the day before the fundamental ideas have been cleared up, the methods of investigation really tried, and an ample supply of facts collected. but this very justified reluctance becomes a real danger if it grows into an instinctive fear of coming into contact at all with practical life. to be sure, in any single case there may be a difference of opinion as to when the right time has come and when the inner consolidation of a new science is sufficiently advanced for the technical service, but it ought to be clear that it is not wise to wait until the scientists have settled all the theoretical problems involved. true progress in every scientific field means that the problems become multiplied and that ever new questions keep coming to the surface. if the psychologists were to refrain from practical application until the theoretical results of their laboratories need no supplement, the time for applied psychology would never come. whoever looks without prejudice on the development of modern psychology ought to acknowledge that the hesitancy which was justified in the beginning would to-day be inexcusable lack of initiative. for the sciences of the mind too, the time has come when theory and practice must support each other. an exceedingly large mass of facts has been gathered, the methods have become refined and differentiated, and however much may still be under discussion, the ground common to all is ample enough to build upon. another important reason for the slowness of practical progress was probably this. when the psychologists began to work with the new experimental methods, their most immediate concern was to get rid of mere speculation and to take hold of actual facts. hence they regarded the natural sciences as their model, and, together with the experimental method which distinguishes scientific work, the characteristic goal of the sciences was accepted too. this scientific goal is always the attainment of general laws; and so it happened that in the first decades after the foundation of psychological laboratories the general laws of the mind absorbed the entire attention and interest of the investigators. the result of such an attitude was, that we learned to understand the working of the typical mind, but that all the individual variations were almost neglected. when the various individuals differed in their mental behavior, these differences appeared almost as disturbances which the psychologists had to eliminate in order to find the general laws which hold for every mind. the studies were accordingly confined to the general averages of mental experience, while the variations from such averages were hardly included in the scientific account. in earlier centuries, to be sure, the interest of the psychological observers had been given almost entirely to the rich manifoldness of human characters and intelligences and talents. in the new period of experimental work, this interest was taken as an indication of the unscientific fancies of the earlier age, in which the curious and the anecdotal attracted the view. the new science which was to seek the laws was to overcome such popular curiosity. in this sign experimental psychology has conquered. the fundamental laws of the ideas and of the attention, of the memory and of the will, of the feeling and of the emotions, have been elaborated. yet it slowly became evident that such one-sidedness, however necessary it may have been at the beginning, would make any practical application impossible. in practical life we never have to do with what is common to all human beings, even when we are to influence large masses; we have to deal with personalities whose mental life is characterized by particular traits of nationality, or race, or vocation, or sex, or age, or special interests, or other features by which they differ from the average mind which the theoretical psychologist may construct as a type. still more frequently we have to act with reference to smaller groups or to single individuals whose mental physiognomy demands careful consideration. as long as experimental psychology remained essentially a science of the mental laws, common to all human beings, an adjustment to the practical demands of daily life could hardly come in question. with such general laws we could never have mastered the concrete situations of society, because we should have had to leave out of view the fact that there are gifted and ungifted, intelligent and stupid, sensitive and obtuse, quick and slow, energetic and weak individuals. but in recent years a complete change can be traced in our science. experiments which refer to these individual differences themselves have been carried on by means of the psychological laboratory, at first reluctantly and in tentative forms, but within the last ten years the movement has made rapid progress. to-day we have a psychology of individual variations from the point of view of the psychological laboratory.[ ] this development of schemes to compare the differences between the individuals by the methods of experimental science was after all the most important advance toward the practical application of psychology. the study of the individual differences itself is not applied psychology, but it is the presupposition without which applied psychology would have remained a phantom. ii the demands of practical life while in this way the progress of psychology itself and the development of the psychology of individual differences favored the growth of applied psychology, there arose at the same time an increasing demand in the midst of practical life. especially the teachers and the physicians, later the lawyers as well, looked for help from exact psychology. the science of education and instruction had always had some contact with the science of the mind, as the pedagogues could never forget that the mental development of the child has to stand in the centre of educational thought. for a long while pedagogy was still leaning on a philosophical psychology, after that old-fashioned study of the soul had been given up in psychological quarters. at last, in the days of progressive experimental psychology, the time came when the teachers under the pressure of their new needs began to inquire how far the modern laboratory could aid them in the classroom. the pedagogical psychology of memory, of attention, of will, and of intellect was systematically worked up by men with practical school interests. we may notice in the movement a slow but most important shifting. at first the results of theoretical psychology were simply transplanted into the pedagogical field. experiments which were carried on in the interest of pure theoretical science were made practical use of, but their application remained a mere chance by-product. only slowly did the pedagogical problems themselves begin to determine the experimental investigation. the methods of laboratory psychology were applied for the solving of those problems which originated in the school experience, and only when this point was reached could a truly experimental pedagogy be built on a psychological foundation. we stand in the midst of this vigorous and healthy movement, which has had a stimulating effect on theoretical psychology itself. we find a similar situation in the sphere of the physician. he could not pass by the new science of the mind without instinctively feeling that his medical diagnosis and therapy could be furthered in many directions by the experimental method. not only the psychiatrist and nerve specialist, but in a certain sense every physician had made use of a certain amount of psychology in his professional work. he had always had to make clear to himself the mental experiences of the patient, to study his pain sensations and his feelings of comfort, his fears and his hopes, his perceptions and his volitions, and to a certain degree he had always tried to influence the mental life of the patient, to work on him by suggestion and to help him by stimulating his mind. but as far as a real description and explanation of such mental experiences came in question, all remained a dilettantic semi-psychology which worked with the most trivial conceptions of popular thinking. the medical men recognized the disproportion between the exactitude of their anatomical, physiological, and pathological observation and the superficiality of their self-made psychology. thus the desire arose in their own medical circle to harmonize their psychological means of diagnosis and therapy with the schemes of modern scientific psychology. the physician who examines the sensations in a nervous disease, or the intelligence in a mental disease, or heals by suggestion or hypnotism, tries to apply the latest discoveries of the psychological laboratory. but here, too, the same development as in pedagogy can be traced. the physicians at first made use only of results which had been secured under entirely different points of view, but later the experiments were subordinated to the special medical problems. then the physician was no longer obliged simply to use what he happened to find among the results of the theoretical psychologist, but carried on the experiments in the service of medical problems. the independent status of experimental medical psychology could be secured only by this development. in somewhat narrower limits the same may be said as to the problems of law. a kind of popular psychology was naturally involved whenever judges or lawyers analyzed the experience on the witness stand or discussed the motives of crime or the confessions of the criminal or the social conditions of criminality. but when every day brought new discoveries in the psychological laboratory, it seemed natural to make use of the new methods and of the new results in the interest of the courtroom. the power of observation in the witness, the exactitude of his memory, the character of his illusions and imagination, his suggestibility and his feeling, appeared in a new light in view of the experimental investigations, and the emotions and volitions of the criminal were understood with a new insight. here, too, the last step was taken. instead of being satisfied with experiments which the psychologist had made for his own purposes, the students of legal psychology adjusted experiments to the particular needs of the courtroom. investigations were carried on to determine, the fidelity of testimony or to find methods for the detection of hidden thoughts and so on. efforts toward the application of psychology have accordingly grown up in the fields of pedagogy, medicine, and jurisprudence, but as these studies naturally do not remain independent of one another, they all together form the one unified science of applied psychology.[ ] as soon as the independence of this new science was felt, it was natural that new demands and new problems should continue to originate within its own limits. there must be applied psychology wherever the investigation of mental life can be made serviceable to the tasks of civilization. criminal law, education, medicine, certainly do not constitute the totality of civilized life. it is therefore the duty of the practical psychologist systematically to examine how far other purposes of modern society can be advanced by the new methods of experimental psychology. there is, for instance, already, far-reaching agreement that the problems of artistic creation, of scientific observation, of social reform, and many similar endeavors must be acknowledged as organic parts of applied psychology. only one group of purposes is so far surprisingly neglected in the realm of the psychological laboratory: the purposes of the economic life, the purposes of commerce and industry, of business and the market in the widest sense of the word. the question how far applied psychology can be extended in this direction is the topic of the following discussions. iii means and ends applied psychology is evidently to be classed with the technical sciences. it may be considered as psychotechnics, since we must recognize any science as technical if it teaches us to apply theoretical knowledge for the furtherance of human purposes. like all technical sciences, applied psychology tells us what we ought to do if we want to reach certain ends; but we ought to realize at the threshold where the limits of such a technical science lie, as they are easily overlooked, with resulting confusion. we must understand that every technical science says only: you must make use of this means, if you wish to reach this or that particular end. but no technical science can decide within its limits whether the end itself is really a desirable one. the technical specialist knows how he ought to build a bridge or how he ought to pierce a tunnel, presupposing that the bridge or the tunnel is desired. but whether they are desirable or not is a question which does not concern the technical scientist, but which must be considered from economic or political or other points, of view. everywhere the engineer must know how to reach an end, and must leave it to others to settle whether the end in itself is desirable. often the end may be a matter of course for every reasonable being. the extreme case is presented by the applied science of medicine, where the physician subordinates all his technique to the end of curing the patient. yet if we are consistent we must acknowledge that all his medical knowledge can prescribe to him only that he proceed in a certain way if the long life of the patient is acknowledged as a desirable end. the application of anatomy, physiology, and pathology may just as well be used for the opposite end of killing a man. whether it is wise to work toward long life, or whether it is better to kill people, is again a problem which lies outside the sphere of the applied sciences. ethics or social philosophy or religion have to solve these preliminary' questions. the physician as such has only to deal with the means which lead toward that goal. we must make the same discrimination in the psychotechnical field. the psychologist may point out the methods by which an involuntary confession can be secured from a defendant, but whether it is justifiable to extort involuntary confessions is a problem which does not concern the psychologist. the lawyers or the legislators must decide as to the right or wrong, the legality or illegality, of forcing a man to show his bidden ideas. if such an end is desirable, the psychotechnical student can determine the right means, and that is the limit of his office. we ought to keep in mind that the same holds true for the application of psychology in economic life. economic psychotechnics may serve certain ends of commerce and industry, but whether these ends are the best ones is not a care with which the psychologist has to be burdened. for instance, the end may be the selection of the most efficient laborers for particular industries. the psychologist may develop methods in his laboratory by which this purpose can be fulfilled. but if some mills prefer another goal,--for instance, to have not the most efficient but the cheapest possible laborers,--entirely different means for the selection are necessary. the psychologist is, therefore, not entangled in the economic discussions of the day; it is not his concern to decide whether the policy of the trusts or the policy of the trade-unions or any other policy for the selection of laborers is the ideal one. he is confined to the statement; if you wish this end, then you must proceed in this way; but it is left to you to express your preference among the ends. applied psychology can, therefore, speak the language of an exact science in its own field, independent of economic opinions and debatable partisan interests. this is necessary limitation, but in this limitation lies the strength of the new science. the psychologist may show how a special commodity can be advertised; but whether from a social point of view it is desirable to reinforce the sale of these goods is no problem for psychotechnics. if a sociologist insists that it would be better if not so many useless goods were bought, and that the aim ought rather to be to protect the buyer than to help the seller, the psychologist would not object. his interest would only be to find the right psychological means to lead to this other social end. he is partisan neither of the salesman nor of the customer, neither of the capitalist nor of the laborer, he is neither socialist nor anti-socialist, neither high-tariff man nor free-trader. here, too, of course, there are certain goals which are acknowledged on all sides, and which therefore hardly need any discussion, just as in the case of the physician, where the prolongation of life is practically acknowledged as a desirable end by every one. but everywhere where the aim is not perfectly a matter of course, the psychotechnical specialist fulfills his task only when he is satisfied with demonstrating that certain psychical means serve a certain end, and that they ought to be applied as soon as that end is accepted. the whole system of psychotechnical knowledge might be subdivided under either of the two aspects. either we might start from the various mental processes and ask for what end each mental factor can be practically useful and important, or we can begin with studying what significant ends are acknowledged in our society and then we can seek the various psychological facts which are needed as means for the realization of these ends. the first way offers many conveniences. there we should begin with the mental states of attention, memory, feeling, and so on, and should study how the psychological knowledge of every one of these mental states can render service in many different practical fields. the attention, for instance, is important in the classroom when the teacher tries to secure the attention of the pupils, but the judge expects the same attention from the jurymen in the courtroom, the artist seeks to stir up the attention of the spectator, the advertiser demands the attention of the newspaper readers. whoever studies the characteristics of the mental process of attention may then be able to indicate how in every one of these unlike cases the attention can be stimulated and retained. nevertheless the opposite way which starts from the tasks to be fulfilled seems more helpful and more fundamentally significant. the question, then, is what mental processes become important for the tasks of education, what for the purposes of the courtroom, what for the hospital, what for the church, what for politics, and so on. as this whole essay is to be devoted exclusively to the economic problems, we are obliged to choose the second way; that is, to arrange applied psychology with reference to its chief ends and not with reference to the various means. but the same question comes up in the further subdivision of the material. in the field of economic psychology, too, we might ask how far the study of attention, or of perception, or of feeling, or of will, or of memory, and so on, can be useful for the purposes of the business man. or here, too, we might begin with the consideration of the various ends and purposes. the ends of commerce are different from those of industry, those of publishing different from those of transportation, those of agriculture different from those of mining; or, in the field of commerce, the purposes of the retailer are different from those of the wholesale merchant. there can be no limit to such subdivisions; each particular industry has its own aims, and in the same industry a large variety of tasks are united. we should accordingly be led to an ample classification of special economic ends with pigeonholes for every possible kind of business and of labor. the psychologist would have to find for every one of these ends the right mental means. this would be the ideal system of economic psychology. but we are still endlessly far from such a perfect system. modern educational psychology and medical psychology have reached a stage at which an effort for such a complete system might be realized, but economic psychology is still at too early a stage of development. it would be entirely artificial to-day to aim at such ideal completeness. if we were to construct such a complete system of questions, we should have no answers. in the present stage nothing can be seriously proposed but the selection of a few central purposes which occur in every department of business life, and a study of the means to reach these special ends by the discussion of some typical cases which may clearly illustrate the methods involved. from this point of view we select three chief purposes of business life, purposes which are important in commerce and industry and every economic endeavor. we ask how we can find the men whose mental qualities make them best fitted for the work which they have to do; secondly, under what psychological conditions we can secure the greatest and most satisfactory output of work from every man; and finally, how we can produce most completely the influences on human minds which are desired in the interest of business. in other words, we ask how to find the best possible man, how to produce the best possible work, and how to secure the best possible effects. part i the best possible man iv vocation and fitness instead of lingering over theoretical discussions, we will move straight on toward our first practical problem. the economic task, with reference to which we want to demonstrate the new psychotechnic method, is the selection of those personalities which by their mental qualities are especially fit for a particular kind of economic work. this problem is especially useful to show what the new method can do and what it cannot do. whether the method is sufficiently developed to secure full results to-day, or whether they will come to-morrow, is unimportant. it is clear that the success of to-morrow is to be hoped for, only if understanding and interest in the problem is already alive to-day. when we inquire into the qualities of men, we use the word here in its widest meaning. it covers, on the one side, the mental dispositions which may still be quite undeveloped and which may unfold only under the influence of special conditions in the surroundings; but, on the other side, it covers the habitual traits of the personality, the features of the individual temperament and character, of the intelligence and of the ability, of the collected knowledge and of the acquired experience. all variations of will and feeling, of perception and thought, of attention and emotion, of memory and imagination, are included here. from a purely psychological standpoint, quite incomparable contents and functions and dispositions of the personality are thus thrown together, but in practical life we are accustomed to proceed after this fashion: if a man applies for a position, he is considered with regard to the totality of his qualities, and at first nobody cares whether the particular feature is inherited or acquired, whether it is an individual chance variation or whether it is common to a larger group, perhaps to all members of a certain nationality or race. we simply start from the clear fact that the personalities which enter into the world of affairs present an unlimited manifoldness of talents and abilities and functions of the mind. from this manifoldness, it necessarily follows that some are more, some less, fit for the particular economic task. in view of the far-reaching division of labor in our modern economic life, it is impossible to avoid the question how we can select the fit personalities and reject the unfit ones. how has modern society prepared itself to settle this social demand? in case that certain knowledge is indispensable for the work or that technical abilities must have been acquired, the vocation is surrounded by examinations. this is true of the lower as well as of the higher activities. the direct examination is everywhere supplemented by testimonials covering the previous achievements, by certificates referring to the previous education, and in frequent cases by the endeavor to gain a personal impression from the applicant. but if we take all this together, the total result remains a social machinery by which perhaps the elimination of the entirely unfit can be secured. but no one could speak of a really satisfactory adaptation of the manifold personalities to the economic vocational tasks. all those examinations and tests and certificates refer essentially to what can be learned from without, and not to the true qualities of the mind and the deeper traits. the so-called impressions, too, are determined by the most secondary and external factors. society relies instinctively on the hope that the natural wishes and interests will push every one to the place for which his dispositions, talents, and psychophysical gifts prepare him. in reality this confidence is entirely unfounded. a threefold difficulty exists. in the first place, young people know very little about themselves and their abilities. when the day comes on which they discover their real strong points and their weaknesses, it is often too late. they have usually been drawn into the current of a particular vocation, and have given too much energy to the preparation for a specific achievement to change the whole life-plan once more. the entire scheme of education gives to the individual little chance to find himself. a mere interest for one or another subject in school is influenced by many accidental circumstances, by the personality of the teacher or the methods of instruction, by suggestions of the surroundings and by home traditions, and accordingly even such a preference gives rather a slight final indication of the individual mental qualities. moreover, such mere inclinations and interests cannot determine the true psychological fitness for a vocation. to choose a crude illustration, a boy may think with passion of the vocation of a sailor, and yet may be entirely unfit for it, because his mind lacks the ability to discriminate red and green. he himself may never have discovered that he is color-blind, but when he is ready to turn to the sailor's calling, the examination of his color-sensitiveness which is demanded may have shown the disturbing mental deficiency. similar defects may exist in a boy's attention or memory, judgment or feeling, thought or imagination, suggestibility or emotion, and they may remain just as undiscovered as the defect of color-blindness, which is characteristic of four per cent of the male population. all such deficiencies may be dangerous in particular callings. but while the vocation of the ship officer is fortunately protected nowadays by such a special psychological examination, most other vocations are unguarded against the entrance of the mentally unfit individuals. as the boys and girls grow up without recognizing their psychical weaknesses, the exceptional strength of one or another mental function too often remains unnoticed by them as well. they may find out when they are favored with a special talent for art or music or scholarship, but they hardly ever know that their attention, or their memory, or their will, or their intellectual apprehension, or their sensory perceptions, are unusually developed in a particular direction; yet such an exceptional mental disposition might be the cause of special success in certain vocations. but we may abstract from the extremes of abnormal deficiency and abnormal overdevelopment in particular functions. between them we find the broad region of the average minds with their numberless variations, and these variations are usually quite unknown to their possessors. it is often surprising to see how the most manifest differences of psychical organization remain unnoticed by the individuals themselves. men with a pronounced visual type of memory and men with a marked acoustical type may live together without the slightest idea that their contents of consciousness are fundamentally different from each other. neither the children nor their parents nor their teachers burden themselves with the careful analysis of such actual mental qualities when the choice of a vocation is before them. they know that a boy who is completely unmusical must not become a musician, and that the child who cannot draw at all must not become a painter, just as on physical grounds a boy with very weak muscles is not fit to become a blacksmith. but as soon as the subtler differentiation is needed, the judgment of all concerned seems helpless and the physical characteristics remain disregarded. a further reason for the lack of adaptation, and surely a most important one, lies in the fact that the individual usually knows only the most external conditions of the vocations from which he chooses. the most essential requisite for a truly perfect adaptation, namely, a real analysis of the vocational demands with reference to the desirable personal qualities, is so far not in existence. the young people generally see some superficial traits of the careers which seem to stand open, and, besides, perhaps they notice the great rewards of the most successful. the inner labor, the inner values, and the inner difficulties and frictions are too often unknown to those who decide for a vocation, and they are unable to correlate those essential factors of the life-calling with all that nature by inheritance, and society by surroundings and training, have planted and developed in their minds. in addition to this ignorance as to one's own mental disposition and to the lack of understanding of the true mental requirements of the various social tasks comes finally the abundance of trivial chances which become decisive in the choice of a vocation. vocation and marriage are the two most consequential decisions in life. in the selection of a husband or a wife, too, the decision is very frequently made dependent upon the most superficial and trivial motives. yet the social philosopher may content himself with the belief that even in the fugitive love desire a deeper instinct of nature is expressed, which may at least serve the biological tasks of married life. in the choice of a vocation, even such a belief in a biological instinct is impossible. the choice of a vocation, determined by fugitive whims and chance fancies, by mere imitation, by a hope for quick earnings, by irresponsible recommendation, or by mere laziness, has no internal reason or excuse. illusory ideas as to the prospects of a career, moreover, often falsify the whole vista; and if we consider all this, we can hardly be surprised that our total result is in many respects hardly better than if everything were left entirely to accident. even on the height of a mental training to the end of adolescence, we see how the college graduates are too often led by accidental motives to the decision whether they shall become lawyers or physicians or business men, but this superficiality of choice of course appears much more strongly where the lifework is to be built upon the basis of a mere elementary or high school education. the final result corresponds exactly to these conditions. everywhere, in all countries and in all vocations, but especially in the economic careers, we hear the complaint that there is lack of really good men. everywhere places are waiting for the right man, while at the same time we find everywhere an oversupply of mediocre aspirants. this, however, does not in the least imply that there really are not enough personalities who might be perfectly fit even for the highest demands of the vocations; it means only that as a matter of course the result in the filling of positions cannot be satisfactory, if the placing of the individuals is carried on without serious regard for the personal mental qualities. the complaint that there is lack of fit human material would probably never entirely disappear, as with a better adjustment of the material, the demands would steadily increase; but it could at least be predicted with high probability that this lack of really fit material would not be felt so keenly everywhere if the really decisive factor for the adjustment of personality and vocation, namely, the dispositions of the mind, were not so carelessly ignored. society, to be sure, has a convenient means of correction. the individual tries, and when he is doing his work too badly, he loses his job, he is pushed out from the career which be has chosen, with the great probability that he will be crushed by the wheels of social life. it is a rare occurrence for the man who is a failure in his chosen vocation, and who has been thrown out of it, to happen to come into the career in which he can make a success. social statistics show with an appalling clearness what a burden and what a danger to the social body is growing from the masses of those who do not succeed and who by their lack of success become discouraged and embittered. the social psychologist cannot resist the conviction that every single one could have found a place in which he could have achieved something of value for the commonwealth. the laborer, who in spite of his best efforts shows himself useless and clumsy before one machine, might perhaps have done satisfactory work in the next mill where the machines demand another type of mental reaction. his psychical rhythm and his inner functions would be able to adjust themselves to the requirements of the one kind of labor and not to those of the other. truly the whole social body has had to pay a heavy penalty for not making even the faintest effort to settle systematically the fundamental problem of vocational choice, the problem of the psychical adaptation of the individuality. an improvement would lie equally in the interest of those who seek positions and those who have positions to offer. the employers can hope that in all departments better work will be done as soon as better adapted individuals can be obtained; and, on the other hand, those who are anxious to make their working energies effective may expect that the careful selection of individual mental characters for the various tasks of the world will insure not only greater success and gain, but above all greater joy in the work, deeper satisfaction, and more harmonious unfolding of the personality. v scientific vocational guidance observations of this kind, which refer to the borderland region between psychology and social politics, are valid for all modern nations. yet it is hardly a chance that the first efforts toward a systematic overcoming of some of these difficulties have been made with us in america. the barriers between the classes lie lower; here the choice of a vocation is less determined by tradition; and it belongs to the creed of political democracy that just as everybody can be called to the highest elective offices, so everybody ought to be fit for any vocation in any sphere of life. the wandering from calling to calling is more frequent in america than anywhere else. to be sure, this has the advantage that a failure in one vocation does not bring with it such a serious injury as in europe, but it contributes much to the greater danger that any one may jump recklessly and without preparation into any vocational stream. it is fresh in every one's mind how during the last decade the economic conscience of the whole american nation became aroused. up to the end of the last century the people had lived with the secure feeling of possessing a country with inexhaustible treasures. the last few years brought the reaction, and it became increasingly clear how irresponsible the national attitude had been, how the richness of the forests and the mines and the rivers had been recklessly squandered without any thought of the future. conservation of the national possessions suddenly became the battle-cry, and this turned the eye also to that limitless waste of human material, a waste going on everywhere in the world, but nowhere more widely than in the united states. the feeling grew that no waste of valuable possessions is so reckless as that which results from the distributing of living force by chance methods instead of examining carefully how work and workmen can fit one another. while this was the emotional background, two significant social movements originated in our midst. the two movements were entirely independent of each other, but from two different starting-points they worked in one respect toward the same goal. they are social and economic movements, neither of which at first had anything directly to do with psychological questions; but both led to a point where the psychological turn of the problem seemed unavoidable. here begins the obligation of the psychologist, and the possibility of fulfilling this obligation will be the topic of our discussion concerning the selection of the best man. these two american movements which we have in mind are the effort to furnish to pupils leaving the school guidance in their choice of a vocation, and the nowadays still better known movement toward scientific management in commerce and industry. the movement toward vocational guidance is externally still rather modest and confined to very narrow circles, but it is rapidly spreading and is not without significant achievements. it started in boston. there the late mr. parsons once called a meeting of all the boys of his neighborhood who were to leave the elementary schools at the end of the year. he wanted to consider with them whether they had reasonable plans for their future. at the well-attended meeting it became clear that the boys knew little concerning what they had to expect in practical life, and parsons was able to give them, especially in individual discussions, much helpful information. they knew too little of the characteristic features of the vocations to which they wanted to devote themselves, and they had given hardly any attention to the question whether they had the necessary qualifications for the special work. from this germ grew a little office which was opened in , in which all boston boys and girls at the time when they left school were to receive individual suggestions with reference to the most reasonable and best adjusted selection of a calling. there is hardly any doubt that the remarkable success of this modest beginning was dependent upon the admirable personality of the late organizer, who recognized the individual features with unusual tact and acumen. but he himself had no doubt that such a merely impressionistic method could not satisfy the demands. he saw that a threefold advance would become necessary. first, it was essential to analyze the objective relations of the many hundred kinds of accessible vocations. their economic, hygienic, technical, and social elements ought to be examined so that every boy and girl could receive reliable information as to the demands of the vocation and as to the prospects and opportunities in it. secondly, it would become essential to interest the schools in all these complex questions of vocational choice, so that, by observation of individual tendencies and abilities of the pupils, the teachers might furnish preparatory material for the work of the institute for vocational guidance. thirdly,--and this is for us the most important point,--he saw that the methods had to be elaborated in such a way that the personal traits and dispositions might be discovered with much greater exactitude and with much richer detail than was possible through what a mere call on the vocational counselor could unveil.[ ] it is well known how this boston bureau has stimulated a number of american cities to come forward with similar beginnings. the pedagogical circles have been especially aroused by the movement, municipal and philanthropic boards have at least approached this group of problems, two important conferences for vocational guidance have met in new york, and at various places the question has been discussed whether or not a vocational counselor might be attached to the schools in a position similar to that of the school physician. the chief progress has been made in the direction of collecting reliable data with reference to the economic and hygienic conditions of the various vocations, the demand and supply and the scale of wages. in short, everything connected with the externalities of the vocations has been carefully analyzed, and sufficient reliable material has been gained, at least regarding certain local conditions. in the place of individual advice, we have thus to a certain degree obtained general economic investigations from which each can gather what he needs. it seems that sometimes the danger of letting such offices degenerate into mere agencies for employment has not been avoided, but that is one of the perils of the first development. the mother institute in boston, too, under its new direction emphasizes more the economic and hygienic side, and has set its centre of gravity in a systematic effort to propagate understanding of the problems of vocational guidance and to train professional vocational counselors in systematic courses, who are then to carry the interest over the land.[ ] the real psychological analysis with which the movement began has, therefore, been somewhat pushed aside for a while, and the officers of those institutes declare frankly that they want to return to the mental problem only after professional psychologists have sufficiently worked out the specific methods for its mastery. most counselors seem to feel instinctively that the core of the whole matter lies in the psychological examination, but they all agree that for this they must wait until the psychological laboratories can furnish them with really reliable means and schemes. certainly it is very important, for instance, that boys with weak lungs be kept away from such industrial vocations as have been shown by the statistics to be dangerous for the lungs, or that the onrush to vocations be stopped where the statistics allow it to be foreseen that there will soon be an oversupply of workers. but, after all, it remains much more decisive for the welfare of the community, and for the future life happiness of those who leave the school, that every one turn to those forms of work to which his psychological traits are adjusted, or at least that he be kept away from those in which his mental qualities and dispositions would make a truly successful advance improbable. the problem accordingly has been handed over from the vocational counselors to the experimental psychologists, and it is certainly in the spirit of the modern tendency toward applied psychology that the psychological laboratories undertake the investigation and withdraw it from the dilettantic discussion of amateur psychologists or the mere impressionism of the school-teachers. even those early beginnings indicate clearly that the goal can be reached only through exact, scientific, experimental research, and that the mere naïve methods--for instance, the filling-out of questionnaires which may be quite useful in the first approach--cannot be sufficient for a real, persistent furtherance of economic life and of the masses who seek their vocations. in order to gain an analysis of the individual, parsons made every applicant answer in writing a long series of questions which referred to his habits and his emotions, his inclinations and his expectations, his traits and his experiences. the psychologist, however, can hardly be in doubt that just the mental qualities which ought to be most important for the vocational counselor can scarcely be found out by such methods. we have emphasized before that the ordinary individual knows very little of his own mental functions: on the whole, he knows them as little as he knows the muscles which be uses when he talks or walks. among his questions parsons included such ones as: "are your manners quiet, noisy, boisterous, deferential, or self-assertive? are you thoughtful of the comfort of others? do you smile naturally and easily, or is your face ordinarily expressionless? are you frank, kindly, cordial, respectful, courteous in word and actions? do you look people frankly in the eye? are your inflections natural, courteous, modest, musical, or aggressive, conceited, pessimistic, repellent? what are your powers of attention, observation, memory, reason, imagination, inventiveness, thoughtfulness, receptiveness, quickness, analytical power, constructiveness, breadth, grasp? can you manage people well? do you know a fine picture when you see it? is your will weak, yielding, vacillating, or firm, strong, stubborn? do you like to be with people and do they like to be with you?"--and so on. it is clear that the replies to questions of this kind can be of psychological value only when the questioner knows beforehand the mind of the youth, and can accordingly judge with what degree of understanding, sincerity, and ability the circular blanks have been filled out. but as the questions are put for the very purpose of revealing the personality, the entire effort tends to move in a circle. to break this circle, it indeed becomes necessary to emancipate one's self from the method of ordinary self-observation and to replace it by objective experiment in the psychological laboratory. experimentation in such a laboratory stands in no contrast to the method of introspection. a contrast does exist between self-observation and observation on children or patients or primitive peoples or animals. in their case the psychologist observes his material from without. but in the case of the typical laboratory experiment, everything is ultimately based on self-observation; only we have to do with the self-observation under exact conditions which the experimenter is able to control and to vary at will. even parsons sometimes turned to little experimental inquiries in which he simplified some well-known methods of the laboratory in order to secure with the most elementary means a certain objective foundation for his mental analysis. for instance, he sometimes examined the memory by reading to the boys graded sentences containing from ten to fifty words and having them repeat what they remembered, or he measured with a watch the rapidity of reading and writing, or he determined the sensitiveness for the discrimination of differences by asking them to make a point with a pencil in the centres of circles of various sizes. but if such experimental schemes, even of the simplest form, are in question, it seems a matter of course that the plan ought to be prescribed by real scientists who specialize in the psychological field. the psychologist, for instance, surely cannot agree to a method which measures the memory by such a method of having spoken sentences repeated and the quality of the memory faculty naïvely graded according to the results. he knows too well that there are many different kinds of memory, and would always determine first which type of memory functions is to be examined if memory achievements are needed for a particular calling. but even with a more exact method of experimenting, such a procedure would not be sufficient to solve the true problem. a second step would still be necessary: namely, the adaptation of the experimental result to the special psychological requirements of the economic activity; and this again presupposes an independent psychological analysis. most of the previous efforts have suffered from the carelessness with which this second step was ignored, and the special mental requirements were treated as a matter of course upon which any layman could judge. in reality they need the most careful psychological analysis, and only if this is carried out with the means of scientific psychology, can a study of the abilities of the individual become serviceable to the demands of the market. such a psychological disentangling of the requirements of the callings, in the interest of guidance, is attempted in the material which the various vocational institutes have prepared, but it seldom goes beyond commonplaces. we read there, for instance,[ ] for the confectioner: "boys in this industry must be clean, quick, and strong. the most important qualities desired are neatness and adaptability to routine"; or, for the future baker, the boy "ought to know how to conduct himself and to meet the public"; or for the future architectural designer, "he must have creative ability, artistic feeling, and power to sketch"; or for the dressmaker, she "should have good eyesight and good sense of color, and an ability to use her hands readily; she should be able to apply herself steadily and be fairly quick in her movements; neatness of person is also essential"; or for the stenographer, she must be "possessed of intelligence, good judgment, and common sense; must have good eyesight, good hearing, and a good memory; must have quick perception, and be able to concentrate her attention completely on any matter in hand." it is evident that all this is extremely far from any psychological analysis in the terms of science. all taken together, we may, therefore, say that in the movement for vocational guidance practically nothing has been done to make modern experimental psychology serviceable to the new task. but on the one side, it has shown that this work of the experimental psychologist is the next step necessary. on the other side, it has become evident that in the vocation bureaus appropriate social agencies are existing which are ready to take up the results of such work, and to apply them for the good of the american youth and of commerce and industry, as soon as the experimental psychologist has developed the significant methods. vi scientific management before we discuss some cases of such experimental investigations, we may glance at that other american movement, the well-known systematic effort toward scientific management which has often been interpreted in an expansive literature.[ ] enthusiastic followers have declared it to be the greatest advance in industry since the introduction of the mill system and of machinery. opponents have hastily denounced it as a mistake, and have insisted that it proved a failure in the factories in which it has been introduced. a sober examination of the facts soon demonstrates that the truth lies in the middle. those followers of frederick w. taylor who have made almost a religion out of his ideas have certainly often exaggerated the practical applicability of the new theories, and their actual reforms in the mills have not seldom shown that the system is still too topheavy; that is, there are too many higher employees necessary in order to keep the works running on principles of scientific management. on the other hand, the opposition which comes from certain quarters,--for instance, from some trade-unions,--may be disregarded, as it is not directed against the claim that the efficiency can be heightened, but only against some social features of the scheme, such as the resulting temporary reduction of the number of workmen. but nobody can deny that this revolutionary movement has introduced most valuable suggestions which the industrial world cannot afford to ignore, and that as soon as exaggerations are avoided and experience has created a broader foundation, the principles of the new theory will prove of lasting value. we shall have to discuss, at a later point, various special features of the system, especially the highly interesting motion study. here we have to deal only with those tendencies of the movement and with those interests which point toward our present problem, the mental analysis of the individual employees in order to avoid misfits. the approach to this problem, indeed, seems unavoidable for the students of scientific management, as its goal is an organization of economic work by which the waste of energy will be avoided and the greatest increase in the efficiency of the industrial enterprise will be reached. the recognition that this can never be effected by a mere excessive driving of the workingmen belongs to its very presuppositions. the illusory means of prolongation of the working-time and similar devices by which the situation of the individual deteriorates would be out of the question; on the contrary, the heightening of the individual's joy in the work and of the personal satisfaction in one's total life development belongs among the most important, indirect agencies of the new scheme. this end is reached by many characteristic changes in the division of labor; also by a new division between supervisors and workers, by transformations of the work itself and of the tools and vehicles. but as a by-product of these efforts the demand necessarily arose for means by which the fit individuals could be found for special kinds of labor. the more scientific management introduced changes, by which the individual achievement often had to become rather complicated and difficult, the more it became necessary to study the skill and the endurance and the intelligence of the individual laborers in order to entrust these new difficult tasks only to the most appropriate men in the factories and mills. the problem of individual selection accordingly forced itself on the new efficiency engineers, and they naturally recognized that the really essential traits and dispositions were the mental ones. in the most progressive books of the new movement, this need of emphasizing the selection of workers with reference to their mental equipment comes to clear expression. yet this is very far from a real application of scientific psychology to the problem at hand. wherever the question of the selection of the fit men after psychological principles is mentioned in the literature of this movement, the language becomes vague, and the same men, who use the newest scientific knowledge whenever physics or mathematics or physiology or chemistry are involved, make hardly any attempts to introduce the results of science when psychology is in question. the clearest insight into the general situation may be found in the most recent books by emerson. he says frankly: "it is psychology, not soil or climate, that enables man to raise five times as many potatoes per acre as the average in his own state";[ ] or: "in selecting human assistants such superficialities as education, as physical strength, even antecedent morality, are not as important as the inner attitudes, proclivities, character, which after all determine the man or woman."[ ] he also fully recognizes the necessity of securing as early as possible the psychological essentials. he says: "the type for the great newspaper is set up by linotype operators. apprenticeship is rigorously limited. some operators can never get beyond the -em class, others with no more personal effort can set ems. do the employers test out applicants for apprenticeship so as to be sure to secure boys who will develop into the -em class? they do not: they select applicants for any near reason except the fundamental important one of innate fitness."[ ] but all this points only to the existence of the problem, and in reality gives not even a hint for its solution. the theorists of scientific management seem to think that the most subtle methods are indispensable for physical measurements, but for psychological inquiry nothing but a kind of intuition is necessary. emerson tells how, for instance, "the competent specialist who has supplemented natural gifts and good judgment by analysis and synthesis can perceive attitudes and proclivities even in the very young, much more readily in those semi-matured, and can with almost infallible certainty point out, not only what work can be undertaken with fair hope of success, but also what slight modification or addition and diminution will more than double the personal power."[ ] the true psychological specialists surely ought to decline this flattering confidence. far from the "almost infallible certainty," they can hardly expect even a moderate amount of success in such directions so long as specific methods have not been elaborated, and so long as no way has been shown to make experimental measurements by which such mere guesswork can be replaced by scientific investigation. the only modest effort to try a step in this direction toward the psychological laboratory is recorded by taylor,[ ] who tells of mr. s.e. thompson's work in a bicycle ball factory, where a hundred and twenty girls were inspecting the balls. they had to place a row of small polished steel balls on the back of the left hand and while they were rolled over and over in the crease between two of the fingers placed together, they were minutely examined in a strong light and the defective balls were picked out with the aid of a magnet held in the right hand. the work required the closest attention and concentration. the girls were working ten and a half hours a day. mr. thompson soon recognized that the quality most needed, beside endurance and industry, was a quick power of perception accompanied by quick responsive action. he knew that the psychological laboratory has developed methods for a very exact measurement of the time needed to react on an impression with the quickest possible movement; it is called the reaction time, and is usually measured in thousandths of a second. he therefore considered it advisable to measure the reaction-time of the girls, and to eliminate from service all those who showed a relatively long time between the stimulus and reaction. this involved laying off many of the most intelligent, hardest-working, and most trustworthy girls. yet the effect was the possibility of shortening the hours and of reducing more and more the number of workers, with the final outcome that thirty-five girls did the work formerly done by a hundred and twenty, and that the accuracy of the work at the higher speed was two thirds greater than at the former slow speed. this allowed almost a doubling of the wages of the girls in spite of their shorter working-day, and at the same time a considerable reduction in the cost of the work for the factory. this excursion of an efficiency engineer into the psychological laboratory remained, however; an entirely exceptional case. moreover, such a reaction-time measurement did not demand any special development of new methods or any particular mental analysis, and this exception thus confirms the rule that the followers of scientific management principles have recognized the need of psychological inquiries, but have not done anything worth mentioning to apply the results of really scientific psychology. hence the situation is the same as in the field of vocational guidance. in both cases a vague longing for psychological analysis and psychological measurement, but in both cases so far everything has remained on the level of helpless psychological dilettantism. it stands in striking contrast with the scientific seriousness with which the economic questions are taken up in the field of vocational guidance and the physical questions in the field of scientific management. it is, therefore, evidently the duty of the experimental psychologists themselves to examine the ground from the point of view of the psychological laboratory. vii the methods of experimental psychology we now see clearly the psychotechnical problem. we have to analyze definite economic tasks with reference to the mental qualities which are necessary or desirable for them, and we have to find methods by which these mental qualities can be tested. we must, indeed, insist on it that the interests of commerce and industry can be helped only when both sides, the vocational demands and the personal function, are examined with equal scientific thoroughness. one aspect alone is unsatisfactory. it would of course be possible to confine the examination to the individual mental traits, and then theoretically to determine for which economic tasks the presence of these qualities would be useful and for which tasks their absence or their deficiency would be fatal. common sense may be sufficient to lead us a few steps in that direction. for instance, if we find by psychological examination that an individual is color-blind for red and green sensations, we may at once conclude, without any real psychological analysis of the vocations, that he would be unfit for the railroad service or the naval service, in which red and green signals are of importance. we may also decide at once that such a boy would be useless for all artistic work in which the nuances of colors are of consequence, or as a laborer in certain departments of a dyeing establishment, and that such a color-blind girl would not do at a dressmaker's or in a millinery store. but if we come to the question whether such a color-blind individual may enter into the business of gardening, in spite of the inability to distinguish the strawberries in the bed or the red flowers among the green leaves, the first necessity, after all, would be to find out how far the particular demands of this vocation make the ability to discriminate color a prerequisite, and how far psychical substitutions such as a recognition of the forms and of differences in the light intensity, may be sufficient for the practical task. moreover, where not merely such mental defects, but more subtly shaded variations within normal limits are involved, it would be superficial, if only the mental states were examined and not at the same time the mental requirements of the vocations themselves. the vocation should rather remain the starting-point. we must at first find out what demands on the mental system are made by it and we must grade these demands in order to recognize the more or less important ones, and, especially for the important ones, we must then seek exact standards with experimental methods. such an experimental investigation may proceed according to either of two different principles. one way is to take the mental process which is demanded by the industrial work as an undivided whole. in this case we have to construct experimental conditions under which this total activity can be performed in a gradual, measurable way. the psychical part of the vocational work thus becomes schematized, and is simply rendered experimentally on a reduced scale. the other way is to resolve the mental process into its components and to test every single elementary function in its isolated form. in this latter case the examination has the advantage of having at its disposal all the familiar methods of experimental psychology, while in the first case for every special vocational situation perfectly new experimental tests must be devised. whether the one or the other method is to be preferred must depend upon the nature of the particular commercial or industrial calling, and accordingly presupposes a careful analysis of the special economical processes. it is, indeed, easy to recognize that in certain industrial activities a series of psychical functions is in question which all lie side by side and which do not fuse into one united total process, however much they may influence one another. but for many industrial tasks just this unity is the essential condition. the testing of the mental elements would be in such cases as insufficient as if we were to test a machine with reference to its parts only and not with reference to its total united performance. even in this latter case this unified function does not represent the total personality: it is always merely a segment of the whole mental life. we may examine with psychological methods, for instance, the fitness of an employee for a technical vocation and may test the particular complex unified combination of attention, imagination and intelligence, will and memory, which is essential for that special kind of labor. we may be able to reconstruct the conditions so completely that we would feel justified in predicting whether the individual can fulfill that technical task or not; and yet we may disregard entirely the question whether that man is honest or dishonest, whether he is pacific or quarrelsome; in short, whether his mental disposition makes him a desirable member of that industrial concern under other aspects. we best recognize the significance of these various methods by selecting a few concrete cases as illustrations and analyzing them in detail. but a word of warning may be given beforehand so as to avoid misunderstandings. these examples do not stand here as reports of completed investigations, the results of which ought to be accepted as conclusive parts of the new psychotechnical science; they are not presented as if the results were to be recommended like a well-tested machine for practical purposes. such really completed investigations do not as yet exist in this field. all that can be offered is modest pioneer work, and just these inquiries into the mental qualities and their relations to the industrial vocations have attracted my attention only very recently, and therefore certainly still demand long continuations of the experiments in every direction. but we may hope for satisfactory results the earlier, the more coöperators are entering the field, and the more such researches are started in other places and in other institutions. i therefore offer these early reports at the first stage of my research merely as stimulations, so as to demonstrate the possibilities. as an illustration of the method of examining the mental process as a whole, i propose to discuss the case of the motormen in the electric railways. as an illustration of the other type, namely, of analyzing the activity and testing the elementary functions, i shall discuss the case of the employees in the telephone service. i select these two functions, as both play a practically important rôle in the technique of modern economic life and as in both occupations very large numbers of individuals are engaged in the work. viii experiments in the interest of electric railway service the problem of securing fit motormen for the electric railways was brought to my attention from without. the accidents which occurred through the fault, or at least not without the fault, of the motormen in street railway transportation have always aroused disquietude and even indignation in the public, and the street railway companies suffered much from the many payments of indemnity imposed by the court as they amounted to thirteen per cent of the gross earnings of some companies. last winter the american association for labor legislation called a meeting of vocational specialists to discuss the problem of these accidents under various aspects. the street railways of various cities were represented, and economic, physiological, and psychological specialists took part in the general discussion. much attention was given, of course, to the questions of fatigue and to the statistical results as to the number of accidents and their relation to the various hours of the day and to the time of labor. but there was a strong tendency to recognize as still more important than the mere fatigue, the whole mental constitution of the motormen. the ability to keep attention constant, to resist distraction by chance happenings on the street and especially the always needed ability to foresee the possible movements of the pedestrians and vehicles were acknowledged as extremely different from man to man. the companies claimed that there are motormen who practically never have an accident, because they feel beforehand even what the confused pedestrian and the unskilled chauffeur will do, while others relatively often experience accidents of all kinds because they do not foresee how matters will develop. they can hardly be blamed, as they were not careless, and yet the accidents did result from their personal qualities; they simply lacked the gift of instinctive foresight. all this turned the attention more and more to the possibilities of psychological analysis, and the association suggested that i undertake an inquiry into this interesting problem with the means of the psychological laboratory. i felt the practical importance of the problem, considering that there are electric railway companies in this country which have up to fifty thousand accident indemnity cases a year. it therefore seemed to me decidedly worth while to undertake a laboratory investigation. it would have been quite possible to treat the functions of the motormen according to the method which resolves the complex achievement into its various elements and tests every function independently. for instance, the stopping of the car as soon as the danger of an accident threatens is evidently effective only if the movement controlling the lever is carried out with sufficient rapidity. we should accordingly be justified in examining the quickness with which the individual reacts on optical stimuli. if a playing child suddenly runs across the track of the electric railway, a difference of a tenth of a second in the reaction-time may decide his fate. but i may say at once that i did not find characteristic differences in the rapidity of reaction of those motormen whom the company had found reliable and those who have frequent accidents. it seems that the slow individuals do not remain in the service at all. as a matter of course certain other indispensable single functions, like sharpness of vision are examined before the entrance into the service and so they cannot stand as characteristic conditions of good or bad service among the actual employees. for this reason, in the case of the motormen i abstracted from the study of single elementary functions and turned my attention to that mental process which after some careful observations seemed to me the really central one for the problem of accidents. i found this to be a particular complicated act of attention by which the manifoldness of objects, the pedestrians, the carriages, and the automobiles, are continuously observed with reference to their rapidity and direction in the quickly changing panorama of the street. moving figures come from the right and from the left toward and across the track, and are embedded in a stream of men and vehicles which moves parallel to the track. in the face of such manifoldness there are men whose impulses are almost inhibited and who instinctively desire to wait for the movement of the nearest objects; they would evidently be unfit for the service, as they would drive the electric car far too slowly. there are others who, even with the car at high speed, can adjust themselves for a time to the complex moving situation, but whose attention soon lapses, and while they are fixating a rather distant carriage, may overlook a pedestrian who carelessly crosses the track immediately in front of their car. in short, we have a great variety of mental types of this characteristic unified activity, which may be understood as a particular combination of attention and imagination. my effort was to transplant this activity of the motormen into laboratory processes. and here i may include a remark on the methodology of psychological industrial experiments. one might naturally think that the experience of a special industrial undertaking would be best reproduced for the experiment by repeating the external conditions in a kind of miniature form. that would mean that we ought to test the motormen of the electric railway by experiments with small toy models of electric cars placed on the laboratory table. but this would be decidedly inappropriate. a reduced copy of an external apparatus may arouse ideas, feelings, and volitions which have little in common with the processes of actual life. the presupposition would be that the man to be tested for any industrial achievement would have to think himself into the miniature situation, and especially uneducated persons are often very unsuccessful in such efforts. this can be clearly seen from the experiences before naval courts, where it is usual to demonstrate collisions of ships by small ship models on the table in the courtroom. experience has frequently shown that helmsmen, who have found their course a life long among real vessels in the harbor and on the sea, become entirely confused when they are to demonstrate by the models the relative positions of the ships. even in the naval war schools where the officers play at war with small model ships, a certain inner readjustment is always necessary for them to bring the miniature ships on the large table into the tactical game. on the water, for instance, the navy officer sees the far-distant ships very much smaller than those near by, while on the naval game table all the ships look equally large. on the whole, i feel inclined to say from my experience so far that experiments with small models of the actual industrial mechanism are hardly appropriate for investigations in the field of economic psychology. the essential point for the psychological experiment is not the external similarity of the apparatus, but exclusively the inner similarity of the mental attitude. the more the external mechanism with which or on which the action is carried out becomes schematized, the more the action itself will appear in its true character. in the method of my experiments with the motormen, accordingly, i had to satisfy only two demands. the method of examination promised to be valuable if, first, it showed good results with reliable motormen and bad results with unreliable ones; and secondly, if it vividly aroused in all the motormen the feeling that the mental function which they were going through during the experiment had the greatest possible similarity with their experience on the front platform of the electric car. these are the true tests of a desirable experimental method, while it is not necessary that the apparatus be similar to the electric car or that the external activities in the experiment be identical with their performance in the service. after several unsatisfactory efforts, in which i worked with too complicated instruments, i finally settled on the following arrangement of the experiment which seems to me to satisfy those two demands. the street is represented by a card half-inches broad and half-inches long. two heavy lines half an inch apart go lengthwise through the centre of the card, and accordingly a space of half-inches remains on either side. the whole card is divided into small half-inch squares which we consider as the unit. thus there is in any cross-section unit between the two central lines and units on either side. lengthwise there are units. the squares which lie between the two heavy central lines are marked with the printed letters of the alphabet from a to z. these two heavy central lines are to represent an electric railway track on a street. on either side the rows of squares are filled in an irregular way with black and red figures of the three first digits. the digit always represents a pedestrian who moves just one step, and that means from one unit into the next; the digit a horse, which moves twice as fast, that is, which moves units; and the digit an automobile which moves three times as fast, that is, units. moreover, the black digits stand for men, horses, and automobiles which move parallel to the track and cannot cross the track, and are therefore to be disregarded in looking out for dangers. the red digits, on the other hand, are the dangerous ones. they move from either side toward the track. the idea is that the man to be experimented on is to find as quickly as possible those points on the track which are threatened by the red figures, that is, those letters in the track units at which the red figures would land, if they make the steps which their number indicates. a red digit which is steps from the track is to be disregarded, because it would not reach the track. a red digit which is only or steps from the track is also to be disregarded, because it would cross beyond the track, if it took steps. but a red which is units from the track, a red which is units from the track, and a red which is unit from the track would land on the track itself; and the aim is quickly to find these points. the task is difficult, as the many black figures divert the attention, and as the red figures too near or too far are easily confused with those which are just at the dangerous distance. as soon as this principle for the experiment was recognized as satisfactory, it was necessary to find a technical device by which a movement over this artificial track could be produced in such a way that the rapidity could be controlled by the subject of the experiment and at the same time measured. again we had to try various forms of apparatus. finally we found the following form most satisfactory. twelve such cards, each provided with a handle, lie one above another under a glass plate through which the upper card can be seen. if this highest card is withdrawn; the second is exposed, and from below springs press the remaining cards against the glass plate. the glass plate with the cards below lies in a black wooden box and is completely covered by a belt inches broad, made of heavy black velvet. this velvet belt moves over two cylinders at the front and the rear ends of the apparatus. in the centre of the belt is a window - / inches wide and - / inches high. if the front cylinder is turned by a metal crank, the velvet belt passes over the glass plate and the little window opening moves over the card with its track and figures. the whole breadth of the card, with its central track and its units on either side, is visible through it over an area of units in the length direction. if the man to be experimented on turns the crank with his right hand, the window slips over the whole length of the card, one part of the card after another becomes visible, and then he simply has to call the letters of those units in the track at which the red figures on either side would land, if they took the number of steps indicated by the digit. at the moment the window has reached z on the card, the experimenter withdraws that card and the next becomes visible, as a second window in the belt appears at the lower end when the first disappears at the upper end. in this way the subject can turn his crank uninterruptedly until he has gone through the cards. the experimenter notes down the numbers of the cards and the letters which the subject calls. besides this, the number of seconds required for the whole experiment, from the beginning of the first card to the end of the twelfth, is measured with a stopwatch. this time is, of course, dependent upon the rapidity with which the crank is turned. the result of the experiment is accordingly expressed by three figures, the number of seconds, the number of omissions, that is, of places at which red figures would land on the track which were not noticed by the subject; and, thirdly, the number of incorrect places where letters were called in spite of the fact, that no danger existed. in using the results, we may disregard this third figure and give our attention to the speed and the number of omissions. the necessary condition for carrying out the experiments with this apparatus is a careful, quiet, practical explanation of the device. the experiment must not under any circumstances be started until the subject completely understands what he has to do and for what he has to look out. for this purpose i at first always show the man one card outside of the apparatus and explain to him the differences between the black and the red figures, and the counting of the steps, and show to him in a number of cases how some red figures do not reach the track, how others go beyond the track, and how some just land in danger on the track. as soon as he has completely understood the principle, we turn to the apparatus and he moves the window slowly over a test card, and tries to find the dangerous spots, and i turn his attention to every case in which he has omitted one or has given an incorrect letter. we repeat this slowly until he completely masters the rules of the game. only then is he allowed to start the experiment. i have never found a man with whom this preparation takes more than a few minutes. after developing this method in the psychological laboratory, i turned to the study of men actually in the service of a great electric railway company which supported my endeavors in the most cordial spirit. in accordance with my request, the company furnished me with a number of the best motormen in its service, men who for twenty years and more had performed their duties practically without accidents, and, on the other hand, with a large number of motormen who had only just escaped dismissal and whose record was characterized by many more or less important collisions or other accidents. finally, we had men whose activity as motormen was neither especially good nor especially bad. the test of the method lies first in the fact that the tried motormen agreed that they really pass through the experiment with the feeling which they have on their car. the necessity of looking out in both directions, right and left, for possible obstacles, of distinguishing those which move toward the track from the many which move along the track, the quick discrimination among the various rates of rapidity, the steady forward movement of the observation point, the constant temptation to give attention to those which are still too far away or to those which are so near that they will cross the track before the approach of the car, in short, the whole complex situation with its demands on attention, imagination, and quick adjustment, soon brings them into an attitude which they themselves feel as identical with that in practical life. on the other hand, the results show a far-reaching correspondence between efficiency in the experiment and efficiency in the actual service. with a relatively small number of experiments this correspondence cannot be expected to be complete, the more as a large number of secondary features must enter which interfere with an exact correlation between experiment and standing in the railway company. we must consider, for instance, that those men whom the company naturally selects as models are men who have had twenty to thirty years of service without accidents, but consequently they are rather old men, who no longer have the elasticity of youth and are naturally less able to think themselves into an artificial situation like that of such an experiment, and who have been for a long time removed from contact with book work. it is therefore not surprising, but only to be expected, that such older, model men, while doing fair work in the test, are yet not seldom far surpassed by bright, quick, young motormen who are twenty years younger, even though they are not yet ideal motormen. moreover, the standing in the company often depends upon features which have nothing to do with the mental make-up of the man, while the experiment has to be confined to these mental conditions which favor accidents. it is quite possible that a man may happen to experience a slight collision, even though no conditions for the accident were lying in his mental make-up. but we may go still further. the experiment refers to those sides of his mind which make him able to foresee the danger points, and that is decidedly the most essential factor and the one from which most can be hoped for the safety of the public. but this does not exclude the possibility that some other mental traits may become causes of accidents. the man may be too daring and may like to run risks, or he may still need discipline, or he may not be sufficiently acquainted with the local conditions. any such secondary factors may cause some slight accidents with the man who shows rather fair results in the experimental test of his foresight. finally, we must not forget that some men enter into such tests under a certain nervous tension and therefore may not show so well at the very first test as their mental equipment should allow. hence it is decidedly desirable not to rely on the first test, but to repeat it. if those various interferences are taken into account, the correspondence between efficiency and the results of the tests is fairly satisfactory. it justified me in proposing that the experiments be continued and in regarding it as quite possible that later tests on the basis of this principle may be introduced at the employment of motormen. a difficulty is presented by the valuation of the numerical results. the mere number of omissions alone cannot be decisive, as it is clear that no intelligent man would make any omissions if he should give an unlimited amount of time to it; for instance, if he were to spend fifteen minutes on those cards. but this is the same thing as to say that a motorman would not run over any one if he were to drive his car one mile in an hour. the practical problem is to combine the greatest possible speed with the smallest number of oversights and both factors must therefore be considered. the subject who makes relatively many mistakes but uses a very short time must be acknowledged to be as good as the man who makes fewer mistakes but takes a longer time. in the results which i have gathered in experiments with motormen, no one has gone through those cards in a shorter time than seconds, while the longest time was seconds. on the other hand, no one of the motormen made less than omissions, while the worst ones made omissions. i abstract from one extreme case with omissions. on the whole, we may say that the time fluctuates between and , the mistakes between and . the aim is to find a formula which gives full value to both factors and makes the material directly comparable in the form of one numerical value instead of the two. if we were simply to add the number of seconds and the number of omissions, the omissions would count far too little, inasmuch as additional omissions would then mean no more than additional seconds. on the other hand, if we were to multiply the two figures the omissions would mean by far too much, as the transition from mistakes to mistakes would then be as great a change as the transition from to seconds, that is, from the one extreme of time to the other. evidently we balance both factors if we multiply the number of omissions by and add them to the number of seconds. the variations between and omissions are steps, which multiplied by correspond to the steps which lie between and seconds. on that basis any additional seconds would be equal to additional omissions. if of two men one takes seconds less than his neighbor, he is equal to him in his ability to satisfy the demands of the service, if he makes mistakes more. on the basis of this calculation i find that the old, well-trained motormen come to a result of about , and i should consider that an average standard. this would mean that a man who uses seconds would not be allowed to make more than omissions, in seconds not more than , in not more than , in not more than , under the condition that these are the results of the first set of experiments. where there are more than omissions made, mere quickness ought not to be allowed as a substitute. the man who takes seconds and makes mistakes would come up to the same standard level of . yet his characteristics would probably not serve the interests of the service. he would speed up his car and would make better time than any one else, but would be liable to accidents. i should consider mistakes with a time not longer than as the permissible maximum. among the younger motormen whom i examined, the best result was , in which seconds were used and only omissions made. results below may be considered as very good. one man, for instance, carried out the experiment in seconds with mistakes, which gives the result . from to may be counted as fair, to as mediocre, and over as very poor. in the case of old men, who may be expected to adjust themselves less easily to artificial experiments, the limits may be shifted. if the experiments are made repeatedly, the valuation of the results must be changed accordingly. the training of the men in literary and mathematical work or in experimentation may be considered, as our experiments have shown that highly educated young people with long training in experimental observations can pass through the test much more quickly than any one of the motormen could. among the most advanced graduate students who do research work in my harvard laboratory there was no one whose result was more than , while, as i said, among all the motormen there was no one whose result was less than . the best result reached was by a student who passed through the test in seconds with only mistake, the total therefore being . next came a student who did it in seconds with mistakes, total, ; then in seconds with omissions, total, , and so on. i recapitulate: with men on the educational level and at the age that comes in question for their first appointment in the service of an electric railway company, the test proposed ought to be applied according to this scheme. if they make more than mistakes, they ought to be excluded; if they make less than mistakes, the number of omissions is to be multiplied by and added to the number of seconds. if the sum is less than , their mental fitness for the avoidance of accidents is very high, between and fair, and more than not acceptable under any conditions. i submit this, however, with the emphasis on my previous statement that the investigation is still in its first stage, and that it will need a long coöperation between science and industry in order to determine the desirable modifications and special conditions which may become necessary in making the employment of men partly dependent upon such psychological tests. there can be no doubt that the experiments could be improved in many directions. but even in this first, not adequately tested, form, an experimental investigation of this kind which demands from each individual hardly minutes would be sufficient to exclude perhaps one fourth of those who are nowadays accepted into the service as motormen. this per cent of the applicants do not deserve any blame. in many other occupations they might render excellent service; they are neither careless nor reckless, and they do not act against instructions, but their psychical mechanism makes them unfit for that particular combination of attention and imagination which ought to be demanded for the special task of the motorman. if the many thousands of injury and the many hundreds of death cases could be reduced by such a test at least to a half, then the conditions of transportation would have been improved more than by any alterations in the technical apparatus, which usually are the only objects of interest in the discussion of specialists. the whole world of industry will have to learn the great lesson, that of the three great factors, material, machine, and man, the man is not the least, but the most important. ix experiments in the interest of ship service where the avoidance of accidents is in question, the test of a special experimental method can seldom be made dependent upon a comparison with practical results, as we do not want to wait until the candidate has brought human life into danger. the ordinary way of reaching the goal must therefore be an indirect one in such cases. for the study of motormen the conditions are exceptionally favorable, as hundreds of thousands of accidents occur every year, but another practical example may be chosen from a field where it is, indeed, impossible to correlate the results with actual misfortunes, because the dangerous situations occur seldom; and nevertheless on account of their importance they demand most serious study. i refer to the ship service, where the officer on the bridge may bring thousands into danger by one single slip of his mind. i turn to this as a further concrete illustration in order to characterize at once the lengths to which such vocational studies may advance. one of the largest ship companies had approached me--long before the disaster of the titanic occurred--with the question whether it would not be possible to find psychological methods for the elimination of such ship officers as would not be able to face an unexpected suddenly occurring complication. the director of the company wrote to me that in his experience the real danger for the great ships lies in the mental dispositions of the officers. they all know exactly what is to be done in every situation, but there are too many who do not react in the appropriate way when an unexpected combination of factors suddenly confronts them, such as the quick approach of a ship in the fog. he claimed that two different types ought to be excluded. there are ship officers who know the requirements excellently, but who are almost paralyzed when the dangerous conditions suddenly threaten. their ability for action is inhibited. in one moment they want to act under the stimulus of one impression, but before the impulse is realized, some other perhaps rather indifferent impression forces itself on their minds and suggests the counteraction, and in this way they vacillate and remain inactive until it is too late to give the right order or to press the right button. the other type feels only the necessity for rapid action, and under the pressure of greatest haste, without clear thought, they jump to the first decision which rushes to their minds. without carefully considering the conditions really given, they explode in an action which they would never have chosen in a state of quiet deliberation. they react on any accidental circumstance, just as at a fire men sometimes carry out and save the most useless parts of their belongings. of course, beside these two types, there is the third type, the desirable one, the men who in the unexpected situation quickly review the totality of the factors in their relative importance and with almost instinctive certainty immediately come to the same decision to which they would have arrived after quiet thought. the director of the company insisted that it would be of highest importance for the ship service to discriminate these three types of human beings, and to make sure that there stand on the bridge of the ship only men who do not belong to those two dangerous classes. he turned to me with this request, as he had heard of the work toward economic psychology in the harvard laboratory. as the problem interested me, i carried on a long series of experiments in order to construct artificial conditions under which the mental process of decision in a complicated situation, especially the rapidity, correctness, and constancy of the decision, could be made measurable. i started from the conviction that this complex act of decision must stand in definite relation to a number of simpler mental functions. if, for instance, it stood in a clear definite relation to the process of association, or discrimination, or suggestibility, or perception, or memory, and so on, it would be rather easy to foresee the behavior of the individual in the act of decision, as every one of those other simple mental functions could be tested by routine methods of the psychological laboratory. this consideration led me to propose ramified investigations concerning the psychology of decision in its relation to the elementary mental processes. these studies by students of the laboratory are not yet completed. but i soon saw that they would be unfit for the solution of my practical problem, as we recognized that these relations between the complex act of decision and the elementary functions of the individual seem to have different form with different types of men.[ ] if i was to approach the solution of the practical problem, accordingly, i had to reproduce in an experimental form the act of decision under complex conditions. it seemed necessary to create a situation in which a number of quantitatively measurable factors were combined without any one of them forcing itself to consciousness as the most important. the subject to be experimented on then has to decide as quickly as possible which of the factors is the relatively strongest one. as usual, here, too, i began with rather complicated material and only slowly did i simplify the apparatus until it finally took an entirely inconspicuous form. but this is surely the most desirable outcome for testing methods which are to be applied to large numbers of persons. complicated instruments, for the handling of which special training is needed, are never so useful for practical purposes as the simple schemes which can be easily applied. the form of which i finally made use is the following. i work with cards of the size of playing-cards. on the upper half of every one of these cards we have rows of capital letters, namely, a, e, o, and u in irregular repetition. on cards, one of these vowels appears times and each of the three others times; on cards, one appears times and every one of the three others times; on cards, one appears times and each of the others times; and finally, on cards one vowel appears times, each of the three others times, and besides them different consonants are mixed in. the person to be tested has to distribute these cards as quickly as possible in piles, in such a way that in the first pile are placed all cards in which the letter a is most frequent, in the second those in which the letter e predominates, and so on. as a matter of course the result must never be secured by counting the letters. any attempt to act against this prescription and secretly to begin counting would moreover delay the decision so long that the final result would be an unsatisfactory achievement anyhow. it would accordingly bring no advantage to the candidate. we measure with a stopwatch in fifths of a second the time for the whole process from the subject's looking at the first card to his laying down of the last card, and, secondly, we record the number and the character of his mistakes, if cards are put into wrong piles. i have made the experiment with very many persons, and results show that those various mental traits which have been observed in the practical ship service come clearly to light under the conditions of this experiment. some of the persons lose their heads entirely, and for many of them it is a painful activity for which they require a long time. even if the number of mistakes is not considerable, they themselves have the feeling that they are not coming to a satisfactory decision, because their attention is pulled hither and thither so that they feel an inner mental paralysis. some chance letters stand out and appear to them to be predominant, but in the next moment the attention is captured by some other letters which bring the suggestion that they are in the majority and that they present the most important factor. the outcome is that inner state of indecision which can become so fatal in practical life. other subjects distribute the cards in piles at a relatively high speed, and they do it with the subjective feeling that they have indeed recognized at the first glance the predominant group of letters. the exact measurement of the results, however, shows that they commit many errors which would have been improbable after quiet consideration. any small group of letters which catches their eye makes on them, under the pressure of their haste, such a strong impression that all the other letters are inhibited for the moment and the wrong decision is quickly made. finally, we find a group of persons who carry out the experiment rather quickly and at the same time with few mistakes. it is characteristic of them to pass through it with the feeling that it is an agreeable and stimulating mental activity. in all cases the subjects feel themselves under the unified impression which results from all those letters of the card together; and this is the reason why the qualitative manifoldness of a practical life situation can be compared with these intermingled, quantitatively determined groups of letters. if i consider the general results of these experiments only with reference to the time-measurement, i should say that a person who completes the distribution of the cards in less than seconds is quick in his decisions; from to , moderately quick; from to , slow and deliberate and rather too deliberate for situations which demand quick action; over seconds, he would belong among those wavering persons who hesitate too long in a life situation which demands decision. the time which is needed for the mere distribution of the cards themselves plays a very small rôle compared with the time of the whole process, and can be neglected. in order to determine this, i asked all the subjects before they made the real experiment to distribute other cards in piles, on each of which one of the four letters, a, e, o, and u was printed only once. hence no comparison of various factors was involved in this form of distribution. the average time for this ordinary sorting was about seconds. only rather quick individuals carried it out in less than and only very slow ones needed more than seconds. this maximum variation of seconds is evidently insignificant, as the variations in the experiment amount to more than seconds. but it is very characteristic that the results of the two experiments do not move parallel. some persons, who are able to sort the cards on which only one of the letters is printed very quickly, are rather slow when they sort the cards with the letters for which the essential factor is the act of comparison. in the first case the training in card-playing also seems to have a certain influence, but in the second case, our real experiment on decision, this influence does not seem to exist. we have emphasized from the start that it is no less important to give consideration to the number of mistakes. a mere rapidity of distribution with many mistakes characterizes, as we saw, a mental system which is just as unfit for practical purposes as one which acts with too great slowness. but it would not have been sufficient simply to ask how many cards were put into wrong piles. the special arrangement of the cards with four different types of combinations was introduced for the purpose of discriminating among mistakes of unequal seriousness. when one letter appeared times and the three others only times, it was surely much easier to make the decision than when the predominant letter appeared only times and the other three each times. the easier the right decision, the graver the mistake. of course the valuation of these mistakes must be rather arbitrary. we decided to value as every mistake in these cards on which the predominant letter appears times; as , a mistake in the letter cards; as , a mistake in the letter cards; and as , a mistake in the most difficult ones, the letter cards. if the mistakes are calculated on this basis and are added together, a sum below may indicate a very safe and perfectly reliable ability for decision; to , satisfactory; to , uncertain; and over , very poor. in order to take account of both factors, time and mistakes, we multiply the sum of the calculated mistakes by the number of seconds. if the product of these two figures is less than , it may be taken as a sign of perfect reliability in making very quick, correct decisions, in complex life situations; to indicates the limits between which the ability for such decisions may be considered as normal and very satisfactory; to , not good but still adequate; to , unreliable, and over , practically absent. it is clear that the real proof of the value of this method cannot be offered. this is just the reason why we selected this illustration as an example of the particular difficulty. wrong decisions, that is, cases in which the man on the bridge waits too long before he makes his decision and thus causes a collision of ships by his delay, or in which he rushes blindly to a decision which he himself would have condemned after quiet deliberation, are rare. it would be impossible to group such men together for the purpose of the experiment and to compare their results with those of model captains, the more as experience has shown that an officer may have a stainless record for many years and yet may finally make a wrong decision which shows his faulty disposition. the test of the method must therefore be a somewhat indirect one. my aim was to compare the results of the experiments with the experiences of the various individuals which they themselves reported concerning their decisions in unexpected complicated situations, and moreover with the judgments of their friends whom i asked to describe what they would expect from the subjects under such conditions. the personal differences in these respects are extremely great, and are also evident in the midst of small groups of persons who may have great similarity in their education and training and in many other aspects of their lives. among the most advanced students of my research laboratory, for instance, all of whom have rather similar schooling and practically the same training in experimental work, the product of mistakes and seconds varied between and , . that smallest value occurred in a case in which the time was seconds and the sum of the mistakes only , inasmuch as cards of the most difficult group where the predominating letter occurred only times were put in the wrong piles. the shortest time among my laboratory students was seconds, but with this individual the sum of the mistakes, calculated on the basis of the valuation agreed upon, was . the largest figure mentioned resulted in a case in which the student needed seconds and yet made mistakes the sum of which amounted to . it is characteristic that the person with the smallest product felt a distinct joy in the experiment, while the one with the largest passed through painful minutes which put him to real organic discomfort. if we arrange the men simply in the order of these products, of course we cannot recognize the various groups, as those who are quick but make mistakes and those who make few mistakes but act slowly may be represented by the same products. the coincidence of the results with the self-characterization is frequently quite surprising. every one has at some time come into unexpected, suddenly arising situations and many have received in such moments a very vivid impression of their own mental reaction. they know quite well that they could not come to a decision quickly enough, or that they rushed hastily to a wrong decision, or that in just such instants a feeling of repose and security came over them and that with sure instinct they turned in the direction which they would have chosen after mature thought. the results of the experiments in sorting the cards confirmed this self-observation in such frequent cases that it may indeed be hoped that a more extended test of this method will prove its practical usefulness. it is clear that the field is a wide one, as these different types of mental dispositions must be of consequence not only in the ship service, but also to a certain degree in the railroad service and in many other industrial tasks. we have emphasized from the start that as a matter of course such a tested function, while it is taken in its complex unity, is nevertheless not the only psychophysical disposition of significance. this is as true for the ship officer as it was for the motorman of the electric car. if we were to study all the mental dispositions necessary or desirable for the ship officer, we should find many other qualities which are accessible to the psychological investigation. the captain of the ship, for instance, is expected to recognize the direction of a vessel passing in the fog by the signals of the foghorn. but so far no one has given any attention to the psychological conditions of localization of sound, which were for a long while a much-studied problem of our psychological laboratories. we know how this localization is dependent upon the comparison of the two ears and what particular mistakes occur from the different sensibility of the two ears. yet there are to-day men on the bridges of the ships who hear much better with one ear than with the other, but who still naïvely believe that, as they hear everything very distinctly with one ear, this normal ear is also sufficient for recognizing the direction of the sound. it is the same mistake which we frequently see among laborers whose vision has become defective in one of their eyes, or one of whose eyes is temporarily bandaged. they are convinced that the one good eye is sufficient for their industrial task, because they are able to recognize everything clearly and distinctly. they do not know that both the eyes together are necessary in order to produce that psychological combination by which the visual impression is projected into the right distance, and that in the factory they are always in danger of underestimating the distance of a wheel or some other part of the machine and of letting the hand slip between the wheels or knives. the results of experimental psychology will have to be introduced systematically into the study of the fitness of the personality from the lowest to the highest technical activity and from the simplest sensory function to the most complex mental achievement. x experiments in the interest of telephone service our plan was to illustrate the possibility of applying psychological experiments to the selection of fit applicants also in cases in which not one characteristic mental function stands out, but in which a large number of relatively independent mental activities are in play. i choose as an illustration of such cases the work of the employees at the telephone switchboard. a study of the psychological factors in this work is strongly suggested by the practical interests of the telephone companies, and may be looked on here exclusively from this point of view. the user of the telephone is little inclined to consider how many actions have to be carried out in the central office before the connection is made and finally broken again. from the moment when the speaker takes off the receiver to the cutting off of the connection, fourteen separate psychophysical processes are necessary in the typical case, and even then it is presupposed that the telephone girl understood the exchange and number correctly. it is a common experience of the companies that these demands cannot be satisfactorily fulfilled when a telephone girl has to handle more than calls in an hour. the official statistics show that this figure is exceeded in not infrequent cases,[ ] in extreme cases the number may even rise beyond . moreover, in short periods of reinforced demands it may happen that for a few minutes even the rapidity of calls in a minute is reached. normally the burden is divided among the employees in such a way that about calls fall to each one in an hour, and that this figure is passed considerably only in one morning and one evening hour. a skillful distribution of pauses and ample arrangements for rest, usually together with very excellent hygienic conditions, make it possible for the fit persons to be able to carry on this work without over-fatigue from to hours a day. on the other hand, it is only natural that such rapid and yet subtle activity under such high tension, where especially the quick localization of the correct hole is a difficult and yet indispensable part, can be carried out only by a relatively small number of human nervous systems. the inability to keep attention at such a high point for a long while, or to perform such rapid movements, or to retain the numbers correctly, does not lead to fatal accidents like those in the case of the unfit motormen, but it does lead to fatigue and finally to a nervous breakdown of the employees and to confusion in the service. the result is that the company is continually obliged to dismiss a considerable proportion of those who have entered the service and who have spent some months in going through the training school of the company. as one single company, the bell telephone company, employs , operators, the problem is an expansive one, and it has bearing on the health of the employees as well as on the patience of the subscribers. but above all it refers to the economic interests of the company, inasmuch as every girl who satisfies the entrance conditions of hearing and sight, of school education and general personal appearance, receives some salary throughout the months of training in the telephone school. since during the first half-year, in which the employee still works entirely under supervision, more than a third of those who had originally entered leave, partly on account of unfitness, and inability, partly on account of over-fatigue or similar reasons, the economic disadvantage to the company is evidently a very great one. the candidates are paid for months of mere training, and they themselves waste their energy and time with practice in a kind of labor which cannot be serviceable to them in any other economic activity. under these circumstances it is not surprising that one city system approached me with the question whether it would not interest me from a scientific point of view to examine how far the mental fitness of the employees could be determined beforehand through experimental means. after carefully observing the service in the central office for a while, i came to the conviction that it would not be appropriate here to reproduce the activity at the switchboard in the experiment, but that it would be more desirable to resolve that whole function into its elements and to undertake the experimental test of a whole series of elementary mental dispositions. every one of these mental acts can then be examined according to well-known laboratory methods without giving to the experiments any direct relation to the characteristic telephone operation as such. i carried on the first series of experiments with about thirty young women who a short time before had entered into the telephone training school, where they are admitted only at the age between seventeen and twenty-three years. i examined them with reference to eight different psychophysical functions. in saying this, i abstract from all those measurements and tests which had somewhat anthropometric character, such as the measurement of the length of the fingers, the rapidity of breathing, the rapidity of pulse, the acuity of vision and of hearing, the distinctness of the pronunciation, and so on. a part of the psychological tests were carried on in individual examinations, but the greater part with the whole class together. these common tests referred to memory, attention, intelligence, exactitude, and rapidity. i may characterize the experiments in a few words. the memory examination consisted of reading to the whole class at first two numbers of digits, then two of digits, then two of digits, and so on up to figures of digits, and demanding that they be written down as soon as a signal was given. the experiments on attention, which in this case of the telephone operators seemed to me especially significant, made use of a method the principle of which has frequently been applied in the experimental psychology of individual differences and which i adjusted to our special needs. the requirement is to cross out a particular letter in a connected text. every one of the thirty women in the classroom received the same first page of a newspaper of that morning. i emphasize that it was a new paper, as the newness of the content was to secure the desired distraction of the attention. as soon as the signal was given, each one of the girls had to cross out with a pencil every "a" in the text for six minutes. after a certain time, a bell signal was given and each then had to begin a new column. in this way we could find out, first, how many letters were correctly crossed out in those six minutes, secondly, how many letters were overlooked, and, thirdly, how the recognition and the oversight were distributed in the various parts of the text. in every one of these three directions strong individual differences were indeed noticeable. some persons crossed out many, but also overlooked many, others overlooked hardly any of the "a's," but proceeded very slowly so that the total number of the crossed-out letters was small. moreover, it was found that some at first do poor work, but soon reach a point at which their attention remains on a high level; others begin with a relatively high achievement, but after a short time their attention flags, and the number of crossed-out letters becomes smaller or the number of unnoticed, overlooked letters increases. fluctuations of attention, deficiencies, and strong points can be discovered in much detail. the third test which was tried with the whole class referred to the intelligence of the individuals. discussion of the question how to test intelligence in general would quickly lead us into as yet unsettled controversies. it is a chapter of the psychology of tests which, especially in the service of pedagogy but to a certain degree also in the service of medicine, has been more carefully elaborated than any other. often it has been contested whether we have any right to speak of one general central intelligence factor, and whether this apparently unified activity ought not to be resolved into a series of mere elementary processes. the newer pedagogical investigations, however, speak in favor of the view that besides all special processes, or rather, above all of them, an ability must be recognized which cannot be divided any further, and by which the individual adjusts his knowledge, his experiences, and his dispositions to the changing purposes of life. the grading of the pupils in a class usually expresses this differentiation of the intelligence; and while the differences of industry or of mere memory and similar secondary features may sometimes interfere, it remains after all not difficult for an observant teacher to grade the pupils of his class, whom he knows well, according to their general intelligence. the psychological experiments carried on in the schoolroom have demonstrated that this ability can be tested by the measurement of some very simple mental activities. the best method would be the one which would allow the experimenter, on the basis of a single experiment, to grade the individuals in the same order in which they appear in the record of the teacher. among the various proposed schemes for this purpose the figures suggest that the most reliable one is the following method, the results of which show the highest agreement between the rank order based on the experiments and the rank order of the teachers.[ ] the experiment consists in reading to the pupils a long series of pairs of words of which the two members of the pair always logically belong together. later, one word of each pair will be read to them and they have to write down the word which belonged with it in the pair. this is not a simple experiment on memory. the tests have shown that if instead of logically connected words simply disconnected chance words are offered and reproduced, no one can keep such a long series of pairs in mind, while with the words which have related meaning, the most intelligent pupils can master the whole series. the very favorable results which this method had yielded in the classroom made me decide to try it in this case too. i chose for an experiment pairs of words from the sphere of experience of the girls to be tested. two further class experiments belonged rather to the periphery of psychology. the exactitude of space-perception was measured by demanding that each divide first the long and then the short edge of a folio sheet into two equal halves by a pencil mark. and finally, to measure the rapidity of movement, it was demanded that every one make with a pencil on the paper zigzag movements of a particular size during the ten seconds from one signal to another. after these class experiments i turned to individual tests. first, every girl had to sort a pack of cards into piles as quickly as possible. the time was measured in fifths of a second. the following experiment which referred to the accuracy of movement impulses demanded that every one try to reach with the point of a pencil different points on the table in the rhythm of metronome beats. on each of these three places a sheet of paper was fixed with a fine cross in the middle. the pencil should hit the crossing point, and the marks on the paper indicated how far the movement had fallen short of the goal. one of these movements demanded the full extension of the arm and the other two had to be made with half-bent arm. i introduced this last test because the hitting of the right holes in the switchboard of the telephone office is of great importance. the last individual experiment was an association test. i called six words like "book," "house," "rain," and had them speak the first word which came to their minds. the time was measured in fifths of a second only, as subtler experiments, for which hundredths of a second would have to be considered, were not needed. in studying the results so far as the memory experiments were concerned, we found that it would be useless to consider the figures with more than digits. we took the results only of those with , , and digits. there were possibilities of mistakes. the smallest number of actual mistakes was , the largest, . in the experiment on attention made with the crossing-out of letters, we found that the smallest number of correctly marked letters was , the largest number in the six minutes, ; the smallest number of overlooked letters was , the largest, ; but this last case of abnormal carelessness stood quite isolated. on the whole, the number of overlooked letters fluctuated between and . if both results, those of the crossed-out and those of the overlooked letters, are brought into relation, we find that the best results were a case of letters marked, with only overlooked, and one of marked, with overlooked. the very interesting details as to the various types of attention which we see in the distribution of mistakes over the six minutes were not taken into our final table. the word experiments by which we tested the intelligence showed that no one was able to reproduce more than of the words. the smallest number of words remembered was . the mistakes in the perception of distances fluctuated between and millimeters; the time for the sorting of the cards, between, and seconds; the association-time for the associated words taken together was between and seconds. the pointing experiments could not be made use of in this first series, as it was found that quite a number of participants were unable to perform the act with the rapidity demanded. several ways were open to make mathematical use of these results. i preferred the simplest way. i calculated the grade of the girls for each of these achievements. the same candidate who stood in the th place in the memory experiment was in the th place with reference to the number of letters marked, in the rd place with reference to the letters overlooked, in the st place with reference to the number of word pairs which she had grasped, in the th place with reference to the exactitude of space-perception, in the th place with reference to the association-time, and in the th place with reference to the time of sorting. as soon as we had all these independent grades, we calculated the average and in this way ultimately gained a common order of grading. it is evident that this kind of calculation contains accidental factors, especially as a consequence of the fact that we give equal value to every one of these results. it might be better, for instance, to attribute a higher value to the attention experiment or to the intelligence experiment. this could be done by multiplying the results of some of these grades by or by , which would bring the high or low grade of a girl for a particular function to stronger influence in the final result. but in this first trial i contented myself with the simplest uniform scheme in order to exclude all arbitrariness, and therefore considered the mere average of all the grades as the expression of the experimental result. with this average rank list, we compared the practical results of the telephone company after three months had passed. these three months had been sufficient to secure at least a certain discrimination between the best, the average, and the unfit. the result of this comparison was on the whole satisfactory. first, the skeptical telephone company had mixed with the class a number of women who had been in the service for a long while and had even been selected as teachers in the telephone school. i did not know, in figuring out the results, which of the participants in the experiments these particularly gifted outsiders were. if the psychological experiments had brought the result that these individuals who stood so high in the estimation of the telephone company ranked low in the laboratory experiment, it would have reflected strongly on the reliability of the laboratory method. the results showed, on the contrary, that these women who had proved most able in practical service stood at the top of our list. correspondingly, those who stood the lowest in our psychological rank list had in the mean time been found unfit in practical service and had either left the company of their own accord or else had been eliminated. the agreement, to be sure, was not a perfect one. one of the list of women stood rather low in the psychological list, while the office reported that so far she had done fair work in the service, and two others to whom the psychological laboratory gave a good testimonial were considered by the telephone office as only fair. but it is evident that certain disagreements would have occurred even with a more ideal method, as on the one side no final achievement in practical service can be given after only three months, and because on the other side a large number of secondary factors may enter which entirely overshadow the mere question of psychophysical fitness. poor health, for instance, may hinder even the most fit individual from doing satisfactory work, and extreme industry and energetic will may for a while lead even the unfit to fair achievement, which, to be sure, is likely to be coupled with a dangerous exhaustion. the slight disagreements between the psychological results and the practical valuation, therefore, do not in the least speak against the significance of such a method. on the other hand, i emphasize that this first series meant only the beginning of the investigation, and it can hardly be expected that at such a first approach the best and most suitable methods would at once be hit upon. a continuation of the work will surely lead to much better combinations of test experiments and to better adjusted schemes. but it would be most desirable that such studies be undertaken at various places according to various schemes in order to come nearer to the solution of a problem which is economically important to the whole public and to many thousands of employees. as soon as methods are really perfected it would seem not at all impossible that by a short experiment of a few minutes thousands of applicants might be saved long months of study and training which are completely wasted. for us here the detailed analysis of this particular case did not mean a suggestion to use to-day in the telephone offices of the country the special scheme which we applied, but it stood only as a clear, simple illustration of a method by which not the specific work itself is tested, but by which the industrial work of the individual is resolved into a long series of parallel functions each one of which is tested independently. the experimental aid which the laboratory has to supply in such cases is not a newly invented device, such as we needed in the case of the motormen, but simply the methods well known as so-called mental tests. the experiments with such tests by which single mental functions are measured approximately in short quick examinations, has been much discussed in psychological circles. for a long while the thorough scholars remained very reluctant to accept such an apparently superficial scheme, when these tests were proposed especially for the pedagogical interests of the schoolroom. it was a time in which the scientific efforts were completely devoted to the general problems of the human mind and in which individual differences were very little considered. moreover, the questions of applied psychology still seemed so far distant that the true scholar instinctively took his standards from the methods of purely theoretical research. seen from such a point of view, it could not be denied that the tests were not sufficient to give us a complete scientific analysis of the personality in its subtler structure. the theorists knew too well that if the reactions, or associations, or memories, or tendencies of attention, or emotions of a subject were measured really with that scientific thoroughness which is the ideal of research, long months of experiments would be needed, and little could be hoped for from tests to be performed in half an hour. but this somewhat haughty reserve which was quite justified twenty years ago has become obsolete and would be meaningless to-day. on the one side the methods themselves have been multiplied; for each mental act like memory, attention, and so on, dozens of well-studied tests are at our disposal, which are adjusted to the finest ramifications of the functions.[ ] on the other side the interest in individual differences and in applied psychology has steadily grown, and through it an understanding for the real meaning of the tests has been gained. their value, indeed, lies exclusively in their relation to the practical problems. where theoretical questions are to be answered and scientific studies concerning the laws and variations of the mind are to be undertaken, the long series of laboratory experiments carried on with patience and devotion are indispensable and can never be replaced by the short-cut methods of the tests. but where practical tasks of pedagogy or jurisprudence or medicine, or especially of commerce and industry, are before us, the method of tests ought to be sovereign. it can be adapted to the special situations and can succeed perfectly, if the task is to discover the outlines of the mental individuality for particular practical work. the only real difficulty of the method lies in the ease with which it can be used. a device which presupposes complicated instruments deters the layman and will be used only by those who are well trained. moreover, the amateur would not think of constructing and adapting such apparatus himself. but when nothing is necessary but to use words or numbers or syllables or pictures, or, as in those experiments which we just described, newspapers and so on, any one feels justified in applying the scheme or in replacing it by a new apparently better one according to his caprice. the manifoldness of the proposed tests for special functions, is therefore enormous to-day. what is needed now is surely much more that order be brought into this chaos of propositions, and that definite norms and standards be secured for certain chief examinations, than that the number of variations simply be increased. the chief danger, moreover, lies in the fact that those who are not accustomed to psychological laboratory research are easily misled. they fancy that such an experiment can be carried out in a mere mechanical way without careful study of all the conditions and accompanying circumstances. thereby a certain crudeness of procedure may enter which is not at all suggested by the test method itself. the psychological layman too seldom recognizes how many other psychical functions may play a rôle in the result of the experiment beside the one which is interesting him at that moment. the well-schooled laboratory worker almost automatically gives consideration to all such secondary circumstances. while his experiments may refer to the process of memory, he will yet at the same time carefully consider the particular situation as to the emotional setting of the subject, as to his attention, as to his preceding experience, as to his intelligence, as to his physiological condition, and many other factors which may have indirect influence even on the simplest memory test. hence the real performance of the experiments ought to be undertaken only by those who are thoroughly familiar and well trained in psychological research. and they alone, moreover, can decide what particular form such an experiment ought to take in a given practical situation. it must be left to them, for instance, to judge in which cases the mental function of economic importance ought to be tested after being resolved into its components and in which it ought to be examined in its characteristic unity. xi contributions from men of affairs while the psychologists have to perform the actual labor, the representatives of practical life are much better able to indicate the points at which the psychological levers ought to be applied. in the past year i have sought contact with several hundred large concerns in america which belong to many different industrial realms. my time did not allow me personal observation in so many cases, but everywhere i begged for information from the leading men. i asked in individual letters for the particular psychological qualities which from the standpoint of the management seemed essential for the various kinds of labor in their establishments. i always inquired to what extent consideration was given to such psychological points of view at the appointment of applicants, and asked for material concerning the question how far individuals who proved to be unfit for one kind of labor showed fitness at other kinds of work. the replies which i received from all sides varied from a few meaningless lines to long documents, which in some cases were composed of detailed reports from all the department chiefs of a particular concern. the common fundamental turn was decidedly a feeling of strong interest in the formulation of the question, which was practically new to all of them. whether the answer came from paper mills or machine shops, from meat-packing houses or from breweries, from electrical or chemical mills, from railroad or mining companies, from department stores or from publishing houses, everywhere it was acknowledged that they had given hardly any conscious attention to the real psychological dispositions of their employees. they had of course noticed whether their men were industrious or lazy, honest or dishonest, skillful or clumsy, peaceful or quarrelsome people, but i had emphasized from the start in all my letters that such points of view were not before my mind. the mental qualities for which i asked were the psychological functions of attention, memory, ideas, imagination, feeling, volition, suggestibility, ability to learn, ability to discriminate, judgment, space-sense, time-sense, and so on. it would lead too far here to discuss why these two groups of characteristics indeed belong to two different aspects of mental life, and why only the latter is strictly psychological. the way in which the management is accustomed to look on their men is the practical way of ordinary life, in which we try to understand our neighbor by entering into the meaning of his mental functions and by seeking to grasp what his aim is. but such an interpretation of the other man's mind is not a psychological analysis. it gives us the purposes of his inner life, but does not show us its structure and its component parts. we can abstract from interpreting and appreciating in order to describe the elements of the mind which in themselves have no meaning and no value, but which are the only important factors, if we are to determine psychologically what we may expect from the individual. while the replies to my letters showed that hardly any attention had so far been given to such problems of objective psychology in the industrial concerns, it became evident that the managers felt distinctly that here a problem was touched which must be of highest importance for economic success. from many different sides willingness was shown to study the problem of employment under the psychological aspect. as my material came mostly from very large establishments in which labor of very many different kinds is carried on side by side, of course i frequently received the assurance that whenever an industrious energetic man is unsuccessful in one kind of work, a trial is made with him in another department, and that by such shifting the right place can often be found for him. young people, to whom, in spite of long trial and the best will, it seems impossible to supply certain automatic machines, become excellent workers at much more difficult labor in the same establishment. women who are apparently careless and inattentive when they have to distribute their attention over a number of operations do high-class work when they are engaged in a single activity; and in other cases the opposite is reported. i may mention a few concrete chance illustrations. in a pencil factory the women in one department have to grasp with one movement a dozen pencils, no more and no less. some learn this at once without effort, and they earn high wages; others never can learn it in spite of repeated trials. if those who fail in this department are transferred, for instance, to the department where the gold-leaf is most carefully to be applied to the pencils before stamping, very often they show great fitness in spite of the extreme exactitude needed for this work. to show how often activities which appear extremely similar may demand different individuals, if the work is based on different psychical functions, i may refer to a report from one of the largest establishments in the country. in the accounting department a large number of girls are occupied with looking over hundreds of thousands of slips from which the weekly pay-list is compiled. each slip contains six figures and small groups of twenty slips have to be looked through to see whether those six figures on each correspond. with moistened forefinger they turn up the slips one by one in much the same manner that a bank clerk counts money. a good sorter will turn up the slips so rapidly that a bystander is unable to read a single figure, and yet she will not overlook an error in thousands of slips. after the slips are sorted, the operation of obtaining the totals on each order number is performed with the aid of an adding machine. the machine operator rolls up the slips of the pile with the thumb of her left hand and transfers the amount to the proper keys of the machine. it has been found that the most rapid and accurate girls at sorting are not seldom useless on the machines. they press the wrong, keys and make errors in copying the total from the machine indicators to the file-card. on the other hand, some of the best machine operators are very slow and inaccurate at the sorting table. girls have been found very poor at the work at which they were first set, and very successful and efficient as soon as they had been transferred from the one to the other. examples of this kind might be heaped up without end. but while the very large establishments demonstrate by such reports only that they can find somewhere a fit place for every able workingman if they take enough trouble to seek for it, after all the essential element of the reports remains, that successful achievement depends upon personal mental traits which cannot be acquired by mere good will and training. in view of this fact it is much more important that by far the majority of establishments have not such a great manifoldness of activities under one roof. the workingman who is a failure in the work which he undertook would usually have no opportunity to show his strong sides in the same factory, or at least to be protected against the consequences of his weak points. if his achievement is deficient in quality or quantity, he generally loses his place and makes a new trial in another factory under the same accidental conditions, without any deeper insight into his particular psychical traits and their relation to special industrial activities. but even in the large concerns, in which many kinds of labor are needed side by side, it is not the rule but a rare exception when the individual is systematically shifted to the psychologically correct place. a whole combination of conditions is necessary for that. if his mental unfitness makes him unsuccessful in one place, the position for which he is fit must happen to be vacant. moreover, he himself must like that other kind of work, and above all the foreman must recognize his particular fitness. in a few model factories in which the apprentice system is developed in the spirit of advanced sociological ideas, for instance, in the lynn factory of the general electric company, such systematic efforts are being carried on and show fair results. but the regulation plan seems to be a haphazard lack of plan, and even the best endeavors probably fall short of what may be attained by the introduction of scientific psychological methods. so far in most factories the laborer who is not doing well simply loses his position, and by such an unfortunate experience he is not mentally enriched but impoverished, as he has lost much of his self-confidence and of his joy in labor. if this limitless waste of human material, this pitiable crushing of joy in the day's work, and this crippling of the economic output is at last to be reduced, indeed nothing is more needed than a careful scrutiny of the various psychophysical functions involved in the work. a mere classification of the industrial occupations according to the classes of manufactured objects would be of no value for this need, as often a small industrial concern may embrace occupations which, are based on many different psychophysical functions. a harvester consists of two hundred and fifty different parts, and almost every one of these parts demands a long series of manufacturing, processes. thousands of different kinds of labor are thus combined in one factory and each process demands for the best work particular psychophysical traits, even though many of them can be carried out by quite unskilled laborers. in a large manufacturing establishment the manager assured me only recently that more than half a million different acts have to be performed in order to complete the goods of that factory. on the other hand, it evidently is proper to form larger groups in which processes are brought together which are similar with reference to the mental activity needed, while they may be dissimilar from the standpoint of industrial technique. this analysis of the special processes can be furthered best by the coöperation of the experienced men of industry. many of the replies which i received contained quite elaborated contributions to such a study of various industrial processes from a psychological point of view. they sometimes covered the ground from the simplest activity to the subtlest and most difficult economic tasks, and this, not only with reference to the functions of the laborer, but also even with reference to the function of the industrial manager. the outsider can see these psychological requirements of the particular occupation only in crude outlines. the subtler nuances of differences between tasks can be gained only by an intimate knowledge of the industry. again i may give an illustration. in the case of a well-known typesetting machine, thousand of which are in daily use, i had the impression that the rapidity of the performance was dependent upon the quickness of the finger reaction. the managers, on the other hand, have found that the most essential condition for speed in the whole work is the ability to retain a large number of words in memory before they are set. the man who presses the keys rather slowly advances more rapidly than another who moves his fingers quickly, but must make many pauses in order to find his place in the manuscript and to provide himself with new words. the factors which are to be brought into correlation are, accordingly, first, the actual experiences of the managers, secondly, the observations of skilled psychologists in the industrial concerns, thirdly, psychological and experimental investigations with successful and unsuccessful laborers, and, fourthly, experimental studies of the normal variability. if such a programme is to be realized in detail, it will be necessary to discriminate carefully, between those mental traits of the personality which must be accredited to a lasting inherited disposition and such as have been developed under the influences of the surroundings, by education and training, by bad or good stimuli from the community. while those acquired traits may have become relatively lasting dispositions, their transformation is, after all, possible, and the limits in which changes may be expected will have to be found out by exact studies. individual psychological rhythm, attention and emotion, memory and will energy, disposition to fatigue and to restoration, imagination, suggestibility and initiative, and many other features will have to be examined in their relation to the special economic aims. too much emphasis cannot be laid on another function as well, the experimental testing of which has only recently been started. i refer to the difference in the individual ability of men to profit from training. if we test an individual at a certain point in his life with regard to a variable ability, our result must be dependent upon three factors, the original disposition for the performance, the original disposition for the advance by training, and the training itself actually passed through up to that moment. a small amount of antecedent training for the particular task together with a high ability to profit from repetition may be a better reason for the appointment of a man than a long training with small ability to profit from schooling, in spite of the fact that his actual achievement at this time may be in the first case smaller than in the second. he will do less at first, but he promises to outrank the other man after a period of further training. special experiments must be carried on and have been actually started to determine this plasticity of the psychophysical apparatus as an independent inborn trait of the individual.[ ] this invasion of psychology into the field of economic activities is still so little advanced that the thought of a real distribution of the wage-earners among the various commercial and industrial positions on the basis of psychological tests would lead far beyond the present possibilities. moreover, many factors would interfere with its being carried out consistently, even if a much higher stage of experimental research were reached. the thousands of social and local reasons which influence the choice of a vocation to-day would to a certain degree remain in force also in a period of better psychological analysis. moreover, the personal inclinations and interests naturally would and ought to remain the mainspring of economic action. this inclination, which gives so much of the joy in labor, is by no means necessarily coincident with those psychophysical dispositions which insure the most successful work. political economists have found this out repeatedly from their statistical inquiries. very careful studies of the textile industry in germany carried out in recent years[ ] yielded the result that the intelligent, highly trained textile laborer often dislikes his work the more, the more he shows ability for it, this ability being measured by the wages the individuals earn at piecework. the wage and the emotional attitude were not seldom inversely related. those who were able to produce by far more than others and accordingly earned the most were sometimes the very ones who hated the work, while the less skillful workers earned less but enjoyed the work more. the consulting economic psychologist will, therefore at first reasonably confine himself to warning the misfits at an early time. even within these limits his service can be useful to both parties, the employers and the employees. he will only slowly reach the stage at which this negative warning may be supplemented by positive suggestions, as to the commercial industrial activities for which the psychophysical dispositions promise particular success. a real assumption of responsibility for success of course cannot be risked by the psychologist, inasmuch as the man who may be fitted for a task by his mental working dispositions may nevertheless destroy his chances for success by secondary personal traits. he may be dishonest, or dissipated, or a drinker, or a fighter, or physically ill. finally, we ought not to forget that all such efforts to adjust to one another the psychological traits and the requirements of the work can never have reference to the extreme variations of human traits. the exceptionally talented man knows anyhow where he belongs, and the exceptionally untalented one will be excluded anyhow. the psychological aid in the selection of the fit refers only to the remaining four fifths of mankind for whom the chances of success can indeed be increased as soon as the psychological personal equation is systematically and with scientific exactitude brought into the calculation of the life development. how far a part of this effort will have to be undertaken by the school is a social problem which must be considered from various points of view. its discussion would lead us beyond the limits of our present inquiry, but it seems probable that the real psychological laboratory experiment in the service of vocational guidance does not belong in the schoolroom itself, but ought to be left to special municipal institutions. xii individuals and groups one point here must not be overlooked. the effort to discover the personal structure of the individual in the interest of his vocational chance does not always necessarily involve a direct analysis of his individuality, as material of some value can be gained indirectly. such indirect knowledge of a man's mental traits may be secured first of all through referring the man to the groups to which he belongs and inquiring into the characteristic traits of those groups. the psychology of human variations gives not only an account of the differences from person to person, but studies no less the psychical inequalities of the races, of the nations, of the ages, of the professions, and so on. if an economic activity demands a combination of mental traits, we may take it for granted that an individual will be fit for the work as soon as we find out that he belongs to a group in which these required mental traits habitually occur. such a judgment based on group psychology can of course be no more than a mere approach to a solution of the problem, as the psychical qualities may vary strongly in the midst of the group. the special individual may happen to stand at the extreme limit of the group, and the traits which are usually characteristic of it may be very little developed or entirely lacking in his special case. we may know that the inhabitants of a special country are rather alert, and yet the particular individual with whom we have to deal may be clumsy and phlegmatic. the interests of economy will, therefore, be served by such considerations of group psychology only if the employment, not of a single person, but of a large number, is in question, as it is most probable that the average character will show itself in a sufficient degree as soon as many members of the group are involved. even in this case the presupposition ought to be that the average characteristics found out with scientific exactitude by statistical and experimental methods, and not that they are simply deduced from superficial impressions. i have found that just this race psychological diagnosis is frequently made in factories with great superficiality. some of the american industrial centres offer extremely favorable conditions for the comparative study of nationality. i have visited many manufacturing establishments in which almost all workers are immigrants from foreign countries and in which up to twenty different nationalities are represented. the employment officers there easily develop some psychological theories on the basis of which they are convinced that they are selecting the men with especial skill, knowing for each in which department he will be most successful. they consider it settled that for a particular kind of activity the italians are the best, and for another, the irish, and for a third, the hungarians, and for a fourth, the russian jews. but as soon as these factory secrets have been revealed, you may be surprised to find that in the next factory a decidedly different classification of the wage-earners is in force. in a gigantic manufacturing concern, i received the definite information that the swedish laborers are preferable wherever a steady eye is needed, and in another large factory on the same street i was assured that just the swedes are unfit for such work. sometimes this diversity of opinion is the result of different points of view. in one factory in which a certain industrial operation is rather dangerous, they told me that they took no southern europeans, especially no italians and greeks, because they are too hasty and careless in their movements, while they gladly filled the places with irishmen. in a quite similar factory, on the other hand, they had a prejudice against the irishmen alone for this work, because the irish laborers are too willing to run a risk and to expose themselves to danger. probably both psychological observations are on the whole correct, but in the first factory only the one and in the second factory only the other was recognized. much more thorough statistical inquiries than those which as yet exist, especially as to the actual differences of wages and piecework for wage-earners of various nationalities, would have to furnish a basis for such race psychological statements, until the time arrives when the psychological experiment comes to its own. in a similar way so far we have to rely on general theories of group psychology when the psychological differences of the sexes are to be reckoned with in economic interests. so long as laboratory methods for individual tests are not usual, the mental analysis of the general groups of men and women must form the background for industrial decisions. to be sure, it is not difficult to emphasize certain mental traits as characteristic of women in general in contrast to men in general, and to relate them to certain fundamental tendencies of their psychophysical organism. as soon as this is done, it is easy theoretically to deduce that certain industrial functions are excellently adapted to the minds of women and that certain others stand in striking antagonism to them. if the employment of large numbers is in question, and average values alone are involved, such a decision on the basis of group psychology may be adequate. in most factories this vague sex psychology, to be sure, usually with a strong admixture of wage questions, suggests for which machines men and for which women ought to be employed. but here again it is not at all improbable that in the case of a particular woman the traditional group value may be entirely misleading and the personality accordingly unfit for the place. only the subtle psychological individual analysis can overcome the superficial prejudices of group psychology. the situation lies differently when problems of economic policy are before us. such general policies as, for instance, colonial politics, or immigration politics, or politics concerned with city and rural communities, or with coast and mountain population, will always have to be based on group psychology as far as the economic problems are involved, inasmuch as they refer to the average and not to the individual, differences. finally, another indirect scheme to determine the personal qualities needed for economic efficiency may be suggested by the psychology of the typical correlations of human traits. we have seen that group psychology proclaims that a certain individual probably has certain traits because he belongs to this or that nation or to this or that otherwise well-known group. correlation psychology proclaims that a particular individual possesses or does not possess certain traits because he shows or does not show some other definite qualities. a correlation, for instance, which the commercial world often presupposes, may exist between individual traits and the handwriting. graphologists are convinced that a certain loop or flourish, or the steepness or the length of the letters, or the position of the _i_ dot, is a definite indication that the writer possesses certain qualities of personality; and if just these qualities are essential requirements for the position, the impression of the handwriting in a letter may be taken as a sufficient basis for appointment. the scientist has reason to look upon this particular case of graphological correlation with distrust. yet even he may acknowledge that certain correlations exist between the neatness, carefulness, uniformity energy, and similar features of the letter, and the general carefulness, steadiness, neatness, and energy of the personality. however, the laboratory psychologists nowadays have gone far beyond such superficial claims for correlations of symptoms. with experimental and statistical methods they have gathered ample material which demonstrates the exact degree of probability with which we have a right to expect that certain qualities will occur together. theoretically we may take it for granted that those traits which are always present together or absent together ultimately have a common mental root. yet practically they appear as two independent traits, and therefore it remains important to know that, if we can find one of them, we may be sure that the other will exist there too. inasmuch as the one of the two traits may be easily detected, while the other may be hidden and can be found out only by long careful tests, it would be valuable, indeed, for the employment manager to become acquainted with such correlations as the psychologist may discover: as soon as he becomes aware of the superficially noticeable symptom, he can foresee that the other disposition is most probably present. to give an illustration: in the interest of such measurements of correlations we have studied in the harvard laboratory the various characteristics of attention and their mutual dependence.[ ] we found that typical connections exist between apparently independent features of attention. persons who have a rather expansive span of attention for acoustical impressions have also a wide span for the visual objects. persons whose attention is vivid and quick have on the whole the expansive type of attention, while those who attend slowly have a narrow field of attention, and so on. hence the manifestation of one feature of attention allows us to presuppose without further tests that certain other features may be expected in the particular individual. the problem of attention, indeed, seems to stand quite in the centre of the field of industrial efficiency. this conviction has grown upon me in my observation of industrial life. the peculiar kind of attention decides more than any mental trait for which economic activity the individual is adapted. the essential point is that such differences of attention cannot be characterized as good or bad; it is not a question of the attentive and of the inattentive mind. one type is not better than another, but is simply different. two workingmen, not only equally industrious and capable, but also equally attentive, may yet occupy two positions in which they are both complete failures because their attention does not fit the places, and both may become highly efficient as soon as they exchange positions. their particular types of attention have now found the right places. the one may be disposed to a strong concentration by which everything is inhibited which lies on the mental periphery, the other may have the talent for distributing his attention over a large field, while he is unable to hold it for a long while at one point. if the one industrial activity demands the attentive observation of one little lever or one wheel at one point, while the other demands that half a dozen large machines be simultaneously supervised, all that is necessary is to find the man with the right type of attention for each place. it would be utterly arbitrary to claim that the expansive type of attention is economically more or less valuable than the concentrated type. both in english and in german we have a long popular series of pamphlets with descriptions of the requirements and conditions for the various occupations to which a boy or a girl may turn, but i have nowhere found any reference to the most essential mental functions such as the particular kind of attention or memory or will. these pamphlets are always cut after the same pattern. where the detail refers at all to the mental side, it points only to particular knowledge which may be learned in school or trade or work, or to abilities which may be developed by training. but the individual differences which are set by the particular conditions and dispositions of the mind are neglected with surprising uniformity in the vocational literature of all countries. the time seems ripe for at last filling this blank in the consciousness of the nation and in the institutions of the land. part ii the best possible work xiii learning and training we have placed our psychotechnical interest at the service of economic tasks. we therefore had to start from the various economic purposes and had to look backward, asking what ways might lead to these goals. all our studies so far were in this sense subordinated to the one task which ought to be the primary one in the economic world, and yet which has been most ignored. the purpose before us was to find for every economic occupation the best-fitted personality, both in the interest of economic success and in the interest of personal development. individual traits under this point of view become for us the decisive psychological factors, and experimental psychology had to show us a method to determine those personal differences and their relation to the demands for industrial efficiency. this first goal may be reached with all the means of science, as we hope it will be in the future, or everything may be left to unscientific, haphazard methods as in the past: in any case a second task stands before the community, namely, the securing of the best possible work from every man in his place. indeed, the nation cannot delay the solution of this second problem until the first has been solved in a satisfactory way. we might even say that the answer to the second question is the more important, the less satisfactory the answer to the first is. if every place in the economic world were filled only by those who are perfectly adapted by their mental traits, it would be much less difficult to get efficient work from everyone. the fact that so many misfits are at work makes it such an urgent necessity to find ways and means by which the efficiency can be heightened. it must be acknowledged, however, that the problem of the best work is not quite such a clear one as that of the best man. from various standpoints a different answer may be given to the question which kind of work is the best. a capitalistic, profit-seeking egotism may consider the quickest performance, or, if differences of quality are involved, the most skillful performance, the only desirable end. the social reformers, on the other hand, may consider the best work that which combines the greatest and best possible output with the highest possible saving of the organism and the fullest development of the personality. we have emphasized from the start that the practical psychologist as such has not the right to give a decision upon problems of social civilization. he has to accept the economic tasks from the community for which he is working and his impartial service commences only when the goals have been determined. it is not his share to select the ends, but simply to determine the means after the valuable ends have been chosen. as a psychological scientist he has not the right to enter into the arena of different social party fights. yet we find after all a broad region which seems rather untouched by any conflict of reasonable opinions. a reckless capitalism on the one side and a feeble sentimentality on the other side may try to widen or to narrow the boundaries of this region, but taken all together, a vigorous healthy nation which is eagerly devoted to its work is on the whole in agreement as to the essential economic demands for efficient labor. experience, to be sure, shows that great changes in the conditions of work can never enter into the history of civilization without certain disturbances, and that opposition must therefore necessarily arise in certain groups even against such changes as are undoubtedly improvements and advances from the point of view of the whole nation. such dissatisfaction arose when the factory system was introduced, and it is only natural that some irritation should accompany the introduction of psychological improvements in the methods of work, inasmuch as not a few wage-earners may at first have to lose their places because a small number of men will under the improved conditions be sufficient for the performance of tasks which needed many before. but the history of economics has clearly shown that from the point of view of the whole community such an apparent disturbance has always been only temporary. if the psychologists succeed in fundamentally improving the conditions of labor, the increased efficiency of the individual will promote such an enriched and vivified economic life that ultimately an increase in the number of laborers needed will result. the inquiry into the possible psychological contributions to the question of reinforced achievement must not be deterred by the superficial objection that in one or another industrial concern a dismissal of wage-earners might at first result. psychotechnics does not stand in the service of a party, but exclusively in the service of civilization. to begin at the beginning, we may start from the commonplace that every form of economic labor in the workshop and in the factory, in the field and in the mine, in the store and in the office, must first be learned. how far do the experiments of the psychologist offer suggestions for securing the most economic method of learning practical activities? bodily actions in the service of economic work are taught and learned in hundreds of thousands of places. it is evident that one method of teaching must reach the goal more quickly and more reliably than another. some methods of teaching must therefore be economically more advantageous, and yet on the whole the methods of teaching muscular work are essentially left to chance. it is indeed not difficult to observe how factory workers or artisans have learned the same complex motion according to entirely different methods. the result is that they carry out the various partial movements in a different order, or with different auxiliary motions, or in different positions, or in a different rhythm, or with different emphasis, simply because they imitate different teachers, and because no norm, no certainty as to the best methods for the teaching, has been determined. but the process of learning is still more fluctuating and still more dependent upon chance than the process of teaching. the apprentice approaches the instruction, in any chance way, and the beginner usually learns even the first steps with a psychophysical attitude which is left to accident. an immense waste of energy and a quite anti-economic training in unfit movements is the necessary result. the learning of the elements of school knowledge in the classroom in earlier times proceeded after exactly such chance methods. any one who knew how to read, write, and calculate felt himself prepared to pour reading, writing, and arithmetic into the unprotected children. methods which are based on scientific examination of the psychophysical process of reading and writing were not at the disposal of the schools, and exact results from comparative studies of pedagogical methods had not been secured. the last few decades have created an entirely new foundation for enlightened school work. the experimental investigations of pedagogical psychology have determined exactly how the consciousness of the child reacts on the various methods of teaching and have built up a real systematic economic learning. all which was left to dilettantic caprice has been transformed into more or less definite standard forms. for instance, the old scheme of teaching reading by the alphabet method is practically eliminated from our modern schools. it is clear that this learning of the names of the single letters as a starting-point for the reading of words was not only a wasting of time and energy, but an actual disturbance in the development of the reading process in the older generation. as those names of the letters do not occur at all in the words to be read, but only their sounds, what had been learned in seeing the single letters had to be inhibited in pronouncing the whole word. it seems not too much to say that the learning of industrial activities on the whole still stands on the level of such alphabet methods, and this cannot be otherwise, as the real problem, namely, the systematic investigation of the psychophysical activities involved, has never been brought into the psychological laboratory. the pedagogical experiment has shown clearly enough that the subjective feeling of easier or quicker learning may be entirely unreliable and misleading. if the task is to learn a page by heart, we may proceed after many different methods. we may learn very small fractions of the text, repeating only a few words, or we may read whole paragraphs every time; we may repeat the whole material again and again, or we may put in long periods of rest after a few repetitions; we may frequently recite it from memory and have some one to prompt us; we may give our attention especially to the meaning of the words, or merely to the sounds, or we may introduce any number of similar variations. now the careful experiment shows that of two such methods one which appears to us the better and more appropriate in learning, perhaps even as the easier and more comfortable, may prove itself the less efficient one in the practical result. the psychology of learning, which won its success by introducing meaningless syllables as experimental material, has slowly determined the most reliable methods for impressing knowledge on memory. where such results have once been secured, it would surely be a grave mistake simply to stick to the methods of so-called common sense and to leave it to the caprice of the individual teacher to decide what method of learning he will suggest to his pupils. the best method is always the only one which should be considered. the psychology of economic work must aim toward similar goals. we must secure a definite knowledge as to the methods by which a group of movements can best be learned. we must understand what value is to be attached to the repetitions and to the pauses, to the imitations and to the special combinations of movements, to the exercise in parts of the movements, to the rhythm of the work, and to many similar influences which may shape the learning process. the simplest aspect, that of the mere repetition of the movement, has frequently been examined by psychophysicists. the real founder of experimental psychology, fechner, showed the way; he performed fatiguing experiments with lifted dumb-bells. then came the time in which the laboratories began to make a record of the muscular activities with the help of the ergograph, an instrument with which the movements of the arm and the fingers can easily be registered on the smoked surface of a revolving drum. the subtlest variations of the activity, the increase and decrease of the psychomotor impulse, the mental fatigue, can be traced exactly in such graphic records. this psychomotor side of the process, and not the mere muscle activity as such, is indeed the essential factor which should interest us. the results of exercise are a training of the central apparatus of the brain and not of the muscular periphery. the further development of those experiments soon led to complex questions, which referred not only to the mere change in the motor efficiency, but to the learning of particular groups of movements and to the influences on the exactitude and reliability of the movements. the purely mental factors of the will-impulse, especially the consciousness of the task, came into the foreground. these experiences of the scientists concerning the influences of training, the mechanization of repetition, and the automatization of movements have been thoroughly discussed by a brilliant political economist[ ] as an explanation of certain industrial facts, but they have not yet practically influenced life in the factory. the nearest approach from the experimental side to the study of the effect of training in actual industrial tasks may be found in certain laboratory investigations which refer to the learning of telegraphing, typewriting, and so on. for instance, we have a careful study[ ] of the progress made in learning telegraphy, both as to the transmitting of the telegrams by the key movement and the receiving of the telegrams by the ear. it was found that the rapidity of transmitting increases more rapidly and more uniformly than the rapidity of receiving. but while the curve of the latter rises more slowly and more irregularly, it finally reaches the greater height. the ability in transmitting, represented by a graphic record, shows an ascent which corresponds to the typical, steady curve of training. in the receiving curve, on the other hand, we find not far from the beginning a characteristic period during which no progress whatever can be noticed, and this is also repeated at a later stage. the psychological analysis shows that the increase of ability in the receiving of telegrams depends upon the development of a complex system of psychophysical habits. the periods in which the curve does not ascend represent stages of training in which the elementary habits are almost completely formed, but have not become sufficiently automatic. the attention is therefore not yet ready to start habits of a higher order. the lowest correlation refers to the single letters, after that to the syllables and words. as soon as the apprentice has reached this point, he stops, because he must learn to master more and more new words until his telegraphic vocabulary is large enough to make it possible for him to turn his consciousness to whole groups of words at once. only when this new habit has been made automatic by a training of several months can he advance to a level at which whole groups of words are perceived as telegraphic units. a time follows in which this mastery of whole phrases advances rapidly, until a new period of rest comes, from which, only after years and often quite suddenly, a last new ascent can be noticed. instead of concentrating the attention with conscious strain on single phrases, the operator progresses to a perfect liberty in which whole sentences are understood automatically. we also have a model experimental research into the psychological conditions of learning in the case of writing on a typewriter.[ ] by electrical connections between the typewriting machine and a system of levers which registered their movements on the rotating drum of a kymograph, graph, each striking of a key, each completion of a word, or of a line, could be recorded in exact time-relations. each glance at the copy was also registered. it was found that the process of learning consisted first of a continuous simplification of the cumbersome methods with which the beginner commences. a steady elimination of unfit movements, a selection, a reorganization, and finally, a combination of psychophysical acts to impulses of higher order, could be traced exactly. here, too, the curve of learning at first rises quickly and then more and more slowly. of course the usual fluctuations in the growth of the ability can also be found, and above all the irregular periods of rest in which the learning itself does not progress, for some of these so-called plateaus which lie between the end of one ascent and the beginning of the next may cover a month and more. at the beginning we have the elementary association between the single letter and the position of the corresponding key, but soon an immediate connection between the visual impression of the whole syllable or the whole word and the total group of movements necessary to strike the keys for it is developed. the more the ability grows, the more these psychical impulses of higher order become organized without conscious intention. the study shows that this development of higher habits has already begun before the lower habits are fully settled. how far the special training involves at the same time a general training which could be of advantage for other kinds of labor has not yet been studied at all with reference to industrial technique. there we are still completely dependent upon certain experiences in the field of experimental pedagogy, and upon certain statistics, for instance, in the textile industry. many patient investigations, with every independent group of apparatus and machines, may be necessary before psychotechnics will be able to supply industry with reliable advice for teaching and learning. nor have we the least right hastily to carry over the results from one group of movements to another. even where superficially a certain similarity between the technical factors exists, the psychophysical conditions may be essentially different. in the two cases mentioned, for instance, telegraphing and typewriting, the chief factor seems the same, as in both cases the aim is to make the quickest possible finger movements for purposes of signals; and yet it is not surprising that the development of the ability from the beginnings to the highest mastery is rather unlike, as all the movements in telegraphing are performed with the same finger, while in typewriting the chief trait is the organization of groups from the impulses to all ten fingers. at least it is certain that learning always means far more than a mere facilitation of the movement by mechanical repetition, and this is true of the simplest handling of the tools in the workshop, of the movements at the machine in the factory, and of the most complex performances at the subtlest instruments. the chief factor in the development is always the organization of the impulses by which the reactions which are at first complicated become simplified, later mechanized, and finally synthesized into a higher group which becomes subordinated to one simple psychical impulse. the most reliable and psychophysically most economic means for this organization will have to be studied in the economic psychological laboratories of the future for every particular technique. then only can the enormous waste of psychical energy resulting from haphazard methods be brought to an end. a problem which is still too little considered in industrial life is the mutual interference of acquired technical activities. if one connected series of movements is well trained by practice, does it become less firmly fixed, if another series is studied in which the same beginning is connected with another path of discharge? i approached this psychophysical question of learning by experiments which i carried on for a long while with variations of ordinary habits of daily life, asking whether a habit associated with a certain sensory stimulus can function automatically while dispositions for a different habit, previously acquired, remain in the psychophysical system. for instance, i was accustomed to carry my watch in my left-hand vest pocket. for a week i carried it in the right-hand pocket of my trousers and recorded every case in which i first automatically made the movement to the vest. after some time the movement to the right-hand pocket became entirely automatic. when it was sufficiently fixed, i again put the watch in the left-hand vest pocket and recorded how often i unconsciously grasped at the right side when i wanted to see what time it was. as soon as the vest pocket movement had again become fixed, i went back to the right-hand trousers pocket. and so i alternated for a long while, always changing only after reaching complete automatism. but the results in this case and in other similar experiments which i carried on showed that the new automatic connection did not extinguish the after effects of the previous habit. with every new change the number of wrong movements became smaller and smaller, and finally a point was reached at which the dispositions for both movements were equally developed so that no wrong movements occurred when the watch was put into the new position.[ ] this problem has been followed up very recently in a valuable investigation at columbia university,[ ] in which various habits of typewriting and of card-sorting were acquired and studied in their mutual interference. these very careful experiments also show that when two opposing associations are alternately practiced, they have an interference effect on each other, but that the interference grows less and less as the practice effect becomes greater. the interference effect is gradually overcome and both opposing associations become automatic, so that either of them can be called up independently without the appearance of the other. many details of the research suggest that this whole group of interference problems deserves the most careful attention by those who would practically profit from increased industrial efficiency. finally, in the experimental study of the problem of technical learning, we cannot ignore the many side influences which may hasten or delay, improve or disturb, the acquisition of industrial skill. in the harvard laboratory, for instance, we are at present engaged in an investigation which deals with the influence of feelings on the rapidity with which new movement coördinations are mastered.[ ] in order to have unlimited comparable material a very simple technical performance is required, namely, the distribution of the playing-cards into boxes. labels on the boxes indicate changing combinations for the distribution to be learned. we examine, on the one side, the influence of feelings of comfort or of discomfort on the learning of the new habit, these feeling states being produced by external conditions, such as pleasant or unpleasant sounds, odors, and so on. on the other side we trace the effects of those feelings which arise during the learning process itself, such as feelings of satisfaction with progress, or disappointment, or discomfort, or disgust or joy in the activity. xiv the adjustment of technical to psychical conditions teaching and learning represent only the preliminary problem. the fundamental question remains, after all, how the work is to be done by those who have learned it in accordance with the customs of the economic surroundings and who are accordingly already educated and trained for it. what can be done to eliminate everything which diminishes and decreases efficiency, and what remains to be done to reinforce it. such influences are evidently exerted by the external technical conditions, by variations of the activity itself, and by the play of the psychical motives and counter-motives. it must seem as if only this last factor would belong in the realm of psychology, but the technical conditions, of which the machine itself is the most important part, and the bodily movements also have manifold relations to the psychical life. only as far as these relations prevail has the psychologist any reason to study the problem. the purely physical and economic factors of technique do not interest him at all, but when a technical arrangement makes a psychophysical achievement more difficult or more easy, it belongs in the sphere of the psychologist, and just this aspect of the work may become of greatest importance for the total result. in all three of these directions, that is, with reference to the technical, to the physiological, and to the purely psychical, the scientific management movement has prepared the way. the engineers of scientific management recognized, at least, that no part of the industrial process is indifferent, even the apparently most trivial activity, the slightest movement of arm or hand or leg, became the object of their exact measurement. the stopwatch which measures every movement in fractions of a second has become the symbol of this new economic period. as long as special psychological experiments in the service of industrial psychology are still so exceptional, it may, indeed, be acknowledged that the practical experiments in the service of scientific management have come nearest to the solution of these special psychotechnical problems. to proceed from without toward the centre, we may begin our review with the physical technique of the working conditions and its relations to the mind. tue history of technique shows on every page this practical adjustment of external labor conditions to the psychophysical necessities and psychophysical demands. no machine with which a human being is to work can survive in the struggle for technical existence, unless it is to a certain degree adapted to the human nerve and muscle system and to man's possibilities of perception, of attention, of memory, of feeling, and of will. industrial technique with its restless improvements has always been subordinated to this postulate. every change which made it possible for the workingman to secure equal effects with smaller effort or to secure greater or better effects with equal effort counted as an economic gain, which was welcome to the market. for instance, throughout the history of industry we find the fundamental tendency to transpose all activities from the great muscles to the small muscles. any activity which is performed with the robust muscles of the shoulder when it can be done with the lower arm, or labor which is demanded from the muscles of the lower arm when it can just as well be carried out by the fingers, certainly involves a waste of psychophysical energy. a stronger psychophysical excitement is necessary in order to secure the innervation of the big muscles in the central nervous system. this difference in the stimulation of the various muscle groups has been of significant consequence for the differentiation of work throughout the development of mankind.[ ] labor with the large muscles has, for these psychophysical reasons, never been easily combined with the subtler training of the finer muscles. hence a social organization which obliged the men to give their energy to war and the hunt, both, in primitive life, functions of the strongest muscles, made it necessary for the domestic activities, which are essentially functions of the small muscles, to be carried out by women. the whole history of the machine demonstrates this economic tendency to make activities dependent upon those muscles which presuppose the smallest psychophysical effort. it is not only the smaller effort which gives economic advantage to the stimulation of the smaller muscles, but the no less important circumstance that the psychophysical after-effect of their central excitement exerts less inhibition than the after-effect of the brain excitement for the big muscles. but we must not overlook another feature in the development of technique. the machines have been constantly transformed in the direction which made it possible to secure the greatest help from the natural coördination of bodily movements. the physiological organization and the psychophysical conditions of the nervous system make it necessary that the movement impulses flow over into motor side channels and thus produce accessory effects without any special effort. if a machine is so constructed that these natural accessory movements must be artificially and intentionally suppressed, it means, on the one side, a waste of available psychophysical energy, and on the other side it demands a useless effort in order to secure this inhibition. the industrial development has moved toward both the fructification of those side impulses and the avoidance of these inhibitions. it has adjusted itself practically to the natural psychical conditions. ultimately it is this tendency which shaped the technical apparatus for the economic work until the muscle movements could become rhythmical. the rhythmical activity necessarily involves a psychophysical saving and this saving has been instinctively secured throughout the history of civilization. all rhythm contains a repetition of movement without making a real repetition of the psychophysical impulse necessary. in the rhythmical activity a large part of the first excitement still serves for the second, and the second for the third. inhibitions fall away and the mere after-effect of each stimulus secures a great saving for the new impulse. the history of the machine even indicates that the newer technical development not only found the far-reaching division of labor already in the workshops of earlier centuries, but a no less far-reaching rhythmization of the labor in fine adaptation to the needs of the psychophysical organism, long before the appearance of the machines. the beginnings of the machine period frequently showed nothing but an imitation of the rhythmical movements of man.[ ] to be sure, the later improvements of the machine have frequently destroyed that original rhythm of man's movement, as the movement itself, especially in the electric machines, has become so quick that the subjective rhythmical experience has been lost. moreover, the rhythmical horizontal and vertical movements were for physical reasons usually replaced by uniform circular movements. but even the most highly developed machine demands human activity, for instance, for the supplying with material; and this again has opened new possibilities for the adjustment of technical mechanism to the economic demand for rhythmical muscle activity. the growth of technical devices has thus been constantly under the control of psychological demands, in spite of the absence of systematic psychological investigations. but the decisive factor was, indeed, that these psychological motives always remained in the subconsciousness of civilization. the improvements were consciously referred to the machine as such, however much the practical success was really influenced by the degree of its adjustment to the mental conditions of the workingmen. the new movements of scientific management and of experimental psychology aim toward bringing this adaptation consciously into the foreground and toward testing and studying systematically what technical variations can best suit the psychophysical status of man. those who are familiar with the achievements of scientific management remember that by no means only the complicated procedures on a high level are in question. the successes are often the most surprising where the technique is old, and where it might have been imagined that the experiences of many centuries would have secured through mere common sense the most effective performance. the best-known case is perhaps that of the masons, which one of the leaders of the scientific management movement has studied in all its details.[ ] the movements of the builders and the tools which they use were examined with scientific exactitude and slowly reshaped under the point of view of psychology and physiology. the total result was that after the new method masons completed without greater fatigue what after the old methods it would have taken masons to do, and that the total expense for the building was reduced to less than a half in spite of the steady increase of the wages of the laborers. for this purpose it was necessary that exact measurements be made of the height at which the bricks were lying and of the height of the wall on which they must be laid, and of the number of bricks which should be carried to the masons at once. he studied how the trowel should be shaped and how the mortar should be used and how the bricks should be carried to the bricklayers. in short, everything which usually is left to tradition, to caprice, and to an economy which looks out only for the most immediate saving, was on the basis of experiments of many years replaced by entirely new means and tools, where nothing was left to arbitrariness. yet these changes did not demand any invention or physically or economically new ideas, but merely a more careful adaptation of the apparatus to the psychological energies of the masons. the new arrangement permitted a better organization of the necessary bodily movements, fatigue was diminished, the accessory movements were better fructified, fewer inhibitions were necessary, a better playing together of the psychical energies was secured. the students of scientific management stepped still lower in the scale of economic activity. there is no more ordinary productive function than shoveling. yet in great establishments the shoveling of coal or of dirt may represent an economically very important factor. it seems that up to the days of scientific management, no one really looked carefully into the technical conditions under which the greatest possible economic effect might be reached. now the act of shoveling was approached with the carefulness with which a scholar turns to any subtle process in his laboratory. the brilliant originator of the scientific management movement, who carried out these investigations[ ] in the great bethlehem steel works, where hundreds of laborers had to shovel heavy iron ore or light ashes, found that the usual chance methods involve an absurd economic waste. the burden was sometimes so heavy that rapid fatigue developed and the movements became too slow, or the lifted mass was so light that the larger part of the laborer's energies remained unused. in either case the final result of the day's work must be anti-economic. he therefore tested with carefully graded experiments what weight ensured the most favorable achievement by a strong healthy workingman. the aim was to find the weight which would secure with well-arranged pauses the maximum product in one day without over-fatigue. as soon as this weight was determined, a special set of shovels had to be constructed for every particular kind of material. the laborers were now obliged to operate with different kinds of shovels, each of such a size that the burden always remained an average of pounds for any kind of material. the following step was an exact determination of the most favorable rapidity and the most perfect movement of shoveling, the best distribution of pauses, and so on, and the final outcome was that only men were needed where on the basis of the old plan about laborers had been engaged. the average workingman who had previously shoveled tons of material, now managed tons without greater fatigue. the wages were raised by two thirds and the expenses for shoveling a ton of material were decreased one half this calculation of expenses included, of course, a consideration of the increased cost for tools and for the salaries of the scientific managers. whoever visits factories in which the new system has been introduced by real specialists must be surprised, indeed, by the great effects which often result from the better psychophysical adaptation of the simplest and apparently most indifferent tools and means. as far as the complicated machines are concerned, we are accustomed to a steady improvement by the efforts of the technicians and we notice it rather little if the changes in them are introduced for psychological instead of the usual physical reasons. but the fact that even the least complicated and most indifferent devices can undergo most influential improvements, as soon as they are seriously studied from a psychological point of view, remains really a source for surprise. sometimes no more is needed than a change in the windows or in the electric lamps, by which the light can fall on the work in a psychologically satisfactory way; sometimes long series of experiments have to be made with a simple hammer or knife or table. often everything must be arranged against the wishes of the workingmen, who feel any deviation from the accustomed conditions as a disturbance which is to be regarded with suspicion. in one concern i heard that the scientific manager became convinced that all the working-chairs for the women were too low and that the laborers therefore had to hold their arms in a psychophysically unfavorable position during the handling of the apparatus. all were strongly opposed to the introduction of higher chairs. the result was that the manager arranged for the chairs to be raised a few millimeters every evening, without the knowledge of the working-women, as soon as the factory was empty. after a few weeks the chairs had reached the right height without those engaged in the work having noticed it at all. the outcome was a decided increase of efficiency. but the most rational scheme will after all be to prepare for such arrangements of tools and apparatus by systematic experiments in the psychological laboratory. the subtlety of such investigations will lead far beyond the point which is accessible to the attempts of scientific management. exact experiments on attention, for instance, will have to determine how the various parts of the apparatus are to be distributed best in space if the laborer must keep watch for disturbances at various places. only the laboratory experiment can find the most favorable speed of the machine or can select the muscles to which the mind can send the most effective impulses. the construction of the machine must then be adapted to such results. in the harvard laboratory, for instance, a practical question led us to examine which fingers would allow the quickest alternation of key movements.[ ] if any two of the ten fingers perform for ten seconds the quickest possible alternation of motion, as in a trill, the experiment can demonstrate exactly the differences between the various combinations of fingers and the individual fluctuations for these differences. with an electrical registration of the movements of the alternating fingers we studied in hundredths of a second the time for the motions of two hands and of fingers of the same hand, in order to adjust the keys of a certain machine to the most favorable impulses. we approach this group of problems from another side when we test the relations of various kinds of machines to various mental types. psychologists have studied, for example, the various styles of typewriting machines.[ ] from a purely commercial point of view the merits of one or another machine are praised as if they were advantageous for every possible human being. the fact is that such advantages for one may be disadvantages for another on account of differences in the mental disposition. one man may write more quickly on one, another on another machine. as every one knows, the chief difference is that of the keyboard and that of the visible or invisible writing. machines like the remington machine work with a shift key; that is, a special key must be pressed when capital letters are to be written. other machines like the oliver even demand double shifting, one key for the capital letters, and one for the figures, and so on. on the other hand, machines like the smith premier have no shift key, but a double keyboard. it is evident that both the shift-key arrangement and the double keyboard have their particular psychological advantages. the single alphabet demands much less from the optical memory, and the corresponding motor inner attitude of consciousness is adjusted to a smaller number of possibilities. but the pressure on the shift key, which goes with the single alphabet, is not only a time-wasting act; from the psychological point of view it is first of all a very strong interruption of the uniform chain of impulses. if the capital and small letters are written for a minute alternatingly with the greatest possible speed, the experiment shows that the number of letters for the machine with the double alphabet is about three times greater than for the machine with simple alphabet and shift key. both systems accordingly have their psychological advantages and disadvantages. human beings of distinct visual ideational type or of highly developed motor type will prefer the double alphabet, provided, of course, that the touch system of writing is learned, and this will be especially true if their inner attitude is easily disturbed by interruptions. but those who have a feebly developed optical mental centre and who have small ability for the development of complex motor habits will be more efficient on the machines with the single alphabet, especially if their nervous system is little molested by interruptions and thus undisturbed by the intrusion of the shift key act. in a similar way the visibility of the writing will be for certain individuals the most valuable condition for quick writing, while for others, who depend less upon visual support, it may mean rather a distraction and an interference with the speediest work. the visible writing attracts the involuntary attention, and thus forces consciousness to stick to that which has been written instead of being concentrated on that which is to be produced by the next writing movements. the operator himself is not aware of this hindrance. on the contrary, the public will always be inclined to prefer the typewriters with visible writing, because by a natural confusion the feeling arises that the production of the letter is somewhat facilitated, when the eye is coöperating, just as in writing with a pen we follow the lines of the written letter. but the situation lies differently in the two cases. when we are writing with a pen, the letter grows under our eyes, while in the machine writing we do not see any part of the letter until the whole movement which produces the single letter is finished. by such a misleading analogy many a man is led to prefer the typewriter with visible writing, while he would probably secure a greater speed with a machine which does not tempt him to attend the completed letters, while his entire attention ought to belong to the following letters. these last observations point to another psychological aspect of the machine and of the whole technical work, namely, their relations to the impressions of the senses. the so-called dynamogenic experiments of the psychological laboratory have demonstrated what a manifold influence flows from the sense-impressions to the will-impulses. if the muscle contraction of a man's fist is measured, the experiment shows that the strongest possible pressure may be very different when the visual field appears in different colors, or tones of different pitch or different noises are stimulating the ear, and so on. as yet no systematic experiments exist by which such results can be brought into relation to the sense-stimuli which reach the laborer during his technical work. the psychophysical effect of colors and noises has not been fructified at all for industrial purposes. the mere subjective judgment of the workingman himself cannot be acknowledged as reliable in such questions. the laborer, for instance, usually believes that a noise to which he has become accustomed does not disturb him in his work, while experimental results point strongly to the contrary. in a similar way the effect of colored windows may appear indifferent to the workmen, and yet may have considerable influence on his efficiency. numberless performances in the factory are reactions on certain optical or acoustical or tactual signals. both the engineer and the workman are satisfied if such a signal is clearly perceivable. the psychological laboratory experiment, however, shows that the whole psychophysical effect depends upon the character of the signal; a more intense light, a quicker change, a higher tone, a larger field of light, a louder noise, or a harder touch may produce a very different kind of reaction. with a careful time-measurement of the motions, it can often be directly traced how purely technical processes in the machine itself influence and control the whole psychical system of impulses in the man. i observed, in a factory, for instance, the work at a machine which performed most of its functions automatically. it had to hammer fine grooves into small metal plates. a young laborer stood before every such machine, took from a pile, alternately from the right and from the left, the little plates to be serrated, placed them in the machine, turned a lever to bring the hammer into motion, and then removed the serrated plates. the speed of the work was dependent upon the operative, as he determined by his lever movement the instant at which the automatic serrating hammer should be released. the man's activity demanded independent movements. i found that those who worked the most quickly were able to carry out this labor for hours at a uniform rapidity of to - / second for those movements. but the time-measurement showed that even these fastest workers were relatively slow in the first movements which they made while the machine stood quiet, and that they reached an astonishing quickness of movement in the last actions during which at the same time the serrating hammer in bewildering rapidity was beating on the plate with sharp loud cracks. the hammer reinforced the energy of the young laborers to an effectiveness which could never have been attained by mere voluntary effort. often the simplicity or complication of the stimulus may be decisive in importance, and this also holds true where the most elementary reactions are involved, for instance, the mere act of counting which enters into many industrial functions. experiments carried on in my laboratory[ ] have shown that the time needed to count a certain number of units becomes longer as soon as the units themselves become more complicated. their inner manifoldness exerts a retarding influence on the eye as it moves from one figure to another. a certain psychical inhibition arises; the mind is held back by the complexity of the impression and cannot proceed quickly enough to the next. psychologically no less important is the demand that the external technical conditions so far as they influence consciousness, should remain as far as possible the same, if the same psychical effect is desired, because then only can a perfectly firm connection between stimulus and movement be formed. in technical life this demand is much sinned against. a typical case is that of the signals for which the engineer on the locomotive has to watch. in the daytime the movable arms of the semaphore indicate by their horizontal, oblique, or vertical position whether the tracks are clear. at night-time, on the other hand, the same information reaches him by the different colors of the signal lanterns. from a psychical point of view it is probable that the safety of the service would be increased if an unchangeable connection between signal and movement were formed. it would be sufficient for that purpose if the color signals at night were given up and were replaced by horizontal, oblique, or vertical lines of white light or rows of points. successful experiments of this kind have been carried on by psychologists in the service of this railroad problem.[ ] the interest in all these problems of large concerns, in transportation and factory work and complex industries, ought not to make us overlook the fact that on principle the same problems can be found in the simplest industrial establishment. even the housewife or the cook destroys economic values if daily she has to spend useless minutes or hours on account of arrangements in the household which are badly adjusted to the psychological conditions. she sacrifices her energy in vain and she wastes her means where she herself is under the illusion of especial economy. scientific management would perhaps be nowhere so wholesome as in kitchen and pantry, in laundry and cellar, just because here the saving would be multiplied millionfold and the final sum of energy saved and of feeling values gained would be enormous, even if it could not be calculated with the exactitude with which the savings of a factory budget can be proven. the profusion of small attractive devices which automatically perform the economic household labor and disburden the human workers must not hide the fact that the chief activities are still little adjusted to the psychophysical conditions. the situation is similar to that of the masons, whose function has also been performed for thousands of years, and yet which did not find a real adaptation to the psychical factors until a systematic time-measuring study was introduced. a manufacturer who sells an improved pan or mixing-spoon or broom expects success if he brings to the market something the merits of which are evident and make the housewife anticipate a decrease of work or a simplification of work, but the development of scientific management has shown clearly that the most important improvements are just those which are deduced from scientific researches, without at first giving satisfaction to the laborers themselves, until a new habit has been formed. perhaps the most frequent technical activity of this simple kind is sewing by hand, which is still entirely left to the traditions of common sense, and yet which is evidently dependent upon the interplay of many psychical factors which demand a subtle adaptation to the psychical conditions. to approach, at least, this field of human labor a careful investigation of the psychophysics of sewing has been started in my laboratory.[ ] the sewing work is done, with the left hand supported, and the right hand connected with a system of levers which make a graphic record of every movement on the smoked surface of a revolving drum. for instance, we begin with simple over and over stitches, measuring the time and the character of the right hand movements for stitches under a variety of technical conditions. the first variation refers to the length of the thread. the thread itself, fixed at the needle's eye, varied between feet and inches in length. other changes refer to the voluntary speed, to the number of stitches, to fatigue, to external stimuli, to attention, to methods of training, and so on, but the chief interest remains centred on the psychical factors. we are still too much at the beginning already to foresee whether it will be possible to draw from these psychophysical experiments helpful conclusions. the four young women engaged in this laboratory research will later extend it to the psychological conditions of work with the various types of sewing-machines. xv the economy of movement the study of the technical aspect of labor can nowhere be separated by a sharp demarcation line from the study of the labor itself as a function of the individual organism. many problems, indeed, extend in both directions. the student of industrial efficiency is, for instance, constantly led to the question of fatigue. he may consider this fatigue as a function of brain and muscle activity and discuss it with reference to the psychophysical effort, but he is equally interested in the question of how far the apparatus or the machine or the accessory conditions of the work might be changed in order to avoid fatigue. the accidents of the electric street railways were regarded as partly related to fatigue. the problem was accordingly how to shorten the working time of the motormen in the interest of the public, but it was soon recognized that the difficulty might also be approached from the mere technical side. some companies introduced seats which the motormen can use whenever they feel fatigue coming and excellent results have followed this innovation. in our last discussions the technical apparatus stood in the foreground. we may now consider as our real topic the psychophysical activity. here, too, the leaders of scientific management have secured some signal successes. their chief effort in this field was directed toward the greatest possible achievement by eliminating all superfluous movements and by training in those movement combinations which were recognized as the most serviceable ones. we may return to the case of the masons in order to clear up the principle. when gilbreth began to reform the labor of the mason after scientific principles, he gave his chief interest to the men's motions. every muscle contraction which was needed to move the brick from the pile in the yard to the final position in the wall was measured with reference to space-and time-relations and the necessary effort. from here he turned to the application of well-known psychophysical principles. a movement is less fatiguing and therefore economically most profitable if it occurs in a direction in which the greatest possible use of gravitation can be made if both hands have to act at the same time, the labor can be carried out most quickly and with the smallest effort if corresponding muscle groups are at work and this means if symmetrical movements are performed. if unequal movements have to be made simultaneously, the effort will become smaller if they are psychically bound together by a common unified impulse. the distance which has to be overcome by hands, arms, or feet must be brought to a minimum for each partial movement. most important, however, is this rule. if a definite combination of movements has been determined as economically most suitable, this method must be applied without any exception from the beginning of the learning. the point is to train from the start those impulse combinations which can slowly lead to the quickest and best work. the usual method is the opposite. generally the beginner learns to produce from the beginning work which is as good and correct as possible. in order to produce such qualitatively good results at an early stage, it is left to him to choose any groups of movements which happen to be convenient to him. then these become habitual, and as soon as he tries to go on to quicker work, these chance habits hinder him in his progress. the movements which may be best suited for fair production by a beginner may be entirely unsuited for really quick work, such as would be expected from an experienced man. the laborer must replace the first habits which he has learned by a new set, instead of starting in the first place with motions which can be continued until the highest point of efficiency has been reached, even if this involves rather a poor showing at the beginning. a final maximum rapidity must be secured from the start by the choice of those motions which have been standardized by careful experiments. it is also psychophysically important to demand that the movements shall not be suddenly stopped, if that can be avoided. any interruption of a movement presupposes a special effort of the will which absorbs energy, and after the interruption a new start must be made of which the same is true. on the other hand, if chains of movements become habitual, the psychophysical effort will be reduced to the minimum, inasmuch as each movement finds its natural end and is not artificially interrupted by will, and at the same time each movement itself becomes a stimulus for the next movement by its accompanying sensations. the traditional method, for instance, demands that a brick be lifted with one hand and a trowel with mortar by the other hand. after that the lifting movement is interrupted, the brick comes to rest in the hand of the mason until the mortar has been spread on and the place prepared for the new brick. then only begins a new action with the brick. this method was fundamentally changed. the laborers learned to swing the brick with one hand from the pack to the wall and at the same time to distribute the mortar over the next brick with the other hand. this whole complex movement is of course more difficult and demands a somewhat longer period of learning, but as soon as it is learned an extreme saving of psychophysical energy and a correspondingly great economic gain is secured. the newly trained masons are not even allowed to gather up with the trowel any mortar which falls to the floor, because it was found that the loss of mortar is economically less important than the waste of psychophysical energy in bending down. whoever has once schooled his eye to observe the limitless waste of human motions and psychophysical efforts in social life has really no difficulty in perceiving all this at every step. this ability to recognize possible savings of impulse may be brought to a certain virtuosity. gilbreth, one of the leaders of the new movement, seems to be such a virtuoso. when he was in london, there was pointed out to him in the japanese british exhibition a young girl who worked so quickly that there at least he would find a rhythm of finger movement which could not any further be improved. in an exhibition booth the woman attached advertisement labels to boxes with phenomenal rapidity. gilbreth watched her for a little while and found that she was able to manage boxes in seconds. then he told the young girl that she was doing it wrongly, and that she ought to try a new way which he showed her. at the first attempt, she disposed of boxes in seconds and at the second trial in seconds. she did not have to make more effort for it, but simply had fewer movements to make. if such economic gain can be secured with little exertion in the simplest processes, it cannot be surprising that in the case of more complex and more advanced technical work which involves highly skilled labor, a careful psychophysical study of motions must bring far-reaching economic improvements. yet the more important steps will have to be guided by special experimental investigations, and here the psychological laboratory must undertake the elaboration of the details. only the systematic experiment can determine what impulses can be released at the least expense of energy and with the greatest exactitude of the motor effect. investigations on the psychophysics of movement and the influences which lead toward making the movement too large or too small have played an important rôle in the psychological laboratories for several decades. it was recognized early that the mistakes which are made in reproducing a movement may spring from two different sources. they result partly from an erroneous perception or memory of the movement carried out, and partly from the inability to realize the movement intention. one series of investigations was accordingly devoted to the studies of those sensations and perceptions by which we become aware of the actual movement. everything which accentuates these sensations must lead to an overestimation of the motion, and the outcome is that the movement is made too small. the concentration of attention, therefore, has the effect of reducing the actual motion, and the same influence must result from any resistance which is not recognized as such and hence is not subtracted in the judgment of the perceiver. another series of researches was concerned with the inner attitude which causes a certain external movement effect and which may lead to an unintended amount of movement as soon as the weight to be lifted is erroneously judged upon. closely related studies, finally, deal with a mistake which enters when the movement is reproduced from memory after a certain time. the exactitude of a simple arm movement seems to increase in the first ten seconds, then rapidly to decrease. the emotional attitude, too, is of importance for the reproduction of a movement. i trained myself in making definite extensor and flexor movements of the arm until i was able to reproduce them under normal conditions with great exactitude. in experiments extending over many months, which were carried on through the changing emotional attitudes of daily life, the exact measurement showed that both groups of movements became too large in states of excitement and too small in states of fatigue. but in a state of satisfaction and joy the extensor movement became too large, the flexor movement too small, and _vice versa_, in unpleasant emotional states the flexor movement was too strong and the extensor movement too weak.[ ] we have a very careful investigation into the relations between rapidity of movement and exactitude.[ ] the subjects had to perform a hand movement simultaneously with the beat of a metronome, the beats of which varied between and in the minute. in general the accuracy of the movement decreases as the rapidity increases, but the descent is not uniform. motions in the rhythm of to the minute were on the whole just as exact as those in the rhythm of , and, on the other hand movements in the rhythm of almost as accurate as those of to the minute. thus we have a lower limit below which decrease of rapidity does not increase the accuracy any further, and an upper limit beyond which a further increase of rapidity brings no additional deterioration. the mistakes of the unskilled left hand increase still more rapidly than the number of movements. if the eyes are closed, the rapid movements are usually too long and the slow ones too short. an investigation in the harvard laboratory varied this problem in a direction which brings it still nearer to technical conditions of industry. our central question was whether the greatest exactitude of rhythmical movement is secured at the same rapidity for different muscle groups.[ ] we studied especially rhythmical movements of hand, foot, arm, and head, and studied them, moreover, under various conditions of resistance. the result from , measured movements was the demonstration that every muscle group has its own optimum of rapidity for the greatest possible accuracy and that the complexity of the movement and the resistance which it finds has most significant influence on the exactitude of the rhythmical achievement. if we abstract at first from the fluctuations around the average value of a particular group of movements and consider only this average itself in its relation to the starting movement which it is meant to imitate, we find characteristic tendencies toward enlargement or reduction dependent upon the rapidity. the right foot, for instance, remained nearest to the original movement at a rapidity of motions in the minute, while the head did the same at about . for a hand movement of centimeters, the most favorable rapidity was repetitions in the minute, while for a hand movement of centimeter the average remained nearest to the standard at about repetitions. the mean variation from time average is the smallest for the left foot at to movements, for the right at to , for the head at , for the larger hand movement at , and so on. investigations of this kind have so far not affected industrial life in the least, but it seems hardly doubtful that a systematic study of the movements necessary for economic work will have to pass through such strictly experimental phases. the essential point, however, will be for the managers of the industrial concerns and the psychological laboratory workers really to come nearer to each other from the start and undertake the work in common, not in the sense that the laboratory is to emigrate to the factory, but in the better sense that definite questions which grow out of the industrial life be submitted to the scientific investigation of the psychologists. xvi experiments on the problem of monotony the systematic organization of movements with most careful regard to the psychophysical conditions appeared to us the most momentous aid toward the heightening of efficiency. but even if the superfluous, unfit, and interfering movement impulses were eliminated and the conditions of work completely adjusted to the demands of psychology, there would still remain a large number of possibilities through which productiveness might be greatly decreased, or at least kept far below the possible maximum of efficiency. for instance, even the best adapted labor might be repeated to the point of exhaustion, at which the workman and the work would be ruined. fatigue and restoration accordingly demand especial consideration. in a similar way emotions may be conditions of stimulation or interference, and no one ought to underestimate the importance of higher motives, intellectual, æsthetic, and moral motives, in their bearing on the psychophysical impulses of the laborer. if these higher demands are satisfied, the whole system gains a new tonus, and if they are disappointed, the irritation of the mental machinery may do more harm than any break in the physical machine at which the man is working. in short, we must still look in various directions to become aware of all the relations between the psychological factors and the economic output. we may begin with one question which plays a large, perhaps too large, rôle in the economic and especially in the popular economic literature. i refer to the problem of monotony of labor. in the discourses of our time on the lights and shades of our modern industrial life, all seem to agree that the monotony of industrial labor ought to be entered on the debit side of the ledger of civilization. since the days when factories began to spring up, the accusation that through the process of division of labor the industrial workingman no longer has any chance to see a whole product, but that he has to devote himself to the minutest part of a part, has remained one of the matter-of-course arguments. the part of a part which he has to cut or polish or shape in endless repetition without alteration cannot awake any real interest. this complete division of labor has to-day certainly gone far beyond anything which adam smith described, and therefore it now appears undeniable that the method must create a mental starvation which presses down the whole life of the laborer, deprives it of all joy in work, and makes the factory scheme a necessary but from the standpoint of psychology decidedly regrettable evil. i have become more and more convinced that the scientific psychologist is not obliged to endorse this judgment of popular psychology. to be sure the problem of division of labor, as it appears in the subdivision of manufacture, is intimately connected with many other related questions. it quickly leads to the much larger question of division of labor in our general social structure, which is necessary for our social life with its vocational and professional demands, and which undoubtedly narrows to a certain degree every individual in the completeness of his human desires. no man in modern society can devote himself to everything for which his mind may long. but as a matter of course these large general problems of civilization lie outside of the realm of our present inquiry. in another direction the problem of monotony comes very near to the question of fatigue. but we must see clearly that these two questions are not identical and that we may discuss monotony here without arguing the problem of fatigue. the frequent repetition of the same movement or of the same mental activity certainly may condition an objective fatigue, which may interfere with the economic output, but this is not the real meaning of the problem of monotony. about fatigue we shall speak later. here we are concerned exclusively with that particular psychological attitude which we know as subjective dislike of uniformity and lack of change in the work. within these limits the question of monotony is, indeed, frequently misunderstood in its economic significance. let us not forget that the outsider can hardly ever judge when work offers or does not offer inner manifoldness. if we do not know and really understand the subject, we are entirely unable to discriminate the subtler inner differences. the shepherd knows every sheep, though the passer-by has the impression that they all look alike. this inability to recognize the differences which the man at work feels distinctly shows itself even in the most complicated activities. the naturalist is inclined to fancy that the study of a philologist must be endlessly monotonous, and the philologist is convinced that it must be utterly tiresome to devote one's self a life lone to some minute questions of natural science. only when one stands in the midst of the work is he aware of its unlimited manifoldness, and feels how every single case is somehow different from every other. in the situation of the industrial workman, the attention may be directed toward some small differences which can only be recognized after long familiarity with the particular field. certainly this field is small, as every workman must specialize, but whether he manufactures a whole machine, or only a little wheel, makes no essential difference in the attitude. the attraction of newness is quickly lost also in the case of the most complicated machine. on the other hand, the fact that such a machine has an independent function does not give an independent attraction to the work. or we might rather say, as far as the work on a whole machine is of independent value, the work of perfecting the little wheel is an independent task also and offers equal value by its own possibilities. whoever has recognized the finest variations among the single little wheels and has become aware of how they are produced sometimes better, sometimes worse, sometimes more quickly, sometimes more slowly, becomes as much interested in the perfecting of the minute part as another man in the manufacture of the complex machine. it is true that the laborer does not feel interest in the little wheel itself, but in the production of the wheel. every new movement necessary for it has a perfectly new chance and stands in new relations, which have nothing to do with the repetition. as a matter of course this interest in the always new best possible method of production is still strongly increased where piece-wages are introduced. the laborer knows that the amount of his earning depends upon the rapidity with which he finishes faultless products. under this stimulus he is in a continuous race with himself, and thus has every reason to prefer the externally uniform and therefore perfectly familiar work to another kind which may bring alternation, but which also brings ever new demands. for a long while i have tried to discover in every large factory which i have visited the particular job which from the standpoint of the outsider presents itself as the most tiresome possible. as soon as i found it, i had a full frank talk with the man or woman who performed it and earnestly tried to get self-observational comment. my chief aim was to bring out how far the mere repetition, especially when it is continued through years, is felt as a source of discomfort. i may again point to a few chance illustrations. in an electrical factory with many thousands of employees i gained the impression that the prize for monotonous work belonged to a woman who packs incandescent lamps in tissue paper. she wraps them from morning until night, from the first day of the year to the last, and has been doing that for the last years. she performs this packing process at an average rate of , lamps a day. the woman has reached about , , times for the next lamp with one hand and with the other to the little pile of tissue sheets and then performed the packing. each lamp demands about finger movements. as long as i watched her, she was able to pack lamps in seconds, and only a few times did she need as many as seconds. every lamps filled a box, and the closing of the box required a short time for itself. she evidently took pleasure in expressing herself fully about her occupation. she assured me that she found the work really interesting, and that she constantly felt an inner tension, thinking how many boxes she would be able to fill before the next pause. above all, she told me that there is continuous variation. sometimes she grasps the lamp or paper in a different way, sometimes the packing itself does not run smoothly, sometimes she feels fresher, sometimes less in the mood for the work, and there is always something to observe and something to think about. this was the trend which i usually found. in some large machine works i sought for a long time before i found the type of labor which seemed to me the most monotonous. i finally settled on a man who was feeding an automatic machine which was cutting holes in metal strips and who simply had to push the strips slowly forward; only when the strip did not reach exactly the right place, he could stop the automatic machine by a lever. he made about , uniform movements daily and had been doing that for the past years. but he gave me the same account, that the work was interesting and stimulating, while he himself made the impression of an intelligent workingman. at the beginning, he reported, the work had sometimes been quite fatiguing, but later he began to like it more and more. i imagined that this meant that at first he had to do the work with full attention and that the complex movement had slowly become automatic, allowing him to perform it like a reflex movement and to turn his thoughts to other things. but he explained to me in full detail that this was not the case, that he still feels obliged to devote his thoughts entirely to the work at hand, and that he is able only under these conditions to bring in the daily wage which he needs for his family, as he is paid for every thousand holes. but he added especially that it is not only the wage which satisfies him, but that he takes decided pleasure in the activity itself. on the other hand, i not seldom found wage-earners, both men and women, who seemed to have really interesting and varied activities and who nevertheless complained bitterly over the monotonous, tiresome factory labor. i became more and more convinced that the feeling of monotony depends much less upon the particular kind of work than upon the special disposition of the individual. it cannot be denied that the same contrast exists in the higher classes of work. we find school-teachers who constantly complain that it is intolerably monotonous to go on teaching immature children the rudiments of knowledge, while other teachers with exactly the same task before them are daily inspired anew by the manifoldness of life in the classroom. we find physicians who complain that one case in their practice is like another, and judges who despair because they always have to deal with the same petty cases, while other judges and physicians feel clearly that every case offers something new and that the repetition as such is neither conspicuous nor disagreeable. we find actors who feel it a torture to play the same rôle every evening for several weeks, and there are actors who, as one of the most famous actresses assured me after the four hundredth performance of her star rôle, repeat their parts many hundred times with undiminished interest, because they feel that they are always speaking to new audiences. it seems not impossible that this individual difference might be connected with deeper-lying psychophysical conditions. i approached the question, to be sure, with a preconceived theory. i fancied that certain persons had a finer, subtler sense for differences than others and that they would recognize a manifoldness of variations where the others would see only uniformity. in that i silently presupposed that the perception of the uniformity must be something disturbing and disagreeable and the recognition of variations something which stimulates the mind pleasantly. but when i came to examine the question experimentally, i became convinced that such a hypothesis is erroneous, and if i interpret the results correctly, i should say that practically the opposite relation exists. those who recognize the uniformities readily are not the ones who are disturbed by them. i proceeded in the following way. to make use of a large number of subjects accustomed to intelligent self-observation, i made the first series of experiments with the regular students in my psychology lecture course in harvard university. last winter i had more than four hundred men students in psychology who all took part in that introductory series. the task which i put before them in a number of variations was this: i used lists of words of which half, or one more or less than half, belonged to one single conceptional group. there were names of flowers, or cities, or poets, or parts of the body, or wild animals, and so on. the remaining words of the list, on the other hand, were without inner connection and without similarity. the similar and the dissimilar words were mixed. the subjects listened to such a list of words and then had to decide without counting from the mere impression whether the similar words were more or equally or less numerous than the dissimilar words. in other experiments the arrangement was that two different lists were read and that in the two lists a larger or smaller number of words were repeated from the first list. here, too, the subjects had to decide from the mere impression whether the repeated words were in the majority or not. in every experiment the judgment referred to those words which belonged to the same group and which were in this sense uniform, or to the repeated words, and it had to be stated with reference to them whether their number was larger, equal to, or smaller than the different words. if all replies had been correct, the judgment would have been per cent equal, per cent smaller, and per cent larger, as they were arranged in perfect symmetry. as soon as i had the results from the students, we figured out for every one what number he judged equal, smaller, or greater. then we divided the equal judgments by and added half of them to the larger and half to the smaller judgments. in this way we were enabled by one figure to characterize the whole tendency of the individual. we found that in the whole student body there was a tendency to underestimate the number of the similar or of the repeated words. the majority of my students had a stronger impression from the varying objects than from those which were in a certain sense equal. yet this tendency appeared in very different degrees and for about a fourth of the participants the opposite tendency prevailed. they received a stronger impression from the uniform ideas. i had coupled with these experimental tests a series of questions, and had asked every subject to express with fullest possible self-analysis his practical attitude to monotony in life. every one had to give an account whether in the small habits of life he liked variety or uniform repetition. he was asked especially as to his preferences for or against uniformity in the daily meals, daily walks, and so on. furthermore he had to report how far he is inclined to stick to one kind of work or to alternate his work, how far he welcomes the idea that vocational work may bring repetition, and so on. and finally i tried to bring the results of these self-observations into relation with the results of those experiments. it was here that the opposite of the hypothesis which i had presupposed suggested itself to me with surprising force. i found that just the ones who perceive the repetition least hate it most, and that those who have a strong perception of the uniform impressions and who overestimate their number are the ones who on the whole welcome repetition in life. as soon as i had reached this first experimental result, i began to see how it might harmonize with known psychological facts. some years ago a hungarian psychologist[ ] showed by interesting experiments that if a series of figures is exposed to the eye for a short fraction of a second, equal digits are seen only once, and he came to the conclusion that equal impressions in such a series inhibit each other. in the harvard laboratory we varied these experiments by eliminating the spatial separation of those numbers. in our experiments the digits did not stand side by side, but followed one another very quickly in the same place.[ ] similar experiments we made with colors and so on. here, too, we found that quickly succeeding equal or very similar impressions have a tendency to inhibit each other or to fuse with each other. where such an inhibition occurs, we probably ought to suppose that the perception of the first impression exhausts the psychical disposition for this particular mental experience. the psychophysical apparatus becomes for a moment unable to arouse the same impression once more. the above described new experiments suggest to me that this inhibition of equal or similar impressions is found unequally developed in different individuals. they possess a different tendency to temporary exhaustion of psychophysical dispositions. there are evidently persons who after they have received an impression are unable immediately to seize the same impression again. their attention and their whole inner attitude fails. but there are evidently other persons for whom, on the contrary, the experience of an impression is a kind of inner preparation for arousing the same or a similar impression. in their case the psychophysical dispositions become stimulated and excited, and therefore favor the repetition. if, as in our experiments, the task is simply to judge the existence of equal or similar impressions without any strain of attention, the one group of persons must underestimate the number of the equal impressions because many words are simply inhibited in their minds and remain neglected, the other groups of persons must from their mental dispositions overestimate the number of similar words. from here we have to take one step more. if these two groups of persons have to perform a task in which it is necessary that not a single member of a series of repetitions be overlooked, it is clear that the two groups must react in a very different way. now a perfect perception of every single member is forced on them. those who grasp equal impressions easily, and who are prepared beforehand for every new repetition by their inner dispositions, will follow the series without strain and will experience the repetition itself with true satisfaction. on the other hand, those in whom every impression inhibits the readiness to receive a repetition, and whose inner energy for the same experience is exhausted, must feel it as a painful and fatiguing effort if they are obliged to turn their attention to one member after another in a uniform series. this mental torture is evidently the displeasure which such individuals call the dislike of monotony in their work. whether this theoretical view is correct, we have to determine by future studies. in our harvard laboratory we have now proceeded from such preparatory mass experiments to subtle investigations on a small number of persons well trained in psychological self-observation with whom the conditions of the experiment can be varied in many directions.[ ] it would seem probable that such experiments might also win psychotechnical significance. a short series of tests which would have to be adapted to the special situations, and which for the simple wage-earner would have to be much easier than those sketched above, would allow it to be determined beforehand whether an individual will suffer from repetition in work. even if we abstract from arguments of social reform and consider exclusively the economic significance, it must seem important that labor which involves much repetition be performed by men and women whose mental dispositions favor an easy grasp of successive uniform impressions. experimentation could secure the selection of the fit workmen and the complaint of monotony would disappear. the same selection could be useful in the opposite direction, as many economic occupations, especially in our time of automatic machines, demand a quick and often rhythmical transition from one activity to another. it is evident that those whose natural dispositions make every mental excitement a preparation not for the identical but for the contrasting stimulation will be naturally equipped for this kind of economic tasks. xvii attention and fatigue the problem of monotony may lead us on to other conditions through which attention is hindered and the product of labor thereby decreased. the psychologist naturally first thinks of external distractions of attention. if he turns to practical studies of the actual economic life, he is often decidedly surprised to find how little regard is given to this psychophysical factor. in industrial establishments in which the smallest disturbance in the machine is at once remedied by a mechanic in order that the greatest possible economic effect may be secured, frequently nobody takes any interest in the most destructive disturbances which unnecessarily occur in the subtlest part of the factory mechanism, namely, the attention apparatus of the laborers. such an interference with attention must, for instance, be recognized when the workingman, instead of devoting himself to one complex function, has to carry out secondary movements which appear to be quite easily performed and not to hinder him in his chief task. often his own feeling may endorse this impression. of course the individual differences in this direction are very great. the faculty of carrying on at the same time various independent functions is unequally distributed and the experiment can show this clearly. it is also well known from practical life that some men can easily go on dictating to a stenographer while they are affixing their signature to several hundred circular letters, or can continue their fluent lecture while they are performing experimental demonstrations. with others such a side activity continually interrupts the chief function. then some succeed better than others in securing a certain automatism of the accessory function to such a point that its special acts do not come to consciousness at all. for example, i watched a laborer who was constantly engaged in a complicated technical performance, and he seemed to give to it his full attention. nevertheless he succeeded in moving a lever on an automatic machine which stood near by whenever a certain wheel had made fifty revolutions. during all his work he kept counting the revolutions without being conscious of any idea of number. a system of motor reactions had become organized which remained below the threshold of consciousness and which produced only at the fiftieth recurrence the conscious psychical impulse to perform the lever movement. yet whether the talent for such simultaneous mastery of independent functions be greater or smaller and the demand more or less complex, in every case the principal action must be hampered by the side issue. to be sure, it may sometimes be economically more profitable to allow the hindrance to the chief work in order to save the expense of an extra man to do the side work. in most cases, however, such a consideration is not involved; it is simply an ignoring of the psychological situation. as the accessory work seems easy, its hindering influence on other functions is practically overlooked. psychological laboratory experiments have shown in many different directions that simultaneous independent activities always disturb and inhibit one another. we must not forget that even the conversations of the laborers belong in this psychophysical class. where a continuous strain of attention has produced a state of fatigue, a short conversation will bring a certain relief and relaxation, and the words which the speaker hears in reply will produce a general stimulation of psychical energy for the moment. moreover, the mere existence of the social conversational intercourse will raise the general emotional mood, and this feeling of social pleasure may be the source from which may spring new psychophysical powers. nevertheless the fundamental fact, after all, is that any talking during the labor, so far as it is not necessary for the work itself, surely involves a distraction of attention. here, too, the individual is not conscious of the effect. he feels certain that he can perform his task just as well, and even the piece-worker, who is anxious to earn as much as possible, is convinced that he does not retard himself by conversation. but the experiments which have been carried on in establishments with scientific management speak decidedly against such a supposition. a tyrannical demand for silence would, of course, be felt as cruelty, and no suggestion of a jail-like discipline would be wise in the case of industrial labor, for evident psychological reasons. but various factories in rearranging their establishments according to the principles of scientific management have changed the positions of the workmen so that conversations become more difficult or impossible. the result reported seems to be everywhere a significant increase of production. the individual concentrates his mind on the task with an intensity which seems beyond his reach as long as the inner attitude is adjusted to social contact. the help which is rendered by the feeling of social coöperation, on the other hand, is not removed by the mere abstaining from speaking. interesting psychopedagogical experiments have, indeed, demonstrated that working in a common room produces better results than isolated activity. this is not true of the most brilliant, somewhat nervous school children, who achieve in their own room at home more than in the classroom. but for the average, which almost alone is in question for life in the factory, the consciousness of common effort is a source of psychophysical reinforcement. this evidently remains effective when the workingmen can see one another, even if the arrangement of the seats precludes the possibility of chatting during the work. however, by far the more important cause of distraction of attention lies in those disturbances which come from without. here again the chief interest ought to be attached to those interferences which the workman himself no longer feels as such. in a great printing-shop a woman who was occupied with work which demanded her fullest attention was seated at her task in an aisle where trucking was done. removing this operator to a quiet corner caused an increase of per cent in her work.[ ] to be sure there are many such disturbances in factory life which can hardly be eliminated with the technical means of to-day. for instance, the noise of the machines, which in many factories makes it impossible to communicate except by shouting, must be classed among the real psychological interferences in spite of the fact that the laborers themselves usually feel convinced that they no longer notice it at all. still more disturbing are strong rhythmical sounds, such as heavy hammer blows which dominate the continuous noises, as they force on every individual consciousness a psychophysical rhythm of reaction which may stand in strong contrast to that of a man's own work. from the incessant inner struggle of the two rhythms, the one suggested by the labor, the other by the external intrusion, quick exhaustion becomes unavoidable. if it were our purpose to elaborate a real system of psychological economics, we should have to proceed here to a careful study of the influences of fatigue on the industrial achievement. we should have to discuss the various kinds of fatigue and exhaustion, the conditions of restoration, and the whole group of related problems of psychophysics. but this is the one field which has been thoroughly ploughed over by science and by practical life in the course of the last decades. no new suggestion and no new hint of the importance of the problem is needed here. our short discussion was planned to be confined to those regions which have not been worked up in systematic investigations and for which new devices seemed desirable. hence we do not reproduce here the rich material of facts which the physiologists and psychophysicists have brought together in the last half-century, the importance of which for industrial labor is perfectly evident. moreover, the practical applications and the insight into the social needs have transformed the factories themselves into one big laboratory in which the problem of fatigue has been studied by practical experiments. the problem of the dependence of fatigue and output upon the length of the working day has been tested in numberless places with the methods of really exact research, as it was easy to find out how the achievement of the laborers became quantitatively and qualitatively changed by the shortening of the working hours. when in one civilized country after another the exhaustingly long working days of the industrial wage-earner were shortened more and more, the theoretical discussions of the legislators and of the social reformers were soon supplemented by careful statistical inquiries in the factories. it was found that everywhere, even abstracting from all other cultural and social interests, a moderate shortening of the working day did not involve loss, but brought a direct gain. the german pioneer in the movement for the shortening of the workingman's day, ernst abbé, the head of one of the greatest german factories, wrote many years ago that the shortening from nine to eight hours, that is, a cutting-down of more than per cent, did not involve a reduction of the day's product, but an increase, and that this increase did not result from any supplementary efforts by which the intensity of the work would be reinforced in an unhygienic way.[ ] this conviction of abbé still seems to hold true after millions of experiments over the whole globe. but the problem of fatigue has forced itself on the consideration of the men of affairs from still another side. it has been well known for a long while how intimate the relations are between fatigue and industrial accidents. the statistics of the various countries and of the various industries do not harmonize exactly, but a close connection between the number of accidents and the hours of the day can be recognized everywhere. usually the greatest number of injuries occurs between ten and eleven o'clock in the forenoon and between three and four o'clock in the afternoon. the different distribution of the working hours, and of the pauses for the meals, make the various statistical tables somewhat incomparable. but it can be traced everywhere that in the first working hours in which fatigue does not play any considerable rôle, the number of accidents is small, and that this number sinks again after the long pauses. it is true that the number also becomes somewhat smaller at the end of the forenoon and of the afternoon period, but this seems to have its cause in the fact that with growing fatigue and with the feeling that the end of the working period is near, the rhythm of the activity becomes much slower, and with such slower movements the danger of accidents is greatly reduced. in a similar way the factories have had to give the fullest attention to the fatigue problem in its relation to the distribution of pauses, and above all in its relation to the advisable speed of the machines, the limits of which are set by the fatigue of the workingmen, and still more of the working-women. the legislatures, the labor unions, and the manufacturers have then had this problem of fatigue constantly before their eyes.[ ] on the other hand, the psychologists and physiologists have continuously studied the fatigue and restoration of the muscle system and of the central nervous system, and have analyzed the facts with the subtlest methods. yet, in spite of this, it cannot be denied that a real mutual enrichment has so far hardly been in question. on the contrary, the whole situation has again demonstrated the old experience. the mere trying and trying again in practical life can never reach the maximum effects which may be secured by systematic, scientifically conducted efforts. on the other side the studies of the theoretical scholars can never yield the highest values for civilization if the problems which offer themselves in practical life are ignored. the theorists have to prepare the ground, and in this preparatory work they must, indeed, remain utterly regardless of any practical situations. but after that a second stage must be reached at which on the foundation of this neutral research special theoretical investigations are undertaken which originate from practical conditions. as long as industrial managers have no contact with the experiments of the laboratory and the experimentalists are shy of any contact with the industrial reality, humanity will pass through social suffering. the hope of mankind will be realized by the mutual fertilization of knowing and doing. the practical efforts of the factories have, indeed, not yet reached the point at which the greatest possible achievement which can be reached without over-fatigue may be secured. we called the abbreviation of the working day an experimental scheme. the question of reducing the working hours is so simple that no further special experiments are needed. but when we come to the questions of the pauses at work, the speed of work and similar factors related to fatigue, the situation is by far more complicated, and the often capricious changes in the plant have very little in common with a systematic experiment. some well-known studies of the efficiency engineers clearly demonstrate the possibility of such systematic efforts. the best-known case is probably taylor's study of the pig-iron handlers of the bethlehem steel company. he found that the gang of men was loading on the average about - / tons per man per day. when he discussed with various managers the question of what output would be the possible maximum, they agreed that under premium work, piecework, or any of the ordinary plans for stimulating the men, an output of to tons would be the extreme possibility. then he proceeded to a systematic study of the fatigue in its relation to the burden and of the best possible relation between working time and resting time. his first efforts to find formulas were unsuccessful, because he calculated only the actual mechanical energy exerted and found that some men were tired after exerting energy of / hp., while others seemed to be able to produce the energy of / hp. without greater fatigue. but soon he discovered the mistake in his figures. he had considered only the actual movements, and had neglected the period in which the laborer was not moving and was not exerting energy, but in which a weight was pulling his arms and demanding a corresponding muscular effort. as soon as this muscular achievement was taken into account, too, he found that for each particular weight a definite relation exists between the time that a man is under a heavy load and the time of rest. for the usual loads of pounds, he found that a first-class laborer must not work more than per cent of time working day and must be entirely without load per cent. if the load becomes lighter, the relation is changed. if the workman is handling a half pig weighing pounds, he can be under load per cent of the day and only has to rest during per cent.[ ] as soon as these figures were experimentally secured, taylor selected fit men, and did not allow them to lift and to carry the loads as they pleased, but every movement was exactly prescribed by foremen who timed exactly the periods of work and rest. if he had simply promised his men a high premium in case they should carry more than the usual tons a day, they would have burdened themselves as heavily as possible and would have carried the load as quickly as possible, thus completely exhausting themselves after three or four hours of labor. in spite of such senseless exaggeration of effort in the first hours, the total output for the day would have been relatively small. now the foremen determined exactly when every individual should lift and move the load and when he should sit quietly. the result was that the men, without greater fatigue, were able to carry - / tons a day instead of the - / tons. their wages were increased per cent. such a trivial illustration demonstrates very clearly the extreme difference between an increase of the economic achievement by scientific, experimental investigation and a mere enforcing of more work by artificially whipping-up the mind with promises of extraordinary wages. yet even such rules as the scientific management engineers have formed, may be elaborated to more lasting prescriptions as soon as the purely psychological factors are brought more into the foreground and are approached with the careful analysis of the experimental psychologist. such a systematic psychological inquiry is the more important for questions of fatigue, as we know that the subjective feeling of displeasure in fatigue is no reliable measure for the objective fatigue, that is, for the real reduction of the ability for work. daily experience teaches us how easily some people overstep the limits of normal fatigue, and in extreme cases even come to a nervous breakdown because nature did not protect them by the timely appearance of strong fatigue feelings. on the other hand, we find many men and still more women who feel tired even after a small exertion, because they did not learn early to inhibit the superficial feelings of fatigue, or because the sensations of fatigue have in fact a certain abnormal intensity in their case. the question how far the psychophysical apparatus has really been exhausted by a certain effort must be answered with the help of objective research and not on the basis of mere subjective feelings. but such objective measurements demand systematic experiments in the laboratory. the experiments which really have been carried on in the laboratory as yet, as far as they were not merely physiological, have on the whole been confined to so-called mental labor, and were essentially devoted to problems of school instruction or medical diagnosis. we have no doubt excellent experiments which are devoted to the study of the individual differences of exhaustion, fatigue, exhaustibility, ability to recover the lost energy, ability to learn from practice, and so on, but they are still exclusively adjusted to the needs of the school-teacher and of the nerve specialist and would hardly be immediately useful to the manager of a factory. we shall need a long careful series of investigations in order to determine how far those manifold results from experiments with memory work, thought work, writing work, and so on can be applied to the work which the industrial laborer is expected to perform. xviii physical and social influences on the working power the increase and decrease of the ability to do good work depends of course not only upon the direct fatigue from labor and the pauses for rest; a large variety of other factors may lead to fluctuations which are economically important. the various hours of the day, the seasons of the year, the atmospheric conditions of weather and climate, may have such influence. some elements of this interplay have been cleared up in recent years. just as the experiments of pedagogical psychology have determined the exact curve of efficiency during the period of an hour in school, so other investigations have traced the typical curve of psychical efficiency throughout the day and the year. sociological and criminological statistics concerning the fluctuations in the behavior of the masses, common-sense experience of practical life, and finally, economic statistics concerning the quantity and quality of industrial output in various parts of the day and of the year, have supplemented one another. the systematic assistance of the psychological laboratory, however, has been confined to the educational aspect of the problem. psychological experiments have determined how the achievement of the youth in the schoolroom changes with the months of the year and the hours of the day. it seems as if it could not be difficult to secure here, too, a connection between exact experiment and economic work. much will have to be reduced to individual variations. the laboratory has already confirmed the experience of daily life that there are morning workers whose strongest psychophysical efficiency comes immediately after the night's rest, while the day's work fatigues them more and more; and that there are evening workers who in the morning still remain under the after effects of the night's sleep, and who slowly become fresher and fresher from the stimuli of the day. it would seem not impossible to undertake a systematic selection of various individuals under this point of view, as different industrial tasks demand a different distribution of efficiency between morning and night. such a selection and adjustment may be economically still more important with reference to the fluctuations during the course of the year. economic inquiries, for instance, have suggested that younger and older workingmen who ordinarily show the same efficiency become unequal in their ability to do good work in the spring months, and the economists have connected this inequality with sexual conditions. but other factors as well, especially the blood circulation of the organism and the resulting reactions to external temperature, different gland activities, and so on, cause great personal differences in efficiency during the various seasons of the year. inasmuch as we know many economic occupations in which the chief demand is made in one or another period of the year, a systematic study of these individual variations might be of high economic value, where large numbers are involved, and might contribute much to the individual comfort of the workers. but a constant relation to day and year also seems to exist independent of all personal variations. when the sun stands at its meridian, a minimum of efficiency is to be expected and a similar minimum is to be found at the height of summer. correspondingly we have an increase of the total psychical efficiency in winter-time. during the spring-time the behavior seems, as far as the investigations go, to be different in the intellectual and in the psychomotor activities. it is claimed that the efficiency of the intellectual functions decreases as the winter recedes, but that the efficiency of psychomotor impulses increases.[ ] the influences of the daily temperature, of the weather and of the seasons may be classed among the physical conditions of efficiency. we may group with them the effects of nourishment, of stimulants, of sleep, and so on. as far as the relations between these external factors and purely bodily muscle work are involved, the interests of the psychologists are not engaged. but it is evident that every one of these relations also has its psychological aspect, and that a really scientific psychotechnical treatment of these problems can become possible only through the agency of psychological experiments. we have excellent experimental investigations concerning the influence of the loss of sleep on intellectual labor and on simple psychomotor activities. but it would be rather arbitrary to deduce from the results of those researches anything as to the effect of reduction of sleep on special economic occupations. yet such knowledge would be of high importance. we have in the literature concerned with accidents in transportation numerous popular discussions about the destructive influence of loss of sleep on the attention of the locomotive engineer or of the helmsman or of the chauffeur, but an analysis of the particular psychophysical processes does not as yet exist and can be expected only from systematic experiments. nor has the influence of hunger on psychotechnical activities been studied in a satisfactory way. a number of psychological investigations have been devoted to the study of the influence of alcohol on various psychical functions and in this field at least the strictly economic problem of industrial labor has sometimes been touched. we have the much quoted and much misinterpreted experiments [ ] which were carried on in germany with typesetters. the workmen received definite quantities of heavy wine at a particular point in the work and the number of letters which they were able to set during the following quarter-hours were measured and compared with their normal achievement in fifteen minutes. the reduction of efficiency amounted on the average to per cent of the output. it may be mentioned that the loss referred only to the quantity of the work and not at all to the quality. the well-known subjective illusory feeling of the subjects was not lacking; they themselves believed that the wine had reinforced their working power. as soon as such experiments are put into the service of economic life, they will have to be carried on with much more accurate adjustment to the special conditions, with subtler gradation of the stimuli, and especially with careful study of individual factors. but at first it seems more in the interest of the practical task that the extremely complicated problem of the influence of alcohol be followed up by purely theoretical research in the laboratory in order that the effect may be resolved into its various components. we must first find the exact facts concerning the influence of alcohol on elementary processes of mental life, such as perception, attention, memory, and so on, and this will slowly prepare the way for the complete economic experiment. at present the greatest significance for the economic field may be attached to those alcohol experiments which dealt with the apprehension of the outer world. they proved a reduction in the ability to grasp the impressions and a narrowing of the span of consciousness. the indubitable decrease of certain memory powers, of the acuity in measuring distance, of the time estimation, and similar psychical disturbances after alcohol, must evidently be of high importance for industry and transportation, while the well-known increase of the purely sensory sensibility, especially of the visual acuity after small closes of alcohol, hardly plays an important rôle in practical life. the best-known and experimentally most studied effect of alcohol, the increase of motor excitability, also evidently has its importance for industrial achievements. it cannot be denied that this facility of the motor impulses after small doses of alcohol is not a real gain, which might be utilized economically, but is ultimately an injury to the apparatus, even if we abstract from the retardation of the reaction which comes as an after-effect. the alcoholic facilitation, after all, reduces the certainty and the perfection of the reaction and creates conditions under which wrong, and this in economic life means often dangerous, motor responses arise. the energy of the motor discharge suffers throughout from the alcohol. some experiments which were recently carried on with reference to the influence of alcohol on the power of will seem to have especial significance for the field of economic activity. the method applied in the experiment was the artificial creation of an exactly measurable resistance to the will-impulse directed toward a purpose. the experiment had to determine what power of resistance could be overcome by the will and how far this energy changes under the influence of alcohol. for this end combinations of meaningless syllables were learned and repeated until they formed a close connection in memory. if one syllable was given, the mechanical tendency of the mind was to reproduce the next syllable in the memorized series. the will-intention was then directed toward breaking this memory type. for instance, it was demanded, when a syllable was called, that the subject should not answer with the next following syllable, but with a rhyming syllable. this will-impulse easily succeeded when the syllables to be learned had been repeated only a few times, while after a very frequent repetition the memory connection offered a resistance which the simple will-intention could not break. the syllable which followed in the series rushed to the mind before the intention to seek a rhyming syllable could be realized. the number of repetitions thus became a measure for the power of the will. after carrying out these experiments at first under normal conditions, they were repeated while the subjects were under the influence of exactly graded doses of alcohol.[ ] from such simple tasks the experiment was turned to more and more complex ones of similar structure. all together they showed clearly that the alcohol did not influence the ability to make the will effective and that the actual decrease of achievement results from a decrease in the ability to grasp the material. as long as the alcohol doses are small, this feeling of decreased ability stirs up a reinforcement in the tension of the will-impulse. this may go to such an extent that the increased will-effort not only compensates for the reduced understanding, but even over-compensates for it, producing an improvement in the mental work. but as soon as the alcohol doses amount to about cubic centimeters, the increased tension of the will is no longer sufficient to balance the paralyzing effect in the understanding. yet it must not be overlooked that in all these experiments only isolated will acts were in question which were separated from one another by pauses of rest. evidently, however, the technical laborer is more often in a situation in which not isolated impulses, but a continuous tension of the will is demanded. how far such an uninterrupted will-function is affected by alcohol has not as yet been studied with the exact means of the experiment. to be sure an obvious suggestion would be that the whole problem, as far as economics, and especially industry, are concerned, might be solved in a simpler way than by the performance of special psychological experiments, namely, by the complete elimination of alcohol itself from the life of the wage-earner. the laboratory experiment which seems to demonstrate a reduction of objective achievement in the case of every important mental function merely supplements in exact language the appalling results indicated by criminal statistics, disease statistics, and inheritance statistics. it seems as if the time had come when scientists could not with a good conscience suggest any other remedy than the merciless suppression of alcohol. indeed, there can be no doubt that alcohol is one of the worst enemies of civilized life, and it is therefore almost with regret that the scientist must acknowledge that all the psychological investigations, which have so often been misused in the partisan writings of prohibitionists, are not a sufficient basis to justify the demand for complete abstinence. first, newer experiments make it very clear that many of the so-called effects of alcohol which the experiment has demonstrated are produced or at least heightened by influences of suggestion. experiments which have been carried on in england for the study of that point show clearly that certain psychical disturbances which seem to result from small doses of alcohol fail to appear as soon as the subject does not know that he has taken alcohol. for that purpose it was necessary to eliminate the odor, and this was accomplished by introducing the beverages into the organism by a stomach pump. when by this method sometimes water and sometimes diluted alcohol was given without the knowledge of the subject, the usual effects of small doses of alcohol did not arise. but another point is far more important. we may take it for granted that alcohol reduces the ability for achievement as soon as such very small doses are exceeded. but from the standpoint of economic life we have no right to consider a reduction of the psychical ability to produce work as identical with a decrease in the economic value of the personality. such a view would be right if the influence necessarily set in at the beginning of the working period. but if, for instance, a moderate quantity of beer is introduced into the organism after the closing of the working day, it would certainly produce an artificial reduction of the psychical ability, and yet this decrease of psychophysical activity might be advantageous to the total economic achievement of the workingman in the course of the week or the year. to be sure the glass of beer in the evening paralyzes certain inhibitory centres of the brain and therefore puts the mind out of gear, but such a way of expressing it may easily be misleading, as it suggests too much that a real injury is done. from the point of view of scientific psychology, we must acknowledge that such a paralyzing effect in certain parts of the psychophysical system sets in with every act of attention and reaches its climax in sleep, which surely does no harm to the mind. it may be thoroughly advantageous for the total work of the normal, healthy, average workingman if the after effects of the motor excitement of the day are eliminated by a mild, short alcoholic poisoning in the evening. it may produce that narrowing and dulling of consciousness which extinguishes the cares and sorrows of the day and secures the night's sleep, and through it increased efficiency the next morning. systematic experiments with exact relation to the various technical demands must slowly bring real insight into this complex situation. the usual hasty generalization from a few experiments with alcohol for partisan interests is surely not justified in the present unsatisfactory state of knowledge.[ ] perhaps we know still less of the influences which coffee, tea, tobacco, sweets, and so on exert on the life of the industrial worker. it will be wise to resolve these stimuli in daily use into their elements and to study the effects of each element in isolated form. to know, for instance, the effects of caffein on the psychophysical activities does not mean to know the effects of tea or coffee, which contain a variety of other substances besides the caffein, substances which may be supposed to modify the effect of the caffein. yet the first step must in this case be the study of the effects of the isolated caffein, before the total influences of the familiar beverages can be followed up. an excellent investigation of this caffein effect on various psychological and psychomotor functions has recently been completed.[ ] when the caffein effect on tapping movements was studied, it was found that it works as a stimulation, sometimes preceded by a slight initial retardation. it persists from one to two hours after doses of from one to three grains and as long as four hours after doses of six grains. the steadiness test showed a slight nervousness after several hours after doses of from one to four grains. after six grains there is pronounced unsteadiness. a complex test in coördination indicated that the effect of small, amounts of caffein is a stimulation and that of large amounts a retardation. correspondingly the speed of performance in typewriting is heightened by small doses of caffein and retarded by larger doses. in both cases the quality of the performance as measured by the number of errors is superior to the normal result. the influences of the physiological stimulants have many points of contact with the effects of social entertainment, the significance of which for the economic life is still rather unknown in any exact detail. many factories in which the labor is noiseless, as in the making of cigars, have introduced gramophone music or reading aloud, and it is easy to understand theoretically that a certain animating effect results, which stimulates the whole psychophysical activity but only the experiment would be able to decide how this stimulation is related, for instance, to the distraction of attention, which is necessarily involved, or how it influences various periods of the work and various types of work, how far it is true that the musical key exerts an exciting or relaxing influence, what intensity and what local position, what rhythm and what duration of such æsthetic stimuli, would bring the best possible economic results. we all have read of the favorable effects which were secured in a factory when a cat was brought into every working-room in which women laborers were engaged in especially fatiguing work. the cat became a living toy for the employees, which stimulated their social consciousness. in not a few plants the reinforced achievement is explained by the social means of entertainment, which have been introduced under the pressure of modern philanthropic ideas. the lounging-rooms with the newspapers and periodicals the clubrooms with libraries, the excursions and dances and patriotic festivities, fill up the reservoir of psychophysical energies. as a matter of course all the social movements which enhance the consciousness of solidarity among the laborers and the feeling of security as to their future development in their career have a similar effect of reinforcing the normal psychical achievement. as the strongest factor, finally, the direct material interest must be added to these conditions. the literature of political economy is full of discussions of the effect of increase of wages, of the payment of bonuses and premiums, of piece-wages, of promised pensions, and, as far as europe is concerned, of state insurance. in short, the whole individual financial situation in its relation to the psychophysical achievement of the wage-earner is a favorite topic of economic inquiry. we cannot participate here in these inexhaustible discussions, because all these questions are to-day still so endlessly far from the field of psychological experiments. nevertheless we ought not to forget the experience through which general experimental psychology has gone in the last few decades. when the first experiments were undertaken in order to deal systematically with the mental life, the friends of this new science and its opponents agreed, on the whole, in the belief that certainly only the most elementary phenomena of consciousness, the sensations and the reactions of impulses, would be accessible to the new method. the opponents naturally compared this modest field with the great problems of the mental totality, and therefore ridiculed the new narrow task as unimportant. the friends, on the other hand, were eager to follow the fresh path, because they were content to gain real exactitude by the experiment at least in these simplest questions. yet as soon as the new independent workshops were established for the young science, it was discovered that the method was able to open fields in which no one had anticipated its usefulness. the experiments turned to the problems of attention, of memory, of imagination, of feeling, of judgment, of character, of æsthetic experience and so on. it is not improbable that the method of the economic psychological experiment may also quickly lead beyond the more elementary problems, as soon as it is systematically applied, and then it, too, may conquer regions of inquiry in which to-day no exact calculation of the psychological factors seems possible. if such an advance is to be a steady one, the economic psychologist will emancipate himself from the chance question of what problems are at this moment important for commerce and industry and will proceed systematically step by step from those results which the psychological laboratory has yielded under the non-economic points of view. many previous psychological or psychophysical inquiries almost touch the problems of industrial achievement. for instance, the experiments on imitation, which psychophysicists have carried on in purely theoretical or pedagogical interests, move parallel to industrial experiences. it is well known that the pacemaker plays his rôle not only in the field of sport but also in the factory. the rhythm of one laborer gains controlling importance for the others, who instinctively imitate him. some plants even have automatically working machines with the special intention that the sharp rhythm of these lifeless forerunners shall produce an involuntary imitation in the psychophysical system. in a similar way many laboratory investigations on suggestion and suggestibility point to such economic processes, and it seems to me that especially the studies on the influence of the ideas of purpose which are being undertaken nowadays in many psychological laboratories may easily be connected with the problems of economic life. we know how the consciousness of the task to be performed has an organizing influence on the system of those psychophysical acts which lead to the goal. the experiment has shown under which conditions this effect can be reinforced and under which reduced. pedagogical experiments have also shown exactly what influence belongs to the consciousness of the approach to the end of work; the feeling of the nearness of the close heightens the achievement, even of the fatigued subject. it would not be difficult to connect psychophysical experiments of this kind with the problems of the task and bonus system, which is nowadays so much discussed in industrial life. the practical successes seem to prove that the individual can do more with equal effort if he does not stand before an unlimited mass of work of which he has to do as much as possible in the course of the day, but if he is before a definitely determined, limited task with the demand that he complete it in an exactly calculated time. scientific management has made far-reaching use of this principle, but whether constant results for the various industries can be hoped for from such methods must again be ascertained by the psychological experiment. these hopes surely will not weaken the interest of the psychologist for those many psychological methods which lie outside of the experimental research. a sociologist, who himself had been a laborer in his earlier life, undertook in germany last year an inquiry into the psychological status of the laborers' achievement by the questionnaire method.[ ] he sent to workingmen in the mining industries, textile industries, and metal industries, blanks containing questions, and received more than replies. the questions referred to the pleasure and interest in the work, to preferences, to fatigue, to the thoughts during the work, to the means of recreation, to the attitude toward the wages, to the emotional situation, and so on. the answers allowed manifold classifications. the various mental types of men could be examined, the influence of the machine, the attitude toward monotony, the changes of pleasure and interest in the work with the age of the laborer, the time at which fatigue becomes noticeable, and so on. many psychological elements of industrial life thus come to a sharp focus and the strong individual differences could not be brought out in a more characteristic way. yet, all taken together, even such a careful investigation on a psychostatistical basis strongly suggests that a few careful experimental investigations could lead further than such a heaping-up of material gathered from men who are untrained in self-observation and in accurate reports, and above all who are accessible to any kind of suggestion and preconceived idea. the experimental method is certainly not the only one which can contribute to reforms in industrial life and the reinforcement of industrial efficiency, but all signs indicate that the future will find it the most productive and most reliable. part iii the best possible effect xix the satisfaction of economic demands every economic function comes in contact with the mental life of man, first from the fact that the work is produced by the psyche of personalities. this gave us the material for the first two parts of our discussion. we asked what mind is best fitted for the particular kind of work, and how the mind can be led to the best output of work. but it is evident that the real meaning of the economic process expresses itself in an entirely different contact between work and mind. the economic activity is separated from all other processes in the world, not by the fact that it involves labor and achievement by personalities, but by the fact that this labor satisfies a certain group of human desires which we acknowledge as economic. the mere performance of labor, with all the psychical traits of attention and fatigue and will-impulses and personal qualities, does not in itself constitute anything of economic value. for instance, the sportsman who climbs a glacier also performs such a fatiguing activity which demands the greatest effort of attention and will; and yet the psychotechnics of sport do not belong in economic psychology, because this mountain climbing does not satisfy economic desires. the ultimate characteristic which designates an activity as economic is accordingly a certain effect on human souls. the whole whirl of the economic world is ultimately controlled by the purpose of satisfying certain psychical desires. hence this psychical effect is still more fundamental for the economic process than its psychical origin in the mental conditions of the worker. the task of psychotechnics is accordingly to determine by exact psychological experiments how this mental effect, the satisfaction of economic desires, can be secured in the quickest, in the easiest, in the safest, in the most enduring, and in the most satisfactory way. but we must not deceive ourselves as to the humiliating truth that so far not the slightest effort has been made toward the answering of this central scientific question. if the inquiry into the psychical effects were really to be confined to this problem of the ultimate satisfaction of economic desires, scientific psychology could not contribute any results and could not offer anything but hopes and wishes for the future. at the first glance it might appear as if just here a large amount of literature exists; moreover, a literature rich in excellent investigations and ample empirical material. on the one side the political economists, with their theories of economic value and their investigations concerning the conditions of prices and the development of luxury, the calculation of economic values from pleasure and displeasure and many similar studies, have connected the economic processes with mental life; on the other side the philosophers, with their theories of value, have not confined themselves to the ethical and æsthetic motives, but have gone deeply into the economic life too. while such studies of the economists and of the philosophers are chiefly meant to serve theoretical understanding, it might seem easy to deduce from them technical practical prescriptions as well. if we know that under particular conditions certain demands will be satisfied, we draw the conclusion that we must realize those conditions whenever such demands are to be satisfied. the theoretical views of the economists and of the philosophers of value might thus be directly translated into psychotechnical advice. as soon as we look deeper into the situation, we must recognize that this surface impression is entirely misleading. certainly whenever the philosophers or political economists discuss the problems of value and of the satisfaction of human demands, they are using psychological terms, but the whole meaning which they attach to these terms, feeling, emotion, will, desire, pleasure, displeasure, joy, and pain, is essentially different from that which controls the causal explanations of scientific psychology. we cannot enter into the real fundamental questions here, which are too often carelessly ignored even in scientific quarters. too often psychology is treated, even by psychologists, as if it covered every possible systematic treatment of inner experience, and correspondingly outsiders like the economists fancy that they are on psychological ground and are handling psychological conceptions as soon as they make any statements concerning the inner life. but if we examine the real purposes and presuppositions of the various sciences, we must recognize that the human experience can be looked on from two entirely different points of view. only from one of the two does it present itself as psychological material and as a fit object for psychological study. from the other point of view, which is no less valuable and no less important for the understanding of our inner life, human experience offers itself as a reality with which psychology as such has nothing to do, even though it may be difficult to eliminate the usual psychological words. the psychologist considers human experience as a series of objects for consciousness. all the perceptions and memory ideas and imaginative ideas and feelings and emotions, are taken by him as mental objects of which consciousness becomes aware, and his task is to describe and to explain them and to find the laws for their succession. he studies them as a naturalist studies the chemical elements or the stars. it makes no difference whether his explanation leads him to connect these mental contents with brain processes as one theory proposes, or with subconscious processes as another theory suggests. the entirely different aspect of inner life is the one which is most natural in our ordinary intercourse. whenever we give an account of our inner life or are interested in the experience of our friends, we do not consider how their mental experiences as such objective contents of consciousness are to be described and explained, but we take them as inner actions and attitudes toward the world, and our aim is not to describe and to explain them but to interpret and to understand them. we do not seek their elements but their meaning, we do not seek their causes and effects but their inner relations and their inner purposes. in short, we do not take them at all as objects but as functions of the subject, and our dealing with them has no similarity to the method of the naturalist. this method of practical life in which we seek to express and to understand a meaning, and relate every will-act to its aim, is not confined to the mere popular aspect; it can lead to very systematic scholarly treatment. it is exactly the treatment which is fundamental in the case of all history, for example, or of law, or of logic. that is, the historian makes us understand the meaning of a personality of the past and is really interested in past events only as far as human needs are to be interpreted. it would be pseudo-psychology, if we called such an account in the truly historical spirit a psychological description and explanation. the student of law interprets the meaning of the will of the legislator; he does not deal with the idea of the law as a psychological content. and the logician has nothing to do with the idea as a conscious object in the mind; he asks as to the inner relations of it and as to the conclusions from the premises. in short, wherever historical interpretations or logical deductions are needed, we move on in the sphere of human life as it presents itself from the standpoint of immediate true experience without artificially moulding it into the conceptions of psychology. on the other hand, as soon as the psychological method is applied, this immediate life meaning of human experience is abandoned, and instead of it is gained the possibility of considering the whole experience as a system of causes and effects. mental life is then no longer what it is to us in our daily intercourse, because it is reconstructed for the purposes of this special treatment, just as the water which we drink is no longer our beverage if we consider it under the point of view of chemistry as a combination of hydrogen and oxygen. hence we have not two statements one of which is true and the other ultimately untrue; on the contrary, both are true. we have a perfect right to give the value of truth to our experience with water as a refreshing drink, and also to the formula of the chemist. with a still better right we may claim that both kinds of mental experience are equally true. hence not a word of objection is raised against the discussions of the historians and the philosophers, if we insist that their so-called psychology stands outside of the really descriptive and explanatory account of mental life, and is therefore not psychology in the technical sense of the word. it is this historical attitude which controls all the studies of the political economists. they speak of the will-acts of the individuals and of their demands and desires and satisfactions, but they do not describe and explain them; they want to interpret and understand them. they may analyze the motives of the laborer or of the manufacturer, but those motives and impulses interest them not as contents of consciousness, but only as acts which are directed toward a goal. the aim toward which these point by their meaning, and not the elements from which they are made up or their causes and effects, is the substance of such economic studies. for such a subjective account of the meaning of actions the only problem is, indeed, the correct understanding and interpretation, and the consistent psychologist who knows that it is not his task to interpret but to explain has no right to raise any questions here. it is, therefore, only a confusing disturbance, if a really psychological, causal explanation is mixed into the interpretation of such a system of will-acts and purposes. it is true we find this confusion in many modern works on economics. economists know that a scientific explanatory study of the human mind exists, and they have a vague feeling that they have no right to ignore this real psychology, instead of recognizing that the psychology really has nothing to do with their particular problem. the result is that they constantly try to discuss the impulses and instincts, the hunger and thirst and sexual desire, and the higher demands for fighting and playing and acquiring, for seeking power and social influence, as a psychologist would discuss them, referring them to biological and physiological conditions and explaining them causally. yet as soon as they come to their real problems and enter into the interpretation and meaning of these economic energies, they naturally slide back into the historical, economic point of view and discuss the economic relations of men without any reference to their psychologizing preambles. the application of the psychological, scientific method to the true economic experience is therefore not secured at all in this way. the demands and volitions which they disentangle are not the ones which the psychophysiologist studies, because they are left in their immediate form of life reality. they are accordingly inaccessible to the point of view of experimental psychology, and nothing can be expected from such interpretative discussions of the economists for the psychotechnics at which the psychologist is aiming. even where the political economists deal with the problems of value in exact language, nothing is gained for the kind of insight for which the psychologist hopes, and the psychologists must therefore go on with their own methods, if they are ever to reach a causal understanding of the means by which a satisfaction of the economic demands may be effected. so far the psychologists have not even started to examine these economic feelings, demands, and satisfactions with the means of laboratory psychology. hence no one can say beforehand how it ought to be done and how to gain access to the important problems, inasmuch as the right formulation of the problem and the selection of the right method would here as everywhere be more than half of the solution. it must be left to the development of science for the right starting-point and the right methods to be discovered. sometimes, to be sure, the experiment has at least approached this group of economic questions. for instance, the investigations of the so-called psychophysical law have often been brought into contact with the experiences of ownership and acquirement. the law, well known to every student of psychology, is that the differences of intensity in two pairs of sensations are felt as equal, when the two pairs of stimuli are standing in the same relation. the difference between the intensities of the light sensations from candles and candles is equal to that from candles and candles, from candles and , from candles and : that is, the difference of one additional candle between and appears just as great as the difference of candles between and . the psychologists have claimed that in a corresponding way the same feeling of difference arises when the amounts of possessions stand in the same relation. that is, the man who owns $ feels the gain or loss of $ as much as one who owns $ , feels the gain or loss of $ . not the absolute amount of the difference, but the relative value of the increase or decrease is the decisive influence on the psychological effect. some experimental investigations concerning feelings have also come near to the economic boundaries. the study of the contrast feelings and of the relativity of feelings, for instance, has points of contact with the economic problem of how far economic progress, with its stirring up and satisfying of continually new demands, really adds to the quantity of human enjoyment. in other words, how far are those sociologists right who are convinced that by the technical complexity of modern life, with all its comforts and mechanizations, the level of individual life is raised, but that the oscillations about this average level remain the same and produce the same amount of pleasure and pain? the technical advance would therefore bring no increase of human pleasure. we might also put into this class the meagre experimental investigations concerning the mutual influence of feelings. when sound, light, and touch impressions, each of which, isolated, produces a feeling of a certain degree, are combined with one another, the experiment can show very characteristic changes in the intensity of pleasure and displeasure. from such routine experiments of the laboratory it might not be difficult to come to more complex experiments on the mutual relations of feeling values and especially of the combinations of pleasure with displeasure. this would lead to an insight into the processes which are involved in the fixing of prices, as they are always dependent upon the pleasure in the acquisition and the displeasure in the outlay. the exact psychology of the future may thus very well determine the conditions under which the best effects for the satisfaction of economic demands may be secured, but our present-day science is still far from such an achievement: and it seems hardly justifiable to propose methods to-day, as it would be like drawing a map with detailed paths for a primeval forest which is still inaccessible. xx experiments on the effects of advertisements we have said that the time has not yet come for discussing from the standpoint of experimental psychology the means to secure the ultimate effects of economic life, namely, the satisfaction of economic demands. if this were the only effect which had economic significance, this whole last part of our little book would have to remain a blank, as we wanted to deal here with the securing of the best effects after having studied the securing of the best man and of the best work. yet these ultimate ends are certainly not the only mental effects which become important in the course of economic processes. in order to reach that final end of the economic movement, often an unlimited number of part processes distributed over space and time must coöperate. the satisfaction of our thirst in a tea-room may be a trivial illustration of such a final effect, but it is clear that in order to produce this ultimate mental effect of satisfying the thirst, thousands of economic processes must have preceded. to bring the tea and the sugar and the lemon to the table, the porcelain cup and the silver spoon, wage-earners, manufacturers and laborers, exporters, importers, storekeepers, salesmen, and customers had to coöperate. among such part processes which serve the economic achievement are always many which succeed only if they produce characteristic effects in human minds. the propaganda which the storekeeper makes, for instance, his display and his posters, serve the economic interplay by psychical effects without themselves satisfying any ultimate economic demand. they must attract the passer-by or impress the reader or stimulate his impulse to buy, and through all this they reach an end which is in itself not final, as no human desire to read advertisements exists. when the salesman influences the customer to buy something which may later help to satisfy a real economic demand, the art of his suggestive words secures a mental effect which again is in itself not ultimate. if the manufacturer influences his employees to work with more attention or with greater industry, or if the community stirs up the desire for luxury or the tendency to saving, we have mental effects which are of economic importance without being really ultimate economic effects. as far as these effects are necessary and justified stages leading to the ultimate satisfaction of economic demands, it certainly is the duty of applied psychology to bring psychological experience and exact methods into their service. we emphasize the necessary and justified character of these steps, as it is evident that psychological methods may be made use of also by those who aim toward mental effects which are unjustified and which are not necessary for the real satisfaction of valuable demands. psychological laws can also be helpful in fraudulent undertakings or in advertisements for unfair competition. the psychotechnical scientist cannot be blamed if the results of his experiments are misused for immoral purposes, just as the chemist is not responsible if chemical knowledge is applied to the construction of anarchistic bombs. but while psychology, as we have emphasized before, cannot from its own point of view determine the value of the end, the psychologist as a human being is certainly willing to coöperate only where the soundness and correctness of the ends are evident from the point of view of social welfare. in order to demonstrate the principle of this kind of psychotechnical help with fuller detail, at least by one illustration, i may discuss the case of the advertisements, the more as this problem has already been taken up in a somewhat systematic way by the psychological laboratories. we have a number of careful experimental investigations referring to the memory-value, the attention-value, the suggestion-value, and other mental effects of the printed business advertisements. of course this group of experimental investigations at once suggests an objection which we cannot ignore. a business advertisement, as it appears in the newspapers, is such an extremely trivial thing and so completely devoted to the egotistical desire for profit that it seems undignified for the scientist to spend his time on such nothings and to shoot sparrows with his laboratory cannon-balls. but on the one side nothing can be unworthy of thorough study from a strictly theoretical point of view. the dirtiest chemical substance may become of greatest importance for chemistry, and the ugliest insect for zoölogy. on the other side, if the practical point of view of the applied sciences is taken, the importance of the inquiry may stand in direct relation to the intensity of the human demand which is to be satisfied by the new knowledge. present-day society is so organized that the economic advertisement surely serves a need, and its intensity is expressed by the well-known fact that in every year billions are paid for advertising. measured by the amount of expenditure, advertising has become one of the largest and economically most important human industries. it is, then, not astonishing that scientists consider it worth while to examine the exact foundations of this industry, but it is surprising that this industry could reach such an enormous development without being guided by the spirit of scientific exactitude which appears a matter of course in every other large business. as it is a function of science to study the physics of incandescent lamps or gas motors so as to bring the economically most satisfactory devices into the service of the community, it cannot be less important from the standpoint of national economics to study scientifically the efficiency of the advertisements in order that the national means may in this industry, too, secure the greatest possible effects. it is only a secondary point that experiments of this kind are of high interest to the theoretical scientist as well. for us the advertisement is simply an instrument constructed to satisfy certain human demands by its effects on the mind. it is a question for psychology to determine the conditions under which this instrument may be best adapted to its purpose. the mental effect of a well-adapted advertisement is manifold. it appeals to the memory. whatever we read at the street corner, or in the pages of the newspaper or magazine, is not printed with the idea that we shall immediately turn to the store, but first of all with the expectation that we keep the content of the advertisement in our memory for a later purchase. it will therefore be the more valuable the more vividly it forces itself on the memory. but if practical books about the art of advertising usually presuppose that this influence on the memory will be proportionate to the effect on the attention, the psychologist cannot fully agree. the advertisement may attract the attention of the reader strongly and yet by its whole structure may be unfit to force on the memory its characteristic content, especially the name of the firm and of the article. the pure memory-value is especially important, as according to a well-known psychological law the pleasure in mere recognition readily attaches itself to the recognized object. the customer who has the choice among various makes and brands in the store may not have any idea how far one is superior to another, but the mere fact that one among them bears a name which has repeatedly approached his consciousness before through advertisements is sufficient to arouse a certain warm feeling of acquaintance, and by a transposition of feeling this pleasurable tone accentuates the attractiveness of that make and leads to its selection. this indirect help through the memory-value is economically no less important than the direct service. in order to produce a strong effect on memory the advertisement must be easily apprehensible. psychological laboratory experiments with exact time-measurement of the grasping of various advertisements of the same size for the same article, but in different formulations, demonstrated clearly how much easier or harder the apprehension became through relatively small changes. no mistake in the construction of the advertisement causes so much waste as a grouping which makes the quick apperception difficult. the color, the type, the choice of words, every element, allows an experimental analysis, especially by means of time-measurement. if we determine in thousandths of a second the time needed to recognize the characteristic content of an advertisement, we may discriminate differences which would escape the naïve judgment, and yet which in practical life are of considerable consequence, as the effect of a deficiency is multiplied by the number of readers. we must insist on the further demand that the advertisement make a vivid impression, so that it may influence the memory through its vividness. size is naturally the most frequent condition for the increase of vividness, but only the relative size is decisive. the experiment shows that the full-page advertisement in a folio magazine does not influence the memory more than the full page in a quarto magazine, if the reader is for the time adjusted to the particular size. no less important than the size is the originality and the unusual form, the vivid color, the skillful use of empty spaces, the associative elements, the appeal to humor or to curiosity, to sympathy or to antipathy. every emotion can help to impress the content of the advertisement on the involuntary memory. unusual announcements concerning the prices or similar factors move in the same direction. together with the question of the apprehension and the vividness of the impression, we must acknowledge the frequency of repetition as an equally important factor. we know from daily life how an indifferent advertisement can force itself on our mind, if it appears daily in the same place in the newspaper or is visible on every street corner. but the psychologically decisive factor here is not the fact of the mere repetition of the impression, but rather the stimulation of the attention which results from the repetition. if we remained simply passive and received the impression the second and third and fourth time with the same indifference with which we noticed it the first time, the mere summation would not be sufficient for a strong effect. but the second impression makes the consciousness of recognition, thus exciting the attention, and through it we now turn actively to the repeated impression which forces itself on our memory with increased vividness on account of this active personal reaction. we may consider how such factors can be tested by the psychotechnical experiment. scott, for instance, studied the direct influence of the relative size of the advertisements.[ ] he constructed a book of a hundred pages from advertisements which had been cut from various magazines and which referred to many different articles. fifty persons who did not know anything about the purpose of the experiment had to glance over the pages of the book as they would look though the advertising parts of a monthly. the time which they used for it was about ten minutes. as soon as they had gone through the hundred pages, they were asked to write down what they remembered. the result from this method was that the persons mentioned on an average every full-page advertisement - / times, every half-page less than times, every fourth-page a little more than time, and the still smaller advertisements only about / time. this series of experiments suggested accordingly that the memory value of a fourth-page advertisement is much smaller than one fourth of the memory-value of a full-page advertisement, and that of an eighth-page again much smaller than one half of the psychical value of a fourth-page. the customer who pays for one eighth of a page receives not the eighth part, but hardly the twentieth part of the psychical influence which is produced by a full page. these experiments, which were carried on in various forms, demanded as a natural supplement a study of the effects of repetition in relation to size. this was the object of a series of tests which i carried on recently in the harvard laboratory. i constructed the following material: sheets of bristol board in folio size were covered with advertisements which were cut from magazines the size of the "saturday evening post" and the "ladies' home journal." we used advertisements ranging from full-page to twelfth-page in size. every one of the full-page advertisements which we used occurred only once, each of the half-page advertisements was given times, each of the fourth-page size, times, each of the eighth-page size, times, and each of the twelfth-page size, times. the repetitions were cut from copies of the magazine number. the same advertisement never occurred on the same page; every page, unless it was covered by a full-page advertisement, offered a combination of various announcements. it is evident that by this arrangement every single advertisement occupied the same space, as the times repeated eighth-page advertisement filled a full page too. thus no one of the announcements which we used was spatially favored above another. thirty persons took part in the experiment. each one had to devote himself to the pages in such a way that every page was looked at for exactly seconds. between each two pages was a pause of seconds, sufficient to allow one sheet to be laid aside and the next to be grasped. in minutes the whole series had been gone through, and immediately after that every one had to write down what he remembered, both the names of the firms and the article announced. in the cases where only the name or only the article was correctly remembered, the result counted / . we found great individual differences, probably not only because the memory of the different persons was different, but also because they varied in the degree of interest with which they looked at such material. the smallest number of reproductions was , of which were only half remembered, that is, only the name or only the article, and as we counted these half reproductions / , the memory-value for this person was counted . the maximum reproduction was , of which were half remembered. if these calculated values are added and the sum divided by the number of participants, that is, , and this finally by the number of the advertisements shown, that is, , we obtain the average memory-value of a single advertisement. the results showed that this was . . but our real interest referred to the distribution for the advertisements of different size. if we make the same calculation, not for the totality of the advertisements but for those of a particular size, we find that the memory-value for the full-page advertisement was . , for the times repeated half-page advertisement, . , for the times repeated fourth-page advertisement, . , for the times repeated eighth-page advertisement, . , and for the times repeated twelfth-page advertisement, . . hence we come to the result that the times repeated fourth-page advertisement as - / times stronger than one offering of a full-page, or the times repeated half-page, but that this relation does not grow with a further reduction of the size. two thirds of the subjects were men and one third women. on the whole, the same relation exists for both groups, but the climax of psychical efficiency was reached in the case of the men by the times repeated fourth-page, in the case of the women by the times repeated eighth-page. the times repeated fourth-page in the case of the women was . , in the case of the men, . , the times repeated eighth-page, women, . , men, . . i am inclined to believe that the ascent of the curve of the memory-value from the full-page to the fourth-page or eighth-page would have been still more continuous, if the whole-page advertisements had not naturally been such as are best known to the american reader. the whole-page announcement, therefore, had a certain natural advantage. but when we come to another calculation, even the effect of this advantage is lost. we examined the relations for the first names and articles, which every one of the persons wrote down. these first were mostly dashed down quickly without special thought. they also included only a few half reproductions. when we study these answers which the persons wrote as their first reproductions, and calculate from them the chances which every one of the advertisements had for being remembered, we obtain the following values: the probability of being remembered among the first was for the full-page advertisement, . , for the half-page times repeated, . , for the fourth-page times repeated, . , for the eighth-page times repeated, . , and for the twelfth-page times repeated, . . the superiority of repetition over mere size appears most impressively in this form, but we see again in this series that the effect decreases even with increased number of repetitions as soon as the single advertisement sinks below a certain relative size, so that the times repeated twelfth-page advertisement does not possess the memory-value of the times repeated fourth-page advertisement. if scott's experiments concerning the size and these experiments of mine concerning the repetition are right, the memory-value of the advertisements for economic purposes is dependent upon complicated conditions. a business man who brings out a full-page advertisement once in a paper which has , readers would leave the desired memory-impression on a larger number of individuals than if he were to print a fourth-page advertisement in four different cities in four local papers, each of which has , readers. but if he uses the same paper in one town, he would produce a much greater effect by printing a fourth of a page four times than by using a full-page advertisement once only. as a matter of course this would hold true only as far as size and repetition are concerned. many other factors have to be considered besides. some of these could even be studied with our material. we could study from our results what memory-value is attached to the various forms of type or suggestive words, what influence to illustrations, how far they reinforce the impressiveness and how far they draw away the attention from the name and the object, how these various factors influence men and women differently, and so on. other questions, however, demand entirely different forms of experiment. we may examine the effects of special contrast phenomena, of unusual background, of irregular borders and original headings. the particular position of the advertisement also deserves our psychological interest. the magazines receive higher prices for the cover pages and the newspapers for advertisements which are surrounded by reading matter. in both cases obvious practical motives are decisive. the cover page comes into the field of vision more frequently. what is surrounded by reading matter is less easily overlooked. but the newspaper world hardly realizes how much other variations of position influence the psychological effect. starch[ ] made experiments in which he did not use real advertisements, but meaningless syllables so as to exclude the influence of familiarity with any announcement. he arranged little booklets, each of pages, on which a syllable such as _lod_, _zan_, _mep_, _dut_, _yib_, and so on was printed in the middle of each page. each of his subjects glanced over the book and then wrote down what syllables remained in memory. he found that the syllables which stood on the first and last page were remembered by persons, those on the second and eleventh by about , and those on the eight other pages by an average of persons. in the next experiment he printed one syllable in the middle of the upper and one in the middle of the lower half of each page. the results now showed that of those syllables which were remembered per cent stood on the upper half and per cent on the lower half of the page. finally, he divided every page into four parts and printed one syllable on the middle of each fourth of a page. the results showed that of the remembered syllables per cent stood on the left-hand upper fourth, per cent on the right-hand upper fourth, per cent left-hand lower, and per cent right-hand lower. a fourth-page advertisement which is printed on the outer side of the upper half of the page thus probably has more than twice the psychological value of one which is printed on the inner side of the lower half. the economic world spends millions every year for advertisements on the upper right-hand side and millions for advertisements on the lower left-hand side, and is not aware that one represents twice the value of the other. these little illustrations of advertisement experiments may suffice to indicate how much haphazard methods are still prevalent in the whole field of economic psychotechnics, methods which would not be tolerated in the sphere of physical and chemical technology. xxi the effect of display if we turn from the simple newspaper advertisement to the means of propaganda in general, we at once stand before a question which is often wrongly answered. the practical handbooks of advertisements and means of display treat it as a self-evident fact that every presentation should be as beautiful as possible. in the first place, we cannot deny that the ugly and even the disgusting possess a strong power for attracting attention. yet it is true that by a transposition of feelings the displeasure in the advertisement may easily become a displeasure in the advertised object. but, on the other hand, it is surely a mistake to believe that pure beauty best fulfills the function of the advertisement. even the draftsman who draws a poster ought to give up the ambition to create a perfect picture. it might have the power to attract attention, but it would hardly serve its true purpose of fixing the attention on the article which is advertised by the picture. the very meaning of beauty lies in its self-completeness. the beautiful picture rests in itself and does not point beyond itself. a really beautiful landscape painting is an end in itself, and must not stir up the practical wish to visit the landscape which has stimulated the eye of the painter. if the display is to serve economic interests, every line and every curve, every form and every color, must be subordinated to the task of leading to a practical resolution, and to an action, and yet this is exactly the opposite of the meaning of art. art must inhibit action, if it is perfect. the artist is not to make us believe that we deal with a real object which suggests a practical attitude. the æsthetic forms are adjusted to the main æsthetic aim, the inhibition of practical desires. the display must be pleasant, tasteful, harmonious, and suggestive, but should not be beautiful, if it is to fulfill its purpose in the fullest sense. it loses its economic value, if by its artistic quality it oversteps the boundaries of that middle region of arts and crafts. this of course stands in no contradiction to the requirement that the advertised article should be made to appear as beautiful as possible. the presentation of something beautiful is not necessarily a beautiful presentation, just as a perfectly beautiful picture need not have something beautiful as its content. a perfect painting may be the picture of a most ugly person. we have not yet spoken of the suggestive power of the means of propaganda. every one knows the influence on taste and smell, on social vanity, on local pride, on the gambling instinct, on the instinctive fear of diseases, and above all on the sexual instinct, can gain suggestive power. everywhere among the uncritical masses such appeals reach individuals whose psychophysical attitudes make such influences vivid and overpowering. every one knows, too, those often clever linguistic forms which are to aid the suggestion. they are to inhibit the opposing impulses. the mere use of the imperative, to be sure, has gradually become an ineffective, used-up pattern. it is a question for special economic psychotechnics to investigate how the suggestive strength of a form can be reinforced or weakened by various secondary influences. what influence, for example, belongs to the electric sign advertisements in which the sudden change from light to darkness produces strong psychophysical effects, and what value belongs to moving parts in the picture? the psychologist takes the same interest in the examples of window displays, sample distributions, and similar vehicles of commerce by which the offered articles themselves and not their mere picture or description are to influence the consciousness of the prospective customer. here, too, every element may be isolated and may be brought under psychotechnical rules. the most external question would refer to the mere quantity of the presented material. the psychologist would ask how the mere mass of the offering influences the attention, how far the feeling of pleasure in the fullness, how far the æsthetic impression of repetition, how far the associative thought of a manifold selection, how far the mere spatial expansion, affects the impression. in any case, as soon as it is acknowledged as desirable to produce with certain objects the impression of the greatest possible number, the experimental psychologist stands before the concrete problem of how a manifoldness of things is to be distributed so that it will not be underestimated, perhaps even overestimated as to quantity. again, the laboratory experiment would not proceed with real window displays or real exhibitions, but would work out the principle with the simplified experimental means. an investigation in the harvard laboratory, for instance, tested the influence which various factors have upon the estimation of a number of objects seen.[ ] the question was how far the form or the size or the distribution makes a group of objects appear larger or smaller. the experiment was started by showing small cards on a black background in comparison with another group of cards the number of which varied between and . at first the form of these little cards was changed: triangles, squares, and circles were tried. or the color was changed: light and dark, saturated and unsaturated colors were used. or the order was varied: sometimes the little cards lay in regular rows, sometimes in close clusters, sometimes widely distributed, sometimes in quite irregular fashion. or the background was changed, or the surrounding frame, or the time of exposure, and so on. each time the subjects had to estimate whether the second group was the larger or equal or the smaller. these experiments indicated that such comparative estimation was indeed influenced by every one of the factors mentioned. if the experiments show that an irregular distribution makes the number appear larger or a close clustering reduces the apparent number, and so on, the business man would be quite able to profit from such knowledge. the jeweler who shows his rings and watches in his window wishes to produce with his small stock the impression of an ample supply. he lacks the psychology which might teach him whether he would act more wisely in having the rings and the watches separated, or whether he should mix the two, whether he ought to choose a background which is similar in color or one which contrasts with the pieces exhibited, whether he ought to present the single object in a special background as in a case, or to show it without one. he is not aware that by simple psychological illusions, it is not difficult to change the apparent size of an isolated object by special treatment, making his show-piece appear larger by a fitting background or intentionally making a dainty object appear smaller by contrasting surroundings. these, to be sure, are very trivial illustrations, but the same fundamental psychological laws which are true for the show-window of the next corner store are true for the world-display of the nation. the point is to present clearly the idea, which can be most simply expressed in such trivial material. but it may be added that even in the case of the most indifferent example a few hasty experiments with one or two subjects cannot yield any results of value. all parts of physiological psychological optics can contribute similar material. the questions of color harmony and color contrast, light intensity and mutual support of uniformly colored objects, of irradiation, depth and perspective, are significant for an effective display in the show-window, and the laboratory results can easily be translated into psychotechnical prescriptions. but here it is still more necessary to separate carefully the merely optical impression from its æsthetic side. all that we claimed as to the poster is still more justified for the presentation of the saleable objects themselves. as soon as the display of the articles forms a real work of art, it must produce inhibitions in the soul of the spectator by which the practical economic desire is turned aside. beauty here too has strong power of attraction, and moreover the suggestive power, by which it withdraws our senses from the chance surroundings, forces us to lose ourselves in the offered presentation. but just through this process the content of the display becomes isolated and separated from the world of our practical interests. our desires are brought to silence, we do not seek a personal relation to the things which we face as admiring spectators, and the intended economic effect is therefore eliminated. whoever is to examine the psychotechnics of displays and exhibitions must therefore study the psychology of æsthetic stimulation, of suggestion, of the effects of light, color, form and movement, of apperception and attention, and ought not to forget the psychology of humor and curiosity, of instincts and emotions. for us the essential point is that here too the experimental psychological method alone is able to lead from mere chance arrangements founded on personal taste to the systematic construction which secures with the greatest possible certainty the greatest possible mental effect in the service of the economic purpose. the problems of the storekeeper who arranges his windows, however, overlap the problems of the manufacturer who prepares his goods for the world-market, and who must from the start take care that the outer appearance of his goods stimulate the readiness to buy. in factories in which these questions have been carefully considered, the psychological elements have always been found to be the most influential, but often the most puzzling. i received material from a number of industrial plants which sold the same article in a variety of packings. the material which was sent to me included all kinds of soaps and candies, writing-papers and breakfast foods, and other articles which are handled by the retailer, the sale of which depends upon the inclination and caprice of the customer in the store. for every one of these objects a number of external covers and labels were sent and with them a confidential report with details about their relative success. for instance, a certain kind of chocolate was sold under different labels. one of them was highly successful in the whole country, and one other had made the same article entirely unsaleable. the other could be graded between these extremes. in all cases the covers were decorated with pictures of women with a scenic background. as long as only æsthetic values were considered, all were on nearly the same level, and æsthetically skilled observers repeatedly expressed their preference for some of the unsuccessful pictures over some of the successful ones. but as soon as an internal relation was formed between the pictures and the chocolate, in the one case a mental harmony resulted which had strong suggestive power, in the other case a certain unrest and inner disturbance which necessarily had an inhibiting influence. the picture which was unsuccessful with the sweets would perhaps have been eminently successful for tobacco. from such elementary starting-points, the laboratory experiment might proceed systematically into spheres of economic life hitherto untouched by scientific methods. the psychology of the influence of external forms on the conscious reactions of the masses is so far usually considered only when, as often happens, the most fundamental demands are violated; for instance, when objects which are to give the impression of ease are painted in colors which give a heavy, clumsy appearance, or _vice versa_, when book-bindings are lettered in archaic type which makes the reading of the title impossible for a passer-by, and in many similar antipsychological absurdities which any stroll through the streets of a modern city forces on us. xxii experiments with reference to illegal imitation it is perhaps not without interest to turn into a by-path at this point of our road. all the illustrations which we have picked out so far have referred to strictly economic conditions. but we ought not to forget that these economic problems of commerce and industry are everywhere in contact with legal interests as well. in order to indicate the manifoldness of problems accessible to the experimental method, we may discuss our last question, the question of packing and of labels, in this legal relation too. all the packings, covers, labels, trademarks, and names by which the manufacturer tries to stimulate the attention, the imagination, and the suggestibility of the customer may easily draw a large part of their psychological effectiveness from without, as soon as they imitate the appearance of articles which are well introduced and favored in the market. if the public is familiar with and favorably inclined toward an article on account of its inner values or on account of its being much advertised, a similar name or a similar packing may offer efficient help to a rival article. the law of course protects the label and the deceiving imitation can be prosecuted. but no law can determine by general conceptions the exact point at which the similarity becomes legally unallowable. this creates a situation which has given rise to endless difficulties in practical life. if everything were forbidden which by its similarity to an accredited article might lead to a possible confusion in the mind of the quite careless and inattentive customer, any article once in the market would have a monopoly in its line. as soon as a typewriter or an automobile or a pencil or a mineral water existed, no second kind could have access to the market, as with a high degree of carelessness one economic rival may be taken for another, even if the new typewriter or the new pencil has a new form and color and name. on the other side, the purchaser could never have a feeling of security if imitations were considered as still legally justifiable when the difference is so small that it needs an intense mental effort and careful examination of details to notice it. the result is that the jurisdiction fluctuates between these two extremes in a most alarming way, and this seems to hold true in all countries. in theory: "there is substantial agreement that infringement occurs when the marks, names, labels, or packings of one trader resemble those of another sufficiently to make it probable that ordinary purchasers, exercising no more care than such persons usually do in purchasing the article in question, will be deceived." but it depends upon the trade experts and the judges to give meaning to such a statement in the particular case, as the amount of care which purchasers usually exercise can be understood very differently. sometimes the customer is expected to proceed with an attention which is most subtly adjusted to the finest differences, and sometimes it is taken for granted that he is unable to notice even strong variations. it is clear that this uncertainty which disturbs the whole trade cannot be eliminated as long as the psychological background has not been systematically studied. mere talking about the attention of the customer, and his ability to decide and select, and of his observations and his habits in the spirit of popular common-sense psychology, can never secure exact standards and definite demarcation lines. the question is important not only where imitations of morally doubtful character are in the market. even the most honest manufacturer is in a certain sense obliged to imitate his predecessors, as they have directed the taste and habits of the public in particular directions, and as the product of his company would suffer unnecessarily if he were to disregard this psychical attitude of the prospective customers. the economic legal situation accordingly suggests the question whether it would not be possible to devise methods for an exact measurement of the permissible similarity, and this demand for exactitude naturally points to the methods of the psychological experiment. e.s. rogers, esq., of chicago, who has thoroughly discussed the legal aspect of the problem,[ ] first turned my attention to the psychological difficulty involved. when i approached the question in the harvard psychological laboratory, it was clear to me that the degree of attention and carefulness which the court may presuppose on the part of the customer can never be determined by the psychologist and his experimental methods. it would be meaningless, if we tried to discover by experiments a particular degree of similarity which every one ought to recognize or a particular degree of attention which would be sufficient for protection against fraud. such degrees must always remain dependent upon arbitrary decision. they are not settled by natural conditions, but are entirely dependent upon social agreement. a decision outside of the realm of psychology must fix upon a particular degree in the scale of various similarity values as the limit which is not to be passed. the aim of the psychologist can be only to construct such a scale by which decisions may be made comparable and by which standards may become possible. the experiment cannot deduce from the study of mental phenomena what degrees of similarity ought to be still admissible, but it may be able to develop methods by which different degrees of similarity can be discriminated and by which a certain similarity value once selected can always be found again with objective certainty. after many fruitless efforts i settled on the following form of experiments, which i hope may bring us nearer to the attainment of the purpose. a group of objects is observed for a definite time and after a definite interval another group of objects is offered for comparison. this second group is identical with the first in all but one of the objects, and this is replaced by a similar one. the question is how often this substitution will be noticed by the observers. i may give in detail a characterization of the set of experiments in which we are at present engaged. we are working with picture postal cards, using many hundred cards of different kinds, but for each one we have one or several similar cards. as postal cards are generally manufactured in sets, it is not difficult to purchase pairs of pictures with any degree of similarity. two cards with christmas trees, or two with easter eggs, or two with football players, or two with forest landscapes, and so on, may differ all the way from a slight variation of color or a hardly noticeable change in the position of details to variations which keep the same motive or the same general arrangement, but after all make the card strikingly different. the first step is to determine for each pair the degree of similarity, on a percentage basis. to overcome mere arbitrariness, we ask thirty to forty educated persons to express the similarity value, calling identical postal cards per cent and two postal cards as different as a colored flower piece and a black picture of a street scene o. the average value of these judgments is then considered as expressing the objective degree of similarity between the two pictures of a pair. after securing such standard values, we carry on the experiments in the following form. six different postal cards, for instance, are seen on a black background through the opening of a shutter which is closed after seconds. the six may be made up of a landscape, a building, a head, a genre scene, and so forth. after seconds the same group of postal cards is shown once more, except that one is replaced by a similar one, instead of one church another church building, or instead of a vase with roses a vase with pinks. if the substituted picture has the average similarity value of per cent and we make the experiment with persons, the substitution may be discovered by persons and remain unnoticed by . we can now easily vary every one of the factors involved. if instead of cards, we take , it may be that only out of persons, instead of , will discover the substitution, while if we take cards instead of , perhaps persons out of will recognize the difference under these otherwise equal conditions. only an especially careless observer will overlook it. but instead of changing the number of objects, we may change the periods of exposure. if we show the cards only for seconds instead of seconds, the number of those who recognize the difference may sink from to or , and if we make the time considerably longer, we shall of course reach a point where all will recognize the substitution. the same holds true of the shortening or lengthening of the time-interval between the two presentations. the third variable factor is the similarity itself. if instead of one church, not another church, but a theatre or a skyscraper is shown, that is, if the similarity value of per cent sinks down to a similarity of per cent or per cent, the number of those who recognize the substitution will again become larger; if, on the other hand, the substituted card shows the same church, only from a slightly different angle, bringing the similarity value up to per cent or per cent, the number of observers who recognize the substitution may sink to or . to make the experiments reliable, it is also necessary frequently to mix in cases in which no substitution at all is introduced. if these experiments are varied sufficiently and a large mass of material brought together, we must be able to secure definite formulæ. we may find that if the critical card appears among cards, is shown for seconds, and the group is again exposed after seconds, per cent of the subjects will recognize the substitution of a similar card, if the degree of similarity is per cent, but only per cent will recognize it if the degree of similarity is per cent, and only per cent will recognize it if the degree of similarity is per cent. these are entirely fictitious figures and are only to indicate the principle. if such an exact formula were definitely discovered, we should still be unable to say from mere psychological reasoning what similarity value is legally permissible. if the rules against infringement are interpreted in a very rigorous spirit, it may seem desirable to prohibit imitations which are as little similar as those postal cards which were graded as per cent in our similarity scale, and if the interpretation is a loose one, it may appear permissible to have imitations on the market which are as strongly similar as our postal cards graded at per cent in our similarity scale. all this would have to be left to the lawmakers and to the judges. but what we would have gained is this. we could say: if our object exposed for seconds in a group of other objects is replaced after an interval of seconds by an imitation and this change is recognized by persons among , the degree of similarity is per cent and if it is recognized by out of subjects, the degree of similarity is per cent. in short, from any percentage of subjects who under these conditions discovered the substitution, we could determine the degree of similarity, independent of any individual arbitrariness. if such methods were accepted by the trade and the courts, it would only be necessary, to agree on the percentage of similarity which ought to be permitted, and all uncertainty would disappear. there would be no wrangling of opposing interests; it would be possible to find out whether the permitted limit were overstepped or not with an exactitude similar to that with which the weight or the chemical constitution of a trade commodity is examined. certainly the experiment establishes here conditions which are very different from those of practical life. the customer who wants to buy a particular picture postal card which he saw once before and to whom the salesman offers a similar one, suggesting that it is the same, is facing only one card and not a group of six. but in practical life the card which be has seen was not observed with the definite intention of keeping the memory picture in mind, and months may have passed since it was seen. the memory picture which the customer has in his consciousness when he seeks the particular card is much weakened by this circumstance too. we secure this weakening artificially by the arrangement of the experiment in placing the card in a group of six or ten and exposing them for a few seconds only. the force of attention and the corresponding memory-value are by this distribution diminished in a definite degree in the case of every single card. the investigation must include a careful study of the size of the groups, of the time-relations, of the percentage of correct answers, all under the point of view of greatest fitness for practical application. in the harvard laboratory the research has been carried on partly with such picture material, partly with word material, and partly with concrete objects.[ ] whatever the details of the outcome may be, we hope that the work will lead to results which may, indeed, make such a psychotechnical use possible. its principles and formulæ might easily be adjusted to any marketable material. as a matter of course, if in future the courts were ever to accept such psychological, experimental methods, it would be intolerable dilettantism if such experiments were carried on by lawyers and district attorneys. it is as true of this economic legal question as of many other legal psychological problems that its introduction into the courtroom can become desirable only when psychological experts are engaged and called in the same way as chemical or medical experts are invited to the court. on the other hand, there is surely not the slightest desire on the part of psychologists to be dragged into humiliating performances like those which not only handwriting experts, but even psychiatric specialists have had to undergo repeatedly in sensational court trials. the day for the expert activity in the courtroom will came for the psychologist only when the country has attached the expert to the court and has eliminated the expert retained by the plaintiff or the defendant. but this general practical question as to the position of the psychologist in the courtroom and as to the need of a psychological laboratory in connection with the courts would lead us too far aside. xxiii buying and selling the effects which we have studied so far were produced by inanimate objects, posters or displays, advertisements or labels and packings. the economic psychotechnics of the future will surely study with similar methods the effects of the living commercial agencies. experiments will trace the exact effects which the salesman or customer may produce. but here not even a modest beginning can be discovered, and it would be difficult to mention a single example of experimental research. the desired psychological influences of the salesman are not quite dissimilar to those of the printed means of propaganda. here, too, it is essential to turn the attention of the customer to different points, to awaken a vivid favorable impression, to emphasize the advantages of the goods, to throw full light on them, and finally to influence the will-decision either by convincing arguments or by persuasion and suggestion. in either case the point is to enhance the impulse to buy and to suppress the opposing ideas. yet every one of these factors, when it starts from a man and not from a thing or paper, changes its form. the influence becomes narrower, it is directed toward a smaller number of persons; but, on the other hand, it gains just by the new possibility of individualization. the salesman in the store or the commercial traveler adjusts himself to the wishes, reactions, and replies of the buyer. above all, when it becomes necessary to direct the attention to the decisive points, the personal agent has the possibility of developing the whole process through a series of stages so that the attention slowly becomes focused on one definite point. the salesman observes at first only the general limits of the interest of the customer as far as it is indicated by his reactions, but slowly he can find out in this whole field the region of strongest desires. as soon as he has discovered this narrower region in which the prospects of success seem to be greatest, he can systematically eliminate everything which distracts and scatters the attention. he can discover whether the psyche of the individual with whom he is dealing can be influenced more strongly by logical arguments or by suggestion, and how far he may calculate on the pleasure instincts, on the excitement of emotions, on the impulse to imitate, on the natural vanity, on the desire for saving, and on the longing for luxury. in every one of these directions the whole play of human suggestion may be helpful. the voice may win or destroy confidence, the statement may by its firmness overcome counter-motives or by its uncertainty reinforce them. even hand or arm movements by their motor suggestion may focus the desires of the customers, while unskillful, erratic movements may scatter the attention and lead to an inner oscillation of the will to buy. at every one of these points the psychological experiment may find a foothold, and only through such methodological study can the haphazard proceedings of the commercial world be transformed into really economic schemes. indeed, it seems nothing but chance that just this field is controlled by chance alone. the enormous social interplay of energies which are discharged in the selling and buying of the millions becomes utterly planless as soon as salesman and customer come into contact, and this tremendous waste of energy cannot appear desirable for any possible interest of civilization. the time alone which is wasted by useless psychophysical operations in front of and behind the counter represents a gigantic part of the national budget. even the complaints about the long working day of the salesgirls might be eliminated from the debit account of the national ledger, if the commercial companies could study the psychical processes in selling and buying with the same carefulness with which they analyze all details in preparing the stock and fixing the prices. in the army or in the fire department, in the railroad service, and even in the factory, all necessary activities are so arranged that as far as possible the greatest achievement is secured by the smallest amount of energy. but when the hundreds of millions of customers in the civilized world want to satisfy their economic demands in the stores, the whole dissolves into a flood of talk, because no one has taken the trouble to examine scientifically the psychotechnics of selling and to put it on a firm psychological foundation. the idea of scientific management must be extended from the industrial concerns to the commercial establishments. the questioning and answering, the showing and replacing of the goods, the demonstrating and suggesting by the salesmen, must be brought into an economic system which saves time and energy, as has been tried with the laborer in the factory. wherever economic processes are carried out with superfluous, haphazard movements, the national resources have to suffer a loss. the single individual can never find the ideal form of motion and the ideal process by mere instinct. a systematic investigation is needed to determine the way to the greatest saving of energy, and the result ought to be made a binding rule for every apprentice. how the smallest influences grow by summation may be illustrated by the experience of a large department store, in which the expense for delivery of the articles sold was felt as too large an item in the budget. the hundreds of saleswomen therefore received the order after every sale of moderate-sized articles not to ask, as before, "may we send it to you?" but instead, "will you take it with you?" probably none of the many thousand daily customers observed the difference, the more as it was indifferent to most of them whether they took the little package home themselves or not. in cases in which it was inconvenient, they would anyhow oppose the suggestion and insist that the purchase be sent to them. yet it is claimed that this hardly noticeable suggestion led to a considerable saving in the following year, distinctly felt in the budget of the whole establishment. we must not forget, however, that the process of buying deserves the same psychological interest as that of selling. if psychotechnics is to be put into the service of a valuable economic task, the goal cannot possibly be to devise schemes by which the customer may easily be trapped. the purpose of science cannot be to help any one to sell articles to a man who does not need them and who would regret the purchase after quiet thought. the applied psychologist should help the prospective buyer no less, and must protect him so that his true intention may become realized in the economic process. otherwise through his suggestibility, the determining idea of his goal might fade in his consciousness and the appeal to his vanity or to his instincts might awaken an anti-economic desire which he would be too weak to inhibit. the salesman must know how to use arguments and suggestions and how to make them effective,[ ] but the customer too must know how to see through a misleading argument and how to resist mere suggestion. the postulate that the psychical factors in commercial life are to be carefully regarded is repeated in more complex form in the wholesale business and in the stock exchange. it is a perfectly justified and consistent thought which recently led a large credit bureau to an effort to base its information on psychological analysis. it is well known that there are bureaus in which the ledger experiences of a large circle of companies in the same commercial line are collected, tabulated, and recorded, thus affording an automatic review of the occurrences, focusing early attention on doubtful accounts and pointing out weaknesses in the customers' conditions, as they develop, as well as evidences of prosperity. the ledger experience which a single company has with all its customers is tabulated without revealing its identity to the associates, who get reports containing it, and the many combined ledgers become a valuable guide. yet all such methods can show only actual movements in the market, and cannot allow the prospects of future development to be determined, simply because they cannot take into account the personal equations. only an acquaintance with the character and the temperament, the intelligence and the habits, the energy and the weakness, of the head of a firm can tell us whether the company, even with satisfactory resources, may go down, or whether, even though embarrassed, it may hold out. the psychological pioneer, therefore, aims not only toward an exchange of ledger accounts, but toward a real psychological diagnosis and prognosis. if a member of a firm is personally known to some scores of business men who have had commercial dealings with him, and each one of them, without disclosing his identity to any one but the central bureau, sends to it a statement of personal impressions, a composite picture of the mental physiognomy can be worked out. of course all this has been often done in the terms of popular psychology and in a haphazard, amateurish way. the new plan is to arrange the questions systematically under the point of view of scientific descriptive psychology. regular psychograms, in which the probability of a particular kind of behavior is to be determined in an exact percentage calculation, are to replace the traditional vagueness, as soon as a sufficient number of reliable answers have been tabulated. commercial life as a whole finds its contact with psychology, of course, not only in the problem of how to secure the best mental effect. those other questions which we have discussed essentially with reference to factory life and industrial concerns, namely, how the best man and the best work are to be secured, recur in the circle of commercial endeavors. it seems, indeed, most desirable to devise psychological tests by which the ability to be a successful salesman or saleswoman may be determined at an early stage. the lamentable shifting of the employees in all commercial spheres, with its injurious social consequences, would then be unnecessary, and both employers and employees would profit. moreover, like the selection of the men, the means of securing the most satisfactory work from them, has also so far been left entirely to common sense. commercial work stands under an abundance of varying conditions, and each may have influences the isolated effects of which are not known, because they have not been studied in that systematic form which only the experiment can establish. the popular literature on this whole group of subjects is extensive, and in its expansion corresponds to the widespread demand for real information and advice to the salesman. but hardly any part of the literature in the borderland regions of economics is so disappointing in its vagueness, emptiness, and helplessness. experimental psychology has nothing with which to replace it to-day, but it can at least show the direction from which decisive help may be expected in future. xxiv the future development of economic psychology here we may stop. from those elementary questions concerning the mental effects, the path would quickly lead to questions of gravest importance. what is the mental effect which the economic labor produces in the laborer himself? how do economic movements influence the mind of the community? how far do non-economic factors produce effects on the psychical mechanism of the economic agents? but it would be idle to claim to-day for exact psychology, with its methods of causal thought, regions in which so far popular psychology, with its methods of purposive thought, is still sovereign. our aim certainly was not to review the totality of possible problems related to economic efficiency, but merely to demonstrate the principles and the methods of experimental economic psychology by a few characteristic illustrations. as all the examples which we selected were chosen only in order to make clear the characteristic point of view of psychotechnics, it is unimportant whether the particular results will stand the test of further experimental investigations, or will have to be modified by new researches. what is needed to-day is not to distribute the results so far reached as if they were parts of a definite knowledge, but only to emphasize that the little which has been accomplished should encourage continuous effort. to stimulate such further work is the only purpose of this sketch. this further work will have to be a work of coöperation. the nature of this problem demands a relatively large number of persons for the experimental treatment. with most experimental researches in our psychological laboratories, the number of the subjects experimented on is not so important as the number of experiments made with a few well-trained participants. but with the questions of applied psychology the number of persons plays a much more significant rôle, as the individual differences become of greatest importance. the same problems ought therefore to be studied in various places, so that the results may be exchanged and compared. moreover, these psychological economic investigations naturally lead beyond the possibilities of the university laboratories. to a certain degree this was true of other parts of applied psychology as well. educational and medical experimental psychology could not reach their fullest productivity until the experiment was systematically carried into the schoolroom and the psychiatric clinic. but the classroom and the hospital are relatively accessible places for the scientific worker, as both are anyhow conducted under a scientific point of view. the teacher and the physician can easily learn to perform valuable experiments with school children or with patients. this favorable condition is lacking in the workshop and the factory, in the banks and the markets. the academic psychologist will be able to undertake work there only with a very disturbing expenditure of time and only under exceptional conditions. if such experiments, for instance, with laborers in a factory or employees of a railway are to advance beyond the faint first efforts of to-day and are really to become serviceable to the cultural progress of our time with effective completeness, they ought not to remain an accidental appendix to the theoretical laboratories. either the universities must create special laboratories for applied psychology or independent research institutes must be founded which attack the new concrete problems under the point of view of national political economy. experimental workshops could be created which are really adjusted to the special practical needs and to which a sufficiently large number of persons could be drawn for the systematic researches. the ideal solution for the united states would be a governmental bureau for applied psychology, with special reference to the psychology of commerce and industry, similar to the model agricultural stations all over the land under the department of agriculture. only when such a broad foundation has been secured will the time be ripe to carry the method systematically into the daily work. the aim will never be for real experimental researches to be performed by the foreman in the workshop or by the superintendent in the factory. but slowly a certain acknowledged system of rules and prescriptions may be worked out which may be used as patterns, and which will not presuppose any scientific knowledge, any more than an understanding of the principles of electricity is necessary for one who uses the telephone. but besides the rigid rules which any one may apply, particular prescriptions will be needed fitting the special situation. this leads to the demand for the large establishments to appoint professionally trained psychologists who will devote their services to the psychological problems of the special industrial plant. there are many factories that have scores of scientifically trained chemists or physicists at work, but who would consider it an unproductive luxury to appoint a scientifically schooled experimental psychologist to their staff. and yet his observations and researches might become economically the most important factor. similar expectations might be justified for the large department stores and especially for the big transportation companies. in smaller dimensions the same real needs exist in the ordinary workshop and store. it is obvious that the professional consulting psychologist would satisfy these needs most directly, and if such a new group of engineers were to enter into industrial life, very soon a further specialization might be expected. some of these psychological engineers would devote themselves to the problems of vocational selection and appointment; others would specialize on questions of advertisement and display and propaganda; a third group on problems of fatigue, efficiency, and recreation; a fourth on the psychological demands for the arrangement of the machines; and every day would give rise to new divisions. such a well-schooled specialist, if he spent a few hours in a workshop or a few days in a factory, could submit propositions which might refer exclusively to the psychological factors and yet which might be more important for the earning and the profit of the establishment than the mere buying of new machines or the mere increase in the number of laborers. no one can deny that such a transition must be burdened with difficult complications and even with dangers; and still less will any one doubt that it may be caricatured. one who demands that a chauffeur or a motorman of an electric railway be examined as to his psychical abilities by systematic psychological methods, so that accidents may be avoided, does not necessarily demand that a congressman or a cabinet minister or a candidate for marriage be tested too by psychological laboratory experiments, as the witty ones have proposed. and one who believes that the work in the factory ought to be studied with reference to the smallest possible expenditure of psychical impulses is not convinced that the same experimental methods will be necessary for the functions of eating and drinking and love-making, as has been suggested. and if it is true that difficulties and discomforts are to be feared during the transition period, they should be more than outweighed by the splendid betterments to be hoped for. we must not forget that the increase of industrial efficiency by future psychological adaptation and by improvement of the psychophysical conditions is not only in the interest of the employers, but still more of the employees; their working time can be reduced, their wages increased, their level of life raised. and above all, still more important than the naked commercial profit on both sides, is the cultural gain which will come to the total economic life of the nation, as soon as every one can be brought to the place where his best energies may be unfolded and his greatest personal satisfaction secured. the economic experimental psychology offers no more inspiring idea than this adjustment of work and psyche by which mental dissatisfaction in the work, mental depression and discouragement, may be replaced in our social community by overflowing joy and perfect inner harmony. the end notes [ ] the fullest account of the modern studies on individual differences is to be found in: william stern: die differentielle psychologie in ihren methodischen grundlagen. (leipzig, .) [ ] the practical applications of psychology in education, law, and medicine, i have discussed in detail in the books: münsterberg: psychology and the teacher. (new york, .) münsterberg: on the witness stand. (new york, .) (english edition under the title: psychology and crime.) münsterberg: psychotherapy (new york, .) [ ] frank parsons: choosing a vocation. (boston, .) [ ] m. bloomfield: the vocational guidance of youth. (boston, .) [ ] vocations for boys. (issued by the vocation bureau of boston. .) vocations for boston girls. (issued by the girls' trade education league. .) bulletins of vocation series. (issued by the women's educational and industrial union. .) [ ] f.w. taylor: the principles of scientific management. (new york, .) h.l. gantt: work, wages, and profits. (new york, .) and the books of emerson, gilbreth, goldmark, etc., to be mentioned later. [ ] h. emerson: efficiency as a basis for operation and wages. (new york, , p. .) [ ] h. emerson: the twelve principles of efficiency. (new york, , p. .) [ ] h emerson: the twelve principles, p. . [ ] h. emerson: the twelve principles, p. . [ ] f.w. taylor: the principles of scientific management, pp. - . [ ] the experiments are being conducted and will be published by mr. j.w. bridges. [ ] investigation of telephone companies: bureau of labor. (washington, government printing office, .) [ ] ries: beiträge zur methodik der intelligenzprüfung. (zeitschrift für psychologie, , vol. .) [ ] for a survey of a large number of such tests and bibliography, compare: g.m. whipple: manual of mental and physical tests. (baltimore, .) [ ] f.l. wells: the relation of practice to individual differences. (american journal of psychology, , vol. , pp. - .) [ ] m. bernays: auslese und anpassung der arbeiterschaft der geschlossenen grossindustrie, dargestellt an den verhältnissen der gladbacher spinnerei und weberei. (leipzig, , p. .) [ ] h.c. mccomas: some types of attention. (psychological review monographs, vol. , , .) [ ] max weber: zur psychophysik der industriellen arbeit. (archiv für sozialwissenschaft und sozialpolitik, and , vols. and .) [ ] bryan and harter: studies in the telegraphic language. (psychological review, vol. .) [ ] w.f. book: the psychology of skill. (university of montana, publications in psychology, .) [ ] h. münsterberg: beiträge zur experimentellen psychologie. (book iv, .) [ ] a.j. culler: interference and adaptability. (archives of psychology, .) [ ] the experiments are being conducted and will be published by mr. l.w. kline. [ ] adolf gerson: die physiologischen grundlagen der arbeitsteilung. (zeitschrift für sozialwissenschaft, .) [ ] karl bücher: arbeit und rhythmus. (fourth edition, leipzig, , p. .) [ ] frank g. gilbreth: motion study. (new york, .) [ ] taylor: the principles of scientific management. (new york, , p. .) [ ] the experiments are being conducted and will be published by mr. e.r. riesen. [ ] r. herbertz: zur psychologie des maschinenschreibens. (zeitschrift für angewandte psychologie, , vol. , p. .) [ ] c.l. vaughan: the moter power of complexity. (harvard psychological studies, vol. , , p. .) [ ] g.m. stratton: some experiments in the perception of the movement, color, and direction of lights. (psychological review monographs, vol. , .) [ ] the experiments are being conducted and will be published by miss l.m. seeley. [ ] h. münsterberg: beiträge sur experimentellen psychologie. (book iv, .) [ ] r.s. woodworth: accuracy of voluntary movement. (psychological review monographs, vol. , .) [ ] b.a. lenfest: the accuracy of linear movement. (harvard psychological studies, vol. , .) [ ] ranschburg: ueber die bedeutung der Ähnlichkeit beim erlernen, behalten und bei der reproduktion. (journal für psychologie und neurologie, vol. .) ranschburg: zeitschrift für psychologie und physiologie der sinnesorgane. (vol. , .) [ ] h. kleinknecht: the interference of optical stimuli. (harvard psychological studies, vol. , .) [ ] the experiments are being conducted and will be published by miss o.e. martin. [ ] henry p. kendall: unsystematized, systematized, and scientific management. (in addresses and discussions at the conference on scientific management held at dartmouth college, .) [ ] ernst abbé: gesammelte abhandlungen. (jena, , vol. , p. .) [ ] a full survey of the problem and its literature is contained in: josephine goldmark: fatigue and efficiency. (new york, .) [ ] f.w. taylor: the principles of scientific management. (new york, , p. .) [ ] w. hellpach: die geopsychischen erscheinungen, wetter, klima und landschaft und ihr einfluss auf das seelenleben (leipzig, p. - .) [ ] aschaffenburg: praktische arbeit unter alkoholwirkung (psychologische arbeiten--kraepelin, vol , .) [ ] hildebrand die beeinflussung der willenskraft durch den alkohol (königsberg, .) [ ] for the scientific facts concerning alcohol and bibliography compare hugo hoppe: die tatsachen über den alkohol (munich, .) [ ] h.l. hollingworth: the influence of caffein on mental and motor efficiency. (new york, .) [ ] levenstein: die arbeiterfrage. (munich, .) [ ] w.d. scott: the psychology of advertising. (boston, , p. .) [ ] d. starch: psychology of preferred positions. (judicious advertising, new york, november, .) [ ] c.t. burnett: the estimation of number. (harvard psychological studies, vol. , p. .) [ ] e.s. rogers: the unwary purchaser: a study in the psychology of trade mark infringement. (michigan law review, vol. , .) [ ] the experiments are being conducted and will be published by mr. g.a. feingold. [ ] w.d. scott: influencing men in business. (new york, .) index abstinence, . accidents, , , , , . adjustment, , . advertisement, . alcohol, , . analysis, , . apperception, . applied psychology, , , , . appointment, . apprentice, . arguments, . art, . artificial track, . association, , . attention, , , , , , , , . attitude, , . beauty, , . beginner, . buying, . caffein, . capitalism, . card test, . choice of vocation, , . color blindness, , . complication, . concentration, . confession, . consciousness, . conservation, . consulting psychologist, . conversation, . counting, . correlation, . court, . credit bureau, . criminal, . customer, . decision, , . discrimination, . display, . dispositions, , , . distraction, . distribution, . disturbances, . division of labor, , , . dynamogenic, . economics, , , . educational psychology, . efficiency, , , , , , , . effort, . electric railway, , , . energy, . entertainment, . ergograph, . exactitude, . examinations, . excitability, . experimental psychology, , , . expert, . factory, , , , , , . failure, . fatigue, , , , , , . feeling, , , . fitness, , , . foresight, . grading, , . groups, . habits, , . handwriting, . history, . household, . illusions, . imagination, . imitation, , . inclination, . individual differences, , , , , , , , . industrial experiments, . industry, , , . inhibition, , , , . injuries, . intelligence, . interest, . interference, . interruption, . intuition, . jurisdiction, . labels, , . labor legislation, . learning, , . legal psychology, , . localization of sound, . locomotives, . logic, . machine, , . mason, . meaning, . medical psychology, . memory, , , , , , . methods, . mills, . miniature models, . monotony, , . motormen, , . movement, , , , , . muscles, . nationality, . nervous disease, . newspaper, . noise, . number, . numerical results, . optics, . organization, . packing, . pauses, . pedagogy, , . personality, . position, . postal cards, . prejudices, . psychiatry, . psychological laboratories, , , , . psychophysical law, . psychotechnics, . qualities, . questionnaires, . race, . rapidity, . reaction-time, , . recognition, . repetition, , , , . rest, . rhythm, , . salesman, . satisfaction, . saving, , . school, , , . scientific management, , , , , . selection, . self-knowledge, , . self-observation, . selling, . sewing, . sex, . shifting, . ship models, . ship service, . shoveling, . signals, . similarity, , . size, . sleep, . social influences, . speed, , . subdivision, . suggestion, , . task, . technical sciences, . technique, , . telegraphy, . telephone service, . temperature, . tests, , , , . trade unions, . training, , , . type-setting, . typewriting, , . uncertainty, . unfitness, . uniformity, . . values, . visibility, . vividness, . vocation, , , . vocational counselor, . vocational guidance, , . wages, , , , . waste, , , . will-impulse, , . witness, . women, , . working-day, , . "boy wanted" nixon waterman [illustration] do not loiter or shirk, do not falter or shrink; but just think out your work and then work out your "think". other books by nixon waterman a book of verses in merry mood a book of cheerful rhymes. cloth, mo, each, $ . . forbes & company, chicago [illustration: cabin in which lincoln was born] "boy wanted" a book of cheerful counsel by nixon waterman author of "the girl wanted," "a book of verses," etc. toronto mcclelland & goodchild limited copyright, by nixon waterman _all rights reserved_ to --the boy who discerns he can never be "it" until he develops some "git-up-and-git." acknowledgments are hereby made to the publishers of life, success, saturday evening post, woman's home companion, st. nicholas, christian endeavor world, young people's weekly, youth's companion, and other periodicals, for their courteous permission to reprint the author's copyrighted poems which originally appeared in their publications. preface in presenting this book of cheerful counsel to his youthful friends, and such of the seniors as are not too old to accept a bit of friendly admonition, the author desires to offer a word of explanation regarding the history of the making of this volume. so many letters have been received from people of all classes and ages requesting copies of some of the author's lines best suited for the purpose of engendering a sense of self-help in the mind of youth, that he deems it expedient to offer a number of his verses in the present collected form. while he is indebted to a great array of bright minds for the prose incidents and inspiration which constitute a large portion of this volume, he desires to be held personally responsible for all of the rhymed lines to be found within these covers. it may be especially true of advice that "it is more blessed to give than to receive," but it is hoped that in this present form of tendering friendly counsel the precepts will be accepted in the same cheerful spirit in which they are offered. the author realizes that no one is more urgently in need of good advice and the intelligence to follow it than is the writer of these lines, and none cries more earnestly the well-known truth-- oh, fellow men and brothers, could we but use the free advice we give to others, how happy we should be! while the title of this book and the character of its contents make it obvious that it is a volume designed primarily for the guidance of youth, no one should pass it by merely because he has reached the years of maturity, and presumably of discretion. as a matter of fact time cannot remove any of us very far from the fancies and foibles, the dreams and dangers of life's morning hours. age bringeth wisdom, so they say, but lots of times we've seen a man long after he was gray keep right on being "green." n. w. contents chapter page i the awakening the life partnership. when to begin. foresight. "boy wanted." the power of mind. "couldn't and could." selfmade men. "deliver the goods." ii "am i a genius?" genius defined. inspiration and perspiration. "stick to it." genius and patience. "keep pegging away." examples of patience. "the secret of success." iii opportunity what is a fair chance? abraham lincoln. depending on self. "myself and i." the importance of the present moment. "right here and just now." poverty and success. "keep a-trying." iv over and underdoing precocity. starting too soon as bad as starting too late. the value of health. "making a man." the worth of toil. "how to win success." sharpened wits. "the steady worker." v the value of spare moments wasting time. "the 'going-to-bees!'" the possibilities of one hour a day. "just this minute." the vital importance of properly employing leisure moments. "do it now." vi cheerfulness the value of smiles. "to know all is to forgive all." hope and strength. "a cure for trouble." carlyle on cheerfulness. "the one with a song." pessimism as a barrier to success. "a smile and a task." a profitable virtue. "an open letter to the pessimist." vii dreaming and doing practicality. "hank streeter's brain-wave." self-esteem. "the valley of never." opportunity and application. "yender grass." viii "trifles" the value of little things. sowing and reaping. the power of habit. "'i wish' and 'i will.'" jenny lind's humble beginning. canova's genius. present opportunities. "'now' and 'waitawhile.'" ix the worth of advice heeding the sign-post. the value of guide-books. "the world's victors." good books a boy's best friend. the danger of knowing too much. "my boyhood dreams." reading and reflecting. x real success are you the boy wanted? money and success. "on getting rich." thinking and doing. life's true purpose. "the mother's dream." illustrations lincoln's birthplace _frontispiece_ patrick henry delivering his celebrated speech facing page whittier's birthplace " " watt discovering the condensation of steam " " longfellow's birthplace " " garfield as a canal boy " " birthplace of benjamin franklin " " washington and lafayette at mount vernon " " "boy wanted" chapter i the awakening [sidenote: nothing is impossible to the man who can will.--mirabeau.] ho, my brave youth! there's a "boy wanted," and--how fortunate!--you are the very boy! who wants you? [sidenote: you will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some with you.--joubert.] the big, busy, beautiful world wants you, and i really do not see how it is going to get on well without you. it has awaited your coming so long, and has kept in store so many golden opportunities for you to improve, it will be disappointed if, when the proper time arrives, you do not smilingly lay hold and do something worth while. when are you to begin? [sidenote: things don't turn up in this world until somebody turns them up.--garfield.] oh, i sincerely hope that you have already begun to begin; that is, that you have already begun to train your hand and head and heart for making the most of the opportunities that await you. in fact, if you are so fortunate as to own thoughtful, intelligent parents, the work of fitting you for the victories of life was begun before you were old enough to give the subject serious consideration. [sidenote: work has made me what i am. i never ate a bit of idle bread in my life.--daniel webster.] "when shall i begin to train my child?" asked a young mother of a wise physician. "how old is the child?" inquired the doctor. "two years." [sidenote: in the blackest soils grow the fairest flowers, and the loftiest and strongest trees spring heavenward among the rocks.--holland.] "then you have already lost just two years," was his serious response. oliver wendell holmes, when asked the same question, said: "you must begin with the child's grandmother." [sidenote: without courage there cannot be truth; and without truth there can be no other virtue.--walter scott.] but no matter what has or has not been done for you up to the present time, you and i know that from now on your future welfare will be largely of your own making and in your own keeping. if you will thoughtfully plan your purpose as definitely as conditions will permit and then learn to stick to it through thick and thin, your success in life is quite well assured, and you need not fear that at the end of the journey you will have to say, as does many a man while retrospectively viewing his years: [sidenote: vigilance in watching opportunity; tact and daring in seizing upon opportunity; force and persistence in crowding opportunity to its utmost of possible achievement--these are the martial virtues which must command success.--phelps.] o'er life's long and winding pathway, looking backward, i confess i have not at looking forward been a genuine success. what is there for you to do? [sidenote: work is the inevitable condition of human life, the true source of human welfare.--tolstoi.] everything and anything you can do or care to do. you are to take your pick of all the trades, professions, and vocations of mankind. look about you and note the thousand and one things now being done by the men of to-day. it will not be so very long till all of these men will be old enough to retire from active service, and then you and the other boys, who in the meantime have grown to man's estate, will be called upon to perform every one of the tasks these men are now doing. doesn't it look as if there would be plenty of honest, earnest, wholesome toil for hand and head in store for you as soon as you are ready to undertake it? you cannot wonder that the busy old world is ever and always hanging out its notice-- "boy wanted" [sidenote: people do not lack strength; they lack will.--victor hugo.] "wanted--a boy." how often we this quite familiar notice see. wanted--a boy for every kind of task that a busy world can find. he is wanted--wanted now and here; there are towns to build; there are paths to clear; there are seas to sail; there are gulfs to span, in the ever onward march of man. [sidenote: you cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge one yourself.--froude.] wanted--the world wants boys to-day and it offers them all it has for pay. 'twill grant them wealth, position, fame, a useful life, and an honored name. boys who will guide the plow and pen; boys who will shape the ways for men; boys who will forward the tasks begun, for the world's great work is never done. [sidenote: the truest wisdom is a resolute determination.--napoleon.] the world is eager to employ not just one, but every boy who, with a purpose stanch and true, will greet the work he finds to do. honest, faithful, earnest, kind,-- to good, awake; to evil, blind,-- a heart of gold without alloy,-- wanted--the world wants such a boy. [sidenote: while we are considering when to begin, it is often too late to act.--quintilian.] no, the world does not insist that you are to accept a position and begin work with your hands at once, but it wishes you to begin to think right things. "as he thinketh in his heart, so is he." what you think will have much to do in determining what you are to become. the mind is master of the man, and so "they can who think they can." [sidenote: where boasting ends, there dignity begins.--young.] [sidenote: impossible is a word found only in the dictionary of fools.--napoleon.] this influence of the mind in thus shaping the man is very well set forth by james allen, who says: "a man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. if no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind. just as a gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds, and growing the flowers and fruits which he requires, so may a man tend the garden of his mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and impure thoughts, and cultivating toward perfection the flowers and fruits of right, useful, and pure thoughts. by pursuing this process, a man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life. he also reveals, within himself, the laws of thought, and understands, with ever-increasing accuracy, how the thought-forces and mind-elements operate in the shaping of his character, circumstances, and destiny." [sidenote: i am in earnest. i will not equivocate. i will not excuse. i will not retreat a single inch; and i will be heard.--garrison.] so it is not too early for you to begin to think bravely and resolutely and hopefully upon the life you intend to live, and to cultivate the mental and physical strength that shall help you later on to put your good thoughts into permanent good deeds. certainty of victory goes far toward winning battles before they are fought. the boy who thinks "i can" is much more likely to succeed in life than is the one who thinks "i can't." "couldn't" and "could" [sidenote: while you stand deliberating which book your son shall read first, another boy has read both.--dr. johnson.] "couldn't" and "could" were two promising boys who lived not a great while ago. they had just the same playmates and just the same toys, and just the same chances for winning life's joys and all that the years may bestow. [sidenote: dost thou love life? then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.--franklin.] and "could" soon found out he could fashion his life on lines very much as he planned; he could cultivate goodness and guard against strife; he could have all his deeds with good cheer to be rife, and build him a name that would stand. [sidenote: when passion is on the throne, reason is out of doors.--matthew henry.] but poor little "couldn't" just couldn't pull through all the trials he met with a sigh; when a task needed doing, he couldn't, he knew; and hence, when he couldn't, how could he? could you, if you couldn't determine you'd try? [sidenote: i wasted time, and now time doth waste me.--shakespeare.] so "could" just kept building his way to success, nor clouding his sky with a doubt, but "couldn't" strayed into the slough of distress, alas! and his end it is easy to guess-- strayed in, but he couldn't get out. and that was the difference 'twixt "couldn't" and "could"; each followed his own chosen plan; and where "couldn't" just wouldn't "could" earnestly would, and where one of them weakened the other "made good," and won with his watchword, "i can!" [sidenote: weak men wait for opportunities, strong men make them.--marden.] by reading between the lines we can infer from the foregoing that what the world really wants is men--good men. but the world is old enough and wise enough to know that if it does not train up some good boys, there will be no good men, by and by. "as the twig is bent the tree is inclined." "the child is father of the man." [sidenote: give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds.--emerson.] so the world simply wishes to inform you, here and now, that it will count on your assistance as soon as you have had sufficient time and opportunity to prepare properly for the many chances it has in store for you. it notifies you in good season of the important use it hopes to make of you. it does not wish you to be confronted suddenly with a life problem you cannot solve intelligently. you must be so well equipped that you will not make life a "fizzle." [sidenote: when i don't know whether to fight or not, i always fight.--nelson.] a "fizzle," as defined by the dictionaries, is a bungling, unsuccessful undertaking. [sidenote: what is a gentleman? i'll tell you: a gentleman is one who keeps his promises made to those who cannot enforce them.--hubbard.] life is, or ought to be, a splendid undertaking. some make a success of it; some make a "fizzle;" some make a sort of half-and-half. every one who lives his or her life must make something of it. what that "something" is depends very largely on the individual person. heredity has something to do with it; environment has something to do with it; yet we like to think it is the individual who has most to do with the finished product. all men are to some degree "self-made," although they are slow to admit it except in instances where the work has been well done. [sidenote: when one begins to turn in bed it is time to turn out.--wellington.] the loser declares it is fate's hard plan, but the winner--ho, ho!--he's a "self-made" man. it is unfair for the loser to blame others for his deficiencies and delinquencies. no one's reputation is likely to suffer much lasting injury as long as he keeps his character unspotted. what others may say of us is not of so much moment; the important question is, "is it true?" [sidenote: when i found i was black, i resolved to live as if i were white, and so force men to look below my skin.--alexandre dumas.] of strife others make us, we've little to fear because we can surely defeat it; few persons get into hot water, 'tis clear, but they furnish the fuel to heat it. [sidenote: impossible? i trample upon impossibilities!--pitt.] on the other hand the winner is ungrateful when he credits to his own ability the help and good influence he has derived from his associates and his surroundings. no one lives by, to, or for himself, alone. a great man adds to his greatness by generously praising those who have aided in his advancement. we are, most of us, selfishly slow to confess how much others aid us in winning success; but the fourth of july and the oyster must see what failures, without any crackers, they'd be. [sidenote: when all is holiday, there are no holidays.--lamb.] this timely notice telling you what the world is going to ask you to perform is as if you were told to prepare to take an extended and important journey. it would require some time for you to procure a trunk and a traveling-bag and to select wearing apparel suitable for the undertaking. then, too, you would need to study maps and time-tables so as to select the best lines of travel and to make advantageous connections with trains and steamships. furthermore, it would be for your best interests to read books describing the countries through which you were to pass, and to learn as much as possible regarding their peoples and customs. [sidenote: let's take the instant by the forward top.--shakespeare.] [sidenote: i have generally found that the man who is good at an excuse is good for nothing else.--franklin.] [sidenote: i feel and grieve, but, by the grace of god, i fret at nothing.--john wesley.] as a matter of fact you _are_ preparing to start on an extended and important journey. you are going out into the big world, by and by, to do business. you are going into partnership with the world, after a fashion. you are to put into the business your honesty, industry, integrity, and ability, and in return for your contributions, the world is to bestow upon you all the honor, fame, goodwill, and happiness of mind that your manner of living your life shall merit. the world is only too willing to bargain for the highest and noblest and best products of the human mind with any one who can deliver the goods [sidenote: we can sing away our cares easier than we can reason them away.--beecher.] the world will buy largely of any one who can deliver the goods. it is ready and eager to barter if you can deliver the goods. but don't take its order and make out the bill unless you are sure you'll be able to fill your contract, because it won't pay you until you deliver the goods. [sidenote: trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle.--michael angelo.] the world rears its loftiest shafts to the men who deliver the goods. with plow, lever, brush, hammer, sword, or with pen they deliver the goods. and while we their eloquent epitaphs scan that say in the world's work they stood in the van, we know that the meaning is, "here lies a man who delivered the goods." [sidenote: anxiety never yet successfully bridged over any chasm.--ruffini.] and rude or refined be your wares, still be sure to deliver the goods. though a king or a clown, still remember that you're to deliver the goods. if you find you are called to the pulpit to preach, to the grain-fields to till, to the forum to teach; be you poet or porter, remember that each must deliver the goods. [illustration: patrick henry delivering his celebrated speech] chapter ii "am i a genius?" [sidenote: true merit is like a river, the deeper it is the less noise it makes.--halifax.] you hope, and perchance believe, no doubt, that when you have a full opportunity to show the world what sort of timber you are made of that it will look upon you as being a "genius." almost every boy cherishes some such aspiration. and why not? such a trend of thought is to be encouraged. it is proper and commendable. we would all be geniuses if we could. [sidenote: we know what we are, but not what we may be.--shakespeare.] the world admires a genius. if he is the genuine article it seeks his autograph, prints his picture in books and newspapers, and when he passes away it is likely to build a monument over his remains. [sidenote: vacillation is the prominent feature of weakness of character.--voltaire.] and can we all be geniuses? some say we can and some say we cannot, quite. some say geniuses are born and some say they are self-made. when mr. edison, the famous electrician and inventor, was asked for his definition of genius he answered: "two per cent is genius and ninety-eight per cent is hard work." on another occasion when asked: "mr. edison, don't you believe that genius is inspiration?" he replied, "no! genius is perspiration." [sidenote: conduct is three-fourths of life.--emerson.] this definition of genius quite agrees with that given by the american statesman, alexander hamilton, who said: "all the genius i have lies in just this: when i have a subject in hand, i study it profoundly. day and night it is before me. i explore it in all its bearings; my mind becomes pervaded with it. then the effort which i make the people are pleased to call genius. it is the fruit of labor and thought." [sidenote: we must not yield to difficulties, but strive the harder to overcome them.--robert e. lee.] helvetius, the famous french philosopher, says: "genius is nothing but a continued attention," and buffon tells us that "genius is only a protracted patience." [sidenote: through every clause and part of speech of a right book, i meet the eyes of the most determined men.--emerson.] turner, the great landscape painter, when asked how he had achieved his great success, replied: "i have no secret but hard work. this is a secret that many never learn, and they do not succeed because they do not learn it. labor is the genius that changes the world from ugliness to beauty." [sidenote: all your greek will never advance you from secretary to envoy, or from envoy to ambassador; but your address, your air, your manner, if good, may.--chesterfield.] "the man who succeeds above his fellows," says lord lytton, "is the one who early in life clearly discerns his object and toward that object habitually directs his powers. even genius itself is but fine observation strengthened by fixity of purpose. every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius." "am i a genius?" [sidenote: 'tis the mind that makes the body rich.--shakespeare.] now that you have asked the question, why not carefully think it over and determine what the answer should be? have you patience and determination? are you cultivating the habit of sticking to it? stick to it [sidenote: to read without reflection is like eating without digesting.--burke.] o prim little postage-stamp, "holding your own" in a manner so winning and gentle. that you're "stuck on" your task--(is that slang?)--you will own, and yet, you're not two-cent-imental. i have noted with pride that through thick and through thin you cling to a thing till you do it, and, whatever your aim, you are certain to win because you seem bound to stick to it. [sidenote: i learnt that nothing can constitute good breeding that has not good nature for its foundation.--bulwer.] sometimes when i feel just like shirking a task or quitting the work i'm pursuing, i recall your stick-to-it-ive-ness and i ask, "would a postage-stamp do as i'm doing?" then i turn to whatever my hands are about and with fortified purpose renew it, and the end soon encompass, for which i set out, if, only, like you, i stick to it. the sages declare that true genius, so called, is simply the will to "keep at it." a "won't-give-up" purpose is never forestalled, no matter what foes may combat it. and most of mankind's vaunted progress is made, o stamp! if the world only knew it, by noting the wisdom which you have displayed in sticking adhesively to it. [sidenote: to acquire a few tongues, says a french writer, is the task of a few years; but to be eloquent in one is the labor of a life.--colton.] genius has a twin brother whose name is patience. the one is quite often mistaken for the other, which is not strange since they resemble each other so closely their most intimate friends can scarcely tell them apart. these two brothers usually work together, which enables the world to tell who and what they are, for whenever either of them is employed singly and alone he is hardly ever recognized. [sidenote: to be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance.--bishop taylor.] one of these brothers plants the tree and the other cares for it until the fruit is finally matured. the tree which genius plants would never amount to much if patience were to grow tired of watering and caring for it. there are weeds to be kept down, branches to be pruned, the soil must be looked after, worms'-nests must be destroyed, and many things must be done before the fruit is ready to harvest. [sidenote: life is not so short but that there is always room enough for courtesy.--emerson.] if patience were to refuse to work at any time the whole undertaking would prove a failure. but he does not. he performs his plain, simple duty, day after day, year after year, until, after long waiting, there is the beautiful fruit at last. it looks very pretty, but it is not yet quite ripe. pick it too soon and it will shrivel up and lack flavor. but patience has learned to wait until the day and the hour of perfection is at hand, and lo! there is his great reward! [sidenote: a man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.--chesterfield.] the people say: "see this wonderful fruit that grew on the tree which genius planted!" but genius, who is wiser than the multitude, says, "see this wonderful fruit that grew on the tree which patience tended!" [sidenote: common sense bows to the inevitable and makes use of it.--wendell phillips.] patience and perseverance are the qualities that enable one to work out his problems in school and his larger problems in the big university of the busy world. [sidenote: above all things, reverence yourself.--pythagoras.] toil holds all genius as his own, for in his grasp a strength is hid to make of polished words or stone a poem or a pyramid. it has been very truly said that if we will pick up a grain a day and add to our heap we shall soon learn by happy experience the power of littles as applied to intellectual processes and possessions. [sidenote: to adam, paradise was home; to the good among his descendants, home is paradise.--hare.] the road to success, says one of the world's philosophers, is not to be run upon by seven-league boots. step by step, little by little, bit by bit; that is the way to wealth, that is the way to wisdom, that is the way to glory. the man who is most likely to achieve success in life is the one who when a boy learns to keep pegging away [sidenote: to give happiness is to deserve happiness.--rosseau.] men seldom mount at a single bound to the ladder's very top; they must slowly climb it, round by round, with many a start and stop. and the winner is sure to be the man who labors day by day, for the world has learned that the safest plan is to keep on pegging away. [sidenote: self-respect,--that corner-stone of all virtues.--john herschel.] you have read, of course, about the hare and the tortoise--the tale is old-- how they ran a race--it counts not where-- and the tortoise won, we're told. the hare was sure he had time to pause and to browse about and play, so the tortoise won the race because he just kept pegging away. a little toil and a little rest, and a little more earned than spent, is sure to bring to an honest breast a blessing of glad content. and so, though skies may frown or smile, be diligent day by day; reward shall greet you after while if you just keep pegging away. [sidenote: this, then, is a proof of a well-trained mind, to delight in what is good, and to be annoyed at the opposite.--cicero.] the chinese tell of one of their countrymen, a student, who, disheartened by the difficulties in his way, threw down his book in despair, when, seeing a woman rubbing a crowbar on a stone, he inquired the reason, and was told that she wanted a needle, and thought she would rub down the crowbar till she got it small enough. provoked by this example of patience to "try again," he resumed his studies, and became one of the foremost scholars of the empire. [sidenote: there never was so much room for the best as there is to-day.--thayer.] after more than ten years of wandering through the unexplored depths of the primeval forests of america in the study of birds and animals, audubon determined to publish the results of his painstaking energy. he went to philadelphia with a portfolio of two hundred sheets, filled with colored delineations of about one thousand birds, drawn life-size. being obliged to leave the city before making final arrangements as to their disposition, he placed his drawings in the warehouse of a friend. on his return in a few weeks he found to his utter dismay that the precious fruits of his wanderings had been utterly destroyed by rats. the shock threw him into a fever of several weeks' duration, but with returning health his native energy came back, and taking up his gun and game-bag, his pencils and drawing-book, he went forward to the forests as gaily as if nothing had happened. he set to work again, pleased with the thought that he might now make better drawings than he had done before, and in three years his portfolio was refilled. [sidenote: a healthful hunger for a great idea is the beauty and blessedness of life.--jean ingelow.] [sidenote: a laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.--lamb.] [sidenote: there is no real life but cheerful life.--addison.] when carlyle had finished the first volume of his "french revolution" he lent the manuscript to a friend to read. a maid, finding what she supposed to be a bundle of waste paper on the parlor floor used it to light the kitchen fire. without spending any time in uttering lamentations, the author set to work and triumphantly reproduced the book in the form in which it now appears. [sidenote: a man is rich in proportion to the things he can afford to let alone.--thoreau.] [sidenote: there is one thing in this world better than making a living, and that is making a life.--russell.] "how hard i worked at that tremendous shorthand, and all improvement appertaining to it! i will only add to what i have already written of perseverance at this time of my life, and of a patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured within me, and which i know to be the strong point of my character, if it have any strength at all, that there, on looking back, i find the source of my success." such is charles dickens's testimony to the value of sticking to it. [sidenote: a man must be one of two things; either a reed shaken by the wind, or a wind to shake the reeds.--handford.] one of the clever characters created by the pen of george horace lorimer says: "life isn't a spurt, but a long, steady climb. you can't run far up hill without stopping to sit down. some men do a day's work, and then spend six lolling around admiring it. they rush at a thing with a whoop and use up all their wind in that. and when they've rested and got it back, they whoop again and start off in a new direction." [sidenote: there is nothing at all in life except what we put there.--madame swetchine.] says the poet, james whitcomb riley, "for twenty years i tried to get into one magazine; back came my manuscripts eternally. i kept on. in the twentieth year that magazine accepted one of my articles." [sidenote: he is, in my opinion, the noblest who has raised himself by his own merit to a higher station.--cicero.] the eminent essayist, william mathews, tells us: "the restless, uneasy, discontented spirit which sends a mechanic from the east to the south, the rocky mountains, or california, renders continuous application anywhere irksome to him, and so he goes wandering about the world, a half-civilized arab, getting the confidence of nobody, and almost sure to die insolvent." [sidenote: a page digested is better than a volume hurriedly read.--macaulay.] the boys who stick to it, and the men who stick to it, are the ones who achieve results. it does not pay to scatter one's energies. if a man cannot succeed at one thing he is even less likely to succeed at many things. just here would be a good place, i think, to tell how johnny's father taught him the secret of success [sidenote: he that can have patience can have what he will.--franklin.] one day, in huckleberry-time, when little johnny wales and half-a-dozen other boys were starting with their pails to gather berries, johnny's pa, in talking with him, said that he could tell him how to pick so he'd come out ahead. "first find your bush," said johnny's pa, "and then stick to it till you've picked it clean. let those go chasing all about who will in search of better bushes, but it's picking tells, my son; to look at fifty bushes doesn't count like picking one." [sidenote: thinking is the talking of the soul with itself.--plato.] [sidenote: a man who dares waste an hour of time has not discovered the value of time.--darwin.] and johnny did as he was told, and, sure enough, he found by sticking to his bush while all the others chased around in search of better picking, it was as his father said; for while the others looked, he worked, and thus came out ahead. and johnny recollected this when he became a man, and first of all he laid him out a well-determined plan; so, while the brilliant triflers failed with all their brains and push, wise, steady-going johnny won by "sticking to his bush." [illustration: whittier's birthplace haverhill mass.] chapter iii opportunity [sidenote: there is nothing impossible to him who will try.--alexander.] if you just get a chance? oh, certainly, it would be unfair for us grown-ups to expect you, a mere inexperienced youth, to win without giving you a fair opportunity. but what is a fair opportunity? [sidenote: the winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.--gibbon.] opinions regarding what is best for the making of a boy differ greatly. some assert that a child born with a silver spoon in its mouth is not likely to breathe as deeply and develop as well as one that is born without any such hindrance to full respiration. [sidenote: he that studieth revenge keepeth his own wounds green.--bacon.] kind parents, a good home training, a chance to go to school, influential friends, good health, and some one to stand between you and the hard knocks of the world all serve to make a boy's surroundings truly enviable. under such conditions any boy ought to win. yet some boys have won without these advantages. [sidenote: the two noblest things are sweetness and light.--swift.] [sidenote: the wise prove, and the foolish confess, by their conduct, that a life of employment is the only life worth leading.--paley.] [sidenote: the world belongs to the energetic.--emerson.] [sidenote: he who hurts others injures himself; he who helps others advances his own interests.--buddha.] [sidenote: he that sips of many arts drinks of none.--fuller.] [sidenote: there is a higher law than the constitution.--william h. seward.] abraham lincoln was born of very poor parents in a very crude cabin. some years later the family passed through a long, cold, indiana winter with no shelter but a shed built of poles, open on one side to the frosts and snows. even when a cabin took the place of this rude "camp" it was left several years, we are told, without floor, doors or windows. his biographers inform us that here in the primeval forest abraham lincoln spent his boyhood. his bed of leaves was raised from the ground by poles, resting upon one side in the interstices of the logs of which the hut was built, and upon the other in crotches of sticks driven into the earth. the skins of animals afforded almost the only covering allowed this truly miserable family. their food was of the simplest and coarsest variety and very scarce. here mrs. lincoln died when abraham was nine years old, and her lifeless form was placed in a rude coffin which abraham's father made with his own hands. the grave was dug in a cleared space in the forest and there nancy hanks lincoln was buried. many months passed before it was practicable to secure a preacher who, when he came, gathered the family about him in the woods and spoke a few words over the mound of sod. when fame had come, mr. lincoln used to say that he never attended school for more than six months in all his life--in no spirit of boastfulness, however, like many a self-made american, but with a regret that was deeply felt. while a boy he worked out his sums on the logs and clapboards of the little cabin, evincing the fondness for mathematics that remained with him through life. but even amid his dark isolation some light found its way to his slowly expanding mind. he got hold of a copy of "aesop's fables," read "robinson crusoe" and borrowed weems's "life of washington," filling his mind with the story of that noble character. one night after he had climbed up the pegs, which served as a ladder to reach his cot, which in the more finished condition of the cabin had been placed in the attic, he hid the book under the rafters. the rain which came in before morning soaked the leaves so that he was compelled to go to the farmer from whom he had borrowed the book and offer to make good the loss. that unphilanthropic neighbor exacted as its price three days' work in the corn-field, and at the end of that time the damaged volume came into the youthful abraham's absolute possession. it was a long way from those rude surroundings to the presidential chair in the white house at washington, but "with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as god gives us to see the right," he made the journey to the glory of himself and the american people. [sidenote: he that has no cross will have no crown.--quarles.] what a fine demonstration of the power and efficacy of self-help! it is quite enough to convince any boy that there is no difficulty he cannot overcome when once he has formed an invincible partnership between "myself and i" [sidenote: a strenuous soul hates a cheap success.--emerson.] myself and i close friends have been since 'way back where we started. we two, amid life's thick and thin, have labored single-hearted. in every season, wet or dry, or fair or stormy weather, we've joined our hands, myself and i, and just worked on together. [sidenote: all that is great in man comes through work, and civilization is its product.--smiles.] though many friends have been as kind and loving as a brother, myself and i have come to find our best friends in each other, for while to us obscure and small may seem the tasks they bend to, we've learned our fellow-men have all they and themselves can tend to. [sidenote: ability and necessity dwell near each other.--pythagoras.] myself and i, and we alone, you and yourself, good neighbor, each in his self-determined zone must find his field of labor. that prize which men have called "success" has joy nor pleasure in it to satisfy the soul unless myself and i shall win it. [sidenote: the only amaranthine flower is virtue.--cowper.] dr. arnold, whose long experience with youth at rugby gave weight to his opinion, declared that "the difference between one boy and another consists not so much in talent as in energy." "the longer i live," says sir thomas buxton, another student of human character, "the more certain i am that the great difference between men, between the great and the insignificant, is energy, invincible determination, an honest purpose once fixed, and then death or victory. this quality will do anything in the world; and no talents, no circumstances, will make a two-legged creature a man without it." [sidenote: the secret of success is constancy to purpose.--beaconsfield.] says an old latin proverb: "opportunity has hair in front, but is bald behind. seize him by the forelock." [sidenote: the only knowledge that a man has is the knowledge he can use.--macaulay.] [sidenote: what sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.--addison.] [sidenote: there is a sufficient recompense in the very consciousness of a noble deed.--cicero.] when thomas a. edison went out into the world to make his way, he had received only two months' regular schooling, but his mother had early impressed upon his mind the thought that he must atone for his lack of school training by developing a taste for reading. his biographers tell us that the "penny encyclopedia" and ure's "history of the sciences" were in his hands at a time when most boys, having become acquainted with stories of adventure, look for mystery in every bush and resolve to become pirates and indian fighters. there are many stories of his early acuteness. one relates how when a boy of twelve or fourteen he was employed in selling papers on a railroad train in michigan, and upon receiving advance news of a battle of the rebellion fought at that time he secured fifteen hundred papers on credit, telegraphed the headlines to the stations along the route, and sold his wares at a premium. it was after this exploit that he conceived the idea of starting a daily paper of his own. securing some old type from the "detroit free press," he set up his establishment in a car and began the publication of the "grand trunk herald," the first newspaper ever published on a train. he also installed in the car a laboratory for making experiments in chemistry, and both his newspaper and his experiments flourished until one unlucky day when he set fire to the car with phosphorus. this was too much for the conductor who promptly threw the young editor and scientist with all his belongings out on the station platform, and in addition boxed his ears so roughly as to cause him to be ever after partly deaf. but misfortune could not dampen his ardor. his lack of schooling was more than atoned for by his grit, ambition and studious habits. with the possession of these qualities and the disposition to make the most of spare moments, this famous physicist, chemist, mechanician, and inventor has done more for himself, and more for humanity and the advancement of civilization than any of the college-bred workers in industrial sciences during the last half-century. [sidenote: the only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.--george eliot.] [sidenote: the secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.--disraeli.] [sidenote: he needs no tears who lived a noble life.--fitz james o'brien.] "yesterday's successes belong to yesterday with all of yesterday's defeats and sorrows," says a present day philosopher. "the day is here! the time is now!" right here and just now [sidenote: i don't think much of a man who is not wiser to-day than he was yesterday.--abraham lincoln.] "if i'd 'a' been born," says sy slocum to me, "in some other far-away clime, or if i could 'a' had my existence," says he, "in some other long-ago time, i know i'd 'a' flourished in pretty fine style and set folks a-talkin', i 'low, but what troubles me is there's nothin' worth while a-doin' right here and just now." [sidenote: hurry not only spoils work, but spoils life also.--lubbock.] "them folks that can dwell in a country," says sy, "where they don't have no winter nor storm, and the weather ain't ready to freeze 'em or fry, by gettin' too cold or too warm, have got all the time that they want to sit down and think out a project so great that it's just about certain to win 'em renown and bring 'em success while they wait." [sidenote: i cannot hear what you say for listening to what you are.--emerson.] says sy, "folks a-livin' here ages ago, before all the chances had flown for makin' a hit, wouldn't stand any show to-day at a-holdin' their own. good times will come back to our planet, i 'low, when i've faded out of the scene; but it hurts me to think that right here and just now is a sorry betwixt and between." at that i got tired a-hearin' sy spout, and says i, "sy, you like to enthuse regardin' the marvelous work you'd turn out if you stood in some other man's shoes; but while all your 'might-'a'-been' praises you sing, it's worth while recallin' as how that no man on earth ever does the first thing that he can't do right here and just now!" [sidenote: honest labor wears a lovely face.--decker.] jean paul richter, who suffered greatly from poverty, said that he would not have been rich for worlds. "i began life with a sixpence," said girard, "and believe that a man's best capital is his industry." [sidenote: i am a part of all that i have seen.--tennyson.] thomas ball, the sculptor, whose fine statues ornament the parks and squares of boston, used as a lad to sweep out the halls of the boston museum. horace greeley, journalist and orator, was the son of a poor new hampshire farmer and for years earned his living by typesetting. thorwaldsen, the great danish sculptor, was the son of humble icelandic fisher-folk, but by study and perseverance he became one of the greatest of modern sculptors. in the copenhagen museum alone are six hundred examples of his art. [sidenote: if it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.--marcus aurelius.] benjamin franklin, philosopher and statesman, was the son of a tallow-chandler, and was the fifteenth child in a family of seventeen children. this would seem to go far toward proving that it is no misfortune to be born into a home of many brothers and sisters. lord tennyson, too, was the third child in a family of eleven children, all born within a period of thirteen years. they formed a joyous, lively household, amusements being agreeably mingled with their daily tasks. they were all handsome and gifted, with marked personal traits and imaginative temperaments. they were very fond of reading and story-telling. at least four of the boys--frederick, charles, alfred, and edward--were given to verse-writing. [sidenote: a thing is never too often repeated which is never sufficiently learned.--seneca.] [sidenote: any man may commit a mistake, but none but a fool will continue in it.--cicero.] john bunyan, author of "pilgrim's progress," which is said to have obtained a larger circulation than any other book in english except the bible, was a tinker. linnaeus, the great swedish botanist, and most influential naturalist of the eighteenth century, was a shoemaker's apprentice. [sidenote: as a matter of fact, a man's first duty is to mind his own business.--lorimer.] george stephenson, the english engineer and inventor, was in his youth a stoker in a colliery, learning to read and write at a workingmen's evening school. sir richard arkwright, inventor of the spinning-jenny, and founder of the great cotton industries of england, never saw the inside of a school-house until after he was twenty years of age, having long served as a barber's assistant. [sidenote: books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.--whipple.] john jacob astor began life as a peddler in the streets of new york, where his descendants now own real estate worth hundreds of millions. [sidenote: civility costs nothing and buys everything.--lady montague.] shakespeare in his youth was a wool-carder. [sidenote: cheerful looks make every dish a feast.--massinger.] thousands of other examples might be mentioned to show that lowly birth is no barrier to lofty attainment. it has been truly said that genius ignores all social barriers and springs forth wherever heaven has dropped the seed. the grandest characters known in art, literature, and the useful inventions, have illustrated the axiom that "brave deeds are the ancestors of brave men," and, as ballou has told us, "it would almost appear that an element of hardship is necessary to the effective development of true genius. indeed, when we come to the highest achievements of the greatest minds, it seems that they were not limited by race, condition of life, or the circumstances of their age." [sidenote: character, good or bad, has a tendency to perpetuate itself.--hodge.] so we see that it is something within the boy rather than conditions about him that is to determine what he is to become. a boy with a good mind with which to think and a determination to do, is pretty sure of doing something worth while. the whole world knows that so much depends on whether or not the boy cultivates a determination to keep a-trying [sidenote: do not hang a dismal picture on your wall, and do not deal with sables and glooms in your conversations.--emerson.] say "i will!" and then stick to it-- that's the only way to do it. don't build up a while and then tear the whole thing down again. fix the goal you wish to gain, then go at it heart and brain, and, though clouds shut out the blue, do not dim your purpose true with your sighing. stand erect, and, like a man, know "they can who think they can!" keep a-trying. [sidenote: pray for a short memory as to all unkindnesses--spurgeon.] [sidenote: do to-day thy nearest duty.--goethe.] had columbus, half seas o'er, turned back to his native shore, men would not, to-day, proclaim round the world his deathless name. so must we sail on with him past horizons far and dim, till at last we own the prize that belongs to him who tries with faith undying; own the prize that all may win who, with hope, through thick and thin keep a-trying. [illustration: watt discovering the condensation of steam] chapter iv over and underdoing [sidenote: if you will not hear reason, she will surely rap your knuckles.--franklin.] learn to do, without overdoing. too much striving for success is as bad as too little. bishop hall says: "moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues." [sidenote: the only true conquests--those which awaken no regrets--are those obtained over our ignorance.--napoleon.] "you have too much respect upon the world," shakespeare tells us. "they lose it that do buy it with much care." do not cram books into your head until you crowd pleasant thinking out of it. a moderately informed man standing firmly on his two good legs is a much superior man to the wise professor who is unable to leave his bed. [sidenote: the occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise high with the occasion.--abraham lincoln.] "what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" and what does it profit him if he shall become a multi-millionaire and lose his health of mind or body? success that costs more than it is worth is failure. [sidenote: if you want to be missed by your friends, be useful.--robert e. lee.] make haste slowly. be ambitious but not foolish. learn a few things and learn them well. he who grasps much holds little. upon investigating the fund of information possessed by a great many young persons it has been found that the matter with it is the "smatter." herbert spencer says the brains of precocious children cease to develop after a certain age, like a plant that fails to flower. [sidenote: the man of grit carries in his presence a power which spares him the necessity of resenting insult.--whipple.] "those unhappy children who are forced to rise too early in their classes are conceited all the forenoon of their lives and stupid all the afternoon," says professor huxley. "the keenness and vitality which should have been stored up for the sharp struggle of practical existence have been washed out of them by precocious mental debauchery, by book-gluttony and lesson-bibbing. their faculties are worn out by the strain put upon their callow brains, and they are demoralized by worthless, childish triumphs before the real tasks of life begin." [sidenote: if you would create something you must be something.--goethe.] carlyle's words upon this subject are worth remembering: "the richer a nature, the harder and slower its development. two boys were once members of a class in the edinburgh grammar school: john, ever trim, precise, and a dux; walter, ever slovenly, confused, and a dolt. in due time john became baillie john, of hunter square, and walter became sir walter scott, of the universe. the quickest and completest of all vegetables is the cabbage." [sidenote: manners must adorn knowledge and smooth its way through the world.--chesterfield.] [sidenote: many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties.--spurgeon.] we all know that there is a happy medium between too much preciseness and slovenliness; between laziness and an unwarranted degree of mental activity; between ignorance and an intellect ground to an edge too fine to carve its way through a hard world. [sidenote: the least error should humble, but we should never permit even the greatest to discourage us.--bishop potter.] "it is now generally conceded on all hands," says professor mathews, "that the mind has no right to build itself up at the expense of the body; that it is no more justifiable in abandoning itself without restraint to its cravings, than the body in yielding itself to sensual indulgence. the acute stimulants, the mental drams, that produce this unnatural activity or overgrowth of the intellect, are as contrary to nature, and as hurtful to the man, as the coarser stimulants that unduly excite the body. the mind, it has been well said, should be a good, strong, healthy feeder, but not a glutton. when unduly stimulated, it wears out the mechanism of the body, like friction upon a machine not lubricated, and the growing weakness of the physical frame nullifies the power it incloses." [sidenote: the most manifest sign of wisdom is continued cheerfulness.--montaigne.] the foundations for a splendid working constitution are laid during boyhood. you are laying yours now. [sidenote: men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they may see twice as much as they say.--colton.] is it to be a good, firm, durable foundation that will stand through all the years to come? or is it being built of faulty material and in a manner so careless that in the by and by when, at great pains and expense you have built your life structure upon it, you will find it untenable or so unstable that it will require a great share of your time and attention to keep it patched up so that you can continue to dwell within it? [sidenote: the important thing in life is to have a great aim, and to possess the aptitude and perseverance to attain it.--goethe.] are you playing and working with moderation or are you so thoughtless that you sometimes, in a single hour, inflict wrongs upon your health and your constitution, the sorry effects of which you cannot overcome during your lifetime? it may be possible that you are studying too hard at school. [sidenote: method is the hinge of business, and there is no method without order and punctuality.--hannah more.] i know that there are many who will smile at the suggestion that the average american schoolboy sticks too closely to his books, but i am sure that such is frequently the case. [sidenote: the greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.--emerson.] sometimes the boy's parents and teachers are eager to have their boy "show off" to the best advantage possible. they urge him, crowd him, compel him to develop as rapidly as he can. in their eagerness to secure results they employ the formulas that require the least possible time for completing the important task of making a man [sidenote: the elect are those who will, and the non-elect are those who won't.--beecher.] hurry the baby as fast as you can, hurry him, worry him, make him a man. off with his baby-clothes, get him in pants, feed him on brain-foods and make him advance. hustle him, soon as he's able to walk, into a grammar school; cram him with talk. fill his poor head full of figures and facts, keep on a-jamming them in till it cracks. once boys grew up at a rational rate, now we develop a man while you wait. rush him through college, compel him to grab of every known subject a dip and a dab. get him in business and after the cash all by the time he can grow a mustache. let him forget he was ever a boy, make gold his god and its jingle his joy. keep him a-hustling and clear out of breath, until he wins--nervous prostration and death! [sidenote: much talent is often lost for want of a little courage.--george eliot.] a sorry picture, isn't it? no doubt it sets forth, in an extreme manner, the evils that arise from crowding a child into boyhood, and a boy into manhood; still, no one who observes carefully will doubt that such wrongs are constantly being committed by hundreds of ambitious parents and well-meaning teachers. [sidenote: the crowning fortune of a man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment and happiness.--emerson.] yet, i think you have little to fear along the lines of over-study. you must train your mind to grapple with tasks while you are young, for if you do not begin now you may not, later on, be able to summon that concentration of thought that is necessary for winning success along any line of endeavor. "difficulties are the best stimulant. trouble is a tonic," says one of our wise essayists. [sidenote: no one is useless in the world who lightens the burden of it for any one else.--charles dickens.] "he that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill, our antagonist is our helper," says edmund burke. "this conflict with difficulty makes us acquainted with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. it will not suffer us to be superficial." [sidenote: the fewer the words the better the prayer.--luther.] life is a grind; a sorry few are blunted in their aim, and some are sharpened, keen and true, and carve their way to fame. "don't take too much advice--keep at the helm and steer your own ship," says noah porter. all of which is very good advice. [sidenote: next to excellence is the appreciation of it.--thackeray.] the boy that the world wants most is the one who will think for himself at the same time he is hearing words of wisdom from others. a boy who tried to follow all the advice given him would probably find himself unable to do anything at all. everyone and everything seems eager to give him the short cut to fortune, as i have endeavored to set forth in a bit of nonsense rhyme which i call the secret of how to win success [sidenote: the great are only great because we are on our knees; let us rise up.--proudhon.] "how shall i win success in life?" the young man asked, whereat: "have push," replied the button; "and a purr-puss" said the cat. "find out the work you're sooted for," the chimney-sweeper said, just as the match and pin remarked: "and never lose your head." "aspire to grater, finer things," the nutmeg cried. the hoe said: "don't fly off the handle," and the snail remarked: "go slow." "be deaf to all that's told you," said the adder. "'mid the strife i've found it best," remarked the heart, "to beat my way through life." [sidenote: next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.--colton.] "select some proper task and then stick to it," said the glue. "look pleasant," said the camera; "and tied-y," said the shoe. "have nerve!" exclaimed the tooth. the hill remarked; "put up a bluff!" "and keep cool," said the ice, whereat the young man cried: "enough!" [sidenote: never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence.--haydon.] the right-minded boy will be thoughtful but not so much absorbed that he is unable to take in the educative, uplifting sunshine all about him. [sidenote: the greatest man is he who chooses with the most invincible reason.--seneca.] sharpen your wits as the woodman must sharpen his axe, but counsel moderation. the woodman who would stay at the stone and grind his axe all away in attempting to put a razor edge on it would be deemed very foolish. [sidenote: self-conquest is the greatest of all victories.--plato.] of course you will be, you must be thoughtful, for as ruskin says: "in general i have no patience with people who talk about 'the thoughtlessness of youth' indulgently. i had infinitely rather hear of the thoughtlessness of old age, and the indulgence of that. when a man has done his work, and nothing can in any way be materially altered in his fate, let him forget his toil, and jest with his fate, if he will, but what excuse can you find for wilfulness of thought at the very time when every crisis of fortune hangs on your decision? a youth thoughtless, when all the happiness of his home forever depends on the chances or the passions of an hour! a youth thoughtless, when the career of all his days depends on the opportunity of a moment! a youth thoughtless, when his every action is a foundation-stone of future conduct, and every imagination a fountain of life or death! be thoughtless in any after years, rather than now, though, indeed, there is only one place where a man may be nobly thoughtless, his death-bed. nothing should ever be left to be done there." [sidenote: sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears, while the used key is always bright.--franklin.] [sidenote: my liveliest delight was in having conquered myself.-rousseau.] but whatever else we may forget, let us remember that it is not work, but overwork that kills. exercise gained through good, wholesome work is the greatest life-preserver man has yet discovered. [sidenote: the great hope of society is in the individual character.--channing.] "i always find something to keep me busy," said peter cooper in explaining how he had preserved so well his strength of mind and body, "and to be doing something is the best medicine one can take." [sidenote: no thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.--landor.] the ones who live the longest and best lives are the cheerful workers, those who find a good excuse for liking the task that comes to their hands. the greatest joy and the truest success do not come to the idler, nor the one who overworks, nor yet to the one who does things by fits and starts, but to the steady worker [sidenote: the habit of looking on the bright side of things is worth more than a thousand pounds a year.--samuel johnson.] whene'er the sun was shining out, squire pettigrew would say, "now, hurrah, boys! it's just the time to be a-making hay, because, you see, the sun's so hot 'twill cure it right away!" then all the mowers kept right on a-mowing. but when a cloud obscured the sun squire pettigrew would shout, "oh, now's the time for working while the sun is blotted out, a cooling cloud like that will make our muscles twice as stout!" and that's the way he kept his men a-going. [sidenote: nothing of worth or weight can be achieved with a half mind, with a faint heart, and with a lame endeavor.--barrow.] hence, little did it matter were the weather wet or dry,-- if sunshine filled the valleys or if clouds o'erspread the sky, he'd always think of something which he deemed a reason why 'twas just the time for him to keep a-working. [sidenote: the strong man is the man with the gift of method, of faithfulness, of valor.--carlyle.] but, now and then, or so it seemed, the reasons he would seek for working on, were quite far-fetched and faulty, so to speak, but, oh, they were not half so "thin" as are the many weak excuses lazy people give for shirking. [illustration: longfellow's birthplace portland me.] chapter v the value of spare moments [sidenote: not only strike while the iron is hot, but make it hot by striking.--cromwell.] "if i had the time!" yes, indeed! time is a very necessary factor in the doing of things. time is money. money is capital. capital is power. the one who is in the possession of the most power and uses it to the best purpose has the best chance for winning success. [sidenote: the greatest work has always gone hand in hand with the most fervent moral purpose.--sidney lanier.] other things being equal, the boy who devotes an extra half-hour every morning or evening to the study of the forthcoming day's lessons will get on better than his classmates who do not thus mentally fortify themselves. [sidenote: no true and permanent fame can be founded except in labors which promote the happiness of mankind.--sumner.] so in the world's big life-school, the man who finds time to think about and to study the tasks and duties that confront him will make a better showing than the ones who thoughtlessly and in an unprepared manner blunder into the work that is before them. "if i had the time!" [sidenote: the greatest men have been those who have cut their way to success through difficulties.--robertson.] that is the sorry cry coming from the lips of thousands of unhappy persons of all classes and ages. but the saddest feature of it all is, that they have the time and do not know it. or, if they do know it, they still go on trying to deceive themselves and others by repeating the same old, threadbare excuse the world has always offered as the reason why it has not made the progress it should have done. [sidenote: one has only to know the twenty-six letters of the alphabet in order to learn everything else that one wishes.--duke of argyle.] now, my boy, stop a moment and honestly think it over. haven't you the time? isn't it the disposition to make the most of your opportunities that is lacking? how much time did you waste yesterday? how much time are you going to waste to-day? [sidenote: strength is like gunpowder; to be effective it needs concentration and aim.--mathews.] let us not lose sight of the sorry fact that in wasting an hour we suffer a double loss and commit a double wrong. we not only lose that particular hour, but we are suffering a moral weakness to impair the strength of our life purpose, which will result in making us more likely to waste other golden hours yet to come. and what is a wasted hour? this is a question well worth considering. moments spent in bright, healthful, joyous play are not wasted. "all work and no play makes jack a dull boy." it should be remembered, also, that "all play and no work makes jack a dull shirk." [sidenote: success treads on the heels of every right effort.--smiles.] we should play with the same keen zest with which we should work. we must not work all the while; we must not play all the while. good, vigorous play prepares one for the enjoyment of work; good, vigorous work prepares one for the enjoyment of play. those who dawdle in a listless, half-and-half way find no joy in working or playing. [sidenote: the creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.--emerson.] it is an error to think that play cannot be made to serve a good and useful purpose. give one boy a knife and a stick and he will produce only a lot of shavings as the result of his whittling. give another boy a knife and a stick and he will carve out some object or invention of use and beauty. give one man leisure and he will produce nothing or worse than nothing to show for his wasted hours. give another man leisure and he will master some trade or profession or theme of study that will make him of happy worth to himself and the world. [sidenote: that is the best government which teaches us to govern ourselves.--goethe.] it is not the lack of time, but the lack of the will to improve our spare moments, that keeps us from going toward success. we mean to do great things some time, but we haven't the will to begin to build just now. we prefer to belong to that great host of procrastinators who are known as the "going-to-bees" [sidenote: the chains of habit are too weak to be felt till they are too strong to be broken.--dr. johnson.] suppose that some fine morn in may a honey-bee should pause and say, "i guess i will not work to-day, but next week or next summer, or some time in the by and by, i'll be so diligent and spry that all the world must see that i am what they call a 'hummer'!" [sidenote: wise evolution is the sure safeguard against a revolution.--roosevelt] of course you'd wish to say at once, "o bee! don't be a little dunce, and waste your golden days and months in lazily reviewing the things you're 'going' to do, and how your hive with honey you'll endow, but bear in mind, o bee, that now is just the time for 'doing.'" [sidenote: the more honesty a man has, the less he affects the air of a saint.--lavater.] suppose a youth with idle hands should tell you all the splendid plans of which he dreams, the while the sands of life are flowing, flowing. you'd wish to say to him, "o boy! if you would reap your share of joy, you must discerningly employ your morning hours in sowing." [sidenote: god sows the self-same truth in every heart.--alicia k. van buren.] he who would win must work! the prize is for the faithful one who tries with loyal hand and heart; whose skies with toil-crowned hopes are sunny. and they who hope success to find this homely truth must bear in mind: "the 'going-to-bees' are not the kind that fill the hive with honey." [sidenote: are you a shepherd, or one of the herded?--edmund vance cooke.] "lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. no reward is offered, for they are gone forever." how clearly these words of horace mann set forth the experience of thousands of persons, day by day. [sidenote: there is a destiny that makes us brothers.--edwin markham.] channing tells us, "it is astonishing how fruitful of improvement a short season becomes when eagerly and faithfully improved. volumes have not only been read, but written, in flying journeys. i have known a man of vigorous intellect, who has enjoyed few advantages of early education, and whose mind was almost engrossed by the details of an extensive business, but who composed a book of much original thought, in steamboats and on horseback, while visiting distant customers." [sidenote: if thou art a man, admire those who attempt great enterprises, even though they fail.--seneca.] the thought recorded by jeremy taylor is well worth remembering, that he who is choice of his time will also be choice of his company, and choice of his actions; lest the first engage him in vanity and loss, and the latter, by being criminal, be throwing his time and himself away, and going back in the accounts of eternity. [sidenote: no one is free who is not master of himself.--shakespeare.] the plea, "if i had the time," is well met by matthew arnold, who says: "and the plea that this or that man has no time for culture will vanish as soon as we desire culture so much that we begin to examine seriously into our present use of time." [sidenote: a thought may touch and edge our life with light.--trowbridge.] "oh, what wonders have been performed in 'one hour a day,'" says marden. "one hour a day withdrawn from frivolous pursuits, and profitably employed, would enable any man of ordinary capacity to master a complete science. one hour a day would make an ignorant man a well-informed man in ten years. one hour a day would earn enough to pay for two daily and two weekly papers, two leading magazines, and a dozen good books. in an hour a day a boy or girl could read twenty pages thoughtfully--over seven thousand pages, or eighteen large volumes, in a year. an hour a day might make all the difference between bare existence and useful, happy living. an hour a day might make--nay, has made--an unknown man a famous one, a useless man a benefactor to his race. consider, then, the mighty possibilities of two--four--yes, six hours a day that are, on the average, thrown away by young men and women in the restless desire for fun and diversion." [sidenote: nothing is too high for a man to reach, but he must climb with care and confidence.--hans andersen.] [sidenote: men exist for the sake of one another. teach them, then, or bear with them.--marcus aurelius.] [sidenote: do good with what thou hast, or it will do thee no good.--william penn.] there is little excuse for continued ignorance these times. if one's time is spent at a point remote from institutions of learning, or his days are so occupied that he cannot avail himself of their advantages, he can be a pupil in an ably conducted correspondence school, that most worthy of educational means whereby the youth in the isolated rural home, the shut-ins who by force of circumstances are prisoned within narrow walls, the night-watchman whose leisure comes at a time when all other schools are closed, the seeker after knowledge of any kind, at any time and at any place reached by the great governmental postal system, can be brought into close touch with a great fountain of learning and inspiration of which one may absorb all he will. from this time forth it will ill become any man to say that he has no chance to acquire an education, or that he has no opportunity to improve upon the mental equipment he already possesses. instruction is within the reach of all. the schoolmaster is abroad as he has never been before. wherever the postman can deliver a letter, in cottage or mansion, in the closely packed tenements of the city or in the remote farm homes reached by the rural free delivery routes, there the trained college professor makes his daily or weekly visits, giving his "heart to heart" talks with each of his thousands of pupils. he is with the boys as they follow the plow, the men who go down into the mines, the girls who serve at the loom and the lathe, pointing out the way that leads, through self-help, to happiness. [sidenote: one great cause of failure of young men in business is the lack of concentration.--carnegie.] [sidenote: better say nothing than not to the purpose.--william penn.] [sidenote: diligence is the mother of good luck.--franklin.] it is more true to-day than ever before, that "they can who think they can." the means are more nearly at hand if one is determined to try them. nothing but the spirit of procrastination can keep man or boy from setting about it to help himself toward better things. when to begin is the stumbling-block in the way of most persons. there is but one time when we can do anything. that time is now! to delay a year, a week, a day may prove most unfortunate. indeed, trouble lies in the way of those who are disposed to defer the doing of their duty for even "just a minute" [sidenote: one to-day is worth two to-morrows.--franklin.] whene'er he faced a task and knew he should begin it, he could not start to put it through for "just a minute." and, though the case demanded speed he could not move just then; but he'd be ready for it, yes, indeed! in "just a minute." [sidenote: my young friend, do you know that there is but one person who can recommend you? who is that, sir? yourself.--emerson.] his purposes were out of rhyme by "just a minute." the whole world seemed ahead of time by "just a minute." he could not learn to overhaul his many duties, large and small, but had to beg them, one and all, to "wait a minute." [sidenote: think before you speak.--washington.] in manhood he was still delayed by "just a minute." he might have won, had fortune stayed for "just a minute." but at the end of life he railed at "cruel fate," and wept and wailed because he knew that he had failed by "just a minute." [sidenote: there are people who do not know how to waste their time alone, and hence become the scourge of busy people.--de bonald.] [sidenote: it is better to be alone than in bad company.--washington.] [sidenote: gold is good in its place; but living, brave, and patriotic men are better than gold.--abraham lincoln.] if we make a careful study of the lives of the world's great men and women, we shall find that their distinction was achieved by making the most of their spare minutes. the ordinary, commonplace, and inevitable tasks of life and the effort required to make a living are remarkably similar in the daily experience of most men and women. it is what one does with the remaining leisure moments that determines his individual taste and trend, and eventually gives him such distinction as he may attain. it is in our leisure hours that we are permitted to follow our "hobbies," and it is in them that our truer selves find expression. many of the greatest men in the world's history achieved their fame outside of their regular occupations in the spare moments of time which most people think are of no serious use. marden wisely observes that "no one is anxious about a young man while he is busy in useful work. but where does he eat his lunch at noon? where does he go when he leaves his boarding-house at night? what does he do after supper? where does he spend his sundays and holidays? the great majority of youth who go to the bad are ruined after supper. most of them who climb upward to honor and fame devote their evenings to study or work or the society of the wise and good. for the right use of these leisure hours, what we have called the waste of life, the odd moments usually thrown away, the author would plead with every youth." [sidenote: politeness and civility are the best capital ever invested in business.--p. t. barnum.] [sidenote: let none falter who thinks he is right.--abraham lincoln.] [sidenote: the truest test of civilization is not the census, not the size of cities, not the crops; no, but the kind of man the country turns out.--emerson.] watt learned chemistry and mathematics while working at his trade of a mathematical-instrument maker. darwin composed most of his works by writing his thoughts on scraps of paper wherever he chanced to be. henry kirke white learned greek while walking to and from a lawyer's office. elihu burritt acquired a mastery of eighteen languages and twenty-two dialects by improving the fragments of time which he could steal from his occupation as a blacksmith. hundreds of similar examples could be given in which men have achieved distinction by improving the odd moments which others waste. [sidenote: inherited wealth is an unmitigated curse when divorced from culture.--charles william eliot.] and you, oh, my boy! when you have reached the age where the world has a right to expect that you will begin to prepare yourself for the work that is before you, lay hold, i beseech you, of these "spare moments," and weld them into a beautiful purpose that shall make your life a joy to yourself and to all who shall come within the zone of your influence. do not fail to improve the moments because they are so few. the fewer there are the more the need of improving them. do not procrastinate, do not put off, do not defer the work of self-improvement till a more favorable time. know that with the coming of every opportunity you have a duty to perform. that you must help yourself whenever you can, and that you must do it now! [sidenote: the wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs, which are brief and pithy. collect and learn them; they are notable measures and directions for human life; you have much in little; they save time in speaking, and upon occasion may be the fullest and safest answers.--william penn.] if you have a task worth doing, do it now! in delay there's danger brewing, do it now! don't you be a "by-and-byer" and a sluggish patience-trier; if there's aught you would acquire, do it now! [sidenote: experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.--franklin.] if you'd earn a prize worth owning, do it now! drop all waiting and postponing, do it now! say, "i will!" and then stick to it, choose your purpose and pursue it, there's but one right way to do it, do it now! [sidenote: don't flinch, flounder, fall over, nor fiddle, but grapple like a man. a man who wills it can go anywhere, and do what he determines to do.--john todd.] [sidenote: do all the good you can, and make as little fuss as possible about it.--dickens.] all we have is just this minute, do it now! find your duty and begin it, do it now! surely you're not always going to be "a going-to-be"; and knowing you must some time make a showing do it now! [illustration: garfield as a canal boy] chapter vi cheerfulness [sidenote: joy is not in things, it is in us.--wagner.] let us suppose that you must go into partnership for life with some other boy, as the world is about to go into partnership with you, would you not wish him to have, first of all, a cheerful disposition? [sidenote: money is good for nothing unless you know the value of it by experience.--p. t. barnum.] has it ever occurred to you that the world entertains the same thought regarding yourself? it is easy to understand why a partnership, the members of which pleasantly pull together, is more likely to thrive than is one wherein they are always complaining of each other and sadly prophesying failure. the world, as your partner, will be toward you what you are toward it. [sidenote: the day is immeasurably long to him who knows not how to value and use it.--goethe.] smile, once in a while, 'twill make your heart seem lighter; smile, once in a while, 'twill make your pathway brighter; life's a mirror; if we smile, smiles come back to greet us; if we're frowning all the while, frowns forever meet us. [sidenote: it is a maxim with me not to ask what, under similar circumstances, i would not grant.--washington.] [sidenote: next to virtues, the fun in this world is what we can least spare.--strickland.] "as you cannot have a sweet and wholesome abode unless you admit the air and sunshine freely into your rooms," says james allen, "so a strong body and a bright, happy, or serene countenance can result only from the free admittance into the mind of thoughts of joy and good will and serenity. there is no physician like cheerful thought for dissipating the ills of the body; there is no comforter to compare with good will for dispersing the shadows of grief and sorrow. to live continually in thoughts of ill will, cynicism, suspicion and envy, is to be confined in a self-made prison-hole. but to think well of all, to be cheerful with all, to patiently learn to find the good in all--such unselfish thoughts are the very portals of heaven; and to dwell day by day in thoughts of peace toward every creature will bring abounding peace to the possessor of such thoughts." [sidenote: i resolved that, like the sun, so long as my day lasted, i would look on the bright side of everything.--thomas hood.] says robert louis stevenson: "a happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound note. he or she is radiating a focus of good will; and his or her entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted." [sidenote: ideas go booming through the world louder than cannon. thoughts are mightier than armies. principles have achieved more victories than horsemen or chariots.--paxton.] "it is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor," says dickens. give but a smile to sorry men, they'll give it, bettered, back again. [sidenote: method is like packing things in a box; a good packer will get in half as much again as a bad one.--cecil.] bovee very truly says, "the cheerful live longest in years, and afterwards in our regards." [sidenote: if it required no brains, no nerve, no energy, no work, there would be no glory in achievement.--bates.] "i have gout, asthma, and seven other maladies," said sydney smith, "but am otherwise very happy." how often those with whom we meet are sorely afflicted and yet their cheerful faces do not betray their troubles. they are too considerate of our happiness to sadden our minds with their woes. those whom we deem fretful without sufficient excuse, if indeed any excuse justifies the habit of fretting, may be much more sorely afflicted than we think they are. there is a world of sympathetic truth in that old saying "to know all is to forgive all" [sidenote: it is not what one can get out of work, but what he may put in, that is the test of success.--lilian whiting.] if i knew you and you knew me-- if both of us could clearly see, and with an inner sight divine the meaning of your heart and mine, i'm sure that we would differ less and clasp our hands in friendliness; our thoughts would pleasantly agree if i knew you and you knew me. if i knew you and you knew me, as each one knows his own self, we could look each other in the face and see therein a truer grace. life has so many hidden woes, so many thorns for every rose; the "why" of things our hearts would see, if i knew you and you knew me. [sidenote: there is only one real failure in life possible; and that is, not to be true to the best one knows.--canon farrar.] "if a word will render a man happy," said one of the french philosophers, "he must be a wretch, indeed, who will not give it. it is like lighting another man's candle with your own, which loses none of its brilliancy by what the other gains." another wise writer says: "mirth is god's medicine; everybody ought to bathe in it. grim care, moroseness, anxiety--all the rust of life, ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth." [sidenote: confidence imparts a wonderful inspiration to its possessor.--milton.] orison swett marden, than whom no man's golden words have done more to make the world brighter and better, says: "we should fight against every influence which tends to depress the mind, as we would against a temptation to crime. a depressed mind prevents the free action of the diaphragm and the expansion of the chest. it stops the secretions of the body, interferes with the circulation of the blood in the brain, and deranges the entire functions of the body." [sidenote: the most important attribute of man as a moral being is the faculty of self-control.--herbert spencer.] "do not anticipate trouble," says franklin, "or worry about what may never happen. keep in the sunlight." [sidenote: self-control, i say, is the root virtue of all virtues. it is at the very center of character.--king.] one of our present day apostles of the gospel of cheerfulness tells us that worry is a disease. "some people ought to be incarcerated for disturbing the family peace, and for troubling the public welfare, on the charge of intolerable fretfulness and touchiness." [sidenote: in the long run a man becomes what he purposes, and gains for himself what he really desires.--mabie.] the boy whom the world wants will be wise, indeed, if he includes in his preparations for meeting the years that are before him-- a cure for trouble trouble is looking for some one to trouble! who will partake of his worrisome wares? where shall he tarry and whom shall he harry at morning and night with his burden of cares? they who have hands that are idle and empty, they without purpose to build and to bless; they who invite him with scowls that delight him are they who shall dwell in the house of distress. [sidenote: i owe all my success in life to having been always a quarter of an hour beforehand.--lord nelson.] trouble is looking for some one to trouble! i'll tell you how all his plans to eclipse: when he draws near you be sure he shall hear you a-working away with a song on your lips. look at him squarely and laugh at his coming; say you are busy and bid him depart; he will not tease you to stay if he sees you have tasks in your hands and a hope in your heart. [sidenote: the period of greenness is the period of growth. when we cease to be green and are entirely ripe we are ready for decay.--bryan.] trouble is looking for some one to trouble! i shall not listen to aught he shall say; out of life's duty shall blossom in beauty a grace and a glory to gladden the way. i shall have faith in the gifts of the giver; i shall be true to my purpose and plan; good cheer abounding and love all-surrounding, i shall keep building the best that i can. [sidenote: prepare yourself for the world as the athletes used to do for their exercises; oil your mind and your manners to give them the necessary suppleness and flexibility; strength alone will not do.--chesterfield.] "give, o give us, the man who sings at his work!" says thomas carlyle. "be his occupation what it may, he is equal to any of those who follow the same pursuit in silent sullenness. he will do more in the same time--he will do it better--he will persevere longer. one is scarcely sensible to fatigue while he marches to music. the very stars are said to make harmony as they revolve in their spheres. wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, altogether past calculation its powers of endurance. efforts to be permanently useful must be uniformly joyous--a spirit all sunshine--grateful for very gladness, beautiful because bright." [sidenote: poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things, and hence its importance.--matthew arnold.] [sidenote: in all things, to serve from the lowest station upwards is necessary.--goethe.] [sidenote: to do nothing by halves is the way of noble minds.--wieland.] have you a cheerful member in your circle of friends, a cheerful neighbor in the vicinity of your home? cherish him as a pearl of great price. he is of real, practical value to all with whom he comes in contact. his presence in a neighborhood ought to make real estate sell for a bit more a square foot, and life more prized by all who partake of his good cheer. he greets the world with a smile and a laugh--a real laugh, born of thought and feeling--not a superficial veneer of humor the falsity of which is detected by all who hear it. "how much lies in laughter," says carlyle "it is the cipher-key wherewith we decipher the whole man. some men wear an everlasting simper; in the smile of another lies the cold glitter, as of ice; the fewest are able to laugh what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snicker from the throat outward, or at least produce some whiffing, husky cachination, as if they were laughing through wool. of none such comes good." [sidenote: whatever your occupation may be, and however crowded your hours with affairs, do not fail to secure at least a few minutes every day for refreshment of your inner life with a bit of poetry.--charles eliot norton.] do you like the boy who in a game of ball is whining all the time because he cannot be constantly at the bat? isn't the real manly boy the one who can lose cheerfully when he has played the game the best he possibly could and has been honestly defeated? [sidenote: nothing of us belongs so wholly to other people as our looks.--glover.] nothing is ever well done that is not done cheerfully. the one with a growl spoils whatever joy good fortune may seek to bring him. the man with whom the whole world loves to be in partnership is the one with a song [sidenote: our greatest glory consists, not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.--goldsmith.] the cloud-maker says it is going to storm, and we're sure to have awful weather,-- just terribly wet or cold or warm, or maybe all three together! but while his spirit is overcast with the gloom of his dull repining, the one with a song comes smiling past, and, lo! the sun is shining. [sidenote: a noble manhood, nobly consecrated to man, never dies.--william mckinley.] the cloud-maker tells us the world is wrong, and is bound in an evil fetter, but the blue-sky man comes bringing a song of hope that shall make it better. and the toilers, hearing his voice, behold the sign of a glad to-morrow, whose hands are heaped with the purest gold, of which each heart may borrow. [sidenote: it is easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.--george eliot.] the one who thinks the world is full of good people and kindly blessings is much richer than the one who thinks to the contrary. some men live in a world peopled with princes of the royal blood; some in a world of want and wrong-doers. those whom we distrust are likely to distrust us. to believe a man is a man helps to make him so at heart. to think him a rascal is a start for him in the wrong direction. the world smiles at us if we smile at it; when we frown it frowns. it is the armor of war and not that of love that invites trouble. he who carries a sword is the most likely to find a cause for using it. the man who remembers it was a beautiful day yesterday is a great deal happier than he who is sure it is going to storm to-morrow. [sidenote: sympathy is two hearts tugging at one load.--parkhurst.] though life is made up of mere bubbles, 'tis better than many aver, for while we've a whole lot of troubles, the most of them never occur. in the thousand and one little everyday affairs of life the man who is disposed to take things by the smooth handles saves himself and those about him an endless amount of worry. the pessimist is an additional sorrow in a world that holds for all of us some glints of sunshine and some shreds of song. it was of one such sorry soul that i penned the lines-- [sidenote: what folly to tear one's hair in sorrow, just as if grief could be assuaged by baldness.--cicero.] he growled at morning, noon and night, and trouble sought to borrow; on days when all the skies were bright he knew 'twould storm to-morrow. a thought of joy he could not stand and struggled to resist it; though sunshine dappled all the land this sorry pessi_mist_ it. [sidenote: be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.--franklin.] occasionally we meet a person well along in years who has not yet acquired sufficient wisdom to understand that without some of the elements of a storm in the sky we could never look upon that most marvelously beautiful spectacle--a rainbow. [sidenote: give us to go blithely about our business all this day, bring us to our resting beds weary and content and undishonored, and grant us in the end the gift of sleep.--stevenson.] without hunger and thirst, food and drink would be superfluous; without cold, warmth would lose its grateful charm; without weariness, rest were of no avail; without grief, gladness would lose its delight. the thoughtful, thankful soul will keep the lips from complaining and the hands from wrong-doing by always supplying them with a smile and a task [sidenote: teach your child to hold his tongue, he'll learn fast enough to speak.--franklin.] keep a smile on your lips; it is better to joyfully, hopefully try for the end you would gain, than to fetter your life with a moan and a sigh. there are clouds in the firmament ever the beauty of heaven to mar, yet night so profound there is never but somewhere is shining a star. [sidenote: there is no use arguing with the inevitable; the only argument with the east wind is to put on your overcoat.--lowell.] keep a task in your hands; you must labor; by deeds is true happiness won; for stranger and friend and for neighbor, rejoice there is much to be done. endeavor by crowning life's duty with joy-giving song and with smile, to make the world fuller of beauty because you are in it a while. [sidenote: a young man cannot honestly make a success in any business unless he loves his work.--edward bok.] "of all virtues cheerfulness is the most profitable. while other virtues defer the day of recompense, cheerfulness pays down. it is a cosmetic which makes homeliness graceful and winning. it promotes health and gives clearness and vigor to the mind; it is the bright weather of the heart in contrast with the clouds and gloom of melancholy." these words from the writings of one of our sunniest philosophers are worth much gold to one who will ever keep them in mind. [sidenote: there is a great deal more to be got out of things than is generally got out of them, whether the thing be a chapter of the bible or a yellow turnip.--macdonald.] sydney smith says that "all mankind are happier for having been happy; so that, if you make them happy now, you make them happy twenty years hence by the memory of it." this being true we should do all in our power to turn men from gloom to gladness; from the shadows to sunshine. with this purpose in mind i have written an open letter to the pessimist [sidenote: the boy who does not go to school does not know what saturday is.--babcock.] brother--you with growl and frown-- why don't you move from grumbletown, where everything is tumbled down and skies are dark and dreary? move over into gladville where your face will don a happy air, and lay aside your cross of care for smiles all bright and cheery. [sidenote: a faithful friend is a strong defence, and he that hath found him hath found a treasure.--ecclesiasticus.] in grumbletown there's not a joy but has a shadow of alloy that must its happiness destroy and make you to regret it. in gladville we have not a care but, somehow, looks inviting there and has about it something fair that makes us glad to get it. [sidenote: the three things most difficult are, to keep a secret, to forget an injury, and to make a good use of leisure.--chilo.] 'tis strange how different these towns of ours are! good cheer abounds in one, and gruesome growls and frowns are always in the other. if you your skies of ashen gray would change for sunny skies of may, from grumbletown, oh, haste away; move into gladville, brother. [illustration: birthplace of benjamin franklin boston] chapter vii dreaming and doing [sidenote: the talent that is buried is not owned. the napkin and the hole in the ground are far more truly the man's property.--babcock.] "hitch your wagon to a star!" such is the advice emerson gave to ambitious youth. he meant well, no doubt, and indeed, his words are all right if taken with a pinch of salt. a boy should dream great dreams, of course, but he ought to set his dream-gauge so as to have it indicate a line of endeavor it will be possible for him to follow. [sidenote: that which some call idleness i call the sweetest part of my life, and that is my thinking.--felsham.] "hitch your wagon to a star," sounds eloquent, of course, but it might prove more prudent, far, to hitch it to a motor-car, or a steady-going horse. [sidenote: we must learn to bear and to work before we can spare strength to dream.--phelps.] the type of boy the world counts on to do it the most lasting good is the youth that does not permit the wings of fancy to carry him so far into the blue empyrean that he cannot touch the solid earth with at least the tiptoes of reason. as wingate truly says: "there is no use in filling young people's minds with vain hopes; not every one can make a fortune or a national reputation, but he who possesses health, ordinary ability, honesty and industry can at least earn a livelihood." [sidenote: training is everything. the peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.--mark twain.] if you are striving to be a level-headed boy you will understand that if you keep your eyes fastened on the stars all the while you are likely to overlook a thousand opportunities lying all about your pathway. let's not despise just common things, for here's a truth there is no dodging, the bird that soars on proudest wings comes down to earth for board and lodging. [sidenote: success comes only to those who lead the life of endeavour.--roosevelt.] some of the poets and others advise you to aim at the sky or the sun or something of that sort, for by so doing you will shoot higher than you would if you aimed at the ground. i would advise you to aim directly at the target you wish to hit. don't shoot over it or under it; shoot at it. [sidenote: the most certain sign of wisdom is a continued cheerfulness.--montaigne.] dreaming great things is good but doing simple things may be better. there ought to be, and there will be more dreams than deeds, just as there are more blossoms on the tree than can mature and ripen into perfect fruit. [sidenote: wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar.--wordsworth.] we shall always have to divide our attention between the things we can do and the things we should like to do. dreaming is an interesting pastime but we should not devote too many precious moments to the pleasures of "iffing" "if" this or that were thus and so, oh, wouldn't it be clever! but "ifs," alas! won't make it so though we should "if" forever. yet, while "ifs" cannot help a mite, we'd all be less contented and life would hold far less delight "if" "iffing" were prevented. [sidenote: our business in life is not to get ahead of other people, but to get ahead of ourselves.--babcock.] when the time arrives for a boy to cease dreaming and to begin doing he should seize upon the highest duty that comes to his hands and waste not a moment in dilatory uncertainties. "thrift of time," says gladstone, "will repay you in after-life with a thousandfold of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams." [sidenote: have the courage to appear poor, and you disarm poverty of its sharpest sting.--irving.] hopes are good, but patiently worked-out realities are better. hope is for to-morrow. work is for to-day. the hope that lulls one into a dreamy inactivity, with the promise that all will be well, whether or no, is sometimes a hindrance in the path toward success. we must not succumb too fully to the power of hope [sidenote: hope is the real riches, as fear is the real poverty.--hume.] hope's a magical compound to increase our strength, we've found, it can charm our bars and barriers all away. with its impulse, which we borrow, we can always do to-morrow lots and lots of things we never do to-day. [sidenote: small pleasures, depend upon it, lie about us as thick as daisies.--jerrold.] hope is the architect but brawn is the builder. an architect's most elaborate design for a mansion, on paper, cannot protect one from the elements as well as can the crudest little cabin actually built by hands. those who spend much time in dreaming wonderful plans and waiting for a ready-made success to come and hunt them up may be interested in learning about hank streeter's brain-wave [sidenote: go after two wolves, and you will not even catch one.--russian.] hank streeter used to sit around the corner grocery store, a-telling of the things he'd like to do; "but, pshaw!" said hank, "it ain't no use to tackle 'em before fate settles in her mind she'll help you through. and 'tain't no use to waste your time on triflin' things," said he; "the feller that secures the biggest plum is the one that thinks up something that's a winner, so, you see, i'm waitin' for a brain-wave to come." [sidenote: in all god's creation there is no place appointed for the idle man.--gladstone.] "the men that make the biggest hits," so hank would often say, "they ain't the ones, or so i calculate, that get their everlastin' fame a-workin' by the day; no, sir! they sort o' grab it while you wait. they spend their time a-thinkin' till they strike some new idee that's big enough to make the hull world hum." "and that's my plan for winnin' out," said hank; "and so," said he, "i'm waitin' for a brain-wave to come." [sidenote: let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.--mark twain.] and there he sat a-waiting: in the winter by the stove, in summer-time he sat outside the store; and, while his busy neighbors all about him worked and throve, he just kept on a-talking more and more; kept on a-getting poorer, and, while time it hauled and tacked, hank had to make a meal off just a crumb, till death it had to take him,--caught him in the very act of waiting for a brain-wave to come. [sidenote: labor is the genius that changes the world from ugliness to beauty, and changes the great curse to a great blessing.--opie read.] the man that's born a genius,--well, i s'pose he's bound to win, but most of us are born the other way; and, after all is said and done, the man who pitches in and works,--well he's a genius, so they say. if he can't win a dollar, why, he tries to earn a dime; if he can't have it all he'll capture some: for doing just the best we can is better, every time, than waiting for a brain-wave to come. [sidenote: i have seldom known any one who deserted truth in trifles that could be trusted in matters of importance.--paley.] [sidenote: there are many echoes in the world, but few voices.--goethe.] [sidenote: consequences are unpitying.--george eliot.] but it is to be remembered that the youth who does not think well of himself is not likely to do well. "ability, learning, accomplishment, opportunity, are all well," says mathews, "but they do not, of themselves, insure success. thousands have all these, and live and die without benefiting themselves or others. on the other hand, men of mediocre talents, often scale the dizzy steeps of excellence and fame because they have firm faith and high resolve. it is this solid faith in one's mission--the rooted belief that it is the one thing to which he has been called,--this enthusiasm, attracting an agassiz to the alps or the amazon, impelling a pliny to explore the volcano in which he is to lose his life, and nerving a vernet, when tossing in a fierce tempest, to sketch the waste of waters, and even the wave that is leaping up to devour him,--that marks the heroic spirit; and, wherever it is found, success, sooner or later, is almost inevitable." [sidenote: they who wish to sing always find a song.--swedish.] the youth who will start out in life's morning with a well-defined idea of the goal he wishes to gain, and who will keep going in the right direction need have little fear that his journey will finally end in the valley of never [sidenote: whoever in the darkness lighteth another with a lamp, lighteth himself also.--auerbach.] the city of is sets on top of a hill and if you would learn of its beauty take right-away street and keep going until you pass through the gateway of duty. but some miss the way, though the guide-board is plain, and leisurely wander forever, sad-hearted and weary, down by-and-by lane that leads to the valley of never. [sidenote: every year of my life i grow more convinced that it is wisest and best to fix our attention on the beautiful and good, and dwell as little as possible on the dark and base.--cecil.] if you start in the morning and follow the sun with a heart that is earnest and cheery, the way is so short that your journey is done before you have time to be weary. but wait till the day is beginning to wane and then, though you rightly endeavor, you are likely to wander down by-and-by lane that leads to the valley of never. [sidenote: a little integrity is better than any career.--emerson.] [sidenote: habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.--mark twain.] [sidenote: sweep first before your own door, before you sweep the doorsteps of your neighbors.--swedish.] when we come to observe life very closely we learn that the law of recompense is always in operation, and that when all things are considered, one man's lot does not seem so much better or another's so much worse than the fortune of those about him as a superficial glance might lead us to think. says hamerton: "i used to believe a great deal more in opportunities and less in application than i do now. time and health are needed, but with these there are always opportunities. rich people have a fancy for spending money very uselessly on their culture because it seems to them more valuable when it has been costly; but the truth is, that by the blessing of good and cheap literature, intellectual light has become almost as accessible as daylight. i have a rich friend who travels more, and buys more costly things than i do, but he does not really learn more or advance farther in the twelvemonth. if my days are fully occupied, what has he to set against them? only other well-occupied days, no more. if he is getting benefit at st. petersburg he is missing the benefit i am getting round my house, and in it. the sum of the year's benefit seems to be surprisingly alike in both cases. so if you are reading a piece of thoroughly good literature, baron rothschild may possibly be as well occupied as you--he is certainly not better occupied. when i open a noble volume i say to myself, 'now the only croesus that i envy is he who is reading a better book than this.'" [sidenote: if you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counsellor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.--addison.] there is many a boy who is quite sure the neighbor's boy has an easier time and a better prospect of success. grown-ups, too, are frequently of the opinion that they could do so much better if they were in somebody else's shoes. between the success which others attain and that which we achieve, we can very readily distinguish the difference [sidenote: calmness is a great advantage.--herbert.] when the other fellow gets rich it's luck, just blundering luck that brings him gains, but when we win it's a case of pluck with intelligent effort and lots of brains. [sidenote: man becomes greater in proportion as he learns to know himself and his faculty. let him once become conscious of what he is, and he will soon learn to be what he should.--schelling.] the country boy is sure that if he could get into the large city where there are more and greater chances for doing things he would make a great success. the city boy is quite as certain that if he could get out into a country town where the competition is not so fierce and where there is more room to grow he would do something worth while. in discussing this subject, edward bok says: "it is the man, not the place that counts. the magnet of worth is the drawing power in business. it is what you are, not where you are. if a young man has the right stuff in him, he need not fear where he lives or does his business. many a large man has expanded in a small place. the idea that a small place retards a man's progress is pure nonsense. if the community does not offer facilities for a growing business, they can be brought to it. proper force can do anything. all that is needed is right direction. the vast majority of people are like sheep, they follow a leader." [sidenote: men must know that in this theater of man's it remaineth only to god and angels to be lookers-on.--bacon.] [sidenote: it is no man's business whether he is a genius or not; work he must, whatever he is, but quietly and steadily.--ruskin.] for the solace and enlightenment of those who think they are the victims of an unkind fortune and that conditions are better elsewhere i herewith offer deacon watts's remarks concerning "yender grass" [sidenote: the talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, without a thought of fame.--longfellow.] "this world is full of 'yender grass,'" says deacon watts to me; "when i'm a-mowin' in the field, the grass close by," says he, "is short and thin and full of weeds; but over yender, why, it looks to me as if the grass is thick and smooth and high. but sakes alive! that ain't the case, for, when i mow to where the grass i saw from far away looked all so smooth and fair, i find it's jest as short and thin as all the rest, or wuss; and that's the way the things of earth keep on a-foolin' us! [sidenote: be not simply good, be good for something.--thoreau.] [sidenote: progress depends upon what we are, rather than upon what we may encounter. one man is stopped by a sapling lying across the road; another, passing that way, picks up the hindrance and converts it into a help in crossing the brook just ahead.--trumbull.] "'bout every day you'll hear some man complainin' of his lot, and tellin', if he'd had a chance like other people, what he might have been! he'd like to know how he can ever win when all the grass that comes his way is all so short and thin. but over in the neighbors' fields, why, he can plainly see that they're in clover plumb knee-deep and sweet as sweet can be! at times it's hard to tell if things are made of gold or brass; some men can't see them distant fields are full of 'yender grass.' [sidenote: greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength.--beecher.] [sidenote: great is wisdom; infinite is the value of wisdom. it cannot be exaggerated; it is the highest achievement of man.--carlyle.] "i've learned one thing in makin' hay, and that's to fill my mow with any grass that i can get to harvest here and now. the 'yender grass' that 'way ahead is wavin' in its pride i find ain't very fillin' by the time it's cut and dried. hope springs eternal, so they say, within the human breast: man never is, the sayin' goes, but always to be, blest. so my advice is, don't you let your present chances pass, a-thinkin' by and by you'll reap your fill of 'yender grass.'" [illustration: washington and lafayette at mount vernon] chapter viii "trifles" [sidenote: it is ours to climb and dare.--frederick lawrence knowles.] "trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle." the saying is old but the truth is ever new. [sidenote: oh, sweet is life when youth is in the blood.--denis mccarthy.] it is the little things that count, day by day, in the forming of character. the way in which we employ our moments finally becomes the way in which we employ our years. [sidenote: down in the busy thoroughfares are boys the world shall know some day.--samuel ellsworth kiser.] as a matter of course every boy will, if he can, do some big, beautiful thing out there in the years to come. but it is a foregone conclusion that every boy must do a vast number of little things before he shall do the larger things. the "trifles" are always at hand waiting to be done, day after day, year after year. and it is the way in which a boy does these little things that gives him the standing he holds in the estimation of those with whom he is intimately associated. [sidenote: to him who presses on, at each degree new visions rise.--julia ward howe.] "as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined." a habit is easy to form but hard to break. yet the strongest of habits are formed just a little at a time--a small strand is added each day until there is a mighty cable that cannot be broken except by a mighty effort. if it is a good habit, its strength makes it all the better! if it is a bad habit, its strength makes it so much the worse. [sidenote: to doubt is failure, and to dare, success.--frederick lawrence knowles.] [sidenote: it's nothing against you to fall down flat, but to lie there is disgrace.--edmund vance cooke.] where is the boy who cannot see the fallacy in such illogical reasoning as this: "now, i will be careless while i am young so that i may be careful when i am older. i will remain ignorant and poorly informed while i am a boy, so that i may be wise when i am a man. i will bend one way while i am a twig so that i shall incline in another direction when i become a tree. i will do wrong things while my character is being formed so that i may do right things when my habits become fixed." all such reasoning is very, very foolish, isn't it? and yet there are some illogical youths who deem it will be easy to have one character and disposition as boys and quite a different one when they come to be men. by some strange hocus-pocus they hope to be able to sow a crop of "wild oats" and later on reap a harvest of good wheat. it cannot be done. [sidenote: do it right now and do it well.--john townsend trowbridge.] any farmer's boy will tell you that "as ye sow, so shall ye reap." when the farmer wishes to harvest wheat he does not sow oats. when he wishes a crop of potatoes he does not plant gourds. he has learned that what he plants in the spring he will harvest in the autumn. it is equally as true of life. that which we sow in youth we reap in our maturer years. we must not try to deceive nature and our own consciences. we shall get back from the years what we give to the years. [sidenote: condemn no creed! dig deep beneath the sod and at the root thou'lt find the truth of god.--alicia k. van buren.] the boy who early gets into the habit of doing things right is pretty sure to go on doing them so all his life, and without much effort on his part. the will is strengthened by exercise in the same manner as are the muscles. we learn to do easily that which we do often. [sidenote: it is adversity, not prosperity, which breeds men; as it is the storm, and not the calm, which makes the mariner.--melvin l. severy.] [sidenote: the slow long way may be the best.--nathan haskell dole.] [sidenote: he who lifts his brother man in turn is lifted by him.--john townsend trowbridge.] [sidenote: as the twig is archetypal of the tree, so childhood builds the ladder up which manhood climbs.--melvin l. severy.] the youth who says "no" to little temptations will, later on in life, be perfectly able to say "no" to temptations of any size. and how many a man's career has been made glorious simply because he learned, while a youth, to say "no" whenever his moral conscience told him it was the thing he should say! how true are the teachings of the wise moralist who tells us: "a very little word is 'no.' it is composed of but two letters and forms only one syllable. in meaning it is so definite as to defy misunderstanding. your lips find its articulation easy. diminutive in size, evident in import, easy of utterance, frequent in use, and necessary in ordinary speech, it seems one of the simplest and most harmless of all words. yet there are those to whom it is almost a terror. its sound makes them afraid. they would expurgate it from their vocabulary if they could. the little monosyllable sticks in their throat. their pliable and easy temper inclines them to conformity, and frequently works their bane. assailed by the solicitations of pleasure they are sure to yield, for at once and resolutely they will not repeat 'no!' plied with the intoxicating cup they seldom overcome, for their facile nature refuses to express itself in 'no!' encountering temptation in the hard and duteous path they are likely to falter and fall, for they have not the boldness to speak out the decided negative 'no!' amid the mists of time, and involved in the labyrinthine mazes of error, they are liable to forget eternal verities and join in the ribald jest, for they have not been accustomed to utter an emphatic 'no!' all the noble souls and heroes of history have held themselves ready, whenever it was demanded, to say 'no!' the poet said 'no!' to the sloth and indolence which was consuming his precious hours, and wove for himself in heavenly song a garland of immortality." [sidenote: all that we send into the lives of others comes back into our own.--edwin markham.] [sidenote: the greatest, strongest, most skilled is he who knows how to wait, and wait patiently.--charles the ninth.] "no" might seem to be but a mere trifle of a word yet the boy who learns to say it on every right occasion has already conquered many of the foes that are likely to beset him along life's pathway. every boy should cultivate his will until it is strong enough for him to depend upon it at all times. with the proper amount of will he is sure to have sufficient "won't" to resist all the temptations that wrong may offer him. [sidenote: the man in whom others believe is a power, but if he believes in himself he is doubly powerful.--willis george emerson.] in developing a strength that enables him to say "no!" to wrong things a boy becomes strong enough to say "yes!" to right things. his "i won't!" with which he meets wrong suggestions engenders his "i will!" toward the wholesome and commendable undertakings in which he should be interested. [sidenote: one forgives everything in him who forgives himself nothing.--chinese.] when a boy has learned to say, and to feel the strength that is in the words, "i will!" he ceases to make use of the words, "i wish," for his will is sufficient to make his wish a living reality. and what a world of difference there is between the involved meanings of the words, "i wish" and "i will" [sidenote: not in rewards, but in the strength to strive, the blessing lies.--john townsend trowbridge.] "i wish" and "i will," so my grandmother says, were two little boys in the long, long ago, and "i wish" used to sigh while "i will" used to try for the things he desired, at least that's what my grandma tells me, and she ought to know. "i wish" was so weak, so my grandmother says, that he longed to have someone to help him about, and while he'd stand still and look up at the hill and sigh to be there to go coasting, "i will" would glide past him with many a shout. [sidenote: it makes considerable difference whether a man talks bigger than he is, or is bigger than he talks.--patrick flynn.] they grew to be men, so my grandmother says, and all that "i wish" ever did was to dream-- to dream, and to sigh that life's hill was so high, while "i will" went to work and soon learned, if we try, hills are never so steep as they seem. "i wish" lived in want, so my grandmother says, but "i will" had enough and a portion to spare: whatever he thought was worth winning he sought with an earnest and patient endeavor that brought of blessings a bountiful share. [sidenote: no man doth safely rule but he that hath learned gladly to obey.--thomas Ã� kempis.] and whenever my grandma hears any one "wish," a method she seeks, in his mind to instill, for increasing his joys, and she straightway employs the lesson she learned from the two little boys whose names were "i wish" and "i will." [sidenote: by varied discipline man slowly learns his part in what the master mind has planned.--nathan haskell dole.] "trifles" are the beginnings of things which finally develop into all that is worth while. the acorn is a trifle, yet within it is hidden an oak tree, and a whole forest of oak trees. the tiny little brooklet is only a trifle yet it flows on and on till it becomes a mighty river. [sidenote: it is a ridiculous thing for a man not to fly from his own badness, which indeed is possible, but to fly from other men's badness, which is impossible.--marcus aurelius.] the first rude little pencil sketch made by the child that has an inborn love of drawing is but a trifle, yet it may be the beginning of an art career that shall brighten the whole world. [sidenote: yet with steadfast courage that rather would die than turn back.--nathan haskell dole.] the first few lines written by the embryo poet constitute but a trifle, yet with a word of encouragement it may sometime be followed by songs that shall make all mankind happier and better. [sidenote: one thing we must never forget, namely: that the infinitely most important work for us is the humane education of the millions who are soon to come on the stage of action.--george t. angell.] [sidenote: in every sincere and earnest man's heart god has placed a little niche where the poetic, the spectacular, and the legendary hold full sway.--willis george emerson.] it was just a trifling incident that developed one of the greatest vocalists the world has ever known. we are told that jenny lind, at the beginning of her life, was a poor, neglected little girl, homely and uncouth, living in a single room of a tumble-down house in a narrow street at stockholm. when the humble woman who had her in charge went out to her daily labor, she was accustomed to lock jenny in with her sole companion, a cat. one day the little girl, who was always singing to herself like a canary-bird, "because," as she said, "the song was in her and must come out," sat with her dumb companion at the window warbling her sweet child-like notes. she was overheard by a passing lady, who paused and listened, struck by the trill and clearness of the untutored notes. she made careful inquiry about the child and became the patroness of the little jenny who was at once supplied with a music-teacher. she loved the art of song, and having a true genius for it she made rapid progress, surprising both patroness and teachers, and presently, became the world's "queen of song." [sidenote: the generous heart should scorn a pleasure which gives others pain.--anonymous.] [sidenote: neither education nor riches can take the place of character, yet we can all get as much character as we want.--patrick flynn.] [sidenote: a teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows on rows of natural objects, classified with name and form.--goethe.] how trifling was the incident that brought about, by a happy accident, the development of the genius which slept in the soul of the sculptor canova! a superb banquet was being prepared in the palace of the falieri family in venice. the tables were already arranged, when it was discovered that a crowning ornament of some sort was required to complete the general effect of the banqueting board. canova's grandfather, who brought him up, was a stone-cutter, often hewing out stone ornaments for architects; and as he lived close at hand, he was hastily consulted by the steward of the falieris. canova chanced to go with his grandfather to view the tables, and overheard the conversation. though but a child his quick eye and ready genius at once suggested a suitable design for the apex of the principal dishes. "give me a plate of cold butter," said the boy; and seating himself at a side table he rapidly moulded a lion of proper proportions, and so true to nature in its pose and detail as to astonish all present. it was put in place and proved to be the most striking ornamental feature of the feast. when the guests, on being seated, discovered the lion, they exclaimed aloud with admiration, and demanded to see at once the person who could perform such a miracle impromptu. canova was brought before them, and his boyish person only heightened their wonder. from that hour the head of the opulent falieri family became his kind, appreciative, liberal patron. canova was placed under the care of the best sculptors of venice and rome and became a grand master of his art. [sidenote: a good conscience expects to be treated with perfect confidence.--victor hugo.] [sidenote: build new domes of thought in your mind, and presently you will find that instead of your finding the eternal life, the eternal life has found you.--jenkin lloyd jones.] but it may be truthfully said that every boy does not possess some latent genius, waiting to be discovered by some one who will foster and develop it. then there is all the more need of making the very most of the small talents one may possess. one need not be a canova, or a shakespeare, in order that he may become something worth while to those with whom he dwells in close association. [sidenote: there is no power on earth that can enslave a man who is mentally free; no power that can free a man who is mentally enslaved.--patrick flynn.] every nook and corner of the world is waiting for the fine characters that are to make it a pleasant place in which to dwell. blest is that household, however humble, in which there are bright, manly, truthful, kind-hearted boys, ever ready to make the hours brighter, and the home dearer, by their tender thoughtfulness of those about them. [sidenote: he who is plenteously provided from within, needs but little from without.--goethe.] are you going to win the admiration of the world, by and by? [sidenote: write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. no man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is doomsday.--emerson.] have you already won the admiration of that little, all-important world that now lies just about you? does the mother, or father, or sister, or brother, who knows you best, hold you in the highest esteem? if you do not win the love of those who know you so well, how can you hope to be loved by the world which can never come into such close and tender relations with you? [sidenote: do not sing with a too exact correctness. put in personality.--william tomlins.] do not wait for some big event out there in the years to come. begin just here and now, by seizing upon the "trifles" that lie all about you. the great wall of solid masonry is not put into place all at once; it is laid patiently and carefully, brick by brick. so manhood must be built a "trifle" at a time until a character is established that temptation cannot totter to the earth. [sidenote: tyranny is always weakness.--james russell lowell.] [sidenote: if we see rightly and mean rightly, we shall get on, though the hand may stagger a little; but if we mean wrongly, or mean nothing, it does not matter how firm the hand is.--ruskin.] and every boy ought to thank his lucky stars that he does not have to wait for some special occasion to offer itself before he can begin to develop the traits that shall waken the warmest regard of those about him, and bring to his own sense of well-doing the reward born of all virtue. this very day there are many "trifles" strewn in his pathway. if he shall make the most of them, larger opportunities will be vouchsafed him. the one important consideration is whether he is ready to begin to build at the present moment, and to utilize the splendid "trifles" all about him, or will procrastinate till such time as he can by some great sweep of action, establish his reputation all at once and full-born. if he has decided on the latter course he should be moved to give the most earnest and serious consideration to the startling differences that exist between "now" and "waitawhile" [sidenote: it is better to hold back a truth than to speak it ungraciously.--st. francis de sales.] little jimmie "waitawhile" and little johnnie "now" grew up in homes just side by side; and that, you see, is how i came to know them both so well, for almost every day i used to watch them in their work and also in their play. [sidenote: it is ever true that he who does nothing for others, does nothing for himself.--george sand.] little jimmie "waitawhile" was bright and steady, too, but never ready to perform what he was asked to do; "wait just a minute," he would say, "i'll do it pretty soon," and tasks he should have done at morn were never done at noon. he put off studying until his boyhood days were gone; he put off getting him a home till age came stealing on; he put off everything, and so his life was not a joy, and all because he waited "just a minute" when a boy. [sidenote: the artist who can realize his ideal has missed the true gain of art, as "a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's heaven for?"--edward dowden.] but little johnnie "now" would say, when he had work to do, "there's no time like the present time," and gaily put it through. and when his time for play arrived he so enjoyed the fun! his mind was not distressed with thoughts of duties left undone. [sidenote: keep but ever looking, whether with the body's eye or the mind's and you will soon find something to look on.--browning.] in boyhood he was studious and laid him out a plan of action to be followed when he grew to be a man; and life was as he willed it, all because he'd not allow his tasks to be neglected, but would always do them "now." [sidenote: great hearts alone understand how much glory there is in being good. to be and keep so is not the gift of a happy nature alone, but it is strength and heroism.--jules michelet.] and so in every neighborhood are scores of growing boys who, by and by, must work with tools when they have done with toys. and you know one of them, i guess, because i see you smile; and is he little johnnie "now" or jimmie "waitawhile"? chapter ix the worth of advice [sidenote: courage is a virtue that the young cannot spare; to lose it is to grow old before the time; it is better to make a thousand mistakes and suffer a thousand reverses than to run away from the battle.--henry van dyke.] of what value is this book to you? perhaps there is more involved in the answer to this question than a careless consideration of it might lead one to think. shakespeare says: "a jest's prosperity lies in the ear of him that hears it, never in the tongue of him that makes it." so it is that the value of advice depends not so much upon the giver as it does upon the one who receives it. [sidenote: he needs no other rosary whose thread of life is strung with beads of love and thought.--persian.] emerson has observed that he who makes a tour of europe brings home from that country only as much as he takes there with him. this same truth holds good in the reading of books and in listening to sermons and lectures. he that has not eyes with which to see, will see nothing. he that has not ears with which to hear, can hear nothing. [sidenote: truth is a cork; it is bound to come to the top.--willis george emerson.] a sign-post indicating which road to take to reach a certain destination surely ought to be of great value to a traveler in a strange land. if the traveler, having failed to cultivate the habit of observing his surroundings, passes by the sign-post without seeing it, or if he reads its directions and says to himself: "i think i know better; i shall reach my destination by whatever road i choose to travel," then the sign-post is of no true use to him. not that it is not a good sign-post. no, the sign-post is all right; it is the traveler who is wrong. he must go his own way and, perhaps, journey far, and fare sadly before he arrives at the place he seeks--the destination he might have reached pleasantly and in good season. franklin tells us that experience is a dear teacher but fools will learn from no other. [sidenote: he who will not answer to the rudder must answer to the rock.--archbishop herve.] now this book which you hold in your hand is only a guide-post, or perhaps we had better call it a guide-book. it is intended for the use of the boys of our land and all other persons who are not too old or too wise to learn more. [sidenote: it is not erudition that makes the intellectual man, but a sort of virtue which delights in vigorous and beautiful thinking, just as moral virtue delights in vigorous and beautiful conduct.--hammerton.] every boy is starting out on a long, interesting, and tremendously important journey. it will lie mostly through a strange country and is a journey which must, in a very large sense, be traveled alone by each individual person. there are many partings of the ways; many perplexing forks in the road. [sidenote: give what you have. to some one it may be better than you dare to think.--longfellow.] the thoughtful boy will ever feel called upon to ask his highest understanding: "which is the right road for me to take?" he will not carelessly pass by the sign-posts without learning what they have to tell him, nor will he forget or refuse to be guided by their instructions and admonitions. [sidenote: there are men who complain that roses have thorns. they should be grateful to know that thorns have roses.--max o'rell.] if a sign post says: "danger! go slowly!" he will govern his movements accordingly. if the sign-post says: "railroad crossing. beware of the engine!" he will not blindly plunge ahead without waiting to see if his course is clear. he will understand that many others have traveled the way before him and have learned by experience that it is well for all to take heed and do as the sign-post directs. [sidenote: i think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.--benjamin franklin.] this life-long pathway upon which every boy is starting is a winding, intricate, interesting way, and many there are who turn into the wrong roads that are ever leading off from the main-traveled track. it is the purpose of this volume to serve as a guide-book for the boy who desires to reach happiness and helpfulness, prosperity and splendid manhood in the most direct and efficient manner. at every turn of life's way it will warn him from the blind paths that would bring him, by the way of idleness, carelessness, ignorance, and extravagance, to the unfortunate land of failure, of broken hopes, and of life misspent. [sidenote: those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.--barrie.] [sidenote: there is a certain sweetness and elegance in "little deeds of kindness," and in letting our best impulses have free play on common occasions.--joseph may.] "a word spoken in due season, how good is it!" in these pages over which your eye is passing are spoken the words of a large and distinguished company of the world's best and wisest men and women. emerson says: "every book is a quotation; every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone-quarries, and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors." [sidenote: the school of the intellectual man is the place where he happens to be, and his teachers are the people, books, animals, plants, stones, and earth round about him.--hammerton.] "in the multitude of counsellors there is safety." the value of well-selected quotations to serve as finger-posts to guide us day by day is thus set forth by the great german poet, goethe: "whatever may be said against such collections which present authors in a disjointed form they nevertheless bring about many excellent results. we are not always so composed, so full of wisdom, that we are able to take in at once the whole scope of a work according to its merits. do we not mark in a book passages which seem to have a direct reference to ourselves? young people especially, who have failed in acquiring a complete cultivation of the mind, are roused in a praiseworthy way by brilliant quotations." [sidenote: heroism is simple and yet it is rare. everyone who does the best he can is a hero.--josh billings.] [sidenote: one of the dearest thoughts to me is this--a real friend will never get away from me, or try to, or want to. love does not have to be tethered.--anna r. brown.] and if it shall so happen that some word or sentence or sentiment contained in this book shall rouse in a praiseworthy way just one boy--the very boy whose thought is dwelling on these lines at this very moment--all of this labor of love shall have been abundantly rewarded. for just one boy roused to his best efforts can grandly gladden his own home circle and, perchance, the whole wide world. [sidenote: in all situations wherein a living man has stood or can stand, there is actually a prize of quite infinite value placed within his reach--namely, a duty for him to do.--carlyle.] "why, the world is at a boy's feet," says burdette, "and power, conquest, and leadership slumber in his rugged arms and care-free heart. a boy sets his ambition at whatever mark he will--lofty or grovelling, as he may elect--and the boy who resolutely sets his heart on fame, on health, on power, on what he will; who consecrates every faculty of his mind and body on ambition, courage, industry, and patience, can trample on genius; for these are better and grander than genius." [sidenote: to have what we want is riches, but to be able to do without is power.--george macdonald.] the past is gone forever; the present is so brief and fleeting we can scarcely call it our own; in the future lies our larger, better hope of a happier civilization. not the men of yesterday, not the men of to-day, but the men of to-morrow, the boys, are the ones who are to make the world right. they are the world's victors [sidenote: let every man be occupied in the highest employment of which his nature is capable, and die with the consciousness that he has done his best.--sydney smith.] hurrah for the beacon-lights of earth,-- the brave, triumphant boys! hurrah for their joyous shouts of mirth, and their blood-bestirring noise! the bliss of being shall never die, nor the old world seem depressed while a boy's stout heart is beating high, like a glad drum in his breast. [sidenote: of course i know that it is better to build a cathedral than to make a boot; but i think it better actually to make a boot than only to dream about building a cathedral.--ellen thornycroft fowler.] ye wise professors of bookish things, that burden the souls of men, go trade your lore for a boy's glad wings, and fly to the stars again. nor grope through a shrunken, shrivelled world that the years have made uncouth, but march 'neath the flaunting flags unfurled by the valiant hands of youth. [sidenote: the most enviable of all titles is the character of an honest man.--abraham lincoln.] oh, never the lamp of age burns low in its cold and empty cup. but youth comes by with his face aglow, and a beacon-light leaps up. the gloomiest skies grow bright and gay, and the whispered clouds of doubt are swept from the brows of the world away by a boy's triumphant shout. [sidenote: an act of yours is not simply the thing you do, but it is also the way you do it.--phillips brooks.] of the multitudes of boys who are to become the world's victors, he will succeed best who earliest in life learns carefully to observe and to appreciate the character of his surroundings, and to build into the structure of his manhood the high and abiding influences that come to his hands. as one of our great thinkers given to deep introspection has so impressively said, life, itself, may be compared to a building in the course of construction. it rises slowly, day by day, through the years. every new lesson we learn lays a block on the edifice which is rising silently within us. every experience, every touch of another life on ours, every influence that impresses us, every book we read, every conversation we have, every act of our commonest days adds to the invisible building. [sidenote: always say a kind word if you can, if only that it may come in, perhaps, with singular opportuneness, entering some mournful man's darkened room like a beautiful firefly, whose happy convolutions he cannot but watch, forgetting his many troubles.--arthur helps.] [sidenote: not in war, not in wealth, not in tyranny, is there any happiness to be found--only in kindly peace, fruitful and free.--ruskin.] [sidenote: you must help your fellow-men; but the only way you can help them is by being the noblest and the best man that it is possible for you to be.--phillips brooks.] [sidenote: the humblest subscriber to a mechanics' institute has easier access to sound learning than had either solomon or aristotle, yet both solomon and aristotle lived the intellectual life.--hammerton.] plenty of good, wholesome play and healthful recreation, every boy needs and must have if he means to round out a fine physical and moral development, but idleness and indifference, evils that creep into the hours that are given up to something that is neither work nor play, must never be tolerated. "the ruin of most men dates from some vacant hour," says hillard. "occupation is the armor of the soul; and the train of idleness is borne up by all the vices. i remember a satirical poem, in which the devil is represented as fishing for men and adapting his baits to the taste and temperament of his prey; but the idler, he said, pleased him most, because he bit the naked hook. to a young man away from home, friendless and forlorn in a great city, the hours of peril are those between sunset and bedtime; for the moon and stars see more of evil in a single hour than the sun in his whole day's circuit. the poet's visions of evening are all compact of tender and soothing images. they bring the wanderer to his home, the child to his mother's arms, the ox to his stall, and the weary laborer to his rest. but to the gentle-hearted youth who is thrown upon the rocks of a pitiless city, 'homeless amid a thousand homes,' the approaching evening brings with it an aching sense of loneliness and desolation, which comes down upon the spirit like darkness upon the earth. in this mood his best impulses become a snare to him; and he is led astray because he is social, affectionate, sympathetic, and warm-hearted. if there be a young man thus circumstanced within the sound of my voice, let me say to him, that books are the friends of the friendless, and that a library is the home of the homeless. a taste for reading will always carry you into the best possible society, and enable you to converse with men who will instruct you by their wisdom, and charm you with their wit; who will soothe you when fretted, refresh you when weary, counsel you when perplexed, and sympathize with you at all times." [sidenote: the man who tries and succeeds is one degree less of a hero than the man who tries and fails and yet goes on trying.--ellen thornycroft fowler.] [sidenote: oh, do not pray for easy lives--pray to be stronger men. do not pray for tasks equal to your powers,--pray for powers equal to your tasks.--phillips brooks.] books are the voices of the dumb, the tongues of brush and pen; the ever-living kernels from the passing husks of men. [sidenote: to know how to grow old is the master-work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.--henri frederic amiel.] it is from good books as well as from living personages that boys will receive much of the good advice which they must follow in order that they may make the most of life. life is too short for a boy to investigate everything for himself. there is much that he must accept as being true. he has not the time to follow every road to its end and ascertain if the sign-posts have all told the truth. strive as we may we are still dependent for much of our information upon the hearsay of others. no one person can begin to know everything. [sidenote: if instead of a gem or even a flower, we could cast the gift of a lovely thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give.--george macdonald.] [sidenote: what must of necessity be done you can always find out, beyond question, how to do.--ruskin.] [sidenote: when i hear people say that circumstances are against them, i always retort: "you mean that your will is not with you!" i believe in the will--i have faith in it.--elizabeth barrett browning.] every thinking boy clearly understands that he knows much more to-day than he did a year ago. and he has good reason for thinking that if he shall remain among the living he will know many things a year from now that he does not know to-day. to live is to learn. hence it is that youth should be modest in the presence of age, for silver hair and wisdom are more than likely to dwell together. no youth should think too lightly of his own mental endowments and his fund of information, neither should he permit his very lack of knowledge to lead him to think that he has acquired about all the secrets that nature and the great world have to divulge. every boy should be cool-headed, clear-headed, long-headed, level-headed, but not big-headed. should he become afflicted with a serious attack of "enlargement of the brain" it is more than likely that when he has reached the years of soberer manhood he will look back with a sense of good-humored humiliation to my boyhood dreams [sidenote: if you do not scale the mountain, you cannot view the plain.--chinese.] i remember, i remember when i was seventeen; i was the cleverest young man the world had ever seen. the universe seemed simple then, but now 'tis little joy to know i don't know lots of things i did know when a boy. [sidenote: there is no substitute for thorough-going, ardent, sincere earnestness.--dickens.] i remember, i remember this old world seemed so slow; i'd teach it how to conquer things when once i got a show! 'twas such a charming fairy tale! but now 'tis sorry play to find how hard i have to work to get three meals a day. [sidenote: to leave undone those things which we ought to do, to leave unspoken the word of recognition or appreciation that we should have said, is perhaps as positive a wrong as it is to do the thing we should not have done.--lillian whiting.] i remember, i remember the things i planned to do; i meant to take this poor old earth and make it over new. it was a most delightful dream; but now 'tis little cheer to know the world when i am gone won't know that i was here. [sidenote: those who can take the lead are given the lead.--arthur t. hadley.] [sidenote: when a family rises early in the morning, conclude the house to be well governed.--chinese.] this somewhat overdrawn picture of human conceit and egotism holds a lesson for each and all of us. he who knows it all can learn no more, and he who can learn no more is likely to die ignorant. there are guide-posts all along our ways which if heeded will direct us toward the very destinations we should reach. and nothing else is so full of suggestion and inspiration as is a good book. in it we can enter the very heart of a man without being abashed by the author's august presence. [sidenote: duty determines destiny. destiny which results from duty performed may bring anxiety and perils, but never failure and dishonor.--william mckinley.] when quite young, the poet, cowley, happened upon a copy of spenser's "faerie queen", which chanced to be nearly the only book at hand, and becoming interested he read it carefully and often, until, enchanted thereby, he irrevocably determined to be a poet. the effect this same poem had upon the earl of southampton when he first read it is worth remembering. as soon as the book was finished spenser took it to this noble patron of poets and sent it up to him. the earl read a few pages and said to a servant, "take the writer twenty pounds." still he read on, and presently he cried in rapture, "carry that man twenty pounds more." entranced he continued to read, but presently he shouted: "go turn that fellow out of the house, for if i read further i shall be ruined!" [sidenote: laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him.--franklin.] dr. franklin tells us that the chance perusal of de foe's "essay on projects" influenced the principal events and course of his life. the reading of the "lives of the saints" caused ignatius loyola to form the purpose of creating a new religious order,--which purpose eventuated in the powerful society of the jesuits. [sidenote: it is faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth looking at.--oliver wendell holmes.] dickens's earliest and best literary work, the "pickwick papers," was begun at the suggestion of a publisher of a magazine for whom dickens was doing some job-work at the time. he was asked to write a serial story to fit some comic pictures which chanced to be in the publisher's possession. [sidenote: blessed is he who has found his work. from the heart of the worker rises the celestial force, awakening him to all nobleness, to all knowledge.--thomas carlyle.] while yet a mere boy scott chanced upon a copy of percy's "reliques of ancient poetry," which he read and re-read with great interest. he purchased a copy as soon as he could get the necessary sum of money and thus was early instilled into his soul a taste for poetry in the writing of which he was destined to attain such eminence. the translation of "götz von berlichingen" was scott's first literary effort and this work, carlyle says, had a very large and lasting influence on the great novelist's future career. in his opinion this translation was "the prime cause of 'marmion' and the 'lady of the lake,' with all that has followed from the same creative hand. truly a grain of seed that had lighted in the right soil. for if not firmer and fairer, it has grown to be taller and broader than any other tree; and all nations of the earth are still yearly gathering of its fruit." [sidenote: nothing that is excellent can be wrought suddenly.--jeremy taylor.] [sidenote: character is centrality, the impossibility of being displaced or overset.--emerson.] thus we see how much there is in life for those who observe their surroundings, who read the directions on the guide-posts, who study the guidebooks and who are wise enough to receive and to utilize the advice and suggestions that are everywhere offered them, and which their reason tells them are good. [sidenote: a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.--milton.] chapter x real success [sidenote: resolve to cultivate a cheerful spirit, a smiling countenance, and a soothing voice. the sweet smile, the subdued speech, the hopeful mind, are earth's most potent conquerors, and he who cultivates them becomes a very master among men.--hubbard.] "boy wanted" are you the boy? if you have carefully read and digested the foregoing chapters you have a pretty clear understanding of the sort of boy the world prefers for a life partner. you have learned that you must ask no favors of "luck,"--win your way like a man; be active and earnest and plucky; then your work will come out just about as you plan and the world will exclaim, "oh, how lucky!" [sidenote: they also serve who only stand and wait.--milton.] in studying the history of the lives of successful men we are constantly being impressed with the thought that they make the most out of their surroundings, whatever their surroundings may be. they do not wait for a good chance to succeed; they take such chances as they can get and make them good. we very soon learn that [sidenote: two things fill me with awe: the starry heavens above, and the moral sense within.--kant.] the ones who shall win are the ones who will toil; the future is all in our keeping; though fortune may give us the seed and the soil, we must still do the sowing and reaping. [sidenote: the realities of to-day surpass the ideals of yesterday.--frothingham.] [sidenote: the person who considers everything will never decide on anything.--italian.] we learn, also, that one may achieve a full measure of success without accumulating much money, and may accumulate much money without achieving success. "mere wealth is no more success than fools' gold is real gold," says one of our wise essayists. "collaterals do not take the place of character. a man obtains thousands or millions of dollars by legal or illegal thieving, and society, instead of sending him to prison, receives him in its parlors. men bow low when he passes, as in the fable the people bowed to the golden idols that were strapped on the back of a donkey, who was ass enough to swell with pride in the thought that all this reverence was for him. the man who puts his trust in gold and deposits his heart in the bank, and thinks money means success, is like the starving traveler in the desert, who, seeing a bag in the distance, found in it, instead of food which he sought, nothing but gold, and flung it from him in disappointment, and died for want of something that could save his life. the soul will starve if gold alone administers to its needs. better to be a man than merely a millionaire. better to have a head and heart than merely houses and lands." [sidenote: nobody can carry three watermelons under one arm.--spanish.] it is along such lines of thinking that i offer these thoughts on getting rich [sidenote: when men speak ill of thee, live so that nobody will believe them.--plato.] get riches, my boy! grow as rich as you can; 'tis the laudable aim of each diligent man of life's many blessings his share to secure, nor go through this world ill-conditioned and poor. get riches, my boy! ah, but hearken you, mind! get riches, but those of the genuine kind. get riches,--not dollars and acres unless you thoughtfully use them to brighten and bless. [sidenote: the great high-road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast well-being and well-doing, and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful; success treads on the heels of every right effort.--samuel smiles.] get riches, not such as with money are bought, but those that with love and high thinking are wrought; get rubies of righteousness, jewels of grace, whose brightness time's passing shall never efface. get riches! do not, as the foolish will do, in getting your money let money get you to steal life's high purpose from heart and from head and prison the soul in a pocket instead. get riches! get gold that is pure and refined; get light from above; get the love of mankind; get gladness through all of life's journey; and then get heaven, forever and ever. _amen._ [sidenote: he overcomes a stout enemy who overcomes his own anger.--greek.] the wide-awake boy will see the advantage of carrying in his thought these words of lavater: "he who sedulously attends, pointedly asks, calmly speaks, coolly answers, and ceases when he has no more to say is in possession of some of the best requisites of man." [sidenote: stones and sticks are flung only at fruit-bearing trees.--persian.] the man of words and not of thoughts is like a great long row of naughts. "there is a gift beyond the reach of art, of being eloquently silent," says bovee, and caroline fox tells us that "the silence which precedes words is so much grander than the grandest words because in it are created those thoughts of which words are the mere outward clothing." to speak to no purpose is as idle as the clanging of tinkling cymbals. [sidenote: let every man be occupied, and occupied in the highest employment of which his nature is capable, and die with the consciousness that he has done his best.--sydney smith.] a thoughtful man will never set his tongue a-going and forget to stop it when his brain has quit a-thinking thoughts to offer it. "if thou thinkest twice before thou speakest once," says penn, "thou wilt speak twice the better for it." it is this matter of thinking, of considering, of weighing one's words and deeds that compels the moments, the days and the years to bring the success that some mistakenly think is only a matter of chance. [sidenote: it is an uncontroverted truth that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.--swift.] it is this habit of careful thinking that is going to make you remember that you owe it not only to yourself to make your life the truest success you can, but you owe it to your family, your friends, your enemies--if such you have--to the whole world with which you are in partnership, and to the stars above you. [sidenote: the great successes of the world have been affairs of a second, a third, nay, a fiftieth trial.--john morley.] but above all others there is one who, either in spirit or in her living presence, must ever and always be near to you, and for whose sake you will--god helping you!--stand up in your boots and be a man! the mother's dream [sidenote: be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing.--sydney smith.] boy, your mother's dreaming; there's a picture pure and bright that gladdens all her gracious tasks at morning, noon and night; a picture where is blended all the beauty born of hope, a view that takes the whole of life within its loving scope. [sidenote: choose always the way that seems the best, however rough it may be.--pythagoras.] she's dreaming, fondly dreaming, of the happy future when her boy shall stand the equal of his grandest fellow men her boy, whose heart with goodness she has labored to imbue, shall be, in her declining years, her lover proud and true. [sidenote: courage consists, not in blindly overlooking danger, but in meeting it with the eyes open.--jean paul richter.] she's growing old; her cheeks have lost the blush and bloom of spring, but oh! her heart is proud because her son shall be a king; shall be a king of noble deeds, with goodness crowned, and own the hearts of all his fellow men, and she shall share his throne. boy, your mother's dreaming; there's a picture pure and bright that gladdens all her gracious tasks at morning, noon and night; a view that takes the whole of life within its loving scope; o boy, beware! you must not mar that mother's dream and hope. transcriber's note: every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible. some minor corrections of spelling and puctuation have been made. italic text has been marked with _underscores_. the _way to wealth._ frontispiece. [illustration: 'if you would have my advice, i will give it you in short; "for a word to the wise is enough." published by w. darton, junr. octr. , .] _franklin's_ way to wealth; or, "poor richard improved." [illustration: published by w. darton, junr. octr. , .] london: printed by and for w. and t. darton, no. , holborn-hill. . to parents, governesses, and school masters. _just published_, a grammatical catechism for the use of schools, upon the plan of lindley murray. "this manual is particularly adapted to the purposes of examination and catechetical instruction, and will be found of the utmost service in weekly grammatical enquiries." _this day is published, price s. mo. bound_, the pagan mythology of ancient greece and rome versified, accompanied with philosophical elucidations of the probable latent meaning of some of the fables of the ancients, on a theory entirely new. by r. atkins. illustrated by twenty-two cuts on wood. "this little work is intended as an easy introduction to the mythology of ancient greece and rome, and is particularly adapted to the use of schools, being divested of the obscene allegories introduced by the ancients in their usual figurative style. it is certainly better calculated to convey a general idea of the subject, than any attempt of the kind which has yet fallen under our observation. the poetical illustrations are simple, and well calculated to the purpose of becoming a vehicle of instruction to juvenile minds, and the elucidations of the fables are plausible and ingenious." _repository, june, ._ sold by w. and t. darton, , holborn hill. introduction. _dr. franklin, wishing to collect into one piece all the sayings upon the following subjects, which he had dropped in the course of publishing the almanacks called "poor richard," introduces father abraham for this purpose. hence it is, that poor richard is so often quoted, and that, in the present title, he is said to be improved. notwithstanding the stroke of humour in the concluding paragraph of this address, poor richard (saunders) and father abraham have proved, in america, that they are no common preachers. and shall we, brother englishmen, refuse good sense and saving knowledge, because it comes from the other side of the water?_ _the following may be had of the proprietors, w. & t. darton_, and of most booksellers in the united kingdom. virtue and innocence, a poem the economy of human life old friends in a new dress, or selections from esop's fables, in verse, parts, plates little jack horner, in verse, plain s. coloured portraits of curious characters in london, &c. with biographical and interesting anecdotes watt's catechism and prayers, in vol. half bound wonders of the horse, recorded in anecdotes, prose and verse, by joseph taylor tales of the robin & other small birds, in verse, by joseph taylor instructive conversation cards, consisting of biographical sketches of eminent british characters ditto, containing a description of the most distinguished places in england *** just published, the mice & their pic nic; a good moral tale, price with neat coloured plates the way to wealth. courteous reader, i have heard that nothing gives an author so great pleasure, as to find his works respectfully quoted by others. judge, then, how much i must have been gratified by an incident i am going to relate to you. i stopped my horse, lately, where a great number of people were collected at an auction of merchants' goods. the hour of the sale not being come, they were conversing on the badness of the times; and one of the company called to a plain, clean, old man, with white locks, 'pray, father abraham, what think you of the times? will not those heavy taxes quite ruin the country! how shall we be ever able to pay them? what would you advise us to?'----father abraham stood up, and replied, 'if you would have my advice, i will give it you in short; "for a word to the wise is enough," as poor richard says.' they joined in desiring him to speak his mind, and, gathering round him, he proceeded as follows: 'friends,' says he, 'the taxes are indeed very heavy; and, if those laid on by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. we are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly; and from these taxes the commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing an abatement. however, let us hearken to good advice, and something may be done for us; "god helps them that help themselves," as poor richard says. i. 'it would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one-tenth part of their time to be employed in its service: but idleness taxes many of us much more; sloth, by bringing on diseases, absolutely shortens life. [illustration: published by w. darton, junr. octr. , .] "sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labour wears, while the used key is always bright," as poor richard says.--"but, dost thou love life? then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of," as poor richard says.--how much more than is necessary do we spend in sleep! forgetting that, "the sleeping fox catches no poultry, and that there will be sleeping enough in the grave," as poor richard says. [illustration] "if time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be" as poor richard says, "the greatest prodigality;" since, as he elsewhere tells us, "lost time is never found again; and what we call time enough, always proves little enough." let us then up and be doing, and doing to the purpose: so by diligence shall we do more with less perplexity. "sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all easy; and he that riseth late, must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night; while laziness travels so slowly, that poverty soon overtakes him. drive thy business, let not that drive thee; and early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise," as poor richard says. [illustration: the sun shone yesterday, and i would not work, to-day it rains and i cannot work.] 'so what signifies wishing and hoping for better times? we may make these times better, if we bestir ourselves. "industry need not wish, and he that lives upon hope will die fasting. there are no gains without pains; then help hands, for i have no lands;" or if i have, they are smartly taxed. "he that hath a trade, hath an estate; and he that hath a calling, hath an office of profit and honour," as poor richard says; but then the trade must be worked at, and the calling well followed, or neither the estate nor the office will enable us to pay our taxes.--if we are industrious, we shall never starve; for "at the working man's house hunger looks in, but dares not enter." nor will the bailiff or the constable enter, for "industry pays debts, while despair increaseth them." what, though you have found no treasure, nor has any rich relation left you a legacy. "diligence is the mother of good luck, and god gives all things to industry. then plow deep, while sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell and to keep." work while it is called to-day, for you know not how much you may be hindered to-morrow. "one to-day is worth two to-morrows," as poor richard says, and farther, "never leave that till to-morrow, which you can do to-day."--if you were a servant, would you not be ashamed that a good master should catch you idle? are you then your own master? be ashamed to catch yourself idle, when there is so much to be done for yourself, your family, your country, and your king. handle your tools without mittens: remember, that "the cat in gloves catches no mice," as poor richard says. it is true, there is much to be done, and, perhaps, you are weak-handed: but stick to it steadily, and you will see great effects; for "constant dropping wears away stones; and by diligence and patience the mouse ate in two the cable; and little strokes fell great oaks." [illustration] 'methinks i hear some of you say, "must a man afford himself no leisure?" i will tell thee, my friend, what poor richard says, "employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure; and, since thou art not sure of a minute, throw not away an hour." leisure is time for doing something useful; this leisure the diligent man will obtain, but the lazy man never; for "a life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. many, without labour, would live by their wits only, but they break for want of stock;" whereas industry gives comfort, and plenty, and respect. "fly pleasures and they will follow you. the diligent spinner has a large shift; and now i have a sheep and a cow, every body bids me good-morrow." ii. 'but with our industry we must likewise be steady, settled, and careful, and oversee our own affairs with our own eyes, and not trust too much to others: for, as poor richard says, "i never saw an oft-removed tree, nor yet an oft-removed family, that throve so well as those that settled be." and again, "three removes are as bad as a fire," and again, "keep thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee:" and again, "if you would have your business done, go; if not, send." and again, "he that by the plow would thrive, himself must either hold or drive." 'and again, "the eye of the master will do more work than both his hands:" and again, "want of care does us more damage than want of knowledge;" and again, "not to oversee workmen, is to leave them your purse open." [illustration: published by w. darton, junr. octr. , .] [illustration: published by w. darton, junr. octr. , .] 'trusting too much to others' care is the ruin of many; for, "in the affairs of this world, men are saved, not by faith, but by the want of it:" but a man's own care is profitable; for, "if you would have a faithful servant, and one that you like,--serve yourself. a little neglect may breed great mischief; for want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider was lost;" being overtaken and slain by the enemy; all for want of a little care about a horse-shoe nail. iii. 'so much for industry, my friends, and attention to one's own business; but to these we must add frugality, if we would make our industry more certainly successful. a man may if he knows not how to save as he gets, "keep his nose all his life to the grindstone, and die not worth a groat at last. a fat kitchen makes a lean will;" and, "many estates are spent in the getting, since women for tea forsook spinning and knitting, and men for punch forsook hewing and splitting." "if you would be wealthy, think of saving, as well as of getting. the indies have not made spain rich, because her out-goes are greater than her incomes." [illustration: published by w. darton, junr. octr. , .] [illustration] * * * * * 'away, then, with your expensive follies, and you will not then have so much cause to complain of hard times, heavy taxes, and chargeable families; for, "women and wine, game and deceit, make the wealth small, and the want great." and farther, "what maintains one vice, would bring up two children." you may think perhaps, that a little tea, or a little punch now and then, diet a little more costly, clothes a little finer, and a little entertainment now and then, can be no great matter; but remember, "many a little makes a mickle." beware of little expences; "a small leak will sink a great ship," as poor richard says; and again, "who dainties love shall beggars prove;" and moreover, "fools make feasts, and wise men eat them." here you are all got together to this sale of fineries and nick-nacks. you call them goods; but, if you do not take care, they will prove evils to some of you. you expect they will be sold cheap, and, perhaps, they may for less than they cost; but, if you have no occasion for them, they must be dear to you. remember what poor richard says, "buy what thou hast no need of, and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessaries." and again, "at a great pennyworth pause a while:" he means, that perhaps the cheapness is apparent only, and not real; or the bargain, by straitening thee in thy business, may do thee more harm than good. for, in another place, he says, "many have been ruined by buying good pennyworths." again, "it is foolish to lay out money in a purchase of repentance;" and yet this folly is practised every day at auctions, for want of minding the almanack. many a one, for the sake of finery on the back, have gone with a hungry belly, and half starved their families; "silks and satins, scarlet and velvets, put out the kitchen fire," as poor richard says. these are not the necessaries of life; they can scarcely be called the conveniences: and yet only because they look pretty, how many want to have them?--by these, and other extravagancies, the genteel are reduced to poverty, and forced to borrow of those whom they formerly despised, but who, through industry and frugality, have maintained their standing; in which case it appears plainly, that "a ploughman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees," as poor richard says. perhaps they have had a small estate left them, which they knew not the getting of; they think "it is day, and will never be night:" that a little to be spent out of so much is not worth minding; but "always taking out of the meal-tub, and never putting in, soon comes to the bottom," as poor richard says; and then, "when the well is dry, they know the worth of water." but this they might have known before, if they had taken his advice. "if you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some; for he that goes a borrowing, goes a sorrowing," as poor richard says; and, indeed, so does he that lends to such people, when he goes to get it in again. poor dick farther advises, and says, "fond pride of dress is sure a very curse, ere fancy you consult, consult your purse." [illustration: published by w. darton, junr. octr. , .] 'and again, "pride is as loud a beggar as want, and a great deal more saucy." when you have bought one fine thing, you must buy ten more, that your appearance may be all of a piece; but poor dick says, "it is easier to suppress the first desire, than to satisfy all that follow it." and it is as truly folly for the poor to ape the rich, as for the frog to swell, in order to equal the ox. "vessels large may venture more, but little boats should keep near shore." it is, however, a folly soon punished: for, as poor richard says, "pride that dines on vanity, sups on contempt;--pride breakfasted with plenty, dined with poverty and supped with infamy." and, after all, of what use is this pride of appearance, for which so much is risked, so much is suffered? it cannot promote health, nor ease pain; it makes no increase of merit in the person, it creates envy, it hastens misfortune. 'but what madness it must be to run in debt for these superfluities? we are offered, by the terms of this sale, six months credit; and that, perhaps, has induced some of us to attend it, because we cannot spare the ready money, and hope now to be fine without it. but, ah! think what you do when you run in debt; you give to another power over your liberty, if you cannot pay at the time, you will be ashamed to see your creditor; you will be in fear when you speak to him; you will make poor pitiful sneaking excuses, and, by degrees, come to lose your veracity, and sink into base, downright lying; for, "the second vice is lying, the first is running in debt," as poor richard says; and again, to the same purpose, "lying rides upon debt's back:" whereas a free-born englishman ought not to be ashamed nor afraid to see or speak to any man living. but poverty often deprives a man of all spirit and virtue. "it is hard for an empty bag to stand upright."--what would you think of that prince, or of that government, who should issue an edict forbidding you to dress like a gentleman or gentlewoman, on pain of imprisonment or servitude? would you not say that you were free, have a right to dress as you please, and that such an edict would be a breach of your privileges, and such a government tyrannical? and yet you are about to put yourself under that tyranny, when you run in debt for such dress! your creditor has authority, at his pleasure, to deprive you of your liberty, by confining you in gaol for life, or by selling you for a servant, if you should not be able to pay him. when you have got your bargain, you may, perhaps, think little of payment; but, as poor richard says, "creditors have better memories than debtors; creditors are a superstitious sect, great observers of set days and times." the day comes round before you are aware, and the demand is made before you are prepared to satisfy it; or, if you bear your debt in mind, the term, which at first seemed so long, will, as it lessens, appear extremely short: "time will seem to have added wings to his heels as well as his shoulders. those have a short lent, who owe money to be paid at easter." at present, perhaps, you may think yourselves in thriving circumstances, and that you can bear a little extravagance without injury; but "for age and want save while you may, no morning sun lasts a whole day." gain may be temporary and uncertain; but ever, while you live, expense is constant and certain; and "it is easier to build two chimneys, than to keep one in fuel," as poor richard says: so, "rather go to bed supper-less, than rise in debt," get what you can, and what you get hold, 'tis the stone that will turn all your lead into gold. and when you have got the philosopher's stone, sure you will no longer complain of bad times, or the difficulty of paying taxes. iv. 'this doctrine, my friends, is reason and wisdom; but, after all, do not depend too much upon your own industry, and frugality, and prudence, though excellent things; for they may all be blasted without the blessing of heaven; and therefore, ask that blessing humbly, and be not uncharitable to those that at present seem to want it, but comfort and help them. remember, job suffered, and was afterwards prosperous. [illustration] 'and now to conclude, "experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other," as poor richard says, and scarce in that; for it is true, "we may give advice, but we cannot give conduct." however, remember this, "they that will not be counselled cannot be helped;" and farther, that "if you will not hear reason, she will surely rap your knuckles," as poor richard says.' * * * * * thus the old gentleman ended his harangue. the people heard it, and approved the doctrine, and immediately practised the contrary, just as if it had been a common sermon; for the auction opened, and they began to buy extravagantly.--i found the good man had thoroughly studied my almanacks, and digested all i had dropt on those topics during the course of twenty-five years. the frequent mention he made of me must have tired any one else; but my vanity was wonderfully delighted with it, though i was conscious that not a tenth part of the wisdom was my own, which he ascribed to me; but rather the gleanings that i had made of the sense of all ages and nations. however, i resolved to be the better for the echo of it; and, though i had at first determined to buy stuff for a new coat, i went away, resolved to wear my old one a little longer. reader, if thou wilt do the same, thy profit will be as great as mine.--i am, as ever, thine to serve thee, richard saunders. [illustration: finis.] w. and t. darton, printers, holborn-hill, london. * * * * * transcriber's notes: only the most obvious and clear punctuation errors repaired. the opening single quotes end pages later. page , "grevious" changed to "grievous" (much more grievous) page , "waisting" changed to "wasting" (wasting time must be) page , "mak" changed to "make" (we may make) protection and communism from the french by frédéric bastiat. with a preface, by the translator london: john w. parker and son, west strand mdccclii. translator's preface. this translation will not, it is hoped, be unacceptable to the english reader, particularly at the present moment, when it is not improbable that, under certain circumstances, a great effort may be made in this country to restore protection--or, should that wild attempt be considered impossible, to shift the public burdens in such a manner as to effect, as far as possible, the same purpose in favour of what is called the 'agricultural interest.' m. bastiat's spirited little work is in the form of a letter, addressed to m. thiers--the archenemy of free-trade, as he was of most propositions which had for their object the true happiness of france. the present was only one of a series of efforts made by m. bastiat in favour of the cause of freedom of commerce; and the english reader has already had an opportunity of admiring the force of his arguments and the clearness of his style, in mr. porter's* admirable translation of _popular fallacies_, which is, indeed, a perfect armory of arguments for those 'who, although they may have a general impression favourable to free-trade, have yet some fears as to the consequences that may follow its adoption.' what impression m. bastiat may have produced on the public mind of france it is not easy to conjecture, or how far the recent violent changes in that country, presuming them to be at all permanent, may prove favourable to free-trade or otherwise. but it is to be feared that there is an amount of prejudice and ignorance in france, among the mass of her people, more inveterate and more difficult to remove and enlighten than was the case in this country. however, seed thus sown cannot remain altogether without fruit, and the rapidity with which correct principles spread through a great community, under apparently most unfavourable circumstances, is such as frequently to astonish even those most convinced of the vast power of truth. * secretary of the board of trade, and author of the _progress of the nation_. the real object of m. bastiat is to expose the unsoundness and injustice of the system of protection. he does this partly by a dexterous reference to the theory of communism, and shows, with logical force and neat application, that the principles of the two are in truth the same. the parallel thus drawn, so far from being fanciful or strained, is capable of easy demonstration. but, in drawing it, m. bastiat rather assumes than proves that communism is itself wholly indefensible--that its establishment would be destructive of security and property, and, consequently, of society--in a word, that it is another term for robbery. this is true, and obviously so, of communism, in its more extravagant form; and it is to this, of course, that m. bastiat refers. but it cannot be denied that there are many modifications of the principle which embrace more or less truth, and which _appear_ to offer a corrective to that excessive competition or pressure of numbers, the evils of which are patent, admitted, and deplored. that the specific remedy proposed is vicious, that it would quickly make matters much worse than they are, that it is, in fact, a fraud and a mockery, does not prevent it from being, and naturally, captivating to many who at present see no other way out of the difficulties and the struggles by which they are surrounded: and who are tempted to embrace it, not only as a relief to their present wants and anxieties, but because it would, in their opinion, entail other consequences, as connected with their social condition, particularly grateful to their feelings. we further admit that such sentiments--not in themselves irrational--founded on a legitimate desire for improvement, and entertained by large and important classes--are entitled to the most respectful consideration. whether some considerable melioration in the condition of our labourers and artisans may not by degrees be effected by means of combined labour, or co-operation, and the principle of partnership, is no doubt one of the great questions to be solved by modern society, but it is much too wide a one to be entered upon, however cursorily, in this place. it is understood, however, that one of the most original and powerful thinkers within the domain of statistics is at the present moment engaged on this subject; and, if this be so, we shall no doubt, before long, be in the possession of views of extreme importance and interest. we have, with deep regret, to add that m. bastiat died during the autumn of last year, after a long illness, in the south of italy. by his death, not only france, but the world also, has sustained a loss. protection and communism. to m. thiers. sir, do not be ungrateful to the revolution of february. it may have surprised, perhaps disturbed you, but it has also afforded you, whether as an author, an orator, or a practised statesman, some unexpected triumphs. amidst these successes, there is one certainly of no usual character. we not long ago read in _la presse_, 'the association for the protection of national labour (the ancient mimerel club)* is about to address a circular to all its correspondents, to announce that a subscription is opened for the purpose of promoting in manufactories the circulation of m. thiers's book upon property. the association itself subscribes for copies.' would that i had been present when this flattering announcement met your eyes. it should have made them sparkle with joy. we have good reason to say that the ways of providence are as infallible as they are impenetrable. for if you will bear with me for a moment i will endeavour to prove that protection, when fully developed, and pushed to its legitimate consequences, becomes communism. it is sufficiently singular that a champion of protection should discover that he is a promoter of communism; but what is more extraordinary and more consoling still, is the fact that we find a powerful association, that was formed for the purpose of propagating theoretically and practically the principles of communism (in the manner deemed most profitable to its members) now devoting the half of its resources to destroy the evil which it has done with the other half. * an association, mr. porter informs us, composed like that assembling (or that did assemble, for we are not quite sure whether it still exists,) at no. , new bond street, exclusively of producers, at least of the article sought to be protected, and therefore of persons who believe themselves to be interested in excluding from the home market the productions of others. i repeat it,--this is consoling. it assures us of the inevitable triumph of truth, since it shows us the real and first propagators of subversive doctrines, startled at their success, industriously correcting with the proper antidote the poison they had spread. this supposes, it is true, the identity of the principles of communism and of protection, and perhaps you do not admit this identity, though, to speak the truth, it seems to me impossible that you could have written four hundred pages upon property without being struck by it. perhaps you imagine that some efforts made in favour of commercial freedom, or rather of free trade, the impatience of a discussion without results, the ardour of the contest, and the keenness of the struggle, have made me view (what happens too often to all of us) the errors of my adversaries in exaggerated colours. but, beyond question, according to my idea, it requires but little effort to develop the principles you have been advocating into those of communism. how can it be that our great manufacturers, landed proprietors, rich bankers, able statesmen, have become, without knowing or wishing it, the introducers, the very apostles of communism in france? and why not, i would ask? there are numerous workmen fully convinced of the _right of labour_, and consequently communists also without knowing or wishing it, and who would not acknowledge the title. the reason of this is, that amongst all classes interest biases the will, and the will, as pascal says, is the chief element of our faith. under another name, many of our working classes, very honest people be it observed, use communism as they have always used it, namely, on the condition that the wealth of others should alone be liable to the law. but as soon as the principle, extending itself, would apply the same rule to their own property--oh! then communism is held in detestation, and their former principles are rejected with loathing. to express surprise at this, is simply to confess ignorance of the human heart, its secret workings, and how strong its inclination is to practise self-deception.* * the truth of this is found on all occasions where the interests or the passions of men are concerned, and was rather amusingly shown in many ways when the free-trade measures of sir r. peel were being carried through. then every interest desired free-trade, except with reference to the articles produced by itself. no, sir; it is not the heat of controversy, which has betrayed me in seeing the doctrine of protection in this light, for, on the contrary, it was because i saw it in this point of view before the struggle commenced that i am thus engaged. believe me that to extend somewhat our foreign commerce--a consequential result which, however, is far from despicable--was never my governing motive; i believed, and i still believe, that property itself was concerned in the question; i believed, and i still believe, that our tariff of customs, owing to the principle which has given it birth, and the arguments by which it is defended, has made a breach in the very principle of property itself, through which all the rest of our legislation threatens to force itself. in considering this state of things, it seems to me that a communism, the true effect and range of which, (i must say this to be just,) was not contemplated by its supporters, was on the point of overwhelming us. it seems to me that this particular species of communism (for there are several kinds of it) flows logically from the arguments of the protectionists, and is involved when those arguments are pressed to their legitimate conclusion. it is upon this ground, therefore, that it seems to me of the utmost importance to meet the evil, for, fortified as it is by sophistical statements, and sanctioned by high authority, there is no hope of eradicating the error while such statements are permitted to take possession of and to distract the mind of the public. it is thus that we view the matter at bordeaux, paris, marseilles, lyons, and elsewhere, where we have organized the free-trade association. commercial freedom, considered by itself, is without doubt a great blessing to the people; but if we had only this object in view, our body should have been named the _association for commercial freedom_, or, more accurately, _for the gradual reform of the tariffs_. but the word 'free-trade' implies the _free disposal of the produce of labour_, in other terms '_property_' and it is for this reason that we have preferred it. we knew, indeed, that the term would give rise to many difficulties. it affirmed a principle, and from that moment all the supporters of the opposite one ranged themselves against us. more than this, it was extremely objectionable, even to some of those who were the most disposed to second us, that is to say, to merchants and traders more engaged in reforming the customs than in overthrowing communism. havre, while sympathizing with our views, refused to enlist under our banner. on all sides i was told, 'let us obtain without loss of time some modification of our tariff, without publishing to the world our extreme pretensions.' i replied, 'if you have only that in view, exert your influence through your chambers of commerce.' to this they answered, 'the word free-trade frightens people, and retards our success.' nothing is more true; but i would derive even from the terror inspired by this word my strongest arguments for its adoption. the more disliked it is, say i, the more it proves that the true notion of property is obscured. the doctrine of protection has clouded ideas, and confused and false ideas have in their turn supported protection. to obtain by surprise, or with the consent of the government, an accidental amelioration of the tariff may modify an effect, but cannot destroy a cause. i retain, then, the word _free-trade_, not in the mere spirit of opposition, but still, i admit, because of the obstacles it creates or encounters--obstacles which, while they betray the mischief at work, bear along with them the certain proof, that the very foundation of social order was threatened. it is not sufficient to indicate our views by a word; they should be defined. this has been done, and i here transcribe, as a programme, the first announcement or manifesto of this association. 'when uniting for the defence of a great cause, the undersigned feel the necessity of declaring their creed: of proclaiming the _design, the province, the means and the principles of their association_. 'exchange is a natural right, like property. every one who has made or acquired any article should have the option either to apply it immediately to his own use, or to transfer it to any one, whomsoever he may be, who may consent to give him something he may prefer to it in exchange. to deprive him of this power when he makes no use of it contrary to public order or morality, and solely to gratify the convenience of another, is to legalise a robbery--to violate the principle of justice. 'again, it is to violate the conditions of social order--for what true social order can exist in the midst of a community, in which each individual interest, aided in this by law and public opinion, aims at success by the depression of all the others? 'it is to disown that providential superintendence which presides over human affairs, and made manifest by the infinite variety of climates, seasons, natural advantages and resources, benefits which god has so unequally distributed among men to unite them by commercial intercourse in the ties of a common brotherhood. 'it is to retard or counteract the development of public prosperity, since he who is not free to barter as he pleases, is not free to select his occupation, and is compelled to give an unnatural direction to his efforts, to his faculties, to his capital, and to those agents which nature has placed at his disposal. 'in short, it is to imperil the peace of nations, for it disturbs the relations which unite them, and which render wars improbable in proportion as they would be burdensome. 'the association has, then, for its object free-trade. 'the undersigned do not contest that society has the right to impose on merchandise, which crosses the frontier, custom dues to meet national expenses, provided they are determined by the consideration of the wants of the treasury alone. 'but as soon as a tax, losing its fiscal character, aims at the exclusion of foreign produce, to the detriment of the treasury itself, in order to raise artificially the price of similar national products, and thus to levy contributions on the community for the advantage of a class, from that instant protection, or rather robbery, displays itself, and _this_ is the principle which the association proposes to eradicate from the public mind, and to expunge from our laws, independently of all reciprocity, and of the systems which prevail elsewhere. 'though this association has for its object the complete destruction of the system of protection, it does not follow that it requires or expects such a reformation to be accomplished in a day, as by the stroke of a wand. to return even from evil to good, from an artificial state of things to one more natural, calls for the exercise of much prudence and precaution. to carry out the details belongs to the supreme power--the province of the association is to propagate the principle, and to make it popular. 'as to the means which the association may employ to accomplish its ends, it will never seek for any but what are legal and constitutional. 'finally, the association has nothing to do with party politics. it does not advocate any particular interest, class or section of the country. it embraces the cause of eternal justice, of peace, of union, of free intercourse, of brotherhood among all men--the cause of public weal, which is identical in every respect with that of the _public consumer_.' is there a word in this programme which does not show an ardent wish to confirm and strengthen, or rather perhaps to re-establish, in the minds of men the idea of property, perverted, as it is, by the system of protection? is it not evident that the interest of commerce is made secondary to the interest of society generally? remark that the tariff, in itself good or evil in the financial point of view, engages little of our attention. but, as soon as it acts _intentionally_ with a view to protection, that is to say, as soon as it develops the principle of spoliation, and ignores, in fact, the right of property, we combat it, not as a tariff, but as a system. _it is there_, we say, that we must eradicate the principle from the public mind, in order to blot it from our laws.* * as mr. porter says, in one of his excellent notes on m. bastiat's work on _popular fallacies_, 'the true history of all progress in regard to great questions, involving change in social policy, is here indicated by m. bastiat. it is in vain that we look for such change through the enlightenment of what should be the governing bodies. in this respect, all legislative assemblies, whether called a chamber of deputies or a house of commons, are truly representatives of the public mind, never placing themselves in advance, nor lagging much behind the general conviction. this is not, indeed, a new discovery, but we are much indebted to mr. cobden and the leading members of the anti-corn-law league for having placed it in a point of view so prominent that it can no longer be mistaken. hereafter, the course of action is perfectly clear upon all questions that require legislative sanction. this can only be obtained through the enlightenment of the constituency; but when such enlightenment has been accomplished--when those mainly interested in bringing about the change have once formed their opinion in its favour, the task is achieved.' it will be asked, no doubt, why, having in view a general principle of this importance, we have confined the struggle to the merits of a particular question. the reason of this, is simple. it is necessary to oppose association to association, to engage the interests of men, and thus draw volunteers into our ranks. we know well that the contest between the protectionists and free-traders cannot be prolonged without raising and finally settling all questions, moral, political, philosophical, and economical, connected with property. and since the mimerel club, in directing its efforts to one end, had weakened the principle of property, so we aimed at inspiring it with renewed vigour, in pursuing a course diametrically opposite. but what matters it what i may have said or thought at other times? what matters it that i have perceived, or thought that i have perceived, a certain connexion between protection and communism? the essential thing is to prove that this connexion exists, and i proceed to ascertain whether this be so. you no doubt remember the time when, with your usual ability, you drew from the lips of monsieur proudhon this celebrated declaration, 'give me the right of labour, and i will abandon the right of property.' m. proudhon does not conceal that, in his eyes, these two rights are incompatible. if property is incompatible with the right of labour, and if the right of labour is founded upon the same principle as protection, what conclusion can we draw, but that protection is itself incompatible with property? in geometry, we regard as an incontestable truth, that two things equal to a third are equal to each other. now it happens that an eminent orator, m. billault, has thought it right to support at the tribune the right of labour. this was not easy, in the face of the declaration which escaped from m. proudhon. m. billault understood very well, that to make the state interfere to weigh in the balance the fortunes, and equalize the conditions, of men, tends towards communism; and what did he say to induce the national assembly to violate property and the principles thereof? he told you with all simplicity that he asked you to do what, in effect, you already do by your tariff. his aim does not go beyond a somewhat more extended application of the doctrines now admitted by you, and applied in practice. here are his words:-- 'look at our custom-house tariff? by their prohibitions, their differential taxes, their premiums, their combinations of all kinds, it is society which aids, which supports, which retards or advances all the combinations of national labour; it not only holds the balance between french labour, which it protects, and foreign labour, but on the soil of france itself it is perpetually interfering between the different interests of the country. listen to the perpetual complaints made by one class against another: see, for example, those who employ iron in their processes, complaining of the protection given to french iron over foreign iron; those who employ flax or cotton thread, protesting against the protection granted to french thread, in opposition to the introduction of foreign thread; and it is thus with all the others. society (it ought to be said, the government) finds itself then forcibly mixed up with all these struggles, with all the perplexities connected with the regulation of labour; it is always actively interfering between them, directly and indirectly, and from the moment that the question of custom duties is broached, you will see that you will be, in spite of yourselves, forced to acknowledge the fact and its cause, and to take on yourself the protection of every interest. 'the necessity which is thus imposed on the government to interfere in the question of labour, should not, then, be considered an objection to the debt which society owes to the poor workmen.' and you will remark well that in his arguments, m. billault has not the least intention of being sarcastic. he is no free-trader, intentionally disguised for the purpose of exposing the inconsistency of the protectionists. no; m. billault is himself a protectionist, _bonâ fide_. he aims at equalizing our fortunes by law. with this view, he considers the action of the tariffs useful; and being met by an obstacle--the right of property--he leaps over it, as you do. the right of labour is then pointed out to him, which is a second step in the same direction. he again encounters the right of property, and again he leaps over it; but turning round, he is surprised to see you do not follow him. he asks the reason. if you reply--i admit in principle that the law may violate property, but i find it _inopportune_ that this should be done under the particular form of the right of labour, m. billault would understand you, and discuss with you the secondary question of expediency. but you raise up, in opposition to his views, the principle of property itself. this astonishes him; and he conceives that he is entitled to say to you--do not act with inconsistency, and deny the right of labour on the ground of its infringement of the right of property, since you violate this latter right by your tariffs, whenever you find it convenient to do so. he might add, with some reason, by the protective tariffs you often violate the property of the poor for the advantage of the rich. by the right of labour, you would violate the property of the rich to the advantage of the poor. by what chance does it happen that your scruples stop short at the point they do? between you and m. billault there is only one point of difference. both of you proceed in the same direction--that of communism: only you have taken but one step, and he has taken two. on this account the advantage, in my eyes at least, is on your side; but you lose it on the ground of logic. for since you go along with him, though more slowly than he does, he is sufficiently well pleased to have you as his follower. this is an inconsistency which m. bitlault has managed to avoid, but, alas! to fall himself also into a sad dilemma! m. billault is too enlightened not to feel, indistinctly perhaps, the danger of each step that he takes in the path which ends in communism. he does not assume the ridiculous position of the champion of property, at the very moment of violating it; but how does he justify himself? he calls to his aid the favourite axiom of all who can reconcile two irreconcilable things--_there are no fixed principles_. property, communism--let us take a little from both, according to circumstances. 'to my mind, the pendulum of civilization which oscillates from the one principle to the other, according to the wants of the moment, but which always makes the greater progress if, after strongly inclining towards the absolute freedom of individual action, it fells back on the necessity of government interference.' there is, then, no such thing as truth in the world. no principles exist, since _the pendulum ought to oscillate from one principle to the other, according to the wants of the moment._ oh! metaphor, to what a point thou wouldst bring us, if allowed! but as you have well said, in your place in the assembly, one cannot discuss all parts of this subject at once, i will not at the present moment examine the system of protection in the purely economic point of view. i do not inquire then whether, with regard to national wealth, it does more good than harm, or the reverse. the only point that i wish to prove is, that it is nothing else than a species of communism. mm. billault and proudhon have commenced the proof, and i will try and complete it. and first, what is to be understood by communism? there are several modes, if not of realizing community of goods, at least of trying to do so. m. de lamartine has reckoned four. you think that there are a thousand, and i am of your opinion. however, i believe that all these could be reduced under three general heads, of which one only, according to me, is truly dangerous. first, it might occur to two or more men to combine their labour and their time. while they do not threaten the security, infringe the liberty, or usurp the property of others, neither directly nor indirectly, if they do any mischief, they do it to themselves. the tendency of such men will be always to attempt in remote places the realization of their dream. whoever has reflected upon these matters knows these enthusiasts will probably perish from want, victims to their illusions. in our times, communists of this description have given to their imaginary elysium the name of icaria,* as if they had had a melancholy presentiment of the frightful end towards which they were hastening. we may lament over their blindness; we should try to rescue them if they were in a state to hear us, but society has nothing to fear from their chimeras. * this, as most of our readers are aware, is an imaginary country at the other side of the world, where a state of circumstances is supposed to exist productive of general happiness--moral and physical--to all. the chief creator of this modern utopia, from which indeed the idea is confessedly taken, is m. cabet, whose book was published during the year of the late revolution in france. it is meant to be a grave essay on possible things, but could only be considered so, we venture to think, in paris, and only there in times of unusual excitement. the means by which m. cabet and his followers suppose their peculiar society could be established and maintained, are beyond conception false, ludicrous, and puerile. m. cabet was obliged to leave france for a grave offence, but found a refuge and no inconsiderable number of followers in america, where, by the side of much that is excellent and hopeful, flourishes, perhaps, under present circumstances, as a necessary parallel, many of the wild and exploded theories of the world. another form of communism, and decidedly the coarsest, is this: throw into a mass all the existing property, and then share it equally. it is spoliation becoming the dominant and universal law. it is the destruction, not only of property, but also of labour and of the springs of action which induce men to work. this same communism is so violent, so absurd, so monstrous, that in truth i cannot believe it to be dangerous. i said this some time ago before a considerable assembly of electors, the great majority of whom belonged to the suffering classes. my words were received with loud murmurs. i expressed my surprise at it. 'what,' said they, 'dares m. bastiat say that communism is not dangerous? he is then a communist! well, we suspected as much, for communists, socialists, economists, are all of the same order, as it is proved by the termination of the words.' i had some difficulty in recovering myself; but even this interruption proved the truth of my proposition. no, communism is not dangerous, when it shows itself in its most naked form, that of pure and simple spoliation; it is not dangerous, because it excites horror. i hasten to say, that if protection can be and ought to be likened to communism, it is not that which i am about to attack. but communism assumes a third form:-- to make the state interfere to, let it take upon itself to adjust profits and to equalize men's possessions by taking from some, without their consent, to give to others without any return, to assume the task of putting things on an equality by robbery, assuredly is communism to the fullest extent. it matters not what may be the means employed by the state with this object, no more than the sounding names with which they dignify this thought. whether they pursue its realization by direct or indirect means, by restriction or by impost, by tariffs or by the right of labour; whether they call it by the watchword of equality, of mutual responsibility, of fraternity, that does not change the nature of things; the violation of property is not less robbery because it is accomplished with regularity, order, and system, and under the forms of law. i repeat that it is here, at this juncture, that communism is really dangerous. why? because under this form we see it incessantly ready to taint everything. behold the proof! one demands that the state should supply gratuitously to artisans, to labourers, the _instruments of labour_,* that is, to encourage them to take them from other artisans and labourers. another wishes that the state should lend without interest; this could not be done without violating property. a third calls for gratuitous education to all degrees; gratuitous! that is to say, at the expense of the tax-payers.** * by this phrase we believe is meant much more than the english words might indicate--the supplying all the capital necessary to start the artisan in the world. ** we think, with adam smith and most others, that education and religious instruction may fairly and properly, if the occasion requires, be excepted from this rule, on the ground that as they are most beneficial to the whole of society-- their effects not stopping short with the persons receiving the immediate benefits--'they may, without injustice, be defrayed by the general contribution of the whole society.' we by no means say, however, that this public support should supersede voluntary contribution. a fourth requires that the state should support the associations of workmen, the theatres, the artists, see. but the means necessary for such support is so much money taken from those who have legitimately made it. a fifth is dissatisfied unless the state artificially raises the price of a particular product for the benefit of those who sell it; but it is to the detriment of those who buy. yes, under this form, there are very few people who at one time or an other would not be communists. you are so yourself; m. billault is; and i fear that in france we are all so in some degree. it seems that the intervention of the state reconciles us to robbery, in throwing the responsibility of it on all the world; that is to say, on no one; and it is thus that we sport with the wealth of others in perfect tranquillity of conscience. that honest m. tourret, one of the most upright of men who ever sat upon the ministerial bench, did he not thus commence his statement in favour of the scheme for the advancement of public money for agricultural purposes? 'it is not sufficient to give instruction for the cultivation of the arts. we must also supply the instruments of labour.' after this preamble, he submits to the national assembly a proposition, the first heading of which runs thus:-- 'first--there is opened, in the budget of , in favour of the minister of agriculture and commerce, a credit of ten millions, to meet advances to the proprietors and associations of proprietors of rural districts.' confess that if this legislative language was rendered with exactness, it should have been:-- 'the minister of agriculture and commerce is authorized, during the year , to take the sum of ten millions from the pocket of the labourers who are in great want of it, and _to whom it belongs_, to put it in the pocket of other labourers who are equally in want of it, and _to whom it does not belong_.' is not this an act of communism, and if made general, would it not constitute the system of communism? the manufacturer, who would die sooner than steal a farthing, does not in the least scruple to make this request of the legislature--'pass me a law which raises the price of my cloth, my iron, my coal, and enable me to overcharge my purchasers.' as the motive upon which he founds this demand is that he is not content with the profit, at which trade unfettered or free-trade would fix it, (which i affirm to be the same thing, whatever they may say,) so, on the other hand, as we are all dissatisfied with our profits, and disposed to call in the aid of the law, it is clear, at least to me, that if the legislature does not hasten to reply, 'that does not signify to us; we are not charged to violate property, but to protect it,' it is clear, i say, that we are in downright communism. the machinery put in motion by the state to effect the object may differ from what we have indicated, but it has the same aim, and involves the same principle. suppose i present myself at the bar of the national assembly, and say, 'i exercise a trade, and i do not find that my profits are sufficient: consequently i pray you to pass a law authorizing the tax-collectors to levy, for my benefit, only one centime upon each french family,' if the legislature grants my request, this could only be taken as a single act of legal robbery, which does not at this point merit the name of communism. but if all frenchmen, one after the other, made the same request, and if the legislature examined them with the avowed object of realizing the equality of goods, it is in this principle, followed by its effects, that i see, and that you cannot help seeing, communism. whether, in order to realize its theory, the legislature employs custom-house officers or excise collectors, imposes direct or indirect taxes, encourages by protection or premiums, matters but little. does it believe itself authorized to _take_ and to _give_ without compensation? does it believe that its province is to regulate profits? does it act in consequence of this belief? do the mass of the public approve of it?--do they compel this species of action? if so, i say we are upon the descent which leads to communism, whether we are conscious of it or not. and if they say to me, the state never acts thus in favour of any one, but only in favour of some classes, i would reply--then it has found the means of making communism even worse than it naturally is. i know, sir, that some doubt is thrown on these conclusions by the aid of a ready confusion of ideas. some administrative acts are quoted, very legitimate cases in their way, where the intervention of the state is as equitable as it is useful; then, establishing an apparent analogy between these cases, and those against which i protest, they will attempt to place me in the wrong, and will say to me--'as you can only see communism in protection, so you ought to see it in every case where government interferes.' this is a trap into which i will not fall. this is why i am compelled to inquire what is the precise circumstance which impresses on state intervention the communistic character. what is the province of the state? what are the things which individuals ought to entrust to the supreme power? which are those which they ought to reserve for private enterprise? to reply to these questions would require a dissertation on political economy. fortunately i need not do this for the purpose of solving the problem before us. when men, in place of labouring for themselves individually, combine with others, that is to say, when they club together to execute any work, or to produce a result by an united exertion, i do not call that _communism_, because i see nothing in this of its peculiar characteristic, _equalizing conditions by violent means_. the state _takes_, it is true, by taxes, but it _renders_ service for them in return. it is a particular but legitimate form of that foundation of all society, _exchange_. i go still further. in intrusting a special service to be done by the state, it may be made beneficial, or otherwise, according to its nature and the mode in which it is effected. beneficial, if by this means the service is made with superior perfection and economy, and the reverse on the opposite hypothesis: but in either case i do not perceive the principle of communism. the proceeding in the first was attended with success; in the second, with failure, that is all; and if communism is a mistake, it does not follow that every mistake is communism. political economists are in general very distrustful on the question of the intervention of government. they see in it inconveniences of all sorts, a discouragement of individual liberty, energy, foresight, and experience, which are the surest foundations of society. it often happens, then, that they have to resist this intervention. but it is not at all on the same ground and from the same motive which makes them repudiate protection. our opponents cannot, therefore, fairly turn any argument against us in consequence of our predilections, expressed, perhaps, without sufficient caution for the freedom of private enterprise, nor say, 'it is not surprising that these people reject the system of protection, for they reject the intervention of the state in everything.' first, it is not true that we reject it in everything: we admit that it is the province of the state to maintain order and security, to enforce regard for person and property, to repress fraud and violence. as to the services which partake, so to speak, of an industrial character, we have no other rule than this: that the state may take charge of these, if the result is a saving of labour to the mass of the people. but pray, in the calculation, take into account all the innumerable inconveniences of labour monopolized by the state. secondly, i am obliged to repeat it, it is one thing to protest against any new interference on the part of the state on the ground that, when the calculation was made, it was found that it would be disadvantageous to do so, and that it would result in a national loss; and it is another thing to resist it because it is illegitimate, violent, unprincipled, and because it assigns to the government to do precisely what it is its proper duty to prevent and to punish. now against the system called protection these two species of objections may be urged, but it is against the principle last mentioned, fenced round as it is by legal forms, that incessant war should be waged. thus, for example, men would submit to a municipal council the question of knowing whether it would be better that each family in a town should go and seek the water it requires at the distance of some quarter of a league, or whether it is more advantageous that the local authority should levy an assessment to bring the water to the marketplace. i should not have any objection in _principle_ to enter into the examination of this question. the calculation of the advantages and inconveniences for all would be the sole element in the decision. one might be mistaken in the calculation, but the error, which in this instance may involve the loss of property, would not be a systematic violation of it. but when the mayor proposes to discourage one trade for the advantage of another, to prohibit boots for the advantage of the shoemaker, or something like it, then would i say to him, that in this instance he acts no longer on a calculation of advantages and inconveniences; he acts by means of an abuse of power, and a violent perversion of the public authority; i would say to him, 'you who are the depositary of power and of the public authority to chastise robbery, dare you apply that power and authority to protect it and render it systematic?' should the idea of the mayor prevail, if i see, in consequence of this precedent all the trading classes of the village bestirring themselves, to ask for favours at the expense of each other--if in the midst of this tumult of unscrupulous attempts i see them confound even the notion of property, i must be allowed to assume that, to save it from destruction, the first thing to do is to point out what has been iniquitous in the measure, which formed the first link of the chain of these deplorable events. it would not be difficult, sir, to find in your work passages which support my position and corroborate my views. to speak the truth, i might consult it almost by chance for this purpose. thus, opening the book at hap-hazard, i would probably find a passage condemning, either expressly or by implication, the system of protection--proof of the identity of this system in principle with communism. let me make the trial. at page , i read:-- 'it is, then, a grave mistake to lay the blame upon competition, and not to have perceived that if the people are the producers, they are also the consumers, and that receiving less on one side,' (which i deny, and which you deny yourself some lines lower down,) 'paying less on the other, there remains then, for the advantage of all, the difference between a system which restrains human activity, and a system which places it in its proper course, and inspires it with ceaseless energy.' i defy you to say that this argument does not apply with equal force to foreign as to domestic competition. let us try again. at page , we find: 'men either possess certain rights, or they do not. if they do--if these rights exist, they entail certain inevitable consequences.... but more than this, they must be the same at all times; they are entire and absolute--past, present, and to come--in all seasons; and not only when it may please you to declare them to be, but when it may please the workmen to appeal to them.' will you maintain that an iron-master has an undefined right to hinder me for ever from producing indirectly two hundredweight of iron in my manufactory, for the sake of producing one hundred-weight in a direct manner in his own? this right, also, i repeat, either exists, or it does not. if it does exist, it must be absolute at all times and in all seasons; not only when it may please you to declare it to be so, but when it may please the iron-masters to claim its protection. let us again try our luck. at page , i read,-- 'property does not exist, if i cannot _give_ as well as _consume_ it.' we say so likewise. 'property does not exist, if i cannot _exchange_ as well as _consume_ it;' and permit me to add, that the _right of exchange_ is at least as valuable, as important in a social point of view, as characteristic of property, as the _right of gift_. it is to be regretted, that in a work written for the purpose of examining property under all its aspects, you have thought it right to devote two chapters to an investigation of the latter right, which is in but little danger, and not a line to that of exchange, which is so boldly attacked, even under the shelter of the laws. again, at page :-- 'man has an absolute property in his person and in his faculties. he has a derivative one, less inherent in his nature, but not less sacred, in what these faculties may produce, which embraces all that can be called the wealth of this world, and which society is in the highest degree interested in protecting; for without this protection there would be no labour; without labour, no civilization, not even the necessaries of life--nothing but misery, robbery, and barbarism.'* * this is a happy exposure of the inconsistency of m. thiers. but we have had recently, and in the sitting of the late national assembly, a curious example of the perversion of his extraordinary powers, in the speeches, full of false brilliancy, to the legislature of france, in condemnation of the principles of free-trade. his statements were coloured, or altogether without foundation; the examples which he adduced, when looked into, told against him, and his logic was puerile. yet he found an attentive and a willing auditory. indeed, the prejudices of the french on this subject, mixed up as they are with so many influences operating on their vanity, are still inveterate; and it was, as it always has been, m. thiers's object to reflect faithfully the national mind. his aim never was the noble one of raising and enlightening the views of his countrymen, but simply to gain an influence over their minds, by encouraging and echoing their prejudices and keeping alive their passions. well, sir, let us make a comment, if you do not object, on this text. like you, i see property at first in the free disposal of the person; then of the faculties; finally, of the produce of those faculties, which proves, i may say as a passing remark, that, from a certain point of view, liberty and property are identical. i dare hardly say, like you, that property in the produce of our faculties is less inherent in our nature than property in these faculties themselves. strictly speaking, that may be true; but whether a man is debarred from exercising his faculties, or deprived of what they may produce, the result is the same, and that result is called _slavery_. this is another proof of the identity of the nature of liberty and property. if i force a man to labour for my profit, that man is my slave. he is so still, if, leaving him personal liberty, i find means, by force or by fraud, to appropriate to myself the fruits of his labour. the first kind of oppression is the more brutal, the second the more subtle. as it has been remarked that free labour is more intelligent and productive, it may be surmised that the masters have said to themselves, 'do not let us claim directly the powers of our slaves, but let us take possession of much richer booty--the produce of their faculties freely exercised, and let us give to this new form of servitude the engaging name of _protection_.' you say, again, that society is interested in rendering property secure. we are agreed; only i go further than you; and if by _society_ you mean _government_, i say that its only province as regards property is to guarantee it in the most ample manner; that if it tries to measure and distribute it by that very act, government, instead of guaranteeing, infringes it. this deserves examination. when a certain number of men, who cannot live without labour and without property, unite to support a _common authority_, they evidently desire to be able to labour, and to enjoy the fruits of their labour in all security, and not to place their faculties and their properties at the mercy of that authority. even antecedent to all form of regular government, i do not believe that individuals could be properly deprived of the _right of defence_--the right of defending their persons, their faculties, and their possessions. without pretending, in this place, to philosophise upon the origin and the extent of the rights of governments--a vast subject, well calculated to deter me--permit me to submit the following idea to you. it seems to me that the rights of the state can only be the reduction into method of personal rights _previously existing_. i cannot, for myself, conceive _collective right_ which has not its root in _individual right_, and does not presume it. then, in order to know if the state is legitimately invested with a right, it is incumbent on us to ask whether this right dwells in the individual in virtue of his being and independently of all government. it is upon this principle that i denied some time ago the right of labour. i said, since peter has no right to take directly from paul what paul has acquired by his labour, there is no better foundation for this pretended right through the intervention of the state: for the state is but the _public authority_ created by peter and by paul, at their expense, with a defined and clear object in view, but which never can render that just which is in itself not so. it is with the aid of this touchstone that i test the distinction between property secured and property controlled by the state. why has the state the right to secure, even by force, every man's property? because this right exists previously in the individual. no one can deny to individuals the _right of lawful defence_--the right of employing force, if necessary, to repel the injuries directed against their persons, their faculties, and their effects. it is conceived that this individual right, since it resides in all men, can assume the collective form, and justify the employment of public authority. and why has the state no right to _equalize_ or apportion worldly wealth? _because, in order to do so, it is necessary to rob some in order to gratify others_. now, as none of the thirty-five millions of frenchmen have the right to take by force, under the pretence of rendering fortunes more equal, it does not appear how they could invest public authority with this right. and remark, that the right of distributing* the wealth of individuals is destructive of the right which secures it. there are the savages. they have not yet formed a government; but each of them possesses the _right of lawful defence_. and it is easy to perceive that it is this right which will become the basis of legitimate public authority. if one of these savages has devoted his time, his strength, his intelligence to make a bow and arrows, and another wishes to take these from him, all the sympathies of the tribe will be on the side of the victim; and if the cause is submitted to the judgment of the elders, the robber will infallibly be condemned. from that there is but one step to the organization of public power. but i ask you--is the province of this public power, at least its lawful province, to repress the act of him who defends his property in virtue of his abstract right, or the act of him who violates, contrary to that right, the property of another? it would be singular enough if public authority was based, not upon the rights of individuals, but upon their permanent and systematic violation! no; the author of the book before me could not support such a position. but it is scarcely enough that he could not support it; he ought perhaps to condemn it. it is scarcely enough to attack this gross and absurd communism disseminated in low newspapers. it would perhaps have been better to have unveiled and rebuked that other and more audacious and subtle communism, which, by the simple perversion of the just idea of the rights of government, insinuates itself into some branches of our legislation, and threatens to invade all. * it is not easy here, and in some other places, to convey the exact meaning without using circuitous language. for, sir, it is quite incontestable that by the action of the tariffs--by means of protection--governments realize this monstrous thing of which i have spoken so much. they abandon the right of lawful defence, previously existing in all men, the source and foundation of their own existence, to arrogate to themselves a _pretended right of equalizing the fortunes of all by means of robbery_, a right which, not existing before in any one, cannot therefore exist in the community. but to what purpose is it to insist upon these general ideas? why should i show the absurdity of communism, since you have done so yourself (except as to one of its aspects, and, as i think, practically the most threatening) much better than it was in my power to effect? perhaps you will say to me that the principle of the system of protection is not opposed to the principle of property. see, then, the means by which this system operates. these are two: by the aid of premiums or bounties, or by restriction. as to the first, that is evident. i defy any one to maintain that the end of the system of premiums, pushed to its legitimate conclusion, is not absolute communism. men work under protection of the public authority, as you say, charged to secure to each one his own--_suum cuique_. but in this instance the state, with the most philanthropic intentions in the world, undertakes a task altogether new and different, and, according to me, not only exclusive, but destructive of the first. it constitutes itself the judge of profits; it decides that this interest is not sufficiently remunerated, and that that is too much so; it stands as the distributor of fortunes, and makes, as m. billault phrases it, the pendulum of civilization oscillate from the liberty of individual action to its opposite. consequently it imposes upon the community at large a contribution for the purpose of making a present, under the name of premiums, to the exporters of a particular kind of produce. the pretext is to favour industry; it ought to say, _one_ particular interest at the expense of _all_ the others. i shall not stop to show that it stimulates the off-shoot at the expense of that branch which bears the fruit; but i ask you, on entering on this course, does it not justify every interest to come and claim a premium, if it can prove that the profits gained by it are not as much as those obtained by other interests? is it not the duty of the state to listen, to entertain, to give ear to every demand, and to do justice between the applicants. i do not believe it; but those who do so, should have the courage to put their thoughts in this form, and to say--government is not charged to render property secure, but to distribute it equally. in other words, there is no such thing as property. i only discuss here a question of principle. if i wished to investigate the subject of premiums for exportation, as shown in their economical effects, i could place them in the most ridiculous light, for they are nothing more than a gratuitous gift made by france to foreigners. it is not the seller who receives it, but the purchaser, in virtue of that law which you yourself have stated with regard to taxes; the consumer in the end supports all the charges, as he reaps all the advantages of production. thus we are brought to the subject of premiums, one of the most mortifying and mystifying things possible. some foreign governments have reasoned thus: 'if we raise our import duties to a figure equal to the premium paid by the tax-payers in france, it is clear that nothing will be changed as regards our consumers, for the net price will remain the same. the goods reduced by five francs on the french frontier, will pay five francs more at the german frontier; it is an infallible means of paying our public expenses out of the french treasury.' but other governments, they assure me, have been more ingenious still. they have said to themselves, 'the premium given by france is properly a present she makes us; but if we raise the duty, no reason would exist why more of those particular goods should be imported than in past times; we ourselves place a limit on the generosity of these excellent french people; let us abolish, on the contrary, provisionally, these duties; let us encourage, for instance, an unusual introduction of cloths, since every yard brings with it an absolute gift.' in the first case, our premiums have gone to the foreign exchequer; in the second they have profited, but upon a larger scale, private individuals. let us pass on to restriction. i am a workman--a joiner, for example--i have a little workshop, tools, some materials. all these things incontestably belong to me, for i have made them, or, which comes to the same thing, i have bought and paid for them. still more, i have strong arms, some intelligence, and plenty of good will. on this foundation i endeavour to provide for my own wants and for those of my family. remark, that i cannot directly produce anything which is useful to me, neither iron, nor wood, nor bread, nor wine, nor meat, nor stuffs, &c., but i can produce the _value_ of them. finally, these things must, so to speak, circulate under another form, from my saw and my plane. it is my interest to receive honestly the largest possible quantity in exchange for the produce of my labour. i say honestly, because it is not my desire to infringe on the property or the liberty of any one. but i also demand that my own property and liberty be held equally inviolable. the other workmen and i, agreed upon this point, impose upon ourselves some sacrifices; we give up a portion of our labour to some men called public _functionaries_, because theirs is the special _function_ to secure our labour and its produce from every injury that might befal either from within or from without. matters being thus arranged, i prepare to put my intelligence, my arms, my saw, and plane into activity. naturally my eyes are always fixed on those things necessary to my existence, and which it is my duty to produce indirectly in creating what is equal to them in _value_. the problem is, that i should produce them in the most advantageous manner possible. consequently i look at _values_ generally, or what, in other words, may be called the current or market price of articles. i am satisfied, judging from these materials in my possession, that my means for obtaining the largest quantity possible of fuel, for example, with the smallest possible quantity of labour, is to make a piece of furniture, to send it to a belgian, who will give me in return some coal. but there is in france a workman who extracts coal from the earth. now, it so happens that the officials, whom the miner and i _contribute_ to pay for preserving to each of us his freedom of labour, and the free disposal of its produce (which is property), it so happens, i say, that these officials have become newly enlightened and assumed other duties. they have taken it into their heads to compare my labour with that of the miner. consequently, they have forbidden me to warm myself with belgian fuel: and when i go to the frontier with my piece of furniture to receive the coal, i find it prohibited from entering france, which comes to the same thing as if they prohibited my piece of furniture from going out. i then reason with myself--if we had never paid the government in order to save us the trouble of defending our own property, would the miner have had the right to go to the frontier to prohibit me from making an advantageous exchange, on the ground that it would be better for him that this exchange should not be effected? assuredly not. if he had made so unjust an attempt, we would have joined issue on the spot, he, urged on by his unjust pretensions, i, strong in my right of legitimate defence. we have appointed and paid a public officer for the special purpose of preventing such contests. how does it happen, then, that i find the miner and him concurring in restraining my liberty and hampering my industry, in limiting the field of my exertions? if the public officer had taken my part, i might have conceived his right; he would have derived it from my own; for lawful defence is, indeed, a right. but on what principle should he aid the miner in his injustice? i learn, then, that the public officer has changed his nature. he is no longer a simple mortal invested with rights delegated to him by other men, who, consequently, possess them. no. he is a being superior to humanity, drawing his right from himself, and, amongst these rights, he arrogates to himself that of calculating our profits, of holding the balance between our various circumstances and conditions. it is very well, say i; in that case, i will overwhelm him with claims and demands, while i see a richer man than myself in the country. he will not listen to you, it may be said to me, for if he listen to you, he will be a communist, and he takes good care not to forget that his duty is to secure properties, not to destroy them. what disorder, what confusion in facts; but what can you expect when there is such disorder and confusion in ideas? you may have resisted communism vigorously in the abstract; but while at the same time you humour, and support, and foster it in that part of our legislation which it has tainted, your labours will be in vain. it is a poison, which, with your consent and approbation, has glided into all our laws and into our morals, and now you are indignant that it is followed by its natural consequences. possibly, sir, you will make me one concession; you will say to me, perhaps, the system of protection rests on the principle of communism. it is contrary to right, to property, to liberty; it throws the government out of its proper road, and invests it with arbitrary powers, which have no rational origin. all this is but too true; but the system of protection is useful; without it the country, yielding to foreign competition, would be ruined. this would lead us to the examination of protection in the economical point of view. putting aside all consideration of justice, of right, of equity, of property, of liberty, we should have to resolve the question into one of pure utility, the money question, so to speak; but this, you will admit, does not properly fall within my subject. take care that, availing yourself of expediency in order to justify your contempt of the principle of right is as if you said, 'communism or spoliation, condemned by justice, can, nevertheless, be admitted as an expedient,' and you must admit that such an avowal is replete with danger. without seeking to solve in this place the economical problem, allow me to make one assertion. i affirm that i have submitted to arithmetical calculation the advantages and the inconveniences of protection, from the point of view of mere wealth, and putting aside all higher considerations. i affirm, moreover, that i have arrived at this result: that all restrictive measures produce one advantage and two inconveniences, or, if you will, one profit and two losses, each of these losses equal to the profit, from which results one pure distinct loss, which circumstance brings with it the encouraging conviction, that in this, as in many other things, and i dare say in all, expediency and justice agree. this is only an assertion, it is true, but it can be supported by proofs of mathematical accuracy.* * what m. bastiat here asserts is unquestionably true. for it has often been shown, and may readily be shown, that the importation of foreign commodities, in the common course of traffic, never takes place except when it is, economically speaking, a national good, by causing the same amount of commodities to be obtained at a smaller cost of labour and capital to the country. to prohibit, therefore, this importation, or impose duties which prevent it, is to render the labour and capital of the country less efficient in production than they would otherwise be; and compel a waste of the difference between the labour and capital necessary for the home production of the commodity, and that which is required for producing the things with which it can be purchased from abroad. the amount of national loss thus occasioned is measured by the excess of the price at which the commodity is produced over that at which it could be imported. in the case of manufactured goods, the whole difference between the two prices is absorbed in indemnifying the producers for waste of labour, or of the capital which supports that labour. those who are supposed to be benefited--namely, the makers of the protected article, (unless they form an exclusive company, and have a monopoly against their own countrymen, as well as against foreigners,) do not obtain higher profits than other people. all is sheer loss to the country as well as to the consumer. when the protected article is a product of agriculture--the waste of labour not being incurred on the whole produce, but only on what may be called the last instalment of it--the extra price is only in part an indemnity for waste, the remainder being a tax paid to the landlords.--j. s. mill what causes public opinion to be led astray upon this point is this, that the profit produced by protection is palpable--visible, as it were, to the naked eye, whilst of the two equal losses which it involves, one is distributed over the mass of society, and the existence of the other is only made apparent to the investigating and reflective mind. without pretending to bring forward any proof of the matter here, i may be allowed, perhaps, to point out the basis on which it rests. two products, a and b, have an original value in france, which i may denominate and respectively. let us admit that a is not worth more than in belgium. this being supposed, if france is subjected to the protective system, she will have the enjoyment of a and b in the whole as the result of her efforts, a quantity equal to , for she will, on the above supposition, be compelled to produce a directly. if she is free, the result of her efforts, equal to , will be equal: st, to the production of b, which she will take to belgium, in order to obtain a; ndly, to the production of another b for herself; rdly, to the production of c. it is that portion of disposable labour applied to the production of c in the second case, that is to say, creating new wealth equal to , without france being deprived either of a or of b, which makes all the difficulty. in the place of a put iron; in the place of b, wine, silk, and parisian articles; in the place of c put some new product not now existing. you will always find that restriction is injurious to national prosperity. do you wish to leave this dull algebra? so do i. to speak of facts, therefore, you will not deny that if the prohibitory system has contrived to do some good to the coal trade, it is only in raising the price of the coal. you will not, moreover, deny that this excess of price from to the present time has only occasioned a greater expense to all those who use this fuel--in other words, that it represents a loss. can it be said that the producers of coal have received, besides the interest of their capital and the ordinary profits of trade, in consequence of the protection afforded them, an extra gain equivalent to that loss? it would be necessary that protection, without losing those unjust and communistic qualities which characterize it, should at least be _neuter_ in the purely economic point of view. it would be necessary that it should at least have the merit of resembling simple robbery, which displaces wealth without destroying it. but you yourself affirm, at page , 'that the mines of aveyron, alais, saint-etienne, creuzot, anzin, the most celebrated of all, have not produced a revenue of four per cent, on the capital embarked in them.' it does not require protection that capital in france should yield four per cent. where, then, in this instance, is the profit to counterbalance the above-mentioned loss? this is not all. there is another national loss. since by the relative rising of the price of fuel, all the consumers of coal have lost, they have been obliged to limit their expenses in proportion, and the whole of national labour has been necessarily discouraged to this extent. it is this loss which they never take into their calculation, because it does not strike their senses. permit me to make another observation, which i am surprised has not struck people more. it is that protection applied to agricultural produce shows itself in all its odious iniquity with regard to farmers, and injurious in the end to the landed proprietors themselves. let us imagine an island in the south seas where the soil has become the private property of a certain number of inhabitants. let us imagine upon this appropriated and limited territory an agricultural population always increasing or having a tendency to increase. this last class will not be able to produce anything _directly_ of what is indispensable to life. they will be compelled to give up their labour to those who have it in their power to offer in exchange maintenance, and also the materials for labour, corn, fruit, vegetables, meat, wool, flax, leather, wood, &c. the interest of this class evidently is, that the market where these things are sold should be as extensive as possible. the more it finds itself surrounded by the greatest quantity of agricultural produce, the more of this it will receive for any given quantity of its own labour. under a free system, a multitude of vessels would be seen seeking food and materials among the neighbouring islands and continents, in exchange for manufactured articles. the cultivators of the land will enjoy all the prosperity to which they have a right to pretend; a just balance will be maintained between the value of manufacturing labour and that of agricultural labour. but, in this situation, the landed proprietors of the island make this calculation--if we prevent the workmen labouring for the foreigners, and receiving from them in exchange subsistence and raw materials, they will be forced to turn to us. as their number continually increases, and as the competition which exists between them is always active, they will compete for that share of food and materials which we can dispose of, after deducting what we require for ourselves, and we cannot fail to sell our produce at a very high price. in other words, the balance in the relative value of their labour and of ours will be disturbed. we shall be able to command a greater share in the result of their labour. let us, then, impose restrictions on that commerce which inconveniences us; and to enforce these restrictions, let us constitute a body of functionaries, which the workmen shall aid in paying. i ask you, would not this be the height of oppression, a flagrant violation of all liberty, of the first and the most sacred principles of property? however, observe well, that it would not perhaps be difficult for the landed proprietors to make this law received as a benefit by the labourer. they would say to the latter: 'it is not for us, honest people, that we have made it, but for you. our own interests touch us little; we only think of yours. thanks to this wise measure, agriculture prospers; we proprietors shall become rich, which will, at the same time, put it in our power to support a great deal of labour, and to pay you good wages; without it, we shall be reduced to misery--and what will become of you? the island will be inundated with provisions and importations from abroad; your vessels will be always afloat--what a national calamity! abundance, it is true, will reign all round you, but will you share in it? do not imagine that your wages will keep up and be raised, because the foreigner will only augment the number of those who overwhelm you with their competition. who can say that they will not take it into their heads to give you their produce for nothing? in this case, having neither labour nor wages, you will perish of want in the midst of abundance. believe us; accept our regulations with gratitude. increase and multiply. the produce which will remain in the island, over and above what is necessary for our own consumption, will be given to you in exchange for your labour, which by this means you will be always secure of. above all, do not believe that the question now in debate is between you and us, or one in which your liberty and your property are at stake. never listen to those who tell you so. consider it as certain that the question is between you and the foreigner--this barbarous foreigner--and who evidently wishes to speculate upon you; making you perfidious proffers of intercourse, which you are free either to accept or to refuse.' it is not improbable that such a discourse, suitably seasoned with sophisms upon cash, the balance of trade, national labour, agriculture encouraged by the state, the prospect of a war, &c., &c., would obtain the greatest success, and that the oppressive decree would' obtain the sanction of the oppressed themselves, if they were consulted. this has been, and will be so again.* * the ease with which the body of the people--the consumers-- are deceived by statements and arguments such as are given in the text is remarkable. the principal reason, perhaps, is, that men are disposed at first to regard themselves as producers rather than as consumers. they imagine that the advantages of protection, if applied to their own case, would be incontestable; and, being unable consistently to deny that their neighbours are equally entitled to the same favour, a general clamour for protection against foreign competition arises. while they fail to perceive the absurdity of universal protection and its fallacy, or that it would be more for their interests to be able to dispose of a larger quantity of their productions, though perhaps at a reduced cost, than a smaller quantity in a market narrowed, as it must be, by the protection which it receives. however, the true position of the case is now, we hope, firmly established in england, and this is chiefly due to the recent able, full, and free discussions which have resulted in our existing free-trade system. and we confidently anticipate the day when the people of the continent, and of america, will, through the same processes of reasoning and reflection, and influenced by our example, arrive at the same result as ourselves. but the prejudices of proprietors and labourers do not change the nature of things. the result will be, a population miserable, destitute, ignorant, ill-conditioned, thinned by want, illness, and vice. the result will then be, the melancholy shipwreck, in the public mind, of all correct notions of right, of property, of liberty, and of the true functions of the state. and what i should like much to be able to show here is, that the mischief will soon ascend to the proprietors themselves, who will have led the way to their own ruin by the ruin of the general consumer, for in that island they will see the population, more and more debased, resort to the inferior species of food. here it will feed on chesnuts, there upon maize, or again upon millet, buckwheat, oats, potatoes. it will no longer know the taste of corn or of meat. the proprietors will be surprised to see agriculture decline. they will in vain exert themselves and ring in the ears of all,--'let us raise produce; with produce, there will be cattle; with cattle, manure; with manure, corn.' they will in vain create new taxes, in order to distribute premiums to the producers of grass and lucern; they will always encounter this obstacle--a miserable population, without the power of paying for food, and, consequently, of giving the first impulse to this succession of causes and effects. they will end by learning, to their cost, that it is better to have competition in a rich community, than to possess a monopoly in a poor one. this is why i say, not only is protection communism, but it is communism of the worst kind. it commences by placing the faculties and the labour of the poor, their only property, at the mercy of the rich; it inflicts a pure loss on the mass, and ends by involving the rich themselves in the common ruin. it invests the state with the extraordinary right of taking from those who have little, to give to those who have much; and when, under the sanction of this principle, the dispossessed call for the intervention of the state to make an adjustment in the opposite direction, i really do not see what answer can be given. in all cases, the first reply and the best would be, to abandon the wrongful act. but i hasten to come to an end with these calculations. after all, what is the position of the question? what do we say, and what do you say? there is one point, and it is the chief, upon which we are agreed: it is, that the intervention of the legislature in order to equalize fortunes, by taking from some for the benefit of others, is _communism_--it is the destruction of all labour, saving, and prosperity; of all justice; of all social order. you perceive that this fatal doctrine taints, under every variety of form, both journals and books: in a word, that it influences the speculations and the doctrines of men, and here you attack it with vigour. for myself, i believe that it had previously affected, with your assent and with your assistance, legislation and practical statesmanship, and it is there that i endeavour to counteract it. afterwards, i made you remark the inconsistency into which you would fall, if, while resisting communism when speculated on, you spare, or much more encourage, communism when acted on. if you reply to me, 'i act thus because communism, as existing through tariffs, although opposed to liberty, property, justice, promotes, nevertheless, the public good, and this consideration makes me overlook all others'--if this is your answer, do you not feel that you ruin beforehand all the success of your book, that you defeat its object, that you deprive it of its force, and give your sanction, at least upon the philosophical and moral part of the question, to communism of every shade? and then, sir, can so clear a mind as yours admit the hypothesis of a fundamental antagonism between what is useful and what is just? shall i speak frankly? rather than hazard an assertion so improbable, so impious, i would rather say, 'here is a particular question in which, at the first glance, it seems to me that utility and justice conflict. i rejoice that all those who have passed their lives in investigating the subject think otherwise. doubtless i have not sufficiently studied it.' i have not sufficiently studied it! is it, then, so painful a confession, that, not to make it, you would willingly run into the inconsistency even of denying the wisdom of those providential laws which govern the development of human societies? for what more formal denial of the divine wisdom can there be, than to pronounce that justice and utility are essentially incompatible! it has always appeared to me, that the most painful dilemma in which an intelligent and conscientious mind can be placed, is when it conceives such a distinction to exist. in short, which side to espouse--what part to take in such an alternative? to declare for utility--it is that to which men incline who call themselves practical. but unless they cannot connect two ideas, they will unquestionably be alarmed at the consequences of robbery and iniquity reduced to a system. shall we embrace resolutely, come what may, the cause of justice, saying--let us do what is our duty, in spite of everything. it is to this that honest men incline; but who would take the responsibility of plunging his country and mankind into misery, desolation and destruction? i defy any one, if he is convinced of this antagonism, to come to a decision. i deceive myself--they will come to a decision; and the human heart is so formed, that it will place interest before conscience. facts prove this; since, wherever they have believed the system of protection to be favourable to the well-being of the people, they have adopted it, in spite of all considerations of justice; but then the consequences have followed. faith in property has vanished. they have said, like m. billault, since property has been violated by protection, why should it not be by the right of labour? some, following m. billault, will take a further step; and others, one still more extreme, until communism is established. good and sound minds like yours are terrified by the rapidity of the descent they feel compelled to draw back--they do, in fact, draw back, as you have done in your book, as regards the protective system, which is the first start, and the sole practical start, of society upon the fatal declivity; but in the face of this strong denial of the right of property, if, instead of this maxim of your book, 'rights either exist, or they do not; if they do, they involve some absolute consequences'--you substitute this, 'here is a particular case where the national good calls for the sacrifice of right;' immediately, all that you believe you have put with force and reason in this work, is nothing but weakness and inconsistency. this is why, sir, if you wish to complete your work, it will be necessary that you should declare yourself upon the protective system; and for that purpose it is indispensable to commence by solving the economical problem; it will be necessary to be clear upon the pretended utility of this system. for, to suppose even that i extract from you its sentence of condemnation, on the ground of justice, that will not suffice to put an end to it. i repeat it--men are so formed, that when they believe themselves placed between _substantial good_ and _abstract justice_, the cause of justice runs a great risk. do you wish for a palpable proof of this? it is that which has befallen myself. when i arrived in paris, i found myself in the presence of schools called democratical and socialist, where, as you know, they make great use of the words, _principle, devotion, sacrifice, fraternity, right, union_. wealth is there treated _de haut en bas_, as a thing, if not contemptible at least secondary, so far, that because we consider it to be of much importance, they treat us as cold economists, egotists, selfish, shopkeepers, men without compassion, ungrateful to god for anything save vile pelf. good! you say to me; these are noble hearts, with whom i have no need to discuss the economical question, which is very subtle, and requires more attention than the parisian newspaper-writers and their readers can in general bestow on a study of this description. but with them the question of wealth will not be an obstacle; either they will take it on trust, on the faith of divine wisdom, as in harmony with justice, or they will sacrifice it willingly without a thought, for they have a passion for self-abandonment. if, then, they once acknowledge that free-trade is, in the abstract, right, they will resolutely enrol themselves under its banner. consequently, i address my appeal to them. can you guess their reply? here it is:-- 'your free-trade is a beautiful theory. it is founded on right and justice; it realizes liberty; it consecrates property; it would be followed by the union of nations--the reign of peace and of good-will amongst men. you have reason and principle on your side; but we will resist you to the utmost, and with all our strength, because foreign competition would be fatal to our national industry.' i take the liberty of addressing this reply to them:-- 'i deny that foreign competition would be fatal to national industry. if it was so, you would be placed in every instance between your interest--which, according to you, is on the side of the restriction--and justice, which, by your confession, is on the side of freedom of intercourse! now when i, the worshipper of the golden calf, warn you that the time has arrived to make your own choice, whence comes it that you, the men of self-denial, cling to self-interest, and trample principle under foot? do not, then, inveigh so much against a motive, which governs you as it governs other men? such is the experience which warns me that it is incumbent on us, in the first place, to solve this alarming problem: is there harmony or antagonism between justice and utility? and, in consequence, to investigate the economical side of the protective system; for since they whose watchword is fraternity, themselves yield before an apprehended adversity, it is clear that this proceeds from no doubt in the truth of the cause of universal justice, but that it is an acknowledgment of the existence and of the necessity of self-interest, as an all-powerful spring of action, however unworthy, abject, contemptible, and despised it may be deemed. it is this which has given rise to a work, in two small volumes, which i take the liberty of sending you with the present one, well convinced, sir, that if, like other political economists, you judge severely of the system of protection on the ground of morality, and if we only differ as far as concerns its utility, you will not refuse to inquire, with some care, if these two great elements of substantial progress agree or disagree. this harmony exists--or, at least, it is as clear to me as the light of the sun that it does. may it reveal itself to you! it is, then, by applying your talents, which have so remarkable an influence on others, to counteract communism in its most dangerous shape, that you will give it a mortal blow. see what passes in england. it would seem that if communism could have found a land favourable to it, it ought to have been the soil of britain. there, the feudal institutions, placing everywhere in juxtaposition extreme misery and extreme opulence, should have prepared the minds of men for the reception of false doctrines. but notwithstanding this, what do we see? whilst the continent is agitated, not even the surface of english society is disturbed. chartism has been able to take no root there. do you know why? because the league or association which, for ten years discussed the system of protection, only triumphed by placing the right of property on its true principles, and by pointing out and defining the proper functions of the state.* * this is a well-earned tribute, both to the people of england, and to the results of the exertions of the league and of sir r. peel. there can be no doubt that the calmness of this country, during the late agitations of europe, was very much due to the contentment which followed on the abolition of the corn-laws, and on the reduction and simplification of the tariff. to this must be added the conviction (though the process is sometimes sufficiently slow), that their wishes, when clearly indicated, find expression and attention in the legislature, and that things are working on to a great though gradual improvement. the inhabitants of this kingdom had the practical good sense to perceive the progress made, and the security they had that the future would not be barren, and they refused to imperil these substantial advantages in favour of mere theories and of experiments, the effects of which no human wit could foresee. assuredly, if to unmask protectionism is to aim a blow at communism in consequence of their close connexion, one might also destroy both, by adopting a course the converse of the above. protection would not stand for any length of time before a good definition of the right of property. also, if anything has surprised and rejoiced me, it is to see the association for the defence of monopolies devote their resources to the propagation of your book. it is an encouraging sight, and consoles me for the inutility of my past efforts. this resolution of the mimerel committee will doubtless oblige you to add to the editions of your work. in this case, permit me to observe to you that, such as it is, it presents a grave deficiency. in the name of science, in the name of truth, in the name of the public good, i adjure you to supply it; and i warn you that the time has come when you must answer these two questions: first, is there an incompatibility in principle between the system of protection and the right of property? secondly, is it the function of the government to guarantee to each the free exercise of his faculties, and the free disposal of the fruits of his labour--that is to say, property--or to take from one to give to the other, so as to weigh in the balance profits, contingencies, and other circumstances? ah! sir, if you arrive at the same conclusions as myself--if, thanks to your talents, to your fame, to your influence, you can imbue the public mind with these conclusions, who can calculate the extent of the service which you will render to french society? we would see the state confine itself within its proper limits, which is, to secure to each the exercise of his faculties, and the free disposition of his possessions. we would see it free itself at once, both from its present vast but unlawful functions, and from the frightful responsibility which attaches to them. it would confine itself to restraining the abuses of liberty, which is to realize liberty itself! it would secure justice to all, and would no longer promise prosperity to any one. men would learn to distinguish between what is reasonable, and what is puerile to ask from the government. they would no longer overwhelm it with claims and complaints; no longer lay their misfortunes at its door, or make it responsible for their chimerical hopes; and, in this keen pursuit of a prosperity, of which it is not the dispenser, they would no longer be seen, at each disappointment, to accuse the legislature and the law, to change their rulers and the forms of government, heaping institution upon institution, and ruin upon ruin. they would witness the extinction of that universal fever for mutual robbery, by the costly and perilous intervention of the state. the government, limited in its aim and responsibility, simple in its action, economical, not imposing on the governed the expense of their own chains, and sustained by sound public opinion, would have a solidity which, in our country, has never been its portion; and we would at last have solved this great problem--_to close for ever the gulf of revolution_. the end. why i believe in poverty * * * * * the riverside uplift series why i believe in poverty. by edward bok, the amateur spirit, by bliss perry. the glory of the imperfect, by george h, palmer. self-cultivation in english. by george h. palmer. trades and professions. by george h. palmer. the cultivated man. by charles w. eliot. whither? anonymous. calm yourself. by george l. walton. each, cents, net. houghton mifflin company boston and new york * * * * * why i believe in poverty as the richest experience that can come to a boy by edward bok boston and hew york houghton mifflin company mdccccxv copyright, , by curtis publishing company copyright, , by edward bok all rights reserved a foreword the article in this little book was published in _the ladies' home journal_ for april, . much to the surprise of the author, the call for copies was so insistent as to exhaust the edition of the magazine containing it. as the demand did not appear to be supplied, the article is now reprinted in this form. it is sent out with the hope of the author that it may still further fulfill its mission of giving the stimulant of encouragement wherever it is needed. e. b. _october nineteen hundred and fifteen_ why i believe in poverty as the richest experience that can come to a boy i make my living trying to edit the "ladies' home journal." and because the public has been most generous in its acceptance of that periodical, a share of that success has logically come to me. hence a number of my very good readers cherish an opinion that often i have been tempted to correct, a temptation to which i now yield. my correspondents express the conviction variously, but this extract from a letter is a fair sample:-- it is all very easy for you to preach economy to us when you do not know the necessity for it: to tell us how, as for example in my own case, we must live within my husband's income of eight hundred dollars a year, when you have never known what it is to live on less than thousands. has it ever occurred to you, born with the proverbial silver spoon in your mouth, that theoretical writing is pretty cold and futile compared to the actual hand-to-mouth struggle that so many of us live, day by day and year in and year out--an experience that you know not of? * * * * * "an experience that you know not of"! now, how far do the facts square with this statement? whether or not i was born with the proverbial silver spoon in my mouth i cannot say. it is true that i was born of well-to-do parents. but when i was six years old my father lost all his means, and faced life at forty-five, in a strange country, without even necessaries. there are men and their wives who know what that means: for a man to try to "come back" at forty-five, and in a strange country! i had the handicap of not knowing one word of the english language. i went to a public school and learned what i could. and sparse morsels they were! the boys were cruel, as boys are. the teachers were impatient, as tired teachers are. my father could not find his place in the world. my mother, who had always had servants at her beck and call, faced the problems of housekeeping that she had never learned nor been taught. and there was no money. so, after school hours, my brother and i went home, but not to play. after-school hours meant for us to help a mother who daily grew more frail under the burdens that she could not carry. not for days, but for years, we two boys got up in the gray cold winter dawn when the bed feels so snug and warm to growing boys, and we sifted the cold ashes of the day-before fire for a stray lump or two of unburned coal, and with what we had or could find we made the fire and warmed up the room. then we set the table for the scant breakfast, went to school, and directly after school we washed the dishes, swept and scrubbed the floors. living in a three-family tenement, each third week meant that we scrubbed the entire three flights of stairs from the third story to the first, as well as the doorsteps and the side-walk outside. the latter work was the hardest: for we did it on saturdays with the boys of the neighborhood looking on none too kindly, or we did it to the echo of the crack of the ball and bat on the adjoining lot! in the evening, when other could sit by the lamp or study their lessons, we two boys went out with a basket and picked up wood and coal in the neighboring lots, or went after the dozen or so pieces of coal left from the ton of coal put in that afternoon by one of our neighbors, with the spot hungrily fixed in mind by one of us during the day, hoping that the man who carried in the coal might not be too careful in picking up the stray lumps! "an experience that you know not of"! don't i? at ten years of age i got my first job: washing the windows of a baker's shop at fifty cents a week. in a week or two i was allowed to sell bread and cakes behind the counter after school hours for a dollar a week--handing out freshly baked cakes and warm, delicious smelling bread, when scarcely a crumb had passed my mouth that day! then on saturday mornings i served a route for a weekly paper, and sold my remaining stock on the street. it meant from sixty to seventy cents for that day's work. i lived in brooklyn, new york, and the chief means of transportation to coney island at that time was the horse car. near where we lived the cars would stop to water the horses, the men would jump out and get a drink of water, but the women had no means of quenching their thirst. seeing this lack i got a pail, filled it with water and a bit of ice, and, with a glass, jumped on each car on saturday afternoon and all day sunday, and sold my wares at a cent a glass. and when competition came, as it did very quickly when other boys saw that a sunday's work meant two or three dollars, i squeezed a lemon or two in my pail, my liquid became "lemonade" and my price two cents a glass, and sundays meant five dollars to me. then, in turn, i became a reporter during the evenings, an office boy day-times, and learned stenography at midnight! my correspondent says she supports her family of husband and child on eight hundred dollars a year, and says i have never known what that means. i supported a family of three on six dollars and twenty-five cents a week--less than one half of her yearly income. when my brother and i, combined, brought in eight hundred dollars a year we felt rich! i have for the first time gone into these details in print so that my readers may know, at first hand, that the editor of the "ladies' home journal" is not a theorist when he writes or prints articles that seek to preach economy or that reflect a hand-to-hand struggle on a small or an invisible income. there is not a single step, not an inch, on the road of direst poverty that i do not know or have not experienced. and, having experienced every thought, every feeling, and every hardship that come to those who travel that road, i say to-day that i rejoice with every boy who is going through the same experiences. nor am i discounting or forgetting one single pang of the keen hardships that such a struggle means. i would not to-day exchange my years of the keenest hardship that a boy can know or pass through for any single experience that could have come to me. i know what it means, not to earn a dollar, but to earn two cents. i know the value of money as i could have learned it or known it in no other way. i could have been trained for my life-work in no surer way. i could not have arrived at a truer understanding of what it means to face a day without a penny in hand, not a loaf of bread in the cupboard, not a piece of kindling wood for the fire--with nothing to eat, and then be a boy with the hunger of nine and ten, with a mother frail and discouraged! "an experience that you know not of"! don't i? and yet i rejoice in the experience, and i repeat: i envy every boy who is in that condition and going through it. but--and here is the pivot of my strong belief in poverty as an undisguised blessing to a boy--i believe in poverty as a condition to experience, to go through, and then to get out of: not as a condition to stay in. "that's all very well," some will say; "easy enough to say, but how can you get out of it?" no one can definitely tell another that. no one told me. no two persons can find the same way out. each must find his way for himself. that depends on the boy. i was determined to get out of poverty because my mother was not born in it, could not stand it, and did not belong in it. this gave me the first essential: a purpose. then i backed up the purpose with effort and a willingness to work, and to work at anything that came my way, no matter what it was, so long as it meant "the way out." i did not pick and choose: i took what came, and did it in the best way i knew how; and when i didn't like what i was doing i still did it well while i was doing it, but i saw to it that i didn't do it any longer than i had to do it. i used every rung in the ladder as a rung to the one above. it meant effort, of course, untiring, ceaseless, and unsparing, and it meant work, hard as nails. but out of the effort and the work came the experience; the upbuilding; the development; the capacity to understand and sympathize; the greatest heritage that can come to a boy. and nothing in the world can give that to a boy, so that it will burn into him, as will poverty. that is why i believe so strongly in poverty, the greatest blessing in the way of the deepest and fullest experience that can come to a boy. but, as i repeat: always as a condition to work out of, not to stay in. the riverside press cambridge· massachusetts u.s.a. generously made available by the internet archive/canadian libraries) _the weinstock lectures on the morals of trade_ the conflict between private monopoly and good citizenship. by john graham brooks. commercialism and journalism. by hamilton holt. the business career in its public relations. by albert shaw. commercialism and journalism by hamilton holt managing editor of the independent boston and new york houghton mifflin company _the riverside press cambridge_ copyright, , by the regents of the university of california all rights reserved _published december _ barbara weinstock lectures on the morals of trade this series will contain essays by representative scholars and men of affairs dealing with the various phases of the moral law in its bearing on business life under the new economic order, first delivered at the university of california on the weinstock foundation. commercialism and journalism in the united states of america, public opinion prevails. it is an axiom of the old political economy, as well as of the new sociology, that no man, or set of men, may with impunity defy public opinion; no law can be enforced contrary to its behests; and even life itself is scarcely worth living without its approbation. public opinion is the ultimate force that controls the destiny of our democracy. by common consent we editors are called the "moulders of public opinion." writing in our easy chairs or making suave speeches over the walnuts and wine, we take scrupulous care to expatiate on this phase of our function. but the real question is: who "moulds" us? for assuredly the hand that moulds the editor moulds the world. i propose to discuss this evening the ultimate power in control of our journals. and this as you will see implies such vital questions as: are we editors free to say what we believe? do we believe what we say? do we fool all the people some of the time, some of the people all the time, or only ourselves? is advertising or circulation--profits or popularity--our secret solicitude? or do we follow faithfully the stern daughter of the voice of god? in short, is journalism a profession or a business? there are almost as many answers to these questions as there are people to ask them. there are those of us who jubilantly burst into poetry, singing:-- "here shall the press the people's rights maintain, unawed by influence and unbribed by gain." on the other hand there are some of us quite ready to corroborate from our own experience the confessions of one new york journalist who wrote:-- there is no such thing in america as an independent press. i am paid for keeping honest opinions out of the paper i am connected with. if i should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation, like othello's, would be gone. the business of a new york journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the foot of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. we are the tools or vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. we are intellectual prostitutes. i come to california, therefore, to tell you with all sincerity and candor the real conditions under which we editors do our work, and the forces that help and hinder us in the discharge of our duties to society and to the journals that we control or that control us. and, first, let me give you succinctly some idea of the magnitude of the industry that we are to discuss. the census, in its latest bulletin on "printing and publishing in the united states," truly and tritely remarks that "printing occupies a unique position among industries, and in certain aspects excels all others in interest, since the printed page has done more to advance civilization than any other human agency." but not only does the printing industry excel all other industries in human interest, it excels them in the relative progress it is making. the latest available figures, published in by the government, show that the capital invested in the publishing business had doubled in the preceding half decade, despite the fact that publishing is almost unique among industries in the diffusion of its establishments, and in the tenacity with which it still clings to competition in an age of combination. since the whole industry has increased over thirty-fold, while all other industries have increased only fifteen-fold. the number of publications in the country, as given, is , . these are capitalized at $ , , ; they employ , salaried officers, and , wage-earners. their aggregate circulation per issue is , , ; and their aggregate number of copies issued during the year is , , , . they consume , , tons of paper, manufactured from , acres of timber. these , periodicals receive $ , , , or per cent of their receipts, from advertising, and $ , , , or per cent of the receipts from sales and subscriptions. they are divided into dailies, of which about one third are issued in the morning and two thirds in the evening; , weeklies; monthlies, and a few bi-weeklies, semi-weeklies, quarterlies, etc. the number of these periodicals has doubled in the last twenty-five years, but at the present moment the monthlies are increasing the fastest, next, the weeklies, and last, the dailies. the dailies issue enough copies to supply every inhabitant of the united states with one every fourth issue, the weeklies with one every other issue, and the monthlies with one copy of each issue for nine months of the year. one third of all these papers are devoted to trade and special interests. the remaining two thirds are devoted to news, politics, and family reading. undoubtedly there are many contributing causes which have made the periodical industry grow faster than all other industries of the country. i shall mention only six. first. the cheapening of the postal, telephone, and telegraph rates, and the introduction of such conveniences as the rural free delivery, so that news and general information can be collected and distributed cheaply and with dispatch. second. the introduction of the linotype machines, rapid and multiple presses, and other mechanical devices, which vastly increase the output of every shop that adopts them. third. the photo-process of illustrating, which threatens to make wood- and steel-engraving a lost art, and which, on account of its cheapness and attractiveness, has made possible literally thousands of pictured publications that never could have existed before. fourth. the growing diffusion of education throughout the country. our high schools, to say nothing of our colleges and universities, alone graduate , pupils a year,--all of them fit objects of solicitude to the newsdealer and subscription-agent. fifth. the use of wood pulp in the manufacture of paper, by which the largest item in the cost of production has been greatly diminished. sixth. the phenomenal growth of advertising. i shall not attempt to amplify the first five of these causes responsible for the unparalleled growth of periodical literature. but the sixth i shall discuss at some length, for advertising is by all odds the greatest factor in the case. in olden times the dailies carried only a very little advertising--a few legal notices, an appeal for the return of a strayed cow, or a house for sale. it is only within the past fifty years that advertising as a means of bringing together the producer and consumer began. and, curiously enough, the men who first began to appreciate the immense selling-power that lay in the printed advertisement were "makers" or "fakirs," of patent medicines. the beginning of modern advertising is in fact synchronous with the beginnings of the patent-medicine business. even magazine advertising, which is now the most profitable and efficacious of all kinds, did not originate until february, , when "the atlantic monthly" printed its first "ad." "harper's" was founded simply as a medium for selling the books issued from the franklin square house, and all advertisements from outsiders were declined. george p. rowell, the dean of advertising agents, in his amusing autobiography, tells how harper & brothers in the early seventies refused an offer of $ , from the howe sewing machine company for a year's use of the last page of the magazine; and mr. rowell adds that he had this information from a member of the firm, of whose veracity he had no doubt, though at the same sitting he heard mr. harper tell another man about the peculiarities of that section of long island where the harpers originated, assuring him the ague prevailed there to such an extent that all his ancestors had quinine put into their graves to keep the corpses from shaking the sand off. before the civil war it is said that the largest advertisement that ever appeared in a newspaper was given by the e. & t. fairbanks company, and published in the new york "tribune," which charged $ for it. now the twenty large department stores alone of new york city spend, so it is estimated, $ , , a year for advertising, while one chicago house is said to appropriate $ , a year for publicity in order to sell $ , , worth of goods. those products which are believed to be advertised to the extent of $ , or more a year include the uneeda biscuits, royal baking powder, grape nuts, force, fairy soap and gold dust, swift's hams and bacon, the ralston mills food-products, sapolio, ivory soap, and armour's extract of beef. the railroads are also very large general advertisers. in they spent over a million and a quarter dollars in publicity, though this did not include free passes for editors, who, i may parenthetically remark, thanks to the recent hepburn act, are now forced to pay their way across the continent just like ordinary american citizens. it is computed that there are about , general advertisers in the country and about a million local advertisers. between the two, $ , , was spent in to get their products before the public. the census gives only the totals and does not classify the advertising that appears in the dailies, weeklies, and monthlies. the rev. cyrus townsend brady, however, has made a very illuminating study[ ] of the advertising and circulation conditions of of the leading monthly magazines published in the united states. the first thing that struck his attention was the fact that candid and courteous replies to his requests for information were vouchsafed by all the publishers--quite a contrast to what would have happened from a similar inquiry a generation ago. he next discovered that these magazines, which had an aggregate circulation of over , , copies per month, could put a full-page advertisement into the hands of , , readers, or seven times the population of the united states, for the astonishingly insignificant sum of $ , , or for two thousandths of a cent for each reader. [ ] _the critic_, august, . the amount paid by the purchasers of these magazines was $ , , , for which they received , pages of text and pictures, and , pages of advertisements. magazine advertisements are better written and better illustrated than the reading matter. this is because they are of no use to the man who pays for their insertion if they do not attract attention, whereas the contributor's interest in his article after its acceptance is mostly nominal. that is, the advertiser must win several thousand readers; the contributor has to win but one editor. these magazines were found to receive $ , , a year from their advertisements and $ , , from their sales and subscriptions. this shows that in monthly magazines the receipts from advertising and subscriptions are about the same. in weeklies the receipts from advertising are often four times as much as the receipts from sales and subscriptions, while in the dailies the proportion is even greater. the owner of one of the leading evening papers in new york told me that per cent of its total receipts came from advertising. from whatever standpoint you approach the subject, it is the advertisements that are becoming the most important factor in publishing. indeed, some students in yale university carried this out to its logical conclusion last autumn by launching a college daily supported wholly by the revenues from advertisements. they put a free copy every morning on the door-mat before each student's room. if it were not for the postal prohibition many dailies and other periodicals would make money by being given away. thus you see that if there were no advertisements and the publishers had to rely on their sales and subscriptions for their receipts, the monthlies would have to double their price, and the weeklies and dailies multiply theirs from four to ten times. this advantage to the reading public must certainly be put to the credit of advertising. the preponderance of advertising over subscription receipts, however, is of comparatively recent occurrence. thirty years ago the receipts from subscriptions and sales of all the american periodicals exceeded those from advertising by $ , , ; twenty years ago they were about equal; and to-day the advertising exceeds the subscriptions and sales by $ , , . in the total amount of advertising was equivalent to the expenditure of cents for every inhabitant in the united states; in it was $ . . on the other hand, the per capita value of subscriptions has increased hardly at all. the reason of this is the fall of the price of subscriptions. we take more papers but pay less--a cent a copy. comparatively few buy the new york "evening post" for three cents. this is all the more remarkable, because advertising is the most sensitive feature of a most sensitive business and is sure to suffer first in any industrial crisis or depression. no wonder that the man who realizes the significance of all these figures and the trend disclosed by them is coming to look upon the editorial department of the newspaper as merely a necessary means of giving a literary tone to the publication, thus helping business men get their wares before the proper people. mr. trueman a. deweese, in his recent significant volume, "practical publicity," thinks that this is about what mr. curtis, the proprietor of "the ladies' home journal," would say if he ventured to say what he really thought:-- it is not my primary purpose to edify, entertain, or instruct a million women with poems, stories, and fashion-hints. mr. bok may think it is. he is merely the innocent victim of a harmless delusion, and he draws a salary for being deluded. to be frank and confidential with you, "the ladies' home journal" is published expressly for the advertisers. the reason i can put something in the magazines that will catch the artistic eye and make glad the soul of the reader is because a good advertiser finds that it pays to give me $ a page, or $ an agate line, for advertising space. yes, the tremendous power of advertising is the most significant thing about modern journalism. it is advertising that has enabled the press to outdistance its old rivals, the pulpit and the platform, and thus become the chief ally of public opinion. it has also economized business by bringing the producer and consumer into more direct contact, and in many cases has actually abolished the middle man and drummer. as an example of the passing of the salesman, due to advertising, "the saturday evening post" of philadelphia, in its interesting series of articles on modern advertising exploits, recently told the story of how the n. h. fairbanks co. made a test of the relative value of advertising and salesmen. a belt of counties in illinois were set aside for the experiment, in which the company was selling a certain brand of soap by salesmen and making a fair profit. it was proposed that the identical soap be put up under another brand and advertised in a conservative way in this particular section, and at the same time the salesmen should continue their efforts with the old soap. within six months the advertised brand was outselling its rival at the rate of $ a year. the douglas shoe is another product that is sold entirely by general advertising. so successful has the business become that the company has established retail stores all over the country, in which only men's shoes are sold at $ . a pair. now other shoe-manufacturers have adopted this plan, and in most of our large cities there are several chains of rival retail shoe stores. but all the advertising is not in the advertising columns. a united states senator said last winter that, when a bill he introduced in the senate was up for discussion, the publicity given it through an article he wrote for "the independent" had more to do with its passage than anything he said in its behalf on the floor of the upper house;--that is, his article was a paying advertisement of the bill. and in mentioning the incident to you, i give "the independent" a good advertisement. universities advertise themselves in many and devious ways--sometimes by the remarkable utterances of their professors, as at chicago; sometimes by the victories of their athletes, as at yale; and sometimes by the treatment of their women students, as at wesleyan. but perhaps the most extraordinary case of university advertising that has come to my attention was when, not so very long ago, a certain state institution of the middle west bought editorials in the country press at advertising rates for the sole purpose of influencing the state legislature to make them a larger appropriation. in other words the university authorities took money forced from a reluctant legislature to make the legislature give them still more money. the charitable organizations are now beginning to advertise in the public press for donations, and even churches are falling into line. the rev. charles stelzle, one of the most conspicuous leaders of the presbyterian church, has just published a book entitled "principles of successful church advertising," in which he says:-- from all parts of the world there come stories of losses in [church] membership, either comparative or actual. in the face of this, dare the church sit back and leave untried a single method which may win men to christ, provided that this method be legitimate?... the church should advertise because of the greatness of its commission, "go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." to fulfill this command does not mean that christian men are to confine themselves to the methods of those who first heard the commission. the question whether advertising pays will never be known in the individual case, for, like marriage, you can't tell till you try it. but in the aggregate, also like marriage, there is no doubt of its value. the tremendous power of persistent advertising to carry an idea of almost any kind into the minds of the people and stamp it there, is amazing. how many "sunny jims," for instance, are there in this audience? if there are none, it is singular; for learned judges have referred to him in their decisions, sermons have been preached, and volumes written about him, though it took a million dollars and two years of persistent work to introduce this modern "mark tapley" to the public. have you a little fairy in your home? do you live in spotless town? do you use any of the varieties? "there's a reason." "that's all." formerly a speaker used a quotation from the bible or shakespeare when he wanted to strike a common chord. nowadays he works in an allusion to some advertising phrase, and is sure of instant and universal recognition. the socialists and other utopian critics, who are supposed to drill to the bedrock of questions, have looked upon advertising as essentially a parasite upon the production and distribution of wealth. they tell us that in the good time coming, advertising will be relegated to the scrap-heap of outworn social machinery, along with war, race prejudice, millionaires, the lower education of women, and other things of an undesirable nature. this has not been the experience, however, of those "sinister offenders" who have come nearest to the coöperative ownership of wealth in this country--i refer of course to "the trusts." when the breakfast food trust was formed, one of the chief reasons for the combination was that the rival companies thus hoped to save the cost of advertising that had hitherto been required when they sold their food-stuffs in competition with each other. but they very soon found that their sales fell off after they stopped advertising, and they kept on falling off until the advertising was resumed. this teaches us that the american people have not enough gumption to buy even the staple products they need except through the stimulus of hypnotic suggestion--which is nothing but another name for advertising. even such a benevolent institution as a great life insurance company could not get much new business on its own merits. if all the money now spent on agents' commissions, advertising, yellow-dog funds, and palatial offices were devoted sacredly to the reduction of the rates of insurance, probably fewer rather than more persons would insure. the american people have to pay to be told what is good for them, otherwise they would soon abolish editors, professors, and all the rest of us who get paid for preaching what others practice. now while advertising pays the consumer who buys, the advertiser who sells, and the publisher who brings both together, there is a limit to the amount of advertising which can be "carried" by a certain amount of reading matter. in newspapers we see the result of this in the vast sunday editions, with sometimes fifty or a hundred detachable pages. in the magazines the case is different. interesting and attractive as magazine advertising has become--it certainly should be so, considering the advertisers pay good money to put it before the people--it is not enough alone to sell a magazine, and when it forms more than half or two thirds of the number the issue becomes too bulky and the value of the advertising pages themselves decreases. in making sandwiches the ham must not be sliced too thin. that necessitates starting a new magazine; and so we find from three to a dozen periodicals issued by the same house, often similar in character and apparently rivals. this accounts for the multiplication of magazines. it is not a yearning for more love stories. thus you see advertising has made possible the great complex papers and magazines of the day with their corps of trained editors, reporters, and advertising writers, in numbers and intellectual calibre comparable with the faculty of a good-sized university. advertising makes it possible to issue a paper far below the cost of manufacturing--all to the benefit of the consumer. so far as i know there is not an important daily, weekly, or monthly in america that can be manufactured at the selling price. but, on the other hand, with the growth of advertising a department had to be created in every paper for its handling. as advertising still further increased, rival papers competed for it and the professional solicitor became a necessary adjunct of every paper, until now the advertising department is the most important branch of the publication business, for it is the real source of the profits. because the solicitor seeks the advertiser, and, therefore, is in the position of one asking for favors, he puts himself under obligations to the advertiser, and so in his keenness to bring in revenue for his paper, he is often tempted to ask the aid of the editor in appeasing the advertiser. thus the advertiser tends to control the policy of the paper. and this is the explanation of the condition that confronts most publications to-day. by throwing the preponderating weight of commercialism into the scales of production, advertising is at the present moment by far the greatest menace to the disinterested practice of a profession upon which the diffusion of intelligence most largely depends. if journalism is no longer a profession, but a commercial enterprise, it is due to the growth of advertising, and nothing else. there was a time, not so very long ago, when journalism was on the verge of developing a system of professional ethics, based on other considerations than those of the cash register. then a greeley, bowles, medill, dana, or raymond, with a hand-press and a printer's devil, could start a paper as good as any university consisting of mark hopkins, a student, and a log. in those days the universal question was, "what does old greeley have to say?" because old greeley was the ultimate source of his own utterances. imagine the rage he would have flown into if any one had dared insinuate that the advertisers dictated a single sentence in "the tribune"! but now the advertisers are aggressive. they are becoming organized. they look upon the giving of an advertisement to a publisher as something of a favor, for which they have a right to expect additional courtesies in the news and editorial columns. advertising is also responsible for the fact that our papers are no longer organs but organizations. the individuality of the great editor, once supreme, has become less and less a power, till finally it vanishes into mere innocuous anonymity. to show you how far the editor has receded into public obscurity, it is only necessary to try to recall the portrayal of a modern editor in a recent play. stage lawyers, stage physicians, and stage preachers abound; when you think of them your mind calls up a very definite image. but no one has yet attempted to portray the typical editor, and it is doubtful if the populace would recognize him if he were portrayed, for the modern editor is a mystery. despite the editorial impersonality which controls modern newspapers, the editors still touch life in more points than any other class of men. and for this reason, if for no other, it is important to know the limitations under which they work. i leave aside the limitations that come from within the editor himself; for manifestly ignorance, prejudice, venality and the like, in the editor are in no wise different from similar faults in other men. there are just two temptations, however, peculiar to the editor, that tend to limit his freedom: first, the fear of the advertisers, and second, the fear of the subscribers. the advertisers when offended stop their advertisements; the readers, their subscriptions. the editor who is afraid to offend both must make a colorless paper indeed. he must discuss only those things about which every one agrees or nobody cares. the attitude of such an editor to his readers is, "gape, sinner, and swallow," and to his advertisers, as senator brandegee said at a recent yale commencement in regard to a proposed rockefeller bequest, "bring on your tainted money." as a rule, the yellows are most in awe of the mob, while the so-called respectables fear the advertising interests. now let me take up in some detail the influences brought to bear upon us which tend to make us swerve from the straight and narrow path. i invite your attention first of all to the press agent, that indispensable adjunct of all projects that have something to gain or to fear from publicity. i have seen the claim made in print, though doubtless it is a press agent's story, that there are ten thousand press agents in the city of new york,--that is, men and women employed to boom people and enterprises in the papers and magazines. you are familiar with the theatrical press agent, the most harmless, jovial, inventive, and resourceful of his kind. he is the one who writes the articles signed by grand opera singers which appear in the magazines. it is he who gets up stories about miss "pansy pinktoes," her milk-baths, the loss of her diamonds, the rich men who follow her. it is he who got for me an interview with a filipino chief at coney island three summers ago, whose unconventional remarks and original philosophy on america and the inhabitants thereof startled me no less than our readers. when the press agent has no news, he manufactures it. the readers of the new york papers the other day read that a prominent socialist, who occupied a box in the theatre where a play was given in which socialism is attacked, stood up and offered to harangue the audience between the acts. the actor who played the rôle of the wicked capitalist came on the stage and invited the audience to vote whether they cared to hear the socialist or him. the audience thereupon voted both down. but the management the next sunday evening very kindly offered the use of the stage for a debate on socialism, to which the leading socialists and anti-socialists of the city were invited. the meeting was a great success, and all the reporters in town were present, just as by some singular coincidence they happened to be on the first night. one of our most successful operatic managers--impressario, i believe, is the more correct appellation--was about to produce the opera of "salome," which had been taken off the rival stage after its first performance, on the assumption that new york was shocked. the singer was not only to sing the part, if one can sing a strauss opera, but was also to dance it. finally, about a week before the opera was produced, a new soprano was engaged to sing another rôle hitherto taken by the prospective salome. instantly the dread headlines on all the front pages of the metropolitan press announced that miss garden would resign before madame cavalieri should sing in any of _her_ rôles. mr. hammerstein's "eyes twinkled," as the reporters besieged him. he said he guessed he could untangle matters. out of the kindness of his heart he had thought the rehearsals of "salome" were too fatiguing for miss garden, and so got assistance for her. after a three or four days' operatic war, in which literally columns of printers' ink was shed, the _entente cordiale_ was resumed, and the song-birds became doves of peace again. the new york "evening post" printed the next day an editorial entitled, "genius in advertising"; and a week later the opera, or rather the song and dance of "salome," was given, with seats selling at ten dollars apiece, and "standing room only" signs at the box-office. this desire for publicity on the part of the histrionic profession goes so far, that often absolute fakes are sent out to the poor, unsuspecting editor. here is a statement that was printed, let us hope in good faith, in one of the brooklyn papers not long ago. it referred to the leading lady in a popular stock company. miss s. has a remarkably fine collection of miniatures painted on ivory. her attention was attracted to them several years ago by a miniature of one of her ancestors, painted by edward greene malbone, which came into her possession. the delicate quality of the painter's art that was of necessity lavished upon the ivory pleased her as an amateur and she began to collect. miss s. has haunted the antique shops of manhattan and brooklyn during the few leisure moments that came to her, in her search after miniatures. she now owns something like one hundred examples of famous miniatures. one of her greatest treasures is a portrait of john dray, by that master-painter of miniatures, richard cosway. the publication of this article brought such a number of requests from the friends of miss s. to see her collection, that the ingenious press agent was obliged to invent and publish another fabrication--this time of a midnight robbery in which the collection disappeared. this shameless story was told me by the press agent himself, and he gave me from his scrap-book the fake clipping i have just read. similarly the imitation riots, and protests from delegations of negroes, where thomas dixon's ku-klux play, "the clansman," was to be produced, were often due to the initiative of the enterprising press agent--at least so he told me. i would not have you think, however, that the press bureau is not in many instances a perfectly legitimate institution, and cannot be used with all propriety by religious, reform, political, and other organizations. the woman's suffrage movement, for instance, has a well-equipped and organized bureau; while the two great political parties during campaign times have sent out for many years news-articles and editorials of great value to the country and partisan press. perhaps the most efficacious press bureau of the legitimate kind is that of the christian scientists. every time an editor prints anything derogatory to the rev. mary baker g. eddy, or her influential cult, a suave and professionally happy gentleman immediately sends his card into the sanctum, and, holding the offensive clipping in one hand, together with a brief and well-written reply, says with the utmost courtesy:-- "inasmuch, my good sir, as you deemed it worth while to devote so much of your valuable space to spreading broadcast before your intelligent audience an error about christian science, i feel sure that your sense of justice will make plain to you the privilege of giving us space to demonstrate the real truth of the matter." to the editor with a conscience--and some of us still have the vestiges of one--this is a hard argument to evade; and as a result christian science gets twice as much notice in the papers as it would were there no smiling press agent to follow up every unfavorable reference, no matter how obscure the publication. the next time the editor wants to point a jest at the expense of christian science, he thinks twice and then substitutes some other cause that does not employ an editorial rectifier. but perhaps the best use of a publicity bureau was made recently by the street-railway company of roanoke, virginia, and the water company of scranton, pennsylvania. both of these companies had become very unpopular, one as a result of poor street-car service, and the other on account of a typhoid epidemic supposed to have been started from the pollution of the company's reservoir. both companies appropriated a good sum of money, hired a press agent, and bought advertising space in the local papers every day for a month or more. these advertisements gave the companies' side of the case with such candor and convincing fairness that they soon became the talk of the town, personal letters were written to the papers about them, and the hostility toward them very quickly turned to a feeling of good-will. it pays to take the public into your confidence. and now the staid "rail-road age-gazette" has sounded the call for a great press agent to arise and stem the growing public hostility to the railroads. the "age-gazette" did not use the phrase "press agent," as the appellation has not as yet come into its full dignity. it employed the more euphonious term "railroad diplomatist." still, high-sounding titles have their use, as when some of my brother editors call their "reporters" "special commissioners," and their foreign correspondents "journalistic ambassadors." we had a peace and arbitration congress in new york two years ago. being chairman of the press committee, i employed a firm of press agents to get for us the maximum amount of publicity. as a result we received over ten thousand clippings from the papers of the united states alone. i do not mean to claim that the congress would not have been extensively noticed without the deft work of the agents; but they unquestionably helped a great deal. the newspapers welcome them when they represent such well-known philanthropic institutions as the peace society, the society for prevention of cruelty to animals, and the people's institute, because the copy they "turn in" requires little or no further editing before it is sent to the printer. but when they are employed to promote financial ventures, wars on labor unions, anti-municipal ownership campaigns, or other private and class interests, then the editors discount what they provide and they actually do more harm than good to the cause they are intended to promote. press agents, however, are sometimes enabled to get illegitimate matter into our best papers. i recall to your memory the reports favorable to the companies sent out during the great insurance investigations in new york. "collier's" has told the whole story.[ ] one of the agents employed testified on the witness-stand that a great insurance company agreed to pay a dollar a line for what he could get into the papers. he made his own arrangements with the journals that took his stuff, and the difference between the price he had to pay and the dollar a line he got from the insurance company was to be his private rake-off. he succeeded in securing the publication of six dispatches of about two hundred and fifty words, in such well-known newspapers as the st. paul "pioneer press," the boston "herald," the toledo "blade," the buffalo "courier," the florida "times-union," the atlanta "constitution," and the wilmington "news." it is only fair to state, however, that there was nothing in the evidence to show whether the papers went into the arrangement on a business basis, or were fooled into thinking the dispatches they published were genuine reports of the proceedings before the committee. [ ] _collier's_, nov. , . examples of the use of press agents for both legitimate and illegitimate purposes could be extended almost indefinitely. the standard oil company, i understand, now issues all its manifestoes to the public through a trained press-representative; and the fight against messrs. gompers, mitchell, and morrison, in the buck stove controversy, was conducted with the aid of a press bureau, as one of the lawyers in the case informed me. whenever such a question comes before the people as the choice between the nicaragua and panama routes for the interoceanic canal, a press bureau is usually an important factor in the campaign. the big navy craze and the japan war cry can hardly be accounted for except on the theory that it has been for somebody's interest to agitate them through the press. whenever the naval appropriation bill comes before congress, the far-eastern war-clouds threaten in thousands of newspaper sanctums, while all of us shudder at the danger of war, for the benefit of ordnance manufacturers, battleship builders, and every incipient "fighting bob" who hopes some day to command another american armada on its gastronomic voyage around the world. fortunately none of our papers are subsidized by the government itself, as is so often the case with the semi-official organs of europe. nor are any of our papers directly in the pay of foreign governments, though the espousal of the infamous reactionary régime in russia by some of them is at least open to suspicion. the danger of manufactured public opinion in this country comes not from governments. even the political parties are losing the allegiance of the press. the days when the republican organs told the people the worst republican was better than the best democrat, and the democratic papers said the same about the republicans, have happily passed, never to return again, though the spirit still lingers in the organs of the socialist, populist, and prohibition parties. the growth of the great politically-independent press is one of the most hopeful signs of the times. but we have only jumped out of the frying-pan of politics into the fire of commercialism, and the fight of the future will therefore be to extricate ourselves from the fetters of commercialism, just as we have already broken away from the bonds of party politics. but the press agent has come to stay. indeed, his business has now assumed such proportions that the profession of anti-press agent will doubtless soon come into existence. i know already of one gentleman in new york whose aid has been invoked when people want things kept out of the papers. on more than one occasion he has prevented good spicy bits of scandal from seeing the light; though in his case i can aver that it was his personal influence with the editors, rather than any improper lubricant, that kept the papers silent. now let me turn from the press agent to the advertiser as a twister of editorial opinion. here let me say at once, and with all emphasis, that the vast majority of advertisements are not only honest but dependable. leaving out of account a few stock phrases which deceive nobody, such as "the most for the money," "the cheapest in the market," etc., what is said about the goods to be sold is not in the least overdrawn. i have taken the pains to go over the advertising columns of the leading papers and periodicals of new york during the month of february, and, with the exception of a few medical, financial, and perhaps real-estate advertisements, i could find absolutely nothing that on the face of it seemed fraudulent, and very little that was misleading. the advertisers have at last come to realize that for the long run, whatever the rule may be for the short run, it does not pay to overstate the qualities of their merchandise. you can now order your purchases by mail from the advertising pages of any reputable publication about as safely as over the counter of a store. at all events the phenomenal growth of the mail-order houses and their sales through advertising, lend strength to this opinion. on the th of march, , a single chicago mail-order house sent to the post office six million catalogues, weighing four hundred and fifty tons, and all were to be distributed within a week. many periodicals now claim that they will not take advertisements that look fraudulent or even misleading. some papers, like the london "times," have a guaranteed list of advertisements which they have investigated and vouch for, though naturally the advertisers have to pay extra for the guarantee. "the sunday school times" printed, several weeks ago, a long list of secular papers that were "going dry," as so many of our southern states. the fact that our best periodicals no longer accept liquor advertisements is another one of the encouraging signs of the coming of the new journalism. the vigorous fight that "the ladies' home journal" and "collier's" waged against the patent-medicine concerns is too fresh in the public memory to need recounting here. the two pictures printed cheek by jowl in "the ladies' home journal,"--one, of the tombstone above the mortal remains of lydia e. pinkham, whose inscription showed that she had been dead since , and the other an advertisement representing lydia in , sitting in her laboratory at lynn, massachusetts, engrossed in assuaging the sufferings of ailing womanhood,--these are eloquent of the type of fraud perpetrated through the press upon a gullible public. similarly, in the negro papers the favorite advertisements are those that claim to straighten kinky hair and bleach complexions--all fakes, of course. perhaps the most fraudulent advertisements, however, are those which purpose to sell mines in brazil, mexico, alaska, or wherever else the investor is unlikely to go. these offer their shares often as low as ten cents each, and guarantee fabulous profits. i have a college classmate who is extensively interested in mexican mines, and he tells me that literally per cent of all the mining companies that float their shares through advertisements are pure, or rather impure, swindles. i am not in the least surprised, for i know how many letters come to a financial editor from the dupes of these slick mine promoters, asking advice as to how they can get their money back. the most demoralizing advertisements are those paid for by loan-sharks, clairvoyants, medical quacks, and the votaries of vice. the new york "herald" has recently stopped printing its vicious personals. it also refuses fortune-tellers the hospitality of its columns, though it is not so squeamish in regard to loan-agencies and patent medicines. how many papers still publish the advertisement of mrs. laudanum's soothing syrup for babies? when you remember that the proprietary medicine concerns have been accustomed to spend forty million dollars a year, which is distributed among the papers of the land, you can see that it requires considerable financial independence for a publisher to forego a taste of their patronage. it is a curious fact that, aside from the country weeklies, the papers most plentifully besprinkled with medical advertisements are the yellow journals, the religious weeklies, the socialistic and other propaganda organs, and in general those which preach most vociferously reform and the brotherhood of man. the danger from the advertising columns is not, as i have said, that the advertisements misrepresent the goods, but that the terms on which they are solicited tend to commercialize the whole tone of the paper and make the editor afraid to say what he believes. the advertiser is coming more and more to look on his patronage as a favor, and he seldom hesitates to withdraw his advertisement if anything appears that may injure his business or interfere with his personal fad or political ambition. let me give you some examples of the withdrawal of advertisements to punish too daring and independent editors. a few weeks ago the paper which, in my opinion, has the ablest editorial page in the country lost some very valuable musical advertising because it had published letters of a decidedly compromising nature, written by a man high in the musical world to a lady who was suing him for damages. another paper, which many consider the brightest in america, discharged its dramatic critic after a theatrical firm had taken out all their advertising. but strange to say, as soon as a new critic was engaged, the advertising was forthwith resumed. i refrain from giving the name of this newspaper because one brave and witty little weekly published the story with names and dates, and is now being sued for libel. "life" states that in cincinnati, lately, every theatrical advertisement in all other newspapers carried this line:-- "we do not advertise in 'the times-star.'" the paralyzing power of advertising is again exemplified in the case of a new york evening paper which was so much interested in the popularization of bicycles that it organized the first bicycle parade ever held in the city. just before the day of the parade, however, it printed an article telling the people that it cost only some fifteen or twenty dollars to manufacture bicycles that sold at from seventy-five to one hundred and twenty-five dollars. instantly all the bicycle advertising was withdrawn, and the paper lost thousands of dollars. the new york "evening post" some years ago offended the department stores by some utterance it made about the tariff, and they withdrew their advertising. the "evening post," instead of quietly backing down, started in to fight single-handed, calling on the public for aid. the personal friends of the editor, mr. godkin, and a few loyal readers rallied to its support, and threatened to boycott the stores. but the public as a whole and all the "post's" esteemed contemporaries, as might have been anticipated, enjoyed the conflict from a safe distance and minded their own business. the department stores not only refused to make terms, but in some instances carried the war into the enemy's territory by stopping the credit accounts of those customers who took the "post's" side. it was only after a very great financial loss and many years of estrangement, that most of the stores came back to the "post," and it was long before the old relations of cordiality were entirely reëstablished. the department stores are seldom or never referred to unfavorably by the new york papers. when an elevator falls down in an office-building and somebody is injured, the headlines ring to heaven. a similar catastrophe in a department store is considered of hardly sufficient human interest to publish. the name and shame of a woman caught shoplifting in a department store can seldom be kept out of the papers. a department store caught overworking and underpaying its sales-girls--well, that is of no public concern. one of the most striking articles i ever printed recounted the experiences of a sales-girl in one of new york's department stores, yet it was unnoticed by the new york papers, which are quick enough to republish and comment on such articles when we print them, as "graft in panama," "peonage in georgia," or "race-prejudice in california." four years ago, in our annual vacation number, we advised our readers to go back to their boyhood village, buy the old homestead, and take a vacation on the farm, abjuring the summer hotels with their temptations to spend money, their vapidities and artificialities, manufactured lovers' lanes, and old cats on the piazza. this so offended a few hotels that they have never since advertised in "the independent." i will not tell you their names, but you can find out by noticing what hotels are not represented in our advertising pages. three years ago i printed the life-story of a girl then on strike in a factory. it was a simple, straightforward autobiography, giving the employés' side of the case. although we printed subsequently--as we are always glad to do--a statement from the company giving their side of the controversy, we must still be on their "we don't patronize" list, judging by the amount of advertising with which they have since favored us. other papers have suffered still more, i understand, from the same factory. the great book-publishing firms are about the only class of advertisers i know of who do not directly or indirectly seem to object to have their wares damned in the editorial pages. whether they have attained more than other men to the christian ideal of turning the other cheek; whether they think that nobody pays any attention to a scathing book-review, or whether they hold that the "best seller" is the offspring of hostile criticism, i do not know. but again and again we denounce books in our literary department that the publishers pay good money to praise in the advertising pages of the same issue. i know of only one prominent publishing firm which is an exception to this rule in that it sometimes attempts to influence the reviews of its books by means of its patronage. but with the small book-houses this happy relationship does not always exist. it would surprise you to know how many of them badger and threaten us. some, i understand, have a rule not to advertise where their books are not indiscriminately puffed. it is a poor maxim, however, that won't shoot both ways; for i am sorry to report that some papers adopt the equally bad rule of not reviewing the books of these firms who do not keep an advertising account with them. i once dined at a public banquet where the guests were both whites and negroes, and made some harmless and well-meaning remarks. a philadelphia advertiser subsequently said he would never do business with a paper that employed such an editor. last year an insurance company withdrew its advertising from the columns of a great weekly because it repeated a disagreeable truth about one of its directors. recently san francisco has gone through one of the most important struggles for civic betterment ever waged in an american city. the whole nation stood at attention. the issue was clear and unequivocal. the story of how san francisco was redeeming her fair name, as every newspaper man knows, was sensational enough to be featured day by day on the front pages of every great paper in the land. the eastern dailies started in bravely enough, but soon cut down their reports until they became so meagre and inadequate as to cause people in the east to surmise that some influence hostile to the prosecution had poisoned the sources of their information. the archbold letters, given to the press by mr. hearst in the late campaign, are further examples of commercialism in journalism. how the standard oil company sent its certificates of deposit and giant subscriptions to sundry editors and public-opinion promoters, and how a member of congress from the great state of pennsylvania actually suggested to mr. archbold that it might be a good plan to obtain "a permanent and healthy control" of that very fountain-head of publicity,--the associated press,--these sinister transactions and suggestions have been so fully discussed as to need no further comment from me. from the standpoint of journalistic ethics, the only thing more reprehensible than selling your opinions is offering them for sale. this is editorial prostitution. the mere getting out of winter-resort numbers, automobile numbers, financial numbers, and alaska-yukon-pacific exposition numbers is not at all to be condemned, though the motive may be commercial, as the swollen advertising pages in such special numbers attest. but what shall we suspect when a paper which claims a million readers devotes a long editorial to praising a poor play, and then in a subsequent issue there appears a full-page advertisement of that play? what does it mean when not a single denver paper publishes a line about three nefarious telephone bills before the colorado legislature? and what shall we think of a certain daily whose editor recently told me that there was on his desk a list three feet long of names of prominent people who were not to be mentioned in his paper either favorably or unfavorably? but direct bribe-giving and bribe-taking are, as i have said, very rare. such a procedure is too crude. if you should get up some palpable advertisement disguised as news, and send it around to the leading papers asking them to put it in as reading matter, and send you the bill, expecting them to swallow the bait, you would be disappointed. it is more likely to be done in another way. a financier invites an editor to go with him on a cruise in his private yacht to the west indies, or offers to let him in on the ground floor in some commercial undertaking. then, after the editor is under obligations, favors are asked and the editor is enmeshed. although i have said much about the sordid side of journalism, and the temptations that we editors have to meet in one form or another, i do not want you to think that the profession or trade of journalism offers no scope for the highest moral and intellectual attainments. i have dwelt thus long on the seamy side of our profession because there is a seamy side, and i believe it does good occasionally to discuss it with frankness. the first step in correcting an evil is to acknowledge its existence. were the title of this lecture "journalism and progress," or "the leadership of the press," i could have told a far different and rosier, though a no less true story. but, as i approach my conclusion, let me give you some more pleasing examples of the better side of "commercialism and journalism." george jones, the late owner of the new york "times," when that paper made its historic fight against the tweed ring, was offered five million dollars by "slippery dick" connolly, one of the gang, and an officer of the city government, if he would sell the "times," which was then not worth over a million. mr. jones said afterwards, "the devil will never make a higher bid for me than that." yet he declined the bribe without a tremor. a certain religious weekly lost a hundred thousand dollars for refusing to take patent-medicine advertisements--probably ten times what the paper was worth. "everybody's magazine," and many others of its class, refuse every kind of questionable advertising. many editors and publishers scrupulously eschew politics, lest obligations be incurred that might limit their opportunities for public service. some will not even accept dinner invitations when the motive is known to be the expectation of a _quid pro quo_. perhaps one of the few disagreeable things a conscientious editor cannot hope to avoid is the necessity of denouncing his personal friends. yet this must be done again and again. indeed, there are thousands of editors to-day who will not hesitate a moment to espouse the unpopular cause, though they know it will endanger their advertising receipts and subscription list. "the independent," for instance, could undoubtedly build up a great circulation in the south among white people if we could only cease expressing our disapproval of the way they mistreat their colored brothers. but we consider it a duty to champion a race, who, through no fault of their own, have been placed among us, and whom few papers, statesmen, or philanthropists feel called upon to treat as friends. there is a limit, of course, to the length to which a paper can go in defying its constituency, whether advertisers or subscribers. manifestly a paper cannot be published without their support. but there are times when an editor must defy them, even if it spells ruin to himself and bankruptcy to the paper. it is rarely necessary, however, to go to such an extremity as suicide. the rule would seem to be--and i think it can be defended on all ethical grounds--that under no circumstances should an editor tell what he knows to be false, or urge measures he believes to be harmful. this is a far different thing from telling all the truth all of the time, or urging all the measures he regards as good for mankind in season and out. that is the attitude of the irreconcilable, and the irreconcilable is as ineffectual in journalism as he is in church or state. thus "the ladies' home journal" has not as yet taken any part in furthering the great woman's suffrage movement which is sweeping over the world, and which ought to, but nevertheless does not, interest most american women. from mr. bok's point of view this policy of silence is quite right, and the only one doubtless consistent with the great circulation of his magazine. a periodical which wants a million readers must adhere strictly to the conventions if it would keep up its reputation as a safe guide for the multitude. this may not be the ideal form of leadership, but it is common sense, which is, perhaps, more to be desired. "ed" howe, the editor of "the atchison globe," the paper which gets closer to the people than any other in america, evidently admires this theory of editing, for he confesses, "when perplexities beset me and troubles thicken, i stop and ask myself what would edward bok have me do, and then all my difficulties dissolve." despite the sinister influences that tend to limit the freedom of editors and taint the news, the efficiency, accuracy, and ability of the american press were never on such a high plane of excellence as they are to-day. the celerity with which news is gathered, written, transmitted, edited, published, and served on millions of breakfast-tables every morning in the year is one of the wonders of the age. when great events happen, especially of a dramatic nature, we see newspapers at their best. witness the recent wreck of the steamship republic. only a few wireless dispatches were sent out by the heroic binns during the first few hours, and yet every paper the next morning had columns about the disaster, all written without padding, inaccuracy, or disproportion. also recall the way the press handled the recent witla kidnaping case. within twenty-four hours every newspaper reader in the united states was apprised of the crime in all its details, and in most cases the photograph of the little boy was reproduced. it is the gathering of the less important news of the day, however, where reporting has deteriorated, and yellow journalism is largely responsible for this. yellow journalism is a matter of typography and theatrics. the most sensational, and often the most unimportant, news is featured with big type, colored inks, diagrams, and illustrations. "a laugh or tear in every line" is the motto above the desk of the copy editor. the dotted line showing the route taken by the beautiful housemaid as she falls out of the tenth-story window to the street below adds a thrill of the yellow "write up." the two prime requisites for an ideal yellow newspaper, as that prince of yellow editors, arthur brisbane, once told me, are sport for the men and love for the women; and as the hearst papers have secured their great circulation by putting in practice this discovery, we find the other papers are consciously or unconsciously copying them. a typographical revolution has thus been brought about, as well as a general deterioration of reporting. even in papers of the highest character an over-indulgence in headlines is coming into vogue, while the reporter is allowed too often to treat the unimportant and most personal events in a picturesque or facetious way without regard to truthfulness. on a lecture trip west last winter, a reporter of one of the most respectable and influential papers in the country asked if i was going to attack anybody in my speech, or say anything that would "stir up the mud." when i said i hoped not, he replied that it would not be necessary for him to attend the lecture. "just give me the title, and the first and last sentences," said he, "and i'll write up an account of it at my desk in the office." sometimes, by this method of reporting, a serious injury is done to the individual. a reporter on the new york "times" wrote up last winter a sensational account of the marriage of the head worker of the university settlement on the east side to a young leader of one of the girls' classes. the marriage was performed by one of the officers of the society of ethical culture, who are expressly authorized by the new york legislature to officiate on such occasions. and yet the reporter called the marriage an "ethical" one, putting the word "ethical" in quotation marks and also the word "mrs.," to which the bride was morally and legally entitled, implying that the marriage was irregular, and indicated a tendency towards free love. though many letters of protest were written to the "times" about this, the "times" made no editorial apology for a breach of journalistic ethics, which should have cost the reporter who wrote the article and probably the managing editor who passed it their positions. it is this lack of sense of the fitness of things that would make the average reporter scribble away for dear life, if, when the president's message on the tariff was being read in congress, a large black cat had happened to walk up the aisle of the house and jumped on the back of speaker cannon. such an occurrence, i venture to say, would have commanded more space in the next morning's papers than any pearls cast before congress by the president in his message. the yellows, however, despite their "night special" editions issued before nine o'clock in the morning, their fake pictures and fake sensations, have come to stay. they serve yellow people. formerly the masses had to choose between such papers as "the atlantic monthly," "the nation," the new york "tribune," and nothing. no wonder they chose nothing. in the yellow press they now have their own champion,--a press that serves them, represents them, leads them, and exploits them, as tammany hall does its constituency. of course they give it their suffrage. the hopeful thing is that yellow readers don't stay yellow always. when a man begins to read he is apt to think. when he begins to think there is no telling where he will end,--maybe by reading the london "times" or the "edinburgh review." in new york the yellow papers, while they still have an enormous circulation, are losing their influence as a political and moral force. evidently as soon as yellow people begin to use their wits they first apply them to the yellow journals. the daily newspapers, however, both yellow and white, like natural monopolies, are public necessities. the people must have the news, and therefore, the predatory interests, whether political or financial, have been quick to get control of the people's necessity. "read the comments on the payne tariff bill," says the "philadelphia north american" in its issue of march , "and every sane, well-informed american discounts the comment of the boston papers regarding raw and unfinished materials that affect the factories of new england. most of the philadelphia criticism counts for no more than what new orleans says of sugar, or pittsburg of steel, or san francisco of fruits, or chicago of packing-house products. and it is common knowledge that what almost every big new york paper says is an echo of wall street." the weeklies and monthlies, however, are not, like the dailies, necessities. they have to attract by their merits alone. they must at all hazards therefore retain the people's confidence in their integrity, enterprise, and leadership. whether this be the true explanation or not, there is at least no doubt that the moral power of the american periodical press has been transferred from the dailies to the monthlies and weeklies. the monthlies and weeklies have also the advantage of being national in circulation instead of local, and therefore less subject to local and personal influence. they are also preserved, bound or unbound, and not thrown away on the day of publication like the daily paper. at all events, the weeklies and monthlies have been the pioneers and prime movers in the great moral renaissance now dawning in america. moral strife always brings out moral leaders. where will you find in the daily press to-day twenty editors to compare with richard watson gilder and robert underwood johnson, of "the century," henry m. alden and george harvey, of "harper's," ray stannard baker and ida m. tarbell, of "the american," lyman abbott and theodore roosevelt, of "the outlook," walter page, of "the world's work," albert shaw, of the "review of reviews," paul e. more, of "the nation," s. s. mcclure, of "mcclure's," erman ridgway, of "everybody's," bliss perry, of "the atlantic monthly," norman hapgood, of "collier's," edward bok, of "the ladies' home journal," george h. lorimer, of the "saturday evening post," robert m. la follette, of "la follette's," william j. bryan, of "the commoner," or shailer matthews, of "the world to-day"? these are the men--and there are more, too, i might name--who came forward with their touch upon the pulse of the nation when the day of the daily newspaper as a leader of enlightened public opinion had waned. as a philadelphia daily has admitted, "a vacuum had been created. they filled it." let me quote from a recent editorial,[ ] which seems to sum up this transformation most clearly:-- "the modern american magazines have now fallen heir to the power exerted formerly by pulpit, lyceum, parliamentary debates, and daily newspapers in the moulding of public opinion, the development of new issues, and dissemination of information bearing on current questions. the newspapers, while they have become more efficient as newspapers, that is, more timely, more comprehensive, more even-handed, more detailed, and, on the whole, more accurate, have relinquished, or at least subordinated, the purpose of their founders, which was generally to make people think with the editor and do what he wanted them to do. the editorials, once the most important feature of a daily paper, are rarely so now. they have become in many cases mere casual comment, in some have been altogether eliminated, in others so neutralized and inoffensive that a man who had bought a certain daily for a year might be puzzled if you asked him its political, religious, and sociological views. he would not be in doubt if asked what his favorite magazine was trying to accomplish in the world. unless it is a mere periodical of amusement it is likely to have a definite purpose, even though it be nothing more than opposition to some other magazine. if a magazine attacks mrs. eddy, another gallantly rushes to her defense. if one gets to seeing things at night, the other becomes anti-spirituous. if the first acquires the muck-raking habit, the complementary organ publishes an 'uplift number' that oozes optimism from every paragraph. the modern editor does not sit in his easy-chair, writing essays and sorting over the manuscripts that are sent in by his contributors. he goes hunting for things. the magazine staff is coming to be a group of specialists of similar views, but diverse talents, who are assigned to work up a particular subject, perhaps a year or two before anything is published, and who spend that time in travel and research among the printed and living sources of information." [ ] _the independent_, oct. , . now my conclusion of the whole question under discussion is this: while commercialism is at present the greatest menace to the freedom of the press, just as it is to the freedom of the church and the university, yet commercialism as it develops carries within itself the germ of its own destruction. for no sooner is its blighting influence felt and recognized than all the moral forces in the community are put in motion to accomplish its overthrow, and as the monthlies and weeklies have thrived by fighting commercialism, so it is reasonable to suppose that the dailies will regain their editorial influence when they adopt the same attitude. i know of only four ways to hasten the time when commercialism will cease to be a reproach to our papers. first. the papers can devote themselves to getting so extensive a circulation that they can ignore the clamor of the advertisers. but this implies a certain truckling to popularity, and the best editors will chafe under such restrictions. second. the papers can become endowed. that others have thought of this before, mr. andrew carnegie can doubtless testify. there would be many advantages, however, of having several great endowed papers in the country. the same arguments that favor endowed theatres or universities apply equally to papers. we need some papers that can say what ought to be said irrespective of anybody and everybody, and which can serve as examples to other papers not so fortunately circumstanced. but manifestly the periodical industry as a whole is much too large to be endowed, and the few papers that may be endowed by private capital, or by the government, would have only a limited influence on the industry as a whole. our government now publishes a weekly paper in panama, which takes no advertisements, and is furnished free to every government employee on the isthmus. it is a model paper in many respects, but manifestly its example is not apt to be followed extensively before the dawn of the coöperative commonwealth. it may be that the practice newspapers conducted by the schools of journalism connected with our great universities will raise the standard by making their chief object the publication of accurate and reliable news. third. the papers can combine in a sort of trust. take the theatrical syndicate, for instance, whose theatres could not be kept open a week without newspaper publicity. the theatrical syndicate's policy seems to be to single out any paper that becomes too critical and give it an absent-advertisement treatment. at the present moment this medicine is being prescribed in several of our large cities. but let all the publishers form a publishers' trade union as it were, and whenever an advertisement is withdrawn, appoint a committee of investigation, and if the committee reports that the withdrawal of the advertisement was done for any improper reason, then let all the papers refuse to print an advertisement of the play, or allow their critics to mention it until the matter is satisfactorily adjusted. this would bring the advertisers to their knees in a moment. the papers have the whip hand if they will only combine, but they are all so jealous of one another that probably any real combination is a long way off. still there are indications of a gentleman's agreement in the air, for all other interests are combining and they will be forced to follow suit. and what will the public do then, poor thing? a newspaper trust will certainly be as inimical to the public welfare as any other combination doing business in the fear of the sherman law. indeed it would be more dangerous, for a periodical trust would practically control the diffusion of intelligence, and that no self-respecting democracy would or should allow. but this is borrowing trouble from the future. fourth and last. we come back to the old, old remedy, which if sincerely applied would solve most all the ills of society. i refer to personal integrity, to character. despite what may be said to the contrary, integrity is the only thing in the newspaper profession, as in life itself, that really counts. the great journalists of the past, whatever their personal idiosyncrasies, have all been men of integrity; the great journalists of to-day are of the same sterling mould; and the journalistic giants of to-morrow--and the journalists of the future will be giants--must also be men of inflexible character. there has never been a time in all history when so many and so important things were waiting to be done as to-day. the newest school of sociology tells us that the human race in its spiral progress onward and upward through sweat and blood, misery and strife, has at last reached the point where, emerging from the control of the blind forces of an inexorable environment, it is about to take its destiny into its own control and actually shape its future. from now on, evolution is to be a psychical rather than a physical process. the world is on the threshold of a new era. we see the first faint dawn of universal peace and of the brotherhood of man. fortunate that editor whose privilege it is to share in pointing out the way. _the riverside press_ cambridge · massachusetts u · s · a economic sophisms by frédéric bastiat translated from the fifth edition of the french, by patrick james stirling, lld., f.r.s.e. author of "the philosophy of trade," etc. edinburgh: oliver and boyd, tweeddale court. translator's preface. bastiat's two great works on political economy--the sophismes Économiques, and the harmonies Économiques--may be regarded as counterparts of each other. he himself so regarded them: "the one," he says, "pulls down, the other builds up." his object in the sophismes was to refute the fallacies of the protectionist school, then predominant in france, and so to clear the way for the establishment of what he maintained to be the true system of economic science, which he desired to found on a new and peculiar theory of value, afterwards fully developed by him in the _harmonies_. whatever difference of opinion may exist among economists as to the soundness of this theory, all must admire the irresistible logic of the _sophismes_, and "the sallies of wit and humour," which, as mr cobden has said, make that work as "amusing as a novel." the system of bastiat having thus a _destructive_ as well as a _constructive_ object, a _negative_ as well as a _positive_ design, it is perhaps only doing justice to his great reputation as an economist to put the english reader in a position to judge of that system as a whole. hence the present translation of the _sophismes_ is intended as a companion volume to the translation of the _harmonies._ it is unnecessary for me to say more here by way of preface, the gifted author having himself explained the design of the work in a short but lucid introduction. p.j.s. economic sophisms. first series. introduction. my design in this little volume is to refute some of the arguments which are urged against the freedom of trade. i do not propose to engage in a contest with the protectionists; but rather to instil a principle into the minds of those who hesitate because they sincerely doubt. i am not one of those who say that protection is founded on men's interests. i am of opinion rather that it is founded on errors, or, if you will, upon _incomplete truths_. too many people fear liberty, to permit us to conclude that their apprehensions are not sincerely felt. it is perhaps aiming too high, but my wish is, i confess, that this little work should become, as it were, the _manual_ of those whose business it is to pronounce between the two principles. where men have not been long accustomed and familiarized to the doctrine of liberty, the sophisms of protection, in one shape or another, are constantly coming back upon them. in order to disabuse them of such errors when they recur, a long process of analysis becomes necessary; and every one has not the time required for such a process--legislators less than others. this is my reason for endeavouring to present the analysis and its results cut and dry. but it may be asked, are the benefits of liberty so hidden as to be discovered only by economists by profession? * the first series of the sophismes Économiques appeared in the end of ; the second series in .--editor. we must confess that our adversaries have a marked advantage over us in the discussion. in very few words they can announce a half-truth; and in order to demonstrate that it is _incomplete_, we are obliged to have recourse to long and dry dissertations. this arises from the nature of things. protection concentrates on one point the good which it produces, while the evils which it inflicts are spread over the masses. the one is visible to the naked eye; the other only to the eye of the mind. in the case of liberty, it is just the reverse. in the treatment of almost all economic questions, we find it to be so. you say, here is a machine which has turned thirty workmen into the street. or, here is a spendthrift who encourages every branch of industry. or, the conquest of algeria has doubled the trade of marseilles. or, the budget secures subsistence for a hundred thousand families. you are understood at once and by all. your propositions are in themselves clear, simple, and true. what are your deductions from them? machinery is an evil. luxury, conquests, and heavy taxation, are productive of good. and your theory has all the more success that you are in a situation to support it by a reference to undoubted facts. on our side, we must decline to confine our attention to the cause, and its direct and immediate effect. we know that this very effect in its turn becomes a cause. to judge correctly of a measure, then, we must trace it through the whole chain of results to its definitive effect. in other words, we are forced to _reason_ upon it. but then clamour gets up: you are theorists, metaphysicians, idealists, utopian dreamers, _doctrinaires_; and all the prejudices of the popular mind are roused against us. what, under such circumstances, are we to do? we can only invoke the patience and good sense of the reader, and set our deductions, if we can, in a light so clear, that truth and error must show themselves plainly, openly, and without disguise,--and that the victory, once gained, may remain on the side of restriction, or on that of freedom. and here i must set down an essential observation. some extracts from this little volume have already appeared in the _journal des economistes_. in a critique, in other respects very favourable, from the pen of m. le vicomte de romanet, he supposes that i demand the suppression of customs. he is mistaken. i demand the suppression of the protectionist _régime_. we don't refuse taxes to the government, but we desire, if possible, to dissuade the governed from taxing one another. napoleon said that "the customhouse should not be made an instrument of revenue, but a means of protecting industry." we maintain the contrary, and we contend that the customhouse ought not to become in the hands of the working classes an instrument of reciprocal rapine, but that it may be used as an instrument of revenue as legitimately as any other. so far are we--or, to speak only for myself, so far am i--from demanding the suppression of customs, that i see in that branch of revenue our future anchor of safety. i believe our resources are capable of yielding to the treasury immense returns; and to speak plainly, i must add, that, seeing how slow is the spread of sound economic doctrines, and so rapid the increase of our budgets, i am disposed to count more upon the necessities of the treasury than on the force of enlightened opinion for furthering the cause of commercial reform. you ask me, then, what is your conclusion? and i reply, that here there is no need to arrive at a conclusion. i combat sophisms; that is all. but you rejoin, that it is not enough to pull down--it is also necessary to build up. true; but to destroy an error, is to build up the truth which stands opposed to it. after all, i have no repugnance to declare what my wishes are. i desire to see public opinion led to sanction a law of customs conceived nearly in these terms:-- articles of primary necessity to pay a duty, ad valorem, of per cent. articles of convenience, per cent. articles of luxury, to per cent. these distinctions, i am aware, belong to an order of ideas which are quite foreign to political economy strictly so called, and i am far from thinking them as just and useful as they are commonly supposed to be. but this subject does not fall within the compass of my present design. i. abundance, scarcity. which is best for man, and for society, abundance or scarcity? what! you exclaim, can that be a question? has any one ever asserted, or is it possible to maintain, that scarcity is at the foundation of human wellbeing? yes, this has been asserted, and is maintained every day; and i hesitate not to affirm that the _theory of scarcity_ is much the most popular. it is the life of conversation, of the journals, of books, and of the tribune; and strange as it may seem, it is certain that political economy will have fulfilled its practical mission when it has established beyond question, and widely disseminated, this very simple proposition: "the wealth of men consists in the abundance of commodities." do we not hear it said every day, "the foreigner is about to inundate us with his products?" then we fear abundance. did not m. saint cricq exclaim, "production is excessive?" then he feared abundance. do workmen break machines? then they fear excess of production, or abundance. has not m. bugeaud pronounced these words, "let bread be dear, and agriculturists will get rich?" now, bread cannot be dear but because it is scarce. therefore m. bugeaud extols scarcity. does not m. d'argout urge as an argument against sugar-growing the very productiveness of that industry? does he not say, "beetroot has no future, and its culture cannot be extended, because a few acres devoted to its culture in each department would supply the whole consumption of france?" then, in his eyes, good lies in sterility, in dearth, and evil in fertility and abundance. the _presse_, the _commerce_, and the greater part of the daily papers, have one or more articles every morning to demonstrate to the chambers and the government, that it is sound policy to raise legislatively the price of all things by means of tariffs. and do the chambers and the government not obey the injunction? now tariffs can raise prices only by diminishing the _supply_ of commodities in the market! then the journals, the chambers, and the minister, put in practice the theory of scarcity, and i am justified in saying that this theory is by far the most popular. how does it happen that in the eyes of workmen, of publicists, and statesmen, abundance should appear a thing to be dreaded, and scarcity advantageous? i propose to trace this illusion to its source. we remark that a man grows richer in proportion to the return yielded by his exertions, that is to say, in proportion as he sells his commodity at a _higher price_. he sells at a higher price in proportion to the rarity, to the scarcity, of the article he produces. we conclude from this, that, as far as he is concerned at least, scarcity enriches him. applying successively the same reasoning to all other producers, we construct the _theory of scarcity_. we next proceed to apply this theory, and, in order to favour producers generally, we raise prices artificially, and cause a scarcity of all commodities, by prohibition, by restriction, by the suppression of machinery, and other analogous means. the same thing holds of abundance. we observe that when a product is plentiful, it sells at a lower price, and the producer gains less. if all producers are in the same situation, they are all poor. therefore it is abundance that ruins society and as theories are soon reduced to practice, we see the law struggling against the abundance of commodities. this sophism in its more general form may make little impression, but applied to a particular order of facts, to a certain branch of industry, to a given class, of producers, it is extremely specious; and this is easily explained. it forms a syllogism which is not _false_, but _incomplete_. now, what is _true_ in a syllogism is always and necessarily present to the mind. but _incompleteness_ is a negative quality, an absent _datum_, which it is very possible, and indeed very easy, to leave out of account. man produces in order to consume. he is at once producer and consumer. the reasoning which i have just explained considers him only in the first of these points of view. had the second been taken into account, it would have led to an opposite conclusion. in effect, may it not be said:-- the consumer is richer in proportion as he _purchases_ all things cheaper; and he purchases things cheaper in proportion to their abundance; therefore it is abundance which enriches him. this reasoning, extended to all consumers, leads to the _theory of plenty_. it is the notion of _exchange_ imperfectly understood which leads to these illusions. if we consider our personal interest, we recognise distinctly that it is double. as _sellers_ we have an interest in dearness, and consequently in scarcity; as _buyers_, in cheapness, or what amounts to the same thing, in the abundance of commodities. we cannot, then, found our reasoning on one or other of these interests before inquiring which of the two coincides and is identified with the general and permanent interest of mankind at large. if man were a solitary animal, if he laboured exclusively for himself, if he consumed directly the fruit of his labour--in a word, _if he did not exchange_--the theory of scarcity would never have appeared in the world. it is too evident that, in that case, abundance would be advantageous, from whatever quarter it came, whether from the result of his industry, from ingenious tools, from powerful machinery of his invention, or whether due to the fertility of the soil, the liberality of nature, or even to a mysterious _invasion_ of products brought by the waves and left by them upon the shore. no solitary man would ever have thought that in order to encourage his labour and render it more productive, it was necessary to break in pieces the instruments which saved it, to neutralize the fertility of the soil, or give back to the sea the good things it had brought to his door. he would perceive at once that labour is not an end, but a means; and that it would be absurd to reject the result for fear of doing injury to the means by which that result was accomplished. he would perceive that if he devotes two hours a day to providing for his wants, any circumstance (machinery, fertility, gratuitous gift, no matter what) which saves him an hour of that labour, the result remaining the same, puts that hour at his disposal, and that he can devote it to increasing his enjoyments; in short, he would see that _to save labour_ is nothing else than _progress_. but _exchange_ disturbs our view of a truth so simple. in the social state, and with the separation of employments to which it leads, the production and consumption of a commodity are not mixed up and confounded in the same individual. each man comes to see in his labour no longer a means but an end. in relation to each commodity, exchange creates two interests, that of the producer and that of the consumer; and these two interests are always directly opposed to each other. it is essential to analyze them, and examine their nature. take the case of any producer whatever, what is his immediate interest? it consists of two things: st, that the fewest possible number of persons should devote themselves to his branch of industry; dly, that the greatest possible number of' persons should be in quest of the article he produces. political economy explains it more succinctly in these terms, supply very limited, demand very extended; or in other words still, competition limited, demand unlimited. what is the immediate interest of the consumer? that the supply of the product in question should be extended, and the demand restrained. seeing, then, that these two interests are in opposition to each other, one of them must necessarily coincide with social interests in general, and the other be antagonistic to them. but which of them should legislation favour, as identical with the public good--if, indeed, it should favour either? to discover this, we must inquire what would happen if the secret wishes of men were granted. in as far as we are producers, it must be allowed that the desire of every one of us is anti-social. are we vine-dressers? it would give us no great regret if hail should shower down on all the vines in the world except our own: _this is the theory of scarcity_. are we iron-masters? our wish is, that there should be no other iron in the market but our own, however much the public may be in want of it; and for no other reason than that this want, keenly felt and imperfectly satisfied, shall ensure us a higher price: this _is still the theory of scarcity_. are we farmers? we say with m. bugeaud, let bread be dear, that is to say, scarce, and agriculturists will thrive: always the same theory, _the theory of scarcity_. are we physicians? we cannot avoid seeing that certain physical ameliorations, improving the sanitary state of the country, the development of certain moral virtues, such as moderation and temperance, the progress of knowledge tending to enable each man to take better care of his own health, the discovery of certain simple remedies of easy application, would be so many blows to our professional success. in as far as we are physicians, then, our secret wishes would be anti-social. i do not say that physicians form these secret wishes. on the contrary, i believe they would hail with joy the discovery of a universal panacea; but they would not do this as physicians, but as men, and as christians. by a noble abnegation of self', the physician places himself in the consumer's point of view. but as exercising a profession, from which he derives his own and his family's subsistence, his desires, or, if you will, his interests, are anti-social. are we manufacturers of cotton stuffs? we desire to sell them at the price most profitable to ourselves. we should consent willingly to an interdict being laid on all rival manufactures; and if we could venture to give this wish public expression, or hope to realize it with some chance of success, we should attain our end, to some extent, by indirect means; for example, by excluding foreign fabrics, in order to diminish the _supply_, and thus produce, forcibly and to our profit, a _scarcity_ of clothing. in the same way, we might pass in review all other branches of industry, and we should always find that the producers, as such, have anti-social views. "the shopkeeper," says montaigne, "thrives only by the irregularities of youth; the farmer by the high price of corn, the architect by the destruction of houses, the officers of justice by lawsuits and quarrels. ministers of religion derive their distinction and employment from our vices and our death. no physician rejoices in the health of his friends, nor soldiers in the peace of their country; and so of the rest." hence it follows that if the secret wishes of each producer were realized, the world would retrograde rapidly towards barbarism. the sail would supersede steam, the oar would supersede the sail, and general traffic would be carried on by the carrier's waggon; the latter would be superseded by the mule, and the mule by the pedlar. wool would exclude cotton, cotton in its turn would exclude wool, and so on until the dearth of all things had caused man himself to disappear from the face of the earth. suppose for a moment that the legislative power and the public force were placed at the disposal of mimeral's committee, and that each member of that association had the privilege of bringing in and sanctioning a favourite law, is it difficult to divine to what sort of industrial code the public would be subjected? if we now proceed to consider the immediate interest of the consumer, we shall find that it is in perfect harmony with the general interest, with all that the welfare of society calls for. when the purchaser goes to market, he desires to find it well stocked. let the seasons be propitious for all harvests; let inventions more and more marvellous bring within reach a greater and greater number of products and enjoyments; let time and labour be saved; let distances be effaced by the perfection and rapidity of transit; let the spirit of justice and of peace allow of a diminished weight of taxation; let barriers of every kind be removed;--in all this the interest of the consumer runs parallel with the public interest. the consumer may push his secret wishes to a chimerical and absurd length, without these wishes becoming antagonistic to the public welfare. he may desire that food and shelter, the hearth and the roof, instruction and morality, security and peace, power and health, should be obtained without exertion, and without measure, like the dust of the highways, the water of the brook, the air which we breathe; and yet the realization of his desires would not be at variance with the good of society. it may be said that if these wishes were granted, the work of the producer would become more and more limited, and would end with being stopped for want of aliment. but why? because, on this extreme supposition, all imaginable wants and desires would be fully satisfied. man, like omnipotence, would create all things by a simple act of volition. well, on this hypotheses, what reason should we have to regret the stoppage of industrial production? i made the supposition, not long ago, of the existence of an assembly composed of workmen, each member of which, in his capacity of producer, should have the power of passing a law embodying his _secret wish_, and i said that the code which would emanate from that assembly would be monopoly systematized, the theory of scarcity reduced to practice. in the same way, a chamber in which each should consult exclusively his own immediate interest as a consumer, would tend to systematize liberty, to suppress all restrictive measures, to overthrow all artificial barriers--in a word, to realize the _theory of plenty_. hence it follows: that to consult exclusively the immediate interest of the producer, is to consult an interest which is anti-social. that to take for basis exclusively the immediate interest of the consumer, would be to take for basis the general interest. let me enlarge on this view of the subject a little, at the risk of being prolix. a radical antagonism exists between seller and buyer.* the former desires that the subject of the bargain should be scarce, its supply limited, and its price high. the latter desires that it should be _abundant_, its supply large, and its price low. the laws, which should be at least neutral, take the part of the seller against the buyer, of the producer against the consumer, of dearness against cheapness,** of scarcity against abundance. * the author has modified somewhat the terms of this proposition in a posterior work.--see _harmonies Économiques_, chapter xi.--editor. ** we have not in french a substantive to express the idea opposed to that of dearness (cheapness). it is somewhat remarkable that the popular instinct expresses the idea by this periphrase, _marché avantageux, bon marche'_. the protectionists would do well to reform this locution, for it implies an economic system opposed to theirs. they proceed, if not intentionally, at least logically, on this datum: _a nation is rich when it is in want of everything_. for they say, it is the producer that we must favour by securing him a good market for his product. for this purpose it is necessary to raise the price, and in order to raise the price we must restrict the supply; and to restrict the supply is to create scarcity. just let us suppose that at the present moment, when all these laws are in full force, we make a complete inventory, not in value, but in weight, measure, volume, quantity, of all the commodities existing in the country, which are fitted to satisfy the wants and tastes of its inhabitants--corn, meat, cloth, fuel, colonial products, etc. suppose, again, that next day all the barriers which oppose the introduction of foreign products are removed. lastly, suppose that in order to test the result of this reform, they proceed three months afterwards to make a new inventory. is it not true that there will be found in france more corn, cattle, cloth, linen, iron, coal, sugar, etc., at the date of the second, than at the date of the first inventory? so true is this, that our protective tariffs have no other purpose than to hinder all these things from reaching us, to restrict the supply, and prevent depreciation and abundance. now i would ask, are the people who live under our laws better fed because there is _less_ bread, meat, and sugar in the country? are they better clothed, because there is _less_ cloth and linen? better warmed, because there is _less_ coal? better assisted in their labour, because there are _fewer_ tools and _less_ iron, copper, and machinery? but it may be said, if the foreigner _inundates_ us with his products, he will carry away our money. and what does it matter? men are not fed on money. they do not clothe themselves with gold, or warm themselves with silver. what matters it whether there is more or less money in the country, if there is more bread on our sideboards, more meat in our larders, more linen in our wardrobes, more firewood in our cellars. restrictive laws always land us in this dilemma:-- either you admit that they produce scarcity, or you do not. if you admit it, you avow by the admission that you inflict on the people all the injury in your power. if you do not admit it, you deny having restricted the supply and raised prices, and consequently you deny having favoured the producer. what you do is either hurtful or profitless, injurious or ineffectual. it never can be attended with any useful result. ii. obstacle, cause. the obstacle mistaken for the cause,--scarcity mistaken for abundance,--this is the same sophism under another aspect; and it is well to study it in all its phases. man is originally destitute of everything. between this destitution and the satisfaction of his wants, there exist a multitude of _obstacles_ which labour enables us to surmount. it is curious to inquire how and why these very obstacles to his material prosperity have come to be mistaken for the cause of that prosperity. i want to travel a hundred miles. but between the starting-point and the place of my destination, mountains, rivers, marshes, impenetrable forests, brigands--in a word, _obstacles_--interpose themselves; and to overcome these obstacles, it is necessary for me to employ many efforts, or, what comes to the same thing, that others should employ many efforts for me, the price of which i must pay them. it is clear that i should have been in a better situation if these obstacles had not existed. on his long journey through life, from the cradle to the grave, man has need to assimilate to himself a prodigious quantity of alimentary substances, to protect himself against the inclemency of the weather, to preserve himself from a number of ailments, or cure himself of them. hunger, thirst, disease, heat, cold, are so many obstacles strewn along his path. in a state of isolation he must overcome them all, by hunting, fishing, tillage, spinning, weaving, building; and it is clear that it would be better for him that these obstacles were less numerous and formidable, or, better still, that they did not exist at all. in society, he does not combat these obstacles personally, but others do it for him; and in return he employs himself in removing one of those obstacles which are encountered by his fellow-men. it is clear also, considering things in the gross, that it would be better for men in the aggregate, or for society, that these obstacles should be as few and feeble as possible. but when we come to scrutinize the social phenomena in detail, and men's sentiments as modified by the introduction of exchange, we soon perceive how they have come to confound wants with wealth, the obstacle with the cause. the separation of employments, the division of labour, which results from the faculty of exchanging, causes each man, instead of struggling on his own account to overcome all the obstacles which surround him, to combat only _one_ of them; he overcomes that one not for himself but for his fellow-men, who in turn render him the same service. the consequence is that this man, in combating this obstacle which it is his special business to overcome for the sake of others, sees in it the immediate source of his own wealth. the greater, the more formidable, the more keenly felt this obstacle is, the greater will be the remuneration which his fellow-men will be disposed to accord him; that is to say, the more ready will they be to remove the obstacles which stand in his way. the physician, for example, does not bake his own bread, or manufacture his own instruments, or weave or make his own coat. others do these things for him, and in return he treats the diseases with which his patients are afflicted. the more numerous, severe, and frequent these diseases are, the more others consent, and are obliged, to do for his personal comfort. regarding it from this point of view, disease, that general obstacle to human happiness, becomes a cause of material prosperity to the individual physician. the same argument applies to all producers in their several departments. the shipowner derives his profits from the obstacle called _distance_; the agriculturist from that called _hunger_; the manufacturer of cloth from that called _cold_; the schoolmaster lives upon _ignorance_; the lapidary upon _vanity_; the attorney on _cupidity_; the notary upon possible _bad faith_,--just as the physician lives upon the diseases of men. it is quite true, therefore, that each profession has an immediate interest in the continuation, nay in the extension, of the special obstacle which it is its business to combat. observing this, theorists make their appearance, and, founding a system on their individual sentiments, tell us: want is wealth, labour is wealth, obstacles to material prosperity are prosperity. to multiply obstacles is to support industry. then statesmen intervene. they have the disposal of the public force; and what more natural than to make it available for developing and multiplying obstacles, since this is developing and multiplying wealth? they say, for example: if we prevent the importation of iron from places where it is abundant, we place an obstacle in the way of its being procured. this obstacle, keenly felt at home, will induce men to pay in order to be set free from it. a certain number of our fellow-citizens will devote themselves to combating it, and this obstacle will make their fortune. the greater the obstacle is--that is, the scarcer, the more inaccessible, the more difficult to transport, the more distant from the place where it is to be used, the mineral sought for becomes--the more hands will be engaged in the various ramifications of this branch of industry. exclude, then, foreign iron, create an obstacle, for you thereby create the labour which is to overcome it. the same reasoning leads to the proscription of machinery. here, for instance, are men who are in want of casks for the storage of their wine. this is an obstacle; and here are other men whose business it is to remove that obstacle by making the casks that are wanted. it is fortunate, then, that this obstacle should exist, since it gives employment to a branch of national industry, and enriches a certain number of our fellow-citizens. but then we have ingenious machinery invented for felling the oak, cutting it up into staves, and forming them into the wine-casks that are wanted. by this means the obstacle is lessened, and so are the gains of the cooper. let us maintain both at their former elevation by a law, and put down the machinery. to get at the root of this sophism, it is necessary only to reflect that human labour is not the _end_, but the _means. it never remains unemployed_. if one obstacle is removed, it does battle with another; and society is freed from two obstacles by the same amount of labour which was formerly, required for the removal of one. if the labour of the cooper is rendered unnecessary in one department, it will soon take another direction. but how and from what source will it be remunerated? from the same source exactly from which it is remunerated at present; for when a certain amount of labour becomes disposable by the removal of an obstacle, a corresponding amount of remuneration becomes disposable also. to maintain that human labour will ever come to want employment, would be to maintain that the human race will cease to encounter obstacles. in that case labour would not only be impossible; it would be superfluous. we should no longer have anything to do, because we should be omnipotent; and we should only have to pronounce our _fiat_ in order to ensure the satisfaction of all our desires and the supply of all our wants.* * see post, ch. xiv. of second series of _sophismes economiques_, and ch. iii. and xi. of the _harmonies Économiques_. iii. effort, result. we have just seen that between our wants and the satisfaction of these wants, obstacles are interposed. we succeed in overcoming these obstacles, or in diminishing their force by the employment of our faculties. we may say in a general way, that industry is an effort followed by a result. but what constitutes the measure of our prosperity, or of our wealth? is it the result of the effort? or is it the effort itself? a relation always subsists between the effort employed and the result obtained. progress consists in the relative enhancement of the second or of the first term of this relation. both theses have been maintained; and in political economy they have divided the region of opinion and of thought. according to the first system, wealth is the result of labour, increasing as the relative _proportion of result to effort increases_. absolute perfection, of which god is the type, consists in the infinite distance interposed between the two terms--in this sense, effort is _nil_, result infinite. the second system teaches that it is the effort itself which constitutes the measure of wealth. to make progress is to increase the relative proportion _which effort bears to result_. the ideal of this system may be found in the sterile and eternal efforts of sisyphus.* the first system naturally welcomes everything which tends to diminish _pains_ and augment _products_; powerful machinery which increases the forces of man, exchange which allows him to derive greater advantage from natural agents distributed in various proportions over the face of the earth, intelligence which discovers, experience which proves, competition which stimulates, etc. logically, the second invokes everything which has the effect of increasing pains and diminishing products; privileges, monopolies, restrictions, prohibitions, suppression of machinery, sterility, etc. it is well to remark that the _universal practice_ of mankind always points to the principle of the first system. we have never seen, we shall never see, a man who labours in any department, be he agriculturist, manufacturer, merchant, artificer, soldier, author, or philosopher, who does not devote all the powers of his mind to work better, to work with more rapidity, to work more economically--in a word, to effect _more with less_. the opposite doctrine is in favour only with theorists, deputies, journalists, statesmen, ministers--men, in short, born to make experiments on the social body. * for this reason, and for the sake of conciseness, the reader will pardon us for designating this system in the sequel by the name of _sisyphism_. at the same time, we may observe, that in what concerns themselves personally, they act as every one else does, on the principle of obtaining from labour the greatest possible amount of useful results. perhaps i may be thought to exaggerate, and that there are no true _sisyphists_. if it be argued that in practice they do not press their principle to its most extreme consequences, i willingly grant it. this is always the case when one sets out with a false principle. such a principle soon leads to results so absurd and so mischievous that we are obliged to stop short. this is the reason why practical industry never admits _sisyphism_; punishment would follow error too closely not to expose it. but in matters of speculation, such as theorists and statesmen deal in, one may pursue a false principle a long time before discovering its falsity by the complicated consequences to which men were formerly strangers; and when at last its falsity is found out, the authors take refuge in the opposite principle, turn round, contradict themselves, and seek their justification in a modern maxim of incomparable absurdity: in political economy, there is no inflexible rule, no absolute principle. let us see, then, if these two opposite principles which i have just described do not predominate by turns, the one in practical industry, the other in industrial legislation. i have already noticed the saying of m. bugeaud (that "when bread is dear, agriculturists become rich"); but in m. bugeaud are embodied two separate characters, the agriculturist and the legislator. as an agriculturist, m. bugeaud directs all his efforts to two ends,--to save labour, and obtain cheap bread. when he prefers a good plough to a bad one; when he improves his pastures; when, in order to pulverize the soil, he substitutes as much as possible the action of the atmosphere for that of the harrow and the hoe; when he calls to his aid all the processes of which science and experiment have proved the efficacy,--he has but one object in view, viz., to diminish _the proportion of effort to result_. we have indeed no other test of the ability of a cultivator, and the perfection of his processes, than to measure to what extent they have lessened the one and added to the other. and as all the farmers in the world act upon this principle, we may assert that the effort of mankind at large is to obtain, for their own benefit undoubtedly, bread and all other products cheaper, to lessen the labour needed to procure a given quantity of what they want. this incontestable tendency of mankind once established, should, it would seem, reveal to the legislator the true principle, and point out to him in what way he should aid industry (in as far as it falls within his province to aid it); for it would be absurd to assert that human laws should run counter to the laws of providence. and yet we have heard m. bugeaud, as a deputy, exclaim: "i understand nothing of this theory of cheapness; i should like better to see bread dearer and labour more abundant." and following out this doctrine, the deputy of the dordogne votes legislative measures, the effect of which is to hamper exchanges, for the very reason that they procure us indirectly what direct production could not procure us but at greater expense. now, it is very evident that m. bugeaud's principle as a deputy is directly opposed to the principle on which he acts as an agriculturist. to act consistently, he should vote against all legislative restriction, or else import into his farming operations the principle which he proclaims from the tribune. we should then see him sow his corn in his most sterile fields, for in this way he would succeed in _working much to obtain little_. we should see him throwing aside the plough, since hand-culture would satisfy his double wish for dearer bread and more abundant labour. restriction has for its avowed object, and its acknowledged effect, to increase labour. it has also for its avowed object, and its acknowledged effect, to cause dearness, which means simply scarcity of products; so that, carried out to its extreme limits, it is pure _sisyphism_, such as we have defined it,--_labour infinite, product nil_. baron charles dupin, the light of the peerage, it is said, on economic science, accuses railways of _injuring navigation_; and it is certain that it is of the nature of a more perfect, to restrict the use of a less perfect means of conveyance. but railways cannot hurt navigation except by attracting traffic; and they cannot attract traffic but by conveying goods and passengers more cheaply; and they cannot convey them more cheaply but by _diminishing the proportion which the effort employed bears to the result obtained_, seeing that that is the very thing which constitutes cheapness. when, then, baron dupin deplores this diminution of the labour employed to effect a given result, it is the doctrine of _sisyphism_ which he preaches. logically, since he prefers the ship to the rail, he should prefer the cart to the ship, the pack-saddle to the cart, and the pannier to all other known means of conveyance, for it is the latter which exacts the most labour with the least result. "labour constitutes the wealth of a people," said m. de saint-cricq, that minister of commerce who has imposed so many restrictions upon trade. we must not suppose that this was an elliptical expression, meaning, "the results of labour constitute the wealth of a people." no, this economist distinctly intended to affirm that it is the _intensity_ of labour which is the measure of wealth, and the proof of it is, that from consequence to consequence, from one restriction to another, he induced france (and in this he thought he was doing her good) to expend double the amount of labour, in order, for example, to provide herself with an equal quantity of iron. in england, iron was then at eight francs, while in france it cost sixteen francs. taking a day's labour at one franc, it is clear that france could, by means of exchange, procure a quintal of iron by subtracting eight days' work from the aggregate national labour. in consequence of the restrictive measures of m. de saint-cricq, france was obliged to expend sixteen days' labour in order to provide herself with a quintal of iron by direct production. double the labour for the same satisfaction, hence double the wealth. then it follows that wealth is not measured by the result, but by the intensity of the labour. is not this _sisyphism_ in all its purity? and in order that there may be no mistake as to his meaning, the minister takes care afterwards to explain more fully his ideas; and as he had just before called the intensity of labour _wealthy_ he goes on to call the more abundant results of that labour, or the more abundant supply of things proper to satisfy our wants, _poverty_. "everywhere," he says, "machinery has taken the place of manual labour; everywhere production superabounds; everywhere the equilibrium between the faculty of producing, and the means of consuming, is destroyed." we see, then, to what, in m. de saint-cricq's estimation, the critical situation of the country was owing--it was to having produced too much, and her labour being too intelligent, and too fruitful. we were too well fed, too well clothed, too well provided with everything; a too rapid production surpassed all our desires. it was necessary, then, to put a stop to the evil, and for that purpose, to force us, by restrictions, to labour more in order to produce less. i have referred likewise to the opinions of another minister of commerce, m. d'argout. they deserve to be dwelt upon for an instant. desiring to strike a formidable blow at beet-root culture, he says, "undoubtedly, the cultivation of beet-root is useful, _but this utility is limited_. the developments attributed to it are exaggerated. to be convinced of this, it is sufficient to observe that this culture will be necessarily confined within the limits of consumption. double, triple, if you will, the present consumption of france, _you will always find that a very trifling portion of the soil will satisfy the requirements of that consumption_." (this is surely rather a singular subject of complaint!) "do you desire proof of this? how many _hectares_ had we under beet-root in ? , which is equivalent to - , th of our arable land. at the present time, when indigenous sugar supplies one-third of our consumption, how much land is devoted to that culture? , _hectares_, or - th of the arable land, or _centiares_ in each commune. suppose indigenous sugar already supplied our whole consumption, we should have only , hectares under beet-root, or - th of the arable land."* there are two things to be remarked upon in this citation--the facts and the doctrine. the facts tend to prove that little land, little capital, and little labour are required to produce a large quantity of sugar, and that each commune of france would be abundantly provided by devoting to beet-root cultivation one hectare of its soil. the doctrine consists in regarding this circumstance as adverse, and in seeing in the very power and fertility of the new industry, _a limit to its utility_. * it is fair to m. d'argout to say that he put this language in the mouth of the adversaries of beet-root culture. but he adopts it formally, and sanctions it besides, by the law which it was employed to justify. i do not mean to constitute myself here the defender of beet-root culture, or a judge of the strange facts advanced by m. d'argout; * but it is worth while to scrutinize the doctrine of a statesman, to whom france for a long time entrusted the care of her agriculture and of her commerce. i remarked in the outset that a variable relation exists between an industrial effort and its result; that absolute imperfection consists in an infinite effort without any result; absolute perfection in an unlimited result without any effort; and perfectibility in the progressive diminution of effort compared with the result. but m. d'argout tells us there is death where we think we perceive life, and that the importance of any branch of industry is in direct proportion to its powerlessness. what are we to expect, for instance, from the cultivation of beet-root? do you not see that , _hectares_ of land, with capital and manual labour in proportion, are sufficient to supply all france with sugar? then, this is a branch of industry of limited utility; limited, of course, with reference to the amount of labour which it demands, the only way in which, according to the ex-minister, any branch of industry can be useful. this utility would be still more limited, if, owing to the fertility of the soil, and the richness of the beet-root, we could reap from , hectares, what at present we only obtain from , . oh! were only twenty times, a hundred times, more land, capital, and labour necessary to _yield us the same result_, so much the better. we might build some hopes on this new branch of industry, and it would be worthy of state protection, for it would offer a vast field to our national industry. but to produce much with little! that is a bad example, and it is time for the law to interfere. * supposing that , or , hectares were sufficient to supply the present consumption, it would require , for triple that consumption, which m. d'argout admits as possible. moreover, if beet-root entered into a six years' rotation of crops, it would occupy successively , hectares, or - th of the arable land. but what is true with regard to sugar, cannot be otherwise with regard to bread. if, then, the _utility_ of any branch of industry is to be estimated not by the amount of satisfactions it is fitted to procure us with a determinate amount of labour, but, on the contrary, by the amount of labour which it exacts in order to yield us a determinate amount of satisfactions, what we ought evidently to desire is, that each acre of land should yield less corn, and each grain of com less nourishment; in other words, that our land should be comparatively barren; for then the quantity of land, capital, and manual labour that would be required for the maintenance of our population would be much more considerable; we could then say that the demand for human labour would be in direct proportion to this barrenness. the aspirations of mm. bugeaud, saint-cricq, dupin, and d'argout, would then be satisfied; bread would be dear, labour abundant, and france rich--rich at least in the sense in which these gentlemen understand the word. what we should desire also is, that human intelligence should be enfeebled or extinguished; for, as long as it survives, it will be continually endeavouring to augment _the proportion which the end bears to the means, and which the product bears to the labour_. it is in that precisely that intelligence consists. thus, it appears that _sisyphism_ has been the doctrine of all the men who have been intrusted with our industrial destinies. it would be unfair to reproach them with it. this principle guides ministers only because it is predominant in the chambers; and it predominates in the chambers only because it is sent there by the electoral body, and the electoral body is imbued with it only because public opinion is saturated with it. i think it right to repeat here that i do not accuse men such as mm. bugeaud, dupin, saint-cricq, and d'argout of being absolutely and under all circumstances _sisyphists_. they are certainly not so in their private transactions; for in these they always desire to obtain _by way of exchange_ what would cost them dearer to procure _by direct production_; but i affirm they are _sisyphists_ when they hinder the country from doing the same thing.* * see on the same subject, _sophismes Économiques_, second series, ch. xvi., post, and _harmonies Économiques_, ch. vi. iv. to equalize the conditions of production. it has been said.....but in case i should be accused of putting sophisms into the mouths of the protectionists, i shall allow one of their most vigorous athletes to speak for them. "it has been thought that protection in our case should simply represent the difference which exists between the cost price of a commodity which we produce and the cost price of the same commodity produced by our neighbours.... a protective duty calculated on this basis would only ensure free competition....; free competition exists only when there is equality in the conditions and in the charges. in the case of a horse race, we ascertain the weight which each horse has to carry, and so equalize the conditions; without that there could be no fair competition. in the case of trade, if one of the sellers can bring his commodity to market at less cost, he ceases to be a competitor, and becomes a monopolist.... do away with this protection which represents the difference of cost price, and the foreigner invades our markets and acquires a monopoly."* "every one must wish, for his own sake, as well as for the sake of others, that the production of the country should be protected against foreign competition, _whenever the latter can furnish products at a lower price._"** * m. le vicomte de romanet. ** matthieu le dombasle. this argument recurs continually in works of the protectionist school. i propose to examine it carefully, and i solicit earnestly the reader's patience and attention. i shall consider, first of all, the inequalities which are attributable to nature, and afterwards those which are attributable to diversity of taxation. in this, as in other cases, we shall find protectionist theorists viewing their subject from the producer's stand-point, whilst we advocate the cause of the unfortunate consumers, whose interests they studiously keep out of sight. they institute a comparison between the field of industry and the _turf_. but as regards the latter, the race is at once the _means_ and the _end_. the public feels no interest in the competition beyond the competition itself. when you start your horses, your _end_, your object, is to find out which is the swiftest runner, and i see your reason for equalizing the weights. but if your _end_, your object, were to secure the arrival of some important and urgent news at the winning-post, could you, without inconsistency, throw obstacles in the way of any one who should offer you the best means of expediting your message? this is what you do in commercial affairs. you forget the end, the object sought to be attained, which is material prosperity; you disregard it, you sacrifice it to a veritable _petitio principii_; in plain language, you are begging the question. but since we cannot bring our opponents to our point of view, let us place ourselves in theirs, and examine the question in its relations with production. i shall endeavour to prove, st, that to level and equalize the conditions of labour, is to attack exchange in its essence and principle. d, that it is not true that the labour of a country is neutralized by the competition of more favoured countries. d, that if that were true, protective duties would not equalize the conditions of production. th, that liberty, freedom of trade, levels these conditions as much as they can be levelled. th, that the least favoured countries gain most by exchange. i. to level and equalize the conditions of labour is not simply to cramp exchanges in certain branches of trade, it is to attack exchange in its principle, for its principle rests upon that very diversity, upon those very inequalities of fertility, aptitude, climate, and temperature, which you desire to efface. if guienne sends wine to brittany, and if brittany sends corn to guienne, it arises from their being placed under different conditions of production. is there a different law for international exchanges? to urge against international exchanges that inequality of conditions which gives rise to them, and explains them, is to argue against their very existence. if protectionists had on their side sufficient logic and power, they would reduce men, like snails, to a state of absolute isolation. moreover, there is not one of their sophisms which, when submitted to the test of rigorous deductions, does not obviously tend to destruction and annihilation. ii. it is not true, in point of _fact_, that inequality of conditions existing between two similar branches of industry entails necessarily the ruin of that which is least favourably situated. on the turf, if one horse gains the prize, the other loses it; but when two horses are employed in useful labour, each produces a beneficial result in proportion to its powers; and if the more vigorous renders the greater service, it does not follow that the other renders no service at all. we cultivate wheat in all the departments of france, although there are between them enormous differences of fertility; and if there be any one department which does not cultivate wheat, it is because it is not profitable to engage in that species of culture in that locality. in the same way, analogy shows us that under the _régime_ of liberty, in spite of similar differences, they produce wheat in all the countries of europe; and if there be one which abandons the cultivation of that grain, it is because it is found _more for its interest_ to give another direction to the employment of its land, labour, and capital and why should the fertility of one department not paralyze the agriculturist of a neighbouring department which is less favourably situated? because the economic phenomena have a flexibility, an elasticity, _levelling powers_, so to speak, which appear to have altogether escaped the notice of the protectionist school. that school accuses us of being given up to system; but it is the protectionists who are systematic in the last degree, if the spirit of system consists in bolstering up arguments which rest upon one fact instead of upon an aggregation of facts. in the example which we have given, it is the difference in the value of lands which compensates the difference in their fertility. your field produces three times more than mine. yes, but it has cost you ten times more, and i can still compete with you. this is the whole mystery. and observe, that superiority in some respects leads to inferiority in others. it is just because your land is more fertile that it is dearer; so that it is not _accidentally_, but _necessarily_, that the equilibrium is established, or tends to be established; and it cannot be denied that liberty is the _régime_ which is most favourable to this tendency. i have referred to a branch of agricultural industry; i might as well have referred to industry in a different department. there are tailors at quimper, and that does not hinder there being tailors also in paris, though the latter pay a higher rent, and live at much greater expense. but then they have a different set of customers, and that serves not only to redress the balance, but to make it incline to their side. when we speak, then, of equalizing the conditions of labour, we must not omit to examine whether liberty does not give us what we seek from an arbitrary system. this natural levelling power of the economic phenomena is so important to the question we are considering, and at the same time so fitted to inspire us with admiration of the providential wisdom which presides over the equitable government of society, that i must ask permission to dwell upon it for a little. the protectionist gentlemen tell us: such or such a people have over us an advantage in the cheapness of coal, of iron, of machinery, of capital--we cannot compete with them. we shall examine the proposition afterwards under all its aspects. at present, i confine myself to the inquiry whether, when a superiority and an inferiority are both present, they do not possess in themselves, the one an ascending, the other a descending force, which must ultimately bring them back to a just equilibrium. suppose two countries, a and b. a possesses over b all kinds of advantages. you infer from this, that every sort of industry will concentrate itself in a, and that b is powerless. a, you say, sells much more than it buys; b buys much more than it sells. i might dispute this, but i respect your hypothesis. on this hypothesis, labour is much in demand in a, and will soon rise in price there. iron, coal, land, food, capital, are much in demand in a, and they will soon rise in price there. contemporaneously with this, labour, iron, coal, land, food, capital, are in little request in b, and will soon fall in price there. nor is this all. while a is always selling, and b is always buying, money passes from b to a. it becomes abundant in a, and scarce in b. but abundance of money means that we must have plenty of it to buy everything else. then in a, to the _real dearness_ which arises from a very active demand, there is added a _nominal dearness_, which is due to a redundancy of the precious metals. scarcity of money means that little is required for each purchase. then in b a _nominal cheapness_ comes to be combined with _real cheapness_. in these circumstances, industry will have all sorts of motives--motives, if i may say so, carried to the highest degree of intensity--to desert a and establish itself in b. or, to come nearer what would actually take place under such circumstances, we may affirm that sudden displacements being so repugnant to the nature of industry, such a transfer would not have been so long delayed, but that from the beginning, under the free _régime_, it would have gradually and progressively shared and distributed itself between a and b, according to the laws of supply and demand--that is to say, according to the laws of justice and utility. and when i assert that if it were possible for industry to concentrate itself upon one point, that very circumstance would set in motion an irresistible decentralizing force, i indulge in no idle hypothesis. let us listen to what was said by a manufacturer in addressing the manchester chamber of commerce (i omit the figures by which he supported his demonstration):-- "formerly we exported stuffs; then that exportation gave place to that of yams, which are the raw material of stuffs; then to that of machines, which are the instruments for producing yarn; afterwards to the exportation of the capital with which we construct our machines; finally, to that of our workmen and our industrial skill, which are the source of our capital. all these elements of labour, one after the other, are set to work wherever they find the most advantageous opening, wherever the expense of living is cheaper and the necessaries of life are moat easily procured; and at the present day, in prussia, in austria, in saxony, in switzerland, in italy, we see manufactures on an immense scale founded and supported by english capital, worked by english operatives, and directed by english engineers." you see very clearly, then, that nature, or rather that providence, more wise, more far-seeing than your narrow and rigid theory supposes, has not ordered this concentration of industry, this monopoly of all advantages upon which you found your reasoning as upon a fact which is unalterable and without remedy. nature has provided, by means as simple as they are infallible, that there should be dispersion, diffusion, solidarity, simultaneous progress; all constituting a state of things which your restrictive laws paralyze as much as they can; for the tendency of such laws is, by isolating communities, to render the diversity of condition much more marked, to prevent equalization, hinder fusion, neutralize countervailing circumstances, and segregate nations, whether in their superiority or in their inferiority of condition. iii. in the third place, to contend that by a protective duty you equalize the conditions of production, is to give currency to an error by a deceptive form of speech. it is not true that an import duty equalizes the conditions of production. these remain, after the imposition of the duty, the same as they were before. at most, all that such a duty equalizes are _the conditions of sale_. it may be said, perhaps, that i am playing upon words, but i throw back the accusation. it is for my opponents to show that _production and sale_ are synonymous terms; and if they cannot do this, i am warranted in fastening upon them the reproach, if not of playing on words, at least of mixing them up and confusing them. to illustrate what i mean by an example: i suppose some parisian speculators to devote themselves to the production of oranges. they know that the oranges of portugal can be sold in paris for a penny apiece, whilst they, on account of the frames and hot-houses which the colder climate would render necessary, could not sell them for less than a shilling as a remunerative price. they demand that portuguese oranges should have a duty of elevenpence imposed upon them. by means of this duty, they say, the _conditions af production_ will be equalized; and the chamber, giving effect, as it always does, to such reasoning, inserts in the tariff a duty of elevenpence upon every foreign orange. now, i maintain that the _conditions of production_ are in nowise changed. the law has made no change on the heat of the sun of lisbon, or on the frequency and intensity of the frosts of paris. the ripening of oranges will continue to go on naturally on the banks of the tagus, and artificially on the banks of the seine--that is to say, much more human labour will be required in the one country than in the other. the conditions of sale are what have been equalized. the portuguese must now sell us their oranges at a shilling, elevenpence of which goes to pay the tax. that tax will be paid, it is evident, by the french consumer. and look at the whimsical result. upon each portuguese orange consumed, the country will lose nothing, for the extra elevenpence charged to the consumer will be paid into the treasury. this will cause displacement, but not loss. but upon each french orange consumed there will be a loss of elevenpence, or nearly so, for the purchaser will certainly lose that sum, and the seller as certainly will not gain it, seeing that by the hypothesis he will only have received the cost price. i leave it to the protectionists to draw the inference. iv. if i have dwelt upon this distinction between the conditions of production and the conditions of sale, a distinction which the protectionists will no doubt pronounce paradoxical, it is because it leads me to inflict on them another, and a much stranger, paradox, which is this: would you equalize effectually the conditions of production, leave exchange free. now, really, it will be said, this is too much; you must be making game of us. well, then, were it only for curiosity, i entreat the gentlemen protectionists to follow me on to the conclusion of my argument. it will not be long. i revert to my former illustration. let us suppose for a moment that the average daily wage which a frenchman earns is equal to a shilling, and it follows incontestably that to produce directly an orange in france, a day's work, or its equivalent, is required; while to produce the value of a portuguese orange, only a twelfth part of that day's labour would be necessary; which means exactly this, that the sun does at lisbon what human labour does at paris. now, is it not very evident that if i can produce an orange, or, what comes to the same thing, the means of purchasing one, with a twelfth part of a day's labour, i am placed, with respect to this production, under exactly the same conditions as the portuguese producer himself, excepting the carriage, which must be at my expense. it is certain, then, that liberty equalizes the conditions of production direct or indirect, as far as they can be equalized, since it leaves no other difference, but the inevitable one arising from the expense of transport. i add, that liberty equalizes also the conditions of enjoyment, of satisfaction, of consumption, with which the protectionists never concern themselves, and which are yet the essential consideration, consumption being the end and object of all our industrial efforts. in virtue of free trade, we enjoy the sun of portugal like the portuguese themselves. the inhabitants of havre and the citizens of london are put in possession, and on the same conditions, of all the mineral resources which nature has bestowed on newcastle. v. gentlemen protectionists, you find me in a paradoxical humour; and i am disposed to go further still. i say, and i sincerely think, that if two countries are placed under unequal conditions of production, _it is that one of the two which is least favoured by nature which has most to gain by free trade_. to prove this, i must depart a little from the usual form of such a work as this. i shall do so nevertheless, first of all, because the entire question lies there, and also because it will afford me an opportunity of explaining an economic law of the highest importance, and which, if rightly understood, appears to me to be fitted to bring back to the science all those sects who, in our day, seek in the land of chimeras that social harmony which they fail to discover in nature. i refer to the law of consumption, which it is perhaps to be regretted that the majority of economists have neglected. consumption is the _end_ and final cause of all the economic phenomena, and it is in consumption consequently that we must expect to find their ultimate and definitive solution. nothing, whether favourable or unfavourable, can abide permanently with the producer. the advantages which nature and society bestow upon him, the inconveniences he may experience, glide past him, so to speak, and are absorbed and mixed up with the community in as far as the community represents consumers. this is an admirable law both in its cause and in its effects, and he who shall succeed in clearly describing it is entitled, in my opinion, to say, "i have not passed through life without paying my tribute to society." everything which favours the work of production is welcomed with joy by the producer, for the _immediate effect_ of it is to put him in a situation to render greater service to the community, and to exact from it a greater remuneration. every circumstance which retards or interrupts production gives pain to the producer, for the _immediate effect_ of it is to circumscribe his services, and consequently his remuneration. _immediate_ good or ill circumstances--fortunate or unfortunate--necessarily fall upon the producer, and leave him no choice but to accept the one and eschew the other. in the same way, when a workman succeeds in discovering an improved process in manufactures, the _immediate_ profit from the improvement results to him. this was necessary, in order to give his labour an intelligent direction; and it is just, because it is fair that an effort crowned with success should carry its recompense along with it. but i maintain that these good or bad effects, though in their own nature permanent, are not permanent as regards the producer. if it had been so, a principle of progressive, and, therefore, of indefinite, inequality would have been introduced among men, and this is the reason why these good or evil effects become very soon absorbed in the general destinies of the human race. how is this brought about? i shall show how it takes place by some examples. let us go back to the thirteenth century. the men who then devoted themselves to the art of copying received for the service which they rendered _a remuneration regulated by the general rate of earnings_.* among them there arose one who discovered the means of multiplying copies of the same work rapidly. he invented printing. in the first instance, one man was enriched, and many others were impoverished. at first sight, marvellous as the invention proves itself to be, we hesitate to decide whether it is hurtful or useful. it seems to introduce into the world, as i have said, an indefinite element of inequality. guttemberg profits by his invention, and extends his invention with its profits indefinitely, until he has ruined all the copyists. as regards the public, in the capacity of consumer, it gains little; for guttemberg takes care not to lower the price of his books, but just enough to undersell his rivals. but the intelligence which has introduced harmony into the movements of the heavenly bodies, has implanted it also in the internal mechanism of society. we shall see the economic advantages of the invention when it has ceased to be individual property, and has become for ever the common patrimony of the masses. at length the invention comes to be known. guttemberg is no longer the only printer; others imitate him. their profits' at first are large. they are thus rewarded for having been the first to imitate the invention; and it is right that it should be so, for this higher remuneration was necessary to induce them to concur in the grand definite result which is approaching. they gain a great deal, but they gain less than the inventor, for _competition_ now begins its work. the price of books goes on falling. the profit of imitators goes on diminishing in proportion as the invention becomes of older date; that is to say, in proportion as the imitation becomes less meritorious..... * the author, here and elsewhere, uses the french word _profits_; but it is clear from the context that he does not refer to the returns from capital, in which sense alone the english economists employ the term _profits_. we have therefore substituted the words _earnings or wages_.-- translator, the new branch of industry at length reaches its normal state; in other words, the remuneration of printers ceases to be exceptionally high, and comes, like that of the copyist, to be _regulated by the ordinary rate of earnings_. here we have production, as such, brought back to the point from which it started. and yet the invention is not the less an acquisition; the saving of time, of labour, of effort to produce a given result, that is, to produce a determinate number of copies, is not the less realized. but how does it show itself? in the cheapness of books. and to whose profit? to the profit of the consumer, of society, of the human race. the printers, who have thenceforth no exceptional merit, no longer receive exceptional remuneration. as men, as consumers, they undoubtedly participate in the advantages which the invention has conferred upon the community. but that is all. as printers, as producers, they have returned to the ordinary condition of the other producers of the country. society pays them for their labour, and not for the utility of the invention. the latter has become the common and gratuitous heritage of mankind at large. i confess that the wisdom and the beauty of these laws call forth my admiration and respect. i see in them saint-simonianism: _to each according to his capacity; to each capacity according to its works_. i see in them, communism; that is, the tendency of products to become the _common_ heritage of men; but a saint-simonianism, a communism, regulated by infinite prescience, and not abandoned to the frailties, the passions, and the arbitrary will of men. what i have said of the art of printing, may be affirmed of all the instruments of labour, from the nail and the hammer to the locomotive and the electric telegraph. society becomes possessed of all through its more abundant consumption, and _it enjoys all gratuitously_, for the effect of inventions and discoveries is to reduce the price of commodities; and all that part of the price which has been annihilated, and which represents the share invention has in production, evidently renders the product gratuitous to that extent. all that remains to be paid for is the human labour, the immediate labour, /and it is paid for without reference to the result of the invention, at least when that invention has passed through the cycle i have just described--the cycle which it is designed to pass through. i send for a tradesman to my house; he comes and brings his saw with him; i pay him two shillings for his day's work, and he saws me twenty-five boards. had the saw not been invented, he would probably not have made out to furnish me with one, and i should have had to pay him the same wages for his day's work. the _utility_ produced by the saw is then, as far as i am concerned, a gratuitous gift of nature, or rather it is a part of that inheritance which, _in common_ with all my brethren, i have received from my ancestors. i have two workmen in my field. the one handles the plough, the other the spade. the result of their labour is very different, but the day's wages are the same, because the remuneration is not proportioned to the utility produced, but to the effort, the labour, which is exacted. i entreat the reader's patience, and beg him to believe that i have not lost sight of free trade. let him only have the goodness to remember the conclusion at which i have arrived: _remuneration is not in proportion to the utilities which the producer brings to market, but to his labour_.* * it is true that labour does not receive a uniform remuneration. it may be more or less intense, dangerous, skilled, etc. competition settles the usual or current price in each department--and this is the fluctuating price of which i speak. i have drawn my illustrations as yet from human inventions. let us now turn our attention to natural advantages. in every branch of production, nature and man concur. but the portion of utility which nature contributes is always gratuitous. it is only the portion of utility which human labour contributes which forms the subject of exchange, and, consequently, of remuneration. the latter varies, no doubt, very much in proportion to the intensity of the labour, its skill, its promptitude, its suitableness, the need there is of it, the temporary absence of rivalry, etc. but it is not the less true, in principle, that the concurrence of natural laws, which are common to all, counts for nothing in the price of the product. we do not pay for the air we breathe, although it is so _useful_ to us, that, without it, we could not live two minutes. we do not pay for it, nevertheless; because nature furnishes it to us without the aid of human labour. but if, for example, we should desire to separate one of the gases of which it is composed, to make an experiment, we must make an exertion; or if we wish another to make that exertion for us, we must sacrifice for that other an equivalent amount of exertion, although we may have embodied it in another product. whence we see that pains, efforts, and exertions are the real subjects of exchange. it is not, indeed, the oxygen gas that i pay for, since it is at my disposal everywhere, but the labour necessary to disengage it, labour which has been saved me, and which must be recompensed. will it be said that there is something else to be paid for, materials, apparatus, etc.? still, in paying for these, i pay for labour. the price of the coal employed, for example, represents the labour necessary to extract it from the mine and to transport it to the place where it is to be used. we do not pay for the light of the sim, because it is a gift of nature. but we pay for gas, tallow, oil, wax, because there is here human labour to be remunerated; and it will be remarked that, in this case, the remuneration is proportioned, not to the utility produced, but to the labour employed, so much so that it may happen that one of these kinds of artificial light, though more intense, costs us less, and for this reason, that the same amount of human labour affords us more of it. were the porter who carries water to my house to be paid in proportion to the _absolute utility_ of water, my whole fortune would be insufficient to remunerate him. but i pay him in proportion to the exertion he makes. if he charges more, others will do the work, or, if necessary, i will do it myself. water, in truth, is not the subject of our bargain, but the labour of carrying it. this view of the matter is so important, and the conclusions which i am about to deduce from it throw so much light on the question of the freedom of international exchanges, that i deem it necessary to elucidate it by other examples. the alimentary substance contained in potatoes is not very costly, because we can obtain a large amount of it with comparatively little labour. we pay more for wheat, because the production of it costs a greater amount of human labour. it is evident that if nature did for the one what it does for the other, the price of both would tend to equality. it is impossible that the producer of wheat should permanently gain much more than the producer of potatoes. the law of competition would prevent it. if by a happy miracle the fertility of all arable lands should come to be augmented, it would not be the agriculturist, but the consumer, who would reap advantage from that phenomenon for it would resolve itself into abundance and cheapness. there would be less labour incorporated in each quarter of corn, and the cultivator could exchange it only for a smaller amount of labour worked up in some other product. if, on the other hand, the fertility of the soil came all at once to be diminished, nature's part in the process of production would be less, that of human labour would be greater, and the product dearer. i am, then, warranted in saying that it is in consumption, in the human element, that all the economic phenomena come ultimately to resolve themselves. the man who has failed to regard them in this light, to follow them out to their ultimate effects, without stopping short at _immediate_ results, and viewing them from the _producer's_ standpoint, can no more be regarded as an economist than the man who should prescribe a draught, and, instead of watching its effect on the entire system of the patient, should inquire only how it affected the mouth and throat, could be regarded as a physician. tropical regions are very favourably situated for the production of sugar and of coffee. this means that nature does a great part of the work, and leaves little for human labour to do. but who reaps the advantage of this liberality of nature? not the producing countries, for competition causes the price barely to remunerate the labour. it is the human race that reaps the benefit, for the result of nature's liberality is cheapness, and cheapness benefits everybody. suppose a temperate region where coal and iron-ore are found on the surface of the ground, where one has only to stoop down to get them. that, in the first instance, the inhabitants would profit by this happy circumstance, i allow. but competition would soon intervene, and the price of coal and iron-ore would go on falling, till the gift of nature became free to all, and then the human labour employed would be alone remunerated according to the general rate of earnings. thus the liberality of nature, like improvements in the processes of production, is, or continually tends to become, under the law of competition, the common and gratuitous patrimony of consumers, of the masses, of mankind in general. then, the countries which do not possess these advantages have everything to gain by exchanging their products with those countries which possess them, because the subject of exchange is _labour_, apart from the consideration of the natural utilities worked up with that labour; and the countries which have incorporated in a given amount of their labour the greatest amount of these _natural utilities_, are evidently the most favoured countries. their products which represent the least amount of human labour are the least profitable; in other words, they _are cheaper_; and if the whole liberality of nature resolves itself into _cheapness_, it is evidently not the producing, but the consuming, country which reaps the benefit. hence we see the enormous absurdity of consuming countries which reject products for the very reason that they are cheap. it is as if they said, "we want nothing that nature gives us. you ask me for an effort equal to two, in exchange for a product which i cannot create without an effort equal to four; you can make that effort, because in your case nature does half the work. be it so; i reject your offer, and i shall wait until your climate, having become more inclement, will force you to demand from me an effort equal to four, in order that i may treat with you _on a footing of equality_." a is a favoured country. b is a country to which nature has been less bountiful. i maintain that exchange benefits both, but benefits b especially; because exchange is not an exchange of _utilities for utilities_, but _of value for value_. now a includes _a greater amount of utility in the same value_, seeing that the utility of a product includes what nature has put there, as well as what labour has put there; whilst value includes only what labour has put there. then b makes quite an advantageous bargain. in recompensing the producer of a for his labour only, it receives into the bargain a greater amount of natural utility than it has given. this enables us to lay down the general rule: exchange is a barter of _values_; value under the action of competition being made to represent labour, exchange becomes a barter of equal labour. what nature has imparted to the products exchanged is on both sides given _gratuitously and into the bargain_; whence it follows necessarily that exchanges effected with countries the most favoured by nature are the most advantageous. the theory of which in this chapter i have endeavoured to trace the outlines would require great developments. i have glanced at it only in as far as it bears upon my subject of free trade. but perhaps the attentive reader may have perceived in it the fertile germ which in the rankness of its maturity will not only smother protection, but, along with it, _fourierisrme, saint-simonianisme, communisme_, and all those schools whose object it is to exclude from the government of the world the law of _competition_. regarded from the producer's point of view, competition no doubt frequently clashes with our _immediate_ and individual interests; but if we change our point of view and extend our regards to industry in general, to universal prosperity--in a word, to _consumption_--we shall find that competition in the moral world plays the same part which equilibrium does in the material world. it lies at the root of true communism, of true socialism, of that equality of conditions and of happiness so much desired in our day; and if so many sincere publicists, and well-meaning reformers seek after the _arbitrary_, it is for this reason--that they do not understand liberty.* * the theory sketched in this chapter, is the same which, four years afterwards, was developed in the _harmonies Économiques_. remuneration reserved exclusively for human labour; the gratuitous nature of natural agents; progressive conquest of these agents, to the profit of mankind, whose common property they thus become; elevation of general wellbeing and tendency to relative equalization of conditions; we recognise here the essential elements of the most important of all the works of bastiat.--editor. v. our products are burdened with taxes. we have here again the same sophism. we demand that foreign products should be taxed to neutralize the effect of the taxes which weigh upon our national products. the object, then, still is to equalize the conditions of production. we have only a word to say, and it is this: that the tax is an artificial obstacle which produces exactly the same result as a natural obstacle, its effect is to enhance prices. if this enhancement reach a point which makes it a greater loss to create the product for ourselves than to procure it from abroad by producing a counter value, _laissez faire_, let well alone. of two evils, private interest will do well to choose the least. i might, then, simply refer the reader to the preceding demonstration; but the sophism which we have here to combat recurs so frequently in the lamentations and demands, i might say in the challenges, of the protectionist school, as to merit a special discussion. if the question relate to one of those exceptional taxes which are imposed on certain products, i grant readily that it is reasonable to impose the same duty on the foreign product. for example, it would be absurd to exempt foreign salt from duty; not that, in an economical point of view, france would lose anything by doing so, but the reverse. let them say what they will, principles are always the same; and france would gain by the exemption as she must always gain by removing a natural or artificial obstacle. but in this instance the obstacle has been interposed for purposes of revenue. these purposes must be attained; and were foreign salt sold in our market duty free, the treasury would lose its hundred millions of francs (four millions sterling); and must raise that sum from some other source. there would be an obvious inconsistency in creating an obstacle, and failing in the object. it might have been better to have had recourse at first to another tax than that upon french salt. but i admit that there are certain circumstances in which a tax may be laid on foreign commodities, provided it is not _protective_, but fiscal. but to pretend that a nation, because she is subjected to heavier taxes than her neighbours, should protect herself by tariffs against the competition of her rivals, in this is a sophism, and it is this sophism which i intend to attack. i have said more than once that i propose only to explain the theory, and lay open, as far as possible, the sources of protectionist errors. had i intended to raise a controversy, i should have asked the protectionists why they direct their tariffs chiefly against england and belgium, the most heavily taxed countries in the world? am i not warranted in regarding their argument only as a pretext? but i am not one of those who believe that men are prohibitionists from self-interest, and not from conviction. the doctrine of protection is too popular not to be sincere. if the majority had faith in liberty, we should be free. undoubtedly it is self-interest which makes our tariffs so heavy; but conviction is at the root of it. "the will," says pascal, "is one of the principal organs of belief." but the belief exists nevertheless, although it has its root in the will, and in the insidious suggestions of egotism. let us revert to the sophism founded on taxation. the state may make a good or a bad use of the taxes which it levies. when it renders to the public services which are equivalent to the value it receives, it makes a good use of them. and when it dissipates its revenues without giving any service in return, it makes a bad use of them. in the first case, to affirm that the taxes place the country which pays them under conditions of production more unfavourable than those of a country which is exempt from them, is a sophism. we pay twenty millions of francs for justice and police; but then we have them, with the security they afford us, and the time which they save us; and it is very probable that production is neither more easy nor more active in those countries, if there are any such, where the people take the business of justice and police into their own hands. we pay many hundreds of millions (of francs) for roads, bridges, harbours, and railways. granted; but then we have the benefit of these roads, bridges, harbours, and railways; and whether we make a good or a bad bargain in constructing them, it cannot be said that they render us inferior to other nations, who do not indeed support a budget of public works, but who have no public works. and this explains why, whilst accusing taxation of being a cause of industrial inferiority, we direct our tariffs especially against those countries which are the most heavily taxed. their taxes, well employed, far from deteriorating, have ameliorated, _the conditions of production_ in these countries. thus we are continually arriving at the conclusion that protectionist sophisms are not only not true, but are the very reverse of true.* * see harmonies Économiques, ch. xvii. if taxes are improductive, suppress them, if you can; but assuredly the strangest mode of neutralizing their effect is to add individual to public taxes. fine compensation truly! you tell us that the state taxes are too much; and you give that as a reason why we should tax one another! a protective duty is a tax directed against a foreign product; but we must never forget that it falls back on the home consumer. now the consumer is the tax-payer. the agreeable language you address to him is this: "because your taxes are heavy, we raise the price of everything you buy; because the state lays hold of one part of your income, we hand over another to the monopolist." but let us penetrate a little deeper into this sophism, which is in such repute with our legislators, although the extraordinary thing is that it is just the very people who maintain unproductive taxes who attribute to them our industrial inferiority, and in that inferiority find an excuse for imposing other taxes and restrictions. it appears evident to me that the nature and effects of protection would not be changed, were the state to levy a direct tax and distribute the money afterwards in premiums and indemnities to the privileged branches of industry. suppose that while foreign iron cannot be sold in our market below eight francs, french iron cannot be sold for less than twelve francs. on this hypothesis, there are two modes in which the state can secure the home market to the producer. the first mode is to lay a duty of five francs on foreign iron. it is evident that that duty would exclude it, since it could no longer be sold under thirteen francs, namely, eight francs for the cost price, and five francs for the tax, and at that price it would be driven out of the market by french iron, the price of which we suppose to be only twelve francs. in this case, the purchaser, the consumer, would be at the whole cost of the protection. or again, the state might levy a tax of five francs from the public, and give the proceeds as a premium to the ironmaster. the protective effect would be the same. foreign iron would in this case be equally excluded; for our ironmaster can now sell his iron at seven francs, which, with the five francs premium, would make up to him the remunerative price of twelve francs. but with home iron at seven francs the foreigner could not sell his for eight, which by the supposition is his lowest remunerative price. between these two modes of going to work, i can see only one difference. the principle is the same; the effect is the same; but in the one, certain individuals pay the price of protection; in the other, it is paid for by the nation at large. i frankly avow my predilection for the second mode. it appears to me more just, more economical, and more honourable; more just, because if society desires to give largesses to some of its members, all should contribute; more economical, because it would save much expense in collecting, and get us rid of many restrictions; more honourable, because the public would then see clearly the nature of the operation, and act accordingly. but if the protectionist system had taken this form, it would have been laughable to hear men say, "we pay heavy taxes for the army, for the navy, for the administration of justice, for public works, for the university, the public debt, etc.--in all exceeding a milliard [£ , , sterling]. for this reason, the state should take another milliard from us, to relieve these poor ironmasters, these poor shareholders in the coal-mines of anzin, these unfortunate proprietors of forests, these useful men who supply us with cod-fish." look at the subject closely, and you will be satisfied that this is the true meaning and effect of the sophism we are combating. it is all in vain; you cannot _give money_ to some members of the community but by taking it from others. if you desire to ruin the tax-payer, you may do so. but at least do not banter him by saying, "in order to compensate your losses, i take from you again as much as i have taken from you already." to expose fully all that is false in this sophism would be an endless work. i shall confine myself to three observations. you assert that the country is overburdened with taxes, and on this fact you found an argument for the protection of certain branches of industry. but we have to pay these taxes in spite of protection. if, then, a particular branch of industry presents itself, and says, "i share in the payment of taxes; that raises the cost price of my products, and i demand that a protecting duty should also raise their selling price," what does such a demand amount to? it amounts simply to this, that the tax should be thrown over on the rest of the community. the object sought for is to be reimbursed the amount of the tax by a rise of prices. but as the treasury requires to have the full amount of all the taxes, and as the masses have to pay the higher price, it follows that they have to bear not only their own share of taxation but that of the particular branch of industry which is protected. but we mean to protect everybody, you will say. i answer, in the first place, that that is impossible; and, in the next place, that if it were possible, there would be no relief. i would pay for you, and you would pay for me; but the tax must be paid all the same. you are thus the dupes of an illusion. you wish in the first instance to pay taxes in order that you may have an army, a navy, a church, a university, judges, highways, etc., and then you wish to free from taxation first one branch of industry, then a second, then a third, always throwing back the burden upon the masses. you do nothing more than create interminable complications, without any other result than these complications themselves. show me that a rise of price caused by protection falls upon the foreigner, and i could discover in your argument something specious. but if it be true that the public pays the tax before your law, and that after the law is passed it pays for protection and the tax into the bargain, truly i cannot see what is gained by it. but i go further, and maintain that the heavier our taxes are, the more we should hasten to throw open our ports and our frontiers to foreigners less heavily taxed than ourselves. and why? in order to throw back upon them a greater share of our burden. is it not an incontestable axiom in political economy that taxes ultimately fall on the consumer? the more, then, our exchanges are multiplied, the more will foreign consumers reimburse us for the taxes incorporated and worked up in the products we sell them; whilst we in this respect will have to make them a smaller restitution, seeing that their products, according to our hypothesis, are less heavily burdened than ours. in fine, have you never asked yourselves whether these heavy burdens on which you found your argument for a prohibitory régime are not caused by that very régime? if commerce were free, what use would you have for your great standing armies and powerful navies?.... but this belongs to the domain of politics. et ne confondons pas, pour trop approfondir, leurs affaires avec les nôtres. vi. balance of trade. our adversaries have adopted tactics which are rather embarrassing. do we establish our doctrine? they admit it with the greatest possible respect. do we attack their principle? they abandon it with the best grace in the world. they demand only one thing--that our doctrine, which they hold to be true, should remain relegated in books, and that their principle, which they acknowledge to be vicious, should reign paramount in practical legislation. resign to them the management of tariffs, and they will give up all dispute with you in the domain of theory. "assuredly," said m. gauthier de rumilly, on a recent occasion, "no one wishes to resuscitate the antiquated theories of the balance of trade." very right, monsieur gauthier, but please to remember that it is not enough to give a passing slap to error, and immediately afterwards, and for two hours together, reason as if that error were truth. let me speak of m. lestiboudois. here we have a consistent reasoner, a logical disputant. there is nothing in his conclusions which is not to be found in his premises. he asks nothing in practice, but what he justifies in theory. his principle may be false; that is open to question. but, at any rate, he has a principle. he believes, and he proclaims it aloud, that if france gives ten, in order to receive fifteen, she loses five; and it follows, of course, that he supports laws which are in keeping with this view of the subject "the important thing to attend to," he says, "is that the amount of our importations goes on augmenting, and exceeds the amount of our exportations--that is to say, france every year purchases more foreign products, and sells less of her own. figures prove this. what do we see? in , imports exceeded exports by millions. these facts appear to prove in the clearest manner that national industry _is not sufficiently protected_, that we depend upon foreign labour for our supplies, that the competition of our rivals _oppresses_ our industry. the present law appears to me to recognise the fact, which is not true according to the economists, that when we purchase we necessarily sell a corresponding amount of commodities. it is evident that we can purchase, not with our usual products, not with our revenue, not with the results of permanent labour, but with our capital, with products which have been accumulated and stored up, those intended for reproduction--that is to say, that we may expend, that we may dissipate, the proceeds of anterior economies, that we may impoverish ourselves, that we may proceed on the road to ruin, and consume entirely the national capital. _this is exactly what we are doing. every year we give away millions of francs to the foreigner_." well, here is a man with whom we can come to an understanding. there is no hypocrisy in this language. the doctrine of the balance of trade is openly avowed. france imports millions more than she exports. then we lose millions a year. and what is the remedy? to place restrictions on importation. the conclusion is unexceptionable. it is with m. lestiboudois, then, that we must deal, for how can we argue with m. gauthier? if you tell him that the balance of trade is an error, he replies that that was what he laid down at the beginning. if you say that the balance of trade is a truth, he will reply that that is what he proves in his conclusions. the economist school will blame me, no doubt, for arguing with m. lestiboudois. to attack the balance of trade, it will be said, is to fight with a windmill. but take care. the doctrine of the balance of trade is neither so antiquated, nor so sick, nor so dead as m. gauthier would represent it, for the entire chamber--m. gauthier himself included--has recognised by its votes the theory of m. lestiboudois. i shall not fatigue the reader by proceeding to probe that theory, but content myself with subjecting it to the test of facts. we are constantly told that our principles do not hold good, except in theory. but tell me, gentlemen, if you regard the books of merchants as holding good in practice? it appears to me that if there is anything in the world which should have practical authority, when the question regards profit and loss, it is commercial accounts. have all the merchants in the world come to an understanding for centuries to keep their books in such a way as to represent profits as losses, and losses as profits? it may be so, but i would much rather come to the conclusion that m. lestiboudois is a bad economist. now, a merchant of my acquaintance having had two transactions, the results of which were very different, i felt curious to compare the books of the counting-house with the books of the customhouse, as interpreted by m. lestiboudois to the satisfaction of our six hundred legislators. m. t. despatched a ship from havre to the united states, with a cargo of french goods, chiefly those known as _articles de paris_, amounting to , francs. this was the figure declared at the customhouse. when the cargo arrived at new orleans it was charged with per cent, freight and per cent, duty, making a total of , francs. it was sold with per cent, profit, or , francs, and produced a total of , francs, which the consignee invested in cottons. these cottons had still for freight, insurance, commission, etc., to bear a cost of per cent. so that when the new cargo arrived at havre it had cost , francs, which was the figure entered in the customhouse books. finally m. t. realized upon this return cargo per cent, profit, or , francs; in other words, the cottons were sold for , francs. if m. lestiboudois desires it, i shall send him an extract from the books of m. t. he will there see _at the credit_ of the _profit and loss_ account--that is to say, as profits--two entries, one of , , another of , francs, and m. t. is very sure that his accounts are accurate. and yet, what do the customhouse books tell m. lestiboudois regarding this transaction? they tell him simply that france exported , francs' worth, and imported to the extent of , francs; whence the honourable deputy concludes "_that she had expended, and dissipated the profits of her anterior economies, that she is impoverishing herself that she is on the high road to ruin, and has given away to the foreigner , francs of her capital_." some time afterwards, m. t. despatched another vessel with a cargo also of the value of , francs, composed of the products of our native industry. this unfortunate ship was lost in a gale of wind after leaving the harbour, and all m. t. had to do was to make two short entries in his books, to this effect:-- "_sundry goods debtors to x_, , francs, for purchases of different commodities despatched by the ship n. "_profit and loss debtors to sundry goods_, , francs, in consequence of _definitive and total loss_ of the cargo." at the same time, the customhouse books bore an entry of . francs in the list of _exportations_; and as there was no corresponding entry to make in the list of _importations_, it follows that m. lestiboudois and the chamber will see in this shipwreck _a clear and net profit_ for france of , francs. there is still another inference to be deduced from this, which is, that according to the theory of the balance of trade, france has a very simple means of doubling her capital at any moment. it is enough to pass them through the customhouse, and then pitch them into the sea. in this case the exports will represent the amount of her capital, the imports will be _nil_, and even impossible, and we shall gain all that the sea swallows up. this is a joke, the protectionists will say. it is impossible' we could give utterance to such absurdities. you do give utterance to them, however, and, what is more, you act upon them, and impose them on your fellow-citizens to the utmost of your power. the truth is, it would be necessary to take the balance of trade _backwards [au rebours]_, and calculate the national profits from foreign trade by the excess of imports over exports. this excess, after deducting costs, constitutes the real profit. but this theory, which is true, leads directly to free trade. i make you a present of it, gentlemen, as i do of all the theories in the preceding chapters. exaggerate it as much as you please--it has nothing to fear from that test. suppose, if that amuses you, that the foreigner inundates us with all sorts of useful commodities without asking anything in return, that our imports are _infinite_ and exports _nil_, i defy you to prove to me that we should be poorer on that account. vii. of the manufacturers of candles, wax-lights, lamps, candlesticks, street lamps, snuffers, extinguishers, and of the producers of oil, tallow, rosin, alcohol, and, generally, of everything connected with lighting. to messieurs the members of the chamber of deputies. gentlemen,--you are on the right road. you reject abstract theories, and have little consideration for cheapness and plenty your chief care is the interest of the producer. you desire to emancipate him from external competition, and reserve the _national market for national industry_. we are about to offer you an admirable opportunity of applying your--what shall we call it? your theory? no; nothing is more deceptive than theory; your doctrine? your system? your principle? but you dislike doctrines, you abhor systems, and as for principles, you deny that there are any in social economy: we shall say, then, your practice, your practice without theory and without principle. we are suffering from the intolerable competition of a foreign rival, placed, it would seem, in a condition so far superior to ours for the production of light, that he absolutely _inundates our national market_ with it at a price fabulously reduced. the moment he shows himself, our trade leaves us--all consumers apply to him; and a branch of native industry, having countless ramifications, is all at once rendered completely stagnant. this rival, who is no other than the sun, wages war to the knife against us, and we suspect that he has been raised up by _perfidious albion_ (good policy as times go); inasmuch as he displays towards that haughty island a circumspection with which he dispenses in our case. what we pray for is, that it may please you to pass a law ordering the shutting up of all windows, sky-lights, dormer-windows, outside and inside shutters, curtains, blinds, bull's-eyes; in a word, of all openings, holes, chinks, clefts, and fissures, by or through which the light of the sun has been in use to enter houses, to the prejudice of the meritorious manufactures with which we flatter ourselves we have accommodated our country,--a country which, in gratitude, ought not to abandon us now to a strife so unequal. we trust, gentlemen, that you will not regard this our request as a satire, or refuse it without at least previously hearing the reasons which we have to urge in its support. and, first, if you shut up as much as possible all access to natural light, and create a demand for artificial light, which of our french manufactures will not be encouraged by it? if more tallow is consumed, then there must be more oxen and sheep; and, consequently, we shall behold the multiplication of artificial meadows, meat, wool, hides, and, above all, manure, which is the basis and foundation of all agricultural wealth. if more oil is consumed, then we shall have an extended cultivation of the poppy, of the olive, and of rape. these rich and exhausting plants will come at the right time to enable us to avail ourselves of the increased fertility which the rearing of additional cattle will impart to our lands. our heaths will be covered with resinous trees. numerous swarms of bees will, on the mountains, gather perfumed treasures, now wasting their fragrance on the desert air, like the flowers from which they emanate. no branch of agriculture but will then exhibit a cheering development. the same remark applies to navigation. thousands of vessels will proceed to the whale fishery; and, in a short time, we shall possess a navy capable of maintaining the honour of france, and gratifying the patriotic aspirations of your petitioners, the undersigned candlemakers and others. but what shall we say of the manufacture of _articles de paris?_ henceforth you will behold gildings, bronzes, crystals, in candlesticks, in lamps, in lustres, in candelabra, shining forth, in spacious warerooms, compared with which those of the present day can be regarded but as mere shops. no poor _resinier_ from his heights on the seacoast, no coalminer from the depth of his sable gallery, but will rejoice in higher wages and increased prosperity. only have the goodness to reflect, gentlemen, and you will be convinced that there is, perhaps, no frenchman, from the wealthy coalmaster to the humblest vender of lucifer matches, whose lot will not be ameliorated by the success of this our petition. we foresee your objections, gentlemen, but we know that you can oppose to us none but such as you have picked up from the effete works of the partisans of free trade. we defy you to utter a single word against us which will not instantly rebound against yourselves and your entire policy. you will tell us that, if we gain by the protection which we seek, the country will lose by it, because the consumer must bear the loss. we answer: you have ceased to have any right to invoke the interest of the consumer; for, whenever his interest is found opposed to that of the producer, you sacrifice the former. you have done so for the purpose of _encouraging labour and increasing employment_. for the same reason you should do so again. you have yourselves obviated this objection. when you are told that the consumer is interested in the free importation of iron, coal, corn, textile fabrics--yes, you reply, but the producer is interested in their exclusion. well, be it so;--if consumers are interested in the free admission of natural light, the producers of artificial light are equally interested in its prohibition. but, again, you may say that the producer and consumer are identical. if the manufacturer gain by protection, he will make the agriculturist also a gainer; and if agriculture prosper, it will open a vent to manufactures. very well; if you confer upon us the monopoly of furnishing light during the day,--first of all, we shall purchase quantities of tallow, coals, oils, resinous substances, wax, alcohol--besides silver, iron, bronze, crystal--to carry on our manufactures; and then we, and those who furnish us with such commodities, having become rich will consume a great deal, and impart prosperity to all the other branches of our national industry. if you urge that the light of the sun is a gratuitous gift of nature, and that to reject such gifts is to reject wealth itself under pretence of encouraging the means of acquiring it, we would caution you against giving a death-blow to your own policy. remember that hitherto you have always repelled foreign products, because they approximate more nearly than home products to the character of gratuitous gifts. to comply with the exactions of other monopolists, you have only _half a motive_; and to repulse us simply because we stand on a stronger vantage-ground than others would be to adopt the equation, + x + = -; in other words, it would be to heap _absurdity upon absurdity_. nature and human labour co-operate in various proportions (depending on countries and climates) in the production of commodities. the part which nature executes is always gratuitous; it is the part executed by human labour which constitutes value, and is paid for. if a lisbon orange sells for half the price of a paris orange, it is because natural, and consequently gratuitous, heat does for the one, what artificial, and therefore expensive, heat must do for the other. when an orange comes to us from portugal, we may conclude that it is furnished in part gratuitously, in part for an onerous consideration; in other words, it comes to us at _half-price_ as compared with those of paris. now, it is precisely the _gratuitous half_ (pardon the word) which we contend should be excluded. you say, how can natural labour sustain competition with foreign labour, when the former has all the work to do, and the latter only does one-half, the sun supplying the remainder? but if this half being gratuitous, determines you to exclude competition, how should the whole, being gratuitous, induce you to admit competition? if you were consistent, you would, while excluding as hurtful to native industry what is half gratuitous, exclude _a fortiori_ and with double zeal, that which is altogether gratuitous. once more, when products such as coal, iron, corn, or textile fabrics, are sent us from abroad, and we can acquire them with less labour than if we made them ourselves, the difference is a free gift conferred upon us. the gift is more or less considerable in proportion as the difference is more or less great. it amounts to a quarter, a half, or three-quarters of the value of the product, when the foreigner only asks us for three-fourths, a half, or a quarter of the price we should otherwise pay. it is as perfect and complete as it can be, when the donor (like the sun in furnishing us with light) asks us for nothing. the question, and we ask it formally, is this, do you desire for our country the benefit of gratuitous consumption, or the pretended advantages of onerous production? make your choice, but be logical; for as long as you exclude as you do, coal, iron, com, foreign fabrics, in proportion as their price approximates to zero, what inconsistency would it be to admit the light of the sun, the price of which is already at _zero_ during the entire day! viii. differential duties. a poor vine-dresser of the gironde had trained with fond enthusiasm a slip of vine, which, after much fatigue and much labour, yielded him, at length, a tun of wine; and his success made him forget that each drop of this precious nectar had cost his brow a drop of sweat. "i shall sell it," said he to his wife, "and with the price i shall buy stuff sufficient to enable you to furnish a trousseau for our daughter." the honest countryman repaired to the nearest town, and met a belgian and an englishman. the belgian said to him: "give me your cask of wine, and i will give you in exchange fifteen parcels of stuff." the englishman said: "give me your wine, and i will give you twenty parcels of stuff; for we english can manufacture the stuff cheaper than the belgians." but a customhouse officer, who was present, interposed, and said: "my good friend, exchange with the belgian if you think proper, but my orders are to prevent you from making an exchange with the englishman." "what!" exclaimed the countryman; "you wish me to be content with fifteen parcels of stuff which have come from brussels, when i can get twenty parcels which have come from manchester?" "certainly; don't you see that france would be a loser if you received twenty parcels, instead of fifteen?" "i am at a loss to understand you," said the vine-dresser, "and i am at a loss to explain it," rejoined the customhouse official; "but the thing is certain, for all our deputies, ministers, and journalists agree in this, that the more a nation receives in exchange for a given quantity of its products, the more it is impoverished." the peasant found it necessary to conclude a bargain with the belgian. the daughter of the peasant got only three-quarters of her trousseau; and these simple people are still asking themselves how it happens that one is ruined by receiving four instead of three; and why a person is richer with three dozens of towels than with four dozens. ix. immense discovery. at a time when everybody is bent on bringing about a saving in the expense of transport--and when, in order to effect this saving, we are forming roads and canals, improving our steamers, and connecting paris with all our frontiers by a network of railways--at a time, too, when i believe we are ardently and sincerely seeking a solution of the problem, _how to bring the prices of commodities, in the place where they are to be consumed, as nearly as possible to the level of their prices in the place where they were produced_,--i should think myself wanting to my country, to my age, and to myself, if i kept longer secret the marvellous discovery which i have just made. the illusions of inventors are proverbial, but i am positively certain that i have discovered an infallible means of bringing products from every part of the world to france, and _vice versa_ at a considerable reduction of cost. infallible, did i say? its being infallible is only one of the advantages of my invention. it requires neither plans, estimates, preparatory study, engineers, mechanists, contractors, capital, shareholders, or government aid! it presents no danger of shipwreck, explosion, fire, or collision! it may be brought into operation at any time! moreover--and this must undoubtedly recommend it to the public--it will not add a penny to the budget, but the reverse. it will not increase the staff of functionaries, but the reverse. it will interfere with no man's liberty, but the reverse. it is observation, not chance, which has put me in possession of this discovery, and i will tell you what suggested it. i had at the time this question to resolve: "why does an article manufactured at brussels, for example, cost dearer when it comes to paris?" i soon perceived that it proceeds from this: that between paris and brussels _obstacles_ of many kinds exist. first of all, there is _distance_, which entails loss of time, and we must either submit to this ourselves, or pay another to submit to it. then come rivers, marshes, accidents, bad roads, which are so many _difficulties_ to be surmounted. we succeed in building bridges, in forming roads, and making them smoother by pavements, iron rails, etc. but all this is costly, and the commodity must be made to bear the cost. then there are robbers who infest the roads, and a body of police must be kept up, etc. now, among these _obstacles_ there is one which we have ourselves set up, and at no little cost, too, between brussels and paris. there are men who lie in ambuscade along the frontier, armed to the teeth, and whose business it is to throw _difficulties_ in the way of transporting merchandise from the one country to the other. they are called customhouse officers, and they act in precisely the same way as ruts and bad roads. they retard, they trammel commerce, they augment the difference we have remarked between the price paid by the consumer and the price received by the producer--that very difference, the reduction of which, as far as possible, forms the subject of our problem. that problem is resolved in three words: reduce your tariff. you will then have done what is equivalent to constructing the northern railway without cost, and will immediately begin to put money in your pocket. in truth, i often seriously ask myself how anything so whimsical could ever have entered into the human brain, as first of all to lay out many millions for the purpose of removing the _natural obstacles_ which lie between france and other countries, and then to lay out many more millions for the purpose of substituting _artificial obstacles_, which have exactly the same effect; so much so, indeed, that the obstacle created and the obstacle removed neutralize each other, and leave things as they were before, the residue of the operation being a double expense. a belgian product is worth at brussels francs, and the cost of carriage would raise the price at paris to francs. the same article made in paris costs francs. and how do we proceed? in the first place, we impose a duty of francs on the belgian product, in order to raise its cost price at paris to francs; and we pay numerous officials to see the duty stringently levied, so that, on the road, the commodity is charged francs for the carriage, and francs for the tax. having done this, we reason thus: the carriage from brussels to paris, which costs francs, is very dear. let us expend two or three hundred millions [of francs] in railways, and we shall reduce it by one half. evidently, all that we gain by this is that the belgian product would sell in paris for francs, viz. francs, its price at brussels. " duty. " reduced carriage by railway. total, francs, representing cost price at paris. now, i ask, would we not have attained the same result by lowering the tariff by francs? we should then have-- francs, the price at brussels. " reduced duty. " carriage by ordinary roads. total, francs, representing cost price at paris. and by this process we should have saved the millions which the railway cost, plus the expense of customhouse surveillance, for this last would be reduced in proportion to the diminished encouragement held out to smuggling. but it will be said that the duty is necessary to protect parisian industry. be it so; but then you destroy the effect of your railway. for, if you persist in desiring that the belgian product should cost at paris francs, you must raise your duty to francs, and then you have-- francs, the price at brussels. " protecting duty. " railway carriage. total, francs, being the equalized price. then, i venture to ask, what, under such circumstances, is the good of your railway? in sober earnestness, let me ask, is it not humiliating that the nineteenth century should make itself a laughing-stock to future ages by such puerilities, practised with such imperturbable gravity? to be the dupe of other people is not very pleasant, but to employ a vast representative apparatus in order to dupe, and double dupe, ourselves--and that, too, in an affair of arithmetic--should surely humble the pride of this _age of enlightenment_. x. reciprocity. we have just seen that whatever increases the expense of conveying commodities from one country to another--in other words, whatever renders transport more onerous--acts in the same way as a protective duty; or if you prefer to put it in another shape, that a protective duty acts in the same way as more onerous transport. a tariff, then, may be regarded in the same light as a marsh, a rut, an obstruction, a steep declivity--in a word, it is an _obstacle_, the effect of which is to augment the difference between the price which the producer of a commodity receives, and the price which the consumer pays for it. in the same way, it is undoubtedly true that marshes and quagmires are to be regarded in the same light as protective tariffs. there are people (few in number, it is true, but there are such people) who begin to understand that obstacles are not less obstacles because they are artificial, and that our mercantile prospects have more to gain from liberty than from protection, and exactly for the same reason which makes a canal more favourable to traffic than a steep, roundabout, and inconvenient road. but they maintain that this liberty must be reciprocal. if we remove the barriers we have erected against the admission of spanish goods, for example, spain must remove the barriers she has erected against the admission of ours. they are, therefore, the advocates of _commercial treaties_, on the basis of exact reciprocity, concession for concession; let us make the _sacrifice_ of buying, say they, to obtain the advantage of selling. people who reason in this way, i am sorry to say, are, whether they know it or not, protectionists in principle; only, they are a little more inconsistent than pure protectionists, as the latter are more inconsistent than absolute prohibitionists. the following apologue will demonstrate this:-- stulta and puera. there were, no matter where, two towns called stulta and puera. they completed at great cost a highway from the one town to the other. when this was done, stulta said to herself, "see how puera inundates us with her products; we must see to it." in consequence, they created and paid a body of _obstructives_, so called because their business was to place _obstacles_ in the way of traffic coming from puera. soon afterwards, puera did the same. at the end of some centuries, knowledge having in the interim made great progress, the common sense of puera enabled her to see that such reciprocal obstacles could only be reciprocally hurtful. she therefore sent a diplomatist to stulta, who, laying aside official phraseology, spoke to this effect: "we have made a highway, and now we throw obstacles in the way of using it. this is absurd. it would have been better to have left things as they were. we should not, in that case, have had to pay for making the road in the first place, nor afterwards have incurred the expense of maintaining _obstructives_. in the name of puera, i come to propose to you, not to give up opposing each other all at once--that would be to act upon a principle, and we despise principles as much as you do--but to lessen somewhat the present obstacles, taking care to estimate equitably the respective _sacrifices_ we make for this purpose." so spoke the diplomatist. stulta asked for time to consider the proposal, and proceeded to consult, in succession, her manufacturers and agriculturists. at length, after the lapse of some years, she declared that the negotiations were broken off. on receiving this intimation, the inhabitants of puera held a meeting. an old gentleman (they always suspected he had been secretly bought by stulta) rose and said: the obstacles created by stulta injure our sales, which is a misfortune. those which we have ourselves created injure our purchases, which is another misfortune. with reference to the first, we are powerless; but the second rests with ourselves. let us, at least, get quit of one, since we cannot rid ourselves of both evils. let us suppress our _obstructives_ without requiring stulta to do the same. some day, no doubt, she will come to know her own interests better. a second counsellor, a practical, matter-of-fact man, guiltless of any acquaintance with principles, and brought up in the ways of his forefathers, replied: "don't listen to that utopian dreamer, that theorist, that innovator, that economist, that _stultomaniac_." we shall all be undone if the stoppages of the road are not equalized, weighed, and balanced between stulta and puera. there would be greater difficulty in going than in coming, in exporting than in importing. we should find ourselves in the same condition of inferiority relatively to stulta, as havre, nantes, bordeaux, lisbon, london, hamburg, and new orleans, are with relation to the towns situated at the sources of the seine, the loire, the garonne, the tagus, the thames, the elbe, and the mississippi, for it is more difficult for a ship to ascend than to descend a river. (_a voice_: towns at the _embouchures_ of rivers prosper more than towns at their source.) this is impossible. (same voice: but it is so.) well, if it be so, they have prospered _contrary to rules_. reasoning so conclusive convinced the assembly, and the orator followed up his victory by talking largely of national independence, national honour, national dignity, national labour, inundation of products, tributes, murderous competition. in short, he carried the vote in favour of the maintenance of obstacles; and if you are at all curious on the subject, i can point out to you countries, where you will see with your own eyes road-makers and obstructives working together on the most friendly terms possible, under the orders of the same legislative assembly, and at the expense of the same taxpayers, the one set endeavouring to clear the road, and the other set doing their utmost to render it impassible. xi. nominal prices. do you desire to be in a situation to decide between liberty and protection? do you desire to appreciate the bearing of an economic phenomenon? inquire into its effects _upon the abundance or scarcity of commodities_, and not _upon the rise or fall of prices_. distrust _nominal prices_;* and they will only land you in an inextricable labyrinth. * i have translated the expression des prix absolus, nominal prices, or actual money prices, because the english economists do not, so far as i remember, make use of the term absolute price.--see post, chap. v. of second series, where the author employs the expression in this sense.-- translator. m. matthieu de dombasle, after having shown that protection raises prices, adds-- "the enhancement of price increases the expense of living, and _consequently_ the price of labour, and each man receives, in the enhanced price of his products, compensation for the higher prices he has been obliged to pay for the things he has occasion to buy. thus, if every one pays more as a consumer, every one receives more as a producer." it is evident that we could reverse this argument, and say--"if every one receives more as a producer, every one pays more as a consumer." now, what does this prove? nothing but this, that protection _displaces_ wealth uselessly and unjustly. in so far, it simply perpetrates spoliation. again, to conclude that this vast apparatus leads to simple compensations, we must stick to the "consequently" of m. de dombasle, and make sure that the price of labour will not fail to rise with the price of the protected products. this is a question of fact which i remit to m. moreau de jonnés, that he may take the trouble to find out whether the rate of wages advances along with the price of shares in the coal-mines of anzin. for my own part, i do not believe that it does; because, in my opinion, the price of labour, like the price of everything else, is governed by the relation of supply to demand. now, i am convinced that _restriction_ diminishes the supply of coal, and consequently enhances its price; but i do not see so clearly that it increases the demand for labour, so as to enhance the rate of wages; and that this effect should be produced is all the less likely, because the quantity of labour demanded depends on the disposable capital. now, protection may indeed displace capital, and cause its transference from one employment to another, but it can never increase it by a single farthing. but this question, which is one of the greatest interest and importance, will be examined in another place.* i return to the subject of _nominal price_; and i maintain that it is not one of those absurdities which can be rendered specious by such reasonings as those of m. de dombasle. put the case of a nation which is isolated, and possesses a given amount of specie, and which chooses to amuse itself by burning each year one half of all the commodities that it possesses. i undertake to prove that, according to the theory of m. de dombasle, it will not be less rich. in fact, in consequence of the fire, all things will be doubled in price, and the inventories of property, made before and after the destruction, will show exactly the same _nominal_ value. but then what will the country in question have lost? if john buys his cloth dearer, he also sells his corn at a higher price; and if peter loses on his purchase of corn, he retrieves his losses by the sale of his cloth. "each recovers, in the extra price of his products, the extra expense of living he has been put to; and if everybody pays as a consumer, everybody receives a corresponding amount as a producer." all this is a jingling quibble, and not science. the truth, in plain terms, is this: that men consume cloth and corn by fire or by using them, and that the effect is the same _as regards price_, but not _as regards wealth_, for it is precisely in the use of commodities that wealth or material prosperity consists. in the same way, restriction, while diminishing the abundance of things, may raise their price to such an extent that each party shall be, _pecuniarily speaking_, as rich as before. but to set down in an inventory three measures of corn at s., or four measures at s., because the result is still sixty shillings,--would this, i ask, come to the same thing with reference to the satisfaction of men's wants? it is to this, the consumer's point of view, that i shall never cease to recall the protectionists, for this is the end and design of all our efforts, and the solution of all problems.** * see _post_, ch. v., second series.--translator. ** to this view of the subject the author frequently reverts. it was, in his eyes, all important; and, four days before his death, he dictated this recommendation:--"tell m. de f. to treat economical questions always from the consumer's point of view, for the interest of the consumer is identical with that of the human race."--editor. i shall never cease to say to them: is it, or is it not, true that restriction, by impeding exchanges, by limiting the division of labour, by forcing labour to connect itself with difficulties of climate and situation, diminishes ultimately the quantity of commodities produced by a determinate amount of efforts? and what does this signify, it will be said, if the smaller quantity produced under the _régime_ of protection has the same _nominal value_ as that produced under the _régime_ of liberty? the answer is obvious. man does not live upon nominal values, but upon real products, and the more products there are, whatever be their price, the richer he is. in writing what precedes, i never expected to meet with an anti-economist who was enough of a logician to admit, in so many words, that the wealth of nations depends on the value of things, apart from the consideration of their abundance. but here is what i find in the work of m. de saint-chamans (p. ):-- "if fifteen millions' worth of commodities, sold to foreigners, are taken from the total production, estimated at fifty millions, the thirty-five millions' worth of commodities remaining, not being sufficient to meet the ordinary demand, will increase in price, and rise to the value of fifty millions. in that case the revenue of the country will represent a value of fifteen millions additional.... there would then be an increase of the wealth of the country to the extent of fifteen millions, exactly the amount of specie imported." this is a pleasant view of the matter! if a nation produces in one year, from its agriculture and commerce, a value of fifty millions, it has only to sell a quarter of it to the foreigner to be a quarter richer! then if it sells the half, it will be one-half richer! and if it should sell the whole, to its last tuft of wool and its last grain of wheat, it would bring up its revenue to millions. singular way of getting rich, by producing infinite dearness by absolute scarcity! again, would you judge of the two doctrines? submit them to the test of exaggeration. according to the doctrine of m. de saint-chamans, the french would be quite as rich--that is to say, quite as well supplied with all things--had they only a thousandth part of their annual products, because they would be worth a thousand times more. according to our doctrine, the french would be infinitely rich if their annual products were infinitely abundant, and, consequently, without any value at all.* * see _post_, ch. v. of second series of _sophismes_; and ch. vi. of _harmonies economiques_. xii. does protection raise the rate of wages? an atheist, declaiming one day against religion and priestcraft, became so outrageous in his abuse, that one of his audience, who was not himself very orthodox, exclaimed, "if you go on much longer in this strain, you will make me a convert." in the same way, when we see our beardless scribblers, our novel-writers, reformers, fops, amateur contributors to newspapers, redolent of musk, and saturated with champagne, stuffing their portfolios with radical prints, or issuing under gilded covers their own tirades against the egotism and individualism of the age--when we hear such people declaim against the rigour of our institutions, groan over the proletariat and the wages system, raise their eyes to heaven, and weep over the poverty of the working classes (poverty which they never see but when they are paid to paint it),--we are likewise tempted to exclaim, "if you go on longer in this strain, we shall lose all interest in the working classes." affectation is the besetting sin of our times. when a serious writer, in a spirit of philanthropy, refers to the sufferings of the working classes, his words are caught up by these sentimentalists, twisted, distorted, and exaggerated, _usque ad 'nauseam_. the grand, the only remedy, it would seem, lies in the high-sounding phrases, association and organization. the working classes are flattered--fulsomely, servilely flattered; they are represented as in the condition of slaves, and men of common sense will soon be ashamed publicly to espouse their cause, for how can common sense make itself heard in the midst of all this insipid and empty declamation? far from us be this cowardly indifference, which would not be justified even by the sentimental affectation which prompts it. workmen! your situation is peculiar! they make merchandise of you, as i shall show you immediately.... but no; i withdraw that expression. let us steer clear of strong language, which may be misapplied; for spoliation, wrapt up in the sophistry which conceals it, may be in full operation unknown to the spoliator, and with the blind assent of his victim. still, you are deprived of the just remuneration of your labour, and no one is concerned to do you _justice_. if all that was wanted to console you were ardent appeals to philanthropy, to impotent charity, to degrading almsgiving; or if the grand words, organization, communism, _phalanstère,_* were enough for you, truly they would not be spared. but _justice_, simple justice, no one thinks of offering you. and yet, would it not be _just_ that when, after a long day's toil, you have received your modest wages, you should have it in your power to exchange them for the greatest amount of satisfactions and enjoyments which you could possibly obtain for them from any one in any part of the world? * allusion to a socialist work of the day.--translator. some day i may have occasion also to talk to you of association and organization, and we shall then see what you have to expect from those chimeras which now mislead you. in the meantime, let us inquire whether _injustice_ is not done you by fixing legislatively the people from whom you are to purchase the things you have need of--bread, meat, linens, or cloth; and in dictating, if i may say so, the artificial scale of prices which you are to adopt in your dealings. is it true that protection, which admittedly makes you pay dearer for everything, and entails a loss upon you in this respect, raises proportionally your wages? on what does the rate of wages depend? one of your own class has put it forcibly, thus: when two workmen run after one master, wages fall; they rise when two masters run after one workman. for the sake of brevity, allow me to make use of this formula, more scientific, although, perhaps, not quite so clear. the rate of wages depends on the proportion which the supply of labour bears to the demand for it. now, on what does the _supply_ of labour depend? on the number of men waiting for employment; and on this first element protection can have no effect. on what does the _demand_ for labour depend? on the disposable capital of the nation. but does the law which says, we shall no longer receive such or such a product from abroad, we shall make it at home, augment the capital? not in the least degree. it may force capital from one employment to another, but it does not increase it by a single farthing. it does not then increase the demand for labour. we point with pride to a certain manufacture. is it established or maintained with capital which has fallen from the moon? no; that capital has been withdrawn from agriculture, from shipping, from the production of wines. and this is the reason why, under the _régime_ of protective tariffs, there are more workmen in our mines and in our manufacturing towns, and fewer sailors in our ports, and fewer labourers in our fields and vineyards. i could expatiate at length on this subject, but i prefer to explain what i mean by an example. a countryman was possessed of twenty acres of land, which he worked with a capital of £ . he divided his land into four parts, and established the following rotation of crops:-- st, maize; d, wheat; d, clover; th, rye. he required for his own family only a moderate portion of the grain, meat, and milk which his farm produced, and he sold the surplus to buy oil, flax, wine, etc. his whole capital was expended each year in wages, hires, and small payments to the working classes in his neighbourhood. this capital was returned to him in his sales, and even went on increasing year by year; and our countryman, knowing very well that capital produces nothing when it is unemployed, benefited the working classes by devoting the annual surplus to enclosing and clearing his land, and to improving his agricultural implements and farm buildings. he had even some savings in the neighbouring town with his banker, who, of course, did not let the money lie idle in his till, but lent it to shipowners and contractors for public works, so that these savings were always resolving themselves into wages. at length the countryman died, and his son, who succeeded him, said to himself, "my father was a dupe all his life. he purchased oil, and so paid _tribute_ to provence, whilst our own land, with some pains, can be made to grow the olive. he bought cloth, wine, and oranges, and thus paid tribute to brittany, medoc, and hyères, whilst we can cultivate hemp, the vine, and the orange tree with more or less success. he paid _tribute_ to the miller and the weaver, whilst our own domestics can weave our linen and grind our wheat." in this way he ruined himself, and spent among strangers that money which he might have spent at home. misled by such reasoning, the volatile youth changed his rotation of crops. his land he divided into twenty divisions. in one he planted olives, in another mulberry trees, in a third he sowed flax, in a fourth he had vines, in a fifth wheat, and so on. by this means he succeeded in supplying his family with what they required, and felt himself independent. he no longer drew anything from the general circulation, nor did he add anything to it. was he the richer for this? no; for the soil was not adapted for the cultivation of the vine, and the climate was not fitted for the successful cultivation of the olive; and he was not long in finding out that his family was less plentifully provided with all the things which they wanted than in the time of his father, who procured them by exchanging his surplus produce. as regarded his workmen, they had no more employment than formerly. there were five times more fields, but each field was five times smaller; they produced oil, but they produced less wheat; he no longer purchased linens, but he no longer sold rye. moreover, the farmer could expend in wages only the amount of his capital, and his capital went on constantly diminishing. a great part of it went for buildings, and the various implements needed for the more varied cultivation in which he had engaged. in short, the supply of labour remained the same, but as the means of remunerating that labour fell off, the ultimate result was a forcible reduction of wages. on a greater scale, this is exactly what takes place in the case of a nation which isolates itself by adopting a prohibitive _régime_. it multiplies its branches of industry, i grant, but they become of diminished importance; it adopts, so to speak, a more complicated _industrial rotation_, but it is not so prolific, because its capital and labour have now to struggle with natural difficulties. a greater proportion of its circulating capital, which forms the wages fund, must be converted into fixed capital. what remains may have more varied employment, but the total mass is not increased. it is like distributing the water of a pond among a multitude of shallow reservoirs--it covers more ground, and presents a greater surface to the rays of the sun, and it is precisely for this reason that it is all the sooner absorbed, evaporated, and lost. the amount of capital and labour being given, they create a smaller amount of commodities in proportion as they encounter more obstacles. it is beyond doubt, that when international obstructions force capital and labour into channels and localities where they meet with greater difficulties of soil and climate, the general result must be, fewer products created--that is to say, fewer enjoyments for consumers. now, when there are fewer enjoyments upon the whole, will the workman's share of them be augmented? if it were augmented, as is asserted, then the rich--the men who make the laws--would find their own share not only subject to the general diminution, but that diminished share would be still further reduced by what was added to the labourers' share. is this possible? is it credible? i advise you, workmen, to reject such suspicious generosity.* * see _harmonies Économiques_, ch. xiv. xiii. theory, practice. as advocates of free trade, we are accused of being theorists, and of not taking practice sufficiently into account. "what fearful prejudices were entertained against m. say," says m. ferrier,* "by that long train of distinguished administrators, and that imposing phalanx of authors who dissented from his opinions; and m. say was not unaware of it. hear what he says:--'it has been alleged in support of errors of long standing, that there must have been some foundation for ideas which have been adopted by all nations. ought we not to distrust observations and reasonings which run counter to opinions which have been constantly entertained down to our own time, and which have been regarded as sound by so many men remarkable for their enlightenment and their good intentions? this argument, i allow, is calculated to make a profound impression, and it might have cast doubt upon points which we deem the most incontestable, if we had not seen, by turns, opinions the most false, and now generally acknowledged to be false, received and professed by everybody during a long series of ages. not very long ago all nations, from the rudest to the most enlightened, and all men, from the street-porter to the _savant_, admitted the existence of four elements. no one thought of contesting that doctrine, which, however, is false; so much so, that even the greenest assistant in a naturalist's class-room would be ashamed to say that he regarded earth, water, and fire as elements.'" * de l'administration commerciale opposée à oeconomie politique, p. . on this m. ferrier remarks:-- "if m. say thinks to answer thus the very strong objection which he brings forward, he is singularly mistaken. that men, otherwise well informed, should have been mistaken for centuries on certain points of natural history is easily understood, and proves nothing. water, air, earth, and fire, whether elements or not, are not the less useful to man.... such errors are unimportant: they lead to no popular commotions, no uneasiness in the public mind; they run counter to no pecuniary interest; and this is the reason why without any felt inconvenience they may endure for a thousand years. the physical world goes on as if they did not exist. but of errors in the moral world, can the same thing be said? can we conceive that a system of administration, found to be absolutely false and therefore hurtful, should be followed out among many nations for centuries, with the general approval of all well-informed men? can it be explained how such a system could coexist with the constantly increasing prosperity of nations? m. say admits that the argument which he combats is fitted to make a profound impression. yes, indeed; and the impression remains; for m. say has rather deepened than done away with it." * might we not say, that it is a "fearful prejudice" against mm. ferrier and saint-chamans, that "_economists of all schools_, that is to say, everybody who has studied the question, should have arrived at the conclusion, that, after all, liberty is better than constraint, and the laws of god wiser than those of colbert." let us hear what m. de saint-chamans says on the same subject:-- "it was only in the middle of the last century, of that eighteenth century which handed over all subjects and all principles without exception to free discussion, that these _spéculative_ purveyors of ideas, applied by them to all things without being really applicable to anything, began to write upon political economy. there existed previously a system of political economy, not to be found in books, but which had been put in _practical_ operation by governments. colbert, it is said, was the inventor of it, and it was adopted as a rule by all the nations of europe. the singular thing is, that in spite of contempt and maledictions, in spite of all the discoveries of the modern school, it still remains in practical operation. this system, which our authors have called the _mercantile system_, was designed to.... impede, by prohibitions or import duties, the entry of foreign products, which might ruin our own manufactures by their competition. economic writers of all schools* have declared this system untenable, absurd, and calculated to impoverish any country. it has been banished from all their books, and forced to take refuge in the _practical_ legislation of all nations. they cannot conceive why, in measures relating to national wealth, governments should not follow the advice and opinions of learned authors, rather than trust to their _experience_ of the tried working of a system which has been long in operation. above all, they cannot conceive why the french government should in economic questions obstinately set itself to resist the progress of enlightenment, and maintain in its _practice_ those ancient errors, which all our economic writers have exposed. but enough of this mercantile system, which has nothing in its favour but _facts_, and is not defended by any speculative writer."* * du système de l'impot, par m. le vicomte de saint-chamans, p. . such language as this would lead one to suppose that in demanding for every one _the free disposal of his property_, economists were propounding some new system, some new, strange, and chimerical social order, a sort of _phalanstère_, coined in the mint of their own brain, and without precedent in the annals of the human race. to me it would seem that if we have here anything factitious or contingent, it is to be found, not in liberty, but in protection; not in the free power of exchanging, but in customs duties employed to overturn artificially the natural course of remuneration. but our business at present is not to compare, or pronounce between, the two systems; but to inquire which of the two is founded on experience. the advocates of monopoly maintain that _the facts_ are on their side, and that we have on our side only _theory_. they flatter themselves that this long series of public acts, this _old experience_ of europe, which they invoke, has presented itself as something very formidable to the mind of m. say; and i grant that he has not refuted it with his wonted sagacity. for my own part, i am not disposed to concede to the monopolists the domain of _facts_, for they have only in their favour facts which are forced and exceptional; and we oppose to these, facts which are universal, the free and voluntary acts of mankind at large. what do we say; and what do they say? we say, "you should buy from others what you cannot make for yourself but at a greater expense." and they say, "it is better to make things for yourself, although they cost you more than, the price at which you could buy them from others." now, gentlemen, throwing aside theory, argument, demonstration, all which seems to affect you with nausea, which of these two assertions has on its side the sanction of _universal practice?_ visit your fields, your workshops, your forges, your warehouses; look above, below, and around you; look at what takes place in your own houses; remark your own everyday acts; and say what is the principle which guides these labourers, artisans, and merchants; say what is your own personal _practice_. does the farmer make his own clothes? does the tailor produce the corn he consumes? does your housekeeper continue to have your bread made at home, after she finds she can buy it cheaper from the baker? do you resign the pen for the brush, to save your paying _tribute_ to the shoeblack? does the entire economy of society not rest upon the separation of employments, the division of labour--in a word, upon _exchange?_ and what is exchange, but a calculation which we make with a view to discontinuing direct production in every case in which we find that possible, and in which indirect acquisition enables us to effect a saving in time and in effort? it is not you, therefore, who are the men of _practice_, since you cannot point to a single human being who acts upon your principle. but you will say, we never intended to make our principle a rule for individual relations. we perfectly understand that this would be to break up the bond of society, and would force men to live like snails, each in his own shell. all that we contend for is, that our principle regulates _de facto_, the regulations which obtain between the different agglomerations of the human family. well, i affirm that this principle is still erroneous. the family, the commune, the canton, the department, the province, are so many agglomerations, which all, without any exception, reject _practically_ your principle, and have never dreamt of acting on it. all procure themselves, by means of exchange, those things which it would cost them dearer to procure by means of production. and nations would do the same, did you not hinder them _by force_. we, then, are the men of practice and of experience; for we oppose to the restriction which you have placed exceptionally on certain international exchanges, the practice and experience of all individuals, and of all agglomerations of individuals, whose acts are voluntary, and can consequently be adduced as evidence. but you begin by _constraining, by hindering_, and then you lay hold of acts which are _forced or prohibited_, as warranting you to exclaim, "we have practice and experience on our side!" you inveigh against our theory, and even against theories in general. but when you lay down a principle in opposition to ours, you perhaps imagine you are not proceeding on theory? clear your heads of that idea. you in fact form a theory, as we do; but between your theory and ours there is this difference: our theory consists merely in observing universal _facts_, universal opinions; calculations and ways of proceeding which universally prevail; and in classifying these, and rendering them co-ordinate, with a view to their being more easily understood. our theory is so little opposed to practice that it is nothing else but _practice explained_. we observe men acting as they are moved by the instinct of self-preservation and a desire for progress, and what they thus do freely and voluntarily we denominate political or social economy. we can never help repeating, that each individual man is _practically_ an excellent economist, producing or exchanging according as he finds it more to his interest to produce or to exchange. each, by experience, educates himself in this science; or rather the science itself is only this same experience accurately observed and methodically explained. but on your side, you construct a _theory_ in the worst sense of the word. you imagine, you invent, a course of proceeding which is not sanctioned by the practice of any living man under the canopy of heaven; and then you invoke the aid of constraint and prohibition. it is quite necessary that you should have recourse to _force_, for you desire that men should be made to produce those things which they find it _more advantageous_ to buy; you desire that they should renounce this _advantage_, and act upon a doctrine which implies a contradiction in terms. the doctrine which you acknowledge would be absurd in the relations of individuals; i defy you to extend it, even in speculation, to transaction between families, communities, or provinces. by your own admission, it is only applicable to international relations. this is the reason why you are forced to keep repeating: "there are no absolute principles, no inflexible rules. what is _good_ for an individual, a family, a province, is _bad_ for a nation. what is _good_ in detail--namely, to purchase rather than produce, when purchasing is more advantageous than producing--that same is _bad_ in the gross. the political economy of individuals is not that of nations;" and other nonsense _ejusdèm farino_. and to what does all this tend? look at it a little closer. the intention is to prove that we, the consumers, are your property! that we are yours body and soul! that you have an exclusive right over our stomachs and our limbs! that it belongs to you to feed and clothe us on your own terms, whatever be your ignorance, incapacity, or rapacity! no, you are not men of practice; you are men of abstraction--and of extortion. xiv. conflict of principles. there is one thing which confounds me; and it is this: sincere publicists, studying the economy of society from the producer's point of view, have laid down this double formula:-- "governments should order the interests of consumers who are subject to their laws, in such a way as to be favourable to national industry. "they should bring distant consumers under subjection to their laws, for the purpose of ordering their interests in a way favourable to national industry." the first of these formulas gets the name of protection; the second we call _débouchés_, or the creating of markets, or vents, for our produce. both are founded on the _datum_ which we denominate the _balance of trade_. "a nation is impoverished when it imports; enriched when it exports." for if every purchase from a foreign country is a _tribute paid_ and a national loss, it follows, of course, that it is right to restrain, and even prohibit, importations. and if every sale to a foreign country is a _tribute received_, and a national profit, it is quite right and natural to create markets for our products even by force. the _system of protection_ and the _colonial system_ are, then, only two aspects of one and the same theory. to _hinder_ our fellow-citizens from buying from foreigners, and to _force_ foreigners to buy from our fellow-citizens, are only two consequences of one and the same principle. now, it is impossible not to admit that this doctrine, if true, makes general utility to repose on _monopoly_ or internal spoliation, and on _conquest_ or external spoliation. i enter a cottage on the french side of the pyrenees. the father of the family has received but slender wages. his half-naked children shiver in the icy north wind; the fire is extinguished, and there is nothing on the table. there are wool, firewood, and corn on the other side of the mountain; but these good things are forbidden to the poor day-labourer, for the other side of the mountain is not in france. foreign firewood is not allowed to warm the cottage hearth; and the shepherd's children can never know the taste of biscayan corn,* and the wool of navarre can never warm their benumbed limbs. general utility has so ordered it. be it so; but let us agree that all this is in direct opposition to the first principles of justice. to dispose legislatively of the interests of consumers, and postpone them to the supposed interests of national industry, is to encroach upon their liberty--it is to prohibit an act; namely, the act of exchange, which has in it nothing contrary to good morals; in a word, it is to do them an act of _injustice_. * the french word employed is _méture_, probably a spanish word gallicized--_mestûra_, meslin, mixed corn, as wheat and rye.---translator. and yet this is necessary, we are told, unless we wish to see national labour at a standstill, and public prosperity sustain a fatal shock. writers of the protectionist school, then, have arrived at the melancholy conclusion that there is a radical incompatibility between justice and utility. on the other hand, if it be the interest of each nation to _sell_, and not to _buy_, the natural state of their relations must consist in a violent action and reaction, for each will seek to impose its products on all, and all will endeavour to repel the products of each. a sale, in fact, implies a purchase, and since, according to this doctrine, to sell is beneficial, and to buy is the reverse, every international transaction would imply the amelioration of one people, and the deterioration of another. but if men are, on the one hand, irresistibly impelled towards what is for their profit, and if, on the other, they resist instinctively what is hurtful, we are forced to conclude that each nation carries in its bosom a natural force of expansion, and a not less natural force of resistance, which forces are equally injurious to all other nations; or, in other words, that antagonism and war are the _natural_ state of human society. thus the theory we are discussing may be summed up in these two axioms: utility is incompatible with justice at home. utility is incompatible with peace abroad. now, what astonishes and confounds me is, that a publicist, a statesman, who sincerely holds an economical doctrine which runs so violently counter to other principles which are incontestable, should be able to enjoy one moment of calm or peace of mind. for my own part, it seems to me, that if i had entered the precincts of the science by the same gate, if i had failed to perceive clearly that liberty, utility, justice, peace, are things not only compatible, but strictly allied with each other, and, so to speak, identical, i should have endeavoured to forget what i had learned, and i should have asked: "how god could have willed that men should attain prosperity only through injustice and war? how he could have willed that they should be unable to avoid injustice and war except by renouncing the possibility of attaining prosperity? "dare i adopt, as the basis of the legislation of a great nation, a science which thus misleads me by false lights, which has conducted me to this horrible blasphemy, and landed me in so dreadful an alternative? and when a long train of illustrious philosophers have been conducted by this science, to which they have devoted their lives, to more consoling results--when they affirm that liberty and utility are perfectly reconcilable with justice and peace--that all these great principles run in infinitely extended parallels, and will do so to all eternity, without running counter to each other,--i would ask, have they not in their favour that presumption which results from all that we know of the goodness and wisdom of god, as manifested in the sublime harmony of the material creation? in the face of such a presumption, and of so many reliable authorities, ought i to believe lightly that god has been pleased to implant antagonism and dissonance in the laws of the moral world? no; before i should venture to conclude that the principles of social order run counter to and neutralize each other, and are in eternal and irreconcilable opposition--before i should venture to impose on my fellow-citizens a system so impious as that to which my reasonings would appear to lead,--i should set myself to reexamine the whole chain of these reasonings, and assure myself that at this stage of the journey i had not missed my way." but if, after a candid and searching examination, twenty times repeated, i arrived always at this frightful conclusion, that we must choose between the bight and the good, discouraged, i should reject the science, and bury myself in voluntary ignorance; above all, i should decline all participation in public affairs, leaving to men of another temper and constitution the burden and responsibility of a choice so painful. xv. reciprocity again. m. de saint-cricq inquires, "whether it is certain that the foreigner will buy from us as much as he sells?" m. de dombasle asks, "what reason we have to believe that english producers will take from us, rather than from some other country of the world, the commodities they have need of, and an amount of commodities equivalent in value to that of their exports to france?" i wonder how so many men who call themselves _practical_ men should have all reasoned without reference to practice! in practice, does a single exchange take place, out of a hundred, out of a thousand, out of ten thousand perhaps, which represents the direct barter of commodity for commodity? never since the introduction of money has any agriculturist said: i want to buy shoes, hats, advice, lessons; but only from the shoemaker, the hat-maker, the lawyer, the professor, who will purchase from me corn to an exactly equivalent value. and why should nations bring each other under a yoke of this kind? practically how are such matters transacted? let us suppose a people shut out from external relations. a man, we shall suppose, produces wheat. he sends it to the _home_ market, and offers it for the highest price he can obtain. he receives in exchange--what? coins, which are just so many drafts or orders, varying very much in amount, by means of which he can draw, in his turn, from the national stores, when he judges it proper, and subject to due competition, everything which he may want or desire. ultimately, and at the end of the operation, he will have drawn from the mass the exact equivalent of what he has contributed to it, and, in value, _his consumption will exactly equal his production_. if the exchanges of the supposed nation with foreigners are left free, it is no longer to the _national_, but to the _general_, market that each sends his contributions, and, in turn, derives his supplies for consumption. he has no need to care whether what he sends into the market of the world is purchased by a fellow-countryman or by a foreigner; whether the drafts or orders he receives come from a frenchman or an englishman; whether the commodities for which he afterwards exchanges these drafts or orders are produced on this or on the other side of the rhine or the pyrenees. there is always in each individual case an exact balance between what is contributed and what is received, between what is poured into and what is drawn out of the great common reservoir; and if this is true of each individual, it is true of the nation at large. the only difference between the two cases is, that in the last each has to face a more extended market both as regards sales and purchases, and has consequently more chances of transacting both advantageously. this objection may perhaps be urged: if everybody enters into a league not to take from the general mass the commodities of a certain individual, that individual cannot, in his turn, obtain from the mass what he is in want of. it is the same of nations. the reply to this is, that if a nation cannot obtain what it has need of in the general market, it will no longer contribute anything to that market. it will work for itself. it will be forced in that case to submit to what you want to impose on it beforehand--_isolation_. and this will realize the ideal of the prohibitive _régime_. is it not amusing to think that you inflict upon the nation, now and beforehand, this very _régime_, from a fear that it might otherwise run the risk of arriving at it independently of your exertions? xvi. obstructed navigation pleading for the prohibitionists. some years ago i happened to be at madrid, and went to the cortes. the subject of debate was a proposed treaty with portugal for improving the navigation of the douro. one of the deputies rose and said: "if the navigation of the douro is improved in the way now proposed, the traffic will be carried on at less expense. the grain of portugal will, in consequence, be sold in the markets of castile at a lower price, and will become a formidable rival to our _national industry_. i oppose the project, unless, indeed, our ministers will undertake to raise the tariff of customs to the extent required to re-establish the equilibrium." the assembly found the argument unanswerable. three months afterwards i was at lisbon. the same question was discussed in the senate. a noble hidalgo made a speech: "mr president," he said, "this project is absurd. you place guards, at great expense, along the banks of the douro to prevent portugal being invaded by castilian grain; and at the same time you propose, also at great expense, to facilitate that invasion. this is a piece of inconsistency to which i cannot assent. let us leave the douro to our children, as it has come to us from our fathers." afterwards, when the subject of improving the navigation of the garonne was discussed, i remembered the arguments of the iberian orators, and i said to myself, if the toulouse deputies were as good economists as the spanish deputies, and the representatives of bordeaux as acute logicians as those of oporto, assuredly they would leave the garonne "dormir au bruit flatteur de son onde naissante;" for the canalisation of the garonne would favour the invasion of toulouse products, to the prejudice of bordeaux, and the inundation of bordeaux products would do the same thing to the detriment of toulouse. xvii. a negative railway. i have said that when, unfortunately, one has regard to the interest of the producer, and not to that of the consumer, it is impossible to avoid running counter to the general interest, because the demand of the producer, as such, is only for efforts, wants, and obstacles. i find a remarkable illustration of this in a bordeaux newspaper. m. simiot proposes this question:-- should the proposed railway from paris to madrid offer a solution of continuity at bordeaux? he answers the question in the affirmative, and gives a multiplicity of reasons, which i shall not stop to examine, except this one: the railway from paris to bayonne should have a break at bordeaux, for if goods and passengers are forced to stop at that town, profits will accrue to bargemen, pedlars, commissionaires, hotel-keepers, etc. here we have clearly the interest of labour put before the interest of consumers. but if bordeaux has a right to profit by a gap in the line of railway, and if such profit is consistent with the public interest, then angoulème, poitiers, tours, orleans, nay, more, all the intermediate places, ruffec, châtellerault, etc., should also demand gaps, as being for the general interest, and, of course, for the interest of national industry; for the more these breaks in the line are multiplied, the greater will be the increase of consignments, commissions, transhipments, etc., along the whole extent of the railway. in this way, we shall succeed in having a line of railway composed of successive gaps, and which may be denominated a _negative railway_. let the protectionists say what they will, it is not the less certain that _the principle of restriction_ is the very same as the _principle of gaps_; the sacrifice of the consumer's interest to that of the producer,--in other words, the sacrifice of the end to the means. xviii. there are no absolute principles. we cannot wonder enough at the facility with which men resign themselves to continue ignorant of what it is most important that they should know; and we may be certain that such ignorance is incorrigible in those who venture to proclaim this axiom: there are no absolute principles. you enter the legislative precincts. the subject of debate is whether the law should prohibit international exchanges, or proclaim freedom. a deputy rises, and says: if you tolerate these exchanges, the foreigner will inundate you with his products: england with her textile fabrics, belgium with coals, spain with wools, italy with silks, switzerland with cattle, sweden with iron, prussia with corn; so that home industry will no longer be possible. another replies: if you prohibit international exchanges, the various bounties which nature has lavished on different climates will be for you as if they did not exist. you cannot participate in the mechanical skill of the english, in the wealth of the belgian mines, in the fertility of the polish soil, in the luxuriance of the swiss pastures, in the cheapness of spanish labour, in the warmth of the italian climate; and you must obtain from a refractory and misdirected production those commodities which, through exchange, would have been furnished to you by an easy production. assuredly, one of these deputies must be wrong. but which? we must take care to make no mistake on the subject; for this is not a matter of abstract opinion merely. you have to choose between two roads, and one of them leads necessarily to _poverty_. to get rid of the dilemma, we are told that there are no absolute principles. this axiom, which is so much in fashion nowadays, not only countenances indolence, but ministers to ambition. if the theory of prohibition comes to prevail, or if the doctrine of free trade comes to triumph, one brief enactment will constitute our whole economic code. in the first case, the law will proclaim that _all exchanges with foreign countries are prohibited_; in the second, that _all exchanges with foreign countries are free_; and many grand and distinguished personages will thereby lose their importance. but if exchange does not possess a character which is peculiar to it,--if it is not governed by any natural law,--if, capriciously, it be sometimes useful and sometimes detrimental,--if it does not find its motive force in the good which it accomplishes, its limit in the good which it ceases to accomplish,--if its consequences cannot be estimated by those who effect exchanges;--in a word, if there be no absolute principles, then we must proceed to weigh, balance, and regulate transactions, we must equalize the conditions of labour, and try to find out the average rate of profits--a colossal task, well deserving the large emoluments and powerful influence awarded to those who undertake it. on entering paris, which i had come to visit, i said to myself, here are a million of human beings, who would all die in a short time if provisions of every kind ceased to flow towards this great metropolis. imagination is baffled when it tries to appreciate the vast multiplicity of commodities which must enter to-morrow through the barriers in order to preserve the inhabitants from falling a prey to the convulsions of famine, rebellion, and pillage. and yet all sleep at this moment, and their peaceful slumbers are not disturbed for a single instant by the prospect of such a frightful catastrophe. on the other hand, eighty departments have been labouring to-day, without concert, without any mutual understanding, for the provisioning of paris. how does each succeeding day bring what is wanted, nothing more, nothing less, to so gigantic a market? what, then, is the ingenious and secret power which governs the astonishing regularity of movements so complicated, a regularity in which everybody has implicit faith, although happiness and life itself are at stake? that power is an _absolute principle_, the principle of freedom in transactions. we have faith in that inward light which providence has placed in the heart of all men, and to which he has confided the preservation and indefinite amelioration of our species, namely, a regard to personal _interest_--since we must give it its right name--a principle so active, so vigilant, so foreseeing, when it is free in its action. in what situation, i would ask, would the inhabitants of paris be, if a minister should take it into his head to substitute for this power the combinations of his own genius, however superior we might suppose them to be--if he thought to subject to his supreme direction this prodigious mechanism, to hold the springs of it in his hands, to decide by whom, or in what manner, or on what conditions, everything needed should be produced, transported, exchanged, and consumed? truly, there may be much suffering within the walls of paris--poverty, despair, perhaps starvation, causing more tears to flow than ardent charity is able to dry up; but i affirm that it is probable, nay, that it is certain, that the arbitrary intervention of government would multiply infinitely those sufferings, and spread over all our fellow-citizens those evils which at present affect only a small number of them. this faith, then, which we repose in a principle, when the question relates only to our home transactions, why should we not retain, when the same principle is applied to our international transactions, which are undoubtedly less numerous, less delicate, and less complicated? and if it is not necessary that the _préfecture_ should regulate our parisian industries, weigh our chances, balance our profits and losses, see that our circulating medium is not exhausted, and equalize the conditions of our home labour, why should it be necessary that the customhouse, departing from its fiscal duties, should pretend to exercise a protective action over our external commerce? xix. national independence. among the arguments which we hear adduced in favour of the restrictive _régime_, we must not forget that which is founded on _national independence_. "what should we do in case of war," it is said, "if we are placed at the mercy of england for iron and coal?" english monopolists do not fail to cry out in their turn: "what would become of great britain, in case of war, if she is dependent on france for provisions?" one thing is overlooked, which is this--that the kind of dependence which results from exchange, from commercial transactions, is a _reciprocal dependence_. we cannot be dependent on the foreigner without the foreigner being dependent on us. now, this is the very essence of society. to break up natural relations is not to place ourselves in a state of independence, but in a state of isolation. remark this: a nation isolates itself looking forward to the possibility of war; but is not this very act of isolating itself the beginning of war? it renders war more easy, less burdensome, and, it may be, less unpopular. let countries be permanent markets for each other's produce; let their reciprocal relations be such that they cannot be broken without inflicting on each other the double suffering of privation and a glut of commodities; and they will no longer stand in need of naval armaments, which ruin them, and overgrown armies, which crush them; the peace of the world will not then be compromised by the caprice of a thiers or of a palmerston; and war will disappear for want of what supports it, for want of resources, inducements, pretexts, and popular sympathy. i am quite aware that i shall be reproached (it is the fashion of the day) with basing the fraternity of nations on men's personal interest--vile, prosaic self-interest. better far, it may be thought, that it should have had its basis in charity, in love, even in a little self-abnegation, and that, interfering somewhat with men's material comforts, it should have had the merit of a generous sacrifice. when shall we be done with these puerile declamations? when will _tartuferie_ be finally banished from science? when shall we cease to exhibit this nauseous contradiction between our professions and our practice? we hoot at and execrate personal _interest_; in other words, we denounce what is useful and good (for to say that all men are interested in anything is to say that the thing is good in itself), as if personal interest were not the necessary, eternal, and indestructible mainspring to which providence has confided human perfectibility. are we not represented as being all angels of disinterestedness? and does the thought never occur to those who say so, that the public begins to see with disgust that this affected language disfigures the pages of those very writers who axe most successful in filling their own pockets at the public expense? oh! affectation! affectation! thou art verily the besetting sin of our times! what! because material prosperity and peace are things correlative, because it has pleased god to establish this beautiful harmony in the moral world, am i not to admire, am i not to adore his ordinances, am i not to accept with gratitude laws which make justice the condition of happiness? you desire peace only in as far as it runs counter to material prosperity; and liberty is rejected because it does not impose sacrifices. if abnegation has indeed so many charms for you, why do you fail to practise it in private life? society will be grateful to you, for some one, at least, will reap the fruit; but to desire to impose it upon mankind as a principle is the very height of absurdity, for the abnegation of all is the sacrifice of all, which is evil erected into a theory. but, thank heaven, one can write or read many of these declamations without the world ceasing on that account to obey the social motive force, which leads us to shun evil and seek after good, and which, whether they like it or not, we must denominate personal interest. after all, it is singular enough to see sentiments of the most sublime self-denial invoked in support of spoliation itself. see to what this boasted disinterestedness tends! these men who are so fantastically delicate as not to desire peace itself, if it is founded on the vile interest of mankind, put their hand into the pockets of others, and especially of the poor; for what article of the tariff protects the poor? be pleased, gentlemen, to dispose of what belongs to yourselves as you think proper, but leave us the disposal of the fruit of our own toil, to use it or exchange it as we see best. declaim on self-sacrifice as much as you choose, it is all very fine and very beautiful, but be at least consistent. xx. human labour, national labour. machine-breaking--prohibition of foreign commodities--are two acts founded on the same doctrine. we see men who clap their hands when a great invention is introduced, and who nevertheless adhere to the protectionist _régime_. such men are grossly inconsistent! with what do they reproach free trade? with encouraging the production by foreigners, more skilled or more favourably situated than we are, of commodities which, but for free trade, would be produced at home. in a word, they accuse free trade of being injurious to _national labour?_ for the same reason, should they not reproach machinery with accomplishing by natural agents what otherwise would have been done by manual labour, and so of being injurious to _human labour?_ the foreign workman, better and more favourably situated than the home workman for the production of certain commodities, is, with reference to the latter, a veritable _economic machine,_ crushing him by competition. in like manner, machinery, which executes a piece of work at a lower price than a certain number of men could do by manual labour, is, in relation to these manual labourers, a veritable _foreign competitor_, who paralyzes them by his rivalry. if, then, it is politic to protect _national labour_ against the competition of _foreign labour_, it is not less so to protect _human labour_ against the rivalry of _mechanical labour_. thus, every adherent of the _régime_ of protection, if he is logical, should not content himself with prohibiting foreign products; he should proscribe also the products of the shuttle and the plough. and this is the reason why i like better the logic of those men who, declaiming against the invasion of foreign merchandise, declaim likewise against the excess of production which is due to the inventive power of the human mind. such a man is m. de saint-chamans. "one of the strongest arguments against free trade," he says, "is the too extensive employment of machinery, for many workmen are deprived of employment, either by foreign competition, which lowers the price of our manufactured goods, or by instruments which take the place of men in our workshops."* * du système d'impôts, p. . m. de saint-chamans has seen clearly the analogy, or, we should rather say, the identity, which obtains between imports and machinery. for this reason, he proscribes both; and it is really agreeable to have to do with such intrepid reasoners, who, even when wrong, carry out their argument to its logical conclusion. but here is the mess in which they land themselves. if it be true, a priori, that the domain of invention and that of labour cannot be simultaneously extended but at each other's expense, it must be in those countries where machinery most abounds--in lancashire, for example--that we should expect to find the fewest workmen. and if, on the other hand, we establish the fact that mechanical power and manual labour coexist, and to a greater extent, among rich nations than among savages, the conclusion is inevitable, that these two powers do not exclude each other. i cannot convince myself how any thinking being can enjoy a moment's repose in presence of the following dilemma: either the inventions of man are not injurious to manual labour, as general facts attest, since there are more of both in england and france than among the hurons and cherokees, and that being so, i am on a wrong road, though i know neither where nor when i missed my way; at all events, i see i am wrong, and i should commit the crime of lese-humanity were i to introduce my error into the legislation of my country. or else, the discoveries of the human mind limit the amount of manual labour, as special facts appear to indicate; for i see every day some machine or other superseding twenty or a hundred workmen; and then i am forced to acknowledge a flagrant, eternal, and incurable antithesis between the intellectual and physical powers of man--between his progress and his present wellbeing; and in these circumstances i am forced to say that the creator of man might have endowed him with reason, or with physical strength, with moral force, or with brute force; but that he mocked him by conferring on him, at the same time, faculties which are destructive of each other. the difficulty is pressing and puzzling; but you contrive to find your way out of it by adopting the strange apophthegm: _in political economy, there are no absolute principles_. in plain language, this means: "i know not whether it be true or false; i am ignorant of what constitutes general good or evil. i give myself no trouble about that. the immediate effect of each measure upon my own personal interest is the only law which i can consent to recognise." there are no principles! you might as well say there are no facts; for principles are merely formulas which classify such facts as are well established. machinery, and the importation of foreign commodities, certainly produce effects. these effects may be good or bad; on that there may be difference of opinion. but whatever view we take of them, it is reduced to a formula, by one of these two principles: machinery is a good; or, machinery is an evil: importations of foreign produce are beneficial; or, such importations are hurtful. but to assert that there are no principles, certainly exhibits the lowest degree of abasement to which the human mind can descend; and i confess that i blush for my country when i hear such a monstrous heresy proclaimed in the french chambers, and with their assent; that is to say, in the face and with the assent of the _élite_ of our fellow-citizens; and this in order to justify their imposing laws upon us in total ignorance of the real state of the case. but then i am told to destroy the sophism, by proving that machinery is not hurtful to human labour, nor the importation of foreign products to national labour. a work like the present cannot well include very full or complete demonstrations. my design is rather to state difficulties than to resolve them; to excite reflection rather than to satisfy doubts. no conviction makes so lasting an impression on the mind as that which it works out for itself. but i shall endeavour nevertheless to put the reader on the right road. what misleads the adversaries of machinery and foreign importations is, that they judge of them by their immediate and transitory effects, instead of following them out to their general and definitive consequences. the immediate effect of the invention and employment of an ingenious machine is to render superfluous, for the attainment of a given result, a certain amount of manual labour. but its action does not stop there. for the very reason that the desired result is obtained with fewer efforts, the product is handed over to the public at a lower price; and the aggregate of savings thus realized by all purchasers, enables them to procure other satisfactions; that is to say, to encourage manual labour in general to exactly the extent of the manual labour which has been saved in the special branch of industry which has been recently improved. so that the level of labour has not fallen, while that of enjoyments has risen. let us render this evident by an example. suppose there are used annually in this country ten millions of hats at shillings; this makes the sum which goes to the support of this branch of industry £ , , sterling. a machine is invented which allows these hats to be manufactured and sold at shillings. the sum now wanted for the support of this industry is reduced to £ , , , provided the demand is not augmented by the change. but the remaining sum of £ , , is not by this change withdrawn from the support of _human labour_. that sum, economized by the purchasers of hats, will enable them to satisfy other wants, and, consequently, to that extent will go to remunerate the aggregate industry of the country. with the five shillings saved, john will purchase a pair of shoes, james a book, jerome a piece of furniture, etc. human labour, taken in the aggregate, will continue, then, to be supported and encouraged to the extent of £ , , ; but this sum will yield the same number of hats, plus all the satisfactions and enjoyments corresponding to £ , , that the employment of the machine has enabled the consumers of hats to save. these additional enjoyments constitute the clear profit which the country will have derived from the invention. this is a free gift, a tribute which human genius will have derived from nature. we do not at all dispute, that in the course of the transformation a certain amount of labour will have been _displaced_; but we cannot allow that it has been destroyed or diminished. the same thing holds of the importation of foreign commodities. let us revert to our former hypothesis. the country manufactures ten millions of hats, of which the cost price was shillings. the foreigner sends similar hats to our market, and furnishes them at shillings each. i maintain that the _national labour_ will not be thereby diminished. for it must produce to the extent of £ , , , to enable it to pay for millions of hats at shillings. and then there remains to each purchaser five shillings saved on each hat, or in all, £ , , , which will be spent on other enjoyments--that is to say, which will go to support labour in other departments of industry. then the aggregate labour of the country will remain what it was, and the additional enjoyments represented by £ , , saved upon hats, will form the clear profit accruing from imports under the system of free trade. it is of no use to try to frighten us by a picture of the sufferings which, on this hypothesis, the displacement of labour will entail. for, if the prohibition had never been imposed, the labour would have found its natural place under the ordinary law of exchange, and no displacement would have taken place. if, on the other hand, prohibition has led to an artificial and unproductive employment of labour, it is prohibition, and not liberty, which is to blame for a displacement which is inevitable in the transition from what is detrimental to what is beneficial. at all events, let no one pretend that because an abuse cannot be done away with, without inconvenience to those who profit by it, what has been suffered to exist for a time should be allowed to exist for ever. xxi. raw materials. it is said that the most advantageous of all branches of trade is that which supplies manufactured commodities in exchange for raw materials. for these raw materials are the aliment and support of _national labour_. hence the conclusion is drawn: that the best law of customs is that which gives the greatest possible facility to the importation of raw materials, and which throws most obstacles in the way of importing finished goods. there is no sophism in political economy more widely disseminated than this. it is cherished not only by the protectionist school, but also, and above all, by the school which dubs itself liberal; and it is unfortunate that it should be so, for what can be more injurious to a good cause than that it should be at the same time vigorously attacked and feebly defended? commercial liberty is likely to have the fate of liberty in general; it will only find a place in the statute-book after it has taken possession of men's minds and convictions. but if it be true that a reform, in order to be solidly established, should be generally understood, it follows that nothing can so much retard reform as that which misleads public opinion; and what is more calculated to mislead public opinion than works which, in advocating freedom, invoke aid from the doctrines of monopoly? some years ago three of the great towns of france--lyons, bordeaux, and havre--united in a movement against the restrictive _régime_. all europe was stirred on seeing raised what they took for the banner of liberty. alas! it proved to be also the banner of monopoly--of a monopoly a little more niggardly and much more absurd than that of which they seemed to desire the overthrow. by the aid of the sophism which i have just endeavoured to expose, the petitioners did nothing more than reproduce the doctrine of protection to national industry, tacking to it an additional inconsistency. it was, in fact, nothing else than the _régime_ of prohibition. just listen to m. de saint-cricq:-- "labour constitutes the wealth of a nation, because labour alone creates those material objects which our wants demand; and universal ease and comfort consist in the abundance of these things." so much for the principle. "but this abundance must be produced by _national labour_. if it were the result of foreign labour, national labour would be immediately brought to a stand." here lies the error. _(see the preceding sophism.)_ "what course should an agricultural and manufacturing country take under such circumstances? reserve its markets for the products of its own soil and of its own industry." such is the end and design. "and for that purpose, restrain by duties, and, if necessary, prohibit importation of the products of the soil and industry of other nations." such are the means. let us compare this system with that which the bordeaux petition advocates. commodities are there divided into three classes:-- "the first includes provisions, and _raw materials upon which no human labour has been bestowed. in principle, a wise economy would demand that this class should be free of duties_. here we have no labour, no protection. "the second consists of products which have, _to some extent, been prepared_. this preparation warrants such products being _charged with a certain amount of duty_." here protection begins, because here, according to the petitioners, begins _national labour_. "the third comprises goods and products in their finished and perfect state. these contribute nothing to national labour, and we regard this class as the most taxable." here labour, and production along with it, reach their maximum. we thus see that the petitioners profess their belief in the doctrine, that foreign labour is injurious to national labour; and this is the _error_ of the prohibitive system. they demand that the home market should be reserved for home industry. that is the _design_ of the system of prohibition. they demand that foreign labour should be subjected to restrictions and taxes. these are the means employed by the system of prohibition. what difference, then, can we possibly discover between the bordeaux petitioners and the corypheus of restriction? one difference, and one only--the greater or less extension given to the word labour. m. de saint-cricq extends it to everything, and so he wishes to protect all. "labour constitutes all the wealth of a people," he says; "to protect agricultural industry, and all agricultural industry; to protect manufacturing industry, and all manufacturing industry, is the cry which should never cease to be heard in this chamber." the bordeaux petitioners take no labour into account but that of the manufacturers; and for that reason they would admit them to the benefits of protection. "raw materials are commodities upon which no human labour has been bestowed. in principle, we should not tax them. manufactured products can no longer serve the cause of national industry, and we regard them as the best subjects for taxation." it is not our business in this place to inquire whether protection to national industry is reasonable. m. de saint-cricq and the bordeaux gentlemen are at one upon this point, and, as we have shown in the preceding chapters, we on this subject differ from both. our present business is to discover whether it is by m. de saint-cricq, or by the bordeaux petitioners, that the word labour is used in a correct sense. now, in this view of the question, we think that m. de saint-cricq has very much the best of it; and to prove this, we may suppose them to hold some such dialogue as the following:-- m. de saint-cricq: you grant that national labour should be protected. you grant that the products of no foreign labour can be introduced into our market without superseding a corresponding amount of our national labour. only, you contend that there are a multiplicity of products possessed of value (for they sell), but upon which no human labour has been bestowed [vierges de tout travail humain]. and you enumerate, among other things, com, flour, meat, cattle, tallow, salt, iron, copper, lead, coal, wools, hides, seeds, etc. if you will only prove to me that the value of these things is not due to labour, i will grant that it is useless to protect them. but, on the other hand, if i demonstrate to you that there is as much labour worked up in a fr. worth of wool as in a fr. worth of textile fabrics, you will allow that the one is as worthy of protection as the other. now, why is this sack of wool worth fr.? is it not because that is its cost price? and what does its cost price represent, but the aggregate wages of all the labour, and profits of all the capital, which have contributed to the production of the commodity? the bordeaux petitioners: well, perhaps as regards wool you may be right. but take the case of a sack of corn, a bar of iron, a hundredweight of coals,--are these commodities produced by labour? are they not created by nature? m. de saint-cricq: undoubtedly nature creates the elements of all these things, but it is labour which produces the value. i was wrong myself in saying that labour created material objects, and that vicious form of expression has led me into other errors. it does not belong to man to create, to make anything out of nothing, be he agriculturist or manufacturer; and if by production is meant creation, all our labour must be marked down as unproductive, and yours, as merchants, more unproductive than all others, excepting perhaps my own. the agriculturist, then, cannot pretend to have created corn, but he has created value; i mean to say, he has, by his labour, and that of his servants, labourers, reapers, etc., transformed into corn substances which had no resemblance to it whatever. the miller who converts the corn into flour, the baker who converts the flour into bread, do the same thing. in order that man may be enabled to clothe himself, a multitude of operations are necessary. prior to all intervention of human labour, the true raw materials of cloth are the air, the water, the heat, the gases, the light, the salts, which enter into its composition. these are the raw materials upon which strictly speaking, no human labour has been employed. they are _vierges de tout travail humain_; and since they have no value, i should never dream of protecting them. but the first application of labour converts these substances into grass and provender, a second into wool, a third into yarn, a fourth into a woven fabric, a fifth into clothing. who can assert that the whole of these operations, from the first furrow laid open by the plough, to the last stitch of the tailor's needle, do not resolve themselves into labour? and it is because these operations are spread over several branches of industry, in order to accelerate and facilitate the accomplishment of the ultimate object, which is to furnish clothing to those who have need of it, that you desire, by an arbitrary distinction, to rank the importance of such works in the order in which they succeed each other, so that the first of the series shall not merit even the name of labour, and that the last, being labour _par excellence_, shall be worthy of the favours of protection? the petitioners: yes; we begin to see that corn, like wool, is not exactly a product of which it can be said that no human labour has been bestowed upon it; but the agriculturist has not, at least, like the manufacturer, done everything himself or by means of his workmen; nature has assisted him, and if there is labour worked up in corn, it is not the simple product of labour. m. de saint-cricq: but its value resolves itself exclusively into labour. i am happy that nature concurs in the material formation of grain. i could even wish that it were entirely her work; but you must allow that i have constrained this assistance of nature by my labour, and when i sell you my corn you will remark this, that it is not for the labour of nature that i ask you to pay, but for my own. but, as you state the case, manufactured commodities are no longer the exclusive products of labour. is the manufacturer not beholden to nature in his processes? does he not avail himself of the assistance of the steam-engine, of the pressure of the atmosphere, just as, with the assistance of the plough, i avail myself of its humidity? has he created the laws of gravitation, of the transmission of forces, of affinity? the petitioners: well, this is the case of the wool over again; but coal is assuredly the work, the exclusive work, of nature. it is indeed a product upon which no human labour has ever been bestowed. m. de saint-cricq: yes; nature has undoubtedly created the coal, but labour has imparted value to it. for the millions of years during which it was buried fathoms under ground, unknown to everybody, it was destitute of value. it was necessary to search for it--that is labour; it was necessary to send it to market--that is additional labour. then the price you pay for it in the market is nothing else than the remuneration of the labour of mining and transport.* * i do not particularize the parts of the remuneration falling to the lessee, the capitalist, etc., for several reasons:-- st, because, on looking at the thing more closely, you will see that the remuneration always resolves itself into the reimbursement of advances or the payment of anterior labour. dly, because, under the term labour, i include not only the wages of the workmen, but the legitimate recompense of everything which co-operates in the work of production. dly (and above all), because the production of manufactured products is, like that of raw materials, burdened with auxiliary remunerations other than the mere expense of manual labour; and, moreover, this objection, frivolous in itself, would apply as much to the most delicate processes of manufacture, as to the rudest operations of agriculture. thus far we see that m. de saint-cricq has the best of the argument; that the value of raw materials, like that of manufactured commodities, represents the cost of production, that is to say, the labour worked up in them; that it is not possible to conceive of a product possessing value, which has had no human labour bestowed on it; that the distinction made by the petitioners is futile in theory; that, as the basis of an unequal distribution of favours, it would be iniquitous in practice, since the result would be that one-third of our countrymen, who happened to be engaged in manufactures, would obtain the advantages of monopoly, on the alleged ground that they produce by labour, whilst the other two-thirds--namely, the agricultural population--would be abandoned to competition under the pretext that they produce without labour. the rejoinder to this, i am quite sure, will be, that a nation derives more advantages from importing what are called raw materials, whether produced by labour or not, and exporting manufactured commodities. this will be repeated and insisted on, and it is an opinion very widely accredited. "the more abundant raw materials are," says the bordeaux petition, "the more are manufactures promoted and multiplied." "raw materials," says the same document in another place, "open up an unlimited field of work for the inhabitants of the countries into which they are imported." "raw materials," says the havre petition, "constituting as they do the elements of labour, must be submitted to a different treatment, and be gradually admitted at the lowest rate of duty." the same petition expresses a wish that manufactured products should be admitted, not gradually, but after an indefinite lapse of time, not at the lowest rate of duty, but at a duty of per cent. "among other articles, the low price and abundance of which are a necessity," says the lyons petition, "manufacturers include all raw materials." all this is founded on an illusion. we have seen that all value represents labour. now, it is quite true that manufacturing labour increases tenfold, sometimes a hundredfold, the value of the raw material; that is to say, it yields ten times, a hundred times, more profit to the nation. hence men are led to reason thus: the production of a hundredweight of iron brings in a gain of only fifteen shillings to workmen of all classes. the conversion of this hundredweight of iron into the mainsprings of watches raises their earnings to £ ; and will any one venture to say that a nation has not a greater interest to secure for its labour a gain of five hundred pounds than a gain of fifteen shillings? we do not exchange a hundredweight of unwrought iron for a hundredweight of watch-springs, nor a hundredweight of unwashed wool for a hundredweight of cashmere shawls; but we exchange a certain value of one of these materials for an equal value of another. now, to exchange equal value for equal value is to exchange equal labour for equal labour. it is not true, then, that a nation which sells five pounds' worth of wrought fabrics or watch-springs, gains more than a nation which sells five pounds' worth of wool or iron. in a country where no law can be voted, where no tax can be imposed, but with the consent of those whose dealings the law is to regulate, and whose pockets the tax is to affect, the public cannot be robbed without first being imposed on and misled. our ignorance is the raw material of every extortion from which we suffer, and we may be certain beforehand, that every sophism is the precursor of an act of plunder. my good friends i when you detect a sophism in a petition, button up your breeches-pocket, for you may be sure that this is the mark aimed at. let us see, then, what is the real object secretly aimed at by the shipowners of bordeaux and havre, and the manufacturers of lyons, and which is concealed under the distinction which they attempt to draw between agricultural and manufactured commodities. "it is principally this first class (that which comprises raw materials, upon which no human labour has been bestowed) which affords," say the bordeaux petitioners, "the principal support to our merchant shipping...." in principle, a wise economy would not tax this class.... the second (commodities partly wrought up) may be taxed to a certain extent. the third (commodities which call for no more exertion of labour) we regard as the fittest subjects of taxation. the havre petitioners "consider that it is indispensable to reduce gradually the duty on raw materials to the lowest rate, in order that our manufacturers may gradually find employment for the shipping interest, which furnishes them with the first and indispensable materials of labour." the manufacturers could not remain behindhand in politeness towards the shipowners. so the lyons petition asks for the free introduction of raw materials, "in order to prove," as they express it, "that the interests of the manufacturing are not always opposed to those of the maritime towns." no; but then the interests of both, understood as the petitioners understand them, are in direct opposition to the interests of agriculture and of consumers. well, gentlemen, we have come at length to see what you are aiming at, and the object of your subtle economical distinctions. you desire that the law should restrain the transport of finished goods across the ocean, in order that the more costly conveyance of raw and rough materials, bulky, and mixed up with refuse, should afford greater scope for your merchant shipping, and more largely employ your marine resources. this is what you call a wise economy. on the same principle, why do you not ask that the pines of russia should be brought to you with their branches, bark, and roots; the silver of mexico in its mineral state; the hides of buenos ayres sticking to the bones of the diseased carcases from which they have been torn? i expect that railway shareholders, the moment they are in a majority in the chambers, will proceed to make a law forbidding the manufacture of the brandy which is consumed in paris. and why not? would not a law enforcing the conveyance of ten casks of wine for every cask of brandy afford parisian industry the indispensable materials of its labour, and give employment to our locomotive resources? how long will men shut their eyes to this simple truth? manufactures, shipping, labour--all have for end the general, the public good; to create useless industries, to favour superfluous conveyances, to support a greater amount of labour than is necessary, not for the good of the public, but at the expense of the public--is to realize a true _petitio principii_. it is not labour which is desirable for its own sake; it is consumption. all labour without a commensurate result is a loss. you may as well pay sailors for pitching stones into the sea as pay them for transporting useless refuse. thus, we arrive at the result to which all economic sophisms, numerous as they are, conduct us, namely, confounding the means with the end, and developing the one at the expense of the other. xxii. metaphors. a sophism sometimes expands, and runs through the whole texture of a long and elaborate theory. more frequently, it shrinks and contracts, assumes the guise of a principle, and lurks in a word or a phrase. may god protect us from the devil and from metaphors! was the exclamation of paul-louis. and it is difficult to say which of them has done most mischief in this world of ours. the devil, you will say; for he has put the spirit of plunder into all our hearts. true, but he has left free the means of repressing abuses by the resistance of those who suffer from them. it is the sophism which paralyzes this resistance. the sword which malice puts into the hands of assailants would be powerless, did sophistry not break the buckler which should shield the party assailed. it was with reason, therefore, that malebranche inscribed on the title-page of his work this sentence: _l'erreur est la cause de la misère des hommes_. let us see in what way this takes place. ambitious men are often actuated by sinister and wicked intentions; their design, for example, may be to implant in the public mind the germ of international hatred. this fatal germ may develop itself, light up a general conflagration, arrest civilization, cause torrents of blood to be shed, and bring upon the country the most terrible of all scourges, invasion. at any rate, and apart from this, such sentiments of hatred lower us in the estimation of other nations, and force frenchmen who retain any sense of justice to blush for their country. these are undoubtedly most serious evils; and to guard the public against the underhand practices of those who would expose the country to such hazard, it is only necessary to see clearly into their designs. how do they manage to conceal them? by the use of metaphors. they twist, distort, and pervert the meaning of three or four words, and the thing is done. the word _invasion_ itself is a good illustration of this. a french ironmaster exclaims: preserve us from the invasion of english iron. an english landowner exclaims in return: preserve us from the invasion of french corn. and then they proceed to interpose barriers between the two countries. these barriers create isolation, isolation gives rise to hatred, hatred to war, war to invasion. what does it signify? cry the two sophists; is it not better to expose ourselves to an eventual invasion than accept an invasion which is certain? and the people believe them, and the barriers are kept up. and yet what analogy is there between an exchange and an invasion? what possible similarity can be imagined between a ship of war which comes to vomit fire and devastation on our towns, and a merchant ship which comes to offer a free voluntary exchange of commodities for commodities? the same thing holds of the use made of the word _inundation_. this word is ordinarily used in a bad sense, for we often see our fields injured, and our harvests carried away by floods. if, however, they leave on our soil something of greater value than what they carry away, like the inundations of the nile, we should be thankful for them, as the egyptians are. before we declaim, then, against the inundations of foreign products--before proceeding to restrain them by irksome and costly obstacles--we should inquire to what class they belong, and whether they ravage or fertilize. what should we think of mehemet ali, if, instead of raising, at great cost, bars across the nile, to extend wider its inundations, he were to spend his money in digging a deeper channel to prevent egypt being soiled by the foreign slime which descends upon her from the mountains of the moon? we display exactly the same degree of wisdom and sense, when we desire, at the cost of millions, to defend our country.... from what? from the benefits which nature has bestowed on other climates. among the metaphors which conceal a pernicious theory, there is no one more in use than that presented by the words _tribute and tributary_. these words have now become so common that they are used as synonymous with _purchase and purchaser_, and are employed indiscriminately. and yet a tribute is as different from a purchase as a theft is from an exchange; and i should like quite as well to hear it said, cartouche has broken into my strong-box and purchased a thousand pounds, as to hear one of our deputies repeat, we have paid germany tribute for a thousand horses which she has sold us. for what distinguishes the act of cartouche from a purchase is, that he has not put into my strong-box, and with my consent, a value equivalent to what he has taken out of it. and what distinguishes our remittance of £ , which we have made to germany from a tribute paid to her is this, that she has not received the money gratuitously, but has given us in exchange a thousand horses, which we have judged to be worth the £ , . is it worth while exposing seriously such an abuse of language? yes; for these terms are used seriously both in newspapers and in books. do not let it be supposed that these are instances of a mere _lapsus linguo_ on the part of certain ignorant writers! for one writer who abstains from so using them, i will point you out ten who admit them, and amongst the rest, the d'argouts, the dupins, the villeles--peers, deputies, ministers of state,--men, in short, whose words are laws, and whose sophisms, even the most transparent, serve as a basis for the government of the country. a celebrated modern philosopher has added to the categories of aristotle the sophism which consists in employing a phrase which includes a _petitio pinncipii_. he gives many examples of it; and he should have added the word tributary to his list. the business, in fact, is to discover whether purchases made from foreigners are useful or hurtful. they are hurtful, you say. and why? because they render us tributaries to the foreigner. this is just to use a word which implies the very thing to be proved. it may be asked how this abuse of words first came to be introduced into the rhetoric of the monopolists? money leaves the country to satisfy the rapacity of a victorious enemy. money also leaves the country to pay for commodities. an analogy is established between the two cases by taking into account only the points in which they resemble each other, and keeping out of view the points in which they differ. yet this circumstance--that is to say, the non-reimbursement in the first case, and the reimbursement voluntarily agreed upon in the second--establishes betwixt them such a difference that it is really impossible to class them in the same category. to hand over a hundred pounds by force to a man who has caught you by the throat, or to hand them over voluntarily to a man who furnishes you with what you want, are things as different as light and darkness. you might as well assert that it is a matter of indifference whether you throw your bread into the river, or eat it, for in both cases the bread is destroyed. the vice of this reasoning, like that applied to the word tribute, consists in asserting an entire similitude between two cases, looking only at their points of resemblance, and keeping out of sight the points in which they differ. conclusion. all the sophisms which i have hitherto exposed have reference to a single question--the system of restriction. there are other tempting subjects, such as _vested interests, inopportuneness, draining away our money_, etc., etc., with which i shall not at present trouble the reader. nor does social economy confine herself to this limited circle. _fourierisme, saint-simonisme_, communism, mysticism, sentimentalism, false philanthropy, affected aspirations after a chimerical equality and fraternity; questions relating to luxury, to wages, to machinery, to the pretended tyranny of capital, to colonies, to markets and vents for produce, to conquests, to population, to association, emigration, taxes, and loans,--have encumbered the field of science with a multiplicity of parasitical arguments, of sophisms which afford work to the hoe and the grubber of the diligent economist. i am quite aware of the inconvenience attending this plan, or rather of this absence of plan. to attack one by one so many incoherent sophisms, which sometimes run foul of each other, and more frequently run into each other, is to enter into an irregular and capricious struggle, and involve ourselves in perpetual repetitions. how much i should prefer to explain simply the situation in which things are, without occupying myself with the thousand aspects under which ignorance sees them!... to explain the laws under which societies prosper or decay, is to demolish virtually all these sophisms at once. when laplace described all that was then known of the movements of the heavenly bodies, he dissipated, without even naming them, all the reveries of the egyptian, greek, and hindoo astrologers far more effectually than he could have done by refuting them directly in innumerable volumes. truth is one, and the work which explains it is an edifice at once durable and imposing: il brave les tyrans avides, plus hardi que les pyramides et plus durable que l'airain. error is multifarious and of an ephemeral nature; and the work which combats it does not carry in itself a principle of greatness and duration. but if the power, and perhaps the occasion, have been wanting to enable me to proceed in the manner of laplace and of say, i cannot help thinking that the form i have adopted has also its modest utility. it seems to me well suited to the wants of our day, and the occasional moments which are set aside for study. a treatise has no doubt unquestionable superiority, but on one condition--namely, that it is read and carefully pondered and thought over. it is addressed to a select class of readers. its mission is to fix first of all, and afterwards enlarge, the circle of our acquired knowledge. a refutation of vulgar errors and prejudices cannot occupy this high position. it aspires merely to clear the road before the march of truth, to prepare men's minds for its reception, to rectify public opinion, and disarm dangerous ignorance. it is, above all, in the department of social economy that this hand-to-hand struggle, that these constantly-recurring battles with popular errors, are of true practical utility. the sciences may be divided into two classes. one of these classes may be known only to _savans_. it includes those sciences the application of which constitutes the business of special professions. the vulgar reap the fruit, in spite of their ignorance. a man may find use for a watch, though ignorant of mechanics and astronomy, and he may be carried along by a locomotive or a steamer, trusting to the skill of the engineer and the pilot. we walk according to the laws of equilibrium, although unacquainted with these laws, just as m. jourdain had talked prose all his life without knowing it. but there are sciences which exercise on the public mind an influence which is only in proportion to public enlightenment, and derive all their efficacy, not from knowledge accumulated in some gifted minds, but from knowledge diffused over the general masses. among these we include morals, medicine, social economy, and, in countries where men are their own masters, politics. it is to such sciences that the saying of bentham specially applies, "to disseminate them is better than to advance them." what signifies it, that some great man, or even that god himself, should have promulgated the laws of morality, as long as men, imbued with false notions, mistake virtues for vices, and vices for virtues? what matters it that smith, say, and, according to m. de saint-chamans, economists of all schools, have proclaimed, in reference to commercial transactions, the superiority of liberty over constraint, if the men who make our laws, and for whom our laws are made, think differently? those sciences, which have been correctly named social, have also this peculiarity, that being of universal and daily application, no one will confess himself ignorant of them. when the business is to resolve a question in chemistry or geometry, no one pretends to have acquired these sciences by intuition, no one is ashamed to consult m. thénard, or makes any difficulty about referring to the works of legendre or bezout. but in the social sciences, authority is scarcely acknowledged. as each man daily takes charge of his morals, whether good or bad, of his health, of his purse, of his politics, whether sound or absurd, so each man believes himself qualified to discuss, comment, and pronounce judgment on social questions. are you ill? there is no old woman who will not at once tell you the cause of your ailment, and the remedy for it. "humours," she will say; "you must take physic." but what are humours? and is there any such disease? about this she gives herself no concern. i cannot help thinking of this old woman when i hear social maladies explained by these hackneyed phrases:--"the superabundance of products," "the tyranny of capital," "an industrial plethora," and other such commonplaces, of which we cannot even say, _verba et voces, protereaque nihil_, for they are so many pestilent errors. from what i have said, two things result-- st, that the social sciences must abound more in sophisms than others, because in them each man takes counsel of his own judgment and instincts; d, that it is in these sciences that sophisms are especially mischievous, because they mislead public opinion, and in a matter, too, with reference to which public opinion is force, is law. in these sciences, then, we have need of two sorts of books, those which explain them, and those which further and advance them--those which establish truth, and those which combat error. it seems to me that the inherent fault of this little work, repetition, is exactly what will make it useful. in the question i have treated, each sophism has undoubtedly its own formula, and its special bearing, but all may be traced to a common root, which is, _forgetting men's interests as consumers_. to point out that a thousand errors may be traced to this prolific sophism, is to teach the public to detect it, to estimate it at its true worth, and to distrust it, under all circumstances. after all, the design of my present work is not exactly to implant convictions, but rather to awaken doubts. i have no expectation that the reader, on laying down the book, will exclaim _i know_; i would much rather that he should say candidly, _i am ignorant!_ "i am ignorant, for i begin to fear that there is something illusory in the flattering promises of scarcity." (sophism i.) "i am not so much charmed with obstacles as i once was. (sophism ii.) "_effort without result_ no longer appears to me so desirable as _result without effort_." (sophism iii.) "it is very possible that the secret of trade does not consist, like the secret of arms (if we adopt the definition of the bully in the _bourgeois gentilhomme_), in giving and not receiving." (sophism vi.) "i can understand that a commodity is worth more in proportion as it has had more labour bestowed upon it; but in exchange, will two equal values cease to be equal values, because the one proceeds from the plough, and the other from the loom?" (sophism xxi.) "i confess that i begin to think it singular that the human race should be improved by shackles, and enriched by taxes; and, truth to say, i should be relieved of a troublesome weight, i should experience unmitigated satisfaction, were it proved to me, as the author of the _sophismes_ asserts, that there is no incompatibility between thriving circumstances and justice, between peace and liberty, between the extension of labour and the progress of intelligence." (sophisms xiv. and xx.) "then, without being quite convinced by his arguments, to which i know not whether to give the name of reasonings or of paradoxes, i shall apply myself to the acknowledged masters of the science." let us conclude this monography of sophism with a final and important observation. the world is not sufficiently alive to the influence exercised over it by sophisms. if i must speak my mind, when the _right of the strongest_ has been put aside, sophisms have set up in its place _the right of the most cunning_; and it is difficult to say which of these two tryants has been the more fatal to humanity. men have an immoderate love of enjoyment, of influence, of consideration, of power--in a word, of wealth. at the same time, they are urged on by a strong, an overpowering, inclination to procure the things they so much desire, at the expense of other people. but these other people--in plain language, the public--have an equally strong desire to keep what they have got, if they can, and if they know it. spoliation, which plays so great a part in this world's affairs, has, then, only two agents at command, _force and cunning_; and two limits, _courage and intelligence_. force employed to effect spoliation forms the groundwork of human annals. to trace back its history, would be to reproduce very nearly the history of all nations--assyrians, babylonians, medes, persians, egyptians, greeks, romans, goths, franks, huns, turks, arabs, monguls, tartars; not to speak of spaniards in america, englishmen in india, frenchmen in africa, russians in asia, etc. but civilized nations, at least, composed of men who produce wealth, have become sufficiently numerous, and sufficiently strong to defend themselves. does this mean that they are no longer plundered? not at all; they are plundered as much as ever, and, what is more, they plunder one another. only, the agent employed has been changed; it is no longer by _force, but by cunning_, that they seize upon the public wealth. to rob the public, we must first deceive it. the trick consists in persuading the public that the theft is for its advantage; and by this means inducing it to accept, in exchange for its property, services which are fictitious, and often worse. hence comes the sophism,--sophism theocratic, sophism economic, sophism political, sophism financial. since; then, force is held in check, the sophism is not only an evil, but the very genius of evil it must in its turn be held in check also. and for that end we must render the public more cunning than the cunning, as it has already become stronger than the strong. good public! it is under the influence of this conviction that i dedicate to you this first essay--although the preface is strangely transposed, and the dedication somewhat late. end of the first series. second series. i. physiology of spoliation. why should i go on tormenting myself with this dry and dreary science of _political economy?_ why? the question is reasonable. labour of every kind is in itself sufficiently repugnant to warrant one in asking to what result it leads? let us see, then, how it is. i do not address myself to those philosophers who profess to adore poverty, if not on their own account, at least on the part of the human race. i speak to those who deem wealth, of some importance. we understand by that word, not the opulence of some classes, but the ease, the material prosperity, the security, the independence, the instruction, the dignity of all. there are only two means of procuring the necessaries, conveniences, and enjoyments of life: production and spoliation. there are some people who represent spoliation as an accident, a local and transient abuse, branded by the moralist, denounced by the law, and unworthy of the economist's attention. in spite of benevolence, in spite of optimism, we are forced to acknowledge that spoilation plays too prominent a part in the world, and mingles too largely in important human affairs, to warrant the social sciences, especially political economy, in holding it as of no account. i go further. that which prevents the social order from attaining that perfection of which it is susceptible, is the constant effort of its members to live and enjoy themselves at the expense of each other. so that if spoliation did not exist, social science would be without object, for society would then be perfect. i go further still. when spoliation has once become the recognised means of existence of a body of men united and held together by social ties, they soon proceed to frame a law which sanctions it, and to adopt a system of morals which sanctities it. it is sufficient to enumerate some of the more glaring forms which spoliation assumes, in order to show the place which it occupies in human transactions. there is first of all war. among savages the conqueror puts to death the vanquished, in order to acquire a right, which, if not incontestable, is, at least, uncontested, to his enemy's hunting grounds. then comes slavery. when man comes to find that the land may be made fertile by means of labour, he says to his brother man, "thine be the labour, and mine the product." next we have priestcraft. "according as you give or refuse me a portion of your substance, i will open to you the gate of heaven or of hell." lastly comes monopoly. its distinguishing character is to leave in existence the great social law of service for service, but to bring force to bear upon the bargain, so as to impair the just proportion between the service received and the service rendered. spoliation bears always in its bosom that germ of death by which it is ultimately destroyed. it is rarely the many who despoil the few. were it so, the few would soon be reduced to such a state as to be no longer able to satisfy the cupidity of the many, and spoliation would die out for want of support. it is almost always the majority who are oppressed, but spoliation is not the less on this account subject to an inevitable check. for, if the agent be force, as in the cases of war and slavery, it is natural that force, in the long run, should pass to the side of the greatest number. and, if the agent be cunning, as in the case of priestcraft and monopoly, it is natural that the majority should become enlightened, otherwise intelligence would cease to be intelligence. another natural law deposits a second germ of death in the heart of spoliation, which is this: spoliation not only _displaces_ wealth, but always partially _destroys_ it. war annihilates many values. slavery paralyzes, to a great extent, men's faculties. priestcraft diverts men's efforts towards objects which are puerile or hurtful. monopoly transfers wealth from one pocket to another, but much is lost in the transference. this is an admirable law. without it, provided there existed an equilibrium between the forces of the oppressors and oppressed, spoliation would have no limits. in consequence of the operation of this law, the equilibrium tends always to be upset; either because the spoliators have the fear of such a loss of wealth, or because, in the absence of such fear, the evil constantly increases, and it is in the nature of anything which constantly gets worse and worse, ultimately to perish and be annihilated. there comes at last a time when, in its progressive acceleration, this loss of wealth is such that the spoliator finds himself poorer than he would have been had there been no spoliation. take, for example, a people to whom the expense of war costs more than the value of the booty. a master who pays dearer for slave labour than for free labour. a system of priestcraft, which, renders people so dull and stupid, and destroys their energy to such an extent, that there is no longer anything to be got from them. a monopoly which increases its efforts at absorption in proportion as there is less to absorb, just as one should endeavour to milk a cow more vigorously in proportion as there is less milk to be got. monopoly, it will be seen, is a species of the genus spoliation. there are many varieties; among others, sinecures, privileges, restrictions. among the forms which it assumes, there are some which are very simple and primitive. of this kind are feudal rights. under this _régime_ the masses are despoiled, and they know it. it implies an abuse of force, and goes down when force is wanting. others are very complicated. the masses are frequently despoiled without knowing it. they may even imagine that they owe all to spoliation--not only what is left to them, but what is taken from them, and what is lost in the process. nay more, i affirm that, in course of time, and owing to the ingenious mechanism to which they become accustomed, many men become spoliators without knowing that they are so, or desiring to be so. monopolies of this kind are engendered by artifice and nourished by error. they disappear only with advancing enlightenment. i have said enough to show that political economy has an evident practical utility. it is the torch which, by exposing craft and dissipating error, puts an end to this social disorder of spoliation. some one--i rather think a lady--has rightly described our science as "_la serrure de sûreté du pécule populaire_." commentary. were this little book destined to last for three or four thousand years, and, like a new koran, to be read, re-read, pondered over, and studied sentence by sentence, word by word, letter by letter; if it were destined to a place in all the libraries of the world, and to be explained by avalanches of annotations and paraphrases, i might abandon to their fate the preceding observations, though somewhat obscure from their conciseness; but since they require a gloss, i think it as well to be my own commentator. the true and equitable law of human transactions is the _exchange, freely bargained for, of service for service_. spoliation consists in banishing by force or artifice this liberty of bargaining, for the purpose of enabling a man or a class to receive a service without rendering an equivalent service. spoliation by force consists in waiting till a man has produced a commodity, and then depriving him of it by the strong hand. this kind of spoliation is formally forbidden by the decalogue--_thou shalt not steal_. when this takes place between individuals, it is called theft, and leads to the hulks; when it takes place between nations, it is called _conquest, and leads to glory_. whence this difference? it is proper to search out its caùse, for it will reveal to us the existence of an irresistible power, public opinion, which, like the atmosphere, surrounds and envelops us so thoroughly that we cease to perceive it. rousseau never said anything truer than this: _il faut beaucoup de philosophie pour observer les faits qui sont trop près de nous_---"you need much philosophy to observe accurately things which are under your nose." a thief for the very reason that he does his work secretly, has always public opinion against him. he frightens all who are within his reach. yet if he has associates, he takes pride in displaying before them his skill and prowess. here we begin to perceive the force of opinion; for the applause of his accomplices takes away the sense of guilt, and even prompts him to glory in his shame. the _warrior_ lives in a different medium. the public opinion which brands him is elsewhere, among the nations he has conquered, and he does not feel its pressure. the public opinion at home applauds and sustains him. he and his companions in arms feel sensibly the bond which imites them. the country which has created enemies, and brought danger upon herself, feels it necessary to extol the bravery of her sons. she decrees to the boldest, who have enlarged her frontiers, or brought her, in the greatest amount of booty, honours, renown, and glory. poets sing their exploits, and ladies twine wreaths and garlands for them. and such is the power of public opinion that it takes from spoliation all idea of injustice, and from the spoliator all sense of wrongdoing. the public opinion which reacts against military spoliation makes itself felt, not in the conquering, but in the conquered, country, and exercises little influence. and yet it is not altogether inoperative, and makes itself the more felt in proportion as nations have more frequent intercourse, and understand each other better. in consequence, we see that the study of languages, and a freer communication between nations, tends to bring about and render predominant a stronger feeling against this species of spoliation. unfortunately, it not unfrequently happens that the nations which surround an aggressive and warlike people are themselves given to spoliation when they can accomplish it, and thus become imbued with the same prejudices. in that case there is only one remedy--time; and nations must be taught by painful experience the enormous evils of mutual spoliation. we may note another check--a superior and growing morality. but the object of this is to multiply virtuous actions. how then can morality restrain acts of spoliation when public opinion places such acts in the rank of the most exalted virtue? what more powerful means of rendering a people moral than religion? and what religion more favourable to peace than christianity? yet what have we witnessed for eighteen hundred years? during all these ages we have seen men fight, not only in spite of their religion, but in name of religion itself. the wars waged by a conquering nation are not always offensive and aggressive wars. such a nation is sometimes so unfortunate as to be obliged to send its soldiers into the field to defend the domestic hearth, and to protect its families, its property, its independence, and its liberty. war then assumes a character of grandeur and sacredness. the national banner, blessed by the ministers of the god of peace, represents all that is most sacred in the land; it is followed as the living image of patriotism and of honour; and warlike virtues are extolled above all other virtues. but when the danger is past, public opinion still prevails; and by the natural reaction of a spirit of revenge, which is mistaken for patriotism, the banner is paraded from capital to capital. it is in this way that nature seems to prepare a punishment for the aggressor. it is the fear of this punishment, and not the progress of philosophy, which retains arms in the arsenals; for we cannot deny that nations the most advanced in civilization go to war, and think little of justice when they have no reprisals to fear, as the himalaya, the atlas, and the caucasus bear witness. if religion is powerless, and if philosophy is equally powerless, how then are wars to be put an end to? political economy demonstrates, that even as regards the nation which proves victorious; war is always made in the interest of the few, and at the expense of the masses. when the masses, then, shall see this clearly, the weight of public opinion, which is now divided, will come to be entirely on the side of peace. spoliation by force assumes still another form. no man will engage voluntarily in the business of production in order to be robbed of what he produces. man himself is therefore laid hold of, robbed of his freedom and personality, and forced to labour. the language held to him is not, "_if you do this for me, i will do that for you;" but this, "yours be the fatigue, and mine the enjoyment_." this is slavery, which always implies abuse of force. it is important to inquire whether it is not in the very nature of a force which is incontestably dominant to commit abuses. for my own part, i should be loath to trust it, and would as soon expect a stone pitched from a height to stop midway of its own accord, as absolute power to prescribe limits to itself. i should like, at least, to have pointed out to me a country and an epoch in which slavery has been abolished by the free, graceful, and voluntary act of the masters. slavery affords a second and striking example of the insufficiency of religious and philanthropical sentiments, when set in opposition to the powerful and energetic sentiment of self-interest. this may appear a melancholy view of the subject to certain modern schools who seek for the renovating principle of society in self-sacrifice. let them begin, then, by reforming human nature. in the west indies, ever since the introduction of slavery, the masters, from father to son, have professed the christian religion. many times a day they repeat these words, "all men are brethren: to love your neighbour is to fulfil the whole law." and they continue to have slaves. nothing appears to them more natural and legitimate. do modern reformers expect that their system of morals will ever be as universally accepted,' as popular, of as great authority, and be as much on men's lips, as the gospel? and if the gospel has not been able to penetrate from the lips to the heart, by piercing or surmounting the formidable barrier of self-interest, how can they expect that their system of morals is to work this miracle? what! is slavery then invulnerable? no; what has introduced it will destroy it, i mean self-interest; provided that, in favouring the special interests which have created this scourge, we do not run counter to the general interests from which we look for the remedy. it is one of the truths which political economy has demonstrated, that free labour is essentially progressive, and slave labour necessarily stationary. the triumph of the former, therefore, over the latter is inevitable. what has become of the culture of indigo by slave labour? free labour directed to the production of sugar will lower its price more and more, and slave property will become less and less valuable to the owners. slavery would long since have gone down of its own accord in america, if in europe our laws had not raised the price of sugar artificially. it is for this reason that we see the masters, their creditors, and their delegates working actively to maintain these laws, which are at present the pillars of the edifice. unfortunately, they still carry along with them the sympathies of those populations from among whom slavery has disappeared, and this again shows how powerful an agent public opinion is. if public opinion is sovereign, even in the region of force, it is very much more so in the region of craft [_ruse_], in truth, this is its true domain. cunning is the abuse of intelligence, and public opinion is the progress of intelligence. these two powers are at least of the same nature. imposture on the part of the spoliator implies credulity on the part of those despoiled, and the natural antidote to credulity is truth. hence it follows that to enlighten men's minds is to take away from this species of spoliation what supports and feeds it. i shall pass briefly in review some specimens of spoliation which are due to craft exercised on a very extensive scale. the first which presents itself is spoliation by priestcraft [_ruse thêocratique_]. what is the object in view? the object is to procure provisions, vestments, luxury, consideration, influence, power, by exchanging fictitious for real services. if i tell a man, "i am going to render you great and immediate services," i must keep my word, or this man will soon be in a situation to detect the imposture, and my artifice will be instantly unmasked. but if i say to him, "in exchange for your services i am going to render you immense service, not in this world, but in another; for after this life is ended, your being eternally happy or miserable depends upon me. i am an intermediate being between god and his creature, and i can, at my will, open the gates of heaven or of hell." if this man only believes me, i have him in my power. this species of imposture has been practised wholesale since the beginning of the world, and we know what plenitude of power was exercised by the egyptian priests. it is easy to discover how these impostors proceed. we have only to ask ourselves what we should do were we in their place. if i arrived among an ignorant tribe with views of this sort, and succeeded by some extraordinary and marvellous act to pass myself off for a supernatural being, i should give myself out for an envoy of god, and as possessing absolute control over the future destinies of man. then i should strictly forbid any inquiry into the validity of my titles and pretensions. i should do more. as reason would be my most dangerous antagonist, i should forbid the use of reason itself, unless applied to this formidable subject. in the language of the savages, i should _taboo_ this question and everything relating to it. to handle it, or even think of it, should be declared an unpardonable sin. it would be the very triumph of my art to guard with a _taboo_ barrier every intellectual avenue which could possibly lead to a discovery of my imposture; and what better security than to declare even doubt to be sacrilege? and still to this fundamental security i should add others. for example, effectually to prevent enlightenment ever reaching the masses, i should appropriate to myself and my accomplices the monopoly of all knowledge, which i would conceal under the veil of a dead language and hieroglyphic characters; and in order that i should never be exposed to any danger, i would take care to establish an institution which would enable me, day after day, to penetrate the secrets of all consciences. it would not be amiss that i should at the same time satisfy some of the real wants of my people, especially if, in doing so, i could increase my influence and authority. thus, as men have great need of instruction, and of being taught morals, i should constitute myself the dispenser of these. by this means i should direct as i saw best the minds and hearts of my people. i should establish an indissoluble connexion between morals and my authority. i should represent them as incapable of existing, except in this state of union; so that, if some bold man were to attempt to stir a tabooed question, society at large, which could not dispense with moral teaching, would feel the earth tremble under its feet, and would turn with rage against this frantic innovator. when things had come to this pass, it is obvious that the people would become my property in a stricter sense than if they were my slaves. the slave curses his chains--they would hug theirs; and i should thus succeed in imprinting the brand of servitude, not on their foreheads, but on their innermost consciences. public opinion alone can overturn such an edifice of iniquity; but where can it make a beginning, when every stone of the edifice is tabooed? it is obviously an affair of time and the printing-press. god forbid that i should desire to shake the consoling religious convictions which connect this life of trial with a life of felicity. but that our irresistible religious aspirations have been abused, is what no one, not even the head of the church himself, can deny. it appears to me that there is a sure test by which a people can discover whether they are duped or not. examine religion and the priest, in order to discover whether the priest is the instrument of religion, or whether religion is not rather the instrument of the priest. _if the priest is the instrument of religion_, if his sole care is to spread over the country morals and blessings, he will be gentle, tolerant, humble, charitable, full of zeal; his life will be a reflection of his divine model; he will preach liberty and equality among men, peace and fraternity between nations; he will repel the seductions of temporal power, desiring no alliance with what of all things in the world most requires to be kept in check; he will be a man of the people, a man of sound counsels, a man of consolation, a man of public opinion, a man of the gospel. if, on the contrary, _religion is the instrument of the priest_, he will treat it as we treat an instrument, which we alter, bend, and twist about in all directions, so as to make it available for the purpose we have in view. he will increase the number of questions which are tabooed; his morals will change with times, men, and circumstances. he will endeavour to impose upon people by gestures and studied attitudes; and will mumble a hundred times a day words, the meaning of which has evaporated, and which have come to be nothing better than a vain conventionalism. he will traffic in sacred things, but in such a way as not to shake men's faith in their sacredness; and he will take care, when he meets with acute, clear-sighted people, not to carry on this traffic so openly or actively as in other circumstances. he will mix himself up with worldly intrigues; and he will take the side of men in power, provided they embrace his side. in a word, in all his actions, we shall discover that his object is not to advance the cause of religion through the clergy, but the cause of the clergy through religion; and as so many efforts must have an object, and as this object, on our hypothesis, can be nothing else than wealth and power, the most incontestable sign of the people having been duped is that the priest has become rich and powerful. it is quite evident that a true religion may be abused as well as a false religion. the more respectable its authority is, the more is it to be feared that the proofs of that respectability will be pressed too far. but the results will be widely different. abuses have a tendency to excite the sound, enlightened, and independent portion of the population to rebellion. and it is a much more serious thing to shake public belief in a true than in a false religion. spoliation by such means, and the intelligence of a people, are always in an inverse ratio to each other; for it is of the nature of abuses to be carried as far only as safety permits. not that in the midst of the most ignorant people pure and devoted priests are never to be found; but the question is, how can we prevent a knave from assuming the cassock, and ambition from encircling his brow with a mitre? spoliators obey the malthusian law: they multiply as the means of existence increase; and a knave's means of existence is the credulity of his dupes. public opinion must be enlightened. there is no other remedy. another variety of spoliation by craft and artifice is to be found in what are called _commercial frauds_, an expression, as it appears to me, not sufficiently broad; for not only is the merchant who adulterates his commodities, or uses a false measure, guilty of fraud, but the physician who gets paid for bad advice, and the advocate who fans and encourages lawsuits. in an exchange between two services, one of them may be of bad quality; but here, the services received being stipulated for beforehand, spoliation must evidently recede before the advance of public enlightenment. next in order come abuses of _public services_--a vast field of spoliation, so vast that we can only glance at it. had man been created a solitary animal, each man would work for himself. individual wealth would, in that case, be in proportion to the services rendered by each man to himself. _but, man being a sociable animal, services are exchanged for other services_; a proposition which you may, if you choose, construe backwards [_à rebours_]. there exist in society wants so general, so universal, that its members provide for them by organizing public services. such, for example, is the need of security. we arrange, we club together, to remunerate by services of various kinds those who render us the service of watching over the general security. there is nothing which does not come within the domain of political economy. do this for me, and i will do that for you. the essence of the transaction is the same, the remunerative process alone is different; but this last is a circumstance of great importance. in ordinary transactions, each man is the judge, both of the service he receives and the service he renders. he can always refuse an exchange, or make it elsewhere; whence the necessity of bringing to market services which will be willingly accepted. it is not so in state matters, especially before the introduction of representative government. whether we have need of such services as the government furnishes or not, whether they are good or bad, we are forced always to accept them such as they are, and at the price at which the government estimates them. now it is the tendency of all men to see through the small end of the telescope the services which they render, and through the large end the services which they receive. in private transactions, then, we should be led a fine dance, if we were without the security afforded by _a price freely and openly bargained for_. now this guarantee we have either not at all or to a very limited extent in public transactions. and yet the government, composed of men (although at the present day they would persuade us that legislators are something more than men), obeys the universal tendency. the government desires to render us great service, to serve us more than we need, and to make us accept, as true services, services which are sometimes very far from being so, and to exact from us in return other services or contributions. in this way the state is also subject to the malthusian law. it tends to pass the level of its means of existence, it grows great in proportion to these means, and these means consist of the people's substance. woe, then, to those nations who are unable to set bounds to the action of the government! liberty, private enterprise, wealth, thrift, independence, all will be wanting in such circumstances. for there is one circumstance especially which it is very necessary to mark--it is this: among the services which we demand from the government, the principal one is security. to ensure this there is needed a force which is capable of overcoming all other forces, individual or collective, internal or external, which can be brought against it. combined with that unfortunate disposition, which we discover in men to live at other people's expense, there is here a danger which is self-evident. just consider on what an immense scale, as we learn from history, spoliation has been exercised through the abuse and excess of the powers of government. consider what services have been rendered to the people, and what services the public powers have exacted from them, among the assyrians, the babylonians, egyptians, romans, persians, turks, chinese, russians, english, spaniards, frenchmen. imagination is startled at the enormous disproportion. at length, representative government has been instituted, and we should have thought, _a priori_, that these disorders would have disappeared as if by enchantment. in fact, the principle of representative government is this: "the people themselves, by their representatives, are to decide on the nature and extent of the functions which they judge it right to regard as public services, and the amount of remuneration to be attached to such services." the tendency to appropriate the property of others, and the tendency to defend that property, being thus placed in opposite scales, we should have thought that the second would have outweighed the first. i am convinced that this is what must ultimately happen, but it has not happened hitherto. why? for two very simple reasons. governments have had too much, and the people too little, sagacity. governments are very skilful. they act with method and consistency, upon a plan well arranged, and constantly improved by tradition and experience. they study men, and their passions. if they discover, for example, that they are actuated by warlike impulses, they stimulate this fatal propensity, and add fuel to the flame. they surround the nation with dangers through the action of diplomacy, and then they very naturally demand more soldiers, more sailors, more arsenals and fortifications; sometimes they have not even to solicit these, but have them offered; and then they have rank, pensions, and places to distribute. to meet all this, large sums of money are needed, and taxes and loans are resorted to. if the nation is generous, government undertakes to cure all the ills of humanity; to revive trade, to make agriculture flourish, to develop manufactures, encourage arts and learning, extirpate poverty, etc., etc. all that requires to be done is to create offices, and pay functionaries. in short, the tactics consist in representing restraints as effective services; and the nation pays, not for services, but for disservices. governments, assuming gigantic proportions, end by eating up half the revenues they exact. and the people, wondering at being obliged to work so hard, after hearing of inventions which are to multiply products _ad infinitum_.... continue always the same overgrown children they were before. while the government displays so much skill and ability, the people display scarcely any. when called upon to elect those whose province it is to determine the sphere and remuneration of governmental action, whom do they choose? the agents of the government. thus, they confer on the executive the power of fixing the limits of its own operations and exactions. they act like the _bourgeois gentilhomme_, who, in place of himself deciding on the number and cut of his coats, referred the whole thing--to his tailor. and when matters have thus gone on from bad to worse, the people at length have their eyes opened, not to the remedy--(they have not got that length yet)--but to the evil. to govern is so agreeable a business, that every one aspires to it. the counsellors of the people never cease telling them: we see your sufferings, and deplore them. it would be very different if we governed you. in the meantime, and sometimes for a long period, there are rebellions and _émeutes_. when the people are vanquished, the expense of the war only adds to their burdens. when they are victorious, the _personnel_ of the government is changed, and the abuses remain unreformed. and this state of things will continue until the people shall learn to know and defend their true interests--so that we always come back to this, that there is no resource but in the progress of public intelligence. certain nations seem marvellously disposed to become the prey of government spoliation; those especially where the people, losing sight of their own dignity and their own energy, think themselves undone if they are not _governed and controlled_ in everything. without having travelled very much, i have seen countries where it is believed that agriculture can make no progress unless experimental farms are maintained by the government; that there would soon be no horses but for the state _haras_; and that fathers of families would either not educate their children, or have them taught immorality, if the state did not prescribe the course of education, etc., etc. in such a country, revolutions succeed each other, and the governing powers are changed in rapid succession. but the governed continue nevertheless to be governed on the principle of mercy and compassion (for the tendency which i am here exposing is the very food upon which governments live), until at length the people perceive that it is better to leave the greatest possible number of services in the category of those which the parties interested exchange at _a price fixed by free and open bargaining_. we have seen that an exchange of services constitutes society; and it must be an exchange of good and loyal services. but we have shown also that men have a strong interest, and consequently an irresistible bent, to exaggerate the relative value of the services which they render. and, in truth, i can perceive no other cure for this evil but the free acceptance or the free refusal of those to whom these services are offered. whence it happens that certain men have recourse to the law in order that it may control this freedom in certain branches of industry. this kind of spoliation is called privilege or monopoly. mark well its origin and character. everybody knows that the services which he brings to the general market are appreciated and remunerated in proportion to their rarity. the intervention of law is invoked to drive out of the market all those who come to offer analogous services; or, which comes to the same thing, if the assistance of an instrument or a machine is necessary to enable such services to be rendered, the law interposes to give exclusive possession of it. this variety of spoliation being the principal subject of the present volume, i shall not enlarge upon it in this place, but content myself with one remark. when monopoly is an isolated fact, it never fails to enrich the man who is invested with it. it may happen, then, that other classes of producers, in place of waiting for the downfall of this monopoly, demand for themselves similar monopolies. this species of spoliation, thus erected into a system, becomes the most ridiculous of mystifications for everybody; and the ultimate result is, that each man believes himself to be deriving greater profit from a market which is impoverished by all. it is unnecessary to add, that this strange _régime_ introduces a universal antagonism among all classes, all professions, and all nations; that it calls for the interposition (constant, but always uncertain) of government action; that it gives rise to all the abuses we have enumerated; that it places all branches of industry in a state of hopeless insecurity; and that it accustoms men to rely upon the law, and not upon themselves, for their means of subsistence. it would be difficult to imagine a more active cause of social perturbation. but it may be said, why make use of this ugly term, spoliation? it is coarse, it wounds, irritates, and turns against you all calm and moderate men--it envenoms the controversy. to speak plainly, i respect the persons, and i believe in the sincerity of nearly all the partisans of protection; i claim no right to call in question the personal probity, the delicacy, the philanthropy, of any one whatsoever. i again repeat that protection is the fruit, the fatal fruit, of a common error, of which everybody, or at least the majority of men, are at once the victims and the accomplices. but with all this i cannot prevent things being as they are. figure diogenes putting his head out of his tub, and saying, "athenians, you are served by slaves. has it never occurred to you, that you thereby exercise over your brethren the most iniquitous species of spoliation?" or, again, figure a tribune speaking thus in the forum: "romans, you derive all your means of existence from the pillage of all nations in succession." justification. in saying so, they would only speak undoubted truth. but are we to conclude from this that athens and rome were inhabited only by bad and dishonest people, and hold in contempt socrates and plato, cato and cincinnatus? who could entertain for a moment any such thought? but these great men lived in a social medium which took away all consciousness of injustice. we know that aristotle could not even realize the idea of any society existing without slavery. slavery in modern times has existed down to our own day without exciting many scruples in the minds of planters. armies serve as the instruments of great conquests, that is to say, of great spoliations. but that is not to say that they do not contain multitudes of soldiers and officers personally of as delicate feelings as are usually to be found in industrial careers, if not indeed more so; men who would blush at the very thought of anything dishonest, and would face a thousand deaths rather than stoop to any meanness. we must not blame individuals, but rather the general movement which carries them along, and blinds them to the real state of the case; a movement for which society at large is responsible. the same thing holds of monopoly. i blame the system, and not individuals--society at large, and not individual members of society. if the greatest philosophers have been unable to discover the iniquity of slavery, how much more easily may agriculturists and manufacturers have been led to take a wrong view of the nature and effects of a system of restriction! ii. two principles of morality. having reached, if he has reached, the end of the last chapter, i fancy i hear the reader exclaim: "well, are we wrong in reproaching economists with being dry and cold? what a picture of human nature! what! is spoliation, then, to be regarded as an inevitable, almost normal, force, assuming all forms, at work under all pretexts, by law and without law, jobbing and abusing things the most sacred, working on feebleness and credulity by turns, and making progress just in proportion as these are prevalent! is there in the world a more melancholy picture than this?" the question is not whether the picture be melancholy, but whether it is true. history will tell us. it is singular enough that those who decry political economy (or _economisme_, as they are pleased to call it), because that science studies man and the world as they are, are themselves much further advanced in pessimism, at least as regards the past and the present, than the economists whom they disparage. open their books and their journals; and what do you find? bitterness, hatred of society, carried to such a pitch that the very word civilization is in their eyes the synonym of injustice, dis-order, and anarchy. they go the length even of denouncing liberty, so little confidence have they in the development of the human race as the natural result of its organization. liberty! it is liberty, as they think, which is impelling us nearer and nearer to ruin. true, these writers are optimists in reference to the future. for if the human race, left to itself, has pursued a wrong road for six thousand years, a discoverer has appeared, who has pointed out the true way of safety; and however little the flock may regard the pastor's crook, they will be infallibly led towards the promised land, where happiness, without any effort on their part, awaits them, and where order, security, and harmony are the cheap reward of improvidence. the human race have only to consent to these reformers changing (to use rousseau's expression) _its physical and moral constitution_. it is not the business of political economy to inquire what society might have become had god made man otherwise than he has been pleased to make him. it may perhaps be a subject of regret that in the beginning, providence should have forgotten to call to its counsels some of our modern _organisateurs_. and as the celestial mechanism would have been very differently constructed had the creator consulted alphonsus the wise, in the same way had he only taken the advice of fourrier, the social order would have had no resemblance to that in which we are forced to breathe, live, and move. but since we are here--since _in eo vivimus, movemur, et minus_--all we have to do is to study and make ourselves acquainted with the laws of the social order in which we find ourselves, especially if its amelioration depends essentially on our knowledge of these laws. we cannot prevent the human heart from being the seat of insatiable desires. we cannot so order it that these desires should be satisfied without labour. we cannot so order it that man should not have as much repugnance to labour as desire for enjoyment. we cannot so order it that from this organization there should not result a perpetual effort on the part of certain men to increase their own share of enjoyments at the expense of others; throwing over upon them, by force or cunning, the labour and exertion which are the necessary condition of such enjoyments being obtained. it is not for us to go in the face of universal history, or stifle the voice of the past, which tells us that such has been the state of things from the beginning. we cannot deny that war, slavery, thraldom, priestcraft, government abuses, privileges, frauds of every kind, and monopolies, have been the incontestable and terrible manifestations of these two sentiments combined in the heart of man--_desire of enjoyments, and repugnance to fatigue_. _in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread_. yes, but every one desires to have the greatest possible quantity of bread, with the least possible amount of sweat. such is the testimony of history. but let us be thankful that history also shows us that the diffusion of enjoyments and of efforts has a tendency to become more and more equal among men. unless we shut our eyes to the light of the sun, we must admit that society has in this respect made progress. if this be so, there must be in society a natural and providential force, a law which repels more and more the principle of dishonesty, and realizes more and more the principle of justice. we maintain that this force exists in society, and that god has placed it there. if it did not exist, we should be reduced, like utopian dreamers, to seek for it in artificial arrangements, in arrangements which imply a previous alteration in the physical and moral constitution of man; or rather, we should conclude that the search was useless and vain, for the simple reason that we cannot understand the action of a lever without its fulcrum. let us try, then, to describe the beneficent force which tends gradually to surmount the mischievous and injurious force to which we have given the name of spoliation, and the presence of which is only too well explained by reasoning, and established by experience. every injurious or hurtful act has necessarily two terms: the point whence it comes, and the point to which it tends--the _terminus a quo, and the terminus ad quern_--the man who acts, and the man acted upon; or, in the language of the schoolmen, the _agent and the patient_. we may be protected, then, from an injurious act in two ways: by the voluntary abstention of the agent; or by the resistance of the patient. these two moral principles, far from running counter to each other, concur in their action, namely, the religious or philosophical moral principle, and the moral principle which i shall venture to term economic. the religious moral principle, in order to ensure the suppression of an injurious act, addresses its author, addresses man in his capacity of agent, and says to him: "amend your life; purify your conduct; cease to do evil; learn to do well; subdue your passions; sacrifice self-interest; oppress not your neighbour, whom it is your duty to love and assist; first of all, be just, and be charitable afterwards." this species of moral principle will always be esteemed the most beautiful and touching, that which best displays the human race in its native majesty, which will be most extolled by the eloquent, and call forth the greatest amount of admiration and sympathy. the economic moral principle aspires at attaining the same result; but addresses man more especially in the capacity of patient. it points out to him the effects of human actions, and by that simple explanation, stimulates him to react against those who injure him, and honour those who are useful to him. it strives to disseminate among the oppressed masses enough of good sense, information, and well-founded distrust, to render oppression more and more difficult and dangerous. we must remark, too, that the economic principle of morality does not fail to act likewise on the oppressor. an injurious act is productive of both good and evil; evil for the man who is subject to it, and good for the man who avails himself of it; without which indeed it would not have been thought of. but the good and the evil are far from compensating each other. the sum total of evil always and necessarily preponderates over the good; because the very fact that oppression is present entails a loss of power, creates dangers, provokes reprisals, and renders, costly precautions necessary. the simple explanation of these effects, then, not only provokes reaction on the part of the oppressed, but brings over to the side of justice all whose hearts are not perverted, and disturbs the security of the oppressors themselves. but it is easy to understand that this economic principle of morality, which is rather virtual than formal; which is only, after all, a scientific demonstration, which would lose its efficacy if it changed its character; which addresses itself not to the heart, but to the intellect; which aims at convincing rather than persuading; which does not give advice, but furnishes proofs; whose mission is not to touch the feelings, but enlighten the judgment, which obtains over vice no other victory than that of depriving it of support; it is easy, i say, to understand why this principle of morality should be accused of being dry and prosaic. the reproach is well founded in itself, without being just in its application. it just amounts to saying that political economy does not discuss everything, that it does not comprehend everything--that it is not, in short, universal science. but who ever claimed for it this character, or put forward on its behalf so exorbitant a pretension? the accusation would be well founded only if political economy presented its processes as exclusive, and had the presumption, if we may so speak, to deny to philosophy and religion their own proper and peculiar means of working for the cultivation and improvement of man. let us admit, then, the simultaneous action of morality, properly so called, and of political economy; the one branding the injurious act in its motive, and exposing its unseemliness, the other discrediting it in our judgment, by a picture of its effects. let us admit even that the triumph of the religious moralist, when achieved, is more beautiful, more consoling, more fundamental but we must at the same time acknowledge that the triumph of the economist is more easy and more certain. in a few lines, which are worth many large volumes, j. b. say has said that, to put an end to the disorder introduced into an honourable family by hypocrisy there are only two alternatives: to _reform tartuffe, or sharpen the wits of orgon_. molière, that great painter of the human heart, appears constantly to have regarded the second of these processes as the more efficacious. it is the same thing in real life, and on the stage of the world. tell me what cæsar did, and i will tell you what the character was of the romans of his time. tell me what modern diplomacy accomplishes, and i will tell you what is the moral condition of the nations among whom it is exercised. we should not be paying nearly two milliards [£ , , sterling] of taxes, if we did not empower those who live upon them to vote them. we should not have been landed in all the difficulties and charges to which the african question has given rise, had we had our eyes open to the fact that _two and two make four, in political economy, as well as in arithmetic_. m. guizot would not have felt himself authorized to say that _france is rich enough to pay for her glory_, if france had never been smitten with the love of false glory. the same statesman would never have ventured to say that liberty is too precious a thing for france to stand higgling about its price, had france only reflected that a _heavy budget and liberty are incompatible_. it is not by monopolists, but by their victims, that monopolies are maintained. in the matter of elections, it is not because there are parties who offer bribes that there are parties open to receive them, but the contrary; and the proof of this is, that it is the parties who receive the bribes who, in the long run, defray the cost of corruption. is it not their business to put an end to the practice? let the religious principle of morality, if it can, touch the hearts of the tartuffes, the cæsars, the planters of colonies, the sinecurists, the monopolists, etc. the clear duty of political economy is to enlighten their dupes. of these two processes, which exercises the more efficacious influence on social progress? i feel it almost unnecessary to say, that i believe it is the second; and i fear we can never exempt mankind from the necessity of learning first of all _defensive morality_. after all i have heard and read and observed, i have never yet met with an instance of an abuse which had been in operation on a somewhat extensive scale, put an end to by the voluntary renunciation of those who profit by it. on the other hand, i have seen many abuses put down by the determined resistance of those who suffered from them. to expose the effects of abuses, then, is the surest means of putting an end to them. and this holds especially true of abuses like the policy of restriction, which, whilst inflicting real evils on the masses, are productive of nothing to those who imagine they profit by them but illusion and deception! after all, can the kind of morality we are advocating of itself enable us to realize all that social perfection which the sympathetic nature of the soul of man and its noble faculties authorize us to look forward to and hope for? i am far from saying so. assume the complete diffusion of defensive morality, it resolves itself simply into the conviction that men's interests, rightly understood, are always in accord with justice and general utility. such a society, although certainly well ordered, would not be very attractive. there would be fewer cheats simply because there would be fewer dupes. vice always lurking in the background, and starved, so to speak, for want of support, would revive the moment that support was restored to it. the prudence of each would be enforced by the vigilance of all; and reform, confining itself to the regulation of external acts, and never going deeper than the skin, would fail to penetrate men's hearts and consciences. such a society would remind us of one of those exact, rigorous, and just men, who are ready to resent the slightest invasion of their rights, and to defend themselves on all sides from attacks. you esteem them; you perhaps admire them; you would elect them as deputies; but you would never make them your friends. but the two principles of morality i have described, instead of running counter to each other, work in concert, attacking vice from opposite directions. whilst the economists are doing their part, sharpening the wits of the orgons, eradicating prejudices, exciting just and necessary distrust, studying and explaining the true nature of things and of actions, let the religious moralist accomplish on his side his more attractive, although more difficult, labours. let him attack dishonesty in a hand-to-hand fight; let him pursue it into the most secret recesses of the heart; let him paint in glowing colours the charms of beneficence, of self-sacrifice, of devotion; let him open up the fountains of virtue, where we can only dry up the fountains of vice. this is his duty, and a noble duty it is. but why should he contest the utility of the duty which has devolved upon us? in a society which, without being personally and individually virtuous, would nevertheless be well ordered through the action of the economic principle of morality (which means a knowledge of the economy of the social body), would not an opening be made for the work of the religious moralist? habit, it is said, is a second nature. a country might still be unhappy, although for a long time each man may have been unused to injustice through the continued resistance of an enlightened public. but such a country, it seems to me, would be well prepared to receive a system of teaching more pure and elevated. we get a considerable way on the road to good, when we become unused to evil. men can never remain stationary. diverted from the path of vice, feeling that it leads only to infamy, they would feel so much the more sensibly the attractions of virtue. society must perhaps pass through this prosaic state of transition, in which men practise virtue from motives of prudence, in order to rise afterwards to that fairer and more poetic region where such calculating motives are no longer wanted. iii. the two hatchets. _petition of jacques bonhomme, carpenter, to m. cunin-gridaine, minister of commerce_. monsieur le fabricant-ministre, i am a carpenter to trade, as was st joseph of old; and i handle the hatchet and adze, for your benefit. now, while engaged in hewing and chopping from morning to night upon the lands of our lord the king, the idea has struck me that my labour may be regarded as _national_, as well as yours. and, in these circumstances, i cannot see why protection should not visit my woodyard as well as your workshop. for, sooth to say, if you make cloths i make roofs; and both, in their own way, shelter our customers from cold and from rain. and yet i run after customers; and customers run after you. you have found out the way of securing them by hindering them from supplying themselves elsewhere, while mine apply to whomsoever they think proper. what is astonishing in all this? monsieur cunin, the minister of state, has not forgotten m. cunin, the manufacturer--all quite natural. but, alas! my humble trade has not given a minister to france, although practised, in scripture times, by far more august personages. and in the immortal code which i find embodied in scripture, i cannot discover the slightest expression which could be quoted by carpenters, as authorizing them to enrich themselves at the expense of other people. you see, then, how i am situated. i earn fifteen pence a day, when it is not sunday or holiday. i offer you my services at the same time as a flemish carpenter offers you his, and, because he abates a halfpenny, you give him the preference. but i desire to clothe myself; and if a belgian weaver presents his cloth alongside of yours, you drive him and his cloth out of the country. so that, being forced to frequent your shop, although the dearest, my poor fifteen pence go no further in reality than fourteen. nay, they are not worth more than thirteen! for in place of expelling the belgian weaver at your own cost (which was the least you could do), you, for your own ends, make me pay for the people you set at his heels. and as a great number of your co-legislators, with whom you are on a marvellously good footing, take each a halfpenny or a penny, under pretext of protecting iron, or coal, or oil, or corn, i find, when everything is taken into account, that of my fifteen pence, i have only been able to save seven pence or eight pence from pillage. you will no doubt tell me that these small halfpence, which pass in this way from my pocket to yours, maintain workpeople who reside around your castle, and enable you to live in a style of magnificence. to which i will only reply, that if the pence had been left with me, the person who earned them, they would have maintained workpeople in my neighbourhood. be this as it may, monsieur le ministre-fabricant, knowing that i should be but ill received by you, i have not come to require you, as i had good right to do, to withdraw the restriction which you impose on your customers. i prefer following the ordinary course, and i approach you to solicit a little bit of protection for myself. here, of course, you will interpose a difficulty. "my good friend," you will say, "i would protect you and your fellow-workmen with all my heart; but how can i confer customhouse favours on carpenter-work? what use would it be to prohibit the importation of houses by sea or by land?" that would be a good joke, to be sure; but, by dint of thinking, i have discovered another mode of favouring the children of st joseph; which you will welcome the more willingly, i hope, as it differs in nothing from that which constitutes the privilege which you vote year after year in your own favour. the means of favouring us, which i have thus marvellously discovered, is to prohibit the use of sharp axes in this country. i maintain that such a restriction would not be in the least more illogical or more arbitrary than the one to which you subject us in the case of your cloth. why do you drive away the belgians? because they sell cheaper than you. and why do they sell cheaper than you? because they have a certain degree of superiority over you as manufacturers. between you and a belgian, therefore, there is exactly the same difference as in my trade there would be between a blunt and a sharp axe. and you force me, as a tradesman, to purchase from you the product of the blunt hatchet? regard the country at large as a workman who desires, by his labour, to procure all things he has want of, and, among others, cloth. there are two means of effecting this. the first is to spin and weave the wool. the second is to produce other articles, as, for example, french clocks, paper-hangings, or wines, and exchange them with the belgians for the cloth wanted. of these two processes, the one which gives the best result may be represented by the sharp axe, and the other by the blunt one. you do not deny that at present, in france, we obtain a piece of stuff by the work of our own looms (that is the blunt axe) _with more labour_ than by producing and exchanging wines (that is the sharp axe). so far are you from denying this, that it is precisely because of this _excess of labour_ (in which you make wealth to consist) that you recommend, nay, that you _compel_ the employment of the worse of the two hatchets. now, only be consistent, be impartial, and if you mean to be just, treat the poor carpenters as you treat yourselves. pass a law to this effect: "_no one shall henceforth be permitted to employ any beams or rafters, but such as are produced and fashioned by blunt hatchets_." and see what will immediately happen. whereas at present we give a hundred blows of the axe, we shall then give three hundred. the work which we now do in an hour will then require three hours. what a powerful encouragement will thus be given to labour! masters, journeymen, apprentices! our sufferings are now at an end. we shall be in demand; and, therefore, well paid. whoever shall henceforth desire to have a roof to cover him must comply with our exactions, just as at present whoever desires clothes to his back must comply with yours. and should the theoretical advocates of free trade ever dare to call in question the utility of the measure, we know well where to seek for reasons to confute them your inquiry of is still to be had. with that weapon, we shall conquer; for you have there admirably pleaded the cause of restriction, and of blunt axes, which are in reality the same thing. iv. lower council of labour. "what! you have the face to demand for all citizens a right to sell, buy, barter, and exchange; to render and receive service for service, and to judge for themselves, on the single condition that they do all honestly, and comply with the demands of the public treasury? then you simply desire to deprive our workmen of employment, of wages, and of bread?" this is what is said to us. i know very well what to think of it; but what i wish to know is, what the workmen themselves think of it. i have at hand an excellent instrument of inquiry. not those upper councils of industry, where extensive proprietors who call themselves labourers, rich shipowners who call themselves sailors, and wealthy shareholders who pass themselves off for workmen, turn their philanthropy to account in a way which we all know. no; it is with workmen, who are workmen in reality, that we have to do--joiners, carpenters, masons, tailors, shoemakers, dyers, blacksmiths, innkeepers, grocers, etc., etc.,--and who, in my village, have founded a friendly society. i have transformed this friendly society, at my own hand, into a lower council of labour, and instituted an inquiry which will be found of great importance, although it is not crammed with figures, or inflated to the bulk of a quarto volume, printed at the expense of the state. my object was to interrogate these plain, simple people as to the manner in which they are, or believe themselves to be, affected by the policy of protection. the president pointed out that this would be infringing to some extent on the fundamental conditions of the association. for in france, this land of liberty, people who associate give up their right to talk politics--in other words, their right to discuss their common interests. however, after some hesitation, he agreed to include the question in the order of the day. they divided the assembly into as many committees as there were groups of distinct trades, and delivered to each committee a schedule to be filled up after fifteen days' deliberation. on the day fixed, the worthy president (we adopt the official style) took the chair, and there were laid upon the table (still the official style) fifteen reports, which he read in succession. the first which was taken into consideration was that of the tailors. here is an exact and literal copy of it:-- effects of protection.--report of the tailors. inconveniences. st, in consequence of the policy of protection, we pay dearer for bread, meat, sugar, firewood, thread, needles, etc., which is equivalent in our case to a considerable reduction of wages. d, in consequence of the policy of 'protection, our customers also pay dearer for everything, and this leaves them less to spend upon clothing; whence it follows that we have less employment, and, consequently, smaller returns. d, in consequence of the policy of protection, the stuffs which we make up are dear, and people on that account wear their clothes longer, or dispense with part of them. this, again, is equivalent to a diminution of employment, and forces us to offer our services at a lower rate of remuneration. advantages. none. note.--after all our inquiries, deliberations, and discussions, we have been quite unable to discover that in any respect whatever the policy of protection has been of advantage to our trade. here is another report:-- effects of protection.--report of the blacksmiths. inconveniences. st, the policy of protection imposes a tax upon us every time we eat, drink, or warm or clothe ourselves, and this tax does not go to the treasury. d, it imposes a like tax upon all our fellow-citizens who are not of our trade, and they, being so much the poorer, have recourse to cheap substitutes for our work, which deprives us of the employment we should otherwise have had. none. d, it keeps up iron at so high a price, that it is not employed in the country for ploughs, grates, gates, balconies, etc.; and our trade, which might furnish employment to so many other people who are in want of it, no longer furnishes employment to ourselves. th, the revenue which the treasury fails to obtain from commodities which are not imported is levied upon the salt we use, postages, etc. all the other reports (with which it is unnecessary to trouble the reader) are to the same tune. gardeners, carpenters, shoemakers, clogmakers, boatmen, millers, all give vent to the same complaints. i regret that there are no agricultural labourers in our association. their report would assuredly have been very instructive. but, alas! in our country of the landes, the poor labourers, protected though they be, have not the means of joining an association, and, having insured their cattle, they find they cannot themselves become members of a friendly society. the boon of protection does not hinder them from being the parias of our social order. what shall i say of the vine-dressers? what i remark, especially, is the good sense displayed by our villagers in perceiving not only the direct injury which the policy of protection does them, but the indirect injury, which, although in the first instance affecting their customers, falls back, _par ricochet_, upon themselves. this is what the economists of the _moniteur industriel_ do not appear to understand. and perhaps those men whose eyes a dash of protection has fascinated, especially our agriculturists, would be willing to give it up, if they were enabled to see this side of the question. in that case they might perhaps say to themselves, "better far to be self-supported in the midst of a set of customers in easy circumstances, than to be protected in the midst of an impoverished clientèle." for to desire to enrich by turns each separate branch of industry by creating a void round each in succession, is as vain an attempt as it would be for a man to try to leap over his own shadow. v. dearness-cheapness. i think it necessary to submit to the reader some theoretical remarks on the illusions to which the words dearness and cheapness give rise. at first sight, these remarks may, i feel, be regarded as subtle, but the question is not whether they are subtle or the reverse, but whether they are true. now, i not only believe them to be perfectly true, but to be well fitted to suggest matter of reflection to men (of whom there are not a few) who have sincere faith in the efficacy of a protectionist policy. the advocates of liberty and the defenders of restriction are both obliged to employ the expressions, dearness, cheapness. the former declare themselves in favour of cheapness with a view to the interest of the consumer; the latter pronounce in favour of dearness, having regard especially to the interest of the producer. others content themselves with saying, the producer and consumer are one and the same person; which leaves undecided the question whether the law should promote cheapness or dearness. in the midst of this conflict, it would seem that the law has only one course to follow, and that is to allow prices to settle and adjust themselves naturally. but then we are attacked by the bitter enemies of _laissez faire_. at all hazards they want the law to interfere, without knowing or caring in what direction. and yet it lies with those who desire to create by legal intervention an artificial dearness or an unnatural cheapness, to explain the grounds of their preference. the _onus probandi_ rests upon them exclusively. liberty is always esteemed good, till the contrary is proved; and to allow prices to settle and adjust themselves naturally, is liberty. but the parties to this dispute have changed positions. the advocates of dearness have secured the triumph of their system, and it lies with the defenders of natural prices to prove the goodness of their cause. on both sides, the argument turns on two words; and it is therefore very essential to ascertain what these two words really mean. but we must first of all notice a series of facts which are fitted to disconcert the champions of both camps. to engender dearness, the restrictionists have obtained protective duties, and a cheapness, which is to them inexplicable, has come to deceive their hopes. to create cheapness, the free-traders have occasionally succeeded in securing liberty, and, to their astonishment, an elevation of prices has been the consequence. for example, in france, in order to favour agriculture, a duty of per cent has been imposed on foreign wool, and it has turned out that french wool has been sold at a lower price after the measure than before it. in england, to satisfy the consumer, they lowered, and ultimately removed, the duty on foreign wool; and it has come to pass that in that country the price of wool is higher than ever. and these are not isolated facts; for the price of wool is governed by precisely the same laws which govern the price of everything else. the same result is produced in all analogous cases. contrary to expectation, protection has, to some extent, brought about a fall, and competition, to some extent, a rise of prices. when the confusion of ideas thence arising had reached its height, the protectionists began saying to their adversaries, "it is our system which brings about the cheapness of which you boast so much." to which the reply was, "it is liberty which has induced the dearness which you find so useful."* at this rate, would it not be amusing to see cheapness become the watch-word of the rue hauteville, and dearness the watchword of the rue choiseul? evidently there is in all this a misconception, an illusion, which it is necessary to clear up; and this is what i shall now endeavour to do. put the case of two isolated nations, each composed of a million of inhabitants. grant that, _coteris paribus_, the one possesses double the quantity of everything,--corn, meat, iron, furniture, fuel, books, clothing, etc.,--which the other possesses. it will be granted that the one is twice as rich as the other. and yet there is no reason to affirm that a difference in _actual money prices_** exists in the two countries. nominal prices may perhaps be higher in the richer country. it may be that in the united states everything is nominally dearer than in poland, and that the population of the former country should, nevertheless, be better provided with all that they need; whence we infer that it is not the nominal price of products, but their comparative abundance, which constitutes wealth. when, then, we desire to pronounce an opinion on the comparative merits of restriction and free-trade, we should not inquire which of the two systems engenders dearness or cheapness, but which of the two brings abundance or scarcity. * recently, m. duchâtel, who had formerly advocated free trade, with a view to low prices, said to the chamber: it would not be difficult for me to prove that protection leads to cheapness. **the expression, _prix absolus_ (absolute prices), which the author employs here and in chap. xi. of the first series (ante), is not, i think, used by english economists, and from the context in both instances i take it to mean _actual money prices;_ or what adam smith terms _nominal prices_,-- translator. for, observe this, that products being exchanged for each other, a relative scarcity of all, and a relative abundance of all, leave the nominal prices of commodities in general at the same point; but this cannot be affirmed of the relative condition of the inhabitants of the two countries. let us dip a little deeper still into this subject. when we see an increase and a reduction of duties produce effects so different from what we had expected, depreciation often following taxation, and enhancement following free trade, it becomes the imperative duty of political economy to seek an explanation of phenomena so much opposed to received ideas; for it is needless to say that a science, if it is worthy of the name, is nothing else than a faithful statement and a sound explanation of facts. now the phenomenon we are here examining is explained very satisfactorily by a circumstance of which we must never lose sight. dearness is due to two causes, and not to one only. the same thing holds of cheapness. it is one of the least disputed points in political economy that price is determined by the relative state of supply and demand. there are then two terms which affect price--supply and demand. these terms are essentially variable. they may be combined in the same direction, in contrary directions, and in infinitely varied proportions. hence the combinations of which price is the result are inexhaustible. high price may be the result, either of diminished supply, or of increased demand. low price may be the result of increased supply, or of diminished demand. hence there are two kinds of dearness, and two kinds of cheapness. there is a _dearness_ of an injurious kind, that which proceeds from a diminution of supply, for that implies scarcity, privation (such as has been felt this year* from the scarcity of corn); and there is a dearness of a beneficial kind, that which results from an increase of demand, for the latter presupposes the development of general wealth. * this was written in .--translator. in the same way, there is a _cheapness_ which is desirable, that which has its source in abundance; and an injurious cheapness, that has for its cause the failure of demand, and the impoverishment of consumers. now, be pleased to remark this; that restriction tends to induce, at the same time, both the injurious cause of dearness, and the injurious cause of cheapness: injurious dearness, by diminishing the supply, for this is the avowed object of restriction; and injurious cheapness, by diminishing also the demand; seeing that it gives a false direction to labour and capital, and fetters consumers with taxes and trammels. so that, as regards price, these two tendencies neutralize each other; and this is the reason why the restrictive system, restraining, as it does, demand and supply at one and the same time, does not in the long run realize even that dearness which is its object. but, as regards the condition of the population, these causes do not at all neutralize each other; on the contrary, they concur in making it worse. the effect of freedom of trade is exactly the opposite. in its general result, it may be that it does not realize the cheapness it promises; for it has two tendencies, one towards desirable cheapness through the extension of supply, or abundance; the other towards appreciable dearness by the development of demand, or general wealth. these two tendencies neutralize each other in what concerns nominal price, but they concur in what regards the material prosperity of the population. in short, under the restrictive system, in as far as it is operative, men recede towards a state of things, in which both demand and supply are enfeebled. under a system of freedom, they progress towards a state of things in which both are developed simultaneously, and without necessarily affecting nominal prices. such prices form no good criterion of wealth. they may remain the same whilst society is falling into a state of the most abject poverty, or whilst it is advancing towards a state of the greatest prosperity. we shall now, in a few words, show the practical application of this doctrine. a cultivator of the south of france believes himself to be very rich, because he is protected by duties from external competition. he may be as poor as job; but he nevertheless imagines that sooner or later he will get rich by protection. in these circumstances, if we ask him the question which was put by the odier committee in these words,-- "do you desire--yes or no--to be subject to foreign competition?" his first impulse is to answer "no," and the odier committee proudly welcome his response. however, we must go a little deeper into the matter. unquestionably, foreign competition--nay, competition in general--is always troublesome; and if one branch of trade alone could get quit of it, that branch of trade would for some time profit largely. but protection is not an isolated favour; it is a system. if, to the profit of the agriculturist, protection tends to create a scarcity of corn and of meat, it tends likewise to create, to the profit of other industries, a scarcity of iron, of cloth, of fuel, tools, etc.,--a scarcity, in short, of everything. now, if a scarcity of corn tends to enhance its price through a diminution of supply, the scarcity of all other commodities for which corn is exchanged tends to reduce the price of corn by a diminution of demand, so that it is not at all certain that ultimately corn will be a penny dearer than it would have been under a system of free trade. there is nothing certain in the whole process but this--that as there is upon the whole less of every commodity in the country, each man will be less plentifully provided with everything he has occasion to buy. the agriculturist should ask himself whether it would not be more for his interest that a certain quantity of corn and cattle should be imported from abroad, and that he should at the same time find himself surrounded by a population in easy circumstances, able and willing to consume and pay for all sorts of agricultural produce. suppose a department in which the people are clothed in rags, fed upon chesnuts, and lodged in hovels. how can agriculture flourish in such a locality? what can the soil be made to produce with a well-founded expectation of fair remuneration? meat? the people do not eat it. milk? they must content themselves with water. butter? it is regarded as a luxury. wool? the use of it is dispensed with as much as possible. does any one imagine that all the ordinary objects of consumption can thus be put beyond the reach of the masses, without tending to lower prices as much as protection is tending to raise them? what has been said of the agriculturist holds equally true of the manufacturer. our manufacturers of cloth assure us that external competition will lower prices by increasing the supply. granted; but will not these prices be again raised by an increased demand? is the consumption of cloth a fixed and invariable quantity? has every man as much of it as he would wish to have? and if general wealth is advanced and developed by the abolition of all these taxes and restrictions, will the first use to which this emancipation is turned by the population not be to dress better? the question,--the constantly-recurring question,--then, is not to find out whether protection is favourable to any one special branch of industry, but whether, when everything is weighed, balanced, and taken into account, restriction is, in its own nature, more productive than liberty. now, no one will venture to maintain this. on the contrary, we are perpetually met with the admission, "you are right in principle." if it be so, if restriction confers no benefit on individual branches of industry without doing a greater amount of injury to general wealth, we are forced to conclude that actual money prices, considered by themselves, only express a relation between each special branch of industry and industry in general, between supply and demand; and that, on this account, a remunerative price, which is the professed object of protection, is rather injured than favoured by the system. supplement.* * what follows appeared in the _libre Échange_ of st august .--editor. the article which we have published under the title of dearness, cheapness, has brought us several letters. we give them, along with our replies:-- mr editor,--you upset all our ideas. i endeavoured to aid the cause of free trade, and found it necessary to urge the consideration of cheapness. i went about everywhere, saying, "when freedom of trade is accorded, bread, meat, cloth, linen, iron, fuel, will go on falling in price." this displeased those who sell, but gave great pleasure to those who buy these commodities. and now you throw out doubts as to whether free trade will bring us cheapness or not. what, then, is to be gained by it? what gain will it be to the people if foreign competition, which may damage their sales, does not benefit them in their purchases? mr free-trader,--allow us to tell you that you must have read only half the article which has called forth your letter. we said that free trade acts exactly in the same way as roads, canals, railways, and everything else which facilitates communication by removing obstacles. its first tendency is to increase the supply of the commodity freed from duty, and consequently to lower its price. but by augmenting at the same time the supply of all other commodities for which this article is exchanged, it increases the demand, and the price by this means rises again. you ask what gain this would be to the people? suppose a balance with several scales, in each of which is deposited a certain quantity of the articles you have enumerated. if you add to the corn in one scale it will tend to fall; but if you add a little cloth, a little iron, a little fuel, to what the other scales contained, you will redress the equilibrium. if you look only at the beam, you will find nothing changed. but if you look at the people for whose use these articles are produced, you will find them better fed, clothed, and warmed. mr editor,--i am a manufacturer of cloth, and a protectionist. i confess that your article on dearness and cheapness has made me reflect. it contains something specious which would require to be well established before we declare ourselves converted. mr protectionist,--we say that your restrictive measures have an iniquitous object in view, namely, artificial dearness. but we do not affirm that they always realize the hopes of those who promote them. it is certain that they inflict on the consumer all the injurious consequences of scarcity. it is not certain that they always confer a corresponding advantage on the producer. why? because if they diminish the supply, they diminish also the demand. this proves that there is in the economic arrangement of this world a moral force, a _vis medieatrix_, which causes unjust ambition in the long run to fall a prey to self-deception. would you have the goodness, sir, to remark that one of the elements of the prosperity of each individual branch of industry is the general wealth of the community. the value of a house is not always in proportion to what it has cost, but likewise in proportion to the number and fortune of the tenants. are two houses exactly similar necessarily of the same value? by no means, if the one is situated in paris and the other in lower brittany. never speak of price without taking into account collateral circumstances, and let it be remembered that no attempt is so bootless as to endeavour to found the prosperity of parts on the ruin of the whole. and yet this is what the policy of restriction pretends to do. consider what would have happened at paris, for example, if this strife of interests had been attended with success. suppose that the first shoemaker who established himself in that city had succeeded in ejecting all others; that the first tailor, the first mason, the first printer, the first watchmaker, the first physician, the first baker, had been equally successful. paris would at this moment have been still a village of or inhabitants. it has turned out very differently. the market of paris has been open to all (excepting those whom you still keep out), and it is this freedom which has enlarged and aggrandized it. the struggles of competition have been bitter and long continued, and this is what has made paris a city of a million of inhabitants. the general wealth has increased, no doubt; but has the individual wealth of the shoemakers and tailors been diminished? this is the question you have to ask. you may say that according as the number of competitors increased, the price of their products would go on falling. has it done so? no; for if the supply has been augmented, the demand has been enlarged. the same thing will hold good of your commodity, cloth; let it enter freely. you will have more competitors in the trade, it is true; but you will have more customers, and, above all, richer customers. is it possible you can never have thought of this, when you see nine-tenths of your fellow-citizens underclothed in winter, for want of the commodity which you manufacture? if you wish to prosper, allow your customers to thrive. this is a lesson which you have* been very long in learning. when it is thoroughly learnt, each man will seek his own interest in the general good; and then jealousies between man and man, town and town, province and province, nation and nation, will no longer trouble the world. vi. to artisans and workmen. many journals have attacked me in your presence and hearing. perhaps you will not object to read my defence? i am not suspicious. when a man writes or speaks, i take for granted that he believes what he says. and yet, after reading and re-reading the journals to which i now reply, i seem unable to discover any other than melancholy tendencies. our present business is to inquire which is more favourable to your interests,--liberty or restriction. i believe that it is liberty,--they believe that it is restriction. it is for each party to prove his own thesis. was it necessary to insinuate that we free-traders are the agents of england, of the south of france, of the government? on this point, you see how easy recrimination would be. we are the agents of england, they say, because some of us employ the words meeting and free-trader! and do they not make use of the words drawback and budget? we, it would seem, imitate cobden and the english democracy! and do they not parody lord george bentinck and the british aristocracy? we borrow from perfidious albion the doctrine of liberty! and do they not borrow from the same source the quibbles of protection? we follow the lead of bordeaux and the south! and do they not avail themselves of the cupidity of lille and the north? we favour the secret designs of the ministry, whose object is to divert public attention from their real policy! and do they not act in the interest of the civil list, which profits most of all from the policy of protection? you see, then, very clearly, that if we did not despise this war of disparagement, arms would not be wanting to carry it on. but this is beside the question. the question, and we must never lose sight of it, is this: _whether is it better for the working classes to be free, or not to be free to purchase foreign commodities?_ workmen! they tell you that "if you are free to purchase from the foreigner those things which you now produce yourselves, you will cease to produce them; you will be without employment, without wages, and without bread; it is therefore for your own good to restrain your liberty." this objection returns upon us under two forms:--they say, for example, "if we clothe ourselves with english cloth; if we make our ploughs of english iron; if we cut our bread with english knives; if we wipe our hands with english towels,--what will become of french workmen, what will become of national labour?" tell me, workmen! if a man should stand on the quay at boulogne, and say to every englishman who landed, "if you will give me these english boots, i will give you this french hat;" or, "if you will give me that english horse, i will give you this french tilbury;" or ask him, "will you exchange that machine made at birmingham, for this clock made at paris?" or, again, "can you arrange to barter this newcastle coal against this champagne wine?" tell me whether, assuming this man to make his proposals with discernment, any one would be justified in saying that our national labour, taken in the aggregate, would suffer in consequence? nor would it make the slightest difference in this respect were we to suppose twenty such offers to be made in place of one, or a million such barters to be effected in place of four; nor would it in any respect alter the case were we to assume the intervention of merchants and money, whereby such transactions would be greatly facilitated and multiplied. now, when one country buys from another wholesale, to sell again in retail, or buys in retail, to sell again in the lump, if we trace the transaction to its ultimate results, we shall always find that _commerce resolves itself into barter, products for products, services for services. if, then, barter does no injury to national labour, since it implies as much national labour given as foreign labour received, it follows that a hundred thousand millions of such acts of barter would do as little injury as one_. but who would profit? you will ask. the profit consists in turning to most account the resources of each country, so that the same amount of labour shall yield everywhere a greater amount of satisfactions and enjoyments. there are some who in your case have recourse to a singular system of tactics. they begin by admitting the superiority of the free to the prohibitive system, in order, doubtless, not to have the battle to fight on this ground. then they remark that the transition from one system to another is always attended with some displacement of labour. lastly, they enlarge on the sufferings, which, in their opinion, such displacements must always entail. they exaggerate these sufferings, they multiply them, they make them the principal subject of discussion, they present them as the exclusive and definitive result of reform, and in this way they endeavour to enlist you under the banners of monopoly. this is just the system of tactics which has been employed to defend every system of abuse; and one thing i must plainly avow, that it is this system of tactics which constantly embarrasses those who advocate reforms, even those most useful to the people. you will soon see the reason of this. when an abuse has once taken root, everything is arranged on the assumption of its continuance. some men depend upon it for subsistence, others depend upon them, and so on, till a formidable edifice is erected. would you venture to pull it down? all cry out, and remark this--the men who bawl out appear always at first sight to be in the right, because it is far easier to show the derangements which must accompany a reform than the arrangements which must follow it. the supporters of abuses cite particular instances of sufferings; they point out particular employers who, with their workmen, and the people who supply them with materials, are about to be injured; and the poor reformer can only refer to the general good which must gradually diffuse itself over the masses. that by no means produces the same sensation. thus, when the question turns on the abolition of slavery. "poor men!" is the language addressed to the negroes, "who is henceforth to support you. the manager handles the lash, but he likewise distributes the cassava." the slaves regret to part with their chains, for they ask themselves, "whence will come the cassava?" they fail to see that it is not the manager who feeds them, but their own labour--which feeds both them and the manager. when they set about reforming the convents in spain, they asked the beggars, "where will you now find food and clothing? the prior is your best friend. is it not very convenient to be in a situation to address yourselves to him?" and the mendicants replied, "true; if the prior goes away, we see very clearly that we shall be losers, and we do not see at all so clearly who is to come in his place." they did not take into account that if the convents bestowed alms, they lived upon them; so that the nation had more to give away than to receive. in the same way, workmen! monopoly, quite imperceptibly, saddles you with taxes, and then, with the produce of these taxes, finds you employment. and your sham friends exclaim, "but for monopolies, where would you find employment?" and you, like the spanish beggars, reply, "true, true; the employment which the monopolists find us is certain. the promises of liberty are of uncertain fulfilment." for you do not see that they take from you in the first instance the money with part of which they afterwards afford you employment. you ask, who is to find you employment? and the answer is, that you will give employment to one another! with the money of which he is no longer deprived by taxation, the shoemaker will dress better, and give employment to the tailor. the tailor will more frequently renew his _chaussure_, and afford employment to the shoemaker; and the same thing will take place in all other departments of trade. it has been said that under a system of free trade we should have fewer workmen in our mines and spinning-mills. i do not think so. but if this happened, we should necessarily have a greater number of people working freely and independently, either in their own houses or at out-door employment. for if our mines and spinning-factories are not capable of supporting themselves, as is asserted, without the aid of taxes levied from the _public at large_, the moment these taxes are repealed _everybody_ will be by so much in better circumstances; and it is this improvement in the general circumstances of the community which lends support to individual branches of industry. pardon my dwelling a little longer on this view of the subject; for my great anxiety is to see you all ranged on the side of liberty. suppose that the capital employed in manufactures yields per cent, profit. but mondor has an establishment in which he employs £ , , at a loss, instead of a profit, of per cent. between the loss and the gain supposed there is a difference of £ , . what takes place? a small tax of £ , is coolly levied from the public, and handed over to mondor. you don't see it, for the thing is skilfully disguised. it is not the tax-gatherer who waits upon you to demand your share of this burden; but you pay it to mondor, the ironmaster, every time that you purchase your trowels, hatchets, and planes. then they tell you that unless you pay this tax, mondor will not be able to give employment; and his workmen, james and john, must go without work. and yet, if they gave up the tax, it would enable you to find employment for one another, independently of mondor. and then, with a little patience, after this smooth pillow of protection has been taken from under his head, mondor, you may depend upon it, will set his wits to work, and contrive to convert his loss into a profit, and james and john will not be sent away, in which case there will be profit for everybody. you may still rejoin, "we allow that, after the reform, there will be more employment, upon the whole, than before; in the meantime, james and john are starving." to which i reply: st, that when labour is only displaced, to be augmented, a man who has a head and hands is seldom left long in a state of destitution. d, there is nothing to hinder the state's reserving a fund to meet, during the transition, any temporary want of employment, in which, however, for my own part, i do not believe. d, if i do not misunderstand the workmen, they are quite prepared to encounter any temporary suffering necessarily attendant on a transfer of labour from one department to another, by which the community are more likely to be benefited and have justice done them. i only wish i could say the same thing of their employers! what! will it be said that because you are workmen you are for that reason unintelligent and immoral? your pretended friends seem to think so. is it not surprising that in your hearing they should discuss such a question, talking exclusively of wages and profits without ever once allowing the word justice to pass their lips? and yet they know that restriction is unjust. why have they not the courage to admit it, and say to you, "workmen! an iniquity prevails in this country, but it is profitable to you, and we must maintain it." why? because they know you would disclaim it. it is not true that this injustice is profitable to you. give me your attention for a few moments longer, and then judge for yourselves. what is it that we protect in france? things which are produced on a great scale by rich capitalists and in large establishments, as iron, coal, cloth, and textile fabrics; and they tell you that this is done, not in the interest of employers, but in yours, and in order to secure you employment. and yet whenever _foreign labour_ presents itself in our markets, in such a shape that it may be injurious to you, but advantageous for your employers, it is allowed to enter without any restriction being imposed. are there not in paris thirty thousand germans who make clothes and shoes? why are they permitted to establish themselves alongside of you while the importation of cloth is restricted? because cloth is manufactured in grand establishments which belong to manufacturing legislators. but clothes are made by workmen in their own houses. in converting wool into cloth, these gentlemen desire to have no competition, because that is their trade; but in converting cloth into coats, they allow it, because that is your trade. in making our railways, an embargo was laid on english rails, but english workmen were brought over. why was this? simply because english rails came into competition with the iron produced in our great establishments, while the english labourers were only your rivals. we have no wish that german tailors and english navvies should be kept out of france. what we ask is, that the entry of cloth and rails should be left free. we simply demand justice and equality before the law, for all. it is a mockery to tell us that customs restrictions are imposed for your benefit. tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, shopkeepers, grocers, watchmakers, butchers, bakers, dressmakers! i defy you all to point out a single way in which restriction is profitable to you, and i shall point out, whenever you desire it, four ways in which it is hurtful to you. and, after all, see how little foundation your journalists have for attributing self-abnegation to the monopolists. i may venture to denominate the rate of wages which settles and establishes itself naturally under a regime of freedom, the _natural rate of wages_. when you affirm, therefore, that restriction is profitable to you, it is tantamount to affirming that it adds an _overplus to your natural_ wages. now, a surplus of wages beyond the natural rate must come from some quarter or other; it does not fall from the skies, but comes from those who pay it. you are landed, then, in this conclusion by your pretended friends, that the policy of protection has been introduced in order that the interests of capitalists should be sacrificed to those of the workmen. do you think this probable? where is your place, then, in the chamber of peers? when did you take your seat in the palais bourbon? who has consulted you? and where did this idea of establishing a policy of protection take its rise? i think i hear you answer, "it is not we who have established it. alas! we are neither peers, nor deputies, nor councillors of state. the capitalists have done it all." verily, they must have been in a good humour that day! what! these capitalists have made the law; they have established a policy of prohibition for the express purpose of enabling you to profit at their expense! but here is something stranger still. how does it come to pass that your pretended friends, who hold forth to you on the goodness, the generosity, and the self-abnegation of capitalists, never cease condoling with you on your being deprived of your political rights? from their point of view, i would ask what you could make of such rights if you had them? the capitalists have a monopoly of legislation;--granted. by means of this monopoly, they have adjudged themselves a monopoly of iron, of cloth, of textile fabrics, of coal, of wood, of meat,--granted likewise. but here are your pretended friends, who tell you that in acting thus, capitalists have impoverished themselves, without being under any obligation to do so, in order to enrich you who have no right to be enriched! assuredly, if you were electors and deputies tomorrow, you could not manage your affairs better than they are managed for you; you could not manage them so well. if the industrial legislation under which you live is intended for your profit, it is an act of perfidy to demand for you political rights; for these new-fashioned democrats never can get quit of this dilemma--the law made by the bourgeoisie either gives you more, or it gives you less than your natural wages. if that law gives you less, they deceive you, in soliciting you to maintain it. if it gives you more, they still deceive you, by inviting you to demand political rights at the very time when the bourgeoisie are making sacrifices for you, which, in common honesty, you could not by your votes exact, even if you had the power. workmen! i should be sorry indeed if this address should excite in your minds feelings of irritation against the rich. if self-interest, ill understood, or too apt to be alarmed, still maintains monopoly, let us not forget that monopoly has its root in errors which are common to both capitalists and labourers. instead of exciting the one class against the other, let us try to bring them together. and for that end what ought we to do? if it be true that the natural social tendencies concur in levelling inequalities among men, we have only to allow these tendencies to act, remove artificial obstructions which retard their operation, and allow the relations of the various classes of society to be established on principles of justice--principles always mixed up, in my mind at least, with the principle of liberty. vii. a chinese story. we hear a great outcry against the cupidity and the egotism of the age! for my own part, i see the world, paris especially, peopled with deciuses. open the thousand volumes, the thousand newspapers of all sorts and sizes, which the parisian press vomits forth every day on the country--are they not all the work of minor saints? how vividly they depict the vices of the times! how touching the tenderness they display for the masses! how liberally they invite the rich to share with the poor, if not the poor to share with the rich! how many plans of social reforms, social ameliorations, and social organizations! what shallow writer fails to devote himself to the wellbeing of the working classes? we have only to contribute a few shillings to procure them leisure to deliver themselves up to their humane lucubrations. and then they declare against the egotism and individualism of our age! there is nothing which they do not pretend to enlist in the service of the working classes--there is positively no exception, not even the customhouse. you fancy, perhaps, that the customhouse is merely an instrument of taxation, like the _octroi_ or the toll-bar? nothing of the kind. it is essentially an institution for promoting the march of civilization, fraternity, and equality. what would you be at? it is the fashion to introduce, or affect to introduce, sentiment and sentimentalism everywhere, even into the toll-gatherer's booth. the customhouse, we must allow, has a very singular machinery for realizing philanthropical aspirations. it includes an army of directors, sub-directors, inspectors, sub-inspectors, comptrollers, examiners, heads of departments, clerks, supernumeraries, aspirant-supernumeraries, not to speak of the officers of the active service; and the object of all this complicated machinery is to exercise over the industry of the people a negative action, which is summed up in the word obstruct. observe, i do not say that the object is to tax, but to obstruct. to prevent, not acts which are repugnant to good morals or public order, but transactions which are in themselves not only harmless, but fitted to maintain peace and union among nations. and yet the human race is so flexible and elastic that it always surmounts these obstructions. and then we hear of the labour market being glutted. if you hinder a people from obtaining its subsistence from abroad, it will produce it at home. the labour is greater and more painful, but subsistence must be had. if you hinder a man from traversing the valley, he must cross the hills. the road is longer and more difficult, but he must get to his journey's end. this is lamentable, but we come now to what is ludicrous. when the law has thus created obstacles, and when, in order to overcome them, society has diverted a corresponding amount of labour from other employments, you are no longer permitted to demand a reform. if you point to the obstacle, you are told of the amount of labour to which it has given employment. and if you rejoin that this labour is not created, but displaced, you are answered, in the words of the _esprit public_, "the impoverishment alone is certain and immediate; as to our enrichment, it is more than problematical." this reminds me of a chinese story, which i shall relate to you. there were in china two large towns, called _tchin_ and _tchan_. a magnificent canal united them. the emperor thought fit to order enormous blocks of stone to be thrown into it, for the purpose of rendering it useless. on seeing this, kouang, his first mandarin, said to him: "son of heaven! this is a mistake." to which the emperor replied: "kouang! you talk nonsense." i give you only the substance of their conversation. at the end of three months, the celestial emperor sent again for the mandarin, and said to him: "kouang, behold!" and kouang opened his eyes, and looked. and he saw at some distance from the canal a multitude of men at work. some were excavating, others were filling up hollows, levelling, and paving; and the mandarin, who was very knowing, said to himself, they are making a highway. when other three months had elapsed, the emperor again sent for kouang, and said to him: "look!" and kouang looked. and he saw the road completed, and from one end of it to the other he saw here and there inns for travellers erected. crowds of pedestrians, carts, palanquins, came and went, and innumerable chinese, overcome with fatigue, carried backwards and forwards heavy burdens from tchin to tchan, and from tchan to tchin; and kouang said to himself, it is the destruction of the canal which gives employment to these poor people. but the idea never struck him that their labour was simply _diverted from other employments_. three months more passed, and the emperor said to kouang: "look!" and kouang looked. and he saw that the hostelries were full of travellers, and that to supply their wants there were grouped around them butchers' and bakers' stalls, shops for the sale of edible birds' nests, etc. he also saw that, the artisans having need of clothing, there had settled among them tailors, shoemakers, and those who sold parasols and fans; and as they could not sleep in the open air, even in the celestial empire, there were also masons, carpenters, and slaters. then there were officers of police, judges, fakirs; in a word, a town with its faubourgs had risen round each hostelry. and the emperor asked kouang what he thought of all this. and kouang said that he never could have imagined that the destruction of a canal could have provided employment for so many people; for the thought never struck him that this was not employment created, but _labour diverted_ from other employments, and that men would have eaten and drank in passing along the canal as well as in passing along the highroad. however, to the astonishment of the chinese, the son of heaven at length died and was buried. his successor sent for kouang, and ordered him to have the canal cleared out and restored. and kouang said to the new emperor: "son of heaven! you commit a blunder." and the emperor replied: "kouang, you talk nonsense." but kouang persisted, and said: "sire, what is your object?" "my object is to facilitate the transit of goods and passengers between tchin and tchan, to render carriage less expensive, in order that the people may have tea and clothing cheaper." but kouang was ready with his answer. he had received the night before several numbers of the moniteur industriel, a chinese newspaper. knowing his lesson well, he asked and obtained permission to reply, and after having prostrated himself nine times, he said: "sire, your object is, by increased facility of transit, to reduce the price of articles of consumption, and bring them within reach of the people; and to effect that, you begin by taking away from them all the employment to which the destruction of the canal had given rise. sire, in political economy, nominal cheapness-" _the emperor_: "i believe you are repeating by rote." _kouang_: "true, sire; and it will be better to read what i have to say." so, producing the _esprit public_, he read as follows: "in political economy, the nominal cheapness of articles of consumption is only a secondary question. the problem is to establish an equilibrium between the price of labour and that of the means of subsistence. the abundance of labour constitutes the wealth of nations; and the best economic system is that which supplies the people with the greatest amount of employment. the question is not whether it is better to pay four or eight cash for a cup of tea, or five or ten tales for a shirt. these are puerilities unworthy of a thinking mind. nobody disputes your proposition. the question is whether it is better to pay dearer for a commodity you want to buy, and have, through the abundance of employment and the higher price of labour, the means of acquiring it; or whether, it is better to limit the sources of employment, and with them the mass of the national production--to transport, by improved means of transit, the objects of consumption, cheaper, it is true, but taking away at the same time from classes of our population the means of purchasing these objects even at their reduced price." seeing the emperor still unconvinced, kouang added, "sire, deign to give me your attention. i have still another quotation from the _moniteur industriel_ to bring under your notice." but the emperor said: "i don't require your chinese journals to enable me to find out that to create _obstacles_ is to divert and misapply labour. but that is not my mission. go and clear out the canal; and we shall reform the customhouse afterwards." and kouang went away tearing his beard, and appealing to his god, "o fo! take pity on thy people; for we have now got an emperor of the english school, and i see clearly that in a short time we shall be in want of everything, for we shall no longer require to do anything." viii. post hoc, ergo propter hoc. this is the greatest and most common fallacy in reasoning. real sufferings, for example, have manifested themselves in england.* * this was written in january .--translator. these sufferings come in the train of two other phenomena: st, the reformed tariff; d, two bad harvests in succession. to which of these two last circumstances are we to attribute the first? the protectionists exclaim: it is this accursed free-trade which does all the harm. it promised us wonderful things; we accepted it; and here are our manufactures at a standstill, and the people suffering: _cum hoc, ergo propter hoc_. free-trade distributes in the most uniform and equitable manner the fruits which providence accords to human labour. if we are deprived of part of these fruits by natural causes, such as a succession of bad seasons, free-trade does not fail to distribute in the same manner what remains. men are, no doubt, not so well provided with what they want; but are we to impute this to free-trade, or to the bad harvests? liberty acts on the same principle as insurances. when an accident, like a fire, happens, insurance spreads over a great number of men, and a great number of years, losses which, in the absence of insurance, would have fallen all at once upon one individual. but will any one undertake to affirm that fire has become a greater evil since the introduction of insurance? in , , and , the reduction of taxes began in england. at the same time the harvests were very abundant; and we are led to conclude that these two circumstances concurred in producing the unparalleled prosperity which england enjoyed during that period. in , the harvest was bad; and in , worse still. provisions rose in price; and the people were forced to expend their resources on first necessaries, and to limit their consumption of other commodities. clothing was less in demand, manufactories had less work, and wages tended to fall. fortunately, in that same year, the barriers of restriction were still more effectually removed, and an enormous quantity of provisions reached the english market. had this not been so, it is nearly certain that a formidable revolution would have taken place. and yet free-trade is blamed for disasters which it tended to prevent, and in part, at least, to repair! a poor leper lived in solitude. whatever he happened to touch, no one else would touch. obliged to pine in solitude, he led a miserable existence. an eminent physician cured him, and now our poor hermit was admitted to all the benefits of _free-trade, and had full liberty to effect exchanges_. what brilliant prospects were opened to him! he delighted in calculating the advantages which, through his restored intercourse with his fellow-men, he was able to derive from his own vigorous exertions. he happened to break both his arms, and was landed in poverty and misery. the journalists who were witnesses of that misery said, "see to what this liberty of making exchanges has reduced him! verily, he was less to be pitied when he lived alone." "what!" said the physician, "do you make no allowance for his broken arms? has that accident nothing to do with his present unhappy state? his misfortune arises from his having lost the use of his hands, and not from his having been cured of his leprosy. he would have been a fitter subject for your compassion had he been lame, and leprous into the bargain." _post hoc, ergo propter hoc_. beware of that sophism. ix. the premium theft. this little book of sophisms is found to be too theoretical, scientific, and metaphysical. be it so. let us try the effect of a more trivial and hackneyed, or, if you will, a ruder style. convinced that the public is duped in this matter of protection, i have endeavoured to prove it. but if outcry is preferred to argument, let us vociferate, "king midas has a snout, and asses' ears."* * "_auriculas asini mida rex habet_."--persius, sat. i. the line as given in the text is from dryden's translation.-- translator. a burst of plain speaking has more effect frequently than the most polished circumlocution. you remember oronte, and the difficulty which the _misanthrope_ had in convincing him of his folly.* alceste. on s'expose à jouer un mauvais personnage. oronte. est-ce que vous voulez me declarer par là que j'ai tort de vouloir.... alceste. je ne dis pas cela. mais.... oronte. est-ce que j'écris mal? alceste. je ne dis pas cela. mais enfin.... oronte. mais ne puis-je savoir ce que dans mon sonnet?... alceste. franchement, il est bon à mettre au cabinet. to speak plainly, good public! _you are robbed_. this is speaking bluntly, but the thing is very evident. (_c'est cru, mais c'est clair_). the words _theft, to steal, robbery_, may appear ugly words to many people. i ask such people, as harpagon asks elise,** "is it the word or the thing which frightens you?" * see molière's play of the misanthrope.--translator. ** see molière's play of oevare.--translator. "whoever has possessed himself fraudulently of a thing which does not belong to him is guilty of theft." (c. pen., art. .) to steal: to take by stealth or by force. (_dictionnaire de l'academie_.) thief: he who exacts more than is due to him. ( .) now, does the monopolist, who, by a law of his own making, obliges me to pay him francs for what i could get elsewhere for , not take from me fraudulently francs which belonged to me? does he not take them by stealth or by force? does he not exact more than is due to him? he takes, purloins, exacts, it may be said; but not by stealth or by force, which are the characteristics of theft. when our bulletins de contributions have included in them francs for the premium which the monopolist takes, exacts, or abstracts, what can be more stealthy for the unsuspecting? and for those who are not dupes, and who do suspect, what savours more of force, seeing that on the first refusal the tax-gather's bailiff is at the door? but let monopolists take courage. premium thefts, tariff thefts, if they violate equity as much as theft à l'américaine, do not violate the law; on the contrary, they are perpetrated according to law; and if they are worse than common thefts, they do not come under the cognizance of _la correctionnelle_. besides, right or wrong, we are all robbed or robbers in this business. the author of this volume might very well cry "stop thief!" when he buys; and with equal reason he might have that cry addressed to him when he sells;* and if he is in a situation different from that of many of his countrymen, the difference consists in this, that he knows that he loses more than he gains by the game, and they don't know it. if they knew it, the game would soon be given up. * possessing some landed property, on which he lives, he belongs to the protected class. this circumstance should disarm criticism. it shows that if he uses hard words, they are directed against the thing itself, and not against men's intentions or motives. nor do i boast of being the first to give the thing its right name. adam smith said, sixty years ago, that "when manufacturers hold meetings, we may be sure a plot is hatching against the pockets of the public." can we be surprised at this, when the public winks at it? well, then, suppose a meeting of manufacturers deliberating formally, under the title of _conseils généraux_. what takes place, and what is resolved upon? here is an abridged report of one of their meetings:-- "shipowner: our merchant shipping is at the lowest ebb. (dissent) that is not to be wondered at. i cannot construct ships without iron. i can buy it in the market of the world at francs; but by law the french ironmaster forces me to pay him francs, which takes francs out of my pocket. i demand liberty to purchase iron wherever i see proper. "ironmaster: in the market of the world i find freights at francs. by law i am obliged to pay the french shipowner ; he takes francs out of my pocket. he robs me, and i rob him; all quite right. "statesman: the shipowner has arrived at a hasty conclusion. let us cultivate union as regards that which constitutes our strength. if we give up a single point of the theory of protection, the whole theory falls to the ground. "shipowner: for us shipowners protection has been a failure. i repeat that the merchant marine is at its lowest ebb. "shipmaster: well, let us raise the _surtaxe_, and let the shipowner who now exacts francs from the public for his freight, charge . "a minister: the government will make all the use they can of the beautiful mechanism of the _surtaxe_; but i fear that will not be sufficient. "a government functionary: you are all very easily frightened. does the tariff alone protect you? and do you lay taxation out of account? if the consumer is kind and benevolent, the taxpayer is not less so. let us heap taxes upon him, and the shipowner will be satisfied. i propose a premium of five francs to be levied from the public taxpayers, to be handed over to the shipbuilder for each ton of iron he shall employ. "confused voices: agreed! agreed! an agriculturist: three francs premium upon the hectolitre of corn for me! a manufacturer: two francs premium on the yard of cloth for me! etc., etc. "the president: this then is what we have agreed upon. our session has instituted a system of _premiums_, and it will be to our eternal honour. what branch of industry can possibly henceforth be a loser, since we have two means, and both so very simple, of converting our losses into gains--the tariff and the premium? the sitting is adjourned." i really think some supernatural vision must have foreshadowed to me in a dream the near approach of the premium (who knows but i may have first suggested the idea to m. dupin?) when six months ago i wrote these words:-- "it appears evident to me that protection, without changing its nature or the effects which it produces, might take the form of a direct tax, levied by the state, and distributed in premiums of indemnification among privileged branches of industry." and after comparing a protective duty to a premium, i added, "i confess candidly my preference for the last system. it seems to me juster, more economical, and more fair. juster, because if society desires to make presents to some of its members, all ought to bear the expense; more economical, because it would save a great deal in the cost of collection, and do away with many of the trammels with which trade is hampered; more fair, because the public would see clearly the nature of the operation, and act accordingly."* * _sophismes economiques_, first series, ch. v. _ante_. since the occasion presents itself to us so opportunely, let us study this system of _plunder by premium_; for all we say of it applies equally to the system of plunder by tariff; and as the latter is a little better concealed, the direct may help us to detect and expose the indirect system of cheating. the mind will thus be led from what is simple to what is more complicated. but it may be asked, is there not a species of theft which is more simple still? undoubtedly; there is _highway robbery_, which wants only to be legalized, and made a monopoly of, or, in the language of the present day, _organized_. i have been reading what follows in a book of travels:-- "when we reached the kingdom of a., all branches of industry declared themselves in a state of suffering. agriculture groaned, manufactures complained, trade murmured, the shipping interest grumbled, and the government were at a loss what to do. first of all, the idea was to lay a pretty smart tax on all the malcontents, and afterwards to divide the proceeds among them after retaining its own quota; this would have been on the principle of the spanish lottery. there are a thousand of you, and the state takes a piastre from each; then by sleight of hand, it conveys away piastres, and divides the remaining in larger and smaller proportions among the ticket-holders. the gallant hidalgo who gets three-fourths of a piastre, forgetting that he had contributed a whole piastre, cannot conceal his delight, and rushes off to spend his fifteen reals at the alehouse. this is very much the same thing as we see taking place in france. but the government had overrated the stupidity of the population when it endeavoured to make them accept such a species of protection, and at length it lighted upon the following expedient. "the country was covered with a network of highroads. the government had these roads accurately measured; and then it announced to the agriculturist, 'all that you can steal from travellers between these two points is yours; let that serve as a _premium_ for your protection and encouragement.' afterwards it assigned to each manufacturer, to each shipowner, a certain portion of road, to be made available for their profit, according to this formula:-- dono tibi et concedo virtutem et puissantiam yolandi, pillandi, derobandi, filoutandi, et escroqtîïindi, impunè per totam istam viam." now it has come to pass that the natives of the kingdom of a. have become so habituated to this system, that they take into account only what they are enabled to steal, not what is stolen from them, being so determined to regard pillage only from the standpoint of the thief, that they look upon the sum total of individual thefts as a national gain, and refuse to abandon a system of protection, without which they say no branch of industry could support itself. you demur to this. it is not possible, you exclaim, that a whole people should be led to ascribe a redundancy of wealth to mutual robbery. and why not? we see that this conviction pervades france, and that we are constantly organizing and improving the system of _reciprocal robbery_ under the respectable names of premiums and protective tariffs. we must not, however, be guilty of exaggeration. as regards the mode of levying, and other collateral circumstances, the system adopted in the kingdom of a. may be worse than ours; but we must at the same time admit that, as regards the principle and its necessary consequences, there is not an atom of difference between these two species of theft; which are both organized by law for the purpose of supplementing the profits of particular branches of industry. remark also, that if _highway robbery_ presents some inconveniences in its actual perpetration, it has likewise some advantages which we do not find in _robbery by tariff_. for example, it is possible to make an equitable division among all the producers. it is not so in the case of customs duties. the latter are incapable of protecting certain classes of society, such as artisans, shopkeepers, men of letters, lawyers, soldiers, labourers, etc. it is true that the robbery by premium assumes an infinite number of shapes, and in this respect is not inferior to highway robbery; but, on the other hand, it leads frequently to results so whimsical and awkward that the natives of the kingdom of a. may well laugh at us. what the victim of a highway robbery loses, the thief gains, and the articles stolen remain in the country. but under the system of robbery by premium, what the tax exacts from the frenchman is conferred frequently on the chinese, on the hottentots, on the caffres, etc., and here is the way in which this takes place: a piece of cloth, we shall suppose, is worth francs at bordeaux. it cannot be sold below that price without a loss. it is impossible to sell it above that price because the competition of merchants prevents the price rising. in these circumstances, if a frenchman desires to have the cloth, he must pay francs, or want it. but if it is an englishman who wants the cloth, the government steps in, and says to the merchant, "sell your cloth, and we will get you francs from the taxpayers." the merchant who could not get more than francs for his cloth, sells it to the englishman for . this sum, added to the francs produced by the premium theft, makes all square. this is exactly the same case as if the taxpayers had given francs to the englishmen, upon condition of his buying french cloth at francs discount, at francs below the cost of production, at francs below what it has cost ourselves. the robbery by premium, then, has this peculiarity, that the people robbed are resident in the country which tolerates it, while the people who profit by the robbery are scattered over the world. verily, it is marvellous that people should persist in maintaining that _all which an individual steals from the masses is a general gain_. perpetual motion, the philosopher's stone, the quadrature of the circle, are antiquated problems; but the theory of _progress by plunder_ is still held in honour. _a priori_, we should have thought that, of all imaginable puerilities, it was the least likely to survive. some people will say, you are partisans, then, of the _laissez passer?_--economists of the school of smith and say? you do not desire the organization of labour. yes, gentlemen, organize labour as much as you choose, but have the goodness not to organize theft. another, and a more numerous, set keep repeating, premiums, tariffs, all that has been exaggerated. we should use them without abusing them. a judicious liberty, combined with a moderate protection, that is what discreet and practical men desire. let us steer clear of fixed principles and inflexible rules. this is precisely what the traveller tells us takes place in the kingdom of a. "highway robbery," say the sages, "is neither good nor bad in itself; that depends upon circumstances. all we are concerned with is to weigh things, and see our functionaries well paid for the work of weighing. it may be that we have given too great latitude to pillage; perhaps we have not given enough. let us examine and balance the accounts of each man employed in the work of pillage. to those who do not earn enough, let us assign a larger portion of the road. to those who gain too much, we must limit the days or months of pillage." those who talk in this way gain a great reputation for moderation, prudence, and good sense. they never aspire to the highest offices in the state. those who say, repress all injustice, whether on a greater or a smaller scale, suffer no dishonesty, to however small an extent, are marked down for _idéologues_, idle dreamers, who keep repeating over and over again the same thing. the people, moreover, find their arguments too clear, and why should they be expected to believe what is so easily understood? x. the taxgatherer. jacques bonhomme, a vinedresser. m. lasouche, taxgatherer. l.: you have secured twenty tuns of wine? j.: yes; by dint of my own skill and labour. l.: have the goodness to deliver up to me six of the best. j.: six tuns out of twenty! good heaven! you are going to ruin me. and, please, sir, for what purpose do you intend them? l.: the first will be handed over to the creditors of the state. when people have debts, the least thing they can do is to pay interest upon them. j.: and what becomes of the capital? l.: that is too long a story to tell you at present. one part used to be converted into cartridges, which emitted the most beautiful smoke in the world. another went to pay the men who had got crippled in foreign wars. then, when this expenditure brought invasion upon us, our polite friend, the enemy, was unwilling to take leave of us without carrying away some of our money as a _soutenir_, and this money had to be borrowed. j.: and what benefit do i derive from this now? l.: the satisfaction of saying-- que je suis fier d'être français quand je regarde la colonne! j.: and the humiliation of leaving to my heirs an estate burdened with a perpetual rent-charge. still, it is necessary to pay one's debts, whatever foolish use is made of the proceeds. so much for the disposal of one tun; but what about the five others? l.: one goes to support the public service, the civil list, the judges who protect your property when your neighbour wishes wrongfully to appropriate it, the gendarmes who protect you from robbers when you are asleep, the cantonnier who maintains the highways, the curé who baptizes your children, the schoolmaster who educates them, and, lastly, your humble servant, who cannot be expected to work exactly for nothing. j.: all right; service for service is quite fair, and i have nothing to say against it. i should like quite as well, no doubt, to deal directly with the rector and the schoolmaster on my own account; but i don't stand upon that. this accounts for the second tun--but we have still other four to account for. l.: would you consider two tuns as more than your fair contribution to the expense of the army and navy? j.: alas! that is a small affair, compared with what the two services have cost me already, for they have deprived me of two sons whom i dearly loved. l.: it is necessary to maintain the balance of power. j.: and would that balance not be quite as well maintained if the european powers were to reduce their forces by one-half or three -fourths? we should preserve our children and our money. all that is requisite is to come to a common understanding. l.: yes; but they don't understand one another. j.: it is that which fills me with astonishment, for they suffer from it in common. l.: it is partly your own doing, jacques bonhomme. j.: you are joking, mr taxgatherer. have i any voice in the matter? l.: whom did you vote for as deputy? j.: a brave general officer, who will soon be a marshal, if god spares him. l.: and upon what does the gallant general live? j.: upon my six tuns, i should think. l.: what would happen to him if he voted a reduction of the army, and of your contingent? j.: instead of being made a marshal, he would be forced to retire. l.: do you understand now that you have yourself.... j.: let us pass on to the fifth tun, if you please. l.: that goes to algeria. j.: to algeria! and yet they tell us that all the mussulmans are wine-haters, barbarians as they are! i have often inquired whether it is their ignorance of claret which has made them infidels, or their infidelity which has made them ignorant of claret. and then, what service do they render me in return for this nectar which has cost me so much toil? l.: none at all; nor is the wine destined for the mussulman, but for good christians who spend their lives in barbary. j.: and what service do they render me? l.: they make _razzias_, and suffer from them in their turn; they kill and are killed; they are seized with dysentery and sent to the hospital; they make harbours and roads, build villages, and people them with maltese, italians, spaniards, and swiss, who live upon your wine; for another supply of which, i can tell you, i will soon come back to you. j.: good gracious! that is too much. i shall give you a flat refusal a vinedresser who could be guilty of such folly would be sent to bicétre. to make roads over mount atlas--good heavens! when i can scarcely leave my house for want of roads! to form harbours in barbary, when the garonne is silted up! to carry off my children whom i love, and send them to torment the kabyles! to make me pay for houses, seed, and cattle, to be handed over to greeks and maltese, when we have so many poor people to provide for at home! l.: the poor! just so; they rid the country of the _trop plein_, and prevent a redundant population. j.: and we are to send after them to algeria the capital on which they could live at home! l.: but then you are laying the foundations of a great empire, you carry civilization into africa, thus crowning your country with immortal glory. j.: you are a poet, mr taxgatherer. i am a plain vinedresser, and i refuse your demand. l.: but think, that in the course of some thousands of years, your present advances will be recouped and repaid a hundredfold to your descendants. the men who direct the enterprise assure us that it will be so. j.: in the meantime, in order to defray the expense, they ask me first of all for one cask of wine, then for two, then for three, and now i am taxed by the tun! i persist in my refusal. l.: your refusal comes too late. your _representative_ has stipulated for the whole quantity i demand. j.: too true. cursed weakness on my part! surely, in making him my proxy, i was guilty of a piece of folly; for what is there in common between a general officer and a poor vinedresser? l.: oh, yes; there is something in common, namely, the wine, which he has voted to himself in your name. j.: you may well laugh at me, mr taxgatherer, for i richly deserve it. but be reasonable. leave me at least the sixth tun. you have already secured payment of the interest of the debt, and provided for the civil list and the public service, besides perpetuating the war in africa. what more would you have? l.: it is needless to higgle with me. communicate your views to monsieur le general, your representative. for the present, he has voted away your vintage. j.: confound the fellow! but tell me what you intend to make of this last cask, the best of my whole stock? stay, taste this wine. how ripe, mellow, and full-bodied it is! l.: excellent! delicious! it will suit mons. d., the cloth-manufacturer, admirably. j.: mons. d., the cloth-manufacturer? what do you mean? l.: that he will reap the benefit. j.: how? what? i'll be hanged if i understand you! l.: don't you know that mons. d. has set on foot a grand undertaking, which will prove most useful to the country, but which, when everything is taken into account, causes each year a considerable pecuniary loss? j.: i am sorry to hear it, but what can i do? l.: the chamber has come to the conclusion that, if this state of things continues, mons. d. will be under the necessity of either working more profitably, or of shutting up his manufacturing establishment altogether. j.: but what have these losing speculations of mons. d. to do with my wine? l.: the chamber has found out that, by making over to mons. d. some wine taken from your cellar, some corn taken from your neighbour's granaries, some money kept off the workmen's wages, the losses of that enterprising patriot may be converted into profits. j.: the recipe is as infallible as it is ingenious. but, zounds! it is awfully iniquitous. mons. d., forsooth, is to make up his losses by laying hold of my wine? l.: not exactly of the wine, but of its price. this is what we denominate _premiums of encouragement_, or bounties. don't you see the great service you are rendering to the country? j.: you mean to mons. d.? l.: to the country. mons. d. assures us that his manufacture prospers in consequence of this arrangement, and in this way he considers the country is enriched. he said so the other day in the chamber, of which he is a member. j.: this is a wretched quibble! a speculator enters into a losing trade, and dissipates his capital; and then he extorts from me and from my neighbours wine and corn of sufficient value, not only to repair his losses, but afford him a profit, and this is represented as a gain to the country at large. l.: your representative having come to this conclusion, you have nothing more to do but to deliver up to me the six tuns of wine which i demand, and sell the remaining fourteen tuns to the best advantage. j.: that is my business. l.: it will be unfortunate if you do not realize a large price j.: i will think of it. l.: the higher price will enable you to procure more of other things. j.: i am aware of that, sir. l.: in the first place, if you purchase iron to renew your ploughs and your spades, the law decrees that you must pay the ironmaster double what the commodity is worth. j.: yes, this is very consolatory. l.: then you have need of coal, of butchers' meat, of cloth, of oil, of wool, of sugar; and for each of these commodities the law makes you pay double. j.: it is horrible, frightful, abominable! l.: why should you indulge in complaints? you yourself, through your representative... j.: say nothing more of my representative. i am singularly represented, it is true. but they will not impose upon me a second time. i shall be represented by a good and honest peasant. l.: bah! you will re-elect the gallant general. j.: shall i re-elect him, to divide my wine among africans and manufacturers? l.: i tell you, you will re-elect him. j,: this is too much. i am free to re-elect him or not, as i choose. l.: but you will so choose. j.: let him come forward again, and he will find whom he has to deal with. l.: well, we shall see. farewell. i carry away your six tuns of wine, to be distributed as your friend, the general, has determined. xi. the utopian free-trader. "if i were but one of his majesty's ministers!... "well, what would you do?" "i should begin by--by--faith, by being very much at a loss. for it is clear i could only be a minister in consequence of having the majority in my favour; i could only have the majority in my favour by securing the popular suffrage; and i could attain that end, honestly at least, only by governing in accordance with public opinion. if i should attempt to carry out my own opinions, i should no longer have the majority; and if i lost the favour of the majority, i should be no longer one of his majesty's ministers." "but suppose yourself already a minister, and that you experience no opposition from the majority, what would you do?" "i should inquire on what side _justice_ lay." "and then?" "i should inquire on what side _utility_ lay." "and then?" "i should inquire whether justice and utility were in harmony, or ran counter to one another." "and if you found they were not in harmony?" "je dirais au roi philippe: reprenez votre portefeuille. la rime n'est pas riche et le style en est vieux; mais ne voyez-vous pas que cela vaut bien mieux, que ces transactions dont le bon sens murmure, et que l'honnêteté parle là toute pure." "but if you found that the just and the useful were one and the same thing?" "then i should go straight forward." "true; but to realize utility by means of justice, a third thing is needed." "what?" "possibility." "you granted me that." "when?" "just now." "how?" "in assuming that i had the majority on my side." "a most dangerous concession, i fear; for it implies that the majority see clearly what is just, see clearly what is useful, and see clearly that both are in perfect harmony." "and if they see clearly all this, good results will work themselves out, so to speak, of their own accord." "you always bring me back to this, that no reform is possible apart from the progress of general intelligence." "assuming this progress, every needed reform will infallibly follow." "true; but this presupposed progress is a work of time. suppose it accomplished, what would you do? i am anxious to see you actually and practically at work." "i should begin by reducing the rate of postage to a penny." "i have heard you speak of a halfpenny."* * see chap. xii. of _sophismes_, second series, _post_. "yes, but as i have other reforms in view, i should proceed prudently, in the first instance, to avoid any risk of a deficit." "fine prudence, to be sure! you have already landed yourself in a deficit of millions of francs." "then i should reduce the salt-tax to francs." "good. then you land yourself in a deficit of other thirty millions. you have doubtless invented a new tax?" "heaven forbid! and besides, i do not flatter myself with possessing an inventive genius." "it will be very necessary, however.... ah! i see. what was i thinking of? you intend simply to reduce the expenditure. i did not think of that." "you are not singular. i shall come to that; but for the present, that is not the resource on which i depend." "what! you are to diminish the revenue without reducing the expenditure, and withal avoid a deficit!" "yes; by diminishing other taxes at the same time." (here the interlocutor, raising the forefinger of the right hand to his forehead, tossed his head, as if beating about for ideas.) "by my faith! a most ingenious process. i pay over francs to the treasury; you relieve me to the extent of francs upon salt, and francs upon postages; and in order that the treasury may still receive francs, you relieve me to the extent of francs on some other tax." "exactly; i see you understand what i mean." "the thing seems so strange that i am not quite sure that i even heard you distinctly." "i repeat, i balance one _dégrèvement_ by another." "well, i happen to have a few minutes to spare, and i should like much to hear you explain this paradox." "here is the whole mystery. i know a tax which costs the taxpayer francs, and of which not one farthing ever reaches the treasury. i relieve you of one-half, and i see that the other half finds its way to the _hôtel des finances_." "truly you are an unrivalled financier. and what tax, pray, do i pay which does not reach the treasury?" "how much does this coat cost you?" " francs." "and if you procured the cloth from verviers, how much would it cost you?" " francs." "why, then, did you not order it from verviers?" "because that is forbidden." "and why is it forbidden?" "in order that the coat may cost instead of francs." "this prohibition, then, costs you francs." "undoubtedly." "and where do these francs go to?" "where should they go to, but into the pocket of the cloth-manufacturer?" "well, then, give me francs for the treasury, i will abrogate the prohibition, and you will still be a gainer of francs." "oh! i begin to follow you. the account with the treasury will then stand thus: the revenue loses francs upon salt, and upon postages, and gains francs upon cloth. the one balances the other." "and your own account stands thus: you gain francs upon salt, francs upon postages, and francs upon cloth." "total, francs. i like your plan; but what comes of the poor cloth-manufacturer?" "oh! i have not lost sight of him. i manage to give him compensation likewise by means of _dégrèvements_ which are profitable to the revenue; and what i have done for you as regards cloth, i do for him as regards wool, coals, machinery, etc., so that he is enabled to reduce his price without being a loser." "but are you sure that the one will balance the other?" "the balance will be in his favour. the francs which i enable you to gain upon cloth, will be augmented by the amount i enable you to save upon corn, meat, fuel, etc. this will amount to a large sum; and a similar saving will be realized by each of your millions of fellow-countrymen. in this way, you will find the means of consuming all the cloth produced at verviers and elbeuf. the nation will be better clothed; that is all." "i shall think over it; for all this, i confess, confuses my head somewhat." "after all, as regards clothing, the main consideration is to be clothed. your limbs are your own, and not the property of the manufacturer. to protect them from the cold is your business and not his! if the law takes his part against you, the law is unjust; and we have been reasoning hitherto on the hypothesis that what is unjust is injurious." "perhaps i make too free with you; but i beg you to complete the explanation of your financial plan." "i shall have a new law of customs." "in two volumes folio?" "no, in two articles." "for once, then, we may dispense with repeating the famous axiom, 'no one is supposed to be ignorant of the law'--_nul n'est cerné ignorer la loi_; which is a fiction. let us see, then, your proposed tariff." "here it is: "'art. st.--all imported merchandise shall pay a duty of per cent. _ad valorem_.'" "even raw materials?" "except those which are destitute of value." "but they are all possessed of value, less or more." "in that case they must pay duty, less or more." "how do you suppose that our manufacturers can compete with foreign manufacturers who have their raw materials free?" "the expenditure of the state being given, if we shut up this source of revenue, we must open another. that will not do away with the relative inferiority of our manufactures, and we shall have an additional staff of officials to create and to pay for." "true. i reason as if the problem were to do away with taxation, and not to substitute one tax for another. i shall think over it. what is your second article?" "'art. d.--all merchandise exported shall pay a duty of per cent, _ad valorem_.'" "good gracious! monsieur l'utopiste. you are going to get yourself pelted, and, if necessary, i myself will cast the first stone." "we have taken for granted that the majority are enlightened." "enlightened! can you maintain that export duties will not be onerous?" "all taxes are onerous; but this will be less so than others." "the carnival justifies many eccentricities. please to render plausible, if that be possible, this new paradox." "how much do you pay for this wine?" "one franc the litre." "how much would you have paid for it outside the barrier?" "half a franc." "what is the reason of this difference?" "ask the octroi, which has imposed a tax of half a franc upon it." "and who established the octroi?" "the commune of paris, to enable them to pave and light the streets." "it resolves itself, then, into an import duty. but if the neighbouring communes had erected the octroi for their profit, what would have been the consequence?" "i should not the less have paid one franc for wine worth half a franc, and the other half franc would have gone to pave and light montmartre and the batignoles." "so that, in effect, it is the consumer who pays the tax." "that is beyond all doubt." "then, in imposing an export duty, you make the foreigner contribute to your expenditure." "pardon me, that is _unjust_." "why? before any commodity can be produced in a country, we must presuppose as existing in that country education, security, roads, which are all things that cost money. why then should not the foreigner bear the charges necessary to the production of the commodity of which ultimately he is the consumer?" "that is contrary to received ideas." "not in the least. the last buyer must bear the whole cost of production, direct and indirect." "it is in vain that you argue on this subject. it is self-evident that such a measure would paralyze trade, and shut all markets against us." "this is a mistake. if you paid this tax over and above all others, you might be right. but if the millions levied by this means relieved the taxpayer to a corresponding extent of other burdens, you would reappear in the foreign market with all your advantages, and even with greater advantages, if this tax shall have given rise to less complication and expense." "i shall think over it. and now that we have put salt, postages, and customs duties on a new footing, does this end your projected reform?" "on the contrary, we are only beginning." "pray give me some account of your other utopian schemes." "we have already given up millions of francs on salt and postages. the customhouse affords compensation, but it gives also something far more precious." "and what is that, if you please?" "international relations founded on justice, and a probability of peace nearly equal to a certainty. i disband the army." "the whole army?" "excepting the special arms, which will be recruited voluntarily like all other professions. you thus see the conscription abolished." "be pleased, sir, to use the word recruitment." "ah! i had forgotten; how easy it is in some countries to perpetuate and hand down the most unpopular things by changing their names!" "thus, _droits réunis_ have become _contributions indirectes_." "and _gendarmes_ have taken the name of _gardes municipaux_." "in short, you would disarm the country on the faith of a utopian theory." "i said that i should disband the army--not that i would disarm the country. on the contrary, i intend to give it invincible force." "and how can you give consistency to this mass of contradictions?" "i should call upon all citizens to take part in the service." "it would be well worth while to dispense with the services of some of them, in order to enrol all." "you surely have not made me a minister in order to leave things as they are. on my accession to power, i should say, like richelieu, 'state maxims are changed.' and my first maxim, the one i should employ as the basis of my administration, would be this: every citizen must prepare for two things--to provide for his own subsistence, and to defend his country." "it appears to me, at first sight, that there is some show of common sense in what you say." "consequently, i should base the law of national defence on these two enactments: "'art. st.--every able-bodied citizen shall remain _sous les drapeaux_ for four years--namely, from to --for the purpose of receiving military instruction.'" "a fine economy, truly! you disband four hundred thousand soldiers to create ten millions." "listen to my second article: "'art. d.--unless it is proved that at years of age he knows perfectly the platoon drill.'" "nor do i stop here. it is certain that in order to get quit of four years' service, there would be a terrible emulation among our youth to learn the _par le flanc droit and the charge en douze temps_. the idea is whimsical." "it is better than that. for without bringing families to grief, without encroaching on equality, would it not secure to the country, in a simple and inexpensive manner, millions of defenders capable of setting at defiance all the standing armies of the world?" "really, if i were not on my guard, i should end with taking a serious interest in your conceits." _utopian free-trader getting excited_. "thank heaven! here is my budget relieved of millions. i suppress the octroi. i remodel indirect contributions. i..." "oh! monsieur l'utopiste!" _utopian free-trader getting more and more excited_. "i should proclaim freedom of worship, freedom of teaching, and new resources. i would buy up the railways, pay off the public debtr and starve out stockjobbers." "monsieur l'utopiste!" "set free from a multiplicity of cares, i should concentrate all the powers of government in the repression of fraud, and in the administration of prompt and cheap justice; i.... "monsieur l'utopiste, you undertake too many things; the nation will not support you!" "you have granted me a majority." "i withdraw it." "be it so. then i am no longer a minister, and my projects will continue to be what they were--_utopias_." xii. the salt-tax, rates of postage, and customhouse duties. we expected some time ago to see our representative machinery produce an article quite new, the manufacture of which had not as yet been attempted--namely, _the relief of the taxpayer_. all was expectation. the experiment was interesting, as well as new. the motion of the machine disturbed nobody. in this respect, its performance was admirable, no matter at what time, in what place, or under what circumstances it was set agoing. but as regarded those reforms which were to simplify, equalize, and lighten the public burdens, no one has yet been able to find out what has been accomplished. it was said: you shall soon see; wait a little; this popular result involves the labours of four sessions. the year gave us railways; is to give us the reduction of the salt-tax and of the rates of postage; in we are to have a reformation of the tariff and of indirect taxation. the fourth session is to be the jubilee of the taxpayer. men were full of hope, for everything seemed to favour the experiment. the _moniteur_ had announced that the revenue would go on increasing every quarter, and what better use could be made of these unlooked-for returns than to give the villager a little more salt to his _eau tiede_, and an additional letter now and then from the battle-field, where his son was risking his life? but what has happened? like the two preparations of sugar which are said to hinder each other from crystallizing, or the kilkenny cats, which fought so desperately that nothing remained of them but their tails, the two promised reforms have swallowed up each other. nothing remains of them but the tails; that is to say, we have _projets de lois, exposés des motifs_, reports, statistical returns, and schedules, in which we have the comfort of seeing our sufferings philanthropically appreciated and homeopathically reckoned up. but as to the reforms themselves, they have not crystallized. nothing has come out of the crucible, and the experiment has been a failure. the chemists will by-and-by come before the jury and explain the causes of the breakdown. one will say, "i proposed a postal reform; but the chamber wished first of all to rid us of the salt-tax, and i gave it up." another will say, "i voted for doing away with the salt-tax, but the minister had proposed a postal reform, and my vote went for nothing." and the jury, finding these reasons satisfactory, will begin the experiment of new on the same data, and remit the work to the same chemists. this proves that it would be well for us, notwithstanding the sources from which it is derived, to adopt the practice introduced half a century ago on the other side of the channel, of prosecuting only one reform at a time. it is slow, it is wearisome; but it leads to some result. here we have a dozen reforms on the anvil at the same time. they hustle one another, like the ghosts at the gate of oblivion, where no one enters. "ohimè! che lasso Î una a la volta, per carità." here is what jacques bonhomme said, in a dialogue with john bull, and it is worth being reported:-- jacques bonhomme, john bull. jacques bonhomme: oh! who will deliver me from this hurricane of reforms? my head is in a whirl. a new one seems to be invented every day: university reform, financial reform, sanitary reform, parliamentary reform, electoral reform, commercial reform, social reform, and, last of all, comes postal reform! john bull: as regards the last, it is so easy and so useful, as we have found by experience, that i venture to give you some advice upon the subject. jacques: we are told that postal reform has turned out ill in england, and that the exchequer has lost half a million. john: and has benefited the public by ten times that sum. jacques: no doubt of that. john: we have every sign by which the public satisfaction can be testified. the nation, following the lead of sir robert peel and lord john russell, have given rowland hill, in true british fashion, substantial marks of the public gratitude. even the poorer classes testify their satisfaction by sealing their letters with wafers bearing this inscription: "public gratitude for postal reform." the leaders of the anti-corn-law league have proclaimed aloud in their place in parliament that without cheap postage thirty years would have been required to accomplish their great undertaking, which had for object the removal of duties on the food of the poor. the officers of the board of trade have declared it unfortunate that the english coin does not admit of a still greater reduction! what more proofs would you have? jacques: but the treasury? john: do not the treasury and the public sail in the same boat? jacques: not quite. and then, is it quite clear that our postal system has need to be reformed? john: that is the question. let us see how matters now stand. what is done with the letters that are put into the post-office? jacques: the routine is very simple. the postmaster opens the letter-box at a certain hour, and takes out of it, say, a hundred letters. john: and then? jacques: then he inspects them one by one. with a geographical table before him, and a letter-weigher in his hand, he assigns each letter to its proper category, according to weight and distance. there are only eleven postal zones or districts, and as many degrees of weight. john: that constitutes simply combinations for each letter. jacques: yes; and we must double that number, because the letter may, or may not, belong to the _service rural_. john: there are, then, , things to be inquired into with reference to every hundred letters. and how does the postmaster then proceed? jacques: he marks the weight on one corner of the letter, and the postage in the middle of the address, by a hieroglyphic agreed upon at headquarters. john: and then? jacques: he stamps the letters, and arranges them in ten parcels corresponding with the other post-offices with which he is in communication. he adds up the total postages of the ten parcels. john: and then? jacques: then he enters the ten sums in a register, with counterfoils. john: and then? jacques: then he writes a letter to each of his ten correspondent postmasters, telling them with what sums he debits them. john: and if the letters are prepaid? jacques: then, i grant you, the service becomes somewhat complicated. he must in that case receive the letter, weigh it, and consign it to its proper category as before, receive payment and give change, select the appropriate stamp among thirty others, mark on the letter its number, weight, and postage; transcribe the full address, first in one register, then in a second, then in a third, then on a detached slip; wrap up the letter in the slip; send the whole, well secured by a string, to the correspondent postmaster; and enter each of these details in a dozen columns, selected from fifty other columns, which indicate the letter-bag in which prepaid letters are put. john: and all this for forty centimes ( d.)! jacques: yes, on an average. john: i see now that the despatch of letters is simple enough. let us see now what takes place on their arrival. jacques: the postmaster opens the post-bag. john: and then? jacques: he reads the ten invoices of his correspondents. john: and after that? jacques: he compares the totals of the invoices with the totals brought out by each of the ten parcels of letters. john: and after that? jacques: he brings the whole to a grand total to find out with what sum, _en bloc_, he is to debit each letter-carrier. john: and after that? jacques: after that, with a table of distances and letter-weigher in hand, he verifies or rectifies the postage of each letter. john: and after that? jacques: he enters in register after register, and in column after column, the greater or less results he has found. john: and after that? jacques: he puts himself in communication with the ten postmasters, his correspondents, to advise them of errors of or centimes (a penny or twopence). john: and then? jacques: he collects and arranges all the letters he has received, to hand them to the postman. john: and after that? jacques: he states the total postages that each postman is charged with. john: and after that? jacques: the postman verifies, or discusses, the signification of the hieroglyphics. the postman finally advances the amount, and sets out. john: go on. jacques: the postman goes to the party to whom a letter is addressed, and knocks at the door. a servant opens. there are six letters for that address. the postages are added up, separately at first, then altogether. they amount to francs centimes ( s. d.). john: go on. jacques: the servant goes in search of his master. the latter proceeds to verify the hieroglyphics. he mistakes the threes for twos and the nines for fours. he has doubts about the weights and distances. in short, he has to ask the postman to walk upstairs, and on the way he tries to find out the signatures of the letters, thinking it may be prudent to refuse some of them. john: go on. jacques: the postman when he has got upstairs pleads the cause of the post-office. they argue, they examine, they weigh, they calculate distances--at length the party agrees to receive five of the letters, and refuses one. john: go on. jacques: what remains is to pay the postage. the servant is sent to the grocer for change. after a delay of twenty minutes he returns, and the postman is at length set free, and rushes from door to door, to go through the same ceremony at each. john: go on. jacques: he returns to the post-office. he counts and recounts with the postmaster. he returns the letters refused, and gets repayment of his advances for these. he reports the objections of the parties with reference to weight and distance. john: go on. jacques: the postmaster has to refer to the registers, letter-bags, and special slips, in order to make up an account of the letters which have been refused. john: go on, if you please. jacques: i am thankful i am not a postmaster. we now come to accounts in dozens and scores at the end of the month; to contrivances invented not only to establish, but to check and control a minute responsibility, involving a total of millions of francs, made up of postages amounting on an average to centimes each (less than d.), and of millions of letters, each of which may belong to one or other of categories. john: a very complicated simplicity truly! the man who has resolved this problem must have a hundred times more genius than your mons. piron or our rowland hill. jacques: well, you seem to laugh at our system. would you explain yours to me? john: in england, the government causes to be sold all over the country, wherever it is judged useful, stamps, envelopes, and covers at a penny apiece. jacques: and after that? john: you write your letter, fold it, put it in the envelope, and throw it into the post-office. jacques: and after that? john: "after that"--why, that is the whole affair. we have nothing to do with distances, bulletins, registers, control, or accounting; we have no money to give or to receive, and no concern with hieroglyphics, discussions, interpretations, etc., etc. jacques: truly this is very simple. but is it not too much so? an infant might understand it. but such reforms as you describe stifle the genius of great administrators. for my own part, i stick to the french mode of going to work. and then your _uniform rate_ has the greatest of all faults. it is unjust. john: how so? jacques: because it is unjust to charge as much for a letter addressed to the immediate neighbourhood, as for one which you carry three hundred miles. john: at all events you will allow that the injustice goes no further than to the extent of a penny. jacques: no matter--it is still injustice. john: besides, the injustice, which at the outside cannot extend beyond a penny in any particular case, disappears when you take into account the entire correspondence of any individual citizen who sends his letters sometimes to a great distance and sometimes to places in the immediate vicinity. jacques: i adhere to my opinion. the injustice is lessened--infinitely lessened, if you will; it is inappreciable, infinitesimal, homoeopathic; but it exists. john: does your government make you pay dearer for an ounce of tobacco which you buy in the rue de clichy than for the same quantity retailed on the quai d'orsay? jacques: what connexion is there between the two subjects of comparison? john: in the one case as in the other, the cost of transport must be taken into account. mathematically, it would be just that each pinch of snuff should be dearer in the rue de clichy than on the quai d'orsay by the millionth part of a farthing. jacques: true; i don't dispute that it may be so. john: let me add, that your postal system is just only in appearance. two houses stand side by side, but one of them happens to be within, and the other just outside, the zone or postal district. the one pays a penny more than the other, just equal to the entire postage in england. you see, then, that with you injustice is committed on a much greater scale than with us. jacques: that is so. my objection does not amount to much; but the loss of revenue still remains to be taken into account. here i ceased to listen to the two interlocutors. it turned out, however, that jacques bonhomme was entirely converted; for some days afterwards, the report of m. vuitry having made its appearance, jacques wrote the following letter to that honourable legislator:-- "j. bonhomme to m. de vuitry, deputy, reporter of the commission charged to examine the _projet de loi_ relative to the postage of letters. "monsieur,--although i am not ignorant of the extreme discredit into which one falls by making oneself the advocate of an absolute theory, i think it my duty not to abandon the cause of a uniform rate of postage, reduced to simple remuneration for the service actually rendered. "my addressing myself to you will no doubt be regarded as a good joke. on the one side appears a heated brain, a closet-reformer, who talks of overturning an entire system all at once and without any gradual transition; a dreamer, who has never, perhaps, cast his eye on that mass of laws, ordinances, tables, schedules, and statistical details which accompany your report,--in a word, a theorist. on the other appears a grave, prudent, moderate-minded legislator, who has weighed, compared, and shown due respect for the various interests involved, who has rejected all systems, or, which comes to the same thing, has constructed a system of his own, borrowed from all the others. the issue of such a struggle cannot be doubtful. "nevertheless, as long as the question is pending, every one has a right to state his opinions. i know that mine are sufficiently decided to expose me to ridicule. all i can expect from the reader of this letter is not to throw ridicule away (if, indeed, there be room for ridicule), before, in place of after, having heard my reasons. "for i, too, can appeal to experience. a great people has made the experiment. what has been the result? we cannot deny that that people is knowing in such matters, and that its opinion is entitled to weight. "very well, there is not a man in england whose voice is not in favour of postal reform. witness the subscription which has been opened for a testimonial to mr rowland hill. witness the manner in which john bull testifies his gratitude. witness the oft-repeated declaration of the anti-corn-law league: 'without the penny postage we should never have had developed that public opinion which has overturned the system of protection." all this is confirmed by what we read in a work emanating from an official source:-- "' the rates of postage should be regulated, not with a view to revenue, but for the sole purpose of covering the expense.' "to which mr macgregor adds:-- "'it is true that the rate having come down to our smallest coin, we cannot lower it further, although it does yield some revenue. but this source of revenue, which will go on constantly increasing, must be employed to improve the service, and to develop our system of mail steamers all over the world.' "this brings me to examine the leading idea of the commission, which is, on the other hand, that the rate of postage should be a source of revenue to government. "this idea runs through your entire report, and i allow that, under the influence of this prejudice, you could arrive at nothing great or comprehensive, and you are fortunate if, in trying to reconcile the two systems, you have not fallen into the errors and drawbacks of both. "the first question we have to consider is this: is the correspondence which passes between individual citizens a proper subject of taxation? "i shall not fall back on abstract principles, or remind you that the very essence of society being the communication of ideas, the object of every government, should be to facilitate and not impede this communication. "let us look to actual facts. "the total length of our highways and departmental and country roads extends to a million of kilomètres ( , miles). supposing that each has cost , francs (£ ), this makes a capital of milliards (£ , , , ) expended by the state to facilitate the transport of passengers and goods. "now, put the question, if one of your honourable colleagues asked leave of the chamber to bring in a bill thus conceived: "'from and after st january next, the government will levy upon all travellers a tax sufficient not only to cover the expense of maintaining the highways, but to bring back to the exchequer four or five times the amount of that expense.... "would you not feel such a proposal to be anti-social and monstrous? "how is it that this consideration of profits, nay, of simple remuneration, never presents itself to our minds when the question regards the circulation of commodities, and yet appears so natural when the question regards the circulation of ideas? "perhaps it is the result of habit. if we had a postal system to create, it would most assuredly appear monstrous to establish it on a principle of revenue. "and yet remark that oppression is more glaring in this case than in the other. "when government has opened a new road it forces no one to make use of it (it would do so undoubtedly if the use of the road were taxed.) but while the post-office regulations continue to be enforced, no one can send a letter through any other channel, were it to his own mother. "the rate of postage, then, in principle, ought to be remunerative, and, for the same reason, uniform. "if we set out with this idea, what marvellous beauty, facility, and simplicity does not the reform i am advocating present! "here is the whole thing nearly put into the form of a law. "'article . from and after st january next there will be exposed to sale, in every place where the government judges it expedient, stamped envelopes and covers, at the price of a halfpenny or a penny. "' . every letter put into one of these envelopes, and not exceeding the weight of half an ounce, every newspaper or print put into one of these covers, and not exceeding the weight of... will be transmitted, and delivered without cost at its address. "' . all post-office accounting is entirely suppressed. "' . all pains and penalties with reference to the conveyance of letters are abolished.' "that is very simple, i admit--much too simple; and i anticipate a host of objections. "that the system i propose may be attended with drawbacks is not the question; but whether yours is not attended with more. "in sober earnest, can the two (except as regards revenue) be put in comparison for a moment? "examine both. compare them as regards facility, convenience, despatch, simplicity, order, economy, justice, equality, multiplication of transactions, public satisfaction, moral and intellectual development, civilizing tendency; and tell me honestly if it is possible to hesitate a moment. "i shall not stop to enlarge on each of these considerations--i give you the headings of twelve chapters, which i leave blank, persuaded that no one can fill them up better than yourself. "but since there is one objection--namely, revenue--i must say a word on that head. "you have constructed a table in order to show that even at twopence the revenue would suffer a loss of £ , . "at a penny, the loss would be £ , , , and at a halfpenny, of £ , , ; hypotheses so frightful that you do not even formulate them in detail. "but allow me to say that the figures in your report dance about with a little too much freedom. in all your tables, in all your calculations, you have the tacit reservation of _coteris paribus_. you assume that the cost will be the same under a simple as under a complicated system of administration--the same number of letters with the present average postage of / d. as with the uniform rate of twopence. you confine yourself to this rule of three: if millions of letters at d. yield so much, then at d. the same number will yield so much; admitting, nevertheless, certain distinctions when they militate against our proposed reform. "in order to estimate the real sacrifice of revenue, we must, first of all, calculate the economy in the service which will be effected; then in what proportion the amount of correspondence will be augmented. we take this last datum solely into account, because we cannot suppose that the saving of cost which will be realized will not be met by an increased personnel rendered necessary by a more extended service. "undoubtedly, it is impossible to fix the exact amount of increase in the circulation of letters which the reduction of postage would cause, but in such matters a reasonable analogy has always been admitted. "you yourself admit that in england a reduction of seven-eighths in the rate has caused an increase of correspondence to the extent of per cent. "here, the lowering to centimes (a halfpenny) of the rate which is at present at an average of something less than / d., would constitute likewise a reduction of seven-eighths. we may therefore be allowed to expect the same result--that is to say, millions of letters, in place of millions. "but let us count on millions. "is there any exaggeration in assuming that with a rate of postage one half less, we shall reach an average of letters to each inhabitant when in england they have reached . now millions of letters, at centimes, give, millions of journals and prints, at centimes, give the present expense (which may diminish) is. deducting for mail steamers,.... there remains for despatches, travellers, and money parcels,.... net product,...... at present the net product is..... "now i ask whether the government, which makes a positive sacrifice of millions (£ , , ) per annum in order to facilitate the gratuitous transport of passengers, should not make a negative sacrifice of millions, in order not to make a gain upon the transmission and circulation of ideas? "but the treasury, i am aware, has its own habits, and with whatever complacence it sees its receipts increase, it feels proportional disappointment in seeing them diminished by a single farthing. it seems to be provided with those admirable valves which in the human frame allow the blood to flow in one direction, but prevent its return. be it so. the treasury is perhaps a little too old for us to quicken its pace. we have no hope, therefore, that it will give in to us. but what will be said if i, jacques bonhomme, show it a way which is simple, easy, convenient, and essentially practical, of doing a great service to the country without its costing a single farthing? "the post-office yields a gross return to the treasury of..... millions total yield of these three services, millions. "now, bring down postages to the uniform rate of centimes (a halfpenny). "lower the salt-tax to francs ( s.) the hundredweight, as the chamber has already voted. "give me power to modify the customs tariff in such a way that i shall be peremptorily prohibited from increasing any duty, but that i may lower duties at pleasure. "and i, jacques bonhomme, guarantee you a revenue, not of millions, but of millions. two hundred french bankers will be my sureties, and all i ask for my reward is as much as these three taxes will produce over and above millions. "is it necessary for me to enumerate the advantages of my proposal? " . the people will receive all the advantage resulting from cheapness in the price of an article of the first necessity--salt. " . fathers will be able to write to their sons, and mothers to their daughters. nor will men's affections and sentiments, and the endearments of love and friendship, be stemmed and driven back into their hearts, as at present, by the hand of the tax-gatherer. " . to carry a letter from one friend to another will no longer be inscribed in our code as a crime. " . trade will revive with liberty, and our merchant shipping will recover from its humiliation. " . the treasury will gain at first twenty millions, afterwards it will gain all that shall accrue to the revenue from other sources through the saving realized by each citizen on salt, postages, and other things, the duties on which have been lowered. "if my proposal is rejected, what am i to conclude? provided the bankers i represent offer sufficient security, under what pretext can my proposal be refused acceptance? it is impossible to invoke the equilibrium of budgets. it would indeed be upset, but upset in such a way that the receipts should exceed the expenses. this is no affair of theory, of system, of statistics, of probability, of conjecture; it is an offer, an offer like that of a company which solicits the concession of a line of railway. the treasury tells me what it derives from postages, salt-tax, and customs. i offer to give it more. the objection, then, cannot come from the treasury. i offer to reduce the tariff of salt, postages, and customs; i engage not to raise it; the objection, then, cannot come from the taxpayers. from whom does it come, then? from monopolists? it remains to be seen whether their voice shall be permitted in france to drown the voice of the government and the people. to assure us of this, i beg you to transmit my proposal to the council of ministers. jacques bonhomme. "p.s.--here is the text of my offer:-- "i, jacques bonhomme, representing a company of bankers and capitalists, ready to give all guarantees and deposit whatever security may be necessary. "having learnt that the government derives only millions of francs from customs duties, postages, and salt-tax, by means of the duties at present fixed; "i offer to give the government millions from the gross produce of these three sources of revenue; "and this while reducing the salt-tax from fr. to l fr.; "reducing the rate of postage from / centimes, at an average, to a uniform rate of from to centimes, "on the single condition that i am permitted not to raise (which will be formally prohibited), but to lower as much as i please the duties of customs. jacques bonhomme." "you are a fool," said i to jacques bonhomme, when he read me his letter. "you can do nothing with moderation. the other day you cried out against the hurricane of reforms, and here i find you demanding three, making one of them the condition of the other two. you will ruin yourself." "be quiet," said he, "i have made all my calculations; i only wish they may be accepted. but they will not be accepted." upon this we parted, our heads full, his of figures, mine of reflections which i forbear to inflict upon the reader. xiii. protection; or, the three city magistrates. demonstration in four tableaux. scene i.--house of master peter.--window looking out on a fine park.--three gentlemen seated near a good fire. peter: bravo! nothing like a good fire after a good dinner. it does feel so comfortable. but, alas! how many honest folks, like the boi d'yvetot, "soufflent, faute de bois, dans leurs doigts." miserable creatures! a charitable thought has just come into my head. you see these fine trees; i am about to fell them, and distribute the timber among the poor. paul and john: what! gratis? peter: not exactly. my good works would soon have an end were i to dissipate my fortune. i estimate my park as worth £ . by cutting down the trees i shall pocket a good sum. paul: wrong. your wood as it stands is worth more than that of the neighbouring forests, for it renders you services which they cannot render. when cut down it will be only good for firewood, like any other, and will not bring a penny more the load. peter: oh! oh! mr theorist, you forget that i am a practical man. my reputation as a speculator is sufficiently well established, i believe, to prevent me from being taken for a noodle. do you imagine i am going to amuse myself by selling my timber at the price of float-wood? paul: it would seem so. peter: simpleton! and what if i can hinder float-wood from being brought into paris? paul: that alters the case. but how can you manage it? peter: here is the whole secret. you know that float-wood, on entering the city, pays d. the load. to-morrow, i induce the commune to raise the duty to £ , £ , £ ,--in short, sufficiently high to prevent the entry of a single log. now, do you follow me? if the good people are not to die of cold, they have no alternative but to come to my woodyard. they will bid against each other for my wood, and i will sell it for a high price; and this act of charity, successfully carried out, will put me in a situation to do other acts of charity. paul: a fine invention, truly! it suggests to me another of the same kind. john: and what is that? is philanthropy to be again brought into play? paul: how do you like this normandy butter? john: excellent. paul: hitherto i have thought it passable. but do you not find that it takes you by the throat? i could make better butter in paris. i shall have four or five hundred cows, and distribute milk, butter, and cheese among the poor. peter and john: what! in charity? paul: bah! let us put charity always in the foreground. it is so fine a figure that its very mask is a good passport. i shall give my butter to the people, and they will give me their money. is that what is called selling? john: no; not according to the bourgeois gentilhomme. but, call it what you please, you will ruin yourself. how can paris ever compete with normandy in dairy produce? paul: i shall be able to save the cost of carriage. john: be it so. still, while paying that cost, the normans can beat the parisians. paul: to give a man something at a lower price--is that what you call beating him? john: it is the usual phrase; and you will always find yourself beaten. paul: yes; as don quixote was beaten. the blows will fall upon sancho. john, my friend, you forget the octroi. john: the octroi! what has that to do with your butter? paul: to-morrow, i shall demand _protection_, and induce the commune to prohibit butter being brought into paris from normandy and brittany. the people must then either dispense with it, or purchase mine, and at my own price, too. john: upon my honour, gentlemen, your philanthropy has quite made a convert of me. "on apprend à hurler, dit l'autre, avec les loups." my mind is made up. i shall not be thought unworthy of my colleagues. peter, this sparkling fire has inflamed your soul. paul, this butter has lubricated the springs of your intelligence. i, too, feel stimulated by this piece of powdered pork; and tomorrow i shall vote, and cause to be voted, the exclusion of swine, dead and alive. that done, i shall construct superb sheds in the heart of paris, "pour l'animal immonde aux hébreux défendu." i shall become a pig-driver and pork-butcher. let us see how the good people of paris can avoid coming to provide themselves at my shop. peter: softly, my good friends; if you enhance the price of butter and salt meat to such an extent, you cut down beforehand the profit i expect from my wood. paul: and my speculation will be no longer so wondrously profitable, if i am overcharged for my firewood and bacon. john: and i, what shall i gain by overcharging you for my sausages, if you overcharge me for my faggots and bread and butter? peter: very well, don't let us quarrel let us rather put our heads together and make reciprocal concessions. moreover, it is not good to consult one's self-interest exclusively--we must exercise humanity, and see that the people do not want fuel. paul: very right; and it is proper that the people should have butter to their bread. john: undoubtedly; and a bit of bacon for the pot. all: three cheers for charity; three cheers for philanthropy; and to-morrow we take the octroi by assault. peter: ah! i forgot. one word more; it is essential. my good friends, in this age of egotism the world is distrustful, and the purest intentions are often misunderstood. paul, you take the part of pleading for the wood; john will do the same for the butter; and i shall devote myself to the home-bred pig. it is necessary to prevent malignant suspicions. paul and john (leaving): upon my word, that is a clever fellow. scene ii.--council chamber. paul: _mes chers collègues_, every day there are brought to paris great masses of firewood, which drain away large sums of money. at this rate, we shall all be ruined in three years, and what will become of the poorer classes? (cheers) we must prohibit foreign timber. i don't speak for myself, for all the wood i possess would not make a tooth-pick. in what i mean to say, then, i am entirely free from any personal interest or bias. (hear, hear) but here is my friend peter, who possesses a park, and he will guarantee an adequate supply of fuel to our fellow-citizens, who will no longer be dependent on the charcoal-burners of the yonne. have you ever turned your attention to the risk which we run of dying of cold, if the proprietors of forests abroad should take it into their heads to send no more firewood to paris? let us put a prohibition, then, on bringing in wood. by this means we shall put a stop to the draining away of our money, create an independent interest charged with supplying the city with firewood, and open up to workmen a new source of employment and remuneration. (cheers) john: i support the proposal of my honourable friend, the preceding speaker, which is at once so philanthropic, and, as he himself has explained, so entirely disinterested. it is indeed high time that we should put an end to this insolent _laissez passer_, which has brought immoderate competition into our markets, and to such an extent that there is no province which possesses any special facility for providing us with a product, be it what it may, which does not immediately inundate us, undersell us, and bring ruin on the parisian workman. it is the duty of government to equalize the conditions of production by duties wisely adapted to each case, so as not to allow to enter from without anything which is not dearer than in paris, and so relieve us from an unequal struggle. how, for example, can we possibly produce milk and butter in paris, with brittany and normandy at our door? remember, gentlemen, that the agriculturists of brittany have cheaper land, a more abundant supply of hay, and manual labour on more advantageous terms. does not common sense tell us that we must equalize the conditions by a protective octroi tariff? i demand that the duty on milk and butter should be raised by per cent., and still higher if necessary. the workman's breakfast will cost a little more, but see to what extent his wages will be raised! we shall see rising around us cow-houses, dairies, and barrel chums, and the foundations laid of new sources of industry. not that i have any interest in this proposition. i am not a cowfeeder, nor have i any wish to be so. the sole motive which actuates me is a wish to be useful to the working classes. (applause.) peter: i am delighted to see in this assembly statesmen so pure, so enlightened, and so devoted to the best interests of the people. (cheers) i admire their disinterestedness, and i cannot do better than imitate the noble example which has been set me. i give their motions my support, and i shall only add another, for prohibiting the entry into paris of the pigs of poitou. i have no desire, i assure you, to become a pig-driver or a pork-butcher. in that case i should have made it a matter of conscience to be silent. but is it not shameful, gentlemen, that we should be the tributaries of the peasants of poitou, who have the audacity to come into our own market and take possession of a branch of industry which we ourselves have no means of carrying on? and who, after having inundated us with their hams and sausages, take perhaps nothing from us in return? at all events, who will tell us that the balance of trade is not in their favour, and that we are not obliged to pay them a tribute in hard cash? is it not evident that if the industry of poitou were transplanted to paris, it would open up a steady demand for parisian labour? and then, gentlemen, is it not very possible, as m. lestiboudois has so well remarked, that we may be buying the salt pork of poitou, not with our incomes, but with our capital? where will that land us? let us not suffer, then, that rivals who are at once avaricious, greedy, and perfidious, should come here to undersell us, and put it out of our power to provide ourselves with the same commodities. gentlemen, paris has reposed in you her confidence; it is for you to justify that confidence. the people are without employment; it is for you to create employment for them; and if salt pork shall cost them a somewhat higher price, we have, at least, the consciousness of having sacrificed our own interests to those of the masses, as every good magistrate ought to do. (loud and long-continued cheers.) a voice: i have heard much talk of the poor; but under pretext of affording them employment, you begin by depriving them of what is more valuable than employment itself, namely, butter, firewood, and meat. peter, paul, and john: vote, vote! down with utopian dreamers, theorists, generalizers! vote, vote! (_the three motions are carried._) scene iii.--twenty years afterwards. son: father, make up your mind; we must leave paris. nobody can any longer live there--no work, and everything dear. father: you don't know, my son, how much it costs one to leave the place where he was born. son: the worst thing of all is to perish from want. father: go you, then, and search for a more hospitable country. for myself, i will not leave the place where are the graves of your mother, and of your brothers and sisters. i long to obtain with them that repose which has been denied me in this city of desolation. son: courage, father; we shall find employment somewhere else--in poitou, or normandy, or brittany. it is said that all the manufactures of paris are being removed by degrees to these distant provinces. father: and naturally so. not being able to sell firewood and provisions, the people of these provinces have ceased to produce them beyond what their own wants call for. the time and capital at their disposal are devoted to making for themselves those articles with which we were in use to furnish them. son: just as at paris they have given up the manufacture of elegant dress and furniture, and betaken themselves to the planting of trees, and the rearing of pigs and cows. although still young, i have lived to see vast warehouses, sumptuous quarters of the city, and quays once teeming with life and animation on the banks of the seine, turned into meadows and copses. father: while towns are spread over the provinces, paris is turned into green fields. what a deplorable revolution! and this terrible calamity has been brought upon us by three magistrates, backed by public ignorance. son: pray relate to me the history of this change. father: it is short and simple. under pretext of planting in paris three new branches of industry, and by this means giving employment to the working classes, these men got the commune to prohibit the entry into paris of firewood, butter, and meat. they claimed for themselves the right of providing for their fellow-citizens. these commodities rose at first to exorbitant prices. no one earned enough to procure them, and the limited number of those who could procure them spent all their income on them, and had no longer the means of buying anything else. a check was thus given to all other branches of industry and production, and all the more quickly that the provinces no longer afforded a market. poverty, death, and emigration then began to depopulate paris. son: and when is this to stop? father: when paris has become a forest and a prairie. son: the three magistrates must have made a large fortune? father: at first they realized enormous profits, but at length they fell into the common poverty. son: how did that happen? father: look at that ruin. that was a magnificent man-sion-house surrounded with a beautiful park. if paris had continued to progress, master peter would have realized more interest than his entire capital now amounts to. son: how can that be, seeing he has got rid of competition? father: competition in selling has disappeared, but competition in buying has disappeared also, and will continue every day to disappear more and more until paris becomes a bare field, and until the copses of master peter have no more value than the copses of an equal extent of land in the forest of bondy. it is thus that monopoly, like every other system of injustice, carries in itself its own punishment. son: that appears to me not very clear, but the decadence of paris is an incontestable fact. is there no means, then, of counteracting this singular measure that peter and his colleagues got adopted twenty years ago? father: i am going to tell you a secret. i remain in paris on purpose. i shall call in the people to my assistance. it rests with them to replace the octroi on its ancient basis, and get quit of that fatal principle which was engrafted on it, and which still vegetates there like a parasitical fungus. son: you must succeed in this at once. father: on the contrary, the work will be difficult and laborious. peter, paul, and john understand one another marvellously. they will do anything rather than allow firewood, butter, and butchers' meat to enter paris. they have on their side the people, who see clearly the employment which these three protected branches of industry afford. they know well to what extent the cowfeeders and wood-merchants give employment to labour; but they have by no means the same exact idea of the labour which would be developed in the open air of liberty. son: if that is all, you will soon enlighten them. father: at your age, my son, no doubts arise. if i write, the people will not read; for, to support their miserable existence, they have not much time at their disposal. if i speak, the magistrates will shut my mouth. the people, therefore, will long remain under their fatal mistake. political parties, whose hopes are founded on popular passions, will set themselves, not to dissipate their prejudices, but to make merchandise of them. i shall have to combat at one and the same time the great men of the day, the people, and their leaders. in truth, i see a frightful storm ready to burst over the head of the bold man who shall venture to protest against an iniquity so deeply rooted in this country. son: you will have truth and justice on your side. father: and they will have force and calumny on theirs. were i but young again! but age and suffering have exhausted my strength. son: very well, father; what strength remains to you, devote to the service of the country. begin this work of enfranchisement, and leave to me the care of finishing it. scene iv.--the agitation. jacques bonhomme: parisians, let us insist upon a reform of the octroi duties; let us demand that they be instantly brought down to the former rate. let every citizen be free to buy his firewood, butter, and butchers' meat where he sees fit. the people: vive, vive la liberté! peter: parisians, don't allow yourselves to be seduced by that word, liberty. what good can result from liberty to purchase if you want the means--in other words, if you are out of employment? can paris produce firewood as cheaply as the forest of bondy? meat as cheaply as poitou? butter as cheaply as normandy? if you open your gates freely to these rival products, what will become of the cowfeeders, woodcutters, and pork-butchers? they cannot dispense with protection. the people: vive, vive la protection! jacques bonhomme: protection! but who protects you workmen? do you not compete with one another? let the wood-merchants, then, be subject to competition in their turn. they ought not to have right by law to raise the price of firewood, unless the rate of wages is also raised by law. are you no longer in love with equality? the people: vive, vive l'egalité! peter: don't listen to these agitators. we have, it is true, raised the price of firewood, butchers' meat, and butter; but we have done so for the express purpose of being enabled to give good wages to the workmen. we are actuated by motives of charity. the people: vive, vive la charité! jacques bonhomme. cause the rate of wages to be raised by the octroi, if you can, or cease by the same means to raise the prices of commodities. we parisians ask for no charity--we demand justice. the people: vive, vive la justice! peter: it is precisely the high price of commodities which will lead, _par ricochet_, to a rise of wages. the people: vive, vive la cherté! jacques bonhomme: if butter is dear, it is not because you pay high wages to the workmen, it is not even because you make exorbitant profits; it is solely because paris is ill-adapted for that branch of industry; it is because you wish to make in the town what should be made in the country, and in the country what should be made in the town. the people have not more employment--only they have employment of a different kind. they have no higher wages; while they can no longer buy commodities as cheaply as formerly. the people: vive, vive le bon marché! peter: this man seduces you with fine words. let us place the question before you in all its simplicity. is it, or is it not, true, that if we admit firewood, meat, and butter freely or at a lower duty, our markets will be inundated? believe me there is no other means of preserving ourselves from this new species of invasion but to keep the door shut, and so maintain the prices of commodities by rendering them artificially rare. some voices in the crowd: vive, vive la rareté! jacques bonhomme: let us bring the question to the simple test of truth. you cannot divide among the people of paris commodities which are not in paris. if there be less meat, less firewood, less butter, the share falling to each will be smaller. now there must be less if we prohibit what should be allowed to enter the city. parisians, abundance for each of you can be secured only by general abundance. the people: vive, vive l'abondance! peter: it is in vain that this man tries to persuade you that it is your interest to be subjected to unbridled competition. the people: a bas, à bas la concurrence! jacques bonhomme: it is in vain that this man tries to make you fall in love with restriction. the people: a bas, à bas la restriction! peter: i declare, for my own part, if you deprive the poor cowfeeders and pig-drivers of their daily bread, i can no longer be answerable for public order. workmen, distrust that man. he is the agent of perfidious normandy, and derives his inspiration from the provinces. he is a traitor; down with him! (the people preserve silence.) jacques bonhomme: parisians, what i have told you to-day, i told you twenty years ago, when peter set himself to work the octroi for his own profit and to your detriment. i am not, then, the agent of normandy. hang me up, if you will, but that will not make oppression anything else than oppression. friends, it is not jacques or peter that you must put an end to, but liberty if you fear it, or restriction if it does you harm. the people: hang nobody, and set everybody free. xiv. something else. "what is restriction?" "it is partial prohibition." "what is prohibition?" "absolute restriction." "so that what holds true of the one, holds true of the other?" "yes; the difference is only one of degree. there is between them the same relation as there is between a circle and the arc of a circle." "then, if prohibition is bad, restriction cannot be good?" "no more than the arc can be correct if the circle is irregular." "what is the name which is common to restriction and prohibition?" "protection." "what is the definitive effect of protection?" "to exact from men _a greater amount of labour for the same result_." "why are men attached to the system of protection?" "because as liberty enables us to obtain the same result with less labour, this apparent diminution of employment frightens them." "why do you say apparent?" "because _all labour saved can be applied to something else_." "to what?" "that i cannot specify, nor is there any need to specify it." "why?" "because if the sum of satisfactions which the country at present enjoys could be obtained with one-tenth less labour, no one can enumerate the new enjoyments which men would desire to obtain from the labour left disposable. one man would desire to be better clothed, another better fed, another better educated, another better amused." "explain to me the mechanism and the effects of protection." "that is not an easy matter. before entering on consideration of the more complicated cases, we must study it in a very simple one." "take as simple a case as you choose." "you remember how robinson crusoe managed to make a plank when he had no saw." "yes; he felled a tree, and then, cutting the trunk right and left with his hatchet, he reduced it to the thickness of a board." "and that cost him much labour?" "fifteen whole days' work." "and what did he live on during that time?" "he had provisions." "what happened to the hatchet?" "it was blunted by the work." "yes; but you perhaps do not know this: that at the moment when robinson was beginning the work he perceived a plank thrown by the tide upon the seashore." "happy accident! he of course ran to appropriate it?" "that was his first impulse; but he stopped short, and began to reason thus with himself:-- "'if i appropriate this plank, it will cost me only the trouble of carrying it, and the time needed to descend and remount the cliff. "'but if i form a plank with my hatchet, first of all, it will procure me fifteen days' employment; then my hatchet will get blunt, which will furnish me with the additional employment of sharpening it; then i shall consume my stock of provisions, which will be a third source of employment in replacing them. now, _labour is wealth_. it is clear that i should ruin myself by appropriating the shipwrecked plank. i must protect my _personal labour_; and, now that i think of it, i can even increase that labour by throwing back the other plank into the sea.'" "but this reasoning was absurd." "no doubt. it is nevertheless the reasoning of every nation which protects itself by prohibition. it throws back the plank which is offered it in exchange for a small amount of labour in order to exert a greater amount of labour. it is not in the labour of the customhouse officials that it discovers a gain. that gain is represented by the pains which robinson takes to render back to the waves the gift which they had offered him. consider the nation as a collective being, and you will not find between its reasoning and that of robinson an atom of difference." "did robinson not see that he could devote the time saved to _something else?_" "what else?" "as long as a man has wants to satisfy and time at his disposal, there is always something to be done. i am not bound to specify the kind of labour he would in such a case undertake." "i see clearly what labour he could have escaped." "and i maintain that robinson, with incredible blindness, confounded the labour with its result, the end with the means, and i am going to prove to you..." "there is no need. here we have the system of restriction or prohibition in its simplest form. if it appear to you absurd when so put, it is because the two capacities of producer and consumer are in this case mixed up in the same individual." "let us pass on, therefore, to a more complicated example." "with all my heart. some time afterwards, robinson having met with friday, they united their labour in a common work. in the morning they hunted for six hours, and brought home four baskets of game. in the evening they worked in the garden for six hours, and obtained four baskets of vegetables. "one day a canoe touched at the island. a good-looking foreigner landed, and was admitted to the table of our two recluses. he tasted and commended very much the produce of the garden, and before taking leave of his entertainers, spoke as follows:-- "'generous islanders, i inhabit a country where game is much more plentiful than here, but where horticulture is quite unknown. it would be an easy matter to bring you every evening four baskets of game, if you would give me in exchange two baskets of vegetables.' "at these words robinson and friday retired to consult, and the argument that passed is too interesting not to be reported _in extenso_. "friday: what do you think of it? "robinson: if we close with the proposal, we are ruined. "f.: are you sure of that? let us consider. "r.: the case is clear. crushed by competition, our hunting as a branch of industry is annihilated. "f.: what matters it, if we have the game? "r.: theory! it will no longer be the product of our labour. "f.: i beg your pardon, sir; for in order to have game we must part with vegetables. "r.: then, what shall we gain? "f.:. the four baskets of game cost us six hours' work. the foreigner gives us them in exchange for two baskets of vegetables, which cost us only three hours' work. this places three hours at our disposal. "r.: say, rather, which are substracted from our exertions. in this will consist our loss. _labour is wealth_, and if we lose a fourth part of our time, we shall be less rich by a fourth. "f.: you are greatly mistaken, my good friend. we shall have as much game, and the same quantity of vegetables, and three hours at our disposal into the bargain. this is progress, or there is no such thing in-the world. "r.: you lose yourself in generalities! what should we make of these three hours? "f.: we would do _something else_. "r.: ah! i understand you. you cannot come to particulars. something else, something else--this is easily said. "f.: we can fish, we can ornament our cottage, we can read the bible. "r.: utopia! is there any certainty that we should do either the one or the other? "f.: very well, if we have no wants to satisfy we can rest. is repose nothing? "r.: but while we repose we may die of hunger. "f.: my dear friend, you have got into a vicious circle. i speak of a repose which will subtract nothing from our supply of game and vegetables. you always forget that by means of our _foreign trade_ nine hours' labour will give us the same quantity of provisions that we obtain at present with twelve. "r: it is very evident, friday, that you have not been educated in europe, and that you have never read the _moniteur industriel_. if you had, it would have taught you this: that all time saved is sheer loss. the important thing is not to eat or consume, but to work. all that we consume, if it is not the direct produce of our labour, goes for nothing. do you want to know whether you are rich? never consider the satisfactions you enjoy, but the labour you undergo. this is what the _moniteur industriel_ would teach you. for myself, who have no pretensions to be a theorist, the only thing i look at is the loss of our hunting. "f.: what a strange conglomeration of ideas! but... "r.: i will have no buts. moreover, there are political reasons for rejecting the interested offers of the perfidious foreigner. "f.: political reasons! "r.: yes, he only makes us these offers because they are advantageous to him. "f.: so much the better, since they are for our advantage likewise. "r.: then by this traffic we should place ourselves in a situation of dependence upon him. "f.: and he would place himself in dependence on us. we should have need of his game, and he of our vegetables, and we should live on terms of friendship. "r.: system! do you want me to shut your mouth? "f.: we shall see about that. i have as yet heard no good reason. "r.: suppose the foreigner learns to cultivate a garden, and that his island should prove more fertile than ours. do you see the consequence? "f.: yes; our relations with the foreigner would cease. he would send us no more vegetables, since he could have them at home with less labour. he would take no more game from us, since we should have nothing to give him in exchange, and we should then be in precisely the situation that you wish us in now. "r.: improvident savage! you don't see that after having annihilated our hunting by inundating us with game, he would annihilate our gardening by inundating us with vegetables. "f.: but this would only last till we were in a situation to give him _something else_; that is to say, until we found something else which we could produce with economy of labour for ourselves. "r. something else, something else! you always come back to that. you are at sea, my good friend friday; there is nothing practical in your views." "the debate was long prolonged, and, as often happens, each remained wedded to his own opinion. but robinson possessing a great ascendant over friday, his opinion prevailed, and when the foreigner arrived to demand a reply, robinson said to him-- "' stranger, in order to induce us to accept your proposal, we must be assured of two things: "' the first is, that your island is no better stocked with game than ours, for we want to fight only with _equal weapons_. "' the second is, that you will lose by the bargain. for, as in every exchange there is necessarily a gaining and a losing party, we should be dupes, if you were not the loser. what have you got to say?' "' nothing,' replied the foreigner; and, bursting out a-laugh-ing, he regained his canoe." "the story would not be amiss, if robinson were not made to argue so very absurdly." "he does not argue more absurdly than the committee of the rue hauteville." "oh! the case is very different. sometimes you suppose one man, and sometimes (which comes to the same thing) two men working in company. that does not tally with the actual state of things. the division of labour and the intervention of merchants and money change the state of the question very much." "that may complicate transactions, but does not change their nature." "what! you want to compare modern commerce with a system of barter." "trade is nothing but a multiplicity of barters. barter is in its own nature identical with commerce, just as labour on a small scale is identical with labour on a great scale, or as the law of gravitation which moves an atom is identical with that same law of gravitation which moves a world." "so, according to you, these arguments, which are so untenable in the mouth of robinson, are equally untenable when urged by our protectionists." "yes; only the error is better concealed under a complication of circumstances." "then, pray, let us have an example taken from the present order of things." "with pleasure. in france, owing to the exigencies of climate and habits, cloth is a useful thing. is the essential thing to _make it_, or to _get it?_" "a very sensible question, truly! in order to have it, you must make it." "not necessarily. to have it, some one must make it, that is certain; but it is not at all necessary that the same person or the same country which consumes it should also produce it. you have not made that stuff which clothes you so well. france does not produce the coffee on which our citizens breakfast." "but i buy my cloth, and france her coffee." "exactly so; and with what?" "with money." "but neither you nor france produce the material of money." "we buy it." "with what?" "with our products, which are sent to peru." "it is then, in fact, your labour which you exchange for cloth, and french labour which is exchanged for coffee." "undoubtedly." "it is not absolutely necessary, therefore, to manufacture what you consume." "no; if we manufacture something else which we give in exchange." "in other words, france has two means of procuring a given quantity of cloth. the first is to make it; the second is to make something else, and to exchange this something else with the foreigner for cloth. of these two means, which is the best?" "i don't very well know." "is it not that which, _for a determinate amount of labour, obtains the greater quantity of cloth?_" "it seems so." "and which is best for a nation, to have the choice between these two means, or that the law should prohibit one of them, on the chance of stumbling on the better of the two?" "it appears to me that it is better for the nation to have the choice, inasmuch as in such matters it invariably chooses right." "the law, which prohibits the importation of foreign cloth, decides, then, that if france wishes to have cloth, she must make it in kind, and that she is prohibited from making the something else with which she could purchase foreign cloth." "true." "and as the law obliges us to make the cloth, and forbids our making the something else, precisely because that something else would exact less labour (but for which reason the law would not interfere with it) the law virtually decrees that for a determinate amount of labour, france shall only have one yard of cloth, when for the same amount of labour she might have two yards, by applying that labour to something else!" "but the question recurs, 'what else?" "and my question recurs, 'what does it signify?' having the choice, she will only make the something else to such an extent as there may be a demand for it." "that is possible; but i cannot divest myself of the idea that the foreigner will send us his cloth, and not take from us the something else, in which case we would be entrapped. at all events, this is the objection even from your own point of view. you allow that france could make this something else to exchange for cloth, with a less expenditure of labour than if she had made the cloth itself?" "undoubtedly." "there would, then, be a certain amount of her labour rendered inert?" "yes; but without her being less well provided with clothes, a little circumstance which makes all the difference. robinson lost sight of this, and our protectionists either do not see it, or pretend not to see it. the shipwrecked plank rendered fifteen days of robinson's labour inert, in as far as that labour was applied to making a plank, but it did not deprive him of it. discriminate, then, between these two kinds of diminished labour--the diminution which has for effect privation, and that which has for its cause satisfaction. these two things are very different, and if you mix them up, you reason as robinson did. in the most complicated, as in the most simple cases, the sophism consists in this: _judging of the utility of labour by its duration and intensity, and not by its results_; which gives rise to this economic policy: _to reduce the results of labour for the purpose of augmenting its duration and intensity_." * * see ch. ii. and iii. of _sophimes_, first series; and _harmonies Économiques_, ch. vi. xv. the little arsenal of the free-trader. if any one tells you that there are no absolute principles, no inflexible rules; that prohibition may be bad and yet that restriction may be good, reply: "restriction prohibits all that it hinders from being imported.": if any one says that agriculture is the nursing-mother of the country, reply: "what nourishes the country is not exactly agriculture, but corn." if any one tells you that the basis of the food of the people is agriculture, reply: "the basis of the people's food is corn. this is the reason why a law which gives us, by agricultural labour, two quarters of corn, when we could have obtained four quarters without such labour, and by means of labour applied to manufactures, is a law not for feeding, but for starving the people." if any one remarks that restriction upon the importation of foreign corn gives rise to a more extensive culture, and consequently to increased home production, reply: "it induces men to sow grain on comparatively barren and ungrateful soils. to milk a cow and go on milking her, puts a little more into the pail, for it is difficult to say when you will come to the last drop. but that drop costs dear." if any one tells you that when bread is dear, the agriculturist, having become rich, enriches the manufacturer, reply: "bread is dear when it is scarce, and then men are poor, or, if you like it better, they become rich _starvelings_." if you are further told that when bread gets dearer, wages rise, reply by pointing out that, in april , five-sixths of our workmen were receiving charity, if you are told that the wages of labour should rise with the increased price of provisions, reply: "this is as much as to say that in a ship without provisions, everybody will have as much biscuit as if the vessel were fully victualled." if you are told that it is necessary to secure a good price to the man who sells corn, reply: "that in that case it is also necessary to secure good wages to the man who buys it." if it is said that the proprietors, who make the laws, have raised the price of bread, without taking thought about wages, because they know that when bread rises, wages naturally rise, reply: "upon the same principle, when the workmen come to make the laws, don't blame them if they fix a high rate of wages without busying themselves about protecting corn, because they know that when wages rise, provisions naturally rise also." if you are asked what, then, is to be done? reply: "be just to everybody." if you are told that it is essential that every great country should produce iron, reply: "what is essential is, that every great country should have iron." if you are told that it is indispensable that every great country should produce cloth, reply: "the indispensable thing is, that the citizens of every great country should have cloth." if it be said that labour is wealth, reply: "this is not true." and, by way of improvement, add: "phlebotomy is not health, and the proof of it is that bleeding is resorted to for the purpose of restoring health." if it is said: "to force men to cultivate rocks, and extract an ounce of iron from a hundredweight of ore, is to increase their labour and consequently their wealth," reply: "to force men to dig wells by prohibiting them from taking water from the brook, is to increase their _useless labour_, but not their wealth." if you are told that the sun gives you his heat and light without remuneration, reply: "so much the better for me, for it costs me nothing to see clearly." and if you are answered that industry in general loses what would have been paid for artificial light, rejoin; "no; for having paid nothing to the sun, what he saves me enables me to buy clothes, furniture, and candles." in the same way, if you are told that these rascally english possess capital which is dormant, reply: "so much the better for us; they will not make us pay interest for it." if it is said: "these perfidious english find coal and iron in the same pit," reply: "so much the better for us; they will charge us nothing for bringing them together." if you are told that the swiss have rich pasturages, which cost little: reply: "the advantage is ours, for they will demand a smaller amount of our labour in return for giving an impetus to our agriculture, and supplying us with provisions." if they tell you that the lands of the crimea have no value, and pay no taxes, reply: "the profit is ours, who buy corn free from such charges." if they tell you that the serfs of poland work without wages, reply: "the misfortune is theirs and the profit is ours, since their labour does not enter into the price of the corn which their masters sell us." finally, if they tell you that other nations have many advantages over us, reply: "by means of exchange, they are forced to allow us to participate in these advantages." if they tell you that under free-trade we are about to be inundated with bread, _bouf à la mode_, coal, and winter clothing, reply: "in that case we shall be neither hungry nor thirsty." if they ask how we are to pay for these things? reply: "don't let that disquiet you. if we are inundated, it is a sign we have the means of paying for the inundation; and if we have not the means of paying, we shall not be inundated." if any one says: i should approve of free-trade, if the foreigner, in sending us his products, would take our products in exchange; but he carries off our money, reply: "neither money nor coffee grows in the fields of beauce, nor are they turned out by the workshops of elbeuf. so far as we are concerned, to pay the foreigner with money is the same thing as paying him with coffee." if they bid you eat butcher's meat, reply: "allow it to be imported." if they say to you, in the words of the _presse_, "when one has not the means to buy bread, he is forced to buy beef," reply: "this is advice quite as judicious as that given by m. vautour to his tenant: "'quand on n'a pas de quoi payer son terme, il faut avoir une maison à soi.'" if, again, they say to you, in the words of _la presse_, "the government should teach the people how and why they must eat beef," reply: "the government has only to allow the beef to be imported, and the most civilized people in the world will know how to use it without being taught by a master." if they tell you that the government should know everything, and foresee everything, in order to direct the people, and that the people have simply to allow themselves to be led, reply by asking: "is there a state apart from the people? is there a human foresight apart from humanity? archimedes might repeat every day of his life, 'with a fulcrum and lever i can move the world;' but he never did move it, for want of a fulcrum and lever. the lever of the state is the nation; and nothing can be more foolish than to found so many hopes upon the state, which is simply to take for granted the existence of collective science and foresight, after having set out with the assumption of individual imbecility and improvidence." if any one says, "i ask no favour, but only such a duty on bread and meat as shall compensate the heavy taxes to which i am subjected; only a small duty equal to what the taxes add to the cost price of my corn," reply: "a thousand pardons; but i also pay taxes. if, then, the protection which you vote in your own favour has the effect of burdening me as a purchaser of corn with exactly your share of the taxes, your modest demand amounts to nothing less than establishing this arrangement as formulated by you: seeing that the public charges are heavy, i, as a seller of corn, am to pay nothing, and you my neighbour, as a buyer of corn, are to pay double, viz., your own share and mine into the bargain.' mr corn-merchant, my good friend, you may have force at your command, but assuredly you have not reason on your side." if any one says to you, "it is, however, exceedingly hard upon me, who pay taxes, to have to compete in my own market with the foreigner, who pays none, reply: " st, in the first place, it is not your market, but our market. i who live upon corn and pay for it, should surely be taken into account. " d, few foreigners at the present day are exempt from taxes. " d, if the taxes you vote yield you in roads, canals, security, etc., more than they cost you, you are not justified in repelling, at my expense, the competition of foreigners, who, if they do not pay taxes, have not the advantages you enjoy in roads, canals, and security. you might as well say, 'i demand a compensating duty because i have finer clothes, stronger horses, and better ploughs than the hard-working peasant of russia.' " th, if the tax does not repay you for what it costs, don't vote it. " th, in short, after having voted the tax, do you wish to get free from it? try to frame a law which will throw it on the foreigner. but your tariff makes your share of it fall upon me, who have already my own burden to bear." if any one says, "for the russians free-trade is necessary to enable them to exchange their products with advantage," (opinion de m. thiers dans les bureaux, april ), reply: "liberty is necessary everywhere, and for the same reason." if you are told, "each country has its wants, and we must be guided by that in what we do." (m. thiers), reply: "each country acts thus of its own accord, if you don't throw obstacles in the way." if they tell you, "we have no sheet-iron, and we must allow it to be imported," (m. thiers), reply: "many thanks." if you are told, "we have no freights for our merchant shipping. the want of return cargoes prevents our shipping from competing with foreigners," (m. thiers), reply: "when a country wishes to have everything produced at home, there can be no freights either for exports or imports. it is just as absurd to desire to have a mercantile marine under a system of prohibition, as it would be to have carts when there is nothing to carry." if you are told that assuming protection to be unjust, everything has been arranged on that footing; capital has been embarked; rights have been acquired; and the system cannot be changed without suffering to individuals and classes, reply: "all injustice is profitable to somebody (except, perhaps, restriction, which in the long run benefits no one). to argue from the derangement which the cessation of injustice may occasion to the man who profits by it, is as much as to say that a system of injustice, for no other reason than that it has had a temporary existence, ought to exist for ever." xvi. the right hand and the left. report addressed to the king. sire, when we observe these free-trade advocates boldly-disseminating their doctrines, and maintaining that the right of buying and selling is implied in the right of property (as has been urged by m. billault in the true style of a special pleader), we may be permitted to feel serious alarm as to the fate of our national labour; for what would frenchmen make of their heads and their hands were they left to their own resources? the administration which you have honoured with your confidence has turned its attention to this grave state of things, and has sought in its wisdom to discover a species of _protection_ which may be substituted for that which appears to be getting out of repute. they propose a _law to prohibit your faithful subjects from using their right hands_. sire, we beseech you not to do us the injustice of supposing that we have adopted lightly and without due deliberation a measure which at first sight may appear somewhat whimsical. a profound study of the system of protection has taught us this syllogism, upon which the whole doctrine reposes: the more men work, the richer they become; the more difficulties there are to be overcome, the more work; ergo, the more difficulties there are to be overcome, the richer they become. in fact, what is protection, if it is not an ingenious application of this reasoning--reasoning so close and conclusive as to balk the subtlety of m. billault himself? let us personify the country, and regard it as a collective being with thirty millions of mouths, and, as a natural consequence, with sixty millions of hands. here is a man who makes a french clock, which he can exchange in belgium for ten hundredweights of iron. but we tell him to make the iron himself. he replies, "i cannot, it would occupy too much of my time; i should produce only five hundredweights of iron during the time i am occupied in making a clock." utopian dreamer, we reply, that is the very reason why we forbid you to make the clock, and order you to make the iron. don't you see we are providing employment for you? sire, it cannot have escaped your sagacity that this is exactly the same thing in effect as if we were to say to the country, "work with your left hand, and not with the right." to create obstacles in order to furnish labour with an opportunity of developing itself, was the principle of the old system of restriction, and it is the principle likewise of the new system which is now being inaugurated. sire, to regulate industry in this way is not to innovate, but to persevere. as regards the efficiency of the measure, it is incontestable. it is difficult, much more difficult than one would suppose, to do with the left hand what we have been accustomed to do with the right. you will be convinced of this, sire, if you will condescend to make trial of our system in a process which must be familiar to you; as, for example, in shuffling a pack of cards. for this reason, we flatter ourselves that we are opening to labour an unlimited career. when workmen in all departments of industry are thus confined to the use of the left hand, we may figure to ourselves, sire, the immense number of people that will be wanted to supply the present consumption, assuming it to continue invariable, as we always do when we compare two different systems of production with one another. so prodigious a demand for manual labour cannot fail to induce a great rise of wages, and pauperism will disappear as if by enchantment. sire, your paternal heart will rejoice to think that this new law of ours will extend its benefits to that interesting part of the community whose destinies engage all your solicitude. what is the present destiny of women in france? the bolder and more hardy sex drives them insensibly out of every department of industry. formerly, they had the resource of the lottery offices. these offices have been shut up by a pitiless philanthropy, and on what pretext? "to save the money of the poor." alas! the poor man never obtained for a piece of money enjoyments as sweet and innocent as those afforded by the mysterious urn of fortune. deprived of all the enjoyments of life, when he, fortnight after fortnight, put a day's wages on the _quaterne_, how many delicious hours did he afford his family! hope was always present at his fireside. the garret was peopled with illusions. the wife hoped to rival her neighbours in her style of living; the son saw himself the drum-major of a regiment; and the daughter fancied herself led to the altar by her betrothed. "c'est quelque chose encor que de faire un beau rêve!" the lottery was the poetry of the poor, and we have lost it. the lottery gone, what means have we of providing for our _protégées?_ tobacco-shops and the post-office. tobacco, all right; its use progresses, thanks to the _distinguées_ habits, which august examples have skilfully introduced among our fashionable youth. the post-office!... we shall say nothing of it, as we mean to make it the subject of a special report. except, then, the sale of tobacco, what employment remains for your female subjects? embroidery, network, and sewing,--melancholy resources, which the barbarous science of mechanics goes on limiting more and more. but the moment your new law comes into operation, the moment right hands are amputated or tied up, the face of everything will be changed. twenty times, thirty times, a greater number of embroiderers, polishers, laundresses, seamstresses, milliners, shirtmakers, will not be sufficient to supply the wants of the kingdom, always assuming, as before, the consumption to be the same. this assumption may very likely be disputed by some cold theorists, for dress and everything else will then be dearer. the same thing may be said of the iron which we extract from our own mines, compared with the iron we could obtain in exchange for our wines. this argument, therefore, does not tell more against gaucherie than against protection, for this very dearness is the effect and the sign of an excess of work and exertion, which is precisely the basis upon which, in both cases, we contend that the prosperity of the working classes is founded. yes, we shall be favoured soon with a touching picture of the prosperity of the millinery business. what movement! what activity! what life! every dress will occupy a hundred fingers, instead of ten. no young woman will be idle, and we have no need, sire, to indicate to your perspicacity the moral consequences of this great revolution. not only will there be more young women employed, but each of them will earn more, for they will be unable to supply the demand; and if competition shall again show itself, it will not be among the seamstresses who make the dresses, but among the fine ladies who wear them. you must see then, sire, that our proposal is not only in strict conformity with the economic traditions of the government, but is in itself essentially moral and popular. to appreciate its effects, let us suppose the law passed and in operation,--let us transport ourselves in imagination into the future,--and assume the new system to have been in operation for twenty years. idleness is banished from the country; ease and concord, contentment and morality, have, with employment, been introduced into every family--no more poverty, no more vice. the left hand being very visible in all work, employment will be abundant, and the remuneration adequate. everything is arranged on this footing, and the workshops in consequence are full. if, in such circumstances, sire, utopian dreamers were all at once to agitate for the right hand being again set free, would they not throw the whole country into alarm? would such a pretended reform not overturn the whole existing state of things? then our system must be good, since it could not be put an end to without universal suffering. and yet we confess we have the melancholy presentiment (so great is human perversity) that some day there will be formed an association for right-hand freedom. we think that already we hear the free dexterities, assembled in the salle montesquieu, holding this language:-- "good people, you think yourselves richer because the use of one of your hands has been denied you; you take account only of the additional employment which that brings you. but consider also the high prices which result from it, and the forced diminution of consumption. that measure has not made capital more abundant, and capital is the fund from which wages are paid. the streams which flow from that great reservoir are directed towards other channels; but their volume is not enlarged; and the ultimate effect, as far as the nation at large is concerned, is the loss of all that wealth which millions of right hands could produce, compared with what is now produced by an equal number of left hands. at the risk of some inevitable derangements, then, let us form an association, and enforce our right to work with both hands." fortunately, sire, an association has been formed in defence of left-hand labour, and the sinistristes will have no difficulty in demolishing all these generalities, suppositions, abstractions, reveries, and utopias. they have only to exhume the moniteur industriel for , and they will find ready-made arguments against freedom of trade, which refute so admirably all that has been urged in favour of right-hand liberty that it is only necessary to substitute the one word for the other. "the parisian free-trade league has no doubt of securing the concurrence of the workmen. but the workmen are no longer men who can be led by the nose. they have their eyes open, and they know political economy better than our professors. free trade, they say, will deprive us of employment, and labour is our wealth. with employment, with abundant employment, the price of commodities never places them beyond our reach. without employment, were bread at a halfpenny a pound, the workman would die of hunger. now your doctrines, instead of increasing the present amount of employment, would diminish it, that is to say, would reduce us to poverty. "when there are too many commodities in the market, their price falls, no doubt. but as wages always fall when commodities are cheap, the result is that, instead of being in a situation to purchase more, we are no longer able to buy anything. it is when commodities are cheap that the workman is worst off." it will not be amiss for the sinistristes to intermingle some menaces with their theories. here is a model for them:--"what! you desire to substitute right-hand for left-hand labour, and thus force down, or perhaps annihilate wages, the sole resource of the great bulk of the nation! "and, at a time when a deficient harvest is imposing painful privations on the workman, you wish to disquiet him as to his future, and render him more accessible to bad advice, and more ready to abandon that wise line of conduct which has hitherto distinguished him." after such conclusive reasoning as this, we entertain a confident hope, sire, that if the battle is once begun, the left hand will come off victorious. perhaps an association may be formed for the purpose of inquiring whether the right hand and the left are not both wrong, and whether a third hand cannot be found to conciliate everybody. after having depicted the dexteristes as seduced by the apparent liberality of a principle, the soundness of which experience has not yet verified and the sinistristes as maintaining the position they have gained, they go on to say:-- "we deny that there is any third position which it is possible to take up in the midst of the battle! is it not evident that the workmen have to defend themselves at one and the same time against those who desire to change nothing in the present situation, because they find their account in it, and against those who dream of an economic revolution of which they have calculated neither the direction nor the extent?" we cannot, however, conceal from your majesty that our project has a vulnerable side; for it may be said that twenty years hence left hands will be as skilful as right hands are at present, and that then you could no longer trust to gaucherie for an increase of national employment. to that we reply, that according to the most learned physicians the left side of the body has a natural feebleness, which is quite reassuring as regards the labour of the future. should your majesty consent to pass the measure now proposed, a great principle will be established: all wealth proceeds from the intensity of labour. it will be easy for us to extend and vary the applications of this principle. we may decree, for example, that it shall no longer be permissible to work but with the foot; for this is no more impossible (as we have seen) than to extract iron from the mud of the seine. you see then, sire, that the means of increasing national labour can never fail. and after all has been tried, we have still the practically ex-haustless resource of amputation. to conclude, sire, if this report were not intended for publicity, we should take the liberty of soliciting your attention to the great influence which measures of this kind are calculated to confer on men in power. but that is a matter which we must reserve for a private audience. xvii. domination by labour. "in the same way that in time of war we attain the mastery by superiority in arms, do we not, in time of peace, arrive at domination by superiority in labour?" this is a question of the highest interest at a time when no doubt seems to be entertained that in the field of industry, as in the field of battle, the stronger crushes the weaker. to arrive at this conclusion, we must have discovered between the labour which is applied to commodities and the violence exercised upon men, a melancholy and discouraging analogy; for why should these two kinds of operations be thought identical in their effects, if they are essentially different in their own nature? and if it be true that in industry, as in war, predominance is the necessary result of superiority, what have we to do with progress or with social economy, seeing that we inhabit a world where everything has been so arranged by providence that one and the same effect--namely, oppression--proceeds necessarily from two opposite principles? with reference to england's new policy of commercial freedom, many persons make this objection, which has, i am convinced, taken possession of the most candid minds among us: "is england doing anything else than pursuing the same end by different means. does she not always aspire at universal supremacy? assured of her superiority in capital and labour, does she not invite free competition in order to stifle continental industry, and so put herself in a situation to reign as a sovereign, having conquered the privilege of feeding and clothing the population she has ruined?" it would not be difficult to demonstrate that these alarms are chimerical; that our alleged inferiority is much exaggerated; that our great branches of industry not only maintain their ground, but are actually developed under the action of external competition, and that the infallible effect of such competition is to bring about an increase of general consumption, capable of absorbing both home and foreign products. at present, i desire to make a direct answer to the objection, leaving it all the advantage of the ground chosen by the objectors. keeping out of view for the present the special case of england and france, i shall inquire in a general way whether, when, by its superiority in one branch of industry, a nation comes to outrival and put down a similar branch of industry existing among another people, the former has advanced one step towards domination, or the latter towards dependence; in' other words, whether both nations do not gain by the operation, and whether it is not the nation which is outrivalled that gains the most. if we saw in a product nothing more than an opportunity of bestowing labour, the alarms of the protectionists would undoubtedly be well-founded. were we to consider iron, for example, only in its relations with ironmasters, we might be led to fear that the competition of a country where it is the gratuitous gift of nature would extinguish the furnaces of another country where both ore and fuel are scarce. but is this a complete view of the subject? has iron relations only with those who make it? has it no relations with those who use it? is its sole and ultimate destination to be produced? and if it is useful, not on account of the labour to which it gives employment, but on account of the qualities it possesses, of the numerous purposes to which its durability and malleability adapt it, does it not follow that the foreigner cannot reduce its price, even so far as to render its production at home unprofitable, without doing us more good in this last respect, than harm in the other? pray consider how many things there are which foreigners, by reason of the natural advantages by which they are surrounded, prevent our producing directly, and with reference to which we are placed in reality in the hypothetical position we have been examining with reference to iron. we produce at home neither tea, coffee, gold, nor silver. is our industry _en masse_ diminished in consequence? no; only in order to create the counter-value of these imported commodities, in order to acquire them by means of exchange, we detach from our national labour a portion less great than would be required to produce these things ourselves. more labour thus remains to be devoted to the procuring of other enjoyments. we are so much the richer and so much the stronger. all that external competition can do, even in cases where it puts an end absolutely to a determinate branch of industry, is to economize labour, and increase our productive power. is this, in the case of the foreigner, the road to domination! if we should find in france a gold mine, it does not follow that it would be for our interest to work it. nay, it is certain that the enterprise would be neglected if each ounce of gold absorbed more of our labour than an ounce of gold purchased abroad with cloth. in this case we should do better to find our mines in our workshops. and what is true of gold is true of iron. the illusion proceeds from our failure to see one thing, which is, that foreign superiority never puts a stop to national industry, except under a determinate form, and under that form only renders it superfluous by placing at our disposal the result of the very labour thus superseded. if men lived in diving-bells under water, and had to provide themselves with air by means of a pump, this would be a great source of employment. to throw obstacles in the way of such employment, as long as men were left in this condition would be to inflict upon them a frightful injury. but if the labour ceases because the necessity for its exertion no longer exists, because men are placed in a medium where air is introduced into their lungs without effort, then the loss of that labour is not to be regretted, except in the eyes of men who obstinately persist in seeing in labour nothing but labour in the abstract. it is exactly this kind of labour which machinery, commercial freedom, progress of every kind, gradually supersedes; not useful labour, but labour become superfluous, without object, and without result. on the contrary, protection sets that sort of useless labour to work; it places us again under water, to bring the air-pump into play; it forces us to apply for gold to the inaccessible national mine, rather than to the national workshops. all the effect is expressed by the words, depredation of forces. it will be understood that i am speaking here of general effects, not of the temporary inconvenience which is always caused by the transition from a bad system to a good one. a momentary derangement accompanies necessarily all progress. this may be a reason for making the transition gently and gradually. it is no reason for putting a stop systematically to all progress, still less for misunderstanding it. industry is often represented as a struggle. that is not a true representation of it, or only true when we confine ourselves to the consideration of each branch of industry in its effects upon similar branches, regarding them both in thought apart from the interests of the rest of mankind. but there is always something else to be considered, namely, the effects upon consumption, and upon general prosperity. it is an error to apply to trade, as is but too often done, phrases which are applicable to war. in war the stronger overcomes the weaker. in industry the stronger imparts force to the weaker. this entirely does away with the analogy. let the english be as powerful and skilful as they are represented, let them be possessed of as large an amount of capital, and have as great a command of the two great agents of production, iron and fuel, as they are supposed to have; all this simply means cheapness. and who gains by the cheapness of products? the man who buys them. it is not in their power to annihilate any part whatever of our national labour. all they can do is to render it superfluous in the production of what is acquired by exchange, to furnish us with air without the aid of the pump, to enlarge in this way our disposable forces, and so render their alleged domination as much more impossible as their superiority becomes more incontestable. thus, by a rigorous and consoling demonstration, we arrive at this conclusion, that labour and violence, which are so opposite in their nature, are not less so in their effects. all we are called upon to do is to distinguish between labour annihilated, and labour economized. to have less iron because we work less, and to have less iron although we work less, are things not only different, but opposed to each other. the protectionists confound them; we do not. that is all. we may be very certain of one thing, that if the english employ a large amount of activity, labour, capital, intelligence, and natural forces, it is not done for show. it is done in order to procure a multitude of enjoyments in exchange for their products. they most certainly expect to receive at least as much as they give. _what they produce at home is destined to pay for what they purchase abroad_. if they inundate us with their products, it is because they expect to be inundated with ours in return. that being so, the best means of having much for ourselves is to be free to choose between these two modes of acquisition, immediate production, and mediate production. british machiavelism cannot force us to make a wrong choice. let us give up, then, the puerility of applying to industrial competition phrases applicable to war,--a way of speaking which is only specious when applied to competition between two rival trades. the moment we come to take into account the effect produced on the general prosperity, the analogy disappears. in a battle, every one who is killed diminishes by so much the strength of the army. in industry, a workshop is shut up only when what it produced is obtained by the public from another source and in greater abundance. figure a state of things where for one man killed on the spot two should rise up full of life and vigour. were such a state of things possible, war would no longer merit its name. this, however, is the distinctive character of what is so absurdly called industrial war. let the belgians and the english lower the price of their iron ever so much; let them, if they will, send it to us for nothing; this might extinguish some of our blast-furnaces; but immediately, and as a necessary consequence of this very cheapness, there would rise up a thousand other branches of industry more profitable than the one which had been superseded. we arrive, then, at the conclusion that domination by labour is impossible, and a contradiction in terms, seeing that all superiority which manifests itself among a people means cheapness, and tends only to impart force to all other nations. let us banish, then, from political economy all terms borrowed from the military vocabulary: to fight with equal weapons, to conquer, to crush, to stifle, to be beaten, invasion, tribute, etc. what do such phrases mean? squeeze them, and you obtain nothing... yes, you do obtain something; for from such words proceed absurd errors, and fatal and pestilent prejudices. such phrases tend to arrest the fusion of nations, are inimical to their peaceful, universal, and indissoluble alliance, and retard the progress of the human race. the end.